Fombombo

by T. S. Stribling

CHAPTER XXII

The next morning Strawbridge awoke with a brisk feeling that some important and happy event was pressing into his life. The sight of his roll of canvas, packed and ready to go, and the bundle of cassava bread gave substance to his mood. He felt stronger than he had since his sickness. No doubt the caresses of the Spanish girl had infused vigor into his big body. He sat up on the side of his bed, pushed his feet into alpargatas, and then got up and went flapping into his bath-room. He got out of his pajamas and walked carefully down the slippery steps of his marble bath, turned the key in the silver nozzle overhead, and stood gratefully in the faintly cool shower. It was his first self-performed ablution since his sickness, and when he had finished he set about the ticklish experiment of toweling himself with the aid of his wounded hand. He managed a very light friction without pain, and this pleased him keenly. His big body was growing softly pinkish again. He ran his good hand along the slight growth of hair on his chest and down the curve of his abdomen with the frank narcissism most men possess and which the thought of marriage enhances.

To-night he and the señora would embark on the most tinglingly romantic adventure of their lives. At the thought his heart began to beat. She was only a little way from him at that moment, only a few doors distant.

He went back into his room and began touchy efforts to dress himself. He did his underclothes well enough, but his socks were troublesome because his feet were still faintly damp. Suddenly, through some compulsion, he dropped this task midway, jabbed his feet into alpargatas again, stood up, and looked out the window. He did not know what had prompted him. In the gray light he saw the slender figure of a nun passing from the palace to the cathedral.

The sight filled the drummer with an extraordinary turbulence. He made a step toward the window and called to her sotto voce. She did not hear, and he drew an intake of breath on the verge of calling more loudly, but the caution of lovers silenced him. After all, why should he call her? He stood watching her, repressing the imperative which had moved him to attract her attention. He did not even know what he had meant to say. His excitement calmed him a little, and even amused him. He pressed his face against the window bars and watched her as far as he possibly could, until the ornamental evergreen with its tassels concealed her from his eyes. Then he turned back to his toilet, with a faint sense of deprivation.

Only then did the drummer think definitely that the señora was going to early mass and confession. In a few minutes she would enter the little double stall in the cathedral and would whisper through the aperture, into the ear of a priest.

The thought brought him a pang, and that, perhaps, was the reason of his distress at her going. He had instinctively wanted her not to go. In the confessional Dolores would whisper of their passionate moment in the music-room; she would lay bare every nook and corner of her heart. The thought of any other human being knowing what was in her heart filled him with a vague jealousy. The idea grew into a mysterious and painful emotion. He could not get rid of it. The priest would explore the señora's heart more intimately than he. And he saw no end to such conditions. He could never get as close to Dolores as could her spiritual adviser. One day, no doubt, she would hold him in her arms, she would give him all that she was, and yet somewhere within the woman's soul would remain privacies which he, her wistful and passionate lover, could never know. Such a reservation filled him with a kind of despair. He felt that in the holiest places of her soul he must remain a stranger. The man's self-torture brought sweat to his face.

He went back to his dressing, but kept glancing through the window, watching for the girl's return. He recalled that he had set his watch with the señora's. He got it from under his pillow and looked at it. The hour was eleven minutes after five. In seventeen hours and forty-nine minutes he and Dolores would be out on the rapids in the night. It seemed to him as if everything were waiting for that hour to come. The whole mechanism of day and night tapered to this event. A little quiver went through him.

In the east the sun must have cut the horizon, for behind the cathedral and the prison spread a pale-gold fan. From the top of the prison came the flash of a cannon dimly picked out, like the flare of a firefly against the light. Two seconds later came the flat crash as if some power had delivered a terrific blow and had lapsed instantly into silence. It advertised the dictator's will over the llanos. The drummer looked at the prison against the east, with his old feeling of dismay.