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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/36442-8.txt b/36442-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0ab8d43 --- /dev/null +++ b/36442-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11201 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Disturbing Charm, by Berta Ruck + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Disturbing Charm + +Author: Berta Ruck + +Illustrator: Edward C. Caswell + +Release Date: June 16, 2011 [EBook #36442] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISTURBING CHARM *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE DISTURBING CHARM + + BY BERTA RUCK + +Author of "In Another Girl's Shoes," "The Three of Hearts," "The Years +for Rachel," etc. + + + ILLUSTRATED BY + EDWARD C. CASWELL + + [Illustration] + + NEW YORK + DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY + 1919 + + COPYRIGHT, 1919 + BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. + + VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY + BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK + + + TO + THE EVER GAY + AND GALLANT MEMORY + OF + WARREN FENN-SMITH + SECOND LIEUTENANT ROYAL FLYING CORPS + SHOT DOWN WITH HIS OBSERVER IN ACTION + JANUARY 18, 1918, AGED 18 + + "They carry back bright to the Coiner the mintage of man, + The lads who will die in their glory and never be old" + + Housman + + + + +[Illustration: _Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's +feet._] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART I + +I THE COMING OF THE CHARM + +II THE ACCEPTING OF THE CHARM + +III THE LAUNCHING OF THE CHARM + +IV THE CHARM BEGINS TO WORK + +V FURTHER PLANS FOR THE CHARM + +VI THE CLUTCHING OF THE CHARM + +VII THE SPREADING OF THE CHARM + +VIII THE FIRST ENGAGEMENT BY THE CHARM + +IX UNFORESEEN EFFECT OF THE CHARM + +X DIVAGATIONS OF THE CHARM + +XI THE FEASTING OF THE CHARM + +XII MOONLIGHT AND THE CHARM + +XIII WILD-FIRE AND THE CHARM + +XIV CLOUDS UPON THE CHARM + +XV THE LOSING OF THE CHARM + +XVI THE COUNTER-CHARM + +XVII DROP-SCENE + + +PART II + +I THE CHARM NEGLECTED + +II THE LAST ALLIES + +III RECOVERY OF THE CHARM + +IV THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER + +V THE BEST GIRL-FRIEND + +VI THE CHARM REMEMBERED + +VII PETROL AND THE CHARM + +VIII RATIONS AND THE CHARM + +IX CHAMPAGNE AND THE CHARM + +X HER BRIDAL NIGHT + +XI HIS BRIDAL NIGHT + +XII SHRAPNEL AND THE CHARM + +XIII VIGIL + +XIV HOME AND THE CHARM + +XV THE CHARM ACKNOWLEDGED + +POSTSCRIPT. THE CHARM CONFESSED + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet + +"It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I was crashing--" + +She stood there as if frozen and said "Away from here!" and in her heart +exclaimed, "Away from him!" + +And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the Sachet of the +Disturbing Charm + + + + +PART I + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE COMING OF THE CHARM + + "Yet I am bewitched with the rogue's company; if the rascal had + not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged; it + could not be else; I have drunk medicines." + + Shakespeare. + + +The letter said: + + "_... And this discovery, sent herewith, will mark an Epoch in + the affairs of the world!_ + + "_Half the trouble in that world arises from the fact that + human beings are continually falling in Love_ ... with the + wrong people. _Sir, have you ever wondered why this should + be?_" + +The old Professor of Botany stood looking at this mysterious typewritten +letter, addressed to him, with the rest of his large mail, at the hotel +in Western France where he was staying in the fourth autumn of the War +with his young niece and secretary. He smiled as he came to the last +words. "Had he ever wondered!" How many nights of his youth had been +wasted in stormily "wondering----?" Strangers who write to celebrities +do stumble on intimate matters sometimes. + +He read on: + + "_Why should one girl set her affections upon the man who of + all others will make her the worst possible husband? All her + friends foresee, and warn her. She herself realizes it vaguely. + But to her own destruction she loves him. What has caused this + catastrophe? Some small and secret Force; one microbe can + achieve a pestilence._" + +"Yes, indeed," murmured Professor Howel-Jones, nodding his massive old +white head. He had been on the point of tossing the letter into the +waste-paper basket, but something made him read on. + + "_Another young man, why must he desire the one pretty woman + who can never give him happiness? She is 'pure as ice, chaste + as snow' ... dull as ditch-water; he, full of fire and dreams. + He swears he'll teach her to respond to Passion; marries her. + Another tragedy!_" + +How like himself again, the Professor mused, going back to the days when +he had worn his Rugby International cap with more pride than he now wore +his foreign degrees. That memory set him staring out of the big +balconied window of his room, over the wide French lagoon, past the +barrier of sandhills with their pointing phare, to where, miles away, +the irregular white line of the Atlantic rollers crashed and spouted on +the reefs. They had been crashing out those thunderous questions to the +sands on his football days, they would be tossing their appeals to the +sky long after his learning and his Nobel Prize were forgotten. Why, +then, should an anonymous correspondent remind him of old unrest? + +For all that, he went on reading: + + "_Each of us knows a list of these stories. How avert them? By + seeking out and planting only in the right soil the root of + good or evil, the Love-germ. All through the ages Man has + recognized its existence; the ancients with their philtres and + amulets. Shakespeare embodies it in an herb. We moderns accept + it as an enigma; have you never heard it said of a woman_, 'She + is not actually pretty, but she has the Disturbing Charm, + whatever it is'?" + +"The Disturbing Charm!" ... Ah, he knew it! _She_ had possessed it, the +girl he had never married, the girl who had passed him over for his +brother the sea-captain, and who had become the mother of Olwen, his +niece. Olwen would be coming in a few minutes to straighten and sort all +those drifts of paper on the roomy work-table which no hand but hers, in +the whole of the hotel, was allowed to touch. He thought, half-amusedly: +"Better not let that little Olwen get hold of this letter." + +The letter ended: + + "_Sir, you shall not be worried with technicalities. Believe + only this, that the life study of the writer of this letter has + at last been crowned with success. In the small packet enclosed + there is sealed up the result of years of Research, with + directions for its use. The inventor lacks courage for + experimenting. But you, learned Sir, you, the gifted author of + 'The Loves of the Ferns,' will not shrink from responsibility + in the cause of Science._ + + "_Should you wish to procure more of the invention, there is + enclosed the address of a box at a newspaper office where you + may apply._ + + "_With all good wishes from_ + + "_Your obedient servant_, + + "_The Inventor._" + +A deep genial laugh broke from the old man's wide chest. + +He threw the letter and its enclosure on to the table, on the top of his +notes for the chapter on "Edible Fungi." + +"Mad--sentimental mad!" he commented. "Most lunatics think themselves +inventors, that's why most inventors are considered lunatics." He drew +up a chair and began making hay of the papers before him, in search of +the other file of notes. + +The large room which the Professor had had cleared of the bed and most +of the other furniture was full of air and sunshine and of that polished +cleanliness which few English rooms achieve. White walls and parquet +floor shone like mirrors, mirrors like diamonds; the glass of the open +windows was clear as the morning air that lay between the hotel and the +pine-forest on the one side, the lagoon on the other. The resinous sigh +of the pines mingled with the warm, lung-lifting breath of the sea. It +was a glorious morning--too glorious for work indoors.... + +Professor Howel-Jones looked hard at his notes, but for once he scarcely +saw them. He knew that the letter he had just read was the work of a +sentimental lunatic, but for all that it had set a string vibrating. As +the old man sat there, his brown eyes abstracted under the thatch of +hair as white as seeding clematis, he looked like some clean-shaven +modern Druid seeing visions. He did, at that moment, see a vision. + + * * * * * + +He saw an endless procession of those people who have loved or married +(or both) the wrong person. + +He saw the lads who have chosen out of their class; barmaids, "bits of +fluff." + +He saw the girls who have married out of their generation. + +He saw the flirts, who wear an attachment as they wear a hat, tied for +life to the affection that is true as steel. (Dreadful for both of +them!) + +Also the young men who treat Love as a cross between a meal and a +music-hall joke, plighted to the shy idealists. + +He saw the Bohemian married to the curate. + +Likewise the attractive young rake, fettered to the frump. + +He saw the women born for motherhood, left lonely spinsters for want of +charm to attract. + +He saw the mothers who sighed for freedom, resenting the nursery. + +He saw the Anything, wedded to the Anything _But_. + +Yes; he saw for that moment nothing but the wholesale gigantic Blunder +of the mis-mating of the world. + + * * * * * + +No doubt it was all crystallized for him in one tender image; Olwen's +dead mother, the girl he should have married. He sighed and smiled. + +"Pity there's no putting things right, as that lunatic suggests," he +thought. "There would be an invention worth boasting about! Wireless +wouldn't be in it, or X-rays. Pity it isn't all true...." + +A tap at the door interrupted his musings. The softest of girl's voices +asked, "Are you ready for me, Uncle?" + +"Yes!" he called out, jerking himself back into the world of realities. +"Come in, Olwen." + +Olwen Howel-Jones came in. + +A small, but daintily made girl of nineteen. Just a handful of softness +in a skimpy one-piece frock. A pale, three-cornered morsel of a face set +off by sleek hair as black as her little French boots. Large eyes that +seemed sometimes brown, sometimes grey; a mouth tremulous, but vivid as +a red carnation--such was Olwen. She brought a ripple of Youth into that +bare temple of Science that was her uncle's study. Something else she +brought--a breath of tension, of impatience. A man would have passed it +over; not so a woman. Already one woman in the hotel had said to +herself, "I wonder who it is that child's so desperately in love with?" + +Had she been in the room at the moment, that woman might have seen the +answer to her question flame suddenly into the young girl's face as she +stepped up to the table by the window. Under the balcony there was a +sound of footsteps. Olwen pushed aside a great jar full of arbutus that +stood at the further edge of the table. + +"That's in your light, Uncle," she said. + +The Professor's back was to her as the figures passed quickly out from +below the balcony. He caught a glimpse of the two wounded British +officers swinging off towards the _plage_. He caught the gleam of +scarlet on khaki; heard a snatch of the rather husky boyish laughter of +one of them; a scrap talk of the other. In a resonant voice with that +particularly dominant form of accent, Scots with a dash of Canadian, +there floated up through the clear morning air this somewhat arrested +announcement: + + "I'm the finest judge of women in Europe." + +This the Professor caught, vaguely. What he did not catch was the +sudden, still alertness into which there seemed to spring the whole body +of the girl behind him. She was "aware" from head to foot; her white +throat seemed to stretch, her whole being to strain; listening. The +footsteps passed, the husky charming laugh of the one, the loud +confident voice of the other.... Life relaxed again in Olwen; +mechanically her hands began sorting papers. No; the Professor had not +noticed, her male relatives being avowedly the worst observers of a +girl's psychology ... even had he seen, he probably would not have +guessed which of the two young men who had gone by was responsible for +that sudden transitory illumination of his niece's face; whether it was +the black-eyed Staff Captain who had lost an arm, or the blonde R.F.C. +pilot who had been shot down last April.... Well, they'd both gone now; +nothing more of them to be seen until the _déjeuner_.... + +Olwen dragged her eyes back to the disorder of the writing-table; she +tossed up her head with a rather forced sprightliness, and laughed. + +"_What_ a mess! Worse than ever, and I'd put everything so beautifully +tidy last night! You _are_ dreadful!" + +"Never mind, Olwen _fach_," he said, with a hand on her shoulder. "There +won't be much work done this morning. I'm going into the woods. Just +hand me my specimen-case ... ah, here. And file the June numbers of that +Danish magazine--where on earth did I put 'em?--ah, there. Then there +are a couple of letters to copy into the book, and that's all. You can +come on and find me; I shall be where we went yesterday with Mrs. +Cartwright and that young What's-his-name, the flying officer." + +He set aside the two letters to be copied, planting upon them, as a +paper weight, one of the enormous pine-cones that he had picked up in +the forest. Then he slung on his specimen-case, took up his indented +grey hat, smiled and nodded to the girlish figure at the table, and went +out. + +Olwen, left alone, stretched her arms over her head. "_Oh!_" she sighed, +desperately. She moved the jar of arbutus into place again; picked out a +spray, dark-leafed, berried with scarlet and orange, tried it against +the dull serge of her frock. Then she tilted her chair back so that she +could just see herself in one of the gilt-framed mirrors. It showed her +a forlorn little face. + +"He'd never _look_ at me, I know," she told herself. + +She thrust the spray of arbutus back into water and turned to her work +listlessly enough. + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later the listlessness had finished. + +A miracle had begun to work! + +For the Professor's niece and secretary was pouring breathlessly over a +letter that she had found on the table under a file of notes for J. +Howel-Jones's great work on Agarics. + +With shining credulous eyes she turned from that typewritten letter to +the little packet that had been enclosed in it. Then she turned to the +letter again. She read: + + "_Half the trouble in the world arises from the fact that + human beings are continually falling in love_ ... with the + wrong people." + +She read the astonishing suggestion: + + "_Each of us knows a list of these stories. How avert them? By + seeking out and planting only in the right soil the root of + good or evil, the Love-germ._" + +She read further, this profoundly hopeful comment: + + "_Have you never heard it said of a woman_, 'She is not pretty, + but she has the disturbing charm, whatever it is'?" + +Finally she read this, the sentence that set her trembling: + + "_In the small packet enclosed there is sealed up the result of + years of Research, with directions for its use._" + +It lay in her hand, the packet which she had taken up as gingerly as if +it had been turpinite, or something else capable of blowing her out +through the window and past the long wooden pier, across the sparkling +_Baissin_, over the sandhills with their lighthouse and into the Bay of +Biscay where those rollers foamed and roared.... + +The old Scientist had said "Madness!" This girl longed to accept every +word of it; partly, perhaps, because every loving woman secretly +believes there must be some Power of this kind, could she but find +it--the power to compel the love she covets. Here it was. + +Hastily she broke the wrapping; it disclosed an inner packet and a +paper. In small characters there was written on the paper: + + DIRECTIONS FOR USE. + + "This charm must be worn, _hidden_, about the person of him or + her who wishes to test its efficacy. + + "It may be hidden about the dress or person of someone who does + not know of its properties; its power will work, nevertheless. + + "A small portion of the charm will suffice. + + "Constant use does not wear away its power." + +Olwen, bending closely over the inner packet, sniffed at the pleasant +musky scent that rose from it. + +"_Oh!..._" she breathed.... Were those steps outside the passage?... She +sprang up.... Swiftly, almost guiltily, she dragged down the low collar +of her frock; she thrust the packet and paper into her bosom. They +crackled against the soft mauve ribbons of her underbodice. + +"Supposing I'd _got_ it!" she thought, and her whole heart lifted. She +pressed her hands to her breast. + +Supposing that under her own small and fevered hands (dimpled, faintly +stained from the carbon of her typewriter) she held it, that recipe for +setting right the Blunder of the world! Ah, if she'd got hold of it +really, the Love-germ, the microbe of mischief and delight! + +The Disturbing Charm itself! + +_Then_ what would come of it? + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE ACCEPTING OF THE CHARM + + "What I can do, can do no hurt to try." + + Shakespeare. + + +That day, since the Professor chose (as he often did) to give lunch a +miss while he wandered and pottered about in the Forest, he sent his +niece into _déjeuner_ alone. Her he never allowed to miss a meal; he +held that young people must eat plenty and often. + +Bareheaded, with a scarlet knitted coat over her frock, the girl +threaded her way through the little round iron-legged tables and past +the tubs of flowering cactus outside the piazza of the hotel. She pushed +open a window and entered the big light _salle_. All one wall of it +seemed to be windows from ceiling to floor, giving on to the _plage_ and +to that stretch of lagoon, and sandhills, pointed by that lighthouse. +The other high walls were panelled with mirrors that reflected a dozen +times the hanging chandeliers, the rococo gilded curves of carving, the +moving heads of the visitors already at the tables. + +The reflections of little Olwen's own head and shoulders, black-and-red +like a lady-bird, appeared repeated in the picture; she did not see it. + +It was another image that she sought.... + +Her bright glance, searching the thronged and buzzing place, fell on two +empty chairs at the long table that ran down the middle of the room. + +Ah! "They" weren't in for lunch, then? Nothing to be seen of "Them" +until the _dîner_, perhaps. With a sigh of resignation Olwen Howel-Jones +turned to the table for two near the end window where she was accustomed +to sit with her Uncle. + +But before she sat down, the tall Englishwoman in brown, who was sitting +at the little table next to hers, caught the girl's eyes, smiled, +nodded, and with a swift leaning forward of a supple body that made her +look like the figurehead of a vessel, accosted her in a deep, rather +attractive voice. + +"I say! Are you alone today? So am I. Have your lunch at my table, won't +you?" + +"Oh! thank you, Mrs. Cartwright; I'd like to," said the girl, pleased. +She took the chair opposite. + +Mrs. Cartwright, who had been at the hotel for some days before the +Howel-Joneses had arrived, was the widow of an Indian Army officer, the +mother of two boys now at school in England, and a journalist under +several names. + +This was why, when she said she was as hungry as a hunter because she +had been working like a nigger all the morning, Olwen asked her, with a +shy smile, "Were you being 'Miss Claudia Crane' or the 'Wanderer through +Western France'?" + +"For a change, neither," returned Mrs. Cartwright cheerfully over the +omelette which the frail little Italian waiter had brought to her. "I +actually went back to being 'Domestica' and I turned out two thousand +words of wisdom on ration-recipes--just for the pleasure of charging +them eight times what my price used to be when I navvied for that paper +regularly. What have you been doing--taking down sheaves of notes from +that wonderful-looking old Welsh Nationalist, your uncle?" + +The Professor's niece, as she answered that she had done nothing but +tidy up and answer letters, was still absorbed by the thought of that +epoch-making letter that she had read before she had even seen that it +had not been left there for her to copy with the others. Her whole being +was so taken up by the memory of what the letter had claimed for the +powers of that hidden packet (now drawing warmth from the softness of +her breast where it lay) that she only had half an ear for the talk of +the woman opposite to her. + +The Disturbing Charm.... Could it be anything but a fairy-tale? How many +of that heterogeneous collection of people gathered there in that very +dining-room--the English visitors, the little knot of uniforms on leave, +the French family parties--how many of them would laugh incredulously if +they were told what she, the celebrity's niece, was treasuring at that +moment inside the bosom of her frock? + +There she sat, demurely eating a plateful of those Edible Fungi of whose +forest lives her Uncle made such a study. Yes, she sat hiding something +that might change not only the current of her life, but of their lives +as well. Perhaps it was true. What a thought! + + * * * * * + +"Some new people here today," chatted Mrs. Cartwright, who never seemed +to look at anyone or anything in a room (Olwen had noticed that) but +whom few details escaped; just as her eyes did not seem to be glancing +about, so her lips hardly moved; but they had the habit of letting fall +comment after comment, softly, casually, on every one of those details +that the eyes above had noticed. "What a typical Hotel Spinster that is +in the corner there! You can just see her over that young French +soldier's head when he ducks to tuck in his napkin; yes, that survival +in the expensive tweeds and the hair-net. Stays so old-fashioned that +when she bends she comes away from the top of them as if it were over +the rim of a vase into which she's been poured. How fatal it is to allow +oneself to crystallize into the mode of the year when one was +twenty-one! (But you, lucky child, don't even know what that mode is +going to be.) English? Yes, of course. No wonder Prévost calls England +'that positive reservoir of old maids'!" + +"Poor thing!" murmured Olwen, glancing at the new-comer, and of whom she +now caught a clearer glimpse. She saw a woman of perhaps thirty-four or +five, with uninteresting brown hair, elaborately dressed, an equally +uninteresting brown face with a large nose and timid eyes that wandered +from face to face. + +Olwen thought, "No; I can't imagine anybody liking her--in _that_ way!" +Then she thought with a little start, "But if it were true--if all women +were allowed even a tiny grain of that Charm, there would be no such +thing as an 'Hotel Spinster.' No old maids in the world! How lovely!" + +"Enter several characters from a French novel by Abel Hermant," pursued +Mrs. Cartwright, as the door of the _salle_ nearest to their table swung +open and admitted two ladies in deepest mourning, an old gentleman with +a red speck in his button-hole, and a boy of four. "The son of those old +people has just 'fallen on the field of honour'; the lovely young +Madonna is his widow; that's his little boy. What a splendid child!" + +The little French boy that followed his grown-ups so sedately down the +room was as dark as a damson and clad in a white tunic that showed his +dimpled arms and his strong brown legs. He left a wake of smiles. The +Hotel Spinster put out a finger and touched him as he went by. + +"There. I knew she'd do that," commented Mrs. Cartwright; that deep soft +voice of hers running out in the sort of monologue that scarcely moved +her lips. "That woman's fonder of children than anyone here, and a +better hand with them, I bet. Did you see the little boy smile back at +her? Only at _her_. Yet Fate has decreed that she's never to have a +chick or child (though what point 'a chick' would have I never could +fathom). Private means. Stodgy connections in Debrett. Left with a house +of her own, probably, crammed with mahogany and Coalport--and no man's +ever looked at her in her life." + +"Dreadful!" murmured little Olwen; and her hand went up involuntarily to +her breast. + +(If that letter was true, what a gift she had it in her power to bestow +upon that woman; upon any woman!) + +"The latest in British officers, I see," ran on Mrs. Cartwright, +pursuing the nonchalant soft stream of comment as she pursued her lunch. +"Staying here on his pay. Giving as much for one _déjeuner_ here as +would keep him for half a week at some little pension in the town, where +he ought to be. _Very_ new; _very_ temporary commission. He had a talk +with me in the lounge just now. A nice frank little Cockney. Told me he +was a shop-assistant before he joined. '_And the next, Madame?_' Poor +lad! The next is that he's learned what it is to be considered IT, and +what the insides of the best hotels are like, and the chief seats at +revues. He's learned Bubbly-tastes on Beer-pay. Overdrawn everywhere. +What _will_ he go back to in civil life, if he goes back? Another +tragedy of the war. Dozens of them!... Pleasant little pink face, +too.... His only hope would be to get some profiteer's heiress to marry +him----" + +"Yes, he might do that," agreed little Olwen, again conscious of that +packet at her breast. She looked down the tables at the rosy, +undistinguished young face of the Second Lieutenant of whom Mrs. +Cartwright had been murmuring. One of the waiters was deferentially +endeavouring to understand this British officer's French. The boy looked +self-conscious; at sea. Even a man might be glad enough of some magic +that could bring him Love and Fortune, thought Olwen. Some men were +without charm, just as some other men--ah, yes!--were all Charm. + +Here Mrs. Cartwright, still seeming to look another way, followed the +young girl's glance as it turned again to the objective that it first +had sought--to the two empty places at the long table. + +"Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas have gone into Bordeaux for the day," +commented Mrs. Cartwright. "I hope they'll bring me back the +fountain-pen ink and the 'Vie Parisienne,' and the brown darning silk +that I commissioned them to get----" and here, quickly, she turned away +as if to gaze out of the window at the little motor-boat that was making +its way up the lagoon, where the tide was high, to the wooden pier. +Actually, her movement was to avoid seeming to stare at the face of the +girl before her, where Consciousness had again flamed out into a live +and lovely red. + +"So _that's_ it ..." she thought. + +"I _wish_ I didn't blush!" Olwen Howel-Jones was scolding herself +angrily. "I _am_ a little idiot to blush at the sound of the man's name! +Nobody in the whole world thinks of doing such a thing nowadays; it's +like wearing your hat on the back of your head! Yet here I am, going on +like this as if it were _Eighteen_ Seventeen! I _do_ wish to goodness I +had another sort of skin. Mrs. Cartwright might easily have +_thought_----!" + +But Mrs. Cartwright was talking pleasantly on about the journey to +Bordeaux; about the forest of Les Pins, the air of it.... + +"Such a becoming place, too," she laughed. "Makes you feel well; look +well. May I make a personal remark, Miss Howel-Jones? You yourself are +getting twice as pretty as when you came here." + +"Oh, no," protested the enraptured girl. "No one could--no one has ever +called me pretty!" + +"No? But they will. Perhaps you are only just growing up to it," said +Mrs. Cartwright with a very kind glance into the face opposite to her. +"So many people make a virtue of blurting out unpleasant truths; why +shouldn't one tell the truths that aren't unpleasant? Today (I saw it +when you came in) you are quite lovely. You look as if a charm had +touched you." + +Little Olwen's whole heart went suddenly out in emotion and gratitude +towards the woman who had said this thing. + +Only the very young can realize how much they mean--the very first +compliments to the very young girl! Especially to the very young girl in +Love; she who feels the special need of beauty, the special need of +encouragement to think herself beautiful. + +And now here was a clever woman (who knew what men admired, and who had +seen so many lovely people) pronouncing her, Olwen, to be "quite +lovely." + +Oh, Event! + + * * * * * + +As she went up after luncheon to her room--the replica of her Uncle's +study, with its parquet floor and high balconied window--she felt there +was nothing she could not have done for this Mrs. Cartwright. + +To do something for other people; that was the wish that filled the +child's heart in its overflowing mood. + +Throwing a look to her hair and eyes in the glass, she thought of the +woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had classified so promptly as the Hotel +Spinster. She thought of that woman's meaningless but "good" clothes, of +the hungry eyes which she fastened upon that little French boy seated at +table with his mother. How the Spinster had watched that mother bending +over her child, turning his chair, showing him how to hold his little +silver spoon shaped like a wine-taster, folding his napkin for him; ah, +how she'd watched! + +"Poor, poor thing!" thought the soft-hearted Olwen. "Anyone could see +how she would love a little child of her own----" + +And then she thought of the other rather "out of it" guest at that +hotel; the very young New Army subaltern whom Mrs. Cartwright had said +was living a life to which he hadn't been brought up and which he must +leave again unless he could find a rich wife. Not an attractive type, +thought Olwen (forgetting that for her at the moment there existed only +one masculine type that showed any attraction whatsoever). It wasn't +likely, she considered, that he would find anyone to care about _him_. + +"Poor boy!" She felt quite motherly. For she was the type of girl whom +personal emotion drives outwards to include the world in her thoughts, +rather than the commoner type of lover who is driven inwards, upon +concentrated narrowed sympathies. Ever since she had come to that hotel +and had fallen in love, Juliet-fashion, with the first glance at a +good-looking male face seen across a dinner-table, the little creature +had longed for everyone, not only herself, to be lucky in Love. + +She found it horrible that in this supreme matter everything must be +left to Fate, to Chance, to the merest Toss-up. + +No woman could lift a finger to help either her own love-affair or +anybody else's. The pity of it! + +But wait----Again the delighted thought thrilled her----If that discovery +were true?... The Disturbing Charm! If that could really help. _If_ ... +after all? + +What was it that Mrs. Cartwright had said to her? + +"_You look as if a charm had touched you._" + +Could that have meant more than her friend had known? + +Olwen threw another wondering, searching look into her glass.... Was it +her imagination, or did she look prettier already than she had ever +before seen herself? _Oh...._ + +She stood there, reflected; an image of Uncertainty hovering between +belief and doubt. "Uncle wouldn't believe a word of it, I'm sure," she +told herself. "I'm sure he thought he'd thrown the letter away. He may +be quite right, of course. It sounds nonsense. Yet----" + +("_As if a charm had touched you_," Mrs. Cartwright said, knowing +nothing.) + +"The writer of the letter said it was the result of years of research," +pondered Olwen. "If he could give years, surely I can give just--just a +_try_?" + +She paused, hands clasped upon her breast. + +"Shall I? Shall I?... Supposing I tried the effect of the Charm upon +somebody else, first? Somebody here? There are at least two people +besides myself in this hotel whom it could help...." + +Then she thought defiantly, "The inventor said he shirked +responsibility. Well, _I_ wouldn't! If it doesn't do any good--well! +There's no _harm_ done! I----" + +Another second's pause. Then the decision. + +"I will. Yes! I _will_ try it!" + +Half believing, half longing to believe, and wholly excited by the +thing, the girl began busying herself as if in answer to some mysterious +Command. + +She opened a drawer of her toilette-table, taking out a square +work-basket in which reels, scissors, thimble, and darning skeins were +packed into the smallest possible compass; Olwen being as neat in her +habits as her uncle was chaotic. From another corner of the drawer she +took a carefully rolled-up length of the mauve satin ribbon she used +for slotting through her underclothes. From this she cut enough to sew +up into a tiny sachet. + +Then she sat by the window and stitched, the young Welsh girl into whose +busy, dimpled hands there had fallen this maybe tremendous Power. While +the autumn sun glowed redly on the bodies of those pines without, while +the border of far-off Biscay rollers tossed their cloud-like columns of +white against the sky-line, she sat at her needle like a Fate with a +face of a grave-eyed child, the mouth of a flower. + +In a few minutes she had the square of satin ready for filling. She drew +the packet from her bosom; opened it with a hundred precautions; poured +into the sachet a little--a very little!--of the musky scented powder. + +The packet itself she bestowed at the bottom of her work-basket, locking +that carefully away. Yes; some of that was for _her_ to wear again, but +not now. Later on. + +The curious fact persisted that she would wish to see first the effect +of that Charm upon another wearer. + +She had stitched up the sachet before she had answered her own question, +"Whom shall I give it to first?" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE LAUNCHING OF THE CHARM + + "A field untilled, a web unwove, + A flower withheld from sun or bee, + An alien in the courts of Love----" + + Kipling. + + +Accident decided it for her. + +As she was running down the broad red and white steps at the front of +the hotel, Olwen met, coming up, the woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had +noticed at lunch for her hopeless well-off spinsterishness. The Spinster +carried a guide book, a flowering-plant in a pot with paper round it, +and a bound map. + +She wore over those expensive tweeds of hers those furs which none but +the young and radiant should venture to wear; grey squirrel. Her face +was blank. + +It lighted into a tentative smile as the young girl turned and ran back +a few steps to the top, waiting for her. + +"Good afternoon; we mustn't cross on the stairs," Olwen called. "It's +unlucky!" + +Was it her fancy, or did the Spinster look pathetically pleased because +some one had said "good afternoon" and had made a playful remark? + +Up the steps she hastened, rather stiffly, her figure being of the kind +that seems all clothes. + +When she got to the top she said, with a shy, effusive little laugh, +"Oh, are you superstitious?" and before Olwen could answer, she hurried +on, "Oh, can one order tea here, at any time one likes? Could I order it +in my own room, do you think?" + +"I think so," said Olwen, surprised. + +In spite of the gap in their ages, this woman of thirty-five seemed to +speak as if she were a new girl, just arrived at school. In spite of her +"set" figure, her mode of dressing, her big nose, there was--yes! +something of suppressed schoolgirlishness about her yet. Some are born +with the saddle to wear, some with the spur, says the proverb. This +Spinster had the look, not only of having been born with the saddle, but +of having been for years under the spur of others. Her timid eyes were +those of a dog who has been turned adrift. They fastened upon Olwen. + +"This is a lovely place, isn't it?" she hurried on as if afraid the girl +would leave her. "Have you been here long?" + +"About a week." + +"Oh, have you? I have only just come. I came just before lunch. I saw +you at lunch, with a tall lady in brown. Are you staying with her?" + +"No," Olwen said, "I'm here with my uncle; I am his secretary." + +"Oh, are you? How nice. I am not with anybody," volunteered the +Spinster. Clutching her guide-book and plant and fixing the girl with +that timid yet persistent eye, she seemed ready to stand there and talk +for half an hour. "You are the first person I have spoken to here. I'm +quite alone." + +These were the three words which--with all the unspoken, unconscious +pathos behind them--went to Olwen's heart. She tightened her fingers +upon what she held in her hand, and she thought to herself, "_Here's_ +someone who needs the Charm!" Then she thought, caught back a little, "I +can't give it just to the first person I meet. Oughtn't I to see a +little more of her, first?" + +The Spinster's next remarks seemed to fall in with this plan. + +"I oughtn't to keep you here talking, without any hat on.... Oh, d'you +always go without a hat in the woods?... I must just put this plant +down; do come into my room a minute, won't you? It's only on the first +floor, just at the top of the stairs; yes, do----" + +It was the best room in the hotel to which Olwen followed this new +acquaintance of hers; and it seemed crowded with belongings, all very +obviously costly, and all--curiously enough!--quite incredibly _new_. + +"Oh--couldn't you--couldn't you have tea with me?" was the Spinster's +next suggestion. "My name is Walsh; Agatha Walsh. Do have tea with me. +Please. I'll order some now----" + +She rang the waiter's bell; and in halting French she ordered the sallow +little Italian to bring up to her room tea for two. + +"_Simple?_" asked the waiter. + +"Oh--what does he mean?" + +"He means do you want just tea," explained Olwen, "or anything with it?" + +"Oh! Everything there is. You like cake, don't you? Girls do," said the +Spinster with that timid, friend-hunting glance. "Jam, and pastries, and +things. Tell him to bring everything, please." + +"_Complet_," ordered little Olwen, feeling a woman of the world in +comparison with this stranger who was abashed before waiters. + +"Oh, how well you talk French," murmured the other. "Do sit down here. I +wonder if I shall ever be able to talk it quickly. I've never been in +France before, do you know? I----Isn't it funny? I have hardly ever been +_anywhere_!" + +"_Haven't_ you?" said Olwen--who herself had known her native Wales, +Liverpool, the South Kensington Museum, and some other museums in Paris. + +The Spinster broke into further confidences. "Oh, no. You see, I lived a +very secluded life. I had to. I lived with an elderly cousin of mine in +Buckinghamshire, oh, quite in the country. Here she is." + +From her silver-strewn table the Spinster took an ornate oval frame. It +enclosed the portrait of an old lady in a Victorian cap of lace and +ribbons, with beetle-brows and a mouth of steel. + +"Yes, this is Miss Walsh; the same name as mine, you see. She never left +her house for the last fifteen years, you know. A beautiful house; such +grounds! We never went out of them, except the half-mile drive to church +every Sunday. And of course we scarcely ever saw anybody, except just +the Rector and the old Doctor," the Spinster confided to Olwen. "All +that money----But, poor thing, she was never really well. Of late years +she had to have everything done for her; everything!" + +"I suppose _you_ had to do it!" volunteered Olwen, with a glance at the +portrait and a pang of pity for the woman who showed it to her. The girl +was too young to read the whole story as Mrs. Cartwright would have +done; soaring years of a woman's youth harnessed to the bath-chair of a +bitter-tongued tyrant in shawl and cap! But she guessed that the "poor +thing" might more appropriately be applied to Miss Walsh the younger. + +"Oh, well," said the Spinster, gently, "she only had me in the world. +Except her nephew. She quarrelled with him. He was very outspoken, +and--well, they quarrelled. He should have come in to her money, you +know. She made another will only just before she died, poor thing. +That's how----" She gave a gesture that seemed to take in the new +portmanteau on the floor, the winking silver-backed brushes on the +table, her own tweeds and furs, the wide view from the window, and the +waiter bringing in the tea-tray. "It all came to _me_!" concluded Miss +Walsh, diffident, amazed. "I can scarcely believe it _yet_! I couldn't +believe I could leave the place and go away for as long as I liked!" + +Olwen asked, "What brought you? Why did you come here?" + +"Oh! because there was nowhere for me to go. I went to London because +I'd only been there once in my life. Then I went over to Paris because +I'd never been there. Then I stuck a hat-pin into the guide-book to see +where I'd go next. It came out here. It seemed like Fate, didn't it? So +I came." + +Olwen looked at her as she poured out the tea. Her wrists clanked with +gold curb bracelets (of a pattern as obsolete as was the enormous brooch +of plaited gold and turquoises at her throat; the heavily set rings on +her fingers, no doubt jewellery of the late Miss Walsh). They were +chains that had fettered a patient slave--but she was a slave no +longer. + +"I'm so glad!" said little Olwen, impulsively. + +"Oh! Thank you." Her hostess smiled as gratefully as if the girl herself +had helped to alter that will. "I knew you were sympathetic. I could +_say_ things to you. One can _talk_ to some people, can't one?" she +added, as the waiter went out. "I thought at lunch what a sweet little +face you had, if you don't mind my saying so. There--there's a charm +about it! What is your name?... Olwen Howel-Jones.... Is your tea right? +I didn't even know they had proper tea in France now; my cousin never +would go Abroad because she said they gave you no tea.... Olwen! How +pretty. How old are you? You don't mind my asking, do you? Nineteen? I +was just nineteen when I went to live at the Grange--Miss Walsh's house. +Nineteen.... I always liked young people; but of course we never saw +any. My cousin disliked girls as a rule. Even the servants were quite +elderly. I--sometimes" she went on in a rush as of the pent-up +confidences of years, "I longed to see something young, do you know? I +suppose _you've_ always.... Brothers and sisters? Lots of cousins? How +nice! And lots of friends, of course...." + +She stopped, she fixed her eyes musingly upon the dainty creature +helping herself to cherry _compote_ and ended with a shy, quick +involuntary question. + +"Are you engaged to be married?" + +"Me?" exclaimed Olwen with a swift turn of her little black head against +the hotel easy chair. She laughed, with the traditional girlish +rejoinder, "Oh, dear, no! I don't suppose I----" + +It broke off short on her lips. + +Footsteps, two sets of footsteps, were tramping up the polished shallow +stairs outside the closed door. A man's voice rang out as it had rung +out that morning under her Uncle's balcony. That accent which was as +penetrating as Scots mist, as clear as Canadian frost, reached her ears +in the giving out of this dictum: + + "What I demand in Women is, firstly----" + +Here a door above slammed, cutting off the rest. + +Ah, thought Olwen, "They" were back again already, were "They"? + +This breathless thought made her lose the thread for a moment of what +this Miss Walsh, the wealthy waif, was pouring out to the first friendly +soul she had encountered in the place. + +Then the girl in love dragged herself back to that polished comfortable +room, that tea-table, that woman who had stuck a hat-pin into a +guide-book to decide where to go. + +"Oh, you know, I often used to wonder if I should be an old woman before +I'd ever made friends with anybody. I used to sit winding wool for my +cousin and looking out of the morning-room window at the rhododendrons. +Such rhododendrons! Every spring they came out ... a wall of pink! Then +they dropped their blossoms on the lawn ... a carpet of pink! Every +spring they came again. Not the same flowers; fresh flowers every +spring. Fresh flowers.... But the springs went by, and of course I knew +that I should never come young again----Oh, what is that?" + +For Miss Walsh, taking up the tea-pot, had caught sight of something +that Olwen had laid down on the tray while she spread the cherry jam on +her biscuits. Hastily Olwen picked it up again. It was the sachet into +which she had sewn the Disturbing Charm. + +In a flash she thought to herself: "Yes! she _is_ the one! This poor +dear, who's never had anything! Before she's quite too old! Something +ought to be done!" + +"... Fifteen--sixteen of those springs," Miss Walsh was murmuring again, +"and such appleblossom. But looking at things alone makes spring so much +sadder than winter.... Of course, you'll never have to understand +that--my dear." + +Olwen was thinking definitely and finally, "I must try the Charm upon +her. I _will_. It's probably rubbish.... But if it isn't----! Now how do +I set about getting her to wear it? I can't say, '_Tuck this inside your +blouse and you needn't be lonely any more, you'll begin to have people +falling in Love with you!_' How shall I----?" + +The method seemed to dart ready-made into her head as she held out on +her pink palm the tiny square of mauve satin, scarcely larger than a +postage-stamp. + +She turned upon the Spinster the appealing smile that had made "little +Miss Howel-Jones" such a successful worker on the last Welsh Flag Day, +in Liverpool. + +"Will you buy one? I'm selling these," announced the inventive Olwen. +"They"--(then to herself, "_Quick, what shall I say?_") "It--it's for +the Croix Rouge." + +"Oh, is it? Oh, yes. What's it supposed to be? A scent sachet? How +pretty," exclaimed Miss Walsh, taking the thing in her hand. "Yes; of +course I'll buy one. Where is my little bag?" (Bag, of crocodile and +purple satin, produced.) "I'll give you something at once." + +The "something" proved to be a hundred-franc note. + +"Oh, no! Not all that!" gasped the impromptu Red Cross Flag seller. +"It's only a franc! I _can't_ take any more!" + +"Oh, but of course you can. It's for the soldiers," put in Miss Walsh, a +look of surprise crossing her mild, Roman-nosed face. "Of course you +must take it. I like giving things.... There! Where's the little sachet? +How sweet! Did you make it yourself? I must put it in among my +writing-paper." (Case produced, all Bond Street pig-skin and +gold-monogrammed A. W.) + +Olwen hesitated. Of course the Charm would be of no earthly good +_there_, even if it were of any good at all, she thought, half +fluttered, half ashamed of herself. One curious thing she had noticed +about this Charm already. + +Alone with it, the whole incredible theory seemed real. Brought into +contact with other people, it appeared nonsense. Still, since she was +going to give it a trial, she might as well do it properly. For a moment +she listened again to the lonely, talkative woman. + +"Oh, you know, I've always longed to give things! Only I've no one to +give to. Shopping is lovely, but not when it's only for oneself----" + +"No," absently from Olwen (who sometimes felt she had all Carnarvonshire +commissioning _her_ to shop for them as soon as she got to town). "That +sachet----" she ventured presently, eyeing the case. "It's supposed to +be a mascot, you know. To bring you luck." + +"Oh?" + +"Perhaps you don't believe in it? But if you wouldn't mind.... To please +_me_," said Olwen. "I mean to please the Red Cross! If you'd _wear_ it!" + +"Oh, I must wear it, must I?" (Case opened; sachet pinned by a large +pearl bar to the front of the thick white satin shirt.) + +"Er----Not quite like that," from Olwen. "It--I believe it has to be +worn hidden. Out of sight somewhere." + +"Oh, yes. Very well." (Sachet unpinned, and refastened to the brocade +lining of the tweed coat.) "There!" + +"But you take off your coat in the evening, don't you?" demurred Olwen, +quite anxiously. + +Not alone this woman's history might be changed by the wearing of a +Charm, but her own. It was her love-story, Olwen's! for which that Charm +was to be put on trial, too. She drew breath quickly. + +"Miss Walsh! I'm so sorry to bother you! But it's something that has to +be _always_ worn about you. Please would you mind pinning it right +inside your blouse? Or--or to the top of your stays! French people often +do wear a sachet there, don't they? Then I shall--I mean you'll always +be sure about it...." + +"Oh, very well!" agreed Miss Walsh, smiling. She turned her back +modestly upon Olwen, and by the movement of her elbows seemed to be busy +with countless fastenings. Then she reached for a gold lace-pin from +her pin-cushion. There were more jerks and fastenings-up, and presently +she turned smiling to the girl. + +"I have safety-pinned it right in _there_," she announced, patting a +slab of satin over Heaven (and Heaven alone) knew how many layers of +Jaeger, whale-bone, coutille, and solid white embroidery, and +long-cloth. "There! Will that be all right?" + +Olwen gave a little sigh; a breeze to carry the ship of this Adventure. +It was launched! + +"Thank you," she said. Then she glanced at the hundred franc note in her +hand. "But I do rather feel as if I'd got this under false pretences!" + +"Oh, no!" smiled the Spinster. "If the little mascot does really bring +me so much Luck, it will be worth a few more francs, won't it?" + +"Yes, indeed," agreed the demure Olwen, feeling as if she exchanged a +mental glance with the unknown Inventor of that Charm. "It will be worth +it." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE CHARM BEGINS TO WORK + + "Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier', + Doch weiter kommt man ohne ihr." + + Boche Proverbs. + + +"No woman can get me to call her pretty," enunciated Captain Ross, +"until I've seen her walk." + +The fiat, delivered in that ice-ax voice of his, cut through the +polyglot murmur of the visitors gathered in the shining bare salon, all +mirrors and decorations of artificial iris. The voice continued to hold +forth. + +"Feet first; then figure. That's how it comes with me. Then hair. +Fairrrr hairrr. Must be fair-to-golden. A woman who isn't bland"--this +is how he pronounced it, but his hearers assumed it to mean blonde--"a +woman who isn't bland is only half a woman to me." + +This saying was given out on the evening of the day when the Charm had +fallen into the hands of Olwen Howel-Jones. + +She was sitting there at the time, on a red plush sofa next to her +Uncle, at the edge of the group formed by Mrs. Cartwright (who wore a +tawny-golden tea-gown and was knitting a khaki sock), Mr. Awdas, the +young flying officer who looked so appropriately like an eagle with his +bold features and the head that was so narrow in comparison with his +wide, wing-like shoulders, and Captain Ross, the one-armed Staff +Captain, who was discoursing to them on the subject of Women, of whom +(as he had been known to remark) he was the finest judge in Europe. + +Olwen's little jet-black head was buried in the current number of +"Femina," which she had picked up from the oval, crimson-covered table +in front of her, but she was devouring every word of the homily on +Women. + +That Captain Ross should notice a girl's feet was glad news; her own +feet being not merely tiny, but of a gratifying shapeliness. But her +heart seemed to sink suddenly down into the slippers that shod them, +when she heard the further "demmannd" that Beauty must be fair-haired. +Ah, he would never look at _her_, then! + +She never, apparently, looked at him. For, regarding this one man for +whom she would have given her eyes, the artless Welsh maiden had learnt +Mrs. Cartwright's art of seeing without seeming to do so. + +What she seemed to see were those glazed full-page French +fashion-plates. + +What she did see were every look and turn of the man at two arms-lengths +from her, lounging in the red plush chair with its ornate écru mats. +What she saw can be seen by each girl in love; "the Heart-wish +Incarnate," a glamorous, radiant creature indeed! + +And----What was really _there_? + +Let us borrow the eyes of the others, who were not in Love with this +Captain Ross, to describe him. + +Young Awdas, the flyer, would have told you, "_A top-hole fellow. Bucks +rather; but you get used to it. Capital chap._" + +Professor Howel-Jones might have said, mildly, "_He has somewhat +definite opinions, even for a man of his youth; but we allow that to +those youngsters who have endured more in three years than we in +three-score._" + +Mrs. Cartwright, in writing to her sisters at home descriptions of every +one staying at Les Pins, had set down: + + "_Captain Ross. Special Reserve man. Keen soldier. Came over + from Canada to join in '14. Arm lost on the Somme. Shell-shock; + and gas--that's why he's here for his chest, which is bad + again._ + + "_About 30; looks more. Thick-set, dark. Scarlet tabs suit him. + Imagine Charles Hawtrey when young and two stone lighter; + imagine a handsome black Tom-cat with a woman's mouth, from + which issues a strong accent with the eternal 'Is that + so--o--oh?' punctuating its speech; well, there you are. + Sometimes he seems entirely Canadian; at other moments the + complete Scot with every R burring like a cockchafer on a + window-pane._ + + "_Right sleeve tucked into pocket. Amazingly quick and clever + at doing everything with left hand; getting notes out of case, + managing siphon, lighting cigar._ + + "_Eyes, hard brown, watchful as a robin's (I don't think they + see anything, but he hates me)._ + + "_Would not be good-looking but for the lower half of his face; + that mouth really beautiful, tenderly curved and sensitive, and + constantly showing an even row of the milkiest teeth in the + world._ + + "_Intensely sure of self (to put it kindly)._ + + "_Has the look that one recognizes as the trace of women's eyes + and lips upon his face, but nothing that counts up to now, I + think._" + +The man thus unknowingly summed up brought out his cigarette-case with +that clever left hand of his and proffered it first to the woman who had +summed him up and then to Jack Awdas. + +This was the tall blonde flyer, who was sitting beside her; a striking +young figure. A woman would have noticed first his eyes and the +changeful expressions that darted swift as racing planes across their +blueness. One was an eager, anticipatory look. "_What have you for me?_" +it demanded of Life. "_Will you be wonderful? Shall I be satisfied?_" +One was a look of joyous mastery. "_Love me_," it seemed to say to Fate +herself. "_Give me and tell me all that I ask, for I am impatient Youth, +and must be served._" One was a look less often seen; it was the +"yonderly" look, the glance of those favoured (or cursed) with a glimpse +now and then beyond the kindly curtains of the Flesh and of Everyday.... +It seemed to question a surprised "_What? I can't quite see.... What?... +I heard something...._" + +Needless to say that the youth himself was entirely ignorant that any of +these signals could be read. Generally, he was healthily unconscious +that there was anything to be signalled. + +To the French people in that hotel he was known as Monsieur de l'Audace. + +His observer, his squadron, and several enemy airmen could have told you +that he deserved the nickname, but no other decoration had been granted +to him. In that last ghastly dive from the clouds he had so nearly lost, +too, everything that was his; however, health and strength and full +power of limb were returning now, and youth, and sleep o' nights, and +careless gaiety. Quite often now his laugh rang out; it was still a +trifle husky, as was his boyish, nonchalant voice. (One of his many +wounds had been in his throat.) + +"Go on, Ross," he jeered amicably. "Let's have some more of your +priceless pointers on the Sex. What was the one you gave me today going +along the sea-wall? Oh, yes; 'Never make love to a woman with a pink +chin; she's older than she looks.'" + +"Why, that's quite true," put in the deep voice of Mrs. Cartwright, +mildly. She crossed one long, gold-draped leg over the other, and threw +an amused glance through the cigarette-haze at the finest judge of women +in Europe. "D'you mind if I put that into a book, Captain Ross?" + +"You'd better not put anything I say into any book you write," the Staff +Captain advised her, with a short laugh (while Olwen, head still deep in +the journal, drank in every syllable of the assured voice). "Your public +wouldn't stand for it, Domestica." + +"This would not be a 'Domestica' book," returned the writer, with a +little tilt of her brown head over her knitting. "This is a little book +I'm going to bring out seven years hence, for my own two boys. A sort of +manual to help them when they go courting. 'The Guide to the Girl,' I +shall call it." + +"The title has one very all right sound," laughed Captain Ross. "But if +you'll pardon my saying so, Mrs. Cartwright, I guess I could compile +that book considerably better than what you could." + +"Not you!" declared Mrs. Cartwright. "Most of those manuals are written +from the point of view of the man. That's where they fall short. _I_ +should make the Girl herself do the advising. I should let her give the +'pointers,' as Mr. Awdas calls them. I should divide them into little +chapters: '_Of Proposing_,' '_Of Presents_,' '_Of In-Laws_,' '_Of +Caresses_'----" + +"'_Of Caresses_,'" took up Captain Ross, with another laugh, "is going +to get you banned by the libraries." + +"Not it. I," said Mrs. Cartwright, knitting, "shall not treat the +subject in--in that way." + +"Then that manual of yours isn't going to help your boys a lot," +affirmed Captain Ross in his most final tone. "For, see here----" + +"Olwen _fach_," said the Professor, suddenly taking his pipe out of his +mouth and looking over the smudged black sheet of "La Patria," "isn't it +time for you to go to bed?" + +"Uncle!" came indignantly from behind the fashion-plates: "It's only +half-past nine!" + +A smile went round the little group of the English about that table; the +eyes of each turned upon Nineteen who was being treated as Ten years +old. She would have kept up the screen of her "Femina," but Mrs. +Cartwright, finishing off a row of her knitting, put it aside, and drew +nearer to the girl. + +"May I look at them with you?" she said, pleasantly, and the two shared +the fashion-drawings, while the men watched; Captain Ross, with a curl +of the lip and a remark about Women and their fairrrrm conviction that, +because clothes are drawn one way in a picture that's the way they'll +look when they've gotten them on. + +Mrs. Cartwright lifted her head quickly, but it was not to retort to +this. She had suddenly seen something (as usual, without looking at it) +that surprised her. Then she dropped her head again. + +"My dear!" she murmured to Olwen in an amazed little laugh. "Did you +ever know such a thing? There! Coming in through the dining-room door, +now! You can see her in the mirror, behind those French children playing +draughts. It's the Hotel Spinster we were looking at, at lunch today," +chattered Mrs. Cartwright in the soft stream that scarcely moved her +lips. "The woman I said had never had a man to look at her. Can I +believe my eyes? She's got a man with her now!" + +"Miss Walsh?" exclaimed Olwen, gazing with all her eyes into the mirror +that showed her this group. + +Miss Walsh, in a fur coat, had evidently just come in from the Forest; +she carried a bough of arbutus, and her cheeks were pink from walking in +the clear night air. Close beside her came the man--yes! the male, +masculine man who was her companion; the sturdy blue-clad French +sergeant who had been at the table d'hôte. Across the intervening groups +of people he was seen to be all smiles and gestures, the traditional +gallantry of his nation spoke in the very bend of his back as he opened +the door, bowed again, clicked his spurred heels. Miss Walsh was holding +out her hand; her lips parted, obviously in one of her characteristic +"Oh's"--the pink upon her cheeks deepened as she took leave of this +cavalier. One could almost hear her struggling French. She looked back +again; another bow, another click of the heels from her escort. Then the +sergeant marched back down the room, beaming satisfaction painted upon +every line of his face, bold, swarthy, and somewhat bull-necked. He was +what his own family described as "beau garçon"; a fine figure of a man. +He disappeared, through the ante-room, towards that wing of the hotel +inhabited by the management; Monsieur Leroux (bald, amiable, the shape +of a captive balloon), his three pigtailed daughters of exquisite +manners, and his alert wife (who ran everything--including him--in the +hotel). + +"Heavens!" ejaculated Mrs. Cartwright absently, as she took up her +knitting again, "that must have been Madame Leroux's nephew. Her +sister's son, the _artilleriste_. I heard all about him the other day. +Gustave Tronchet his name is. Madame told me that he was coming here _en +perme_ as her guest, seeing she had no son, and that he loved to eat +well and to be _bien_ generally. I suppose she is introducing him----!" + +"Some romance!" laughed Captain Ross, jerking his head towards the door +through which the fur-clad form of the lonely traveller had disappeared. +This was the first remark of his to which Olwen had paid scant +attention. As suddenly as if some one had called her, she sprang up. She +had dropped a kiss on her Uncle's thistle-down locks, had given her hand +to Mrs. Cartwright, had launched a shy glance and a "good night" in the +direction of the others, and had darted away, a slim sprite in grey with +touches of black, almost before the two young men could rise to their +feet. + +Mrs. Cartwright was still thinking of the stiletto-eyed French +manageress who had introduced her nephew to the occupant of the best +room in the hotel. + +"What family spirit!" she admired. "What sense of possibilities! What +respect for Power--I mean money. What an admirable nation they are.... +Will ours ever learn foresight and thrift from theirs?" + +"Ours--that is, mine--has family loyalty very strongly too," the +Professor joined in. "The Welsh, my dear lady, are as clannish in that +way as the French; they'll do anything for 'my nephew.'" + +"They've an eye skinned for the dollars as well," volunteered Captain +Ross, his robin-like eye twinkling as he took out a cigar. "What's that +saying--ah, yes, God made a Welshman, and God made a Jew, but thank God +he never made a Welsh Jew!" + +The Professor stiffened a little; and Mrs. Cartwright, seeing this, drew +the conversation back to the worldly aspects of germinating Romance.... + +The drift of all these remarks would have been entirely lost upon Olwen +even had she stayed to hear them. + +For she knew better. She knew that it was not Madame Leroux, the +manageress, who was responsible for the coming together of a travelling +spinster and of a French soldier on leave. She, Olwen, knew what was +responsible for those attentions, that talk, that interested, +deferential smile on the part of the man who had attached himself to her +new-made friend. Olwen knew what had attracted him where no man had ever +been attracted before. Yes! She knew! This was the work of the Charm +that she herself had seen hidden away so near to an unsought heart.... + +This nephew of a French hotel manageress ... of course he wasn't exactly +the sort of admirer who belonged in Granges with grounds full of +rhododendrons, but he was a _man_, triumphed Olwen. There'd be others, +people that Miss Agatha Walsh could think seriously about; but he was +the _beginning_! He'd shown the success of her experiment. The Charm +_could_ work. That letter was _not_ all nonsense! It was all true! And +since the Charm had worked for Miss Walsh, it would work for--well, +others! Joy, oh joy! + +Bursting with joy, in fact, the girl darted out of the _salon_, +scampering upstairs in all haste to overtake Miss Walsh, and to hear +more of this. + +She hoped to catch her up at her bedroom door, but already Miss Walsh +had gone in. + +Olwen knocked; was asked, "Who's there?" + +"Only me--Olwen!" + +"Come in," was the muffled answer. It came from behind a handful of Miss +Walsh's hair, quite abundant and almost pretty, now that she had removed +the flattening net and taken it all down. The first glance showed Olwen +that it was not just "down" for the night. There was a side glass in +Miss Walsh's hand; a thick loop of her locks was coiled up at the back, +ready for the side "bits" to be drawn across in a simpler fashion than +the upholstery of puffs and curls. Yes! She was seeing how she looked +with her hair done a different way! Ah, sign of the times, that could +spell only one thing: M--A--N! + +"I--I only came in to say good night to you," Olwen began (really +longing to ply with questions; how--how soon did IT work--what +happened----). + +Miss Walsh turned a face as transfigured as Olwen's own above her +quilted dressing jacket. + +She looked ten years younger. She held her head at almost the angle of +those who have _not_ been born with the saddle. All fluttered and +flushed she was, but delighted; a once bleak landscape that a sun-ray +lightens. For it is your lifelong teetotaller who, rescued from Death, +perks up at the first sip of restorative. It was the elder Miss Walsh's +cloistered companion who was responding to that tonic: masculine +attention. She turned a new smile upon Olwen. + +"Oh, it's you," she exclaimed, with new notes in her voice. Then she +broke into the breathless talk which was to her as new a function as +shopping for herself. + +"I've been out!" with a wave towards the arbutus-bough on her table. +"Oh, it is such a lovely night! Oh! You've no idea how glorious the +stars looked, peeping down between the branches of the pines! I've +_never_ seen them so wonderful, never. I went for a stroll in the Forest +after dinner, do you know----Oh! You saw me come in? Oh, I never saw +you. Yes; I--I went with somebody----" she babbled on. "That Monsieur +Tronchet, the French soldier. He is a sergeant ... but everybody in the +Army is anything just now, aren't they? He showed me the Avenue leading +out into the woods.... Was it very extraordinary of me to go out for a +walk with him? Oh, I don't think it matters, do you? Everything's so +different ... in France. He spoke to me at dinner; I believe I'd taken +his place by mistake--then we talked----" + +"_Ah_," came softly from Olwen, standing there listening, listening to +her witness for the power of the Charm. It had forced this man to speak; +it had drawn him!... "Oh, and he's such a delightful person," Miss Walsh +poured out between gasps. "He has been telling me such a lot of the most +interesting things about himself and the War! He spoke slowly, when I +asked him. I could really understand most of it. He expresses himself so +wonderfully! The French all do, I suppose. But he finds the English so +sympathetic. Oh, and what do you think? You won't laugh, I know; you're +so sweet. I am going to be his _marraine_. God-mother, that is. They all +have them in the French Army, he tells me; somebody who just writes very +often and takes an interest. He told me he hadn't any. So I promised. We +are to write to each other when he gets back to the front. Oh, and +tomorrow--what do you think? He is going to take me across the lagoon in +the motor-boat!" breathed Miss Walsh, and her eyes were now those of a +child who has been promised a fairy treat. "I don't think any one has +ever taken me in a boat before. This is a wonderful place, isn't it? I +am so glad I came!--Oh, are you going to bed now? I shall see you +tomorrow. I feel as if I knew _such_ a lot of nice people already! Good +night!" and her door closed upon a very happy face. + +Equally excited, and even happier, little Olwen sped up another flight +of stairs to her room. Stars danced in her eyes. It was true! It was all +true! she rejoiced. _Now----!_ + +Yes; now, Captain Ross, _en garde_! Stipulate as you choose for the +colour of Beauty's hair; swear that no woman is Woman to you except a +blonde. One little sooty-haired brunette is now no longer to be cast +down by your specifications. Say what you like; she has confidence in +what she is going to do. + + * * * * * + +She burst into her room, snapped on the lights, ran to the drawer, +snatched out work-basket, thimble, needle, silk; now the mauve ribbon! +Now the packet containing that so potent Charm! + +Then down she sat again to work as she had worked that afternoon, but +in all certainty instead of doubt. Snip--snip--snip. Three lengths of +ribbon, and to each a sachet. + +"I'll have to buy yards and yards and yards of this ribbon presently," +thought Olwen feverishly as she stitched. "And I'll have to send to that +address for all the Charm that they can send me; all that there is in +the world!" + +She rolled a sheet of note-paper into a little funnel; and through this +she filled--ah, so cautiously!--the sachets with the musky, seed-like +powder. + +She sighed: "_What_ a pity that I've only got enough here for four of +us!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + +FURTHER PLANS FOR THE CHARM + + "Je dirai qu'une femme ne doit jamais écrire.... + + "Je ne vois qu'une exception; c'est une femme qui fait des livres + pour nourrier ou élever sa famille. + + "Alors elle doit toujours se retrancher dans l'intérêt d'argent + en parlant de ses ouvrages, et dire, par exemple, à un chef + d'escadron: 'Votre état vous donne quatre mille francs par an, + et moi, avec mes deux traductions de l'anglais, j'ai pu, l'année + dernière, consacrer trois mille cinq cents francs de plus à l'éducation + de mes deux fils.'" + + Stendhal. + + +Now so far one charm-sachet was accounted for. It was safety-pinned into +the high busk of Miss Walsh's almost obsolete corset. The second Olwen +now hung about her own neck. Even in sleep she would never be parted +from it. Let her absorb its potency every hour of the day or night! +Therefore she sewed to the square of mauve satin a piece of pink +baby-ribbon, tied it in a bow and slipped it over her head. _Her_ charm! + +There were (until she obtained more of that magic stuff) two sachets +left. + +Over these she pondered, running her needle into the flannel leaf of her +needle-book. + +"There's one thing to be seen yet," she meditated. "I've seen it work +once. It's been a success all right with a woman. The question is--Will +it work with a man? I must try." + +So the destination of the third sachet was decided. That young and +pink-faced subaltern should have it; he who had such blushing struggles +with his French and who seemed to have no more friends than had Miss +Walsh; he who had told Mrs. Cartwright so frankly that he was an ex-shop +assistant, with the joys of travelling first-class (and of living to +match) gone to his boyish head. Yes; the disturbing Charm should be +applied to help him. She would think out the "how" tomorrow. + +But the fourth sachet? To whom should she give that? + +Perhaps it was the passing thought of her writer-friend that brought in +its train a bright idea. + +Mrs. Cartwright! + +"Why shouldn't I give her the Charm? Why shouldn't she enjoy life a +little bit more before she's quite, quite an old woman?" thought the +girl. "Of course she's not young; older than Miss Walsh even. And not +pretty--well, how could any one be pretty at forty--even though her +clothes do seem to fit her, and she does run up and down those sandhills +as fast as I can. She's awfully jolly and nice, though; so kind, too! I +daresay she'd like to be married again. I daresay she's tired of always +writing and writing. Tired of living all by herself when those boys of +hers are at school. I daresay she'd like to have somebody nice and sort +of settled-down to help her with them. Now if only she could attract +somebody! Somebody like that----" + +Here a second brilliant idea flashed into that well-willing, impulsive +little black head of Olwen's. She uttered it aloud, the name of this +"somebody" who might be suitably attracted by Mrs. Cartwright--even at +forty. + +"_Uncle!_" + +All alone in her room, Olwen clapped her hands over this idea. Swiftly +it began to enlarge itself. + +"Yes; why not Uncle? The very person! He's old, but then that's all the +better; for her. He's just the right age, in fact!" + +Professor Howel-Jones was a sturdy seventy; and to Nineteen the gap +between forty and seventy, seen vaguely down the perspective of the +years, is scarcely noticeable, particularly when it is the man who is +seventy--men generally being of themselves younger than women. (Or so we +are told.) + +"Yes; it must be Uncle. He's such a dear. A widower, too; and I'm sure +he ought to have somebody nice to be a comfort to him, always there. Not +only me. Besides, I might be----" + +She hardly dared yet to finish to herself the thought, "Besides, I might +be getting married and leaving him any time now!" + +So she pursued her ingenuous scheme. "He ought to have a nice wife. He +really ought. And Mrs. Cartwright would be splendid--for him. He does +like her. He was talking to her for hours in the Forest the other day +about that essay of his on Welsh Flower-names. He calls her 'My dear +lady' always. And she likes him; why, only at lunch today she said +something about 'that wonderful-looking old Uncle of yours.' She admires +him. Now, if she only had enough Charm to _attract_ him," thought Olwen, +"so that he would ask her to marry him, I'm sure she'd be only too glad +to! I don't suppose any one else has ever asked her to marry again ... +but I would so like her for a kind of Auntie," decided the young girl, +hastily taking out her needle again and threading it with pink silk. + +Another length of narrow ribbon was stitched to one end of the fourth +sachet. + +It was destined for the neck of Mrs. Cartwright. + +At Olwen's age a thing is considered better left undone, than not done +at once. + +At once she decided to take this gift to her friend. + +So, still dressed as she had left the _salon_, Olwen slipped quickly out +of her room and down a sharply-angled corridor, passing as she went the +old Frenchman with the red speck in his button-hole and the elder lady +in mourning. + +Olwen glanced up at the numbers on the doors. + +... "22," that was Mr. Awdas's room; she had overheard him telling +Madame that he would remember _vingt-deux_ because it was his own age. +"23," next to it on the right; that was Mrs. Cartwright's. Olwen hoped +that she had not yet gone to bed. + +She tapped. + +"_Entrez!_" called Mrs. Cartwright's deep voice, rather absorbed. + +Olwen entered, to find the writer apparently ready for bed, but at work. + +Her green shaded lamp was alight on the table, where she sat with a pad +before her. + +Her brown hair hung down in two plaits over a Persian robe of raw white +silk, almost seamless, gold-girdled, and with stars and islands worked +in gold thread; a relic of her time in the East. Another relic, perhaps, +was the mingling of faint discreet scents that hung about the room: +sandal-wood, orris, kuss-kuss, and rose. + +She looked up; then sprang to her feet as she saw Olwen Howel-Jones, +still dressed as she had gone to bed some time before. + +"My dear----Anything wrong?" + +"No! No, thanks," said Olwen. Then involuntarily and surprised, "Oh, +Mrs. Cartwright! how wonderful you look in that dressing-gown! Your arm, +when the sleeve fell back, was like a little statue my Uncle's got in +Liverpool, copied from the British Museum. A Tanagra, he calls it. You +look exactly like that statue, you do really." + +"Do I?" returned Mrs. Cartwright, with a passing glance down her own +long outlines from the shoulder to the narrow Turkish-slippered foot on +the mat. It was no news to her that she possessed, even yet, some lines +that sculptors centuries dead would have loved. Like many another +plain-faced woman (as she was self-admitted) she had her special vanity. +Her own pride of limb was as arrogant as it was secret. + +"My boys are going to inherit my absurdly long legs, I think," was all +she said, lightly, smiling down into the vivid little face of the girl +who had come in, and wondering what had brought her there so late. + +Olwen held it out, the Charm dangling at the end of its long ribbons. As +she was hastening along the corrider she had wondered what excuse she +could bring with it. Now she felt that it was unnecessary display, that +invention of the Red Cross Charity Sale which she had palmed off upon +poor Miss Walsh. The truth--or a small portion of it--seemed to blurt +itself out to Mrs. Cartwright. + +"I've got something here that I've made for you," explained Olwen, +flushing a little. "It's--it's a luck-charm. Like a touchwood or a +swastika, only--only different. There's something in the sachet that +will bring you very good luck if you always keep it on where it can't be +seen. Don't ask me what it is," she begged, lifting her earnest little +face that the elder woman found so touchingly pretty. "And please don't +open it. Only always wear it, will you, please?" + +"Thank you so much; of course I will. I can do with any good luck that's +going just now," smiled Mrs. Cartwright. She slipped the ribbon over her +head and tucked the sachet inside the soft folds of her Persian robe. +"There! It's like a scapular that the little French children have; I +remember seeing a flock of them once, trooping in to bathe off the coast +of Normandy, wearing nothing else; their little bodies each marked by +the black scapular, were like pink tulips freaked with one dark +stripe.... May I take it off when I wash? Good. Now I'll expect it'll +bring me luck for finishing the last chapters of my serial." + +"Are you going to sit there and write all night?" asked Olwen, with an +eye on the half-covered pad. + +"Oh dear, no! Just another hour or so, perhaps. I was only recopying a +paragraph, and then I found I was in the vein and could go on. But +you--you mustn't lose your beauty-sleep," she added, gently smiling at +the pretty creature in the doorway. "Good night!" + +"Good night!" said Olwen, with a final glance at the edge of that pink +ribbon showing above her friend's unconscious neck. She sped away--to +dream, as she hoped, of all that Charm might be expected to bring her, +but in reality to the dreamless perfect sleep that is Youth's heritage. + +The half-gentle, half-amused little smile hovered about Mrs. +Cartwright's lips for a moment, then gave way gradually to the look of +blank absorption as she bent her brown head over her pad, writing +rapidly, filling a page, tearing it off, to add to the pile at her feet, +filling another. + + * * * * * + +It had been a long apprenticeship which she had served to this job of +hers, since she had first been left as a young widow, to fend for +herself and two babies on the pension which her country judged +sufficient for the families of the (Old) Army. Ream after ream she had +written on the once so fully discussed subjects: What to do with the +Cold Mutton; and, How to Keep a Husband's Affection Warm. + +To say that this occupation thrilled her would be overstating the case, +but Mrs. Cartwright had preferred it to the thought of letting some +other man pay for her board and lodging, some man who was not her Keith. +This alternative had been hers more than once (in spite of little +Olwen's conjecture that she had never been asked to marry again). She +had refused; working on, in her poky "rooms." ... At all events, those +cold-mutton articles had put plenty of nourishing beef-gravy into little +Keith; and when Reggie had nearly gone out with bronchitis she had +settled the doctor's bills with her brightly-written instructions as to +always keep a smiling face and a dainty blouse for when Hubby got back +from a hard day's work in the office. A fortnight's fresh air at +Margate had been supplied to the small convalescent by his Mother's +"Chats to Engaged Girls," which discussed "how many and many a foolish +damsel brings shipwreck upon her life's happiness by her failure to +realize that her fiancé cannot be expected to give up for her sake every +hobby, every recreation, every chum that he possesses," etc. etc. + +When this sort of journalism became superannuated "Domestica" adapted +herself swiftly. Business-like columns on Emigration and Fruit Farming +for Women paid for the boys' first reefer-coats. Their school-kits came +out of the long serials to which she had at last attained, and which +became a never-failing joke with those of her acquaintances who had +cultured literary tastes. + +"My _dear_ Claudia, I see you've been and gone and done it again, in the +'Morning Mail,'" they had smiled. "Another of your sugary fullertons--I +mean 'A thrilling new story, by Miss Claudia Crane! You can begin +today!' You don't expect US to, I hope?" + +"Oh no," Mrs. Cartwright had said, also smiling. + +After all, these literary tastes of her acquaintances were no more +"superior" than the thickness of her new woollies that she was then +going on to buy for her sons' wear. + +Moreover, the woollies were of more use. + +(Furthermore, they were harder to come by.) + + * * * * * + +At the juncture when Mrs. Cartwright enters this story she was able to +make any holiday pay for itself twice over; witness her "Wanderings in +Western France." It was about this time, too, that she had begun to +afford not only the warmest underwear for Keith and Reggie, but the +silkiest for herself. + +Even yet, she discovered, silk "things" were a joy to her again. So were +her perfectly simple _suède_ shoes. All these years she had lived and +toiled for Reggie and Keith; she was only just beginning to find herself +in this toiler. She was beginning to discover other relics, beside the +Eastern embroideries and the scent, of the woman whom she had thought to +be left dead beside her merry soldier husband. + +Surprising.... Life was still surprising; interesting. Let people take +it out of her "fullertons" if it amused them.... + +She completed the "sugary" paragraph that brought her instalment to the +requided "curtain," wrote "_To be continued_" beneath it, and smoothed +the blotting-paper down over the pad with a sigh of relief. + +"There!" + +She rose, stretching the tall symmetry of herself under the Persian +robe, then glanced with raised eye-brows at her watch. + +So late? She had not realized the flight of the midnight hours. +Everybody else in the hotel would be asleep. + +Mrs. Cartwright snapped off the lights. Guided by a thin streak of +moonlight on the floor, she stepped to the window, flung first the +shutters then the windows open, and stepped out, all shimmering and +ghostly, on to her balcony. She stood--accustomed to air about +her--looking out on the moon-bathed scene below. The _Baissin_ was a +sheet of silver; the belt of sandhills silver-grey. No words can give +the whiteness of the Biscay rollers, silent with distance, tossing their +columns of foam to the vast and lambent sky. Stars were as pin-points. +Reassuringly near, the lighthouse raised its taper finger, on which the +light sparkled like a jewel, now white, now red. + +Mrs. Cartwright, enjoying all this too much to feel cold, stood +watching. + +Why did people sleep away the best part of the twenty-four hours? Why +scuttle away and hide from Beauty within the ugliness of their own +houses? It was only once in months that a woman stood as she was +standing at that virgin hour, able to lose herself in the solitude, the +freshness and silence and light. She stood, dematerialized, part no +longer of a woman's warm and pulsing body, but of the sea and sky +themselves.... White, red.... White, red ... the phare light flashed +almost in time to the soft breathing, that could be heard, in that +perfect stillness of her body. _She_ was outside it.... _Ah!_ What was +that? + +With a start so violent that it seemed to wrench her, Mrs. Cartwright +came to herself again, and to--what Horror was this? + +Through that perfect stillness a cry had rung out, sudden as a shot. +Close beside her; it came from the right. It was a man's voice crying +hoarsely, "_Got_ him!" Then another cry, of agony; a scream.... + +What was it? + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE CLUTCHING OF THE CHARM + + "Fights all his battles o'er again; + And thrice he charged the foe, and thrice he slew the slain." + + Dryden. + + "Un aviateur, un de ces demi-dieux dont l'existence sur terre + doit être courte. (La lumière dont ils procèdent les rappelle + bientôt. On croit qu'ils tombent, mais ils remontent.)" + + Marcel Astruc. + + +It came from the right, therefore it must be in the bedroom next to hers +on the wall encircled by the balcony. + +Quick as thought, Mrs. Cartwright ran a few steps along the balcony. +Yes; the next window stood wide open. She dashed into the room, flooded +with moonlight; white light that showed up, clearer than a star-shell, +the figure of Mr. Awdas, the young wounded flying-officer, sitting bolt +upright in his bed, with his eyes still closed, his mouth too working, +and his face as the face of Death itself. + +She ran to him, took him by the shoulder. + +"Wake up! Wake up!" she called, clearly and firmly, in the voice which +had often delivered her small son Keith from the bane of his childhood, +nightmare. "Wake up, it's just a dream!" + +A great shudder rocked the young man, he opened his eyes. Their wild +stare met the woman's face, the woman's white-clad figure bending over +him. "Oh Lord! Sister," he muttered. "It all came again. Oh, Lord! I +thought I was crashing. I----" + +[Illustration: "_It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I was +crashing!----_"] + +Shuddering again, shaking like a leaf, he threw out his hands and +grasped Mrs. Cartwright's arms, his fingers burying themselves in her +flesh. "Don't leave me," he sobbed, hoarsely. "For God's sake don't +leave me, Sister!" + +Before Mrs. Cartwright could speak the door of his bedroom was flung +open. There burst in a group of people in night attire, a group +heterogeneous and agitated as on a raid night or at a fire, roused by +the alarm of that sudden scream in the darkness, demanding "Qu'est-ce +qu'il y a donc?" ... "What's up?..." + +Mrs. Cartwright, pinned in the grip of the young man's shaking hands, +had only time to realize two of these people, the portly French manager, +draped in an eider-down and looking (as she afterwards said) a perfect +advertisement for Michelin tyres, and Captain Ross, in violently-striped +pyjamas, when she saw the door gently but firmly closing upon all of the +invaders but Captain Ross. + +In a curious medley of idiom Captain Ross was reassuring the others. + +"It's all right. _C'est seulement_ Monsieur de l'Audace. He's been +drrrriming again; _songe_, crasher; _comprenez_? Pardon me, but please +_allez vous en_. I guess we can fix him, me and this lady. _Bon nuit!_" + +A final glimpse of open-mouthed faces, seen over dressing-gowned +shoulders, and then the door clicked upon the murmuring, dispersing +throng. Captain Ross, barefoot, turned back to the bed where his friend, +utterly unnerved, was shaking as if with fever. His fingers still +gripped the arms that had first been held out to him; his wet forehead +was now pressed to a woman's shoulder, as if to shut out from his sight +a vision of horror. + +"Oh Lord!" he groaned. + +"All over, Jack. Put a pipe on," said Captain Ross quietly. + +And Mrs. Cartwright glancing at him over that rumpled head buried on her +shoulder, beheld a Captain Ross quite new to her; not merely the finest +judge of women in Europe, but the fine comrade of men. It was with an +admirable mixture of gentleness and matter-of-factness that he spoke, +moving as he did so quietly and quickly about the room; closing the +shutters, to banish the ghastly radiance of the moon; turning up the +yellow, mercifully ordinary lights; finding flask, a tobacco, pipe, and +matches; handier and swifter with his one arm than many a man with two. + +"Put a pipe on, man. Here. No? All right; presently. Rotten luck; I +thought we were clear of these attacks. It's this darned moon.... He was +shot down in the moonlight, I heard.... We used to get 'em every week +one time, Mrs. Cartwright; the whole ward pulled up standing, and the +girls on night duty thinking it was blue murder, I guess, the first +time. I knew when I heard him; we were in hospital together." + +"He thought he was still in hospital when he saw me," put in Mrs. +Cartwright softly. + +"Is that so? You only reached him first by seconds, I guess; I was up +before he'd finished hollering," said Captain Ross, with a glance at the +spent boy who was leaning up against the woman, his face still hidden, +his breath coming in gasps. "It was a baddish go, this trip. A drink, +man?" + +Young Awdas shook his head without raising it. "I'm ... all right. +Dashed sorry ... all right in a second...." + +"Give it him presently," murmured Captain Ross; then glancing at the +woman beside the bed, "There won't be much sleeping for him or me; but +it's no reason why you should lose your night's rest, Mrs. Cartwright. +I'm staying. No need for you to wait up any longer." + +But at this, those clutching hands of the boy gripped her tight again, +closing upon the silken folds above her breast. She answered the quick +involuntary appeal, feeling herself caught back to the times when little +Keith, waking in fright, had clutched her, and cried: "_Don't go Mums! I +want you to stay with me!_" + +"I'm not going," she said, just as she had said then. She let herself +slip down in a sitting posture to the edge of the bed. + +Captain Ross paused, with another swift glance at the group. + +"You'll stay with him?" + +"Of course." + +"I guess he's better in your hands; I'll leave him there," said Captain +Ross with a nod. He glanced about, picked up the thick dressing-gown +that lay over the bed-rail, and tucked it like a railway rug about her. +Then he turned to the door. "I'm just across the corridor. If you want +anything, just call, ever so softly. I shall hear." + +He went out, leaving Mrs. Cartwright to the oddest vigil she had ever +spent. For the first time she found herself watching through the small +hours in the company of a wounded lad who had come through that Hell +which is not always left behind on the battlefield. They bring some of +it away with them, too many of these boys! its fiery traces still +impressed upon mind and brain and nerve, however plucky. Its memory +persists, robbing them of laughter, despoiling them of that dreamless +perfect sleep which is Youth's heritage, making of night a thing to be +dreaded. + +So this young airman, who had been shot down in an air duel one +moonlight night last spring, must live it through again and again before +he might live it away.... + +Presently he raised his head. He began to mutter. + +She listened, pitifully, knowing that the lad scarcely knew even yet +whom he was holding--save that it was human, and friendly, and warm. He +scarcely cared to whom he was babbling in hoarse little snatches, +incoherently--save that it was a woman, and kind. + +"Five--five of them! Five Australians!" he began, suddenly. "You know +what splendid fine chaps.... I had to watch.... I was lying ... out +there ... pinned under the wing. They ... they tried to get at me with +stretchers--six times they tried ... came across No Man's Land...." + +"Yes; but you were dreaming," she said, in the most soothing tone of her +deep voice. "You just had a bad dream----" + +"No, No! It was what happened," he said hoarsely. "They were trying to +bring me in after I'd crashed. Those blighters ... turned a machine-gun +on to them. They did in five. I--I saw it!" + +She could only look at him, only give him the comfort of her touch, +could only put out to him, silently, all the pity that was in her. + +He took one hand away for a moment, passed it back over his hair in the +known gesture of the flyer who adjusts his crest like cap, then returned +his clasp to her arm. + +He began again: + +"I ... I never take an Australian's salute in the street without +remembering ... that!... I had to lie there ... couldn't lift ... +finger. Five of them, were stretched out ... killed.... Just for me! My +God! Think of it----" He seemed about to break down once more. + +"Hush!" Mrs. Cartwright said, steadily. She bent her eyes upon his. +"Hush! One can't think like that. It's impossible." + +"Those splendid chaps----" + +"S'sh! Remember only that they were killed doing one of the finest +things a soldier is called to do," interrupted the soldier's widow, +quickly. "Remember that their people would be proud to know how it +happened. They volunteered to save you; took their chance. Think how +your own people would have been proud, Mr. Awdas----" + +"Yes," he muttered, letting her hold his eyes, clinging to her for the +strength that had slipped. + +She repeated, firmly: "When you see Australians in the street, think +only of _that_!" + +"Yes," said the youngster, simply. "Yes.... All right, I will." + +When he next spoke there was a thought less strain in his husky voice. + +"I'm everlastingly sorry, routing people up like this. They got quite +fed-up in the hospital.... I couldn't help it.... Falling, falling--oh, +it's beastly.... So weird, too.... You wouldn't think.... Well, I +couldn't _take_ more than about two and a half minutes to crash, could +I?" + +"I suppose not," she said, forcing herself to be as matter-of-fact as +Captain Ross had been. + +"Two and a half minutes; well, it seemed a _week_, at least. Absolutely. +It always seems a week till I come down.... Down, down, down--I seemed +to have time to think ... no end of things. I yelled out to my +observer.... That's why I always shout in those dreams of mine.... I was +falling, falling; and calling out to my observer, trying to make him +hear. He was killed." + +"Was he?" she responded gently--not too gently, lest he should melt. + +"Yes! He was dead before we came down. Jolly good chap, my observer. +(Ross knew him.) Ferris, his name was. The first time we went up +together over the Boche lines, I remember his saying to me: 'Now, when +you hear a dog bark, don't take any notice; it's only Archie!'" + +Here the ghost of a smile seemed hovering about the young flyer's face. +Mrs. Cartwright did not speak; but surely the warm sympathy that flowed +from her caught him in some restoring current. His voice grew less +strained with every sentence. + +"It's--it's a funny thing how fond one gets of one's observer; the man +one's always with. Each of you depending so much on the other, I +suppose; being for it together, always together. You've no idea what +pals one gets. I--I sometimes think there can be nothing like it. We +_were_ pals; I was sick; they'd done him in----" + +Mrs. Cartwright nodded; listening to the husky English boy's voice, that +seemed to fill this room of a sleeping, silent French hotel, and hearing +also in her heart that immortal plaint of the young fellow-soldier +mourning down the ages--"_I am distressed for thee, my brother +Jonathan...._" + +"D'you know, I sometimes think there can be nothing else in the world as +good as just friendship. To be absolute friends with some other fellow," +young Awdas said presently; shyly, but earnestly looking into the +woman-face so near him. Without speaking a word, Mrs Cartwright was +encouraging him to talk on and on. Yes; let him talk--of Friendship or +the Differential Calculus, if he liked; anything, rather than let him be +haunted again by this useless, this unreasoning Remorse that he had been +the death of five other brave men--or by this dream of falling, falling. +He talked on, sitting up; taking his hands at last from her +(badly-marked) arms and clasping them about his knees. + +"Absolute friends," he mused. "Understanding everything the other chap +means, or doesn't mean. Not minding if he's ratty sometimes; being ratty +yourself if you want to, and going off on your own, knowing it'll be all +right whenever you come back. Good times or rotten times, always with +him. Not seeing each other for ages, perhaps. Then finding him just the +same. Caring for all the things you're keenest about; barring the same +things. I don't think it could be ever exactly like that with a girl." + +"Never," murmured Mrs. Cartwright; "the girl will be more to you or less +to you, but not the same." + +"A girl would never be more to me," said young Awdas, and now his voice +sounded almost normal. He broke off suddenly, and turned to her +protestingly. "Mrs. Cartwright, I don't know what you must think of me. +Keeping you up like this----Good Lord! it's three o'clock. Sitting +there, catching cold----?" + +"I'm never cold." + +"And I'm all right now. Please--please do go to bed." + +Mrs. Cartwright smiled obstinately. "My good young man, I am on +night-duty. You called me 'Sister' yourself when I came in. I am going +to be 'Sister' for once." + +"You're too good," he said, with a sigh of obvious relief that she was +not going. "I couldn't sleep ... but why should you miss yours?" + +"I couldn't sleep now, either; I couldn't have slept. I'd only just +finished working when you called out. I shall stay"--she tucked the +dressing-gown a little more closely about her--"and----No, I won't have +a cigarette. I'll light one for you, however. And here's your drink, and +I shall just stay and talk to you until you go to sleep." + +"Too good," he said again, taking the cigarette from her hand and giving +her a shyly grateful glance. "I've been bucking no end--I don't know +why--I don't generally talk a lot." + +She knew it; knew also that the distraught boy would not have talked to +a man as he had let himself babble, almost hysterically, to her. (It is +only women, the so-called talkative sex, who could give statistics of +how much men talk, and of what they will talk, upon occasion!) Up to +that night, he had not exchanged a dozen sentences with her since they +had been staying at the hotel. That same evening, when Mrs. Cartwright +and his friend Ross had chipped each other in the _salon_ over her +"Manual of Courtship," had been the first occasion that Awdas had found +himself sitting next to this tall countrywoman of his. + +But now he turned his eyes upon her as if she were all that is meant by +the word Home. + +These wakeful, solitary, strange hours had made them friends such as two +years of ordinary companionship could not have seen them. Both knew that +never again could they be mere hotel acquaintances. + +She looked at the face that was falling at last into lines of composure; +no longer a white mask of strain and anguish. Colour was coming back, +and a smile took the place of that intently thinking ghost behind the +blue eyes. He lifted that small head, set so eagle-wise upon the wide +shoulders, breathed more deeply; and she knew that it was she who had +restored him, this fallen cloud-sweeper. Fancifully she thought of his +daring job as something still verging on the super-human; after all, +these flying lads, with their freedom of one element more, are the +half-gods of our time. She thought of that myth of the other half-god +Antaëus, who, to gain fresh life, must draw it from the touch of earth; +and she remembered that Woman (that last creature to be civilized) is +still generations nearer than man to the healing soil. Yes; she had +healed him. + +Without showing him that she did so, she studied his face, with its soft +fruit-like oval that does not survive the first quarter of a century. +Twenty-two! He seemed, as most young soldiers do nowadays, more than his +age. Yet in some ways he looked younger. + +After a puff or two of cigarette-smoke had risen into the air, she asked +gently, "Why did you say, just now, that a girl could never mean more to +you than friendship?" + +He said simply, "I don't know. Perhaps it is because I don't really know +any girls much. They've never come my way." + +"Not?" she exclaimed, scarcely believing this. + +He said quite seriously: "You know it makes a lot of difference when one +hasn't any sisters. I haven't any; there were just three of us; me, and +my brother in the Navy, and the Nipper--the youngest. (Cadet Corps.) My +people live in the country, you know--Kent. It's not a bad old place; +orchards and a moat for punting about on when we were kids, and the +paddock. We had quite a decent time. But there were no girls in the +house." + +Mrs. Cartwright suggested "Other people's sisters?" + +"Not often. My mother used to try and get girls to stay with her +sometimes, but----" He moved his wide shoulders. "It was rather a +wash-out. When there aren't other girls to come for, you know. There's a +sort of feeling of their having been dragged in. Everybody's shy and +stiff. At least, they were; the girls who came. I suppose that's why I +haven't thought much of girls. They always seemed a nuisance, and +self-conscious, you know. Wooden. Glad when it was time for them to go, +and I can tell you _I_ was. They were thundering difficult to talk to." + +Mrs. Cartwright, always ready to hear of the bringing-up of boys, gave +thanks inwardly that her Keith and Reggie possessed countless +girl-cousins who were to them as sisters; creatures dispossessed of +glamour, but a channel into those fields where glamour ripens. Then she +said, softly, to this other boy: "But when you went away from Home, when +you came up to Town, and--oh, all that sort of thing, like other young +men of your age, surely you met plenty of girls who were--well! Easy +enough to talk to?" + +He nodded slightly. "Oh, yes; one met those. But----" There crept over +his face the look that some think is more often to be seen in these days +of Emancipation than in more guarded times; the scrutiny of the young +man who is at least as fastidious in his love affairs as the young +woman. "They weren't very amusing either--or, probably, I wasn't--to +them. Of course, one knows lots of top-hole fellows who were always +about with girls. Permanent address: 'Stagedoor, Frivolity,' sort of +thing. But when I got leave, I'd just as soon go round with my people, +or poor old Ferris, or some other fellow----" + +He had finished his cigarette, and leant his fair rumpled head back on +the pillow. + +Mrs. Cartwright, watching it, knew suddenly and certainly that--but for +his own mother and his nurses at that hospital--she was the first woman +who had seen it thus. + +Then she could hardly check the smile that rose to her lips; for there +was stealing over his face a look that made it not merely boyish, but +little-boyish. A film was blurring those keen blue eyes; he opened them +more widely, precisely as she had seen the eyes of little Keith open +widely, obstinately, against her breast when he was dropping with the +sleep that he defied. Young Awdas, she saw, was fighting down a +well-disguised yawn. For a moment there was silence in the bright, +isolated room. Then he said, "Mrs. Cartwright, do go to bed." + +"I am not sleepy." + +"No, nor am I," with a drowsy smile. "If you go, I'll get out a book and +read until it's time to get up." + +"Don't do that," she said. "I suppose you wouldn't try and go to sleep +for a bit?" + +"I couldn't." The blue eyes opened again fixedly upon her face. "I----" + +It seemed in the midst of the sentence that his lashes fell against his +cheeks, closely and suddenly as the lashes of her babies used to fall. +In the idiom of those old days he was "off," he was "down." + +Afraid of moving, to snap off the lights, lest she might disturb the +sleeper, she sat on, watching that peaceful face, that broad chest +heaving rhythmically. She sat, watching him; or letting her glance take +in the room with his neat, soldier-like appointments; his folding-case +for brushes and shaving-kit, his one photograph (obviously of his +mother) in a celluloid glazed frame, his leather writing-case, with his +name and the name of his Corps printed in ink on the cover. Her eyes +upturned to him, as she sat--thinking ... thinking.... + +It was nearly five o'clock when the door opened cautiously, and Captain +Ross, that adequate campaigner, entered, with a Service dressing-gown +over his zebra-stripes, and carrying two steaming cups of +excellently-made tea. His glance fell upon Jack Awdas, slumbering like +a child. Mrs. Cartwright, rather cramped, rather chilled, and rather +drawn in the face between her straight-falling plaits of hair, was still +sitting there like a statue, in a white robe with gold patterns, from +the folds of which there peeped an end of narrow pink ribbon--the ribbon +which held, hidden at her breast, and all unsuspected, a Charm. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE SPREADING OF THE CHARM + + "When England needs + The sons she breeds, + And there's fighting to be done, + No matter where, + You will find him _there_, + The Man behind the Gun.... + It's Bill, Bill, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy Brown, + Of Putney, Piccadilly, Camden Town; + Why! It's Mister---- + Bill, Billy Brown---- + Of London!" + + Fragson's Song. + + +The following morning brought a small disappointment to that little +plotter for the commonweal, Olwen Howel-Jones. + +No Mrs. Cartwright at _déjeuner_! + +Olwen (knowing nothing of that vigil of the night before, or of the +slumber into which the woman, drained of vitality, had dropped as soon +as she returned to her room) imagined her working through luncheon-time. + +Too bad! For now it must be postponed, the sight of how that Charm, +given to the writer, would affect Professor Howel-Jones. It could not +begin at once then, that Darby-and-Joan pairing-off that so suitable +match which little Olwen had planned. What a pity! Still it was not put +off for long, she cheerfully hoped. + +The other wearer of the Charm was also absent from the midday gathering +in the _salle_, but that was all to the good, Olwen had passed Miss +Walsh, with her hair done in that new way! speeding off as excitedly as +an Early Victorian to her first dance; speeding down to the pier, where +the motor-boat awaited her, with Sergeant Tronchet. Madame Leroux had +put up a basket of provisions for them, and they were going to make a +picnic of their excursion across the lagoon. + +Captain Ross came in to lunch with his friend Mr. Awdas, but so late +that the two young men crossed the path of Olwen and her Uncle (who had +finished their meal early) in the hall. The girl had paused here for a +moment to slip into the Red Cross collection-box that hundred-franc note +which had been bestowed upon her yesterday by Miss Walsh. + +Captain Ross noticed her action. + +"You're making a mistake, Miss Howel-Jones," he said banteringly, and +smiled as he might have smiled at one of the little pigtailed daughters +of the manageress. "That's not the box you put ten centimes into and get +two sticks of candy." + +Olwen, half in delight that he had spoken to her, half in resentment +that it was in the tone he might have used to a child, raised her +pointed chin on its white childish neck, looked down under her lids, and +demanded, with what she considered great stateliness, "Who wants +_candy_?" + +"All little girls, I guess," returned Captain Ross, his robin's eyes +twinkling, his perfect teeth flashing in another teasing smile. Olwen, +glancing under those dropped lids at this somewhat showy vision of +black-and-white-and-brown-and-scarlet-and-khaki, felt that she would die +for him. + +There was a magic about him, she thought; even if he were dictatorial or +teasing, or seemed to think rather a lot of himself--a magic! At the +same instant she remembered that, yes! There was a secret magic about +her too, now. A magic that had proved itself unmistakably once; a Charm +that she herself was wearing. Confidence seemed to rush, in a warming +flood, about her heart. + +Quite defiantly she tilted her black head, and looking straight over +Captain Ross's shoulder, she laughed, for pure joy of her secret. + +"_You_ don't know everything about girls!" she told the finest judge of +women in Europe. + +And before the young Staff-Officer could retort, before he could even +open his eyes over the temerity of this chit, this schoolgirl, who had +said this thing to him (_Him!_), those little French boots of hers had +skipped away, carrying her upstairs towards the study where she must +type out the notes which she had taken down for her Uncle in shorthand +that morning. Those boots fitted the chit's ankles like a coat of black +paint, he noticed as he looked after her, too amused to be annoyed, of +course. The piece of Impertinence----! Awfully neat.... They +disappeared, the little twinkling heels. He went on to join Jack Awdas +at table. + +Olwen, at an angle in the corridor a floor higher, ran into the young +_femme-de-chambre_ for that floor, carrying over her arm a khaki tunic. + +They stopped to smile and to exchange "_bonjours_," these two girls much +of an age and much of a race, for Marie came from Brittany, and already +the Professor and his niece had amused themselves by finding out how +many Welsh words the Breton maid could understand; the simple words +which were the same in her own tongue. + +"I come from cleaning the buttons of the English monsieur, his better +tunic," explained Marie, in French, smiling as she held out the khaki +coat. + +"It is not of Monsieur de l'Audace?" asked Olwen. + +"No, Mademoiselle. Of the other English officer, young, young, who does +not talk French too well; Lieutenant Brrrrrrown," returned Marie. "Can +Mademoiselle tell me what decoration is that he has?" Olwen gave a look +at it. + +"It is the ribbon of the Military Cross--it's like your Croix de +Guerre," she said. "I didn't notice that he'd got that." + +"He" was the pink-faced New Army officer of whom Mrs. Cartwright had +spoken to her. + +She remembered, in a flash, that it was he for whom she had intended +that fourth share of the Charm, still in the pocket of the serge dress +that she wore. She had not yet made up any plan as to how she was to +press the Charm upon him. The plan came to her then and there, as she +stood in that corridor. + +"Hold Marie," she said, suddenly. "I have a _porte-bonheur_ for this +officer." She took out the sachet. "Say nothing to Monsieur," she +impressed it upon the little maid, all smiles and delight to be included +in a secret. "I am going to hide it in his coat." + +And, taking hold of the coat, she slipped the sachet full of the +enchanted powder into the slit-like pocket at the waist where men keep +tickets. + +"There!... Probably Monsieur will not find it; but all the better. It +won't matter, even if he does not know it is there." + +The Breton maid nodded. "A _sachet à preservation_ then? I know them. We +have them also, Mademoiselle. It is to avert all danger from the soldier +who is to wear it, is it not?" + +"No. Not precisely that," said the young Welsh girl. "It is to bring to +him--well, Happiness of the best." + +"Love, then. Ah, _là là_! I doubted myself of that!" declared the young +_bonne_, bursting into ripples of laughter. "I go now to take the coat +to Monsieur, who does not suspect. But no, Mademoiselle, I will say +nothing to him of this; nothing, nothing, nothing at all!" + +Olwen thought, as she went on: "Now Marie probably imagines that I am in +love with this dreadfully uninteresting little Mr. Brown, and want to +attract him to being in love with me! When I've never spoken to him in +my life, or even seen what he's like when he's close to one!" + +But that afternoon she both saw and spoke to this Mr. Brown. + +They were returning, she and her Uncle, from one of those wanderings +which the Professor loved to take out westwards from the hotel. For a +couple of miles they had tramped along the hard sands at the foot of the +great dunes wherein pine-trees were buried up to their lower boughs; +then, leaving the sands, they had scrambled up the sandhills into the +pine-forest that bordered them. + +Its fragrant aisles stretched for miles bisected by paths, spread with +a rich terra-cotta carpet of pine-needles. Already the Professor had +slipped his pipe back into his pocket, for the notice "_Défense à +fumer_" appeared again and again tacked up on the trunks of the great +pines that made of those miles a perfect factory of turpentine. + +With their faces towards home, they caught sight through the pines of a +figure that repeated for an instant the effect of the pine-trunks +themselves, brown-clad, long-lined, and slender. It stooped at the foot +of a tree. + +"My dear lady," said the Professor, taking off his hat to the figure, +which was that of Mrs. Cartwright, "you look like Daphne, being changed +into a pine rather than a laurel." + +Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she rose to her feet. She had been putting +into position a fallen tin cup, shaped like a flower-pot, and left to +catch the resin as it oozed stickily from the trunk. Most of the firs in +this part of the forest had a tin blade, that had scored them down, left +plunged into the bark. + +"Delightful, to be able to turn into any sort of plant, rather than be +bored by the wrong man," remarked Mrs. Cartwright lightly, dusting her +hands. + +"What a pull for those nymphs! Must have made it worth while to live in +a world where there was no tea. I am ready for mine, though----" + +The three went on homewards together, the Professor walking between +Olwen and the writer, who found herself once more admiring his Druidic +head and still-active frame. In precisely the same spirit she would have +admired some stately, ivy-grown keep that had once echoed to the shouts +of archers; she was scarcely the type of woman who becomes an "old man's +darling----" + +But little Olwen was busily thinking: "Now! I do believe the Charm has +begun to work. Didn't Uncle say she was like Daphne?--and doesn't she +really look younger today? It's _begun_! And see how she's smiling at +him and talking to him about Anatole France.... But I wish they'd leave +off about books and begin about themselves. I wish I could run on and +leave them to come home together (but they both walk as fast as I do any +day, bother them!). If only we could meet somebody that I could fall +behind with, and let Mrs. Cartwright have Uncle all to herself----" + +This wish was fulfilled at a turn in the path where there was a clearing +in the symmetrically spaced pines. Three paths converged towards a sort +of oasis of heather and undergrowth, surrounding a hut of untrimmed +pine-branches. Huge blackberry runners, purple and green, flung +themselves before the door of it. And there stood, fixedly regarding the +place, a boyish figure in khaki with an ultra-floppy cap at a rakish +angle on his head. + +"Are you thinking of taking that house, Mr. Brown?" Mrs. Cartwright +asked him laughingly, as they came up. + +Mr. Brown gave quite a jump before he turned and saluted the party. + +Up to now they had known this young man as one very fond of his food, +always sitting on the back of his neck in the most comfortable chair he +could find, eternally smoking cigarettes, and evidently bent on getting +his money's worth out of the hotel. But it was a different young man +who now turned his pink face and pop-eyes on them. They'd evidently +interrupted him in thinking over something; thinking hard. + +He echoed Mrs. Cartwright's last words. "Thinking of taking that hut?" +he repeated, in a voice that seemed to bring a breath of crowded A B C +shops, of Tube-lifts and cheerful workaday London generally into that +stately French glade. "Well, d'you know, that's a wheeze. It's a dashed +good idea. I was just that moment thinking that something would have to +be done!" + +"What about?" asked Mrs. Cartwright, as the party halted. + +"Why, about everything, the whole blooming thing," returned Mr. Brown, +pushing his floppy cap to the back of his head. "This is just about +beating me, I give you _my_ word. Look at me, what am _I_ doing here?" + +Mrs. Cartwright said: "Evidently you're having a look at your new +house?" + +He said: "I don't mean here this minute, in this Epping Forest sort of +show. I mean _here_!"--he spread out his hands as if to take in the +whole of Western France. "Of course, they told me I'd got to go to +pine-woods when they gave me three months, and a cavalry fellow, at +Sister Agnes's, told me here was better than Surrey, and gave me the +address, and it seemed quite natural to take it and think--Blow the +expense. But I wish--I tell you what I wish." + +He dropped his voice confidentially. + +"I wish this blessed War was over, and me riding in a third-class +carriage again!" + +Before any one could speak, he went on with his candid and good-humoured +grouse. + +"I've got to go first, with these colonels and company promotors, and +people. The trouble is, I like it. Too dashed well I've got to like it. +I never used to think of all these things coming to me when I was +serving behind the counter; nor the customers neither, I'll bet. And now +nothing but the tip-toppest hotel's good enough for me, and me posted in +Cox's 'star' department. R. D., refer to drawer! Got it in my pocket +now; show it to you. I could have sworn I'd got the money, you know. +Still, here's the cheque--" + +He said it with a disarming and engaging honesty, as if the whole story +might be read anyhow in his pink, snub-nosed, and ordinary face. Mrs. +Cartwright and the Professor found it impossible to help liking him as +he stood there, the little Briton who gave no further thought to the +tense horrors of Suvla Bay, where he had won his Cross, but who +confessed his liking for the best hotels. But as for Olwen, she was +watching him anxiously; for his hand had gone to the pocket where she +herself had hidden that "_porte bonheur_." He fumbled. At that moment +his finger and thumb must have encountered it.... + +"No--what's this?--that's not the cheque--must be in my case," he went +on, taking the hand out of the pocket. (Olwen breathed again.) "Well, +now something's got to be done. They'll wait at the hotel, I daresay, if +I don't leave this place altogether. And I like this place." He looked +round the empty hut again, as if he half expected to see a Willesden +estate agent's name round the corner. "Not half a bad idea of yours, +Mrs. C. I might send for some camp-kit; sleep here--do the picnic +touch----" + +For a few moments they stood, discussing forest regulations and to whom +the would-be camper-out must apply. Then, four abreast, they turned to +go on, the sea-breeze meeting them. + +"Mind the barbed wire," exclaimed Mr. Brown, flipping with his cane at +one of those giant brambles. "It's caught your skirt," to Olwen. "Allow +me." + +He bent down and unfastened the hook-like thorns from her frock. This +kept the two behind the Professor and Mrs. Cartwright, whereat the +innocent Olwen rejoiced. She could not guess that not only did the +Professor seem at least as old to Mrs. Cartwright as he did to his own +niece, but that the Professor himself, though he found her a sympathetic +listener, could never at any age have wished to make love to this lady. +For he was a "type"-lover. To him any woman who was not tiny and +black-haired (as Olwen's own mother had been) was only, to quote Captain +Ross, "half a woman...." + +But they were talking together, easily, interestedly, as they walked +ahead through the wood. And even though the subject might only be of +Celtic Folk-lore, Olwen felt already that she saw her wish coming to +pass before her eyes. + +She turned to her other experiment with the Charm. + +Mr. Brown had slipped his fingers again into the pocket into which he +had first hunted for his dishonoured cheque. And this time he brought +out the hidden sachet. + +He stared at the small mauve object. + +"Now what the dickens is this?" he demanded, genially bewildered. +"Don't remember where this came from----" + +Olwen, inwardly terrified lest the young man might in his ignorance toss +the precious thing into the arbutus bushes, said with outward +carelessness, "It looks like a mascot; better not lose it." + +"Looks more like the little square bags they used to fasten on to the +ladies' covered coathangers in the Haberdashery. With scent inside 'em. +I've no use for perfumery----" + +Olwen was now sure he meant to throw this gift of the gods away. With a +hasty gesture she snatched it out of the young man's hand. + +"It is a mascot; I've seen others like them!" she told him, as they came +in sight of the hotel. On the piazza Captain Ross was smoking, with his +friend, the aviator; Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had joined them. + +Olwen realized that Captain Ross was also staring down on to the +pine-bordered road, at herself and young Mr. Brown, who had stopped +short, and was still looking at what she held, the treasure that he had +discovered in his pocket. + +"But how did it get in there?" he demanded. + +"Somebody might have slipped it in without your knowing. But anyhow," +said Olwen, taking a resolution, "_I'm_ going to slip it back for you +now, to bring you luck!" And she did slip it back into the khaki pocket. +"There! You know where it's come from this time. You'll keep it there, +won't you?" + +"Anything to oblige," laughed Mr. Brown, and the two young people walked +on to join the party on the piazza, who were waiting for them. + +Olwen thought, "It's rather annoying that he's going to leave the hotel, +and live in a hut like the Wild Man of the Woods _just_ when I want to +watch how the Charm will work with him! But if it _does_ work, that's +the main thing, after all." + +She added aloud, looking into the pink and puggy face that had outstared +Danger and was now staring at Bankruptcy, "Take care of it, won't you? +You won't throw it away or let it get lost or anything?" + +"Not for all the Eau in Cologne!" Mr. Brown assured her with a +mock-flourish as they ran up the piazza steps together. + +Those robin-like eyes of Captain Ross were fixed very watchfuly upon +this young Mr. Brown as he appeared, laughing and chatting as if he were +quite old friends with the Professor's niece. Then the young Staff +officer looked from him to her. + +For a girl who wasn't bland, she was (he thought again) quite neat.... + +The chit didn't look at him.... + +And what (Captain Ross wondered) was that keep-sake that she was handing +to that fellow? + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE FIRST ENGAGEMENT BY THE CHARM + + "Artill. 38 ans, célib., sér., demande marraine affect, désinteressée." + + La Vie Parisienne. + + +Astonishment, incredulity, excitement and delight, reigned in the hotel +at Les Pins. + +One thought only pervaded the place, from the topmost attics inhabited +by Marie the Bretonne and the other _femmes-de-chambre_, down through +the other floors to the wide _salons_ and to the shut-off wing that was +the domain of the management. One topic alone set all tongues there +chattering, in English, French, or Canadian-Scots. One piece of news was +now being discussed before any _communiqué_ from any of the fronts. + +It was the news about Miss Agatha Walsh and the nephew of "the +management," Sergeant Tronchet. + +They were engaged to be married. + +This was sudden, as everybody commented one after another. This was +quick work. For, how long had Miss Walsh been staying at the hotel? +Two--three days? And had she ever met this man before? Never? + +One moonlight walk in the pine-forest, one expedition by motor-boat +across the lagoon, half a dozen conversations at table d'hôte, an +encounter at the post office where Miss Walsh had gone to buy picture +postcards of the Côte d'Azur, another stroll in the forest, a game of +draughts together--this had been all the preparation necessary for a +declaration from the bull-necked, swarthy French sergeant to the English +lady-all-alone. The deed was done. He had asked her to become his wife. +She had accepted him. No; there was no mistake. The pair were going +about looking as if they were newly-elected king and queen of the +Gironde, and those visitors to whom the engagement had not been +announced in French by Sergeant Tronchet, had been told in English by +the radiant, tremulous, blissful Miss Walsh herself. + +Madame Leroux, all smiles, had confirmed the news herself in each +instance. Monsieur Leroux had taken the little tramway into Arcachon to +blaze it abroad at his café. The three little pigtailed daughters +fluttered about the villas of Les Pins in their red-and-white check +frocks, twittering like starlings on the subject of the _fiançailles_, +and spreading the news that Mademoiselle Ouallshe was sending to Paris +for presents for each of them, and had said that they were to call her +Tante Agathe! The wedding was for soon--for almost immediately! + +Excitement rose higher and higher; it might be observed that the delight +seemed, if anything, on the French side; the astonishment on that of the +English visitors. + +Little Mr. Brown turned from his plans for furnishing the woodcutter's +hut for himself to open his candid and bulging blue eyes upon this new +event in the hotel. He was, as a matter of fact, the first of those who +heard the news to refer to a certain element in it. + +"I say; look here," was his comment. "That chap's all right, I daresay; +but are his people and all that quite class enough for the lady's +family? I don't know about foreigners, of course. And of course I don't +pretend to be Anybody, myself. But what'll her people at home think? +Won't they----Well, _socially_, I should have thought it would have been +considered a bit _Rum_!" + +Mrs. Cartwright told him, quickly and quietly, that this marriage was +not complicated, on "the lady's" side, by any people at home, and turned +to Olwen to confirm it. Olwen, who was wide-eyed with a mixture of +feelings, which she was surprised to find were not all happy ones, +agreed that Miss Walsh hadn't any relations. + +And presently Mrs. Cartwright was writing to her sisters: "_A marriage +has been arranged between the French Sergeant and the Hotel Spinster I +described to you in my last. I think an excellent plan. She wants +marriage, he wants money. Translated into English, it is brutal and +horrible. But these clear-eyed French make something so different out of +all that._ + +"_She is madly in love with him, for the same reason that Eve fell in +love with Adam in that Garden; he's the first man she's ever seen. The +gap between their worlds is no wider than the gap between her and the +world generally. Up to now (35, my dear!) she's belonged to the Great +Unkissed._ + +"_He is proud of his achievement, and, consequently, proud of her. I +expect he will make her an admirable husband. They'll live in this +country, his people will be her people. He will be affectionate, and +genuinely fond of her, as only a Frenchman can be fond of the wife who +has brought him money, and at whom he would not have looked, but for her +income!_" + +Olwen, behind that startled gaze of hers, was realizing that she, and +she alone, was responsible for this projected marriage and for the way +in which it would turn out, whether for good or ill. + +She had been the first person in the hotel to whom Miss Walsh had +confided the great news. With the tremulous face of a girl, with a +girl's faltering delight, the Spinster had called into her room an hour +before. + +"Oh, Olwen, come here a minute. (I'm going to call you Olwen.) Oh, I +must tell you first. You were the first person who spoke to me here," +she cried. "Oh, can you believe that it was only last Thursday? +You said that it would bring me luck--that Charm you gave me. Oh, my +little Olwen, it's brought me all the luck and happiness in the world! +That's nonsense--I suppose! Still, I _am_ the happiest person in the +world. Kiss me. Pierre is so wonderful! You see what's happened? Oh, +yes, you must guess----" + +Olwen, hardly believing her ears, still guessed. She left Miss Walsh, +her small ears buzzing with the woman's pathetic gush of confidences, +her mind a welter of emotions. Perhaps the chief feeling was fright.... + +It was so powerful, then, that Charm? She had not expected this. Not +only the swiftness of the wooing, but a definite engagement!... + +And a marriage to be expected shortly.... And to--well, _not_ the sort +of person whom Olwen, the disposer of the Charm, had meant to see +attracted to the wearer of her amulet. At least, she had not expected to +see him _accepted_----! She had hoped--for what? Well, not the first man +who asked Miss Walsh; not the man who--who looked rather like their +village policeman at home! and not for it to happen in three days! It +was rather frightening. Could one count so little upon the way in which +that Charm was going to act? Perhaps after all it was not going to prove +the unmitigated blessing of the human race which Olwen had at first seen +it.... Oh.... Misgivings thronged upon her. For a moment she felt +inclined to wish that she could take the Charm by force, if necessary, +from Miss Walsh--undo what she had done. That she could steal the Charm +away from Mr. Brown's tunic-pocket. That she could snip the ribbon that +tied the Charm round Mrs. Cartwright's long slender neck.... + +As for the Charm that rose and fell with the gentle curve of Olwen's own +breast, where it lay, well, that would be all right. For her, Charm or +no Charm, there was no question of attracting the wrong man. For her +there was only one man in the world; his right sleeve was tucked into +his jacket-pocket, and as he smiled teasingly down at her his teeth were +a flash of snow across the brown of his self-confident face. For her the +Charm that attracted him could only be a beneficent thing. + +But what about those others? she mused, doubtfully, over her typewriter. + +In Mrs. Cartwright's case, the Charm was not working as swiftly as in +the case of Miss Walsh. She seemed, so far, on the same terms with the +Professor that she had always been; as ready to listen to his +interpretations of Welsh names--"Olwen," for instance, meaning "White +Track," and belonging to a maid of Celtic mythology in whose path +daisies were wont to spring up--as interested in his special subjects. +As friendly at table d'hôte or in the evenings; yes, as friendly ... but +no more so! At their age, Olwen thought, people strolled into Love, +perhaps, instead of falling into it, as they did at nineteen. + +In her own case, she thought--and she hugged the thought!--the Charm did +seem to be working. Not at that perilous speed with which it had served +Miss Agatha Walsh; not yet with results which meant these definite and +pole-axing announcements! Still ... wasn't it working a little? + +Without looking at him, the girl had several times been aware that +Captain Ross's dark quick glance had sought her out as soon as she +appeared, and that it had followed her as she went out. Several times +since the encounter in the hall, when she had told him that he "didn't +know everything about girls," he had stopped to talk to her; always to +"rag" her with some question or comment. But he had stopped. + +Often she thought: "That means nothing! He never could think of me +seriously. Why should he?" + +Then again she felt that a time must come when he would stop longer, say +more. + +She waited for that time, outwardly indifferent, just as a branch +studded with the brown scentless swellings of mid-winter waits for the +spring that shall see them break into sweetest buds. She waited, fixing +her bright gaze upon some point beyond her idol's broad shoulder as she +answered his greeting with some snippy girlish flippancy, while her +heart whispered--ah! what volumes of tenderness. She just waited; biding +her time as a girl needs must, whether or not she knows of some secret +Charm that backs her power. + +She waited ... but now waiting and secret watching, uttered retort and +unuttered yearning, were all alike tinged with a new apprehension. + +That Charm! What unexpected way of its own was it going to take _next_? + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +UNFORSEEN EFFECTS OF THE CHARM + + "Does the wood-pecker flit round the young ferash? Does the grass + clothe a new-built wall? + Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall?" + + Kipling. + + +It would have been a shock to little Olwen had she realized what other +result of the Charm was manifesting itself already at that moment. + +Probably the first, imperceptible manifestations would have been lost +upon this quite young girl. + +Had she noticed the gravitating towards Mrs. Cartwright's chair of an +evening of Captain Ross's friend, the young flyer, had she observed the +gradual way in which it was becoming a matter of course that when the +writer was not working he was in attendance upon her, had she known of a +bouquet of late roses, bought in the Ville d'Hiver and sent by the +chambermaid to Room 23, had she heard what boyish confidences about +flying, and Work, and Other Fellows, and even Home were being poured +into an ear well used to hearing of such things by a tongue not well +used to talking to women--well! Even had she known all this, Olwen would +have looked upon it much as she looked upon her own impulses when she +stooped quickly to pick up a pair of dropped spectacles for the old +French lady, the little dark boy's grandmother, or held open the door of +the _salle_ for her to pass out. It was merely "manners." + +Further, if she had known of that night which Mrs. Cartwright had +watched through with him, putting all her own Force between him and the +forces of Horror, little Olwen would have thought she saw the whole +reason for the young man's attentions to a woman nearly twenty years his +senior. It was gratitude. How natural! + +Manners, and gratitude.... + +This is what Olwen would have thought, and what Mrs. Cartwright herself +would have said. It is true that the elder woman should have known +better. Later, she might have confessed that she did know. At the +time.... Well---- + +There is one subject in the world upon which more barefaced lying goes +on than upon any other half a dozen subjects put together: sport +included. The discussion of it turns nine men out of ten into what +Captain Ross might describe as "a darned fabricator." + +Golf and salmon fishing cannot compete with the lying records of Love! +Food it cannot be that the golfer and the fisherman cling _in their own +hearts_ to the fabrications that they fling abroad. + +Whereas, regarding the matter of Love, men (and even women) can actually +believe exactly what they wish to believe. + +This was not Mrs. Cartwright's habit. She was a woman sincere with +herself as a rule. Into the lives of the sincerest of us there +trespasses the exception that shows up the fallibility of human rules. + +So when she told herself that this growing attraction towards her of the +boyish Flying-officer was a normal and delightful friendship, she +believed it herself; she insisted on believing that the look in his +young eyes as they followed her movements was not the look she had been +used to see in the eyes of Captain Keith Cartwright and of a dozen other +men; yes, she made herself believe that her own more joyous mood was not +the life-giving zest that every woman feels when she is admired, +desired--and at no other time. + +She deliberately believed it was the glorious autumn weather that made +her feel this stimulant in the air, in the sea-bordered forest, in the +society of young people; that amusing Captain Ross, little Mr. Brown, +the pretty Howel-Jones child, and Mr. Awdas, for instance. + +With pleasure she accepted Mr. Awdas's invitation, one afternoon, to +walk through the forest with him and down to the oyster-beds, the pride +of that part of the country. She thought that Captain Ross was coming +too, but it appeared that Captain Ross and the little Brown boy had gone +for a walk in the opposite direction, to prospect around that +woodcutter's hut. + +She and the young flyer set out together, walking lightly and quickly in +step; their shadows, flung on the road in front of them, showed a +curious likeness that one would not, looking at the pair, have noticed, +he so blond, and blue-eyed, and boyish--she whimsical, brown-haired, +plain of feature. But the shapes of both, blue silhouettes on the white +road, were young and supple, both characteristically small-headed, wide +in the shoulder, slim in the flank, and long from hip to knee. Seeing +them from their shadows only, one might have guessed a brother and his +sister swinging easily along together. + +The shadows broke, striping the red bodies of the pines as they entered +the forest from the road. + +"It's jollier walking further up," said Mrs. Cartwright, taking a path +to the left. "We get glimpses of the sea all the way along; this way." + +He followed her in silence. He had been in a silent mood all day, she +had noticed. She asked him, looking back with a little glance of +concern, if he had not been sleeping again. + +"Oh yes, I've slept all right--slept like a top," he reassured her from +behind. The path was so narrow that they could only walk one abreast +through the arbutus bushes. He told her: "I haven't had any bother at +all since--that night----" + +"Good!" said Mrs. Cartwright heartily, but he had not finished speaking; +he was concluding in a low voice, "that night when you were such an +angel to me." + +"Oh, please don't!" she laughed, looking ahead. "You make me feel like +something off a Christmas card of my childhood; it's not a bit like me, +believe me." She was not looking at him; she did not know, just now, +that his eyes were fastened on the lithe brown length of her as she made +her way through the bushes that seemed to catch at her, offering their +bouquets of white flowers, their jewels of orange and scarlet, as she +passed. + +Presently they grew less thickly, the arbutus bushes; they seemed to +fall back into the forest. + +The two people walking, reached a little rise in the ground, and now a +rush of salter air was mingling with the warm pine-scent that hung +everywhere about them, and now there was a familiar sapphire gleam +through the pine-boughs that showed black and fringed against sea and +sky. + +"One can't walk for long in this wood without coming upon that glimpse +of the sea outside," remarked Mrs. Cartwright, gazing at it, and taking +in a deep, enjoying breath. "Sea through pine-needles is so like the +blink of very blue eyes fringed by thick black lashes! It reminds me so +of a man I was once very much in love with----" + +Quick as a shot came the interruption to what she was saying; a hoarse +curt "Don't!" over her shoulder; a hand that clutched at her upper arm, +and then dropped as soon as it had touched her. + +She wheeled, startled. She faced the angry, hurt, and jealous eyes of a +man. + +Jack Awdas, looking steadily down into her astonished face, repeated in +that husky, angry tone; "Don't. Don't do it! Don't talk to me about any +man you've loved. I can't bear it. D'you see? You----I----You mustn't." + +She said nothing, in the extreme of surprise. He said nothing more +either. It is possible that he was as startled as she was by the +declaration that had broken from his lips, and whose sound was still +ringing in their ears. The boy had not meant to say it. He had not known +what he had meant to say; his mind had been, as it were, filled by some +luminous and bewildering and concealing mist. + +Now a breath had blown aside a corner of that mist: he caught a glimpse +of the heights and depths that it had been hiding--for how many hours, +how many days? He did not know. Only it seemed to him that since that +night of his bad dream, since his eyes had closed upon the sight of that +woman watching, lovely with Pity, he had woken up to a new world. + +It was full of strangeness and unrest, that world; it was full of sudden +thrills. It held impatience to hear her voice, to touch her hand. It +held longing and mystery. It held worship of a laugh or gesture from +her. It held amazement at oneself; incredulity that one could feel these +things. Now, he found, it held also Pain.... + +This woman had been made part of his life by that vigil shared. He could +not bear the thought of her in other men's lives; couldn't bear to think +of it, much less to hear of it in words.... It couldn't be. She was his! + +They walked on in silence, these two English people from the hotel; each +treading a maze of hidden thought as they went. No word of it escaped +them for the present. Jack Awdas was the first to speak. + +He said, his husky voice once more composed: "You haven't had a look at +this place yet, have you?" + +"No," replied Mrs. Cartwright, also in the accents of every day. "You +know the way, don't you?" + +"Yes; Ross and I explored the oyster-beds the first day we came over. +Rather interesting. I thought perhaps the place might come in useful to +you as--as 'copy.'" + +"Oh yes," murmured Mrs. Cartwright, out of the labyrinth of her +thoughts.... + +It would have augured ill for the next chapters of her serial had she +depended for "copy" upon what she was to see of that French oyster-park +that afternoon. Neither she nor the boy, who was her guide, had anything +but a cursory eye, an abstracted mind, to give to that lightsome, airy +picture of wide sea and sand, mapped out with stakes and sills and +basins, and peopled with busy barefoot women in their picturesque garb +of black sunbonnet, print jumper and long scarlet trousers. + +Up and down the narrow paths stepped those long slender feet of Mrs. +Cartwright, shod in the brown canvas _sandalettes_ of the neighbourhood, +with lacings that clipped her to mid-calf like the _cothurne_ ribbons of +a dancer. Before her tramped the high leather boots of the Flying-man; +crunch--crunch--crunch, over the gravel and chipped shell. But still the +paths that each was treading remained those of the secret labyrinth.... + + * * * * * + +She, behind all the light composure of her manner, was more than +disturbed. She was touched down to that mingling of inner tears and +inner laughter, which was her very self. He cared for her, then, this +charming lad, whose heart so far had known only his own people, only +that other lad who had been his observer and his chum. He loved her. +There could be no mistaking the tone in which he'd blurted out: "_Don't +talk to me about other men you've loved; I can't bear it!_" Yes; he was +hers--just as Keith Cartwright had been hers, and young Rolfe, who was +killed on the Frontier, and Rex Mannering in Nineteen-oh-one, _and_ the +man whose sea-blue regard had laughed through such black fringing +lashes, and the others. She ought to have known. Here was this boy.... +At twenty-two!... She had seen such affairs.... She had watched, not too +sympathetically, the mature woman who receives the attentions of her +son's contemporaries. Once she had heard a friend of hers, in all the +glory of her twenty-four summer, declare, "It's such an _elderly_ habit, +letting youths _younger than oneself_ fetch and carry for one. And oh, +Claudia! I don't think you or I will ever have to know the humiliation +of loving a _boy_!" Mrs. Cartwright had lost sight of this friend, who +was a year older than herself. + +Perhaps the unforseen had happened to her too. Certainly Mrs. Cartwright +had never dreamed that this thing would ever happen to herself; to +become at her age the object of a lad's first love. It made her feel, at +the same time, suddenly old--and suddenly young. + +Outwardly unchanged, she let her gaze sweep the flat stretches of sand +before her, and then rest upon a _parqueuse_ who waded by, a vivid +figure in scarlet and black, carrying a square rope-bottomed +oyster-basket. + +"Wonderfully picturesque those wide black sunbonnets the women wear," +Mrs. Cartwright commented. "Curious to think they're a survival of our +occupation of this part of France, all those centuries ago." + +"Are they? by Jove," was all that young Awdas replied. "That's +interesting." + +But for him, too, what he said was as a man talks in his sleep; what he +saw about him was less clear than the landscape of a dream. In his heart +the boy was awed and exultant. He had told her. It had leapt from his +lips, rather. He was conscious of new power within him; something of the +feeling that had been his on the morning when he had first gone up on a +"solo." Now she knew what he had to say to her--for he _would_ say the +rest of it presently. Not yet; not yet.... + +They pottered about the oyster-park, talking of oyster-culture. They +had tea in the town, discussing the various tea-shops of their +preference in London and Paris. Then he asked her if she were too tired +to walk home and would like to take the little tramway; he knew he ought +to ask her that, but he hoped inwardly that she would agree to walk. He +breathed again when she protested that she was never tired. They took to +the forest-path again, now gilded by the sun's rays, pointing through +the pine-trunks; beyond the fringing branches the glimpse of sea and sky +had changed from corn-cockle-blue to saffron-yellow. They walked, +talking of those other fair woods of France that the War had turned into +treeless, blasted wastes, spun over by webs of barbed wire. And then +they came to that rise in the ground of the forest where the arbutus +bushes seemed to fall back, and whence they had caught the first glimpse +of the sea. It was here that he had spoken, on their way out. It was +here that, on their way home, silence fell suddenly upon them. As if by +tacit consent, they stopped walking. He turned to her. + +"No," said Mrs. Cartwright hastily, as if he had said something. "No, +no." + +"Yes," said Jack Awdas, quietly and steadily, and just as if no time had +elapsed between his first hurt "_Don't_" and this. "I am going to talk +to you about it. I must." + +"No, no. Please don't," gently and unhappily, from her. "It's better +not. There's nothing to be said." + +"Oh, isn't there, by Jove!" exclaimed the boy. "There is everything. I +must tell you. I----Well, you know now, of course. I do care for you, +most tremendously." + +Tall woman as she was, he was looking down into her face as he went on +quickly, composedly. The intensity of what he felt took from him all +shyness. + +He said: "I never thought it was in me to care so awfully about anybody. +It's all come"--he sketched a gesture with his long arm--"like that! In +me! I can't tell you what it's like. When I've heard other fellows +talking, I've thought----But I see now it's absolutely true. Only more +so. None of them cared as I do. They couldn't. They hadn't met--you." + +"Please don't." She pressed her lips together. "I ought not to have let +you say as much." She tried to meet his eyes frankly, but that young +ardour in them disconcerted her. She looked aside, leant a hand on the +hard red bark of the pine nearest to her. "Of course," she concluded +(very feebly, as she felt!), "I am so glad you like me, Mr. Awdas.... I +hope we shall always be ... great friends...." + +"Friends?" echoed the boy. He put back his small head and laughed. "Like +you? But I want you to marry me." + +She looked at him, at a loss for just the right words. + +He persisted, still smiling. "But, of course, you've got to marry me." + +Now she gave a little hopeless laugh, glancing about as if to take on to +her side the tall old trees, the distant sea, the sunset-clouds. She +said, with an attempt to put the conversation on a more natural basis, +"You know, you mustn't talk nonsense to me----" + +"Why nonsense?" quickly. "This is dead earnest." + +She said quietly: "Mr. Awdas, how old are you? Twenty-two, aren't you?" + +"Yes; but look here! That's got absolutely nothing to do with this----" + +"Everything," said the woman. "You're twenty-two; I am----" + +"I don't want to know," he broke in. "You're--you. You've got nothing to +do with ages, or age. You're so wonderful. There's nobody in the world +like you. I love you," he ended, in a mutter. "I want you to marry me." + +There was a lump in Mrs. Cartwright's throat as she said ruefully, "I +might be your mother." + +He cried out impatiently: "Oh, dash it all! So '_might_' Madame Leroux, +or anybody else, be my mother! The point is, they don't happen to be. +You don't either. You aren't. And you're going to be my wife. Don't you +see how I care for you?" + +She was struck by the stark simplicity of him. He cared so much, then, +that he should not think of its not meaning everything to the person +beloved, as well as himself. He was looking down at her not only +adoringly, but masterfully. To him this new love was so wonderful that +it must needs be omnipotent. Sorry, and touched more deeply that she had +dreamed, she sighed as she stood there in the wood and set herself to +argue. + +She went over them all, the old, the obvious, the stock facts that have +proved themselves for centuries, the truths whose lasting light is put +out only by the transient fairy glamour of Infatuation. + +"_You see, this is a passing thing. This happens to almost every young +man once in his life. He looks back and laughs at it._" + +"_ ... fatal to marry out of one's generation!_" + +"_In a little time you'll know how right I am----_" + +"_ ... ten years hence you'd look at me, and see I was an old woman. +You'd still be a young man. It would be horrible!