



Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charles Franks and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team.











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- 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- 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