"Jim, have I not always told you in reply to your questioning that the charges made against you by my poor, misguided father and Mr. Hopkins are too absurd to repeat? If I should tell you now, it would only prove my father to be a hot-headed man, one who is so easily misled by those who arouse his fears. Let it all rest with my statement that his position is taken because of those absurd conclusions. Then it will not be necessary for me to make my dear father appear ridiculous."

"I shan't think that," said Jim, softly. It appeared that he could say or do nothing to extricate himself from the work of the plotters, whose shadows disappeared as he drew nigh. "But if you would only give me, the accused, a chance to make a defense, I could incidentally prove Hopkins innocent and have him at our wedding. That I should like to do. It pains me more than I can tell to ignore that poor chap. I often wonder where he is, and think myself a coward and an inhuman scoundrel not to make an effort to find him."

"Why do you bother about him, Jim? Didn't the nurse hurry us from the hospital that day because she said Mr. Hopkins had told her you were a rogue? Don't you see that both father and he have been impressed by the story of those villainous detectives, who would do anything for money?"

"Well, Gabrielle, tell me what those detectives have told your father about me. He has told you, has he not? Have these charges raised no suspicion in your mind against me? Are you not anxious to question me?

How proud, then, I am to have won the heart of such a grand little woman!"

Before he could wait for replies to his questions the burly invalid clutched his chair, rose to his feet and stretching out his arms gathered up his treasure of loyalty and fondly caressed her. "How fortunate for me," he continued, "that your heart has not been poisoned against me! How priceless this love of yours! for without it I should not be saved. Let the whole world forsake me, and you remain true, what care I? Gabrielle, you have guarded me like an angel."

Jim could say no more. He choked and could not go on. Was sincerity to be doubted when so emphasized? Could there be aught of guile in that embrace?

"Jim, I have never doubted you--I never could doubt you, for do I not know your heart as you know mine?" a.s.sured Gabrielle, meeting his frank eyes steadily with hers. "You are my plain hero, untrumpeted, except by all your friends who have known you here for years. Never ask me again of the base charges father has listened to. I trust my love, which I see answered in those boyish eyes--in every kind word and act. Jim, I love you and we shall be married; we shall plan our own life in the light of this love, and doing that we have naught to fear. We shall welcome true friends, who will be loyal to us because we are loyal to our own ideals, and so father shall be won to us, and Mr. Hopkins may turn toward us again. Our troubles are largely our fears, Mr. MacDonald says, and I believe him. How foolish to fear when we may enjoy repose through faith and love!"

"Gabrielle, my darling, you will never again be questioned by me. So long as you have faith, let the rest of the world go hang! Poor Ben Hopkins, I would like to see him, though."

I give no notice here as to when the embrace released. It is quite possible that it continued until late in the afternoon, with hand-holding modifications, when Nellie returned and sang loudly in another room for warning and company. The fleeting hours that the happy pair looked out from one of those magic windows are not to be recorded in detail. A lover's log-book is unknown. The fears and conspiracies that might have hara.s.sed them found no leverage of doubt to pry an entrance into Gabrielle's heart. Every wave of the higher air wafted from Trinity's steeple, brought them the joy of marriage bells. Even without a lame leg, Jim would never have thought of running away from that place.

The wedding was to take place in the afternoon of Wednesday, only three weeks off. Mr. Tescheron was to be notified in due time that it would be held at the Episcopal church to which the family belonged. That part of the ceremony calling for the giving away of the bride would be omitted.

Only a few relatives and dear friends would be present, and they would understand Gabrielle's purpose to marry the man of her choice. The affair would be clouded with sadness, they all believed (except Jim); but Gabrielle was determined not to hide the opposition of her father.

She was determined to have her wedding about as she had planned from childhood in the little church she loved, and up to the very minute of the fixed hour she would hope and pray to have her father there full of repentance and forgiveness. Mr. Tescheron was to be told by her one week prior to the wedding. Thus he was to be given one week alone with his conscience to settle the question whether he should accept an invitation to his daughter's wedding. More than a week's notice, Gabrielle believed, would inflict unnecessary cruelty and less than a week grant hardly enough time for him to retrace his steps.

Mrs. Tescheron, poor soul, spent many hours in tears, her faith and pride in her daughter sustaining her through the hours of preparation.

