The South Shore Weather Bureau
"But," says Cap'n Jonadab and me together, jest as if we was
"reading in concert" same as the youngsters do in school, "but,"
we says, "will it work? Will anybody pay for it?"
"Work?" says Peter T., with his fingers in the arm-holes of the
double-breasted danger-signal that he called a vest, and with his
cigar tilted up till you'd think 'twould set his hat-brim afire.
"Work?" says he. "Well, maybe 'twouldn't work if the ordinary
brand of canned lobster was running it, but with ME to jerk the
lever and sound the loud timbrel--why, say! it's like stealing
money from a blind cripple that's hard of hearing."
"Yes, I know," says Cap'n Jonadab. "But this ain't like starting
the Old Home House. That was opening up a brand-new kind of hotel
that nobody ever heard of before. This is peddling weather
prophecies when there's the Gov'ment Weather Bureau running
opposition--not to mention the Old Farmer's Almanac, and I don't
know how many more," he says.
Brown took his patent leathers down off the rail of the piazza,
give the ashes of his cigar a flip--he knocked 'em into my hat that
was on the floor side of his chair, but he was too excited to mind--
and he says:
"Confound it, man!" he says. "You can throw more cold water than a
fire-engine. Old Farmer's Almanac! This isn't any 'About this
time look out for snow' business. And it ain't any Washington cold
slaw like 'Weather for New England and Rocky Mountains, Tuesday to
Friday; cold to warm; well done on the edges with a rare streak in
the middle, preceded or followed by rain, snow, or clearing. Wind,
north to south, varying east and west.' No siree! this is TO-DAY'S
weather for Cape Cod, served right off the griddle on a hot plate,
and cooked by the chef at that. You don't realize what a regular
dime-museum wonder that feller is," he says.
Well, I suppose we didn't. You see, Jonadab and me, like the rest
of the folks around Wellmouth, had come to take Beriah Crocker and
his weather notions as the regular thing, like baked beans on a
Saturday night. Beriah, he--
But there! I've been sailing stern first. Let's get her headed
right, if we ever expect to turn the first mark. You see, 'twas
this way:
'Twas in the early part of May follering the year that the "Old
Home House" was opened. We'd had the place all painted up, decks
holy-stoned, bunks overhauled, and one thing or 'nother, and the
"Old Home" was all taut and shipshape, ready for the crew--
boarders, I mean. Passages was booked all through the summer and
it looked as if our second season would be better'n our first.
Then the Dillaway girl--she was christened Lobelia, like her
mother, but she'd painted it out and cruised under the name of
Belle since the family got rich--she thought 'twould be nice to
have what she called a "spring house-party" for her particular
friends 'fore the regular season opened. So Peter--he being
engaged at the time and consequent in that condition where he'd
have put on horns and "mooed" if she'd give the order--he thought
'twould be nice, too, and for a week it was "all hands on deck!"
getting ready for the "house-party."
Two days afore the thing was to go off the ways Brown gets a letter
from Belle, and in it says she's invited a whole lot of folks from
Chicago and New York and Boston and the land knows where, and that
they've never been to the Cape and she wants to show 'em what a
"quaint" place it is. "Can't you get," says she, "two or three
delightful, queer, old 'longshore characters to be at work 'round
the hotel? It'll give such a touch of local color," she says.
So out comes Peter with the letter.
"Barzilla," he says to me, "I want some characters. Know anybody
that's a character?"
"Well," says I, "there's Nate Slocum over to Orham. He'd steal
anything that wa'n't spiked down. He's about the toughest
character I can think of, offhand, this way."
"Oh, thunder!" says Brown. "I don't want a crook; that wouldn't be
any novelty to THIS crowd," he says. "What I'm after is an odd
stick; a feller with pigeons in his loft. Not a lunatic, but jest
a queer genius--little queerer than you and the Cap'n here."
After a while we got his drift, and I happened to think of Beriah
and his chum, Eben Cobb. They lived in a little shanty over to
Skakit P'int and got their living lobstering, and so on. Both of
'em had saved a few thousand dollars, but you couldn't get a cent
of it without giving 'em ether, and they'd rather live like
Portugees than white men any day, unless they was paid to change.
Beriah's pet idee was foretelling what the weather was going to be.
And he could do it, too, better'n anybody I ever see. He'd smell a
storm further'n a cat can smell fish, and he hardly ever made a
mistake. Prided himself on it, you understand, like a boy does on
his first long pants. His prophecies was his idols, so's to speak,
and you couldn't have hired him to foretell what he knew was wrong,
not for no money.
