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:
"You--you mean--?"
"I mean just what I say. Your daughter has severed the betrothal.
Haven't you noticed my ring was gone from her finger?"
"Gone? Bless my soul, no--that is, yes--maybe. I don't know. But--but
at any rate, I thought nothing of it. So then, you say--she's broken it
off? But, why? And when? And--and tell me, Wally, what's it all about?"
"Listen, and I _will_ tell you," Tiger answered. "And I'll give it to
you straight. I'm partly at fault. Mostly so, it may be. Let me assume
all the blame, at any rate. I'm not sparing myself and have no intention
of doing so. My conduct, I admit, was beastly. No excuses offered. All I
want to do, now, is to make the _amende honorable_, be forgiven, and
have the former status resumed."
Thus spoke Waldron. But all the time his soul lay hot within him, at
having so to humble himself before Flint; at being thus obliged to eat
crow, and fawn and feign and creep.
"If I didn't need your billion, old man," his secret thought was, as he
eyed Flint with pretended humility, "you might go to Hell, for all of
me--you and your daughter with you, damn you both!"
The Billionaire sat blinking, for a moment. Then, picking up a pencil
and idly scrawling pothooks on the big clean sheet of blotting-paper
that covered his reference-book table, beside which the men were
sitting, he asked:
"Well, what's the trouble all about? What are the facts? I must have
those, in full, before I can guarantee to do anything toward changing my
daughter's opinion. Much as I deplore her action, Wally, I don't know
whether she's right or wrong, till you tell me. Now, let's have it."
"I will," the other answered; and he was as good as his word. Realizing
the prime futility of any subterfuge, or any misstatement of
fact--which Catherine would surely discover and tell her father, and
which would react against him--Waldron began at the beginning and
narrated the entire affair, with every detail precisely accurate. Nay,
he even exaggerated the offensiveness of his conduct, at the Longmeadow
Club, and in various ways gave the Billionaire to understand that he was
a more serious offender than in truth he really was. For, after all, the
only real offense was the lack of any compatibility between the girl and
himself--the total absence of love.
Flint listened carefully and with a judicial expression. If he blamed
Waldron, he made no statement of that fact. A man himself, and one who
viewed man's weaknesses and woman's foibles with a cynic eye, he could
judge motives and weigh actions with considerable skill.
"I see, I see," he commented, when Waldron had quite done, and had
poured forth a highly false declaration of his great love for the girl
and his determination that this rupture should not be permanent. "I
understand the case, I think. It all seems an unfortunate accident--just
one of those unavoidable incidents which strike into and upset human
calculations, against all expectation.
"You're not terribly guilty, Waldron. You acted inconsiderably.
Irritatingly, perhaps, and not wholly like a gentleman--for which, blame
the rotten Scotch they _will_ persist in selling, out there at
Longmeadow. But even that's not fatal. Many men have done worse and been
forgiven. I'll have a talk with Catherine, inside a day or two, when the
psychological moment offers. And you may be sure, if a father's advice
and good offices are of any avail, this little quarrel will be all
patched up between you two. Surely will be! I can almost positively
promise you that!"
"Promise it?" asked Waldron, leaning eagerly forward, a strange light in
those close-set, greenish eyes.
Flint nodded. "Yes," he answered. "I've never yet failed to bring Kate
to reason and good common-sense, when I've set out to. This will be no
exception. My word and my counsel possess the greatest weight with her.
She'll listen and be advised, I'm sure. So have no uneasiness," he
concluded, holding out his hand to his partner. "Leave everything to me.
You'll see, it will all come right, in the end."
"Tiger" shook his hand, cordially.
"I haven't words to thank you!" he exclaimed, with as much emotion as he
could simulate from a perfectly cold heart and calculating soul.
"Don't try to," the Billionaire replied, with seeming benevolence. "All
the thanks I want, Wally, is to patch up this little difficulty and
reunite two--that is--two loving, sympathetic hearts!"
"You old hypocrite!" Waldron thought, eyeing him. "All _you_ want of me,
if anything, is to keep me as your partner, because you know you're
growing old and losing your grip, and I'm still in the game with all
four claws! Paternal philanthropist _you_ are--I don't think!"
Wally was dead right.
"I can't lose this man," the Billionaire was thinking. "Whether or no,
Kate has got to marry him. This Air Trust business demands a strong, a
quick, a perfectly unscrupulous hand. And no outsider will do. My
partner has got to be my son-in-law. Love be damned! Romantic slush can
go to Hell! Kate will marry him--she's _got_ to--or I'll know the reason
why!
"Though, after all," he soothed his conscience, as Waldron stood up,
walked to the window and stood gazing out as he smoked, "after all,
Wally will make her as happy, I fancy, as any man. He's a fine figure in
the world, commanding, heavily propertied, energetic and successful,
also of the finest family connections. Yes, a husband any woman might
admire and be proud of. Certainly, the only son-in-law for _me_. Even if
she can't idolize and worship him, as some fool women think they must, a
man, she can respect and be respected with him. And with him she can
take the highest position in the land, without a qualm as to his
competence and manner. Beside all that, what's love? Love? Bah!"
With which philosophy, he too arose, went back into his own office, and
returned to the dictating of some very private letters to Slade, the
Cosmos Detective Agency manager, _in re_ the ferreting-out and jailing
or deporting of all Socialists and labor leaders at Niagara. This
preparatory work on the ground of the huge new Air Trust plant, he
deemed most essential. The Cosmos people, scenting a big contract, had
fostered his belief, and now, already, the work was well under way.
Subterranean methods were still sufficing; but, should these fail,
others lay in the background.
Flint smiled a grim, vulturine smile as he read over the finished
letters of instruction, a few minutes later.
