9369
WEEK went by. Helen Warren had been sitting that warm afternoon in the big bay-window of the parlor. A cooling breeze fanned the old lace curtains inward, bringing the perfume of the the garden and now and then revealing a wealth of color on the rose-bushes near by. She had just read an appealing letter from Sanders in which he had expressed himself as having been so disturbed by her refusal to assure him positively of what his ultimate fate was to be that he had permitted himself to worry considerably. So greatly concerned, indeed, was he that he had confided in his mother, who, he wrote, had made matters worse by asking him flatly if he was absolutely sure that he was loved in the one and only way a man should be loved by the woman he was hoping to win for his wife.
He was writing all this to Helen in a straightforward, manly way, putting her sharply on her honor, as it were, and she, poor girl, was worried in her turn. Leaving her chair, she went to the piano and seated herself and began to play. She was thus occupied when Ida Tarpley came in suddenly and unannounced, as she felt privileged to do at any time.
“Well, tell me,” the visitor smiled, “what's the matter with your playing? Why, you used to have a good, even touch, but as I came up the walk I declare I thought it was some one tuning the piano. You were dropping enough notes to fill a waste-paper basket.”
“Oh, I'm not in the mood for it, I presume!” Helen said, checking a sigh.
“I understand.” Miss Tarpley gently pushed back Helen's hair and kissed her brow. “You can't deny it; you were thinking about Carson Dwight and all his troubles.”
Helen flushed and dropped her glance to her lap, then she rose from the piano and the two girls moved hand in hand to the window. “The truth is,” Helen admitted, “that I have been wondering if anything has gone wrong with him—any bad news or indications about his election.”
“He can't be worrying about the election,” Ida said, confidently. “Mr. Garner comes to see me often and confides in me rather freely, and he says the people are flocking back to Carson in swarms and droves. They understand him now and admire him for the courageous stand he took.”
“Well, something is wrong with him,” Helen declared, eying her cousin sadly. “Mam' Linda never makes a mistake; she knows him through and through. She went to thank him last night for getting a position for Pete to work regularly at the flouring mill, and she came back really depressed and shaking her head.
“'Suppin certain sho gone wrong wid young mars-ter, honey,' she said. 'He ain't never been lak dis before; he ain'thisse'f, I tell you! He's yaller an' shaky an' look quar out'n de eyes.'”
“Oh!” and Miss Tarpley sank into one of the chairs in the window. “I'm almost sorry you mentioned that, for now I'll worry. I've always had his cause at heart, and now—Helen, I'm afraid something very, very serious is hanging over him.
0371
I'm not hinting at anything that might come out of his disappointment over your affair with Mr. Sanders, either. It seems to me he accepted that as inevitable and is making the best of it, but it is something else.”
“Something else!” Helen repeated. “Oh, Ida, how horribly you talk! Do you mean—is it possible that he was more seriously wounded that night than he has let us know?”
“No, it's not that. I don't know what it is. In fact, Mr. Garner says—”
“What does he say, Ida?” Helen threw into the gap left by her cousin's failure to proceed, and stood staring.
“Well, you know it is easy sometimes to tell when one is not revealing everything, and I felt that way about Mr. Garner when he called night before last. In the first place, though he tried to do it in a casual sort of way, he kept talking of Carson all the time. It was almost as if he had come to see if I would confirm some secret fear of his, for he seemed to get near it several times and then backed out. Once he went further than he intended, for he said, as if it were a slip of the lip, when we were speculating on the possible cause of Carson's depression—he said, 'There isonething, Miss Ida, that I fear, and I fear it so much that I dare not even mention it to myself.'”
“Oh!” exclaimed Helen, and she leaned on the back of her chair; “what could he have meant?”
“I don't know; Mr. Garner wouldn't explain; in fact, he seemed rather upset by his unintentional remark. He laughed awkwardly and changed the subject, and never alluded to Carson again while he stayed. As he was getting his hat in the hall, I followed him and tried to pin him down to some sort of explanation, and then he made an effort to throw me off. 'Oh,' he said, 'you know Carson is terribly blue about losing Helen, and it has, of course, caused him to care less about his election, but he'll come around in time.' I told Mr. Garner then that I was sure he had meant something else. I was looking straight at him and saw his glance fall, but that was all I got out of him. Something is wrong, Helen—something very, very serious.”
