Читать книгу Mam' Linda - Will N. Harben - Страница 13

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ALF an hour later all the young men had left the room except Garner and Dwight. Garner still wore the frown brought to his broad brow by Tingle's recital.

“I've set my heart on putting this thing through,” he said; “and while it looks kind of shaky, I haven't lost all hope yet. Of course, your reckless remarks about the White Caps have considerably damaged us in the mountains, but we may live it down. It may die a natural death if you and Dan Willis don't meet and plug away at each other and set the talk afloat again. I reckon he'll keep out of your way when he's sober, anyway.”

“I am not running after him,” Carson returned. “I simply said what I thought and Wiggin made the most of it.”

Garner was silent for several minutes, then he folded his dime novel and bent it across his knee, and when he finally spoke Dwight thought he had never seen a graver look on the strong face. He had seen it full of emotional tears when Garner was at the height of earnest appeal to a jury in a murder case; he had seen it dark with the fury of unjust legal defeat, but now there was a strange feminine whiteness at the corners of the big facile mouth, a queer twitching of the lips.

“I've made up my mind to tell you a secret,” he said, falteringly. “I've come near it several times and backed out. It's a subject I don't know how to handle. It's about a woman, Carson. You know I'm not a ladies' man. I don't call on women; I don't take them buggy-riding; I don't dance with them, or even know how to fire soft things at them like you and Keith, but I've had my experience.”

“It certainly is a surprise to me,” Dwight said, sympathetically, and then in the shadow of Garner's seriousness he found himself unable to make further comment.

“I reckon you'll lose all respect for me for thinking there was a ghost of a chance in that particular quarter,” Garner pursued, without meeting his companion's eye. “But, Carson, my boy, there is a certain woman that every man who knows her has loved or is still loving. Keith's crazy about her, though he has given up all hope as I did long ago, and even poor Bob Smith thinks he's in luck if she will only listen to one of his new songs or let him do her some favor. We all love her, Carson, because she is so sweet and kind to us—”

“You mean—” Dwight interrupted, impulsively, and then lapsed into silence, an awkward flush rising to his brow.

“Yes, I mean Helen Warren, old man. As I say, I had never thought of a woman that way in my life. We were thrown together once at a house-party at Hilburn's farm—well, I simply went daft. She never refused to walk with me when I asked her, and seemed specially interested in my profession. I didn't know it at the time, but I have since discovered that she has that sweet way with every man, rich or poor, married or single. Well, to make a long story short, I proposed to her. The whole thing is stamped on my brain as with a branding-iron. We had taken a long walk that morning and were seated under a big beech-tree near a spring. She kept asking about my profession, her face beaming, and it all went to my head. I knew that I was the ugliest man in the State, that I had no style about me, and knew nothing about being nice to women of her sort; but her interest in everything pertaining to the law made me think, you know, that she admired that kind of thing. I went wild. As I told her how I felt I actually cried. Think of it—I was silly enough to blubber like a baby! I can't describe what happened. She was shocked and pained beyond description. She had never dreamed that I felt that way. I ended by asking her to try to forget it all, and we had a long, awful walk to the house.”

“That was tough,” Carson Dwight said, a queer expression on his face.

“Well, I've told it to you for a special reason,” Garner said, with a big, trembling sigh. “Carson, I am a close observer, and I afterwards made up my mind that I knew why she had led me on to talk so much about the law and my work in particular.”

“Oh, you found that out!” Carson said, almost absently.

“Yes, my boy, it was about the time you and I were thinking of going in together. It was all on your account.”

Carson stared straight at Garner. “My account? Oh no!”

“Yes, on your account. I've kept it from you all this time. I'm your friend now in full—to the very bone, but at that time I felt too sore to tell you. I'd lost all I cared for on earth, but I simply had too much of primitive man left in me to let you know how well you stood. My God, Carson, about that time I used to sit at my desk behind some old book pretending to read, but just looking at you as you sat at work wondering how it would feel to have what was yours. Then I watched you both together; you seemed actually made for each other, an ideal couple. Then came your—she refused you.”

