Short Stories for English Courses

V >> Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.) >> Short Stories for English Courses

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But the parson prayed for Jules.

"Pray fo' de MONEY!" repeated the negro.

"And oh, give thy servant back that there lost money!"

Colossus rose stealthily, and tiptoed by his still shouting
master. St.-Ange, the captain, the crew, gazed in silent wonder at
the strategist. Pausing but an instant over the master's hat to
grin an acknowledgment of his beholders' speechless interest, he
softly placed in it the faithfully mourned and honestly prayed for
Smyrna fund; then, saluted by the gesticulative, silent applause
of St.-Ange and the schooner-men, he resumed his first attitude
behind his roaring master.

"Amen!" cried Colossus, meaning to bring him to a close.

"Onworthy though I be--" cried Jones.

"AMEN!" reiterated the negro.

"A-a-amen!" said Parson Jones.

He rose to his feet, and, stooping to take up his hat, beheld the
well-known roll. As one stunned, he gazed for a moment upon his
slave, who still knelt with clasped hands and rolling eyeballs;
but when he became aware of the laughter and cheers that greeted
him from both deck and shore, he lifted eyes and hands to heaven,
and cried like the veriest babe. And when he looked at the roll
again, and hugged and kissed it, St.-Ange tried to raise a second
shout, but choked, and the crew fell to their poles.

And now up runs Baptiste, covered with slime, and prepares to cast
his projectiles. The first one fell wide of the mark; the schooner
swung round into a long reach of water, where the breeze was in
her favor; another shout of laughter drowned the maledictions of
the muddy man; the sails filled; Colossus of Rhodes, smiling and
bowing as hero of the moment, ducked as the main boom swept round,
and the schooner, leaning slightly to the pleasant influence,
rustled a moment over the bulrushes, and then sped far away down
the rippling bayou.

M. Jules St.-Ange stood long, gazing at the receding vessel as it
now disappeared, now reappeared beyond the tops of the high
undergrowth; but, when an arm of the forest hid it finally from
sight, he turned townward, followed by that fagged-out spaniel,
his servant, saying, as he turned, "Baptiste." "Miche?"

"You know w'at I goin' do wid dis money?"

"Non, m'sieur."

"Well, you can strike me dead if I don't goin' to pay hall my
debts! Allons!"

He began a merry little song to the effect that his sweetheart was
a wine-bottle, and master and man, leaving care behind, returned
to the picturesque Rue Royale. The ways of Providence are indeed
strange. In all Parson Jones's after-life, amid the many painful
reminiscences of his visit to the City of the Plain, the sweet
knowledge was withheld from him that by the light of the Christian
virtue that shone from him even in his great fall, Jules St.-Ange
arose, and went to his father an honest man.

OUR AROMATIC UNCLE

BY

HENRY CUYLER BUNNER

The title of Mr. Bunner's story is attractive and stimulating to
the imagination. The plot is slight, yet clever in its use of the
surprise element. Its leading character is a splendid illustration
of a hero worshipper who is himself the real hero. The atmosphere
is especially good. It is warmed by family affection and fragrant
with romance. This romance, as Mr. Grabo points out in "The Art of
the Short Story," is suggested rather than recorded. The running
away of the Judge's son and of his little admirer, the butcher
boy, really lies outside the story proper. "With these youthful
adventures the story has not directly to do, but the hints of the
antecedent action envelop the story with a romantic atmosphere.
The reader speculates upon the story suggested, and thereby is the
written story enriched and made a part of a larger whole."

OUR AROMATIC UNCLE

[Footnote: From "Love in Old Cloathes and Other Stories," by F.
C. Bunner. Copyright, 1896, by Charles Scribner's Sons.]

It is always with a feeling of personal tenderness and regret that
I recall his story, although it began long before I was born, and
must have ended shortly after that important date, and although I
myself never laid eyes on the personage of whom my wife and I
always speak as "The Aromatic Uncle."

The story begins so long ago, indeed, that I can tell it only as a
tradition of my wife's family. It goes back to the days when
Boston was so frankly provincial a town that one of its leading
citizens, a man of eminent position and ancient family, remarked
to a young kinsman whom he was entertaining at his hospitable
board, by way of pleasing and profitable discourse: "Nephew, it
may interest you to know that it is Mr. Everett who has the OTHER
hindquarter of this lamb". This simple tale I will vouch for, for
I got it from the lips of the nephew, who has been my uncle for so
many years that I know him to be a trustworthy authority.

