Part 31
We went down to Stafford next day. The news of my return had already got abroad, and folk were expecting me, for there was a great crowd at the door of the _Bell_, and when I clambered off the coach, there was such a shouting and cheering as you never heard. I didn't know I had so many friends. Two great youths pushed their way through the throng and, gripping me by the arms, began lugging me into the inn, and one of them cried, "Well done, old Harry!" and then I knew it was my cousin Tom, and the other, who was James home from Cambridge, says, "Come on, Harry, Mother's in there," and when I asked where was Father, they told me he was crippled with the gout and couldn't come. My aunt, good woman, round and rosy as ever, was all of a tremble when she saw me, and burst into tears as she flung her arms around my neck; and then up comes honest John King, the landlord, with a tumbler of rum shrub, which he made her drink, saying it was the finest thing in the world for the staggers; and the pot-boy was close behind him with four foaming tankards of ale, and John lifts his and cries, "Welcome home!" his honest face shining like the sun. And then I remembered Billy, and called him in, and he came, rather red and uneasy, and the landlord sent for another pot when I explained who he was, and there was such a laughing and chattering that my head fairly buzzed.
When we had emptied our tankards (Billy whispered to me, "Master, did you ever taste such beer?") my aunt said Father would be dying of impatience, so we went out again among the crowd and found them looking with curiosity and amazement at Little John, who sat on the door-step, keeping guard. "Never seed a beast like that," says one; "what is he?" Billy laughed, and said it was a dog, at which they scoffed: and I may say here that it was a long time before the other dogs in our part would own Little John as one of their kind. We got into a carriage waiting for us, and nothing would satisfy some of the young 'prentices but they must unyoke the horses, and drag us the two miles to my uncle's house, and there were the maidservants at the gate (more of them than when I went away), and they waved handkerchiefs or dish-clouts, I don't know which, and Billy's face was redder than ever.
I found my uncle sitting in his great chair, with his leg stretched out, and I was not a bit surprised nor hurt when his first words were, "Mind my toe!" and then he cries, "God bless you, Harry, my boy," and flings his arms round me, and kisses me as if I were a child again instead of a tall fellow of near twenty-six. And then he wiped his eyes and said he was an old fool, and catching sight of Billy he wanted to know who that was, and I tried to explain, but somehow the words stuck in my throat, and I couldn't say more than "Billy." "Billy what?" shouts my uncle. "Bobbin, sir," says Billy, and everybody laughed, and laughed again when Billy, looking very much puzzled, said, "Rightly, William, sir." And then James, the graver of my two cousins, said we had better have something to eat, and so we did, my aunt having prepared a feast of fat things fit for kings, as Billy said, and finer by a great deal than I ever had when I was king of Palm Tree Island. On which everybody demanded to know what he meant, and I had to begin my story there and then, and it lasted all through supper and many hours beyond, and even then I had not told the half of it. You may guess how rapt an audience I had, and how they cried out against Wabberley and Chick, and the indignation of my uncle and aunt at their villanous doings; and my admiration of Aunt Susan was vastly increased because she did not turn round upon her husband, as many good women would have done, and beg him to note that she had told him so. When they heard what a close comrade Billy had been to me during those years of solitude and trouble they perfectly overwhelmed him with kind words and praises, and he said to me afterwards that he knew now why my uncle had called his ship the _Lovey Susan_, and he wished he had an Aunt Susan himself, instead of a mother-in-law.
[Sidenote: Pleasant Places]
When I, in my turn, came to hear of what had happened during my long absence, I found that after two years had passed my uncle began to be very restless, and when the third was gone without bringing any news of us, he was much perturbed, and made many visits to London to ask if we had been spoken by any vessel, and to see the captains of outgoing ships and beg them to make what search they could. At the end of the fourth year he gave us up for lost, and was in such terrible distress of mind that he fell ill, and was a long time of recovering. When he did get about again he collected all his books about the sea, and the voyages of navigators and discoverers, of which he had a great many, and burnt them every one, and never in all his life looked into any book of the sort again, but took to poetry instead. His business had thriven amazingly, and he led me into his private room one day and showed me a book in which he had entered, quarter by quarter, the sums of money he had put away for me in case I should ever come back. I had not been home a week when he drew out a deed of partnership, on such generous terms that by the time I was thirty I was what the country folk call a very warm man. He presented Billy immediately with fifty pounds, and learning from him that he wished to remain with me, he said the best thing he could do was to learn the pottery trade, which Billy accordingly did, and he is now the manager of our factory.
We had not been at home above six months when Billy came to me one evening, and said that he was a good deal bothered in his mind. I asked him what was the matter, and he asked me back whether I thought there was anything unlucky in names. When I told him that I did not think so, and he still seemed troubled, I said he had better make a clean breast of it, whereupon he said: "It's that little girl again, sir." "Clums's girl?" I said. "No, sir, it's Elizabeth Jane." "You have found her, then?" I said. "It's not _her_," says he; "it's them," looking very gloomy.
