The Queen of Sheba, and My Cousin the Colonel Part 11

"What was that?" inquired Miss Ruth.

"He called it Penelope's web, because it is always being unravelled and reknitted."

"That artist mistook his profession."

"Folks often do," said Lynde. "I know painters who ought to be poets, and poets who ought to be bricklayers."

"Why bricklayers?"

"Because I fancy that bricklaying makes as slight drain on the imagination as almost any pursuit in life. Speaking of poets and waterfalls, do you remember Byron's daring simile in Manfred? He compares a certain waterfall at the foot of the Jungfrau to the tail of the pale horse ridden by Death in the Apocalypse. Mrs. Denham," said Lynde abruptly, "the marquis tells me there's a delightful short cut, through the rocks here, which strikes into the road a mile further on."

"Let us take it then," answered Mrs. Denham, settling herself comfortably in the cushions.

"It is a foot-path," explained Lynde.

"Oh!"

"Our reputation as great American travellers will suffer, Mrs. Denham, if we fail to do a bit of Switzerland on foot. Rather than have that happen I would undertake the expedition alone. It would be mere martyrdom, though, without company." As Lynde turned the handle of the carriage door and planted his foot on the first step, he ventured a glance at Miss Ruth, who was sitting there with a face as impenetrable as that of the Memphian Sphinx.

"Certainly, if our reputation is at stake," exclaimed Mrs. Denham, rising with alacrity. Lynde could not help his clouded countenance.

"No," she added, slowly sinking back into the seat, "I've no ambition as an explorer. I really have not."

"And Miss Denham?" said Lynde, drawing a scarcely repressed breath of relief.

"Oh, Ruth can go if she likes," replied Mrs. Denham, "provided it is not too far."

"It is hardly an eighth of a mile across," said Lynde. "You will find us waiting for you at the opposite end of the cut, unless you drive rapidly. It is more than a mile by the road."

"Do you wish to go, Ruth?"

Miss Denham hesitated an instant, and then answered by rising impulsively and giving her hand to Lynde. Evidently, her first intention had been to refuse. In a moment more she was standing beside him, and the carriage was lazily crawling up the hill with Mrs. Denham looking back through her gla.s.s at the cascade.

A dozen rude steps, partly artificial and partly formed by the strata of the limestone bank, led from the roadside up to the opening of the foot-way. For thirty or forty yards the fern-fringed path was too narrow to admit of two persons walking abreast. Miss Denham, with her skirts gathered in one hand, went first, picking her way over the small loose stones rendered slippery by the moss, and Lynde followed on in silence, hardly able to realize the success of the ruse which had come so near being a failure. His companion was equally preoccupied. Once she stopped for Lynde to detach her dress from a grasping twig, and once to pluck one of those pallid waxen flowers which sometimes dauntlessly find a footing even among the snowdrifts of the higher Alps. The air was full of the resinous breath of the pines, whose boughs, meeting and interlacing overhead, formed an arabesqued roof, through the openings of which the afternoon sunshine sifted, as if through stained gla.s.s. With the slender stems of the trees rising on each side in the semi-twilight, the grove was like the transept of a cathedral. It seemed a profanation to speak in such a place. Lynde could have wandered on forever in contented silence, with that tall, pliant figure in its severely cut drapery moving before him. As he watched the pure outline defining itself against the subdued light, he was reminded of a colored bas-relief he had seen on a certain Egyptian vase in the Museum at Naples. Presently the path widened, a brook babbled somewhere ahead among the rocks, and the grove abruptly ended.

As Lynde stepped to Miss Denham's side he heaved a deep, involuntary sigh.

"What a sigh, Mr. Lynde!" she cried, swiftly turning upon him with a surprised smile. "It was scarcely complimentary."

"It was not exactly a compliment; it was an unpremeditated monody on the death of this day, which has flown too soon."

"You are very ready with your monody; it yet lacks three or four hours of sunset, when one might probably begin to lament. I am enjoying it all too much to have a regret."

"Do you know, I thought you were not enjoying it--the journey, I mean?

You have not spoken a hundred words since we left Geneva."

"That was a proof of my perfect enjoyment, as you would know if you knew me better. Fine scenery always affects me like music, and, with Jessica, 'I am never merry when I hear sweet music.' Besides, Mr.

Lynde, I was forming a plan."

"A plan?"

"A dark conspiracy"--

"Is the spirit of Lucretia Borgia present?"

--"in which you are to be chief conspirator, Mr. Lynde."

"Miss Denham, the person is dead, either by steel or poison; it is all one to me--I am equally familiar with both methods."

As the girl lifted up her eyes in a half-serious, half-amused way, and gave him a look in which gentleness and a certain shadow of hauteur were oddly blended, Lynde started in spite of himself. It was the very look of the poor little Queen of Sheba.

"With your bowl and dagger and monody," said Miss Denham, breaking into one of her rare laughs, "you are in full tragedy this afternoon. I am afraid my innocent plot will seem very tame to you in the face of such dreadful things."

"I promise beforehand to regard it as the one important matter in the world. What is it?"

"Nothing more than this: I want you to insist that aunt Gertrude and I ought to make the ascent of Montanvert and visit the Mer de Glace--before uncle Denham arrives."

"Why, would he object?"

"I do not think anything would induce him to trust either of us on one of those narrow mule-paths."

"But everybody goes up Montanvert as a matter of course. The bridle-way is perfectly safe."

"Uncle Denham once witnessed a painful accident on the Wetterhorn--indeed, he himself barely escaped death; and any suggestion of mountain climbing that cannot be done on wheels always meets a negative from him. I suspect my aunt will not strongly favor the proposal, but when I make it I shall depend on you to sustain me."

"I shall surely do so, Miss Denham. I have had this same excursion in my mind all along."

"I was wondering how I should get the chance to ask the favor of you, when that special Providence, which your friend Mr. Flemming pretends not to believe in, managed it for me."

"It wasn't I, then, but Providence, that invited you to walk?"

"It looks like it, Mr. Lynde."

"But at first you were disposed to reject the providential aid."

"I hesitated about leaving aunt Gertrude alone."

"If you had refused me, there would have been no end to my disappointment. This walk, though it is sixty or seventy miles too short, is the choicest thing in the whole journey."

"Come, Mr. Lynde, that is an improvement on your sigh."

"Does it occur to you that this is the first time we have chanced to be alone together, in all these weeks?"

"Yes," said Miss Ruth simply, "it is the first time."

"I am a great admirer of Mrs. Denham"--

"I do not see how you can help being; she is charming, and she likes you."

"But sometimes I have wished that--that Mr. Denham was here."