Jane Cable

by George Barr McCutcheon

  Early in March a great transport sailed from Manila Bay, laden withsick and disabled soldiers--the lame, the healthless and the mad.It was not a merry shipload, although hundreds were rejoicing in theescape from the hardships of life in the islands. Graydon Bansemerwas among them, weak and distrustful of his own future--albeita medal of honour and the prospect of an excellent position wereahead of him. His discharge was assured. He had served his countrybriefly, but well, and he was not loath to rest on his insignificantlaurels and to respect the memory of the impulse which had drivenhim into service. In his heart he felt that time would make him asstrong as ever, despite the ugly scar in his side. It was a questionwith him, however, whether time could revive the ambition that hadbeen smothered during the first days of despair. He looked aheadwith keen inquiry, speculating on the uncertain whirl of fortune'swheel.

  Jane was obduracy itself in respect to his pleadings. A certainlight in her eyes had, at last, brought conviction to his soul. Hebegan to fear--with a mighty pain--that she would not retreat fromthe stand she had taken.

  She went on board with Mrs. Harbin and Ethel. There were otherwives on board who had found temporary release from irksome butvoluntary enlistment. Jane's resignation from the Red Cross societydeprived her of the privileges which would have permitted her tosee much of Graydon. They were kept separated by the transport'sregulations; he was a common soldier, she of the officer's mess.The restrictions were cruel and relentless. They saw but little ofone another during the thirty days; but their thoughts were busywith the days to come. Graydon grew stronger and more confidentas the ship forged nearer to the Golden Gate; Jane more wistfuland resigned to the new purpose which was to give life anothercolouring, if possible. They were but one day out from San Franciscowhen he found the opportunity to converse with her as she passedthrough the quarters of the luckless ones.

  "Jane, I won't take no for an answer this time," he whisperedeagerly; "you must consent. Do you want to ruin both of our lives?"

  "Why will you persist, Graydon? You know I cannot--"

  "You can. Consider me as well as yourself. I want you. Isn't thatenough? You can't ask for more love than I will give. To-morrowwe'll be on shore. I have many things to do before I am at libertyto go my way. Won't you wait for me? It won't be long. We can bemarried in San Francisco. Mr. and Mrs. Cable are to meet you. Tellthem, dearest, that you want to go home with me. The home won't bein Chicago; but it will be home just the same."

  "Dear Graydon, I am sorry--I am heartsick. But I cannot--I darenot."

  Graydon Bansemer was a man as well as a lover. He gave utteranceto a perfectly man-like expression, coming from the bottom of histried soul:

  "It's damned nonsense, Jane!" He said it so feelingly that shesmiled even as she shook her head and moved away. "I'll see youto-morrow on shore?" he called, repentant and anxious.

  "Yes!"

  The next day they landed. Graydon waved an anxious farewell toher as he was hurried off with the lame, the halt, and the blind.He saw David Cable and his wife on the pier and, in spite ofhimself, he could not repel an eager, half-fearful glance throughthe crowd of faces. Although he did not expect his father to meethim, he dreaded the thought that he might be there, after all. Tohis surprise, as he stood waiting with his comrades, he saw DavidCable turn suddenly, and, after a moment's hesitation, wave hishand to him, the utmost friendship in his now haggard face. Hisheart thumped joyously at this sign of amity.

  As the soldiers moved away, Cable paused and looked after him, agrim though compassionate expression in his eyes. He and Jane wereready to confront the customs officers.

  "I wonder if he knows about his father," mused he. Jane caught herbreath and looked at him with something like terror in her eyes.He abruptly changed the subject, deploring his lapse into the pastfrom which they were trying to shield her.

  The following morning Graydon received a note from Cable, a frankbut carefully worded message, in which he was invited to take thetrip East in the private car of the President of the Pacific, Lakes& Atlantic. Mrs. Cable joined her husband in the invitation; one ofthe sore spots in Graydon's conscience was healed by this exhibitionof kindness. Moreover, Cable stated that his party would delaydeparture until Graydon's papers were passed upon and he was freefrom red tape restrictions.

