Affairs went thus for a week. Orde was much at the Bishop residence, where he was cordially received by the general, where he gained an occasional half-hour with Carroll, and where he was almost ignored by Mrs. Bishop in her complete self-absorption. Indeed, it is to be doubted whether he attained any real individuality to that lady, who looked on all the world outside her family as useful or useless to the church.
In the course of the happy moments he had alone with Carroll, he arrived at a more intimate plane of conversation with her. He came to an understanding of her unquestioning acceptance of Mrs. Bishop's attitude. Carroll truly believed that none but herself could perform for her mother the various petty offices that lady demanded from her next of kin, and that her practical slavery was due by every consideration of filial affection. To Orde's occasional tentative suggestion that the service was of a sort better suited to a paid companion or even a housemaid, she answered quite seriously that it made mother nervous to have others about her, and that it was better to do these things than to throw her into a “spell.” Orde chafed at first over seeing his precious opportunities thus filched from him; later he fretted because he perceived that Carroll was forced, however willingly, to labours beyond her strength, to irksome confinement, and to that intimate and wearing close association with the abnormal which in the long run is bound to deaden the spirit. He lost sight of his own grievance in the matter. With perhaps somewhat of exaggeration he came mightily to desire for her more of the open air, both of body and spirit. Often when tramping back to his hotel he communed savagely with himself, turning the problem over and over in his mind until, like a snowball, it had gathered to itself colossal proportions.
And in his hotel room he brooded over the state of affairs until his thoughts took a very gloomy tinge indeed. To begin with, in spite of his mother's assurance, he had no faith in his own cause. His acquaintance with Carroll was but an affair of months, and their actual meetings comprised incredibly few days. Orde was naturally humble-minded. It did not seem conceivable to him that he could win her without a long courtship. And superadded was the almost intolerable weight of Carroll's ideas as to her domestic duties. Although Orde held Mrs. Bishop's exactions in very slight esteem, and was most sceptical in regard to the disasters that would follow their thwarting, nevertheless he had to confess to himself that all Carroll's training, life, the very purity and sweetness of her disposition lent the situation an iron reality for her. He became much discouraged.
Nevertheless, at the very moment when he had made up his mind that it would be utterly useless even to indulge in hope for some years to come, he spoke. It came about suddenly, and entirely without premeditation.
The two had escaped for a breath of air late in the evening. Following the conventions, they merely strolled to the end of the block and back, always within sight of the house. Fifth Avenue was gay with illumination and the prancing of horses returning uptown or down to the Washington Square district. In contrast the side street, with its austere rows of brownstone houses, each with its area and flight of steps, its spaced gas lamps, its deserted roadway, seemed very still and quiet. Carroll was in a tired and pensive mood. She held her head back, breathing deeply.
“It's only a little strip, but it's the stars,” said she, looking up to the sky between the houses. “They're so quiet and calm and big.”
She seemed to Orde for the first time like a little girl. The maturer complexities which we put on with years, with experience, and with the knowledge of life had for the moment fallen from her, leaving merely the simple soul of childhood gazing in its eternal wonder at the stars. A wave of tenderness lifted Orde from his feet. He leaned over, his breath coming quickly.
“Carroll!” he said.
She looked up at him, and shrank back.
“No, no! You mustn't,” she cried. She did not pretend to misunderstand. The preliminaries seemed in some mysterious fashion to have been said long ago.
“It's life or death with me,” he said.
“I must not,” she cried, fluttering like a bird. “I promised myself long ago that I must always, ALWAYS take care of mother.”
“Please, please, dear,” pleaded Orde. He had nothing more to say than this, just the simple incoherent symbols of pleading; but in such crises it is rather the soul than the tongue that speaks. His hand met hers and closed about it. It did not respond to his grasp, nor did it draw away, but lay limp and warm and helpless in his own.
She shook her head slowly.
“Don't you care for me, dear?” asked Orde very gently.
“I have no right to tell you that,” answered she. “I have tried, oh, so hard, to keep you from saying this, for I knew I had no right to hear you.”
Orde's heart leaped with a wild exultation.
“You do care for me!” he cried.
They had mounted the steps and stood just within the vestibule. Orde drew her toward him, but she repulsed him gently.
“No,” she shook her head. “Please be very good to me. I'm very weak.”
“Carroll!” cried Orde. “Tell me that you love me! Tell me that you'll marry me!”
“It would kill mother if I should leave her,” she said sadly.
“But you must marry me,” pleaded Orde. “We are made for each other. God meant us for each other.”
“It would have to be after a great many years,” she said doubtfully.
She pulled the bell, which jangled faintly in the depths of the house.
“Good-night,” she said. “Come to me to-morrow. No, you must not come in.” She cut short Orde's insistence and the eloquence that had just found its life by slipping inside the half-open door and closing it after her.
