"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.