The passing of General Fombombo with the peon girl, Madruja, will call
to the philosophical mind one of the sharpest distinctions between
North American chastity and Venezuelan laxity. In America, no man, not
even the most degraded specimen of our race, would think of parading
his mistress before his wife. Such a thing is not done in America.
Where the Latin flaunts his dalliances openly, the puritanical North
American invariably makes an effort to conceal his shortcomings and to
present to the world an innocuous and inoffensive front.
Spanish-American moralists are prone to ascribe this flowering of the
great Anglo-Saxon cult of concealment to hypocrisy. Nothing could
be shorter of the truth. Hypocrisy is an effort to deceive, but the
best English and American types deceive no one. Their intention is
not to deceive but to keep life clean, pure, and enjoyable for their
fellow-men. For here is the peculiar thing about vice: A man's own
shortcomings never appear censure-worthy, whereas the sins of other men
are hideous. To be seen openly sinning is to make of oneself a public
nuisance.
The genius of the Anglo-Saxon realizes this, and he avoids paining
and distressing others by performing his dalliances as privately as
possible. This secrecy is each man's private contribution to the
comfort and reassurance of his fellow-citizens. Taking us all in all,
perhaps America's greatest gift to the world is the peccadillo of low
visibility.
As an instance of the deplorable effect of being seen, observe how
the passing of General Fombombo and Madruja completely destroyed Mr.
Thomas Strawbridge's pleasure in the society of Señora Fombombo. Yet
all the time he had known from Lubito the actual state of the case.
It had seemed humorous when Lubito told the story, but the sight of
the dictator and the peon girl passing in the car was not humorous at
all. On the contrary, it was oppressive and painful. It ended abruptly
his tête-à-tête with the señora. Indeed, it hung about him for days,
popping up every little while with disagreeable iteration.
The incident upset Strawbridge's own code. It caused him to doubt
the rightness of any husband deceiving any wife. He had never before
thought even of questioning such a situation. He had known many
drummers, married men, who when they got to a city would take a
little flyer. It had seemed perfectly all right, a sort of joke. Now,
abruptly, it all seemed wrong, and he was vaguely angry and ill at ease.
And the personal end of the affair puzzled him. He could not understand
how any sane man would run away from so delightful a girl as Dolores
Fombombo, to the over-accented and uncultivated charms of a Madruja.
He tried to put himself in the general's place, to fancy himself
the husband of Dolores. Would he betray her? Would he deceive the
confidence of so dainty a creature? Indeed no! The very thought filled
him with a most unusual and tremulous tenderness. Why, before he would
break faith with Dolores ... before he would do that.... He got out
a cigar, bit off the nib with a snap, and lighted it in vague anger.
He continued pacing up and down his room from one barred window to
another, looking out at the river, at the gloomy prison called "La
Fortuna," at the back of the cathedral.
Then his thoughts veered away from the general's infidelity, and he
began thinking about a strange thing which had happened to him a day
or two before, when he called on the proprietor of "Sol y Sombra." He
decided he would mention it to Dolores; perhaps she could explain it.
The decision to see Dolores and tell her this thing comforted
Strawbridge somewhat. He drew an eased breath, went over to the window,
reached through the bars, and tapped off the ash of his cigar, then
walked out into the corridor, turned toward the rear of the palace, and
passed out through a back entrance onto a sort of piazza--a roofless
paved space about forty feet wide, which extended from the building
quite to the edge of the take-off that led down a long, steep slope to
the yellow river.
On the western end of this piazza projected the kitchen, and it
was littered on that side with unsightly bags of charcoal, chicken
feathers, bundles of kindling, bones, and other rejectæ from the
cooking-department of the palace. This litter increased or decreased
according to the spasmodic energy of the _griffe_ girl, the wrinkled
old hag, and three or four other familiars of the kitchen. When these
caretakers were induced to purge their premises, they simply shoved the
refuse over the edge of the piazza and allowed it to distribute itself
as it would down the long slope.
