On Tuesday afternoon a Boston lawyer,who had been trying a case in Vermont,was standing on the siding at White River Junctionwhen the Canadian Express pulled by on itsnorthward journey. As the day-coaches atthe rear end of the long train swept by him,the lawyer noticed at one of the windows aman's head, with thick rumpled hair. "Curious," he thought; "that looked likeAlexander, but what would he be doing backthere in the daycoaches?"

It was, indeed, Alexander.

That morning a telegram from Moorlockhad reached him, telling him that there wasserious trouble with the bridge and that hewas needed there at once, so he had caughtthe first train out of New York. He had takena seat in a day-coach to avoid the risk ofmeeting any one he knew, and because he didnot wish to be comfortable. When thetelegram arrived, Alexander was at his roomson Tenth Street, packing his bag to go to Boston. On Monday night he had written a long letterto his wife, but when morning came he wasafraid to send it, and the letter was stillin his pocket. Winifred was not a womanwho could bear disappointment. She demandeda great deal of herself and of the peopleshe loved; and she never failed herself.If he told her now, he knew, it would beirretrievable. There would be no going back.He would lose the thing he valued most inthe world; he would be destroying himselfand his own happiness. There would benothing for him afterward. He seemed to seehimself dragging out a restless existence onthe Continent--Cannes, Hyeres, Algiers, Cairo--among smartly dressed, disabled men ofevery nationality; forever going on journeysthat led nowhere; hurrying to catch trainsthat he might just as well miss; getting up inthe morning with a great bustle and splashingof water, to begin a day that had no purposeand no meaning; dining late to shorten thenight, 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 COULD EVEN LET IT GO, he told himself.But he had promised to be in London at mid-summer, and he knew that he would go. . . .It was impossible to live like this any longer.

And this, then, was to be the disasterthat his old professor had foreseen for him:the crack in the wall, the crash, the cloudof dust. And he could not understand how ithad come about. He felt that he himself wasunchanged, that he was still there, the sameman he had been five years ago, and that hewas sitting stupidly by and letting someresolute offshoot of himself spoil his life forhim. This new force was not he, it was but apart of him. He would not even admit that itwas stronger than he; but it was more active.It was by its energy that this new feeling gotthe better of him. His wife was the womanwho 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 deeplystirred he turned to her. When the grandeurand beauty of the world challenged him--as it challenges even the most self-absorbed people--he always answered with her name. That was hisreply to the question put by the mountains and the stars;to all the spiritual aspects of life. In his feelingfor his wife there was all the tenderness,all the pride, all the devotion of which he wascapable. There was everything but energy;the energy of youth which must register itselfand cut its name before it passes. This newfeeling was so fresh, so unsatisfied and lightof foot. It ran and was not wearied, anticipatedhim everywhere. It put a girdle round theearth while he was going from New Yorkto Moorlock. At this moment, it was tinglingthrough 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 sluggishpassage up the Mersey, the flash of theboat train through the summer country.He closed his eyes and gave himself up to thefeeling of rapid motion and to swift,terrifying thoughts. He was sitting so, his faceshaded by his hand, when the Boston lawyersaw him from the siding at White River Junction.

When at last Alexander roused himself,the afternoon had waned to sunset. The trainwas passing through a gray country and thesky overhead was flushed with a wide flood ofclear color. There was a rose-colored lightover the gray rocks and hills and meadows.Off to the left, under the approach of aweather-stained wooden bridge, a group ofboys 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 highroadin his box-wagon, there was not another livingcreature to be seen. Alexander looked back wistfullyat the boys, camped on the edge of a little marsh,crouching under their shelter and looking gravelyat their fire. They took his mind back a long way,to a campfire on a sandbar in 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 stillthinking of the boys, when it occurred to himthat the train must be nearing Allway.In going to his new bridge at Moorlock he hadalways to pass through Allway. The trainstopped at Allway Mills, then wound twomiles up the river, and then the hollow soundunder his feet told Bartley that he was on hisfirst bridge again. The bridge seemed longerthan it had ever seemed before, and he wasglad when he felt the beat of the wheels onthe solid roadbed again. He did not likecoming and going across that bridge, orremembering the man who built it. And was he,indeed, the same man who used to walk thatbridge at night, promising such things tohimself and to the stars? And yet, he couldremember it all so well: the quiet hillssleeping in the moonlight, the slender skeletonof the bridge reaching out into the river, andup yonder, alone on the hill, the big white house;upstairs, in Winifred's window, the light that toldhim 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 thewhite magic of the night, unwilling to sleepbecause longing was so sweet to him, and because,for the first time since first the hills werehung with moonlight, there was a lover in the world.And always there was the sound of the rushing waterunderneath, the sound which, more than anything else,meant death; the wearing away of things under theimpact of physical forces which men coulddirect but never circumvent or diminish.Then, in the exaltation of love, more thanever it seemed to him to mean death, the onlyother thing as strong as love. Under the moon,under the cold, splendid stars, there were onlythose 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 wereeither 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 itmean--what was the answer? How could thishappen to a man who had lived through thatmagical spring and summer, and who had feltthat the stars themselves were but flamingparticles in the far-away infinitudes of his love?