Orde stood for a moment uncertain; then turned away and walked up the street, his eyes so blinded by the greater glory that he all but ran down an inoffensive passer-by.
At the hotel he wrote a long letter to his mother. The first part was full of the exultation of his discovery. He told of his good fortune quite as something just born, utterly forgetting his mother's predictions before he came East. Then as the first effervescence died, a more gloomy view of the situation came uppermost. To his heated imagination the deadlock seemed complete. Carroll's devotion to what she considered her duty appeared unbreakable. In the reaction Orde doubted whether he would have it otherwise. And then his fighting blood surged back to his heart. All the eloquence, the arguments, the pleadings he should have commanded earlier in the evening hurried belated to their posts. After the manner of the young and imaginative when in the white fire of emotion, he began dramatising scenes between Carroll and himself. He saw them plainly. He heard the sound of his own voice as he rehearsed the arguments which should break her resolution. A woman's duty to her own soul; her obligation toward the man she could make or mar by her love; her self-respect; the necessity of a break some time; the advantage of having the crisis over with now rather than later; a belief in the ultimate good even to Mrs. Bishop of throwing that lady more on her own resources; and so forth and so on down a list of arguments obvious enough or trivial enough, but all inspired by the soul of fervour, all ennobled by the spirit of truth that lies back of the major premise that a woman should cleave to a man, forsaking all others. Orde sat back in his chair, his eyes vacant, his pen all but falling from his hand. He did not finish the letter to his mother. After a while he went upstairs to his own room.
The fever of the argument coursed through his veins all that long night. Over and over again he rehearsed it in wearisome repetition until it had assumed a certain and almost invariable form. And when he had reached the end of his pleading he began it over again, until the daylight found him weary and fevered. He arose and dressed himself. He could eat no breakfast. By a tremendous effort of the will he restrained himself from going over to Ninth Street until the middle of the morning.
He entered the drawing-room to find her seated at the piano. His heart bounded, and for an instant he stood still, summoning his forces to the struggle for which he had so painfully gathered his ammunition. She did not look up as he approached until he stood almost at her shoulder. Then she turned to him and held out both her hands.
“It is no use, Jack,” she said. “I care for you too much. I will marry you whenever you say.”
Orde left that evening early. This was at Carroll's request. She preferred herself to inform her family of the news.
“I don't know yet how mother is going to get along,” said she. “Come back to-morrow afternoon and see them all.”
The next morning Orde, having at last finished and despatched the letter to his mother, drifted up the avenue and into the club. As he passed the smoking room he caught sight of Gerald seated in an armchair by the window. He entered the room and took a seat opposite the young fellow.
Gerald held out his hand silently, which the other took.
“I'm glad to hear it,” said Gerald at last. “Very glad. I told you I was on your side.” He hesitated, then went on gravely: “Poor Carroll is having a hard time, though. I think it's worse than she expected. It's no worse than I expected. You are to be one of the family, so I am going to give you a piece of advice. It's something, naturally, I wouldn't speak of otherwise. But Carroll is my only sister, and I want her to be happy. I think you are the man to make her so, but I want you to avoid one mistake. Fight it out right now, and never give back the ground you win.”
“I feel that,” replied Orde quietly.
“Mother made father resign from the army; and while he's a dear old boy, he's never done anything since. She holds me—although I see through her—possibly because I'm weak or indifferent, possibly because I have a silly idea I can make a bad situation better by hanging around. She is rapidly turning Kendrick into a sullen little prig, because he believes implicitly all the grievances against the world and the individual she pours out to him. You see, I have no illusions concerning my family. Only Carroll has held to her freedom of soul, because that's the joyous, free, sweet nature of her, bless her! For the first time she's pitted her will against mother's, and it's a bad clash.”
“Your mother objected?” asked Orde.
Gerald laughed a little bitterly. “It was very bad,” said he. “You've grown horns, hoofs, and a tail overnight. There's nothing too criminal to have escaped your notice. I have been forbidden to consort with you. So has the general. The battle of last night had to do with your coming to the house at all. As it is not Carroll's house, naturally she has no right to insist.”
“I shall not be permitted to see her?” cried Orde.
“I did not say that. Carroll announced then quite openly that she would see you outside. I fancy that was the crux of the matter. Don't you see? The whole affair shifted ground. Carroll has offered direct disobedience. Oh, she's a bully little fighter!” he finished in admiring accents. “You can't quite realise what she's doing for your sake; she's not only fighting mother, but her own heart.”
Orde found a note at the hotel, asking him to be in Washington Square at half-past two.
Carroll met him with a bright smile.
