The Green Dolphin
word about the dance your Uncle Ben led the family, or how he skipped
to Mexico with the money from the Allentown bank.”
The blood shot scarlet to Althea’s cheeks.
“He knew?” she whispered.
Asaph nodded.
“Some feller who came down here from Boston told him. But Lemmy’s never
mentioned it to me an’ ’twas only by accident I found he’d heard the
story. A corkscrew couldn’t twist it out of him.”
Althea’s expression softened.
“Lemuel Gill may go round boastin’ how smart you were to cut over your
dress so’st ’twould look like new; but you’ll never find him breathin’
to a soul any scandal of Uncle Ben an’ how he ended up.”
The wife turned away. She had fineness enough to appreciate the
distinction contained in Asaph’s defense of his friend. Moreover, she
was born with sufficient worldly wisdom to realize that her family
escutcheon was in Lemmy’s hands to sully or leave spotless as he saw
fit. The result was that henceforth she seldom cautioned her husband as
to what information he should or should not impart to Captain Gill.
Nevertheless, the episode served as a warning, and when Asaph found
himself confronted by opposing loyalties, the devil on the one hand and
the deep sea on the other, he exercised as great a degree of prudence
and restraint as Lemuel Gill would permit him to.
Such a dilemma now faced him.
At the thought of Althea’s desertion Lemmy could scarcely contain his
ire. He stood primed to take up the cudgels in his friend’s defense,
and assert in no uncertain terms that she who had instigated the Green
Dolphin should have remained at home and attended to it. Asaph saw
war in his eye, and admitted that even a less interested person would
doubtless have held the same view. It did seem reasonable.
Evidently Lemuel sensed that right was on his side and had no
intention of surrendering his ground.
“What’s got the Tylers that they must see Althea today?” persisted he,
after he had waited a proper length of time and received no answer to
his first question.
Inwardly Asaph sighed. There was no help for it. Unless Althea was to
be misjudged and berated he must divulge the facts.
“Teddie’s had a fall an’ has to go to the city for an X-ray.”
“Humph! I don’t see what Althea can do about that.”
“Sarah wanted she should come up an’ keep house for the family while
she took the little chap to a Boston hospital.”
“Keep house!” blazed the Captain. “Keep house! An’ in the meantime
what’s to become of her own place an’ this infernal Dolphin? Who’s to
look out for them, I’d like to know? What’s Althea thinkin’ of? She
can’t clear out an’ leave you high an’ dry now.”
“But she has cleared out.”
“She’s gone already?”
Timidly Asaph nodded.
“An’ ain’t comin’ back today?”
“She feared she mightn’t be back for a week. There’s reasons why--”
“My soul! What in mercy does she think is goin’ to become of her
tea-shop in the meantime? Ain’t she advertised it in ’most every
newspaper on Cape Cod? I’ve read the notices--trudged way up to the
village readin’ room a-purpose to see ’em in print:”
“‘_The Green Dolphin will open June first for tea an’ light
refreshments. Hours three to six. Come for a quiet hour to the Sign
of the Dolphin, Shore Road, Belleport._’”
“Quiet hour!” broke in Asaph. “Did she say that? She ain’t givin’ ’em
leave to stay an hour, is she?”
“Oh likely that was just her way of wordin’ it,” consoled Lemuel on
witnessing his companion’s horror. “Most of ’em wouldn’t want to stay
an hour anyway. City folks can’t sit still that long; they have to keep
movin’.”
“But if she’s promised ’em they can stay an hour they’ll have the right
to,” insisted Asaph, his sense of equity to the fore. “’Twouldn’t be
square to shoo ’em out short of their full time. It’ll mean dishin’ ’em
gallons of tea, though.”
“Oh, they won’t be drinkin’ tea all that time,” was Lemmy’s answer.
“But what’ll be the use of their hangin’ round here if they ain’t?”
“They’ll be lookin’ at the view, smellin’ your flowers--”
“She didn’t tell ’em they could do that, did she?” cried the man
indignantly.
“No, not in so many words.”
“Then I sha’n’t let ’em,” snapped out Asaph. “Smellin’ my flowers! I
guess not. I ain’t goin’ to have every Tom, Dick, an’ Harry treadin’ my
garden down an’ mebbe spoilin’ it.”
“I don’t blame you for feelin’ so,” agreed Captain Gill. “If folks was
to go pickin’ them irises of yours now--”
“They ain’t goin’ to pick ’em,” shouted his crony. “Ain’t I sent far
an’ wide to get them plants? There ain’t a garden anywhere round here
that has so many kinds of iris as mine. My iris an’ my hollyhocks can’t
be beat. Roses I ain’t so much on. That feller up to Bridgewater has
me skun to a finish. Still I ain’t so bad on Ramblers; an’ my Silver
Moon will reach the ridgepole this season, see if it don’t. How’s yours
doin’, Lemmy?”
“Growin’ like a queen. Some of the blossoms are a good seven inches
across.”
“Huh!”
“What?”
“I just said nonsense. You can’t stuff me with a yarn like that. No
Silver Moon livin’ ever had a seven-inch blossom.”
“Mine has.”
There was no reply.
“I tell you it has!” blustered Captain Gill in a louder tone.
“There, there, Lemmy--don’t go gettin’ het up. Have it your own way,”
soothed his peaceable host.
“You don’t believe it, though.”
“I didn’t ’xactly say that.”
“But you don’t, do you?”
A menacing silence followed.
“In other words you put me down for a liar. All right, Asaph Holmes. If
that’s your ratin’ of me I may’s well go back where I come from.”
Magnificently the Captain rose and drawing his spare little figure up
to the last quarter inch he strode with dignity toward the gate.
