His talk at the breakfast table, with Señora Fombombo, braced the spirits of Thomas Strawbridge. The girl seemed to bring a kind of comfort to the drummer. Now as he walked down the long marble steps of thepresidencia, the tropical sunshine slanting into the plaza, the cries of gathering street venders, the rattle of carts, the stir of pigeons in the cathedral tower all conspired to speed his thoughts and energy along their customary channel—that is to say, toward the selling of merchandise. He was in fettle, and he wanted to sell hardware. He felt so full of power he believed he could sell anything to anybody.
And the Señora Fombombo was in some degree responsible for his exaltation. A pleasant woman always grooms a man for a fine deed. So it was the Spanish girl who sent the big blond American striding through the plaza, smiling to himself and seeking whom he might sell.
It was Strawbridge's plan to go to the general merchandise stores in Canalejos and stock them up on hardware, by the mere élan and warmth of his approach. It is conceivable that enough Thomas Strawbridges, a whole army of them, could bankrupt the manufacturing interests of all foreign nations, could wither them right out of existence in the overpowering sunshine of their good-fellowship and love for humanity.
As Strawbridge hurried through the plaza, filled, one might say, with this destructive amiability, he was accosted by a voice asking him if he did not desire a fortune of ten million pesetas.
The drummer looked around and saw a lottery-venderholding out his sheaf of tickets. He was offering coupons on the National Spanish Lottery, an institution which circulates its chances all over South America, including even insurgent Rio Negro.
The good fairy who was offering this chance of fortune was a ragged man whose lean ribs and belly could be seen through the rents in his clothes. The American paused, took the sheaf, and looked at the tickets curiously. Each ticket was a long strip of small coupons which could be torn into ten pieces and divided among indigent buyers. They were vilely printed on the cheapest of paper.
Strawbridge stood looking at the tickets and shaking his head. Life, he told the ticket-seller, was what a man made it, and he could not afford to mix up his solid success with lottery chances and such like. What he wanted was certainties, and not moonshine. Here he handed back the sheaf and moved on briskly through the plaza, a big, well-tailored American, the ensample of a man who had taken his life in his own hands and molded it into a warm and shining success. The vender stared emptily after the drummer. Never before had his hope of a sale inflated so suddenly, or collapsed so completely.
Strawbridge had gone only a little way when a man came running out of a bodega that was down a side street. He was waving his sombrero and calling Strawbridge's name. The American stood in doubt whether he had heard aright, for no one in Canalejos knew his name, and then he saw a wad of hair on the shouter's head and recognized the bull-fighter. Lubito came up quickly and somewhat unsteadily. His face was flushed, his black eyes glistened with alcohol, and his bull-fighter's pigtail was somewhat awry.
"I was just starting to thepalacioto see you, señor," he began a little thickly. "I was just starting when mycompadrein the bodega says,'There goes theAmericanonow,' so out I came."
"What can I do for you?" asked the drummer, with brief patience.
The torero grinned laxly.
"You were mycomaradocoming here from Caracas, señor. You remember, we rode all the way together."
"Sure! Get to your point."
Lubito straightened.
"Well, would you see yourcomaradowronged? Are you going to see him turned into a laughing-stock?"
"You've turned yourself into a laughing-stock; you're drunk."
"Caramba!Whose fault is it?"
"Why, yours, of course!"
The bull-fighter spread the fingers of both hands on his chest.
"I! It is no fault of mine. The President did this!"
"Aw, you're talking nonsense."
"No, it is true, the fault is with General Fombombo. I am no tippler. I am a bull-fighter. That's what I wanted to see you about. You are acaballero, and a friend of the President. You can stand up and talk to him, but he sends me off to see the bull-ring. You know, you heard him yesterday, sending me off to see the bull-ring, the moment he clapped eyes on me."
Strawbridge was faintly amused.
"Is that what you want me to see him about—because he dismissed you yesterday?"
Lubito was only slightly intoxicated, and now his anger sobered him completely:
"No! No! What do I care for his contempt? I, too, am a Venezuelan, but, señor, when any man interferes with my paternal rights—" he tapped himself threateningly on his powerful chest—"I am a bull-fighter."
"What in the world are you talking about?"
"Cá!Madruja!"
"But your paternal rights!"
Lubito flung out exasperated hands.
"Didn't you hear her father, the old man in the 'reds,' place her in my care?"
"Yes. Well, what has happened?"
"Enough! I saw Madruja carried, by the guards, to one of the rooms in the west wing of thepalacio. Very good. I followed, and marked the room. The windows seemed rather old; perhaps the bars could be bent. I did not know. I was in her father's place. It was my duty to see."
Strawbridge's interest picked up, as a man's always does when a woman is introduced into the narrative:
"Yes, I guess you would be very strict about your daughter. Then what?"
"Well, last night I slept in the dressing-room at the bull-ring. That is, I tried to sleep, but I could not. I kept thinking of my daughter Madruja, pining for Esteban. I got up and walked out into the bull-ring, thinking of the lonely little bride. Ah, señor, there were stars! I can never look at stars without thinking of the eyes of brides...." Lubito shivered, reached up and straightened his hair a trifle, then went on: "I said to myself, 'Cá!A man who stumbles goes all the faster if he does not fall.' So I made up my mind. I went back to the dressing-room, in the dark found my guitar, and started for thepresidencia. Señor, you will believe it when I tell you I was trembling all the way, like a mimosa leaf. I slipped very quietly around the plaza, past the department offomento, and so to the window where my little daughter slept. I came up softly and tried the bars with all my strength, but although I am a bull-fighter, señor, they did not budge."
The drummer stood looking at the veins in the bull-fighter's forehead. The fellow went on:
"There was nothing to do, señor, but to sing, to sing a love-song to my little Madruja, and perhaps she would come to the window, or open the door if she could. I touched the chords and began singing 'La Encantadora,' softly, into the window, just for her.
"For minutes nothing stirred, but I have a tender voice, señor. You know; you have heard me sing. It will melt any woman's heart. I began, 'Mi alma, mi amor perdida.'
"Oh, señor, it was a sobbing, plaintive song, and when I had finished and stood holding my breath, something moved in the darkness. There came a little clinking on the windowsill, and I saw the faint gleam of metal. It was a gold coin, señor. Then the voice of General Fombombo said: 'That is Lubito, is it not? Sing to us all night long, Lubito.'"
Strawbridge opened his eyes and thrust his head forward.
"What!" he cried.
