The Riverman

S >> Stewart Edward White >> The Riverman

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"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."

XIX

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 thes
e 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.

XX

"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.

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