Produced by Donald Lainson
THE WOMAN-HATERS
By Joseph C. Lincoln
FOREWORD
(By Way of Explanation)
A story of mine called, like this, “The Woman-Haters,” appeared
recently in one of the magazines. That story was not this one, except in
part--the part dealing with “John Brown” and Miss Ruth Graham. Readers
of the former tale who perhaps imagine they know all about Seth Atkins
and Mrs. Emeline Bascom will be surprised to find they really know so
little. The truth is that, when I began to revise and rearrange the
magazine story for publication as a book, new ideas came, grew, and
developed. I discovered that I had been misinformed concerning the
lightkeeper's past and present relations with the housekeeper at the
bungalow. And there was “Bennie D.” whom I had overlooked, had not
mentioned at all; and that rejuvenated craft, the Daisy M.; and the
high tide which is, or should be, talked about in Eastboro even yet; all
these I had omitted for the very good reason that I never knew of them.
I have tried to be more careful this time. During the revising process
“The Woman-Haters” has more than doubled in length and, let us hope, in
accuracy. Even now it is, of course, not a novel, but merely a summer
farce-comedy, a “yarn.” And this, by the way, is all that it pretends to
be.
JOSEPH C. LINCOLN.
May, 1911.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I.-- MR. SETH ATKINS
II.-- MR. JOHN BROWN
III.-- MR. BROWN PUTS IN AN APPLICATION
IV.-- THE COMING OF JOB
V.-- THE GOING OF JOSHUA
VI.-- THE PICNIC
VII.-- OUT OF THE BAG
VIII.--NEIGHBORS AND WASPS
IX.-- THE BUNGALOW GIRL
X.-- THE BUNGALOW WOMAN
XI.-- BEHIND THE SAND DUNE
XII.-- THE LETTER AND THE 'PHONE
XIII.--“JOHN BROWN” CHANGES HIS NAME
XIV.-- “BENNIE D.”
XV.-- THE VOYAGE OF THE Daisy M.
XVI.-- THE EBB TIDE
XVII.--WOMAN-HATERS
THE WOMAN-HATERS
CHAPTER I
MR. SETH ATKINS
The stars, like incandescent lights fed by a fast weakening dynamo, grew
pale, faded, and, one by one, went out. The slate-colored sea, with its
tumbling waves, changed color, becoming a light gray, then a faint blue,
and, as the red sun rolled up over the edge of the eastern horizon, a
brilliant sapphire, trimmed with a silver white on the shoals and along
the beach at the foot of the bluff.
Seth Atkins, keeper of the Eastboro Twin-Lights, yawned, stretched,
and glanced through the seaward windows of the octagon-shaped,
glass-enclosed room at the top of the north tower, where he had spent
the night just passed. Then he rose from his chair and extinguished the
blaze in the great lantern beside him. Morning had come, the mists had
rolled away, and the dots scattered along the horizon--schooners,
tugs, and coal barges, for the most part--no longer needed the glare
of Eastboro Twin-Lights to warn them against close proximity to
the dangerous, shoal-bordered coast. Incidentally, it was no longer
necessary for Mr. Atkins to remain on watch. He drew the curtains over
the polished glass and brass of the lantern, yawned again, and descended
the winding iron stairs to the door at the foot of the tower, opened it
and emerged into the sandy yard.
Crossing this yard, before the small white house which the government
provided as a dwelling place for its lightkeepers, he opened the door of
the south tower, mounted the stairs there and repeated the extinguishing
process with the other lantern. Before again descending to earth,
however, he stepped out on the iron balcony surrounding the light
chamber and looked about him.
The view, such as it was, was extensive. To the east the open sea,
the wide Atlantic, rolling lazily in the morning light, a faint breeze
rippling the surfaces of the ground-swell. A few sails in sight, far
out. Not a sound except the hiss and splash of the surf, which, because
of a week of calms and light winds, was low even for that time of
year--early June.
