Americans All Part 8

"Vot it ees?" shrieked the tenor. "It ees ze history of how zey have heest me at Nice! It ees all zair--how I have been heest--in zis sacre sheet--in zis handkairchif of infamy! And it ees you zat have told it to zat devil of a Rastignac--_traitresse!_"

"Now, Hipleet," pleaded his wife, "if I can't learn enough French to talk with you, how am I going to tell Rastignac about your being hissed?"

This reasoning silenced Mr. Remy for an instant--an instant only.

"You _vood_ have done it!" he cried, sticking out his chin and thrusting his face forward.

"Well, I didn't," said Madame, "and n.o.body reads that thing, any way.

Now, don't mind it, and let me get your things off, or you'll be catching cold."

Mr. Remy yielded at last to the necessity of self-preservation, and permitted his wife to remove his frogged overcoat, and to unwind him from a system of silk wraps to which the Gordian knot was a slip-noose.

This done, he sat down before the dressing-case, and Mme. Remy, after tying a bib around his neck, proceeded to dress his hair and put brilliantine on his moustache. Her husband enlivened the operation by reading from the pinky paper.

"It ees not gen-air-al-lee known--zat zees dees-tin-guished tenor vos heest on ze pob-lic staidj at Nice--in ze year--"

Louise leaned against the wall, sick, faint and frightened, with a strange sense of shame and degradation at her heart. At last the tenor's eye fell on her.

"Anozzair eediot?" he inquired.

"She ain't very bright, Hipleet," replied his wife; "but I guess she'll do. Louise, open the door--there's the caterer."

Louise placed the dishes upon the table mechanically. The tenor sat himself at the board, and tucked a napkin in his neck.

"And how did the Benediction Song go this afternoon?" inquired his wife.

"Ze Benediction? Ah! One _encore_. One on-lee. Zese pigs of Ameericains.

I t'row my pairls biffo' swine. _Chops once more!_ You vant to mordair me? Vat do zis mean, madame? You ar-r-re in lig wiz my enemies. All ze vorlt is against ze ar-r-r-teest!"

The storm that followed made the first seem a zephyr. The tenor exhausted his execratory vocabulary in French and English. At last, by way of a dramatic finale, he seized the plate of chops and flung it from him. He aimed at the wall; but Frenchmen do not pitch well. With a ring and a crash, plate and chops went through the broad window-pane. In the moment of stricken speechlessness that followed, the sound of the final smash came softly up from the sidewalk.

"Ah-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ah!"

The tenor rose to his feet with the howl of an anguished hyena.

"Oh, good gracious!" cried his wife; "he's going to have one of his creezes--his creezes de nare!"

He did have a _crise de nerfs_. "Ten dollair!" he yelled, "for ten dollair of gla.s.s!" He tore his pomaded hair; he tore off his bib and his neck-tie, and for three minutes without cessation he shrieked wildly and unintelligibly. It was possible to make out, however, that "arteest" and "ten dollair" were the themes of the improvisation. Finally he sank exhausted into the chair, and his white-faced wife rushed to his side.

"Louise!" she cried, "get the foot-tub out of the closet while I spray his throat, or he can't sing a note. Fill it up with warm water--102 degrees--there's the thermometer--and bathe his feet."

Trembling from head to foot, Louise obeyed her orders, and brought the foot-tub, full of steaming water. Then she knelt down and began to serve the maestro for the first time. She took off his shoes. Then she looked at his socks. Could she do it?

"Eediot!" gasped the sufferer, "make haste! I die!"

"Hold your mouth open, dear," said Madame, "I haven't half sprayed you."

"Ah! _you!_" cried the tenor. "Cat! Devil! It ees you zat have killed me!" And moved by an access of blind rage, he extended his arm, and thrust his wife violently from him.

Louise rose to her feet, with a hard set, good old New England look on her face. She lifted the tub of water to the level of her breast, and then she inverted it on the tenor's head. For one instant she gazed at the deluge, and at the bath-tub balanced on the maestro's skull like a helmet several sizes too large--then she fled like the wind.

Once in the servant's quarters, she s.n.a.t.c.hed her hat and jacket. From below came mad yells of rage.

"I kill hare! give me my knife--give me my rivvolvare! Au secours!

a.s.sa.s.sin!"

