The Woman-Haters Part 23

"Just as you say. The pleasure is--or will be--entirely mine, I a.s.sure you."

"No--o. On the whole, I think I'll wait until later. I may call again.

Good morning."

She moved across the threshold. Then, standing on the mica slab which was the step to the kitchen door, she turned to say:

"You didn't swim yesterday."

"No--o. I--I was busy."

"I see."

She paused, as if expecting him to say something further on the subject.

He was silent. Her manner changed.

"Good morning," she said, coldly, and walked off. The a.s.sistant watched her as she descended the path to the cove, but she did not once look back. Brown threw himself into a chair. He had never hated anyone as thoroughly as he hated himself at the moment.

"What a cheerful liar she must think I am," he reflected. "She caught me in that fool yarn about meeting her brother here last summer; and now, after deliberately promising to teach her that stroke, I don't go near her. What a miserable liar she must think I am! And I guess I am. By George, I can't be such a cad. I've got to make good somehow. I must give her ONE lesson. I must."

The tide served for bathing about three that afternoon. At ten minutes before that hour the subst.i.tute a.s.sistant keeper of Eastboro Twin-Lights tiptoed silently to the bedroom of his superior and peeped in. Seth was snoring peacefully. Brown stealthily withdrew. At three, precisely, he emerged from the boathouse on the wharf, clad in his bathing suit.

Fifteen minutes after three, Seth Atkins, in his stocking feet and with suspicion in his eye, crept along the path to the edge of the bluff.

Crouching behind a convenient sand dune he raised his head and peered over it.

Below him was the cove, its pleasant waters a smooth, deep blue, streaked and bordered with pale green. But the water itself did not interest Seth. In that water was his helper, John Brown, of nowhere in particular, John Brown, the hater of females, busily engaged in teaching a young woman to swim.

Atkins watched this animated picture for some minutes. Then, carefully crawling back up to the path until he was well out of possible sight from the cove, he rose to his feet, raised both hands, and shook their clenched fists above his head.

"The liar!" grated Mr. Atkins, between his teeth. "The traitor! The young blackguard! After tellin' me that he . . . And after my doin'

everything for him that . . . Oh, by Judas, wait! only wait till he comes back! I'LL l'arn him! I'LL show him! Oh, by jiminy crimps!"

He strode toward the doorway of the kitchen. There he stopped short.

A woman was seated in the kitchen rocker; a stout woman, with her back toward him. The room, in contrast to the bright suns.h.i.+ne without, was shadowy, and Seth, for an instant, could see her but indistinctly.

However, he knew who she must be--the housekeeper at the bungalow--"Basket" or "Biscuit" his helper had said was her name, as near as he could remember it. The lightkeeper ground his teeth. Another female! Well, he would teach this one a few things!

He stepped across the threshold.

"Ma'am," he began, sharply, "perhaps you'll tell me what you--"

He stopped. The stout woman had, at the sound of his step, risen from the chair, and turned to face him. And now she was staring at him, her face almost as white as the stone-china cups and saucers on the table.

"Why . . . why . . . SETH!" she gasped.

The lightkeeper staggered back until his shoulders struck the doorpost.

"Good Lord!" he cried; "good . . . LORD! Why--why--EMELINE!"

For over a minute the pair stared at each other, white and speechless.

Then Mrs. Bascom hurried to the door, darted out, and fled along the path around the cove to the bungalow. Atkins did not follow her; he did not even look in the direction she had taken. Instead, he collapsed in the rocking-chair and put both hands to his head.

CHAPTER X

THE BUNGALOW WOMAN

When, an hour later, the swimming teacher, his guilty conscience p.r.i.c.king him, and the knowledge of having been false to his superior strong within him, came sneaking into the kitchen, he was startled and horrified to find the lightkeeper awake and dressed. Mentally he braced himself for the battery of embarra.s.sing questions which, he felt sure, he should have to answer. It might be that he must face something more serious than questions. Quite possible Seth, finding him absent, had investigated--and seen. Well, if he had, then he had, that was all. The murder would be out, and Eastboro Twin-Lights would shortly be shy a subst.i.tute a.s.sistant keeper.

But there were no embarra.s.sing questions. Atkins scarcely noticed him. Seated in the rocker, he looked up as the young man entered, and immediately looked down again. He seemed to be in a sort of waking dream and only dimly conscious of happenings about him.

"h.e.l.lo!" hailed the a.s.sistant, with an a.s.sumption of casual cheerfulness.

"Hey? Oh! how be you?" was Mr. Atkins's reply.

"I've been for my dip," explained Brown. "The water was fine to-day."

"Want to know!"

"You're up early, aren't you?"

"Hey? Yes, I guess likely I be."

"What's wrong? Not sick, are you?"

"No. Course I ain't sick. Say!" Seth seemed to take a sudden interest in the conversation, "you come straight up from the cove, have you?"

"Yes. Why?"

"You ain't been hangin' around outside here, have you?"

"Hanging around outside? What do you mean?"

"Nothin'. Why do you stand there starin' at me as if I was some sort of dime show curiosity? Anything queer about me?"

"No. I didn't know I was staring." The young man was bewildered by this strange behavior. He was prepared for suspicion concerning his own actions; but Seth seemed rather to be defending himself from suspicion on the part of his helper.

"Humph!" The lightkeeper looked keenly at him for a moment. Then he said:

"Well, ain't there nothin' to do but stand around? Gettin' pretty nigh to supper time, ain't it? Put the kettle on and set the table."

It was not supper time, but Brown obeyed orders. Seth went to cooking.

He spoke perhaps three words during the culinary operations, and a half dozen more during the meal, of which he ate scarcely a mouthful. After it was over, he put on his cap and went out, not to his usual lounging spot, the bench, but to walk a full half mile along the edge of the bluff and there sit in the seclusion of a clump of bayberry bushes and gaze stonily at nothing in particular. Here he remained until the deepening dusk reminded him that it was time the lights were burning.

Returning, he lit the lanterns and sat down in the room at the top of the left-hand tower to think, and think, and think.

The shadows deepened; the last flush of twilight faded from the western sky; the stars came out; night and the black silence of night shrouded Eastboro Twin-Lights. The clock in the tower room ticked on to nine and then to ten. Still Seth sat, a huddled, dazed figure in the camp chair, by the great lantern. At last he rose and went out on the iron balcony.

He looked down at the buildings below him; they were black shapes without a glimmer. Brown had evidently gone to bed. In the little stable Joshua thumped the side of his stall once or twice--dreaming, perhaps, that he was again pursued by the fly-papered Job--and subsided. Atkins turned his gaze across the inlet. In the rear window of the bungalow a dim light still burned. As he watched, it was extinguished. He groaned aloud, and, with his arms on the railing, thought and thought.