NO, NO, I WON'T SIGN
"NO, NO, I WON'T SIGN!"
"Yes, Sheila," he said, trying to give to his words an air of conviction, for he realized that he had been too clever. "I stop at a good many things and always on the windy side of the law. I am not a fool. As for the rest, I am not close. Play square and you will find me a good fellow."
From his pocketbook he added two bills of fifty dollars to the first, and with a smile offered them to her.
"In return for your signature, of course."
He again placed the document before her, laid the three bills at its side and, giving her a little tap on the shoulder, said:
"Come, Sheila, this place gives me the horrors. Let's get through and out of here."
She gazed at the three bills, then took the pen, looking moodily up into his face. There, despite the smile with which he sought to reassure her, she saw such avidity in his eye that suddenly there rose to her mind the scene where Faust sells his immortal soul to the devil, and, turning from Bofinger to the covenant, she shuddered. Then half averting her face she pressed the pen to the paper and signed.
He pounced upon it, without concealing his joy, compared the signatures and thrust both papers into his pocket. She had the three bank notes twisting in her fingers.
"Pack up, pay up, and be ready in an hour," he said, no longer delaying for fair speeches. "I'll have the marriage witnessed to-night. In an hour, Sheila."
"Yes."
She opened the door, followed him to the stairs, and leaned over the banister to watch his descent. Below, a faint blurred lightmarked the drop of the stairs. His steps were hushed on the carpeted flight, only the white of his hand, slipping down the railing, showed the winding retreat. All at once she was shaken with a loathing and a dread of this unseen man, and leaning over, she whispered,
"Stop. Come back!"
On the banisters the white spot paused, then slid rapidly down, and a shadow, like the passage of a bat, obscured the glow in the hall. The door shivered noisily.
She waited and then went slowly to her room. The three bank-notes were on the table, waiting. At the foot, the pen had rolled on the floor.
She flung down into a chair and snatched up the bills as though to tear them into shreds. A moment later they slipped from her fingers into her lap.
"No, I won't do it!" she said aloud, staring with horror at the green notes, stained and bruised by the clutch of battling hands.
But though she had renounced them, she could not withdraw her eyes. When the hour was three quarters gone, with a cry she jumped up, crumpled the bills into her breast, and began feverishly to make ready.
Max Fargus, on leaving Sheila to be shadowed by the lawyer, departed in such a fever of amorous suspense that it became absolutely essential to his intense nature to inflict some cruelty on his fellow beings. The nearer he approached to the realization of his infatuation the more imperative became these sudden revulsions to savagery. With this temperamental debauch in mind, he hastened to Broadway, purposing to surprise his principal establishment and find food for his spleen.
By a back entrance he glided into the kitchens, where he passed like a storm among the scullions, who feared him like the Evil One. But this time, to pour out the floods of his wrath on oyster openers and dish washers nolonger satisfied him. The crisis in his affections was too vital for him to find relief in petty browbeating. Realizing that only a master stroke could satisfy him to-day, he climbed the stairs and passed moodily through the restaurant, where the waiters watched him from the corners of their eyes. Then passing into his office he shut himself up and waited angrily for an inspiration.
All at once he struck the bell and shouted joyfully:
"Send Bastien here!"
At the end of a brief moment a portly, florid Frenchman slipped through the door and glided to attention, waiting blandly the moment it pleased his employer to speak. Fargus, enjoying the surprise his announcement would bring, feasted his eyes interminably on the victim a flash of genius had suggested to him. The head waiter, who by a miracle had for three years avoided the suspicions of his master, without troubling himself at this savage inspection, shifted his balance, coughed faintly,and fell to studying the clouded tops of his employer's shoes.
"Bastien," Fargus began softly, "do you know why I want you?"
"No, sir, I don't, sir."
"Can't guess?"
"Why, no, sir," Bastien said, beginning to show some perplexity.
"I sent for you," Fargus said, hanging on each word, "to tell you, Bastien, that I don't need your services any more."
"Me?" exclaimed the head waiter, who could not have been more astonished had a bomb exploded under his legs.
"You, Bastien."
"Beg pardon, sir, you said—"
"Discharged!"
"Me—me?"
"You, Bastien."
"What for, sir?" he cried all in a gulp. "Haven't I served you three years without your finding a word of fault?"
"Exactly!" said Fargus, whose black eyesunder the frowning eyebrows, like threatening muzzles, had been holding in their pent-up rage. "Exactly. For all that time I have never found fault—found—Bastien. There's the trouble. There's where you started my suspicions. You're clever, my man, but there you overreached yourself."
Before the impossibility of such a charge, Bastien for the first time in his life lost his self-possession and remained, desperately fastening his hope on the chances of a joke. Fargus, shaking with malicious, dumb laughter ran on:
"Too sharp, my man, too clever: You forget I know the business from A to Z. If you'd stolen a little I should have said nothing. Don't tell me you don't steal. You steal—all steal—and if I haven't caught you it's because you stole too well, or, OR," he cried, raising his finger theatrically, to confound him with the shrewdness of his guess, "OR, because you thought you'd wait until you were put where you could touch the keys of the safe! Aha, have I hit it—you scoundrel!"
"Before God, Mr. Fargus—" the frightened waiter started to protest, but Fargus, with a contemptuous laugh, waved him off, crying:
"Discharged, discharged!"
"What, you turn me out," Bastien said sullenly, "because you haven't found fault with me?"
"Yes! It is impossible, I say, to be so virtuous without some evil purpose."
"But not for good, sir—I can come back?"
"No!" Fargus shouted with a crash of his fist. "No you don't! You gave yourself away that time! If you were innocent you wouldn't take it so meekly. I only suspected before, now I KNOW!"
Bastien, helpless before such madness, remained a moment staring stupidly at him. Then suddenly, convinced of the hopelessness of appeasing such an obsession, he forgot the waiter, and as a man, outraged and indignant, raised his fists and cursed him. At the uproar the clerks and the waiters ran in, while Fargus,rubbing his hands with delight, shouted above the din of oaths:
"So, at last you rage! Now you show your true character! And for three years you have tried to put me to sleep with your meek face! You villain, I'll tell you what I'll do—I'll have your accounts investigated, before you get a cent!"
