It was May in Arcady, and those young-hearted old lovers, Mr. and Mrs.
Seth Appleby, were almost ready to open the tea-room. They had leased
for a term of two years an ancient and weathered house on the gravel
cliffs of Grimsby Head. From the cliffs the ocean seemed more sweepingly
vast than when beheld from the beach, and the plain of it was colored
like a pearly shell. To the other side of their dream-house were moors
that might have been transplanted from Devon, rolling uplands covered
with wiry grass that was springy to the feet, dappled with lichens which
gave to the spacious land its lovely splashes of color--rose and green
and sulphur and quiet gray.
It was a lonely countryside; the nearest signs of human life were a
church gauntly silhouetted on the hill above Grimsby Center, two miles
away, and a life-saving station, squat and sand-colored, slapped down in
a hollow of the cliffs. But near the Applebys' door ran the State road,
black and oily and smooth, on which, even at the beginning of the summer
season, passed a procession of motors from Boston and Brockton, Newport
and New York, all of them unquestionably filled with people who would
surely discover that they were famished for tea and preserves and
tremendous quantities of sandwiches, as soon as Father and Mother hung
out the sign, "The T Room."
They would open in a day or two, now, when Mother had finished the livid
chintz window-curtains. The service-room was already crammed with chairs
and tables till it resembled a furniture-store. A maid was established,
a Cape Verde Portygee girl from Mashpee. All day long Father had been
copying the menu upon the florid cards which he had bought from a
bankrupt Jersey City printer--thick gilt-edged cards embossed with
forget-me-nots in colors which hadn't quite registered.
From their upper rooms, in which Mother had arranged the furniture to
make the new home resemble their New York flat, the Applebys came
happily down-stairs for the sunset. They were still excited at having
country and sea at their door; still felt that all life would be one
perpetual vacation. Every day now they would have the wild peace of the
Cape, for two weeks of which, each year, they had had to work fifty
weeks. Think of stepping out to a view of the sea instead of a view of
Brambach's laundry! They were, in fact, as glad to get into the open as
the city-seeking youngster is to get away from it.
On the landward side of the bleak house, crimson-rambler roses were
luxuriant, and a stiff shell-bordered garden gave charily of small
marigolds. Riches were these, by comparison with the two geraniums in a
window-box which had been their New York garden. But they had an even
greater pride--the rose-arbor. Sheltered by laurel from the sea winds
was a whitewashed lattice, covered with crimson ramblers. Through a gap
in the laurels they could see the ocean, stabbingly blue in contrast to
the white dunes which reared battlements along the top of the gravel
cliff. Far out a coasting schooner blossomed on the blue skyline. Bees
hummed and the heart was quiet. Already the Applebys had found the place
of brooding blossoms for which they had hoped; already they loved the
rose-arbor as they had never loved the city. He nuzzled her cheek like
an old horse out at pasture, and "Old honey!" he whispered.
Two days more, and they had the tea-room ready for its opening.
Father insisted on giving the evening over to wild ceremonies. He played
"Juanita" and "Kelly with the Green Necktie," and other suitable chants
upon that stately instrument, the mouth-organ, and marched through the
tea-room banging on a dishpan with the wooden salad-spoon. Suddenly he
turned into the first customer, and seating himself in a lordly manner,
with his legs crossed, his thumbs in his waistcoat pockets and his hands
waving fan-wise, he ordered, "Lettuce sandwiches, sody-water, a
tenderloin steak, fish-balls, a bottle of champagne, and ice-cream with
beef gravy, and hustle my order, young woman."
Mother was usually too shy for make-believe, but this time she was
stirred to stand with her fat doll-arms akimbo, and to retort, "You'll
get nothing here, young fellow. This is a place for ladies and gents
only!"
They squealed and hugged each other. From the kitchen door the Portygee
maid viewed her employers with lofty scorn, as Father gave a whole
series of imitations of the possible first customer, who, as variously
presented, might be Jess Willard, Senator Lodge, General von Hindenburg,
or Mary Pickford.
