The interview with the foreman had been stormy. It became furious. It had ended disastrously, so disastrously he did n't care a tinker's curse.
"I ha'e gi'en you two raises a'ready, and here you 're back for more. Be damned to it, men, is it the king's mint you take me for?"
"Ay, you ha' gi'en us the raises, Mister Aleck, but the rents ha' raised again. There 's no place to flit to tha' 's cheaper. The price o' food is unchristian—"
"Is that my fault?"
"Na! Na! It's no' your fault. It's just the times. And there 's childer comin'—"
"Is that my fault?"
"Ah, Mister Aleck, be reasonable! We got to live. Down at Richardson's mill they 're gi'en the third raise. And at the United—"
"Now, listen to me, men," he roared like a maddened bull. "You 've got to make a choice. Either get on with what you have, or I 'll close the mill. I swear to my God I 'll close the mill."
"We 've got to live," the men said sullenly. An old workman stepped out.
"Mister Aleck," he pleaded, "I 've worked for your da all my life, and I was a wee nipper when your grandfa'er was here. I mind him well. You 've got neither chick nor child, and if you have n't, the mill goes wi' you—"
Good God! So it did. He had never thought of that.
"—so it is n't as though you wanted the money—"
"I will not!" One part of his brain formulated the reply and his lips uttered it. The other part was busy on this new discovery, that with him the mills died. Of course they did.
"Well, then, be damned to you! Close your mill!"
"Be damned to the whole lot of you! Take your week's notice from the day. Saturday week the mill closes, and I swear to my God it never opens again."
Why should it, he asked himself when they were gone, why should it?
He sat back after they had left him and for an instant the magnitude of the thought that there would be no successor shook him physically, left him all of a tremble. He had never thought of it before, incredible as that may seem.
"No! There'll be no other. I'm the last." He lighted a match to put to his pipe, but he let it go out. "I 'm the last."
All his life, at this moment, seemed shattered—the comfortable running order of it junked into a grotesque and cold puzzle, as a complicated engine will be ruined by a thunderbolt. The mills were gone, for he would not give in to any raise, and Jeanie Lindsay too—she was so much to him, so much that she obtruded herself on every thought he had.
For the first time in his existence, sitting on the ruin, it occurred to him after all what a poor thing this complicated mechanism had been. He could remember his boyhood, a drear Sabbatical term of years, spent with a bearded father and a thin, acidulous mother. At school he had not been liked.
"It was no' so pleasant, now that I come to think of it."
And he was supposed to approach a strict spinster in marriage, that the destiny of the Robertsons should be accomplished; to be intimate with a frigid stranger, that another lonely and not-liked boy would be brought into the world, between a dour father and a mother of marked gentility, in a house that was cold no matter how warm the summer, and dark though the sun shone.
"I will not!"
The face of the Lindsay girl came between him and the tepid vision he had conjured, as in some motion-picture device. And he saw her warmth and bonniness, her slow laughter, her calm eyes. Why, under God's name, must she be born in a region where the Robertson tradition did not pick? Why must she be so desirable, and eligible wives so insipid?
"Ah, be damned to her!" he snapped viciously. "The whole thing can go to the de'il. It's a dog's life, that's what it is, and I 'm through. Ay, I am so."
For a year he wandered across Europe, and to and fro in it. He saw Denmark and Jutland, and though he had sworn good-by to linen, he could not help examining the quality of the flax grown there, and he did n't think much of it—as no good Belfast man should. He visited Holland and approved the industrious population, but adjudged them "o'er pleased wi' themsel's." Paris he knew before, but it palled on him now. One of his old dreams had been to go there with Jeanie Lindsay. "It's kind o' empty," he thought. England rather irritated him. People there, knowing he came from Ireland, wished to know what he thought of Home Rule and were shocked when they heard it. He went north to Scotland for golf, and the flat Scot accent made him homesick for Belfast.
"I think I 'll just run over to see how the old town 's getting on." The truth was, though he would n't acknowledge it to himself, he wanted to get news of Jeanie Lindsay. How was she? And was she the same as ever? And was she—the thought stabbed him strangely—laughing her slow laugh and looking her calm look for some other than he?
News he got of her quickly and with a vengeance. Going across Donegal Place he was tapped on the arm.
"I 'd like a wee word wi' you, Mr. Aleck Robertson."
