One day, in the November following William Wetherell's death, Jethro Bass
astonished Coniston by moving to the little cottage in the village which
stood beside the disused tannery, and which had been his father's. It was
known as the tannery house. His reasons for this step, when at length
discovered, were generally commended: they were, in fact, a
disinclination to leave a girl of Cynthia's tender age alone on Thousand
Acre Hill while he journeyed on his affairs about the country. The Rev.
Mr. Satterlee, gaunt, red-faced, but the six feet of him a man and a
Christian, from his square-toed boots to the bleaching yellow hair around
his temples, offered to become her teacher. For by this time Cynthia had
exhausted the resources of the little school among the birches.
The four years of her life in the tannery house which are now briefly to
be chronicled were, for her, full of happiness and peace. Though the
young may sorrow, they do not often mourn. Cynthia missed her father; at
times, when the winds kept her wakeful at night, she wept for him. But
she loved Jethro Bass and served him with a devotion that filled his
heart with strange ecstasies--yes, and forebodings. In all his existence
he had never known a love like this. He may have imagined it once, back
in the bright days of his youth; but the dreams of its fulfilment had
fallen far short of the exquisite touch of the reality in which he now
spent his days at home. In summer, when she sat, in the face of all the
conventions of the village, reading under the butternut tree before the
house, she would feel his eyes upon her, and the mysterious yearning in
them would startle her. Often during her lessons with Mr. Satterlee in
the parlor of the parsonage she would hear a noise outside and perceive
Jethro leaning against the pillar. Both Cynthia and Mr. Satterlee knew
that he was there, and both, by a kind of tacit agreement, ignored the
circumstance.
Cynthia, in this period, undertook Jethro's education, too. She could
have induced him to study the making of Latin verse by the mere asking.
During those days which he spent at home, and which he had grown to value
beyond price, he might have been seen seated on the ground with his back
to the butternut tree while Cynthia read aloud from the well-worn books
which had been her father's treasures, books that took on marvels of
meaning from her lips. Cynthia's powers of selection were not remarkable
at this period, and perhaps it was as well that she never knew the effect
of the various works upon the hitherto untamed soul of her listener.
Milton and Tennyson and Longfellow awoke in him by their very music
troubled and half-formed regrets; Carlyle's "Frederick the Great" set up
tumultuous imaginings; but the "Life of Jackson" (as did the story of
Napoleon long ago) stirred all that was masterful in his blood.
Unlettered as he was, Jethro had a power which often marks the American
of action--a singular grasp of the application of any sentence or
paragraph to his own life; and often, about this time, he took away the
breath of a judge or a senator by flinging at them a chunk of Carlyle or
Parton.
It was perhaps as well that Cynthia was not a woman at this time, and
that she had grown up with him, as it were. His love, indeed, was that of
a father for a daughter; but it held within it as a core the revived love
of his youth for Cynthia, her mother. Tender as were the manifestations
of this love, Cynthia never guessed the fires within, for there was in
truth something primeval in the fierceness of his passion. She was his
now--his alone, to cherish and sweeten the declining years of his life,
and when by a chance Jethro looked upon her and thought of the suitor who
was to come in the fulness of her years, he burned with a hatred which it
is given few men to feel. It was well for Jethro that these thoughts came
not often.
Sometimes, in the summer afternoons, they took long drives through the
town behind Jethro's white horse on business. "Jethro's gal," as Cynthia
came to be affectionately called, held the reins while Jethro went in to
talk to the men folk. One August evening found Cynthia thus beside a
poplar in front of Amos Cuthbert's farmhouse, a poplar that shimmered
green-gold in the late afternoon, and from the buggy-seat Cynthia looked
down upon a thousand purple hilltops and mountain peaks of another state.
The view aroused in the girl visions of the many wonders which life was
to hold, and she did not hear the sharp voice beside her until the woman
had spoken twice. Jethro came out in the middle of the conversation,
nodded to Mrs. Cuthbert, and drove off.
"Uncle Jethro," asked Cynthia, presently, "what is a mortgage?"
Jethro struck the horse with the whip, an uncommon action with him, and
the buggy was jerked forward sharply over the boulders.
"Er--who's b'en talkin' about mortgages, Cynthy?" he demanded.
"Mrs. Cuthbert said that when folks had mortgage held over them they had
to take orders whether they liked them or not. She said that Amos had to
do what you told him because there was a mortgage. That isn't so is it?"
Jethro did not speak. Presently Cynthia laid her hand over his.
"Mrs. Cuthbert is a spiteful woman," she said. "I know the reason why
people obey you--it's because you're so great. And Daddy used to tell me
so."
A tremor shook Jethro's frame and the hand on which hers rested, and all
the way down the mountain valleys to Coniston village he did not speak
again. But Cynthia was used to his silences, and respected them.
To Ephraim Prescott, who, as the days went on, found it more and more
difficult to sew harness on account of his rheumatism, Jethro was not
only a great man but a hero. For Cynthia was vaguely troubled at having
found one discontent. She was wont to entertain Ephraim on the days when
his hands failed him, when he sat sunning himself before his door; and
she knew that he was honest.
"Who's b'en talkin' to you, Cynthia?" he cried. "Why, Jethro's the
biggest man I know, and the best. I don't like to think where some of us
would have b'en if he hadn't given us a lift."
"But he has enemies, Cousin Eph," said Cynthia, still troubled. "What
great man hain't?" exclaimed the soldier. "Jethro's enemies hain't worth
thinkin' about."
The thought that Jethro had enemies was very painful to Cynthia, and she
wanted to know who they were that she might show them a proper contempt
if she met them. Lem Hallowell brushed aside the subject with his usual
bluff humor, and pinched her cheek and told her not to trouble her head;
Amanda Hatch dwelt upon the inherent weakness in the human race, and the
Rev. Mr. Satterlee faced the question once, during a history lesson. The
nation's heroes came into inevitable comparison with Jethro Bass. Was
Washington so good a man? and would not Jethro have been as great as the
Father of his Country if he had had the opportunities?
The answers sorely tried Mr. Satterlee's conscience, albeit he was not a
man of the world. It set him thinking. He liked Jethro, this man of
rugged power whose word had become law in the state. He knew best that
side of him which Cynthia saw; and--if the truth be told--as a native of
Coniston Mr. Satterlee felt in the bottom of his heart a certain pride in
Jethro. The minister's opinions well represented the attitude of his
time. He had not given thought to the subject--for such matters had came
to be taken for granted. A politician now was a politician, his ways and
standards set apart from those of other citizens, and not to be judged by
men without the pale of public life. Mr. Satterlee in his limited vision
did not then trace the matter to its source, did not reflect that Jethro
Bass himself was almost wholly responsible in that state for the
condition of politics and politicians. Coniston was proud of Jethro,
prouder of him than ever since his last great victory in the Legislature,
which brought the Truro Railroad through to Harwich and settled their
townsman more firmly than ever before in the seat of power. Every
statesman who drove into their little mountain village and stopped at the
tannery house made their blood beat faster. Senators came, and
representatives, and judges, and governors, "to git their orders," as
Rias Richardson briefly put it, and Jethro could make or unmake them at a
word. Each was scanned from the store where Rias now reigned supreme, and
from the harness shop across the road. Some drove away striving to bite
from their lips the tell-tale smile which arose in spite of them; others
tried to look happy, despite the sentence of doom to which they had
listened.
Jethro Bass was indeed a great man to make such as these tremble or
rejoice. When he went abroad with Cynthia awheel or afoot, some took off
their hats--an unheard-of thing in Coniston. If he stopped at the store,
they scanned his face for the mood he was in before venturing their
remarks; if he lingered for a moment in front of the house of Amanda
Hatch, the whole village was advised of the circumstance before
nightfall.
Two personages worthy of mention here visited the tannery house during
the years that Cynthia lived with Jethro. The Honorable Heth Sutton drove
over from Clovelly attended by his prime minister, Mr. Bijah Bixby. The
Honorable Heth did not attempt to conceal the smile with which he went
away, and he stopped at the store long enough to enable Rias to produce
certain refreshments from depths unknown to the United States Internal
Revenue authorities. Mr. Sutton shook hands with everybody, including
Jake Wheeler. Well he might. He came to Coniston a private citizen, and
drove away to all intents and purposes a congressman: the darling wish of
his life realized after heaven knows how many caucuses and conventions of
disappointment, when Jethro had judged it expedient for one reason or
another that a north countryman should go. By the time the pair reached
Brampton, Chamberlain Bixby was introducing his chief as Congressman
Sutton, and by this title he was known for many years to come.
Another day, when the snow lay in great billows on the ground and filled
the mountain valleys, when the pines were rusty from the long winter, two
other visitors drove to Coniston in a two-horse sleigh. The sun was
shining brightly, the wind held its breath, and the noon-day warmth was
almost like that of spring. Those who know the mountain country will
remember the joy of many such days. Cynthia, standing in the sun on the
porch, breathing deep of the pure air, recognized, as the sleigh drew
near, the somewhat portly gentleman driving, and the young woman beside
him regally clad in furs who looked patronizingly at the tannery house as
she took the reins. The young woman was Miss Cassandra Hopkins, and the
portly gentleman, the Honorable Alva himself, patron of the drama, who
had entered upon his governorship and now wished to be senator.
"Jethro Bass home?" he called out.
"Mr. Bass is home," answered Cynthia. The girl in the sleigh murmured
something, laughing a little, and Cynthia flushed. Mr. Hopkins gave a
somewhat peremptory knock at the door and was admitted by Millicent
Skinner, but Cynthia stood staring at Cassandra in the sleigh, some
instinct warning her of a coming skirmish.
