if he had not thrilled to her splendid ardent devotion, her
whole-hearted trust in him. He did not quite realize that, as it
takes two to make a quarrel, no man, however determined upon a
course, can absolutely settle a woman's relationship to him without
her consent, especially when he loves her and has told her so and
received her love in return.
How much of all this Helen Illingworth realized, what her thoughts
were, what resolutions she came to, what determinations were her own,
her lover could not tell. She recognized the awful gravity, the
terrible seriousness, of the situation of course. The bridge meant
much to her even if in quite a different way. It was there he had
saved her from the awful fall. It was there that he had told her
that he loved her. If she had been given the choice she would have
embraced the risk for the avowal if it could not have been brought
about otherwise. The bridge might fall, but it was as eternal as her
affection in her memory. Their engagement, or their marriage, had
been made dependent upon the successful completion of the bridge.
What of that? The proviso meant nothing to her when she looked at
the white-faced agonized man to whom she had given herself.
Who dared condition love? What parental injunction could bind the
free movement of human hearts? Age? What did age know about it?
Here were youth, sorrow, love, life. While they had being they
belonged to each other. Not the trusses and stringers of the great
bridge were stronger than the intangible ties that bound heart to
heart, and the steel was not half so real. Bridges might come and
bridges might go, reputations fail and disappear, property be lost in
ruin and disaster--it would make no difference. She was his and he
was hers. The senses of possession and possessed alike would and
should have the mastery.
"It is terrible, of course," she said quietly.
"Appalling."
"But you can do nothing?"
"If I could do you think I'd let the bridge, and you, go without----"
"I'm not going with the bridge," was her quick and decisive
interruption.
They had both forgotten the presence of young Johnson, who was not
only decidedly uncomfortable, but desperately anxious. He was about
to speak when, into this already broken scene, came another
interruption.
There was a rush of wheels on the driveway outside, the roar of a
motor. Before Meade could answer the statement, into the room burst
Colonel Illingworth. He was covered with dust, his face was white,
his eyes filled with anxiety. The character of the summons had
disquieted him beyond measure. Back of him came Severence, the
vice-president, and Curtiss, the chief engineer.
"Meade, what of the bridge?" he burst out, with a quick nod to his
daughter, knowing that nothing else could have brought the engineer
there, especially in the light of the messages received.
Colonel Illingworth had not stopped to hunt for a wayside telephone.
The automobile driven madly, recklessly through the hills and over
the rough roads, had brought him directly to the office in the
shortest possible time.
"There is a deflection one inch and three-quarters deep in one of the
compression members, C-10-R," was the prompt and terrible answer.
Colonel Illingworth had not been president of the Martlet Bridge
Company for so long without learning something of practical
construction. He was easily enough of an engineer to realize
instantly what that statement meant.
"When did you discover it?" he snapped out.
"Last night."
"Is the bridge gone?"
"Not yet."
"Why didn't you let us know?"
"I telegraphed father and, not hearing from him, I came down on the
midnight train. It is a holiday in New York as well as here. I just
happened to meet father in the office. He sent a telegram to you and
not hearing from you, duplicated it an hour later. I tried half a
dozen times to get you on the telephone and finally, by a happy
chance, got hold of young Johnson."
"Where are your father's telegrams?"
"Here."
Colonel Illingworth tore the first open with trembling fingers?
"Why didn't you tell Abbott?" asked the chief engineer.
"You know Abbott. He said the bridge would stand until the world
caved in. Said he could jack the member into line. He wouldn't do a
thing except on direct orders from here."
"Your father wires, 'put no more weight on the bridge.' What shall
we do?" interposed Colonel Illingworth.
"Telegraph Abbott at once."
"If the bridge goes it means ruin to the company," said the agitated
vice-president, who was the financial member of the firm and who
could easily be pardoned for a natural exaggeration under the
terrible circumstances.
"Yes, but if it goes with the men on, it means--Johnson, are you a
telegraph operator?"