"By five thousand devils on horseback, it's true!" Lubito flung up his arms. "And me there—her father! My head grew hot. I went insane! I told General Fombombo I was in her father's place, that I, Lubito, was in her father's place, but the general only laughed and said: 'Sing, sing to us, Lubito. As to your paternal duties, your ideas went out of date with the Neanderthal man, five hundred thousand years ago." The torero came to a pause, breathing heavily; then, after a moment, he asked more rationally, "Now, what did he mean by that?"
The dictator's quip, jest, or philosophy, whatever it was, had not registered at all with Strawbridge. He stood staring at Lubito and suddenly began laughing. The bull-fighter at once looked offended, and Strawbridge began gasping an apology in the midst of his mirth. He got out his handkerchief and wiped his eyes.
"Ex-excuse me, Lubito, b-but wh-what did he say? 'S-s-singall night! S-s-s...." His effort at the "s" rippled into laughter again.
Lubito flung up his hands in disgust.
"Canastos!what a man! To see a young girl deflowered—and laugh!" The bull-fighter turned on his heel, perfectly sober, and walked away.
Strawbridge also became sober; he even frowned.
"Hell! putting it like that!" Then he shrugged, and continued his unspoken soliloquy: "Well, what better could you expect from a bunch of Venezuelans ... just natives...." His good-natured face began to form another smile; then he thought of Señora Fombombo. At that he became serious enough. The Spanish girl seemed to raise some obscure question in his mind. He made a hazy effort to clarify that question, but nothing came of it.
With this, Strawbridge removed his thoughts from the incident and proceeded to canvass the town in the interest of the Orion Arms Corporation. He walked out of Plaza Mayor into a narrow, dirtycallewhich was the principal street of the city. It was lined with the usual ill-lighted, inconvenient business houses which characterize Venezuelan towns; a roulette establishment, a charcoal and kindling store with a box of half-decayed mangos as a side line, a gloomy book-store with the works of Vargas Vila lying, back up, on a table outside. The first general merchandise store he found had a single bolt of calico on display. Above the bolt swung the name of the store in faded letters, "Sol y Sombra."
Such complete absence of attractive displays was a real pain to the American. It spurred his commercial missionary spirit. He entered the dark "Sol y Sombra." It had once been an ancient dwelling. Its use had been changed from domestic to mercantile ends by the simple expedients of knocking out some partitions and roofing an old patio. In fact, when aVenezuelan merchant covers an old patio and thereby adds to his floor space, he has just about uttered the last word in Venezuelan progressiveness.
Strawbridge turned into the shop and asked for the proprietor. The proprietor had not arrived, but one of the clerks offered his services. The American introduced himself and vigorously grasped the young man's limp hand.
"I'm a hardware man," he began briskly; "and now, if you'll just carry me back to your hardware department, we'll check through and see what you're short on; then I can hand your boss the lists and prices of the very things he needs and save him a lot of time."
The clerk was a small, withered youth with sad brown eyes that resembled a monkey's. He looked at Strawbridge and said:
"My employer will have all the time there is when he gets here, señor."
"Um ... well, ... we can shove the deal through quicker, anyway."
The little clerk turned and started doubtfully toward the hardware department. It was clear that he did not want to go, but he could not hold his ground against the dynamic force of Strawbridge's enthusiasm. As he moved along he said:
"You are an American, aren't you?"
"Travel out of New York, but my home's in Keokuk. Great little burg; thirty thousand population and thirty-five hundred automobiles, not to mention flivvers...." Here Strawbridge laughed heartily, sharing the wide-spread American conviction that to make a distinction between an automobile and a flivver is the most amusing flight of human wit. "And, say," he added, when he had finished his lonely laugh, "I wish you could see the Keokuk window displays; give you some pointers, young man."
The young man was smiling agreeably, so the drummer turned to business.
"Well," he began optimistically, "trade picking up here as everywhere, I suppose?"
The monkey-eyed youth agreed without enthusiasm.
"Your export trade showing any strength?"
"I am only a clerk, señor; I have no export trade."
"Yes, I know; I meant...." It became clear that it was not worth while to pursue this topic. They had reached the hardware department. The clerk stood silent while Strawbridge looked around him. The stock was fuller than the American had expected.
A sudden idea occurred to Strawbridge:
"Look here, why don't you get out a big display of this stuff? You could push out a lot of it."
"I have no interest here at all, señor," repeated the little man, concealing a yawn with his fingers. "I'm just a clerk."
Strawbridge broke into cheerful irritation:
"Why, damn it, man! if you'll make this business your own, some day it will be your own. Right here is your chance to use your initiative, throw some pep into this establishment. Get this thing moving and you'll be the headliner around here." Strawbridge gave the prospective headliner a cheerful blow on the shoulder, designed to knock energy into him. A constructive impulse seized the American: "Say, I'm quite a lad when it comes to window-dressing. Let's bundle a lot of this stuff out front and fix up something of a scream by the time the old man arrives!" Like a benevolent giant Strawbridge beamed down on the little clerk. Next moment he had caught up an armful of ropes, plow points, hoes, and door hinges and was lugging them toward the front of the store.
The feather of a clerk tried to resist the American whirlwind.
"But, señor, wait one minute!Nombre de Dios!Señor, for God's sake stop! What you are doing is mad!"
Strawbridge was annoyed.
"Mad the devil! It's the only sensible thing in Canalejos; give your joint a prosperous, up-to-date look."
"But, señor, we don't want to look prosperous and up to date."
"What!" The American was scandalized. "Don't want to look up to date! What's eating you?"
"Nothing. We don't want to, because it will raise our taxes. We shall be forced to pay larger contributions to the governor.Caramba!Señor, you do not know this country!"
Strawbridge came to a halt at last.
"Your taxes will be raised if you look prosperous!"
"Seguramente!" affirmed the clerk, excitedly. "To look prosperous is a sort of crime in Venezuela. If we seemtoowell off, perhaps the dictator will take over our whole business. We dare not risk it. So we keep everything out of sight. That is best."
Thomas Strawbridge stood confounded. He doubted his ears.
"Look here: is that straight goods?"
"It is true, señor," asseverated the little man, solemnly, "if that is what you mean."
"But take your business from you? Take itfromyou!"
The clerk evidently thought the American did not understand his Spanish, for he elucidated:
"I mean occupy it—receive the money—have the key to the door."
Strawbridge stood staring at the little fellow, wondering if such a fantastic situation could really exist.
"Did you ever know of such a case?" he asked slowly.
