The Green Dolphin
stopped before the door and these guests were soon followed by a group
of college girls.
“There, now! Ain’t I thankful I didn’t desert the ship,” soliloquized
the chef. “An’ ain’t I glad I’m armed for ’em?”
The bread was at hand, the butter, too. The cake was sliced and on a
plate; and on the stove steamed the water. Only the tea remained to be
made. It was, to be sure, not the tea; but it was the best to be found.
With tranquillity Asaph set about brewing it. Why, running a tea-shop
was child’s play when one was primed and ready.
Proudly he bore the beverage in and put it down before the primmer
of the two ladies, who placed her hand on the pot, drew it away with
a little scream, and complimented him on the hotness of it. In sheer
delight he lingered awkwardly while she turned it out and passed the
cups around. It steamed up amber from the green china. Then the old
gentleman, after putting in cream and a plentiful supply of sugar,
gulped down a swallow, gasped, and made for the piazza rail, where he
wrathfully dashed what remained in his cup over a syringa bush.
“Pa!” cried his daughters in chorus.
“What in goodness is the matter with him?” inquired Asaph. “Does he
think to still spite the British that he’s heavin’ his tea overboard?”
“You--you--sir!” sputtered the visitor. “Do you call this tea? And do
you consider it the part of a gentleman to play practical jokes on your
patrons?”
“Jokes?” Helplessly the proprietor of the Dolphin wheeled on the lady
who was nearest. “What’s got him?” he whispered.
“I said jokes,” thundered the stranger. “Do you mean to pretend you
were ignorant of the contents of that teapot?”
The consternation suffusing Asaph’s honest countenance bore more
emphatic testimony to his innocence than any argument could have done.
“What is it, Pa?” cried the lady with the cameo brooch of Caesar
Augustus beneath her chin. “What was in the teapot?”
“I don’t know,” responded the old gentleman with dramatic solemnity. “I
don’t know what it is I’ve drunk.”
“It couldn’t have been poison, could it?” demanded the elder daughter,
of Asaph, in a quick undertone.
Her father caught up the word.
“Poison!” repeated he. “Maybe it was. I have no way of knowing. But if
these are my last moments I mean to spend them--”
“Better spend ’em sendin’ for a doctor,” cut in Asaph. “There’s a good
one over to the Inn who can be fetched in a jiffy. Meantime I’d advise
you not to fly all to pieces about the stuff you swallered. You can
rest easy ’twon’t hurt you. Althea always keeps everything labelled
an’--”
“Was this labelled?”
“Wal,--no. The dampness had kinder peeled the writin’ off it. ’Twas
just in a tin box I found on the pantry shelf. But I thought much as
could be it was tea. I’d ’a’ staked my oath on it. It looked like it.”
“Well, it wasn’t,” came testily from the victim.
“What could it ’a’ been?”
During the dialogue the lady of the cameo had lifted the cover from the
teapot and now sat sniffing the thin vapor that rose from it.
“I’ve smelled this smell before, Clara,” declared she. “What is it?”
The other lady took a whiff.
“M--m,” she reflected, as she drew in her nostrils. “Yes, Sophie, I
have smelled it too; the odor is perfectly familiar.”
“That doesn’t help anything,” cut in her father. “The point is, have
either of you ever drunk the mixture as I have just done?”
The lady of the pin, who apparently was the more daring of the two,
bent over the untasted liquid in her cup; then with sudden resolution
she raised it to her lips and sipped a little of it.
“Clara!” remonstrated her sister.
“It’s sage--sage tea,” announced she calmly. “I knew I couldn’t be
mistaken. It’s only sage, Pa, and won’t hurt you at all; on the
contrary it may do you good.”
But the old gentleman, instead of rejoicing at this eleventh-hour
deliverance from a premature grave, only waxed more angry than ever. He
apparently did not relish finding himself suddenly transformed from the
hero of a tragedy to the dupe of a comedy.
“I’ll have you prosecuted, sir,” roared he. “I’ll warn all Cape Cod
against you and your Green Dolphin. You’re a swindler, a miserable
swindler. I told you, Sophie, I had no opinion of all this promiscuous
tea drinking. It’s a foolish custom. When I want anything to eat I want
a square meal and not a cup of milk and water.”
“You didn’t get milk and water this time, Pa,” put in Clara demurely.
“I’d have been better off if I had,” snapped her father.
“Say,” drawled a gentle voice from somewhere in the shrubbery, “you
wouldn’t like to forget your troubles in a nice fresh lobster, would
you?”
Beaming up from among the roses stood Lemuel Gill, jauntily dangling
from either hand a great scarlet lobster.
His coming was so unexpected that even Asaph Holmes was startled. As
for the fuming old gentleman, surprise cut short his anger. He gazed
with astonishment down on Lemuel and the mammoth lobsters.
“Say the word,” continued Lemmy, holding one of the shellfish
enticingly aloft in the air, “an’ I’ll open her up for you an’ have her
on the table before you can say Jack Robinson.”
Something in her father’s eye must have warned Sophie of impending
danger, for she ejaculated:
“Now, Pa, you know lobster always disagrees with you.”
“It will give you indigestion and keep you awake all night,” asserted
Clara.
“I think I’ll have the lobster,” announced the old gentleman,
determination crystallized into stubbornness by the opposition of his
daughters.
“Pa!” came in horrified tones from Sophie and Clara.
“That’s the talk,” applauded Lemuel. “What’s the use of livin’ if we
don’t get some pleasure out of it?”
As he hastened away to prepare the feast the four college girls called
after him:
“We couldn’t have the other lobster, could we?”
“Sure you could, ladies!”