“Have you seen Carson lately, Ida?” Helen asked, with rigid lips.
“Not to speak to him; he seems to avoid me, but as I sat in the window of my room yesterday afternoon I saw him go by. He didn't see me, but I saw his face in repose, and oh, cousin, it wrung my heart. He really must have some great secret trouble, and it hurts me to feel that I can't help him bear it. He used to confide in me, but he seems to shun me now, and that, too, in itself, is queer.”
“It is not about his mother, either,” Helen sighed, “for her health has been improving lately.” And as Miss Tarpley was leaving she accompanied her, gloomily to the door.
The twilight fell softly, and as Helen sat in the hammock on the veranda her father came in at the gate and up the walk. She rose to greet him with her customary kiss, and taking his arm they began to stroll back and forth along the veranda. She was hoping that he would speak of Carson Dwight, but he didn't, and she was forced to mention him herself, which she did rather stiffly in her effort to make it appear as merely casual.
“Ida was saying this afternoon that Carson is not looking well—or, rather, that he seems to be worried,” she faltered out, and then she hung on to the Major's arm and waited.
“Oh, I don't know,” the old gentleman said, reflectively. “I went into his office this afternoon to get a blank check, and found him at his desk with a pile of letters from his supporters all over the county. Well, I acknowledge I wondered why he should have so little enthusiasm when the thing is going his way like the woods afire, and his crusty old father fairly chuckling with pride and delight; but what's the use of talking to you! You know if he is blue there is onlyonereason for it.”
“Only one reason!” Helen echoed, faintly.
“Yes, how could the poor boy be happy—thoroughly, so I mean—when the whole town can talk of nothing else but the grandeur of your approaching marriage. Mrs. Snodgrass has started the report that your aunt is to give you a ten-thousand-dollar trousseau and that Sanders is to load you down with family jewels. Mrs. Snod says we are going to have such a crowd here at the house that the verandas will be enclosed in canvas and the tables be set barbecue fashion on the lawn, and that the family servants and all their unlynched descendants are to be brought from the four quarters of the earth to wait on the multitude in the old style. You needn't bother; that's what ails Carson. He's got plenty of pride, and that sort of talk will hurt any man.” But Helen was unconvinced. After supper she sat alone on the veranda, her father being occupied with the evening papers in the library. What could Garner have meant by his remark to Ida? With a heavy heart and her hands tightly clasped in her lap, Helen sat trying to fathom the mystery, for that there was mystery she had no doubt.
She went back to the first days of her return home. When she had arrived her heart—the queer, inconsistent thing which was now so deeply concerned with Carson Dwight's affairs—had been coldly steeled against him. The next salient event of that gladsome period was the ball in her honor of which all else had faded into the background except that memorable talk with Carson and his promise to remove Pete from the temptations of living in town. The boy had gone, then the real trouble had begun. Carson had rescued him from a violent death before her very eyes. That speech of his was never to be forgotten. It had roused her as she had never been roused by human eloquence. With a throb of terror, she heard the report of the pistol fired by Dan Willis, his avowed enemy—Dan Willis upon whom a just Providence had visited—visited—visited—She sat staring at the ground, her beautiful eyes growing larger, her hands clutching each other like clamps of vitalized steel.
“Oh!” she cried. “No, no! not that—not that!” It was an accident. The coroner and his jury had said so. But how strange! No one had mentioned it, and yet it had happened on the very day Carson had ridden along the fatal road to reach Springtown. She knew the way well. She herself had driven over it twice with Carson, and had heard him say it was the nearest and best road, and that he wouldnever take any other.
Ah, yes,thatwas the explanation—thatwas what Garner feared.Thatwas the terrible fatality which the shrewd lawyer, knowing its full gravity, had hardly dared mention even to himself. Carson Dwight, her hero, had killed a man!
