Coniston, Complete

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CONISTON

By Winston Churchill

"We have been compelled to see what was weak in democracy as well as
what was strong. We have begun obscurely to recognize that things
do not go of themselves, and that popular government is not in
itself a panacea, is no better than any other form except as the
virtue and wisdom of the people make it so, and that when men
undertake to do their own kingship, they enter upon, the dangers and
responsibilities as well as the privileges of the function. Above
all, it looks as if we were on the way to be persuaded that no
government can be carried on by declamation."

--JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL.



CONISTON

BOOK I



CHAPTER I

First I am to write a love-story of long ago, of a time some little while
after General Jackson had got into the White House and had shown the
world what a real democracy was. The Era of the first six Presidents had
closed, and a new Era had begun. I am speaking of political Eras. Certain
gentlemen, with a pious belief in democracy, but with a firmer
determination to get on top, arose,--and got in top. So many of these
gentlemen arose in the different states, and they were so clever, and
they found so many chinks in the Constitution to crawl through and steal
the people's chestnuts, that the Era may be called the Boss-Era. After
the Boss came along certain Things without souls, but of many minds, and
found more chinks in the Constitution: bigger chinks, for the Things were
bigger, and they stole more chestnuts. But I am getting far ahead of my
love-story--and of my book.

The reader is warned that this first love-story will, in a few chapters,
come to an end: and not to a happy end--otherwise there would be no book.
Lest he should throw the book away when he arrives at this page, it is
only fair to tell him that there is another and a much longer love story
later on, if he will only continue to read, in which, it is hoped, he may
not be disappointed.

The hills seem to leap up against the sky as I describe that region where
Cynthia Ware was born, and the very old country names help to summon up
the picture. Coniston Mountain, called by some the Blue Mountain, clad in
Hercynian forests, ten good miles in length, north and south, with its
notch road that winds over the saddle behind the withers of it. Coniston
Water, that oozes out from under the loam in a hundred places, on the
eastern slope, gathers into a rushing stream to cleave the very granite,
flows southward around the south end of Coniston Mountain, and having
turned the mills at Brampton, idles through meadows westward in its own
green valley until it comes to Harwich, where it works again and tumbles
into a river. Brampton and Harwich are rivals, but Coniston Water gives
of its power impartially to each. From the little farm clearings on the
western slope of Coniston Mountain you can sweep the broad valley of a
certain broad river where grew (and grow still) the giant pines that gave
many a mast to King George's navy as tribute for the land. And beyond
that river rises beautiful Farewell Mountain of many colors, now
sapphire, now amethyst, its crest rimmed about at evening with saffron
flame; and, beyond Farewell, the emerald billows of the western peaks
catching the level light. A dozen little brooks are born high among the
western spruces on Coniston to score deep, cool valleys in their way
through Clovelly township to the broad music of the water and fresh
river-valleys full of the music of the water and fresh with the odor of
the ferns.

To this day the railroad has not reached Coniston Village--nay, nor
Coniston Flat, four miles nearer Brampton. The village lies on its own
little shelf under the forest-clad slope of the mountain, and in the
midst of its dozen houses is the green triangle where the militia used to
drill on June days. At one end of the triangle is the great pine mast
that graced no frigate of George's, but flew the stars and stripes on
many a liberty day. Across the road is Jonah Winch's store, with a
platform so high that a man may step off his horse directly on to it;
with its checker-paned windows, with its dark interior smelling of coffee
and apples and molasses, yes, and of Endea rum--for this was before the
days of the revivals.

How those checker-paned windows bring back the picture of that village
green! The meeting-house has them, lantern-like, wide and high, in three
sashes--white meeting-house, seat alike of government and religion, with
its terraced steeple, with its classic porches north and south. Behind it
is the long shed, and in front, rising out of the milkweed and the
flowering thistle, the horse block of the first meeting-house, where many
a pillion has left its burden in times bygone. Honest Jock Hallowell
built that second meeting-house--was, indeed, still building it at the
time of which we write. He had hewn every beam and king post in it, and
set every plate and slip. And Jock Hallowell is the man who, unwittingly
starts this chronicle.

At noon, on one of those madcap April days of that Coniston country, Jock
descended from his work on the steeple to perceive the ungainly figure of
Jethro Bass coming toward him across the green. Jethro was about thirty
years of age, and he wore a coonskin cap even in those days, and trousers
tacked into his boots. He carried his big head bent forward, a little to
one aide, and was not, at first sight, a prepossessing-looking person. As
our story largely concerns him and we must get started somehow, it may as
well be to fix a little attention on him.

