The Happy Man/Chapter 11

“I don't see,” said Mrs. Vernon, “why you are so hard on Mr. Shortland, Beryl. I thought you rather liked him.”

“I haven't said that I don't, that I am aware of,” replied Beryl, with a yawn that seemed too perfect to be true.

“Well, perhaps not, but you have certainly slammed him”

“Mamma! Such awful slang!”

“Slammed him,” continued her mother, with emphasis on the word, “a dozen times in the last ten minutes.”

“I only said that he seemed superficial and idle and—and insincere.”

“Only that?” asked Mrs. Vernon ironically. “You must like him, then, a great deal, my dear.”

“I don't see,” answered the girl, a trifle irritably, “that it is necessary that I should either like him or dislike him. Mr. Shortland is merely an acquaintance of a month and I decline to—to”

“Well?” prompted Mrs. Vernon.

But Beryl did not complete her sentence. Instead, “I think,” she observed, “it is perfectly ghastly the way you and every other woman here treat him, Mamma!”

“Good heavens, Beryl! And how is that?”

“Why, you just let him say or do anything he pleases, and sit and beam on him as though he were a sort of—of little god. Any one would think you were all quite daffy about him.”

“Daffy?” murmured her mother. “Such awful slang, dear!”

“Well, you do! It's sickening. Even Mrs. Follen has caught it. She stopped me on the porch at the clubhouse yesterday afternoon, tapped me on the arm with her fan in that silly way of hers, you know, and simpered, 'Where is that nice Mr. Shortland, Beryl? I suppose he isn't very far away, my dear?' I told her I hadn't the slightest idea where Mr. Shortland might be. 'Well, I did want to see him so,' she went on. 'He is going to tell me about having my rugs cleaned. He says you should wash them in milk. He's such a fascinating man, I think! So—so sympathetic and understanding!'” And, Beryl, who had cleverly parodied Mrs. Follen's speech and facial grimaces, laughed exasperatedly, arose from her chair, and laid the book she had been holding but not reading none too gently on the table. “Silly old thing!” she muttered. “I suppose if Mr. Shortland told her to wash her rugs in ink, she'd do it! I am going to write some letters.”

Mrs. Vernon smiled, but the smile held perplexity.

“Dear me!” she murmured, as she wiggled her pretty fingers in the bowl of soapy water. “I didn't suspect that she cared that much for him!”

She dried her hand slowly and thoughtfully.

“I think,” she added to herself and Cliquot, “I'll have to ask Whittier to find out something about this Mr. Shortland.”

Allan was in disgrace, a state of affairs which had endured for two days, in fact, every since that morning conversation on the porch. If Allan surmised wherein he had erred, he knew more than did Beryl herself. She only knew that Mr. Shortland had suddenly become very tiresome and distasteful to her, and that she disliked him extremely. In consequence, she avoided him so brazenly that Alderbury smiled behind its hand, and when forced to meet him she snubbed him unmercifully. Allan preserved an unchanged attitude of admiration and attentiveness, and, if he was aware of being in disgrace, failed to show it, a fact which served to exasperate the lady even more.

“Every one spoils him so,” she told herself contemptuously, “that he's just a mass of conceit and doesn't know when—when he isn't wanted!”

Of course they did meet constantly, for in so small a place as Alderbury only immurement in one's bedroom saved one from encountering every one else at least twice in the twenty-four hours. And Beryl had no intention of letting her dislike of Allan interfere with her enjoyment. She didn't want to see him, she assured herself, and she hoped she wouldn't, but she wasn't going to stay away from the clubhouse on his account. She even danced with him at the Saturday night hop. She didn't care to, of course, but he insisted after half a dozen rebuffs, and it would have looked too pointed to have refused again. He didn't even ask, as would have been proper, what he had done to merit her coldness. That annoyed her, too, although she didn't know. how she could have answered such a question.

The dove-cot was erected a few days later, with appropriate ceremonies. Allan himself issued the invitations, in Mrs. Vernon's name, and all Alderbury was bidden, and all Alderbury came. “More of that delightful Mr. Shortland's fun,” declared the ladies. “Another of Shortland's jokes,” chuckled the men. The garden was well filled when Perkins and the gardener—the latter divided his labors among a number of places—raised the dove-cot and set its white post in the hole that had been dug in the middle of the oval rosebed, while a group of ladies who preferred shade to sunlight looked on from the porch. Allan explained that it had been his intention to have the guests join hands and dance about the dove-cot to the sweet and simple strains of a flageolet, but that he had been unable to find a flageolet in the village. Several of his hearers expressed re- lief, and Allan went on to say that instead of the dancing, the lack of which was to be greatly regretted, they would have tea and refreshments on the porch. The dove-cot was properly admired, and several ladies were heard to declare that they meant to have them in their own gardens.

“Such a clever idea,” said Mrs. Purdy, an elderly and very deaf dowager in heliotrope, “and so decorative and—and rural, Mrs. Vernon. Ah—what is it for, my dear?”

“Pigeons,” explained Mrs. Vernon loudly.

“Indeed? Do you know, my dear, I've always thought a widgeon was a sort of duck? Stupid of me, wasn't it? For, of course, ducks don't fly, at least, I don't think they do and I see no way for them to walk up to the cute little house.”

“Not widgeons,” corrected Mrs. Vernon. “Pigeons!”

“Oh, pigeons! Of course, my dear! And an excellent idea, too. I heard of a man who made a great deal of money with them. I think they had peculiar tails or something. At least, they were rather out of the ordinary and brought quite fancy prices. I must come and see them some day, my dear.”