CHAPTER XXVII
The dead man's fate oppressed Strawbridge, and the irony of all the rejoicing at the rise of Saturnino filled him with bitterness. He turned away. He meant to go back to the priests' house. He would leave this anarchic land as quickly as he could. As he turned, a girl came running down the steps of the palace. She stopped half-way down and peered at the man on the pavement. Next moment she called his name, under her breath:
"Ola, Señor Strawbridge! is that you?" She started quickly down the rest of the steps to him. "Cá! Señor Strawbridge, come to my señora at once; she needs you! Quick! Pronto! Ehue, señor, hurry!"
The drummer recognized the griffe girl. The urgency in her voice brought him up sharply.
"What is it, chica?"
"Oh, Madre de Jesus! The soldiers are searching the convents! She has slipped into the garden and hid! The poor angel! I came flying for you! Señor, hurry! For love of the Virgin! Would you have a heretic like Saturnino seize a nun?"
A terrible feeling came over Strawbridge.
"Seize her! Is that hell-hound...." The monstrousness of it throttled him. The girl pulled at his sleeve, and by this time both were running diagonally across the plaza. They were not conspicuous: they might have been new merrymakers, hurrying to sing, around the bonfire, of the rise of Saturnino and of his protection to "our daughters and our niñas." But these two angled into one of the narrow calles that emptied into the plaza. Even from this little run the convalescent began to breathe heavily. He caught his breath to ask:
"How do you know they are searching the convents?"
"I was in the convent of Saint Ursula with her."
"What did they do there?"
"The soldiers surrounded the place, and allowed no one to leave."
"That might be to keep you from getting hurt," gasped the drummer, with a ray of hope.
"Oh, no; they are searching other convents. One of the sisters escaped and told us. Everybody knows who Coronel Saturnino is hunting."
The drummer mended his lagging trot a trifle.
"God almighty!" he breathed in despair; then, "Aren't we almost there?"
The girl pointed ahead at the upper story of a big convent that rose above the poor huts which surrounded it. It was hazy in the gathering shadows of night.
"She is hiding in the garden on this side."
"Were you in there with her?"
"Sí, señor."
"How'd you get out?"
"I climbed the limb of a tree and dropped out."
The drummer was filled with apprehension.
"Good Lord! we'll never get in, that way!"
The griffe girl suddenly began to whimper.
"Oh, señor, don't say that! It is the only way we can get back! We can't let the poor señora be caught in the garden!"
At this moment the two rounded a corner and came upon the dark wall of a Venezuelan garden. It was quite as high as an ordinary adobe house, and was finished in the same way, with plaster masonry. It had not a foothold from top to bottom.
The girl caught the American's arm and drew him to a standstill.
"Ola!" she breathed. "There they are now!"
The drummer paused to peer through the gloom, and saw two peons with rifles, standing half-way down the length of the garden. He looked at them, ransacking his brain for some plan. Then he moved forward again, with his shoulders back and with a certain air of authority. The soldiers heard him approach, clicked their rifles, and called him to halt.
The big man stepped out of the shadow of the wall.
"I am the Americano who is backing Coronel Saturnino's rebellion with money," he stated briefly. "I suppose you saw me give him a chest of gold in San Geronimo; at least you heard about it."
One of the guards saluted.
"Sí, señor."
"The coronel has reached Saint Ursula now; he told me to come out here and send in you two guards to help him search the place."
One of the soldiers looked at him suspiciously.
"Why did not the coronel ask you to help him, señor?"
"Me? Why, I'm no Catholic. I am a Protestant. You don't imagine the coronel would allow a Protestant to go searching through a Catholic convent, do you? He respects the decencies of life."
The doubting guard touched his cap.
"Very well, señor." Both of them turned about, shouldered their rifles, and marched off down the garden fence toward the convent.
When they were some distance away, Strawbridge turned and beckoned. The griffe girl came to him. She was doubled up with stifled explosions of laughter.
"Caramba! what a man!" she gasped. "Send those two donkeys trotting off like that! Cá!" She put her hand on her stomach and doubled again.