He saw beside him a compact figure with a set jaw and savage eyes. He was mostly cognizant of the eyes. They blazed at him with unconcealed hatred.
"And who may you be?"
"You 'll know me fine afore I 'm through with you, Aleck Robertson. I 'm Tom Lindsay, Jeanie Lindsay's brother."
Robertson forgot the eyes in the question that jumped to his lips. He held out his hand.
"I ha'e heard her speak o' you. You 're the one that went to Newcastle, to the shipbuilding. And how 's Jean?"
Lindsay struck the proffered hand down.
"She 's the way you left her, wi' this difference: There 's a bastard o' yours on her arm this four months. And do you know what I 'm going to do to you for that, Aleck Robertson? I 'm going to kill you!"
"Wi' a baby!"
"Wi' a baby o' yours!"
"Wi' a baby o' mine!" Robertson was plainly dazed.
"You were no' expecting that, maybe?"
"No! I was no' expecting that." The big man tried to pull his faculties together.
"And where is she now? She 's no' gone away, is she?"
"No! She 's no' gone away. And she 's not where she might be, for all you did—in the poor-house! Nor tramping the streets, selling matches! No! She 's at home. In her father's house—"
"At home, you say?"
"She 's at home." Tom Lindsay put himself in Robertson's way. "And, now, listen to me—"
The red-bearded man shoved Tom aside as though he were a troublesome bush in the path.
"Will you get to hell out o' my way," he roared, "afore I gi'e you a clout on the lug?"
He started at breakneck speed down the street. The brother looked after him silently, his jaw loose with wonder.
He pushed aside the little gate in front of the garden and though he knocked at the door, he tried it, so impatient was he for entry, and finding it on the latch, he opened it as a gust of wind might. In the hall he met her coming to answer the knock, and suddenly as he saw her, all the bluster and the heartiness went out of him, and his knees turned to water and there was a great catch in his throat. He wanted to see her only, but the baby she had on her arm was she also, both of them one. It suddenly occurred to him that he too was a part of her, all three of them one. And he felt suddenly as Saul must have felt when, going toward Damascus, he was stricken to the earth.
She smiled at his perturbation. "I 'm glad to see you, Aleck." Calmly she shifted the child to her left arm. She put out her hand to him and he caught it and held on to it as a foundering sailor hangs on to a thrown line. She led him to the parlor.
"Have you no word," she smiled, "for me and this wee fellow o' yours?"
He looked at the both of them, she more like Ceres, the autumn spirit, than ever, buxom and wise and calmly happy, and the little thing of down and fluttering life in her arms, soft as a newly hatched chick, he sensed.
"When," he asked, and his voice in his own ears was hoarse as the cawing of a rook, "when are you going to marry me?"
"I 'm no' so sure," she said calmly, "that I 'm going to marry you at all."
"You 're going to marry me, Jeanie, and I 'll start the mill again, and we 'll all be fine—"
"And you 'll gi'e the working people the raises they're entitled to?"
"I will not," he flashed out suddenly, as of old. "They 're entitled to nothing."
"Then I'll ha' nothing to do wi' you." She looked at him calmly. "Nor will this wee fellow. I 'm a working-woman, Aleck, and he 's a working-woman's son. We 're no' your kind."
He saw the baby's face now, crumpled with sleep. Very like an old man's face it seemed to him, and yet there was something indefinably pulling about it.
"The wee workin'-fellow!" There was such a pathetic touch to the idea.
"By God!" he blurted suddenly. "I'll gi'e them the mill!"
She smiled again. "The wee thing then was missing in you, Aleck—I think you got it now. And I 'll marry you, Aleck, just when you say. It's no' too soon," she added simply.
For a minute he was sunk in abstraction while she patted his hand with the old, familiar gesture. He raised his head and spoke with conviction.
"You know, Jeanie, you know, it's queer to think that an hour ago I had no idea of all this. You and thon wee fellow, and the mill's working again and a' right between me and the men. I had made an end, and now there 'll be no end. You know, it seems ordained in a manner of speaking. Ay, as it were, ordained. It does," he said. "It does that. Ay, indeed. It does so."
