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?”