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, 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 of her childhood.
That forbidding pile was the
goal of her truant fancy, and
she was sometimes taken there
for a treat, as other children
are taken to the theatre. 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 hid
his youth under his coat and
hugged it! And how good it was
to turn one's back upon all that
vaulted cold, to take Hilda's
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 in
their day had carried the flaming
liquor, but to-day 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 some
one.
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 hoof-beats of a hansom-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 Hilda's number
and stopped. The hansom 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 round. 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 Burgoyne would let him take
her to the theatre. 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; Somerset 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
in 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 road-making.
On his return he had undertaken
the bridge at Moorlock, 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 Moorlock 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 meant to keep his
personal liberty at all costs,
as old MacKeller, his first chief,
had done, and not, like so many
American engineers, to become
a part of a professional movement,
a cautious board member, a Nestor
de 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; overwork
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
work-horse that his profession
had made of him. He felt rich
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 light-heartedness.
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 to be himself,
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 this 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 in 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 Burgoyne, by any
means, but 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 Hilda Burgoyne. Mainhall
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 large drawing-room, the
centre of a circle of men, young
and old. She was apparently telling
them a story. They were all laughing
and bending toward her. When
she saw Alexander, she rose quickly
and put out her hand. The other
men drew back a little to let
him approach.
"Mr. 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
Towne explained as the circle
closed up again. Lord Westmere
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,
people 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 MacConnell's box
with Mainhall one evening,
but I supposed 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
gayly. "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. "Time
and 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 a
part of success?"
"Why, how absurd! As if I were
not always interested!" Hilda
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."
"I know. Mainhall
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 a rather 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
every one else-- more agreeable
to meet when things are going
well with me. Don't you suppose
it gives me any pleasure to do
something that people like?"
"Does it? Oh, how fine it all
is, your 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-eyed astonishment
for a moment, and
then broke into a low, amused
laugh. "My dear Mr. 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 to be anything but
what you are. If you care to
come, it's yourself I'll be glad
to see, and you thinking well
of yourself. 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.
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