"Sin embargo.A friend of mine had a ranch near the President's. It was a good ranch, with water so well placedthat it stayed green each summer, much longer than the President's own. So suddenly, one day of a very dry summer, soldiers came to my friend's estancia and carried him away, and all his peons. It lay vacant a week or two. No one dared go on it. Then the President ran his fences around it and claimed it as waste land."
"That really happened?"
"Sí, señor."
"What became of the poor devil of a rancher and his peons?"
"Oh, the peons were put into the army and the man...." The clerk shrugged, and nodded his head in a certain direction. Strawbridge did not know to what he referred.
The American replaced the goods he had chosen for display, and stood in the wareroom rather stunned. A sort of horripilation ran over him as he pondered the clerk's story. Under such a government, all business was in jeopardy.
"Why, that's awful!" he said aloud. "That'llruinbusiness! If a fellow's investments are not protected, then—" he made a hopeless gesture—"then what in God's name do they hold sacred here?"
The clerk gave a Latin shrug of despondency.
"Cá, señor, they hold nothing sacred here. Why, even our sisters and betrothed are violated—"
Strawbridge lifted a hand and waggled a finger for silence.
"Yes, I know that old stuff, but business—not to respect a man's investment—God! but these people are savages!"
Thomas Strawbridge left "Sol y Sombra" and started back up the street, hurrying out of habit but with no objective. His conversation with the little monkey-eyed clerk had suddenly explained to the drummer the squalor and filth of Canalejos. It was an intentional filth, deliberately chosen to escape governmental mulcting. In short, Venezuelan cities were especially designed to do business in the worst possible way and with the greatest amount of friction and inconvenience. Strawbridge was bewildered. He had come from a country where the whole machinery of government is built for the especial purpose of expediting business. Now this sudden reversal of motif seemed to him a mad thing.
What was the object of it? If men did not organize a government to promote business, why did any exist? Why did the shop-keepers persist in running their dirty little shops? Why did the peons go and come, the fishermen labor up and down the rapids? If business was strangled, what reason was there for life to go on?
The drummer's steps had led him back to Plaza Mayor, and by this time the square was full of people. Most of them were loiterers, sitting on the park benches gazing listlessly at the palms and ornamental evergreens, or watching the drip of a fountain too clogged to play. In the center of the plaza was a statue, and the drummer was somewhat surprised to observe that it was a full-length figure of General Fombombo. The statue was of heroic size and held out in its hands a scroll bearing the words, "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."
There was a slow movement, among the idlers, toward the cathedral. Señoritas came by with their missals, beggars with their cups. Youths and well-dressed men took a last puff at their eternal cigarettes, tossed away the stubs, and wandered toward the gloomy temple.
Strawbridge had never been in a Roman Catholic church in his life. In fact, since his boyhood he had scarcely been in any sort of church. Now his desire for silence and a place to think out the riddle he had found, drew him through the deeply recessed archway of the cathedral. On one of the columns he saw the holy water, in a shell of a size that amazed him in a superficial way. He passed on in and immediately forgot the shell.
The interior of the church was a semi-darkness punctuated here and there with groups of candles flickering before the different altars. To the right hand of the entrance he saw a life-size effigy of the crucifixion. The head of the figure drooped to one side, and the whole body was painted the pallor of death.
With the impersonal and faintly interested eyes of an American tourist the drummer stood looking at this figure. As he stood, an old man with an aura of white hair shuffled up before the crucifix, laid down a bundle on the stone floor, spread a filthy handkerchief, and knelt stiffly on it. Then he stared fixedly at the effigy, and spread out his old arms to it, and his lips began moving beneath his tobacco-stained beard. In his earnestness his old head shook and nodded; he reached up his scrawny arms farther and farther, as if to pull down from the figure the good he was seeking. He arose and went; other men took his place—young men, well-dressed men. They went through their devotions openly and unashamed.
But Strawbridge was somehow shamed before them. Itseemed to him a rather improper thing for a man to be seen praying in public. In North America, to pray in public is a sort of test of audacity, not to say brazenness. In North America one who prays in public seldom thinks about God; he thinks about how he looks and what the people are thinking about his prayer. Now, for these Venezuelans to pray to God earnestly and unaffectedly in the open made Strawbridge feel uncomfortable, as if they were appearing in public wearing too few clothes.
The women, on the other hand, somehow pleased him. As each señorita and señora came in with a white handkerchief spread over her black hair, touched the holy water to her forehead, lips, and breast, and then knelt to pray, it gave the drummer a queer sense of intimacy and pleasure.
Presently reading and responses began in one of the chapels hidden from the American. The voice of the priest would rise in a muffled swell and then taper into silence again; a moment later this would be followed by a hushed babble of women's voices. There was something sad in the reading and responses. The same words were repeated over and over and filled the cathedral with a monotonous and melancholy music.
As Strawbridge stood musing among these frail and unaccustomed pleasures, his mind moved vaguely about the question which had brought him there: what could the Venezuelans find in life to take the place of business? Upon what other cord could any man string the rosary of his days? As the women came and went, as the responses filled the church with a many-tongued music, as the odor of incense flattered the gloom, he pondered his question, but could find no answer.
The drummer found a seat near a column of the nave and relaxed, American fashion, with his legs spread out and his arms lying along the back of the bench. He stoppedthinking toward any point and allowed his fancies to drift idly. The life of the cathedral slowly developed itself around him. A woman was on her knees just inside the altar-rail, scrubbing the tiled floor. Several acolytes in lace robes were gathered in the transept, perhaps waiting to take part in some later mass. A priest in his cassock loitered near a confessional, evidently expecting a penitent. Presently a little girl did come and step into the double stall of the confessional. The father moved into the other side with the slowness of a heavy man and with a mechanical movement lifted the little shutter in the partition. The child placed her face in the aperture and began to whisper.
Strawbridge sat and looked with a dreamy emptiness at the priest and the little girl. He could feel the bench pressing his body and catch the queer fragrance of incense. Presently the child stepped out of the confessional and began a round of the stations, kneeling and telling her beads before each one. A beggar entered the booth and presently went away. A few moments later, to the drummer's surprise, Coronel Saturnino came down the aisle and stepped into the confessional. The officer put his mouth to the orifice and whispered steadily for five or ten minutes. Strawbridge could see his profile against the darkness of the booth—a handsome, almost flawless profile, with a slight sardonic molding about the nose and the corners of the mouth even in this moment of confession.
Strawbridge wondered what he was confessing; what kind of sins Saturnino committed.
