CHAPTER XXXIII

WELCOME

“Oh, it fills my soul with joy To greet my friends once more.”

“Here I am! Here is your disreputable-looking cousin! I had better proclaim my name and rank, lest the good doctor has not prepared you to meet a ragamuffin!” said a voice from a remote corner as tall and shadowy figure arose and emerged from the darkness.

The lieutenant threw open a window-shutter, let in a flood of light, and turned at once to meet his kinsman.

“You are Leonidas Bruce! Welcome! It seems incredible—impossible! but you _are_ Leonidas Bruce! I know you at once by your eyes and smile. Welcome! Welcome! Thank Heaven, you have lived to come back to us, though at so late a day, and like one from the grave. Welcome! Welcome! Welcome!” exclaimed Ronald Bruce as he heartily shook both his cousin’s hands. If he had been of any other Christian nation than English or American he would have embraced and kissed his restored kinsman. But his greeting was felt to be sufficiently heartful.

Tears sprang to Lonny’s eyes. For a few moments he could not speak at all. Then he said, with much emotion:

“You are the very first who has welcomed me home, warmly and without doubt. My father drove me from his presence. One nearer and dearer fainted at the sight of me. Good Dr. Willet mistook me for a beggar and offered me alms. Only _you_ knew me and welcome me at once. But are you quite _sure_ you know me?” inquired Lonny with morbid and touching anxiety.

“Quite sure. I never forget a face. Besides, your portrait, taken just before you went away, has been familiar to me from boyhood up; and you have not changed so much from that.”

“But my father did not know me at all.”

“His sight is very dim; besides, he was not prepared to expect you, as I was.”

“Dr. Willet did not know me at first, though he recognized me afterwards.”

“His vision is also somewhat impaired by age, though not so much as your father’s, and, besides, _he_ did not expect to see you, either, as I did.”

“I wrote from Marseilles; but it seems my letter never came to hand.”

“The foreign mails are notoriously irregular; so are the country mails; between them both your letter has been delayed or miscarried. But come, Lonny! Though I am devoured with curiosity, I will not ask you a single question, for you seem to be in urgent need of rest and refreshment,” said Ronald Bruce, turning toward the door.

“Stay! Stay! If by refreshment you mean food, I do not require any. I got a substantial meal from a hospitable farmer on the Grey Rock Road. What I do need, as I explained to Dr. Willet, is a bath, a barber, and a fresh suit of clothes.”

“You shall have them all as expeditiously as possible.”

“Take me to your own room. You are at home here, I suppose.”

“Yes; so are you; though the folks don’t know it as yet. But come with me, so that I can attend to your wants.”

Lonny turned to follow his cousin.

Just as they were about to pass into the hall Ronald saw his Aunt Margaret descend the stairs and pass into the little green study. He held Lonny back until she had disappeared.

“That was our aunt. I did not want her to see you. No one must see you till you are dressed. Come now,” said Ronald as he led the way upstairs.

Just as they passed into the lieutenant’s room a door on the opposite side opened and Mrs. Bruce came out and crossed the hall.

“That was my mother. Now we are safe from observation at last,” said Ronald as he closed the door.

These were the only risks they ran of discovery.

As soon as they found themselves alone, Ronald turned to his cousin and said:

“I know you do not wish to be seen by any one, not even by a servant, until you are transfigured and renewed.”

“No, indeed,” replied Lonny earnestly.

“All right; then I will lock the door and be your valet myself!” said Ronald as he went and turned the key in the door.

“Now look in here, Lonny,” he continued, opening an inner door. “Here is a bathroom, with every possible convenience for the toilet. Go in there and make ready, while I lay out your clothes. I am a little larger than you, but I guess mine will do for the present. Stay, however, I have a thought!”

“What is it?” inquired Lonny.

“An inspiration, my dear fellow!”

“Of what description?”

“You shall hear anon.”

And with these words Ronald unlocked the door and passed out, carefully closing it behind him.

Lonny threw himself into a chair and waited, wondering whether he or his friends were more eccentric than the rest of the world.

His wonder was not lessened when Ronald reappeared, lugging in that life-sized portrait of Lonny that had been taken in his midshipman’s uniform, just before he went to sea.

Ronald locked the door carefully and then stood the picture on the floor, leaning against it, and said:

“Do you know that boy?”

“I _used_ to know him some seventeen years ago, and a sad dog he was, to be sure! He came to no good, I dare say,” replied Lonny with a rueful smile.