Bastien, purple in the face, screamed that he would have a lawyer.
"You will, will you!" Fargus cried, bounding up. "And I'll have a judge on you! Oscar, Peter, put him out! Throw him out! Joseph, call a policeman!"
The waiters, who had suffered the usual indignities from the fallen chief, without waiting a second urging seized the struggling Bastien and propelled him from the office.
Fargus, with lips still trembling from his excitation, listened with clenched fists to the dwindling tumult that announced the progress of the eviction. Then gradually his breathing grew quieter, the anger passed from his eyes,he reseated himself, held his head a moment in his hands, then, stretching back, threw out his arms and smiled a smile of vast contentment. Peace had returned to his soul.
His history, from the age of nineteen, had been the record of a ledger, of the hour of rising, eating, working, and returning to sleep. He spent not one cent more one day than another. He woke invariably at half past four he was in bed by one o'clock. He spent five cents on carfare each morning, and saved five by walking home each night. He lunched and dined at his restaurants. His one extravagance was to breakfast at a coffee stall, kept by a woman who thirty years before had jilted him for a longshoreman, where for six cents he might remind her each day of the fortune she had flung aside.
So much for the history of the man. Before nineteen his youth had been one of storm. Three great disillusionments had marked the period, the greatest which can befall a man, in the loyalty of a friend, in the virtue of hismother, and in the love of a woman. The friend was a newsboy, the mother a pedler, and the woman a waitress in a restaurant on the wharves. Society, which regards honor, virtue, and faith, and the capability of sorrow, peculiar to itself, can see nothing but the ridiculous in such tragedies. To the frail boy, however, with his misanthropic bent, these three trials changed the complexion of the sky and brought a rage against humanity, and with it an abiding, vindictive purpose to treat it always as an enemy.
His worldly progress had been the journey of the mole. Burrowing through his youth, obscure and undivined, he had broken ground one day and emerged, to the surprise of his associates, rich and successful. Starting as a chore boy, rising to a waiter in a small oyster house near the docks, he had progressed to the proprietorship of one lunch counter, to the ownership of a restaurant, of an oyster house, of three; until the city knew him at last as the owner of half a dozen resorts, Fargus's West Side Oyster Rooms, Fargus's Bowery OysterParlors, Fargus's Broadway Oyster & Chop House, etc. He had but one vanity, a weakness pardonable in self-made men, he had come to regard himself as the discoverer of the oyster.
On the night of the interview with Bofinger, to the upsetting of all routine he left his office an hour earlier. The hat boy, hastily summoned, arrived trembling, but to the amazement of every one Fargus departed without a word of reproof.
The violence which had eased his craving for cruelty had departed and left him timid and infatuated, with the elusive figure of Sheila running before him and mocking his desires. Instead of following his invariable course down Broadway, he turned into the quieter side streets seeking an opportunity for reflection.
He did not walk like the generality of men, who propel themselves from the back foot, but like the animals who draw themselves forward by their claws. This peculiarity, which was not so noticeable when he was in a hurry,sprang into notice the moment his gait relaxed, when he appeared, as to-night, to be prowling over the ground, alert as a panther to bound forward a dozen feet.
So immersed was he in the perplexities of his passion that he failed to notice the sudden swooping down of three soldiers of the night, until a hand fell on his shoulder and an angry voice commanded:
"Stop short, damn ye!"
Fargus, thus threatened, answered without disconcertion:
"Well, my friend, what can I do for you?"
At this moment, the third of the party, coming up, broke in with a shout:
"Bill—you fool, what'cher stopping him for? It's the old screw!"
"It is, eh?" the other cried with an oath. "And what if it is?"
"Go through him, then, if you're so green!" continued the first, "and if you pull more than a nickel I'll double what you get."
"Quite right," Fargus said cheerfully. "I'vebeen here forty-nine years and no one's ever found any more on me than the next day's car fare." He drew from his pocket five pennies which he displayed for confirmation. "And what's more, you can't find another cent in my room!"
"Ah, come on. Don't waste time over that guy," said the third. "We've turned him inside out a dozen times."
"The hell you have!" the other cried in disgust, and struck up his hand, causing the pennies to scatter into the street.
The three footpads lurched into the darkness. Fargus, fondling his chin, stood a moment chuckling at their discomfiture before striking a match and betaking himself to the task of recovering his pennies. The fifth having been secured on his hands and knees he started rapidly home, penetrated a squalid, heated street, filled with children slumbering on the steps, and halting at a flight of tenements stumbled up a dark stairway and found his door.
Lighting the butt of a candle, which he had drawn from his pocket, he entered a room with one window, murky and pinched, which he called his home, and whose horror can only be appreciated when it is realized that three families had shared the room before him.
In the further corner stood a cot, without covering, and a pine washstand. By the window was a small leather trunk. In the whole room there was not another object. Placing the flickering stump on the washstand, Fargus secured the door. Then going to the trunk he unlocked it, drew out the bedding and made the bed. Once undressed he went in his nightgown to the window and, resting his chin in his palm, gazed up a moment at the black rim of the opposite tenement.
Forty-nine years before, in the little room under the heated roof opposite, he had opened his eyes to the struggle of life. From there, as a child, he had a thousand times gazed down on the room he now occupied as a region of unattainable felicity. To possess such aparadise, all to himself, seemed then the zenith of earthly ambition. It was his earliest conception of the possibilities of wealth, it had never changed. He had remained in his present home twenty-one years, without a larger desire.
To-night he stayed but a short time at the window, the contemplation of his progress did not bring him its accustomed satisfaction. He was conscious of a great unrest, of having suddenly laid his way along unfamiliar and perilous paths, where everything was problematical and uncertain.
"If the lawyer finds everything all right," he said to himself, turning away, "I'll marry her. But if he don't—"
He blew out the candle with the breath of his irritation and flung down on the bed, saying to himself querulously:
"Am I going to sleep to-night, I wonder? Well, supposing he don't—what then?"
