The Air Trust Part 21

"I can win her, yet," reflected he, as his car swung into the long and brilliant night-vista of Fifth Avenue. "I know women, and I understand the game. Flowers, letters, telephone calls, attention every day--every hour, if need be--these are the artillery to batter down the strongest fortresses of indifference, even of dislike. And she shall have them all--all and more. Wally, old chap, you've never been beaten at any game, whether in the Street or in the pursuit of woman. You'll win yet; you're bound to win! And Kate shall yet open the door to you, toward wealth and power and position such as never yet were seen on earth!"

Thus fortified by his own determination, he slept more calmly that night. And, on the morrow, his campaign began.

It lasted but a week.

At the end of that time, a friendly little note from Idle Hour told him, frankly and in the kindest manner possible, that--much as she still liked and respected him--Catherine could not, now or ever, think of him in any other way than as a friend.

Stunned by this body-blow, "Tiger" first swore with hideous blasphemies that caused his valet to retreat precipitately from the famous, nymph-frieze bedchamber; then ordered drink, then walked the floor a while in a violent pa.s.sion; and finally knit up his decision.

"By G.o.d!" he swore, shaking his fist in the direction of Englewood.

"She's balky, eh? She won't, eh? But _I_ say she _will_! And if I can't make her, there's her father, who can. Together we can break this stiff-necked spirit and bring her to time. Hm! Fancy anybody or anything in this world setting up opposition to Flint and Waldron, combined! Just fancy it, that's all!

"So then, what's to do? This: See her father and have a heart-to-heart talk with him. It's obvious she hasn't told him, yet, the real state of affairs. I doubt if the old idiot has even noticed the absence of my ring from her finger. And if he has, she's been able to fool him, easily enough. But not much longer, so help me!

"No, this very morning he shall hear from me, the whole infernal story--he shall learn his daughter's unreasonable rebellion, the slight she's put upon me and her opposition to his will. _Then_ we shall see--we shall see who's master in that family, he or the girl!"

With this strong determination in his superheated mind, Waldron rang up Flint, asked for a private talk, at eleven, in the Wall Street office, and made ready the mustering of his arguments; his self-defense; his appeals to Flint's every sense of interest and liking; his whole plea for the resumption of the broken betrothal.

And Catherine, all this time of convalescence--what were her thoughts, and whither were they straying? Not thoughts of Waldron, that is sure, despite his notes, his telephoning, his flowers, his visits. Not to him did they wander, as she sat in her sunny bedroom bay-window, looking out over the great, close cropped lawn, through the oaks and elms, to the Palisades and the sparkling Hudson beneath.

No, not to Waldron. Yet wander they did, despite her; and with persistence they followed channels till then quite unknown to her.

What might these channels be? And whither, I ask again, did the girl's memories and fancies, her wondering thoughts, her vague, half-formulated longings, lead?

You, perhaps, can answer, as well as I, if you but remember that--Billionaire's daughter though she was, and all unversed in the hard realities of life--she was, at heart and soul, very much a woman after all.

CHAPTER XVII.

THOUGHTS.

During the long days, the June days, of her convalescence, Catherine found herself involuntarily reverting, more often than she could understand, to thoughts of the inscrutable and unknown man who had in all probability saved her life.

"Had it not been for him," she reflected, as she sat there gazing out over the river, "I might not be here, this minute. Caught as I was, on the very brink of the precipice, I should almost certainly have slipped and fallen over, in my dazed condition, when I tried to get up. If I'd been alone, if he hadn't found me just when he did--!"

She shuddered at thought of what must almost inevitably have happened, and covered her face with both hands. Her cheeks burned; she knew emotion such as not once had Waldron's kiss ever been able to arouse in her. The memory of how she, half-unconscious, had lain in that stranger's arms, so powerful and tense; had been carried by him, as though she had been a child; had felt his breath upon her face and the quick, vigorous beating of his heart--all this, and more, dwelt in her soul, nor could she banish it.

Grat.i.tude? Yes, and more. For the first time in her two-and-twenty years, Catherine had sensed the power, the virility of a real man--not of the make-believe, manicured and tailored parasites of her own cla.s.s--and something elemental in her, some urge of primitive womanhood, grappled her to that memory and, all against her will, caused her to live and re-live those moments, time and time again, as the most strange and vital of her life.

Yet, it was not this physical call alone, in her, that had awakened her being. The man's eyes, and mouth and hair, true, all remained with her as a subtly compelling lure; his strength and straight directness seemed to conquer her and draw her to him; but beyond all this, something in his speech, in his ideas and the strange reticence that had so puzzled her, kept him even more constantly in her wondering thoughts.