Helen rose like a mechanical thing, and with dragging feet went up the stairs to her room. Before her open window—the window looking out upon the Dwight lawn and garden—she sat in the still darkness, now praying that Carson might appear as he sometimes did. If she saw him, should she go to him? Yes, for the pain, the cold clutch on her heart of the discovery was like the throes of death. She told herself that she had been the primal cause of this as of all his suffering. In the blind desire to oblige her, he had wrecked his every hope. He had lost all and yet was uncomplaining. Indeed, he was trying to hide his misfortune, bearing it alone, like the man he was.
She heard her father closing the library windows to prepare for bed. His steps rang hollowly as he came out into the hall below and called up to her: “Daughter, are you asleep?”
A reply hung in her dry throat. She feared to trust her voice to utterance. She heard the Major mutter, as if to himself, “Well, good-night, daughter,” and then his footsteps died out. Again she was alone with her grim discovery.
The town clock had just struck ten when she saw the red coal of a cigar on the Dwight lawn quite near the gate leading into her father's grounds. It was he. She knew it by the fitful flaring of the cigar. Noiselessly she glided down the stairs, softly she turned the big brass key in the massive lock and went out and sped, light of foot, across the dewy grass. As she approached him Dwight was standing with his back to her, his arms folded.
“Carson!” she called, huskily, and he turned with a start and a stare of wonder through the gloom.
“Oh,” he said, “it's you,” and doffing his hat he came through the gateway and stood by her. “It's time, young lady, that you were asleep, isn't it?”
She saw through his effort at lightness of manner.
“I noticed your cigar and wanted to speak to you,” she said, in a voice that sounded tense and even harsh. It rose almost in a squeak and died in her tight throat. Something in his wan face and shifting eyes, noticeable even in the darkness, confirmed her in the conviction that she had divined his secret.
“You wanted to see me,” he said; “I've had so many things to think about lately, in this beastly political business, you know, that I'm sadly behind in my social duties.”
“I—I've been thinking about you all evening,” she said, lamely. “Somehow, I felt as if I simply must see you and talk to you.”
“How good of you!” he cried. “I don't deserve it, though—at such a time, anyway. It is generally conceded that it is a woman's duty, placed as you are, to think of only one thing and one individual. In this case the man is the luckiest one in God's universe. He's well-to-do, has scores of admiring, influential friends, and is to marry the grandest, sweetest woman on earth. If that isn't enough to make a man happy, why—”
“Stop; don't speak that way!” Helen commanded. “I can't stand it. I simply can't stand it, Carson!”
He stared at her inquiringly for a moment, as she stood with her face averted, and then he heaved a big sigh as he gently, almost reverently, touched her sleeve to direct her glance upon himself.
“What is it, Helen?” he said, softly, a wealth of tenderness in his shaking voice. “What's gone wrong? Don't tell meyouare unhappy. Things have gone crooked with me of late—I—I mean that my father has been displeased, till quite recently at least, and I have not been in the best mood; but I have been sustained by the thought that you, at least, were happy. If I thought you were not, I don't know what I would do.”
“How can I be happy when you—when you—” Her voice dwindled away into nothingness, and she could only face him with all her agony and despair burning in her great, melting eyes.
“When I what, Helen?” he asked, gropingly. “Surely you are not troubled aboutme, now that my political horizon is so bright that my opponent can't look at it without smoked glasses. Oh, I'm all right. Ask Garner—ask your father—ask Braider—ask anybody.”
“I was not thinking of yourelection,” she found voice, to say. “Oh, Carson,dohave faith in me! I crave it; I long for it; I yearn for it. I want to help you. I want to stand by you and suffer with you. You can trust me. You tried me once—you remember—and I stood the test. Before God, I'll never breathe it to a soul. Oh”—stopping him by raising her despairing hand—“don't try to deceive me because I'm a girl. The uncertainty is killing me. I'll not close my eyes to-night. The truth will be easier borne because I'll be bearing it—with you.”
“Oh, Helen, can it be possible that you—” He had spoken impulsively and essayed to check himself, but now, pale as a corpse, he stood before her not knowing what to do or say. He opened his mouth as if to speak, and then with a helpless shrug of his shoulders he lapsed into silence, a droop of utter despondency upon him. She was now sure she was right, and a shaft she had never met before entered her heart and remained there—remained there to strengthen her, good woman that she was, as such things have strengthened women of all periods. She laid her firm hand upon his arm in a pressure meant to comfort him, and with the purity of a sorrowing angel she said: “I know the truth, dear Carson, and if you don't show me a way to get you out from under it—you who did it all for my sake—if you don't I shall die. I can't stand it.”
