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They went to the stables, and the old Scotch hostler brought out the horses and talked with Neckart of the mysteries of flanks and strains of blood, while Jane looked on shyly, standing with the dog in the wide door. "Maybe I shall know them as well as I do you some day, Bruno," she said gravely to him. "But I shall never like them as well. That wouldn't be possible: they're strangers."
A man cannot live all the time on the heights of emotion or of religion; the air is too rarefied up there for healthy lungs; he comes down punctually to the ordinary levels of his saner self; and Neckart, on his ordinary level, was an exceedingly practical, honest man. He knew that he had brought irreparable injury to this girl, and that it was his duty now to make amends as best he could.
He could neither answer to the purpose nor rid his face of the shocked alarm visible in it. To have been told that Neckart was dying would have startled him less, and seemed not so pitiable to him as to know that he was shut out for life from love and marriage. Neckart read his thoughts. "There's a difference in men," he said, concealing a smile.
It was her habit and choice to say nothing, but if pushed to the wall what was there that she would not say? The dog, lying at her feet watching him steadily, did not give up to him the secret of its own being or its opinion of himself; but if it once did speak it would do both, and with no white lies in the words either. "The girl is like her dog," thought Neckart.
The truth was, that there were very few people who had been kind to Jane or the captain in the days when they were all hungry together whom Neckart had not met at the farm, either as visitors or settled in fat sinecures of office. He had arranged the business part of their removal, indeed, in many cases.
Neckart, striking across the fields from the little station, caught glimpses through the forest for a mile or two of its walls and heavy chimneys stained with smoke and lichen. They seemed to grow out of the ground as naturally as the oaks and gray beeches. It was a damp, cool day in June.
For years, too, people who talked to Neckart, though in but a street greeting, invariably recognized his power to help or harm them. If they had no favors to ask, they bore themselves deferentially, as to a power that could grant favors.
No doubt there were "old Sutphens" there, whole generations of people, outside of the living world, sleeping and sunning themselves. It was like a glimpse into some newly-discovered, silent, sunlit Hades. Mr. Neckart put back his watch in his pocket, and looked irresolutely at the captain.
Neckart smiled and glanced at his watch. At nine the committee would meet. Sun? Sleeping on the beach? He was a stout, strongly-built man, with muscles like steel, but, like most Americans who have urged their way relentlessly up, his brain before middle age gave signs of disease. As any other creature would, when overdriven for years it revolted, and failed in its work now and then.
The truth is, Neckart light a cigar the truth is," lowering his voice and leaning over the table, "Laidley exacted a half promise from me that night which troubles me. The fellow died forthwith, you see, and so clenched it on me. He had a plan for Miss Swendon's future, and asked me to forward it. I thought he was going to cheat the girl, and paid little attention to it.
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