The Woman-Haters Part 39

Seth did not answer. With a leap he landed at Joshua's head, unhooked the halter, and ran out of the shop leading the horse. The astonished blacksmith followed as far as the door. Seth was backing the animal into his wagon, which stood beneath the shed. He fastened the traces with trembling fingers.

"What in the world has struck you?" shouted Ellis. "Ain't you goin' to have that shoe fixed? He can't travel that way. Seth! Seth Atkins! . . .

By time, he IS crazy!"

Seth did not deny the charge. Climbing into the wagon, he took up the reins.

"Are you sure and sartin' 'twas the Denboro road they took?" he demanded.

"Who took? That feller and the Bascom woman? Course I am, but . . .

Well, I swan!"

For the lightkeeper waited to hear no more. He struck the unsuspecting Joshua with the end of the reins and, with a jump, the old horse started forward. Another moment, and the lighthouse wagon was splas.h.i.+ng and rattling through the pouring rain along the road leading to Denboro.

CHAPTER XV

THE VOYAGE OF THE DAISY M.

Denboro is many long miles from Eastboro, and the road, even in the best of weather, is not a good one. It winds and twists and climbs and descends through woods and over hills. There are stretches of marshy hollows where the yellow clay needs but a little moistening to become a paste which sticks to wheels and hoofs and makes traveling, even behind a young and spirited horse, a disheartening progress.

Joshua was neither young nor spirited. And the weather could not have been much worse. The three days' storm had soaked everything, and the clay-bottomed puddles were near kin to quicksands. As the lighthouse wagon descended the long slope at the southern end of the village and began the circle of the inner extremity of Eastboro Back Harbor, Seth realized that his journey was to be a hard one. The rain, driven by the northeast wind, came off the water in blinding gusts, and the waves in the harbor were tipped with white. Also, although the tide was almost at its lowest, streaks of seaweed across the road showed where it had reached that forenoon, and prophesied even a greater flood that night.

He turned his head and gazed up the harbor to where it narrowed and became Pounddug Slough. In the Slough, near its ocean extremity, his old schooner, the Daisy M., lay stranded. He had not visited her for a week, and he wondered if the "spell of weather" had injured her to any extent.

This speculation, however, was but momentary. The Daisy M. must look out for herself. His business was to reach Judge Gould's, in Denboro, before Mrs. Bascom and Bennie D. could arrange with that prominent citizen and legal light for the threatened divorce.

That they had started for Judge Gould's he did not doubt for a moment.

"I shall seek the nearest lawyer," Bennie D. had said. And the judge was the nearest. They must be going there, or why should they take that road? Neither did he doubt now that their object was to secure the divorce. How divorces were secured, or how long it took to get one, Seth did not know. His sole knowledge on that subject was derived from the newspapers and comic weeklies, and he remembered reading of places in the West where lawyers with the necessary blanks in their pockets met applicants at the arrival of one train and sent them away, rejoicing and free, on the next.

"You jump right off the cars and then Turn round and jump right on again."

This fragment of a song, sung at a "moving-picture" show in the town hall, and resung many times thereafter by Ezra Payne, John Brown's predecessor as a.s.sistant keeper at the lights, recurred to him as he urged the weary Joshua onward. So far as Seth knew, the Reno custom might be universal. At any rate, he must get to Judge Gould's before Emeline and her brother-in-law left there. What he should do when he arrived and found them there was immaterial; he must get there, that was all.

Eastboro Back Harbor was left behind, and the long stretch of woods beyond was entered. Joshua, his hoofs swollen by the sticky clay to yellow cannon b.a.l.l.s, plodded on, but, in spite of commands and pleadings--the lightkeeper possessed no whip and would not have used one if he had--he went slower and slower. He was walking now, and limping sadly on the foot where the loose shoe hung by its bent and broken nails.

Five miles, six, seven, and the limp was worse than ever. Seth, whose conscience smote him, got out of the carriage into the rain and mud and attempted repairs, using a stone as a hammer. This seemed to help matters some, but it was almost dark when the granite block marking the towns.h.i.+p line was pa.s.sed, and the windows in the houses were alight when he pulled up at the judge's door.

The judge himself answered the knock, or series of knocks. He seemed much surprised to find the keeper of Eastboro Twin-Lights standing on his front step.

"Why, h.e.l.lo, Atkins!" he cried. "What in the world are you doing over here? a night like this!"

