Chapter one of Alexander's Bridge. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Miranda Stinson. Alexander's Bridge by Willis Cybert Cather,
Chapter one, Late one brilliant April afternoon, Professor Lucius Wilson stood at
the head of Chestnut Street, looking about him with the pleased air of a
man of taste who does not very often get to Boston. He had lived
there as a student, but for twenty years and more since he had been
professor of philosophy in a western university, he had seldom come east, except
to take a steamer for some foreign port. Wilson was standing quite still,
contemplating with a whimsical smile, the slanting street, with its worn paving,
its irregular, gravely colored houses, and the row of naked trees on which
the thin sunlight was still shining. The gleam of the river at the foot
of the hill made him blink a little, not so much because it was
too bright, as because he found it so pleasant. The few passers by
glanced at him unconcernedly and even the children who hurried along with their school bags
under their arms, seemed to find it perfectly natural that a tall, brown
gentleman should be standing there, looking up through his glasses at the gray housetops.
The sun sank rapidly, the silvery light had faded from the bare boughs,
and the watery twilight was setting in. When Wilson at last walked down
the hill, descending into cooler and cooler depths of grayish shadow. His nostril,
long unused to it, was quick to detect the smell of wood smoke
in the air, blended with the odor of moist spring earth, and the
saltiness that came up the river with the tide. He crossed Charles Street between
jangling street cars and shelving lumber drays, and after a moment of uncertainty,
wound into Brimmer Street. The street was quiet, deserted, and hung with
a thin, bluish haze. He had already fixed his sharp eye upon the
house, which he reasoned should be his objective point, when he noticed a
woman approaching rapidly from the opposite direction. All was an interested observer of women,
Wilson would have slackened his pace anywhere to follow this one with his impersonal
appreciative glance. She was a person of distinction, he saw at once,
and moreover, very handsome. She was tall, carried her beautiful head proudly,
and moved with ease and certainty. One immediately took for granted the costly
privileges and fine spaces that must lie in the background from which such a figure
could emerge with this rapid and elegant gait. Wilson noted her dress, too,
for in his way he had an eye for such things, particularly her
brown furs and her hat. He got a blurred impression of her fine color,
the violets she wore, her white gloves, and curiously enough of her
veil. As she turned up a flight of steps in front of him and
disappeared. Wilson was able to enjoy lovely things that passed him on the wing
as completely and deliberately as if they had been dug up marvels long anticipated and
definitely fixed at the end of a railway journey. For a few pleasureable seconds,
he quite forgot where he was going, and only after the door had
closed behind her did he realize that the young woman had entered the house to
which he had directed his trunk from the South station that morning. He hesitated
a moment before mounting the steps. Can that he murmured in amazement, Can
that possibly have been Missus Alexander? When the servant admitted him, Missus Alexander
was still standing in the hallway. She heard him give his name and came
forward, holding out her hand. Is it you, indeed, Professor Wilson?
I was afraid that you might get here before I did. I was
detained at a concert, and Bartley telephoned that he would be late. Thomas
will show you your room. Had you rather have your tea brought to you
there? Or will you have it down here with me while we wait for
Bartley. Wilson was pleased to find that he had been the cause of her
rapid walk, and with her he was even more vastly pleased than before.
He followed her through the drawing room into the library, where the wide back
windows looked out upon the garden and the sunset and a fine stretch of silver
colored river. A harp shape elm stood stripped against the pale colored evening sky
with ragged last year it's bird's nests in its forks, and through the bare
branches, the evening star quivered in the misty air. The long brown room
breathed the piece of a rich and amply guarded quiet tea was brought in immediately
and placed in front of the wood fire. Missus Alexander sat down in a
high backed chair and began to pour it, while Wilson sank into a low
seat opposite her and took his cup with a great sense of ease and harmony
and comfort. You have had a long journey, haven't you, Missus Alexander
asked, after showing gracious concern about his tea. And I am so sorry
Bartley is late. He's often tired when he's late. He flatters himself that
it is a little on his account that you have come to this congress of
psychologists. It is, Wilson assented, selecting his muffin carefully, and I
hope he won't be tired to night. But on my own account, I'm
glad to have a few moments alone with you before Bartley comes. I was
somehow afraid that my knowing him so well would not put me in the way
of getting to know you. That's very nice of you, she nodded at
him above her cup and smiled, but there was a little formal tightness in
her tone, which had not been there when she greeted him in the hall.
Wilson leaned forward, Have I said something awkward? I live very far
out of the world, you know, But I didn't mean that you would
exactly fade dim even if Bartley were here. Missus Alexander laughed relentingly. Oh,
I'm not so vain. How terribly discerning you are. She looked straight
at Wilson, and he felt that this quick, frank glance brought about an
understanding between them. He liked everything about her, he told himself, but
he particularly liked her eyes. When she looked at one directly for a moment,
they were like a glimpse of fine, windy sky that may bring all
sorts of weather. Since you noticed something, Missus Alexander, went on,
it must have been a flash of the distrust I have come to feel.
Whenever I meet any of the people who knew Bartley when he was a boy,
it is always as if they were talking about some one I had never
met. They Professor Wilson, it would seem that he grew up among the
strangest people. They usually say that he has turned out very well, or
remarked that he was always a fine fellow. I never know what reply to
make. Wilson chuckled and leaned back in his chair, shaking his left foot
gently. I expect the fact is that we none of us knew him very
well, Missus Alexander. Though I will say for myself that I was always
confident he'd do something extraordinary. Missus Alexander's shoulders gave a slight movement suggestive of
impatience. Oh, I should think that might have been a safe prediction.
Another cup, please, yes, thank you. But predicting in the case
of boys is not so easy as you might imagine, Missus Alexander. Some
get a bad hurt early and lose their courage, and some never get a
fair wind Bartley. He dropped his chin on the back of his long hand
and looked at her admiringly. Bartley caught the wind early, and it has
sung in his sails ever since. Missus Alexander sat looking into the fire with
intent preoccupation, and Wilson studied her half averted face. He liked the suggestion
of stormy possibilities in the proud curve of her lip and nostril. Without that,
he reflected, she would be too cold. I should like to know
what he was really like when he was a boy. I don't believe he
remembers, she said, suddenly, won't you smoke, mister Wilson. Wilson
lit a cigarette. No, I don't suppose he does. He was never
introspective. He was simply the most tremendous response to stimuli I have ever known.
We didn't know exactly what to do with him. A servant came in
and noiselessly removed the tea tray. Missus Alexander screened her face from the firelight,
which was beginning to throw wavering bright spots on her dress and hair as
the dusk deepened. Of course, she said, I now and again hear
stories about things that happen when he was in college. But that isn't what
you want. Wilson wrinkled his brows and looked at her with a smiling familiarity
that had come about so quickly. What do you want is a picture of
him standing back there at the other end of twenty years. You want to
look down through my memory. She dropped her hands in her lap. Yes,
Yes, that's exactly what I want at this moment. They heard the
front door shut with a jar, and Wilson laughed as Missus Alexander rose quickly.
There he is away with perspective, no past, no future for Bartley,
just the fiery moment, the only moment that ever was or will be
in the world. The door from the hall opened, a voice called Winifred
Hurly, and a big man came through the drawing room with a quick,
heavy tread, bringing with him a smell of cigar smoke and chilled out of
door's air. When Alexander reached the library door, he switched on the lights
and stood six feet and more in the archway, glowing with strength and cordiality
and rugged blonde good looks. There were other bridge builders in the world,
certainly, but it was always Alexander's picture that the Sunday Supplement men wanted,
because he looked as a tamer of rivers ought to look under his tumbled sandy
hair, his head seemed as hard and powerful as a catapult, and his
shoulders looked strong enough in themselves to support a span of any one of his,
and great bridges that cut the air above as many rivers. After dinner,
Alexander took Wilson up to his study. It was a large room over
the library, and looked out upon the Black River and the row of white
lights along the Cambridge embankment. The room was not at all what one might
expect of an engineer's study. Wilson felt at once the harmony of beautiful things
that had lived long together without obtrusions of ugliness or change. It was none
of Alexander's doing, of course, those warm consonances of color had been blending
and mellowing before he was born. But the wonder was that he was not
out of place there, that it all seemed to glow, like the inevitable
background for his vigor and vehemence. He sat before the fire, his shoulders
deep in the cushions of his chair, his powerful head upright, his hair
rumpled above his broad forehead. He sat heavily, a cigar in his large,
smooth hand, a flush of after dinner color in his face, which
wind and sun and exposure to all sorts of weather had left fair and clear
skinned. You are off for England on Saturday, Bartley, missus, Alexander
tells me. Yes, for a few weeks only there's a meeting of bridge's
engineers, and I'm doing another bridge in Canada. You know, Oh,
everyone knows about that. And it was in Canada that you met your wife,
wasn't it? Yes? At Alway she was visiting her great aunt.
There, a most remarkable old lady. I was working with mc keeller,
then, an old Scotch engineer who would pick me up in London and taken
me back to Quebec with him. He had the contract for the Alway bridge,
but before he began work on it, he found out that he was
going to die, and he advised the committee to turn the job over to
me. Otherwise I'd never have gotten anything good so early. Mc keeller was
an old friend of missus Pemberton, Winnifred's aunt. He had mentioned me to
her, so when I went to Alway, she asked me to come and
see her. She was a wonderful old lady like her niece. Wilson,
queried, Bartley laughed. She had been very handsome, but not in Winifred's
way. When I knew her, she was little and fragile, very pink
and white, with a splendid head and a face like fine old lace somehow,
But perhaps I always think of that because she wore a lace scarf on
her hair. She had such a flavor of life about her. She had
known Gordon and Livingstone in Beaconsfield when she was young, every one. She
was the first woman of that sort I'd ever known. You know how it
is in the West. Old people are poked out of the way. Aunt
ellenor fascinated me as few young women have ever done. I used to go
up from the works to have tea with her and sit talking to her for
hours. It was very stimulating, for she couldn't tolerate stupidity. It must
have been then that your luck began, Bartley, said Wilson, flicking his
cigar ash with his long finger. It's curious watching boys, he went on
reflectively. I'm sure I did you justice in the matter of ability. Yet
I always used to feel that there was a weak spot where some day strain
would tell. Even after you began to climb. I stood down in the
crowd and watched you with well, not with confidence. The more dazzling the
front you presented, the higher your facade rose, the more I expected to
see a black crack zig zagg from top to bottom. He indicated its course
in the air with his forefinger. Then a crash and clouds of dust.
It was curious I had such a clear picture of it. And another curious
thing Bartley Wilson spoke with deliberateness and settled deeper into his chair, is that
I don't feel it any longer. I'm sure of you, Alexander laughed.
Nonsense, it's not I you feel sure of. It's winifred. People often
make that mistake. No, I'm serious, Alexander. You've changed. You
have decided to leave some birds in the bushes. You used to want them
all. Alexander's chair creaked. I still want a good many, he said,
rather gloomily. After all, life doesn't offer a man much. You
work like the devil and think you're getting on, and suddenly you discover that
you've only been getting yourself tied up a million details, drink you dry,
your life keeps going for things you don't want, and all the while you
are being built alive into a social structure that you don't care a rap about.
I sometimes wonder what sort of chap I'd have been if I hadn't been
this sort. I want to go out and live his potentialities too. I
haven't forgotten that there are birds in the bushes. Bartley stopped and sat frowning
into the fire, his shoulders thrust forward as if he were about to spring
at something. Wilson watched him, wondering his old pupil always stimulated him at
first, and then vastly wearied him. The machinery was always pounding away in
this man, and Wilson preferred companions of a more reflective habit of mind.
He could not help feeling that they were unreasoning and unreasonable activities going on in
Alexander. All the while that even after dinner, when most men achieve a
decent impersonality, Bartley had merely closed the door of the engine room and come
up for an airing. The machinery itself was still pounding on. Bartley's abstraction
and Wilson's reflections were cut short by a rustle at the door, and almost
before they could rise, Missus Alexander was standing by the hearth. Alexander brought
a chair for her, but she shook her head no, thank you.
I only came in to see whether you and Professor Wilson were quite comfortable.
I am going down to the music room. Why not practice here, Wilson,
and I are growing very dull. We are tired of talk. Yes,
I beg you, missus Alexander Wilson began, but he got no further.
Why, certainly, if you won't find me too noisy, I am
working on the Schumann Carnival, and though I don't practice a great many hours,
I am very methodical, Missus Alexander explained, and she crossed to an
upright piano that stood at the back of the room, near the windows.
Wilson followed, and, having seen her seated, dropped into a chair behind
her. She played brilliantly and with great musical feeling. Wilson could not imagine
her permitting herself to do anything badly, but he was surprised at the cleanness
of her execution. He wondered how a woman with so many duties had managed
to keep herself up to a standard really professional. It must take a great
deal of time, certainly, and Bartley must take a great deal of time.
Wilson reflected that he had never before known woman who had been able,
for any concern iterable while to support both a personal and an intellectual passion.
Sitting behind her he watched her with perplexed admiration, shading his eyes with his
hand. In her dinner dress, she looked even younger than in street clothes,
and for all her composure and self sufficiency, she seemed to him strangely
alert and vibrating, as if in her too, there was something never altogether
at rest. He felt that he knew pretty much what she demanded in people,
and what she demanded from life, And he wondered how she squared Bartley
after ten years. She must know him, and however one took him,
however much one admired him, one had to admit that he simply wouldn't square.
He was a natural force, certainly, but beyond that, Wilson felt
he was not anything, very really, or for very long at a time,
Wilson glanced toward the fire, where Bartley's profile was still wreathed in cigar
smoke that curled up at more and more slowly. His shoulders were sunk deep
in the cushions. In one hand, hung large and passive over the arm
of his chair. He had slipped on a purple velvet smoking coat. His
wife, Wilson surmised, had chosen it. She was certainly very proud of
his good looks and his fine color, but with the glow of an immediate
interest gone out of it, the engineer's face looked tired, even a little
haggard. The three lines in his forehead directly above the nose deepened as he
sat thinking, and his powerful head drooped forward heavily. Although Alexander was only
forty three, Wilson thought that beneath his vigorous color he detected the dulling weariness
of oncoming middle age. The next afternoon, at the hour when the river
was beginning to redden under the declining sun, Wilson again found himself facing Missus
Alexander at the tea table in the library. Well, he remarked, when
he was bidden to give an account of himself. There was a long mourning
with the psychologists, luncheon with Bartley at his club, more psychologists than here
I am. I've looked forward to this hour all day, Missus Alexander smiled
at him across the vapor from the kettle, and do you remember where we
stopped yesterday? Perfectly? I was going to show you a picture, but
I doubt whether I have enough color in me. Bartley makes me feel a
faded monochrome. You can't get at the young Bartley except by means of color.
Wilson paused and deliberated. Suddenly he broke out. He wasn't a remarkable
student, you know, though he was always strong and higher mathematics. His
work in my own department was quite ordinary. It was as a powerfully equipped
nature that I found him interesting. That is the most interesting thing a teacher
can find. It has the fascination of a scientific discovery. We come across
other pleasing and endearing qualities so much oftener than we find force. And after
all, said missus Alexander, that is the thing we all live upon.
