Part 12 (1/2)
Continuing my way homeward, I caught the distant hum of voices and an occasional shout. The sounds grew nearer. Looking down the Prado, I beheld many moving lights. Then a band began to play. A procession was approaching. I paused to watch. First came a band, men in smart uniforms; following these were men on horseback, some in uniform, some in civilian dress. Then came several other bands, and men and boys on foot carrying banners and lanterns and illuminations. A mult.i.tude was marching through the streets. Every now and then they shouted the name ”Ma.s.so, Ma.s.so,” and broke into _vivas_ and _bravos_. At the Hotel Pasaje they halted and renewed their cheers and cries, the wide street becoming packed with the pressing mob, a cheering crowd, mostly dark-faced. The procession was a demonstration in behalf of Ma.s.so by the followers of the ”Ma.s.soista” party. He is the candidate they would elect to the Presidency of the Cuban Republic in opposition to Estrada Palma.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SELLING VEGETABLES--HAVANA]
On the afternoon of the following day, I was riding on the tramway in company with a friend, toward the suburbs on the hill, when a tall and courtly Cuban came toward us. He took a seat next to my friend and after a few moments' conversation, turned to me and said in perfect English that he had noticed me the night before in the box of ”_Senora_ General Wood,” and, ”that he had remarked me for a stranger in Habana.” He said that he was shortly to leave the car, and asked whether we would not like to visit an old Cuban mansion, in order to see how people in Cuba lived in the style of the old _regime_.
Knowing the gracious manner of compliment habitual among the Spanish peoples, I was going to thank him for the proffered courtesy and decline; but my American friend, to my surprise, promptly accepted the invitation. We left the car in company with our guide, _Senor_ ----, who belongs to one of the oldest Cuban families of French descent,--and is a lawyer of distinction.
We approached a stately residence built of white marble, a series of high marble pillars before a marble portico running along the front.
We pa.s.sed through a small gate within a larger one in a high, wrought iron fence, through a small glazed door in a large doorway and came into a high, wide drawing room, extending across the front of the house. All was white marble,--the floors, the wainscoting, the doorways;--there was no woodwork anywhere. Handsome rugs lay upon the floor and French rattan furniture of easy shapes was scattered about the room. At one side we entered another lofty chamber, similarly floored and wainscoted, used as a ladies' boudoir, and thence pa.s.sed out across a wide piazza, into a beautiful and well-kept Spanish garden. The walks were carefully laid out, the beds were full of blooming plants--there were many palms of different varieties, and a marble bath house with running water and a large swimming pool. Beyond the flower garden, we entered a vegetable garden, close to which stood a commodious stable; then returning to the house _El Senor_ asked whether we would like also to see the kitchen. We were shown into a big square room, in the center of which stood an octagonal blue-tiled ”stove,” about ten feet across at the top, and four feet high, a sort of porcelain table, containing many niches wherein to build small charcoal fires, a single fire to cook each separate dish. An old negro servant, a freed slave, was preparing the evening meal. We next entered the large dining room, with old mahogany furniture, a long table for banquets, and at one side a small table already set for the evening meal. There was much handsome silver and cut gla.s.s upon the high, old-fas.h.i.+oned mahogany sideboard. From the dining room we pa.s.sed into a library, the shelves filled with French and Spanish and German and English books. Here the father of my host, an eminent judge, had gathered about him much of the world's choicest literature. Then we came out into the wide _patio_, square and open to the sky, a fountain playing in the middle, and many potted palms and flowering plants set round about. The great house was of one story, and all rooms opened upon the central court. None of the windows were sashed with gla.s.s, and Venetian blinds kept out the light and too much air.
Here, in this sumptuous home lived for half a century one of the distinguished families of Havana; here now were living the grandchildren of those who built it.
Our host then led us up to the wide flat roof, whence stretched out before us a panorama of the city, the bay and the open sea.
My friend, who had long lived in Havana, holding a prominent post in government employ, had never before enjoyed the privilege of inspecting so beautiful a Cuban home. As we parted that evening he turned to me and said, ”Perhaps the white duck trousers and blue flannel coat, which were so conspicuous last night in the box of Cuba's Governor General, are to be thanked for this opportunity now come to both of us.” _El Senor_ had been pleased to show a courtesy to the guest of the first lady of the Island.
Neither the great cathedral of Havana, nor any of her churches, nor the honored chapel where Columbus' bones are supposed to have lain, nor any of her public buildings, not even the ”Palace” of the Spanish Captain Generals, are of so striking and splendid architecture as one sees generally in Mexico. The allurement and dazzling fame of the Empire of Montezuma attracted thither all that was daring and forceful and brilliant in old Spain. Even the wonders of Cuba and the Antilles paled before the tales of fabulous wealth and treasure of the conquest of Cortez. The n.o.ble churches and architecture of Mexico have no rivals among the Cuban cities. Nor is there among the Cubans that picturesqueness in garb, that striking brilliancy of coloring, which one sees upon the streets of the Mexican cities. In Cuba you see no scarlet and green and blue _zerapes_; no purple and blue and pink _rebozos_; no _rancherros_ and _caballeros_ in velvet jackets and tight-fitting trousers, laced and spangled and b.u.t.toned with threads of silver and gold; none of the splendor in coloring and dress of the sixteenth century, which still clings to the street scene in Mexico. Cuba in its outward aspects is distinctly, unromantically modern. The black coat is _de rigueur_; the black hat or the _panama_ is the only covering for the head, and even conventional millinery has begun to drive away the graceful _mantilla_ from the brows of _las senoras_. There is no poetry, no artistic coloring in the life scheme of the Cuban. His face and movements lack the vivacity and alertness inspired by the keen, quickening air of the Mexican Highlands. Even the clothes he wears and the way he wears them bespeak the heavy, sea level atmosphere he breathes. Nor has the language of the Cuban preserved the ancient grace and forcefulness which distinguish the almost cla.s.sic Spanish of the Mexican. The Spanish spoken in Cuba has added to its vocabulary a mult.i.tude of words from the French and English of its neighbors, and from the provincial _patois_ of the formerly numerous Spanish soldiery.
