Max Fargus

In a street, uniform and dedicated it would seem to commonplace existences, there was taking place, on a certain evening in March, 187-, a chapter in one of the most perplexing and mysterious of dramas which the scramble for wealth has known; whose denouement, unsuspected by neighbors and hidden from the press, holds the secret of the rise of one of the most forceful and brutal individualities that have dominated the city.

Near Stuyvesant Square, which then presented in the waste of New York, a charming oasis, serene and calm with the quiet of Colonial dignity; in one of the side streets east of Second Avenue there extended an unbroken march of red brick houses, uniform as though homes were fashioned wholesale. The block was clear of the skirts of fashion which gathered about the square, yet rescued from the squalor into which the street suddenly sank as it passed east under the brutal yoke of the Elevated.

It belonged to mediocre life, to those who earned two thousand a year, who paid a third of their income in rent, went rarely to the theater and always to church, where occasionally the children fetched the family beer in pail and pitcher; a street of one servant or none at all; one of those indistinct half-way stations of the city where fortune and misfortune, ascending and descending, pass; where one finds the small shopkeeper, the clerk who is rising next to the doctor whose patients have left him, or the lawyer who has missed his leap. Towards the east a saloon made the corner, while a few doors nearer a brothel displayed its red ensign, before which, in the daytime, the children romped without distinction. Already several doorways invited board and lodging, signs of the invasion which sooner or later would claim the street.

A third of the way down the block, on the north side, there projected above a doorway the figure of a tin sailor, balancing two paddles which the breeze caused to revolve. Some one in whom the instinct of home was strong had placed it there in protest against the tyranny of uniformity, while succeeding tenants, grateful for the indication, had left it undisturbed.

By eleven o'clock of the night on which this story opens, beside the distant red lantern of the brothel and a few top-story lights there was only the parlor window, under the odd weather-vane, whose bright edge cut into the blackness of the street. The shade, contrary to custom, was lowered, but at each approaching step the silhouette of a woman crossed it hurriedly in the direction of the door.

Shortly after the bells of a dozen churches had cried the hour, a man coming from the west passed under the lamp-post, carrying a satchel and striding with that nervous intensity which the tumult of New York injects into the legs.

As he perceived the lighted window his advance suddenly relaxed, until opposite the door, in default of a number, he began to seek in the shadow the presence of the creaking boatman. Then, noticing the silhouette on the shade, as though assured of his destination he sprang up the steps. Before he could seize the bell the door was thrown open and he passed into the house.

A woman in the thirties, pretty, dressed in white, closed the door after him and remained weakly leaning against the wall, awaiting in agitation his first word. He gave her a nod, took a step, turned and looked at her sharply, then busied himself with his coat. Suddenly the woman stretched out her hand and cried, with the hopelessness of one for whom the question can bring but one answer:

"Bofinger, what is it? Tell me!"

"Oh, it's good news," he said laconically, placing his bag on the floor, "good enough."

"He's alive--my husband is alive!" she stammered, her eyes filling with nervous, incredulous tears.

"Alive!" he exclaimed, rising his voice to a shout, while his head jerked about. But in a moment the amazement gave way to unbelief and he continued, with the irony of one impatient with feminine hypocrisy, "Max Fargus, my dear Sheila, is dead; done for by bandits, accommodating little greasers, bless their souls!"

He turned his back on her scornfully, busying himself with finding a hook in the dark hallway. The woman had received the news like a blow in the face. She swayed back against the door, her hands went to her lips, then to her throat as though to stifle a cry, and for a moment she seemed about to fall. Then suddenly her eyes returned in fear to the contemptuous back of the lawyer and she controlled herself by a violent effort, passing before him into the parlor to hide the agitation on her face.

"Shed a few tears for the public, my dear," he called out, following her with the impertinence of a man who has a right to dispense with civilities. "You can afford them; for eventually you'll come into as tidy a fortune as was ever won in six months' time. But before we get down to business, Sheila my dear, I am starving; could you get me a bite."

Seizing further opportunity to prepare herself for the encounter she passed into the dining-room, after bidding him be seated with a conventionality as marked as his affectation of intimacy. As he was settling in a chair he suddenly remembered his bag and returned to the vestibule.

