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THE WRITINGS OF THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA, AND MY COUSIN THE COLONEL
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
1907
CONTENTS
I. MARY
II. IN WHICH THERE IS A FAMILY JAR
III. IN WHICH MARY TAKES A NEW DEPARTURE
IV. THE ODD ADVENTURE WHICH BEFELL YOUNG LYNDE IN THE HILL COUNTRY
V. CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER
VI. BEYOND THE SEA
VII. THE DENHAMS
VIII. FROM GENEVA TO CHAMOUNI
IX. MONTANVERT
X. IN THE SHADOW OF MONT BLANC
XI. FROM CHAMOUNI TO GENEVA
MY COUSIN THE COLONEL
"FOR BRAVERY ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE"
THE QUEEN OF SHEBA
I
MARY
In the month of June, 1872, Mr. Edward Lynde, the assistant cashier and
bookkeeper of the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, found himself in a
position to execute a plan which he had long meditated in secret.
A statement like this at the present time, when integrity in a place of
trust has become almost an anomaly, immediately suggests a defalcation;
but Mr. Lynde's plan involved nothing more criminal than a horseback
excursion through the northern part of the State of New Hampshire. A
leave of absence of three weeks, which had been accorded him in
recognition of several years' conscientious service, offered young
Lynde the opportunity he had desired. These three weeks, as already
hinted, fell in the month of June, when Nature in New Hampshire is in
her most ravishing toilet; she has put away her winter ermine, which
sometimes serves her quite into spring; she has thrown a green mantle
over her brown shoulders, and is not above the coquetry of wearing a
great variety of wild flowers on her bosom. With her sassafras and her
sweet-brier she is in her best mood, as a woman in a fresh and becoming
costume is apt to be, and almost any one might mistake her laugh for
the music of falling water, and the agreeable rustle of her garments
for the wind blowing through the pine forests.
As Edward Lynde rode out of Rivermouth one morning, an hour or two
before anybody worth mention was moving, he was very well contented
with this world, though he had his grievances, too, if he had chosen to
think of them.
Masses of dark cloud still crowded the zenith, but along the eastern
horizon, against the increasing blue, lay a city of golden spires and
mosques and minarets--an Oriental city, indeed, such as is inhabited by
poets and dreamers and other speculative persons fond of investing
their small capital in such unreal estate. Young Lynde, in spite of his
prosaic profession of bookkeeper, had an opulent though as yet unworked
vein of romance running through his composition, and he said to himself
as he gave a slight twitch to the reins, "I'll put up there to-night at
the sign of the Golden Fleece, or may be I'll quarter myself on one of
those rich old merchants who used to do business with the bank in the
colonial days." Before he had finished speaking the city was destroyed
by a general conflagration; the round red sun rose slowly above the
pearl-gray ruins, and it was morning.
In his three years' residence at Rivermouth, Edward Lynde had never
chanced to see the town at so early an hour. The cobble-paved street
through which he was riding was a commercial street; but now the shops
had their wooden eyelids shut tight, and were snoozing away as
comfortably and innocently as if they were not at all alive to a sharp
stroke of business in their wakeful hours. There was a charm to Lynde
in this novel phase of a thoroughfare so familiar to him, and then the
morning was perfect. The street ran parallel with the river, the
glittering harebell-blue of which could be seen across a vacant lot
here and there, or now and then at the end of a narrow lane running up
from the wharves. The atmosphere had that indescribable sparkle and
bloom which last only an hour or so after daybreak, and was charged
with fine sea-flavors and the delicate breath of dewy meadow-land.
Everything appeared to exhale a fragrance; even the weather-beaten sign
of "J. Tibbets & Son, West India Goods & Groceries," it seemed to
Lynde, emitted an elusive spicy odor.
Edward Lynde soon passed beyond the limits of the town, and was
ascending a steep hill, on the crest of which he proposed to take a
farewell survey of the picturesque port throwing off its gauzy
counterpane of sea-fog. The wind blew blithely on this hilltop; it
filled his lungs and exhilarated him like champagne; he set spur to the
gaunt, bony mare, and, with a flourish of his hand to the peaked roof
of the Nautilus Bank, dashed off at a speed of not less than four miles
an hour--for it was anything but an Arabian courser which Lynde had
hired of honest Deacon Twombly. She was not a handsome animal
either--yellow in tint and of the texture of an ancestral hair-trunk,
with a plebeian head, and mysterious developments of muscle on the hind
legs. She was not a horse for fancy riding; but she had her good
points--she had a great many points of one kind and another--among
which was her perfect adaptability to rough country roads and the sort
of work now required of her.
"Mary ain't what you'd call a racer," Deacon Twombly had remarked while
the negotiations were pending; "I don't say she is, but she's easy on
the back."
This statement was speedily verified. At the end of two miles Mary
stopped short and began backing, deliberately and systematically, as if
to slow music in a circus. Recovering from the surprise of the halt,
which had taken him wholly unawares, Lynde gathered the slackened reins
firmly in his hand and pressed his spurs to the mare's flanks, with no
other effect than slightly to accelerate the backward movement.