“Things aren't quite right at home,” she said. “It is a great shock to poor mother at first, and she feels very strongly. Oh, it isn't you, dear; it's the notion that I can care for anybody but her. You see, she's been used to the other idea so long that I suppose it seemed a part of the universe to her. She'll get used to it after a little, but it takes time.”
Orde examined her face anxiously. Two bright red spots burned on her cheeks; her eyes flashed with a nervous animation, and a faint shade had sketched itself beneath them.
“You had a hard time,” he murmured, “you poor dear!”
She smiled up at him.
“We have to pay for the good things in life, don't we, dear? And they are worth it. Things will come right after a little. We must not be too impatient. Now, let's enjoy the day. The park isn't so bad, is it?”
At five o'clock Orde took her back to her doorstep, where he left her.
This went on for several days.
At the end of that time Orde could not conceal from himself that the strain was beginning to tell. Carroll's worried expression grew from day to day, while the animation that characterised her manner when freed from the restraint became more and more forced. She was as though dominated by some inner tensity, which she dared not relax even for a moment. To Orde's questionings she replied as evasively as she could, assuring him always that matters were going as well as she had expected; that mother was very difficult; that Orde must have patience, for things would surely come all right. She begged him to remain quiescent until she gave him the word; and she implored it so earnestly that Orde, though he chafed, was forced to await the turn of events. Every afternoon she met him, from two to five. The situation gave little opportunity for lovers' demonstrations. She seemed entirely absorbed by the inner stress of the struggle she was going through, so that hardly did she seem able to follow coherently even plans for the future. She appeared, however, to gain a mysterious refreshment from Orde's mere proximity; so gradually he, with that streak of almost feminine intuition which is the especial gift to lovers, came to the point of sitting quite silent with her, clasping her hand out of sight of the chance passer-by. When the time came to return, they arose and walked back to Ninth Street, still in silence. At the door they said good-bye. He kissed her quite soberly.
“I wish I could help, sweetheart,” said he.
She shook her head at him.
“You do help,” she replied.
From Gerald at the club, Orde sought more intimate news of what was going on. For several days, however, the young man absented himself from his usual haunts. It was only at the end of the week that Orde succeeded in finding him.
“No,” Gerald answered his greeting, “I haven't been around much. I've been sticking pretty close home.”
Little by little, Orde's eager questions drew out the truth of the situation. Mrs. Bishop had shut herself up in a blind and incredible obstinacy, whence she sallied with floods of complaints, tears, accusations, despairs, reproaches, vows, hysterics—all the battery of the woman misunderstood, but in which she refused to listen to a consecutive conversation. If Carroll undertook to say anything, the third word would start her mother off into one of her long and hysterical tirades. It was very wearing, and there seemed to be nothing gained from day to day. Her child had disobeyed her. And as a climax, she had assumed the impregnable position of a complete prostration, wherein she demanded the minute care of an invalid in the crisis of a disorder. She could bear no faintest ray of illumination, no lightest footfall. In a hushed twilight she lay, her eyes swathed, moaning feebly that her early dissolution at the hands of ingratitude was imminent. Thus she established a deadlock which was likely to continue indefinitely. The mere mention of the subject nearest Carroll's heart brought the feeble complaint:
“Do you want to kill me?”
The only scrap of victory to be snatched from this stricken field was the fact that Carroll insisted on going to meet her lover every afternoon. The invalid demanded every moment of her time, either for personal attendance or in fulfilment of numerous and exacting church duties. An attempt, however, to encroach thus on the afternoon hours met a stone wall of resolution on Carroll's part.
This was the situation Orde gathered from his talk with Gerald. Though he fretted under the tyranny exacted, he could see nothing which could relieve the situation save his own withdrawal. He had already long over-stayed his visit; important affairs connected with his work demanded his attention, he had the comfort of Carroll's love assured; and the lapse of time alone could be depended on to change Mrs. Bishop's attitude, a consummation on which Carroll seemed set. Although Orde felt all the lively dissatisfaction natural to a newly accepted lover who had gained slight opportunity for favours, for confidences, even for the making of plans, nevertheless he could see for the present nothing else to do.
The morning after he had reached this conclusion he again met Gerald at the gymnasium. That young man, while as imperturbable and languid in movement as ever, concealed an excitement. He explained nothing until the two, after a shower and rub-down, were clothing themselves leisurely in the empty couch-room.
“Orde,” said Gerald suddenly, “I'm worried about Carroll.”
Orde straightened his back and looked steadily at Gerald, but said nothing.
“Mother has commenced bothering her again. It wasn't so bad as long as she stuck to daytime, but now she's taken to prowling in a dozen times a night. I hear their voices for an hour or so at a time. I'm afraid it's beginning to wear on Carroll more than you realise.”
“Thank you,” said Orde briefly.
