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The World and the Door

Short Stories

"Fox-in-the-Morning"

A Bird of Bagdad

A Blackjack Bargainer

A Call Loan

A Chaparral Christmas Gift

A Chaparral Prince

A Comedy in Rubber

A Cosmopolite in a Cafe

A Departmental Case

A Dinner at--------*

A Double-Dyed Deceiver

A Fog in Santone

A Harlem Tragedy

A Lickpenny Lover

A Little Local Colour

A Little Talk about Mobs

A Madison Square Arabian Night

A Matter of Mean Elevation

A Midsummer Knight's Dream

A Midsummer Masquerade

A Municipal Report

A Newspaper Story

A Night in New Arabia

A Philistine in Bohemia

A Poor Rule

A Ramble in Aphasia

A Retrieved Reformation

A Ruler of Men

A Sacrifice Hit

A Service of Love

A Snapshot at the President

A Strange Story

A Technical Error

A Tempered Wind

According to Their Lights

After Twenty Years

An Adjustment of Nature

An Afternoon Miracle

An Apology

An Unfinished Christmas Story

An Unfinished Story

Aristocracy Versus Hash

Art and the Bronco

At Arms With Morpheus

Babes in the Jungle

Best-Seller

Between Rounds

Bexar Scrip No. 2692

Blind Man's Holiday

Brickdust Row

Buried Treasure

By Courier

Calloway's Code

Caught

Cherchez La Femme

Christmas by Injunction

Compliments of the Season

Confessions of a Humorist

Conscience in Art

Cupid a La Carte

Cupid's Exile Number Two

Dickey

Dougherty's Eye-Opener

Elsie in New York

Extradited from Bohemia

Fickle Fortune or How Gladys Hustled

Friends in San Rosario

From Each According to His Ability

From the Cabby's Seat

Georgia's Ruling

Girl

He Also Serves

Hearts and Crosses

Hearts and Hands

Helping the Other Fellow

Holding Up a Train

Hostages to Momus

Hygeia at the Solito

Innocents of Broadway

Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet

Jimmy Hayes and Muriel

Law and Order

Let Me Feel Your Pulse

Little Speck in Garnered Fruit

Lord Oakhurst's Curse

Lost on Dress Parade

Madame Bo-Peep, of the Ranches

Makes the Whole World Kin

Mammon and the Archer

Man About Town

Masters of Arts

Memoirs of a Yellow Dog

Modern Rural Sports

Money Maze

Nemesis and the Candy Man

New York by Camp Fire Light

Next to Reading Matter

No Story

October and June

On Behalf of the Management

One Dollar's Worth

One Thousand Dollars

Out of Nazareth

Past One at Rooney's

Phoebe

Proof of the Pudding

Psyche and the Pskyscraper

Queries and Answers

Roads of Destiny

Roses, Ruses and Romance

Rouge et Noir

Round the Circle

Rus in Urbe

Schools and Schools

Seats of the Haughty

Shearing the Wolf

Ships

Shoes

Sisters of the Golden Circle

Smith

Sociology in Serge and Straw

Sound and Fury

Springtime a La Carte

Squaring the Circle

Strictly Business

Strictly Business

Suite Homes and Their Romance

Telemachus, Friend

The Admiral

The Adventures of Shamrock Jolnes

The Assessor of Success

The Atavism of John Tom Little Bear

The Badge of Policeman O'Roon

The Brief Debut of Tildy

The Buyer From Cactus City

The Caballero's Way

The Cactus

The Caliph and the Cad

The Caliph, Cupid and the Clock

The Call of the Tame

The Chair of Philanthromathematics

The Champion of the Weather

The Church with an Overshot-Wheel

The City of Dreadful Night

The Clarion Call

The Coming-Out of Maggie

The Complete Life of John Hopkins

The Cop and the Anthem

The Count and the Wedding Guest

The Country of Elusion

The Day Resurgent

The Day We Celebrate

The Defeat of the City

The Detective Detector

The Diamond of Kali

The Discounters of Money

The Dog and the Playlet

The Door of Unrest

The Dream

The Duel

The Duplicity of Hargraves

The Easter of the Soul

The Emancipation of Billy

The Enchanted Kiss

The Enchanted Profile

The Ethics of Pig

The Exact Science of Matrimony

The Ferry of Unfulfilment

The Fifth Wheel

The Flag Paramount

The Fool-Killer

The Foreign Policy of Company 99

The Fourth in Salvador

The Friendly Call

The Furnished Room

The Gift of the Magi

The Girl and the Graft

The Girl and the Habit

The Gold That Glittered

The Greater Coney

The Green Door

The Guardian of the Accolade

The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

