CHAPTER 1

 Probably the thought most remote from the mind of Asaph Holmes, as his dingy wagon gritted along the ribbon of sand that bound together the hamlets of Belleport and Wilton, was matrimony.

He was a shy man with only a limited acquaintance among women. Moreover he considered himself to be well enough off as he was. His small cottage overlooking the horseshoe enclosure of Belleport harbor was cosy as a schooner’s cabin and within it he could do as he pleased without running the risk of being nagged, prodded or reformed.

Just why Asaph should have associated a wife with this trilogy of vices was an enigma, for his mother, gentle soul, had never been a nagging, prodding, or reforming woman and hers was the only marriage he had had opportunity to study at close range. Certainly the theory had not been deduced from viewing her tyrannies, and from what source Asaph had evolved it was a puzzle difficult of solution.

Perchance Hannah Dole was responsible for the credo.

She was a lean, stern-visaged Cape Codder who came periodically from the village to clean him up. Asaph Holmes dreaded her visits as he dreaded the Day of Judgment and would joyfully have done away with them had they not become indispensable. Gradually, however, it had developed that whenever his solitary existence waxed too complex and he found himself face to face with a state of things he was powerless to untangle, he summoned Hannah Dole, that paragon of method and orderliness, to extricate him from his unhappy dilemma.

The feat sounded simple enough and under ordinary conditions would doubtless have proved so, but in Asaph’s case the conditions were not ordinary.

Unfortunately he was possessed of two hobbies: an admiration for Daniel Webster abnormal in its proportions; and a passion for horticulture in consequence of which he collected everything having even a remote connection with this delightful pursuit. He sent far and wide for flower catalogues; he invested in patent seed shakers, pruning shears, and self-watering window boxes; he dabbled in every heralded variety of fertilizer and insecticide; he spent his last jingling copper for perennials that never came up. To these heterogeneous treasures he added reels of wire, tags, balls of twine, markers, volumes of garden lore, not to mention innumerable clippings culled from every periodical he could lay hands on.

It was these latter intellectual wisps that complicated his existence. He could have managed very well had he not had them to reckon with. But as they were of a precarious nature and must be guarded against the gusts that howled through his wind-swept abode, he found it necessary to make them secure by weighting them down with books, vases, candlesticks, or any other object that chanced to be within reach. He tucked pearls of wisdom beneath the clock, behind the mirror, under the chair legs. He was never separated from his pocket scissors and whenever he read (and he read a great deal), snip, snip, snip they went and more information was added to his mounting pile of knowledge.

As a result his dwelling was a place perilous of habitation. Whenever the door opened a snowstorm of whirling paper greeted the visitor, forcing him to grope his way through its blinding thickness as through a winter’s blizzard. Ordinarily Asaph was a mild-tempered person who seldom raised his voice in anger; but on such occasions he would bawl shrilly:

“Shut that door, can’t you, you blasted idiot! Don’t you see you’re turnin’ loose all my cuttin’s?”

Then the unlucky invader, startled by this wrathful reception, would bang the door with a vim that did but increase the havoc he sought to check. What a scramble would ensue forthwith, what a chase to recapture the winged fragments of learning! Behind pictures they skimmed; they lodged in odd cracks and unfrequented corners, sailing away as if bewitched. Often, in the excitement of the moment, the hunters would inadvertently release wisdom already imprisoned and this would augment the squall.

When at length as many items as it was possible to corral had been gathered together and anchored, Asaph Holmes would drop panting into a chair, if he could find one not already preëmpted as a paper-weight; but when it proved that every seat the room possessed had been pressed into service and the interior rendered uncomfortable he would gaze about him for a moment in helpless irritation, then sigh deeply, and tiptoeing out would turn the key in the door and move into the adjoining apartment where in due time he repeated the drama.

A month of hoarding would usually throw the four modestly proportioned rooms on the ground floor out of commission and another month serve to make the bedrooms uninhabitable; and then, chagrined and mortified, Asaph Holmes would creep out the back window to the shed roof, drop softly to the ground, lock up his abode and flee to Lemmy Gill’s, from which haven he would telephone Hannah Dole to come and set him to rights.

Hannah was quite accustomed to the summonses; indeed she looked for them as a means of making both ends meet and would have been disappointed enough had they not been received. It was never necessary, therefore, to explain details or give her instructions. She arrived with her apron under her arm, took the key from behind the kitchen blind, and opening the door just wide enough for her spare body to wriggle through the crack she went to work. She knew before leaving home exactly what she would find and she invariably found precisely what she expected.

Her only comment was a muttered: “Humph! At it again!”

