THE COMPACT
Sheila looked at him in astonishment. A world intervened between the two
attitudes. The man she had fathomed and did not fear had given place to
something hard, impassive, and mechanical. She saw she had marched into
a trap and the perspiration rose cold between her shoulders as she moved
uneasily, seeking with a smile to regain the man from the lawyer.
"Come, it isn't so bad as that!" she said with a moue. "You see how I am
fixed. What do you ask?"
"Half!"
She looked at him open-mouthed. A moment intervened before she asked in
perplexity:
"What? Half of what?"
"Half!" he answered, raising his voice. "Share and share alike!"
"Do you think I'm a fool?" she cried angrily, springing up. "A fool?"
"Half!" he insisted, pressing the point of his pencil obstinately into
the table. "Of all he gives you--one half to me!"
"Oh, that's too absurd!" she cried with a clap of laughter.
"My dear Miss Morissey, sit down, sit down and listen," he said acridly.
"We are to be partners, share alike or the game's off. Whatever you get,
whatever money passes from his hands to yours, for whatever reason, for
expenses or for pleasure, for carfare even, one half comes to me--to my
account. Accept and I take all expenses. You leave here to-night and
marry Fargus in two months. Otherwise I break you with a word, as easily
as this."
He took a glass from the table, placed it without anger under his foot,
and crushed it.
She came suddenly to him, tears of fear in her eyes, and placing her
hand on his shoulder said:
"You're not going to be as hard as that--I am starving, in rags--have a
little pity on me. Or is it the way of you lawyers," she said, forcing
an anxious smile, "to ask for more than you expect? If so, you are
wrong. I will be generous. Help me to marry Fargus and I'll give you one
thousand dollars."
"One thousand dollars!" he cried uproariously. "You fool, do you know
what the old miser is worth? A quarter of a million! Half, half I say!"
She still sought the man in the lawyer and, throwing herself on her
knees, cried:
"But that would make me a slave! You can't mean that--you are too young
to be so merciless. Make your own terms, say anything reasonable, and
it's yours."
"Miss Morissey," he said pompously, "you are mistaken in the person
you're addressing. Mr. Bofinger has left the room. You're dealing now
with the lawyer. Let me tell you right now, as a lawyer, I don't set
one price to get another. I always get what I ask. When I have once made
up my mind what's coming to me, I never relent. I am not twenty-one," he
added with a smile. "I do not throw away thousands, either for caresses
or tears. Get up!"
She regained her feet, affrighted, perceiving that this obsession of the
lawyer was the more implacable that it was set in vanity and pride.
"Don't drive me to despair!" she said with an ugly flash of anger.
He began to laugh.
"You are wrong," she said sullenly, "to squeeze such a bargain. I will
refuse."
"Come," he said, rising, and with a brutal movement laying his hand over
the bank-note. "Is it for you to make conditions? I know your kind, a
fine dress outside, rags to your skin--rags, that's the story, rags and
crumbs, beggary and starvation. And you bargain with me! Come, that's
too good. Suppose I offer _you_ a thousand and take the rest? I could
do it. I hold the whip hand. I make the terms. Enough of this. Come,
choose."
He held the bill loosely in his fingers, withdrawing it gradually. She
followed its retreat with haggard looks, until, when he was on the point
of replacing it in his pocket, she shot forth her hand, and said
sullenly:
"Give me it--I am starving!"
"There, my dear, that's sensible," he said with a burst of good humor.
"You can have the best dinner to-night New York can give! What! Are you
hankering after cold bread and sausage? Is poverty so lovely that you
regret it? And, Sheila, do you think that boiled ham is any more
satisfying than a crust? Look at me. I swear I suffer as much on a
pittance as you do on nothing. I also, my dear, am hungry for a little
bit of the cream. No, you are not one bit more miserable, here in this
room, than I; I, who if I had had ten thousand dollars to start with
would be worth a million to-day. Do you think a man like me--with my
talents, don't suffer too? Come, we're more than partners--comrades! We
each want the same thing, don't we? So lets play the game together and
square now! There's no limit to what we can do!"
She felt the wolfish sincerity in his avowal and perceived that it was
useless to struggle, but, disliking his new mood, she said coldly:
"I'd rather talk to the lawyer."
"Which reminds me," he said, driving into his pocket. "Kindly sign this
paper. It is an acknowledgment of a common-law marriage between us."
"Between _us_!" she exclaimed, utterly bewildered.
"Purely technical, my dear," he said with a reassuring smile. "My
affections ain't enlisted. The document is simply for my protection and
is, as you will see, the only one that can guarantee me you'll live up
to your agreement."
"So that means I am to be absolutely in your power?" she said slowly.
"Absolutely."
"And if I don't do as I agree--"
"I'd produce the contract and prove your marriage to Fargus void. You
see how it protects me?"
"And suppose Fargus dies?" she persisted. "You see I want to know all."
"In that case," he said cheerily, "We should probably--after a decent
period--get married ourselves."
"That's what I wanted to know!" she cried, hurling the contract angrily
away. "Very well. I will never, never sign such a paper, never!"
She began to whip up and down the room like a panther, her lips moving,
repeating incessantly, "Never, never!"
Bofinger, without shifting, allowed her passion to run its limit. Then
when, from its very violence, exhaustion compelled her at last to fall
into a chair, he said softly:
"So, so. Then, my dear, you had no idea of holding to the agreement, had
you? Come now, why are you so furious? Because you find that I am not
to be tricked? Take the pen and sign."
She shook her head weakly and put it away with her hand, as a child
refusing medicine.
"I shan't give you time to repent," he said, pursuing his advantage. "If
you refuse, I take a cab from here to Max Fargus. I don't propose that
you shall see him first. It's hard luck, of course it is, that you can't
get it all, but luck has given me a chance to divide the pie--and what
are you going to do about it? Come, come," he said, again advancing the
contract to the yielding woman. "Sign and get through with this
wretchedness. What holds you? Do you love squalor? Do you prefer this to
luxury and riding in your own carriage--for play your cards well and
that's what you can get. There, sign this and learn what it is to live."
The devil could not have persuaded her more eloquently. She allowed him
to slip the paper under her unresisting fingers.
"Sign, my dear," he repeated softly, moderating his impatience. "There
now, we are sensible. Don't try to disguise your handwriting. I have
your signature, you know."
She dropped the paper and pen with a cry of fear and recoiling
exclaimed:
"No, no, I won't sign. I am afraid of you--afraid of what you may make
me do. You would stop at nothing!"
[Illustration: "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 light marked 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.