What had he done to lose it? How couldhe endure the baseness of life without it?And with every revolution of the wheels beneathhim, the unquiet quicksilver in his breast toldhim that at midsummer he would be in London. He remembered his last night there: the redfoggy darkness, the hungry crowds beforethe theatres, the hand-organs, the feverishrhythm of the blurred, crowded streets, andthe feeling of letting himself go with thecrowd. He shuddered and looked about himat the poor unconscious companions of hisjourney, unkempt and travel-stained, nowdoubled in unlovely attitudes, who had cometo stand to him for the ugliness he hadbrought into the world.

And those boys back there, beginning itall just as he had begun it; he wished hecould promise them better luck. Ah, if onecould promise any one better luck, if onecould 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 fellasleep. In his sleep, as if it had nothingfresher to work upon, his mind went backand tortured itself with something years andyears away, an old, long-forgotten sorrowof his childhood.

When Alexander awoke in the morning,the sun was just rising through pale goldenripples of cloud, and the fresh yellow lightwas vibrating through the pine woods.The white birches, with their littleunfolding leaves, gleamed in the lowlands,and the marsh meadows were already coming to lifewith their first green, a thin, bright colorwhich had run over them like fire. As thetrain rushed along the trestles, thousands ofwild birds rose screaming into the light.The sky was already a pale blue and of theclearness of crystal. Bartley caught up his bagand hurried through the Pullman coaches until hefound 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 anythingcould be so pleasant as the cold water he dashedover his head and shoulders and the freshnessof clean linen on his body.

After he had dressed, Alexander sat downat the window and drew into his lungsdeep breaths of the pine-scented air.He had awakened with all his old sense of power.He could not believe that things were as bad withhim as they had seemed last night, that therewas 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 notthe reality of his life. Yet he knew that hewould go to London.

Half an hour later the train stopped atMoorlock. Alexander sprang to the platformand hurried up the siding, waving to PhilipHorton, one of his assistants, who wasanxiously looking up at the windows ofthe coaches. Bartley took his arm andthey 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 didyou stop work?" he asked sharply.

The young engineer looked confused."I haven't stopped work yet, Mr. Alexander.I didn't feel that I could go so far withoutdefinite authorization from you."

"Then why didn't you say in your telegramexactly what you thought, and ask for yourauthorization? You'd have got it quick enough."

"Well, really, Mr. Alexander, I couldn't beabsolutely sure, you know, and I didn't liketo take the responsibility of making it public."

Alexander pushed back his chair and rose."Anything I do can be made public, Phil.You say that you believe the lower chordsare showing strain, and that even theworkmen have been talking about it,and yet you've gone on adding weight."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Alexander, but I hadcounted 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 andpenciled the following message to his wife:--

I may have to be here for some time.Can you come up at once? Urgent.

BARTLEY.

The Moorlock Bridge lay three milesabove the town. When they were seated inthe carriage, Alexander began to question hisassistant further. If it were true that thecompression members showed strain, with thebridge only two thirds done, then there wasnothing to do but pull the whole structuredown and begin over again. Horton keptrepeating that he was sure there could benothing wrong with the estimates.

Alexander grew impatient. "That's alltrue, Phil, but we never were justified inassuming that a scale that was perfectly safefor an ordinary bridge would work withanything of such length. It's all very well onpaper, but it remains to be seen whether itcan be done in practice. I should have thrownup the job when they crowded me. It's allnonsense to try to do what other engineersare doing when you know they're not sound."