_" + +The boy looked at her and smiled as she spoke, and she knew that the +words meant nothing to him, the lips that uttered them were everything. + +She said, resignedly, "Let's walk on," and they walked on down the +narrow path between the thickening clumps of arbutus; this time he led, +his head turned over his shoulder to watch her as she followed. + +He began again (without alarm, it seemed): "You won't marry me, then?" + +She was a little reassured by the cheerfulness in that husky boyish +voice. She had flung cold water, then, to some purpose? He was ready to +listen to reason. + +"My dear boy, my dear child!" she exclaimed, laughing more naturally. +"You weren't _born_ when I'd been living for years and years. I was +growing up and married when you were running about that paddock at home +in a jersey suit. I'd been round the world when you were going to public +school. Marry you? I shouldn't dream for one instant of such a thing. +Not for one single instant." + +"Just because of _ages_?" he tossed back over that wide shoulder as they +went. "Is that all?" + +"Isn't that more than enough?" + +"What, just because you've lived in this world more years than I have? +Eaten more breakfasts and dinners? Had time to wear out more pairs of +shoes?" the boy took up quite gaily. He pushed aside a bush that +straggled right across her path, offering his bouquet of white +lily-of-the-valley-like flowers, growing on the same bough as the +berries of scarlet and orange. Arbutus! She knew she would never see the +plant again without being reminded of this hour. To her and to these +others here with her it would always mean "that time at Les Pins...." + +He broke off a spray, held it towards her. "Look, you're like that," he +told her, more softly, and for the first time rather bashfully. "I was +thinking so yesterday, in the woods. You may have been grown-up, +and--and have known things and all that; that's ripeness and fruit, I +suppose.... Yes; but, at the same time, you kept on being ... white +flowers, and buds...." + +She shook her head, silently refusing the flattery that she knew was +meant sincerely. + +But she took the spray from his hand, tucked it into her brown coat +(tucking in as well an end of Olwen's pink ribbon that had escaped +again). + +The look of joyous mastery flashed into his eyes. He went on, fondly +teasing, "Come to that, I've seen and done more things than you have in +all that long, long life you talk so much about. I've been _up_ further, +anyway, haven't I?" He tilted his crested head towards the pine-tops. +"And _you've_ never crashed down a mile and a half from the clouds; now, +have you?" + +"Ah----" she said, and checked a little shiver. The sun had set now; it +was growing dark under the trees. + +"Let's walk faster," said Mrs. Cartwright, hurriedly. "Let's get in. +And--we won't talk about all that any more." + +He said nothing. His whole heart was filled with the utterly boyish, +utterly obstinate Will-to-Get. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +DIVAGATIONS OF THE CHARM + + "There's a girl wanted there, there's a girl wanted there, + And he don't care if she's dark or fair, + There's a nice little home that she's wanted to share." + + Song of the Past. + + +The scene with which the last chapter closed would have been further +undeniable proof to Olwen of the too-potent success of her talisman, had +she known of it. But how about the working of the Charm, as it had been +mapped out by herself? + +As it was, guessing nothing as yet of how it had drawn to her friend, +Mrs. Cartwright, the adoration of quite the wrong man, the girl was +already in a mood of dissatisfaction. Chiefly, perhaps, because half the +day was over, without a word or look for her from Captain Ross. It is +true that the young Staff officer had announced the evening before that +he guessed he was going to take the following day out in the open. But +if her Charm had been strong as she had hoped it, Captain Ross would +scarcely have wished to leave the hotel for an entire day while she +(Olwen) was in it? Yet, how magic had been its effect in the case of +Miss Walsh and her sergeant! They (the fiancés) were now inseparable, +rather to the scandal of the French contingent, new to the code of the +English betrothed. Olwen scarcely had a word with her friend, except for +good night! Well, the unchaperoned Miss Walsh was entirely happy. That +was one ray of brightness in the gloom of little Olwen's mood, for even +she was now coming round to Mrs. Cartwright's expressed view that it was +better to be happy with a quite unsuitable partner than to be bored with +one who is apparently "cut out" for one. So much for what the Charm had +done for Agatha Walsh. + +But what about Olwen herself? What about Mrs. Cartwright? What about +little Mr. Brown?... To the girl, in her present impatient frame of +mind, there seemed to be absolutely "nothing doing," as Captain Ross +would have said. + +That very afternoon, when she and her Uncle were closeted together in +that bare, shining study-room of his, she had tried to draw a discussion +of Mrs. Cartwright into the rewriting of the Professor's article on old +Welsh flower-names, but the old man was not to be diverted from his own +subject. + +"Never mind Mrs. Cartwright's new dress now, Olwen _fach_," he'd said, +indulgently, but firmly. "Clothes, clothes, and stuffs----! Get on with +this, now----" And he had laid down close to her typewriter a further +page of notes, in his all but indecipherably small handwriting: + + "Fox-glove--_Bysedd cwn_ (Hound's fingers). + Mullein--_Canwyll yr adar_ (Bird's candle). + Cotton-grass--_Sidan y waun_ (Moor silk). + Snowdrops--_Clych Maban_ (Baby's bells)...." + +Olwen had tapped out a dozen of these names on a fresh sheet of paper, +thinking, rebelliously: "Well, I don't see that these are any more +important than 'clothes and stuffs' that one's got to _wear_! Certainly +not half as important as an awfully nice woman whom Uncle might be +marrying all this time. I do call it a waste----" Then, as she pushed +the roller of her machine along the carrier again, a more optimistic +thought had struck her. "Perhaps he's making up his mind to propose to +her _now_." + +"Perhaps he won't----Good gracious, what handwriting! What's this? + +"'Briony--_Paderau gatti_ (Cat's Rosary).' + +"Perhaps he won't just say a word to me about Mrs. Cartwright, or how +that goldeny jumper suits her, on purpose. _He's afraid I might guess!_" + +Then the optimism had faded again into gloom.... Mechanically she +finished her work, stamped the letters, tidied up the table after her +Uncle had gone. She ought to write home, she knew. She owed letters to +Auntie Margaret, who kept the big rambling house in Carnarvonshire for +the family, and to her sisters Peggy and Myfanwy, and to some of the +cousins. (The Howel-Jones family was as big and rambling as that old +house of theirs.) But Olwen was in no mood for writing any letters of +her own. She took out some picture postcards of the place, one showing +the edge of the pine-forest silhouetted against the sea, one of the +_Baissin_ all a-flutter with the sails of yachts (a flight of giant +butterflies) on regatta day, and one of a wave, marbled with foam, about +to break on Biscay shore. On these Olwen scribbled messages to her +home-people; then she took them up with her Uncle's letters, and ran out +of the hotel to post them at the little bureau opposite to where the +tramway started for Arcachon. Then, since there was nothing else to do +until dinner-time, she turned to ramble in that forest that seemed to +fling out its green, deep arms towards human beings clustered in their +houses and villas, their hotels, and their chattering groups between its +edge and the margin of the sea. That forest seemed to draw them as if it +too held at its hidden heart some disturbing Charm, thought Olwen +fancifully, as she roamed out westwards, apparently alone, but always in +her thoughts accompanied by a sturdy compact form in khaki with scarlet +tabs, his right sleeve tucked into his pocket, his gaze confident as the +tone of his voice. Only, in her inmost thoughts, that voice was not wont +to tease and laugh, and "rag" her, as in everyday life. She put, into +the unexpectedly beautiful womanish mouth under that toothbrush +moustache, the tone and the words that she would have wished to hear +from it ... and one can hazard a guess at the feelings of Captain Ross +and of most other young men could they but listen to the dream-language +given to the dream-images of themselves by the girls who are interested +in them. + +Little Olwen's guileless imaginings, for instance, murmured, "Olwen! My +sweetheart! My own, sweet, sweet little girl! No, no; I have never cared +for any one else in my life. All my life I have been waiting for YOU; +the one girl who was made for me. Tell me you've never cared for any one +either; ah yes, darling! Tell me. Do tell me. I shan't be able to sleep +all tonight unless you do----" Thus the Captain Ross of Olwen's maiden +reverie. + +"Then," she mused, with her head down and her eyes on the unseen carpet +of pine needles, "I'd tease him for half an hour before I did tell him +there'd never been anybody, _seriously_, but him. And then at last--yes, +then I'd let him kiss me. Two or three times running, even," decided +this abandoned Olwen, as she roamed the forest that might have been +Arden, or Eden, or the woods of her native Wales, for all she noticed of +it in her daydream. + +Into that dream there broke a loud and cheerful shout of "Hullo, hullo, +hullo, hullo!" + +Olwen jumped on the path, glanced quickly to the right, and then found +that she had reached, without knowing that she had come so far, that +clearing among the pine-trunks where the paths converged upon the +woodcutter's hut. + +Upon that place the hand of Change had fallen. Those giant +bramble-runners had been thrust aside from the entrance to it; a pile of +green canvas camp-kit leant against the log-wall; a khaki coat and a +service cap were hung upon the outstretched arm of the nearest tree; +and, just within the open doorway, a small figure in shirt-sleeves was +standing working. With the end of a bough, used as a maul, he was +driving four stumpy stakes at right angles into the pine-needle strewn +floor of the hut. + +"Harry Tate, in 'Moving House,' that's what this is supposed to +represent!" explained Mr. Brown cheerfully, as Olwen came up. "What +d'you think of my little grey home in the West? Palatial and desirable +family residence, is it not? (Not.) Standing in its own park-like +grounds." He dropped the maul. "Allow me----" + +He lifted the little green canvas chair out from among the pile of the +other things, pulled the four legs of it into position, and set it on an +even piece of ground close to the doorway. + +"Take a pew, Miss Howel-Jones," said Mr. Brown, and Olwen sat down, +laughing. In a whisk the shadowy and adorable companion of her dream had +been for the moment banished. She turned to this substantial but +unthrilling young man of everyday life. + +"Are you really going to live out here?" she asked. + +"Got to," said Mr. Brown, with a business-like nod of his bullet-head. +He returned to his post just inside the doorway, and went on driving in +his stake. She watched him; asked him what those were for? + +"Table," he explained between thumps. "They're lending me a table-top +from the hotel. (Very decent the old girl was as soon as she realized I +wasn't going to do a flit without paying my bill.) These stakes are +going to be the four legs, d'you see? Then I stick the festive board on +top of 'em. Old Ross is bringing it along presently; he's been lending a +hand." + +"Oh, has he?" said Olwen, looking round with great interest at the rest +of the furniture. "Are those all the things you've had in Camp, I +suppose?" + +"Things somebody's had in Camp," grinned the little subaltern. "I +think----Yes, that is my bucket, with 'Brown' painted on it; but none of +the other things seem to be mine. I've snaffled a lot of other fellows' +kit. But then, they've snaffled mine--or where is it? The bed's marked +'Capt. Smith,' and the bath 'Robinson'--I'd better paint Crusoe in front +o' that, eh? Monarch of all I survey touch." + +She watched him as he drove in the last stake; then he turned, put down +the clump of wood with which he had been hammering, and began to drag +out the light, canvas-covered furniture. + +"Shall I help you with that?" suggested the girl, idly, half rising. + +He waved her back with his pink hands. "No! No! You sit here and watch +me and talk to me. Having a pretty young lady to look on and make things +pleasant when you're doing a job of work; what could be nicer?" prattled +little Mr. Brown, picking up the camp-bed that, under his short arm, +gave him rather the appearance of an ant carrying a twig. "There! I'll +have done the lot before Ross comes back with that table-top; I bet he's +getting in another drink while he's about it. Talking of drinks, won't +you allow me to offer you a little light refreshment? Such as my humble +mansion can afford; here you are----" + +As he spoke he took his knife out of his pocket and gave a cut at one of +those ten-foot bramble-runners that had sprawled before the doorway of +the hut. He held it out; it was covered with clusters of those soft, +juicy blackberries that grow largest in the shade. + +"Try our fresh gathered fruit, at market prices," chattered the +London-bred lad; he took the cut end of the prickly runner and stuck it +between two logs of the wall, just to Olwen's hand. "There you are, you +see. Help yourself, won't you?" + +Olwen picked and ate a couple of the sweet cones, black and glossy as +her own little hatless head. Then she held out half a dozen on her pink +palm to her host. "Won't you have one?" + +"Chuck it in," he said, from where he was squatting turning over the +things in his hold-all, which was spread out on the ground almost at her +feet. "Three shies a penny, Miss! Try your luck----" + +He put back his head, opened his large pink mouth. He looked almost like +a big bull-pup, to whom the girl was teaching, with lumps of sugar, the +trick of "Trust" and "Paid for." Smilingly Olwen took aim with one +blackberry after another, missing twice to each one that she dropped +into the mouth not so far from her knee; a babyish game enough! But +their combined ages scarcely reached forty-two. Their laughter rang +pleasantly through the trees, greeting the ears of Captain Ross as he +strode up with the light wooden table-top tucked under his left arm. + +And it was quite an idyllic little picnic group that met his eyes in +that woodland glade of green and russet-brown: the little lady-bird of a +girl, black-headed and red-coated, enthroned there on that camp-chair +set under the trees, and taking aim from a handful of fruit at the +open-mouthed, wholesome-faced boy kneeling before those absurdly small +boots of hers. + +Perhaps the little slinger of blackberries aimed more successfully, at +that moment, than she knew; hitting, as Woman often does, another mark +than the one at which she looks. + +Perhaps the Authority on Woman was not too pleased to see another man +allowed a glance at his (the Authority's) special study, even at a stray +page of it? + +But it was with quite a genial "good afternoon" that Captain Ross set +down the table-top beside the other furniture. + +"Well, that's that, Brown," he said. + +"Ah, thank you," from the other young officer. "Much obliged, I'm sure. +Now, we'll fix this on to here----" + +Olwen darted forward to help with the table-top, but the two young men +had managed without her. + +"That's the ticket. Now, Ross! What about this for a scene in a +Canadian lumber camp? Yes; there's water over there, and I've got my old +spirit-kettle. Might turn an honest penny, too, by giving teas in the +forest. Parties catered for, eh? The Old Bull and Bush touch. Who speaks +for the job of the pretty waitress?" with a cheerful grin at Olwen. +"What, are you going on, Ross? I thought you'd come to lend a hand at my +flit. Don't go. Stop and watch me work, anyway." + +"I guess not," said the Staff Officer, with a flash of his splendid +teeth, and with the gesture that always tore at Olwen's sympathy, the +forward shrug of the shoulder that should have moved his right arm. "I'd +just hate to think I was in anybody's _way_----" He saluted, without +looking at Miss Howel-Jones any more than she was looking at him. + +Another moment and his scarlet tabs had ceased to brighten that glade of +a French wood, that heart of a Welsh maid. + +Poor little Olwen sat there by Mr. Brown's hut, feeling as if she could +with her own hands have pulled it down about his ears, just for sheer +exasperation. It's true that he, Mr. Brown, was wearing the Charm that +her own hand had tucked into his pocket--but that had no power over her +here. Here she was, left! Left for the rest of the afternoon, possibly, +in the company of a young man whom she didn't care if she never saw +again. _He_ could talk to her, it seemed; _he_ could pick blackberries +for her; _he_ could suggest that she would make a pretty waitress. + +But the one and only young man for whose attentions and compliments she +would have wished--what did _he_ do? Just chucked down, with a careless +word, the table-top that he had been to fetch, and made off without a +look or a thought for her, she told herself. + +Yet she was wearing, as she always wore, hidden away next her heart, the +disturbing Charm! + +What was the meaning of that? + +But for the engagement which it had already brought about, Olwen would +have been forced to the conclusion that it was all a fraud, that Charm. + +Couldn't be that for some people it possessed power, for others none at +all? + +Had it only no effect when it was worn by her, Olwen? + +The "no" to this question came almost as she was asking it; but not in +the way that the girl had wished. + +Little Mr. Brown, having been busy as he chattered, unheeded by her! for +the last ten minutes, had now moved into position the whole of his +effects--except the canvas chair on which Olwen was sitting. His blue +bulging eyes had glanced in her direction several times, as he pulled +and shifted and set straight. Now he looked again, and at length. + +"I say, you know, you do look top-hole, sitting there like that," he +told her, suddenly. "Wish I'd got my little kodak that I had to leave at +Southampton after all; I'd take a snap of you, just as you are. Sitting +there, as if it were your own little place, and all----" + +He paused, still looking at her with his head on one side. He had taken +his coat down from the bough, and stood, one arm in a sleeve of it, +while he considered Olwen as if from a new point of view. + +He said: "It's just what it wants--what any house or cottage or +anything wants. The little missus.... You'll be having a house of your +own, o' course, one day." + +Olwen shook her head. "Never," she said, with all the gloom of a +temporary conviction. + +"Oh! Come! Don't say that," Mr. Brown besought her, cheerily. "Course +you will. All girls say they'll never marry, and all girls _do_, after +all. All the pretty----All the ones like you, I'm sure." + +"I shan't," persisted Olwen, a trifle cheered however. "_I'm_ not +pretty." + +"Oh! Who's fishing for compliments?" laughed Mr. Brown. He jerked the +other arm into his coat and began to fasten it. "If you don't mind me +saying so, you're the prettiest girl in the place by miles. You are. I'm +not the only person in the hotel who thinks so, either." + +"Aren't you?" said Olwen, with a lift of her head, and of her heart. +"Who----?" + +"Why that old boy who keeps the hotel; old Leroux. He said you were +'_très jolie_' the other day, when you were passing the steps. I said +'wee, wee, _très_.' You've got such ripping eyes." + +"I don't think they're anything," said Olwen, disconsolate again. + +"They are," insisted little Mr. Brown, his pink, ordinary face becoming +dignified by his sincerity. "And it's not only--not only that you've got +a lovely little face. There's--well, I don't know what there is about +it." + +"A charm, perhaps," suggested Olwen, with would-be irony; but he took up +quite gravely: "That's it! Just what I meant. A charm. One sort of feels +glad there is the kind of think walking about. It's like the song + + 'When we was in the trenches + Fighting beside the Frenchies, + We'd 'a' given all we 'ad for a girl like 'er, + Wouldn't we, Bill? + Aye!' + +Or something of that sort. Really now. Seriously. It is awfully topping +to know there _is_ a girl like you!" + +Olwen shook her head again, laughed, deprecated.... Impossible to assert +that she was offended at his homage, even from the wrong young man. She +listened as the guileless Brown went on to tell her it was a very lucky +man for whom she'd be making a little home, some day; and, by Jove, +anybody might envy him---- + +"Very nice of you to say so," murmured Olwen, pink-eared, and ardently +wishing that Captain Ross had stayed on to hear this declaration. + +The next remark of Mr. Brown's seemed to have nothing to do with it. + +"Well, the War can't go on for ever." + +"No, I suppose not," said Olwen, uncertainly. + +"And I suppose----Well, it oughtn't to be quite as hard for a chap to +get some sort of a posish of his own afterwards," said little Mr. Brown, +thoughtfully, and as if he were already looking ahead, to a time when he +should no longer wear that uniform, that belt that he was fastening as +he came and stood nearer to the girl, looking down. + +"I mean to say, I'm not going back to any stuffy shop and serving a lot +of old trout--I beg their pardons--ladies with two and a half yards of +écru insertion, pay at the desk, please. Not much. 'Tisn't the life for +me; I know it now. They ought to find something different for me, after +this. They've got to. Don't you think so?" + +"Oh yes," agreed Olwen, a little vaguely. + +"Well! There you are! All sorts of things might happen, with luck, even +if it's no good planning 'em out now," took up the cheery boyish voice; +and then there was silence for a moment under the pines. + +Then lowering the voice, he said: "I say, I'll tell you something. That +little mascot I found"--he touched his coat--"that you tucked in there +for me, I'll always keep that. Nobody else shall touch it, you bet." + +Olwen rose from the chair, putting her hand on the back of it. She was +suddenly a little fluttered, as if by some ripple in the atmosphere, set +stirring by some small and secret Force. The ripple was setting towards +her this time; not from her, as she was wont to feel when she was +putting out that childish soul of herself towards another man. But it +touched her, the tiny Disturbance. + +"Don't you want this chair?" she asked quickly. + +Little Mr. Brown put his own hand on the back of it, closing his fingers +for one moment over Olwen's--his fingers that had handled laces in a +ladies' shop, had handled a rifle later, and, later still, a +blood-stained revolver.... Decency and honesty were written on every +line of the little fellow's face at that moment; and even if he were of +a pattern that everyday England turns out by the thousand--well, so much +the better for England. + +Quite simply, and as one stating a fact, he said to the girl beside him: +"I don't suppose you've ever let any fellow kiss you?" + +He himself had no doubt kissed girls in dozens, but he knew now that +even to mention the word to this girl was a different thing. It did not +need Olwen Howel-Jones's aghast little "_What----?_" to forbid him to go +further than the word. + +He took his hand away with a little rueful laugh. + +"'_Archibald_, certainly not!' Eh? _I_ wouldn't have tried." + +"No. Of course not," said Olwen, repressively, but feeling a trifle +shaken. Who would have thought of his saying such a thing to her? Who +would have dreamt that the Charm would threaten to work to +cross-purposes like this? Her small face took an invulnerable look. She +swept some bits of blackberry leaves off her skirt, and prepared to turn +homewards. + +He walked with her to where the trees met the telegraph-posts of the +shaded road. + +There, as he said good-bye to her, this little young officer added, with +a wistfulness: "But I would give anything to!" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE FEASTING OF THE CHARM + + "There's that that would be thought upon, + I trow, beside the bride. + The business of the kitchen's great, + For it is fit that men should eat, + Nor was it there denied." + + Sir John Suckling. + + +Crowded hours were to follow that quiet afternoon in the forest. + +A morning or so afterwards Olwen darted out into the hall, where she had +caught a glimpse of the bride-to-be going past in a great hurry. + +"Miss Walsh----!" + +"Oh, Olwen," said Miss Walsh, stopping breathlessly. "Oh, I do want to +talk to you, but I haven't a moment. It's the lunch today, you know, the +_déjeuner intime_ for all his relations and friends. They've had the +cards----" + +Olwen nodded; she had sent her "_faire part_" card home to Wales as a +curiosity. + +"It's to be down in Madame Leroux's own sitting-room; she says better so +than having the party in the _salle_ after the hotel visitors have had +lunch," explained Miss Walsh, always breathless. "Oh, I feel I must go +down and see if I can help her, but it is so difficult to understand +when she will talk French so dreadfully fast----" + +"Let me come too," entreated Olwen, eyes suddenly alight. "Let me help, +do! I can generally make out even her fast French." + +"Very well--if _you_ ask her!" + +Madame Leroux was talking faster French that morning than they had ever +heard from her before. They found her in the basement, a whole region of +the hotel that was unknown ground to Olwen, peopled by a tribe of +workers whose sallow faces she had never seen before, and who were +flying hither and thither on errands undreamt of on the upper floors. +Even so the stoke-hole of a liner is unthought about on its polished +decks. + +The manageress was in the _appartement_ that adjoined the kitchen, a +domain smaller but pleasanter of aspect than any of the big rooms above, +and more comfortable, except for one narrow space that was neither +kitchen nor _appartement_. This space between the walls seemed to be a +sound magnifier of the rumbling service-lift, the whistles of +speaking-tubes, and the hissing and running of every water-pipe in the +place. The door into the huge French kitchen stood open, giving a +glimpse of marmites, burnished copper pans, crocks, and five-decker +cookers; of vegetables piled haystack high, of ramparts of yard-long +rolls, of twenty other kinds of provisions. + +Beyond the kitchen a second door opened out into the _cour_, where +buckets clanked, a tap splashed, and the whistling of a knife-cleaning +machine could be heard. By yet another door Marie and Rosalie were +bringing in chairs collected from bedrooms, attics, landings, and any +other corner. + +"May we both come in?" Miss Walsh asked timidly. + +Madame Leroux turned. + +"Ah! Enter always, Mademoiselle. It is not to all the world that I +permit it--but for the little demoiselle of M. the Professor, but yes, +but yes----To help? But certainly, if that gives her pleasure. One would +have said that she would have preferred to spend the fine morning with +M. le Capitaine in the forest, he with the one arm who admires her +already----" Madame's glance was as swift as the dart of a chameleon's +tongue after a fly. + +She was already dressed for the day, her dark hair dragged up to the top +of her head in a fist-shaped knob, secured with combs, and her front +locks _frisés_ above her mercilessly intelligent face. Over her +tightly-fitted gown of black _broché_ and _passementerie_, showing a fat +white V of neck, a velvet band and a pendant, she had passed an enormous +apron of blue-and-white check. + +She was looking over her well-covered shoulder with eyes that were +everywhere at once, and giving orders in a voice that was as shrill as a +whipsaw and as quick as a mill-race. + +"Hold! Prop that door open, Rosalie, instead of bumping it each time +with the good chair, little careless one; one would say a swing!" (She +took breath in a gasp.) + +"And those oysters from Monsieur Paul; are they not yet arrived? Do not +open them immediately, as last time; and even so, see that you open me +but half of them in order that they may keep. And thou, Marcel, take me +that mat into the yard instead of brushing me the dust over the +vegetables!" (Gasps.) "_Bon dieu_, one would need twenty eyes----As +for these knives, Etienne, have you the intention to grind them to +powder rather than find other work? It is then not necessary that they +serve us for another day?" (Gasp.) "My faith!... Ah, Mees Ouall +she--Agathe----but no, it is not necessary that you help. Go, go and +make yourself beautiful for after the _déjeuner_, when you are presented +to the friends. Make yourself beautiful for Pierre, who shall mount up +afterwards to beg you to descend for a little half-hour, like a +princess!" (Gasp.) "_Eh bien_, if you hold to assisting me now, but not +in the kitchen, no, no; if you will have the goodness to dispose on the +table within the _serviettes_ that I have already placed in a heap. Also +the glasses; they are in those cupboards there; no, not there, +Mademoiselle, here, here, here. Arrange them all precisely as in +England, at your _château_, yes? It is that! It is perfect!" (Gasp.) +"And the little demoiselle of the Professor shall set out the cards with +the names----But no, no, no, no, no; she does not know the names nor +where they sit. Better to place these pots of cyclamen on the +window-sill, Mademoiselle, if you please. One would say real flowers, +would one not? But two francs." (Gasp.) "Fifty! It is true! _Ah, pas +ça_----" seeing Agatha Walsh, entirely at a loss, picking up from the +sofa-corner and unrolling a tricolor flag. "Not that. It should have +been interlaced with the other. I was desolated, but one could not +obtain in time, the Union Jacques. Flowers only, therefore. _Tiens_, I +have not placed a cloth over the safe----" + +She spread over the iron cash-safe a cloth edged and inserted with the +lovely pillow-made lace of the neighbourhood, while her nimble French +tongue ran ceaselessly on. + +Her niece-by-marriage-to-be, helped by Olwen, set to work with all the +good will in the world to lay the large round table. From the cupboard +drawers indicated by Madame's plump hands they brought a tablecloth, an +ornately embroidered table-centre, and napkins of the finest linen, all +wedded to that beautiful lace; from the cupboards they took old and +exquisite glass, and silver that could not have been bettered at the +Grange of Miss Walsh's youth. Olwen noticed that the old-fashioned +carved bread-cradle that swung from the ceiling had already been filled +with blossomed and berried boughs of the arbutus, patron plant of the +place. She thought as Mrs. Cartwright had thought, "I shall always think +of arbutus--and here." + +The chairs, some of them rush-bottomed, others of carved gilt, were +ranged about the table; then Olwen and Agatha Walsh sped out into the +yard and returned with the knives that Etienne, the boy in the green +drugget apron, had at last polished to his satisfaction. + +In the middle of the red-tiled kitchen Madame Leroux still stormed as +shrilly as though she alone of all excellent housewives possessed +worthless servants. + +"Is it not enough that I myself must arise at half-past four today, and +it is that I must do _all_ myself, me, as well as to entertain the +friends and the relations of Monsieur, they who are eating their blood +with jealousy because he marries himself with an English lady of the +high nobility? And why are the boards not placed over the bowls of soup? +My faith, it is then that _I_ must work, _I_ must arrange, _I_ must +plan, _I_ must have the eyes everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, while +you let the fire die down, female idle ones who do nothing but regard +with open mouths and talk in corners and try to eat me the _glacés_ +fruits out of the dishes?" (Gasp for breath.) "Take you these +immediately, Marie Claire----" she waved towards a score of trussed +chickens that looked like a frieze of poultry--"and set them in the +pans. And pose you those lids so that the pottage may simmer as it +must." She pointed to the vast arched fireplace with the grid running +from one end to the other. "_Mon Dieu_, if this boy here had as many +legs as an octopus he could not more expressly place them in my way. +That he does at each moment! Is it that I have sent my own children out +to receive _les amis_ even at Arcachon, to be encumbered by thee? The +children? They will feast out here in the yard with the children of the +notary and the little cousins; I do not wish that they are the whole +time with the grown ones when one talks----" + +And she bustled out into the _cour_ to look to the long trestled table +there which had been surrounded by a still further variety of chairs. + +It was here that Miss Walsh in her halting French asked where was +Gustave, where was Monsieur Leroux? + +"The men?" Madame gabbled. "Ah, for that, where would they be? +Invisibles, so long as there is work to be done," with a half-indulgent +laugh. "You will see also, in good time, you English ladies, that which +the _service militaire_ does for the men! They make their service. They +return. They put themselves at their ease. Behold, they are required to +do nothing further for the rest of their life. It is we, Mesdemoiselles, +we who are accustomed to it; we other French wives. You also, you will +see! Ah, hold, the oysters! Now, Etienne, you will dust me once again +the seats of all these chairs, I say to you, and with a dry duster, I +pray you, not a wet one; dry, dry, dry, dry, dry----" + +In this exalting hubbub did Olwen pass the whole morning with her friend +until the sallow little Italian waiter came down to announce that +_déjeuner_ was served. + +They went up. How cool and quiet, it struck them, were those upper +reaches of the hotel.... + +But as they were seeking their places a quick "Oh, come and look!" from +Miss Walsh brought Olwen running to the side window. "Oh, here are the +people----" + +The procession of the French _invités_ was coming down the road from the +little tramway terminus. It was solemnly headed by the three little +pigtailed Leroux girls, each holding by the hand another child, bare +from mid-thigh to ankle, and wearing an adaptation of the sailor suit. +After them, in a broken line of twos and ones and threes, came the +grown-up people. + +First and most resplendent of them appeared the individual whom Olwen +rightly guessed to be the _notaire_ from Bordeaux. He wore a white +bowler hat, a white waistcoat, and he carried in his hands, which he +held well out in front of him, a large bouquet tied with tricolour +streamers and the Union Jacques which Madame Leroux had desired, and he +overshadowed even his rotund _endimanchée_ wife in her purple costume +and forward raking hat, who bobbed in his wake. She was escorted by +Monsieur Leroux. Next came Monsieur Popinot, the clerk from the +passports office, all in black, but carrying Madame Popinot's pink +parasol. She, a plump and pretty little woman, carried a year-old baby +in a corolla of lace. + +Then came a sister of Madame Leroux, as dark, as mercilessly intelligent +as the manageress herself, talking eagerly to Pierre Tronchet, effective +in his blue and red. + +Another _artilleriste_ on leave, evidently a comrade from the regiment, +walked a pace or so behind them, between two silent young girls; then a +trio of stout, bearded old men gesticulating freely, then a lady in +another forward raking hat, then a party wearing deepest mourning, but +wreathed in smiles, then others ... then again others.... Tronchets, +Leroux, ramifications of both families, relatives, friends, and those +whom it was intended to dazzle.... + +Olwen, gazing upon this _cortège_, suppressed a wish to think aloud of a +rhyme of her childhood: + + "The animals went in four by four, + Hurray, Hurray! + The animals went in four by four + And the big hippopotamus stuck in the door." + +This last line, she considered, might almost have applied to several of +the _invités_! + +All of them, as they approached the hotel, stiffened, pulled themselves +together as if they were going past the saluting point of a review, +assumed photographically unnatural expressions, and walked delicately; +then they seemed to deflate and hurry as they slipped past the corner to +the back entrance to the premises. + +"Oh, I'm not a bit hungry," sighed the agitated Miss Walsh as she turned +from the window and sat down next to Olwen at the long table. The +_déjeuner_ was as perfectly cooked and served as if no subterranean +banquet had been in preparation. "Oh, fancy having to be 'shown' to a +host of people! Oh, I can't help feeling almost glad that Gustave's +father and mother aren't alive! If they had been, you know, he would +have had to ask their consent to marry me, even though he is +thirty-eight. Oh, it is such a mercy that Madame didn't want me to sit +through the whole of lunch." + +"Much the best plan!" agreed Mrs. Cartwright from her side of the table. + +"Oh, yes; I don't appear till they have to drink my health--oh, but I am +so nervous! And do you think I look all right in this, Mrs. +Cartwright?... honestly?" + +She wore an expensive new dress of prune-coloured _glacé_ silk, +ornamented with a kind of lace bib and with rows and rows of little +crimson buttons that fastened nothing. Both Mrs. Cartwright and Olwen +fibbed valiantly, and had their reward. The loveliest frock in Paris +could not have been more becoming to Agatha Walsh than her flush of +pleasure. + + * * * * * + +That _déjeuner_ downstairs was supposed to be _intime_ and private; but +the distant sounds of it were already becoming audible to the more +public part of the hotel. + +First a soft but thunderous drumming as of applause upon the table-top +was heard. + +Then a skirl of laughter, the piercingness of which, near to, could only +be guessed at. + +Then, booming fragments of a voice that rose above others just as an +occasional column of foam spouted higher than those other Biscay +rollers on the reef. Then an uninterrupted booming.... Apparently a +speech was in progress. + +An involuntary and smiling silence seemed to fall upon the luncheon +parties in the _salle_ above, almost as if they would have felt it +impolite to talk through what was going on below. Truly, Miss Walsh was +making the hotel one that day--the hotel to which she had only come +because of that hat-pin stuck in a guide-book and pricking at random a +name on a page! + +Then suddenly, the door of the _salle à manger_ opened. The blue-and-red +apparition of Sergeant Tronchet stood to attention just inside it: +darkly flushed, beaming, silent. + +(It may here be said that none of the visitors ever had known this +swarthy well-set-up French soldier anything but silent. All that most of +them had ever heard of his voice had been the murmured "Madame ... +Mademoiselle ... Messieurs ..." that accompanied his heel-clicking +bows. Only Miss Walsh had ever had any conversation with him. But had +not this been to some purpose?) + +"Oh, he's come to fetch me," she exclaimed now in a voice that failed. +"Good-bye, Olwen dear," she added, as if she never expected to come back +alive. "I shall see you and Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor at +tea-time----you are all coming to _my_ tea, aren't you?" she finished +appealingly. + +Then she disappeared, with her peacock-proud _fiancé_. + + * * * * * + +"The day has only just begun, my dear child!" declared Mrs. Cartwright +to Olwen, rising. "Come to my room and take a rest before _we_ come on +in the next act. Run up, will you? I'll follow." + +Olwen ran up; glad of a breathing space. + +That party, three floors and five or six rooms away, did still dominate +the whole hotel! She was glad to lie back in Mrs. Cartwright's +basket-chair and to draw a long breath. She had nothing to do that +afternoon, she thanked goodness.... + +But Mrs. Cartwright, as soon as she came in, drew a chair up to her +writing-table and began to make notes, chuckling from time to time. + +"Tell me when the people begin to go," she begged Olwen. "I had to make +an errand about the tea, and take a peep in just now, I couldn't miss +it.... My dear! The heat! And the din down there! Poor Miss Walsh! How +Madame crammed them all in I don't know.... And Monsieur Leroux with his +black domino beard and his pouchy eyes, _and_ all those women exactly +the same height whether they sit down or stand up...." + +She was scribbling sketches of them all to send to her boys.... + +The noise downstairs rose to sounds of confused singing--_Le Chanson des +Baisers_, then fell at last. + +"I think they're all going away now," said Olwen from the balconied +window, and Mrs. Cartwright ran to join her and to watch the +homeward-faring procession filing by. + +First the notary, his white bowler hat a little dinted, appeared round +the corner of the hotel. He was arm in arm with Monsieur Popinot, who +still carried his wife's pink parasol, and who seemed to have an idea +of putting it up over the pair of them as they went by the windows, but +was restrained by a gesture, suppressed but fierce, from the notary. His +purple-clad wife hustled the children ahead of her; the party in +mourning were giggling joyously together, then assumed a gravity. + +With the same effect of pompously pulling themselves together with which +they had passed the front of the hotel, they all repassed it now. + +Even as they turned their backs upon it, the strain was seen to relax +again. Up went the pink parasol in the distance. + +"Ah, there; there goes Gustave's comrade the _artilleriste_," commented +Mrs. Cartwright. "First at the fight--and last at the feast; yes, he's +the last." + +The _artilleriste_ swaggered delightfully, turning to wave a farewell, +and obviously caring little whether it were to the front of the hotel or +the back.... + +And then, about seventy yards behind the last of these revellers there +went by two other figures. + +They were those of Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas, who had been making +themselves scarce for the day. + +And perhaps it was because Olwen was busy with her own effort not to +look at one of them that she did not notice Mrs. Cartwright's swift +glance at the other; the flying boy. + +As if he felt that glance upon him, Jack Awdas looked up and put a hand +to his cap; a smile rippling all over his face. + +Olwen would not have read the purpose behind the smile. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +MOONLIGHT AND THE CHARM + + "O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, + That monthly changes in her circled orb, + Lest thy love prove likewise variable." + + Shakespeare. + + +Now let us take the roof off, as is done in fairy stories about other +charms. + +Let us steal a peep, that is, inside various rooms of that hotel, where +this story is laid. + +In the basement, first of all, let us cast a glance at the _appartement_ +that had echoed to the feasting of that luncheon party, and had been +later the scene of a sedate and ultra-English tea. Nobody there now, +except the hotel manageress and her husband. Monsieur Leroux with that +black domino beard of his, is dozing in the most capacious chair; Madame +is poring over her accounts. Every now and then her eye lights up with a +spark from the smouldering fire of pride within her; for who but she has +such a right of feeling proud at the end of that day of meals and +acclamations (and washing-up?). She thinks of her nephew Gustave's +brilliant _partie_, and of the bedazzling of all her friends, most +especially of the notary's wife, here in this very room. The little +close room seems to her once more a-glitter with the glass and the +silver and the display.... Only the prune-coloured velvet curtains are +tightly drawn before the pots of imitation cyclamen, and there enters no +gleam of the light that is bathing the forest and the sea +without--light of the waning moon, melting and cool at once, at once +disdainful and seductive. + +Upstairs in the _salle à manger_ the engaged couple have been dining as +guests of the guests. Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had suggested +this, and their proposal was cordially received. The health of the +_fiancés_ had been drunk, and the old French gentleman with the red +button-hole has added the toast to the next betrothed from that party +there present tonight. + +And now Gustave Tronchet and his bride-elect are still moving from group +to group in the _salon_, and the diffident, old-maidish Englishwoman is +transfigured. It astonishes her to think that she could ever have felt +that violent shyness so early in the day. She has forgotten how her +knees trembled as she faced that perfect zoo of foreigners, all beards +and bosoms, come to inspect Mees Ouallshe. + +She feels now that she carried it off admirably. She has been amplifying +to herself since the ten words of French that she had managed to stammer +out then, and by now they appear to her a classic oration. She feels she +was born to this kind of thing. On her _fiancé's_ stout arm she moves +about the room like a spoon that is keeping on the stir a pan of hot and +incredibly sweet social jam. As Mrs. Cartwright says to herself, "No +ordinary English engagement to a man out of her own world could ever +have brought the dear good creature these triumphs; let her enjoy +them,"----and everybody enjoys seeing Miss Agatha Walsh radiant, while +she even more enjoys being so seen. + +As for Sergeant Gustave Tronchet, if he were not enjoying it, also, who +should be? Accepted, _rangé_, adored! + +He marshals her about from _salle_ to _salon_ and lounge, drawing her +back as she peeps through the chink of the big hall door at the +beckoning moonlight without. + +"No, Agathe! You will _inrhume_ yourself----" + +She turns to beam brighter than the moon itself at the comely dark face +of the only man who has ever protested whether she took cold or not. He, +too, has been studying a speech in the language of the country into +which he is marrying. + +He brings it out, and the ears of love are quick to understand even his +English, even his accent. + +"I oueelle trai to you rendaire 'appeee, Agathe!" + +"Oh," she breathed, with a little clutch to the blue-sleeved arm. "Oh, +but you do, you _have_!" + +They return to the _salle_.... + +But the assembled visitors cannot spend the whole evening in +contemplating the happiness of Miss Walsh and of Gustave Tronchet, +_serjent d'artillerie_. + +Other groups begin to make their own arrangements; in one of the +bedrooms the Madonna-like French mother and the Brittany nurse are +putting to bed Lucien, the little damson-dark boy, who was also at Miss +Walsh's tea; he is repeating, with the correct pronunciation of a child +to whom all language is new, a little prayer that she has taught him: + + "I see the moon and the moon sees me, + God bless the moon and God bless me!" + +In another bedroom Olwen Howel-Jones has just run up to get into her big +driving-coat; she thinks of going out for a breath of fresh air and of +moonlight. Why not? Mrs. Cartwright will probably come if she's asked. + + * * * * * + +Roof on again here, please. For at this point of the story Mrs. +Cartwright was standing just outside the _salle_ windows beside the dark +spiky shape of a cactus; she had put on a pale-hued wrap, and in the +puzzling light and shade she appeared gleaming and straight as the +flowering rod of the plant. Just as she was looking out to where a few +riding lights showed in the _Baissin_, Jack Awdas strode up beside her. + +"Come for a turn down on the sands," he suggested, cheerfully. "It's not +cold; it is one perfectly good night for a walk." + +Now it is almost easier to take the roof off an hotel and to look down +unchecked into its various rooms than it is to unveil and take stock of +the contents of a woman's mind with its strata upon strata of confusing +elements. + +So, for what Mrs. Cartwright was feeling, we will take her word as she +told herself that she felt relieved and settled about the _affaire_ Jack +Awdas. + +She was glad it was all over. The boy had imagined himself in love with +her. + +A great mercy that he had not, after the manner of some men, allowed +himself to dangle and sigh and create an atmosphere in which one did not +quite know where one was. He had voiced his absurd and youthful passion +at once. He had actually proposed to her--to her who might be his +mother. So much the better, as it happened; because _now_ she had been +able to say "No" definitely. It had all been definitely settled and +tidied up in that wood on the way from the oyster park. + +Now, it was finished. + +Now, it was quite safe again. + +It would be silly to avoid the boy since both of them knew where they +were. + +Besides, he had had that horrible nightmare. He would have to go flying +again. Not even yet were his jangled nerves quite healed, poor child! He +ought, he really ought to have some one to look after him, to give a +thought to his welfare now and again ... some nice, sensible woman.... + +Mrs. Cartwright, in thus describing herself to herself, did not for one +moment admit that if the boy had already proposed to her in the +sunlight, he simply couldn't help himself in the moonlight. + +So she answered him lightly and conventionally; she fell into step +beside him. They walked. + +She was too old for him, as she'd told him. A generation too old! But +she was still not too old to walk with him, to listen to him. And ... +When is a woman too old to wish she were young enough? + +It was brusquely enough that Jack Awdas broke into speech. + +"I say," he began, "how old should I have to be, then, before you'd want +to marry me?" + +She had been looking away across the _Baissin_ with its twinkling +lights, its guardian jewel flashing from white to red. She turned +abruptly, dismayed, as one is dismayed when some trouble, dimly foreseen +(and defied) descends upon one's head. + +Oh dear.... Oh dear.... It was not quite at an end then? She had not yet +definitely put a stop to this very young man's folly? + +"Oh," she returned. "Oh, but we had agreed, I think, not to talk +about ... _that_, any more...." + +"Had we?" he retorted. "You had 'agreed,' perhaps. I hadn't." + +"But----Please! There must be no more of it." + +"What?" He threw up his head. "We must have it out, you know. We are +going to." + +"No, no----" + +"Yes, I say. Yes. As I was saying----How old should I have to be before +you'd want to marry me?" + +Mrs. Cartwright gave a little hopeless sort of laugh to herself as she +threw upon him that quick glance that seemed to be not looking. + +He put on his coat (at her orders), his flyer's coat with the wide +collar that made his head seem even smaller and the oval of his face +more perfect as it rested against the fur. That young, young face +topping the athlete's body that towered above her own, that spring and +lilt of his walk had never before made such appeal to the sense of +physical beauty that was in her. + +Claudia Cartwright thought that in this faculty she brought up the +arrears of the countless members of her own sex who would seem to be +entirely without it. A woman had once said to her, "_I don't find any +man much under forty-five worth considering. Youth doesn't appeal to me. +I never can see the attraction!_" and to Mrs. Cartwright this was +exactly as though her friend had boasted, "_I am colour-blind! I can't +tell one tune from another, either! Also, I never care for flowers._" + +The boy at her side was beautiful, in the diffused and shifting light, +as a young marble Hermes dressed in the trappings of today and come to +life to court her. The next twenty years might teach him many, many +things--but they must strip from him one by one the charms of which he +was all unconscious, as he demanded of her how old he must be to please +her. + +She should stop him there, she knew. Since he had not seen that it had +been the end, she should put the definite end to it; go in. + +She should not dally or coquet with this thing. + +Instincts that she had thought long dead were lifting their heads within +her; too strong to be beaten down at once. For the life of her the woman +could not help dallying with that passing moment to which every woman +alive cries out within herself, "Oh _stay_! _Thou art so fair_----" + +Aloud she said (truthfully enough, but in a sense that he did not +follow), "I might not want to marry you if you _were_ older." + +"Why not? Why not? The other day in the wood you said it was my age that +you barred," he went on, persistently. "It isn't that you don't like +_me_, is it? _Is_ it? If you just happened to be my own age, then, you'd +take me, wouldn't you?" + +Would she? Ah, wouldn't she, she thought, vainly. And again for the life +of her she could not keep that subtlest, faintest trace of coquetry out +of her voice as she replied, "You seem very sure of that." + +"Mustn't I be? Tell me at least. _Tell_ me what you think of me!" + +She seemed to catch herself back just in time from uttering follies. "I +think you are a dear boy; one of the dearest that I have seen," she +said, evenly. "But I know that you're wasting your time with an ageing +woman like me." + +"A what?" he almost snorted. + +She repeated it all the more firmly, perhaps, because she knew that she +was looking her youngest in that soft light of the waning moon. + +"An ageing woman like me. For I am that. Just think of it, quite +sensibly, for a moment. In a little while you would see me getting to be +just the same as friends of your mother's, that you're specially nice to +and talk to because they are old. Yes! Listen! It's coming. Before you +have a line on your face or a grey thread in your hair." + +"I shall get as bald as a coot. All flyers will; it's the tight leather +caps, here----" + +"Nonsense! Ages before that, my hair will be growing grey all over." + +"It's quite grey now; absolutely white in the moonlight--silver! And it +looks top-hole," he assured her, laughing down at her. "Why, you look +wonderful. You always do. You can't talk about the usual sort of women +getting old, and pretend you're going to be like that, because you +aren't. How could you ever be? You're different." + +"Only to you," she sighed, "and only for the moment." + +"Moment! I swear _I_ shouldn't ever alter----" + +"No? Let's turn." They retraced on the sands the lines of their own +footprints; his boot-marks making a contrast with the slim, light +prints of the woman's shoes. + +"What have you got on your feet?" he asked her presently, almost +roughly, stopping to look down. "I never saw anything like the things +women go out in. Haven't you got _any_ sensible boots?... You aren't fit +to take care of yourself, as a matter of fact. You've got to let me take +care of you." + +"My dear boy," she smiled, shaking the head on which the moonlight was +spinning those prophetic webs of silver, "all nice men at your age begin +to feel that need of taking care of something. A young girl, that's what +you ought to be seeing to the shoes of, and looking for wraps for, and +all that. Not me, not me. A young girl." + +"What young girl?" he demanded mutinously. + +Mrs. Cartwright was silent as they passed into the darkness under the +wooden jetty. Out into the light again they came, and up the beach, +back, in the direction of the hotel piazza, and of the old cannon that +stood on its stone plinth at the foot of the stone steps. They reached +the cannon, and still she had not spoken. + +She was thinking, hard. + +A young girl, she had said; and she could think without "minding" it in +the least, that the best thing this lad of twenty-two could do would be +to fall in love with a young girl. She had thought so several times +lately. It was odd, however, that she always thought of this solution as +"a" young girl, not any particular one. Not little Olwen Howel-Jones, +for instance; oh, no! Nor her (Mrs. Cartwright's) young niece Stella, +not any of the Mabels or Ethels or Dorothys that she knew at home, and +to whom she might have introduced the boy. None of these could she think +of for one instant in connection with Jack Awdas. Yet, one of these +days, some lucky girl must be responsible for the happiness of all his +days (not just of one glamorous afternoon in the forest) and all his +nights (not just of one night when the power of darkness had been kept +at bay, and when he had fallen at last asleep "as one whom his mother +comforteth"). Yes, later on, there must be "a" young girl for him.... + +He stopped by the cannon. + +"Don't go in. Just a little minute," he coaxed, softly. "I can't talk to +you in there." + +"It's no use talking," murmured Mrs. Cartwright. + +But she did pause. + +And, as he sat down on the body of that obsolete gun, and then, +unfastening his thick coat, spread a flap of it out, she did yield so +far as to sit down, in her pale wrap, on that corner of his coat beside +him. + +He leant an arm on the cannon behind her. Both looked in silence over +the lagoon, towards the reef. + +White, red; white, red--flashed the warning light. + +She felt herself at the beginning of a conflict that must tear her this +way and that; but his mind was single and set. He was just blind, +obstinate, and keen. + +He said, "I told you that night when you sat up with me what I thought +of girls. I don't want 'em. I want _you_, and you're all I want; or ever +shall. I can swear to that. Oh, I know myself! I can swear to it." + +The arm behind her trembled a little with his earnestness. + +For one mad moment Mrs. Cartwright admitted to herself that if she could +be twenty-two again for one year, she would buy that year with the rest +of the time that she had to live. Ah, to be twenty-two! To let that hard +boyish arm close round her, clasp her, crush her! To turn, with lips and +eyes aglow, to turn to him as she felt herself drawn to do--drawn, +driven---- + +But because she felt thus she kept around herself that invisible, +intangible armour of refusal which is every woman's at need and which no +outside power can pierce. She did not need to move one half-inch away +from that corner of his coat on which she sat. Yet ... Yet she could +hardly believe that he did not guess at the growing disturbance in the +heart that beat not so far, after all, from his own. + +Appealingly he broke out. "_You_ must marry me. I don't know why on +earth you want to talk about other girls to me!" + +"_'Other_' girls----!" + +"Yes. You're just a girl to me. You _are_ a girl, yourself. I can't see +you as anything but a girl!" + +She made a little gesture with her long arms, lithe and elastic still as +when she was a schoolgirl, only more rounding in modelling; she pressed +a hand to her hair, still brown and thickly growing. She turned away the +face that showed lines brought by years of worry, of concentration upon +her work; ah, they were there even in the moonlight and even though she +tended her skin as prettier women often neglect to do. She could feel +that in every inch and ounce of him this boy was alert and conscious of +her nearness, of her suppleness of body, of that faint scent of rose, +kuss-kuss and orris that clung about her. + +It couldn't be. It mustn't be. + +Lightly as little Olwen could have sprung up, Mrs. Cartwright sprang up +from her seat upon the muzzled cannon and said quickly, "I am going in." + +As she set her foot upon the first step of the piazza, she turned to +young Jack Awdas with what she told herself would be, definitely, her +last word upon the subject. Her little laugh was whimsical and mirthless +as she said it. + +"You think you see me as a girl? Ah! Wait until you see me beside a +_real_ girl!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +WILD-FIRE AND THE CHARM + + "A light that shifts, a glare that drifts, + Rekindling thus and thus." + + Kipling. + + +A little earlier, on that same evening, the disturbing Charm had set to +work in other directions. + +Little Mr. Brown, who had taken his dinner as usual at the hotel, was +lingering on the terrace on the other side of the building from the +piazza. He was smoking a cigarette, which the "_Défense_" notices would +forbid him at every turn on the forest; but, apart from this, it was not +to be wondered at that the gregarious little Londoner was in no hurry to +get back to that sylvan shanty of his. The contrast, after that evening, +would have been as great as that between a chandeliered ballroom and a +cave. + +Oh, the loneliness of that hut at night! His cheerful urban +soul got fairly fed-up, as he would express it, with all that +wind-sighing-in-the-pine-tops business. Of course, as he'd have told +you, the little old hut was good enough for lolling outside of with a +book, or for writing his letters in of a morning. If only they'd allow +him to smoke there he would be quite fond of the dashed little dug-out +by now, but he didn't pretend to find it a very attractive spot of an +evening. + +Even of an evening, perhaps, it wouldn't have been so dusty if he'd had +somebody with him. With his cigarette between his teeth he found himself +humming a song of seven years back: + + "It's all right if there's a girl there, + That's the place where I'd like----" + +At that moment Olwen Howel-Jones, her slim shape buried in a big +driving-coat, appeared upon the terrace. + +He approached her joyously. + +"Going for a little stroll round the houses, Miss Olwen?" + +Olwen shrank within herself. She did not want any more of the obvious +admiration of this quite nice boy; it had dismayed her to find that in +shooting at a star (Captain Ross) she had hit a blackberry-bush (little +Mr. Brown). After that declaration of his in the wood she had felt +almost inclined to tear that misleading Charm she wore from its ribbon +and to toss it down the wind into the _Baissin_! However, she could not +be rude to him just because he didn't happen to be somebody else. +Hesitatingly she replied that she had thought of going for a little walk +with Mrs. Cartwright, who seemed to have disappeared. + +(She, as we know, was at the moment pacing the sands beside Jack Awdas.) + +"Ah, you're at a loose end, then, are you," returned Mr. Brown, +cheerfully. "Well, if I might have the pleasure----?" + +Before Olwen could either grant or refuse "the pleasure," there stepped +out on to the terrace Captain Ross, who with a note of some purpose in +his "good evening," took up his position on the other side of the girl. + +Now, all through that thrilling day, something (heard quite at the +beginning of it) had been humming in Olwen's heart like a wind-harp that +responds to every passing breath. It was that something let fall by +Madame Leroux, and it had tossed Olwen far too high up into the rosy +clouds to take more than a quite superficial notice of the subsequent +events of that rousing day. She had helped Miss Walsh, had listened and +watched with Mrs. Cartwright, had drunk healths--but all the time she +had been secretly hearing, over and over again, one lightly-uttered +remark. + +"_Monsieur le Capitaine, he with one arm, who admires Mademoiselle +already----_" + +Madame had thought that! There must be truth in it. The Charm was +working and not only in the wrong direction. It was true that Captain +Ross had talked to Olwen as if she were a little girl; he had avoided +her in the forest when he was carrying that table-top for Mr. Brown, and +he had blackened this evening for her by taking not the smallest notice +of her at dinner; he hadn't even come up to touch his glass to hers when +the toast had been proposed to the next engaged person for that hotel. +To set off against all this, Madame Leroux (that piercingly acute +Frenchwoman) had given it as her opinion that he admired Mademoiselle. + +Now he joined her and Mr. Brown on the terrace. + +His coming had a curious effect. Olwen became filled with apparent +animation and delight in the company of little Mr. Brown. This was not +deliberate coquetry, but pure instinct. The kindest-hearted girl in the +world, the most kernel-sweet maid never hesitates before one form of +feminine cruelty--_to make use of the admirer for whom she does not care +in order to spur the man she loves_. It is not an admirable instinct. +But it is a form of self-preservation in Woman, for which Man alone is +responsible.... + +Perhaps it is not fair to allege that every man in his heart is a dog in +the manger, hating to see his fellow-men smiled upon by a pretty girl? +Perhaps it's not true that his interest in the girl is awakened when he +sees her interested in another? No! Perhaps it's a libellous old theory +that simply doesn't hold water as a rule. + +Only, what myriads of exceptions it does take to prove that rule! + +In her happiest voice Olwen, standing between the two men, began talking +to Mr. Brown. "I do think that hut of yours must be a delightful place +to live in! No cleaning! No sweeping! and you've only to put out your +hand to get those lovely blackberries for breakfast----" + +Captain Ross, leaning on the balustrade, was seen to hump his back a +little. + +"Can't say I fancy blackberries as a breakfast myself, but I daresay +it'll come to that," grumbled Mr. Brown, cheerily. "Blackberries, and +'bright _water is my drink from the crystal spring_.' Can you make +anything out of this tangle about allowances, Ross?" + +Captain Ross was apparently _not_ the finest judge of pay-warrants in +Europe. A short "nope" came from over his humped shoulder. Olwen noticed +that his one hand was resting on his left-side-jacket-pocket, that +appeared to be bulging with something he had slipped into it. + +"Dashed if I can make 'em out," said Mr. Brown, pleasantly. "According +to my reckoning, Miss Olwen, there was my regimental pay for July, +rations and lodgings for August, and they'll be in arrears for +September--and no hospital stoppages.... Cox's do make mistakes; ask +anybody. Anybody!" + +Olwen agreed that Cox's did make mistakes. Honeyed sympathy informed her +tone as she said so. + +"Well, that's just that," Mr. Brown concluded, beaming upon her. "But, +as I was just asking you, what about a turn on the prom. in the +moonlight?" + +Here the hump of Captain Ross's square shoulders suddenly straightened +out. + +He took his hand away from the packet in his pocket, gave a hitch to his +belt, then, turning to Olwen, and in the most matter-of-fact voice +imaginable, he told the fib that took her breath away. + +"I guess Miss Howel-Jones is engaged to me for this dance. Isn't that +so, Miss Howel-Jones?" + +"Dance? But----" gasped little Olwen, stupefied. "Nobody is dancing!" + +"Then I guess we'll have to sit it out together on the old cannon or +somewhairrr," said Captain Ross, coolly. "Shall you be all right without +anything on your head?" + +Now if Captain Ross expected that upon this hint Mr. Brown would retire +in good order to his hut, there to brood upon allowances for the rest of +the evening, he was no very fine judge of subalterns in the London Rifle +Brigade. + +Mr. Brown, M.C., stood firm. "Look here, Ross----" he was beginning, +when another voice, a deep, genial, elderly voice, was heard behind the +shutters of the window through which Captain Ross had come out upon the +terrace. + +The voice enquired, "Has anybody seen my niece?" + +Little Olwen jumped. + +"Oh, it's my Uncle. Do open the shutters, Uncle! I'm out here, with Mr. +Brown and Captain Ross," explained Olwen, hurriedly. "It's--it's ever so +early, you know! We were all just thinking of going for a little +walk----" + +"No; I've got it," put in the unquenchable Mr. Brown. "What about a pull +on the lagoon, to look at the phosphorescence? You too, Ross," he added, +hospitably; guessing that Professor Howel-Jones was of an age that might +allow its young nieces to go for moonlight rows in boats on lakes with +two young men, but scarcely with one. "I saw a skiff drawn up by the +jetty. You don't mind, Professor, do you?" + +"At this hour?" demurred the Professor, looking out into the light that +made of his massive old head the summit of Mynedd Mawr in a snowy +December. "For you to take your death of cold, Olwen _fach_, in the +night air?" + +Little Olwen, pulling up her storm-collar, murmured appealingly above +it. "Oh, _darling_! I shall be as warm as warm! Do let me go." + +She did not know that in her coaxing she was helped by a girl long dead. +It was to a certain note in the voice that she had from her mother that +the Professor ceded now. + +With a little nod he said, "Very well," and all but added "Mary." "Very +well, Olwen _fach_. I trust you gentlemen not to keep her out long. I +wish you a pleasant row; good night to you, good night!" And he went in. + +"Come on; let's make a dash for it," said young Brown. + +He led the way; followed by Olwen and Captain Ross, the latter in a +worse temper than he had been in since he left the hospital. + +"Jump in," said Mr. Brown, as they came up to the little empty skiff +moored at the foot of the jetty. + +In the skiff little Mr. Brown, cheerfully resigned to doing all the +work, took both oars; as he would naïvely have said, he rather fancied +himself in a boat. He pushed his shirt-sleeves up above a pair of short +but neatly-turned forearms, and as he rowed on that foreign lagoon +margined by that French sea-wall, his cheerful chatter was all of the +Thames above Richmond, of sunny Sundays and of parties on Eel-Pie +Island. The two in the stern sat rather silently, letting him talk; +Captain Ross sulking as he would never have admitted he sulked, Olwen +uttering now and again a little "Ah" of delight at the phosphorescence +on the water. + +For it was wonderful, that sea that flamed as they pushed out into it. +The boat's keel cut into the shimmer of pale green as into a field of +glow-worms; it lighted up to left and right, blazing, dying down, +rekindling fitfully as love itself; raining in spangles from the oars, +dripping in jewels from Olwen's fingers as she dipped them over the side +of the boat. + +"Trim, Miss Olwen," said Mr. Brown, jerking his bullet head. "A bit +nearer to Ross, if you don't mind." + +Olwen moved; in the softly rocking boat overbalancing a trifle, she +bumped against something hard and angular on the seat close to her +companion. It felt like a camera or a book. + +"Oh," she said, "did I knock you, Captain Ross?" + +"No----" he said--and then he brought out of his jacket-pocket that +which she had seen bulging it into that square shape on the terrace. It +was a box covered with coloured satin and tied with gay ribbons. + +"Candy," explained Captain Ross, somewhat curtly. He lifted the lid and +offered the chocolates to Olwen, then perforce to Mr. Brown, who stopped +rowing and leant forward, opening his mouth as he had done to the +blackberries. + +"Pop one in, Miss Olwen, please," he laughed, hands on the oars; but it +was Captain Ross who leant forward in the boat and stuffed the sweet +into his mouth. + +"Thanks," said little Mr. Brown, with his mouth full. "Very pretty +attention of yours, Ross, I must say, bringing out chocs for me when I +like 'em." + +Captain Ross planted the box on Olwen's lap. + +"Don't," she laughed shyly. "I shall eat them all up." + +"I guess you're meant to," he said shortly. "I got them for you in +Bordeaux." + +"For _me_?" + +"Sure. I wanted to see if you'd eat candies, after what you said the +other day to me in the lounge." + +Through the soft noises of the water Olwen's soft voice took up "What I +said?" + +"Yes--when you said, 'Who wants candy?'" + +"Oh, that," said Olwen, looking down at the green lambent water of which +the rippling light beat up, soft and magical upon a face whose young +curves could have dared a harsher radiance. She then looked back across +the lagoon towards the big block of the hotel, picked out against the +pale sky. She also glanced to her right, at the sand dunes that +barricaded the waters of the _Baissin_ from those of Biscay Bay, and at +the lighthouse, winking white and red. She looked, in fact, anywhere but +at Captain Ross, sitting so close beside her in that boat. + +She was bathed in such a rapturous dream of moonlight and +phosphorescence and rosy clouds and proximity that she was afraid to +look at him. Fear lest he might read a confession in her eyes did for +her what wisdom itself might have prompted. + +A sophisticated woman in Simla, for example, had once told Mrs. +Cartwright that she found no variation of the Glad Eye more successful +with some men than the glance withheld. How dogmatically would this have +been combated by Captain Ross! More than once had this expert in Woman's +Ways affirmed, "_If there's a woman on this airrrrth that I've no use +for, it's the woman who looks away when I'm speaking to her. I don't +dawdle talking to a woman who doesn't look at ME all the time----_" + +His impulse at that moment was to catch this little chit beside him by +her slender shoulders and shake her good and hard. If he'd had two arms, +he thought savagely, that's what he'd have wanted to do with 'em. He'd +have loved to do that, then and there, and be hanged to that young +butter-in of a Brown! Young Brown could be ignored, anyway. Let him get +the boat along; the only pity was that he couldn't row with his back to +the stern. + +Captain Ross, turned a little sideways on the cushions of the skiff, +attempted, by looking the girl full in the face, to make the girl look +straight back at him. Not a successful method. Olwen's soft bright +glance slid away from him even as the phosphorescence slid away from the +oars. + +Curtly he demanded, "You _do_ like candy, after all?" + +"I don't call it 'candy.' That's American, or Canadian," Olwen said with +that indifference which was her only idea of Love's camouflage. "I say, +'chocolate,' or 'sweets.'" + +"Is that so?" + +"Yes," said Olwen, looking now at the box that was, as she knew, to +become her most precious and inseparable treasure, her first gift--from +Him! + +As she sat holding it, backed by luminous sky and luminous sea, the +little slim Pandora with her casket, he too looked at it between her +hands; touched the bow of it. + +"That'll do for a hair-ribbon for you, I guess," he remarked. + +All that Olwen could think of to say was "I don't ever wear any +ribbons." + +"Is that so?" retorted Captain Ross maliciously. "Then what's that +little pink tie-thing you've gotten coming out over your coat-collar at +the back?" + +Precipitately, Olwen's hand went up to the ribbon that was sewn to her +Charm, and that, according to the mysterious and osmotic nature of +ribbons, had let an end work up and out again. She tucked it in, with +the eyes of the two young men upon her little dark, ducking head, and +the small hand white in the moonlight. + +That moonlight flashed too on the line of Captain Ross's fine teeth. A +great alteration had suddenly come over his dour mood. He had two +reasons for laughing good-humouredly. One, because he had just given a +welcome present (event that always adds to one's good will towards the +receiver), and two, because he had scored off the little chit now, with +her ribbon! Ha! + +His bad temper had vanished as her pretty confusion appeared. Again she +dipped her fingers into that gleaming wake; she shook them, dried them +against the thick skirt of her coat. + +"You've gotten your hands cold now," said Captain Ross, in a pleased +tone, and his left hand caught hold of the fingers of her little chilled +right hand as if to verify the fact. + +His own was a short and rather stumpy hand, Olwen had often noticed, +with beautifully kept nails and with the cushions of the palm developed +and muscular from the double share of work that was put upon it; +generally she had seen it held half-closed above the watch-bracelet on a +sturdy wrist. She had never shaken hands with him.... + +She thought he meant only to touch her fingers and to let them go. But +he held them. He held the little soft fingers, in the shadow of her +loose cuff and under a fold of her thick coat. They lay, firmly tucked +into that clever magnetic left hand of the soldier who had only that one +hand to do everything with. + +Olwen, a prisoner enraptured with her chain, sat silent and still. She +thought, "I suppose I ought to take my hand away. Oh, need I? No; I +can't. He's only holding it to warm it, perhaps. And then if I took it +away he might think I thought he thought he was _really_ holding it!" + +She sat in the boat that glided through that fairy mere of lambert +waves, shimmering with green. Little shivers seemed to start in her +elapsed hand and to run up her arm quick as wildfire, and spreading like +wildfire through the whole of her slight frame. Yet she was now, as she +had promised the Professor that she would be, "as warm as warm." Once +she moved her hand a little in its prison, but that was only as a bird +might stir and nestle in its cosy haunt. The man's clasp tightened a +trifle, but she had made no effort to take away the hand that he was +describing to himself as "a little bit of velvet." + +As she assured herself some time afterwards, "Well, how _could_ I? How +can you possibly take your hand away from a man's who's only got one arm +to hold you with?" + +The boat sped on ... and the thrills that trembled through the girl did +not, surely, leave the man unstirred. + +"Well, what about it, Ross?" broke in the making-the-best-of-it voice of +little Mr. Brown, resting at last on his oars. "What about another of +those chocolates?" + +With one of his quickest movements Captain Ross's hand left the shadow +of Olwen's cuff and grabbed the biggest chocolate walnut out of the box. +He crammed it into the other young man's mouth as if it were a gag. + +Then, unseen, his hand sought the girl's again, found it, held it close. + +The boat sped on through the whispering wildfire.... + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +CLOUDS UPON THE CHARM + + "The burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see + Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green." + + Swinburne. + + +After an evening of ecstasy such as Olwen had lived through upon those +iridescent waves, what could the girl expect? + +It is one of Fate's harshest rules that in one way or another we pay for +our ecstasies. The more golden the moment the more dull and clouded must +seem the hours that follow: and that is just because we have seen that +magic green shimmer on the breaker's crest that the grey of these smooth +waters looks to us so leaden. Ah, better to know the sadness of this +than never to have set keel in any but the quiet waters! To have no +reckoning to pay because no ecstasy has been ours to enjoy is surely the +bitterest price that can be demanded of us.... But Olwen was too young +to recognize this. + +So, when the next day she emerged bit by bit from her dream, she was +sore and resentful to find all life at its flattest. + +To begin with (and, indeed, to go on with; for this was the whole leaven +of discontent), Captain Ross encountered her as if there had been no +magic voyage, no hand clasped in hand, no wildfire, no silent thrills +between them. "Ah, good morrrrning, Miss Howel-Jones. Another beautiful +day----" + +Beautiful, indeed.... Olwen felt as if by rights the sun should have +gone out and the rains should have come to weep over the lagoon. As a +matter of fact the weather remained radiant. Her idol's easy, friendly +manner had dealt her a blow that stunned her into a torper of low +spirits, and there seemed nobody to give her a helping hand out of it. + +Mrs. Cartwright, usually so sympathetic and interesting, talked to her +(Olwen) as if her thoughts were far, far away: with her serial-people, +the girl supposed vexedly, or with those boys of hers at school. + +Young Mr. Awdas--well, he never talked to Olwen. An apathetic young man, +she considered him. All flyers were interesting from their very +job--otherwise _how_ uninteresting was Mr. Awdas! Nobody but Mrs. +Cartwright (who was so kind), would bother to draw him out, Olwen +thought. + +Then Agatha Walsh--impossible to talk to _her_ today: her Sergeant +Gustave Tronchet's leave was up, and he was to depart to join his +battery that evening. They could not be married until his next leave. +Poor Agatha was paying too for her golden moments. + +Mr. Brown--well, as for Mr. Brown (who had, after all, done all the work +in that boat the night before), Olwen felt that she could have slapped +him. Upon Mr. Brown's well-meaning bullet head she felt herself pouring +the resentment that she might have reserved for Captain Ross and his +forgetfulness, his insensibility. Silly little Mr. Brown! Why on earth +couldn't he run away and attract somebody (hadn't Olwen given him a +talisman for that very purpose?) instead of hanging about trying to talk +to somebody who was already distracted enough as it was, because her own +talisman seemed sometimes so potent, sometimes so useless? That it +should have allured Mr. Brown into being sentimental about her seemed +the last straw! (to Olwen.) + +But it wasn't. For it was Professor Howel-Jones, it was her Uncle +himself who contributed to his niece's burden, on this day of +depression, what was really the last straw. + +It happened as Olwen brought to him, with a little air of triumph, the +typed copy and the duplicate of the last section of the last chapter of +his book on "Agarics." + +"So that's finished," she said. + +"That's finished," agreed the Professor, his brown gaze running over the +sheets. "Olwen, I've done well here. This has been an excellent place +for work; excellent." He laid the copy down on that chaotic work-table +of his, and added, with cheerfulness, "Well! There's nothing to keep us +here any longer, now." + +This Olwen did not take in at once. "Nothing to keep us, Uncle?" + +"Only the passports to be _visé'd_ and made out for Paris," returned the +old man. "I want to stay a night or so in Paris before I go on to +London." + +A great blankness fell upon Olwen's small face. "The passports," she +repeated. "Paris!!! You mean you want us to leave quite soon?" + +The Professor's head was bent over his work-table. "A couple of days, my +dear, I suppose. You can be packed up and all that by then. You are +broken in by now, aren't you, to your packing up and getting on without +much warning?" + +But this had taken Olwen without any warning, it appeared. + +She stood there as if frozen, and said, "Away from here!" and in her +heart exclaimed, "Away from _him_!" She stood aghast, an image of all +the maids in love who have ever been sentenced to banishment from the +presence of the beloved. She had put away from her up to now all thought +of such a dreadful thing happening. Simply, she could not have imagined +it. Going away from the hotel in the pine forest, while he still was +left in it! Going away, before he had ever said to her a word that +counted? Going away--with that Charm unproved? + +[Illustration: She stood there as if frozen, and said: "Away from here!" +and in her heart exclaimed: "Away from him!"] + + * * * * * + +It was time the Charm required; Olwen was agitatedly certain of that +now. Time. + +It had taken so many days before he had even held her hand; given so +many other days, and what might not happen? But she was not to know. +Those days were not to be allowed to her. She clenched into her palm the +nails of those little fingers that Captain Ross had held in that +warmly-caressing clasp. She was to go ... never to see him any more.... + +She cleared her throat, pulled herself together, and asked, "And after +Paris, Uncle, where do we go; London, you said?" + +Now, this was a gleam of hope; London! + +For she had once heard Captain Ross, in talking to Mrs. Cartwright, tell +the writer that when his sick leave was up and after he had been +boarded, he had prospects of an office job in town. If he were in +London, and if her Uncle and she were also in London ... well, then the +outlook would not be entirely so black. It would not be the every day +and several times a day encountering of this French hotel; but there +surely might be meetings, if they were together, in London? + +But the Professor, eyes still upon his papers, said, "London for a week +or so, but I'm always glad enough to get out of the place. I shall be +going down to Wales, then; I can leave you at your Auntie Margaret's, +dear, before I go on to Liverpool. My plans will be unsettled----" + +"You're not going to have me with you, then Uncle?" + +"No, Olwen _fach_. For the present, not," he told her above the rustling +of the papers. "I shan't require you for the work in hand for the +next----Let me see, four or six months, perhaps. You will be able to go +home; have a nice rest from work; help your Auntie in the house, see a +little bit of your sisters and of your old friends." + +Olwen felt precisely as if the genial-voiced old man were condemning her +to penal servitude for the rest of her natural life. + +"Uncle!" she exclaimed in horror. + +It was met by a mildly surprised glance from the old man. + +"What's the matter, small lass? Aren't you glad to be seeing your home +again?" + +"No," blurted out Olwen. "I don't want to go. Oh, I don't. Uncle! I'd +rather be with you. Much. But if you can't have me, I--I--I won't go +back----" + +She put up her little head, shaking it violently as if in the face of a +vision of the home in which she'd been brought up. Comfortable, +old-fashioned, rambling place that it was, set in wild beauty, and +echoing with gay voices, it repelled her; it seemed to her a prison +from which there would be no further escaping towards the Heart's +Desire. At work as her Uncle's secretary, there still seemed chances of +movement in her life, there still seemed possibilities.... But as a girl +at home, she felt she would be chained and bound by a thousand chances +against. + +She told herself rebelliously, "Down there, I should never see him +again! I won't go!" + +Unconsciously her hands clasped themselves upon her breast, upon that +slender talisman that she was wearing. + +The old man regarded her, at a loss why the child should be agitated, +she who had always seemed happy enough with her sisters at home. + +"But, Olwen _fach_, if you don't go back, what do you want to do?" + +"I want to stay on in London, Uncle!" + +"In London--dear me--curious taste! Why? What could you do there?" + +"I could do War work, like lots and lots--like every other girl!" + +"Tut," retorted the Professor. Being a Welshman, he pronounced this word +to rhyme with "foot." Being a man of his generation, he still disliked +to think of any girl at work except domestically or for him. + +"What d'you want to do that for, Olwen _fach_?" + +To this question Olwen could hardly answer with the whole truth. + +How many girls insist upon working in London because there, also, is +working their particular Captain Ross? + +Olwen's mind was set upon a plan. + +She would think out the "hows" as soon as she left this place. + +Only a couple more days in which the Charm might work for her, here! + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE LOSING OF THE CHARM + + "Farewell, thou latter Spring! Farewell, All-hallown summer!" + + Shakespeare. + + +"It's perfectly easy to have a good time in this world without any men," +declared Mrs. Cartwright, smiling. "In fact, as easy as it is with them. +In many ways, easier!" + +Her listeners looked at her without conviction. For they were Miss Walsh +and Olwen Howel-Jones. Poor Miss Walsh, having passed thirty-four years +of her life in a manless world, having been then caught up into a +Paradise for two, and, further, having been banished from it again with +the departure of her Gustave, felt that nothing could be more untrue +than this remark of the writer's. + +As for Olwen--well, this was on the morning after her Uncle had sprung +upon her the news that all _her_ "good time" was to end in two days' +time. And one whole precious day of that remaining two was to be wasted; +_wasted_! + +A somewhat mysterious message had come from Bordeaux, asking all three +of the British officers then sojourning at Les Pins to go over and spend +the day with their comrades-in-arms at a base about which none of these +soldiers would answer any questions. They had gone, all three of them; +Captain Ross, Mr. Awdas, and little Mr. Brown. They wouldn't be back +all day. Not all day would Olwen have a glimpse of him whom presently +she might never be seeing at all--and still Mrs. Cartwright affirmed +that it would be possible to have a good time! + +Probably Mrs. Cartwright guessed at the young girl's frame of mind as +easily as at the less disguised feelings of Sergeant Tronchet's +betrothed; it had not been for long that the writer had wondered "Who +that child's so desperately in love with?" But brooding was a thing that +Claudia Cartwright considered a wasteful and useless proceeding on the +part of any young girl. She determined to put a stop to it, if possible, +and that was why she went on gaily, "I often think of how Eve would have +got on if she had been made first; probably she'd have thoroughly +enjoyed having the whole of that Garden to herself, whereas Adam----! +Bored to tears, of course. Not good for man to be alone.... Well, since +all the men have gone from here, why shouldn't we have a party of our +own?" + +"A party!" echoed Miss Walsh, lugubriously. "Oh, Mrs. Cartwright!" + +"Why not? I am sure Sergeant Gustave doesn't want you to shut yourself +up because he's gone back to the front; come and see something to put +into your lovely long letters to him. And since those other three young +men have gone off on a stag party to Bordeaux, we'll organize a dove +lunch, as the American girls call it, and go off to Cap Ferret. It's +perfectly lovely there. Olwen, where's the Professor? I'm going to beg +leave for you. Come along, Miss Walsh----" + +There was about Mrs. Cartwright that day an almost schoolgirlish flow of +vitality that the other two found it impossible to resist; their own +being at a low ebb, they let themselves drift with the current of hers. +The corners of Miss Walsh's mouth ceased to turn quite so definitely +downward, and the clouds in Olwen's bright eyes seemed about to +disperse. In half an hour they were all ready, and setting out for this +trip to Cap Ferret, which lay beyond the _Baissin_, the dunes, and the +lighthouse. + +In the bright autumn sunlight the little motor-boat buzzed with them +across the lagoon that had set such a fairy scene, that night.... But +there was a gay wind blowing now, sending the big white clouds rolling +across the sky in towering columns like those of the Biscay waves, seen +from afar. + +"We'll go right down to Biscay, after lunch," planned Mrs. Cartwright, +as they landed at the small iron pier above the oyster parks. Then she +guided them through the belt of pine woods that lay between the two +borders of sandhills, past the lighthouse which they saw every day as a +warning finger, but with which they now made acquaintance as the huge +tower it was; she led them to the inn where they were to lunch. This was +a long white building, its corners rounded and scoured by the flying +sands borne on the gales of winter. + +"Outside is the best dining-room," said Mrs. Cartwright. "I daresay +Madame will think us mad--but it's an Indian summer day today. The +Professor told me that you Welsh people call it '_the little summer of +the Angels_.' Come along!" + +And having given her order to the smiling French landlady (who wore a +black shawl, a bright blue apron, and a brighter blue glass comb in her +black hair), she led the others to a table in the sunny yard, under the +wooden veranda. Its green paint had flaked off beneath those noisy +gales, but the latticework was over-grown with passion-flower vines and +other vines, richly clustered with bunches of sweet white grapes. + +"Our dessert," said Mrs. Cartwright, nodding towards the fruit. "Madame +will come and cut the bunches while we are eating the Biscay sole." + +Lunch was brought; before she began upon the sole Mrs. Cartwright threw +off the loose brown coat that she had worn for the crossing in the +motor-boat, and appeared in a frock that Olwen had never seen before. +Yesterday, the girl had noticed, a carton-box had arrived for the writer +at the hotel; doubtless this was the dress that it had contained.... + +It was of rough sky-blue crêpy stuff with touches of creamy edging and +of dull pink stitchery, very simple, for all Mrs. Cartwright's clothes +were simply cut. This was something more than simple, though, almost ... +trivial, was it? A frock for a more insignificant person? Olwen could +not have told you why she shouldn't quite like that frock. It wasn't +altogether that it seemed too young; and it did fit her, perfectly. +Perhaps the fact that Olwen noticed it at all showed how well the elder +woman's clothes generally did suit her. + +Today--not only her frock was different, but her mood was different. It +puzzled little Olwen entirely.... + +As the sole and the potatoes in their jackets gave place to an +admirably-cooked ham omelette, Mrs. Cartwright was saying almost +audacious things, that passed as swiftly as the shadows of the gulls +swooped over the sands. And she seemed conscious that she was "being +different...." Why? It was almost as though she were playing at some +game; she thought feverishly. As if half of her sat apart, watching the +play, criticizing, exchanging notes with people who were not Miss Walsh, +not Olwen. + +The girl, having never before looked upon her friend as a riddle, sat +wondering at her.... In that sheltered corner the savoury scents of the +meal mingled with the inevitable pine scent and the tang of sea while +the sun flung blue shadows upon the bright table and the plates; dancing +delicate silhouettes of vine leaves and tendrils and passion flowers. +There drifted to them from the woods the sound of the cow bells; +"tonkle--tankle--tonkle--" and from the shore the distant roar of +breakers. + +Suddenly, as the inn servant removed and brought coffee, Mrs. Cartwright +broke out, apparently à propos of nothing. + +"Ah, well! + + "'Better an omelette _aux fines herbes_ where Love is, than the + Carlton and a chaperon therewith.' + +Forgive my quoting my own works, but I was thinking of one of those +books of mine that I--that we never write. Plenty of other things in +Life like that. Men we didn't marry, their babies that we've never +had----" + +Then she laughed. + +"I wonder what people would have thought if I'd ever written that book. +It's the one I threatened your friend Captain Ross with, Olwen, the +other night. Would you like to hear a bit of it, girls?" + +And without waiting to hear whether they would or not, she went on in +that deep, whimsical attractive voice of hers: + + "'Don't tell your mother beforehand that I am a lady. Possibly + I'm not. You won't know. But she will.' + +I remember thinking of that when a great friend of mine in the navy told +me about his engagement. He made a joke at the time about sailors and +their _culte_ for _mésalliances_.... Here's another bit: + + "'Always write to me when you're away. Never mind if you've + nothing to say. It doesn't matter if you don't say anything. + Only write!' + +I can see the young man now that I said that to," said Mrs. Cartwright, +and the expression in her eyes was of one who looks down from a hill-top +upon the landmarks passed, far back. "He'd only been married a month to +a school chum of mine, and was suddenly ordered off. He couldn't take +her. I told him that even if the mail only went out twice a week there +was no reason that it should not take three letters each time----" + +Here Miss Walsh, who did not seem to be listening, broke in. "I think +that's very true." She fingered in her bag an envelope with the printed +label, "Controle Postale Militaire," and looked cheered. + +"This young man numbered his letters after that. Then I remember a girl +friend--ah! she's a grand-mamma now--married before I did. I remember +her once saying something that I should have stolen from her. + + "'Do you mind not giving me these useful solid, durable + presents of leather, which you men love and which are hideous + in our eyes? Why not something charming that won't last; scent, + powder, or chocolates in a pretty box?' + +And this, which is the last that I shall inflict upon you, dear yawners, +nobody at all told me. I made it up, unaided, and by my little self." +She looked away above her coffee-cup as she quoted it, and her eyes were +the eyes of all the girls that be, appealing to all the plighted lovers: + + "'Remember that nine out of ten women in the world will never + know what Love can be, and that _six out of those nine are + married women_. Please won't you try to make me the happy + Tenth?' + +And now, when all the people have said Amen, what about a walk down to +Biscay?----No, Miss Walsh! Please. This is my _day_. I proposed this, +and I know you won't grudge me this little pleasure." + +She paid the _addition_ and drew on her loose white gloves. + +Through the woods they went, and over the sandhills planted with grass +in lines to keep that barrier together. + +Olwen, in her red woolly coat, walked between Mrs. Cartwright, whose +short blue skirts flapped like a wind-blown succory flower above her +ankles, and Miss Walsh, who was holding on to her hat. Little Olwen +thought irrelevantly--"and, fancy! we're all three wearing that Charm!" + +They descended from the dunes, passed the loose shuffling upper sands, +and came on to the stretch of other sands, smooth, hard, and firm as a +ballroom floor set down in the widest landscape that any of them had +trodden yet. Soaring skies, illimitable beach, and oh, how empty seemed +the sea far, far behind the breakers of Biscay Bay! + +At the sight of those breakers, whose sound had been growing in her +ears, Olwen gave an involuntary "Oh! _Look_ at them!" + +From the hotel windows they seemed nothing more than a crawling white +line. Here they were rushing monsters that seemed to shake the shore +where they broke. They broke and spouted not more than fifty yards away, +then swirled and seethed almost to the feet of the women in surf, in the +lines that would be taken by boiling milk. + +Olwen stood nearest with spray on her cheeks, thunder in her ears, and a +storm of unimagined whiteness before her eyes, finding it all riotously +beautiful. But the last thing in the world that she expected was what +Mrs. Cartwright then said: + +"I say! Let's bathe. It would be too gorgeous in there!" + +Miss Walsh, behind her, looked as if she could not believe her ears. + +"In _October_, dear Mrs. Cartwright?" + +Dear Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she threw out her arm towards the +waters, soaring to crash, soaring again to crash.... "_That_," she +cried, "was going on before the months had names!" + +"Oh, but I never knew any one dreamed of bathing after August," murmured +Miss Walsh, still clutching her hat, "and, besides!" (as if that +settled it), "you haven't brought your things with you." + +"That's just what I meant," declared Mrs. Cartwright, taking a deep +breath. "I'm going in." + +"Oh, please don't!" protested Olwen. "I can swim quite well, but any one +can see _that's_ dangerous. Supposing you were caught in and swept away. +Oh, I wouldn't." + +"I shouldn't dream of letting you, child," cried Mrs. Cartwright gaily. +"I'm going in," and she stooped to unlace the brown thongs of her +sandalettes. + +"Oh! I'll go on and gather shells, then," said Agatha Walsh (hurriedly +turning her back as if she dreaded to let her eyes fall upon some +repellent sight, reflected Mrs. Cartwright, with amusement). + +The elder woman was of the type that, under such circumstances, makes no +more ado about getting out of her clothes than she would about taking +off her hat. She was of that type--and of that build. + +They dropped from about her, the flapper's frock of succory blue and the +silken under-garments, and with them she seemed to cast off as well that +rather feverish sprightliness of the last hour. It was a genuinely +girlish delight that shone from her eyes as she ran, lightly and +free-limbed, over the sand and into the surf that flung itself towards +her body of a slender statue, white as those crests. She revelled in +that hour that was hers, Claudia Cartwright's--hers and that girl's who +had been Claudia Crane's. + +"Not too far in!" warned Olwen from higher up the beach. + +"Right!" called her friend's voice from out of the dazzling sunlight +spray; the sound of it lost in the crash of the breakers and the scream +of the gulls that wheeled and dived like a flight of white-winged +aeroplanes above her. + +She sprang and dipped; threw herself forward, breasted the waves, and +tried to swim, always frustrated by those tossing waters that made of +her a plaything, all panting and aglow with joyous life. + +Olwen watched; anxious. But Claudia Cartwright was not to be caught in +and swept away; not she. It was something else that was to be so lost; +unseen by Olwen, unthought about at all. + +From where the bather's garments lay in a soft heap under a smooth heavy +stone that she had set down to keep them from blowing away, there +disentangled itself a ribbon that she had worn about her neck and that +she had untied, carelessly, just before she ran down to plunge into the +sea. + +It blew along the sands above the scatter of shells. + +It blew along, fast and faster, the pink thread holding that +feather-light Charm that the wind had swept away. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE COUNTER-CHARM + + "Too old, by Heaven; let still the woman take + An elder than herself; so wears she to him, + So sways she level in her husband's heart." + + Shakespeare. + + +The two parties (those of the stag gathering and the dove lunch) +returned to the hotel at almost the same moment, just before +dinner-time. + +"_We've_ had a ripping time!" Mrs. Cartwright said gaily, in answer to +an enquiry from Captain Ross; young Jack Awdas, hearing, gave her a +reproachful glance. But there was no time for reproaches. Madame had +announced "_On va servir!_" and there was a rush for rooms. But not +before Awdas, at the door that was next to his own, had murmured +urgently, "I want to talk to you afterwards, there's something that I +_must_ say to you. Come down quickly, won't you?" + +The others tore through their dressing. Miss Walsh wanted to retire to +Madame's sitting-room, there to have a soul-satisfying "mourn" with +Madame over the departure of Gustave, and to pick out of Madame's stream +of reminiscences a pearl or so to remember of the boyhood of that +excellent nephew. Little Olwen, who had overheard Mr. Brown saying, +"Look here, Ross, none of your shoving me out of my place at table--even +if I do sleep out, there's no reason why I should be made to sit with +the back of my head towards everybody I want to look at, dashed if +there is," was eager to run down to the _salle_, and with a glance or a +greeting make an excuse for the right young man to be sitting facing +her. + +Only Mrs. Cartwright took her time and was rather late for dinner. As +she redressed her hair, still damp from her bathe, and slipped into her +tawny-golden tea-gown, the writer's face was intent. She was thinking, +thinking hard. Even in moving about her room she kept glancing at a +couple of pig-skin bags stowed into a corner. One of them bore the name +of Captain Keith Cartwright, and of his regiment; what service it had +seen since it had first gone out with them to India. She knew what she +ought to be doing with those bags at this moment. + +Packing them up, to go. + +Yes, she ought to be folding her skirts and wrapping up her boots and +shoes and sorting her manuscripts. One word to Madame, and a _fiacre_ +could be obtained that same evening to take the bags, and herself with +them, to the hotel at the Ville d'Hiver, where she had already spent a +night on her way here. There she could stay until her passport was made +out for England, and then she could go back to her rooms in town, back +to be near her boys at school, and right away from this place of +conflict and too sweet disturbance--away from Jack Awdas, who wanted to +say something to her after dinner. + +She knew well what it was. Ever since that moonlight walk he had been +besieging her--not with words again, but with every glance of his blue +eyes, every turn of his head towards her, every husky, beseeching note +of his voice. + +Now for a third time he was going to put it into words. She did not know +how to check him. It was because she wished--she so wished that she need +not. + +Again and again already, by night, when she was tossing sleeplessly, by +day, when she was talking of other things, she had gone over the +question. + +Marriage----with that boy. + +He was not the first, he would not be the last who had adored a woman +old enough to be his mother. And she herself was not the first woman +who, past what is considered the age for Love, had received, offered to +her as a bouquet, the gathered share of love that could have sufficed a +score of young girls. + +Had this been always a wrong and an unlovely thing? + + * * * * * + +As she slipped on her bangles after washing, Mrs. Cartwright found +herself thinking, with a half-mutinous, half-deprecating little smile, +of some of the greatest love affairs of the world. They stood out in the +history of human kind just as the lighthouse yonder towered above the +low-rising dunes. Their passions blazed white-hot and rosy-red through +the night of centuries; but were they stories of the loves of immature +women? + +Antony's Cleopatra--how old was she when she romped in the public street +to show her defiance of Age and Conventions generally? + +How old was Ninon, beloved of lads not one, but two generations after +her girlhood? + +"I'd never wish for _that_," thought Claudia Cartwright, "but what about +Diane de Poictiers?" + +She mused a moment upon that story, upon those sweetest of love-letters +written by a young and ardent king to "_Madame ma Mie_." They bore the +dates of many years, those letters signed by the cypher which was the +"_Lac d'Amour_" for Henri and his Diane--the first Frenchwoman, Mrs. +Cartwright reminded herself, to go in for the exotic practice of the +cold tub. And she was forty--_forty_ when that affair was in blossom! +Her statue as Diana, the bather, Mrs. Cartwright had seen in pictures, +and the tall slim Englishwoman's vanity had recognized a familiar pose. + +"I _am_ like her," she thought now. + +But in the middle of her thought she pulled herself together, tossing +aside the towel as she laughed without amusement. + +What was the use of it; what? Why dwell on the outstanding Exceptions, +of whom the very fame went to prove the relentless rule that a waning +woman and a boy may not find lasting happiness together? These stories +of Cleopatra, Ninon, and Diane were lamentably beside the mark. But the +stories of matrons of today who had married their sons' contemporaries +hadn't drifted across the writer's experience. + +Stories of mistakes recognized almost at once, but too late. Of passion +that died quickly down on the one side, leaving on the other side an +unrequited and consuming flame. Of sad-faced, elderly, neglected wives +at home. Of desperate efforts to retain fading attractions; of grotesque +make-up, of golden hair and gaiety, both false. Of the interests of +separated generations, their claims, their mental outlook, always at +war! Of youth, fettered and fuming, straining towards his kind.... + +At best they were pathetic, these stories. + +At worst they were ugly enough. They justified the contempt in the term +"Baby-snatcher!" They established the principle, "A middle-aged woman +who will _marry_ a young boy is no sportswoman." + +Now Mrs. Cartwright had always hoped that, with all her faults, she +could never be accused of being unsportsmanlike. Still confident of +this, she ran downstairs to dinner. + +Her lateness only postponed by a little the hour of reckoning. + +The flying boy, rather pale but with a smile in his eyes, told her that +he had ordered coffee for her and himself to be brought into the lounge, +since all the other people seemed to be drifting into the _salon_ +after dinner. In the further corner of that lounge, under an +artificial-looking palm, he drew up for her a wicker-chair. + +"Sit down there!" he ordered her with a new masterfulness in his husky +charming voice. "And listen to me. You'll sit there until you've given +me the answer that I want." + +She sat, leaning back, lax and graceful. + +He fastened his eyes upon her. + +She could not meet them, but she was aware of every line of his face, +printed upon her heart. She loved him. She did not deny to herself that +she had come to love every look and every tone of him; and the facts +that their mental outlook must be different and that her own experience, +her wider knowledge must yawn as a gulf between them did not lessen his +attraction for her, as it might have done for another woman. Claudia +Cartwright had often smiled when she heard certain prattlers of her own +sex avow their demand to have "their mentality fed, and their need of +being in perfect intellectual sympathy" with the men (sometimes elderly +men) whom they married. + +In Mrs. Cartwright, as we know, the sense of physical perfection was +better developed ... the worse for her, all the worse for her now. + +Jack Awdas, standing over her, was saying, "I can't go on like this, you +know. You've got to have me, or I've got to get away. It's come to +that." + +Her heart, it seemed to her, seemed to miss a beat at this, then to beat +faster as she sat there. She shook her head, almost abstractedly, for +her thoughts were racing ahead of the words she would have tried to +frame. They were slipping from her, those wise and too true arguments to +which she had submitted, alone in her own room and without his eyes upon +her, disarming her of all her wisdom. Instinct within her clamoured, +"But I love him so! I want him!" + +She ought to be upstairs now, she knew, packing those bags for dear +life. + +She ground the heel of her slender slipper into the floor of the lounge +before her as she thought of this, and she thought, "Ah, if marriage +were for a year, say! _Then!..._ If I could marry him and die before he +began to tire--even his mother would not hate me then." Then came the +breath-taking thought, "He will be flying again presently. He may crash +again.... Ah!..." This was unendurable. She thrust it from her to think, +"_For a time_ I could make him gloriously happy! Happier than any girl +alive has power to do----" + +And she thought wildly that there were plenty of girls in their early +twenties who were older than she; as well as colder, with less gift for +Passion. Girls who were narrower in their outlook, girls who were less +generous, less sympathetic, less adaptable than she, as his wife, could +be. There were girls with petty minds and tongues that could say little, +jealous, spiteful things about other women. These had nothing but their +ignorant youth; did that outweigh all that she had to give? Ah, she +could point to girls still in their teens who were already nearer the +end of their powers than she was, even nearer the end of their looks. +Was it really better for him to choose a girl? It was her, Claudia, the +woman, that he wanted.... + +She could surely make of herself another exception to the unpitying rule +that Youth must mate with Youth. + +"Say 'yes' to me; say 'yes,'" urged Jack Awdas, and he let himself down, +softly, to sit on the wide wicker arm of the chair. She felt that if it +were to save her life, her lips could not now frame the word "no." + +There was a short and agonizing pause in which both listened, without +hearing it, to the sound of the wheels of a _fiacre_, drawing up outside +the door of the hotel. + +"Say 'yes,'" repeated young Awdas, more urgently, "or I clear right +out." + +"_Better_," she forced herself to murmur. + +"Better?----And if I go, I won't remember what you did for me that +night. I shall try to forget it; d'you hear? I shall try----" + +"Don't," she said, very low. "I couldn't forget it if I tried." + +"_Ah!_" It broke from him exultantly. "Then you do care! I knew you +would, I knew I could make you! The other was rot; I knew you did." + +She threw her head back and aside; she made a last struggle. She would +have risen. + +"No, you don't," he triumphed. "Now say 'yes,' and then perhaps you may +get up, darling; _darling_----!" + +At the delight of hearing it from his lips she shut her eyes even as a +sweetheart of little Olwen's age might have done. It was her moment of +ecstasy, poignant and ageless and pure.... + +A moment only. + +There broke into it footsteps and a girl's voice, a charming voice, but +of an inflection most un-English. + +"Why, yes! Wasn't I expected? I wrote the hotel anyway.... _J'ai +écrit_.... Miss Golden van Huysen.... Oh, pardon me----" + +Mrs. Cartwright's eyes had opened upon something that seemed like a +sunburst breaking in upon the dim and formal, Frenchily-furnished +lounge. A vision it was of gold and colour. Radiance seemed to emanate +from it--from her.... For it was just a girl, a blonde and +generously-built girl, whose coat, thrown open, showed a crisp light +uniform with the Red Cross. Her head, proudly carried, was backed by the +hanging lamp that made a glory around it, and Miss Golden van Huysen, +self-introduced, might have stood for a symbolical figure of Young +America breaking into the War, descending upon the Old Continent with +help in her hands. + +She moved, and the light fell directly on her face. It had the contours +and the bloom of a peach, and under her slouch hat her eyes, large and +wonderfully wide apart, shone out with candour and young eagerness for +life. Yes, youth, youth! That was the keynote of her. That, and the +sweetness of honey, coloured like her hair; the kindliness of milk, +white as her skin. + +Mrs. Cartwright, with doom at her heart, looked at this young girl. So +did Jack Awdas, who had sprung to his feet and off the wicker chair-arm. +The girl frankly returned the glances of the lady sitting back there, +and of the boyish English officer who was (as she ingenuously put it to +herself) "the loveliest looking young man she'd ever seen." + +Jack Awdas did not know that he was staring almost rudely.... Mrs. +Cartwright knew. She also knew what a kiss had been interrupted by that +look at another. + +And when the bustle of this arrival and of Madame and the _chasseur_ and +the "grips" and the Franco-American explanations had died away to the +first landing, it was Mrs Cartwright, standing, who spoke. + +She spoke quite lightly and with a smile on her lips. She came of +soldier people. + +"Dear Jack, there's nothing more to be said. I know I'm right. But _you_ +needn't go. I'm going instead. I must get back to my boys for half-term. +I shall be off early in the morning, so this is good-bye." + +"But----" he protested, in a voice that was not quite that of five +minutes before. + +"No. That's all. I hope----No, don't come with me. Good night!" + +Before he knew, she was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +DROP-SCENE + + "There is no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend but he + grieveth the less." + + Bacon. + + +Mrs. Cartwright went up to her room, but she did not pack those bags of +hers at once. + +Instead, she put on her coat, tied a scarf over her head, changed her +shoes, and went for a walk. + +She knew that she must tire herself out. She had thought she was rather +tired already from her tussle with the waves that afternoon, but that +wasn't enough. She must be more exhausted before she could sleep for a +few hours. She would order them to call her very early in the morning, +so that she could be packed and off before any of the other visitors had +left their rooms. + +She set out, and she couldn't have told anybody in what direction. A +path was soft--probably with pine-needles--beneath her feet. Before her +eyes there was a striping of light on darkness; still a moon between the +trees. + +She walked. She could not have said off-hand what she thought about as +she swung along. Not many definite thoughts filled her mind. Only a very +definite picture of young Awdas's fair eaglet face, looking with +startled and pleased surprise into the face of that beautiful girl. One +look; the boy had just been taken aback at the sight of a stranger, and +such an unusually pretty one. Then and there Claudia Cartwright didn't +herself know _why_ she knew that this, the look that did not seem to +mean anything, meant ... everything. + +It meant that she, the woman at her last love affair who had been within +an inch of accepting the proposal of that boy, must begin to pay, +already, for her one moment of ecstasy. + +The coming of that girl had stopped not one, but all kisses for her. + +She knew what was coming between that boy, all awakened and malleable +from his first passion, and that girl. They were heritors of an age in +which Love has quickened his pace to keep up with the double-march of +war. + +She was resigned. She had foreseen it. Hadn't she said to him, "Wait +until you see me beside a real young girl"? It had come upon her rather +abruptly, that was all, but she need not really allow herself to +suffer.... + +She whistled a little tune between her teeth as she swung along. She was +thinking of nothing, she was just moving quickly and regularly, as a +mechanical toy that has been wound up to go for a certain time before +the machinery runs down. + +So mechanically, so fast she covered the ground. Suddenly a voice called +out, "Halt! Who's there? Mrs. Cartwright?" + +With a start, she found that she was in the forest, approaching the +clearing and the woodcutter's hut. The sturdy, square-set figure that, +coming away from the hut, had encountered her on the moon-dappled path, +was that of Captain Ross. + +"Hullo!" she returned, brightly. "Have you been cat-calling on Mr. +Brown? Isn't it perfectly lovely? After all, this is the time of day to +go for walks, I find." + +"Is that so? I thought this was the time of day you sat writing your +great worrrks." + +"Sometimes; but how did you know?" + +"You told me you were sitting up working that last time Awdas had that +infairrrnal dream of his," said the Staff-officer. "That was how." + +But at this the machinery that had kept Mrs. + +Cartwright going so steadily for the last hour or more, broke down +without warning. Without warning, she blurted out in a low, unnatural +voice, "Oh, Captain Ross! I am----in such trouble." + +Her limbs failed her and she would have fallen. + +The next moment she found that she was sitting upon a pine-log, with her +head upon the solid support of Captain Ross's shoulder, and with his arm +thrown very comfortingly about her. She wept, copiously and silently, +all her tears; the only tears a man had ever seen Claudia Cartwright +shed. + +This man, to his eternal honour, made no attempt to check them or to +enquire into them. He sat there, supporting her, clasping her with the +arm of a brother--this man whom she had not before regarded as any +particular friend of hers. She wept, taking his handkerchief, large and +scented with cigarettes, that he presently stuffed into her hands. She +knew that she must be making him feel miserably uncomfortable and upset; +she cried on, unashamed in the silence of the wood, telling herself that +it would be for the one and only time that she would give herself this +relief. Presently she sobbed out, "I loved him----" + +Captain Ross's "Is that so?" was entirely unstartled and matter-of-fact. + +Actually he had been too pole-axed with amazement to do anything but the +natural thing; but a finer judge of women might have been less of a +comfort to her. He sat holding her stolidly until she gave the +long-drawn breath and the apology that mark the ebbing of the storm. + +"Thank you so much," she was able to say presently, almost as lightly as +if he had put a coffee-cup down for it. "You'll forget it, I know. I +must just tell you that it was in my own hands. I refused him. I shall +be glad, presently. But----" + +She paused, and the man muttered awkwardly something about wishing there +were anything he could do---- + +She spoke softly but gravely now. "Captain Ross! Be very gentle, won't +you, with that little, young girl?" + +Captain Ross did not ask what young girl she meant. + + + + +PART II + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE CHARM NEGLECTED + + "Few people realize that Love is a hybernating animal." + + Extract from Private Letter. + + +Olwen Howel-jones sat at her War work in room 0369 on the sixth floor of +some Government offices called---- + +We will call them The Honeycomb. + +The entrance to this hive of activity was near Charing Cross, and its +courtyard was one continual procession of cars, cyclists, +motor-cyclists, dispatch cycles with little side-car mail vans, also of +men in every conceivable uniform; most of them (as befitted a swarm of +such bees!) were decorated with wings.... Goodness knows how many +telephone extensions The Honeycomb possessed! Lifts carried you up to +floor after floor. Each floor was packed with cells that had been +bedrooms and private sitting-rooms, each cell with workers making +Victory-honey (and perhaps with odd drones watching them do it). The +whole place with its come-and-go of clerks, messengers, telephone girls, +civilians, typists, switchboard girls, and their khakied male superiors, +was in a never-ending buzz. + +The small cell marked 0369 had big windows that looked up and down the +Strand: it held three workers. + +Olwen's roll-top desk stood back to back with another; the two backs +screening off her colleague of the other desk. This other desk had an +unusual feature. From behind it there came a stream of comments in +different voices, so that it seemed as if several unseen people were +sitting there. These voices were: + + FIRST VOICE--A natural girlish treble that slightly rolled its + R's; being the voice of one Mrs. Newton, in charge of cell + 0369, who possessed the gift of mimicry. + + SECOND VOICE--A masculine drawl that died away of sheer + superiority in the roof of the mouth, after the fashion of one + Major Leefe of that Department. + + THIRD VOICE--Rollicking and boyish, intersected by loud "Ha's" + and "Bai Jove's" in the manner of Lieutenant Harold Ellerton, + also of The Honeycomb. + +Mingling with the click of the typewriter, at which the third girl sat +in a further corner, came the sound of one or other of these voices. +Thus: + + FIRST VOICE--"Miss Howel-Jones, what is the French for 'land'? + Aeroplanes, I mean?" + +A murmured "_atterrir_" came from Olwen, immersed in her work, which +meant dividing the morning's correspondence into four batches: A, B, C, +and D. + + SECOND VOICE (after a moment of paper-rustling)--"Er--yeh ... + yeh! Wha' have we heah? Letters to be translay' into Fren'. + Yeh. Mrs. Newton, will you atten' to thi' too?" + + THIRD VOICE (after more rustling)--"_Damn_ this nib. Oh, sorry, + Mrs. Newton; didn't mean to say damn before you." + + FIRST VOICE--"Not at all, Mr. Ellerton; I am a married woman + myself." + + FOURTH VOICE (A Scots-Canadian accent)--"Is that so? What I + demand of a woman is that she shall be a rrreliable worrrrkerr. + I don't assk what she does affterr hours, I----" + +Here all the voices ceased. + +For a quarter of an hour no sound came from behind that desk, but that +of papers being turned, regularly and methodically. Then the busy Mrs. +Newton, not the mimic, spoke. + +"Just turn up the Q. M. G. file for last month and see if there's a +letter with this reference." + +She gave the reference, and Olwen, after a minute's search in a manilla +"jacket," handed over the letter, leaving a slip of paper sticking out +of the jacket in its place. Having written "Mrs. Newton" and the date +upon that slip, she turned again to her letter-trays. The rustling of +papers was resumed. Then the voices again: + + SECOND VOICE--"Claim for missing kit, wha'? How do f'las manage + to be always losing kit? Do _I_ lose kit? Haven't _I_ always + goh' millions pairs bags all beau'fly press'? 'Sides, isn't + even in ah sec.' Room Two--Fi'----Fi'." + + THIRD VOICE--"Ha! Reference A. B., stroke two bracket nine oh + one two two dated two twelve seventeen. Do they, bai Jove!" + + FIRST VOICE--"Aren't there any more 'C's,' Miss Howel-Jones?" + +"Not this morning." Olwen's little black head was bent over the "D" +correspondence, which she dealt with herself. "A" letters were handed to +the typist, who carried them into cell 0368, next door. "B's" and "C's" +were to be thrust into the basket that stood on the top of that +desk-screen, from behind which a hand came up ever and anon to take +letters. + +With real enjoyment the Welsh girl worked on. + +How amazingly she had altered, in all these weeks, from the one ideaed, +feverish little emotionalist she'd been in the autumn! + +Yes. Change of scene and of daily work had laid potent hands upon the +plastic, fundamentally sound nature of this young girl. Routine had +hypnotized her with its rhythmic monotony. She felt the peculiar +attraction of being a tiny cog in all this huge machine of War work. New +thoughts, new feelings, new interests packed her life; new friends, too, +were a revelation to her. + +Now came Mrs. Newton's more frivolous voice. + +"_Arlette_, _Bubbly_, and _Cheep_, that's my record so far _this_ week; +and tonight I'm going to _Pamela_ for the second time; all thanks to one +very young youth getting four days' leave from the Front!" + +Olwen laughed. The solemn little typist, however, rose to take the +letters with a look that practically said, "Some people may be heads of +rooms, but they don't seem to realize there's a war on!" and as she took +the sheaf of papers to be signed in cell 0368 she all but slammed the +door behind her. + +"Seventeen; _not_ the best phase of English maidenhood, neither washed +nor kissed," went on the voice of the unseen Mrs. Newton. "Ah! It's +nearly lunch time." + +"I shan't be able to lunch with you today, Mrs. Newton," Olwen said +rather quickly. "My Aunt that I stay with is shopping in town today, +so----" + +"Say no more," returned Mrs. Newton's voice. "I've got Aunts myself. I +mean I had before I was married. By the way, I told Fascinating Fergus +that I can hear him telephoning his dinner engagements in the next room. +He said, with that aggressive face of his, that there was nothing +prrivatt in those. I said, "Then why drop your voice when you're doing +it?" And why does he, I ask you, insist on being a Tower of Silence in +here, when he _longs_ to be considered a perfect Devil outside? Keeping +his girl friends _well_ round the corner, nobody ever having seen +_one_!... Swank!" + +"Oh, he's not as bad as all that," murmured Olwen. + +"He's all right at heart perhaps," came from the other side, "but I +_should_ like to take a scraper to him!" + +And herewith there merged from behind the desk the source of all the +voices that had been holding forth, in the person of Mrs. Newton. + +Her Nile-green silken sports coat alone had cost more than her month's +salary could have paid; her hair was arranged as carefully as though +there was no thought but of her own extremely pretty looks beneath the +broad velvet band that snooded her, but for all that, she was efficient. +Clever, too, at darting the arrows of a bright mind at chiefs and +colleagues alike. She "took in" most things, not in any disguised +fashion, but by turning full upon whatever it was she wished to observe +a pair of large, pale grey and pretty eyes, amused and passionless as +those of a sea-maid. Their stare was even emphasized at times by the +gesture of a slender forefinger and by the clearly-audible "Ah" of that +treble voice. + +Olwen enjoyed her thoroughly; her appreciation mingling with a wonder +why she did not sometimes bitterly resent Mrs. Newton and her remarks. + +Yes, two months of War work on The Honeycomb had taught Olwen already +more than the A, B, C, and D of her job. Self-possession, serenity and +poise, all newly acquired, were to be noticed now about the young girl +as she sorted her letters (very different from the leisured +correspondence of her Uncle), and smiled, partly at some thought that +she was holding in reserve, and partly at her fellow-worker. + +Mrs. Newton began again, "Do you know what I think is the keynote of F. +F.'s character?" + +"Fascination, you seem to make out," suggested Olwen, that divided smile +deepening upon her lips. She sometimes thought that Mrs. Newton dwelt +upon the subject of their chief for her (Olwen's) benefit, and she was +prepared for it. + +"Ah! But I mean the _real_ keynote. It's _jealousy_," declared the young +married woman. "He's a _jealous_ thing. Hates any other man to have a +show at all. Must have everybody doing their best work, just for his +_beaux yeux_ (not that he's got any, except those teeth). Yes; our +Fergus must be IT in this Honeycomb. He must be _The_ Great Captain----" + +She stopped abruptly as the door of cell 0369 opened to frame the black +head, square shoulders, red tabs, and empty sleeve of the man of whom +she'd been speaking; the chief of their section, Captain Fergus Ross +himself. + +"Mrs. Newton," he said, in the tone of business unalloyed, "have they +sent up to you a letter that was taken in error to room 0720? A letter +from A G 6, dated the 22nd?" + +"It's here, Captain Ross," replied the head of the room in her demurest +treble. "Miss Howel-Jones was attending to it.... Here it is." + +"Right. Thank you," said Captain Ross. + +His bright dark glance took in the letter that Mrs. Newton handed him; +it passed over the filed stack of other letters; it swept over the two +desks, the typing-table, Miss Lennon's back, the calendar, the pinned-up +Matania drawing on the wall, the green electric-light shades, the glass +on the mantelpiece holding freesias, the chairs, the waste-paper +basket--in short, over every object in the room but one. + +For Olwen Howel-Jones, bending absorbed over her work, Captain Ross did +not spare a fraction of his glance. + +"Mrs. Newton, I am going out to lunch now," he announced. "Should there +be any enquiries, I shall be back before two-thirty." + +"Very well, Captain Ross." + +(Exit Captain Ross.) + +Then Mrs. Newton in Major Leefe's voice, "Wha'? Old Ferg' gone t' lunch? +_Bet_ you he's taking out some gir', Miss Howel-Jo'." + +Olwen smiled undisturbed as she went to put on her her hat. + +Twenty minutes later she was sitting at a table for two in a Soho +restaurant, opposite to Captain Ross. + +This meeting was not due to any arrangement. + +What had happened was that some weeks before, Olwen, having explored all +lunch-time haunts within a mile of the Honeycomb, had found this tiny, +Continentally-appointed restaurant that she chose to call "The Aunt in +Town." This had been on a fishday, and the fish had been deliciously +cooked, as Olwen had reported afterwards. Perhaps Captain Ross did not +overhear her mentioning the restaurant's real name to Major Leefe. +Anyhow, there is no reason to suppose that it was not by chance that +Captain Ross happened upon "The Aunt in Town" upon the very next Friday. +As he saw Miss Howel-Jones sitting at a little table by herself, wasn't +it natural that he should join her? He knew the girl, apart from the +office, knew her Uncle. Absurd if he hadn't come up. But, as you see, +there was a vast difference between his just taking the chair opposite +to her, and his having planned to meet her. He did not attempt to pay +for the chit's lunch. So that was that. + +Certainly the fish-curry was excellent. + +Captain Ross had already announced that he was fond of fish for lunch. + +Consequently he took to haunting that restaurant on Fridays. Why shun +it, merely because Miss Howel-Jones lunched there on that day? + +As he would have told you, however, he made a definite rule of never +"going out to lunch" with any woman working on The Honeycomb. With other +girls, from other Government offices--well, that was another story. +There was, for instance, a fair-haired Miss Somebody (who rang him up, +Mrs. Newton had declared, three times a day), but she worked at the +institution we will call The Rabbit Warren. There was also a pretty +little friend of his on The Ant Hill. But from The Honeycomb +itself--nope. Work and social relations must be kept strictly apart. + +Olwen had been made to realize that from the first time she had set foot +in the courtyard under those arches and that clock. She had been first +astounded, then hurt, then finally she actually wanted to laugh at the +different Captain Ross he now was from the one she had met at Les Pins. + +The change had been sudden as the cut of a knife. + +Over there on leave he had idled about the pine-woods and the _plage_; +he had teased her as if she were no more than a pretty child; once he +had given her chocolates; once--ah, that once!--he had held her hand.... + +Here, idleness was the last thing of which he could be accused. He no +longer teased her with laughter and allusions to "_most_ little girls." +He had given her no more chocolates. As for hand-holding, why! She might +not have had any hands. To be a fellow-worker with him on The Honeycomb +seemed enough to transform any young woman into teak or granite as far +as Captain Ross was concerned. + +He had his code. + +"I guess no girl friend of mine would ask me for a job where I work, +twice," he'd told Olwen when they had first met in London at her Uncle's +hotel. The Professor's niece, greatly daring, had retorted, "Do you mean +she'd get it the first time of asking?" + +"She'd get 'it,' sure thing. In the neck," the young Staff-officer had +explained grimly. "She'd know better than to ask the second time." + +So, exactly as he was not taking her out to lunch, Captain Ross had not +secured for her this post on The Honeycomb. He had told Jack Awdas to +get it for her, through his friend Major Leefe. A very different thing. + +Olwen had "given up" the subtle reasonings of the sex. + +Today he was obviously in a bad temper. Why? After he had ordered his +own lunch, he turned to her with an edgy politeness. + +"I hope you enjoyed the show last night, Miss Howel-Jones." + +"Show----?" said Olwen, forgetting for a second that she had been taken +to the theatre by Mr. Ellerton, the young R.N.A.S. officer. + +"Yes; you were too occupied to notice who else was in the house, I +guess. I was in the dress-sairrcle. I looked right down upon you in the +stalls." + +Now, Olwen was losing her habit of the vivid blush that used to scorch +her. She merely coloured up slightly but prettily as she returned, "Oh, +were you?" and proceeded to eat her fish and to discuss the play--which +had been _Romance_. She had thought it lovely. + +Captain Ross informed her definitely that he himself had no use for such +sentimental balderdash; and then told her he guessed it made her pretty +late, going back all the way to Wembley Park (where her Aunt lived) +after the theatre. He hoped that at least young Ellerton took her all +the way home. + +"Yes, thank you; he did." + +"M'm. Last train from Baker Street, I presume. And then you've a long +trail from the station to your house. In the drive, isn't it?" + +"Yes, but we didn't go by train at all," the girl explained. "Mr. +Ellerton managed to get a taxi to take us all the way back from town." + +"In war-time?" Captain Ross's black-cat-like face was a study in +righteous indignation. Then he took a lighter tone, tilting his chin +contemptuously. "Well! If Mr. Ellerton's got money to burn that way it's +no concairrrrn of mine. Taxis out to Wembley Park with a girl who's +employed in the same office as he is. That's Ellerton's lookout. Not the +kind of thing I'd care to be seen doing myself. (No, I won't have +anything to drink. A ginger-ale, waiter.) Still, if he thinks that's all +right in war-time and for folks on War work together, I've nothing to +say." + +The ghost of a smile hovered about Olwen's red mouth as Captain Ross +went on saying this "nothing." + +"Sweet as honey to any girl he takes out, no doubt. The regular naval +flirt. He held your hand in the theatre, or some foolishness of that +sort, I daresay." + +"He didn't!" retorted little Olwen, quickly, and then a message seemed +to come to her, whispered, perhaps by the generations of girls in love +who still survived in her blood. Upon that instinct she added, "He did +_not_ hold my hand----in the theatre." + +The finest judge of women in Europe rose swiftly enough to this. "Is +that so? You mean he only held it in the taxi going home. A much better +scheme altogether." + +Olwen, still refusing to meet the aggressive brown eyes that challenged +her over the jar of mimosa on the table, retorted, "I didn't say so." + +"It was so, though. Wasn't it?" + +"I shan't tell you," said the girl, whose hand had not been held by +anyone since that magic evening in a boat. "Why should I?" + +"Don't trouble to tell me. I know." + +"Then why d'you ask me?" she returned with a little ripple of laughter. +"Besides, why should you mind?" + +"'_Mind?_'" retorted Captain Ross, laughing in his turn, but louder. "If +I'd nothing worse than that to 'mind' about, I shouldn't be the busy man +I am." + +He turned to the menu; and Olwen, going on with her lunch, remembered +Mrs. Newton's verdict, "He's a _jealous_ thing!" + +She ought to have been wildly delighted.... + +Curious! She was only flattered; amused. + +She felt oddly conscious today, that (to parody a superannuated song), +she was _not_ the only girl in the world, and he was not the only boy. +That little restaurant alone was crowded with girl workers, busy as she +was, being taken out to lunch by khaki of every grade and age; and, by +the way, there was something to be noticed about all these girls and +young women from Government offices. Once, a girl worker found it hard +to hit the mean between being fluffily unsuitable or unbecomingly +severe. Today these girls were approximating to a new type; pretty but +_durable_. The London day that began in the office and ended in +restaurant and theatre with an "on-leaver" without the possibility of +going home to change, had done way with fripperies, but had brought +decorativeness into the worker's kit. _That_ was why skirts were short, +coats impertinently neat, and hair done so that it stayed done. + +"Sensible" shoes, too, were now made in pretty styles; and since taxis +were problematical on wet days, rain-coats and rain-hats were at last +becoming things. This mixture of utility and attractiveness was a gift +of war-time to British girlhood. + +Olwen gained by it. She also gained by the consciousness that there was +male companionship in the world besides that of Captain Ross. Further, +she knew him so much better, now! Possibly, she was not left +uninfluenced by the daily sallies of Mrs. Newton at the young officer's +expense (for who knows the power of the comment that shows friend or +lover from another's point of view?). No longer was she lacerated by the +thoughts of those other girl friends "kept well around the corner." +Altogether Olwen realized that it was a good thing she no longer +imagined herself desperately in love with Captain Ross, since he, though +interested in all girls, was not "seriously" attracted by her. +(Otherwise, she concluded, he would have said so by this time.) She was +cured; she no longer wore a Charm to win him.... + +That Charm! One night at Wembley Park the ribbon that held it had come +unsewn. She hadn't had time to stitch it. It hung over her mirror. One +day, perhaps, she would attend to it; but she was always busy now. It +didn't seem to matter.... + +Captain Ross rose to go. Olwen could picture the expression with which +he'd presently look into cell 0369 to "see" if the workers had all +returned. + +She was generally just five minutes behind him. + +Today he paused, and said abruptly, "Speaking of theatres--there's a +concert or show of some sort on at the Phoenix Hut, that American +place, next Monday. Awdas rang me up about it. He'd be very pleased if +you'd go." + +Mischief danced in Olwen's averted glance. "How jolly! But how funny of +Mr. Awdas not to ask me himself! What time is this concert, Captain +Ross?" + +In a wooden voice Captain Ross said, "It starts at eight. If you'd +dinner, say, at seven o'clock here, I could take you along afterwards." + +"_You_ could? But you never take girls out from The Honeycomb." + +"That's so," agreed Captain Ross, with firmness. "But this is Awdas's +show. You'll be with him. So shall I. Good-bye." + +He put on his red-banded hat, thrust his stick and gloves for a moment +into the cross of his belt as he saluted woodenly, and turned. + +Olwen burst into a merry laugh. "Captain Ross!" + +He turned again. + +"It's all right; I was going to that concert anyhow," she told him. + +"I'm going with the girl who sings; you know Miss van Huysen!" + +Miss Golden van Huysen was now one of Olwen's best friends. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE LAST ALLIES + + "They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they have + found no fault, + They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread + and salt." + + Kipling. + + +The War-missioner on the platform paused for a moment to look at his +watch. + +Then he resumed, in the rich deep voice that spoke English not as the +English speak it, the voice that had done so much to bring the help of +his great country into the War. + +"But you'd rather be hearing Miss van Huysen sing; and if you wouldn't, +I would. So I'll just say this one thing to you men and women at the +Phoenix Hut tonight. I want you to look at this flag." He pointed to +the right-hand one of the two flags that backed him where he stood; the +Stars and Stripes. + +"And now--I want to think of another flag. Our stars only stand for +stars that are older still." + +The orator's fine grey head was lifted as if he could see those stars +above the many-pointed roof of the hut; stars of the night sky. + +"Those stars don't change. They're rising all the while, right round the +world. They were there, those stars, before you or I were heard of. They +will be there when we are gone. I see them as the stars of Love and +Home. And I'll tell you, friends, what I see in those stripes, too. I +see the whole world turning round to Daybreak, and those stripes are the +rays of the Dawn." + +Measured as the roll of distant drums, as soft, as stirring, the +War-missionary's voice sounded through a silence which could be felt. + +"The Dawn seems a long time in coming, but that it is coming is sure; +sure as our men are on the ocean now! That's all I have to say. It +wouldn't be any truer if I said it twenty times, and it wouldn't be any +less true if I never said it at all.... So now--Mr. Reynolds?" + +The orator smiled to the dark, clean-shaven official with the high khaki +collar and stepped quickly down off the platform. Just as he did so he +looked back at the Stars and Stripes. "Not 'Old Glory' now," he added as +if the thought had just come to him. "'New Glory,' joined with the Old," +and his smile was for the Union Jack. + +His talk, as homely as the gossip of a camp, yet somehow as high as the +stars to which it pointed, was not of the kind that provokes violent +applause. The whole assembly in that big hall felt that it was not mere +applause that the orater and his kind were out to win. Quiet brooded for +a moment over the meeting, over the mingling of Allies in khaki; and +over the rows of big-framed, bold-featured Americans in uniforms of +brown and blue, all clean-shaven as were those Normans of whom King +Harold said, "_Those priests will make good soldiers._" + +Then the spell was relaxed; there was a little sputtering of matches as +pipes were relighted. Men began to talk. And little Olwen Howel-Jones, +who was one of the visitors occupying the two front rows of chairs +settled herself for the singing. + +On her lap was a great soft heap of leopard-skin furs. They belonged to +Miss van Huysen (the girl who was going to sing as soon as she could be +fetched from saying good-bye to a party of sailors who were taking their +leave in the billiard-room). Miss van Huysen's seat, next to Olwen, had +just been slid into by Captain Ross, who would have to leave it as soon +as the singer had finished; Olwen thought he must have something to say +to her, but apparently he hadn't. On her other side sat Mrs. Cartwright, +serene and smiling, with her hand lying in that of the very young man +who accompanied her. This very young man, aged fifteen, was Keith, her +elder son, now in London with his mother on account of measles at his +school. In the row behind them, his long legs rather cramped, sat Jack +Awdas, the flyer, with the rest of the party from The Honeycomb; Leefe, +Ellerton, little Mrs. Newton, and one or two other R.F.C. officers. + +Since Captain Ross did not seem to have anything to say to her, Olwen +found time to glance about this great hall which was only one room of +the Phoenix Hut. + +The keynote to the whole place--with its spaciousness of comfort, its +shields of Harvard, Yale, and the other colleges, its flags, its palms, +its theatrical posters, and its three glowing fireplaces, might be found +in the great pedestalled image of the American Eagle, carved in grey +stone and set up in the middle of the hall. Stately he stood with +outstretched wings, poised and ready to strike; and from one of those +wings dangled the blue jacket of some American sailor, while upon the +huge bird's head there was perched an American soldier's cowboy hat. + +It seemed so typical, that mixture of dignity and gaiety! + +Suddenly a rustle and a buzz went round the hall, then the applause +broke out in a storm as of summer rain. + +Miss Golden van Huysen, the singer, had come quickly through the doors +that led from the billiard-room smiling an apology for her absence. +Olwen's glance flew back to the platform as her friend stepped forward +up to it. + +There she stood facing all eyes, a vision of white and gold. There she +shone, in front of all the illuminating lights. Into that place, already +bright, she brought an added radiance as of the June sun on a field of +buttercups. Golden was her name; golden her hair, golden the girdle that +clipped her, its long ends falling to the hem of her skirt. Olwen looked +at the glorious young form, symbolical as that of a goddess on a golden +coin. + +"Isn't she beautiful tonight!" she breathed. + +Every man in the hall must have agreed with her, and the blue eyes of at +least one Englishman there said as much. + +They were the eyes of Jack Awdas. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +RECOVERY OF THE CHARM + + "One sudden gleam of a face, and my cherished Ideal is real! + There moved my miracle, there passed my Fate whom to see is + to love." + + Brunton Stephens. + + +Those eyes of Jack Awdas's had known their business from the start. + +Wise Mrs. Cartwright, to have known what would happen, even as she sat +in that basket-chair in that hotel lounge at Les Pins, all those weeks +ago! + +It had happened instantaneously. The electric flash had not been quicker +than the glance that had passed from young eyes to young eyes. + +Those months ago!... + +Mrs. Cartwright had left the French hotel the morning after--had left +Les Pins and the man she had refused. Her place at table next to Jack +Awdas had been given (as she guessed it would be given) to her +successor. + +That goddess-built young American had made friends with everybody, +easily and at once. The French families had regarded her as if she'd +been a visitant from another planet. Olwen Howel-Jones had been +subjugated on the spot. But Jack Awdas from the very first _déjeuner_ +had scarcely for a moment left her side. + +Never before had he seen a girl so frank, yet so apart, so boyish in +her unaffected good-fellowship, yet so womanly. + +Unchaperoned she had travelled from the States to join her father in +London, where he was attached to the Embassy, and where she meant to +continue her special War work. But upon landing at Bordeaux she had +found a cable from him stating that he would be out town for some days. +She'd had no use for an empty house. So she had decided to stay in +France and by the sea for those few days. + +To young Jack Awdas they were a gift from Destiny! + + * * * * * + +Some people consider that the truest and most human touch in the world's +greatest love drama is that which pitches the young man already +infatuated with one woman into the purest passion for another. There is +no hiatus of feeling between the gloomy "_I am done_" of Romeo sighing +for Rosaline, and his quick "_What lady's that?_" when Juliet appears; +there is no thought of that first lady afterwards. + +Yet who shall measure what Juliet owes to Rosaline?--what rough ways +made smooth, what cold young crudities softened and warmed, what +kindling of susceptibility, what speeding-up of passion? + +And, for all this, what thanks may Rosaline expect? "_Oh, she was just +someone he used to think he cared for._" Or, "_I'm sure she couldn't +have been a very nice woman._" Or even "_Horrid! Robbing the cradle, I +call it; I don't know how any woman can!