Strawbridge shook her out of her mirth.
"Here, cut it out! How can we get into this garden?" He looked up the sheer wall. "How in hell are we ever going to get in?!"
The girl looked up.
"I got out on that tree." She pointed at an overhanging bough.
"Well—damn it!—you see you can't reach it now. You couldn't reach that from the top of the wall!"
"No, señor."
The drummer took the girl by the arm as if he meant to throw her over, and moved distractedly back along the wall.
"I wonder if you could hold on to that Bougainvillea," he speculated hurriedly. "The only thing I see to do is to boost you up to it. We can try it."
They hurried up under the bush. Strawbridge picked her up bodily with his good hand and the elbow of his bad arm. He got her to his shoulder, put one hand under her, and shoved upward with his whole strength. The smell of the kitchen enveloped him. Her sandaled feet were on his shoulders; then she stepped on his head. Flickers of flame danced before his eyes as she kicked off and grabbed the down-hanging bush above them. The next moment she was scrambling toward the top of the wall, clinging to an armful of Bougainvillea stems.
Strawbridge watched her, with his arms straining upward, as if he still bore her weight. He stood thus, as the half-breed girl gained slowly upward and wriggled her body over the top of the wall.
The drummer stood for a monotonous age in the gloom beside the garden, waiting for the reappearance of the maid and her mistress. As he stood there the stars came out among the overhanging branches. A faint perfume of some flowering tree sifted down to him, and its fragrance alternated with the smells of a Latin street. A rumor of the turmoil in the plaza still reached his ears, but it was overpowered at regular intervals by the sharp trilling of some insect in the wall. This tiny creature repeated its love-trill over and over, until at last it caught the drummer's attention. He thought what a strange thing it was for this little living speck to send out its love-cry thus and to expect, out of the immensity of the night, some final satisfaction. And there was he, Thomas Strawbridge, on precisely the same quest of love as the midge in the wall.
It was a fantastic thought. The drummer shuddered, and moved about. It seemed to him the insect had been trilling for hours, when he heard a movement on the top of the wall. Then the voice of the griffe girl whispered:
"Señor, we went to the gate. There are four guards there. How will the señora ever get down?"
Strawbridge was at the edge of his nerves. He thought in irritation: "You fools! wasting time to go to the gate!" He said aloud: "Dolores! Are you up there, Dolores!"
"Oh, dear Tomas, how can I get down?" came the girl's whisper.
"You'll have to drop!" He braced himself for a violent strain.
"I'll catch you!"
The salesman heard a movement above, then the rapid breathing of women attempting some uncertain feat. Presently he made out an object lowering itself, or being lowered, from the rim of the wall. Then he heard a strained whisper: "Oh, señor, I can't let go! Please come up and help me!"
Strawbridge was writhing in a rigor of impatience.
"Drop! For God's sake, drop, Dolores!"
"But I can't drop in the dark! I can't!"
"For Christ's sake, Dolores, drop!" he cried. "Chica! chica! Break her grip! Shove her hands loose! Quick! Damn it! here they come!"
At that instant came a flurry of falling skirts; a blow of soft flesh staggered the drummer and almost brought him to his knees. An aura of faint perfume surrounded him. The breath burst from the girl's strained lungs as she jarred through her lover's arms to the ground. The next moment they had straightened themselves and set out running, hand in hand, down the calle.
"To the cathedral," gasped the señora. "We'll be safe there!"
From behind them came shouts, then a rifle-shot. A moment later the fugitives ran past the turn in the calle and for the moment were screened from rifle fire. They had hardly turned when the griffe girl came pattering behind them. She was winged with terror for her mistress.
"Oh, Heart of Pity! They are firing! Run! Run!"
The maid's excitement really hurried them on faster than the shots had done; but the señora already was panting with the exhaustion of the gently bred.
"I—I—how far do we have to run?" she gasped.
"On, on, señora! Merciful Mary!"
"But—but I can't! I—I—"
"Let's carry her!" panted Strawbridge, at the end of his resources, but he knew he could not do it. The run was telling on his own strength.
