It was the afternoon of the day before Christmas. Mrs. Alexander had
been driving about all the morning, leaving presents at the houses of
her friends. She lunched alone, and as she rose from the table she
spoke to the butler: “Thomas, I am going down to the kitchen now to see
Norah. In half an hour you are to bring the greens up from the cellar
and put them in the library. Mr. Alexander will be home at three to
hang them himself. Don’t forget the stepladder, and plenty of tacks and
string. You may bring the azaleas upstairs. Take the white one to Mr.
Alexander’s study. Put the two pink ones in this room, and the red one
in the drawing-room.”
A little before three o’clock Mrs. Alexander went into the library to
see that everything was ready. She pulled the window shades high, for
the weather was dark and stormy, and there was little light, even in
the streets. A foot of snow had fallen during the morning, and the wide
space over the river was thick with flying flakes that fell and
wreathed the masses of floating ice. Winifred was standing by the
window when she heard the front door open. She hurried to the hall as
Alexander came stamping in, covered with snow. He kissed her joyfully
and brushed away the snow that fell on her hair.
“I wish I had asked you to meet me at the office and walk home with me,
Winifred. The Common is beautiful. The boys have swept the snow off the
pond and are skating furiously. Did the cyclamens come?”
“An hour ago. What splendid ones! But aren’t you frightfully
extravagant?”
“Not for Christmas-time. I’ll go upstairs and change my coat. I shall
be down in a moment. Tell Thomas to get everything ready.”
When Alexander reappeared, he took his wife’s arm and went with her
into the library. “When did the azaleas get here? Thomas has got the
white one in my room.”
“I told him to put it there.”
“But, I say, it’s much the finest of the lot!”
“That’s why I had it put there. There is too much color in that room
for a red one, you know.”
Bartley began to sort the greens. “It looks very splendid there, but I
feel piggish to have it. However, we really spend more time there than
anywhere else in the house. Will you hand me the holly?”
He climbed up the stepladder, which creaked under his weight, and began
to twist the tough stems of the holly into the frame-work of the
chandelier.
“I forgot to tell you that I had a letter from Wilson, this morning,
explaining his telegram. He is coming on because an old uncle up in
Vermont has conveniently died and left Wilson a little money—something
like ten thousand. He’s coming on to settle up the estate. Won’t it be
jolly to have him?”
“And how fine that he’s come into a little money. I can see him posting
down State Street to the steamship offices. He will get a good many
trips out of that ten thousand. What can have detained him? I expected
him here for luncheon.”
“Those trains from Albany are always late. He’ll be along sometime this
afternoon. And now, don’t you want to go upstairs and lie down for an
hour? You’ve had a busy morning and I don’t want you to be tired
to-night.”
After his wife went upstairs Alexander worked energetically at the
greens for a few moments. Then, as he was cutting off a length of
string, he sighed suddenly and sat down, staring out of the window at
the snow. The animation died out of his face, but in his eyes there was
a restless light, a look of apprehension and suspense. He kept clasping
and unclasping his big hands as if he were trying to realize something.
The clock ticked through the minutes of a half-hour and the afternoon
outside began to thicken and darken turbidly. Alexander, since he first
sat down, had not changed his position. He leaned forward, his hands
between his knees, scarcely breathing, as if he were holding himself
away from his surroundings, from the room, and from the very chair in
which he sat, from everything except the wild eddies of snow above the
river on which his eyes were fixed with feverish intentness, as if he
were trying to project himself thither. When at last Lucius Wilson was
announced, Alexander sprang eagerly to his feet and hurried to meet his
old instructor.
“Hello, Wilson. What luck! Come into the library. We are to have a lot
of people to dinner to-night, and Winifred’s lying down. You will
excuse her, won’t you? And now what about yourself? Sit down and tell
me everything.”
“I think I’d rather move about, if you don’t mind. I’ve been sitting in
the train for a week, it seems to me.” Wilson stood before the fire
with his hands behind him and looked about the room. “You _have_ been
busy. Bartley, if I’d had my choice of all possible places in which to
spend Christmas, your house would certainly be the place I’d have
chosen. Happy people do a great deal for their friends. A house like
this throws its warmth out. I felt it distinctly as I was coming
through the Berkshires. I could scarcely believe that I was to see Mrs.