"Yes, sir."
"Take the key," said the Colonel, who, having been a soldier, thought
first of the men.
Johnson sat down at the table where the direct wire ran from the
Bridge Company to the Western Union office. He reached his hand out
and laid his fingers on the key. Before he could give the faintest
pressure to the instrument, it suddenly clicked of its own motion.
Everybody in the room stood silent.
"They are calling us, sir," said Johnson.
Colonel Illingworth nodded.
"It is a message from Wilchings, the chief of construction foremen
of," Johnson paused a moment, listening to the rapid click--"The
International----" he said in an awestruck whisper.
It had come!
"Read it, man! Read it, for God's sake!" cried the chief engineer.
"_The bridge is in the river,_" faltered Johnson slowly, word by
word, translating the fearful message on the wire. "_Abbott and one
hundred and fifty men with it._"
XII
THE FAILURE
In spite of himself and his confidence in the bridge, and every look
at the huge trusses rising from the massive piers and extending their
long arms out to meet their sister trusses beginning to rise on the
other side, re-enforced that confidence, Abbott felt a little uneasy
the next morning. At bottom he had more respect for Meade's
technical knowledge than he had displayed or even admitted to
himself. The younger engineer's terrified alarm, his urgent
pleading, his utter forgetfulness of the amenities that usually
prevailed between them, his frantic but futile efforts to telephone,
of which the operator told Abbott in the morning, his hurried
departure to New York, were, to say the least, somewhat disquieting,
much more so than he was fain to admit to himself.
Although it involved a hard and somewhat dangerous climb downward and
took upwards of a half-hour of his valuable time, the first thing the
erecting engineer did in the morning was to go down to the pier head
and make a thorough and careful examination of the buckled member.
C-10-R was the first great member of the right-hand truss, as you
crossed the bridge, that sprang from the steel shoe and reached out
over the water. It was, of course, a part of the great lower chord
of the huge diamond-shaped truss, which, with its parallel sixty feet
away on the other side of the bridge and its two opposites across the
river, supported the whole structure. If anything were wrong,
seriously, irreparably wrong, with the member and it gave way, the
whole truss would go. The other truss would inevitably follow suit,
and the cantilever would immediately collapse. Abbott realized that,
of course, as he climbed carefully down to the pier head and stood on
the shoe.
Now the member was composed of four steel webs, each one made up of
several plates of steel riveted together to form one huge plate.
These four parallel webs were bound into one member and held rigid by
steel lacings, which criss-crossed above and below the edges of the
four webs. These steel lacings were angle bars riveted to the
several webs and were also riveted through plates where they crossed,
and finally were fastened to the edges of the webs. It was this
massive and imposing piece of structural steel work which had got a
little out of line, and which Abbott, perturbed in spite of himself,
had come down to inspect, to see if there were any real ground for
Meade's excitement and alarm.
It is wonderful how well-trained our physical senses may become. The
final perfections of curvature in a great lens are the results of
refinements of the sense of touch in the manufacturer's hands. So
much had long experience taught Abbott that, as he stood by the
member and surveyed it throughout its length, he could easily see
that it had buckled, although the deviation was so slight, about two
inches at its maximum in sixty feet. He brought with him a line and,
with infinite care and pains, he drew it taut across the slight
concavity like a bow-string. He had estimated the camber, or the
distance between the center of the bow and the string, at one and a
half inches. As he made more careful measurements, he discovered
that it was slightly over one and three-quarter inches. Did this
denote an increase? Abbott thought not. The difference simply lay
between an estimate, however careful, and the actual measurements.
An inch and three-quarters in seven hundred and twenty was scarcely
noticeable, not noticeable at all to the untrained eye, unless
actually squinting along the line, and it did not seem very much to
Abbott, standing on the pier head and looking up through the network
of struts and bracing and girders. As he stood there feeling himself
an insignificant figure amid this great interwoven mass of steel,
again the sense of its strength and stability came to him
overpoweringly, so much so that he laughed aloud in a rather grim
fashion at the unwonted nervousness which had been induced in his
mind by Meade's words and actions.