Every time he came back, after a brief visit in the South American capital, to the gorge where he was building the great bridge, Lovat's heart would throb and his throat swell with pride as he looked at the great stone structure spanning the Andean chasm. First the little train would come puffing and straining up the grade, on the iron path between the lavish tropic greenery. Then there were the peaks of mountains, daring the sky, their tops lightly muffled with snow.Nevada, went the Spanish word, soft as the snow itself. Then, imminent, one felt, was the drop of the gorge, a dramatic descent that stopped the heart in its rhythmic beating. "Here is the end!" one said. And then the bridge!
Soaring, splendid, slender, strong, its arches spanning the tumbling river beneath, the great bridge ran like a rainbow from mountain to mountain. Lovat thought of it, with its lightness, its perfection, its spurning of the ground, as a spirit that crossed with winged unwetted feet the challenging river beneath. It suggested, somehow, Artemis in the dusk, with a tongue of fire above her proud brow.
The wonder and the miracle of it never failed to thrill him. All the harsh practical details of his work, details of thrust and strain, of fitting springer to pier, and voussoir to springer, of the curve of intrados, of the strength of abutments, never took away from him the sense that he had done, was doing, a great and practical thing. These mountains, that composition of jungle, that smashing drop to the turbulent river, the snarling waters themselves—all these were the work of the Great Mason, the detail of his Divine Hand. So they were when and so they had remained since the heavens and the earth were finished and all the host of them, and He rested on the seventh day from all the work which He had made.
But a day would come, the Master of the Masons knew and had ordained, when the welter of passionate nature would subside, and the small race of mankind He had fashioned would reach a place of progress in their journey when this would have to be bridged. Then one of His prentice men would do it. And Lovat experienced a sense of holiness that he had been the chosen one.
Lovat looked at the bridge with wonder and with pride each time he returned, but each time he returned he felt somehow that the bridge had been jealous of his absence, resented it, became temperamental as a woman. Whilst he was there everything was right. There were accidents, of course, but they were the recognized risks of a great venture, the ordinary failure of the human factor in a Titanic equation. But when he was away strange things happened. Now an unaccountable error in laying this or that, now a sudden collapse of machinery, now a terrible accident to the native workmen. But when he was there, all was well. It seemed as if the bridge demanded all his time, all his talent, all his attention.
It occurred to him there was a sort of contest between him and the bridge, a sort of quiet, deadly fight, as between a man and a spirited horse he is riding in a steeplechase. He felt, too, that all the strange things about him knew it—the surly river, the whispering jungle, the majestic mountains, the cold observant stars. These could tell him what it was, for they had observed all things, seeing history begin and peoples fade and nations rise. They had seen great prehistoric animals flap wings terrible and dark as a demon's. They had seen these things die and be forgotten. They were of nature and knew humanity, and they could tell him, if they wished.
But they told nothing. They observed the cruel law of silence, which all nature knows and dead men learn. The business was his and the bridge's. Let the twain fight it out.
"I 'm getting morbid, up here in the mountains," Lovat complained, and he turned abruptly to think of a month from now, when Cecily would come south from New York to marry him in Cartagena, and to be with him for the last days before the bridge was opened. Her dark, serious eyes and cloudy hair and serious smiling mouth were before him, but the shadow of the bridge rose between him and the vision of her like a barred door....
There were two mysteries in Simon Lovat's life. One was how he, a poor Highland Scots-born boy, reared in abject poverty, had ever come to be the great architect he was. And the other was how he had become engaged to Cecily Stanford, Gamaliel Stanford's only daughter, and Gamaliel Stanford was a millionaire.
He hated to think of his infancy in the little Argyle town where he was born. He hated even to think of his boyhood in New York. People, he felt, would n't understand it. They might talk of being hungry, but did they know what hunger for years was, abject hunger, malnutrition? Did these well-fed men who talked of hardship know, could they conceive of a family to whom for years a nickel meant the difference between butter on bread and dry bread? They talked of slums, and dirt, and poverty, but he kept his mouth closed. Were he to tell them what he knew of these—he himself—might they not draw back from him as they would draw back with a shudder from a man who had been close to lepers? Fine words mean so little in this world.
All his life until seven years ago, when he was twenty-five, had been a succession of cold ill-fed days, relieved by the magic thrill of bridges.
