Just then the bull-fighter leaned past the American.
"You say this girl is in Canalejos, señor?" he broke in.
"Sí, señor."
"Then the Holy Virgin has directed you to the right person, señor. I am Lubito, the bull-fighter, a man of heart." He touched his athletic chest. "I will find your little Madruja, señor, and care for her as if she were my own."
The convict reached out a shaking claw.
"Gracias á Madre in cielo! Gracias á San Pedro! Gracias á la Vírgen Inmaculada!" Somehow a tear had managed to form in the wretch's dried and sunken eye.
"You give her to me, señor?"
"O sí, sí! un millón gracias!"
"You hear that, Señor Strawbridge: the poor little bride Madruja, in Canalejos, is now under my protection."
The drummer felt a qualm, but said nothing, because, after all, nothing was likely to come from so shadowy a trust. The red-garbed skeleton tried to give more thanks.
"Come, come, don't oppress me with your gratitude,viejo. It is nothing for me. I am all heart. Step away from in front of the car so we may start at once.Vamose, señors! Let us fly to Canalejos!"
Gumersindo let in his clutch, there was a shriek of cogs, and the motor plowed through the sand. The bull-fighter turned and waved good-by to the guard and smiled gaily at the ancient prisoner. The motor crossed the head of the dry canal, and the party looked down into its cavernous depths. As the great work dropped into the distance behind them, the dull-red convicts and their awful faces followedStrawbridge with the persistence of a bad dream. At last he broke out:
"Gumersindo, is it possible that those men back there have committed no crime?"
The negro looked around at him.
"Some have and some have not, señor."
"Was the fisherman innocent? Was the old man with the daughter innocent?"
"It is like this, Señor Strawbridge," said Gumersindo, watching his course ahead. "Thejefes civilesof the different districts must make up their quota of men to work on the canal. They select all the idlers and bad characters they can, but they need more. Then they select for different reasons. All thejefes civilesare not angels. Sometimes they send a man to the 'reds' because they want his cow, or his wife or his daughter—"
"Is this the beginning of Fombombo's brotherhood devoted to altruistic ends!" cried Strawbridge.
"Mi caro amigo," argued the editor, with the amiability of a man explaining a well-thought-out premise, "why not? There must be a beginning made. The peons will not work except under compulsion. Shall the whole progress of Rio Negro be stopped while some one tries to convince a stupid peon population of the advisability of laboring? They would never be convinced."
"But that is such an outrageous thing—to take an innocent man from his work, take a father from his daughter!"
The editor made a suave gesture.
"Certainly, that is simply applying a military measure to civil life, drafted labor. The sacrifice of a part for the whole. That has always been the Spanish idea, señor. The first conquistadors drafted labor among the Indians. The Spanish Inquisition drafted saints from a world of sinners.If one is striving for an ultimate good, señor, one cannot haggle about the price."
"But that isn't doing those fellows right!" cried Strawbridge, pointing vehemently toward the canal they had left behind. "It isn't doing those particular individuals right!"
"A great many Americans did not want to join the army during the war. Was it right to draft them?" Gumersindo paused a moment, and then added: "No, Señor Strawbridge; back of every aristocracy stands a group of workers represented by the 'reds.' It is the price of leisure for the superior man, and without leisure there is no superiority. Where one man thinks and feels and flowers into genius, señor, ten must slave. Weeds must die that fruit may grow. And that is the whole content of humanity, señor, its fruit."
Two hours later the negro pointed out a distant town purpling the horizon. It was Canalejos.
Strawbridge rode forward, looking at General Fombombo's capital city. The houses were built so closely together that they resembled a walled town. As the buildings were constructed of sun-dried brick, the metropolis was a warm yellow in common with the savannahs. It was as if the city were a part of the soil, as if the winds and sunshine somehow had fashioned these architectural shapes as they had the mesas of New Mexico and Arizona.
The whole scene was suffused with the saffron light of deep afternoon. It reminded the drummer of a play he had seen just before leaving New York. He could not recall the name of the play, but it opened with a desert scene, and a beggar sitting in front of a temple. There was just such a solemn yellow sunset as this.
As the drummer thought of these things the motor had drawn close enough to Canalejos for him to make out some of the details of the picture. Now he could see a processionof people moving along the yellow walls of the city. Presently, above the putter of the automobile, he heard snatches of a melancholy singing. The bull-fighter leaned forward in his seat and watched and listened. Presently he said with a certain note of concern in his voice:
"Gumersindo, that's a wedding!"
"I believe it is," agreed the editor.
Lubito hesitated, then said:
"Would you mind putting on a little more speed, señor? It ... it would be interesting to find out whose wedding it is."
Without comment the negro fed more gasolene. As the motor whirled cityward, the bull-fighter sat with both hands gripping the front seat, staring intently as the wedding music of the peons came to them, with its long-drawn, melancholy burden.
Strawbridge leaned back, listening and looking. He was still thinking about the play in New York and regretting the fact that in real life one never saw any such dramatic openings. In real life it was always just work, work, work—going after an order, or collecting a bill—never any drama or romance, just dull, prosy, commonplace business ... such as this.
Canalejos was no exception to the general rule that all Venezuelan cities function upon a war basis. At the entrance of acalle, just outside the city wall, stood a faded green sentry-box. As the motor drove up, a sentry popped out of the box, with a briskness and precision unusual in Venezuela. He stood chin up, heels together, quite as if he were under some German martinet. With a snap he handed the motorists the police register and jerked out, from somewhere down in his thorax, military fashion:
"Hup ... your names ... point of departure ... destination ... profession...."
It amused Strawbridge to see a South American performing such military antics. It was like a child playing soldier. He was moved to mimic the little fellow by grunting back in the same tones, "Hup ... Strawbridge ... Caracas ... Canalejos ... sell guns and ammunition...." Then he wrote those answers in the book.
An anxious look flitted across the face of the sentry at this jocularity. His stiff "eyes front" flickered an instant toward the sentry-box. While the negro and the bull-fighter were filling in the register, a peon came riding up on a black horse. He stopped just behind the motor and with the immense patience of his kind awaited his turn.
While his two companions were signing, Strawbridge yielded to that impulse for horse-play which so often attacks Americans who are young and full-blooded. He leaned out of the motor very solemnly, lifted the cap of the sentry, turned the visor behind, and replaced it on his head. Theeffect was faintly but undeniably comic. The little soldier's face went beet-colored. At the same moment came a movement inside the sentry-box and out of the door stepped a somewhat corpulent man wearing the epaulettes, gold braid, and stars of a general. He was the most dignified man and had the most penetrating eyes that Strawbridge had ever seen in his life. He had that peculiar possessive air about him which Strawbridge had felt when once, at a New York banquet, he saw J. P. Morgan. By merely stepping out of the sentry-box this man seemed to appropriate thecalle, the motor and men, and the llanos beyond the town. Strawbridge instantly knew that he was in the presence of General Adriano Fombombo, and the gaucherie of having turned around the little sentry's cap set up a sharp sinking feeling in the drummer's chest. For this one stupid bit of foolery he might very well forfeit his whole order for munitions.
Gumersindo leaped out of the car and, with a deep bow, removed his hat.
"Your Excellency, I have the pleasure to report that I accomplished your mission without difficulty, that I have procured an American gentleman whom, if you will allow me the privilege, I will present. General Fombombo, this is Señor Tomas Strawbridge of New York city."
By this time Strawbridge had scrambled out of the motor and extended his hand.
The general, although he was not so tall as the American, nor, really, so large, drew Strawbridge to him, somehow as if the drummer were a small boy.
"I see your long journey from Caracas has not quite exhausted you," he said, with a faint gleam of amusement in his eyes.
Strawbridge felt a deep relief. He glanced at the soldier's cap and began to laugh.
"Thank you," he said; "I manage to travel very well."
The general turned to the negro.
"Gumersindo, telephone mycasathat Señor Strawbridge will occupy the chamber overlooking the river."
The drummer put up a hand in protest.
"Now, General, I'll go on to the hotel."
The general erased the objection:
"There are no hotels in Canalejos, Señor Strawbridge; a few little eating-houses which the peons use when they come in from the llanos, that is all."
By this time Strawbridge's embarrassment had vanished. The general somehow magnified him, set him up on a plane the salesman had never occupied before.
"Well, General," he began cheerfully, using the American formula, "how's business here in Canalejos?"
"Business?" repeated the soldier, suavely. "Let me see, ... business. You refer, I presume, to commercial products?"
"Why, yes," agreed the drummer, rather surprised.
"Pues, the peons, I believe, are gathering balata. The cocoa estancias will be sending in their yield at the end of this month; tonka-beans—"
"Are prices holding up well?" interrupted Strawbridge, with the affable discourtesy of an American who never quite waits till his question is answered.
"I believe so, Señor Strawbridge; or, rather, I assume so; I have not seen a market quotation in...." He turned to the editor: "Señor Gumersindo, you are a journalist; are youau courantwith the market reports?"
The negro made a slight bow.
"On what commodity, your Excellency?"
"What commodity are you particularly interested in, Señor Strawbridge?" inquired the soldier.
"Why ... er ... just the general trend of the market," said Strawbridge, with a feeling that his little excursion intothat peculiar mechanical talk of business, markets, prices, which was so dear to his heart, had not come off very well.
"There has been, I believe, an advance in some prices and a decline in others," generalized Gumersindo; "the usual seasonal fluctuations."
"Sí, gracias," acknowledged the general. "Señor Gumersindo, during Señor Strawbridge's residence in Canalejos, you will kindly furnish him the daily market quotations."
"Sí, señor."
The matter of business was settled and disposed of. Came that slight hiatus in which hosts wait for a guest to decide what shall be the next topic. The drummer thought rapidly over his repertoire; he thought of baseball, of Teilman's race in the batting column; one or two smoking-car jokes popped into his head but were discarded. He considered discussing the probable Republican majority Ohio would show in the next presidential election. He had a little book in his vest pocket which gave the vote by states for the past decade. In Pullman smoking-compartments the drummer had found it to be an arsenal of debate. He could make terrific political forecasts and prove them by this little book. But, with his very fingers on it, he decided against talking Ohio politics to an insurgent general in Rio Negro. His thoughts boggled at business again, at the prices of things, when he glanced about and saw Lubito, who had been entirely neglected during this colloquy. The drummer at once seized on his companion to bridge the hiatus. He drew theespadato him with a gesture.
"General Fombombo," he said with a salesman's ebullience, "meet Señor Lubito. Señor Lubito is a bull-fighter, General, and they tell me he pulls a nasty sword."
The general nodded pleasantly to the torero.
"I am very glad you have come to Canalejos, Señor Lubito. I think I shall order in some bulls and have anexhibition of your art. If you care to look at our bull-ring in Canalejos, you will find it in the eastern part of our city." He pointed in the direction and apparently brushed the bull-fighter away, for Lubito bowed with the muscular suppleness of his calling and took himself off in the direction indicated.
At that moment the general observed the peon on the black horse, who as yet had not dared to present himself at the sentry-box before thecaballeros.
"What are you doing on that horse,bribon?" asked the general.
"I was waiting to enter, your Excellency," explained the fellow, hurriedly.
"Your name?"
"Guillermo Fando, your Excellency."
"Is that your horse?"
"Sí, your Excellency."
"Take it to my cavalry barracks and deliver it to Coronel Saturnino. A donkey will serve your purpose."
Fando's mouth dropped open. He stared at the President.
"T-take mycaballoto the ... the cavalry...."
A little flicker came into the black eyes of the dictator. He said in a somewhat lower tone:
"Is it possible, Fando, that you do not understand Spanish? Perhaps a little season in La Fortuna...."
The peon's face went mud-colored. "P-pardon, su excellencia!" he stuttered, and the next moment thrust his heels into the black's side and went clattering up the narrowcalle, filling the drowsy afternoon with clamor.
The general watched him disappear, and then turned to Strawbridge.
"Caramba!the devil himself must be getting into these peons! Speaking to me after I had instructed him!"
The completely proprietary air of the general camouflaged under a semblance of military discipline the taking of thehorse from the peon. It was only after the three men were in Gumersindo's car and on their way to the President's palace that the implications of the incident developed in the drummer's mind. The peon was not in the army; the horse belonged to the peon, and yet Fombombo had taken it with a mere glance and word.
Evening was gathering now. The motor rolled through a street of dark little shops. Here and there a candle-flame pricked a black interior. Above the level line of roofs the east gushed with a wide orange light.
The dictator and the editor had respected the musing mood of their guest and were now talking to each other in low tones. They were discussing Pio Barajo's novels.
