Stacy Aumonier

“ The naked truth kept jogging our elbows, that this money from which we were benefiting, that brought us SO much pleasure and comfort, had been acquired in some dishonest way or even over the corpse of some tragic episode. ”

“ To a successful sugar broker or a popular comedian I must appear in the light of a pauper. To my own family I have always appeared to be something of a plutocrat. For you must know that I owe my education and whatever advancement I may have made to my own efforts at a national school, and the privileges of continuation classes. My father was a small greengrocer, and his family, which was a very large one and peculiarly prolific, has in no instance except my own risen above the social standard that he set for us. ”

“ An adventurer named Ben Cotton married my sister Louie, obviously because she had a little money. Laura quarreled with her husband, the Baptist, and on the strength of her new independence left him, and the poor man hanged himself a few months later.
To all these stories of misadventure and trouble Uncle Herbert listened with a great show of profuse sympathy, but it was patent that their real significance did not get through to him. He always acted lavishly and impulsively. He set Albert up in business again. He started both Christopher and Richard independently. ”

“ All my relatives are dear good people; it is simply that they do not, and never have, taken any interest in what is called education. My brother Albert is a greengrocer, as our father was, and he has seven children. Richard is in a leather-seller's shop. He earns more money than I did, but he has eleven children. Christopher is a packer at the Chadstow Heath Emporium. God has blessed him with three small offspring. ”

“ He did n't inspire any one. He misjudged men, and men did n't believe in him. As the years went on, and Lynneker became more and more successful, and Banstow made no progress, the thing began to get on Banstow's nerves. He quarreled with his friend, and they became rivals. The injustice of it all infuriated Banstow. He worked, and Lynneker lazed and dreamed and yet won every time. They went into the diamond-mining industry, and Lynneker began amassing a great fortune in a careless, haphazard way. Again Banstow failed. ”

“ She has two children. Laura is the wife of an elderly Baptist who keeps a tobacco kiosk on Meadway. She is childless. Louie, my favorite sister, is not married, but she has a child. But her tragedy does not concern this story.
In fact, the details of the entities neither of myself nor of my brothers and sisters are of very great importance in what I want to tell you, beyond the fact that they will give you a clue to the amazing flutter among us that accompanied the appearance of our Uncle Herbert when he arrived from Africa. ”

“ Thirty thousand of this was bequeathed to various charitable institutions in South Africa, and the residue of the estate was to be divided equally between his nephews and nieces. I shall never forget the varied expressions on the faces of my brothers and sisters when each one realized that he or she was to inherit between four and five thousand pounds. We gasped and said nothing, though I remember Christopher, when the reading was finished, mumbling something to the lawyer. ”

“ Josh and asked him if he would come back to the house with us. He nodded in a nonchalant manner and followed me out. On the way back I made vain attempts to draw him out, but he was as uncommunicative as Uncle Herbert himself. He merely repeated what he had said at the inquest. We had lunch, and a curiously constrained meal it was, all of us speaking in little self-conscious whispers, with the exception of Albert, who did n't speak at all, and Mr. Josh, who occasionally shouted "Yes," or "No, thank you," in a loud voice. ”

“ Banstow was suspected, but apparently he had escaped. Nothing more was seen of him."
The stranger paused and then languidly lighted another cheroot. The interval seemed so indefinite that at last Albert said:
"Where does Uncle Herbert come in?"
"Your Uncle Herbert was a cipher," replied our visitor. "He was merely one of the people who came under the influence of Lynneker. As a matter of fact, I believe he was one of the worst cases. He worshiped Lynneker. Lynneker was the obsession of his life. He acted as secretary for him for his vast charitable concerns. ”

“ The next step of progression in this direction, indeed, was made by Albert, somewhat under cover of the old adage, in vino Veritas. For on the night after Albert's new shop was opened we all supped at uncle's, and Albert, I 'm afraid, got a little drunk. He was, in any case, very excited and garrulous, and he and Christopher and I met in the smoking-room late in the evening, and Albert was very mysterious. I would like to reproduce what he said in his own words. He shut the door carefully and tiptoed across the room.
"Look here, boys," he said. "The old man beats me. ”

“ He bought and stocked a new shop for Albert, He set Richard up in business and gave Christopher a partnership in it. He paid Will's passage out to Canada and gave him two hundred pounds to start on. (I believe Will had already been trying to borrow money from him, with what result I do not know.) He offered me some light secretarial work to do for him in my spare time, for which he agreed to pay me sixty pounds a year. As for the girls, he bought them a life annuity bringing them in fifty pounds a year. ”

“ When I first received this important appointment my salary was eighty pounds a year, but after six years' assiduous application to my duties it was advanced to one hundred and twenty pounds a year. I am married and have two children, and we lived in Gentian Villa, which is convenient to the library and barely ten minutes' walk from the heath itself. ”