Nothing had been farther from Lemmy’s intentions when leaving home than
to part with his trophies. The temper that had so quickly flamed up
had been as quickly extinguished, and as the day wore on he decided to
postpone his treat until evening and share it with Asaph, when both of
them would be at leisure to enjoy it. But happening in and beholding
his colleague in the toils of disaster banished every consideration but
that of rescue from his mind.
“What do I care about lobsters,” sniffed he, with a contemptuous shrug,
when the two men met in the kitchen. “I set no great store by ’em.
Besides, I can fish more out of my traps any time.”
“’Tain’t so easy to waylay fellers like these.”
“They ain’t swimmin’ in all waters, I’ll admit,” confessed the
altruist. “Still, ’tain’t probable I’ve cleared the sea of ’em. They
must have sisters, cousins, or aunts. Anyhow, somethin’ had to be done
with that cantankerous old codger; he was just in the mood to go out
an’ run down the Dolphin if he warn’t muzzled, an’ we couldn’t let that
happen. We had to square things with him, live or die.”
“I had to--you didn’t.”
“It’s all the same,” returned Lemmy.
“Lemuel, you’re the best friend I’ve got on this earth,” Asaph burst
out, a wave of emotion sweeping him out of his habitual reserve.
“Pooh, Asaph. Don’t go gettin’ theatrical. Them lobsters are yours as
much as mine. I was bringin’ ’em over to you, anyway.”
Thus ended, or appeared to end, the second day of the Dolphin’s career,
but the effect of it was far reaching, for Asaph Holmes, intimidated
by his initial failures, could no longer be prevailed upon to pursue
conventional tea-shop methods and serve tea.
“I’ve had bad luck with drinks,” he explained, a remnant of old
sea-faring superstition cropping up in him. “Twice now tea has proved
my undoin’. The third time I’d likely poison somebody outright an’
later swing for it. No, siree, Lemmy! Nobody’s goin’ to coax me into
dishin’ up more tea. We’ll leave that to Althea. I’ll stick to the
things I’m used to.”
Thus it came about that the Green Dolphin was metamorphosed into a
mongrel variety of eating house, where, with Lemuel Gill’s help, Asaph
served chowders, fried clams, clam fritters, and the sea foods with
which he was familiar, and as a result its fame travelled broadcast the
length and breadth of the Cape. Lines of cars, like gigantic serpents,
stretched down the narrow, grassy lane, and every seat at the tables
was filled.
The owner of the place puffed and panted in frenzied attempts to care
for the legion of guests.
“Land alive, Lemmy!” murmured he. “What have we set a-goin’? There’s
more folks crowdin’ in here than we have chairs for. I can’t account
for it no way. There ain’t any tea. I’ve explained that. An’ there
ain’t no lace mats, flowers, or one of the fixin’s Althea maintained
was necessary to draw trade; an’ still the people come.”
“Mebbe it’s the garden,” suggested simple-minded Lemmy Gill.
“Mebbe.”
“Or mebbe the sage tea done the trick.” The Captain darted from his
small, beady eyes a quizzical glance at his friend.
“There, I’m glad you spoke of that tea,” rejoined Asaph. “I’ve been
meanin’ to have a look at the syringa bush. ’Twill be interestin’ to
see what effect a tonic like that has on flowers.”
CHAPTER X
On Saturday, to the consternation of the tea-shop managers, a letter
from Althea arrived announcing that owing to a tangle of circumstances
too complex to explain, she should be forced to prolong her absence
from home for an indefinite period; she was both sorry and apologetic
and she offered half a page of regrets. Nevertheless in spite of them
it was evident she had not the least intention of shortening her stay.
“Them Tylers!” wrathfully exploded Captain Gill. “Them damn Tylers! I
wish to mercy Althea had either been born without relations or else
without such a conscience. What does she gain by bendin’ herself
backwards to do her duty? It only gets her an’ the rest of us into
trouble.”
Asaph offered no response. He dared not reply lest in this moment of
weakness and discouragement he endorse Lemuel’s philosophy.
“It will mean mannin’ the boats for another pull, I s’pose,” ventured
he wearily. “Still, I reckon we can do it; eh, pardner?”
“Folks can always do what they have to,” grunted Lemuel. “All the same
I think Althea’d oughter come home. What does she ’magine is happenin’
to her Dolphin?”
“I dunno. She ’pears to have forgotten there is such a critter.”
“Ain’t you written her how business was boomin’?”
“No. To tell the truth I ain’t had time. Furthermore I’ve been
expectin’ every day she’d come walkin’ in. I did send her one postal
but there warn’t room on it to--”
“Don’t you believe if she knew how the shop’s blossomed out she’d--”
“Hurry back?” interrogated Asaph, completing the unfinished sentence.
“No, I don’t. Once she made up her mind her duty was to bail Sarah
out she’d stand by till she was bailed. That’s the way Althea’s made.
Her sense of right an’ wrong is somethin’ prodigious. A letter would
no more move her than a charge of dynamite. She’d just say folks must
do the will of the Lord no matter what fate overtook ’em. Althea’s a
powerful good woman, Lemmy.”
“I know that,” promptly agreed Captain Gill. “If all the world was
as Christian the millennium wouldn’t be long a-comin’. Still in this
case--”
Alas, Abington was too far away to render Lemuel’s ethical opinions
of value. Thus it came about that the two cronies launched forth on a
second week of the Dolphin, and as the days dragged on and the glories
of their success began to be overshadowed by fatigue, Peggy Davidson
suddenly made her appearance.
She knocked timidly at the kitchen door early one warm afternoon.
“May I come in?” she asked.
Asaph, who with gingerly care was bringing the sacred green china
from the pantry, started at the sound of a feminine voice and all but