CHAPTER XX
Strawbridge did not know why the general's second infidelity stirred him so deeply. For some reason it sent him hurrying weakly back, through the heat, to the palace. What he meant to do when he got there, what he could do, he did not know.
The drummer reached the side door almost exhausted and rang the bell. He waited several minutes in the intense heat of the sunshine. At last the door was opened by the griffe girl. She gave just one glance, then swooped on him, caught him about the waist, and helped him inside.
"Caramba! Señor Tomas, you are as white as a sheet! You are about to fall! You must go to bed at once. I told you—"
"Where is your mistress?" panted the drummer.
The girl was dictatorial.
"Cá! What do you want with the señora? I tell you to go to bed! I told you never to...."
The maid's question helped temper Strawbridge's impulse. After all, what did he want with the señora! What did he mean to say to her! There was nothing to say, much less to do. He began to realize how empty his impulse was of any possible action.
"What do you want with her?" repeated the maid, holding him up and leading him inside.
The drummer fumbled for an answer, and then explained lamely that they were reading a play together.
The freckled maid looked up at him, amazed.
"A play! Caramba! it must be a wonderful play!"
"Look here," frowned the American, recovering his dignity, "can't you answer a simple question without making remarks?"
"Pues, was I making remarks? You told me you were reading a play!"
"Yes, you do make remarks! Damn it! you talk all the time! If you've got to chatter like that, beat it!"
She would not let go her patient, for fear he might really fall and hurt himself, but she was offended.
"Seguramente!" she snapped. "If I ever get you in bed, trust me, I'll never lift another finger to get you out! Caramba! after all I've done!" She seemed about to cry. "As for the señora, she is in the music-room, and when you rush in through this heat, all white and trembly, to read a play, I think you are crazy; that's what I think!"
"Well, damn what you think! Here, let go; I can walk without you!" He shook himself loose and walked on in weak irascibility.
The girl stood looking after him with angry tears in her eyes and much anxiety for his welfare as he passed through the transverse corridor and turned down the main hallway.
He moved more and more slowly past the old doors which lined the corridor. There were no guards in the passage; they had been drawn away, no doubt, by the fiesta. The palace seemed rather empty without them. He was thinking of this when the door of the music-room opened and a man stepped into the hallway. He stood holding the door ajar and looking back into the room. The drummer was surprised to see that it was Coronel Saturnino. The salesman had thought the colonel was in San Geronimo, but no doubt he had come to Canalejos for the fiesta. The expression on the officer's face struck Strawbridge. For once his look of satire had vanished, and it left exposed what must have been the real Saturnino beneath all his quips and mockeries. He was speaking through the door, in a low tone:
"When a man has only one desire in life, señora, would he not be a fool to sacrifice that! Why should he sacrifice it! Shall his one brief glimpse of existence be entirely empty?"
There came a gasp from the music-room, and Strawbridge caught the phrase, "But, Pancho, that is sacrilegious!"
"Sacrilegious!" echoed the officer, in a sudden passion. "Sacrilegious! A word to trap fools with! To give up the very heart of this life, here, expecting another which will never come.... Dolores, can you imagine the immeasurable unconcern with which Nature views us! And then expect me to give up the very essence of my little glimpse of existence, for fear, forsooth, that the hand that made me will not precisely approve my squirmings toward the ends for which He framed me! Puh! it's too absurd!" With pallid face he stood looking through the doorway; then came a return of some of his old pococurantism: "Well, señora, I leave you now, but I will come back one day, you might say as a missionary, to convert you to a happier view of life and the Deity. Until then, adios." He bowed gracefully and turned up the passage toward the front of the palace.
With considerable surprise, and also a certain questioning, the American watched the colonel go. The officer evidently had concluded a tête-à-tête with the señora which was unsatisfactory to him. Strawbridge was secretly glad of this; he had always been glad that Saturnino was persona non grata with the señora.
But what set up a questioning in the drummer were the tones of the man and the woman, and the nickname, "Pancho," which the señora had used. This diminutive and just such overtones the drummer recalled hearing through the hedge as he stood in the plaza outside the cathedral garden. The idea that those quarreling lovers in the garden had been Saturnino and Dolores came to him with a shock. All along, had Saturnino been a suitor for the señora's favors? Was the officer attempting intimacies with the wife of his employer and general? Such duplicity filled the American with disdain. He was shocked at Saturnino. Then, as he stood thinking about it, he asked himself why he should be shocked. The colonel was no Anglo-Saxon, with a restraint cultivated by long generations of controlled ancestors. He was a Latin, a Venezuelan.