Peter said Beriah and Eben was just the sort of "cards" he was
looking for and drove right over to see 'em. He hooked 'em, too.
I knew he would; he could talk a Come-Outer into believing that a
Unitarian wasn't booked for Tophet, if he set out to.
So the special train from Boston brought the "house-party" down,
and our two-seated buggy brought Beriah and Eben over. They didn't
have anything to do but to look "picturesque" and say "I snum!" and
"I swan to man!" and they could do that to the skipper's taste.
The city folks thought they was "just too dear and odd for
anything," and made 'em bigger fools than ever, which wa'n't
necessary.
The second day of the "party" was to be a sailing trip clear down
to the life-saving station on Setuckit Beach. It certainly looked
as if 'twas going to storm, and the Gov'ment predictions said it
was, but Beriah said "No," and stuck out that 'twould clear up by
and by. Peter wanted to know what I thought about their starting,
and I told him that 'twas my experience that where weather was
concerned Beriah was a good, safe anchorage. So they sailed away,
and, sure enough, it cleared up fine. And the next day the
Gov'ment fellers said "clear" and Beriah said "rain," and she
poured a flood. And, after three or four of such experiences,
Beriah was all hunky with the "house-party," and they looked at him
as a sort of wonderful freak, like a two-headed calf or the "snake
child," or some such outrage.
So, when the party was over, 'round comes Peter, busting with a new
notion. What he cal'lated to do was to start a weather prophesying
bureau all on his own hook, with Beriah for prophet, and him for
manager and general advertiser, and Jonadab and me to help put up
the money to get her going. He argued that summer folks from
Scituate to Provincetown, on both sides of the Cape, would pay good
prices for the real thing in weather predictions. The Gov'ment
bureau, so he said, covered too much ground, but Beriah was local
and hit her right on the head. His idee was to send Beriah's
predictions by telegraph to agents in every Cape town each morning,
and the agents was to hand 'em to susscribers. First week a free
trial; after that, so much per prophecy.
And it worked--oh, land, yes! it worked. Peter's letters and
circulars would satisfy anybody that black was white, and the free
trial was a sure bait. I don't know why 'tis, but if you offered
the smallpox free, there'd be a barrel of victims waiting in line
to come down with it. Brown rigged up a little shanty on the bluff
in front of the "Old Home," and filled it full of barometers and
thermometers and chronometers and charts, and put Beriah and Eben
inside to look wise and make b'lieve do something. That was the
office of "The South Shore Weather Bureau," and 'twas sort of
sacred and holy, and 'twould kill you to see the boarders tip-
toeing up and peeking in the winder to watch them two old coots
squinting through a telescope at the sky or scribbling rubbish on
paper. And Beriah was right 'most every time. I don't know why--
my notion is that he was born that way, same as some folks are born
lightning calculators--but I'll never forget the first time Peter
asked him how he done it.
"Wall," drawls Beriah, "now to-day looks fine and clear, don't it?
But last night my left elbow had rheumatiz in it, and this morning
my bones ache, and my right toe-j'int is sore, so I know we'll have
an easterly wind and rain this evening. If it had been my left toe
now, why--"
Peter held up both hands.
"That'll do," he says. "I ain't asking any more questions. ONLY,
if the boarders or outsiders ask you how you work it, you cut out
the bones and toe business and talk science and temperature to beat
the cars. Understand, do you? It's science or no eight-fifty in
the pay envelope. Left toe-joint!" And he goes off grinning.
We had to have Eben, though he wasn't wuth a green hand's wages as
a prophet. But him and Beriah stuck by each other like two flies
in the glue-pot, and you couldn't hire one without t'other. Peter
said 'twas all right--two prophets looked better'n one, anyhow;
and, as subscriptions kept up pretty well, and the Bureau paid a
fair profit, Jonadab and me didn't kick.
In July, Mrs. Freeman--she had charge of the upper decks in the
"Old Home" and was rated head chambermaid--up and quit, and being
as we couldn't get another capable Cape Codder just then, Peter
fetched down a woman from New York; one that a friend of old
Dillaway's recommended. She was able seaman so far's the work was
concerned, but she'd been good-looking once and couldn't forget it,
and she was one of them clippers that ain't happy unless they've
got a man in tow. You know the kind: pretty nigh old enough to be
a coal-barge, but all rigged up with bunting and frills like a
yacht.
Her name was Kelly, Emma Kelly, and she was a widow--whether from
choice or act of Providence I don't know. The other women servants
was all down on her, of course, 'cause she had city ways and a
style of wearing her togs that made their Sunday gowns and bonnets
look like distress signals. But they couldn't deny that she was a
driver so far's her work was concerned. She'd whoop through the
hotel like a no'theaster and have everything done, and done well,
by two o'clock in the afternoon. Then she'd be ready to dress up
and go on parade to astonish the natives.
Men--except the boarders, of course--was scarce around Wellmouth
Port. First the Kelly lady begun to flag Cap'n Jonadab and me, but
we sheered off and took to the offing. Jonadab, being a widower,
had had his experience, and I never had the marrying disease and
wasn't hankering to catch it. So Emma had to look for other
victims, and the prophet-shop looked to her like the most likely
feeding-ground.
And, would you b'lieve it, them two old critters, Beriah and Eben,
gobbled the bait like sculpins. If she'd been a woman like the
kind they was used to--the Cape kind, I mean--I don't s'pose they'd
have paid any attention to her; but she was diff'rent from anything
they'd ever run up against, and the first thing you know, she had
'em both poke-hooked. 'Twas all in fun on her part first along, I
cal'late, but pretty soon some idiot let out that both of 'em was
wuth money, and then the race was on in earnest.
She'd drop in at the weather-factory 'long in the afternoon and
pretend to be terrible interested in the goings on there.
"I don't see how you two gentlemen CAN tell whether it's going to
rain or not. I think you are the most WONDERFUL men! Do tell me,
Mr. Crocker, will it be good weather to-morrer? I wanted to take a
little walk up to the village about four o'clock if it was."
And then Beriah'd swell out like a puffing pig and put on airs and
look out of the winder, and crow:
"Yes'm, I jedge that we'll have a southerly breeze in the morning
with some fog, but nothing to last, nothing to last. The
afternoon, I cal'late, 'll be fair. I--I--that is to say, I was
figgering on goin' to the village myself to-morrer."
Then Emma would pump up a blush, and smile, and purr that she was
SO glad, 'cause then she'd have comp'ny. And Eben would glower at
Beriah and Beriah'd grin sort of superior-like, and the mutual
barometer, so's to speak, would fall about a foot during the next
hour. The brotherly business between the two prophets was coming
to an end fast, and all on account of Mrs. Kelly.
She played 'em even for almost a month; didn't show no preference
one way or the other. First 'twas Eben that seemed to be eating up
to wind'ard, and then Beriah'd catch a puff and gain for a spell.
Cap'n Jonadab and me was uneasy, for we was afraid the Weather
Bureau would suffer 'fore the thing was done with; but Peter was
away, and we didn't like to interfere till he come home.
And then, all at once, Emma seemed to make up her mind, and 'twas
all Eben from that time on. The fact is, the widder had learned,
somehow or 'nother, that he had the most money of the two. Beriah
didn't give up; he stuck to it like a good one, but he was falling
behind and he knew it. As for Eben, he couldn't help showing a
little joyful pity, so's to speak, for his partner, and the
atmosphere in that rain lab'ratory got so frigid that I didn't know
but we'd have to put up a stove. The two wizards was hardly on
speaking terms.
The last of August come and the "Old Home House" was going to close
up on the day after Labor Day. Peter was down again, and so was
Ebenezer and Belle, and there was to be high jinks to celebrate the
season's wind-up. There was to be a grand excursion and clambake
at Setuckit Beach and all hands was going--four catboats full.
Of course, the weather must be good or it's no joy job taking
females to Setuckit in a catboat. The night before the big day,
Peter came out to the Weather Bureau and Jonadab and me dropped in
likewise. Beriah was there all alone; Eben was out walking with
Emma.
"Well, Jeremiah," says Brown, chipper as a mack'rel gull on a spar-
buoy, "what's the outlook for to-morrer? The Gov'ment sharp says
there's a big storm on the way up from Florida. Is he right, or
only an 'also ran,' as usual?"
"Wall," says Beriah, goin' to the door, "I don't know, Mr. Brown.
It don't look just right; I swan it don't! I can tell you better
in the morning. I hope 'twill be fair, too, 'cause I was
cal'lating to get a day off and borrer your horse and buggy and go
over to the Ostable camp-meeting. It's the big day over there," he
says.
