Whirligigs | Page 6

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 pro- claimed that she
was the Pajaro, bound up-coast from Callao to Panama.
The Paiaro 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 pas- sengers. 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 frappéd 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 Concepción and Valparaiso and Lima. The captain of this sub-
sidized ferry boat told us there was some good picking around here in
silver mines. So we got off. Now, where is that café, Merriam? Oh, in
this portable soda water pavilion?"
Leaving Quinby at the bar, Hedges drew Merriam side.
"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 can- didate 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