It was now a little over four months since Sheila Vaughn had intruded upon the well-ordered and sufficient existence of the misanthrope. On that memorable day in June Fargus, for the first time, had broken his prison-like routine and taken in the middle of the afternoon an hour's relaxation. Three bits of good fortune, arriving together, had inclined him to such an unusual vacation: the monthly contract for clams, thanks to his shrewdness was ten per cent below the market; second, he had concluded a deal by which he took over the establishment of his chief competitor for the theater trade, at terms offered only by a bankrupt; third, he had discovered that his monthly personal expenses had fallen thirty-five cents below the average.
For the first time in his life, then, he felt the imperative need of drawing breath for a moment's gratified contemplation. He sauntered over to Washington Square where, yielding to the pleasure of the spring and his own good humor, he installed himself on a shady bench, buying a newspaper in an automatic seeking for some reason to be idling there. The foliage was complete, yet with the zest of its youth still on it. The fountain in the center flung its spray against the rich green background. Gardeners were setting out the flower beds. The chirp of sparrows and the glee of children blended together in the stirring of the leaves. The air was fragrant and gentle, good to breathe. Fargus, contemplating the scene, forgot his paper, and remained contented and idle, with something that approached a smile.
By one of the thousand and one chances which determine our mortal journey, call it fate or call it coincidence, it presently happened that his eye was arrested by the figure of awoman, advancing towards him. The green silk dress she wore, as though alive to the breeze, was in a continual flutter, the edges billowing as though served by the playful hand of cherubs. In the poise of her figure there was a slight, pleasant consciousness, but the face was given to abstraction and a dreamy, wistful contemplation of the park. A parasol swung languidly from her wrist, occasionally resting lightly on the ground.
She seemed so a part of the gentle prospect that Fargus nodded approvingly, without realizing that it was not nature, but a woman, who had thus drawn his admiring glance.
Arrived near him, she cast about for a vacant seat, and presently, with a glance, came and sat beside him.
His first impulse was to recoil, all a-bristle and scowling, but as his companion continued oblivious to his displeasure he relaxed and from the tail of his eye stole a glance at the slender hands crossed on the top of her parasol. Suddenly he heard a soft voice say:
"I beg your pardon, could you give me the time?"
He withdrew gruffly, glaring at the woman, on whose face appeared first surprise and then a restrained amusement.
"I beg your pardon, have you the time?"
At this gentle reminder he became confused and, fumbling for his watch, with a jerk extended it to her on his palm, without vouchsafing a word.
"Thank you," she said, nodding. "You don't speak English?"
"What do you mean?" he said, startled into speech.
"Oh, I see," she said with a malicious smile. "I was wrong. You do look foreign, though. It's pleasant here, isn't it?"
Insensibly, resenting the ingenuity that drew him on, he was led into conversation and then all too soon abandoned by her rising and departing with an inclination of her head, sent to him over her shoulder as she swept up the shimmering green dress. Fargus jumped upand glanced guiltily at his watch. Then, with a scowl, brushing aside a bevy of children, he rushed back to his office.
The following day, at the same hour, before he had quite understood what had guided his steps, he found himself straying again into the Square. She was already there, in the same green dress, on the bench where they had sat, her arms resting languidly, her head a little back, yielding to the charm of the sky. He faltered as he approached, went on, and then making a sudden turn came and sat beside her.
Two months passed, and in the soul of the misanthrope an infatuation took root and grew, tumultuous and struggling with the stubborn forces of his hatred, without his being able, from word or look, to determine that the woman was leading him on. His first advances, awkward and innocent, to his surprise were abruptly rejected, nor was he able once to transgress the strict limits of acquaintanceship.
Despite such austerity, he would not havebeen Fargus had he been without suspicions. He apprehended a deep purpose and set himself to preparing his retreat in the belief that some day she would attempt to discover his identity. The precaution was unproductive and, without his suspecting it, arrived too late. When in turn he sought to follow her he was surprised by the same ambush which had nearly entrapped Bofinger, and obtained his pardon only by a solemn promise to refrain from further attempts.
The repulse and her steady indifference heaped fuel on the rising flame of his infatuation. He arrived at the stage where he no longer could see the ridicule of his own actions. He asked her to the theater, with the palpitations of a schoolboy blundering through his first escapade, and her constant refusals left him helpless and miserable.
Finally, he sought by discreet questions to discover her existence.
"Why do you always wear the same dress?" he began abruptly.
"I am poor," she answered so naturally that Fargus was left abashed.
"You work for a living then?" he persisted.
"I do embroidery and fancy sewing."
"You are alone?"
"I live with my aunt."
"You support her, I suppose?" he said with almost a sneer.
"I help."
He left her brusquely, enraged at her story, convinced of its insincerity. What infuriated him was that all he had to do was not to return. But that was an experiment he had no desire to try.
Finally he obtained from her a promise to spend a Sunday afternoon with him in Central Park. The concession once laboriously won, he feigned to see the second stage of her campaign. He ran precipitately, full of joyous madness, to a jeweler's, whence, for the enormous price of ten dollars and a half he bore away a horseshoe of pearls, after lingeringromantically over a lover's heart to offer her which he finally lacked the daring.
The next afternoon the mischievous package in his vest pocket left him no peace. He blew hot and he blew cold. He said to himself that he would never have the audacity to offer it, and the next moment imagined impassioned speeches which never reached the tip of his tongue.
Finally, when they had paused to rest, in one of the unfrequented bypaths which wind about the lakes, he plunged his hand into his pocket, and bringing forth the box said in a fit of desperation:
"For you. For luck."
He did not dare to look at her. He had a sinking feeling of having thrown away all by his folly—and he did not know that he was in love.
Sheila turned, saw him trembling like a frightened bird under the hand, took the box and held up the pin. Fargus, scarce believing his fortune, dared to steal a look. Shecounterfeited admirably a flush of pleasure and regret.
