The Happy Man/Chapter 5
V
“By Jove!” said Mr. Smith.
“It really is!” exclaimed Mrs. Vernon. “Beryl, he's come back for the house!”
“You forget there's no dove-cot,” laughed the girl softly.
“I say, may I bring him in?” asked Mr. Smith eagerly.
“By all means,” replied his hostess. But perhaps the dog—” She glanced apprehensively at the slumbering Cliquot.
“I'll ask him to leave the brute outside,” said Mr. Smith, nimbly dodging a hydrangea in a tub. “He may not come, you know. You never can tell about him. He—he's a queer”
But Mr. Smith disappeared for a moment around the corner of the house just then, and the rest of his remark was lost. The ladies watched and listened. It was quite still, and the greetings of the two men were plainly audible.
“Hello, old chap! Just talking about you, you know! How are you?”
They saw Allan Shortland's gaze fall slowly from the upper part of the house and rest on the approaching Smith. A smile came to his face, and he reached a hand over the top of the gate.
“I wouldn't have mentioned them, Smith, but I happened to break a tooth on one. I've been wondering since if they grew the things on a battlefield.”
The ladies on the porch exchanged amused glances. Mr. Smith was holding the gate open and talking volubly, but his words were indistinguishable. It was, however, evident that the man outside was demurring. Mr. Smith laid an impelling hand on his arm. At last the traveler removed his pack and hung it on the gate. Then he took off his cap and slapped the dust from his coat. Then the gate closed behind them, leaving a disconsolate dog on the further side, and a moment later the two men stepped onto the porch. Mr. Smith advanced with the air of an animal-tamer leading a trained lion.
“Here's the chap himself, Mrs. Vernon! Mr. Shortland, Mrs. Vernon; and Miss Vernon. Funny thing we should be just talking about you, Shortland!”
“Have you come back to claim our house, Mr. Shortland?” asked Mrs. Vernon as she shook hands.
Allan Shortland smiled. “There are certain changes I should have to insist on, madam.” He turned to Beryl. “Miss Vernon and I,” he said as took her hand, “have met before.” He looked intently at the girl for what seemed a long while after he released her hand, his regard frankly and gravely interested. Beryl's color deepened a little.
“I think not, Mr. Shortland,” she answered.
His smile deepened. “Some day I'll recall the circumstances.” He accepted the chair that Mr. Smith pushed forward, and turned again to Mrs. Vernon. “It is very kind of you to ask me in,” he continued. “I ought to, I suppose, apologize for my condition. Your roads are very dusty, and Dobbin and I are scarcely presentable.”
“Dobbin?” questioned Smith.
“My companion.” He nodded in the direction of the gate. “I call him Dobbin.”
“But—I thought,” hazarded Mrs. Vernon rather blankly, “that Dobbin was a horse's name.”
Shortland nodded. “I dare say. It happened to be the first name that occurred to me, and he answered to it. I have since discovered that he answers to any other name quite as readily, but that may be owing to his amiability. He's a very amiable dog.”
“Where the deuce did you get hold of such an ugly brute?” asked Smith, with a laugh.
“I didn't. That is—well, he got hold of me. It happened some days ago—I forget just when—or where. There were some green apples in a yard. I am very fond of green apples.” He was addressing Mrs. Vernon particularly, and his tone plainly said, “You, of course, will understand that.” Mrs. Vernon nodded sympathetically, as though green apples were a secret passion with her. “I stepped into the yard and was about to help myself when Dobbin appeared from nowhere and put his teeth around my ankle.” He looked reminiscently at the ankle in question. “That was the beginning of our acquaintance.”
“Well, I say, what happened then?” prompted Mr. Smith. Shortland appeared to consider the tale at an end.
“Then?” he asked. “Oh, then I argued with him—”
“With a brick?” laughed Smith.
“Oh, no, merely verbally. He is a sensible dog. I persuaded him that he had been hasty. So he withdrew, and I filled my pockets with the apples. Subsequently I found that he was following me. So I—so I named him Dobbin.”
“But, Mr. Shortland,” said Beryl puzzledly, “didn't you feel a little bit guilty at taking him away from his home?”
Shortland regarded her mildly as he shook his head. “No. I think not. I used no persuasion, Miss Vernon. He came of his own free will. I have an idea that he had been finding existence dull and was glad of a change. He is rather an oldish dog, and while my recollection of the village where I met him is hazy, I seem to recall that it was rather a dead spot for even a dog. I have a deal of sympathy for people—or dogs either—who tire of their environment. I do myself.”