The day of the wedding she dreaded, and she doubted if she would bear up when the climax of the strain came. Firmness prompted by kindness, the wife and mother understood to be necessary in dealing with the irascible head of the family, and she therefore quietly acquiesced in this policy when administered by their only child. She had never been able to successfully make her will dominant in the household on that principle, perhaps because she had begun by surrendering to him the first few times he was mastered by his temper in the early days of married life, like most wives do surrender. The baby is generally much better brought up in the family than the father. My observation as a bachelor teaches me that every wife should take a husband in hand like a child--coddle him, keep him in after dark, put him to bed very early full of hot gruel when he sneezes or falls asleep after dinner; if he complains of a draught give him a steaming foot-bath and one or two mustard plasters, those gentle love-taps of family life, that lingeringly long tell of devotion; and when he has any inclination to do anything except smile, pounce upon him and trundle him into some sort of medicated misery, tenderly but firmly.

I could name a dozen good husbands, men of eagle eye in the market place, who stand pat in good nature at home, because their wives make little or no discrimination between the babies and their papa. Mrs.

Tescheron was fortunate in her daughter, however, and in later years was relieved as the child grew to lead them. The mother determined with as much strength of purpose as she could summon, to rely upon Gabrielle to find the way out in this emergency, as the daughter had in all others.

CHAPTER XIX

The day Mr. Tescheron was to receive notification of the wedding in his immediate family came so quickly the announcement could not be made in the morning. Gabrielle needed the day to prepare, for while she was brave, the meeting with her father must bring tears of disappointment.

Perhaps the glowering skies made postponement easy. Better the night for sorrow, thought she, and then hurried down-town, her hands full of small packages containing bits of finery not available to enter into the ornamentation of the dressmaker's conceptions in silk and lace. These must be exchanged for other shades, and the light of a cloudy day was not suitable for matching colors; her feminine mind turned to the more important details of preparation.

As she entered the office her thoughts were wholly away from the law of her country and its business operations. The gowns that were to be fitted and the untrimmed hats loomed larger than the intricate questions in various states of litigation that came under her supervision. In a week she was to pa.s.s from this realm of worldly detail, and would a.s.sume the larger role of wife, better equipped by freedom and the good uses she had made of its opportunities. Still the hats and gowns must not be ignored by any high-flown philosophy. She was about to hitch her wagon to a star, to be a whole woman, the head of a home and all that; but what would we think even of the president of Sorosis if she appeared in last year's sleeves?

Among her letters that morning, Gabrielle found one from Hygeia, and regretted that she must place it with her packages as soon as she glanced at the name, for there was no time to read it then; perhaps in a car she would find the time. Letters written at leisure in the country and read in the crowded city cars lose their native sweetness. Such as I have ever received from there must be opened tenderly and read slowly far from the throng.

By one o'clock the mills of Justice ceased to claim the attention of Gabrielle. Two hours were spent in the stores, every minute consumed in the closest study of fabrics, miles of floor-walking and volumes of questioning--all composing the art and science of shopping, the one sphere in which woman can carry the weight of a fur cloak and do a hundred-yard dash or a mile run to the most distant department, while her man companion takes his coat off and worms his way twenty feet to the necktie counter, which is always found opposite the main entrance.

Ten feet farther in, it would fail. Gabrielle shopped with system, to save time, and then used the time she saved to shop some more.

Not long after three o'clock on that memorable Wednesday, Mrs. Gibson, Nellie and Gabrielle gathered around the enthroned Jim in his castle retreat to talk it all over again for the thousandth time.

"The wedding ring fitted the first time we tried it, and so do all my clothes, ties, gloves and hats," said Jim, with a smile intended to aggravate argument. "It is no trouble at all for me to get married."

"You're not original, though," laughed Nellie. "Originality, you know, takes time, thought and effort. Gabrielle will outshine you."

"Of course, she will," said Jim--"if there is anything left of the poor girl to wear these things."

"Oh, don't fear that, Jim," Gabrielle advised. "This is great fun."

"The stores always seem to be filled with women," remarked Jim. "Are they all about to get married, I wonder?"

"Those who go the earliest and stay the longest are women who are getting ready for the fourth trip," said Mr. Gibson, the jolly father, whose grim face belied his heart. He had entered in time to catch Jim's query. "It's a case of accelerated motion," he added.

The girls laughed and chided him for his wantonly cruel words. They chatted along merrily for an hour, first about this trifle and then that, completely under the influence of the glorious event, without one thought being given to the cloud, as big as a postman's hand, among Gabrielle's packages, for they did not see it there.

The happy prospective bridegroom, who had escaped the dire fate the letters threatened to throw across his path by dodging beneath the quilts at the hospital, was now full of the heroism that thrives in peace. The calamity which seemed prepared to fall upon him in the hour of his greatest happiness, Fate had tossed aside, and his star combination proved to be intact and in good working order. Trouble had gathered near in murky concentration for a few minutes that anxious day, but when Hygeia pa.s.sed out of the door of his room to answer my bell, the knight stood forth with visor up, resumed his normal color, and gradually his power of speech. Those old breadcrumbs cast upon the waters of love years before had washed ash.o.r.e at a most untimely moment, thought he; but the audience had not reached the end to ponder on the writer's name. A miss was as good as a mile in slipping between the cup and the lip.