With that she would start in unceremoniously gathering up the clippings and jamming them along with hundreds of their predecessors into the faded blue sea chest beneath the stairs. It mattered not to her that they were gems of learning. Helter-skelter, in they went! Then she would collect the stray trowels, shears, envelopes of seed, boxes of sifted loam, and, having sorted the collection, would transfer it to the destination she deemed most suitable. The tools she carted to the shed; armfuls of pamphlets and catalogues were borne to the attic; boxes of sprouting plants were thrust out of doors. Afterward, having emptied the various poisonous sprays out of pails, teapots and pitchers and scoured the premises from top to bottom, she would return the key to its accustomed peg behind the blind and telephone the master of the house that he might come home.

She never supplemented the permission with social pleasantries nor did he. There was a quality in her tone that discouraged airy nothings even had Asaph been skilled to utter them. The crisp timbre of her voice and her scantily worded message was courteous enough but somehow it conveyed a rebuke that caused the proprietor of the estate to shrivel and feel sheepish as a whipped schoolboy. To carry off the situation and make possible a continuance of their relations he habitually scrawled a jaunty line of commendation and, enclosing it with his check, sent it promptly away to the autocrat by mail.

He could as well have left the money behind the blind in advance, for Mrs. Dole was unimpeachably honest, and, being a rutty creature, never varied her charges by the fraction of a cent. But, although he knew beforehand what the bill would be, he invariably mailed the wage. The more formal method restored to some extent his injured dignity and at the same time avoided the possibility of an encounter with his rescuer. He had not looked Hannah in the face since he could remember. The acquaintance of these two being of such limited and laconic a character, it can easily be seen that to accuse Hannah Dole of naggin’, proddin’ an’ reformin’ was base injustice. And yet so cameo-cut are certain personalities that all unvoiced their opinions emanate from them. Thus it was with Mrs. Dole.

Never in her life had she been guilty of uttering the assertion that Asaph Holmes was a disorderly old fogy or framed the sarcasm that he never would glance a second time at the litter of printed matter he amassed. Yet in spite of her forbearance she might as well have voiced the charges, for they breathed in the very corner-to-corner precision with which the seed catalogues were stacked and the firmness with which the cover of the sea chest was clamped down.

Nevertheless, if the spirited and flawless performance of her task was intended as an example, the lesson she sought to convey made but a shallow imprint on Asaph Holmes’s conscience, for, beyond the fact that he shrank more timidly each time from sending for his deliverer and confessing he had again perpetrated the crimes he knew her to deplore, he did no better for all her teaching.

Whenever he returned from exile he would beam upon his domain from the threshold and after a second or two of pleased contemplation would proceed to search out the sprouting seeds and the dislodged trowels. Other penates, too, he would restore to their accustomed haunts until before an hour had elapsed one might well have questioned whether the beneficent presence of Hannah Dole had pervaded the place or not.

Still, there undeniably was in the interior a subtle sense of spaciousness that awakened in its owner a feeling of luxury and the impulse to expand. With zeal he immediately set about culling more clippings, mixing fresh sprays, recruiting additional catalogues even though all the time he was doing it he was dimly aware of the abyss of disgrace into which such backsliding would lead him. Hence by the end of the allotted two months he was again an outlaw and compelled to subpoena Hannah Dole.

As this cycle of events made its rotation, he resolved every time that this visit should be her last. He would no longer submit to the ignominy of being chided by a supercilious female. Tomorrow he would begin to peruse, classify, and arrange his cuttings and paste them into books. He would sort his bulb from his seed catalogues and tie them in bundles. But the utopian tomorrow he pictured never came.

Having been born into the world with a personality of this ilk, is it to be marvelled at that Asaph Holmes prized his bachelorhood as his brightest jewel and in no unmistakable terms derided matrimony?

As he bowled along to Zenas Henry Brewster’s to haggle about the wood he proposed to purchase, who would have imagined an event of such stupendous proportions impended? Certainly not he. He turned into the yard trustingly as a child and, pulling up at the back door, dismounted from his wagon. Even when he entered the kitchen he had no premonition that Fate stood jeering impishly at his elbow.

Then without warning he spied the woman!

She was, as it happened, washing dishes, but she might as well have been gathering the apples of the Hesperides, so glorified seemed her task.

Meantime Abbie, Zenas Henry’s wife, came forward.

“Good-mornin’, Asaph,” ejaculated she. “Why, we haven’t seen you for weeks. Where have you been keepin’ yourself? Pity Zenas Henry or the Captains ain’t in. They were speakin’ of you only the other day. Draw up a chair. I want to make you acquainted with my friend Althea Morton who’s up from Provincetown visitin’ me.”

