What is this unerring clairvoyance that prompts devoted hearts in
moments of danger, in crises demanding supernatural judgment? It is the
very essence of much of our song and story, but the wise men do not
grasp its origin; to them it is as elusive and incapable of isolation
from its forms of manifestation as that phase of force we call
electricity. An old gentleman whom I knew well, a learned man, far above
all superstitions, arose from the sofa in his home one afternoon and
announced to the startled family that his son was in the water. He noted
the time and anxiously awaited news, so firm was his belief that truth
must have inspired his vivid dream. That night he learned that the very
moment he had announced his fears his son had fallen into the river and
was so held under by logs that he narrowly escaped drowning. This was
probably the same miraculous power love employs in youth to laugh at
locksmiths; it is the inherent wisdom of the passion deeper than our
philosophy can delve; it warns at times, and then again it will save
without warning, strangely leading us to the post of duty.
It was too early to go to the office--then about 6:45--when Gabrielle
Tescheron's coach landed on the New York side of the North River. While
coming across the ferry she believed it would be wise to take the
opportunity to visit Jim at his apartment in Eighteenth Street, and
inform him of the action I had taken in notifying the coroner, and
therefore to beware of me, for it was plain that her father had
convinced me, although he was unable to restrain and sway me to accept
his plan of privacy. Gabrielle had classed me as a dull fellow, not able
to see beneath the shallow case of Smith. Little did she imagine that I
had laughed at her father and ridiculed his course at my interview with
him. She jumped to the conclusion that I had notified the coroner, to
make sure of a conviction at any cost, so thoroughly had I been
convinced of Jim's guilt by the evidence her father had laid before me,
and so high was my sense of honor and duty to the community. This action
on my part she assumed would result in the publicity her father dreaded,
but eventually would lead to Jim's vindication; she deplored my lack of
faith in my companion; she marveled that I, too, should have fallen so
easily a prey to the sharpers who were deceiving her hot-headed,
obstinate father, whose senses were alert for every word or sign that
would smirch, by even so much as a shadow, the man he would overthrow.
If it had been possible for Gabrielle Tescheron to understand that I had
read her impulsive father's character aright, and that my loyalty to Jim
Hosley at the time was as firm as her own, our difficulties would have
been greatly simplified. My joke turned its other edge on me and cut me
off from her confidence, but not from her good-will, as expressed in the
beautiful flowers, in the hope that I might turn from pursuing Jim and
become a staunch advocate of his cause, when I realized, as she did and
as I surely must, how strong and true he was and how far above the
rogues who would smirch him for gain. But it was plain to her that I had
been turned against Jim by her father, and had gone far beyond the point
her father intended to reach in his attack on Hosley. Jim must be
quickly warned not to place any more confidence in me, for I had taken
hasty action that would soon involve them all in a criminal
investigation, full of unpleasant notoriety even for the innocent. Jim
should also be well advised by an able criminal lawyer to protect him
against these rogues and intemperate reasoners.
But these thoughts which came to Gabrielle and seemed to her to be the
impelling force that directed her to Eighteenth Street that morning, to
my mind now, read in the light of the whole story, were really only the
miraculous methods of that clairvoyance, operating under the veil of
mystery beyond reason. My shallow joke, I insist, could not have been
the cause. With an unshaken faith in Jim and no danger threatening him,
I am confident she would have remained at the hotel, taken breakfast
with her father and mother, and then, perhaps, have leisurely departed
for her office, to tell laughingly of the early morning flight to Jim at
some trysting place in the commercial section of the town later in the
day. Faith, without real danger, would have meant a contented mind,
whether or not, it seems to me, I had notified one coroner or a
thousand, for it would have been only part of the general plan to give
the widest scope to Jim's detractors, and to take no part in
counter-plotting any more than she would ally herself with her father's
villainous advisers. The utter absurdity of my joke, I firmly believe,
would have appeared plainly to her had the real danger of the fire not
been apprehended by her intuitions, far keener than she suspected, and
so interpreted to her will as to lead her without fear to the very spot
she was most needed in all the world.