  The young man, on landing, sent telegrams to his father and EliasDroom, the latter having asked him to notify him as soon as hereached San Francisco. Graydon was not a little puzzled by the factthat the old clerk seemed strangely at variance with his father,in respect to the future. In both telegrams, he announced that hewould start East as soon as possible.

  There was a letter from Droom awaiting him at headquarters. It wasbrief, but it specifically urged him to accept the place proposedby Mr. Clegg, and reiterated his pressing command to the young manto stop for a few days in Chicago. In broad and characteristicallyuncouth sentences, he assured him that while the city held nogrudge against him, and that the young men would welcome him withopen arms--his groundless fears to the contrary--he would advisehim to choose New York. There was one rather sentimental allusionto "old Broadway" and another to "Grennitch," as he wrote it. Inconclusion, he asked him to come to the office, which was still inthe U----Building, adding that if he wished to avoid the newspapermen he could find seclusion at the old rooms in Wells Street."Your father," he said, "has given up his apartment and has takenlodgings. I doubt very much if he will be willing to share themwith you, in view of the position he has assumed in regard to yourfuture; although he says you may always call upon him for pecuniaryassistance." A draft for five hundred dollars was enclosed withthe letter.

  Graydon was relieved to find that there would be no irksome delayattending his official discharge. When he walked out a "free man,"as he called it, a gentlemanly pension attorney locked arms withhim, and hung on like a leech, until the irritated soldier shookhim off with less consideration than vigour.

  He went directly to the Palace Hotel, where he knew the Cables werestopping. David Cable came down in response to his card. The twomen shook hands, each eyeing the other inquiringly for an instant.

  "I want you to understand, Graydon, that I am your friend. Nothinghas altered my esteem for you."

  "Thank you, Mr. Cable. I hardly expected it."

  "I don't see why, my boy. But, we'll let all that pass. Mrs. Cablewants to see you."

  "Before we go any farther I want to make myself clear to you. Istill hope to marry Jane. She says she cannot become my wife. Youunderstand why, sir. I only want to tell you that her objectionsare not objections to me. She is Jane and I love her, sir, becauseshe is."

  "I hope you can win her over, Graydon. She seems determined,however, and she is unhappy. You can't blame her, either. If therewere base or common blood in her, it wouldn't make much differenceto her pride. But she's made of other material. She's serious aboutit and I am sensible enough to get her point of view. She wouldn'twant to marry you with the prospect of an eternal shadow thatneither of you could get off of your minds. I sometimes wish thatI knew who were her parents."

  "It doesn't matter, so far as I am concerned."

  "I know, my boy, but she is thinking of the heritage that comesdown from her mother to her. You'll never know how it hurt me tofind that I had no daughter. It hurts her worse a thousandfold tolearn that she has no mother. I trust it may not happen that youwill lose her as a wife."

  "If I really thought I couldn't win her, sir, it would ruin myambition in life. She loves me, I'm sure."

  "By the way, Clegg tells me he has offered you the New York office.It is a splendid chance for you. You will take it, of course."

  "I expect to talk it over with Mr. Clegg when I get to Chicago."

  "Come up to our apartments. Oh, pardon me, Graydon, I want to askyou if you have sufficient money to carry you through? I know thepay of a private is not great--"

  "Thank you. I have saved nearly all of it. My father has sent mea draft for five hundred. I don't expect to use it, of course."<
br />
  "Your father?" asked Cable, with a quick, searching look.

  "And then I did save something in Chicago, strange as it may seem,"said Bansemer, with a smile. "I have a few of your five per cents.I trust the road is all right?"

  The Cables left San Francisco on the following day, accompanied bythe Harbins and Graydon Bansemer. There was no mistaking the joywhich lay under restraint in the faces and attitude of the Cables.David Cable had grown younger and less grey, it seemed, and hiswife was glowing with a new and subdued happiness. Graydon, sittingwith the excited Ethel--who was rejoicing in the prospect of NewYork and the other young man--studied the faces of the three peoplewho sat at the other end of the coach.