_" + +But none of these verdicts would ever be passed by Golden van Huysen, +either upon Claudia Cartwright or upon any other woman. She had read of +the theory that women are "catty" to their own sex; smilingly she +disbelieved it. Like attracts like. Just as her own heart had never +known an ungenerous prompting, so her own lips had never uttered a +spiteful remark. She therefore never heard one. If she had, she would +probably have widened her blue eyes and exclaimed with a little air of +discovery, "Why, that's not _kind_!" + +And this big and innocent creature was the very type which (if she'd had +her choice) Mrs. Cartwright would have chosen for the man whom she +herself was too old to choose. + + * * * * * + +He didn't ask Golden van Huysen to marry him on the first day of their +acquaintance. No! He had waited until the third day. + +"Mustn't rush things," he'd told himself, as if those three days had +been three years' duteous service of a knight of old. So he had merely +made himself into this young girl's shadow. + +To her it was no novelty to be attended and worshipped. Wasn't every +girl that she cared to know accustomed to this setting of masculine +worship? Golden took as naturally as she took air and food the existence +of a train of such young knights. + +Only ... from the first she realized vaguely that this one was somehow +different from the others she had known and liked. This tall young man +with the small crested head set on his sweeping, wing-like shoulders, +who had drawn her first quick glance in the lounge. She admitted it +quite frankly to herself this young flying-man _fascinated_ her. + +Why was it? + +She had met plenty of flying-men before. Hadn't she talked to them in +the aerodromes of her own country--which was also the birthplace of that +very marvel, flying? Hadn't she been introduced to her aviators who had +broken records for altitude, distance, and time? Hadn't she danced at +balls with some of the very first pilots who'd ever looped? Flying and +flyers had been no new proposition to her, but _this_ flyer.... + +Presently the young American girl began to realize what it was that was +new and special about "this flyer." + +It was symbolized in the little gold stripe on the cuff of his +flying-jacket. He was the very first _fighting_ flyer who had crossed +her path. The first she'd met who had already given battle to men in the +air, the first she'd known who had been shot down in fighting for the +cause which was now her country's too. + +Never before had she seen a man who had actually used her country's +invention of flying as the instrument of battle. + +She, with her whole country, had wished to use this invention as a +beneficent gift. + +Her country had seen that _before this gift could be so used_, stern +work lay before the men of the air. She saw it, too.... As that +War-missioner had said. Her country was looking with other eyes upon her +Allies. + +For Golden these new friends were typified in the young Briton who wore +the wound stripe as well as the wings. + +She told herself wonderingly, "Now isn't it queer that I should ever +come to like one of the English so well. This Bird-boy is quite nice +enough to be an American...." + +Neither of the young people remembered afterwards at what exact moment +of that second day she had called him "Bird-boy." Though he took it +with a hidden lift of the heart, he did not use any name at all to her +until the third day. + +On the morning of that day she announced to him that it would be her +last day at Les Pins. + +"What? Going?" he cried aghast, as if the idea that she must one day go +had never occurred to him. + +"Why, yes! I'd never meant to stay here at all. It was just because of +father, and now he cables me he'll be back in London before I shall." + +"Well, but I say!" Jack Awdas broke in in consternation. "Shan't I see +you any more?" It seemed unspeakable. + +"Didn't you tell me you were coming back to London at the end of the +fall, to a Board or something? My father would be pleased if you came +and saw us then." + +"But that's not for ages!" he cried, his face blank. "I'm not due back +in town for another month! When are you going? Tonight? Tomorrow?" + + +"Tomorrow morning early, to Bordeaux; then on to Paris, then London." + +"All by yourself?" exclaimed the young Englishman stupefied. + +She laughed. "Why, certainly, 'all by myself.' That's funny! Why, I've +made all the travelling arrangements for father and myself since I was +twelve! I'm a lot more useful than he is, that way. I've been most all +over the world. 'All by myself.' Why, yes! You're shocked? Now isn't +that real old-fashioned, and English? It's the way they talk in those +novels with the sweet little heroine in book-muslin, whatever that is, +in the days of Queen Victoria. Haven't you got past that, in this War? +If you haven't it's time America did come in and teach you a few things! +I guess I'm as capable as you are of looking after myself, Bird-boy!" + +"You certainly aren't," he declared resolutely. "I shouldn't let you, +if--if I were anything to do with you." He pulled himself together and +added, "Well, there's all today, anyhow. Look here, can't you let me +take you somewhere jolly all by myself, just for today?" + +He could never have made this suggestion to a young woman of the +traditions and upbringing of, say Miss Agatha Walsh. But already he knew +that SHE would take it as it was meant. + +"Why, yes, if you like," she said. + +So they'd gone off to Cap Ferret. Midday had found this tall girl and +boy upon Biscay shore where four days before Mrs. Cartwright's +dove-lunch party had walked, watching those rollers. Soaring to crash, +gathering and soaring once again to crash, those great waves boomed the +chorus that had sounded across wide sea and wide shore long "before the +months had names." It would go on sounding long after the names of those +two on the seashore had ceased to be music to those who loved them. + +But this was the moment when the waves sang for them, only for them. + +Golden van Huysen had said something about surf-riding. The young +aviator, his eyes turning for a moment from her to the tumultuous +waters, had muttered, "Dangerous game for a girl!" + +She laughed. "What a lot of things there are that you English think a +girl can't do! It would do you lots of good to get to know some +American girls. Then you'd see!" + +He made no reply. His eyes were again upon her. + +She wore what he had come to know were (out of uniform) her only +colours; white and gold. Her dress of some creamy white stuff, perfectly +cut, and over it she had slipped a knitted coat of yellowy silk. Crisp +as a gardenia-petal, her skirt blew out above her ankles, and her feet, +not small, but shapely as those of a sandalled Hermes. No hat hid her +hair, which glinted like a casque in the sun as they turned away from +the sea towards the dunes. + +Here Jack Awdas took the plunge. + +"See some American girls, you say? You're all the girl I want to see," +he declared, not knowing that he spoke with the boyish vehemence that +had so lately taken Claudia Cartwright's breath. The persistence with +which he'd wooed that first love he now turned upon this--this only love +of his. + +"You're all the girls in the world to me," said he. "D'you understand?" + +She did, and she did not. She stared at him: her uncovered gold head +almost on a level with his own fair head, crested by that flyer's cap. + +"Yes, rather!" continued the lad, definitely. "Now, what about it?" + +He held out a hand to help her up the dunes, but she climbed as lightly +as he. + +"What about it, please?" he repeated. "What about your belonging to me +for keeps, I mean?" + +The girl had a curious little gesture as she looked at him, then away. + +Surprise was in it, and protest, and a virginal dignity; also amusement, +unpreparedness, and wonder.... + +She repeated his words. "'Belong' to you? To you? Oh! No, I----" + +"Don't you like me?" he shot out. + +"Oh! I like you very well," she answered quickly, almost hurt herself by +the thought that she might have hurt him. "I like you so well! I like to +be with you. I like to talk to you. I--yes, I like to look at you," and +she turned one of her frank and friendly glances upon that handsome +figure striding by her side, that fresh face, all pink in the +sea-breezes. "But I guess I'd never want to 'belong' to any man!" + +He smiled into the sweet bewildered eyes. It was the smiling side of his +obstinacy; obstinate and keen again, in love as in war! + +"I say----How old are you?" he asked. + +"Twenty-one," she told him. + +"Well, then! You don't mind my asking, do you? Hasn't any man ever +wanted you to belong to him before?" + +"You mean asked me to marry them?" + +"Yes." + +"Why, yes," she admitted with her crystal straightness. "Men, proposed +to me? Why, stacks of them! But they didn't do it that way." + +She looked back and out to sea, as though she could see on the other +side of that severing Atlantic the half-score of her splendid young +countrymen who had offered her marriage as tribute is offered to a young +queen. + +"You are--queer people over here," she said softly. + +"Queer?" + +"The way you talk of 'belonging.'" + +"Queer, if it's the right man and the girl he wants?" Jack Awdas asked. + +"But," she said, sweet and stately, "I should always want to belong to +myself." + +Then he understood. He said quickly, "Of course I'd always want that for +you, too. But--oh, look here! Would the other stop that? As I see it, it +might help it." + +The puzzled wonder grew in her look. All this was strange to her; she +had read of it, heard of it. All this was unexpectedly different from +books, from college, from life until now. The old was so unexplored to +the new, embodied in its modern Diana. At twenty she had seen half the +capitals of two hemispheres, yet she was in his eyes more backward in +some ways than a girl who had never left her native village. + +Mrs. Cartwright could have told her that it is by "belonging" that a +woman forms her individuality, and that it is only by giving that she +can either gain or keep what she has. + +He went on softly talking. Presently he said, "I know now what people +mean by being made for each other. You were, for me. Yes, but I was for +you. Oh, yes. Oh, yes!... You can't tell me you honestly don't think +so.... You don't want to send me away; you don't want not to see me +again." + +"Oh, _no_," she agreed, quickly, looking away from him as if to face a +situation. She was of the type that faces, losing no time in wondering +what she ought to think. And this was the very first time she had ever +wondered _what_ she thought. + +She did like him. How it had grown, that first "fascination," born from +a look! But----At last she seemed to find the words that summed it up. + +"This is a big thing," she said, gravely. "It might be the biggest thing +that's happened to me; but, Bird-boy, there's no hurry about it." + +"No hurry?" He seemed to think that "hurry" was now the main point. + +She shook her head. "We don't have to settle anything about it, right +here and right now. Now _do_ we?" + +"Yes. _Yes!_" urged the boy. + +"No," denied the girl's wise young voice. "See here; I'll be in London, +and you will be there in a month. There's plenty of time. You'll come +over then.... Then we can think of it.... Then maybe we'll talk of it +again...." + +"Oh, will we," muttered Jack Awdas in a voice of utter +expressionlessness. For the moment he was ready to say nothing more. + +Silence fell between them. + +Each full of thought, they ascended and descended the belt of +softly-rolling dunes and came to where the sand had drifted half-way up +the trunks of the growing pines. + +Suddenly Golden gave a little exclamation. "Oh, look; what's this?" + +"What's what?" he asked, stopping beside her. + +"I thought it was a cute little flower that was growing up the tree," +said the girl with down-bent head, "but look, it's sown on to a ribbon, +and it's got itself wound way round the branch----" + +She was disentangling the object that had taken her eye; a couple of +lengths of ribbon, faded to white by the sea breeze and stitched to a +little padded square of satin, once mauve, now pale as the sand. + +"What is it?" she wondered. + +Half-absently Jack Awdas caught hold of the other ribbon as he looked at +the thing. + +And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the sachet of the +Disturbing Charm that had hung about Mrs. Cartwright's neck just before +she had plunged into the waters of Biscay Bay; the Charm that the wind +had caught and whirled away across the sands until at last it had been +in that pine branch from which a girl's hand unwound it. + +[Illustration: _And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the +sachet of the Disturbing Charm._ ] + +"Something from a wreck?" mused Golden. + +The Charm dangled between them. + +He was scarcely thinking of what he was doing as he twisted that ribbon +over his own fingers. + +He was set, so that he would not have realized, now, that he had set +before. This was a universe away from that. _She_ knew that, the other +one.... She'd been kind.... It wasn't that she hadn't liked him, he +believed. She _had_ begun to like him near her, she _had_ liked it when +he said "darling." Ah, to think that he had ever wanted to say "darling" +to any woman before! Here was his darling, and she must be made to see +it, not later, not in London, but "right here and now." + +As he twisted the ribbon, he spoke in the tone that had caused that +other woman to shut her eyes; for it was the note of the mating call. + +"I say, darling----" + +Again the girl shook her head, but--was there now the least quiver of +indecision in her gesture? + +"I say, if nobody else has ever been allowed to call you that----" + +"Oh, no!" she cried, sincerity itself. + +He was mechanically twisting up that ribbon between them; another inch +he took, another. + +"Then if there's nobody else you liked well enough for that, there's a +chance for me," persisted the soft husky voice of her lover above the +faint distant crashing of those breakers behind them. + +"Shall I tell you what?" + +"What----?" she asked, slowly, no longer looking at him. A kind of +arrogance seemed to shine up in him. Somewhere deep down in his heart he +was cheering himself on by the reminder that he knew more than she. He +seemed vaguely conscious of some force upon his side.... He would not +have believed anyone who had told him that a woman's strongest love, +poured out upon him, had lent him magnetism, charged him. He fastened +his blue eyes upon this girl, as upon some doggedly desired objective +seen from his battle 'plane as he drove through the blue, but he did not +reply. He smiled, with all that is far-away in those searching eyes of +his. + +He had twisted up the last inch of that ribbon. Now he caught hold of +the Charm that hung between the two ties, then came to the twin ribbon +that she held. Before she knew what he would do with it, he wound that +ribbon about her fingers and palm, binding her hand to his own with the +Charm in it. + +Close, close and warm his pulses beat to hers. + +"I've caught you," he ventured, very softly, eyes intent upon her. He +smiled more broadly at the first faint dawning of lovely trouble in her +face. "Yes! This is what they'd call marriage-by-capture, I suppose?" + +She didn't speak. She didn't move as he caught hold of her free hand as +well. He held his crested head gaily as he said to her, "Of course I'm +English and old-fashioned, and I know American girls are independent, +and I ought to see the things they could teach me! But there's something +I could teach one of them. Let me try?" + +Softly he muttered the word which was to mean everything as his own name +for her. "Girl! _Girl!_ ... I say, let's learn from each other?" + +Still she didn't speak. How find words, when at a nearness, a name, a +touch, some spell seems snapped and the meanings of all words thereafter +seem entirely to have altered? This stranger who had become her friend +so soon had even more quickly changed to---- + +"_What?_" + +Her lover nodded, saying below his breath, "It will be all right." + +Then, loosing one of her hands, he deftly unwound the ribbon that was +about the other. As he was stuffing the Charm with its ribbons inside +the breast of his flyer's coat, words came at last to his love. + +Laughing tremulously, she asked, "Why, what are you doing that for?" + +"Putting it by, safely," he smiled at her as he stood just a step away +from her on the sand. "It'll never leave me now, not that ribbon +that--that tied our hands together for me. I say, I shall fasten it to +my 'bus later on, to bring me luck, Girl. It's started already, what?" +He jerked his belt straight. "Hasn't it?" + +And with the words he took that one step nearer that brought her into +his arms. + +"Ah, please," he said, more softly than ever. "Please...." + +He drew down to his shoulder the face so full of sweet disturbance, he +folded her close, close to the wide breast beneath the white-embroidered +wings. As if swayed by a Charm, she drew a long breath, then smiled in +wonder, nestled, and yielded to his kisses--the first for both of +them.... + +"What about America coming in now, Girl? She will, won't she?... Yes, +but say yes; you _must_! Say it!" + +"No, Bird-boy! I just won't _say_ it," was her last touch of mutiny. +"And--and I guess we'll see about that 'belonging' later on." + +"Yes," triumphed Jack Awdas. "I 'guess' so too!" + +That was all those months ago. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER + + "She is singing an air that is known to me; + A passionate ballad gallant and gay, + A martial song like a trumpet's call." + + Tennyson. + + +All that had been in November. It was now January--which brings me back +to the Phoenix Hut, where Golden van Huysen was preparing to sing. + +Advancing to the edge of the platform, she said, smiling, but as quietly +as if she'd been proposing a game in a room full of children: + +"What'll I sing you, boys?" + +An instantaneous chorus of men's voices answered her, and she laughed. +Evidently she had heard, though Olwen hadn't caught a word of which song +it was they all wanted. + +It was "the" sentimental song of the moment, that song whose name varies +from season to season. As I write, it is called differently from what it +will be called by the time you read. Once it was "Until," once "Roses of +Picardy." The soul of it remains the same. "Cheap and common," smile the +superior. Yes! Cheap as the air we breathe. Common as sunlight. + +Golden van Huysen pronounced its present name to the accompanist, who +struck four cords on the piano. Then, into a dead silence, her voice +stole out. + +It might have been the gushing of honey from a suddenly broken comb. +Already her speaking voice could set Olwen's heartstrings vibrating in +response to the sound, but Golden's singing voice (a rich mezzo-soprano) +was almost more than her little Welsh friend could endure for pleasure. +It cleft the middle of the note, the middle of the heart. Olwen sat, her +hands clenched under those furs, listening, listening. She could not +have told you what the words were about. She only knew that when the +immortal nightingale sang to his rose, it must be in some such song as +this.... The two verses of the song ended, and the applause that +followed them was as much a murmur of deep voices as it was a clapping +of hands from Americans, British tars, Canadian, kilties.... Without a +pause, the singer whispered to her accompanist. The wonderful voice rose +in a second song, of which the words might have been trivial, but which +were music because of their singer. Not a man or woman in that hut made +a movement.... In all she sang three songs. + +Just before her last song she took a couple of steps backward, and +stood, tall and resplendent, between the two flags with a hand upon +each. + +She had not sung three notes before the audience had risen to their +feet, with every soldier and sailor in the hall standing to attention. +For it was "The Star-Spangled Banner" that Golden van Huysen was singing +now. + +There are some songs that never age. Of these are those a mother sings +to her child; of these, too, are those a Motherland sings to her absent +sons. This one----Well, all in that hall had heard it a thousand times +before, yet this might have been the first time. Golden sang it as once +Sims Reeves sang "Maud," as Patti sang "Home, Sweet Home"--in the +perfection of simplicity. + +At the end she neither bowed nor smiled. She just backed out, as before +some Royalty of emotion, between the English and the American flags. + +With a deep breath the audience felt that it was as though a light had +been put out.... + +It was this radiant personality of hers, as well as her power of holding +her hearers spellbound in hut, hospital, theatre, and soldiers' club, +that had gained her the name by which half London knew her now--"that +wonderful American they call the Sunburst Girl." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE BEST GIRL-FRIEND + + "She was Sweet of Heart." + + Epitaph on the Tomb of an Egyptian Princess, 700 b.c. + + +Olwen, with Golden's furs, hurried through the billiard-room to the +outer hall with the "Enquiries" counter, the long bar, and the rows of +refreshment-tables crowded by soldiers and sailors. + +One table was empty, reserved for Mr. Awdas's party, but the young +flying officer had been called away on duty just after his _fiancée's_ +second song. Olwen was sorry for him, but his loss was her chance; and +she saw so little of this friend of hers. + +As she handed over the great leopard-skin muff, she said, rather +appealingly, "Are you staying, Golden?" + +"Why, aren't you?" Golden said, glancing towards the group who were +ordering coffee. "It's quite early." + +"Yes; and I felt like a walk," said the other girl, wistfully, "and I +thought if we got out of this crush I might see you to speak to----" + +Golden laughed. "Very well," she agreed. "I'll come with you; wait while +I shake hands with Mrs. Cartwright...." + +The two young girls bade a quick good night to the party, and before it +was quite realized that they were leaving, they had passed through the +hall, descended the wooden staircase, and reached the entrance to the +Strand. + +It was a clear and sparkling night above the murky lamp-glasses, with a +touch of frost. Away to the west the spoke of a single searchlight could +be seen creeping this way and that like a snail's horn. + +The tall girl and the little one turned to take the quieter streets in +the direction of Baker Street, Olwen's terminus. + +Already they had walked many a mile together, those oddly contrasted +girl-friends, during that growth of this quick, firm friendship. Several +times the Welsh girl had been invited to the big house near Grosvenor +Gardens, which was Golden's home; the little house at Wembley Park had +in its turn welcomed the American. There had been appointments for +matinées together, and for lunch. Olwen, in fact, would have wished to +claim the Sunburst girl whenever Jack Awdas was out of town, bound for +France with a new machine. Taking aeroplanes across the Channel was now +his job. Little Olwen had been the first of her girl friends to whom +Golden had confided the pact on Biscay Beach that had made of her +Bird-boy the happiest man flying. + +But as Golden was not of the type that lets any Third (however dear) +into details that concern a happy two, Olwen had never heard of the part +played in that scene by a trifle of pink ribbon and satin in which her +own hand had bestowed a Charm.... + +If she had known of it, it might have been better for her. It might have +startled her out of the lines that her own life was taking; humdrum +lines, she knew--she scarcely realized that they were also growing +towards the lines of disillusionment, even of cynicism. Being gloriously +in love was a thing for the few, she thought. Certainly a bright fixed +star seemed to shine over this girl by her side and over the Jack she +appeared to adore. But what gleam of it touched the life of Olwen? She +had now reached twenty, and the phase when a girl believes herself to +have outgrown everything she ever used to feel. Certainly she had +gained, by that casting off of some of her feverish emotionalism and +credulities, but was there nothing this young girl was in danger of +losing? + +It was as they were turning into Cranbourne Street that Golden van +Huysen, who had been swinging along without speaking, did startle her by +a sudden remark: + +"Olwen! I didn't know you could be so cruel." + +Quickly Olwen's little head went up. "Cruel, Golden? What can you mean?" + +"I mean just plain cruel. What made you say good night in the way you +said it, as if you didn't care if it were good night, or good-bye, or +good riddance?" + +"'Good night' to whom? I spoke to Mrs. Cartwright; she was the one who +mattered," Olwen said a little defensively. "All those other people from +the Honeycomb----well, I wanted to get away with you, and I see _them_ +every day." + +"And are '_they_' all the same to you?" + +"Of course," said Olwen in a resigned voice, "you _mean_ Captain Ross." + +"Certainly I didn't mean your little Major Leefe, who talks as if it +hurt him, not your young sailor-boy, who loves to laugh." + +"Well, I see Captain Ross every day, and I expect he thinks that's far +too much." + +Golden's reply was a soft laugh. "Oh, you British, you are the funniest +things! Either you want to grab a thing before you take another breath, +or else you wait staring at it until you can't see it!----Why, Olwen, +that man's crazy about you." + +"Not he!" returned Olwen, decidedly, and with another sort of laugh--a +slightly bitter one. + +For she had just remembered that this was the second time some one had +thought this thing. She heard again the mercilessly shrewd voice of that +French manageress at Les Pins. + +"_Monsieur le Capitaine, he with the one arm, who admires +Mademoiselle._" + +She, Olwen, had actually been silly enough to believe it, then. She +didn't believe it now; how could she? Did she have any reason? Those +Fridays were the only time she saw him to speak to, and even those, as +he'd practically pointed out to her, were the purest accident. + +The rest of the time--she laughed again. + +"My _dear_ Golden, if you could _only_ see him at the Honeycomb!" + +And there seemed to resound in her mind echoes of Captain Ross's voice +at the Honeycomb--or were they echoes of Mrs. Newton's mimicries of +Captain Ross? + +"Hullo--yes?" curtly down the telephone in his office where Olwen had +come for instructions. "Yes; Miss Howel-Jones _is_ working on the +Honeycomb. You will find her number in room 0369----" Then, in an iron +tone to Olwen, "Miss Howel-Jones, I should be glad if you would give +your _correct_ telephone number to any friends whom you wish to ring you +up...." + +And so on. Was that the manner of a man who cares? + +More echoes were broken in upon by the gentler voice of Golden. + +"I don't need to see him at any Honeycomb. I saw it in one, at the Eagle +Hut. If he's different in the office, why, that's his fine sense of +duty, and you ought to like him for that.... Jack thinks a deal of +Captain Ross. So does Mrs. Cartwright, and she's a real, intelligent +woman. Why, do you know, just before Captain Ross came on to the meeting +tonight, your little friend Mrs. Newton said something about him; I +think she likes to make fun of him a little. Mrs. Cartwright said, quite +quietly, '_I have a great affection for Captain Ross!_' + +"I guess she wouldn't have said that without some reason for liking him. +Jack thinks he's fine," young Awdas's sweetheart concluded her plea for +the absent. "Don't you like him, Olwen?" + +There was a silence as the two girls walked up Tottenham Court Road, +comparatively empty at this time of the evening. + +Then Olwen drew a quick little breath, turned up her face to her +friend's, and let out an emphatic "I did like him." Then in a soft hurry +of words, "I liked him all that time in France. Yes. Awfully! I thought +of him and thought of him, Golden. It seemed to make everything ... +beautiful to me." Then a little ashamed laugh, "I was----silly, then!" + +"Silly?" repeated her friend gently. "That's not the way it seems to +me. That's a lovely thing in a girl's life." She lifted her chin over +the leopard-skin stole and looked ahead to the stars above the murky +lamps, to the skies in which lay her own lover's pathless way. "Make +everything beautiful; that's what love should do. I _know_," said +Golden, shyly, but proudly. "I didn't know for certain, until Jack +showed me. I'm so pleased you know too...." + +"Oh, but--that's not new," Olwen protested quickly. "That's over." + +"Over? Then--if you don't mind telling me, what do you feel about +Captain Ross now? What does he mean in your life?" + +Little Olwen had asked herself this very same question until she'd given +it up, and now she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to shrug her +shoulders. + +"I'll tell you," she said lightly, after a moment, "exactly how I feel +about Captain Ross. I would have told you before, if you'd asked me. To +start with, I work all day at the Honeycomb, where there are hundreds of +other girls, and men. Some of these people amuse me, and some don't, +so----" + +"But----'_amuse_'----" repeated Golden, blankly. "Does that stand for +anything big?" + +The soft Welsh voice of the other girl retorted, "It does, when you are +working, and--and there isn't anything else. Isn't it natural that one +likes the amusing people best? Mrs. Newton is amusing. Major Leefe +doesn't mean to be, but he is. Mr. Ellerton is nice to go about +with----" + +Again Golden broke in gently. "Olwen! I don't like to hear you talk that +way." + +"Why not? Les Pins is over. And when a thing's over," pronounced this +sage of twenty, "sensible people don't waste any more time on it." + +"When you say that, it seems to me to be belittling a very----" Golden +made the characteristic American pause after the adverb--"beautiful +thing." + +"It's different for you who have one man meaning the whole world to you. +As I haven't. Well, I want to be amused, Golden." + +More gently still Golden repeated, "I don't like to hear you talk that +way, Olwen. Don't you feel any more that Captain Ross is different from +the others?" + +"I feel he's less amusing," declared the girl, walking beside her. + +"And how," asked Golden, "does that young Mr. Ellerton 'amuse' you, +then?" + +"Well, he gives me a good time. I like being with him. He rattles away +all the time. _He_ doesn't snap my head off----" + +For half a minute there was silence as they walked along. Then Golden +stopped by one of those dimly-gleaming lamps and peered down into her +friend's small, mutinous face; her voice dropped a whole note as she +said slowly: + +"Olwen! You wouldn't do such a thing as play Mr. Ellerton off against +Captain Ross to make Captain Ross jealous?" + +"Oh, no," Olwen said quite honestly; forgetting something as entirely as +a change of mood can cause one to forget. She had mischievously enough, +allowed Captain Ross to go on thinking that the young R.N.A.S. officer +had held her hand.... She didn't even care enough to remember it.... + +But at her answer the American girl heaved quite a sigh of relief. +"Forgive me," she begged. "Forget I said that. I ought to have known it +wasn't like you." + +And here Olwen really felt herself humbled by the standards of the +straight young goddess at her side. For the first time the younger, less +womanly but more feminine and complex girl suffered a pang of remorse on +account of a certain little Mr. Brown. Him she had certainly made use of +at Les Pins to annoy Captain Ross. The blackberry time was not +intentional; but that time on the terrace? Would Golden ever have talked +to a young man "at" another young man? It would be better, she knew, if +every girl could think and act like Golden ... it would be better.... +But to every girl her problems. + +Golden went on, "You've done it without wanting to, then. He was scared +tonight that Mr. Ellerton would sit by you. You aren't out to make him +jealous, but have you wondered if he thinks that's what you're doing? +I've told you that he watched every look of yours!" + +"But I don't believe it," persisted Olwen, feeling somehow more +disturbed, less contented with life as it was then she had been that +day. "Why should I?" and into her voice there crept another note. + +It was a note of unspoken irritation, exasperation, and appeal. In how +many soft girl voices does it not sound, telling of budding emotions +nipped by the frost of silence--of hopes that had grown tired of raising +their heads--of womanly impulse turned back upon itself--of influences +that might have made the sunshine of two lives, but that dies of +forbiddance because some man has shown himself so near to +speaking----and has not spoken! + +"He cares," said Golden with the conviction of some young great-eyed +oracle. + +A passer-by separated the two girls for the moment. As they came +together again Olwen retorted, "Then why can't he say so? Men do, when +they like a girl well enough. Your Jack did, in a minute." + +Golden gave a happy little laugh. "But, as I say most every day, you +British are so queer! You're so different! Some of your men want to +propose before they even say 'Pleased to meet you.' Others seem to have +this habit of waiting and waiting until some cows of their own come +home, I guess." + +"It's the second sort that I don't understand," sighed the Welsh girl. +"If a man is fond of a girl, why doesn't he want to say so at once?" + +Golden shook her head. "Now that is something that I can't tell you." + +Presently Olwen said, as if getting rid of something that had been a +little on her mind, "I read in a book of essays about engagements and +things, that Mrs. Newton lent me, that '_a Proposal was one-half the +Engineering of Some Girl, and one-half the False Pretences of Some +Man_' ... but I hope that's not quite true...." + +"It is not true," said the American girl serenely. "It's ugly." + +With this profoundly simple remark, uttered as if it were some creed, +she turned with Olwen down Warren Street; and they were half-way to +Baker Street station before either of them spoke again. + +Then said the Sunburst Girl, "I wouldn't have missed this walk. I think +you needed to talk to somebody who knows Love's lovely." + +"Somebody who seems to upset things I thought were _settled_," grumbled +Olwen, affectionately. + +"That's why I'm glad I came with you. I just hate to see you in a hurry +to settle all the wrong things!" + +Olwen persisted. "For the umpteenth time, as Mr. Ellerton would say, +that man doesn't care two-pence about me, Golden." + +"Just because he hasn't proposed?" smiled Golden as she took the last +word. "But he will. Watch out for it. Good night, dear." + +The heavy furs lifted to her gesture as she turned, then swung away +under the stars towards the South. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE CHARM REMEMBERED + + "A is happy, oh, so happy! + A is happy, B is not." + + Gilbert. + + +The words of Golden remained with her friend all the way back to Wembley +Park, down the Drive of little red-roofed villas, and up the +short-flagged path between the standard rose-bushes that led to her +Aunt's front door. + +Olwen took her latch-key from her bag and let herself in; as she did so +she heard the voice of the Aunt from the sitting-room, "Is that you, +dear?" + +"Yes! I'll be down in a minute," she called back, and ran straight +upstairs to the bedroom with the pink-curtained window that overlooked +the back lawn. + +She wanted to be alone for a moment or so. She had just told the +Sunburst Girl that what she wanted was amusement, but what she would +have liked now would have been solitude. + +Why had Golden unsettled her again like this, when she had been getting +along so cheerfully? + +She sat down on the edge of the springy brass-railed bed drawn up +against the window. It was open, and the breeze stirred in the curtain +behind her head, full of uneasy thought.... As she drew the hat-pins +from her head she glanced restlessly about her room, bright, girlishly +pink-and-white, with the atmosphere of a room that had been lived in +happily enough. Mechanically Olwen's eyes fell upon the dressing-table, +upon the crystal powder-box, upon the signed photograph of Professor +Howel-Jones--about the frame of which there was twisted a long piece of +pink ribbon, sewn to---- + +Why, it was that half-forgotten Charm of her days in France! + +Half scornfully she smiled now at the memories that it brought to her. + +It seemed another Olwen that she remembered, poring over typewritten +directions for the use of that Charm.... Fancy an Olwen who believed in +that! What a simple way out of the problems of Love, to wear a mascot +and to have everything happen that one could wish! + +This did happen to some people, Olwen mused. To Golden van Huysen it had +come without the help of any talisman. Golden possessed within her all +that quality of Charm of which that "inventor" claimed to have found the +secret. She was one of the lucky people who hold that secret without +knowing what it is.... + +But as for materializing it into something that might be annexed and +worn----well, thought the new and more sophisticated Olwen, what had +been the success of that, so far? Half laughing now, she considered it. + +That other, romantic little Olwen had (in her first enthusiasm!) written +to that newspaper address for more of the Charm. + +No answer had been vouchsafed to her. + +Therefore her experiments had been limited to four. She had planted out +her Charm upon four people: Miss Agatha Walsh, Mrs. Cartwright, little +Mr. Brown, and herself. + +With what results? + +This older, wiser Olwen ticked them off now on her fingers. + +_One_, Agatha Walsh--successful. She had become engaged to her Gustave +and was perfectly happy. + +_Two_, Mrs. Cartwright--unsuccessful. Absolutely nothing had happened, +thought Olwen, vexedly; her friend the writer had received not one word +of added attention from her Uncle, and had remained unclaimed except by +that work and those boys of hers. + +_Three_, little Mr. Brown--more than unsuccessful. Not only had he +failed to attract anybody on his own account, but he had shown symptoms +of becoming attracted to a girl who didn't want him. + +_Four_, Herself--unsuccessful again. No results at all. You can't count +as "results" two attacks of masculine dog-in-the-mangerishness, one box +of chocolates, a few ragging remarks, and an evening of having one's +hand held in a boat. No results.... + +That left one out of four cases in which the Charm had worked. _Only one +out of four people lucky in Love!_ Was it so the world over? One in four +meant a quarter of the people in the world!... Well, perhaps that wasn't +such a very poor percentage, Olwen told herself more briskly as she gave +herself a little shake out of her meditations and ran downstairs to the +sitting-room, where a cup of cocoa and a plate of those neutral objects +known as War-biscuits had been set ready for her by the Aunt. + +This Aunt was Professor Howel-Jones's youngest sister, a small demure +woman of forty-five, with the air of constantly saying, "Of course _I_ +am the failure of the family." She had been left a widow very young, +and it was her pose to give out that she had never been asked to marry +again. But her pretty eyes laughed, most disconcertingly, while the rest +of her face remained prim. She smoked, sang Clarice Mayne's songs and +forbade Olwen to call her "Aunt" anything. + +"Thank you, Lizzie," said her niece, as this lady handed her over a +letter that had arrived by the last post. Then, glancing at the +signature, Olwen gave a little exclamation of surprise. It was over the +well-known type of coincidence that brings a letter from some one almost +immediately following one's own thoughts of that some one. + +For the letter was signed, "Yours affectionately, AGATHA WALSH." + +Miss Walsh wrote from Paris, where she had just been having "Oh, such a +lovely time shopping with Madame Leroux, who had taken a month away from +the hotel, and had been looking up some of the relations----" + +Followed an account of these relations who had evidently taken the +English _fiancée_ to their bosoms; Agatha, who had been English and +provincial, was rapidly becoming a good French _bourgeoise_. + +She went on, "Oh, and there is such news, Olwen. Figure to yourself that +Gustave is coming to London with General Chose next week! Coming as his +orderly! Just think how lovely for me! Of course I shall come over at +once. I have not been in England since September! We must all meet, we +and you and the Professor and dear Mrs. Cartwright, if she is in town! +And won't it be like old times again! and oh, Olwen, I may even be +getting married----" + +This last word was so heavily underlined that Olwen had to laugh, and +the Aunt asked her what she was so pleased at. + +"Oh, only that there _are_ some very happy people in the world even +now," said Olwen. + +"'Some' pessimist", murmured the Aunt, whose vocabulary was not of her +epoch. "Never mind, Olwen; I have just remembered something. An admirer +rang you up on the telephone this afternoon, and would you ring him up +at the Regent Palace Hotel as soon as you came in----?" + +"What?" said Olwen, astonished. "What was his name, and why d'you think +he was an admirer, Lizzie?" + +"I think he admired you by the tone of his voice, in which he said, +'Miss Olwen,'" said the demure Aunt, who had a private and vicarious +delight in watching all the activities of her young niece. "As for his +name----what was it now? Something rather out of the way." + +"I don't know," wondered Olwen. "Was it Mr. Ellerton?" + +"Oh, no; not our young Naval man who finished our last drop of whisky, +by the way--no, I thought at once of him, dear, but it wasn't. It +was--oh, yes! He said, '_Ask her to ring up Lieutenant Brown_.'" + +"What? _Not_ Little Mr. Brown?" + +"I couldn't tell you what height he was," murmured the Aunt, but already +Olwen, amused, had run out into the hall and had taken up the telephone. + +(Coincidence, then, had been busying itself with another of the Les Pins +party!) + +After some little delay the Regent Palace found Mr. Brown. + +"Hul-_lo!_" the familiar boy's voice sounded over the wires as cheerily +as it had sounded over the waves and through the pine woods. "That you, +Miss Olwen?... That's great. How are you?... That's top-hole.... Me? Oh, +I'm fine, thanks. Yes; I'm up for a Board. I say, Miss Olwen, when can +we for-gather?... Can I see you tomorrow?... Dinner? What are you +doing?" + +Olwen said, "I'm going to a party at Mrs. Cartwright's----" + +"No! By Jove, are you? I say, I'm glad you mentioned it. I nearly +forgot. I'm booked for Mrs. C. too. Rang her up and she asked me to roll +up at seven. Can I take you along? Miss Olwen, can't I have tea with you +in town somewhere first?" + +"Er----" began Olwen, doubtfully. Truth to tell she had not wanted to +see very much of little Mr. Brown; she had not wished to encourage his +boyish sentimentality for her. + +He took up quickly, "Won't you have tea with me, here, tomorrow? I've +got something very particular to say to you, Miss Olwen." + +"Oh? What is it?" + +"Give you three guesses. I say, you know that mascot you gave me?" + +"Yes?" + +"Well! It's brought me luck, I reckon." + +"Oh, has it? Well, what is it?" + +"That's what I want to talk about tomorrow," came with a joyous giggle +from the other end of the wires; evidently the speaker could scarcely +wait until tomorrow's talk. "I say, can't you guess, Miss Olwen? +Master's got off, this time." + +"Got _what_?" + +"_Off!_" + +"I can't quite hear what you say," called Olwen, puzzled. "Who has got +what?" + +"Oh, spare my blushes," begged the voice of Mr. Brown, and then brought +out the announcement, "I'm engaged to be married, Miss Olwen, that's +what!" + +"Oh--_oh!_" gasped Olwen. "I'm so glad----" + +"Thanks! Thought you would be! You wait till you hear all about it +though. You prepare for a shock, Miss O. Tea tomorrow. Four o'clock. +That suit you? I'll meet you at the door--you know, in the hall just in +front of the big place where all the animals feed. Right! So long! +Chin-chin!" + +"Good night!" called Olwen, and rang off. Then she stood gazing at the +telephone almost as if it were the small figure in khaki coming towards +her out of the forest. + +Engaged----Little Mr. Brown! + +The Charm had worked with him, then, after all? + +That made two out of four.... + +Well, that was a better percentage than she had thought she might hope +for, thought Olwen as she turned away. + +Did it mean that after all _half_ the people in the world were lucky in +love? + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +PETROL AND THE CHARM + + "For your own ladies, and pale-visaged maids, + Like Amazons, come tripping after drums; + Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, + Their needles to lances." + + Shakespeare. + + +"I've got a table in the corner over here," said little Mr. Brown to +Olwen through the buzz of talk that drowned all but the louder strains +of the band in the tea-room of the Regent Palace Hotel. + +It was, as ever on a Sunday afternoon, a welter of khaki and girls. The +wicker chairs could not be seen for shrubberies of furs, coloured forest +of millinery; there was scarcely a space on the floor clear of muffs, +vanity bags, and feet; big feet in brown boots, little feet in +high-heeled coloured shoes; swathed feet in hospital wrappings. It took +Mr. Brown and Olwen minutes to steer their way through this labyrinth to +the further corner by a window that the little campaigner had marked +down and engaged just after lunch. + +"Now, that's better," he said. "Nobody will come and walk over us here, +and nobody can hear what I say through this racket, not that I care if +they do.... Well, it's nice to see you again, Miss Olwen. I've been +fairly bursting to have a good old mag with you, ever since all this +happened.... What? Yes, two teas, please, Miss, if you can call 'em +teas. Spelling it with an E at the end is nearer the mark nowadays; +sort of reminding you of what once was tea. I've got some sugar here; +pinched some out of HER cupboard yesterday--good start, wasn't it? Are +you one of those people who miss lump sugar with every breath they draw, +Miss Olwen?" + +Olwen smiled into the pink, pug-dog face that looked pinker, more +pertinacious than ever; the boy held his head even more assuredly in the +air, but his blue, prominent eyes were humble as well as joyous, and the +whole of him radiated amazement at Fortune as well as delight. + +"Tell me about 'all this,'" Olwen begged, and little Mr. Brown zestfully +drawing in his chair and letting a pleased grin crumple his cheeks, +broke into his story.... + +Here and there Olwen interposed a question, a "Really," a "Why," a "What +did she say to that?" but for the rest she listened mutely as a woman +must, with the widening of her eyes, with a nod, a turn of the attentive +head, while the cheerful boy's voice--a thread in that closely woven +pattern of other voices all about them--ran on and on. + +"It was only last Saturday it started. Imagine that! Seems ages ago to +me now, so much happening.... However, to begin at the beginning. I'd +been to my Board in the morning, and the silly old blighters had given +me another three weeks' leave before putting me on light duty. I was in +a taxi, coming away from them, because I was in a hurry, promised to +meet a fellow I knew for lunch at the Troc.... + +"By Jove, I never even rang him up after! I've only just thought of that +fellow who used to be in the Lace Department at that old show of mine, +and I hadn't seen him since '14. Too bad. I'll have to write him. Anyhow +I can't help it; absolutely everything seems to have gone straight out +of my head. + +"Well, I was going to lunch with this fellow, and then I thought after +that I'd ring you up, Miss Olwen, and see what you were doing, and if +you'd perhaps care to come with me to the Alhambra or something. If I +couldn't get hold of you I was going to look up Ross, I thought, and +Mrs. Cartwright.... This was where I was mapping out things that came +rather different, as it happened! + +"We were coming along Piccadilly towards the Circus when my taxi-man (an +absolutely dud driver, as I'd noticed) barged straight into a +motor-cycle and side-car that were going along at no end of a lick for +Knightsbridge. He only pulled up in the very nick of time; the cycle and +the rider were over and into the mud; a filthy day it was, p'raps you'll +remember--drizzling and the streets like a soap-slide. + +"Out I nipped, before the crowd had even begun to collect, and picked up +the motor-cyclist with one hand, and started saying what I thought of +the taxi-driver with the other--he was swearing away like a trooper at +'these here so and so and so and so side-cars'; and the little nipper +who had been upset was cursing him to blazes, an octave higher. The +voice took me by surprise, of course.... The little thing was so covered +in mud that I couldn't have told you off-hand if it were a boy or girl +or a retriever dog. + +"A girl; yes, it was a girl, of course. + +"One of those lady dispatch-riders, they call them. Cap like mine, +trench-coat down to her knees, top-boots, riding-breeches ... laughing +all over her little splashed face.... + +"Well, in about two twos I'd pushed his fare at the taxi-driver and sent +him off and was assessing the damages to that motor-cycle of +hers--nothing wrong at all luckily! while she wiped her face on a huge +khaki handkerchief and put her cap straight. Short hair, of course, +rather sticking out, curly.... I always thought I loathed short hair on +a girl. Suits her A1, and it's most awfully soft and jolly to run your +fingers through.... + +"What? Oh, no, not _then_. Give us a chance. I wasn't allowed a chance +to touch her hair for ages--you'll see. + +"All this time I was being all over myself with apologies, and she +laughing and saying it was all part of the day's work, only the taxi-man +had put her back up; taxi-drivers did always seem to be women haters! +She told me (standing there by the kerb) that she was just coming off +anyway before her three days' leave that she gets in a month, and that +she was dashing up to Harrod's before they closed, because she was on +duty from eight to six ordinarily, and never got any time to do any +shopping for herself. + +"(Mind you, that's the only grouse she seems to have at all after doing +a man's job day in, day out; no time to get her shopping done!) + +"I thought to myself at once, the way one does, 'H'm, here's a nice +little bit of skirt, if you could see it for mud.' Not that it _wore_ a +skirt, but still. So I said, pretending to be rather fed, 'I don't +suppose there's another taxi to be had for love or butter now, so I'll +just push on to Harrods' on my flat feet.' + +"'Oh,' she says, 'were you going to Harrods'?' + +"'I am,' said I, determined to now, anyway. + +"'And you're wounded, too, aren't you,' says she. 'I'll give you a lift. +Hop in.' + +"In I hopped into that side-car; and off we buzzed to Harrods', and we +were just in time before they closed for her to buy half a dozen pair of +the best quality brown silk stockings for herself. (I'd seen she was a +lady, you know, and all that.) She said she hadn't a stocking left to +her foot----Tiny feet she's got, Miss Olwen! Reminded me of yours, +honest, they did. Same sort of hands, too. Coming out of her great +gauntlets like snowdrops, growing in a drift of brown leaves----No, I +didn't make that up, that's what she told me some ass of an old Colonel +that she used to drive the cars for said to her once. I think it's neck, +the way some of those old Johnnies with one foot in the grave go on +giving the Glad to any pretty young girl that's near them.... + +"Well, after Harrods' shut, we went on to some place where she could get +a wash and brush up, and we had a spot of lunch together. She was a real +jolly little thing to go about with, I thought. We sat talking--you know +the way ones does--until it was nearly tea-time. + +"Tea we had out, too. She would stand me tea, said it was her shout, and +because I was wounded. Seemed to think that because a fellow had been +pipped once he was helpless for evermore. Generally I loathe women +fussing over one for that, but she was different.... Struck one as so +comic, you know, that tiny little thing with those hands and feet to be +got up like any old mechanic, and to do all that hefty work in all +weathers----and for her to get frightened that I might be tired! + +"Well, so we went to Rumplemayer's. + +"Afterwards I went with her to take her bike back to the Park. You know +she's attached to the Royal Flying Corps there; yes, that's what she +does now. Carries their letters and messages for them all over the show, +to your people at the Honeycomb too, sometimes. Sometimes she drives out +officers to the various training schools for flying, all about. Has to +clean her own bike, too! Wouldn't let me give her a hand, said it didn't +look well. Extraordinary, the lot she gets through!... And I used to +hate girls being 'independent,' too. + +"I asked her what put it into her head to do all this, and she said it +was because one had to do one's bit somehow, and the harder the better, +so that it sent one to bed tired enough to sleep. + +"Dashed sporting little girl I thought her. + +"It was dinner-time before I knew, and I asked her if she'd come out. (I +had got just one pound note left on me!) + +"She said, as naturally as if we always fed together, 'Shall I go up to +my rooms and get into respectable clothes, or d'you mind if I came in my +uniform?' + +"I said, 'Oh, come along!' And we went off to a quiet little place at +the back of the Palace. + +"By that time, d'you know, I felt as if I'd known that little girl for +years and years and years. + +"She seemed just like the best little pal a man could have. We +talked--oh, about any old thing. I sort of felt at home with her. So she +did with me. She told me so. But it was me that did most of the +talking. Only, what d'you think? We never bothered to ask each other's +names. That was the funny part. I'd told her all about me being in a +shop before the War----Lace, forward----and how I thought of having a +shot at in Canada, p'raps, and all that sort of rot. Miles I'd yapped to +her; even about my mother dying when I was a nipper.... + +"I wonder the girl wasn't bored stiff. I can't make out now why she +wasn't. However, as I say, they might never have named this child N or M +for all she was given to hear about _that_. + +"Fact was, I clean forgot about names until I took her home----she's got +two rooms in one of those big old-fashioned houses in a street off Baker +Street. Then, as I said good night to her on the doorstep, I said, 'Oh, +by the way, who do I ask for tomorrow?' + +"She said, 'Coming tomorrow?' + +"I said, 'Well, you told me it was your three days' leave, and I thought +p'raps you'd come for a walk'----thinking to myself that I might be able +to raise another quid or so for meals from some man at the Regent +Palace, which I was. + +"'Oh,' she said, with a little sort of laugh. 'Rightoh. And I haven't +told you, of course, my name's Robinson,' she said as she went into the +house; big dark hall, it seemed to swallow her up. + +"I said, 'Brown's mine,' and off I went----and I couldn't simply get the +little thing out of my head all night, and what a jolly little chum she +was. Don't laugh at me, Miss Olwen; no, I know you're not really +laughing, but I am, I can tell you. 'They laugh last who laugh laughs,' +as that chap says at the Hippodrome. + +"Next morning I was round at that house so early that I hadn't the nerve +to ring the bell. I had to patrol the street for another half an hour +before I rang. + +"'Miss Robinson?' says I to the old girl who opened the door, but before +she could answer I could hear the little girl herself singing out over +the banisters, 'Hullo, I think I know that voice! Come up, Mr. +Brown----' + +"I legged it up to the first floor. Her sitting-room door was open; +well, in I went, and there I got a nasty one." + +Here Mr. Brown stopped to draw a breath, to finish his cooling tea, and +to offer a cigarette to Olwen, listening with all her ears. There is no +audience to a love-story so intent and so satisfactory as the girl to +whom one has been attracted. Curiosity as to her supplanter burns in the +breast of the woman whether or no she had been attracted to the man; +curiosity made of varied elements--sympathy is one, and competition is +one, and the undying yearning to compare notes is another.... + +Little Mr. Brown went on. + +"Well, it was a pretty room, full of sun in the morning. Pretty coloured +curtains and cushions about; and lots of flowers and that yellow bobbly +thingummybob scented stuff--mimosa. And then.... Her in the middle of it +all----_all different...._ + +"I stopped dead and stared at her, never even saying good morning. Miss +Olwen, I can tell you it was a shock to me. + +"Last night, you see, I'd left her looking like a saucy little tomboy in +that khaki working kit of hers with a cap the same as my own on her +head and a black-and-white badge of the R. F. C. on her shoulder, and +those brown riding bags.... + +"This morning here she stood all in a dead-black frock, with a widow's +hat on and a long black veil streaming away from her little face. + +"I stared, I tell you. I saw the situation absobloominglutely changed, +in one. + +"'Good Lord,' I said, 'you've been married?' + +"She opened her eyes at me and said, 'Why shouldn't I?' + +"I looked at her, such a little woman in her girl's clothes, but taller +than she seemed in t'other rig-out, and I said, 'I didn't know you were +married. I thought you were a kid of a girl. A widow. You didn't tell +me.' + +"'You didn't ask me,' she says. 'You might have seen I wore a +wedding-ring. Men never do seem to notice rings--or anything else, I +can't think why.' + +"I stood there like a silly ass and said, 'I never thought of you being +married. I s'pose I only looked at your face----' + +"And I suppose I'd been magging so hard all yesterday about myself that +I hadn't given the girl a chance to put her life history across me! + +"She told me then, all quickly as I stood there, that she'd been married +last year to her cousin, just before he went out. He was in the Flying +Corps. He crashed in France just three months after they'd been married. +Then she joined this Women's Legion. (You know they're jolly particular +who they let into it, Miss Olwen: have to have no end of refs. from +_padres_ and lawyers and people.) She threw herself into her job.... +She'd been working like a nigger ever since.... + +"All I could think to say was 'Well, this knocks me out.' + +"She laughed and asked me why it should make any difference, her being +Mrs. Robinson instead of Miss? She asked me if I didn't like her in +those things she'd got on? She said, 'Most people think it's rather +becoming, all this black.' + +"It made her little face look like a wild rose coming out of a +coal-bucket, but what could I say to her? I tell you I was so flummoxed +I stood there like a stuck pig--I don't know what I said next; honest, I +don't. + +"So then she offered me cigarettes, and I took one in a sort of dream, +and felt all over myself for matches. Couldn't find any. + +"Only, then---- + +"D'you know what I found, Miss Olwen? Blessed if I didn't stick my +fingers into my belt pocket here, and feel something soft. I brought it +out. It was that little mascot of yours. She asked me quickly what it +was. + +"'Oh,' I said, 'something a girl put there once, to bring me luck,' and +I stuck it back again. + +"'Oh,' she said. I saw her looking at that pocket. + +"Then she said, 'What about going for that walk we've heard so much +about?' + +"'Right you are,' I says, pulling myself together. 'I'm ready if you +are, Mrs. Robinson.' + +"Then she said, 'No; I'm not quite. I shall have to keep you five +minutes, not longer.' + +"She popped through a door at the other end of the room and left me +gazing at a big photograph in a silver frame on her table with violets +in front of it. 'Yours, JIM,' on it. Him, of course. Fine-looking chap +in R. F. C. uniform. I didn't wonder she'd taken him. Anyhow, he'd had a +short life and a merry; a topping time! Marrying _her_, and then getting +shot down in action before he knew he was for it. I was envying him when +the door opened and in she came again---- + +"By Jove, she had done a quick change in five minutes and no mistake! + +"She'd got out of the widow's weeds again and into khaki the same as +yesterday, except that there was nothing on her curls, and she'd put on +a short skirt and little brown brogues and a pair of those silk +stockings she bought yesterday; and she came straight up to me and said +quietly, 'Now, look here----why were you all upset when you came in? +What's put you out? My being a widow?' + +"'No,' I said, straight. 'It wasn't just that, but never mind.' + +"'Yes, let's have it out,' she said, and I looked at her standing there +in her khaki, but somehow I only saw her in a frock again, and I thought +to myself all in a rush, 'All right, you asked to have it out, and you +shall,' and so I just blurted out, 'It was seeing you, and knowing all +in a minute how much I wanted you myself--and remembering.' + +"'Remembering what?' she says as sharp as a needle. + +"And I said, 'My dear, I haven't a _bean_.' + +"And I grabbed up my hat and gloves and I think I would have said +'Good-bye' and bolted. + +"But she just looked at me so that I couldn't. + +"Then she looked away and said, 'If beans are all that matter----!' and +then she picked a couple of violets out of the vase by that photograph, +and tucked them into her jacket, and, just like a kid, said, 'Jim always +loved me to have a good time. Jim would like me to have everything I +liked, I _know_ he would----' + +"And here's where the room seemed to go round and round until it +steadied down with me holding her tight.... + +"Well, then, Miss Olwen----well, then, there we were; engaged! Or +practically then," amended little Mr. Brown, his pink face deepening in +hue. "It was hours after that that I began to grasp how little it +mattered about my not having anything but debts to ask any girl to marry +me on; why, great Scott, d'you know who she is? Her Uncle, her hubby's +father, is old Jack Robinson of Robinson and Mott; he's got the biggest +aeroplane-body business in the Midlands, and he, this Jim of +hers----well, she's got all he was to have. He arranged it so. She was +to marry again if she liked, and whom she liked. And----Well, she's a +girl who might have her pick; apart from the money. Then there's all her +money as well; and yet----yet----" + +He paused for words just as the band at the other end of the tea-room +got the upper hand of the buzz of talk and sent a lilt of insistent +melody through the air above the parties. + +"_Fancy you fancying me_" was the tune. + + "Fancy you fancying me, + I can fancy anybody fancying you, + But fancy you fancying me." + +"Incidental music; jolly appropriate," laughed little Mr. Brown, +happily. "What that girl could possibly see in your humble beats me. I +expect most people who meet us thinks she's balmy----" + +But Olwen, smiling and interested and sympathetically murmuring, was +thinking again (secretly) of the Charm. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +RATIONS AND THE CHARM + + "A dinner of herbs where Love is." + + Proverbs. + + +"If there is one thing that bores a man," gave out Captain Ross, in a +voice like the clashing together of Tube lift-gates--a tone that he had +adopted all that evening, since nothing seemed to be going right, "if +there is one thing that bores a man stiff, it's when some woman starts +in to '_Love_' him." + +He paused to glance across the table at Olwen, gaily chattering with Mr. +Ellerton. + +"It don't matter what woman," pursued the young Staff-officer +inexorably. "_Any_ woman. If he's keen before, that chokes him dead off. +He's not out for any of this Love-with-a-capital-L business that women +are such nuts on. Once he's done the chasing, he's gotten all he wants +out of it, I guess. Man's a hunter, Mrs. Cartwright." + +"I know," cooed his hostess. Inwardly she exclaimed, "Dear Ass!... But +is he going on like this for the whole of my party?" + +Up to then Captain Ross had only spoken to her and to the other young +Scotsman whom he had brought with him. At Olwen he had simply glowered. +At Miss van Huysen on the other side he had not looked. + +"What's Love?" he continued, still to Mrs. Cartwright. "It's an +amusement. That's what it ought to be. An Episode. It's the Women who +insist on spoiling it; taking it seriously. Nothing in this world is +worth taking seriously; barring a man's job.... What's woman? The +Plaything of Man. And what's Marriage?" + +It was, as he pronounced it, a word of one syllable. + +"Marriage," he answered his own question, "is an idea that the sensible +man looks at from every angle, and then cuts right out until he can't +find anything better to do. If he is really a sensible man, he +invariably can find it." + +"Ah," uttered Mrs. Cartwright with the little appreciative laugh of one +who hears for the first time an original thought brilliantly phrased. + +But she wanted to be soothing; she was fond of Captain Ross. One does +not sob out one's weakness on a man's shoulder once and think of him as +a stranger thereafter. She had asked him to forget. She never forgot.... + +A pity he'd come in this absurd mood, she thought. + +Her party, at her flat in Westminster, had arrived at the stage of the +feast when tongues were loosed and the young guests were gossiping and +chirruping in merry twos and threes. + +Little Mr. Brown was beamingly loquacious in spite of the absence of his +khakied _fiancée_, kept out of town that evening on late duty. Between +Mr. Brown and the fresh-faced naval boy, Mr. Ellerton sat little Olwen +Howel-Jones, enjoying herself without disguise and looking her very +best. She was a girl who had "days"; this was one of them. Never had her +glossy black hair "gone up" so well, or her face lighted up so vividly; +never, against her pale skin, had her laughing mouth bloomed in such a +carnation-red. Never had any dress suited her so well as that flapper's +frock of succory-blue with touches of cream, and dull pink. It was the +frock Mrs. Cartwright had worn once on Biscay beach; she had pressed it +upon Olwen as she said good-bye at Les Pins, telling her it was a young +girl's colour after all. There Olwen sat in it now, laughing and being +talked to by two young men at once and looking a picture in it.... + +It was from this picture that Captain Ross's dark eyes looked so +pertinaciously away, as with new sardonic energy he informed Mrs. +Cartwright that by the time a man had learnt to handle women he'd learnt +that their place in his life was not all that important that he wanted +to handle them at all. + +Mrs. Cartwright passed him the Sauterne. + +"Thank goodness that there is at least enough to _drink_," she reflected +with a quick whimsical glance about the well-cleared dishes on her +supper-table that had held: + + 1. Remains of chicken, with an intolerable deal of + rice and curry to a very little fowl. + + 2. Allotment potatoes. + + 3. A pound of Normandy butter bought that morning + in Boulogne and brought over in Sergeant Tronchet's + haversack. + + 4. Pease-pudding. + + 5. Beetroot.... + + 6. Green salad. + +Well, they'd seemed to enjoy what there was. + +"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, here catching a remark from over the +table. "A penny from _you_, Mr. Brown!" And she pushed over to him a +money-box with the Blue Cross upon it, known as "The Fine-box." + +This claimed a penny from whomsoever entering Mrs. Cartwright's abode +should make any allusion to a subject which she declared was now +inadmissibly boring: namely, food. One met quite intelligent people who +became hopelessly tedious about "recipes," "how they managed," and so +on. Rations had to be; and catering, food-cards, and substitute foods. +But why intensify the Unspeakable by unnecessary speaking about it? +Hence this box. + +She took Mr. Brown's penny (a fine for some cheese anecdote or other), +rattled the box, and glanced, as usual without seeming to do so, at her +other guests. + +Next to young Ellerton sat a niece of her own; a pretty girl in grey and +scarlet nursing kit; the red- and blue _artilleriste_ uniform of Gustave +Tronchet next; delighting the eyes of his _fiancée_ opposite. + +Agatha Walsh had taken off years, Mrs. Cartwright thought, since they +had parted at Les Pins. In place of the "old-maid" look, she was +acquiring that of the young and prosperous woman--her smile seeming not +yet entirely her own, and she had a new gesture or two modelled on those +of Madame Leroux, her aunt-to-be. Also, her speech was altered. Some one +must have rallied her on her "English" habit of beginning every sentence +with "Oh"----Mrs. Cartwright missed it as she caught fragments of Miss +Walsh's talk to Jack Awdas, who sat on her left. + +"Now could _you_ tell me, Mr. Awdas, the really best sort of man's wrist +watch?... I want to get a really _special_ one for Gustave--it is his +'_fête_' on Thursday ... not time to engrave anything, I'm afraid.... +Ah, yes, if you could come with me on Monday, you and Miss van Huysen, +to help choose! That would be so amiable of you--nice, I mean. So +stupid of me. I _keep_ putting in the French words for things always, +now! + +"Ah, a bracelet-watch like yours, that would be perfect.... + +"Was there a _cadeau de fiançailles_--let's see, what do you call it in +English, an engagement present?" + +And she put her carefully dressed head on one side as she inspected the +watch that Jack Awdas, smiling, held out towards her. Jack was silent +this evening, Mrs. Cartwright had noticed already, as she noticed every +detail, still, of the young flyer's looks and manner.... He was in some +happy abstraction, she saw, worlds away from the brightly-lighted table +thronged with these young people chattering over their grapes and +oranges.... + +There was a light behind those horizon-blue eyes of his even when they +were not turned upon the sweetheart at his other side. There was an +undernote of something new and joyous in the tone of his voice as he +spoke to her. + +("What _d'you_ think about it, girl?") + +From the Sunburst Girl, as ever, a radiance seemed to emanate that was +more than the effulgence of her white-and-golden dress. But she, too, +was quieter than usual as she sat; now giving a little friendly smile to +her hostess across Captain Ross and his dogmas, now leaning to the right +and putting in a word about the matter of the engagement present. + +("But, Bird-boy, if Miss Walsh _wants_ it in platinum----!") + +Now turning her wide eyes affectionately upon the girl friend opposite +to her. Olwen was not flirting with the young sailor who talked so much +and had so little to say beyond his "Bai Joves" and "Ha's"; she was only +blooming in what Mr. Brown had already called "the sunshine of his +smile"; she was also caught in and made beautiful by some of that +happiness that flowed in a current about the table under the pink +inverted parasol of lights, flowed from Golden and her Jack.... + +Golden and Jack.... What pretty lover's secrets was between them now? + +Still watching them covertly, Mrs. Cartwright could only wonder why, +since it was possible for young human beings to be grown so big and +beautiful--why in the name of a thousand pities did Nature turn out so +many samples of the stunted, the plain, the commonplace? Must this +well-matched pair stand for the exception rather than the rule? She +watched them, and that scene of physical perfection which had so nearly +brought Claudia Cartwright to shipwreck over a boy-lover was no longer +her torment, but her comfort. + +She had wept all her tears; she had tossed sleeplessly through all her +hours of fierce rebellion; she had gone through the most agonizing +ordeal of her woman's life. But thank God it was over now.... + +It was over! and her eyes travelled now to that which is a woman's only +balm for such wounds as hers had been. + +He sat, the master of the house, with a school-fellow between himself +and Agatha Walsh. This school-fellow was sixteen, a year older but three +inches shorter than young Keith Cartwright. Keith was already well over +six foot. Coltish at present, with great wrists shooting ever too +quickly beyond his cuffs, and feet that seemed four sizes too large for +his ankles, but wait until he began to fill out! thought Claudia +proudly. Her rightness of bone, her limbs, her suppleness had gone to +her boys; Reggie, on a visit in the country, was just as good, but it +was her elder son who seemed the child of her soul as well as of her +body. He had her tastes, her impatiences. Her own ardour would presently +be breaking into flame in his heart. She felt (as even the mute-bird +mothers feel) that she at least would not fail to understand him. She +smiled across the table into his face, pink and free of care, with its +clear eyes, thick lashes (those were from his father's side), and the +fruit-like, perfect oval that does not outlast twenty-five. She, the +mother, faded; but she had set in these young plants and they were +budding. + +Keith's voice (or rather voices, for he himself never knew in what +octave his words might break forth) came roughly but affectionately +across the table to his mother. + +"I say, mums! What about coffee----" so far in the bass, and now a +treble squeak of "if you don't mind. Harrison says he's got to get back +home, and I wanted to put on these new records"--relapse into the bass, +"for him first?... Rightoh...." + +They had coffee before they adjourned to the sitting-room. It was a +low-ceilinged, soothing place with soft brown walls, low cushiony seats, +a richly-glowing Persian rug, some brass, and a few pictures. Mrs. +Cartwright's standing-desk at which she worked had been wheeled away +into a corner near an old oak coffer. Its place was usurped by the tall +stand of a gramophone. About this the young people clustered, talking +"records" ... + +"I say, have you got that topping thing of George Graves's----?" + +"Not a talking one; Miss Walsh wanted something _pretty_----" + +"Well, what about 'The Naughty Sporty Girl,' Miss Olwen?" + +"Bai Jove, did you hear him in----?" + +"Heaps of room to dance, if----" + +"Look out, please," said Keith Cartwright, lugging at a heavy flat +packet; and presently he put on a loud "selection" from some revue. + +It was under cover of this music that Captain Ross who had been carrying +on with his Scots friend a conversation that seemed to consist of +variations on the letter R, suddenly left him in the middle of a +question as to the "Pairrrrrrrrrrsonnel" at the Honeycomb, and came up +to Awdas, who was making his way to a vacant place on the arm of the +couch whereon Golden was sitting. + +With some force, Captain Ross gripped him by the upper arm. In the tone +of one who has been for hours storing up some accumulated grievance, he +muttered, "Say, Jack. I've got to have a word with you. _Now_," he +added, peremptorily, "Come out here, will you?" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +CHAMPAGNE AND THE CHARM + + "Here's to the Wings of Love, + May they never moult a feather." + + Toast. + + +Almost roughly he dragged Jack Awdas into the little entrance lobby, +where, under a couple of mounted ibex heads, a carved oak chest was +piled up with khaki caps, gloves, and British warms. The red silk-shaded +hanging-lamp glowed down on the two young men reflected in a convex +mirror on the other wall; Captain Ross's black head was therein enlarged +until his figure had the proportions of a tadpole; his face showed the +expression of a deeply-injured man, of one whom his friend had "let in" +for something uncalled-for and gratuitous. + +"See here," he began abruptly. "I've got to tell you. There's something +I know that I don't know if I'm supposed to know." + +Jack Awdas gave his husky boy's laugh. + +"Well, dash it, there are a few things that a Captain on the staff is +supposed to know after all. '_Wearing red things round his hat, he's +employed at this and----_'" + +"Don't rag, Jack. This thing's about _you_." Then, almost violently, "I +saw you this morning." + +That red light glowed on a change in the fair one of the two faces as +the young flying officer looked down upon his friend, "I say, d'you +mean----?" + +"Yep. I saw you." + +Awdas, still startled, broke into another laugh. "Sorry, Ross. I didn't +mean to steal a march upon you, you know. But look here, old thing, how +the devil did you see me? You weren't there. Nobody was, ex----" + +"I was in my office. Saw you all right from the window there." + +"The deuce you did!... I say, if you let it get known about the +Honeycomb, that you've got a view like that, you'll have some of the +Mandarins snaffling that office of yours for themselves." + +Captain Ross did not smile as he returned curtly, "There must be a dozen +of our windows looking, straight out on to the entrance to the Adelphi +Chapel." + +Then a broad grin overspread Jack Awdas's fair face. "Well, is that all, +old thing?" he asked, tucking his handkerchief up his sleeve and making +as though he would turn back to the door, through which there rollicked, +but subdued, the strains of "Me and My Girl" put on very quickly. +"Weren't you going to congratulate me, Ross?" + +Ross growled, "I guess a fellow doesn't want to put his foot into it by +throwing about congratulations for a secret marriage----" + +"Secret? Good Lord, nothing secret about it," the other young officer +took up quickly, as he sat down for a moment on the edge of that +heaped-up chest. "Look here! We haven't told anybody about it because +there simply hasn't been time yet. When we came here tonight we were +going to tell you. We wouldn't put off Mrs. Cartwright; we were going to +come as if nothing had happened, and then make a wedding party of it; +tell you all, first thing. But how've I been able to get a word in? +First there was our gallant ally the Sergeant that everybody had to make +a fuss over in French, and then there was young Brown and his widow, +_that_ announcement! and then there was you----" + +"_Me?_" + +"Yes, you yarning away about what women were and what they weren't, and +if so why not. There hasn't been time to get a word in, man. Secret?" He +laughed joyously. "Why, I expect Golden's just telling Mrs. Cartwright +all about it now." The bridegroom crossed his long legs and grinned up +into the unresponsive face of this bachelor standing before him. "Yes; +this morning! I didn't see what there was to wait for ... here, have one +of mine. Golden thought it was a bit quick, but then so she did when I +wanted to be engaged to her, after three whole blooming days. Thought it +was _sudden_! That's----why, it's nearly four months ago. Anyway I said +to myself yesterday, 'This engagement's been dragging on long enough; +looks like lasting for ever'----so I got the license right away, wired +for my mother, broke it to Golden's governor, who has always been very +decent, and----Well, they were the only guests as far as I knew, never +guessing that you and the rest of the Honeycomb were gazing from the +windows at my girl in her veil and orange-blossoms. So now will you +congratulate me on my marriage?" + +The face of the finest judge of marriage in Europe was a study. + + * * * * * + +For weeks past now, from the windows of cell 0638 at the Honeycomb, +Captain Fergus Ross had been accustomed to glance up from his desk and +to observe through the window various taxis, cars, or broughams drive up +to the door of the Adelphi Chapel. + +He had seen young people and their friends alight in ceremonial kit. He +had watched them go in; and he had seen young couples presently come out +again, sometimes under arches of swords, sometimes under those of +crutches and walking-sticks, sometimes in a simple shower of confetti. +No doubt these sights had confirmed him in his misogynistic broodings. + +This very morning he had attracted the attention of his colleague, Major +Leefe, to the window, and, pointing down upon a hurrying young figure in +khaki with a sword, had announced with a grim and pitying smile, "There +goes another good man to his doom." + +Even as he pronounced the last word (which he did as though it were the +German for "stupid"), he observed the hurrying figure below to raise its +head for a moment as it looked quickly around. + +He had recognized Jack Awdas. + +Five minutes afterwards he had seen Golden in all her bridal glory, step +out of a taxi with Mr. van Huysen. + +You could have knocked Captain Ross down with a feather. + +What was everybody coming to? he had pondered irritably ever since. +_All_ his friends.... + + * * * * * + +"I congrrratulate----" he began stiffly, but at that very moment a +clamour broke out above the music in the room they had left. + +"Where is he?" + +"Fetch him in----" + +"Fancy bolting like that----" came the muffled cries. + +The door was flung suddenly open as Brown, Ellerton, the Highlander, +Sergeant Tronchet and the Master of the House burst suddenly into the +lobby. + +"Here he is!" + +"Now, you rascal----" + +"Dark horse, what?" + +"Come in, you dog----" + +"Ah, _farceur_! Félicita----" + +"Bai Jove, trying to hush it up----" + +"Mr. Awdas, I say. Mr. Awdas----" + +"Ah, would you----" + +"Monsieur de l'Audace!" + +"Priceless!" + +Among them they almost carried Jack's Herculean young form back into the +sitting-room. + +Captain Ross followed. + +The golden head of the Sunburst Girl towered above the heads of Olwen +and of Miss Walsh as they pressed upon her their enthusiastic good +wishes. Laughing, flushed, sparkling, she was giving her version of that +dilatory courtship of Jack's; while Mrs. Cartwright in the corner by +that desk of hers, was hunting in some _cache_ of hers for something (to +wit, the last drop of Bubbly she possessed). + +"Here's more surprises about your English ways," the American bride was +laughing. "Here's this Bird-boy of mine----well, you all know the quick +and sudden start of our engagement! There was father and I thinking +maybe it wouldn't matter so much provided we had a sensible time to get +to know one another in after say a year! Then yesterday Jack gets +suddenly scared that we'll both be grey and rheumatic fossils if we +aren't married half an hour from then.... Say, Olwen? What could I say? +I don't know how he does it--it's mesmerism or a charm, I guess, for +when once Jack takes it into his head----" + +Here the laughter and cheering of the men broke out. The Master of the +House was seen to be advancing, carrying at the full length of his young +arms a tray of glasses. Mrs. Cartwright rose from the chest, smilingly +holding a gold-topped bottle in either hand. + +"Who's going to open these?" + +Already Mr. Brown had whisked a skirt of his tunic under his arm and was +slipping his sapper's knife from its swivel. "Stand from under!" sang +out the little second lieutenant as pop! went a cork. "Right! I'll fill +'em, Mrs. C. I'm the next starter for the matrimonial stakes, after the +giddy bridegroom. Out o' the way, Ross! Don't take up the earth.... +Invited out to supper, and staying to wedding-breakfast, eh?... Here's +yours, Miss Olwen; a bridesmaid, are you?... No, you don't, Ellerton; +_I'm_ booked for best man.... I'm going to have one from everybody.... +_After_ you've finished with my feet, Ross----" + +Captain Ross, glaring above his glass at the group about that tall and +resplendent bridal pair, found his bad temper of the day culminating in +a very curious decision. + +He was going to leave directly he'd finished this glass of champagne in +which they toasted the young Awdases. And he was going to take with him, +Olwen Howel-Jones. He was going to see her home. He was; not that +gibbering idiot Brown, who was engaged anyway, nor that hopeless ass +Ellerton, that Naval outfitter's dummy; no fear. Most certainly not. As +for that fellow Jack, what the Hades did he mean by looking as if he +were the only man on God's earth whose wedding-night it had ever been or +ever could be? Was Jack Awdas the first young fool who'd ever managed to +get himself marked down and married by a girl?... The whole party seemed +to be one confounded whirl of tomfoolery.... Well, he, Ross, was +leaving, and taking that chit home. (It was high time.) Drive her all +the way, too; because he'd got something to say to her. Straight away +he'd say to her, "Now, see here, damn it, there's going to be no more of +_this_, there's been enough of it, and I won't have it." + +Just that was what he intended to say, and---- + +At this instant the Master of the House, in the treble one of his +voices, called, "I say, Captain Ross, please--they're asking for _you_." + +The telephone-bell had rung a moment before, and Keith had run out of +the room to answer it. + +The telephone was just outside; Captain Ross went to it.... + +In a minute or so he returned. He was seen to draw his hostess aside, to +murmur something to her. Mrs. Cartwright nodded quickly. Then he went up +for the second time that evening to catch hold, with his one remaining +hand, of the arm of Jack Awdas. The young flying officer gave a jerk of +his fair head; a whisper to Golden, another to his hostess.... Before +the rest of the group had realized that they were going, those two, Ross +and Awdas, were out of the flat, down the one flight of steps and out +into the clear moonlight above Westminster. + +Then, composedly and carelessly, Mrs. Cartwright slipped her arm through +Golden's, and turned to her other guests. + +"I'm so sorry to be inhospitable, dear people, but I think it would be +better if you went, now!" she announced, smilingly. "There's heaps of +time. You see Captain Ross gets the warning from the Honeycomb half an +hour before any of us, and they've just rung him up to say----" + +"Raid on!" ejaculated Keith's highest squeak. + +"Probably, he thinks," said his mother with a shrug. "Tiresome people +these Huns are; _no_ sense of fitness. Well--finish your bubbly and off +with you." + +There was a scurrying of the women-folk to get their wraps from Mrs. +Cartwright's bedroom; a chorus of comment half exasperated, half amused. +Raids were less of a terror by night than a source of deep boredom to +Londoners by this time.... They had all been in them before; they knew +(with luck) just what would happen from the first whistling signals of +the "Take cover" to the "All clear." + +"_Bother_ them," exclaimed little Olwen, disgusted. "In the middle of +the party for _you_, Golden!" + +The men, coated and capped, thronged the tiny lobby, waiting.... Mr. +Brown and Captain Ross's friend would escort Mrs. Cartwright's niece to +her hotel. Young Mr. Ellerton was all eagerness to see Miss Howel-Jones +all the way home again. Agatha's sergeant had secured a taxi to take his +_fiancée_ Victoria-wards; they offered a lift to Golden, imagining that +the young bride would now return to her father's house in Grosvenor +Gardens. But in the midst of the little bustle of departure Mrs. +Cartwright had given a gentle clasp to the American girl's arm. + +"Don't go," she said softly. "I am going to put you up, Golden. You are +to stay with me. He told me he wanted you to stay with me tonight----" + +As she finished speaking, the first warning maroon went off with a +bang. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +HER BRIDAL NIGHT + + "An airy devil hovers in the sky + And pours down mischief." + + Shakespeare. + + +Presently the growling of the guns began to reverberate over London. + +First came the far-off rumbling that is felt rather than heard; the hint +whereat the mothers of households drop book or work to exclaim, +"Hush!... It _is_!..." + +"Don't think so, dear," return the men folk; to retract a couple of +minutes later with an "Ah, yes; blast 'em. Here they are. I'll bring the +kids down." + +Then came the long, nerve-irritating pause. + +In Mrs. Cartwright's Westminster flat there were no children to cause +those anxieties with which the enemy had made himself more detested than +by any legitimate act of war. Her son, as he would have wished you to +note, was hardly a kid to be roused from his sleep. As he strolled back +from the staircase window, hands in pockets, his manner was nonchalant +in the extreme. He was no callow scout, either, to wait in a +police-station for that thrilling moment when he should be allowed out +to sound the bugle-call. + +"Like the gramophone on again?" he suggested (luckily in the more manly +of his two voices). "It would drown that boring noise for you." + +"I don't think so, darling, thanks," said his mother. A pause; silence. +"They may not get through after all. Won't you go to bed, Keith?" + +"Oh, I don't know"--the over-grown lad was already dropping with sleep. +"Wouldn't you women rather I stopped up with you?" + +Golden and Mrs. Cartwright exchanged a tiny smile before the mother +said, "Do you know, I don't think we'll stop up. I am going to show Mrs. +Awdas to her room now. You do as you like." + +The Master of the House moved from the traditional attitude, flat back +against the sitting-room mantelpiece, feet wide apart on the Persian +rug. "Oh, well, I don't see why I should hang about, waiting up for +those wretched Huns, either," he pronounced, his pink mouth twisting +sidewards as he strangled his yawns. "I'll turn in too, if you're sure +you don't mind." + +And he walked across the sitting-room to hold the door open for his +mother and her guest to precede him. + +Golden, who considered this English schoolboy "perfectly lovely," gave +him a smiling good night over her shoulder. + +"Good night, Precious," whispered his mother. + +Very prettily the boy returned her kiss as he responded, "Good night, +old Bean." + +He turned out the lights behind him and betook himself to his room on +the left of the corridor that skirted the flat. On the right were +Reggie's room and his mother's; her old Belgian _femme de ménage_ came +in by the day. Her younger son's room was unoccupied tonight, but it was +her own bedroom that Mrs. Cartwright gave up to Golden Awdas. Here she +left her to undress, promising to come back. + +She did not think that Golden would sleep at once. + +She wandered back to turn up the lights again in the sitting-room, still +full of cigarette smoke, and with its atmosphere still vibrant as if +with young voices and laughter. And as she set chairs into their places, +plumped up cushions, and, putting her hand carefully through the +curtains, set a window open and wheeled her standing-desk back ready for +her morning's work tomorrow, she thought smilingly of those guests of +hers; all so many years behind her, in age, in emotion, in experience. +She delighted in them, these young men who felt themselves masters of +all wisdom, these girls on the right side of a barrier.... The passing +of it had been an agony to Claudia Cartwright. + +It did not take all women in the same way, she reflected. Many went +through life so entirely satisfied with inessentials; so half-awake. + +Most had never been lovers or had lovers. But those who had----! + +No death of a sweetheart in early youth, no cruel jilting, no bitter +matrimonial experience, nothing, nothing! could compare with the +poignant, crushing, rending pain of those years when Youth and Love slip +away from the woman. It is a long black tunnel of misery from which she +emerges (having lost much but accepted, bowed her head, folded her +hands) into the grey afternoon of Life. + +And then----Heaven's blessing on the maternal sense that is rich in any +real woman's character, even if she never has a child at all! For it is +this that comes to her aid; and she spreads it out over the girls and +the men she knows; caring, helping, sympathizing with all their love +emotions (or lack or them). + +Henceforward everything must be vicariously felt by her. She must live +in the lives of her children; in their professions and interests; she +must love through her young friends ... Little Olwen ... Golden.... As +she thought of these Untried, their friend smiled over a tag of verse +that came into her mind with the image that seemed its illustration. + + "Oh, tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see! Lie + long, high snowdrifts on the hedge, That will not shower on + me." + +Prayer, she thought, can take odd forms----well, this was hers for the +happiness of her girl-friends. + +Golden, she thought, would be in bed by now. + +A nearer growling of guns, from the north, she judged, sounded as she +tapped at the door. + +"Come!" called the charming un-English voice. + +Mrs. Cartwright entered her own familiar room with its known mingling of +kuss-kuss, rose, and orris scent. The toilet silver, the Indian numnah +on the floor, her husband's sword and sash over the bookshelf, and the +enlarged photograph of him laughing under the black, semi-lune shadow of +his solar-topi----these things were Claudia's background. Her eyes +opened upon them each morning. Tonight they all seemed suddenly new to +her.... + +It was because they were now a background to this radiant stranger in +her room. Out of that cloud of loosened gold on her pillow there looked +the face of a beauty as rare as any that had ever been kissed awake by a +fairy prince. + +"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, involuntarily. "How lovely you +are, Golden; how lovely!" + +Paradoxical enough it might seem to some women, but this woman thanked +Heaven it was a girl so beautiful who had supplanted her, or rather, to +whom she had relinquished that beautiful boy. She could not have endured +to see Jack choose a bride unworthy in body or mind, least of all one +who might be as the ordinary "nice" pretty girl often is, a bundle of +mere sentiment and frigidity. To Golden she could give him. Actually she +had brought them together. And now it was to his best woman-friend that +the young flier confided his sweetheart. + +On this, of all nights! Their bridal night! + +Mrs. Cartwright could have laughed outright at the strangeness of it. +Jack's wedding-night! + +She remembered that other night, months ago, when in a French hotel +bedroom she had outwatched the hours with a nightmare-haunted man. In +the very attitude that she had taken then, she sat down now on the edge +of this other bed, tucking the eider-down about her as she began +chatting, quietly and cheerfully, with his bride. Through speech and +pause alike the elder woman's mind was echoing with memories. It was +Jack Awdas's husky voice that she heard, clearly as when it was his face +upon a pillow that she watched. How feverishly he had muttered, "That's +why I always shout in my dream.... I was falling, falling, and calling +out to my observer.... We _were_ pals!... I don't think it could ever be +exactly like that with a girl." + +She, Claudia, had told him, "The girl is more to you or less to you, but +not the same." + +And now she lay in her beauty, the girl; that worshipped "girl" of +Jack's. And this----_This!_--was her bridal night. + +Guns! The nearer guns were uttering now. Bark after vicious bark set +windows rattling. The racket died away only to break out afresh.... + +In an interval, Golden said suddenly. "Jack told me what a really fine +friend you'd always been to him. And, d'you know? I've always known I +should be friends with you." + +"Have you?" + +"Why, yes. I said so before we left Les Pins.... D'you remember, I saw +you for a moment that very first evening, sitting with him in the +lounge? But who would have thought where we should all be tonight?" +mused the girl, lifting the throat that rose so pillar-wise and white +above the silken edge of a night-dress of her hostess's. "In London, and +me married to the Bird-boy, and an air raid going on outside. But do I +have to keep you up this way? You're all dressed and everything: I'm so +afraid you'll be dead tired." + +"Not I. I shouldn't be able to sleep if I did undress. There'll be +another hullabaloo on in another minute, I expect," said Mrs. +Cartwright, cheerfully. The sound of the guns had died down for a +moment. "And--well, it won't be the first time, Golden, that I've stayed +up with somebody who could not sleep.... Ah, they're starting again." + +Yes, they were starting again.... + +Throughout London, nurses in hospitals set their teeth angrily over +patients whom they had hoped to drag back to life, out of the horrors +of shock. Other nurses, in maternity homes, could have wrung dismayed +hands over this terror added to Nature's ordeal. And in operating rooms +the white-coated surgeons cursed below their breath the hellish +interruption that might cause a slip of the hand or the instrument and +leave all care, all science vain. These things were the danger and the +damage; not merely the bomb dropped at random; the crumbling masonry. +These, and the mischief to countless little children, disturbed past +soothing now, with tender nerves a-fret, heads gathered to their +parents' shoulders. Little heads! They ought never to have been visited +by such questions as punctuated the din in homes where baby voices +asked, _"Was that a gun or a bomb, daddy?" ... "Where was that firing +from?" ... "If a raid came right on Billy's cot, mamsie, what would you +do?"_ + +Then there came to their ears a new sound--the gutteral, syncopated +drone of twin engines--beating over the roofs. + +"Ah! There's one got through, then," said Mrs. Cartwright. +Following on her words came the outburst of nearer gunnery, +to which the whole house seemed to shake; in twos and +threes--"_Brroum--brrroum!--brrroum!--brroum!--brrrroum!_" +then a more ponderous crash than all. + +Then, a light tap at the door and a voice in two keys, calling with +zest, "Mums! Are you all right? Is Mrs. Awdas? There's nothing to be +frightened at really." + +"No; all right, Keith darling. You're all right, aren't you?" + +"Top-hole. I say, did you hear that last? I'm sure it was a dud shell +just outside on the pavement, so----" + +"Keith, you're to _promise_ you won't go outside until they've gone," +called his mother, starting up. "Go to your room!" + +"Oh ... all right, then. I'll nip out as soon as the all-clear goes +though." The Master of the House pattered off down the corridor to his +room. + +"I wonder if any others will get through tonight," said Mrs. Cartwright, +listening. + +Golden, who had not yet lost any of her kin or seen them broken in this +War, suggested that these German flyers were, anyway, brave. + +"So are other beasts of prey," returned the Englishwoman. + +Again the firing rolled away in the distance, following the raiders' +course.... + +But a thoughtfulness seemed to have fallen upon the wakeful girl. For +the first time she had given a little shiver at the sound of that +receding turmoil. + +"Now I hope it isn't too cowardly of me, what I'm going to say," she +began, suddenly, turning on her rounded elbow. "But I can't help +thinking of boys flying up there in the dark, in the teeth of guns like +that.... _He_ was doing it, of course, until he crashed. My Bird-boy!... +He's always glad when he goes up; he was grousing to me, as you call it, +yesterday, because he hadn't been off the ground for a week ... but, oh, +Mrs. Cartwright! do you know, _I'm_ real glad, just for tonight, that +Jack can't be up." + +Mrs. Cartwright smiled at her, answering her in two words that seemed +ordinary enough. + +"I know." + +But they meant, to the elder woman, something very different from the +gentle agreement that they conveyed to the girl. + +Claudia Cartwright heard again the hasty whisper with which Jack had +taken leave of her those hours ago. "I want _Her_ to stay here," he told +her. "I'd want you to take care of her." + +At the time Mrs. Cartwright had been paralyzed with surprise. Golden +Awdas to stay with her? Why? + +Why on earth should Jack leave her----tonight of all nights? She, the +bride, had seemed to see nothing stupefying in his action in going off +with Captain Ross when the warning came through. + +But Mrs. Cartwright knew that Captain Ross had his own duty, not +anything in which Jack must help him. Jack was free, she'd heard, until +ten o'clock tomorrow morning. It was not Jack's pidgin to do anything +until then.... Therefore why in the name of all that was extraordinary +hadn't he taken his bride away when the others all went? Why hadn't he +taken her off home with him, or to the hotel where he put up, or +wherever it was? + +Then, very quickly, she'd seen why. + +One of the cleverest soldiers of her acquaintance had already told +Claudia that, could the true history of these campaigns ever be written, +it would read not merely like _another version_ of the War, but like +_another War_. She guessed how many things planned never happen and how +many things happen that were never planned, and how few of either get +into the papers. Oh, the difference between the published account and +the story of the man who was there! Tomorrow would see a report of this +raid, which would say nothing at all of the men whose duty ... it had +_not_ been to beat back the raiders. It was _not_ Jack's duty to go up +that night. It was his duty not to go. + +But---- + +Up there he was now, she knew it. Up there, in the darkness and the din! +Perhaps over the house now, the joyous eaglet-boy, fighting those +circling hawks ... now, at this moment!... + +She knew it in her heart. + +And, thinking of that, she sat there smiling at the white and golden +bride who was glad to think of her boy safe from this danger at +least.... There was no reason why Golden should know it too. + +The woman he had loved continued to watch with the girl he loved, during +her bridal night. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +HIS BRIDAL NIGHT + + "Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind + That from the nunnery + Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind + To war and arms I fly. + + Yet this inconstancy is such + As you too shall adore, + I could not love thee, Dear, so much, + Loved I not Honour more." + + Lovelace. + + +Mrs. Cartwright's intuition had been perfectly right. + +Jack Awdas was up during the raid over London. He was up to some +purpose, as his comrades and three other airmen (prisoners of war) could +tell. + +But here is his own version of the affair, as told by him, on the +following day, to his young wife. + + "When that warning came through, you see, I felt that it was + for me too. I don't know what my own idea was when I went off + with old Ross. He said, 'What the something do _you_ want to + come along for?' I said, 'All right; shut up.' I didn't know, + you know. Queer, wasn't it? All I knew was that I had got to go + too, instead of bringing you back here as I'd thought.... I'd + _got_ to leave you, girl." + +She listened, leaning back now in his happy arms. She listened, all +eyes. His own blue eyes had been deep in hers, locked to them with the +lover's look that is another embrace. But now he took them from hers. +He glanced aside and away, and into Jack Awdas's eyes there crept back +one of those two other looks which were characteristic of him. It was +the "yonderly" look that sees what is not for all to see. + +"Somehow," he said, "I knew I just couldn't stay with you. I'd got to go +up, and Lord only knew how it was going to be managed, or how I was +going to get out of the 'drome in time, even. There wasn't a taxi in +sight. Ross and I walked on to the Honeycomb, or half ran, half walked. +Going up Whitehall he said, 'Jack, you darned fool, go back; what's +wrong?' I said, 'Nothing; shut up, old thing, if you don't mind.' + +"In the courtyard of the Honeycomb we nearly ran into a tiny little +dispatch-rider girl with a side-car. I didn't know until just now that +it was young Brown's widow that he was going to marry, that we'd heard +about at dinner! She'd brought some man in, and was just starting up; I +said to her, 'Where are you for?' She said, 'Home! and time, too.' +'Where's home?' said I, and I believe she told me it was Baker +Street.... But just as I was asking her I began to see what I'd got to +do. It began to come to me then, d'you see? + +"I said to the girl, 'Look here, I'm sorry, you can't go home yet. +You've got to drive me out to my 'drome, and I told her where that was. +Half an hour's ride into the country. We did it in less. I told her I'd +got to get to my 'bus, and that she'd got to go hell-for-leather; and we +did it in less.... + +"You see, I'd got to take that machine across at ten o'clock next +morning. Had to: duty. (You knew about that, of course.) But if I could +only get her up a few hours before that! I thought.... There she was, +waiting. There were dozens of our chaps up already, I knew. Here was +I----and I couldn't stand it, somehow. Not last night. Just because it +_was_ that night. It would have spoilt it. You see, don't you? Yes; I +thought you would. I wouldn't think of you then; except to think 'It's +_her_ I'm going to give Them.' I don't even know what 'them' +meant----(This sounds such rot, girl, that I couldn't possibly tell +anybody else, but there you are.... I won't kiss you again until I've +told you the end of this.) + +"Well, we chased along the roads in the moonlight at the deuce of a +lick, coming round the corners on the edge of one wheel. Just imagine +it! Me and that side-car, and that girl of Brown's----No more idea it +was his girl----! She's only about so-size; I thought she was a kid of +fifteen like one of those little brown messengers with pigtails that go +trotting about the corridors, and by Jove, I tried to _tip_ her! I did! +I didn't know. I hadn't any silver on me after all those tips and things +in the afternoon, after we were married. I just lugged out my note-case +and got out a couple of John Bradburys--the last. I stuffed 'em into her +hand. 'Here, thanks awfully!' I said; 'do buy yourself a hat-pin or some +sweets or something----' She did laugh! 'You won't?' I said--she +stuffing them back for all she was worth. 'Oh well, sorry if I've made a +break,' I said, 'can't stop to explain now--thanks awfully--Good night!' +and up I legged it to the gates, holding those notes in my hand all the +time.... + +"You know, I hadn't my papers or orders or anything! Neck, wasn't it? +_I_ didn't know what on earth I was going to ask the Adjutant! +Sometimes when you want a thing it's a good deal better not to ask ... +just go and grab it, and explain afterwards. + +"Well, then I had a bit of luck. + +"Scurrying through the gates, I ran straight into Dashmold himself; that +is the Adjutant. (A stinker on duty.) + +"'Ha, Awdas!' he said, 'can't stop now, the Colonel's just rung me up +from his house. See you in half an hour.' + +"'Rightoh,' I said, and dashed ahead, thanking my lucky stars--for this +only left me with our assistant adjutant, always a bit of an ass. I +chased off to the orderly-room and found him. + +"'Hello, Awdas,' he squeaked. (Voice rather like George Clarke at the +Empire; pink and white face.) + +"'I suppose you know there's a raid on?' I said. 'I've come for that +'bus.' He said, 'What about your papers?' I said, 'Yes, hand 'em over, +that's all right. I've just this moment spoken to Dashmold.' (So I had; +just said 'Rightoh' to him.) 'Those are my orders,' I said, 'in that +pile there. Chuck 'em over. Thanks.' So that was _that_.... + +"Then off I streaked to the Officers' Quarters to get into my things. +Not a soul there. You know. It's a long corridor with a row of little +cubicles not much bigger than the dressing-rooms at the swimming bath. +Just hold a camp-bed and a chest of drawers and a row of pegs.... By +Jove, if some thief hadn't pinched my kit. Some one got into the first +that was handy, I suppose, when they got the warning. I'll have his +blood for that, later. So in I nipped to one cubicle after another. All +empty. I thought I wasn't going to find a stitch. However! At last I +came to one; there it was, a lovely outfit all hanging ready on the +pegs. Man called Jackson. He'd got leave. Well! I plunged into his coat +and overalls and flying-cap and goggles, all the lot! quicker than +anything I've ever done in my life. I remember I'd got those blessed +pound notes still in my hand. I shoved them into my teeth while I +dressed. Then down I doubled to the hangars. + +"About a dozen of the ac emmas--those are mechanics, dear--were waiting +about there. I switched the lights on. + +"There was my 'bus all ready for tomorrow morning--ah, a beauty! Yes, +the one you saw on Thursday, that I'd been making the trial flight in; +the single-seater Scout monoplane. I'd always fancied her. She ran a +little light, but I liked that. I'd got her balanced; just right for me. +I.T. All ready, tanks filled up and everything. The gun was on her, +but----Dash it! No ammunition, of course. That did me. + +"Then I saw Smithers. (He's the Quartermaster's nephew.) I said, +'Smithers! Jump to it ... here you are, take this' (the last two quid I +had on me, that Brown's widow refused), 'and get me two drums of +ammunition. How? _I_ don't know. Somehow. Off with you and give you five +minutes to get back in.' Off he streaked. Then I said to the others, +'Now, you men, get a move on. Get her out.' They wheeled her out of the +hangar and into the moonlight. + +"Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you all about something, though. Even at +the time I noticed it. (The sort of funny little thing you do notice +when you aren't really thinking of anything except getting on with +what's on.) It was tied round the joy-stick! You know, dear, your bit of +ribbon that I've always kept as a mascot since that day on the beach. +I'd tied it on just before the trial flight. It's always been on, you +know, on whatever 'bus I've been flying. I meant it to, until you were +mine, and then I was going to give it back to you, Girl, because it +wouldn't matter which of us two had the Luck _then_; it would be the +same thing. + +"I looked at it once as I was waiting, and I remember thinking to myself +quickly, in the sort of rum way, like you think of things in dreams, 'By +Jove, I suppose that's the most precious prize I've owned, up to now.' + +"But after that I just looked at my watch and stamped as I stood waiting +for those blighted drums. I'd given Smithers five minutes. Lord, if he +couldn't do it. I----It seemed a thundering important thing to me, you +see: the most important I'd ever had to do. You do know why, don't you? +You do understand?" + +Golden's great eyes upon his face were as full of understanding as the +tone of her simple "yes." Her young husband gave a short, contented nod, +then he went on: + +"Well! So then I saw Smithers, coming running back. 'Got 'em?' I +shouted. 'Right, sir!' he shouted back. Up he came with those two drums +he'd got (God knows _how_). I fixed one on the gun myself, and put the +other handy. + +"'Start her up,' I said. I climbed in, and the boys swung the propeller. +I gave 'em 'Contact,' and then I was up and off.... Hadn't been off the +earth for a week. And, by the way, I hadn't gone up to fight since the +time I crashed. + +"Yes, of course, it was a perfectly idiotic thing to do. I hadn't got +the night's Orders any more than I'd orders to go and stand by with +Ross, where you thought I was. I didn't know if we were fighting with +guns or planes or both, nor where nor when nor anything about it. +However!----. + +"What did London look like from up there? Oh, just all dark, you know: +like a great turned-up field below you, with the river winding through +it. What you do see very plainly is that silver ribbon of the Thames, +reflecting the light of the sky. + +"You think the sky's big, don't you? Well, it isn't so big when you can +bumble into your own barrage at any moment, or when a Hun you can +neither see nor hear lets fly suddenly. But I could see shrapnel +breaking away to the south-west, so I just beetled off after that.... + +"Then I'm dashed if those three blighters in their big plane didn't +nearly run me down. Yes, I s'pose she'd be the plane you and Mrs. +Cartwright heard over the house. Was she missing it all?" + +"Missing?" repeated the fascinated Golden. "Why, how could I know?" + +"Well, anyway, she was somewhere over that part of town. They'd jumped +the barrage and got in. I circled round, climbing all I knew, and then I +guess they dropped those two bombs to lighten themselves. + +"The searchlight fellows down below were dazzling away to beat the band. +You could see nothing but jumping flashes all over the show, putting 'em +off their aim. Me too. Perfectly poisonous. I cursed, but I knew I'd no +business there.... + +"Well, that Scout of mine could climb as quick as any Gotha built yet, +so I gave them twenty rounds or so right into 'em. They didn't like +that, so I gave 'em some more. They fired back, but nothing to hurt. The +next go, they decided to give it up, I think. They headed for the +south-west again. Evidently they were going to chance the barrage. Bon! +Anyway, if they were, so was I. + +"And oh, Girl, if you knew how I wanted to get them! I wanted to get +those raiding Huns, if I had to chase them to the coast and across and +right to Berlin. As Ross says, 'I wanted to let 'em have it where Dora +wore the beads.' I felt 'I must. I'll die if I don't, and I----' + +"D'you know what I did? This is one of the most idiotic bits yet, but +I'm going to tell you the lot.... Generally, I don't think I'm +superstitious. Some fellows are; well, I'd known one perfectly sane and +sensible fellow, who, when he was mad keen after something he wanted, +winning some event, or something----he'd turn money out of his pocket--a +sovereign, say, in the days when we had sovereigns, or a handful of +silver----and throw it away. Pitch it right away, you know, to buy him +luck. Well, I thought of it then. If I could buy that German plane! +So---- + +"I pulled off my glove as I buzzed along after 'em and made a dive +inside my jacket for money. Then I remembered I hadn't a bean on me. I'd +given my last two quid to Smithers, and here I was, and I wanted to buy +that Gotha, I tell you! I'd have bought her with anything I'd got, +money, ring, every last thing---- + +"Then I remembered. + +"It was on the joy-stick, the thing I valued. Your little mascot! I +ripped it off. I gave one look round to where those beggars were heading +for the barrage, and then chucked that bit of ribbon out over where I +guessed you might be. (Perfectly absurd, of course. The wind whisked it +away.) ... And as I chucked it I shouted something out. Somebody's name. + +"No! You can't guess whose name it was. Nobody'd have thought it. The +funny thing about it was, it wasn't even the name I meant to shout. I +meant to shout out 'Cheer O, Girl!' I heard myself yelling out instead, +'Cheer O, _Ferris_!' + +"He was the observer I used to have. Killed, last year.... Somehow, just +then, I forgot that; I felt as if he were with me. Then! I thought 'Good +Lord, fancy if old Ferris----' + +"Then I didn't think any more; I settled down to business. Well, as you +know, I did have to chase 'em to the coast, those dashed Archies popping +all the way. _At_ the coast the Archies were----say really hot. Then +those sea-planes took a hand, but it wasn't the seaplane that got her. +_I_ got her! Got her right over Beachy Head. + +"I knew I'd done it the moment he turned about. I'd put half a drum +right into her engines, and she wouldn't want to land in the sea (rather +Irish). + +"Suddenly a searchlight blazed right on the pair of us, and the Archies +stopped, just like the band stops and the limelight concentrates for the +really tricky bit of the show with those acrobats at a music-hall.... + +"But this was dead easy, the rest of it. I just circled above her like a +buzzard, driving her down, down, all the time. I didn't fire at her any +more, because you could tell within twenty yards where she was going to +land, and I knew the lads of the village were all ready and waiting for +her. One bad wobble she gave and pitched straight down. I sheered off a +bit for fear of getting any bombs, but she'd drop her last one on the +way. She simply came down end on like shying a lump of clay at a board. +Then I landed, tumbled out, and legged it up the slope as fast as I +could; just in time to see 'em getting out all the three Huns alive. + +"'My bird, I think,' says I, running up all out of breath. + +"Then a chap beside me spoke out of the dark, 'Hi! Who are you?' + +"I couldn't see him, so I said, 'D'you mind telling me who _you_ are?' + +"He pulled a torch out of his pocket and showed it on himself. A +Staff-major. So we shook hands, and he congratulated me.... Then I felt +rather a fool," laughed Jack Awdas, "for he asked me my name. + +"'Well, as a matter of fact, Sir,' I said, and stopped. + +"'Well what?' he asked. + +"'Well, as a matter of fact, I'm not supposed to be here at all.' + +"'Oh?' he barked. 'Got any orders on you?' + +"I had; from the Assistant Adjutant. I pulled 'em out and he read them +by the light of his torch. + +"'H'm,' he said, 'taking a machine to France, but I see by this you're +not due to start until tomorrow morning. It's now two, ac emma. How's +this?' + +"Well, when you're cornered like that I always think there's only one +thing for it; pure cheek. So, as bold as brass, I gave a look at the +orders myself, and then said, 'I rather fancy this must be a clerical +error, sir. My verbal orders were to start today, and I can't have been +two hours on the way yet?' + +"I fancied I heard him give a chuckle in the dark, but all he said was, +'Well, this will be a serious matter for you.' + +"'Oh, I hope not, Sir,' I said. + +"'A serious matter,' says he. 'If you'd been sent up to chase Hun planes +you might have got the D.S.O. for this. But you see what it means now?' + +"'What?' I asked. + +"'Well! This being an act outside the course of your duty,' he said, 'it +_may_ mean the Victoria Cross!'" + +Golden Awdas gasped. "Then, think of it, Bird-boy! You'll only have +traded _my_ ribbon," she exclaimed, "for that wonderful other! Now +wasn't that a prize----" + +But the wide and distant stare had gone now from her airman's eyes. +These had returned to her; his sweet American who had journeyed across a +world before he had found her, his love whom he had loved enough to +leave, knowing that it might be for ever.... His blue eyes were locked +into hers again for a moment with his lover's look that now sent a wave +of pink fire flaming into her face and down her throat. Against that +perfect throat he buried eyes and lips. + +"'Think?' I needn't think of anything else now, Girl," he whispered. +"_You're_ my prize!" + + * * * * * + +That was Jack Awdas's story of his share in the raid. + +The evening papers announced: + +"Bombs were dropped in several districts, but no material damage was +caused. A woman and two children were slightly injured. + +"One German aeroplane was brought down on the coast by a pilot of the +Royal Flying Corps." + +The German account read: + +"A successful raid was carried out by our airmen over London last night. +Good results were obtained, and large fires were seen to break out in +various districts. + +"All our aeroplanes returned safely." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +SHRAPNEL AND THE CHARM + + "Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!" + + Browning. + + +And what of the other people who had been at Mrs. Cartwright's party +when that raid alarm came through? + +Olwen Howel-Jones and young Ellerton had imagined that by taking "the +Metropolitan" from Baker Street Station they might arrive at Wembley +Park before the raid started in earnest. + +This hope proved to be vain before their train reached Willesden +Junction. Out went the lights as the train came to a dead stand between +two stations. Up went the windows; above the iron bars that guarded them +there craned the heads of passengers asking in every key what the matter +was. + +They were answered by the distant growling of those first guns. + +"Bai Jove! Held up for the blessed raid," exclaimed the cheerful voice +of young Ellerton, who was alone with Olwen in a first-class carriage in +the front of the train. "How priceless! Here we are and here we stay +until the blighters choose to finish their little call, I s'pose. That's +all right.... Hope you don't feel nervous, Miss Howel-Jones?" + +The soft voice of little Olwen came to him out of the dark. (She was +sitting in the corner seat, opposite to him.) "Oh, no! I'm not nervous +at all, thanks. I think it's quite exciting! I only hope Lizzie (that's +my Aunt) won't be worrying about me; but then she knew where I was; +she'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept me." + +"Ah, yes. She'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept you," agreed +Olwen's companion. "I thought it looked a likely night for our friends." + +He had made this remark, by the way, twice on their way to Baker Street. + +"Yes," said Olwen. + +Silence, punctuated by a nearer muttering of the guardian guns fell +between the two young people in the carriage to themselves. The voices +of other passengers could be heard further along the train; and the +guard appeared to be exchanging repartee with the engine-driver, whose +name (as that of all drivers of 'bus or engine seems to be), was Bill. +Olwen gave a little laugh as "Bill's" comments were shouted forth on the +night air, and her companion chuckled also. But he started no +conversation about it. Or about any other subject. + +The whole truth of the matter was that this quite good-looking and +pleasant young man Harold Ellerton hadn't got very much conversation. +Others besides Captain Ross (who was never inclined to be fair to him) +had noticed this. Olwen herself had noticed it before now. It had been +noticed by various girls whom he had taken out; for he was fond of +taking out girls. But, unlike the majority of his sex, he preferred +_them_ to talk to _him_. He was perfectly happy to punctuate their +treble twitter with his appreciative bass, "Ha!" "Bai Jove!" and +"Priceless!" But (except for one other detail to be presently +specified), he hardly knew what else to say to a young woman who was out +with him. That was why he felt most at ease sitting beside her at a +theatre (where, during two enjoyable hours, all the talking necessary +was done for him by Mr. Owen Nares, or Mr. Leslie Henson, or somebody +like that). Or at a restaurant, preferably at a table near the band; +listening to that could always fill up any awkward pause. At dances, +again, one could dance. At a little dinner party like tonight's, for +instance, there was a crowd where everybody talked; made everything so +much more cheery at once. But it was when these things came to an end, +when one had the girl all to oneself to bring home----_That_, he found, +was the crab! + +Why was it, he wondered, that he found it so difficult to talk to her, +except upon one subject? + +He remembered delightful evenings, ending in these painful and tedious +journeys _à deux_. Tonight, for instance, it was going to be the very +dickens with this little Miss Howel-Jones. A jolly nice little kid, +thought the sailor, a pretty kid! But here they might be held up +together in this confounded train for another hour, perhaps, and he +couldn't even see her face, and he was blessed if he knew what more to +say to her----Why, he'd said everything as he sat next to her at dinner, +he and that funny little Brown chap. He did envy the flow of chaps like +that! Chaps who could yarn away upon this, that, and the other subject +for three years or the duration of the War. Talk to girls for ever, they +could, without repeating themselves! + +"I thought it looked a likely sort of evening for a raid," he heard +himself say at this point. + +"Yes," said the girl opposite to him in the dark. + +Of course he'd said everything there was to be said on the subject of +air-raids in general and this air-raid in particular on the way to Baker +Street. Yet he couldn't sit here in the dark opposite to her for the +whole length of the raid, saying nothing? + +Still the guns made distant thunder.... + +"I do hope you aren't frightened," he said. "It's quite all right, you +know." + +"Oh, I know. I'm not a bit frightened," came from Olwen; truthfully +enough. + +She was not frightened as she settled herself back against the padding +of the carriage. She was only a little sleepy, a little anxious for the +kind-hearted Lizzie, who would be waiting up for her in that pretty +villa at Wembley Park; she was also excited and elated still after her +lovely party. + +She was thinking far more of that party than she was of her companion of +the raid! + +She was also wondering about Captain Ross. + +What a _disgusting_ temper the man had been in all that evening! + +Positively scowling at her! Was he jealous, really? _Was_ he? + +Then she wondered what Captain Ross was doing at that moment. + +If there had been no raid----! If it had been he who was seeing her home +she might have asked him what she had done that he should scowl at her +like that. + +Or if only it were Captain Ross who was sitting with her here in this +darkened carriage all smelling of engine-dust and cigarette smoke, +waiting for the raid to finish.... + +Hurriedly Olwen put the thought away. It was no use allowing oneself to +dwell on thoughts of things that were too good to be true. No, no, not +too good. She told herself firmly that she did not wish Captain Ross +were in this railway-carriage instead of Mr. Ellerton. Captain Ross +would only be disagreeable. + +Only----Well! She could imagine some girls feeling glad of a raid in +these circumstances. Some girls to whom it would be as one long, long +lovely dance "sat out" in a dark corner with their favourite partner of +all. Perhaps there were girls "hung up" in this very train, feeling that +it was the evening of their lives. + +Whereas all she could feel was apologetic to Mr. Ellerton. He liked her, +but she was sure he had never bargained for sitting out with her a dance +of this length. Still, what was to be done? Here the train stuck. They +couldn't get out and walk to Wembley! + +"Shall we smoke?" suggested Mr. Ellerton. "You'll have a cigarette, +won't you?" + +He fumbled in his pockets and brought out his torch. Its tiny beams made +rounds of light in the carriage and upon his face and upon the gold +braid and gold rings of his uniform. He found case and matches. He +lighted a cigarette for Olwen, who puffed at it with secret distaste +(for the moderate smoker is not found among her sex; a woman being +either a cigarette fiend or a passive objector). + +The two red glow-worms winked and wavered in the dark carriage, their +reflections shining in the glass of photographs over the rack. Outside +the searchlights pointed, and now and again the sky showed the alien +star of a shrapnel-burst. + +Then, without warning, crash after crash seemed to rock the train on the +rails. Some guns, very near, that had not yet spoken, were barking +savagely, and between the barks a shrill "whee-you! whee-you!" hissed +past the telegraph wires.... + +The start that Olwen gave made her drop her cigarette on to the floor of +the carriage. She dug her little French heel into the spark. Young +Ellerton threw his cigarette down beside it and rose quickly. Snapping +up the arm of the seat by Olwen, he sat down close to her. + +"You needn't be frightened," he said, encouragingly. + +"I'm not frightened," she assured him. "Only it makes me jump." + +"Brutes, frightening you!" exclaimed young Ellerton. "I say, I do wish +I'd thought of bringing some chocolates or something for you." + +"I'm not hungry either, thank you," laughed Olwen into the barking of +those guns, but young Ellerton's voice repeated, "I wish I'd got any +sweets for you. I've only this----" + +She felt him move against her arm as he leant nearer to her to get +something else out of his pocket: it was a phial of saccharine tablets, +carried about since the sugar restrictions. + +"Have some of these," he said. "Put out your hand ... here, where are +you?" He shook half a dozen tablets out into her palm. + +As it happened, Olwen disliked saccharine worse than she disliked +Virginian cigarettes, yet she munched the substitute-sweets to please +this young man who, according to his lights, was being nice and kind and +protective towards her. + +For the severalth time he informed her that she was not to be +frightened.... Then, in a new tone, he added, "Dear little girl." Then, +more softly still, "For you _are_ a dear little girl, you know. Do you +know, you're just about the sweetest I've ever met." + +"Oh, pooh!" laughed Olwen, taken by surprise, nevertheless. She rather +wished she could see the face of the young man sitting so close beside +her. Had she done so, she would have seen it was what is known as "a +study." For during the last half-hour or so the young man had become the +prey to conflicting emotions indeed. Chief of these, perhaps, was a +helpless fascination; the fascination of some one with a weak head who +watches himself draw nearer and nearer to the brink of some giddy +height. + +Harold Ellerton knew he was drifting, as he'd done times and again, +towards a fatal habit of his. Times and again, since before he had left +Dartmouth, this thing had happened to him. It was as characteristic of +him as was his lack of general conversation where women were concerned. +In fact, it's not impossible that one of these characteristics may have +led to the other. + + +He didn't know what to say to girls unless he were making love to them, +and his sole conception of love-making was to ask them to marry him! + +He saw it coming now in the dark accomplice solitude of this railway +carriage. He knew that he was going to say a few more tender things to +this little Howel-Jones girl, about her eyelashes and how sweet she'd +looked at that party and how she ought to have a bridal party of her +own, directly--dear little sweetheart she'd make to any fellow! + +He said these things. + +He knew the other was coming. + +It came. + +"Look here, d'you think you could care enough to be _mine_?" he heard +himself say. "Bai Jove, if you would----! If you'd marry _me_! Would +you? Would you?" + +There! He'd done it again. + +Now came the agonizing moment. + +Now again he'd have to wait for the girl's answer. That always seemed to +him to be at least two hours in coming: except once, an anguished once +when the girl had said, "Yes" directly. What would this one say; what? +He waited in the dark; and sweat broke out on the young brow under the +peaked cap. + +In a long, uncertain breath the girl said, "Oh----" + +Then, "D'you mean it, Mr. Ellerton?" + +"Of _course_!" returned Mr. Ellerton, ardently, but digging his nails +into the palms of his hands. + +The soft voice beside him said, rather waveringly, "Wait a minute----" + +The young man who had just proposed again set his teeth and waited. This +was Hades. Serve him right for being such a double-blanked fool again! +But this was the worst yet. Never before had he not been able to see the +girl's face when he asked her to marry him. Never again, he vowed +incoherently to himself, never again would he be such an ass as to +propose to a girl during a raid with all the lights out! But then, never +again would he let himself in for this with any girl alive! Not if he +got safely out of this! Oh, Lord, the fool he'd been!... Could he +possibly light a cigarette?... No, only wait.... "A minute" this little +thing had said.... + +Before she spoke again, æons seemed to elapse. + +Actually they were a few moments only, during which the mind of Olwen +Howel-Jones dashed swiftly through four distinct phases of thought. The +first was pure surprise. + +The second was a "No" that came from the bed-rock of woman's nature, +that fundamental thing which Convention must blast and quarry into +acceptable shapes. + +The third was a "Yes" compounded of a thousand artificialities +inherited, acquired, fostered, observed, and taught. Fear was among +them; fear handed down from generations of dowerless girls who accepted +the first proposal lest they might die as old maids. Why not! thought +little Olwen. Engaged! Fancy if she were! What would her Aunts think, +and Uncle, and her sisters! She would be the first of her sisters to +become engaged! And she had got her leave, too, and would be going down +to Wales; fancy going home to tell them! Fancy telling them at the +Honeycomb; Mrs. Newton and everybody! What fun! Engaged to Mr. Ellerton. +She did like him so much; she did, she did! He was awfully nice, and +jolly with people, and so good-looking and so----it appeared, so fond of +her!... More than could be said for Captain Ross. Wouldn't it be +absolutely ridiculous to miss a real thing like this, for just a fancy +like that? Girls had to get engaged while they could. It was the +happiest thing; getting engaged and having a ripping time for a bit, +then getting married and having everybody congratulating you. Getting +engaged in the middle of a raid, too! Nobody could say that wasn't +romantic. Love?... Well, Captain Ross had said that men couldn't bear +"that Love-with-a-capital-L" business. It wasn't for everybody. And why +do without all the fun of getting engaged, simply for the sake of some +man who evidently didn't care two-pence.... It would be awfully silly to +say "No." + +Swiftly as the flash of the guns this phase passed; swiftly as the +following report there followed the fourth phase in the girl's mind. It +flung her back to phase the second. But that had been composed of dumb +Instinct. This was articulate. + +No, no! She must not say "Yes" to this young man. However nice, however +good-looking, however fond, he was not the man. She knew it. She did not +love him. Golden said Love must be Lovely. What more unlovely than a +loveless pact? The "fun" of this engagement? What would that be? A +wretched substitute; no more real, sweet fun than the saccharine tablets +which she had been munching were real sugar. Sugar in tea; Love in +Life.... Some people put up with makeshifts cheerfully; but not she. +Some other people (she pursued the childish analogy) never did take +sugar in their tea. The luckier they! They missed nothing; Olwen would +crave it forever. But better a thousand times to go without everything +than to accept the wrong thing! + +She came out of her swift inner reverie, back to the dark railway +carriage and the young man. + +"Oh, Mr. Ellerton," she said hurriedly and remorsefully. "I am +dreadfully sorry but I can't possibly. I don't care for you. Not that +way. I do like you ever so much. But if--if you don't mind, I _couldn't_ +marry you." + +She heard the young man near her give, in the darkness, the profoundest +sigh that she had ever heard torn from any human breast.... + +Remorsefully she repeated, "I am so sorry----" Then stopped abruptly. +She seemed, in the darkness and the vibrating atmosphere, to have caught +a floating idea that startled her somewhat. + +She began again gravely. "Will you lend me your torch for a minute?" + +She felt it put into her hand. + +Quickly Olwen said, "It's very rude of me, but I _must_ look at you, +please: I must see your face!" + +Then she turned the little beam right upon him. + +Then she exclaimed, "Mr. Ellerton!" + +"Yes----" he said, unmistakably sheepish. + +Olwen burst out laughing. "You are a fraud," she exclaimed gaily. "You +aren't one bit sorry that I refused you. You're trying not to, but +you're looking----yes, _relieved_. You're glad! Don't pretend!" + +"Oh, I say----" + +"No! Don't pretend! You were laughing. You're feeling gladder than +you've ever felt over anything in your life because I don't want to +marry you! I _know_!" + +Young Ellerton dragged his handkerchief from his cuff, pushed back his +cap and wiped his forehead. "Bai Jove," he said with the sincerest +admiration in his tone, "you _are_ a clever little thing. I--I don't +think any of the others have ever tumbled to that." + +A moment later he found himself talking to her with more real ease and +enjoyment than he had ever talked to a girl in his life; with real +fluency. To her (during the second hour for which they were hung up) he +confessed that no, he didn't want to get married. There were +people----anyhow, men, who _didn't_. Not to the sweetest and prettiest +girl in the world. Not to _anybody_. To tie himself up like that for +life, declared the young sailor, was what he wouldn't want to do for +anything under the sun; certainly not for anything under a hat. Never! + +Olwen, finding she had ceased to be bored by him for the first time +since she had left Mrs. Cartwright's turned her face towards him in the +dark and plied him with question after laughing question. + +"But you ask people to marry you!" + +"Can't stop myself! It's the devil!" + +"And none of them have accepted you?" + +"Yes; one! A girl who was at college with my sister. A nice girl. I did +get to loathe her!" with feeling. "We were engaged for one whole awful +week!" + +"How did you break it off, then?" + +"She did. I loved her for that. She said I was too much like the young +man in Stevenson who said being engaged was all right as long as her +sisters were there. So she chucked me. And after that I've been +lucky----I mean, you know what I mean!" + +Olwen shook with laughter. "But, then, why d'you _do_ it?" she +persisted. + +"I tell you I can't help it. It happens!" + +"Why? For instance, why did you let it happen tonight? Quite frankly, +_why_ did you ask me?" + +"Oh, you----!" he began, and he paused for a minute. "Oh, come," he +said, "you are an awful nice little girl, you know. Anybody might be +excused for losing his head. You were looking extra pretty at the party +tonight, too. Some _peach_, you looked, if I may say so; and it wasn't +just looks either. There was _something_ about you. Sort of +disturbing.... I swear there was. You attracted me till I----" + +"Don't propose to me again," Olwen warned him. "I might think better of +it." + +"Oh, no," laughed Harold Ellerton. "You're an absolute little +sportswoman, I know." + +The little sportswoman, while she continued to laugh and chat with him +in the friendliest way until the signal sounded for the train to start +again, the little sportswoman had been really arrested by one of his +remarks. + +"_Something about her_" tonight, he thought. She'd heard something like +that before. She thought she might know what it meant. + +She went back to early on the afternoon of that eventful day. + + * * * * * + +Very late she had found herself as she was dressing for her tea with Mr. +Brown at the Regent Palace; even as she was putting on her nicest silk +stockings she had known that it would mean a scamper down the drive if +she meant to catch that train.... + +Then in her hurry a suspender had snapped. + +"Dash!" she had cried. + +No time to stitch it. + +She had cast round for the nearest bit of ribbon wherewith to garter +herself securely, and had snatched it up from where it dangled on her +dressing-table, hardly seeing which bit of pink ribbon it was with what +satin sachet attached. She'd wound it hastily about her slim and +silk-sheathed leg and forgotten all about it. That's how she had come to +be wearing it that evening, not in the orthodox way round her neck, but +wearing it nevertheless; the Disturbing Charm! + +Hidden thus, it almost seemed as if it had done its work again? + + * * * * * + +As they said good-bye at the wicket gate of her Aunt's house, she found +herself quite affectionately promising to write, while on leave, to this +young sailor who never would be anything but a friend to her. She found +herself submitting quite naturally to one of those flavourless and +definite kisses on the cheek, of which the entirely brotherly quality +can never be mistaken by the recipient. + +A looker-on may be more easily mistaken. + +Olwen's Aunt Lizzie was coming up the Drive behind her, having been +delayed in another carriage of that very same train, since she had also +been dining in town. From some distance she had observed the farewell at +the gate. But she exchanged greetings, quite unprejudiced, with the +young sailor who passed her. She was a modern Aunt.... + +At the house she found her niece already in the bedroom, so busy with +her little straw work-basket and two lengths of pink ribbon, that before +any talk even of the raid, she asked, "What have you got there, Olwen?" + +"I'm just mending something," returned the intent Olwen, "that I've got +to wear." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +VIGIL + + "The raid is still in progress." + + Morning Paper. + + +To other members of the party that raid had been less (obviously) +eventful. + +Little Mr. Brown, after he had seen Mrs. Cartwright's niece, the nurse, +back to her rooms, trotted back to the Regent Palace Hotel all in a +dither of undeniable funk. + +Not funk for himself! Gallipoli and the Somme had found him "sticking +it" with a music-hall joke between his teeth. But here he had something +to be frightened about. The danger-zone was no place for women. At once +he rang up his _fiancée_, Mrs. Robinson, in Baker Street. There was no +reply!... On duty still? And Lord knew where.... + + [The little dispatch rider was at that moment, as we know, + scorching along the road out of London and past the Kilburn + Empire.] + +Mr. Brown, M.C., took his cold feet and his pipe to another man's room, +and sat there talking feverishly to drown the guns; from here he rang up +at intervals, getting through to her at last. + +"Worrying?... What about?" her cheeky little voice called back to him. +"Been? Why I've been carting some young lunatic who's lost his 'bus or +something, back to his 'drome.... I say! He tried to give me two pounds. +Got off again, didn't I?... Yes, and I'm just going to turn in.... Silly +ass.... Worrying about me? Well, drop it. I'm not marrying any worries, +they're too old-fash. Go to bed!" + +"Right you are," called back her future lord on the note of cheery +docility which was to resound throughout his married life. "See you +demang. Good night, Pet!" + +"Good night, Pug." + +She rang off; he sought his room, and slept through the rest of the +raid. + + * * * * * + +Miss Agatha Walsh sat up for it. She sat up in the private sitting-room +of her hotel, where there was also staying, on business, the old family +lawyer who transacted her business. There she sat with him and her +_fiancé_ at midnight, feeling delightfully emancipated if not "fast," +drinking stone ginger-beer and translating the lawyer's remarks to her +half-dozing sergeant. Agatha was entirely happy, for the talk was all +about arrangements for her approaching marriage, settlements for her +husband, and so on. What, compared to these things, was the noise of +gun-fire? The only attention that she paid to it was to exclaim once, +"Oh, I do wish I could have a bit of the shrapnel set in gold as a +paper-weight or something for Gustave, just as a souvenir of the first +raid we've been through together!" + + * * * * * + +And now we come to Captain Ross. + +Captain Ross would have allowed no questions as to where he was and what +doing whilst that raid was in progress. Suffice it to say that he was on +duty. + +Not active duty; not strenuous duty, but duty which, unfortunately for +him, gave him plenty of leisure to think, and to feel, as he himself put +it curtly, "sick." + +Very sick he felt. + +First there was the standing grouse of his not being able to take a +man's job, ever, in that sort of show. They would never allow a +one-armed chap to go up in a plane, of course. Not even by altering the +mechanism of the whole thing so that he could work the controls +left-handed--that was off for good; and he was sick of it. + +He also felt sick with young Jack. What on earth had he been trying to +play at? He had no duty. He was married that morning; hadn't he, Ross, +seen him married? What the something did he mean by leaving his wife and +chasing off like that? Saying "All right; shut up----" What did the +young fool mean by it? + +Further, there was that little hussy that Captain Ross was sick with. +Sitting----wherever he was sitting while the raid-guns scolded outside, +he went over and over in his mind the many grouses that he had against +that little hussy Olwen Howel-Jones. She didn't know how to treat him +right. + +She was a darned little flirt. + +Look at her at Les Pins with that ass young Brown! + +Look at her here in London, with that even worse ass, young Ellerton! + +Scandalous.... Scandalous.... + +To Ellerton he meant to give such a telling-off as the young man had +never heard in his life before. + +And to the girl he was going to speak about it this very evening. Then +the raid had come.... + +Of course Ellerton would see that child all the way home. + +He'd done it before.... + +She admitted that herself. + +She practically admitted that the fellow made love to her on the way +home. + +No doubt he was doing it again at that moment! Captain Ross could +picture it. He did picture it.... + +Nothing could have been less like his picture than the reality of that +proposal scene in the railway carriage of the train held up outside +Willesden Junction at that moment, but how should this jealous brooder +be expected to guess that? + +He continued to brood so intently that it is unlikely he heard any of +the firing.... + +That little hussy! How was it she always contrived to irritate him so? +Always! Every time she spoke! The more meek and mild she was in the +office the more downright impairrrtinence she managed to infuse, +somehow, into the very meekness and mildness of the tone in which she +spoke to her chief. Yep! Even if she were only putting somebody through +to him on the telephone, she managed to convey an impression of--of--of +_something_. + +And why any busy man should waste a moment thinking of her the finest +judge of women in Europe did not know.... How had she done it? + +Yes; she was pretty; confound her! Awfully neat.... but weren't other +girls? Why think of her, more than of all the others, dozens, scores, +yes, hundreds of 'em that he'd known? What he demanded of a girl's +society was that it should be kept in its right proporrrrtion as a +relaxation for when a man wasn't occupied with a job. + +Woman, it could not too often be reiterated, was the Plaything of +Man----but not of young Ellerton, by the way. Why should any sensible +man be obsessed by one more than another of these toys? + +Let them keep in their places. + +Dashed pretty she was! Taking little face, dandy little figure, hands +and feet _it_.... Still, if she thought that he, with all his +experience, was going to say that Miss Olwen Howel-Jones was the +best-looking girl he'd ever struck, she had another guess coming to her. +Casual little ways she had! Those spoilt her. Pursing up her +mouth----which was as red as if she shoved on carmine by the stick every +five minutes, though he could see she didn't. It would sairrrrrrrrve her +jolly well right if a man (not young Ellerton) were to catch ahold of +her and kiss her good and hard a couple of dozen times running and then +leave her, having had all he wanted of her. That other maddening habit +of hers, too; looking 'way over a man's shoulder when he was speaking to +her! Refusing to meet his eyes ... though she could look straight enough +into young Ellerton's.... What colour _were_ her eyes when all was said: +brown, green, or hazel? + +He had arrived at this point by the time that the rushing by of cars +began to be heard up the Strand, down the Embankment and along every +street within earshot; cars containing joyously important children in +Scout's kit who "_woke to find that Noise was Duty_," and who now +roused London's echoes with their bugle calls of two long notes: + +"_All clear----! All----clear!_" + +Yes; the raid was over. Captain Ross of the Honeycomb found himself +drawing a long breath and realizing that he did most bitterly resent +these raids on account of the women that he knew who were in the danger +zone. That child Olwen, now; had she been frightened? Very likely +indeed. Scared to death, no doubt. + +Poor wee girl!... + +With the return to the thought of her, there suddenly stirred within him +a feeling that lay so deep down and under so many other mere immediate +things that he seldom allowed himself the chance of leisure to delve +towards it.... + +It was----how express it? A gentle, reverent unspoilt tenderness. It was +That which makes the difference in the ingrainedly sentimental mind of +Man, between Woman----and his own women-folk. The key to the hearts of +these finest judges of women in Europe is to be found held in the hands +of a mother, a wife, or (most surely) of a baby-daughter.... This +particular Scot had denied _in toto_ that that chit of a Welsh girl +could ever have part or lot in any of his jealously-secret dreams. + +But denied it he had; yes! Already he was so far gone as all that. + +Therefore it will be seen that he had reached the moment when a man +pulls himself resolutely together and determines that having gone so +far, he will go no further. + +The moment had arrived when he told himself that, having taken all +things into consideration, he had done with the girl. + +Yes; he had done with this Olwen. + +What was meant by this could only be judged by subsequent events. One +cannot but surmise that it meant the following: + +To come to that office on Monday and, as usual, to treat her as part of +the office furniture. To speak to her as usual with the charm of manner +of a bear with a sore head. To glower at her as usual in the Strand if +she passed him with young Ellerton. To have lunch on Friday as usual at +that restaurant where she had lunch and, still as usual, to spar and +wrangle with her until it was time to get back to work. To meet her as +usual at Mrs. Cartwright's; to meet her perhaps with her friend Mrs. +Awdas; to----well, to carry on in the usual way, as he had done up to +now, and so, indefinitely, to continue.... + +"Yes! I've done with her," he meditated aloud in the solitude of +whatever place it was in which he found himself. The sound of his own +voice pronouncing these resolute words was balm to his irritated, +exasperated mood. "I've done with her. _That's_ sett----" + +Into the word there broke the shrill whirring call of the telephone. + +He snapped it up. The silence of the place where he sat seemed to ring +to the now irritated bark of his voice, answering. + +"Spikkin'! Who is that?" + +"Ell--what? Oh, Ellerton? Yes; what is it?" He listened, scowling, to +the clear boyish voice that came through, obviously in the joyous high +feather. "Oh, yes; I know the raid's over, yes.... Nothing of +consequence; nothing at all.... You saw _what_? Miss Howel-Jones home +safely? That's all?... You were held up? Is that so? Where? For +_how_----For two hours, was it? All the lights turned out, I suppose?... +Indid.... Ah.... Well! I don't know that I was worrying specially about +either of you; not so as you'd notice it. But thanks all the same for +reassuring me, Ellerton----" + +(This with the bitter sarcasm which, the Celt maintains, is ever lost +upon the Saxon.) + +"And I suppose Miss Howel-Jones will make it her excuse for turrrning up +late on Monday morrrrning.... _Whatt?_ She won't be coming Monday? How's +that?... _Leave?_" + +His voice jumped up three notes. + +"Going on leave?... Where's she going? Wales?... What part of Wales?... +I said what part of Wales.... Aber-_which_?... Ah.... 