HOMEWARD BOUND
Early in March a great transport sailed from Manila Bay, laden with
sick and disabled soldiers--the lame, the healthless and the mad.
It was not a merry shipload, although hundreds were rejoicing in the
escape from the hardships of life in the islands. Graydon Bansemer
was among them, weak and distrustful of his own future--albeit
a medal of honour and the prospect of an excellent position were
ahead of him. His discharge was assured. He had served his country
briefly, but well, and he was not loath to rest on his insignificant
laurels and to respect the memory of the impulse which had driven
him into service. In his heart he felt that time would make him as
strong as ever, despite the ugly scar in his side. It was a question
with him, however, whether time could revive the ambition that had
been smothered during the first days of despair. He looked ahead
with keen inquiry, speculating on the uncertain whirl of fortune's
wheel.
Jane was obduracy itself in respect to his pleadings. A certain
light in her eyes had, at last, brought conviction to his soul. He
began to fear--with a mighty pain--that she would not retreat from
the stand she had taken.
She went on board with Mrs. Harbin and Ethel. There were other
wives on board who had found temporary release from irksome but
voluntary enlistment. Jane's resignation from the Red Cross society
deprived her of the privileges which would have permitted her to
see much of Graydon. They were kept separated by the transport's
regulations; he was a common soldier, she of the officer's mess.
The restrictions were cruel and relentless. They saw but little of
one another during the thirty days; but their thoughts were busy
with the days to come. Graydon grew stronger and more confident
as the ship forged nearer to the Golden Gate; Jane more wistful
and resigned to the new purpose which was to give life another
colouring, if possible. They were but one day out from San Francisco
when he found the opportunity to converse with her as she passed
through the quarters of the luckless ones.
"Jane, I won't take no for an answer this time," he whispered
eagerly; "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 that
enough? You can't ask for more love than I will give. To-morrow
we'll be on shore. I have many things to do before I am at liberty
to go my way. Won't you wait for me? It won't be long. We can be
married in San Francisco. Mr. and Mrs. Cable are to meet you. Tell
them, dearest, that you want to go home with me. The home won't be
in Chicago; but it will be home just the same."
"Dear Graydon, I am sorry--I am heartsick. But I cannot--I dare
not."
Graydon Bansemer was a man as well as a lover. He gave utterance
to a perfectly man-like expression, coming from the bottom of his
tried soul:
"It's damned nonsense, Jane!" He said it so feelingly that she
smiled even as she shook her head and moved away. "I'll see you
to-morrow on shore?" he called, repentant and anxious.
"Yes!"
The next day they landed. Graydon waved an anxious farewell to
her 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 of
himself, he could not repel an eager, half-fearful glance through
the crowd of faces. Although he did not expect his father to meet
him, he dreaded the thought that he might be there, after all. To
his surprise, as he stood waiting with his comrades, he saw David
Cable turn suddenly, and, after a moment's hesitation, wave his
hand to him, the utmost friendship in his now haggard face. His
heart thumped joyously at this sign of amity.
As the soldiers moved away, Cable paused and looked after him, a
grim though compassionate expression in his eyes. He and Jane were
ready to confront the customs officers.
"I wonder if he knows about his father," mused he. Jane caught her
breath and looked at him with something like terror in her eyes.
He abruptly changed the subject, deploring his lapse into the past
from which they were trying to shield her.
The following morning Graydon received a note from Cable, a frank
but carefully worded message, in which he was invited to take the
trip East in the private car of the President of the Pacific, Lakes
& Atlantic. Mrs. Cable joined her husband in the invitation; one of
the sore spots in Graydon's conscience was healed by this exhibition
of kindness. Moreover, Cable stated that his party would delay
departure until Graydon's papers were passed upon and he was free
from red tape restrictions.
The young man, on landing, sent telegrams to his father and Elias
Droom, the latter having asked him to notify him as soon as he
reached San Francisco. Graydon was not a little puzzled by the fact
that the old clerk seemed strangely at variance with his father,
in respect to the future. In both telegrams, he announced that he
would start East as soon as possible.
There was a letter from Droom awaiting him at headquarters. It was
brief, but it specifically urged him to accept the place proposed
by Mr. Clegg, and reiterated his pressing command to the young man
to stop for a few days in Chicago. In broad and characteristically
uncouth sentences, he assured him that while the city held no
grudge against him, and that the young men would welcome him with
open arms--his groundless fears to the contrary--he would advise
him to choose New York. There was one rather sentimental allusion
to "old Broadway" and another to "Grennitch," as he wrote it. In
conclusion, he asked him to come to the office, which was still in
the U----Building, adding that if he wished to avoid the newspaper
men he could find seclusion at the old rooms in Wells Street.
