CHAPTER XXXII

THE TRAMP’S STORY

Of most disastrous chances, Of moving accidents by flood and field, Of being taken by the insolent foe And sold to slavery. SHAKESPEARE.

“Better so,” sighed the poor tramp to himself, as, when ejected from the study, he paused in the front hall, which happened for the moment to be deserted. “Yes, better so. I came too suddenly upon them, and they had not got my letter. I did not mean to shock them so; but what did that blundering negro mean by springing me upon them in that startling manner? He told me there was no one in the study. Well, possibly he thought so. It can’t be helped now. I must be patient, though it seems harder to wait minutes now than it was to wait years in the hopeless past.”

Then instead of leaving the house, as the commodore had peremptorily commanded him to do, the “cut-throat” threw himself down into a chair, dropped his hat by his side, and stretched out his limbs with the air of a man who meant to remain and make himself at home, while he continued his mental soliloquy:

“The man I met on the road and questioned about the family told me there was an old Dr. Willet on a visit here—our old family physician, of course. If I could only catch sight of him now and make myself known, I could procure a decent suit of clothes before presenting myself to any one else. But would he recognize me? ‘Ay, there’s the rub.’ The old man did not; but then his sight is dimmed by age. Ah, he has grown very aged since I saw him last—more aged even than his years would warrant—not in temper, though! Whew! what a fury he was in when he turned me out! He would have hurled a chair at me and broken my head if I had hesitated another moment! It was hard to go and leave her fainting there, but I know to have stayed would have made matters so much worse, even for her. How lovely she looked! Yet colorless as marble, with the traces of sorrow on her beautiful face! _She_ recognized me, my love! my own——Hallo, who comes here? Some one who will make me welcome or show me the door?” asked the tramp to himself as he saw a white-haired old gentleman slowly descending the stairs.

“It is Dr. Willet! He has grown gray since I saw him last, but I should know that eagle’s beak of a nose of his anywhere under the sun. I’ll stop him.”

The good physician was about to pass the stranger with a kindly nod when the latter accosted him:

“Dr. Willet.”

“Well, my friend, what can I do for you?” inquired the kind-hearted physician, very naturally supposing that his professional services were required by some poor patient. And he stopped.

“Sir,” said the tramp very gravely, “I wish you, if you please, to look at me well and tell me if you remember me.”

The doctor, surprised and puzzled by this address, looked long and wistfully into the face of the stranger, first to see if he could recognize him, secondly to see if he was mad or drunk.

“Well?” queried the tramp in an anxious tone.

“As far as I can recollect, I never met you in my life before; though I may have done so in some hospital, where in many years I have treated many transient patients. Was it there I made your acquaintance?” inquired the doctor.

“No, I was never in a hospital since I was born, and I was never a patient of yours, doctor—though, indeed, I believe you were the very first to introduce me to my nearest relations and friends on the occasion of my first appearance in this world, some thirty-five years ago,” said the tramp, with a gleam of that native, irrepressible humor which years of servitude and sorrow had not been able to extinguish.

The doctor looked at him long and seriously, and then said:

“I am responsible for many such introductions, my friend; though I cannot be expected to remember the faces of all to whom I officiated as gentleman usher. But you appear to be in need. Tell me how I can best help you and I will do so willingly.”

“I am no invalid and no beggar, Dr. Willet! I ask only for recognition. I can command everything else,” said the tatterdemalion, drawing himself up with dignity.

“Lord bless my soul alive!” exclaimed the astonished and bewildered doctor, as he put on his spectacles and looked again at this _strange_ stranger, who looked like a gypsy and talked like a king.

The tramp bore the scrutiny well.

“Come nearer the light, sir,” he said, moving toward the open, sunny back door.

“Can’t you tell me who you are at once, man? Only mention your name, and if I ever heard if before it will bring you to my memory,” said Dr. Willet, as he followed him.

“No, sir; I must not name myself to you. I wish _you_ to do that first. I wish to test your memory and prove my own identity. Come, sir, I will stand facing the open door. You will please place yourself in the most favorable position and examine my features under the full light of the sun.”

“Lord bless my soul alive, what does it all mean?” again exclaimed Dr. Willet, as he planted himself within two feet of the stranger, adjusted his glasses and stared at him.

“Now, sir, be kind enough to look in my eyes, for they change least of all. And while you do so, I may prompt your memory a little——”

“I am perplexed, but not in despair,” murmured the doctor to himself.

“You knew me from infancy to manhood. Then you lost sight of me,” continued the tramp.

“Lord—have——” slowly began the doctor, but the words died on his lips as he stared with reviving recollection of the speaker.

“I am the son of one of the oldest and dearest of your friends——”

“Mercy on——”

“Missing for many years——”

“Our souls!”

“Falsely supposed to have been lost at sea——”

“YOU ARE LONNY BRUCE!” cried the doctor, reeling back as if he had been shot.

“Yes, I am Lonny Bruce! Now don’t _you_ go and faint—that’s a good fellow! Brace up!” exclaimed the tramp, with half a laugh.

“Lon—ny Bruce!” reiterated the doctor, as he leaned against the wall which had stopped him in his backward reel—“Lon—ny Bruce! And you are really alive?”

“I rather think I am; but are _you really_ sure you recognize me? Because, you see, if you want any of the proofs usually required on such occasions—the ripe strawberry on my breast, or the tattooed anchor on my back, or any other birthmark or branded scar, why, it will be very awkward, for I haven’t such a thing about me—no, not even so much as a mole. Nature and Fortune left all that out. So it is extremely important that you should be able to identify me without their help. Are you sure you know me now?”

“Yes; I should know you among a thousand,” replied the doctor, who, still leaning for support against the wall, continued to stare at the returned exile.