"Do you live here all the year round?"
"Of course," said Cynthia.
Miss Cassandra shrugged as though that were beyond her comprehension.
"I'd die in a place like this," she said. "No balls, or theatres. Doesn't
your father take you around the state?"
"My father's dead," said Cynthia.
"Oh! Your name's Cynthia Wetherell, isn't it? You know Bob Worthington,
don't you? He's gone to Harvard now, but he was a great friend of mine at
Andover."
Cynthia didn't answer. It would not be fair to say that she felt a pang,
though it might add to the romance of this narrative. But her dislike for
the girl in the sleigh decidedly increased. How was she, in her
inexperience, to know that the radiant beauty in furs was what the boys
at Phillips Andover called an "old stager."
"So you live with Jethro Bass," was Miss Cassandra's next remark. "He's
rich enough to take you round the state and give you everything you
want."
"I have everything I want," replied Cynthia.
"I shouldn't call living here having everything I wanted," declared Miss
Hopkins, with a contemptuous glance at the tannery house.
"I suppose you wouldn't," said Cynthia.
Miss Hopkins was nettled. She was out of humor that day, besides she
shared some of her father's political ambition. If he went to Washington,
she went too.
"Didn't you know Jethro Bass was rich?" she demanded, imprudently. "Why,
my father gave twenty thousand dollars to be governor, and Jethro Bass
must have got half of it."
Cynthia's eyes were of that peculiar gray which, lighted by love or
anger, once seen, are never forgotten. One hand was on the dashboard of
the cutter, the other had seized the seat. Her voice was steady, and the
three words she spoke struck Miss Hopkins with startling effect.
Miss Hopkins's breath was literally taken away, and for once she found no
retort. Let it be said for her that this was a new experience with a new
creature. A demure country girl turn into a wildcat before her very eyes!
Perhaps it was as well for both that the door of the house opened and the
Honorable Alva interrupted their talk, and without so much as a glance at
Cynthia he got hurriedly into the sleigh and drove off. When Cynthia
turned, the points of color still high in her cheeks and the light still
ablaze in her eyes, she surprised Jethro gazing at her from the porch,
and some sorrow she felt rather than beheld stopped the confession on her
lips. It would be unworthy of her even to repeat such slander, and the
color surged again into her face for very shame of her anger. Cassandra
Hopkins had not been worthy of it.
Jethro did not speak, but slipped his hand into hers, and thus they stood
for a long time gazing at the snow fields between the pines on the
heights of Coniston.
The next summer, was the first which the painter--pioneer of summer
visitors there--spent at Coniston. He was an unsuccessful painter, who
became, by a process which he himself does not to-day completely
understand, a successful writer of novels. As a character, however, he
himself confesses his inadequacy, and the chief interest in him for the
readers of this narrative is that he fell deeply in love with Cynthia
Wetherell at nineteen. It is fair to mention in passing that other young
men were in love with Cynthia at this time, notably Eben Hatch--history
repeating itself. Once, in a moment of madness, Eben confessed his love,
the painter never did: and he has to this day a delicious memory which
has made Cynthia the heroine of many of his stories. He boarded with
Chester Perkins, and he was humored by the village as a harmless but
amiable lunatic.
The painter had never conceived that a New England conscience and a
temper of no mean proportions could dwell together in the body of a wood
nymph. When he had first seen Cynthia among the willows by Coniston
Water, he had thought her a wood nymph. But she scolded him for his
impropriety with so unerring a choice of words that he fell in love with
her intellect, too. He spent much of his time to the neglect of his
canvases under the butternut tree in front of Jethro's house trying to
persuade Cynthia to sit for her portrait; and if Jethro himself had not
overheard one of these arguments, the portrait never would have been
painted. Jethro focussed a look upon the painter.
"Er--painter-man, be you? Paint Cynthy's picture?"
"But I don't want to be painted, Uncle Jethro. I won't be painted!"
"H-how much for a good picture? Er--only want the best--only want the
best."
The painter said a few things, with pardonable heat, to the effect--well,
never mind the effect. His remarks made no impression whatever upon
Jethro.
"Er---paint the picture--paint the picture, and then we'll talk about the
price. Er--wait a minute."
He went into the house, and they heard him lumbering up the stairs.
Cynthia sat with her back to the artist, pretending to read, but
presently she turned to him.
"I'll never forgive you--never, as long as I live," she cried, "and I
won't be painted!"
"N-not to please me, Cynthy?" It was Jethro's voice.
Her look softened. She laid down the book and went up to him on the porch
and put her hand on his shoulder.
"Do you really want it so much as all that, Uncle Jethro?" she said.
"Callate I do, Cynthy," he answered. He held a bundle covered with
newspaper in his hand, he looked down at Cynthia.