It is the thing that takes us forward. Wilson thought, she spoke a
little wistfully. Exactly, he assented warmly. It builds the bridges into the
future over which the feet of every one of us will go. How interested
I am to hear you put it in that way, the bridges into the
future. I often say that to myself. Bartley's bridges always seemed to me
like that. Have you ever seen his first suspension bridge in Canada, the
one he was doing when I first knew him. I hope you will see
it sometime. We were married as soon as it was finished. And he
will laugh when I tell you that it always has a rather bridle look to
me. It is over the wildest river, with mists and clouds always battling
about it, and it is as delicate as a cobweb hanging in the sky.
It really was a bridge into the future. You have only to look
at it to feel that it meant the beginning of a great career. But
I have a photograph of it. Here. She drew a portfolio from behind
a bookcase, and there you see on the hill as my aunt's house.
Wilson took up the photograph. Bartley was telling me something about your aunt last
night. She must have been a delightful person. Winnifred laughed. But the
bridge you see was just at the foot of the hill, and the noise
of the engines annoyed her very much at first, but after she met Bartley
she pretended to like it, and said it was a good thing to be
reminded that there were things going on in the world. She loved life,
and Bartley brought a great deal of it to her when he came to the
house. Aunt Eleanor was very worldly in a frank early Victorian manner. She
liked men of action, and disliked men who were careful of themselves, and
who, as she put it, were always trimming in their wick, as
if they were afraid of their oils giving out. Mc keellar, Bartley's first
chief, was an old friend of my aunt, and he told her that
Bartley was a wild, little governed youth, which really pleased her very much.
I remember we were sitting alone in the dusk after Bartley had been there
for the first time. I knew that Aunt Eleanor had found him much to
her taste, but she hadn't said anything. Presently, she came out with
a chuckle. Mc keellar found him sewing wild oats in London, I believe,
I hope he didn't stop him too soon. Life coquettes with dashing fellows.
The coming men are always like that. We must have him to dinner,
my dear, and so we did. She grew much fonder of Bartley
than she was of me. I had been studying in Vienna, and she
thought that absurd. She was interested in the army and in politics, and
she had a great contempt for music and art and philosophy. She used to
declare that the Prince Consort had brought all that stuff over from Germany. She
always sniffed when Bartley asked me to play for him. She considered that a
new fangled way of making a match of it. When Alexander came in a
few moments later, he found Wilson and his wife still confronting the photograph.
Oh let us get that out of the way, he said, laughing,
Whendifred Thomas can bring my trunk down, I've decided to go over to New
York tomorrow night and take a fast boat. I shall save two days.
End of chapter one. Chapter one of Alexander's Bridge. Chapter two of Alexander's
Bridge by Willikada. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more omation or to volunteer, please visit librevax dot
org. Recording by Gen Maxwell, Boston, Massachusetts. Chapter two. On
the night of his arrival in London, Alexander went immediately to the hotel on
the Embankment, at which he always stopped, and in the lobby he was
accosted by an old acquaintance, Maurice Mainhall, who fell upon him with effusive
cordiality and indicated a willingness to dine with him. Bartley never dined alone if
he could help it. And Mainhall was a good gossip who always knew what
had been going on in town. Especially he knew everything that was not printed
in the newspapers. The nephew of one of the standard Victorian novelists, Mainhall
bobbed about among the various literary cliques of London at its outlying suburbs, careful
to lose touch with none of them. He had written a number of books
himself, among them The History of Dancing, A History of Costume, A
Key to Shakespeare's Sonnets, A Study of the poetry of Ernest Dowson. Although
main Hall's enthusiasm was often tiresome, and although he was often unable to distinguish
between facts and vivid figments of his imagination, his imperturbable good nature overcame even
the people whom he bored most, so that they ended up by becoming in
a reluctant manner his friends. In appearance, main Hall was astonishingly like the
conventional stage englishman of American drama, tall and thin, with high hitching shoulders
and a small head, glistening with closely brushed yellow hair. He spoke with
an extreme Oxford accent, and when he was talking well, his face sometimes
wore the rapt expression of an emotional man listening to music. Main Hall liked
Alexander because he was an engineer. He had preconceived ideas about everything, and
his idea about Americans was that they should be engineers or mechanics. He hated
them when they presumed to be anything else. While they sat at dinner,
main Hall acquainted Bartley with the fortunes of his old friends in London, and
as they left the table, he proposed that they should go see Hugh McConnell's
new comedy bog Lights. It's really quite the best thing McConnell's done, he
explained, as they got into a hansom. It's tremendously well put on too
Florence Merrill and Cyril Henderson, but Hildebergoygne's the hit of the piece. He's
written a delightful part for her, and she's quite inexpressible. It's been on
only two weeks and i've been half a dozen times already. I haven't have
McConnell's box for tonight, where there'd be no chance of our getting places.
There's everything in seeing Hilda while she's fresh in apart. She's apt to grow
a bit stale after a time. The ones who have any imagination do Hildeburgoyne,
Alexander exclaimed mildly. Why I haven't heard of her for years? Manhal
laughed. Then you can't have heard much at all, my dear Alexander.
It's only lately since McConnell and his set have got hold of her that she's
come up myself. I always knew she had it in her if we had
one real critic in London. But one can one expect, do you know,
Alexander? Mainhall looked with perplexity up into the top of the hansom and
rubbed his pink cheek with his gloved finger. Do you know I sometimes think
of taking to criticism seriously myself. In a way it would be a sacrifice.
But dear me, we do need someone. Just then they drove up
to the Duke of York, so Alexander did not commit himself, but followed
Mainhall into the theater. When they entered the stage box on the left,
the first act was well underway, the scene being the interior of a cabin
in the south of Ireland. As they sat down, a burst of applause
drew Alexander's attention to the stage. Miss Burgoyne and her donkey were thrusting their
heads in at the half door. After all, he reflected, there's a
small probability of her recognizing me. She doubtless hasn't thought of me for years.
He felt the enthusiasm of the house at once, and in a few
moments he was caught up by the current if McConnell's irresistible comedy. The audience
had come forewarned, evidently, and whenever the ragged slip of a donkey girl
ran upon the st age, there was a deep murmur of approbation. Everyone
smiled and glowed, and main Hall hitched his heavy chair a little nearer the
brass railing, you see, he murmured at Alexander's ear as the curtain fell
on the first act. One almost never sees apart like that done without smartness
or mawkishness. Of course, Hilda is Irish. The Burgoyins have vin stage
people for generations, and she has the Irish voice. It's delightful to hear
it in a London Theater. That laugh now when she doubles over at the
hips, who ever heard it out of Galway? She saves her hand too.
She's at her best in the second act. She's really McConnell's poetic motif
you see makes the whole thing a fairy tale. The second act opened before
Philly Doyle's underground, still with Peggy and her battered donkey come in to smuggle
a load of pothine across the bog, and to bring Philly word of what
was doing in the world without, and of what was happening along the roadsides
and ditches with the first gleam of fine weather. Alexander, annoyed by main
Hall's size and exclamations, watched her with keen half skeptical interest. As main
Hall had said she was. The second act, the plot and feeling alight
depended upon her lightness of foot, her lightness of touch, upon the shrewdness
and deft fancifulness that played alternately and sometimes together in her mirthful brown eyes.
When she began to dance by way of showing the gassoons what she had seen
in the fairy Rings at night, the house broke into a prolonged uproar.
After the dance, she withdrew from the dialog and retreated to the ditch wall
back of Philly's burrow, where she sat singing the Rising of the Moon and
making a wreath of primroses for her donkey. When the act was over,
Alexander and Mainhall strolled out into the corridor. They met a good many acquaintances.
Main Hall indeed knew almost every one, and he babbled on incontinently,
screwing his small head about over his high collar. Presently he held a tall
bearded man, grim browed and rather battered looking, who had his opera cloak
on his arm and his hat in his hand, and who seemed to be
in the point of leaving the theater. McConnell, let me introduce mister Bartley
Alexander. I say, it's going famously to night, mac and what an
audience. You'll never do anything like this again, mark me, a man
writes to the top of his bent. Only once the playwright gave Mainhall a
curious look out of his deep set, faded eyes and made a wry face.
And have I done anything so full as that? Now? He asked,
That's what I'm saying. Mainhall lounged a little nearer and dropped into her
tone even more conspicuously confidential. And you'll never bring Hilda out like this again,
Dear me, Mac The girl couldn't possibly be better, you know.
McConnell grunted. She'll do well enough if she keeps her pace and doesn't go
off on us in the middle of the season, as she's more than like
to do. He nodded curtly and made for the door, dodging acquaintances as
he went. Poor old Hugh Mainhall murmured, he's hit terribly hard. He's
been wanting to marry Hilda these three years and more. She doesn't take up
with anybody, you know, Irene Burgoyne. One of her family told me
in confidence that there was a romance somewhere back in the beginning, one of
your countrymen, Alexander, by the way, an American student whom she met
in Paris. I believe, I dare say it's quite true that there's never
been any one else. Manhall vouched for her constancy with a loftiness that made
Alexander smile even while a kind of rapid excitement was tingling through him. Blinking
up at the lights. Mainhall added in his luxurious worldly way. She's an
elegant little person and quite capable of an extravagant bit of sentiment like that.
Here comes, Sir harry Town. He's another who's awfully keen about her.
Let me introduce you, Sir harry Town, mister Bartley Alexander, the American
engineer. Sir Harrytown bowed and said that he had met mister Alexander and his
wife in Tokyo. Mainhall cut in impatiently. I say, Sir Harry,
the little girl's going famously to night, isn't she. Sir Harry wrinkled his
brows judiciously. You know, I thought the dance a bit conscious tonight for
the first time. The fact is she's feeling rather seedy. Poor child.
Westmere and I were back after the first act, and we thought she seemed
quite uncertain of herself, a little attack of nerves possibly. He bowed as
the warning bell rang and Mainhall whispered, you know, Lord west mayor,
of course, the stoopman with the long gray mustache talking to Lady Dowell.
Lady Westmeyre is very fond of Hilda. When they reached their box, the
house was darkened, and the orchestra was playing The Cloak of Old Gall.
In a moment, Peggy was on the stage again, and Alexander applauded vigorously
with the rest. He even leaned forward over the rail a little. For
some reason, he felt pleased and flattered by the enthusiasm of the audience.
In the half light, he looked about at the stalls and boxes and smiled
a little, consciously recalling with amusement Sir Harry's judicial frown. He was beginning
to feel a keen interest in the slender, barefoot donkey girl who slipped in
and out of the play, singing like someone winding through a hilly field.
He leaned forward and beamed felicitations as warmly as Mainhall himself, when at the
end of the play she came again and again before the curtain, panting a
little flushed, her eyes dancing, and her eager, nervous little mouth tremulous
with excitement. When Alexander returned to his hotel, he shook main Hall at
the door of the theater. He had some supper brought up to his room,
and it was late before he went to bed. He had not thought
of Hildeba gone for years. Indeed, he'd almost forgotten her. He'd last
written to her from Canada after he first met Winnifred, telling her that everything
was changed with him, that he had met a woman whom he would marry
if he could. If he could not, then all the more was everything
changed for him. Hilda had never replied to his letter. He felt guilty
and unhappy about her for a time, but after Winnifred promised to marry him,
he really forgot Hilda altogether. When he wrote her that everything was changed
for him, he was telling the truth. After he met Winnifred Pemberton,
he seemed to himself like a different man. One night, when he and
Winnifrid were sitting together on the bridge, he told her that things had happened
while he was studying abroad, that he was sorry for one thing in particular,
and he asked her whether she thought she ought to know about them.
She considered for a moment and then said, no, I think not,
though I am glad you asked me. You see, one can't be jealous
about things in general, but about particular, definite personal things. Here she
had thrown her hands up to his shoulders with a quick, impulsive gesture.
Oh about those things. I should be very jealous. I should torture myself.
I couldn't help it. After that, it was easy to forget,
actually to forget. He wondered tonight, as he poured his wine. How
many times he had thought of Hilda in the last ten years. He had
been in London more or less, but he had never happened to hear of
her. All the same, he lifted his glass. Here's to you,
little Hilda. You've made things come your way, and I never thought you
could do it. Of course, he reflected, she always had that combination
of something homely and sensible, something utterly wild and daft. But I never
thought she'd do anything. She hadn't much ambition then, and she was too
fond of trifles. She must care about the theater or a great deal more
than she used to. Perhaps she has met a thank for something. After
all, Sometimes a little jolt like that does one good. She was a
daft, generous little thing. I'm glad she's held her own since. After
all, we were awfully young. It was youth and poverty and proximity,
and everything was young and kindly. I shouldn't wonder if she could laugh about
it with me. Now, I shouldn't wonder, but they've probably spoiled her
so that she'd be tiresome if one met her again. Bartley smiled and yawned
and went to bed end of chapter two. Chapter three of Alexander's Bridge by
WILLI. Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox dot org.
Recording by Gen Maxwell, Boston, Massachusetts, Chapter three. The next
evening, Alexander dined alone at a club, and at about nine o'clock he
dropped in at the Duke of York's. The house was sold out and he
stood through the second act. When he returned to his hotel, he examined
the new directory and found Miss Burgoyne's address still given as off Bedford Square,
though at a new number. He remembered that in so far as she had
been brought up at all, that she had been brought up in Bloomsbury.
Her father and mother played in the provinces most of the year, and she
was left a great deal in the care of an old aunt who was crippled
by rheumatism, and who had had to leave the stage altogether. In the
days when Alexander knew her, Hilda always managed to have a lodging of some
sort about Bedford Square, because she clung tenaciously to such scraps and shreds of
memories as were connected with it. The Mummy Room of the British Museum had
been one of the chief delights her childhood. That forbidding pile was the goal
of her true and fancy, and she was sometimes taken there for a treat
as other children were taken to the theater. It was long since Alexander had
thought of any of these things, but now they came back to him quite
fresh and had a significance they did not have when they were first told him
in his restless twenties. So she was still in the old neighborhood near Bedford
Square. The new number probably meant increased prosperity, he hoped, so he
would like to know that she was snugly settled. He looked at his watch.
It was a quarter past ten. She would not be home for a
good two hours yet, and he might as well walk over and have a
look at the place. He remembered the shortest way. It was a warm,
smoky evening, and there was a grimy moon. He went through Covent
Garden to Oxford Street, and as he turned into Museum Street, he walked
more slowly, smiling at his own nervousness as he approached the sullen gray mass
at the end. He had not been inside the museum actually, since he
and Hilda used to meet there, sometimes to set out for gay adventures at
Twickenham or Richmond, sometimes to linger about the place for a while, and
to ponder, by Lord Elgin's marbles upon the lastingness of some things, or
in the mummy room, upon the awful brevity of others. Since then,
Bartley had always thought of the British Museum as the ultimate repository of mortality,
where all the dead things in the world were assembled to make one's hour of
youth the more precious. One trembled, lest before he got out it might
somehow escape him, lest he might drop the glass from over eagerness and see
it shivered on the stone floor at his feet. How one hit his youth
under his coat and hugged it, And how good it was to turn one's
back upon that vaulted cold to take hilled his arm, and hurry out of
the great door and down the steps into the sunlight among the pigeons, to
know that the warm and vital thing within him was still there and had not
been snatched away to flush Caesar's lean cheek, or to feed the veins of
some bearded Assyrian king. They and their day had carried the flaming liquor,
but today was his, So the song used to run in his head those
summer mornings. A dozen years ago, Alexander walked by the place, very
quietly, as if he were afraid of waking someone. He crossed Bedford Square
and found the number he was looking for. The house a comfortable, well
kept place. Enough was dark except for the four front windows on the second
floor, where a low even light was burning behind the white muslin sash curtains.
