Chapter XXIV. THE SMOKING TREE
Nan awoke to a new day with the feeling that the loss of her treasureddoll must have been a bad dream. But it was not. Another search of herroom and the closet assured her that it was a horrid reality.
She might have lost many of her personal possessions without a pang;but not Beautiful Beulah. Nan could not tell her aunt or the rest ofthe family just how she felt about it. She was sure they would notunderstand.
The doll had reminded her continually of her home life. Although thestay of her parents in Scotland was much more extended than they or Nanhad expected, the doll was a link binding the girl to her old home lifewhich she missed so much.
Her uncle and aunt had tried to make her happy here at Pine Camp. As faras they could do so they had supplied the love and care of Momsey andPapa Sherwood. But Nan was actually ill for her old home and her oldhome associations.
On this morning, by herself in her bedroom, she cried bitterly beforeshe appeared before the family.
"I have no right to make them feel miserable just because my heart, is,breaking," she sobbed aloud. "I won't let them see how bad I feel. Butif I don't find Beulah, I just know I shall die!"
Could she have run to Momsey for comfort it would have helped, Oh, howmuch!
"I am a silly," Nan told herself at last, warmly. "But I cannot help it.Oh, dear! Where can Beulah have gone?"
She bathed her eyes well in the cold spring water brought by Tom thatshe always found in the jug outside her door in the morning, and removedsuch traces of tears as she could; and nobody noticed when she went outto breakfast that her eyelids were puffy and her nose a bit red.
The moment Rafe caught sight of her he began to squall, supposedly likean infant, crying:
"Ma-ma! Ma-ma! Tum an' take Too-tums. Waw! Waw! Waw!"
After all her hurt pride and sorrow, Nan would have called up a laughat this. But Tom, who was drinking at the water bucket, wheeled with thefull dipper and threw the contents into Rafe's face. That broke off theteasing cousin's voice for a moment; but Rafe came up, sputtering andmad.
"Say! You big oaf!" he shouted. "What you trying to do?"
"Trying to be funny," said Tom, sharply. "And you set me the example."
"Now, boys!" begged Aunt Kate. "Don't quarrel."
"And, dear me, boys," gasped Nan, "please don't squabble about me."
"That big lummox!" continued Rafe, still angry. "Because dad backshim up and says he ought to lick me, he does this. I'm going to defendmyself. If he does a thing like that again, I'll fix him."
Tom laughed in his slow way and lumbered out. Uncle Henry did not hearthis, and Nan was worried. She thought Aunt Kate was inclined to sidewith her youngest boy. Rafe would always be "the baby" to Aunt Kate.
At any rate Nan was very sorry the quarrel had arisen over her. And shewas careful to say nothing to fan further the flame of anger betweenher cousins. Nor did she say anything more about the lost doll. So thefamily had no idea how heartsore and troubled the girl really was overthe mystery.
It hurt her the more because she could talk to nobody about Beulah.There was not a soul in whom she could confide. Had Bess Harley beenhere at Pine Camp Nan felt that she could not really expect sympathyfrom her chum at this time; for Bess considered herself quite grown upand her own dolls were relegated to the younger members of her family.
Nan could write to her chum, however, and did. She could write toMomsey, and did that, too; not forgetting to tell her absent parentsabout old Toby Vanderwiller, and his wife and his grandson, and of theirdilemma. If only Momsey's great fortune came true, Nan was sure thatGedney Raffer would be paid off and Toby would no longer have the threatof dispossession held over him.
Nan Sherwood wrote, too, to Mr. Mangel, the principal of the TillburyHigh School, and told him about the collection the crippled grandsonof the old lumberman had made, mentioning those specimens which hadimpressed her most. She had some hope that the strange moth might bevery valuable.
Nan was so busy writing letters, and helping Aunt Kate preserve someearly summer fruit, that she did not go far from the house during thenext few days, and so did not see even Margaret Llewellen. The othergirl friends she had made at Pine Camp lived too far away for her tovisit them often or have them come to call on her.