In the course of their trip the drummer had that characteristic American feeling that he was wasting time, that here in the car he might get some idea of the general's needs in the way of guns and ammunition. In a pause of the talk about Barajo, he made a tentative effort to speak of the business which had brought him to Canalejos, but the general smoothed this wrinkle out of the conversation, and the talk veered around to Zamacois.
The drummer had dropped back into his original thoughts about the injustice and inequalities of life here in Rio Negro, and what the American people would do in such circumstances, when the motor turned into Plaza Mayor and the motorists saw a procession of torches marching beneath the trees on the other side of the square. Then the drummer observed that the automobile in which he rode and the moving line of torches were converging on the dark front of a massive building. He watched the flames without interest until his own conveyance and the marchers came to a halt in front of the great spread of ornamental stairs that flowed out of the entrance of the palace. A priest in a cassock stood at the head of the procession, and immediately behind himwere two peons, a young man and a girl, both in wedding finery. They evidently had come for the legal ceremony which in Venezuela must follow the religious ceremony, for as the car stopped a number of voices became audible: "There is his Excellency!" "In the motor, not in thepalacio!" The priest lifted his voice:
"Your Excellency, here are a man and a woman who desire—"
While the priest was speaking, a graceful figure ran up the ornamental steps and stood out strongly against the white marble.
"Your Excellency," he called, "I must object to this wedding! I require time. I represent the father of the bride. It is my paternal duty, your Excellency, to investigate this suitor."
Every one in the line stared at the figure on the steps. The priest began in an astonished voice:
"How is this, my son?"
"I represent the father of this girl," asserted the man on the steps, warmly. "I must look into the character of this bridegroom. A father, your Excellency, is a tender relation."
A sudden outbreak came from the party:
"Who is this man?" "What does he mean by 'father'? Madruja's father is with the 'reds.'"
General Fombombo, who had been watching the little scene passively, from the motor, now scrutinized the girl herself. It drew Strawbridge's attention to her. She was a tall pantheress of a girl, and the wavering torchlight at one moment displayed and the next concealed her rather wild black eyes, full lips, and a certain untamed beauty of face. Her husband-elect was a hard, weather-worn youth. The coupling together of two such creatures did seem rather incongruous.
General Fombombo asked a few questions as he stepped outof the car: Who was she? What claim had the man on the steps? He received a chorus of answers none of which were intelligible. All the while he kept scrutinizing the girl, appraising the contours visible through the bridal veil. At last he waggled a finger and said:
"Cá! Cá!I will decide this later. The señorita may occupy the west room of the palace to-night, and later I will go into this matter more carefully. I have guests now." He clapped his hands. "Ho, guards!" he called, "conduct the señorita to the west room for the night."
Two soldiers in uniform came running down the steps. The line of marchers shrank from the armed men. The girl stared large-eyed at this swift turn in her affairs. Suddenly she clutched her betrothed's arm.
"Esteban!" she cried. "Esteban!"
The groom stood staring, apparently unable to move as the soldiers hurried down the steps.
By this time General Fombombo was escorting the drummer courteously up the stairs into the deeply recessed entrance of the palace. Strawbridge could not resist looking back to see the outcome of this singular wedding. But now the torchbearers were scattering and all the drummer could see was a confused movement in the gloom, and now and then he heard the sharp, broken shrieks of a woman.
His observations were cut short by General Fombombo who, at the top of the stairs, made a deep bow:
"My house and all that it contains are yours, señor."
Strawbridge bowed as to this stereotype he made the formal response, "And yours also."
As the general led the way into the palace, through a broad entrance hall, the cry of the peon girl still clung to the fringe of Thomas Strawbridge's mind. He put it resolutely aside, and assumed his professional business attitude. That is to say, a manner of complimentary intimacy such as an American drummer always assumes toward a prospective buyer. He laid a warm hand on the general's arm, and indicated some large oil paintings hung along the hallway. He said they were "nifty." He suggested that the general was pretty well fixed, and asked how long he had lived here, in the palace.
"Ever since I seized control of the government in Rio Negro," answered the dictator, simply.
For some reason the reply disconcerted Strawbridge. He had not expected so bald a statement. At that moment came the ripple of a piano from one of the rooms off the hallway. The notes rose and fell, massed by some skilful performer into a continuous tone. Strawbridge listened to it and complimented it.
"Pretty music," he said.
"That is my wife playing—the Señora Fombombo."
"Isit!" The drummer's accent congratulated the general on having a wife who could play so well. He tilted his head so the general could see that he was listening and admiring.
"Do you like that sort of music, General?" he asked breezily.
"What sort?"
"That that your wife's playing. It's classic music, isn't it?"
The general was really at a loss. He also began listening, trying to determine whether the music was of the formal classic school of Bach and Handel, or whether it belonged to the later romantic or to the modern. He was unaware that Americans of Strawbridge's type divided all music into two kinds, classic and jazz, and that anything which they do not like falls into the category of classic, and anything they do is jazz.
"I really can't distinguish," admitted the general.
"You bet I can!" declared Strawbridge, briskly. "That's classic. It hasn't got the jump to it, General, the rump-ty, dump-ty, boom! I can feel the lack, you know, the something that's missing. I play a little myself."
The general murmured an acknowledgment of the salesman's virtuosity, and almost at the same moment sounds from the piano ceased. A little later the door of the salon opened and into the hall stepped a slight figure dressed in the bonnet and black robe of a nun.
For such a woman to come out of the music-room gave the drummer a faint surprise; then he surmised that this was one of the sisters from some near-by convent who had come to give piano lessons to Señora Fombombo. The idea was immediately upset by the general:
"Dolores," and, as the nun turned, "Señora Fombombo, allow me to present my friend, Señor Strawbridge."
The strangeness of being presented to a nun who was also the general's wife disconcerted Strawbridge. The girl in the robe was bowing and placing their home at his disposal. The drummer was saying vague things in response: "Very grateful.... The general had insisted.... He hoped that she would feel better soon...." Where under heaven Strawbridge had fished up this last sentiment, he did notknow. His face flushed red at so foolish a remark. Señora Fombombo smiled briefly and kindly and went her way down the passage, a somber, religious figure. Presently she opened one of the dull mahogany doors and disappeared.
The general stood looking after his wife thoughtfully and then answered the question which he knew was in his guest's mind:
"My wife wears that costume on account of a vow. Her sister was ill in Madrid, and my wife vowed to the Virgin that if her sister were restored she would wear a Carmelitish habit."