The Halberdier of the Little Rheinschloss

The Hand that Riles the World

The Handbook of Hymen

The Harbinger

The Head-Hunter

The Hiding of Black Bill

The Higher Abdication

The Higher Pragmatism

The Hypotheses of Failure

The Indian Summer of Dry Valley Johnson

The Lady Higher Up

The Last Leaf

The Last of the Troubadours

The Lonesome Road

The Lost Blend

The Lotus And The Bottle

The Love-Philtre of Ikey Schoenstein

The Making of a New Yorker

The Man Higher Up

The Marionettes

The Marquis and Miss Sally

The Marry Month of May

The Memento

The Missing Chord

The Moment of Victory

The Octopus Marooned

The Passing of Black Eagle

The Pendulum

The Phonograph and the Graft

The Pimienta Pancakes

The Plutonian Fire

The Poet and the Peasant

The Pride of the Cities

The Princess and the Puma

The Prisoner of Zembla

The Proem

The Purple Dress

The Ransom of Mack

The Ransom of Red Chief

The Rathskeller and the Rose

The Red Roses of Tonia

The Reformation of Calliope

The Remnants of the Code

The Renaissance at Charleroi

The Roads We Take

The Robe of Peace

The Romance of a Busy Broker

The Rose of Dixie

The Rubaiyat of a Scotch Highball

The Rubber Plant's Story

The Shamrock and the Palm

The Shocks of Doom

The Skylight Room

The Sleuths

The Snow Man

The Social Triangle

The Song and the Sergeant

The Sparrows in Madison Square

The Sphinx Apple

The Tale of a Tainted Tenner

The Theory and the Hound

The Thing's the Play

The Third Ingredient

The Trimmed Lamp

The Unknown Quantity

The Unprofitable Servant

The Venturers

The Vitagraphoscope

The Voice of the City

The Whirligig of Life

The World and the Door

Thimble, Thimble

Tictocq

To Him Who Waits

Tobin's Palm

Tommy's Burglar

Tracked to Doom

Transformation of Martin Burney

Transients in Arcadia

Two Recalls

Two Renegades

Two Thanksgiving Day Gentlemen

Ulysses and the Dogman

Vanity and Some Sables

What You Want

While the Auto Waits

Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking

Witches' Loaves







A favourite dodge to get your story read by the public is to assert
that it is true, and then add that Truth is stranger than Fiction.
I do not know if the yarn I am anxious for you to read is true; but
the Spanish purser of the fruit steamer _El Carrero_ swore to me by
the shrine of Santa Guadalupe that he had the facts from the U. S.
vice-consul at La Paz--a person who could not possibly have been
cognizant of half of them.

As for the adage quoted above, I take pleasure in puncturing it by
affirming that I read in a purely fictional story the other day the
line: "'Be it so,' said the policeman." Nothing so strange has yet
cropped out in Truth.


When H. Ferguson Hedges, millionaire promoter, investor and man-about-
New-York, turned his thoughts upon matters convivial, and word of it
went "down the line," bouncers took a precautionary turn at the Indian
clubs, waiters put ironstone china on his favourite tables, cab
drivers crowded close to the curbstone in front of all-night cafes,
and careful cashiers in his regular haunts charged up a few bottles to
his account by way of preface and introduction.

As a money power a one-millionaire is of small account in a city where
the man who cuts your slice of beef behind the free-lunch counter
rides to work in his own automobile. But Hedges spent his money as
lavishly, loudly and showily as though he were only a clerk
squandering a week's wages. And, after all, the bartender takes no
interest in your reserve fund. He would rather look you up on his
cash register than in Bradstreet.

On the evening that the material allegation of facts begins, Hedges
was bidding dull care begone in the company of five or six good
fellows--acquaintances and friends who had gathered in his wake.

Among them were two younger men--Ralph Merriam, a broker, and Wade,
his friend.

Two deep-sea cabmen were chartered. At Columbus Circle they hove to
long enough to revile the statue of the great navigator,
unpatriotically rebuking him for having voyaged in search of land
instead of liquids. Midnight overtook the party marooned in the rear
of a cheap cafe far uptown.