Perhaps nothing gives you so acute a sense of helplessness as to have a
horse back with you, under the saddle or between shafts. The reins lie
limp in your hands, as if detached from the animal; it is impossible to
check him or force him forward; to turn him around is to confess
yourself conquered; to descend and take him by the head is an act of
pusillanimity. Of course there is only one thing to be done; but if you
know what that is you possess a singular advantage over your
fellow-creatures.
Finding spur and whip of no avail, Lynde tried the effect of moral
suasion: he stroked Mary on the neck, and addressed her in terms that
would have melted the heart of almost any other Mary; but she continued
to back, slowly and with a certain grace that could have come only of
confirmed habit. Now Lynde had no desire to return to Rivermouth, above
all to back into it in that mortifying fashion and make himself a
spectacle for the townsfolk; but if this thing went on forty or fifty
minutes longer, that would be the result.
"If I cannot stop her," he reflected, "I'll desert the brute just
before we get to the toll-gate. I can't think what possessed Twombly to
let me have such a ridiculous animal!"
Mary showed no sign that she was conscious of anything unconventional
or unlooked for in her conduct.
"Mary, my dear," said Lynde at last, with dangerous calmness, "you
would be all right, or, at least, your proceeding would not be quite so
flagrant a breach of promise, if you were only aimed in the opposite
direction."
With this he gave a vigorous jerk at the left-hand rein, which caused
the mare to wheel about and face Rivermouth. She hesitated an instant,
and then resumed backing.
"Now, Mary," said the young man dryly, "I will let you have your head,
so to speak, as long as you go the way I want you to."
This manoeuvre on the side of Lynde proved that he possessed qualities
which, if skilfully developed, would have assured him success in the
higher regions of domestic diplomacy. The ability to secure your own
way and impress others with the idea that they are having THEIR own way
is rare among men; among women it is as common as eyebrows.
"I wonder how long she will keep this up," mused Lynde, fixing his eye
speculatively on Mary's pull-back ears. "If it is to be a permanent
arrangement I shall have to reverse the saddle. Certainly, the creature
is a lusus naturae--her head is on the wrong end! Easy on the back," he
added, with a hollow laugh, recalling Deacon Twombly's recommendation.
"I should say she was! I never saw an easier."
Presently Mary ceased her retrograde movement, righted herself of her
own accord, and trotted off with as much submissiveness as could be
demanded of her. Lynde subsequently learned that this propensity to
back was an unaccountable whim which seized Mary at odd intervals and
lasted from five to fifteen minutes. The peculiarity once understood
not only ceased to be an annoyance to him, but became an agreeable
break in the ride. Whenever her mood approached, he turned the mare
round and let her back to her soul's content. He also ascertained that
the maximum of Mary's speed was five miles an hour.
"I didn't want a fast horse, anyway," said Lynde philosophically. "As I
am not going anywhere in particular, I need be in no hurry to get
there."
The most delightful feature of Lynde's plan was that it was not a plan.
He had simply ridden off into the rosy June weather, with no settled
destination, no care for to-morrow, and as independent as a bird of the
tourist's ordinary requirements. At the crupper of his saddle--an old
cavalry saddle that had seen service in long-forgotten
training-days--was attached a cylindrical valise of cowhide, containing
a change of linen, a few toilet articles, a vulcanized cloth cape for
rainy days, and the first volume of The Earthly Paradise. The two
warlike holsters in front (in which Colonel Eliphalet Bangs used to
carry a brace of flintlock pistols now reposing in the Historical
Museum at Rivermouth) became the receptacle respectively of a slender
flask of brandy and a Bologna sausage; for young Lynde had determined
to sell his life dearly if by any chance of travel he came to close
quarters with famine.
A broad-brimmed Panama hat, a suit of navy-blue flannel, and a pair of
riding-boots completed his equipment. A field-glass in a leather case
was swung by a strap over his shoulder, and in the breast pocket of his
blouse he carried a small compass to guide him on his journey due north.
The young man's costume went very well with his frank, refined face,
and twenty-three years. A dead-gold mustache, pointed at the ends and
sweeping at a level right and left, like a swallow's wings, gave him
something of a military air; there was a martial directness, too, in
the glance of his clear gray eyes, undimmed as yet with looking too
long on the world. There could not have been a better figure for the
saddle than Lynde's--slightly above the average height, straight as a
poplar, and neither too spare nor too heavy. Now and then, as he passed
a farm-house, a young girl hanging out clothes in the front yard--for
it was on a Monday--would pause with a shapeless snowdrift in her hand
to gaze curiously at the apparition of a gallant young horseman riding
by. It often happened that when he had passed, she would slyly steal to
the red gate in the lichen-covered stone wall, and follow him with her
palm-shaded eyes down the lonely road; and it as frequently happened
that he would glance back over his shoulder at the nut-brown maid,
whose closely clinging, scant drapery gave her a sculpturesque grace to
which her unconsciousness of it was a charm the more.
These flashes of subtile recognition between youth and youth--these
sudden mute greetings and farewells--reached almost the dimension of
incidents in that first day's eventless ride. Once Lynde halted at the
porch of a hip-roofed, unpainted house with green paper shades at the
windows, and asked for a cup of milk, which was brought him by the
nut-brown maid, who never took her flattering innocent eyes off the
young man's face while he drank--sipping him as he sipped the milk; and
young Lynde rode away feeling as if something had really happened.
