Alexanders Bridge | Page 7

Willa Cather
remember where we stopped yesterday?"
"Perfectly. I was going to show you a picture. But I doubt whether I
have color enough 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 in 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 Mrs. 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 seem 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 you will
laugh when I tell you that it always has a rather bridal 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, is 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."
Winifred laughed. "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 in 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 young men who were
careful of themselves and who, as she put it, were always trimming
their wick as if they were afraid of their oil's giving out. MacKeller,
Bartley's first chief, was an old friend of my aunt, and he told her that
Bartley was a wild, ill-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: `MacKeller found him sowing wild oats in London, I
believe. I hope he didn't stop him too soon. Life coquets with dashing
fellows. The coming men are always like that. We must have him to
dinner, my dear.' And 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 out of Germany.
She always sniffed when Bartley asked me to play for him. She
considered that a newfangled 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. "Winifred, Thomas can bring my trunk down.
I've decided to go over to New York to-morrow night and take a fast
boat. I shall save two days."
CHAPTER II
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
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