Hedges was arrogant, overriding and quarrelsome. He was burly and
tough, iron-gray but vigorous, "good" for the rest of the night. There
was a dispute--about nothing that matters--and the five-fingered words
were passed--the words that represent the glove cast into the lists.
Merriam played the role of the verbal Hotspur.

Hedges rose quickly, seized his chair, swung it once and smashed
wildly down at Merriam's head. Merriam dodged, drew a small revolver
and shot Hedges in the chest. The leading roysterer stumbled, fell in
a wry heap, and lay still.

Wade, a commuter, had formed that habit of promptness. He juggled
Merriam out a side door, walked him to the corner, ran him a block and
caught a hansom. They rode five minutes and then got out on a dark
corner and dismissed the cab. Across the street the lights of a small
saloon betrayed its hectic hospitality.

"Go in the back room of that saloon," said Wade, "and wait. I'll go
find out what's doing and let you know. You may take two drinks while
I am gone--no more."

At ten minutes to one o'clock Wade returned. "Brace up, old chap," he
said. "The ambulance got there just as I did. The doctor says he's
dead. You may have one more drink. You let me run this thing for
you. You've got to skip. I don't believe a chair is legally a deadly
weapon. You've got to make tracks, that's all there is to it."

Merriam complained of the cold querulously, and asked for another
drink. "Did you notice what big veins he had on the back of his
hands?" he said. "I never could stand--I never could--"

"Take one more," said Wade, "and then come on. I'll see you through."

Wade kept his promise so well that at eleven o'clock the next morning
Merriam, with a new suit case full of new clothes and hair-brushes,
stepped quietly on board a little 500-ton fruit steamer at an East
River pier. The vessel had brought the season's first cargo of limes
from Port Limon, and was homeward bound. Merriam had his bank balance
of $2,800 in his pocket in large bills, and brief instructions to pile
up as much water as he could between himself and New York. There was
no time for anything more.

From Port Limon Merriam worked down the coast by schooner and sloop to
Colon, thence across the isthmus to Panama, where he caught a tramp
bound for Callao and such intermediate ports as might tempt the
discursive skipper from his course.

It was at La Paz that Merriam decided to land--La Paz the Beautiful,
a little harbourless town smothered in a living green ribbon that
banded the foot of a cloud-piercing mountain. Here the little
steamer stopped to tread water while the captain's dory took him
ashore that he might feel the pulse of the cocoanut market. Merriam
went too, with his suit case, and remained.

Kalb, the vice-consul, a Graeco-Armenian citizen of the United States,
born in Hessen-Darmstadt, and educated in Cincinnati ward primaries,
considered all Americans his brothers and bankers. He attached
himself to Merriam's elbow, introduced him to every one in La Paz who
wore shoes, borrowed ten dollars and went back to his hammock.

There was a little wooden hotel in the edge of a banana grove, facing
the sea, that catered to the tastes of the few foreigners that had
dropped out of the world into the _triste_ Peruvian town. At Kalb's
introductory: "Shake hands with ----," he had obediently exchanged
manual salutations with a German doctor, one French and two Italian
merchants, and three or four Americans who were spoken of as gold men,
rubber men, mahogany men--anything but men of living tissue.

After dinner Merriam sat in a corner of the broad front _galeria_ with
Bibb, a Vermonter interested in hydraulic mining, and smoked and drank
Scotch "smoke." The moonlit sea, spreading infinitely before him,
seemed to separate him beyond all apprehension from his old life. The
horrid tragedy in which he had played such a disastrous part now
began, for the first time since he stole on board the fruiter, a
wretched fugitive, to lose its sharper outlines. Distance lent
assuagement to his view. Bibb had opened the flood-gates of a stream
of long-dammed discourse, overjoyed to have captured an audience that
had not suffered under a hundred repetitions of his views and
theories.

"One year more," said Bibb, "and I'll go back to God's country. Oh, I
know it's pretty here, and you get _dolce far niente_ handed to you in
chunks, but this country wasn't made for a white man to live in.
You've got to have to plug through snow now and then, and see a game
of baseball and wear a stiff collar and have a policeman cuss you.
Still, La Paz is a good sort of a pipe-dreamy old hole. And Mrs.
Conant is here. When any of us feels particularly like jumping into
the sea we rush around to her house and propose. It's nicer to be
rejected by Mrs. Conant than it is to be drowned. And they say
drowning is a delightful sensation."

"Many like her here?" asked Merriam.