I told him to light his pipe (he had become a very great smoker) and to tell me all about it. Accordingly, between puffs of his pipe, he explained that he thought one of my aunt's maids, whose name was Elizabeth, a very fine young woman; and he also thought the parson's cook, whose name was Jane, a very fine young woman; but that after the sad fate of our vessel, and the distressing discovery that the first Elizabeth Jane's father had been hanged, he was afraid there was something "unchancy," as he put it, about both names. Moreover, he liked both Elizabeth and Jane so much that, even if there had been no shadow on their names, he could not make up his mind between them: "And I can't have 'em both," says he; "not even Harry the Eighth, by what you said, had more'n one wife at once." I said it was a very hard case, and after considering of it very deeply (as he thought) for a good while, I told him that, being quite inexperienced in these matters, I was afraid my advice would be of little worth, but he might ask them whether they would go back with him to Palm Tree Island, and choose the one that said yes. "I've done that, sir," says he heavily, "and they both say they'd like it ever so, if it was me." This was a facer, and I knew not what to say, until by a happy thought I suggested that he should consult my aunt Susan, with whom he was a prime favourite.
He came to me a day or two after and said it was all settled. "I spoke to Mrs. Brent, sir," says he, "and she said 'Bless the man! What next, I wonder!' and then she says that she had nothing to say against Elizabeth, who does her work well, but has rather a fancy for ribbons and laces, she says; and as for Jane, she is a very decent respectable woman, and a good cook, and makes dough cakes the very way Mrs. Brent told her, she says. 'She'd make any man a good wife,' she says."
"Well, you must bring Jane to see me," I said.
"Oh, but it ain't Jane; it's Elizabeth," says he, and when I had done laughing, and asked him why he had ignored my aunt's recommendation, he launched forth into a very rambling and confused statement of which I could make nothing. He married Elizabeth soon after, and I do not think my aunt ever thoroughly forgave him.
[Sidenote: One Mariner Returns]
One day, about ten years ago, I was sitting with my uncle in his garden, chatting with him as I frequently did in the evening, because he could not get about much, when we saw an old man, very crooked and infirm, hobble up to the gate on two sticks, and lift the latch. Thinking he was a beggar, my uncle bade him very sharply to be off. For a moment he hesitated; then he opened the gate and came slowly towards us, my uncle shaking his fist at him, and daring him to move another step. There was something strangely familiar, and yet unfamiliar, in his appearance; but as he still hobbled along, it came upon me all of a sudden who he was, and I told my uncle I believed it was Nick Wabberley. "The scoundrel! The villain!" cried my uncle. "How dare he show his face here!" and then he added under his breath, "I'm getting old, Harry," remembering, I suppose, that he and Wabberley were much of an age.
Wabberley came towards us very slowly, and I saw that his hands were shaking and his features twisted. He looked at my uncle, and then at me, but it was plain that he did not recognize me; and then he began to speak, and it was very pitiful to hear him, because with palsy upon him he could not pronounce some of his words aright, and the story he told was pitiful too. He related how he had been left with Hoggett and Chick on the island by me and the stowaway, "who didn't ought to have left us, men what they ought to respect," said he. Chick died; then Hoggett fell into a melancholy and took to going off for days alone. One day there was a dreadful eruption of the volcano, which terrified them so much that they went down into the cavern below the hut to hide, and when the danger was past, Hoggett refused to go up; he had lost his wits and thought he was in his grave. Wabberley let down food to him in a basket, but he did not touch it, and so remained until he starved himself to death.
"I was all alone; d'ye know what that is, Stephen Brent?" says Wabberley. How long he lived thus solitary he knew not, but he was nearly out of his mind when one day a ship's boat came ashore for water, and brought him home, the wreck we saw him. "You won't forget your old schoolmate, Stephen Brent?" says he; and my uncle, who had muttered "Dear, dear!" and "Poor fellow!" and suchlike things, while Wabberley was speaking, now thrust his hand into his pocket, and saying "God have mercy on us all!" gave him a handful of silver. Wabberley touched his forelock in the old mechanical fashion, and without a second look at me he hobbled away, and as he came to the gate, whom should he meet but Billy, walking up to the house with his eldest son, a boy of twelve. Billy stopped, and in his face I saw a great amazement; but Wabberley passed him by, not knowing him again. And then I was surprised, and touched too, to see Billy follow after the poor old man, and take him by one arm, and make his boy take the other, to help his tottering footsteps, and so they passed out of my sight.
[Sidenote: The End]
I have been long of telling my story; yet I might have told much more but for the fear of wearying you. Billy sometimes says he wouldn't have minded taking a trip to the South Seas and having a look at Old Smoker; but if it had come to the point I think he could hardly have torn himself away from Elizabeth and the little Bobbins. As for me, though I have neither wife nor child, I am too busy a man, and maybe too old, to think of entering upon what would, I fear, be a long and troublesome search. There have been many voyages of discovery in those parts since my time, and if Palm Tree Island is now marked on maps and charts for the guidance of captains and navigators, I think I should feel a trifle sorry did I see it under another name.
[1] This must have been Bougainville Island, one of the Solomon Group.--H.S.
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