22 
Land & Water 
March 7, 191 8 
The Return : By Stacy Aumonier 
1 OUGHT perhaps, in the first plu-e. to explain that I 
am (or raiher was) a Hbrarian at the suburban library 
Tchadstow Heath. W.en I hrst received this 
important appointment my sahirv was ^^^^P^'^^ 
a year, but after six years assiduous apphcation to 
mv duties it was advanced to one hundred and twenty pounds 
Tvear I am married and have two cliildren and we hyed in 
GentTan vX which is convenient to the hbrary and barely 
^fn nCiutes-'walk from the heath itself. This may no 
eSrc^ent to vou a condition of material prosperity, but I 
wouS "en ure to point out that :U! these matters are entirely 
anpJat e To a successful sugar broker, or a popular 
ome£ 1 must appear in the light of n pauper. To my 
msT family I have always appe^ired to be something o( a 
Zo rat. • For you must know that 1 owe my education and 
£ ever 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 peculi^urly prolific, has^ in no instance 
except mv own risen above the social standard he set for us. 
I'hope this Will not sound a priggish statement of mine. It is 
simply a very bald assertion of truth. All my relations are 
deJ, good people: it is simply that they do not, and never 
have taken any interest in what is called educatiori. My 
brother Albert is a greengrocer, as our father was, and he has 
seven children. Richard is in a leatherseller's shop. He earns 
more money than I did. but he has eleven children. Chris- 
topher is' a packer at the Chadstow Heath luupornim. God 
has blessed him with three small offspring. Will is unmarried, 
and I couldn't tell you quite what he does. He is something 
„f a black sheep.' My sister Nancy is married— alas ! 
unhappUy— to a worthless traveUer in cheap jewellery. She 
has two chUdren. Laura is the .wife of an elderly Baptist who 
keeps a tobacco kiosk on Meadway. She is childless. Louie, 
my favourite 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 
whati want to t,ell 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. 
The trutli is that every one of us had entirely forgotten aU 
about him. Albert and I had a Vague recollection of having 
heard our father refer to a delicate young brother who bolted 
to South .Africa when he was a young man, and had not been 
heard of since. 
But, lo and behold ! he turned up one evening suddenly 
at Gentian Villa when my sister Louie and her child were 
paying us a visit. At first I thought he was some impostor, 
and I was almost on the point of warning my wife to keep an 
eye on the silver butter-dish and the fish knives which we 
always displayed with a certain amount of pride on our 
dining-room sideboard. 
He was a little wizened old man, with a bald head and small 
beady eyes. He had a way of sucking in his lips and contin- 
ually nodding his head. He was somewhat shabbily dressed 
except for a heavy gold watch and chain. He appeared to 
be intensely anxious to be friendly with us all. He got the 
names and addresses of the whole family from me, and stated 
that he was going to settle down and live in London. 
When one had got over his nervy, fussy way of behaving, 
there was something about the little man that was rather 
lovable. He stayed a couple of hours, and promised to call 
again the next day. We laughed, about him after he had 
gone and, as relations will, discussed his possible financial 
position. We little dreamed of the surprising difference 
Uncle Herbert was going to make to us all. 
He called on all the family in rotation, and wherever he 
went he took little presents, and made himself extremely 
affable and friendly. He told us that he had bought a house 
and was having it "done up a bit." And then, to our surprise, 
we discovered that he had bought '' Silversands," which, as 
you know, is one of the largest houses on Chadstow Heath, 
it is, as Albert remarked, "more like a palace," a vast red brick 
structure standing in its own grounds, which are surrounded 
by a high wall. 
1 shall never forget the day when we "were all — including 
the children — invited to go and spend the afternoon and 
evening. We wandered about the house and garden spell- 
bound, doubting how to behave, and being made to feel 
continually self-conscious by the presence of .some half-dozen 
servants. It would be idle to pretend that the house was 
decorated in the best of taste. It was lavish in every sense 
of the word. The keynote was an almost exuberant gaiety. 