[Ill.u.s.tration: A CORNER OF THE MARKET--HAVANA]
Another time we rode out to the attractive suburbs of Vendado, where are many fine houses and extensive gardens, the greater part of them built in the old Spanish style, but some of the newer buildings after the fas.h.i.+on of modern American architecture. These last are less attractive than those which the Spaniard has evolved from his centuries of living in the lat.i.tudes of the tropics.
XXI
Cuba--The Fortress of La Cabana
HAVANA, _December 2nd_.
The candle end Captain MacIrvine held in his hand had burned so low that his fingers were scorching. My last match was burned up. We should have to grope our way out. Just at that moment a dim flicker of a distant light gleamed far down the low, narrow tunnelway. It came nearer, it grew larger; a man was there,--a soldier--yes, a Cuban officer, a lieutenant of infantry. With him were two ladies; one older than he, whose face, sweet, but oh, so sad! was furrowed with deep lines. Her hand trembled on her escort's arm. The other woman was younger, quite as young as the lieutenant, and comely to look upon.
”_Si, Senor_,” replied the lieutenant to a query, ”I do have one box of the match. Take of them one half. Take of them all. I do know the way out.” He handed MacIrvine a box of small wax tapers. Tears were streaming down the elder woman's face; the younger gave a sob. The three pa.s.sed on and turned up the steep ascent to the left. We were in the pitch dark again.
[Ill.u.s.tration: FORTRESS OF LA CABAnA]
”Who is he? Who are they?” I asked. ”He is the officer now in command of this fortification; they are his mother and sister,” MacIrvine replied, half divining my question. ”He is of a prominent Cuban family. They were people of wealth. The family were at dinner one evening. A Spanish guard called at the house, sent in a card to the father, who was an eminent judge. He left the table and went to the door. He was arrested and brought here, hatless and in his slippers.
When the family went to ascertain why he did not come back to finish his coffee, they learned that he had been taken to La Cabana. They never saw him again. The Spanish authorities reported that he had 'escaped.' In fact, he was brought down here into one of these dungeons, and was walled up alive. These loose rock walls you are now looking at, filling these low arches along this pa.s.sageway, all tell the same tale. Behind every one of these walls, one or more Cubans have been immured alive. Their bones still rot there.”
When a man was walled in, no record was kept of the dungeon; the guards were subsequently changed and often sent to another fortress.
No one might know the victim's burial place, where he was immured with only a jug of water, a loaf of bread; and the rats robbed him of half of these. Oblivion in life, oblivion in death.
We were in the deepest, darkest dungeonway of the gigantic fortress, La Cabana, which crowns the height across the bay from Havana. The pa.s.sage was about four feet wide. Along one side were narrow, low arches, some three feet in span. Most of these arches were wholly filled with a wall of large loose rock. Air might pa.s.s through between the c.h.i.n.ks, and the rats and lizards could crawl through; an empty rat, not one full-fattened on the dead within. A few of these walls had been torn down, and the scattered bones which sharp teeth had not destroyed had been utterly gathered together and buried in the beautiful cemetery of the city. But most of these walls were yet untouched, the story of their unknown dead forever lost. My foot hit something, I bent down and picked up the tibia of a human arm; the rats had dragged it through the wall. I laid it back gently on a projecting shelf of rock, my soul filled with horror, at the tale of Spanish cruelty it told.
We were a long way from daylight. We had crossed a moat within the giant fortress. We had pa.s.sed many cave-like chambers built into the ma.s.sive masonry--the casemates where soldiers and officers had lived in ease. We had entered a small room with stone seats on either hand.
It was the outer guardroom of the series of dungeons behind. We had pushed open an immense iron grating which swung on rusty hinges like a door. We had come into a vast vaulted chamber, flagged with huge stones, the center of the floor being lower than the sides, making the drain. Along the walls on either hand, all the way, at a height of about seven feet, were heavy iron rings. To these rings the prisoners had been chained. Sometimes the chains were riveted to iron collars welded about the neck. A man might stand on tiptoe in comfort. When his toes gave out the collar pinched his neck; he sometimes died overnight before the jail guard discovered that his toes were weak.
Into this great chamber hundreds of Cuban patriots had been crowded.
No air could enter but through the narrow grated door,--no light could penetrate but the faint glimmering that drifted in through the small outer doorway. Those who might die were brought to the grating by any of their fellow-prisoners whose fetters enabled them to move. The great chamber still stank with the reek of blasted mortality. But this was not all. At the far end of the vast room was yet another grated door, now swung open upon rusting hinges. We pa.s.sed into a second chamber, lower and longer than the first, obscure with perpetual gloom. The faintest gleam of G.o.d's sweet day could be scarcely discerned through the distant door-grating of the first chamber.