The door of the music-room was still ajar when Strawbridge reached the entrance. He had meant to express, in a roundabout way, his deep moral approval of what the señora had just done, but what he saw in the music-room put completely out of his head any sentiment he meant to utter.
The señora half knelt before the window-seat, with her head in her outstretched arms and her rosary clutched in her fingers. As a sharp accent in the picture was her hair. Her nun's cap had fallen off and revealed a great jet corona wound about her head in a complexity of cables. The glint and sheen of the light from the window fell over this luxuriant coiffure, and the slender white nape of her neck curved up into it. The loveliness of it clutched at something in the drummer's chest as if with physical fingers.
At his continued gaze the girl stirred, looked about, saw him, and made a little defensive movement toward her nun's bonnet.
The American protested involuntarily:
"For God's sake, señora, don't hide it! What makes you want to hide your hair?"
Her eyes showed she had been crying, but such an outbreak of admiration moved her to a brief smile; immediately she was grave again.
"It is a vow I made for my sister, señor."
"A vow to what?"
"To Saint Teresa."
"To a saint! Are you hiding your lovely hair just to keep a vow to a saint?"
"Sí, señor."
"Well, I declare! think of that! Wait, don't put it back on right now...."
Nevertheless she replaced the bonnet, smiling faintly at his protesting face. Then she became concerned about him.
"I didn't know you were out of bed. You ought not to be, Señor Tomas. You look quite worn out. Come over here, on this couch by the window."
She was swiftly becoming herself again, pleasant, softly gracious, and remote. She crossed the room, took his arm, and helped him to the wicker couch she had indicated. Her mere presence and touch wove a deep comfort about the sick man. Whatever were her relations with Saturnino, they faded into a small matter in the atmosphere of her delicate charm. Strawbridge leaned back against the end of the couch, looking at her.
"What were you crying about when I came in, señora?" he asked simply.
She looked at him with dark eyes that appeared slightly unfocused.
"I would rather not tell you, Señor Tomas."
"You might tell me, señora. I'm a mighty good friend of yours."
The girl sighed with some comfort of her own.
"Yes, you are. You are so ... nice. But you don't want to be my confessor, do you, Señor Tomas?"
"I wish I could be. Who is your confessor, señora?"
"Father Benicio."
"Sure! it would naturally be him."
She noted his tone, with surprise and a delicate amusement in her face.
"You seem really aggrieved. Do you want to be a priest?"
"I wish I could sit in a little box with you and hear you talk what is really in your heart, señora. I wish I could find out what is in your heart. I think it must be a pure and lovely place, señora, like one of those chapels in the cathedral, with an alabaster cross and a soft rug to kneel and pray on."
She seemed almost startled.
"Oh, no, Señor Tomas," she denied hurriedly, "it is not like that, at all. Holy Mary! I wish it were!"
"But it is!" affirmed Strawbridge, warmly. "Why, señora, the very first morning I saw you going to chapel I thought—"
The Spanish girl arose abruptly.
"Listen," she interrupted. "Don't talk to me of chapels and crosses and souls!" She stood looking down on him, with tragic eyes. "I am not a person who should speak of such things. I ... I...."
The American looked at her in dismay. He thought of Saturnino.
"Why ... what do you mean?" he asked in a lower tone.
She studied him a moment longer.
"I was a girl when I came here to Venezuela, Señor Tomas, a little girl of sixteen, just out of a convent; and then ... I was dropped in a place like this!" She made a quick gesture, spreading her hands as if to fling something from her fingers.
A rush of pity caught the sick man.
"Whatever made you come here?" he questioned gruffly, then frowned and cleared his throat.
The two understood each other with remarkable economy of words. The girl answered the implications of his question:
"Because he was rich! He had millions of pesetas, millions. My parents said it was a wonderful opportunity, and I—" she touched her breast sharply—"why, I knew nothing of life or love or marriage! They said he was a wealthy Venezuelan who owned a territory almost as large as Spain itself. Well, he does ... but nobody said what he did in that territory!" She gave a brief, shivering laugh.
The sick man arose unsteadily.
"That's the damnable point!" He trembled. "That's what I can't endure. I think about it all the time. I was sitting in the plaza thinking about the shame he puts on you—"
The girl looked up at him.
