CHAPTER XXIV THE MOTHER MYSTERY
What was Mr. Devering going to tell the boy I wondered. I kept close to the family during dinner the next day, and immediately afterward Dallas hurried to his uncle and the two went sauntering up the road, I, of course, in close attendance.
Mr. Devering seemed in no hurry to begin his communication. He strolled along looking at the lake and the sky and presently he said, "Those are fine Lombardy poplars in front of the Talkers."
"Yes, Uncle," said Dallas eagerly.
"Do you see that one with the queer curve in it?" asked Mr. Devering.
"Yes, I do."
"Someone struck it a cruel blow in youth," said Mr. Devering, "and it has given Mr. Talker more trouble than all the rest of the trees put together. 'Cut it down,' everybody said but me. 'Grapple with it,' I said, and he bandaged and propped and pulled until finally it had only that slight twist in it. He's quite proud of it and calls it his prodigal tree."
"Lots of things get hurt when they're young," said Dallas.
"Yes, boy, that's true."
"Bolshy is one, and I am another," said Dallas, going as easily along the mind path his uncle wished to lead him as his stout brown shoes went along the grassy path by the lake. "Uncle, can't you get the twist out of me? You're stronger than I am."
"Lad," said Mr. Devering enthusiastically, "we're going to get that twist out without leaving a curve."
"How, Uncle Jim? Oh! how will you do it?"
"I'll give the young tree such a shock that it will toss up its head to the sky in order to know what is going to happen to it."
"Uncle, if you don't speak soon I think I'll go crazy," said my poor young master.
"Your mother loved trees," said Mr. Devering musingly. "I know she is glad that you have changed in your feeling toward them."
"They're green brothers and sisters," said Dallas, "and when winter comes they will be nice old grandmothers and grandfathers. Uncle, I belong to the wild things. I don't want to live in a city. What shall I do?"
"Keep on brothering the trees. Your father is like you. He, too, loves the country and God's free unpolluted air."
"My father loves the country," repeated the boy in amazement. "I never knew that."
"He never had time to tell you. He was too busy chasing the almighty dollar. Now he has lifted his eyes to the hills. He will never live in a city again."
Dallas stopped short. "Is my father coming to live here?"
"No, lad—have you no woods and fields in your own country?"
The boy was intensely excited. "If my father lives in the country," he said slowly, "I can have Prince Fetlar with me all the time," and he threw his arm over my neck. "Also I can have a cow and hens and a dog or two. Oh! what a beautiful blow! Is that what is to shock me into telling the truth?"
"No, my boy—it is something about your mother."
"My mother, my mother," repeated the boy passionately. "Oh! if she had only lived. What could we not have done, my father and I?"
"Did you ever hear of departed ones coming back to earth?" asked Mr. Devering softly.
My young master wrinkled his eyebrows. "Sometimes," he said; "sometimes, Uncle, I think I see misty shapes in the clouds or in moonlight. It pleases me. I am not afraid. I have even imagined a lady in a long flowing cloak. Something stretches out like arms. I think it is my mother. Then I dream of her, always so pleasantly—Oh! how can boys ever be cross to their mothers?"
"My lad," said his uncle dreamily, "if you think of your mother in that way she is not dead. She may come back to you."
"What do you mean?" asked the boy in a puzzled voice.
"A great man has said that when we speak or think of our dead they live again. I believe that you will see your mother some day."
"What is it you are trying to tell me?" asked the boy.
"Will you haunt these beloved woods between here and the Mountain?" asked Mr. Devering mysteriously. "Will you and Prince Fetlar haunt them, and at the end of a week tell me what you see? Say nothing to any other person. You must come alone. You will not be afraid?"
"Afraid, no," said the boy almost with scorn. "All that is past, but what shall I see and hear? Oh! tell me."
"I can tell you no more save this," said Mr. Devering, shaking his head. "You must not soil your lips by falsehood. Your mother told stories when a child. Later on with all her faults she grew to hate a lie. If you are ever to be happy in her presence you must speak the truth and nothing but the truth, and you must not dream, although you will be on a dream quest. Do you understand that, my boy?"
"If I can see my mother," said my young master earnestly, "I shall never tell a lie again. It would be too ungrateful. I am in earnest this time. I swear it."
Mr. Devering was satisfied now and his face glowed as he looked at the boy.
Then taking him by the arm, they both set their faces toward the sawmill in the woods.
I always liked to go there. The ripping and tearing of the wood and the strong smell of sawdust and the jolly young men, who were all trained singers brought from other places at quite an expense by Mr. Devering, made it seem like a visit to a concert hall in the woods.
We heard a sweet tenor voice ringing out as we got near.
"Bite deep and wide, O Axe, the tree,
What doth thy bold voice promise me?"
and then a chorus of men's voices
"'We build up nations—this my axe and I.'"
These young men who worked in the mill and brought their logs down the river, which was our old friend the Merry-Tongue, lived in very comfortable log houses which could be occupied summer or winter. Consequently some of them were quite nicely furnished.
To my amusement, didn't I see my acquaintance, Black-Paws, the raccoon, just waking from a sound sleep under a bed in one of these log cabins.
"So this is where you go when you disappear from the Devering Farm," I said.
He looked me all over with his little cunning eyes. "Sometimes," he said. "I have many homes—they have a good cook in this camp," and approaching a quite nice looking bed he pulled back the covers and showed me a lump of orange layer cake under the pillow.