That afternoon with Carroll he took the affair firmly in hand.
“This thing has come to the point where it must stop,” said he, “and I'm going to stop it. I have some rights in the matter of the health and comfort of the girl I love.”
“What do you intend to do?” asked Carroll, frightened.
“I shall have it out with your mother,” replied Orde.
“You mustn't do that,” implored Carroll. “It would do absolutely no good, and would just result in a quarrel that could never be patched up.”
“I don't know as I care particularly,” said Orde.
“But I do. Think—she is my mother.”
Orde stirred uneasily with a mental reservation as to selfishness, but said nothing.
“And think what it means to a girl to be married and go away from home finally without her parent's consent. It's the most beautiful and sacred thing in her life, and she wants it to be perfect. It's worth waiting and fighting a little for. After all, we are both young, and we have known each other such a very short time.”
So she pleaded with him, bringing forward all the unanswerable arguments built by the long average experience of the world—arguments which Orde could not refute, but whose falsity to the situation he felt most keenly. He could not specify without betraying Gerald's confidence. Raging inwardly, he consented to a further armistice.
At his hotel he found a telegram. He did not open it until he had reached his own room. It was from home, urging his immediate return for the acceptance of some contracted work.
“To hell with the contracted work!” he muttered savagely, and calling a bell-boy, sent an answer very much to that effect. Then he plunged his hands into his pockets, stretched out his legs, and fell into a deep and gloomy meditation.
He was interrupted by a knock on the door.
“Come in!” he called, without turning his head.
He heard the door open and shut. After a moment he looked around. Kendrick Bishop stood watching him.
Orde lit the gas.
“Hello, Kendrick!” said he. “Sit down.” The boy made no reply. Orde looked at him curiously, and saw that he was suffering from an intense excitement. His frame trembled convulsively, his lips were white, his face went red and pale by turns. Evidently he had something to say, but could not yet trust his voice. Orde sat down and waited.
“You've got to let my mother alone,” he managed to say finally.
“I have done nothing to your mother, Kendrick,” said Orde kindly.
“You've brought her to the point of death,” asserted Keudrick violently. “You're hounding her to her grave. You're turning those she loves best against her.”
Orde thought to catch the echo of quotation in these words.
“Did your mother send you to me?” he asked.
“If we had any one else worth the name of man in the family, I wouldn't have to come,” said Kendrick, almost in the manner of one repeating a lesson.
“What do you want me to do?” asked Orde after a moment of thought.
“Go away,” cried Kendrick. “Stop this unmanly contest against a defenceless woman.”
“I cannot do that,” replied Orde quietly.
Kendrick's face assumed a livid pallor, and his eyes seemed to turn black with excitement. Trembling in every limb, but without hesitation, he advanced on Orde, drew a short riding-whip from beneath his coat, and slashed the young man across the face. Orde made an involuntary movement to arise, but sank back, and looked steadily at the boy. Once again Kendrick hit; raised his arm for the third time; hesitated. His lips writhed, and then, with a sob, he cast the little whip from him and burst from the room.
Orde sat without moving, while two red lines slowly defined themselves across his face. The theatrical quality of the scene and the turgid rhetorical bathos of the boy's speeches attested his youth and the unformed violence of his emotions. Did they also indicate a rehearsal, or had the boy merely been goaded to vague action by implicit belief in a woman's vagaries? Orde did not know, but the incident brought home to him, as nothing else could, the turmoil of that household.
“Poor youngster!” he concluded his reverie, and went to wash his face in hot water.
He had left Carroll that afternoon in a comparatively philosophical and hopeful frame of mind. The next day she came to him with hurried, nervous steps, her usually pale cheeks mounting danger signals of flaming red, her eyes swimming. When she greeted him she choked, and two of the tears overflowed. Quite unmindful of the nursemaids across the square, Orde put his arm comfortingly about her shoulder. She hid her face against his sleeve and began softly to cry.
Orde did not attempt as yet to draw from her the cause of this unusual agitation. A park bench stood between two dense bushes, screened from all directions save one. To this he led her. He comforted her as one comforts a child, stroking clumsily her hair, murmuring trivialities without meaning, letting her emotion relieve itself. After awhile she recovered somewhat her control of herself and sat up away from him, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief dampened into a tiny wad. But even after she had shaken her head vigorously at last, and smiled up at him rather tremulously in token that the storm was over, she would not tell him that anything definite had happened to bring on the outburst.
“I just needed you,” she said, “that's all. It's just nothing but being a woman, I think. You'll get used to little things like that.”
“This thing has got to quit!” said he grimly.
She said nothing, but reached up shyly and touched his face where Kendrick's whip had stung, and her eyes became very tender. A carriage rolled around Washington Arch, and, coming to a stand, discharged its single passenger on the pavement.
