I was lent a car, which called at the Hotel at 6:00 A.M. We did not
start till seven, and it was cold, ever so cold, but the road was
beautiful. I repeated the expedition to El Desirto and having started
early got there before the rains. El Desirto is the ruin of a Carmelite
Convent. It is a huge rambling place “in the desert” quite isolated on
the mountainside amid the woods. It is very beautiful, but I thought
dismal and damp. A Mexican man and boy, armed us with candles, led us
down through underground passages and cells that were very extensive
and dripping from the vaulted roofs ... Dick loved it, but I was glad
to be back in the sunlight. It must be a curious sensation to be a nun
or a monk, to live secluded from the world, in peace and calm, and to
have no further anxiety (unless it be about one’s soul--) and to be
content with the daily round, the menial work. I suppose it requires
great belief and no imagination. We came back down the mountain,
stopping to pick wild flowers, and at a village we found a house that
gave us hot milk, for which we were thankful. Then we pursued our way
along a road whence came the endless procession of men, women and boys,
carrying their abnormal loads into town for sale. It led us through
a valley some miles further in among the hills, and we paused on a
hillside in the sun, to eat our combined breakfast and lunch. From our
selected spot we viewed about a mile of road, and it made a curious
impression upon one (as de la Huerta would have wished). This never
ceasing steady stream of human beasts of burden! It suggested the
evacuation of a town by refugees, carrying all they could take away.
Dick, gathering bunches of wild penstimon was joined by two little
Indian girls. One could not have been more than three years old. She
wore a single garment of coarse linen. It reached nearly to her little
barefeet, was sleeveless and cut in a big square decolleté. She had the
loveliest little face, huge eyes and regular features ... and as she
crushed a big bunch of long stemmed penstimon in her arms, as if it
might have been a baby, she made a picture that one longed to preserve.
But a sadness overwhelmed me at the thought that these little young
things on the flowery hillside were surveying their destiny, as it
passed along the road below them. They had been born into a world where
early in life, they would be bent double, by the burden back and front,
of merchandise and baby, and there would seem to be no escape. “Why do
they submit?” was the question that kept rising in my heart. Why does
man, woman or child submit; and then I imagined myself in their place,
and I got the answer: If my father had always done it, and my mother
whilst she bore me, and my father’s father and mother, and my mother’s,
and my brother already accompanied them, and the neighbors went too,
and they talked pantingly as they started off together, or rested at
the wayside places, then I who was young enough to be left behind, (and
not so young as to be a burden that must be carried with them), I would
know that my life would not always be one of watching, or of gathering
flowers. When everyone is doing it, and it is in your tradition and in
your environment, there is a submission to conditions that no one would
dream of breaking.
We went for a walk along a stream, out of view of the saddening road,
and our path was a mosaic of flowers, and the shrubs and trees grew
in such a way that it might have been a carefully planted and tended
English rock garden.
At seven o’clock Mr. Rubio came to see me. Sent by de la Huerta. He
was accompanied by a well known writer called Velazquez, who is also a
poet. Rubio delivered into my hands a photograph from the Minister; it
was inscribed in a way that only the Spanish language lends itself to.
Apparently he was pleased by my letter. I had said that I appreciated
his personality and his aims, that a few more people of his calibre in
the world, and there would be less of suffering for the masses. Rubio
says that everything was arranged for General Calles to come and see
me last Thursday at seven, but that at five, they telephoned he had
been taken suddenly ill, in his office. He has been ill ever since.
I had already heard the rumor that he had been poisoned. Rubio asked
why I was leaving so quickly. I explained Dick was not well. I did not
explain that I had finished my work. To all appearance I have not had
any!
A letter has just come from the President’s Secretary, inviting Dick
and me to Chapultepec at five on Monday.