CHAPTER 17.

 

            MAYNARD returned from the hacienda about midday, bringing the padre with him.

 

            ‘It is useless to talk to him,’ said the latter, shrugging his shoulders, and quaintly mixing Spanish and English, to Noel, who met them on their entrance. ‘Instead of sending the piccarones to be locked up in the Alhondiga at Guanaxuato, he has made them dig a grave and bury their camarádas muertos, given them a talking to, and let them carry off their broken heads to nurse at leisure. Santa Virgen! I have often heard of the pugilista inglés before, but I never thought an Englishman’s fist could crack a Mexican’s skull.’

 

            At this moment Margaret, hearing their arrival, came from her room, and looked anxiously at James. He was grave, and seemed disinclined to be communicative. Telling Margaret to entertain the padre, he asked Noel to accompany him to his study.

 

            ‘You expressed a wish,’ he said, as they seated themselves in the little room, to accompany my next conductá to Tampico. I have determined to despatch it at once. I do not advise you to go, and I shall be sorry to lose you; but if you prefer going, your arrangements ought to be made to-day.’

 

            ‘When does it start?’

 

            ‘At midday to-morrow, and encamps the first night a little beyond Dolóres, the village whence we take our name. You need not start so early as that. The train travels slowly, and you can easily overtake it. You will have a roughish time, but it is the best season for travelling, and your absence, after last night’s business, will not be without its advantages. If you do

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go through to the port, I shall not be surprised at the sight of the steamer making you change your mind about coming back to us. At any rate, if you return, you will find us living in the hacienda.’

 

            If one thing seemed more impossible than another to Noel at that time, it was the idea of his leaving Mexico while Margaret was in it. It was, however, very satisfactory to him to find that Maynard had no thought of the kind.

 

            ‘My baggage is all at Vera Cruz,’ he answered; ‘and I could hardly make the voyage home without it. No, I shall certainly come back, and have another look at you, and then take Mexico city on my next journey. Besides, I have done nothing of what I came here to do, and if there is any risk impending, I cannot return and tell my uncle that I left you to face it alone.’

 

            ‘So far as that is concerned,’ said Maynard, ‘it is only part of my business to take whatever may come. With you it is different.’

 

            ‘You may be quite sure that neither my uncle nor I,’ returned Noel, ‘will consent to your remaining in this country when there is any real danger. If a time comes when no precaution will ensure safety in working the mine, you must shut it up, and leave it in charge of an agent, and come away until things become settled again.’

 

            ‘It will take a good deal to drive me from my post,’ answered Maynard. ‘And I intend to stick to it, and keep things going in one way or another, so that even if I cannot actually extract or ship any metal, I shall still be in a better position for doing so when the country is open again.’

 

            It struck Noel that he spoke as if he had some ground of confidence, which he was averse to revealing; but wishing to avoid any allusion to the question of sending Margaret and the children home, for he did not feel prepared to give a dispassionate opinion thereon, Noel hastened to change the subject, and so inquired what Maynard had been doing at the hacienda.

 

            ‘Much as the padre told you. I found that the ladrones were of the poorest class of péons, with the smallest drop of Spanish blood in them, and so I gave vent to the sympathy which I have with the aboriginal inhabitants, and, after some magisterial observations, set them free. The poor fellows, who really seemed to be driven by famine into turning an honest penny as best they could, went off far better disposed towards me than

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they would be likely to be after a course of punishment. A policy of leniency is rare in this country, where nature, man, and circumstance are alike volcanic; and I shall not be surprised to find it prove the best. I have never yet told you all my real position in Mexico, and the reasons I have for believing that I shall not be seriously molested, except under a complete capsize of affairs.’

 

            ‘No; but ought we not to be rejoining the señora and padre?’

