Swept Out to Sea Part 4

Ham turned his head when I called to him in a low voice.

"Watch what they do and where they go, Ham," I told him. "I want to see you when you come back."

"Aye, aye, sir!" he returned in his sailorlike way; for in Bolderhead if you ask your direction of a man on the street he'll lay a course for you as though you were at sea. Ham Mayberry, like most of the other male inhabitants of the old town, had been a deep-sea sailor.

I heard the quick, angry step of Mr. Downes descending the stairs then, and I slipped out of the way. I didn't want any more words with him, if I could help. They were leaving the house--and I meant it should be for good. That satisfied me.

I heard Paul follow him out upon the porch, and then James came with the baggage. The carriage rolled briskly away just as Dr. Eldridge's little electric wagon steamed up to the other door. The doctor--who was a plump, bald, pink-faced man--trotted up the steps and I let him into the house myself.

"Well, well, Clint Webb!" he demanded. "What have you been doing to that little mother of yours now?"

But he said it in a friendly way. Dr. Eldridge knew well enough that I never intended to cause mother a moment's anxiety. And I believed that I could take him into my confidence--to an extent, at least. I did not tell him how Paul had tried to knife me in the Wavecrest; but I repeated what had really caused my mother's becoming so suddenly ill.

"Ha!" he jerked out, as he got himself out of his tight, light overcoat and picked up his case again from the hall settee. "The least said about _that_ time before her the better. Tut, tut! the least said the better."

And so saying he marched up stairs to her room, leaving me more eager than ever to learn the particulars regarding my father's death. Now, I had lived some sixteen years up to this very evening and had never heard anything but the simplest and plainest story of my father's unfortunate death. But even the doctor spurred my awakened curiosity now.

What did it mean? I had been told by my mother, by Ham, and by other people as I grew up, that Dr. Webb had rowed out in a dory to fish off White Rock, a particularly good local fis.h.i.+ng ground for blackfish. Some hours later a pa.s.sing fis.h.i.+ng party discovered the empty dory, bobbing up and down at the end of its kedge cable. The fis.h.i.+ng lines were out.

My father's hat was in the boat, and his watch lay upon a seat as though he had taken it out and put it beside him so as not to forget when to row back to attend to his patients. It was a fine timepiece, had belonged to his father, and I wear it myself now on "state and date"

occasions.

But the fishermen saw no other sign of the doctor. It was plain he had fallen overboard. With the current as it is about White Rock it was no wonder that the body was never recovered.

The story seemed plain enough. There was nothing that could be added to it. That there was any mystery about my father's death I could not believe. And the suggestion that Paul Downes had made I utterly scoffed at!

Yet I wanted to see Ham Mayberry before I went to sleep that night.

Dr. Eldridge came down after a long time, and his pink, fat face was very serious. "How is she?" I asked him, eagerly.

"She's all right--for the night," he replied. But his gravity did not leave him--which was strange. The doctor was a most sanguine pract.i.tioner and usually brought a spirit of cheerfulness with him into any home where there was illness. "Clint," he said, "you want to be careful of that little mother of yours."

"My goodness, Doctor!" I exclaimed. "You don't suppose that I had anything to do with this business tonight? That I brought it about?"

"If you have another row with your cousin--or words with his father--have it all outside the house. She is in a very nervous state.

She must not be worried. Friction in the household is bad for her.

And--well, I'll drop in again and see her tomorrow."

What he said frightened me. When he had gone I went up and tapped on the door. But Marie would not let me in the room.

"She is resting now, Master Clin-tone," said the French woman, and then shut the door in my face.

I couldn't have slept then had I gone to bed. Beside, I was determined to talk with Ham when he came back. I wandered down stairs again and James, the butler, beckoned me into the dining room. At one end of the table he had laid a cloth and he made me sit down and eat a very tasty supper that had been prepared for me in the kitchen. This was an attention I had not expected. It served to bolster up my belief that I had some influence in my mother's house, after all!

By and by I heard Ham drive in and I went out to the stables. We kept no footman, Ham doing all the stablework. I helped him unharness Bob and Betty, while he told me where he had taken the Downeses. There was a small hotel in the old part of the town, and my uncle and Paul had gone there for the night.

"They'll probably attack the fortifications on the morrow, Master Clint--or, them's my prognostications," remarked Ham, in conclusion.

"Meaning they'll come over here and try to see mother?" I asked.

"I reckon."

"Then they're not to be let in, Ham. I want them kept out. Dr. Eldridge says she should not be disturbed. I mean to see that his orders are obeyed."

"And I'm glad to see ye take the bit in your teeth, sir," exclaimed the coachman, with emphasis. "It's time ye did so."

"What do you mean, Ham?" I demanded, curiously.

The old man--he was past sixty, but hale and hearty still--came out of Bob's stall and put his grizzled face close to mine while he stared into my eyes in the dim light of the stable lantern.

"List ye, Master Clint," he said. "'Tis my suspicion that that same scaley Chester Downes has it in his mind to get rid of you--to put ye away from your mother altogether--to make her believe ye air a bad egg, in fact. 'Tis time he and that precious b'y of his was put off the place. Ye've done right this night, Clint Webb, if ye never done so before."

CHAPTER V

IN WHICH THE OLD COACHMAN GOES SOMEWHAT INTO DETAILS

Ordinarily it might seem that a servant taking it upon himself to so plainly state his opinion of family matters, should be admonished. But Hamilton Mayberry was just as much my friend as he was our hired coachman. He had been my father's friend. He had served in the same s.h.i.+p as my father long before he came ash.o.r.e to drive horses for Dr. Webb.

And I verily believe the old man loved me as though I were his own blood.

Anyhow, I was too excited and worried on this night to think of any cla.s.s distinction. Beside, among Bolderhead people, the master was considered no better than the man--if both behaved themselves, were honest, and attended church on the Sabbath!

So I opened my heart to Ham as we sat with our backs against the grain-chest, and told him all that had occurred on the Wavecrest as she drifted into the harbor that evening, and what had followed when I brought Paul Downes home with his hands tied behind his back.

"But what is puzzling me, Ham," I said, in conclusion, looking sideways into his shrewdly puckered face, "is what those Downes meant by hinting that there was something queer about father's death."

"Huh!" grunted Ham.

"What made that crazy Paul say he committed suicide, and that if he hadn't we'd have been paupers?"

"Huh!" said Ham again.

"And why should such a foolish remark," I added, "have frightened mother? For that is what brought about her fainting fit, I verily believe."

"Huh!" said the coachman for a third time, and then I got mad.

"Stop that, Ham!" I cried. "Don't you go about trying to mystify me. I want to know what they meant. I intend to find out what they meant. If you have any suspicion, tell it out."

"Well, Master Clint," he said gravely, "I don't blame you for being angry."

"Or being puzzled, either?" I put in.

"No, sir; nor for being puzzled. And I'm some puzzled myself. But I reckon Paul Downes was jest repeatin' what he'd heard his father say."

"That my poor father had to jump overboard from his dory, to save himself from trouble and mother and I from poverty? Why, it's preposterous!" I cried.

"So it is, sir," Ham a.s.sured me. "So it is. And n.o.body believes it--n.o.body that's got anything inside their heads but sawdust."