More than once that morning he drew up by the roadside to listen to
some lyrical robin on an apple-bough, or to make friends with the
black-belted Durham cows and the cream-colored Alderneys, who came
solemnly to the pasture wall and stared at him with big, good-natured
faces. A row of them, with their lazy eyes and pink tongues and moist
india-rubber noses, was as good as a play.
At noon that day our adventureless adventurer had reached Bayley's
Four-Corners, where he found provender for himself and Mary at what had
formerly been a tavern, in the naive stage-coach epoch. It was the sole
house in the neighborhood, and was occupied by the ex-landlord, one
Tobias Sewell, who had turned farmer. On finishing his cigar after
dinner, Lynde put the saddle on Mary, and started forward again. It is
hardly correct to say forward, for Mary took it into her head to back
out of Bayley's Four-Corners, a feat which she performed to the
unspeakable amusement of Mr. Sewell and a quaint old gentleman, named
Jaffrey, who boarded in the house.
"I guess that must be a suck-cuss hoss," remarked Mr. Sewell, resting
his loosely jointed figure against the rail fence as he watched his
departing guest.
Mary backed to the ridge of the hill up which the turnpike stretched
from the ancient tavern, then recovered herself and went on.
"I never saw such an out-and-out wilful old girl as you are, Mary!"
ejaculated Lynde, scarlet with mortification. "I begin to admire you."
Perhaps the covert reproach touched some finer chord of Mary's nature,
or perhaps Mary had done her day's allowance of backing; whatever the
case was, she indulged no further caprice that afternoon beyond shying
vigorously at a heavily loaded tin-pedler's wagon, a proceeding which
may be palliated by the statement of the fact that many of Mary's
earlier years were passed in connection with a similar establishment.
The afterglow of sunset had faded out behind the serrated line of
hills, and black shadows were assembling, like conspirators, in the
orchards and under the spreading elms by the roadside, when Edward
Lynde came in sight of a large manufacturing town, which presented a
sufficiently bizarre appearance at that hour.
Grouped together in a valley were five or six high, irregular
buildings, illuminated from basement to roof, each with a monstrous
chimney from which issued a fan of party-colored flame. On one long low
structure, with a double row of windows gleaming like the port-holes of
a man-of-war at night, was a squat round tower that now and then threw
open a vast valve at the top, and belched forth a volume of amber
smoke, which curled upward to a dizzy height and spread itself out
against the sky. Lying in the weird light of these chimneys, with here
and there a gable or a spire suddenly outlined in vivid purple, the
huddled town beneath seemed like an outpost of the infernal regions.
Lynde, however, resolved to spend the night there instead of riding on
farther and trusting for shelter to some farm-house or barn. Ten or
twelve hours in the saddle had given him a keen appetite for rest.
Presently the roar of flues and furnaces, and the resonant din of
mighty hammers beating against plates of iron, fell upon his ear; a few
minutes later he rode into the town, not knowing and not caring in the
least what town it was.
All this had quite the flavor of foreign travel to Lynde, who began
pondering on which hotel he should bestow his patronage--a question
that sometimes perplexes the tourist on arriving at a strange city. In
Lynde's case the matter was considerably simplified by the circumstance
that there was but a single aristocratic hotel in the place. He
extracted this information from a small boy, begrimed with iron-dust,
and looking as if he had just been cast at a neighboring foundry, who
kindly acted as cicerone, and conducted the tired wayfarer to the
doorstep of The Spread Eagle, under one of whose wings--to be at once
figurative and literal--he was glad to nestle for the night.
II
IN WHICH THERE IS A FAMILY JAR
While Lynde is enjoying the refreshing sleep that easily overtook him
after supper, we will reveal to the reader so much of the young man's
private history as may be necessary to the narrative. In order to do
this, the author, like Deacon Twombly's mare, feels it indispensable to
back a little.
One morning, about three years previous to the day when Edward Lynde
set forth on his aimless pilgrimage, Mr. Jenness Bowlsby, the president
of the Nautilus Bank at Rivermouth, received the following letter from
his wife's nephew, Mr. John Flemming, a young merchant in New York--
NEW YORK, May 28,1869.
MY DEAR UNCLE: In the course of a few days a friend of mine, Mr. Edward
Lynde of this city, will call upon you and hand you a note of
introduction from myself. I write this to secure for him in advance the
liking and interest which I am persuaded you will not be able to
withhold on closer acquaintance. I have been intimate with Edward Lynde
for twelve years or more, first at the boarding-school at Flatbush, and
afterwards at college. Though several years my junior, he was in the
same classes with me, and, if the truth must be told, generally carried
off all the honors. He is not only the most accomplished young fellow I
know, but a fellow of inexhaustible modesty and amiability, and I think
it was singularly malicious of destiny to pick him out as a victim,
when there are so many worthless young men (the name of John Flemming
will instantly occur to you) who deserve nothing better than rough
treatment. You see, I am taking point-blank aim at your sympathy.
When Lynde was seven or eight years old he had the misfortune to lose
his mother; his father was already dead. The child's nearest relative
was an uncle, David Lynde, a rich merchant of New York, a bachelor, and
a character. Old Lynde--I call him old Lynde not out of disrespect, but
to distinguish him from young Lynde--was at that period in his sixtieth
year, a gentleman of unsullied commercial reputation, and of regular if
somewhat peculiar habits. He was at his counting-room precisely at
eight in the morning, and was the last to leave in the evening, working
as many hours each day as he had done in those first years when he
entered as office-boy into the employment of Briggs & Livingstone--the
firm at the time of which I am now writing was Lynde, Livingstone & Co.