Just then a hand touched the American's outstretched arm. The drummer looked around and saw Gumersindo standing at the back of his seat. The negro bowed slightly, with his thick lips smiling. Strawbridge aroused himself, really glad to see Gumersindo. He got up and joined the colored man.
"Lots of folks in church to-day," he whispered.
Gumersindo nodded.
"The cavalry expect to go to San Geronimo soon. There is always a crowding in for confession before such an expedition."
"Oh! I see." Strawbridge was rather taken aback. He looked across at the opposite aisle, where two or three soldiers were standing near another confessional, awaiting their turn. "Do they really believe anything is going to happen to them?"
"Why, they know it!" Gumersindo considered Strawbridge, faintly surprised at such a question; then he evidently decided it was one of those thoughtless queries such as every one makes at times, for he passed to another subject: "Would you like to go down into the crypt?"
Strawbridge agreed, with his mind still hovering about San Geronimo. The negro led the way, tiptoeing through the big, murmuring cathedral:
"There's a great painting in that chapel," he said, pointing into one as they passed, but not stopping to enter it; "you must see it some day." Strawbridge said he would, and immediately forgot it.
They passed through the transept and round behind the high altar. In the passage they found another priest, walking slowly back and forth, reading some religious book. Gumersindo introduced Strawbridge to Father Benicio. The priest's face held the worn, ascetic look of a celibate who endures the ardors of the tropics.
"Señor Strawbridge is the American gentleman whom I brought back from Caracas," proceeded the editor; "perhaps you noticed my article about him in the 'Correo'?"
"I have not seen to-day's 'Correo,'" said the father, looking, with the shrewd eyes of his calling, at the American.
Gumersindo was already drawing from his pocket a damp copy of his paper. He opened the limp sheet and handed it to the priest, with his finger at the article. Then he turnedaway and pretended to inspect the carving on the reredos, glancing repeatedly toward the readers to see what effect his article was producing.
The article itself was typical Spanish-American rhetoric. It referred to the drummer as a merchant prince, a distinguished manufacturer, a world-famous exporter, and once it called him the illustrious Vulcan of the Liberal Arts, a flourish based on the fact that Strawbridge sold hardware.
When they had finished reading, the black man turned with his face beaming in anticipation of praise.
"Elegantly done, Gumersindo," pæaned the priest. "You have a very rich style."
The editor lifted his brows.
"I never hope to command a style, Father. I always write simply. It is all I can do."
Father Benicio patted the black man's arm and smiled the rather bloodless smile of the repressed.
"He is a fountain of eloquence and doesn't know it; don't you think so, Señor Strawbridge?"
"I was never called so many fine names in all my life," murmured Strawbridge, in the subdued tones all three men were using. "I must have a bundle of these papers to send home."
Gumersindo beamed, and said all Strawbridge needed to do was to give him the names and he would mail out copies direct. Then he again proposed going down into the crypt.
The father agreed. He gathered his cassock about him for convenience in descending the steps, produced a key, opened a small door in the back wall of the cathedral, then, apologizing for preceding his guests, stepped into the opening.
The American followed the editor and groped down a flight of clammy steps into a cellar about ten feet deep. The priest presently found a match and a candle and lighted the cold,unventilated crypt. In the dim light Father Benicio pointed out some old stone slabs set in the sides of the crypt, with half-obliterated names carved upon them. Then he began a recountal of the doings of the first Benedictines who had come into the Orinoco country in 1573. They had formed a flourishing colony, but the evil deeds of the Guipuzcoana Company had provoked the Indians to attack the religious colony, and many of the monks were massacred. The gravestones marked those early martyrs.
With a certain fire the priest told the tale. These early fathers were links in a chain to which he, himself, belonged. Their constancy, their devotion to duty, their faithfulness unto death were ensamples often in his heart, which warmed his monastic life.
Strawbridge did not feel the faintest interest in Father Benicio's recital. He looked at the stone slabs without any widening of his vision of the past. Indeed, anything that antedated 1890 was without interest to him. To the drummer, history had no connection with the present. If he had analyzed his impressions he would have found that he believed that all the acts of mankind prior to the nineties formed history and were completely cut asunder from the press and importance of to-day. The world in which Mr. Thomas Strawbridge lived and had his being was absolutely new and up to date. It was like a new steam-heated apartment house with all the elevators running and the water connections going, and it was utterly cut off from all the past efforts and struggles of mankind. History, to him, was not even the blue-prints from which this house was built, the brick and mortar of which it was constructed. It was simply a kind of confusion that went on in the world until men settled down and produced something worth while—that is to say, the American nation and the New York skyscrapers.
He yawned under his fingers.
"I wonder what they did for a living, back there." He touched one of the stones with his foot.
Father Benicio glanced around at him.
"They raised maize, bananas, and a few chickens," he said drily.
"Ship 'em back to ... Spain?" hazarded the drummer.
"No, they simply lived on what they cultivated, and what the Indians gave them."
The salesman's interest flickered out completely. He glanced at the gravestones of the unenterprising monks and moved a step toward the stairs.
Gumersindo attempted to stir up human interest by pointing out a slab of stone in the bottom of the crypt.
"This is not a gravestone; it conceals the entrance of a tunnel. The early Spanish settlers were great troglodytes, Señor Strawbridge. It is impossible to find an old castle or an old church without a tunnel or two leading into it."
"It was necessary in those unsettled times when a man's house was likely to be burned with the man in it unless he could slip out," put in the priest.
"Where does it lead to?" asked Strawbridge, taking rather more interest in this purely mechanical arrangement than in the human background which caused the tunnels to be dug.
"One branch leads down to the river, another to thepalacio, and another to the prison, La Fortuna."
Strawbridge suppressed another yawn and dismissed the tunnels from his mind. His thoughts came back to the original problem which had brought him to the cathedral. He broke out rather abruptly:
"Say, I suppose both you fellows know about the general and his ... er ... business methods?"
Editor and priest looked at their guest quite blankly.
"I mean his method of ... well, ... of confiscatingranches and horses and stores, provisions, and such like. Now, that's a rotten way to do. I was wondering whether a good, straightforward talk with him wouldn't help some."
By now the two men were staring at Strawbridge as if one of the old monks had risen out of his tomb.
"Señor," said the priest, in a queer voice, "would you have the goodness to explain yourself?"
"Sure! A chap told me while ago that the general arrested a rancher and took his ranch. I've been thinking about it all morning."
"The ranch to which your informant alludes," said Gumersindo, in a cold voice, "was deserted, and General Fombombo occupied it as waste land."
The drummer laughed friendlily.