Outside, there were window boxes painted white and full of flowers. Bartley
was making a third round of the square when he heard the far flung hoofbeats
of a handsome cab horse driven rapidly. He looked at his watch and was
astonished to find that it was a few minutes after twelve. He turned and
walked back along the iron railing. As the cab came up to Hild his
number and stopped. The handsome must have been one that she employed regularly,
for she did not stop to pay the driver. She stepped out quickly and
lightly. He heard her cheerful good night, Cabby as she ran up the
steps and opened the door with a latchkey. In a few moments, the
lights flared up brightly behind the white curtains, and as he walked away he
heard a window raised, but he had gone too far to look up.
Without turning around, he went back to his hotel, feeling that he had
had a good evening, and he slept well. For the next few days.
Alexander was very busy. He took a desk in the office of a
Scotch engineering firm on Henrietta Street, and was at work almost constantly. He
avoided the clubs and usually dined alone at his hotel. One afternoon, after
he had tea, he started for a walk down the embankment toward Westminster,
intending to end his stroll at Bedford Square and to ask whether miss Bourgoyne would
let him take her to the theater, but he did not go so far.
When he reached the abbey, he turned back and crossed Westminster Bridge and
sat down to watch the trails of smoke behind the Houses of Parliament catch fire.
With the sunset, The slender towers were washed by a rain of golden
light and licked by little flickering flames. Summer set House and the bleached gray
pinnacles about Whitehall were floated in a luminous haze. The yellow light poured through
the trees, and the leaves seemed to burn with soft fires. There was
a smell of acacias in the air everywhere, and the laburnums were dripping gold
over the walls of the gardens. It was a sweet, lonely kind of
summer evening. Remembering Hilda as she used to be was doubtless more satisfactory than
seeing her as she must be now. And after all, Alexander asked himself,
what was it but his own young years that he was remembering. He
crossed back to Westminster, went up to the Temple and sat down to smoke
in the middle Temple gardens, listening to the thin voice of the fountain and
smelling the spice of the sycamores that came out heavily in the damp evening air.
He thought as he sat there about a great many things, about his
own youth and Hilda's. Above all, he thought of how glorious it had
been, and how quickly it had passed, and when it had passed,
how little worth while anything was. None of the things he had gained and
the least compensated. In the last six years, his reputation had become as
the saying is popular. Four years ago he had been called to Japan to
deliver, at the Emperor's request, a course of lectures at the Imperial University,
and had instituted reforms throughout the islands, not only in the practice of
bridge building, but in drainage and roadmaking. On his return, he had
undertaken the bridge at Morlock in Canada, the most important piece of bridge building
going on in the world, a test indeed, of how far the latest
practice in bridge structure could be carried. It was a spectacular undertaking by reason
of its very size, and Bartley realized that whatever else he might do,
he would probably always be known as the engineer who designed the Great Morlock Bridge,
the longest cantilever in existence. Yet it was to him the least satisfactory
thing he had ever done. He was cramped in every way by a niggardly
commission, and was using lighter structural material than he thought proper. He had
vexations enough too with his work at home. He had several bridges under way
in the United States, and they were always being held up by strikes and
delays resulting from a general industrial unrest. Though Alexander often told himself he had
never put more into his work than he had done in the last few years,
he had to admit that he had never got so little out of it.
He was paying for success too, in the demands made on his time
by boards of civic enterprise and committees of public welfare. The obligations imposed by
his wife's fortune and position were sometimes distracting to a man who followed his profession,
and he was expected to be interested in a great many worthy endeavors on
her account as well as on his own. His existence was becoming a network
of great and little details. He had expected that success would bring him freedom
and power, but it had brought only power that was in itself another kind
of restraint. He had always bent to keep his personal liberty at all costs,
as old mc kellar, his first chief, had done, and not,
like so many American engineers, to become part of a professional movement.
A cautious board member unnested a pontibus. He happened to be engaged in work
of public utility, but he was not willing to become what is called a
public man. He found himself living exactly the kind of life he had determined
to escape. What he asked himself did he want with these genial honors and
substantial comforts, hardships and difficulties he had carried lightly over work had not exhausted
him, But this dead calm of middle life which confronted him of that he
was afraid he was not ready for it. It was like being buried alive.
In his youth, he would not have believed such a thing possible.
The one thing he had really wanted all his life was to be free,
and there was still something unconquered in him, something besides the strong workhorse that
his profession had made of him. He felt to night in the possession of
that unstultified survival. In the light of his experience, it was more precious
than honors or achievement. In all those busy successful years, there had been
nothing so good as this hour of wild, lightheartedness. This feeling was the
only happiness that was real to him, and such hours were the only ones
in which he could feel his own continuous identity, feel the boy he had
been in the rough days of the Old West, feel the youth who had
worked his way across the ocean on a cattle ship and gone to study in
Paris without a dollar in his pocket. The man who sat in his offices
in Boston was only a powerful machine. Under the activities of that machine,
the person who, in such moments as this he felt himself to be,
was fading and dying. He remembered how, when he was a little boy
and his father called him in the morning, he used to leap from his
bed into the full consciousness of himself. That consciousness was life itself. Whatever
took its place, action, reflection, the power of concentrated thought were only
functions of a mechanism useful to society, things that could be bought in the
market. There was only one thing that had an absolute value for each individual,
and it was just that original impulse, that internal heat, that feeling
of one's self in one's own breast, When Alexander walked back to his hotel,
the red and green lights were blinking along the docks on the farther shore,
and the soft white stars were shining in the wide sky above the river.
The next night and the next Alexander repeated the same foolish performance. It
was always miss Burgoyne whom he started out to find, and he got no
farther than the temple gardens and the embankment. It was a pleasant kind of
loneliness to a man who was so little given to reflection, whose dreams always
took the form of definite ideas reaching into the future. There was a seductive
excitement in renewing old experiences and imagination. He started out upon these walks,
half guiltily, with a curious longing and expectancy, which were wholly gratified by
solitude. Solitude, but not solitariness, For he walked shoulder to shoulder with
a shadowy companion, not little Hilda Bogoyne by any means, but by some
one vastly dearer to him than she had ever been his own young self,
the youth who had waited for him upon the steps of the British Museum that
night and who, though he had tried to pass so quietly, had known
him and come down and linked an arm in his. It was not until
long afterward that Alexander learned that for him this youth was the most dangerous of
companions. One Sunday evening at Lady Walford's, Alexander did at last meet Hilde
Burgoyne. Main Hall had told him that she would probably be there. He
looked about for her rather nervously, and finally found her at the farther end
of the drawing room, the center of a circle of men, young and
old. She was apparently telling them story. They were all laughing and bending
towards her. When she saw Alexander, she rose quickly and put out her
hand. The other men drew back a little to let him approach. Mister
Alexander. I am delighted. Have you been in London? Long? Bartley
bowed somewhat laboriously over her hand, long enough to have seen you more than
once? How fine it all is, she laughed, as if she were
pleased. I'm glad you think so. I like it. Won't you join
us here? Miss Burgoyne was just telling us about a donkey boy she had
in Galway last summer, Sir harry Ton explained. As the circle closed up
again, Lord Westmeyre stroked his long white mustache with his bloodless hand and looked
at Alexander blankly. Hilda was a good story teller. She was sitting on
the edge of her chair, as if she had alighted there for a moment.
Only. Her primrose satin gown seemed like a soft sheath for her slender,
supple figure, and its delicate color suited her white Irish skin and brown
hair. Whatever she wore felt the charm of her active, girlish body,
with its slender hips and quick, eager shoulders. Alexander heard little of the
story, but he watched Hilda intently. She must, certainly, he reflected,
be thirty, and he was honestly delighted to see that the years had
treated her so indulgently. If her face had changed at all, it was
in a slight hardening of the mouth, still eager enough to be very disconcerting
at times, he felt, and in an added air of self possession and
self reliance. She carried her head too, a little more resolutely. When
the story was finished, Miss Burgoyne turned pointedly to Alexander and the other men
drifted away. I thought I saw you in McConnell's box with Main Hall one
evening. But I suppose you had left town before this. She looked at
him frankly and cordially, as if he were indeed merely an old friend whom
she was glad to meet again. No, I've been mooning about here,
Hilda laughed, gaily, mooning. I see you mooning. You must be
the busiest man in the world. Time and Success have done well by you.
You know, you're handsomer than ever, and you've gained a grand manner.
Alexander blushed and bowed. Timing Success have been good friends to both of
us. Aren't you tremendously pleased with yourself? She laughed again and shrugged her
shoulders. Oh so so. But I want to hear about you. Several
years ago I read such a lot in the papers about the wonderful things you
did in Japan, and how the Emperor decorated you. What was it,
Commander of the Order of the Rising Sun? That sounds like the Mikado?
And what about your new bridge in Canada, isn't it And it's to be
the longest one in the world and has some queer name I can't remember.
Bartley shook his head and smiled drolly. Since when have you been interested in
bridges or have you learned to be interested in everything? And is that part
of success? Why? How absurd is if I were not always interested?
Hilde exclaimed, Well, I think we won't talk about bridges here at any
rate. Bartley looked down at the toe of her yellow slipper, which was
tapping the rug impatiently under the hem of her gown. But I wonder whether
you'd think me impertinent if I asked you to let me come to see you
sometime and tell you about them. Why should I ever? So many people
come on Sunday afternoons. Why know? Main Hall offered to take me.
But you must know that I've been in London several times within the last few
years, and you might very well think that just now is an inopportune time,
She cut him short. Nonsense. One of the pleasantest things about success
is that it makes people want to look one up. If that's what you
mean, I'm like everyone else, more agreeable to meet when things are going
well with me. Don't you suppose it gives me any pleasure to do something
the people like, does it? Oh? How fine it all is.
You're coming on like this, But I didn't want you to think it was
because of that I wanted to see you. He spoke very seriously and looked
down at the floor. Hilda studied him in wide on astonishment for a moment,
and then broke into a low, amused laugh. My dear mister Alexander,
you have strange delicacies. If you please, that is exactly why you
wish to see me. We understand that, do we not. Bartley looked
ruffled and turned the seal ring on his little finger about awkwardly. Hilda leaned
back in her chair, watching him indulgently out of her shrewd eyes. Come,
don't be angry, but don't try to pose for me or be anything
but what you are. If you care to come it yourself, I'll be
glad to see and you thinking well of yourself. And don't try to wear
a cloak of humility. It doesn't become you. Stalk in as you are,
and don't make excuses. I'm not accustomed to inquiring into the motives of
my guests. That would hardly be safe even for Lady Walford in a great
house like this Sunday afternoon, then said Alexander, as she rose to join
her hostess, how early may I come? She gave him her hand and
flushed and laughed. He bent over it a little stiffly. She went away
on Lady Walford's arm, And as he stood watching her yellow train glide down
the long floor, he looked rather sullen. He felt that he had not
come out of it very brilliantly. End of chapter three, Chapter four of
Alexander's Bridge by WILLI. Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Gen Maxwell, Boston, Massachusetts. Chapter four.
On Sunday afternoon, Alexander remembered Miss Burgoyne's invitation and called at her apartment.
He founded a delightful little place, and he met charming people there.
Hilda lived alone, attended by a very pretty, incompetent French servant who answered
the door and brought in the tea. Alexander arrived early, and some twenty
odd people dropped in during the course of the afternoon, Hugh McConnell came with
his sister and stood about managing his tea cup awkwardly and watching everyone out of
his deep set, faded eyes. He seemed to have made a resolute effort
at tidiness of attire, and his sister, a robust, florid woman with
the splendid oviality about her, kept eyeing his freshly creased clothes apprehensively. It
was not very long, indeed, before his coat hung with a discouraged sag
from his gaunt shoulders, and his hair and beard were rumpled as if he'd
been out in a gale. His dry humor went under a cloud of absent
minded kindliness, which main Hall explained always overtook him here. He was never
so witty or so sharp here as elsewhere, And Alexander thought he behaved as
if he were an elderly relative come into a young girl's party. The editor
of a monthly review came with his wife, and Lady Kildare, the Irish
philanthropist, brought her young nephew, Robert Owen, who had come up from
Oxford, and who was visibly excited and gratified by his first introduction to Miss
Burgoyne. Hilda was very nice to him, and he sat on the edge
of his chair, flushed with his conversational efforts, and moving his chin about
nervously over his high collar. Sarah Frost, the novelist, came with her
husband, a very genial and placid old scholar who would become slightly deranged upon
the subject of the fourth dimension. On other matters, he was perfectly rational,
and he was easy and pleasing in conversation. He looked very much like
Agazies, and his wife in her old fashioned black silk dress, overskirted and
tight sleeved, reminded Alexander of the early pictures of Missus Browning. Hilda seemed
particularly fond of this quaint couple, and Bartley himself was so pleased with their
mild and thoughtful converse that he took his leave when they did and walked with
them over to Oxford Street, where they waited for their bus. They asked
him to come to see them in Chelsea, and they spoke very tenderly of
Hilda. She's a dear and unworldly little thing, said the philosopher absently,
more like the stage people of my young days. Folk of simple manners.
There aren't many such left American tours have spoiled them. I'm afraid they have
all grown very smart. Lamb wouldn't care a great deal about many of them.
I fancy Alexander went back to Bedford Square a second Sunday afternoon. He
had a long talk with mc connell, but he got no word with Hilda
alone, and he left in a discontented state of mind. For the rest
of the week, he was nervous and unsettled, and kept rushing his work
as if he were preparing for immediate departure. On Thursday afternoon, he cut
short a committee meeting, jumped into a hansom, and drove to Bedford Square.
He sent up his card, but it came back to him with a
message scribbled across the front, Sorry, I can't see you. We'll come
and dine with me Sunday evening at half past seven h b. When Bartley
arrived at Bedford Square on Sunday evening, Marie, the pretty little French girl,
met him at the door and conducted him upstairs. Hilda was writing in
her living room under the light of a tall desk lamp. Bartley recognized the
primrose satin gown she had worn that first evening at Lady Walford's. I'm so
pleased that you think me worth that yellow dress, you know, he said,
taking her hand and looking her over admiringly, from the toes of her
canary slippers to her smoothly parted brown hair. Yes, it's very pretty.