In a haze of wonder such as that in which Adam must have first surveyed Eve, Asaph turned toward the woman. He had, however, one advantage over his distinguished progenitor—he had previously beheld the sex. But alas! his superiority did him no good for the woman he now confronted was like unto no other woman he had ever set eyes upon.

Not that she was so different in appearance, although with her bright color, vivacity, encouraging smile, and well-proportioned figure she presented a bewildering ensemble. The characteristic he found novel and appealing was the gracious simplicity with which she welcomed him. Females were wont to scent out the fact that he was shy in their presence and make scant effort to draw him out. But this one either failed to recognize his limitations or, having detected them, overleaped them as matters of no consequence. Never had he been approached with such a degree of understanding, never addressed with so much courtesy and ease. Under the genial spell he waxed fluent or thought he did until he afterward discovered that it was Circe and not he who had done the talking. But he could have talked, that was the miracle. His tongue was unloosed and to its tip came a score of observations he might have uttered had the conversation lagged.

Half an hour later he drove home conscious that he had been transformed into another being altogether. The silent, serene man who had gone to Wilton to bargain for wood—where was he?

Next day he went to the Brewsters’ again, having recollected that he had forgotten in his confusion to stipulate that he wished the wood split, and once more he beheld Althea Morton. How full of spirit she was! How wholesome and natural! He could not recall ever having met so enthralling a woman. Asaph’s mental processes, however, were slow and therefore the possibility of securing the continual companionship of this peerless creature did not occur to him until a fortnight later, during which interval he had repeatedly pondered on what a desirable wife Althea would make for some lonely, quiet man like himself. How her alert, ingratiating personality would enliven a home! Then gradually out of these abstractions the realization took form that he was quiet and lonely and Althea Morton might enliven him. It was a new and disturbing idea yet withal a pleasant one. Idly conceived, it grew until it assumed such compelling force that might became must and Asaph set resolutely to work to possess himself of this gem of womanhood.

There was nothing to hinder the marriage, for he was well-to-do and his solitary home stood ready to receive a mistress. Moreover, he had neither kith nor kin to oppose the match. There was no one to object, no one to rate the inspiration as preposterous except Lemuel Gill.

Here Asaph paused, his enthusiasm experiencing a check.

What was Lemmy going to think of the amazing move—Lemmy, who up to the present moment had been the paramount consideration of his life?

He knew all too well without asking and if he entertained doubts he could have them forever set at rest by inquiring, for not only was Lemmy honesty itself but between the two men existed a friendship tough of fibre and redolent with frankness. Lemmy could be depended upon to state without reserve exactly what his opinion of the venture was.

Then of a sudden it came over Asaph that he did not want to know what Lemuel thought, did not care. Should his crony’s judgment be unfavorable to the plan it would in no way hinder it. It would merely create disagreement and hard feeling. For Lemuel would disapprove, that he knew perfectly well. Had they not often exchanged felicitations on their untrammeled independence and dwelt with satisfaction on the compensations of single blessedness?

Furthermore, his friend knew him through and through and was acquainted with every quirk of his character—his absorption in books, his horticultural bent, his unmethodical habits. These idiosyncrasies he would feel it his Christian duty to drag into the daylight as barriers to any matrimonial enterprise.

Indeed Asaph himself had been obliged to acknowledge there was something to be said for such arguments. Having granted this, however, he considered he had done all that honesty required and finding the facts disagreeable he forthwith swept them aside. Much better reflect on Althea and her varied charms.

But although he valiantly attempted to do this the thought of Lemmy Gill would persist. It was going to be awkward to explain his change of heart to Lemuel; to make clear just why he, who had revelled in pursuing his tastes unmolested, should now prefer a stranger’s continual companionship. Besides, Lemmy was sensitive and easily aggrieved. It was going to cut him to the quick to have a third person come between them.

Asaph frowned.

The entanglement in which he found himself was embarrassing and unluckily it was not one from which Hannah Dole could deliver him. He must face the perplexity alone.

He admitted it was only just, only decent, to consult Lemmy before taking a step so revolutionary. Why, the two had never so much as planted a rose-bush without first discussing for a good half-day all the pros and cons of the project. But with regard to this larger and more vital issue he confessed, after searching examination, he had not the courage to take Lemuel into his confidence. He was determined to wed Althea Morton whether or no, with Lemuel’s consent or without it. That was what the matter sifted down to.

The discovery of this monstrous breach of friendship appalled and dismayed him. What enchantment was upon him? What magic spell? It was the first time during the long span of years they had known one another that he had ever kept a secret from Lemuel Gill.