Mr. David Lynde lived in a set of chambers up town, and dined at his
club, where he usually passed the evenings at chess with some brother
antediluvian. A visit to the theatre, when some old English comedy or
some new English ballet happened to be on the boards, was the periphery
of his dissipation. What is called society saw nothing of him. He was a
rough, breezy, thickset old gentleman, betrothed from his birth to
apoplexy, enjoying life in his own secluded manner, and insisting on
having everybody about him happy. He would strangle an old friend
rather than not have him happy. A characteristic story is told of a
quarrel he had with a chum of thirty or forty years' standing, Ripley
Sturdevant Sen. Sturdevant came to grief in the financial panic of
1857. Lynde held a mortgage on Sturdevant's house, and insisted on
cancelling it. Sturdevant refused to accept the sacrifice. They both
were fiery old gentlemen, arcades ambo. High words ensued. What
happened never definitely transpired; but Sturdevant was found lying
across the office lounge, with a slight bruise over one eyebrow and the
torn mortgage thrust into his shirt-bosom. It was conjectured that
Lynde had actually knocked him down and forced the cancelled mortgage
upon him!
In short, David Lynde was warm-hearted and generous to the verge of
violence, but a man in every way unfitted by temperament, experience,
and mode of life to undertake the guardianship of a child. To have an
infant dropped into his arms was as excellent an imitation of a
calamity as could well happen to him. I am told that no one could have
been more sensible of this than David Lynde himself, and that there was
something extremely touching in the alacrity and cheerfulness with
which he assumed the novel responsibility.
Immediately after the funeral--Mrs. Lynde had resided in
Philadelphia--the uncle brought the boy to New York. It was impossible
to make a permanent home for young Lynde in bachelor chambers, or to
dine him at the club. After a week of inconvenience and wretchedness,
complicated by the sinister suspicions of his landlady, David Lynde
concluded to send the orphan to boarding-school.
It was at Flatbush, Long Island, that I made the acquaintance of the
forlorn little fellow. His cot was next to mine in the dormitory; we
became close friends. We passed our examinations, left Flatbush at the
same time, and entered college together. In the meanwhile the boy's
relations with his guardian were limited to a weekly exchange of
letters, those of the uncle invariably beginning with "Yours of
Saturday duly at hand," and ending with "Enclosed please find." In
respect to pocket-money young Lynde was a prince. My friend spent the
long vacations with me at Newburgh, running down to New York
occasionally to pass a day or so with the uncle. In these visits their
intimacy ripened. Old Lynde was now become very proud of his bright
young charge, giving him astonishing dinners at Delmonico's, taking him
to Wallack's, and introducing him to the old fossils at the club as "my
boy Ned."
It was at the beginning of Lynde's last term at college that his uncle
retired from business, bought a house in Madison Avenue, and turned it
into a sort of palace with frescoes and upholstery. There was a library
for my boy Ned, a smoking-room in cherry-wood, a billiard-room in black
walnut, a dining-room in oak and crimson--in brief, the beau-ideal of a
den for a couple of bachelors. By Jove! it was like a club-house--the
only model for a home of which poor old Lynde had any conception. Six
months before Ned was graduated, the establishment was in systematic
running order under the supervision of the pearl of housekeepers. Here
David Lynde proposed to spend the rest of his days with his nephew, who
might, for form's sake, adopt some genteel profession; if not, well and
good, the boy would have money.
Now just as Ned was carrying off the first prizes in Greek and
mathematics, and dreaming of the pleasant life he was to lead with his
amiable old benefactor, what does that amiable old benefactor go and do
but marry the housekeeper!
David Lynde knew very little of women: he had not spoken to above a
dozen in his whole life; did not like them, in fact; had a mild sort of
contempt for them, as persons devoid of business ability. It was in the
course of nature that the first woman who thought it worth her while
should twist him around her finger like a remnant of ribbon. When Ned
came out of college he found himself in the arms of an unlooked-for
aunt who naturally hated him at sight.
I have not the time or space, my dear uncle, to give you even a
catalogue of the miseries that followed on the heels of this deplorable
marriage; besides, you can imagine them. Old Lynde, loving both his
wife and his nephew, was by turns violent and feeble; the wife cool,
cunning, and insidious--a Vivien of forty leading Merlin by the beard.
I am not prepared to contend that the nephew was always in the right,
but I know he always got the worst of it, which amounts to about the
same thing. At the end of eight or ten months he saw that the position
was untenable, packed his trunk one night, and quitted the MENAGE--the
menagerie, as he calls it.
This was three weeks ago. Having a small property of his own, some
fifteen hundred dollars a year, I believe, Lynde at first thought to go
abroad. It was always his dream to go abroad. But I persuaded him out
of that, seeing how perilous it would be for a young fellow of his
inexperience and impressible disposition to go rambling alone over the
Continent. Paris was his idea. Paris would not make a mouthful of him.