He stood convicted before her. With bowed head he remained silent for a moment, then he said, almost with a groan: “To think, on top of it all, that you must know—you!I was bearing it all right, but now you—you poor, gentle, delicate girl—you have to be dragged into this as you have been dragged into every miserable thing that ever happened to me. It began with your brother's death—I helped stain that memory for you—now this—this unspeakable thing!”
“You did it wholly in self-defence,” she said. “Youhadto do it. He forced it on you.”
“Yes, yes—he or fate, the imps of Satan or the elemental passion born in me. Flight, open flight lay before me, but that would have been the death of self-respect—so it came about.”
“And you kept it on account of your mother?” she went on, insistently, her agonized face close to his.
“Yes, of course. It would kill her, Helen, and I would be doing it deliberately, for I know what the consequences would be. I must be my own tribunal. I have no right to take still another life that legal curiosity may be gratified. But till I am proven innocent I am a murderer—that's what hurts. I am offering myself to my fellow-men as a maker of laws, and yet am deliberately defying those made by my predecessors.”
“Your mother must never know,” Helen said, firmly. “No one shall but you and I, Carson. We'll bear it together.” She took his hand and held it tightly for a moment, then pressing it tenderly against her cold cheek, she lowered her head and left him—left him there under the vague starlight, the soulful fragrance of her soothing personality upon him, causing him to forget his peril, his grief, and his far-reaching sorrow, and to draw close to his aching breast her heavenly sympathy and undying fidelity.
9382
NE morning, a week later, Pole Baker slouched down the street from the wagon-yard, and, peering into the law-office of Garner & Dwight, he stood undecided on the deserted street, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his baggy trousers. He took another surreptitious look. Garner was at his desk, his great brow wrinkled as with concentrated thought, his coarse hair awry, his coat off and shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows, his fingers stained with ink. Glancing up at this moment, he caught the farmer's eye and nodded: “Hello!” he said, cordially; “come in. How's our young colt running out your way?”
“Like a shot out of a straight-barrelled gun,” Baker retorted. “He's the most popular man in the county. He had a slow start, in all that nigger mess, but he's all right now.”
“So you think he'll be elected?” Garner said, as Pole sat down in a chair near his desk and began to twirl his long, gnarled fingers.
“Well, I didn't saythat, exactly,” the farmer answered.
“But you said—” In his perplexity the lawyer could only stare.
“I reckon thar are lots of things in this life that kin keep fellows out of offices besides the men runnin' agin 'em,” Baker said, significantly.
The eyes of the two men met in a long, steady stare; each was trying to read the other. But Garner was too shrewd a lawyer to be pumped even by a trusted friend, and he simply leaned back and took up his pen. “Oh yes, of course,” he observed, “a good many slips betwixt the cup and the lip.”
Silence fell between the two men. Baker broke it suddenly and with his customary frankness. “Look here, Bill Garner,” he said. “That young feller's yore partner an' friend, but I've got his interests at heart myself, an' it don't do no harm sometimes fer two men to talk over what concerns a friend to both. I come in town to talk tosomebody, an' it looks like you are the man.”
“Oh, that's it,” Garner said. “Well, out with it, Baker.”
Pole thrust his right hand into his pocket and took out a splinter of soft pine and his knife. Then, with the toe of his heavy shoe, he drew a wooden, sawdust-filled cuspidor towards him and over it he prepared to whittle.
“I want to talk to you about Carson,” he said. “It ain't none o' my business, Bill, but I believe he's in great big trouble.”
“You do, eh?” and Garner seemed to throw caution to the winds as he leaned forward, his great, facile mouth open. “Well, Pole?”