The parlor breathed an air of imitation and a striving for luxury, which after the first impression of ridicule had a certain note of pathos. Everything was of the factory, with the odor of the bargain-counter. One saw the decoration before the body, overwhelmed by a confused sense of plush and gilt, of reds and greens, of false cherubs and artificial flowers, of airy, bejeweled furniture for which, in the department stores, one imagines in vain a purchaser. In the medallion carpet all the colors fought, in the portieres the Byzantine wrestled with the Gothic, the Roman with the Greek.

Before selecting a comfortable chair, Bofinger peeled off a pair of yellow gloves, looked about in indecision and placed them gingerly on an étagère. Next, whisking out a lilac handkerchief, he slapped vigorously the dust from his shoes. Then bringing forth a number of documents from the bag he smoothed them nervously on his knee, replaced them, and suddenly raised his head to follow the movements of the woman with a perplexed intensity, in which there was both irritation and anxiety.

On the body of a dandy was set the head of a comedian. One and the other produced a like impression of sham. He was too solicitous of his clothes, too conscious of his manner. His collar was worn with discomfort, his checked tweed cutaway was too tight, his shoes too new; while, on establishing himself in his chair, he had thrown open his coat on a buckskin vest, heavily sealed, and a purple tie, held in four-in-hand by a fat horseshoe, with the ill-at-ease of the man who never quite familiarizes himself with his own audacity.

The head had the prominent bones of the Yankee with a suggestion of the Italian in the sallowness of the complexion and the limpidity of the eyes, which when most gracious had a warning of treachery. He smiled much, but the smile was as constrained as his dress. Though not far in the thirties, his face was sown with lines, while at each thought flurries showed on the forehead and the cheeks, which from constant conscription had come to never remaining still. His ears were so small that they seemed almost a deformity. The nose, which was impressive and slightly pointed, told more of cunning than of sagacity; the mouth, open and pliant, was the mouth of the demagogue and the orator, which lets escape the torrent of phrases.

One divined the man who played at will the tyrant or the servitor, who browbeat the timid and flattered the strong, who bellowed in a police court, but who tiptoed for a favor and could on occasion listen obsequiously. Finally his jet hair, which he enforced into parting in the middle and plastered to his scalp, in the back rose like the comb of a cockatoo. This rebellious movement to the repression of the front was significant of the whole man.

When Mrs. Fargus returned with a tray all traces of emotion had vanished. Watching her, the lawyer voiced the amazement that had been in his mind from the first.

"Sheila, you are astonishingly pretty to-night."

"Really!" she said, and despite her alarm she sent a glance to the mirror.

Over the loose white muslin, free at the throat and at the elbows, she wore a filmy scarf of red chiffon, subtle as a mist, which, encircling her shoulders, came to a loose knot and fell to her feet in a sanguine line. It was a striking effect which perplexed the eye, and threw in bold relief the waves of her black hair and the rather high color of her complexion; but emphasized in the general voluptuousness the surprising contrast of the eyes which, gray with a slight blue tinge, were cold, without passion or enticement.

Intrigued at the contrast of her indifference with her first agitation, Bofinger was careful not to open the conversation, knowing that it is easier to penetrate the hypocrisy of an enforced question than to discover truth in a guarded answer.

Mrs. Fargus, seeing at last that the situation compelled her to speak, rested her chin on her palm and said as though to herself:

"So Fargus is dead!"

"Eh, eh!" the lawyer cried instantly, shooting a sharp look, "a moment ago that overwhelmed you. But you are reconciled already, I suppose."

She showed some confusion, but returned immediately:

"Sure I'm shocked; poor fellow, after all he did love me."

Displeased to find her self-possessed, the lawyer, not to waken her mistrust, seemed to accept her attitude by launching into a diatribe.

"Yes, yes, cling to your respectability. You women are all the same. Virtue always! Do you do it to fool us or yourselves? Come now, you know that old Fargus's death is a stroke of luck! Why the deuce, then, don't you admit it?"

"You don't understand," she said coldly.

He searched her face with aroused curiosity, saying to himself, "No, my lady, you bet I don't." Then continuing his plan of battle he occupied himself with his plate.

"You brought him, the body, back," she asked presently.

"No," he answered irritably, and pushed back his plate with impatience.

"Why not?" she asked, noticing his annoyance.

"That is a long story and goes with the rest," he said rising. "Now, my dear, we'll get down to it."

In the parlor, as he was taking a chair, he recollected himself and demanded with a jerk of his head:

"Any one up there?"