CHAPTER XI.
A HAPPY HOME-COMING.
Four long years! yes, they did seem very long to Tom Bure, as he shipped on board a trading schooner that was to bear him over the sunlight sea, in bright September weather, to his home in Norfolk.
Four years! Why to look back appeared an eternity, so filled were they with wild adventures, with battles and sieges, and storms by sea and on land. We can only judge of distance on the ocean when ships, rocks, or islands are visible, and so can only judge of distance on the ocean of time by the events that stand out here and there, and seem to stud its surface.
"Four years!" he said to himself as he gazed over the taffrail at the rippling water, that went gurgling past the vessel's side as she headed north and away from the mouth of the Thames. "Four years! Why I was but a boy when I went to sea. Now I am a man, seventeen in a few months, and no mite at that. And a lieutenant! I wonder what Bertha will say. I do believe I used to make love to the child. Well, she is but a child yet, not more than twelve. But---- I wonder what she looks like. She'll hardly remember me. I do believe I've got her letter still."
"Beautiful day, isn't it?" said the skipper, who had now got his ship into a safe position. "Lovely weather I calls it for the season of the year. Just returned from the wars, haven't you?"
"Yes," said Tom, smiling.
"And haven't lost ne'er an arm nor a leg. Sad thing about poor Nelson, sir; but, lor' bless ye, he's a hero every inch! There isn't a man in Yarmouth that wouldn't die for him. Mind you, sir, Yarmouth's precious proud of him."
"As Yarmouth well may be, Mr. Auld."
"You've been to Norfolk afore, sir?"
"Why, I may say I belong there. My father died a poor man. His sword and his honour were about all he could call his own, but he belonged to a good family, I believe--the Bures."
"Bless my soul and old hull of a body!" cried the skipper. "You don't mean to say you're Tom Brundell, or Bure, that lived as a nipper wi' old Dan, and that we now hears so much talk about?"
"I'm all that stands for that youth," said Tom.
"Who would have thought it? Such a strapping, handsome fellow too. Why, tip us your nipper, my boy. Taking home Tom Bure am I? Why this is the happiest day in my life."
Tom shook hands right merrily, and the conversation continued.
There wasn't a man or woman apparently all over the north and east of Norfolk that Mr. Auld did not know the history of; and every question Tom asked was answered in a moment, and right heartily too.
He was unfeignedly glad to hear that Daddy Dan was well, and Ruth and his foster-mother. That the Ashleys were still afloat in the _Fairy_, and that "there wasn't a bit of difference in Yarmouth or in anybody or any place anywhere." These were Skipper Auld's own words.
"It seems to me," said Tom, "that all the change is in me alone."
"Ah! you're growing, young sir; but I daresay if one could see into your heart it isn't a deal of difference he'd see in that after all."
"Not a bit!" cried Tom. "That is in the right place, and I'll never forget dear Norfolk as long as my head is left above water."
"Bravo! Spoken like one o' Nelson's own!"
And at this point of the conversation Mr. Auld was constrained to spit in his palm and shake hands with Tom Bure once again.
* * * * *
Yarmouth at last! Not a bit of difference in the long, muddy river, nor in the quay alongside, nor in the shipping alongside.
Tom felt once more that the change was all in himself, but he was glad enough to get on shore nevertheless, for he meant to hire a trap, it being early morning, and drive straight away down to Daddy Dan's property, and give all hands a pleasant surprise.
He bade Mr. Auld good-bye, hoping they should meet again.
About half way up towards the spot where the town hall now stands he came abreast of a clean, taut, and trim-looking schooner. He started and stopped.
"I should know her," he thought. "Why, yes, I declare it's my first ship--the saucy _Yarmouth Belle_.
"Ship ahoy!" he shouted, in a voice so stentorian that a score of sailors and fishermen on the quay turned quickly round to look.
"Hullo!" cried a voice from on board; and up from the companion hatch popped the rough and warty old figure-head of Skipper Hughes himself.
Tom Bure went rushing over the gangway, stuck out his fist, seized the skipper's, and literally gaffed him on deck as if he'd been a forty-pound salmon.
Hughes didn't know Tom at first, but when he did he could hardly utter a word with excitement.
"Mate! mate!" he cried at last, "come up at once."
The mate--same old phizog--came up as quickly as if the ship had caught fire, and when about a hundred questions had been asked and answered to the satisfaction of all, "Mate," said Skipper Hughes, "on this auspicious occasion let us----"
"Hurrah!" cried the mate.
"Let us," continued the skipper most impressively--"let us----splice the main-brace."
* * * * *
There was a rat at the foot of that poplar tree without the slightest doubt.
Meg, Uncle Bob's collie, knew that. She had known it for a very long time. Indeed, the rat made little or no secret of the matter himself, for there was the door to his sub-arboreal residence close beneath the exposed portion of a root that Meg had often clawed and clawed at in vain. This was only the rascal's front door, however; he had several back doors, and he had an underground tunnel also, that led all the way to the old mare's stable.
That rat was a married rat too, and to Meg's certain knowledge had brought up a large family in there this last summer.
Meg was standing with her head turned a little on one side on this bright autumnal forenoon, and fancying she could almost see the rat grinning at her from the depths of his long, dark passage. She couldn't be sure though, for her eyes had grown more dim of late for some reason or another, which she didn't understand.
Her hearing was not so good as it used to be either. That was very curious!
"Meg, Meg, old girl!"
Her ears were in the habit of playing her strange tricks at times too.
"Meg!" For example, if she didn't know that Tom Bure had disappeared from off the earth ages and ages ago, just as her poor dear master had, she would fancy she heard his voice even now calling to her.
"_Meg_, you silly old girl!"
She turned her head at last.
Fancy? No, no, it was not fancy. Here was Tom himself, grown up from his puppyhood, as she had known all along he would, but Tom all the same--the eyes of Tom, the scent of Tom, the voice of Tom. She went for him straight with a rush and a run, and jumped upon his breast with a cry of joy that was half hysterical, and for all the world as if tears were choking her.
Then she must have a caper round and round the grassy lawn, where poor Bob used to lie so patiently in his cot.
Round and round.
Round and round.
Oh, if she had not capered and danced just then the excitement of her feelings might have given her a fit!
One more daft caper.
One more hysterical joy-bark. Then off over the bridge she flies, and in two minutes more comes back with Ruth.
Ruth had been making a cake, but those bare, plump, mealy arms of hers are thrown round her foster-brother's neck all the same, and she hugs him to her heart.
And----why the poor lassie is crying!
* * * * *
Altogether, this was indeed a happy home coming.
Neither Daddy Dan nor his wife were a bit changed. The garden was the same, the porch around the door and the roses and flowers, and even the jasmine that clung about Uncle Bob's wing.
Nothing altered.
Bob's bed yonder too, in Bob's own end of the house.
Aye, and the hooded crow's nest up in the poplar tree.
"And on fine days in summer," said Mrs. Brundell that evening as they all sat round the blazing hearth, with Meg, the collie, leaning her chin on Tom's knee, "on fine days in summer your Daddy will wheel out poor Bob's cot to its old place near to the shed where he works, though I tell him it is foolish."
Daddy Dan took his pipe from his lips and gazed upwards at the curling smoke with a strange moisture in his eye.
"Poor Bob," he said, "I like even yet to think the dear lad's near me."
Book III