“Why, it's Gerald!” cried Carroll, surprised.
The young man, catching sight of them, picked his way daintily and leisurely toward them. He was, as usual, dressed with meticulous nicety, the carnation in his button-hole, the gloss on his hat and shoes, the freshness on his gloves, the correct angle on his stick. His dark, long face with its romantic moustache, and its almost effeminate soft eyes, was as unemotional and wearied as ever. As he approached, he raised his stick slightly by way of salutation.
“I have brought,” said he, “a carriage, and I wish you would both do me the favour to accompany me on a short excursion.”
Taking their consent for granted, he signalled the vehicle, which rapidly approached.
The three—Carroll and Orde somewhat bewildered—took their seats. During a brief drive, Gerald made conversation on different topics, apparently quite indifferent as to whether or not his companions replied. After an interval the carriage drew up opposite a brown-stone dwelling on a side street. Gerald rang the bell, and a moment later the three were ushered by a discreet and elderly maid into a little square reception-room immediately off the hall. The maid withdrew.
Gerald carefully deposited his top hat on the floor, placed in it his gloves, and leaned his stick against its brim.
“I have brought you here, among other purposes, to hear from me a little brief wisdom drawn from experience and the observation of life,” he began, addressing his expectant and curious guests. “That wisdom is briefly this: there comes a time in the affairs of every household when a man must assert himself as the ruler. In all the details he may depend on the woman's judgment, experience, and knowledge, but when it comes to the big crises, where life is deflected into one channel or the other, then, unless the man does the deciding, he is lost for ever, and his happiness, and the happiness of those who depend on him. This is abstruse, but I come to the particular application shortly.
“But moments of decision are always clouded by many considerations. The decision is sure to cut across much that is expedient, much that seems to be necessary, much that is dear. Carroll remembers the case of our own father. The general would have made a name for himself in the army; his wife demanded his retirement; he retired, and his career ended. That was the moment of his decision. It is very easy to say, in view of that simple statement, that the general was weak in yielding to his wife, but a consideration of the circumstances—”
“Why do you say all this?” interrupted Orde.
Gerald raised his hand.
“Believe me, it is necessary, as you will agree when you have heard me through. Mrs. Bishop was in poor health; the general in poor financial circumstances. The doctors said the Riviera. Mrs. Bishop's parents, who were wealthy, furnished the money for her sojourn in that climate. She could not bear to be separated from her husband. A refusal to resign then, a refusal to accept the financial aid offered, would have been cast against him as a reproach—he did not love his wife enough to sacrifice his pride, his ambition, his what-you-will. Nevertheless, that was his moment of decision.
“I could multiply instances, yet it would only accumulate needless proof. My point is that in these great moments a man can afford to take into consideration only the affair itself. Never must he think of anything but the simple elements of the problem—he must ignore whose toes are trodden upon, whose feelings are hurt, whose happiness is apparently marred. For note this: if a man does fearlessly the right thing, I am convinced that in the readjustment all these conflicting interests find themselves bettered instead of injured. You want a concrete instance? I believe firmly that if the general had kept to his army life, and made his wife conform to it, after the storm had passed she would have settled down to a happy existence. I cannot prove it—I believe it.”
“This may be all very true, Gerald,” said Orde, “but I fail to see why you have brought us to this strange house to tell it.”
“In a moment,” replied Gerald. “Have patience. Believing that thoroughly, I have come in the last twenty-four hours to a decision. That this happens not to affect my own immediate fortunes does not seem to me to invalidate my philosophy.”
He carefully unbuttoned his frock coat, crossed his legs, produced a paper and a package from his inside pocket, and eyed the two before him.
“I have here,” he went on suddenly, “marriage papers duly made out; in this package is a plain gold ring; in the next room is waiting, by prearrangement, a very good friend of mine in the clergy. Personally I am at your disposal.”
He looked at them expectantly.
“The very thing!” “Oh, no!” cried Orde and Carroll in unison.
Nevertheless, in spite of this divergence of opinion, ten minutes later the three passed through the door into the back apartment—Carroll still hesitant, Orde in triumph, Gerald as correct and unemotional as ever.
In this back room they found waiting a young clergyman conversing easily with two young girls. At the sight of Carroll, these latter rushed forward and overwhelmed her with endearments. Carroll broke into a quickly suppressed sob and clasped them close to her.
“Oh, you dears!” she cried, “I'm so glad you're here!” She flashed a grateful look in Gerald's direction, and a moment later took occasion to press his arm and whisper:
“You've thought of everything! You're the dearest brother in the world!”
Gerald received this calmly, and set about organising the ceremony. In fifteen minutes the little party separated at the front door, amid a chatter of congratulations and good wishes. Mr. and Mrs. Orde entered the cab and drove away.