Miss Slattery appeared in the doorway, still polishing her nails.

"What have you done to His Tonsils?" she inquired. "He's pretty hot, this trip."

"How can I get away from here?" cried Louise.

Miss Slattery pointed to a small door. Louise rushed down a long stairway--another--and yet others--through a great room where there was a smell of cooking and a noise of fires--past white-capped cooks and scullions--through a long stone corridor, and out into the street. She cried aloud as she saw Esther's face at the window of the coupe.

She drove home--cured.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] From "Stories of H. C. Bunner," copyright, 1890, 1896, by Alice L.

Bunner; published by Charles Scribner's Sons. By permission of the publishers.

H. C. BUNNER

Henry Cuyler Bunner was his full name, H. C. Bunner was the way he always signed his writings, and "Bunner" was his name to his friends, and even to his wife. He was born in Oswego, New York, August 3, 1855.

His parents soon moved to New York City, and Bunner was educated in the public schools there. Then he became a clerk in a business house, but this did not satisfy him, and he began to write for newspapers, finally getting a position on the _Arcadian_, a short-lived journal. In 1877 the publishers of _Puck_, a humorous weekly printed in the German language, decided to issue an edition in English, and made Bunner a.s.sistant editor. It was a happy choice. He soon became editor-in-chief, and under his direction the paper became not only the best humorous journal of its time, but a powerful influence in politics as well. Bunner wrote not only editorials, humorous verse, short stories, and t.i.tles for pictures, but often suggested the cartoons, which were an important feature of the paper.

Outside the office he was a delightful conversationalist. His friends Brander Matthews, Lawrence Hutton and others speak of his ready wit, his kindness of heart, and his wonderfully varied store of information. He was a constant reader, and a good memory enabled him to retain what he read. It is said that one could hardly name a poem that he had not read, and it was odds but that he could quote its best lines. Next to reading, his chief pleasure was in wandering about odd corners of the city, especially the foreign quarters. He knew all the queer little restaurants and queer little shops in these places.

His first literary work of note was a volume of poems, happily ent.i.tled _Airs from Arcady_. It contains verses both grave and gay: one of the cleverest is called "Home, Sweet Home, with Variations." He writes the poem first in the style of Swinburne, then of Bret Harte, then of Austin Dobson, then of Oliver Goldsmith and finally of Walt Whitman. The book also showed his skill in the use of French forms of verse, as in this dainty triolet:

A PITCHER OF MIGNONETTE

A pitcher of mignonette In a tenement's highest cas.e.m.e.nt: Queer sort of flower-pot--yet That pitcher of mignonette Is a garden in heaven set, To the little sick child in the bas.e.m.e.nt-- The pitcher of mignonette In the tenement's highest cas.e.m.e.nt.

The last poem in the book, called "To Her," was addressed to Miss Alice Learned, whom he married soon after, and to whom, as "A. L. B." all his later books were dedicated. Soon after his marriage he moved to Nutley, New Jersey. Here he was not only the editor and man of letters but the neighbor who could always be called on in time of need, and the citizen who took an active part in the community life, helping to organize the Village Improvement Society, one of the first of its kind.

He followed up his first volume by two short novels, _The Midge_ and _The Story of a New York House_. Then he undertook the writing of the short story, his first book being _Zadoc Pine and other Stories_. The t.i.tle story of this book contains a very humorous and faithful delineation of a New Englander who is transplanted to a New Jersey suburb. Soon after writing this he began to read the short stories of Guy de Maupa.s.sant. He admired them so much that he half translated, half adapted a number of them, and published them under the t.i.tle _Made in France_. Then he tried writing stories of his own, in the manner of de Maupa.s.sant, and produced in _Short Sixes_ a group of stories which are models of concise narrative, crisply told, artistic in form, and often with a touch of surprise at the end. Other volumes of short stories are _More Short Sixes_, and _Love in Old Cloathes_. _Jersey Street and Jersey Lane_ was a book which grew out of his Nutley life. He also wrote a play, _The Tower of Babel_, which was produced by Marie Wainwright in 1883. He died at Nutley, May 11, 1896. He was one of the first American authors to develop the short story as we know it to-day, and few of his successors have surpa.s.sed him in the light, sure style and the firmness of construction which are characteristic of his later work.

SOCIETY IN OUR TOWN