Chapter VIII: The Lovers Make Pictures on Paper and Heart

The next morning bright and early--adjectives that refer not only to the morning, but to the man and, as we shall see, to the woman--Meade hurried down the platform he had traversed late and slowly because he was leaving her the night before. The men were not yet called to work, they had not had their breakfasts even. The sun had just risen. He did not expect to see anyone at that hour at the private car toward which he stepped softly, he just wanted to be there so he could be near the woman whom, in spite of the fact that they were separated by the steel and glass walls of the car, he still could feel in his arms.

We all know the proverb about the early bird and the worm. It seems almost ungallant even to think it in this instance, but Bertram Meade certainly caught Helen Illingworth because he was on hand at the break of day. She too had been moved to early rising, for as he stopped abreast of the car she came from the door and stood surprised and, like Aurora, rosy with the dawn, especially in cheeks, if an adjective so common as rosy may be applied to the flush of color that flamed beneath her sensitive skin as she saw him and came down to him.

He had not expected to see her and she had not expected to see him, and it was necessary for both of them to make elaborate explanations each to the other of this indubitable fact. Explanations are said to be dangerous; not, however, is that true when they are sandwiched between kisses. If you rise early enough, that is before anybody else, you may kiss unobserved by the world; and if you do it softly, even while you stand under the open window of a car behind the curtain of which a father nods, you may do it with impunity.

When a brief period of sanity ensued--"I came out to see the bridge," said the girl.

"I had a sweeter object in view than any structures of stone and steel."

"Knowing man as I do, I infer----" began the woman archly.

"Your deductive powers, like yourself, are beyond praise," he interrupted.

"Some lady in the field?" she concluded.

"In the car."

"But you couldn't see me," she began, with dismay well assumed.

"In my mind's eye I can see nothing else, not even the bridge. When I look at that bridge the sound of your voice speaks to me in every whisper of the wind through the steel. I can hear the swish of the silk of your dress, the grind of the slipping gusset as I did last night. I can recall the beating of your heart as I caught you and we stood rocking on the very edge. It would not have been such a bad death after all," he continued, "for we would have gone down together and the last beat of each heart would have been against the last beat of the other."

The woman looked at him. The gay badinage with which they had begun suddenly seemed inappropriate.

"It's better to live together," she said softly, "even than to die together."

"Yes, of course. But I am not sure of----"

"Me?"

"Of myself. I don't see how such happiness can come to me. I've done nothing to deserve it."

"You're making the bridge."

"A man might make a million bridges and not be worthy of one woman like you."

"I told you last night that to hear you say that, even though it is not true and I know it isn't----" she went on, stopping his protest with her hand lightly touching his lips.

"I didn't make it half strong enough," he interposed, kissing her fingers.

"It was worth all the risk and I don't know why you have any fears. I belong to you now. If it hadn't been for you I shouldn't have been here at all. My life is yours by right of conquest."

"Only for that?" cried the man.

"And by my heart's gift as well," she added softly.

"Oh," said Meade, "I can't understand it. It's beyond me."

He looked at her, fresh, white, sweet, cool, lovely, and then at himself, rough, rugged, stark, strong. Now Helen Illingworth was not fragile or delicate, but one of the charms of woman is that if she wills she can easily look that which she is not, on occasion. He knew that she was a strong, vigorous young woman, yet it pleased him to think of her then as a flower, spirituelle, daintily dependent. She looked the part and she acted it too, because she divined his wish.

She laid her hand on his arm. The light pressure which thrilled him telegraphed dependence, abandonment, trust, through the fibers of his being to his very soul. He looked down at her hand. It was not the smallest thing on earth. It was the firm hand of the splendid woman. It fell upon his arm lightly, not with the delicate touch of the hand of little use, but with a pressure of beautiful proportion and womanly tenderness.

Yet it seemed to him smaller than he imagined a woman's hand could be and the hand with which he clasped hers appeared huge and rough indeed. And it seemed so to her, too, his hand that is, yet the qualities that he deprecated in his own hands were those that she admired. She, too, was conscious of the difference between her fleecy lightness and his severe strength.