I have talked him out of that, I repeat, and have succeeded in
convincing him that the wisest course for him to pursue is to go to
some pleasant town or village within hailing distance of one of our
larger cities, and spend the summer quietly. I even suggested he should
make the personal acquaintance of some light employment, to help him
forget the gorgeous castle of cards which has just tumbled down about
his ears. In six words, I have sent him to Rivermouth.
Now, my dear uncle, I have wasted eight pages of paper and probably a
hundred dollars' worth of your time, if you do not see that I am
begging you to find a position for Lynde in the Nautilus Bank. After a
little practice he would make a skilful accountant, and the question of
salary is, as you see, of secondary importance. Manage to retain him at
Rivermouth if you possibly can. David Lynde has the strongest affection
for the lad, and if Vivien, whose name is Elizabeth, is not careful how
she drags Merlin around by the beard, he will reassert himself in some
unexpected manner. If he were to serve her as he is supposed to have
served old Sturdevant, his conduct would be charitably criticised. If
he lives a year he will be in a frame of mind to leave the bulk of his
fortune to Ned. THEY have not quarrelled, you understand; on the
contrary, Mr. Lynde was anxious to settle an allowance of five thousand
a year on Ned, but Ned would not accept it. "I want uncle David's
love," says Ned, "and I have it; the devil take his money."
Here you have all the points. I could not state them more succinctly
and do justice to each of the parties interested. The most unfortunate
party, I take it, is David Lynde. I am not sure, after all, that young
Lynde is so much to be pitied. Perhaps that club-house would not have
worked well for him if it had worked differently. At any rate he now
has his own way to make, and I commend him to your kindness, if I have
not exhausted it.
Your affectionate nephew, J. FLEMMING.
Five or six days after this letter reached Mr. Bowlsby, Mr. Edward
Lynde presented himself in the directors' room of the Nautilus Bank.
The young man's bearing confirmed the favorable impression which Mr.
Bowlsby had derived from his nephew's letter, and though there was
really no vacancy in the bank at the moment, Mr. Bowlsby lent himself
to the illusion that he required a private secretary. A few weeks later
a vacancy occurred unexpectedly, that of paying-teller--a position in
which Lynde acquitted himself with so much quickness and accuracy, that
when Mr. Trefethen, the assistant cashier, died in the December
following, Lynde was promoted to his desk.
The unruffled existence into which Edward Lynde had drifted was almost
the reverse of the career he had mapped out for himself, and it was a
matter of mild astonishment to him at intervals that he was not
discontented. He thought Rivermouth one of the most charming old spots
he had ever seen or heard of, and the people the most hospitable. The
story of his little family jar, taking deeper colors and richer
ornamentation as it passed from hand to hand, made him at once a social
success. Mr. Goldstone, one of the leading directors of the bank,
invited Lynde to dinner--few persons were ever overburdened with
invitations to dine at the Goldstones'--and the door of many a refined
home turned willingly on its hinges for the young man. At the evening
parties, that winter, Edward Lynde was considered almost as good a card
as a naval officer. Miss Mildred Bowlsby, then the reigning belle, was
ready to flirt with him to the brink of the Episcopal marriage service,
and beyond; but the phenomenal honeymoon which had recently quartered
in Lynde's family left him indisposed to take any lunar observations on
his own account.
With his salary as cashier, Lynde's income was Vanderbiltish for a
young man in Rivermouth. Unlike his great contemporary, he did not let
it accumulate. Once a month he wrote a dutiful letter to his uncle
David, who never failed to answer by telegraph, "Yours received. God
bless you, Edward." This whimsical fashion of reply puzzled young Lynde
quite as much as it diverted him until he learned (through his friend,
John Flemming) that his aunt Vivien had extorted from the old gentleman
a solemn promise not to write to his nephew.
Lynde's duties at the bank left him free every afternoon at four
o'clock; his work and his leisure were equally pleasant. In summer he
kept a sail-boat on the river, and in winter he had the range of a rich
collection of books connected with an antiquated public reading-room.
Thus very happily, if very quietly, and almost imperceptibly the months
rolled round to that period when the Nautilus Bank gave Edward Lynde a
three weeks' vacation, and he set forth, as we have seen, on Deacon
Twombly's mare, in search of the picturesque and the peculiar, if they
were to be found in the northern part of New Hampshire.
III
IN WHICH MARY TAKES A NEW DEPARTURE
It was still dark enough the next morning to allow the great chimneys
to show off their colored fires effectively, when Lynde passed through
the dingy main street of K---and struck into a road which led to the
hill country. A short distance beyond the town, while he was turning in
the saddle to observe the singular effect of the lurid light upon the
landscape, a freight-train shot obliquely across the road within five
rods of his horse's head, the engine flinging great flakes of fiery
spume from its nostrils, and shrieking like a maniac as it plunged into
a tunnel through a spur of the hills. Mary went sideways, like a crab,
for the next three quarters of a mile.
To most young men the expedition which Edward Lynde had undertaken
would have seemed unattractive and monotonous to the last degree; but
Lynde's somewhat sedentary habits had made him familiar with his own
company. When one is young and well read and amiable, there is really
no better company than one's self--as a steady thing. We are in a
desperate strait indeed if we chance at any age to tire of this
invisible but ever-present comrade; for he is not to be thrown over
during life. Before now, men have become so weary of him, so bored by
him, that they have attempted to escape, by suicide; but it is a
question if death itself altogether rids us of him.