He seated himself on the edge of the porch and for the moment seemed lost
in revery. Then he began slowly to unwrap the newspaper from the bundle:
there were five layers of it, but at length he disclosed a bolt of
cardinal cloth.
"Call this to mind, Cynthy?"
"Yes," she answered with a smile.
"H-how's this for the dress, Mr. Painter-man?" said Jethro, with a pride
that was ill-concealed.
The painter started up from his seat and took the material in his hands
and looked at Cynthia. He belonged to a city club where he was popular
for his knack of devising costumes, and a vision of Cynthia as the
daughter of a Doge of Venice arose before his eyes. Wonder of wonders,
the daughter of a Doge discovered in a New England hill village! The
painter seized his pad and pencil and with a few strokes, guided by
inspiration, sketched the costume then and there and held it up to
Jethro, who blinked at it in astonishment. But Jethro was suspicious of
his own sensations.
"Er--well--Godfrey--g-guess that'll do." Then came the involuntary:
"W-wouldn't a-thought you had it in you. How about it, Cynthy?" and he
held it up for her inspection.
"If you are pleased, it's all I care about, Uncle Jethro," she answered,
and then, her face suddenly flushing, "You must promise me on your honor
that nobody in Coniston shall know about it, 'Mr. Painter-man'."
After this she always called him "Mr. Painter-man,"--when she was pleased
with him.
So the cardinal cloth was come to its usefulness at last. It was
inevitable that Sukey Kittredge, the village seamstress, should be taken
into confidence. It was no small thing to take Sukey into confidence, for
she was the legitimate successor in more ways than one of Speedy Bates,
and much of Cynthia and the artist's ingenuity was spent upon devising a
form of oath which would hold Sukey silent. Sukey, however, got no small
consolation from the sense of the greatness of the trust confided in her,
and of the uproar she could make in Coniston if she chose. The painter,
to do him justice, was the real dressmaker, and did everything except cut
the cloth and sew it together. He sent to friends of his in the city for
certain paste jewels and ornaments, and one day Cynthia stood in the old
tannery shed--hastily transformed into a studio--before a variously moved
audience. Sukey, having adjusted the last pin, became hysterical over her
handiwork, Millicent Skinner stared openmouthed, words having failed her
for once, and Jethro thrust his hands in his pockets in a quiet ecstasy
of approbation.
"A-always had a notion that cloth'd set you off, Cynthy," said he,
"er--next time I go to the state capital you come along--g-guess it'll
surprise 'em some."
"I guess it would, Uncle Jethro," said Cynthia, laughing.
Jethro postponed two political trips of no small importance to be present
at the painting of that picture, and he would sit silently by the hour in
a corner of the shed watching every stroke of the brush. Never stood
Doge's daughter in her jewels and seed pearls amidst stranger
surroundings,--the beam, and the centre post around which the old white
horse had toiled in times gone by, and all the piled-up, disused
machinery of forgotten days. And never was Venetian lady more unconscious
of her environment than Cynthia.
The portrait was of the head and shoulders alone, and when he had given
it the last touch, the painter knew that, for once in his life, he had
done a good thing. Never before; perhaps, had the fire of such
inspiration been given him. Jethro, who expressed himself in terms (for
him) of great enthusiasm, was for going to Boston immediately to purchase
a frame commensurate with the importance of such a work of art, but the
artist had his own views on that subject and sent to New York for this
also.
The day after the completion of the picture a rugged figure in rawhide
boots and coonskin cap approached Chester Perkins's house, knocked at the
door, and inquired for the "Painter-man." It was Jethro. The
"Painter-man" forthwith went out into the rain behind the shed, where a
somewhat curious colloquy took place.
"G-guess I'm willin' to pay you full as much as it's worth," said Jethro,
producing a cowhide wallet. "Er--what figure do you allow it comes to
with the frame?"
The artist was past taking offence, since Jethro had long ago become for
him an engrossing study.
"I will send you the bill for the frame, Mr. Bass," he said, "the picture
belongs to Cynthia."
"Earn your livin' by paintin', don't you--earn your livin'?"
The painter smiled a little bitterly.
"No," he said, "if I did, I shouldn't be--alive. Mr. Bass, have you ever
done anything the pleasure of doing which was pay enough, and to spare?"
Jethro looked at him, and something very like admiration came into the
face that was normally expressionless.
He put up his wallet a little awkwardly, and held out his hand more
awkwardly.
"You be more of a feller than I thought for," he said, and strode off
through the drizzle toward Coniston. The painter walked slowly to the
kitchen, where Chester Perkins and his wife were sitting down to supper.
"Jethro got a mortgage on you, too?" asked Chester.
The artist had his reward, for when the picture was hung at length in the
little parlor of the tannery house it became a source of pride to
Coniston second only to Jethro himself.