The Green Dolphin
long have you been gettin’ ready for this thing? An’ when under the sun
did you make all this stuff?”
“Oh, off an’ on. When you were readin’ mostly. An’ sometimes when Lemmy
Gill was here.”
The historian cursed Sherman, Sheridan, and Lemuel Gill along with them.
“We can put up this dolphin where the cross roads branch, over toward
Wilton,” explained Althea. “I’ve printed out a notice to go with it,
tellin’ just where our house is situated an’ the hours the tea-room
will be open.”
She heard a faint groan but did not heed it.
“You won’t mind walkin’ over there an’ settin’ the sign in place, will
you?” she coaxed. “It isn’t far.”
The assertion that it was a good mile to the Wilton fork if it was a
step trembled on the victim’s tongue, and but for the grace of God
would have fallen from it. But a power greater than himself helped him
to nod acquiescence.
Althea beamed upon him.
“I knew you’d come to the rescue,” said she. “It’s twice the fun for us
to run the Dolphin together.”
“I ain’t runnin’ much of it,” was the grim retort.
“You’re doin’ your full part,” comforted his spouse, mistaking irony
for an apology. “Of course a man can’t do so much at a scheme of this
sort as a woman--especially at the outset. Still, it’s nice to have you
sympathetic an’ later on there’ll be more for you to do.”
The sobering effect of the latter clause prevented Asaph from refuting
the commendation contained in the former. He would have proclaimed in
no uncertain terms that when the Dolphin was once launched he intended
to wash his hands of it had not Althea’s eyes shone so brightly.
“I’ve set my heart on openin’ the place the first of June,” went on his
wife. “I reckon we can manage to get things ready by that time.”
Sadly he agreed. Althea’s efficiency! Alas, how he had prided himself
upon it and lived secure within its shadow; and now what a boomerang
it was proving! With all his heart he wished she had been a helpless,
clinging parasite instead of this mountain of ability. However, such
wishes were futile now.
Meanwhile, as the tea-room materialized, wonder, admiration, and awe
hypnotized mutiny into subjection. He finished the chairs, stencilling
the last hateful dolphin upon them, and when his wife declared herself
pushed for time he heard his voice volunteering to hang the chintz
curtains. He had not meant to be beguiled into this concession and was
surprised to discover he had been.
Later in the same somnambulistic mood he found himself at the Wilton
cross roads, the wooden dolphin in one hand and in the other the
invitation to all the world to come and drink tea on his veranda or in
his sitting room. The indignity of it! What peace would there be for
him henceforth, he mused. What possibility of quiet with his books?
If only Althea had not clung so tenaciously to the word we and the
delusion that they were partners in the venture! Or if, even at this
eleventh hour, he had the courage to rise up, repudiate the Dolphin and
its attendant ignominies, and flee to Lemuel Gill’s! Lemmy would grant
him a refuge. Lemmy always granted everybody everything. But alas! this
avenue of escape disappeared like a mirage even as the thought of it
came before his imagination, for to cast off the Dolphin would mean
to cast off Althea as well, and to such an alternative he refused to
subscribe.
Jealously as he resented the fact that her fate and that of the hated
cetacean were irrevocably intertwined, there was no denying it. He
loathed the very thought of the monster. Moreover, it really wasn’t a
dolphin at all. Althea’s zoölogical knowledge had its limitations, and
so, too, had her artistic prowess. What she had actually created was a
mongrel habitant of the deep, a fictitious combination of sea-serpent
and whale--interesting, perhaps; decorative--but in no way true to life.
Althea had always attacked science from this casual angle. It was
the outstanding flaw in her. Zealously as he had tried to correct it
and mold her mind into grooves of greater technical accuracy, he had
failed. It seemed not to matter to her how far away Mars was, whether
a mastodon was a mammal or an aquatic. She listened, to be sure,
when the matter was discussed, but afterward she either forgot the
information vouchsafed her or garbled it so heedlessly one regretted
having imparted it.
Perhaps no defect a wife could have been born with would have been more
patience-trying to a person of Asaph Holmes’s peculiar bent of mind
than was this vice of Althea’s. Nevertheless, human nature has its
idiosyncrasies, and we are what we are.
Althea had not many corners to be avoided, excused, and made light of.
Certainly loyalty to her own flesh and blood could scarcely be
condemned as a blot on her character. And yet in the present instance
this devotion took on the guise of a flagrant crime. At least the
result of it appeared heinous, for to be left alone with a tea-shop
on one’s hands--a tea-shop to which he had never whole-heartedly
subscribed--was no small calamity to face, and that was the dilemma
that now confronted Asaph Holmes.
“It’s too bad I have to go to Sister Sarah’s just when the Dolphin is
booked to start,” apologized the promoter of the project. “Still, I’ve
no choice in the matter. My relations, of course, come first. I guess
you can manage somehow. It’s early in the season yet an’ most likely
folks won’t have seen the sign.”
“You--you--don’t mean you’re intendin’ to open the shop same’s if you
were at home?” quavered her astounded helpmate.
“What else can we do? The date is all announced.”
“’Tain’t much announced,” was the quick argument. “It’s only posted on
the board at the cross roads an’ I can go over there double quick an’
take it down.”
“But it’s announced in other places besides,” returned Althea bending
intently over her sewing.
“What places?”
“Now, Asaph, what use would it be to start a thing unless folks knew
you’d done it? I stuck some notices in the papers.”
