CHAPTER III.

Captain Swendon, with the majority of his sex, was never less a hero than when at home. Brute force, _od_, backbone, whatever you call the resistant power which keeps a man erect among other men, weakens under the coddling of feminine fingers and the smoke of conjugal incense. The aching tooth, the gnawing passion or the religious problem that strikes across his life like a blank wall, all of which he pooh-poohs out of sight in the street, master him indoors. A woman puts on her noblest virtues with the fireside slippers, but to a man they are a chance for remorse, for repining, for turning God's mighty judgments on himself into a small drizzling shower of miseries for his wife and the children. Give the same man his boots and the fresh air, and he will go to the stake gallantly.

The captain, pacing up and down the garden-alleys that night, thinking of the blow which would fall on his daughter in Laidley's threatened disposal of his property, was not altogether unheroic. There was nothing mean in the big gaunt figure with its uncertain strides, or in the high-featured, mild-eyed face: neither was there anything mean in his wrath. It was all directed against himself. His Swedish blood had infused a gentle laziness into his temper, and he had forgiven Laidley long ago for his lifelong swindle, as no American with English grandfathers would have done.

"It's Will's nature," he said now. "Will's a coward and desperately ill. He wants to pay his way into heaven, and I can't blame him. But _I_--I'm an incompetent fool! I can't even pay my girl's way on earth!" The captain's life, in fact, was a long ague of feverish conceit and chills of humility. Yesterday he was an inventor who would benefit the world: to-day he was fit for nothing but to dig clams. Going up and down the lonely walk, he summed up all the capital he had had to make his fortune in the world's market--the education, the opportunities, the great inventions that all fell just short of their aim. For himself, he did not want money. His work-bench, his iron bed, a bowl of Jane's soup, a fishing-rod and a tramp into the hills now and then with the girl,--if he had millions they could buy him nothing better. But she--Why should she not be as other women? Why could he not work for her as other fathers--?

He raised his right arm, and the empty sleeve fell back from the stump, which burned and throbbed impotently. There was will enough in it to conquer the whole world for her. There was that aching love which mothers feel in his breast for her, as though his heart were physically wrenched.

But at breakfast the next morning, while quite as ready to die for her, he nagged and scolded incessantly, and threw the blame of their ill-luck on her, his voice sounding like the clatter of a brass kettle: "Omelette? No--no omelette for me. I am quite content to breakfast on dry bread and coffee. It is time we practiced economy. I'll make out a system for you, Jane. A system, and I desire you to follow it."

Jane laughed and helped him to cherries, and then devoted herself in earnest to her own breakfast. She never argued with anybody, and had that impregnable good-humor which so often passes for lack of feeling. Little griefs, either her own or those of other people, dwindled out of notice in the atmosphere about her, like mosquitoes buzzing in a large sun-lighted room.

"We certainly must practice economy. God knows where to-morrow's meals may come from!"

"Jane's hens are in good laying condition, and there are the cherries on the tree," said Miss Fleming tartly. She did not like Jane nor any other woman, but she usually fought for her sex against men in a mannish way--for the pleasure of fighting for the weaker party.

"Hens? Yes, and but for the whim of renting this tumble-down house with its great gardens out on the suburb, we could have had snug rooms in some business street, where I could have earned our bread and butter."

"It was your whim, captain. Why, she has kept up the table out of the garden, and you know it. Don't interfere with the child. She can turn a penny to the best advantage. Her ability is of the most practical kind."

The captain did not like her tone. He glanced uneasily at Jane, who ate her cherries in calm unconsciousness.

