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Yet with this glow upon her she regarded the reformer's noble face and benignant blond beard doubtfully, thinking how she used to stick pins in brilliant bubbles when she was a child, and nothing would be left but a patch of dirty water. "Jane is out on the river, as usual?" she asked presently. "Yes," said her father: "Mr. Neckart is with her.
Gaps of silence were so much wasted time in the world; and besides, he owed a duty to Bruce. Here was a man going headlong to the devil by the road of ambition, a sweet, high nature becoming soured and tainted, all for the lack of honest direction from somebody of age and experience. When Neckart roused himself enough to understand, the captain was in the full swing of his dictatorial oration.
How can I see Swendon?" interrupting himself. "Where is their house?" Mr. Neckart hesitated a moment: "I am going there this evening to dine and spend the night, and I will take you with me. It will be a surprise which the captain will like." "The very thing! Precisely!
And the going to town Do you often meet him in town? Is he enjoying himself? Did it strike you that he was improving until I suggested it?" "Why, it was only to-day," said Neckart, "that I told Judge Rhodes how I met Captain Swendon everywhere at the club " "Yes. I urged him to join the club," her face beaming. "Couldn't have been a wiser move.
Neckart would have analyzed these women at a glance as easily as he could impale a butterfly on a pin: why should he watch Jane as though she were the Sphinx? The dark-blue eyes that met his now and then were the most frank and friendly in the world, but the naked truth in them irritated him as though it had been the gleam of a drawn sword.
This wild fancy of the girl's would speedily burn itself out if judiciously damped. He would at once take the matter in hand. "Neckart," he said deliberately, eying her to gauge the effect of his words, "is a man of sense and knowledge of the world.
When she was a baby it seemed to rouse her. She's a very quiet little body, you see. Go, Bruno: bring your mistress back." She came in a few minutes, as they were making ready to meet the train. She hurried to her father, caught his arm, and when they were seated in the train still held him close: "Stay with me, father. Mr. Neckart does not need you. Don't leave me alone again: I need you."
The wind blew damp in their faces. Since Neckart had talked so confidently of her father's improvement, Jane had been gay and light-hearted as a child, with a nervous quaver now and then in her voice as if a word would bring the tears. She looked at him thoughtfully as they walked on. "You ought to go to California again," she said abruptly.
An hour afterward he had found her tearing it into bits with an idiotic laugh. A little later He shut his eyes, as if to keep out some real sight before him. It seemed to him as if his whole boyhood had been made up of just such nights as this one which he remembered. It was not often that Neckart looked back at that early time. He was neither morbid nor addicted to self-torture.
It seemed as if they all knew that he loved her. The captain found Mr. Neckart standing on the stoop listening to some sound that came up from the woods. "It is Jane singing," he said. "You would not hear her once in a year. Hereditary gift! In the old Swedish annals we read of the remarkable voices of the Svens." "I never heard her sing before." Yet he had known at once that it was she.
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