Every one at Lady Walford's was looking at it. Hill to curtesyed, is
that why you think I'm pretty? I've no need for fine clothes in Max's
play this time, so I can afford a few duddies for myself. It's
owing to that same chance, by the way, that I'm able to ask
you to dinner. I don't need Marie to dress me this season, so
she keeps house for me, and my little Galway girl has gone home for
a visit. I should never have asked you if Molly had been here for
I remember you don't like English cookery. Alexander walked about the room, looking
at everything. I haven't had a chance yet to tell you what a jolly
little place I think this is. Where did you get those etchings? They're
quite unusual, aren't they. Lady Westmere sent them to me from Rome last
Christmas. She's very much interested in the American artist who did them. They
are all sketches made about the Villadeste, you see. He painted that group
of cypresses for the salon, and it was bought for the Luxembourg. Alexander
walked over to the bookcases. It's the air of the whole place here that
I like. You haven't got anything that doesn't be long, seems to me
it looks particularly well to night. You have so many flowers. I like
these little yellow irises. Rooms always look better by lamp light in London at
least. Though Marie is clean, really clean as the French are. Why
do you look at the flowers so critically? Marie got them all fresh in
Covent Garden Market yesterday morning. I'm glad, said Alexander, simply. I
can't tell you how glad I am to have you so pretty uncomfortable here,
and to hear everyone saying such nice things about you. You've got awfully nice
friends, he added, humbly, picking up a little jade elephant from her
desk. Those fellows are all very loyal, even main Hall. They don't
talk of any one else as they do of you. Hilda sat down on
the couch and said seriously, I've a neat little sum in the bank too
now, and I own a mite of a hut in Galway. It's not
worth much, but I love it. I've managed to save something every year,
and that with helping my three sisters now and then, and tiding poor
cousin Mike over bad seasons. He's that gifted, you know. But he
will drink and loses more good engagements than other fellows ever get. And I've
traveled a bit too. Marie opened the door and smilingly announced that dinner was
served. My dining room, Hilda explained, as she led the way is
the tiniest place you have ever seen. It was a tiny room hung all
around with French prints, above which ran a shelf full of china. Hilda
saw Alexander look up at it. It's not particularly rare, she said,
but some of it was my mother's. Heaven knows how she managed to keep
it whole through all our wanderings, or in what baskets and bundles and theater
trunks. It hasn't been stowed away. We always had our tea out of
those blue cups when I was a little girl. Sometimes in the queerest lodgings
and sometimes on a trunk at the theater Queer Theaters, for that matter.
It was a wonderful little dinner. There was watercress, soup and soul,
and a delightful omelet stuffed with mushrooms and truffles, and two small rare ducklings
and artichokes, and a dry yellow ron wine of which Bartley had always been
very fond. He drank it appreciatively and remarked that there was still no other
he liked so well. I have some champagne for you too. I don't
drink it myself, but I like to see it behave when it's poured.
There's nothing else that looks so jolly. Thank you, But I don't like
it so well as this. Bartley held the yellow wine against the light and
squinted into it as he turned the glass slowly. About you've traveled, you
say, Have you been in Paris much these late years? Hilda lowered one
of the candle shades carefully. Oh, yes, I go over to Paris
often. There are a few changes in the old quarter. Dear old Madame
Auger is dead, but perhaps you don't remember her, don't I though I'm
so sorry to hear it. How did her son turn out. I remember
how she saved and scraped for him, and how we always lay abed till
ten o'clock. He was the laziest fellow at the Bow's Ar, and that's
saying a good deal. Well, he is still clever and lazy. They
say he's a good architect when he will work. He's a big, handsome
creature, and he hates Americans as much as ever. But Angel, do
you remember? Angel? Did she ever get back to Brittany and her band
de mair Ah? No, poor Angel. She got tired of cooking and
scouring the coppers in Madame Angill's little kitchen, so she ran away with a
soldier, and then with another soldier. Too bad. She still lives about
the quarter, and though there is always a Solda, she has become a
blancheurs de fin. She did my blouse as beautifully the last time I was
there, and was so delighted to see me again. I gave her all
my old clothes, even my old hats. Though she always wears her Breton
head dress. Her hair is still like flax, and her blue eyes are
just like a baby's, and she has the same three freckles on her little
nose and talks about going back to her banda mare. Bartley looked at Hilda
across the yellow light of the candles and broke into a low, happy laugh.
How jolly it was being young, Hilda. Do you remember that first
walk we took together in Paris? We walked on the place Sam Michelle to
buy some lilacs. Do you remember how sweet they smelled? Indeed, I
do. Come. We'll have our coffee in the other room and you can
smoke. Hilda rose quickly, as if she wished to change the drift of
their talk, but Bartley found it pleasant to continue. What a warm,
soft spring evening that was, he went on, as they sat down in
the study with the coffee on a little table between them, and the sky
over the bridges was just the color of lilacs. We walked on down by
the river, didn't we. Hilda laughed and looked at him questioningly. He
saw a little gleam in her eyes that he remembered even better than the episode
he was recalling. I think we did, she answered demurely. It was
on the Qui where we met that woman who was crying so bitterly. I
gave her a spray of Lilac, I remember, and you gave her a
franc I was frightened at your prodigality. I expect it was the last franc
I had. What a strong brown face she had, and very tragic.
She looked at us with such despair and longing out from under her black shawl.
What she wanted from us was neither our flowers, nor our francs,
but just our youth. I remember it touched me so I would have given
her some of mine off my back if I could. I had enough and
to spare. Then, Bartley mused and thoughtfully looked at his cigar. They
were both remembering what the woman had said when she took the money. God
give you a happy love. It was not in the ingratiating tone of the
habitual beggar. It had come out of the depths of the poor creature's sorrow,
vibrating with pity for their youth and despair at the terribleness of human life.
It had the anguish of a voice of prophecy. Until she spoke,
Bartley had not realized that he was in love. The strange woman, and
her passionate sentence that rang out so sharply had frightened them. Both. They
went home sadly with the lilacs, back to the Rue Saint Jean, walking
very slowly arm in arm. When they reached the house where Hilda lodged,
Bartley went across the court with her and up the dark old stairs to the
third landing. And there he had kissed her for the first time. He
had shut his eyes to give him the courage he remembered, and she had
trembled, so Bartley started. When Hilda rang the little bell beside her,
Dear me, why did you do that? I had quite forgotten I was
back there. It was very jolly, he murmured lazily. As Marie came
in to take away the coffee. Hilda laughed and went over to the piano.
Well we are neither of us twenty now, you know? Have I
told you about my new play? Mac is writing one really for me?
This time? You see, I'm coming on. I've seen nothing else.
What kind of a part is it? Shall you wear? Yellow gowns?
I hope? So he was looking at a round, slender figure as she
stood by the piano, turning over a pile of music, and he felt
the energy in every line of it. No, it isn't a dress up
part. He doesn't seem to fancy me in fine feathers. He says,
I ought to be minding the pigs at home, and I suppose I ought.
But he's given me some good Irish songs. Listen. She sat down
at the piano and sang. When she finished, Alexander shook himself out of
a reverie, sing the harp that once, Hilda, you used to sing
it so well. Nonsense. Of course, I can't really sing except the
way my mother and grandmother did before me. Most actresses nowadays learn to sing
properly, so I try to master. But he confused me. Just Alexander
laugh all the same, sing it, Hilda. Hilda started up from the
stool and moved restlessly toward the window. It's really too warm in this room
to sing, don't you feel it? Alexander went over and opened the window
for her. Aren't you afraid to let the wind low like that on your
neck? Can't I get a scarf for something? Ask a theater lady if
she's afraid of drafts. Hilda laughed, But perhaps, as I'm so warm,
give me your handkerchief there just in front, He slipped the corners carefully
around her shoulder. Straps. There that will do. It looks like a
bib. She pushed his hand away quickly and stood looking out in the deserted
square. Isn't London a tomb? On Sunday night? Alexander caught the agitation
in her voice. He stood a little behind her and tried to steady himself
as he said, It's soft and misty. See how white the stars are.
For a long time, neither Hilda nor Bartley spoke. They stood close
together, looking out of the wan watery sky, breathing all ways, more
quickly and lightly, and it seemed as if all the clocks in the world
had stopped. He suddenly moved the clenched handy it held behind him, and
dropped it violently at his side. He felt a tremor run through the slender
yellow figure in front of him. She caught his handkerchief from her throat and
thrust it at him without turning around. Here take it, you must go
now, Bartley. Good night. Bartley leaned over her shoulder without touching her,
and whispered in her ear. You are giving me a chance, yes,
take it and go. This isn't fair, you know. Good Night.
Alexander clenched the two hands at his sides. With one he drew down
the window, and with the other still standing behind her, he drew her
back against him. She uttered a little cry and threw her arms over her
head, and drew his face down to hers. Are you going to let
me love you a little Bartley? She whispered? End of chapter four Chapter
five of Alexander's Bridge by WILLI. Cather. This is a LibriVox recording.
All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
visit LibriVox dot org. Alexander's Bridge, Chapter five. It was the
afternoon of the day before Christmas. Missus Alexander had been driving about all the
morning, leaving presents at the houses of her friends. She lunched alone,
and as she rose from the table, she spoke to the butler, Thomas,
I'm going down to the kitchen now to see Norah. In half an
hour, you were to bring the greens up from the cellar and put them
in the library. Mister Alexander will be home at three to hang them himself.
Don't forget the step ladder and plenty of tax and string. You may
bring the Azalea upstairs, take the white want mister Alexander's study. Put the
two pink ones in his room and the red one in the drawing room.
A little before three o'clock, Missus Alexander went into the library to see that
everything was ready. She pulled the window shades high, for the weather was
dark and stormy, and there little light even in the streets. A foot
of snow had fallen during the morning, and the wide space over the river
was thick with flying flakes that fell and wreathed the masses of floating ice.
Winnifred was standing by the window when she heard the front door open. She
hurried to the hall as Alexander came stamping end covered with snow. He kissed
her joyfully and brushed away the snow that fell on her hair. I wish
i'd ask you to meet me at the office and walk home with me,
Winnifred. The common is beautiful. The boys have swept the snow off the
pond, and they're skating furiously. Did the sicklamans come an hour ago?
What splendid ones? But aren't you frightfully extravagant? Not for Christmas time?
I'll go upstairs and change my coat. I'll be down in a moment.
Tell Thomas to get everything ready. When Alexander reappeared, he took his wife's
arm and went with her into the library. When did the azaleas get here?
Thomas has got the white one in my room. I told him to
put it there, but I say it's much the finest of the lot.
That's why I had it put there. There is too much color in that
room for a red one, you know. Bartley began to sort the greens.
It looks very splendid there, but I feel piggish to have it.
However, we really spend more time there than anywhere else in the house.
Will you hand me the holly? He climbed up the step ladder, which
creaked under his weight, and began to twist the tough stems of the holly
into the framework of the chandelier. I forgot to tell you that I had
a letter from Wilson this morning explaining his telegram. He is coming because an
old uncle up in Vermont has conveniently died and left Wilson a little money,
something like ten thousand. He's come on to settle up the estate. Won't
it be jolly? To have him, And how fine that he's come into
a little money. I can see him posting down State Street to the steamship
offices. He will get a good many trips out of that ten thousand.
What can have detained him? I expected him here for luncheon. Those trains
from Albany are always late. He'll be along some time this afternoon. And
now, don't you want to go upstairs and lie down for an hour.
You've had a busy morning, and I don't want you to be tired tonight.
After his wife went upstairs, Alexander worked energetically at the greens for a
few moments. Then, as he was cutting off a length of string,
he sighed suddenly and sat down, staring out the window at the snow.
The animation died out of his face, but in his eyes there was a
restless light, a look of apprehension and suspense. He kept clasping and unclasping
his big hands, as if he were trying to realize something. The clock
ticked through the minutes of a half hour, and the afternoon outside began to
thicken and darken turbidly. Alexander, since he first sat down, had not
changed his position he leaned forward, his hands between his knees, scarcely breathing,
as if he were holding himself away from his surroundings, from the room,
and from the very chair in which he sat, from everything except the
wild eddies of snow above the river, on which his eyes were fixed with
feverish intentness, as if he were trying to project himself thither. When at
last Lucius Wilson was announced, Alexander Or sprang eagerly to his feet and hurried
to meet his old instructor. Hello, Wilson, what luck? Come into
the library? We are to have a lot of people to dinner tonight and
Winifred's lying down, you will excuse or won't you? And now what about
yourself? Sit down and tell me everything. I think I'd rather move about,
if you don't mind. I've been sitting in the train for a week,
it seems to me. Wilson stood before the fire with his hands behind
him, and looked about the room. You have been busy, Bartley.
If I'd had my choice of all possible places in which to spend Christmas,
your house would certainly be the place I'd have chosen. Happy people do a
great deal for their friends, a house like this throws its warmth out.
I felt it distinctly as I was coming through the Berkshires. I could scarcely
believe that I was to see missus Bartley again. So soon, Thank you
Wilson. She'll be as glad to see you. Shall we have tea?
Now? I'll ring for Thomas to clear away this litter. Winifred says,
I always wrecked the house when I try to do anything. Do you know
I am tired? Looks as if we're not used to work, doesn't it?
Alexander laughed and dropped into a chair. You know I'm sailing the day
after New Year's again. Why you've been over twice since I was here in
the spring, haven't you? Oh? I was in London about ten days
in the summer, went to escape the hot weather more than anything else.
I shan't be gone more than a month this time, Winifred and I have
been up in Canada for most of the autumn. That morlock Bridge is on
my back all the time. I never had so much trouble with a job
before. Alexander moved about restlessly and fell to poking the fire. Haven't I
seen in the papers that there is some trouble about a tidewater bridge of yours
in New Jersey. Oh that doesn't amount to anything. It's held up by
a steel strike a bother, of course, but the sort of thing one
is always having to put up with. But the Morlock Bridge is a continual
anxiety, you see. The truth is we're having to build pretty well to
the strained limit up there. They've crowded me too much on the cost.
It's all very well if everything goes well, but these estimates have never been
used for anything of such length before. However, there's nothing to be done.
They hold me to the scale I've used in shorter bridges. The last
thing a bridge commission cares about is the kind of bridge you build. When
Bartley had finished dressing for dinner, he went to his study, where he
found his wife arranging flowers on his writing table. These pink roses just came
from Missus Hastings, she said, smiling, and I'm sure she meant them
for you. Bartley looked about with an air of satisfaction at the greens and
the wreaths in the windows. Have you a moment, Winnifred. I have
just now been thinking that this is our twelfth Christmas. Can you realize it?
He went up to the table and took her hands away from the flowers,
drying them with his pocket handkerchief. They've been awfully happy ones, all
of them, haven't they. He took her in his arms and bent back,
lifting her a little and giving her a long kiss. You are happy,
aren't you, Winnifred. More than anything else in the world, I
want you to be happy. Sometimes, of late, i've thought you looked
as if you were troubled. No, it's only when you were troubled and
harassed that I feel worried. Bartley. I wish you always seemed as you
do tonight, but you don't always. She looked earnestly and inquiringly into his
eyes. Alexander took her two hands from his shoulders and swung them back and
forth in his own, laughing his big blonde laugh. I'm growing older,
my dear, that's what you feel now? It may I show you something.
I meant to save them until tomorrow, but I want you to wear
them tonight. He took a little leather box out of his pocket and opened
it. On the white velvet lay, two long pendants of curiously worked gold
set with pearls Winnifred looked from the box to Bartley and exclaimed, where did
you ever find such gold work? Bartley? It's old Flemish, isn't it
fine? They are the most beautiful things, dear. But you know I
never wear earrings. Yes, yes I know, but I want you to
wear them. I've always wanted you to. So few women can. There
must be a good ear to begin with, and a nose. He waved
his hand above reproach. Most women look silly in them. They go only
with faces like yours, very very proud, and just a little hard.