"But just now, when there is such competition,"the younger man demurred. "And certainlythat's the new line of development."

Alexander shrugged his shoulders andmade no reply.

When they reached the bridge works,Alexander began his examination immediately. An hour later he sent for the superintendent. "I think you had better stop work out thereat once, Dan. I should say that the lower chordhere might buckle at any moment. I toldthe Commission that we were using higherunit 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 tookthe superintendent by the arm. "Don't lookso chopfallen, Dan. It's a jolt, but we'vegot to face it. It isn't the end of the world,you know. Now we'll go out and call the menoff 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 endriveters in first."

Alexander and the superintendent pickedtheir way out slowly over the long span.They went deliberately, stopping to see whateach gang was doing, as if they were on anordinary round of inspection. When theyreached the end of the river span, Alexandernodded to the superintendent, who quietlygave an order to the foreman. The men in theend gang picked up their tools and, glancingcuriously at each other, started back acrossthe bridge toward the river-bank. Alexanderhimself remained standing where they hadbeen working, looking about him. It was hardto 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 inthe lower chord of the cantilever arm.

The end riveters had reached the bankand were dispersing among the tool-houses,and the second gang had picked up their toolsand were starting toward the shore. Alexander,still standing at the end of the river span,saw the lower chord of the cantilever armgive a little, like an elbow bending.He shouted and ran after the second gang,but by this time every one knew that the bigriver span was slowly settling. There wasa burst of shouting that was immediately drownedby the scream and cracking of tearing iron,as all the tension work began to pull asunder.Once the chords began to buckle, there werethousands of tons of ironwork, all riveted togetherand lying in midair without support. It toreitself to pieces with roaring and grinding andnoises that were like the shrieks of a steam whistle.There was no shock of any kind; the bridge had noimpetus except from its own weight.It lurched neither to 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 instantthe 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 sideof the bridge. He struck the water withoutinjury and disappeared. He was under theriver a long time and had great difficultyin holding his breath. When it seemed impossible,and his chest was about to heave, he thought heheard his wife telling him that he could hold outa little longer. An instant later his face cleared the water.For a moment, in the depths of the river, he had realizedwhat it would mean to die a hypocrite, and to lie deadunder the last abandonment of her tenderness. But once in the light and air, he knew he shouldlive 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 himthat he had been through something ofthis sort before. There was nothing horribleabout it. This, too, was life, and life wasactivity, just as it was in Boston or in London. He was himself, and there was somethingto be done; everything seemed perfectlynatural. Alexander was a strong swimmer,but he had gone scarcely a dozen strokeswhen the bridge itself, which had been settlingfaster and faster, crashed into the waterbehind him. Immediately the river was fullof drowning men. A gang of French Canadiansfell almost on top of him. He thought he hadcleared them, when they began coming up allaround him, clutching at him and at eachother. Some of them could swim, but theywere either hurt or crazed with fright. Alexander tried to beat them off, but therewere too many of them. One caught him aboutthe neck, another gripped him about the middle,and they went down together. When he sank,his wife seemed to be there in the waterbeside him, telling him to keep his head,that if he could hold out the men would drownand release him. There was something hewanted to tell his wife, but he could notthink 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 wenton all day and all the following night.By the next morning forty-eight bodies had beentaken out of the river, but there were stilltwenty missing. Many of the men had fallenwith the bridge and were held down underthe debris. Early on the morning of thesecond day a closed carriage was driven slowlyalong the river-bank and stopped a littlebelow the works, where the river boiled andchurned about the great iron carcass whichlay in a straight line two thirds across it.The carriage stood there hour after hour,and word soon spread among the crowds onthe shore that its occupant was the wifeof the Chief Engineer; his body had notyet been found. The widows of the lost workmen,moving up and down the bank with shawlsover their heads, some of them carryingbabies, looked at the rusty hired hack manytimes that morning. They drew near it andwalked about it, but none of them venturedto peer within. Even half-indifferent sight-seers dropped their voices as they told anewcomer: "You see that carriage over there?That's Mrs. Alexander. They haven't foundhim 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 waythrough the crowd with a tray and a tincoffee-pot from the camp kitchen. When hereached the carriage he found Mrs. Alexanderjust as he had left her in the early morning,leaning forward a little, with her hand on thelowered window, looking at the river. Hourafter hour she had been watching the water,the lonely, useless stone towers, and theconvulsed mass of iron wreckage over whichthe angry river continually spat up its yellowfoam.