I couldn't help laughing as he tucked it back and patted it with his paws. "Whose bed is it?" I asked.
"Cyril Green's—he's first violin."
"You're quite a musical animal, I suppose," I said.
"If music isn't too near, I am," he remarked. "Excuse me, I must go wash this piece of beef," and didn't he drag some steak from under a sofa cushion, and run to the river with it.
Then my master and his uncle came along, bringing the whole bunch of young men with them. They were knocking off work to go down to the Deverings' and have a good time.
It was Mr. Devering's mill, so he could do as he liked.
"Play must be played," he said earnestly to a red-haired young giant who seemed to be boss, and who looked doubtful about quitting work before five. "Aren't you old enough yet, Cyril, to know that Jack gets to be a very dull boy indeed if his mind is always on dollars and cents? Go dress up a bit, and put your fiddle under your arm."
"Is that your friend?" I asked Black-Paws, whose dark hands were glistening with water.
"Yes—he's a dandy. Temper sweet as maple sugar. Other chaps stone me if I hide my little treasures in their cabins."
I walked over to Mr. Green and he looked me up and down admiringly, and stood watching me as Dallas got on my back and asked his uncle's permission to hurry home.
Our lad was so excited about his mother that he wished to be alone to think over what his uncle had said.
There was some mystery here which he did not quite understand.
Oh! how I longed to tell him that he would really see his beloved mother in the flesh, but alas! though I loved him so dearly and could communicate some of my feelings to him, this was one thing that he would have to find out for himself.
All the way home he was singing, so I knew what thoughts were passing through his mind. The longing for his mother amounted to a passion. His childhood had been so repressed that now with the prospect of his mother's presence either in the body or out of it, and normal life with his father outside a city, he acted like a boy that had a joyous fountain of delight springing up inside him.
He took a song all these backwoodsmen sang about, "Over the Mountain," and changed it to suit his purpose.
Instead of a traveller on horseback, he was a boy on ponyback, and he was looking for his mother, stolen by wicked fairies.
I think he really knew at this time that his mother was not dead, but for the life of me I could not be sure of it.
Children are pretty clever at concealing their inner thoughts, and though I am reckoned a pretty wise pony, I never have fully understood all the workings of this young master's picturesque mind.
I loved him, though. That was enough for me, and I listened with deep pleasure to his gay singing until we reached the Farm. Arriving there, he jumped off my back and went soberly up to the veranda, where Big Chief was having a meeting of the Calf and Pig Club, composed of neighbourhood boys and girls.
After they went away, there was a very jolly big supper party and later on some quaint folk dances on the lawn.
Then they had a bear dance. Mr. Devering and Mr. Macdonald dressed up in bearskins and frolicked about the grass in the electric light.
They were very amusing as Mother and Father Bear, but when my young master came on as a saucy cub who would not mind his parents, the fun became so fast and furious between the big bears and the little one that everybody shrieked with laughter.
Occasionally little bear cub glanced at the wrist watch on his paw and I knew that even in the midst of his gambolling he was keeping an eye on the time. He wished to be early to bed in order to be early to rise.
Finally, when the dancing was over and Mr. Devering proposed that they all go out in a motor-boat to take some cake and ice-cream to old Mrs. Petpeswick up by the head of the lake, Dallas slipped away to bed.
Big Chief caught him by the hand as he went by him.
"Come on, Cousin. It isn't late."
They were both out on the veranda and Dallas' eyes grew dark and mysterious. "I have a quest," he said, "like knights of old. Don't butt in, old boy."
Big Chief nodded and ran after Cassowary and Champ, who were whistling "O Canada" together as they strolled down to the boat.
I watched my young master undressing and hanging his clothes over a chair back as neatly as a girl would do, then he kneeled down beside his bed and afterward hopped into it.
I trotted up to the stable and found a nice sleepy quiet prevailing there until I asked the news of the day, when I got a whole budget from the different animals.
"The Good American has come," announced Attaboy pompously, "the friend of my master's father."
"Indeed!" I said, "I am quite curious to see him."
"He is very good to everybody," Attaboy continued; "he is just like my master's father."
I was rather amused. Attaboy had been very nice to me ever since I stopped Big Chief from running away. He was so stubborn, however, that he always said Big Chief, being such a wonderful boy, would have come home without my interference.
"The Good American's wife and children arrived, too," said David Wales, the Welsh pony.
"And servants and guests," continued the Exmoor.
"You should have seen them driving in from the Lake of Bays," said Attaboy, "motor cars and waggons piled high with luggage."
"They are very late this year," said Attaboy. "I hear there was a wedding in the family that delayed them."
I pricked up my ears when I heard the word guests. Was it possible that Dallas' mother was among them? Probably she was and that would explain Mr. Devering's eagerness to get the trail between the two houses in good condition before his American friends arrived.
Well! We ponies would see what we would see, and I listened sleepily to Apache Girl, who always had a talk with me now before I sank down on my straw bed.
She rarely lay down. She said she was afraid of mice getting up her nostrils, but I told her it was the wild blood in her. When horses roam in bands about a country they must be always on the alert against enemies who would creep on them.
Oh! what queer stories she used to tell me—queer uncanny stories of Spaniards and Americans that had been passed down to her by her ancestors.
I was delighted that she had thawed toward me, but finally nodded until I fell asleep just as a wild Inca chief with a spear in his hand was rushing at a Spaniard.
In my dreams the Inca spared the Spaniard, so I was quite relieved.