A long letter from Papa Sherwood about this time served to take Nan'smind off the mystery, in part, at least. It was a nice letter and mostjoyfully received by the girl; but to her despair it gave promise of novery quick return of her parents from Scotland:
"Those relatives of your mother's whom we have met here, Mr. AndrewBlake's family, for instance, have treated us most kindly. They are,themselves, all well-to-do, and gentlefolk as well. The disposal byOld Hughie Blake, as he was known hereabout, of his estate makes nodifference to the other Blakes living near Emberon," wrote Mr. Sherwood.
"It is some kin at a distance, children of a half sister of Old Hughie,who have made a claim against the estate. Mr. Andrew Blake, who is wellversed in the Scotch law, assures us these distant relatives have notthe shadow of a chance of winning their suit. He is so sure of this thathe has kindly offered to advance certain sums to your mother to tide usover until the case is settled.
"I am sending some money to your Uncle Henry for your use, if anyemergency should arise. You must not look for our return, my dear Nancy,too soon. Momsey's health is so much improved by the sea voyage and thewonderfully invigorating air here, that I should be loath to bring herhome at once, even if the matter of the legacy were settled. By the way,the sum she will finally receive from Mr. Hugh Blake's estate will bequite as much as the first letter from the lawyer led us to expect. Someof your dearest wishes, my dear, may be realized in time."
"Oh! I can go to Lakeview Hall with Bess, after all!" cried Nan, aloud,at this point.
Indeed, that possibility quite filled the girl's mind for a while.Nothing else in Papa Sherwood's letter, aside from the good news ofMomsey's improved health, so pleased her as this thought. She hastenedto write a long letter to Bess Harley, with Lakeview Hall as the text.
Summer seemed to stride out of the forest now, full panoplied. After thefrost and snow of her early days at Pine Camp, Nan had not expectedsuch heat. The pools beside the road steamed. The forest was atune fromdaybreak to midnight with winged denizens, for insect and bird lifeseemed unquenchable in the Big Woods.
Especially was this true of the tamarack swamp. It was dreadfully hotat noontide on the corduroy road which passed Toby Vanderwiller's littlefarm; but often Nan Sherwood went that way in the afternoon. Mr. Mangel,the school principal, had written Nan and encouraged her to send a fulldescription of some of Corson Vanderwiller's collection, especially ofthe wonderful death's-head moth, to a wealthy collector in Chicago. Nandid this at once.
So, one day, a letter came from the man and in it was a check fortwenty-five dollars.
"This is a retainer," the gentleman wrote. "I am much interested in youraccount of the lame boy's specimens. I want the strangely marked mothin any case, and the check pays for an option on it until I can come andsee his specimens personally."
Nan went that very afternoon to the tamarack swamp to tell theVanderwillers this news and give Toby the check. She knew poor Corsonwould be delighted, for now he could purchase the longed-for silk dressfor his grandmother.
The day was so hot and the way so long that Nan was glad to sit downwhen she reached the edge of the sawdust strip, to rest and cool offbefore attempting this unshaded desert. A cardinal bird--one of thesauciest and most brilliant of his saucy and brilliant race, flittedabout her as she sat upon a log.
"You pretty thing!" crooned Nan. "If it were not wicked I'd wish to haveyou at home in a cage. I wish--"
She stopped, for in following the flight of the cardinal her gazefastened upon a most surprising thing off at some distance from thesawdust road. A single dead tree, some forty feet in height and almostlimbless, stood in solemn grandeur in the midst of the sawdust waste. Ithad been of no use
to the woodcutters and they had allowed the shell ofthe old forest monarch to stand. Now, from its broken top, Nan espied athin, faint column of blue haze rising.
It was the queerest thing! It was not mist, of course and she did notsee how it could be smoke. There was no fire at the foot of the tree,for she could see the base of the bole plainly. She even got up and rana little way out into the open in order to see the other side of thedead tree.
The sky was very blue, and the air was perfectly still. Almost Nan wastempted to believe that her eyes played her false. The column was almostthe color of the sky itself, and it was thin as a veil.
How could there be a fire in the top of that tall tree?
"There just isn't! I don't believe I see straight!" declared Nan toherself, moving on along the roadway. "But I'll speak to Toby about it."