Chapter IVIn Which Ham Mayberry Reveals His Suspicions
Chapter IV
In Which Ham Mayberry Reveals His Suspicions
Mr. Downes continued to bluster and Paul hung sullenly about the drawing room. I had got through with both of them, however. Whether the butler—and the other servants—backed me up, or not, I believed that I had the whip-hand.
Marie helped me bear my mother to her room. It troubled me greatly to see her pretty face so pale and deathlike, and her eyes closed. I hurried to the telephone and called up Dr. Eldridge, who was an old friend of our family as well as our physician. I felt better when I heard his voice over the wire and knew that he would soon be at the house.
Then I turned to get my hat and coat. I looked into the drawing room to give Mr. Downes one more chance. He had been talking to his son in a low voice, but with emphasis; and I could see by Paul’s countenancethat the “calling down” he had received from his father was a serious one.
“I warn you for the last time, Mr. Downes, that I am going to Justice of the Peace Ringold just as soon as the doctor gets here to attend my mother,” I said.
“You don’t dare do any such thing, you young scoundrel!” roared Mr. Chester Downes, and he actually sprang across the room at me. He was a tall and bony man and I knew very well that I should fare ill in his hands. I dodged back, found the imperturbable James in my way and as I sidestepped him, too, Mr. Downes came face to face with the impassive butler in the doorway.
“Beg pardon, sir,” James said, quietly. “Hamilton has the horses harnessed and awaits your pleasure, sir.”
“You—you—” stammered Mr. Downes, evidently as much surprised that the butler had obeyed me asIcould possibly be!
“The carriage is waiting, sir,” explained James, just as though the occasion was an ordinary one. “Shall I bring down your bags, sir?”
“No! I don’t want our bags brought down!” cried Mr. Downes. “This is an outrage. And let me tell you, you dunderhead,”he added to James, “this will cost you your position.”
The butler’s voice did not change in the least. “Shall I bring down your bags, sir?” he asked once more.
“Yes!” cried Mr. Downes, changing his mind very suddenly. “We will go up and pack them. But this is a sorry day for this house when we leave it in such a way,” he said, his threat hissing through his clenched teeth as his glowing eyes sought my face in the hall. “And it is a sorry day foryou, you young villain! Remember this.”
“You threaten a good deal like your son, Mr. Downes,” I said, unable to resist a mild “gloat.” “But he couldn’t carry out his threat; I wonder if you will be better able to compass your revenge?”
He said nothing further, but dashed up stairs. Paul lagged behind him and James, without a word to me, and with the attitude and manner of the well-trained servant, followed sedately and stood outside of their rooms waiting for the bags.
I stepped out upon the side porch and saw Ham Mayberry, our coachman (he had driven my father in his little chaise the two years that he had practised in Bolderhead) sitting uponthe box of the closed carriage. Of all the people who worked for mother about the Bolderhead cottage, I knew that Ham would take my part against the Downeses. Ham and I were old cronies.
And I believed that I could thank Ham for the butler’s espousal of my cause on this present occasion. Ham had a deal of influence with the other servants, having been with us before mother was willed the great Darringford property.
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 theWavecrest; 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 aboutthattime 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 yearsup 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 fishing ground for blackfish. Some hours later a passing fishing party discovered the empty dory, bobbing up and down at the end of its kedge cable. The fishing 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’sdeath 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 practitioner 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 VIn Which the Old Coachman Goes Somewhat Into Details
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 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 theWavecrestas 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’msome 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 therewasany 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 everwassuch 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 morethan 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,didmake 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 VIIn Which Is Related a Conversation With My Mother
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 pussy 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 beangry 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 washisopinion 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 thatmy 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.”
“But you have mine, Clinton!” she cried.
“Indeed, I have!” I returned, smiling, “and I’d take it upon almost any other subject you could name, Mumsie! But you are prejudiced in favor of Mr. Downes.”
“And you are prejudiced against him.”
“I am, indeed,” I admitted. “And am so prejudiced that I do not mean he shall ever interfere in my affairs again.”
