ALF an hour later all the young men had left the room except Garner and Dwight. Garner still wore the frown brought to his broad brow by Tingle's recital.
“I've set my heart on putting this thing through,” he said; “and while it looks kind of shaky, I haven't lost all hope yet. Of course, your reckless remarks about the White Caps have considerably damaged us in the mountains, but we may live it down. It may die a natural death if you and Dan Willis don't meet and plug away at each other and set the talk afloat again. I reckon he'll keep out of your way when he's sober, anyway.”
“I am not running after him,” Carson returned. “I simply said what I thought and Wiggin made the most of it.”
Garner was silent for several minutes, then he folded his dime novel and bent it across his knee, and when he finally spoke Dwight thought he had never seen a graver look on the strong face. He had seen it full of emotional tears when Garner was at the height of earnest appeal to a jury in a murder case; he had seen it dark with the fury of unjust legal defeat, but now there was a strange feminine whiteness at the corners of the big facile mouth, a queer twitching of the lips.
“I've made up my mind to tell you a secret,” he said, falteringly. “I've come near it several times and backed out. It's a subject I don't know how to handle. It's about a woman, Carson. You know I'm not a ladies' man. I don't call on women; I don't take them buggy-riding; I don't dance with them, or even know how to fire soft things at them like you and Keith, but I've had my experience.”
“It certainly is a surprise to me,” Dwight said, sympathetically, and then in the shadow of Garner's seriousness he found himself unable to make further comment.
“I reckon you'll lose all respect for me for thinking there was a ghost of a chance in that particular quarter,” Garner pursued, without meeting his companion's eye. “But, Carson, my boy, there is a certain woman that every man who knows her has loved or is still loving. Keith's crazy about her, though he has given up all hope as I did long ago, and even poor Bob Smith thinks he's in luck if she will only listen to one of his new songs or let him do her some favor. We all love her, Carson, because she is so sweet and kind to us—”
“You mean—” Dwight interrupted, impulsively, and then lapsed into silence, an awkward flush rising to his brow.
“Yes, I mean Helen Warren, old man. As I say, I had never thought of a woman that way in my life. We were thrown together once at a house-party at Hilburn's farm—well, I simply went daft. She never refused to walk with me when I asked her, and seemed specially interested in my profession. I didn't know it at the time, but I have since discovered that she has that sweet way with every man, rich or poor, married or single. Well, to make a long story short, I proposed to her. The whole thing is stamped on my brain as with a branding-iron. We had taken a long walk that morning and were seated under a big beech-tree near a spring. She kept asking about my profession, her face beaming, and it all went to my head. I knew that I was the ugliest man in the State, that I had no style about me, and knew nothing about being nice to women of her sort; but her interest in everything pertaining to the law made me think, you know, that she admired that kind of thing. I went wild. As I told her how I felt I actually cried. Think of it—I was silly enough to blubber like a baby! I can't describe what happened. She was shocked and pained beyond description. She had never dreamed that I felt that way. I ended by asking her to try to forget it all, and we had a long, awful walk to the house.”