CATHERINE'S SUPREME DECISION.
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 circumstances 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 crêpe 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 Vassar 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 glass and
flowers and fine Sèvres 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 damned 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 flashing 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 assure 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 identity, 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 nobility was not of wealth or
title, but of--"
"Nonsense!" Flint interrupted. "Nobility, eh? Read _that_, will you?"
Leering, despite himself, he handed the paper across the table to his
daughter.
"Those marked passages," 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 noble! Bah! Sunday-school dope, that! Noble, 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 noble 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 glasses 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 glass, 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, pushing 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-assumed passion. "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 glass on our table--see! What tragedies it could reveal, could
it but speak! What tales of coughing, consumptive glass-cutters, bending
over wheels, their lungs cut to pieces by the myriad spicules of sharp
glass, so that we, we of our class, 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--!"
Stumbling blindly, he turned and staggered out of the room. She watched
him go, nor tried to steady his uncertain steps. In the hallway,
outside, she heard him ring for Slawson, heard the valet come, and both
of them ascend the stairs.
"Father," she whispered to herself, a look of great and pure spiritual
beauty on her noble face, "father, this had to come. Sooner or later, it
was inevitable. Whatever you have done, I forgive you, for you _are_ my
father, and have surely acted for what you think my interest.
"But none the less, the end is here and now. Between you and me, a great
gulf is fixed. And from tonight I face the world, to battle with it,
learn from it, and know the truth in every way. Enough of this false,
easy, unnatural life. I cannot live it any longer; it would crush and
stifle me! Enough! I must be free, I shall be free, to know, and dare,
and do!"
That night, having had no further speech with old Flint, Kate left Idle
Hour, taking just a few necessities in a suit-case, and a few dollars
for her immediate needs.
Giving no explanation to maid, valet or anyone, she let herself out,
walked through the great estate and down Englewood Avenue, to the
station, where she caught a train for Jersey City.
The midnight special for Chicago bore her swiftly westward. No sleeping
car she took, but passed the night in a seat of an ordinary coach. Her
ticket read "Rochester."
The old page of her Book of Life was closed forever. A new and better
page was open wide.