"And she's doing it?" ejaculated Strawbridge, in an amazed voice.
The general made a gesture.
"Her sister was restored."
The American began impulsively:
"Well, I must say that's rather rough on.... Why, her vow had nothing to do with.... You know her sister would have...." It seemed that none of the sentences which the American began could be concluded with courtesy. Finally he was left suspended in air, with a slight perspiration on his face. He drew out a silk handkerchief, dabbed his face, and wiped his wrists.
"General," he floundered on to solider ground, "now, about how many rifles are you going to want?"
The dictator looked at him, almost as much at loss as the drummer had been.
"Rifles?"
"Yes," proceeded the drummer, becoming quite his enthusiastic self again at this veering back to business. "You see, it will depend upon what you are going to do with 'em, how many you will need. If you are just going to hold this state which you have ... er ... seized, why, you won't need somany, but if you are going out and try to grab some more towns, you'll need a lot more."
With a penetrating scrutiny the dictator considered his guest.
"Why do you ask such a question, Señor Strawbridge?" he inquired in a changed tone.
"Because it's your business."
"My business!"
"Why, yes," declared Strawbridge, amiably and with gathering aplomb. "You see, General, when my firm sends out a salesman, the very first rule they teach him is, 'Study your customer's business.' 'Study his business,' said my boss, 'just the same as if it was your own business. Don't oversell him, don't undersell him. Sell him just exactly what he needs. You want your customer to rely on you,' says my old man, 'so you must be reliable. When you sell a man, you have really gone into partnership with him. His gain is your gain.'" By this time Strawbridge was emphasizing his points by thumping earnestly on the dictator's shoulder. "A hundred times I've had my old man say to me, 'Strawbridge, if you don't make your customer's business your own, if his problems are not your problems, if you can't give him expert advice on his difficulties, then you are no salesman; you are simply a mut with a sample case.'"
This eruption of American business philosophy came from Strawbridge as naturally and bubblingly as champagne released from a bottle. He had at last got his prospect's ear and had launched his sales talk. With rather a blank face the general listened to the outburst.
"So you were inquiring through considerations of business?" he asked.
"Exactly; I want to know your probable market. Perhaps I can think up a way to extend it."
"I see." The general was beginning to smile faintly now. "Because I am going to buy some rifles from you, you ask me what cities I am going to attack next."
A slight disconcert played through Strawbridge at this bald statement, but he continued determinedly:
"That's the idea. If you are going to use my guns, I'm partners with you in your ... er ... expansion. That's American methods, General; that's straightforward and honest."
General Fombombo drew in his lips, bit them thoughtfully, and considered Strawbridge. No man with a rudimentary knowledge of human nature could have doubted the drummer's complete sincerity. The general seemed to be repressing a smile.
"Suppose we step into my study, here, a moment, Señor Strawbridge. We might discuss my ... my business, as you put it, if you will excuse its prematurity."
"That's what I'm here for—business," said Strawbridge, earnestly, as he passed in at a door which the dictator opened.
A wall map was the most conspicuous feature of General Fombombo's library, a huge wall map of Venezuela which covered the entire west wall of the room. As the two men entered, only the lower third of this cartograph was revealed by reading-lamps ranged along tables, but the general switched on a frieze of ceiling lights and swept the whole projection into high illumination.
The general stood looking at it meditatively, glanced at his watch as if timing some other engagement, then pointed out to Strawbridge that the greater part of the chart was outlined in blue, while the extreme western end of the Orinoco Valley was in red.
"That is my life work, Señor Strawbridge—extending this red outline of the free and independent state of RioNegro to include the whole Orinoco Valley. I want to consolidate an empire from the Andes to the Atlantic."
Strawbridge stood nodding, looking at the blue-and-red map, and began his characteristic probing for detail:
"How many square miles you got now, General?"
To Strawbridge's surprise, the dictator repeated this question in a somewhat louder tone:
"How many square miles does the state of Rio Negro now contain, Coronel Saturnino?" and a voice from the north end of the study answered:
"Seventeen thousand five hundred and eighty-two, General."
The general repeated these figures to Strawbridge.
At the first words uttered by the voice, Strawbridge turned, to see a third person in the library, a young man behind a reading-lamp at the other end of the room, busy at some clerical work. Strawbridge turned his thoughts back to the figures and fixed them in his mind, then set out after more details.
"How much more is there to be consolidated?"
This question in turn was relayed to the clerk, who said:
"Two hundred and thirty-two thousand four hundred and eighteen."
The American compared the two figures, looked at the map.
"Then it will take you a long time, a number of years to finish," he observed.
"Oh, no!" objected the general, becoming absorbed in his subject. "Our progress will be in geometrical, not in arithmetical ratio. You see, every new town we absorb gives us so much human material for our next step."
"I see that," assented the drummer, looking at the map; "and your idea is to absorb the whole Orinoco Valley?"
The general's answer to this was filled with genuine ardor. The Orinoco Valley was one of the largestgeographical units in the world, a great natural empire. It was variously estimated at from two hundred and fifty thousand to six hundred and fifty thousand square miles in area. It was drained by four hundred and thirty-six rivers and upward of two thousand streams. These innumerable waters would convert the whole region into a seaport. With such cheap transportation the Orinoco country could supply the world with cocoa, tonka-beans, cotton, sugar, rubber, tropical cabinet-woods, cattle, hides, gold, diamonds.
"But what I have just traveled over is almost a desert," objected Strawbridge. "The cattle were dying of thirst."
"Precisamente!" interjected the general, with a sharp gesture; "but right at this moment I am driving a canal from here to here." He took a long ruler and began to point eagerly on the map.
"Yes, I saw your ... your men at work." The drummer stuttered as the ghastly "reds" recurred to his mind.
"That canal will furnish water in the dry season. In the wet season it will form a conduit to impound the waters in this great natural depression here." The dictator pointed dynamically at the configuration showed on the map. "Young man, can you imagine such a development? Can you fancy the Nile Valley magnified thirty times?" He waved at the brilliantly lighted map. "Can you imagine league after league lush with harvest, decked with noble cities, and peopled by the aristocrats of the earth? I refer to the Spanish race. You must realize, señor, there have been but two dominant races in modern history—the English and the Spanish. We two divided the New World between us. You will agree with me when I say that the English North Americans have cultivated the material side of civilization to a degree that has never been approached in the sweep of human history. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the other great segment of humanity, the Spanish South Americans,will cultivate the immaterial side, will establish a great artistic, intellectual, and spiritual hegemony in the world? By such a division our imperial races will supplement each other. One will show the world how to produce, the other how to live. We shall be the halves of a whole."