“Could you swear to me if called upon to do so?”

“On a stack of Bibles as high as the Pyramids of Egypt.”

“One will do,” said Lonny.

“But how did you escape? Where have you been these seventeen years? Why didn’t you come home long ago or write? Have you seen your father?”

“Whist! Whist! for Heaven’s sake! To answer a tithe of your questions, doctor, would keep me here all day long. Now that you see and know me, you must perceive that I am in want of everything and everything else. First and most of all a bath, a barber and a clean shirt. I must be metamorphosed into a Christian before I present myself again to my old father, when, it is to be hoped, he will acknowledge his son. And then in good time, dear friend, I will satisfy your curiosity. Oh! you shall hear a story as long and as full of adventure as the Arabian Nights Entertainments! Oh, what a fireside treat you will have this winter if you stay with us! But come. Are you going to help me?”

The doctor, who had been thinking profoundly while the returned man spoke, now looked up and asked:

“Why not go to your father just as you are?”

“Like the prodigal son! Lord bless you, so I did! But the old gentleman didn’t fall on my neck and kiss me worth a cent! He didn’t know me from the king of the Cannibal Islands! He stormed and threatened me with the constable and a prison if I did not march double-quick! I obeyed him and an instinct of self-preservation and left the room. To have remained another minute would have been unwholesome.”

“Ah! if I were blind, I should know you now for Lonny Bruce! Should know you from that buoyancy of spirit that no misfortune could repress,” said the doctor.

“Thanks, but I want my father to know me,” said the tramp.

“Very well, I will try to help you. Come with me,” said the doctor; and he led the way to the long drawing-room, which was now closed and vacant and never opened or tenanted except on “high days and holidays.”

“Come in here, where no one will think of intruding on you, and remain while I go in search of your Cousin Ronald,” said the doctor, as he opened the door and preceded the stranger into the apartment.

“My Cousin Ronald! What! The little lad I left in the schoolroom when I went to sea? Is he in the house?” inquired Lonny, with a gleam of delight in his dark eyes, as he entered the room and dropped into the nearest easy-chair.

“Yes; but he is not a little lad now, by any manner of means! He is even a bigger lad than you, if anything. I will send him to you at once. He will take you to his room and attend to all your wants. Unluckily, Lonny, I must leave you.”

“Must you? I am sorry. I would like the circle of friends to be complete to-day,” said Leonidas with a look of disturbance.

“Why, so should I; but I am called to an old patient of mine who is lying dangerously ill at the Wilderness Manor-house. At the moment you stopped me I was even then on my way to join the messenger who was waiting in his wagon to take me away.”

“Oh, indeed, I see that you have no time to spare; so don’t let me detain you,” said the young man with visible reluctance.

“No, not a moment more even to bestow on such a joyful arrival as yours. Lord bless my soul! how strange all this is! I never was so unwilling to obey a professional call in my life. However, I will dispatch Ronald to you immediately.”

So saying the good doctor hurried out of the drawing-room and upstairs to the private apartment of Lieutenant Bruce.

Time being too precious to permit much ceremony, he entered without knocking, and found the young gentleman sitting at his table absorbed in writing a letter—to Em., most likely, as he was so deeply engaged as not to be disturbed even by the bustling entrance of the old physician.

“LIEUTENANT!” exclaimed the latter.

“Well, doctor,” cried the young man, starting to his feet. “What news? Has the lady succeeded in bringing my uncle to reason?”

“The lady is still with your uncle, I believe, though I don’t know. But I haven’t come about your sweetheart, Ronald, but about something of more pressing importance; and I haven’t time to break the news, so you must brace yourself at once for a severe shock. Are you braced?”

“Yes,” answered the young man, turning white as death and setting his teeth firmly; for he knew not what disastrous stroke he was to be called upon to bear. “Yes, I am ready.”

“Now, then, think of Alexander Selkirk, Robinson Crusoe, La Parouse, Captain John Riley, the Swiss Family Robinson, the four Russian Sailors, the——”

“In the name of Heaven, man, speak!” exclaimed the lieutenant.

“—And Lonny Bruce! there, it’s out!” said the doctor.

“What in the world do you mean?” demanded the young officer, wondering if the staid old physician, for the first time in his life, had taken a glass too much.

“Haven’t I told you? Lonny Bruce has come home.”

“WHAT!” cried Ronald, starting to his feet.

“Lonny Bruce, so long supposed to have been lost at sea, has come home, safe and sound, as many a missing man has done before him!” repeated the doctor.

Ronald stared as if his eyes would have started from their sockets.

“Do you hear me? Can’t you take it in yet? I tell you Lonny Bruce has come home! He is in this house at this present time; I have seen him and spoken with him.”

“Do I——”

“Yes, you do. You hear exactly right!” exclaimed the doctor, impatiently interrupting the bewildered speaker. “You are not dreaming nor are you mad; neither am I! You are wide awake and in your right mind, and so am I who tell you all this strange news. Now listen, Ronald Bruce, for I have got to hurry off to old Nancy Whitlock, who is in extremity. John Palmer has been waiting to take me to the Wilderness in his wagon for half an hour or more, so I have no time for further explanation. Lonny Bruce is below. No one except you and myself dreams of his presence in the house. You will find him in the long drawing-room needing all sorts of attention. Rouse yourself! Go to him! Rise to the occasion, man!”

So saying the doctor hurried off, leaving the young lieutenant standing there in a state of stupefaction from which indeed he found it difficult to rise.

The rumbling of the wagon wheels that carried the doctor off was the first sound that broke the spell that bound him.

Then he started like one awakened from a dream, walked downstairs and opened the door leading into the long drawing-room.

The place was half dark, for all the window shutters were closed; so the young lieutenant walked in slowly, peering curiously to the right and left.