"Those poor women out there, do theyblame him very much?" she asked, as shehanded the coffee-cup back to Horton.

"Nobody blames him, Mrs. 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 triedto get him here a day earlier, but my telegrammissed him, somehow. He didn't have timereally to explain to me. If he'd got hereMonday, he'd have had all the men off at once.But, you see, Mrs. Alexander, such a thing neverhappened before. According to all human calculations,it simply couldn't happen."

Horton leaned wearily against the frontwheel of the cab. He had not had his clothesoff for thirty hours, and the stimulus of violentexcitement was beginning to wear off.

"Don't be afraid to tell me the worst,Mr. Horton. Don't leave me to the dread offinding out things that people may be saying.If he is blamed, if he needs any one to speakfor him,"--for the first time her voice brokeand a flush of life, tearful, painful, andconfused, swept over her 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 theafternoon he was carrying his hat in his hand,and Winifred knew as soon as she saw himthat they had found Bartley. She opened thecarriage door before he reached her andstepped to the ground.

Horton put out his hand as if to hold herback and spoke pleadingly: "Won't you driveup to my house, Mrs. Alexander? They willtake him up there."

"Take me to him now, please. I shall notmake any trouble."

The group of men down under the riverbankfell back when they saw a woman coming,and one of them threw a tarpaulin overthe stretcher. They took off their hatsand caps as Winifred approached, and althoughshe had pulled her veil down over her facethey did not look up at her. She was tallerthan Horton, and some of the men thoughtshe was the tallest woman they had ever seen."As tall as himself," some one whispered.Horton motioned to the men, and six of themlifted the stretcher and began to carry it upthe embankment. Winifred followed them thehalf-mile to Horton's house. She walkedquietly, without once breaking or stumbling.When the bearers put the stretcher down inHorton's spare bedroom, she thanked themand gave her hand to each in turn. The menwent out of the house and through the yardwith their caps in their hands. They weretoo much confused to say anythingas they went down the hill.

Horton himself was almost as deeply perplexed."Mamie," he said to his wife, when he came outof the spare room half an hour later,"will you take Mrs. Alexander the thingsshe needs? She is going to do everythingherself. Just stay about where you canhear her and go in if she wants you."

Everything happened as Alexander hadforeseen in that moment of prescience underthe river. With her own hands she washedhim clean of every mark of disaster. All nighthe was alone with her in the still house,his great head lying deep in the pillow.In the pocket of his coat Winifred found theletter that he had written her the night beforehe left New York, water-soaked and illegible,but because of its length, she knew it hadbeen meant for her.

For Alexander death was an easy creditor. Fortune, which had smiled upon himconsistently all his life, did not desert him inthe end. His harshest critics did not doubt that,had he lived, he would have retrieved himself.Even Lucius Wilson did not see in this accidentthe disaster he had once foretold.

When a great man dies in his prime thereis no surgeon who can say whether he did well;whether or not the future was his, as itseemed to be. The mind that society hadcome to regard as a powerful and reliablemachine, dedicated to its service, may for along time have been sick within itself andbent upon its own destruction.

EPILOGUE

Professor Wilson had been living in Londonfor six years and he was just back from a visitto America. One afternoon, soon after hisreturn, he put on his frock-coat and drove ina hansom to pay a call upon Hilda Burgoyne,who still lived at her old number, off BedfordSquare. He and Miss Burgoyne had been fastfriends for a long time. He had first noticedher about the corridors of the British Museum,where he read constantly. Her being thereso often had made him feel that he wouldlike to know her, and as she was not aninaccessible person, an introduction wasnot difficult. The preliminaries once over,they came to depend a great deal upon eachother, and Wilson, after his day's reading,often went round to Bedford Square for histea. They had much more in common thantheir memories of a common friend. Indeed,they seldom spoke of him. They saved thatfor the deep moments which do not comeoften, and then their talk of him was mostlysilence. Wilson knew that Hilda had lovedhim; more than this he had not tried to know.

