The Air Trust Part 13

As a bull charging, is struck to the heart by the sword of the matador, and stops in his tracks, motionless and dazed before he falls, so "Tiger" Waldron stopped, wholly stunned by this abrupt and crushing denouement.

For a moment, man and woman faced each other. Not a word was spoken.

Catherine had no word to say; and Waldron, though his lips worked, could bring none to utterance. Then their eyes met; and his lowered.

"Good-bye," said she quietly. "Good-bye forever, as my betrothed. When we meet again, Wally, it will be as friends, and nothing more. And now, let me go. Don't come with me. I prefer to be alone. I'd rather walk, a bit, and think--and then go back quietly to the club-house, and so home, in my car. Don't follow me. Here--take this, and--good-bye."

Mechanically he accepted the gleaming jewel. Mechanically, like a man without sense or reason, he watched her walk away from him, upright and strong and lithe, voluptuous and desirable in every motion of that splendid body, now lost to him forever. Then all at once, entering a woodland path that led by a short cut back to the club-house, she vanished from his sight.

Vanished, without having even so much as turned to look at him again, or wave that firm brown hand.

Then, seeming to waken from his daze, "Tiger" laughed, a terrible and cruel laugh; and then he flung a frightful blasphemy upon the still June air; and then he dashed the wondrous diamond to earth, and stamped and dug it with a perfect frenzy of rage into the soft mold.

And, last of all, with lowered head and lips that moved in fearful curses, he crashed away into the woods, away from the path where the girl was, away from the club-house, away, away, thirsting for solitude and time to quell his pa.s.sion, salve his wounded pride and ponder measures of terrible revenge.

The diamond ring, crushed into the earth, and the golf clubs, lying where they had fallen from the disputants' hands, now remained there as melancholy reminders of the double game--love and golf--which had so suddenly ended in disaster.

CHAPTER XII.

ON THE GREAT HIGHWAY.

As violently rent from his job as Maxim Waldron had been torn from his alliance with Catherine, Gabriel Armstrong met the sudden change in his affairs with far more equanimity than the financier could muster. Once the young electrician's first anger had subsided--and he had pretty well mastered it before he had reached the Oakwood Heights station--he began philosophically to turn the situation in his mind, and to rough out his plans for the future.

"Things might be worse, all round," he reflected, as he strode along at a smart pace. "During the seven months I've been working for these pirates, I've managed to pay off the debt I got into at the time of the big E. W. strike, and I've got eighteen dollars or a little more in my pocket. My clothes will do a while longer. Even though Flint blacklists me all over the country, as he probably will, I can duck into some job or other, somewhere. And most important of all, I know what's due to happen in America--I've seen that note-book! Let them do what they will, they can't take _that_ knowledge away from me!"

The outlook, on the whole, was cheering. Gabriel broke into a whistle, as he swung along the highway, and slashed cheerfully with his heavy stick at the dusty bushes by the roadside. A vigorous, pleasing figure of a man he made, striding onward in his blue flannel shirt and corduroys, stout boots making light of distance, somewhat rebellious black hair cl.u.s.tering under his cap, blue eyes clear and steady as the sunlight itself. There must have been a drop of Irish blood somewhere or other in his veins, to have given him that ruddy cheek, those eyes, that hair, that quick enthusiasm and that swiftness to anger--then, by reaction, that quick buoyancy which so soon banished everything but courageous optimism from his hot heart.

Thus the man walked, all his few worldly belongings--most precious among them his union card and his red Socialist card--packed in the knapsack strapped to his broad shoulders. And as he walked, he formulated his plans.

"Niagara for mine," he decided. "It's there these h.e.l.lions mean to start their devilish work of enslaving the whole world. It's there I want to be, and must be, to follow the infernal job from the beginning and to nail it, when the right time comes. I'll put in a day or two with my old friend, Sam Underwood, up in the Bronx, and maybe tell him what's doing and frame out the line of action with him. But after that, I strike for Niagara--yes, and on foot!"