He would have been content to have left the pier head and have
climbed back to the floor of the bridge, but he was a conscientious
man, so he pursued his investigations further. He climbed up on top
of the member, which was easy enough by means of the criss-crossed
lacing, and carefully inspected that lacing. He did not, of course,
look at every one of the bars of steel that bound together the giant
webs that made up the member, but he gave a very careful and minute
scrutiny to the lacings at the center of the concavity, or sidewise
spring from the right line.
He noticed, by getting down on his face and surveying the lacing bars
closely, a number of fine hair-line cracks in the paint, surface
traceries apparently, running here and there from the rivet holes.
The rivets themselves had rather a strained look. Some of the outer
rivets seemed slightly loose, where before they must have been tight,
for the members, like all other parts of the bridge, had been
carefully inspected at the shop and any looseness of the rivets would
certainly have been noticed there. But, at the time these
discoveries were made, Abbott's obsession as to the strength of the
bridge had grown stronger. Lining it out, crawling over it, feeling
its rigidity, he decided that these evident strains were to be
expected. Of course the lacings that held the webs together would
have to take up a terrific stress. They had been designed for that
purpose.
The best engineer had made the design and now the best erector found
no radical fault with it. The other members of the truss were still
in line. Abbott clambered over to the next one and examined some of
the lacings there. He found a few of those hair-line paint cracks;
not quite so many, but still some. He had brought with him a small
hammer and he struck the lacing here and there, straining his ear to
see if he could discover any difference in resonance between those at
this point, at which the greater stress was being brought, because of
the curvature, and others in other places. There was a difference,
but it would have taken a finer ear than Abbott's, somewhat deafened
by the constant noise of the pneumatic riveters, to realize the
danger in the slight increase in sharpness of the resonance of the
lacings that were most strained. Largely because he did not find
anything very glaring, and because he wanted to believe what he
believed, the chief of construction left the pier head and clambered
up to the floor with more satisfaction in his heart than his somewhat
surprising anticipation, which had so unwillingly grown under the
stimulus of Meade's persistence, had led him to expect.
The whistle was just blowing for the commencement of work when he got
back to the bridge floor. He could not but reflect, as the men came
swarming along the tracks to begin their day's work, that the
responsibility for their lives lay with him. Well, Abbott was a big
man in his way, he had assumed responsibilities before and was
perfectly willing to do so again, both for men and bridge. The
workmen at least had no suspicions or premonitions of disaster.
Wilchings, the chief erecting foreman, knew about the camber. It had
not bothered him. As he approached the two exchanged greetings.
"You're out early, Mr. Abbott," said Wilchings.
"Yes, I've been down to examine C-10-R."
Wilchings laughed.
"That little spring is nothing." He looked over the track and
through the maze of bracing at the member. "If we had a pier
somewhere we could hold up the earth with that strut. You didn't
find out anything, did you?"
"Not a thing except some hair-line cracks in the paint around the
rivets."
"You'll often find those where there's a heavy load to take up. This
bridge will stand long after you and I and every man on it has quit
work for good."
Now Wilchings was a man of experience and ability, and if Abbott had
needed any confirmation of his opinion this careless expression would
have served. He did send him across the river to examine the
half-completed cantilever on the other bank, upon which work had been
suspended, awaiting shipments of steel. Wilchings later reported
that it was all right, which was what he expected, of course, and
this also added to Abbott's confidence.
The day was an unusually hard one. A great quantity of structural
steel that had been delayed and which had threatened to hold up the
work, arrived that day and the chief of construction was busier than
he had ever been. He was driving the men with furious energy. Even
under the best conditions it would be well-nigh impossible to
complete the bridge on time. Abbott had pride in carrying out the
contract and the financial question was a considerable one. Had it
not been for that, perhaps, he would have paid more attention to
Meade's appeal. So he hurried on the work at top speed.