Now, I knew of course, that he meant he was going to take the
widder with him, but Peter spoke up and says he:
"Sorry, Beriah, but you're too late. Eben asked me for the horse
and buggy this morning. I told him he could have the open buggy;
the other one's being repaired, and I wouldn't lend the new surrey
to the Grand Panjandrum himself. Eben's going to take the fair
Emma for a ride," he says. "Beriah, I'm afraid our beloved Cobb
is, in the innocence of his youth, being roped in by the
sophisticated damsel in the shoo-fly hat," says he.
Me and Jonadab hadn't had time to tell Peter how matters stood
betwixt the prophets, or most likely he wouldn't have said that.
It hit Beriah like a snowslide off a barn roof. I found out
afterwards that the widder had more'n half promised to go with HIM.
He slumped down in his chair as if his mainmast was carried away,
and he didn't even rise to blow for the rest of the time we was in
the shanty. Just set there, looking fishy-eyed at the floor.
Next morning I met Eben prancing around in his Sunday clothes and
with a necktie on that would make a rainbow look like a mourning
badge.
"Hello!" says I. "You seem to be pretty chipper. You ain't going
to start for that fifteen-mile ride through the woods to Ostable,
be you? Looks to me as if 'twas going to rain."
"The predictions for this day," says he, "is cloudy in the
forenoon, but clearing later on. Wind, sou'east, changing to south
and sou'west."
"Did Beriah send that out?" says I, looking doubtful, for if ever
it looked like dirty weather, I thought it did right then.
"ME and Beriah sent it out," he says, jealous-like. But I knew
'twas Beriah's forecast or he wouldn't have been so sure of it.
Pretty soon out comes Peter, looking dubious at the sky.
"If it was anybody else but Beriah," he says, "I'd say this
mornings prophecy ought to be sent to Puck. Where is the seventh
son of the seventh son--the only original American seer?"
He wasn't in the weather-shanty, and we finally found him on one of
the seats 'way up on the edge of the bluff. He didn't look 'round
when we come up, but just stared at the water.
"Hey, Elijah!" says Brown. He was always calling Beriah "Elijah"
or "Isaiah" or "Jeremiah" or some other prophet name out of
Scripture. "Does this go?" And he held out the telegraph-blank
with the morning's prediction on it.
Beriah looked around just for a second. He looked to me sort of
sick and pale--that is, as pale as his sun-burned rhinoceros hide
would ever turn.
"The forecast for to-day," says he, looking at the water again, "is
cloudy in the forenoon, but clearing later on. Wind sou'east,
changing to south and sou'west."
"Right you are!" says Peter, joyful. "We start for Setuckit, then.
And here's where the South Shore Weather Bureau hands another swift
jolt to your Uncle Sam."
So, after breakfast, the catboats loaded up, the girls giggling and
screaming, and the men boarders dressed in what they hoped was sea-
togs. They sailed away 'round the lighthouse and headed up the
shore, and the wind was sou'east sure and sartin, but the
"clearing" part wasn't in sight yet.
Beriah didn't watch 'em go. He stayed in the shanty. But by and
by, when Eben drove the buggy out of the barn and Emma come
skipping down the piazza steps, I see him peeking out of the little
winder.
The Kelly critter had all sail sot and colors flying. Her dress
was some sort of mosquito netting with wall-paper posies on it, and
there was more ribbons flapping than there is reef-p'ints on a
mainsail. And her hat! Great guns! It looked like one of them
pictures you see in a flower-seed catalogue.
"Oh!" she squeals, when she sees the buggy. "Oh! Mr. Cobb. Ain't
you afraid to go in that open carriage? It looks to me like rain."
But Eben waved his flipper, scornful. "My forecast this morning,"
says he, "is cloudy now, but clearing by and by. You trust to me,
Mis' Kelly. Weather's my business."
"Of COURSE I trust you, Mr. Cobb," she says, "Of course I trust
you, but I should hate to spile my gown, that's all."
They drove out of the yard, fine as fiddlers, and I watched 'em go.
When I turned around, there was Beriah watching 'em too, and he was
smiling for the first time that morning. But it was one of them
kind of smiles that makes you wish he'd cry.
At ha'f-past ten it begun to sprinkle; at eleven 'twas raining
hard; at noon 'twas a pouring, roaring, sou'easter, and looked good
for the next twelve hours at least.
"Good Lord! Beriah," says Cap'n Jonadab, running into the Weather
Bureau, "you've missed stays THIS time, for sure. Has your
prophecy-works got indigestion?" he says.
But Beriah wasn't there. The shanty was closed, and we found out
afterwards that he spent that whole day in the store down at the
Port.