“Oh, Clinton!” she cried, “I do not see how you can speak so to me.”
“Now, mother dear,” I said, “I do not mean to be unfilial to you, or ungrateful for your kindness. But Paul Downes tried to stab me last night——”
“Oh!” she cried, and shrank and trembled.
“I hate to annoy you by bringing up such things, but I must show you that they cannot hang around here any more,” I declared, firmly. “Paul hates me; his father has done his best to poison your mind against me. I have been in danger of my life, and in dangerof losing your love and trust, through the Downeses——”
“No, no!” she said, to this last.
“I am afraid I am right,” I said. “I know that I have kept away from the house a good deal this summer. I couldn’t stay here and listen to that false man and be annoyed by that great, hulking boy of his. Now, let us be the good friends we always have been when the Downeses are at a distance.”
“Oh, Clinton! my dear boy! I only live for you!” she cried, and began to sob so that I felt condemned to insist. But the occasion was serious. I knew—as Ham had warned me—that Chester Downes was lingering near and would soon attempt to see my mother again.
“Then, let us be more to each other, mother,” I said, quietly.
“But I need your uncle to assist me,” she said. “He can manage my business much better than I possibly can——”
“What’s the matter with Mr. Hounsditch?” I demanded. “He was our lawyer and had been grandfather’s lawyer, too.”
“Mr. Hounsditch is an old man. He is behind the times. He cannot invest our money to such good advantage——”
“Who says so?” I asked, and she could not answer the pointed question without admitting what I had supposed—that Mr. Chester Downes put these opinions of the keen old lawyer into mother’s head.
“I don’t care much about the money, mother,” I said. “I suppose we have plenty anyway, and the real estate cannot be sold at all till I am of age. But what property does come to me when I’m twenty-one, I’d rather not have Mr. Chester Downes handle. I’d rather trust to Mr. Hounsditch and accept small interest.”
“Clinton! you are really ridiculous,” cried mother, reddening again.
“Well, that’s all right,” I returned, laughing. “But you’ll hear to me, mother, won’t you? You won’t bother about Chester Downes and Paul? Put it down that I am jealous of the influence they have over you, if you like. I don’t care. Just let’s you and I live together and be happy.”
“That’s all I live for—to make you happy, Clinton,” said my mother, still sobbing like a child who has been injured.
“Then this request I make will be the only thing I’ll ask you to do for me for a year, Mumsie!” I cried, calling her by the petname I had used when I was a little fellow.
“Will it really make you so happy, my boy?” she asked, wistfully.
“Indeed it will,” I declared. “And now I’ve bothered you long enough. I’ll be around here if you want me. I shan’t go out on the water today, or until you feel quite yourself again.”
I went out of her room. Marie, the Frenchwoman, was just coming up the stairs. I saw her hide her hand with something in it under her apron. It was a square white object. I knew it was a letter. Mr. Chester Downes had been writing to my mother, and Marie was the go-between. She smiled, slyly, as she passed me and whisked into the room I had just left.
Chapter VIIIn Which I Put Two and Two Together—and Sleep Aboard the Wavecrest
Chapter VII
In Which I Put Two and Two Together—and Sleep Aboard the Wavecrest
If for no other reason, that sly smile of my mother’s French maid would have kept me at home that day. I was still strolling about the place, just before luncheon, when I saw Mr. Chester Downes’ spare figure and his tall hat coming up the hill. I went down the path and met him at the steps which mounted the little terrace from the street to our lawn.
“Oh!” he ejaculated. “Areyouhere?”
“You are just in time to catch me as I was going out, Mr. Downes,” I said. “What have you to say to me, sir?”
“Nothing, young man—nothing,” he exclaimed.
“You certainly have not walked over here merely for the pleasure of looking at the house,” I said, smartly.
“I have come to see your mother, sir. And I propose to see her,” he said. “Last night I did not wish to make a disturbance while shewas so ill. But I understand from Dr. Eldridge that she is much improved——”
“You are correct there, Mr. Downes,” I said. “And she will continue to improve I hope. But whether she is well or ill, you cannot see her.”