At four next afternoon, with the solemn trembling of an explorer
hoisting the flag to take possession of new territory, they hung out
their sign, stepped back to admire it as it swung and shone against the
crimson ramblers, and watched for the next motor-car.
It was coming! It was a seven-passenger car, filled with women in
blanket coats. One of them actually waved, as the car approached the
little couple who were standing in the sun, unconsciously arm in arm.
Then the car had streaked by, was gone round the bend.
The second car passed them, and the third. A long intense period when
the road was vacant. Then the fourth and fifth cars, almost together;
and the file of motorists turned from exciting prospects into just
motorists, passing strangers, oblivious of the two old people under
their hopeful sign.
While they were forlornly re-entering the house the eleventh car
suddenly stopped, and five hungry people trooped into the tea-room with
demands for tea and muffins and cake. The Applebys didn't have muffins,
but they did have sandwiches, and everybody was happy. Mother shooed
the maid out into the kitchen, and herself, with awkward eagerness to
get orders exactly right, leaned over the tea-table. In the kitchen
Father stuffed kindling into the stove to bring the water to a boil
again, and pantingly seized the bread-knife and attacked a loaf as
though he were going to do it a violence. Mother entered, took the knife
away from him, and dramatically drove him out to cut up more kindling.
The customers were served. While they ate and drank, and talked about
what they had eaten and drunk at lunch at an inn, they were unconscious
of two old pairs of eyes that watched them from the kitchen door, as
brightly, as furtively, as excitedly as two birds in a secret thicket.
The host paid without remarks what seemed to the Applebys an enormous
bill, a dollar and sixty cents, and rambled out to the car, still
unknowing that two happy people wanted to follow him with their
blessings. This history is unable to give any further data regarding
him; when his car went round the bend he disappeared from the fortunes
of the Applebys, and he was not to know how much blessing he had
scattered. I say, perhaps he was you who read this--you didn't by any
chance happen to be motoring between Yarmouth and Truro, May 16, 1915,
did you? With five in the party; coffee-colored car with one mud-guard
slightly twisted?
The season was not quick in opening. To the Applebys the time between
mid-May and mid-June was crawlingly slow. On some days they had two
orders; some days, none at all. Of an evening, before they could sink
into the sunset-colored peace of the rose-arbor, they had to convince
themselves that they couldn't really expect any business till the
summerites had begun to take their vacations. There was a curious
psychological fact. It had always been Father, the brisk burden-bearer,
who had comforted the secluded Mother. He had brought back to the flat
the strenuousness of business. But inactivity was hard on his merry
heart; he fretted and fussed at having nothing to do; he raged at having
to throw away unused bread because it was growing stale. It was Mother
who reminded him that they couldn't expect business before the season.
Mid-June came; the stream of cars was almost a solid parade; the
Portygee maid brought the news that there were summer boarders at the
Nickerson farm-house; and the Applebys, when they were in Grimsby Center
buying butter and bread, saw the rocking-chair brigade mobilizing on the
long white porches of the Old Harbor Inn.
And trade began!
There was no rival tea-room within ten miles. Father realized with a
thumping heart that he had indeed chosen well in selecting Grimsby Head.
Ten, twelve, even fifteen orders a day came from the motorists. The
chronic summerites, they who came to Grimsby Center each year, walked
over to see the new tea-room and to purchase Mother's home-made
doughnuts. On June 27th the Applebys made a profit of $4.67, net.
As they rested in the rose-arbor at dusk of that day, Father burst out
in desperate seriousness: "Oh my dear, my dear, it is going to go! I was
beginning to get scared. I couldn't have forgiven myself if I'd let you
in for something that would have been a failure. Golly! I've been
realizing that we would have been pretty badly up against it if the
tea-room hadn't panned out right. I'd have wanted to shoot myself if I'd
been and gone and led you into want, old honey!"