Bartley again so soon.”
“Thank you, Wilson. She’ll be as glad to see you. Shall we have tea
now? I’ll ring for Thomas to clear away this litter. Winifred says I
always wreck the house when I try to do anything. Do you know, I am
quite tired. Looks as if I were not used to work, doesn’t it?”
Alexander laughed and dropped into a chair. “You know, I’m sailing the
day after New Year’s.”
“Again? Why, you’ve been over twice since I was here in the spring,
haven’t you?”
“Oh, I was in London about ten days in the summer. Went to escape the
hot weather more than anything else. I shan’t be gone more than a month
this time. Winifred and I have been up in Canada for most of the
autumn. That Moorlock Bridge is on my back all the time. I never had so
much trouble with a job before.” Alexander moved about restlessly and
fell to poking the fire.
“Haven’t I seen in the papers that there is some trouble about a
tidewater bridge of yours in New Jersey?”
“Oh, that doesn’t amount to anything. It’s held up by a steel strike. A
bother, of course, but the sort of thing one is always having to put up
with. But the Moorlock Bridge is a continual anxiety. You see, the
truth is, we are having to build pretty well to the strain limit up
there. They’ve crowded me too much on the cost. It’s all very well if
everything goes well, but these estimates have never been used for
anything of such length before. However, there’s nothing to be done.
They hold me to the scale I’ve used in shorter bridges. The last thing
a bridge commission cares about is the kind of bridge you build.”
When Bartley had finished dressing for dinner he went into his study,
where he found his wife arranging flowers on his writing-table.
“These pink roses just came from Mrs. Hastings,” she said, smiling,
“and I am sure she meant them for you.”
Bartley looked about with an air of satisfaction at the greens and the
wreaths in the windows. “Have you a moment, Winifred? I have just now
been thinking that this is our twelfth Christmas. Can you realize it?”
He went up to the table and took her hands away from the flowers,
drying them with his pocket handkerchief. “They’ve been awfully happy
ones, all of them, haven’t they?” He took her in his arms and bent
back, lifting her a little and giving her a long kiss. “You are happy,
aren’t you Winifred? More than anything else in the world, I want you
to be happy. Sometimes, of late, I’ve thought you looked as if you were
troubled.”
“No; it’s only when you are troubled and harassed that I feel worried,
Bartley. I wish you always seemed as you do to-night. But you don’t,
always.” She looked earnestly and inquiringly into his eyes.
Alexander took her two hands from his shoulders and swung them back and
forth in his own, laughing his big blond laugh.
“I’m growing older, my dear; that’s what you feel. Now, may I show you
something? I meant to save them until to-morrow, but I want you to wear
them to-night.” He took a little leather box out of his pocket and
opened it. On the white velvet lay two long pendants of curiously
worked gold, set with pearls. Winifred looked from the box to Bartley
and exclaimed:—
“Where did you ever find such gold work, Bartley?”
“It’s old Flemish. Isn’t it fine?”
“They are the most beautiful things, dear. But, you know, I never wear
earrings.”
“Yes, yes, I know. But I want you to wear them. I have always wanted
you to. So few women can. There must be a good ear, to begin with, and
a nose”—he waved his hand—“above reproach. Most women look silly in
them. They go only with faces like yours—very, very proud, and just a
little hard.”
Winifred laughed as she went over to the mirror and fitted the delicate
springs to the lobes of her ears. “Oh, Bartley, that old foolishness
about my being hard. It really hurts my feelings. But I must go down
now. People are beginning to come.”
Bartley drew her arm about his neck and went to the door with her. “Not
hard to me, Winifred,” he whispered. “Never, never hard to me.”
Left alone, he paced up and down his study. He was at home again, among
all the dear familiar things that spoke to him of so many happy years.
His house to-night would be full of charming people, who liked and
admired him. Yet all the time, underneath his pleasure and hopefulness
and satisfaction, he was conscious of the vibration of an unnatural
excitement. Amid this light and warmth and friendliness, he sometimes
started and shuddered, as if some one had stepped on his grave.
Something had broken loose in him of which he knew nothing except that
it was sullen and powerful, and that it wrung and tortured him.
