Illingworth was a very rich man. The Martlet Bridge Company was
nearest his heart, but he had many other interests. His only
daughter would eventually be the mistress of a great fortune. She
could have married anybody--anywhere. Indeed Europeans of high
station and ancient lineage had already indicated quite plainly their
willingness to ally themselves with beauty and--is it doing them an
injustice to say booty, as well?
But Miss Illingworth would have none of them. She was an American to
the very core and so proud of it that no old-world title or position
could buy her. None of these distinguished gentlemen of foreign
birth who had come a-wooing had made any lasting impression upon her.
She was now convinced, and for all her life she was sure, that she
wanted more than anything else just one American man in the
engineering profession! She could have him for the taking, she knew.
And she wished he knew it, and would act upon the knowledge without
further delay.
Meade was not poor. Of course, his means were limited compared to
Colonel Illingworth's great fortune, but what he had earned, saved,
and invested was sufficient--yes, even for two. And he would inherit
much more. Old Meade had not been the greatest engineer of his
generation for nothing. Independent and self-respecting, young Meade
could not be considered a fortune-hunter by anybody. He was the kind
of man to whom a decent father likes to intrust his daughter. Old
Colonel Illingworth found himself gazing wonderingly at the two in a
way that again deepened the flush of color in his daughter's cheek as
she caught his look. She was relieved that Meade had not happened to
observe it.
Had he been blessed with a son by his long dead wife he would have
been proud if he had been the type of man that Meade was, thought the
Colonel, as he mused on all these possibilities. Perhaps Meade and
Helen might--who could tell? He sat silent, so far as he could as
host, during the latter part of the dinner, in his turn seeing
visions and dreaming dreams. There was a contagion of that sort of
thing around that bridge, it would seem.
After dinner the men went out on the observation platform with their
cigars and coffee. For those that liked it there was something in
tall glasses in which ice tinkled when the glasses were agitated, but
Meade declined all three.
"With your permission, sir," he said, "I am going to take Miss
Illingworth out on the bridge. The moon is rising and----"
"I have heard so much about it," said the girl, standing by the door.
"I want to see it when the workmen are all off and it is all quiet,
in the moonlight."
"Very well," said the Colonel. "You will be careful of her, Meade?"
"I'll be more careful of her than we are of the bridge, sir," was the
prompt answer.
"And you had better change your dress, Helen, before you go," said
the Colonel, turning to Abbott and engaging him in conversation on
technical matters.
"I'll wait for you at the front door of the car," said the engineer,
his heart beating like a pneumatic riveter and sounding almost as
loud in his ears.
As she turned to her stateroom he decided not to break the delicious
anticipation of the coming adventure by talking about it to anyone or
by seeing anyone but her. He just wanted to wait for her alone in
the dark until she came, so he followed her down the corridor to the
other end.
"I won't be long," she whispered as she left him.
He took that with a grain of salt. A second that she were away when
she might have been with him, would be a long time to him, he knew.
IV
THE PORTAGE THROUGH THE DUST
Now Helen Illingworth did not want to waste time any more than
Bertram Meade did. It was, of course, the height of foolishness for
her to explore a half-completed bridge, or an entirely finished one
for that matter, in an elaborate and expensive dinner gown. But
whatever her age or his they were at that period of life and love in
which, if ever, humanity had a clear title to be foolish--and there
you are!
Economy had not necessarily been inculcated in this young woman's
mind and although she prized the dress it had served its purpose,
since the man so obviously highly approved of it and her. If she
spoiled it she spoiled it and that was all there was about it. She
dismissed that possibility promptly. There was nothing else she
could wear which was so exquisitely becoming, anyway, and especially
in the moonlight. So, instead of taking her father's advice all she
did was to cover her beautiful shoulders with a light wrap, gather
the train of her gown in her hand and hasten to the car door in the
shortest possible time. She did not even stop to change the light
slippers and filmy stockings she wore, satin and silk of the same
delicate tint and fabric to match her gown. It was a warm summer
night and she needed no covering except nature's golden crowning on
her head.