'Night." + +The finest judge of women snapped up the receiver and sat for a moment +motionless: only the shapely feminine mouth under the hogged moustache +moving to the form of inaudible words. + +Then he sprung up and grabbed a paper-covered book from a shelf of +reference books. He stood holding it. + +Ellerton and she! + +Held up for two mortal hours in the dark! + +And the cub sounded in racing spirits.... + +Proposed to her! Not a doubt of it! And would he sound like that if he +hadn't been acc----? + +Here he slammed the book down on the table (it was an A B C), and, with +his one hand, began violently fluttering the pages. Aber----Aber---- + +Gone, had she? Without a word.... How dare she? Got leave without +telling him.... + +Leave, indeed.... + +He'd got some leave coming to him. + +Right now was where he'd take it, and at this Aber-where-was-it--ah, +here.... + +Done with the girl? He realized that he had not yet begun with her. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +HOME AND THE CHARM + + "A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, + Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere." + + Still-Popular Song. + + +There was one thing that struck Olwen very forcibly as soon as she got +down to that house of her Aunt Margaret's in Wales. + +It was the first time for many months that she had entered a +dwelling-place that was also a home. + +Where had she been all this time? In places of which the keynote was +"Here today and gone tomorrow"; places that she had never even seen a +year ago; places without associations, without responsibilities for the +pilgrim-guest. + +There had been Les Pins; its hotel.... Cap Ferret and its charming inn. +Other hotels in Paris and London. There had been the Honeycomb; its +busyness still informed by the hotel spirit of "_Dwell as if about to +depart_." + +Then there had been her Aunt's villa at Wembley Park; delightful little +red-roofed, rose-wreathed doll's-house! There was an impermanency about +that, too; it looked as if a gale of wind would carry it off, with the +row of other red-and-white toy-dwellings in the midst of which it stood. +It was a place to picnic and to sleep in, and of one which one turned +the latch-key without giving it all day a further thought. + +The same note was struck by Mrs. Cartwright's prettily-arranged flat. +In three hours, perhaps, she could pack up and move ... somewhere, +anywhere that suited her! (People lived where they liked, after all, +instead of making it a religion to like where they lived.) + +The same could be said of Mrs. Newton's rooms at her hotel, and of the +bachelor-diggings of half a dozen War-working girls whom Olwen knew in +London. The new note was spreading. Domestic life as lived under Queen +Victoria seemed at a discount. And to more and more of England's young +womanhood one might apply the plaintive remark of the straphanger to the +other occupants of the crowded 'bus: "Ain't _none_ o' you got no 'omes?" + +But here, on the outskirts of this provincial town where generations of +the Howel-Joneses had been born, had lived and married and died----here +one found oneself swept back to the domestic conditions of more than +half a century ago. + +Ah, the solidity of this square grey house, padded with ancient ivy and +roofed with purple slate! Oh, the density of that laurel hedge, +screening its lawn from the road that wound up towards the mountains! +Heavens, the ponderous comfort of the furniture; every mahogany "piece," +every _portière_, every vast Landseer steel engraving upon the walls +seemed to remind Olwen "We were here in your grandmamma's time, and your +great-grandmother's and you, little superficial upstart, what right have +you to turn up your nose at what was good enough for them?" + +Yes; it had taken three reigns to bring these things together; details +that dragged the generations behind them as they settled down, heavily, +into a permanent, complete and dominant whole, which it would now take +an earthquake or a revolution to shift. + +But Olwen, as it happened, felt no desire to "turn up her nose." She was +enjoying this return to the days of old. It was a rest and a refreshment +to her after all her war-time gipsying, after her eating in Soho +restaurants, after her coming and going, after that whole life of the +bird on the twig. For there is no place like home, the old, established, +sturdy, stolid British home ... when one knows that one is only there on +ten days' leave. + +Then there were the home-dwellers. Olwen had never before realized how +pretty and amusing were her young sisters Peggy and Myfanwy; especially +Peggy, in her V.A.D. kit! She had wrested three days' leave from her +hospital in the town in order to be with her sister from London; and +there were also gathered together on a visit in the old home a selection +of cousins--Howel-Joneses, Pritchards, and little Llewella Price--to +welcome the wanderer home. Never before had they "made such a fuss of +her," or she of them. + +Even Auntie Margaret (who was THE Miss Howel-Jones, the head of the +household, and a despotic version of the Professor in petticoats), even +Auntie Margaret did not seem nearly as "trying" to Olwen as in those +pre-War days when the present Honeycomb war-worker was a girl at home. + +Why, Olwen had been in the house for two whole days, and Auntie had +only been really exasperating once! And even then she had almost +immediately afterwards bestowed upon Olwen an exquisite old coral brooch +and a bristly kiss. After all, there were no people like one's +home-people ... once one wasn't obliged always to live with them. + +Yes; Olwen enjoyed them. She enjoyed the accent of the young creature +who brought up hot water to her old bedroom (and who was described by +Auntie as "no servant, but a colt off the mountains!"). And she enjoyed +the forgotten ambrosia of the Welsh butter, and the family tea to which +they all sat down about the family table, and the family jokes--all as +old as her beloved hills. + +There was no news, except of a bazaar in aid of comforts for the town's +recruits; that had happened a month since, but it seemed still as +important to the family as anything that Olwen could tell them of what +had been happening in London. It was only on the Sunday when this +function had been described to the last detail by each relation in turn +that they left it at last to enquire about what raid; had Olwen seen +anything of this? + +The question was put to her at tea-time. + +Olwen, munching Auntie's hot cakes, told them of the interrupted party +and of her delayed journey home. + +"In one of those wretchedly draughty trains! I wonder you didn't take +your death," was her aunt's aghast comment. + +A Pritchard cousin added, "In the dark! Weren't you terrified all +alone?" + +Olwen explained. + +"Oh! _With_ somebody," exclaimed another cousin. + +"Sitting with a man from that place of yours.... In khaki, then? No; a +_sailor_? Oh, how _lovely_!... How old; twenty-four--five? It must have +felt just like being at the Cinema. Olwen, what _did_ he talk about?" + +"Asked me to marry him," Olwen replied, tranquil in the assurance that +this unembellished truth would never be believed. + +A gale of girlish laughter broke out round the table; a clatter of +feminine questions. + +The Welsh speaking-voice, which normally resembles the coo of the +ring-dove (_vide_ a paper on "Timbre" read by a college-friend of +Professor Howel-Jones), is capable of rising, in excitement, above the +corncrake note of the average Saxon, to the parrot-screech of the +Continental. It did so now, as the stay-at-homes cross-examined their +wanderer. + +"No; but really?" + +"Do tell us what sort of a young man he was?" + +"Yes; come on, Olwen _fach_. We never see a young man down here; might +as well describe to us what one looks like----" + +It was at this very moment that the young man who was passing the +dining-room windows on his way to the front door caught a glimpse of +clustered black heads all alike and heard a breaking wave of talk and +giggling. This tide rose until it swamped the sound of his ring at the +bell. + +Presently, without warning, there burst into the dining-room that +aproned colt from the mountains who had answered the door. + + +In an explosive whisper she announced, "Some _gent----tleman_! Some +gentleman is in the drawing-room!" + +"Who is it?" asked the mistress. + +"Some gentleman wanting to see Miss S'Olwen," the little maid hissed on +every "S." (A sudden quiet fell upon the party.) "Some _Captain_, or +something, he say." + +"Of course!" shrilled Olwen's youngest cousin Llewella, in a voice that +could (and did) carry easily across the hall into the drawing-room and +beyond the lawn outside, "This _must_ be her _sailor_ young man!" + +But Olwen (rising from the tea-table with the sudden sensation of having +had no tea or any other meal for about a fortnight) knew better. She was +the only one at that tea-table who had not been too absorbed in talk to +notice the caller passing the window. Against the dark green laurel +hedge and the lavender mountains beyond she had caught the flash of +gayer colour, scarlet on khaki. + +_Captain Ross----!_ + +"He's come," she thought in a whirl of happiest flurry. "What did Golden +say!" + +Her heart seemed to stand still as she crossed the hall. On the mat she +waited for one second. She must look as if absolutely nothing had +happened or could happen. Then she opened the heavily-draped door and +went into the drawing-room. + +Captain Ross had planted himself just where she had expected that he +might; he was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the log fire. + +That hearthrug was wide and white and fluffy; there was a brass-edged +glass screen before the fender. The mantelpiece was of white alabaster +and hung with looped drapery of peacock-blue brocade, lustrous and +pompous and ball-fringed, dating from 1889. Upon the mantelshelf itself +there stood under a tall glass shade an ormolu clock, with figures of +nymphs and Cupid. On each side of this gleamed candlesticks with +dangling prisms. + +There were also china ornaments, a miniature of Margaret Howel-Jones at +eighteen and another glass shade protecting a branch of white coral; the +whole reflected in a gilt-framed mirror. + +Everything in that drawing-room was in key with that mantelpiece. And +into that complete and Victorian harmony there broke the Neo-Georgian +note of a girl wearing the little modern serge frock, the pert effective +shoes, and the hair-dressing of the instant. + +But Captain Ross, turning abruptly did not see the dramatic +contradiction of that girl to this room. + +What he saw was the girl at last in the background that suited her. Yes; +here she was, where she should be. None of your gimcrack hotels or grimy +offices or fly-blown, cotton-glove restaurants! A girl like that ought +never to leave a place like this. The place into which any decent man +instinctively wants to put the sweetest woman he knows----A Nice, +Comfortable Home of her Own. + +(That the woman invariably longs to be "put" there has never yet been +questioned by this type.) + +To him every detail of the place seemed in league to "set" her; sweetly, +worthily. For the first time he saw her as in a shrine--therefore to be +worshipped, yes! worshipped. + +But there was nothing of this to be read in Captain Ross's face as he +returned her soft-voiced, surprised-sounding greeting. He was positively +scowling. + +And why was the finest judge of women in Europe scowling like this? + +It was because of the unforseen way in which all his plans were going +astray. On the way down in the train he'd had everything beautifully +planned. He'd intended to tell this little Olwen casually but quite +authoritatively that he'd something to say to her, and that "as he was +in Wales" he guessed he'd look in and say it right then. (These women +had to be handled--firmly.) He thought that a darned good opening ... in +the train. + +But suddenly that "was in Wales" didn't seem the strong card he'd +thought. It seemed, in fact, remarkably weak. He admitted that as he +glanced round that immutably Victorian room. It might have done for the +Honeycomb, but not here. Set-back Number One. + +Next, he must look as if he'd come down here on purpose to see this +aggravating chit. Which of course, he had not done. Or at least hadn't +meant to. Or, anyway, wouldn't have done if there had been any other +way. Captain Ross could explain this position to himself, perfectly. But +appearances were all against him.... Set-back Number Two. + +For Set-back Number Three, had he not just heard half a sentence (before +a door closed), in a shrill girlish voice, about a "_sailor_ young man"? + +_Damn_ young Ellerton! + +His anger against the sailor gave the send-off to the very first +sentence that he addressed to the girl. + +With a forward jerk of his head he brought out the startling abrupt +remark, "Look, Miss Howel-Jones, don't you think this has gone on long +enough?" + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE CHARM ACKNOWLEDGED + + "'Even he that flies shall follow for thy sake-- + Shall kiss that would not kiss thee' (yea, kiss me), + 'When thou wouldst not' (when I would not kiss thee!)" + + Swinburne. + + +Olwen's bright eyes opened in real astonishment. Here was a bewildering +sex! + +"_Long enough_," it said. "_Hasn't this been going on long +enough._" ... When----well, whose was the fault that anything had been +_long_? + +Or did Captain Ross mean that? Or what did he mean? + +"I don't know what you mean," she confessed, standing there all at sea. +Then she put out a hand to the draperies of that door. Bewilderment gave +place for the moment to a stronger impulse; hospitality. The little +Welshwoman must feed her guest. "Do come into the dining-room," she +begged, "and have some tea first, anyhow----" + +But Captain Ross stood rock-like. He had seen that rookery of black +heads through the dining-room window. + +"Thanks; I had tea in the train," he said curtly. + +"I came to ask you something, and I'd like to know about it right now." + +"But----oh----very well," murmured Olwen. + +"It's this," said Captain Ross, peremptorily, "are you or are you not +engaged to that----to Ellerton?" + +Olwen had known her Chief sharp and abrupt before. For weeks she'd never +known him anything else. This was his sharpest yet. She was +intimidated.... Then suddenly that went, and she had all the boldness of +the kitten turning to face the big dog. + +"Engaged?" she repeated. "What do you mean?" + +"What do I mean? Engaged to be married." Captain Ross explained. "May I +have a straight answer to that, please?" + +There was a pause. Perhaps Olwen was sorting her thoughts. She smiled, +at first uncertainly. Then, also uncertainly, she said, "But surely, +Captain Ross, you didn't come down from London specially to ask me +that?" + +With ominous patience Captain Ross nodded that sleek, black, Tom-cat +head of his, almost as if to some old enemy he had expected to see +cropping up at some time. "Why, of course, it's a lot to ask of a woman, +a plain answer to a plain question. Right away, that is. But perhaps in +haff a minute or so?" he suggested, adding, at once, "Are you engaged to +him or are you not? Yes or no?" + +Olwen, wondering at her own boldness, parried with, "If--if it _wasn't_ +worth coming down specially for, h-have you the right to ask me?" + +"Say I came down specially, then," Captain Ross conceded reluctantly. +"Now are you going to tell me?" + +"Who said," asked Olwen, with a glance out of the window, "that there +was anything to tell?" + +"He's asked you to marry him, I know that," said Captain Ross with such +conviction that Olwen coloured a little with surprise. How did Captain +Ross know about that? It was true, of course.... But he couldn't know +quite _what_ had happened. She almost laughed at the memory of Harold +Ellerton's face in the light of the torch. + +She hesitated.... + +It doesn't always follow that because a man is obstinate he may not be +quick as well. It was very quickly that Captain Ross seized upon Olwen's +hesitation, declaring, "He asked you on the night of the raid." + +As quickly Olwen asked, "Did he _tell_ you?" + +A pause. Then "There was no nid, Miss Howel-Jones. I thought, somehow, +that there'd be somebody else I'd have to be congrrrrratulating very +soon," said Captain Ross, with a sort of grim triumph in his tone. + +He straightened his back, giving that little forward shrug of an armless +shoulder that Olwen could never see unmoved. But her eyes were on the +window and on the glimpse of variegated Welsh landscape beyond. + +"Since that is so," concluded Captain Ross in his most final tone, "will +you allow me to offer my very best wishes to yourself and to Mr. +Ell----" + +"No! Please don't!" protested Olwen quickly. + +She felt that this misunderstanding had gone on long enough. Long +enough. She turned from the window and looked straight----not at Captain +Ross, that she couldn't do! but at a water-colour drawing of Carnarvon +Castle on the wall. She said, "You see, I am not engaged or anything to +Mr. Ellerton!" + +And even as she said it, she knew what a change her words had made. + +Without looking at him, she knew that Captain Ross's dark face had +lighted up like a lantern into which a candle is put. She knew what he +meant by that quick movement that he gave, as if rolling aside some +weight that he'd been carrying. She knew, for sure and certain, why he'd +come. Would he have cared about her being engaged to Mr. Ellerton if he +hadn't wanted her himself? Of course he did want her.... + +Hadn't Golden said so? Wasn't that serene and lovely American always +right? + +Hadn't Madame Leroux thought so, too? + +And hadn't she, Olwen herself, always known it too, in the very depths +of her heart? Yes! Hadn't she always, always suspected his curt speech +and his off-hand manner and his judgment of women? + +Always! + +A great and glowing delight filled the girl. For if he wanted her----oh, +wasn't she his! Hadn't she been his all that time ago? All her denials +of him since had been fibbing to herself, they had been making the best +of things, they had been the hybernating sleep from which Love awakes as +a giant refreshed! It had all been camouflage, and now there was no more +need of it.... + +But even with this sweet and thrilling knowledge warm at her heart, the +woman's Will-to-Prolong was strong within her, too. + +She was a human little person enough and she had her dignity, she +thought. Also she had to have her laugh--oh, quite a little one! over +this man. + +He said, "Then----" in a voice that there was no misunderstanding. His +surliness had vanished like a mist. His eyes shone. He said, happily, +"Then if you aren't engaged to him----!" + +He seemed to think that she could take for granted what must follow. + +But Olwen was mutinous. Had he come down here to propose? Let him do it! +she thought. She resolved that she would not be cheated out of a single +word of it. "Then----" in itself was not going to count as a proposal. +"Then----," indeed! + +"_Then----!_" Oh, dear no. + +Immediately Olwen put on that look which is scarcely a look, but is for +all that a defence past which no man's love-making may come. Immediately +Captain Ross's own look changed to one of dashed and angry surprise. He +had put out his arm. It dropped to his side while he watched this girl. + +She sat down, her little figure almost lost in the embrace of a chair +like a cretonne-covered bed. "Won't you sit down?" she said in the voice +of a hostess, pointing to an opposite chair. + +He did not move. + +She, feeling that never before had she been mistress of the situation, +and that perhaps never again would she have the opportunity, spoke first +with a composure which startled herself. + +"Why," she asked, "should it be supposed to have anything to do with you +whether or not I was going to marry Mr. Ellerton?" + +And now Captain Ross moved so abruptly against the mantelpiece that he +shifted one of the handleless china teacups out of its place and set the +prisms tinkling on the candlesticks. + +He opened his mouth, then shut it as if he'd thought better of the +answer which he meant to make to this chit. And then, in the tone of +stinging reproof which he reserved for some careless error in the +reading of some letter at the Honeycomb, he said, looking down upon her, +"I should have thought that a girl of your intelligence would have had +the sense to guess by this time what my object was in wanting to know +what your ideas were on the subject of getting married." + +Olwen, with a tiny turn of her head, remained silent, watching the +sunset, which could just be seen over the Rival mountains out of the +other window. This last remark of Captain Ross's she was not going to +take as a proposal either. + +From the lack of expression on her small face no man would have guessed +at the happy tumult in the heart under that ribbon-and-satin of a hidden +mascot that it rocked. + +"Well?" demanded Captain Ross with outward patience. "How much longer do +you intend to keep me dangling around and guessing?" + +"About what?" + +"About whether you're going to marry _me_ or not," said Captain Ross, +dourly. + +Olwen stuffed a cushion behind her back and laughed quite naturally. +"But, Captain Ross! You said Marriage was a thing the sensible man +looked at from every angle and then decided to cut out. I never +imagined----" + +"Ah, cut _that_ out," Captain Ross begged her, with the unsmiling mien +of one who sees himself about to be routed from his last defences. "You +knew all the time; you knew." + +"I didn't!" + +"What?" Captain Ross thrust out his jaw. "You ought to know me well +enough by this time. You've seen me plenty." + +"Yes," said Olwen, with feeling, "and always being----" + +"Well?" + +"Perfectly horrid to me." + +"'Horrid,' you think?" barked Captain Ross. "In the office? You don't +understand that I'm as much on active service there behind a pen as I +was when I was able to be behind a gun? 'Horrid.' Because I didn't make +love to you there, and both of us on duty? If you imagine that I'm the +kind of man who'd do that ever, I am afraid you are under a serious +misapprehen----" + +"But you weren't always in the office," protested Olwen, quickly, "and +you were _always_ horrid to me!" + +"When, please?" + +"Well, at lunch!" + +"Because I only had lunch with you once a week?" + +"You didn't 'have lunch _with_ me,'" Olwen demurely reminded him. "You +happened to be lunching at the same place on Fridays." + +"That's hair-splitting," snapped Captain Ross. + +Exactly as if he never split hairs! As if he had not been splitting +hairs for the last six months. That is, the same hair. And with a +hatchet. + +He felt that he was burying that hatchet now----if she would only let +him. + +He declared, "You know I only went to that darned little eating-place to +see you," and it was with the manner of one who hands over his revolver +that he had said it. "I loathe fish." + +(But this was not a proposal!) + +Olwen, gazing not at him, but through the window at a cluster of yellow +crocuses on the lawn, exclaimed softly, "As if you didn't know that this +is the first hint you've ever given me of your wanting to see me at +all!" + +Captain Ross took a step back on the hearthrug. He gave a short and +angry laugh. "The fairrrrrst hint?" he cried, as if aghast. + +"Of course it is," declared Olwen. + +"It's nothing of the kind," doggedly from the man. "Plenty of other ... +things of that sort." + +They were both wrong, and they knew it. + +It is unlikely that Olwen had forgotten that Elysian evening on the +lagoon when Mr. Brown had pulled and she had sat in the stern-sheets +with Captain Ross. To have your hand held in the moonlight tenderly, and +for an hour on end, might fairly be called "a hint." + +So Captain Ross was right on that point. + +But he was wrong on every other. + +In the whole of their acquaintance that had been the one isolated +instance in which he had failed to be as forbidding as an Army order. +But at that moment (and indeed for several months afterwards) that +incident in the boat was not to be referred to by either of them. For +some obscure reason both of them felt more shy of that memory than any +of fresh experiences. + +Quickly Olwen got on with this war in the enemy's country. "Hints? I'm +sure I don't know what they could have been. That box of chocolates at +Les Pins. But I've had other boxes of chocolates given to me----" + +"I've no doubt of that" (with grimness). + +"So you can hardly call that a 'hint,' Captain Ross!" + +"Ah!" he said, impatiently. "It's not what one gives or says to a woman, +as you know. It's the _manner_----" + +There was real merriment in Olwen's laugh at this. "The manner! The +_manner_! Well, really! After the scolding and strafing and +disapproving! After the way you never came near me if we were out----" + +"I did. I did. I sat next you at that concert when Jack Awdas's girl was +singing." + +"For five minutes; yes, I remember," said Olwen, tilting her chin. "It +was the one and only time." + +"It was not, pardon me. I was coming to sit by you at Mrs. Cartwright's +party, and I wasn't allowed a look in----" + +"So you had a look _at_, most severely," Olwen countered. "At Mrs. +Cartwright's was when you were the horridest of all. You just sat +opposite to me and glared----" + + * * * * * + +In the dining-room the party of Olwen's relations sat over their last +half-cups of tea in a simmer of delighted curiosity. + +This was shared, openly, by the hireling colt from the mountains as she +clattered in at intervals with hot water or more butter. Breathlessly +she asked at last, "Will I take a tray and some fresh tea into the +drawing-room for Miss S'Olwen and that t'officer?" + +"You will not," ordered her mistress. Even she had been young once. + +"----Yes! glared at me as if you hated the sight of me!" insisted Olwen. + +He said, "And weren't you flirrrting with those two fellows, and simply +out to make me wild?" + +"No," said the girl, quietly and sincerely. + +He could have clasped her for it. "Darling!" said his glance, but aloud +he only retorted, "Maybe you were not out to do it, but you certainly +pulled it off." + +"As for _you_," continued Olwen, "weren't you talking at me to Mrs. +Cartwright all the time at dinner?" + +"No!" he retorted, flagrantly. + +"You know you were! _All_ about Woman being the Plaything of Man!" + +"Don't rub it in," he entreated, with another glance down at this +plaything so maddeningly near, yet not, perhaps, for him. Yes! If she +had had the boldness of the kitten who strikes with soft paws at the +Force which could annihilate her, he had the boding patience of that big +dog who waits, sitting up, with the lump of sugar on his nose. + +It was she who kept him so.... She was--oh, she was getting her own back +now! + +She broke off as if by the way, to ask him, "Let me see, what was the +first thing--almost the first I ever heard you say.... _What_ sort of a +judge of women are you?" + +It is not true that the Scot is inevitably without a sense of humour. At +that moment Fergus Ross saw even the joke against himself, since he +thought it would appeal to her. He responded, "What was that about +women? Something I've hairred in a drim?" + +Relentless, Olwen repeated her demand. "What sort of a judge of women +are you?" + +He looked at her, threw up and shook his head with the action of a boxer +who drops his hands as well. + +"I guess I'm about as fine a judge of women as a baby is a judge of +mothers," he told her, frankly and ruefully. "One he knows; his own. And +herrrr he's got to have!" + +But she put it aside. _This_ wasn't enough of a proposal! She harked +back to that party at Mrs. Cartwright's which had witnessed the last +losing fight of this prisoner of hers, taken now with horse, foot and +guns. + +"'What's Love? An amusement,'" she quoted, mischievously, his words upon +that occasion. "That's what you said, four--no! only three days ago," +she insisted, now feeling that she had got well into her stride and +could keep this well-merited strafing of the young man for an hour yet. +"Yes! Just to be horrid to _me_! How you talked! All about how bored a +man got 'when some woman started in to Love' him----" + +Here Olwen stopped, abruptly but too late. She coloured to the deep pink +of the little coral brooch at her throat. She saw what she'd said. + +So did he. + +Very quickly the soldier took advantage of this break in the line of her +defence. + +"Ah!" His voice lifted. "Well, what of that? What has _that_ got to do +with my being 'horrid' to you? What----connection is there between you, +and any woman starting in to love _me_?" + +"Oh, _none_! I didn't mean _that_," Olwen assured him, laughing +flippantly, but dropping her eyes to gaze so hard at the carpet that +only the top of the head was to be seen. Glossily black and shapely +enough was the little head upon which Captain Ross had heaped, in his +mind, every anathema as well as every endearment that he knew, but he +was dashed if he was expected to read what she meant out of the mere top +of it. So---- + +If, a month ago, some one had informed Captain Ross of the Honeycomb +that he would ever be reduced for any possible reason, to go down on his +knees on the floor at a woman's feet, he would not have considered the +idiotic prophecy was worth a laugh. + +But his number was up. + +Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet just +because there seemed no other way at that moment of getting a really +satisfactory glimpse of Olwen's face. + +"Now! my lady," he began, firmly. + +But just as he'd thought he meet her eyes squarely she turned her head +sidewards and directed that bright gaze of hers, as she'd often done +before, over his shoulder and away. She was ready to glance at the blaze +of the log fire, at the wall-paper, at the oval china frame all garlands +and Loves of the standing mirror, at the large portrait of Professor +Howel-Jones in his robes, at anything, yes! anything rather than at the +(late) finest judge of women in Europe, at her feet. It was too much. + +The pent-up, exasperated longing of months broke out in six words. + +"Look at me, you little demon! _look_ at me----" + +But even now she did not look; how could she, when she had shut her eyes +before the change that had come into his own? + +He caught her to him. With his one arm slung about her, he put a +scorching kiss upon her throat, under her ear. Then he took her chin in +his hand and turned her face round; he kissed the childishly red mouth +until little Olwen, all shy and aflame, felt that the shape of his own +would be moulded upon her lips. + +For all his theorizings, his protestations, his boastings about Love, he +was yet a lover ... or perhaps it would be truer to say a lover at last. + +As for her.... The whole of her girl's nature seemed to stretch out +gleeful hands to the gift that he made to her--of herself. Till now she +had resembled--what? The sea-anemone that for weary hours of low-tide +has waited self-contained and folded into itself upon its rock, an inert +lump.... At last the warm waves rise, and lo! the rosy fingers spread to +welcome its own element have turned it to a lovely thing, a star-shaped +flower of flesh. + +Into her sigh of delight he heard her murmur, "No! I _mustn't_----" + +"Mustn't what?" muttered the strange voice of him who was no longer the +Captain Ross of this story, but the Fergus of their love-tale that was +beginning. + +And in Love, after all, all's well that begins well. (Even though there +was no real "proposal" after all.) + +He coaxed, "Mustn't what, Honey?" + +"Mustn't like you any _more_, or you won't like me as _much_!" + +It was Woman's dearly-bought wisdom----but he laughed at it until his +teeth gleamed across his vivid face. + +She? Do anything he would not like? Even if she loved him and showed +it, even that could not cool this man off, now he knew. The chit had got +him going sure enough. Whatever she did or said only added to her +attraction, to her long-contested, her triumphant, her Disturbing +Charm! + + + + +POSTSCRIPT + +THE CHARM CONFESSED + + +With regard to the three words with which the last chapter closed: + +The Disturbing Charm.... + +What was its story, after all, apart from the tangled stories of those +people into whose lives it twined its thread of rose colour? + +Perhaps it was all summed up in a letter that came, one February morning +of Nineteen-Eighteen, to Professor Howel-Jones. + +The old botanist was sitting in his study. It was a wide, cleared room +with a table as chaotic as that had been at Les Pins, set, as at Les +Pins, before a window; but the view here was not of a lagoon with a belt +of dunes and a lighthouse. It showed the roofs of Liverpool. + +Professor Howel-Jones had just returned, after various wanderings, to +find a big mail awaiting him. He sighed, as he opened the letters, for +his little niece and secretary. (Olwen had not been replaced.) + +Then he knit his brows over the letter in his hand. + +It said: + + "DEAR SIR, + + "The writer of this letter has reproached himself more than + once over the rather stupid practical joke that he elected to + play upon a man of your attainments by sending to you what was + alleged to be the discovery of a love-germ, or Disturbing + Charm----" + + "Dear me! What and when was that?" pondered the Professor. "Ah, + yes. I have it. Some lunatic that wrote to me in France. + Something about '_half the trouble in the world arising from + people falling in Love--with the wrong people_.' Yes, yes. And + what was this 'Charm' supposed to do?... Ah, it says now that + the Charm was spoof...." He went on reading the letter; the + belated apology of some pupil at some University where he had + once lectured.... + + He took it in, half thinking of the next letter as he read.... + + Fern seed, it appeared, was all that the "magic" packet had + contained.... + + The Professor scarcely remembered that there had been a packet! + What had he done with it now, and with the letter? Burnt them, + he thought, before that little Olwen got hold of that + nonsense.... + + It would have been just like a very young, imaginative girl + like that to have believed in it! + + Well, this last letter would have to shatter that belief! + thought her Uncle, as he crumpled the practical joker's apology + into a ball and tossed it on to the fire. + +At the moment when her Uncle's thoughts were turning to her, his niece, +young Mrs. Ross, was watching rather a pretty scene. + +She stood at the window of her husband's rooms in Victoria Street, his +old bachelor rooms into which she had brought the new element of her +girlish belongings, her love, herself.... + +Behind her on the table, above a pile of his books on "Reconstruction," +there trailed a dainty litter of her sewing: the lacy whiteness of a +garment that was being reconstructed, feminine-fashion, into some other +garment. + +Beside her stood another war-bride of but a few more weeks' standing, +young Mrs. Awdas. + +Both of them were looking down into the street, where a crowd lined the +pavement to right and left, waiting, watching to see a company of +American soldiers march past on their way to Victoria Station. + +Ah! Here it was, the stream of clean khaki cleaving the motley of the +crowd. Here they came, the boys, tall, fit, and splendid, drilled to the +minute; the pick and cream of the new belligerent country.... Here they +came, spare and useful looking and ah, how faultless in kit and +accoutrements, from straight-brimmed hats to spotlessly-polished boots. +And as they swung past with the unison of a machine in which every part +is perfect, there hove into sight, straggling, slouching towards them +out of the station, a knot of British just back from the firing line. An +officer walked along beside the men. + +Over these there brooded the spectre of three years and more of War. +Their eyes were heavy with lack of sleep as they lurched heavily along, +blinking around them at London once again; they were dirty and loaded +down with gear, they were strung about with mess-tins and water-bottles +and boots and brown-paper parcels and battered shrapnel helmets. One or +two of them had Hun helmets tied to their knapsacks. They wore greasy +remnants of caps, disreputable goatskin coats. All over them was thickly +caked the foul mud of the trenches. + +What a contrast.... + +The mob of straggling scarecrows turned to give a friendly stare, a +"Cheerio" to their smart American comrades as they swung past in their +immaculate fours. + +"See you in ten days!" shouted a Tommy. + +Olwen Ross, up at the window, thrust out her little black head to watch +the Americans. + +"Oh, they are magnificent," she breathed excitedly. "Aren't you proud of +them, Golden?" + +"Am I _proud_ of them!" laughed her friend. + +But while the Welsh girl was all eyes for these new troops, the American +girl's wide gaze turned upon the others with whom they must soon be +standing shoulder to shoulder; the war-worn soldiers, muddy, tattered, +scarred, exhausted, cheery still.... + +"_They_ are magnificent, Olwen, I guess," said she. + +And her opinion seemed to be shared by a countryman. A quick and +graceful thought struck the officer in charge of those Americans. + +Suddenly and clearly, above the buzz of the street, the rhythmic tramp +of feet, there snapped out his order: + +"Company----eyes----RIGHT!" + +Every head under the straight-brimmed hat turned sharply towards those +heroic scallywags their allies. + +Perhaps that young American company officer would have explained, +diplomatically, that the word of command had been for his men to give +the Eyes Right to that British subaltern who was passing with the +leave-men; a white-faced, hollow-eyed stripling with two gold stripes on +his cuff and the black "flash" of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers fluttering +at his nape. But if it were ostensibly for him, it was also for his men. +The new Allies, equipped for Victory, saluted the old, all but broken, +but carrying on.... + +And the bright eyes of the two girls at the windows above shone +suddenly, mistily brighter at the sight. + +As they watched the two bodies of men disappear----those marching +towards Victoria and the boat-train, these straggling towards a +soldiers' hostel in Buckingham Palace Road, Golden said softly, "My +people, Olwen, honouring yours." + +Olwen said, "Yes; but mine are yours now, and yours are mine." + +She turned from the window and into the little sitting-room with her +guest's arm in hers. + +"What's the time?" asked young Mrs. Awdas. "I'm due to sing at the +hospital at four. We'll have to hurry----" + +She lifted, on Olwen's blouse, the tiny pin-on watch which was one of +her friend's wedding presents. Then she exclaimed, "What have you got +tied around here?" + +Golden did not recognize any similarity between this sachet of +pink-and-mauve and the sun-faded ribbon trifle she had picked up on +Biscay beach. But Olwen smiled as she tucked into the place the mascot +that she wore and always would wear, even had she read that letter which +her Uncle held would shatter any belief in that "magic." The old +scientist summed her up as faultily as if he, too, had set out to be the +finest judge, etc.... + +"Golden," she said, "if I tell you about this, will you promise not to +laugh?" + +And as they walked along to the hospital, she gave to her friend the +outlines of the story which you have just read ... so far as she knew +them herself. + +Golden, listening, smiled above her leopard-skins. "Do you think all +these things would not have happened just as they did happen without the +wearing of a Charm?" + +Olwen, with happy dreams in her eyes, did not reply. + +After a pause her friend went on, softly, "When I look at you," she +said, "and when I look at your Fergus, and at my Jack, and at any one +else who is lovely and loving ... why, of course I believe there's a +Charm really, though it just can't be anything you could make up out of +a pinch of powder and a bit of ribbon. A Charm? Why, the world's full of +it! Didn't it send me over the sea to my Bird-boy? Didn't it bring your +men from Canada and France to you? Didn't it let us all meet in a +country that was sweet and friendly, though none of ours? Didn't it +work----why, all the time?" + +"Sometimes----Often--Half the time," suggested Olwen, "it is supposed to +make such mistakes. It takes the wrong people...." + +"We hear of those, just because they're the exceptions, I guess," smiled +her buoyant friend. "We aren't so talked about, we with the happy love +stories, that the Charm has worked!... Olwen, it's making stories now +for each of those splendid boys we saw go marching by, and for each of +the pretty girls who wishes them Luck. It never stops!... But you can't +see it. You can't hold it. You can only feel it is----" + +"But then what is it?" Olwen asked. "What is it in itself?" + +"Who knows?" Golden replied. "Does it matter if we _never_ know?" + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Disturbing Charm, by Berta Ruck + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISTURBING CHARM *** + +***** This file should be named 36442-8.txt or 36442-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/4/4/36442/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Disturbing Charm + +Author: Berta Ruck + +Illustrator: Edward C. Caswell + +Release Date: June 16, 2011 [EBook #36442] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISTURBING CHARM *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="figleft"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + + +<div class="figright"> +<img src="images/tp.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + + +<h1>THE DISTURBING CHARM</h1> + +<h2>BY BERTA RUCK</h2> + +<h3>Author of "In Another Girl's Shoes," "The Three of Hearts," "The Years +for Rachel," etc.</h3> + +<h3>ILLUSTRATED BY<br /> +EDWARD C. CASWELL</h3> + +<h3>NEW YORK<br /> +DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY<br /> +1919</h3> + +<h3><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1919</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, Inc.</span></h3> + +<h3>VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY<br /> +BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK</h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h3>TO<br /> +THE EVER GAY<br /> +AND GALLANT MEMORY<br /> +OF<br /> +WARREN FENN-SMITH<br /> +<span class="smcap">Second Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps</span><br /> +SHOT DOWN WITH HIS OBSERVER IN ACTION<br /> +JANUARY 18, 1918, AGED 18</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">"They carry back bright to the Coiner the mintage of man,<br /></span> +<span class="i12">The lads who will die in their glory and never be old"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12"><span class="smcap">Housman</span><br /></span> +</div></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus1" id="illus1"></a> +<img src="images/illus1.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3><i>Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's +feet.</i></h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#PART_I">PART I</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I. <span class="smcap">The Coming of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II. <span class="smcap">The Accepting of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III. <span class="smcap">The Launching of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV. <span class="smcap">The Charm Begins to Work</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V. <span class="smcap">Further Plans for the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI. <span class="smcap">The Clutching of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII. <span class="smcap">The Spreading of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII. <span class="smcap">The First Engagement by the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX. <span class="smcap">Unforeseen Effect of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X. <span class="smcap">Divagations of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI. <span class="smcap">The Feasting of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII. <span class="smcap">Moonlight and the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII. <span class="smcap">Wild-fire and the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV. <span class="smcap">Clouds Upon the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV. <span class="smcap">The Losing of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI. <span class="smcap">The Counter-charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII. <span class="smcap">Drop-scene</span></a><br /><br /> +<a href="#PART_II">PART II</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I2">CHAPTER I. <span class="smcap">The Charm Neglected</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II2">CHAPTER II. <span class="smcap">The Last Allies</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III2">CHAPTER III. <span class="smcap">Recovery of the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV2">CHAPTER IV. <span class="smcap">The Voice of the Charmer</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V2">CHAPTER V. <span class="smcap">The Best Girl-friend</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI2">CHAPTER VI. <span class="smcap">The Charm Remembered</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII2">CHAPTER VII. <span class="smcap">Petrol and the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII2">CHAPTER VIII. <span class="smcap">Rations and the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX2">CHAPTER IX. <span class="smcap">Champagne and the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X2">CHAPTER X. <span class="smcap">Her Bridal Night</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI2">CHAPTER XI. <span class="smcap">His Bridal Night</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII2">CHAPTER XII. <span class="smcap">Shrapnel and the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII2">CHAPTER XIII. <span class="smcap">Vigil</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV2">CHAPTER XIV. <span class="smcap">Home and the Charm</span></a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV2">CHAPTER XV. <span class="smcap">The Charm Acknowledged</span></a><br /> +<a href="#POSTSCRIPT">POSTSCRIPT. <span class="smcap">The Charm Confessed</span></a><br /> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + + +<p><a href="#illus1">Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet</a></p> + +<p><a href="#illus2">"It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I was crashing—"</a></p> + +<p><a href="#illus3">She stood there as if frozen and said "Away from here!" and in her heart +exclaimed, "Away from him!"</a></p> + +<p><a href="#illus4">And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the Sachet of the +Disturbing Charm</a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>THE COMING OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<blockquote><p>"Yet I am bewitched with the rogue's company; if the rascal had +not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged; it +could not be else; I have drunk medicines."</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Shakespeare.</span></p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The letter said:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>... And this discovery, sent herewith, will mark an Epoch in +the affairs of the world!</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Half the trouble in that world arises from the fact that +human beings are continually falling in Love</i> ... with the +wrong people. <i>Sir, have you ever wondered why this should +be?</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>The old Professor of Botany stood looking at this mysterious typewritten +letter, addressed to him, with the rest of his large mail, at the hotel +in Western France where he was staying in the fourth autumn of the War +with his young niece and secretary. He smiled as he came to the last +words. "Had he ever wondered!" How many nights of his youth had been +wasted in stormily "wondering——?" Strangers who write to celebrities +do stumble on intimate matters sometimes.</p> + +<p>He read on:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Why should one girl set her affections upon the man who of +all others will make her the worst possible husband? All her +friends foresee, and warn her. She herself realizes it vaguely. +But to her own destruction she loves him. What has caused this +catastrophe? Some small and secret Force; one microbe can +achieve a pestilence.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>"Yes, indeed," murmured Professor Howel-Jones, nodding his massive old +white head. He had been on the point of tossing the letter into the +waste-paper basket, but something made him read on.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Another young man, why must he desire the one pretty woman +who can never give him happiness? She is 'pure as ice, chaste +as snow' ... dull as ditch-water; he, full of fire and dreams. +He swears he'll teach her to respond to Passion; marries her. +Another tragedy!</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>How like himself again, the Professor mused, going back to the days when +he had worn his Rugby International cap with more pride than he now wore +his foreign degrees. That memory set him staring out of the big +balconied window of his room, over the wide French lagoon, past the +barrier of sandhills with their pointing phare, to where, miles away, +the irregular white line of the Atlantic rollers crashed and spouted on +the reefs. They had been crashing out those thunderous questions to the +sands on his football days, they would be tossing their appeals to the +sky long after his learning and his Nobel Prize were forgotten. Why, +then, should an anonymous correspondent remind him of old unrest?</p> + +<p>For all that, he went on reading:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Each of us knows a list of these stories. How avert them? By +seeking out and planting only in the right soil the root of +good or evil, the Love-germ. All through the ages Man has +recognized its existence; the ancients with their philtres and +amulets. Shakespeare embodies it in an herb. We moderns accept +it as an enigma; have you never heard it said of a woman</i>, 'She +is not actually pretty, but she has the Disturbing Charm, +whatever it is'?"</p></blockquote> + +<p>"The Disturbing Charm!" ... Ah, he knew it! <i>She</i> had possessed it, the +girl he had never married, the girl who had passed him over for his +brother the sea-captain, and who had become the mother of Olwen, his +niece. Olwen would be coming in a few minutes to straighten and sort all +those drifts of paper on the roomy work-table which no hand but hers, in +the whole of the hotel, was allowed to touch. He thought, half-amusedly: +"Better not let that little Olwen get hold of this letter."</p> + +<p>The letter ended:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Sir, you shall not be worried with technicalities. Believe +only this, that the life study of the writer of this letter has +at last been crowned with success. In the small packet enclosed +there is sealed up the result of years of Research, with +directions for its use. The inventor lacks courage for +experimenting. But you, learned Sir, you, the gifted author of +'The Loves of the Ferns,' will not shrink from responsibility +in the cause of Science.</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Should you wish to procure more of the invention, there is +enclosed the address of a box at a newspaper office where you +may apply.</i></p> + +<p>"<i>With all good wishes from</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Your obedient servant</i>,</p> + +<p>"<i>The Inventor.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>A deep genial laugh broke from the old man's wide chest.</p> + +<p>He threw the letter and its enclosure on to the table, on the top of his +notes for the chapter on "Edible Fungi."</p> + +<p>"Mad—sentimental mad!" he commented. "Most lunatics think themselves +inventors, that's why most inventors are considered lunatics." He drew +up a chair and began making hay of the papers before him, in search of +the other file of notes.</p> + +<p>The large room which the Professor had had cleared of the bed and most +of the other furniture was full of air and sunshine and of that polished +cleanliness which few English rooms achieve. White walls and parquet +floor shone like mirrors, mirrors like diamonds; the glass of the open +windows was clear as the morning air that lay between the hotel and the +pine-forest on the one side, the lagoon on the other. The resinous sigh +of the pines mingled with the warm, lung-lifting breath of the sea. It +was a glorious morning—too glorious for work indoors....</p> + +<p>Professor Howel-Jones looked hard at his notes, but for once he scarcely +saw them. He knew that the letter he had just read was the work of a +sentimental lunatic, but for all that it had set a string vibrating. As +the old man sat there, his brown eyes abstracted under the thatch of +hair as white as seeding clematis, he looked like some clean-shaven +modern Druid seeing visions. He did, at that moment, see a vision.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>He saw an endless procession of those people who have loved or married +(or both) the wrong person.</p> + +<p>He saw the lads who have chosen out of their class; barmaids, "bits of +fluff."</p> + +<p>He saw the girls who have married out of their generation.</p> + +<p>He saw the flirts, who wear an attachment as they wear a hat, tied for +life to the affection that is true as steel. (Dreadful for both of +them!)</p> + +<p>Also the young men who treat Love as a cross between a meal and a +music-hall joke, plighted to the shy idealists.</p> + +<p>He saw the Bohemian married to the curate.</p> + +<p>Likewise the attractive young rake, fettered to the frump.</p> + +<p>He saw the women born for motherhood, left lonely spinsters for want of +charm to attract.</p> + +<p>He saw the mothers who sighed for freedom, resenting the nursery.</p> + +<p>He saw the Anything, wedded to the Anything <i>But</i>.</p> + +<p>Yes; he saw for that moment nothing but the wholesale gigantic Blunder +of the mis-mating of the world.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>No doubt it was all crystallized for him in one tender image; Olwen's +dead mother, the girl he should have married. He sighed and smiled.</p> + +<p>"Pity there's no putting things right, as that lunatic suggests," he +thought. "There would be an invention worth boasting about! Wireless +wouldn't be in it, or X-rays. Pity it isn't all true...."</p> + +<p>A tap at the door interrupted his musings. The softest of girl's voices +asked, "Are you ready for me, Uncle?"</p> + +<p>"Yes!" he called out, jerking himself back into the world of realities. +"Come in, Olwen."</p> + +<p>Olwen Howel-Jones came in.</p> + +<p>A small, but daintily made girl of nineteen. Just a handful of softness +in a skimpy one-piece frock. A pale, three-cornered morsel of a face set +off by sleek hair as black as her little French boots. Large eyes that +seemed sometimes brown, sometimes grey; a mouth tremulous, but vivid as +a red carnation—such was Olwen. She brought a ripple of Youth into that +bare temple of Science that was her uncle's study. Something else she +brought—a breath of tension, of impatience. A man would have passed it +over; not so a woman. Already one woman in the hotel had said to +herself, "I wonder who it is that child's so desperately in love with?"</p> + +<p>Had she been in the room at the moment, that woman might have seen the +answer to her question flame suddenly into the young girl's face as she +stepped up to the table by the window. Under the balcony there was a +sound of footsteps. Olwen pushed aside a great jar full of arbutus that +stood at the further edge of the table.</p> + +<p>"That's in your light, Uncle," she said.</p> + +<p>The Professor's back was to her as the figures passed quickly out from +below the balcony. He caught a glimpse of the two wounded British +officers swinging off towards the <i>plage</i>. He caught the gleam of +scarlet on khaki; heard a snatch of the rather husky boyish laughter of +one of them; a scrap talk of the other. In a resonant voice with that +particularly dominant form of accent, Scots with a dash of Canadian, +there floated up through the clear morning air this somewhat arrested +announcement:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"I'm the finest judge of women in Europe."</p></blockquote> + +<p>This the Professor caught, vaguely. What he did not catch was the +sudden, still alertness into which there seemed to spring the whole body +of the girl behind him. She was "aware" from head to foot; her white +throat seemed to stretch, her whole being to strain; listening. The +footsteps passed, the husky charming laugh of the one, the loud +confident voice of the other.... Life relaxed again in Olwen; +mechanically her hands began sorting papers. No; the Professor had not +noticed, her male relatives being avowedly the worst observers of a +girl's psychology ... even had he seen, he probably would not have +guessed which of the two young men who had gone by was responsible for +that sudden transitory illumination of his niece's face; whether it was +the black-eyed Staff Captain who had lost an arm, or the blonde R.F.C. +pilot who had been shot down last April.... Well, they'd both gone now; +nothing more of them to be seen until the <i>déjeuner</i>....</p> + +<p>Olwen dragged her eyes back to the disorder of the writing-table; she +tossed up her head with a rather forced sprightliness, and laughed.</p> + +<p>"<i>What</i> a mess! Worse than ever, and I'd put everything so beautifully +tidy last night! You <i>are</i> dreadful!"</p> + +<p>"Never mind, Olwen <i>fach</i>," he said, with a hand on her shoulder. "There +won't be much work done this morning. I'm going into the woods. Just +hand me my specimen-case ... ah, here. And file the June numbers of that +Danish magazine—where on earth did I put 'em?—ah, there. Then there +are a couple of letters to copy into the book, and that's all. You can +come on and find me; I shall be where we went yesterday with Mrs. +Cartwright and that young What's-his-name, the flying officer."</p> + +<p>He set aside the two letters to be copied, planting upon them, as a +paper weight, one of the enormous pine-cones that he had picked up in +the forest. Then he slung on his specimen-case, took up his indented +grey hat, smiled and nodded to the girlish figure at the table, and went +out.</p> + +<p>Olwen, left alone, stretched her arms over her head. "<i>Oh!</i>" she sighed, +desperately. She moved the jar of arbutus into place again; picked out a +spray, dark-leafed, berried with scarlet and orange, tried it against +the dull serge of her frock. Then she tilted her chair back so that she +could just see herself in one of the gilt-framed mirrors. It showed her +a forlorn little face.</p> + +<p>"He'd never <i>look</i> at me, I know," she told herself.</p> + +<p>She thrust the spray of arbutus back into water and turned to her work +listlessly enough.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Half an hour later the listlessness had finished.</p> + +<p>A miracle had begun to work!</p> + +<p>For the Professor's niece and secretary was pouring breathlessly over a +letter that she had found on the table under a file of notes for J. +Howel-Jones's great work on Agarics.</p> + +<p>With shining credulous eyes she turned from that typewritten letter to +the little packet that had been enclosed in it. Then she turned to the +letter again. She read:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Half the trouble in the world arises from the fact that +human beings are continually falling in love</i> ... with the +wrong people."</p></blockquote> + +<p>She read the astonishing suggestion:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Each of us knows a list of these stories. How avert them? By +seeking out and planting only in the right soil the root of +good or evil, the Love-germ.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>She read further, this profoundly hopeful comment:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Have you never heard it said of a woman</i>, 'She is not pretty, +but she has the disturbing charm, whatever it is'?"</p></blockquote> + +<p>Finally she read this, the sentence that set her trembling:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>In the small packet enclosed there is sealed up the result of +years of Research, with directions for its use.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>It lay in her hand, the packet which she had taken up as gingerly as if +it had been turpinite, or something else capable of blowing her out +through the window and past the long wooden pier, across the sparkling +<i>Baissin</i>, over the sandhills with their lighthouse and into the Bay of +Biscay where those rollers foamed and roared....</p> + +<p>The old Scientist had said "Madness!" This girl longed to accept every +word of it; partly, perhaps, because every loving woman secretly +believes there must be some Power of this kind, could she but find +it—the power to compel the love she covets. Here it was.</p> + +<p>Hastily she broke the wrapping; it disclosed an inner packet and a +paper. In small characters there was written on the paper:</p> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Directions for Use.</span></p> + +<p>"This charm must be worn, <i>hidden</i>, about the person of him or +her who wishes to test its efficacy.</p> + +<p>"It may be hidden about the dress or person of someone who does +not know of its properties; its power will work, nevertheless.</p> + +<p>"A small portion of the charm will suffice.</p> + +<p>"Constant use does not wear away its power."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Olwen, bending closely over the inner packet, sniffed at the pleasant +musky scent that rose from it.</p> + +<p>"<i>Oh!...</i>" she breathed.... Were those steps outside the passage?... She +sprang up.... Swiftly, almost guiltily, she dragged down the low collar +of her frock; she thrust the packet and paper into her bosom. They +crackled against the soft mauve ribbons of her underbodice.</p> + +<p>"Supposing I'd <i>got</i> it!" she thought, and her whole heart lifted. She +pressed her hands to her breast.</p> + +<p>Supposing that under her own small and fevered hands (dimpled, faintly +stained from the carbon of her typewriter) she held it, that recipe for +setting right the Blunder of the world! Ah, if she'd got hold of it +really, the Love-germ, the microbe of mischief and delight!</p> + +<p>The Disturbing Charm itself!</p> + +<p><i>Then</i> what would come of it?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE ACCEPTING OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What I can do, can do no hurt to try."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>That day, since the Professor chose (as he often did) to give lunch a +miss while he wandered and pottered about in the Forest, he sent his +niece into <i>déjeuner</i> alone. Her he never allowed to miss a meal; he +held that young people must eat plenty and often.</p> + +<p>Bareheaded, with a scarlet knitted coat over her frock, the girl +threaded her way through the little round iron-legged tables and past +the tubs of flowering cactus outside the piazza of the hotel. She pushed +open a window and entered the big light <i>salle</i>. All one wall of it +seemed to be windows from ceiling to floor, giving on to the <i>plage</i> and +to that stretch of lagoon, and sandhills, pointed by that lighthouse. +The other high walls were panelled with mirrors that reflected a dozen +times the hanging chandeliers, the rococo gilded curves of carving, the +moving heads of the visitors already at the tables.</p> + +<p>The reflections of little Olwen's own head and shoulders, black-and-red +like a lady-bird, appeared repeated in the picture; she did not see it.</p> + +<p>It was another image that she sought....</p> + +<p>Her bright glance, searching the thronged and buzzing place, fell on two +empty chairs at the long table that ran down the middle of the room.</p> + +<p>Ah! "They" weren't in for lunch, then? Nothing to be seen of "Them" +until the <i>dîner</i>, perhaps. With a sigh of resignation Olwen Howel-Jones +turned to the table for two near the end window where she was accustomed +to sit with her Uncle.</p> + +<p>But before she sat down, the tall Englishwoman in brown, who was sitting +at the little table next to hers, caught the girl's eyes, smiled, +nodded, and with a swift leaning forward of a supple body that made her +look like the figurehead of a vessel, accosted her in a deep, rather +attractive voice.</p> + +<p>"I say! Are you alone today? So am I. Have your lunch at my table, won't +you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! thank you, Mrs. Cartwright; I'd like to," said the girl, pleased. +She took the chair opposite.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, who had been at the hotel for some days before the +Howel-Joneses had arrived, was the widow of an Indian Army officer, the +mother of two boys now at school in England, and a journalist under +several names.</p> + +<p>This was why, when she said she was as hungry as a hunter because she +had been working like a nigger all the morning, Olwen asked her, with a +shy smile, "Were you being 'Miss Claudia Crane' or the 'Wanderer through +Western France'?"</p> + +<p>"For a change, neither," returned Mrs. Cartwright cheerfully over the +omelette which the frail little Italian waiter had brought to her. "I +actually went back to being 'Domestica' and I turned out two thousand +words of wisdom on ration-recipes—just for the pleasure of charging +them eight times what my price used to be when I navvied for that paper +regularly. What have you been doing—taking down sheaves of notes from +that wonderful-looking old Welsh Nationalist, your uncle?"</p> + +<p>The Professor's niece, as she answered that she had done nothing but +tidy up and answer letters, was still absorbed by the thought of that +epoch-making letter that she had read before she had even seen that it +had not been left there for her to copy with the others. Her whole being +was so taken up by the memory of what the letter had claimed for the +powers of that hidden packet (now drawing warmth from the softness of +her breast where it lay) that she only had half an ear for the talk of +the woman opposite to her.</p> + +<p>The Disturbing Charm.... Could it be anything but a fairy-tale? How many +of that heterogeneous collection of people gathered there in that very +dining-room—the English visitors, the little knot of uniforms on leave, +the French family parties—how many of them would laugh incredulously if +they were told what she, the celebrity's niece, was treasuring at that +moment inside the bosom of her frock?</p> + +<p>There she sat, demurely eating a plateful of those Edible Fungi of whose +forest lives her Uncle made such a study. Yes, she sat hiding something +that might change not only the current of her life, but of their lives +as well. Perhaps it was true. What a thought!</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"Some new people here today," chatted Mrs. Cartwright, who never seemed +to look at anyone or anything in a room (Olwen had noticed that) but +whom few details escaped; just as her eyes did not seem to be glancing +about, so her lips hardly moved; but they had the habit of letting fall +comment after comment, softly, casually, on every one of those details +that the eyes above had noticed. "What a typical Hotel Spinster that is +in the corner there! You can just see her over that young French +soldier's head when he ducks to tuck in his napkin; yes, that survival +in the expensive tweeds and the hair-net. Stays so old-fashioned that +when she bends she comes away from the top of them as if it were over +the rim of a vase into which she's been poured. How fatal it is to allow +oneself to crystallize into the mode of the year when one was +twenty-one! (But you, lucky child, don't even know what that mode is +going to be.) English? Yes, of course. No wonder Prévost calls England +'that positive reservoir of old maids'!"</p> + +<p>"Poor thing!" murmured Olwen, glancing at the new-comer, and of whom she +now caught a clearer glimpse. She saw a woman of perhaps thirty-four or +five, with uninteresting brown hair, elaborately dressed, an equally +uninteresting brown face with a large nose and timid eyes that wandered +from face to face.</p> + +<p>Olwen thought, "No; I can't imagine anybody liking her—in <i>that</i> way!" +Then she thought with a little start, "But if it were true—if all women +were allowed even a tiny grain of that Charm, there would be no such +thing as an 'Hotel Spinster.' No old maids in the world! How lovely!"</p> + +<p>"Enter several characters from a French novel by Abel Hermant," pursued +Mrs. Cartwright, as the door of the <i>salle</i> nearest to their table swung +open and admitted two ladies in deepest mourning, an old gentleman with +a red speck in his button-hole, and a boy of four. "The son of those old +people has just 'fallen on the field of honour'; the lovely young +Madonna is his widow; that's his little boy. What a splendid child!"</p> + +<p>The little French boy that followed his grown-ups so sedately down the +room was as dark as a damson and clad in a white tunic that showed his +dimpled arms and his strong brown legs. He left a wake of smiles. The +Hotel Spinster put out a finger and touched him as he went by.</p> + +<p>"There. I knew she'd do that," commented Mrs. Cartwright; that deep soft +voice of hers running out in the sort of monologue that scarcely moved +her lips. "That woman's fonder of children than anyone here, and a +better hand with them, I bet. Did you see the little boy smile back at +her? Only at <i>her</i>. Yet Fate has decreed that she's never to have a +chick or child (though what point 'a chick' would have I never could +fathom). Private means. Stodgy connections in Debrett. Left with a house +of her own, probably, crammed with mahogany and Coalport—and no man's +ever looked at her in her life."</p> + +<p>"Dreadful!" murmured little Olwen; and her hand went up involuntarily to +her breast.</p> + +<p>(If that letter was true, what a gift she had it in her power to bestow +upon that woman; upon any woman!)</p> + +<p>"The latest in British officers, I see," ran on Mrs. Cartwright, +pursuing the nonchalant soft stream of comment as she pursued her lunch. +"Staying here on his pay. Giving as much for one <i>déjeuner</i> here as +would keep him for half a week at some little pension in the town, where +he ought to be. <i>Very</i> new; <i>very</i> temporary commission. He had a talk +with me in the lounge just now. A nice frank little Cockney. Told me he +was a shop-assistant before he joined. '<i>And the next, Madame?</i>' Poor +lad! The next is that he's learned what it is to be considered IT, and +what the insides of the best hotels are like, and the chief seats at +revues. He's learned Bubbly-tastes on Beer-pay. Overdrawn everywhere. +What <i>will</i> he go back to in civil life, if he goes back? Another +tragedy of the war. Dozens of them!... Pleasant little pink face, +too.... His only hope would be to get some profiteer's heiress to marry +him——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he might do that," agreed little Olwen, again conscious of that +packet at her breast. She looked down the tables at the rosy, +undistinguished young face of the Second Lieutenant of whom Mrs. +Cartwright had been murmuring. One of the waiters was deferentially +endeavouring to understand this British officer's French. The boy looked +self-conscious; at sea. Even a man might be glad enough of some magic +that could bring him Love and Fortune, thought Olwen. Some men were +without charm, just as some other men—ah, yes!—were all Charm.</p> + +<p>Here Mrs. Cartwright, still seeming to look another way, followed the +young girl's glance as it turned again to the objective that it first +had sought—to the two empty places at the long table.</p> + +<p>"Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas have gone into Bordeaux for the day," +commented Mrs. Cartwright. "I hope they'll bring me back the +fountain-pen ink and the 'Vie Parisienne,' and the brown darning silk +that I commissioned them to get——" and here, quickly, she turned away +as if to gaze out of the window at the little motor-boat that was making +its way up the lagoon, where the tide was high, to the wooden pier. +Actually, her movement was to avoid seeming to stare at the face of the +girl before her, where Consciousness had again flamed out into a live +and lovely red.</p> + +<p>"So <i>that's</i> it ..." she thought.</p> + +<p>"I <i>wish</i> I didn't blush!" Olwen Howel-Jones was scolding herself +angrily. "I <i>am</i> a little idiot to blush at the sound of the man's name! +Nobody in the whole world thinks of doing such a thing nowadays; it's +like wearing your hat on the back of your head! Yet here I am, going on +like this as if it were <i>Eighteen</i> Seventeen! I <i>do</i> wish to goodness I +had another sort of skin. Mrs. Cartwright might easily have +<i>thought</i>——!"</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Cartwright was talking pleasantly on about the journey to +Bordeaux; about the forest of Les Pins, the air of it....</p> + +<p>"Such a becoming place, too," she laughed. "Makes you feel well; look +well. May I make a personal remark, Miss Howel-Jones? You yourself are +getting twice as pretty as when you came here."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," protested the enraptured girl. "No one could—no one has ever +called me pretty!"</p> + +<p>"No? But they will. Perhaps you are only just growing up to it," said +Mrs. Cartwright with a very kind glance into the face opposite to her. +"So many people make a virtue of blurting out unpleasant truths; why +shouldn't one tell the truths that aren't unpleasant? Today (I saw it +when you came in) you are quite lovely. You look as if a charm had +touched you."</p> + +<p>Little Olwen's whole heart went suddenly out in emotion and gratitude +towards the woman who had said this thing.</p> + +<p>Only the very young can realize how much they mean—the very first +compliments to the very young girl! Especially to the very young girl in +Love; she who feels the special need of beauty, the special need of +encouragement to think herself beautiful.</p> + +<p>And now here was a clever woman (who knew what men admired, and who had +seen so many lovely people) pronouncing her, Olwen, to be "quite +lovely."</p> + +<p>Oh, Event!</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>As she went up after luncheon to her room—the replica of her Uncle's +study, with its parquet floor and high balconied window—she felt there +was nothing she could not have done for this Mrs. Cartwright.</p> + +<p>To do something for other people; that was the wish that filled the +child's heart in its overflowing mood.</p> + +<p>Throwing a look to her hair and eyes in the glass, she thought of the +woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had classified so promptly as the Hotel +Spinster. She thought of that woman's meaningless but "good" clothes, of +the hungry eyes which she fastened upon that little French boy seated at +table with his mother. How the Spinster had watched that mother bending +over her child, turning his chair, showing him how to hold his little +silver spoon shaped like a wine-taster, folding his napkin for him; ah, +how she'd watched!</p> + +<p>"Poor, poor thing!" thought the soft-hearted Olwen. "Anyone could see +how she would love a little child of her own——"</p> + +<p>And then she thought of the other rather "out of it" guest at that +hotel; the very young New Army subaltern whom Mrs. Cartwright had said +was living a life to which he hadn't been brought up and which he must +leave again unless he could find a rich wife. Not an attractive type, +thought Olwen (forgetting that for her at the moment there existed only +one masculine type that showed any attraction whatsoever). It wasn't +likely, she considered, that he would find anyone to care about <i>him</i>.</p> + +<p>"Poor boy!" She felt quite motherly. For she was the type of girl whom +personal emotion drives outwards to include the world in her thoughts, +rather than the commoner type of lover who is driven inwards, upon +concentrated narrowed sympathies. Ever since she had come to that hotel +and had fallen in love, Juliet-fashion, with the first glance at a +good-looking male face seen across a dinner-table, the little creature +had longed for everyone, not only herself, to be lucky in Love.</p> + +<p>She found it horrible that in this supreme matter everything must be +left to Fate, to Chance, to the merest Toss-up.</p> + +<p>No woman could lift a finger to help either her own love-affair or +anybody else's. The pity of it!</p> + +<p>But wait——Again the delighted thought thrilled her——If that discovery +were true?... The Disturbing Charm! If that could really help. <i>If</i> ... +after all?</p> + +<p>What was it that Mrs. Cartwright had said to her?</p> + +<p>"<i>You look as if a charm had touched you.</i>"</p> + +<p>Could that have meant more than her friend had known?</p> + +<p>Olwen threw another wondering, searching look into her glass.... Was it +her imagination, or did she look prettier already than she had ever +before seen herself? <i>Oh....</i></p> + +<p>She stood there, reflected; an image of Uncertainty hovering between +belief and doubt. "Uncle wouldn't believe a word of it, I'm sure," she +told herself. "I'm sure he thought he'd thrown the letter away. He may +be quite right, of course. It sounds nonsense. Yet——"</p> + +<p>("<i>As if a charm had touched you</i>," Mrs. Cartwright said, knowing +nothing.)</p> + +<p>"The writer of the letter said it was the result of years of research," +pondered Olwen. "If he could give years, surely I can give just—just a +<i>try</i>?"</p> + +<p>She paused, hands clasped upon her breast.</p> + +<p>"Shall I? Shall I?... Supposing I tried the effect of the Charm upon +somebody else, first? Somebody here? There are at least two people +besides myself in this hotel whom it could help...."</p> + +<p>Then she thought defiantly, "The inventor said he shirked +responsibility. Well, <i>I</i> wouldn't! If it doesn't do any good—well! +There's no <i>harm</i> done! I——"</p> + +<p>Another second's pause. Then the decision.</p> + +<p>"I will. Yes! I <i>will</i> try it!"</p> + +<p>Half believing, half longing to believe, and wholly excited by the +thing, the girl began busying herself as if in answer to some mysterious +Command.</p> + +<p>She opened a drawer of her toilette-table, taking out a square +work-basket in which reels, scissors, thimble, and darning skeins were +packed into the smallest possible compass; Olwen being as neat in her +habits as her uncle was chaotic. From another corner of the drawer she +took a carefully rolled-up length of the mauve satin ribbon she used +for slotting through her underclothes. From this she cut enough to sew +up into a tiny sachet.</p> + +<p>Then she sat by the window and stitched, the young Welsh girl into whose +busy, dimpled hands there had fallen this maybe tremendous Power. While +the autumn sun glowed redly on the bodies of those pines without, while +the border of far-off Biscay rollers tossed their cloud-like columns of +white against the sky-line, she sat at her needle like a Fate with a +face of a grave-eyed child, the mouth of a flower.</p> + +<p>In a few minutes she had the square of satin ready for filling. She drew +the packet from her bosom; opened it with a hundred precautions; poured +into the sachet a little—a very little!—of the musky scented powder.</p> + +<p>The packet itself she bestowed at the bottom of her work-basket, locking +that carefully away. Yes; some of that was for <i>her</i> to wear again, but +not now. Later on.</p> + +<p>The curious fact persisted that she would wish to see first the effect +of that Charm upon another wearer.</p> + +<p>She had stitched up the sachet before she had answered her own question, +"Whom shall I give it to first?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>THE LAUNCHING OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A field untilled, a web unwove,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A flower withheld from sun or bee,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An alien in the courts of Love——"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Kipling.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Accident decided it for her.</p> + +<p>As she was running down the broad red and white steps at the front of +the hotel, Olwen met, coming up, the woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had +noticed at lunch for her hopeless well-off spinsterishness. The Spinster +carried a guide book, a flowering-plant in a pot with paper round it, +and a bound map.</p> + +<p>She wore over those expensive tweeds of hers those furs which none but +the young and radiant should venture to wear; grey squirrel. Her face +was blank.</p> + +<p>It lighted into a tentative smile as the young girl turned and ran back +a few steps to the top, waiting for her.</p> + +<p>"Good afternoon; we mustn't cross on the stairs," Olwen called. "It's +unlucky!"</p> + +<p>Was it her fancy, or did the Spinster look pathetically pleased because +some one had said "good afternoon" and had made a playful remark?</p> + +<p>Up the steps she hastened, rather stiffly, her figure being of the kind +that seems all clothes.</p> + +<p>When she got to the top she said, with a shy, effusive little laugh, +"Oh, are you superstitious?" and before Olwen could answer, she hurried +on, "Oh, can one order tea here, at any time one likes? Could I order it +in my own room, do you think?"</p> + +<p>"I think so," said Olwen, surprised.</p> + +<p>In spite of the gap in their ages, this woman of thirty-five seemed to +speak as if she were a new girl, just arrived at school. In spite of her +"set" figure, her mode of dressing, her big nose, there was—yes! +something of suppressed schoolgirlishness about her yet. Some are born +with the saddle to wear, some with the spur, says the proverb. This +Spinster had the look, not only of having been born with the saddle, but +of having been for years under the spur of others. Her timid eyes were +those of a dog who has been turned adrift. They fastened upon Olwen.</p> + +<p>"This is a lovely place, isn't it?" she hurried on as if afraid the girl +would leave her. "Have you been here long?"</p> + +<p>"About a week."</p> + +<p>"Oh, have you? I have only just come. I came just before lunch. I saw +you at lunch, with a tall lady in brown. Are you staying with her?"</p> + +<p>"No," Olwen said, "I'm here with my uncle; I am his secretary."</p> + +<p>"Oh, are you? How nice. I am not with anybody," volunteered the +Spinster. Clutching her guide-book and plant and fixing the girl with +that timid yet persistent eye, she seemed ready to stand there and talk +for half an hour. "You are the first person I have spoken to here. I'm +quite alone."</p> + +<p>These were the three words which—with all the unspoken, unconscious +pathos behind them—went to Olwen's heart. She tightened her fingers +upon what she held in her hand, and she thought to herself, "<i>Here's</i> +someone who needs the Charm!" Then she thought, caught back a little, "I +can't give it just to the first person I meet. Oughtn't I to see a +little more of her, first?"</p> + +<p>The Spinster's next remarks seemed to fall in with this plan.</p> + +<p>"I oughtn't to keep you here talking, without any hat on.... Oh, d'you +always go without a hat in the woods?... I must just put this plant +down; do come into my room a minute, won't you? It's only on the first +floor, just at the top of the stairs; yes, do——"</p> + +<p>It was the best room in the hotel to which Olwen followed this new +acquaintance of hers; and it seemed crowded with belongings, all very +obviously costly, and all—curiously enough!—quite incredibly <i>new</i>.</p> + +<p>"Oh—couldn't you—couldn't you have tea with me?" was the Spinster's +next suggestion. "My name is Walsh; Agatha Walsh. Do have tea with me. +Please. I'll order some now——"</p> + +<p>She rang the waiter's bell; and in halting French she ordered the sallow +little Italian to bring up to her room tea for two.</p> + +<p>"<i>Simple?</i>" asked the waiter.</p> + +<p>"Oh—what does he mean?"</p> + +<p>"He means do you want just tea," explained Olwen, "or anything with it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! Everything there is. You like cake, don't you? Girls do," said the +Spinster with that timid, friend-hunting glance. "Jam, and pastries, and +things. Tell him to bring everything, please."</p> + +<p>"<i>Complet</i>," ordered little Olwen, feeling a woman of the world in +comparison with this stranger who was abashed before waiters.</p> + +<p>"Oh, how well you talk French," murmured the other. "Do sit down here. I +wonder if I shall ever be able to talk it quickly. I've never been in +France before, do you know? I——Isn't it funny? I have hardly ever been +<i>anywhere</i>!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Haven't</i> you?" said Olwen—who herself had known her native Wales, +Liverpool, the South Kensington Museum, and some other museums in Paris.</p> + +<p>The Spinster broke into further confidences. "Oh, no. You see, I lived a +very secluded life. I had to. I lived with an elderly cousin of mine in +Buckinghamshire, oh, quite in the country. Here she is."</p> + +<p>From her silver-strewn table the Spinster took an ornate oval frame. It +enclosed the portrait of an old lady in a Victorian cap of lace and +ribbons, with beetle-brows and a mouth of steel.</p> + +<p>"Yes, this is Miss Walsh; the same name as mine, you see. She never left +her house for the last fifteen years, you know. A beautiful house; such +grounds! We never went out of them, except the half-mile drive to church +every Sunday. And of course we scarcely ever saw anybody, except just +the Rector and the old Doctor," the Spinster confided to Olwen. "All +that money——But, poor thing, she was never really well. Of late years +she had to have everything done for her; everything!"</p> + +<p>"I suppose <i>you</i> had to do it!" volunteered Olwen, with a glance at the +portrait and a pang of pity for the woman who showed it to her. The girl +was too young to read the whole story as Mrs. Cartwright would have +done; soaring years of a woman's youth harnessed to the bath-chair of a +bitter-tongued tyrant in shawl and cap! But she guessed that the "poor +thing" might more appropriately be applied to Miss Walsh the younger.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well," said the Spinster, gently, "she only had me in the world. +Except her nephew. She quarrelled with him. He was very outspoken, +and—well, they quarrelled. He should have come in to her money, you +know. She made another will only just before she died, poor thing. +That's how——" She gave a gesture that seemed to take in the new +portmanteau on the floor, the winking silver-backed brushes on the +table, her own tweeds and furs, the wide view from the window, and the +waiter bringing in the tea-tray. "It all came to <i>me</i>!" concluded Miss +Walsh, diffident, amazed. "I can scarcely believe it <i>yet</i>! I couldn't +believe I could leave the place and go away for as long as I liked!"</p> + +<p>Olwen asked, "What brought you? Why did you come here?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! because there was nowhere for me to go. I went to London because +I'd only been there once in my life. Then I went over to Paris because +I'd never been there. Then I stuck a hat-pin into the guide-book to see +where I'd go next. It came out here. It seemed like Fate, didn't it? So +I came."</p> + +<p>Olwen looked at her as she poured out the tea. Her wrists clanked with +gold curb bracelets (of a pattern as obsolete as was the enormous brooch +of plaited gold and turquoises at her throat; the heavily set rings on +her fingers, no doubt jewellery of the late Miss Walsh). They were +chains that had fettered a patient slave—but she was a slave no +longer.</p> + +<p>"I'm so glad!" said little Olwen, impulsively.</p> + +<p>"Oh! Thank you." Her hostess smiled as gratefully as if the girl herself +had helped to alter that will. "I knew you were sympathetic. I could +<i>say</i> things to you. One can <i>talk</i> to some people, can't one?" she +added, as the waiter went out. "I thought at lunch what a sweet little +face you had, if you don't mind my saying so. There—there's a charm +about it! What is your name?... Olwen Howel-Jones.... Is your tea right? +I didn't even know they had proper tea in France now; my cousin never +would go Abroad because she said they gave you no tea.... Olwen! How +pretty. How old are you? You don't mind my asking, do you? Nineteen? I +was just nineteen when I went to live at the Grange—Miss Walsh's house. +Nineteen.... I always liked young people; but of course we never saw +any. My cousin disliked girls as a rule. Even the servants were quite +elderly. I—sometimes" she went on in a rush as of the pent-up +confidences of years, "I longed to see something young, do you know? I +suppose <i>you've</i> always.... Brothers and sisters? Lots of cousins? How +nice! And lots of friends, of course...."</p> + +<p>She stopped, she fixed her eyes musingly upon the dainty creature +helping herself to cherry <i>compote</i> and ended with a shy, quick +involuntary question.</p> + +<p>"Are you engaged to be married?"</p> + +<p>"Me?" exclaimed Olwen with a swift turn of her little black head against +the hotel easy chair. She laughed, with the traditional girlish +rejoinder, "Oh, dear, no! I don't suppose I——"</p> + +<p>It broke off short on her lips.</p> + +<p>Footsteps, two sets of footsteps, were tramping up the polished shallow +stairs outside the closed door. A man's voice rang out as it had rung +out that morning under her Uncle's balcony. That accent which was as +penetrating as Scots mist, as clear as Canadian frost, reached her ears +in the giving out of this dictum:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"What I demand in Women is, firstly——"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Here a door above slammed, cutting off the rest.</p> + +<p>Ah, thought Olwen, "They" were back again already, were "They"?</p> + +<p>This breathless thought made her lose the thread for a moment of what +this Miss Walsh, the wealthy waif, was pouring out to the first friendly +soul she had encountered in the place.</p> + +<p>Then the girl in love dragged herself back to that polished comfortable +room, that tea-table, that woman who had stuck a hat-pin into a +guide-book to decide where to go.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you know, I often used to wonder if I should be an old woman before +I'd ever made friends with anybody. I used to sit winding wool for my +cousin and looking out of the morning-room window at the rhododendrons. +Such rhododendrons! Every spring they came out ... a wall of pink! Then +they dropped their blossoms on the lawn ... a carpet of pink! Every +spring they came again. Not the same flowers; fresh flowers every +spring. Fresh flowers.... But the springs went by, and of course I knew +that I should never come young again——Oh, what is that?"</p> + +<p>For Miss Walsh, taking up the tea-pot, had caught sight of something +that Olwen had laid down on the tray while she spread the cherry jam on +her biscuits. Hastily Olwen picked it up again. It was the sachet into +which she had sewn the Disturbing Charm.</p> + +<p>In a flash she thought to herself: "Yes! she <i>is</i> the one! This poor +dear, who's never had anything! Before she's quite too old! Something +ought to be done!"</p> + +<p>"... Fifteen—sixteen of those springs," Miss Walsh was murmuring again, +"and such appleblossom. But looking at things alone makes spring so much +sadder than winter.... Of course, you'll never have to understand +that—my dear."</p> + +<p>Olwen was thinking definitely and finally, "I must try the Charm upon +her. I <i>will</i>. It's probably rubbish.... But if it isn't——! Now how do +I set about getting her to wear it? I can't say, '<i>Tuck this inside your +blouse and you needn't be lonely any more, you'll begin to have people +falling in Love with you!</i>' How shall I——?"</p> + +<p>The method seemed to dart ready-made into her head as she held out on +her pink palm the tiny square of mauve satin, scarcely larger than a +postage-stamp.</p> + +<p>She turned upon the Spinster the appealing smile that had made "little +Miss Howel-Jones" such a successful worker on the last Welsh Flag Day, +in Liverpool.</p> + +<p>"Will you buy one? I'm selling these," announced the inventive Olwen. +"They"—(then to herself, "<i>Quick, what shall I say?</i>") "It—it's for +the Croix Rouge."</p> + +<p>"Oh, is it? Oh, yes. What's it supposed to be? A scent sachet? How +pretty," exclaimed Miss Walsh, taking the thing in her hand. "Yes; of +course I'll buy one. Where is my little bag?" (Bag, of crocodile and +purple satin, produced.) "I'll give you something at once."</p> + +<p>The "something" proved to be a hundred-franc note.</p> + +<p>"Oh, no! Not all that!" gasped the impromptu Red Cross Flag seller. +"It's only a franc! I <i>can't</i> take any more!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but of course you can. It's for the soldiers," put in Miss Walsh, a +look of surprise crossing her mild, Roman-nosed face. "Of course you +must take it. I like giving things.... There! Where's the little sachet? +How sweet! Did you make it yourself? I must put it in among my +writing-paper." (Case produced, all Bond Street pig-skin and +gold-monogrammed A. W.)</p> + +<p>Olwen hesitated. Of course the Charm would be of no earthly good +<i>there</i>, even if it were of any good at all, she thought, half +fluttered, half ashamed of herself. One curious thing she had noticed +about this Charm already.</p> + +<p>Alone with it, the whole incredible theory seemed real. Brought into +contact with other people, it appeared nonsense. Still, since she was +going to give it a trial, she might as well do it properly. For a moment +she listened again to the lonely, talkative woman.</p> + +<p>"Oh, you know, I've always longed to give things! Only I've no one to +give to. Shopping is lovely, but not when it's only for oneself——"</p> + +<p>"No," absently from Olwen (who sometimes felt she had all Carnarvonshire +commissioning <i>her</i> to shop for them as soon as she got to town). "That +sachet——" she ventured presently, eyeing the case. "It's supposed to +be a mascot, you know. To bring you luck."</p> + +<p>"Oh?"</p> + +<p>"Perhaps you don't believe in it? But if you wouldn't mind.... To please +<i>me</i>," said Olwen. "I mean to please the Red Cross! If you'd <i>wear</i> it!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I must wear it, must I?" (Case opened; sachet pinned by a large +pearl bar to the front of the thick white satin shirt.)</p> + +<p>"Er——Not quite like that," from Olwen. "It—I believe it has to be +worn hidden. Out of sight somewhere."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. Very well." (Sachet unpinned, and refastened to the brocade +lining of the tweed coat.) "There!"</p> + +<p>"But you take off your coat in the evening, don't you?" demurred Olwen, +quite anxiously.</p> + +<p>Not alone this woman's history might be changed by the wearing of a +Charm, but her own. It was her love-story, Olwen's! for which that Charm +was to be put on trial, too. She drew breath quickly.</p> + +<p>"Miss Walsh! I'm so sorry to bother you! But it's something that has to +be <i>always</i> worn about you. Please would you mind pinning it right +inside your blouse? Or—or to the top of your stays! French people often +do wear a sachet there, don't they? Then I shall—I mean you'll always +be sure about it...."</p> + +<p>"Oh, very well!" agreed Miss Walsh, smiling. She turned her back +modestly upon Olwen, and by the movement of her elbows seemed to be busy +with countless fastenings. Then she reached for a gold lace-pin from +her pin-cushion. There were more jerks and fastenings-up, and presently +she turned smiling to the girl.</p> + +<p>"I have safety-pinned it right in <i>there</i>," she announced, patting a +slab of satin over Heaven (and Heaven alone) knew how many layers of +Jaeger, whale-bone, coutille, and solid white embroidery, and +long-cloth. "There! Will that be all right?"</p> + +<p>Olwen gave a little sigh; a breeze to carry the ship of this Adventure. +It was launched!</p> + +<p>"Thank you," she said. Then she glanced at the hundred franc note in her +hand. "But I do rather feel as if I'd got this under false pretences!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!" smiled the Spinster. "If the little mascot does really bring +me so much Luck, it will be worth a few more francs, won't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, indeed," agreed the demure Olwen, feeling as if she exchanged a +mental glance with the unknown Inventor of that Charm. "It will be worth +it."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE CHARM BEGINS TO WORK</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier',<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Doch weiter kommt man ohne ihr."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Boche Proverbs.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"No woman can get me to call her pretty," enunciated Captain Ross, +"until I've seen her walk."</p> + +<p>The fiat, delivered in that ice-ax voice of his, cut through the +polyglot murmur of the visitors gathered in the shining bare salon, all +mirrors and decorations of artificial iris. The voice continued to hold +forth.</p> + +<p>"Feet first; then figure. That's how it comes with me. Then hair. +Fairrrr hairrr. Must be fair-to-golden. A woman who isn't bland"—this +is how he pronounced it, but his hearers assumed it to mean blonde—"a +woman who isn't bland is only half a woman to me."</p> + +<p>This saying was given out on the evening of the day when the Charm had +fallen into the hands of Olwen Howel-Jones.</p> + +<p>She was sitting there at the time, on a red plush sofa next to her +Uncle, at the edge of the group formed by Mrs. Cartwright (who wore a +tawny-golden tea-gown and was knitting a khaki sock), Mr. Awdas, the +young flying officer who looked so appropriately like an eagle with his +bold features and the head that was so narrow in comparison with his +wide, wing-like shoulders, and Captain Ross, the one-armed Staff +Captain, who was discoursing to them on the subject of Women, of whom +(as he had been known to remark) he was the finest judge in Europe.</p> + +<p>Olwen's little jet-black head was buried in the current number of +"Femina," which she had picked up from the oval, crimson-covered table +in front of her, but she was devouring every word of the homily on +Women.</p> + +<p>That Captain Ross should notice a girl's feet was glad news; her own +feet being not merely tiny, but of a gratifying shapeliness. But her +heart seemed to sink suddenly down into the slippers that shod them, +when she heard the further "demmannd" that Beauty must be fair-haired. +Ah, he would never look at <i>her</i>, then!</p> + +<p>She never, apparently, looked at him. For, regarding this one man for +whom she would have given her eyes, the artless Welsh maiden had learnt +Mrs. Cartwright's art of seeing without seeming to do so.</p> + +<p>What she seemed to see were those glazed full-page French +fashion-plates.</p> + +<p>What she did see were every look and turn of the man at two arms-lengths +from her, lounging in the red plush chair with its ornate écru mats. +What she saw can be seen by each girl in love; "the Heart-wish +Incarnate," a glamorous, radiant creature indeed!</p> + +<p>And——What was really <i>there</i>?</p> + +<p>Let us borrow the eyes of the others, who were not in Love with this +Captain Ross, to describe him.</p> + +<p>Young Awdas, the flyer, would have told you, "<i>A top-hole fellow. Bucks +rather; but you get used to it. Capital chap.</i>"</p> + +<p>Professor Howel-Jones might have said, mildly, "<i>He has somewhat +definite opinions, even for a man of his youth; but we allow that to +those youngsters who have endured more in three years than we in +three-score.</i>"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, in writing to her sisters at home descriptions of every +one staying at Les Pins, had set down:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<i>Captain Ross. Special Reserve man. Keen soldier. Came over +from Canada to join in '14. Arm lost on the Somme. Shell-shock; +and gas—that's why he's here for his chest, which is bad +again.</i></p> + +<p>"<i>About 30; looks more. Thick-set, dark. Scarlet tabs suit him. +Imagine Charles Hawtrey when young and two stone lighter; +imagine a handsome black Tom-cat with a woman's mouth, from +which issues a strong accent with the eternal 'Is that +so—o—oh?' punctuating its speech; well, there you are. +Sometimes he seems entirely Canadian; at other moments the +complete Scot with every R burring like a cockchafer on a +window-pane.</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Right sleeve tucked into pocket. Amazingly quick and clever +at doing everything with left hand; getting notes out of case, +managing siphon, lighting cigar.</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Eyes, hard brown, watchful as a robin's (I don't think they +see anything, but he hates me).</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Would not be good-looking but for the lower half of his face; +that mouth really beautiful, tenderly curved and sensitive, and +constantly showing an even row of the milkiest teeth in the +world.</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Intensely sure of self (to put it kindly).</i></p> + +<p>"<i>Has the look that one recognizes as the trace of women's eyes +and lips upon his face, but nothing that counts up to now, I +think.</i>"</p></blockquote> + +<p>The man thus unknowingly summed up brought out his cigarette-case with +that clever left hand of his and proffered it first to the woman who had +summed him up and then to Jack Awdas.</p> + +<p>This was the tall blonde flyer, who was sitting beside her; a striking +young figure. A woman would have noticed first his eyes and the +changeful expressions that darted swift as racing planes across their +blueness. One was an eager, anticipatory look. "<i>What have you for me?</i>" +it demanded of Life. "<i>Will you be wonderful? Shall I be satisfied?</i>" +One was a look of joyous mastery. "<i>Love me</i>," it seemed to say to Fate +herself. "<i>Give me and tell me all that I ask, for I am impatient Youth, +and must be served.</i>" One was a look less often seen; it was the +"yonderly" look, the glance of those favoured (or cursed) with a glimpse +now and then beyond the kindly curtains of the Flesh and of Everyday.... +It seemed to question a surprised "<i>What? I can't quite see.... What?... +I heard something....</i>"</p> + +<p>Needless to say that the youth himself was entirely ignorant that any of +these signals could be read. Generally, he was healthily unconscious +that there was anything to be signalled.</p> + +<p>To the French people in that hotel he was known as Monsieur de l'Audace.</p> + +<p>His observer, his squadron, and several enemy airmen could have told you +that he deserved the nickname, but no other decoration had been granted +to him. In that last ghastly dive from the clouds he had so nearly lost, +too, everything that was his; however, health and strength and full +power of limb were returning now, and youth, and sleep o' nights, and +careless gaiety. Quite often now his laugh rang out; it was still a +trifle husky, as was his boyish, nonchalant voice. (One of his many +wounds had been in his throat.)</p> + +<p>"Go on, Ross," he jeered amicably. "Let's have some more of your +priceless pointers on the Sex. What was the one you gave me today going +along the sea-wall? Oh, yes; 'Never make love to a woman with a pink +chin; she's older than she looks.'"</p> + +<p>"Why, that's quite true," put in the deep voice of Mrs. Cartwright, +mildly. She crossed one long, gold-draped leg over the other, and threw +an amused glance through the cigarette-haze at the finest judge of women +in Europe. "D'you mind if I put that into a book, Captain Ross?"</p> + +<p>"You'd better not put anything I say into any book you write," the Staff +Captain advised her, with a short laugh (while Olwen, head still deep in +the journal, drank in every syllable of the assured voice). "Your public +wouldn't stand for it, Domestica."</p> + +<p>"This would not be a 'Domestica' book," returned the writer, with a +little tilt of her brown head over her knitting. "This is a little book +I'm going to bring out seven years hence, for my own two boys. A sort of +manual to help them when they go courting. 'The Guide to the Girl,' I +shall call it."</p> + +<p>"The title has one very all right sound," laughed Captain Ross. "But if +you'll pardon my saying so, Mrs. Cartwright, I guess I could compile +that book considerably better than what you could."</p> + +<p>"Not you!" declared Mrs. Cartwright. "Most of those manuals are written +from the point of view of the man. That's where they fall short. <i>I</i> +should make the Girl herself do the advising. I should let her give the +'pointers,' as Mr. Awdas calls them. I should divide them into little +chapters: '<i>Of Proposing</i>,' '<i>Of Presents</i>,' '<i>Of In-Laws</i>,' '<i>Of +Caresses</i>'——"</p> + +<p>"'<i>Of Caresses</i>,'" took up Captain Ross, with another laugh, "is going +to get you banned by the libraries."</p> + +<p>"Not it. I," said Mrs. Cartwright, knitting, "shall not treat the +subject in—in that way."</p> + +<p>"Then that manual of yours isn't going to help your boys a lot," +affirmed Captain Ross in his most final tone. "For, see here——"</p> + +<p>"Olwen <i>fach</i>," said the Professor, suddenly taking his pipe out of his +mouth and looking over the smudged black sheet of "La Patria," "isn't it +time for you to go to bed?"</p> + +<p>"Uncle!" came indignantly from behind the fashion-plates: "It's only +half-past nine!"</p> + +<p>A smile went round the little group of the English about that table; the +eyes of each turned upon Nineteen who was being treated as Ten years +old. She would have kept up the screen of her "Femina," but Mrs. +Cartwright, finishing off a row of her knitting, put it aside, and drew +nearer to the girl.</p> + +<p>"May I look at them with you?" she said, pleasantly, and the two shared +the fashion-drawings, while the men watched; Captain Ross, with a curl +of the lip and a remark about Women and their fairrrrm conviction that, +because clothes are drawn one way in a picture that's the way they'll +look when they've gotten them on.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright lifted her head quickly, but it was not to retort to +this. She had suddenly seen something (as usual, without looking at it) +that surprised her. Then she dropped her head again.</p> + +<p>"My dear!" she murmured to Olwen in an amazed little laugh. "Did you +ever know such a thing? There! Coming in through the dining-room door, +now! You can see her in the mirror, behind those French children playing +draughts. It's the Hotel Spinster we were looking at, at lunch today," +chattered Mrs. Cartwright in the soft stream that scarcely moved her +lips. "The woman I said had never had a man to look at her. Can I +believe my eyes? She's got a man with her now!"</p> + +<p>"Miss Walsh?" exclaimed Olwen, gazing with all her eyes into the mirror +that showed her this group.</p> + +<p>Miss Walsh, in a fur coat, had evidently just come in from the Forest; +she carried a bough of arbutus, and her cheeks were pink from walking in +the clear night air. Close beside her came the man—yes! the male, +masculine man who was her companion; the sturdy blue-clad French +sergeant who had been at the table d'hôte. Across the intervening groups +of people he was seen to be all smiles and gestures, the traditional +gallantry of his nation spoke in the very bend of his back as he opened +the door, bowed again, clicked his spurred heels. Miss Walsh was holding +out her hand; her lips parted, obviously in one of her characteristic +"Oh's"—the pink upon her cheeks deepened as she took leave of this +cavalier. One could almost hear her struggling French. She looked back +again; another bow, another click of the heels from her escort. Then the +sergeant marched back down the room, beaming satisfaction painted upon +every line of his face, bold, swarthy, and somewhat bull-necked. He was +what his own family described as "beau garçon"; a fine figure of a man. +He disappeared, through the ante-room, towards that wing of the hotel +inhabited by the management; Monsieur Leroux (bald, amiable, the shape +of a captive balloon), his three pigtailed daughters of exquisite +manners, and his alert wife (who ran everything—including him—in the +hotel).</p> + +<p>"Heavens!" ejaculated Mrs. Cartwright absently, as she took up her +knitting again, "that must have been Madame Leroux's nephew. Her +sister's son, the <i>artilleriste</i>. I heard all about him the other day. +Gustave Tronchet his name is. Madame told me that he was coming here <i>en +perme</i> as her guest, seeing she had no son, and that he loved to eat +well and to be <i>bien</i> generally. I suppose she is introducing him——!"</p> + +<p>"Some romance!" laughed Captain Ross, jerking his head towards the door +through which the fur-clad form of the lonely traveller had disappeared. +This was the first remark of his to which Olwen had paid scant +attention. As suddenly as if some one had called her, she sprang up. She +had dropped a kiss on her Uncle's thistle-down locks, had given her hand +to Mrs. Cartwright, had launched a shy glance and a "good night" in the +direction of the others, and had darted away, a slim sprite in grey with +touches of black, almost before the two young men could rise to their +feet.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright was still thinking of the stiletto-eyed French +manageress who had introduced her nephew to the occupant of the best +room in the hotel.</p> + +<p>"What family spirit!" she admired. "What sense of possibilities! What +respect for Power—I mean money. What an admirable nation they are.... +Will ours ever learn foresight and thrift from theirs?"</p> + +<p>"Ours—that is, mine—has family loyalty very strongly too," the +Professor joined in. "The Welsh, my dear lady, are as clannish in that +way as the French; they'll do anything for 'my nephew.'"</p> + +<p>"They've an eye skinned for the dollars as well," volunteered Captain +Ross, his robin-like eye twinkling as he took out a cigar. "What's that +saying—ah, yes, God made a Welshman, and God made a Jew, but thank God +he never made a Welsh Jew!"</p> + +<p>The Professor stiffened a little; and Mrs. Cartwright, seeing this, drew +the conversation back to the worldly aspects of germinating Romance....</p> + +<p>The drift of all these remarks would have been entirely lost upon Olwen +even had she stayed to hear them.</p> + +<p>For she knew better. She knew that it was not Madame Leroux, the +manageress, who was responsible for the coming together of a travelling +spinster and of a French soldier on leave. She, Olwen, knew what was +responsible for those attentions, that talk, that interested, +deferential smile on the part of the man who had attached himself to her +new-made friend. Olwen knew what had attracted him where no man had ever +been attracted before. Yes! She knew! This was the work of the Charm +that she herself had seen hidden away so near to an unsought heart....</p> + +<p>This nephew of a French hotel manageress ... of course he wasn't exactly +the sort of admirer who belonged in Granges with grounds full of +rhododendrons, but he was a <i>man</i>, triumphed Olwen. There'd be others, +people that Miss Agatha Walsh could think seriously about; but he was +the <i>beginning</i>! He'd shown the success of her experiment. The Charm +<i>could</i> work. That letter was <i>not</i> all nonsense! It was all true! And +since the Charm had worked for Miss Walsh, it would work for—well, +others! Joy, oh joy!</p> + +<p>Bursting with joy, in fact, the girl darted out of the <i>salon</i>, +scampering upstairs in all haste to overtake Miss Walsh, and to hear +more of this.</p> + +<p>She hoped to catch her up at her bedroom door, but already Miss Walsh +had gone in.</p> + +<p>Olwen knocked; was asked, "Who's there?"</p> + +<p>"Only me—Olwen!"</p> + +<p>"Come in," was the muffled answer. It came from behind a handful of Miss +Walsh's hair, quite abundant and almost pretty, now that she had removed +the flattening net and taken it all down. The first glance showed Olwen +that it was not just "down" for the night. There was a side glass in +Miss Walsh's hand; a thick loop of her locks was coiled up at the back, +ready for the side "bits" to be drawn across in a simpler fashion than +the upholstery of puffs and curls. Yes! She was seeing how she looked +with her hair done a different way! Ah, sign of the times, that could +spell only one thing: M—A—N!</p> + +<p>"I—I only came in to say good night to you," Olwen began (really +longing to ply with questions; how—how soon did IT work—what +happened——).</p> + +<p>Miss Walsh turned a face as transfigured as Olwen's own above her +quilted dressing jacket.</p> + +<p>She looked ten years younger. She held her head at almost the angle of +those who have <i>not</i> been born with the saddle. All fluttered and +flushed she was, but delighted; a once bleak landscape that a sun-ray +lightens. For it is your lifelong teetotaller who, rescued from Death, +perks up at the first sip of restorative. It was the elder Miss Walsh's +cloistered companion who was responding to that tonic: masculine +attention. She turned a new smile upon Olwen.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's you," she exclaimed, with new notes in her voice. Then she +broke into the breathless talk which was to her as new a function as +shopping for herself.</p> + +<p>"I've been out!" with a wave towards the arbutus-bough on her table. +"Oh, it is such a lovely night! Oh! You've no idea how glorious the +stars looked, peeping down between the branches of the pines! I've +<i>never</i> seen them so wonderful, never. I went for a stroll in the Forest +after dinner, do you know——Oh! You saw me come in? Oh, I never saw +you. Yes; I—I went with somebody——" she babbled on. "That Monsieur +Tronchet, the French soldier. He is a sergeant ... but everybody in the +Army is anything just now, aren't they? He showed me the Avenue leading +out into the woods.... Was it very extraordinary of me to go out for a +walk with him? Oh, I don't think it matters, do you? Everything's so +different ... in France. He spoke to me at dinner; I believe I'd taken +his place by mistake—then we talked——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Ah</i>," came softly from Olwen, standing there listening, listening to +her witness for the power of the Charm. It had forced this man to speak; +it had drawn him!... "Oh, and he's such a delightful person," Miss Walsh +poured out between gasps. "He has been telling me such a lot of the most +interesting things about himself and the War! He spoke slowly, when I +asked him. I could really understand most of it. He expresses himself so +wonderfully! The French all do, I suppose. But he finds the English so +sympathetic. Oh, and what do you think? You won't laugh, I know; you're +so sweet. I am going to be his <i>marraine</i>. God-mother, that is. They all +have them in the French Army, he tells me; somebody who just writes very +often and takes an interest. He told me he hadn't any. So I promised. We +are to write to each other when he gets back to the front. Oh, and +tomorrow—what do you think? He is going to take me across the lagoon in +the motor-boat!" breathed Miss Walsh, and her eyes were now those of a +child who has been promised a fairy treat. "I don't think any one has +ever taken me in a boat before. This is a wonderful place, isn't it? I +am so glad I came!—Oh, are you going to bed now? I shall see you +tomorrow. I feel as if I knew <i>such</i> a lot of nice people already! Good +night!" and her door closed upon a very happy face.</p> + +<p>Equally excited, and even happier, little Olwen sped up another flight +of stairs to her room. Stars danced in her eyes. It was true! It was all +true! she rejoiced. <i>Now——!</i></p> + +<p>Yes; now, Captain Ross, <i>en garde</i>! Stipulate as you choose for the +colour of Beauty's hair; swear that no woman is Woman to you except a +blonde. One little sooty-haired brunette is now no longer to be cast +down by your specifications. Say what you like; she has confidence in +what she is going to do.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>She burst into her room, snapped on the lights, ran to the drawer, +snatched out work-basket, thimble, needle, silk; now the mauve ribbon! +Now the packet containing that so potent Charm!</p> + +<p>Then down she sat again to work as she had worked that afternoon, but +in all certainty instead of doubt. Snip—snip—snip. Three lengths of +ribbon, and to each a sachet.</p> + +<p>"I'll have to buy yards and yards and yards of this ribbon presently," +thought Olwen feverishly as she stitched. "And I'll have to send to that +address for all the Charm that they can send me; all that there is in +the world!"</p> + +<p>She rolled a sheet of note-paper into a little funnel; and through this +she filled—ah, so cautiously!—the sachets with the musky, seed-like +powder.</p> + +<p>She sighed: "<i>What</i> a pity that I've only got enough here for four of +us!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>FURTHER PLANS FOR THE CHARM</h3> + +<blockquote> +<p>Je dirai qu'une femme ne doit jamais écrire....</p> + +<p>"Je ne vois qu'une exception; c'est une femme qui fait des livres pour nourrier ou élever sa famille.</p> + +<p>"Alors elle doit toujours se retrancher dans l'intérêt d'argent +en parlant de ses ouvrages, et dire, par exemple, à un chef +d'escadron: 'Votre état vous donne quatre mille francs par an, +et moi, avec mes deux traductions de l'anglais, j'ai pu, l'année +dernière, consacrer trois mille cinq cents francs de plus à l'éducation +de mes deux fils.'"</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Stendhal.</span></p> +</blockquote> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Now so far one charm-sachet was accounted for. It was safety-pinned into +the high busk of Miss Walsh's almost obsolete corset. The second Olwen +now hung about her own neck. Even in sleep she would never be parted +from it. Let her absorb its potency every hour of the day or night! +Therefore she sewed to the square of mauve satin a piece of pink +baby-ribbon, tied it in a bow and slipped it over her head. <i>Her</i> charm!</p> + +<p>There were (until she obtained more of that magic stuff) two sachets +left.</p> + +<p>Over these she pondered, running her needle into the flannel leaf of her +needle-book.</p> + +<p>"There's one thing to be seen yet," she meditated. "I've seen it work +once. It's been a success all right with a woman. The question is—Will +it work with a man? I must try."</p> + +<p>So the destination of the third sachet was decided. That young and +pink-faced subaltern should have it; he who had such blushing struggles +with his French and who seemed to have no more friends than had Miss +Walsh; he who had told Mrs. Cartwright so frankly that he was an ex-shop +assistant, with the joys of travelling first-class (and of living to +match) gone to his boyish head. Yes; the disturbing Charm should be +applied to help him. She would think out the "how" tomorrow.</p> + +<p>But the fourth sachet? To whom should she give that?</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was the passing thought of her writer-friend that brought in +its train a bright idea.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright!</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't I give her the Charm? Why shouldn't she enjoy life a +little bit more before she's quite, quite an old woman?" thought the +girl. "Of course she's not young; older than Miss Walsh even. And not +pretty—well, how could any one be pretty at forty—even though her +clothes do seem to fit her, and she does run up and down those sandhills +as fast as I can. She's awfully jolly and nice, though; so kind, too! I +daresay she'd like to be married again. I daresay she's tired of always +writing and writing. Tired of living all by herself when those boys of +hers are at school. I daresay she'd like to have somebody nice and sort +of settled-down to help her with them. Now if only she could attract +somebody! Somebody like that——"</p> + +<p>Here a second brilliant idea flashed into that well-willing, impulsive +little black head of Olwen's. She uttered it aloud, the name of this +"somebody" who might be suitably attracted by Mrs. Cartwright—even at +forty.</p> + +<p>"<i>Uncle!</i>"</p> + +<p>All alone in her room, Olwen clapped her hands over this idea. Swiftly +it began to enlarge itself.</p> + +<p>"Yes; why not Uncle? The very person! He's old, but then that's all the +better; for her. He's just the right age, in fact!"</p> + +<p>Professor Howel-Jones was a sturdy seventy; and to Nineteen the gap +between forty and seventy, seen vaguely down the perspective of the +years, is scarcely noticeable, particularly when it is the man who is +seventy—men generally being of themselves younger than women. (Or so we +are told.)</p> + +<p>"Yes; it must be Uncle. He's such a dear. A widower, too; and I'm sure +he ought to have somebody nice to be a comfort to him, always there. Not +only me. Besides, I might be——"</p> + +<p>She hardly dared yet to finish to herself the thought, "Besides, I might +be getting married and leaving him any time now!"</p> + +<p>So she pursued her ingenuous scheme. "He ought to have a nice wife. He +really ought. And Mrs. Cartwright would be splendid—for him. He does +like her. He was talking to her for hours in the Forest the other day +about that essay of his on Welsh Flower-names. He calls her 'My dear +lady' always. And she likes him; why, only at lunch today she said +something about 'that wonderful-looking old Uncle of yours.' She admires +him. Now, if she only had enough Charm to <i>attract</i> him," thought Olwen, +"so that he would ask her to marry him, I'm sure she'd be only too glad +to! I don't suppose any one else has ever asked her to marry again ... +but I would so like her for a kind of Auntie," decided the young girl, +hastily taking out her needle again and threading it with pink silk.</p> + +<p>Another length of narrow ribbon was stitched to one end of the fourth +sachet.</p> + +<p>It was destined for the neck of Mrs. Cartwright.</p> + +<p>At Olwen's age a thing is considered better left undone, than not done +at once.</p> + +<p>At once she decided to take this gift to her friend.</p> + +<p>So, still dressed as she had left the <i>salon</i>, Olwen slipped quickly out +of her room and down a sharply-angled corridor, passing as she went the +old Frenchman with the red speck in his button-hole and the elder lady +in mourning.</p> + +<p>Olwen glanced up at the numbers on the doors.</p> + +<p>... "22," that was Mr. Awdas's room; she had overheard him telling +Madame that he would remember <i>vingt-deux</i> because it was his own age. +"23," next to it on the right; that was Mrs. Cartwright's. Olwen hoped +that she had not yet gone to bed.</p> + +<p>She tapped.</p> + +<p>"<i>Entrez!</i>" called Mrs. Cartwright's deep voice, rather absorbed.</p> + +<p>Olwen entered, to find the writer apparently ready for bed, but at work.</p> + +<p>Her green shaded lamp was alight on the table, where she sat with a pad +before her.</p> + +<p>Her brown hair hung down in two plaits over a Persian robe of raw white +silk, almost seamless, gold-girdled, and with stars and islands worked +in gold thread; a relic of her time in the East. Another relic, perhaps, +was the mingling of faint discreet scents that hung about the room: +sandal-wood, orris, kuss-kuss, and rose.</p> + +<p>She looked up; then sprang to her feet as she saw Olwen Howel-Jones, +still dressed as she had gone to bed some time before.</p> + +<p>"My dear——Anything wrong?"</p> + +<p>"No! No, thanks," said Olwen. Then involuntarily and surprised, "Oh, +Mrs. Cartwright! how wonderful you look in that dressing-gown! Your arm, +when the sleeve fell back, was like a little statue my Uncle's got in +Liverpool, copied from the British Museum. A Tanagra, he calls it. You +look exactly like that statue, you do really."</p> + +<p>"Do I?" returned Mrs. Cartwright, with a passing glance down her own +long outlines from the shoulder to the narrow Turkish-slippered foot on +the mat. It was no news to her that she possessed, even yet, some lines +that sculptors centuries dead would have loved. Like many another +plain-faced woman (as she was self-admitted) she had her special vanity. +Her own pride of limb was as arrogant as it was secret.</p> + +<p>"My boys are going to inherit my absurdly long legs, I think," was all +she said, lightly, smiling down into the vivid little face of the girl +who had come in, and wondering what had brought her there so late.</p> + +<p>Olwen held it out, the Charm dangling at the end of its long ribbons. As +she was hastening along the corrider she had wondered what excuse she +could bring with it. Now she felt that it was unnecessary display, that +invention of the Red Cross Charity Sale which she had palmed off upon +poor Miss Walsh. The truth—or a small portion of it—seemed to blurt +itself out to Mrs. Cartwright.</p> + +<p>"I've got something here that I've made for you," explained Olwen, +flushing a little. "It's—it's a luck-charm. Like a touchwood or a +swastika, only—only different. There's something in the sachet that +will bring you very good luck if you always keep it on where it can't be +seen. Don't ask me what it is," she begged, lifting her earnest little +face that the elder woman found so touchingly pretty. "And please don't +open it. Only always wear it, will you, please?"</p> + +<p>"Thank you so much; of course I will. I can do with any good luck that's +going just now," smiled Mrs. Cartwright. She slipped the ribbon over her +head and tucked the sachet inside the soft folds of her Persian robe. +"There! It's like a scapular that the little French children have; I +remember seeing a flock of them once, trooping in to bathe off the coast +of Normandy, wearing nothing else; their little bodies each marked by +the black scapular, were like pink tulips freaked with one dark +stripe.... May I take it off when I wash? Good. Now I'll expect it'll +bring me luck for finishing the last chapters of my serial."</p> + +<p>"Are you going to sit there and write all night?" asked Olwen, with an +eye on the half-covered pad.</p> + +<p>"Oh dear, no! Just another hour or so, perhaps. I was only recopying a +paragraph, and then I found I was in the vein and could go on. But +you—you mustn't lose your beauty-sleep," she added, gently smiling at +the pretty creature in the doorway. "Good night!"</p> + +<p>"Good night!" said Olwen, with a final glance at the edge of that pink +ribbon showing above her friend's unconscious neck. She sped away—to +dream, as she hoped, of all that Charm might be expected to bring her, +but in reality to the dreamless perfect sleep that is Youth's heritage.</p> + +<p>The half-gentle, half-amused little smile hovered about Mrs. +Cartwright's lips for a moment, then gave way gradually to the look of +blank absorption as she bent her brown head over her pad, writing +rapidly, filling a page, tearing it off, to add to the pile at her feet, +filling another.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>It had been a long apprenticeship which she had served to this job of +hers, since she had first been left as a young widow, to fend for +herself and two babies on the pension which her country judged +sufficient for the families of the (Old) Army. Ream after ream she had +written on the once so fully discussed subjects: What to do with the +Cold Mutton; and, How to Keep a Husband's Affection Warm.</p> + +<p>To say that this occupation thrilled her would be overstating the case, +but Mrs. Cartwright had preferred it to the thought of letting some +other man pay for her board and lodging, some man who was not her Keith. +This alternative had been hers more than once (in spite of little +Olwen's conjecture that she had never been asked to marry again). She +had refused; working on, in her poky "rooms." ... At all events, those +cold-mutton articles had put plenty of nourishing beef-gravy into little +Keith; and when Reggie had nearly gone out with bronchitis she had +settled the doctor's bills with her brightly-written instructions as to +always keep a smiling face and a dainty blouse for when Hubby got back +from a hard day's work in the office. A fortnight's fresh air at +Margate had been supplied to the small convalescent by his Mother's +"Chats to Engaged Girls," which discussed "how many and many a foolish +damsel brings shipwreck upon her life's happiness by her failure to +realize that her fiancé cannot be expected to give up for her sake every +hobby, every recreation, every chum that he possesses," etc. etc.</p> + +<p>When this sort of journalism became superannuated "Domestica" adapted +herself swiftly. Business-like columns on Emigration and Fruit Farming +for Women paid for the boys' first reefer-coats. Their school-kits came +out of the long serials to which she had at last attained, and which +became a never-failing joke with those of her acquaintances who had +cultured literary tastes.</p> + +<p>"My <i>dear</i> Claudia, I see you've been and gone and done it again, in the +'Morning Mail,'" they had smiled. "Another of your sugary fullertons—I +mean 'A thrilling new story, by Miss Claudia Crane! You can begin +today!' You don't expect US to, I hope?"</p> + +<p>"Oh no," Mrs. Cartwright had said, also smiling.</p> + +<p>After all, these literary tastes of her acquaintances were no more +"superior" than the thickness of her new woollies that she was then +going on to buy for her sons' wear.</p> + +<p>Moreover, the woollies were of more use.</p> + +<p>(Furthermore, they were harder to come by.)</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>At the juncture when Mrs. Cartwright enters this story she was able to +make any holiday pay for itself twice over; witness her "Wanderings in +Western France." It was about this time, too, that she had begun to +afford not only the warmest underwear for Keith and Reggie, but the +silkiest for herself.</p> + +<p>Even yet, she discovered, silk "things" were a joy to her again. So were +her perfectly simple <i>suède</i> shoes. All these years she had lived and +toiled for Reggie and Keith; she was only just beginning to find herself +in this toiler. She was beginning to discover other relics, beside the +Eastern embroideries and the scent, of the woman whom she had thought to +be left dead beside her merry soldier husband.</p> + +<p>Surprising.... Life was still surprising; interesting. Let people take +it out of her "fullertons" if it amused them....</p> + +<p>She completed the "sugary" paragraph that brought her instalment to the +requided "curtain," wrote "<i>To be continued</i>" beneath it, and smoothed +the blotting-paper down over the pad with a sigh of relief.</p> + +<p>"There!"</p> + +<p>She rose, stretching the tall symmetry of herself under the Persian +robe, then glanced with raised eye-brows at her watch.</p> + +<p>So late? She had not realized the flight of the midnight hours. +Everybody else in the hotel would be asleep.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright snapped off the lights. Guided by a thin streak of +moonlight on the floor, she stepped to the window, flung first the +shutters then the windows open, and stepped out, all shimmering and +ghostly, on to her balcony. She stood—accustomed to air about +her—looking out on the moon-bathed scene below. The <i>Baissin</i> was a +sheet of silver; the belt of sandhills silver-grey. No words can give +the whiteness of the Biscay rollers, silent with distance, tossing their +columns of foam to the vast and lambent sky. Stars were as pin-points. +Reassuringly near, the lighthouse raised its taper finger, on which the +light sparkled like a jewel, now white, now red.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, enjoying all this too much to feel cold, stood +watching.</p> + +<p>Why did people sleep away the best part of the twenty-four hours? Why +scuttle away and hide from Beauty within the ugliness of their own +houses? It was only once in months that a woman stood as she was +standing at that virgin hour, able to lose herself in the solitude, the +freshness and silence and light. She stood, dematerialized, part no +longer of a woman's warm and pulsing body, but of the sea and sky +themselves.... White, red.... White, red ... the phare light flashed +almost in time to the soft breathing, that could be heard, in that +perfect stillness of her body. <i>She</i> was outside it.... <i>Ah!</i> What was +that?</p> + +<p>With a start so violent that it seemed to wrench her, Mrs. Cartwright +came to herself again, and to—what Horror was this?</p> + +<p>Through that perfect stillness a cry had rung out, sudden as a shot. +Close beside her; it came from the right. It was a man's voice crying +hoarsely, "<i>Got</i> him!" Then another cry, of agony; a scream....</p> + +<p>What was it?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>THE CLUTCHING OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i12">"Fights all his battles o'er again;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And thrice he charged the foe, and thrice he slew the slain."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Dryden.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Un aviateur, un de ces demi-dieux dont l'existence sur terre<br /></span> +<span class="i0">doit être courte. (La lumière dont ils procèdent les rappelle<br /></span> +<span class="i0">bientôt. On croit qu'ils tombent, mais ils remontent.)"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Marcel Astruc.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>It came from the right, therefore it must be in the bedroom next to hers +on the wall encircled by the balcony.</p> + +<p>Quick as thought, Mrs. Cartwright ran a few steps along the balcony. +Yes; the next window stood wide open. She dashed into the room, flooded +with moonlight; white light that showed up, clearer than a star-shell, +the figure of Mr. Awdas, the young wounded flying-officer, sitting bolt +upright in his bed, with his eyes still closed, his mouth too working, +and his face as the face of Death itself.</p> + +<p>She ran to him, took him by the shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Wake up! Wake up!" she called, clearly and firmly, in the voice which +had often delivered her small son Keith from the bane of his childhood, +nightmare. "Wake up, it's just a dream!"</p> + +<p>A great shudder rocked the young man, he opened his eyes. Their wild +stare met the woman's face, the woman's white-clad figure bending over +him. "Oh Lord! Sister," he muttered. "It all came again. Oh, Lord! I +thought I was crashing. I——"</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus2" id="illus2"></a> +<img src="images/illus2.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>"<i>It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I was +crashing!—--</i>"</h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Shuddering again, shaking like a leaf, he threw out his hands and +grasped Mrs. Cartwright's arms, his fingers burying themselves in her +flesh. "Don't leave me," he sobbed, hoarsely. "For God's sake don't +leave me, Sister!"</p> + +<p>Before Mrs. Cartwright could speak the door of his bedroom was flung +open. There burst in a group of people in night attire, a group +heterogeneous and agitated as on a raid night or at a fire, roused by +the alarm of that sudden scream in the darkness, demanding "Qu'est-ce +qu'il y a donc?" ... "What's up?..."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, pinned in the grip of the young man's shaking hands, +had only time to realize two of these people, the portly French manager, +draped in an eider-down and looking (as she afterwards said) a perfect +advertisement for Michelin tyres, and Captain Ross, in violently-striped +pyjamas, when she saw the door gently but firmly closing upon all of the +invaders but Captain Ross.</p> + +<p>In a curious medley of idiom Captain Ross was reassuring the others.</p> + +<p>"It's all right. <i>C'est seulement</i> Monsieur de l'Audace. He's been +drrrriming again; <i>songe</i>, crasher; <i>comprenez</i>? Pardon me, but please +<i>allez vous en</i>. I guess we can fix him, me and this lady. <i>Bon nuit!</i>"</p> + +<p>A final glimpse of open-mouthed faces, seen over dressing-gowned +shoulders, and then the door clicked upon the murmuring, dispersing +throng. Captain Ross, barefoot, turned back to the bed where his friend, +utterly unnerved, was shaking as if with fever. His fingers still +gripped the arms that had first been held out to him; his wet forehead +was now pressed to a woman's shoulder, as if to shut out from his sight +a vision of horror.</p> + +<p>"Oh Lord!" he groaned.</p> + +<p>"All over, Jack. Put a pipe on," said Captain Ross quietly.</p> + +<p>And Mrs. Cartwright glancing at him over that rumpled head buried on her +shoulder, beheld a Captain Ross quite new to her; not merely the finest +judge of women in Europe, but the fine comrade of men. It was with an +admirable mixture of gentleness and matter-of-factness that he spoke, +moving as he did so quietly and quickly about the room; closing the +shutters, to banish the ghastly radiance of the moon; turning up the +yellow, mercifully ordinary lights; finding flask, a tobacco, pipe, and +matches; handier and swifter with his one arm than many a man with two.</p> + +<p>"Put a pipe on, man. Here. No? All right; presently. Rotten luck; I +thought we were clear of these attacks. It's this darned moon.... He was +shot down in the moonlight, I heard.... We used to get 'em every week +one time, Mrs. Cartwright; the whole ward pulled up standing, and the +girls on night duty thinking it was blue murder, I guess, the first +time. I knew when I heard him; we were in hospital together."</p> + +<p>"He thought he was still in hospital when he saw me," put in Mrs. +Cartwright softly.</p> + +<p>"Is that so? You only reached him first by seconds, I guess; I was up +before he'd finished hollering," said Captain Ross, with a glance at the +spent boy who was leaning up against the woman, his face still hidden, +his breath coming in gasps. "It was a baddish go, this trip. A drink, +man?"</p> + +<p>Young Awdas shook his head without raising it. "I'm ... all right. +Dashed sorry ... all right in a second...."</p> + +<p>"Give it him presently," murmured Captain Ross; then glancing at the +woman beside the bed, "There won't be much sleeping for him or me; but +it's no reason why you should lose your night's rest, Mrs. Cartwright. +I'm staying. No need for you to wait up any longer."</p> + +<p>But at this, those clutching hands of the boy gripped her tight again, +closing upon the silken folds above her breast. She answered the quick +involuntary appeal, feeling herself caught back to the times when little +Keith, waking in fright, had clutched her, and cried: "<i>Don't go Mums! I +want you to stay with me!</i>"</p> + +<p>"I'm not going," she said, just as she had said then. She let herself +slip down in a sitting posture to the edge of the bed.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross paused, with another swift glance at the group.</p> + +<p>"You'll stay with him?"</p> + +<p>"Of course."</p> + +<p>"I guess he's better in your hands; I'll leave him there," said Captain +Ross with a nod. He glanced about, picked up the thick dressing-gown +that lay over the bed-rail, and tucked it like a railway rug about her. +Then he turned to the door. "I'm just across the corridor. If you want +anything, just call, ever so softly. I shall hear."</p> + +<p>He went out, leaving Mrs. Cartwright to the oddest vigil she had ever +spent. For the first time she found herself watching through the small +hours in the company of a wounded lad who had come through that Hell +which is not always left behind on the battlefield. They bring some of +it away with them, too many of these boys! its fiery traces still +impressed upon mind and brain and nerve, however plucky. Its memory +persists, robbing them of laughter, despoiling them of that dreamless +perfect sleep which is Youth's heritage, making of night a thing to be +dreaded.</p> + +<p>So this young airman, who had been shot down in an air duel one +moonlight night last spring, must live it through again and again before +he might live it away....</p> + +<p>Presently he raised his head. He began to mutter.</p> + +<p>She listened, pitifully, knowing that the lad scarcely knew even yet +whom he was holding—save that it was human, and friendly, and warm. He +scarcely cared to whom he was babbling in hoarse little snatches, +incoherently—save that it was a woman, and kind.</p> + +<p>"Five—five of them! Five Australians!" he began, suddenly. "You know +what splendid fine chaps.... I had to watch.... I was lying ... out +there ... pinned under the wing. They ... they tried to get at me with +stretchers—six times they tried ... came across No Man's Land...."</p> + +<p>"Yes; but you were dreaming," she said, in the most soothing tone of her +deep voice. "You just had a bad dream——"</p> + +<p>"No, No! It was what happened," he said hoarsely. "They were trying to +bring me in after I'd crashed. Those blighters ... turned a machine-gun +on to them. They did in five. I—I saw it!"</p> + +<p>She could only look at him, only give him the comfort of her touch, +could only put out to him, silently, all the pity that was in her.</p> + +<p>He took one hand away for a moment, passed it back over his hair in the +known gesture of the flyer who adjusts his crest like cap, then returned +his clasp to her arm.</p> + +<p>He began again:</p> + +<p>"I ... I never take an Australian's salute in the street without +remembering ... that!... I had to lie there ... couldn't lift ... +finger. Five of them, were stretched out ... killed.... Just for me! My +God! Think of it——" He seemed about to break down once more.</p> + +<p>"Hush!" Mrs. Cartwright said, steadily. She bent her eyes upon his. +"Hush! One can't think like that. It's impossible."</p> + +<p>"Those splendid chaps——"</p> + +<p>"S'sh! Remember only that they were killed doing one of the finest +things a soldier is called to do," interrupted the soldier's widow, +quickly. "Remember that their people would be proud to know how it +happened. They volunteered to save you; took their chance. Think how +your own people would have been proud, Mr. Awdas——"</p> + +<p>"Yes," he muttered, letting her hold his eyes, clinging to her for the +strength that had slipped.</p> + +<p>She repeated, firmly: "When you see Australians in the street, think +only of <i>that</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the youngster, simply. "Yes.... All right, I will."</p> + +<p>When he next spoke there was a thought less strain in his husky voice.</p> + +<p>"I'm everlastingly sorry, routing people up like this. They got quite +fed-up in the hospital.... I couldn't help it.... Falling, falling—oh, +it's beastly.... So weird, too.... You wouldn't think.... Well, I +couldn't <i>take</i> more than about two and a half minutes to crash, could +I?"</p> + +<p>"I suppose not," she said, forcing herself to be as matter-of-fact as +Captain Ross had been.</p> + +<p>"Two and a half minutes; well, it seemed a <i>week</i>, at least. Absolutely. +It always seems a week till I come down.... Down, down, down—I seemed +to have time to think ... no end of things. I yelled out to my +observer.... That's why I always shout in those dreams of mine.... I was +falling, falling; and calling out to my observer, trying to make him +hear. He was killed."</p> + +<p>"Was he?" she responded gently—not too gently, lest he should melt.</p> + +<p>"Yes! He was dead before we came down. Jolly good chap, my observer. +(Ross knew him.) Ferris, his name was. The first time we went up +together over the Boche lines, I remember his saying to me: 'Now, when +you hear a dog bark, don't take any notice; it's only Archie!'"</p> + +<p>Here the ghost of a smile seemed hovering about the young flyer's face. +Mrs. Cartwright did not speak; but surely the warm sympathy that flowed +from her caught him in some restoring current. His voice grew less +strained with every sentence.</p> + +<p>"It's—it's a funny thing how fond one gets of one's observer; the man +one's always with. Each of you depending so much on the other, I +suppose; being for it together, always together. You've no idea what +pals one gets. I—I sometimes think there can be nothing like it. We +<i>were</i> pals; I was sick; they'd done him in——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright nodded; listening to the husky English boy's voice, that +seemed to fill this room of a sleeping, silent French hotel, and hearing +also in her heart that immortal plaint of the young fellow-soldier +mourning down the ages—"<i>I am distressed for thee, my brother +Jonathan....</i>"</p> + +<p>"D'you know, I sometimes think there can be nothing else in the world as +good as just friendship. To be absolute friends with some other fellow," +young Awdas said presently; shyly, but earnestly looking into the +woman-face so near him. Without speaking a word, Mrs Cartwright was +encouraging him to talk on and on. Yes; let him talk—of Friendship or +the Differential Calculus, if he liked; anything, rather than let him be +haunted again by this useless, this unreasoning Remorse that he had been +the death of five other brave men—or by this dream of falling, falling. +He talked on, sitting up; taking his hands at last from her +(badly-marked) arms and clasping them about his knees.</p> + +<p>"Absolute friends," he mused. "Understanding everything the other chap +means, or doesn't mean. Not minding if he's ratty sometimes; being ratty +yourself if you want to, and going off on your own, knowing it'll be all +right whenever you come back. Good times or rotten times, always with +him. Not seeing each other for ages, perhaps. Then finding him just the +same. Caring for all the things you're keenest about; barring the same +things. I don't think it could be ever exactly like that with a girl."</p> + +<p>"Never," murmured Mrs. Cartwright; "the girl will be more to you or less +to you, but not the same."</p> + +<p>"A girl would never be more to me," said young Awdas, and now his voice +sounded almost normal. He broke off suddenly, and turned to her +protestingly. "Mrs. Cartwright, I don't know what you must think of me. +Keeping you up like this——Good Lord! it's three o'clock. Sitting +there, catching cold——?"</p> + +<p>"I'm never cold."</p> + +<p>"And I'm all right now. Please—please do go to bed."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright smiled obstinately. "My good young man, I am on +night-duty. You called me 'Sister' yourself when I came in. I am going +to be 'Sister' for once."</p> + +<p>"You're too good," he said, with a sigh of obvious relief that she was +not going. "I couldn't sleep ... but why should you miss yours?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't sleep now, either; I couldn't have slept. I'd only just +finished working when you called out. I shall stay"—she tucked the +dressing-gown a little more closely about her—"and——No, I won't have +a cigarette. I'll light one for you, however. And here's your drink, and +I shall just stay and talk to you until you go to sleep."</p> + +<p>"Too good," he said again, taking the cigarette from her hand and giving +her a shyly grateful glance. "I've been bucking no end—I don't know +why—I don't generally talk a lot."</p> + +<p>She knew it; knew also that the distraught boy would not have talked to +a man as he had let himself babble, almost hysterically, to her. (It is +only women, the so-called talkative sex, who could give statistics of +how much men talk, and of what they will talk, upon occasion!) Up to +that night, he had not exchanged a dozen sentences with her since they +had been staying at the hotel. That same evening, when Mrs. Cartwright +and his friend Ross had chipped each other in the <i>salon</i> over her +"Manual of Courtship," had been the first occasion that Awdas had found +himself sitting next to this tall countrywoman of his.</p> + +<p>But now he turned his eyes upon her as if she were all that is meant by +the word Home.</p> + +<p>These wakeful, solitary, strange hours had made them friends such as two +years of ordinary companionship could not have seen them. Both knew that +never again could they be mere hotel acquaintances.</p> + +<p>She looked at the face that was falling at last into lines of composure; +no longer a white mask of strain and anguish. Colour was coming back, +and a smile took the place of that intently thinking ghost behind the +blue eyes. He lifted that small head, set so eagle-wise upon the wide +shoulders, breathed more deeply; and she knew that it was she who had +restored him, this fallen cloud-sweeper. Fancifully she thought of his +daring job as something still verging on the super-human; after all, +these flying lads, with their freedom of one element more, are the +half-gods of our time. She thought of that myth of the other half-god +Antaëus, who, to gain fresh life, must draw it from the touch of earth; +and she remembered that Woman (that last creature to be civilized) is +still generations nearer than man to the healing soil. Yes; she had +healed him.