Chapter XIV

It did not take long for the intuitive Rebecca Crosby with her keen scent for romance to detect the delicately poised and altogether delightful state of affairs twixt Peggy Davidson and the young doctor, and vastly interested was she therein.

“It’s easy enough to see how matters stand there,” commented she to Althea after her first meeting with the young people. “He’s so in love with her he scarcely knows which way he’s goin’. I don’t wonder at it either, for she’s pretty as a picture; sensible, too, an’ common.” (By common Rebecca meant democratic.) “Moreover I like him full’s well as I like her. A fine, upstandin’ young chap as you’d find anywheres. Sometimes, though, I pity him he’s so harassed. I s’pose it’s a girl’s way to hector; but there’s moments when it almost seems as if she carried it too far an’ pushed him beyond the limits of endurance. ’Twould serve her right were he to turn on her an’ hand out a bit of her own teasin’.”

“You think she’s too sure of him?”

“Yes. He gives his hand away too plain.”

“Why don’t you put a flea in his ear?”

“I? Law! Why, I hardly know the man. He’d rate me as a meddlesome old maid, I guess, were I to dip my finger into his pie; an’ rightly, too. Besides, there’s no real need for interference. In the long run Doctor Eric will win Miss Peggy without your help or mine, even though she is a mite skittish at present. The two were made for one another.”

“That’s what I told my husband. A blind man could see that. An’ yet, will you believe it, Asaph was as took aback as if I’d put a bomb under his chair when I first mentioned their bein’ in love. He hadn’t even suspected it, an’ here the affair has been goin’ on for weeks right under his nose. He’s awful innocent that way.”

“Men are. My brother Thomas, now, never took in fallin’s in love. There was times when he ’peared stupid as a codfish. The way he’d open his eyes an’ stare at me when I’d tell him a morsel of gossip actually turned me red an’ made me feel pryin’ an’ vulgar to have been suspectin’ what warn’t on the surface.”

“I know,” asserted Althea.

Ah, how perfectly Rebecca understood humanity and what comfort there was in having a person of her wisdom and perspicacity to confide in! Althea wondered she had ever been content with an environment that entirely barred out feminine companionship.

Oh, the satisfaction in discussing with a representative of her own sex whether the cake wouldn’t have been a mite tastier if flavored with burnt almond instead of vanilla; and talking over what the tea-shop patrons wore! Many a time she would tiptoe back with a tray and beckon her associate to peep through a crack at some unsuspecting guest who had figured conspicuously in their conversation.

“That woman settin’ back-to at the middle table is the one I was speakin’ about last night,” she would whisper. “The rich one from out West. Lemmy Gill is positive the man with her is her husband; I say he’s her son. His eyes are the same color as hers an’ his hair, too. Take a look, do, an’ see what you think.”

Or Mrs. Holmes would hurry into the kitchen and remark _sotto voce_: “’Becca, I could trim my black straw hat over exactly like that pink one on the piazza without it costin’ me a cent. There’s nothin’ on it but a rosette of ribbon.”

Nor were these trifling confidences the only ones that passed between the discreet Miss Crosby and her employer. Many matters less trivial were poured into Rebecca’s sympathetic ear and with the unburdening the weight of their annoyance vanished. When Asaph was more disorderly, absent minded, and phlegmatic than usual, and continually placed boxes of sifted loam under foot, what could be more consoling than to discover that during his lifetime Brother Thomas had been addicted to this identical mania.

Indeed, this relative of Rebecca’s appeared to have run the gamut of experience, and duplicating each emotion, fault, and virtue to have embodied the total in an all-embracing philosophy applicable to every issue that could possibly confront human clay.

Was the wheelbarrow left out over night to rust in the fog? Brother Thomas had had to be reminded times without number to bring his in. Or were the eggs forgotten, Brother Thomas, it proved, when present in the flesh had been prone to forget the eggs. Then would follow an amusing recital of what had been done to dry out the weather-beaten wheelbarrow and counter-balance the tragedy of the missing eggs. Such tales, when set forth with Rebecca’s dramatic skill, never failed to be entertaining, dwarfing by their interest present misfortune and wooing one into the best of humor.

Or was the issue less prosaic in content--a filament of ethical or imaginative nature, Brother Thomas had either felt precisely that way or had uttered wise counsel concerning a similar dilemma.