"A workingman," she murmured to herself, in uncomprehending revery, "he said he was a workingman--and he knew that I was very, very rich. He knew my father would have rewarded him magnificently, given him money, work, anything he might have asked. And yet, and yet--he would not even tell his name. And he refused to know mine! He didn't want to know! His pride--why, in all my life, among all the proud, rich people that I've known, I've never found such pride as that!"

She reflected what would have happened had any man of the usual type rescued her, even a man of wealth and position. Of course, thought she, that man would have made himself known and would have called on her, ostensibly to inquire after her condition, yet really to ingratiate himself. At this reflection she shuddered again.

"Ugh!" she whispered. "He'd have tried to take liberties, any other man would. He'd have presumed on the accident--he'd have been--oh, everything that _that_ man was not, and could never be!"

Now her thoughts wandered to the brief talk they two had had there in the old sugar-house. Every word of it seemed graven on her memory.

Disconnected bits of what he had told her, seemed to float before her mental vision--: "I? Oh, I'm just an out-of-work--don't ask me who I am; and I won't ask who _you_ are. We're of different worlds, I guess--don't question me; I'd rather you wouldn't. Am I happy? Yes, in a way, or shall be, when I've done what I mean to do!"

Such were some of his phrases that kept coming back to her, as she sat there in that luxurious and beautiful room, her book lying unread in her lap, the scent of flowers everywhere, and, merely for her taking, all the world's treasures hers to command. Strange man, indeed, and stranger speech, to her! Never had she been thus spoken to. His every word and thought and point of view, commonplace enough, perhaps, seemed peculiarly stimulating to her, and wakened eager curiosity, and would not let her live in peace, as heretofore.

"He said he was a Socialist, too," she murmured, "whatever that may be.

But he--he didn't _look_ it! On the contrary, he looked remarkably clean and intelligent. And the words he used were the words of an educated man. Far better vocabulary than Waldron's, for example; and as for poor little Van Slyke, and that set, why this man's mind seems to have towered above them as the Palisades tower above the river!

"Happy? Rich? He said he was both--and all he had was eighteen dollars and his two big hands! Just fancy that, will you? He might as well have said eighteen cents; it would have been about as much! And I--what did I tell him? I told him I, with all my money and everything, was vacant, empty, futile! Just those words. And--G.o.d help me, I--I am!"

Suddenly, she felt her eyes were wet. What was the reason? Herself she knew not. All she knew was that with her beautiful and queenly head bowed on the arm of her j.a.panese silk morning gown, as its loose sleeves lay along the edge of the Chippendale table, she was crying like a child.

Crying bitterly; and yet in a kind of new, strange joy. Crying with tears so bitter-sweet that she, herself, could not half understand them; could not fathom the deeper meaning that lay hidden there.

"If!" she whispered to her heart. "If only I were of his cla.s.s, or he of mine!"

And Gabriel, what of him?

As he swung north and westward, day by day, on the long hike toward Niagara, the memory of the girl went with him, and hour by hour bore him company.

He was not forgetting. Could he forget? Strive as he might, to thrust her out of his heart and soul, she still indwelt there.

Not all his philosophy, nor all his realization that this woman he had saved, this woman who had lain in his two arms and mingled her breath with his, belonged to another and an alien cla.s.s, could banish her.

And as he strode along, swinging his knotted stick at the daisies and pondering on all that might have been and now could never be, a sudden, pa.s.sionate longing burst over him, as a long sea-roller, hurled against a cliff, flings upward in vast tourbillions of spume.

Raising his face to the summer sky, his bare head high with emotion and his eyes wide with the thought of strange possibilities that shook and intoxicated him, he cried:

"Oh--would G.o.d she were an orphan and an outcast! Would G.o.d she had no penny in this world to call her own!"

CHAPTER XVIII.

FLINT AND WALDRON PLAN.

"Tiger" Waldron's interview with old man Flint, regarding Catherine's breaking of the engagement, was particularly electric. Promptly at the appointed hour, Waldron appeared, shook hands with the older man, sat down and lighted a cigar, then proceeded to business.

"Flint," said he, without any ado, "I've come here to tell you some very unpleasant news and to ask your help. Can you stand the one, and give me the other?"

The Billionaire looked at him through his pince-nez, poised on that vulture-beak, with some astonishment. Then he smiled nervously, showing his gleaming tooth of gold, and answered:

"Yes, I guess so. What's wrong?"

"What's wrong? Everything! Catherine has broken our engagement!"

For a moment old Flint sat there motionless and staring. Then, moving his head forward with a peculiar, pecking twitch that still further enhanced his likeness to a buzzard, he stammered: