Alexander's Bridge by Willa Cather

CHAPTER I

Late one brilliant April afternoon Professor
Lucius Wilson stood at the head of Chestnut Street,
looking about him with the pleased air of a man
of taste who does not very often get to Boston.
He had lived there as a student, but for
twenty years and more, since he had been
Professor of Philosophy in a Western
university, he had seldom come East except
to take a steamer for some foreign port.
Wilson was standing quite still, contemplating
with a whimsical smile the slanting street,
with its worn paving, its irregular, gravely
colored houses, and the row of naked trees on
which the thin sunlight was still shining.
The gleam of the river at the foot of the hill
made him blink a little, not so much because it
was too bright as because he found it so pleasant.
The few passers-by glanced at him unconcernedly,
and even the children who hurried along with their
school-bags under their arms seemed to find it
perfectly natural that a tall brown gentleman
should be standing there, looking up through
his glasses at the gray housetops.

The sun sank rapidly; the silvery light
had faded from the bare boughs and the
watery twilight was setting in when Wilson
at last walked down the hill, descending into
cooler and cooler depths of grayish shadow.
His nostril, long unused to it, was quick to
detect the smell of wood smoke in the air,
blended with the odor of moist spring earth
and the saltiness that came up the river with
the tide.  He crossed Charles Street between
jangling street cars and shelving lumber
drays, and after a moment of uncertainty
wound into Brimmer Street.  The street was
quiet, deserted, and hung with a thin bluish
haze.  He had already fixed his sharp eye
upon the house which he reasoned should be
his objective point, when he noticed a woman
approaching rapidly from the opposite direction.
Always an interested observer of women,
Wilson would have slackened his pace
anywhere to follow this one with his impersonal,
appreciative glance.  She was a person
of distinction he saw at once, and, moreover,
very handsome.  She was tall, carried her
beautiful head proudly, and moved with ease
and certainty.  One immediately took for
granted the costly privileges and fine spaces
that must lie in the background from which
such a figure could emerge with this rapid
and elegant gait.  Wilson noted her dress,
too,--for, in his way, he had an eye for such
things,--particularly her brown furs and her
hat.  He got a blurred impression of her fine
color, the violets she wore, her white gloves,
and, curiously enough, of her veil, as she turned
up a flight of steps in front of him and disappeared.

Wilson was able to enjoy lovely things
that passed him on the wing as completely
and deliberately as if they had been dug-up
marvels, long anticipated, and definitely fixed
at the end of a railway journey.  For a few
pleasurable seconds he quite forgot where he
was going, and only after the door had closed
behind her did he realize that the young
woman had entered the house to which he
had directed his trunk from the South Station
that morning.  He hesitated a moment before
mounting the steps.  "Can that," he murmured
in amazement,--"can that possibly have been
Mrs. Alexander?"

When the servant admitted him, Mrs. Alexander
was still standing in the hallway.
She heard him give his name, and came
forward holding out her hand.

"Is it you, indeed, Professor Wilson?  I
was afraid that you might get here before I
did.  I was detained at a concert, and Bartley
telephoned that he would be late.  Thomas
will show you your room.  Had you rather
have your tea brought to you there, or will
you have it down here with me, while we
wait for Bartley?"

Wilson was pleased to find that he had been
the cause of her rapid walk, and with her
he was even more vastly pleased than before.
He followed her through the drawing-room
into the library, where the wide back windows