Winifred laughed as she went over to the mirror and fitted the delicate springs to
the lobes of her ears. Oh, Bartley, that old foolishness about my
being hard, It really hurts my feelings. But I must go down now
people are beginning to come. Bartley drew her arm about his neck and went
to the door with her. Not hard to me, Winifred, he whispered,
never, never hard to me. Left alone, he paced up and
down in his study. He was at home again, among all the dear,
familiar things that spoke to him of so many happy years. His house
to night would be full of charming people who liked and admired him. Yet
all the time, underneath his pleasure and hopefulness and satisfaction, he was conscious
of the vibration of an unnatural excitement. Amid this light and warmth and friendliness,
he sometimes started and shuddered, as if some one had stepped on his
grave. Something had broken loose in him, of which he knew nothing except
that it was sullen and powerful, and that it rung and tortured him.
Sometimes it came upon him softly, in enervating reveries. Sometimes it battered him
like the cannon rolling in the hold of the vessel. Always now it brought
with it a sense of quickened life, of stimulating danger. To night.
It came upon him suddenly as he was walking the floor after his wife left
him. It seemed impossible. He could not believe it. He glanced entreatingly
at the door, as if to call her back. He heard voices in
the hall below, and knew that he must go down. Going over to
the window, he looked out at the lights across the river. How could
this happen here in his own house, among the things he loved? What
was it that reached in out of the darkness and thrilled him. As he
stood there, he had a feeling that he would never escape. He shut
his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold window glass, breathing in the
chill that came through it. That this, he groaned, that this should
have happened to me. On New Year's Day, a thaw set in,
and during the night torrents of rain fell. In the morning, the morning
of Alexander's departure for England, the river was streaked with fog, and the
rain drove hard against the windows of the breakfast room. Alexander finished his coffee
and was pacing up and down. His wife sat at the table, watching
him. She was pale and unnaturally calm. When Thomas brought the letters,
Bartley sank into his chair and ran them over rapidly. Here's a note from
old Wilson. He's safe back at his grind and says he had a bully
time. The memory of missus Bartley will make my whole winter fragrant. Just
like him, he will go on getting measureless satisfaction out of you by his
study fire. What a man he is for looking on at life, Bartley
sighed, pushed the letters back impatiently and went over to the window. This
is a nasty sort of day to sail. I've a notion to call it
off. Next week would be time enough. That would only mean starting twice.
It wouldn't really help you out at all, missus. Alexander spoke soothingly,
and you'd come back late for all your engagements. Bartley began jingling some
loose coins in his pocket. I wish things would let me rest. I'm
tired of work, tired of people, tired of trailing about. He looked
out at the storm beaten river. Winnifred came up behind him and put a
hand on his shoulder. That's what you always say, poor Bartley, at
bottom, you really like all these things, can't you remember that? He
put his arm about her. All the same life runs smoothly enough with some
people, and with me it's always a messy sort of patchwork. It's like
the song pieces where I am not. How can you face it all with
so much fortitude? She looked at him with that clear gaze which Wilson had
so much admired, which he had felt implied such high confidence and fearless pride.
Oh, I faced that long ago, when you were on your first
bridge up at Old Allway. I knew then that your paths were not to
be paths of peace, But I decided that I wanted to follow them.
Bartley and his wife stood silent for a long time. The fire crackled in
the grate, the rain beat insistently upon the windows, and the sleepy Angora
looked up at them curiously. Presently, Thomas made a discreet sound at the
door. Shall Edward bring down your trunks, sir, Yes, they are
ready. Tell him not to forget the big portfolio and the study table.
Thomas withdrew, closing the door softly. Bartley turned away from his wife,
still holding her hand. It never gets any easier, Winnifred. They both
started at the sound of the carriage on the pavement outside. Alexander sat down
and leaned his head on his hand. His wife bent over him courage,
she said gaily. Bartley rose and rang the bell. Thomas brought him his
hat and stick and ulster. At the sight of these, the supercilious Angora
moved restlessly, quitted her red cushion by the fire, and came up,
waving her tail and vexation at these ominous indications of change. Alexander stooped to
stroke her, and then plunged into his coat and drew on his gloves.
His wife held his stick, smiling. Bartley smiled too, and his eyes
cleared. I'll work like the devil, Winifrid, and be home again before
you realize I've gone. He kissed her quickly several times, hurried out of
the front door into the rain, and waved to her from the carriage window.
As the driver was starting his melancholy dripping black horses, Alexander sat with
his hands clenched on his knees. As the carriage turned up the hill,
he lifted one hand and brought it down violently. This time he spoke aloud
through his set teeth. This time, I'm I'm going to end it.
On the afternoon of the third day out, Alexander was sitting well to the
stern on the windward side, where the chairs were few, his rugs over
him and the collar of his fur lined coat turned up about his ears.
The weather had so far been dark and raw. For two hours he had
been watching the low, dirty sky and the beating of the heavy rain upon
the iron colored sea. There was a long oily swell that made exercise laborious.
The deck smelled of damp woolens, and the air was so humid that
drops of moisture kept gathering upon his hair and mustache. He seldom moved except
to brush them away. The great open spaces made him passive, and the
restlessness of the water quieted him. He intended during the voyage to decide upon
a course of action, but he held all this away from him for the
present and lay in a blessed gray oblivion. Deep down in him somewhere his
resolution was weakening and strengthening, ebbing and flowing. The thing that perturbed him
went on as steadily as his pulse, but he was almost unconscious of it.
He was submerged in the vast impersonal grayness about him, and at the
intervals the sidelong roll of the boat measured off time like the ticking of a
clock. He felt released from everything that troubled and perplexed him. It was
as if he had tricked and outwitted torturing memories, had actually managed to get
on board without them. He thought of nothing at all. If his mind
now and again picked a face out of the grayness, it was Lucius Wilson's,
or the face of an old schoolmate forgotten for years, or it was
the slim outline of a favorite greyhound who used to hunt jack rabbits with when
he was a boy. Towards six o'clock, the wind rose and tugged at
the tarpaulin and brought the swell higher. After dinner, Alexander came back to
the wet deck, piled his damp rugs over him again, and sat smoking,
losing himself in the obliterating blackness and drowsing in the rush of the gate
ale. Before he went below, a few bright stars were pricked off between
heavily moving masses of cloud. The next morning was bright and mild, with
a fresh breeze. Alexander felt the need of exercise even before he came out
of his cabin. When he went on deck, the sky was blue and
blinding, with heavy whiffs of white cloud smoke colored at the edges moving rapidly
across it. The water was roughish, a cold, clear indigo breaking into
white caps. Bartley walked for two hours and then stretched himself in the sun
until lunch time. In the afternoon, he wrote a long letter to Winifrid
later, as he walked the deck through a splendid golden sunset, his spirits
rose continually. It was agreeable to come to himself again. After several days
of numbness and torpor. He stayed out until the last tinge of violet had
faded from the water. There was literally a taste of life on his lips
as he sat down to dinner and ordered a bottle of champagne. He was
late in finishing his dinner and drank rather more wine than he had meant too.
When he went above, the wind had risen and the deck was almost
deserted. As he stepped out of the door, a gale lifted his heavy
fur coat about his shoulders. He fought his way back up the deck with
keen exhilaration. The moment he stepped, almost out of breath, behind the
shelter of the stern, the wind was cut off, and he felt like
a rush of warm air, a sense of close and intimate companionship. He
started back and tore his coat open, as if something warm were actually clinging
to him beneath it. He hurried up the deck and went into the saloon
parlor full of women who had retreated thither from the sharp wind, he threw
himself upon them. He talked delightfully to the older ones, and played accompaniments
for the younger ones until the last sleepy girl had followed her mother below.
Then he went into the smoking room. He played bridge until two o'clock in
the morning, and managed to lose a considerable sum of money without really noticing
that he was doing so. After the break of one fine day, the
weather was pretty consistently dull. When the low sky thinned a trifle, the
pale white spots of a sun did no more than throw a bluish luster on
the water, giving it the dark brightness of newly cut lead. Through One
after another of those gray days, Alexander drowsed and mused, drinking in the
grateful moisture, but the complete peace of the first part of the voyage was
over. Sometimes he rose suddenly from his chair, as if driven out,
and paced the deck for hours. People noticed his propensity for walking in rough
weather and watched him curiously as he did his rounds. From his abstraction and
the determined set of his jaw, they fancied he must be thinking about his
bridge. Everyone had heard of the new Cantilever bridge in Canada, but Alexander
was not thinking about his work after the fourth night out, when his will
suddenly softened under his hands. He had been continually hammering away at himself,
more and more often. When he first wakened in the morning, or when
he stepped into a warm place after being chilled the deck, he felt a
sudden, painful delight at being nearer another shore. Sometimes when he was most
despondent, when he thought himself worn out with this struggle, in a flash,
he was free of it and leaped into an overwhelming consciousness of himself.
On the instant, he felt that marvelous return of the impetuousness, the intense
excitement, the increasing expectancy of youth. End of chapter five, Chapter six
of Alexander's Bridge by Willi Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit
LibriVox dot org. Chapter six of Alexander's Bridge. The last two days of
the voyage Bartley found almost intolerable. The stop at Queenstown, the tedious passage
up the Mercy were things that he noted dimly through his growing impatience. He
planned to stop in Liverpool, but instead he took the boat train for London,
emerging at Euston at half past three o'clock in the afternoon. Alexander had
his luggage sent to the Savoy and drove at once to Bedford Square. When
Marie met him at the door, even her strong sense of proprieties could not
restrain her surprise and delight. She blushed and smiled, and fumbled his card
in her confusion before she ran upstairs. Alexander paced up and down the hallway,
buttoning and unbuttoning his overcoat until she returned and took him up to Hilda's
living room. The room was empty when he entered. A coal fire was
crackling in the grate, and the lamps were lit, for it was already
beginning to grow dark outside. Alexander did not sit down. He stood his
ground over by the windows until Hilda came in. She called his name on
the threshold, but in her swift flight across the room, she felt a
change in him and caught herself up so deftly that he could not tell just
when she did it. She merely brushed his cheek with her lips and put
a hand lightly and joyously on either shoulder. Oh, what a grand thing
to happen on a raw day. I felt it in my bones when I
woke this morning that something splendid was going to turn up. I thought it
might be sister Kate or cousin Mike would be happening along. I never dreamed
it would be you, Bartley. But why do you let me chatter on
like this? Come over to the fire you're chilled through. She pushed him
toward the big chair by the fire and sat down on a stool at the
opposite side of the hearth, her knees drawn up to her chin, laughing
like a happy little girl. When did you come, Bartley? And how
did it happen? You haven't spoken a word. I got in about ten
minutes ago. I landed at Liverpool this morning and came down on the boat
train. Alexander leaned forward and warmed his hands before the blaze. Hilda watched
him with perplexity. There's something troubling you, Bartley. What is it?
Bartley bent lowered over the fire. It's the whole thing that troubles me,
Hilda, You and I. Hilda took a quick, soft breath. She
looked at his heavy shoulder in big, determined head, thrust forward like a
catapult in leash. What about us, Bartley, she asked in a thin
voice. He locked and unlocked his hands over the grate and spread his fingers
close to the bluish flame, while the coals crackled, and the clock ticked,
and a street vendor began to call under the window. At last,
Alexander brought out one word everything. Hilda was pale by this time, and
her eyes were wide with fright. She looked about desperately, from Bartley to
the door, then to the windows, and back again to Bartley. She
rose uncertainly, touched his hair with her hand, then sank back upon her
stool. I'll do anything you wish me to Bartley, she said tremulously.
I can't stand seeing you miserable. I can't live with myself any longer,
he answered roughly. He rose and pushed the chair behind him, and began
to walk miserably about the room, seeming to find it too small for him.
He pulled up a window as if the air were heavy. Hilda watched
him from the corner, trembling and scarcely breathing, dark shadows growing about her
eyes. It hasn't always made you miserable, hazard her eyelids fell and her
lips quivered always. But it's worse now. It's unbearable. It tortures me
every minute. But why now, she asked, pitilessly, wringing her hands.
He ignored her question. I am not a man who can live two
lives, he went on, feverishly. Each life spoils the other. I
get nothing but misery out of either. The world is all there, just
as it used to be, but I can't get at it any more.
There is this deception between me and everything. At the word deception, spoken
with such self contempt, the color flashed back into Hilda's face, as suddenly
if she had been struck by a whiplash. She bit her lip and looked
down at her hands, which were clasped tightly in front of her. Could
you sit down and talk about it quietly, bartly, as if I were
a friend and not someone who had to be defied. He dropped back heavily
into his chair by the fire. It was myself I was defying, Hilda.
I have thought about it until I am worn out. He looked at
her, and his haggard face softened. He put out his hand toward her
as he looked away again into the fire. She crept across to him,
drawing her stool after her. When did you begin to first feel like this,
Bartley? After the very first? The first was sort of in play,
wasn't it. Helda's face quivered, but she whispered, yes, I
think it must have been. But why didn't you tell me when you were
here in the summer, Alexander groaned. I meant to, but somehow I
couldn't. We had only a few days and your new play was just on,
and you were so happy. Yes, I was happy, wasn't i?
She pressed his hand gently in gratitude. Weren't you happy then at all?
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath, as if to draw
in again the fragrance of those days, Something of their troubling sweetness came back
to alec Xander too. He moved uneasily, and his chair creaked. Yes,
I was then, you know, But afterward, yes, yes,
she hurried, pulling her hand gently away from him. Presently it stole back
to his coat sleeve. Please tell me one thing, Bartley, at least
tell me that you believe I thought I was making you happy. His hands
shut down quickly over the questioning fingers on his sleeves. Yes, Hilda,
I know that, he said simply. She leaned her head against his arm
and spoke softly. You see, my mistake was in wanting you to have
everything. I wanted you to eat all the cakes and have them too.
I somehow believe that I could take all the bad consequences for you. I
wanted you always to be happy and handsome and successful, to have all the
things that a great man ought to have, and once in a way,
the careless holidays that great men are not permitted. Bartley gave a bitter little
laugh, and Hilda looked up and read in the deepening lines of his face
that youth and Bartley would not much longer struggle together. I understand, Bartley,
I was wrong, but I didn't know. You've only to tell me
now, what must I do that I've not done, or what must I
not do? She listened intently, but she heard nothing but the creaking of
his chair. You want me to say it, she whispered. You want
to tell me that you can only see me like this as old friends do,
or out in the world among people I can do that. I can't,
he said heavily. Hilda shivered and sat still. Bartley leaned his head
in his hands and spoke through his teeth. It's got to be a clean
break, Hilda. I can't see you at all anywhere. What I mean
is that I want you to promise never to see me again, no matter
how often I come, no matter how hard I beg Hilda sprang up like
a flame. She stood over him, with her hands clenched at her side,
her body rigid. No, she gasped. It's too late to ask
that. Do you hear me, Bartley? It's too late. I won't
promise. It's abominable of you to ask me. Keep away if you wish.