"I might as well stick pins in the divine cow Audhumbla!" Miss Fleming said to herself every day. This child, as she called her, irritated her, just as a machine did, or an animal, or any other creature whose motive-power she could by no means comprehend. She was herself a mass of vitalized nerves, all of which centred in that secret I, Cornelia Fleming, over whose hopes, nature and chances she brooded night and day. This other woman, who simply grew in her place, concerning herself no more about her own mind, body or future than the larch yonder did about its roots or leaves, and who took praise and blame as indifferently as the tree, the sun or rain, roused in her a feeling of active dislike. She called Jane stolid to other people, but she was by no means satisfied that she was stolid. She was often sorry that she had brought herself measurably under the protection of Captain Swendon and his daughter by renting two of the rooms in their house, though she had planned and manoeuvred a long time to accomplish that end. When Miss Fleming came up to town to join the art-class at the Academy, she was exceedingly careful not to join also the emancipated lonely sisterhood, who set social laws at defiance. She might live alone, but it must be under the roof of conventionally correct people. She abjured the whole tribe of literary and artistic adventurers who haunted the studios and lecture-halls. She wrote home to her old mother that the Swendons, descended from the leaders of the first Swedish settlers, that family of Svens from whom Penn bought the land for his village of Philadelphia, had possessed culture and social rank, if no money, for centuries. Miss Fleming found for herself a lodging-place under their roof, with very much the motive of the low-born blackbird burrowing in the high, bare nest of the osprey.

She was on her way to the Academy now, and touched her hat jauntily and shook loose her flowing-sleeve as she said good-bye with a lingering look at the captain, to which he did not reply.

The cold ague of despair was on him: he combed his grizzled beard with his fingers, stared at the carpet and saw nobody. "Yes, I ought to have rented two small rooms up town, and found work that would pay. I'll do it now," he grumbled.

Jane had uncovered a long table heaped with tools, glue-pots, drawing-materials, models in wood, in paper, in clay, with others finely draughted on large sheets of Bristol board. The captain preserved his failures as sacredly as a Chinese the dead bodies of his ancestors. She took up one of these models and studied it thoughtfully: "Very well, father. I could go on with the business, I suppose."

The captain burst into a laugh: "Absurd! Though," relapsing into anxiety, "this is, as you say, really my business. But I could easily find a place as professor of Latin and Greek in some Western college which would support us."

"Now, I don't quite understand the action of this screw, A, B," meditatively. "It interferes with the force of the piston, in my judgment."

"Impossible!" hurrying over to the table. "I'll explain that in a moment, Jane. Why, that screw is the finest idea in the machine. It's the meaning, in fact. It all hinges on that."

In five minutes his smoking-cap was pushed back, his spectacles on his hooked nose, and he was lost in the depths of valves, gauges and levers.

Jane took the place of a dozen lost hands. She made the models, she draughted them, she worked with carpenter's tools, needles, pencils, clay, by turns, and was both swift and skillful. She had been at this daily work, indeed, since the time her father had lost his arm. Now and then, being really nothing but a child in years, she clasped her hands over her head and yawned when he was not looking, or, when she was sent to the fire for the glue, sat down on the floor and began a rough-and-tumble romp with the dog, or while she was at work, sang scraps of songs into which the captain threw a fine rolling bass.

The morning was warm: the fire had burned down low in the grate, and both windows were wide open. The wind which entered, though raw, had a breath of spring in it. The scraggy plum trees outside were covered with deep pink blossoms, yellow dandelions blazed up out of the grass, and even in the muddy walks: a half-frozen bee buzzed among them feebly for a while, and then lost his way into the room and fell with a thump on the table.

Jane dropped her tools, and put out her finger for him to crawl upon. "Now you are too early afoot: you're greedy, you fellow," she said. "You are in too great a hurry to be rich. Haven't you a comfortable house? And plenty of honey?" She carried him to the window and set him in the sun on the sill. "He'll fall in some puddle and be frozen to death; and serve him right! I hate your early birds and ants and bees, always at work."

"It is work you hate, Jenny. Now tack this strip in place, child, and then paste on the muslin. We must finish this before night, and there is more than a day's work on it."

Jane tacked and measured diligently a while, and then dropped her elbows on the table and rested her chin on her palms. Her face was just in front of her father's. "I was thinking--"

"Yes."

"I mean that I saw in the paper this morning that there was a school of black-fish on the coast, the largest for years. I suppose the Lantrims will be out for them?"

"No doubt. The old captain wrote to me that he had bought Sutphen's Tuckerton skiff."

"Aha? You did not tell me that. What else did he say?"

"Oh, nothing. 'Crabs would be scarce this season; and couldn't we come down?' The larks were beginning to rise in the marshes."