"Yes, I know about that, but just how the general hunched the man off his ranch has nothing to do with it. I say any kind of hunching is bad business." The drummer became very earnest: "Now look here, both you fellows know the only way to make a country pay is through business. Now, look at these old monks—" he nodded at the stones. "Fizzled out because they didn't develop their holdings. I don't know just what they did do, but it's clear they built this church instead of building a factory. No returns; see? All overhead and no production. Not that I'm against praying," he added, with a placating gesture toward the priest. "I'm for it. I think it peps one up, but, as my old man says, 'Get in your prayers when there is no customer in sight'; see? Just to come down to facts: these old boys didn't run on business principles.
"Now, here's what I'm driving at: The general's idea of grabbing things balls up the market. Your market has got to be open and it's got to be protected before you get any real big volume of trade. Any man in General Fombombo's shoes can get better returns in the way of legitimate taxes onlegitimate business than he can by grabbing what's in sight and scaring off business men. For, let me tell you, the eagle on the dollar is just about the timidest bird you ever tried to get to roost in your hen-house, and that's straight."
Strawbridge came to an earnest and apparently a questioning pause. The editor and the priest stood looking at him in the candle-light, quite as silent as the ancient and unbusinesslike monks beneath their feet. After a while the editor asked in a strange voice:
"Why have you ... said these things to us, Señor Strawbridge?"
"I'm asking your advice."
"About what?"
"About talking this over with the general. I believe he is making a business mistake. He would realize more if he would boost business instead of knocking it. Perhaps you've read that little poem,
"It's better to boost than to knock;It's better to help than to shove,We're brothers all, on the road of Life,And the law of the road is Love."
"It's better to boost than to knock;It's better to help than to shove,We're brothers all, on the road of Life,And the law of the road is Love."
"It's better to boost than to knock;It's better to help than to shove,We're brothers all, on the road of Life,And the law of the road is Love."
"It's better to boost than to knock;
It's better to help than to shove,
We're brothers all, on the road of Life,
And the law of the road is Love."
The editor said he had never read it.
"The thing I'm driving at," proceeded the drummer, "is, would it be good business for me to spring this on the general? You see, I might queer a two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar order for rifles. Still, if he could see the real business side of the situation, I might establish a market for millions of dollars' worth of hardware. What do you think about it? Would you run the risk?"
The priest chose to answer:
"Our President is rather a man of impulse, Señor Strawbridge."
The big American nodded.
"I see what you mean." He looked at Gumersindo.
"The future is always uncertain, Señor Strawbridge," observed the editor.
Strawbridge nodded.
"Uh huh; I see you agree with Father Benicio." He paused, thinking.
"Well, ... I don't know...." He continued to ponder the problem before him, and presently quoted, perhaps subconsciously:
"Did you speak that word of warning?Did you act the part of friend?Do your duty resolutely;It means dollars in the end."
"Did you speak that word of warning?Did you act the part of friend?Do your duty resolutely;It means dollars in the end."
"Did you speak that word of warning?Did you act the part of friend?Do your duty resolutely;It means dollars in the end."
"Did you speak that word of warning?
Did you act the part of friend?
Do your duty resolutely;
It means dollars in the end."
Notwithstanding Strawbridge's apt and well-timed quotation from one of the best of the American business poets, still, he left the cathedral on his way to thepresidenciain a shilly-shally mood. He went out at the side entrance, as the most direct route. The glare of sunshine struck his eyes rather uncomfortably after the gloom of the church. Just outside the door a dense flowering hedge delimited the plaza from the garden on the other side.
The drummer felt for his case and drew out a cigar to settle his thoughts on his proposed interview with the dictator. He stopped to scratch a match, when he heard voices talking just inside the garden. They were low voices, a man's and a woman's, but their passionate undertones caught the salesman's attention. He could understand little of what they were saying, but occasionally the woman lost her poise, or her caution, and he would get a phrase or two; then he could hear the man mumbling. Once the woman whipped out, "You are mad, you are insane, Pancho!" The voice of the man seemed to admit this. Later she gasped: "But you can't do that. He's alive!" and after another interval, she cried: "What a monster! I despise you as I do him. You are abribon!"
This speech was stopped abruptly, as if a hand were laid over the woman's mouth. Came sounds of some guarded physical struggle, then a slap, a little cry, and the sound of running. The woman's restrained cry went through Strawbridge with a queer effect. He tried to peer through the dense hedge, but could make out nothing more than the fact ofmovement on the other side. A moment's reflection told him the man and the woman had separated.
The incident gripped the salesman in a strange way. He reasoned that if the two had separated one must have gone back into the church and the other toward the small postern at the end of the garden. So he walked briskly in the direction of the latter. Just as he stepped into the thoroughfare between garden and palace, he saw a woman in a nun's costume hurry out at the little gate, cross the road, and pass in at the side entrance of the big state house. With a breath of surprise, Strawbridge recognized Señora Fombombo. He found it difficult to attribute such an adventure to this small, quiet woman in her severe religious garb. And yet she had almost run from the garden gate to the palace. The American pondered this, but at last decided that the señora had been coming from her music practice in the cathedral and some quarreling, fighting couple in the garden had frightened her. The drummer walked quickly to the little postern and looked into the garden for the disturbing couple, but, of course, they had had time to escape.
Strawbridge loitered outside the palace for a few minutes, finishing his cigar and thinking over the incident. Then he walked up to the side door. His intention to ask for the señora at once was somewhat disturbed by the fact that thegriffegirl admitted him when he rang the bell.
As the American stepped into the entrance, a little leather-colored soldier in uniform came briskly forward, with his rifle at attention. A word from the girl established Strawbridge's right to enter.
"The señora," she said, giving Strawbridge her knowing look, "is in the music-room." She paused a moment and added, "That's her, now."
The thing which she called the señora was the chromatic scale, played with great velocity.
The maid was so insinuating that Strawbridge thought of denying he had meant to see the chatelaine at all, but he changed this to something about believing he would go and hear the music. Instead of producing the casual effect he had hoped for, this statement lit a brightly intelligent smile on thegriffegirl's copper-colored face. As Strawbridge walked down the transverse passage to the main corridor, to turn up toward the music-room, he could feel the eyes of both maid and guard watching his back.
The drummer passed two more guards in the main corridor, and presently paused before the door whence issued the runs and cadenzas. As he was about to tap, he was again seized with the inexplicable hesitancy which afflicted him whenever he came near the señora. It was an odd thing. He knew that she was just inside the dull mahogany panels, but somehow the door seemed to shut him out completely. He felt he would not get in. He tapped uncertainly, with a conviction that it would accomplish nothing. But it did accomplish something: it stopped the music so suddenly that it startled him. Then he waited in a profound silence.