When have I ever followed you? But if you come to me,
I'll do as I see fit. The shamefulness of your asking me to do
that. If you come to me, I'll do as I see fit.
Do you understand, Bartley, you're cowardly? Alexander rose and shook himself angrily.
Yes, I know I'm cowardly. I'm afraid of myself. I don't
trust myself any more. I carried it all lightly enough at first, but
now I don't dare trifle with it. It's getting the better of me.
It's different now I'm growing older, and you've got my young self here with
you. It's through him that I've come to wish for you all and all
the time. He took her roughly in his arms. Do you know what
I mean? Hilda held her face back from him and began to cry bitterly.
Oh Bartley, what am I to do? Why didn't you let me
be angry with you? You ask me to stay away from you because you
want me, and I've got nobody but you. I will do anything you
say, but that I will ask the least imaginable. But I must have
something. Bartley turned away and sank down in his chair again. Hilda sat
on the arm of it and put her hands lightly on his shoulders. Just
something, Bartley, I must have you to think of through the months and
months of loneliness. I must see you. I must know about you,
the sight of you, Bartley, to see you living and happy and successful.
Can I never make you understand what that means to me? She pressed
his shoulders gently. You see, loving someone as I love you makes the
whole world different. If I'd met you later, if I hadn't loved you
so well, But that's all over long ago. Then came all those years
without you, lonely and hurt and discouraged, those decent young fellows and poor
Mac and me, never heeding hard as a still spring. And then you
came back, not caring very much. But it made no difference. She
slid to the floor beside him, as if she were too tired to sit
up any longer. Bartley bent over and took her in his arms, kissing
her mouth and her wet tired eyes. Don't cry, don't cry, he
whispered. We've tortured each other enough for to night. Forget everything except that
I am here. I think I've forgotten everything but that already. She murmured,
Ah, your dear arms. End of chapter six, Chapter seven of
Alexander's Bridge by WILLI Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
LibriVox dot org. Recording by Jen Maxwell, Chapter seven. During the fortnight
that Alexander was in London, he drove himself hard. He got through a
great deal of personal business, and there are a great many men who were
doing interesting things in his own profession. He disliked to think of his visits
to London as holidays, and when he was there he worked even harder than
he did at home. The day before his departure for Liverpool was a singularly
fine one. The thick air had cleared overnight in a strong wind, which
brought in a golden dawn, and then fell off to a fresh breeze.
When Bartley looked out of his windows from the Savoy, the river was flashing
silver, and the gray stone along the embankment was bathed in bright, clear
sunshine. London had wakened to life after three weeks of cold and sodden rain.
Bartley breakfasted hurriedly and went over his mail while the hotel valet packed his
trunks. Then he paid his account and walked rapidly down the strand past Charing
Cross Station. His spirits rose with every step, and when he reached Trafalgar
Square, blazing in the sun, with its fountains playing and its columns reaching
high up into the bright air, he signaled to a hansom, and before
he knew what he was about, told the driver to go to Bedford Square
by way of the British Museum. When he reached Hilda's apartment, she met
him fresh as the morning itself. Her rooms were flooded with sunshine and full
of the flowers he had been sending her. She would never let him give
her anything else. Are you busy this morning, Hilda, he asked,
as he sat down, his hat and gloves in his hand. Very,
I've been up in about three hours working at my part. We open in
February. You know. Well, then you've worked enough, and so have
I. I've seen all my men. My packing is done and I go
to Liverpool this evening. But this morning we're going to have a holiday.
What do you say to a drive out to Queue or Richmond. You may
not get another day like this all winter. It's like a fine April day
at home. May I use your telephone? I want to order the carriage.
Oh, how jolly there. Sit down at the desk, and while
you're telephoning, I'll change my dress. I shan't be long. All the
morning papers are on the table. Hilda was back in a few moments,
wearing a law gray squirrel coat and a broad fur hat. Bartley rose and
inspected her. Why don't you wear some of those pink roses, he asked.
But they came only this morning, and they've not even begun to open.
I was saving them. I am so unconsciously thrifty, she laughed as
she looked about the room. You've been sending me far too many flowers,
Bartley, new ones every day. That's too often, though. I do
love to open the boxes, and I take good care of them. Why
won't you let me send you any of those jade or ivory things you're so
fond of, or pictures. I know a good deal about pictures. Hilda
shook her large hat as she drew the roses out of the tall glass.
No, there are some things you can't do. There's the carriage. Will
you button my gloves for me? Bartley took her wrist and began to button
the long, gray suede glove. How gay your eyes are this morning,
Hilda. That's because I've been studying. It always stirs me up a little.
He pushed the top of the glove up slowly. When did you learn
to take hold of your hearts like that? When I had nothing else to
think of? Come, the carriage is waiting. What a shocking while you
take I'm in no hurry. We've plenty of time. They found all London
abroad Piccadilly was a stream of rapidly moving carriages, from which flashed firs and
flowers and bright winter costumes. The metal trappings of the harnesses shone dazzingly,
and the wheels were revolving disks that threw off rays of light. The parks
were full of children and nursemaids, and joyful dogs that leaped and yelped and
scratched up the brown earth with their paws. I'm not going until tomorrow,
you know, Bartley announced. Suddenly, I'll cut off a day in Liverpool.
I haven't felt so jolly this long while Hilda looked up with a smile
which she tried not to make too glad. I think people were meant to
be happy a little, she said. They had lunch at Richmond and then
walked to Twickenham, where they had sent the carriage. They drove back,
with a glorious sunset behind them, toward the distant gold Water city. It
was one of those rare afternoons when all the thickness and shadow of London are
changed to a kind of shining, pulsing special atmosphere, when the smoky vapors
become fluttering golden clouds, nacrious veils of pink and amber, when all that
bleakness of gray stone and dulness of dirty brick trembles in aureate light, and
all the roofs and spires and one great dome are floated in golden haze.
On such rare afternoons, the ugliest of cities becomes the most poetic, and
months of sodden days are offset by a moment of miracle. It's like that
with us Londoners too, Hilda was saying. Everything is awfully grim and cheerless,
our weather and our houses and our ways of amusing ourselves. But we
can be happier than anybody. We can go mad with joy as the people
do out in the fields on a fine wooden's day. We make the most
of our moment. She thrust her little chin out defiantly over her gray fur
collar, and Bartley looked down at her and laughed, You are a plucky
one, you, He patted her glove with his hand. Yes, you
are a plucky one. Hild Aside, No, I'm not not about some
things at any rate. It doesn't take pluck to fight for one's moment.
But it takes pluck to go without a lot more than I have. I
can't help it, she added fiercely. After miles of outlying streets and little
gloomy houses, they reached London itself, red and roaring and murky, with
a thick dampness coming up from the river that betokened fog again tomorrow. The
streets were full of people who had worked indoors all through the priceless day and
had now come hungrily out to drink the muddy leaves of it. They stood
in long black lines, waiting for the pit entrances of the theaters, short
coated boys and girls and sailor hats, all shivering and chatting gaily. There
was a blurred rhythm in all the dull city noises, in the clatter of
the cab horses and the rumbling of the buses, in the street calls,
and in the undulating tramp tramp of the crowd. It was like the deep
vibration of some vast underground machinery, and like the muffled pulsations of millions of
human hearts. Seems good to get back, doesn't it. Bartley whispered as
they drove from Bayswater Road to Oxford Street. London always makes me want to
live more than any other city in the world. You remember our priestess Mummy
over in the Mummy Room, and how we used to go and bring her
out on nights like this three thousand years uugh, all the same. I
believe she used to feel it when we stood there and watched her and wished
her well. I believe she used to remember, Hilda said thoughtfully, I
hope. So now let's go to some awfully jolly place for dinner before we
go home. I could eat all the dinners there are in London tonight.
Where shall I tell the driver? The Piccadilly Restaurant. The music's good there.
There were too many people there whom one knows. Why not that little
French place in Soho where we went so often when you were here in the
summer. I love it, and I've never been there with any one but
you. Sometimes I go by myself when I am particularly lonely, very well,
the soul's good there. How many street pianos there are about tonight?
The fine weather must have thawed them out. We've had five miles of the
il trovatore. Now they always make me feel jaunty. Are you comfy and
not too tired? I'm not tired at all. I was just wondering how
people can ever die? Why did you remind me of the Mummy? Life
seems the strongest and most indestructible thing in the world. Do you really believe
that all those people rushing down there, going to good dinners and clubs and
theaters will be dead some day and not care about anything. I don't believe
it, and I know I shan't die ever. You see, I feel
too too powerful. The carriage stopped, Bartley sprang out and swung her quickly
to the pavement. As he lifted her in his two hands, he whispered,
you are powerful. End of chapter seven. Chapter eight of Alexander's Bridge
by WILLI Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot
org. Chapter eight The last rehearsal was over a tedious dress rehearsal which had
lasted all day and exhausted the patience of everyone who had to do with it.
When Hilda had dressed for the street and came out of her dressing room.
She found Hugh McConnell waiting for her in the corridor. The FOG's thicker
than ever, Hilda. There have been a great many accidents today. It's
positively unsafe for you to be out alone. Will you let me take you
home? How good of you, mac, if you are going with me,
I think i'd rather walk. I've had no exercise to day, and
all this has made me nervous. I shouldn't wonder, said mc connell dryly.
Hilda pulled down her veil and stepped out into the thick brown wash that
submerged Saint Martin's lane. Mc conell took her hand and tucked it snugly under
his arm. I'm sorry I was such a savage. I hope you didn't
think I made an ass of myself. Not a bit of it. I
don't wonder you were peppery. Those things are awfully trying. How do you
think it's going magnificently? That's why I got so stirred up. We are
going to hear from this, both of us, and that reminds me.
I've got news for you. They're going to begin repairs on the theater about
the middle of March, and we are to run over to New York for
six weeks. Bennett told me yesterday that it was decided. Hilda looked up
delightedly at the tall, gray figure beside her. He was the only thing
she could see, for they were moving through a dense opaqueness, as if
they were walking at the bottom of the ocean. Oh, Mac, how
glad I am? And they love your things over there, don't they?
Shall you be glad for any other reason? Hilda. McConnell put his hand
in front of her to ward off some dark object. It proved to be
only a lamp post, and they beat in father from the edge of the
pavement. What do you mean, Mac, Hilda asked nervously. I was
just thinking there might be people over there you'd be glad to see, he
brought out awkwardly. Hilda said nothing, and as they walked on, mc
connell spoke again, apologetically. I hope you don't mind my knowing about it,
Hilda. Don't stiffen up like that. No one else knows, and
I didn't try to find out anything. I felt it even before I knew
who he was. I knew there was somebody and that it wasn't I.
They crossed Oxford Street in silence, feeling their way. The buses had stopped
running, and the cab drivers were leading their horses. When they reached the
other side, McConnell said, suddenly, I hope you're happy, terribly dangerously
happy. Mac. Hilda spoke quietly, pressing the rough sleeve of his greatcoat
with her gloved hand. You've always thought me too old for you, Hilda.
Oh of course you've never said just that. And here this fellow is
not more than eight years younger than I. I've always felt that if I
could get out of my old case, I might win you. Yet it's
a fine, brave youth I carry inside me. Only he'll never be seen.
Nonsense, Mac, that has nothing to do with it. It's because
you seem too close to me, too much my own kind. It would
be like marrying cousin Mike. Almost. I really tried to care as you
wanted me to away back in the beginning. Well, here we are turning
out of the square. You're not angry with me, Hilda. Thank you
for this walk, my dear, go in and get dry things on at
once. You'll be having a great night tomorrow. She put out her hand.
Thank you Mac for everything. Good night McConnell trudged off through the fog,
and she went slowly upstairs. Her slippers and dressing gown were waiting for
her before the fire. I shall certainly see him in New York. He
will see by the papers that were coming. Perhaps he knows it already,
Hilda kept thinking as she undressed. Perhaps he will be at the dock,
no scarcely that, But I may meet him in the street even before he
comes to see me. Marie placed the tea table by the fire and brought
Hilda her letters. She looked them over and started as she came to one
in handwriting that she did not often see. Alexander had written to her only
twice before, and he did not allow her to write him at all.
Thank you, Marie, You may go now. Hilda sat down by the
table with the letter in her hand, still unopened. She looked at it
intently, turned it over, and felt its thickness with her fingers. She
believed that she sometimes had a kind of second sight about letters, and could
tell before she read them whether they brought good or evil tidings. She put
this one down on the table in front of her while she poured her tea.
At last, a little shiver of expectancy, she tore open the envelope
and read Boston, February. My dear Hilda, it is after twelve o'clock.
Everyone else is in bed, and I am sitting alone in my study.
I have been happier in this room than anywhere else in the world.
Happiness like that makes one insolent. I used to think these four walls could
stand against anything, and now I scarcely know myself here. Now I know
that no one can build his security upon the nobleness of another person. Two
people, when they love each other, grow alike in their tastes and habits
and pride, But their moral natures, whatever we may mean by that canting
expression, are never welded. The base one goes on being base, and
the noble one to the end. The last week has been a bad one.
I have been realizing how things used to be with me. Sometimes I
get used to being dead inside, But lately it has been as if a
window beside me had suddenly opened, and as if all the smells of spring
blew into me. There was a garden out there with stars overhead, where
I used to walk at night, when I had a single purpose and a
single heart. I can remember how I used to feel there, how beautiful
everything about me was, and what life and power and freedom I felt in
myself. When the window opens, I know exactly how it would feel to
be out there, but that garden is closed to me. How is it,
I asked myself, that everything can be so different with me when nothing
here has changed. I am in my own house, in my own study,
in the midst of all these quiet streets where my friends live. They
are all safe and at peace with themselves, But I am never at peace.
I always feel in the edge of danger and change. I keep remembering
low cowed horses I used to see on the range when I was a boy.
They changed like that. We used to catch them and put them up
in the corral, and they developed great cunning. They could pretend to eat
their oats like the other horses, but we knew they were always scheming to
get back At the logo, it seems that a man is meant to live
only one life in this world. When he tries to live a second,
he develops another nature. I feel as if a second man had been grafted
into me. At first, he seemed only a pleasure loving simpleton of whose
company I was rather ashamed, and whom I used to hide under my coat
when I walked the embankment in London. But now he is strong and sullen,
and he is fighting for his life at the cost of mine. That
is his one activity, to grow strong. No creature ever wanted so much
to live. Eventually, I suppose he will absorb me altogether. Believe me,
you will hate me then. And what have you to do, Hilda,
with this story? Nothing at all. The little boy drank of the
prettiest brook in the forest, and he became a stag. I write all
this because I can never tell it to you, and because it seems as
if I could not keep silent any longer, And because I suffer, Hilda.
If anyone I loved suffered like this, I'd want to know it.
Help me, Hilda b a end of chapter eight Chapter nine of Alexander's Bridge
by Willicather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox dot org.