In those days which seem so far away--and yet the space between
them and us is spanned by a lifetime of threescore years and ten--
life was simpler in all its details; yet such towns as Boston,
already old, had well established local customs which varied not
at all from year to year; many of which lingered in later phases
of urban growth. In Boston, or at least in that part of Boston
where my wife's family dwelt, it was the invariable custom for the
head of the family to go to market in the early morning with his
wife's list of the day's needs. When the list was filled, the
articles were placed in a basket; and the baskets thus filled were
systematically deposited by the marketboys at the back door of the
house to which they were consigned. Then the housekeeper came to
the back door at her convenience, and took the basket in. Exposed
as this position must have been, such a thing as a theft of the
day's edibles was unknown, and the first authentic account of any
illegitimate handling of the baskets brings me to the introduction
of my wife's uncle.

It was on a summer morning, as far as I can find out, that a
little butcher boy--a very little butcher boy to be driving so big
a cart--stopped in the rear of two houses that stood close
together in a suburban street. One of these houses belonged to my
wife's father, who was, from all I can gather, a very pompous,
severe, and generally objectionable old gentleman; a Judge, and a
very considerable dignitary, who apparently devoted all his
leisure to making life miserable for his family. The other was
owned by a comparatively poor and unimportant man, who did a
shipping business in a small way. He had bought it during a period
of temporary affluence, and it hung on his hands like a white
elephant. He could not sell it, and it was turning his hair gray
to pay the taxes on it. On this particular morning he had got up
at four o'clock to go down to the wharves to see if a certain ship
in which he was interested had arrived. It was due and overdue,
and its arrival would settle the question of his domestic comfort
for the whole year; for if it failed to appear, or came home with
an empty bottom, his fate would be hard indeed; but if it brought
him money or marketable goods from its long Oriental trip, he
might take heart of grace and look forward to better times.

When the butcher's boy stopped at the house of my wife's father,
he set down at the back-door a basket containing fish, a big joint
of roast beef, and a generous load of fruit and vegetables,
including some fine, fat oranges. At the other door he left a
rather unpromising-looking lump of steak and a half-peck of
potatoes, not of the first quality. When he had deposited these
two burdens he ran back and started his cart up the road.

But he looked back as he did so, and he saw a sight familiar to
him, and saw the commission of a deed entirely unfamiliar. A
handsome young boy of about his own age stepped out of the back-
door of my wife's father's house and looked carelessly around him.
He was one of the boys who compel the admiration of all other
boys--strong, sturdy, and a trifle arrogant.

He had long ago compelled the admiration of the little butcher-
boy. They had been playmates together at the public school, and
although the Judge's son looked down from an infinite height upon
his poor little comrade, the butcher-boy worshipped him with the
deepest and most fervent adoration. He had for him the admiring
reverence which the boy who can't lick anybody has for the boy who
can lick everybody. He was a superior being, a pattern, a model;
an ideal never to be achieved, but perhaps in a crude, humble way
to be imitated. And there is no hero-worship in the world like a
boy's worship of a boy-hero.

The sight of this fortunate and adorable youth was familiar enough
to the butcher-boy, but the thing he did startled and shocked that
poor little workingman almost as much as if his idol had committed
a capital crime right before his very eyes. For the Judge's son
suddenly let a look into his face that meant mischief, glanced
around him to see whether anybody was observing him or not, and,
failing to notice the butcher-boy, quickly and dexterously changed
the two baskets. Then he went back into the house and shut the
door on himself.

The butcher-boy reined up his horse and jumped from his cart. His
first impulse, of course, was to undo the shocking iniquity which
the object of his admiration had committed. But before he had
walked back a dozen yards, it struck him that he was taking a
great liberty in spoiling the other boy's joke. It was wrong, of
course, he knew it; but was it for him to rebuke the wrong-doing
of such an exalted personage? If the Judge's son came out again,
he would see that his joke had miscarried, and then he would be
displeased. And to the butcher-boy it did not seem right in the
nature of things that anything should displease the Judge's son.
Three times he went hesitatingly backward and forward, trying to
make up his mind, and then he made it up. The king could do no
wrong. Of course he himself was doing wrong in not putting the
baskets back where they belonged; but then he reflected, he took
that sin on his own humble conscience, and in some measure took it
off the conscience of the Judge's son--if, indeed, it troubled
that lightsome conscience at all. And, of course, too, he knew
that, being an apprentice, he would be whipped for it when the
substitution was discovered. But he didn't mind being whipped for
the boy he worshipped. So he drove out along the road; and the
wife of the poor shipping-merchant, coming to the back-door, and
finding the basket full of good things, and noticing especially
the beautiful China oranges, naturally concluded that her
husband's ship had come in, and that he had provided his family
with a rare treat. And the Judge, when he came home to dinner, and
Mrs. Judge introduced him to the rump-steak and potatoes--but I do
not wish to make this story any more pathetic than is necessary.