Strawbridge followed this dithyramb keenly in regard to the irrigation and development project; the artistic end sounded rather nebulous to him.
"And you've got this far with it," he particularized, pointing at the red boundary; "what's the next step?"
The dictator was riding his own hobby now, and he answered without reservation:
"This town, San Geronimo."
"When are you going to do it?"
"We will absorb San Geronimo.... Let me see, ... Coronel Saturnino, on what date do we attack San Geronimo?"
"On the twenty-third of this month," came the voice from the back of the study.
"Exactly. We want to incorporate that town with the state of Rio Negro before our flotilla returns up the Amazon from Rio Janeiro."
"When do you expect them back?"
"Inside of two months."
"Are they the boats Gumersindo was talking about? He spoke of my going up the Orinoco, crossing to the Amazon, and then going down to Rio Janeiro."
"Those were the instructions I gave Señor Gumersindo."
Strawbridge stood looking up at the map. A sudden plan popped into his head.
"Since I'll be here," he said, "it wouldn't be a bad plan for me to run along with your army to San Geronimo and see how the trick of absorbing it is done. Give me some notion of the working end of this business."
"Do you mean you desire to accompany my army to San Geronimo?"
"Wouldn't be a bad idea."
"You would be running a certain risk, señor."
"Is it dangerous?" The salesman was surprised. The general had talked so comfortably about "absorbing" San Geronimo that it sounded a very peaceable operation. "Anyway," he persisted with a certain characteristic stubbornness, "this will be a good opportunity to learn about actual conditions down here, and if you can make a place for me, I believe I'll go."
The dictator became grave.
"It is my duty to advise you against it."
Strawbridge considered his host.
"Your objections are not to me personally, are they, señor?" he asked bluntly.
"No, not at all. My resources are entirely at your disposal."
"Then I think I ought to go," decided the American. "You see, when my old man started me out, he said to me, 'Study conditions first-hand, Strawbridge. Find out what your customer has to meet. Make his problems your problems, his interest your interest.' So, you see, I am very glad of the chance to see just how this absorption business works."
All this was given in a very enthusiastic tone. The dictator smiled faintly.
"You are personally welcome to go. You may speak to Coronel Saturnino. He will arrange your billet."
"Good! Good!" Strawbridge was gratified. Then he dropped automatically into the follow-up methods taught him by the sales manager of the Orion Arms Corporation.
"And now, General," he continued intimately, "abouthow many rifles do we want shipped here?" As he asked this question he used his left hand to draw a leather-covered book from his hip pocket, while with his right he plucked a fountain-pen from his vest pocket. With a practised flirt he flung open his order-book at a rubber-band marker. Thus mobilized, he looked with bright expectation at his prospect.
The general seemed a little at loss.
"Do you mean how many riflesIwant?"
Strawbridge nodded, and repeated in an intimate, confident tone, "Yes; how many do we want?" The pronoun followed up the impression of how thoroughly he had identified himself with the interest of his customer.
Fombombo hesitated a moment, then asked aloud:
"Coronel Saturnino, how many rifles do we want?"
The young colonel did not pause in his work.
"Twenty-five thousand, General." His brain seemed to be a card-index.
"Twenty-five thousand," repeated Fombombo.
A jubilant sensation went through the drummer at the hugeness of the order. He jotted something in his book.
"When do you want them delivered?"
"As soon as I can get them."
Strawbridge made soft, blurry noises of approval, nodding as he wrote.
"And how shipped?"
All through this little colloquy the general seemed rather at sea. At last he said:
"We can arrange these details later, Señor Strawbridge."
The drummer suddenly turned his full-power selling-talk on his prospect. This was the pinch, this was where he either "put it across" or failed. For just this crisis his sales manager had drilled him day after day. He turned on the dictator and began in an earnest, almost a religious tone:
"Now, General, I can make you satisfactory terms and prices. Every article that leaves our shop is guaranteed; the Orion Arms brands are to-day the standards by which all other firearms are judged. You can't make a mistake by ordering now." He pushed the pen and the book closer to the general's hand. All the general had to do now was simply to close his fingers.
"Señor, we can hardly go into such details to-night." The dictator moved back a trifle from the drummer, with a South American's distaste of touching another human being of the same sex. "There is no necessity. You will be here for weeks, waiting for my canoes from Rio. They will bring drafts, some gold, some barter. When all this is arranged I will send you down the Amazon to embark at Rio for New York, but we have a long wait until my flotilla arrives."
The salesman made a flank attack, almost without thinking. He gently insinuated the book and pen into the general's fingers.
"Now, your Excellency," he murmured, raising his brows, "you sign the dotted line, just here; see?" He pointed at it absorbedly. "I want you to do it to protect yourself. If the prices happen to advance, you get the benefit of to-day's quotations; see? If they fall—why, countermand and order again; see? I'm trying to protect your interests just the same as if they were mine, General."
The dictator returned pen and book.
"We will discuss these details later, señor." He again drew out his watch and seemed struck with the hour. "I am sure you are weary after your long ride, Señor Strawbridge. I myself, unfortunately, have another engagement. Allow me to introduce to you Coronel Saturnino." He moved with the salesman toward the man at the desk, a moment later presented the colonel, and bowed himself away.
The drummer was discomfited at his prospect's escape;nevertheless he shook hands warmly with Coronel Saturnino. The colonel was a handsome young officer, in uniform, and his sword leaned against the desk at which he sat writing. Saturnino's face tended toward squareness, and he had a low forehead. His thick black hair was glossy with youth. His square-cut face was marked with a faintly superior smile, as though he perceived all the weaknesses of the person who was before him and was slightly amused by them. He was of middle height. Strawbridge would have called him heavy-set except for a remarkably slender waist. When the colonel stood up and shook hands with the drummer, Strawbridge discovered that he was in the presence of an athlete.
The salesman put himself on a friendly footing with this officer at once, just as he always did with the clerks in American stores. He seated himself on the edge of Coronel Saturnino's desk, very much at ease.
"Well, I thought I was going to land the old general right off the bat!" he confided, laughing.
"Yes?" inquired Saturnino, politely, still standing. "Why your haste?"