In no minute of the twenty-four hours since Lynde left Rivermouth had
he felt the want of other companionship. Mary, with her peculiarities,
the roadside sights and sounds, the chubby children with shining
morning face, on the way to school, the woodland solitudes, the farmers
at work in the fields, the blue jays and the robins in the orchards,
the blonde and brown girls at the cottage doors, his own buoyant,
unreproachful thoughts--what need had he of company? If anything could
have added to his enjoyment it would have been the possibility of being
waylaid by bandits, or set upon in some desolate pass by wild animals.
But, alas, the nearest approximation to a bandit that fell in his way
was some shabby, spiritless tramp who passed by on the further side
without lifting an eyelid; and as for savage animals, he saw nothing
more savage than a monkish chipmunk here and there, who disappeared
into his stonewall convent the instant he laid eyes on Lynde.
Riding along those lonely New England roads, he was more secure than if
he had been lounging in the thronged avenues of a great city. Certainly
he had dropped on an age and into a region sterile of adventure. He
felt this, but not so sensitively as to let it detract from the serene
pleasure he found in it all. From the happy glow of his mind every
outward object took a rosy light; even a rustic funeral, which he came
upon at a cross-road that fore-noon, softened itself into something not
unpicturesque.
For three days after quitting K---Lynde pushed steadily forward. The
first two nights he secured lodgings at a farm-house; on the third
night he was regarded as a suspicious character, and obtained reluctant
permission to stow himself in a hay-loft, where he was so happy at
roughing it and being uncomfortable that he could scarcely close an
eye. The amateur outcast lay dreamily watching the silver spears of
moonlight thrust through the roof of the barn, and extracting such
satisfaction from his cheerless surroundings as would have astonished a
professional tramp. "Poverty and hardship are merely ideas after all,"
said Lynde to himself softly, as he drifted off in a doze. Ah, Master
Lynde, playing at poverty and hardship is one thing; but if the reality
is merely an idea, it is one of the very worst ideas in the world.
The young man awoke before sunrise the next morning, and started onward
without attempting to negotiate for breakfast with his surly host. He
had faith that some sunburnt young woman, with bowl of brown-bread and
milk, would turn up farther on; if she did not, and no tavern presented
itself, there were the sausage and the flask of eau-de-vie still
untouched in the holsters.
The mountain air had not wholly agreed with Mary, who at this stage of
the journey inaugurated a series of abnormal coughs, each one of which
went near to flinging Lynde out of the saddle.
"Mary," he said, after a particularly narrow escape, "there are few
fine accomplishments you haven't got except a spavin. Perhaps you've
got that, concealed somewhere about your person."
He said this in a tone of airy badinage which Mary seemed to
appreciate; but he gravely wondered what he could do with her, and how
he should replace her, if she fell seriously ill.
For the last two days farm-houses and cultivated fields had been
growing rarer and rarer, and the road rougher and wilder. At times it
made a sudden detour, to avoid the outcropping of a monster stratum of
granite, and in places became so narrow that the rank
huckleberry-bushes swept the mare's flanks. Lynde found it advisable on
the morning in question to pick his way carefully. A range of arid
hills rose darkly before him, stretching east and west further than his
eye could follow--rugged, forlorn hills covered with a thick prickly
undergrowth, and sentinelled by phantom-like pines. There were gloomy,
rocky gorges on each hand, and high-hanging crags, and where the vapor
was drawn aside like a veil, in one place, he saw two or three peaks
with what appeared to be patches of snow on them. Perhaps they were
merely patches of bleached rock.
Long afterwards, when Edward Lynde was passing through the valley of
the Arve, on the way from Geneva to Chamouni, he recollected this bit
of Switzerland in America, and it brought an odd, perplexed smile to
his lips.
The thousand ghostly shapes of mist which had thronged the heights,
shutting in the prospect on every side, had now vanished, discovering
as wild and melancholy a spot as a romantic heart could desire. There
was something sinister and ironical even in the sunshine that lighted
up these bleak hills. The silver waters of a spring--whose source was
hidden somewhere high up among the mossy boulders--dripping silently
from ledge to ledge, had the pathos of tears. The deathly stillness was
broken only by the dismal caw of a crow taking abrupt flight from a
blasted pine. Here and there a birch with its white satin skin
glimmered spectrally among the sombre foliage.
The inarticulate sadness of the place brought a momentary feeling of
depression to Lynde, who was not usually given to moods except of the
lighter sort. He touched Mary sharply with the spurs and cantered up
the steep.
He had nearly gained the summit of the hill when he felt the saddle
slipping; the girth had unbuckled or broken. As he dismounted, the
saddle came off with him, his foot still in the stirrup. The mare
shied, and the rein slipped from his fingers; he clutched at it, but
Mary gave a vicious toss of the head, wheeled about, and began trotting
down the declivity. Her trot at once broke into a gallop, and the
gallop into a full run--a full run for Mary. At the foot of the hill
she stumbled, fell, rolled over, gathered herself up, and started off
again at increased speed. The road was perfectly straight for a mile or
two. The horse was already a small yellow patch in the distance. She
was evidently on her way back to Rivermouth! Lynde watched her until
she was nothing but a speck against the gray road, then he turned and
cast a rueful glance on the saddle, which suddenly took to itself a
satirical aspect, as it lay sprawling on the ground at his feet.
