The Green Dolphin
the blooms on the rubbish heap. Givin’ ’em to Miss Crosby is a good way
to use ’em up.”
Asaph ruminated.
“Ain’t all this prunin’ somethin’ new?” he asked. “I don’t recall your
ever thinnin’ down your bushes at such a rate before.”
Lemuel straightened up and smiled pleasantly.
“It is kinder a new notion,” admitted he suavely. “In fact it’s an
experiment. Mebbe I never shall try it again. It’ll depend on how it
works out.”
“It oughter benefit the plants,” asserted the literal-minded Asaph.
“Books say it will. I’ll be interested to see what comes of it.”
“So shall I.” Smiling to himself Lemmy began to hum a little tune.
For an interval neither man spoke. Then Asaph presently continued:
“Puttin’ Rebecca aside, what of Peggy Davidson? You say you ain’t
comfortable in your mind about her.”
“I ain’t. I can’t for the life of me help feelin’ that navy feller
ain’t the one for her to marry; an’ what’s more I suspect both Althea
an’ Rebecca feel same’s I do about it.”
“Althea ain’t never breathed any such word to me.”
“Mebbe not. Mebbe she wouldn’t think she’d oughter express an opinion
concernin’ Peggy’s affairs. She might rate ’em as none of her business.
I know she holds marriages to be terrible solemn, an’ don’t approve of
ordinary mortals meddlin’ with ’em. She told me so once herself.”
“Oh, you wouldn’t ketch Althea meddlin’ with matrimonial doin’s,”
agreed Asaph. “She believes matin’ folks is the Lord’s lookout.
Still, her convictions wouldn’t prevent her bein’ distressed if she
saw a match goin’ awry.” He paused to twine a slender tendril of the
grapevine round an adjacent wire. “What makes you think she an’ ’Becca
are bothered about Peggy?”
“I dunno. I ain’t really got no reason. I just sorter feel it in my
bones. Now an’ then I’ve caught Althea eyin’ Eric an’ the Parker
girl almost as if she somehow held herself to blame for their bein’
together.”
“Nonsense! Why, she’s pleased to death they’re so happy.”
The argument did not appear to convince Lemuel. However, he did not
pursue the subject, but occupied himself for a time by cramming fresh
tobacco into his pipe. Then at last when the smoke began to ascend
skyward in a thin blue spiral, he inquired in a musing voice:
“Do you subscribe to your wife’s notion that marriages are made in
heaven, Asaph?”
Asaph deliberated.
“Wall, as to that I ain’t fully prepared to say,” returned he with
judicial caution. “’Course I believe the Lord throws folks in other
folks’ way.”
“But after gettin’ ’m there?”
His crony rocked back and forth on his heels.
“That’s where the rub comes. I’d hardly be ready to state He then left
’em there high an’ dry--kinder washed His hands of ’em,” philosophized
he. “Still, you couldn’t actually expect Him to do more, could you?
’Tain’t ever His policy to put through the whole of a job. He always
shifts some part of it off onto us. For example He leaves us to save
our own souls. He don’t land us in the Kingdom of Heaven without we
make some effort of our own to get there. An’ I call that square
dealin’, too.”
“Then as you figger it, Peggy, Eric, that Lieutenant Shattuck, Eleanor
Parker, an’ Rebecca Crosby were all of ’em kinder coaxed to Belleport
a-purpose,” Lemuel said, with an earnestness he seldom displayed.
“What you includin’ Rebecca for? She’s got nothin’ to do with marriage.”
“No,” squeaked Lemmy. “No, of course not. She’s got nothin’ in the
world to do with it. I only mentioned her ’cause she happened to be
here.”
“True enough! So she does. Likely, too, the Lord had an aim in sendin’
her hither. When I see what a place she’s made for herself here at the
Dolphin I can well believe it. She an’ Althea are like sisters. Even I
feel towards ’Becca as if she was my own flesh an’ blood. ’Twill be a
sad day for us when she leaves town.”
“Leaves town!”
“Why, yes. Much as I hate to think of it, I s’pose she will have to go
when the season’s over. There won’t be any cause for her to stay on
after the tea-shop closes. The Dolphin will be shuttin’ its doors by
October.”
“But--but--” Helplessly Lemuel halted.
“Not but what we’d admire to keep ’Becca with us an’ give her a home
through the winter,” Asaph went on. “But she has her livin’ to earn
an’ I s’pose must go where folks can pay her. We couldn’t afford to do
that. Already Althea’s suggested her remainin’ an’ she’s refused.”
“When did you say the Dolphin would be closin’ up?”
“By the middle of October, at the latest.”
Lemuel began to count in absent fashion on his fingers.
“What you doin’?” demanded Asaph, watching him curiously.
“I? Doin’?” He started. “I--I--dunno. I was just kinder--”
“I’ll bet I know,” came in triumph from his comrade. “You were
figgerin’ how many weeks it would be before the green china would be in
dry dock an’ we’d be free to work in our gardens. Now warn’t you?”
But to the prophet’s astonishment the suggestion failed to produce a
jubilant echo in his brother horticulturist. Instead, Lemmy looked
gravely before him out over the water.
“I ain’t minded the tea drinkin’ a mite; nor the green china neither,”
said he. “In fact, I’ve enjoyed ’em.”
Having delivered himself of this astounding intelligence, he turned
abruptly on his heel and without another word walked moodily off in the
direction of his own domicile.