“Gossip—talk under cover from one mouth to another,” the mountaineer drawled out, “is the most dangerous thing, next to a bucket o' powder in a cook-stove that you are goin' to bake in, of anything I know of. Gossip has got hold of Dwight, Bill, an' it's tangled itself all about him. Ef some'n' ain't done to choke it off it will git him down as shore as a blacksnake kin swallow a toad after he's kivered it with slime.”
“You mean—” But Garner seemed to think better of his inclination towards subterfuge and broke off.
“I mean about the way Dan Willis met his death,” Pole said, to the point. “I'm no fool an' you ain't, at least you wouldn't be ef you was paid by some client to git at the facts. Folks are ready to swear Carson was seed the day that thing happened on that road inside of a mile o' whar Willis was found. You know what time Carson left here that day; it was sometime after dinner, an' the hotel man at Spring-town says he got thar an' registered after dark. He says, too, that Carson looked nervous an' upset an' seemed more anxious to avoid folks than the general run of vote-hunters. Then—then, oh, well, what's the use o' beatin' about the bush? You know an' I know that Carson hain't been actin' like himself since then. It's all we can do to git 'im interested in his own popularity, an' that shows some'n' is wrong—dead wrong. An' it looks to me like it is a matter that ought to be attended to. Killin' a man is serious enough in the eyes of the law without covering it up till it's jerked out of you by the State solicitor.”
“So you think the two men met?” Garner said, now quite as if he were inquiring into the legal status of any ordinary case.
“That's my judgment,” answered Pole. “And if I'm right, then it seems to me that Carson an' his friends ought to take action before—”
“Before what?” Garner prompted, almost eagerly. “Before the grand jury takes it up, as you know they will have to with all this commotion goin' the rounds.”
“Yes, Carson ought to act—concerned in it or not,” said Garner. “If something isn't done right away, it might be sprung on him on the very eve of his election and actually ruin him.”
“I'm worried, an' I don't deny it,” said the mountaineer. “You see, Bill, Carson's a lawyer, and he knows whether he had a good case of self-defence or not, an' shirking investigation this way looks powerful like—”
“Like he was himself the—aggressor,” interpolated Garner, with a frown.
“Yes, like that,” said Baker. “Of course we know Willis was houndin' the boy and making threats, but Carson's hot-headed, as hot-headed as they make 'em, an' maybe he flared up at the first sight of Willis an' blazed away at 'im. I don't see no other reason for him lyin' so low about it.”
“I'm glad you came to me,” Garner said. “I'll admit I've been fearing the thing, Pole. It will be a delicate matter to broach, but I'm going to talk to him about it. As you say, the longer it remains like it is the more serious it becomes. Good Lord! if hedidkill Willis—if hedidkill him, it would take sharp work to clear him of the charge of murder after the silly way he has acted about it. Why, dang it, it's almost an admission of guilt!”
Baker had barely left the office when Carson came in, nodded to his partner, and sat down at his desk and began in an absent-minded way to cut open some letters that were waiting for him. Unobserved Garner watched him from behind the worn book he was holding up to his face. Hardened lawyer that he was, Garner's heart melted with pity as he noted the dark splotches under the young man's eyes, the pathetic droop of his shoulders, the evidences in every facial line of the grim inward struggle that was going on in the brave, supersensitive soul. Garner put down his book and went into the little consultation-room in the rear and stood at the window which looked out upon a small patch of corn in an adjoining lot.
“He did it!” he said, grimly. “Yes, he did it. Poor chap!”
The task before him was the hardest Garner had ever faced. He could have discussed, to the finest points of detail, such a case for a client, but Carson—the strange, winning personality over which he had marvelled so often—was different. He was the most courageous, the most self-sacrificing, the most keenly suffering human being Garner had ever known, and the most sensitively honorable. How was it possible, even indirectly, to allude to so grave a charge against such a man? And yet, Garner reflected, pessimistically, the best of men sometimes reach a point at which their high moral and spiritual tension, under one crucial test or another, breaks. Why should it not be so in Carson Dwight's case.
Garner went back to his desk, sat down, and turned his revolving-chair till he faced Carson's profile. “Look here, old chap,” he said. “I've got something of a very unpleasant nature to say to you, and it's a pretty hard thing to do, considering my keen regard for you.”
