Gabrielle could not be swayed from her devotion to the man whose simple ways and sturdy honor made their silent appeal to her. He was nobody's ideal man but hers, perhaps, and people who knew them wondered what she saw in him to match her ambitions. Well, there was her wisdom coming to the surface again in a way to confuse those who would have managed her affairs differently. Gabrielle had a firm faith in herself. Jim was the complementary type of man; he approached her with qualifications that met all the practical conditions the careful father had a right to demand, prompted by his love for his child—at least, this was true according to her conception—and beyond that the father could not enter to live her life for her. She was at once convinced of her father's folly and paid no further heed to his objections. She gave full liberty to others, and firmly but not excitedly demanded it for herself. This was a manifestation of love's controlling power in the stress of storm that I, as a theorist, knew not, but having gained the wisdom through the course it prescribes in the school—I might say the Correspondence School of Hard Knocks, I think I am now qualified to have my name in the catalogue, if not as a member of the faculty, then as janitor—for no man was ever more ready than I to eat humble pie.
Gabrielle Tescheron was a graduate of Vassar. When only twenty she had her degree and an ambition to progress farther in knowledge by direct contact with the world of business. The opportunity came on her Commencement Day, when John MacDonald, an old friend of her father, playfully suggested that she come into his law office and be a Portia.
"Your black gown," he said, "makes me think you are a Justice of the Court of Appeals."
He smiled, and she became very happy with this thought to carry home. Even then I believe she had the good sense not to feel badly because he had not praised her essay on "Constitutional Provisions Bearing Upon Our Federal Control of Inter-State Commerce."
"Ten years from now, I'll tell you what I think about it," was all he had to say.
John MacDonald was getting well along in years, but was at the height of his active professional career when Gabrielle induced him to seriously confirm his suggestion made a few months before. This persistence of hers in the matter pleased him. He liked her self-confidence and that quiet manner which told him she would win by taking the sure road of steady, earnest endeavor to grasp the whole by taking each part, day by day. She began, he saw, with scientific methods and abundant enthusiasm. The plan was for her to master stenography and typewriting, become John MacDonald's confidante in the office, and at the same time take a law course at one of the down-town schools. The mechanical aids afforded by stenographic note-taking and the typewriter's rapidity gave her the short cuts to mastering the details and routine of the business—the shop-work of a law office. Mr. MacDonald, a kind, mild-mannered man, but an exact and careful lawyer, who demanded the utmost thoroughness from his subordinates, had known this girl from childhood and took a fatherly interest in her. She, in turn, admired him for his justice, and she felt that the progress she was able to make in her work by keeping busy and taking pains, might not have been so marked under his tutorship were he not a man whose sympathy never ran to coddling and spoiling. He was in sympathy with her, that she knew; but he never went out of his way to tell her how well she was doing. He incorporated much of her original work in his own, and let her infer his opinion of her from this. This man was, I believe, the source of the girl's wisdom in the events which drove her father and me into the most unusual forms of insane conclusion. We assumed that we understood human nature. This girl assumed nothing. She walked with sure feet after she had gone over the case with some of the old-fashioned common sense that hovered around John MacDonald's law office. How fine it was for her to attach herself to some of the real problems of the world rather than bury her talents in the shallow social activities she might have entered into and come to regard as her limited sphere, when in reality she had the widest liberty for the mere seeking and deserving!
I was not present at the reception held at the home of mutual friends, Mr. and Mrs. Gibson, some three years prior to these events narrated here, when Gabrielle Tescheron and James Hosley first met. I was out of town that New Year's eve, and so missed the jolly party at the Gibsons', although I had been present usually on these anniversary occasions in bygone years, for the Gibsons were kind friends of ours and pitied our lonely lot. They lived in the cutest little home in all the great city—in the most romantic spot you could find when the waning hours of the old year were danced away by merry feet and jolly hearts sang the New Year in. Mr. Gibson was a mechanical engineer (not from Stevens', but from Cooper Union), and he was the superintendent in charge of the big Produce Exchange building, whose tall, red tower is one of the landmarks of New York. Their home was a conveniently arranged and tastefully furnished apartment high up in the tower just beneath the clock, where, perhaps, you have seen those round windows that look out upon the world of surrounding harbor and soaring skyscrapers, like tiny portholes. Those windows of the Gibson home are larger than you imagine when viewing them from the street. What a spot to meet a charming girl! Why, I used to lose my heart there every New Year's night as regularly as the big clock marked the minutes, but it always came back to me with a bounce six weeks later; the dense atmosphere of romance hovering there made competition extremely keen. Who would not fall in love in that clock tower!—far up among the stars, separated from the dull routine below by encircling fairy lights of harbor, misty outlines of buildings and busily moving craft—all seemingly in mid-air, flashing the scenery of a joyland, while mellow chimes of the neighboring Trinity pealed their glad welcome to the New Year. At that magic moment, when you pressed far out of the window to hear the bells—she and you—suspended above that vast expanse of earth, sea and air shrinking away, as if you two together were flying aloft with arms entwined, you passed very close to heaven. The shouts from the street were heard but faintly, and awoke sighing echoes in your heart, like the minor chord accenting the ecstatic movement which seemed to hold the world in rhythm. How lustily you caroled the chorus to hide your tender feelings! Some of those round windows have such dear memories clinging to them—aye! clinging is the word—that I dare not look up at them any more from Broadway.
My story tells of Trinity bells,
When chimes ring clear
And harbor lights are flashing,
Beneath the starry bower,
Where a dying year brings not a tear
To young hearts in the tower.
How sweetly swells—how merrily bells!
The song of youth,
To lift the soul enraptured—
A glance may tell the story,
Prompted by Cupid, now shyly hid—
Anon he'll claim the glory.
Remember that Gabrielle Tescheron was enjoying herself like all the other girls that night—that New Year's eve, a little more than three years before the opening of our tale, and Jim Hosley was deep in all the fun. On the floor above the Gibson apartment, the young folks danced around the works of the clock to the music of a violin and harp, and from early evening till late—or early, as you please—they had the best kind of a time—the mothers, fathers, sons and daughters—for it was a family party. All the Gibson relatives and their friends were there, for it would not seem like New Year's to them to celebrate the coming of the year away from that romantic nest. Don't ask me to analyze the hearts of Gabrielle and Jim to the whys and wherefores, for the potencies of love are beyond the analysis even of the purists, although they give us many words of explanation which get around at last to the old formula: "They fell in love." And it was as if they had dropped from one of the round windows as they leaned far out together to catch the sound of the chimes, so sudden and so deep was the fall.