singers who toss their hats aloft and roll in their seats; the chorus
swells to the accompaniment of a thousand brogans—
“He used to wear an old gray coat
All buttoned down before.”
A ribboned man in the arena is trying to be heard, and the Latins
raise one mighty cry for silence. The big red man gets a hand over the
parson’s mouth, and the ribboned man seizes his moment.
“They have been endeavoring for hours,” he says, “to draw the terrible
animals from their dens, but such is their strength and fierceness,
that——”
His voice is drowned. Enough has been heard to warrant the inference
that the beasts cannot be whipped out of the storm-drenched cages to
which menagerie-life and long starvation have attached them, and from
the roar of indignation the man of ribbons flies. The noise increases.
Men are standing up by hundreds, and women are imploring to be let out
of the turmoil. All at once, like the bursting of a dam, the whole mass
pours down into the ring. They sweep across the arena and over the
showman’s barriers. Miguel gets a frightful trampling. Who cares for
gates or doors? They tear the beasts’ houses bar from bar, and, laying
hold of the gaunt buffalo, drag him forth by feet, ears, and tail;
and in the midst of the _mêlée_, still head and shoulders above all,
wilder, with the cup of the wicked, than any beast, is the man of God
from the Florida parishes!
In his arms he bore—and all the people shouted at once when they saw
it—the tiger. He had lifted it high up with its back to his breast,
his arms clasped under its shoulders; the wretched brute had curled up
caterpillar-wise, with its long tail against its belly, and through
its filed teeth grinned a fixed and impotent wrath. And Parson Jones
was shouting:
“The tiger and the buffler _shell_ lay down together! You dah to say
they shayn’t and I’ll comb you with this varmint from head to foot! The
tiger and the buffler _shell_ lay down together. They _shell_! Now,
you, Joe! Behold! I am here to see it done. The lion and the buffler
_shell_ lay down together!”
Mouthing these words again and again, the parson forced his way through
the surge in the wake of the buffalo. This creature the Latins had
secured by a lariat over his head, and were dragging across the old
rampart and into a street of the city.
The northern races were trying to prevent, and there was pommelling
and knocking down, cursing and knife-drawing, until Jules St.-Ange was
quite carried away with the fun, laughed, clapped his hands, and swore
with delight, and ever kept close to the gallant parson.
Joe, contrariwise, counted all this child’s-play an interruption. He
had come to find Colossus and the money. In an unlucky moment he made
bold to lay hold of the parson, but a piece of the broken barriers in
the hands of a flat-boatman felled him to the sod, the terrible crowd
swept over him, the lariat was cut, and the giant parson hurled the
tiger upon the buffalo’s back. In another instant both brutes were dead
at the hands of the mob; Jones was lifted from his feet, and prating
of Scripture and the millennium, of Paul at Ephesus and Daniel in the
“buffler’s” den, was borne aloft upon the shoulders of the huzzaing
_Américains_. Half an hour later he was sleeping heavily on the floor
of a cell in the _calaboza_.
When Parson Jones awoke, a bell was somewhere tolling for midnight.
Somebody was at the door of his cell with a key. The lock grated,
the door swung, the turnkey looked in and stepped back, and a ray of
moonlight fell upon M. Jules St.-Ange. The prisoner sat upon the empty
shackles and ring-bolt in the centre of the floor.
“Misty Posson Jone’,” said the visitor, softly.
“O Jools!”
“_Mais_, w’at de matter, Posson Jone’?”
“My sins, Jools, my sins!”
“Ah! Posson Jone’, is that something to cry, because a man get
sometime a litt’ bit intoxicate? _Mais_, if a man keep _all the time_
intoxicate, I think that is again’ the conscien’.”
“Jools, Jools, your eyes is darkened—oh! Jools, where’s my pore old
niggah?”
“Posson Jone’, never min’; he is wid Baptiste.”
“Where?”
“I don’ know w’ere—_mais_ he is wid Baptiste. Baptiste is a beautiful
to take care of somebody.”
“Is he as good as you, Jools?” asked Parson Jones, sincerely.
Jules was slightly staggered.
