“Bless ye, lad! how do I know? I only know he sent the money from Chili. He was something of a mystery, that feller, I allow. Ever heard tell of him in Bolderhead? Are there any Carvers there?”
“It’s a mighty small town along the New England coast in which there are no Carvers,” I replied.
“Now, ain’t that a fact? They’re a spraddled out family, I do allow,” said Tom.
“What did this man look like?” I asked, and I was still eager—I could scarcely have told why.
There was an enlarged crayon picture of my father in my bedroom at home. When he died my mother only had a cheap little tintype of him. I don’t suppose the crayon portrait looked much like Dr. Webb. Certainly there was little in Tom Anderly’s description to connect the strange man rescued out of the sea with the portrait of my father. Yet the circumstances, the time of the happening, and the suspicions that had been roused in my mind by Paul Downes and his father, all dovetailed together and troubled me.
Even Ham Mayberry, who scoffed at the idea that my father had made way with himself, admitted that had Dr. Webb lived my mother and I could never have enjoyed Grandfather Darringford’s money. I could never believe that my father had been wicked enough to commit suicide. But, suppose he had merely slipped away from us—gone out of our lives entirely—with the intention of putting his wife and child in a prosperous position?
It was romantic, I suppose. To the perfectly sane and hard-headed such a suspicion would seem utterly ridiculous. But the longer I thought over Tom Anderly’s story—the more I allowed my imagination to roam—the more possible the idea seemed. Ham had said my father was not a money-making man. He was in financial difficulties, too. Grandfather had died and there was a heap of money just beyond my mother’s grasp. My father had become a stumbling-block in her path—in my path. He it was who kept us from enjoying wealth.
The cruelty of my grandfather in arranging such a situation filled me with anger when I contemplated it. What could my father think but that, if he were out of the way, it would be far, far better for his wife and child?
I could not believe, for an instant, that Dr. Webb would have committed the crime of self-destruction. But in my then romantic state of mind, what more easily believed than that he had deliberately removed himself out of our lives—and in a way to make it appear that he was dead?
As we did, he knew we would at once enter into the enjoyment of the wealth left by old Mr. Darringford. There would be no material suffering caused by his dropping out of sight. I faced the matter with more coolness and a better understanding than most boys of my age possess, because of my knowing my mother’s nature so well. Take my own sudden disappearance, for instance. I knew well she would be quite overwhelmed at first; but if good Dr. Eldridge brought her out of it all right, and she had somebody to turn to and depend upon for comfort and encouragement, she would sustain my mysterious absence very well indeed.