Dwight glanced up from the letter he held before him. He read Garner's face in a steady stare for a moment, and then said, with a sigh, as he laid the letter down: “I see you've heard it. Well, I knew it would get out. I've seen it coming for several days.”
“I began to guess it a week or so back,” Garner went on, outwardly calm; “but this morning in talking to Pole Baker I became convinced of it. It is a grim sort of thing, my boy, but you must not despair. You've surmounted more obstacles than any young fellow I know, and I believe you will eventually come through this. Though you must acknowledge that it would have been far wiser to have given yourself up at once.”
“I couldn't do it,” Carson responded, gloomily. “I thought of it. I started on my way to Braider, really, but finally decided that it wouldn't do.”
“Good God! was it as bad as that?” Garner exclaimed. “I've been hoping against hope that you could—”
“It couldn't be worse.” Carson lowered his head till it rested on his hand. His face went out of Garner's view. “It's going to kill her, Garner. She can't stand it. Dr. Stone told me that another shock would kill her.”
“You mean—my Lord! you mean yourmother?You—you”—Garner leaned forward, his face working, his eyes gleaming—“you mean that you did not report it because of her condition? Great God! why didn't I think of that?”
“Why, certainly.” Carson looked round. “Did you think it was because—”
“I thought it was because you had—had killed him in—well, in a manner you feared would not be adjudged wholly justifiable. I never dreamed of therealreason. I see it all now,” and Garner rose from his chair and with his lips twitching he laid his hand on Dwight's back. “I understand perfectly, and I admire you more than I can say. Now, tell me all about it.”
For an hour the two friends sat talking together. Calmly Carson went into detail as to the happening, and when he had finished Garner said: “You've got a good case, but you can easily see that it is grievously hampered by your concealment of the facts so long. To make a jury see exactly how you felt about your mother's reception of the thing may be hard, for the average man is not by nature quite so finely strung as that, but we mustmakethem see it. Dr. Stone's testimony as to his advice to you will help. But, by all means, we must make the advance ourselves as soon as possible—before a charge is brought against you by the grand jury.” v “But”—and Dwight groaned aloud—“my mother simply cannot go through it, Garner. I know her. It will kill her.”
“She simply must bear it,” Garner said, gloomily. “We must find a way to brace her up to the ordeal. I have it. All my hopes are based on our making such a clear statement before Squire Felton, with the testimony of several witnesses as to Willis's threats against you, that he will throw it out of court. I can see the squire to-day and have a hearing set for to-morrow. We'll make quick work of it. I'll also see your father and—”
“My father!” Carson exclaimed, despondently.
“Yes, I'll see him and explain the whole thing. I think I can get him to keep the matter from reaching your mother till after the hearing. She is still confined to her room, and surely your father can manage that part of it.”
“Yes,” Carson replied, gloomily; “and he will do all he can, though it's going to be a terrible blow to him. But—if—if the justice court should bind me over, and I should have to go to jail to await trial, then my mother—”
“Don't think about her now!” Garner said, testily. “Let's work for a prompt dismissal and not look on the dark side till we have to. I'll run down and talk to your father at once, before the rumor reaches him and drives him crazy. I tell you it's in the very air; I've felt it for several days.”
9390
N his office in one corner of his great grain and cotton warehouse, at a dusty, littered desk before a murky, cobweb-bed window, Garner found old Dwight, his lap full of telegraphic reports, his head submerged in a morning paper containing the market and crop news in general. Outside of the thin-walled office heavy iron trucks, in the grasp of brawny black men, rattled and rumbled over the heavy floor and across weighty skids into open cars in the rear. There was the creaking sound of the big hand elevators engaged in hoisting and lowering bales, barrels, bags, and casks, the mellow sing-song of the light-hearted negroes as they toiled, blissfully ignorant of the profound gloom which had fallen on the defender of their rights.
“I came to see you on an important matter concerning Carson,” Garner began, as he leaned over the old man's desk.
Dwight lowered his paper, shrugged his shoulders, and sniffed.
“Campaign funds, I reckon,” he said. “Well, I've been looking for some such demand. In fact, I've been astonished that you fellows haven't been after me sooner. I'll do anything but buy whiskey to give away. I'm against that custom.”