“You know, Posson Jone’, you know, a nigger cannot be good as a w’ite
man—_mais_ Baptiste is a good nigger.”
The parson moaned and dropped his chin into his hands.
“I was to of left for home to-morrow, sun-up, on the Isabella schooner.
Pore Smyrny!” He deeply sighed.
“Posson Jone’,” said Jules, leaning against the wall and smiling, “I
swear you is the moz funny man I ever see. If I was you I would say,
me, ’Ah! ’ow I am lucky! the money I los’, it was not mine, anyhow!’ My
faith! shall a man make hisse’f to be the more sorry because the money
he los’ is not his? Me, I would say, ’it is a specious providence.’
“Ah! Misty Posson Jone’,” he continued, “you make a so droll sermon ad
the bull-ring. Ha! ha! I swear I think you can make money to preach
thad sermon many time ad the theatre St. Philippe. Hah! you is the moz
brave dat I never see, _mais_ ad the same time the moz rilligious man.
Where I’m goin’ to fin’ one priest to make like dat? _Mais_, why you
can’t cheer up an’ be ’a’ppy? Me, if I should be miserabl’ like that I
would kill meself.”
The countryman only shook his head.
“_Bien_, Posson Jone’, I have the so good news for you.”
The prisoner looked up with eager inquiry.
“Las’ evening when they lock’ you, I come right off at M. De Blanc’s
house to get you let out of de calaboose; M. De Blanc he is the judge.
So soon I was entering—’Ah! Jules, me boy, juz the man to make
complete the game!’ Posson Jone’, it was a specious providence! I win
in t’ree hours more dan six hundred dollah! Look.” He produced a mass
of bank-notes, _bons_, and due-bills.
“And you got the pass?” asked the parson, regarding the money with a
sadness incomprehensible to Jules.
“It is here; it take the effect so soon the daylight.”
“Jools, my friend, your kindness is in vain.”
The Creole’s face became a perfect blank.
“Because,” said the parson, “for two reasons: firstly, I have broken
the laws, and ought to stand the penalty; and secondly—you must really
excuse me, Jools, you know, but the pass has been got onfairly, I’m
afeerd. You told the judge I was innocent; and in neither case it don’t
become a Christian (which I hope I can still say I am one) to ’do evil
that good may come.’ I muss stay.”
M. St.-Ange stood up aghast, and for a moment speechless, at this
exhibition of moral heroism; but an artifice was presently hit upon.
“_Mais_, Posson Jone’!”—in his old _falsetto_—“de order—you cannot
read it, it is in French—compel you to go hout, sir!”
“Is that so?” cried the parson, bounding up with radiant face—“is that
so, Jools?”
The young man nodded, smiling; but, though he smiled, the fountain of
his tenderness was opened. He made the sign of the cross as the parson
knelt in prayer, and even whispered “Hail Mary,” etc., quite through,
twice over.
* * * * *
Morning broke in summer glory upon a cluster of villas behind the city,
nestled under live-oaks and magnolias on the banks of a deep bayou, and
known as Suburb St. Jean.
With the first beam came the West-Floridian and the Creole out upon
the bank below the village. Upon the parson’s arm hung a pair of
antique saddle-bags. Baptiste limped wearily behind; both his eyes were
encircled with broad, blue rings, and one cheek-bone bore the official
impress of every knuckle of Colossus’s left hand. The “beautiful to
take care of somebody” had lost his charge. At mention of the negro he
became wild, and, half in English, half in the “gumbo” dialect, said
murderous things. Intimidated by Jules to calmness, he became able to
speak confidently on one point; he could, would, and did swear that
Colossus had gone home to the Florida parishes; he was almost certain;
in fact, he thought so.
There was a clicking of pulleys as the three appeared upon the bayou’s
margin, and Baptiste pointed out, in the deep shadow of a great oak,
the Isabella, moored among the bulrushes, and just spreading her sails
for departure. Moving down to where she lay, the parson and his friend
paused on the bank, loath to say farewell.
“O Jools!” said the parson, “supposin’ Colossus ain’t gone home! O
Jools, if you’ll look him out for me, I’ll never forget you—I’ll never
forget you, nohow, Jools. No, Jools, I never will believe he taken
that money. Yes, I know all niggahs will steal”—he set foot upon the
gang-plank—“but Colossus wouldn’t steal from me. Good-bye.”
