Five minutes later she was in the new-comer’s car, which had been turned around and now was headed back toward Haverstraw. The shawl and robe serving her as wraps, she was made comfortable in the tonneau.
“Think you can stand it, all right?” asked Gabriel, as he took in his the hand she extended. “In half an hour, you’ll be under a doctor’s care, and your father will be on his way toward you.”
She nodded, and for a second tightened the grasp of her hand.
“I—I’m not even going to know who you are?” she asked, a strange tone in her voice.
“No,” he answered. “And now, good luck, and good-bye!”
“Good-bye,” she echoed, her voice almost inaudible. “I—I won’t forget you.”
He made no answer, but only smiled in a peculiar way.
Then, as the car rolled slowly forward, their hands separated.
Gabriel, bareheaded and with level gaze, stood there in the middle of the great highway, looking after her. A minute, under the darkening arches of the forest road, he saw her, still. Then the car swung round a bend, and vanished.
Had she waved her hand at him? He could not tell. Motionless he stood, a while, then cleared away the barrier of branches that obstructed the road, took up his knapsack, and with slow steps returned to the sugar-house.
Almost on the threshold, a white something caught his eye. He picked it up. Her handkerchief! A moment he held the dainty, filmy thing in his rough hand. A vague perfume reached his nostrils, disquieting and seductive.
“More than eighteen dollars an ounce, perhaps!” he exclaimed, with sudden bitterness; but still he did not throw the handkerchief away. Instead, he looked at it more keenly. In one corner, the fading light just showed him some initials. He studied them, a moment.
“C. J. F.” he read. Then, yielding to a sudden impulse, he folded the kerchief and put it in his pocket.
He entered the sugar-house, to make sure, before departing, that he had left no danger of fire behind him.
Another impulse bade him sit down on a rough box, there, before the dying embers. He gazed at the bed of leaves, a while, immersed in thought, then filled his pipe and lighted it with a glowing brand, and sat there—while the night came—smoking and musing, in a reverie.
The overpowering lure of the woman who had lain in his arms, as he had borne her thither; her breath upon his face; the perfume of her, even her blood that he had washed away—all these were working on his senses, still. But most of all he seemed to see her eyes, there in the ember-lit gloom, and hear her voice, and feel her lithe young body and her breast against his breast.
For a long time he sat there, thinking, dreaming, smoking, till the last shred of tobacco was burned out in the heel of his briar; till the last ember had winked and died under the old sheet-iron stove.
At last, with a peculiar laugh, he rose, slung the knapsack once more on his shoulders, settled his cap upon his head, and made ready to depart.
But still, one moment, he lingered in the doorway. Lingered and looked back, as though in his mind’s eye he would have borne the place away with him forever.
Suddenly he stooped, picked up a leaf from the bed where she had lain, and put that, too, in his pocket where the kerchief was.
Then, looking no more behind him, he strode off across the maple-grove, through which, now, the first pale stars were glimmering. He reached the road again, swung to the north, and, striking into his long marching stride, pushed onward northward, away and away into the soft June twilight.
CHAPTER XVI.
TIGER WALDRON “COMES BACK.”
Old Isaac Flint loved but two things in all this world—power, and his daughter Catherine.
I speak advisedly in putting “power” first. Much as he idolized the girl, much as she reminded him of the long-dead wife of his youth, he could have survived the loss of her. The loss of power would inevitably have crushed and broken him, stunned him, killed him. Yet, so far as human affection could still blossom in that withered heart, shrunk by cold scheming and the cruel piracies of many decades, he loved the girl.
And so it was that when the message came in, that evening, over the telephone, the news that Kate had been injured in an auto-accident which had entirely destroyed the machine and killed Herrick, he paled, trembled, and clutched the receiver, hardly able to hold it to his ear with his shaking hand.
“Here! You!” he cried. “She—she’s not badly hurt? She’s living? She’s safe? No lies, now! The truth!”
“Your daughter is very much alive, and perfectly safe,” a voice answered. “This is Doctor MacDougal, of Haverstraw, speaking. The patient is now having a superficial scalp wound dressed by my assistant. You can speak to her, in a few minutes, if you like.”
“Now! For God’s sake, let me speak now!” entreated the Billionaire; but the doctor refused. Not all Flint’s urging or bribing would turn him one hair’s breadth.
“No,” he insisted. “In ten minutes she can talk to you. Not now. But have no fear, sir. She is perfectly safe and—barring her wound, which will probably heal almost without a scar—is as well as ever. A little nervous and unstrung, of course, but that’s to be expected.”