“Oh, it IS the best way, dear, after all!” cried Carroll, pressing close to her husband. “A few minutes ago I was all doubts and fears, but now I feel so safe and settled,” she laughed happily. “It is as though I had belonged to you always, you old Rock of Gibraltar! and anything that happens now will come from the outside, and not from the inside, won't it, dear?”
“Yes, sweetheart,” said Orde.
“Poor mother! I wonder how she'll take it.”
“We'll soon know, anyway,” replied Orde, a little grimly.
In the hallway of the Bishop house Orde kissed her.
“Be brave, sweetheart,” said he, “but remember that now you're my wife.”
She nodded at him gravely and disappeared.
Orde sat in the dim parlour for what seemed to be an interminable period. Occasionally the sounds of distant voices rose to his ear and died away again. The front door opened to admit some one, but Orde could not see who it was. Twice a scurrying of feet overhead seemed to indicate the bustle of excitement. The afternoon waned. A faint whiff of cooking, escaping through some carelessly open door, was borne to his nostrils. It grew dark, but the lamps remained unlighted. Finally he heard the rustle of the portieres, and turned to see the dim form of the general standing there.
“Bad business! bad business!” muttered the old man. “It's very hard on me. Perhaps you did the right thing—you must be good to her—but I cannot countenance this affair. It was most high-handed, sir!”
The portieres fell again, and he disappeared.
Finally, after another interval, Carroll returned. She went immediately to the gas-fixture, which she lit. Orde then saw that she was sobbing violently. She came to him, and for a moment hid her face against his breast. He patted her hair, waiting for her to speak. After a little she controlled herself.
“How was it?” asked Orde, then.
She shivered.
“I never knew people could be so cruel,” she complained in almost a bewildered manner. “Jack, we must go to-night. She—she has ordered me out of the house, and says she never wants to see my face again.” She broke down for a second. “Oh, Jack! she can't mean that. I've always been a good daughter to her. And she's very bitter against Gerald. Oh! I told her it wasn't his fault, but she won't listen. She sent for that odious Mr. Merritt—her rector, you know—and he supported her. I believe he's angry because we did not go to him. Could you believe such a thing! And she's shut herself up in her air of high virtue, and underneath it she's, oh, so angry!”
“Well, it's natural she should be upset,” comforted Orde. “Don't think too much of what she does now. Later she'll get over it.”
Carroll shivered again.
“You don't know, dear, and I'm not going to tell you. Why,” she cried, “she told me that you and I were in a conspiracy to drive her to her grave so we could get her money!”
“She must be a little crazy,” said Orde, still pacifically.
“Come, help me,” said Carroll. “I must get my things.”
“Can't you just pack a bag and leave the rest until tomorrow? It's about hungry time.”
“She says I must take every stitch belonging to me tonight.”
They packed trunks until late that night, quite alone. Gerald had departed promptly after breaking the news, probably without realising to what a pass affairs would come. A frightened servant, evidently in disobedience of orders and in fear of destruction, brought them a tray of food, which she put down on a small table and hastily fled. In a room down the hall they could hear the murmur of voices where Mrs. Bishop received spiritual consolation from her adviser. When the trunks were packed, Orde sent for a baggage waggon. Carroll went silently from place to place, saying farewell to such of her treasures as she had made up her mind to leave. Orde scribbled a note to Gerald, requesting him to pack up the miscellanies and send them to Michigan by freight. The baggage man and Orde carried the trunks downstairs. No one appeared. Carroll and Orde walked together to the hotel. Next morning an interview with Gerald confirmed them in their resolution of immediate departure.
“She is set in her opposition now, and at present she believes firmly that her influence will separate you. Such a state of mind cannot be changed in an hour.”
“And you?” asked Carroll.
“Oh, I,” he shrugged, “will go on as usual. I have my interests.”
“I wish you would come out in our part of the country,” ventured Orde.
Gerald smiled his fine smile.
“Good-bye,” said he. “Going to a train is useless, and a bore to everybody.”
Carroll threw herself on his neck in an access of passionate weeping.
“You WILL write and tell me of everything, won't you?” she begged.
“Of course. There now, good-bye.”
Orde followed him into the hall.
“It would be quite useless to attempt another interview?” he inquired.
Gerald made a little mouth.
“I am in the same predicament as yourselves,” said he, “and have since nine this morning taken up my quarters at the club. Please do not tell Carroll; it would only pain her.”
At the station, just before they passed in to the train, the general appeared.
