On Tuesday afternoon a Boston lawyer, who had been trying a case in
Vermont, was standing on the siding at White River Junction when the
Canadian Express pulled by on its northward journey. As the day-coaches
at the rear end of the long train swept by him, the lawyer noticed at
one of the windows a man's head, with thick rumpled hair. "Curious," he
thought; "that looked like Alexander, but what would he be doing back
there in the daycoaches?"
It was, indeed, Alexander.
That morning a telegram from Moorlock had reached him, telling him that
there was serious trouble with the bridge and that he was needed there
at once, so he had caught the first train out of New York. He had taken
a seat in a day-coach to avoid the risk of meeting any one he knew, and
because he did not wish to be comfortable. When the telegram arrived,
Alexander was at his rooms on Tenth Street, packing his bag to go to
Boston. On Monday night he had written a long letter to his wife, but
when morning came he was afraid to send it, and the letter was still in
his pocket. Winifred was not a woman who could bear disappointment. She
demanded a great deal of herself and of the people she loved; and
she never failed herself. If he told her now, he knew, it would be
irretrievable. There would be no going back. He would lose the thing
he valued most in the world; he would be destroying himself and his own
happiness. There would be nothing for him afterward. He seemed to see
himself dragging out a restless existence on the Continent--Cannes,
Hyeres, Algiers, Cairo--among smartly dressed, disabled men of every
nationality; forever going on journeys that led nowhere; hurrying to
catch trains that he might just as well miss; getting up in the morning
with a great bustle and splashing of water, to begin a day that had no
purpose and no meaning; dining late to shorten the night, sleeping late
to shorten the day.
And for what? For a mere folly, a masquerade, a little thing that he
could not let go. AND HE COULD EVEN LET IT GO, he told himself. But he
had promised to be in London at mid-summer, and he knew that he would
go. . . . It was impossible to live like this any longer.
And this, then, was to be the disaster that his old professor had
foreseen for him: the crack in the wall, the crash, the cloud of dust.
And he could not understand how it had come about. He felt that he
himself was unchanged, that he was still there, the same man he had been
five years ago, and that he was sitting stupidly by and letting some
resolute offshoot of himself spoil his life for him. This new force was
not he, it was but a part of him. He would not even admit that it was
stronger than he; but it was more active. It was by its energy that this
new feeling got the better of him. His wife was the woman who had made
his life, gratified his pride, given direction to his tastes and habits.
The life they led together seemed to him beautiful. Winifred still was,
as she had always been, Romance for him, and whenever he was deeply
stirred he turned to her. When the grandeur and beauty of the world
challenged him--as it challenges even the most self-absorbed people--he
always answered with her name. That was his reply to the question put
by the mountains and the stars; to all the spiritual aspects of life.
In his feeling for his wife there was all the tenderness, all the pride,
all the devotion of which he was capable. There was everything but
energy; the energy of youth which must register itself and cut its name
before it passes. This new feeling was so fresh, so unsatisfied and
light of foot. It ran and was not wearied, anticipated him everywhere.
It put a girdle round the earth while he was going from New York to
Moorlock. At this moment, it was tingling through him, exultant, and
live as quicksilver, whispering, "In July you will be in England."