A few months after this episode, perhaps indirectly in consequence
of it--I have never been able to find out exactly--the Judge's
son, my wife's uncle, ran away to sea, and for many years his
recklessness, his strength, and his good looks were only
traditions in the family, but traditions which he himself kept
alive by remembrances than which none could have been more
effective.

At first he wrote but seldom, later on more regularly, but his
letters--I have seen many of them--were the most uncommunicative
documents that I ever saw in my life. His wanderings took him to
many strange places on the other side of the globe, but he never
wrote of what he saw or did. His family gleaned from them that his
health was good, that the weather was such-and-such, and that he
wished to have his love, duty, and respects conveyed to his
various relatives. In fact, the first positive bit of personal
intelligence that they received from him was five years after his
departure, when he wrote them from a Chinese port on letter-paper
whose heading showed that he was a member of a commercial firm.
The letter itself made no mention of the fact. As the years passed
on, however, the letters came more regularly and they told less
about the weather, and were slightly--very slightly--more
expressive of a kind regard for his relatives. But at the best
they were cramped by the formality of his day and generation, and
we of to-day would have called them cold and perfunctory.

But the practical assurances that he gave of his undiminished--
nay, his steadily increasing--affection for the people at home,
were of a most satisfying character, for they were convincing
proof not only of his love but of his material prosperity. Almost
from his first time of writing he began to send gifts to all the
members of the family. At first these were mere trifles, little
curios of travel such as he was able to purchase out of a seaman's
scanty wages; but as the years went on they grew richer and
richer, till the munificence of the runaway son became the pride
of the whole family.

The old house that had been in the suburbs of Boston was fairly in
the heart of the city when I first made its acquaintance, and one
of the famous houses of the town. And it was no wonder it was
famous, for such a collection of Oriental furniture, bric-a-brac,
and objects of art never was seen outside of a museum. There were
ebony cabinets, book-cases, tables, and couches wonderfully carved
and inlaid with mother-of-pearl. There were beautiful things in
bronze and jade and ivory. There were all sorts of strange rugs
and curtains and portieres. As to the china-ware and the vases, no
house was ever so stocked; and as for such trifles as shawls and
fans and silk handkerchiefs, why such things were sent not singly
but by dozens.

No one could forget his first entrance into that house. The great
drawing-room was darkened by heavy curtains, and at first you had
only a dim vision of the strange and graceful shapes of its
curious furnishing. But you could not but be instantly conscious
of the delicate perfume that pervaded the apartment, and, for the
matter of that, the whole house. It was a combination of all the
delightful Eastern smells--not sandalwood only, nor teak, nor
couscous, but all these odors and a hundred others blent in one.
Yet it was not heavy nor overpowering, but delightfully faint and
sweet, diffused through those ample rooms. There was good reason,
indeed, for the children of the generation to which my wife
belonged to speak of the generous relative whom they had never
seen as "Our Aromatic Uncle." There were other uncles, and I have
no doubt they gave presents freely, for it was a wealthy and free-
handed family; but there was no other uncle who sent such a
delicate and delightful reminder with every gift, to breathe a
soft memory of him by day and by night.

I did my courting in the sweet atmosphere of that house, and,
although I had no earthly desire to live in Boston, I could not
help missing that strangely blended odor when my wife and I moved
into an old house in an old part of New York, whose former owners
had no connections in the Eastern trade. It was a charming and
home-like old house; but at first, although my wife had brought
some belongings from her father's house, we missed the pleasant
flavor of our aromatic uncle, for he was now my uncle, as well as
my wife's. I say at first, for we did not miss it long. Uncle
David--that was his name--not only continued to send his fragrant
gifts to my wife at Christmas and upon her birthday, but he
actually adopted me, too, and sent me Chinese cabinets and Chinese
gods in various minerals and metals, and many articles designed
for a smoker's use, which no smoker would ever want to touch with
a ten-foot pole. But I cared very little about the utility of
these presents, for it was not many years before, among them all,
they set up that exquisite perfume in the house, which we had
learned to associate with our aromatic uncle.