“There, there!” he fussed. “If your mother should hear of my being here, it would be a very bad business, very bad. This is very sad; but—well, good-bye, dear; and you, sir, be good to her. And write your daddy, Carroll. He'll be lonesome for you.” He blew his nose very loudly and wiped his glasses. “Now, run along, run along,” he hurried them. “Let us not have any scenes. Here, my dear, open this envelope when you are well started. It may help cheer the journey. Not a word!”
He hurried them through the gate, paying no heed to what they were trying to say. Then he steamed away and bustled into a cab without once looking back.
When the train had passed the Harlem River and was swaying its uneven way across the open country, Carroll opened the envelope. It contained a check for a thousand dollars.
“Dear old daddy!” she murmured. “Our only wedding present!”
“You are the capitalist of the family,” said Orde. “You don't know how poor a man you've married. I haven't much more than the proverbial silver watch and bad nickel.”
She reached out to press his hand in reassurance. He compared it humorously with his own.
“What a homely, knotted, tanned old thing it is by yours,” said he.
“It's a strong hand,” she replied soberly, “it's a dear hand.” Suddenly she snatched it up and pressed it for a fleeting instant against her cheek, looking at him half ashamed.
The winter months were spent at Monrovia, where Orde and his wife lived for a time at the hotel. This was somewhat expensive, but Orde was not quite ready to decide on a home, and he developed unexpected opposition to living at Redding in the Orde homestead.
“No, I've been thinking about it,” he told Grandma Orde. “A young couple should start out on their own responsibility. I know you'd be glad to have us, but I think it's better the other way. Besides, I must be at Monrovia a good deal of the time, and I want Carroll with me. She can make you a good long visit in the spring, when I have to go up river.”
To this Grandma Orde, being a wise old lady, had to nod her assent, although she would much have liked her son near her.
At Monrovia, then, they took up their quarters. Carroll soon became acquainted with the life of the place. Monrovia, like most towns of its sort and size, consisted of an upper stratum of mill owners and lumber operators, possessed of considerable wealth, some cultivation, and definite social ideas; a gawky, countrified, middle estate of storekeepers, catering both to the farm and local trade and the lumber mill operatives, generally of Holland extraction, who dwelt in simple unpainted board shanties. The class first mentioned comprised a small coterie, among whom Carroll soon found two or three congenials—Edith Fuller, wife of the young cashier in the bank; Valerie Cathcart, whose husband had been killed in the Civil War; Clara Taylor, wife of the leading young lawyer of the village; and, strangely enough, Mina Heinzman, the sixteen-year-old daughter of old Heinzman, the lumberman. Nothing was more indicative of the absolute divorce of business and social life than the unbroken evenness of Carroll's friendship for the younger girl. Though later the old German and Orde locked in serious struggle on the river, they continued to meet socially quite as usual; and the daughter of one and the wife of the other never suspected anything out of the ordinary. This impersonality of struggle has always been characteristic of the pioneer business man's good-nature.
Newmark received the news of his partner's sudden marriage without evincing any surprise, but with a sardonic gleam in one corner of his eye. He called promptly, conversed politely for a half hour, and then took his leave.
“How do you like him?” asked Orde, when he had gone.
“He looks like a very shrewd man,” replied Carroll, picking her words for fear of saying the wrong thing.
Orde laughed.
“You don't like him,” he stated.
“I don't dislike him,” said Carroll. “I've not a thing against him. But we could never be in the slightest degree sympathetic. He and I don't—don't—”
“Don't jibe,” Orde finished for her. “I didn't much think you would. Joe never was much of a society bug.” It was on the tip of Carroll's tongue to reply that “society bugs” were not the only sort she could appreciate, but she refrained. She had begun to realise the extent of her influence over her husband's opinion.
Newmark did not live at the hotel. Early in the fall he had rented a small one-story house situated just off Main Street, set well back from the sidewalk among clumps of oleanders. Into this he retired as a snail into its shell. At first he took his meals at the hotel, but later he imported an impassive, secretive man-servant, who took charge of him completely. Neither master nor man made any friends, and in fact rebuffed all advances. One Sunday, Carroll and Orde, out for a walk, passed this quaint little place, with its picket fence.
“Let's go in and return Joe's call,” suggested Orde.
Their knock at the door brought the calm valet.
“Mr. Newmark is h'out, sir,” said he. “Yes, sir, I'll tell him that you called.”
They turned away. As they sauntered down the little brick-laid walk, Carroll suddenly pressed close to her husband's arm.
“Jack,” she begged, “I want a little house like that, for our very own.”
“We can't afford it, sweetheart.”
“Not to own,” she explained, “just to rent. It will be next best to having a home of our own.”
“We'd have to have a girl, dear,” said Orde, “and we can't even afford that, yet.”
“A girl!” cried Carroll indignantly. “For us two!”
“You couldn't do the housework and the cooking,” said Orde. “You've never done such a thing in your life, and I won't have my little girl slaving.”
