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_ 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. _
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