Willa Sibert Cather

“ After dinner Alexander took Wilson up to his study. It was a large room over the library, and looked out upon the black river and the row of white lights along the Cambridge Embankment. The room was not at all what one might expect of an engineer's study. Wilson felt at once the harmony of beautiful things that have lived long together without obtrusions of ugliness or change. It was none of Alexander's doing, of course; those warm consonances of color had been blending and mellowing before he was born. ”

“ The audience had come forewarned, evidently, and whenever the ragged slip of a donkey-girl ran upon the stage there was a deep murmur of approbation, every one smiled and glowed, and Mainhall hitched his heavy chair a little nearer the brass railing.
“You see,” he murmured in Alexander's ear, as the curtain fell on the first act, “one almost never sees a part like that done without smartness or mawkishness. Of course Hilda is Irish—the Burgoynes have been stage people for generations—and she has the Irish voice. It's delightful to hear it in a London theater. ”

“ Wilson reflected that he had never before known a woman who had been able, for any considerable while, to support both a personal and an intellectual passion. Sitting behind her, he watched her with perplexed admiration, shading his eyes with his hand. In her dinner-dress she looked even younger than in street-clothes, and, for all her composure and self-sufficiency, she seemed to him strangely alert and vibrating, as if in her, too, there were something never altogether at rest. ”

“ When the story was finished, Miss Burgoyne turned pointedly to Alexander, and the other men drifted away.
“T thought I saw you in MacConnell's box with Mainhall one evening, but I supposed you had left town before this.” She looked at him frankly and cordially, as if he were indeed merely an old friend whom she was glad to meet again.
“No, I've been mooning about here.”
Hilda laughed gaily. “Mooning! I see you mooning! You must be the busiest man in the world. Time and success have done well by you, you know. You're handsomer than ever and you've gained a grand manner.” ”

“ Alexander, you have strange delicacies. If you please, that is exactly why you wish to see me. We understand that, do we not?”
Bartley looked ruffled and turned the seal-ring on his little finger about awkwardly. Hilda leaned back in her chair, watching him indulgently out of her shrewd eyes. “Come, don't be angry, but don't try to pose for me, or to be anything but what you are. If you care to come, it's yourself I'll be glad to see, and you thinking well of yourself. Don't try to wear a cloak of humility; it doesn't become you. Stalk in as you are and don't make excuses. ”

“ Your life keeps going for things you don't want, and all the while you are being built alive into a social structure you don't care arap about. I sometimes wonder what sort of chap I'd have been if I hadn't been this sort; I want to go and live out his potentialities, too. I haven't forgotten that there are birds in the bushes.” Bartley stopped and sat frowning into the fire, his shoulders thrust forward as if he were about to spring at something. ”

“ This feeling was the only happiness that was real to him, and such hours were the only ones in which he could feel his own identity—feel the boy he had been in the rough days of the old West, feel the youth who had worked his way across the ocean on a cattle-ship and gone to study in Paris without a dollar in his pocket. The man who sat in his offices in Boston was only a powerful machine. ”

“ Alexander explained, as she crossed to an upright piano that stood at the back of the room, near the windows. Wilson followed, and, having seen her seated, dropped into a chair behind her. She played brilliantly and with great musical feeling. Wilson could not imagine her permitting herself to do anything badly, but he was surprised at the cleanness of her execution. He wondered how a woman with so many duties had managed to keep herself up to a standard really professional. It must take a great deal of time, certainly, and Bartley must take a great deal of time. ”

“ Mainhall, indeed, knew almost every one, and he babbled on incontinently, screwing his small head about over his high collar. Presently he hailed a tall, bearded man, grim-browed and rather battered-looking, who had his opera-cloak on his arm and his hat in his hand, and who seemed to be on the point of leaving the theater.
“I say, MacConnell, let me introduce Mr. Bartley Alexander. It's going famously to-night, Mac. And what a house! You'll never do anything like this again, mark me. A man writes to the top of his bent only once.” ”

“ Mainhall offered to take me. But you must know that I've been in London several times within the last few years, and you might very well think that just now is a rather inopportune time——”
She cut him short. “Nonsense. One of the pleasantest things about success is that it makes people want to look one up, if that's what you mean. I'm like every one else—more agreeable to meet when things are going well with me. Don't you suppose it gives me any pleasure to do something that people like?” ”

“ You see, one can't be jealous about things in general; but about particular, definite, personal things,”—here she had thrown her hands up to his shoulders with a quick, impulsive gesture,—“oh, about those I should be very jealous. I should torture myself—I couldn't help it.” After that it was easy to forget, actually to forget. He wondered to-night, as he poured his wine, how many times he had thought of Hilda in the last ten years. He had been in London more or less, but he had never happened to hear of her. “All the same,” he lifted his glass, “here's to you, little Hilda. ”

