The Air Trust Part 29

The meal was almost at an end--silently, like all their hours spent together, now--before the old man sprang his _coup_. It was characteristic of him to wait thus, to hold his fire till what he conceived to be the opportune moment; never to act prematurely, under any circ.u.mstances whatever.

"By the way, Kate," he remarked, casually, when coffee had been served and he had motioned the butlers out of the room, "by the way, I've been rather badly disappointed, today. Did you know that?"

"No, father," she answered. She never called him "daddy," now. "No, I'm sorry to hear it. What's gone wrong?"

He looked at her a moment before replying, as though to gauge her mind and the effect his announcement might have. Very charming she looked, that evening, in a crepe de Chine gown with three-quarter lace sleeves and an Oriental girdle--a wonderful Nile-green creation, very simple (she had told herself) yet of staggering cost. A single white rose graced her hair. The low-cut neck of the gown revealed a full, strong bosom. Around her throat she wore a fine gold chain, with a French 20-franc piece and her Va.s.sar Phi Beta Kappa key attached--the only pendants she cared for. The gold coin spoke to her of the land of her far ancestry, a land oft visited by her and greatly loved; the gold key reminded her of college, and high rank taken in studies there.

Old Flint noted some of these details as he sat looking at her across the white and gleaming table, where silver and gold plate, cut gla.s.s and flowers and fine Sevres china all combined to make a picture of splendor such as the average workingman or his wife has never even dreamed of or imagined; a picture the merest commonplace, however, to Flint and Catherine.

"A devilish fine-looking girl!" thought he, eyeing his daughter with approval. "She'd grace any board in the world, whether billionaire's or prince's! Waldron, old man, you'll never be able to thank me sufficiently for what I'm going to do for you tonight--never, that is, unless you help me make the Air Trust the staggering success I think you can, and give me the boost I need to land the whole d.a.m.ned world as my own private property!"

He chuckled dryly to himself, then drew the paper from his pocket.

"Well, father, what's gone wrong?" asked Kale, again. "Your disappointment--what was it?"

She spoke without animation, tonelessly, in a flat, even voice. Since that night when her father had tried to force Waldron upon her, and had taunted her with loving the vagabond (as he said) who had rescued her, something seemed to have been broken, in her manner; some spring of action had snapped; some force was lacking now.

"What's wrong with me?" asked Flint, trying to veil the secret malice and keen satisfaction that underlay his speech. "Oh, just this. You remember about a week ago, when we--ah--had that little talk in the music room--?"

"Don't, father, please!" she begged, raising one strong, brown hand.

"Don't bring that up again. It's all over and done with, that matter is.

I beg you, don't re-open it!"

"I--you misunderstand me, my dear child," said Flint, trying to smile, but only flas.h.i.+ng his gold tooth. "At that time I told you I was looking for, and would reward, if found, the--er--man who had been so brave and quick-witted as to rescue you. You remember?"

"Really, father, I beg you not to--"

"Why not, pray?" requested Flint, gazing at her through his pince-nez.

"My intentions, I a.s.sure you, were most honest and philanthropic. If I had found him--_then_--I'd have given him--"

"Oh, but he wouldn't have taken anything, you see!" the girl interrupted, with some spirit. "I told you that, at the time. It's just as true, now. So please, father, let's drop the question altogether."

"I'm sorry not to be able to grant your request, my dear," said the old man, with hidden malice. "But really, this time, you must hear me. My disappointment arises from the fact that I've just discovered the young man's ident.i.ty, and--"

"You--you have?" Kate exclaimed, grasping the edge of the table with a nervous hand. Her father smiled again, bitterly.

"Yes, I have," said he, with slow emphasis, "and I regret to say, my dear child, that my diagnosis of his character is precisely what I first thought. Any interest you may feel in that quarter is being applied to a very unworthy object. The man is one of my discharged employees, a thorough rascal and hard ticket in every way--one of the lowest-bred and most villainous persons yet unhung, I grieve to state. The fact that he carried you in his arms, and that I owe your preservation to him, is one of the bitterest facts in my life. Had it been any other man, no matter of what humble birth--"

"Father!" she cried, bending forward and gazing at him with strange eyes. "Father! By what right and on what authority do you make these accusations? That man, I know, was all that innate gentleness and upright manhood could make any man. His n.o.bility was not of wealth or t.i.tle, but of--"

"Nonsense!" Flint interrupted. "n.o.bility, eh? Read _that_, will you?"

Leering, despite himself, he handed the paper across the table to his daughter.

"Those marked pa.s.sages," said he. "And remember, this is only the beginning. Wait till all the facts are known, the whole conspiracy laid bare and everything exposed to public view! _Then_ tell me, if you can, that he is poor but n.o.ble! Bah! Sunday-school dope, that! n.o.ble, yes!"