“Nonsense, boy! you are crazy. Do you know that I am a man, your uncle, and your mother’s business agent? Bold as you are, sir, you are a minor.”
“I never wanted to wish my life away before, sir,” I said, gravely. “But I do sincerely wish that I was of age, Mr. Downes. However, I believe I shall be able to hold my own with you, sir. At least, I shall try. And if this is to be your course I shall know what to do. Before you get into that house to trouble my mother again, I’ll place a guard around it.”
“You talk ridiculously. You cannot do such a thing.”
“No, perhaps not. And fortunately, I shan’t have to take such extreme measures. I have a better way of keeping you off the premises.”
“You would not dare do what you threatened last night, Clinton Webb,” he said, his voice shaking with anger.
“You pass me and go up to that door, and see whether I dare or not,” I returned, my eyes flashing. “Paul tried to stab me. I’ll have him arrested if he is in Bolderhead still, and if he has run away I’ll find means of having him brought back here to stand trial.”
I was just as earnest as ever I was about anything in my life, and I guess Mr. Chester Downes realized it. He had gone away the night before in haste; but after thinking over the situation he believed that I could be browbeaten and my will set aside. He stared at me, with his dark, Indian-looking face reddening under the skin, and Paul had not looked at me more murderously the night before when we quarreled aboard theWavecrest, than his father did now!
“Why, sir,” said Mr. Downes at last, “this is a most ridiculous thing for you to do. I can write to your mother—and I shall. She will demand that I attend her——”
“Until she does so, just take notice that you’re not to come here,” I interrupted. “That is, if you want Paul to stay out of jail.”
I turned on my heel then and walked back to the house, and he—after hesitating a half minute or so—turned likewise and stalkeddown the hill. I was pretty sure he would not come back—not in that tall hat, anyway—for before luncheon was over it had begun to rain and rained hard. There was a sharp wind from the northwest—nor’—nor’—west, to be exact—and everybody within a hundred miles of Cape Ann knows what that means. In all probability we were in for a long offshore gale.
So I risked going over the ferry that afternoon on an errand. I did not propose to get caught out on theWavecrestagain without provisions, and I purchased half a boat load of canned goods and the like, and a couple of cases of spring water. While I was hunting for a boat and a man to take my purchases aboard the sloop I ran against my cousin Paul.
He was not alone, and the instant I spied him with two hang-dog fellows, I knew he was—like the hen in the story—“laying for me!” Paul Downes knew half the riff-raff of Bolderhead which, like most small seaports, boasted more than a sufficient quantity of wharf-rats. Mr. Downes had been wont to expatiate to my mother on my taste for low company; but he must have had his own son in mind. Paul certainly picked sour fruit when he made friends along the water-front of Bolderhead!
“That’s the feller,” snarled my cousin—I could read his lips, although the trio was across the narrow street as I went along the docks—and I knew very well that he was hatching something against me with his two friends.
But they were not likely to pitch upon me here in broad daylight, so I paid them little heed at the moment. I found old Crab Bolster and his skiff to lighter my cargo across the inlet, and when the boy came down from the store with the barrow, Crab and I loaded the provisions and spring water into his boat. Paul and his companions looked on, whispering together now and then, from a neighboring wharf.
I was not wholly a fool if Iwasso well satisfied with my own smartness. My success in settling Mr. Chester Downes had of course given me an inflated opinion of myself; but I knew better than to overlook the possibility of my cousin being able to do me some mean trick, especially with the help of the two fellows he was with.
When Crab Bolster and I set off in the skiff for theWavecrest, I saw Paul and his friends make for the ferry, and while I helped pull the skiff in the drizzle of rain that sweptacross the harbor, I saw the three board the ferryboat and land at the dock on the Neck near which we lived.
I made Crab hustle the goods aboard and stowed all away in the cuddy before I let the boatman put me ashore. Paul and his friends were hanging about the landing.
“Keep your eye on myWavecrest, will you, Lampton?” I said to the man who owned the landing, and kept boats for hire. “Remember, nobody’s to go aboard of the sloop without my special permission,” and I glanced pointedly at my cousin.