To the north stretched the shores of the back of the Cape. High clay
bluffs, rain-washed and wrinkled, sloping sharply to the white sand
of the beach a hundred feet below. Only one building, except
those connected with the lighthouses, near at hand, this a small,
gray-shingled bungalow about two hundred yards away, separated from the
lights by the narrow stream called Clam Creek--Seth always spoke of it
as the “Crick”--which, turning in behind the long surf-beaten sandspit
known, for some forgotten reason, as “Black Man's Point,” continued to
the salt-water pond which was named “The Cove.” A path led down from the
lighthouses to a bend in the “Crick,” and there, on a small wharf, was a
shanty where Seth kept his spare lobster and eel-pots, dory sails, nets,
and the like. The dory itself, with the oars in her, was moored in the
cove.
A mile off, to the south, the line of bluffs was broken by another
inlet, the entrance to Pounddug Slough. This poetically named channel
twisted and wound tortuously inland through salt marshes and between
mudbanks, widening at last to become Eastboro Back Harbor, a good-sized
body of water, with the village of Eastboro at its upper end. In the
old days, when Eastboro amounted to something as a fishing port, the
mackerel fleet unloaded its catch at the wharves in the Back Harbor.
Then Pounddug Slough was kept thoroughly dredged and buoyed. Now it was
weed-grown and neglected. Only an occasional lobsterman's dory traversed
its winding ways, which the storms and tides of each succeeding winter
rendered more difficult to navigate. The abandoned fish houses along its
shores were falling to pieces, and at intervals the stranded hulk of
a fishing sloop or a little schooner, rotting in the sun, was a dismal
reminder that Eastboro's ambitious young men no longer got their living
alongshore. The town itself had gone to sleep, awakening only in the
summer, when the few cottagers came and the Bay Side Hotel was opened
for its short season.
Behind the lighthouse buildings, to the west--and in the direction
of the village--were five miles of nothing in particular. A desolate
wilderness of rolling sand-dunes, beach grass, huckleberry and bayberry
bushes, cedar swamps, and small clumps of pitch-pines. Through this
desert the three or four rutted, crooked sand roads, leading to and
from the lights, turned and twisted. Along their borders dwelt no human
being; but life was there, life in abundance. Ezra Payne, late assistant
keeper at the Twin-Lights, was ready at all times to furnish evidence
concerning the existence of this life.
“My godfreys domino!” Ezra had exclaimed, after returning from a drive
to Eastboro village, “I give you my word, Seth, they dummed nigh et
me alive. They covered the horse all up, so that he looked for all the
world like a sheep, woolly. I don't mind moskeeters in moderation, but
when they roost on my eyelids and make 'em so heavy I can't open 'em,
then I'm ready to swear. But I couldn't get even that relief, because
every time I unbattened my mouth a million or so flew in and choked me.
That's what I said--a million. Some moskeeters are fat, but these don't
get a square meal often enough to be anything but hide-racks filled with
cussedness. Moskeeters! My godfreys domino!”
Ezra was no longer assistant lightkeeper. He and his superior had
quarreled two days before. The quarrel was the culmination, on Ezra's
part, of a gradually developing “grouch” brought on by the loneliness of
his surroundings. After a night of duty he had marched into the house,
packed his belongings in a battered canvas extension case, and announced
his intention of resigning from the service.
“To the everlastin' brimstone with the job!” he snarled, addressing Mr.
Atkins, who, partially dressed, emerged from the bedroom in bewilderment
and sleepy astonishment. “To thunder with it, I say! I've had all the
gov'ment jobs I want. Life-savin' service was bad enough, trampin' the
condemned beach in a howlin' no'theaster, with the sand cuttin'
furrers in your face, and the icicles on your mustache so heavy you
got round-shouldered luggin' 'em. But when your tramp was over, you had
somebody to talk to. Here, by godfreys! there ain't nothin' nor nobody.
I'm goin' fishin' again, where I can be sociable.”
“Humph!” commented Seth, “you must be lonesome all to once. Ain't my
company good enough for you?”
“Company! A heap of company you are! When I'm awake you're asleep and
snorin' and--”
“I never snored in my life,” was the indignant interruption
“What? YOU'LL snore when you're dead, and wake up the whole graveyard.
