Bashwood

“ There was no questioning Bassett's sincerity, nor was there any doubt that this appeal was having its effect on the younger man. If Bassett had been a weakling timorously making overtures for help, Harwood would have been sensible of it; but a man of demonstrated force and intelligence, who had probably never talked thus to another soul in his life, was addressing him with a candor at once disarming and compelling. It was not easy to say to a man from whom he had accepted every kindness that he had ceased to trust him ”

“ In spite of the clashing winter at the state house and all he had heard and read of the senate leader since the Fraserville visit, Dan's opinion of Bassett stood. His sturdy figure, those firm, masterful hands, and his deep, serious voice all spoke for strength.
"It has occurred to me, Mr. Harwood, that we might be of service to each other. I have a good many interests. You may have gathered that I am a very practical person. That is wholly true. In business I aim at success; I didn't start out in life to be a failure." ”

“ Pray what else could it be called?”
“Well, it might have been called Grasslands, you know, or The Poplars, but somehow the old name seemed to suit it best. I like to think of it as the Bascom Place.”
“You are right, sir,” said the Judge with emphasis; “you are right, sir. It is the Bascom Place. All the powers of earth cannot strip us of our name.”
Again Underwood looked at the young girl, and again he read in her shining but apprehensive eyes the answer he should make. ”

“ A feeling of theatrical unreality was Bassett's chief emotion during the trying time that followed. The cloaked and shrouded figure of the woman ahead, the passage through two dark and empty rooms by pass key to an unguarded corridor in the rear, the descent of the fire-escape, where they stood flattened against the wall while a man, possibly one of the posse, rode in, tied his horse and stamped in high heeled boots into the building, and always just ahead the sure movement and silent tread of the woman, kept his nerves taut and increased his feeling of the unreal. ”

“ He faded as the Southern Cross rose higher in the sky, till even Balatta knew that he would be dead ere the nuptial date determined by his taboo. Ngurn made pilgrimage personally and gathered the smoke materials for the curing of Bassett's head, and to him made proud announcement and exhibition of the artistic perfectness of his intention when Bassett should be dead. As for himself, Bassett was not shocked. Too long and too deeply had life ebbed down in him to bite him with fear of its impending extinction. ”

“ Ngurn was in himself a forerunner of ethics and contract, of consideration, and gentleness in man. No, Bassett decided; it would be a ghastly pity and an act of dishonour to cheat the old fellow at the last. His head was Ngurn’s, and Ngurn’s head to cure it would be.
And Bassett, raising his hand in signal, bending forward his head as agreed so as to expose cleanly the articulation to his taut spinal cord, forgot Balatta, who was merely a woman, a woman merely and only and undesired. He knew, without seeing, when the razor-edged hatchet rose in the air behind him. ”

“ Yet therein was usually to be found his favourite crony and gossip, Ngurn, always willing for a yarn or a discussion, the while he sat in the ashes of death and in a slow smoke shrewdly revolved curing human heads suspended from the rafters. For, through the months' interval of consciousness of his long sickness, Bassett had mastered the psychological simplicities and lingual difficulties of the language of the tribe of Ngurn and Balatta and Vngngn--the latter the addle-headed young chief who was ruled by Ngurn, and who, whispered intrigue had it, was the son of Ngurn. ”

“ 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 worshiped at Sumner's feet at Yale and he held views that were not readily reconcilable with parochial boss-ships and the meek swallowing of machine-made platforms. Bassett was not the vulgar, intimate good-fellow who slapped every man on the back—the teller of good stories over a glass of whiskey and a cigar. He was, as Pettit had said, a new type, not of the familiar cliché. ”

“ From the striker king-post, were suspended ropes of climbers to which men could apply their strength and direction. Like a battering ram, this king-post could be driven end-onward against the mighty red-iridescent sphere.
Here was where Ngurn officiated and functioned religiously for himself and the twelve tribes under him. Bassett laughed aloud, almost with madness, at the thought of this wonderful messenger, winged with intelligence across space, to fall into a bushman stronghold and be worshipped by ape-like, man-eating and head- hunting savages. ”

“ But if I was Cantine, and you ain’t goin’ to perforate Cantine on sight, what in Hades do you mean?”
“Mean?” echoed Bassett. “Your gall is sure chilled steel and case-hardened on top. Do you think as me or any other white man’s goin’ to eat, drink or sleep with or breathe the same air as you? You as broke the bond of bread and blanket, the Northland law as no man ever breaks, and lives to boast of it! Days on end I seen you sit at table with my pardner Sark under his own roof in White Pass City. ”

“ Many pictures, unrelated, came and went in Bassett's mind as he reviewed that period of his terrible wanderings. He remembered invading another village of a dozen houses and driving all before him with his shot-gun save, for one old man, too feeble to flee, who spat at him and whined and snarled as he dug open a ground-oven and from amid the hot stones dragged forth a roasted pig that steamed its essence deliciously through its green-leaf wrappings. ”

“ As soon as Torrence left I returned to the garage, feeling that with Mrs. Bashford on American soil my use of the residence even as a loafing-place was unbecoming. Mrs. Bashford was not only in America, but with a motor at her command she might reach Barton at any hour. And the vigorous, dominating woman who had captured my uncle Bash, buried him in a far country, and then effected a hop, skip, and jump from Bangkok to Seattle, was likely to be a prodigal spender of gasoline. ”

“ Bassett asked, by this time so accustomed to the old man's gruesome occupation as to take even an interest in the progress of the smoke-curing.
With the eye of an expert Ngurn examined the particular head he was at work upon.
"It will be ten days before I can say 'finish,'" he said. "Never has any man fixed heads like these."
Bassett smiled inwardly at the old fellow's reluctance to talk with him of the Red One. It had always been so. Never, by any chance, had Ngurn or any other member of the weird tribe divulged the slightest hint of any physical characteristic of the Red One. ”