</p> + +<p>Without showing him that she did so, she studied his face, with its soft +fruit-like oval that does not survive the first quarter of a century. +Twenty-two! He seemed, as most young soldiers do nowadays, more than his +age. Yet in some ways he looked younger.</p> + +<p>After a puff or two of cigarette-smoke had risen into the air, she asked +gently, "Why did you say, just now, that a girl could never mean more to +you than friendship?"</p> + +<p>He said simply, "I don't know. Perhaps it is because I don't really know +any girls much. They've never come my way."</p> + +<p>"Not?" she exclaimed, scarcely believing this.</p> + +<p>He said quite seriously: "You know it makes a lot of difference when one +hasn't any sisters. I haven't any; there were just three of us; me, and +my brother in the Navy, and the Nipper—the youngest. (Cadet Corps.) My +people live in the country, you know—Kent. It's not a bad old place; +orchards and a moat for punting about on when we were kids, and the +paddock. We had quite a decent time. But there were no girls in the +house."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright suggested "Other people's sisters?"</p> + +<p>"Not often. My mother used to try and get girls to stay with her +sometimes, but——" He moved his wide shoulders. "It was rather a +wash-out. When there aren't other girls to come for, you know. There's a +sort of feeling of their having been dragged in. Everybody's shy and +stiff. At least, they were; the girls who came. I suppose that's why I +haven't thought much of girls. They always seemed a nuisance, and +self-conscious, you know. Wooden. Glad when it was time for them to go, +and I can tell you <i>I</i> was. They were thundering difficult to talk to."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, always ready to hear of the bringing-up of boys, gave +thanks inwardly that her Keith and Reggie possessed countless +girl-cousins who were to them as sisters; creatures dispossessed of +glamour, but a channel into those fields where glamour ripens. Then she +said, softly, to this other boy: "But when you went away from Home, when +you came up to Town, and—oh, all that sort of thing, like other young +men of your age, surely you met plenty of girls who were—well! Easy +enough to talk to?"</p> + +<p>He nodded slightly. "Oh, yes; one met those. But——" There crept over +his face the look that some think is more often to be seen in these days +of Emancipation than in more guarded times; the scrutiny of the young +man who is at least as fastidious in his love affairs as the young +woman. "They weren't very amusing either—or, probably, I wasn't—to +them. Of course, one knows lots of top-hole fellows who were always +about with girls. Permanent address: 'Stagedoor, Frivolity,' sort of +thing. But when I got leave, I'd just as soon go round with my people, +or poor old Ferris, or some other fellow——"</p> + +<p>He had finished his cigarette, and leant his fair rumpled head back on +the pillow.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, watching it, knew suddenly and certainly that—but for +his own mother and his nurses at that hospital—she was the first woman +who had seen it thus.</p> + +<p>Then she could hardly check the smile that rose to her lips; for there +was stealing over his face a look that made it not merely boyish, but +little-boyish. A film was blurring those keen blue eyes; he opened them +more widely, precisely as she had seen the eyes of little Keith open +widely, obstinately, against her breast when he was dropping with the +sleep that he defied. Young Awdas, she saw, was fighting down a +well-disguised yawn. For a moment there was silence in the bright, +isolated room. Then he said, "Mrs. Cartwright, do go to bed."</p> + +<p>"I am not sleepy."</p> + +<p>"No, nor am I," with a drowsy smile. "If you go, I'll get out a book and +read until it's time to get up."</p> + +<p>"Don't do that," she said. "I suppose you wouldn't try and go to sleep +for a bit?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't." The blue eyes opened again fixedly upon her face. "I——"</p> + +<p>It seemed in the midst of the sentence that his lashes fell against his +cheeks, closely and suddenly as the lashes of her babies used to fall. +In the idiom of those old days he was "off," he was "down."</p> + +<p>Afraid of moving, to snap off the lights, lest she might disturb the +sleeper, she sat on, watching that peaceful face, that broad chest +heaving rhythmically. She sat, watching him; or letting her glance take +in the room with his neat, soldier-like appointments; his folding-case +for brushes and shaving-kit, his one photograph (obviously of his +mother) in a celluloid glazed frame, his leather writing-case, with his +name and the name of his Corps printed in ink on the cover. Her eyes +upturned to him, as she sat—thinking ... thinking....</p> + +<p>It was nearly five o'clock when the door opened cautiously, and Captain +Ross, that adequate campaigner, entered, with a Service dressing-gown +over his zebra-stripes, and carrying two steaming cups of +excellently-made tea. His glance fell upon Jack Awdas, slumbering like +a child. Mrs. Cartwright, rather cramped, rather chilled, and rather +drawn in the face between her straight-falling plaits of hair, was still +sitting there like a statue, in a white robe with gold patterns, from +the folds of which there peeped an end of narrow pink ribbon—the ribbon +which held, hidden at her breast, and all unsuspected, a Charm.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>THE SPREADING OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i4">"When England needs<br /></span> +<span class="i6">The sons she breeds,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">And there's fighting to be done,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">No matter where,<br /></span> +<span class="i6">You will find him <i>there</i>,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">The Man behind the Gun....<br /></span> +<span class="i0">It's Bill, Bill, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy Brown,<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Of Putney, Piccadilly, Camden Town;<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Why! It's Mister——<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Bill, Billy Brown——<br /></span> +<span class="i12">Of London!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Fragson's Song.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The following morning brought a small disappointment to that little +plotter for the commonweal, Olwen Howel-Jones.</p> + +<p>No Mrs. Cartwright at <i>déjeuner</i>!</p> + +<p>Olwen (knowing nothing of that vigil of the night before, or of the +slumber into which the woman, drained of vitality, had dropped as soon +as she returned to her room) imagined her working through luncheon-time.</p> + +<p>Too bad! For now it must be postponed, the sight of how that Charm, +given to the writer, would affect Professor Howel-Jones. It could not +begin at once then, that Darby-and-Joan pairing-off that so suitable +match which little Olwen had planned. What a pity! Still it was not put +off for long, she cheerfully hoped.</p> + +<p>The other wearer of the Charm was also absent from the midday gathering +in the <i>salle</i>, but that was all to the good, Olwen had passed Miss +Walsh, with her hair done in that new way! speeding off as excitedly as +an Early Victorian to her first dance; speeding down to the pier, where +the motor-boat awaited her, with Sergeant Tronchet. Madame Leroux had +put up a basket of provisions for them, and they were going to make a +picnic of their excursion across the lagoon.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross came in to lunch with his friend Mr. Awdas, but so late +that the two young men crossed the path of Olwen and her Uncle (who had +finished their meal early) in the hall. The girl had paused here for a +moment to slip into the Red Cross collection-box that hundred-franc note +which had been bestowed upon her yesterday by Miss Walsh.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross noticed her action.</p> + +<p>"You're making a mistake, Miss Howel-Jones," he said banteringly, and +smiled as he might have smiled at one of the little pigtailed daughters +of the manageress. "That's not the box you put ten centimes into and get +two sticks of candy."</p> + +<p>Olwen, half in delight that he had spoken to her, half in resentment +that it was in the tone he might have used to a child, raised her +pointed chin on its white childish neck, looked down under her lids, and +demanded, with what she considered great stateliness, "Who wants +<i>candy</i>?"</p> + +<p>"All little girls, I guess," returned Captain Ross, his robin's eyes +twinkling, his perfect teeth flashing in another teasing smile. Olwen, +glancing under those dropped lids at this somewhat showy vision of +black-and-white-and-brown-and-scarlet-and-khaki, felt that she would die +for him.</p> + +<p>There was a magic about him, she thought; even if he were dictatorial or +teasing, or seemed to think rather a lot of himself—a magic! At the +same instant she remembered that, yes! There was a secret magic about +her too, now. A magic that had proved itself unmistakably once; a Charm +that she herself was wearing. Confidence seemed to rush, in a warming +flood, about her heart.</p> + +<p>Quite defiantly she tilted her black head, and looking straight over +Captain Ross's shoulder, she laughed, for pure joy of her secret.</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> don't know everything about girls!" she told the finest judge of +women in Europe.</p> + +<p>And before the young Staff-Officer could retort, before he could even +open his eyes over the temerity of this chit, this schoolgirl, who had +said this thing to him (<i>Him!</i>), those little French boots of hers had +skipped away, carrying her upstairs towards the study where she must +type out the notes which she had taken down for her Uncle in shorthand +that morning. Those boots fitted the chit's ankles like a coat of black +paint, he noticed as he looked after her, too amused to be annoyed, of +course. The piece of Impertinence——! Awfully neat.... They +disappeared, the little twinkling heels. He went on to join Jack Awdas +at table.</p> + +<p>Olwen, at an angle in the corridor a floor higher, ran into the young +<i>femme-de-chambre</i> for that floor, carrying over her arm a khaki tunic.</p> + +<p>They stopped to smile and to exchange "<i>bonjours</i>," these two girls much +of an age and much of a race, for Marie came from Brittany, and already +the Professor and his niece had amused themselves by finding out how +many Welsh words the Breton maid could understand; the simple words +which were the same in her own tongue.</p> + +<p>"I come from cleaning the buttons of the English monsieur, his better +tunic," explained Marie, in French, smiling as she held out the khaki +coat.</p> + +<p>"It is not of Monsieur de l'Audace?" asked Olwen.</p> + +<p>"No, Mademoiselle. Of the other English officer, young, young, who does +not talk French too well; Lieutenant Brrrrrrown," returned Marie. "Can +Mademoiselle tell me what decoration is that he has?" Olwen gave a look +at it.</p> + +<p>"It is the ribbon of the Military Cross—it's like your Croix de +Guerre," she said. "I didn't notice that he'd got that."</p> + +<p>"He" was the pink-faced New Army officer of whom Mrs. Cartwright had +spoken to her.</p> + +<p>She remembered, in a flash, that it was he for whom she had intended +that fourth share of the Charm, still in the pocket of the serge dress +that she wore. She had not yet made up any plan as to how she was to +press the Charm upon him. The plan came to her then and there, as she +stood in that corridor.</p> + +<p>"Hold Marie," she said, suddenly. "I have a <i>porte-bonheur</i> for this +officer." She took out the sachet. "Say nothing to Monsieur," she +impressed it upon the little maid, all smiles and delight to be included +in a secret. "I am going to hide it in his coat."</p> + +<p>And, taking hold of the coat, she slipped the sachet full of the +enchanted powder into the slit-like pocket at the waist where men keep +tickets.</p> + +<p>"There!... Probably Monsieur will not find it; but all the better. It +won't matter, even if he does not know it is there."</p> + +<p>The Breton maid nodded. "A <i>sachet à preservation</i> then? I know them. We +have them also, Mademoiselle. It is to avert all danger from the soldier +who is to wear it, is it not?"</p> + +<p>"No. Not precisely that," said the young Welsh girl. "It is to bring to +him—well, Happiness of the best."</p> + +<p>"Love, then. Ah, <i>là là</i>! I doubted myself of that!" declared the young +<i>bonne</i>, bursting into ripples of laughter. "I go now to take the coat +to Monsieur, who does not suspect. But no, Mademoiselle, I will say +nothing to him of this; nothing, nothing, nothing at all!"</p> + +<p>Olwen thought, as she went on: "Now Marie probably imagines that I am in +love with this dreadfully uninteresting little Mr. Brown, and want to +attract him to being in love with me! When I've never spoken to him in +my life, or even seen what he's like when he's close to one!"</p> + +<p>But that afternoon she both saw and spoke to this Mr. Brown.</p> + +<p>They were returning, she and her Uncle, from one of those wanderings +which the Professor loved to take out westwards from the hotel. For a +couple of miles they had tramped along the hard sands at the foot of the +great dunes wherein pine-trees were buried up to their lower boughs; +then, leaving the sands, they had scrambled up the sandhills into the +pine-forest that bordered them.</p> + +<p>Its fragrant aisles stretched for miles bisected by paths, spread with +a rich terra-cotta carpet of pine-needles. Already the Professor had +slipped his pipe back into his pocket, for the notice "<i>Défense à +fumer</i>" appeared again and again tacked up on the trunks of the great +pines that made of those miles a perfect factory of turpentine.</p> + +<p>With their faces towards home, they caught sight through the pines of a +figure that repeated for an instant the effect of the pine-trunks +themselves, brown-clad, long-lined, and slender. It stooped at the foot +of a tree.</p> + +<p>"My dear lady," said the Professor, taking off his hat to the figure, +which was that of Mrs. Cartwright, "you look like Daphne, being changed +into a pine rather than a laurel."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she rose to her feet. She had been putting +into position a fallen tin cup, shaped like a flower-pot, and left to +catch the resin as it oozed stickily from the trunk. Most of the firs in +this part of the forest had a tin blade, that had scored them down, left +plunged into the bark.</p> + +<p>"Delightful, to be able to turn into any sort of plant, rather than be +bored by the wrong man," remarked Mrs. Cartwright lightly, dusting her +hands.</p> + +<p>"What a pull for those nymphs! Must have made it worth while to live in +a world where there was no tea. I am ready for mine, though——"</p> + +<p>The three went on homewards together, the Professor walking between +Olwen and the writer, who found herself once more admiring his Druidic +head and still-active frame. In precisely the same spirit she would have +admired some stately, ivy-grown keep that had once echoed to the shouts +of archers; she was scarcely the type of woman who becomes an "old man's +darling——"</p> + +<p>But little Olwen was busily thinking: "Now! I do believe the Charm has +begun to work. Didn't Uncle say she was like Daphne?—and doesn't she +really look younger today? It's <i>begun</i>! And see how she's smiling at +him and talking to him about Anatole France.... But I wish they'd leave +off about books and begin about themselves. I wish I could run on and +leave them to come home together (but they both walk as fast as I do any +day, bother them!). If only we could meet somebody that I could fall +behind with, and let Mrs. Cartwright have Uncle all to herself——"</p> + +<p>This wish was fulfilled at a turn in the path where there was a clearing +in the symmetrically spaced pines. Three paths converged towards a sort +of oasis of heather and undergrowth, surrounding a hut of untrimmed +pine-branches. Huge blackberry runners, purple and green, flung +themselves before the door of it. And there stood, fixedly regarding the +place, a boyish figure in khaki with an ultra-floppy cap at a rakish +angle on his head.</p> + +<p>"Are you thinking of taking that house, Mr. Brown?" Mrs. Cartwright +asked him laughingly, as they came up.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brown gave quite a jump before he turned and saluted the party.</p> + +<p>Up to now they had known this young man as one very fond of his food, +always sitting on the back of his neck in the most comfortable chair he +could find, eternally smoking cigarettes, and evidently bent on getting +his money's worth out of the hotel. But it was a different young man +who now turned his pink face and pop-eyes on them. They'd evidently +interrupted him in thinking over something; thinking hard.</p> + +<p>He echoed Mrs. Cartwright's last words. "Thinking of taking that hut?" +he repeated, in a voice that seemed to bring a breath of crowded A B C +shops, of Tube-lifts and cheerful workaday London generally into that +stately French glade. "Well, d'you know, that's a wheeze. It's a dashed +good idea. I was just that moment thinking that something would have to +be done!"</p> + +<p>"What about?" asked Mrs. Cartwright, as the party halted.</p> + +<p>"Why, about everything, the whole blooming thing," returned Mr. Brown, +pushing his floppy cap to the back of his head. "This is just about +beating me, I give you <i>my</i> word. Look at me, what am <i>I</i> doing here?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright said: "Evidently you're having a look at your new +house?"</p> + +<p>He said: "I don't mean here this minute, in this Epping Forest sort of +show. I mean <i>here</i>!"—he spread out his hands as if to take in the +whole of Western France. "Of course, they told me I'd got to go to +pine-woods when they gave me three months, and a cavalry fellow, at +Sister Agnes's, told me here was better than Surrey, and gave me the +address, and it seemed quite natural to take it and think—Blow the +expense. But I wish—I tell you what I wish."</p> + +<p>He dropped his voice confidentially.</p> + +<p>"I wish this blessed War was over, and me riding in a third-class +carriage again!"</p> + +<p>Before any one could speak, he went on with his candid and good-humoured +grouse.</p> + +<p>"I've got to go first, with these colonels and company promotors, and +people. The trouble is, I like it. Too dashed well I've got to like it. +I never used to think of all these things coming to me when I was +serving behind the counter; nor the customers neither, I'll bet. And now +nothing but the tip-toppest hotel's good enough for me, and me posted in +Cox's 'star' department. R. D., refer to drawer! Got it in my pocket +now; show it to you. I could have sworn I'd got the money, you know. +Still, here's the cheque—"</p> + +<p>He said it with a disarming and engaging honesty, as if the whole story +might be read anyhow in his pink, snub-nosed, and ordinary face. Mrs. +Cartwright and the Professor found it impossible to help liking him as +he stood there, the little Briton who gave no further thought to the +tense horrors of Suvla Bay, where he had won his Cross, but who +confessed his liking for the best hotels. But as for Olwen, she was +watching him anxiously; for his hand had gone to the pocket where she +herself had hidden that "<i>porte bonheur</i>." He fumbled. At that moment +his finger and thumb must have encountered it....</p> + +<p>"No—what's this?—that's not the cheque—must be in my case," he went +on, taking the hand out of the pocket. (Olwen breathed again.) "Well, +now something's got to be done. They'll wait at the hotel, I daresay, if +I don't leave this place altogether. And I like this place." He looked +round the empty hut again, as if he half expected to see a Willesden +estate agent's name round the corner. "Not half a bad idea of yours, +Mrs. C. I might send for some camp-kit; sleep here—do the picnic +touch——"</p> + +<p>For a few moments they stood, discussing forest regulations and to whom +the would-be camper-out must apply. Then, four abreast, they turned to +go on, the sea-breeze meeting them.</p> + +<p>"Mind the barbed wire," exclaimed Mr. Brown, flipping with his cane at +one of those giant brambles. "It's caught your skirt," to Olwen. "Allow +me."</p> + +<p>He bent down and unfastened the hook-like thorns from her frock. This +kept the two behind the Professor and Mrs. Cartwright, whereat the +innocent Olwen rejoiced. She could not guess that not only did the +Professor seem at least as old to Mrs. Cartwright as he did to his own +niece, but that the Professor himself, though he found her a sympathetic +listener, could never at any age have wished to make love to this lady. +For he was a "type"-lover. To him any woman who was not tiny and +black-haired (as Olwen's own mother had been) was only, to quote Captain +Ross, "half a woman...."</p> + +<p>But they were talking together, easily, interestedly, as they walked +ahead through the wood. And even though the subject might only be of +Celtic Folk-lore, Olwen felt already that she saw her wish coming to +pass before her eyes.</p> + +<p>She turned to her other experiment with the Charm.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brown had slipped his fingers again into the pocket into which he +had first hunted for his dishonoured cheque. And this time he brought +out the hidden sachet.</p> + +<p>He stared at the small mauve object.</p> + +<p>"Now what the dickens is this?" he demanded, genially bewildered. +"Don't remember where this came from——"</p> + +<p>Olwen, inwardly terrified lest the young man might in his ignorance toss +the precious thing into the arbutus bushes, said with outward +carelessness, "It looks like a mascot; better not lose it."</p> + +<p>"Looks more like the little square bags they used to fasten on to the +ladies' covered coathangers in the Haberdashery. With scent inside 'em. +I've no use for perfumery——"</p> + +<p>Olwen was now sure he meant to throw this gift of the gods away. With a +hasty gesture she snatched it out of the young man's hand.</p> + +<p>"It is a mascot; I've seen others like them!" she told him, as they came +in sight of the hotel. On the piazza Captain Ross was smoking, with his +friend, the aviator; Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had joined them.</p> + +<p>Olwen realized that Captain Ross was also staring down on to the +pine-bordered road, at herself and young Mr. Brown, who had stopped +short, and was still looking at what she held, the treasure that he had +discovered in his pocket.</p> + +<p>"But how did it get in there?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Somebody might have slipped it in without your knowing. But anyhow," +said Olwen, taking a resolution, "<i>I'm</i> going to slip it back for you +now, to bring you luck!" And she did slip it back into the khaki pocket. +"There! You know where it's come from this time. You'll keep it there, +won't you?"</p> + +<p>"Anything to oblige," laughed Mr. Brown, and the two young people walked +on to join the party on the piazza, who were waiting for them.</p> + +<p>Olwen thought, "It's rather annoying that he's going to leave the hotel, +and live in a hut like the Wild Man of the Woods <i>just</i> when I want to +watch how the Charm will work with him! But if it <i>does</i> work, that's +the main thing, after all."</p> + +<p>She added aloud, looking into the pink and puggy face that had outstared +Danger and was now staring at Bankruptcy, "Take care of it, won't you? +You won't throw it away or let it get lost or anything?"</p> + +<p>"Not for all the Eau in Cologne!" Mr. Brown assured her with a +mock-flourish as they ran up the piazza steps together.</p> + +<p>Those robin-like eyes of Captain Ross were fixed very watchfuly upon +this young Mr. Brown as he appeared, laughing and chatting as if he were +quite old friends with the Professor's niece. Then the young Staff +officer looked from him to her.</p> + +<p>For a girl who wasn't bland, she was (he thought again) quite neat....</p> + +<p>The chit didn't look at him....</p> + +<p>And what (Captain Ross wondered) was that keep-sake that she was handing +to that fellow?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE FIRST ENGAGEMENT BY THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Artill. 38 ans, célib., sér., demande marraine affect, désinteressée."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">La Vie Parisienne.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Astonishment, incredulity, excitement and delight, reigned in the hotel +at Les Pins.</p> + +<p>One thought only pervaded the place, from the topmost attics inhabited +by Marie the Bretonne and the other <i>femmes-de-chambre</i>, down through +the other floors to the wide <i>salons</i> and to the shut-off wing that was +the domain of the management. One topic alone set all tongues there +chattering, in English, French, or Canadian-Scots. One piece of news was +now being discussed before any <i>communiqué</i> from any of the fronts.</p> + +<p>It was the news about Miss Agatha Walsh and the nephew of "the +management," Sergeant Tronchet.</p> + +<p>They were engaged to be married.</p> + +<p>This was sudden, as everybody commented one after another. This was +quick work. For, how long had Miss Walsh been staying at the hotel? +Two—three days? And had she ever met this man before? Never?</p> + +<p>One moonlight walk in the pine-forest, one expedition by motor-boat +across the lagoon, half a dozen conversations at table d'hôte, an +encounter at the post office where Miss Walsh had gone to buy picture +postcards of the Côte d'Azur, another stroll in the forest, a game of +draughts together—this had been all the preparation necessary for a +declaration from the bull-necked, swarthy French sergeant to the English +lady-all-alone. The deed was done. He had asked her to become his wife. +She had accepted him. No; there was no mistake. The pair were going +about looking as if they were newly-elected king and queen of the +Gironde, and those visitors to whom the engagement had not been +announced in French by Sergeant Tronchet, had been told in English by +the radiant, tremulous, blissful Miss Walsh herself.</p> + +<p>Madame Leroux, all smiles, had confirmed the news herself in each +instance. Monsieur Leroux had taken the little tramway into Arcachon to +blaze it abroad at his café. The three little pigtailed daughters +fluttered about the villas of Les Pins in their red-and-white check +frocks, twittering like starlings on the subject of the <i>fiançailles</i>, +and spreading the news that Mademoiselle Ouallshe was sending to Paris +for presents for each of them, and had said that they were to call her +Tante Agathe! The wedding was for soon—for almost immediately!</p> + +<p>Excitement rose higher and higher; it might be observed that the delight +seemed, if anything, on the French side; the astonishment on that of the +English visitors.</p> + +<p>Little Mr. Brown turned from his plans for furnishing the woodcutter's +hut for himself to open his candid and bulging blue eyes upon this new +event in the hotel. He was, as a matter of fact, the first of those who +heard the news to refer to a certain element in it.</p> + +<p>"I say; look here," was his comment. "That chap's all right, I daresay; +but are his people and all that quite class enough for the lady's +family? I don't know about foreigners, of course. And of course I don't +pretend to be Anybody, myself. But what'll her people at home think? +Won't they——Well, <i>socially</i>, I should have thought it would have been +considered a bit <i>Rum</i>!"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright told him, quickly and quietly, that this marriage was +not complicated, on "the lady's" side, by any people at home, and turned +to Olwen to confirm it. Olwen, who was wide-eyed with a mixture of +feelings, which she was surprised to find were not all happy ones, +agreed that Miss Walsh hadn't any relations.</p> + +<p>And presently Mrs. Cartwright was writing to her sisters: "<i>A marriage +has been arranged between the French Sergeant and the Hotel Spinster I +described to you in my last. I think an excellent plan. She wants +marriage, he wants money. Translated into English, it is brutal and +horrible. But these clear-eyed French make something so different out of +all that.</i></p> + +<p>"<i>She is madly in love with him, for the same reason that Eve fell in +love with Adam in that Garden; he's the first man she's ever seen. The +gap between their worlds is no wider than the gap between her and the +world generally. Up to now (35, my dear!) she's belonged to the Great +Unkissed.</i></p> + +<p>"<i>He is proud of his achievement, and, consequently, proud of her. I +expect he will make her an admirable husband. They'll live in this +country, his people will be her people. He will be affectionate, and +genuinely fond of her, as only a Frenchman can be fond of the wife who +has brought him money, and at whom he would not have looked, but for her +income!</i>"</p> + +<p>Olwen, behind that startled gaze of hers, was realizing that she, and +she alone, was responsible for this projected marriage and for the way +in which it would turn out, whether for good or ill.</p> + +<p>She had been the first person in the hotel to whom Miss Walsh had +confided the great news. With the tremulous face of a girl, with a +girl's faltering delight, the Spinster had called into her room an hour +before.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Olwen, come here a minute. (I'm going to call you Olwen.) Oh, I +must tell you first. You were the first person who spoke to me here," +she cried. "Oh, can you believe that it was only last Thursday? +You said that it would bring me luck—that Charm you gave me. Oh, my +little Olwen, it's brought me all the luck and happiness in the world! +That's nonsense—I suppose! Still, I <i>am</i> the happiest person in the +world. Kiss me. Pierre is so wonderful! You see what's happened? Oh, +yes, you must guess——"</p> + +<p>Olwen, hardly believing her ears, still guessed. She left Miss Walsh, +her small ears buzzing with the woman's pathetic gush of confidences, +her mind a welter of emotions. Perhaps the chief feeling was fright....</p> + +<p>It was so powerful, then, that Charm? She had not expected this. Not +only the swiftness of the wooing, but a definite engagement!...</p> + +<p>And a marriage to be expected shortly.... And to—well, <i>not</i> the sort +of person whom Olwen, the disposer of the Charm, had meant to see +attracted to the wearer of her amulet. At least, she had not expected to +see him <i>accepted</i>——! She had hoped—for what? Well, not the first man +who asked Miss Walsh; not the man who—who looked rather like their +village policeman at home! and not for it to happen in three days! It +was rather frightening. Could one count so little upon the way in which +that Charm was going to act? Perhaps after all it was not going to prove +the unmitigated blessing of the human race which Olwen had at first seen +it.... Oh.... Misgivings thronged upon her. For a moment she felt +inclined to wish that she could take the Charm by force, if necessary, +from Miss Walsh—undo what she had done. That she could steal the Charm +away from Mr. Brown's tunic-pocket. That she could snip the ribbon that +tied the Charm round Mrs. Cartwright's long slender neck....</p> + +<p>As for the Charm that rose and fell with the gentle curve of Olwen's own +breast, where it lay, well, that would be all right. For her, Charm or +no Charm, there was no question of attracting the wrong man. For her +there was only one man in the world; his right sleeve was tucked into +his jacket-pocket, and as he smiled teasingly down at her his teeth were +a flash of snow across the brown of his self-confident face. For her the +Charm that attracted him could only be a beneficent thing.</p> + +<p>But what about those others? she mused, doubtfully, over her typewriter.</p> + +<p>In Mrs. Cartwright's case, the Charm was not working as swiftly as in +the case of Miss Walsh. She seemed, so far, on the same terms with the +Professor that she had always been; as ready to listen to his +interpretations of Welsh names—"Olwen," for instance, meaning "White +Track," and belonging to a maid of Celtic mythology in whose path +daisies were wont to spring up—as interested in his special subjects. +As friendly at table d'hôte or in the evenings; yes, as friendly ... but +no more so! At their age, Olwen thought, people strolled into Love, +perhaps, instead of falling into it, as they did at nineteen.</p> + +<p>In her own case, she thought—and she hugged the thought!—the Charm did +seem to be working. Not at that perilous speed with which it had served +Miss Agatha Walsh; not yet with results which meant these definite and +pole-axing announcements! Still ... wasn't it working a little?</p> + +<p>Without looking at him, the girl had several times been aware that +Captain Ross's dark quick glance had sought her out as soon as she +appeared, and that it had followed her as she went out. Several times +since the encounter in the hall, when she had told him that he "didn't +know everything about girls," he had stopped to talk to her; always to +"rag" her with some question or comment. But he had stopped.</p> + +<p>Often she thought: "That means nothing! He never could think of me +seriously. Why should he?"</p> + +<p>Then again she felt that a time must come when he would stop longer, say +more.</p> + +<p>She waited for that time, outwardly indifferent, just as a branch +studded with the brown scentless swellings of mid-winter waits for the +spring that shall see them break into sweetest buds. She waited, fixing +her bright gaze upon some point beyond her idol's broad shoulder as she +answered his greeting with some snippy girlish flippancy, while her +heart whispered—ah! what volumes of tenderness. She just waited; biding +her time as a girl needs must, whether or not she knows of some secret +Charm that backs her power.</p> + +<p>She waited ... but now waiting and secret watching, uttered retort and +unuttered yearning, were all alike tinged with a new apprehension.</p> + +<p>That Charm! What unexpected way of its own was it going to take <i>next</i>?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>UNFORSEEN EFFECTS OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Does the wood-pecker flit round the young ferash? Does the grass clothe a new-built wall?<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall?"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Kipling.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>It would have been a shock to little Olwen had she realized what other +result of the Charm was manifesting itself already at that moment.</p> + +<p>Probably the first, imperceptible manifestations would have been lost +upon this quite young girl.</p> + +<p>Had she noticed the gravitating towards Mrs. Cartwright's chair of an +evening of Captain Ross's friend, the young flyer, had she observed the +gradual way in which it was becoming a matter of course that when the +writer was not working he was in attendance upon her, had she known of a +bouquet of late roses, bought in the Ville d'Hiver and sent by the +chambermaid to Room 23, had she heard what boyish confidences about +flying, and Work, and Other Fellows, and even Home were being poured +into an ear well used to hearing of such things by a tongue not well +used to talking to women—well! Even had she known all this, Olwen would +have looked upon it much as she looked upon her own impulses when she +stooped quickly to pick up a pair of dropped spectacles for the old +French lady, the little dark boy's grandmother, or held open the door of +the <i>salle</i> for her to pass out. It was merely "manners."</p> + +<p>Further, if she had known of that night which Mrs. Cartwright had +watched through with him, putting all her own Force between him and the +forces of Horror, little Olwen would have thought she saw the whole +reason for the young man's attentions to a woman nearly twenty years his +senior. It was gratitude. How natural!</p> + +<p>Manners, and gratitude....</p> + +<p>This is what Olwen would have thought, and what Mrs. Cartwright herself +would have said. It is true that the elder woman should have known +better. Later, she might have confessed that she did know. At the +time.... Well——</p> + +<p>There is one subject in the world upon which more barefaced lying goes +on than upon any other half a dozen subjects put together: sport +included. The discussion of it turns nine men out of ten into what +Captain Ross might describe as "a darned fabricator."</p> + +<p>Golf and salmon fishing cannot compete with the lying records of Love! +Food it cannot be that the golfer and the fisherman cling <i>in their own +hearts</i> to the fabrications that they fling abroad.</p> + +<p>Whereas, regarding the matter of Love, men (and even women) can actually +believe exactly what they wish to believe.</p> + +<p>This was not Mrs. Cartwright's habit. She was a woman sincere with +herself as a rule. Into the lives of the sincerest of us there +trespasses the exception that shows up the fallibility of human rules.</p> + +<p>So when she told herself that this growing attraction towards her of the +boyish Flying-officer was a normal and delightful friendship, she +believed it herself; she insisted on believing that the look in his +young eyes as they followed her movements was not the look she had been +used to see in the eyes of Captain Keith Cartwright and of a dozen other +men; yes, she made herself believe that her own more joyous mood was not +the life-giving zest that every woman feels when she is admired, +desired—and at no other time.</p> + +<p>She deliberately believed it was the glorious autumn weather that made +her feel this stimulant in the air, in the sea-bordered forest, in the +society of young people; that amusing Captain Ross, little Mr. Brown, +the pretty Howel-Jones child, and Mr. Awdas, for instance.</p> + +<p>With pleasure she accepted Mr. Awdas's invitation, one afternoon, to +walk through the forest with him and down to the oyster-beds, the pride +of that part of the country. She thought that Captain Ross was coming +too, but it appeared that Captain Ross and the little Brown boy had gone +for a walk in the opposite direction, to prospect around that +woodcutter's hut.</p> + +<p>She and the young flyer set out together, walking lightly and quickly in +step; their shadows, flung on the road in front of them, showed a +curious likeness that one would not, looking at the pair, have noticed, +he so blond, and blue-eyed, and boyish—she whimsical, brown-haired, +plain of feature. But the shapes of both, blue silhouettes on the white +road, were young and supple, both characteristically small-headed, wide +in the shoulder, slim in the flank, and long from hip to knee. Seeing +them from their shadows only, one might have guessed a brother and his +sister swinging easily along together.</p> + +<p>The shadows broke, striping the red bodies of the pines as they entered +the forest from the road.</p> + +<p>"It's jollier walking further up," said Mrs. Cartwright, taking a path +to the left. "We get glimpses of the sea all the way along; this way."</p> + +<p>He followed her in silence. He had been in a silent mood all day, she +had noticed. She asked him, looking back with a little glance of +concern, if he had not been sleeping again.</p> + +<p>"Oh yes, I've slept all right—slept like a top," he reassured her from +behind. The path was so narrow that they could only walk one abreast +through the arbutus bushes. He told her: "I haven't had any bother at +all since—that night——"</p> + +<p>"Good!" said Mrs. Cartwright heartily, but he had not finished speaking; +he was concluding in a low voice, "that night when you were such an +angel to me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, please don't!" she laughed, looking ahead. "You make me feel like +something off a Christmas card of my childhood; it's not a bit like me, +believe me." She was not looking at him; she did not know, just now, +that his eyes were fastened on the lithe brown length of her as she made +her way through the bushes that seemed to catch at her, offering their +bouquets of white flowers, their jewels of orange and scarlet, as she +passed.</p> + +<p>Presently they grew less thickly, the arbutus bushes; they seemed to +fall back into the forest.</p> + +<p>The two people walking, reached a little rise in the ground, and now a +rush of salter air was mingling with the warm pine-scent that hung +everywhere about them, and now there was a familiar sapphire gleam +through the pine-boughs that showed black and fringed against sea and +sky.</p> + +<p>"One can't walk for long in this wood without coming upon that glimpse +of the sea outside," remarked Mrs. Cartwright, gazing at it, and taking +in a deep, enjoying breath. "Sea through pine-needles is so like the +blink of very blue eyes fringed by thick black lashes! It reminds me so +of a man I was once very much in love with——"</p> + +<p>Quick as a shot came the interruption to what she was saying; a hoarse +curt "Don't!" over her shoulder; a hand that clutched at her upper arm, +and then dropped as soon as it had touched her.</p> + +<p>She wheeled, startled. She faced the angry, hurt, and jealous eyes of a +man.</p> + +<p>Jack Awdas, looking steadily down into her astonished face, repeated in +that husky, angry tone; "Don't. Don't do it! Don't talk to me about any +man you've loved. I can't bear it. D'you see? You——I——You mustn't."</p> + +<p>She said nothing, in the extreme of surprise. He said nothing more +either. It is possible that he was as startled as she was by the +declaration that had broken from his lips, and whose sound was still +ringing in their ears. The boy had not meant to say it. He had not known +what he had meant to say; his mind had been, as it were, filled by some +luminous and bewildering and concealing mist.</p> + +<p>Now a breath had blown aside a corner of that mist: he caught a glimpse +of the heights and depths that it had been hiding—for how many hours, +how many days? He did not know. Only it seemed to him that since that +night of his bad dream, since his eyes had closed upon the sight of that +woman watching, lovely with Pity, he had woken up to a new world.</p> + +<p>It was full of strangeness and unrest, that world; it was full of sudden +thrills. It held impatience to hear her voice, to touch her hand. It +held longing and mystery. It held worship of a laugh or gesture from +her. It held amazement at oneself; incredulity that one could feel these +things. Now, he found, it held also Pain....</p> + +<p>This woman had been made part of his life by that vigil shared. He could +not bear the thought of her in other men's lives; couldn't bear to think +of it, much less to hear of it in words.... It couldn't be. She was his!</p> + +<p>They walked on in silence, these two English people from the hotel; each +treading a maze of hidden thought as they went. No word of it escaped +them for the present. Jack Awdas was the first to speak.</p> + +<p>He said, his husky voice once more composed: "You haven't had a look at +this place yet, have you?"</p> + +<p>"No," replied Mrs. Cartwright, also in the accents of every day. "You +know the way, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; Ross and I explored the oyster-beds the first day we came over. +Rather interesting. I thought perhaps the place might come in useful to +you as—as 'copy.'"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," murmured Mrs. Cartwright, out of the labyrinth of her +thoughts....</p> + +<p>It would have augured ill for the next chapters of her serial had she +depended for "copy" upon what she was to see of that French oyster-park +that afternoon. Neither she nor the boy, who was her guide, had anything +but a cursory eye, an abstracted mind, to give to that lightsome, airy +picture of wide sea and sand, mapped out with stakes and sills and +basins, and peopled with busy barefoot women in their picturesque garb +of black sunbonnet, print jumper and long scarlet trousers.</p> + +<p>Up and down the narrow paths stepped those long slender feet of Mrs. +Cartwright, shod in the brown canvas <i>sandalettes</i> of the neighbourhood, +with lacings that clipped her to mid-calf like the <i>cothurne</i> ribbons of +a dancer. Before her tramped the high leather boots of the Flying-man; +crunch—crunch—crunch, over the gravel and chipped shell. But still the +paths that each was treading remained those of the secret labyrinth....</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>She, behind all the light composure of her manner, was more than +disturbed. She was touched down to that mingling of inner tears and +inner laughter, which was her very self. He cared for her, then, this +charming lad, whose heart so far had known only his own people, only +that other lad who had been his observer and his chum. He loved her. +There could be no mistaking the tone in which he'd blurted out: "<i>Don't +talk to me about other men you've loved; I can't bear it!</i>" Yes; he was +hers—just as Keith Cartwright had been hers, and young Rolfe, who was +killed on the Frontier, and Rex Mannering in Nineteen-oh-one, <i>and</i> the +man whose sea-blue regard had laughed through such black fringing +lashes, and the others. She ought to have known. Here was this boy.... +At twenty-two!... She had seen such affairs.... She had watched, not too +sympathetically, the mature woman who receives the attentions of her +son's contemporaries. Once she had heard a friend of hers, in all the +glory of her twenty-four summer, declare, "It's such an <i>elderly</i> habit, +letting youths <i>younger than oneself</i> fetch and carry for one. And oh, +Claudia! I don't think you or I will ever have to know the humiliation +of loving a <i>boy</i>!" Mrs. Cartwright had lost sight of this friend, who +was a year older than herself.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the unforseen had happened to her too. Certainly Mrs. Cartwright +had never dreamed that this thing would ever happen to herself; to +become at her age the object of a lad's first love. It made her feel, at +the same time, suddenly old—and suddenly young.</p> + +<p>Outwardly unchanged, she let her gaze sweep the flat stretches of sand +before her, and then rest upon a <i>parqueuse</i> who waded by, a vivid +figure in scarlet and black, carrying a square rope-bottomed +oyster-basket.</p> + +<p>"Wonderfully picturesque those wide black sunbonnets the women wear," +Mrs. Cartwright commented. "Curious to think they're a survival of our +occupation of this part of France, all those centuries ago."</p> + +<p>"Are they? by Jove," was all that young Awdas replied. "That's +interesting."</p> + +<p>But for him, too, what he said was as a man talks in his sleep; what he +saw about him was less clear than the landscape of a dream. In his heart +the boy was awed and exultant. He had told her. It had leapt from his +lips, rather. He was conscious of new power within him; something of the +feeling that had been his on the morning when he had first gone up on a +"solo." Now she knew what he had to say to her—for he <i>would</i> say the +rest of it presently. Not yet; not yet....</p> + +<p>They pottered about the oyster-park, talking of oyster-culture. They +had tea in the town, discussing the various tea-shops of their +preference in London and Paris. Then he asked her if she were too tired +to walk home and would like to take the little tramway; he knew he ought +to ask her that, but he hoped inwardly that she would agree to walk. He +breathed again when she protested that she was never tired. They took to +the forest-path again, now gilded by the sun's rays, pointing through +the pine-trunks; beyond the fringing branches the glimpse of sea and sky +had changed from corn-cockle-blue to saffron-yellow. They walked, +talking of those other fair woods of France that the War had turned into +treeless, blasted wastes, spun over by webs of barbed wire. And then +they came to that rise in the ground of the forest where the arbutus +bushes seemed to fall back, and whence they had caught the first glimpse +of the sea. It was here that he had spoken, on their way out. It was +here that, on their way home, silence fell suddenly upon them. As if by +tacit consent, they stopped walking. He turned to her.</p> + +<p>"No," said Mrs. Cartwright hastily, as if he had said something. "No, +no."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Jack Awdas, quietly and steadily, and just as if no time had +elapsed between his first hurt "<i>Don't</i>" and this. "I am going to talk +to you about it. I must."</p> + +<p>"No, no. Please don't," gently and unhappily, from her. "It's better +not. There's nothing to be said."</p> + +<p>"Oh, isn't there, by Jove!" exclaimed the boy. "There is everything. I +must tell you. I——Well, you know now, of course. I do care for you, +most tremendously."</p> + +<p>Tall woman as she was, he was looking down into her face as he went on +quickly, composedly. The intensity of what he felt took from him all +shyness.</p> + +<p>He said: "I never thought it was in me to care so awfully about anybody. +It's all come"—he sketched a gesture with his long arm—"like that! In +me! I can't tell you what it's like. When I've heard other fellows +talking, I've thought——But I see now it's absolutely true. Only more +so. None of them cared as I do. They couldn't. They hadn't met—you."</p> + +<p>"Please don't." She pressed her lips together. "I ought not to have let +you say as much." She tried to meet his eyes frankly, but that young +ardour in them disconcerted her. She looked aside, leant a hand on the +hard red bark of the pine nearest to her. "Of course," she concluded +(very feebly, as she felt!), "I am so glad you like me, Mr. Awdas.... I +hope we shall always be ... great friends...."</p> + +<p>"Friends?" echoed the boy. He put back his small head and laughed. "Like +you? But I want you to marry me."</p> + +<p>She looked at him, at a loss for just the right words.</p> + +<p>He persisted, still smiling. "But, of course, you've got to marry me."</p> + +<p>Now she gave a little hopeless laugh, glancing about as if to take on to +her side the tall old trees, the distant sea, the sunset-clouds. She +said, with an attempt to put the conversation on a more natural basis, +"You know, you mustn't talk nonsense to me——"</p> + +<p>"Why nonsense?" quickly. "This is dead earnest."</p> + +<p>She said quietly: "Mr. Awdas, how old are you? Twenty-two, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; but look here! That's got absolutely nothing to do with this——"</p> + +<p>"Everything," said the woman. "You're twenty-two; I am——"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to know," he broke in. "You're—you. You've got nothing to +do with ages, or age. You're so wonderful. There's nobody in the world +like you. I love you," he ended, in a mutter. "I want you to marry me."</p> + +<p>There was a lump in Mrs. Cartwright's throat as she said ruefully, "I +might be your mother."</p> + +<p>He cried out impatiently: "Oh, dash it all! So '<i>might</i>' Madame Leroux, +or anybody else, be my mother! The point is, they don't happen to be. +You don't either. You aren't. And you're going to be my wife. Don't you +see how I care for you?"</p> + +<p>She was struck by the stark simplicity of him. He cared so much, then, +that he should not think of its not meaning everything to the person +beloved, as well as himself. He was looking down at her not only +adoringly, but masterfully. To him this new love was so wonderful that +it must needs be omnipotent. Sorry, and touched more deeply that she had +dreamed, she sighed as she stood there in the wood and set herself to +argue.</p> + +<p>She went over them all, the old, the obvious, the stock facts that have +proved themselves for centuries, the truths whose lasting light is put +out only by the transient fairy glamour of Infatuation.</p> + +<p>"<i>You see, this is a passing thing. This happens< to almost every young +man once in his life. He looks back and laughs at it.</i>"</p> + +<p>"<i> ... fatal to marry out of one's generation!</i>"</p> + +<p>"<i>In a little time you'll know how right I am——</i>"</p> + +<p>"<i> ... ten years hence you'd look at me, and see I was an old woman. +You'd still be a young man. It would be horrible!</i>"</p> + +<p>The boy looked at her and smiled as she spoke, and she knew that the +words meant nothing to him, the lips that uttered them were everything.</p> + +<p>She said, resignedly, "Let's walk on," and they walked on down the +narrow path between the thickening clumps of arbutus; this time he led, +his head turned over his shoulder to watch her as she followed.</p> + +<p>He began again (without alarm, it seemed): "You won't marry me, then?"</p> + +<p>She was a little reassured by the cheerfulness in that husky boyish +voice. She had flung cold water, then, to some purpose? He was ready to +listen to reason.</p> + +<p>"My dear boy, my dear child!" she exclaimed, laughing more naturally. +"You weren't <i>born</i> when I'd been living for years and years. I was +growing up and married when you were running about that paddock at home +in a jersey suit. I'd been round the world when you were going to public +school. Marry you? I shouldn't dream for one instant of such a thing. +Not for one single instant."</p> + +<p>"Just because of <i>ages</i>?" he tossed back over that wide shoulder as they +went. "Is that all?"</p> + +<p>"Isn't that more than enough?"</p> + +<p>"What, just because you've lived in this world more years than I have? +Eaten more breakfasts and dinners? Had time to wear out more pairs of +shoes?" the boy took up quite gaily. He pushed aside a bush that +straggled right across her path, offering his bouquet of white +lily-of-the-valley-like flowers, growing on the same bough as the +berries of scarlet and orange. Arbutus! She knew she would never see the +plant again without being reminded of this hour. To her and to these +others here with her it would always mean "that time at Les Pins...."</p> + +<p>He broke off a spray, held it towards her. "Look, you're like that," he +told her, more softly, and for the first time rather bashfully. "I was +thinking so yesterday, in the woods. You may have been grown-up, +and—and have known things and all that; that's ripeness and fruit, I +suppose.... Yes; but, at the same time, you kept on being ... white +flowers, and buds...."</p> + +<p>She shook her head, silently refusing the flattery that she knew was +meant sincerely.</p> + +<p>But she took the spray from his hand, tucked it into her brown coat +(tucking in as well an end of Olwen's pink ribbon that had escaped +again).</p> + +<p>The look of joyous mastery flashed into his eyes. He went on, fondly +teasing, "Come to that, I've seen and done more things than you have in +all that long, long life you talk so much about. I've been <i>up</i> further, +anyway, haven't I?" He tilted his crested head towards the pine-tops. +"And <i>you've</i> never crashed down a mile and a half from the clouds; now, +have you?"</p> + +<p>"Ah——" she said, and checked a little shiver. The sun had set now; it +was growing dark under the trees.</p> + +<p>"Let's walk faster," said Mrs. Cartwright, hurriedly. "Let's get in. +And—we won't talk about all that any more."</p> + +<p>He said nothing. His whole heart was filled with the utterly boyish, +utterly obstinate Will-to-Get.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>DIVAGATIONS OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There's a girl wanted there, there's a girl wanted there,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And he don't care if she's dark or fair,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There's a nice little home that she's wanted to share."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Song of the Past.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The scene with which the last chapter closed would have been further +undeniable proof to Olwen of the too-potent success of her talisman, had +she known of it. But how about the working of the Charm, as it had been +mapped out by herself?</p> + +<p>As it was, guessing nothing as yet of how it had drawn to her friend, +Mrs. Cartwright, the adoration of quite the wrong man, the girl was +already in a mood of dissatisfaction. Chiefly, perhaps, because half the +day was over, without a word or look for her from Captain Ross. It is +true that the young Staff officer had announced the evening before that +he guessed he was going to take the following day out in the open. But +if her Charm had been strong as she had hoped it, Captain Ross would +scarcely have wished to leave the hotel for an entire day while she +(Olwen) was in it? Yet, how magic had been its effect in the case of +Miss Walsh and her sergeant! They (the fiancés) were now inseparable, +rather to the scandal of the French contingent, new to the code of the +English betrothed. Olwen scarcely had a word with her friend, except for +good night! Well, the unchaperoned Miss Walsh was entirely happy. That +was one ray of brightness in the gloom of little Olwen's mood, for even +she was now coming round to Mrs. Cartwright's expressed view that it was +better to be happy with a quite unsuitable partner than to be bored with +one who is apparently "cut out" for one. So much for what the Charm had +done for Agatha Walsh.</p> + +<p>But what about Olwen herself? What about Mrs. Cartwright? What about +little Mr. Brown?... To the girl, in her present impatient frame of +mind, there seemed to be absolutely "nothing doing," as Captain Ross +would have said.</p> + +<p>That very afternoon, when she and her Uncle were closeted together in +that bare, shining study-room of his, she had tried to draw a discussion +of Mrs. Cartwright into the rewriting of the Professor's article on old +Welsh flower-names, but the old man was not to be diverted from his own +subject.</p> + +<p>"Never mind Mrs. Cartwright's new dress now, Olwen <i>fach</i>," he'd said, +indulgently, but firmly. "Clothes, clothes, and stuffs——! Get on with +this, now——" And he had laid down close to her typewriter a further +page of notes, in his all but indecipherably small handwriting:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Fox-glove—<i>Bysedd cwn</i> (Hound's fingers).<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Mullein—<i>Canwyll yr adar</i> (Bird's candle).<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Cotton-grass—<i>Sidan y waun</i> (Moor silk).<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Snowdrops—<i>Clych Maban</i> (Baby's bells)...."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Olwen had tapped out a dozen of these names on a fresh sheet of paper, +thinking, rebelliously: "Well, I don't see that these are any more +important than 'clothes and stuffs' that one's got to <i>wear</i>! Certainly +not half as important as an awfully nice woman whom Uncle might be +marrying all this time. I do call it a waste——" Then, as she pushed +the roller of her machine along the carrier again, a more optimistic +thought had struck her. "Perhaps he's making up his mind to propose to +her <i>now</i>."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he won't——Good gracious, what handwriting! What's this?</p> + +<p>"'Briony—<i>Paderau gatti</i> (Cat's Rosary).'</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he won't just say a word to me about Mrs. Cartwright, or how +that goldeny jumper suits her, on purpose. <i>He's afraid I might guess!</i>"</p> + +<p>Then the optimism had faded again into gloom.... Mechanically she +finished her work, stamped the letters, tidied up the table after her +Uncle had gone. She ought to write home, she knew. She owed letters to +Auntie Margaret, who kept the big rambling house in Carnarvonshire for +the family, and to her sisters Peggy and Myfanwy, and to some of the +cousins. (The Howel-Jones family was as big and rambling as that old +house of theirs.) But Olwen was in no mood for writing any letters of +her own. She took out some picture postcards of the place, one showing +the edge of the pine-forest silhouetted against the sea, one of the +<i>Baissin</i> all a-flutter with the sails of yachts (a flight of giant +butterflies) on regatta day, and one of a wave, marbled with foam, about +to break on Biscay shore. On these Olwen scribbled messages to her +home-people; then she took them up with her Uncle's letters, and ran out +of the hotel to post them at the little bureau opposite to where the +tramway started for Arcachon. Then, since there was nothing else to do +until dinner-time, she turned to ramble in that forest that seemed to +fling out its green, deep arms towards human beings clustered in their +houses and villas, their hotels, and their chattering groups between its +edge and the margin of the sea. That forest seemed to draw them as if it +too held at its hidden heart some disturbing Charm, thought Olwen +fancifully, as she roamed out westwards, apparently alone, but always in +her thoughts accompanied by a sturdy compact form in khaki with scarlet +tabs, his right sleeve tucked into his pocket, his gaze confident as the +tone of his voice. Only, in her inmost thoughts, that voice was not wont +to tease and laugh, and "rag" her, as in everyday life. She put, into +the unexpectedly beautiful womanish mouth under that toothbrush +moustache, the tone and the words that she would have wished to hear +from it ... and one can hazard a guess at the feelings of Captain Ross +and of most other young men could they but listen to the dream-language +given to the dream-images of themselves by the girls who are interested +in them.</p> + +<p>Little Olwen's guileless imaginings, for instance, murmured, "Olwen! My +sweetheart! My own, sweet, sweet little girl! No, no; I have never cared +for any one else in my life. All my life I have been waiting for YOU; +the one girl who was made for me. Tell me you've never cared for any one +either; ah yes, darling! Tell me. Do tell me. I shan't be able to sleep +all tonight unless you do——" Thus the Captain Ross of Olwen's maiden +reverie.</p> + +<p>"Then," she mused, with her head down and her eyes on the unseen carpet +of pine needles, "I'd tease him for half an hour before I did tell him +there'd never been anybody, <i>seriously</i>, but him. And then at last—yes, +then I'd let him kiss me. Two or three times running, even," decided +this abandoned Olwen, as she roamed the forest that might have been +Arden, or Eden, or the woods of her native Wales, for all she noticed of +it in her daydream.</p> + +<p>Into that dream there broke a loud and cheerful shout of "Hullo, hullo, +hullo, hullo!"</p> + +<p>Olwen jumped on the path, glanced quickly to the right, and then found +that she had reached, without knowing that she had come so far, that +clearing among the pine-trunks where the paths converged upon the +woodcutter's hut.</p> + +<p>Upon that place the hand of Change had fallen. Those giant +bramble-runners had been thrust aside from the entrance to it; a pile of +green canvas camp-kit leant against the log-wall; a khaki coat and a +service cap were hung upon the outstretched arm of the nearest tree; +and, just within the open doorway, a small figure in shirt-sleeves was +standing working. With the end of a bough, used as a maul, he was +driving four stumpy stakes at right angles into the pine-needle strewn +floor of the hut.</p> + +<p>"Harry Tate, in 'Moving House,' that's what this is supposed to +represent!" explained Mr. Brown cheerfully, as Olwen came up. "What +d'you think of my little grey home in the West? Palatial and desirable +family residence, is it not? (Not.) Standing in its own park-like +grounds." He dropped the maul. "Allow me——"</p> + +<p>He lifted the little green canvas chair out from among the pile of the +other things, pulled the four legs of it into position, and set it on an +even piece of ground close to the doorway.</p> + +<p>"Take a pew, Miss Howel-Jones," said Mr. Brown, and Olwen sat down, +laughing. In a whisk the shadowy and adorable companion of her dream had +been for the moment banished. She turned to this substantial but +unthrilling young man of everyday life.</p> + +<p>"Are you really going to live out here?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Got to," said Mr. Brown, with a business-like nod of his bullet-head. +He returned to his post just inside the doorway, and went on driving in +his stake. She watched him; asked him what those were for?</p> + +<p>"Table," he explained between thumps. "They're lending me a table-top +from the hotel. (Very decent the old girl was as soon as she realized I +wasn't going to do a flit without paying my bill.) These stakes are +going to be the four legs, d'you see? Then I stick the festive board on +top of 'em. Old Ross is bringing it along presently; he's been lending a +hand."</p> + +<p>"Oh, has he?" said Olwen, looking round with great interest at the rest +of the furniture. "Are those all the things you've had in Camp, I +suppose?"</p> + +<p>"Things somebody's had in Camp," grinned the little subaltern. "I +think——Yes, that is my bucket, with 'Brown' painted on it; but none of +the other things seem to be mine. I've snaffled a lot of other fellows' +kit. But then, they've snaffled mine—or where is it? The bed's marked +'Capt. Smith,' and the bath 'Robinson'—I'd better paint Crusoe in front +o' that, eh? Monarch of all I survey touch."</p> + +<p>She watched him as he drove in the last stake; then he turned, put down +the clump of wood with which he had been hammering, and began to drag +out the light, canvas-covered furniture.</p> + +<p>"Shall I help you with that?" suggested the girl, idly, half rising.</p> + +<p>He waved her back with his pink hands. "No! No! You sit here and watch +me and talk to me. Having a pretty young lady to look on and make things +pleasant when you're doing a job of work; what could be nicer?" prattled +little Mr. Brown, picking up the camp-bed that, under his short arm, +gave him rather the appearance of an ant carrying a twig. "There! I'll +have done the lot before Ross comes back with that table-top; I bet he's +getting in another drink while he's about it. Talking of drinks, won't +you allow me to offer you a little light refreshment? Such as my humble +mansion can afford; here you are——"</p> + +<p>As he spoke he took his knife out of his pocket and gave a cut at one of +those ten-foot bramble-runners that had sprawled before the doorway of +the hut. He held it out; it was covered with clusters of those soft, +juicy blackberries that grow largest in the shade.</p> + +<p>"Try our fresh gathered fruit, at market prices," chattered the +London-bred lad; he took the cut end of the prickly runner and stuck it +between two logs of the wall, just to Olwen's hand. "There you are, you +see. Help yourself, won't you?"</p> + +<p>Olwen picked and ate a couple of the sweet cones, black and glossy as +her own little hatless head. Then she held out half a dozen on her pink +palm to her host. "Won't you have one?"</p> + +<p>"Chuck it in," he said, from where he was squatting turning over the +things in his hold-all, which was spread out on the ground almost at her +feet. "Three shies a penny, Miss! Try your luck——"</p> + +<p>He put back his head, opened his large pink mouth. He looked almost like +a big bull-pup, to whom the girl was teaching, with lumps of sugar, the +trick of "Trust" and "Paid for." Smilingly Olwen took aim with one +blackberry after another, missing twice to each one that she dropped +into the mouth not so far from her knee; a babyish game enough! But +their combined ages scarcely reached forty-two. Their laughter rang +pleasantly through the trees, greeting the ears of Captain Ross as he +strode up with the light wooden table-top tucked under his left arm.</p> + +<p>And it was quite an idyllic little picnic group that met his eyes in +that woodland glade of green and russet-brown: the little lady-bird of a +girl, black-headed and red-coated, enthroned there on that camp-chair +set under the trees, and taking aim from a handful of fruit at the +open-mouthed, wholesome-faced boy kneeling before those absurdly small +boots of hers.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the little slinger of blackberries aimed more successfully, at +that moment, than she knew; hitting, as Woman often does, another mark +than the one at which she looks.</p> + +<p>Perhaps the Authority on Woman was not too pleased to see another man +allowed a glance at his (the Authority's) special study, even at a stray +page of it?</p> + +<p>But it was with quite a genial "good afternoon" that Captain Ross set +down the table-top beside the other furniture.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's that, Brown," he said.</p> + +<p>"Ah, thank you," from the other young officer. "Much obliged, I'm sure. +Now, we'll fix this on to here——"</p> + +<p>Olwen darted forward to help with the table-top, but the two young men +had managed without her.</p> + +<p>"That's the ticket. Now, Ross! What about this for a scene in a +Canadian lumber camp? Yes; there's water over there, and I've got my old +spirit-kettle. Might turn an honest penny, too, by giving teas in the +forest. Parties catered for, eh? The Old Bull and Bush touch. Who speaks +for the job of the pretty waitress?" with a cheerful grin at Olwen. +"What, are you going on, Ross? I thought you'd come to lend a hand at my +flit. Don't go. Stop and watch me work, anyway."</p> + +<p>"I guess not," said the Staff Officer, with a flash of his splendid +teeth, and with the gesture that always tore at Olwen's sympathy, the +forward shrug of the shoulder that should have moved his right arm. "I'd +just hate to think I was in anybody's <i>way</i>——" He saluted, without +looking at Miss Howel-Jones any more than she was looking at him.</p> + +<p>Another moment and his scarlet tabs had ceased to brighten that glade of +a French wood, that heart of a Welsh maid.</p> + +<p>Poor little Olwen sat there by Mr. Brown's hut, feeling as if she could +with her own hands have pulled it down about his ears, just for sheer +exasperation. It's true that he, Mr. Brown, was wearing the Charm that +her own hand had tucked into his pocket—but that had no power over her +here. Here she was, left! Left for the rest of the afternoon, possibly, +in the company of a young man whom she didn't care if she never saw +again. <i>He</i> could talk to her, it seemed; <i>he</i> could pick blackberries +for her; <i>he</i> could suggest that she would make a pretty waitress.</p> + +<p>But the one and only young man for whose attentions and compliments she +would have wished—what did <i>he</i> do? Just chucked down, with a careless +word, the table-top that he had been to fetch, and made off without a +look or a thought for her, she told herself.</p> + +<p>Yet she was wearing, as she always wore, hidden away next her heart, the +disturbing Charm!</p> + +<p>What was the meaning of that?</p> + +<p>But for the engagement which it had already brought about, Olwen would +have been forced to the conclusion that it was all a fraud, that Charm.</p> + +<p>Couldn't be that for some people it possessed power, for others none at +all?</p> + +<p>Had it only no effect when it was worn by her, Olwen?</p> + +<p>The "no" to this question came almost as she was asking it; but not in +the way that the girl had wished.</p> + +<p>Little Mr. Brown, having been busy as he chattered, unheeded by her! for +the last ten minutes, had now moved into position the whole of his +effects—except the canvas chair on which Olwen was sitting. His blue +bulging eyes had glanced in her direction several times, as he pulled +and shifted and set straight. Now he looked again, and at length.</p> + +<p>"I say, you know, you do look top-hole, sitting there like that," he +told her, suddenly. "Wish I'd got my little kodak that I had to leave at +Southampton after all; I'd take a snap of you, just as you are. Sitting +there, as if it were your own little place, and all——"</p> + +<p>He paused, still looking at her with his head on one side. He had taken +his coat down from the bough, and stood, one arm in a sleeve of it, +while he considered Olwen as if from a new point of view.</p> + +<p>He said: "It's just what it wants—what any house or cottage or +anything wants. The little missus.... You'll be having a house of your +own, o' course, one day."</p> + +<p>Olwen shook her head. "Never," she said, with all the gloom of a +temporary conviction.</p> + +<p>"Oh! Come! Don't say that," Mr. Brown besought her, cheerily. "Course +you will. All girls say they'll never marry, and all girls <i>do</i>, after +all. All the pretty——All the ones like you, I'm sure."</p> + +<p>"I shan't," persisted Olwen, a trifle cheered however. "<i>I'm</i> not +pretty."</p> + +<p>"Oh! Who's fishing for compliments?" laughed Mr. Brown. He jerked the +other arm into his coat and began to fasten it. "If you don't mind me +saying so, you're the prettiest girl in the place by miles. You are. I'm +not the only person in the hotel who thinks so, either."</p> + +<p>"Aren't you?" said Olwen, with a lift of her head, and of her heart. +"Who——?"</p> + +<p>"Why that old boy who keeps the hotel; old Leroux. He said you were +'<i>très jolie</i>' the other day, when you were passing the steps. I said +'wee, wee, <i>très</i>.' You've got such ripping eyes."</p> + +<p>"I don't think they're anything," said Olwen, disconsolate again.</p> + +<p>"They are," insisted little Mr. Brown, his pink, ordinary face becoming +dignified by his sincerity. "And it's not only—not only that you've got +a lovely little face. There's—well, I don't know what there is about +it."</p> + +<p>"A charm, perhaps," suggested Olwen, with would-be irony; but he took up +quite gravely: "That's it! Just what I meant. A charm. One sort of feels +glad there is the kind of think walking about. It's like the song</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'When we was in the trenches<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Fighting beside the Frenchies,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">We'd 'a' given all we 'ad for a girl like 'er,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Wouldn't we, Bill?<br /></span> +<span class="i6">Aye!'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Or something of that sort. Really now. Seriously. It is awfully topping +to know there <i>is</i> a girl like you!"</p> + +<p>Olwen shook her head again, laughed, deprecated.... Impossible to assert +that she was offended at his homage, even from the wrong young man. She +listened as the guileless Brown went on to tell her it was a very lucky +man for whom she'd be making a little home, some day; and, by Jove, +anybody might envy him——</p> + +<p>"Very nice of you to say so," murmured Olwen, pink-eared, and ardently +wishing that Captain Ross had stayed on to hear this declaration.</p> + +<p>The next remark of Mr. Brown's seemed to have nothing to do with it.</p> + +<p>"Well, the War can't go on for ever."</p> + +<p>"No, I suppose not," said Olwen, uncertainly.</p> + +<p>"And I suppose——Well, it oughtn't to be quite as hard for a chap to +get some sort of a posish of his own afterwards," said little Mr. Brown, +thoughtfully, and as if he were already looking ahead, to a time when he +should no longer wear that uniform, that belt that he was fastening as +he came and stood nearer to the girl, looking down.</p> + +<p>"I mean to say, I'm not going back to any stuffy shop and serving a lot +of old trout—I beg their pardons—ladies with two and a half yards of +écru insertion, pay at the desk, please. Not much. 'Tisn't the life for +me; I know it now. They ought to find something different for me, after +this. They've got to. Don't you think so?"</p> + +<p>"Oh yes," agreed Olwen, a little vaguely.</p> + +<p>"Well! There you are! All sorts of things might happen, with luck, even +if it's no good planning 'em out now," took up the cheery boyish voice; +and then there was silence for a moment under the pines.</p> + +<p>Then lowering the voice, he said: "I say, I'll tell you something. That +little mascot I found"—he touched his coat—"that you tucked in there +for me, I'll always keep that. Nobody else shall touch it, you bet."</p> + +<p>Olwen rose from the chair, putting her hand on the back of it. She was +suddenly a little fluttered, as if by some ripple in the atmosphere, set +stirring by some small and secret Force. The ripple was setting towards +her this time; not from her, as she was wont to feel when she was +putting out that childish soul of herself towards another man. But it +touched her, the tiny Disturbance.</p> + +<p>"Don't you want this chair?" she asked quickly.</p> + +<p>Little Mr. Brown put his own hand on the back of it, closing his fingers +for one moment over Olwen's—his fingers that had handled laces in a +ladies' shop, had handled a rifle later, and, later still, a +blood-stained revolver.... Decency and honesty were written on every +line of the little fellow's face at that moment; and even if he were of +a pattern that everyday England turns out by the thousand—well, so much +the better for England.</p> + +<p>Quite simply, and as one stating a fact, he said to the girl beside him: +"I don't suppose you've ever let any fellow kiss you?"</p> + +<p>He himself had no doubt kissed girls in dozens, but he knew now that +even to mention the word to this girl was a different thing. It did not +need Olwen Howel-Jones's aghast little "<i>What——?</i>" to forbid him to go +further than the word.</p> + +<p>He took his hand away with a little rueful laugh.</p> + +<p>"'<i>Archibald</i>, certainly not!' Eh? <i>I</i> wouldn't have tried."</p> + +<p>"No. Of course not," said Olwen, repressively, but feeling a trifle +shaken. Who would have thought of his saying such a thing to her? Who +would have dreamt that the Charm would threaten to work to +cross-purposes like this? Her small face took an invulnerable look. She +swept some bits of blackberry leaves off her skirt, and prepared to turn +homewards.</p> + +<p>He walked with her to where the trees met the telegraph-posts of the +shaded road.</p> + +<p>There, as he said good-bye to her, this little young officer added, with +a wistfulness: "But I would give anything to!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>THE FEASTING OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"There's that that would be thought upon,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I trow, beside the bride.<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The business of the kitchen's great,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">For it is fit that men should eat,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Nor was it there denied."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Sir John Suckling.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Crowded hours were to follow that quiet afternoon in the forest.</p> + +<p>A morning or so afterwards Olwen darted out into the hall, where she had +caught a glimpse of the bride-to-be going past in a great hurry.</p> + +<p>"Miss Walsh——!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Olwen," said Miss Walsh, stopping breathlessly. "Oh, I do want to +talk to you, but I haven't a moment. It's the lunch today, you know, the +<i>déjeuner intime</i> for all his relations and friends. They've had the +cards——"</p> + +<p>Olwen nodded; she had sent her "<i>faire part</i>" card home to Wales as a +curiosity.</p> + +<p>"It's to be down in Madame Leroux's own sitting-room; she says better so +than having the party in the <i>salle</i> after the hotel visitors have had +lunch," explained Miss Walsh, always breathless. "Oh, I feel I must go +down and see if I can help her, but it is so difficult to understand +when she will talk French so dreadfully fast——"</p> + +<p>"Let me come too," entreated Olwen, eyes suddenly alight. "Let me help, +do! I can generally make out even her fast French."</p> + +<p>"Very well—if <i>you</i> ask her!"</p> + +<p>Madame Leroux was talking faster French that morning than they had ever +heard from her before. They found her in the basement, a whole region of +the hotel that was unknown ground to Olwen, peopled by a tribe of +workers whose sallow faces she had never seen before, and who were +flying hither and thither on errands undreamt of on the upper floors. +Even so the stoke-hole of a liner is unthought about on its polished +decks.</p> + +<p>The manageress was in the <i>appartement</i> that adjoined the kitchen, a +domain smaller but pleasanter of aspect than any of the big rooms above, +and more comfortable, except for one narrow space that was neither +kitchen nor <i>appartement</i>. This space between the walls seemed to be a +sound magnifier of the rumbling service-lift, the whistles of +speaking-tubes, and the hissing and running of every water-pipe in the +place. The door into the huge French kitchen stood open, giving a +glimpse of marmites, burnished copper pans, crocks, and five-decker +cookers; of vegetables piled haystack high, of ramparts of yard-long +rolls, of twenty other kinds of provisions.</p> + +<p>Beyond the kitchen a second door opened out into the <i>cour</i>, where +buckets clanked, a tap splashed, and the whistling of a knife-cleaning +machine could be heard. By yet another door Marie and Rosalie were +bringing in chairs collected from bedrooms, attics, landings, and any +other corner.</p> + +<p>"May we both come in?" Miss Walsh asked timidly.</p> + +<p>Madame Leroux turned.</p> + +<p>"Ah! Enter always, Mademoiselle. It is not to all the world that I +permit it—but for the little demoiselle of M. the Professor, but yes, +but yes——To help? But certainly, if that gives her pleasure. One would +have said that she would have preferred to spend the fine morning with +M. le Capitaine in the forest, he with the one arm who admires her +already——" Madame's glance was as swift as the dart of a chameleon's +tongue after a fly.</p> + +<p>She was already dressed for the day, her dark hair dragged up to the top +of her head in a fist-shaped knob, secured with combs, and her front +locks <i>frisés</i> above her mercilessly intelligent face. Over her +tightly-fitted gown of black <i>broché</i> and <i>passementerie</i>, showing a fat +white V of neck, a velvet band and a pendant, she had passed an enormous +apron of blue-and-white check.</p> + +<p>She was looking over her well-covered shoulder with eyes that were +everywhere at once, and giving orders in a voice that was as shrill as a +whipsaw and as quick as a mill-race.</p> + +<p>"Hold! Prop that door open, Rosalie, instead of bumping it each time +with the good chair, little careless one; one would say a swing!" (She +took breath in a gasp.)</p> + +<p>"And those oysters from Monsieur Paul; are they not yet arrived? Do not +open them immediately, as last time; and even so, see that you open me +but half of them in order that they may keep. And thou, Marcel, take me +that mat into the yard instead of brushing me the dust over the +vegetables!" (Gasps.) "<i>Bon dieu</i>, one would need twenty eyes——As +for these knives, Etienne, have you the intention to grind them to +powder rather than find other work? It is then not necessary that they +serve us for another day?" (Gasp.) "My faith!... Ah, Mees Ouall +she—Agathe——but no, it is not necessary that you help. Go, go and +make yourself beautiful for after the <i>déjeuner</i>, when you are presented +to the friends. Make yourself beautiful for Pierre, who shall mount up +afterwards to beg you to descend for a little half-hour, like a +princess!" (Gasp.) "<i>Eh bien</i>, if you hold to assisting me now, but not +in the kitchen, no, no; if you will have the goodness to dispose on the +table within the <i>serviettes</i> that I have already placed in a heap. Also +the glasses; they are in those cupboards there; no, not there, +Mademoiselle, here, here, here. Arrange them all precisely as in +England, at your <i>château</i>, yes? It is that! It is perfect!" (Gasp.) +"And the little demoiselle of the Professor shall set out the cards with +the names——But no, no, no, no, no; she does not know the names nor +where they sit. Better to place these pots of cyclamen on the +window-sill, Mademoiselle, if you please. One would say real flowers, +would one not? But two francs." (Gasp.) "Fifty! It is true! <i>Ah, pas +ça</i>——" seeing Agatha Walsh, entirely at a loss, picking up from the +sofa-corner and unrolling a tricolor flag. "Not that. It should have +been interlaced with the other. I was desolated, but one could not +obtain in time, the Union Jacques. Flowers only, therefore. <i>Tiens</i>, I +have not placed a cloth over the safe——"</p> + +<p>She spread over the iron cash-safe a cloth edged and inserted with the +lovely pillow-made lace of the neighbourhood, while her nimble French +tongue ran ceaselessly on.</p> + +<p>Her niece-by-marriage-to-be, helped by Olwen, set to work with all the +good will in the world to lay the large round table. From the cupboard +drawers indicated by Madame's plump hands they brought a tablecloth, an +ornately embroidered table-centre, and napkins of the finest linen, all +wedded to that beautiful lace; from the cupboards they took old and +exquisite glass, and silver that could not have been bettered at the +Grange of Miss Walsh's youth. Olwen noticed that the old-fashioned +carved bread-cradle that swung from the ceiling had already been filled +with blossomed and berried boughs of the arbutus, patron plant of the +place. She thought as Mrs. Cartwright had thought, "I shall always think +of arbutus—and here."</p> + +<p>The chairs, some of them rush-bottomed, others of carved gilt, were +ranged about the table; then Olwen and Agatha Walsh sped out into the +yard and returned with the knives that Etienne, the boy in the green +drugget apron, had at last polished to his satisfaction.</p> + +<p>In the middle of the red-tiled kitchen Madame Leroux still stormed as +shrilly as though she alone of all excellent housewives possessed +worthless servants.</p> + +<p>"Is it not enough that I myself must arise at half-past four today, and +it is that I must do <i>all</i> myself, me, as well as to entertain the +friends and the relations of Monsieur, they who are eating their blood +with jealousy because he marries himself with an English lady of the +high nobility? And why are the boards not placed over the bowls of soup? +My faith, it is then that <i>I</i> must work, <i>I</i> must arrange, <i>I</i> must +plan, <i>I</i> must have the eyes everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, while +you let the fire die down, female idle ones who do nothing but regard +with open mouths and talk in corners and try to eat me the <i>glacés</i> +fruits out of the dishes?" (Gasp for breath.) "Take you these +immediately, Marie Claire——" she waved towards a score of trussed +chickens that looked like a frieze of poultry—"and set them in the +pans. And pose you those lids so that the pottage may simmer as it +must." She pointed to the vast arched fireplace with the grid running +from one end to the other. "<i>Mon Dieu</i>, if this boy here had as many +legs as an octopus he could not more expressly place them in my way. +That he does at each moment! Is it that I have sent my own children out +to receive <i>les amis</i> even at Arcachon, to be encumbered by thee? The +children? They will feast out here in the yard with the children of the +notary and the little cousins; I do not wish that they are the whole +time with the grown ones when one talks——"</p> + +<p>And she bustled out into the <i>cour</i> to look to the long trestled table +there which had been surrounded by a still further variety of chairs.</p> + +<p>It was here that Miss Walsh in her halting French asked where was +Gustave, where was Monsieur Leroux?</p> + +<p>"The men?" Madame gabbled. "Ah, for that, where would they be? +Invisibles, so long as there is work to be done," with a half-indulgent +laugh. "You will see also, in good time, you English ladies, that which +the <i>service militaire</i> does for the men! They make their service. They +return. They put themselves at their ease. Behold, they are required to +do nothing further for the rest of their life. It is we, Mesdemoiselles, +we who are accustomed to it; we other French wives. You also, you will +see! Ah, hold, the oysters! Now, Etienne, you will dust me once again +the seats of all these chairs, I say to you, and with a dry duster, I +pray you, not a wet one; dry, dry, dry, dry, dry——"</p> + +<p>In this exalting hubbub did Olwen pass the whole morning with her friend +until the sallow little Italian waiter came down to announce that +<i>déjeuner</i> was served.</p> + +<p>They went up. How cool and quiet, it struck them, were those upper +reaches of the hotel....</p> + +<p>But as they were seeking their places a quick "Oh, come and look!" from +Miss Walsh brought Olwen running to the side window. "Oh, here are the +people——"</p> + +<p>The procession of the French <i>invités</i> was coming down the road from the +little tramway terminus. It was solemnly headed by the three little +pigtailed Leroux girls, each holding by the hand another child, bare +from mid-thigh to ankle, and wearing an adaptation of the sailor suit. +After them, in a broken line of twos and ones and threes, came the +grown-up people.</p> + +<p>First and most resplendent of them appeared the individual whom Olwen +rightly guessed to be the <i>notaire</i> from Bordeaux. He wore a white +bowler hat, a white waistcoat, and he carried in his hands, which he +held well out in front of him, a large bouquet tied with tricolour +streamers and the Union Jacques which Madame Leroux had desired, and he +overshadowed even his rotund <i>endimanchée</i> wife in her purple costume +and forward raking hat, who bobbed in his wake. She was escorted by +Monsieur Leroux. Next came Monsieur Popinot, the clerk from the +passports office, all in black, but carrying Madame Popinot's pink +parasol. She, a plump and pretty little woman, carried a year-old baby +in a corolla of lace.</p> + +<p>Then came a sister of Madame Leroux, as dark, as mercilessly intelligent +as the manageress herself, talking eagerly to Pierre Tronchet, effective +in his blue and red.</p> + +<p>Another <i>artilleriste</i> on leave, evidently a comrade from the regiment, +walked a pace or so behind them, between two silent young girls; then a +trio of stout, bearded old men gesticulating freely, then a lady in +another forward raking hat, then a party wearing deepest mourning, but +wreathed in smiles, then others ... then again others.... Tronchets, +Leroux, ramifications of both families, relatives, friends, and those +whom it was intended to dazzle....</p> + +<p>Olwen, gazing upon this <i>cortège</i>, suppressed a wish to think aloud of a +rhyme of her childhood:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The animals went in four by four,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Hurray, Hurray!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The animals went in four by four<br /></span> +<span class="i2">And the big hippopotamus stuck in the door."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>This last line, she considered, might almost have applied to several of +the <i>invités</i>!</p> + +<p>All of them, as they approached the hotel, stiffened, pulled themselves +together as if they were going past the saluting point of a review, +assumed photographically unnatural expressions, and walked delicately; +then they seemed to deflate and hurry as they slipped past the corner to +the back entrance to the premises.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm not a bit hungry," sighed the agitated Miss Walsh as she turned +from the window and sat down next to Olwen at the long table. The +<i>déjeuner</i> was as perfectly cooked and served as if no subterranean +banquet had been in preparation. "Oh, fancy having to be 'shown' to a +host of people! Oh, I can't help feeling almost glad that Gustave's +father and mother aren't alive! If they had been, you know, he would +have had to ask their consent to marry me, even though he is +thirty-eight. Oh, it is such a mercy that Madame didn't want me to sit +through the whole of lunch."</p> + +<p>"Much the best plan!" agreed Mrs. Cartwright from her side of the table.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; I don't appear till they have to drink my health—oh, but I am +so nervous! And do you think I look all right in this, Mrs. +Cartwright?... honestly?"</p> + +<p>She wore an expensive new dress of prune-coloured <i>glacé</i> silk, +ornamented with a kind of lace bib and with rows and rows of little +crimson buttons that fastened nothing. Both Mrs. Cartwright and Olwen +fibbed valiantly, and had their reward. The loveliest frock in Paris +could not have been more becoming to Agatha Walsh than her flush of +pleasure.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>That <i>déjeuner</i> downstairs was supposed to be <i>intime</i> and private; but +the distant sounds of it were already becoming audible to the more +public part of the hotel.</p> + +<p>First a soft but thunderous drumming as of applause upon the table-top +was heard.</p> + +<p>Then a skirl of laughter, the piercingness of which, near to, could only +be guessed at.</p> + +<p>Then, booming fragments of a voice that rose above others just as an +occasional column of foam spouted higher than those other Biscay +rollers on the reef. Then an uninterrupted booming.... Apparently a +speech was in progress.</p> + +<p>An involuntary and smiling silence seemed to fall upon the luncheon +parties in the <i>salle</i> above, almost as if they would have felt it +impolite to talk through what was going on below. Truly, Miss Walsh was +making the hotel one that day—the hotel to which she had only come +because of that hat-pin stuck in a guide-book and pricking at random a +name on a page!</p> + +<p>Then suddenly, the door of the <i>salle à manger</i> opened. The blue-and-red +apparition of Sergeant Tronchet stood to attention just inside it: +darkly flushed, beaming, silent.</p> + +<p>(It may here be said that none of the visitors ever had known this +swarthy well-set-up French soldier anything but silent. All that most of +them had ever heard of his voice had been the murmured "Madame ... +Mademoiselle ... Messieurs ..." that accompanied his heel-clicking +bows. Only Miss Walsh had ever had any conversation with him. But had +not this been to some purpose?)</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's come to fetch me," she exclaimed now in a voice that failed. +"Good-bye, Olwen dear," she added, as if she never expected to come back +alive. "I shall see you and Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor at +tea-time——you are all coming to <i>my</i> tea, aren't you?" she finished +appealingly.</p> + +<p>Then she disappeared, with her peacock-proud <i>fiancé</i>.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"The day has only just begun, my dear child!" declared Mrs. Cartwright +to Olwen, rising. "Come to my room and take a rest before <i>we</i> come on +in the next act. Run up, will you? I'll follow."</p> + +<p>Olwen ran up; glad of a breathing space.</p> + +<p>That party, three floors and five or six rooms away, did still dominate +the whole hotel! She was glad to lie back in Mrs. Cartwright's +basket-chair and to draw a long breath. She had nothing to do that +afternoon, she thanked goodness....</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Cartwright, as soon as she came in, drew a chair up to her +writing-table and began to make notes, chuckling from time to time.</p> + +<p>"Tell me when the people begin to go," she begged Olwen. "I had to make +an errand about the tea, and take a peep in just now, I couldn't miss +it.... My dear! The heat! And the din down there! Poor Miss Walsh! How +Madame crammed them all in I don't know.... And Monsieur Leroux with his +black domino beard and his pouchy eyes, <i>and</i> all those women exactly +the same height whether they sit down or stand up...."</p> + +<p>She was scribbling sketches of them all to send to her boys....</p> + +<p>The noise downstairs rose to sounds of confused singing—<i>Le Chanson des +Baisers</i>, then fell at last.</p> + +<p>"I think they're all going away now," said Olwen from the balconied +window, and Mrs. Cartwright ran to join her and to watch the +homeward-faring procession filing by.</p> + +<p>First the notary, his white bowler hat a little dinted, appeared round +the corner of the hotel. He was arm in arm with Monsieur Popinot, who +still carried his wife's pink parasol, and who seemed to have an idea +of putting it up over the pair of them as they went by the windows, but +was restrained by a gesture, suppressed but fierce, from the notary. His +purple-clad wife hustled the children ahead of her; the party in +mourning were giggling joyously together, then assumed a gravity.</p> + +<p>With the same effect of pompously pulling themselves together with which +they had passed the front of the hotel, they all repassed it now.</p> + +<p>Even as they turned their backs upon it, the strain was seen to relax +again. Up went the pink parasol in the distance.</p> + +<p>"Ah, there; there goes Gustave's comrade the <i>artilleriste</i>," commented +Mrs. Cartwright. "First at the fight—and last at the feast; yes, he's +the last."</p> + +<p>The <i>artilleriste</i> swaggered delightfully, turning to wave a farewell, +and obviously caring little whether it were to the front of the hotel or +the back....</p> + +<p>And then, about seventy yards behind the last of these revellers there +went by two other figures.</p> + +<p>They were those of Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas, who had been making +themselves scarce for the day.</p> + +<p>And perhaps it was because Olwen was busy with her own effort not to +look at one of them that she did not notice Mrs. Cartwright's swift +glance at the other; the flying boy.</p> + +<p>As if he felt that glance upon him, Jack Awdas looked up and put a hand +to his cap; a smile rippling all over his face.</p> + +<p>Olwen would not have read the purpose behind the smile.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>MOONLIGHT AND THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">That monthly changes in her circled orb,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Lest thy love prove likewise variable."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Now let us take the roof off, as is done in fairy stories about other +charms.</p> + +<p>Let us steal a peep, that is, inside various rooms of that hotel, where +this story is laid.</p> + +<p>In the basement, first of all, let us cast a glance at the <i>appartement</i> +that had echoed to the feasting of that luncheon party, and had been +later the scene of a sedate and ultra-English tea. Nobody there now, +except the hotel manageress and her husband. Monsieur Leroux with that +black domino beard of his, is dozing in the most capacious chair; Madame +is poring over her accounts. Every now and then her eye lights up with a +spark from the smouldering fire of pride within her; for who but she has +such a right of feeling proud at the end of that day of meals and +acclamations (and washing-up?). She thinks of her nephew Gustave's +brilliant <i>partie</i>, and of the bedazzling of all her friends, most +especially of the notary's wife, here in this very room. The little +close room seems to her once more a-glitter with the glass and the +silver and the display.... Only the prune-coloured velvet curtains are +tightly drawn before the pots of imitation cyclamen, and there enters no +gleam of the light that is bathing the forest and the sea +without—light of the waning moon, melting and cool at once, at once +disdainful and seductive.</p> + +<p>Upstairs in the <i>salle à manger</i> the engaged couple have been dining as +guests of the guests. Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had suggested +this, and their proposal was cordially received. The health of the +<i>fiancés</i> had been drunk, and the old French gentleman with the red +button-hole has added the toast to the next betrothed from that party +there present tonight.</p> + +<p>And now Gustave Tronchet and his bride-elect are still moving from group +to group in the <i>salon</i>, and the diffident, old-maidish Englishwoman is +transfigured. It astonishes her to think that she could ever have felt +that violent shyness so early in the day. She has forgotten how her +knees trembled as she faced that perfect zoo of foreigners, all beards +and bosoms, come to inspect Mees Ouallshe.</p> + +<p>She feels now that she carried it off admirably. She has been amplifying +to herself since the ten words of French that she had managed to stammer +out then, and by now they appear to her a classic oration. She feels she +was born to this kind of thing. On her <i>fiancé's</i> stout arm she moves +about the room like a spoon that is keeping on the stir a pan of hot and +incredibly sweet social jam. As Mrs. Cartwright says to herself, "No +ordinary English engagement to a man out of her own world could ever +have brought the dear good creature these triumphs; let her enjoy +them,"——and everybody enjoys seeing Miss Agatha Walsh radiant, while +she even more enjoys being so seen.</p> + +<p>As for Sergeant Gustave Tronchet, if he were not enjoying it, also, who +should be? Accepted, <i>rangé</i>, adored!</p> + +<p>He marshals her about from <i>salle</i> to <i>salon</i> and lounge, drawing her +back as she peeps through the chink of the big hall door at the +beckoning moonlight without.</p> + +<p>"No, Agathe! You will <i>inrhume</i> yourself——"</p> + +<p>She turns to beam brighter than the moon itself at the comely dark face +of the only man who has ever protested whether she took cold or not. He, +too, has been studying a speech in the language of the country into +which he is marrying.</p> + +<p>He brings it out, and the ears of love are quick to understand even his +English, even his accent.</p> + +<p>"I oueelle trai to you rendaire 'appeee, Agathe!"</p> + +<p>"Oh," she breathed, with a little clutch to the blue-sleeved arm. "Oh, +but you do, you <i>have</i>!"</p> + +<p>They return to the <i>salle</i>....</p> + +<p>But the assembled visitors cannot spend the whole evening in +contemplating the happiness of Miss Walsh and of Gustave Tronchet, +<i>serjent d'artillerie</i>.</p> + +<p>Other groups begin to make their own arrangements; in one of the +bedrooms the Madonna-like French mother and the Brittany nurse are +putting to bed Lucien, the little damson-dark boy, who was also at Miss +Walsh's tea; he is repeating, with the correct pronunciation of a child +to whom all language is new, a little prayer that she has taught him:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"I see the moon and the moon sees me,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">God bless the moon and God bless me!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>In another bedroom Olwen Howel-Jones has just run up to get into her big +driving-coat; she thinks of going out for a breath of fresh air and of +moonlight. Why not? Mrs. Cartwright will probably come if she's asked.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Roof on again here, please. For at this point of the story Mrs. +Cartwright was standing just outside the <i>salle</i> windows beside the dark +spiky shape of a cactus; she had put on a pale-hued wrap, and in the +puzzling light and shade she appeared gleaming and straight as the +flowering rod of the plant. Just as she was looking out to where a few +riding lights showed in the <i>Baissin</i>, Jack Awdas strode up beside her.</p> + +<p>"Come for a turn down on the sands," he suggested, cheerfully. "It's not +cold; it is one perfectly good night for a walk."</p> + +<p>Now it is almost easier to take the roof off an hotel and to look down +unchecked into its various rooms than it is to unveil and take stock of +the contents of a woman's mind with its strata upon strata of confusing +elements.</p> + +<p>So, for what Mrs. Cartwright was feeling, we will take her word as she +told herself that she felt relieved and settled about the <i>affaire</i> Jack +Awdas.</p> + +<p>She was glad it was all over. The boy had imagined himself in love with +her.</p> + +<p>A great mercy that he had not, after the manner of some men, allowed +himself to dangle and sigh and create an atmosphere in which one did not +quite know where one was. He had voiced his absurd and youthful passion +at once. He had actually proposed to her—to her who might be his +mother. So much the better, as it happened; because <i>now</i> she had been +able to say "No" definitely. It had all been definitely settled and +tidied up in that wood on the way from the oyster park.</p> + +<p>Now, it was finished.</p> + +<p>Now, it was quite safe again.</p> + +<p>It would be silly to avoid the boy since both of them knew where they +were.</p> + +<p>Besides, he had had that horrible nightmare. He would have to go flying +again. Not even yet were his jangled nerves quite healed, poor child! He +ought, he really ought to have some one to look after him, to give a +thought to his welfare now and again ... some nice, sensible woman....</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, in thus describing herself to herself, did not for one +moment admit that if the boy had already proposed to her in the +sunlight, he simply couldn't help himself in the moonlight.</p> + +<p>So she answered him lightly and conventionally; she fell into step +beside him. They walked.</p> + +<p>She was too old for him, as she'd told him. A generation too old! But +she was still not too old to walk with him, to listen to him. And ... +When is a woman too old to wish she were young enough?</p> + +<p>It was brusquely enough that Jack Awdas broke into speech.</p> + +<p>"I say," he began, "how old should I have to be, then, before you'd want +to marry me?"</p> + +<p>She had been looking away across the <i>Baissin</i> with its twinkling +lights, its guardian jewel flashing from white to red. She turned +abruptly, dismayed, as one is dismayed when some trouble, dimly foreseen +(and defied) descends upon one's head.</p> + +<p>Oh dear.... Oh dear.... It was not quite at an end then? She had not yet +definitely put a stop to this very young man's folly?</p> + +<p>"Oh," she returned. "Oh, but we had agreed, I think, not to talk +about ... <i>that</i>, any more...."</p> + +<p>"Had we?" he retorted. "You had 'agreed,' perhaps. I hadn't."</p> + +<p>"But——Please! There must be no more of it."</p> + +<p>"What?" He threw up his head. "We must have it out, you know. We are +going to."</p> + +<p>"No, no——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I say. Yes. As I was saying——How old should I have to be before +you'd want to marry me?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright gave a little hopeless sort of laugh to herself as she +threw upon him that quick glance that seemed to be not looking.</p> + +<p>He put on his coat (at her orders), his flyer's coat with the wide +collar that made his head seem even smaller and the oval of his face +more perfect as it rested against the fur. That young, young face +topping the athlete's body that towered above her own, that spring and +lilt of his walk had never before made such appeal to the sense of +physical beauty that was in her.</p> + +<p>Claudia Cartwright thought that in this faculty she brought up the +arrears of the countless members of her own sex who would seem to be +entirely without it. A woman had once said to her, "<i>I don't find any +man much under forty-five worth considering. Youth doesn't appeal to me. +I never can see the attraction!</i>" and to Mrs. Cartwright this was +exactly as though her friend had boasted, "<i>I am colour-blind! I can't +tell one tune from another, either! Also, I never care for flowers.</i>"</p> + +<p>The boy at her side was beautiful, in the diffused and shifting light, +as a young marble Hermes dressed in the trappings of today and come to +life to court her. The next twenty years might teach him many, many +things—but they must strip from him one by one the charms of which he +was all unconscious, as he demanded of her how old he must be to please +her.</p> + +<p>She should stop him there, she knew. Since he had not seen that it had +been the end, she should put the definite end to it; go in.</p> + +<p>She should not dally or coquet with this thing.</p> + +<p>Instincts that she had thought long dead were lifting their heads within +her; too strong to be beaten down at once. For the life of her the woman +could not help dallying with that passing moment to which every woman +alive cries out within herself, "Oh <i>stay</i>! <i>Thou art so fair</i>——"</p> + +<p>Aloud she said (truthfully enough, but in a sense that he did not +follow), "I might not want to marry you if you <i>were</i> older."</p> + +<p>"Why not? Why not? The other day in the wood you said it was my age that +you barred," he went on, persistently. "It isn't that you don't like +<i>me</i>, is it? <i>Is</i> it? If you just happened to be my own age, then, you'd +take me, wouldn't you?"</p> + +<p>Would she? Ah, wouldn't she, she thought, vainly. And again for the life +of her she could not keep that subtlest, faintest trace of coquetry out +of her voice as she replied, "You seem very sure of that."</p> + +<p>"Mustn't I be? Tell me at least. <i>Tell</i> me what you think of me!"</p> + +<p>She seemed to catch herself back just in time from uttering follies. "I +think you are a dear boy; one of the dearest that I have seen," she +said, evenly. "But I know that you're wasting your time with an ageing +woman like me."</p> + +<p>"A what?" he almost snorted.</p> + +<p>She repeated it all the more firmly, perhaps, because she knew that she +was looking her youngest in that soft light of the waning moon.</p> + +<p>"An ageing woman like me. For I am that. Just think of it, quite +sensibly, for a moment. In a little while you would see me getting to be +just the same as friends of your mother's, that you're specially nice to +and talk to because they are old. Yes! Listen! It's coming. Before you +have a line on your face or a grey thread in your hair."</p> + +<p>"I shall get as bald as a coot. All flyers will; it's the tight leather +caps, here——"</p> + +<p>"Nonsense! Ages before that, my hair will be growing grey all over."</p> + +<p>"It's quite grey now; absolutely white in the moonlight—silver! And it +looks top-hole," he assured her, laughing down at her. "Why, you look +wonderful. You always do. You can't talk about the usual sort of women +getting old, and pretend you're going to be like that, because you +aren't. How could you ever be? You're different."</p> + +<p>"Only to you," she sighed, "and only for the moment."</p> + +<p>"Moment! I swear <i>I</i> shouldn't ever alter——"</p> + +<p>"No? Let's turn." They retraced on the sands the lines of their own +footprints; his boot-marks making a contrast with the slim, light +prints of the woman's shoes.</p> + +<p>"What have you got on your feet?" he asked her presently, almost +roughly, stopping to look down. "I never saw anything like the things +women go out in. Haven't you got <i>any</i> sensible boots?... You aren't fit +to take care of yourself, as a matter of fact. You've got to let me take +care of you."</p> + +<p>"My dear boy," she smiled, shaking the head on which the moonlight was +spinning those prophetic webs of silver, "all nice men at your age begin +to feel that need of taking care of something. A young girl, that's what +you ought to be seeing to the shoes of, and looking for wraps for, and +all that. Not me, not me. A young girl."</p> + +<p>"What young girl?" he demanded mutinously.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright was silent as they passed into the darkness under the +wooden jetty. Out into the light again they came, and up the beach, +back, in the direction of the hotel piazza, and of the old cannon that +stood on its stone plinth at the foot of the stone steps. They reached +the cannon, and still she had not spoken.</p> + +<p>She was thinking, hard.</p> + +<p>A young girl, she had said; and she could think without "minding" it in +the least, that the best thing this lad of twenty-two could do would be +to fall in love with a young girl. She had thought so several times +lately. It was odd, however, that she always thought of this solution as +"a" young girl, not any particular one. Not little Olwen Howel-Jones, +for instance; oh, no! Nor her (Mrs. Cartwright's) young niece Stella, +not any of the Mabels or Ethels or Dorothys that she knew at home, and +to whom she might have introduced the boy. None of these could she think +of for one instant in connection with Jack Awdas. Yet, one of these +days, some lucky girl must be responsible for the happiness of all his +days (not just of one glamorous afternoon in the forest) and all his +nights (not just of one night when the power of darkness had been kept +at bay, and when he had fallen at last asleep "as one whom his mother +comforteth"). Yes, later on, there must be "a" young girl for him....</p> + +<p>He stopped by the cannon.</p> + +<p>"Don't go in. Just a little minute," he coaxed, softly. "I can't talk to +you in there."</p> + +<p>"It's no use talking," murmured Mrs. Cartwright.</p> + +<p>But she did pause.</p> + +<p>And, as he sat down on the body of that obsolete gun, and then, +unfastening his thick coat, spread a flap of it out, she did yield so +far as to sit down, in her pale wrap, on that corner of his coat beside +him.</p> + +<p>He leant an arm on the cannon behind her. Both looked in silence over +the lagoon, towards the reef.</p> + +<p>White, red; white, red—flashed the warning light.</p> + +<p>She felt herself at the beginning of a conflict that must tear her this +way and that; but his mind was single and set. He was just blind, +obstinate, and keen.</p> + +<p>He said, "I told you that night when you sat up with me what I thought +of girls. I don't want 'em. I want <i>you</i>, and you're all I want; or ever +shall. I can swear to that. Oh, I know myself! I can swear to it."</p> + +<p>The arm behind her trembled a little with his earnestness.</p> + +<p>For one mad moment Mrs. Cartwright admitted to herself that if she could +be twenty-two again for one year, she would buy that year with the rest +of the time that she had to live. Ah, to be twenty-two! To let that hard +boyish arm close round her, clasp her, crush her! To turn, with lips and +eyes aglow, to turn to him as she felt herself drawn to do—drawn, +driven——</p> + +<p>But because she felt thus she kept around herself that invisible, +intangible armour of refusal which is every woman's at need and which no +outside power can pierce. She did not need to move one half-inch away +from that corner of his coat on which she sat. Yet ... Yet she could +hardly believe that he did not guess at the growing disturbance in the +heart that beat not so far, after all, from his own.</p> + +<p>Appealingly he broke out. "<i>You</i> must marry me. I don't know why on +earth you want to talk about other girls to me!"</p> + +<p>"<i>'Other</i>' girls——!"</p> + +<p>"Yes. You're just a girl to me. You <i>are</i> a girl, yourself. I can't see +you as anything but a girl!"</p> + +<p>She made a little gesture with her long arms, lithe and elastic still as +when she was a schoolgirl, only more rounding in modelling; she pressed +a hand to her hair, still brown and thickly growing. She turned away the +face that showed lines brought by years of worry, of concentration upon +her work; ah, they were there even in the moonlight and even though she +tended her skin as prettier women often neglect to do. She could feel +that in every inch and ounce of him this boy was alert and conscious of +her nearness, of her suppleness of body, of that faint scent of rose, +kuss-kuss and orris that clung about her.</p> + +<p>It couldn't be. It mustn't be.</p> + +<p>Lightly as little Olwen could have sprung up, Mrs. Cartwright sprang up +from her seat upon the muzzled cannon and said quickly, "I am going in."</p> + +<p>As she set her foot upon the first step of the piazza, she turned to +young Jack Awdas with what she told herself would be, definitely, her +last word upon the subject. Her little laugh was whimsical and mirthless +as she said it.</p> + +<p>"You think you see me as a girl? Ah! Wait until you see me beside a +<i>real</i> girl!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>WILD-FIRE AND THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A light that shifts, a glare that drifts,<br /></span> +<span class="i5">Rekindling thus and thus."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Kipling.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>A little earlier, on that same evening, the disturbing Charm had set to +work in other directions.</p> + +<p>Little Mr. Brown, who had taken his dinner as usual at the hotel, was +lingering on the terrace on the other side of the building from the +piazza. He was smoking a cigarette, which the "<i>Défense</i>" notices would +forbid him at every turn on the forest; but, apart from this, it was not +to be wondered at that the gregarious little Londoner was in no hurry to +get back to that sylvan shanty of his. The contrast, after that evening, +would have been as great as that between a chandeliered ballroom and a +cave.</p> + +<p>Oh, the loneliness of that hut at night! His cheerful urban +soul got fairly fed-up, as he would express it, with all that +wind-sighing-in-the-pine-tops business. Of course, as he'd have told +you, the little old hut was good enough for lolling outside of with a +book, or for writing his letters in of a morning. If only they'd allow +him to smoke there he would be quite fond of the dashed little dug-out +by now, but he didn't pretend to find it a very attractive spot of an +evening.</p> + +<p>Even of an evening, perhaps, it wouldn't have been so dusty if he'd had +somebody with him. With his cigarette between his teeth he found himself +humming a song of seven years back:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"It's all right if there's a girl there,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That's the place where I'd like——"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>At that moment Olwen Howel-Jones, her slim shape buried in a big +driving-coat, appeared upon the terrace.</p> + +<p>He approached her joyously.</p> + +<p>"Going for a little stroll round the houses, Miss Olwen?"</p> + +<p>Olwen shrank within herself. She did not want any more of the obvious +admiration of this quite nice boy; it had dismayed her to find that in +shooting at a star (Captain Ross) she had hit a blackberry-bush (little +Mr. Brown). After that declaration of his in the wood she had felt +almost inclined to tear that misleading Charm she wore from its ribbon +and to toss it down the wind into the <i>Baissin</i>! However, she could not +be rude to him just because he didn't happen to be somebody else. +Hesitatingly she replied that she had thought of going for a little walk +with Mrs. Cartwright, who seemed to have disappeared.</p> + +<p>(She, as we know, was at the moment pacing the sands beside Jack Awdas.)</p> + +<p>"Ah, you're at a loose end, then, are you," returned Mr. Brown, +cheerfully. "Well, if I might have the pleasure——?"</p> + +<p>Before Olwen could either grant or refuse "the pleasure," there stepped +out on to the terrace Captain Ross, who with a note of some purpose in +his "good evening," took up his position on the other side of the girl.</p> + +<p>Now, all through that thrilling day, something (heard quite at the +beginning of it) had been humming in Olwen's heart like a wind-harp that +responds to every passing breath. It was that something let fall by +Madame Leroux, and it had tossed Olwen far too high up into the rosy +clouds to take more than a quite superficial notice of the subsequent +events of that rousing day. She had helped Miss Walsh, had listened and +watched with Mrs. Cartwright, had drunk healths—but all the time she +had been secretly hearing, over and over again, one lightly-uttered +remark.</p> + +<p>"<i>Monsieur le Capitaine, he with one arm, who admires Mademoiselle +already——</i>"</p> + +<p>Madame had thought that! There must be truth in it. The Charm was +working and not only in the wrong direction. It was true that Captain +Ross had talked to Olwen as if she were a little girl; he had avoided +her in the forest when he was carrying that table-top for Mr. Brown, and +he had blackened this evening for her by taking not the smallest notice +of her at dinner; he hadn't even come up to touch his glass to hers when +the toast had been proposed to the next engaged person for that hotel. +To set off against all this, Madame Leroux (that piercingly acute +Frenchwoman) had given it as her opinion that he admired Mademoiselle.</p> + +<p>Now he joined her and Mr. Brown on the terrace.</p> + +<p>His coming had a curious effect. Olwen became filled with apparent +animation and delight in the company of little Mr. Brown. This was not +deliberate coquetry, but pure instinct. The kindest-hearted girl in the +world, the most kernel-sweet maid never hesitates before one form of +feminine cruelty—<i>to make use of the admirer for whom she does not care +in order to spur the man she loves</i>. It is not an admirable instinct. +But it is a form of self-preservation in Woman, for which Man alone is +responsible....</p> + +<p>Perhaps it is not fair to allege that every man in his heart is a dog in +the manger, hating to see his fellow-men smiled upon by a pretty girl? +Perhaps it's not true that his interest in the girl is awakened when he +sees her interested in another? No! Perhaps it's a libellous old theory +that simply doesn't hold water as a rule.</p> + +<p>Only, what myriads of exceptions it does take to prove that rule!</p> + +<p>In her happiest voice Olwen, standing between the two men, began talking +to Mr. Brown. "I do think that hut of yours must be a delightful place +to live in! No cleaning! No sweeping! and you've only to put out your +hand to get those lovely blackberries for breakfast——"</p> + +<p>Captain Ross, leaning on the balustrade, was seen to hump his back a +little.</p> + +<p>"Can't say I fancy blackberries as a breakfast myself, but I daresay +it'll come to that," grumbled Mr. Brown, cheerily. "Blackberries, and +'bright <i>water is my drink from the crystal spring</i>.' Can you make +anything out of this tangle about allowances, Ross?"</p> + +<p>Captain Ross was apparently <i>not</i> the finest judge of pay-warrants in +Europe. A short "nope" came from over his humped shoulder. Olwen noticed +that his one hand was resting on his left-side-jacket-pocket, that +appeared to be bulging with something he had slipped into it.</p> + +<p>"Dashed if I can make 'em out," said Mr. Brown, pleasantly. "According +to my reckoning, Miss Olwen, there was my regimental pay for July, +rations and lodgings for August, and they'll be in arrears for +September—and no hospital stoppages.... Cox's do make mistakes; ask +anybody. Anybody!"</p> + +<p>Olwen agreed that Cox's did make mistakes. Honeyed sympathy informed her +tone as she said so.</p> + +<p>"Well, that's just that," Mr. Brown concluded, beaming upon her. "But, +as I was just asking you, what about a turn on the prom. in the +moonlight?"</p> + +<p>Here the hump of Captain Ross's square shoulders suddenly straightened +out.</p> + +<p>He took his hand away from the packet in his pocket, gave a hitch to his +belt, then, turning to Olwen, and in the most matter-of-fact voice +imaginable, he told the fib that took her breath away.</p> + +<p>"I guess Miss Howel-Jones is engaged to me for this dance. Isn't that +so, Miss Howel-Jones?"</p> + +<p>"Dance? But——" gasped little Olwen, stupefied. "Nobody is dancing!"</p> + +<p>"Then I guess we'll have to sit it out together on the old cannon or +somewhairrr," said Captain Ross, coolly. "Shall you be all right without +anything on your head?"</p> + +<p>Now if Captain Ross expected that upon this hint Mr. Brown would retire +in good order to his hut, there to brood upon allowances for the rest of +the evening, he was no very fine judge of subalterns in the London Rifle +Brigade.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brown, M.C., stood firm. "Look here, Ross——" he was beginning, +when another voice, a deep, genial, elderly voice, was heard behind the +shutters of the window through which Captain Ross had come out upon the +terrace.</p> + +<p>The voice enquired, "Has anybody seen my niece?"</p> + +<p>Little Olwen jumped.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it's my Uncle. Do open the shutters, Uncle! I'm out here, with Mr. +Brown and Captain Ross," explained Olwen, hurriedly. "It's—it's ever so +early, you know! We were all just thinking of going for a little +walk——"</p> + +<p>"No; I've got it," put in the unquenchable Mr. Brown. "What about a pull +on the lagoon, to look at the phosphorescence? You too, Ross," he added, +hospitably; guessing that Professor Howel-Jones was of an age that might +allow its young nieces to go for moonlight rows in boats on lakes with +two young men, but scarcely with one. "I saw a skiff drawn up by the +jetty. You don't mind, Professor, do you?"</p> + +<p>"At this hour?" demurred the Professor, looking out into the light that +made of his massive old head the summit of Mynedd Mawr in a snowy +December. "For you to take your death of cold, Olwen <i>fach</i>, in the +night air?"</p> + +<p>Little Olwen, pulling up her storm-collar, murmured appealingly above +it. "Oh, <i>darling</i>! I shall be as warm as warm! Do let me go."</p> + +<p>She did not know that in her coaxing she was helped by a girl long dead. +It was to a certain note in the voice that she had from her mother that +the Professor ceded now.</p> + +<p>With a little nod he said, "Very well," and all but added "Mary." "Very +well, Olwen <i>fach</i>. I trust you gentlemen not to keep her out long. I +wish you a pleasant row; good night to you, good night!" And he went in.</p> + +<p>"Come on; let's make a dash for it," said young Brown.</p> + +<p>He led the way; followed by Olwen and Captain Ross, the latter in a +worse temper than he had been in since he left the hospital.</p> + +<p>"Jump in," said Mr. Brown, as they came up to the little empty skiff +moored at the foot of the jetty.</p> + +<p>In the skiff little Mr. Brown, cheerfully resigned to doing all the +work, took both oars; as he would naïvely have said, he rather fancied +himself in a boat. He pushed his shirt-sleeves up above a pair of short +but neatly-turned forearms, and as he rowed on that foreign lagoon +margined by that French sea-wall, his cheerful chatter was all of the +Thames above Richmond, of sunny Sundays and of parties on Eel-Pie +Island. The two in the stern sat rather silently, letting him talk; +Captain Ross sulking as he would never have admitted he sulked, Olwen +uttering now and again a little "Ah" of delight at the phosphorescence +on the water.</p> + +<p>For it was wonderful, that sea that flamed as they pushed out into it. +The boat's keel cut into the shimmer of pale green as into a field of +glow-worms; it lighted up to left and right, blazing, dying down, +rekindling fitfully as love itself; raining in spangles from the oars, +dripping in jewels from Olwen's fingers as she dipped them over the side +of the boat.</p> + +<p>"Trim, Miss Olwen," said Mr. Brown, jerking his bullet head. "A bit +nearer to Ross, if you don't mind."</p> + +<p>Olwen moved; in the softly rocking boat overbalancing a trifle, she +bumped against something hard and angular on the seat close to her +companion. It felt like a camera or a book.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, "did I knock you, Captain Ross?"</p> + +<p>"No——" he said—and then he brought out of his jacket-pocket that +which she had seen bulging it into that square shape on the terrace. It +was a box covered with coloured satin and tied with gay ribbons.</p> + +<p>"Candy," explained Captain Ross, somewhat curtly. He lifted the lid and +offered the chocolates to Olwen, then perforce to Mr. Brown, who stopped +rowing and leant forward, opening his mouth as he had done to the +blackberries.</p> + +<p>"Pop one in, Miss Olwen, please," he laughed, hands on the oars; but it +was Captain Ross who leant forward in the boat and stuffed the sweet +into his mouth.</p> + +<p>"Thanks," said little Mr. Brown, with his mouth full. "Very pretty +attention of yours, Ross, I must say, bringing out chocs for me when I +like 'em."</p> + +<p>Captain Ross planted the box on Olwen's lap.</p> + +<p>"Don't," she laughed shyly. "I shall eat them all up."</p> + +<p>"I guess you're meant to," he said shortly. "I got them for you in +Bordeaux."</p> + +<p>"For <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Sure. I wanted to see if you'd eat candies, after what you said the +other day to me in the lounge."</p> + +<p>Through the soft noises of the water Olwen's soft voice took up "What I +said?"</p> + +<p>"Yes—when you said, 'Who wants candy?'"</p> + +<p>"Oh, that," said Olwen, looking down at the green lambent water of which +the rippling light beat up, soft and magical upon a face whose young +curves could have dared a harsher radiance. She then looked back across +the lagoon towards the big block of the hotel, picked out against the +pale sky. She also glanced to her right, at the sand dunes that +barricaded the waters of the <i>Baissin</i> from those of Biscay Bay, and at +the lighthouse, winking white and red. She looked, in fact, anywhere but +at Captain Ross, sitting so close beside her in that boat.</p> + +<p>She was bathed in such a rapturous dream of moonlight and +phosphorescence and rosy clouds and proximity that she was afraid to +look at him. Fear lest he might read a confession in her eyes did for +her what wisdom itself might have prompted.</p> + +<p>A sophisticated woman in Simla, for example, had once told Mrs. +Cartwright that she found no variation of the Glad Eye more successful +with some men than the glance withheld. How dogmatically would this have +been combated by Captain Ross! More than once had this expert in Woman's +Ways affirmed, "<i>If there's a woman on this airrrrth that I've no use +for, it's the woman who looks away when I'm speaking to her. I don't +dawdle talking to a woman who doesn't look at ME all the time——</i>"</p> + +<p>His impulse at that moment was to catch this little chit beside him by +her slender shoulders and shake her good and hard. If he'd had two arms, +he thought savagely, that's what he'd have wanted to do with 'em. He'd +have loved to do that, then and there, and be hanged to that young +butter-in of a Brown! Young Brown could be ignored, anyway. Let him get +the boat along; the only pity was that he couldn't row with his back to +the stern.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross, turned a little sideways on the cushions of the skiff, +attempted, by looking the girl full in the face, to make the girl look +straight back at him. Not a successful method. Olwen's soft bright +glance slid away from him even as the phosphorescence slid away from the +oars.</p> + +<p>Curtly he demanded, "You <i>do</i> like candy, after all?"</p> + +<p>"I don't call it 'candy.' That's American, or Canadian," Olwen said with +that indifference which was her only idea of Love's camouflage. "I say, +'chocolate,' or 'sweets.'"</p> + +<p>"Is that so?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Olwen, looking now at the box that was, as she knew, to +become her most precious and inseparable treasure, her first gift—from +Him!</p> + +<p>As she sat holding it, backed by luminous sky and luminous sea, the +little slim Pandora with her casket, he too looked at it between her +hands; touched the bow of it.</p> + +<p>"That'll do for a hair-ribbon for you, I guess," he remarked.</p> + +<p>All that Olwen could think of to say was "I don't ever wear any +ribbons."</p> + +<p>"Is that so?" retorted Captain Ross maliciously. "Then what's that +little pink tie-thing you've gotten coming out over your coat-collar at +the back?"</p> + +<p>Precipitately, Olwen's hand went up to the ribbon that was sewn to her +Charm, and that, according to the mysterious and osmotic nature of +ribbons, had let an end work up and out again. She tucked it in, with +the eyes of the two young men upon her little dark, ducking head, and +the small hand white in the moonlight.</p> + +<p>That moonlight flashed too on the line of Captain Ross's fine teeth. A +great alteration had suddenly come over his dour mood. He had two +reasons for laughing good-humouredly. One, because he had just given a +welcome present (event that always adds to one's good will towards the +receiver), and two, because he had scored off the little chit now, with +her ribbon! Ha!</p> + +<p>His bad temper had vanished as her pretty confusion appeared. Again she +dipped her fingers into that gleaming wake; she shook them, dried them +against the thick skirt of her coat.</p> + +<p>"You've gotten your hands cold now," said Captain Ross, in a pleased +tone, and his left hand caught hold of the fingers of her little chilled +right hand as if to verify the fact.</p> + +<p>His own was a short and rather stumpy hand, Olwen had often noticed, +with beautifully kept nails and with the cushions of the palm developed +and muscular from the double share of work that was put upon it; +generally she had seen it held half-closed above the watch-bracelet on a +sturdy wrist. She had never shaken hands with him....</p> + +<p>She thought he meant only to touch her fingers and to let them go. But +he held them. He held the little soft fingers, in the shadow of her +loose cuff and under a fold of her thick coat. They lay, firmly tucked +into that clever magnetic left hand of the soldier who had only that one +hand to do everything with.</p> + +<p>Olwen, a prisoner enraptured with her chain, sat silent and still. She +thought, "I suppose I ought to take my hand away. Oh, need I? No; I +can't. He's only holding it to warm it, perhaps. And then if I took it +away he might think I thought he thought he was <i>really</i> holding it!"</p> + +<p>She sat in the boat that glided through that fairy mere of lambert +waves, shimmering with green. Little shivers seemed to start in her +elapsed hand and to run up her arm quick as wildfire, and spreading like +wildfire through the whole of her slight frame. Yet she was now, as she +had promised the Professor that she would be, "as warm as warm." Once +she moved her hand a little in its prison, but that was only as a bird +might stir and nestle in its cosy haunt. The man's clasp tightened a +trifle, but she had made no effort to take away the hand that he was +describing to himself as "a little bit of velvet."</p> + +<p>As she assured herself some time afterwards, "Well, how <i>could</i> I? How +can you possibly take your hand away from a man's who's only got one arm +to hold you with?"</p> + +<p>The boat sped on ... and the thrills that trembled through the girl did +not, surely, leave the man unstirred.</p> + +<p>"Well, what about it, Ross?" broke in the making-the-best-of-it voice of +little Mr. Brown, resting at last on his oars. "What about another of +those chocolates?"</p> + +<p>With one of his quickest movements Captain Ross's hand left the shadow +of Olwen's cuff and grabbed the biggest chocolate walnut out of the box. +He crammed it into the other young man's mouth as if it were a gag.</p> + +<p>Then, unseen, his hand sought the girl's again, found it, held it close.</p> + +<p>The boat sped on through the whispering wildfire....</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>CLOUDS UPON THE CHARM</h3> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see<br /></span> +<span class="i4">Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Swinburne</span>.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>After an evening of ecstasy such as Olwen had lived through upon those +iridescent waves, what could the girl expect?</p> + +<p>It is one of Fate's harshest rules that in one way or another we pay for +our ecstasies. The more golden the moment the more dull and clouded must +seem the hours that follow: and that is just because we have seen that +magic green shimmer on the breaker's crest that the grey of these smooth +waters looks to us so leaden. Ah, better to know the sadness of this +than never to have set keel in any but the quiet waters! To have no +reckoning to pay because no ecstasy has been ours to enjoy is surely the +bitterest price that can be demanded of us.... But Olwen was too young +to recognize this.</p> + +<p>So, when the next day she emerged bit by bit from her dream, she was +sore and resentful to find all life at its flattest.</p> + +<p>To begin with (and, indeed, to go on with; for this was the whole leaven +of discontent), Captain Ross encountered her as if there had been no +magic voyage, no hand clasped in hand, no wildfire, no silent thrills +between them. "Ah, good morrrrning, Miss Howel-Jones. Another beautiful +day——"</p> + +<p>Beautiful, indeed.... Olwen felt as if by rights the sun should have +gone out and the rains should have come to weep over the lagoon. As a +matter of fact the weather remained radiant. Her idol's easy, friendly +manner had dealt her a blow that stunned her into a torper of low +spirits, and there seemed nobody to give her a helping hand out of it.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, usually so sympathetic and interesting, talked to her +(Olwen) as if her thoughts were far, far away: with her serial-people, +the girl supposed vexedly, or with those boys of hers at school.</p> + +<p>Young Mr. Awdas—well, he never talked to Olwen. An apathetic young man, +she considered him. All flyers were interesting from their very +job—otherwise <i>how</i> uninteresting was Mr. Awdas! Nobody but Mrs. +Cartwright (who was so kind), would bother to draw him out, Olwen +thought.</p> + +<p>Then Agatha Walsh—impossible to talk to <i>her</i> today: her Sergeant +Gustave Tronchet's leave was up, and he was to depart to join his +battery that evening. They could not be married until his next leave. +Poor Agatha was paying too for her golden moments.</p> + +<p>Mr. Brown—well, as for Mr. Brown (who had, after all, done all the work +in that boat the night before), Olwen felt that she could have slapped +him. Upon Mr. Brown's well-meaning bullet head she felt herself pouring +the resentment that she might have reserved for Captain Ross and his +forgetfulness, his insensibility. Silly little Mr. Brown! Why on earth +couldn't he run away and attract somebody (hadn't Olwen given him a +talisman for that very purpose?) instead of hanging about trying to talk +to somebody who was already distracted enough as it was, because her own +talisman seemed sometimes so potent, sometimes so useless? That it +should have allured Mr. Brown into being sentimental about her seemed +the last straw! (to Olwen.)</p> + +<p>But it wasn't. For it was Professor Howel-Jones, it was her Uncle +himself who contributed to his niece's burden, on this day of +depression, what was really the last straw.</p> + +<p>It happened as Olwen brought to him, with a little air of triumph, the +typed copy and the duplicate of the last section of the last chapter of +his book on "Agarics."</p> + +<p>"So that's finished," she said.</p> + +<p>"That's finished," agreed the Professor, his brown gaze running over the +sheets. "Olwen, I've done well here. This has been an excellent place +for work; excellent." He laid the copy down on that chaotic work-table +of his, and added, with cheerfulness, "Well! There's nothing to keep us +here any longer, now."</p> + +<p>This Olwen did not take in at once. "Nothing to keep us, Uncle?"</p> + +<p>"Only the passports to be <i>visé'd</i> and made out for Paris," returned the +old man. "I want to stay a night or so in Paris before I go on to +London."</p> + +<p>A great blankness fell upon Olwen's small face. "The passports," she +repeated. "Paris!!! You mean you want us to leave quite soon?"</p> + +<p>The Professor's head was bent over his work-table. "A couple of days, my +dear, I suppose. You can be packed up and all that by then. You are +broken in by now, aren't you, to your packing up and getting on without +much warning?"</p> + +<p>But this had taken Olwen without any warning, it appeared.</p> + +<p>She stood there as if frozen, and said, "Away from here!" and in her +heart exclaimed, "Away from <i>him</i>!" She stood aghast, an image of all +the maids in love who have ever been sentenced to banishment from the +presence of the beloved. She had put away from her up to now all thought +of such a dreadful thing happening. Simply, she could not have imagined +it. Going away from the hotel in the pine forest, while he still was +left in it! Going away, before he had ever said to her a word that +counted? Going away—with that Charm unproved?</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus3" id="illus3"></a> +<img src="images/illus3.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3>She stood there as if frozen, and said: "Away from here!" +and in her heart exclaimed: "Away from him!"</h3> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>It was time the Charm required; Olwen was agitatedly certain of that +now. Time.</p> + +<p>It had taken so many days before he had even held her hand; given so +many other days, and what might not happen? But she was not to know. +Those days were not to be allowed to her. She clenched into her palm the +nails of those little fingers that Captain Ross had held in that +warmly-caressing clasp. She was to go ... never to see him any more....</p> + +<p>She cleared her throat, pulled herself together, and asked, "And after +Paris, Uncle, where do we go; London, you said?"</p> + +<p>Now, this was a gleam of hope; London!</p> + +<p>For she had once heard Captain Ross, in talking to Mrs. Cartwright, tell +the writer that when his sick leave was up and after he had been +boarded, he had prospects of an office job in town. If he were in +London, and if her Uncle and she were also in London ... well, then the +outlook would not be entirely so black. It would not be the every day +and several times a day encountering of this French hotel; but there +surely might be meetings, if they were together, in London?</p> + +<p>But the Professor, eyes still upon his papers, said, "London for a week +or so, but I'm always glad enough to get out of the place. I shall be +going down to Wales, then; I can leave you at your Auntie Margaret's, +dear, before I go on to Liverpool. My plans will be unsettled——"</p> + +<p>"You're not going to have me with you, then Uncle?"</p> + +<p>"No, Olwen <i>fach</i>. For the present, not," he told her above the rustling +of the papers. "I shan't require you for the work in hand for the +next——Let me see, four or six months, perhaps. You will be able to go +home; have a nice rest from work; help your Auntie in the house, see a +little bit of your sisters and of your old friends."</p> + +<p>Olwen felt precisely as if the genial-voiced old man were condemning her +to penal servitude for the rest of her natural life.</p> + +<p>"Uncle!" she exclaimed in horror.</p> + +<p>It was met by a mildly surprised glance from the old man.</p> + +<p>"What's the matter, small lass? Aren't you glad to be seeing your home +again?"</p> + +<p>"No," blurted out Olwen. "I don't want to go. Oh, I don't. Uncle! I'd +rather be with you. Much. But if you can't have me, I—I—I won't go +back——"</p> + +<p>She put up her little head, shaking it violently as if in the face of a +vision of the home in which she'd been brought up. Comfortable, +old-fashioned, rambling place that it was, set in wild beauty, and +echoing with gay voices, it repelled her; it seemed to her a prison +from which there would be no further escaping towards the Heart's +Desire. At work as her Uncle's secretary, there still seemed chances of +movement in her life, there still seemed possibilities.... But as a girl +at home, she felt she would be chained and bound by a thousand chances +against.</p> + +<p>She told herself rebelliously, "Down there, I should never see him +again! I won't go!"</p> + +<p>Unconsciously her hands clasped themselves upon her breast, upon that +slender talisman that she was wearing.</p> + +<p>The old man regarded her, at a loss why the child should be agitated, +she who had always seemed happy enough with her sisters at home.</p> + +<p>"But, Olwen <i>fach</i>, if you don't go back, what do you want to do?"</p> + +<p>"I want to stay on in London, Uncle!"</p> + +<p>"In London—dear me—curious taste! Why? What could you do there?"</p> + +<p>"I could do War work, like lots and lots—like every other girl!"</p> + +<p>"Tut," retorted the Professor. Being a Welshman, he pronounced this word +to rhyme with "foot." Being a man of his generation, he still disliked +to think of any girl at work except domestically or for him.</p> + +<p>"What d'you want to do that for, Olwen <i>fach</i>?"</p> + +<p>To this question Olwen could hardly answer with the whole truth.</p> + +<p>How many girls insist upon working in London because there, also, is +working their particular Captain Ross?</p> + +<p>Olwen's mind was set upon a plan.</p> + +<p>She would think out the "hows" as soon as she left this place.</p> + +<p>Only a couple more days in which the Charm might work for her, here!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>THE LOSING OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Farewell, thou latter Spring! Farewell, All-hallown summer!"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"It's perfectly easy to have a good time in this world without any men," +declared Mrs. Cartwright, smiling. "In fact, as easy as it is with them. +In many ways, easier!"</p> + +<p>Her listeners looked at her without conviction. For they were Miss Walsh +and Olwen Howel-Jones. Poor Miss Walsh, having passed thirty-four years +of her life in a manless world, having been then caught up into a +Paradise for two, and, further, having been banished from it again with +the departure of her Gustave, felt that nothing could be more untrue +than this remark of the writer's.</p> + +<p>As for Olwen—well, this was on the morning after her Uncle had sprung +upon her the news that all <i>her</i> "good time" was to end in two days' +time. And one whole precious day of that remaining two was to be wasted; +<i>wasted</i>!</p> + +<p>A somewhat mysterious message had come from Bordeaux, asking all three +of the British officers then sojourning at Les Pins to go over and spend +the day with their comrades-in-arms at a base about which none of these +soldiers would answer any questions. They had gone, all three of them; +Captain Ross, Mr. Awdas, and little Mr. Brown. They wouldn't be back +all day. Not all day would Olwen have a glimpse of him whom presently +she might never be seeing at all—and still Mrs. Cartwright affirmed +that it would be possible to have a good time!</p> + +<p>Probably Mrs. Cartwright guessed at the young girl's frame of mind as +easily as at the less disguised feelings of Sergeant Tronchet's +betrothed; it had not been for long that the writer had wondered "Who +that child's so desperately in love with?" But brooding was a thing that +Claudia Cartwright considered a wasteful and useless proceeding on the +part of any young girl. She determined to put a stop to it, if possible, +and that was why she went on gaily, "I often think of how Eve would have +got on if she had been made first; probably she'd have thoroughly +enjoyed having the whole of that Garden to herself, whereas Adam——! +Bored to tears, of course. Not good for man to be alone.... Well, since +all the men have gone from here, why shouldn't we have a party of our +own?"</p> + +<p>"A party!" echoed Miss Walsh, lugubriously. "Oh, Mrs. Cartwright!"</p> + +<p>"Why not? I am sure Sergeant Gustave doesn't want you to shut yourself +up because he's gone back to the front; come and see something to put +into your lovely long letters to him. And since those other three young +men have gone off on a stag party to Bordeaux, we'll organize a dove +lunch, as the American girls call it, and go off to Cap Ferret. It's +perfectly lovely there. Olwen, where's the Professor? I'm going to beg +leave for you. Come along, Miss Walsh——"</p> + +<p>There was about Mrs. Cartwright that day an almost schoolgirlish flow of +vitality that the other two found it impossible to resist; their own +being at a low ebb, they let themselves drift with the current of hers. +The corners of Miss Walsh's mouth ceased to turn quite so definitely +downward, and the clouds in Olwen's bright eyes seemed about to +disperse. In half an hour they were all ready, and setting out for this +trip to Cap Ferret, which lay beyond the <i>Baissin</i>, the dunes, and the +lighthouse.</p> + +<p>In the bright autumn sunlight the little motor-boat buzzed with them +across the lagoon that had set such a fairy scene, that night.... But +there was a gay wind blowing now, sending the big white clouds rolling +across the sky in towering columns like those of the Biscay waves, seen +from afar.</p> + +<p>"We'll go right down to Biscay, after lunch," planned Mrs. Cartwright, +as they landed at the small iron pier above the oyster parks. Then she +guided them through the belt of pine woods that lay between the two +borders of sandhills, past the lighthouse which they saw every day as a +warning finger, but with which they now made acquaintance as the huge +tower it was; she led them to the inn where they were to lunch. This was +a long white building, its corners rounded and scoured by the flying +sands borne on the gales of winter.