It was nearly all white woodwork, or crimson mahogany, 
with brilliant floral coverings. Masses of naturalistic flowers 
rose at you from the carpet and the walls. And the electric 
lights' I've never in my life seen so many brackets and 
electroliers. I do not believe there was a cubic foot of space 
in the house that was not brightly illuminated. And m 
this gay setting Uncle Herbert became the embodiment of 
hospitality itself. He darted about among us, shaking 
hands patting the heads of the children, passing trays of nch 
cakes and sandwiches. The younger children were sent home 
early in the evening laden with toys, and we elders stayed on to 
supper. And, heavens ! What a supper it was ! The table was 
covered with lobster salads, and cold turkey, and chicken, and 
ham, and everything one could think of. And on the side 
table were rows of bottles of beer, and claret, and stout, 
and whisky, and as if a concession tb-the social status of his 
guests, Uncle dismissed the servants, and we waited on 
ourselves. , , ,• i 
And the little man sat at the head of the table, and bhnked 
and nodded, and winked at us, and he kept on repeating": 
" Now, boys and girls, enjoy yourselves Albert, cut a 
bit o' fowl for Nancy. 'Erbeft.my boy, pass the 'am to 
yer aunt." 
Uncle was the life and soul of the party, and it need hardly 
be said that we soon melted to his mood. I observed that 
he himself ate very httle, and he did not drink at all. For 
an oldish man whose digestion was probably not what it 
was, this was not a very remarkable phenomenon. And I 
should probably not have commented upon it, but for the fact 
that it was the" first personal trait of my uncle which arrested 
my attention, and which, in conjunction with more peculiar 
characteristics, caused me to keep a closer watch upon him 
in the days that followed. For this supper-party was but 
the nucleus of a series of supper- parties. It was given out 
that •' Silversands " was an open house. We were all welcome 
at any time. Uncle was never so happy as when the house 
was full of laughing children, or when his large circle of relations 
clattered round the groaning board, and ate and drank the 
prodigal delicacies he supplied. Not only were we welcome, 
but any friends we cared to take were welcome also. I have 
known thirty-three of us sit down to supper there on a Sunday 
evening. And on these occasions all the house was lighted 
up, and in fact I have no recollection of going there .when 
every electric light and fitting was not fulfilling its utmost 
function. 
Apart from abstemiousness, the characteristic of Uncle 
which immediately gripped my attention was what I will 
call ■' abstraction." 
It was indeed a very noticeable characteristic. He had 
a way of suddenly shrinking within himself and apparently 
being oblivious to his surroundings. He would make some 
gay remark, and then suddenly stop, and stare into space, 
and if you spoke to him he would not answer for some moments. 
Another peculiarity was that he would never speak of Africa, 
or of his own affairs. He had a convenient deafness, which 
assailed him at awkward moments. He seemed to be in a 
frenzy of anxiety to be always surrounded by his own family 
and the ubiquitous electric lights. When the house was 
quite in order I do not think he ever went out at all except 
into the garden. 
He was scrupulously impartial in his treatment of us all ; 
in fact, he had a restless, impartial way of distributing his 
favours, as though he were less interested in us as individuals 
than anxious to surround himself with a loving and sympa- 
thetic atmosphere. Nevertheless — and it may quite possibly 
have been an illusion — I always felt he leant a httle more 
towards me than to the others, perhaps because I was called 
after him. He always called me " 'Erb, boy," and there 
were times when he seemed instinctively to draw me apart, 
as though he wanted to hide behind me. And realising his 
diffidence to indulge in personal explanation, I respected the 
peculiarity and talked of impersonal things or remained silent 
It was, I think, Albert who was the most worried by Uncle's 
odd tricks. I remember he came to me one night in the 
smoking-room after a particularly riotous supper-party, and 
he said : 
" I say, 'Erbert (all my family call me 'Erbert), what 
I'd like to know is — What is Uncle staring at ?" 
I knew quite well what he meant, but I pretended not t(x 
and Albert continued : 
" Of course it's all right. It's no business of ours, but it's 
a very rum thing. He laughs, and talks, and suddenly he 
•leaves off, and then he stares — and stares — into space." 
{Continued on page 24.) 
