Part 57

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.

XXI

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.