They walked up and down the platform between the bridge and the car, her hand still on his arm. By no mental process whatsoever could one conclude that she really needed support or that he actually gave it, yet both agreed on those points. Love, like Gratiano, speaketh an infinite deal of nothing, but unlike the Venetian the conversers treasure the lightest word. They were both to live on the remembrance of the glorious trivialities, from the world's point of view, of last night and that morning. Yes, they were destined to live on those, far, far longer than they dreamed.

So pacing up and down they came at last to stop beside the car. There were signs of life about it. They passed by it to the observation platform. Meade climbed up, opened the gate, let down the step, and helped his lady-love up. She invited him to breakfast, preparations for which were already under way. He had not thought about it and neither had she, although they were both possessed of healthy appetites, but it was an excuse for a further exchange of the limitless variety of trifles which make up the secret and beloved part of our most cherished recollections.

They sat together in the camp chairs talking and gazing their full. No ideas were ever so wonderful to her as his; nor to him, as hers. They had begun to plan their future on the completion of the bridge. They would go abroad when they were married. He had been everywhere and seen everything, and so had she, but now they would see them together. It would be quite different. Life would begin with the completion of the bridge.

A pencil and a piece of paper lay on the little table which had been left on the platform the night before. So still had been the summer night that the paper had not been disturbed by breeze or human hand. When Helen Illingworth rose to press the electric button to summon an attendant Meade picked up the scrap and--by what chance who knew, since he had not taken his eyes from her throughout the long morning, not even when she told him to look at the bridge--he glanced down at the paper. She turned to find him looking at it with wrinkled brow.

"What is this?" he asked.

"What is what?" she returned with a little jealousy, for it was the first moment of attention he had given to anything but to her.

He held it up to her. She saw a curious little sketch on the paper made with some care so as to show four huge webs of steel connected at the top and bottom by lacings of steel angles.

"It looks like part of the bridge," she announced with a glance downward.

"It is a part of the bridge," he said promptly. "It is one of the big compression members of the lower chord of the truss."

There Was a little trouble in his face of which she was dimly conscious, yet it was not sufficient to call for comment.

"Mr. Abbott and Mr. Curtiss were talking about it yesterday evening. Mr. Curtiss said something about its design that I happened to overhear. One of them must have drawn it. Mr. Abbott probably. I came out on the platform just before you came to dinner. Mr. Abbott was telling Mr. Curtiss it was all right. He seemed to have some doubt. It is all right, isn't it?"

"Of course, of course," said Meade. "You know it's the member we were discussing last night."

He picked up the pencil, as is the habit of engineers, and began to sketch just as Abbott had done the night before. As he talked she bent over him.

"Why," she said, "you're making a little picture of the bridge, aren't you?"

He dropped the pencil.

"It's a habit we all have."

She picked up the paper and looked at it carefully.

"Finish it," she said, handing it back to him.

"I'll make you a fine drawing of it when I have more time."

"No, just that. It came by chance just as we came to know that we loved each other."

"Didn't you know it before?" he went on, taking the pencil and laying the paper on the table while he worked rapidly.

"I hoped. Didn't you?"

"I never dreamed that such a thing could be possible."

"And I had to fall off a bridge to make you speak, did I, incredibly stupid man?"

"You did, adorably wise woman," he laughed in glad affirmation.

"It is finished," he said as he handed the rough sketch back to her. She bent over him, looking at it carefully. With a few bold outlines and expert strokes he had drawn a different sketch above the strut Curtiss and Abbott had debated over, the outreaching cantilever with the suspended span, traveler and everything just as it stood. "There," he said, pointing with his pencil to the outer end of the floor, "that is where it happened."

She pressed it to her heart.

"I don't have to do this, it is printed there without this, but I will just keep the sketch to look at it and think of it when we are parted."

"Good-morning," said the Colonel, coming out of the door of the car.