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.
CHAPTER VIII
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 somewhat moodily 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.