The Green Dolphin
With boyish jubilance the Doctor caught up the basket. Already the
spell of the summer day was upon him, its enchantment, like an opiate,
deadening the poignancy of his wounds.
Rebecca waved him out of sight. Then when he was lost amid the pines
that edged the little lane she hastened indoors.
“What do you s’pose has happened?” cried she, bursting breathlessly in
on Althea. “One of those brass-trimmed navy chaps has chased Peggy down
here!”
“Land alive! How’d you know?”
“The Doctor was here an’ told me. Gloomy as the grave he was; an’ mad
as a hatter. We’ve got to do somethin’ with him or he may get himself
into mischief. I’ve sent him off gatherin’ evergreens. When he comes
back we’ll put him to work. Can’t he slice bread?”
“Oh, he’d get it too thick.”
“Well, some chore has got to be provided for him till he pulls himself
together.” Rebecca pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I have it!” she
exclaimed. “We’ll set him to foldin’ paper napkins.”
“Law! That’s child’s play. He’d have ’em done in no time.”
“Let him fold a lot--dozens of ’em. Trot out all you have stowed in the
attic. They’ve got to be folded sometime, an’ may’s well be done one
time as another. They’ll take his mind up an’ keep him from thinkin’ of
himself.”
“I can’t for the life of me see why he didn’t clinch matters with Peggy
an’ make sure of her when the coast was clear an’ he had the chance,”
grumbled Althea. “Here he’s had her to himself since June. Why ain’t he
perked up an’ said somethin’ instead of dallyin’ round day after day?”
“Mebbe he hadn’t the nerve to speak,” excused the more charitable
Rebecca. “Brother Thomas used often to say the bravest men turned
weak-kneed when it came to proposin’.”
“Well, his philanderin’ may cost him a good wife,” sniffed her
companion.
“Not if he goes at things right,” asserted Miss Crosby sagely.
Curiously enough, despite her spinsterhood, it was Rebecca who was
conceded to be the authority in all affairs of the heart. Her lynxlike
eyes were ever on the unconscious Peggy and her swain, studying the
amatory barometer and passing on her observations to her less acutely
observant associate.
The times she had coaxed Asaph out of the grape arbor that the youthful
pair might enjoy its seclusion, and prevented Lemuel Gill from breaking
in upon a tête-à-tête of delicious nothings were innumerable. Like an
anxious mother bird fluttering protectingly over her fledglings she
would remark:
“Seem’s if she’s sorter offish this afternoon. When I took in their tea
they weren’t speakin’. She was just settin’ lookin’ at the table an’
playin’ with her spoon. I hope to mercy nothin’s wrong.”
Or:
“He’s terrible cast down today. I’m most afraid they’ve had a fallin’
out.”
“They were all right when I saw ’em five minutes ago,” Althea would
respond.
“A lot of damage can be done in five minutes,” would be the oracle’s
sagacious answer.
So the days had passed, Cupid’s temperature being taken every time his
form ventured into sight.
Hence it was scarcely a wonder that the advent of a hero bedizened with
gold braid set both Althea and the watchful Rebecca into almost as
violent a flurry as it had Eric Hollingsworth.
“I wish to mercy this brass-buttoned chap had stayed away,” wailed
Althea for the twentieth time. “What will happen now, I wonder? Ain’t
you worried to death, ’Becca? I am. Girls are so foolish an’ those
uniforms--” She paused helplessly.
“Pooh! Don’t go takin’ too much stock in all that gilt trumpery,” was
Rebecca’s contemptuous response. “Let this navy officer be what he
will, I’ll risk the Doctor against him. His good looks alone will carry
him. Women think a lot of that.”
“Mebbe. Still I’m sorry the man’s turned up, ain’t you?”
“Not altogether. It makes things more excitin’. You certainly couldn’t
expect a girl pretty as Peggy to have but one string to her bow. Livin’
in Cambridge as she does right alongside of that Harvard College
crammed with men, ’twould be queer enough had no one noticed her.”
“Goodness, ’Becca! What an upsettin’ notion!”
Miss Crosby appeared to enjoy her friend’s chagrin.
“I don’t see how you can take it all so lightly,” went on Althea. “The
whole thing is gettin’ me so on edge I feel’s if ’twas I the Doctor was
in love with. Asaph’s growin’ jumpy, too; an’ only last night Lemmy
Gill told me he thought fallin’s in love were terrible unsettlin’.”
“Captain Gill said that?”
“Yes. He declared a love affair was as uncomfortable as anything he’d
ever had dealin’s with.”
“I wonder he don’t let ’em alone then,” sniffed Miss Rebecca.
Nevertheless, something in the Captain’s observation seemed to amuse
her vastly, for she laughed beneath her breath.
“What you laughin’ at?”
“Nothin’. Just somethin’ I was thinkin’ of.”
“I wish I could laugh as you do over Peggy an’ her concerns,” Althea
sighed. “You ’pear to relish the mess. The more tangled up it gets the
better you seem to like it. I believe you’re a born match-maker.”
“I’ll own to havin’ had my finger in quite a few love affairs in my
day,” smiled Rebecca.
“How ever did you dare?”
“Providence needs aid occasionally,” was the retort. “I know the sayin’
goes that marriages are made in heaven; but they have to take place on
earth for all that. I’ve made four marriages to my certain knowledge
durin’ my lifetime--possibly five. An’ I’ve helped on dozens.”
“Rebecca Crosby!”
The horror in Althea’s ejaculation was unconcealed.
“Yes,” added Miss Crosby, ignoring the interruption and proceeding with
serenity, “I’m sure I can take credit for five marriages at least.”
“How’d they turn out?”
“All right; as well as most. They had their ups an’ downs, to be sure,
but that’s to be expected. The fifth one warn’t much to boast of.
