BOFINGER IN SHEEP'S CLOTHING
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, that Fargus 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 her own
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
what she 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 ugly shadow 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. Her repulsion 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, my dear," 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 a
peremptory 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, escaping quickly, 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 and said 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.