They were half-way down the calle now, spurring on the last of the señora's endurance. They were running between solidly built walls. Behind them the soldiers were shouting commands to halt! The Spanish girl began to sob.
"I—I'll have to stop, I—can't—go—any—"
At that moment Strawbridge glimpsed a little gap in the wall of houses, the slit-like mouth of a tiny calle. He gasped to the señora:
"Run into that! Here, to the left! Jump in as we pass. Get to the cathedral the best you can! Chica and I will run on!"
The Spanish girl used up the last of her strength to forge ahead of the other two, who ran close to the wall behind her, screening her movements in the gloom. The next moment she disappeared in the narrow opening.
Strawbridge and the griffe girl ran on alone. When the whole party, pursued and pursuers, were well past the hiding-place of the Spanish woman, the girl whispered in a fairly controlled breath, "Let's run off and leave them, señor!"
"Can you?" puffed the drummer, surprised.
"Seguramente, señor!" There was even a hint of the light-hearted in her voice.
By this time Strawbridge had driven his heart action up to running tempo. He was now good for twenty or thirty minutes of hard running. He answered the griffe girl by increasing his pace. She kept even with him, apparently without exertion. Even in the midst of his anxiety about the señora, the drummer sensed the freedom and resilience of the girl's movements.
Nothing but pride drove Strawbridge to keep even with her. He spurted at top speed. His long legs spanned the cobblestones at a furious clip. The girl twinkled along at his side with the effortlessness of a squirrel. She must have enjoyed running; she made little sounds of pleasure. When the soldiers rounded the corner and saw their quarry far down the calle, there came a hurricane of distant oaths and shouts, then the sharp crackling of high-powered rifles and a whistling about their ears.
The griffe girl had the breath to giggle hysterically, "They—can't—run—or—shoot!"
But the next moment she gave a little cry. With an extra spurt of speed she veered to Strawbridge, clutched his hand, trying to pull him along, then pressed it sharply against her bosom and blubbered, "Adios, mi amo! They—my mistress...." Then, abruptly and shockingly, she fell headlong on the cobblestones, out of a dead run. Like some wild animal, she had dashed twenty or thirty yards carrying a shot through her heart
Strawbridge stooped for a moment over the body of the girl, and with a stab of pain realized that she was dead. He lifted her head and shoulders, with an idea of carrying her body to some decent place, but another fusillade of shots rattled behind him. He dropped her on the cobblestones and dashed ahead, bending low to avoid the bullets as much as he might. He had not run twenty yards when he came out on the open plaza. If the griffe girl could have gone twenty yards farther....
He turned sharply to the right along the shop fronts, and tried to lose himself among the bacchanalían crowd. He began threading his way as quickly as he could toward the cathedral.
The murder of the servant-girl filled him with terrible apprehensions for the señora. She was alone in this half-mad city. He began reproaching himself for ever having left her. A hundred misfortunes could befall an unaccompanied woman on Spanish-American streets after nightfall. Some of her pursuers could easily have followed the girl up the narrow calle. They might be carrying her back to Saturnino at this moment.... A chill sweat broke out on Strawbridge's face. He shoved along through the dancing crowd, past the bonfire, toward the church.
The leaping flames of the fire cast waves of illumination across the plaza and against the cathedral, causing its massive façade to glow and fade in the darkness. From the moment Strawbridge could make out the three dark archways of the triple entrance, he began looking for the woman. He hurried along, peering ahead, hitting his fist against his palm, twisting his fingers. His rapid walk changed into a trot. He forgot that his great height rendered him conspicuous as he shoved along through these low-statured Venezuelans. Once he looked back and he saw a sinister thing. A squad of soldiers were plunging through the singers of liberty, like a plow. They left a furrow in the human mass behind them which required twenty or thirty seconds to refill with revelers. Then from another direction a second body of soldiers pushed their way; these two bodies were converging on the cathedral.