“What happened, and how?” demanded Flint, in terrible agitation.
The doctor briefly gave him such facts as he knew, ending with the statement that a passing automobilist had brought the girl to him, and outlining the situation of the first-aid measures in the sugar-house. At the thought that Herrick, the drunken cause of it all, was dead and burned, Flint smiled with real satisfaction.
“Damn him! It’s too good for the scum!” he muttered. Then, aloud, he asked over the wire:
“And who was the rescuer?”
“I don’t know,” MacDougal answered. “Your daughter didn’t tell me. But from what I’ve learned, he must have been a man of rare strength and presence of mind. It may well be that you owe your daughter’s life to his prompt work.”
“I’ll find him, yet. He’ll be suitably rewarded,” thought the Billionaire. “No matter what my enemies have called me, I’m not incapable of gratitude!”
Some few minutes later, having paced the library floor meanwhile, in great excitement, he called the doctor’s house again by long-distance, and this time succeeded in having speech with his daughter. Her voice, though a little weak, vastly reassured him. Once more he asked for the outline of the story. She told him all the essentials, and finished by:
“Now, come and get me, won’t you, father dear? I want to go home. And the quicker you come for me, the happier I’ll be.”
“Bless your heart, Kate!” he exclaimed, deeply moved. “Nothing like the old man, after all, is there? Yes, I’ll start at once. I’ve only been waiting here, to talk with you and know you’re safe. In five minutes I’ll be on my way, with the racing-car. And if I don’t break a few records between here and Haverstraw, my name’s not Isaac Flint!”
After an affectionate good-bye, the old man hung up, rang for Slawson, his private valet, and ordered the swiftest car in his garage made ready at once, for a quick run.
Two hours later, Doctor MacDougal had pocketed the largest fee he ever had received or ever would, again; and Kate was safe at home, in Idle Hour.
On the homeward journey, Flint learned every detail of the affair, from start to finish; and again grimly consigned the soul of the dead chauffeur to the nethermost pits of Hell. Yes, he realized, he must have the body brought in and decently buried, after the coroner’s verdict had been rendered; but in his heart he knew that, save for the eye of public opinion and the law, he would let those charred remnants lie and rot there, by the river bank, under the twisted wreckage of the car—and revel in the thought of that last, barbarous revenge.
Arrived at home, Flint routed specialists out of their offices, and at a large expense satisfied himself the girl had really taken no serious harm. Next day, and the days following, all that money and science could do to make the gash heal without a scar, was done. Wald
ron called, greatly unnerved and not at all himself; and Kate received him with amicable interest. She had not yet informed her father of the rupture between Waldron and herself, nor did he suspect it. As for “Tiger,” he realized the time was inopportune for any statement of conditions, and held his peace. But once she should be well, again, he had savagely resolved this decision of hers should not stand.
“Damn it, it can’t! It mustn’t!” he reflected, as on the third evening he returned to his Fifth Avenue house. “Now that I’m really in danger of losing her, I’m just beginning to realize what an extraordinary woman she is! As a wife, the mistress of my establishment, a hostess, a social leader, what a figure she would make! And too, the alliance between Flint and myself simply must not be shattered. Kate is the only child. The old man’s billion, or more, will surely come to her, practically every penny of it. Flint is more than sixty-three this very minute, he’s a dope-fiend, and his heart’s damned weak. He’s liable to drop off, any moment. If I get Kate, and he dies, what a fortune! What a prize! Added to my interests, it will make me master of the world!
“Then, too, this new Air Trust scheme positively demands that Flint and I should be bound together by something closer than mere financial association. I’ve simply got to be one of the family. I’ve got to be his son-in-law. That’s a positive necessity! God, what a fool I was at Longmeadow, to have taken those three drinks, and have been piqued at her beating me—to have let my tongue and temper slip—in short, to have acted like an ass!”
Ugly and grim, he puffed at his Londres. Vast schemes of finance and of conquest wove through his busy, plotting brain. Visions of the girl arose, too, tempting him still more, though his chill heart was powerless to feel the urge of any real, self-sacrificing or devoted love. Sensual passion he knew, and ambition, and the lust of power; nothing else. But these all opened his eyes to the vast blunder he had committed, and nerved him to reconquest of the ground that he had lost.
“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 passion; and finally knit up his decision.
“By God!” 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.
Gratitude? 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 class—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 wh
ispered. “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—God 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 Japanese silk morning gown, as its loose sleeves lay along the edge of the Chippendale table, she was crying like a child.
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