Every moment they were apart, since the sum-total in which they could
be together was so small, was a moment lost. What were all the
dresses and slippers on earth to the pressure of his hand, a glance
from his eyes? She was very much in love with him and he with her
then, and thereafter.
"Now," she said, coming out of the door of the car and descending the
steps toward him, eagerly expectant, "I want a prize for my
swiftness."
"A prize!" returned the man, "why, you've been gone years and years
and years. You have had time to dress yourself a thousand times, and
you haven't even changed your gown. What have you been doing? How
have you idled away precious time you might have bestowed upon me?"
he concluded reprovingly in mock severity.
"I think that it's less than sixty seconds since you said you would
wait for me here," she laughed in joyous satisfaction.
"Of course, time seems shorter to you than it would to me," was his
cool reply. "It naturally would. You don't have to wait for any
man, things come always to you."
"If you can refer to me as a thing, Mr. Meade," she replied, "in this
instance I have come to you."
"I thank heaven you have done so, but unfortunately I shall have to
dismiss you."
"Dismiss me, why?"
"You can't go out on a bridge in that gown and those slippers,
tramping over dirty tracks, piles of steel, rough wooden planks,
paint and----"
"Can't I?" she said, "you just see."
"Really haven't you got anything for rough work that you could put
on?"
"I have a walking suit."
"That would do."
"But it would take me half an hour to get out of this and into it
and----"
"I hate to see you spoil your dress," he said uncertainly as she
stopped.
Really what gown on earth was worth half an hour of her society? At
least that is the way he felt about it, and evidently she felt the
same way.
"It is settled, then," she said, slipping her arm through his as they
walked down the long wooden platform near the siding. "You know,"
she continued, feeling herself obliged to speak since he was so
portentously silent--ordinarily he was a fluent and ready man but
something had got hold of him now and he was as shy and speechless as
a boy--"You know," she went on, "I have heard so much about that
bridge and how wonderful it is by moonlight that I rather felt that I
ought to dress the part when I came to inspect it under such
auspices."
"What about me?" he asked.
"You are dressed in the part, too," she continued, "yours is the
strength and the power and masculinity of the bridge----"
"While you are its grace and beauty," he concluded as she hesitated.
"I didn't like to say it myself and I won't admit it is true, but----"
"You don't have to admit it," he said quickly. "In this half light
you look as mystic and ethereal as----"
"And how do I look in the whole light, pray?"
"A trifle more substantial but not less beautiful and winning," was
the prompt answer.
Really for a timid man, with women, he was doing very well he
thought, and so did she.
"Do you prefer the ethereal woman, the dependent woman of the
mid-Victorian period to her self-sufficient descendant of the present
day?"
"I like a woman to be all things not to all men, but to me, at
different times"--he ran the whole gamut of feminine possibilities in
his desires, it seemed!--"There are times when the clinging
mid-Victorian 'female' is the sweetest thing on earth to a man and
there are times when the woman who can march shoulder to shoulder
with you is the one woman you desire. Tears, laughter, submission,
mastery--a man wants a woman in all her possible moods," he concluded
oracularly.
"You want a great many things, it seems to me," she retorted
mockingly.
"Yes, but only one woman."
"Well, you want her to be a great many things, then."
"I just want her to be herself."
Now Meade was perilously near that point when he would describe his
love if he ventured to discuss it further in the words trite but
true, "I love you because you're you!" That is what he meant anyway,
and incidentally although our sense of humor even in our tenderest
moments may spare us from the banality of the exact words, it is what
all think and most say in one way or another under such circumstances.
"I hope some day you will meet this imaginary creature of infinite
variety," said the woman softly.
"I hope so," was the somewhat surprising answer, at which she was not
a little chagrined.
"You know you men have so many advantages over poor womankind, you
are free to go everywhere and pick and choose," she went on,
carefully concealing her discomfiture.
"To tell the truth, I have met the woman," the man admitted.
"Where, in Burma?"
"In America."
"America is a great country and there are a hundred million people in
it, possibly half of them my sex.
"Your statistics are sadly in error."
"They are the latest, I believe."
"The latest in this instance are wrong. The population of America,
as I see it, is only one."
