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—”
“Si, 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 Garcia. 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 to that, and you can settle with me any old time. All you have to do”—taking Seyd by the shoulders, he marched him into his own bedroom—“is to take a shave and bath and make yourself look as much as you can like a happy bridegroom.”
With a last order, “Help yourself from my clothes,” he went out laughing. But when he returned an hour later his smile was obscured by a vexed cloud. “Eduardo wins,” he reported to Seyd, who had just come out on the veranda. “He must have gone right to it, for when I arrived at the edificio municipal they were already primed. The judge and jefe-politico both count themselves of mine, but they wouldn’t do a thing. Really you can’t blame them. El general Garcia is a name to conjure with down here, and they are all afraid of their official heads. ‘Much as we would like to serve you,’ and so forth, ‘but in the case of a young lady of such high family we dare not proceed without her guardian’s written consent.’