"And to think," he mused, as he finished them, "that these fanatics
believe--really believe--they can make headway anywhere in this country,
now! Ten years ago, yes, they might have. But that's not today. Then,
publie opinion--stupid and futile as it was--could still be aroused.
Then, there was a really effective labor and Socialist press. And the
Limited Franchise Bill hadn't gone through. Neither had the enlarged
Military Bill, the National Censorship nor even the Grays--the National
Mounted Police. While _now_--ah, thank Heaven, it's all so different and
so easy that I call myself a fool, at times, for even giving these
matters a single thought!
"Well," he concluded, handing the letters back to his confidential
secretary, for mailing, "well, now _that's_ done, at any rate. So then,
to the S. & S. committee meeting. And tonight my little
talk with Kate. I'll soon bring her to reason, I'm sure. There's nothing
can't be accomplished by a little patience and persuasion."
The old Billionaire chose his time well, that night, for the vital
interview with his daughter, who had so far rebelled against his
authority as to break with the man most eminently acceptable to him.
After a simple but exquisite dinner in the Venetian room, he asked the
girl to play for him, which (he knew) always pleased her and put her in
a receptive mood.
"Play for you, father?" she answered. "Of course I will, anything and as
much as you like! What shall it be, tonight? Chopin, or Grieg, or--?"
"Anything that pleases you, suits me, my dear," he answered, smiling
with satisfaction at his ruse. Never had he felt more masterful. He had
allowed himself a trifle more morphia than usual that day, by reason of
the approaching interview; and now the subtle drug filled him with
well-being and seemed to enhance his self-control and power. Lighting a
cigar--rare treat for him--he offered Kate his arm; and together,
unattended by any valet or domestic, they walked along the high,
paneled hallway, hung with Gobelin tapestries, and so reached the
magnificent music-room which Kate claimed, in a way, as her own special
place at Idle Hour.
Here everything suggested harmony. The mahogany wainscotted walls were
decked with fine portraits of the world's great masters of melody.
Handsome cabinets contained costly and elaborate collections and folios
of music, a complete library of the entire world's best productions. The
girl's harp--a masterpiece by Pestalozzi of Venice--stood at one side;
on the other, a five hundred dollar Victrola, with a wonderful
repertoire of records. But the grand piano itself dominated all,
especially made for Catherine by Durand Frères, in Paris, and imported
on the Billionaire's own yacht, the "Bandit." A wondrous instrument,
this, finer even than the pipe-organ in an alcove at the far end of the
room. It summed up all that the world's masters knew of
instrument-production; and its cost, from factory to its present place
at Idle Hour, represented twenty years' wages, and more, of any of
Flint's slaves in the West Virginia mines or the Glenn Pool oil-fields
of Oklahoma.
At this magnificent piano the girl now seated herself, on a bench of
polished teak, from Mindanao. And, turning to her father, who had sunk
down in his favorite easy-chair of Russia leather, she asked with a
smile:
"Well, daddy, what shall I play for you, to-night?"
He looked at her a minute, before replying. Never had she seemed to
dear, so beautiful to him. The rose-tinted light that fell softly from a
Bohemian chandelier over her head, flooded her coiled hair, her face,
her hands, with soft warm color. The slight dressing that her wound now
required was covered by a deft arrangement of her hair. She had regained
her usual tint. Nothing now told of the accident, the close call she had
had, from death, so short a time before. And old Flint smiled, as he
answered her:
"What shall you play? Anything you like, my dear. You know best--only,
don't make it too classical. Your old father isn't up to that ultra
music, you know, and never will be!"
She smiled again with understanding, and turned to the keyboard. Then,
without notes, and with a delicate touch of perfectly modulated
interpretation, she began to render "Traümerei," as though she, too, had
been dreaming of something that might have been.
Flint listened, with perfect content. The music soothed and quieted him.
Even the foreknowledge of the difficult task that lay before him, the
interview that he must have with his daughter, faded from his mind, a
little, and left him wholly calm. Eyes closed, every sense intent on the
delicious harmony, he followed the masterpiece to the end; and sighed
when the last notes had died away, and kept silence.
Then Kate, still needing no music on the rack before her, played the
"Miserere" from "Il Trovatore," a Hungarian "Czardas," Mendelssohn's
"Frühlingslied" and the overture from "William Tell." She followed these
with the "Intermezzo" and the "Pizzicato" from "Sylvia," and then with
"Narcissus" and "Sans Souci." And at the end of this, she paused again;
for now her father had arisen and come close to her. With a hand on her
shoulder, looking down at her with stern yet kindly eyes, he said:
"'Sans Souci'? That means 'Without Care,' doesn't it, Kate?"
"Yes, Daddy. Why?" she answered.
"Oh, I was just thinking, that's all," said he. "It made me wish _I_ had
no cares, no troubles, no sorrows."
"Sorrows, father? Why should you have sorrows?" she queried, turning to
him and taking both his shriveled hands in her warm, strong ones.
"Sorrows? Why shouldn't I?" said he. "Every man of large affairs has
them. Every father has them, too." And he bent over her and kissed her,
with unusual emotion.
"Every father?" asked she. "What do you mean? Am _I_ a sorrow to you?"
"A joy in many ways," he answered. "In some, a sorrow."
"In what ways?" she asked quickly, her eyes widening.
"In this way, most of all," he told her, as he took her left hand up,
and pointed at the finger where Waldron's ring had been and now no
longer was.
She looked at him a moment, hardly understanding; then bowed her head.
"Father," she whispered. "Forgive me--but I couldn't! I--I couldn't! No,
not for the world!"
Flint's drug-contracted eyes hardened as he stood there gazing down at
her. Once, twice he essayed to speak, but found no words. At last,
however, blinking nervously, he said:
"This, Kate, is what I want to talk with you about, to-night. Will you
hear me?"