“Yes, but my method, Henry, resulted in misery and grief to me and Helen that can never be cured. You see, it is because of that awful mistake that I take such an interest in Carson. I love him because Albert loved him, and because sometimes it seems to me that you are most too quick to condemn him. Oh, he's different! Carson has changed wonderfully since Albert died. He doesn't drink to excess now, and Garner says he has quit playing cards, having only one aim, and that to win this political race—to win it to please you, Henry.”
“Win it!” Dwight sniffed. “He's already as dead as a salt mackerel—laid out stiff and stark by his own bull-headed stupidity. I've always talked down drinking and card-playing, but I have known some men to succeed in life who had such habits in moderation; but you nor I nor no one else ever saw a blockhead succeed at anything. I tell you he'll never make a successful politician. Wiggin will beat the hind sights off of him. Wiggin is simply making capital of the fool's inability to control his temper and sympathies. Wiggin would have let that mob thrash his own father and mother rather than antagonize them and lose their votes. He knows Carson comes of fighting stock, and he will continue to egg Dan Willis and others on, knowing that every resentful word from Carson will make enemies for him by the score.”
“Oh, I can see that, too!” the Major sighed; “but, to save me, I can't help admiring the boy. He thinks the White Caps did wrong that night and he simply can't pretend otherwise. It is the principle of the thing, Henry. He is an unusual sort of candidate, and his stand may ruin his chances, but I—I glory in his firmness. I must say g 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.”
“Yes, but my method, Henry, resulted in misery and grief to me and Helen that can never be cured. You see, it is because of that awful mistake that I take such an interest in Carson. I love him because Albert loved him, and because sometimes it seems to me that you are most too quick to condemn him. Oh, he's different! Carson has changed wonderfully since Albert died. He doesn't drink to excess now, and Garner says he has quit playing cards, having only one aim, and that to win this political race- -to win it to please you, Henry.”
“Win it!” Dwight sniffed. “He's already as dead as a salt mackerel—laid out stiff and stark by his own bull-headed stupidity. I've always talked down drinking and card-playing, but I have known some men to succeed in life who had such habits in moderation; but you nor I nor no one else ever saw a blockhead succeed at anything. I tell you he'll never make a successful politician. Wiggin will beat the hind sights off of him. Wiggin is simply making capital of the fool's inability to control his temper and sympathies. Wiggin would have let that mob thrash his own father and mother rather than antagonize them and lose their votes. He knows Carson comes of fighting stock, and he will continue to egg Dan Willis and others on, knowing that every resentful word from Carson will make enemies for him by the score.”
“Oh, I can see that, too!” the Major sighed; “but, to save me, I can't help admiring the boy. He thinks the White Caps did wrong that night and he simply can't pretend otherwise. It is the principle of the thing, Henry. He is an unusual sort of candidate, and his stand may ruin his chances, but I—I glory in his firmness. I must say that.”
“Oh yes, that's the trouble with you sentimental people,” Dwight fumed. “Between you and the boy's doting mother, the Lord only knows where he'll land. I've overlooked a lot in him in the hope that he'd put this election through, but I shall let him go his own way now. It has come to a pretty pass if I have to see my son beaten to the dust by a man of Wiggin's stamp because of that long-legged negro boy of yours who would have been better long ago if he had been soundly thrashed.”
When his visitor had gone Dwight dropped his unfinished cigar into the grate and went slowly upstairs to his wife's room. At a small-paned window overlooking the flower-garden, on a couch supported in a reclining position by several puffy pillows, was Mrs. Dwight. She was well past middle-age and of extremely delicate physique. Her hair was snowy white, her skin thin to transparency, her veins full and blue.
“That was Major Warren, wasn't it?” she asked, in a soft, sweet voice, as she put down the magazine she had been reading.