“Well, _that_,” said the lieutenant, rapping on the canvas, “was the last his friends saw of him, was it not?”

“Yes.”

“Well, _this_,” said Ronald, again rapping the canvas—“or something very _like_ this, must be the first his friends see of him again! In other words, Lonny Bruce, you must dress to match your portrait of seventeen years ago, so that your friends may know you at a glance. Do you understand?”

“Yes, but it will be difficult.”

“Not at all! Listen now. I have the recipe, the pattern, the programme, all cut, dried, and laid out! After you have had your bath and put on fresh underclothing, we must take the plantation barber so far into our confidence as to let him cut and shave that bandit-like black beard of yours, and trim those unkempt elf locks into civilized proportions. Then you must put on my last midshipman’s uniform, which is quite new and fresh, and which, having been discarded by me two years ago, when I was promoted, will probably fit you perfectly.”

“And so, when that toilet is completed, I shall come forth a new, revised, and improved edition of the Midshipman Lonny Bruce of seventeen years ago?”

“Exactly.”

“An excellent idea! Thanks, Ronald! I am impatient to act upon it. My father will be sure to recognize me now,” said Lonny.

“All right,” laughed Ronald.

He then proceeded to open his wardrobe and bureau and to lay out from them all necessary articles of apparel required by the wanderer. Lastly, he unlocked a lumber closet and took from its peg the midshipman’s uniform.

All these things he lifted in his arms and conveyed into the communicating bathroom, saying as he came out: “Now all is ready for you in there, Lonny. Go in and get ready. I will go down and send the barber up here to you, with directions to wait in this room until you want him. Then I will go and find your father and break the news of your return to him. But, for Heaven’s sake, Lonny, do not leave this apartment until I come back for you.”

“Of course I will not,” replied the latter.

Lieutenant Bruce then left the room and went slowly down the stairs, asking himself how on earth he should ever be able to tell the commodore without killing him.

In the hall below he met his own servant, and to him he said:

“Timothy, go and find the barber, and take him to my room, and tell him to wait there until he is called. There is a gentleman there who will require his services.”

“Yes, sir. Did you hear, sir, about the robber what broke inter de house dis morning and drawed a pistol on Marse Commodore in de little green study, and scared one of de ladies into fainty fits, and jumped clear through de glass windy, and made off before any one could catch him?”

“Oh! yes, I heard all about him,” replied the young gentleman, smiling to himself to see how the poor tramp’s adventure had grown in the telling.

“We libs in awful times, marster,” added the man, who seemed inclined to linger.

“We do, indeed. But now run and find the barber. Yet, stay a moment. Where is the commodore?”

“He been tending to de fainty lady ’til jes’ dis minute, when he went to de liberary to ’ceive de mail-bag, which de mail-boy have jes’ fotched in.”

“Very well. I shall find him there. Now run on your errand.”

The boy obeyed, but the lieutenant stood still, ruminating how he could ever with safety break to the long bereaved old father the news of his son’s return, and praying that it might be given him in that hour what to speak.

“I have it!” he said to himself at length. “I have it! The mail has just come in with the Washington and Richmond papers! I will go in and take up one and offer to read it to him. I will then pretend to read the heading of an article: ‘Remarkable Return to Life.’ ‘Reappearance of a young man long supposed to have been lost at sea.’

“And then I’ll read a rigmarole about somebody, or rather nobody, that shall resemble Lonny’s arrival, and so prepare the old man’s mind to hear the fact, by presenting the possibility of such a thing. Bah! I know it will throw him in a fit, all the same,” concluded the poor lieutenant as he opened the library door and went in.

He found the old commodore seated in his big arm-chair at the table, holding an open letter in his shaking hand and staring at it with starting eyes.

The young man saw, as by a flash of lightning, what had occurred. The commodore held in his hand the long-delayed letter from Marseilles, referred to by poor Lonny, announcing his existence and intended return.

No need of breaking news here.

“Ronald! For Heaven’s sake, look at this!” exclaimed Commodore Bruce as soon as he saw his nephew. The lieutenant, instead of immediately complying with his uncle’s request, went to the buffet, poured out a glass of cognac, and took it to the old man, who received it with a trembling hand and drank it at a draught.

“Ronald! Ronald! You are shocked to see me in this state; but if you knew the contents of this letter you would wonder you had not found me stone dead in my chair, struck by a lightning flash of joy! Ronald! You may marry the girl you love now! You may do anything in the world you like to make yourself happy! I would all the world were as happy as I am now! There! Read the letter. I—read it!”