"Heigho!" said Jock, rubbing his hands on his leather apron.

"H-how be you, Jock?" said Jethro, stopping.

"Heigho!" cried Jock, "what's this game of fox and geese you're a-playin'
among the farmers?"

"C-callate to git the steeple done before frost?" inquired Jethro,
without so much as a smile. "B-build it tight, Jock--b-build it tight."

"Guess he'll build his'n tight, whatever it is," said Jock, looking after
him as Jethro made his way to the little tannery near by.

Let it be known that there was such a thing as social rank in Coniston;
and something which, for the sake of an advantageous parallel, we may
call an Established Church. Coniston was a Congregational town still, and
the deacons and dignitaries of that church were likewise the pillars of
the state. Not many years before the time of which we write actual
disestablishment had occurred, when the town ceased--as a town--to pay
the salary of Priest Ware, as the minister was called. The father of
Jethro Bass, Nathan the currier, had once, in a youthful lapse, permitted
a Baptist preacher to immerse him in Coniston Water. This had been the
extent of Nathan's religion; Jethro had none at all, and was, for this
and other reasons, somewhere near the bottom of the social scale.

"Fox and geese!" repeated Jock, with his eyes still on Jethro's
retreating back. The builder of the meetinghouse rubbed a great, brown
arm, scratched his head, and turned and came face to face with Cynthia
Ware, in a poke bonnet.

Contrast is a favorite trick of authors, and no greater contrast is to be
had in Coniston than that between Cynthia Ware and Jethro Bass. In the
first place; Cynthia was the minister's daughter, and twenty-one. I can
summon her now under the great maples of the village street, a virginal
figure, gray eyes that kindled the face shaded by the poke bonnet, and up
you went above the clouds.

"What about fox and geese, Jock?" said Cynthia.

"Jethro Bass," said Jock, who, by reason of his ability, was a privileged
character. "Mark my words, Cynthy, Jethro Bass is an all-fired sight
smarter that folks in this town think he be. They don't take notice of
him, because he don't say much, and stutters. He hain't be'n eddicated a
great deal, but I wouldn't be afeard to warrant he'd make a racket in the
world some of these days."

"Jock Hallowell!" cried Cynthia, the gray beginning to dance, "I suppose
you think Jethro's going to be President."

"All right," said Jock, "you can laugh. Ever talked with Jethro?"

"I've hardly spoken two words to him in my life," she replied. And it was
true, although the little white parsonage was scarce two hundred yards
from the tannery house.

"Jethro's never ailed much," Jock remarked, having reference to Cynthia's
proclivities for visiting the sick. "I've seed a good many different men
in my time, and I tell you, Cynthia Ware, that Jethro's got a kind of
power you don't often come acrost. Folks don't suspicion it."

In spite of herself, Cynthia was impressed by the ring of sincerity in
the builder's voice. Now that she thought of it, there was rugged power
in Jethro's face, especially when he took off the coonskin cap. She
always nodded a greeting when she saw him in the tannery yard or on the
road, and sometimes he nodded back, but oftener he had not appeared to
see her. She had thought this failure to nod stupidity, but it might
after all be abstraction.

"What makes you think he has ability?" she asked, picking flowers from a
bunch of arbutus she held.

"He's rich, for one thing," said Jock. He had not intended a dissertation
on Jethro Bass, but he felt bound to defend his statements.

"Rich!"

"Wal, he hain't poor. He's got as many as thirty mortgages round among
the farmers--some on land, and some on cattle."

"How did he make the money?" demanded Cynthia, in surprise.

"Hides an' wool an' bark--turned 'em over an' swep' in. Gits a load, and
Lyman Hull drives him down to Boston with that six-hoss team. Lyman gits
drunk, Jethro keeps sober and saves."

Jock began to fashion some wooden pegs with his adze, for nails were
scarce in those days. Still Cynthia lingered, picking flowers from the
bunch.

"What did you mean by 'fox and geese' Jock?" she said presently.

Jock laughed. He did not belong to the Establishment, but was a
Universalist; politically he admired General Jackson. "What'd you say if
Jethro was Chairman of the next Board of Selectmen?" he demanded.