Then, after the first of July, when the Cape Cod season really began,
business suddenly fell away to nothing. They couldn't understand it. In
panic they reduced the price of tea to five cents. No result. They had
about one customer a day. They had not looked to Grimsby Center for the
cause. That they might personally attend to business they had been
sending the maid to the Center for their supplies, while they stuck at
home--and wore out their hearts in vain hoping, in terrified wonder as
to why the invisible gods had thus smitten them. Not for a week, a week
of draining expense without any income to speak of, did they find out.
One July evening they walked to Grimsby Center. Half-way down they came
to a new sign, shaped like a tea-pot, declaring in a striking block of
print:
MISS MITCHIN OF BROOKLINE ANNOUNCES THE QUAINTEST TEA-ROOM ON
THE CAPE. HISTORIC SOULE MANSION, GRIMSBY CENTER. CRUMPETS AND
SALLY LUNNS WITH FRESH STRAWBERRY JAM. OPEN JULY 1.
And the Applebys had never heard of crumpets or Sally Lunns.
While the light turned the moors to a wistful lavender, the little old
couple stood in a hollow of the road, looking mutely up at the sign that
mocked them from its elevation on a bare gravel bank beside the way.
Father's shoulders braced; he bit his lips; he reached out for Mother's
hand and patted it. He led her on, and it was he who spoke first:
"Oh, that kind of miffle-business won't hurt us any. Girly-girly stuff,
that's what it is. Regular autoists would rather have one of your
home-made doughnuts than all the crumples in the world, and you can just
bet your bottom dollar on that, Sary Jane."
He even chuckled, but it was a feeble chuckle, and he could find no
other solace to give as they trudged toward Grimsby Center, two
insignificant people, hand in hand, dim in the melancholy light which
made mysterious the stretching moors. Presently they and the black
highroad disappeared. Only the sandy casual trails and mirror-bright
tiny pools stood out in the twilight.
Yet there was light enough for them to see the silhouettes of two more
tea-pot signs before they entered Grimsby Center.
The village was gay, comparatively. There was to be a motion-picture
show in the town hall, and the sign advertising it was glaring with no
less than four incandescent lights. In the Old Harbor Inn the guests
were dancing to phonograph music, after their early supper. A man who
probably meant well was playing long, yellowish, twilit wails on a
cornet, somewhere on the outskirts. Girls in sailor jumpers, with vivid
V's of warmly tanned flesh, or in sweaters of green and rose and violet
and canary yellow, wandered down to the post-office. To the city-bred
Applebys there would have been cheer and excitement in this mild
activity, after their farm-house weeks; indeed Father suggested, "We
ought to stay and see the movies. Look! Royal X. Snivvles in 'The Lure
of the Crimson Cobra'--six reels--that sounds snappy." But his
exuberance died in a sigh. A block down Harpoon Street they saw a sign,
light-encircled, tea-pot shaped, hung out from a great elm. Without
explanations they turned toward it.
They passed a mansion of those proud old days when whalers and China
traders and West-Indiamen brought home gold and blacks, Cashmere shawls
and sweet sandalwood, Malay oaths and the jawbones of whales. The
Applebys could see by the electric lights bowered in the lilac-bushes
that a stately grass walk, lined with Madonna lilies and hollyhock and
phlox, led to the fanlight-crested white door, above which hung the
mocking tea-pot sign. The house was lighted, the windows open. To the
right of the hall was the arts-shop where, among walls softened with
silky Turkish rugs and paintings of blue dawn amid the dunes, were
tables of black-and-white china, sports hats, and Swiss toys, which the
Grimsby summer colony meekly bought at the suggestion of the sprightly
Miss Mitchin.
To the left was the dining-room, full of small white candle-lighted
tables and the sound of laughter.
"Gosh! they even serve supper there!" Father's voice complained. He
scarcely knew that he had spoken. Like Mother, he was picturing their
own small tea-room and the cardboard-shaded oil-lamp that lighted it.
"Come, don't let's stand here," said Mother, fiercely, and they trailed
forlornly past. They were not so much envious as in awe of Miss
Mitchin's; it seemed to belong to the same unattainable world as Newport
and the giant New York hotels.
The Applebys didn't know it, but Grimsby Center had become artistic.