“I’ll see to that, sir,” said Lampton, who was my friend, I knew. “And in this weather, and with the wind the way she is, anybody would be crazy to want to take a boat out through the breach.”
I went back to the house in ample time for dinner, and Ham, who had been on the watch, reported that my uncle had not again tried to enter the house. But I was worried about Paul and his henchmen. I couldn’t rest in the house after dark. If they couldn’t get a boat on the Neck side of the harbor in which to go out to theWavecrest, they might come across from the town side and do her some damage.
Mother had come down to dinner and we had one of our old-fashioned, homey meals, followed by a pleasant hour in the drawing-room, where she played and sang for me. It was her pleasure that I should dress for dinner just as though company was to be present, and she trained me in the niceties of life, and in bits of etiquette, for which I have often, in later times, been very thankful. For although I found my amusement in rough adventure and my companionship for the most part among seamen and fishermen, it hurts no boy or man to be as well grounded in the tenets of polite society as in writing, reading, and arithmetic!
The subject that was uppermost in my mind—that hazy mystery surrounding my father’s death—did not come up between us on this evening. Nor did the unpleasant topic of the Downeses come to the fore. I am very, very glad to remember that my mother looked her prettiest, that she gave me the tenderest of kisses when she bade me goodnight early, and that we parted very lovingly.
I went up to my room, but only to put on a warmer suit—a fishing suit in fact. I shrugged myself into oilskin pants and jacket, too, in the back shed, and exchanged my capfor a sou’wester. Then I sallied forth through a pelting rain, with the gale whistling a sharp tune behind me, and descended the hill toward the point off which theWavecrestwas moored.
I had said nothing to anybody about my intention. I do not think that any of the servants saw me go. I left my home without any particular thought of the future, or any serious cogitation as to what would be the result of my act.
Merely, I had put two and two together in my mind—and I would sleep aboard theWavecrest.
Chapter VIIIIn Which An Expected Comedy Proves To Be a Tragedy
Chapter VIII
In Which An Expected Comedy Proves To Be a Tragedy
I knew well enough that my cousin, Paul Downes, was too thoroughly scared by my threat to have him arrested for assault, to openly make an attack upon either my boat or myself. But his money could bribe such fellows as I had seen him with that very day, to sink theWavecrest, or even to assault me in the dark.
It would be a joke on Paul—so I thought—if he or his friends should sneak out to the sloop where she was moored, intending to do her some harm, and find me there all ready for such a visitation. I chuckled to myself while I wended my way to the shore, carrying a single oar with me, and unlocked the padlock of the chain which fastened my rowboat to the landing.
There was nobody about, and I pushed out and sculled over to theWavecrestwithout being interfered with. Had I not known sowell just where the sloop lay I declare I would have had trouble in finding her. It was the darkest kind of a night and itdidblow great guns! The rain pelted as sharp as hail and before I got half way to the sloop I decided that I wasn’t showing very good sense, after all, in coming out here on such a night. I didn’t think Paul and his friends would venture forth in such a storm.
However, having once set out to do a thing I have usually run the full course. I am not sure that it is natural perseverance in my case, but fear that I am more often ashamed to be considered fickle. So I sculled on to theWavecrestand prepared to go aboard.
But just here I bethought me that if my cousin should attempt to board the sloop he would be warned that I was aboard by the presence of the tender. Therefore I snubbed the nose of the rowboat up short to the float, and then, after getting into the bows of theWavecrestI let go her cable and paid out several yards so that the float and the tender were both out of sight in the darkness.
I chuckled then, as I crept aft to the cockpit and unlocked the door of the little cabin. Once inside, out of the rain, I drew curtains before all the lights and then lit the lamp overthe cabin table. There were four berths, two on each side, with lockers fore and aft. Altogether the cabin of theWavecrestwas cozy and not a bad place at all in which to spend a night.