Strawbridge dragged out a chair on the east side of the piazza and sat
down to his cigar and the sunset. This had grown to be his custom every
late afternoon. Until the señora joined him he was more attentive to
his cigar than to the sunset. But when she came, her arrival, oddly
enough, seemed to open his eyes to the fact that sunsets in the Orinoco
Valley are famous for their brilliant coloring and dramatic effects.
He had finished perhaps a third of his cigar when he heard a servant
come dragging the señora's chair behind her. This ended a faint
suspense in Strawbridge. He looked around, and the two of them smiled
at each other the satisfied smiles of friends who had been anticipating
just this pleasure of watching the sunset together.
For the first evening or two they had talked dutifully all the time.
Strawbridge had exerted himself to amuse the señora, but of late they
had found long silences mutually pleasant. So now, as the señora came
up, he simply remarked that he thought they were going to have a nice
sunset.
The drummer himself was immeasurably content. He sat watching the
change and play of that huge and airy mansionry of vapors. Somehow it
reduced him and Dolores to two human midges seated behind a little
palace, on a tiny piazza, in microscopic wicker chairs. It sent a
shudder of pleasure through him: they were so very, very small, and so
very, very comforting each to the other.
As they sat staring at the vast chromatic architecture, a faint breeze
brought him the malodor of the kitchen at the other end of the piazza
and stirred him out of his reverie. He looked around.
"By the way, señora, a queer thing happened to me the other morning.
I've been meaning to tell you about it, but I never can think to when
I'm with you."
"Yes?"
"About that clerk at 'Sol y Sombra.' That little chap who put me wise
to business conditions in this country. You remember what a row he
raised because I wanted to make a hardware display."
"Yes, that's Josefa."
"Well, he's gone."
The señora moved lazily in the gloom, to face her companion.
"You wanted to tell me Josefa was gone?" He could tell by her voice
that she was smiling.
"Not so much that as the way I heard it. Day or two ago I called on
the proprietor. He was as polite as pie, but he didn't warm up to my
selling talk. Finally I offered him my leader--some shovels at a price
that'd make him think he stole 'em. I was pushing the goods pretty hard
when finally he looked at me with a sort of whitish face and says,
'Señor Strawbridge, I am not in the market for your goods at any price.'
"'That lets me down,' I says, 'if low prices and high quality don't
interest you. That's all I got--the lowest prices and the highest
quality."
"I saw he was going to bow me out regardless, so I thought I would be
polite up to the limit and inquire after the health of the little clerk
I had met in the store several mornings before that.
"When I asked after him, the proprietor jumped from his chair. 'Señor!'
he cried, 'you shall not mock at my distress! You may have the leading
hand now, but as sure as there is a God in heaven, He will punish you!'
He shook a finger at me. 'He will punish you! He will punish you!'
"I stared at him. I never came so near hitting a man in all my life,
but I remembered something my old man told me when I first went to work
with him. 'Strawbridge,' he'd say, 'keep your temper; nobody else wants
it.' So I thought to myself, 'Here's where I keep her,' and I said,
'Señor, you've got the advantage of me. If I've done you or yours any
harm, I'm sorry, but how have I done it?'
"He looked at me as keen as all you black-eyed folks can look. 'Don't
you know where Josefa is?' he asked.
"'Certainly I don't, or I wouldn't have asked where he was.'
"'Well--he's not here any longer.'
"'Did you discharge him?' I asked.
"The merchant looked at me, and I be damned if there wasn't tears in
his eyes. 'Señor Strawbridge,' he said, 'Josefa is gone. He is simply
gone. He was a good boy; that is all I can say to you about it.'"
Here Strawbridge's narration was interrupted by a little sound from the
girl in the darkness. He stopped short.
"Why, what's the matter, señora?" he asked in surprise.
"Oh, nothing ... nothing...." Her voice quavered. "Poor Josefa!"
The salesman tried to peer into her face.
"What are you saying, 'Poor Josefa,' about? I thought you didn't know
him particularly well."
"I didn't. Oh, Señor Strawbridge, everything is so horrible here!... so
terrible!... Oh.... Oh ..." and suddenly the señora began to weep, a
pathetic little figure in her nun's costume.
Something clutched the drummer's diaphragm. He leaned toward her.
"Señora!" he remonstrated. "What's the matter? Have I done anything?"