By two o'clock 'twas so bad that I put on my ileskins and went over
to Wellmouth and telephoned to the Setuckit Beach life-saving
station to find out if the clambakers had got there right side up.
They'd got there; fact is, they was in the station then, and the
language Peter hove through that telephone was enough to melt the
wires. 'Twas all in the shape of compliments to the prophet, and I
heard Central tell him she'd report it to the head office. Brown
said 'twas blowing so they'd have to come back by the inside
channel, and that meant landing 'way up Harniss way, and hiring
teams to come to the Port with from there.
'Twas nearly eight when they drove into the yard and come slopping
up the steps. And SUCH a passel of drownded rats you never see.
The women-folks made for their rooms, but the men hopped around the
parlor, shedding puddles with every hop, and hollering for us to
trot out the head of the Weather Bureau.
"Bring him to me," orders Peter, stopping to pick his pants loose
from his legs; "I yearn to caress him."
And what old Dillaway said was worse'n that.
But Beriah didn't come to be caressed. 'Twas quarter past nine
when we heard wheels in the yard.
"By mighty!" yells Cap'n Jonadab; "it's the camp-meeting pilgrims.
I forgot them. Here's a show."
He jumped to open the door, but it opened afore he got there and
Beriah come in. He didn't pay no attention to the welcome he got
from the gang, but just stood on the sill, pale, but grinning the
grin that a terrier dog has on just as you're going to let the rat
out of the trap.
Somebody outside says: "Whoa, consarn you!" Then there was a
thump and a sloshy stamping on the steps, and in comes Eben and the
widder.
I had one of them long-haired, foreign cats once that a British
skipper gave me. 'Twas a yeller and black one and it fell
overboard. When we fished it out it looked just like the Kelly
woman done then. Everybody but Beriah just screeched--we couldn't
help it. But the prophet didn't laugh; he only kept on grinning.
Emma looked once round the room, and her eyes, as well as you could
see 'em through the snarl of dripping hair and hat-trimming, fairly
snapped. Then she went up the stairs three steps at a time.
Eben didn't say a word. He just stood there and leaked. Leaked
and smiled. Yes, sir! his face, over the mess that had been that
rainbow necktie, had the funniest look of idiotic joy on it that
ever _I_ see. In a minute everybody else shut up. We didn't know
what to make of it.
'Twas Beriah that spoke first.
"He! he! he!" he chuckled. "He! he! he! Wasn't it kind of wet
coming through the woods, Mr. Cobb? What does Mrs. Kelly think of
the day her beau picked out to go to camp-meeting in?"
Then Eben came out of his trance.
"Beriah," says he, holding out a dripping flipper, "shake!"
But Beriah didn't shake. Just stood still.
"I've got a s'prise for you, shipmate," goes on Eben. "Who did you
say that lady was?"
Beriah didn't answer. I begun to think that some of the wet had
soaked through the assistant prophet's skull and had give him water
on the brain.
"You called her Mis' Kelly, didn't you?" gurgled Eben. "Wall, that
ain't her name. Her and me stopped at the Baptist parsonage over
to East Harniss when we was on the way home and got married. She's
Mis' Cobb now," he says.
Well, the queerest part of it was that 'twas the bad weather was
really what brought things to a head so sudden. Eben hadn't
spunked up anywhere nigh enough courage to propose, but they
stopped at Ostable so long, waiting for the rain to let up, that
'twas after dark when they was half way home. Then Emma--oh, she
was a slick one!--said that her reputation would be ruined, out
that way with a man that wa'n't her husband. If they was married
now, she said--and even a dummy could take THAT hint.
I found Beriah at the weather-shanty about an hour afterwards with
his head on his arms. He looked up when I come in.
"Mr. Wingate," he says, "I'm a fool, but for the land's sake don't
think I'm SUCH a fool as not to know that this here storm was bound
to strike to-day. I lied," he says; "I lied about the weather for
the first time in my life; lied right up and down so as to get her
mad with him. My repertation's gone forever. There's a feller in
the Bible that sold his--his birthday, I think 'twas--for a mess of
porridge. I'm him; only," and he groaned awful, "they've cheated
me out of the porridge."
But you ought to have read the letters Peter got next day from
subscribers that had trusted to the prophecy and had gone on
picnics and such like. The South Shore Weather Bureau went out of
business right then.
-THE END-
Joseph Crosby Lincoln's short story: The South Shore Weather Bureau
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