章节正文
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 magnificentlv 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 mutualaffinity, 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 frapp锟絛
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 Concepci锟絥
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 caf? 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 ambulancesurgeon 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 -- "
"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 Se锟給ra
Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel -- Dios! what a
name to say! - that to Se锟給r 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 mysteriousdisappearance 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 deadlypoison, 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."
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 magnificentlv 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 mutualaffinity, 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 frapp锟絛
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 Concepci锟絥
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 caf? 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 ambulancesurgeon 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 -- "
"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 Se锟給ra
Conant; that to el Doctor S-S-Schlegel -- Dios! what a
name to say! - that to Se锟給r 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 mysteriousdisappearance 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 deadlypoison, 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."
- horrible [´hɔrəbəl]
a.可怕的；恐怖的 (初中英语单词) - poison [´pɔizən] n.毒物 v.毒害 a.有毒的 (初中英语单词)
- errand [´erənd] n.差使，使命 (初中英语单词)
- cabinet [´kæbinit] n.橱，柜；内阁 (初中英语单词)
- stagger [´stægə] v.&n.(使)蹒跚(震惊) (初中英语单词)
- scream [skri:m] v.&n.尖叫(声) (初中英语单词)
- sufficiently [sə´fiʃəntli] ad.充分地，足够地 (初中英语单词)
- engagement [in´geidʒmənt] n.婚约；雇用；受聘 (初中英语单词)
- steamer [´sti:mə] n.汽船；轮船；蒸笼 (初中英语单词)
- arrival [ə´raivəl] n.到达；到达的人(物) (初中英语单词)
- shallow [´ʃæləu] a.肤浅的；表面的 (初中英语单词)
- sprang [spræŋ] spring 的过去式 (初中英语单词)
- healthy [´helθi] a.健康的 (初中英语单词)
- gallery [´gæləri] n.画廊；美术馆；长廊 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- climate [´klaimit] n.气候；特殊气候地带 (初中英语单词)
- horizon [hə´raizən] n.地平线；范围；视野 (初中英语单词)
- absence [´æbsəns] n.不在，缺席；缺乏 (初中英语单词)
- mysterious [mi´stiəriəs] a.神秘的；难以理解的 (初中英语单词)
- freely [´fri:li] ad.自由地；慷慨地 (初中英语单词)
- departure [di´pɑ:tʃə] n.离开，出发 (初中英语单词)
- deadly [´dedli] a.致命的 ad.死一般地 (初中英语单词)
- intention [in´tenʃən] n.意图；打算；意义 (初中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- endurance [in´djuərəns] n.忍受(耐)；耐力 (高中英语单词)
- learned [´lə:nid] a.有学问的，博学的 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- earnestly [´ə:nistli] ad.认真地；急切地 (高中英语单词)
- mutual [´mju:tʃuəl] a.相互的；共同的 (高中英语单词)
- plateau [´plætəu] n.高原；平稳；托盘 (高中英语单词)
- melancholy [´melənkəli] n.忧郁 a.忧郁的 (高中英语单词)
- elevation [,eli´veiʃən] n.高度；晋升；高尚 (高中英语单词)
- misfortune [mis´fɔ:tʃən] n.不幸；灾祸 (高中英语单词)
- strawberry [´strɔ:bəri] n.草莓 (高中英语单词)
- slippery [´slipəri] a.滑的；不稳固的 (高中英语单词)
- surgeon [´sə:dʒən] n.外科医生；军医 (高中英语单词)
- coffin [´kɔfin] n.棺材，柩 (高中英语单词)
- casual [´kæʒuəl] a.偶然的；临时的 (高中英语单词)
- proprietor [prə´praiətə] n.所有人；业主；经营者 (高中英语单词)
- panama [,pænə´mɑ:] n.巴拿马；巴拿马运河 (高中英语单词)
- hardship [´hɑ:dʃip] n.受苦，吃苦；苦难 (高中英语单词)
- random [´rændəm] n.偶然的行动 (高中英语单词)
- cruelty [´kru:əlti] n.残忍；残酷行为 (高中英语单词)
- suicide [´su:isaid, ´sju:-] n.&a.自杀(者)(的) (高中英语单词)
- brutal [´bru:tl] a.兽性的；残暴的 (英语四级单词)
- orleans [ɔ:´liənz] n.奥尔良 (英语四级单词)
- bungalow [´bʌŋgələu] n.(有凉台的)平房 (英语四级单词)
- shingle [´ʃiŋgəl] n.盖屋板；木瓦 (英语四级单词)
- ambulance [´æmbjuləns] n.救护车(船，飞机) (英语四级单词)
- barefooted [beə´futid] ad.&a.赤脚(的) (英语四级单词)
- hammock [´hæmək] n.吊床；圆丘 (英语四级单词)
- headline [´hedlain] n.(报纸的)标题 (英语四级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- affinity [ə´finiti] n.密切关系；吸引(力) (英语六级单词)
- emancipation [i,mænsi´peiʃən] n.解放，翻身 (英语六级单词)
- portable [´pɔ:təbəl] a.轻便的 n.手提打字机 (英语六级单词)
- lagoon [lə´gu:n] n.濒海湖，泻湖 (英语六级单词)
- familiarity [fə,mili´æriti] n.熟悉；新近；随便 (英语六级单词)
- disappearance [,disə´piərəns] n.消失；失踪 (英语六级单词)
- wanting [´wɔntiŋ, wɑ:n-] a.短缺的；不足的 (英语六级单词)
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