One arm was crumpled about her face, she stretched the other toward him.
"Oh, no, no! you've done nothing to me. I ... I thought I was getting
used to it. I used to cry all the time when I first came here. I
thought I was growing hard, but I suppose I'm not."
The drummer was tingling at the appeal in her attitude and of her hand
which had caught two of his fingers. A faint pulse began murmuring in
his ears. He wanted to pick the whole of her daintiness up in his arms
and comfort her.
"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he begged.
The girl collected herself.
"I will tell you," she said in a low tone. "There, sit closer, please,
so I can talk in a low tone. Don't make any noise, señor."
Strawbridge adjusted his chair silently and sat staring at the
slight figure, in mute speculation. His head was full of the wildest
conjectures: Josefa was her brother ... her lover. Josefa had followed
her over from Spain....
"You say you never heard of Josefa before you came here?" he asked
aloud.
"No, I'd never heard of him."
"Then why in the world--"
She made a weary gesture.
"Oh, Señor Strawbridge, because life is all terrifying here; every part
has the same horrible quality!"
"But you don't know where Josefa is?"
"_Sí, sí,_ señor; indeed I do!"
"Then where is he?" asked Strawbridge, more bewildered than ever.
The girl pointed silently through the gloom.
"Yonder," she whispered.
Strawbridge turned, half expecting to see the little monkey-eyed clerk
behind him. But the piazza was deserted, and he saw nothing more than
the low, heavy walls of the fort against the last umber light in the
east.
"What do you mean?" he asked.
"I mean ... the prison, señor."
A cold trickle went over the drummer.
"You don't mean that little clerk's in prison?"
"_Sí_, señor."
The drummer stared at her.
"For God's sake, why? What did he do?"
"Nothing señor, except...."
"Except what?"
"Except talk to you, señor."
She whispered this last in a rush which ended in a gasp, and this told
Strawbridge she was weeping again.
The big drummer miserably watched her distress.
"Talked to me!"
"Because he told you about President Fombombo's methods."
With a queer sensation the American turned to look at the prison again.
"O-o-oh ... I see. Well, I'll be ... damned!" he uttered in slow
stupefaction.
"And that is nothing ... nothing!" accented the girl passionately.
"There are scores, _scores_ in there--the maimed, the tortured, the
sick, the dying. They have filthy crusts to eat. Never a physician
or a priest. When they die, the guards throw them into the river, to
the crocodiles. Oh, Señor Strawbridge, somehow God will punish this
terrible place! Listen!" she whispered. "At night, Father Benicio
sleeps in the cathedral, where he overlooks the river and the prison.
When any noise awakens him and he sees the guards throwing something
into the water, the priests go to the altar and say the mass for
departing souls."
The American shook his head as he stared at the prison.
"Merciful God!" he said in a whisper.
Presently she began telling Strawbridge her sensations when she came
from Spain as General Fombombo's bride and found herself amid such a
reign of terror.
"It was like stepping into hell, Señor Strawbridge. There never was a
woman so miserable as I. I was afraid to confess such awful things,
even to Father Benicio, but at last I did. He was the only human soul
to whom I could turn. Good, kind Father Benicio! He saved me from going
mad."
As she finished her story the American's optimism returned. "Maybe
I can do something about this," he said thoughtfully. "I never have
talked to General Fombombo about his business policy, but I really must
now. I'll start in about Josefa. I'll show the general how the boy
meant no harm. I'll get him taken out; then I'll show the general how
his policy as a whole is bad for business--"
"Oh, no, no, no!" interrupted the señora in alarm. "It won't help at
all."
"Not if I show him it's bad business?"
"Señor, the general doesn't care that about business!" She snapped her
fingers.
Thomas Strawbridge smiled in the darkness.
"That's where you don't know men, señora," he assured her from his
wider knowledge. "Every man cares about business. There is no man on
earth that isn't wrapped up in some sort of business. Well, I think
I'll step inside and see what I can do." He patted her hand where it
lay on the arm of her chair. There was something about its softness and
littleness that sent a strange, sweet sensation up Strawbridge's arm
and suffused his body. The next moment he moved into the palace, with
his usual quick, rangy strides.