The Woman-Haters: a yarn of Eastboro twin-lights

Joseph Crosby Lincoln

Informations

• Publié par: omkau
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 24
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Woman-Haters, by Joseph C. Lincoln
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Woman-Haters
Author: Joseph C. Lincoln
Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #2372]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN-HATERS ***
Produced by Donald Lainson; David Widger
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 thehousekeeper 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
WomanHaters" 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
FOREWORD
THE WOMAN-HATERS
CHAPTER I MR. SETH ATKINS
CHAPTER II MR. JOHN BROWN
CHAPTER III MR. BROWN PUTS IN AN APPLICATION
CHAPTER IV THE COMING OF JOB
CHAPTER V THE GOING OF JOSHUA
CHAPTER VI THE PICNIC
CHAPTER VII OUT OF THE BAG
CHAPTER VIII NEIGHBORS AND WASPS
CHAPTER IX THE BUNGALOW GIRL
CHAPTER X THE BUNGALOW WOMAN
CHAPTER XI BEHIND THE SAND DUNE
CHAPTER XII THE LETTER AND THE 'PHONECHAPTER XIII "JOHN BROWN" CHANGES HIS NAME
CHAPTER XIV "BENNIE D."
CHAPTER XV THE VOYAGE OF THE Daisy M.
CHAPTER XVI THE EBB TIDE
CHAPTER 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,
glassenclosed 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 steppedout 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 amillion 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,"