 

            ‘Oh no, the poor old fellow has no greater treat than a good chat with Margaret, and a game with the children. We are not wanted. He knows but a small portion of what I am going to tell you. Of the three principal parties in the Mexican States, the Spanish, the aboriginal, and the mixed, or mestizos, his sympathies are with the latter. The curas of this part of the country have always been both ardent patriots and ardent Catholics, even to inciting insurrections and heading them in person in the field, whenever they considered the interests of the Church in danger. The most famous of these clerical warriors belonged to this very neighbourhood. There was an idea that the government imposed upon Mexico by Napoleon, in 1810, intended betraying the country to England and heresy; and Hidalgo, the padre of Dolóres, raised an immense force to resist it, took Guanaxuato by storm, and after several battles was himself captured and shot. Everybody is shot in Mexico. It is the way of the country. Well, my padre goes so far as to refuse his sympathies to the exclusive Spanish party, which is confined almost entirely to the capital and large towns, but he does not know that I go beyond him, and restrict mine to the aborigines, and those who share their blood, to the exclusion of all influence from Rome, Spain, or any other foreign source. The system followed by the Spaniards in Mexico, practically exceeds in its severity towards the natives any that ever was practised by ourselves in India, Ireland, or elsewhere. For, without denying them the legal right of owning the soil, they have yet reduced them for the most part to a state of serfdom, and made them dependent on such charity or work as they can obtain from the race of their conquerors. The hopes of all these, who constitute the millions in these States, rest upon the President, Juarez, who is a pure-blooded Indian, and claims the soil for its natural owners. At present he has made but little way toward the redemption of his countrymen. Holding his position by Spanish aid, he is compelled

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to cloak his ultimate designs, and proceed step by step. He is shrewd enough to see that there is little hope for the emancipation of his people, so long as they are under a foreign spiritual domination, and incapacitated from owning the land. All his depredations upon Church property, – and the priests call him the arch-destroyer – have been prompted as much by this motive as by the pressing needs of the State. If foreign residence have sometimes fared badly under his government, it is solely because he is unable to control effectively the Spanish-blooded agents whom he is forced to employ. If he reveals himself too soon, he will be deposed and shot; but if once he can become sufficiently independent of them to come out in his real character, he will have the enthusiastic support of the vast mass of the population. I discovered a good deal of all this on my first visit to Mexico; and, on my second, the matter seemed to me to have so important a bearing on the safety of the property here, that I contrived to get intimate enough with the President to let him see that my sympathies are with his race as against the conquerors: and he has assured me of his special protection against the forced loans which others are sometimes called on to pay. Remember that I am telling you all this in strict confidence. Not another soul must know it. It is as much in pursuance of my friendship with Juarez, as from any other motive, that I have treated my assailants of last night so gently. When you go to the capital, I will, if you like, give you an introduction to him. You have only to represent yourself as an admiring student of aboriginal antiquities, and a believer in the direct derivation of the old religion of Mexico from the earliest worships of Asia, which we have so often discussed together, to find ready access to his heart. I told him a good deal on the subject that he was delighted with, and I have heard that he sometimes banters the Archbishop about getting his rites at second hand. The Spaniards are here as conquerors; despisers and supplanters of everything really Mexican. Any good they might have done by bringing the civilisation of Europe with them has been far overbalanced by the arrogance and contempt, the cruelty and rapacity, the crushing servitude of soul and body, which they have imposed upon the subject race.’

 

            ‘But I thought,’ said Noel, ‘that the constitution of 1824 was a vast step in the direction of liberty for them.’

 

            ‘So it was. Without it an Indian could never have been President; but, practically, it left the péons in hopeless bondage

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and entirely at the mercy of the hacendéros. No government will be successful or stable that fails to act rightly by the labouring race. The reason why I anticipate little good from the Intervention is just this. If it does not use compulsion, it will have no attention paid to it, beyond an increase of the feeling against foreigners. And if it attempt to establish a government by force, it will make the mistake of treating Mexico as Spanish, and so fail to establish itself upon the only firm basis which the country affords, – the affections and interests of the peasantry. There’s the dinner bell.’ 

 

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