"Oh, well—" Strawbridge wagged his head—"push your business or your business will push you. Never put off till to-morrow what you can do to-day. Why, there might be a German salesman in here to-morrow with another line of goods!"
"Is a German salesman coming?" asked the colonel, quickly.
"Oh, no, no, no! I said there might be." Strawbridge reached into an inner pocket, drew out and flipped open a silver case. "Have a cigar."
"No, thank you." The colonel hesitated, and added, "I don't smoke after twelve o'clock at night."
Strawbridge jumped up.
"Good Lord! is it as late as that?"
The colonel thought it was.
"By the way," interrupted the drummer, "I'm to go with you to San Geronimo. The old man said so. I'll get the hang of things down there. I suppose it pays—this revolting—or the old man wouldn't stay in the business."
As the colonel simply stood, Strawbridge continued his desultory remarks:
"The old man's got a grand scheme—hasn't he?—canalizing the Orinoco Valley. Say, this goes: when you fellows put that across, this beautiful little city of Canalejos will just have a shade on any damn burg in this wide world. Now you can take that flat; it goes." He made a gesture with his palm down.
Coronel Saturnino did not appear particularly gratified by this encomium heaped upon his home town. He picked up a paper-weight and looked at it with a faint smile.
"Did the general tell you about that?"
"Oh, yes," declared Strawbridge, heartily, "we buddied up from the jump. Why, I never meet a stranger. I'm just Tom Strawbridge wherever you find me."
The colonel passed over Mr. Strawbridge's declaration of his identity.
"Did the general's plan for canalization strike you as economically sound?" he asked, with a certain quizzical expression.
"Why, sure! That's the most progressive scheme I've heard of since I struck South America. I'm for it. I tell you it's a big idea."
The colonel laid down the paper-weight, and asked with a flavor of satire:
"Why should a colony of men canalize a semi-arid country when they can go to other parts of South America and obtain just as fertile, well-watered land without effort?"
With a vague sense of sacrilege the drummer looked at the young officer.
"Why—good Lord, man!—you're not knocking your home town, are you?"
Coronel Saturnino was unaware that this was the cardinal crime in an American's calendar.
"I am stating the most elementary analysis of an economic situation," he defended, rather surprised at his guest's heat.
The drummer laughed in brief amazement at a man who would decry his place of residence for any reason under the sun.
"You certainly must never have read Edgar Z. Best's celebrated poem, 'The Trouble Is Not with Your Town; It's You.'"
"No," said the officer. "I've never read it."
"Well, I'll try to get it for you," said the drummer, in a tone which told Coronel Saturnino that until he had read "The Trouble Is Not with Your Town: It's You," he could never hope to stand among literate men.
Having thus, one might say, laid the foundation of the American spirit in Canalejos, Strawbridge yawned frankly and said:
"If you'll be good enough to show me my bunk, I believe I'll hit the hay."
Coronel Saturnino pressed a button on his desk and a moment later a little palace guard in uniform entered the library, carrying a rifle. The colonel gave a brief order, then walked to the door with his guest and bowed him out of the study.
Next morning the cathedral bells roused Strawbridge with dreams of fire-alarms. He thought he was in a burning house and he struggled terrifically to move a leg, to twitch an inert arm. Somewhere in the sleeping bulk of the drummer a strange, insubstantial entity sent out desperate alarms. At last a finger flexed, an eyelid trembled, then suddenly something in the sleeper's brain expanded, flowed out through and identified itself with the whole body. It was reinstated as a traveling salesman with trade ambitions who pursued devious ends through ways and means imposed on him by custom and training. The drummer opened his eyes and sat up. He wiped the sweat from his face and damned the bells for waking him. The fact that by some strange means he had been cut off a moment or two from his body, that he had engaged in a terrific struggle to regain its control, did not suggest a mystery or provoke a question in his mind. He had had a nightmare. That explained everything. He often had nightmares. To Thomas Strawbridge's type of mind anything that happens often cannot possibly contain a mystery.
Nevertheless his experience left him in a dour mood. He turned out of bed, shoved his feet into some native alpargatas, and shuffled to the bath which adjoined his chamber.
The bath-tub was a basin of white marble, rather dirty, and built into the tiled floor. It was a miniature swimming-pool. Overhead was a clumsy silver nozzle on a water-pipe. The drummer turned it on, and the water which sprayed over him was neither cool nor very clean. The roaring and banging of the cathedral bells continued as if they would never leave off.
As Strawbridge soaped and rubbed he recalled somewhatmoodily his engagement to go with General Fombombo's force to San Geronimo. At this hour of the morning the adventure did not appeal to him. It was rather a wild-goose chase, and he decided he would tell the general he had changed his mind, and have Saturnino remove his name from the lists.
The bells continued their uproar. They did not stop until the drummer had finished his bath and was back in his room. Then their silence brought into notice a distant, watery note. This came from the cataracts in the Rio Negro somewhere below Canalejos. The disquietude of the water was rumored through the room, over the city, and it spread across the llanos for miles and miles. It held a certain disagreeableness for Strawbridge. He liked a quiet morning. Somewhere on the street a native donkey-cart rattled. The cathedral bells started again, but this time not for long—merely to gather in the faithful their previous tumult had awakened. But it all struck Strawbridge on raw nerves.
In fact, every morning Strawbridge was subject to what he called his grouch. He got up with a grouch on. It was a short daily reaction from his American heartiness, his American optimism, his tendency to convert every moment into a fanfare and a balloon ascension. This early morning depression continued until he had had his coffee and the fife-and-drum corps of his spirit started up their stridor again. It is just possible that the American flag, instead of stars, should bear forty-eight coffee beans rampant.
A woman in black passed the barred windows of Strawbridge's room. The drummer, after the manner of men, moved slowly about his window to keep her in sight as long as possible. He fussed with his tie as he did so. He watched her cross the plaza. She passed under a row of ornamental evergreen trees which looked as if they had dark-green tassels hung at regular intervals on perfectly symmetrical limbs. The grace of the trees somehow lent itself to the girl whopassed beneath them. At the same moment an odor of frangipani drifted in through the bars, out of the morning.
When any man is looking at a woman, any odor that comes to his nostrils automatically associates itself with her—a relic, no doubt, of our animal forebears, during their mating seasons.
Strawbridge watched the girl intently until at last he had his face pressed against the bars to get a final glimpse of her at a difficult angle.
