A Hoosier Chronicle Part 10

Dan caught a glimpse of a girl at the piano in the parlor who turned to glance at him and continued her playing. The lad indicated an open door midway of the long hall and waited for Harwood to enter. A lady, carrying a small workbasket in her hand, bade the reporter good-evening as she pa.s.sed out. On a table in the middle of the room a checkerboard's white and black belligerents stood at truce, and from the interrupted game rose a thick-set man of medium height, with dark hair and a close-trimmed mustache, who came toward him inquiringly.

"Good-evening. I am Mr. Ba.s.sett. Have a chair."

Harwood felt the guilt of his intrusion upon a scene so sheltered and domestic. The father had evidently been playing checkers with his son; the mother's chair still rocked by another table on which stood a reading lamp.

Harwood stated his errand, and Ba.s.sett merely nodded, offering none of those protestations of surprise and humility, those pleas of unworthiness that his predecessors on Dan's list had usually insisted upon. Dan made mental note at once of the figure before him. Ba.s.sett's jaw was square and firm--power was manifest there, unmistakably, and his bristling mustache suggested combativeness. His dark eyes met Harwood's gaze steadily--hardness might be there, though their gaze was friendly enough. His voice was deep and its tone was pleasant. He opened a drawer and produced a box of cigars.

"Won't you smoke? I don't smoke myself, but you mustn't mind that." And Harwood accepted a cigar, which he found excellent. A moment later a maid placed on the table beside the checkerboard a tray, with a decanter and gla.s.ses, and a pitcher of water.

"That's for us," remarked Ba.s.sett, nodding toward the gla.s.ses. "Help yourself."

"The cigar is all I need; thank you."

The reporter was prepared to ask questions, following a routine he had employed with other subjects, but Ba.s.sett began to talk on his own initiative--of the town, the county, the district. He expressed himself well, in terse words and phrases. Harwood did not attempt to direct or lead: Ba.s.sett had taken the interview into his own hands, and was imparting information that might have been derived from a local history at the town library. Dan ceased, after a time, to follow the narrative in his absorption in the man himself. Harwood took his politics seriously and the petty politicians with whom he had thus far become acquainted in his newspaper work had impressed him chiefly by their bigotry or venality. It was not for nothing that he had wors.h.i.+ped at Sumner's feet at Yale and he held views that were not readily reconcilable with parochial boss-s.h.i.+ps and the meek swallowing of machine-made platforms. Ba.s.sett was not the vulgar, intimate good-fellow who slapped every man on the back--the teller of good stories over a gla.s.s of whiskey and a cigar. He was, as Pett.i.t had said, a new type, not of the familiar _cliche_. The decanter was a "property" placed in the scene at the dictates of hospitality; the checkerboard canceled any suggestion of conviviality that might have been conveyed by the decanter of whiskey.

Ba.s.sett's right hand lay on the table and Dan found himself watching it.

It was broad but not heavy; the fingers that opened and shut quietly on a small paperweight were supple. It was a hand that would deal few blows, but hard ones. Harwood was aware, at a moment when he began to be bored by the bald facts of local history, that Ba.s.sett had abruptly switched the subject.

"Parties are necessary to democratic government. I don't believe merely in my own party; I want the opposition to be strong enough to make a fight. The people are better satisfied if there's a contest for the offices. I'm not sorry when we lose occasionally; defeat disciplines and strengthens a party. I have made a point in our little local affairs of not fighting independents when they break with us for any reason.

Believing as I do that parties are essential, and that schismatic movements are futile, I make a point of not attacking them. Their failures strengthen the party--and incidentally kill the men who have kicked out of the traces. You never have to bother with them a second time."

"But they help clear the air--they serve a purpose?" suggested Harwood.

He had acquired a taste for the "Nation" and the New York "Evening Post"

at college, and Ba.s.sett's frank statement of his political opinions struck Dan as mediaeval. He was, however, instinctively a reporter, and he refrained from interposing himself further than was necessary to stimulate the talk of the man before him.