“It won't be slaving, it will be fun—just like play-housekeeping,” protested Carroll. “And I've got to learn some time. I was brought up most absurdly, and I realise it now.”
“We'll see,” said Orde vaguely.
The subject was dropped for the time being. Later Carroll brought it up again. She was armed with several sheets of hotel stationery, covered with figures showing how much cheaper it would be to keep house than to board.
“You certainly make out a strong case—on paper,” laughed Orde. “If you buy a rooster and a hen, and she raises two broods, at the end of a year you'll have twenty-six; and if they all breed—even allowing half roosters—you'll have over three hundred; and if they all breed, you'll have about thirty-five hundred; and if—”
“Stop! stop!” cried Carroll, covering her ears.
“All right,” agreed Orde equably, “but that's the way it figures. Funny the earth isn't overrun with chickens, isn't it?”
She thrust her tables of figures into her desk drawer. “You're just making fun of me always,” she said reproachfully.
Two days later Orde took her one block up the street to look at a tiny little house tucked on a fifty-foot lot beneath the shadow of the church.
“It's mighty little,” said he. “I'll have to go out in the hall to change my collar, and we couldn't have more than two people at a time to call on us.”
“It's a dear!” said she, “and I'm not so e-nor-mous myself, whatever YOU may be.”
They ended by renting the little house, and Carroll took charge of it delightedly. What difficulties she overcame, and what laughable and cryable mistakes she made only those who have encountered a like situation could realise. She learned fast, however, and took a real pride in her tiny box of a home. A piano was, of course, out of the question, but the great golden harp occupied one corner, or rather one side, of the parlour. Standing thus enshrouded in its covering, it rather resembled an august and tremendous veiled deity. To Carroll's great delight, Orde used solemnly to go down on all fours and knock his forehead thrice on the floor before it when he entered the house at evening. When the very cold weather came and they had to light the base-burner stove, which Orde stoutly maintained occupied all the other half of the parlour, the harp's delicate constitution necessitated its standing in the hall. Nevertheless, Carroll had great comfort from it. While Orde was away at the office, she whispered through its mellow strings her great happiness, the dreams for her young motherhood which would come in the summer, the vague and lingering pain over the hapless but beloved ones she had left behind her in her other life. Then she arose refreshed, and went about the simple duties of her tiny domain.
The winter was severe. All the world was white. The piles of snow along the sidewalks grew until Carroll could hardly look over them. Great fierce winds swept in from the lake. Sometimes Orde and his wife drove two miles to the top of the sand hills, where first they had met in this their present home, and looked out beyond the tumbled shore ice to the steel-gray, angry waters. The wind pricked their faces, and, going home, the sleigh-bells jingled, the snowballs from the horses' hoofs hit against the dash, the cold air seared the inside of their nostrils. When Orde helped Carroll from beneath the warm buffalo robes, she held up to him a face glowing with colour, framed in the soft fluffy fur of a hood.
“You darling!” he cried, and stooped to kiss her smooth, cold cheek.
When he had returned from the stable around the corner, he found the lit lamp throwing its modified light and shade over the little round table. He shook down the base-burner vigorously, thrust several billets of wood in its door, and turned to meet her eyes across the table.
“Kind of fun being married, isn't it?” said he.
“Kind of,” she admitted, nodding gravely.
The business of the firm was by now about in shape. All the boom arrangements had been made; the two tugs were in the water and their machinery installed; supplies and equipments were stored away; the foremen of the crews engaged, and the crews themselves pretty well picked out. Only there needed to build the wanigan, and to cart in the supplies for the upper river works before the spring break-up and the almost complete disappearance of the roads. Therefore, Orde had the good fortune of unusual leisure to enjoy these first months with his bride. They entered together the Unexplored Country, and found it more wonderful than they had dreamed. Almost before they knew it, January and February had flown.
“We must pack up, sweetheart,” said Orde.
“It's only yesterday that we came,” she cried regretfully.
They took the train for Redding, were installed in the gable room, explored together for three days the delights of the old-fashioned house, the spicy joys of Grandma Orde's and Amanda's cookery, the almost adoring adulation of the old folks. Then Orde packed his “turkey,” assumed his woods clothes, and marched off down the street carrying his bag on his back.
“He looks like an old tramp in that rig,” said Grandma Orde, closing the storm door.
“He looks like a conqueror of wildernesses!” cried Carroll, straining her eyes after his vanishing figure. Suddenly she darted after him, calling in her high, bird-like tones. He turned and came back to her. She clasped him by the shoulders, reluctant to let him go.
“Good-bye,” she said at last. “You'll take better care of my sweetheart than you ever did of Jack Orde, won't you, dear?”