Sometimes it came upon him softly, in enervating reveries. Sometimes it
battered him like the cannon rolling in the hold of the vessel. Always,
now, it brought with it a sense of quickened life, of stimulating
danger. To-night it came upon him suddenly, as he was walking the
floor, after his wife left him. It seemed impossible; he could not
believe it. He glanced entreatingly at the door, as if to call her
back. He heard voices in the hall below, and knew that he must go down.
Going over to the window, he looked out at the lights across the river.
How could this happen here, in his own house, among the things he
loved? What was it that reached in out of the darkness and thrilled
him? As he stood there he had a feeling that he would never escape. He
shut his eyes and pressed his forehead against the cold window glass,
breathing in the chill that came through it. “That this,” he groaned,
“that this should have happened to _me!_”
On New Year’s day a thaw set in, and during the night torrents of rain
fell. In the morning, the morning of Alexander’s departure for England,
the river was streaked with fog and the rain drove hard against the
windows of the breakfast-room. Alexander had finished his coffee and
was pacing up and down. His wife sat at the table, watching him. She
was pale and unnaturally calm. When Thomas brought the letters, Bartley
sank into his chair and ran them over rapidly.
“Here’s a note from old Wilson. He’s safe back at his grind, and says
he had a bully time. ‘The memory of Mrs. Bartley will make my whole
winter fragrant.’ Just like him. He will go on getting measureless
satisfaction out of you by his study fire. What a man he is for looking
on at life!” Bartley sighed, pushed the letters back impatiently, and
went over to the window. “This is a nasty sort of day to sail. I’ve a
notion to call it off. Next week would be time enough.”
“That would only mean starting twice. It wouldn’t really help you out
at all,” Mrs. Alexander spoke soothingly. “And you’d come back late for
all your engagements.”
Bartley began jingling some loose coins in his pocket. “I wish things
would let me rest. I’m tired of work, tired of people, tired of
trailing about.” He looked out at the storm-beaten river.
Winifred came up behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “That’s
what you always say, poor Bartley! At bottom you really like all these
things. Can’t you remember that?”
He put his arm about her. “All the same, life runs smoothly enough with
some people, and with me it’s always a messy sort of patchwork. It’s
like the song; peace is where I am not. How can you face it all with so
much fortitude?”
She looked at him with that clear gaze which Wilson had so much
admired, which he had felt implied such high confidence and fearless
pride. “Oh, I faced that long ago, when you were on your first bridge,
up at old Allway. I knew then that your paths were not to be paths of
peace, but I decided that I wanted to follow them.”
Bartley and his wife stood silent for a long time; the fire crackled in
the grate, the rain beat insistently upon the windows, and the sleepy
Angora looked up at them curiously.
Presently Thomas made a discreet sound at the door. “Shall Edward bring
down your trunks, sir?”
“Yes; they are ready. Tell him not to forget the big portfolio on the
study table.”
Thomas withdrew, closing the door softly. Bartley turned away from his
wife, still holding her hand. “It never gets any easier, Winifred.”
They both started at the sound of the carriage on the pavement outside.
Alexander sat down and leaned his head on his hand. His wife bent over
him. “Courage,” she said gayly. Bartley rose and rang the bell. Thomas
brought him his hat and stick and ulster. At the sight of these, the
supercilious Angora moved restlessly, quitted her red cushion by the
fire, and came up, waving her tail in vexation at these ominous
indications of change. Alexander stooped to stroke her, and then
plunged into his coat and drew on his gloves. His wife held his stick,
smiling. Bartley smiled too, and his eyes cleared. “I’ll work like the
devil, Winifred, and be home again before you realize I’ve gone.” He
kissed her quickly several times, hurried out of the front door into
the rain, and waved to her from the carriage window as the driver was
starting his melancholy, dripping black horses. Alexander sat with his
hands clenched on his knees. As the carriage turned up the hill, he
lifted one hand and brought it down violently. “This time”—he spoke
aloud and through his set teeth—“this time I’m going to end it!”
On the afternoon of the third day out, Alexander was sitting well to
the stern, on the windward side where the chairs were few, his rugs
over him and the collar of his fur-lined coat turned up about his ears.
