CASTLES IN THE AIR
It was fully a month before Sheila received word of Max Fargus. The
weeks passed in skirmishes with Bofinger, who, dissatisfied with her
explanations, continually harassed her. To his insistent demands she
answered always that Fargus had left without further explanation than
that he was going to investigate the oyster fields.
"And that's all you know?" the lawyer demanded with one of his
inquisitorial looks.
"Absolutely."
"He writes to you?"
"Me? I haven't heard a word," she answered truthfully.
"Well, it looks peculiar," he said suspiciously. "He has never done this
before that I can find out."
"Perhaps he has a plan to extend his business," she said, committing
the mistake of trying to explain.
He looked at her with an antagonistic eye.
"Sheila, I bet something's gone wrong between you two."
She protested in surprise.
"You haven't been cutting up, have you?" he continued angrily. "Doing
anything to make him jealous?"
"Me? What could I do?" she answered. "I might as well live in a
convent."
"How long is he going to be away?"
"I don't know."
"And he hasn't written?"
"No."
"And that doesn't worry you?"
"Me?" she said, slipping over the dangerous answer. "Why should it?"
Twenty times Bofinger returned to the catechism without discovering in
her manner a single flaw. She held the lawyer always in terror, but
according to the nature of her sex, which is disconcerted only by the
unknown, the daily contact educated her and brought a new confidence.
Besides she was defending the millions Fargus had promised her with the
instinct of a mother for her children. They had grown very real to her,
these children of her hopes. She believed in them because she had always
wanted to believe. So now without restraint she began to abandon herself
to all the delights of the imagination.
She began the morning by ransacking the society columns for details of
the last night's functions, promising herself, with a delicious rage,
that the time would soon come when she would read her own name there.
She ran the shops, purchasing in her imagination enough to fill their
little house three times over. She hung over the shining counters of the
jewelers, setting aside for the future day bracelets and brooches
unending, and decided, so natural did her new destiny seem to her, that
she would wear nothing but rubies and pearls. She remained late abed,
having her breakfast served in her room and tired out the morning with
preparations for her afternoon parade on the Avenue.
At times her happiness became so intense that she had a superstitious
dread lest at the last moment Providence might thwart her. She went
thrice a week to church, where she promised to be a faithful and
exemplary wife if only Fargus might be permitted to return successful,
hoping by this bargain to conciliate God and range him on her side, for
she was a bit uneasy over her past. Also it must be admitted that her
conception of Paradise had a flavor of upper Fifth Avenue.
The culmination of these weeks of delirium arrived in a visit to the
opera. It was an intoxication such as she had never known. Ensconced in
the glittering orchestra, the display on the stage, the surge and the
sweep of the immense music, awakened all her senses. Radiant and
palpitating she leaned back languidly, her glance traveling among the
boxes, back and forth over the bewildering horseshoe, dreaming of the
day when she too would take her place among these princesses of
fashion,--and it took her quite a while to decide which box she would
occupy. During the second entre-acte she joined the parade in the foyer.
Feeling that the excitement gave her a moment of unusual brilliancy, she
placed herself in prominence, wondering anxiously if she would be
noticed among all the gorgeous toilettes. To her delight she drew many
glances and on leaving had the delicious satisfaction of hearing a voice
say in a whisper half impertinent and half admiration:
"Who is she?"
"Oh, when I can dress as they do!" she thought with a sigh of delight,
"they will know who I am!"
The incense of this flattery caused her to imagine the conquests she
should then number--little infidelities to Fargus, a number of which,
despite all her vows, she committed in that moment of ecstasy. On
leaving the opera she took a carriage for the mere vanity of being
obsequiously handed through the door. Then, arrived home, she paid the
driver double his fare in the embarrassment she felt that he should set
her down in such an unfashionable quarter.
The next morning, remembering with alarm the infidelities she had
imagined to her poor husband, she hastened to church where she renounced
them in trembling, hoping perhaps that the divine Providence had not
noticed such a minuscule frailty.
At the end of the month Bofinger, on repairing to Sheila's, stumbled on
a messenger who was bringing a telegram to the door. Convinced for a
long time that the absence of Fargus held some mystery of which the
woman knew the secret he avidly seized on the occasion offered. Slipping
a quarter into the palm of the surprised messenger he bade him return
five minutes later. Then he went in hurriedly and going at once to the
attack said:
"Well, Sheila, what news?"
"About Fargus? Nothing."
"What! Not even a letter?"
"No, indeed."
"But he's telegraphed?" he persisted.
"He'd never think of that," she said with conviction.
"So," he said smiling. "And you're still satisfied there's nothing to
fear?"
"Why, I am a little worried," she said, deciding to answer thus. "But
then I suppose it's only one of his funny ways."
At this moment the bell rang and Sheila, answering the door, received
the telegram.
"Hello, what's that?" the lawyer cried from the parlor.
"Only someone at the wrong number," she said, shutting the door.
Bofinger rose and with two steps reached her side at the moment she was
trying to conceal the telegram in her dress.
"Indeed!" he said ironically, twisting the dispatch from her hand. "So
this doesn't count?"
Sheila, paralyzed with fear, felt the floor swim beneath her. Bofinger,
tearing off the cover, found to his great disappointment only this:
Begin journey tomorrow.
"MAX FARGUS."
Without attempting to conceal his vexation, he was tendering the
dispatch to Sheila when all at once snatching it back he scanned it for
the source.
"Mexico!" he exclaimed, and, looking at her with the gleam of the lawyer
who has entrapped his witness, he raised his voice to a shout, "MEXICO!"
Sheila, who had feared that the contents might reveal the story of the
mine, comprehended rapidly that she might yet extricate herself.
"Mexico?" she cried with well acted incredulity, and seizing the
telegram she read it. "But--but I don't understand! Why Mexico?"
"You do it well," he said scornfully. "So Fargus has gone to Mexico.
Why?"
"My dear fellow," she said, sitting down and studying the telegram, "I
am as astonished as you."
"Sheila, you're lying to me."
"You tell me that a dozen times a day," she said with a shrug. "It gets
tiresome. Still, I would like to know why he is in Mexico and what he
means by beginning his journey. Does he mean his return or what?"
Deceived by her air of candid bewilderment Bofinger tried a new method.
"Sheila," he said, looking at her earnestly, "I believe you. But, my
dear girl, if you are deceiving me, you are running big risks. Fargus is
too clever for you alone. You need me, whether you find it out now or
later."
"Perhaps," she said, glancing at the telegram to escape his scrutiny,
"perhaps he has some idea of bringing up a Mexican establishment?"
"You think he's coming back now?"
"Oh, of course."
"You are doubtless right," he added, smiling too graciously not to
raise her doubts, "and we'll soon know."
A week later, the mail brought her the following brief letter, with a
Southern postmark.
Dear Sheila:
Fargus has been away a leettle too long. You may be satisfied, I am
not. I'm off for Mexico.
ALONZO BOFINGER.
"Oh, if he finds him, then everything is lost!" she cried in
consternation. "If only I knew how to warn Fargus!"
At the end of three weeks she received a telegram from Bofinger which
completed her despair, for he sent but the one word:
"Progress."
Six weeks of torture succeeded, during which she was torn between the
fear that the lawyer should learn of the mines and the agony which
gradually possessed her as she became convinced that some dreadful
accident had happened to Fargus, forever sweeping away her brief vision
of fortune. This was the secret of the overwhelming grief which had so
mystified Bofinger on the night when he had returned to reveal to the
distracted woman the fall of all her hopes and the extraordinary
sentence which for seven years she must undergo by the provisions of the
common law.