"Señor, what do you mean?"
"I mean the shame and disgrace of it. I can't endure staying here seeing you continually disgraced in your own home by one stray woman after another!"
The señora stared.
"Señor, do you fancy I want it to be different?"
The drummer was astonished.
"You don't! Do you mean you condone such offense? Do you mean?..."
The señora's black eyes grew moist at the reproach in his voice.
"Dear Señor Tomas, that is something you do not understand. You don't know how glad I am to be free of him—such a brute! Oh, señor, you can't imagine how horrible it was—the very sight of him. It seemed to me I could not endure it another day. A murderer, a robber...." The expression on her face moved the drummer. "At last I went to Father Benicio. I told him I would jump in the river and let the caymans eat me rather than ... continue."
Strawbridge was trembling as if he himself had been tormented; yet how much of this was from sympathy, and how much from this heady topic of sex which had suddenly sprung up between them, the youth himself had not the faintest idea.
"And what did he do? What did Father Benicio say?"
The girl exhaled a sick breath.
"Oh ... duty ... sacrament. Sacrament—with him!" She stood breathing heavily through her open lips. "When Father Benicio saw I really meant to kill myself, when he saw I was desperate, then, finally, he told me to wear this." She touched her black nun's robe.
"To wear what?"
"This robe."
The drummer looked at the robe as if he had not seen it before.
"What has that got to do with it?"
"Pues ... cá!" The señora began to laugh hysterically. "When I wore this nun's robe, he stayed with other women all the time. He would not touch me. He ... he.... Father Benicio said he would not!"
She laughed till the tears stood in her eyes. Strawbridge stared at her. There was something dreadful about her laughter. Presently she sobered abruptly.
"Why ... why was that? Why-y?" The drummer was utterly at sea.
The señora shook her head.
"Father Benicio told me to wear this robe and conceal my hair."
"What an extraordinary thing!"
"Father Benicio is a very wise man."
"But there is no sense to it. Still, if it worked...." The drummer cogitated, and presently made the observation, "So, you are not wearing it for your sister, after all?"
"Señor, I have never had a sister."
Such an extraordinary ruse required thought. The salesman sat down slowly, and the girl followed his example. She was perusing his face while he puzzled over the unaccountable quirk in the dictator's amorousness.
"Why, señora," he said at last, as if coming to a conclusion, "that doesn't seem possible. Why, I think you are lovelier in your nun's robe than.... Why, you look as pure and tender and as fair as the stars of heaven. If I—"
The Spanish girl reached out an impulsive hand and gripped the American's.
"Ah, Señor Tomas, that is because you are a dear, dear boy; it is because you, yourself, are pure and tender and fine!"
At her caress a force apparently quite other than himself moved him, to his own fear and dismay. His unwounded hand went groping beneath the voluminous sleeve of the robe, up the soft naked arm of the girl. With his other arm he caught her as she swayed against him. She gave a long sigh, as if utterly exhausted. The touch of her body to his set Strawbridge quivering and trembling. His bandaged hand groped over her with delicate pains until it touched the warm supple mounds of her bosom; there the sheer pain in his fingers mingled with his passion and edged it into a sort of tingling ecstasy.
The two lay relaxed together in the corner of the couch, without a sound. The music-room swam before the man's eyes, in the melting madness of her warmth and passion. She wore no perfume—no doubt by the wisdom of Father Benicio—but the faint, intimate odor of a woman's hair and body ravaged his senses with its provocation. He drew her closer. He was trembling as if with sickness. He passed his lips over her temples, cheeks, nose; their lips met.
He had desired her subconsciously for so long; he had repressed his passion for her so endlessly into the very form of propriety that now it suddenly burst loose like a flood and rushed over his senses. The two clung together quite silently except for an occasional sob, an intake of shaken breath, and the rapid murmur of their hearts.
Strawbridge first recovered himself. Her embrace had whisked away all his feeling of futility and doubt. He knew now precisely what he must do.
"First," he said, "I've got to get you out of here."
She looked at him with misty eyes and a faint, sad smile.
"Out of the palacio?" she whispered.
"Out of Rio Negro, out of Venezuela, to the States." Her sweet puzzled face amused him, and made him feel tenderer than ever.
"But, dear Tomas, I am married."
"We'll get a divorce."
"But that is impossible in Rio Negro."
"It's easy in the States."
She studied his face so intently that he grew a little afraid of what she might say about the divorce. Finally she asked:
"My own dear life, when did you first know you loved me?"