“ As for you, upon whom the dark has already brooded, it is well that you die now. And I promise you, in the long days to come when I turn your head in the smoke, no man of the tribe shall come in to disturb us. And I will tell you many secrets, for I am an old man and very wise, and I shall be adding wisdom to wisdom as I turn your head in the smoke.”
So a litter was made, and, borne on the shoulders of half a dozen of the men, Bassett departed on the last little adventure that was to cap the total adventure, for him, of living. ”

“ I don't want to hear any stories of that kind about Bassett. Politics is rotten enough at best without tipping over the garbage can to find arguments. I don't believe your father is going to stoop to that. To be real frank with you, I don't think he can afford to."
"You've got to hear it; you can't desert me now. I'm away up in the air this morning, and even if you do hate this kind of thing, you've got to see where dad's hatred of Bassett puts Marian and me."
"It puts you clean out of it; away over the ropes and halfway home! That's where it puts you," boomed Harwood. ”

“ Bassett's connection with White River Canneries was an incident of the politician's career to which Harwood had never been wholly reconciled. Nor was he pleasantly impressed by Bassett's next remark, which, in view of Mrs. Bassett's natural expectations,—and these Dan had frequently heard mentioned at the capital,—partook of the nature of a leading question. "That's unfortunate. But I suppose Mrs. Owen, by reason of her friendship for the grandfather, won't let the girl suffer."
"She's not the sort of girl who would be dependent in any case. ”

“ Harwood's face clouded for a moment; she noticed it and was sorry she had spoken; but he said immediately:—
"Well, I haven't had much time for the law this winter. I have more things to do outside than I had expected. But I fear I need prodding; I'm too prone to wander into other fields. And I'm getting a good deal interested in politics. You know Mr. Bassett is one of the leading men in our state."
"Yes, I had learned that; I suppose he may be Senator or Governor some day. That makes it all the more important that Marian should be fitted for high station." ”

“ Louis Bassett had become a familiar figure in the village life by that time. David depended on him with a sort of wistful confidence that set him to grinding his teeth occasionally in a fury at his own helplessness. And, as the extent of the disaster developed, as he saw David failing and Lucy ageing, and when in time he met Elizabeth, the feeling of his own guilt was intensified. ”

“ The thought that he was going home had upheld Dick through the days that followed Bassett's departure for the West. He knew that it would be a fight, that not easily does a man step out of life and into it again, but after his days of inaction he stood ready to fight. For David, for Lucy, and, if it was not too late, for Elizabeth. When Bassett's wire came from Norada, “All clear,” he set out for Haverly, more nearly happy than for months. The very rhythm of the train sang: “Going home; going home.” ”

“ Such a stroke fell on Richard Bassett: he saw Bella Bruce sweep past him, clinging to her husband, and shuddering at himself. For this, then, he had plotted and intrigued and written an anonymous letter. The only woman he had ever loved at all went past him with a look of aversion, and was his enemy's wife, and would soon be the mother of that enemy's children, and blot him forever out of the coveted inheritance. ”

“ As Mr. Joe-Bob Grissom passed the Bascom Place on his way home, after gathering from Major Jimmy Bass all the news and gossip of the town, he heard Mr. Francis Underwood, the owner of the Place, walking up and down the piazza, singing. Mr. Underwood appeared to be in a cheerful mood, and he had a right to be. He was young,—not more than thirty,—full of life, and the world was going on very well with him. Mr. Grissom paused a moment and listened; then he made up his mind to go in and have a chat with the young man. He opened the gate and went up the avenue under the cedars and Lombardy poplars. ”

“ Richard Bassett saw this from his tower of observation; saw it, and chuckled. “Aha!” said he. “Husband sick in bed. Wife walking in the garden with a young man—a parson, too. He is dark, she is fair. Something will come of this. Ha, ha!”
Lady Bassett now talked of sending to London for advice; but Mary Wells dissuaded her. “Physic can't cure him. There's only one can cure him, and that is yourself, my lady.” ”

“ From which vain speculations, Bassett turned idly to review all that had occurred since that day on the beach of Ringmanu when he first heard the sound and plunged into the jungle after it. Sagawa had protested. He could see him yet, his queer little monkeyish face eloquent with fear, his back burdened with specimen cases, in his hands Bassett's butterfly net and naturalist's shot-gun, as he quavered, in Beche-de-mer English: "Me fella too much fright along bush. Bad fella boy, too much stop'm along bush." ”

“ All your little Rose asks is the right to an occasional Wednesday matinée when business droops like a sick oleander. You needn't worry about me having callers. I'm a business woman, I am, and I guess I know what's proper in a business office. If I don't understand men, Mr. Harwood, no poor working girl does."
Bassett was pleased with Dan's choice of a stenographer. He turned over to Rose the reading of the rural newspapers and sundry other routine matters. There was no doubt of Miss Farrell's broad knowledge of the world, or of her fidelity to duty. ”

“ Little did Richard Bassett, in England, dream what was going on at Baden. He now surveyed the chimneys of Huntercombe Hall with resignation, and even with growing complacency, as chimneys that would one day be his, since their owner would not be in a hurry to love again. He shot Sir Charles's pheasants whenever they strayed into his hedgerows, and he lived moderately and studied health. In a word, content with the result of his anonymous letter, he confined himself now to cannily out-living the wrongful heir—his cousin. ”

“ It slanted a mile or so to the summit, wandered vaguely another two miles among gorse-bushes along the crest, passed Tom Bassett’s cottage by the pines, and then dropped sharply down on the other side through rather thin woods to the ancient house where the old folk-lorist lived and dreamed himself into his impossible world of theory and fantasy. ”