This decision came to him as strongly desirable. Not for some time, he knew, could the actual work of building the Air Trust plant be started at Niagara. Meanwhile, he wanted to keep out of sight, as much as possible. He wanted, also to save every cent. Again, his usual mode of travel had always been either to ride the rods or "hike" it on shanks'

mare. Bitterly opposed to swelling the railways' revenues by even a penny, Armstrong in the past few years of his life had done some thousands of miles, afoot, all over the country. His best means of Socialist propaganda, he had found, was in just such meanderings along the highways and hedges of existence--a casual job, here or there, for a day, a week, a month--then, quick friendships; a little talk; a few leaflets handed to the intelligent, if he could find any. He had laced the continent with such peregrinations, always sowing the seed of revolution wherever he had pa.s.sed; getting in touch with the Movement all over the republic; keeping his finger on the pulse of ever-growing, always-strengthening Socialism.

Such had his habits long been. And now, once more adrift and jobless, but with the most tremendous secret of the ages in his possession, he naturally turned to the comfort and the calming influence of the broad highway, in his long journey towards the place where he was to meet, in desperate opposition, the machinations of the Air Trust magnates.

"It's the only way for me," he decided, as he turned into the road leading toward Saint George and the Manhattan Ferry. "Flint and Herzog will be sure to put Slade and the Cosmos people after me. Blacklisting will be the least of what they'll try to do. They'll use slugging tactics, sure, if they get a chance, or railroad me to some Pen or other, if possible. My one best bet is to keep out of their way; and I figure I'm ten times safer on the open road, with a few dollars to stave off a vagrancy charge, and with two good fists and this stick to keep 'em at a distance, than I would be on the railroads or in cheap dumps along the way.

"The last place they'll ever think of looking for me will be the big outdoors. _Their_ idea of hunting for a workman is to dragnet the back rooms of saloons--especially if they're after a Socialist. That's the limit of their intelligence, to connect Socialism and beer. I'll beat 'em; I'll hike--and it's a hundred to one I land in Niagara with more cash than when I started, with better health, more knowledge, and the freedom that, alone, can save the world now from the most d.a.m.nable slavery that ever threatened its existence!"

Thus reasoning, with perfect clarity and a long-headedness that proved him a strategist at four-and-twenty, Gabriel Armstrong whistled a louder note as he tramped away to northward, away from the hateful presence of Herzog, away from the wage-slavery of the Oakwood Heights plant, away--with that precious secret in his brain--toward the far scene of destined warfare, where stranger things were to ensue than even he could possibly conceive.

Sat.u.r.day morning found him, his visit with Underwood at an end, already twenty miles or more from the Bronx River, marching along through Haverstraw, up the magnificent road that fringes the Hudson--now hidden from the mighty river behind a forest-screen, now curving on bold abutments right above the sun-kissed expanses of Haverstraw Bay, here more than two miles from wooded sh.o.r.e to sh.o.r.e.

At eleven, he halted at a farm house, some miles north of the town, got a job on the woodpile, and astonished the farmer by the amount of birch he could saw in an hour. He took his pay in the shape of a bountiful dinner, and--after half an hour's smoke and talk with the farmer, to whom he gave a few pamphlets from the store in his knapsack--said good-bye to all hands and once more set his face northward for the long hike through much wilder country, to West Point, where he hoped to pa.s.s the night.

Thus we must leave him, for a while. For now the thread of our narration, like the silken cord in the Labyrinth of Crete, leads us back to the Country Club at Longmeadow, the scene, that very afternoon, of the sudden and violent rupture between the financier and Catherine Flint.

Catherine, her first indignation somewhat abated, and now vastly relieved at the realization that she indeed was free from her loveless and long-since irksome alliance with Waldron, calmly enough returned to the club-house. Head well up, and eyes defiant, she walked up the broad steps and into the office. Little cared she whether the piazza gossips--The Hammer and Anvil Club, in local slang--divined the quarrel or not. The girl felt herself immeasurably indifferent to such pettinesses as prying small talk and innuendo. Let people know, or not, as might be, she cared not a whit. Her business was her own. No wagging of tongues could one hair's breadth disturb that splendid calm of hers.