No wonder Cynthia gasped. Jethro Bass, Chairman of the Board, in the
honored seat of Deacon Moses Hatch, the perquisite of the church in
Coniston! The idea was heresy. As a matter of fact, Jock himself uttered
it as a playful exaggeration. Certain nonconformist farmers, of whom
there were not a few in the town, had come into Jonah Winch's store that
morning; and Jabez Miller, who lived on the north slope, had taken away
the breath of the orthodox by suggesting that Jethro Bass be nominated
for town office. Jock Hallowell had paused once or twice on his work on
the steeple to look across the tree-tops at Coniston shouldering the sky.
He had been putting two and two together, and now he was merely making
five out of it, instead of four. He remembered that Jethro Bass had for
some years been journeying through the town, baying his hides and wool,
and collecting the interest on his mortgages.

Cynthia would have liked to reprove Jock Hallowell, and tell him there
were some subjects which should not be joked about. Jethro Bass, Chairman
of the Board of Selectmen!

"Well, here comes, young Moses, I do believe," said Jock, gathering his
pegs into his apron and preparing to ascend once more. "Callated he'd
spring up pretty soon."

"Jock, you do talk foolishly for a man who is able to build a church,"
said Cynthia, as she walked away. The young Moses referred to was Moses
Hatch, Junior, son of the pillar of the Church and State, and it was an
open secret that he was madly in love with Cynthia. Let it be said of him
that he was a steady-going young man, and that he sighed for the moon.

"Moses," said the girl, when they came in sight of the elms that, shaded
the gable of the parsonage, "what do you think of Jethro Bass?"

"Jethro Bass!" exclaimed honest Moses, "whatever put him into your head,
Cynthy?" Had she mentioned perhaps, any other young man in Coniston,
Moses would have been eaten with jealousy.

"Oh, Jock was joking about him. What do you think of him?"

"Never thought one way or t'other," he answered. "Jethro never had much
to do with the boys. He's always in that tannery, or out buyin' of hides.
He does make a sharp bargain when he buys a hide. We always goes shares
on our'n."

Cynthia was not only the minister's daughter,--distinction enough,--her
reputation for learning was spread through the country roundabout, and at
the age of twenty she had had an offer to teach school in Harwich. Once a
week in summer she went to Brampton, to the Social library there, and sat
at the feet of that Miss Lucretia Penniman of whom Brampton has ever been
so proud--Lucretia Penniman, one of the first to sound the clarion note
for the intellectual independence of American women; who wrote the "Hymn
to Coniston"; who, to the awe of her townspeople, went out into the great
world and became editress of a famous woman's journal, and knew
Longfellow and Hawthorne and Bryant. Miss Lucretia it was who started the
Brampton Social Library, and filled it with such books as both sexes
might read with profit. Never was there a stricter index than hers.
Cynthia, Miss Lucretia loved, and the training of that mind was the
pleasantest task of her life.

Curiosity as a factor has never, perhaps, been given its proper weight by
philosophers. Besides being fatal to a certain domestic animal, as an
instigating force it has brought joy and sorrow into the lives of men and
women, and made and marred careers. And curiosity now laid hold of
Cynthia Ware. Why in the world she should ever have been curious about
Jethro Bass is a mystery to many, for the two of them were as far apart
as the poles. Cynthia, of all people, took to watching the tanner's son,
and listening to the brief colloquies he had with other men at Jonah
Winch's store, when she went there to buy things for the parsonage; and
it seemed to her that Jock had not been altogether wrong, and that there
was in the man an indefinable but very compelling force. And when a woman
begins to admit that a man has force, her curiosity usually increases. On
one or two of these occasions Cynthia had been startled to find his eyes
fixed upon her, and though the feeling she had was closely akin to fear,
she found something distinctly pleasurable in it.

May came, and the pools dried up, the orchards were pink and white, the
birches and the maples were all yellow-green on the mountain sides
against the dark pines, and Cynthia was driving the minister's gig to
Brampton. Ahead of her, in the canon made by the road between the great
woods, strode an uncouth but powerful figure--coonskin cap, homespun
breeches tucked into boots, and all. The gig slowed down, and Cynthia
began to tremble with that same delightful fear. She knew it must be
wicked, because she liked it so much. Unaccountable thing! She felt all
akin to the nature about her, and her blood was coursing as the sap
rushes through a tree. She would not speak to him; of that she was sure,
and equally sure that he would not speak to her. The horse was walking
now, and suddenly Jethro Bass faced around, and her heart stood still.

"H-how be you, Cynthy?" he asked.

"How do you do, Jethro?"