"Oh, how wonderful!" she exclaimed, holding it at arm's length and allowing her eyes to show the longing for its possession. "But it is too valuable, I could not take it—no." She looked at it again regretfully, then turning to him added: "You are very kind—but I mustn't, I can't take that!"
Then, by quick movement, she averted her head, as though she wished to conceal from him her tears.
The fire mounted into his temples. He caught her hand, drawing her to him and crying:
"Sheila, Sheila, my darling!"
"Oh! OH!"
She sprang up, wrenching free her hand. Fargus, swept away by his infatuation, followed her, seizing her by her arm. With a rapid movement of anger she threw him off and, dashing a stinging hand across his face, cried:
"All or nothing!"
Then flinging the pin into the dust she stamped on it, covered her face with her hands and, bursting into sobs, ran away; leaving Fargus so thoroughly undone that he could neither speak or move.
"Ah, she wants to marry me, does she?" he cried with a clap of rage, when he had recovered a little from his amazement. He picked up the twisted brooch, dusted it off and cried again, overcome by the enormity of her crime: "She wants to marry me! That's her game, then! Marry me! Huh!"
With a roar he made off, swaying between incredulity and rage, contempt vying with derisive laughter. Full of fury and tempest he passed the night, eating out the slow hours until the next afternoon when he descended like a lion upon the Square, to force an understanding. She was not there.
"What, she won't come!" he cried, thunderstruck at such a solution. He sunk on the bench, waiting desperately for some glimpseof the woman. His rage departed like a puff of wind, leaving him beaten, lonely, and blank.
"She will come to-morrow," he said, as he trudged wearily home.
She came neither that day nor the succeeding days. Then in Fargus the last seeds of resistance died and left nothing but a barren, disheartened surrender. He had no longer any doubts as to his true state, her absence taught him what he could suffer.
A week passed before a chance meeting on the street brought them together again. He sought her forgiveness abjectly and without shame. For a while she refused to give ear to his protestations, his explanations and his promises. At last she inclined her head and replied seriously:
"Very well. But I shall reserve my opinion, for the future."
With this resumption of their daily meetings, his suspicion started up anew, without his still being able to find a hook whereon to hang them. She remained cold and uninterested,refusing always to believe in his vows of affection. It is true, he had not spoken of marriage.
"Sheila, you don't care for me," he said once to her in unreasoning anger.
"I don't," she said with a nod.
"And it won't make any difference to you if you never see me again."
"Yes, it would. You have been kind, and my life is lonely," she said reflectively. "I will miss you."
"You say that as if you were going away," he said irritably.
"True. I haven't told you. We go next week to Chicago."
"And why should you go to Chicago?" he cried furiously.
"My aunt must go—she's had a legacy left her, a small one but it'll mean a good deal. Of course, I have to go with her," she added, a little regretfully.
The next morning, in a panic, Fargus had sought out Bofinger.
Fargus, who slept as badly as a bridegroom on the wedding eve, was up before five o'clock. After replacing the bedding in the trunk he departed for his morning's breakfast. Three blocks to the west near the river front, in a frame building which occupied a corner, a flaring yellow sign, over a sunken basement, announced,
Nellie the Coffee-Woman
Ladies & Gents Parlors.
Three wooden steps, rotted by the weather, descended past the food bulletins into a sanded room. It was in this underground resort, with its rough clients, that Fargus had served his apprenticeship, faithfully his master and his master's daughter, pretty Nell O'Hara, whohad jilted him for the privilege of maintaining the present Mr. Biggs in idleness among his bottles. Fargus descended the familiar steps and entered. Never once did he return to the presence of his first love without a pang of mortification that all the triumphs of his changed fortune could not obliterate.
A ponderous woman on whose expanding trunk time had recorded each successive year was behind the counter. Of the charm that once was Nell's nothing remained but a certain reminiscent prettiness of the face.
Fargus, who entered as a conqueror, took his seat at the counter, asking maliciously, as he never failed to do:
"And how's your man, Nell?"
AND HOW'S YOUR MAN, NELL
"AND HOW'S YOUR MAN, NELL?"
"The same," she answered, as though the simple statement required no explanation. "And are you doin' well, Mr. Fargus?"
"I bought another restaurant, Nell," he said. "Yes, I'm doin' well. It's a little larger than the old place."
He saw she understood the malice of hislast remark and enjoyed the new opening of the old wound. To-day his vindictiveness was tempered by a feeling of wonder. With Sheila in mind he looked at this woman, mottled and worn with toil, and asked himself how it was possible that she could still have the power to make him suffer. The thought recalled Sheila and abruptly he arose and departed. But, not wishing to lose an opportunity for vengeance, he returned and said wisely:
"Nell, perhaps I'll have something to tell you before long, a bit of news that may interest you. My love to your man."
He departed for the oyster markets for his purchases, but without the zest that gave to these excursions the exhilaration of the battle-field.
"I'm a fool," he said to himself angrily, "to let a woman upset me so. How the devil, though, am I going to wait two days more to hear from that lawyer!"
Bofinger had resolved to conceal his relations with Fargus from Groll, taking the risk of aninopportune visit of his client. He knew well the consequences of such treachery once discovered, but the avidity of great stakes gave him the daring to play with fire. He was in the office, chatting with Groll and LeBeau, when towards one o'clock he perceived from his sentry by the window the incongruous figure of Fargus, advancing from the direction of Sixth Avenue. He yielded to a moment's panic, then rapidly, with a hasty excuse, stepped out of the door and departed, not too quickly, towards the west.
"They may notice him again," he thought, "but it's not so risky as going to meet him."
He slackened his gait at the corner, bought a newspaper and, perusing it, went slowly northward. A moment later Fargus shuffled up, all out of breath.
"Oh, it's you," Bofinger exclaimed in surprise. "That's lucky; you want to see me? Shall we go back to the office?"
"There's some one there," Fargus said nervously.
"Yes, there's my partner and a reporter," Bofinger replied with an air of reflection. "Perhaps you'd rather—"
"Let's walk on," Fargus interrupted. Then, no longer holding back his anxiety, he blurted out, "Well, what? Have you found out anything?"