"FOO-CHOO-LI, CHINA, January-, 18-.

"DEAR NEPHEW AND NIECE: The Present is to inform you that I have
this day shipped to your address, per Steamer Ocean Queen, one
marble and ebony Table, six assorted gods, and a blue Dinner set;
also that I purpose leaving this Country for a visit to the Land
of my Nativity on the 6th of March next, and will, if same is
satisfactory to you, take up my Abode temporarily in your
household. Should same not be satisfactory, please cable at my
charge. Messrs. Smithson & Smithson, my Customs Brokers, will
attend to all charges on the goods, and will deliver them at your
readiness. The health of this place is better than customary by
reason of the cool weather, which Health I am as usual enjoying.
Trusting that you both are at present in possession of the same
Blessing, and will so continue, I remain, dear nephew and niece,

"Your affectionate
"UNCLE."

This was, I believe, by four dozen words--those which he used to
inform us of his intention of visiting America--the longest letter
that Uncle David had ever written to any member of his family. It
also conveyed more information about himself than he had ever
given since the day he ran away to sea. Of course we cabled the
old gentleman that we should be delighted to see him.

And, late that spring, at some date at which he could not possibly
have been expected to arrive, he turned up at our house.

Of course we had talked a great deal about him, and wondered what
manner of a man we should find him. Between us, my wife and I had
got an idea of his personal appearance which I despair of
conveying in words. Vaguely, I should say that we had pictured him
as something mid-way between an abnormally tall Chinese mandarin
and a benevolent Quaker. What we found when we got home and were
told that our uncle from India was awaiting us, was a shrunken and
bent old gentleman, dressed very cleanly and neatly in black
broadcloth, with a limp, many-pleated shirt-front of old-fashioned
style, and a plain black cravat. If he had worn an old-time stock
we could have forgiven him the rest of the disappointment he cost
us; but we had to admit to ourselves that he had the most
absolutely commonplace appearance of all our acquaintance. In
fact, we soon discovered that, except for a taciturnity the like
of which we had never encountered, our aromatic uncle had
positively not one picturesque characteristic about him. Even his
aroma was a disappointment. He had it, but it was patchouly or
some other cheap perfume of the sort, wherewith he scented his
handkerchief, which was not even a bandanna, but a plain decent
white one of the unnecessarily large sort which clergymen and old
gentlemen affect.

But, even if we could not get one single romantic association to
cluster about him, we very soon got to like the old gentleman. It
is true that at our first meeting, after saying "How d'ye do" to
me and receiving in impassive placidity the kiss which my wife
gave him, he relapsed into dead silence, and continued to smoke a
clay pipe with a long stem and a short bowl. This instrument he
filled and re-filled every few minutes, and it seemed to be his
only employment. We plied him with questions, of course, but to
these he responded with a wonderful brevity. In the course of an
hour's conversation we got from him that he had had a pleasant
voyage that it was not a long voyage, that it was not a short
voyage, that it was about the usual voyage, that he had not been
seasick, that he was glad to be back, and that he was not
surprised to find the country very much changed. This last piece
of information was repeated in the form of a simple "No," given in
reply to the direct question; and although it was given politely,
and evidently without the least unamiable intent, it made us both
feel very cheap. After all, it WAS absurd to ask a man if he were
surprised to find the country changed after fifty or sixty years
of absence. Unless he was an idiot, and unable to read at that, he
must have expected something of the sort.

But we grew to like him. He was thoroughly kind and inoffensive in
every way. He was entirely willing to be talked to, but he did not
care to talk. If it was absolutely necessary, he COULD talk, and
when he did talk he always made me think of the "French-English
Dictionary for the Pocket," compiled by the ingenious Mr. John
Bellows; for nobody except that extraordinary Englishman could
condense a greater amount of information into a smaller number of
words. During the time of his stay with us I think I learned more
about China than any other man in the United States knew, and I do
not believe that the aggregate of his utterances in the course of
that six months could have amounted to one hour's continuous talk.
Don't ask me for the information. I had no sort of use for it, and
I forgot it as soon as I could. I like Chinese bric-a-brac, but my
interest in China ends there.