The sight of these squads whipped the drummer into headlong flight again. His apprehension increased as he came to the cathedral. His back crawled with dread of a crashing impact. One little fact comforted his harassed brain: if the two squads were focusing on the cathedral, Dolores must have escaped. If he were killed, Father Benicio would protect her.
At the very moment he thought of the priest, he saw him. The cleric's black-robed figure stood at the entrance of the middle door as if on guard. When Strawbridge reached the piazza in front of the church, he slackened his pace to something a little more respectful.
"Father—Father," he panted, when he was close enough, "is Dolores in the church? Has she come? For Christ's sake, man, tell me!"
The priest waved him sharply inside, then walked quickly to the smaller of the three portals, apparently to shut it. He seemed to have been waiting for the American's arrival. What he did next, the American did not know; he was already hurrying down the aisle toward the chapel of the Last Supper.
Strawbridge knew that Dolores was in this chapel. He turned into the entrance. He could see nothing except the slender dark figure against a glow of gold. The girl turned at his footstep, gave a little cry, and lifted herself to the arms of her lover. The big American bent over her, unable to see for his own tears. He kissed her ears, her chin, with her nun's bonnet in his face. He lifted a clumsy hand to remove it. His shaking fingers felt the coils of her hair, the curve of her neck. He was half sobbing.
"Oh, I ought never to have left you! Poor angel! Did they hurt you!"
With fluttering fingers she got the bonnet off, and it fell down before the altar. They stood pressing their mouths together, clinging to each other with convulsive gusts of strength. They gasped and murmured inarticulate sounds out of the corners of their lips. They had been so terrified for each other, and now their nerves swung back in a crescent and inarticulate transport.
Strawbridge spoke first:
"I saw some soldiers coming this way. I think we'd better go."
The girl lifted her face from his breast to look at him.
"Leave the cathedral!"
"Why, yes, Beautiful! I tell you the soldiers chased me in here. They must be outside. God knows how long we've been standing here!"
She loosed herself and straightened.
"But, my own heaven, this is our sanctuary. We are safe here."
It had never occurred to the drummer to allow the cathedral to be the haven of his flight.
"But listen, beloved: we're not safe anywhere. You thought you were safe in the convent, but—"
"But, mi adoración, you know that not even he would violate the chapel of our merciful Lady." She looked at him, amazed.
"But he will! I know he will. Here, let's go!" He took her arm and swung her gently about so that she was at his side with one of his arms about her waist.
"But, mi carino!" she cried, "don't you know if he should dare come in here, our holy Lady would cast him out of this cathedral; Cá! She would call down fire from heaven upon his head!" The girl made a sharp gesture from the image on the altar to some imaginary victim before it.
Such a passion of belief startled the drummer. He had never before sensed this fire in the girl. But his apprehension was rising constantly. He heard a murmur from the front of the cathedral. He made her listen; he began urging her more strongly than ever that they fly while they could. She put a hand over his mouth.
"But listen, carissimo!" she insisted passionately. "Our loving Lady brought us together in her chapel; shall we not trust her to the end? Can we wound her feelings by deserting her now?" She touched her breast and forehead and looked at the image. "Oh, mi corazon, I prayed and prayed to her for this great happiness! I wrote a letter to my dear Lady and placed it here on her altar so my prayer would go up to her like an incense. And now I have you!" She put her arms around him again and gazed into his face with rapt and tender eyes. "Let us stay here!"
The fact that Dolores had written the letter which he had contemplated writing, moved Strawbridge with a profound intimacy and sweetness. It gave him another of his rare glimpses of the eternity in which his little life momentarily moved. Perhaps supernal powers were indeed ranged back of these altars, with their protecting arms about him and this sweet lady. The thought of such guardianship wrapped the drummer in its glory. It elevated his passion for the Spanish girl; it lifted it from the earth, and set it up in heaven, like a star. He was almost minded to rest his fate with the Virgin, but his mystical mood was broken by the gathering turmoil at the cathedral entrance. The sounds reached the chapel softened and sweetened by arches and domes, but they were sinister. They whipped the American's thoughts from any supernatural help and set him back sharply on his pagan self-reliance. He took the girl's arm again.
