The Essential Winston Churchill Collection. Winston Churchill
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is finer than ever, Mr. Bass," remarked Mrs. Northcutt.
"So-so, Mis' Northcutt, so-so."
"I was there ten years ago," remarked Mrs. Northcutt, with a sigh of reminiscence, "and I never see such fine silks and bonnets in my life. Now I've often wanted to ask you, did you buy that bonnet with the trembly jet things for Mis' Bass?"
"That bonnet come out full better'n I expected," answered Jethro, modestly.
"You have got taste in wimmin's fixin's, Mr. Bass. Strange? Now I wouldn't let Joe choose my things for worlds."
So the dinner progressed, Joe with his eyes on his plate, Chester silent, but bursting with anger and resentment, until at last Jethro pushed back his chair, and said good day to Mrs. Northcutt and walked out. Chester got up instantly and went after him, and Joe, full of forebodings, followed his brother-in-law! Jethro was standing calmly on the grass plot, whittling a toothpick. Chester stared at him a moment, and then strode off toward the barn, unhitched his horse and jumped in his wagon. Something prompted him to take another look at Jethro, who was still whittling.
"C-carry me down to the road, Chester--c-carry me down to the road?" said Jethro.
Joe Northcutt's knees gave way under him, and he sat down on a sugar kettle. Chester tightened up his reins so suddenly that his horse reared, while Jethro calmly climbed into the seat beside him and they drove off. It was some time before Joe had recovered sufficiently to arise and repair to the scene of operations on the road.
It was Joe who brought the astounding news to the store that evening. Chester was Jethro's own candidate for senior Selectman! Jethro himself had said so, that he would be happy to abdicate in Chester's favor, and make it unanimous--Chester having been a candidate so many times, and disappointed.
"Whar's Chester?" said Lem Hallowell.
Joe pulled a long face.
"Just come from his house, and he hain't done a lick of work sence noon time. Jest sets in a corner--won't talk, won't eat--jest sets thar."
Lem sat down on the counter and laughed until he was forced to brush the tears from his cheeks at the idea of Chester Perkins being Jethro's candidate. Where was reform now? If Chester were elected, it would be in the eyes of the world as Jethro's man. No wonder he sat in a corner and refused to eat.
"Guess you'll ketch it next, Will, for goin' over to Harwich with Lem," Joe remarked playfully to the storekeeper, as he departed.
These various occurrences certainly did not tend to allay the uneasiness of Mr. Wetherell. The next afternoon, at a time when a slack trade was slackest, he had taken his chair out under the apple tree and was sitting with that same volume of Byron in his lap--but he was not reading. The humorous aspects of the doings of Mr. Bass did not particularly appeal to him now; and he was, in truth, beginning to hate this man whom the fates had so persistently intruded into his life. William Wetherell was not, it may have been gathered, what may be called vindictive. He was a sensitive, conscientious person whose life should have been in the vale; and yet at that moment he had a fierce desire to confront Jethro Bass and--and destroy him. Yes, he felt equal to that.
Shocks are not very beneficial to sensitive natures. William Wetherell looked up, and there was Jethro Bass on the doorstep.
"G-great resource--readin'--great resource," he remarked.
In this manner Jethro snuffed out utterly that passion to destroy, and another sensation took its place--a sensation which made it very difficult for William Wetherell to speak, but he managed to reply that reading had been a great resource to him. Jethro had a parcel in his hand, and he laid it down on the step beside him; and he seemed, for once in his life, to be in a mood for conversation.
"It's hard for me to read a book," he observed. "I own to it--it's a little mite hard. H-hev to kind of spell it out in places. Hain't had much time for readin'. But it's kind of pleasant to l'arn what other folks has done in the world by pickin' up a book. T-takes your mind off things--don't it?"
Wetherell felt like saying that his reading had not been able to do that lately. Then he made the plunge, and shuddered as he made it.
"Mr. Bass--I--I have been waiting to speak to you about that mortgage."
"Er--yes," he answered, without moving his head, "er--about the mortgage."
"Mr. Worthington told me that you had bought it."
"Yes, I did--yes, I did."
"I'm afraid you will have to foreclose," said Wetherell; "I cannot reasonably ask you to defer the payments any longer."
"If I foreclose it, what will you do?" he demanded abruptly.
There was but one answer--Wetherell would have to go back to the city and face the consequences. He had not the strength to earn his bread on a farm.
"If I'd a b'en in any hurry for the money--g-guess I'd a notified you," said Jethro.
"I think you had better foreclose, Mr. Bass," Wetherell answered; "I can't hold out any hopes to you that it will ever be possible for me to pay it off. It's only fair to tell you that."
"Well," he said, with what seemed a suspicion of a smile, "I don't know but what that's about as honest an answer as I ever got."
"Why did you do it?" Wetherell cried, suddenly goaded by another fear; "why did you buy that mortgage?"
But this did not shake his composure.
"H-have a little habit of collectin' 'em," he answered, "same as you do books. G-guess some of 'em hain't as valuable."
William Wetherell was beginning to think that Jethro knew something also of such refinements of cruelty as were practised by Caligula. He drew forth his cowhide wallet and produced from it a folded piece of newspaper which must, Wetherell felt sure, contain the mortgage in question.
"There's one power I always wished I had," he observed, "the power to make folks see some things as I see 'em. I was acrost the Water to-night, on my hill farm, when the sun set, and the sky up thar above the mountain was all golden bars, and the river all a-flamin' purple, just as if it had been dyed by some of them Greek gods you're readin' about. Now if I could put them things on paper, I wouldn't care a haycock to be President. No, sir."
The storekeeper's amazement as he listened to this speech may be imagined. Was this Jethro Bass? If so, here was a side of him the existence of which no one suspected. Wetherell forgot the matter in hand.
"Why don't you put that on paper?" he exclaimed.
Jethro smiled, and made a deprecating motion with his thumb.
"Sometimes when I hain't busy, I drop into the state library at the capital and enjoy myself. It's like goin' to another world without any folks to bother you. Er--er--there's books I'd like to talk to you about--sometime."
"But I thought you told me you didn't read much, Mr. Bass?"
He made no direct reply, but unfolded the newspaper in his hand, and then Wetherell saw that it was only a clipping.
"H-happened to run across this in a newspaper--if this hain't this county, I wahn't born and raised here. If it hain't Coniston Mountain about seven o'clock of a June evening, I never saw Coniston Mountain. Er--listen to this."
Whereupon he read, with a feeling which Wetherell had not supposed he possessed, an extract: and as the storekeeper listened his blood began to run