"Not anywhere," said Bibb, with a comfortable sigh. She's the only
white woman in La Paz. The rest range from a dappled dun to the
colour of a b-flat piano key. She's been here a year. Comes from--
well, you know how a woman can talk--ask 'em to say 'string' and
they'll say 'crow's foot' or 'cat's cradle.' Sometimes you'd think
she was from Oshkosh, and again from Jacksonville, Florida, and the
next day from Cape Cod."

"Mystery?" ventured Merriam.

"M--well, she looks it; but her talk's translucent enough. But
that's a woman. I suppose if the Sphinx were to begin talking she'd
merely say: 'Goodness me! more visitors coming for dinner, and nothing
to eat but the sand which is here.' But you won't think about that
when you meet her, Merriam. You'll propose to her too."

To make a hard story soft, Merriam did meet her and propose to her.
He found her to be a woman in black with hair the colour of a bronze
turkey's wings, and mysterious, _remembering_ eyes that--well, that
looked as if she might have been a trained nurse looking on when Eve
was created. Her words and manner, though, were translucent, as Bibb
had said. She spoke, vaguely, of friends in California and some of
the lower parishes in Louisiana. The tropical climate and indolent
life suited her; she had thought of buying an orange grove later on;
La Paz, all in all, charmed her.

Merriam's courtship of the Sphinx lasted three months, although be did
not know that he was courting her. He was using her as an antidote
for remorse, until he found, too late, that he had acquired the habit.
During that time he had received no news from home. Wade did not know
where he was; and he was not sure of Wade's exact address, and was
afraid to write. He thought he had better let matters rest as they
were for a while.

One afternoon he and Mrs. Conant hired two ponies and rode out along
the mountain trail as far as the little cold river that came tumbling
down the foothills. There they stopped for a drink, and Merriam spoke
his piece--he proposed, as Bibb had prophesied.

Mrs. Conant gave him one glance of brilliant tenderness, and then her
face took on such a strange, haggard look that Merriam was shaken out
of his intoxication and back to his senses.

"I beg your pardon, Florence," he said, releasing her hand; "but I'll
have to hedge on part of what I said. I can't ask you to marry me, of
course. I killed a man in New York--a man who was my friend--shot
him down--in quite a cowardly manner, I understand. Of course, the
drinking didn't excuse it. Well, I couldn't resist having my say; and
I'll always mean it. I'm here as a fugitive from justice, and--I
suppose that ends our acquaintance."

Mrs. Conant plucked little leaves assiduously from the low-hanging
branch of a lime tree.

"I suppose so," she said, in low and oddly uneven tones; "but that
depends upon you. I'll be as honest as you were. I poisoned my
husband. I am a self-made widow. A man cannot love a murderess. So
I suppose that ends our acquaintance."

She looked up at him slowly. His face turned a little pale, and he
stared at her blankly, like a deaf-and-dumb man who was wondering what
it was all about.

She took a swift step toward him, with stiffened arms and eyes
blazing.

"Don't look at me like that!" she cried, as though she were in acute
pain. "Curse me, or turn your back on me, but don't look that way.
Am I a woman to be beaten? If I could show you--here on my arms,
and on my back are scars--and it has been more than a year--scars
that he made in his brutal rages. A holy nun would have risen and
struck the fiend down. Yes, I killed him. The foul and horrible
words that he hurled at me that last day are repeated in my ears every
night when I sleep. And then came his blows, and the end of my
endurance. I got the poison that afternoon. It was his custom to
drink every night in the library before going to bed a hot punch made
of rum and wine. Only from my fair hands would he receive it--
because he knew the fumes of spirits always sickened me. That night
when the maid brought it to me I sent her downstairs on an errand.
Before taking him his drink I went to my little private cabinet and
poured into it more than a tea-spoonful of tincture of aconite--
enough to kill three men, so I had learned. I had drawn $6,000 that I
had in bank, and with that and a few things in a satchel I left the
house without any one seeing me. As I passed the library I heard him
stagger up and fall heavily on a couch. I took a night train for New
Orleans, and from there I sailed to the Bermudas. I finally cast
anchor in La Paz. And now what have you to say? Can you open your
mouth?"

Merriam came back to life.

"Florence," he said earnestly, "I want you. I don't care what you've
done. If the world--"

"Ralph," she interrupted, almost with a scream, "be my world!"

Her eyes melted; she relaxed magnificently and swayed toward Merriam
so suddenly that he had to jump to catch her.