</p> + +<p>"Outside is the best dining-room," said Mrs. Cartwright. "I daresay +Madame will think us mad—but it's an Indian summer day today. The +Professor told me that you Welsh people call it '<i>the little summer of +the Angels</i>.' Come along!"</p> + +<p>And having given her order to the smiling French landlady (who wore a +black shawl, a bright blue apron, and a brighter blue glass comb in her +black hair), she led the others to a table in the sunny yard, under the +wooden veranda. Its green paint had flaked off beneath those noisy +gales, but the latticework was over-grown with passion-flower vines and +other vines, richly clustered with bunches of sweet white grapes.</p> + +<p>"Our dessert," said Mrs. Cartwright, nodding towards the fruit. "Madame +will come and cut the bunches while we are eating the Biscay sole."</p> + +<p>Lunch was brought; before she began upon the sole Mrs. Cartwright threw +off the loose brown coat that she had worn for the crossing in the +motor-boat, and appeared in a frock that Olwen had never seen before. +Yesterday, the girl had noticed, a carton-box had arrived for the writer +at the hotel; doubtless this was the dress that it had contained....</p> + +<p>It was of rough sky-blue crêpy stuff with touches of creamy edging and +of dull pink stitchery, very simple, for all Mrs. Cartwright's clothes +were simply cut. This was something more than simple, though, almost ... +trivial, was it? A frock for a more insignificant person? Olwen could +not have told you why she shouldn't quite like that frock. It wasn't +altogether that it seemed too young; and it did fit her, perfectly. +Perhaps the fact that Olwen noticed it at all showed how well the elder +woman's clothes generally did suit her.</p> + +<p>Today—not only her frock was different, but her mood was different. It +puzzled little Olwen entirely....</p> + +<p>As the sole and the potatoes in their jackets gave place to an +admirably-cooked ham omelette, Mrs. Cartwright was saying almost +audacious things, that passed as swiftly as the shadows of the gulls +swooped over the sands. And she seemed conscious that she was "being +different...." Why? It was almost as though she were playing at some +game; she thought feverishly. As if half of her sat apart, watching the +play, criticizing, exchanging notes with people who were not Miss Walsh, +not Olwen.</p> + +<p>The girl, having never before looked upon her friend as a riddle, sat +wondering at her.... In that sheltered corner the savoury scents of the +meal mingled with the inevitable pine scent and the tang of sea while +the sun flung blue shadows upon the bright table and the plates; dancing +delicate silhouettes of vine leaves and tendrils and passion flowers. +There drifted to them from the woods the sound of the cow bells; +"tonkle—tankle—tonkle—" and from the shore the distant roar of +breakers.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, as the inn servant removed and brought coffee, Mrs. Cartwright +broke out, apparently à propos of nothing.</p> + +<p>"Ah, well!</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'Better an omelette <i>aux fines herbes</i> where Love is, than the +Carlton and a chaperon therewith.'</p></blockquote> + +<p>Forgive my quoting my own works, but I was thinking of one of those +books of mine that I—that we never write. Plenty of other things in +Life like that. Men we didn't marry, their babies that we've never +had——"</p> + +<p>Then she laughed.</p> + +<p>"I wonder what people would have thought if I'd ever written that book. +It's the one I threatened your friend Captain Ross with, Olwen, the +other night. Would you like to hear a bit of it, girls?"</p> + +<p>And without waiting to hear whether they would or not, she went on in +that deep, whimsical attractive voice of hers:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'Don't tell your mother beforehand that I am a lady. Possibly +I'm not. You won't know. But she will.'</p></blockquote> + +<p>I remember thinking of that when a great friend of mine in the navy told +me about his engagement. He made a joke at the time about sailors and +their <i>culte</i> for <i>mésalliances</i>.... Here's another bit:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'Always write to me when you're away. Never mind if you've +nothing to say. It doesn't matter if you don't say anything. +Only write!'</p></blockquote> + +<p>I can see the young man now that I said that to," said Mrs. Cartwright, +and the expression in her eyes was of one who looks down from a hill-top +upon the landmarks passed, far back. "He'd only been married a month to +a school chum of mine, and was suddenly ordered off. He couldn't take +her. I told him that even if the mail only went out twice a week there +was no reason that it should not take three letters each time——"</p> + +<p>Here Miss Walsh, who did not seem to be listening, broke in. "I think +that's very true." She fingered in her bag an envelope with the printed +label, "Controle Postale Militaire," and looked cheered.</p> + +<p>"This young man numbered his letters after that. Then I remember a girl +friend—ah! she's a grand-mamma now—married before I did. I remember +her once saying something that I should have stolen from her.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'Do you mind not giving me these useful solid, durable +presents of leather, which you men love and which are hideous +in our eyes? Why not something charming that won't last; scent, +powder, or chocolates in a pretty box?'</p></blockquote> + +<p>And this, which is the last that I shall inflict upon you, dear yawners, +nobody at all told me. I made it up, unaided, and by my little self." +She looked away above her coffee-cup as she quoted it, and her eyes were +the eyes of all the girls that be, appealing to all the plighted lovers:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"'Remember that nine out of ten women in the world will never +know what Love can be, and that <i>six out of those nine are +married women</i>. Please won't you try to make me the happy +Tenth?'</p></blockquote> + +<p>And now, when all the people have said Amen, what about a walk down to +Biscay?——No, Miss Walsh! Please. This is my <i>day</i>. I proposed this, +and I know you won't grudge me this little pleasure."</p> + +<p>She paid the <i>addition</i> and drew on her loose white gloves.</p> + +<p>Through the woods they went, and over the sandhills planted with grass +in lines to keep that barrier together.</p> + +<p>Olwen, in her red woolly coat, walked between Mrs. Cartwright, whose +short blue skirts flapped like a wind-blown succory flower above her +ankles, and Miss Walsh, who was holding on to her hat. Little Olwen +thought irrelevantly—"and, fancy! we're all three wearing that Charm!"</p> + +<p>They descended from the dunes, passed the loose shuffling upper sands, +and came on to the stretch of other sands, smooth, hard, and firm as a +ballroom floor set down in the widest landscape that any of them had +trodden yet. Soaring skies, illimitable beach, and oh, how empty seemed +the sea far, far behind the breakers of Biscay Bay!</p> + +<p>At the sight of those breakers, whose sound had been growing in her +ears, Olwen gave an involuntary "Oh! <i>Look</i> at them!"</p> + +<p>From the hotel windows they seemed nothing more than a crawling white +line. Here they were rushing monsters that seemed to shake the shore +where they broke. They broke and spouted not more than fifty yards away, +then swirled and seethed almost to the feet of the women in surf, in the +lines that would be taken by boiling milk.</p> + +<p>Olwen stood nearest with spray on her cheeks, thunder in her ears, and a +storm of unimagined whiteness before her eyes, finding it all riotously +beautiful. But the last thing in the world that she expected was what +Mrs. Cartwright then said:</p> + +<p>"I say! Let's bathe. It would be too gorgeous in there!"</p> + +<p>Miss Walsh, behind her, looked as if she could not believe her ears.</p> + +<p>"In <i>October</i>, dear Mrs. Cartwright?"</p> + +<p>Dear Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she threw out her arm towards the +waters, soaring to crash, soaring again to crash.... "<i>That</i>," she +cried, "was going on before the months had names!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but I never knew any one dreamed of bathing after August," murmured +Miss Walsh, still clutching her hat, "and, besides!" (as if that +settled it), "you haven't brought your things with you."</p> + +<p>"That's just what I meant," declared Mrs. Cartwright, taking a deep +breath. "I'm going in."</p> + +<p>"Oh, please don't!" protested Olwen. "I can swim quite well, but any one +can see <i>that's</i> dangerous. Supposing you were caught in and swept away. +Oh, I wouldn't."</p> + +<p>"I shouldn't dream of letting you, child," cried Mrs. Cartwright gaily. +"I'm going in," and she stooped to unlace the brown thongs of her +sandalettes.</p> + +<p>"Oh! I'll go on and gather shells, then," said Agatha Walsh (hurriedly +turning her back as if she dreaded to let her eyes fall upon some +repellent sight, reflected Mrs. Cartwright, with amusement).</p> + +<p>The elder woman was of the type that, under such circumstances, makes no +more ado about getting out of her clothes than she would about taking +off her hat. She was of that type—and of that build.</p> + +<p>They dropped from about her, the flapper's frock of succory blue and the +silken under-garments, and with them she seemed to cast off as well that +rather feverish sprightliness of the last hour. It was a genuinely +girlish delight that shone from her eyes as she ran, lightly and +free-limbed, over the sand and into the surf that flung itself towards +her body of a slender statue, white as those crests. She revelled in +that hour that was hers, Claudia Cartwright's—hers and that girl's who +had been Claudia Crane's.</p> + +<p>"Not too far in!" warned Olwen from higher up the beach.</p> + +<p>"Right!" called her friend's voice from out of the dazzling sunlight +spray; the sound of it lost in the crash of the breakers and the scream +of the gulls that wheeled and dived like a flight of white-winged +aeroplanes above her.</p> + +<p>She sprang and dipped; threw herself forward, breasted the waves, and +tried to swim, always frustrated by those tossing waters that made of +her a plaything, all panting and aglow with joyous life.</p> + +<p>Olwen watched; anxious. But Claudia Cartwright was not to be caught in +and swept away; not she. It was something else that was to be so lost; +unseen by Olwen, unthought about at all.</p> + +<p>From where the bather's garments lay in a soft heap under a smooth heavy +stone that she had set down to keep them from blowing away, there +disentangled itself a ribbon that she had worn about her neck and that +she had untied, carelessly, just before she ran down to plunge into the +sea.</p> + +<p>It blew along the sands above the scatter of shells.</p> + +<p>It blew along, fast and faster, the pink thread holding that +feather-light Charm that the wind had swept away.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>THE COUNTER-CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Too old, by Heaven; let still the woman take<br /></span> +<span class="i0">An elder than herself; so wears she to him,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">So sways she level in her husband's heart."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The two parties (those of the stag gathering and the dove lunch) +returned to the hotel at almost the same moment, just before +dinner-time.</p> + +<p>"<i>We've</i> had a ripping time!" Mrs. Cartwright said gaily, in answer to +an enquiry from Captain Ross; young Jack Awdas, hearing, gave her a +reproachful glance. But there was no time for reproaches. Madame had +announced "<i>On va servir!</i>" and there was a rush for rooms. But not +before Awdas, at the door that was next to his own, had murmured +urgently, "I want to talk to you afterwards, there's something that I +<i>must</i> say to you. Come down quickly, won't you?"</p> + +<p>The others tore through their dressing. Miss Walsh wanted to retire to +Madame's sitting-room, there to have a soul-satisfying "mourn" with +Madame over the departure of Gustave, and to pick out of Madame's stream +of reminiscences a pearl or so to remember of the boyhood of that +excellent nephew. Little Olwen, who had overheard Mr. Brown saying, +"Look here, Ross, none of your shoving me out of my place at table—even +if I do sleep out, there's no reason why I should be made to sit with +the back of my head towards everybody I want to look at, dashed if +there is," was eager to run down to the <i>salle</i>, and with a glance or a +greeting make an excuse for the right young man to be sitting facing +her.</p> + +<p>Only Mrs. Cartwright took her time and was rather late for dinner. As +she redressed her hair, still damp from her bathe, and slipped into her +tawny-golden tea-gown, the writer's face was intent. She was thinking, +thinking hard. Even in moving about her room she kept glancing at a +couple of pig-skin bags stowed into a corner. One of them bore the name +of Captain Keith Cartwright, and of his regiment; what service it had +seen since it had first gone out with them to India. She knew what she +ought to be doing with those bags at this moment.</p> + +<p>Packing them up, to go.</p> + +<p>Yes, she ought to be folding her skirts and wrapping up her boots and +shoes and sorting her manuscripts. One word to Madame, and a <i>fiacre</i> +could be obtained that same evening to take the bags, and herself with +them, to the hotel at the Ville d'Hiver, where she had already spent a +night on her way here. There she could stay until her passport was made +out for England, and then she could go back to her rooms in town, back +to be near her boys at school, and right away from this place of +conflict and too sweet disturbance—away from Jack Awdas, who wanted to +say something to her after dinner.</p> + +<p>She knew well what it was. Ever since that moonlight walk he had been +besieging her—not with words again, but with every glance of his blue +eyes, every turn of his head towards her, every husky, beseeching note +of his voice.</p> + +<p>Now for a third time he was going to put it into words. She did not know +how to check him. It was because she wished—she so wished that she need +not.</p> + +<p>Again and again already, by night, when she was tossing sleeplessly, by +day, when she was talking of other things, she had gone over the +question.</p> + +<p>Marriage——with that boy.</p> + +<p>He was not the first, he would not be the last who had adored a woman +old enough to be his mother. And she herself was not the first woman +who, past what is considered the age for Love, had received, offered to +her as a bouquet, the gathered share of love that could have sufficed a +score of young girls.</p> + +<p>Had this been always a wrong and an unlovely thing?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>As she slipped on her bangles after washing, Mrs. Cartwright found +herself thinking, with a half-mutinous, half-deprecating little smile, +of some of the greatest love affairs of the world. They stood out in the +history of human kind just as the lighthouse yonder towered above the +low-rising dunes. Their passions blazed white-hot and rosy-red through +the night of centuries; but were they stories of the loves of immature +women?</p> + +<p>Antony's Cleopatra—how old was she when she romped in the public street +to show her defiance of Age and Conventions generally?</p> + +<p>How old was Ninon, beloved of lads not one, but two generations after +her girlhood?</p> + +<p>"I'd never wish for <i>that</i>," thought Claudia Cartwright, "but what about +Diane de Poictiers?"</p> + +<p>She mused a moment upon that story, upon those sweetest of love-letters +written by a young and ardent king to "<i>Madame ma Mie</i>." They bore the +dates of many years, those letters signed by the cypher which was the +"<i>Lac d'Amour</i>" for Henri and his Diane—the first Frenchwoman, Mrs. +Cartwright reminded herself, to go in for the exotic practice of the +cold tub. And she was forty—<i>forty</i> when that affair was in blossom! +Her statue as Diana, the bather, Mrs. Cartwright had seen in pictures, +and the tall slim Englishwoman's vanity had recognized a familiar pose.</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> like her," she thought now.</p> + +<p>But in the middle of her thought she pulled herself together, tossing +aside the towel as she laughed without amusement.</p> + +<p>What was the use of it; what? Why dwell on the outstanding Exceptions, +of whom the very fame went to prove the relentless rule that a waning +woman and a boy may not find lasting happiness together? These stories +of Cleopatra, Ninon, and Diane were lamentably beside the mark. But the +stories of matrons of today who had married their sons' contemporaries +hadn't drifted across the writer's experience.</p> + +<p>Stories of mistakes recognized almost at once, but too late. Of passion +that died quickly down on the one side, leaving on the other side an +unrequited and consuming flame. Of sad-faced, elderly, neglected wives +at home. Of desperate efforts to retain fading attractions; of grotesque +make-up, of golden hair and gaiety, both false. Of the interests of +separated generations, their claims, their mental outlook, always at +war! Of youth, fettered and fuming, straining towards his kind....</p> + +<p>At best they were pathetic, these stories.</p> + +<p>At worst they were ugly enough. They justified the contempt in the term +"Baby-snatcher!" They established the principle, "A middle-aged woman +who will <i>marry</i> a young boy is no sportswoman."</p> + +<p>Now Mrs. Cartwright had always hoped that, with all her faults, she +could never be accused of being unsportsmanlike. Still confident of +this, she ran downstairs to dinner.</p> + +<p>Her lateness only postponed by a little the hour of reckoning.</p> + +<p>The flying boy, rather pale but with a smile in his eyes, told her that +he had ordered coffee for her and himself to be brought into the lounge, +since all the other people seemed to be drifting into the <i>salon</i> +after dinner. In the further corner of that lounge, under an +artificial-looking palm, he drew up for her a wicker-chair.</p> + +<p>"Sit down there!" he ordered her with a new masterfulness in his husky +charming voice. "And listen to me. You'll sit there until you've given +me the answer that I want."</p> + +<p>She sat, leaning back, lax and graceful.</p> + +<p>He fastened his eyes upon her.</p> + +<p>She could not meet them, but she was aware of every line of his face, +printed upon her heart. She loved him. She did not deny to herself that +she had come to love every look and every tone of him; and the facts +that their mental outlook must be different and that her own experience, +her wider knowledge must yawn as a gulf between them did not lessen his +attraction for her, as it might have done for another woman. Claudia +Cartwright had often smiled when she heard certain prattlers of her own +sex avow their demand to have "their mentality fed, and their need of +being in perfect intellectual sympathy" with the men (sometimes elderly +men) whom they married.</p> + +<p>In Mrs. Cartwright, as we know, the sense of physical perfection was +better developed ... the worse for her, all the worse for her now.</p> + +<p>Jack Awdas, standing over her, was saying, "I can't go on like this, you +know. You've got to have me, or I've got to get away. It's come to +that."</p> + +<p>Her heart, it seemed to her, seemed to miss a beat at this, then to beat +faster as she sat there. She shook her head, almost abstractedly, for +her thoughts were racing ahead of the words she would have tried to +frame. They were slipping from her, those wise and too true arguments to +which she had submitted, alone in her own room and without his eyes upon +her, disarming her of all her wisdom. Instinct within her clamoured, +"But I love him so! I want him!"</p> + +<p>She ought to be upstairs now, she knew, packing those bags for dear +life.</p> + +<p>She ground the heel of her slender slipper into the floor of the lounge +before her as she thought of this, and she thought, "Ah, if marriage +were for a year, say! <i>Then!...</i> If I could marry him and die before he +began to tire—even his mother would not hate me then." Then came the +breath-taking thought, "He will be flying again presently. He may crash +again.... Ah!..." This was unendurable. She thrust it from her to think, +"<i>For a time</i> I could make him gloriously happy! Happier than any girl +alive has power to do——"</p> + +<p>And she thought wildly that there were plenty of girls in their early +twenties who were older than she; as well as colder, with less gift for +Passion. Girls who were narrower in their outlook, girls who were less +generous, less sympathetic, less adaptable than she, as his wife, could +be. There were girls with petty minds and tongues that could say little, +jealous, spiteful things about other women. These had nothing but their +ignorant youth; did that outweigh all that she had to give? Ah, she +could point to girls still in their teens who were already nearer the +end of their powers than she was, even nearer the end of their looks. +Was it really better for him to choose a girl? It was her, Claudia, the +woman, that he wanted....</p> + +<p>She could surely make of herself another exception to the unpitying rule +that Youth must mate with Youth.</p> + +<p>"Say 'yes' to me; say 'yes,'" urged Jack Awdas, and he let himself down, +softly, to sit on the wide wicker arm of the chair. She felt that if it +were to save her life, her lips could not now frame the word "no."</p> + +<p>There was a short and agonizing pause in which both listened, without +hearing it, to the sound of the wheels of a <i>fiacre</i>, drawing up outside +the door of the hotel.</p> + +<p>"Say 'yes,'" repeated young Awdas, more urgently, "or I clear right +out."</p> + +<p>"<i>Better</i>," she forced herself to murmur.</p> + +<p>"Better?——And if I go, I won't remember what you did for me that +night. I shall try to forget it; d'you hear? I shall try——"</p> + +<p>"Don't," she said, very low. "I couldn't forget it if I tried."</p> + +<p>"<i>Ah!</i>" It broke from him exultantly. "Then you do care! I knew you +would, I knew I could make you! The other was rot; I knew you did."</p> + +<p>She threw her head back and aside; she made a last struggle. She would +have risen.</p> + +<p>"No, you don't," he triumphed. "Now say 'yes,' and then perhaps you may +get up, darling; <i>darling</i>——!"</p> + +<p>At the delight of hearing it from his lips she shut her eyes even as a +sweetheart of little Olwen's age might have done. It was her moment of +ecstasy, poignant and ageless and pure....</p> + +<p>A moment only.</p> + +<p>There broke into it footsteps and a girl's voice, a charming voice, but +of an inflection most un-English.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes! Wasn't I expected? I wrote the hotel anyway.... <i>J'ai +écrit</i>.... Miss Golden van Huysen.... Oh, pardon me——"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright's eyes had opened upon something that seemed like a +sunburst breaking in upon the dim and formal, Frenchily-furnished +lounge. A vision it was of gold and colour. Radiance seemed to emanate +from it—from her.... For it was just a girl, a blonde and +generously-built girl, whose coat, thrown open, showed a crisp light +uniform with the Red Cross. Her head, proudly carried, was backed by the +hanging lamp that made a glory around it, and Miss Golden van Huysen, +self-introduced, might have stood for a symbolical figure of Young +America breaking into the War, descending upon the Old Continent with +help in her hands.</p> + +<p>She moved, and the light fell directly on her face. It had the contours +and the bloom of a peach, and under her slouch hat her eyes, large and +wonderfully wide apart, shone out with candour and young eagerness for +life. Yes, youth, youth! That was the keynote of her. That, and the +sweetness of honey, coloured like her hair; the kindliness of milk, +white as her skin.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright, with doom at her heart, looked at this young girl. So +did Jack Awdas, who had sprung to his feet and off the wicker chair-arm. +The girl frankly returned the glances of the lady sitting back there, +and of the boyish English officer who was (as she ingenuously put it to +herself) "the loveliest looking young man she'd ever seen."</p> + +<p>Jack Awdas did not know that he was staring almost rudely.... Mrs. +Cartwright knew. She also knew what a kiss had been interrupted by that +look at another.</p> + +<p>And when the bustle of this arrival and of Madame and the <i>chasseur</i> and +the "grips" and the Franco-American explanations had died away to the +first landing, it was Mrs Cartwright, standing, who spoke.</p> + +<p>She spoke quite lightly and with a smile on her lips. She came of +soldier people.</p> + +<p>"Dear Jack, there's nothing more to be said. I know I'm right. But <i>you</i> +needn't go. I'm going instead. I must get back to my boys for half-term. +I shall be off early in the morning, so this is good-bye."</p> + +<p>"But——" he protested, in a voice that was not quite that of five +minutes before.</p> + +<p>"No. That's all. I hope——No, don't come with me. Good night!"</p> + +<p>Before he knew, she was gone.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<h3>DROP-SCENE</h3> + +<blockquote><p>"There is no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend but he +grieveth the less."</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Bacon.</span></p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright went up to her room, but she did not pack those bags of +hers at once.</p> + +<p>Instead, she put on her coat, tied a scarf over her head, changed her +shoes, and went for a walk.</p> + +<p>She knew that she must tire herself out. She had thought she was rather +tired already from her tussle with the waves that afternoon, but that +wasn't enough. She must be more exhausted before she could sleep for a +few hours. She would order them to call her very early in the morning, +so that she could be packed and off before any of the other visitors had +left their rooms.</p> + +<p>She set out, and she couldn't have told anybody in what direction. A +path was soft—probably with pine-needles—beneath her feet. Before her +eyes there was a striping of light on darkness; still a moon between the +trees.</p> + +<p>She walked. She could not have said off-hand what she thought about as +she swung along. Not many definite thoughts filled her mind. Only a very +definite picture of young Awdas's fair eaglet face, looking with +startled and pleased surprise into the face of that beautiful girl. One +look; the boy had just been taken aback at the sight of a stranger, and +such an unusually pretty one. Then and there Claudia Cartwright didn't +herself know <i>why</i> she knew that this, the look that did not seem to +mean anything, meant ... everything.</p> + +<p>It meant that she, the woman at her last love affair who had been within +an inch of accepting the proposal of that boy, must begin to pay, +already, for her one moment of ecstasy.</p> + +<p>The coming of that girl had stopped not one, but all kisses for her.</p> + +<p>She knew what was coming between that boy, all awakened and malleable +from his first passion, and that girl. They were heritors of an age in +which Love has quickened his pace to keep up with the double-march of +war.</p> + +<p>She was resigned. She had foreseen it. Hadn't she said to him, "Wait +until you see me beside a real young girl"? It had come upon her rather +abruptly, that was all, but she need not really allow herself to +suffer....</p> + +<p>She whistled a little tune between her teeth as she swung along. She was +thinking of nothing, she was just moving quickly and regularly, as a +mechanical toy that has been wound up to go for a certain time before +the machinery runs down.</p> + +<p>So mechanically, so fast she covered the ground. Suddenly a voice called +out, "Halt! Who's there? Mrs. Cartwright?"</p> + +<p>With a start, she found that she was in the forest, approaching the +clearing and the woodcutter's hut. The sturdy, square-set figure that, +coming away from the hut, had encountered her on the moon-dappled path, +was that of Captain Ross.</p> + +<p>"Hullo!" she returned, brightly. "Have you been cat-calling on Mr. +Brown? Isn't it perfectly lovely? After all, this is the time of day to +go for walks, I find."</p> + +<p>"Is that so? I thought this was the time of day you sat writing your +great worrrks."</p> + +<p>"Sometimes; but how did you know?"</p> + +<p>"You told me you were sitting up working that last time Awdas had that +infairrrnal dream of his," said the Staff-officer. "That was how."</p> + +<p>But at this the machinery that had kept Mrs.</p> + +<p>Cartwright going so steadily for the last hour or more, broke down +without warning. Without warning, she blurted out in a low, unnatural +voice, "Oh, Captain Ross! I am——in such trouble."</p> + +<p>Her limbs failed her and she would have fallen.</p> + +<p>The next moment she found that she was sitting upon a pine-log, with her +head upon the solid support of Captain Ross's shoulder, and with his arm +thrown very comfortingly about her. She wept, copiously and silently, +all her tears; the only tears a man had ever seen Claudia Cartwright +shed.</p> + +<p>This man, to his eternal honour, made no attempt to check them or to +enquire into them. He sat there, supporting her, clasping her with the +arm of a brother—this man whom she had not before regarded as any +particular friend of hers. She wept, taking his handkerchief, large and +scented with cigarettes, that he presently stuffed into her hands. She +knew that she must be making him feel miserably uncomfortable and upset; +she cried on, unashamed in the silence of the wood, telling herself that +it would be for the one and only time that she would give herself this +relief. Presently she sobbed out, "I loved him——"</p> + +<p>Captain Ross's "Is that so?" was entirely unstartled and matter-of-fact.</p> + +<p>Actually he had been too pole-axed with amazement to do anything but the +natural thing; but a finer judge of women might have been less of a +comfort to her. He sat holding her stolidly until she gave the +long-drawn breath and the apology that mark the ebbing of the storm.</p> + +<p>"Thank you so much," she was able to say presently, almost as lightly as +if he had put a coffee-cup down for it. "You'll forget it, I know. I +must just tell you that it was in my own hands. I refused him. I shall +be glad, presently. But——"</p> + +<p>She paused, and the man muttered awkwardly something about wishing there +were anything he could do——</p> + +<p>She spoke softly but gravely now. "Captain Ross! Be very gentle, won't +you, with that little, young girl?"</p> + +<p>Captain Ross did not ask what young girl she meant.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I2" id="CHAPTER_I2"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>THE CHARM NEGLECTED</h3> + +<blockquote><p>"Few people realize that Love is a hybernating animal."</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Extract from Private Letter.</span></p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Olwen Howel-jones sat at her War work in room 0369 on the sixth floor of +some Government offices called——</p> + +<p>We will call them The Honeycomb.</p> + +<p>The entrance to this hive of activity was near Charing Cross, and its +courtyard was one continual procession of cars, cyclists, +motor-cyclists, dispatch cycles with little side-car mail vans, also of +men in every conceivable uniform; most of them (as befitted a swarm of +such bees!) were decorated with wings.... Goodness knows how many +telephone extensions The Honeycomb possessed! Lifts carried you up to +floor after floor. Each floor was packed with cells that had been +bedrooms and private sitting-rooms, each cell with workers making +Victory-honey (and perhaps with odd drones watching them do it). The +whole place with its come-and-go of clerks, messengers, telephone girls, +civilians, typists, switchboard girls, and their khakied male superiors, +was in a never-ending buzz.</p> + +<p>The small cell marked 0369 had big windows that looked up and down the +Strand: it held three workers.</p> + +<p>Olwen's roll-top desk stood back to back with another; the two backs +screening off her colleague of the other desk. This other desk had an +unusual feature. From behind it there came a stream of comments in +different voices, so that it seemed as if several unseen people were +sitting there. These voices were:</p> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">First Voice</span>—A natural girlish treble that slightly rolled its +R's; being the voice of one Mrs. Newton, in charge of cell +0369, who possessed the gift of mimicry.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Second Voice</span>—A masculine drawl that died away of sheer +superiority in the roof of the mouth, after the fashion of one +Major Leefe of that Department.</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Third Voice</span>—Rollicking and boyish, intersected by loud "Ha's" +and "Bai Jove's" in the manner of Lieutenant Harold Ellerton, +also of The Honeycomb.</p></blockquote> + +<p>Mingling with the click of the typewriter, at which the third girl sat +in a further corner, came the sound of one or other of these voices. +Thus:</p> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">First Voice</span>—"Miss Howel-Jones, what is the French for 'land'? +Aeroplanes, I mean?"</p></blockquote> + +<p>A murmured "<i>atterrir</i>" came from Olwen, immersed in her work, which +meant dividing the morning's correspondence into four batches: A, B, C, +and D.</p> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Second Voice</span> (after a moment of paper-rustling)—"Er—yeh ... +yeh! Wha' have we heah? Letters to be translay' into Fren'. +Yeh. Mrs. Newton, will you atten' to thi' too?"</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Third Voice</span> (after more rustling)—"<i>Damn</i> this nib. Oh, sorry, +Mrs. Newton; didn't mean to say damn before you."</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">First Voice</span>—"Not at all, Mr. Ellerton; I am a married woman +myself."</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Fourth Voice</span> (A Scots-Canadian accent)—"Is that so? What I +demand of a woman is that she shall be a rrreliable worrrrkerr. +I don't assk what she does affterr hours, I——"</p></blockquote> + +<p>Here all the voices ceased.</p> + +<p>For a quarter of an hour no sound came from behind that desk, but that +of papers being turned, regularly and methodically. Then the busy Mrs. +Newton, not the mimic, spoke.</p> + +<p>"Just turn up the Q. M. G. file for last month and see if there's a +letter with this reference."</p> + +<p>She gave the reference, and Olwen, after a minute's search in a manilla +"jacket," handed over the letter, leaving a slip of paper sticking out +of the jacket in its place. Having written "Mrs. Newton" and the date +upon that slip, she turned again to her letter-trays. The rustling of +papers was resumed. Then the voices again:</p> + +<blockquote><p><span class="smcap">Second Voice</span>—"Claim for missing kit, wha'? How do f'las manage +to be always losing kit? Do <i>I</i> lose kit? Haven't <i>I</i> always +goh' millions pairs bags all beau'fly press'? 'Sides, isn't +even in ah sec.' Room Two—Fi'——Fi'."</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Third Voice</span>—"Ha! Reference A. B., stroke two bracket nine oh +one two two dated two twelve seventeen. Do they, bai Jove!"</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">First Voice</span>—"Aren't there any more 'C's,' Miss Howel-Jones?"</p></blockquote> + +<p>"Not this morning." Olwen's little black head was bent over the "D" +correspondence, which she dealt with herself. "A" letters were handed to +the typist, who carried them into cell 0368, next door. "B's" and "C's" +were to be thrust into the basket that stood on the top of that +desk-screen, from behind which a hand came up ever and anon to take +letters.</p> + +<p>With real enjoyment the Welsh girl worked on.</p> + +<p>How amazingly she had altered, in all these weeks, from the one ideaed, +feverish little emotionalist she'd been in the autumn!</p> + +<p>Yes. Change of scene and of daily work had laid potent hands upon the +plastic, fundamentally sound nature of this young girl. Routine had +hypnotized her with its rhythmic monotony. She felt the peculiar +attraction of being a tiny cog in all this huge machine of War work. New +thoughts, new feelings, new interests packed her life; new friends, too, +were a revelation to her.</p> + +<p>Now came Mrs. Newton's more frivolous voice.</p> + +<p>"<i>Arlette</i>, <i>Bubbly</i>, and <i>Cheep</i>, that's my record so far <i>this</i> week; +and tonight I'm going to <i>Pamela</i> for the second time; all thanks to one +very young youth getting four days' leave from the Front!"</p> + +<p>Olwen laughed. The solemn little typist, however, rose to take the +letters with a look that practically said, "Some people may be heads of +rooms, but they don't seem to realize there's a war on!" and as she took +the sheaf of papers to be signed in cell 0368 she all but slammed the +door behind her.</p> + +<p>"Seventeen; <i>not</i> the best phase of English maidenhood, neither washed +nor kissed," went on the voice of the unseen Mrs. Newton. "Ah! It's +nearly lunch time."</p> + +<p>"I shan't be able to lunch with you today, Mrs. Newton," Olwen said +rather quickly. "My Aunt that I stay with is shopping in town today, +so——"</p> + +<p>"Say no more," returned Mrs. Newton's voice. "I've got Aunts myself. I +mean I had before I was married. By the way, I told Fascinating Fergus +that I can hear him telephoning his dinner engagements in the next room. +He said, with that aggressive face of his, that there was nothing +prrivatt in those. I said, "Then why drop your voice when you're doing +it?" And why does he, I ask you, insist on being a Tower of Silence in +here, when he <i>longs</i> to be considered a perfect Devil outside? Keeping +his girl friends <i>well</i> round the corner, nobody ever having seen +<i>one</i>!... Swank!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's not as bad as all that," murmured Olwen.</p> + +<p>"He's all right at heart perhaps," came from the other side, "but I +<i>should</i> like to take a scraper to him!"</p> + +<p>And herewith there merged from behind the desk the source of all the +voices that had been holding forth, in the person of Mrs. Newton.</p> + +<p>Her Nile-green silken sports coat alone had cost more than her month's +salary could have paid; her hair was arranged as carefully as though +there was no thought but of her own extremely pretty looks beneath the +broad velvet band that snooded her, but for all that, she was efficient. +Clever, too, at darting the arrows of a bright mind at chiefs and +colleagues alike. She "took in" most things, not in any disguised +fashion, but by turning full upon whatever it was she wished to observe +a pair of large, pale grey and pretty eyes, amused and passionless as +those of a sea-maid. Their stare was even emphasized at times by the +gesture of a slender forefinger and by the clearly-audible "Ah" of that +treble voice.</p> + +<p>Olwen enjoyed her thoroughly; her appreciation mingling with a wonder +why she did not sometimes bitterly resent Mrs. Newton and her remarks.</p> + +<p>Yes, two months of War work on The Honeycomb had taught Olwen already +more than the A, B, C, and D of her job. Self-possession, serenity and +poise, all newly acquired, were to be noticed now about the young girl +as she sorted her letters (very different from the leisured +correspondence of her Uncle), and smiled, partly at some thought that +she was holding in reserve, and partly at her fellow-worker.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Newton began again, "Do you know what I think is the keynote of F. +F.'s character?"</p> + +<p>"Fascination, you seem to make out," suggested Olwen, that divided smile +deepening upon her lips. She sometimes thought that Mrs. Newton dwelt +upon the subject of their chief for her (Olwen's) benefit, and she was +prepared for it.</p> + +<p>"Ah! But I mean the <i>real</i> keynote. It's <i>jealousy</i>," declared the young +married woman. "He's a <i>jealous</i> thing. Hates any other man to have a +show at all. Must have everybody doing their best work, just for his +<i>beaux yeux</i> (not that he's got any, except those teeth). Yes; our +Fergus must be IT in this Honeycomb. He must be <i>The</i> Great Captain——"</p> + +<p>She stopped abruptly as the door of cell 0369 opened to frame the black +head, square shoulders, red tabs, and empty sleeve of the man of whom +she'd been speaking; the chief of their section, Captain Fergus Ross +himself.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Newton," he said, in the tone of business unalloyed, "have they +sent up to you a letter that was taken in error to room 0720? A letter +from A G 6, dated the 22nd?"</p> + +<p>"It's here, Captain Ross," replied the head of the room in her demurest +treble. "Miss Howel-Jones was attending to it.... Here it is."</p> + +<p>"Right. Thank you," said Captain Ross.</p> + +<p>His bright dark glance took in the letter that Mrs. Newton handed him; +it passed over the filed stack of other letters; it swept over the two +desks, the typing-table, Miss Lennon's back, the calendar, the pinned-up +Matania drawing on the wall, the green electric-light shades, the glass +on the mantelpiece holding freesias, the chairs, the waste-paper +basket—in short, over every object in the room but one.</p> + +<p>For Olwen Howel-Jones, bending absorbed over her work, Captain Ross did +not spare a fraction of his glance.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Newton, I am going out to lunch now," he announced. "Should there +be any enquiries, I shall be back before two-thirty."</p> + +<p>"Very well, Captain Ross."</p> + +<p>(Exit Captain Ross.)</p> + +<p>Then Mrs. Newton in Major Leefe's voice, "Wha'? Old Ferg' gone t' lunch? +<i>Bet</i> you he's taking out some gir', Miss Howel-Jo'."</p> + +<p>Olwen smiled undisturbed as she went to put on her her hat.</p> + +<p>Twenty minutes later she was sitting at a table for two in a Soho +restaurant, opposite to Captain Ross.</p> + +<p>This meeting was not due to any arrangement.</p> + +<p>What had happened was that some weeks before, Olwen, having explored all +lunch-time haunts within a mile of the Honeycomb, had found this tiny, +Continentally-appointed restaurant that she chose to call "The Aunt in +Town." This had been on a fishday, and the fish had been deliciously +cooked, as Olwen had reported afterwards. Perhaps Captain Ross did not +overhear her mentioning the restaurant's real name to Major Leefe. +Anyhow, there is no reason to suppose that it was not by chance that +Captain Ross happened upon "The Aunt in Town" upon the very next Friday. +As he saw Miss Howel-Jones sitting at a little table by herself, wasn't +it natural that he should join her? He knew the girl, apart from the +office, knew her Uncle. Absurd if he hadn't come up. But, as you see, +there was a vast difference between his just taking the chair opposite +to her, and his having planned to meet her. He did not attempt to pay +for the chit's lunch. So that was that.</p> + +<p>Certainly the fish-curry was excellent.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross had already announced that he was fond of fish for lunch.</p> + +<p>Consequently he took to haunting that restaurant on Fridays. Why shun +it, merely because Miss Howel-Jones lunched there on that day?</p> + +<p>As he would have told you, however, he made a definite rule of never +"going out to lunch" with any woman working on The Honeycomb. With other +girls, from other Government offices—well, that was another story. +There was, for instance, a fair-haired Miss Somebody (who rang him up, +Mrs. Newton had declared, three times a day), but she worked at the +institution we will call The Rabbit Warren. There was also a pretty +little friend of his on The Ant Hill. But from The Honeycomb +itself—nope. Work and social relations must be kept strictly apart.</p> + +<p>Olwen had been made to realize that from the first time she had set foot +in the courtyard under those arches and that clock. She had been first +astounded, then hurt, then finally she actually wanted to laugh at the +different Captain Ross he now was from the one she had met at Les Pins.</p> + +<p>The change had been sudden as the cut of a knife.</p> + +<p>Over there on leave he had idled about the pine-woods and the <i>plage</i>; +he had teased her as if she were no more than a pretty child; once he +had given her chocolates; once—ah, that once!—he had held her hand....</p> + +<p>Here, idleness was the last thing of which he could be accused. He no +longer teased her with laughter and allusions to "<i>most</i> little girls." +He had given her no more chocolates. As for hand-holding, why! She might +not have had any hands. To be a fellow-worker with him on The Honeycomb +seemed enough to transform any young woman into teak or granite as far +as Captain Ross was concerned.</p> + +<p>He had his code.</p> + +<p>"I guess no girl friend of mine would ask me for a job where I work, +twice," he'd told Olwen when they had first met in London at her Uncle's +hotel. The Professor's niece, greatly daring, had retorted, "Do you mean +she'd get it the first time of asking?"</p> + +<p>"She'd get 'it,' sure thing. In the neck," the young Staff-officer had +explained grimly. "She'd know better than to ask the second time."</p> + +<p>So, exactly as he was not taking her out to lunch, Captain Ross had not +secured for her this post on The Honeycomb. He had told Jack Awdas to +get it for her, through his friend Major Leefe. A very different thing.</p> + +<p>Olwen had "given up" the subtle reasonings of the sex.</p> + +<p>Today he was obviously in a bad temper. Why? After he had ordered his +own lunch, he turned to her with an edgy politeness.</p> + +<p>"I hope you enjoyed the show last night, Miss Howel-Jones."</p> + +<p>"Show——?" said Olwen, forgetting for a second that she had been taken +to the theatre by Mr. Ellerton, the young R.N.A.S. officer.</p> + +<p>"Yes; you were too occupied to notice who else was in the house, I +guess. I was in the dress-sairrcle. I looked right down upon you in the +stalls."</p> + +<p>Now, Olwen was losing her habit of the vivid blush that used to scorch +her. She merely coloured up slightly but prettily as she returned, "Oh, +were you?" and proceeded to eat her fish and to discuss the play—which +had been <i>Romance</i>. She had thought it lovely.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross informed her definitely that he himself had no use for such +sentimental balderdash; and then told her he guessed it made her pretty +late, going back all the way to Wembley Park (where her Aunt lived) +after the theatre. He hoped that at least young Ellerton took her all +the way home.</p> + +<p>"Yes, thank you; he did."</p> + +<p>"M'm. Last train from Baker Street, I presume. And then you've a long +trail from the station to your house. In the drive, isn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, but we didn't go by train at all," the girl explained. "Mr. +Ellerton managed to get a taxi to take us all the way back from town."</p> + +<p>"In war-time?" Captain Ross's black-cat-like face was a study in +righteous indignation. Then he took a lighter tone, tilting his chin +contemptuously. "Well! If Mr. Ellerton's got money to burn that way it's +no concairrrrn of mine. Taxis out to Wembley Park with a girl who's +employed in the same office as he is. That's Ellerton's lookout. Not the +kind of thing I'd care to be seen doing myself. (No, I won't have +anything to drink. A ginger-ale, waiter.) Still, if he thinks that's all +right in war-time and for folks on War work together, I've nothing to +say."</p> + +<p>The ghost of a smile hovered about Olwen's red mouth as Captain Ross +went on saying this "nothing."</p> + +<p>"Sweet as honey to any girl he takes out, no doubt. The regular naval +flirt. He held your hand in the theatre, or some foolishness of that +sort, I daresay."</p> + +<p>"He didn't!" retorted little Olwen, quickly, and then a message seemed +to come to her, whispered, perhaps by the generations of girls in love +who still survived in her blood. Upon that instinct she added, "He did +<i>not</i> hold my hand——in the theatre."</p> + +<p>The finest judge of women in Europe rose swiftly enough to this. "Is +that so? You mean he only held it in the taxi going home. A much better +scheme altogether."</p> + +<p>Olwen, still refusing to meet the aggressive brown eyes that challenged +her over the jar of mimosa on the table, retorted, "I didn't say so."</p> + +<p>"It was so, though. Wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>"I shan't tell you," said the girl, whose hand had not been held by +anyone since that magic evening in a boat. "Why should I?"</p> + +<p>"Don't trouble to tell me. I know."</p> + +<p>"Then why d'you ask me?" she returned with a little ripple of laughter. +"Besides, why should you mind?"</p> + +<p>"'<i>Mind?</i>'" retorted Captain Ross, laughing in his turn, but louder. "If +I'd nothing worse than that to 'mind' about, I shouldn't be the busy man +I am."</p> + +<p>He turned to the menu; and Olwen, going on with her lunch, remembered +Mrs. Newton's verdict, "He's a <i>jealous</i> thing!"</p> + +<p>She ought to have been wildly delighted....</p> + +<p>Curious! She was only flattered; amused.</p> + +<p>She felt oddly conscious today, that (to parody a superannuated song), +she was <i>not</i> the only girl in the world, and he was not the only boy. +That little restaurant alone was crowded with girl workers, busy as she +was, being taken out to lunch by khaki of every grade and age; and, by +the way, there was something to be noticed about all these girls and +young women from Government offices. Once, a girl worker found it hard +to hit the mean between being fluffily unsuitable or unbecomingly +severe. Today these girls were approximating to a new type; pretty but +<i>durable</i>. The London day that began in the office and ended in +restaurant and theatre with an "on-leaver" without the possibility of +going home to change, had done way with fripperies, but had brought +decorativeness into the worker's kit. <i>That</i> was why skirts were short, +coats impertinently neat, and hair done so that it stayed done.</p> + +<p>"Sensible" shoes, too, were now made in pretty styles; and since taxis +were problematical on wet days, rain-coats and rain-hats were at last +becoming things. This mixture of utility and attractiveness was a gift +of war-time to British girlhood.</p> + +<p>Olwen gained by it. She also gained by the consciousness that there was +male companionship in the world besides that of Captain Ross. Further, +she knew him so much better, now! Possibly, she was not left +uninfluenced by the daily sallies of Mrs. Newton at the young officer's +expense (for who knows the power of the comment that shows friend or +lover from another's point of view?). No longer was she lacerated by the +thoughts of those other girl friends "kept well around the corner." +Altogether Olwen realized that it was a good thing she no longer +imagined herself desperately in love with Captain Ross, since he, though +interested in all girls, was not "seriously" attracted by her. +(Otherwise, she concluded, he would have said so by this time.) She was +cured; she no longer wore a Charm to win him....</p> + +<p>That Charm! One night at Wembley Park the ribbon that held it had come +unsewn. She hadn't had time to stitch it. It hung over her mirror. One +day, perhaps, she would attend to it; but she was always busy now. It +didn't seem to matter....</p> + +<p>Captain Ross rose to go. Olwen could picture the expression with which +he'd presently look into cell 0369 to "see" if the workers had all +returned.</p> + +<p>She was generally just five minutes behind him.</p> + +<p>Today he paused, and said abruptly, "Speaking of theatres—there's a +concert or show of some sort on at the Phœnix Hut, that American +place, next Monday. Awdas rang me up about it. He'd be very pleased if +you'd go."</p> + +<p>Mischief danced in Olwen's averted glance. "How jolly! But how funny of +Mr. Awdas not to ask me himself! What time is this concert, Captain +Ross?"</p> + +<p>In a wooden voice Captain Ross said, "It starts at eight. If you'd +dinner, say, at seven o'clock here, I could take you along afterwards."</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> could? But you never take girls out from The Honeycomb."</p> + +<p>"That's so," agreed Captain Ross, with firmness. "But this is Awdas's +show. You'll be with him. So shall I. Good-bye."</p> + +<p>He put on his red-banded hat, thrust his stick and gloves for a moment +into the cross of his belt as he saluted woodenly, and turned.</p> + +<p>Olwen burst into a merry laugh. "Captain Ross!"</p> + +<p>He turned again.</p> + +<p>"It's all right; I was going to that concert anyhow," she told him.</p> + +<p>"I'm going with the girl who sings; you know Miss van Huysen!"</p> + +<p>Miss Golden van Huysen was now one of Olwen's best friends.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II2" id="CHAPTER_II2"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE LAST ALLIES</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they have found no fault,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread and salt."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Kipling.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The War-missioner on the platform paused for a moment to look at his +watch.</p> + +<p>Then he resumed, in the rich deep voice that spoke English not as the +English speak it, the voice that had done so much to bring the help of +his great country into the War.</p> + +<p>"But you'd rather be hearing Miss van Huysen sing; and if you wouldn't, +I would. So I'll just say this one thing to you men and women at the +Phœnix Hut tonight. I want you to look at this flag." He pointed to +the right-hand one of the two flags that backed him where he stood; the +Stars and Stripes.</p> + +<p>"And now—I want to think of another flag. Our stars only stand for +stars that are older still."</p> + +<p>The orator's fine grey head was lifted as if he could see those stars +above the many-pointed roof of the hut; stars of the night sky.</p> + +<p>"Those stars don't change. They're rising all the while, right round the +world. They were there, those stars, before you or I were heard of. They +will be there when we are gone. I see them as the stars of Love and +Home. And I'll tell you, friends, what I see in those stripes, too. I +see the whole world turning round to Daybreak, and those stripes are the +rays of the Dawn."</p> + +<p>Measured as the roll of distant drums, as soft, as stirring, the +War-missionary's voice sounded through a silence which could be felt.</p> + +<p>"The Dawn seems a long time in coming, but that it is coming is sure; +sure as our men are on the ocean now! That's all I have to say. It +wouldn't be any truer if I said it twenty times, and it wouldn't be any +less true if I never said it at all.... So now—Mr. Reynolds?"</p> + +<p>The orator smiled to the dark, clean-shaven official with the high khaki +collar and stepped quickly down off the platform. Just as he did so he +looked back at the Stars and Stripes. "Not 'Old Glory' now," he added as +if the thought had just come to him. "'New Glory,' joined with the Old," +and his smile was for the Union Jack.</p> + +<p>His talk, as homely as the gossip of a camp, yet somehow as high as the +stars to which it pointed, was not of the kind that provokes violent +applause. The whole assembly in that big hall felt that it was not mere +applause that the orater and his kind were out to win. Quiet brooded for +a moment over the meeting, over the mingling of Allies in khaki; and +over the rows of big-framed, bold-featured Americans in uniforms of +brown and blue, all clean-shaven as were those Normans of whom King +Harold said, "<i>Those priests will make good soldiers.</i>"</p> + +<p>Then the spell was relaxed; there was a little sputtering of matches as +pipes were relighted. Men began to talk. And little Olwen Howel-Jones, +who was one of the visitors occupying the two front rows of chairs +settled herself for the singing.</p> + +<p>On her lap was a great soft heap of leopard-skin furs. They belonged to +Miss van Huysen (the girl who was going to sing as soon as she could be +fetched from saying good-bye to a party of sailors who were taking their +leave in the billiard-room). Miss van Huysen's seat, next to Olwen, had +just been slid into by Captain Ross, who would have to leave it as soon +as the singer had finished; Olwen thought he must have something to say +to her, but apparently he hadn't. On her other side sat Mrs. Cartwright, +serene and smiling, with her hand lying in that of the very young man +who accompanied her. This very young man, aged fifteen, was Keith, her +elder son, now in London with his mother on account of measles at his +school. In the row behind them, his long legs rather cramped, sat Jack +Awdas, the flyer, with the rest of the party from The Honeycomb; Leefe, +Ellerton, little Mrs. Newton, and one or two other R.F.C. officers.</p> + +<p>Since Captain Ross did not seem to have anything to say to her, Olwen +found time to glance about this great hall which was only one room of +the Phœnix Hut.</p> + +<p>The keynote to the whole place—with its spaciousness of comfort, its +shields of Harvard, Yale, and the other colleges, its flags, its palms, +its theatrical posters, and its three glowing fireplaces, might be found +in the great pedestalled image of the American Eagle, carved in grey +stone and set up in the middle of the hall. Stately he stood with +outstretched wings, poised and ready to strike; and from one of those +wings dangled the blue jacket of some American sailor, while upon the +huge bird's head there was perched an American soldier's cowboy hat.</p> + +<p>It seemed so typical, that mixture of dignity and gaiety!</p> + +<p>Suddenly a rustle and a buzz went round the hall, then the applause +broke out in a storm as of summer rain.</p> + +<p>Miss Golden van Huysen, the singer, had come quickly through the doors +that led from the billiard-room smiling an apology for her absence. +Olwen's glance flew back to the platform as her friend stepped forward +up to it.</p> + +<p>There she stood facing all eyes, a vision of white and gold. There she +shone, in front of all the illuminating lights. Into that place, already +bright, she brought an added radiance as of the June sun on a field of +buttercups. Golden was her name; golden her hair, golden the girdle that +clipped her, its long ends falling to the hem of her skirt. Olwen looked +at the glorious young form, symbolical as that of a goddess on a golden +coin.</p> + +<p>"Isn't she beautiful tonight!" she breathed.</p> + +<p>Every man in the hall must have agreed with her, and the blue eyes of at +least one Englishman there said as much.</p> + +<p>They were the eyes of Jack Awdas.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III2" id="CHAPTER_III2"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>RECOVERY OF THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"One sudden gleam of a face, and my cherished Ideal is real!<br /></span> +<span class="i0">There moved my miracle, there passed my Fate whom to see is to love."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Brunton Stephens.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Those eyes of Jack Awdas's had known their business from the start.</p> + +<p>Wise Mrs. Cartwright, to have known what would happen, even as she sat +in that basket-chair in that hotel lounge at Les Pins, all those weeks +ago!</p> + +<p>It had happened instantaneously. The electric flash had not been quicker +than the glance that had passed from young eyes to young eyes.</p> + +<p>Those months ago!...</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright had left the French hotel the morning after—had left +Les Pins and the man she had refused. Her place at table next to Jack +Awdas had been given (as she guessed it would be given) to her +successor.</p> + +<p>That goddess-built young American had made friends with everybody, +easily and at once. The French families had regarded her as if she'd +been a visitant from another planet. Olwen Howel-Jones had been +subjugated on the spot. But Jack Awdas from the very first <i>déjeuner</i> +had scarcely for a moment left her side.</p> + +<p>Never before had he seen a girl so frank, yet so apart, so boyish in +her unaffected good-fellowship, yet so womanly.</p> + +<p>Unchaperoned she had travelled from the States to join her father in +London, where he was attached to the Embassy, and where she meant to +continue her special War work. But upon landing at Bordeaux she had +found a cable from him stating that he would be out town for some days. +She'd had no use for an empty house. So she had decided to stay in +France and by the sea for those few days.</p> + +<p>To young Jack Awdas they were a gift from Destiny!</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Some people consider that the truest and most human touch in the world's +greatest love drama is that which pitches the young man already +infatuated with one woman into the purest passion for another. There is +no hiatus of feeling between the gloomy "<i>I am done</i>" of Romeo sighing +for Rosaline, and his quick "<i>What lady's that?</i>" when Juliet appears; +there is no thought of that first lady afterwards.</p> + +<p>Yet who shall measure what Juliet owes to Rosaline?—what rough ways +made smooth, what cold young crudities softened and warmed, what +kindling of susceptibility, what speeding-up of passion?</p> + +<p>And, for all this, what thanks may Rosaline expect? "<i>Oh, she was just +someone he used to think he cared for.</i>" Or, "<i>I'm sure she couldn't +have been a very nice woman.</i>" Or even "<i>Horrid! Robbing the cradle, I +call it; I don't know how any woman can!</i>"</p> + +<p>But none of these verdicts would ever be passed by Golden van Huysen, +either upon Claudia Cartwright or upon any other woman. She had read of +the theory that women are "catty" to their own sex; smilingly she +disbelieved it. Like attracts like. Just as her own heart had never +known an ungenerous prompting, so her own lips had never uttered a +spiteful remark. She therefore never heard one. If she had, she would +probably have widened her blue eyes and exclaimed with a little air of +discovery, "Why, that's not <i>kind</i>!"</p> + +<p>And this big and innocent creature was the very type which (if she'd had +her choice) Mrs. Cartwright would have chosen for the man whom she +herself was too old to choose.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>He didn't ask Golden van Huysen to marry him on the first day of their +acquaintance. No! He had waited until the third day.</p> + +<p>"Mustn't rush things," he'd told himself, as if those three days had +been three years' duteous service of a knight of old. So he had merely +made himself into this young girl's shadow.</p> + +<p>To her it was no novelty to be attended and worshipped. Wasn't every +girl that she cared to know accustomed to this setting of masculine +worship? Golden took as naturally as she took air and food the existence +of a train of such young knights.</p> + +<p>Only ... from the first she realized vaguely that this one was somehow +different from the others she had known and liked. This tall young man +with the small crested head set on his sweeping, wing-like shoulders, +who had drawn her first quick glance in the lounge. She admitted it +quite frankly to herself this young flying-man <i>fascinated</i> her.</p> + +<p>Why was it?</p> + +<p>She had met plenty of flying-men before. Hadn't she talked to them in +the aerodromes of her own country—which was also the birthplace of that +very marvel, flying? Hadn't she been introduced to her aviators who had +broken records for altitude, distance, and time? Hadn't she danced at +balls with some of the very first pilots who'd ever looped? Flying and +flyers had been no new proposition to her, but <i>this</i> flyer....</p> + +<p>Presently the young American girl began to realize what it was that was +new and special about "this flyer."</p> + +<p>It was symbolized in the little gold stripe on the cuff of his +flying-jacket. He was the very first <i>fighting</i> flyer who had crossed +her path. The first she'd met who had already given battle to men in the +air, the first she'd known who had been shot down in fighting for the +cause which was now her country's too.</p> + +<p>Never before had she seen a man who had actually used her country's +invention of flying as the instrument of battle.</p> + +<p>She, with her whole country, had wished to use this invention as a +beneficent gift.</p> + +<p>Her country had seen that <i>before this gift could be so used</i>, stern +work lay before the men of the air. She saw it, too.... As that +War-missioner had said. Her country was looking with other eyes upon her +Allies.</p> + +<p>For Golden these new friends were typified in the young Briton who wore +the wound stripe as well as the wings.</p> + +<p>She told herself wonderingly, "Now isn't it queer that I should ever +come to like one of the English so well. This Bird-boy is quite nice +enough to be an American...."</p> + +<p>Neither of the young people remembered afterwards at what exact moment +of that second day she had called him "Bird-boy." Though he took it +with a hidden lift of the heart, he did not use any name at all to her +until the third day.</p> + +<p>On the morning of that day she announced to him that it would be her +last day at Les Pins.</p> + +<p>"What? Going?" he cried aghast, as if the idea that she must one day go +had never occurred to him.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes! I'd never meant to stay here at all. It was just because of +father, and now he cables me he'll be back in London before I shall."</p> + +<p>"Well, but I say!" Jack Awdas broke in in consternation. "Shan't I see +you any more?" It seemed unspeakable.</p> + +<p>"Didn't you tell me you were coming back to London at the end of the +fall, to a Board or something? My father would be pleased if you came +and saw us then."</p> + +<p>"But that's not for ages!" he cried, his face blank. "I'm not due back +in town for another month! When are you going? Tonight? Tomorrow?"</p> + + +<p>"Tomorrow morning early, to Bordeaux; then on to Paris, then London."</p> + +<p>"All by yourself?" exclaimed the young Englishman stupefied.</p> + +<p>She laughed. "Why, certainly, 'all by myself.' That's funny! Why, I've +made all the travelling arrangements for father and myself since I was +twelve! I'm a lot more useful than he is, that way. I've been most all +over the world. 'All by myself.' Why, yes! You're shocked? Now isn't +that real old-fashioned, and English? It's the way they talk in those +novels with the sweet little heroine in book-muslin, whatever that is, +in the days of Queen Victoria. Haven't you got past that, in this War? +If you haven't it's time America did come in and teach you a few things! +I guess I'm as capable as you are of looking after myself, Bird-boy!"</p> + +<p>"You certainly aren't," he declared resolutely. "I shouldn't let you, +if—if I were anything to do with you." He pulled himself together and +added, "Well, there's all today, anyhow. Look here, can't you let me +take you somewhere jolly all by myself, just for today?"</p> + +<p>He could never have made this suggestion to a young woman of the +traditions and upbringing of, say Miss Agatha Walsh. But already he knew +that <span class="smcap">SHE</span> would take it as it was meant.</p> + +<p>"Why, yes, if you like," she said.</p> + +<p>So they'd gone off to Cap Ferret. Midday had found this tall girl and +boy upon Biscay shore where four days before Mrs. Cartwright's +dove-lunch party had walked, watching those rollers. Soaring to crash, +gathering and soaring once again to crash, those great waves boomed the +chorus that had sounded across wide sea and wide shore long "before the +months had names." It would go on sounding long after the names of those +two on the seashore had ceased to be music to those who loved them.</p> + +<p>But this was the moment when the waves sang for them, only for them.</p> + +<p>Golden van Huysen had said something about surf-riding. The young +aviator, his eyes turning for a moment from her to the tumultuous +waters, had muttered, "Dangerous game for a girl!"</p> + +<p>She laughed. "What a lot of things there are that you English think a +girl can't do! It would do you lots of good to get to know some +American girls. Then you'd see!"</p> + +<p>He made no reply. His eyes were again upon her.</p> + +<p>She wore what he had come to know were (out of uniform) her only +colours; white and gold. Her dress of some creamy white stuff, perfectly +cut, and over it she had slipped a knitted coat of yellowy silk. Crisp +as a gardenia-petal, her skirt blew out above her ankles, and her feet, +not small, but shapely as those of a sandalled Hermes. No hat hid her +hair, which glinted like a casque in the sun as they turned away from +the sea towards the dunes.</p> + +<p>Here Jack Awdas took the plunge.</p> + +<p>"See some American girls, you say? You're all the girl I want to see," +he declared, not knowing that he spoke with the boyish vehemence that +had so lately taken Claudia Cartwright's breath. The persistence with +which he'd wooed that first love he now turned upon this—this only love +of his.</p> + +<p>"You're all the girls in the world to me," said he. "D'you understand?"</p> + +<p>She did, and she did not. She stared at him: her uncovered gold head +almost on a level with his own fair head, crested by that flyer's cap.</p> + +<p>"Yes, rather!" continued the lad, definitely. "Now, what about it?"</p> + +<p>He held out a hand to help her up the dunes, but she climbed as lightly +as he.</p> + +<p>"What about it, please?" he repeated. "What about your belonging to me +for keeps, I mean?"</p> + +<p>The girl had a curious little gesture as she looked at him, then away.</p> + +<p>Surprise was in it, and protest, and a virginal dignity; also amusement, +unpreparedness, and wonder....</p> + +<p>She repeated his words. "'Belong' to you? To you? Oh! No, I——"</p> + +<p>"Don't you like me?" he shot out.</p> + +<p>"Oh! I like you very well," she answered quickly, almost hurt herself by +the thought that she might have hurt him. "I like you so well! I like to +be with you. I like to talk to you. I—yes, I like to look at you," and +she turned one of her frank and friendly glances upon that handsome +figure striding by her side, that fresh face, all pink in the +sea-breezes. "But I guess I'd never want to 'belong' to any man!"</p> + +<p>He smiled into the sweet bewildered eyes. It was the smiling side of his +obstinacy; obstinate and keen again, in love as in war!</p> + +<p>"I say——How old are you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Twenty-one," she told him.</p> + +<p>"Well, then! You don't mind my asking, do you? Hasn't any man ever +wanted you to belong to him before?"</p> + +<p>"You mean asked me to marry them?"</p> + +<p>"Yes."</p> + +<p>"Why, yes," she admitted with her crystal straightness. "Men, proposed +to me? Why, stacks of them! But they didn't do it that way."</p> + +<p>She looked back and out to sea, as though she could see on the other +side of that severing Atlantic the half-score of her splendid young +countrymen who had offered her marriage as tribute is offered to a young +queen.</p> + +<p>"You are—queer people over here," she said softly.</p> + +<p>"Queer?"</p> + +<p>"The way you talk of 'belonging.'"</p> + +<p>"Queer, if it's the right man and the girl he wants?" Jack Awdas asked.</p> + +<p>"But," she said, sweet and stately, "I should always want to belong to +myself."</p> + +<p>Then he understood. He said quickly, "Of course I'd always want that for +you, too. But—oh, look here! Would the other stop that? As I see it, it +might help it."</p> + +<p>The puzzled wonder grew in her look. All this was strange to her; she +had read of it, heard of it. All this was unexpectedly different from +books, from college, from life until now. The old was so unexplored to +the new, embodied in its modern Diana. At twenty she had seen half the +capitals of two hemispheres, yet she was in his eyes more backward in +some ways than a girl who had never left her native village.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright could have told her that it is by "belonging" that a +woman forms her individuality, and that it is only by giving that she +can either gain or keep what she has.</p> + +<p>He went on softly talking. Presently he said, "I know now what people +mean by being made for each other. You were, for me. Yes, but I was for +you. Oh, yes. Oh, yes!... You can't tell me you honestly don't think +so.... You don't want to send me away; you don't want not to see me +again."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>no</i>," she agreed, quickly, looking away from him as if to face a +situation. She was of the type that faces, losing no time in wondering +what she ought to think. And this was the very first time she had ever +wondered <i>what</i> she thought.</p> + +<p>She did like him. How it had grown, that first "fascination," born from +a look! But——At last she seemed to find the words that summed it up.</p> + +<p>"This is a big thing," she said, gravely. "It might be the biggest thing +that's happened to me; but, Bird-boy, there's no hurry about it."</p> + +<p>"No hurry?" He seemed to think that "hurry" was now the main point.</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "We don't have to settle anything about it, right +here and right now. Now <i>do</i> we?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. <i>Yes!</i>" urged the boy.</p> + +<p>"No," denied the girl's wise young voice. "See here; I'll be in London, +and you will be there in a month. There's plenty of time. You'll come +over then.... Then we can think of it.... Then maybe we'll talk of it +again...."</p> + +<p>"Oh, will we," muttered Jack Awdas in a voice of utter +expressionlessness. For the moment he was ready to say nothing more.</p> + +<p>Silence fell between them.</p> + +<p>Each full of thought, they ascended and descended the belt of +softly-rolling dunes and came to where the sand had drifted half-way up +the trunks of the growing pines.</p> + +<p>Suddenly Golden gave a little exclamation. "Oh, look; what's this?"</p> + +<p>"What's what?" he asked, stopping beside her.</p> + +<p>"I thought it was a cute little flower that was growing up the tree," +said the girl with down-bent head, "but look, it's sown on to a ribbon, +and it's got itself wound way round the branch——"</p> + +<p>She was disentangling the object that had taken her eye; a couple of +lengths of ribbon, faded to white by the sea breeze and stitched to a +little padded square of satin, once mauve, now pale as the sand.</p> + +<p>"What is it?" she wondered.</p> + +<p>Half-absently Jack Awdas caught hold of the other ribbon as he looked at +the thing.</p> + +<p>And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the sachet of the +Disturbing Charm that had hung about Mrs. Cartwright's neck just before +she had plunged into the waters of Biscay Bay; the Charm that the wind +had caught and whirled away across the sands until at last it had been +in that pine branch from which a girl's hand unwound it.</p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="illus4" id="illus4"></a> +<img src="images/illus4.jpg" alt=""/> +</div> + +<h3><i>And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the +sachet of the Disturbing Charm.</i></h3> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"Something from a wreck?" mused Golden.</p> + +<p>The Charm dangled between them.</p> + +<p>He was scarcely thinking of what he was doing as he twisted that ribbon +over his own fingers.</p> + +<p>He was set, so that he would not have realized, now, that he had set +before. This was a universe away from that. <i>She</i> knew that, the other +one.... She'd been kind.... It wasn't that she hadn't liked him, he +believed. She <i>had</i> begun to like him near her, she <i>had</i> liked it when +he said "darling." Ah, to think that he had ever wanted to say "darling" +to any woman before! Here was his darling, and she must be made to see +it, not later, not in London, but "right here and now."</p> + +<p>As he twisted the ribbon, he spoke in the tone that had caused that +other woman to shut her eyes; for it was the note of the mating call.</p> + +<p>"I say, darling——"</p> + +<p>Again the girl shook her head, but—was there now the least quiver of +indecision in her gesture?</p> + +<p>"I say, if nobody else has ever been allowed to call you that——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no!" she cried, sincerity itself.</p> + +<p>He was mechanically twisting up that ribbon between them; another inch +he took, another.</p> + +<p>"Then if there's nobody else you liked well enough for that, there's a +chance for me," persisted the soft husky voice of her lover above the +faint distant crashing of those breakers behind them.</p> + +<p>"Shall I tell you what?"</p> + +<p>"What——?" she asked, slowly, no longer looking at him. A kind of +arrogance seemed to shine up in him. Somewhere deep down in his heart he +was cheering himself on by the reminder that he knew more than she. He +seemed vaguely conscious of some force upon his side.... He would not +have believed anyone who had told him that a woman's strongest love, +poured out upon him, had lent him magnetism, charged him. He fastened +his blue eyes upon this girl, as upon some doggedly desired objective +seen from his battle 'plane as he drove through the blue, but he did not +reply. He smiled, with all that is far-away in those searching eyes of +his.</p> + +<p>He had twisted up the last inch of that ribbon. Now he caught hold of +the Charm that hung between the two ties, then came to the twin ribbon +that she held. Before she knew what he would do with it, he wound that +ribbon about her fingers and palm, binding her hand to his own with the +Charm in it.</p> + +<p>Close, close and warm his pulses beat to hers.</p> + +<p>"I've caught you," he ventured, very softly, eyes intent upon her. He +smiled more broadly at the first faint dawning of lovely trouble in her +face. "Yes! This is what they'd call marriage-by-capture, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>She didn't speak. She didn't move as he caught hold of her free hand as +well. He held his crested head gaily as he said to her, "Of course I'm +English and old-fashioned, and I know American girls are independent, +and I ought to see the things they could teach me! But there's something +I could teach one of them. Let me try?"</p> + +<p>Softly he muttered the word which was to mean everything as his own name +for her. "Girl! <i>Girl!</i> ... I say, let's learn from each other?"</p> + +<p>Still she didn't speak. How find words, when at a nearness, a name, a +touch, some spell seems snapped and the meanings of all words thereafter +seem entirely to have altered? This stranger who had become her friend +so soon had even more quickly changed to——</p> + +<p>"<i>What?</i>"</p> + +<p>Her lover nodded, saying below his breath, "It will be all right."</p> + +<p>Then, loosing one of her hands, he deftly unwound the ribbon that was +about the other. As he was stuffing the Charm with its ribbons inside +the breast of his flyer's coat, words came at last to his love.</p> + +<p>Laughing tremulously, she asked, "Why, what are you doing that for?"</p> + +<p>"Putting it by, safely," he smiled at her as he stood just a step away +from her on the sand. "It'll never leave me now, not that ribbon +that—that tied our hands together for me. I say, I shall fasten it to +my 'bus later on, to bring me luck, Girl. It's started already, what?" +He jerked his belt straight. "Hasn't it?"</p> + +<p>And with the words he took that one step nearer that brought her into +his arms.</p> + +<p>"Ah, please," he said, more softly than ever. "Please...."</p> + +<p>He drew down to his shoulder the face so full of sweet disturbance, he +folded her close, close to the wide breast beneath the white-embroidered +wings. As if swayed by a Charm, she drew a long breath, then smiled in +wonder, nestled, and yielded to his kisses—the first for both of +them....</p> + +<p>"What about America coming in now, Girl? She will, won't she?... Yes, +but say yes; you <i>must</i>! Say it!"</p> + +<p>"No, Bird-boy! I just won't <i>say</i> it," was her last touch of mutiny. +"And—and I guess we'll see about that 'belonging' later on."</p> + +<p>"Yes," triumphed Jack Awdas. "I 'guess' so too!"</p> + +<p>That was all those months ago.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV2" id="CHAPTER_IV2"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"She is singing an air that is known to me;<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A passionate ballad gallant and gay,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">A martial song like a trumpet's call."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span>.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>All that had been in November. It was now January—which brings me back +to the Phœnix Hut, where Golden van Huysen was preparing to sing.</p> + +<p>Advancing to the edge of the platform, she said, smiling, but as quietly +as if she'd been proposing a game in a room full of children:</p> + +<p>"What'll I sing you, boys?"</p> + +<p>An instantaneous chorus of men's voices answered her, and she laughed. +Evidently she had heard, though Olwen hadn't caught a word of which song +it was they all wanted.</p> + +<p>It was "the" sentimental song of the moment, that song whose name varies +from season to season. As I write, it is called differently from what it +will be called by the time you read. Once it was "Until," once "Roses of +Picardy." The soul of it remains the same. "Cheap and common," smile the +superior. Yes! Cheap as the air we breathe. Common as sunlight.</p> + +<p>Golden van Huysen pronounced its present name to the accompanist, who +struck four cords on the piano. Then, into a dead silence, her voice +stole out.</p> + +<p>It might have been the gushing of honey from a suddenly broken comb. +Already her speaking voice could set Olwen's heartstrings vibrating in +response to the sound, but Golden's singing voice (a rich mezzo-soprano) +was almost more than her little Welsh friend could endure for pleasure. +It cleft the middle of the note, the middle of the heart. Olwen sat, her +hands clenched under those furs, listening, listening. She could not +have told you what the words were about. She only knew that when the +immortal nightingale sang to his rose, it must be in some such song as +this.... The two verses of the song ended, and the applause that +followed them was as much a murmur of deep voices as it was a clapping +of hands from Americans, British tars, Canadian, kilties.... Without a +pause, the singer whispered to her accompanist. The wonderful voice rose +in a second song, of which the words might have been trivial, but which +were music because of their singer. Not a man or woman in that hut made +a movement.... In all she sang three songs.</p> + +<p>Just before her last song she took a couple of steps backward, and +stood, tall and resplendent, between the two flags with a hand upon +each.</p> + +<p>She had not sung three notes before the audience had risen to their +feet, with every soldier and sailor in the hall standing to attention. +For it was "The Star-Spangled Banner" that Golden van Huysen was singing +now.</p> + +<p>There are some songs that never age. Of these are those a mother sings +to her child; of these, too, are those a Motherland sings to her absent +sons. This one——Well, all in that hall had heard it a thousand times +before, yet this might have been the first time. Golden sang it as once +Sims Reeves sang "Maud," as Patti sang "Home, Sweet Home"—in the +perfection of simplicity.</p> + +<p>At the end she neither bowed nor smiled. She just backed out, as before +some Royalty of emotion, between the English and the American flags.</p> + +<p>With a deep breath the audience felt that it was as though a light had +been put out....</p> + +<p>It was this radiant personality of hers, as well as her power of holding +her hearers spellbound in hut, hospital, theatre, and soldiers' club, +that had gained her the name by which half London knew her now—"that +wonderful American they call the Sunburst Girl."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V2" id="CHAPTER_V2"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE BEST GIRL-FRIEND</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"She was Sweet of Heart."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Epitaph on the Tomb of an Egyptian Princess, 700 b.c.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Olwen, with Golden's furs, hurried through the billiard-room to the +outer hall with the "Enquiries" counter, the long bar, and the rows of +refreshment-tables crowded by soldiers and sailors.</p> + +<p>One table was empty, reserved for Mr. Awdas's party, but the young +flying officer had been called away on duty just after his <i>fiancée's</i> +second song. Olwen was sorry for him, but his loss was her chance; and +she saw so little of this friend of hers.</p> + +<p>As she handed over the great leopard-skin muff, she said, rather +appealingly, "Are you staying, Golden?"</p> + +<p>"Why, aren't you?" Golden said, glancing towards the group who were +ordering coffee. "It's quite early."</p> + +<p>"Yes; and I felt like a walk," said the other girl, wistfully, "and I +thought if we got out of this crush I might see you to speak to——"</p> + +<p>Golden laughed. "Very well," she agreed. "I'll come with you; wait while +I shake hands with Mrs. Cartwright...."</p> + +<p>The two young girls bade a quick good night to the party, and before it +was quite realized that they were leaving, they had passed through the +hall, descended the wooden staircase, and reached the entrance to the +Strand.</p> + +<p>It was a clear and sparkling night above the murky lamp-glasses, with a +touch of frost. Away to the west the spoke of a single searchlight could +be seen creeping this way and that like a snail's horn.</p> + +<p>The tall girl and the little one turned to take the quieter streets in +the direction of Baker Street, Olwen's terminus.</p> + +<p>Already they had walked many a mile together, those oddly contrasted +girl-friends, during that growth of this quick, firm friendship. Several +times the Welsh girl had been invited to the big house near Grosvenor +Gardens, which was Golden's home; the little house at Wembley Park had +in its turn welcomed the American. There had been appointments for +matinées together, and for lunch. Olwen, in fact, would have wished to +claim the Sunburst girl whenever Jack Awdas was out of town, bound for +France with a new machine. Taking aeroplanes across the Channel was now +his job. Little Olwen had been the first of her girl friends to whom +Golden had confided the pact on Biscay Beach that had made of her +Bird-boy the happiest man flying.</p> + +<p>But as Golden was not of the type that lets any Third (however dear) +into details that concern a happy two, Olwen had never heard of the part +played in that scene by a trifle of pink ribbon and satin in which her +own hand had bestowed a Charm....</p> + +<p>If she had known of it, it might have been better for her. It might have +startled her out of the lines that her own life was taking; humdrum +lines, she knew—she scarcely realized that they were also growing +towards the lines of disillusionment, even of cynicism. Being gloriously +in love was a thing for the few, she thought. Certainly a bright fixed +star seemed to shine over this girl by her side and over the Jack she +appeared to adore. But what gleam of it touched the life of Olwen? She +had now reached twenty, and the phase when a girl believes herself to +have outgrown everything she ever used to feel. Certainly she had +gained, by that casting off of some of her feverish emotionalism and +credulities, but was there nothing this young girl was in danger of +losing?</p> + +<p>It was as they were turning into Cranbourne Street that Golden van +Huysen, who had been swinging along without speaking, did startle her by +a sudden remark:</p> + +<p>"Olwen! I didn't know you could be so cruel."</p> + +<p>Quickly Olwen's little head went up. "Cruel, Golden? What can you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean just plain cruel. What made you say good night in the way you +said it, as if you didn't care if it were good night, or good-bye, or +good riddance?"</p> + +<p>"'Good night' to whom? I spoke to Mrs. Cartwright; she was the one who +mattered," Olwen said a little defensively. "All those other people from +the Honeycomb——well, I wanted to get away with you, and I see <i>them</i> +every day."</p> + +<p>"And are '<i>they</i>' all the same to you?"</p> + +<p>"Of course," said Olwen in a resigned voice, "you <i>mean</i> Captain Ross."</p> + +<p>"Certainly I didn't mean your little Major Leefe, who talks as if it +hurt him, not your young sailor-boy, who loves to laugh."</p> + +<p>"Well, I see Captain Ross every day, and I expect he thinks that's far +too much."</p> + +<p>Golden's reply was a soft laugh. "Oh, you British, you are the funniest +things! Either you want to grab a thing before you take another breath, +or else you wait staring at it until you can't see it!—--Why, Olwen, +that man's crazy about you."</p> + +<p>"Not he!" returned Olwen, decidedly, and with another sort of laugh—a +slightly bitter one.</p> + +<p>For she had just remembered that this was the second time some one had +thought this thing. She heard again the mercilessly shrewd voice of that +French manageress at Les Pins.</p> + +<p>"<i>Monsieur le Capitaine, he with the one arm, who admires +Mademoiselle.</i>"</p> + +<p>She, Olwen, had actually been silly enough to believe it, then. She +didn't believe it now; how could she? Did she have any reason? Those +Fridays were the only time she saw him to speak to, and even those, as +he'd practically pointed out to her, were the purest accident.</p> + +<p>The rest of the time—she laughed again.</p> + +<p>"My <i>dear</i> Golden, if you could <i>only</i> see him at the Honeycomb!"</p> + +<p>And there seemed to resound in her mind echoes of Captain Ross's voice +at the Honeycomb—or were they echoes of Mrs. Newton's mimicries of +Captain Ross?</p> + +<p>"Hullo—yes?" curtly down the telephone in his office where Olwen had +come for instructions. "Yes; Miss Howel-Jones <i>is</i> working on the +Honeycomb. You will find her number in room 0369——" Then, in an iron +tone to Olwen, "Miss Howel-Jones, I should be glad if you would give +your <i>correct</i> telephone number to any friends whom you wish to ring you +up...."</p> + +<p>And so on. Was that the manner of a man who cares?</p> + +<p>More echoes were broken in upon by the gentler voice of Golden.</p> + +<p>"I don't need to see him at any Honeycomb. I saw it in one, at the Eagle +Hut. If he's different in the office, why, that's his fine sense of +duty, and you ought to like him for that.... Jack thinks a deal of +Captain Ross. So does Mrs. Cartwright, and she's a real, intelligent +woman. Why, do you know, just before Captain Ross came on to the meeting +tonight, your little friend Mrs. Newton said something about him; I +think she likes to make fun of him a little. Mrs. Cartwright said, quite +quietly, '<i>I have a great affection for Captain Ross!</i>'</p> + +<p>"I guess she wouldn't have said that without some reason for liking him. +Jack thinks he's fine," young Awdas's sweetheart concluded her plea for +the absent. "Don't you like him, Olwen?"</p> + +<p>There was a silence as the two girls walked up Tottenham Court Road, +comparatively empty at this time of the evening.</p> + +<p>Then Olwen drew a quick little breath, turned up her face to her +friend's, and let out an emphatic "I did like him." Then in a soft hurry +of words, "I liked him all that time in France. Yes. Awfully! I thought +of him and thought of him, Golden. It seemed to make everything ... +beautiful to me." Then a little ashamed laugh, "I was——silly, then!"</p> + +<p>"Silly?" repeated her friend gently. "That's not the way it seems to +me. That's a lovely thing in a girl's life." She lifted her chin over +the leopard-skin stole and looked ahead to the stars above the murky +lamps, to the skies in which lay her own lover's pathless way. "Make +everything beautiful; that's what love should do. I <i>know</i>," said +Golden, shyly, but proudly. "I didn't know for certain, until Jack +showed me. I'm so pleased you know too...."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but—that's not new," Olwen protested quickly. "That's over."</p> + +<p>"Over? Then—if you don't mind telling me, what do you feel about +Captain Ross now? What does he mean in your life?"</p> + +<p>Little Olwen had asked herself this very same question until she'd given +it up, and now she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to shrug her +shoulders.</p> + +<p>"I'll tell you," she said lightly, after a moment, "exactly how I feel +about Captain Ross. I would have told you before, if you'd asked me. To +start with, I work all day at the Honeycomb, where there are hundreds of +other girls, and men. Some of these people amuse me, and some don't, +so——"</p> + +<p>"But——'<i>amuse</i>'——" repeated Golden, blankly. "Does that stand for +anything big?"</p> + +<p>The soft Welsh voice of the other girl retorted, "It does, when you are +working, and—and there isn't anything else. Isn't it natural that one +likes the amusing people best? Mrs. Newton is amusing. Major Leefe +doesn't mean to be, but he is. Mr. Ellerton is nice to go about +with——"</p> + +<p>Again Golden broke in gently. "Olwen! I don't like to hear you talk that +way."</p> + +<p>"Why not? Les Pins is over. And when a thing's over," pronounced this +sage of twenty, "sensible people don't waste any more time on it."</p> + +<p>"When you say that, it seems to me to be belittling a very——" Golden +made the characteristic American pause after the adverb—"beautiful +thing."</p> + +<p>"It's different for you who have one man meaning the whole world to you. +As I haven't. Well, I want to be amused, Golden."</p> + +<p>More gently still Golden repeated, "I don't like to hear you talk that +way, Olwen. Don't you feel any more that Captain Ross is different from +the others?"</p> + +<p>"I feel he's less amusing," declared the girl, walking beside her.</p> + +<p>"And how," asked Golden, "does that young Mr. Ellerton 'amuse' you, +then?"</p> + +<p>"Well, he gives me a good time. I like being with him. He rattles away +all the time. <i>He</i> doesn't snap my head off——"</p> + +<p>For half a minute there was silence as they walked along. Then Golden +stopped by one of those dimly-gleaming lamps and peered down into her +friend's small, mutinous face; her voice dropped a whole note as she +said slowly:</p> + +<p>"Olwen! You wouldn't do such a thing as play Mr. Ellerton off against +Captain Ross to make Captain Ross jealous?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," Olwen said quite honestly; forgetting something as entirely as +a change of mood can cause one to forget. She had mischievously enough, +allowed Captain Ross to go on thinking that the young R.N.A.S. officer +had held her hand.... She didn't even care enough to remember it....</p> + +<p>But at her answer the American girl heaved quite a sigh of relief. +"Forgive me," she begged. "Forget I said that. I ought to have known it +wasn't like you."</p> + +<p>And here Olwen really felt herself humbled by the standards of the +straight young goddess at her side. For the first time the younger, less +womanly but more feminine and complex girl suffered a pang of remorse on +account of a certain little Mr. Brown. Him she had certainly made use of +at Les Pins to annoy Captain Ross. The blackberry time was not +intentional; but that time on the terrace? Would Golden ever have talked +to a young man "at" another young man? It would be better, she knew, if +every girl could think and act like Golden ... it would be better.... +But to every girl her problems.</p> + +<p>Golden went on, "You've done it without wanting to, then. He was scared +tonight that Mr. Ellerton would sit by you. You aren't out to make him +jealous, but have you wondered if he thinks that's what you're doing? +I've told you that he watched every look of yours!"</p> + +<p>"But I don't believe it," persisted Olwen, feeling somehow more +disturbed, less contented with life as it was then she had been that +day. "Why should I?" and into her voice there crept another note.</p> + +<p>It was a note of unspoken irritation, exasperation, and appeal. In how +many soft girl voices does it not sound, telling of budding emotions +nipped by the frost of silence—of hopes that had grown tired of raising +their heads—of womanly impulse turned back upon itself—of influences +that might have made the sunshine of two lives, but that dies of +forbiddance because some man has shown himself so near to +speaking——and has not spoken!</p> + +<p>"He cares," said Golden with the conviction of some young great-eyed +oracle.</p> + +<p>A passer-by separated the two girls for the moment. As they came +together again Olwen retorted, "Then why can't he say so? Men do, when +they like a girl well enough. Your Jack did, in a minute."</p> + +<p>Golden gave a happy little laugh. "But, as I say most every day, you +British are so queer! You're so different! Some of your men want to +propose before they even say 'Pleased to meet you.' Others seem to have +this habit of waiting and waiting until some cows of their own come +home, I guess."</p> + +<p>"It's the second sort that I don't understand," sighed the Welsh girl. +"If a man is fond of a girl, why doesn't he want to say so at once?"</p> + +<p>Golden shook her head. "Now that is something that I can't tell you."</p> + +<p>Presently Olwen said, as if getting rid of something that had been a +little on her mind, "I read in a book of essays about engagements and +things, that Mrs. Newton lent me, that '<i>a Proposal was one-half the +Engineering of Some Girl, and one-half the False Pretences of Some +Man</i>' ... but I hope that's not quite true...."</p> + +<p>"It is not true," said the American girl serenely. "It's ugly."</p> + +<p>With this profoundly simple remark, uttered as if it were some creed, +she turned with Olwen down Warren Street; and they were half-way to +Baker Street station before either of them spoke again.</p> + +<p>Then said the Sunburst Girl, "I wouldn't have missed this walk. I think +you needed to talk to somebody who knows Love's lovely."</p> + +<p>"Somebody who seems to upset things I thought were <i>settled</i>," grumbled +Olwen, affectionately.</p> + +<p>"That's why I'm glad I came with you. I just hate to see you in a hurry +to settle all the wrong things!"</p> + +<p>Olwen persisted. "For the umpteenth time, as Mr. Ellerton would say, +that man doesn't care two-pence about me, Golden."</p> + +<p>"Just because he hasn't proposed?" smiled Golden as she took the last +word. "But he will. Watch out for it. Good night, dear."</p> + +<p>The heavy furs lifted to her gesture as she turned, then swung away +under the stars towards the South.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI2" id="CHAPTER_VI2"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>THE CHARM REMEMBERED</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A is happy, oh, so happy!<br /></span> +<span class="i2">A is happy, B is not."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Gilbert.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>The words of Golden remained with her friend all the way back to Wembley +Park, down the Drive of little red-roofed villas, and up the +short-flagged path between the standard rose-bushes that led to her +Aunt's front door.</p> + +<p>Olwen took her latch-key from her bag and let herself in; as she did so +she heard the voice of the Aunt from the sitting-room, "Is that you, +dear?"</p> + +<p>"Yes! I'll be down in a minute," she called back, and ran straight +upstairs to the bedroom with the pink-curtained window that overlooked +the back lawn.</p> + +<p>She wanted to be alone for a moment or so. She had just told the +Sunburst Girl that what she wanted was amusement, but what she would +have liked now would have been solitude.</p> + +<p>Why had Golden unsettled her again like this, when she had been getting +along so cheerfully?</p> + +<p>She sat down on the edge of the springy brass-railed bed drawn up +against the window. It was open, and the breeze stirred in the curtain +behind her head, full of uneasy thought.... As she drew the hat-pins +from her head she glanced restlessly about her room, bright, girlishly +pink-and-white, with the atmosphere of a room that had been lived in +happily enough. Mechanically Olwen's eyes fell upon the dressing-table, +upon the crystal powder-box, upon the signed photograph of Professor +Howel-Jones—about the frame of which there was twisted a long piece of +pink ribbon, sewn to——</p> + +<p>Why, it was that half-forgotten Charm of her days in France!</p> + +<p>Half scornfully she smiled now at the memories that it brought to her.</p> + +<p>It seemed another Olwen that she remembered, poring over typewritten +directions for the use of that Charm.... Fancy an Olwen who believed in +that! What a simple way out of the problems of Love, to wear a mascot +and to have everything happen that one could wish!</p> + +<p>This did happen to some people, Olwen mused. To Golden van Huysen it had +come without the help of any talisman. Golden possessed within her all +that quality of Charm of which that "inventor" claimed to have found the +secret. She was one of the lucky people who hold that secret without +knowing what it is....</p> + +<p>But as for materializing it into something that might be annexed and +worn——well, thought the new and more sophisticated Olwen, what had +been the success of that, so far? Half laughing now, she considered it.</p> + +<p>That other, romantic little Olwen had (in her first enthusiasm!) written +to that newspaper address for more of the Charm.</p> + +<p>No answer had been vouchsafed to her.</p> + +<p>Therefore her experiments had been limited to four. She had planted out +her Charm upon four people: Miss Agatha Walsh, Mrs. Cartwright, little +Mr. Brown, and herself.</p> + +<p>With what results?</p> + +<p>This older, wiser Olwen ticked them off now on her fingers.</p> + +<p><i>One</i>, Agatha Walsh—successful. She had become engaged to her Gustave +and was perfectly happy.</p> + +<p><i>Two</i>, Mrs. Cartwright—unsuccessful. Absolutely nothing had happened, +thought Olwen, vexedly; her friend the writer had received not one word +of added attention from her Uncle, and had remained unclaimed except by +that work and those boys of hers.</p> + +<p><i>Three</i>, little Mr. Brown—more than unsuccessful. Not only had he +failed to attract anybody on his own account, but he had shown symptoms +of becoming attracted to a girl who didn't want him.</p> + +<p><i>Four</i>, Herself—unsuccessful again. No results at all. You can't count +as "results" two attacks of masculine dog-in-the-mangerishness, one box +of chocolates, a few ragging remarks, and an evening of having one's +hand held in a boat. No results....</p> + +<p>That left one out of four cases in which the Charm had worked. <i>Only one +out of four people lucky in Love!</i> Was it so the world over? One in four +meant a quarter of the people in the world!... Well, perhaps that wasn't +such a very poor percentage, Olwen told herself more briskly as she gave +herself a little shake out of her meditations and ran downstairs to the +sitting-room, where a cup of cocoa and a plate of those neutral objects +known as War-biscuits had been set ready for her by the Aunt.</p> + +<p>This Aunt was Professor Howel-Jones's youngest sister, a small demure +woman of forty-five, with the air of constantly saying, "Of course <i>I</i> +am the failure of the family." She had been left a widow very young, +and it was her pose to give out that she had never been asked to marry +again. But her pretty eyes laughed, most disconcertingly, while the rest +of her face remained prim. She smoked, sang Clarice Mayne's songs and +forbade Olwen to call her "Aunt" anything.</p> + +<p>"Thank you, Lizzie," said her niece, as this lady handed her over a +letter that had arrived by the last post. Then, glancing at the +signature, Olwen gave a little exclamation of surprise. It was over the +well-known type of coincidence that brings a letter from some one almost +immediately following one's own thoughts of that some one.</p> + +<p>For the letter was signed, "Yours affectionately, <span class="smcap">Agatha Walsh</span>."</p> + +<p>Miss Walsh wrote from Paris, where she had just been having "Oh, such a +lovely time shopping with Madame Leroux, who had taken a month away from +the hotel, and had been looking up some of the relations——"</p> + +<p>Followed an account of these relations who had evidently taken the +English <i>fiancée</i> to their bosoms; Agatha, who had been English and +provincial, was rapidly becoming a good French <i>bourgeoise</i>.</p> + +<p>She went on, "Oh, and there is such news, Olwen. Figure to yourself that +Gustave is coming to London with General Chose next week! Coming as his +orderly! Just think how lovely for me! Of course I shall come over at +once. I have not been in England since September! We must all meet, we +and you and the Professor and dear Mrs. Cartwright, if she is in town! +And won't it be like old times again! and oh, Olwen, I may even be +getting married——"</p> + +<p>This last word was so heavily underlined that Olwen had to laugh, and +the Aunt asked her what she was so pleased at.</p> + +<p>"Oh, only that there <i>are</i> some very happy people in the world even +now," said Olwen.</p> + +<p>"'Some' pessimist", murmured the Aunt, whose vocabulary was not of her +epoch. "Never mind, Olwen; I have just remembered something. An admirer +rang you up on the telephone this afternoon, and would you ring him up +at the Regent Palace Hotel as soon as you came in——?"</p> + +<p>"What?" said Olwen, astonished. "What was his name, and why d'you think +he was an admirer, Lizzie?"</p> + +<p>"I think he admired you by the tone of his voice, in which he said, +'Miss Olwen,'" said the demure Aunt, who had a private and vicarious +delight in watching all the activities of her young niece. "As for his +name——what was it now? Something rather out of the way."</p> + +<p>"I don't know," wondered Olwen. "Was it Mr. Ellerton?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, no; not our young Naval man who finished our last drop of whisky, +by the way—no, I thought at once of him, dear, but it wasn't. It +was—oh, yes! He said, '<i>Ask her to ring up Lieutenant Brown</i>.'"</p> + +<p>"What? <i>Not</i> Little Mr. Brown?"</p> + +<p>"I couldn't tell you what height he was," murmured the Aunt, but already +Olwen, amused, had run out into the hall and had taken up the telephone.</p> + +<p>(Coincidence, then, had been busying itself with another of the Les Pins +party!)</p> + +<p>After some little delay the Regent Palace found Mr. Brown.</p> + +<p>"Hul-<i>lo!</i>" the familiar boy's voice sounded over the wires as cheerily +as it had sounded over the waves and through the pine woods. "That you, +Miss Olwen?... That's great. How are you?... That's top-hole.... Me? Oh, +I'm fine, thanks. Yes; I'm up for a Board. I say, Miss Olwen, when can +we for-gather?... Can I see you tomorrow?... Dinner? What are you +doing?"</p> + +<p>Olwen said, "I'm going to a party at Mrs. Cartwright's——"</p> + +<p>"No! By Jove, are you? I say, I'm glad you mentioned it. I nearly +forgot. I'm booked for Mrs. C. too. Rang her up and she asked me to roll +up at seven. Can I take you along? Miss Olwen, can't I have tea with you +in town somewhere first?"</p> + +<p>"Er——" began Olwen, doubtfully. Truth to tell she had not wanted to +see very much of little Mr. Brown; she had not wished to encourage his +boyish sentimentality for her.</p> + +<p>He took up quickly, "Won't you have tea with me, here, tomorrow? I've +got something very particular to say to you, Miss Olwen."</p> + +<p>"Oh? What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Give you three guesses. I say, you know that mascot you gave me?"</p> + +<p>"Yes?"</p> + +<p>"Well! It's brought me luck, I reckon."</p> + +<p>"Oh, has it? Well, what is it?"</p> + +<p>"That's what I want to talk about tomorrow," came with a joyous giggle +from the other end of the wires; evidently the speaker could scarcely +wait until tomorrow's talk. "I say, can't you guess, Miss Olwen? +Master's got off, this time."</p> + +<p>"Got <i>what</i>?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Off!</i>"</p> + +<p>"I can't quite hear what you say," called Olwen, puzzled. "Who has got +what?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, spare my blushes," begged the voice of Mr. Brown, and then brought +out the announcement, "I'm engaged to be married, Miss Olwen, that's +what!"</p> + +<p>"Oh—<i>oh!</i>" gasped Olwen. "I'm so glad——"</p> + +<p>"Thanks! Thought you would be! You wait till you hear all about it +though. You prepare for a shock, Miss O. Tea tomorrow. Four o'clock. +That suit you? I'll meet you at the door—you know, in the hall just in +front of the big place where all the animals feed. Right! So long! +Chin-chin!"</p> + +<p>"Good night!" called Olwen, and rang off. Then she stood gazing at the +telephone almost as if it were the small figure in khaki coming towards +her out of the forest.</p> + +<p>Engaged——Little Mr. Brown!</p> + +<p>The Charm had worked with him, then, after all?</p> + +<p>That made two out of four....</p> + +<p>Well, that was a better percentage than she had thought she might hope +for, thought Olwen as she turned away.</p> + +<p>Did it mean that after all <i>half</i> the people in the world were lucky in +love?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII2" id="CHAPTER_VII2"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>PETROL AND THE CHARM</h3> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"For your own ladies, and pale-visaged maids,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Like Amazons, come tripping after drums;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Their needles to lances."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare</span>.<br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"I've got a table in the corner over here," said little Mr. Brown to +Olwen through the buzz of talk that drowned all but the louder strains +of the band in the tea-room of the Regent Palace Hotel.</p> + +<p>It was, as ever on a Sunday afternoon, a welter of khaki and girls. The +wicker chairs could not be seen for shrubberies of furs, coloured forest +of millinery; there was scarcely a space on the floor clear of muffs, +vanity bags, and feet; big feet in brown boots, little feet in +high-heeled coloured shoes; swathed feet in hospital wrappings. It took +Mr. Brown and Olwen minutes to steer their way through this labyrinth to +the further corner by a window that the little campaigner had marked +down and engaged just after lunch.</p> + +<p>"Now, that's better," he said. "Nobody will come and walk over us here, +and nobody can hear what I say through this racket, not that I care if +they do.... Well, it's nice to see you again, Miss Olwen. I've been +fairly bursting to have a good old mag with you, ever since all this +happened.... What? Yes, two teas, please, Miss, if you can call 'em +teas. Spelling it with an E at the end is nearer the mark nowadays; +sort of reminding you of what once was tea. I've got some sugar here; +pinched some out of HER cupboard yesterday—good start, wasn't it? Are +you one of those people who miss lump sugar with every breath they draw, +Miss Olwen?"</p> + +<p>Olwen smiled into the pink, pug-dog face that looked pinker, more +pertinacious than ever; the boy held his head even more assuredly in the +air, but his blue, prominent eyes were humble as well as joyous, and the +whole of him radiated amazement at Fortune as well as delight.</p> + +<p>"Tell me about 'all this,'" Olwen begged, and little Mr. Brown zestfully +drawing in his chair and letting a pleased grin crumple his cheeks, +broke into his story....</p> + +<p>Here and there Olwen interposed a question, a "Really," a "Why," a "What +did she say to that?" but for the rest she listened mutely as a woman +must, with the widening of her eyes, with a nod, a turn of the attentive +head, while the cheerful boy's voice—a thread in that closely woven +pattern of other voices all about them—ran on and on.</p> + +<p>"It was only last Saturday it started. Imagine that! Seems ages ago to +me now, so much happening.... However, to begin at the beginning. I'd +been to my Board in the morning, and the silly old blighters had given +me another three weeks' leave before putting me on light duty. I was in +a taxi, coming away from them, because I was in a hurry, promised to +meet a fellow I knew for lunch at the Troc....</p> + +<p>"By Jove, I never even rang him up after! I've only just thought of that +fellow who used to be in the Lace Department at that old show of mine, +and I hadn't seen him since '14. Too bad. I'll have to write him. Anyhow +I can't help it; absolutely everything seems to have gone straight out +of my head.</p> + +<p>"Well, I was going to lunch with this fellow, and then I thought after +that I'd ring you up, Miss Olwen, and see what you were doing, and if +you'd perhaps care to come with me to the Alhambra or something. If I +couldn't get hold of you I was going to look up Ross, I thought, and +Mrs. Cartwright.... This was where I was mapping out things that came +rather different, as it happened!</p> + +<p>"We were coming along Piccadilly towards the Circus when my taxi-man (an +absolutely dud driver, as I'd noticed) barged straight into a +motor-cycle and side-car that were going along at no end of a lick for +Knightsbridge. He only pulled up in the very nick of time; the cycle and +the rider were over and into the mud; a filthy day it was, p'raps you'll +remember—drizzling and the streets like a soap-slide.</p> + +<p>"Out I nipped, before the crowd had even begun to collect, and picked up +the motor-cyclist with one hand, and started saying what I thought of +the taxi-driver with the other—he was swearing away like a trooper at +'these here so and so and so and so side-cars'; and the little nipper +who had been upset was cursing him to blazes, an octave higher. The +voice took me by surprise, of course.... The little thing was so covered +in mud that I couldn't have told you off-hand if it were a boy or girl +or a retriever dog.</p> + +<p>"A girl; yes, it was a girl, of course.</p> + +<p>"One of those lady dispatch-riders, they call them. Cap like mine, +trench-coat down to her knees, top-boots, riding-breeches ... laughing +all over her little splashed face....</p> + +<p>"Well, in about two twos I'd pushed his fare at the taxi-driver and sent +him off and was assessing the damages to that motor-cycle of +hers—nothing wrong at all luckily! while she wiped her face on a huge +khaki handkerchief and put her cap straight. Short hair, of course, +rather sticking out, curly.... I always thought I loathed short hair on +a girl. Suits her A1, and it's most awfully soft and jolly to run your +fingers through....</p> + +<p>"What? Oh, no, not <i>then</i>. Give us a chance. I wasn't allowed a chance +to touch her hair for ages—you'll see.</p> + +<p>"All this time I was being all over myself with apologies, and she +laughing and saying it was all part of the day's work, only the taxi-man +had put her back up; taxi-drivers did always seem to be women haters! +She told me (standing there by the kerb) that she was just coming off +anyway before her three days' leave that she gets in a month, and that +she was dashing up to Harrod's before they closed, because she was on +duty from eight to six ordinarily, and never got any time to do any +shopping for herself.</p> + +<p>"(Mind you, that's the only grouse she seems to have at all after doing +a man's job day in, day out; no time to get her shopping done!)</p> + +<p>"I thought to myself at once, the way one does, 'H'm, here's a nice +little bit of skirt, if you could see it for mud.' Not that it <i>wore</i> a +skirt, but still. So I said, pretending to be rather fed, 'I don't +suppose there's another taxi to be had for love or butter now, so I'll +just push on to Harrods' on my flat feet.'</p> + +<p>"'Oh,' she says, 'were you going to Harrods'?'</p> + +<p>"'I am,' said I, determined to now, anyway.</p> + +<p>"'And you're wounded, too, aren't you,' says she. 'I'll give you a lift. +Hop in.'</p> + +<p>"In I hopped into that side-car; and off we buzzed to Harrods', and we +were just in time before they closed for her to buy half a dozen pair of +the best quality brown silk stockings for herself. (I'd seen she was a +lady, you know, and all that.) She said she hadn't a stocking left to +her foot——Tiny feet she's got, Miss Olwen! Reminded me of yours, +honest, they did. Same sort of hands, too. Coming out of her great +gauntlets like snowdrops, growing in a drift of brown leaves——No, I +didn't make that up, that's what she told me some ass of an old Colonel +that she used to drive the cars for said to her once. I think it's neck, +the way some of those old Johnnies with one foot in the grave go on +giving the Glad to any pretty young girl that's near them....</p> + +<p>"Well, after Harrods' shut, we went on to some place where she could get +a wash and brush up, and we had a spot of lunch together. She was a real +jolly little thing to go about with, I thought. We sat talking—you know +the way ones does—until it was nearly tea-time.</p> + +<p>"Tea we had out, too. She would stand me tea, said it was her shout, and +because I was wounded. Seemed to think that because a fellow had been +pipped once he was helpless for evermore. Generally I loathe women +fussing over one for that, but she was different.... Struck one as so +comic, you know, that tiny little thing with those hands and feet to be +got up like any old mechanic, and to do all that hefty work in all +weathers——and for her to get frightened that I might be tired!</p> + +<p>"Well, so we went to Rumplemayer's.</p> + +<p>"Afterwards I went with her to take her bike back to the Park. You know +she's attached to the Royal Flying Corps there; yes, that's what she +does now. Carries their letters and messages for them all over the show, +to your people at the Honeycomb too, sometimes. Sometimes she drives out +officers to the various training schools for flying, all about. Has to +clean her own bike, too! Wouldn't let me give her a hand, said it didn't +look well. Extraordinary, the lot she gets through!... And I used to +hate girls being 'independent,' too.</p> + +<p>"I asked her what put it into her head to do all this, and she said it +was because one had to do one's bit somehow, and the harder the better, +so that it sent one to bed tired enough to sleep.</p> + +<p>"Dashed sporting little girl I thought her.</p> + +<p>"It was dinner-time before I knew, and I asked her if she'd come out. (I +had got just one pound note left on me!)</p> + +<p>"She said, as naturally as if we always fed together, 'Shall I go up to +my rooms and get into respectable clothes, or d'you mind if I came in my +uniform?'</p> + +<p>"I said, 'Oh, come along!' And we went off to a quiet little place at +the back of the Palace.</p> + +<p>"By that time, d'you know, I felt as if I'd known that little girl for +years and years and years.</p> + +<p>"She seemed just like the best little pal a man could have. We +talked—oh, about any old thing. I sort of felt at home with her. So she +did with me. She told me so. But it was me that did most of the +talking. Only, what d'you think? We never bothered to ask each other's +names. That was the funny part. I'd told her all about me being in a +shop before the War——Lace, forward——and how I thought of having a +shot at in Canada, p'raps, and all that sort of rot. Miles I'd yapped to +her; even about my mother dying when I was a nipper....</p> + +<p>"I wonder the girl wasn't bored stiff. I can't make out now why she +wasn't. However, as I say, they might never have named this child N or M +for all she was given to hear about <i>that</i>.</p> + +<p>"Fact was, I clean forgot about names until I took her home——she's got +two rooms in one of those big old-fashioned houses in a street off Baker +Street. Then, as I said good night to her on the doorstep, I said, 'Oh, +by the way, who do I ask for tomorrow?'</p> + +<p>"She said, 'Coming tomorrow?'</p> + +<p>"I said, 'Well, you told me it was your three days' leave, and I thought +p'raps you'd come for a walk'——thinking to myself that I might be able +to raise another quid or so for meals from some man at the Regent +Palace, which I was.</p> + +<p>"'Oh,' she said, with a little sort of laugh. 'Rightoh. And I haven't +told you, of course, my name's Robinson,' she said as she went into the +house; big dark hall, it seemed to swallow her up.</p> + +<p>"I said, 'Brown's mine,' and off I went——and I couldn't simply get the +little thing out of my head all night, and what a jolly little chum she +was. Don't laugh at me, Miss Olwen; no, I know you're not really +laughing, but I am, I can tell you. 'They laugh last who laugh laughs,' +as that chap says at the Hippodrome.</p> + +<p>"Next morning I was round at that house so early that I hadn't the nerve +to ring the bell. I had to patrol the street for another half an hour +before I rang.</p> + +<p>"'Miss Robinson?' says I to the old girl who opened the door, but before +she could answer I could hear the little girl herself singing out over +the banisters, 'Hullo, I think I know that voice! Come up, Mr. +Brown——'</p> + +<p>"I legged it up to the first floor. Her sitting-room door was open; +well, in I went, and there I got a nasty one."</p> + +<p>Here Mr. Brown stopped to draw a breath, to finish his cooling tea, and +to offer a cigarette to Olwen, listening with all her ears. There is no +audience to a love-story so intent and so satisfactory as the girl to +whom one has been attracted. Curiosity as to her supplanter burns in the +breast of the woman whether or no she had been attracted to the man; +curiosity made of varied elements—sympathy is one, and competition is +one, and the undying yearning to compare notes is another....</p> + +<p>Little Mr. Brown went on.</p> + +<p>"Well, it was a pretty room, full of sun in the morning. Pretty coloured +curtains and cushions about; and lots of flowers and that yellow bobbly +thingummybob scented stuff—mimosa. And then.... Her in the middle of it +all——<i>all different....</i></p> + +<p>"I stopped dead and stared at her, never even saying good morning. Miss +Olwen, I can tell you it was a shock to me.</p> + +<p>"Last night, you see, I'd left her looking like a saucy little tomboy in +that khaki working kit of hers with a cap the same as my own on her +head and a black-and-white badge of the R. F. C. on her shoulder, and +those brown riding bags....</p> + +<p>"This morning here she stood all in a dead-black frock, with a widow's +hat on and a long black veil streaming away from her little face.</p> + +<p>"I stared, I tell you. I saw the situation absobloominglutely changed, +in one.</p> + +<p>"'Good Lord,' I said, 'you've been married?'</p> + +<p>"She opened her eyes at me and said, 'Why shouldn't I?'</p> + +<p>"I looked at her, such a little woman in her girl's clothes, but taller +than she seemed in t'other rig-out, and I said, 'I didn't know you were +married. I thought you were a kid of a girl. A widow. You didn't tell +me.'</p> + +<p>"'You didn't ask me,' she says. 'You might have seen I wore a +wedding-ring. Men never do seem to notice rings—or anything else, I +can't think why.'</p> + +<p>"I stood there like a silly ass and said, 'I never thought of you being +married. I s'pose I only looked at your face——'</p> + +<p>"And I suppose I'd been magging so hard all yesterday about myself that +I hadn't given the girl a chance to put her life history across me!</p> + +<p>"She told me then, all quickly as I stood there, that she'd been married +last year to her cousin, just before he went out. He was in the Flying +Corps. He crashed in France just three months after they'd been married. +Then she joined this Women's Legion. (You know they're jolly particular +who they let into it, Miss Olwen: have to have no end of refs. from +<i>padres</i> and lawyers and people.) She threw herself into her job.... +She'd been working like a nigger ever since....</p> + +<p>"All I could think to say was 'Well, this knocks me out.'</p> + +<p>"She laughed and asked me why it should make any difference, her being +Mrs. Robinson instead of Miss? She asked me if I didn't like her in +those things she'd got on? She said, 'Most people think it's rather +becoming, all this black.'</p> + +<p>"It made her little face look like a wild rose coming out of a +coal-bucket, but what could I say to her? I tell you I was so flummoxed +I stood there like a stuck pig—I don't know what I said next; honest, I +don't.</p> + +<p>"So then she offered me cigarettes, and I took one in a sort of dream, +and felt all over myself for matches. Couldn't find any.</p> + +<p>"Only, then——</p> + +<p>"D'you know what I found, Miss Olwen? Blessed if I didn't stick my +fingers into my belt pocket here, and feel something soft. I brought it +out. It was that little mascot of yours. She asked me quickly what it +was.</p> + +<p>"'Oh,' I said, 'something a girl put there once, to bring me luck,' and +I stuck it back again.</p> + +<p>"'Oh,' she said. I saw her looking at that pocket.</p> + +<p>"Then she said, 'What about going for that walk we've heard so much +about?'</p> + +<p>"'Right you are,' I says, pulling myself together. 'I'm ready if you +are, Mrs. Robinson.'</p> + +<p>"Then she said, 'No; I'm not quite. I shall have to keep you five +minutes, not longer.'</p> + +<p>"She popped through a door at the other end of the room and left me +gazing at a big photograph in a silver frame on her table with violets +in front of it. 'Yours, JIM,' on it. Him, of course. Fine-looking chap +in R. F. C. uniform. I didn't wonder she'd taken him. Anyhow, he'd had a +short life and a merry; a topping time! Marrying <i>her</i>, and then getting +shot down in action before he knew he was for it. I was envying him when +the door opened and in she came again——</p> + +<p>"By Jove, she had done a quick change in five minutes and no mistake!</p> + +<p>"She'd got out of the widow's weeds again and into khaki the same as +yesterday, except that there was nothing on her curls, and she'd put on +a short skirt and little brown brogues and a pair of those silk +stockings she bought yesterday; and she came straight up to me and said +quietly, 'Now, look here——why were you all upset when you came in? +What's put you out? My being a widow?'</p> + +<p>"'No,' I said, straight. 'It wasn't just that, but never mind.'</p> + +<p>"'Yes, let's have it out,' she said, and I looked at her standing there +in her khaki, but somehow I only saw her in a frock again, and I thought +to myself all in a rush, 'All right, you asked to have it out, and you +shall,' and so I just blurted out, 'It was seeing you, and knowing all +in a minute how much I wanted you myself—and remembering.'</p> + +<p>"'Remembering what?' she says as sharp as a needle.</p> + +<p>"And I said, 'My dear, I haven't a <i>bean</i>.'</p> + +<p>"And I grabbed up my hat and gloves and I think I would have said +'Good-bye' and bolted.</p> + +<p>"But she just looked at me so that I couldn't.</p> + +<p>"Then she looked away and said, 'If beans are all that matter——!' and +then she picked a couple of violets out of the vase by that photograph, +and tucked them into her jacket, and, just like a kid, said, 'Jim always +loved me to have a good time. Jim would like me to have everything I +liked, I <i>know</i> he would——'</p> + +<p>"And here's where the room seemed to go round and round until it +steadied down with me holding her tight....</p> + +<p>"Well, then, Miss Olwen——well, then, there we were; engaged! Or +practically then," amended little Mr. Brown, his pink face deepening in +hue. "It was hours after that that I began to grasp how little it +mattered about my not having anything but debts to ask any girl to marry +me on; why, great Scott, d'you know who she is? Her Uncle, her hubby's +father, is old Jack Robinson of Robinson and Mott; he's got the biggest +aeroplane-body business in the Midlands, and he, this Jim of +hers——well, she's got all he was to have. He arranged it so. She was +to marry again if she liked, and whom she liked. And——Well, she's a +girl who might have her pick; apart from the money. Then there's all her +money as well; and yet——yet——"</p> + +<p>He paused for words just as the band at the other end of the tea-room +got the upper hand of the buzz of talk and sent a lilt of insistent +melody through the air above the parties.</p> + +<p>"<i>Fancy you fancying me</i>" was the tune.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Fancy you fancying me,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">I can fancy anybody fancying you,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">But fancy you fancying me."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Incidental music; jolly appropriate," laughed little Mr. Brown, +happily. "What that girl could possibly see in your humble beats me. I +expect most people who meet us thinks she's balmy——"</p> + +<p>But Olwen, smiling and interested and sympathetically murmuring, was +thinking again (secretly) of the Charm.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII2" id="CHAPTER_VIII2"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>RATIONS AND THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A dinner of herbs where Love is."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Proverbs.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>"If there is one thing that bores a man," gave out Captain Ross, in a +voice like the clashing together of Tube lift-gates—a tone that he had +adopted all that evening, since nothing seemed to be going right, "if +there is one thing that bores a man stiff, it's when some woman starts +in to '<i>Love</i>' him."</p> + +<p>He paused to glance across the table at Olwen, gaily chattering with Mr. +Ellerton.</p> + +<p>"It don't matter what woman," pursued the young Staff-officer +inexorably. "<i>Any</i> woman. If he's keen before, that chokes him dead off. +He's not out for any of this Love-with-a-capital-L business that women +are such nuts on. Once he's done the chasing, he's gotten all he wants +out of it, I guess. Man's a hunter, Mrs. Cartwright."</p> + +<p>"I know," cooed his hostess. Inwardly she exclaimed, "Dear Ass!... But +is he going on like this for the whole of my party?"</p> + +<p>Up to then Captain Ross had only spoken to her and to the other young +Scotsman whom he had brought with him. At Olwen he had simply glowered. +At Miss van Huysen on the other side he had not looked.</p> + +<p>"What's Love?" he continued, still to Mrs. Cartwright. "It's an +amusement. That's what it ought to be. An Episode. It's the Women who +insist on spoiling it; taking it seriously. Nothing in this world is +worth taking seriously; barring a man's job.... What's woman? The +Plaything of Man. And what's Marriage?"</p> + +<p>It was, as he pronounced it, a word of one syllable.</p> + +<p>"Marriage," he answered his own question, "is an idea that the sensible +man looks at from every angle, and then cuts right out until he can't +find anything better to do. If he is really a sensible man, he +invariably can find it."</p> + +<p>"Ah," uttered Mrs. Cartwright with the little appreciative laugh of one +who hears for the first time an original thought brilliantly phrased.</p> + +<p>But she wanted to be soothing; she was fond of Captain Ross. One does +not sob out one's weakness on a man's shoulder once and think of him as +a stranger thereafter. She had asked him to forget. She never forgot....</p> + +<p>A pity he'd come in this absurd mood, she thought.</p> + +<p>Her party, at her flat in Westminster, had arrived at the stage of the +feast when tongues were loosed and the young guests were gossiping and +chirruping in merry twos and threes.</p> + +<p>Little Mr. Brown was beamingly loquacious in spite of the absence of his +khakied <i>fiancée</i>, kept out of town that evening on late duty. Between +Mr. Brown and the fresh-faced naval boy, Mr. Ellerton sat little Olwen +Howel-Jones, enjoying herself without disguise and looking her very +best. She was a girl who had "days"; this was one of them. Never had her +glossy black hair "gone up" so well, or her face lighted up so vividly; +never, against her pale skin, had her laughing mouth bloomed in such a +carnation-red. Never had any dress suited her so well as that flapper's +frock of succory-blue with touches of cream, and dull pink. It was the +frock Mrs. Cartwright had worn once on Biscay beach; she had pressed it +upon Olwen as she said good-bye at Les Pins, telling her it was a young +girl's colour after all. There Olwen sat in it now, laughing and being +talked to by two young men at once and looking a picture in it....</p> + +<p>It was from this picture that Captain Ross's dark eyes looked so +pertinaciously away, as with new sardonic energy he informed Mrs. +Cartwright that by the time a man had learnt to handle women he'd learnt +that their place in his life was not all that important that he wanted +to handle them at all.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright passed him the Sauterne.</p> + +<p>"Thank goodness that there is at least enough to <i>drink</i>," she reflected +with a quick whimsical glance about the well-cleared dishes on her +supper-table that had held:</p> + +<blockquote> +<p>1. Remains of chicken, with an intolerable deal of rice and curry to a very little fowl.</p> + +<p>2. Allotment potatoes.</p> + +<p>3. A pound of Normandy butter bought that morning in Boulogne and brought over in Sergeant Tronchet's haversack.</p> + +<p>4. Pease-pudding.</p> + +<p>5. Beetroot....</p> + +<p>6. Green salad.</p> +</blockquote> + +<p>Well, they'd seemed to enjoy what there was.</p> + +<p>"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, here catching a remark from over the +table. "A penny from <i>you</i>, Mr. Brown!" And she pushed over to him a +money-box with the Blue Cross upon it, known as "The Fine-box."</p> + +<p>This claimed a penny from whomsoever entering Mrs. Cartwright's abode +should make any allusion to a subject which she declared was now +inadmissibly boring: namely, food. One met quite intelligent people who +became hopelessly tedious about "recipes," "how they managed," and so +on. Rations had to be; and catering, food-cards, and substitute foods. +But why intensify the Unspeakable by unnecessary speaking about it? +Hence this box.</p> + +<p>She took Mr. Brown's penny (a fine for some cheese anecdote or other), +rattled the box, and glanced, as usual without seeming to do so, at her +other guests.</p> + +<p>Next to young Ellerton sat a niece of her own; a pretty girl in grey and +scarlet nursing kit; the red- and blue <i>artilleriste</i> uniform of Gustave +Tronchet next; delighting the eyes of his <i>fiancée</i> opposite.</p> + +<p>Agatha Walsh had taken off years, Mrs. Cartwright thought, since they +had parted at Les Pins. In place of the "old-maid" look, she was +acquiring that of the young and prosperous woman—her smile seeming not +yet entirely her own, and she had a new gesture or two modelled on those +of Madame Leroux, her aunt-to-be. Also, her speech was altered. Some one +must have rallied her on her "English" habit of beginning every sentence +with "Oh"——Mrs. Cartwright missed it as she caught fragments of Miss +Walsh's talk to Jack Awdas, who sat on her left.</p> + +<p>"Now could <i>you</i> tell me, Mr. Awdas, the really best sort of man's wrist +watch?... I want to get a really <i>special</i> one for Gustave—it is his +'<i>fête</i>' on Thursday ... not time to engrave anything, I'm afraid.... +Ah, yes, if you could come with me on Monday, you and Miss van Huysen, +to help choose! That would be so amiable of you—nice, I mean. So +stupid of me. I <i>keep</i> putting in the French words for things always, +now!</p> + +<p>"Ah, a bracelet-watch like yours, that would be perfect....</p> + +<p>"Was there a <i>cadeau de fiançailles</i>—let's see, what do you call it in +English, an engagement present?"</p> + +<p>And she put her carefully dressed head on one side as she inspected the +watch that Jack Awdas, smiling, held out towards her. Jack was silent +this evening, Mrs. Cartwright had noticed already, as she noticed every +detail, still, of the young flyer's looks and manner.... He was in some +happy abstraction, she saw, worlds away from the brightly-lighted table +thronged with these young people chattering over their grapes and +oranges....</p> + +<p>There was a light behind those horizon-blue eyes of his even when they +were not turned upon the sweetheart at his other side. There was an +undernote of something new and joyous in the tone of his voice as he +spoke to her.</p> + +<p>("What <i>d'you</i> think about it, girl?")</p> + +<p>From the Sunburst Girl, as ever, a radiance seemed to emanate that was +more than the effulgence of her white-and-golden dress. But she, too, +was quieter than usual as she sat; now giving a little friendly smile to +her hostess across Captain Ross and his dogmas, now leaning to the right +and putting in a word about the matter of the engagement present.</p> + +<p>("But, Bird-boy, if Miss Walsh <i>wants</i> it in platinum——!")</p> + +<p>Now turning her wide eyes affectionately upon the girl friend opposite +to her. Olwen was not flirting with the young sailor who talked so much +and had so little to say beyond his "Bai Joves" and "Ha's"; she was only +blooming in what Mr. Brown had already called "the sunshine of his +smile"; she was also caught in and made beautiful by some of that +happiness that flowed in a current about the table under the pink +inverted parasol of lights, flowed from Golden and her Jack....</p> + +<p>Golden and Jack.... What pretty lover's secrets was between them now?</p> + +<p>Still watching them covertly, Mrs. Cartwright could only wonder why, +since it was possible for young human beings to be grown so big and +beautiful—why in the name of a thousand pities did Nature turn out so +many samples of the stunted, the plain, the commonplace? Must this +well-matched pair stand for the exception rather than the rule? She +watched them, and that scene of physical perfection which had so nearly +brought Claudia Cartwright to shipwreck over a boy-lover was no longer +her torment, but her comfort.</p> + +<p>She had wept all her tears; she had tossed sleeplessly through all her +hours of fierce rebellion; she had gone through the most agonizing +ordeal of her woman's life. But thank God it was over now....</p> + +<p>It was over! and her eyes travelled now to that which is a woman's only +balm for such wounds as hers had been.</p> + +<p>He sat, the master of the house, with a school-fellow between himself +and Agatha Walsh. This school-fellow was sixteen, a year older but three +inches shorter than young Keith Cartwright. Keith was already well over +six foot. Coltish at present, with great wrists shooting ever too +quickly beyond his cuffs, and feet that seemed four sizes too large for +his ankles, but wait until he began to fill out! thought Claudia +proudly. Her rightness of bone, her limbs, her suppleness had gone to +her boys; Reggie, on a visit in the country, was just as good, but it +was her elder son who seemed the child of her soul as well as of her +body. He had her tastes, her impatiences. Her own ardour would presently +be breaking into flame in his heart. She felt (as even the mute-bird +mothers feel) that she at least would not fail to understand him. She +smiled across the table into his face, pink and free of care, with its +clear eyes, thick lashes (those were from his father's side), and the +fruit-like, perfect oval that does not outlast twenty-five. She, the +mother, faded; but she had set in these young plants and they were +budding.</p> + +<p>Keith's voice (or rather voices, for he himself never knew in what +octave his words might break forth) came roughly but affectionately +across the table to his mother.</p> + +<p>"I say, mums! What about coffee——" so far in the bass, and now a +treble squeak of "if you don't mind. Harrison says he's got to get back +home, and I wanted to put on these new records"—relapse into the bass, +"for him first?... Rightoh...."</p> + +<p>They had coffee before they adjourned to the sitting-room. It was a +low-ceilinged, soothing place with soft brown walls, low cushiony seats, +a richly-glowing Persian rug, some brass, and a few pictures. Mrs. +Cartwright's standing-desk at which she worked had been wheeled away +into a corner near an old oak coffer. Its place was usurped by the tall +stand of a gramophone. About this the young people clustered, talking +"records" ...</p> + +<p>"I say, have you got that topping thing of George Graves's——?"</p> + +<p>"Not a talking one; Miss Walsh wanted something <i>pretty</i>——"</p> + +<p>"Well, what about 'The Naughty Sporty Girl,' Miss Olwen?"</p> + +<p>"Bai Jove, did you hear him in——?"</p> + +<p>"Heaps of room to dance, if——"</p> + +<p>"Look out, please," said Keith Cartwright, lugging at a heavy flat +packet; and presently he put on a loud "selection" from some revue.</p> + +<p>It was under cover of this music that Captain Ross who had been carrying +on with his Scots friend a conversation that seemed to consist of +variations on the letter R, suddenly left him in the middle of a +question as to the "Pairrrrrrrrrrsonnel" at the Honeycomb, and came up +to Awdas, who was making his way to a vacant place on the arm of the +couch whereon Golden was sitting.</p> + +<p>With some force, Captain Ross gripped him by the upper arm. In the tone +of one who has been for hours storing up some accumulated grievance, he +muttered, "Say, Jack. I've got to have a word with you. <i>Now</i>," he +added, peremptorily, "Come out here, will you?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX2" id="CHAPTER_IX2"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>CHAMPAGNE AND THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Here's to the Wings of Love,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">May they never moult a feather."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Toast.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Almost roughly he dragged Jack Awdas into the little entrance lobby, +where, under a couple of mounted ibex heads, a carved oak chest was +piled up with khaki caps, gloves, and British warms. The red silk-shaded +hanging-lamp glowed down on the two young men reflected in a convex +mirror on the other wall; Captain Ross's black head was therein enlarged +until his figure had the proportions of a tadpole; his face showed the +expression of a deeply-injured man, of one whom his friend had "let in" +for something uncalled-for and gratuitous.</p> + +<p>"See here," he began abruptly. "I've got to tell you. There's something +I know that I don't know if I'm supposed to know."</p> + +<p>Jack Awdas gave his husky boy's laugh.</p> + +<p>"Well, dash it, there are a few things that a Captain on the staff is +supposed to know after all. '<i>Wearing red things round his hat, he's +employed at this and——</i>'"</p> + +<p>"Don't rag, Jack. This thing's about <i>you</i>." Then, almost violently, "I +saw you this morning."</p> + +<p>That red light glowed on a change in the fair one of the two faces as +the young flying officer looked down upon his friend, "I say, d'you +mean——?"</p> + +<p>"Yep. I saw you."</p> + +<p>Awdas, still startled, broke into another laugh. "Sorry, Ross. I didn't +mean to steal a march upon you, you know. But look here, old thing, how +the devil did you see me? You weren't there. Nobody was, ex——"</p> + +<p>"I was in my office. Saw you all right from the window there."</p> + +<p>"The deuce you did!... I say, if you let it get known about the +Honeycomb, that you've got a view like that, you'll have some of the +Mandarins snaffling that office of yours for themselves."</p> + +<p>Captain Ross did not smile as he returned curtly, "There must be a dozen +of our windows looking, straight out on to the entrance to the Adelphi +Chapel."</p> + +<p>Then a broad grin overspread Jack Awdas's fair face. "Well, is that all, +old thing?" he asked, tucking his handkerchief up his sleeve and making +as though he would turn back to the door, through which there rollicked, +but subdued, the strains of "Me and My Girl" put on very quickly. +"Weren't you going to congratulate me, Ross?"</p> + +<p>Ross growled, "I guess a fellow doesn't want to put his foot into it by +throwing about congratulations for a secret marriage——"</p> + +<p>"Secret? Good Lord, nothing secret about it," the other young officer +took up quickly, as he sat down for a moment on the edge of that +heaped-up chest. "Look here! We haven't told anybody about it because +there simply hasn't been time yet. When we came here tonight we were +going to tell you. We wouldn't put off Mrs. Cartwright; we were going to +come as if nothing had happened, and then make a wedding party of it; +tell you all, first thing. But how've I been able to get a word in? +First there was our gallant ally the Sergeant that everybody had to make +a fuss over in French, and then there was young Brown and his widow, +<i>that</i> announcement! and then there was you——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Me?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Yes, you yarning away about what women were and what they weren't, and +if so why not. There hasn't been time to get a word in, man. Secret?" He +laughed joyously. "Why, I expect Golden's just telling Mrs. Cartwright +all about it now." The bridegroom crossed his long legs and grinned up +into the unresponsive face of this bachelor standing before him. "Yes; +this morning! I didn't see what there was to wait for ... here, have one +of mine. Golden thought it was a bit quick, but then so she did when I +wanted to be engaged to her, after three whole blooming days. Thought it +was <i>sudden</i>! That's——why, it's nearly four months ago. Anyway I said +to myself yesterday, 'This engagement's been dragging on long enough; +looks like lasting for ever'——so I got the license right away, wired +for my mother, broke it to Golden's governor, who has always been very +decent, and——Well, they were the only guests as far as I knew, never +guessing that you and the rest of the Honeycomb were gazing from the +windows at my girl in her veil and orange-blossoms. So now will you +congratulate me on my marriage?"</p> + +<p>The face of the finest judge of marriage in Europe was a study.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>For weeks past now, from the windows of cell 0638 at the Honeycomb, +Captain Fergus Ross had been accustomed to glance up from his desk and +to observe through the window various taxis, cars, or broughams drive up +to the door of the Adelphi Chapel.</p> + +<p>He had seen young people and their friends alight in ceremonial kit. He +had watched them go in; and he had seen young couples presently come out +again, sometimes under arches of swords, sometimes under those of +crutches and walking-sticks, sometimes in a simple shower of confetti. +No doubt these sights had confirmed him in his misogynistic broodings.</p> + +<p>This very morning he had attracted the attention of his colleague, Major +Leefe, to the window, and, pointing down upon a hurrying young figure in +khaki with a sword, had announced with a grim and pitying smile, "There +goes another good man to his doom."</p> + +<p>Even as he pronounced the last word (which he did as though it were the +German for "stupid"), he observed the hurrying figure below to raise its +head for a moment as it looked quickly around.</p> + +<p>He had recognized Jack Awdas.</p> + +<p>Five minutes afterwards he had seen Golden in all her bridal glory, step +out of a taxi with Mr. van Huysen.</p> + +<p>You could have knocked Captain Ross down with a feather.</p> + +<p>What was everybody coming to? he had pondered irritably ever since. +<i>All</i> his friends....</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>"I congrrratulate——" he began stiffly, but at that very moment a +clamour broke out above the music in the room they had left.</p> + +<p>"Where is he?"</p> + +<p>"Fetch him in——"</p> + +<p>"Fancy bolting like that——" came the muffled cries.</p> + +<p>The door was flung suddenly open as Brown, Ellerton, the Highlander, +Sergeant Tronchet and the Master of the House burst suddenly into the +lobby.</p> + +<p>"Here he is!"</p> + +<p>"Now, you rascal——"</p> + +<p>"Dark horse, what?"</p> + +<p>"Come in, you dog——"</p> + +<p>"Ah, <i>farceur</i>! Félicita——"</p> + +<p>"Bai Jove, trying to hush it up——"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Awdas, I say. Mr. Awdas——"</p> + +<p>"Ah, would you——"</p> + +<p>"Monsieur de l'Audace!"</p> + +<p>"Priceless!"</p> + +<p>Among them they almost carried Jack's Herculean young form back into the +sitting-room.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross followed.