There had been a viaduct here, a railroad span there, an Egyptian arch somewhere else in Argyle that would vibrate some chord within him. A rainbow would flush him with sudden beauty. And in New York the wonder of the bridges made up for heartburnings and disappointments. The gossamer span to Brooklyn affected him like a long note on a hunting-horn. At times human weaknesses would boil within him, as when he thought with rage that other boys and men must be uplifted by the prizes and scholarships they won, feeling the pride of combat and of victory, but to him they meant only the wherewithal to live for himself and his mother and sisters. Other boys were welcomed with feastings when they had achieved success, but success meant to him only the filling of famished hands—not that he grudged it, God knows! but one hungers for a little praise, a little recognition, as one hungers for food. And then had come the days of obscurity, working for others until Gamaliel Stanford, the big, bluff builder, had recognized his genius and given him his chance. He did fine work for Stanford.
Stanford, the self-made millionaire, wished after the fashion of his kind to patronize the genius he had found, and so he brought him here, brought him there, to his club, to golf-links, to his house. And there Lovat met Cecily, Stanford's daughter....
At thirty-one Lovat met people with ease, for they meant little to him, men or women. Men, outside his own profession, were mere figures to him. They did n't count. He spoke to them in the chit-chat of the day, and when they mentioned architecture, he changed the subject deftly. The alembication of engineering and art they could n't understand, so why talk of it? Women he didn't mind so much. They had a soft place in his heart, because they had been good to him as a boy and child whom there had been few to care for.... And he had had his little love-affairs, natural as the phases of the moon—calf-love, sentiment, adoration, passion. They had loitered, knocked, passed by. None had ever touched that inmost self of him to whom God had once called and said seriously: "You are to build bridges."
And then he saw Cecily Stanford coming toward him with her serious shining eyes.
She did not say to him the ordinary, obvious things a woman says when she meets a man. She held his hand for an instant and looked at him.
"When I saw the bridge you built at Indian Ford," she told him, "I was afraid to meet you. Afraid I might be disappointed in what you were. You might have been a chunky, merry man who treats his genius as a favorite, halloing to it when needed, proud of it, patronizingly modest. Or you might have been an angular, unsure man, jealous of his talent's fame, comparing it as one compares horses. But you are just you, Simon Lovat, and your bridge is you, and you are your bridge. I 'm blessed to see you this day."
As he watched her he seemed to be watching not a woman but some fine spirit that struck a silver note in its movement. Like a silver flame in the dusk she appeared to him. There was so much spirit to her that nothing else really mattered. The strain of Highland mysticism in him gave him an uncanny power of seeing people as they were, not as they seemed to the outward eye. He could look at a certain man and say to himself with certainty, "At death that man dies," or at some sweet-faced woman, repressed, waiting, and know, "At death this woman's life begins." He saw Cecily Stanford and said: "This woman endures forever. She lives now and she will live always."
And then from the spirit within his eyes went to the body without, as one might look first at some gracious womanhood and be all eyes for her presence, forgetting for the nonce the queenly satins that clothed it. He saw her hair, like a blue cloud. Her eyes he knew. He saw the skilful symmetry of face, a little, longish face with lips half open, eagerly. He sensed the littleness of her figure, the long, firm line from knee to ankle, the small bosom, the loveliness of arms. He saw the firm, sensitive hands.
And yet she might have been nothing to him but a gracious memory, as of some splendid day, but that she was whole-heartedly interested in and understood the importance of bridges. Some generous arch, or some line of a writer's might have turned her heart that way once, and set her on that broad masonic road the charm of which endures a lifetime. A book may trouble or a picture inspire one, but those are of the spirit. But a bridge is of spirit and body. One sees the architect, one sees the art, one sees the courage and grandeur and beauty. A history of bridges is a history of the world, of its wars, its commerce, its progress. And the thoughts about it are without end.
And she could speak of all that to him. She understood the mystic errand of the builder of bridges, which is to be the servant of unborn men. Old wisdom that had been lost was reborn in her. She could feel why the heads of a great religion should call themselves proudly sovereign pontiffs—pontiff,pontifex, builder of bridges. She could understand the reverence that stirred in Highlanders when they crossed a bridge and removed their bonnets. "God bless the builder of the bridge!" their prayer went.