They couldn't know it, but that sharp-nosed genius-hound Miss Mitchin
was cashing in on her _salon_. She came from Brookline, hence
Massachusetts Brahmins of almost pure caste could permit themselves to
be seen at her tea-room. But nowadays she spent her winters in New York,
as an artistic photographer, and she entertained interior decorators,
minor fiction-writers, and minus poets with free food every Thursday
evening. It may be hard to believe, but in A.D. 1915 she was still
calling her grab-bag of talent a "_salon_." It was really a saloon, with
a literary free-lunch counter. In return, whenever they could borrow the
price from commercialized friends, the yearners had her take their
photographs artistically, which meant throwing the camera out of focus
and producing masterpieces which were everything except likenesses.
When Miss Mitchin resolved to come to Grimsby Center her group of
writers, who had protected themselves against the rude, crude world of
business men and lawyers by living together in Chelsea Village, were
left defenseless. They were in danger of becoming human. So they all
followed Miss Mitchin to Grimsby, and contentedly went on writing about
one another.
There are many such groups, with the same summer watering-places and the
same winter beering-places. Some of them drink hard liquor and play
cards. But Miss Mitchin's group were very mild in manner, though
desperately violent in theory. The young women wore platter-sized
tortoise-shell spectacles and smocks that were home-dyed to a pleasing
shrimp pink. The young men also wore tortoise-shell spectacles, but not
smocks--not usually, at least. One of them had an Albanian costume and a
beard that was a cross between the beard of an early Christian martyr on
a diet and that of a hobo who merely needed a shave. Elderly ladies
loved to have him one-step with them and squeeze their elbows.
All of the yearners read their poetry aloud, very superior, and rising
in the inflections. It is probable that they made a living by taking in
one another's literary washing. But they were ever so brave about their
financial misfortunes, and they could talk about the ballet Russe and
also charlotte russes in quite the nicest way. Indeed it was a pretty
sight to see them playing there on the lawn before the Mitchin mansion,
talking about the novels they were going to write and the revolutions
they were going to lead.
Had Miss Mitchin's ballet of hobohemians been tough newspapermen they
wouldn't have been drawing-cards for a tea-room. But these literary
ewe-lambs were a spectacle to charm the languishing eyes of the
spinsters who filled the Old Harbor Inn and the club-women from the
yellow water regions who were viewing the marvels of nature as displayed
on and adjacent to the ocean. Practically without exception these ladies
put vine leaves in their hair--geranium leaves, anyway--and galloped to
Miss Mitchin's, to drink tea and discuss Freud and dance the fox-trot in
a wild, free, artistic, somewhat unstandardized manner.
Because it was talked about and crowded, ordinary untutored motorists
judged Miss Mitchin's the best place to go, and permitted their wives to
drag them past the tortoise-shell spectacles and the unprostituted art
and the angular young ladies in baggy smocks breaking out in sudden
irresponsible imitations of Pavlova.
None of this subtlety, this psycho-analysis and fellowship of the arts,
was evident to the Applebys. They didn't understand the problem, "Why
is a Miss Mitchin?" All that they knew, as they dragged weary joints
down the elm-rustling road and back to the bakery on Main Street, was
that Miss Mitchin's caravanserai was intimidatingly grand--and very
busy.
They were plodding out of town again when Mother exclaimed, "Why,
Father, you forgot to get your cigarettes."
"No, I-- Oh, I been smoking too much. Do me good to lay off."
They had gone half a mile farther before she sighed: "Cigarettes don't
cost much. 'Twouldn't have hurt you to got 'em. You get 'em the very
next time we're in town--or send Katie down. I won't have you denying--"
Her voice droned away. They could think of nothing but mean economies as
they trudged the wide and magic night of the moors.
When they were home, and the familiar golden-oak chairs and tidies
blurred their memory of Miss Mitchin's crushing competition, Father
again declared that no dinky tea-pot inn could permanently rival
Mother's home-made doughnuts. But he said it faintly then, and more
faintly on the days following, for inactivity again enervated him--made
him, for the first time in his life, feel almost old.