"I think I've made a good beginning," the lawyer said in his professional manner. "Of course in one day—"
"I was passing," Fargus said, avoiding his eye, "I thought—"
"Well, sir," Bofinger broke in tactfully, "I have investigated enough, I guess, to satisfy you. To begin, Miss Sheila Vaughn is an orphan living with an aunt whom she supports by her needlework."
At this confirmation of Sheila's story the misanthrope gave a sigh of relief, which showed the lawyer what pangs a contrary answer would have cost him. Immediately, seizing the arm of the lawyer, he stammered:
"Are you sure? Can you be sure? How are you sure?"
"My dear sir," Bofinger objected, "I ain't goin' to make a statement on insufficient evidence. I followed Miss Vaughn without any difficulty. She lives in a respectable boarding-house on the West side. Here is the address, for your information," he added, passing him a slip. "I marked the house and went back pretending to seek a room. Two circumstances, fortunately, helped me to gather a great deal of information. In the first place, the servant who showed me around asked nothing better than to talk."
"Well, well?" Fargus broke in irritably.
"A little patience," Bofinger said with a smile. "Things have got to be told in their order. I learned from the servant that Miss Vaughn and her aunt Miss Morissey have lived in the same rooms for over six years. The aunt is a retired school-teacher, having perhaps a very small income. Miss Vaughn, evidently, is the mainstay, doing fancyembroidery and needlework. The servant told me that she was very devout. Now for the second circumstance, but this won't be to your liking."
"What do you mean?" Fargus demanded, instantly alarmed.
"I learned that Miss Vaughn and her aunt are going to leave."
"You are sure?" Fargus cried in despair. He had only half believed the announcement from the lips of the woman.
"I am. With an inspiration, I instantly asked to see their room. What do you think of that? On this pretext I saw not only the room but Miss Vaughn and her aunt. Well, they impressed me very favorably, quiet and devoted—"
"But when is she going, and where?" Fargus broke in impatiently.
"They go to Chicago in a few days—a very few."
"And did you find out why?"
"I did," Bofinger said with a nod, and beganagain. "Of course I did not try to pump them, but when I left I said to the maid—"
"Never mind that, tell me now why they are going."
"Miss Morissey, the aunt," Bofinger said, stopping short, "has had a small legacy left her and is going to settle her affairs."
"Then what she told me was true after all!" Fargus exclaimed, without perceiving how clearly he portrayed his real sentiments.
"Now, of course," Bofinger said glibly, stealing a glance at his dejected client. "I shall at once take up the threads and push my investigation rapidly."
"Mr. Bofinger," Fargus said, coming out of his abstraction, "that's enough. Don't do anything more. I've got now all I wanted to know."
"Then you are satisfied?" Bofinger replied in feigned astonishment.
"Yes." He walked a while, studying the sidewalk, and then asked slowly: "Mr. Bofinger, you see all kinds of people—you ought to bea judge. I'm going to put a question to you. Would you, if you were me, in my position, adopt Miss Vaughn?"
"Really, my dear sir," Bofinger said carefully. "I can't take the responsibility of answering that."
"Is she the right sort—steady and dependable?"
"Oh, if you mean is she worthy of being adopted—certainly yes! But," he added with a show of frankness, "if you do want my opinion, I think the young lady is too independent a character to permit it."
Fargus hesitated a moment, with an impulse to confidences, then, retreating awkwardly, he began to draw out his pocketbook, saying:
"Thanks, you've done well."
"Then you want nothing further?" Bofinger said, smiling at the way his hand fumbled in his coat.
"No, no," Fargus said hastily. "You've done enough. That's what I wanted. You've done fine."
He turned his back on the lawyer and examined the pocketbook, close to his nose, for he was short-sighted. After long weighing of reasons, he plucked forth two bills as one might draw out a thorn, and spinning about hastily he thrust them into the lawyer's hand, as though mistrusting his second thoughts. Bofinger saw that each was for twenty dollars. With a flash, he stiffened and said sternly:
"My dear sir, I would like you to know that, in my profession, we fix the remuneration."
Fargus, believing himself entrapped, looked with repressed rage at the money he had surrendered. Bofinger allowed him this moment of torture, before continuing on the same key:
"My fee, sir, for these services is twenty dollars."
And with a gesture that was sultanesque he returned the other bank-note.
Fargus received one of the shocks of his life. The idea that any one could refuse money so confounded him that he did not have wit enough to extend his hand. But only for amoment; then, with a grunt of joy, he snatched up the bill, crying with genuine feeling:
"Mr. Bofinger, you'll not regret this!"
"Thank you, that is my invariable fee—good day," the lawyer said, holding his hat like a statue. Then, snapping back to life again, he returned exultantly to the office. In the short interview he had grown immeasurably in his own eyes. But one thing distressed him, the thought that so much talent must be locked in his own bosom. He drew a long breath and, walking on his toes, said with conviction:
"Ah, Bofinger, you were made for bigger things!"
Two weeks later Sheila and Max Fargus left church as man and wife and, entering a cab, set out for their new home near Stuyvesant Square. The comedy which Bofinger had devised had thus come to a successful end. The lawyer was not mistaken. Fargus, in despair at the thought of Sheila's leaving, had offered himself that afternoon. She did not accept at once, she asked time for reflection; but promised, in response to his frantic appeals, to remain in New York. Miss Morissey, her aunt, departed for Chicago on the next afternoon. Fargus did not see her.
Sheila, after several days, allowed herself to be persuaded. But in consenting to be his wife she promised nothing more. She frankly avowed herself happy to have the opportunityof a home, admitted a certain friendly esteem, which she did not pretend was irrevocable, but made him understand that to win her love lay in his hands alone. On these terms she asked him, with many misgivings, if it was right for a woman to marry.
Fargus argued the question furiously and without rest, and succeeded, to his delight, in disposing of one objection after the other, without for a moment suspecting that it was he and not Sheila the arguments were designed to convince.