She could understand the ideals of an ancient age, when a community of monks called themselves the Pontist Brothers, theFrères Pontifes. Modest, white-robed, they built bridges of great fame, they operated ferry-boats, they fed and housed pilgrims. But their greatest care was the building and upkeep of bridges. Before Pius II suppressed them, they built the Pont Saint-Esprit over the Rhone, one of the largest stone bridges in the world; a thousand meters long, it is, with twenty-six great arches. Surely their spirits guard it still!
She could understand the arrogant cry of the Roman architect when he finished the great Alcantare over the Tagus. "Pontem perpetui mansurum in saecula mundi," Lacer smiled. "It shall see the end of the world." The Saracen trampled and Charles V rebuilt it. Wellington's troops blew it up, and the Carlists fought on its Titanic arches. All these causes are forgotten now. But the bridge, the bridge remains.
And because she understood these things, she understood Simon Lovat, and got close to his heart, which none had ever been near.
Lovat told her his fear that never again would great stone bridges be built. The days of beauty in bridges were past, like the days of chivalry. Long steel suspension bridges, with their infinity of metal triangles, or marvels of carpentry, such as the Portage Bridge over the Genesee. But never again would they build bridges such as the Romans did, like the dreadful Pont du Gard at Nîmes.
"They will, Simon," she told him. "You will build like that."
"Never, Cecily. Never again!"
"Yes, Simon. I know."
"All those days are gone, Cecily."
"Not for you." The conviction would shine from her eyes. "I know it here—" she touched her head—"and here—" she touched her bosom.
And he was persuaded somehow that she was right, though his head told him she could not be, for cement and steel are cheaper and quicker, and only cheapness and rapidity obtain now that people no longer dream of to-morrow. And the soldier's honor and the sailor's courage, and the writer's fire and the builder's genius—yes, and the dreams of great merchants, too, Lovat grimaced—are curbed and roweled by the huckster's purse. Impossible! But somehow because she believed it, the thought took form and substance in his heart, that one day he would build a great bridge—of stone.
How they came so close to each other, neither knew. It was just as natural as a tree growing out of the green ground. They came so close that they could be silent, each with the other, for a long time, each knowing, feeling what the other thought. Then they would smile at each other with a strange seriousness....
One afternoon, in the December dusk, his heart opened suddenly, and all, all the horror of his early years came rushing like a flood from a broken dam. Why he told her he didn't know. He didn't believe it possible to tell any one. Yet here he was, standing by the window of the drawing-room, looking out at the street glistening with fog, while she sat huddled in a great arm-chair by the log fire. And out of his lips in harsh staccato sentences came the sordidness of his infant days....
"... We were pleased when we found it. And Joan took it under a shawl and went out. But we had forgotten that the pawnbroker closed at six. So there was nothing to eat until he should open in the morning.... We all cried...."
He was interrupted by her terrible fit of sobbing. Suddenly he came out of his tragic vision.
"I 'm sorry I should have horrified you," he said, aghast. "I don't know what came over me to tell such things. I 'll go."
But she was in his arms, weeping bitterly. "To think that you and I should have been in the same city! And I had everything, and you nothing. You hungry! Cold! Oh, Simon! Simon!" Though they were as close as this, as close as birds in a nest are, yet there had never been between them any talk of marriage, any talk of life other than they were leading that week. He knew he loved her tremendously, but fear of refusal and Scots pride because he was poor kept the question in his heart. And she, because she was modest as she was brave, never said anything, though she knew, she knew...
At last the miracle happened. Two South American commonwealths, with the hearts of children and the bravery of men, decided to span the Andes with an immense bridge. They saw only peaceful progress in front of them, not war. The bridge was to be of stone, because stone was plentiful and labor cheap, and to bring steel up the mountain gorge would be a wasteful undertaking. First a German architect was to have the work, for they had the foothold there, and then an Englishman stepped in confidently. But old Gamaliel Stanford had his friends in New York, heads of great fruit companies and immense agricultural-machinery syndicates, and banks powerful as nations. So Simon Lovat was chosen.
When he and Cecily were told, he was dumb. She said nothing, but her shining eyes spoke, and she sat and watched the proud throw of his head as he thought of arches as powerful as the Romans', of great spans one hundred and fifty feet in width, of voussoirs weighing each eighty tons of stone. Suddenly he knew her eyes were showering him with joy and confidence, and he put out his hand fearfully.
