AS A FLASH IN THE DARK
The card Sheila had played in her desperation succeeded so completely
that she became alarmed. She had played on impulse, recking not the
danger of crossing the lawyer. The effect on Fargus was so extreme that
she suddenly found herself in all the dangers which now arose from her
double relation. The very thought that any man might make love to his
wife had sufficed to awaken all the demons of jealousy in Fargus and had
caused the face of Bofinger to appear the most odious in the world. From
that night the name of the lawyer never passed his lips. He avoided him
studiously in the streets. He left orders at his restaurants to deny him
access. It was no longer only Bofinger he held in fear but all younger
men, and he resolved bitterly never again to commit the error of
introducing into his home that particular danger.
For six days Bofinger was unable to catch even a glimpse of his
coat-tails or to penetrate to his office. Vaguely alarmed, he studied
his time and succeeded in surprising Fargus one afternoon at the moment
he was leaving for the rounds of his various establishments. Fargus,
unaware of his proximity, was startled by a clasp on his arm and the
glib voice of Bofinger crying in his ear:
"Here's luck! Where in thunder have you been hiding all the while?"
In dismay Fargus let fall the package under his arm.
"Evil conscience," said the lawyer, laughing as he restored the bundle.
"Well, are things going any better?"
"What things?" Fargus stammered. He looked at him darkly, seeing nothing
but the eyes that Sheila had found handsome.
"Hello, didn't your lady tell you how I lectured her on expenses?"
Bofinger said, examining him with uneasiness. "Guess I must have turned
her against me with too much advice."
"Oh yes," Fargus said finally, forced to say something. "I remember."
"It goes better then?"
"Better."
"Well, well, glad to hear it," Bofinger said, withdrawing his arm and
shooting a queer look. "Glad to have been of use. Call on me any time.
By, by!"
With a nod and a luxuriant wave of his arm he ground on his heel and
strode away. Fargus, a little uneasy, plodded along saying to himself
that he had shown his ill-humor too abruptly. Next, remembering the
little deceit in which they had been fellows, he became genuinely
alarmed lest Bofinger, offended, should revenge himself by blabbing to
Sheila. At this horrible idea he at once set out for Jefferson Market
determined to conciliate the lawyer. The poor man, after a few weeks of
marriage, was ready to do anything to escape facing a scene.
Entering hastily he found the office in the sole possession of Hyman
Groll. He halted, startled by the unusual figure of the hunchback, and
asked:
"Isn't Mr. Bofinger back?"
"Not yet."
"When do you expect him?"
"When I see him," Groll answered, shrugging his shoulders.
"You're his partner?" Fargus said, surveying the hunchback with an
interest which Groll returned, each recognizing in the other a common
intensity of purpose.
"I'm his partner. Can we do anything for you?"
"No, no," Fargus said hastily; "just tell him I want to see him very
much."
"What name?"
"Fargus. He will know."
"You're a client of his, then?" Groll said with aroused curiosity.
"Yes, of course."
"I beg pardon--since when?"
"Why, a couple of months--"
"Indeed--what name?"
"Fargus, Max Fargus."
"Oh, Max Fargus. Thank you, I'll speak to him," Groll answered with just
the slightest twitch to his eyebrows.
Excusing himself Fargus hurried directly home, convinced that the lawyer
would be beforehand. He arrived at the corner of Second Avenue just in
time to perceive the figure of Bofinger passing into his home.
"Oh, the villain," he cried, "he is going to betray me!"
And clutching his cane in the middle, he began to run, provoking the
gibes of a group of street urchins, who cheered him on. He reached the
door, blown and trembling, and inserting the key entered. Immediately
such an explosion of anger greeted him from above that, mystified, he
checked the call on his lips and stole cautiously to the foot of the
stairs. The voice of his wife was answering in terror:
"I swear I haven't! I've played square!"
"Look here, Sheila, my girl," cried the furious voice of Bofinger. "It
won't go. It won't do. What I want to know is what you've been telling
the old boy to set him against me!"
The first words had revealed the truth to the misanthrope, as in the
storm a flash suddenly reveals the monstrous iniquities of the night.
The exclamation was stifled in his throat; crumbling he fell across the
banister, clinging to them with desperate fingers, while above the
sounds of the altercation continued their overwhelming revelation.
"Are you going to tell me the truth?" cried the lawyer. "Sheila, either
you've made a blunder or you're playing double with me."
"I am not."
"You've made him suspicious of me."
"I haven't--I swear it--on my honor."
"Honor!" he cried with a roar of laughter. "Cut that out between us!
Now once for all you can't fool me. I know when you're lying, and you're
lying now! Ah, my girl, I've placed you long ago. You think you'll play
me close and get all for yourself."
"Bofinger, you are mad!"
"See here, cut this short. I'll give you just one chance."
"What's that?" she said, but so faintly that Fargus did not hear it.
"You get me to supper here within four days--or I'll put the screws on!"
"But how can I?"
"That's a good one," he cried, repeating contemptuously her words. "You
do it. That's all. We're partners and don't you forget it. Share alike!
That was the terms when I could have ruined you with a word--and those,
my girl, are the terms now!"
