A remarkably attractive and faithful woman, he told himself;
it was a pity that, in her estimation, her good qualities had come to
so little. The thing for him to do was to see his brother, and move
part of the burden of his decisions over to Daniel's heavy frame.
The sugar estate of which he was Administrador was in the Province of
Camag?ey, at Cobra; an overnight trip from Havana, Lee had learned. It
was Sunday evening now, and they would have to give up their room at
the Inglaterra Tuesday. Obviously there wasn't time to write Daniel and
have a reply by then. The other desirable hotels were as full as the
Inglaterra. He must wire, but the composition of his telegram presented
an unexpected difficulty:
Lee didn't know how to explain the presence with him of Savina; he
couldn't determine how much or how little to say; and it was probable
that Daniel had had a cable from Eastlake. The mere putting down of the
necessary words of his message, under the concerned gaze of a clerk,
with a limited comprehension of English, was hazardous. The clerk, he
had discovered, would read in a loud voice of misplaced linguistic
confidence whatever Lee wrote, and there was a small assemblage of
Americans at the counter of a steamship company across the office.
What, it began to appear, they'd have to do would be to take the train
for Cobra on Tuesday. Yet they couldn't quite come down on Daniel so
unexpectedly; he lived, Lee recalled, on a batey, the central
dominating point of a sugar estate; and--unmarried--what accommodations
he might offer were problematic.
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