It was late when Wilson reached Hilda'sapartment on this particular Decemberafternoon, and he found her alone. She sentfor fresh tea and made him comfortable, as shehad such a knack of making people comfortable.

"How good you were to come backbefore Christmas! I quite dreaded theHolidays without you. You've helped me over agood many Christmases." She smiled at him gayly.

"As if you needed me for that! But, atany rate, I needed YOU. How well you arelooking, my dear, and how rested."

He peered up at her from his low chair,balancing the tips of his long fingers togetherin a judicial manner which had grown on himwith years.

Hilda laughed as she carefully poured hiscream. "That means that I was looking veryseedy at the end of the season, doesn't it?Well, we must show wear at last, you know."

Wilson took the cup gratefully. "Ah, noneed to remind a man of seventy, who hasjust been home to find that he has survivedall his contemporaries. I was most gentlytreated--as a sort of precious relic. But, doyou know, it made me feel awkward to behanging about still."

"Seventy? Never mention it to me." Hilda lookedappreciatively at the Professor's alert face,with so many kindly lines about the mouthand 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 ofso many conquests and the spoils ofconquered cities! You've really missed me?Well, then, I shall hang. Even if you haveat last to put ME in the mummy-room with the others.You'll visit me often, won't you?"

"Every day in the calendar. Here, your cigarettesare 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 journeystrying. People live a thousand miles apart.But I did it thoroughly; I was all over the place.It was in Boston I lingered longest."

"Ah, you saw Mrs. Alexander?"

"Often. I dined with her, and had teathere a dozen different times, I should think.Indeed, it was to see her that I lingered onand on. I found that I still loved to go to thehouse. It always seemed as if Bartley werethere, somehow, and that at any moment onemight hear his heavy tramp on the stairs. Doyou know, I kept feeling that he must be upin his study." The Professor looked reflectivelyinto the grate. "I should really have likedto go up there. That was where I had my lastlong talk with him. But Mrs. Alexander neversuggested it."

"Why?"

Wilson was a little startled by her tone,and he turned his head so quickly that hiscuff-link caught the string of his nose-glassesand pulled them awry. "Why? Why, dearme, I don't know. She probably neverthought of it."

Hilda bit her lip. "I don't know whatmade 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 hewere there. In a way, he really is there.She never lets him go. It's the most beautifuland dignified sorrow I've ever known. It's sobeautiful that it has its compensations,I should think. Its very completenessis a compensation. It gives her a fixed starto steer by. She doesn't drift. We sat thereevening after evening in the quiet of thatmagically haunted room, and watched thesunset burn on the river, and felt him.Felt him with a difference, of course."

Hilda leaned forward, her elbow on her knee,her chin on 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 becomesmore and more their simple personal relation."

Hilda studied the droop of the Professor'shead intently. "You didn't altogether likethat? You felt it wasn't wholly fair to him?"

Wilson shook himself and readjusted hisglasses. "Oh, fair enough. More than fair.Of course, I always felt that my image of himwas just a little different from hers.No relation is so complete that it can holdabsolutely all of a person. And I liked himjust as he was; his deviations, too;the places where he didn't square."

Hilda considered vaguely. "Has shegrown much older?" she asked at last.

"Yes, and no. In a tragic way she is evenhandsomer. But colder. Cold for everythingbut him. `Forget thyself to marble'; I keptthinking of that. Her happiness was ahappiness a deux, not apart from the world,but actually against it. And now her grief is likethat. She saves herself for it and doesn't evengo through the form of seeing people much.I'm sorry. It would be better for her, andmight be so good for them, if she could letother people in."

"Perhaps she's afraid of letting him out a little,of sharing him with somebody."

Wilson put down his cup and looked upwith vague alarm. "Dear me, it takes a womanto 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 herdestiny. She underwent it. And it has left herchilled. As to her not wishing to take theworld into her confidence--well, it is a prettybrutal and stupid world, after all, you know."

Hilda leaned forward. "Yes, I know, I know.Only I can't help being glad that there wassomething for him even in stupid and vulgar people.My little Marie worshiped him. When she is dustingI always know when she has 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 Mrs. Alexander. She must feel how useless it would be tostir about, that she may as well sit still;that nothing can happen to her after Bartley."

"Yes," said Hilda softly, "nothing canhappen to one after Bartley."

They both sat looking into the fire.