“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 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’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 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.”