Jane Cable | Page 5

and consequently careless. She chafed under the indifference,
and in her resentment believed the worst of him. Turmoil succeeded
peace and contentment, and in the end, David Cable, driven to
distraction, weakly abandoned the domestic battlefield and fled to the
Far West, giving up home, good wages, and all for the sake of freedom,
such as it was. He ignored her letters and entreaties, but in all those
months that he was away from her he never ceased to regret the
impulse that had defeated him. Nevertheless, he could not make up his
mind to go back and resume the life of torture her jealousy had
begotten.
Then, the unexpected happened. A letter was received containing the
command to come home and care for his wife and baby. At once, David
Cable called a halt in his demoralising career and saw the situation
plainly. He forgot that she had "nagged" him to the point where
endurance rebelled; he forgot everything but the fact that he cared for
her in spite of all. Sobered and conscience-stricken, he knew only that
she was alone and toiling; that she had suffered uncomplainingly until
the babe was some months old before appealing to him for help. In
abject humiliation, he hastened back to New York, reproaching himself
every mile of the way. Had he but known the true situation, he would
have been spared the pangs of remorse, and this narrative never would
have been written.

CHAPTER III
JAMES BANSEMER

In the City of New York there was practising, at that time, a lawyer by
the name of Bansemer. His office, on the topmost floor of a dingy
building in the lower section of the city, was not inviting. On leaving
the elevator, one wound about through narrow halls and finally peered,
with more or less uncertainty and misgiving, at the half-obliterated sign

which said that James Bansemer held forth on the other side of the
glass panel.
It was whispered in certain circles and openly avowed in others that
Bansemer's business was not the kind which elevates the law; in plain
words, his methods were construed to debase the good and honest
statutes of the land. Once inside the door of his office--and a heavy
spring always closed it behind one--there was quick evidence that the
lawyer lamentably disregarded the virtues of prosperity, no matter how
they had been courted and won. Although his transactions in and out of
the courts of that great city bore the mark of dishonour, he was known
to have made money during the ten years of his career as a member of
the bar. Possibly he kept his office shabby and unclean that it might be
in touch with the transactions which had their morbid birth inside the
grimy walls. There was no spot or corner in the two small rooms that
comprised his "chambers" to which he could point with pride. The
floors were littered with papers; the walls were greasy and bedecked
with malodorous notations, documents and pictures; the windows were
smoky and useless; the clerk's desk bore every suggestion of
dissoluteness.
But little less appalling to one's aesthetic sense was the clerk himself.
Squatting behind his wretched desk, Elias Droom peered across the
litter of papers and books with snaky but polite eyes, almost as inviting
as the spider who, with wily but insidious decorum, draws the guileless
into his web.
If one passed muster in the estimation of the incomprehensible Droom,
he was permitted, in due season, to pass through a second
oppressive-looking door and into the private office of Mr. James
Bansemer, attorney-at-law and solicitor. It may be remarked at this
early stage that, no matter how long or how well one may have known
Droom, one seldom lingered to engage in commonplaces with him. His
was the most repellent personality imaginable. When he smiled, one
was conscious of a shock to the nervous system; when he so far forgot
himself as to laugh aloud, there was a distinct illustration of the word
"crunching"; when he spoke, one was almost sorry that he had ears.
Bansemer knew but little of this freakish individual's history; no one
else had the temerity to inquire into his past--or to separate it from his
future, for that matter. Once, Bansemer ironically asked him why he

had never married. It was a full minute before the other lifted his eyes
from the sheet of legal cap, and by that time he was in full control of
his passion.
"Look at me! Would any woman marry a thing like me?"
This was said with such terrible earnestness that Bansemer took care
never to broach the subject again. He saw that Droom's heart was not
all steel and brass.
Droom v/as middle-aged. His lank body and cadaverous face were