The Essential Winston Churchill Collection. Winston Churchill
at the unmoved offender in the chair) "he has bought and intimidated men to do his bidding. He has sinned against heaven, and against the spirit of that most immortal of documents--" (Blank again. Most unfortunate blank, for this is becoming oratory, but somebody from below has seized the squire by the leg.) Squire Northcutt is too dignified and elderly a person to descend to rough and tumble, but he did get his leg liberated and kicked Fletcher Bartlett in the face. Oh, Coniston, that such scenes should take place in your town meeting! By this time another is orating, Mr. Sam Price, Jackson Democrat. There was no shorthand reporter in Coniston in those days, and it is just as well, perhaps, that the accusations and recriminations should sink into oblivion.
At last, by mighty efforts of the peace loving in both parties, something like order is restored, the ballots are in the box, and Deacon Lysander is counting them: not like another moderator I have heard of, who spilled the votes on the floor until his own man was elected. No. Had they registered his own death sentence, the deacon would have counted them straight, and needed no town clerk to verify his figures. But when he came to pronounce the vote, shame and sorrow and mortification overcame him. Coniston, his native town, which he had served and revered, was dishonored, and it was for him, Lysander Richardson, to proclaim her disgrace. The deacon choked, and tears of bitterness stood in his eyes, and there came a silence only broken by the surging of the sleet as he rapped on the table.
"Seventy-five votes have been cast for Jethro Bass--sixty-three for Moses Hatch. Necessary for a choice, seventy--and Jethro Bass is elected senior Selectman."
The deacon sat down, and men say that a great sob shook him, while Jacksonian Democracy went wild--not looking into future years to see what they were going wild about. Jethro Bass Chairman of the Board of Selectmen, in the honored place of Deacon Moses Hatch! Bourbon royalists never looked with greater abhorrence on the Corsican adventurer and usurper of the throne than did the orthodox in Coniston on this tanner, who had earned no right to aspire to any distinction, and who by his wiles had acquired the highest office in the town government. Fletcher Bartlett in, as a leader of the irresponsible opposition, would have been calamity enough. But Jethro Bass!
This man whom they had despised was the master mind who had organized and marshalled the loose vote, was the author of that ticket, who sat in his corner unmoved alike by the congratulations of his friends and the maledictions of his enemies; who rose to take his oath of office as unconcerned as though the house were empty, albeit Deacon Lysander could scarcely get the words out. And then Jethro sat down again in his chair--not to leave it for six and thirty years. From this time forth that chair became a seat of power, and of dominion over a state.
Thus it was that Jock Hallowell's prophecy, so lightly uttered, came to pass.
How the remainder of that Jacksonian ticket was elected, down to the very hog-reeves, and amid what turmoil of the Democracy and bitterness of spirit of the orthodox, I need not recount. There is no moral to the story, alas--it was one of those things which inscrutable heaven permitted to be done. After that dark town-meeting day some of those stern old fathers became broken men, and it is said in Coniston that this calamity to righteous government, and not the storm, gave to Priest Ware his death-stroke.
CHAPTER VI
And now we must go back for a chapter--a very short chapter--to the day before that town meeting which had so momentous an influence upon the history of Coniston and of the state. That Monday, too, it will be remembered, dawned in storm, the sleet hissing in the wide throats of the centre-chimneys, and bearing down great boughs of trees until they broke in agony. Dusk came early, and howling darkness that hid a muffled figure on the ice-bound road staring at the yellow cracks in the tannery door. Presently the figure crossed the yard; the door, flying open, released a shaft of light that shot across the white ground, revealed a face beneath a hood to him who stood within.
"Jethro!"
She darted swiftly past him, seizing the door and drawing it closed after her. A lantern hung on the central post and flung its rays upon his face. Her own, mercifully, was in the shadow, and burning now with a shame that was insupportable. Now that she was there, beside him, her strength failed her, and her courage--courage that she had been storing for this dread undertaking throughout the whole of that dreadful day. Now that she was there, she would have given her life to have been able to retrace her steps, to lose herself in the wild, dark places of the mountain.
"Cynthy!" His voice betrayed the passion which her presence had quickened.
The words she would have spoken would not come. She could think of nothing but that she was alone with him, and in bodily terror of him. She turned to the door again, to grasp the wooden latch; but he barred the way, and she fell back.
"Let me go," she cried. "I did not mean to come. Do you hear?--let me go!"
To her amazement he stepped aside--a most unaccountable action for him. More unaccountable still, she did not move, now that she was free, but stood poised for flight, held by she knew not what.
"G-go if you've a mind to, Cynthy--if you've a mind to."
"I've come to say something to you," she faltered. It was not, at all the way she had pictured herself as saying it.
"H-haven't took' Moses--have you?"
"Oh," she cried, "do you think I came here to speak of such a thing as that?"
"H-haven't took--Moses, have you?"
She was trembling, and yet she could almost have smiled at this well-remembered trick of pertinacity.
"No," she said, and immediately hated herself for answering him.
"H-haven't took that Worthington cuss?"
He was jealous!
"I didn't come to discuss Mr. Worthington," she replied.
"Folks say it's only a matter of time," said he. "Made up your mind to take him, Cynthy? M-made up your mind?"
"You've no right to talk to me in this way," she said, and added, the words seeming to slip of themselves from her lips, "Why do you do it?"
"Because I'm--interested," he said.
"You haven't shown it," she flashed back, forgetting the place, and the storm, and her errand even, forgetting that Jake Wheeler, or any one in Coniston, might come and surprise her there.
He took a step toward her, and she retreated. The light struck her face, and he bent over her as though searching it for a sign. The cape on her shoulders rose and fell as she breathed.
"'Twahn't charity, Cynthy--was it? 'Twahn't charity?"
"It was you who called it such," she answered, in a low voice.
A sleet-charged gust hurled itself against the door, and the lantern flickered.
"Wahn't it charity."
"It was friendship, Jethro. You ought to have known that, and you should not have brought back the book."
"Friendship," he repeated, "y-you said friendship?"
"Yes."
"M-meant friendship?"
"Yes," said Cynthia, but more faintly, and yet with a certain delicious fright as she glanced at him shyly. Surely there had never been a stranger man! Now he was apparently in a revery.
"G-guess it's because I'm not good enough to be anything more," he remarked suddenly. "Is that it?"
"You have not tried even to be a friend,"