Catherine sat there staring at the paper, a minute, as though quite unable to decipher a word. Through a kind of wavering mist that seemed to swim before her eyes, she vaguely saw the words: "Socialist White Slaver!" but that these bore any relation to the man she remembered, back there at the sugar-house, had not yet occurred to her mind. She simply could not grasp the significance of the glaring headlines. And, turning a blank gaze on her father's face, she stammered:

"Why--why do you give me this? What has this got to do with--_me_? With _him_?"

"Everything!" snarled the Billionaire, violently irritated by his daughter's seeming obtuseness. "Everything, I tell you! That man, that strong and n.o.ble hero of yours, is this man! This white slaver! This wild beast--this Socialist--this Anarchist! Do you understand now, or don't you? Do you grasp the truth at last, or is your mind incapable of apprehending it?"

He had risen, and now was standing there at his side of the table, shaking with violent emotion, his gla.s.ses awry, face wrinkled and drawn, hands twitching. His daughter, making no answer to his taunts, sat with the paper spread before her on the table. A wine gla.s.s, overset, had spilled a red stain--for all the world like the workers' blood, spilled in war and industry for the greater wealth and glory of the masters--out across the costly damask, but neither she nor Flint paid any heed.

For he was staring only at her; and she, now having mastered herself a little, though her full breast still rose and fell too quickly, was struggling to read the slanderous lies and foul libels of the blue-penciled article.

Silently she read, paling a little but otherwise giving no sign to show her father how the tide of her thought was setting. Twice over she read the article; then, pus.h.i.+ng the paper back, looked at old Flint with eyes that seemed to question his very soul--eyes that saw the living truth, below.

"It is a lie!" said she, at last, in a grave, quiet voice.

"What?" blurted the old man. "A--a lie?"

She nodded.

"Yes," said she. "A lie."

Furious, he ripped open the paper, and once more shoved it at her.

"Fool!" cried he. "Read _that_!" And his shaking, big-knuckled finger tapped the editorial on "Socialism Unveiled."

"No," she answered, "I need read no more. I know; I understand!"

"You--you know _what_?" choked Flint. "This is an editorial, I tell you!

It represents the best thought and the most careful opinion of the paper. And it condemns this man, absolutely, as a criminal and a menace to society. It denounces him and his whole gang of Socialists or Anarchists or White-slavers--they're all the same thing--as a plague to the world. That's the editor's opinion; and remember, he's on the ground, there. He has all the facts. You--_you_ are at a distance, and have none! Yet you set up your futile, childish opinion--"

"No more, father! No more!" cried Catherine, also standing up. She faced him calmly, coldly, magnificently. "You can't talk to me this way, any more. Cannot, and must not! As I see this thing--and my woman's intuition tells me more in a minute than you can explain away in an hour--this fabrication here has all, or nearly all, been invented and carried out by you. For what reason? This--to discredit this man! To make me hate and loathe him! To force me back to Waldron. To--"

"Stop!" shouted the old man, in a well-a.s.sumed pa.s.sion. "No daughter of mine shall talk to me this way! Silence! It is monstrous and unthinkable. It--it is horrible beyond belief! Silence, I tell you--and--"

"No, father, not silence," she replied, with perfect poise. "Not silence now, but speech. Either this thing is true or it is false. In either case, I must know the facts. The papers? No truth in _those_! The finding of the courts? today, they are a by-word and a mockery! All I can trust is the evidence of my own senses; what I hear, and feel, and see. So then--"

"Then?" gulped the Billionaire, holding the back of his chair in a trembling grasp.

"Just this, father. I'm going to Rochester, myself, to investigate this thing, to see this man, to hear his side of the story, to know--"

"Do that," cried Flint in a terrible voice, "and you never enter these doors again! From the minute you leave Idle Hour on that fool's errand, my daughter is dead to me, forever!"

Swept clean off his feet by rage, as well as by the deadly fear of what might happen if his daughter really were to learn the truth, he had lost his head completely.

With quiet attention, the girl regarded him, then smiled inscrutably.

"So it be," she replied. "Even though you disinherit me or turn me off with a penny, my mind is made up, and my duty's clear.

"While things like these are going on in the world, outside, I have no right to linger and to idle here. I am no child, now; I have been thinking of late, reading, learning. Though I can't see it all clearly, yet, I know that every bite we eat, means deprivation to some other people, somewhere. This light and luxury mean poverty and darkness elsewhere. This fruit, this wine, this very bread is ours because some obscure and unknown men have toiled and sweat and given them to us. Even this cut gla.s.s on our table--see! What tragedies it could reveal, could it but speak! What tales of coughing, consumptive gla.s.s-cutters, bending over wheels, their lungs cut to pieces by the myriad spicules of sharp gla.s.s, so that we, we of our cla.s.s, may enjoy beauty of design and coloring! And the silken gown I wear--that too has cost--"

"No more! No more of this!" gurgled old Flint, now nearly in apoplexy.

"I deny you! I repudiate you, Anarchist that you are! Go! Never come back--never, never--!"