This was direct and unequivocal. He was gaining courage, fast
mastering his timidity. She was by way of being swept off her feet,
so that woman-like she temporized. She changed the subject although
it was the subject nearest her heart and the one she most wished to
discuss; to wit, herself, in relation to him.
They had now reached the end of the platform in their slow progress,
and as they turned about the temporary station and storehouse before
them rose the bridge. The moon larger and more magnificent than she
had ever been before to either of them--for when, since God set the
night lights in the firmament, had there ever been an evening like
that?--was rising over the high hills that sprang up from the steep
cliff-like bank of the other side of the vast river. They saw her
round red full face through an interlacing tracery of steel. The
lower part of the bridge was still in deep shadow. Indeed the moon
had just cleared the hills of the opposite bank of the great gorge
cut by the broad river flowing swiftly in its darkness far below.
The base of the truss was yet almost invisible and the effect of the
peak of the pyramid of steel brilliantly gilded by the high light and
rising out of dark nothing was as wonderful as the picture of a
mountain top glowing in the setting sun while all the valley is sunk
in the ever deepening shadows. At the further end of the suspended
arm extending far over the water the top of the traveler glistened in
exactly the same way. The cantilever on the opposite shore,
incomplete and sunk under a high rise of land, was still in shadow
and not yet discernible.
Instinctively the two people stopped and gazed out and up and across.
Unwittingly the woman drew a little near the man. He became more
conscious than before of the light touch of her hand upon his arm.
It was very still where they stood. The shacks of the workmen had
been erected below the bridge about a quarter of a mile to the right
along the banks of the little affluent of the main stream. They
could hear faint but indistinguishable noises that yet indicated
humanity coming from that direction. The fires in the machine house
and in the engines were banked. Lazy curls of smoke rose to be blown
away in the limitless areas of the upper air. In the darkness all
the unsightly evidences of construction work were hidden.
"Oh," said the woman, drawing a long breath, "I don't wonder that you
love it. Isn't it beautiful, flung up in the air that way? One
would think it wasn't steel but silver and gold and----"
"Time was," said the man, "when I loved a thing like that above
everything except my father, but now----"
In spite of herself the woman looked at him.
"But now?" she whispered as he hesitated, and then she turned her
head half fearful of his answer.
"I am almost afraid to say it," he said, lowering his voice to match
her own.
"A soldier of steel," she said, "and afraid!"
"Well then, all that was the second now takes the third place."
"And before your father comes?"
But she did not give him time to answer. Atalanta cast the golden
apples before Hippomenes, but she delayed her pace while he picked
them up. This girl would and would not. She threw her golden
personality in his face, and when he reached for it she glided ahead
again.
"Come," she said, "let us go out on the bridge."
"It looks beautiful," said the man, "like most things in the
moonlight, but----"
"Even women?"
He nodded his head.
"But appearances are deceptive," he went on. "It's a rough place for
you. Those little slippers you wear----"
He looked down and as if in obedience to his glance she outthrust her
foot from her gown. It was not the smallest foot that ever upbore a
woman. Quite the contrary. Which is not saying it was too large,
not at all. It was just right for her height and figure, and its
shape and shoe left nothing to be desired.
"Never mind the slippers," she said, "they are stronger than they
look. They'll serve."
"But the distance between here and the bridge is inches deep in dust."
"Dust!" she exclaimed in dismay. "I don't mind rough walking, but
dust----
"I never thought of that," admitted the man. "The fact is I have
thought of nothing but you since I saw you, but now we'll have to go
back or----"
"I shall not go back," she answered firmly.
"Well then, there is no help for it, pardon me."
He stepped down off the platform and before she knew what he would be
at he lifted her straight up in his arms. He did not carry her like
a baby, he held her erect, crushed against his breast and before she
had time to utter a protest, or even to say a word, he started
through the dusty roadway toward the bridge-head.