The weather had so far been dark and raw. For two hours he had been
watching the low, dirty sky and the beating of the heavy rain upon the
iron-colored sea. There was a long, oily swell that made exercise
laborious. The decks smelled of damp woolens, and the air was so humid
that drops of moisture kept gathering upon his hair and mustache. He
seldom moved except to brush them away. The great open spaces made him
passive and the restlessness of the water quieted him. He intended
during the voyage to decide upon a course of action, but he held all
this away from him for the present and lay in a blessed gray oblivion.
Deep down in him somewhere his resolution was weakening and
strengthening, ebbing and flowing. The thing that perturbed him went on
as steadily as his pulse, but he was almost unconscious of it. He was
submerged in the vast impersonal grayness about him, and at intervals
the sidelong roll of the boat measured off time like the ticking of a
clock. He felt released from everything that troubled and perplexed
him. It was as if he had tricked and outwitted torturing memories, had
actually managed to get on board without them. He thought of nothing at
all. If his mind now and again picked a face out of the grayness, it
was Lucius Wilson’s, or the face of an old schoolmate, forgotten for
years; or it was the slim outline of a favorite greyhound he used to
hunt jack-rabbits with when he was a boy.
Toward six o’clock the wind rose and tugged at the tarpaulin and
brought the swell higher. After dinner Alexander came back to the wet
deck, piled his damp rugs over him again, and sat smoking, losing
himself in the obliterating blackness and drowsing in the rush of the
gale. Before he went below a few bright stars were pricked off between
heavily moving masses of cloud.
The next morning was bright and mild, with a fresh breeze. Alexander
felt the need of exercise even before he came out of his cabin. When he
went on deck the sky was blue and blinding, with heavy whiffs of white
cloud, smoke-colored at the edges, moving rapidly across it. The water
was roughish, a cold, clear indigo breaking into whitecaps. Bartley
walked for two hours, and then stretched himself in the sun until
lunch-time.
In the afternoon he wrote a long letter to Winifred. Later, as he
walked the deck through a splendid golden sunset, his spirits rose
continually. It was agreeable to come to himself again after several
days of numbness and torpor. He stayed out until the last tinge of
violet had faded from the water. There was literally a taste of life on
his lips as he sat down to dinner and ordered a bottle of champagne. He
was late in finishing his dinner, and drank rather more wine than he
had meant to. When he went above, the wind had risen and the deck was
almost deserted. As he stepped out of the door a gale lifted his heavy
fur coat about his shoulders. He fought his way up the deck with keen
exhilaration. The moment he stepped, almost out of breath, behind the
shelter of the stern, the wind was cut off, and he felt, like a rush of
warm air, a sense of close and intimate companionship. He started back
and tore his coat open as if something warm were actually clinging to
him beneath it. He hurried up the deck and went into the saloon parlor,
full of women who had retreated thither from the sharp wind. He threw
himself upon them. He talked delightfully to the older ones and played
accompaniments for the younger ones until the last sleepy girl had
followed her mother below. Then he went into the smoking-room. He
played bridge until two o’clock in the morning, and managed to lose a
considerable sum of money without really noticing that he was doing so.
After the break of one fine day the weather was pretty consistently
dull. When the low sky thinned a trifle, the pale white spot of a sun
did no more than throw a bluish lustre on the water, giving it the dark
brightness of newly cut lead. Through one after another of those gray
days Alexander drowsed and mused, drinking in the grateful moisture.
But the complete peace of the first part of the voyage was over.
Sometimes he rose suddenly from his chair as if driven out, and paced
the deck for hours. People noticed his propensity for walking in rough
weather, and watched him curiously as he did his rounds. From his
abstraction and the determined set of his jaw, they fancied he must be
thinking about his bridge. Every one had heard of the new cantilever
bridge in Canada.
But Alexander was not thinking about his work. After the fourth night
out, when his will suddenly softened under his hands, he had been
continually hammering away at himself. More and more often, when he
first wakened in the morning or when he stepped into a warm place after
being chilled on the deck, he felt a sudden painful delight at being
nearer another shore. Sometimes when he was most despondent, when he
thought himself worn out with this struggle, in a flash he was free of
it and leaped into an overwhelming consciousness of himself. On the
instant he felt that marvelous return of the impetuousness, the intense
excitement, the increasing expectancy of youth.