“It wasn'tthat,” said Garner, who, usually plain-spoken, shrank from beating about the bush even in so delicate a matter. “The truth is, Carson is in a little trouble, Mr. Dwight.”
“Trouble?” the merchant said, bluntly. “Will you kindly show me when he's ever been out of it? Since the day he was born it's been scrape after scrape. By all possessed, Billy, when he wasn't a year old I had to spend fifty dollars to encase all the chimneys in with iron grating to keep him from crawling into the fire. He's walked or stumbled into every fire that was made since then. When he was only twelve a man out at the farm fell in a well and nothing would do Carson but that he must go down after him. He did it, fastened the only available rope about the man and sent him to the top, and when they lowered it to Carson he was so nearly drowned that he could hardly sit in the loop. If I had a list of the scrapes that boy went through at home and at college I'd sell it to some blood-and-thunder novel writer. It would make his fortune. Well, what is it now?”
“Carson is in very serious trouble I'm afraid, Mr. Dwight,” Garner said, as he took a chair and sat down. “You will have to prepare yourself for a pretty sharp shock. He couldn't help it. It was pushed on him to such an extent that there was no other way out of it and retain his self-respect. Mr. Dwight, you, of course, heard of Dan Willis's death?”
“Yes, and thought that now that he was under the sod Carson would surely—”
“The death was not an accident, Mr. Dwight,”
Garner interrupted, and his eyes rested steadily on the old man's face.
“You mean that Willis killed himself—that he—”
“I mean that heforcedCarson to kill him, Mr. Dwight.”
The old merchant's face was working as if in the throes of death; he leaned forward, his eyes wide in growing horror.
“Don't, don't say that, Billy; take it back!” he gasped. “Anything but that—anything else under God's shining sun.”
“You must try to be calm,” Garner said, gently. “It can't be helped. After all, the poor boy was forced to do it to save his life.”
Old Dwight lowered his face to his hands and groaned. The negro at the head of the gang of truckmen approached and leaned in the doorway. He had come to ask some directions about the work, but with widening eyes he stood staring. Garner peremptorily waved him away, and, rising, he laid his hand on Dwight's shoulder.
“Don't take it so hard!” he said, soothingly. “Remember, there is a lot to do, and that's what I came to see you about.”
Old Dwight raised his blearing eyes, which, in his pallid face now looked bloodshot, and stammered out: “What is there to do? What does it mean? How was it kept till now? Was he trying to hide it?”
“Yes”—Garner nodded—“the poor boy has been bearing it in secret. He was afraid the news of it would seriously injure his mother.”
“And it will!” Dwight groaned. “She will never bear it in the world. She is as frail as a flower. His conduct has brought her within a hair's-breadth of the grave more than once, and nothing under high heaven could save her from this. It's awful, awful!”
“I know it's bad, but we've got to save him, Mr. Dwight. You can't have your own son—”
“Have himwhat?” Dwight rose, swaying from side to side, and stood facing the lawyer.
“Well, you can't have him sent to jail for murder; you can't have him—found guilty and publicly executed. The law is a ticklish business. Absolutely innocent men have been hanged time after time. I tell you this concealment of the thing, and Carson's hot fury at Willis and the remarks he has made here and there about him—the fact that he was armed—that there were no witnesses to the duel—that he allowed the erroneous verdict of the coroner's jury to go on record—all these things, with a scoundrel like Wiggin in the background at deadly work to thwart us and pull Carson out of his track, are very, very serious. It is the most serious job I ever tackled in the courts, but I'm going to put it through or, as God is my judge, Mr. Dwight, I'll throw up the law.”
Tears were now flowing freely from the old merchant's eyes and, unhindered, dripped from his face to the ground. Taking Garner's hand he grasped it firmly, and as he wrung it he sobbed: “Save my boy, Billy, and I'll never let you want for means as long as you live. He's all I've got, and I'm prouder of him than I ever let folks know. I've made a lot of fuss over some things he's done, but through it all I was proud of him, proud of him because he saw deeper into right than I did. Even this nigger question—I talked against that a lot, because I thought it would pull him down, but when I heard how he got you all together in Blackburn's store that night and persuaded you to save old Linda's boy—when I learned of that and heard the old woman's cries of joy, and saw the far-reaching effects of what Carson was standing for, I was so proud and thankful that I sneaked off to my room and cried—cried like a child; and now upon it all, as his reward, comes this thing. Oh, Billy, save him! Don't crush the poor boy's spirit. I've always wanted to aid you in some substantial way for your interest in him, and I'm going to do it this time.”