It was a strange position. There was nothing that she could do. He
clasped her with a grip of iron, too tightly for her comfort, indeed,
but the pressure he put upon her was due entirely to his own
nervousness. She could not kick. She could not even move. Really
she did not wish to. It was respectful enough even if a little
absurd. What he was doing was so obviously the proper thing to spare
her dainty slippers and silk stockings and other finery. And, if it
were not, she could not help liking it. She knew she ought to
protest, but the words did not come. While she was trying to think
them up they had crossed the little desert that intervened between
the portal of the bridge and the end of the platform. Then he set
her down gently. She felt her feet strike solid plank and she was
distinctly sorry that the journey was ended, the crossing had been
made.
Another woman might have reproved him then, just as another woman
might have screamed or tried to kick or beaten him over the head _en
route_. Her arms had been free, but she had attempted none of these
things. Perhaps love, perhaps a sense of humor, or both had saved
her. He was glad to recognize the difference between her and the
ordinary member of the sex. It flattered his discrimination that she
had accepted so coolly and quietly, outwardly at least, his services
as a matter of course.
"Thank you," she said simply, "that was very nice of you. You are
wonderfully strong."
Now a man's bodily strength is something for which in a large measure
he has no responsibility, for which he can claim no merit, but there
is no subtler form of flattery that a woman may offer a man than to
praise him for physical prowess. He feels much more satisfaction in
being told that he has a strong arm than in having it pointed out
that he carries a great brain, and Meade was pleased beyond measure.
"It's nothing," he said, which was scarcely true, because it was the
greatest thing that had ever happened to him so far. "Those shoes of
yours will be ruined on this planking, but at least there is little
dust. If my feet were not so enormous I----"
Helen Illingworth laughed outright at the idea.
"My own shoes will have to do me and if they are ruined I can get
another pair or a dozen."
"Bad lookout for your husband, if he happens to be a poor man."
"Oh, I wouldn't spend my husband's money as I do my father's,"
laughed the young woman with that indifference to father's money
which is characteristic of the relationship, the age, and the sex.
"Could you be happy with a man who couldn't give you dresses like
this and slippers and----"
"If I loved him I could be happy with him in rags," was the reckless
answer.
They were now walking down the track on the floor of the
approach-span of the bridge. There were two railroad tracks running
out across the bridge to the end over the river, and the space
between the rails was covered with rough planking. The man on guard
at the entrance recognized the engineer and, with a word of greeting,
the two adventurers passed him and marched down the track. They had
now reached the anchor arm of the cantilever proper. On either side
of them rose the ribs of the huge diamond-shaped truss, one point
resting on the vast shoe on the pier and the other point, both the
center and focus of the radiating arms of steel, far above their
heads.
The moon, by this time, had passed the floor level and the cross
bracing cast a network of shadows over them, upon track and floor
beams and stringers. The silence of the half-light, the mystery of
it all oppressed them a little. It was with beating hearts that they
pressed on.
V
FALL AND REVELATION
"It's rather confused in here," said the man, "but we will soon get
out toward the end and then the view is magnificent. You can see up
and down the river for miles and the night boat will be along in a
few minutes."
"Isn't that it?" asked the woman, pointing up the river to where a
cluster of lights rounded a huge bend not far away, and swung out in
midstream.
"Yes," said the man, "if we listen I think we can hear her."
They both stopped, and sure enough faintly across the water came the
noise of the clanking paddles of the big river steamer. With that
sound also mingled the song of the night wind, for a wonder
comparatively gentle, making strange, weird harmonies as it sifted
through the taut and rigid bars of steel. She listened enchanted
with the sound.
The big floor beams extended from one side to the other of the
bridge, between the trusses at intervals of fifty feet. At right
angles to them and six feet apart the stringers ran lengthways
parallel to the trusses. Here and there pieces of timber false work
had been thrown across the stringers for the convenience of the
workmen, but as these two slowly moved toward mid-stream at last
these pieces became fewer and finally there was nothing to be seen
but the heavy floor beams and the lighter stringers.
After they passed the top of the pier and got beyond the small space
of river bank on which the pier was set, there was nothing between
them and the water, now moonlit and quivering, except these cross
girders of steel on either hand beyond the planking in the tracks.
