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 ship
as my father long before he came ashore 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
class 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 assured me. "So it is. And nobody believes
it--nobody that's got anything inside their heads but sawdust."
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 platitudes, 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 Massachusetts 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.