A thrush in the woods began to sing a hymn, and they listened. After that
a silence, save for the notes of answering birds quickened by the song,
the minister's horse nibbling at the bushes. Cynthia herself could not
have explained why she lingered. Suddenly he shot a question at her.

"Where be you goin'?"

"To Brampton, to get Miss Lucretia to change this book," and she held it
up from her lap. It was a very large book.

"Wh-what's it about," he demanded.

"Napoleon Bonaparte."

"Who was be?"

"He was a very strong man. He began life poor and unknown, and fought his
way upward until he conquered the world."

"C-conquered the world, did you say? Conquered the world?"

"Yes."

Jethro pondered.

"Guess there's somethin' wrong about that book--somethin' wrong. Conquer
the United States?"

Cynthia smiled. She herself did not realize that we were not a part of
the world, then.

"He conquered Europe; where all the kings and queens are, and became a
king himself--an emperor."

"I want to-know!" said Jethro. "You said he was a poor boy?"

"Why don't you read the book, Jethro?" Cynthia answered. "I am sure I can
get Miss Lucretia to let you have it."

"Don't know as I'd understand it," he demurred.

"I'll try to explain what you don't understand," said Cynthia, and her
heart gave a bound at the very idea.

"Will You?" he said, looking at her eagerly. "Will you? You mean it?"

"Certainly," she answered, and blushed, not knowing why. "I-I must be
going," and she gathered up the reins.

"When will you give it to me?"

"I'll stop at the tannery when I come back from Brampton," she said, and
drove on. Once she gave a fleeting glance over her shoulder, and he was
still standing where she had left him.

When she returned, in the yellow afternoon light that flowed over wood
and pasture, he came out of the tannery door. Jake Wheeler or Speedy
Bates, the journeyman tailoress, from whom little escaped, could not have
said it was by design--thought nothing, indeed, of that part of it.

"As I live!" cried Speedy from the window to Aunt Lucy Prescott in the
bed, "if Cynthy ain't givin' him a book as big as the Bible!"

Aunt Lucy hoped, first, that it was the Bible, and second, that Jethro
would read it. Aunt Lucy, and Established Church Coniston in general,
believed in snatching brands from the burning, and who so deft as Cynthia
at this kind of snatching! So Cynthia herself was a hypocrite for once,
and did not know it. At that time Jethro's sins were mostly of omission.
As far as rum was concerned, he was a creature after Aunt Lucy's own
heart, for he never touched it: true, gaunt Deacon Ira Perkins,
tithing-man, had once chided him for breaking the Sabbath--shooting at a
fox.

To return to the book. As long as he lived, Jethro looked back to the joy
of the monumental task of mastering its contents. In his mind, Napoleon
became a rough Yankee general; of the cities, villages, and fortress he
formed as accurate a picture as a resident of Venice from Marco Polo's
account of Tartary. Jethro had learned to read, after a fashion, to
write, add, multiply, and divide. He knew that George Washington and
certain barefooted companions had forced a proud Britain to her knees,
and much of the warring in the book took color from Captain Timothy
Prescott's stories of General Stark and his campaigns, heard at Jonah
Winch's store. What Paris looked like, or Berlin, or the Hospice of St.
Bernard--though imaged by a winter Coniston--troubled Jethro not at all;
the thing that stuck in his mind was that Napoleon--for a considerable
time, at least--compelled men to do his bidding. Constitutions crumble
before the Strong. Not that Jethro philosophized about constitutions.
Existing conditions presented themselves, and it occurred to him that
there were crevices in the town system, and ways into power through the
crevices for men clever enough to find them.

A week later, and in these same great woods on the way to Brampton,
Cynthia overtook him once more. It was characteristic of him that he
plunged at once into the subject uppermost in his mind.

"Not a very big place, this Corsica--not a very big place."

"A little island in the Mediterranean," said Cynthia.

"Hum. Country folks, the Bonapartes--country folks?"

Cynthia laughed.

"I suppose you might call them so," she said. "They were poor, and lived
out of the world."

"He was a smart man. But he found things goin' his way. Didn't have to
move 'em."

"Not at first;" she admitted; "but he had to move mountains later. How
far have you read?"

"One thing that helped him," said Jethro, in indirect answer to this
question, "he got a smart woman for his wife--a smart woman."

Cynthia looked down at the reins in her lap, and she felt again that
wicked stirring within her,--incredible stirring of minister's daughter
for tanner's son. Coniston believes, and always will believe, that the
social bars are strong enough. So Cynthia looked down at the reins.