Chapter nine on the last Saturday in April, The New York Times published an
account of the strike complications which were delaying Alexander's New Jersey Bridge, and stated
that the engineer himself was in town and at his office on West tenth Street
on Sunday, the day after this notice appeared, Alexander worked all day at
his Tenth Street rooms. His business often called him to New York, and
he had kept an apartment there for years, sub letting it when he went
abroad for any length of time. Besides his sleeping room in Bath, there
was a large room, formerly a painter's studio, which he used as a
study in office. It was furnished with cast off possessions of his bachelor days
and with odd things which he sheltered for friends of his who followed itinerant and
more or less artistic callings. Over the fireplace there was a large old fashioned
gilt mirror. Alexander's big work table stood in front of one of three windows,
and above the couch hung one picture in the room, a big canvas
of charming color and spirit, a study of the Luxembourg Gardens in early spring,
painted in his youth by a man who would since become a portrait painter
of international renown. He had done it for Alexander when they were students together
in Paris. Sunday, it was a cold, raw day and a fine
rain fell continuously. When Alexander came back from dinner, he put more wood
on his fire, made himself comfortable, and settled down at his desk,
where he began checking over estimate sheets. It was after nine o'clock and he
was lighting a second pipe when he thought he heard a sound at his door.
He started and listened, holding the burning match in his hand. Again,
he heard the same sound, like a firm light tap. He rose
and crossed the room quickly. When he threw open the door, he recognized
the figure that shrank back into the bare, dimly lit hallway. He stood
for a moment in awkward constraint, his pipe in his hand. Come in,
he said to Hilda at last, and closed the door behind her.
He pointed to a chair by the fire and went back to his work table.
Won't you sit down? He was standing behind the table, churning over
a pile of blueprints nervously. The yellow light from the student's lamp fell on
his hands, and the purple sleeves of his velvet smoking jacket, but his
flushed face and big hard head were in the shadow. There was something about
him that made Hilda wish herself at her hotel again, in the street below,
anywhere but where she was, of course, I know, Bartley.
She said at last that after this you won't owe me the least consideration.
But we sail on Tuesday. I saw that interview in the paper yesterday telling
where you were, and I thought I had to see you. That's all,
good night, I'm going now. She turned and her hand closed on
the door knob. Alexander hurried towards her and took her gently by the arm.
Sit down, Hilda, you're wet through. Let me take off your
coat and your boots. They're oozing water. He knelt down and began to
unlace her shoes, while Hilda shrank into the chair. Here, put your
feet on the stool. You don't mean to say you walked down and without
overshoes. Hilda hid her face in her hands. I was afraid to take
a cab, can't you see, Bartley. I'm terribly frightened. I've been
through this a hundred times today. Don't be any more angry than you can
help. I was all right until I knew you were in town, if
you'd sent me a note or telephoned me or anything. But you won't let
me write you, and I had to see you after that letter, that
terrible letter you wrote me when you got home. Alexander faced her, resting
his arm on the mantel behind him, and began to brush the sleeve of
his jacket. Is this the way you mean to answer at Hilda, he
asked unsteadily. She was afraid to look up at him. Didn't didn't you
mean to even say goodbye to me? Bartley? Did you mean to just
quit me? She asked. I came to tell you that I'm willing to
do as you asked me. But it's no use talking about that. Now
give me my things, please. She put her hand toward the fender.
Alexander sat down on the arm of her chair. Did you think I'd forgotten
you were in town? Hilda? Do you think I kept away by accident?
Did you suppose I didn't know you were sailing on Tuesday? There's a
letter for you there in my desk drawer. It was to have reached you
on the steamer. I was all the morning right it. I told myself
that if I were really thinking of you and not of myself, a letta
would be better than nothing. Marks on paper means something to you, he
paused, They never did to me. Hilda smiled up at him beautifully,
her hand on his sleeve. Oh, Bartley, did you write to me?
Why didn't you telephone me to let me know that you had? Then
I wouldn't have come, Alexander slipped his arm about her. I didn't know
it before, Hilda, on my honor, I didn't, but I believe
it was because, deep down to me, somewhere I was hoping I might
drive you to do just this. I've watched that door all day. I've
jumped up if the fire crackled. I think I've felt that you were coming.
He bent his face over her hair, and I, she whispered,
I felt that you were feeling that. But when I came, I thought
I had been mistaken. Alexander started up and began to walk up and down
the room. No, you weren't mistaken. I've been up in Canada with
my bridge, and I arranged not to come to New York until after you
had gone. Then when your manager added two more weeks I was already committed.
He dropped down on the stool in front of her and sat with his
hands hanging between his knees. What am I to do, Hilda? That's
what I wanted to see you about Bartley. I'm going to do what you
asked me to do when you were in London, only I'll do it more
completely. I'm going to marry who. Oh, it doesn't matter much one
of them. Only not Mac. I'm too fond of him. Alexander moved
restlessly. Are you joking, Hilda? Indeed I'm not. Then you don't
know what you're talking about. Yes, I know very well. I thought
about it a great deal, and I've quite decided. I never used to
understand how women did things like that, but I know now it's because they
can't be at the mercy of the man they love any longer. Alexander flushed
angrily. So it's better to be at the mercy of a man you don't
love under such circumstances. Infinitely, there was a flash in her eyes that
made Alexander's fall. He got up and over to the window, threw it
open, and leaned out. He heard Hilda moving about behind him. When
he looked over his shoulders. She was lacing her boots. He went back
and stood over her. Hilda, you'd better think a while longer before you
do that. I don't know what I ought to say, but I don't
believe you'd be happy, truly, I don't. Are you trying to frighten
me? She tied the knot of the last lacing and put her boot heeled
down firmly. No, I'm telling you what I've made up my mind to
do. I suppose I would better do it without telling you, But afterward
I shan't have an opportunity to explain, for I shan't be seeing you again.
Alexander started to speak, but caught himself. When Hilda rose, he
sat down on the arm of her chair and drew her back into it.
I wouldn't be so much alarmed if I didn't know how utterly reckless you can
be. Don't do anything like that rashly, His face grew troubled. You
wouldn't be happy. You are not that kind of woman. I'd never have
another hour's peace if I helped to make you do a thing like that.
He took her face between his hands and looked down into it. You see
you are different, Hilda. Don't you know you are? His voice grew
soft, his touch more and more tender. Some women can do that sort
of thing, But you you can love as queens did in the old time.
Hilda had heard that soft, deep tone in his voice only once before
she closed her eyes. Her lips and eyelids trembled only one, Bartley,
only one, and he threw it back at me a second time. She
felt the strength leap in the arms that held her so lightly. Try him
again, Hilda, Try him once again. She looked up into his eyes
and hid her face in her hands. End of chapter nine, Chapter ten
of Alexander's Bridge by WILLI Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox
recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit
LibriVox dot org. Chapter ten. On Tuesday afternoon, a Boston lawyer who
had been trying a case in Vermont was standing on the siding at White River
Junction when the Canadian Express pulled by on its northward journey. As the day
coaches at the rear end of the long train swept by him, the lawyer
noticed at one of the windows a man's head with thick, rumpled hair.
Curious, he thought that looked like Alexander. But what would he be doing
back there in the day coaches. It was indeed Alexander. That morning,
a telegram from Morlock had reached him, telling him that there was serious trouble
with the bridge and that he was needed there at once. So he had
caught the first train out of New York. He had taken a seat in
a day coach to avoid the risk of meeting anyone he knew, and because
he did not wish to be comfortable. When the telegram arrived, Alexander was
at his rooms on Tenth Street, packing his bag to go to Boston.
On Monday night. He had written a long letter to his wife, but
when morning came he was afraid to send it, and the letter was still
in his pocket. Winnifred was not a woman who could bear disappointment. She
demanded a great deal of herself and of the people she loved, and she
never failed herself. If he told her now, he knew it would be
irretrievable. There would be no going back. He would lose the thing he
valued most in the world, and he would be destroying himself and his own
happiness. There would be nothing for him afterward. He seemed to see himself
dragging out of a restless existence on the continent canns Hires, Algiers, Cairo,
among the smartly dressed disabled men of every nationality, forever going on journeys
that led nowhere, hurrying to catch trains that he might just as well miss,
getting up in the morning with a great bustle and splashing of water to
begin a day that had no purpose and no meaning, Dining late to shorten
the night, sleeping late to shorten the day, and for what for a
mere folly, a masquerade, a little thing that he could not let go.
And he couldn't even let it go, he told himself. But he
had promised to be in London at Midsummer, and he knew that he would
go. It was impossible to live like this any longer. And this then
was to be the disaster that his old professor had foreseen for him, the
crack in the wall, the crash, the cloud of dust, And he
could not understand how it had come about. He felt that he himself was
unchanged, that he was still there, the same man he had been five
years ago, and that he was sitting stupidly by and letting some resolute offshoot
of himself spoil his life. For him, this new force was not he.
It was but a part of him. He would not even admit that
it was stronger than he, but it was more active. It was by
its energy that this new feeling got the better of him. His wife was
the woman who had made his life gratified, his pride, given direction to
his tastes and habits. The life they led together seemed to him beautiful Winifred
still was as she had always been, romance for him, and whenever he
was deeply stirred, he turned to her. When the grandeur and beauty of
the world challenged him, as it challenges even the most self absorbed people,
he was always answered with her name. That was his reply to the question
put by the mountains and the stars, to all the spiritual aspects of life.
In his feeling for his wife, there was all the tenderness, all
the pride, all the devotion of which he was capable. There was everything
but energy, the energy of youth, which must register itself and cut its
name before it passes. This new feeling was so fresh, so unsatisfied,
in light of foot. It ran and was not wearied, anticipated him everywhere.
It put a girdle round the earth. While he was going from New
York to Morlock. At this moment it was tingling through him, exultant and
live as quicksilver, whispering in July, you will be in England. Already
he dreaded the long empty days at sea, the monotonous Irish coast, the
sluggish passage up the Mercy, the flash of the boat train through the summer
country. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the feeling of rapid
motion and to swift, terrifying thoughts. He was sitting so his face shaded
by his hand when the Boston lawyer saw him from the siding at the White
River junction. When at last Alexander roused himself, the afternoon had waned to
sunset. The train was passing through a gray country, and the sky overhead
was flushed with a wide flood of clear color. There was a rose colored
light over the gray rocks and hills and meadows. Off to the left,
under the approach of a weather stained wooden bridge, a group of boys were
sitting around a little fire. The smell of wood smoke blew in at the
window. Except for an old farmer jogging along the high road in his box
wagon, there was not another living creature to be seen. Alexander looked back
wistfully at the boys camped on the edge of a little marsh, crouching under
their shelter and looking gravely at their fire. They took his mind back a
long way to a camp fire on a sand bar and a western river,
and he wished he could go back and sit down with them. He could
remember exactly how the world had looked. Then it was quite dark, and
Alexander was still thinking of the boys when it occurred to him that the train
must be nearing Allway. In going to his new bridge at Morlock, he
had always to pass through Allway. The train stopped at Allway Mills, then
wound two miles up the river, and then the hollow sound under his feet
told Bartley that he was on his first bridge again. The bridge seemed longer
than it had ever seemed before, and he was glad when he felt the
beat of the wheels on the solid road bed again. He did not like
coming and going across that bridge, or remembering the man who built it,
and was he indeed the same man I used to walk that bridge at night,
promising such things to himself and to the stars. And yet he could
remember it all so well, the quiet hills sleeping in the moonlight, the
slender skeleton of the bridge reaching out into the river and up yonder alone on
the hill, the big white house upstairs in Winnifred's window, the light that
told him she was still awake and still thinking of him. And after the
light went out, he walked alone, taking the heavens into his confidence,
unable to tear himself away from the white magic of the night, unwilling to
sleep, because longing was so sweet to him, and because, for the
first time since the first hills were hung with moonlight, there was a lover
in the world. And always there was the sound of the rushing water underneath,
the sound, which, more than anything else meant death, the wearing
away of things under the impact of physical forces which men could direct but never
circumvent or diminish. Then, in the exultation of love, more than ever
it seemed to him to mean death, the only other thing as strong as
love. Under the moon, under the cold, splendid stars, there were
only those two things, awake and sleepless, death and love, the rushing
river and his burning heart. Alexander sat up and looked about him. The
train was tearing on through the darkness. All his companions in the day coach
were either dozing or sleeping heavily, and the murky lamps were turned low.
How came he here among all these dirty people? Why was he going to
London? What did it mean? What was the answer? How could this
happen to a man who had lived through all that magical spring and summer,
and who had felt that the stars themselves were but flaming particles in the far
away infinitudes of his love? What had he done to lose it? How
could he endure the baseness of life without it? And with every revolution of
the wheels beneath him, the unquiet quicksilver in his breast told him that at
midsummer he would be in London. He remembered his last night there, the
red, foggy darkness, the hungry crowds before the theaters, the hand organs,
the feverish rhythm of the blurred, crowded streets, and the feeling of
letting himself go with the crowd. He shuddered and looked about him at the
poor, unconscious companions of his journey, unkempt and travel stained, now doubled
in unlovely attitudes, who had come to stand to him for the ugliness he
had brought into the world, And those boys back there, beginning it all
just as he had begun it. He wished he could promise them better luck.
Ah, if one could promise anyone better luck, if one could assure
a single human being of happiness. He had thought he could do so once.
And it was thinking of that that he at last fell asleep in his
sleep, as if it had nothing fresher to work upon. His mind went
back and tortured itself with something years and years away, an old, long
forgotten sorrow of his childhood. When Alexander awoke in the morning, the sun
was just rising through pale, golden ripples of cloud, and the fresh yellow
light was vibrating through the pine woods. The white birches, with their little
unfolding leaves, gleamed in the low lands, and the marshmadows were already coming
to life with their first green, a thin, bright color which had run
over them like fire. As the train rushed along the trestles. Thousands of
wild birds rose screaming into the light. The sky was already a pale blue
and of the clearness of crystal. Bartley caught up his bag and hurried through
the pullman coaches until he found the conductor. There was a stateroom unoccupied,
and he took it and set about changing his clothes. Last night, he
would not have believed that anything could be so pleasant as the cold water he
dashed over his head and shoulders, and the freshness of clean linen on his
body. After he had dressed, Alexander sat down at the window and drew
into his lungs deep breaths of pine scented air. He had awakened with all
his old sense of power. He could not believe that things were as bad
with him as they had seen last night, that there was no way to
set them entirely right. Even if he went to London at midsummer, What
would that mean except that he was a fool, and he had been a
fool before. That was not the reality of his life. Yet he knew
he would go to London. Half an hour later, the train stopped at
Morlock. Alexander sprang to the platform and hurried up the siding, waving to
Philipporton, one of his assistants, who was anxiously looking up at the windows
of the coaches. Bartley took his arm and they went together into the station
buffet. I'll have my coffee first, Philip, Have you had yours?
And now what seems to be the matter up here? The young man,
in a hurried, nervous way, began his explanation, but Alexander cut him
short. When did you stop work? He asked sharply. The young engineer
looked confused. I haven't stopped work yet, mister Alexander. I did feel
that I could go so far without definite authorization from you. Then why didn't
you say on your telegram exactly what you thought and ask for your authorization.