The phrase, “Brother Thomas used often to say,” was perpetually on Rebecca’s lips, until her listeners were forced to the conclusion that if a quarter of the observations credited to this worthy had actually been vouchsafed, Brother Thomas during his earthly pilgrimage must have been a deplorably garrulous talker.

Indeed, so frequently did this absent relative come to the fore that by degrees he became a presence as real as Rebecca herself, lurking like Banquo’s ghost in the background of all the Dolphin affairs, and making at its tea parties the fifth member of the household. Blessed with every virtue, damned with every fault, his modest soul would have been aghast could it have returned to earth and beheld the cenotaph reared to him by an adoring sister.

Yet despite the laurels that wreathed his brows, Brother Thomas was a likable shade, so likable that Lemuel Gill affirmed had he stumbled upon the spirit in the dark, or rounded some corner and found him unexpectedly standing there, far from being alarmed he should clap the apparition on the shoulder and hail him with delight. Unquestionably, Thomas was a cheery phantom. A practical one, too, if Rebecca’s rating of him was to be trusted. One could not picture him in wings and a halo. Instead, it seemed certain that unabashed by the celestial light that played forever on the Great White Throne, Brother Thomas was still arrayed in his blue overalls hitched up by the particular make of suspender he had so vehemently advocated in life.

It was the knowledge of Brother Thomas’s preferences in these intimate matters that made of him so vivid and living a spirit and drove from his personality every taint of the supernatural. One knew exactly what kind of shoe, collar, and razor he had patronized; what make of underwear; what color sock. And so excellent were his ideas concerning these articles that both Lemmy Gill and Asaph gradually found themselves creeping into the specific varieties he had made immortal, and constantly projecting into the other world their congratulations on his unparallelled good taste.

Lemuel, for example, gave over fastening on the buttons of his clothes with wire or catgut, as had been his custom, and proceeded to sew them to his garments with the especial make of linen thread Brother Thomas had discovered to be enduring. He even went farther, and tested out the paragon’s pet cut of tobacco.

As for Asaph, he in turn adopted as his own innumerable methods practised by the departed. Certain of these, it is true, were forced on him by Rebecca, who darned his socks, patched his coat, ironed his shirts after the manner Brother Thomas had preferred.

A kindly creature was Rebecca; one who was always doing some thoughtful act for others. Before she had been at the Holmes’s a day she had remarked:

“As I was passin’ through the entry I noticed the rug needed fixin’ so I took a stitch in it.”

She was continually taking such stitches. She took them here, there, and everywhere. From her belt dangled a red tomato cushion stabbed with needles threaded with black, white, brown, and grey cotton, and whenever she espied a feebly attached button, an escaping hem, the first subtle ravages of a rent, out of her pocket came her blue celluloid thimble and grasping one of the needles adorning the tomato, Rebecca “took a stitch.” Asaph declared no better characterization of her could be given than that afforded by these few significant words, and asserted the phrase should be graven on her tombstone. The stitches were humble, understanding, sympathetic ones, and never failed to promote happiness.

She mended Asaph’s frayed cuffs; shortened Althea’s petticoats; even went so far as to volunteer to darn Eric Hollingsworth’s stockings. It was noticeable, however, that she never presumed to suggest meddling with Lemuel Gill’s precariously constructed wardrobe. Whether she curbed her altruism because of diffidence, or whether the omission resulted from a sense of maidenly propriety, the slight was evidently intentional, for no one of Rebecca’s quick observation could have failed to be aware of the legion of stitches the Captain’s garments required.

To be sure, she occasionally performed for him some especial service, such as offering to secure for him a slip of the hydrangea growing on Brother Thomas’s grave. It had been a signal honor, and Lemmy had been overwhelmed by it, since to get the cutting had meant a trip to Truro. But for all that, a reserve she had not at the outset displayed, almost imperceptibly began to rear itself ’twixt her and the little man. Lemmy, sensitively attuned, sensed the barrier and screwing up his courage tried now and then to surmount it by consulting her about a tailoring problem that outdistanced his amateur skill. But though courteous, Miss Crosby did not encourage these advances, and it was to Althea he subsequently came with his difficulties.