"You are quite right, Mr. Harwood. They serve an excellent purpose. They provide an outlet; they serve as a safety valve. Now and then they will win a fight, and that's a good thing too, for they will prove, on experiment, that they are just as human and weak in practical application of their ideas as the rest of us. I'd even go as far as to say that in certain circ.u.mstances I'd let them win. They help drive home my idea that the old parties, like old, established business houses, have got to maintain a standard or they will lose the business to which they are rightfully ent.i.tled. When you see your customers pa.s.sing your front door to try a new shop farther up the street, you want to sit down and consider what's the matter, and devise means of regaining your lost ground. It doesn't pay merely to ridicule the new man or cry that his goods are inferior. Yours have got to be superior--or"--and the gray eyes twinkled for the first time--"they must be dressed up to look better in your show window."

Ba.s.sett rose and walked the length of the room, with his hands thrust into his trousers pockets, and before he sat down he poured himself a gla.s.s of water from the pitcher and drank it slowly, with an air of preoccupation. He moved easily, with a quicker step than might have been expected in one of his figure. The strength of his hand was also in the firm line of his vigorous, well-knit frame. And his rather large head, Dan observed, rested solidly on broad shoulders.

Harwood's thoughts were, however, given another turn at once. Morton Ba.s.sett had said all he cared to say about politics and he now asked Dan whether he was a college man, to which prompting the reporter recited succinctly the annals of his life.

"You're a Harrison County boy, are you? So you didn't like the farm, and found a way out? That's good. You may be interested in some of my books."

Dan was immediately on guard against being bored; the library of even an intelligent local statesman like Morton Ba.s.sett was hardly likely to prove interesting. One of his earlier subjects had asked him particularly to mention his library, which consisted mainly of government reports.

"I've been a collector of Americana," Ba.s.sett remarked, throwing open several cases. "I've gone in for colonial history, particularly, and some of these things are pretty rare."

The shelves rose to the ceiling and Ba.s.sett produced a ladder that he might hand down a few of the more interesting volumes for Dan's closer inspection.

"Here's Wainwright's 'Brief Description of the Ohio River, With some Account of the Savages Living Thereon'--published in London in 1732, and there are only three copies in existence. This is Atterbury's 'Chronicle of the Chesapeake Settlements'--the best thing I have. The author was an English sailor who joined the colonists in the Revolution and published a little memoir of his adventures in America. The only other copy of that known to exist is in the British Museum. I fished mine out of a pile of junk in Baltimore about ten years ago. When I get old and have time on my hands I'm going to reprint some of these--wide margins, and footnotes, and that sort of thing. But there's fun enough now in just having them and knowing the other fellow hasn't!"

He flung open a panel of the wainscoting at a point still free of shelves and disclosed a door of a small iron safe which he opened with a key. "This isn't the family silver, but a few little things that are more valuable. These are first editions of American authors. Here's Lowell's 'Fable for Critics,' first edition; and this is Emerson's 'Nature,' 1836--a first. These are bound by Orpcutt; had them done myself. They feel good to the hand, don't they!"

Harwood's pleasure in the beautiful specimens of the binder's art was unfeigned and to his questioning Ba.s.sett dilated upon the craftsmans.h.i.+p.

"The red morocco of the Emerson takes the gold tooling beautifully, and the oak-leaf border design couldn't be finer. I believe this olive-green shade is the best of all. This Whittier--a first edition of 'In War Time'--is by Durand, a French artist, and one of the best specimens of his work."

Those strong hands of his touched the beautiful books fondly. Harwood took advantage of a moment when Ba.s.sett carried to the lamp Lowell's "Under the Willows" in gold and brown, the better to display the deft workmans.h.i.+p, to look more closely at the owner of these lovely baubles.

The iron hand could be very gentle! Ba.s.sett touched the volume caressingly as he called attention to its perfection. His face, in the lamp's full light, softened, but there was in it no hint of sensuousness to prepare one for this indulgence in luxurious bibliomania. There was a childlike simplicity in Ba.s.sett's delight. A man who enjoyed such playthings could not be hard, and Dan's heart warmed with liking.

