Chapter Twenty Four.
March Marston at Home—His astonishing Behaviour—Narration of his extraordinary Adventures—Widow Marston’s Bower—The Rendezvous of the Trappers—A strange Interruption to March’s Narrative—A wild Surprise and Recovery of a lost Lover—Great Destruction of household Goods—A double Wedding and tremendous Excitement—The Wild Man of the West the Wisest Man in Pine Point Settlement.
Three months passed away, and at the end of that period March Marston found himself back again in Pine Point settlement, sitting on a low stool at that fireside where the yelling and kicking days of his infancy had been spent, and looking up in the face of that buxom, blue-eyed mother, with whom he had been wont to hold philosophical converse in regard to fighting and other knotty—not to say naughty—questions, in those bright but stormy days of childhood when he stood exactly “two-foot-ten,” and when he looked and felt as if he stood upwards of ten feet two!
Three months passed away, and during the passage of that period March Marston’s bosom became a theatre in which, unseen by the naked eye, were a legion of spirits, good, middling, and bad, among whom were hope, fear, despair, joy, fun, delight, interest, surprise, mischief, exasperation, and a military demon named General Jollity, who overbore and browbeat all the rest by turns. These scampered through his brain and tore up his heart and tumbled about in his throat and lungs, and maintained a furious harlequinade, and in short behaved in a way that was quite disgraceful, and that caused the poor young man alternately to amuse, annoy, astonish, and stun his comrades, who beheld the exterior results of those private theatricals, but had no conception of the terrific combats that took place so frequently on the stage within.
During those three months, March saw many things. He saw his old friends the prairie dogs, and the prong-horned antelopes, and the grisly bears, and the wolves; more than that, he chased, and shot, and ate many of them. He also saw clouds of locusts flying high in the air, so thick that they sometimes darkened the very sky, and herds of buffaloes so large that they often darkened the whole plain.
During those three months March learned a good deal. He learned that there was much more of every sort of thing in this world than he had had any idea of—that there was much, very much, to be thankful for—that there were many, very many, things to be grieved for, and many also to be glad about—that the fields of knowledge were inimitably large, and that his own individual acquirements were preposterously, humblingly small!
He thought much, too. He thought of the past, present, and future in quite a surprising way. He thought of his mother and her loneliness, of Dick and his obstinacy, of Mary and her sweetness, of the Wild Man of the West and his invisibility. When this latter thought arose, it had the effect invariably of rousing within him demon Despair; also General Jollity, for the general had a particular spite against that demon, and, whenever he showed symptoms of vitality, attacked him with a species of frenzy that was quite dreadful to feel, and the outward manifestations of which were such as to cause the trappers to fear seriously that the poor youth had “gone out of his mind,” as they expressed it. But they were wrong—quite wrong—it was only the natural consequence of those demons and sprites having gone into his mind, where they were behaving themselves—as Bounce, when March made him his confidant, said—with “horrible obstropolosity.”
Well, as we have said, March was seated on a low stool, looking up in his mother’s face. He had already been three days at home, and, during every spare minute he had he sat himself down on the same stool, and went on with his interminable narrations of the extraordinary adventures through which he had passed while among the Rocky Mountains and out upon the great prairies.
Widow Marston—for she knew that she was a widow now, though the knowledge added but little to the feeling of widowhood to which she had been doomed for so many years—widow Marston, we say, listened to this interminable narration with untiring patience and unmitigated pleasure. There was as yet no symptom of the narrative drawing to a close, neither was there the slightest evidence of the widow Marston becoming wearied. We have seen a cat worried and pulled and poked by its kitten almost beyond endurance, and we have observed that the cat endured it meekly—nay, evidently rejoiced in the annoyance: it was pleasurable pain. As it is with feline, so is it with human mothers. Their love overbears and outweighs everything. Ah! good cause have the rugged males of this world to rejoice that such is the fact; and although they know it well, we hold that it is calculated to improve the health and refresh the spirit of men to have that fact brought prominently and pointedly to their remembrance!
Had March Marston talked the most unutterable balderdash, widow Marston would have listened with unwearied delight as long, we believe, as her eyes and ears could do their duty. But March did not talk balderdash. For a madman, he spoke a great deal of common, besides a considerable amount of uncommon sense, and his mother listened with intelligent interest: commenting on what he said in her quiet way, as she found opportunity—we say this advisedly, for opportunities were not so frequent as one might suppose. March had always been possessed of a glib tongue, and he seemed, as Bounce remarked, to have oiled the hinges since his return to Pine Point settlement.