Part 5 (1/2)

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 pus.h.i.+ng 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.”