“Papers? The newspapers? Which ones?” demanded the man in a
high-pitched voice.
“Oh, the Wilton _Trumpeter_; the Sawyer’s Falls _Clarion_; the Eastport
_Signal_--quite a few of ’em. I can’t name ’em all now. I can get you
the list.” List! There was a whole list of ’em? Good Lord!
CHAPTER VI
Althea’s parting admonition as she drove down the sandy road bound for
Abington was:
“Now, Asaph, you’ll do the best you can with the Dolphin till I get
back, won’t you?”
And then she disappeared behind the curving shore and was lost in the
depths of the plumy-tipped pines crowding one another for a peep at the
highway.
Asaph was still half resentfully pondering her injunction when Lemmy
Gill’s droning whistle reached his ear and his crony was seen turning
in at the gate.
Now for the last two days Lemuel had been occupied carting kelp from
the beach to spread as fertilizer on his lawn, and therefore tidings of
Althea’s proposed visit had escaped him. Hence in high good humor he
hailed Asaph with the jovial salutation:
“Well, at last the great day’s come, Asaph. It’s certainly a prime one
for business, I’ll say that. The Dolphin couldn’t set sail under a
fairer sky. I s’pose Althea’s in the seventh heaven.”
Lemuel knew all about the Green Dolphin, oh, yes, indeed! Had he not
followed its progress step by step? He always knew everything with
which Asaph Holmes was concerned, and Asaph expected he would. But
today, for some reason the Captain’s leisurely attitude toward life and
the inquisitive gleam in his sharp blue eyes irritated his comrade,
who turned away and began bustling about the piazza in the hope of
conveying the impression that he was too busy for gossip.
“Althea’s gone away,” he called over his shoulder with crisp brevity.
“Gone--gone away!”
“Yes. She had to go up to Abington.” He imparted the news in offhand
fashion struggling to make it appear that such visits were every-day
events and that he regarded them as matters of no importance.
But Lemuel Gill was neither to be rebuffed nor deceived.
“Land alive!” ejaculated he, drawing nearer and dropping expectantly
down on the steps. “Must have been somethin’ magnitudinous that would
coax her to Abington today. I s’pose the Tylers are in the fryin’ pan
again. Wouldn’t you know that Sarah’d contrive to get herself into hot
water just when ’twas least convenient? What’s the matter now?”
When Lemuel Gill wished to know a thing he adopted the direct method
of asking; and if this means failed to bring forth the information he
sought, he asked again. He saw no reason why he should not, since for
almost thirty years Asaph’s affairs had been quite as much his property
as his own. Did he not reciprocate the courtesy by recounting to his
colleague all his doings? He had, to be sure, little to tell, for
Lemmy’s horizon was not an extended one. How many eggs his Plymouth
Rocks laid each day; what he had had for supper; the number of buds on
his Regal lilies; the size of the lobsters caught in his traps; these
together with the gossip picked up at the store formed the boundaries
of his world. Nevertheless, had he been blessed with weightier concerns
he would as unreservedly have prattled them into Asaph’s listening ear.
Such being the case, it was beyond his understanding that the advent
of a woman should in any way interfere with the former arrangement. To
condone with his comrade as he habitually had done seemed only to be
expected; and when the misfortune included wife as well as husband,
why, his interest was simply doubled.
Meanwhile, Asaph, the apex of the triangle, found his position a far
less complicated one to maintain. On the one hand was Lemmy, who,
sensitive as a girl, was deeply wounded by even a hint of reticence
on his part; on the other was Althea, reserved to the verge of
secretiveness, in whom the discovery that every thought emanating from
her mind, every observation that crossed her lips, was passed on to
Lemuel Gill, awakened a disconcerting degree of indignation.
“I do wish, Asaph, you hadn’t told Lemuel about my makin’ over my
weddin’ dress, an’ how I painted the furniture in our bedroom. It’ll be
all over town. You tell him everythin’ that goes on in this house, I do
believe.”
Her husband did not refute the charge.
“Lemmy’s interested,” replied he mildly.
“’Tain’t likely he cares hearin’ how I managed to eke out my sleeves,”
retorted Althea sharply.
“Yes, he does.”
“Well, I ain’t goin’ to tell him,” protested his wife with spirit;
“Lemuel Gill’s a perfect sieve; whatever goes in his ears comes
straight out his mouth. He’ll retail every word told him down at the
store before nightfall.”
“I don’t believe so,” came from Asaph.
“Well, whether he does or not I don’t want you should babble to him all
our doin’s. What goes on in this house is no concern of Lemuel Gill’s.”
For an instant the man was silent.
“I’ve always been in the habit of tellin’ Lemmy everythin’,” he said
presently. “Were I to stop doin’ it now ’twould hurt his feelin’s.
Besides, he never does any harm with what he hears.”
“Didn’t he go blabbin’ all over Belleport about the Dolphin before the
paint was dry on the tables?”
“He did kinder spread the news around. But that was only ’cause he was
tryin’ to help. Remember you did worse yourself, Althea--you put all
about the tea-shop in the newspapers.”
“That was different. I was advertisin’.”
“So was Lemmy. There ain’t a better advertiser to be found in town.
Tell him what you want told an’ he’ll strew the tidin’s about like
wildfire.”
“Tell him what you don’t want told an’ he’ll strew ’em just as far.”
“Not always,” corrected Asaph stoutly. “There’s things wild horses
couldn’t drag out of Lemuel. He ain’t, for instance, ever uttered a