You'd have got it quick enough. Well, really, mister Alexander, I
couldn't be absolutely sure, you know, and I didn't like to take the
responsibility of making it public. Alexander pushed back his chair and rose, anything
I do can be made public, Philip. You say that you believe the
lower chords are showing strain, and that even the workmen have been talking about
it, and yet you've gone on adding weight. I'm sorry, mister Alexander,
but I had counted on your getting here yesterday. My first telegram missed
you somehow. I sent one Sunday evening to the same address, but it
was returned to me. Have you a carriage out there? I must stop
to send a wire. Alexander went up to the telegraph desk and penciled the
following message to his wife. I may have to be here for some time.
Can you come up at once, Urgent Bartley. The more Luck Bridge
lay three miles of the town. When they were seated in the carriage,
Alexander began to question his assistant further. If it were true that the compression
members showed strain with the bridge only two thirds done, then there was nothing
left to do but pull the whole structure down and begin over again. Horton
kept repeating that he was sure there could be nothing wrong with the estimates.
Alexander grew impatient. That's all true, Phil, but we were never justified
in assuming that a scale that was perfectly safe for an ordinary bridge would work
with anything of such length. It's all very well on paper, but it
remains to be seen whether it can be done in practice. I should have
thrown up the job when they crowded me. It's all nonsense to try to
do what other engineers are doing when you know they're not sound. But just
now, when there is such competition, the younger man demured, And certainly
that's the new line of development. Alexander shrugged his shoulders and made no reply.
When they reached the bridge works, Alexander began his examination immediately. An
hour later, he sent for the superintendent. I think you would better stop
work out there at once, Dan, I should say that the lower chord
here might buckle at any moment. I told the commission that we were using
higher unit stresses than any practice is established, and we've put the dead load
at a low estimate. Theoretically it worked out well enough, but it had
never actually been tried. Alexander put on his overcoat and took the superintendent by
the arm. Don't look so chop fallen, Dan. It's a jolt,
but we've got to face it. It isn't the end of the world,
you know. Now. We'll go out and call the men off quietly.
They're already nervous, Horton tells me, and there's no use alarming them.
I'll go with you, and we'll send the end riveters in first. Alexander
and the Superintendent picked their way out slowly over the long span. They went,
deliberately, stopping to see what each gang was doing, as if they
were on an ordinary round of inspection. When they reached the end of the
river span, Alexander nodded to the Superintendent, who quietly gave an order to
the foreman. The men in the end gang picked up their tools, and,
glancing curiously at each other, started back across the bridge toward the river
bank. Alexander himself remained standing where they had been working. Looking about him,
it was hard to believe, as he looked back over it that the
whole great span was incurably disabled, was already as good as condemned, because
something was out of line in the lower cord of the candilever arm. The
end riveters had reached the bank and were dispersing among the tool houses, and
the second gang had picked up their tools and were starting towards the shore.
Alexander, still standing at the end of the river span, saw the lower
cord of the candilever arm give a little like an elbow bending. He shouted
and ran after the second gang, but by this time everyone knew that the
big river span was slowly settling. There was a burst of shouting that was
immediately drowned by the scream and cracking of tearing iron, as all the tension
work began to asunder. Once the cords began to buckle, there were thousands
of tons of iron work, all riveted together and lying in mid air without
support. It tore itself to pieces with roaring and grinding and noises that were
like the shrieks of a steam whistle. There was no shock of any kind.
The bridge had no impetus except from its own weight. It lurched neither
to the right nor left, but sank almost in a vertical line, snapping
and breaking and tearing as it went because no integral part could bear for an
instant the enormous strain loosed upon it. Some of the men jumped, and
some ran trying to make the shore. At the first shriek of the tearing
iron, Alexander jumped from the downstream side of the bridge. He struck the
water without injury and disappeared. He was under the river a long time and
had great difficulty in holding his breath when it seemed impossible, and its chest
was about to heave. He thought he heard his wife telling him that he
could hold out a little longer. An instant later, his face cleared the
water. For a moment in the depths of the river, he had realized
what it would mean to die a hypocrite, and to lie dead under the
last abandonment of her tenderness. But once in the light air, he knew
he should live to tell her and to recover all he had lost. Now,
at last he felt sure of himself. He was not startled. It
seemed to him that he had been through something of this sort before. There
was nothing horrible about it. This too was life, and life was activity,
just as it was in Boston or in London. He was himself,
and there was something to be done. Everything seemed perfectly natural. Alexander was
a strong swimmer, but he had gone scarcely a dozen strokes when the bridge
itself, which had been settling faster and faster, crashed into the water behind
him. Immediately the river was full of drowning men. A gang of French
Canadians fell almost on top of him. He thought he had cleared them when
they began coming up all around him, clutching at him and at each other.
Some of them could swim, but they were either hurt or crazed with
fright. Alexander tried to beat them off, but there were too many of
them. One caught him about the neck, another gripped him about the middle,
and they went down together. When he sank, his wife seemed to
be there in the water beside him, telling him to keep his head,
that if he could hold out, the men would drown and release him.
There was something he wanted to tell his wife, but he could not think
clearly for the roaring in his ears. Suddenly he remembered what it was.
He caught his breath, and then she let him go. The work of
recovering the dead went on all day and all the following night. By the
next morning, forty eight bodies had been taken out of the river, but
there were still twenty missing. Many of the men had fallen with the bridge
and were held down under the debris. Early in the morning of the second
day, a closed carriage was driven slowly along the river bank and stopped a
little below the works, where the river boiled and churned about the great iron
carcass which lay in a straight line two thirds across it. The carriage stood
there hour after hour, and words soon spread among the crowds on the shore
that it saw comment was the wife of the chief engineer. His body had
not yet been found. The widows of the lost workmen, moving up and
down the bank with shawls over their heads, some of them carrying babies,
looked at the rusty hard hack many times that morning. They drew near it
and walked about it, but none of them ventured to peer within even half
Indifferent sightseers dropped their voices as they told a newcomer, you see that carriage
over there. That's Missus Alexander. They haven't found him yet. She got
off the train this morning. Horton met her. She heard it in Boston
yesterday, heard the newsboys crying it in the street. At noon, Philip
Horton made his way through the crowd with a tray and a tin coffee pot
from the camp kitchen. When he reached the carriage, he found Missus Alexander,
just as he had left her in the early morning, leaning forward a
little with her hand in the lowered window, looking at the river. Hour
after hour, she had been watching the water the lonely, useless stone towers,
and the convulsed mass of iron wreckage over which the angry river continually spat
up its yellow foam. Those poor women out there, do they blame him
very much? She asked, as she handed the coffee cup back to Horton.
Nobody blames him, Missus Alexander. If any one is to blame,
I'm afraid it's I. I should have stopped work before he came, he
said, so, as soon as I met him. I tried to get
him here a day earlier, but my telegram missed him somehow. He didn't
have much time, really to explain to me. If he'd got here Monday,
he'd have had all the men off at once. But you see,
Missus Alexander, such a thing never happened before. According to all human calculations,
it simply couldn't happen. Horton leaned wearily against the front wheel of the
cab. He had not had his clothes off for thirty hours, and the
stimulus of violent excitement was beginning to wear off. Don't be afraid to tell
me the worst, mister Horton. Don't leave me to the dread of finding
out things that people may be saying, if he is blamed, if he
needs any one to speak for him. For the first time, her voice
broke in a flush of life, tearful, painful and confused, swept over
a rigid pallor if he needs any one, tell me, show me what
to do. She began to sob, and Horton hurried away. When he
came back at four o'clock in the afternoon, he was carrying his hat in
his hand, and Winnifred knew as soon as she saw him that they had
found Bartley. She opened the carriage door before he reached her and stepped to
the ground. Horton put out his hand as if to hold her back,
and spoke pleadingly, won't you drive up to my house, missus Alexander.
They will take him up there. Take me to him now, please,
I shall not make any trouble. The group of men down the river bank
fell back when they saw a woman coming, and one of them threw a
tarpaulin over the stretcher. They took off their hats and caps as Winnifred approached,
and although she had pulled her veil down over her face, they did
not look up at her. She was taller than Horton, and some of
the the men thought that she was the tallest woman they had ever seen,
as tall as himself. Some one whispered. Horton motioned to the men,
and six of them lifted the stretcher and began to carry it up the embankment.
Winnifred followed them half mile to Horton's house. She walked quietly, without
once breaking or stumbling. When the bearers put the stretcher down in Horton's spare
bedroom, she thanked them and gave her hand to each in turn. The
men went out of the house and through the yard with their caps in their
hands. They were too much confused to say anything as they went down the
hill. Horton himself was almost as deeply perplexed Mamie. He said to his
wife when he came out of the spare room half an hour later, will
you take missus Alexander the things she needs. She's going to do everything herself.
Just stay about where you can hear her, and go in if she
wants you. Everything happened as Alexander had foreseen in that moment of prescience.
Under the river. With her own hands, she washed him clean of every
mark of disaster. All night he was alone with her in the still house,
his great head lying deep in the pillow, in the pocket of his
coat. When if it found the letter he had written her the night before
he left New York water soaked and illegible, But because of its length,
she knew it had been meant for her. For Alexander, death was an
easy creditor. Fortune, which had smiled upon him consistently all his life,
did not desert him in the end. His harshest critics did not doubt that
had he lived, he would have retrieved himself. Even Lucius Wilson did not
see in this accident the disaster he had once foretold. When a great man
dies in his prime, there is no surgeon who can say whether he did
well, whether or not the future was his as it seemed to be.
The mind that society had come to regard as a powerful and reliable machine dedicated
to its service, may for a long time have been sick within itself and
bent upon its own destruction. End of Chapter ten. Epilog for Alexander's Bridge
by Willik Cather. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, visit LibriVox dot org.
Epilog. Professor Wilson had been living in London for six years, and
he was just back from a visit to America. One afternoon. Soon after
his return, he put on his frock coat and drove in a hansom to
pay a call upon Hilde Burgoyne, who still lived at her old number off
Bedford Square. He and miss Burgoyne had been fast friends for a long time.
He had first noticed her about the quarters of the British Museum, where
he read constantly. Her being there so often had made him feel that he
would like to know her, and as she was not an inaccessible person,
an introduction was not difficult. The preliminaries once over they came to depend a
great deal upon each other, and Wilson, after his day's reading, often
went round to Bedford Square for his tea. They had much more in common
than their memories of a common friend. Indeed, they seldom spoke of him.
They saved that for the deep moments which do not come often, and
then their talk of him was mostly silence. Wilson knew that Hilda had loved
him more than this he had not tried to know. It was late when
Wilson reached Hilda's apartment on this particular December afternoon, and he found her alone.
She sent for fresh tea and made him comfortable, as she had such
a knack of making people comfortable. How good you were to come back before
Christmas. I quite dreaded the holidays without you. You've helped me over a
good many Christmases. She smiled at him gaily, as if you needed me
for that, But at any rate I needed you. How well you are
looking, my dear, and how rested. He peered up at her from
his low chair, balancing the tips of his long fingers together in a judicial
manner which had grown on him with years. Hilda laughed as she carefully poured
his cream. That means that I was looking very seedy at the end of
the season, doesn't it. Well we must show where at last, you
know, Wilson took the cup gratefully. Ah, No need to remind a
man of seventy who has just been home to find that he has survived all
his contemporaries. I was most gently treated as a sort of precious relic.
But do you know it made me feel awkward to be hanging about still seventy
never mentioned it to me. Hilda looked appreciatively at the professor's alert face,
with so many kindly lines about the mouth and so many quizzical ones about the
eyes. You've got to hang about for me. You know, I can't
even let you go home again. You must stay put now that I have
you back. You're the realest thing I have, Wilson chuckled. Dear me,
am, I out of so many conquests and the spoils of conquered cities,
you've really missed me. Well, then I shall hang even if you
have at last to put me in the mummy room with the others. You'll
visit me oft, and won't you every day in the calendar. Here your
cigarettes are in this drawer where you left them. She struck a match and
lit one for him. But you did, after all, enjoy being at
home again. Oh yes, I found the long railway journeys trying people live
a thousand miles apart. But I did it thoroughly. I was all over
the place. I was in Boston. It was in Boston, I lingered
longest. Ah, you saw missus Alexander often. I dined with her and
had tea there a dozen different times, I should think. Indeed, it
was to see her that I lingered on and on. I found that I
still loved to go to the house. It always seemed as if Bartley were
there somehow, and that at any moment one might hear his heavy tramp on
the stairs. Do you know I kept feeling that he must be up in
his study. The professor looked reflectively into the grate. I should really have
liked to go up there. That was where I had my last long talk
with him. But Miss as Alexander never suggested it. Why Wilson was a
little startled by her tone, and he turned his head so quickly that his
cufflink caught the string of his nose glasses and pulled them awry. Why,
why, dear me, I don't know. She probably never thought of it,
hild a bitter lip. I don't know what made me say that.
I didn't mean to interrupt. Go on, please and tell me how it
was. Well, it was like that, almost as if he were there.
In a way, he really is there. She never lets him go.
It's the most beautiful and dignified sorrow I've ever known. It's so beautiful
that it has its compensations. I should think its very completeness is a compensation.
It gives her a fixed star to steer by. She doesn't drift.
We sat there evening after evening, in the quiet of that magically haunted room,
and watched the sunset burn on the river, and felt him, felt
him with a difference, of course. Hilda leaned forward, her elbow on
her knee, her chin in her hand, with a difference because of her,
you mean, Wilson's brow wrinkled something like that. Yes, of course,
as time goes on to her, he becomes more and more their simple
personal relation. Hilda studied the droop of the Professor's head intently. You didn't
altogether like that, You felt it wasn't wholly fair to him. Wilson shook
himself and readjusted his glasses. Oh, fair enough, more than fairer.
Of course. I always felt that my image of him was just a little
different from hers. No relation is so complete that it can hold absolutely all
of a person. And I liked him just as he was. His deviations
too, the places where he didn't square. Hilda considered vaguely. Has she
grown much older? She asked at last, Yes and no in a tragic
way. She is even handsomer, but colder, cold for everything but him.
Forget thyself to marble. I kept thinking of that. Her happiness was
a happy biness, a dieu, not apart from the world, but actually
against it. And now her grief is like that. She saves herself for
it and doesn't even go through the form of seeing people much. I'm sorry.
It would be better for her, and it might be so good for
them if she could let other people in. Perhaps she's afraid of letting him
out a little, of sharing him with somebody. Wilson put down his cup
and looked up with vague alarm. Dear me, it takes a woman to
think of that now, I don't you know, think we ought to be
hard on her more even than the rest of us. She didn't choose her
destiny, she underwent it, and it has left her chilled as to her
not wishing to take the world into her confidence. Well, it is a
pretty brutal and stupid world, after all, you know, Hilda leaned forward.
Yes, I know, I know. Only I can't help being glad
that there was something for him, even in stupid and vulgar people. My
little Marie worshiped him. When she's dusting, I always know when she's come
to his picture. Wilson nodded, Oh, yes, he left an echo.
The ripples go on in all of us. He belonged to the people
who make the play, and most of us are only onlookers at the best.
We shouldn't wonder too much at missus Alexander. She must feel how useless
it would be to stir about that. She may as well sit still,
that nothing can happen to her after Bartley. Yes, Hilda said softly,
nothing can happen to one after Bartley. They both sat looking into the fire
and of Alexander's bridge.