Yet it was not long before Uncle David slid into his own place in
the family circle. We soon found that he did not expect us to
entertain him. He wanted only to sit quiet and smoke his pipe, to
take his two daily walks by himself, and to read the daily paper
one afternoon and Macaulay's "History of England" the next. He was
never tired of sitting and gazing amiably but silently at my wife;
and, to head the list of his good points, he would hold the baby
by the hour, and for some mysterious reason that baby, who
required the exhibition of seventeen toys in a minute to be
reasonably quiet in the arms of anybody else, would sit placidly
in Uncle David's lap, teething away steadily on the old
gentleman's watch-chain, as quiet and as solemn and as aged in
appearance as any one of the assorted gods of porcelain and jade
and ivory which our aromatic uncle had sent us.

The old house in Boston was a thing of the past. My wife's parents
had been dead for some years, and no one remained of her immediate
family except a certain Aunt Lucretia, who had lived with them
until shortly before our marriage, when the breaking up of the
family sent her West to find a home with a distant relative in
California. We asked Uncle Davy if he had stopped to see Aunt
Lucretia as he came through California. He said he had not. We
asked him if he wanted to have Aunt Lucretia invited on to pass a
visit during his stay with us. He answered that he did not. This
did not surprise us at all. You might think that a brother might
long to see a sister from whom he had been separated nearly all of
a long lifetime, but then you might never have met Aunt Lucretia.
My wife made the offer only from a sense of duty; and only after a
contest with me which lasted three days and nights. Nothing but
loss of sleep during an exceptionally busy time at my office
induced me to consent to her project of inviting Aunt Lucretia.
When Uncle David put his veto upon the proposition I felt that he
might have taken back all his rare and costly gifts, and I could
still have loved him.

But Aunt Lucretia came, all the same. My wife is afflicted with a
New England conscience, originally of a most uncomfortable
character. It has been much modified and ameliorated, until it is
now considerably less like a case of moral hives; but some
wretched lingering remnant of the original article induced her to
write to Aunt Lucretia that Uncle David was staying with us, and
of course Aunt Lucretia came without invitation and without
warning, dropping in on us with ruthless unexpectedness.

You may not think, from what I have said, that Aunt Lucretia's
visit was a pleasant event. But it was, in some respects; for it
was not only the shortest visit she ever paid us, but it was the
last with which she ever honored us.

She arrived one morning shortly after breakfast, just as we were
preparing to go out for a drive. She would not have been Aunt
Lucretia if she had not upset somebody's calculations at every
turn of her existence. We welcomed her with as much hypocrisy as
we could summon to our aid on short notice, and she was not more
than usually offensive, although she certainly did herself full
justice in telling us what she thought of us for not inviting her
as soon as we even heard of Uncle David's intention to return to
his native land. She said she ought to have been the first to
embrace her beloved brother--to whom I don't believe she had given
one thought in more years than I have yet seen.

Uncle David was dressing for his drive. His long residence in
tropical countries had rendered him sensitive to the cold, and
although it was a fine, clear September day, with the thermometer
at about sixty, he was industriously building himself up with a
series of overcoats. On a really snappy day I have known him to
get into six of these garments; and when he entered the room on
this occasion I think he had on five, at least.

My wife had heard his familiar foot on the stairs, and Aunt
Lucretia had risen up and braced herself for an outburst of
emotional affection. I could see that it was going to be such a
greeting as is given only once in two or three centuries, and then
on the stage. I felt sure it would end in a swoon, and I was
looking around for a sofa-pillow for the old lady to fall upon,
for from what I knew of Aunt Lucretia I did not believe she had
ever swooned enough to be able to go through the performance
without danger to her aged person. But I need not have troubled
myself. Uncle David toddled into the room, gazed at Aunt Lucretia
without a sign of recognition in his features, and toddled out
into the hall, where he got his hat and gloves, and went out to
the front lawn, where he always paced up and down for a few
minutes before taking a drive, in order to stimulate his
circulation. This was a surprise, but Aunt Lucretia's behavior was
a greater surprise. The moment she set eyes on Uncle David the
theatrical fervor went out of her entire system, literally in one
instant; and an absolutely natural, unaffected astonishment
displayed itself in her expressive and strongly marked features.
For almost a minute, until the sound of Uncle David's footsteps
had died away, she stood absolutely rigid; while my wife and I
gazed at her spellbound.

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