“I hope we can squash the thing in justice court in the morning, Mr. Dwight,” Garner said, confidently. “The chief thing is for you to keep it all from your wife until then, anyway. I can't do a thing with Carson till his mind is at ease over her. He worships the ground she walks on, Mr. Dwight, and if it hadn't been for that he would have been out of this trouble long ago, for I'm sure a plain statement of the matter immediately after it happened would have cleared him without any trouble. In his desire to spare his mother he has complicated the case, that's all.”
“Oh, I can keep it from his mother that long easy enough,” said Dwight. “I'll go home now and see to it. Pull my boy through this, Billy. If you have to draw on me for every cent I've got, pull him through. I'm going to treat him different in the future-. If he can get out of this I believe he will be elected and make a great man.”
An hour later Garner hurried back to the office.
“Everything is in fine shape!” he chuckled, as he threw off his coat and fell to work at his desk. “Squire Felton has fixed the hearing for to-morrow morning at eleven and Pole Baker has gone on the fastest horse in the livery-stable to secure witnesses for our side. He says he can find them galore in the mountains, and your father is as solid as a stone wall. He fell all in a tumble at first, but braced up, said some beautiful things about you, and went home to see that your mother's ears are closed.
“I saw the sheriff, too. What do you think? When I told him the facts, and said that you were ready to give yourself up, he almost cried. Braider's a trump. He said that the law gave him the right to let you go on your own recognizance, and that before he'd arrest you and put you in a common jail he'd have his arms and legs cut off. He said, knowing your heart as he knew it, he'd let you go all the way to Canada without stopping you, and that if you were bound over on this charge he'd throw up his job rather than arrest you. He told me he'd been looking for it—that he got wind of it two days ago, and would have been in to see you about it if he hadn't been afraid you'd misunderstand his coming at such a time. He put a flea in my ear, too. He said we must beware of Wiggin. He has an idea that Wiggin has been on to this for sometime and may have a dangerous dagger up his sleeve. The district-attorney is out of town to-day but will be back to-night. He's as straight as a die and will act fair. I will see him the first thing in the morning. Now, you brace up. Leave everything to me. You are as good a lawyer as I am, but you are too nervous and worried about your mother to act on your best judgment.”
At this juncture the colored gardener from Dwight's came in with a note directed to Garner. Garner opened it and read it while Carson stood looking on. It ran:“Dear Billy,—Everything is all right at this end, and will remain so, at least till after the hearing to-morrow. I enclose my check for ten thousand dollars as a retaining fee. I always intended to give you a little start, and I hope this will help you materially. Save my boy. Save him, Billy. For God's sake pull him through; don't let this thing crush his spirit. He's got a great and a useful future before him if only we can pull him through this.”
Carson read the note through a blur and turned away. He was standing alone in the dreary little consultation-room a few minutes later, when Garner came to him, old Dwight's check fluttering in his hands.
“Your dad's the right sort,” he said, his eyes gleaming with the infant fires of avarice. “One only has to know how to understand him. The size of this check is out of all reason, but if I can do what he wishes to-morrow, I'll not only accept it, but I'll put it to a glorious use. Carson, there is a young woman in this town whom I'll ask to marry me, and I'll buy a home with this to start life on.”
“Ida Tarpley?” said Carson.
“She's the one,” Garner said, with a bare touch of rising color. “I think she would take me, from a little remark she dropped, and it was through you that I found her.”
“Through me?” Dwight said.
“Yes, it was in talking of your ups and downs that I first saw into her wonderfully sweet and sympathetic nature. Carson, if you get your walking-papers in the morning, I won't wait ten minutes before I pop the question. The lack of means was the only thing that kept me from proposing the last time I saw her.”