Droom was talking to a youth who held a notebook in his hand and
who appeared frightened and embarrassed. Graydon shook hands with
the old man. Droom followed him into the hall.
"If you ever need a friend, Graydon," he said in a low voice, "call
on me. If I'm not in jail, I'll help you."
Half an hour later Graydon rang the Cables' doorbell.
"Miss Jane is not seeing anyone to-day, sir," said the servant.
"Say that I must see her," protested the young man, "I'm going away
to-night."
"So is she, sir."
"Where?"
"I don't know, sir. California, more than likely. Mrs. Cable and
she will be gone for some time."
"Did she tell you not to admit me?" he asked, white-faced and calm.
"Yes, sir. NOBODY, sir."
He turned down the steps and walked away.
That afternoon he enlisted, and the following morning was going
westward with a party of recruits, bound eventually for service
with the Regulars in the Philippines.
CHAPTER XXI
IN THE PHILIPPINES
David Cable lost no time in hurrying away from Chicago with his
wife and Jane. They were whisked westward in his private car on
the second day after the Bansemer exposure. Broken-spirited, Jane
acquiesced in all their plans; she seemed as one in a stupor,
comprehending, yet unresponsive to the pain that enveloped her.
"I can't see anyone that I know here," she said listlessly. "Oh,
the thought of what they are saying!"
They did not tell her that Graydon had enlisted as a private soldier
in the United States Army; Jane only knew that she loved him and
that the bar sinister existed.
Cable's devotion to her was beautiful. He could not have been
more tender had she been his own daughter, instead of his wife's
imposition.
Jane was ill in Pasadena for many weeks. Her depressed condition
made her recovery doubtful. It was plain to two persons, at least,
that she did not care whether she lived or died. The physicians
were puzzled, but no explanation was offered by the Cables. It was
not until certain Chicago sojourners generously spread the news,
that the cause of her breakdown became apparent to the good doctors.
Before many days, the girl who sat, wan and distrait, upon the
flower-shaded piazza was an object of curiosity to fashionable
Pasadena. As soon as she was strong enough to endure the trip, the
hunted trio forsook Pasadena and fled northward.
San Francisco afforded relief in privacy. Jane's spirits began to
revive. There had not been, nor was there ever to be, any mention
of that terrible night and its revelations. What she may have felt
and suffered in secret could only be conjectured by those who loved
her. Bansemer's name was never uttered. His fate remained unknown
to her. The far-away, unhappy look in her eyes proved to them that
Graydon was never out of her thoughts.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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