Perhaps you might not think Uncle Dick a "gentleman"—Aunt Emma did not, I know, though she kept her mind to herself, being his brother's widow, and the prudent mother of many children. Uncle Dick lived with them; that is, if he could be said to live anywhere, being always on the move, never liking to stay long in one place, and somewhat restless-minded, as those are who have passed all their life in rambling about the world. A "rolling stone" he certainly was, though he could scarcely be said to have gathered no moss, as he had amassed two fortunes, one after the other: having lost the first, he was now enjoying the second in his own harmless but rather eccentric way.
I doubt if Aunt Emma really liked him, yet she was always very civil to him, her chief complaint being that he never would "take his position in the world"; that is, he avoided her balls, made himself scarce at her dinner parties, and no persuasion could ever induce him to exhibit his long, thin, gaunt figure, his brown hands and face, in evening clothes. What a "guy" he would have looked in them! as we boys always agreed, and sympathized with him, and not with Aunt Emma. But in his own costume we admired him immensely. His shooting-jacket, Knickerbockers, and Panama hat were to us the perfection of comfort and elegance.
As to his cleverness, that also was a disputed point with some folk. But we had never any doubt at all. And perhaps we were right. "A fool and his money are soon parted," says the proverb. But when they part to meet again—that is, when a man can bear the loss of one fortune, and set to work to make another—the chances are (without any exaggerated Mammon-worship I say it) that he is not a fool.
"Yes, I have really made two fortunes," said Uncle Dick, as we sat beguiling a sunshiny day, when the fish refused to bite, by plying him with innumerable questions, till at last he "rose" like a trout at a fly. "How old was I when I lost the first one? Well, about twenty-five. Yes, I remember it happened on my birthday, Michaelmas-day."
"Happened all in one day?" some of us inquired.
"Ay, in a day, an hour, a minute," said Uncle Dick, with his peculiar smile, half sad, half droll, as if he saw at once all the fun and all the pathos of life. "And now I remember it was not in the day, but in the middle of the night. I went to sleep a rich man; by daylight I was a beggar. Any more questions, boys?"
Of course we rained them upon him by the dozen. He sat composedly, watching his float swim down the stream, and answered none for ever so long: Uncle Dick had, when he chose, an unlimited capacity for silence.
"Yes," he said at length, "it was one night in the middle of the Atlantic on the deck of a sinking ship. There's a saying, boys, about gaining the whole world and losing one's own soul. Well, I gained then my soul, though I lost my fortune. And it was all through my sister's grapes."
Now Uncle Dick was in the habit of talking nonsense—at least Aunt Emma considered it such. In his long solitude he was accustomed to let his thoughts run underground, as it were, for a good while, when they would suddenly crop up again, and he would make a remark, apropos of nothing, which greatly puzzled matter-of-fact people, or those who liked elegant small-talk, of which he had absolutely none.
"Your sister's grapes?" repeated one of us, with great astonishment. "Then you had a sister? Where is she now?"