“Seems to me Lemmy’s gettin’ terrible puckered up an’ queer with ’Becca,” remarked Asaph to his wife one night when the two were secure within the fastness of their bedroom.

“Is he?” Althea went on indifferently, braiding her thin pigtail down to its very tip, appearing vastly interested in the process.

“Ain’t you noticed it?”

“I’ve noticed he was extra polite to her, if that’s what you mean.”

“He’s too polite. ’Tain’t natural for him to be that way. He never jokes with her or calls her by her first name, same’s the rest of us do--at least not to her face. Sometimes I wonder has he took a slant against her.”

Althea smiled down at the strand she was weaving.

“I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you,” said she, soothingly. “Everybody can’t take a fancy to everybody else in the world. Besides, he’s no more stilted an’ odd with her than she is with him,” and then she laughed a strange, enigmatical laugh.

“But ’Becca’s such a good soul,” persisted the man, still unsatisfied. “I don’t see how Lemmy can help takin’ to her. What on earth can he find in her to dislike? I can’t for the life of me make it out. You don’t s’pose he’s miffed an’ jealous because of our havin’ her here an’ makin’ so much of her, do you?”

“Mebbe.”

“Wal’, I call it very silly of him an’ I shall tell him so.”

“Now, Asaph, you let Lemmy alone,” commanded his wife with sudden spirit. “Don’t you go meddlin’ with him. You can’t talk people into likin’ others.”

“N--o. No, I reckon you can’t. Still--”

“You know you can’t. You’re far more likely to drive ’em the other way.”

“P’raps you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” came positively from the woman. “You just keep your mouth shut an’ don’t go botherin’ with what don’t concern you.”

“But Lemmy’s affairs do concern me.”

“Possibly--some of them. But there’s others that don’t. Rebecca Crosby’s one. Take my advice an’ hold your tongue regardin’ her.”

“I will if you say so,” mumbled Asaph. “Only I don’t see why--”

“You don’t need to,” Althea retorted and laughed again.

Accordingly Asaph held his peace, and having unloaded this quandary upon his better half’s trustworthy intellect, he dismissed the puzzle from his mind. Even if he had not he would doubtless soon have forgotten it, for there were times when the obstruction estranging Lemmy and Rebecca seemed to disappear altogether and leave them as merry and unrestrained as they had been at first.

On such an evening, the aftermath of a particularly felicitous day, Asaph and his comrade chanced to be dallying in the garden while the women sat nearby, silent in the quiet and coolness of the long summer twilight.

“Can’t you step over an’ have a look at my dahlias, Asaph? They’re comin’ on fine.”

“Not tonight, Lemmy. I’m trackin’ down white grubs. They’ve gnawed away the roots of three of my best campanulas, drat ’em!”

“The pests! Ain’t that always the way?” commiserated the Captain. “There’s no comfort raisin’ flowers. When you ain’t sprayin’ your roses for aphids or black spot you’re chasin’ cut-worms, red spiders, or some other hectorin’ critter. There’s always some fly in the ointment. I can’t for the life of me ever recall just settin’ down to enjoy in peace an’ quiet what I’ve planted. No sooner do I get comfortable on the steps an’ think how pleasant the breeze is than I spy a rambler that needs trainin’ up; a vine that wants prunin’; or some corner that’s smothered in weeds. There’s no such thing as rest. Seem’s if a garden, like the Evil One, was always steppin’ on your heels.”

“Still, for all your grumblin’ you wouldn’t be without one,” responded Asaph, elbow deep in dirt.

“You bet I wouldn’t,” was the prompt reply. “Much as it plagues me I’d be uneasy as the Wanderin’ Jew were I without flowers. Growin’ things are rare company. My dahlias now--from the day I set ’em out I’ve had no end of pleasure watchin’ ’em. Mebbe I was foolish to squander so much money on ’em. Folks would say so. Nevertheless, I figger to get full returns for every penny I’ve put into ’em. Not only shall I enjoy the blossoms when they come, but this fall every plant oughter yield at least three good tubers. I’ll give you some of ’em, Asaph.”

“I’ll buy ’em of you.”

“You will! Well, I’d like to see you do it,” protested Lemmy indignantly. “Ain’t you given me slips without number? Why, those hybrid delphiniums were worth a generous batch of dahlias. Furthermore, I like the fun of distributin’ my wares to my neighbors. That’s half the satisfaction of raisin’ flowers. No-siree! You’ll buy no bulbs of me. In the autumn, though, you shall have as many as you can plant.”