"When this is done, Cecily—" he was red as a school-boy—"would you—could you—will you marry me?"
"Whom else could I marry, dearest one?" she answered simply.
Now they were married and moved into their house, a cool bungalow on the green hills. Love and passion abode with them, silent and strong and clean as the winds on the great bridge below. Above them of nights was the immense mosaic of the stars—the stars of the North, and the stars Northerners knew not; the Southern Cross, the false cross and the True, and an infinity of little worlds to southward yet unnamed, and which mariners had marked with quaint Greek letters in their charts. When the moon arose it was tremendously near, as near as Africa, so they could distinguish the immense blue mountains and the dips and whorls of her to whom poets had given fanciful, colorful names: the Bay of Rainbows, the Green Lagoon. And all about them at night were movement and mystery,—the screeching of parakeets, the chattering and whistling of monkeys,—and in the dark green jungle there was rustling, as of pied serpents, and crackling, as of jaguars with limbs of flame.
And then the dawn would come, and the earth, a mysterious womanhood by night, would enter with the sun as a gracious lady. Clothed in glistening green, and jeweled with humming-birds and the sheen of parrots, she was like some barbaric princess of ancient days, such as Balkis, Queen of Sheba, must have been when she went forth from Arabia Felix to view the magnificence of Solomon the king.
There was mystery at night and there was majesty in the daytime, and that all of nature, and then a little path of the mountainside, a little turn, a pace a big man could make, and there arose suddenly concentration and genius, the bridge. One felt stunned at seeing it; a man might catch his breath and swear, a woman might cry, so great was its drama. Arch by white arch it spanned the tropic gulf, and above it, straight as an arrow, ran the line of roadway. Superb and splendid and slender, it joined the green-clad mountains, as the web of a master spider joins two branches of a tree. Very high it was, "so high that it was dreadful," the words of Ezekiel came to one's mind, and beneath it now swirled, now weltered the tropic river, on its way to join the Amazon, greatest of waters.
And yet somehow the bridge loitered, refused to be finished, brooded, sulked. So much did it fight against him that had it not been for his wife Cecily, time and time again Lovat would have lost heart.
But she was there with him, and in some hidden mystical way she had to do with the bridge. One look at her, one touch of her, and he regained courage and patience. Silently and strong she moved by his side, by day in her man's breeches and gaiters and sport coat, by night in her dark-blue garment with its rolling collar of white, somehow like a monk's but of line and beauty. Very like a flower she was, a Northern flower, straight and slender and supple and velvety, and strong. Yes, she had to do with the bridge, for he had only to look into her serious smiling eyes, and to him, through her, out of somewhere, flowed strength and wisdom.
Yes, she had to do with the bridge, he knew. Her being here was not fortuitous. That she was a young bride on her honeymoon in an enchanted land, was not, as it is to most women, the only thing in the world. They were two lovers, but they were oblivious of all things, sympathized with by all things. The bridge was there. And between him and her and the bridge there existed some strange link of destiny. There were three of them. Two of them were happy, but the bridge was sullen. Two of them were uncertain, but the bridge was sure.
Out of dumb rock and lifeless iron the bridge arose. First these were only amorphous objects, and then through the fire of genius was evoked an entity. The bridge had a personality strong as a man's, as houses have personalities, and some trees. It rose there strong and slim and beautiful and of use to men, but terrible as an army with banners. And though Simon Lovat and his wife Cecily said nothing to each other about it, yet there arose in both their minds that the bridge demanded and needed something. And ancient lore of bridges came to them in lightning flashes of memory—old stories of terror that told of human sacrifice before a bridge would stand. What ancient mysticism made the priests of the Pons Sublicius of olden Rome throw dummies of human beings into the Tiber on festal days? What horror of old made British Vortigern build his castle over the dead body of a murdered boy? Even in China of to-day, a pig was thrown into the river in times of flood, that the bridge should hold. And gnarled old masons told tales....
Old wives' tales! Ancient vile superstition! And yet, what wisdom had departed from the world since ancient days! Not spiritual wisdom alone but material wisdom. How were the great blocks of the pyramids raised? We were n't certain of that! The mighty things of Easter Island, yes, and the great stone legacies of the Incas! We did n't know. And the progress of the world was not spiritual. It was material. And we were n't even certain of material things.
