“Well, you see,” Major Warren began, lamely, “Carson and I saw Pete the night he was whipped so severely and we took pity on him. They played together when they were boys, as boys all over the South do, you know, and then he saw Mam' Linda break down over it and saw old Lewis crying for the first time in the old man's life. I was mad, Henry, myself, and you would have been if you had been there. I could have fought the men who did it, so I understand how Carson felt, and when he made the remark Wiggin is using to such deadly injury to his prospects my heart warmed to the boy. If he doesn't succeed as a politician it will be because he is too genuine for a tricky career of that sort. His friends are trying to get him to make some statement that will reinstate him with the mountain people who sympathized with the White Caps, but he simply won't do it.”
“Won't do it! I reckon not!” Dwight blurted out. “Didn't the young idiot wait in Blackburn's store for Dan Willis to come and shoot the top of his head off? He sat there till past midnight, and wouldn't move an inch till actual proof was brought to him that Willis had left town. Oh, I'm no fool! I know a thing or two. I've watched him and your daughter together. That's at the bottom of it. She sat down on him before she went off to Augusta, but her refusal didn't alter him. He knows Helen thinks a lot of her old negro mammy, and in her absence he simply took up her cause and is fighting mad about it—so mad that he is blind to his political ruin. That's what a man will do for a woman. They say she's about to become engaged down there. I hope she is, and that Carson will have pride enough when he hears of it to let another man do her fighting, and one with nothing to lose by it.”
“She hasn't written me a thing about any engagement,” the Major answered, with some animation; “but my sister highly approves of the match and writes that it may come about. Mr. Sanders is a well-to-do, honorable man of good birth and education: Helen never seemed to get over her brother's sad death. She loved poor Albert more than she ever did me or any one else.”
“And I always thought that it was Carson's association with your son in his dissipation that turned Helen against him. For all I know, she may have thought Carson actually led Albert on and was partly the cause of his sad end.”
“She may have looked at it that way,” the Major said, musingly. They had now reached the porch in the rear of the house and they went together into the wide hall. A colored maid with a red bandanna tied like a turban round her head was dusting the walnut railing of the stairs. Passing through the hall, the old gentlemen turned into the library, a great square room with wide windows and tall, gilt-framed pier-glass mirrors.
“Yes, I'm sure that's what turned her against him,” Dwight continued, “and that is where, between you and Helen, I get mixed up. Why do you always take up for the scamp? It looks to me like you'd resent the way he acted with your son after the boy's terrible end.”
“There is a good deal more in the matter, Henry, than I ever told you about.” Major Warren's voice faltered. “To be plain, that is my secret trouble. I reckon if Helen was to discover the actual truth—all of it—she would never feel the same towards me. I think maybe I ought to tell you. It certainly will explain why I am so much interested in your boy.” They sat down, the owner of the house in a reclining-chair at an oblong, carved mahogany table covered with books and papers, the visitor on a lounge near by.
“Well, it always has seemed odd to me,” old Dwight said. “I couldn't exactly believe you wanted to bring him and Helen together, after your experience with that sort of man under your own roof.”
“It is this way,” said the Major, awkwardly. “To begin with, I am sure, from all I've picked up, that it was not your son that was leading mine on to dissipation, but just the other way. He's dead and gone, but Albert was always ready for a prank of any sort. Henry, I want to talk to you about it because it seems to me you are in the same position in regard to Carson that I was in regard to my poor boy, and I've prayed a thousand times for pardon for what I did in anger and haste. Henry, listen to me. If ever a man made a vital mistake I did, and I'll bear the weight of it to my grave. You know how I worried over. Albert's drinking and his general conduct. Time after time he made promises that he would turn over a new leaf only to break them. Well, it was on the last trip—the fatal one to New York, where he had gone and thrown away so much money. I wrote him a severe letter, and in answer to it I got a pathetic one, saying he was sick and tired of the way he was doing and begging me to try him once more and send him money to pay his way home. It was the same old sort of promise and I didn't have faith in him. I was unfair, unjust to my only son. I wrote and refused, telling him that I could not trust him any more. Hell inspired that letter, Henry—the devil whispered to me that I'd been indulgent to the poor boy's injury. Then came the news. When he was found dead in a small room on the top floor of that squalid hotel—dead by his own hand—my letter lay open beside him.”
“Well, well, you couldn't help it!” Dwight said, most awkwardly, and he crossed his short, fat legs anew and reached for an open box of cigars. “You were trying to do your duty as you saw it, and to the best of your ability.”