After that the sequence of their plans to elope was continually broken by caresses and the wistful interrogations of a newly revealed love. Mixed in with these they planned with what coherence they could their elopement. They discussed horses, a motor, but finally decided on a small boat down the Rio Negro. Strawbridge would get one that afternoon, and the next night they would start from the piazza in the darkness. By daylight they would reach San Geronimo and the Orinoco.
The señora tried to make her lover realize the gravity of the undertaking, the danger and certainty of punishment if they were discovered, but the whole affair glowed on the American in a rose-colored light. They would escape, of a certainty. He had never failed to do anything he set out to do, and he wouldn't fail now. Luck was always with him, and he was predestined to win. He was in gala mood. He commanded fortune! Once the girl put up a hand to his mouth.
"Eh, hush! don't say that! It ... it reminds me of ... him."
Their talk came down to the odds and ends of the affair—how large a bundle of clothes she could smuggle out of the palace; the food they should carry, hammocks and mosquiteros. In the midst of these trifles came the sound of many feet in the corridor. The man and the woman got away from each other quickly and sat on opposite ends of the couch, looking at the door a little anxiously, when there really did come a sharp rap. With a glance at Strawbridge, the señora sprang up, crossed the room, and opened the shutter. In the entrance stood General Fombombo in full uniform. Banked behind him were ranks of men, most of whom were in uniform. After an instant the blurr of color defined itself as Coronel Saturnino, a number of other officers, several of the governmental dignitaries, some of the alcaldes from the surrounding villages, Gumersindo in his white linen, and behind them ranks of the palace guards, in dress uniform. It was a fiesta assembly.
The drummer stared at the processional in the utmost amazement. A wild suspicion shot through his head that somehow General Fombombo had learned of his dalliance with Dolores, and that all this pomp was a movement to arrest him and send him to prison. The American moistened his lips. He could feel the blood leave his face as he stood looking at Dolores's husband.
But the general was smiling. Indeed, the faces of the whole group of dignitaries wore expressions of mysterious kindliness and good-will. The black man Gumersindo seemed to labor under some beneficent excitement. The dictator began speaking, not in ordinary conversational tones, but in the somewhat over-emphasized articulation of an orator.
"Señor Strawbridge," he began, "we, the admiring citizens of the independent republic of Rio Negro, have chosen during this fiesta and on this historic spot to express to you our never-dying respect, gratitude, and affection for a man, who, impelled by no selfish motive, but moved only by a flame from the very altar of freedom itself, by the purest love of human liberty and the world-wide brotherhood of man, has hurled himself upon the field of battle and, at the risk of his own life, made safe the social and political securities of a young and struggling people. Amid the defiance of cannon and the flashing of swords, you, Señor Tomas Strawbridge, led the forces of liberty to complete and glorious victory. It is with tears of gratitude that we, the representatives of the free and independent state of Rio Negro, bestow upon you this token of our love and appreciation for your heroic act in saving the insurgent army on the bloody field of San Geronimo. There will come a time, Señor Strawbridge, when our beloved valley will be decked with great and smiling cities; when men and women will live with no tyrant to make them afraid; then, carved in letters of gold in the pantheon of that happy people, will shine the name of Tomas Strawbridge, hero of San Geronimo!"
The President was moved. His eyes were misty as he drew from his pocket and pinned on the drummer's lapel a little gold decoration pendent from a rainbow-colored ribbon. It was the Order of the Libertador, for heroic action. Strawbridge had seen dozens of these decorations in Venezuela, but he had always put them down to the South American's love of fripperies. Now there was something about these men and their solemn, admiring faces that moved him.
A play of incongruous emotions kept harassing the American's nerves. He alternately flushed and paled. How grotesque it was that the general should have given him this medal just as he was planning to abduct the general's wife! As the dictator bent toward him to pin on the decoration, the drummer caught a strong odor of musk.
After the presentation other dignitaries delivered orations reviewing Rio Negro's heroic past. They pointed out, from the very music-room windows, spots where martyrs had perished.
When the officials had finished, Gumersindo read his whole six columns describing the battle of San Geronimo. The black man seldom glanced at the paper, but recited the whole from memory, in an agreeable resonant baritone.
After the ceremony the whole audience shook hands with the drummer, and each man expressed his admiration with a suppleness of phrase that was very graceful and yet seemed sincere. Perhaps it was.