“ Alexander blushed and bowed. “Time and success have been good friends to both of us. Aren't you tremendously pleased with yourself?”
She laughed again and shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, so-so But I want to hear about you. Several years ago I read such a lot in the papers about the wonderful things you did in Japan, and how the Emperor decorated you. What was it, Commander of the Order of the Rising Sun? That sounds like 'The Mikado.' And what about your new bridge—in Canada, isn't it, and it's to be the longest in the world and has some queer name I can't remember.” ”

“ Mainhall murmured. “He's terribly hard hit. He's been wanting to marry Hilda these three years and more. She doesn't take up with anybody, you know. Irene Burgoyne, one of her family, told me in confidence that there was a romance somewhere back in the beginning. One of your countrymen, Alexander, by the way; an American student whom she met in Paris, I believe. I dare say it's quite true there's never been any one else.” Mainhall vouched for her constancy with a loftiness that made Alexander smile, though a kind of rapid excitement was tingling through him. ”

“ The long brown room breathed the peace of a rich and amply guarded quiet. Tea was brought in immediately and placed in front of the wood fire. Mrs. Alexander sat down in a high-backed chair and began to pour it, while Wilson sank into a low seat opposite her and took his cup with a great sense of ease and harmony and comfort.
“You have had a long journey, haven't you?” said Mrs. Alexander, after showing gracious concern about his tea. “And I am so sorry Bartley is late. He's apt to be tired when he's late. ”

“ He had always meant to keep his personal liberty at all costs, as old MacKeller, his first chief, had done, and not, like so many American engineers, to become a part of a professional movement, a cautious board member, a Nestor de pontibus. He happened to be engaged in work of public utility, but he was not willing to become what is called a public man. He found himself living exactly the kind of life he had determined to escape. ”

“ And another curious thing, Bartley,”—Wilson spoke with deliberateness and settled deeper into his chair,—“is that I don't feel it any longer. I am sure of you.”
Alexander laughed. “Nonsense! It's not I you feel sure of; it's Winifred. People often make that mistake.”
“No, I'm serious, Alexander. You've changed. You have decided to leave some birds in the bushes. You used to want them all.”
Alexander's chair creaked. “I still want a good many,” he said rather gloomily. “After all, life doesn't offer a man much. ”

“ MacKeller, Bartley's first chief, was an old friend of my aunt, and he told her that Bartley was a wild, ill-governed youth, which really pleased her very much. I remember we were sitting alone in the dusk after Bartley had been there for the first time. I knew that Aunt Eleanor had found him much to her taste, but she hadn't said anything. Presently she came out, with a chuckle: 'MacKeller found him sowing wild oats in London, I believe. I hope he didn't stop him too soon. Life coquets with dashing fellows. The coming men are always like that. ”

“ Although Mainhall's enthusiasm was often tiresome, and although he was often unable to distinguish between facts and the vivid figments of his imagination, his imperturbable good nature overcame even the people whom he bored most, so that they ended by becoming, in a reluctant manner, his friends. ”

“ I happen to have MacConnell's box for to-night or there'd be no chance of our getting places. There's everything in seeing Hilda while she's fresh in a part. She's apt to grow a bit stale after a time. The ones who have any imagination do.”
“Hilda Burgoyne!” Alexander exclaimed mildly. “Why, I haven't heard of her for—years.”
Mainhall laughed. “Then you can't have heard much at all, my dear Alexander. It's only lately, since MacConnell and his set have got hold of her, that she's come up. Myself, I always knew she had it in her. If we had one real critic in London—but what can one expect? ”

“ But predicting, in the case of boys, is not so easy as you might imagine, Mrs. Alexander. Some get a bad hurt early and lose their courage; and some never get a fair wind. Bartley”—he dropped his chin on the back of his long hand and looked at her admiringly—“Bartley caught the wind early, and it has sung in his sails ever since.”
Mrs. Alexander sat looking into the fire with intent preoccupation, and Wilson studied her half-averted face. ”

“ She was the first woman of that sort I'd ever known. You know how it is in the West—old people are poked out of the way. Aunt Eleanor fascinated me as few young women have ever done. I used to go up from the works to have tea with her, and sit talking to her for hours. It was very stimulating, for she couldn't tolerate stupidity.”
“That must have been when your luck began, Bartley,” said Wilson, flicking his cigar ash with his long finger. ”