Air Trust

  CHAPTER XI.

  THE END OF TWO GAMES.

  Trivial events sometimes precipitate catastrophies. It has been saidthat had James MacDonald not left the farm gate open, at Hugomont,Waterloo might have ended otherwise. So now, the rupture betweenCatherine Flint and Maxim Waldron was precipitated by a single unguardedoath.

  It was at the ninth hole, down back of the Terrace Woods bunker.Waldron, heated by exercise and the whiskey he had drunk, had alreadydismissed the caddies and had undertaken to carry the clubs, himself,hoping--man-fashion--to steal a kiss or two from Catherine, along theedge of the close-growing oaks and maples. But all his plans went agley,for Catherine really made good and beat him, there, by half a dozenstrokes; and as her little sphere, deftly driven by the putting-irongripped in her brown, firm hands, rolled precisely over the cropped turfand fell into the tinned hole, the man ejaculated a perfectly audible"_Hell!_"

  She stood erect and faced him, with a singular expression in those levelgray eyes--eyes the look of which could allure or wither, could enticeor command.

  "Wally," said she, "did you swear?"

  "I--er--why, yes," he stammered, taken aback and realizing, despite hischagrin, how very poor and unsportsmanlike a figure he was cutting.

  "I don't like it," she returned. "Not a little bit, Wally. It isn'tgame, and it isn't manly. You must respect me, now and always. I can'thave profanity, and I won't."

  He essayed lame apologies, but a sudden, hot anger seemed to havepossessed him, in presence of this free, independent, exactingwoman--this woman who, worst of all, had just beaten him at the game ofall games he prided himself on playing well. And despite his everyeffort, she saw through the veil of sheer, perfunctory courtesy; andseeing, flushed with indignation.

  "Wally," she said in a low, quiet tone, fixing a singular gaze upon him,"Wally, I don't know what to make of you lately. The other night at IdleHour, you hardly looked at me. You and father spent the whole eveningdiscussing some business or other--"

  "Most important business, my dear girl, I do assure you," protestedWaldron, trying to steady his voice. "Most vitally--"

  "No matter about that," she interposed. "It could have been abridged, atrifle. I barely got six words out of you, that evening; and let me tellyou, Wally, a woman never forgets neglect. She may forgive it; butforget it, never!"

  "Oh, well, if you put it that way--" he began, but checked himself intime to suppress the cutting rejoinder he had at his tongue's end.

  "I do, and it's vital, Wally," she answered. "It's all part and parcelof some singular kind of change that's been coming over you, lately,like a blight. You haven't been yourself, at all, these few days past.Something or other, I don't know what, has been coming between us.You've got something else on your mind, beside me--something bigger andmore important to you than I am--and--and--"

  He pulled out his gold cigar-case, chose and lighted a cigar to steadyhis nerve, and faced her with a smile--the worst tactic he couldpossibly have chosen in dealing with this woman. Supremely successful inhandling men, he lacked finesse and insight with the other sex; and nowthat lack, in his moment of need, was bringing him moment by momentnearer the edge of catastrophe.

  "I don't like it at all, Waldron," she resumed, again. "You were late,the other night, in taking me to the Flower Show. You were late, today,for our appointment here; and the ten minutes I gave you to get readyin, stretched out to twenty before you--"

  He interrupted her with a gesture of uncontrollable vexation.

  "Really, my dear Kate," he exclaimed, "if you--er--insist on holding meto account for every moment--"

  "You've been drinking, too, a little," she kept on. "And you know Idetest it! And just now, when I beat you in a square game, you so farforgot yourself as to swear. Now, Waldron--"

  "Oh, puritanical, eh?" he sneered, ignoring the danger signals in hereyes. Even yet there might have been some chance of avoiding shipwreck,had he heeded those twin beacons, humbled himself, made amends by dueapology and promised reformation. For though Catherine never had trulyloved this man, some years older than herself and of radically differentcharacter, still she liked and respected him, and found him--by his veryforce and dominance--far more to her taste than the insipid hangers-on,sons of fortune or fortune-hunters, who, like the sap-brained VanSlyke, made up so great a part of her "set."

  So, all might yet have been amended; but this was not to be. Never yethad "Tiger" Waldron bowed the neck to living man or woman. Dominance washis whole scheme of life. Though he might purr, politely enough, so longas his fur was smoothed the right way, a single backward stroke set hisfangs gleaming and unsheathed every sabre-like claw. And now this woman,his fiancee though she was, her beauty dear to him and her charm mostfascinating, her fortune much desired and most of all, an alliance withher father--now this woman, despite all these considerations, had with afew incisive words ruffled his temper beyond endurance.

  So great was his agitation that, despite his strongest instinct ofsaving, he flung away the scarcely-tasted cigar.

  "Kate," he exclaimed, his very tongue thick with the rage he could notquell, "Kate, I can't stand this! You're going too far. What do you knowof men's work and men's affairs? Who are you, to judge of their times ofcoming and going, their obligations, their habits and man of life? Whatdo _you_ understand--?"