Jane nodded thoughtfully: "A Tuckerton skiff? Now, I'm surprised at that, father. I should prefer something heavier--a yawl, say--for coming in on that beach. Well--The wind must be dead sou'-west to-day. It would bring the spray right up into your face if you were lying on the sand."

She was silent for some time, looking steadily out of doors.

The captain glanced uneasily once or twice at the dark blue eyes and at a ray of sunlight glistening in the loose yellow hair. "It _is_ sou'-west. It really does begin to feel like summer," he said, dropping his pencil and fumbling for his tobacco.

Jane brought his pipe and lighted it for him. "I am dreadfully tired!" stretching her arm out, pushing up the sleeve, and looking at it as if it had done a day's ploughing. "Now, I suppose the men are all out in their boats by this time, but a person could easily rig Lantrim's little sloop and join them; or we could camp on the marshes all day. The scent of the pines would be heavy in this damp wind."

The captain nodded gravely and puffed in silence a while: "It's no use, Jane," taking the pipe from his mouth. "I haven't a penny."

She sprang up, ran to a writing-desk and took out a glove-box. In it were a pair of well-darned kid gloves and two tiny paper packages. She laid them before him: "It's all in silver: this is for your summer hat, and that for my shoes. What do you say, father? We are in time for the eight-o'clock train. We should have nearly the whole day on the beach."

"Hat? What do I want with a hat? But your shoes are broken."

"They can be patched," with a gasp of delight. "Here! clear away the work, father, while I put up a basket of dinner." She stopped by the window, looking out: "Somebody is coming through the apple trees: I smell a cigar. Now, remember, nothing must detain you. We can't break our engagement."

The visitor came in sight from under the apple trees--a sombre, heavy man in gray, the editor Neckart, to whom Mr. Waring had criticised the Swendons with such freedom the night before. Mr. Neckart had known the captain years ago. When he was a boy, too poor to pay for schooling, he used to go to the captain at night for help in his Greek or mathematics. Swendon had always preferred the companionship of younger men than himself, and was never without a "following" of clever, unruly schoolboys, whom he was as ready to help when they were lazy, as to tip with silver half-dollars--when he had them. Some of them had brought young Neckart to the captain, knowing nothing about him, except that he was miserably poor, with a desire for knowledge which they thought insane enough. Now that Neckart was a man, living in New York, and with very different problems to work from those of Euclid, he had but little intercourse with the slow, easy-going captain. They met occasionally, when Neckart came to Philadelphia, at the club or at dinner somewhere, when there would be a few minutes' hasty gossip about the old pranks of the boys--White, who died in California, or Porter, who was now in the Senate--and then a shake of the hand and good-bye, Neckart usually wondering to himself, as they parted, how soon that fellow Laidley would cease to cumber the earth and the captain would have his own and wear a decent coat again and the bits of gaudy jewelry in which he used so to delight.

The old man hurried down the garden-walk now to meet him, and wrung his hand heartily: "Bruce! is it possible? You have not crossed my threshold since the old Epictetus days."

"No, and I interrupt you now? You are going out? I only called for a few words on business."

"Plenty of time, plenty of time! My little girl and I were going to run down to the shore to vagabondize for a day.--Jane, this is my old friend Mr. Neckart.--We have plenty of time in which to catch the train. Sit down, Bruce."

Mr. Neckart did not sit down, however. He found some difficulty now in putting his business into a few concise words. He had heard Laidley's avowal the night before that he proposed to leave the captain penniless. All his boyish regard for the old man woke in force. His boyish feelings were apt to waken and clog Mr. Neckart's strait-lined path to success. He did not sentimentalize about his old teacher, but he set aside half an hour in which to look in on him and see what could be done for him. Anything could be done in half an hour by a man who chose to work hard enough.

He expected to find the captain totally disheartened by this blow, but here he was making ready for a day's fooling on the beach; for the captain, finding that his visitor did not promptly broach the subject of his errand, went on with his preparations.