"Your father," he said, "has given up his apartment and has taken
lodgings. I doubt very much if he will be willing to share them
with you, in view of the position he has assumed in regard to your
future; although he says you may always call upon him for pecuniary
assistance." A draft for five hundred dollars was enclosed with
the letter.
Graydon was relieved to find that there would be no irksome delay
attending his official discharge. When he walked out a "free man,"
as he called it, a gentlemanly pension attorney locked arms with
him, and hung on like a leech, until the irritated soldier shook
him off with less consideration than vigour.
He went directly to the Palace Hotel, where he knew the Cables were
stopping. David Cable came down in response to his card. The two
men shook hands, each eyeing the other inquiringly for an instant.
"I want you to understand, Graydon, that I am your friend. Nothing
has 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. Cable
wants to see you."
"Before we go any farther I want to make myself clear to you. I
still hope to marry Jane. She says she cannot become my wife. You
understand why, sir. I only want to tell you that her objections
are not objections to me. She is Jane and I love her, sir, because
she is."
"I hope you can win her over, Graydon. She seems determined,
however, and she is unhappy. You can't blame her, either. If there
were base or common blood in her, it wouldn't make much difference
to her pride. But she's made of other material. She's serious about
it and I am sensible enough to get her point of view. She wouldn't
want to marry you with the prospect of an eternal shadow that
neither of you could get off of your minds. I sometimes wish that
I 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 comes
down from her mother to her. You'll never know how it hurt me to
find that I had no daughter. It hurts her worse a thousandfold to
learn that she has no mother. I trust it may not happen that you
will lose her as a wife."
"If I really thought I couldn't win her, sir, it would ruin my
ambition 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 ask
you if you have sufficient money to carry you through? I know the
pay of a private is not great--"
"Thank you. I have saved nearly all of it. My father has sent me
a draft for five hundred. I don't expect to use it, of course."
"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 by
the Harbins and Graydon Bansemer. There was no mistaking the joy
which lay under restraint in the faces and attitude of the Cables.
David Cable had grown younger and less grey, it seemed, and his
wife was glowing with a new and subdued happiness. Graydon, sitting
with the excited Ethel--who was rejoicing in the prospect of New
York and the other young man--studied the faces of the three people
who sat at the other end of the coach.
Time had wrought its penalties. Cable was thin and his face had
lost its virility, but not its power. His eyes never left the face
of Jane, who was talking in an earnest, impassioned manner, as was
her 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 the
change was not apparent to the casual observer. Graydon could see
that she had suffered in many ways. The keen, eager appeal for
appreciation was gone from her eyes; in its stead was the appeal
for love and contentedness. Happiness, now struggling against the
smarting of a sober pain, was giving a sweetness to her eyes that
had been lost in the ambitious glitter of other days. Ethel bored
him--a most unusual condition. He longed to be under the tender,
quieting influences at the opposite end of the car. He even resented
his temporary exile.
"Jane," Cable was saying with gentle insistence; "it is not just
to 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 can
have the best of homes and in any place you like. Why waste your
life in--"
"Waste, mother? It would be wasting my life if I did not find an
occupation for it. I can't be idle. I can't exist forever in your
love and devotion."
"Good Lord, child, don't be foolish," exclaimed Cable. "That hurts
me more than you think. Everything we have is yours."
"I'm sorry I said it, daddy. I did not mean it in that way. It
isn't the money, you know, and it isn't the home, either. No, you
must let me choose my own way of living the rest of my life. I came
from a foundling hospital. A good and tender nurse found me there
and gave me the happiest years of my life. I shall go back there
and give the rest of my years to children who are less fortunate
than I was. I want to help them, mother, just as you did--only it
is 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 women
support 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 keep
that poor boy over there alive when he might have died and ended
his misery? You nursed him back to life only to give him a wound
that 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, unkind
beginning--but I really believe I've got more heart in me than you
have."
"David!" exclaimed his wife. Jane looked at the exasperated man in
surprise.
"Now here's what I intend you to do: you owe me something for the
love that I give to you; you owe Graydon something for keeping him
from 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 before
that 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 attending
to me. I'm sick for want of your love. I'm giving up business for
the sake of enjoying it unrestrained. Your mother and I expect it.
We are going abroad for our health and we are going to take you
with us. Right now is where you begin your career as a nurse. You've
got 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--at
once: will you take charge of two patients on a long-contemplated
trip in search of love and rest--wages paid in advance?"
She looked at him, white-faced and stunned. He was putting it
before her fluently and in a new light. She saw what it was that he
considered that she owed them--the love of a daughter, after all.
An hour later she stood with Graydon on the rear platform of the
car. He was trying to talk calmly of the country through which
they were rushing and she was looking pensively down the rails that
slipped 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 before
starting 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. Changing
his 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 miss
you."
"And I shall miss you, Graydon," she said, her eyes very solemn
and wistful.
"Won't you--won't you give me the promise I want, Jane?" he asked
eagerly. 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."