</p> + +<p>The golden head of the Sunburst Girl towered above the heads of Olwen +and of Miss Walsh as they pressed upon her their enthusiastic good +wishes. Laughing, flushed, sparkling, she was giving her version of that +dilatory courtship of Jack's; while Mrs. Cartwright in the corner by +that desk of hers, was hunting in some <i>cache</i> of hers for something (to +wit, the last drop of Bubbly she possessed).</p> + +<p>"Here's more surprises about your English ways," the American bride was +laughing. "Here's this Bird-boy of mine——well, you all know the quick +and sudden start of our engagement! There was father and I thinking +maybe it wouldn't matter so much provided we had a sensible time to get +to know one another in after say a year! Then yesterday Jack gets +suddenly scared that we'll both be grey and rheumatic fossils if we +aren't married half an hour from then.... Say, Olwen? What could I say? +I don't know how he does it—it's mesmerism or a charm, I guess, for +when once Jack takes it into his head——"</p> + +<p>Here the laughter and cheering of the men broke out. The Master of the +House was seen to be advancing, carrying at the full length of his young +arms a tray of glasses. Mrs. Cartwright rose from the chest, smilingly +holding a gold-topped bottle in either hand.</p> + +<p>"Who's going to open these?"</p> + +<p>Already Mr. Brown had whisked a skirt of his tunic under his arm and was +slipping his sapper's knife from its swivel. "Stand from under!" sang +out the little second lieutenant as pop! went a cork. "Right! I'll fill +'em, Mrs. C. I'm the next starter for the matrimonial stakes, after the +giddy bridegroom. Out o' the way, Ross! Don't take up the earth.... +Invited out to supper, and staying to wedding-breakfast, eh?... Here's +yours, Miss Olwen; a bridesmaid, are you?... No, you don't, Ellerton; +<i>I'm</i> booked for best man.... I'm going to have one from everybody.... +<i>After</i> you've finished with my feet, Ross——"</p> + +<p>Captain Ross, glaring above his glass at the group about that tall and +resplendent bridal pair, found his bad temper of the day culminating in +a very curious decision.</p> + +<p>He was going to leave directly he'd finished this glass of champagne in +which they toasted the young Awdases. And he was going to take with him, +Olwen Howel-Jones. He was going to see her home. He was; not that +gibbering idiot Brown, who was engaged anyway, nor that hopeless ass +Ellerton, that Naval outfitter's dummy; no fear. Most certainly not. As +for that fellow Jack, what the Hades did he mean by looking as if he +were the only man on God's earth whose wedding-night it had ever been or +ever could be? Was Jack Awdas the first young fool who'd ever managed to +get himself marked down and married by a girl?... The whole party seemed +to be one confounded whirl of tomfoolery.... Well, he, Ross, was +leaving, and taking that chit home. (It was high time.) Drive her all +the way, too; because he'd got something to say to her. Straight away +he'd say to her, "Now, see here, damn it, there's going to be no more of +<i>this</i>, there's been enough of it, and I won't have it."</p> + +<p>Just that was what he intended to say, and——</p> + +<p>At this instant the Master of the House, in the treble one of his +voices, called, "I say, Captain Ross, please—they're asking for <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>The telephone-bell had rung a moment before, and Keith had run out of +the room to answer it.</p> + +<p>The telephone was just outside; Captain Ross went to it....</p> + +<p>In a minute or so he returned. He was seen to draw his hostess aside, to +murmur something to her. Mrs. Cartwright nodded quickly. Then he went up +for the second time that evening to catch hold, with his one remaining +hand, of the arm of Jack Awdas. The young flying officer gave a jerk of +his fair head; a whisper to Golden, another to his hostess.... Before +the rest of the group had realized that they were going, those two, Ross +and Awdas, were out of the flat, down the one flight of steps and out +into the clear moonlight above Westminster.</p> + +<p>Then, composedly and carelessly, Mrs. Cartwright slipped her arm through +Golden's, and turned to her other guests.</p> + +<p>"I'm so sorry to be inhospitable, dear people, but I think it would be +better if you went, now!" she announced, smilingly. "There's heaps of +time. You see Captain Ross gets the warning from the Honeycomb half an +hour before any of us, and they've just rung him up to say——"</p> + +<p>"Raid on!" ejaculated Keith's highest squeak.</p> + +<p>"Probably, he thinks," said his mother with a shrug. "Tiresome people +these Huns are; <i>no</i> sense of fitness. Well—finish your bubbly and off +with you."</p> + +<p>There was a scurrying of the women-folk to get their wraps from Mrs. +Cartwright's bedroom; a chorus of comment half exasperated, half amused. +Raids were less of a terror by night than a source of deep boredom to +Londoners by this time.... They had all been in them before; they knew +(with luck) just what would happen from the first whistling signals of +the "Take cover" to the "All clear."</p> + +<p>"<i>Bother</i> them," exclaimed little Olwen, disgusted. "In the middle of +the party for <i>you</i>, Golden!"</p> + +<p>The men, coated and capped, thronged the tiny lobby, waiting.... Mr. +Brown and Captain Ross's friend would escort Mrs. Cartwright's niece to +her hotel. Young Mr. Ellerton was all eagerness to see Miss Howel-Jones +all the way home again. Agatha's sergeant had secured a taxi to take his +<i>fiancée</i> Victoria-wards; they offered a lift to Golden, imagining that +the young bride would now return to her father's house in Grosvenor +Gardens. But in the midst of the little bustle of departure Mrs. +Cartwright had given a gentle clasp to the American girl's arm.</p> + +<p>"Don't go," she said softly. "I am going to put you up, Golden. You are +to stay with me. He told me he wanted you to stay with me tonight——"</p> + +<p>As she finished speaking, the first warning maroon went off with a +bang.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X2" id="CHAPTER_X2"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>HER BRIDAL NIGHT</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"An airy devil hovers in the sky<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And pours down mischief."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Shakespeare.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Presently the growling of the guns began to reverberate over London.</p> + +<p>First came the far-off rumbling that is felt rather than heard; the hint +whereat the mothers of households drop book or work to exclaim, +"Hush!... It <i>is</i>!..."</p> + +<p>"Don't think so, dear," return the men folk; to retract a couple of +minutes later with an "Ah, yes; blast 'em. Here they are. I'll bring the +kids down."</p> + +<p>Then came the long, nerve-irritating pause.</p> + +<p>In Mrs. Cartwright's Westminster flat there were no children to cause +those anxieties with which the enemy had made himself more detested than +by any legitimate act of war. Her son, as he would have wished you to +note, was hardly a kid to be roused from his sleep. As he strolled back +from the staircase window, hands in pockets, his manner was nonchalant +in the extreme. He was no callow scout, either, to wait in a +police-station for that thrilling moment when he should be allowed out +to sound the bugle-call.</p> + +<p>"Like the gramophone on again?" he suggested (luckily in the more manly +of his two voices). "It would drown that boring noise for you."</p> + +<p>"I don't think so, darling, thanks," said his mother. A pause; silence. +"They may not get through after all. Won't you go to bed, Keith?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know"—the over-grown lad was already dropping with sleep. +"Wouldn't you women rather I stopped up with you?"</p> + +<p>Golden and Mrs. Cartwright exchanged a tiny smile before the mother +said, "Do you know, I don't think we'll stop up. I am going to show Mrs. +Awdas to her room now. You do as you like."</p> + +<p>The Master of the House moved from the traditional attitude, flat back +against the sitting-room mantelpiece, feet wide apart on the Persian +rug. "Oh, well, I don't see why I should hang about, waiting up for +those wretched Huns, either," he pronounced, his pink mouth twisting +sidewards as he strangled his yawns. "I'll turn in too, if you're sure +you don't mind."</p> + +<p>And he walked across the sitting-room to hold the door open for his +mother and her guest to precede him.</p> + +<p>Golden, who considered this English schoolboy "perfectly lovely," gave +him a smiling good night over her shoulder.</p> + +<p>"Good night, Precious," whispered his mother.</p> + +<p>Very prettily the boy returned her kiss as he responded, "Good night, +old Bean."</p> + +<p>He turned out the lights behind him and betook himself to his room on +the left of the corridor that skirted the flat. On the right were +Reggie's room and his mother's; her old Belgian <i>femme de ménage</i> came +in by the day. Her younger son's room was unoccupied tonight, but it was +her own bedroom that Mrs. Cartwright gave up to Golden Awdas. Here she +left her to undress, promising to come back.</p> + +<p>She did not think that Golden would sleep at once.</p> + +<p>She wandered back to turn up the lights again in the sitting-room, still +full of cigarette smoke, and with its atmosphere still vibrant as if +with young voices and laughter. And as she set chairs into their places, +plumped up cushions, and, putting her hand carefully through the +curtains, set a window open and wheeled her standing-desk back ready for +her morning's work tomorrow, she thought smilingly of those guests of +hers; all so many years behind her, in age, in emotion, in experience. +She delighted in them, these young men who felt themselves masters of +all wisdom, these girls on the right side of a barrier.... The passing +of it had been an agony to Claudia Cartwright.</p> + +<p>It did not take all women in the same way, she reflected. Many went +through life so entirely satisfied with inessentials; so half-awake.</p> + +<p>Most had never been lovers or had lovers. But those who had——!</p> + +<p>No death of a sweetheart in early youth, no cruel jilting, no bitter +matrimonial experience, nothing, nothing! could compare with the +poignant, crushing, rending pain of those years when Youth and Love slip +away from the woman. It is a long black tunnel of misery from which she +emerges (having lost much but accepted, bowed her head, folded her +hands) into the grey afternoon of Life.</p> + +<p>And then——Heaven's blessing on the maternal sense that is rich in any +real woman's character, even if she never has a child at all! For it is +this that comes to her aid; and she spreads it out over the girls and +the men she knows; caring, helping, sympathizing with all their love +emotions (or lack or them).</p> + +<p>Henceforward everything must be vicariously felt by her. She must live +in the lives of her children; in their professions and interests; she +must love through her young friends ... Little Olwen ... Golden.... As +she thought of these Untried, their friend smiled over a tag of verse +that came into her mind with the image that seemed its illustration.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"Oh, tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see! Lie +long, high snowdrifts on the hedge, That will not shower on +me."</p></blockquote> + +<p>Prayer, she thought, can take odd forms——well, this was hers for the +happiness of her girl-friends.</p> + +<p>Golden, she thought, would be in bed by now.</p> + +<p>A nearer growling of guns, from the north, she judged, sounded as she +tapped at the door.</p> + +<p>"Come!" called the charming un-English voice.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright entered her own familiar room with its known mingling of +kuss-kuss, rose, and orris scent. The toilet silver, the Indian numnah +on the floor, her husband's sword and sash over the bookshelf, and the +enlarged photograph of him laughing under the black, semi-lune shadow of +his solar-topi——these things were Claudia's background. Her eyes +opened upon them each morning. Tonight they all seemed suddenly new to +her....</p> + +<p>It was because they were now a background to this radiant stranger in +her room. Out of that cloud of loosened gold on her pillow there looked +the face of a beauty as rare as any that had ever been kissed awake by a +fairy prince.</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, involuntarily. "How lovely you +are, Golden; how lovely!"</p> + +<p>Paradoxical enough it might seem to some women, but this woman thanked +Heaven it was a girl so beautiful who had supplanted her, or rather, to +whom she had relinquished that beautiful boy. She could not have endured +to see Jack choose a bride unworthy in body or mind, least of all one +who might be as the ordinary "nice" pretty girl often is, a bundle of +mere sentiment and frigidity. To Golden she could give him. Actually she +had brought them together. And now it was to his best woman-friend that +the young flier confided his sweetheart.</p> + +<p>On this, of all nights! Their bridal night!</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright could have laughed outright at the strangeness of it. +Jack's wedding-night!</p> + +<p>She remembered that other night, months ago, when in a French hotel +bedroom she had outwatched the hours with a nightmare-haunted man. In +the very attitude that she had taken then, she sat down now on the edge +of this other bed, tucking the eider-down about her as she began +chatting, quietly and cheerfully, with his bride. Through speech and +pause alike the elder woman's mind was echoing with memories. It was +Jack Awdas's husky voice that she heard, clearly as when it was his face +upon a pillow that she watched. How feverishly he had muttered, "That's +why I always shout in my dream.... I was falling, falling, and calling +out to my observer.... We <i>were</i> pals!... I don't think it could ever be +exactly like that with a girl."</p> + +<p>She, Claudia, had told him, "The girl is more to you or less to you, but +not the same."</p> + +<p>And now she lay in her beauty, the girl; that worshipped "girl" of +Jack's. And this——<i>This!</i>—was her bridal night.</p> + +<p>Guns! The nearer guns were uttering now. Bark after vicious bark set +windows rattling. The racket died away only to break out afresh....</p> + +<p>In an interval, Golden said suddenly. "Jack told me what a really fine +friend you'd always been to him. And, d'you know? I've always known I +should be friends with you."</p> + +<p>"Have you?"</p> + +<p>"Why, yes. I said so before we left Les Pins.... D'you remember, I saw +you for a moment that very first evening, sitting with him in the +lounge? But who would have thought where we should all be tonight?" +mused the girl, lifting the throat that rose so pillar-wise and white +above the silken edge of a night-dress of her hostess's. "In London, and +me married to the Bird-boy, and an air raid going on outside. But do I +have to keep you up this way? You're all dressed and everything: I'm so +afraid you'll be dead tired."</p> + +<p>"Not I. I shouldn't be able to sleep if I did undress. There'll be +another hullabaloo on in another minute, I expect," said Mrs. +Cartwright, cheerfully. The sound of the guns had died down for a +moment. "And—well, it won't be the first time, Golden, that I've stayed +up with somebody who could not sleep.... Ah, they're starting again."</p> + +<p>Yes, they were starting again....</p> + +<p>Throughout London, nurses in hospitals set their teeth angrily over +patients whom they had hoped to drag back to life, out of the horrors +of shock. Other nurses, in maternity homes, could have wrung dismayed +hands over this terror added to Nature's ordeal. And in operating rooms +the white-coated surgeons cursed below their breath the hellish +interruption that might cause a slip of the hand or the instrument and +leave all care, all science vain. These things were the danger and the +damage; not merely the bomb dropped at random; the crumbling masonry. +These, and the mischief to countless little children, disturbed past +soothing now, with tender nerves a-fret, heads gathered to their +parents' shoulders. Little heads! They ought never to have been visited +by such questions as punctuated the din in homes where baby voices +asked, <i>"Was that a gun or a bomb, daddy?" ... "Where was that firing +from?" ... "If a raid came right on Billy's cot, mamsie, what would you +do?"</i></p> + +<p>Then there came to their ears a new sound—the gutteral, syncopated +drone of twin engines—beating over the roofs.</p> + +<p>"Ah! There's one got through, then," said Mrs. Cartwright. +Following on her words came the outburst of nearer gunnery, +to which the whole house seemed to shake; in twos and +threes—"<i>Brroum—brrroum!—brrroum!—brroum!—brrrroum!</i>" +then a more ponderous crash than all.</p> + +<p>Then, a light tap at the door and a voice in two keys, calling with +zest, "Mums! Are you all right? Is Mrs. Awdas? There's nothing to be +frightened at really."</p> + +<p>"No; all right, Keith darling. You're all right, aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Top-hole. I say, did you hear that last? I'm sure it was a dud shell +just outside on the pavement, so——"</p> + +<p>"Keith, you're to <i>promise</i> you won't go outside until they've gone," +called his mother, starting up. "Go to your room!"</p> + +<p>"Oh ... all right, then. I'll nip out as soon as the all-clear goes +though." The Master of the House pattered off down the corridor to his +room.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if any others will get through tonight," said Mrs. Cartwright, +listening.</p> + +<p>Golden, who had not yet lost any of her kin or seen them broken in this +War, suggested that these German flyers were, anyway, brave.</p> + +<p>"So are other beasts of prey," returned the Englishwoman.</p> + +<p>Again the firing rolled away in the distance, following the raiders' +course....</p> + +<p>But a thoughtfulness seemed to have fallen upon the wakeful girl. For +the first time she had given a little shiver at the sound of that +receding turmoil.</p> + +<p>"Now I hope it isn't too cowardly of me, what I'm going to say," she +began, suddenly, turning on her rounded elbow. "But I can't help +thinking of boys flying up there in the dark, in the teeth of guns like +that.... <i>He</i> was doing it, of course, until he crashed. My Bird-boy!... +He's always glad when he goes up; he was grousing to me, as you call it, +yesterday, because he hadn't been off the ground for a week ... but, oh, +Mrs. Cartwright! do you know, <i>I'm</i> real glad, just for tonight, that +Jack can't be up."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright smiled at her, answering her in two words that seemed +ordinary enough.</p> + +<p>"I know."</p> + +<p>But they meant, to the elder woman, something very different from the +gentle agreement that they conveyed to the girl.</p> + +<p>Claudia Cartwright heard again the hasty whisper with which Jack had +taken leave of her those hours ago. "I want <i>Her</i> to stay here," he told +her. "I'd want you to take care of her."</p> + +<p>At the time Mrs. Cartwright had been paralyzed with surprise. Golden +Awdas to stay with her? Why?</p> + +<p>Why on earth should Jack leave her——tonight of all nights? She, the +bride, had seemed to see nothing stupefying in his action in going off +with Captain Ross when the warning came through.</p> + +<p>But Mrs. Cartwright knew that Captain Ross had his own duty, not +anything in which Jack must help him. Jack was free, she'd heard, until +ten o'clock tomorrow morning. It was not Jack's pidgin to do anything +until then.... Therefore why in the name of all that was extraordinary +hadn't he taken his bride away when the others all went? Why hadn't he +taken her off home with him, or to the hotel where he put up, or +wherever it was?</p> + +<p>Then, very quickly, she'd seen why.</p> + +<p>One of the cleverest soldiers of her acquaintance had already told +Claudia that, could the true history of these campaigns ever be written, +it would read not merely like <i>another version</i> of the War, but like +<i>another War</i>. She guessed how many things planned never happen and how +many things happen that were never planned, and how few of either get +into the papers. Oh, the difference between the published account and +the story of the man who was there! Tomorrow would see a report of this +raid, which would say nothing at all of the men whose duty ... it had +<i>not</i> been to beat back the raiders. It was <i>not</i> Jack's duty to go up +that night. It was his duty not to go.</p> + +<p>But——</p> + +<p>Up there he was now, she knew it. Up there, in the darkness and the din! +Perhaps over the house now, the joyous eaglet-boy, fighting those +circling hawks ... now, at this moment!...</p> + +<p>She knew it in her heart.</p> + +<p>And, thinking of that, she sat there smiling at the white and golden +bride who was glad to think of her boy safe from this danger at +least.... There was no reason why Golden should know it too.</p> + +<p>The woman he had loved continued to watch with the girl he loved, during +her bridal night.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI2" id="CHAPTER_XI2"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>HIS BRIDAL NIGHT</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">That from the nunnery<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind<br /></span> +<span class="i2">To war and arms I fly.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Yet this inconstancy is such<br /></span> +<span class="i2">As you too shall adore,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">I could not love thee, Dear, so much,<br /></span> +<span class="i2">Loved I not Honour more."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Lovelace.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Mrs. Cartwright's intuition had been perfectly right.</p> + +<p>Jack Awdas was up during the raid over London. He was up to some +purpose, as his comrades and three other airmen (prisoners of war) could +tell.</p> + +<p>But here is his own version of the affair, as told by him, on the +following day, to his young wife.</p> + +<blockquote><p>"When that warning came through, you see, I felt that it was +for me too. I don't know what my own idea was when I went off +with old Ross. He said, 'What the something do <i>you</i> want to +come along for?' I said, 'All right; shut up.' I didn't know, +you know. Queer, wasn't it? All I knew was that I had got to go +too, instead of bringing you back here as I'd thought.... I'd +<i>got</i> to leave you, girl."</p></blockquote> + +<p>She listened, leaning back now in his happy arms. She listened, all +eyes. His own blue eyes had been deep in hers, locked to them with the +lover's look that is another embrace. But now he took them from hers. +He glanced aside and away, and into Jack Awdas's eyes there crept back +one of those two other looks which were characteristic of him. It was +the "yonderly" look that sees what is not for all to see.</p> + +<p>"Somehow," he said, "I knew I just couldn't stay with you. I'd got to go +up, and Lord only knew how it was going to be managed, or how I was +going to get out of the 'drome in time, even. There wasn't a taxi in +sight. Ross and I walked on to the Honeycomb, or half ran, half walked. +Going up Whitehall he said, 'Jack, you darned fool, go back; what's +wrong?' I said, 'Nothing; shut up, old thing, if you don't mind.'</p> + +<p>"In the courtyard of the Honeycomb we nearly ran into a tiny little +dispatch-rider girl with a side-car. I didn't know until just now that +it was young Brown's widow that he was going to marry, that we'd heard +about at dinner! She'd brought some man in, and was just starting up; I +said to her, 'Where are you for?' She said, 'Home! and time, too.' +'Where's home?' said I, and I believe she told me it was Baker +Street.... But just as I was asking her I began to see what I'd got to +do. It began to come to me then, d'you see?</p> + +<p>"I said to the girl, 'Look here, I'm sorry, you can't go home yet. +You've got to drive me out to my 'drome, and I told her where that was. +Half an hour's ride into the country. We did it in less. I told her I'd +got to get to my 'bus, and that she'd got to go hell-for-leather; and we +did it in less....</p> + +<p>"You see, I'd got to take that machine across at ten o'clock next +morning. Had to: duty. (You knew about that, of course.) But if I could +only get her up a few hours before that! I thought.... There she was, +waiting. There were dozens of our chaps up already, I knew. Here was +I——and I couldn't stand it, somehow. Not last night. Just because it +<i>was</i> that night. It would have spoilt it. You see, don't you? Yes; I +thought you would. I wouldn't think of you then; except to think 'It's +<i>her</i> I'm going to give Them.' I don't even know what 'them' +meant——(This sounds such rot, girl, that I couldn't possibly tell +anybody else, but there you are.... I won't kiss you again until I've +told you the end of this.)</p> + +<p>"Well, we chased along the roads in the moonlight at the deuce of a +lick, coming round the corners on the edge of one wheel. Just imagine +it! Me and that side-car, and that girl of Brown's——No more idea it +was his girl——! She's only about so-size; I thought she was a kid of +fifteen like one of those little brown messengers with pigtails that go +trotting about the corridors, and by Jove, I tried to <i>tip</i> her! I did! +I didn't know. I hadn't any silver on me after all those tips and things +in the afternoon, after we were married. I just lugged out my note-case +and got out a couple of John Bradburys—the last. I stuffed 'em into her +hand. 'Here, thanks awfully!' I said; 'do buy yourself a hat-pin or some +sweets or something——' She did laugh! 'You won't?' I said—she +stuffing them back for all she was worth. 'Oh well, sorry if I've made a +break,' I said, 'can't stop to explain now—thanks awfully—Good night!' +and up I legged it to the gates, holding those notes in my hand all the +time....</p> + +<p>"You know, I hadn't my papers or orders or anything! Neck, wasn't it? +<i>I</i> didn't know what on earth I was going to ask the Adjutant! +Sometimes when you want a thing it's a good deal better not to ask ... +just go and grab it, and explain afterwards.</p> + +<p>"Well, then I had a bit of luck.</p> + +<p>"Scurrying through the gates, I ran straight into Dashmold himself; that +is the Adjutant. (A stinker on duty.)</p> + +<p>"'Ha, Awdas!' he said, 'can't stop now, the Colonel's just rung me up +from his house. See you in half an hour.'</p> + +<p>"'Rightoh,' I said, and dashed ahead, thanking my lucky stars—for this +only left me with our assistant adjutant, always a bit of an ass. I +chased off to the orderly-room and found him.</p> + +<p>"'Hello, Awdas,' he squeaked. (Voice rather like George Clarke at the +Empire; pink and white face.)</p> + +<p>"'I suppose you know there's a raid on?' I said. 'I've come for that +'bus.' He said, 'What about your papers?' I said, 'Yes, hand 'em over, +that's all right. I've just this moment spoken to Dashmold.' (So I had; +just said 'Rightoh' to him.) 'Those are my orders,' I said, 'in that +pile there. Chuck 'em over. Thanks.' So that was <i>that</i>....</p> + +<p>"Then off I streaked to the Officers' Quarters to get into my things. +Not a soul there. You know. It's a long corridor with a row of little +cubicles not much bigger than the dressing-rooms at the swimming bath. +Just hold a camp-bed and a chest of drawers and a row of pegs.... By +Jove, if some thief hadn't pinched my kit. Some one got into the first +that was handy, I suppose, when they got the warning. I'll have his +blood for that, later. So in I nipped to one cubicle after another. All +empty. I thought I wasn't going to find a stitch. However! At last I +came to one; there it was, a lovely outfit all hanging ready on the +pegs. Man called Jackson. He'd got leave. Well! I plunged into his coat +and overalls and flying-cap and goggles, all the lot! quicker than +anything I've ever done in my life. I remember I'd got those blessed +pound notes still in my hand. I shoved them into my teeth while I +dressed. Then down I doubled to the hangars.</p> + +<p>"About a dozen of the ac emmas—those are mechanics, dear—were waiting +about there. I switched the lights on.</p> + +<p>"There was my 'bus all ready for tomorrow morning—ah, a beauty! Yes, +the one you saw on Thursday, that I'd been making the trial flight in; +the single-seater Scout monoplane. I'd always fancied her. She ran a +little light, but I liked that. I'd got her balanced; just right for me. +I.T. All ready, tanks filled up and everything. The gun was on her, +but——Dash it! No ammunition, of course. That did me.</p> + +<p>"Then I saw Smithers. (He's the Quartermaster's nephew.) I said, +'Smithers! Jump to it ... here you are, take this' (the last two quid I +had on me, that Brown's widow refused), 'and get me two drums of +ammunition. How? <i>I</i> don't know. Somehow. Off with you and give you five +minutes to get back in.' Off he streaked. Then I said to the others, +'Now, you men, get a move on. Get her out.' They wheeled her out of the +hangar and into the moonlight.</p> + +<p>"Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you all about something, though. Even at +the time I noticed it. (The sort of funny little thing you do notice +when you aren't really thinking of anything except getting on with +what's on.) It was tied round the joy-stick! You know, dear, your bit of +ribbon that I've always kept as a mascot since that day on the beach. +I'd tied it on just before the trial flight. It's always been on, you +know, on whatever 'bus I've been flying. I meant it to, until you were +mine, and then I was going to give it back to you, Girl, because it +wouldn't matter which of us two had the Luck <i>then</i>; it would be the +same thing.</p> + +<p>"I looked at it once as I was waiting, and I remember thinking to myself +quickly, in the sort of rum way, like you think of things in dreams, 'By +Jove, I suppose that's the most precious prize I've owned, up to now.'</p> + +<p>"But after that I just looked at my watch and stamped as I stood waiting +for those blighted drums. I'd given Smithers five minutes. Lord, if he +couldn't do it. I——It seemed a thundering important thing to me, you +see: the most important I'd ever had to do. You do know why, don't you? +You do understand?"</p> + +<p>Golden's great eyes upon his face were as full of understanding as the +tone of her simple "yes." Her young husband gave a short, contented nod, +then he went on:</p> + +<p>"Well! So then I saw Smithers, coming running back. 'Got 'em?' I +shouted. 'Right, sir!' he shouted back. Up he came with those two drums +he'd got (God knows <i>how</i>). I fixed one on the gun myself, and put the +other handy.</p> + +<p>"'Start her up,' I said. I climbed in, and the boys swung the propeller. +I gave 'em 'Contact,' and then I was up and off.... Hadn't been off the +earth for a week. And, by the way, I hadn't gone up to fight since the +time I crashed.</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course, it was a perfectly idiotic thing to do. I hadn't got +the night's Orders any more than I'd orders to go and stand by with +Ross, where you thought I was. I didn't know if we were fighting with +guns or planes or both, nor where nor when nor anything about it. +However!—--.</p> + +<p>"What did London look like from up there? Oh, just all dark, you know: +like a great turned-up field below you, with the river winding through +it. What you do see very plainly is that silver ribbon of the Thames, +reflecting the light of the sky.</p> + +<p>"You think the sky's big, don't you? Well, it isn't so big when you can +bumble into your own barrage at any moment, or when a Hun you can +neither see nor hear lets fly suddenly. But I could see shrapnel +breaking away to the south-west, so I just beetled off after that....</p> + +<p>"Then I'm dashed if those three blighters in their big plane didn't +nearly run me down. Yes, I s'pose she'd be the plane you and Mrs. +Cartwright heard over the house. Was she missing it all?"</p> + +<p>"Missing?" repeated the fascinated Golden. "Why, how could I know?"</p> + +<p>"Well, anyway, she was somewhere over that part of town. They'd jumped +the barrage and got in. I circled round, climbing all I knew, and then I +guess they dropped those two bombs to lighten themselves.</p> + +<p>"The searchlight fellows down below were dazzling away to beat the band. +You could see nothing but jumping flashes all over the show, putting 'em +off their aim. Me too. Perfectly poisonous. I cursed, but I knew I'd no +business there....</p> + +<p>"Well, that Scout of mine could climb as quick as any Gotha built yet, +so I gave them twenty rounds or so right into 'em. They didn't like +that, so I gave 'em some more. They fired back, but nothing to hurt. The +next go, they decided to give it up, I think. They headed for the +south-west again. Evidently they were going to chance the barrage. Bon! +Anyway, if they were, so was I.</p> + +<p>"And oh, Girl, if you knew how I wanted to get them! I wanted to get +those raiding Huns, if I had to chase them to the coast and across and +right to Berlin. As Ross says, 'I wanted to let 'em have it where Dora +wore the beads.' I felt 'I must. I'll die if I don't, and I——'</p> + +<p>"D'you know what I did? This is one of the most idiotic bits yet, but +I'm going to tell you the lot.... Generally, I don't think I'm +superstitious. Some fellows are; well, I'd known one perfectly sane and +sensible fellow, who, when he was mad keen after something he wanted, +winning some event, or something——he'd turn money out of his pocket—a +sovereign, say, in the days when we had sovereigns, or a handful of +silver——and throw it away. Pitch it right away, you know, to buy him +luck. Well, I thought of it then. If I could buy that German plane! +So——</p> + +<p>"I pulled off my glove as I buzzed along after 'em and made a dive +inside my jacket for money. Then I remembered I hadn't a bean on me. I'd +given my last two quid to Smithers, and here I was, and I wanted to buy +that Gotha, I tell you! I'd have bought her with anything I'd got, +money, ring, every last thing——</p> + +<p>"Then I remembered.</p> + +<p>"It was on the joy-stick, the thing I valued. Your little mascot! I +ripped it off. I gave one look round to where those beggars were heading +for the barrage, and then chucked that bit of ribbon out over where I +guessed you might be. (Perfectly absurd, of course. The wind whisked it +away.) ... And as I chucked it I shouted something out. Somebody's name.</p> + +<p>"No! You can't guess whose name it was. Nobody'd have thought it. The +funny thing about it was, it wasn't even the name I meant to shout. I +meant to shout out 'Cheer O, Girl!' I heard myself yelling out instead, +'Cheer O, <i>Ferris</i>!'</p> + +<p>"He was the observer I used to have. Killed, last year.... Somehow, just +then, I forgot that; I felt as if he were with me. Then! I thought 'Good +Lord, fancy if old Ferris——'</p> + +<p>"Then I didn't think any more; I settled down to business. Well, as you +know, I did have to chase 'em to the coast, those dashed Archies popping +all the way. <i>At</i> the coast the Archies were——say really hot. Then +those sea-planes took a hand, but it wasn't the seaplane that got her. +<i>I</i> got her! Got her right over Beachy Head.</p> + +<p>"I knew I'd done it the moment he turned about. I'd put half a drum +right into her engines, and she wouldn't want to land in the sea (rather +Irish).</p> + +<p>"Suddenly a searchlight blazed right on the pair of us, and the Archies +stopped, just like the band stops and the limelight concentrates for the +really tricky bit of the show with those acrobats at a music-hall....</p> + +<p>"But this was dead easy, the rest of it. I just circled above her like a +buzzard, driving her down, down, all the time. I didn't fire at her any +more, because you could tell within twenty yards where she was going to +land, and I knew the lads of the village were all ready and waiting for +her. One bad wobble she gave and pitched straight down. I sheered off a +bit for fear of getting any bombs, but she'd drop her last one on the +way. She simply came down end on like shying a lump of clay at a board. +Then I landed, tumbled out, and legged it up the slope as fast as I +could; just in time to see 'em getting out all the three Huns alive.</p> + +<p>"'My bird, I think,' says I, running up all out of breath.</p> + +<p>"Then a chap beside me spoke out of the dark, 'Hi! Who are you?'</p> + +<p>"I couldn't see him, so I said, 'D'you mind telling me who <i>you</i> are?'</p> + +<p>"He pulled a torch out of his pocket and showed it on himself. A +Staff-major. So we shook hands, and he congratulated me.... Then I felt +rather a fool," laughed Jack Awdas, "for he asked me my name.</p> + +<p>"'Well, as a matter of fact, Sir,' I said, and stopped.</p> + +<p>"'Well what?' he asked.</p> + +<p>"'Well, as a matter of fact, I'm not supposed to be here at all.'</p> + +<p>"'Oh?' he barked. 'Got any orders on you?'</p> + +<p>"I had; from the Assistant Adjutant. I pulled 'em out and he read them +by the light of his torch.</p> + +<p>"'H'm,' he said, 'taking a machine to France, but I see by this you're +not due to start until tomorrow morning. It's now two, ac emma. How's +this?'</p> + +<p>"Well, when you're cornered like that I always think there's only one +thing for it; pure cheek. So, as bold as brass, I gave a look at the +orders myself, and then said, 'I rather fancy this must be a clerical +error, sir. My verbal orders were to start today, and I can't have been +two hours on the way yet?'</p> + +<p>"I fancied I heard him give a chuckle in the dark, but all he said was, +'Well, this will be a serious matter for you.'</p> + +<p>"'Oh, I hope not, Sir,' I said.</p> + +<p>"'A serious matter,' says he. 'If you'd been sent up to chase Hun planes +you might have got the D.S.O. for this. But you see what it means now?'</p> + +<p>"'What?' I asked.</p> + +<p>"'Well! This being an act outside the course of your duty,' he said, 'it +<i>may</i> mean the Victoria Cross!'"</p> + +<p>Golden Awdas gasped. "Then, think of it, Bird-boy! You'll only have +traded <i>my</i> ribbon," she exclaimed, "for that wonderful other! Now +wasn't that a prize——"</p> + +<p>But the wide and distant stare had gone now from her airman's eyes. +These had returned to her; his sweet American who had journeyed across a +world before he had found her, his love whom he had loved enough to +leave, knowing that it might be for ever.... His blue eyes were locked +into hers again for a moment with his lover's look that now sent a wave +of pink fire flaming into her face and down her throat. Against that +perfect throat he buried eyes and lips.</p> + +<p>"'Think?' I needn't think of anything else now, Girl," he whispered. +"<i>You're</i> my prize!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>That was Jack Awdas's story of his share in the raid.</p> + +<p>The evening papers announced:</p> + +<p>"Bombs were dropped in several districts, but no material damage was +caused. A woman and two children were slightly injured.</p> + +<p>"One German aeroplane was brought down on the coast by a pilot of the +Royal Flying Corps."</p> + +<p>The German account read:</p> + +<p>"A successful raid was carried out by our airmen over London last night. +Good results were obtained, and large fires were seen to break out in +various districts.</p> + +<p>"All our aeroplanes returned safely."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII2" id="CHAPTER_XII2"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>SHRAPNEL AND THE CHARM</h3> + +<blockquote><p>"Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!"</p> + +<p><span class="smcap">Browning.</span></p></blockquote> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>And what of the other people who had been at Mrs. Cartwright's party +when that raid alarm came through?</p> + +<p>Olwen Howel-Jones and young Ellerton had imagined that by taking "the +Metropolitan" from Baker Street Station they might arrive at Wembley +Park before the raid started in earnest.</p> + +<p>This hope proved to be vain before their train reached Willesden +Junction. Out went the lights as the train came to a dead stand between +two stations. Up went the windows; above the iron bars that guarded them +there craned the heads of passengers asking in every key what the matter +was.</p> + +<p>They were answered by the distant growling of those first guns.</p> + +<p>"Bai Jove! Held up for the blessed raid," exclaimed the cheerful voice +of young Ellerton, who was alone with Olwen in a first-class carriage in +the front of the train. "How priceless! Here we are and here we stay +until the blighters choose to finish their little call, I s'pose. That's +all right.... Hope you don't feel nervous, Miss Howel-Jones?"</p> + +<p>The soft voice of little Olwen came to him out of the dark. (She was +sitting in the corner seat, opposite to him.) "Oh, no! I'm not nervous +at all, thanks. I think it's quite exciting! I only hope Lizzie (that's +my Aunt) won't be worrying about me; but then she knew where I was; +she'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept me."</p> + +<p>"Ah, yes. She'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept you," agreed +Olwen's companion. "I thought it looked a likely night for our friends."</p> + +<p>He had made this remark, by the way, twice on their way to Baker Street.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Olwen.</p> + +<p>Silence, punctuated by a nearer muttering of the guardian guns fell +between the two young people in the carriage to themselves. The voices +of other passengers could be heard further along the train; and the +guard appeared to be exchanging repartee with the engine-driver, whose +name (as that of all drivers of 'bus or engine seems to be), was Bill. +Olwen gave a little laugh as "Bill's" comments were shouted forth on the +night air, and her companion chuckled also. But he started no +conversation about it. Or about any other subject.</p> + +<p>The whole truth of the matter was that this quite good-looking and +pleasant young man Harold Ellerton hadn't got very much conversation. +Others besides Captain Ross (who was never inclined to be fair to him) +had noticed this. Olwen herself had noticed it before now. It had been +noticed by various girls whom he had taken out; for he was fond of +taking out girls. But, unlike the majority of his sex, he preferred +<i>them</i> to talk to <i>him</i>. He was perfectly happy to punctuate their +treble twitter with his appreciative bass, "Ha!" "Bai Jove!" and +"Priceless!" But (except for one other detail to be presently +specified), he hardly knew what else to say to a young woman who was out +with him. That was why he felt most at ease sitting beside her at a +theatre (where, during two enjoyable hours, all the talking necessary +was done for him by Mr. Owen Nares, or Mr. Leslie Henson, or somebody +like that). Or at a restaurant, preferably at a table near the band; +listening to that could always fill up any awkward pause. At dances, +again, one could dance. At a little dinner party like tonight's, for +instance, there was a crowd where everybody talked; made everything so +much more cheery at once. But it was when these things came to an end, +when one had the girl all to oneself to bring home——<i>That</i>, he found, +was the crab!</p> + +<p>Why was it, he wondered, that he found it so difficult to talk to her, +except upon one subject?</p> + +<p>He remembered delightful evenings, ending in these painful and tedious +journeys <i>à deux</i>. Tonight, for instance, it was going to be the very +dickens with this little Miss Howel-Jones. A jolly nice little kid, +thought the sailor, a pretty kid! But here they might be held up +together in this confounded train for another hour, perhaps, and he +couldn't even see her face, and he was blessed if he knew what more to +say to her——Why, he'd said everything as he sat next to her at dinner, +he and that funny little Brown chap. He did envy the flow of chaps like +that! Chaps who could yarn away upon this, that, and the other subject +for three years or the duration of the War. Talk to girls for ever, they +could, without repeating themselves!</p> + +<p>"I thought it looked a likely sort of evening for a raid," he heard +himself say at this point.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said the girl opposite to him in the dark.</p> + +<p>Of course he'd said everything there was to be said on the subject of +air-raids in general and this air-raid in particular on the way to Baker +Street. Yet he couldn't sit here in the dark opposite to her for the +whole length of the raid, saying nothing?</p> + +<p>Still the guns made distant thunder....</p> + +<p>"I do hope you aren't frightened," he said. "It's quite all right, you +know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know. I'm not a bit frightened," came from Olwen; truthfully +enough.</p> + +<p>She was not frightened as she settled herself back against the padding +of the carriage. She was only a little sleepy, a little anxious for the +kind-hearted Lizzie, who would be waiting up for her in that pretty +villa at Wembley Park; she was also excited and elated still after her +lovely party.</p> + +<p>She was thinking far more of that party than she was of her companion of +the raid!</p> + +<p>She was also wondering about Captain Ross.</p> + +<p>What a <i>disgusting</i> temper the man had been in all that evening!</p> + +<p>Positively scowling at her! Was he jealous, really? <i>Was</i> he?</p> + +<p>Then she wondered what Captain Ross was doing at that moment.</p> + +<p>If there had been no raid——! If it had been he who was seeing her home +she might have asked him what she had done that he should scowl at her +like that.</p> + +<p>Or if only it were Captain Ross who was sitting with her here in this +darkened carriage all smelling of engine-dust and cigarette smoke, +waiting for the raid to finish....</p> + +<p>Hurriedly Olwen put the thought away. It was no use allowing oneself to +dwell on thoughts of things that were too good to be true. No, no, not +too good. She told herself firmly that she did not wish Captain Ross +were in this railway-carriage instead of Mr. Ellerton. Captain Ross +would only be disagreeable.</p> + +<p>Only——Well! She could imagine some girls feeling glad of a raid in +these circumstances. Some girls to whom it would be as one long, long +lovely dance "sat out" in a dark corner with their favourite partner of +all. Perhaps there were girls "hung up" in this very train, feeling that +it was the evening of their lives.</p> + +<p>Whereas all she could feel was apologetic to Mr. Ellerton. He liked her, +but she was sure he had never bargained for sitting out with her a dance +of this length. Still, what was to be done? Here the train stuck. They +couldn't get out and walk to Wembley!</p> + +<p>"Shall we smoke?" suggested Mr. Ellerton. "You'll have a cigarette, +won't you?"</p> + +<p>He fumbled in his pockets and brought out his torch. Its tiny beams made +rounds of light in the carriage and upon his face and upon the gold +braid and gold rings of his uniform. He found case and matches. He +lighted a cigarette for Olwen, who puffed at it with secret distaste +(for the moderate smoker is not found among her sex; a woman being +either a cigarette fiend or a passive objector).</p> + +<p>The two red glow-worms winked and wavered in the dark carriage, their +reflections shining in the glass of photographs over the rack. Outside +the searchlights pointed, and now and again the sky showed the alien +star of a shrapnel-burst.</p> + +<p>Then, without warning, crash after crash seemed to rock the train on the +rails. Some guns, very near, that had not yet spoken, were barking +savagely, and between the barks a shrill "whee-you! whee-you!" hissed +past the telegraph wires....</p> + +<p>The start that Olwen gave made her drop her cigarette on to the floor of +the carriage. She dug her little French heel into the spark. Young +Ellerton threw his cigarette down beside it and rose quickly. Snapping +up the arm of the seat by Olwen, he sat down close to her.</p> + +<p>"You needn't be frightened," he said, encouragingly.</p> + +<p>"I'm not frightened," she assured him. "Only it makes me jump."</p> + +<p>"Brutes, frightening you!" exclaimed young Ellerton. "I say, I do wish +I'd thought of bringing some chocolates or something for you."</p> + +<p>"I'm not hungry either, thank you," laughed Olwen into the barking of +those guns, but young Ellerton's voice repeated, "I wish I'd got any +sweets for you. I've only this——"</p> + +<p>She felt him move against her arm as he leant nearer to her to get +something else out of his pocket: it was a phial of saccharine tablets, +carried about since the sugar restrictions.</p> + +<p>"Have some of these," he said. "Put out your hand ... here, where are +you?" He shook half a dozen tablets out into her palm.</p> + +<p>As it happened, Olwen disliked saccharine worse than she disliked +Virginian cigarettes, yet she munched the substitute-sweets to please +this young man who, according to his lights, was being nice and kind and +protective towards her.</p> + +<p>For the severalth time he informed her that she was not to be +frightened.... Then, in a new tone, he added, "Dear little girl." Then, +more softly still, "For you <i>are</i> a dear little girl, you know. Do you +know, you're just about the sweetest I've ever met."</p> + +<p>"Oh, pooh!" laughed Olwen, taken by surprise, nevertheless. She rather +wished she could see the face of the young man sitting so close beside +her. Had she done so, she would have seen it was what is known as "a +study." For during the last half-hour or so the young man had become the +prey to conflicting emotions indeed. Chief of these, perhaps, was a +helpless fascination; the fascination of some one with a weak head who +watches himself draw nearer and nearer to the brink of some giddy +height.</p> + +<p>Harold Ellerton knew he was drifting, as he'd done times and again, +towards a fatal habit of his. Times and again, since before he had left +Dartmouth, this thing had happened to him. It was as characteristic of +him as was his lack of general conversation where women were concerned. +In fact, it's not impossible that one of these characteristics may have +led to the other.</p> + + +<p>He didn't know what to say to girls unless he were making love to them, +and his sole conception of love-making was to ask them to marry him!</p> + +<p>He saw it coming now in the dark accomplice solitude of this railway +carriage. He knew that he was going to say a few more tender things to +this little Howel-Jones girl, about her eyelashes and how sweet she'd +looked at that party and how she ought to have a bridal party of her +own, directly—dear little sweetheart she'd make to any fellow!</p> + +<p>He said these things.</p> + +<p>He knew the other was coming.</p> + +<p>It came.</p> + +<p>"Look here, d'you think you could care enough to be <i>mine</i>?" he heard +himself say. "Bai Jove, if you would——! If you'd marry <i>me</i>! Would +you? Would you?"</p> + +<p>There! He'd done it again.</p> + +<p>Now came the agonizing moment.</p> + +<p>Now again he'd have to wait for the girl's answer. That always seemed to +him to be at least two hours in coming: except once, an anguished once +when the girl had said, "Yes" directly. What would this one say; what? +He waited in the dark; and sweat broke out on the young brow under the +peaked cap.</p> + +<p>In a long, uncertain breath the girl said, "Oh——"</p> + +<p>Then, "D'you mean it, Mr. Ellerton?"</p> + +<p>"Of <i>course</i>!" returned Mr. Ellerton, ardently, but digging his nails +into the palms of his hands.</p> + +<p>The soft voice beside him said, rather waveringly, "Wait a minute——"</p> + +<p>The young man who had just proposed again set his teeth and waited. This +was Hades. Serve him right for being such a double-blanked fool again! +But this was the worst yet. Never before had he not been able to see the +girl's face when he asked her to marry him. Never again, he vowed +incoherently to himself, never again would he be such an ass as to +propose to a girl during a raid with all the lights out! But then, never +again would he let himself in for this with any girl alive! Not if he +got safely out of this! Oh, Lord, the fool he'd been!... Could he +possibly light a cigarette?... No, only wait.... "A minute" this little +thing had said....</p> + +<p>Before she spoke again, æons seemed to elapse.</p> + +<p>Actually they were a few moments only, during which the mind of Olwen +Howel-Jones dashed swiftly through four distinct phases of thought. The +first was pure surprise.</p> + +<p>The second was a "No" that came from the bed-rock of woman's nature, +that fundamental thing which Convention must blast and quarry into +acceptable shapes.</p> + +<p>The third was a "Yes" compounded of a thousand artificialities +inherited, acquired, fostered, observed, and taught. Fear was among +them; fear handed down from generations of dowerless girls who accepted +the first proposal lest they might die as old maids. Why not! thought +little Olwen. Engaged! Fancy if she were! What would her Aunts think, +and Uncle, and her sisters! She would be the first of her sisters to +become engaged! And she had got her leave, too, and would be going down +to Wales; fancy going home to tell them! Fancy telling them at the +Honeycomb; Mrs. Newton and everybody! What fun! Engaged to Mr. Ellerton. +She did like him so much; she did, she did! He was awfully nice, and +jolly with people, and so good-looking and so——it appeared, so fond of +her!... More than could be said for Captain Ross. Wouldn't it be +absolutely ridiculous to miss a real thing like this, for just a fancy +like that? Girls had to get engaged while they could. It was the +happiest thing; getting engaged and having a ripping time for a bit, +then getting married and having everybody congratulating you. Getting +engaged in the middle of a raid, too! Nobody could say that wasn't +romantic. Love?... Well, Captain Ross had said that men couldn't bear +"that Love-with-a-capital-L" business. It wasn't for everybody. And why +do without all the fun of getting engaged, simply for the sake of some +man who evidently didn't care two-pence.... It would be awfully silly to +say "No."</p> + +<p>Swiftly as the flash of the guns this phase passed; swiftly as the +following report there followed the fourth phase in the girl's mind. It +flung her back to phase the second. But that had been composed of dumb +Instinct. This was articulate.</p> + +<p>No, no! She must not say "Yes" to this young man. However nice, however +good-looking, however fond, he was not the man. She knew it. She did not +love him. Golden said Love must be Lovely. What more unlovely than a +loveless pact? The "fun" of this engagement? What would that be? A +wretched substitute; no more real, sweet fun than the saccharine tablets +which she had been munching were real sugar. Sugar in tea; Love in +Life.... Some people put up with makeshifts cheerfully; but not she. +Some other people (she pursued the childish analogy) never did take +sugar in their tea. The luckier they! They missed nothing; Olwen would +crave it forever. But better a thousand times to go without everything +than to accept the wrong thing!</p> + +<p>She came out of her swift inner reverie, back to the dark railway +carriage and the young man.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Mr. Ellerton," she said hurriedly and remorsefully. "I am +dreadfully sorry but I can't possibly. I don't care for you. Not that +way. I do like you ever so much. But if—if you don't mind, I <i>couldn't</i> +marry you."</p> + +<p>She heard the young man near her give, in the darkness, the profoundest +sigh that she had ever heard torn from any human breast....</p> + +<p>Remorsefully she repeated, "I am so sorry——" Then stopped abruptly. +She seemed, in the darkness and the vibrating atmosphere, to have caught +a floating idea that startled her somewhat.</p> + +<p>She began again gravely. "Will you lend me your torch for a minute?"</p> + +<p>She felt it put into her hand.</p> + +<p>Quickly Olwen said, "It's very rude of me, but I <i>must</i> look at you, +please: I must see your face!"</p> + +<p>Then she turned the little beam right upon him.</p> + +<p>Then she exclaimed, "Mr. Ellerton!"</p> + +<p>"Yes——" he said, unmistakably sheepish.</p> + +<p>Olwen burst out laughing. "You are a fraud," she exclaimed gaily. "You +aren't one bit sorry that I refused you. You're trying not to, but +you're looking——yes, <i>relieved</i>. You're glad! Don't pretend!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say——"</p> + +<p>"No! Don't pretend! You were laughing. You're feeling gladder than +you've ever felt over anything in your life because I don't want to +marry you! I <i>know</i>!"</p> + +<p>Young Ellerton dragged his handkerchief from his cuff, pushed back his +cap and wiped his forehead. "Bai Jove," he said with the sincerest +admiration in his tone, "you <i>are</i> a clever little thing. I—I don't +think any of the others have ever tumbled to that."</p> + +<p>A moment later he found himself talking to her with more real ease and +enjoyment than he had ever talked to a girl in his life; with real +fluency. To her (during the second hour for which they were hung up) he +confessed that no, he didn't want to get married. There were +people——anyhow, men, who <i>didn't</i>. Not to the sweetest and prettiest +girl in the world. Not to <i>anybody</i>. To tie himself up like that for +life, declared the young sailor, was what he wouldn't want to do for +anything under the sun; certainly not for anything under a hat. Never!</p> + +<p>Olwen, finding she had ceased to be bored by him for the first time +since she had left Mrs. Cartwright's turned her face towards him in the +dark and plied him with question after laughing question.</p> + +<p>"But you ask people to marry you!"</p> + +<p>"Can't stop myself! It's the devil!"</p> + +<p>"And none of them have accepted you?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; one! A girl who was at college with my sister. A nice girl. I did +get to loathe her!" with feeling. "We were engaged for one whole awful +week!"</p> + +<p>"How did you break it off, then?"</p> + +<p>"She did. I loved her for that. She said I was too much like the young +man in Stevenson who said being engaged was all right as long as her +sisters were there. So she chucked me. And after that I've been +lucky——I mean, you know what I mean!"</p> + +<p>Olwen shook with laughter. "But, then, why d'you <i>do</i> it?" she +persisted.</p> + +<p>"I tell you I can't help it. It happens!"</p> + +<p>"Why? For instance, why did you let it happen tonight? Quite frankly, +<i>why</i> did you ask me?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you——!" he began, and he paused for a minute. "Oh, come," he +said, "you are an awful nice little girl, you know. Anybody might be +excused for losing his head. You were looking extra pretty at the party +tonight, too. Some <i>peach</i>, you looked, if I may say so; and it wasn't +just looks either. There was <i>something</i> about you. Sort of +disturbing.... I swear there was. You attracted me till I——"</p> + +<p>"Don't propose to me again," Olwen warned him. "I might think better of +it."</p> + +<p>"Oh, no," laughed Harold Ellerton. "You're an absolute little +sportswoman, I know."</p> + +<p>The little sportswoman, while she continued to laugh and chat with him +in the friendliest way until the signal sounded for the train to start +again, the little sportswoman had been really arrested by one of his +remarks.</p> + +<p>"<i>Something about her</i>" tonight, he thought. She'd heard something like +that before. She thought she might know what it meant.</p> + +<p>She went back to early on the afternoon of that eventful day.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Very late she had found herself as she was dressing for her tea with Mr. +Brown at the Regent Palace; even as she was putting on her nicest silk +stockings she had known that it would mean a scamper down the drive if +she meant to catch that train....</p> + +<p>Then in her hurry a suspender had snapped.</p> + +<p>"Dash!" she had cried.</p> + +<p>No time to stitch it.</p> + +<p>She had cast round for the nearest bit of ribbon wherewith to garter +herself securely, and had snatched it up from where it dangled on her +dressing-table, hardly seeing which bit of pink ribbon it was with what +satin sachet attached. She'd wound it hastily about her slim and +silk-sheathed leg and forgotten all about it. That's how she had come to +be wearing it that evening, not in the orthodox way round her neck, but +wearing it nevertheless; the Disturbing Charm!</p> + +<p>Hidden thus, it almost seemed as if it had done its work again?</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>As they said good-bye at the wicket gate of her Aunt's house, she found +herself quite affectionately promising to write, while on leave, to this +young sailor who never would be anything but a friend to her. She found +herself submitting quite naturally to one of those flavourless and +definite kisses on the cheek, of which the entirely brotherly quality +can never be mistaken by the recipient.</p> + +<p>A looker-on may be more easily mistaken.</p> + +<p>Olwen's Aunt Lizzie was coming up the Drive behind her, having been +delayed in another carriage of that very same train, since she had also +been dining in town. From some distance she had observed the farewell at +the gate. But she exchanged greetings, quite unprejudiced, with the +young sailor who passed her. She was a modern Aunt....</p> + +<p>At the house she found her niece already in the bedroom, so busy with +her little straw work-basket and two lengths of pink ribbon, that before +any talk even of the raid, she asked, "What have you got there, Olwen?"</p> + +<p>"I'm just mending something," returned the intent Olwen, "that I've got +to wear."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII2" id="CHAPTER_XIII2"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>VIGIL</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The raid is still in progress."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Morning Paper.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>To other members of the party that raid had been less (obviously) +eventful.</p> + +<p>Little Mr. Brown, after he had seen Mrs. Cartwright's niece, the nurse, +back to her rooms, trotted back to the Regent Palace Hotel all in a +dither of undeniable funk.</p> + +<p>Not funk for himself! Gallipoli and the Somme had found him "sticking +it" with a music-hall joke between his teeth. But here he had something +to be frightened about. The danger-zone was no place for women. At once +he rang up his <i>fiancée</i>, Mrs. Robinson, in Baker Street. There was no +reply!... On duty still? And Lord knew where....</p> + +<blockquote><p>[The little dispatch rider was at that moment, as we know, +scorching along the road out of London and past the Kilburn +Empire.]</p></blockquote> + +<p>Mr. Brown, M.C., took his cold feet and his pipe to another man's room, +and sat there talking feverishly to drown the guns; from here he rang up +at intervals, getting through to her at last.</p> + +<p>"Worrying?... What about?" her cheeky little voice called back to him. +"Been? Why I've been carting some young lunatic who's lost his 'bus or +something, back to his 'drome.... I say! He tried to give me two pounds. +Got off again, didn't I?... Yes, and I'm just going to turn in.... Silly +ass.... Worrying about me? Well, drop it. I'm not marrying any worries, +they're too old-fash. Go to bed!"</p> + +<p>"Right you are," called back her future lord on the note of cheery +docility which was to resound throughout his married life. "See you +demang. Good night, Pet!"</p> + +<p>"Good night, Pug."</p> + +<p>She rang off; he sought his room, and slept through the rest of the +raid.</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>Miss Agatha Walsh sat up for it. She sat up in the private sitting-room +of her hotel, where there was also staying, on business, the old family +lawyer who transacted her business. There she sat with him and her +<i>fiancé</i> at midnight, feeling delightfully emancipated if not "fast," +drinking stone ginger-beer and translating the lawyer's remarks to her +half-dozing sergeant. Agatha was entirely happy, for the talk was all +about arrangements for her approaching marriage, settlements for her +husband, and so on. What, compared to these things, was the noise of +gun-fire? The only attention that she paid to it was to exclaim once, +"Oh, I do wish I could have a bit of the shrapnel set in gold as a +paper-weight or something for Gustave, just as a souvenir of the first +raid we've been through together!"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>And now we come to Captain Ross.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross would have allowed no questions as to where he was and what +doing whilst that raid was in progress. Suffice it to say that he was on +duty.</p> + +<p>Not active duty; not strenuous duty, but duty which, unfortunately for +him, gave him plenty of leisure to think, and to feel, as he himself put +it curtly, "sick."</p> + +<p>Very sick he felt.</p> + +<p>First there was the standing grouse of his not being able to take a +man's job, ever, in that sort of show. They would never allow a +one-armed chap to go up in a plane, of course. Not even by altering the +mechanism of the whole thing so that he could work the controls +left-handed—that was off for good; and he was sick of it.</p> + +<p>He also felt sick with young Jack. What on earth had he been trying to +play at? He had no duty. He was married that morning; hadn't he, Ross, +seen him married? What the something did he mean by leaving his wife and +chasing off like that? Saying "All right; shut up——" What did the +young fool mean by it?</p> + +<p>Further, there was that little hussy that Captain Ross was sick with. +Sitting——wherever he was sitting while the raid-guns scolded outside, +he went over and over in his mind the many grouses that he had against +that little hussy Olwen Howel-Jones. She didn't know how to treat him +right.</p> + +<p>She was a darned little flirt.</p> + +<p>Look at her at Les Pins with that ass young Brown!</p> + +<p>Look at her here in London, with that even worse ass, young Ellerton!</p> + +<p>Scandalous.... Scandalous....</p> + +<p>To Ellerton he meant to give such a telling-off as the young man had +never heard in his life before.</p> + +<p>And to the girl he was going to speak about it this very evening. Then +the raid had come....</p> + +<p>Of course Ellerton would see that child all the way home.</p> + +<p>He'd done it before....</p> + +<p>She admitted that herself.</p> + +<p>She practically admitted that the fellow made love to her on the way +home.</p> + +<p>No doubt he was doing it again at that moment! Captain Ross could +picture it. He did picture it....</p> + +<p>Nothing could have been less like his picture than the reality of that +proposal scene in the railway carriage of the train held up outside +Willesden Junction at that moment, but how should this jealous brooder +be expected to guess that?</p> + +<p>He continued to brood so intently that it is unlikely he heard any of +the firing....</p> + +<p>That little hussy! How was it she always contrived to irritate him so? +Always! Every time she spoke! The more meek and mild she was in the +office the more downright impairrrtinence she managed to infuse, +somehow, into the very meekness and mildness of the tone in which she +spoke to her chief. Yep! Even if she were only putting somebody through +to him on the telephone, she managed to convey an impression of—of—of +<i>something</i>.</p> + +<p>And why any busy man should waste a moment thinking of her the finest +judge of women in Europe did not know.... How had she done it?</p> + +<p>Yes; she was pretty; confound her! Awfully neat.... but weren't other +girls? Why think of her, more than of all the others, dozens, scores, +yes, hundreds of 'em that he'd known? What he demanded of a girl's +society was that it should be kept in its right proporrrrtion as a +relaxation for when a man wasn't occupied with a job.</p> + +<p>Woman, it could not too often be reiterated, was the Plaything of +Man——but not of young Ellerton, by the way. Why should any sensible +man be obsessed by one more than another of these toys?</p> + +<p>Let them keep in their places.</p> + +<p>Dashed pretty she was! Taking little face, dandy little figure, hands +and feet <i>it</i>.... Still, if she thought that he, with all his +experience, was going to say that Miss Olwen Howel-Jones was the +best-looking girl he'd ever struck, she had another guess coming to her. +Casual little ways she had! Those spoilt her. Pursing up her +mouth——which was as red as if she shoved on carmine by the stick every +five minutes, though he could see she didn't. It would sairrrrrrrrve her +jolly well right if a man (not young Ellerton) were to catch ahold of +her and kiss her good and hard a couple of dozen times running and then +leave her, having had all he wanted of her. That other maddening habit +of hers, too; looking 'way over a man's shoulder when he was speaking to +her! Refusing to meet his eyes ... though she could look straight enough +into young Ellerton's.... What colour <i>were</i> her eyes when all was said: +brown, green, or hazel?</p> + +<p>He had arrived at this point by the time that the rushing by of cars +began to be heard up the Strand, down the Embankment and along every +street within earshot; cars containing joyously important children in +Scout's kit who "<i>woke to find that Noise was Duty</i>," and who now +roused London's echoes with their bugle calls of two long notes:</p> + +<p>"<i>All clear——! All——clear!</i>"</p> + +<p>Yes; the raid was over. Captain Ross of the Honeycomb found himself +drawing a long breath and realizing that he did most bitterly resent +these raids on account of the women that he knew who were in the danger +zone. That child Olwen, now; had she been frightened? Very likely +indeed. Scared to death, no doubt.</p> + +<p>Poor wee girl!...</p> + +<p>With the return to the thought of her, there suddenly stirred within him +a feeling that lay so deep down and under so many other mere immediate +things that he seldom allowed himself the chance of leisure to delve +towards it....</p> + +<p>It was——how express it? A gentle, reverent unspoilt tenderness. It was +That which makes the difference in the ingrainedly sentimental mind of +Man, between Woman——and his own women-folk. The key to the hearts of +these finest judges of women in Europe is to be found held in the hands +of a mother, a wife, or (most surely) of a baby-daughter.... This +particular Scot had denied <i>in toto</i> that that chit of a Welsh girl +could ever have part or lot in any of his jealously-secret dreams.</p> + +<p>But denied it he had; yes! Already he was so far gone as all that.</p> + +<p>Therefore it will be seen that he had reached the moment when a man +pulls himself resolutely together and determines that having gone so +far, he will go no further.</p> + +<p>The moment had arrived when he told himself that, having taken all +things into consideration, he had done with the girl.</p> + +<p>Yes; he had done with this Olwen.</p> + +<p>What was meant by this could only be judged by subsequent events. One +cannot but surmise that it meant the following:</p> + +<p>To come to that office on Monday and, as usual, to treat her as part of +the office furniture. To speak to her as usual with the charm of manner +of a bear with a sore head. To glower at her as usual in the Strand if +she passed him with young Ellerton. To have lunch on Friday as usual at +that restaurant where she had lunch and, still as usual, to spar and +wrangle with her until it was time to get back to work. To meet her as +usual at Mrs. Cartwright's; to meet her perhaps with her friend Mrs. +Awdas; to——well, to carry on in the usual way, as he had done up to +now, and so, indefinitely, to continue....</p> + +<p>"Yes! I've done with her," he meditated aloud in the solitude of +whatever place it was in which he found himself. The sound of his own +voice pronouncing these resolute words was balm to his irritated, +exasperated mood. "I've done with her. <i>That's</i> sett——"</p> + +<p>Into the word there broke the shrill whirring call of the telephone.</p> + +<p>He snapped it up. The silence of the place where he sat seemed to ring +to the now irritated bark of his voice, answering.</p> + +<p>"Spikkin'! Who is that?"</p> + +<p>"Ell—what? Oh, Ellerton? Yes; what is it?" He listened, scowling, to +the clear boyish voice that came through, obviously in the joyous high +feather. "Oh, yes; I know the raid's over, yes.... Nothing of +consequence; nothing at all.... You saw <i>what</i>? Miss Howel-Jones home +safely? That's all?... You were held up? Is that so? Where? For +<i>how</i>——For two hours, was it? All the lights turned out, I suppose?... +Indid.... Ah.... Well! I don't know that I was worrying specially about +either of you; not so as you'd notice it. But thanks all the same for +reassuring me, Ellerton——"</p> + +<p>(This with the bitter sarcasm which, the Celt maintains, is ever lost +upon the Saxon.)</p> + +<p>"And I suppose Miss Howel-Jones will make it her excuse for turrrning up +late on Monday morrrrning.... <i>Whatt?</i> She won't be coming Monday? How's +that?... <i>Leave?</i>"</p> + +<p>His voice jumped up three notes.</p> + +<p>"Going on leave?... Where's she going? Wales?... What part of Wales?... +I said what part of Wales.... Aber-<i>which</i>?... Ah.... 'Night."</p> + +<p>The finest judge of women snapped up the receiver and sat for a moment +motionless: only the shapely feminine mouth under the hogged moustache +moving to the form of inaudible words.</p> + +<p>Then he sprung up and grabbed a paper-covered book from a shelf of +reference books. He stood holding it.</p> + +<p>Ellerton and she!</p> + +<p>Held up for two mortal hours in the dark!</p> + +<p>And the cub sounded in racing spirits....</p> + +<p>Proposed to her! Not a doubt of it! And would he sound like that if he +hadn't been acc——?</p> + +<p>Here he slammed the book down on the table (it was an A B C), and, with +his one hand, began violently fluttering the pages. Aber——Aber——</p> + +<p>Gone, had she? Without a word.... How dare she? Got leave without +telling him....</p> + +<p>Leave, indeed....</p> + +<p>He'd got some leave coming to him.</p> + +<p>Right now was where he'd take it, and at this Aber-where-was-it—ah, +here....</p> + +<p>Done with the girl? He realized that he had not yet begun with her.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV2" id="CHAPTER_XIV2"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>HOME AND THE CHARM</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere."<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Still-Popular Song.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>There was one thing that struck Olwen very forcibly as soon as she got +down to that house of her Aunt Margaret's in Wales.</p> + +<p>It was the first time for many months that she had entered a +dwelling-place that was also a home.</p> + +<p>Where had she been all this time? In places of which the keynote was +"Here today and gone tomorrow"; places that she had never even seen a +year ago; places without associations, without responsibilities for the +pilgrim-guest.</p> + +<p>There had been Les Pins; its hotel.... Cap Ferret and its charming inn. +Other hotels in Paris and London. There had been the Honeycomb; its +busyness still informed by the hotel spirit of "<i>Dwell as if about to +depart</i>."</p> + +<p>Then there had been her Aunt's villa at Wembley Park; delightful little +red-roofed, rose-wreathed doll's-house! There was an impermanency about +that, too; it looked as if a gale of wind would carry it off, with the +row of other red-and-white toy-dwellings in the midst of which it stood. +It was a place to picnic and to sleep in, and of one which one turned +the latch-key without giving it all day a further thought.</p> + +<p>The same note was struck by Mrs. Cartwright's prettily-arranged flat. +In three hours, perhaps, she could pack up and move ... somewhere, +anywhere that suited her! (People lived where they liked, after all, +instead of making it a religion to like where they lived.)</p> + +<p>The same could be said of Mrs. Newton's rooms at her hotel, and of the +bachelor-diggings of half a dozen War-working girls whom Olwen knew in +London. The new note was spreading. Domestic life as lived under Queen +Victoria seemed at a discount. And to more and more of England's young +womanhood one might apply the plaintive remark of the straphanger to the +other occupants of the crowded 'bus: "Ain't <i>none</i> o' you got no 'omes?"</p> + +<p>But here, on the outskirts of this provincial town where generations of +the Howel-Joneses had been born, had lived and married and died——here +one found oneself swept back to the domestic conditions of more than +half a century ago.</p> + +<p>Ah, the solidity of this square grey house, padded with ancient ivy and +roofed with purple slate! Oh, the density of that laurel hedge, +screening its lawn from the road that wound up towards the mountains! +Heavens, the ponderous comfort of the furniture; every mahogany "piece," +every <i>portière</i>, every vast Landseer steel engraving upon the walls +seemed to remind Olwen "We were here in your grandmamma's time, and your +great-grandmother's and you, little superficial upstart, what right have +you to turn up your nose at what was good enough for them?"</p> + +<p>Yes; it had taken three reigns to bring these things together; details +that dragged the generations behind them as they settled down, heavily, +into a permanent, complete and dominant whole, which it would now take +an earthquake or a revolution to shift.</p> + +<p>But Olwen, as it happened, felt no desire to "turn up her nose." She was +enjoying this return to the days of old. It was a rest and a refreshment +to her after all her war-time gipsying, after her eating in Soho +restaurants, after her coming and going, after that whole life of the +bird on the twig. For there is no place like home, the old, established, +sturdy, stolid British home ... when one knows that one is only there on +ten days' leave.</p> + +<p>Then there were the home-dwellers. Olwen had never before realized how +pretty and amusing were her young sisters Peggy and Myfanwy; especially +Peggy, in her V.A.D. kit! She had wrested three days' leave from her +hospital in the town in order to be with her sister from London; and +there were also gathered together on a visit in the old home a selection +of cousins—Howel-Joneses, Pritchards, and little Llewella Price—to +welcome the wanderer home. Never before had they "made such a fuss of +her," or she of them.</p> + +<p>Even Auntie Margaret (who was <span class="smcap">THE</span> Miss Howel-Jones, the head of the +household, and a despotic version of the Professor in petticoats), even +Auntie Margaret did not seem nearly as "trying" to Olwen as in those +pre-War days when the present Honeycomb war-worker was a girl at home.</p> + +<p>Why, Olwen had been in the house for two whole days, and Auntie had +only been really exasperating once! And even then she had almost +immediately afterwards bestowed upon Olwen an exquisite old coral brooch +and a bristly kiss. After all, there were no people like one's +home-people ... once one wasn't obliged always to live with them.</p> + +<p>Yes; Olwen enjoyed them. She enjoyed the accent of the young creature +who brought up hot water to her old bedroom (and who was described by +Auntie as "no servant, but a colt off the mountains!"). And she enjoyed +the forgotten ambrosia of the Welsh butter, and the family tea to which +they all sat down about the family table, and the family jokes—all as +old as her beloved hills.</p> + +<p>There was no news, except of a bazaar in aid of comforts for the town's +recruits; that had happened a month since, but it seemed still as +important to the family as anything that Olwen could tell them of what +had been happening in London. It was only on the Sunday when this +function had been described to the last detail by each relation in turn +that they left it at last to enquire about what raid; had Olwen seen +anything of this?</p> + +<p>The question was put to her at tea-time.</p> + +<p>Olwen, munching Auntie's hot cakes, told them of the interrupted party +and of her delayed journey home.</p> + +<p>"In one of those wretchedly draughty trains! I wonder you didn't take +your death," was her aunt's aghast comment.</p> + +<p>A Pritchard cousin added, "In the dark! Weren't you terrified all +alone?"</p> + +<p>Olwen explained.</p> + +<p>"Oh! <i>With</i> somebody," exclaimed another cousin.</p> + +<p>"Sitting with a man from that place of yours.... In khaki, then? No; a +<i>sailor</i>? Oh, how <i>lovely</i>!... How old; twenty-four—five? It must have +felt just like being at the Cinema. Olwen, what <i>did</i> he talk about?"</p> + +<p>"Asked me to marry him," Olwen replied, tranquil in the assurance that +this unembellished truth would never be believed.</p> + +<p>A gale of girlish laughter broke out round the table; a clatter of +feminine questions.</p> + +<p>The Welsh speaking-voice, which normally resembles the coo of the +ring-dove (<i>vide</i> a paper on "Timbre" read by a college-friend of +Professor Howel-Jones), is capable of rising, in excitement, above the +corncrake note of the average Saxon, to the parrot-screech of the +Continental. It did so now, as the stay-at-homes cross-examined their +wanderer.</p> + +<p>"No; but really?"</p> + +<p>"Do tell us what sort of a young man he was?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; come on, Olwen <i>fach</i>. We never see a young man down here; might +as well describe to us what one looks like——"</p> + +<p>It was at this very moment that the young man who was passing the +dining-room windows on his way to the front door caught a glimpse of +clustered black heads all alike and heard a breaking wave of talk and +giggling. This tide rose until it swamped the sound of his ring at the +bell.</p> + +<p>Presently, without warning, there burst into the dining-room that +aproned colt from the mountains who had answered the door.</p> + + +<p>In an explosive whisper she announced, "Some <i>gent——tleman</i>! Some +gentleman is in the drawing-room!"</p> + +<p>"Who is it?" asked the mistress.</p> + +<p>"Some gentleman wanting to see Miss S'Olwen," the little maid hissed on +every "S." (A sudden quiet fell upon the party.) "Some <i>Captain</i>, or +something, he say."</p> + +<p>"Of course!" shrilled Olwen's youngest cousin Llewella, in a voice that +could (and did) carry easily across the hall into the drawing-room and +beyond the lawn outside, "This <i>must</i> be her <i>sailor</i> young man!"</p> + +<p>But Olwen (rising from the tea-table with the sudden sensation of having +had no tea or any other meal for about a fortnight) knew better. She was +the only one at that tea-table who had not been too absorbed in talk to +notice the caller passing the window. Against the dark green laurel +hedge and the lavender mountains beyond she had caught the flash of +gayer colour, scarlet on khaki.</p> + +<p><i>Captain Ross——!</i></p> + +<p>"He's come," she thought in a whirl of happiest flurry. "What did Golden +say!"</p> + +<p>Her heart seemed to stand still as she crossed the hall. On the mat she +waited for one second. She must look as if absolutely nothing had +happened or could happen. Then she opened the heavily-draped door and +went into the drawing-room.</p> + +<p>Captain Ross had planted himself just where she had expected that he +might; he was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the log fire.</p> + +<p>That hearthrug was wide and white and fluffy; there was a brass-edged +glass screen before the fender. The mantelpiece was of white alabaster +and hung with looped drapery of peacock-blue brocade, lustrous and +pompous and ball-fringed, dating from 1889. Upon the mantelshelf itself +there stood under a tall glass shade an ormolu clock, with figures of +nymphs and Cupid. On each side of this gleamed candlesticks with +dangling prisms.</p> + +<p>There were also china ornaments, a miniature of Margaret Howel-Jones at +eighteen and another glass shade protecting a branch of white coral; the +whole reflected in a gilt-framed mirror.</p> + +<p>Everything in that drawing-room was in key with that mantelpiece. And +into that complete and Victorian harmony there broke the Neo-Georgian +note of a girl wearing the little modern serge frock, the pert effective +shoes, and the hair-dressing of the instant.</p> + +<p>But Captain Ross, turning abruptly did not see the dramatic +contradiction of that girl to this room.</p> + +<p>What he saw was the girl at last in the background that suited her. Yes; +here she was, where she should be. None of your gimcrack hotels or grimy +offices or fly-blown, cotton-glove restaurants! A girl like that ought +never to leave a place like this. The place into which any decent man +instinctively wants to put the sweetest woman he knows——A Nice, +Comfortable Home of her Own.</p> + +<p>(That the woman invariably longs to be "put" there has never yet been +questioned by this type.)</p> + +<p>To him every detail of the place seemed in league to "set" her; sweetly, +worthily. For the first time he saw her as in a shrine—therefore to be +worshipped, yes! worshipped.</p> + +<p>But there was nothing of this to be read in Captain Ross's face as he +returned her soft-voiced, surprised-sounding greeting. He was positively +scowling.</p> + +<p>And why was the finest judge of women in Europe scowling like this?</p> + +<p>It was because of the unforseen way in which all his plans were going +astray. On the way down in the train he'd had everything beautifully +planned. He'd intended to tell this little Olwen casually but quite +authoritatively that he'd something to say to her, and that "as he was +in Wales" he guessed he'd look in and say it right then. (These women +had to be handled—firmly.) He thought that a darned good opening ... in +the train.</p> + +<p>But suddenly that "was in Wales" didn't seem the strong card he'd +thought. It seemed, in fact, remarkably weak. He admitted that as he +glanced round that immutably Victorian room. It might have done for the +Honeycomb, but not here. Set-back Number One.</p> + +<p>Next, he must look as if he'd come down here on purpose to see this +aggravating chit. Which of course, he had not done. Or at least hadn't +meant to. Or, anyway, wouldn't have done if there had been any other +way. Captain Ross could explain this position to himself, perfectly. But +appearances were all against him.... Set-back Number Two.</p> + +<p>For Set-back Number Three, had he not just heard half a sentence (before +a door closed), in a shrill girlish voice, about a "<i>sailor</i> young man"?</p> + +<p><i>Damn</i> young Ellerton!</p> + +<p>His anger against the sailor gave the send-off to the very first +sentence that he addressed to the girl.</p> + +<p>With a forward jerk of his head he brought out the startling abrupt +remark, "Look, Miss Howel-Jones, don't you think this has gone on long +enough?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV2" id="CHAPTER_XV2"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>THE CHARM ACKNOWLEDGED</h3> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"'Even he that flies shall follow for thy sake—<br /></span> +<span class="i0">Shall kiss that would not kiss thee' (yea, kiss me),<br /></span> +<span class="i0">'When thou wouldst not' (when I would not kiss thee!)"<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0"><span class="smcap">Swinburne.</span><br /></span> +</div></div> +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<p>Olwen's bright eyes opened in real astonishment. Here was a bewildering +sex!</p> + +<p>"<i>Long enough</i>," it said. "<i>Hasn't this been going on long +enough.</i>" ... When——well, whose was the fault that anything had been +<i>long</i>?</p> + +<p>Or did Captain Ross mean that? Or what did he mean?</p> + +<p>"I don't know what you mean," she confessed, standing there all at sea. +Then she put out a hand to the draperies of that door. Bewilderment gave +place for the moment to a stronger impulse; hospitality. The little +Welshwoman must feed her guest. "Do come into the dining-room," she +begged, "and have some tea first, anyhow——"</p> + +<p>But Captain Ross stood rock-like. He had seen that rookery of black +heads through the dining-room window.</p> + +<p>"Thanks; I had tea in the train," he said curtly.</p> + +<p>"I came to ask you something, and I'd like to know about it right now."</p> + +<p>"But——oh——very well," murmured Olwen.</p> + +<p>"It's this," said Captain Ross, peremptorily, "are you or are you not +engaged to that——to Ellerton?"</p> + +<p>Olwen had known her Chief sharp and abrupt before. For weeks she'd never +known him anything else. This was his sharpest yet. She was +intimidated.... Then suddenly that went, and she had all the boldness of +the kitten turning to face the big dog.</p> + +<p>"Engaged?" she repeated. "What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"What do I mean? Engaged to be married." Captain Ross explained. "May I +have a straight answer to that, please?"</p> + +<p>There was a pause. Perhaps Olwen was sorting her thoughts. She smiled, +at first uncertainly. Then, also uncertainly, she said, "But surely, +Captain Ross, you didn't come down from London specially to ask me +that?"</p> + +<p>With ominous patience Captain Ross nodded that sleek, black, Tom-cat +head of his, almost as if to some old enemy he had expected to see +cropping up at some time. "Why, of course, it's a lot to ask of a woman, +a plain answer to a plain question. Right away, that is. But perhaps in +haff a minute or so?" he suggested, adding, at once, "Are you engaged to +him or are you not? Yes or no?"</p> + +<p>Olwen, wondering at her own boldness, parried with, "If—if it <i>wasn't</i> +worth coming down specially for, h-have you the right to ask me?"</p> + +<p>"Say I came down specially, then," Captain Ross conceded reluctantly. +"Now are you going to tell me?"</p> + +<p>"Who said," asked Olwen, with a glance out of the window, "that there +was anything to tell?"</p> + +<p>"He's asked you to marry him, I know that," said Captain Ross with such +conviction that Olwen coloured a little with surprise. How did Captain +Ross know about that? It was true, of course.... But he couldn't know +quite <i>what</i> had happened. She almost laughed at the memory of Harold +Ellerton's face in the light of the torch.</p> + +<p>She hesitated....</p> + +<p>It doesn't always follow that because a man is obstinate he may not be +quick as well. It was very quickly that Captain Ross seized upon Olwen's +hesitation, declaring, "He asked you on the night of the raid."</p> + +<p>As quickly Olwen asked, "Did he <i>tell</i> you?"</p> + +<p>A pause. Then "There was no nid, Miss Howel-Jones. I thought, somehow, +that there'd be somebody else I'd have to be congrrrrratulating very +soon," said Captain Ross, with a sort of grim triumph in his tone.</p> + +<p>He straightened his back, giving that little forward shrug of an armless +shoulder that Olwen could never see unmoved. But her eyes were on the +window and on the glimpse of variegated Welsh landscape beyond.</p> + +<p>"Since that is so," concluded Captain Ross in his most final tone, "will +you allow me to offer my very best wishes to yourself and to Mr. +Ell——"</p> + +<p>"No! Please don't!" protested Olwen quickly.</p> + +<p>She felt that this misunderstanding had gone on long enough. Long +enough. She turned from the window and looked straight——not at Captain +Ross, that she couldn't do! but at a water-colour drawing of Carnarvon +Castle on the wall. She said, "You see, I am not engaged or anything to +Mr. Ellerton!"</p> + +<p>And even as she said it, she knew what a change her words had made.</p> + +<p>Without looking at him, she knew that Captain Ross's dark face had +lighted up like a lantern into which a candle is put. She knew what he +meant by that quick movement that he gave, as if rolling aside some +weight that he'd been carrying. She knew, for sure and certain, why he'd +come. Would he have cared about her being engaged to Mr. Ellerton if he +hadn't wanted her himself? Of course he did want her....</p> + +<p>Hadn't Golden said so? Wasn't that serene and lovely American always +right?</p> + +<p>Hadn't Madame Leroux thought so, too?</p> + +<p>And hadn't she, Olwen herself, always known it too, in the very depths +of her heart? Yes! Hadn't she always, always suspected his curt speech +and his off-hand manner and his judgment of women?</p> + +<p>Always!</p> + +<p>A great and glowing delight filled the girl. For if he wanted her——oh, +wasn't she his! Hadn't she been his all that time ago? All her denials +of him since had been fibbing to herself, they had been making the best +of things, they had been the hybernating sleep from which Love awakes as +a giant refreshed! It had all been camouflage, and now there was no more +need of it....</p> + +<p>But even with this sweet and thrilling knowledge warm at her heart, the +woman's Will-to-Prolong was strong within her, too.</p> + +<p>She was a human little person enough and she had her dignity, she +thought. Also she had to have her laugh—oh, quite a little one! over +this man.</p> + +<p>He said, "Then——" in a voice that there was no misunderstanding. His +surliness had vanished like a mist. His eyes shone. He said, happily, +"Then if you aren't engaged to him——!"</p> + +<p>He seemed to think that she could take for granted what must follow.</p> + +<p>But Olwen was mutinous. Had he come down here to propose? Let him do it! +she thought. She resolved that she would not be cheated out of a single +word of it. "Then——" in itself was not going to count as a proposal. +"Then——," indeed!</p> + +<p>"<i>Then——!</i>" Oh, dear no.</p> + +<p>Immediately Olwen put on that look which is scarcely a look, but is for +all that a defence past which no man's love-making may come. Immediately +Captain Ross's own look changed to one of dashed and angry surprise. He +had put out his arm. It dropped to his side while he watched this girl.</p> + +<p>She sat down, her little figure almost lost in the embrace of a chair +like a cretonne-covered bed. "Won't you sit down?" she said in the voice +of a hostess, pointing to an opposite chair.</p> + +<p>He did not move.</p> + +<p>She, feeling that never before had she been mistress of the situation, +and that perhaps never again would she have the opportunity, spoke first +with a composure which startled herself.</p> + +<p>"Why," she asked, "should it be supposed to have anything to do with you +whether or not I was going to marry Mr. Ellerton?"</p> + +<p>And now Captain Ross moved so abruptly against the mantelpiece that he +shifted one of the handleless china teacups out of its place and set the +prisms tinkling on the candlesticks.</p> + +<p>He opened his mouth, then shut it as if he'd thought better of the +answer which he meant to make to this chit. And then, in the tone of +stinging reproof which he reserved for some careless error in the +reading of some letter at the Honeycomb, he said, looking down upon her, +"I should have thought that a girl of your intelligence would have had +the sense to guess by this time what my object was in wanting to know +what your ideas were on the subject of getting married."</p> + +<p>Olwen, with a tiny turn of her head, remained silent, watching the +sunset, which could just be seen over the Rival mountains out of the +other window. This last remark of Captain Ross's she was not going to +take as a proposal either.</p> + +<p>From the lack of expression on her small face no man would have guessed +at the happy tumult in the heart under that ribbon-and-satin of a hidden +mascot that it rocked.</p> + +<p>"Well?" demanded Captain Ross with outward patience. "How much longer do +you intend to keep me dangling around and guessing?"</p> + +<p>"About what?"</p> + +<p>"About whether you're going to marry <i>me</i> or not," said Captain Ross, +dourly.</p> + +<p>Olwen stuffed a cushion behind her back and laughed quite naturally. +"But, Captain Ross! You said Marriage was a thing the sensible man +looked at from every angle and then decided to cut out. I never +imagined——"</p> + +<p>"Ah, cut <i>that</i> out," Captain Ross begged her, with the unsmiling mien +of one who sees himself about to be routed from his last defences. "You +knew all the time; you knew."</p> + +<p>"I didn't!"</p> + +<p>"What?" Captain Ross thrust out his jaw. "You ought to know me well +enough by this time. You've seen me plenty."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Olwen, with feeling, "and always being——"</p> + +<p>"Well?"</p> + +<p>"Perfectly horrid to me."</p> + +<p>"'Horrid,' you think?" barked Captain Ross. "In the office? You don't +understand that I'm as much on active service there behind a pen as I +was when I was able to be behind a gun? 'Horrid.' Because I didn't make +love to you there, and both of us on duty? If you imagine that I'm the +kind of man who'd do that ever, I am afraid you are under a serious +misapprehen——"</p> + +<p>"But you weren't always in the office," protested Olwen, quickly, "and +you were <i>always</i> horrid to me!"</p> + +<p>"When, please?"</p> + +<p>"Well, at lunch!"</p> + +<p>"Because I only had lunch with you once a week?"</p> + +<p>"You didn't 'have lunch <i>with</i> me,'" Olwen demurely reminded him. "You +happened to be lunching at the same place on Fridays."</p> + +<p>"That's hair-splitting," snapped Captain Ross.</p> + +<p>Exactly as if he never split hairs! As if he had not been splitting +hairs for the last six months. That is, the same hair. And with a +hatchet.</p> + +<p>He felt that he was burying that hatchet now——if she would only let +him.</p> + +<p>He declared, "You know I only went to that darned little eating-place to +see you," and it was with the manner of one who hands over his revolver +that he had said it. "I loathe fish."</p> + +<p>(But this was not a proposal!)</p> + +<p>Olwen, gazing not at him, but through the window at a cluster of yellow +crocuses on the lawn, exclaimed softly, "As if you didn't know that this +is the first hint you've ever given me of your wanting to see me at +all!"</p> + +<p>Captain Ross took a step back on the hearthrug. He gave a short and +angry laugh. "The fairrrrrst hint?" he cried, as if aghast.</p> + +<p>"Of course it is," declared Olwen.</p> + +<p>"It's nothing of the kind," doggedly from the man. "Plenty of other ... +things of that sort."</p> + +<p>They were both wrong, and they knew it.</p> + +<p>It is unlikely that Olwen had forgotten that Elysian evening on the +lagoon when Mr. Brown had pulled and she had sat in the stern-sheets +with Captain Ross. To have your hand held in the moonlight tenderly, and +for an hour on end, might fairly be called "a hint."</p> + +<p>So Captain Ross was right on that point.</p> + +<p>But he was wrong on every other.</p> + +<p>In the whole of their acquaintance that had been the one isolated +instance in which he had failed to be as forbidding as an Army order. +But at that moment (and indeed for several months afterwards) that +incident in the boat was not to be referred to by either of them. For +some obscure reason both of them felt more shy of that memory than any +of fresh experiences.</p> + +<p>Quickly Olwen got on with this war in the enemy's country. "Hints? I'm +sure I don't know what they could have been. That box of chocolates at +Les Pins. But I've had other boxes of chocolates given to me——"</p> + +<p>"I've no doubt of that" (with grimness).</p> + +<p>"So you can hardly call that a 'hint,' Captain Ross!"</p> + +<p>"Ah!" he said, impatiently. "It's not what one gives or says to a woman, +as you know. It's the <i>manner</i>——"</p> + +<p>There was real merriment in Olwen's laugh at this. "The manner! The +<i>manner</i>! Well, really! After the scolding and strafing and +disapproving! After the way you never came near me if we were out——"</p> + +<p>"I did. I did. I sat next you at that concert when Jack Awdas's girl was +singing."</p> + +<p>"For five minutes; yes, I remember," said Olwen, tilting her chin. "It +was the one and only time."</p> + +<p>"It was not, pardon me. I was coming to sit by you at Mrs. Cartwright's +party, and I wasn't allowed a look in——"</p> + +<p>"So you had a look <i>at</i>, most severely," Olwen countered. "At Mrs. +Cartwright's was when you were the horridest of all. You just sat +opposite to me and glared——"</p> + +<hr style="width: 45%;" /> + +<p>In the dining-room the party of Olwen's relations sat over their last +half-cups of tea in a simmer of delighted curiosity.</p> + +<p>This was shared, openly, by the hireling colt from the mountains as she +clattered in at intervals with hot water or more butter. Breathlessly +she asked at last, "Will I take a tray and some fresh tea into the +drawing-room for Miss S'Olwen and that t'officer?"</p> + +<p>"You will not," ordered her mistress. Even she had been young once.</p> + +<p>"——Yes! glared at me as if you hated the sight of me!" insisted Olwen.</p> + +<p>He said, "And weren't you flirrrting with those two fellows, and simply +out to make me wild?"</p> + +<p>"No," said the girl, quietly and sincerely.</p> + +<p>He could have clasped her for it. "Darling!" said his glance, but aloud +he only retorted, "Maybe you were not out to do it, but you certainly +pulled it off."</p> + +<p>"As for <i>you</i>," continued Olwen, "weren't you talking at me to Mrs. +Cartwright all the time at dinner?"</p> + +<p>"No!" he retorted, flagrantly.</p> + +<p>"You know you were! <i>All</i> about Woman being the Plaything of Man!"</p> + +<p>"Don't rub it in," he entreated, with another glance down at this +plaything so maddeningly near, yet not, perhaps, for him. Yes! If she +had had the boldness of the kitten who strikes with soft paws at the +Force which could annihilate her, he had the boding patience of that big +dog who waits, sitting up, with the lump of sugar on his nose.</p> + +<p>It was she who kept him so.... She was—oh, she was getting her own back +now!</p> + +<p>She broke off as if by the way, to ask him, "Let me see, what was the +first thing—almost the first I ever heard you say.... <i>What</i> sort of a +judge of women are you?"</p> + +<p>It is not true that the Scot is inevitably without a sense of humour. At +that moment Fergus Ross saw even the joke against himself, since he +thought it would appeal to her. He responded, "What was that about +women? Something I've hairred in a drim?"</p> + +<p>Relentless, Olwen repeated her demand. "What sort of a judge of women +are you?"</p> + +<p>He looked at her, threw up and shook his head with the action of a boxer +who drops his hands as well.</p> + +<p>"I guess I'm about as fine a judge of women as a baby is a judge of +mothers," he told her, frankly and ruefully. "One he knows; his own. And +herrrr he's got to have!"</p> + +<p>But she put it aside. <i>This</i> wasn't enough of a proposal! She harked +back to that party at Mrs. Cartwright's which had witnessed the last +losing fight of this prisoner of hers, taken now with horse, foot and +guns.</p> + +<p>"'What's Love? An amusement,'" she quoted, mischievously, his words upon +that occasion. "That's what you said, four—no! only three days ago," +she insisted, now feeling that she had got well into her stride and +could keep this well-merited strafing of the young man for an hour yet. +"Yes! Just to be horrid to <i>me</i>! How you talked! All about how bored a +man got 'when some woman started in to Love' him——"</p> + +<p>Here Olwen stopped, abruptly but too late. She coloured to the deep pink +of the little coral brooch at her throat. She saw what she'd said.</p> + +<p>So did he.</p> + +<p>Very quickly the soldier took advantage of this break in the line of her +defence.</p> + +<p>"Ah!" His voice lifted. "Well, what of that? What has <i>that</i> got to do +with my being 'horrid' to you? What——connection is there between you, +and any woman starting in to love <i>me</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>none</i>! I didn't mean <i>that</i>," Olwen assured him, laughing +flippantly, but dropping her eyes to gaze so hard at the carpet that +only the top of the head was to be seen. Glossily black and shapely +enough was the little head upon which Captain Ross had heaped, in his +mind, every anathema as well as every endearment that he knew, but he +was dashed if he was expected to read what she meant out of the mere top +of it. So——</p> + +<p>If, a month ago, some one had informed Captain Ross of the Honeycomb +that he would ever be reduced for any possible reason, to go down on his +knees on the floor at a woman's feet, he would not have considered the +idiotic prophecy was worth a laugh.</p> + +<p>But his number was up.</p> + +<p>Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet just +because there seemed no other way at that moment of getting a really +satisfactory glimpse of Olwen's face.</p> + +<p>"Now! my lady," he began, firmly.</p> + +<p>But just as he'd thought he meet her eyes squarely she turned her head +sidewards and directed that bright gaze of hers, as she'd often done +before, over his shoulder and away. She was ready to glance at the blaze +of the log fire, at the wall-paper, at the oval china frame all garlands +and Loves of the standing mirror, at the large portrait of Professor +Howel-Jones in his robes, at anything, yes! anything rather than at the +(late) finest judge of women in Europe, at her feet. It was too much.</p> + +<p>The pent-up, exasperated longing of months broke out in six words.</p> + +<p>"Look at me, you little demon! <i>look</i> at me——"</p> + +<p>But even now she did not look; how could she, when she had shut her eyes +before the change that had come into his own?</p> + +<p>He caught her to him. With his one arm slung about her, he put a +scorching kiss upon her throat, under her ear. Then he took her chin in +his hand and turned her face round; he kissed the childishly red mouth +until little Olwen, all shy and aflame, felt that the shape of his own +would be moulded upon her lips.</p> + +<p>For all his theorizings, his protestations, his boastings about Love, he +was yet a lover ... or perhaps it would be truer to say a lover at last.</p> + +<p>As for her.... The whole of her girl's nature seemed to stretch out +gleeful hands to the gift that he made to her—of herself. Till now she +had resembled—what? The sea-anemone that for weary hours of low-tide +has waited self-contained and folded into itself upon its rock, an inert +lump.... At last the warm waves rise, and lo! the rosy fingers spread to +welcome its own element have turned it to a lovely thing, a star-shaped +flower of flesh.</p> + +<p>Into her sigh of delight he heard her murmur, "No! I <i>mustn't</i>——"</p> + +<p>"Mustn't what?" muttered the strange voice of him who was no longer the +Captain Ross of this story, but the Fergus of their love-tale that was +beginning.</p> + +<p>And in Love, after all, all's well that begins well. (Even though there +was no real "proposal" after all.)</p> + +<p>He coaxed, "Mustn't what, Honey?"</p> + +<p>"Mustn't like you any <i>more</i>, or you won't like me as <i>much</i>!"</p> + +<p>It was Woman's dearly-bought wisdom——but he laughed at it until his +teeth gleamed across his vivid face.</p> + +<p>She? Do anything he would not like? Even if she loved him and showed +it, even that could not cool this man off, now he knew. The chit had got +him going sure enough. Whatever she did or said only added to her +attraction, to her long-contested, her triumphant, her Disturbing +Charm!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="POSTSCRIPT" id="POSTSCRIPT"></a>POSTSCRIPT</h2> + +<h3>THE CHARM CONFESSED</h3> + + +<p>With regard to the three words with which the last chapter closed:</p> + +<p>The Disturbing Charm....</p> + +<p>What was its story, after all, apart from the tangled stories of those +people into whose lives it twined its thread of rose colour?</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was all summed up in a letter that came, one February morning +of Nineteen-Eighteen, to Professor Howel-Jones.</p> + +<p>The old botanist was sitting in his study. It was a wide, cleared room +with a table as chaotic as that had been at Les Pins, set, as at Les +Pins, before a window; but the view here was not of a lagoon with a belt +of dunes and a lighthouse. It showed the roofs of Liverpool.</p> + +<p>Professor Howel-Jones had just returned, after various wanderings, to +find a big mail awaiting him. He sighed, as he opened the letters, for +his little niece and secretary. (Olwen had not been replaced.)</p> + +<p>Then he knit his brows over the letter in his hand.</p> + +<p>It said:</p> + +<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>,</p> + +<p>"The writer of this letter has reproached himself more than +once over the rather stupid practical joke that he elected to +play upon a man of your attainments by sending to you what was +alleged to be the discovery of a love-germ, or Disturbing +Charm——"</p> + +<p>"Dear me! What and when was that?" pondered the Professor. "Ah, +yes. I have it. Some lunatic that wrote to me in France. +Something about '<i>half the trouble in the world arising from +people falling in Love—with the wrong people</i>.' Yes, yes. And +what was this 'Charm' supposed to do?... Ah, it says now that +the Charm was spoof...." He went on reading the letter; the +belated apology of some pupil at some University where he had +once lectured....</p> + +<p>He took it in, half thinking of the next letter as he read....</p> + +<p>Fern seed, it appeared, was all that the "magic" packet had +contained....</p> + +<p>The Professor scarcely remembered that there had been a packet! +What had he done with it now, and with the letter? Burnt them, +he thought, before that little Olwen got hold of that +nonsense....</p> + +<p>It would have been just like a very young, imaginative girl +like that to have believed in it!</p> + +<p>Well, this last letter would have to shatter that belief! +thought her Uncle, as he crumpled the practical joker's apology +into a ball and tossed it on to the fire.</p></blockquote> + +<p>At the moment when her Uncle's thoughts were turning to her, his niece, +young Mrs. Ross, was watching rather a pretty scene.</p> + +<p>She stood at the window of her husband's rooms in Victoria Street, his +old bachelor rooms into which she had brought the new element of her +girlish belongings, her love, herself....</p> + +<p>Behind her on the table, above a pile of his books on "Reconstruction," +there trailed a dainty litter of her sewing: the lacy whiteness of a +garment that was being reconstructed, feminine-fashion, into some other +garment.</p> + +<p>Beside her stood another war-bride of but a few more weeks' standing, +young Mrs. Awdas.</p> + +<p>Both of them were looking down into the street, where a crowd lined the +pavement to right and left, waiting, watching to see a company of +American soldiers march past on their way to Victoria Station.</p> + +<p>Ah! Here it was, the stream of clean khaki cleaving the motley of the +crowd. Here they came, the boys, tall, fit, and splendid, drilled to the +minute; the pick and cream of the new belligerent country.... Here they +came, spare and useful looking and ah, how faultless in kit and +accoutrements, from straight-brimmed hats to spotlessly-polished boots. +And as they swung past with the unison of a machine in which every part +is perfect, there hove into sight, straggling, slouching towards them +out of the station, a knot of British just back from the firing line. An +officer walked along beside the men.</p> + +<p>Over these there brooded the spectre of three years and more of War. +Their eyes were heavy with lack of sleep as they lurched heavily along, +blinking around them at London once again; they were dirty and loaded +down with gear, they were strung about with mess-tins and water-bottles +and boots and brown-paper parcels and battered shrapnel helmets. One or +two of them had Hun helmets tied to their knapsacks. They wore greasy +remnants of caps, disreputable goatskin coats. All over them was thickly +caked the foul mud of the trenches.</p> + +<p>What a contrast....</p> + +<p>The mob of straggling scarecrows turned to give a friendly stare, a +"Cheerio" to their smart American comrades as they swung past in their +immaculate fours.</p> + +<p>"See you in ten days!" shouted a Tommy.</p> + +<p>Olwen Ross, up at the window, thrust out her little black head to watch +the Americans.</p> + +<p>"Oh, they are magnificent," she breathed excitedly. "Aren't you proud of +them, Golden?"</p> + +<p>"Am I <i>proud</i> of them!" laughed her friend.</p> + +<p>But while the Welsh girl was all eyes for these new troops, the American +girl's wide gaze turned upon the others with whom they must soon be +standing shoulder to shoulder; the war-worn soldiers, muddy, tattered, +scarred, exhausted, cheery still....</p> + +<p>"<i>They</i> are magnificent, Olwen, I guess," said she.</p> + +<p>And her opinion seemed to be shared by a countryman. A quick and +graceful thought struck the officer in charge of those Americans.</p> + +<p>Suddenly and clearly, above the buzz of the street, the rhythmic tramp +of feet, there snapped out his order:</p> + +<p>"Company——eyes——<span class="smcap">RIGHT</span>!"</p> + +<p>Every head under the straight-brimmed hat turned sharply towards those +heroic scallywags their allies.</p> + +<p>Perhaps that young American company officer would have explained, +diplomatically, that the word of command had been for his men to give +the Eyes Right to that British subaltern who was passing with the +leave-men; a white-faced, hollow-eyed stripling with two gold stripes on +his cuff and the black "flash" of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers fluttering +at his nape. But if it were ostensibly for him, it was also for his men. +The new Allies, equipped for Victory, saluted the old, all but broken, +but carrying on....</p> + +<p>And the bright eyes of the two girls at the windows above shone +suddenly, mistily brighter at the sight.</p> + +<p>As they watched the two bodies of men disappear——those marching +towards Victoria and the boat-train, these straggling towards a +soldiers' hostel in Buckingham Palace Road, Golden said softly, "My +people, Olwen, honouring yours."</p> + +<p>Olwen said, "Yes; but mine are yours now, and yours are mine."</p> + +<p>She turned from the window and into the little sitting-room with her +guest's arm in hers.</p> + +<p>"What's the time?" asked young Mrs. Awdas. "I'm due to sing at the +hospital at four. We'll have to hurry——"</p> + +<p>She lifted, on Olwen's blouse, the tiny pin-on watch which was one of +her friend's wedding presents. Then she exclaimed, "What have you got +tied around here?"</p> + +<p>Golden did not recognize any similarity between this sachet of +pink-and-mauve and the sun-faded ribbon trifle she had picked up on +Biscay beach. But Olwen smiled as she tucked into the place the mascot +that she wore and always would wear, even had she read that letter which +her Uncle held would shatter any belief in that "magic." The old +scientist summed her up as faultily as if he, too, had set out to be the +finest judge, etc....</p> + +<p>"Golden," she said, "if I tell you about this, will you promise not to +laugh?"</p> + +<p>And as they walked along to the hospital, she gave to her friend the +outlines of the story which you have just read ... so far as she knew +them herself.</p> + +<p>Golden, listening, smiled above her leopard-skins. "Do you think all +these things would not have happened just as they did happen without the +wearing of a Charm?"</p> + +<p>Olwen, with happy dreams in her eyes, did not reply.</p> + +<p>After a pause her friend went on, softly, "When I look at you," she +said, "and when I look at your Fergus, and at my Jack, and at any one +else who is lovely and loving ... why, of course I believe there's a +Charm really, though it just can't be anything you could make up out of +a pinch of powder and a bit of ribbon. A Charm? Why, the world's full of +it! Didn't it send me over the sea to my Bird-boy? Didn't it bring your +men from Canada and France to you? Didn't it let us all meet in a +country that was sweet and friendly, though none of ours? Didn't it +work——why, all the time?"</p> + +<p>"Sometimes——Often—Half the time," suggested Olwen, "it is supposed to +make such mistakes. It takes the wrong people...."</p> + +<p>"We hear of those, just because they're the exceptions, I guess," smiled +her buoyant friend. "We aren't so talked about, we with the happy love +stories, that the Charm has worked!... Olwen, it's making stories now +for each of those splendid boys we saw go marching by, and for each of +the pretty girls who wishes them Luck. It never stops!... But you can't +see it. You can't hold it. You can only feel it is——"</p> + +<p>"But then what is it?" Olwen asked. "What is it in itself?"</p> + +<p>"Who knows?" Golden replied. "Does it matter if we <i>never</i> know?"</p> + + +<h3>THE END</h3> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Disturbing Charm, by Berta Ruck + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISTURBING CHARM *** + +***** This file should be named 36442-h.htm or 36442-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/4/4/36442/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Disturbing Charm + +Author: Berta Ruck + +Illustrator: Edward C. Caswell + +Release Date: June 16, 2011 [EBook #36442] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISTURBING CHARM *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE DISTURBING CHARM + + BY BERTA RUCK + +Author of "In Another Girl's Shoes," "The Three of Hearts," "The Years +for Rachel," etc. + + + ILLUSTRATED BY + EDWARD C. CASWELL + + [Illustration] + + NEW YORK + DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY + 1919 + + COPYRIGHT, 1919 + BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, INC. + + VAIL-BALLOU COMPANY + BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK + + + TO + THE EVER GAY + AND GALLANT MEMORY + OF + WARREN FENN-SMITH + SECOND LIEUTENANT ROYAL FLYING CORPS + SHOT DOWN WITH HIS OBSERVER IN ACTION + JANUARY 18, 1918, AGED 18 + + "They carry back bright to the Coiner the mintage of man, + The lads who will die in their glory and never be old" + + Housman + + + + +[Illustration: _Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's +feet._] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART I + +I THE COMING OF THE CHARM + +II THE ACCEPTING OF THE CHARM + +III THE LAUNCHING OF THE CHARM + +IV THE CHARM BEGINS TO WORK + +V FURTHER PLANS FOR THE CHARM + +VI THE CLUTCHING OF THE CHARM + +VII THE SPREADING OF THE CHARM + +VIII THE FIRST ENGAGEMENT BY THE CHARM + +IX UNFORESEEN EFFECT OF THE CHARM + +X DIVAGATIONS OF THE CHARM + +XI THE FEASTING OF THE CHARM + +XII MOONLIGHT AND THE CHARM + +XIII WILD-FIRE AND THE CHARM + +XIV CLOUDS UPON THE CHARM + +XV THE LOSING OF THE CHARM + +XVI THE COUNTER-CHARM + +XVII DROP-SCENE + + +PART II + +I THE CHARM NEGLECTED + +II THE LAST ALLIES + +III RECOVERY OF THE CHARM + +IV THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER + +V THE BEST GIRL-FRIEND + +VI THE CHARM REMEMBERED + +VII PETROL AND THE CHARM + +VIII RATIONS AND THE CHARM + +IX CHAMPAGNE AND THE CHARM + +X HER BRIDAL NIGHT + +XI HIS BRIDAL NIGHT + +XII SHRAPNEL AND THE CHARM + +XIII VIGIL + +XIV HOME AND THE CHARM + +XV THE CHARM ACKNOWLEDGED + +POSTSCRIPT. THE CHARM CONFESSED + + + + +ILLUSTRATIONS + + +Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet + +"It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I was crashing--" + +She stood there as if frozen and said "Away from here!" and in her heart +exclaimed, "Away from him!" + +And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the Sachet of the +Disturbing Charm + + + + +PART I + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE COMING OF THE CHARM + + "Yet I am bewitched with the rogue's company; if the rascal had + not given me medicines to make me love him, I'll be hanged; it + could not be else; I have drunk medicines." + + Shakespeare. + + +The letter said: + + "_... And this discovery, sent herewith, will mark an Epoch in + the affairs of the world!_ + + "_Half the trouble in that world arises from the fact that + human beings are continually falling in Love_ ... with the + wrong people. _Sir, have you ever wondered why this should + be?_" + +The old Professor of Botany stood looking at this mysterious typewritten +letter, addressed to him, with the rest of his large mail, at the hotel +in Western France where he was staying in the fourth autumn of the War +with his young niece and secretary. He smiled as he came to the last +words. "Had he ever wondered!" How many nights of his youth had been +wasted in stormily "wondering----?" Strangers who write to celebrities +do stumble on intimate matters sometimes. + +He read on: + + "_Why should one girl set her affections upon the man who of + all others will make her the worst possible husband? All her + friends foresee, and warn her. She herself realizes it vaguely. + But to her own destruction she loves him. What has caused this + catastrophe? Some small and secret Force; one microbe can + achieve a pestilence._" + +"Yes, indeed," murmured Professor Howel-Jones, nodding his massive old +white head. He had been on the point of tossing the letter into the +waste-paper basket, but something made him read on. + + "_Another young man, why must he desire the one pretty woman + who can never give him happiness? She is 'pure as ice, chaste + as snow' ... dull as ditch-water; he, full of fire and dreams. + He swears he'll teach her to respond to Passion; marries her. + Another tragedy!_" + +How like himself again, the Professor mused, going back to the days when +he had worn his Rugby International cap with more pride than he now wore +his foreign degrees. That memory set him staring out of the big +balconied window of his room, over the wide French lagoon, past the +barrier of sandhills with their pointing phare, to where, miles away, +the irregular white line of the Atlantic rollers crashed and spouted on +the reefs. They had been crashing out those thunderous questions to the +sands on his football days, they would be tossing their appeals to the +sky long after his learning and his Nobel Prize were forgotten. Why, +then, should an anonymous correspondent remind him of old unrest? + +For all that, he went on reading: + + "_Each of us knows a list of these stories. How avert them? By + seeking out and planting only in the right soil the root of + good or evil, the Love-germ. All through the ages Man has + recognized its existence; the ancients with their philtres and + amulets. Shakespeare embodies it in an herb. We moderns accept + it as an enigma; have you never heard it said of a woman_, 'She + is not actually pretty, but she has the Disturbing Charm, + whatever it is'?" + +"The Disturbing Charm!" ... Ah, he knew it! _She_ had possessed it, the +girl he had never married, the girl who had passed him over for his +brother the sea-captain, and who had become the mother of Olwen, his +niece. Olwen would be coming in a few minutes to straighten and sort all +those drifts of paper on the roomy work-table which no hand but hers, in +the whole of the hotel, was allowed to touch. He thought, half-amusedly: +"Better not let that little Olwen get hold of this letter." + +The letter ended: + + "_Sir, you shall not be worried with technicalities. Believe + only this, that the life study of the writer of this letter has + at last been crowned with success. In the small packet enclosed + there is sealed up the result of years of Research, with + directions for its use. The inventor lacks courage for + experimenting. But you, learned Sir, you, the gifted author of + 'The Loves of the Ferns,' will not shrink from responsibility + in the cause of Science._ + + "_Should you wish to procure more of the invention, there is + enclosed the address of a box at a newspaper office where you + may apply._ + + "_With all good wishes from_ + + "_Your obedient servant_, + + "_The Inventor._" + +A deep genial laugh broke from the old man's wide chest. + +He threw the letter and its enclosure on to the table, on the top of his +notes for the chapter on "Edible Fungi." + +"Mad--sentimental mad!" he commented. "Most lunatics think themselves +inventors, that's why most inventors are considered lunatics." He drew +up a chair and began making hay of the papers before him, in search of +the other file of notes. + +The large room which the Professor had had cleared of the bed and most +of the other furniture was full of air and sunshine and of that polished +cleanliness which few English rooms achieve. White walls and parquet +floor shone like mirrors, mirrors like diamonds; the glass of the open +windows was clear as the morning air that lay between the hotel and the +pine-forest on the one side, the lagoon on the other. The resinous sigh +of the pines mingled with the warm, lung-lifting breath of the sea. It +was a glorious morning--too glorious for work indoors.... + +Professor Howel-Jones looked hard at his notes, but for once he scarcely +saw them. He knew that the letter he had just read was the work of a +sentimental lunatic, but for all that it had set a string vibrating. As +the old man sat there, his brown eyes abstracted under the thatch of +hair as white as seeding clematis, he looked like some clean-shaven +modern Druid seeing visions. He did, at that moment, see a vision. + + * * * * * + +He saw an endless procession of those people who have loved or married +(or both) the wrong person. + +He saw the lads who have chosen out of their class; barmaids, "bits of +fluff." + +He saw the girls who have married out of their generation. + +He saw the flirts, who wear an attachment as they wear a hat, tied for +life to the affection that is true as steel. (Dreadful for both of +them!) + +Also the young men who treat Love as a cross between a meal and a +music-hall joke, plighted to the shy idealists. + +He saw the Bohemian married to the curate. + +Likewise the attractive young rake, fettered to the frump. + +He saw the women born for motherhood, left lonely spinsters for want of +charm to attract. + +He saw the mothers who sighed for freedom, resenting the nursery. + +He saw the Anything, wedded to the Anything _But_. + +Yes; he saw for that moment nothing but the wholesale gigantic Blunder +of the mis-mating of the world. + + * * * * * + +No doubt it was all crystallized for him in one tender image; Olwen's +dead mother, the girl he should have married. He sighed and smiled. + +"Pity there's no putting things right, as that lunatic suggests," he +thought. "There would be an invention worth boasting about! Wireless +wouldn't be in it, or X-rays. Pity it isn't all true...." + +A tap at the door interrupted his musings. The softest of girl's voices +asked, "Are you ready for me, Uncle?" + +"Yes!" he called out, jerking himself back into the world of realities. +"Come in, Olwen." + +Olwen Howel-Jones came in. + +A small, but daintily made girl of nineteen. Just a handful of softness +in a skimpy one-piece frock. A pale, three-cornered morsel of a face set +off by sleek hair as black as her little French boots. Large eyes that +seemed sometimes brown, sometimes grey; a mouth tremulous, but vivid as +a red carnation--such was Olwen. She brought a ripple of Youth into that +bare temple of Science that was her uncle's study. Something else she +brought--a breath of tension, of impatience. A man would have passed it +over; not so a woman. Already one woman in the hotel had said to +herself, "I wonder who it is that child's so desperately in love with?" + +Had she been in the room at the moment, that woman might have seen the +answer to her question flame suddenly into the young girl's face as she +stepped up to the table by the window. Under the balcony there was a +sound of footsteps. Olwen pushed aside a great jar full of arbutus that +stood at the further edge of the table. + +"That's in your light, Uncle," she said. + +The Professor's back was to her as the figures passed quickly out from +below the balcony. He caught a glimpse of the two wounded British +officers swinging off towards the _plage_. He caught the gleam of +scarlet on khaki; heard a snatch of the rather husky boyish laughter of +one of them; a scrap talk of the other. In a resonant voice with that +particularly dominant form of accent, Scots with a dash of Canadian, +there floated up through the clear morning air this somewhat arrested +announcement: + + "I'm the finest judge of women in Europe." + +This the Professor caught, vaguely. What he did not catch was the +sudden, still alertness into which there seemed to spring the whole body +of the girl behind him. She was "aware" from head to foot; her white +throat seemed to stretch, her whole being to strain; listening. The +footsteps passed, the husky charming laugh of the one, the loud +confident voice of the other.... Life relaxed again in Olwen; +mechanically her hands began sorting papers. No; the Professor had not +noticed, her male relatives being avowedly the worst observers of a +girl's psychology ... even had he seen, he probably would not have +guessed which of the two young men who had gone by was responsible for +that sudden transitory illumination of his niece's face; whether it was +the black-eyed Staff Captain who had lost an arm, or the blonde R.F.C. +pilot who had been shot down last April.... Well, they'd both gone now; +nothing more of them to be seen until the _dejeuner_.... + +Olwen dragged her eyes back to the disorder of the writing-table; she +tossed up her head with a rather forced sprightliness, and laughed. + +"_What_ a mess! Worse than ever, and I'd put everything so beautifully +tidy last night! You _are_ dreadful!" + +"Never mind, Olwen _fach_," he said, with a hand on her shoulder. "There +won't be much work done this morning. I'm going into the woods. Just +hand me my specimen-case ... ah, here. And file the June numbers of that +Danish magazine--where on earth did I put 'em?--ah, there. Then there +are a couple of letters to copy into the book, and that's all. You can +come on and find me; I shall be where we went yesterday with Mrs. +Cartwright and that young What's-his-name, the flying officer." + +He set aside the two letters to be copied, planting upon them, as a +paper weight, one of the enormous pine-cones that he had picked up in +the forest. Then he slung on his specimen-case, took up his indented +grey hat, smiled and nodded to the girlish figure at the table, and went +out. + +Olwen, left alone, stretched her arms over her head. "_Oh!_" she sighed, +desperately. She moved the jar of arbutus into place again; picked out a +spray, dark-leafed, berried with scarlet and orange, tried it against +the dull serge of her frock. Then she tilted her chair back so that she +could just see herself in one of the gilt-framed mirrors. It showed her +a forlorn little face. + +"He'd never _look_ at me, I know," she told herself. + +She thrust the spray of arbutus back into water and turned to her work +listlessly enough. + + * * * * * + +Half an hour later the listlessness had finished. + +A miracle had begun to work! + +For the Professor's niece and secretary was pouring breathlessly over a +letter that she had found on the table under a file of notes for J. +Howel-Jones's great work on Agarics. + +With shining credulous eyes she turned from that typewritten letter to +the little packet that had been enclosed in it. Then she turned to the +letter again. She read: + + "_Half the trouble in the world arises from the fact that + human beings are continually falling in love_ ... with the + wrong people." + +She read the astonishing suggestion: + + "_Each of us knows a list of these stories. How avert them? By + seeking out and planting only in the right soil the root of + good or evil, the Love-germ._" + +She read further, this profoundly hopeful comment: + + "_Have you never heard it said of a woman_, 'She is not pretty, + but she has the disturbing charm, whatever it is'?" + +Finally she read this, the sentence that set her trembling: + + "_In the small packet enclosed there is sealed up the result of + years of Research, with directions for its use._" + +It lay in her hand, the packet which she had taken up as gingerly as if +it had been turpinite, or something else capable of blowing her out +through the window and past the long wooden pier, across the sparkling +_Baissin_, over the sandhills with their lighthouse and into the Bay of +Biscay where those rollers foamed and roared.... + +The old Scientist had said "Madness!" This girl longed to accept every +word of it; partly, perhaps, because every loving woman secretly +believes there must be some Power of this kind, could she but find +it--the power to compel the love she covets. Here it was. + +Hastily she broke the wrapping; it disclosed an inner packet and a +paper. In small characters there was written on the paper: + + DIRECTIONS FOR USE. + + "This charm must be worn, _hidden_, about the person of him or + her who wishes to test its efficacy. + + "It may be hidden about the dress or person of someone who does + not know of its properties; its power will work, nevertheless. + + "A small portion of the charm will suffice. + + "Constant use does not wear away its power." + +Olwen, bending closely over the inner packet, sniffed at the pleasant +musky scent that rose from it. + +"_Oh!..._" she breathed.... Were those steps outside the passage?... She +sprang up.... Swiftly, almost guiltily, she dragged down the low collar +of her frock; she thrust the packet and paper into her bosom. They +crackled against the soft mauve ribbons of her underbodice. + +"Supposing I'd _got_ it!" she thought, and her whole heart lifted. She +pressed her hands to her breast. + +Supposing that under her own small and fevered hands (dimpled, faintly +stained from the carbon of her typewriter) she held it, that recipe for +setting right the Blunder of the world! Ah, if she'd got hold of it +really, the Love-germ, the microbe of mischief and delight! + +The Disturbing Charm itself! + +_Then_ what would come of it? + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE ACCEPTING OF THE CHARM + + "What I can do, can do no hurt to try." + + Shakespeare. + + +That day, since the Professor chose (as he often did) to give lunch a +miss while he wandered and pottered about in the Forest, he sent his +niece into _dejeuner_ alone. Her he never allowed to miss a meal; he +held that young people must eat plenty and often. + +Bareheaded, with a scarlet knitted coat over her frock, the girl +threaded her way through the little round iron-legged tables and past +the tubs of flowering cactus outside the piazza of the hotel. She pushed +open a window and entered the big light _salle_. All one wall of it +seemed to be windows from ceiling to floor, giving on to the _plage_ and +to that stretch of lagoon, and sandhills, pointed by that lighthouse. +The other high walls were panelled with mirrors that reflected a dozen +times the hanging chandeliers, the rococo gilded curves of carving, the +moving heads of the visitors already at the tables. + +The reflections of little Olwen's own head and shoulders, black-and-red +like a lady-bird, appeared repeated in the picture; she did not see it. + +It was another image that she sought.... + +Her bright glance, searching the thronged and buzzing place, fell on two +empty chairs at the long table that ran down the middle of the room. + +Ah! "They" weren't in for lunch, then? Nothing to be seen of "Them" +until the _diner_, perhaps. With a sigh of resignation Olwen Howel-Jones +turned to the table for two near the end window where she was accustomed +to sit with her Uncle. + +But before she sat down, the tall Englishwoman in brown, who was sitting +at the little table next to hers, caught the girl's eyes, smiled, +nodded, and with a swift leaning forward of a supple body that made her +look like the figurehead of a vessel, accosted her in a deep, rather +attractive voice. + +"I say! Are you alone today? So am I. Have your lunch at my table, won't +you?" + +"Oh! thank you, Mrs. Cartwright; I'd like to," said the girl, pleased. +She took the chair opposite. + +Mrs. Cartwright, who had been at the hotel for some days before the +Howel-Joneses had arrived, was the widow of an Indian Army officer, the +mother of two boys now at school in England, and a journalist under +several names. + +This was why, when she said she was as hungry as a hunter because she +had been working like a nigger all the morning, Olwen asked her, with a +shy smile, "Were you being 'Miss Claudia Crane' or the 'Wanderer through +Western France'?" + +"For a change, neither," returned Mrs. Cartwright cheerfully over the +omelette which the frail little Italian waiter had brought to her. "I +actually went back to being 'Domestica' and I turned out two thousand +words of wisdom on ration-recipes--just for the pleasure of charging +them eight times what my price used to be when I navvied for that paper +regularly. What have you been doing--taking down sheaves of notes from +that wonderful-looking old Welsh Nationalist, your uncle?" + +The Professor's niece, as she answered that she had done nothing but +tidy up and answer letters, was still absorbed by the thought of that +epoch-making letter that she had read before she had even seen that it +had not been left there for her to copy with the others. Her whole being +was so taken up by the memory of what the letter had claimed for the +powers of that hidden packet (now drawing warmth from the softness of +her breast where it lay) that she only had half an ear for the talk of +the woman opposite to her. + +The Disturbing Charm.... Could it be anything but a fairy-tale? How many +of that heterogeneous collection of people gathered there in that very +dining-room--the English visitors, the little knot of uniforms on leave, +the French family parties--how many of them would laugh incredulously if +they were told what she, the celebrity's niece, was treasuring at that +moment inside the bosom of her frock? + +There she sat, demurely eating a plateful of those Edible Fungi of whose +forest lives her Uncle made such a study. Yes, she sat hiding something +that might change not only the current of her life, but of their lives +as well. Perhaps it was true. What a thought! + + * * * * * + +"Some new people here today," chatted Mrs. Cartwright, who never seemed +to look at anyone or anything in a room (Olwen had noticed that) but +whom few details escaped; just as her eyes did not seem to be glancing +about, so her lips hardly moved; but they had the habit of letting fall +comment after comment, softly, casually, on every one of those details +that the eyes above had noticed. "What a typical Hotel Spinster that is +in the corner there! You can just see her over that young French +soldier's head when he ducks to tuck in his napkin; yes, that survival +in the expensive tweeds and the hair-net. Stays so old-fashioned that +when she bends she comes away from the top of them as if it were over +the rim of a vase into which she's been poured. How fatal it is to allow +oneself to crystallize into the mode of the year when one was +twenty-one! (But you, lucky child, don't even know what that mode is +going to be.) English? Yes, of course. No wonder Prevost calls England +'that positive reservoir of old maids'!" + +"Poor thing!" murmured Olwen, glancing at the new-comer, and of whom she +now caught a clearer glimpse. She saw a woman of perhaps thirty-four or +five, with uninteresting brown hair, elaborately dressed, an equally +uninteresting brown face with a large nose and timid eyes that wandered +from face to face. + +Olwen thought, "No; I can't imagine anybody liking her--in _that_ way!" +Then she thought with a little start, "But if it were true--if all women +were allowed even a tiny grain of that Charm, there would be no such +thing as an 'Hotel Spinster.' No old maids in the world! How lovely!" + +"Enter several characters from a French novel by Abel Hermant," pursued +Mrs. Cartwright, as the door of the _salle_ nearest to their table swung +open and admitted two ladies in deepest mourning, an old gentleman with +a red speck in his button-hole, and a boy of four. "The son of those old +people has just 'fallen on the field of honour'; the lovely young +Madonna is his widow; that's his little boy. What a splendid child!" + +The little French boy that followed his grown-ups so sedately down the +room was as dark as a damson and clad in a white tunic that showed his +dimpled arms and his strong brown legs. He left a wake of smiles. The +Hotel Spinster put out a finger and touched him as he went by. + +"There. I knew she'd do that," commented Mrs. Cartwright; that deep soft +voice of hers running out in the sort of monologue that scarcely moved +her lips. "That woman's fonder of children than anyone here, and a +better hand with them, I bet. Did you see the little boy smile back at +her? Only at _her_. Yet Fate has decreed that she's never to have a +chick or child (though what point 'a chick' would have I never could +fathom). Private means. Stodgy connections in Debrett. Left with a house +of her own, probably, crammed with mahogany and Coalport--and no man's +ever looked at her in her life." + +"Dreadful!" murmured little Olwen; and her hand went up involuntarily to +her breast. + +(If that letter was true, what a gift she had it in her power to bestow +upon that woman; upon any woman!) + +"The latest in British officers, I see," ran on Mrs. Cartwright, +pursuing the nonchalant soft stream of comment as she pursued her lunch. +"Staying here on his pay. Giving as much for one _dejeuner_ here as +would keep him for half a week at some little pension in the town, where +he ought to be. _Very_ new; _very_ temporary commission. He had a talk +with me in the lounge just now. A nice frank little Cockney. Told me he +was a shop-assistant before he joined. '_And the next, Madame?_' Poor +lad! The next is that he's learned what it is to be considered IT, and +what the insides of the best hotels are like, and the chief seats at +revues. He's learned Bubbly-tastes on Beer-pay. Overdrawn everywhere. +What _will_ he go back to in civil life, if he goes back? Another +tragedy of the war. Dozens of them!... Pleasant little pink face, +too.... His only hope would be to get some profiteer's heiress to marry +him----" + +"Yes, he might do that," agreed little Olwen, again conscious of that +packet at her breast. She looked down the tables at the rosy, +undistinguished young face of the Second Lieutenant of whom Mrs. +Cartwright had been murmuring. One of the waiters was deferentially +endeavouring to understand this British officer's French. The boy looked +self-conscious; at sea. Even a man might be glad enough of some magic +that could bring him Love and Fortune, thought Olwen. Some men were +without charm, just as some other men--ah, yes!--were all Charm. + +Here Mrs. Cartwright, still seeming to look another way, followed the +young girl's glance as it turned again to the objective that it first +had sought--to the two empty places at the long table. + +"Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas have gone into Bordeaux for the day," +commented Mrs. Cartwright. "I hope they'll bring me back the +fountain-pen ink and the 'Vie Parisienne,' and the brown darning silk +that I commissioned them to get----" and here, quickly, she turned away +as if to gaze out of the window at the little motor-boat that was making +its way up the lagoon, where the tide was high, to the wooden pier. +Actually, her movement was to avoid seeming to stare at the face of the +girl before her, where Consciousness had again flamed out into a live +and lovely red. + +"So _that's_ it ..." she thought. + +"I _wish_ I didn't blush!" Olwen Howel-Jones was scolding herself +angrily. "I _am_ a little idiot to blush at the sound of the man's name! +Nobody in the whole world thinks of doing such a thing nowadays; it's +like wearing your hat on the back of your head! Yet here I am, going on +like this as if it were _Eighteen_ Seventeen! I _do_ wish to goodness I +had another sort of skin. Mrs. Cartwright might easily have +_thought_----!" + +But Mrs. Cartwright was talking pleasantly on about the journey to +Bordeaux; about the forest of Les Pins, the air of it.... + +"Such a becoming place, too," she laughed. "Makes you feel well; look +well. May I make a personal remark, Miss Howel-Jones? You yourself are +getting twice as pretty as when you came here." + +"Oh, no," protested the enraptured girl. "No one could--no one has ever +called me pretty!" + +"No? But they will. Perhaps you are only just growing up to it," said +Mrs. Cartwright with a very kind glance into the face opposite to her. +"So many people make a virtue of blurting out unpleasant truths; why +shouldn't one tell the truths that aren't unpleasant? Today (I saw it +when you came in) you are quite lovely. You look as if a charm had +touched you." + +Little Olwen's whole heart went suddenly out in emotion and gratitude +towards the woman who had said this thing. + +Only the very young can realize how much they mean--the very first +compliments to the very young girl! Especially to the very young girl in +Love; she who feels the special need of beauty, the special need of +encouragement to think herself beautiful. + +And now here was a clever woman (who knew what men admired, and who had +seen so many lovely people) pronouncing her, Olwen, to be "quite +lovely." + +Oh, Event! + + * * * * * + +As she went up after luncheon to her room--the replica of her Uncle's +study, with its parquet floor and high balconied window--she felt there +was nothing she could not have done for this Mrs. Cartwright. + +To do something for other people; that was the wish that filled the +child's heart in its overflowing mood. + +Throwing a look to her hair and eyes in the glass, she thought of the +woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had classified so promptly as the Hotel +Spinster. She thought of that woman's meaningless but "good" clothes, of +the hungry eyes which she fastened upon that little French boy seated at +table with his mother. How the Spinster had watched that mother bending +over her child, turning his chair, showing him how to hold his little +silver spoon shaped like a wine-taster, folding his napkin for him; ah, +how she'd watched! + +"Poor, poor thing!" thought the soft-hearted Olwen. "Anyone could see +how she would love a little child of her own----" + +And then she thought of the other rather "out of it" guest at that +hotel; the very young New Army subaltern whom Mrs. Cartwright had said +was living a life to which he hadn't been brought up and which he must +leave again unless he could find a rich wife. Not an attractive type, +thought Olwen (forgetting that for her at the moment there existed only +one masculine type that showed any attraction whatsoever). It wasn't +likely, she considered, that he would find anyone to care about _him_. + +"Poor boy!" She felt quite motherly. For she was the type of girl whom +personal emotion drives outwards to include the world in her thoughts, +rather than the commoner type of lover who is driven inwards, upon +concentrated narrowed sympathies. Ever since she had come to that hotel +and had fallen in love, Juliet-fashion, with the first glance at a +good-looking male face seen across a dinner-table, the little creature +had longed for everyone, not only herself, to be lucky in Love. + +She found it horrible that in this supreme matter everything must be +left to Fate, to Chance, to the merest Toss-up. + +No woman could lift a finger to help either her own love-affair or +anybody else's. The pity of it! + +But wait----Again the delighted thought thrilled her----If that discovery +were true?... The Disturbing Charm! If that could really help. _If_ ... +after all? + +What was it that Mrs. Cartwright had said to her? + +"_You look as if a charm had touched you._" + +Could that have meant more than her friend had known? + +Olwen threw another wondering, searching look into her glass.... Was it +her imagination, or did she look prettier already than she had ever +before seen herself? _Oh...._ + +She stood there, reflected; an image of Uncertainty hovering between +belief and doubt. "Uncle wouldn't believe a word of it, I'm sure," she +told herself. "I'm sure he thought he'd thrown the letter away. He may +be quite right, of course. It sounds nonsense. Yet----" + +("_As if a charm had touched you_," Mrs. Cartwright said, knowing +nothing.) + +"The writer of the letter said it was the result of years of research," +pondered Olwen. "If he could give years, surely I can give just--just a +_try_?" + +She paused, hands clasped upon her breast. + +"Shall I? Shall I?... Supposing I tried the effect of the Charm upon +somebody else, first? Somebody here? There are at least two people +besides myself in this hotel whom it could help...." + +Then she thought defiantly, "The inventor said he shirked +responsibility. Well, _I_ wouldn't! If it doesn't do any good--well! +There's no _harm_ done! I----" + +Another second's pause. Then the decision. + +"I will. Yes! I _will_ try it!" + +Half believing, half longing to believe, and wholly excited by the +thing, the girl began busying herself as if in answer to some mysterious +Command. + +She opened a drawer of her toilette-table, taking out a square +work-basket in which reels, scissors, thimble, and darning skeins were +packed into the smallest possible compass; Olwen being as neat in her +habits as her uncle was chaotic. From another corner of the drawer she +took a carefully rolled-up length of the mauve satin ribbon she used +for slotting through her underclothes. From this she cut enough to sew +up into a tiny sachet. + +Then she sat by the window and stitched, the young Welsh girl into whose +busy, dimpled hands there had fallen this maybe tremendous Power. While +the autumn sun glowed redly on the bodies of those pines without, while +the border of far-off Biscay rollers tossed their cloud-like columns of +white against the sky-line, she sat at her needle like a Fate with a +face of a grave-eyed child, the mouth of a flower. + +In a few minutes she had the square of satin ready for filling. She drew +the packet from her bosom; opened it with a hundred precautions; poured +into the sachet a little--a very little!