When he straightened from this rather awkward posture and returned to his tie, he became aware that the maid had entered his room with his morning coffee. She was a short girl, of dusky yellow color, and was evidently half Indian and half negro, or what the Venezuelans call agriffe. She also had moved about the window to its last angular possibility, and when Strawbridge saw her she was peering with very bright black eyes to see who had been the gentleman's quarry.
At this the drummer became acutely aware of every movement he had made. He frowned at thegriffegirl.
"Here, give me the coffee! Don't stand all day staring like that!"
The girl started and nervously handed her salver to him.
"Whyn't you knock when you came in?" demanded Strawbridge.
"I did, señor, but I thought you were asleep," she said, a little frightened.
It was the maid's custom to find her master's guests asleep, to steal in noiselessly, awaken them, and administer in a tiny cup two tablespoonfuls of Venezuelan coffee, black as the pit and strong as death.
The incident of the servant-girl counteracted, to a certain extent, the heartening effect of the coffee. Strawbridge looked out on the brightening morning and wondered if by any chance her gossip might affect his landing General Fombombo's order for rifles, because he knew that the girl in black he hadbeen watching at such inconvenience was the Señora Fombombo. He felt sure thegriffegirl knew it also. But he decided optimistically that she would say nothing about it, or, if she did, it would have no influence on his sale.
The big, somber bedroom to which General Fombombo had assigned his guest was a good observation point, and no doubt the dictator had chosen it for this very reason. The scene at which Strawbridge was looking might have aroused enthusiasm in a more susceptible man. At an angle it gave a view of the Plaza Mayor and a glimpse of the cathedral seen through the trees. Straight east a bit of paved street showed, and beyond that a garden with a side gate facing Strawbridge's window. A heavy hedge divided the garden from the plaza. Beyond the garden rose the walls and buttresses of the rear of the cathedral, and this was a handsome thing. In the soft morning light it was an aspiration toward God.
Beyond the cathedral, the wide river stretched eastward. Two hundred yards down the river bank rose another low, massive building, more heavily built and gloomier even than the palace. In the uncertain light Strawbridge thought he discerned two or three figures on the flat roof of this building.
A little later the sun's limb cut the far eastern reach of the river. Distant quivering reflections marked the rapids whose subdued turmoil brooded over the city and the llanos. The light increased momentarily. Against its widening flame blinked tiny black native boats, like familiar demons traversing the fires of some wide and splendid hell.
None of this interested Strawbridge. He stared at it through the same mechanical compulsion that causes a moth to head toward light, but he did not see it. The first thing that really caught his attention was a bugle blowing reveille; the next breath, from the top of the low building came the flash of a cannon, faintly seen against the brilliant east. After an interval came a brief, hard report.
The concussion not only startled Strawbridge but did some obscure violence to his sensibilities. It did not roar and rumble and so suggest the pomp and panoply of war. The flatness of the llanos lent no echo. The shot was just a hard, abrupt blow, a smash, then silence. There was something dismaying about it. Then Strawbridge could see the figures on the flat roof leaving their cannon and descending.
Like all good Americans who observe a foreign military demonstration, Strawbridge thought:
"That's nothing. An American army with big American guns could blow that little toy right out of existence." Nevertheless he continued to be depressed and somehow dismayed by the hard and savage suddenness of the sunrise gun, and in his heart he determined firmly that he would not go with the army to San Geronimo. In his mind Strawbridge uttered these thoughts resolutely, and he felt himself to be one of those strong-willed men who, having once settled on a program, never vary from it, no matter what chance befalls.
A gong announcingalmuerzobrought the drummer out of his reverie and moved him toward the breakfast table. As he went he shook off his mood, and resumed, as if he were putting on a suit of clothes, his quick American walk, his optimism, and his dashing business manner. As he moved briskly down the great hallway, a guard with a rifle directed him to thecomidor.
The palace was divided into an east and a west wing, by a series of patios, and the breakfast-room proved to be a little place latticed off from one of the smaller patios. The lattice was overgrown with vines. In this retreat Strawbridge found a small basketry table laid with snowy linen, on which were oranges, sweet lemons, rolls, and coffee.
Thanks to Strawbridge's quick movements, he was the first person here. He sat down at the table and enjoyed the sunshine glinting at him through the vines. Through an end doorof the breakfast-room he could see the kitchen. Its principal furnishing was a Venezuelan cooking-range. This was a great stone table punctured with little iron grates each holding a handful of charcoal fire. Above the table spread a big sheet-iron canopy, to convey away the gases and fumes. Ranged on the little fires were pots and pans and saucepans. At the farther end of the kitchen a wrinkled old negress was on her knees on the earthen floor, pouring boiling water into an old stocking leg filled with ground coffee. The beverage dripped out into a silver pot which sat on the ground in front of the crone. Beyond the negress, in the sunshine, stood a meat block with a machete stuck in it and a joint of meat lying on it. Around the meat the flies were so thick that they appeared to Strawbridge as a kind of wavering shadow over the block.
A sound behind the drummer caused him to turn, and he saw the Señora Fombombo, in her religious black, evidently just returned from early mass. The sight of her gave Strawbridge a certain faint satisfaction, but at the same time it brought back the vague embarrassment he had felt on the previous evening. He returned her salutation of "Buenos dias," and was pondering something else to say, when she expressed a fear that the sight of a Venezuelancocina(kitchen) would be disagreeable to him. She had heard how spotless were American kitchens.
The salesman began a hasty assurance that the kitchen was very interesting, but the señora called to a servant to close the shutter. The samegriffegirl whom Strawbridge had seen that morning answered the call, and before she retired she gave the señora and the salesman a certain understanding look, which linked up in Strawbridge's mind with what the girl had seen an hour or two earlier.
The señora herself was proceeding with her table talk.
"We can get only native servants here in Canalejos," shewas saying in the faintly mechanical manner of a hostess who has an uninteresting guest, "and they prepare everything in the native way."
Strawbridge said he liked Venezuelan cooking.
"It is monotonous," criticized the señora. "The chicken is always cooked with rice, and the plantains are always fried."
Strawbridge started to say that he loved chicken and rice and fried plantains, but even his imperfect sense of rhetoric warned him that he had already overworked those particular phrases. So he checked that sentiment, cast about for a substitute, and finally fished up:
"I saw you going to early mass this morning, señora."