  Time had wrought its penalties. Cable was thin and his face hadlost its virility, but not its power. His eyes never left the faceof Jane, who was talking in an earnest, impassioned manner, as washer wont in these days. Frances Cable's face was a study in transition.She had lost the colour and vivacity of a year ago, although thechange was not apparent to the casual observer. Graydon could seethat she had suffered in many ways. The keen, eager appeal forappreciation was gone from her eyes; in its stead was the appealfor love and contentedness. Happiness, now struggling against thesmarting of a sober pain, was giving a sweetness to her eyes thathad been lost in the ambitious glitter of other days. Ethel boredhim--a most unusual condition. He longed to be under the tender,quieting influences at the opposite end of the car. He even resentedhis temporary exile.

  "Jane," Cable was saying with gentle insistence; "it is not justto him. He loves you and you are not doing the right thing by him."

  "You'll find I am right in the end," she said stubbornly.

  "I can't bear the thought of your going out as a trained nurse,dear," protested Frances Cable. "There is no necessity. You canhave the best of homes and in any place you like. Why waste yourlife in--"

  "Waste, mother? It would be wasting my life if I did not find anoccupation for it. I can't be idle. I can't exist forever in yourlove and devotion."

  "Good Lord, child, don't be foolish," exclaimed Cable. "That hurtsme more than you think. Everything we have is yours."

  "I'm sorry I said it, daddy. I did not mean it in that way. Itisn't the money, you know, and it isn't the home, either. No, youmust let me choose my own way of living the rest of my life. I camefrom a foundling hospital. A good and tender nurse found me thereand gave me the happiest years of my life. I shall go back thereand give the rest of my years to children who are less fortunatethan I was. I want to help them, mother, just as you did--only itis different with me."

  "You'll see it differently some day," said Mrs. Cable earnestly.

  "I don't object to your helping the foundlings, Jane," said Cable,"but I don't see why you have to be a nurse to do it. Other womensupport such causes and not as nurses, either. It's--"

  "It's my way, daddy, that's all," she said firmly.

  "Then why, in the name of Heaven, were you so unkind as to keepthat poor boy over there alive when he might have died and endedhis misery? You nursed him back to life only to give him a woundthat cannot be healed. You would ruin his life, Jane. Is it fair?Damn me, I'm uncouth and hard in many ways--I had a hard, unkindbeginning--but I really believe I've got more heart in me than youhave."

  "David!" exclaimed his wife. Jane looked at the exasperated man insurprise.

  "Now here's what I intend you to do: you owe me something for thelove that I give to you; you owe Graydon something for keeping himfrom dying. If you want to go into the nursing business, all right.But I'm going to demand some of your devotion for my own sake beforethat time comes. I've loved you all of your life--"

  "And I've loved you, daddy," she gasped.

  "And I'm going to ask you to begin your nursing career by attendingto me. I'm sick for want of your love. I'm giving up business forthe sake of enjoying it unrestrained. Your mother and I expect it.We are going abroad for our health and we are going to take youwith us. Right now is where you begin your career as a nurse. You'vegot to begin by taking care of the love that is sick and miserable.We want it to live, my dear. Now, I want a direct decision--atonce: will you take charge of two patients on a long-contemplatedtrip in search of love and rest--wages paid in advance?"

  She looked at him, white-faced and stunned. He was putting itbefore her fluently and in a new light. She saw what it was that heconsidered that she owed them--the love of a daughter, after all.

  An hour later she stood with Graydon on the rear platform of thecar. He was trying to talk calmly of the country through whichthey were rushing and she was looking pensively down the rails thatslipped out behind them.

  "We'll be in Chicago in three days," he remarked.

  "Graydon, I have decided to go abroad for five or six months beforestarting upon my work. They want me so much, you see," she said,her voice a trifle uncertain.

  "I wish I could have some power to persuade you," he said. Changinghis tone to one of brisk interest, he went on. "It is right, dear.It will do you great good and it will be a joy to them. I'll missyou."

  "And I shall miss you, Graydon," she said, her eyes very solemnand wistful.

  "Won't you--won't you give me the promise I want, Jane?" he askedeagerly. She placed her hand upon his and shook her head.

  "Won't you be good to me, Graydon? Don't make it so hard for me.Please, please don't tell me again that you love me."

  CHAPTER XXIX

  THE WRECKAGE