Lonesome!” he continued, without giving his companion a chance to
retort, “lonesome ain't no name for this place. No company but green
flies and them moskeeters, and nothin' to look at but salt water and
sand and--and--dummed if I can think of anything else. Five miles from
town and the only house in sight shut tight. When I come here you told
me that bungalow was opened up every year--”
“So it has been till this season.”
“And that picnics come here every once in a while.”
“Don't expect picnickers to be such crazy loons as to come here in
winter time, do you?”
“I don't know. If they're fools enough to come here ANY time, I wouldn't
be responsible for 'em. There ain't so many moskeeters in winter. But
just LOOK at this hole. Just put on your specs and LOOK at it! Not a
man--but you--not a woman, not a child, not a girl--”
“Ah ha! ah ha! NOW we're gettin' at it! Not a girl! That's what's the
matter with you. You want to be up in the village, where you can go
courtin'. You're too fur from Elsie Peters, that's where the shoe
pinches. I've heard how you used to set out in her dad's backyard, with
your arm round her waist, lookin' at each other, mushy as a couple of
sassers of hasty-puddin'. Bah! I'll take care my next assistant ain't
girl-struck.”
“Girl-struck! I'd enough sight ruther be girl-struck than always ravin'
and rippin' against females. And all because some woman way back in
Methusalem's time had sense enough to heave you over. At least, that's
what everybody cal'lates must be the reason. You pretend to be a
woman-hater. All round this part of the Cape you've took pains to get up
that kind of reputation; but--”
“There ain't no pretendin' about it. I've got brains enough to keep
clear of petticoats. And when you get to be as old as I be and know as
much as I do--though that ain't no ways likely, even if you live to be
nine hundred and odd, like Noah in Scripture--you'll feel the same way.”
“Aw, come off! Woman-hater! You hate women same as the boy at the
poorhouse hated ice cream--'cause there ain't none around. Why, I
wouldn't trust you as fur as I could see you!”
This was the end of the dialogue, because Mr. Payne was obliged to break
off his harangue and dodge the stove-lifter flung at him by the outraged
lightkeeper. As the lifter was about to be followed by the teakettle,
Ezra took to his heels, bolted from the house and began his long tramp
to the village. When he reached the first clumps of bayberry bushes
bordering the deeply rutted road, a joyful cloud of mosquitoes rose and
settled about him like a fog.
So Seth Atkins was left alone to do double duty at Eastboro Twin-Lights,
pending the appointment of another assistant. The two days and nights
following Ezra's departure had been strenuous and provoking. Doing
all the housework, preparation of meals included, tending both lights,
rubbing brass work, sweeping and scouring, sleeping when he could and
keeping awake when he must, nobody to talk to, nobody to help--the
forty-eight hours of solitude had already convinced Mr. Atkins that the
sooner a helper was provided the better. At times he even wished the
disrespectful Payne back again, wished that he had soothed instead of
irritated the departed one. Then he remembered certain fragments of
their last conversation and wished the stove-lifter had been flung with
better aim.
Now, standing on the gallery of the south tower, he was conscious of
a desire for breakfast. Preparing that meal had been a part of his
assistant's duties. Now he must prepare it himself, and he was hungry
and sleepy. He mentally vowed that he would no longer delay notifying
the authorities of the desertion, and would urge them to hurry in
sending some one to fill the vacant place.
Grumbling aloud to himself, he moved around the circle of the gallery
toward the door. His hand was on the latch, when, turning, he cast
another glance over the rail, this time directly downward toward the
beach below. And there he saw something which caused him to forget
hunger and grievances of all kinds; something which, after one horrified
look to make sure, led him to dart into the light chamber, spring at a
reckless gait down the winding stair, out of the tower, rush to the edge
of the bluff, and plunge headlong down the zigzag path worn in the clay.
On the sand, at the foot of the bluff below the lights, just beyond
reach of the wash of the surf, lay a man, or the dead body of a man,
stretched at full length.