"Have you a clear head?" asked the man. "I mean does it affect you
to be on high elevations? Do you get dizzy?"
"I never have," was the answer, "but----"
"I think I'll hold you," was the reply.
He grasped her firmly by the arm. The loose wrap she was wearing
over her shoulders did not cover her arms and it was a bare arm that
he took in his hand.
"I beg your pardon," he said quickly, "but----"
"It doesn't matter. I understand. You would better hold me, I might
slip."
She was in fact as clear-headed as any woman on earth. She had stood
alone and unsupported on the brink of precipices a thousand feet
high, yet her heart had not beaten then as it was beating now and she
had never felt the need of support before. There was something
electric and compelling in the pressure of his strong hand upon the
firm flesh of her round arm. She shrank closer to him, again
unthinkingly, by a natural impulse.
The moon was now well clear of the brow of the highest hill. Its
yellow was turning to silver and in its cold and beautiful
illumination the whole river flowed bright beneath them. Every inch
of the bridge was now clearly revealed in the white passionless light.
Their progress was now checked by a flat car, fortunately partially
unloaded, which had been left on the track before them when the men
knocked off work. They would complete its unloading in the morning.
If Meade had been alone he would have crossed on one of the floor
beams to the other track, but that was not to be thought of in the
case of Helen Illingworth.
"Too bad," he said in deep disappointment, "I suppose we shall have
to go back. I'll rout out one of the engine-drivers and get him to
pull this car out of the way----"
"Can't you climb that car?"
"Certainly I can."
"Well, so can I if you help me."
"I'll help you this way," said Meade, having acquired a certain
facility from his previous performance, as he lifted her up to the
low platform of the truck, lower by the way than the level of an
ordinary railroad car. Placing his hand upon it he vaulted to her
side. They walked across it quickly, choosing the side that had been
unloaded of its burden of iron for their path.
"Wait," said Meade as they reached its end.
He sprang down to the track and as she leaned forward he lifted her
down also. Fifty feet away the bridge ended in the air. They were
now almost directly beneath the traveler near the end of the
suspended span. Its huge legs sprawled out like those of a gigantic
animal on the extreme edges of the bridge on either side above their
heads. The wooden platform on the track ran out half the distance to
the bridge end. Slowly the two walked along it until but a few feet
was left between them and the naked floor beams and the stringers
carrying the ties to which the rails were bolted and the planks laid.
By the side of the track on the top of the stringers had been placed
a pile of material surmounted by a large flat plate of steel which
lay level upon it. It was triangular in shape, the blunt point
turned inward. The base which was about six feet wide paralleled the
course of the river. The plate on the top of the pile was raised
about three feet above the level of the track. They stopped abreast
of it.
"Can't we go any further?" asked the girl in low tones, still close
to the young man, who still tightly clasped her arm.
It was a night and time in which to speak softly. Yet a whisper
would not serve. Indeed there was always wind in the gorge and out
there on the end of the bridge. It might be never so still on the
shore but there was always a current of air where they were and it
seemed to be coming stronger. The sound of it overhead was louder,
and less pleasing. There was a threat in its notes as it swept
through the steel. Her dress was whipped about her by its force.
The drapery which she wore about her shoulders blew against him. She
drew it around her with her free hand and looked at him for her
answer.
"I'm afraid it wouldn't be safe to go any further," he said.
"But I must, I want to see the steamer."
"It will pass directly under the bridge."
"But this wooden platform will hide it, this and the pile of steel
here."
"They have no business to pass under the bridge," said Meade.
"They've been warned hundreds of times and orders have been issued."
"Why?"
"There is always danger that something might fall."
"At night with no one working?"
"Yes, even at night. We are never quite sure that everything has
been made secure until we examine it. A bolt or a nut or a bar of
steel or a tool, to say nothing of a beam, falling from such a height
would kill anyone and the beam might sink the steamer, but they still
come as near as they like. The passengers seem to wish it and the
captains humor them. Besides the best water and the least current to
fight against seem to be just under the bridge end yonder."
"Can't we go just a few steps nearer?"
"I would not have anything happen to you for the bridge itself and
all the rest of the world."