But a man may be persuaded and yet not satisfied. All day long
Abbott, confident, yet unforgetting, had in mind that questionable
member. His work kept him on shore a large part of the time and the
further away he got from it and from the powerful persuasiveness of
the actually existent standing bridge, the stronger grew his unease.
He sought to laugh himself out of it, to strengthen his convictions
that it was nothing by self-ridicule. He worked himself up into a
state of positive resentment and anger against Meade. He cursed him
for a fool and himself likewise, still he could not get away from the
thought. It was in his mind. Suppose--it was impossible to suppose!
Late in the afternoon, without saying anything to Wilchings, who had
resumed his regular work, or to anybody in fact, Abbott went down to
look at the member again. He climbed down a hundred feet or more to
make another examination at the expense of much valuable time, for he
had not passed so busy a day as that one since the bridge began.
Abbott's judgment and reasoning told him that it was time thrown
away. Nevertheless, despite his convictions, he went. He made
another careful examination, and, in fact, duplicated his procedure
of the morning. Everything was exactly as it had been. Those
hair-line cracks had troubled him a little despite Wilching's remark.
He studied them a second time. They were just as they had been, so
far as he could tell, no larger, no more numerous. The lacings rang
exactly the same under his hammer.
Abbott was cool enough ordinarily, but he was now so angry with
himself for having given away to foolish fears, that, in a fit of
temper, he threw the hammer into the water--and it was indicative of
how the situation had got on his nerves--as he declared to himself
that he would not go down there again. By this time old Meade and
the bridge people and Curtiss, the chief engineer, must know all
about it. He had actually visited the telegraph office a dozen
times--unnecessarily, of course, since any wire would have been
delivered at once to him. The fact that he had not heard from them
gave him renewed confidence. They evidently regarded it of little
moment. They were probably laughing at Meade, Junior, as they would
laugh at him if they ever learned of his nervousness. He realized,
of course, that he could never jack the springing member back into
line. As Meade had said, there was nothing to jack against. Also it
would be practically impossible to haul it back by turn-buckles
attached to the parallel truss. Indeed he had only said these things
carelessly. It would have to stay the way it was until he got
definite instructions from Martlet what to do.
He climbed back to the floor of the bridge and spent the next
half-hour inspecting the progress of the work. The suspended span
had already been pushed out far beyond the end of the cantilever.
The work on the other side of the river had been stopped. As soon as
they got the suspended span halfway over they would transfer the
workmen and finish the opposite cantilever. Abbott calculated that
perhaps in another week they could get it out if he drove the men.
He looked at his watch, grudgingly observing that it was almost five
o'clock. The men were nothing to Abbott. The bridge was everything.
That is not to say he was heartless, but the bridge and its erection
were supreme in his mind. As he stood surveying the mighty structure
he felt as Napoleon might have felt when he looked beyond the men and
horses who would perish in the next battle he was planning, to the
mighty end he had in view.
The material was arriving and everything was going on with such a
swing and vigor that he would fain have kept them at work an hour or
two longer. The men themselves did not feel that way. Some of the
employees of the higher grades had got the obsession of the bridge,
but to most of them it was the thing they worked at, by which they
got their daily bread--nothing more.
Those who worked by the day were already laying aside their tools,
and preparing for their departure. They always would get ready so
that at the signal all that was left to do was to stop. The
riveters, who were paid by the piece, kept at it always to the very
last minute. As Abbott watched and waited he was unusually conscious
in some strange way of the wild clamor of the work. He had been
standing near the outer end of the cantilever and, as if to get rid
of it, he turned and walked toward the bank. The pneumatic riveters
were rat-tat-tatting on the rivet heads with a perfectly damnable
iteration of insistent sound. The steam winch on the traveler was
blowing off steam almost like a locomotive, preparatory to the rest
of the night. A confused babel of voices, the clatter of hammers,
the slithering, ringing sounds of swinging steel grating against
steel as the huge cranes lifted the girders and braces and dropped
them in their places, the deeper crash of beams being unloaded from
the trucks and dropped heavily on the stringers and floor beams, the
clanking of trucks, the grinding of wheels, the deep breathing of the
locomotives, mingled in a hard, harsh, unharmonious diapason of
horrid sound. Abbott's usual iron nerves had been severely strained
that day. Ordinarily he was as indifferent to those noises as if he
had been a deaf man. Now they irritated him. In his irritation he
turned instinctively to the cause of it.