The girl glanced at him, agreed to this, and continued peeling her orange with a knife and fork, in the Venezuelan fashion.
The drummer wanted strongly to follow this opening with something brisk and lively to compel her attention and interest, but his head seemed oddly empty. His embarrassment persisted and made him a little uncomfortable. He wondered why. It was irritating. Why didn't he tell her a joke, one of his parlor jokes? Strawbridge knew scores and scores of obscene jokes, and perhaps half a dozen parlor jokes which he kept for women. Now, to his discomfiture, he could not recall a single one of his parlor jokes. For some reason or other, he told himself, the señora crabbed his style.
She was a smallish woman with a rather slender, melancholy face, and her eyes had that slightly unfocused look which is characteristic of all pure-black eyes. Her eyebrows and lips were engraved in black and red against a colorless face. Her nun's bonnet and the white cloth that passed beneath it across her forehead concealed the least trace of hair. And Strawbridge speculated with a sort of apprehension whether or noshe really had shaved her head nun fashion. If so, the Virgin had exacted a bitter price for her sister's recovery.
During these meditations, however, the salesman was not dumb. He automatically started one of those typically American conversations which consist in a long string of disconnected questions asked without any object whatever. Strawbridge himself regretted these questions. He had hoped to do something amusing and rather brilliant.
"Have you lived here long, señora?"
"About two years. I came here immediately after I was married to General Fombombo."
"Then you were not married here?"
"No, in Spain."
"Then you are a Spanish girl?"
"Yes, I lived in Barcelona."
"How do you like it here?"
"Very well."
"I suppose you miss the stir. I hear Barcelona is the livest town in Spain."
"I believe it is," she agreed a little uncertainly.
"What do they export? Anything besides olive-oil? I understand they export a lot of olive-oil."
Señora Fombombo touched her slender fingers to her lips a moment and then said she believed they exported olive-oil.
"I suppose the girls go in for business over there, too—bookkeepers, you know; stenogs, clerks, cash girls ...?"
"Ye-e-es."
"What was your line before you married?"
The señora came awake and looked at the drummer.
"Myline?"
"Yes," said Strawbridge, becoming a little less of an automaton and a little more of a human. "What was your job before you hooked up with the general?"
The señora almost stared at the American. Then she drew in her under lip and seemed to compress it rigorously, thoughtfully, perhaps to assist her in recalling what her line was before she hooked up with the general. Then she said:
"I ... I did a little music."
"Teach?" probed the American.
"Well ... no.... Really, I'm afraid I didn't do anything."
Strawbridge nodded as if some puzzle had been solved for him.
"Now, that's where you made your mistake," he explained paternally. "A woman ought to have a job just the same as a man. She ought to be able to hold over her goods until the market is right. Now take me: suppose I had to sell my rifles right now because I didn't have the overhead to keep them ninety days longer; I'd be in a bad way. It's the same way with you girls. With no overhead, it's no wonder you married Ge—" He caught himself up abruptly, aghast at the implication to which his monologue had led him. He floundered mentally in an effort to turn it off, but all he could do was simply to moisten his lips and stop talking. He wondered chillily if the señora had caught it.
Apparently she had not. A spray of flowers swung near her from the vine. She drew a raceme to her face and began smoothly:
"I know feminism is very modern and up to date, but somehow we Spanish women don't care for it. We are as idle as these flowers." She turned and looked at the blossoms. "This variety of wistaria grew in my garden in Barcelona; that's why I had it planted here. It reminds me of home." She looked up at the American, smiled faintly, and added rather disconnectedly:
"It may seem strange to you, Señor Strawbridge, but once I very nearly entered a convent in Barcelona."
By this time Strawbridge was convinced that she had not observed his false step. He was still warm, and a little shivery, but he was recovering. He said very simply and truthfully:
"Well, I'm glad you didn't. If I have to stay in Canalejos, I'm glad there is an agreeable woman in it to talk to."
The señora expressed her pleasure if she could enliven his stay at Canalejos, and as they talked Coronel Saturnino entered the breakfast-room. He bowed to the señora and inquired of Strawbridge, in his somewhat amused voice, if he had slept well after his enlistment.
Oh, yes, he had slept like a top.
"Enlistment?" echoed the señora.
"Seguramente," smiled the colonel. "Señor Strawbridge has enlisted in the cavalry to march against San Geronimo."
Señora Fombombo seemed utterly astonished. She stared at the colonel, then at the drummer.
"You don't mean Señor Strawbridge will be in the cavalry attack on San Geronimo?"
"Yes, señora; I arranged his billet last night." The colonel made a smiling bow.
The girl turned to the American.
"But why are you going to fight at San Geronimo, señor?" she asked.
Strawbridge hesitated, cleared his throat, glanced through the vine-grown lattice into the sunshine, then apparently came to some inward decision.
"Now, it's like this, señora," he began, getting back the ring and confidence in his voice which had heretofore been missing: "It's like this. In order to meet your clients' needs you've got to get first-hand information." He patted his right fingers against his left palm and looked the señora squarely in the eye for the first time. "Before you can grasp your patrons' problems, you've got to make 'em yours. Why, the first thing my old man said to me, he said:'Strawbridge, an expert salesman is first aid to the financially injured; he's the star of Bethlehem to the sinners of commerce.' He's a cutter, my old man is. I wish you could know him, señora."
"You mean your father?" hazarded the President's wife.
"Holy mackerel, lady! no!" cried the drummer, with a touch of Keokuk gusto in his voice. "I mean my boss, the head knocker of my firm. Great old chap, and rich as Limburger cheese. Say, he owns fifty-one per cent. of the Orion Arms stock, and he started in as a water boy. How do you like that?" Mr. Strawbridge gave his auditors a little triumphant smile.
"Caramba!Very American, I say," laughed the colonel.
The señora interposed quickly:
"And very good and very fine, I say, Señor Strawbridge!" She looked at the colonel with a certain little light in her eye, then added emphatically, "I am sure I should like him."
She was rising to leave the table.
Coronel Saturnino, who was about to seat himself, said:
"If I concede his admirable qualities, I wonder if you would stay and eat another orange, señora?"
But the girl pleaded that she must practise some music in the cathedral.
Strawbridge hesitated, half-way out of his chair. He was undecided whether to stay with Coronel Saturnino or to go with the señora. He decided for the latter and walked out of the breakfast-room with her, but he was vaguely embarrassed for fear he had done the wrong thing.