Strawbridge imagined that the señora knew that it was he, and that by the long silence she was showing him that she did not want him in the music-room. A painful humility came over him. After all, he thought, she had a right to dislike him. Every time she saw him he was dull and embarrassed. Queer how she crabbed his style. Now, at home, back in Keokuk, he was rather popular with the ladies, but here.... The drummer's good-natured face sagged in a mirthless quirk. Well, ... he might as well go away. The señora would never know what a jolly friend she was missing, for he was jolly when one took him right; he simply was jolly. And he would never know her, either. It was the fault of neither of them; he saw that. He couldn't help it, she couldn't help it. A faintsense of pathos floated through the drummer's mind, and he turned away from the door.
At that moment it opened and the señora stood before him. Since he tapped she had just had time to walk across the room.
The man and the woman looked at each other in utter surprise, but in an instant this expression vanished from the señora's face and she asked him if he would like to come in and hear her play.
The drummer moistened his lips with his tongue and explained vaguely that he had just been passing and had heard the piano....
He was so painfully ill at ease that the girl said she too had been lonely that forenoon and was wishing some one would come in. She indicated a chair near a barred window, then, wearing the faint, unamused smile of a hostess, she went back to the piano and asked what he would have her play. Mr. Strawbridge said, "Just anything lively."
The señora pondered and began a mazurka. It was a trifle of thematic runs. She began rather indifferently, but presently her fingers or her mood warmed and she did it with dash and brilliancy.
At first Strawbridge's mental state prevented him from listening at all, but gradually the richly furnished room, the murals on the ceiling, the black ebony piano, and the slender nun-like player all re-formed themselves out of original confusion. Then he became aware of the music.
He did not care much for it. The señora did not jazz the piano as Strawbridge craved that it should be jazzed. It should be explained, perhaps, that the drummer's contact with music had been confined almost exclusively to the Keokuk dance-halls. He was, one might say, a musical bottle baby, who had waxed fat on the electric piano. Now he missed that roaring double shuffle in the bass and that grotesque yelpingin the treble which he knew and admired and was moved by. He at once classified the señora as a performer who lacked pep.
The girl continued to fill the stately room full of dancing fairies; presently these exquisite little creatures rippled away into the distance; the last faraway fairy gave a last faraway pirouette, and the music ceased. The señora turned with a faint smile and waited a moment for her guest to say he liked the mazurka, but finally was forced to ask if he did.
"Well, y-e-s," he agreed dubiously, he liked it; then, with animation, "Señora, do you play 'Shuffle Along'?"
She repeated the title after him, evidently trying to translate it into intelligible Spanish.
"Who wrote it, señor?" She turned to a big music-rack which apparently held the music of the world.
"I don't know," said the drummer, naïvely. "Maybe you've got 'My Ding-Dong Baby'?"
Señora Fombombo began going through the huge music-cabinet uncertainly.
"You don't know the composer of that, either?"
"No. How about 'Ten Little Fingers and Ten Little Toes'? Or have you got the 'Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle'?"
The señora, who was a methodical woman, began alphabetically with Brahms and looked for the "Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle." Strawbridge got up from his chair and came to assist.
"Let me help you," he volunteered. "I know the backs of those pieces just as well as I do my own face."
The señora glanced at him.
"Do you play?"
"A little," admitted the drummer. "I have been known to ripple my fingers over the elephants' tusks." Strawbridge laughed pleasantly at this tiny jest. It was the first time he had been able to speak a single sentence in a natural way, to the señora. Now this small success pleased him.
"Play me the kind of music you like," invited the señora, at once. "I don't recognize the English titles. Perhaps I have them, after all."
"Oh, all right." He smiled and sat down on the old-fashioned piano stool. With a pleased expression on his handsome, good-natured face he looked at the señora. Then he popped his left fist into his right palm and his right fist into his left palm, to warm up his finger action.
"Now, this is the rage," he explained with a faint patronage in his voice; "this is what runs 'em ragged in New York," and, lifting his hands high, he boomed into the "Haw-Hee Haw-Hee Toddle."
Strawbridge did not see the señora's face during the opening bars of his jazz, and therefore had no means of determining her mood. When, presently, he looked about at her, she was much as usual; her black eyes a trifle wider, perhaps, her smile a little less mechanical.
"I've seen a thousand people on the floor at one time, toddling to this," he called to her loudly above his demonstration.
The señora pressed her lips together, her eyes seemed fairly to dance, and she nodded at this bit of information.
Strawbridge realized that he was entertaining the señora highly. He had never seen her look so amused. He had not thought her especially pretty, before, but just at this moment she gave him the impression of a ruby with the dust suddenly polished off and held in the sunshine.
The drummer was very proud of the fact that he could play the piano and talk at the same time, and he always did this.
"Say, I like the tone of this machine," he called out in a complimentary way; "she's hitting on all six cylinders now."
The señora laughed outright, in little gusts, with attempts at suppression. It was as if she had not laughed in a long, long time.
Strawbridge wagged his blond head to the clangor and syncopation of his own making.
"Coming down the home stretch!" he yelled, pounding louder and faster. "Giving her more gas and running up her timer!" He threw his big shoulders into the uproar. "Going to win the all-comers' sweepstakes! Go on, you little old taxi! Go to it! Wow! Bang! You're it, kid! The fifty-thousand-dollar purse is yours!"
He stopped as suddenly as he had begun, reached into his vest pocket, fished out a cigar band, and, with a burlesque curtsy, offered it to the señora as the sweepstakes prize he had just captured.
The señora produced a handkerchief and wiped her eyes, then drew a long breath. With her face dimpled and ready to laugh again, she looked at the drummer.
"I knew you'd like me if we ever got acquainted," confided Strawbridge; "nothing like music to get folks together."
"Yes," acquiesced the señora, smiling, "it is one of the shibboleths of culture."
"Why, ... yes, I suppose so," agreed Strawbridge. The phrase "shibboleths of culture" sobered him somewhat. It was not the sort of phrase an American girl would have flung into a gay conversation, at least not without making some sort of face, or saying it in a burlesque tone to show it was meant to be humorous. It plunked into the drummer's careless mood like a stone through a window. "By the way," he said, on this somewhat soberer plane, "let me tell you why I followed you here into this music-room."
"Did you follow me?"
"Yes."
"Where from?" she asked in a different voice.
"From the garden."
