"Forgotten?" She closed her eyes once or twice, bewildered, as if suddenly wakened from sleep. "You are in trouble," she said anxiously. "Can I help you?"
The question brought him to sober reason sharply enough. It was precisely the frank, tender tone which she would use to her father; and the truth was, that the girl to herself did not yet distinguish between her father and this friend. A moment before a strange emotion had touched her. But it had passed like a warm gust of summer. There was not a seven-year old child in the city yonder who did not know more about love than Jane. She had never heard servants or schoolmates chatter about it; novels had bored her; the captain, whatever he had left undone, had kept the air pure and cold about her as for a very nun.
"What is this trouble, Mr. Neckart? You have been ill for months, I know. Can I—? Or perhaps father—"
She leaned forward, the oars suspended in her hands, her lips apart, attentive and eager.
He leaned over the edge of the skiff and wet his forehead and eyes, forcing a careless laugh: "One moment, Miss Swendon, and I will explain to you," adding presently, precisely in the manner with which he would have discussed the weather, "We men each have our skeleton to hide, according to popular belief, and mine is no worse than the rest. It is the most practical of facts. Only I am apt to forget it, and then, when it meets me unawares, it is as grim as death."
She nodded, watching him intently as if he were physically ill: she would not let the oars strike on the water, lest the noise might jar on him. All kinds of wild plans for helping him filled her brain. If the trouble were anything which money could help, there was plenty of that, thank God! If it was political difficulty—bills maybe—she could not even understand it. If God had only not made her so stupid! the humble tears rising slowly to her eyes.
Mr. Neckart did not see them. He was careful not to look at her as he spoke, and hurried on with his explanation, as if it were business of small importance. But she was not deceived by that. "I never have talked of this matter, and least of all should I have told it to you. I can bear the trouble when it comes without difficulty. The most ordinary men meet disaster coolly which they know is inevitable. Commonplace fellows who are born with scrofula or consumption march along with them to early death cheerfully. They make no tragedy out of it. There is no reason why I should complain of my lifelong companion." His tone was harder than he had ever used in speaking to Jane before.
"I have never told you of my mother?"
"No," eagerly, hastening to spare him pain. "But I have heard of her from Cornelia Fleming, who was your neighbor in Delaware. I know all that she suffered. You need not tell me."
"She was the last of the Davidge family. There was not one of them for generations who had not inherited disease of the brain. They were either epileptics from youth, or became, as she did, incurably insane. The disease invariably manifested itself in that way after middle age, and from that time they were helpless burdens to their children. Yet there was not a Davidge who refrained from marriage, so entailing the curse on another generation. It would have been more righteous to have put a pistol to their heads and have blown out their brains."