Alexander's Bridge

press 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 window

indeed,

tter to his wife, but when morning came he was afraid to send it, and the letter was still in his pocket. Winifred 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; he would be destroying himself and his own happiness. There would be nothing

D HE COULD EVEN LET IT GO, he told himself. But he had promised to be in London at mid-su

s 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 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 l

oat train through the summer country. He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the feeling of rapid motion and to swift, terrifyi

a weather-stained wooden bridge, a group of boys were sitting around a little fire. The smell of the wood smoke blew in at the window. Except for an old farmer, jogging along the highroad in his box-wagon, there was not another living creature to be seen. Alexander looked back wistfully at the boys

ame man who 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 Winifred'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 beca

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

He remembered his last night there: the red foggy darkness, the hungry crowds before the theatres, the hand-organs, the feverish rhythm of the blurred, crowded streets, and the feeling of letting himself go with the crowd.

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

th 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

He could not believe that things were as bad with him as they had seemed last night, that there was no way to set them entirely right. Even if he went to London at

up the siding, waving to Philip Horton, one of his assistants, who was anxiously looking up at

. Have you had yours? And now, wha

urried, nervous way,

ort. "When did you stop

ed work yet, Mr. Alexander. I didn't feel that I cou

actly what you thought, and ask for your aut

bsolutely sure, you know, and I didn't like t

il. You say that you believe the lower chords are showing strain, and that even

re yesterday. My first telegram missed you somehow. I sent one

out there? I must s

graph-desk and penciled the f

or some time. Can you c

RT

her. If it were true that the compression members showed strain, with the bridge only two thirds done, then there was nothing to do but p

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 sh

tion," the younger man demurred. "And cer

d his shoulders a

e were using higher unit stresses than any practice has 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

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

ver 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 pull asunder. Once the chords began to buckle, there were thousands of tons of ironwork, all riveted together and lying in midair without support. It tore itself to pieces with roaring and grinding and noises that were lik

e 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, wh

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 word soon spread among the crowds on the shore that its occupant 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 r

er just as he had left her in the early morning, leaning forward a little, with her hand on the lowered window, looking at the river. Hour after hour she had b

lame him very much?" she asked, as she

tried to get him here a day earlier, but my telegram missed him, somehow. He didn't have time really to explain to me. If he'd got here Monday, he'd have h

He had not had his clothes off for thirty hours, and the

he is blamed, if he needs any one to speak for him,"-for the first time her voice broke and a flush of life, tearful, painful, and

his hand, and Winifred knew as soon as she saw him that they had found Bartley

d spoke pleadingly: "Won't you drive up to my hou

, please. I shall n

n, and some of the men thought 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. Winifred followed them the half-mile to Horton's house. She walked quietly, wit

the spare room half an hour later, "will you take Mrs. Alexander the things she needs? She is g

saster. 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 Winifred found the lette

e, did not desert him in the end. His harshest critics did not doubt that, had he lived, he would hav

ture was his, as it seemed to be. The mind that society had come to regard as a powerful and reliable machine

IL

irst noticed her about the corridors 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

cember afternoon, and he found her alone. She sent for fresh tea and ma

ite dreaded the Holidays without you. You've helped me

any rate, I needed YOU. How well you

ng the tips of his long fingers together in a j

ans that I was looking very seedy at the end of the seaso

home to find that he has survived all his contemporaries. I was most gently treated-as a so

y lines about the mouth and so many quizzical ones about the eyes. "You've got to hang about for me, you know. I

ed cities! You've really missed me? Well, then, I shall hang. Even if you have at l

drawer, where you left them." She struck a match and lit one

live a thousand miles apart. But I did it thoroughly; I w

saw Mrs.

. 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.

hy

y that his cuff-link caught the string of his nose-glasses and pulled them

de me say that. I didn't mean to interru

t'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

r knee, her chin on her hand. "With a

es. Of course, as time goes on, to her he becom

head intently. "You didn't altogether like

hat my image of him was just a little different from hers. No relation is so complete that it can hold absolu

. "Has she grown much ol

appiness was a happiness a deux, not apart from the world, but actually against it. And now her grief is like that. She saves herself for it and doesn't

tting him out a little, of

e 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 chil

here was something for him even in stupid and vulgar people. My little Marie wo

ay, and most of us are only onlookers at the best. We shouldn't wonder too much at Mrs. Alexander. She must feel ho

ly, "nothing can happe

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