“Misty Posson Jone’,” said St.-Ange, putting his hand on the parson’s
arm with genuine affection, “hol’ on. You see dis money—w’at I win
las’ night? Well, I win’ it by a specious providence, ain’t it?”
“There’s no tellin’,” said the humbled Jones. “Providence
“‘Moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform.’”
“Ah!” cried the Creole, “_c’est_ very true. I ged this money in the
mysterieuze way. _Mais_, if I keep dis money, you know where it goin’
be to-night?”
“I really can’t say,” replied the parson.
“Goin’ to de dev’,” said the sweetly-smiling young man.
The schooner-captain, leaning against the shrouds, and even Baptiste,
laughed outright.
“O Jools, you mustn’t!”
“Well, den, w’at I shall do wid _it_?”
“Any thing!” answered the parson; “better donate it away to some poor
man——”
“Ah! Misty Posson Jone’, dat is w’at I want. You los’ five hondred
dollar’—’twas me fault.”
“No, it wa’n’t, Jools.”
“_Mais_, it was!”
“No!”
“It _was_ me fault! I _swear_ it was me fault! _Mais_, here is five
hondred dollar’; I wish you shall take it. Here! I don’t got no use
for money.—Oh, my faith! Posson Jone’, you must not begin to cry some
more.”
Parson Jones was choked with tears. When he found voice he said:
“O Jools, Jools, Jools! my pore, noble, dear, misguidened friend! ef
you hed of hed a Christian raisin’! May the Lord show you your errors
better’n I kin, and bless you for your good intentions—oh, no! I
cayn’t touch that money with a ten-foot pole; it wa’n’t rightly got;
you must really excuse me, my dear friend, but I cayn’t touch it.”
St.-Ange was petrified.
“Good-bye, dear Jools,” continued the parson. “I’m in the Lord’s
haynds, and he’s very merciful, which I hope and trust you’ll
find it out. Good-bye!”—the schooner swang slowly off before the
breeze—“good-bye!”
St.-Ange roused himself.
“Posson Jone’! make me hany’ow _dis_ promise: you never, never, _never_
will come back to New Orleans.”
“Ah, Jools, the Lord willin’, I’ll never leave home again!”
“All right!” cried the Creole; “I thing he’s willin’. Adieu, Posson
Jone’. My faith’! you are the so fighting an’ moz rilligious man as I
never saw! Adieu! Adieu!”
Baptiste uttered a cry and presently ran by his master toward the
schooner, his hands full of clods.
St.-Ange looked just in time to see the sable form of Colossus of
Rhodes emerge from the vessel’s hold, and the pastor of Smyrna and
Bethesda seize him in his embrace.
“O Colossus! you outlandish old nigger! Thank the Lord! Thank the Lord!”
The little Creole almost wept. He ran down the tow-path, laughing and
swearing, and making confused allusion to the entire _personnel_ and
furniture of the lower regions.
By odd fortune, at the moment that St.-Ange further demonstrated his
delight by tripping his mulatto into a bog, the schooner came brushing
along the reedy bank with a graceful curve, the sails napped, and the
crew fell to poling her slowly along.
Parson Jones was on the deck, kneeling once more in prayer. His hat had
fallen before him; behind him knelt his slave. In thundering tones he
was confessing himself “a plum fool,” from whom “the conceit had been
jolted out,” and who had been made to see that even his “nigger had the
longest head of the two.”
Colossus clasped his hands and groaned.
The parson prayed for a contrite heart.
“Oh, yes!” cried Colossus.
The master acknowledged countless mercies.
“Dat’s so!” cried the slave.
The master prayed that they might still be “piled on.”
“Glory!” cried the black man, clapping his hands; “pile on!”
“An’ now,” continued the parson, “bring this pore, backslidin’ jackace
of a parson and this pore ole fool nigger back to thar home in peace!”
“Pray fo’ de money!” called Colossus.
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.”
“_Miché?_”
“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[21]
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 market-boys
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.