IX
June passed into July, and the season at Alderbury was in full swing. Usually it was the Mixed Handicap Tournament on the Fourth and the dance in the evening that officially opened the season, but this year the early arrivals had already taken part in several events by that time. It was Allan Shortland who, with a fine disregard of custom, had led the way. Somehow, when Allan led others rushed to follow, and his most fantastic schemes were acclaimed with enthusiasm. There had been, for instance, the Pageant. I write it with a capital since it went down in history so. The Pageant had its inception in Allan's fertile brain at ten o'clock one June morning, and was presented on the lawn in front of the clubhouse at five o'clock that afternoon. It purported to represent episodes in the early history of Alderbury. If it really did, Alderbury in Colonial days was a remarkable and busy place. It was all the veriest nonsense, but a deal of ingenuity and taste were shown in the matter of costuming and setting, and every one, participants and audience alike—the latter small in numbers—had a merry time. There was a dinner in the clubhouse afterwards, and an impromptu dance by moonlight on the lawn still later, in which the actors in the Pageant appeared in costume.
The tournament was held on the Fourth. Beryl played with Allan, Jerry accepting his fate with philosophy and attaining revenge by winning the event with a partner who, if less to his taste than Beryl, played a far better game of golf. The ball in the evening was a big success in spite of the efforts of the weather to put a damper on it. A drizzle set in just in time to dim the brilliancy of the fireworks display, but by cooling the air it made dancing more popular. Alderbury was in the habit of keeping early hours, and usually no affair lasted much after midnight, but on this occasion at half-past one Allan was teaching the “Zulu Glide” to a dozen or more venturesome youngsters, and the older folks, looking on, quite forgot to go home. The “Zulu Glide”—which, according to its sponsor, was the only dance countenanced in the court circles of Zululand—was joyous but decorous, and not difficult to learn. Unfortunately, however, it was extremely hard on narrow skirts, and more than one accident resulted. The next day Mrs. Follen, one of the settlement's most dignified matrons, was heard to speculate whether “that Mr. Shortland was not—well, perhaps just a little too—should she say venturesome?—for Alderbury!” Encountering him later in the same day, drinking tea at Mrs. Vernon's, she was pleasurably surprised to discover that she had quite misjudged him, and that a quieter, more earnest, nicer-mannered man she had never met. Not, however, as she confided to her husband at dinner, that she agreed with some of the things he had said. For instance, his plan of requiring all foreign missionaries to live for six months in Paris or Vienna before assuming their duties seemed most strange. He had explained that the idea was to complete the missionaries' education, but for her part she thought it would be a very dangerous venture!
Meanwhile Allan showed no disposition to leave Alderbury. He played a good deal of golf—he was a brilliant rather than a careful performer, and indulged in a good many experiments which more often than not resulted disastrously to his game; went for long rambles with Dobbin, now usually quite clean and correspondingly dejected; accepted invitations to anything from an afternoon tea to an auction party with apparent gratitude; and was an almost daily visitor to “Solana.”
There he was always welcome. Mrs. Vernon brightened perceptibly when he appeared, and was even known to recover apparently from one of her worst headaches at his advent. He played an excellent, if venturesome, game of bridge, and had taught her four new forms of patience. As for Beryl, she and Allan had become very good friends. Any one could see that. George Smith saw it, for one, and gradually transferred his attentions to the elder Miss Mellen, who, he possibly assured himself, was experienced enough to be safe. Jerry Forbes, however, did not yield his place so readily, nor did Harry Russell, who, since the dinner party, had been a frequent caller and an eager cavalier. The settlement watched, waited, and speculated.
One afternoon Allan and Beryl, unaware of the interest they were creating, leisurely followed their balls toward the first hole. It was necessary for them to be leisurely since just holing out on the distant green were George Smith and the elder Miss Mellen. The latter was undergoing instruction and was now playing her eleventh stroke. Neither Allan nor Beryl had a caddie. Allan declared that to use one unless playing in a championship match was ridiculous. “To see a full-grown man striding along followed by a twelve-year-old boy dragging a bag of clubs as tall as he is,” he declared, “reminds me of a man out walking with a valet to carry his cane! Mellen came puffing into the taproom the other day, just about finished. 'Great exercise,' he said proudly. 'Eighteen holes in an hour and twenty minutes!' 'Did you carry your own bag?' I asked him. 'Great Scott, no!' 'Then,' said I, 'you didn't get any exercise. The caddie got it all!'”
“I don't mind carrying my bag,” said Beryl—she had refused to allow him to perform that service for her. “It's the picking it up that annoys me.”
“That's even finer exercise,” he laughed, “There's a thingumabob now that holds your bag up when you set it down—a sort of easel arrangement; good thing for women, I should think.”
Beryl promptly dropped her bag with a clatter of clubs. As Allan stepped forward to pick it up, she waved him haughtily back. “I shall pick it up myself, thank you. After the emphasis you put on women, I intend to drop it every twenty feet, just to prove that we're not so helpless as you think.”
Beryl was not a good player, and she overran the hole twice before she finally trickled the ball in for six. Allan holed-out in three, and climbed the slope of the grassy knoll to where the second tee stood in the cool shadows of a belt of oaks and maples. Allan laid his pipe in the sand-box, dropped his ball to the clay, and sent it arching away with a mid-iron. Smith and his partner were dawdling about the second green. Across the wide stretch of the links the cottages of the summer colony peered from under their trees, and further southward a double line of big, graceful elms showed where the main road ran. From where they stood a chimney of “Solana” lay warmly red against a background of dark green branches.
“I think,” said Allan, as they descended the little hill, “we'd better pass through those folks. We'll never get around if we don't.”
