378
PARTISAN REVIEW
What was back in the bed room on the pine table?
A large packet of letters, eight tattered, black-bound account
books tied together with faded red tape, a photograph, 5 x 8 inches,
mounted on cardboard and stained in its lower half by water, and a
plain gold ring, mansized, with some engraving
in
it, on a loop of
string. The past. Or that part of the past which had gone by the name
of Cass Mastern.
Cas~
Mastern was one of Jack Burden's father's two maternal
uncles, a brother of his mother, Lavinia Mastern, a great-uncle to Jack
Burden. The other great-uncle was named Gilbert Mastern, who died
in 1914, at the age of ninety-four or five, rich, a builder of railroads,
a sitter on boards of directors, and left the packet of letters, the black
account books, and the photograph, and a great deal of money to a
grandson (and not a penny to Jack Burden). Some ten years later the
heir of Gilbert Mastern, recollecting that his cousin Jack Burden, with
wnom he had no personal acquaintance, was a student of history, or
somethin~
of the sort, sent him the packet of letters, the account books,
and the photograph, asking
if
he, Jack Burden, thought that the
enclosures were of any "financial interest" since he, the heir, had
heard that libraries sometimes would pay a "fair sum for old papers
and ante-bellum relics and keep-sakes." Jack Burden replied that,
since Cass Mastern had been of no historical importance as an indivi–
dual, it was doubtful that any library would pay more than a few dol–
lars, if anything, for the material, and asked for instructions as to the
disposition of the parcel. The heir replied that under the circum–
stances Jack Burden might keep the things for "sentimental reasons."
So Jack Burden made the acquaintance of Cass Mastern, his
~reat-uncle,
who had died in 1864 at a military hospital in Atlanta,
who had been only a heard but forgotten name to him, and who was
the pair of dark, wide-set, deep eyes which burned out of the photo–
graph, through the dinginess and dust and across more than fifty
years. The eyes, which were Cass Mastern, stared out of a long, bony
face, but a young face with full lips above a rather thin, curly black
beard. The lips did not seem to belong to that bony face and the burn–
ing eyes.
The young man in the picture, standing visible from the thighs
up, wore a loose-fitting, shapeless jacket, too large in the collar, short
in the sleeves, to show strong wrists and bony hands clasped at the
waist. The thick dark hair, combed sweepingly back from the high
brow, came down long and square-cut, after the fashion of time, place,