Dear me! in such scenes how the talk runs into artificial prose. But
it can't be helped. It's the subconscious smell of the footlights'
smoke that's in all of us. Stir the depths of your cook's soul
sufficiently and she will discourse in Bulwer-Lyttonese.

Merriam and Mrs. Conant were very happy. He announced their
engagement at the Hotel Orilla del Mar. Eight foreigners and four
native Astors pounded his back and shouted insincere congratulations
at him. Pedrito, the Castilian-mannered barkeep, was goaded to extra
duty until his agility would have turned a Boston cherry-phosphate
clerk a pale lilac with envy.

They were both very happy. According to the strange mathematics of
the god of mutual affinity, the shadows that clouded their pasts when
united became only half as dense instead of darker. They shut the
world out and bolted the doors. Each was the other's world. Mrs.
Conant lived again. The remembering look left her eyes. Merriam was
with her every moment that was possible. On a little plateau under a
grove of palms and calabash trees they were going to build a fairy
bungalow. They were to be married in two months. Many hours of the
day they had their heads together over the house plans. Their joint
capital would set up a business in fruit or woods that would yield a
comfortable support. "Good night, my world," would say Mrs. Conant
every evening when Merriam left her for his hotel. They were very
happy. Their love had, circumstantially, that element of melancholy
in it that it seems to require to attain its supremest elevation. And
it seemed that their mutual great misfortune or sin was a bond that
nothing could sever.

One day a steamer hove in the offing. Bare-legged and bare-shouldered
La Paz scampered down to the beach, for the arrival of a steamer was
their loop-the-loop, circus, Emancipation Day and four-o'clock tea.

When the steamer was near enough, wise ones proclaimed that she was
the _Pajaro_, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.

The _Pajaro_ put on brakes a mile off shore. Soon a boat came bobbing
shoreward. Merriam strolled down on the beach to look on. In the
shallow water the Carib sailors sprang out and dragged the boat with a
mighty rush to the firm shingle. Out climbed the purser, the captain
and two passengers, ploughing their way through the deep sand toward
the hotel. Merriam glanced toward them with the mild interest due to
strangers. There was something familiar to him in the walk of one of
the passengers. He looked again, and his blood seemed to turn to
strawberry ice cream in his veins. Burly, arrogant, debonair as ever,
H. Ferguson Hedges, the man he had killed, was coming toward him ten
feet away.

When Hedges saw Merriam his face flushed a dark red. Then he shouted
in his old, bluff way: "Hello, Merriam. Glad to see you. Didn't
expect to find you out here. Quinby, this is my old friend Merriam,
of New York--Merriam, Mr. Quinby."

Merriam gave Hedges and then Quinby an ice-cold hand. "Br-r-r-r!" said
Hedges. "But you've got a frapped flipper! Man, you're not well.
You're as yellow as a Chinaman. Malarial here? Steer us to a bar if
there is such a thing, and let's take a prophylactic."

Merriam, still half comatose, led them toward the Hotel Orilla del
Mar.

"Quinby and I," explained Hedges, puffing through the slippery sand,
"are looking out along the coast for some investments. We've just
come up from Concepcion and Valparaiso and Lima. The captain of this
subsidized ferry boat told us there was some good picking around
here in silver mines. So we got off. Now, where is that cafe,
Merriam? Oh, in this portable soda water pavilion?"

Leaving Quinby at the bar, Hedges drew Merriam aside.

"Now, what does this mean?" he said, with gruff kindness. "Are you
sulking about that fool row we had?"

"I thought," stammered Merriam--"I heard--they told me you were--
that I had--"

"Well, you didn't, and I'm not," said Hedges. "That fool young
ambulance surgeon told Wade I was a candidate for a coffin just
because I'd got tired and quit breathing. I laid up in a private
hospital for a month; but here I am, kicking as hard as ever. Wade
and I tried to find you, but couldn't. Now, Merriam, shake hands and
forget it all. I was as much to blame as you were; and the shot
really did me good--I came out of the hospital as healthy and fit as
a cab horse. Come on; that drink's waiting."

"Old man," said Merriam, brokenly, "I don't know how to thank you--I
--well, you know--"

"Oh, forget it," boomed Hedges. "Quinby'll die of thirst if we don't
join him."

Bibb was sitting on the shady side of the gallery waiting for the
eleven-o'clock breakfast. Presently Merriam came out and joined him.
His eye was strangely bright.

