“He did it!” he said, grimly. “Yes, he did it. Poor chap!”
The task before him was the hardest Garner had ever faced. He could have discussed, to the finest points of detail, such a case for a client, but Carson—the strange, winning personality over which he had marvelled so often—was different. He was the most courageous, the most self-sacrificing, the most keenly suffering human being Garner had ever known, and the most sensitively honorable. How was it possible, even indirectly, to allude to so grave a charge against such a man? And yet, Garner reflected, pessimistically, the best of men sometimes reach a point at which their high moral and spiritual tension, under one crucial test or another, breaks. Why should it not be so in Carson Dwight's case.
Garner went back to his desk, sat down, and turned his revolving-chair till he faced Carson's profile. “Look here, old chap,” he said. “I've got something of a very unpleasant nature to say to you, and it's a pretty hard thing to do, considering my keen regard for you.”
Dwight glanced up from the letter he held before him. He read Garner's face in a steady stare for a moment, and then said, with a sigh, as he laid the letter down: “I see you've heard it. Well, I knew it would get out. I've seen it coming for several days.”
“I began to guess it a week or so back,” Garner went on, outwardly calm; “but this morning in talking to Pole Baker I became convinced of it. It is a grim sort of thing, my boy, but you must not despair. You've surmounted more obstacles than any young fellow I know, and I believe you will eventually come through this. Though you must acknowledge that it would have been far wiser to have given yourself up at once.”
“I couldn't do it,” Carson responded, gloomily. “I thought of it. I started on my way to Braider, really, but finally decided that it wouldn't do.”
“Good God! was it as bad as that?” Garner exclaimed. “I've been hoping against hope that you could—”
“It couldn't be worse.” Carson lowered his head till it rested on his hand. His face went out of Garner's view. “It's going to kill her, Garner. She can't stand it. Dr. Stone told me that another shock would kill her.”
“You mean—my Lord! you mean your mother? You—you”—Garner leaned forward, his face working, his eyes gleaming—“you mean that you did not report it because of her condition? Great God! why didn't I think of that?”
“Why, certainly.” Carson looked round. “Did you think it was because—”