"Poor Josephine!" she said, "I always wish he had not cast her off."

"C-cast her off?" said Jethro. "Cast her off! Why did he do that?"

"After a while, when he got to be Emperor, he needed a wife who would be
more useful to him. Josephine had become a drag. He cared more about
getting on in the world than he did about his wife."

Jethro looked away contemplatively.

"Wa-wahn't the woman to blame any?" he said.

"Read the book, and you'll see," retorted Cynthia, flicking her horse,
which started at all gaits down the road. Jethro stood in his tracks,
staring, but this time he did not see her face above the hood of the gig.
Presently he trudged on, head downward, pondering upon another problem
than Napoleon's. Cynthia, at length, arrived in Brampton Street, in a
humor that puzzled the good Miss Lucretia sorely.




CHAPTER II

The sun had dropped behind the mountain, leaving Coniston in amethystine
shadow, and the last bee had flown homeward from the apple blossoms in
front of Aunt Lucy Prescott's window, before Cynthia returned. Aunt Lucy
was Cynthia's grandmother, and eighty-nine years of age. Still she sat in
her window beside the lilac bush, lost in memories of a stout, rosy lass
who had followed a stalwart husband up a broad river into the wilderness
some seventy years agone in Indian days--Weathersfield Massacre days.
That lass was Aunt Lucy herself, and in just such a May had Timothy's axe
rung through the Coniston forest and reared the log cabin, where six of
her children were born. Likewise in review passed the lonely months when
Timothy was fighting behind his rugged General Stark for that privilege
more desirable to his kind than life--self government. Timothy Prescott
would pull the forelock to no man, would have such God-fearing persons as
he chose make his laws for him.

Honest Captain Timothy and his Stark heroes, Aunt Lucy and her memories,
have long gone to rest. Little did they dream of the nation we have lived
to see, straining at her constitution like a great ship at anchor in a
gale, with funnels belching forth smoke, and a new race of men thronging
her decks for the mastery. Coniston is there still behind its mountain,
with its rusty firelocks and its hillside graves.

Cynthia, driving back from Brampton in the gig, smiled at Aunt Lucy in
the window, but she did not so much as glance at the tannery house
farther on. The tannery house, be it known, was the cottage where Jethro
dwelt, and which had belonged to Nathan, his father; and the tannery
sheds were at some distance behind it, nearer Coniston Water. Cynthia did
not glance at the tannery house, for a wave of orthodox indignation had
swept over her: at any rate, we may call it so. In other words, she was
angry with herself: pitied and scorned herself, if the truth be told, for
her actions--an inevitable mood.

In front of the minister's barn under the elms on the hill Cynthia pulled
the harness from the tired horse with an energy that betokened activity
of mind. She was not one who shrank from self-knowledge, and the question
put itself to her, "Whither was this matter tending?" The fire that is in
strong men has ever been a lure to women; and many, meaning to play with
it, have been burnt thereby since the world began. But to turn the fire.
to some use, to make the world better for it or stranger for it, that
were an achievement indeed! The horse munching his hay, Cynthia lingered
as the light fainted above the ridge, with the thought that this might be
woman's province, and Miss Lucretia Penniman might go on leading her
women regiments to no avail. Nevertheless she was angry with Jethro, not
because of what he had said, but because of what he was.

The next day is Sunday, and there is mild excitement in Coniston. For
Jethro Bass, still with the coonskin cap, but in a brass-buttoned coat
secretly purchased in Brampton, appeared at meeting! It made no
difference that he entered quietly, and sat in the rear slip, orthodox
Coniston knew that he was behind them: good Mr. Ware knew it, and changed
a little his prayers and sermon: Cynthia knew it, grew hot and cold by
turns under her poke bonnet. Was he not her brand, and would she not get
the credit of snatching him? How willingly, then, would she have given up
that credit to the many who coveted it--if it were a credit. Was Jethro
at meeting for any religious purpose?

Jethro's importance to Coniston lay in his soul, and that soul was
numbered at present ninety and ninth. When the meeting was over, Aunt
Lucy Prescott hobbled out at an amazing pace to advise him to read
chapter seven of Matthew, but he had vanished: via the horse sheds; if
she had known it, and along Coniston Water to the house by the tannery,
where he drew breath in a state of mind not to be depicted. He had gazed
at the back of Cynthia's poke bonnet for two hours, but he had an uneasy
feeling that he would have to pay a price.