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.
V
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.
VI
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.
VII
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....