So it happened that they fell into a brief silence. The old man by the fire screwed his rod as though rods were the business of life: the young girl sat by the window, a white-covered lunch-basket on the floor beside her, sewing strings on a wide-rimmed hat which she meant to wear. Her yellow hair was bound loosely about her head, fastened by a band of black velvet: it made a faint shadow about the calm, delicate face. The dog sat at her feet, his head on her knee, watching her intently. She took her stitches slowly and with care, stopping now and then to put her hand on Bruno's muzzle and nod at him significantly about the fun they were going to have presently. It was a quiet, pretty picture.

Now, silence or leisurely calm of any kind was rare in Mr. Neckart's daily life. He was the controller of a great journal: he was a leading politician. He had been making his own way, and dragging and goading slower men along, since he had left his cradle. Even his own party found the indomitable energy of this dwarfish giant intolerable sometimes. But his own action did not satisfy him. He had held his finger so long on the world's pulse that affairs in New York or Washington seemed but small matters. He liked to feel that they and he were linked by a thousand sympathies to the chances and changes of every country on the globe. A famine in India or an insurrection in Turkey were not mere newspaper items to him, but significant movements of the outer levers and pulleys of the great machine, part of which he was.

It is the straining horse that is always loaded, and there was no man in the party from whom such work was exacted as from Neckart. The night before he had received a deputation of French Communists proposing emigration: this morning he was to meet in secret caucus the leaders who would decide on the next candidate for the Presidency. So it went on day after day. To fall suddenly into this little room, among people to whom a day's fishing or sauntering with a dog through salt marshes was the object of life, startled him.

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. To the captain he was still the boy Bruce, a good fellow, though dull in Greek: to the girl, intent on her holiday, he saw that he was an unwelcome guest, who would interfere with her journey. The jar of falling to the common level was sudden, yet oddly pleasant.

The captain, to fill up the time, began to discuss the different makes of fishing-rods. Mr. Neckart was used to give ten minutes each to men seeking interviews: their words had to be sharp as arrows, and driven straight home to the bull's eye of the matter to command his attention. Yet he listened to this lazy talk. The damp wind drove the perfume of the apple-blossoms in at the open window: the sunlight touched the glistening rings of hair on Jane's throat. How slow-moving and calm the girl was! He was quite sure that the blood had flowed leisurely in the veins under that pearly skin ever since she was born. None of that true American vim, sparkle, pushing energy here which he admired in his countrywomen.

"I really don't understand the new kinds of tackle," he said to Captain Swendon: "I have not had a rod in my hand for fifteen years."

"No. Of course not. You have other work to do. But Jane and I run down to the shore whenever we have money--I mean whenever we can manage to leave home. She knows every fisherman's hut from Henlopen to Barnegat. No better place to go for a breath of salt air than Sutphen's Point. You can troll with him all day, or dig for roots in the pine woods, or sleep on the beach in the sun."

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. Night after night he lay sleepless, conscious only of a dull vacuity at the base of the brain; and by day, when some crisis demanded his most vigilant, keenest thought, thought suddenly blurred into momentary stupor. Any man who overworks his brain will understand how it was with him, and why, for physical reasons, this glimpse of absolute quiet and rest should touch his nerves as the taste of cordial would a fainting man. A sudden vision opened before him of yellow, silent sands, and dusky stretches of solemn pines, and the monotonous dash of the green sea all day, all night long. 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. The foolish, kindly old face belonged to his boyhood--to the time when his shoes were patched and his feet chilblained, but all the world was waiting for him to be a man to do him honor. If he could sit for an hour with the old man on the beach, would it bring the boyish feeling back again? He was conscious of a purposeless temptation--unreasonable as that which he had felt at the edge of a precipice to throw himself over. Nonsense! The committee would be waiting; there were appointments for every hour of his stay in Philadelphia; there was the leading article on the situation which nobody but he could write, that must go to his paper by the next mail.

He took up his hat: "It is time for you to catch the train, captain. Will you take me with you?"

Captain Swendon looked at him hastily: "The very best thing you can do, Bruce! Just what I should advise.--Jane, go on before with Bruno. Mr. Neckart and I will follow."

Mr. Neckart was annoyed. He had forgotten that the girl was to go, and had thought of the captain as his only companion. But she walked far in front of them, through the apple trees, and down the quiet street, engrossed with the dog. She probably would not be in his way.