It was still early in the evening. The tide had not long since turned and was running out, while the wind out of its present quarter was with the tide. Any craft could sail out of Bolderhead harbor this night with both gale and sea in its favor; but heaven help the vessel striving to beat into the inlet! The reefs and ledges along this coast are as dangerous as any down on the charts.
TheWavecrestpitched a good bit at the end of her cable. I made up my bed and arranged the lamp in its gimbals near the head of the berth, and so took off my outer clothing and lay down to read. I did not think that the lamplight could be seen from without, even if a boat came quite near me. Being so far in-shore I had lit no riding light. It was unnecessary at these moorings.
I did not read for long. Used to the swing of the sea as I had been for years the bucking of theWavecrestas she tugged at her cable, put me to sleep before I had any idea that I was sleepy. And my lamp was left burning.
I do not know how long I was unconscious—at least, I did not know at the moment of my awakening; but suddenly something bumped against the sloop’s counter. I thought when I opened my eyes:
“Here they are! Now for some fun.”
I supposed they would not have seen my light and I was going to put my head out of the cabin and scare them before they could do theWavecrestany harm.
But as it proved, the bumping of the small boat against the sloop did not announce the arrival of the enemy. Almost instantly—I had not got into my trousers, indeed—there came a great hammering at the cabin door.
I did not speak, although at first I supposed the rascals were knocking to arouse me. Then it shot across my bewildered mind that somebody was nailing up the cabin door!
“Hello there! stop that!” I bawled, getting interested in the proceedings right away.
But there was no answer, unless certain whisperings that I could not understand could be considered as such. Several long nails—twenty-penny, I was sure—were driven home. Then there was a clattering of boots and the small boat bumped the sloop’s counter again.
They were getting into their own boat.They had left me in a nice fix—nailed up tightly in the cabin of my boat. I was mad ’way through; instead of playing any joke on Paul Downes and his friends, they had played me a most scurvy trick.
But it was only comedy as yet—comedy for them, at least. I was pretty sure that they had fixed me in the cabin, not only for the night, but until somebody passing in a boat would see me signalling from the tiny deadlights. And goodness only knew when the gale would subside enough to tempt any other boatman out upon the bay.
The sloop was still pitching at the end of her cable. I could feel the tug of the moorings as my enemies got into their boat. Then—in half a minute, perhaps—there was a startling change in the sloop’s action. She leaped like a horse struck with a whip and instantly began to roll and swing broadside to the gale.
I knew at once what had happened. The cable had parted; theWavecrestwas adrift!
The discovery alarmed me beyond all measure. I was panic-stricken—I admit it. And I earnestly believe that almost any other person who had a love of life within them would have felt the same.
For to be adrift in Bolderhead Harbor on such a night, with the wind and tide urging one’s craft out toward the broad ocean, while one was nailed up in the cabin and unable to do a thing toward guiding the boat, was a situation to shake the courage of the bravest sailor who ever was afloat.
I believed I had nobody but myself to thank for the accident. In letting out the cable by which the sloop was moored, I had increased the strain upon it. I should have thrown out a stern anchor as well when I came aboard theWavecrestto spend the night. The tug of wind and tide had been too much for the single cable.
And now my bonnieWavecrestwas swinging about, broadside to the sea, and likely to be rolled over completely in a moment. If she turned turtle, what would become of me? The air in the cabin was already foul. If she turned topsyturvy, and providing she was not cast upon the rocks and smashed, I would be in difficulty for fresh air in a very few hours.
These possibilities—and many others—passed through my mind in seconds of time. I had no idea that one’s brain could work so rapidly. A hundred possible happenings, arising from my situation, entered my mind inthose first few moments while theWavecrestwas swinging about.
Fortunately, however, although she went far over on her beam ends, and I expected to hear the stick snap, she righted, headed with the tide, and began to hobble over the seas at a great rate. I had dressed completely ere this, and was trying my best to open the cabin door. If I could get to the centerboard and drop it, I believed the sloop would ride better and could be steered.
Those rascals had nailed the door securely, however. The slide in the deck above was fastened on the outside too. I was a prisoner in my own boat and she was being swept out to sea as fast as a northwest gale and a heavy tide could carry her.