“Now, Lemuel Gill, don’t you go givin’ Asaph more dahlia bulbs,” called Althea, who had overheard the offer. “He ain’t goin’ to have one more’n he’s got already. Those have caused trouble enough.”

“What do you mean--trouble?”

“Ain’t we been tendin’ ’em all winter like we would a family of children--keepin’ ’em warm; keepin’ ’em moist; keepin’ ’em dry? My soul! We’ve tugged them boxes from one end of the cellar to the other over an’ over again. I could have brought up half a dozen babies in the time I’ve spent haulin’ them bulbs round.”

“Oh, come, come, Althea! ’Twarn’t so bad as all that,” contradicted her husband, grinning.

“It was every bit as bad. You can’t tell me anything about dahlias. Ignorant as I am about flowers, that’s one branch of horticulture I’m primed on.”

“How come you to be so up on that?” asked Rebecca Crosby.

“I’ve had experience. Sister Sarah’s husband went to the Barnstable fair once an’ got so addle-pated lookin’ at the exhibits nothin’ would do but he must bring home a dozen prize dahlia bulbs. Some man coaxed him into the belief he could raise blooms as big without turnin’ over his hand. He learned better.” She gave a short, disagreeable laugh.

“Couldn’t he make ’em grow?” inquired Rebecca, with interest.

“Make ’em grow! Oh, they grew fast enough,” Althea sniffed.

“Then what was the matter?”

“There wouldn’t ’a’ been any matter, I s’pose, if Sarah, Jabez, an’ the rest had had nothin’ to do in life but tend those dahlias; but unfortunately they had.”

“Pooh, pooh, Althea! Nonsense! Dahlias ain’t the trouble all that comes to,” objected Lemuel Gill, who had drawn near and seated himself on the steps.

“Maybe they ain’t. Still, I guess I know what happened to my own kith an’ kin,” was the tart retort.

“What did happen?” queried Lemmy, all meekness.

“Well, as I said, Jabez fetched home them bulbs an’ all winter long had Sarah totin’ ’em from Dan to Beersheba, same’s Asaph’s had me. First they’d start wizzlin’ up an’ Jabez would spray ’em; then they’d go to moldin’. He had ’em covered with burlap, an’ covered with newspapers, an’ did everythin’ but sit an’ fan ’em. Sarah said she was never so thankful in all her born days as when spring came an’ ’twas time to put the pesky things into the ground.”

“Mercy! I’d no idea dahlias were that much bother,” asserted Miss Crosby.

“Accordin’ to Lemmy’s tell they ain’t,” was the scathing answer. “His neither dry up nor rot.”

“Wal’, I could hardly say that,” Lemuel was forced to own.

“You mean you have to be fussin’ with ’em durin’ cold weather same’s Althea says?” inquired Rebecca.

“I do have to kinder keep an eye on ’em,” confessed the discomfited Captain.

“You do? You surprise me,” taunted Althea. “I gathered from what you said you never had to take a second look at ’em.”

“There, there, Althea,” Asaph put in, “Lemmy means that once they’re in the ground they’re little care.”

“He does, does he? Well, I beg to differ from him. Little care! They’re care from start to finish. To begin with, puttin’ ’em in the ground’s a care--an’ there’s where Jabez imposed on poor Sarah somethin’ shameful. He got her to help him dig the holes to plant ’em in; search out a pole for each one; an’ print a tag so’st its name could be posted above it like a headstone. The poles had to be set in the ground before the tubers were planted, he said, because if you drove ’em down afterward you were liable to drive ’em through the bulbs. Poor trustin’ Sarah! So innocent was she an’ so anxious to see the earth close over them sprouts, that she worked like a beaver helpin’ Jabez chop the poles an’ label ’em. She’d ’a’ done anythin’ he asked, be it what it might, to be clear of them roots; she told me so herself. Lemmy, of course, makes nothin’ of strippin’ poles an’ settin’ ’em out; or mebbe his bulbs don’t have to have any.”

“Yes, they do,” the little man growled.

“Oh! Well, you make terrible light of gettin’ ’em in place.”