“And yet,” reminded Mrs. Vernon, “you were looking for a place to settle down in the other day, Mr. Shortland.”
“Yes, but I have been looking for that for a long time. I've always thought that if I could find the place I have in mind, I'd like it so well that I'd be content to stay in it. But—I don't know.”
“Even if one doesn't stay in it long at a time,” said Mrs. Vernon, “it is nice to have a home of one's own.”
“You speak as feelingly, Mamma, as though you had never had such a thing until to-day,” said Beryl amusedly.
“Well, I was thinking of some women I know, dear, who spend all their lives bobbing around from one place to another, living in hotels and apartments, with no real home to go to when they get tired of it.”
“And you think that when Mr. Shortland gets tired of 'bobbing around' he ought to have a home to go to? I wonder, though, who would feed the pigeons while he was away.
“The pigeons?” asked Shortland.
“She's referring to the dove-cot,” explained her mother. “If it is not an impertinent question, Mr. Shortland, won't you please tell me why you want a dove-cot?”
“A dove-cot? I don't, or, rather, I don't demand it; the vision does. You see, Mrs. Vernon, I have been, more or less unconsciously, constructing this place I seek for many years. Just how the dove-cot got there, I don't know; but it is there, right in the middle of the garden. I have only to shut my eyes to see the whole place vividly; and almost every time I see it I find that I have added something new. For instance, just the other day I discovered that at the right of the doorway there is a queer, wrought-iron shoe-scraper with the points ending in a swirl.”
“But that is like the one at our door,” said Beryl.
“Then, that explains where I got it. And it seems to show, too, that in building this dream house of mine I have borrowed bits here, there, and everywhere. And I fancied that it was original! I wonder,” he added puzzledly, “where I got that dove-cot!”
“One sees them in England,” Beryl suggested.
“In England? To be sure! I remember now. It was a little place in Dorset. Something-minster—Ilminster, was it? You come around a sudden bend in the road between high hedges, and in front of you, away off, is the sea, intensely blue, and on the right is a warm red cottage set in a tangle of briar roses that climb and nod to you over the fence. And beyond the house is the dove-cot, with a thatched roof, and gray and white doves fluttering about it. And the air is filled with the mingled fragrance of drying seaweed and pink and white and yellow roses. Yes, yes, in Dorset it was. And so that is where I got my dove-cot!”
“Dorset must be very lovely if it is as you describe it,” said Mrs. Vernon. “I don't think I have ever been in Dorset.”
“The world is very full of lovely places,” responded Shortland thoughtfully. “This is one of them, Mrs. Vernon.”
“Yes, Alderbury is pretty, isn't it?” she agreed.
“A bit dull, though, yet, old man,” said Mr. Smith. You ought to come back later in the summer.”
“I fancy three visits to one place in the same year would be extraordinary for Mr. Shortland,” observed Beryl.
He turned and looked across at her thoughtfully for a moment in his intent way. When he removed his gaze he said slowly, “I'm not sure that I shan't stay here a while.”
“Do, Mr. Shortland,” said Mrs. Vernon cordially. “We will even set up a dove-cot for you. I was saying just before you appeared that if you'd come back and explain things a little I'd do it in a minute! Do you—do you play bridge?”
There was a gurgle of amusement from Beryl, and even Mr. Smith chuckled at the over-elaborate carelessness of Mrs. Vernon's tone.
“Indifferently,” replied Shortland.
“That means you play very well, I'm sure. You and Mr. Smith must come over very soon and take dinner. I presume you will put up at at the club?”
“I have a card to it,” responded Shortland gravely. “Smith very kindly put me up.” There was an explosive guffaw from Smith, and the ladies smiled demurely. “I think, however, I'd prefer, should I remain, to find lodgings.”
“Aren't any,” returned Smith. “It's club or nothing, old man.”
Shortland viewed him indulgently. “One can always find lodgings. Smith,” he said. He arose and held out his hand to Mrs. Vernon. “Thank you for admitting me to 'Solana,' Mrs. Vernon—”
“That really is its name now, Mr. Shortland,” said Beryl.
He smiled across at her. “It always was,” he replied. Then, to Mrs. Vernon: “If I stay for a few days you will let me come again?”
“I command you to!” laughed his hostess. “And if you have a spark of pity in you, Mr. Shortland, you will stay and help to cheer up two lonesome females.”
“If I stay,” he responded gravely, “it will be only because I am pampering my greatest failing.”
“And what,” asked Beryl as she gave him her hand, “is your greatest failing, Mr. Shortland?”
“Selfishness, Miss Vernon,” he replied.