"Look here, Dolores," he hurried as the sounds swelled in intensity, "we'll have to go. She—" he nodded at the altar—"she's done enough—all I want. She's got us together. Now we ought to help ourselves!" Strawbridge's voice admitted of no discussion. He was almost dragging the girl away.
The noise at the entrance was resounding as if the cathedral were a bass viol. Dolores moved instinctively back to her protectress, but Strawbridge hurried her along.
As they ran up the aisle, Strawbridge thought swiftly of possible avenues of escape. He remembered the underground tunnels in the crypt, but the idea of flying through a hole in the ground was repellent to him. He would take the night and the stars.
Even while he was planning, he hurried to the side door of the cathedral which let out into the garden. As he fumbled at the bolts with his good hand, came two heavy, drum-like reports from the front of the cathedral. This seemed to loose pandemonium in the church.
The drummer leaped with the girl into the dark garden, and went running down the hedge. They had not gone a hundred feet before they heard men rush out at the side door behind them. Bending low in the shadow, Strawbridge ran at full tilt. His good arm took the strain of the señora's stumblings. In his necessity he upheld her, he almost carried her. He crashed on through the garden. His impact burst open the little postern gate toward the palace. As he ran, he silently cursed his pursuers with every blasphemy he could think of. He could hear the Spanish girl whispering rapid prayers.
He rushed across to the piazza behind the palace. He swung Dolores upon it and leaped up after her. The west side of the piazza was blocked by the palace kitchen. In the cooking-stove a handful of red coals glowered at him. Their pursuers had now filled the thoroughfare between the garden and the palace. Suddenly he saw two or three forms leap upon the platform. The drummer ran to the river side of the piazza. The girl clutched his arm.
"Oh, carissimo! we are not going down there!"
"Yes, yes! there's nowhere else to go!"
They stepped upon the steep, dark slope that dropped away to the river. Instantly they were sliding and slipping down, helter-skelter. They went through rotting flesh, bones, decaying vegetables, stenches and smells such as are found nowhere on earth save outside a Latin-American kitchen. They balanced, they caught each other, they fell on their hands and knees. The fetor of the stuff high on the bank changed to the dull smell of dried leavings farther down. Suddenly, from far above them, came the flashes of rifles. As usual with riflemen on a height, the soldiers overshot. A moment later, the fugitives reached the dank smell that marked the river's edge. Not forty yards down the river, Strawbridge saw the glimmer of a white object. He went running toward it, lifting the girl on his arm. The scoured canoe took form out of the night. The drummer swung Dolores bodily over the garboard, then heaved at the prow and began backing it out into the dark, swift river. When it was well afloat, he leaped and landed on his belly across its nose. He wriggled inside, groped for the paddle, straightened up, and began working furiously with his good hand and his elbow, away from the rifle fire.
When he was well away, he looked back. Flashes from the rifles were still visible, but they seemed to be moving rapidly up the river bank. With the rifles drifted the black bulk of the palace, the stately spire of the cathedral, the somber outline of La Fortuna. All moved evenly and swiftly into the west; they dwindled in size and definition until presently they melted into the night. At last all the fugitives could discern were the red reflections of the bonfire against the clouds.
Around the canoe boiled the rapids of the Rio Negro. They were in the midst of the thunder that brooded for miles over cities and villages and llanos. The air was full of flying spray and the peculiar smell of fresh water in great disturbance. The canoe was flung skyward, dropped. It came to sharp pauses, leaped forward, and pirouetted on prow and stern. Strawbridge lay flat on his back in the fish-boat, to keep the center of gravity as low as possible. The stars overhead appeared to him a whirling vortex of fiery points. He gripped the señora's hands in his good palm. He could feel her moving her rosary through her fingers. As they shot through the black thunder, the Spanish girl was praying to the Virgin of Canalejos. Dolores believed the Virgin was guiding the canoe down the perilous channel. Strawbridge's nerves were at tension, but he was not afraid. He believed in his luck.