He had been wanting something to happen, and something had happened. He
was unhorsed and alone in the heart of the hill country--alone in a
strange and, it seemed to Lynde as he looked about him, uninhabited
region.
IV
THE ODD ADVENTURE WHICH BEFELL YOUNG LYNDE IN THE HILL COUNTRY
It had all happened so suddenly that one or two minutes passed before
Edward Lynde took in the full enormity of Mary's desertion. A dim smile
was still hovering about his lips when the yellow speck that was Mary
faded into the gray distance; then his countenance fell. There was no
sign of mortal habitation visible from the hillside where he stood; the
farm at which he had spent the night was five miles away; his stiff
riding-boots were ill-adapted to pedestrianism. The idea of lugging
that heavy saddle five miles over a mountain road caused him to knit
his brows and look very serious indeed. As he gave the saddle an
impatient kick, his eyes rested on the Bologna sausage, one end of
which protruded from the holster; then there came over him a poignant
recollection of his Lenten supper of the night before and his no
breakfast at all of that morning. He seated himself on the saddle,
unwrapped the sausage, and proceeded to cut from it two or three thin
slices.
"It might have been much worse," he reflected, as he picked off with
his penknife the bits of silver foil which adhered to the skin of the
sausage; "if Mary had decamped with the commissary stores, that would
have been awkward." Lynde devoured the small pieces of pressed meat
with an appetite born of his long fast and the bracing upland air.
"Talk about pate de foie gras!" he exclaimed, with a sweep of his arm,
as if he were disdainfully waving back a menial bearing a tray of
Strasbourg pates; "if I live to return to Rivermouth I will have
Bologna sausage three times a day for the rest of my life."
A cup of the ice-cold water which bubbled up from a boss of cresses by
the roadside completed his Spartan breakfast. His next step was to
examine his surroundings. "From the top of this hill," said Lynde, "I
shall probably be able to see where I am, if that will be any comfort
to me."
It was only fifty or sixty rods to the crown of the hill, where the
road, viewed from below, seemed abruptly to come to an end against the
sky. On gaining the summit, Lynde gave an involuntary exclamation of
surprise and delight. At his feet in the valley below, in a fertile
plain walled in on all sides by the emerald slopes, lay the loveliest
village that ever was seen. Though the road by which he had approached
the eminence had been narrow and steep, here it widened and descended
by gentle gradations into the valley, where it became the main street
of the village--a congregation of two or possibly three hundred houses,
mostly cottages with gambrel and lean-to roofs. At the left of the
village, and about an eighth of a mile distant, was an imposing red
brick building with wings and a pair of octagon towers. It stood in a
forest of pines and maples, and appeared to be enclosed by a high wall
of masonry. It was too pretentious for an almshouse, too elegant for a
prison; it was as evidently not a school-house, and it could not be an
arsenal. Lynde puzzled over it a moment, and then returned for his
saddle, which he slung across his back, holding it by a stirrup-strap
brought over either shoulder.
"If Mary has got a conscience," muttered Lynde, "it would prick her if
she could see me now. I must be an affecting spectacle. In the village
they won't know whether I am the upper or the lower half of a centaur.
They won't know whether to rub me down and give me a measure of oats,
or to ask me in to breakfast."
The saddle with its trappings probably weighed forty pounds, and Lynde
was glad before he had accomplished a third of the way to the village
to set down his burden and rest awhile. On each side of him now were
cornfields, and sloping orchards peopled with those grotesque,
human-like apple-trees which seem twisted and cramped by a pain
possibly caught from their own acidulous fruit. The cultivated land
terminated only where the village began. It was not so much a village
as a garden--a garden crowded with flowers of that bright metallic tint
which distinguishes the flora of northern climes. Through the centre of
this Eden ran the wide main street, fringed with poplars and elms and
chestnuts. No polluting brewery or smoky factory, with its hideous
architecture, marred the idyllic beauty of the miniature town--for
everything which is not a city is a town in New England. The population
obviously consisted of well-to-do persons, with outlying stock-farms or
cranberry meadows, and funds snugly invested in ships and railroads.
In out-of-the-way places like this is preserved the greater part of
what we have left of the hard shrewd sense and the simpler manner of
those homespun old worthies who planted the seed of the Republic. In
our great cities we are cosmopolitans; but here we are Americans of the
primitive type, or as nearly as may be. It was unimportant settlements
like the one we are describing that sent their quota of stout hearts
and flintlock muskets to the trenches on Bunker Hill. Here, too, the
valorous spirit which had been slumbering on its arm for half a century
started up at the first shot fired against Fort Sumter. Over the
chimney-place of more than one cottage in such secluded villages hangs
an infantry or a cavalry sword in its dinted sheath, looked at to-day
by wife or mother with the tenderly proud smile that has mercifully
taken the place of tears.
Beyond the town, on the hillside which Edward Lynde had just got within
the focus of his field-glass, was the inevitable cemetery. On a grave
here and there a tiny flag waved in the indolent June breeze. If Lynde
had been standing by the head-stones, he could have read among the
inscriptions such unlocal words as Malvern Hill, Andersonville, Ball's
Bluff, and Gettysburg, and might have seen the withered Decoration Day
wreaths which had been fresh the month before.