Fargus, crimped to the banisters, listening with parted mouth and
terrible eyes, could hear no more. He was suffocated. He reeled to the
door and with a last effort opened it without noise. Once in the street
he slunk rapidly away, glancing backward fearfully over his shoulder,
scarce restraining a mad impulse to break into a run. He scurried under
the Elevated and on without stopping, until at last the river barred his
way. There he collapsed on a pile of lumber and remained holding his
numbed head in his hands, swaying, until a policeman startled him by
touching him on the shoulder and questioning him. Then, stumbling to his
feet, he fled again towards the south, but haphazard as the rush of a
brute wounded to the death.
For mile after mile he scurried thus, striking east and striking west,
his mind vacant and stunned, incapable of other thought than to flee as
far as he could from the abomination he had left in his home. A dozen
times he came near being run over, without knowing his danger or hearing
the screams of warning that followed his crazy progress. In the blank
shifting of faces he saw nothing but the leer and the scorn of the
mocking world. The blow had been too instant and too astounding. His
numbed mind could only feel the acuteness of the anguish, without as yet
being able to analyze or recognize the causes. He did not think of
Sheila or Bofinger. It was the world which had crushed him, the
perfidious, mocking world which in the end had thus taken its
contemptuous revenge.
[Illustration: FOR MILE AFTER MILE HE SCURRIED THUS.]
He saw everywhere smiles of derision, heard triumphant laughter. Every
one was gazing at him, enjoying the discomfiture of the ancient enemy.
He saw nothing clearly, he began to stumble in his walk and to waver,
clearing his way through the crowds with his cane, thrusting women and
children violently out of his path.
In one narrow street in the Jewish quarter a crowd of boys at play set
up a cry of "Madman!"
He turned furiously and shook his fist, cursing them. Then fleeing anew
his course became embroiled, crossing and recrossing, until to his
dismay, a second time, he encountered the group of urchins, who
accompanied him a block, with derisive shouts. Fargus, clasping his
temples in his hands, broke away in terror and, by some instinct
avoiding his former direction, turned north, winding and twisting
helplessly in the labyrinth of the ill-smelling slums. Still everything
was confused, his hatred and his agony. It was always the world which
pursued him with its jeers. This obsession possessed him so completely
that even the noises of the city, the rumble of truck and carriage, the
roar of the Elevated, the screams of the street hawkers, the hum and
swish of the crowd, struck his ears as so many delirious taunts.
Through this fog and rumble, all at once, he heard a wild shriek of
acclaim:
"Madman! Madman!"
Looking up wildly he found himself, to his horror, a third time in the
street of his persecutors. This time the hilarity descended on him like
a storm, for humanity is pitiless once its sense of ridicule is touched.
From the windows women saluted him with gibes and laughter, people
crowded to the front of the shops showing him to one another, while the
loungers cheered on the ragamuffins who, forming in a company behind
him, chanted in unison:
"Mad dog! Mad dog!"
Some one from a window pelted him with an apple. At this moment he was
in danger of losing his reason. He began frantically to run, his
tormentors with shrieks of delight pursuing him. After two blocks of
fruitless flight he turned suddenly on the pack about his heels and
clubbed the foremost with such fury that the rest fled. Then forgetting
everything but the new fear of the something within his mind which was
beginning to snap, he rushed over to the west side, crossing Broadway by
a miracle. All at once he heard his name pronounced. A familiar voice
was saying conciliatingly:
"Oh, Mr. Fargus, do come in! What has happened to you?"
He came to a halt, stock still, and glared about him. Some strange
instinct had led him back to the scenes of his boyhood. He was before
the sunken rooms of Nell's Coffee House, and Mrs. Biggs herself was
watching him with fear and wonder.
"What, you too!" he cried, and whipped into fury by the sight of his
first love he brandished his cane and rushed on her. The woman, with a
cry, flung into the restaurant and barricaded the door.
Then a chill began to shake him, his arm fell inertly, his rage, from
utter exhaustion, passed like a fever from him. He turned away and
instinctively took up the familiar journey to his old home in the
tenements.
"Ah, let me think," he said wearily, striking his damp forehead. The
perfidy of Bofinger he had guessed from the first words of his wife. He
gradually comprehended what had happened, that the lawyer had gone
straight to Sheila and with her had formed a compact which had made her
his wife. If the details were obscure the truth was blinding. When he
had thought this carefully out he said again:
"What am I going to do?"
He returned to the street of his birth and hurried up the well-known
stairs. The key of the room was still in his pocket--he had never
surrendered the old quarters. It was a superstition and a sentiment
unique in his life. He entered the room and looked about solicitously.
Nothing had been disturbed. Mechanically, still confused, he went to the
trunk and was taking out the bedding when in dismay he recollected
himself and shoved it hurriedly back. Then seating himself on the bed,
his head imprisoned in his hands, he repeated:
"What am I going to do?"
This time the question had the vigor of an explosion. He no longer could
abandon himself to the torrents of his rage. That emotion had left him
in weakness and fear. But gradually, in the cold succeeding calm, a
germ of a new passion formed and gathered violence,--the germ of
vengeance.
At the end of an hour of anguish he leaped to his feet with a shout of
victory and, refreshed and alert, again rushed down the stairs and set
out resolutely for the upper city.