Whirligigs | Page 8

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
tqvo 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, señora," 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 shoul- der. 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 evenino's 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