"Has--has Mrs. Bascom been here? Is she here now?" panted Seth anxiously.

"Mrs. Bascom? Who is Mrs. Bascom?"

"She--she's a friend of mine. She and--and a relation of hers was comin'

over here to see you on business. Ain't they here? Ain't they been here?"

"No. No one has been here this afternoon. I've been in since one o'clock, and not a soul has called, on business or otherwise."

The lightkeeper could scarcely believe it.

"You're sure?" he demanded.

"Certainly. If they came before one my wife would have told me, I think.

I'll ask her."

"No, no," hastily. "You needn't. If they ain't been since one they ain't been. But I don't understand. . . . There's no other lawyer nigh here, is there?"

"No; none nearer than Bayport."

"My land! My LAND! Then--then I'm out of soundin's somehow. They never came for it, after all."

"Came for what?"

"Nothin', nothin', I guess," with a sickly smile. "I've made some sort of mistake, though I don't know how. Benije must have . . . I'll break that feller's neck; I will!"

The lawyer began to share the blacksmith's opinion that his caller had gone crazy.

"Come in, Atkins," he urged. "Come in out of the wet. What IS the matter? What are you doing here at this time of night so far from the Lights? Is it anything serious? Come in and tell me about it."

But Seth, instead of accepting the invitation, stared at him aghast.

Then, turning about, he leaped down the steps, ran to the wagon and climbed in.

"Giddap!" he shouted. Poor, tired Joshua lifted his clay-daubed hoofs.

"You're not going back?" cried Gould. "Hold on, Atkins! Wait!"

But Seth did not wait. Already he had turned his horse's head toward Eastboro, and was driving off. The lawyer stood still, amazedly looking after him. Then he went into the house and spent the next quarter of an hour trying to call the Twin-Lights by telephone. As the northeast wind had finished what the northwest one had begun and the wire was down, his attempt was unsuccessful. He gave it up after a time and sat down to discuss the astonis.h.i.+ng affair with his wife. He was worried.

But his worriment was as nothing compared to Seth's. The lawyer's reference to the Lights had driven even matrimonial troubles from the Atkins mind. The lights! the Twin-Lights! It was long past the time for them to be lit, and there was no one to light them but Brown, a green hand. Were they lit at all? If not, heaven knew what might happen or had happened already.

He had thought of this before, of course, had vaguely realized that he was betraying his trust, but then he had not cared. The Lights, his position as keeper, everything, were side issues compared with the one thing to be done, the getting to Denboro. He had reached Denboro and found his journey all a mistake; his wife and Bennie D. had not, apparently, visited that village; perhaps had not even started for it.

Therefore, in a measure relieved, he thought of other things. He was many miles from his post of duty, and now his sole idea was to get back to it.

At ten o'clock Mrs. Hepsibah Deacon, a widow living in a little house in the woods on the top of the hill on the Denboro side of Eastboro Back Harbor, with no neighbors for a mile in either direction, was awakened by shouts under her bedroom window. Opening that window she thrust forth her head.

"Who is it?" she demanded quaveringly. "What's the matter? Is anything afire?"

From the blackness of the rain and fog emerged a vague shape.

"It's me, Mrs. Deacon; Seth Atkins, down to the Lights, you know. I've left my horse and carriage in your barn. Josh--he's the horse--is gone lame and played himself out. He can't walk another step. I've unharnessed him and left him in the stall. He'll be all right. I've given him some water and hay. Just let him stay there, if it ain't too much trouble, and I'll send for him to-morrer and pay for his keep. It's all right, ain't it? Much obliged. Good night."

Before the frightened widow could ask a question or utter a word he was gone, ploughing down the hill in the direction of the Back Harbor. When he reached the foot of that hill where the road should have been, he found that it had disappeared. The tide had risen and covered it.

It was pitch-dark, the rain was less heavy, and clouds of fog were drifting in before the wind. Seth waded on for a short distance, but soon realized that wading would be an impossibility. Then, as in despair, he was about ready to give up the attempt, a dark object came into view beside him. It was a dory belonging to one of the lobstermen, which, at the end of its long anchor rope, had swung insh.o.r.e until it floated almost over the road. Seth seized it in time to prevent collision with his knees. The thole pins were in place, and the oars laid lengthwise on its thwarts. As his hands touched the gunwale a new idea came to him.

He had intended walking the rest of the way to Eastboro, routing out the liveryman and hiring a horse and buggy with which to reach the Lights.