The arrival of the wedding was to him a day of bewildering and complex emotions. So well did the woman keep him in suspense of her final acceptance, that it was only on the morning of the wedding-day itself that he awoke to the fact that the day would dispose of his own existence.
His first act was characteristic. He rushed in a tempest to the coffee stall, where he announced his departure and his marriage to Nell, to whom for the final time he broughtthe agony of a destiny despised. Refreshed by thiscoup de graceon the woman he had never forgiven, he hurried chastened and cheerful to Sheila.
At first he had opposed a religious ceremony. He professed himself an atheist. When one ceases to believe in man, one does not believe in God. Sheila, who was really devout, would hear of nothing else. Fargus ceded, but his appearance in church had put him into a frightful humor.
Now in the cab, alone at last with the woman he had so long desired, he discovered all at once that the law, which gave him everything, gave him nothing at all. In his squat hand were the four fingers which she had ceded to him, without resistance and without feeling. He clung to them awkwardly, gingerly, knowing not what to do.
Sheila did not even feel his presence. Withdrawn as far as possible, without appearing to shun him, she nerved herself for the battle which, with sure instinct, she felt approaching.Of the two, she had all the self-possession, plus an excited mentality which stimulated all her forces at the approach of the crisis.
She was in this mood when the cab stopped at the flight of red brick dwellings, before the stoop above which the tin sailor was whirling his paddles. She had a slight surprise. It was not elegance; but she had dreaded worse.
"It's not so discouraging," she thought, as she jumped out full of anticipation. "It is not bad—to begin with."
Astonished to find the shades down, she rang impatiently, then turning to Fargus, who was disputing furiously with the driver, she cried:
"Is this right? Have I made a mistake?"
"In a moment, I have the key," he cried, dismissing the driver and hurrying up.
"Ah!" she thought, drawing breath like a gladiator entering the arena. "I'm to have no servant, then!"
"There, my dear," cried the voice of her husband, proudly, "there you are!"
Forgetting twenty pretty speeches, he threw open the door and stood aside with bashful pride to let her pass.
The beam of light entered the vacant dusk like an intruder. Sheila seized all in one swift glance and her lips set dangerously. She remained without motion, while Fargus, mumbling nervously, stole to the parlor window and flung open the shutters. The hall was bare, the parlor had but a table and a cheap lamp in its emptiness. The walls were destitute of ornament, clothed with an invariable dust-green paper.
She went quickly to the dining-room. The furniture was of the scantiest. She counted the chairs, there were just two. The sideboard and the table were of oak, thinly veneered and not fresh. The two gazed silently, Sheila with swelling throat and clouded eyes, Fargus, to whom each purchase had been a plunge into the abyss of ruin, trembling again with the memory of the pangs each had cost him.
"Well," he asked at last, "it's pretty, don't you think?"
"Oh, the house can be made very pretty," she said pensively and, turning to him with a smile, she added gratefully, "and you were real nice to leave me the furnishing of it."
"The—the furnishing!" he stammered, opening his eyes.
"Wait and see what I can do," she cried with a laugh. "Now I'm going up to see the rest."
She left him stupefied and tripped up the stairs. In their bedroom, which alone was furnished, there was nothing but a bed, a chest of drawers, and two chairs. She felt a profound discouragement, a sudden desire to weep, but it was only the weakness that precedes great victories.
"Now or never!" she thought, as she heard the soft step of her husband on the stairs. She threw herself into an attitude of inspection, gathering her skirts from the dusty floor, sether head critically on one side, and extended her hand as though to calculate the height of the walls.
"What are you doing?" Fargus said, stopping short.
"I was trying to decide," she answered meditatively, "whether to paper all the room in rose or to use a border."
Fargus leaned against the door for support. Then forcing a horrible laugh, he cried with desperate good humor:
"Say, now, you're a good one, and that's a good joke!"
"As for the guest room—green and white," she continued, passing to the back; "green and white is fresh and clean."
The absurdity of a guest room convinced Fargus. He laughed with a light heart and entered the spirit of the jest.
"Green and white is good," he assented, wagging his head.
"The question is whether to have a double bed or two single ones," she persisted.
"Oh, two!" he said gravely, sticking his tongue in his cheek.
"A double bed is cheaper," she said reflectively.
"Bah!"
"I know just the furniture," she said, embracing the room with a sweep of her hand. "Such a bargain! We ought to pick it up at once,—seven pieces, bird's-eye maple too, just the elegant thing."
"Let's go now," he said with exaggerated levity.
"Shall we—O Max!" she answered, clapping her hands. Then nodding seriously, she said in approbation: "You have begun well. You don't know what it means to a woman to have the making of her home. Just think what fun it'll be, picking out carpets and rugs and pictures. But we must decide on the papering right off—because I don't intend to be out of my home any longer than I can help it!"
He eyed her suspiciously. There was that in her enthusiasm which made him doubt herlevity. Nevertheless he could not yet bring himself to comprehend such a monstrosity. He answered facetiously:
"How about the stable and horses, my dear?"
Seeing that she must bring matters to an issue she returned to their room, nodded and said pensively:
"This we ought to decide more carefully. I'm for ebony, though. It's nobby. Now," she added, wheeling about, "let's go to the hotel."
"What hotel?" he said dumfounded.
"Why, the hotel we're going to stay at, until the house is ready," she said impatiently.
Then all at once he comprehended that he was caught. He felt for a chair and stumbled into it.
"Then what you said about furnishing was true?" he said in a dying voice. "You meant it!"
"Why, what is the matter with you?" she asked, stopping and looking at him in pretended amazement.
Suddenly he bounded up and said brutally, pointing to the room:
"This is where we stay!"
"Here?" she cried scornfully. "This isn't fit for a servant!"
She had dreamed of luxury so long that the manner came to her naturally. For a moment Fargus was overawed by her sudden stature, then the thought came to him that after all she belonged to him and that he had a right to do as he wished with her.
"Well, that's where you stay!" he cried with that rage which is as closely allied to love as madness to genius. She saw him advance upon her to crush her in his arms. Without giving an inch, she put her hands behind her and looked him frigidly in the eyes. His hands touched her before they fell. She was at once anger and ice; to have continued would have been to embrace a monument. So overcome was he that he remained awkwardly before her, not knowing how to extricate himself.