Why did they do it, Lovat pondered! Was it a sacrifice to the bridge itself? A tribute to the idol they had made with their own hands? Hardly! For that would be the idea of barbarians, and barbarians never built great bridges. Was it a sacrifice to the cruelty of the great elements that might endanger the bridge? Possibly. And yet storm was so powerful and so cruel when it felt that way that nothing would hinder it. What was it? He did n't know.
And yet the bridge demanded, needed something.
Cecily felt it,, too, he knew, for she spoke one evening in the lamplight, with averted eyes.
"Dearest one, it sounds a silly question, but why are you building the bridge?"
"Because it's my work, Cecily, to build bridges." He felt what she meant.
"Dearest one, if the bridge were to fall, you would be heartbroken, would n't you?"
"I 'm afraid I should, Cecily."
"Why, dearest one? Is it because you are proud of your bridge? That you want generations to remember you by your bridge?"
"No, Cecily," he thought seriously, "it is n't that. I—I 'm just a helper of the Master Mason, and if the bridge were to fall, I should feel I was a poor, an unworthy helper. That's how I feel, Cecily. That's why I should be heart-broken."
She put down the sewing work she was doing, and came to him, her eyes misty. She took his hands. She knelt by his side.
"I know, my lover," she whispered, a little huskily, "but your bridge will never fall. Believe it, dearest one. Believe it night and day."
But the bridge bothered him. And all her wise courage could not still its silent clamor. He could watch the ant-like battalions of men as they laid stone on stone, chanting in the guttural Chibcha as the bridge-builders of Persia chanted when they built the Perl-i-Khaju at Ispahan. But above their voices came the silent voice of the bridge, loud as thunder. Until he could stand it no longer.
"What is it you want? In God's name what do you want?"
"You know."
"I don't know."
"Ta-wak knew when he builded the great wall of China."
"I don't know."
"King Cheops knew when he builded his great pyramid at Ghizeh."
"But I don't know."
"The Romans knew when they raised the bridges of Gaul. You know, building me."
"I don't know. I won't know." Lovat broke from the place, his forehead damp with perspiration. And as he went toward his cottage, it seemed to him that the jungle and the mountains and all the creatures of the wilds were watching with their inhuman apathetic eyes the Titanic struggle between himself and the thing he had conceived into being, out of lifeless iron and dumb stone.
For two days in the South American city Lovat now raged like a madman, now was limp and gray as if all life had left. The storm crashed like artillery. The wind swirled in terrific outshoots of uncontrolled power. Rain whorled like a water-burst. And all the time there ran through Lovat's head the unending, pounding rhythm: "The bridge! The bridge is down! Is down! The bridge! The bridge is down!" Statesmen and ministers looked at him in pity, forgetting the country's loss in the great grief of the artist.
Cecily he was n't worried about. He knew she was all right. There was an army to take care of her there, and their home was solid, would last against the deluge.
Three days ago and no warning of this cataclysm.
And now, to-day! To-day was like the Day of Judgment. To be sure, a half-crazy astronomer had predicted the end of the world, and sane scientists had pooh-poohed it, saying that there might be bad weather from the stellar conjunctions, but outside of that—nothing. And then, suddenly, this immensity of flood. Down in the lowlands, on the shore of the Caribbees, there had been havoc past imagining. Whole towns were swept away. There had been no chance of getting in touch with the bridge. All telegraph wires were down.
Now it was Wednesday, and on Sunday he had left to discuss some details of the opening with the ministry and he had asked Cecily to come with him, but she would not go.
"Lover, no," she had said; "I would rather stay here by the bridge."
"But, Cecily, you have n't been away from here in two months. Would n't you like to come to the city? There 'll be clothes to buy and people to see, and an opera from Madrid. Come, Cecily."
"Dearest one, no!" she had refused. She smiled. "One of us must stay by the bridge."
"But, Cecily—"
"No! No!"
She loved the bridge as much as he.
On the little platform of the working railroad station he had said good-by to her. The train started and she ran alongside.
"Stop the train!" she cried.
He pulled the emergency cord.
"What is it, Cecily? Changing your mind?"
"Dearest one, I just want to kiss you again before you go. Just once more. I 'm a silly woman."
"Come with me, Cecily. Come as you are. We can get you clothes in town."
"No, lover. I must stay and take care of your bridge. I don't mind who 's looking, lover. Just—kiss me again."