He was right above the pier head now. He looked down at it through
the struts and floor beams and braces, fastening his gaze on the
questioned member. There it stood satisfactorily, of course. Yet,
something impelled him to walk out on the nearest floor beam to the
extreme edge of the truss and look down at it once more, leaning far
out to see it better. He could get a better view of it with nothing
between it and him. It still stood bravely. It was all right, of
course. He wished that he had never said a word about it to anyone.
He did not see why he could not regard it with the indifference that
it merited. As he stared down at it over the edge of the truss the
whistle for quitting blew.
Every sound of work ceased after the briefest of intervals, except
here and there a few riveters driving home a final rivet kept at it
for a few seconds, but only for a few seconds. Then, for a moment a
silence like death itself intervened. It even seemed as if the ever
blowing wind had been momentarily stilled. That shrill whistle and
the consequent cessation of the work always affected everybody the
same way. There was inevitably and invariably a pause. The contrast
between the noise and its sudden stoppage was so great that the men
instinctively waited a few seconds and drew a breath before they
began to light their pipes, close their tool boxes, pick up their
coats and dinner pails, and resume their conversation as they
strolled along the roadway to the shore.
It seemed to Abbott, who had often noted the psychological effect of
the stoppage of work on the men, that it had never been so silent on
the bridge before. There was almost always a breeze, sometimes a
gale, blowing down or up the gorge through which the river flowed,
but that afternoon not a breath was stirring. The void was as empty
and as still as the hearts or minds of the workmen. Abbott found
himself waiting in strained and unwonted suspense for the next second
or two, when the silence would be broken almost as if by concerted
effort by the men.
While he waited, his eyes were not idle. They were fixed on the
member. The long warm rays of the afternoon sun illuminated it so
clearly that he could see every detail of it. In that second
immediately below him, far down toward the pier head he saw a sudden
flash as of breaking steel. Low, but clear enough in the intense
silence, he heard a popping sound like the snap of a great finger.
Then the bright gleam of freshly broken metal caught his excited
glance.
Abbott instantly realized what was happening. The lacing was giving
way. Meade was right. The member would go and with it---- He had a
second or two to call his own. The habit, the character of the man
put them to the best use possible. The first pop or two was
succeeded by a little rattle as it might be a rain of revolver shots
heard from a distance, as the lacings gave way in quick succession.
It was a sort of accompaniment to what Abbott shouted. He was a man
with a powerful voice and he raised it to its limit and expanded it
to its full compass.
The idle workmen, just beginning to laugh and jest, heard a great cry:
"_Off the bridge, for God's sake!_"
Two or three, among them Wilchings, who happened to be within a few
feet of the landward end, without understanding why, but impelled by
the agony, the appeal, the horror in the great shout of the master
builder, leaped for the shore. On the bridge itself some stepped
forward, some stood still staring, others peered downward. It takes
minutes to tell it and to read it, but probably not three seconds
passed between the first snap of the first lacing bar and the utter
collapse of the member. The great sixty-foot webs of steel wavered
like ribbons in the wind. The bridge shook as if in an earthquake.
There was a heavy, shuddering, swaying movement and then the
six-hundred foot cantilever arm plunged downward, as a great ship
falls into the trough of a mighty sea. Sharp-keyed sounds cracked
out overhead as the truss parted at the apex, the outward half
inclining to the water, the inward half sinking straight down.