“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 only one reason 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 would never take any other.
Ah, yes, that was the explanation—that was what Garner feared. That was 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.