He stopped, for he was tremendously agitated.

The lieutenant took the letter. It was short and crudely written, as by a hand long unaccustomed to the use of the pen. It was dated Marseilles, September 1st, and it told, in a few brief words, of the wreck of the U. S. frigate _Eagle_ on the coast of Africa seventeen years before; of the loss of all the officers and crew, with the exception of the writer, who was rescued by the natives and carried captive into the interior, where he had long remained; of his flight to the seacoast after many ineffectual efforts; of his escape on board of a French ship, and his voyage to Marseilles; of his failure to find friends who would listen to or believe a story that he could not prove; and finally of his being obliged to work his passage home on board of a Baltimore clipper, which would sail in a few days.

While Ronald Bruce read this letter the commodore, recovering his voice, was pouring forth his emotions in a torrent of exclamations.

“He was to follow the letter by the next ship, you see! In a few days! The date of that letter is old! It has been delayed! It was sent first to the Navy Department at Washington, then forwarded here! Good Heaven, to think of it! Even the consul at Marseilles discredited his story! A half-naked vagabond, picked up by a French ship on the coast of Africa and clothed by the humanity of the crew. Obliged to work his passage home! It is my son, Lonny, that I am talk of, Ronald—do you understand? My son, Lonny Bruce, who was falsely supposed to have been lost at sea seventeen years ago!”

“Yes, yes, dear sir, I quite understand. I am reading his letter,” said the young man, trying to comprehend through the confusion what he was reading.

“He will be here soon—very soon! Those Baltimore clippers are fast sailers. He will go to Washington first—to the Navy Department—to find out where I am. Then he will post here!”

The impetuous torrent of language poured forth by the old man in his excessive excitement made it almost impossible for the young lieutenant to get in his word “edgeways;” but at length he had an opportunity of saying:

“If Lonny has neither money nor friends he may have to _tramp_ all the way from Baltimore to Washington, and from Washington here.”

“So he may, poor dear fellow,” said the commodore musingly.

“By the way, did not that strange _tramp_ who came here this morning say something about a letter from Marseilles which should have preceded him?” inquired Ronald meaningly.

The old man started, looked keenly at the younger one for a moment, then doubling his fist and bringing it down upon the table, he smote it smartly, exclaiming:

“What an idiot! What a monster I have been! He was my Lonny! And _she_ knew him! Oh! it is all clear enough now! What a jolter-headed beast I have been! No wonder strangers discredited his story when his own father disowned him!”

“Do not reproach yourself, sir! Not dreaming of seeing your son, how should you have known him after so many years and in that strange dress?”

“By nature, sir! By nature, if I had not been an unnatural monster!” cried the commodore, springing up and striking out for the bell rope.

“What are you about to do?” inquired Ronald, intercepting him.

“Ring up the whole house and start them in pursuit of him.”

“I thought that had been already tried without success.”

“True, true,” said the commodore, sinking back in his seat. “He could not be found. He has taken a temporary shelter in some farmer’s house, doubtless. But he will come back before night. He could never imagine that I would deny _him_!”

“No, never; and I dare say he never even left the house at all, but is waiting in some vacant room for a good chance to make himself known.”

“Nothing more likely!” exclaimed the commodore, standing up again. “They have looked for him too far away. They have _over_looked him. They should have sought him nearer at hand.” And so saying he went for the bell.

“Stay! do not call a servant! Let me go and institute a search,” said the lieutenant.

“Yes, thanks, that is better,” agreed the old man.

Ronald Bruce left the library and flew, bound beyond bound, up the stairs to the chamber where he had left Lonny.

He found the “tramp” washed, combed, shaved, trimmed, dressed, and looking not like the original of his portrait, but like the elder brother of the original.

The plantation barber, having finished his work, had left the room.

“Come,” said Ronald, “he is waiting to see you. No preparation was needed; I found him reading your letter, which had just arrived. Come.”

Lonny joined his cousin at once, and both, with beating hearts, went below.

“Go in alone. I cannot intrude on such a meeting,” whispered Ronald Bruce as they reached the door.

Lonny passed into the library.

The commodore stood in the middle of the room, with a look of expectancy on his aged face.

“Father!” exclaimed Lonny, hastening towards him.

The old man started forward and caught his son to his heart, exclaiming:

“Lonny! Lonny! My son! My son! Oh, joy!”