Lynde brought his glass to bear on the red brick edifice mentioned, and
fell to pondering it again.
"I'll be hanged if I don't think it's a nunnery," he said. By and by he
let his gaze wander back to the town, in which he detected an
appearance of liveliness and bustle not usual in New England villages,
large or small. The main street was dotted with groups of men and
women; and isolated figures, to which perhaps the distance lent a kind
of uncanny aspect, were to be seen hurrying hither and thither.
"It must be some local celebration," thought Lynde. "Rural oratory and
all that sort of thing. That will be capital!"
He had returned the glass to its leather case, and was settling it well
on his hip, when he saw a man approaching. It was a heavily built old
gentleman in a suit of black alpaca, somewhat frayed and baggy at the
knees, but still respectable. He carried his hat in his hand, fanning
himself with it from time to time, as if overcome by heat and the
fatigue of walking. A profusion of snow-white hair, parted in the
middle, swept down on either side of a face remarkable--if it was
remarkable for anything--for its benign and simple expression. There
was a far-off, indescribable something about this person, as though he
had existed long ago and once had a meaning, but was now become an
obsolete word in the human dictionary. His wide placid brows and the
double chin which asserted itself above his high neckcloth gave him a
curious resemblance to portraits of Dr. Franklin.
"The country parson," said Lynde to himself. "Venerable and lovely old
character. I'll speak to him."
The old gentleman, with his head slightly thrown back, had his eyes
fixed intently on some object in the sky, and was on the point of
passing Lynde without observing him, when the young man politely lifted
his hat, and said, "I beg your pardon, sir, but will you be kind enough
to tell me the name of the town yonder?"
The old gentleman slowly brought his eyes down from the sky, fixed them
vacantly upon Lynde, and made no response. Presuming him to be deaf,
Lynde repeated his question in a key adapted to the exigency. Without a
change in his mild, benevolent expression, and in a voice whose
modulations were singularly musical, the old gentleman exclaimed, "Go
to the devil!" and passed on.
The rejoinder was so unexpected, the words themselves were so brusque,
while the utterance was so gentle and melodious, that Lynde refused to
credit his ears. Could he have heard aright? Before he recovered from
his surprise the gentleman in black was far up the slope, his gaze
again riveted on some remote point in the zenith.
"It wasn't the country parson after all," said Lynde, with a laugh; "it
was the village toper. He's an early bird--I'll say that for him--to
have secured his intoxicating worm at this hour of the morning."
Lynde picked up the saddle and resumed his march on the town in the
happy valley. He had proceeded only a little way when he perceived
another figure advancing towards him--a figure not less striking than
that of the archaic gentleman, but quite different. This was a young
girl, of perhaps seventeen, in a flowing dress of some soft white
stuff, gathered at the waist by a broad red ribbon. She was without hat
or shawl, and wore her hair, which was very long and very black,
hanging loosely down her shoulders, in exaggeration of a style of
coiffure that afterwards came into fashion. She was moving slowly and
in the manner of a person not accustomed to walking. She was a
lady--Lynde saw that at a glance--probably some city-bred bird of
passage, resting for the summer in this vale of health. His youthful
vanity took alarm as he reflected what a comical picture he must
present with that old saddle on his back. He would have dumped it into
the barberry-bushes if he could have done so unobserved; but it was now
too late.
On perceiving Lynde, the girl arrested her steps a moment irresolutely,
and then came directly towards him. As she drew nearer Lynde was
conscious of being dazzled by a pair of heavily fringed black eyes,
large and lustrous, set in an oval face of exquisite pallor. The girl
held a dandelion in one hand, twirling it by the end of its long,
snake-like stem as she approached. She was close upon him now; for an
instant he caught the wind of the flower as it swiftly described a
circle within an inch of his cheek. The girl paused in front of him,
and drawing herself up to her full height said haughtily--
"I am the Queen of Sheba."
Then she glided by him with a quickened pace and a suddenly timid air.
Lynde was longer recovering himself, this time. He stood rooted to the
ground, stupidly watching the retreating gracious form of the girl, who
half turned once and looked back at him. Then she vanished over the
ridge of the hill, as the old gentleman had done. Was she following
him? Was there any connection between those two? Perhaps he was the
village clergyman. Could this be his daughter? What an unconventional
costume for a young lady to promenade in--for she was a lady down to
her finger-nails! And what an odd salutation!
"The Queen of Sheba!" he repeated wonderingly. "What could she mean by
that? She took me for some country bumpkin, with this confounded
saddle, and was laughing at me. I never saw a girl at once so--so
audacious and modest, or so lovely. I didn't know there was anything on
earth so lovely as that girl."
He had caught only an instantaneous glimpse of her face, but he had
seen it with strange distinctness, as one sees an object by a flash of
lightning; and he still saw it, as one seems still to see the object in
the after-darkness. Every line of the features lived in his eyes, even
an almost indistinguishable scar there was on the girl's right cheek
near the temple. It was not a flaw, that faint scar; it seemed somehow
to heighten her loveliness, as an accent over a word sometimes gives it
one knows not what of piquancy.