But the course of true love is a rugged path to the close of the ceremony; beyond, it is still more rugged, and the surrounding country, they say, is often wild and desolate, and quite unlike the park gardening and its beckoning vistas to be seen along Lovers' Lane before the turn in the road at the altar.

A cloud no larger than the tiny mist from the whistle of one of those tooting tugs familiar in the harbor scene was gathering while the sun shone so brightly in the tower apartment. An electric shock will gather and burst a cloud large enough to bring midnight and deluge at noonday.

Mr. Gibson understood the importance of lightning arresters, but was not prepared to apply them in his home. The women could do nothing; and, of course, I, the only person in the world who might have transformed the current to a harmless voltage, had been shunned as an enemy.

Then came the lull before the hurricane--the soft whispering of the wind in the tree-tops. Jim alone could see the havoc it raised along the mountain ridge, foretelling by a few minutes the arrival of the twisting and wrenching blast.

"Oh, Nellie, you remember my telling about the gushy love-letters the nurse read to us at the hospital, for our entertainment. Well, here, please take this; she has sent another, which I see by a glance is quite as good as the rest. Would you mind reading it aloud? and then I ask you all to excuse me while I s.n.a.t.c.h a moment to read her long letter."

In this way, Gabrielle believed she would solve the problem of time, that had been so limited that busy day.

"Why, certainly; let us have the pleasure, and go ahead with your reading." Nellie was always ready to entertain the company.

But Gabrielle did not advance more than a few lines with Hygeia's accompanying letter. The Gibson family were so delighted with Nellie's reading of my celebrated collaboration with Lord Byron, constructed by the drip of my pen welding some of the choicest gems of the inspired poet to bring together the hearts of Jim and that fair Margaret, it was quite out of the question for Gabrielle to withdraw from the fun. She became as attentive as the other auditors and added her applause to sustain the clever elocutionist. Comment flowed freely from all except Jim at nearly every interruption.

"Father, this is supposed to be the proper way to make love," said Nellie, and she began to read:

"'My Darling Margaret:

"'Your letter of this morning bids me with many playful thrusts to be more hopeful during your absence, which you say will be brief in one paragraph and in another that it will be "about three months." How is it possible for me to reconcile these statements? Three months may be an eternity. The criminal bound and held beneath the spigot, from which water, drop by drop, pounds with thundering impact upon his hot head, and the idlers in sylvan dells, view time differently. Your advice, though, shall be taken and followed with such will as I am able to command. Weakness, backsliding from my purpose to be as cheerful as you wish, you must forgive. If you would have me display an even interest in life, undisturbed by the moaning which creeps into these letters, you know the sure, swift course to take--the fastest express train to New York, and a telegram summoning me to the depot--that is all.

"'For the past two nights my sleep has been blessed with visions more lovely and hope inspiring. Fear has been driven away, to give place to fairer thoughts of you. Not to dream of you crowded the hours of absence too heavily upon me. Henceforth I am determined that you shall be with me in my thoughts, tenderly ministering to me with those eyes whose soft light I would have my steady beacons. Darling Margaret, their flickering, or the fear that they will flicker, sets me almost crazy.

"'Thy form appears through night, through day: Awake, with it my fancy teems; In sleep, it smiles in fleeting dreams-- The vision charms the hours away, And bids me curse Aurora's ray, For breaking slumbers of delight, Which make me wish for endless night; Since, oh! whate'er my future fate, Shall joy or woe my steps await, Tempted by love, by storms beset, Thine image I can ne'er forget.'"

"He pursued her hard," interrupted Mr. Gibson. "I can remember when I used to feel that way about girls, but I couldn't put it on paper."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Gibson. "What you put on paper would never compromise you. The name of the man who wrote the letter, you understand, father, is not known, and neither do we know the woman.

Still, I hardly think it can be one of yours, so I shan't worry. Go on, Nellie."

Nellie had observed as she paused in her reading and glanced upward, that Jim seemed much disturbed. He was very red and his eyes seemed to be afire. But Gabrielle did not give any of her attention to Jim, and Nellie was too busy with her task of deciphering my wretched ma.n.u.script to interject a gay remark at Jim's expense. Jim moistened his lips, wiped his beading brow, and nerved himself for the worst. There were now no quilts for him to dodge under, and no acute pain to serve as a standing account against which he might charge these evidences of the anguish he could not conceal.

Nellie continued, and Gabrielle forgot all about Hygeia's letter. This I think flattering to my style.

"Listen!" commanded Nellie, and again she read: