“Well, I’ll drive over for you and your luggage to-morrow,” the Englishman insisted cordially.
And Señorita Marie whispered demurely, “Au revoir—there’s another steamer—in a month!”
So Brainard rode off with the others, very much pleased with himself and life, lightly putting aside his settled purpose of taking the Toulouse two days hence. What urgent reason for haste, when life was so full of promise and of beauty? Another month would do as well for Krutzmacht’s business. . . .
“You didn’t see much of the plantation,” the Southerner drawled to Brainard as the young man’s horse drew up abreast.
“He saw a great deal of something more to his liking,” Hollinger observed, a little ironical smile on his lips.
“I had a very good day,” Brainard responded simply, wishing to avoid further reference to the girl.
The daylight quickly faded, and before they reached the hill on which Jalapa lies, the moon was up, flooding the valley and the mountains. Calloway became confidential, and for the first time told the full story of their recent host. Years before, the Englishman had arrived in Mexico and bought this plantation. He was a young man then and single. He never went home. It seems that he had absconded from a shipping firm in Liverpool where he was employed and had taken ten thousand pounds. Later he married a Mexican woman of good family and had prospered.
“But he never leaves the country. The woman and the girls go—the son is being educated in the States—but the old man has never been beyond the line.”
“It must be hard on them—the girls,” Brainard said.
“What do they care? Harlow is rich and respected in this country. The women are Mexican, though the girls have been well educated. It was a long time ago when he took the money, and as you see he lives like a perfect gentleman with his own wife and family. There are a good many citizens here who have better antecedents than Harlow and aren’t as respectable.”