“You might at least have told me your Madonnas had come out,” called he
in an aggrieved tone as he passed into the road.
“I didn’t know they had,” declared Asaph hurrying after him. “I’ve been
so upset about Althea goin’ I forgot to look at ’em.”
“They’re out--every durn one of ’em,” exclaimed Lemmy, forgetting his
anger in the excitement of the moment. “Even the little sickly one that
we thought was goin’ to dry up an’ not blossom at all is bloomin’ like
a star. Did you ever see a prettier sight? How white they look against
the sky! That big one on the second stalk must be full as large as my
Silver Moon rose,” concluded he magnanimously.
“It can’t be,” protested the delighted gardener, who, proud as a father
glimpsing his first son, triumphantly surveyed the flower.
“Yes, it is--every mite. How much should you say it measured across?”
pressed Lemmy.
“I don’t know. Five inches, mebbe.”
“I reckon that after all my rose ain’t bigger’n that,” admitted the
horticulturist. “Sizes are misleadin’.”
“So they are.”
For an interval the two men stood bending over the lilies, drinking in
their perfume. Then as if nothing had occurred Captain Gill wheeled
about and sauntered with his friend back to his place on the steps.
“Say, Asaph, how you goin’ to manage without Althea?” questioned he,
abruptly.
“I don’t know,” confided the proprietor of the Dolphin, ignoring in
his turn the recent unpleasantness. “She was of the opinion that folks
wouldn’t be comin’ for tea much at first. You know it always takes the
public a while to get started on a new idea. In case, though, anyone
should straggle in she baked a lot of cake an’ stuff an’ I’m to give
’em that.”
“Most likely nobody’ll come,” was the comforting retort. “Should they
heave in sight remember you can signal me. I can brew tea an’ coffee
that’s good as anybody’s; an’ I can turn out a rip-snorter of a clam
chowder--if I do say it myself.”
“I’ll back your chowder makin’, Lemmy,” attested his friend. “You have
the world beat on that dish. I’d like some this minute.”
“What do you say we go dig a bucket of clams an’ make one?” suggested
Lemuel, catching up the idea. “’Twould seem like old times. We ain’t
had a chowder together--I don’t know the day. The tide’s goin’ out an’
’twill be low water soon. Let’s make a spree of it. Come on over to my
shack with your pail an’ fork an’ we’ll stew up such a chowder as never
was!”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, Lemmy,” objected Asaph. “What would become of
the Dolphin?”
“Lock it up.”
“Althea wouldn’t like it.”
“Why not?”
“Somebody might come.”
“Let ’em pound. If you warn’t here you’d be saved that much trouble.”
“They might break in an’ take somethin’.”
“You ain’t carin’ if my things are stole,” responded Lemuel, reproach
in his tone.
“They wouldn’t be. Who’s goin’ to wade waist high through a jungle of
tick grass an’ sand to overhaul a shanty that ain’t ever locked day
or night, an’ that’s been invitin’ thieves to come an’ carry it off
for the last quarter century? But it’s different with the Dolphin.
Everybody knows Althea must have laid in knives, forks, an’ spoons, an’
while I ain’t boastin’ they’re solid silver, still they’re skun over
with it thick enough to attract some mean cuss.”
“So you ain’t goin’ to have the chowder after all.”
“Sure I’m goin’ to have it,” contradicted Asaph, unable to endure the
disappointment in Lemmy’s face. “You didn’t think I intended to give
it up, did you? No, siree! Only we’ll make it here, Lemmy, instead of
over to your place. We’ll dig the clams an’ shuck ’em in our shed. I’ve
pork, crackers, potatoes, and onions in the house, an’ luckily plenty
of milk, too. I’ve got all the fixin’s right in the pantry.”
Lemuel beamed until his beady blue eyes threatened to be swallowed up.
“You know, now I come to think of it, that Silver Moon rose of mine
ain’t a mite more’n four inches across,” announced he irrelevantly.
CHAPTER VII
Probably the person who would have been most concerned could she
have known what was happening at home would have been Althea, who
while entertaining for Lemuel Gill a warm esteem was not blind to his
happy-go-lucky standards of living. She was a realist, and to pretend
to one of her unimaginative temperament that Lemmy was not idle,
shiftless and shabby would have been futile. Although an ocean rolled
before his door into which he might have dived for pearls; dropped
nets for food; and plunged for cleanliness and refreshment, he seldom
troubled its waters for any of these services, contenting himself
merely with gazing at its flashing foam.
Day after day and year after year he had looked upon the vast expanse
before him, delighting in its smiles and frowns and failing to
appreciate the material advantages of its proximity. Nevertheless he
must have derived something of value from its presence, or he would not
have remained where its surge and swell all but lapped his doorsill.
Just what the immensity of blue meant to him he could not, perhaps,
have put into words. There were golden June days when a spray of his
Dorothy Perkins, pink with blossoms and swaying against the sweep of
sea and sky, sent a throb of delight pulsing over him; the fairness of
a lily opening its chalice to the sun was lovelier, in his opinion,
when its perfumes mingled with the salty air; and the whisper of the
tide was a song he never tired of hearing.
Lemuel Gill may have been careless and untidy of body, but over his
soul there broke a hundred times a day floods of beauty that kept it
pure and unspotted.
Then there was his code of honor, for casual as he was he had his
own particular credo. He did not hesitate to borrow a clam fork and
forget to return it; or borrow money, either, in the same irresponsible
fashion; and he gossiped like a magpie. But the town agreed he never
passed on a slander or failed a friend.
“Lemmy’s made up of a streak of fat an’ a streak of lean, Althea,”
explained Asaph to his wife; and possibly this characterization of his