“I didn’t say dahlia plantin’ was no work.” Signs of a rising storm were apparent in the tone.

“If the plantin’ was all, I’d not be dwellin’ on it,” came instantly from Althea. “It’s the unplantin’ that’s the trouble--as poor, deluded Sarah learned to her sorrow. That’s where Jabez tricked her. All the time she was workin’ an’ exultin’ at gettin’ them tubers into the ground, he knew perfectly well that in the fall they’d got to come up again; but Sarah didn’t. She slaved away steadyin’ the poles, writin’ the tags, an’ even cultivatin’ the wretched plants all summer.”

“Did they blossom well?” piped Lemuel, his irritation submerged for the moment in horticultural sympathy.

“Yes. The blossoms warn’t nowhere near the measurement, though, Jabez had said they’d be. He had ’em big as the top of a barrel at first; afterwards he backed down to a water pail; then gradually he reduced ’em to dinner plate size, an’ that was pretty near the dimensions they turned out to be. But they were handsome enough to make Sarah feel they’d been worth the trouble, an’ she was just beginnin’ to think that mebbe after all she was goin’ to get a sight of pleasure out of ’em, when one day late in the autumn Jabez remarked kinder casual:

“‘Well, Sarah, it’s about time, I reckon, we were diggin’ the dahlias.’

“You never saw a more flabbergasted individual in your life. I happened to be there at the time an’ the sight of Sarah’s face was a study.

“‘What do you mean?’ stammered she.

“‘The dahlias have got to come up before the frost, you know,’ replied Jabez, offhand as could be.

“‘Roots an’ all?’ gasped Sarah.

“‘Of course.’

“‘You--you mean we’ve got to--’ she eyed him stupid as a dogfish.

“‘We have to take in bulbs, poles, an’ everythin,’ Jabez answered.

“‘Oh,’ was all she said. I guess ’twas all she was capable of utterin’, poor soul!

“Well, they got ’em in, carted ’em to the cellar, an’ nursed ’em through the cold weather same’s I told you. Then in the spring, when Sarah was prayin’ for strength to plant ’em again, Jabez began cuttin’ ’em up, explainin’ how the tubers had multiplied an’ how he now had three or four times as many as he’d had the season before. He seemed tickled to death an’ proud as a peacock at the thought. But Sarah warn’t. It meant cuttin’ three times the number of poles; writin’ three times the number of labels; diggin’ treble the number of holes. She was clean discouraged; an’ when she thought how they’d all have to be dug up again in the fall, she was more discouraged still. Likely Lemmy’s dahlias don’t increase this way--”

“They do!”

“There, there, Lemmy, don’t go gettin’ irritated,” soothed Asaph. “Althea’s only jokin’. Let him alone, can’t you, Althea? He’s gettin’ all riled up.”

“Well, anyhow, Jabez’s dahlias went on accumulatin’ that way,” continued Althea serenely, “till poor Sarah was at her wit’s end. Every fall there were more an’ more of ’em, an’ there was no such thing as coaxin’ Jabez to give one away. He always had some reason why he must keep ’em. The red ones sorter matched the pew cushions an’ looked good in church; the yaller ones cheered up the house; the white ones couldn’t be equalled for weddin’s an’ funerals. As for the pink ones--he liked those best of all, an’ certainly wouldn’t think of givin’ those away on any account.

“So finally one day when the cellar was bulgin’ with boxes an’ barrels of bulbs, an’ they’d overflowed till every shelf in the cold closet was loaded with ’em, Sarah just up an’ told Jabez he’d have to choose ’twixt them an’ her. Either they went out of the house or she did.”

“Land alive! She did bring him up with a sharp turn,” ejaculated Rebecca.

“He had to be brought up,” was the brief response.

“Somehow such decisiveness don’t sound like your sister Sarah,” ventured Lemuel Gill after a pause. “’Twarn’t one of them times when you went up to sorter advise her, was it?”

A flush crept into the woman’s cheek, and seeing it Lemmy smiled.

“Wal’,” drawled he, “don’t worry, Althea. I won’t give Asaph no dahlias. Then he’ll be saved the trouble of choosin’ ’twixt ’em an’ you.” And feeling he had repaid in full the taunts that had been heaped upon him, the Captain rose, and chuckling to himself, departed down the lane.