“They will think me hard and cruel.” Her musings continued. “The whole Barranca will throw up hands of horror—the hands that applauded the greater sin when I gave myself without love in marriage. Bueno!” She scornfully tossed her head. “Wicked or not, I will do it—for thee.”
She squeezed his face so hard, murmuring it, that he stirred, and for fully a minute thereafter she sat holding her breath. But he slept on. During the last hour the river had widened, and along its banks tufted cocoa palms were woven with the brighter foliage of bananas into the rich green damask of the bordering jungle. Also the sun had prevailed for a few hours in the daily battle with the mists, and under the golden spell of light and warmth the girl’s musings grew happier as they floated on. When she awoke him to the sight of the blue harbor opening up from behind a long bend, Seyd looked up at a smiling face.
“That’s the American consulate.” After rubbing the sleep out of his eyes he pointed out a white stone building which perched, like a gull, on a terrace above the flaming rose and gold of the adobe town. “We’ll go there. The consul is a fine old fellow. He’ll help us all he can.”
First, however, they were destined to encounter the unexpected, for when, an hour later, Seyd pulled the dugout into a ragged wooden pier an officer in the silver and gray of the Mexican rurales pushed through the peon laborers who thronged the wharf.
“You are from up river, señor? Then you can tell us of the flood in the Barranca. A cousin of mine, Don Sebastien—Caramba!” At the sight of Francesca he broke suddenly off. “It is surely the señorita García? You will remember me, Eduardo Gallardo, upon the occasion that I visited, at San Nicolás, your uncle, the excellent General García, with my wife, who is of your kinsfolk?”
Recognizing him while he was still in the crowd, Francesca had gained time to prepare. His use of her maiden name proved that here at the port they had heard nothing as yet of her marriage, so, after briefly describing Sebastien’s death and the destruction of El Quiss, she concluded: “I was saved by the señor, here, who rode in to warn us. But for him I also should have drowned.”
And Seyd availed himself of the opening. “As the señorita is completely exhausted, señor, you will please to excuse us. We go to the American consulate.”
“But why the consulate, señor,” the rurale politely objected, “when she owns here the house of her kinswoman? The señora, my wife—”
“Sí, I have heard of her—nothing that is not lovely.” Drawing him a little aside, Francesca proceeded to heal, with winning smiles, the wound in his pride. “You shall give her my love, cousin. Tell her that I should prefer to visit her, but, having taken my life from the hand of this señor, I cannot do otherwise than fall in with his plans.”
Deferring with Latin politeness to her wish, his pride was none the less hurt, and while they climbed the hill to the consulate he hurried home to his wife, whose feminine intuitions placed the whole matter in an entirely new light.
“A gringo, sayest thou? Then it will be he for whose sake she was sent away to Europe. Medium tall, is he, with a straight nose, hollow cheeks, quick gray eyes? The very man that Paulo, the administrador, described to me on his last visit to the port. Caramba! Here’s fine bread for the baking! ’Tis told all over the Barranca that she has this man in her blood, and count me for a liar if she comes with him this far for any purpose but marriage. ’Twill never do to have Don Luis knocking at our door to ask why we let her go before our very eyes. He is a power, hombrecita, with the government, thy master, and, fail or win, we lose nothing by trying to trip her run. And ’twill be easy! A word in the ear of the jefe, judge, and priest, and ’tis done. And do not sleep on it. Away with you—at once.”
In his cool white salon on the hill above, the consul—a portly old fellow with a clean, good-natured face—was counseling Seyd at that moment in almost the same terms.
“As you say, this is no time to stand on conventions—especially after the man had locked you in and left you to drown. After seeing the young lady”—his smiling glance went to the door through which Francesca had just gone with his wife—“I should feel less than ever like protracted mourning. Besides, it is now or never. If you don’t marry her at once the chance may never come again. If Eduardo Gallardo hadn’t seen you it would have been quite simple. I could have fixed it up for you all right. But he is counted something of a sneak, and if he once sniffs the wind—well, you can be sure he won’t let such a chance slip to better himself with General García. You’ve simply got to beat him to it.”
After a pause of thought he went on: “In their usual course, both the legal and ecclesiastical procedures are very slow. It takes about a week for the lawyers to coin the bridegroom’s natural impatience into ready money, and after they are through the Church holds out its hand for what’s left. It’s an awful graft, but has its advantages, for if the wheels are well greased they spin like lightning. Shut up! I don’t have to be told that you emerged from the flood with empty pockets. I’ll attend