Had she some premonition of the disaster? Did that spiritual wisdom which we call intuition, tell her of ruin that was hovering like a hawk? Poor Cecily! How heartbroken she'd be. Her eyes, her poor eyes, would be burnt with crying. Poor Cecily! Perhaps he could make her believe it did n't matter. Nothing mattered so long as he had her. Ah, but it did! He would never build another bridge. He might do mighty structures of iron and cement, immense feats of engineering, but never a great stone bridge again. Never again!... Poor Cecily!
He had steeled himself to see it all, and on Saturday when the storm had subsided, and the little train started up the mountainside, his face was a gray mask, and the nearer the top he came, the more impassive, the grayer was his face. A little turn of a boulder and he knew he 'd see the ruin. A few piles and the welter of the swollen river attacking them. His eyes were open, but he saw nothing. The official beside him suddenly screamed.
"My God! Excellency! The bridge!"
"Yes, I know. The bridge is down."
"The bridge is there. Excellency, the bridge is there!"
All Lovat could do was to laugh, a vacant laugh. Yes, it was there. But it was so impossible. The sun suddenly flashed behind it, and he saw the arrogant white structure soar like a bird, joining green hill to green hill. Beneath it rolled an unknown river, not the tumbling, snarling river of a week before, but a brown concave current, become gigantic, flying northward to the greatest of waters and carrying on its thewed back death and desolation. There was something that looked like a man and then an ox. And here was the wreckage of a homestead. And there was a jaguar and here was a great serpent of the jungle, and now a horse and here a gigantic tree. But the bridge spurned the river, floated on it like a swan. Lovat jumped off on the platform.
"It holds! It stays!" he cried exultantly. He rushed toward the house. "Cecily, it holds!"
But he felt, as he flung open the door, that the house was empty.
"Cecily! Where are you, Cecily?"
There was no one there but a weeping, terrified maid.
"Where is Madame? Where is your señora?"
But she only wept and wrung her hands. Lovat, half crazy, yanked her to her feet, and shook her.
"Where is Madame?
"Cecily! Cecily!"
He ran outside. It suddenly occurred to him that all his men had made way for him from the station, with silent pitying eyes. Why, they should have been cheering, too, but for something—
"Cecily! Cecily!" He ran around the little house.
One of the big Inca foreman detached himself from a standing group, and stood in front of the frenzied man.
"Excellency," he said, "there's no good calling Madame. Madame has left us."
"Left us? What do you mean?"
"Excellency—" the big Indian threw his hands toward the river—"the bridge is there, but Madame has left us. Don't you understand?"
With numbing force the blow descended on Lovat.
"The bridge took her, you mean."
"No, señor. She left us."
Lovat suddenly straightened up.
"Mason, what do you mean?"
"Señor, when the wind came and the flood, the men quit. The wind shrieked through the arches. The river rose and attacked the piers. And the bridge groaned, and we left. It was the will of God, we thought. He did n't want this chasm joined.
"And I came up toward your house, señor, to see if everything was right there. I met Madame on the path. She had her big black cloak on.
"'You had better go back, señora,' I said.
"'I am going to the bridge,' she said.
"'But it is growing black as night, señora; you had better go back.'
"'Stand aside, Vicente,' was all she said. And there was something in her eyes that made me give way. She went on.
"Excellency, I loved Madame, as did every one here. And she liked me. And I was your man. I followed her down the path. I caught up to her at the bridge. It was blue dark, like twilight. The bridge was quivering. I caught the edge of her cape.
"'What are you going to do, señora?'
"'Stand aside, Vicente.'
"'You are crazy, señora!' I cried out.
"'No, Vicente, I am wise.'
"'You must n't, señora!'
"'I must, Vicente.'
"'Let me, señora,' I pleaded.
"'Vicente,' she said, 'you 've done your work on the bridge. Now I must do mine.'
"I could n't stop her, Excellency. Something in the face, in the eyes—I don't know—I dropped on my knees. She moved over the bridge.
"Excellency, from the time she was on it the bridge stopped quivering, the wind hushed. I saw her drop her cloak as she stood in the center. I saw her step forward, sure, unafraid. And for an instant I saw her, like a blossom in the wind....
"And so, Excellency, the bridge stands, will always stand...."