Alexanders Bridge | Page 5

on the lights
and stood six feet and more in the archway, glowing with strength and
cordiality and rugged, blond 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 ten
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 have 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
clearskinned.
"You are off for England on Saturday, Bartley, Mrs. Alexander tells
me."
"Yes, for a few weeks only. There's a meeting of British engineers, and
I'm doing another bridge in Canada, you know."
"Oh, every one knows about that. And it was in Canada that you met
your wife, wasn't it?"
Yes, at Allway. She was visiting her great-aunt there. A most
remarkable old lady. I was working with MacKeller then, an old Scotch
engineer who had picked me up in London and taken me back to
Quebec with him. He had the contract for the Allway 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 got anything good so early. MacKeller was an old friend of
Mrs. Pemberton, Winifred's aunt. He had mentioned me to her, so when
I went to Allway she asked me to come to 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 and 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 Eleanor
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 big crack zigzagging 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 am 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