The clerk, behind the desk, smiled and nodded at her approach.

"Please have my car brought round to the porte-cochere, at once?" she asked. "And tell Herrick to be sure there's plenty of gas for a long run. I'm going through to New York."

"So soon?" queried the clerk. "I'm sure your father will be disappointed, Miss Flint. He's just wired that he's coming out tomorrow, to spend Sunday here. He particularly asks to have you remain. See here?"

He handed her a telegram. She glanced it over, then crumpled it and tossed it into the office fire-place.

"I'm sorry," she answered. "But I can't stay. I must get back, to-night.

I'll telegraph father not to come. A blank, please?"

The clerk handed her one. She pondered a second, then wrote:

Dear Father: A change of plans makes me return home at once.

Please wait and see me there. I've something important to talk over with you.

Affectionately,

Kate.

Ordinarily people try to squeeze their message to ten words, and count and prune and count again; but not so, Catherine. For her, a telegram had never contained any s.p.a.ce limit. It meant less to her than a post-card to you or me. Not that the girl was consciously extravagant.

No, had you asked her, she would have claimed rigid economy--she rarely, for instance, paid more than a hundred dollars for a morning gown, or more than a thousand for a ball-dress. It was simply that the idea of counting words had never yet occurred to her. And so now, she complacently handed this verbose message to the clerk, who--thoroughly well-trained--understood it was to be charged on her father's perfectly staggering monthly bill.

"Very well, Miss Flint," said he. "I'll send this at once. And your car will be ready for you in ten minutes--or five, if you like?"

"Ten will do, thank you," she answered. Then she crossed to the elevator and went up to her own suite of rooms on the second floor, for her motor-coat and veils.

"Free, thank heaven!" she breathed, with infinite relief, as she stood before the tall mirror, adjusting these for the long trip. "Free from that man forever. What a narrow escape! If things hadn't happened just as they did, and if I hadn't had that precious insight into Wally's character--good Lord!--catastrophe! Oh, I haven't been so happy since I--since--why, I've _never_ been so happy in all my life!

"Wally, dear boy," she added, turning toward the window as though apostrophizing him in reality, "now we can be good friends. Now all the sham and pretense are at an end, forever. As a friend, you may be splendid. As a husband--oh, impossible!"

Lighter of heart than she had been for years, was she, with the added zest of the long spin through the beauty of the June country before her--down among the hills and cliffs, among the forests and broad valleys--down to New York again, back to the father and the home she loved better than all else in the world.

In this happy frame of mind she presently entered the low-hung, swift-motored car, settled herself on the luxurious cushions and said "Home, at once!" to Herrick.

He nodded, but did not speak. He felt, in truth, somewhat incapable of quite incoherent speech. Not having expected any service till next day, he had foregathered with others of his ilk in the servants' bar, below-stairs, and had with wa.s.sail and good cheer very effectively put himself out of commission.

But, somewhat sobered by this quick summons, he had managed to pull together. Now, drunk though he was, he sat there at the wheel, steady enough--so long as he held on to it--and only by the redness of his face and a certain gla.s.sy look in his eye, betrayed the fact of his intoxication. The girl, busy with her farewells as the car drew up for her, had not observed him. At the last moment Van Slyke waved a foppish hand at her, and smirked adieux. She acknowledged his good-bye with a smile, so happy was she at the outcome of her golf-game; then cast a quick glance up at the club windows, fearing to see the harsh face of Wally peeping down at her in anger.

But he was nowhere to be seen; and now, with a sudden acceleration of the powerful six-cylinder engine, the big gray car moved smoothly forward. Growling in its might, it swung in a wide circle round the sweep of the drive, gathered speed and shot away down the grade toward the stone gates of the entrance, a quarter mile distant.

Presently it swerved through these, to southward. Club-house, waving handkerchiefs and all vanished from Kate's view.

"Faster, Herrick," she commanded, leaning forward, "I must be home by half past five."

Again he nodded, and notched spark and throttle down. The car, leaping like a wild creature, began to hum at a swift clip along the smooth, white road toward Newburgh on the Hudson.