“Mr. Smith appears quite devoted there,” observed Beryl, with a smile. “I fear he is a—what is the word?—a philanderer.”
“A pleasant occupation, I fancy,” murmured Allan, “but dangerous.”
“Not for George Smith, though. Have you known him long? I think he spoke of having met you first in Paris.”
“In Paris, was it? I'd forgotten. Perhaps ten years. But I can't say that I know him very well, Miss Vernon.”
“Really? He spoke as though you and he were old and close friends.”
“That was nice of him,” replied Allan.
Beryl studied his face a moment doubtfully. “Was that—sarcasm?” she asked.
“On my word, no! Do you think friendship is so plentiful that I can afford to poke fun at it?”
“No, indeed; only—Mr. Smith”
“You don't quite approve of him?”
“It's only that he is rather—tiresome—at times.”
“Possibly. Many of us are, though. I've always liked Smith. He's big-hearted.”
Beryl looked as though she found the tribute surprising. But she only said, “You must be a very loyal friend, Mr. Shortland.”
“I hope so. As a matter of fact, I don't think my loyalty has ever been tested. I have very few friends, Miss Vernon; perhaps none.”
“No friends! I'd have said you had more than any man I'd ever met. Why, every one likes you, Mr. Shortland.”
Allan smiled. “I meant I had no real—well, what some one calls 'most-bosom-friend,' Miss Vernon. I know dozens of men—scores, perhaps—as I know George Smith. I run across them here and there and now and then, lose them for a while, find them again, and am always as glad to see them as they are to see me. But I don't know of a single person, male or female, black or white, red or yellow, who would care a continental if I never turned up again. There is one, though, but he's not a person; he's just Dobbin.”
“I don't like to hear you talk that way,” demurred Beryl, with a little frown. “I don't think—it doesn't seem as if it could be true.”
“It is, though,” he replied cheerfully. “You see, I've moved around too much. One doesn't make friends that way; only acquaintances. It's a case of the rolling stone, I guess, the moss being real friendship. I've always been on the go.”
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don't know,” he answered frankly. “It must have been born in me, although certainly my immediate ancestors were not rovers. My father and his father before him were stay-at-homes. My father lived the life of a Virginia planter, and I know that his wedding journey to England and France was his only excursion out of his own country. Aside from that, a trip to New York perhaps once in two years, a trip to White Sulphur occasionally, and a visit to Richmond or Washington, quite satisfied his wanderlust. I was intended for a lawyer. Possibly that is why I wasn't. This thing of settling things beforehand is dangerous. It's a challenge to Fate. I studied one year at the Columbia Law School, and then went to Paris and had a fling at art. After three years of it, I discovered that at best I could never be more than a mediocre painter, and there were so many others who could do real work, the sort I never could. So I burned some two dozen canvases—we had quite a ceremony, and all the Quarter attended—and went off on a tramp through Bavaria. That, I think, started it, although I had poked around France a bit before that. Since then I have been pretty much on the hike. What else is there to do? Unfortunately—or fortunately, as you look at it—my stay-at-home progenitors managed to accumulate a good deal of money. That rather handicaps one, you see. Why sell things or paint pictures or write books unless the world needs your services or you need the money?”
“But you do write books, don't you?” she asked.
“After a fashion, for my own pleasure. If one knocks around enough he gets full of a lot of stuff that he needs to get rid of for his own comfort. I've done three volumes of unilluminating travel, and one novel. At least, I intended it for a novel, and that there might be no mistake about it, I stated the fact on the title-page. But the publishers and the critics unanimously agreed that it wasn't.”
“What did they call it?” Beryl inquired, smiling.
“I'd really dislike to tell you,” he replied gravely. “Some of the things wouldn't be fit for your ears, Miss Vernon.”
She laughed. “I don't believe it was as bad as that, and I shall get a copy and read it at once.”
“No.” He shook his head. “You may get a copy—I'd be delighted to inflict one on you; and you may read it; but not at once. No one, I am convinced, ever read that book at once. It's a matter of small doses. That gives me an idea. If I ever try it again, I'll call it 'A Homœopathic Novel. To be Taken in Small Doses.' Thanks for the suggestion.”
“But it wasn't mine,” Beryl laughed. “Would you use a brassie, Mr. Shortland?”
“I'd follow my own inclination, Miss Vernon. If I felt in the least disposed toward a putter, I'd use that.”
“You might, but I shall try a brassie shot. I hate brassies, too. I never could do anything with them except kick holes in the grass.”
There it is! Why insist on using an implement you don't like, that you're not in sympathy with?: You really didn't do badly, as it happened, but I'm sure that had you made use of the club your soul craved, you'd have. done better. It's a mistake to allow custom to make a slave of one, Miss Vernon.”
Presently, when they had driven off again, “Do you still keep your place in Virginia, Mr. Shortland?” she asked.
“No, I sold it.”
“O-oh! Why?”
“Because I would never have lived in it, and it was much too pleasant a place to let lie idle and neglected. A man wanted it for a home, and so I sold it to him. Don't you think it is happier with folks living in it than it would have been all empty and dark, with its curtains lowered and the mice scurrying about it?”
“But—does one usually consider the happiness of a house, Mr. Shortland?” she asked perplexedly.
“Why not? One should, I think. Don't you think houses have feelings?”
“How silly!”
“Not at all. At least, not to me. I always think of houses as sentient things. That is why I can never bear to look at a house or a building being torn down. Think how it must hurt when the boards are ripped away and the beams torn from their places.”
She shook her head. “I don't like to, although I know that it is only nonsense again. Houses have—have personality, Mr. Shortland, but not feeling.”
“I hope you are right,” he responded gravely. “Shall we play back from here? I fear there isn't time for the fifth.”