CHAPTER XIX
It was an alluring spot, the little lane through which his path took
him. Hedged in between sweet fern and bayberry, and tangles of wild
grape that climbed the stunted oaks until their faint pink tips
levelled one’s head, it was a place to bewitch the eye and charm the
imagination. Across its shade danced fantastic splashes of sunlight,
and far at the end of its green-arched vista lay the sea, brilliant as
sapphire and shimmering with gold.
Whenever Lemuel traversed this dim, silent path the spell of its
loveliness smoothed every wrinkle from his brow and brought to his
heart a sense of companionship and peace. But today, although his
feet lagged along the shadowy expanse, the tranquillity he sought
eluded him. Instead, out of a turmoil of misery that seethed like a
tempestuous sea, there crystallized the realization that his whole
future was futile and hopeless.
What had he to live for? A few roses; a stalk or two of delphinium; a
blaze of dahlias--fair weather comrades who deserted when blue skies
and sunshine gave way to the chill of winter. That was all raising
flowers amounted to.
To be sure, he had Asaph Holmes. But even Asaph’s friendship, stanch
as it was, was not what it had been in the halcyon days before his
marriage. Not but that he was every inch as loyal. Indeed, whenever
occasion presented he took particular pains to exaggerate the
unalterableness of his affection. Nevertheless, for all his bravado he
was different. Marriage was bound to transform a man. The very fact of
a wife’s presence restricted the old-time freedom.
Lemuel had not been blind to his crony’s frenzied diplomacy, or the
attempts he made to cajole, translate, smooth, and keep the peace. To
be sure, he and Althea, by mutual forbearance, had succeeded in getting
on surprisingly well together. He would not have dreamed he could come
to regard her with such a measure of esteem. Nevertheless, he was
perfectly aware he was not her sort.
Was he anybody’s sort, he speculated. An indulgent world overlooked
his faults and even good-humoredly applauded his virtues in a careless
sort of way. But did anyone really entertain for him more than a
surface regard? Did Eric Hollingsworth rate him as worthwhile? Did
Peggy Davidson? Or, to narrow the interrogation down to a very specific
point, did Rebecca Crosby?
Ah, that was the all-important question. To deny it and beat about the
bush was useless. Rebecca was the one individual out of the entire
universe who mattered. The others, worthy and delightful as they were,
were mere flotsam and jetsam on the tide of humanity. Peggy Davidson
was uncontestably a gem of her sex; but Rebecca! There was a woman for
you! Beside her the fascinations and virtues of every other female
paled into nothingness.
What a tower of strength she was! How versatile and many sided! Why,
she was resourceful as a magician and yet withal so simple, modest, and
human. How could she have escaped being arrogant and self-esteeming
when everything she turned her hand to was done so well? Her cooking
now--it couldn’t be surpassed; you could tell with your eyes shut
just which dishes were of her concocting. She never over-salted or
under-sweetened; never used too much pepper or too little butter.
And her darning! It looked better than the cloth itself. As for her
buttons, they seemed to be held in place by a superhuman power, so firm
and immovable were they.
Then she was such a cheery person--always with something sparkling at
the tip of her tongue. She was never at a loss for words, as he was.
Strange how stupid he had become of late. He used to be quite a wit--at
least Zeke Barker and the men down on the shore seemed to consider him
so. But, alas, whatever brilliancy he had once boasted had vanished,
leaving him tongue-tied and abashed as a gawky schoolboy.
Rebecca Crosby must consider him a clumsy hulk of a man. Indeed, it
was evident she did by the fashion in which she avoided him. He could
see her now whisking into the house or out into the garden every time
he put in his appearance. What a figure she had! Trim and neat as a
girl’s. And how up-and-coming she held her head!
Then there was her love for flowers. Didn’t it beat all how she
understood their ways and liked the very kinds he was most partial to?
And her disposition! She was never ruffled or flurried, never impatient
or on edge, like Althea.
And to cap these many virtues she could see a joke!
Oh, she was a rare woman truly--one out of a hundred, a thousand, a
million; in fact she was the only absolutely perfect being on the globe.
He could, he confessed, do with less of Brother Thomas. But was not
that, perhaps, because he was peeved that another man should hold in
Rebecca’s affections a position of such paramount importance? Who
could help being jealous of a smug ghost that so proudly flaunted
his supremacy in one’s face? And yet during his lifetime Brother
Thomas, despite the halo that now encircled his head, had undoubtedly
been a faulty bit of clay like everybody else. Affection certainly
minimized flaws and magnified virtues; so did absence--there could
be no question about that. Deeply as he respected Rebecca’s sisterly
devotion, he could not but wish she would let the dead past bury its
dead, banish the shade to the background of her thoughts, and put her
mind on the present, or rather on the future, for after all the present
was well enough as it was.
Although she scoffed at him, avoided him, tossed her head and laughed
at him over her shoulder, he at least had the morbid satisfaction of
seeing her do it. That was something. Tantalizing as it was, it was
better than the future Asaph Holmes so vividly pictured--the time when
she would be far away and the sun descend from its heaven into an abyss
of blackness--that was a day that would mark the end of the world so
far as he was concerned. What was to become of him then?
What would be the use of dwelling longer upon such an empty and
purposeless planet? How futile it would be to go on living, moving, and
raising flowers! Why, there would be nobody to enjoy them; nobody to
hold them up, caress their curling petals, sniff their perfume, touch
them with gentle fingers. In fact, flowers would no longer thrive if
Rebecca left Belleport, for there would be no more sunshine.
He had just reached this dismal conclusion and sunk unresistingly into