“For his sake,” repeated Benson slowly, as the carriage rolled away; and he turned back in the twilight that had fallen, and reentered the house.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I WONDER if she will never understand!” Benson asked himself, as he stood by the window and watched the carriage roll across the square and disappear down Main Street.
With the twilight, silence had fallen also; not that the town ever expressed itself with any accumulated volume of sound, but the score of teams that had stood hitched by the curb all day while their owners traded or gossiped, were now seeking the lonely country roads that led toward home.
In the half light, Benson saw vaguely outlined, the court-house, the jail, two newspaper offices, four dry-goods stores, one grocery, two saloons, and the tavern; the mere externals of middle West civilization at the end of the first half of the nineteenth century. Along the fences, in the gutters, and beneath the sheltering eaves of the houses, were dirty patches of melting snow and ice; mud and slush filled the street, and over all, between the changing grey clouds, the rising moon sent a faint uncertain radiance.
The winter was almost at an end. If he went West it must be soon. He sought to recall all that had been said, and all that he, carried away by the stress of his own emotions—his pity, and his love, had promised Virginia.
“And people call me shrewd and capable! Well, one thing, it will never profit me,” he mused sadly. “She will never forget him. She's the sort of woman who doesn't forget; I must bear that in mind.” The conviction had come to him slowly and reluctantly that Stephen Landray and his brother and their companions had perished; for this was the only theory that could explain their silence. It had been either the Indians or the cholera; and the entire party must have been destroyed or they would have heard from the survivers. The wealth of the train, and the money Stephen and his brother had in their possession, might have induced dishonesty; but he was unwilling to believe that either Walsh, or Dunlevy, or Bingham, could have been guilty of the crime of silence if anything had happened to the brothers; of Rogers he felt he knew nothing.
“Stephen's dead; of course, he's dead.” Then his memory reverted to her gratitude when he had told her he would go, and his heart leaped again with a swift intoxicating sense of joy. Yes, he would go for her gladly—and perhaps—