The mirth vanished from the señora's face as if some onehad turned down a lamp. It left her pale, delicately engraved, and not very pretty.
"May I ask why you followed me?" she questioned.
"Sure!" said Strawbridge with a protective impulse stirring in him. "I was coming out of the cathedral and I heard some rough-neck couple raising a row over in the garden. I came on to thepalacioand saw you running out of the gate. I knew they had frightened you with their yelping, and it made me mad. So when you go to the cathedral again, just tip me off, please, and I'll go along with you."
The señora stood leaning over the end of the piano, studying him intently.
"That is very kind, and ... and it's a very unexpected kindness, Señor Strawbridge. I am grateful."
"Don't thank me at all.... Do the same for any woman. And, say, that reminds me what I was balled up about."
"'Balled up'? What do you mean—'balled up'?"
"Oh!—" with little gesture—"I don't know what to do. It's a matter of business."
"Are you bringing me a matter of business?"
"Sure! Why not? You've got your ideas."
She continued to look at him curiously.
"Well, what is it?"
"It's about your husband. I consider that he runs this country on the most unbusinesslike basis I ever heard of."
The Spanish girl opened her eyes still wider at this astonishing turn.
"Unbusinesslike?"
"Sure, it's like this," and Strawbridge proceeded to explain what he knew of the dictator's methods; who had told him, and that he thought the general was losing money.
During the recital he was surprised to see the señora's pale face grow paler still. Finally she gasped:
"And does he take property, too?"
"Why, good God!" cried the drummer, in amazement, "didn't you know that?"
After a long pause the Spanish girl said almost inaudibly, "No, I didn't know ... that."
"Huh!" ejaculated Strawbridge, growing very much embarrassed. "I'm sorry I mentioned it, I ... I...." He looked at her, moistening his lips, and broke out with a desperate note of remorse, "Well, I swear I hate mentioning that!"
The señora shrugged wearily.
"Oh, ...thatdoesn't matter."
She kept accenting her "thats" as if other things preyed more deeply on her thoughts.
At this moment a big French motor-car murmured past the window of the music-room. It happened that both the drummer and the señora saw it, were looking straight at it. The car contained General Fombombo, and in the seat beside him Strawbridge recognized the peon girl Madruja, the little bride whom the dictator continued to detain in the palace until he could come to some judicial decision as to what to do with her.
The passing of General Fombombo with the peon girl, Madruja, will call to the philosophical mind one of the sharpest distinctions between North American chastity and Venezuelan laxity. In America, no man, not even the most degraded specimen of our race, would think of parading his mistress before his wife. Such a thing is not done in America. Where the Latin flaunts his dalliances openly, the puritanical North American invariably makes an effort to conceal his shortcomings and to present to the world an innocuous and inoffensive front.
Spanish-American moralists are prone to ascribe this flowering of the great Anglo-Saxon cult of concealment to hypocrisy. Nothing could be shorter of the truth. Hypocrisy is an effort to deceive, but the best English and American types deceive no one. Their intention is not to deceive but to keep life clean, pure, and enjoyable for their fellow-men. For here is the peculiar thing about vice: A man's own shortcomings never appear censure-worthy, whereas the sins of other men are hideous. To be seen openly sinning is to make of oneself a public nuisance.
The genius of the Anglo-Saxon realizes this, and he avoids paining and distressing others by performing his dalliances as privately as possible. This secrecy is each man's private contribution to the comfort and reassurance of his fellow-citizens. Taking us all in all, perhaps America's greatest gift to the world is the peccadillo of low visibility.
As an instance of the deplorable effect of being seen, observe how the passing of General Fombombo and Madrujacompletely destroyed Mr. Thomas Strawbridge's pleasure in the society of Señora Fombombo. Yet all the time he had known from Lubito the actual state of the case. It had seemed humorous when Lubito told the story, but the sight of the dictator and the peon girl passing in the car was not humorous at all. On the contrary, it was oppressive and painful. It ended abruptly his tête-à-tête with the señora. Indeed, it hung about him for days, popping up every little while with disagreeable iteration.
The incident upset Strawbridge's own code. It caused him to doubt the rightness of any husband deceiving any wife. He had never before thought even of questioning such a situation. He had known many drummers, married men, who when they got to a city would take a little flyer. It had seemed perfectly all right, a sort of joke. Now, abruptly, it all seemed wrong, and he was vaguely angry and ill at ease.
And the personal end of the affair puzzled him. He could not understand how any sane man would run away from so delightful a girl as Dolores Fombombo, to the over-accented and uncultivated charms of a Madruja.
He tried to put himself in the general's place, to fancy himself the husband of Dolores. Would he betray her? Would he deceive the confidence of so dainty a creature? Indeed no! The very thought filled him with a most unusual and tremulous tenderness. Why, before he would break faith with Dolores ... before he would do that.... He got out a cigar, bit off the nib with a snap, and lighted it in vague anger. He continued pacing up and down his room from one barred window to another, looking out at the river, at the gloomy prison called "La Fortuna," at the back of the cathedral.
Then his thoughts veered away from the general's infidelity, and he began thinking about a strange thing which had happened to him a day or two before, when he called on theproprietor of "Sol y Sombra." He decided he would mention it to Dolores; perhaps she could explain it.
The decision to see Dolores and tell her this thing comforted Strawbridge somewhat. He drew an eased breath, went over to the window, reached through the bars, and tapped off the ash of his cigar, then walked out into the corridor, turned toward the rear of the palace, and passed out through a back entrance onto a sort of piazza—a roofless paved space about forty feet wide, which extended from the building quite to the edge of the take-off that led down a long, steep slope to the yellow river.
On the western end of this piazza projected the kitchen, and it was littered on that side with unsightly bags of charcoal, chicken feathers, bundles of kindling, bones, and other rejectæ from the cooking-department of the palace. This litter increased or decreased according to the spasmodic energy of thegriffegirl, the wrinkled old hag, and three or four other familiars of the kitchen. When these caretakers were induced to purge their premises, they simply shoved the refuse over the edge of the piazza and allowed it to distribute itself as it would down the long slope.
Strawbridge dragged out a chair on the east side of the piazza and sat down to his cigar and the sunset. This had grown to be his custom every late afternoon. Until the señora joined him he was more attentive to his cigar than to the sunset. But when she came, her arrival, oddly enough, seemed to open his eyes to the fact that sunsets in the Orinoco Valley are famous for their brilliant coloring and dramatic effects.