  "It's obvious," she replied with glacial coldness, "that I don'tunderstand _you_, and never have. I have been living in a dream, Wally;seeing you through the glass of illusion; not reality. After all, you'relike all men--just the same, no different. Idealism, self-sacrifice, contrue nobility of character, where are these, in you? What is there butthe same old selfishness, the same innate masculine conceit and--"

  "No more of this, Kate!" cried the financier, paling a little. "No more!I can't have it! I won't--it's impossible! You--you don't understand, Itell you. In your narrow, untrained, woman's way, you try to set upstandards for me; try to judge me, and dictate to me. Some oldpuritanical streak in you is cropping out, some blue-law atavism, some Iknow not what, that rebels against my taking a drink--like every otherman. That cries out against my letting slip a harmless oath--again, likeevery other man that lives and breathes. Every man, that is, who _is_ aman, a real man, not a dummy! If you've been mistaken in me, how muchmore have I, in you! And so--"

  "And so," she took the very words from his pale lips, "we've both beenmistaken, that's all. No, no," she forbade him with raised hand, as hewould have interrupted with protests. "No, you needn't try to convinceme otherwise, now. A thousand volumes of speeches, after this, couldn'tdo it. An hour's insight into the true depths of a man's character--yes,even a moment's--perfectly suffices to show the truth. You've just drawnthe veil aside, Wally, for me, and let me look at the true picture. Allthat I've known and thought of you, so far, has been sham and illusion.Now, I _know_ you!"

  "You--you don't, Catherine!" he exclaimed, half in anger, halfcontrition, terrified at last by the imminent break between them, by thethought of losing this rich flower from the garden of womanhood, thissplendid financial and social prize. "I--I've done wrong, Kate. I admitit. But, truly--"

  "No more," said she, and in her voice sounded a command he knew, atlast, was quite inexorable. "I'm not like other women of our set,perhaps. I can't be bought and sold, Wally, with money and position. Ican't marry a man, and have to live with him, if he shows himselfpetty, or small, or narrow in any way. I must be free, free as air, aslong as I live. Even in marriage, I must be free. Freedom can only comewith the union of two souls that understand and help and inspire eachother. Anything else is slavery--and worse!"

  She shuddered, and for a moment turned half away from him, as, nowcontrite enough for the minute, he stood there looking at her with dazedeyes. For a second the idea came to him that he must take her in hisarms, there in the edge of the woods, burn kisses on her ripe mouth, winher back to him by force, as he had won all life's battles. He wouldnot, could not, let this prize escape him now. A wave of desire surgedthroug
h his being. He took a step toward her, his trembling arms open toseize her lithe, seductive body. But she, retreating, held him away withrepellant palms.

  "No, no, no!" she cried. "Not now--never that, any more! I must be free,Wally--free as air!"

  She raised her face toward the vast reaches of the sky, breathed deepand for a moment closed her eyes, as though bathing her very soul in thesweet freedom of the out-of-doors.

  "Free as air!" she whispered. "Let me go!"

  He started violently. Her simile had struck him like a lash.

  "Free--as what?" he exclaimed hoarsely. "As _air_? But--but there's nosuch freedom, I tell you! Air isn't free any more--or won't be, soon! Itwill be everything, anything but free, before another year is gone! Freeas air? You--you don't understand! Your father and I--we shall soon ownthe air. Free as air? Yes, if you like! For that--that means you, too,must belong to me!"

  Again he sought to take her, to hold her and overmaster her. But she,now wide-eyed with a kind of sudden terror at this latest outbreak, thisseeming madness on his part, which she could nowise fathom orcomprehend, retreated ever more and more, away from him.

  Then suddenly with a quick effort, she stripped off the splendid,blazing diamond from her finger, and held it out to him.

  "Wally," said she, calm now and quite herself again, "Wally, let's befriends. Just that and nothing more. Dear, good, companionable friends,as we used to be, long years ago, before this madness seized us--thischimera of--of love!"

  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 crushingdenouement.

  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, couldbring none to utterance. Then their eyes met; and his lowered.

  "Good-bye," said she quietly. "Good-bye forever, as my betrothed. Whenwe 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, abit, 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 manwithout sense or reason, he watched her walk away from him, upright andstrong and lithe, voluptuous and desirable in every motion of thatsplendid body, now lost to him forever. Then all at once, entering awoodland path that led by a short cut back to the club-house, shevanished from his sight.

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

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

  And, last of all, with lowered head and lips that moved in fearfulcurses, he crashed away into the woods, away from the path where thegirl was, away from the club-house, away, away, thirsting for solitudeand time to quell his passion, salve his wounded pride and pondermeasures of terrible revenge.

  The diamond ring, crushed into the earth, and the golf clubs, lyingwhere they had fallen from the disputants' hands, now remained there asmelancholy reminders of the double game--love and golf--which had sosuddenly ended in disaster.