"Bibb, my boy," said he, slowly waving his hand, "do you see those
mountains and that sea and sky and sunshine?--they're mine, Bibbsy
--all mine."

"You go in," said Bibb, "and take eight grains of quinine, right away.
It won't do in this climate for a man to get to thinking he's
Rockefeller, or James O'Neill either."

Inside, the purser was untying a great roll of newspapers, many of
them weeks old, gathered in the lower ports by the _Pajaro_ to be
distributed at casual stopping-places. Thus do the beneficent voyagers
scatter news and entertainment among the prisoners of sea and
mountains.

Tio Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver-rimmed _anteojos_
upon his nose and divided the papers into a number of smaller rolls.
A barefooted _muchacho_ dashed in, desiring the post of messenger.

"_Bien venido_," said Tio Pancho. "This to Senora Conant; that to el
Doctor S-S-Schlegel--_Dios_! what a name to say!--that to Senor Davis
--one for Don Alberto. These two for the _Casa de Huespedes, Numero
6, en la calle de las Buenas Gracias_. And say to them all, _muchacho_,
that the _Pajaro_ sails for Panama at three this afternoon. If any have
letters to send by the post, let them come quickly, that they may
first pass through the _correo_."

Mrs. Conant received her roll of newspapers at four o'clock. The boy
was late in delivering them, because he had been deflected from his
duty by an iguana that crossed his path and to which he immediately
gave chase. But it made no hardship, for she had no letters to send.

She was idling in a hammock in the patio of the house that she
occupied, half awake, half happily dreaming of the paradise that she
and Merriam had created out of the wrecks of their pasts. She was
content now for the horizon of that shimmering sea to be the horizon
of her life. They had shut out the world and closed the door.

Merriam was coming to her house at seven, after his dinner at the
hotel. She would put on a white dress and an apricot-coloured lace
mantilla, and they would walk an hour under the cocoanut palms by the
lagoon. She smiled contentedly, and chose a paper at random from the
roll the boy had brought.

At first the words of a certain headline of a Sunday newspaper meant
nothing to her; they conveyed only a visualized sense of familiarity.
The largest type ran thus: "Lloyd B. Conant secures divorce." And then
the subheadings: "Well-known Saint Louis paint manufacturer wins
suit, pleading one year's absence of wife." "Her mysterious
disappearance recalled." "Nothing has been heard of her since."

Twisting herself quickly out of the hammock, Mrs. Conant's eye soon
traversed the half-column of the "Recall." It ended thus: "It will be
remembered that Mrs. Conant disappeared one evening in March of last
year. It was freely rumoured that her marriage with Lloyd B. Conant
resulted in much unhappiness. Stories were not wanting to the effect
that his cruelty toward his wife had more than once taken the form of
physical abuse. After her departure a full bottle of tincture of
aconite, a deadly poison, was found in a small medicine cabinet in her
bedroom. This might have been an indication that she meditated
suicide. It is supposed that she abandoned such an intention if she
possessed it, and left her home instead."

Mrs. Conant slowly dropped the paper, and sat on a chair, clasping her
hands tightly.

"Let me think--O God!--let me think," she whispered. "I took
the bottle with me . . . I threw it out of the window of the train
. . . I-- . . . there was another bottle in the cabinet . . .
there were two, side by side--the aconite--and the valerian that I
took when I could not sleep . . . If they found the aconite bottle
full, why--but, he is alive, of course--I gave him only a
harmless dose of valerian . . . I am not a murderess in fact . . .
Ralph, I--O God, don't let this be a dream!"

She went into the part of the house that she rented from the old
Peruvian man and his wife, shut the door, and walked up and down her
room swiftly and feverishly for half an hour. Merriam's photograph
stood in a frame on a table. She picked it up, looked at it with a
smile of exquisite tenderness, and--dropped four tears on it. And
Merriam only twenty rods away! Then she stood still for ten minutes,
looking into space. She looked into space through a slowly opening
door. On her side of the door was the building material for a castle
of Romance--love, an Arcady of waving palms, a lullaby of waves on
the shore of a haven of rest, respite, peace, a lotus land of dreamy
ease and security--a life of poetry and heart's ease and refuge.
Romanticist, will you tell me what Mrs. Conant saw on the other side
of the door? You cannot?--that is, you will not? Very well; then
listen.