"Go and sit down," she said coldly, "and let's have an understanding at once!"
He hesitated, with his eyes on the floor, brooding whether to carry it through by violence. She saw and was frightened.
"And let me say at once, Mr. Fargus," she continued hurriedly. "Never attempt again what you tried then! For if you do—I shall know how to protect myself."
The mystery of her threat appalled him. The man in love believes all absurdities. He retreated.
"What furnishing does it need?" he asked sullenly.
"Everything, carpets, curtains, linen, furniture," she said aggressively, now that her moment of danger had passed. "Even to the servant's room nothing is done!"
"Servant!" he cried in terror. "Do you want to ruin me!"
"What!" she exclaimed in turn. "Do you mean I'm to have no servant!"
"What for?"
"Then it's true," she cried vehemently. "You were bringing me to this garret to be your servant! This is the kindness you promised me—this is your generosity!"
"Sheila!" he cried in fear, as she gathered her cape about her.
"This, then, is what your love means!" she continued angrily. "So you expect me to come to this, do you? A kennel! A dining-room without a chair for a friend!"
"I have no friends!"
"So you thought, did you," she said scornfully, "that I would cook for you, wash for you, clean for you, make your bed for you? You call that getting a wife! You are wrong, you don't want a wife—you want a slave! Go and get one!"
"Sheila, one moment,—Sheila!" he cried, seeing her about to depart.
She paused, and then, with a toss of her head, returned and sat down. Presently she said sadly, her eyes filling with tears:
"And this is all you care for me. If youwere poor and I loved you, I'd share anything with you. But you are rich—you told me so twenty times. So, if you bring me to this, it can only mean, Max, that you despise me."
"No, no!" he cried, won by the sweetness of the look she gave him. He flung himself at her knees, striving to gain her hand, but Sheila, withdrawing it with firmness, said gently:
"What else am I to think? I haven't concealed from you that I don't love you. I liked you for your kindness, I respected you—yes, I trusted you, when you swore you would know how to earn my love. I consented to marry you telling you all this, for I longed for a home. Is this, then," she continued with a catch in her voice, "is this the way you're going to make me love you?"
He had caught her hand, he felt himself going, slipping from the old moorings, and with a last resistance he cried desperately:
"Sheila, what is it you want?"
"To be treated as your wife!" she saidquickly, avoiding the pitfall of the specific. "To be treated as though you were proud of me. Either that or"—she paused a moment and ran her fingers through his hair; "or if money means more to you than to love and be loved, poor man, then let us own our mistake and part—now."
"No, Sheila, no! Don't leave me!" he cried, and sinking his head in her lap, vanquished, he caught her knees while the very rout of his soul made her indispensable to his infatuation.
"Then I am—to stay?"
A sob was her answer.
"Poor fellow," she said compassionately. "What do you know of life? I will teach you how to live."
These terrible words, which filled the flesh of the miser with mortification, aroused in the lover the frenzy of the gambler. He felt that he was throwing his all to the winds and the thought intoxicated him.
"Sheila," he cried, lifting his face, "do what you want! I love you—only you!"
She bent her head hurriedly. There were in her eyes two things she did not dare let him see, the pride of her triumph and that bewildered pity which comes only to the utter victors.
Fargus, as all those who are forced to surrender without conditions, retained a reservation,—he counted on the future. His nature was too simple and intense to fathom the complexities of marriage. He had the fierce, half-savage conception that the woman resigned her ascendancy when she gave herself into his power. He conceived of woman as a tyrant before marriage and a suppliant ever after. For him the physical submission carried all with it. So even in his surrender he believed that time would restore the balance in his favor.
Sheila, on the contrary, had well understood that the first weeks of marriage must be a battle on which would hinge the fortunes of her whole life. She had this advantage, thatFargus was utterly unprepared and ignorant of the thousand agilities of her sex. She had subdued him by taking him by surprise, but she was not the dupe of her victory. She knew where the danger lay, divining the secret thoughts of her husband. The problem with her was to forever cheat his infatuation. She submitted but she did not give herself to him.
The history of these unending skirmishes, open or ambushed, seldom rising to the dignity of a conflict, was an uninterrupted record of successes for the woman. Fargus, who had counted on the future, found himself each day more willingly subjugated. This infatuation that overturned all his ideas of conduct gave to his love the mad aspect of a forbidden passion. Each time that he ceded to Sheila he had a moment of horror, and then that delirious access of folly and passion which comes only to the man who loves and ruins himself.
Sheila, then, had her way, but she did not abuse her power. She even began to practise economies,—she sewed the curtains with herown needle and marked the linen. Fargus avowed himself touched by such acts of moderation. Nevertheless, there were moments in the night when he awoke with a cry, starting in a cold perspiration from a nightmare where he had seen himself dragged down into bankruptcy by the follies of his pretty wife. He rose and crept over the house, trying the windows and the locks, listening suspiciously at the door of the servant, an innovation to which he could never accustom himself. Then returning softly to his room he regained his bed. But the night was rare when the creak of a plank did not start him again on his uncanny rounds.
He was not happy. He had believed that in marriage all desires were gratified. Instead he found himself, to his mystification, even more miserable than in the days when he returned in despair to his one room in the slums, there to pursue all night, in his dreams, the elusive figure of the radiant woman. He came at length, slowly, to understand whatshe adroitly and cruelly intended he should, that the possession at last of Sheila, even under the wide domain of marriage, left him still defeated, and that it was her love alone that would satisfy. After that he was ready for all follies.
When Sheila saw that the victory was complete, she had, naturally, a moment of intense virtue, in which she said to herself that she could well be content, with a man whom she so easily bent to her every desire. Besides, the joy of making a home was to her such a natural impulse, that during its ecstasy Fargus represented to her no more than the husband. This joy was so intense that she came near relenting and showing him some kindness,—a slip against which she was forced to be constantly on her guard. For she saw clearly that her domination lay in perpetual vigilance, and that with such a man nothing could be shared—she would have to be either a tyrant or a slave.
