Whirligigs | Page 7

O. Henry
-- "
"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 sun- shine? -- 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 enter- tainment among the prisoners of sea and mountains. Tio
Pancho, the hotel proprietor, set his great silver- rimmed aiteojos 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 Señora Conant; that to el
Doctor S-S-Schlegel -- Dios! what a name to say! - that to Señor 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 manufac- turer 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 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 whis- pered. "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 -- 0 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
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