Swept Out to Sea Part 5

I started and grasped him by the arm. "Do you mean," I said, "that there _was_ any such story told when my father was lost at sea?"

"Well, sir, you know that an oak-ball will smoke when you bust it atwixt your fingers--but there ain't no fire in it," grunted Ham, philosophically. "Folk says that there can't be smoke without some fire.

The oak-ball disproves it. And it's so with gossip. Gossip is the only thing that don't really need a beginning. It's hatched without the sign of an egg----"

"Oh, hang your plat.i.tudes, Ham!" I cried. "Do you mean that there ever _was_ such a story circulated?"

"Well, sir----"

"There was!" I cried, horrified.

"It come about in this way," began Ham, calmly and quietly. And his speaking so soon brought me to a calmer mind. "It was your grandfather's will. I don't wish to say aught against the dead, sir," said Ham, "but if ever there was a cantankerous old curmudgeon on the face of this footstool, it was Simon Darringford! That was your grandfather."

"I know," said I, nodding. "He did not like my father."

"He hated him. He made his will so that your mother, his only living child, should not enjoy the property as long as your father lived--nor you, either. That's a fact, Master Clint. Ye see, he put the money jest beyond your mother's reach, and beyond your reach. He done it very skillfully. He had the best attorneys in Ma.s.sachusetts draw the will.

The courts wouldn't break it. You and your mother was doomed to poverty as long as your father lived."

"But Ham!" I cried in amazement and pain, "couldn't my father earn money enough to support us?"

"Not properly, sir," said Ham, in a low voice. "Not as your mother had been used to living. Don't forget that. The Doctor was as fine a man as ever stepped; but he wasn't a money-maker. He knowed more than any ten doctors in this county--old Doc Eldridge is a fool to him. But your father was easy, and he served the poor for nothing. He had ten non-paying patients to one that paid. And he was heavily in debt, and his debts were pressing, when he--he died."

"Ham!" I cried, leaping up again. "You--you believe there is some truth in the story Paul hinted at?"

"Naw, I don't!" returned the coachman, promptly. "But I tell you that there was a chance for busy-bodies to put this and that together and make out a case of suicide. His death, my poor boy, _did_ make you and your mother wealthy--which you'd never been, in all probability, as long as your poor father remained alive."

I heard him with pain and with a deeper understanding of the reason for my mother's seizure that evening. My blurting out the statement that Paul had uttered when he was angry had undoubtedly shocked my mother terribly. She had heard these whispers years before--when my father's death was still an awful reality to her. What occurred in our drawing room that evening had brought that time of trial and sorrow back to her mind, and had resulted in the attack I have recounted. I understood it all then--or I thought I did--and I left Ham and finally sought my bed, determined more than ever to keep Chester Downes and his son out of the house and make it impossible in the future for them to cause any further trouble or misunderstanding between my mother and myself.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH IS RELATED A CONVERSATION WITH MY MOTHER

Mother was better in the morning. I ascertained that fact from James, the butler. Marie, the Frenchwoman, seemed desirous of telling me nothing and--I thought--wished to keep me out of my mother's room.

But I hung about the house all the morning and, after the doctor had come and gone (and this time, I was glad to see, with a more cheerful face) I insisted on pushing into the room and speaking to mother myself.

Marie tossed her head and shrugged her shoulders when I insisted. "La, la!" she exclaimed, in her French way, "boys are so troublesome. Yes!"

Had it been any other servant, I should have said something sharp to her, in my newly acquired confidence. But she was mother's maid, and it was no business of mine if she was impertinent.

"Well, mother," I said, sitting down beside the bed and taking the hand she put out to me, "I hope you are better--the doctor says you are--and I hope you will forgive me for my part in the disgraceful scene we had down stairs last night. But I couldn't stand those Downeses any more and that's a fact!"

"Oh, Clinton! My dear boy! you are so impulsive and tempestuous," she murmured.

"I'll try to be as meek as Moses--a regular p.u.s.s.y cat around the house, hereafter," I returned, cheerfully.

"You are just like your father," she sighed.

"I'm proud to hear you say it," I returned, promptly. "For all I have ever heard about my father--save the hints that those two scoundrels have dropped--makes me believe that father was a man worthy of copying in every particular."

Mother squeezed my hand convulsively, exclaiming:

"Clinton! Clinton! You must not say such things."

"Pray tell me why not, mother?" I demanded, but I spoke quietly. "I won't say a word about Mr. Chester Downes and Paul, if it hurts your feelings for me to tell the truth about them. But I am bound to be angry if anybody maligns my father's memory."

"Oh, Chester would never do such a thing," mother gasped.

"Then, where did Paul pick up that old scandal to throw at me?" I demanded.

"What old scandal do you mean, Clinton?" she asked, faintly.

"Are you sure you wish to talk about it now, mother?" I asked, for I was troubled by what the doctor had said the night before.

"Better now than at any other time," she said, with some decision. "I suppose poor Paul heard some of the servants, or other people like that, repeating the story. Oh, Clinton! it almost broke my heart at the time.

That anybody should think your father would contemplate taking his own life--it was awful. Of course, you do not remember."

"Well--hardly!" I exclaimed. But I was troubled again by the manner in which she spoke of Paul Downes. Hanged if she wasn't excusing my cousin!

"It was a very wretched time for me," said my mother, weakly. "I really do not know what I would have done had it not been for Chester. He came immediately, and he took charge of everything. I can never forget his kindness."

A sudden thought struck me, and I could not help putting the suspicion to the test. "Mother," I asked, "was father and Mr. Chester Downes very good friends?"

She looked startled again for an instant. I saw her smooth cheek flush and then turn pale again. My mother blushed as easily as any girl of fifteen.

"Why, Clinton, that is a strange question," she said.

"Not very strange, mother, when you consider that I believe my father was a mighty good pattern for his son to copy. If father trusted Mr.

Chester Downes, I could be almost tempted to believe that I had injured that gentleman in my thoughts."

"You have, Clinton! you have!" she cried.

"I don't doubt you believe so mother," I said, quietly. "But how about father? What was _his_ opinion of Aunt Alice's husband?"

"Why--you see, Clinton," she returned slowly and doubtfully, "Doctor Webb was not very well acquainted with Chester."

"No?"

"He never came much to our house while the doctor was alive."

"And why not?" I asked.

"That--that would be hard to say," she said; but she was so confused that I felt that my mother, who was the soul of truth, found it hard to answer my question honestly.

"Well, I should have been glad of my father's opinion, at least," I said. "As it is," I added, "not having that to guide me, I must stick to my own."