There was on her fair horizon but the uglyshadow of the lawyer. She had almost forgotten him, then she almost doubted his existence, so fantastic seemed the idea of their extraordinary contract. Each month, she had agreed to give him an accounting, delivering him her note for the sum due. But to carry out such a program they must see each other, and she asked herself incredulously how the lawyer could manage.
The month passed without a sign of Bofinger, when, one evening as she was in her bedroom, she heard, to her amazement, the familiar shuffle of Fargus on the stoop, accompanied by a thick, resolute fall of feet. The lock clicked and the voice of Bofinger said loudly:
"See here, Mr. Fargus, your lady won't like being taken by surprise."
She understood that he was sending her a warning. She had indeed need of it. A voice from the dead could not have struck more terror than this sudden apparition of the lawyer. She felt her knees wabble and with an effort seized a bottle of smelling salts. Herrepulsion for Bofinger, intensified by fear, was suddenly a hundred times magnified by this uncanny introduction into her home, on the very arm of her husband, at the moment when she fatuously had put him out of her mind.
"Ah, I was so happy!" she cried, sinking limply into a chair.
Nevertheless she realized that the moment was fraught with peril and that she must regain her control.
"Sheila, Sheila!" Fargus called from below.
She shut her teeth savagely over her lip and went down to face her husband's glance.
"Sheila," he said, as she halted in simulated surprise, "I brought an old friend with me,—Mr. Bofinger."
She went hurriedly past her husband, murmuring something, and extended her hand to the lawyer, who, bland and smiling, bowed with stiff legs. Seeing his self-possession, she rallied, brought to calm by the quiet command of his eye.
"Take Mr. Bofinger into the parlor, mydear," Fargus said. "Put him into a comfortable chair and make him at home. I'll be down in a minute."
"Really, Mrs. Fargus," Bofinger said, halting on the threshold of the parlor, "I compliment you on your home. I heard my friend had to sail pretty close this winter, but I guess that must have been rumor. Really, this is elegant; say, this is luxury!"
While pronouncing this glibly he managed to lay his fingers over his lips, sending her a glance of warning. Sheila, at this extraordinary introduction, delivered without a trace of expression to clarify its meaning, stood in stupid bewilderment. When she heard the sound of her husband's step above, she started forward with an impulsive question. With a rapid frown the lawyer again laid his finger along his lips and, drawing her to a corner, said quickly:
"Not a word to-night. Complain at the table about the size of the house—remember!" Then aloud, quelling her astonishment with aperemptory gesture, he continued, raising his voice purposely, "Mrs. Fargus, I really ought to apologize. I shouldn't have dropped in on you like this, but your husband would have it; and when an old friend gets you buttonholed—you know!"
This assumption of intimacy, avowed alike by the lawyer and her husband, completed her terror. Her wits had deserted her. All her artillery lay in the consciousness of her fascination. As soon as she knew herself loved, she became formidable and arrogant. The unimpressionable glance of the lawyer disarmed her and scattered all her artifices. Obeying an imperious sign from Bofinger, she gathered herself together and said hastily:
"Why—I am sure my husband was quite right, and, indeed, it's no trouble."
"So I said," Fargus put in, his nocturnal face appearing at the door when she believed him above. "Sheila, it's all right, I had something sent over from the restaurant."
"Then I'll see to it," she said, escapingquickly, for she felt as yet unequal to retaining her composure before both of them.
The supper, to her relief, passed easily. She dissociated herself from the conversation, resisting all the lawyer's attempts to drag her into it and evading obstinately a dozen openings which he gave her to criticise her home. Keeping a stubborn silence, then, she began anxiously to study his game. Seeing that she had no intention of obeying him, he shifted his tactics. He began a tirade against the extravagance of the modern woman, asserting that she put on her back one fourth of the family income. Sheila smiled, but guarded herself against a retort. Fargus applauded in his taciturn way.
Receiving no answer, Bofinger developed his thesis, to the point of declaring that the nation was becoming effeminate, due to the fact that the wife instead of the husband was the dominating influence in the home. He even ascribed to this cause the increase of domestic infelicity.
"Is he, by any chance, trying to force me to quarrel with him?" Sheila thought in amused perplexity. "Is that his game, I wonder?"
Acting on this assumption, she avoided all expression so skilfully that the lawyer on his leaving immediately after supper shot her a glance full of anger and irritation.
"Come again—come soon," Fargus said cordially. "Sheila, ask Mr. Bofinger to run in and see you some afternoon."
"Why," she stammered, overcome by this new surprise, "I hope he will."
When Fargus returned from ushering out the lawyer, he found Sheila in the parlor, an elbow on the mantelpiece, resting her chin pensively in her palm.
"I thought you had no friends," she said immediately.
"I? So I haven't—not many."
"Mr. Bofinger is a friend then?"
"He is—why, yes."
"You have known him a long time then?"
"Oh, quite a while."
"Five years?"
"Well—around that."
"Why, you've never spoken to me of him."
"Didn't I? So I didn't."
"Tell me this," she said, her anxiety rising above her prudence, "do you rely upon him? Do you trust him?"
"Why, in a way," he answered evasively, adding sharply, "why do you ask that?"
She made a gesture of impatience.
"You don't like him, eh?"
Her shoulders twisted with an indefinable displeasure.
"Why not?"
"I could never trust—that man!" she said desperately. "It's a woman's instinct, that's all."
"Nonsense," he answered with great good humor, "Bofinger's square as they make 'em. He is not a lady's man, I know. But he's got sense—horse sense, and Sheila, my dear, if you ever want advice, go to him."
She opened her eyes very wide at this andsaid nothing more, turning it over and seeking some explanation in the tangle of the evening.
"I've been a fool," she thought, glancing at the satisfied face of Fargus. "I've played into Bofinger's hands—whereas I ought to have made Fargus jealous."
The truth is, she was too near the dreaded shadow of Bofinger to have regained the clearness of analysis which would have saved her from such a blunder.