_She saw herself go into a department store and buy five spools of
silk thread and three yards of gingham to make an apron for the cook.
"Shall I charge it, ma'am?" asked the clerk. As she walked out a
lady whom she met greeted her cordially. "Oh, where did you get the
pattern for those sleeves, dear Mrs. Conant?" she said. At the corner
a policeman helped her across the street and touched his helmet. "Any
callers?" she asked the maid when she reached home. "Mrs. Waldron,"
answered the maid, "and the two Misses Jenkinson." "Very well," she
said. "You may bring me a cup of tea, Maggie._"

Mrs. Conant went to the door and called Angela, the old Peruvian
woman. "If Mateo is there send him to me." Mateo, a half-breed,
shuffling and old but efficient, came.

"Is there a steamer or a vessel of any kind leaving this coast
to-night or to-morrow that I can get passage on?" she asked.

Mateo considered.

"At Punta Reina, thirty miles down the coast, senora," he answered,
"there is a small steamer loading with cinchona and dyewoods. She
sails for San Francisco to-morrow at sunrise. So says my brother, who
arrived in his sloop to-day, passing by Punta Reina."

"You must take me in that sloop to that steamer to-night. Will you do
that?"

"Perhaps--" Mateo shrugged a suggestive shoulder. Mrs. Conant
took a handful of money from a drawer and gave it to him.

"Get the sloop ready behind the little point of land below the town,"
she ordered. "Get sailors, and be ready to sail at six o'clock. In
half an hour bring a cart partly filled with straw into the patio
here, and take my trunk to the sloop. There is more money yet. Now,
hurry."

For one time Mateo walked away without shuffling his feet.

"Angela," cried Mrs. Conant, almost fiercely, "come and help me pack.
I am going away. Out with this trunk. My clothes first. Stir
yourself. Those dark dresses first. Hurry."

From the first she did not waver from her decision. Her view was clear
and final. Her door had opened and let the world in. Her love for
Merriam was not lessened; but it now appeared a hopeless and
unrealizable thing. The visions of their future that had seemed so
blissful and complete had vanished. She tried to assure herself that
her renunciation was rather for his sake than for her own. Now that
she was cleared of her burden--at least, technically--would not
his own weigh too heavily upon him? If she should cling to him, would
not the difference forever silently mar and corrode their happiness?
Thus she reasoned; but there were a thousand little voices calling to
her that she could feel rather than hear, like the hum of distant,
powerful machinery--the little voices of the world, that, when
raised in unison, can send their insistent call through the thickest
door.

Once while packing, a brief shadow of the lotus dream came back to
her. She held Merriam's picture to her heart with one hand, while she
threw a pair of shoes into the trunk with her other.

At six o'clock Mateo returned and reported the sloop ready. He and
his brother lifted the trunk into the cart, covered it with straw and
conveyed it to the point of embarkation. From there they transferred
it on board in the sloop's dory. Then Mateo returned for additional
orders.

Mrs. Conant was ready. She had settled all business matters with
Angela, and was impatiently waiting. She wore a long, loose black-silk
duster that she often walked about in when the evenings were chilly.
On her head was a small round hat, and over it the apricot-coloured
lace mantilla.

Dusk had quickly followed the short twilight. Mateo led her by dark
and grass-grown streets toward the point behind which the sloop was
anchored. On turning a corner they beheld the Hotel Orilla del Mar
three streets away, nebulously aglow with its array of kerosene lamps.

Mrs. Conant paused, with streaming eyes. "I must, I _must_ see him
once before I go," she murmured in anguish. But even then she did not
falter in her decision. Quickly she invented a plan by which she might
speak to him, and yet make her departure without his knowing. She
would walk past the hotel, ask some one to call him out and talk a few
moments on some trivial excuse, leaving him expecting to see her at
her home at seven.

She unpinned her hat and gave it to Mateo. "Keep this, and wait here
till I come," she ordered. Then she draped the mantilla over her head
as she usually did when walking after sunset, and went straight to the
Orilla del Mar.

She was glad to see the bulky, white-clad figure of Tio Pancho
standing alone on the gallery.

"Tio Pancho," she said, with a charming smile, "may I trouble you to
ask Mr. Merriam to come out for just a few moments that I may speak
with him?"

Tio Pancho bowed as an elephant bows.

"Buenas tardes, Senora Conant," he said, as a cavalier talks. And
then he went on, less at his ease:

"But does not the senora know that Senor Merriam sailed on the _Pajaro_
for Panama at three o'clock of this afternoon?"




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