"Are you a reader of poetry?" asked Dan, as Ba.s.sett carefully collected the books and returned them to the safe.

"No. That is something we leave behind us with our youth," he said; and looking down at the bent head and st.u.r.dy shoulders, and watching the strong fingers turning the key, Dan wondered what the man's youth had been and what elements were mixed in him that soft textures of leather and delicate tracings of gold on brown and scarlet and olive could so delight him. His rather jaunty att.i.tude toward the "Home Life of Hoosier Statesmen" experienced a change. Morton Ba.s.sett was not a man who could be hit off in a few hundred words, but a complex character he did not pretend to understand. Threads of various hues had pa.s.sed before him, but how to intertwine them was a question that already puzzled the reporter. Ba.s.sett had rested his hand on Dan's shoulder for a moment as the younger man bent over one of the prized volumes, and Dan was not insensible to the friendliness of the act.

Mrs. Ba.s.sett and the two children appeared at the door a little later.

"Come in, Hallie," said the politician; "all of you come in."

He introduced the reporter to his wife and to Marian, the daughter, and Blackford, the son.

"The children were just going up," said Mrs. Ba.s.sett. "As it's Sat.u.r.day they have an hour added to their evening. I think I heard Mr. Ba.s.sett talking of books a moment ago. It's not often he brings out his first editions for a visitor."

They talked of books for a moment, while the children listened. Then Ba.s.sett recurred to the fact, already elicited, that Harwood was a Yale man, whereupon colleges were discussed.

"Many of our small fresh-water colleges do excellent work," remarked Ba.s.sett. "Some educator has explained the difference between large and small colleges by saying that in the large one the boy goes through more college, but in the small one more college goes through the boy. Of course I'm not implying, Mr. Harwood, that that was true in your case."

"Oh, I'm not sensitive about that, Mr. Ba.s.sett. And I beg not to be taken as an example of what Yale does for her students. Some of the smaller colleges stand for the best things; there's Madison College, here in our own state--its standards are severely high, and the place itself has quality, atmosphere--you feel, even as a casual visitor, that it's the real thing."

"So I've always heard," remarked Mrs. Ba.s.sett. "My father always admired Madison. Strange to say, I have never been there. Are you acquainted in Montgomery?"

Ba.s.sett bent forward slightly at the question.

"I was there for an hour or so last spring; but I was in a hurry. I didn't even take time to run into my fraternity house, though I saw its banner on the outer wall."

"Your newspaper work must give you many interesting adventures,"

suggested the politician.

"Not always as pleasant as this, I a.s.sure you. But I'm a person of two occupations--I'm studying law, and my visit to Montgomery was on an errand for the office where I'm allowed to use the books in return for slight services of one kind and another. As a newspaper man I'm something of an impostor; I hope I'm only a pa.s.sing pilgrim in the business."

Dan faced Mrs. Ba.s.sett as he made this explanation, and he was conscious, as he turned toward the master of the house, that Ba.s.sett was observing him intently. His gaze was so direct and searching that Harwood was disconcerted for a moment; then Ba.s.sett remarked carelessly,--

"I should think newspaper work a good training for the law. It drills faculties that a lawyer exercises constantly."

Mrs. Ba.s.sett now made it possible for Marian and young Blackford to contribute to the conversation.

"I'm going to Annapolis," announced the boy.

"You've had a change of heart," said his father, with a smile. "It was West Point last week."

"Well, it will be Annapolis next week," the lad declared; and then, as if to explain his abandonment of a military career, "In the Navy you get to see the world, and in the Army you're likely to be stuck away at some awful place on the Plains where you never see anything. The Indians are nearly all killed anyhow."

"We hear a good deal nowadays about the higher education of woman," Mrs.

Ba.s.sett remarked, "and I suppose girls should be prepared to earn their own living. Mothers of daughters have that to think about."

Miss Marian, catching Dan's eye, smiled as though to express her full appreciation of the humor of her mother's remark.

"Mama learned that from my Aunt Sally," she ventured; and Dan saw that she was an independent spirit, given to daring sayings, and indulged in them by her parents.