He had finished perhaps a third of his cigar when he heard a servant come dragging the señora's chair behind her. This ended a faint suspense in Strawbridge. He looked around, and the two of them smiled at each other the satisfied smiles of friends who had been anticipating just this pleasure of watching the sunset together.
For the first evening or two they had talked dutifully all the time. Strawbridge had exerted himself to amuse the señora, but of late they had found long silences mutually pleasant. So now, as the señora came up, he simply remarked that he thought they were going to have a nice sunset.
The drummer himself was immeasurably content. He sat watching the change and play of that huge and airy mansionry of vapors. Somehow it reduced him and Dolores to two human midges seated behind a little palace, on a tiny piazza, in microscopic wicker chairs. It sent a shudder of pleasure through him: they were so very, very small, and so very, very comforting each to the other.
As they sat staring at the vast chromatic architecture, a faint breeze brought him the malodor of the kitchen at the other end of the piazza and stirred him out of his reverie. He looked around.
"By the way, señora, a queer thing happened to me the other morning. I've been meaning to tell you about it, but I never can think to when I'm with you."
"Yes?"
"About that clerk at 'Sol y Sombra.' That little chap who put me wise to business conditions in this country. You remember what a row he raised because I wanted to make a hardware display."
"Yes, that's Josefa."
"Well, he's gone."
The señora moved lazily in the gloom, to face her companion.
"You wanted to tell me Josefa was gone?" He could tell by her voice that she was smiling.
"Not so much that as the way I heard it. Day or two ago I called on the proprietor. He was as polite as pie, but he didn't warm up to my selling talk. Finally I offered him my leader—some shovels at a price that'd make him think he stole 'em. I was pushing the goods pretty hard when finallyhe looked at me with a sort of whitish face and says, 'Señor Strawbridge, I am not in the market for your goods at any price.'
"'That lets me down,' I says, 'if low prices and high quality don't interest you. That's all I got—the lowest prices and the highest quality."
"I saw he was going to bow me out regardless, so I thought I would be polite up to the limit and inquire after the health of the little clerk I had met in the store several mornings before that.
"When I asked after him, the proprietor jumped from his chair. 'Señor!' he cried, 'you shall not mock at my distress! You may have the leading hand now, but as sure as there is a God in heaven, He will punish you!' He shook a finger at me. 'He will punish you! He will punish you!'
"I stared at him. I never came so near hitting a man in all my life, but I remembered something my old man told me when I first went to work with him. 'Strawbridge,' he'd say, 'keep your temper; nobody else wants it.' So I thought to myself, 'Here's where I keep her,' and I said, 'Señor, you've got the advantage of me. If I've done you or yours any harm, I'm sorry, but how have I done it?'
"He looked at me as keen as all you black-eyed folks can look. 'Don't you know where Josefa is?' he asked.
"'Certainly I don't, or I wouldn't have asked where he was.'
"'Well—he's not here any longer.'
"'Did you discharge him?' I asked.
"The merchant looked at me, and I be damned if there wasn't tears in his eyes. 'Señor Strawbridge,' he said, 'Josefa is gone. He is simply gone. He was a good boy; that is all I can say to you about it.'"
Here Strawbridge's narration was interrupted by a little sound from the girl in the darkness. He stopped short.
"Why, what's the matter, señora?" he asked in surprise.
"Oh, nothing ... nothing...." Her voice quavered. "Poor Josefa!"
The salesman tried to peer into her face.
"What are you saying, 'Poor Josefa,' about? I thought you didn't know him particularly well."
"I didn't. Oh, Señor Strawbridge, everything is so horrible here!... so terrible!... Oh.... Oh ..." and suddenly the señora began to weep, a pathetic little figure in her nun's costume.
Something clutched the drummer's diaphragm. He leaned toward her.
"Señora!" he remonstrated. "What's the matter? Have I done anything?"
One arm was crumpled about her face, she stretched the other toward him.
"Oh, no, no! you've done nothing to me. I ... I thought I was getting used to it. I used to cry all the time when I first came here. I thought I was growing hard, but I suppose I'm not."
The drummer was tingling at the appeal in her attitude and of her hand which had caught two of his fingers. A faint pulse began murmuring in his ears. He wanted to pick the whole of her daintiness up in his arms and comfort her.
"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he begged.
The girl collected herself.
"I will tell you," she said in a low tone. "There, sit closer, please, so I can talk in a low tone. Don't make any noise, señor."
Strawbridge adjusted his chair silently and sat staring at the slight figure, in mute speculation. His head was full of the wildest conjectures: Josefa was her brother ... her lover. Josefa had followed her over from Spain....
"You say you never heard of Josefa before you came here?" he asked aloud.
"No, I'd never heard of him."
"Then why in the world—"
She made a weary gesture.
"Oh, Señor Strawbridge, because life is all terrifying here; every part has the same horrible quality!"
"But you don't know where Josefa is?"
"Sí, sí,señor; indeed I do!"
"Then where is he?" asked Strawbridge, more bewildered than ever.
The girl pointed silently through the gloom.
"Yonder," she whispered.
Strawbridge turned, half expecting to see the little monkey-eyed clerk behind him. But the piazza was deserted, and he saw nothing more than the low, heavy walls of the fort against the last umber light in the east.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean ... the prison, señor."
A cold trickle went over the drummer.
"You don't mean that little clerk's in prison?"
"Sí, señor."
The drummer stared at her.
"For God's sake, why? What did he do?"
"Nothing señor, except...."
"Except what?"
"Except talk to you, señor."
She whispered this last in a rush which ended in a gasp, and this told Strawbridge she was weeping again.
The big drummer miserably watched her distress.
"Talked to me!"
"Because he told you about President Fombombo's methods."
With a queer sensation the American turned to look at the prison again.
"O-o-oh ... I see. Well, I'll be ... damned!" he uttered in slow stupefaction.
"And that is nothing ... nothing!" accented the girl passionately. "There are scores,scoresin there—the maimed, the tortured, the sick, the dying. They have filthy crusts to eat. Never a physician or a priest. When they die, the guards throw them into the river, to the crocodiles. Oh, Señor Strawbridge, somehow God will punish this terrible place! Listen!" she whispered. "At night, Father Benicio sleeps in the cathedral, where he overlooks the river and the prison. When any noise awakens him and he sees the guards throwing something into the water, the priests go to the altar and say the mass for departing souls."
The American shook his head as he stared at the prison.
"Merciful God!" he said in a whisper.
Presently she began telling Strawbridge her sensations when she came from Spain as General Fombombo's bride and found herself amid such a reign of terror.