“I know, I know, but why talk about it, Garner?” Carson had risen and stood in the doorway in the rays of the morning sun. There was silence for a moment. The church bells were ringing and negroes and whites were passing along the street below.

“It may be good for me to speak of it and be done with it, or it may not,” said Garner; “but this is what I was coming to. I've said it was a long time before I could tell you that she was once—I don't know how she is now, but she was at one time in love with you.”

“Oh no, no, she was never that!” Dwight said. “We were great friends, but she never cared that much for me or for any one.”

“Well, it was a long time before I could say what I thought about that, and I have only just now taken another step in self-renunciation. Carson, I can now say that you didn't have a fair deal, and that I have reached a point in which I want to see you get it. I think I know why she refused you.”

“You do?” Dwight said, pale and excited, as he came away from the door and leaned heavily against the wall near his friend.

“Yes, it was this way. I've studied it all out. She loved Albert as few women love their brothers, and his grim end was an almost unbearable shock. After his death, you know it leaked out that you had been Albert's constant companion through his dissipation, almost, in fact, up to the very end. She couldn't reconcile herself to your part, innocent as it was, in the tragedy, and it simply killed the feeling she had for you. I suppose it is natural to a character as strong as hers.”

“I've always feared that—that was the reason,” said Dwight, falteringly, as he went back to the door and looked out. There was a droop of utter dejection on him and his face seemed to have aged. “Garner,” he said, suddenly, “there is no use denying anything. You have admitted your love for her, why should I deny mine? I never cared for any other woman and I never shall.”

“That's right, but you didn't get a fair deal, all the same,” said Garner. “She's never looked for any sort of justification in your conduct; her poor brother's death stands like a draped wall between you, but I know you were not as black as you were painted. Carson, all the time you were keeping pace with Albert Warren you were blind to the gulf ahead of him and were simply glorying in his friendship—because he was her brother. Ah, I know that feeling!”

Carson was silent, while Garner's gray eyes rested on him for a moment full of conviction, and then he nodded. “Yes, I think that was it. It was my ruination, but I could not get away from the fascination of his companionship. He fairly worshipped her and used to talk of her constantly when we were together, and he—he sometimes told me things she kept back. He knew how I felt. I told him. Through him I seemed to be closer to her. But when the news came that he was dead, and when I met her at the funeral at the church, and caught her eye, I saw her shrink back in abhorrence. She wouldn't go out with me ever again after that, and was never exactly the same.”

“That was two years ago, my boy,” Garner said, significantly, “and your character has changed. You are a better, firmer man. In fact, it seems to me that your change dates from Albert Warren's death. But now I'm coming to the thing that prompted me to say all this. I met Major Warren in the post-office this morning. He was greatly excited. Carson, she has just written him that she is coming home for a long stay and the old gentleman is simply wild with delight.”

“Oh, she's coming, then!” Dwight exclaimed, in surprise.

“Yes, and Keith and Bob and the rest of her adorers will go crazy over the news and want to celebrate it. I didn't tell them. I wanted you to know it first. There is one other thing. You know you can't tell whether there is anything in an idle report, but the gossips say she has perhaps met her fate down there. I've even heard his name—one Earle Sanders, a well-to-do cotton merchant of good standing in the business world. But I'll never believe she's engaged to him till the cards are out.”

“I really think it may be true,” Carson Dwight said, a firm, set expression about his lips. “I've heard of him. He's a man of fine character and intellect. Yes, it may be true, Garner.”

“Well,” and Garner drew himself up and folded his arms, “if it should happen to be so, Carson, there would be only one thing to do, and that would be to grin and bear it.”

“Yes, that would be the only thing,” Dwight made answer. “She has a right to happiness, and it would have been wrong for her to have tied herself to me, when I was what I was, and when I am still as great a failure as I am.”

He turned suddenly out onto the passage, and Garner heard his resounding tread as he walked away.

“Poor old chap,” Garner mused, as he leaned forward and looked at the threadbare toes of his slippers, “if he weathers this storm he'll make a man right—if not, he'll go down with the great majority, the motley throng meant for God only knows what purpose.”