Still, I didn’t look for it to be ’specially successful. It wouldn’t
’a’ been anyhow.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, both him an’ her were harpies. Either one of ’em was bound to make
somebody miserable. So I conceived the idea they’d do less damage yoked
together an’ I set ’em on one another,” answered Miss Crosby placidly.
“’Becca!”
“Well, warn’t that plain common sense? Warn’t it far better for
their characters they should get as good as they sent than bully an’
tyrannize all their days over some meek, timid soul who’d knuckle under
to ’em an’ just make ’em worse?”
“E--r--p’raps so,” foundered Althea, who obviously felt herself beyond
her depth when confronted by such novel ethics.
“I reasoned that way, anyhow,” continued the philosopher, “an’ I ain’t
ever seen cause to change my mind. It certainly was better two folks
should be miserable than four.”
“I dunno but ’twas,” groped Althea uncertainly.
For an interval the loud ticking of the clock and the distant murmur of
the surf were the only sounds in the room.
“Queer you never married yourself, ’Becca--an’ you so keen on
match-makin’,” ventured Mrs. Holmes, having completed in thoughtful
silence the buttering of the pyramid of bread before her.
“I? Oh, mercy! I’ve seen enough of men,” Rebecca bristled. “I wouldn’t
be bothered with ’em. Besides, I had Mother an’ Aunt Feemie to think
of; an’ afterward there was Brother Thomas.”
“You nursed all those folks?”
“I was glad to do it. It was because of Mother’s sickness I gave up
teachin’, you know.”
Althea did not reply at once. Instead she meditatively beat to a cream
the butter in the blue china bowl before her.
Then she remarked softly as if half to herself:
“It was kind of a pity, ’Becca.”
“My givin’ up teachin’ you mean?” came in an even tone from the other
woman. “Well, I was sorter sorry because--”
“I didn’t mean that.”
For response Miss Crosby cocked her head critically to one side and let
a spoonful of fragrant orange frosting drip with gentle, clock-like
beats into the dish in her lap.
“Should you say this icin’ was stiff enough?” was her irrelevant query.
CHAPTER XVI
The afternoon was at its height and the Dolphin gay with patrons, when
a low grey car rolled up to the Holmes’s gate and from it alighted
Peggy Davidson and a young naval lieutenant. The girl was wearing a
clinging gown fashioned from some soft woolen fabric, and a saucy
little hat cast a warm rosy shadow over her face.
It was plain from the deliberation with which the pair dallied along
between the tall foxgloves and nodding purple monkshood bordering
the path that they were far more interested in one another than in
afternoon tea. Nevertheless, they at length ascended the steps leading
to the veranda and, searching out a table just vacated by a couple no
more hungry than themselves, they sat down.
Althea spied them and hastened forward.
“Oh, Mrs. Holmes, how good it is to see you!” cried Peggy, placing her
hand with a gesture of caress on the elder woman’s arm. “I want you to
meet Lieutenant Shattuck who is here from Annapolis.”
The officer rose. He was a fine specimen of young manhood--erect,
clean-shaven, and with a frank, appealing smile that instantly put
Althea at her ease.
“I tell him,” continued Peggy, “that the Dolphin has the best tea to be
found anywhere in the world; and that is a daring claim to make to a
connoisseur who has travelled the globe and sampled tea in almost every
port under the sun.”
“I shall be afraid to offer him ours,” smiled Althea half timidly.
“You needn’t be. We do not need to apologize for our Dolphin brew,”
dimpled the girl. “Besides, he is just home from a cruise to the Orient
and at present everything American has a halo resting on it.” She toyed
with her spoon to avoid the glance her companion flashed her. “Do tell
me how things are going here,” she went on, addressing Althea. “Miss
Rebecca is still with you?”
“Oh, yes, indeed! We couldn’t live without ’Becca.”
“She’s wonderful, isn’t she?” agreed Peggy. “And Mr. Holmes and the
Captain are as busy with their flowers as ever, I suppose.”
“Still a-putterin’ same’s they were when you were here. They’d be in
the garden from sunrise to sunset if they were let alone.”
“A garden is a tremendously engrossing thing,” laughed Peggy. “I must
see them before I go and hear just what’s in bloom. And speaking of
flowers, how lovely yours are today!” She motioned toward a jar of
cedar where blue berries starred the foliage like jewels.
“They do look nice. Doctor Hollingsworth fixed ’em.”
“Eric! Why, I’d no idea he had so much artistic ability. He has been
hiding his light under a bushel. Offer him my compliments when next you
see him.”
“You can offer them yourself. He’ll be here in a minute; he’s out in
the kitchen.”
“Is he?” Peggy seemed taken aback. “Well, I’m glad to know he is making
himself useful. With such a crowd as you have today you certainly need
all the aid you can muster. I actually felt guilty to come and swell
the number you already have to wait upon.”
“You needn’t have,” was Althea’s instant retort. “I guess if anybody’s
earned the privilege of bein’ waited on at the Dolphin it’s you. What
shall I bring you with your tea? We’ve lobster salad sandwiches, cheese
dreams, cinnamon toast--”
“You choose for me, Mrs. Holmes. I adore being surprised, you know.
Lieutenant Shattuck gave me a genuine thrill when he appeared
unannounced at the Inn Saturday.”
“Are you stayin’ long, sir?” questioned Althea, addressing the stranger.
“I hope so,” responded the officer, smiling in friendly fashion. “It
all depends. My ship is to pick me up later at Provincetown; but I do
not know when.”
“In the meantime I shall bring him here very often,” announced Peggy,
with a pretty air of proprietorship. “I want him to become acquainted
with all the nice things the Cape has to offer, and I hold the Dolphin
to be the very nicest of the collection. Now we must not monopolize you