--of the musky scented powder. + +The packet itself she bestowed at the bottom of her work-basket, locking +that carefully away. Yes; some of that was for _her_ to wear again, but +not now. Later on. + +The curious fact persisted that she would wish to see first the effect +of that Charm upon another wearer. + +She had stitched up the sachet before she had answered her own question, +"Whom shall I give it to first?" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE LAUNCHING OF THE CHARM + + "A field untilled, a web unwove, + A flower withheld from sun or bee, + An alien in the courts of Love----" + + Kipling. + + +Accident decided it for her. + +As she was running down the broad red and white steps at the front of +the hotel, Olwen met, coming up, the woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had +noticed at lunch for her hopeless well-off spinsterishness. The Spinster +carried a guide book, a flowering-plant in a pot with paper round it, +and a bound map. + +She wore over those expensive tweeds of hers those furs which none but +the young and radiant should venture to wear; grey squirrel. Her face +was blank. + +It lighted into a tentative smile as the young girl turned and ran back +a few steps to the top, waiting for her. + +"Good afternoon; we mustn't cross on the stairs," Olwen called. "It's +unlucky!" + +Was it her fancy, or did the Spinster look pathetically pleased because +some one had said "good afternoon" and had made a playful remark? + +Up the steps she hastened, rather stiffly, her figure being of the kind +that seems all clothes. + +When she got to the top she said, with a shy, effusive little laugh, +"Oh, are you superstitious?" and before Olwen could answer, she hurried +on, "Oh, can one order tea here, at any time one likes? Could I order it +in my own room, do you think?" + +"I think so," said Olwen, surprised. + +In spite of the gap in their ages, this woman of thirty-five seemed to +speak as if she were a new girl, just arrived at school. In spite of her +"set" figure, her mode of dressing, her big nose, there was--yes! +something of suppressed schoolgirlishness about her yet. Some are born +with the saddle to wear, some with the spur, says the proverb. This +Spinster had the look, not only of having been born with the saddle, but +of having been for years under the spur of others. Her timid eyes were +those of a dog who has been turned adrift. They fastened upon Olwen. + +"This is a lovely place, isn't it?" she hurried on as if afraid the girl +would leave her. "Have you been here long?" + +"About a week." + +"Oh, have you? I have only just come. I came just before lunch. I saw +you at lunch, with a tall lady in brown. Are you staying with her?" + +"No," Olwen said, "I'm here with my uncle; I am his secretary." + +"Oh, are you? How nice. I am not with anybody," volunteered the +Spinster. Clutching her guide-book and plant and fixing the girl with +that timid yet persistent eye, she seemed ready to stand there and talk +for half an hour. "You are the first person I have spoken to here. I'm +quite alone." + +These were the three words which--with all the unspoken, unconscious +pathos behind them--went to Olwen's heart. She tightened her fingers +upon what she held in her hand, and she thought to herself, "_Here's_ +someone who needs the Charm!" Then she thought, caught back a little, "I +can't give it just to the first person I meet. Oughtn't I to see a +little more of her, first?" + +The Spinster's next remarks seemed to fall in with this plan. + +"I oughtn't to keep you here talking, without any hat on.... Oh, d'you +always go without a hat in the woods?... I must just put this plant +down; do come into my room a minute, won't you? It's only on the first +floor, just at the top of the stairs; yes, do----" + +It was the best room in the hotel to which Olwen followed this new +acquaintance of hers; and it seemed crowded with belongings, all very +obviously costly, and all--curiously enough!--quite incredibly _new_. + +"Oh--couldn't you--couldn't you have tea with me?" was the Spinster's +next suggestion. "My name is Walsh; Agatha Walsh. Do have tea with me. +Please. I'll order some now----" + +She rang the waiter's bell; and in halting French she ordered the sallow +little Italian to bring up to her room tea for two. + +"_Simple?_" asked the waiter. + +"Oh--what does he mean?" + +"He means do you want just tea," explained Olwen, "or anything with it?" + +"Oh! Everything there is. You like cake, don't you? Girls do," said the +Spinster with that timid, friend-hunting glance. "Jam, and pastries, and +things. Tell him to bring everything, please." + +"_Complet_," ordered little Olwen, feeling a woman of the world in +comparison with this stranger who was abashed before waiters. + +"Oh, how well you talk French," murmured the other. "Do sit down here. I +wonder if I shall ever be able to talk it quickly. I've never been in +France before, do you know? I----Isn't it funny? I have hardly ever been +_anywhere_!" + +"_Haven't_ you?" said Olwen--who herself had known her native Wales, +Liverpool, the South Kensington Museum, and some other museums in Paris. + +The Spinster broke into further confidences. "Oh, no. You see, I lived a +very secluded life. I had to. I lived with an elderly cousin of mine in +Buckinghamshire, oh, quite in the country. Here she is." + +From her silver-strewn table the Spinster took an ornate oval frame. It +enclosed the portrait of an old lady in a Victorian cap of lace and +ribbons, with beetle-brows and a mouth of steel. + +"Yes, this is Miss Walsh; the same name as mine, you see. She never left +her house for the last fifteen years, you know. A beautiful house; such +grounds! We never went out of them, except the half-mile drive to church +every Sunday. And of course we scarcely ever saw anybody, except just +the Rector and the old Doctor," the Spinster confided to Olwen. "All +that money----But, poor thing, she was never really well. Of late years +she had to have everything done for her; everything!" + +"I suppose _you_ had to do it!" volunteered Olwen, with a glance at the +portrait and a pang of pity for the woman who showed it to her. The girl +was too young to read the whole story as Mrs. Cartwright would have +done; soaring years of a woman's youth harnessed to the bath-chair of a +bitter-tongued tyrant in shawl and cap! But she guessed that the "poor +thing" might more appropriately be applied to Miss Walsh the younger. + +"Oh, well," said the Spinster, gently, "she only had me in the world. +Except her nephew. She quarrelled with him. He was very outspoken, +and--well, they quarrelled. He should have come in to her money, you +know. She made another will only just before she died, poor thing. +That's how----" She gave a gesture that seemed to take in the new +portmanteau on the floor, the winking silver-backed brushes on the +table, her own tweeds and furs, the wide view from the window, and the +waiter bringing in the tea-tray. "It all came to _me_!" concluded Miss +Walsh, diffident, amazed. "I can scarcely believe it _yet_! I couldn't +believe I could leave the place and go away for as long as I liked!" + +Olwen asked, "What brought you? Why did you come here?" + +"Oh! because there was nowhere for me to go. I went to London because +I'd only been there once in my life. Then I went over to Paris because +I'd never been there. Then I stuck a hat-pin into the guide-book to see +where I'd go next. It came out here. It seemed like Fate, didn't it? So +I came." + +Olwen looked at her as she poured out the tea. Her wrists clanked with +gold curb bracelets (of a pattern as obsolete as was the enormous brooch +of plaited gold and turquoises at her throat; the heavily set rings on +her fingers, no doubt jewellery of the late Miss Walsh). They were +chains that had fettered a patient slave--but she was a slave no +longer. + +"I'm so glad!" said little Olwen, impulsively. + +"Oh! Thank you." Her hostess smiled as gratefully as if the girl herself +had helped to alter that will. "I knew you were sympathetic. I could +_say_ things to you. One can _talk_ to some people, can't one?" she +added, as the waiter went out. "I thought at lunch what a sweet little +face you had, if you don't mind my saying so. There--there's a charm +about it! What is your name?... Olwen Howel-Jones.... Is your tea right? +I didn't even know they had proper tea in France now; my cousin never +would go Abroad because she said they gave you no tea.... Olwen! How +pretty. How old are you? You don't mind my asking, do you? Nineteen? I +was just nineteen when I went to live at the Grange--Miss Walsh's house. +Nineteen.... I always liked young people; but of course we never saw +any. My cousin disliked girls as a rule. Even the servants were quite +elderly. I--sometimes" she went on in a rush as of the pent-up +confidences of years, "I longed to see something young, do you know? I +suppose _you've_ always.... Brothers and sisters? Lots of cousins? How +nice! And lots of friends, of course...." + +She stopped, she fixed her eyes musingly upon the dainty creature +helping herself to cherry _compote_ and ended with a shy, quick +involuntary question. + +"Are you engaged to be married?" + +"Me?" exclaimed Olwen with a swift turn of her little black head against +the hotel easy chair. She laughed, with the traditional girlish +rejoinder, "Oh, dear, no! I don't suppose I----" + +It broke off short on her lips. + +Footsteps, two sets of footsteps, were tramping up the polished shallow +stairs outside the closed door. A man's voice rang out as it had rung +out that morning under her Uncle's balcony. That accent which was as +penetrating as Scots mist, as clear as Canadian frost, reached her ears +in the giving out of this dictum: + + "What I demand in Women is, firstly----" + +Here a door above slammed, cutting off the rest. + +Ah, thought Olwen, "They" were back again already, were "They"? + +This breathless thought made her lose the thread for a moment of what +this Miss Walsh, the wealthy waif, was pouring out to the first friendly +soul she had encountered in the place. + +Then the girl in love dragged herself back to that polished comfortable +room, that tea-table, that woman who had stuck a hat-pin into a +guide-book to decide where to go. + +"Oh, you know, I often used to wonder if I should be an old woman before +I'd ever made friends with anybody. I used to sit winding wool for my +cousin and looking out of the morning-room window at the rhododendrons. +Such rhododendrons! Every spring they came out ... a wall of pink! Then +they dropped their blossoms on the lawn ... a carpet of pink! Every +spring they came again. Not the same flowers; fresh flowers every +spring. Fresh flowers.... But the springs went by, and of course I knew +that I should never come young again----Oh, what is that?" + +For Miss Walsh, taking up the tea-pot, had caught sight of something +that Olwen had laid down on the tray while she spread the cherry jam on +her biscuits. Hastily Olwen picked it up again. It was the sachet into +which she had sewn the Disturbing Charm. + +In a flash she thought to herself: "Yes! she _is_ the one! This poor +dear, who's never had anything! Before she's quite too old! Something +ought to be done!" + +"... Fifteen--sixteen of those springs," Miss Walsh was murmuring again, +"and such appleblossom. But looking at things alone makes spring so much +sadder than winter.... Of course, you'll never have to understand +that--my dear." + +Olwen was thinking definitely and finally, "I must try the Charm upon +her. I _will_. It's probably rubbish.... But if it isn't----! Now how do +I set about getting her to wear it? I can't say, '_Tuck this inside your +blouse and you needn't be lonely any more, you'll begin to have people +falling in Love with you!_' How shall I----?" + +The method seemed to dart ready-made into her head as she held out on +her pink palm the tiny square of mauve satin, scarcely larger than a +postage-stamp. + +She turned upon the Spinster the appealing smile that had made "little +Miss Howel-Jones" such a successful worker on the last Welsh Flag Day, +in Liverpool. + +"Will you buy one? I'm selling these," announced the inventive Olwen. +"They"--(then to herself, "_Quick, what shall I say?_") "It--it's for +the Croix Rouge." + +"Oh, is it? Oh, yes. What's it supposed to be? A scent sachet? How +pretty," exclaimed Miss Walsh, taking the thing in her hand. "Yes; of +course I'll buy one. Where is my little bag?" (Bag, of crocodile and +purple satin, produced.) "I'll give you something at once." + +The "something" proved to be a hundred-franc note. + +"Oh, no! Not all that!" gasped the impromptu Red Cross Flag seller. +"It's only a franc! I _can't_ take any more!" + +"Oh, but of course you can. It's for the soldiers," put in Miss Walsh, a +look of surprise crossing her mild, Roman-nosed face. "Of course you +must take it. I like giving things.... There! Where's the little sachet? +How sweet! Did you make it yourself? I must put it in among my +writing-paper." (Case produced, all Bond Street pig-skin and +gold-monogrammed A. W.) + +Olwen hesitated. Of course the Charm would be of no earthly good +_there_, even if it were of any good at all, she thought, half +fluttered, half ashamed of herself. One curious thing she had noticed +about this Charm already. + +Alone with it, the whole incredible theory seemed real. Brought into +contact with other people, it appeared nonsense. Still, since she was +going to give it a trial, she might as well do it properly. For a moment +she listened again to the lonely, talkative woman. + +"Oh, you know, I've always longed to give things! Only I've no one to +give to. Shopping is lovely, but not when it's only for oneself----" + +"No," absently from Olwen (who sometimes felt she had all Carnarvonshire +commissioning _her_ to shop for them as soon as she got to town). "That +sachet----" she ventured presently, eyeing the case. "It's supposed to +be a mascot, you know. To bring you luck." + +"Oh?" + +"Perhaps you don't believe in it? But if you wouldn't mind.... To please +_me_," said Olwen. "I mean to please the Red Cross! If you'd _wear_ it!" + +"Oh, I must wear it, must I?" (Case opened; sachet pinned by a large +pearl bar to the front of the thick white satin shirt.) + +"Er----Not quite like that," from Olwen. "It--I believe it has to be +worn hidden. Out of sight somewhere." + +"Oh, yes. Very well." (Sachet unpinned, and refastened to the brocade +lining of the tweed coat.) "There!" + +"But you take off your coat in the evening, don't you?" demurred Olwen, +quite anxiously. + +Not alone this woman's history might be changed by the wearing of a +Charm, but her own. It was her love-story, Olwen's! for which that Charm +was to be put on trial, too. She drew breath quickly. + +"Miss Walsh! I'm so sorry to bother you! But it's something that has to +be _always_ worn about you. Please would you mind pinning it right +inside your blouse? Or--or to the top of your stays! French people often +do wear a sachet there, don't they? Then I shall--I mean you'll always +be sure about it...." + +"Oh, very well!" agreed Miss Walsh, smiling. She turned her back +modestly upon Olwen, and by the movement of her elbows seemed to be busy +with countless fastenings. Then she reached for a gold lace-pin from +her pin-cushion. There were more jerks and fastenings-up, and presently +she turned smiling to the girl. + +"I have safety-pinned it right in _there_," she announced, patting a +slab of satin over Heaven (and Heaven alone) knew how many layers of +Jaeger, whale-bone, coutille, and solid white embroidery, and +long-cloth. "There! Will that be all right?" + +Olwen gave a little sigh; a breeze to carry the ship of this Adventure. +It was launched! + +"Thank you," she said. Then she glanced at the hundred franc note in her +hand. "But I do rather feel as if I'd got this under false pretences!" + +"Oh, no!" smiled the Spinster. "If the little mascot does really bring +me so much Luck, it will be worth a few more francs, won't it?" + +"Yes, indeed," agreed the demure Olwen, feeling as if she exchanged a +mental glance with the unknown Inventor of that Charm. "It will be worth +it." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE CHARM BEGINS TO WORK + + "Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier', + Doch weiter kommt man ohne ihr." + + Boche Proverbs. + + +"No woman can get me to call her pretty," enunciated Captain Ross, +"until I've seen her walk." + +The fiat, delivered in that ice-ax voice of his, cut through the +polyglot murmur of the visitors gathered in the shining bare salon, all +mirrors and decorations of artificial iris. The voice continued to hold +forth. + +"Feet first; then figure. That's how it comes with me. Then hair. +Fairrrr hairrr. Must be fair-to-golden. A woman who isn't bland"--this +is how he pronounced it, but his hearers assumed it to mean blonde--"a +woman who isn't bland is only half a woman to me." + +This saying was given out on the evening of the day when the Charm had +fallen into the hands of Olwen Howel-Jones. + +She was sitting there at the time, on a red plush sofa next to her +Uncle, at the edge of the group formed by Mrs. Cartwright (who wore a +tawny-golden tea-gown and was knitting a khaki sock), Mr. Awdas, the +young flying officer who looked so appropriately like an eagle with his +bold features and the head that was so narrow in comparison with his +wide, wing-like shoulders, and Captain Ross, the one-armed Staff +Captain, who was discoursing to them on the subject of Women, of whom +(as he had been known to remark) he was the finest judge in Europe. + +Olwen's little jet-black head was buried in the current number of +"Femina," which she had picked up from the oval, crimson-covered table +in front of her, but she was devouring every word of the homily on +Women. + +That Captain Ross should notice a girl's feet was glad news; her own +feet being not merely tiny, but of a gratifying shapeliness. But her +heart seemed to sink suddenly down into the slippers that shod them, +when she heard the further "demmannd" that Beauty must be fair-haired. +Ah, he would never look at _her_, then! + +She never, apparently, looked at him. For, regarding this one man for +whom she would have given her eyes, the artless Welsh maiden had learnt +Mrs. Cartwright's art of seeing without seeming to do so. + +What she seemed to see were those glazed full-page French +fashion-plates. + +What she did see were every look and turn of the man at two arms-lengths +from her, lounging in the red plush chair with its ornate ecru mats. +What she saw can be seen by each girl in love; "the Heart-wish +Incarnate," a glamorous, radiant creature indeed! + +And----What was really _there_? + +Let us borrow the eyes of the others, who were not in Love with this +Captain Ross, to describe him. + +Young Awdas, the flyer, would have told you, "_A top-hole fellow. Bucks +rather; but you get used to it. Capital chap._" + +Professor Howel-Jones might have said, mildly, "_He has somewhat +definite opinions, even for a man of his youth; but we allow that to +those youngsters who have endured more in three years than we in +three-score._" + +Mrs. Cartwright, in writing to her sisters at home descriptions of every +one staying at Les Pins, had set down: + + "_Captain Ross. Special Reserve man. Keen soldier. Came over + from Canada to join in '14. Arm lost on the Somme. Shell-shock; + and gas--that's why he's here for his chest, which is bad + again._ + + "_About 30; looks more. Thick-set, dark. Scarlet tabs suit him. + Imagine Charles Hawtrey when young and two stone lighter; + imagine a handsome black Tom-cat with a woman's mouth, from + which issues a strong accent with the eternal 'Is that + so--o--oh?' punctuating its speech; well, there you are. + Sometimes he seems entirely Canadian; at other moments the + complete Scot with every R burring like a cockchafer on a + window-pane._ + + "_Right sleeve tucked into pocket. Amazingly quick and clever + at doing everything with left hand; getting notes out of case, + managing siphon, lighting cigar._ + + "_Eyes, hard brown, watchful as a robin's (I don't think they + see anything, but he hates me)._ + + "_Would not be good-looking but for the lower half of his face; + that mouth really beautiful, tenderly curved and sensitive, and + constantly showing an even row of the milkiest teeth in the + world._ + + "_Intensely sure of self (to put it kindly)._ + + "_Has the look that one recognizes as the trace of women's eyes + and lips upon his face, but nothing that counts up to now, I + think._" + +The man thus unknowingly summed up brought out his cigarette-case with +that clever left hand of his and proffered it first to the woman who had +summed him up and then to Jack Awdas. + +This was the tall blonde flyer, who was sitting beside her; a striking +young figure. A woman would have noticed first his eyes and the +changeful expressions that darted swift as racing planes across their +blueness. One was an eager, anticipatory look. "_What have you for me?_" +it demanded of Life. "_Will you be wonderful? Shall I be satisfied?_" +One was a look of joyous mastery. "_Love me_," it seemed to say to Fate +herself. "_Give me and tell me all that I ask, for I am impatient Youth, +and must be served._" One was a look less often seen; it was the +"yonderly" look, the glance of those favoured (or cursed) with a glimpse +now and then beyond the kindly curtains of the Flesh and of Everyday.... +It seemed to question a surprised "_What? I can't quite see.... What?... +I heard something...._" + +Needless to say that the youth himself was entirely ignorant that any of +these signals could be read. Generally, he was healthily unconscious +that there was anything to be signalled. + +To the French people in that hotel he was known as Monsieur de l'Audace. + +His observer, his squadron, and several enemy airmen could have told you +that he deserved the nickname, but no other decoration had been granted +to him. In that last ghastly dive from the clouds he had so nearly lost, +too, everything that was his; however, health and strength and full +power of limb were returning now, and youth, and sleep o' nights, and +careless gaiety. Quite often now his laugh rang out; it was still a +trifle husky, as was his boyish, nonchalant voice. (One of his many +wounds had been in his throat.) + +"Go on, Ross," he jeered amicably. "Let's have some more of your +priceless pointers on the Sex. What was the one you gave me today going +along the sea-wall? Oh, yes; 'Never make love to a woman with a pink +chin; she's older than she looks.'" + +"Why, that's quite true," put in the deep voice of Mrs. Cartwright, +mildly. She crossed one long, gold-draped leg over the other, and threw +an amused glance through the cigarette-haze at the finest judge of women +in Europe. "D'you mind if I put that into a book, Captain Ross?" + +"You'd better not put anything I say into any book you write," the Staff +Captain advised her, with a short laugh (while Olwen, head still deep in +the journal, drank in every syllable of the assured voice). "Your public +wouldn't stand for it, Domestica." + +"This would not be a 'Domestica' book," returned the writer, with a +little tilt of her brown head over her knitting. "This is a little book +I'm going to bring out seven years hence, for my own two boys. A sort of +manual to help them when they go courting. 'The Guide to the Girl,' I +shall call it." + +"The title has one very all right sound," laughed Captain Ross. "But if +you'll pardon my saying so, Mrs. Cartwright, I guess I could compile +that book considerably better than what you could." + +"Not you!" declared Mrs. Cartwright. "Most of those manuals are written +from the point of view of the man. That's where they fall short. _I_ +should make the Girl herself do the advising. I should let her give the +'pointers,' as Mr. Awdas calls them. I should divide them into little +chapters: '_Of Proposing_,' '_Of Presents_,' '_Of In-Laws_,' '_Of +Caresses_'----" + +"'_Of Caresses_,'" took up Captain Ross, with another laugh, "is going +to get you banned by the libraries." + +"Not it. I," said Mrs. Cartwright, knitting, "shall not treat the +subject in--in that way." + +"Then that manual of yours isn't going to help your boys a lot," +affirmed Captain Ross in his most final tone. "For, see here----" + +"Olwen _fach_," said the Professor, suddenly taking his pipe out of his +mouth and looking over the smudged black sheet of "La Patria," "isn't it +time for you to go to bed?" + +"Uncle!" came indignantly from behind the fashion-plates: "It's only +half-past nine!" + +A smile went round the little group of the English about that table; the +eyes of each turned upon Nineteen who was being treated as Ten years +old. She would have kept up the screen of her "Femina," but Mrs. +Cartwright, finishing off a row of her knitting, put it aside, and drew +nearer to the girl. + +"May I look at them with you?" she said, pleasantly, and the two shared +the fashion-drawings, while the men watched; Captain Ross, with a curl +of the lip and a remark about Women and their fairrrrm conviction that, +because clothes are drawn one way in a picture that's the way they'll +look when they've gotten them on. + +Mrs. Cartwright lifted her head quickly, but it was not to retort to +this. She had suddenly seen something (as usual, without looking at it) +that surprised her. Then she dropped her head again. + +"My dear!" she murmured to Olwen in an amazed little laugh. "Did you +ever know such a thing? There! Coming in through the dining-room door, +now! You can see her in the mirror, behind those French children playing +draughts. It's the Hotel Spinster we were looking at, at lunch today," +chattered Mrs. Cartwright in the soft stream that scarcely moved her +lips. "The woman I said had never had a man to look at her. Can I +believe my eyes? She's got a man with her now!" + +"Miss Walsh?" exclaimed Olwen, gazing with all her eyes into the mirror +that showed her this group. + +Miss Walsh, in a fur coat, had evidently just come in from the Forest; +she carried a bough of arbutus, and her cheeks were pink from walking in +the clear night air. Close beside her came the man--yes! the male, +masculine man who was her companion; the sturdy blue-clad French +sergeant who had been at the table d'hote. Across the intervening groups +of people he was seen to be all smiles and gestures, the traditional +gallantry of his nation spoke in the very bend of his back as he opened +the door, bowed again, clicked his spurred heels. Miss Walsh was holding +out her hand; her lips parted, obviously in one of her characteristic +"Oh's"--the pink upon her cheeks deepened as she took leave of this +cavalier. One could almost hear her struggling French. She looked back +again; another bow, another click of the heels from her escort. Then the +sergeant marched back down the room, beaming satisfaction painted upon +every line of his face, bold, swarthy, and somewhat bull-necked. He was +what his own family described as "beau garcon"; a fine figure of a man. +He disappeared, through the ante-room, towards that wing of the hotel +inhabited by the management; Monsieur Leroux (bald, amiable, the shape +of a captive balloon), his three pigtailed daughters of exquisite +manners, and his alert wife (who ran everything--including him--in the +hotel). + +"Heavens!" ejaculated Mrs. Cartwright absently, as she took up her +knitting again, "that must have been Madame Leroux's nephew. Her +sister's son, the _artilleriste_. I heard all about him the other day. +Gustave Tronchet his name is. Madame told me that he was coming here _en +perme_ as her guest, seeing she had no son, and that he loved to eat +well and to be _bien_ generally. I suppose she is introducing him----!" + +"Some romance!" laughed Captain Ross, jerking his head towards the door +through which the fur-clad form of the lonely traveller had disappeared. +This was the first remark of his to which Olwen had paid scant +attention. As suddenly as if some one had called her, she sprang up. She +had dropped a kiss on her Uncle's thistle-down locks, had given her hand +to Mrs. Cartwright, had launched a shy glance and a "good night" in the +direction of the others, and had darted away, a slim sprite in grey with +touches of black, almost before the two young men could rise to their +feet. + +Mrs. Cartwright was still thinking of the stiletto-eyed French +manageress who had introduced her nephew to the occupant of the best +room in the hotel. + +"What family spirit!" she admired. "What sense of possibilities! What +respect for Power--I mean money. What an admirable nation they are.... +Will ours ever learn foresight and thrift from theirs?" + +"Ours--that is, mine--has family loyalty very strongly too," the +Professor joined in. "The Welsh, my dear lady, are as clannish in that +way as the French; they'll do anything for 'my nephew.'" + +"They've an eye skinned for the dollars as well," volunteered Captain +Ross, his robin-like eye twinkling as he took out a cigar. "What's that +saying--ah, yes, God made a Welshman, and God made a Jew, but thank God +he never made a Welsh Jew!" + +The Professor stiffened a little; and Mrs. Cartwright, seeing this, drew +the conversation back to the worldly aspects of germinating Romance.... + +The drift of all these remarks would have been entirely lost upon Olwen +even had she stayed to hear them. + +For she knew better. She knew that it was not Madame Leroux, the +manageress, who was responsible for the coming together of a travelling +spinster and of a French soldier on leave. She, Olwen, knew what was +responsible for those attentions, that talk, that interested, +deferential smile on the part of the man who had attached himself to her +new-made friend. Olwen knew what had attracted him where no man had ever +been attracted before. Yes! She knew! This was the work of the Charm +that she herself had seen hidden away so near to an unsought heart.... + +This nephew of a French hotel manageress ... of course he wasn't exactly +the sort of admirer who belonged in Granges with grounds full of +rhododendrons, but he was a _man_, triumphed Olwen. There'd be others, +people that Miss Agatha Walsh could think seriously about; but he was +the _beginning_! He'd shown the success of her experiment. The Charm +_could_ work. That letter was _not_ all nonsense! It was all true! And +since the Charm had worked for Miss Walsh, it would work for--well, +others! Joy, oh joy! + +Bursting with joy, in fact, the girl darted out of the _salon_, +scampering upstairs in all haste to overtake Miss Walsh, and to hear +more of this. + +She hoped to catch her up at her bedroom door, but already Miss Walsh +had gone in. + +Olwen knocked; was asked, "Who's there?" + +"Only me--Olwen!" + +"Come in," was the muffled answer. It came from behind a handful of Miss +Walsh's hair, quite abundant and almost pretty, now that she had removed +the flattening net and taken it all down. The first glance showed Olwen +that it was not just "down" for the night. There was a side glass in +Miss Walsh's hand; a thick loop of her locks was coiled up at the back, +ready for the side "bits" to be drawn across in a simpler fashion than +the upholstery of puffs and curls. Yes! She was seeing how she looked +with her hair done a different way! Ah, sign of the times, that could +spell only one thing: M--A--N! + +"I--I only came in to say good night to you," Olwen began (really +longing to ply with questions; how--how soon did IT work--what +happened----). + +Miss Walsh turned a face as transfigured as Olwen's own above her +quilted dressing jacket. + +She looked ten years younger. She held her head at almost the angle of +those who have _not_ been born with the saddle. All fluttered and +flushed she was, but delighted; a once bleak landscape that a sun-ray +lightens. For it is your lifelong teetotaller who, rescued from Death, +perks up at the first sip of restorative. It was the elder Miss Walsh's +cloistered companion who was responding to that tonic: masculine +attention. She turned a new smile upon Olwen. + +"Oh, it's you," she exclaimed, with new notes in her voice. Then she +broke into the breathless talk which was to her as new a function as +shopping for herself. + +"I've been out!" with a wave towards the arbutus-bough on her table. +"Oh, it is such a lovely night! Oh! You've no idea how glorious the +stars looked, peeping down between the branches of the pines! I've +_never_ seen them so wonderful, never. I went for a stroll in the Forest +after dinner, do you know----Oh! You saw me come in? Oh, I never saw +you. Yes; I--I went with somebody----" she babbled on. "That Monsieur +Tronchet, the French soldier. He is a sergeant ... but everybody in the +Army is anything just now, aren't they? He showed me the Avenue leading +out into the woods.... Was it very extraordinary of me to go out for a +walk with him? Oh, I don't think it matters, do you? Everything's so +different ... in France. He spoke to me at dinner; I believe I'd taken +his place by mistake--then we talked----" + +"_Ah_," came softly from Olwen, standing there listening, listening to +her witness for the power of the Charm. It had forced this man to speak; +it had drawn him!... "Oh, and he's such a delightful person," Miss Walsh +poured out between gasps. "He has been telling me such a lot of the most +interesting things about himself and the War! He spoke slowly, when I +asked him. I could really understand most of it. He expresses himself so +wonderfully! The French all do, I suppose. But he finds the English so +sympathetic. Oh, and what do you think? You won't laugh, I know; you're +so sweet. I am going to be his _marraine_. God-mother, that is. They all +have them in the French Army, he tells me; somebody who just writes very +often and takes an interest. He told me he hadn't any. So I promised. We +are to write to each other when he gets back to the front. Oh, and +tomorrow--what do you think? He is going to take me across the lagoon in +the motor-boat!" breathed Miss Walsh, and her eyes were now those of a +child who has been promised a fairy treat. "I don't think any one has +ever taken me in a boat before. This is a wonderful place, isn't it? I +am so glad I came!--Oh, are you going to bed now? I shall see you +tomorrow. I feel as if I knew _such_ a lot of nice people already! Good +night!" and her door closed upon a very happy face. + +Equally excited, and even happier, little Olwen sped up another flight +of stairs to her room. Stars danced in her eyes. It was true! It was all +true! she rejoiced. _Now----!_ + +Yes; now, Captain Ross, _en garde_! Stipulate as you choose for the +colour of Beauty's hair; swear that no woman is Woman to you except a +blonde. One little sooty-haired brunette is now no longer to be cast +down by your specifications. Say what you like; she has confidence in +what she is going to do. + + * * * * * + +She burst into her room, snapped on the lights, ran to the drawer, +snatched out work-basket, thimble, needle, silk; now the mauve ribbon! +Now the packet containing that so potent Charm! + +Then down she sat again to work as she had worked that afternoon, but +in all certainty instead of doubt. Snip--snip--snip. Three lengths of +ribbon, and to each a sachet. + +"I'll have to buy yards and yards and yards of this ribbon presently," +thought Olwen feverishly as she stitched. "And I'll have to send to that +address for all the Charm that they can send me; all that there is in +the world!" + +She rolled a sheet of note-paper into a little funnel; and through this +she filled--ah, so cautiously!--the sachets with the musky, seed-like +powder. + +She sighed: "_What_ a pity that I've only got enough here for four of +us!" + + + + +CHAPTER V + +FURTHER PLANS FOR THE CHARM + + "Je dirai qu'une femme ne doit jamais ecrire.... + + "Je ne vois qu'une exception; c'est une femme qui fait des livres + pour nourrier ou elever sa famille. + + "Alors elle doit toujours se retrancher dans l'interet d'argent + en parlant de ses ouvrages, et dire, par exemple, a un chef + d'escadron: 'Votre etat vous donne quatre mille francs par an, + et moi, avec mes deux traductions de l'anglais, j'ai pu, l'annee + derniere, consacrer trois mille cinq cents francs de plus a l'education + de mes deux fils.'" + + Stendhal. + + +Now so far one charm-sachet was accounted for. It was safety-pinned into +the high busk of Miss Walsh's almost obsolete corset. The second Olwen +now hung about her own neck. Even in sleep she would never be parted +from it. Let her absorb its potency every hour of the day or night! +Therefore she sewed to the square of mauve satin a piece of pink +baby-ribbon, tied it in a bow and slipped it over her head. _Her_ charm! + +There were (until she obtained more of that magic stuff) two sachets +left. + +Over these she pondered, running her needle into the flannel leaf of her +needle-book. + +"There's one thing to be seen yet," she meditated. "I've seen it work +once. It's been a success all right with a woman. The question is--Will +it work with a man? I must try." + +So the destination of the third sachet was decided. That young and +pink-faced subaltern should have it; he who had such blushing struggles +with his French and who seemed to have no more friends than had Miss +Walsh; he who had told Mrs. Cartwright so frankly that he was an ex-shop +assistant, with the joys of travelling first-class (and of living to +match) gone to his boyish head. Yes; the disturbing Charm should be +applied to help him. She would think out the "how" tomorrow. + +But the fourth sachet? To whom should she give that? + +Perhaps it was the passing thought of her writer-friend that brought in +its train a bright idea. + +Mrs. Cartwright! + +"Why shouldn't I give her the Charm? Why shouldn't she enjoy life a +little bit more before she's quite, quite an old woman?" thought the +girl. "Of course she's not young; older than Miss Walsh even. And not +pretty--well, how could any one be pretty at forty--even though her +clothes do seem to fit her, and she does run up and down those sandhills +as fast as I can. She's awfully jolly and nice, though; so kind, too! I +daresay she'd like to be married again. I daresay she's tired of always +writing and writing. Tired of living all by herself when those boys of +hers are at school. I daresay she'd like to have somebody nice and sort +of settled-down to help her with them. Now if only she could attract +somebody! Somebody like that----" + +Here a second brilliant idea flashed into that well-willing, impulsive +little black head of Olwen's. She uttered it aloud, the name of this +"somebody" who might be suitably attracted by Mrs. Cartwright--even at +forty. + +"_Uncle!_" + +All alone in her room, Olwen clapped her hands over this idea. Swiftly +it began to enlarge itself. + +"Yes; why not Uncle? The very person! He's old, but then that's all the +better; for her. He's just the right age, in fact!" + +Professor Howel-Jones was a sturdy seventy; and to Nineteen the gap +between forty and seventy, seen vaguely down the perspective of the +years, is scarcely noticeable, particularly when it is the man who is +seventy--men generally being of themselves younger than women. (Or so we +are told.) + +"Yes; it must be Uncle. He's such a dear. A widower, too; and I'm sure +he ought to have somebody nice to be a comfort to him, always there. Not +only me. Besides, I might be----" + +She hardly dared yet to finish to herself the thought, "Besides, I might +be getting married and leaving him any time now!" + +So she pursued her ingenuous scheme. "He ought to have a nice wife. He +really ought. And Mrs. Cartwright would be splendid--for him. He does +like her. He was talking to her for hours in the Forest the other day +about that essay of his on Welsh Flower-names. He calls her 'My dear +lady' always. And she likes him; why, only at lunch today she said +something about 'that wonderful-looking old Uncle of yours.' She admires +him. Now, if she only had enough Charm to _attract_ him," thought Olwen, +"so that he would ask her to marry him, I'm sure she'd be only too glad +to! I don't suppose any one else has ever asked her to marry again ... +but I would so like her for a kind of Auntie," decided the young girl, +hastily taking out her needle again and threading it with pink silk. + +Another length of narrow ribbon was stitched to one end of the fourth +sachet. + +It was destined for the neck of Mrs. Cartwright. + +At Olwen's age a thing is considered better left undone, than not done +at once. + +At once she decided to take this gift to her friend. + +So, still dressed as she had left the _salon_, Olwen slipped quickly out +of her room and down a sharply-angled corridor, passing as she went the +old Frenchman with the red speck in his button-hole and the elder lady +in mourning. + +Olwen glanced up at the numbers on the doors. + +... "22," that was Mr. Awdas's room; she had overheard him telling +Madame that he would remember _vingt-deux_ because it was his own age. +"23," next to it on the right; that was Mrs. Cartwright's. Olwen hoped +that she had not yet gone to bed. + +She tapped. + +"_Entrez!_" called Mrs. Cartwright's deep voice, rather absorbed. + +Olwen entered, to find the writer apparently ready for bed, but at work. + +Her green shaded lamp was alight on the table, where she sat with a pad +before her. + +Her brown hair hung down in two plaits over a Persian robe of raw white +silk, almost seamless, gold-girdled, and with stars and islands worked +in gold thread; a relic of her time in the East. Another relic, perhaps, +was the mingling of faint discreet scents that hung about the room: +sandal-wood, orris, kuss-kuss, and rose. + +She looked up; then sprang to her feet as she saw Olwen Howel-Jones, +still dressed as she had gone to bed some time before. + +"My dear----Anything wrong?" + +"No! No, thanks," said Olwen. Then involuntarily and surprised, "Oh, +Mrs. Cartwright! how wonderful you look in that dressing-gown! Your arm, +when the sleeve fell back, was like a little statue my Uncle's got in +Liverpool, copied from the British Museum. A Tanagra, he calls it. You +look exactly like that statue, you do really." + +"Do I?" returned Mrs. Cartwright, with a passing glance down her own +long outlines from the shoulder to the narrow Turkish-slippered foot on +the mat. It was no news to her that she possessed, even yet, some lines +that sculptors centuries dead would have loved. Like many another +plain-faced woman (as she was self-admitted) she had her special vanity. +Her own pride of limb was as arrogant as it was secret. + +"My boys are going to inherit my absurdly long legs, I think," was all +she said, lightly, smiling down into the vivid little face of the girl +who had come in, and wondering what had brought her there so late. + +Olwen held it out, the Charm dangling at the end of its long ribbons. As +she was hastening along the corrider she had wondered what excuse she +could bring with it. Now she felt that it was unnecessary display, that +invention of the Red Cross Charity Sale which she had palmed off upon +poor Miss Walsh. The truth--or a small portion of it--seemed to blurt +itself out to Mrs. Cartwright. + +"I've got something here that I've made for you," explained Olwen, +flushing a little. "It's--it's a luck-charm. Like a touchwood or a +swastika, only--only different. There's something in the sachet that +will bring you very good luck if you always keep it on where it can't be +seen. Don't ask me what it is," she begged, lifting her earnest little +face that the elder woman found so touchingly pretty. "And please don't +open it. Only always wear it, will you, please?" + +"Thank you so much; of course I will. I can do with any good luck that's +going just now," smiled Mrs. Cartwright. She slipped the ribbon over her +head and tucked the sachet inside the soft folds of her Persian robe. +"There! It's like a scapular that the little French children have; I +remember seeing a flock of them once, trooping in to bathe off the coast +of Normandy, wearing nothing else; their little bodies each marked by +the black scapular, were like pink tulips freaked with one dark +stripe.... May I take it off when I wash? Good. Now I'll expect it'll +bring me luck for finishing the last chapters of my serial." + +"Are you going to sit there and write all night?" asked Olwen, with an +eye on the half-covered pad. + +"Oh dear, no! Just another hour or so, perhaps. I was only recopying a +paragraph, and then I found I was in the vein and could go on. But +you--you mustn't lose your beauty-sleep," she added, gently smiling at +the pretty creature in the doorway. "Good night!" + +"Good night!" said Olwen, with a final glance at the edge of that pink +ribbon showing above her friend's unconscious neck. She sped away--to +dream, as she hoped, of all that Charm might be expected to bring her, +but in reality to the dreamless perfect sleep that is Youth's heritage. + +The half-gentle, half-amused little smile hovered about Mrs. +Cartwright's lips for a moment, then gave way gradually to the look of +blank absorption as she bent her brown head over her pad, writing +rapidly, filling a page, tearing it off, to add to the pile at her feet, +filling another. + + * * * * * + +It had been a long apprenticeship which she had served to this job of +hers, since she had first been left as a young widow, to fend for +herself and two babies on the pension which her country judged +sufficient for the families of the (Old) Army. Ream after ream she had +written on the once so fully discussed subjects: What to do with the +Cold Mutton; and, How to Keep a Husband's Affection Warm. + +To say that this occupation thrilled her would be overstating the case, +but Mrs. Cartwright had preferred it to the thought of letting some +other man pay for her board and lodging, some man who was not her Keith. +This alternative had been hers more than once (in spite of little +Olwen's conjecture that she had never been asked to marry again). She +had refused; working on, in her poky "rooms." ... At all events, those +cold-mutton articles had put plenty of nourishing beef-gravy into little +Keith; and when Reggie had nearly gone out with bronchitis she had +settled the doctor's bills with her brightly-written instructions as to +always keep a smiling face and a dainty blouse for when Hubby got back +from a hard day's work in the office. A fortnight's fresh air at +Margate had been supplied to the small convalescent by his Mother's +"Chats to Engaged Girls," which discussed "how many and many a foolish +damsel brings shipwreck upon her life's happiness by her failure to +realize that her fiance cannot be expected to give up for her sake every +hobby, every recreation, every chum that he possesses," etc. etc. + +When this sort of journalism became superannuated "Domestica" adapted +herself swiftly. Business-like columns on Emigration and Fruit Farming +for Women paid for the boys' first reefer-coats. Their school-kits came +out of the long serials to which she had at last attained, and which +became a never-failing joke with those of her acquaintances who had +cultured literary tastes. + +"My _dear_ Claudia, I see you've been and gone and done it again, in the +'Morning Mail,'" they had smiled. "Another of your sugary fullertons--I +mean 'A thrilling new story, by Miss Claudia Crane! You can begin +today!' You don't expect US to, I hope?" + +"Oh no," Mrs. Cartwright had said, also smiling. + +After all, these literary tastes of her acquaintances were no more +"superior" than the thickness of her new woollies that she was then +going on to buy for her sons' wear. + +Moreover, the woollies were of more use. + +(Furthermore, they were harder to come by.) + + * * * * * + +At the juncture when Mrs. Cartwright enters this story she was able to +make any holiday pay for itself twice over; witness her "Wanderings in +Western France." It was about this time, too, that she had begun to +afford not only the warmest underwear for Keith and Reggie, but the +silkiest for herself. + +Even yet, she discovered, silk "things" were a joy to her again. So were +her perfectly simple _suede_ shoes. All these years she had lived and +toiled for Reggie and Keith; she was only just beginning to find herself +in this toiler. She was beginning to discover other relics, beside the +Eastern embroideries and the scent, of the woman whom she had thought to +be left dead beside her merry soldier husband. + +Surprising.... Life was still surprising; interesting. Let people take +it out of her "fullertons" if it amused them.... + +She completed the "sugary" paragraph that brought her instalment to the +requided "curtain," wrote "_To be continued_" beneath it, and smoothed +the blotting-paper down over the pad with a sigh of relief. + +"There!" + +She rose, stretching the tall symmetry of herself under the Persian +robe, then glanced with raised eye-brows at her watch. + +So late? She had not realized the flight of the midnight hours. +Everybody else in the hotel would be asleep. + +Mrs. Cartwright snapped off the lights. Guided by a thin streak of +moonlight on the floor, she stepped to the window, flung first the +shutters then the windows open, and stepped out, all shimmering and +ghostly, on to her balcony. She stood--accustomed to air about +her--looking out on the moon-bathed scene below. The _Baissin_ was a +sheet of silver; the belt of sandhills silver-grey. No words can give +the whiteness of the Biscay rollers, silent with distance, tossing their +columns of foam to the vast and lambent sky. Stars were as pin-points. +Reassuringly near, the lighthouse raised its taper finger, on which the +light sparkled like a jewel, now white, now red. + +Mrs. Cartwright, enjoying all this too much to feel cold, stood +watching. + +Why did people sleep away the best part of the twenty-four hours? Why +scuttle away and hide from Beauty within the ugliness of their own +houses? It was only once in months that a woman stood as she was +standing at that virgin hour, able to lose herself in the solitude, the +freshness and silence and light. She stood, dematerialized, part no +longer of a woman's warm and pulsing body, but of the sea and sky +themselves.... White, red.... White, red ... the phare light flashed +almost in time to the soft breathing, that could be heard, in that +perfect stillness of her body. _She_ was outside it.... _Ah!_ What was +that? + +With a start so violent that it seemed to wrench her, Mrs. Cartwright +came to herself again, and to--what Horror was this? + +Through that perfect stillness a cry had rung out, sudden as a shot. +Close beside her; it came from the right. It was a man's voice crying +hoarsely, "_Got_ him!" Then another cry, of agony; a scream.... + +What was it? + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE CLUTCHING OF THE CHARM + + "Fights all his battles o'er again; + And thrice he charged the foe, and thrice he slew the slain." + + Dryden. + + "Un aviateur, un de ces demi-dieux dont l'existence sur terre + doit etre courte. (La lumiere dont ils procedent les rappelle + bientot. On croit qu'ils tombent, mais ils remontent.)" + + Marcel Astruc. + + +It came from the right, therefore it must be in the bedroom next to hers +on the wall encircled by the balcony. + +Quick as thought, Mrs. Cartwright ran a few steps along the balcony. +Yes; the next window stood wide open. She dashed into the room, flooded +with moonlight; white light that showed up, clearer than a star-shell, +the figure of Mr. Awdas, the young wounded flying-officer, sitting bolt +upright in his bed, with his eyes still closed, his mouth too working, +and his face as the face of Death itself. + +She ran to him, took him by the shoulder. + +"Wake up! Wake up!" she called, clearly and firmly, in the voice which +had often delivered her small son Keith from the bane of his childhood, +nightmare. "Wake up, it's just a dream!" + +A great shudder rocked the young man, he opened his eyes. Their wild +stare met the woman's face, the woman's white-clad figure bending over +him. "Oh Lord! Sister," he muttered. "It all came again. Oh, Lord! I +thought I was crashing. I----" + +[Illustration: "_It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I was +crashing!----_"] + +Shuddering again, shaking like a leaf, he threw out his hands and +grasped Mrs. Cartwright's arms, his fingers burying themselves in her +flesh. "Don't leave me," he sobbed, hoarsely. "For God's sake don't +leave me, Sister!" + +Before Mrs. Cartwright could speak the door of his bedroom was flung +open. There burst in a group of people in night attire, a group +heterogeneous and agitated as on a raid night or at a fire, roused by +the alarm of that sudden scream in the darkness, demanding "Qu'est-ce +qu'il y a donc?" ... "What's up?..." + +Mrs. Cartwright, pinned in the grip of the young man's shaking hands, +had only time to realize two of these people, the portly French manager, +draped in an eider-down and looking (as she afterwards said) a perfect +advertisement for Michelin tyres, and Captain Ross, in violently-striped +pyjamas, when she saw the door gently but firmly closing upon all of the +invaders but Captain Ross. + +In a curious medley of idiom Captain Ross was reassuring the others. + +"It's all right. _C'est seulement_ Monsieur de l'Audace. He's been +drrrriming again; _songe_, crasher; _comprenez_? Pardon me, but please +_allez vous en_. I guess we can fix him, me and this lady. _Bon nuit!_" + +A final glimpse of open-mouthed faces, seen over dressing-gowned +shoulders, and then the door clicked upon the murmuring, dispersing +throng. Captain Ross, barefoot, turned back to the bed where his friend, +utterly unnerved, was shaking as if with fever. His fingers still +gripped the arms that had first been held out to him; his wet forehead +was now pressed to a woman's shoulder, as if to shut out from his sight +a vision of horror. + +"Oh Lord!" he groaned. + +"All over, Jack. Put a pipe on," said Captain Ross quietly. + +And Mrs. Cartwright glancing at him over that rumpled head buried on her +shoulder, beheld a Captain Ross quite new to her; not merely the finest +judge of women in Europe, but the fine comrade of men. It was with an +admirable mixture of gentleness and matter-of-factness that he spoke, +moving as he did so quietly and quickly about the room; closing the +shutters, to banish the ghastly radiance of the moon; turning up the +yellow, mercifully ordinary lights; finding flask, a tobacco, pipe, and +matches; handier and swifter with his one arm than many a man with two. + +"Put a pipe on, man. Here. No? All right; presently. Rotten luck; I +thought we were clear of these attacks. It's this darned moon.... He was +shot down in the moonlight, I heard.... We used to get 'em every week +one time, Mrs. Cartwright; the whole ward pulled up standing, and the +girls on night duty thinking it was blue murder, I guess, the first +time. I knew when I heard him; we were in hospital together." + +"He thought he was still in hospital when he saw me," put in Mrs. +Cartwright softly. + +"Is that so? You only reached him first by seconds, I guess; I was up +before he'd finished hollering," said Captain Ross, with a glance at the +spent boy who was leaning up against the woman, his face still hidden, +his breath coming in gasps. "It was a baddish go, this trip. A drink, +man?" + +Young Awdas shook his head without raising it. "I'm ... all right. +Dashed sorry ... all right in a second...." + +"Give it him presently," murmured Captain Ross; then glancing at the +woman beside the bed, "There won't be much sleeping for him or me; but +it's no reason why you should lose your night's rest, Mrs. Cartwright. +I'm staying. No need for you to wait up any longer." + +But at this, those clutching hands of the boy gripped her tight again, +closing upon the silken folds above her breast. She answered the quick +involuntary appeal, feeling herself caught back to the times when little +Keith, waking in fright, had clutched her, and cried: "_Don't go Mums! I +want you to stay with me!_" + +"I'm not going," she said, just as she had said then. She let herself +slip down in a sitting posture to the edge of the bed. + +Captain Ross paused, with another swift glance at the group. + +"You'll stay with him?" + +"Of course." + +"I guess he's better in your hands; I'll leave him there," said Captain +Ross with a nod. He glanced about, picked up the thick dressing-gown +that lay over the bed-rail, and tucked it like a railway rug about her. +Then he turned to the door. "I'm just across the corridor. If you want +anything, just call, ever so softly. I shall hear." + +He went out, leaving Mrs. Cartwright to the oddest vigil she had ever +spent. For the first time she found herself watching through the small +hours in the company of a wounded lad who had come through that Hell +which is not always left behind on the battlefield. They bring some of +it away with them, too many of these boys! its fiery traces still +impressed upon mind and brain and nerve, however plucky. Its memory +persists, robbing them of laughter, despoiling them of that dreamless +perfect sleep which is Youth's heritage, making of night a thing to be +dreaded. + +So this young airman, who had been shot down in an air duel one +moonlight night last spring, must live it through again and again before +he might live it away.... + +Presently he raised his head. He began to mutter. + +She listened, pitifully, knowing that the lad scarcely knew even yet +whom he was holding--save that it was human, and friendly, and warm. He +scarcely cared to whom he was babbling in hoarse little snatches, +incoherently--save that it was a woman, and kind. + +"Five--five of them! Five Australians!" he began, suddenly. "You know +what splendid fine chaps.... I had to watch.... I was lying ... out +there ... pinned under the wing. They ... they tried to get at me with +stretchers--six times they tried ... came across No Man's Land...." + +"Yes; but you were dreaming," she said, in the most soothing tone of her +deep voice. "You just had a bad dream----" + +"No, No! It was what happened," he said hoarsely. "They were trying to +bring me in after I'd crashed. Those blighters ... turned a machine-gun +on to them. They did in five. I--I saw it!" + +She could only look at him, only give him the comfort of her touch, +could only put out to him, silently, all the pity that was in her. + +He took one hand away for a moment, passed it back over his hair in the +known gesture of the flyer who adjusts his crest like cap, then returned +his clasp to her arm. + +He began again: + +"I ... I never take an Australian's salute in the street without +remembering ... that!... I had to lie there ... couldn't lift ... +finger. Five of them, were stretched out ... killed.... Just for me! My +God! Think of it----" He seemed about to break down once more. + +"Hush!" Mrs. Cartwright said, steadily. She bent her eyes upon his. +"Hush! One can't think like that. It's impossible." + +"Those splendid chaps----" + +"S'sh! Remember only that they were killed doing one of the finest +things a soldier is called to do," interrupted the soldier's widow, +quickly. "Remember that their people would be proud to know how it +happened. They volunteered to save you; took their chance. Think how +your own people would have been proud, Mr. Awdas----" + +"Yes," he muttered, letting her hold his eyes, clinging to her for the +strength that had slipped. + +She repeated, firmly: "When you see Australians in the street, think +only of _that_!" + +"Yes," said the youngster, simply. "Yes.... All right, I will." + +When he next spoke there was a thought less strain in his husky voice. + +"I'm everlastingly sorry, routing people up like this. They got quite +fed-up in the hospital.... I couldn't help it.... Falling, falling--oh, +it's beastly.... So weird, too.... You wouldn't think.... Well, I +couldn't _take_ more than about two and a half minutes to crash, could +I?" + +"I suppose not," she said, forcing herself to be as matter-of-fact as +Captain Ross had been. + +"Two and a half minutes; well, it seemed a _week_, at least. Absolutely. +It always seems a week till I come down.... Down, down, down--I seemed +to have time to think ... no end of things. I yelled out to my +observer.... That's why I always shout in those dreams of mine.... I was +falling, falling; and calling out to my observer, trying to make him +hear. He was killed." + +"Was he?" she responded gently--not too gently, lest he should melt. + +"Yes! He was dead before we came down. Jolly good chap, my observer. +(Ross knew him.) Ferris, his name was. The first time we went up +together over the Boche lines, I remember his saying to me: 'Now, when +you hear a dog bark, don't take any notice; it's only Archie!'" + +Here the ghost of a smile seemed hovering about the young flyer's face. +Mrs. Cartwright did not speak; but surely the warm sympathy that flowed +from her caught him in some restoring current. His voice grew less +strained with every sentence. + +"It's--it's a funny thing how fond one gets of one's observer; the man +one's always with. Each of you depending so much on the other, I +suppose; being for it together, always together. You've no idea what +pals one gets. I--I sometimes think there can be nothing like it. We +_were_ pals; I was sick; they'd done him in----" + +Mrs. Cartwright nodded; listening to the husky English boy's voice, that +seemed to fill this room of a sleeping, silent French hotel, and hearing +also in her heart that immortal plaint of the young fellow-soldier +mourning down the ages--"_I am distressed for thee, my brother +Jonathan...._" + +"D'you know, I sometimes think there can be nothing else in the world as +good as just friendship. To be absolute friends with some other fellow," +young Awdas said presently; shyly, but earnestly looking into the +woman-face so near him. Without speaking a word, Mrs Cartwright was +encouraging him to talk on and on. Yes; let him talk--of Friendship or +the Differential Calculus, if he liked; anything, rather than let him be +haunted again by this useless, this unreasoning Remorse that he had been +the death of five other brave men--or by this dream of falling, falling. +He talked on, sitting up; taking his hands at last from her +(badly-marked) arms and clasping them about his knees. + +"Absolute friends," he mused. "Understanding everything the other chap +means, or doesn't mean. Not minding if he's ratty sometimes; being ratty +yourself if you want to, and going off on your own, knowing it'll be all +right whenever you come back. Good times or rotten times, always with +him. Not seeing each other for ages, perhaps. Then finding him just the +same. Caring for all the things you're keenest about; barring the same +things. I don't think it could be ever exactly like that with a girl." + +"Never," murmured Mrs. Cartwright; "the girl will be more to you or less +to you, but not the same." + +"A girl would never be more to me," said young Awdas, and now his voice +sounded almost normal. He broke off suddenly, and turned to her +protestingly. "Mrs. Cartwright, I don't know what you must think of me. +Keeping you up like this----Good Lord! it's three o'clock. Sitting +there, catching cold----?" + +"I'm never cold." + +"And I'm all right now. Please--please do go to bed." + +Mrs. Cartwright smiled obstinately. "My good young man, I am on +night-duty. You called me 'Sister' yourself when I came in. I am going +to be 'Sister' for once." + +"You're too good," he said, with a sigh of obvious relief that she was +not going. "I couldn't sleep ... but why should you miss yours?" + +"I couldn't sleep now, either; I couldn't have slept. I'd only just +finished working when you called out. I shall stay"--she tucked the +dressing-gown a little more closely about her--"and----No, I won't have +a cigarette. I'll light one for you, however. And here's your drink, and +I shall just stay and talk to you until you go to sleep." + +"Too good," he said again, taking the cigarette from her hand and giving +her a shyly grateful glance. "I've been bucking no end--I don't know +why--I don't generally talk a lot." + +She knew it; knew also that the distraught boy would not have talked to +a man as he had let himself babble, almost hysterically, to her. (It is +only women, the so-called talkative sex, who could give statistics of +how much men talk, and of what they will talk, upon occasion!) Up to +that night, he had not exchanged a dozen sentences with her since they +had been staying at the hotel. That same evening, when Mrs. Cartwright +and his friend Ross had chipped each other in the _salon_ over her +"Manual of Courtship," had been the first occasion that Awdas had found +himself sitting next to this tall countrywoman of his. + +But now he turned his eyes upon her as if she were all that is meant by +the word Home. + +These wakeful, solitary, strange hours had made them friends such as two +years of ordinary companionship could not have seen them. Both knew that +never again could they be mere hotel acquaintances. + +She looked at the face that was falling at last into lines of composure; +no longer a white mask of strain and anguish. Colour was coming back, +and a smile took the place of that intently thinking ghost behind the +blue eyes. He lifted that small head, set so eagle-wise upon the wide +shoulders, breathed more deeply; and she knew that it was she who had +restored him, this fallen cloud-sweeper. Fancifully she thought of his +daring job as something still verging on the super-human; after all, +these flying lads, with their freedom of one element more, are the +half-gods of our time. She thought of that myth of the other half-god +Antaeus, who, to gain fresh life, must draw it from the touch of earth; +and she remembered that Woman (that last creature to be civilized) is +still generations nearer than man to the healing soil. Yes; she had +healed him. + +Without showing him that she did so, she studied his face, with its soft +fruit-like oval that does not survive the first quarter of a century. +Twenty-two! He seemed, as most young soldiers do nowadays, more than his +age. Yet in some ways he looked younger. + +After a puff or two of cigarette-smoke had risen into the air, she asked +gently, "Why did you say, just now, that a girl could never mean more to +you than friendship?" + +He said simply, "I don't know. Perhaps it is because I don't really know +any girls much. They've never come my way." + +"Not?" she exclaimed, scarcely believing this. + +He said quite seriously: "You know it makes a lot of difference when one +hasn't any sisters. I haven't any; there were just three of us; me, and +my brother in the Navy, and the Nipper--the youngest. (Cadet Corps.) My +people live in the country, you know--Kent. It's not a bad old place; +orchards and a moat for punting about on when we were kids, and the +paddock. We had quite a decent time. But there were no girls in the +house." + +Mrs. Cartwright suggested "Other people's sisters?" + +"Not often. My mother used to try and get girls to stay with her +sometimes, but----" He moved his wide shoulders. "It was rather a +wash-out. When there aren't other girls to come for, you know. There's a +sort of feeling of their having been dragged in. Everybody's shy and +stiff. At least, they were; the girls who came. I suppose that's why I +haven't thought much of girls. They always seemed a nuisance, and +self-conscious, you know. Wooden. Glad when it was time for them to go, +and I can tell you _I_ was. They were thundering difficult to talk to." + +Mrs. Cartwright, always ready to hear of the bringing-up of boys, gave +thanks inwardly that her Keith and Reggie possessed countless +girl-cousins who were to them as sisters; creatures dispossessed of +glamour, but a channel into those fields where glamour ripens. Then she +said, softly, to this other boy: "But when you went away from Home, when +you came up to Town, and--oh, all that sort of thing, like other young +men of your age, surely you met plenty of girls who were--well! Easy +enough to talk to?" + +He nodded slightly. "Oh, yes; one met those. But----" There crept over +his face the look that some think is more often to be seen in these days +of Emancipation than in more guarded times; the scrutiny of the young +man who is at least as fastidious in his love affairs as the young +woman. "They weren't very amusing either--or, probably, I wasn't--to +them. Of course, one knows lots of top-hole fellows who were always +about with girls. Permanent address: 'Stagedoor, Frivolity,' sort of +thing. But when I got leave, I'd just as soon go round with my people, +or poor old Ferris, or some other fellow----" + +He had finished his cigarette, and leant his fair rumpled head back on +the pillow. + +Mrs. Cartwright, watching it, knew suddenly and certainly that--but for +his own mother and his nurses at that hospital--she was the first woman +who had seen it thus. + +Then she could hardly check the smile that rose to her lips; for there +was stealing over his face a look that made it not merely boyish, but +little-boyish. A film was blurring those keen blue eyes; he opened them +more widely, precisely as she had seen the eyes of little Keith open +widely, obstinately, against her breast when he was dropping with the +sleep that he defied. Young Awdas, she saw, was fighting down a +well-disguised yawn. For a moment there was silence in the bright, +isolated room. Then he said, "Mrs. Cartwright, do go to bed." + +"I am not sleepy." + +"No, nor am I," with a drowsy smile. "If you go, I'll get out a book and +read until it's time to get up." + +"Don't do that," she said. "I suppose you wouldn't try and go to sleep +for a bit?" + +"I couldn't." The blue eyes opened again fixedly upon her face. "I----" + +It seemed in the midst of the sentence that his lashes fell against his +cheeks, closely and suddenly as the lashes of her babies used to fall. +In the idiom of those old days he was "off," he was "down." + +Afraid of moving, to snap off the lights, lest she might disturb the +sleeper, she sat on, watching that peaceful face, that broad chest +heaving rhythmically. She sat, watching him; or letting her glance take +in the room with his neat, soldier-like appointments; his folding-case +for brushes and shaving-kit, his one photograph (obviously of his +mother) in a celluloid glazed frame, his leather writing-case, with his +name and the name of his Corps printed in ink on the cover. Her eyes +upturned to him, as she sat--thinking ... thinking.... + +It was nearly five o'clock when the door opened cautiously, and Captain +Ross, that adequate campaigner, entered, with a Service dressing-gown +over his zebra-stripes, and carrying two steaming cups of +excellently-made tea. His glance fell upon Jack Awdas, slumbering like +a child. Mrs. Cartwright, rather cramped, rather chilled, and rather +drawn in the face between her straight-falling plaits of hair, was still +sitting there like a statue, in a white robe with gold patterns, from +the folds of which there peeped an end of narrow pink ribbon--the ribbon +which held, hidden at her breast, and all unsuspected, a Charm. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +THE SPREADING OF THE CHARM + + "When England needs + The sons she breeds, + And there's fighting to be done, + No matter where, + You will find him _there_, + The Man behind the Gun.... + It's Bill, Bill, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy Brown, + Of Putney, Piccadilly, Camden Town; + Why! It's Mister---- + Bill, Billy Brown---- + Of London!" + + Fragson's Song. + + +The following morning brought a small disappointment to that little +plotter for the commonweal, Olwen Howel-Jones. + +No Mrs. Cartwright at _dejeuner_! + +Olwen (knowing nothing of that vigil of the night before, or of the +slumber into which the woman, drained of vitality, had dropped as soon +as she returned to her room) imagined her working through luncheon-time. + +Too bad! For now it must be postponed, the sight of how that Charm, +given to the writer, would affect Professor Howel-Jones. It could not +begin at once then, that Darby-and-Joan pairing-off that so suitable +match which little Olwen had planned. What a pity! Still it was not put +off for long, she cheerfully hoped. + +The other wearer of the Charm was also absent from the midday gathering +in the _salle_, but that was all to the good, Olwen had passed Miss +Walsh, with her hair done in that new way! speeding off as excitedly as +an Early Victorian to her first dance; speeding down to the pier, where +the motor-boat awaited her, with Sergeant Tronchet. Madame Leroux had +put up a basket of provisions for them, and they were going to make a +picnic of their excursion across the lagoon. + +Captain Ross came in to lunch with his friend Mr. Awdas, but so late +that the two young men crossed the path of Olwen and her Uncle (who had +finished their meal early) in the hall. The girl had paused here for a +moment to slip into the Red Cross collection-box that hundred-franc note +which had been bestowed upon her yesterday by Miss Walsh. + +Captain Ross noticed her action. + +"You're making a mistake, Miss Howel-Jones," he said banteringly, and +smiled as he might have smiled at one of the little pigtailed daughters +of the manageress. "That's not the box you put ten centimes into and get +two sticks of candy." + +Olwen, half in delight that he had spoken to her, half in resentment +that it was in the tone he might have used to a child, raised her +pointed chin on its white childish neck, looked down under her lids, and +demanded, with what she considered great stateliness, "Who wants +_candy_?" + +"All little girls, I guess," returned Captain Ross, his robin's eyes +twinkling, his perfect teeth flashing in another teasing smile. Olwen, +glancing under those dropped lids at this somewhat showy vision of +black-and-white-and-brown-and-scarlet-and-khaki, felt that she would die +for him. + +There was a magic about him, she thought; even if he were dictatorial or +teasing, or seemed to think rather a lot of himself--a magic! At the +same instant she remembered that, yes! There was a secret magic about +her too, now. A magic that had proved itself unmistakably once; a Charm +that she herself was wearing. Confidence seemed to rush, in a warming +flood, about her heart. + +Quite defiantly she tilted her black head, and looking straight over +Captain Ross's shoulder, she laughed, for pure joy of her secret. + +"_You_ don't know everything about girls!" she told the finest judge of +women in Europe. + +And before the young Staff-Officer could retort, before he could even +open his eyes over the temerity of this chit, this schoolgirl, who had +said this thing to him (_Him!_), those little French boots of hers had +skipped away, carrying her upstairs towards the study where she must +type out the notes which she had taken down for her Uncle in shorthand +that morning. Those boots fitted the chit's ankles like a coat of black +paint, he noticed as he looked after her, too amused to be annoyed, of +course. The piece of Impertinence----! Awfully neat.... They +disappeared, the little twinkling heels. He went on to join Jack Awdas +at table. + +Olwen, at an angle in the corridor a floor higher, ran into the young +_femme-de-chambre_ for that floor, carrying over her arm a khaki tunic. + +They stopped to smile and to exchange "_bonjours_," these two girls much +of an age and much of a race, for Marie came from Brittany, and already +the Professor and his niece had amused themselves by finding out how +many Welsh words the Breton maid could understand; the simple words +which were the same in her own tongue. + +"I come from cleaning the buttons of the English monsieur, his better +tunic," explained Marie, in French, smiling as she held out the khaki +coat. + +"It is not of Monsieur de l'Audace?" asked Olwen. + +"No, Mademoiselle. Of the other English officer, young, young, who does +not talk French too well; Lieutenant Brrrrrrown," returned Marie. "Can +Mademoiselle tell me what decoration is that he has?" Olwen gave a look +at it. + +"It is the ribbon of the Military Cross--it's like your Croix de +Guerre," she said. "I didn't notice that he'd got that." + +"He" was the pink-faced New Army officer of whom Mrs. Cartwright had +spoken to her. + +She remembered, in a flash, that it was he for whom she had intended +that fourth share of the Charm, still in the pocket of the serge dress +that she wore. She had not yet made up any plan as to how she was to +press the Charm upon him. The plan came to her then and there, as she +stood in that corridor. + +"Hold Marie," she said, suddenly. "I have a _porte-bonheur_ for this +officer." She took out the sachet. "Say nothing to Monsieur," she +impressed it upon the little maid, all smiles and delight to be included +in a secret. "I am going to hide it in his coat." + +And, taking hold of the coat, she slipped the sachet full of the +enchanted powder into the slit-like pocket at the waist where men keep +tickets. + +"There!... Probably Monsieur will not find it; but all the better. It +won't matter, even if he does not know it is there." + +The Breton maid nodded. "A _sachet a preservation_ then? I know them. We +have them also, Mademoiselle. It is to avert all danger from the soldier +who is to wear it, is it not?" + +"No. Not precisely that," said the young Welsh girl. "It is to bring to +him--well, Happiness of the best." + +"Love, then. Ah, _la la_! I doubted myself of that!" declared the young +_bonne_, bursting into ripples of laughter. "I go now to take the coat +to Monsieur, who does not suspect. But no, Mademoiselle, I will say +nothing to him of this; nothing, nothing, nothing at all!" + +Olwen thought, as she went on: "Now Marie probably imagines that I am in +love with this dreadfully uninteresting little Mr. Brown, and want to +attract him to being in love with me! When I've never spoken to him in +my life, or even seen what he's like when he's close to one!" + +But that afternoon she both saw and spoke to this Mr. Brown. + +They were returning, she and her Uncle, from one of those wanderings +which the Professor loved to take out westwards from the hotel. For a +couple of miles they had tramped along the hard sands at the foot of the +great dunes wherein pine-trees were buried up to their lower boughs; +then, leaving the sands, they had scrambled up the sandhills into the +pine-forest that bordered them. + +Its fragrant aisles stretched for miles bisected by paths, spread with +a rich terra-cotta carpet of pine-needles. Already the Professor had +slipped his pipe back into his pocket, for the notice "_Defense a +fumer_" appeared again and again tacked up on the trunks of the great +pines that made of those miles a perfect factory of turpentine. + +With their faces towards home, they caught sight through the pines of a +figure that repeated for an instant the effect of the pine-trunks +themselves, brown-clad, long-lined, and slender. It stooped at the foot +of a tree. + +"My dear lady," said the Professor, taking off his hat to the figure, +which was that of Mrs. Cartwright, "you look like Daphne, being changed +into a pine rather than a laurel." + +Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she rose to her feet. She had been putting +into position a fallen tin cup, shaped like a flower-pot, and left to +catch the resin as it oozed stickily from the trunk. Most of the firs in +this part of the forest had a tin blade, that had scored them down, left +plunged into the bark. + +"Delightful, to be able to turn into any sort of plant, rather than be +bored by the wrong man," remarked Mrs. Cartwright lightly, dusting her +hands. + +"What a pull for those nymphs! Must have made it worth while to live in +a world where there was no tea. I am ready for mine, though----" + +The three went on homewards together, the Professor walking between +Olwen and the writer, who found herself once more admiring his Druidic +head and still-active frame. In precisely the same spirit she would have +admired some stately, ivy-grown keep that had once echoed to the shouts +of archers; she was scarcely the type of woman who becomes an "old man's +darling----" + +But little Olwen was busily thinking: "Now! I do believe the Charm has +begun to work. Didn't Uncle say she was like Daphne?--and doesn't she +really look younger today? It's _begun_! And see how she's smiling at +him and talking to him about Anatole France.... But I wish they'd leave +off about books and begin about themselves. I wish I could run on and +leave them to come home together (but they both walk as fast as I do any +day, bother them!). If only we could meet somebody that I could fall +behind with, and let Mrs. Cartwright have Uncle all to herself----" + +This wish was fulfilled at a turn in the path where there was a clearing +in the symmetrically spaced pines. Three paths converged towards a sort +of oasis of heather and undergrowth, surrounding a hut of untrimmed +pine-branches. Huge blackberry runners, purple and green, flung +themselves before the door of it. And there stood, fixedly regarding the +place, a boyish figure in khaki with an ultra-floppy cap at a rakish +angle on his head. + +"Are you thinking of taking that house, Mr. Brown?" Mrs. Cartwright +asked him laughingly, as they came up. + +Mr. Brown gave quite a jump before he turned and saluted the party. + +Up to now they had known this young man as one very fond of his food, +always sitting on the back of his neck in the most comfortable chair he +could find, eternally smoking cigarettes, and evidently bent on getting +his money's worth out of the hotel. But it was a different young man +who now turned his pink face and pop-eyes on them. They'd evidently +interrupted him in thinking over something; thinking hard. + +He echoed Mrs. Cartwright's last words. "Thinking of taking that hut?" +he repeated, in a voice that seemed to bring a breath of crowded A B C +shops, of Tube-lifts and cheerful workaday London generally into that +stately French glade. "Well, d'you know, that's a wheeze. It's a dashed +good idea. I was just that moment thinking that something would have to +be done!" + +"What about?" asked Mrs. Cartwright, as the party halted. + +"Why, about everything, the whole blooming thing," returned Mr. Brown, +pushing his floppy cap to the back of his head. "This is just about +beating me, I give you _my_ word. Look at me, what am _I_ doing here?" + +Mrs. Cartwright said: "Evidently you're having a look at your new +house?" + +He said: "I don't mean here this minute, in this Epping Forest sort of +show. I mean _here_!"--he spread out his hands as if to take in the +whole of Western France. "Of course, they told me I'd got to go to +pine-woods when they gave me three months, and a cavalry fellow, at +Sister Agnes's, told me here was better than Surrey, and gave me the +address, and it seemed quite natural to take it and think--Blow the +expense. But I wish--I tell you what I wish." + +He dropped his voice confidentially. + +"I wish this blessed War was over, and me riding in a third-class +carriage again!" + +Before any one could speak, he went on with his candid and good-humoured +grouse. + +"I've got to go first, with these colonels and company promotors, and +people. The trouble is, I like it. Too dashed well I've got to like it. +I never used to think of all these things coming to me when I was +serving behind the counter; nor the customers neither, I'll bet. And now +nothing but the tip-toppest hotel's good enough for me, and me posted in +Cox's 'star' department. R. D., refer to drawer! Got it in my pocket +now; show it to you. I could have sworn I'd got the money, you know. +Still, here's the cheque--" + +He said it with a disarming and engaging honesty, as if the whole story +might be read anyhow in his pink, snub-nosed, and ordinary face. Mrs. +Cartwright and the Professor found it impossible to help liking him as +he stood there, the little Briton who gave no further thought to the +tense horrors of Suvla Bay, where he had won his Cross, but who +confessed his liking for the best hotels. But as for Olwen, she was +watching him anxiously; for his hand had gone to the pocket where she +herself had hidden that "_porte bonheur_." He fumbled. At that moment +his finger and thumb must have encountered it.... + +"No--what's this?--that's not the cheque--must be in my case," he went +on, taking the hand out of the pocket. (Olwen breathed again.) "Well, +now something's got to be done. They'll wait at the hotel, I daresay, if +I don't leave this place altogether. And I like this place." He looked +round the empty hut again, as if he half expected to see a Willesden +estate agent's name round the corner. "Not half a bad idea of yours, +Mrs. C. I might send for some camp-kit; sleep here--do the picnic +touch----" + +For a few moments they stood, discussing forest regulations and to whom +the would-be camper-out must apply. Then, four abreast, they turned to +go on, the sea-breeze meeting them. + +"Mind the barbed wire," exclaimed Mr. Brown, flipping with his cane at +one of those giant brambles. "It's caught your skirt," to Olwen. "Allow +me." + +He bent down and unfastened the hook-like thorns from her frock. This +kept the two behind the Professor and Mrs. Cartwright, whereat the +innocent Olwen rejoiced. She could not guess that not only did the +Professor seem at least as old to Mrs. Cartwright as he did to his own +niece, but that the Professor himself, though he found her a sympathetic +listener, could never at any age have wished to make love to this lady. +For he was a "type"-lover. To him any woman who was not tiny and +black-haired (as Olwen's own mother had been) was only, to quote Captain +Ross, "half a woman...." + +But they were talking together, easily, interestedly, as they walked +ahead through the wood. And even though the subject might only be of +Celtic Folk-lore, Olwen felt already that she saw her wish coming to +pass before her eyes. + +She turned to her other experiment with the Charm. + +Mr. Brown had slipped his fingers again into the pocket into which he +had first hunted for his dishonoured cheque. And this time he brought +out the hidden sachet. + +He stared at the small mauve object. + +"Now what the dickens is this?" he demanded, genially bewildered. +"Don't remember where this came from----" + +Olwen, inwardly terrified lest the young man might in his ignorance toss +the precious thing into the arbutus bushes, said with outward +carelessness, "It looks like a mascot; better not lose it." + +"Looks more like the little square bags they used to fasten on to the +ladies' covered coathangers in the Haberdashery. With scent inside 'em. +I've no use for perfumery----" + +Olwen was now sure he meant to throw this gift of the gods away. With a +hasty gesture she snatched it out of the young man's hand. + +"It is a mascot; I've seen others like them!" she told him, as they came +in sight of the hotel. On the piazza Captain Ross was smoking, with his +friend, the aviator; Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had joined them. + +Olwen realized that Captain Ross was also staring down on to the +pine-bordered road, at herself and young Mr. Brown, who had stopped +short, and was still looking at what she held, the treasure that he had +discovered in his pocket. + +"But how did it get in there?" he demanded. + +"Somebody might have slipped it in without your knowing. But anyhow," +said Olwen, taking a resolution, "_I'm_ going to slip it back for you +now, to bring you luck!" And she did slip it back into the khaki pocket. +"There! You know where it's come from this time. You'll keep it there, +won't you?" + +"Anything to oblige," laughed Mr. Brown, and the two young people walked +on to join the party on the piazza, who were waiting for them. + +Olwen thought, "It's rather annoying that he's going to leave the hotel, +and live in a hut like the Wild Man of the Woods _just_ when I want to +watch how the Charm will work with him! But if it _does_ work, that's +the main thing, after all." + +She added aloud, looking into the pink and puggy face that had outstared +Danger and was now staring at Bankruptcy, "Take care of it, won't you? +You won't throw it away or let it get lost or anything?" + +"Not for all the Eau in Cologne!" Mr. Brown assured her with a +mock-flourish as they ran up the piazza steps together. + +Those robin-like eyes of Captain Ross were fixed very watchfuly upon +this young Mr. Brown as he appeared, laughing and chatting as if he were +quite old friends with the Professor's niece. Then the young Staff +officer looked from him to her. + +For a girl who wasn't bland, she was (he thought again) quite neat.... + +The chit didn't look at him.... + +And what (Captain Ross wondered) was that keep-sake that she was handing +to that fellow? + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE FIRST ENGAGEMENT BY THE CHARM + + "Artill. 38 ans, celib., ser., demande marraine affect, desinteressee." + + La Vie Parisienne. + + +Astonishment, incredulity, excitement and delight, reigned in the hotel +at Les Pins. + +One thought only pervaded the place, from the topmost attics inhabited +by Marie the Bretonne and the other _femmes-de-chambre_, down through +the other floors to the wide _salons_ and to the shut-off wing that was +the domain of the management. One topic alone set all tongues there +chattering, in English, French, or Canadian-Scots. One piece of news was +now being discussed before any _communique_ from any of the fronts. + +It was the news about Miss Agatha Walsh and the nephew of "the +management," Sergeant Tronchet. + +They were engaged to be married. + +This was sudden, as everybody commented one after another. This was +quick work. For, how long had Miss Walsh been staying at the hotel? +Two--three days? And had she ever met this man before? Never? + +One moonlight walk in the pine-forest, one expedition by motor-boat +across the lagoon, half a dozen conversations at table d'hote, an +encounter at the post office where Miss Walsh had gone to buy picture +postcards of the Cote d'Azur, another stroll in the forest, a game of +draughts together--this had been all the preparation necessary for a +declaration from the bull-necked, swarthy French sergeant to the English +lady-all-alone. The deed was done. He had asked her to become his wife. +She had accepted him. No; there was no mistake. The pair were going +about looking as if they were newly-elected king and queen of the +Gironde, and those visitors to whom the engagement had not been +announced in French by Sergeant Tronchet, had been told in English by +the radiant, tremulous, blissful Miss Walsh herself. + +Madame Leroux, all smiles, had confirmed the news herself in each +instance. Monsieur Leroux had taken the little tramway into Arcachon to +blaze it abroad at his cafe. The three little pigtailed daughters +fluttered about the villas of Les Pins in their red-and-white check +frocks, twittering like starlings on the subject of the _fiancailles_, +and spreading the news that Mademoiselle Ouallshe was sending to Paris +for presents for each of them, and had said that they were to call her +Tante Agathe! The wedding was for soon--for almost immediately! + +Excitement rose higher and higher; it might be observed that the delight +seemed, if anything, on the French side; the astonishment on that of the +English visitors. + +Little Mr. Brown turned from his plans for furnishing the woodcutter's +hut for himself to open his candid and bulging blue eyes upon this new +event in the hotel. He was, as a matter of fact, the first of those who +heard the news to refer to a certain element in it. + +"I say; look here," was his comment. "That chap's all right, I daresay; +but are his people and all that quite class enough for the lady's +family? I don't know about foreigners, of course. And of course I don't +pretend to be Anybody, myself. But what'll her people at home think? +Won't they----Well, _socially_, I should have thought it would have been +considered a bit _Rum_!" + +Mrs. Cartwright told him, quickly and quietly, that this marriage was +not complicated, on "the lady's" side, by any people at home, and turned +to Olwen to confirm it. Olwen, who was wide-eyed with a mixture of +feelings, which she was surprised to find were not all happy ones, +agreed that Miss Walsh hadn't any relations. + +And presently Mrs. Cartwright was writing to her sisters: "_A marriage +has been arranged between the French Sergeant and the Hotel Spinster I +described to you in my last. I think an excellent plan. She wants +marriage, he wants money. Translated into English, it is brutal and +horrible. But these clear-eyed French make something so different out of +all that._ + +"_She is madly in love with him, for the same reason that Eve fell in +love with Adam in that Garden; he's the first man she's ever seen. The +gap between their worlds is no wider than the gap between her and the +world generally. Up to now (35, my dear!) she's belonged to the Great +Unkissed._ + +"_He is proud of his achievement, and, consequently, proud of her. I +expect he will make her an admirable husband. They'll live in this +country, his people will be her people. He will be affectionate, and +genuinely fond of her, as only a Frenchman can be fond of the wife who +has brought him money, and at whom he would not have looked, but for her +income!_" + +Olwen, behind that startled gaze of hers, was realizing that she, and +she alone, was responsible for this projected marriage and for the way +in which it would turn out, whether for good or ill. + +She had been the first person in the hotel to whom Miss Walsh had +confided the great news. With the tremulous face of a girl, with a +girl's faltering delight, the Spinster had called into her room an hour +before. + +"Oh, Olwen, come here a minute. (I'm going to call you Olwen.) Oh, I +must tell you first. You were the first person who spoke to me here," +she cried. "Oh, can you believe that it was only last Thursday? +You said that it would bring me luck--that Charm you gave me. Oh, my +little Olwen, it's brought me all the luck and happiness in the world! +That's nonsense--I suppose! Still, I _am_ the happiest person in the +world. Kiss me. Pierre is so wonderful! You see what's happened? Oh, +yes, you must guess----" + +Olwen, hardly believing her ears, still guessed. She left Miss Walsh, +her small ears buzzing with the woman's pathetic gush of confidences, +her mind a welter of emotions. Perhaps the chief feeling was fright.... + +It was so powerful, then, that Charm? She had not expected this. Not +only the swiftness of the wooing, but a definite engagement!... + +And a marriage to be expected shortly.... And to--well, _not_ the sort +of person whom Olwen, the disposer of the Charm, had meant to see +attracted to the wearer of her amulet. At least, she had not expected to +see him _accepted_----! She had hoped--for what? Well, not the first man +who asked Miss Walsh; not the man who--who looked rather like their +village policeman at home! and not for it to happen in three days! It +was rather frightening. Could one count so little upon the way in which +that Charm was going to act? Perhaps after all it was not going to prove +the unmitigated blessing of the human race which Olwen had at first seen +it.... Oh.... Misgivings thronged upon her. For a moment she felt +inclined to wish that she could take the Charm by force, if necessary, +from Miss Walsh--undo what she had done. That she could steal the Charm +away from Mr. Brown's tunic-pocket. That she could snip the ribbon that +tied the Charm round Mrs. Cartwright's long slender neck.... + +As for the Charm that rose and fell with the gentle curve of Olwen's own +breast, where it lay, well, that would be all right. For her, Charm or +no Charm, there was no question of attracting the wrong man. For her +there was only one man in the world; his right sleeve was tucked into +his jacket-pocket, and as he smiled teasingly down at her his teeth were +a flash of snow across the brown of his self-confident face. For her the +Charm that attracted him could only be a beneficent thing. + +But what about those others? she mused, doubtfully, over her typewriter. + +In Mrs. Cartwright's case, the Charm was not working as swiftly as in +the case of Miss Walsh. She seemed, so far, on the same terms with the +Professor that she had always been; as ready to listen to his +interpretations of Welsh names--"Olwen," for instance, meaning "White +Track," and belonging to a maid of Celtic mythology in whose path +daisies were wont to spring up--as interested in his special subjects. +As friendly at table d'hote or in the evenings; yes, as friendly ... but +no more so! At their age, Olwen thought, people strolled into Love, +perhaps, instead of falling into it, as they did at nineteen. + +In her own case, she thought--and she hugged the thought!--the Charm did +seem to be working. Not at that perilous speed with which it had served +Miss Agatha Walsh; not yet with results which meant these definite and +pole-axing announcements! Still ... wasn't it working a little? + +Without looking at him, the girl had several times been aware that +Captain Ross's dark quick glance had sought her out as soon as she +appeared, and that it had followed her as she went out. Several times +since the encounter in the hall, when she had told him that he "didn't +know everything about girls," he had stopped to talk to her; always to +"rag" her with some question or comment. But he had stopped. + +Often she thought: "That means nothing! He never could think of me +seriously. Why should he?" + +Then again she felt that a time must come when he would stop longer, say +more. + +She waited for that time, outwardly indifferent, just as a branch +studded with the brown scentless swellings of mid-winter waits for the +spring that shall see them break into sweetest buds. She waited, fixing +her bright gaze upon some point beyond her idol's broad shoulder as she +answered his greeting with some snippy girlish flippancy, while her +heart whispered--ah! what volumes of tenderness. She just waited; biding +her time as a girl needs must, whether or not she knows of some secret +Charm that backs her power. + +She waited ... but now waiting and secret watching, uttered retort and +unuttered yearning, were all alike tinged with a new apprehension. + +That Charm! What unexpected way of its own was it going to take _next_? + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +UNFORSEEN EFFECTS OF THE CHARM + + "Does the wood-pecker flit round the young ferash? Does the grass + clothe a new-built wall? + Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall?" + + Kipling. + + +It would have been a shock to little Olwen had she realized what other +result of the Charm was manifesting itself already at that moment. + +Probably the first, imperceptible manifestations would have been lost +upon this quite young girl. + +Had she noticed the gravitating towards Mrs. Cartwright's chair of an +evening of Captain Ross's friend, the young flyer, had she observed the +gradual way in which it was becoming a matter of course that when the +writer was not working he was in attendance upon her, had she known of a +bouquet of late roses, bought in the Ville d'Hiver and sent by the +chambermaid to Room 23, had she heard what boyish confidences about +flying, and Work, and Other Fellows, and even Home were being poured +into an ear well used to hearing of such things by a tongue not well +used to talking to women--well! Even had she known all this, Olwen would +have looked upon it much as she looked upon her own impulses when she +stooped quickly to pick up a pair of dropped spectacles for the old +French lady, the little dark boy's grandmother, or held open the door of +the _salle_ for her to pass out. It was merely "manners." + +Further, if she had known of that night which Mrs. Cartwright had +watched through with him, putting all her own Force between him and the +forces of Horror, little Olwen would have thought she saw the whole +reason for the young man's attentions to a woman nearly twenty years his +senior. It was gratitude. How natural! + +Manners, and gratitude.... + +This is what Olwen would have thought, and what Mrs. Cartwright herself +would have said. It is true that the elder woman should have known +better. Later, she might have confessed that she did know. At the +time.... Well---- + +There is one subject in the world upon which more barefaced lying goes +on than upon any other half a dozen subjects put together: sport +included. The discussion of it turns nine men out of ten into what +Captain Ross might describe as "a darned fabricator." + +Golf and salmon fishing cannot compete with the lying records of Love! +Food it cannot be that the golfer and the fisherman cling _in their own +hearts_ to the fabrications that they fling abroad. + +Whereas, regarding the matter of Love, men (and even women) can actually +believe exactly what they wish to believe. + +This was not Mrs. Cartwright's habit. She was a woman sincere with +herself as a rule. Into the lives of the sincerest of us there +trespasses the exception that shows up the fallibility of human rules. + +So when she told herself that this growing attraction towards her of the +boyish Flying-officer was a normal and delightful friendship, she +believed it herself; she insisted on believing that the look in his +young eyes as they followed her movements was not the look she had been +used to see in the eyes of Captain Keith Cartwright and of a dozen other +men; yes, she made herself believe that her own more joyous mood was not +the life-giving zest that every woman feels when she is admired, +desired--and at no other time. + +She deliberately believed it was the glorious autumn weather that made +her feel this stimulant in the air, in the sea-bordered forest, in the +society of young people; that amusing Captain Ross, little Mr. Brown, +the pretty Howel-Jones child, and Mr. Awdas, for instance. + +With pleasure she accepted Mr. Awdas's invitation, one afternoon, to +walk through the forest with him and down to the oyster-beds, the pride +of that part of the country. She thought that Captain Ross was coming +too, but it appeared that Captain Ross and the little Brown boy had gone +for a walk in the opposite direction, to prospect around that +woodcutter's hut. + +She and the young flyer set out together, walking lightly and quickly in +step; their shadows, flung on the road in front of them, showed a +curious likeness that one would not, looking at the pair, have noticed, +he so blond, and blue-eyed, and boyish--she whimsical, brown-haired, +plain of feature. But the shapes of both, blue silhouettes on the white +road, were young and supple, both characteristically small-headed, wide +in the shoulder, slim in the flank, and long from hip to knee. Seeing +them from their shadows only, one might have guessed a brother and his +sister swinging easily along together. + +The shadows broke, striping the red bodies of the pines as they entered +the forest from the road. + +"It's jollier walking further up," said Mrs. Cartwright, taking a path +to the left. "We get glimpses of the sea all the way along; this way." + +He followed her in silence. He had been in a silent mood all day, she +had noticed. She asked him, looking back with a little glance of +concern, if he had not been sleeping again. + +"Oh yes, I've slept all right--slept like a top," he reassured her from +behind. The path was so narrow that they could only walk one abreast +through the arbutus bushes. He told her: "I haven't had any bother at +all since--that night----" + +"Good!" said Mrs. Cartwright heartily, but he had not finished speaking; +he was concluding in a low voice, "that night when you were such an +angel to me." + +"Oh, please don't!" she laughed, looking ahead. "You make me feel like +something off a Christmas card of my childhood; it's not a bit like me, +believe me." She was not looking at him; she did not know, just now, +that his eyes were fastened on the lithe brown length of her as she made +her way through the bushes that seemed to catch at her, offering their +bouquets of white flowers, their jewels of orange and scarlet, as she +passed. + +Presently they grew less thickly, the arbutus bushes; they seemed to +fall back into the forest. + +The two people walking, reached a little rise in the ground, and now a +rush of salter air was mingling with the warm pine-scent that hung +everywhere about them, and now there was a familiar sapphire gleam +through the pine-boughs that showed black and fringed against sea and +sky. + +"One can't walk for long in this wood without coming upon that glimpse +of the sea outside," remarked Mrs. Cartwright, gazing at it, and taking +in a deep, enjoying breath. "Sea through pine-needles is so like the +blink of very blue eyes fringed by thick black lashes! It reminds me so +of a man I was once very much in love with----" + +Quick as a shot came the interruption to what she was saying; a hoarse +curt "Don't!" over her shoulder; a hand that clutched at her upper arm, +and then dropped as soon as it had touched her. + +She wheeled, startled. She faced the angry, hurt, and jealous eyes of a +man. + +Jack Awdas, looking steadily down into her astonished face, repeated in +that husky, angry tone; "Don't. Don't do it! Don't talk to me about any +man you've loved. I can't bear it. D'you see? You----I----You mustn't." + +She said nothing, in the extreme of surprise. He said nothing more +either. It is possible that he was as startled as she was by the +declaration that had broken from his lips, and whose sound was still +ringing in their ears. The boy had not meant to say it. He had not known +what he had meant to say; his mind had been, as it were, filled by some +luminous and bewildering and concealing mist. + +Now a breath had blown aside a corner of that mist: he caught a glimpse +of the heights and depths that it had been hiding--for how many hours, +how many days? He did not know. Only it seemed to him that since that +night of his bad dream, since his eyes had closed upon the sight of that +woman watching, lovely with Pity, he had woken up to a new world. + +It was full of strangeness and unrest, that world; it was full of sudden +thrills. It held impatience to hear her voice, to touch her hand. It +held longing and mystery. It held worship of a laugh or gesture from +her. It held amazement at oneself; incredulity that one could feel these +things. Now, he found, it held also Pain.... + +This woman had been made part of his life by that vigil shared. He could +not bear the thought of her in other men's lives; couldn't bear to think +of it, much less to hear of it in words.... It couldn't be. She was his! + +They walked on in silence, these two English people from the hotel; each +treading a maze of hidden thought as they went. No word of it escaped +them for the present. Jack Awdas was the first to speak. + +He said, his husky voice once more composed: "You haven't had a look at +this place yet, have you?" + +"No," replied Mrs. Cartwright, also in the accents of every day. "You +know the way, don't you?" + +"Yes; Ross and I explored the oyster-beds the first day we came over. +Rather interesting. I thought perhaps the place might come in useful to +you as--as 'copy.'" + +"Oh yes," murmured Mrs. Cartwright, out of the labyrinth of her +thoughts.... + +It would have augured ill for the next chapters of her serial had she +depended for "copy" upon what she was to see of that French oyster-park +that afternoon. Neither she nor the boy, who was her guide, had anything +but a cursory eye, an abstracted mind, to give to that lightsome, airy +picture of wide sea and sand, mapped out with stakes and sills and +basins, and peopled with busy barefoot women in their picturesque garb +of black sunbonnet, print jumper and long scarlet trousers. + +Up and down the narrow paths stepped those long slender feet of Mrs. +Cartwright, shod in the brown canvas _sandalettes_ of the neighbourhood, +with lacings that clipped her to mid-calf like the _cothurne_ ribbons of +a dancer. Before her tramped the high leather boots of the Flying-man; +crunch--crunch--crunch, over the gravel and chipped shell. But still the +paths that each was treading remained those of the secret labyrinth.... + + * * * * * + +She, behind all the light composure of her manner, was more than +disturbed. She was touched down to that mingling of inner tears and +inner laughter, which was her very self. He cared for her, then, this +charming lad, whose heart so far had known only his own people, only +that other lad who had been his observer and his chum. He loved her. +There could be no mistaking the tone in which he'd blurted out: "_Don't +talk to me about other men you've loved; I can't bear it!_" Yes; he was +hers--just as Keith Cartwright had been hers, and young Rolfe, who was +killed on the Frontier, and Rex Mannering in Nineteen-oh-one, _and_ the +man whose sea-blue regard had laughed through such black fringing +lashes, and the others. She ought to have known. Here was this boy.... +At twenty-two!... She had seen such affairs.... She had watched, not too +sympathetically, the mature woman who receives the attentions of her +son's contemporaries. Once she had heard a friend of hers, in all the +glory of her twenty-four summer, declare, "It's such an _elderly_ habit, +letting youths _younger than oneself_ fetch and carry for one. And oh, +Claudia! I don't think you or I will ever have to know the humiliation +of loving a _boy_!" Mrs. Cartwright had lost sight of this friend, who +was a year older than herself. + +Perhaps the unforseen had happened to her too. Certainly Mrs. Cartwright +had never dreamed that this thing would ever happen to herself; to +become at her age the object of a lad's first love. It made her feel, at +the same time, suddenly old--and suddenly young. + +Outwardly unchanged, she let her gaze sweep the flat stretches of sand +before her, and then rest upon a _parqueuse_ who waded by, a vivid +figure in scarlet and black, carrying a square rope-bottomed +oyster-basket. + +"Wonderfully picturesque those wide black sunbonnets the women wear," +Mrs. Cartwright commented. "Curious to think they're a survival of our +occupation of this part of France, all those centuries ago." + +"Are they? by Jove," was all that young Awdas replied. "That's +interesting." + +But for him, too, what he said was as a man talks in his sleep; what he +saw about him was less clear than the landscape of a dream. In his heart +the boy was awed and exultant. He had told her. It had leapt from his +lips, rather. He was conscious of new power within him; something of the +feeling that had been his on the morning when he had first gone up on a +"solo." Now she knew what he had to say to her--for he _would_ say the +rest of it presently. Not yet; not yet.... + +They pottered about the oyster-park, talking of oyster-culture. They +had tea in the town, discussing the various tea-shops of their +preference in London and Paris. Then he asked her if she were too tired +to walk home and would like to take the little tramway; he knew he ought +to ask her that, but he hoped inwardly that she would agree to walk. He +breathed again when she protested that she was never tired. They took to +the forest-path again, now gilded by the sun's rays, pointing through +the pine-trunks; beyond the fringing branches the glimpse of sea and sky +had changed from corn-cockle-blue to saffron-yellow. They walked, +talking of those other fair woods of France that the War had turned into +treeless, blasted wastes, spun over by webs of barbed wire. And then +they came to that rise in the ground of the forest where the arbutus +bushes seemed to fall back, and whence they had caught the first glimpse +of the sea. It was here that he had spoken, on their way out. It was +here that, on their way home, silence fell suddenly upon them. As if by +tacit consent, they stopped walking. He turned to her. + +"No," said Mrs. Cartwright hastily, as if he had said something. "No, +no." + +"Yes," said Jack Awdas, quietly and steadily, and just as if no time had +elapsed between his first hurt "_Don't_" and this. "I am going to talk +to you about it. I must." + +"No, no. Please don't," gently and unhappily, from her. "It's better +not. There's nothing to be said." + +"Oh, isn't there, by Jove!" exclaimed the boy. "There is everything. I +must tell you. I----Well, you know now, of course. I do care for you, +most tremendously." + +Tall woman as she was, he was looking down into her face as he went on +quickly, composedly. The intensity of what he felt took from him all +shyness. + +He said: "I never thought it was in me to care so awfully about anybody. +It's all come"--he sketched a gesture with his long arm--"like that! In +me! I can't tell you what it's like. When I've heard other fellows +talking, I've thought----But I see now it's absolutely true. Only more +so. None of them cared as I do. They couldn't. They hadn't met--you." + +"Please don't." She pressed her lips together. "I ought not to have let +you say as much." She tried to meet his eyes frankly, but that young +ardour in them disconcerted her. She looked aside, leant a hand on the +hard red bark of the pine nearest to her. "Of course," she concluded +(very feebly, as she felt!), "I am so glad you like me, Mr. Awdas.... I +hope we shall always be ... great friends...." + +"Friends?" echoed the boy. He put back his small head and laughed. "Like +you? But I want you to marry me." + +She looked at him, at a loss for just the right words. + +He persisted, still smiling. "But, of course, you've got to marry me." + +Now she gave a little hopeless laugh, glancing about as if to take on to +her side the tall old trees, the distant sea, the sunset-clouds. She +said, with an attempt to put the conversation on a more natural basis, +"You know, you mustn't talk nonsense to me----" + +"Why nonsense?" quickly. "This is dead earnest." + +She said quietly: "Mr. Awdas, how old are you? Twenty-two, aren't you?" + +"Yes; but look here! That's got absolutely nothing to do with this----" + +"Everything," said the woman. "You're twenty-two; I am----" + +"I don't want to know," he broke in. "You're--you. You've got nothing to +do with ages, or age. You're so wonderful. There's nobody in the world +like you. I love you," he ended, in a mutter. "I want you to marry me." + +There was a lump in Mrs. Cartwright's throat as she said ruefully, "I +might be your mother." + +He cried out impatiently: "Oh, dash it all! So '_might_' Madame Leroux, +or anybody else, be my mother! The point is, they don't happen to be. +You don't either. You aren't. And you're going to be my wife. Don't you +see how I care for you?" + +She was struck by the stark simplicity of him. He cared so much, then, +that he should not think of its not meaning everything to the person +beloved, as well as himself. He was looking down at her not only +adoringly, but masterfully. To him this new love was so wonderful that +it must needs be omnipotent. Sorry, and touched more deeply that she had +dreamed, she sighed as she stood there in the wood and set herself to +argue. + +She went over them all, the old, the obvious, the stock facts that have +proved themselves for centuries, the truths whose lasting light is put +out only by the transient fairy glamour of Infatuation. + +"_You see, this is a passing thing. This happens to almost every young +man once in his life. He looks back and laughs at it._" + +"_ ... fatal to marry out of one's generation!_" + +"_In a little time you'll know how right I am----_" + +"_ ... ten years hence you'd look at me, and see I was an old woman. +You'd still be a young man. It would be horrible!_" + +The boy looked at her and smiled as she spoke, and she knew that the +words meant nothing to him, the lips that uttered them were everything. + +She said, resignedly, "Let's walk on," and they walked on down the +narrow path between the thickening clumps of arbutus; this time he led, +his head turned over his shoulder to watch her as she followed. + +He began again (without alarm, it seemed): "You won't marry me, then?" + +She was a little reassured by the cheerfulness in that husky boyish +voice. She had flung cold water, then, to some purpose? He was ready to +listen to reason. + +"My dear boy, my dear child!" she exclaimed, laughing more naturally. +"You weren't _born_ when I'd been living for years and years. I was +growing up and married when you were running about that paddock at home +in a jersey suit. I'd been round the world when you were going to public +school. Marry you? I shouldn't dream for one instant of such a thing. +Not for one single instant." + +"Just because of _ages_?" he tossed back over that wide shoulder as they +went. "Is that all?" + +"Isn't that more than enough?" + +"What, just because you've lived in this world more years than I have? +Eaten more breakfasts and dinners? Had time to wear out more pairs of +shoes?" the boy took up quite gaily. He pushed aside a bush that +straggled right across her path, offering his bouquet of white +lily-of-the-valley-like flowers, growing on the same bough as the +berries of scarlet and orange. Arbutus! She knew she would never see the +plant again without being reminded of this hour. To her and to these +others here with her it would always mean "that time at Les Pins...." + +He broke off a spray, held it towards her. "Look, you're like that," he +told her, more softly, and for the first time rather bashfully. "I was +thinking so yesterday, in the woods. You may have been grown-up, +and--and have known things and all that; that's ripeness and fruit, I +suppose.... Yes; but, at the same time, you kept on being ... white +flowers, and buds...." + +She shook her head, silently refusing the flattery that she knew was +meant sincerely. + +But she took the spray from his hand, tucked it into her brown coat +(tucking in as well an end of Olwen's pink ribbon that had escaped +again). + +The look of joyous mastery flashed into his eyes. He went on, fondly +teasing, "Come to that, I've seen and done more things than you have in +all that long, long life you talk so much about. I've been _up_ further, +anyway, haven't I?" He tilted his crested head towards the pine-tops. +"And _you've_ never crashed down a mile and a half from the clouds; now, +have you?" + +"Ah----" she said, and checked a little shiver. The sun had set now; it +was growing dark under the trees. + +"Let's walk faster," said Mrs. Cartwright, hurriedly. "Let's get in. +And--we won't talk about all that any more." + +He said nothing. His whole heart was filled with the utterly boyish, +utterly obstinate Will-to-Get. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +DIVAGATIONS OF THE CHARM + + "There's a girl wanted there, there's a girl wanted there, + And he don't care if she's dark or fair, + There's a nice little home that she's wanted to share." + + Song of the Past. + + +The scene with which the last chapter closed would have been further +undeniable proof to Olwen of the too-potent success of her talisman, had +she known of it. But how about the working of the Charm, as it had been +mapped out by herself? + +As it was, guessing nothing as yet of how it had drawn to her friend, +Mrs. Cartwright, the adoration of quite the wrong man, the girl was +already in a mood of dissatisfaction. Chiefly, perhaps, because half the +day was over, without a word or look for her from Captain Ross. It is +true that the young Staff officer had announced the evening before that +he guessed he was going to take the following day out in the open. But +if her Charm had been strong as she had hoped it, Captain Ross would +scarcely have wished to leave the hotel for an entire day while she +(Olwen) was in it? Yet, how magic had been its effect in the case of +Miss Walsh and her sergeant! They (the fiances) were now inseparable, +rather to the scandal of the French contingent, new to the code of the +English betrothed. Olwen scarcely had a word with her friend, except for +good night! Well, the unchaperoned Miss Walsh was entirely happy. That +was one ray of brightness in the gloom of little Olwen's mood, for even +she was now coming round to Mrs. Cartwright's expressed view that it was +better to be happy with a quite unsuitable partner than to be bored with +one who is apparently "cut out" for one. So much for what the Charm had +done for Agatha Walsh. + +But what about Olwen herself? What about Mrs. Cartwright? What about +little Mr. Brown?... To the girl, in her present impatient frame of +mind, there seemed to be absolutely "nothing doing," as Captain Ross +would have said. + +That very afternoon, when she and her Uncle were closeted together in +that bare, shining study-room of his, she had tried to draw a discussion +of Mrs. Cartwright into the rewriting of the Professor's article on old +Welsh flower-names, but the old man was not to be diverted from his own +subject. + +"Never mind Mrs. Cartwright's new dress now, Olwen _fach_," he'd said, +indulgently, but firmly. "Clothes, clothes, and stuffs----! Get on with +this, now----" And he had laid down close to her typewriter a further +page of notes, in his all but indecipherably small handwriting: + + "Fox-glove--_Bysedd cwn_ (Hound's fingers). + Mullein--_Canwyll yr adar_ (Bird's candle). + Cotton-grass--_Sidan y waun_ (Moor silk). + Snowdrops--_Clych Maban_ (Baby's bells)...." + +Olwen had tapped out a dozen of these names on a fresh sheet of paper, +thinking, rebelliously: "Well, I don't see that these are any more +important than 'clothes and stuffs' that one's got to _wear_! Certainly +not half as important as an awfully nice woman whom Uncle might be +marrying all this time. I do call it a waste----" Then, as she pushed +the roller of her machine along the carrier again, a more optimistic +thought had struck her. "Perhaps he's making up his mind to propose to +her _now_." + +"Perhaps he won't----Good gracious, what handwriting! What's this? + +"'Briony--_Paderau gatti_ (Cat's Rosary).' + +"Perhaps he won't just say a word to me about Mrs. Cartwright, or how +that goldeny jumper suits her, on purpose. _He's afraid I might guess!_" + +Then the optimism had faded again into gloom.... Mechanically she +finished her work, stamped the letters, tidied up the table after her +Uncle had gone. She ought to write home, she knew. She owed letters to +Auntie Margaret, who kept the big rambling house in Carnarvonshire for +the family, and to her sisters Peggy and Myfanwy, and to some of the +cousins. (The Howel-Jones family was as big and rambling as that old +house of theirs.) But Olwen was in no mood for writing any letters of +her own. She took out some picture postcards of the place, one showing +the edge of the pine-forest silhouetted against the sea, one of the +_Baissin_ all a-flutter with the sails of yachts (a flight of giant +butterflies) on regatta day, and one of a wave, marbled with foam, about +to break on Biscay shore. On these Olwen scribbled messages to her +home-people; then she took them up with her Uncle's letters, and ran out +of the hotel to post them at the little bureau opposite to where the +tramway started for Arcachon. Then, since there was nothing else to do +until dinner-time, she turned to ramble in that forest that seemed to +fling out its green, deep arms towards human beings clustered in their +houses and villas, their hotels, and their chattering groups between its +edge and the margin of the sea. That forest seemed to draw them as if it +too held at its hidden heart some disturbing Charm, thought Olwen +fancifully, as she roamed out westwards, apparently alone, but always in +her thoughts accompanied by a sturdy compact form in khaki with scarlet +tabs, his right sleeve tucked into his pocket, his gaze confident as the +tone of his voice. Only, in her inmost thoughts, that voice was not wont +to tease and laugh, and "rag" her, as in everyday life. She put, into +the unexpectedly beautiful womanish mouth under that toothbrush +moustache, the tone and the words that she would have wished to hear +from it ... and one can hazard a guess at the feelings of Captain Ross +and of most other young men could they but listen to the dream-language +given to the dream-images of themselves by the girls who are interested +in them. + +Little Olwen's guileless imaginings, for instance, murmured, "Olwen! My +sweetheart! My own, sweet, sweet little girl! No, no; I have never cared +for any one else in my life. All my life I have been waiting for YOU; +the one girl who was made for me. Tell me you've never cared for any one +either; ah yes, darling! Tell me. Do tell me. I shan't be able to sleep +all tonight unless you do----" Thus the Captain Ross of Olwen's maiden +reverie. + +"Then," she mused, with her head down and her eyes on the unseen carpet +of pine needles, "I'd tease him for half an hour before I did tell him +there'd never been anybody, _seriously_, but him. And then at last--yes, +then I'd let him kiss me. Two or three times running, even," decided +this abandoned Olwen, as she roamed the forest that might have been +Arden, or Eden, or the woods of her native Wales, for all she noticed of +it in her daydream. + +Into that dream there broke a loud and cheerful shout of "Hullo, hullo, +hullo, hullo!" + +Olwen jumped on the path, glanced quickly to the right, and then found +that she had reached, without knowing that she had come so far, that +clearing among the pine-trunks where the paths converged upon the +woodcutter's hut. + +Upon that place the hand of Change had fallen. Those giant +bramble-runners had been thrust aside from the entrance to it; a pile of +green canvas camp-kit leant against the log-wall; a khaki coat and a +service cap were hung upon the outstretched arm of the nearest tree; +and, just within the open doorway, a small figure in shirt-sleeves was +standing working. With the end of a bough, used as a maul, he was +driving four stumpy stakes at right angles into the pine-needle strewn +floor of the hut. + +"Harry Tate, in 'Moving House,' that's what this is supposed to +represent!" explained Mr. Brown cheerfully, as Olwen came up. "What +d'you think of my little grey home in the West? Palatial and desirable +family residence, is it not? (Not.) Standing in its own park-like +grounds." He dropped the maul. "Allow me----" + +He lifted the little green canvas chair out from among the pile of the +other things, pulled the four legs of it into position, and set it on an +even piece of ground close to the doorway. + +"Take a pew, Miss Howel-Jones," said Mr. Brown, and Olwen sat down, +laughing. In a whisk the shadowy and adorable companion of her dream had +been for the moment banished. She turned to this substantial but +unthrilling young man of everyday life. + +"Are you really going to live out here?" she asked. + +"Got to," said Mr. Brown, with a business-like nod of his bullet-head. +He returned to his post just inside the doorway, and went on driving in +his stake. She watched him; asked him what those were for? + +"Table," he explained between thumps. "They're lending me a table-top +from the hotel. (Very decent the old girl was as soon as she realized I +wasn't going to do a flit without paying my bill.) These stakes are +going to be the four legs, d'you see? Then I stick the festive board on +top of 'em. Old Ross is bringing it along presently; he's been lending a +hand." + +"Oh, has he?" said Olwen, looking round with great interest at the rest +of the furniture. "Are those all the things you've had in Camp, I +suppose?" + +"Things somebody's had in Camp," grinned the little subaltern. "I +think----Yes, that is my bucket, with 'Brown' painted on it; but none of +the other things seem to be mine. I've snaffled a lot of other fellows' +kit. But then, they've snaffled mine--or where is it? The bed's marked +'Capt. Smith,' and the bath 'Robinson'--I'd better paint Crusoe in front +o' that, eh? Monarch of all I survey touch." + +She watched him as he drove in the last stake; then he turned, put down +the clump of wood with which he had been hammering, and began to drag +out the light, canvas-covered furniture. + +"Shall I help you with that?" suggested the girl, idly, half rising. + +He waved her back with his pink hands. "No! No! You sit here and watch +me and talk to me. Having a pretty young lady to look on and make things +pleasant when you're doing a job of work; what could be nicer?" prattled +little Mr. Brown, picking up the camp-bed that, under his short arm, +gave him rather the appearance of an ant carrying a twig. "There! I'll +have done the lot before Ross comes back with that table-top; I bet he's +getting in another drink while he's about it. Talking of drinks, won't +you allow me to offer you a little light refreshment? Such as my humble +mansion can afford; here you are----" + +As he spoke he took his knife out of his pocket and gave a cut at one of +those ten-foot bramble-runners that had sprawled before the doorway of +the hut. He held it out; it was covered with clusters of those soft, +juicy blackberries that grow largest in the shade. + +"Try our fresh gathered fruit, at market prices," chattered the +London-bred lad; he took the cut end of the prickly runner and stuck it +between two logs of the wall, just to Olwen's hand. "There you are, you +see. Help yourself, won't you?" + +Olwen picked and ate a couple of the sweet cones, black and glossy as +her own little hatless head. Then she held out half a dozen on her pink +palm to her host. "Won't you have one?" + +"Chuck it in," he said, from where he was squatting turning over the +things in his hold-all, which was spread out on the ground almost at her +feet. "Three shies a penny, Miss! Try your luck----" + +He put back his head, opened his large pink mouth. He looked almost like +a big bull-pup, to whom the girl was teaching, with lumps of sugar, the +trick of "Trust" and "Paid for." Smilingly Olwen took aim with one +blackberry after another, missing twice to each one that she dropped +into the mouth not so far from her knee; a babyish game enough! But +their combined ages scarcely reached forty-two. Their laughter rang +pleasantly through the trees, greeting the ears of Captain Ross as he +strode up with the light wooden table-top tucked under his left arm. + +And it was quite an idyllic little picnic group that met his eyes in +that woodland glade of green and russet-brown: the little lady-bird of a +girl, black-headed and red-coated, enthroned there on that camp-chair +set under the trees, and taking aim from a handful of fruit at the +open-mouthed, wholesome-faced boy kneeling before those absurdly small +boots of hers. + +Perhaps the little slinger of blackberries aimed more successfully, at +that moment, than she knew; hitting, as Woman often does, another mark +than the one at which she looks. + +Perhaps the Authority on Woman was not too pleased to see another man +allowed a glance at his (the Authority's) special study, even at a stray +page of it? + +But it was with quite a genial "good afternoon" that Captain Ross set +down the table-top beside the other furniture. + +"Well, that's that, Brown," he said. + +"Ah, thank you," from the other young officer. "Much obliged, I'm sure. +Now, we'll fix this on to here----" + +Olwen darted forward to help with the table-top, but the two young men +had managed without her. + +"That's the ticket. Now, Ross! What about this for a scene in a +Canadian lumber camp? Yes; there's water over there, and I've got my old +spirit-kettle. Might turn an honest penny, too, by giving teas in the +forest. Parties catered for, eh? The Old Bull and Bush touch. Who speaks +for the job of the pretty waitress?" with a cheerful grin at Olwen. +"What, are you going on, Ross? I thought you'd come to lend a hand at my +flit. Don't go. Stop and watch me work, anyway." + +"I guess not," said the Staff Officer, with a flash of his splendid +teeth, and with the gesture that always tore at Olwen's sympathy, the +forward shrug of the shoulder that should have moved his right arm. "I'd +just hate to think I was in anybody's _way_----" He saluted, without +looking at Miss Howel-Jones any more than she was looking at him. + +Another moment and his scarlet tabs had ceased to brighten that glade of +a French wood, that heart of a Welsh maid. + +Poor little Olwen sat there by Mr. Brown's hut, feeling as if she could +with her own hands have pulled it down about his ears, just for sheer +exasperation. It's true that he, Mr. Brown, was wearing the Charm that +her own hand had tucked into his pocket--but that had no power over her +here. Here she was, left! Left for the rest of the afternoon, possibly, +in the company of a young man whom she didn't care if she never saw +again. _He_ could talk to her, it seemed; _he_ could pick blackberries +for her; _he_ could suggest that she would make a pretty waitress. + +But the one and only young man for whose attentions and compliments she +would have wished--what did _he_ do? Just chucked down, with a careless +word, the table-top that he had been to fetch, and made off without a +look or a thought for her, she told herself. + +Yet she was wearing, as she always wore, hidden away next her heart, the +disturbing Charm! + +What was the meaning of that? + +But for the engagement which it had already brought about, Olwen would +have been forced to the conclusion that it was all a fraud, that Charm. + +Couldn't be that for some people it possessed power, for others none at +all? + +Had it only no effect when it was worn by her, Olwen? + +The "no" to this question came almost as she was asking it; but not in +the way that the girl had wished. + +Little Mr. Brown, having been busy as he chattered, unheeded by her! for +the last ten minutes, had now moved into position the whole of his +effects--except the canvas chair on which Olwen was sitting. His blue +bulging eyes had glanced in her direction several times, as he pulled +and shifted and set straight. Now he looked again, and at length. + +"I say, you know, you do look top-hole, sitting there like that," he +told her, suddenly. "Wish I'd got my little kodak that I had to leave at +Southampton after all; I'd take a snap of you, just as you are. Sitting +there, as if it were your own little place, and all----" + +He paused, still looking at her with his head on one side. He had taken +his coat down from the bough, and stood, one arm in a sleeve of it, +while he considered Olwen as if from a new point of view. + +He said: "It's just what it wants--what any house or cottage or +anything wants. The little missus.... You'll be having a house of your +own, o' course, one day." + +Olwen shook her head. "Never," she said, with all the gloom of a +temporary conviction. + +"Oh! Come! Don't say that," Mr. Brown besought her, cheerily. "Course +you will. All girls say they'll never marry, and all girls _do_, after +all. All the pretty----All the ones like you, I'm sure." + +"I shan't," persisted Olwen, a trifle cheered however. "_I'm_ not +pretty." + +"Oh! Who's fishing for compliments?" laughed Mr. Brown. He jerked the +other arm into his coat and began to fasten it. "If you don't mind me +saying so, you're the prettiest girl in the place by miles. You are. I'm +not the only person in the hotel who thinks so, either." + +"Aren't you?" said Olwen, with a lift of her head, and of her heart. +"Who----?" + +"Why that old boy who keeps the hotel; old Leroux. He said you were +'_tres jolie_' the other day, when you were passing the steps. I said +'wee, wee, _tres_.' You've got such ripping eyes." + +"I don't think they're anything," said Olwen, disconsolate again. + +"They are," insisted little Mr. Brown, his pink, ordinary face becoming +dignified by his sincerity. "And it's not only--not only that you've got +a lovely little face. There's--well, I don't know what there is about +it." + +"A charm, perhaps," suggested Olwen, with would-be irony; but he took up +quite gravely: "That's it! Just what I meant. A charm. One sort of feels +glad there is the kind of think walking about. It's like the song + + 'When we was in the trenches + Fighting beside the Frenchies, + We'd 'a' given all we 'ad for a girl like 'er, + Wouldn't we, Bill? + Aye!' + +Or something of that sort. Really now. Seriously. It is awfully topping +to know there _is_ a girl like you!" + +Olwen shook her head again, laughed, deprecated.... Impossible to assert +that she was offended at his homage, even from the wrong young man. She +listened as the guileless Brown went on to tell her it was a very lucky +man for whom she'd be making a little home, some day; and, by Jove, +anybody might envy him---- + +"Very nice of you to say so," murmured Olwen, pink-eared, and ardently +wishing that Captain Ross had stayed on to hear this declaration. + +The next remark of Mr. Brown's seemed to have nothing to do with it. + +"Well, the War can't go on for ever." + +"No, I suppose not," said Olwen, uncertainly. + +"And I suppose----Well, it oughtn't to be quite as hard for a chap to +get some sort of a posish of his own afterwards," said little Mr. Brown, +thoughtfully, and as if he were already looking ahead, to a time when he +should no longer wear that uniform, that belt that he was fastening as +he came and stood nearer to the girl, looking down. + +"I mean to say, I'm not going back to any stuffy shop and serving a lot +of old trout--I beg their pardons--ladies with two and a half yards of +ecru insertion, pay at the desk, please. Not much. 'Tisn't the life for +me; I know it now. They ought to find something different for me, after +this. They've got to. Don't you think so?" + +"Oh yes," agreed Olwen, a little vaguely. + +"Well! There you are! All sorts of things might happen, with luck, even +if it's no good planning 'em out now," took up the cheery boyish voice; +and then there was silence for a moment under the pines. + +Then lowering the voice, he said: "I say, I'll tell you something. That +little mascot I found"--he touched his coat--"that you tucked in there +for me, I'll always keep that. Nobody else shall touch it, you bet." + +Olwen rose from the chair, putting her hand on the back of it. She was +suddenly a little fluttered, as if by some ripple in the atmosphere, set +stirring by some small and secret Force. The ripple was setting towards +her this time; not from her, as she was wont to feel when she was +putting out that childish soul of herself towards another man. But it +touched her, the tiny Disturbance. + +"Don't you want this chair?" she asked quickly. + +Little Mr. Brown put his own hand on the back of it, closing his fingers +for one moment over Olwen's--his fingers that had handled laces in a +ladies' shop, had handled a rifle later, and, later still, a +blood-stained revolver.... Decency and honesty were written on every +line of the little fellow's face at that moment; and even if he were of +a pattern that everyday England turns out by the thousand--well, so much +the better for England. + +Quite simply, and as one stating a fact, he said to the girl beside him: +"I don't suppose you've ever let any fellow kiss you?" + +He himself had no doubt kissed girls in dozens, but he knew now that +even to mention the word to this girl was a different thing. It did not +need Olwen Howel-Jones's aghast little "_What----?_" to forbid him to go +further than the word. + +He took his hand away with a little rueful laugh. + +"'_Archibald_, certainly not!' Eh? _I_ wouldn't have tried." + +"No. Of course not," said Olwen, repressively, but feeling a trifle +shaken. Who would have thought of his saying such a thing to her? Who +would have dreamt that the Charm would threaten to work to +cross-purposes like this? Her small face took an invulnerable look. She +swept some bits of blackberry leaves off her skirt, and prepared to turn +homewards. + +He walked with her to where the trees met the telegraph-posts of the +shaded road. + +There, as he said good-bye to her, this little young officer added, with +a wistfulness: "But I would give anything to!" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE FEASTING OF THE CHARM + + "There's that that would be thought upon, + I trow, beside the bride. + The business of the kitchen's great, + For it is fit that men should eat, + Nor was it there denied." + + Sir John Suckling. + + +Crowded hours were to follow that quiet afternoon in the forest. + +A morning or so afterwards Olwen darted out into the hall, where she had +caught a glimpse of the bride-to-be going past in a great hurry. + +"Miss Walsh----!" + +"Oh, Olwen," said Miss Walsh, stopping breathlessly. "Oh, I do want to +talk to you, but I haven't a moment. It's the lunch today, you know, the +_dejeuner intime_ for all his relations and friends. They've had the +cards----" + +Olwen nodded; she had sent her "_faire part_" card home to Wales as a +curiosity. + +"It's to be down in Madame Leroux's own sitting-room; she says better so +than having the party in the _salle_ after the hotel visitors have had +lunch," explained Miss Walsh, always breathless. "Oh, I feel I must go +down and see if I can help her, but it is so difficult to understand +when she will talk French so dreadfully fast----" + +"Let me come too," entreated Olwen, eyes suddenly alight. "Let me help, +do! I can generally make out even her fast French." + +"Very well--if _you_ ask her!" + +Madame Leroux was talking faster French that morning than they had ever +heard from her before. They found her in the basement, a whole region of +the hotel that was unknown ground to Olwen, peopled by a tribe of +workers whose sallow faces she had never seen before, and who were +flying hither and thither on errands undreamt of on the upper floors. +Even so the stoke-hole of a liner is unthought about on its polished +decks. + +The manageress was in the _appartement_ that adjoined the kitchen, a +domain smaller but pleasanter of aspect than any of the big rooms above, +and more comfortable, except for one narrow space that was neither +kitchen nor _appartement_. This space between the walls seemed to be a +sound magnifier of the rumbling service-lift, the whistles of +speaking-tubes, and the hissing and running of every water-pipe in the +place. The door into the huge French kitchen stood open, giving a +glimpse of marmites, burnished copper pans, crocks, and five-decker +cookers; of vegetables piled haystack high, of ramparts of yard-long +rolls, of twenty other kinds of provisions. + +Beyond the kitchen a second door opened out into the _cour_, where +buckets clanked, a tap splashed, and the whistling of a knife-cleaning +machine could be heard. By yet another door Marie and Rosalie were +bringing in chairs collected from bedrooms, attics, landings, and any +other corner. + +"May we both come in?" Miss Walsh asked timidly. + +Madame Leroux turned. + +"Ah! Enter always, Mademoiselle. It is not to all the world that I +permit it--but for the little demoiselle of M. the Professor, but yes, +but yes----To help? But certainly, if that gives her pleasure. One would +have said that she would have preferred to spend the fine morning with +M. le Capitaine in the forest, he with the one arm who admires her +already----" Madame's glance was as swift as the dart of a chameleon's +tongue after a fly. + +She was already dressed for the day, her dark hair dragged up to the top +of her head in a fist-shaped knob, secured with combs, and her front +locks _frises_ above her mercilessly intelligent face. Over her +tightly-fitted gown of black _broche_ and _passementerie_, showing a fat +white V of neck, a velvet band and a pendant, she had passed an enormous +apron of blue-and-white check. + +She was looking over her well-covered shoulder with eyes that were +everywhere at once, and giving orders in a voice that was as shrill as a +whipsaw and as quick as a mill-race. + +"Hold! Prop that door open, Rosalie, instead of bumping it each time +with the good chair, little careless one; one would say a swing!" (She +took breath in a gasp.) + +"And those oysters from Monsieur Paul; are they not yet arrived? Do not +open them immediately, as last time; and even so, see that you open me +but half of them in order that they may keep. And thou, Marcel, take me +that mat into the yard instead of brushing me the dust over the +vegetables!" (Gasps.) "_Bon dieu_, one would need twenty eyes----As +for these knives, Etienne, have you the intention to grind them to +powder rather than find other work? It is then not necessary that they +serve us for another day?" (Gasp.) "My faith!... Ah, Mees Ouall +she--Agathe----but no, it is not necessary that you help. Go, go and +make yourself beautiful for after the _dejeuner_, when you are presented +to the friends. Make yourself beautiful for Pierre, who shall mount up +afterwards to beg you to descend for a little half-hour, like a +princess!" (Gasp.) "_Eh bien_, if you hold to assisting me now, but not +in the kitchen, no, no; if you will have the goodness to dispose on the +table within the _serviettes_ that I have already placed in a heap. Also +the glasses; they are in those cupboards there; no, not there, +Mademoiselle, here, here, here. Arrange them all precisely as in +England, at your _chateau_, yes? It is that! It is perfect!" (Gasp.) +"And the little demoiselle of the Professor shall set out the cards with +the names----But no, no, no, no, no; she does not know the names nor +where they sit. Better to place these pots of cyclamen on the +window-sill, Mademoiselle, if you please. One would say real flowers, +would one not? But two francs." (Gasp.) "Fifty! It is true! _Ah, pas +ca_----" seeing Agatha Walsh, entirely at a loss, picking up from the +sofa-corner and unrolling a tricolor flag. "Not that. It should have +been interlaced with the other. I was desolated, but one could not +obtain in time, the Union Jacques. Flowers only, therefore. _Tiens_, I +have not placed a cloth over the safe----" + +She spread over the iron cash-safe a cloth edged and inserted with the +lovely pillow-made lace of the neighbourhood, while her nimble French +tongue ran ceaselessly on. + +Her niece-by-marriage-to-be, helped by Olwen, set to work with all the +good will in the world to lay the large round table. From the cupboard +drawers indicated by Madame's plump hands they brought a tablecloth, an +ornately embroidered table-centre, and napkins of the finest linen, all +wedded to that beautiful lace; from the cupboards they took old and +exquisite glass, and silver that could not have been bettered at the +Grange of Miss Walsh's youth. Olwen noticed that the old-fashioned +carved bread-cradle that swung from the ceiling had already been filled +with blossomed and berried boughs of the arbutus, patron plant of the +place. She thought as Mrs. Cartwright had thought, "I shall always think +of arbutus--and here." + +The chairs, some of them rush-bottomed, others of carved gilt, were +ranged about the table; then Olwen and Agatha Walsh sped out into the +yard and returned with the knives that Etienne, the boy in the green +drugget apron, had at last polished to his satisfaction. + +In the middle of the red-tiled kitchen Madame Leroux still stormed as +shrilly as though she alone of all excellent housewives possessed +worthless servants. + +"Is it not enough that I myself must arise at half-past four today, and +it is that I must do _all_ myself, me, as well as to entertain the +friends and the relations of Monsieur, they who are eating their blood +with jealousy because he marries himself with an English lady of the +high nobility? And why are the boards not placed over the bowls of soup? +My faith, it is then that _I_ must work, _I_ must arrange, _I_ must +plan, _I_ must have the eyes everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, while +you let the fire die down, female idle ones who do nothing but regard +with open mouths and talk in corners and try to eat me the _glaces_ +fruits out of the dishes?" (Gasp for breath.) "Take you these +immediately, Marie Claire----" she waved towards a score of trussed +chickens that looked like a frieze of poultry--"and set them in the +pans. And pose you those lids so that the pottage may simmer as it +must." She pointed to the vast arched fireplace with the grid running +from one end to the other. "_Mon Dieu_, if this boy here had as many +legs as an octopus he could not more expressly place them in my way. +That he does at each moment! Is it that I have sent my own children out +to receive _les amis_ even at Arcachon, to be encumbered by thee? The +children? They will feast out here in the yard with the children of the +notary and the little cousins; I do not wish that they are the whole +time with the grown ones when one talks----" + +And she bustled out into the _cour_ to look to the long trestled table +there which had been surrounded by a still further variety of chairs. + +It was here that Miss Walsh in her halting French asked where was +Gustave, where was Monsieur Leroux? + +"The men?" Madame gabbled. "Ah, for that, where would they be? +Invisibles, so long as there is work to be done," with a half-indulgent +laugh. "You will see also, in good time, you English ladies, that which +the _service militaire_ does for the men! They make their service. They +return. They put themselves at their ease. Behold, they are required to +do nothing further for the rest of their life. It is we, Mesdemoiselles, +we who are accustomed to it; we other French wives. You also, you will +see! Ah, hold, the oysters! Now, Etienne, you will dust me once again +the seats of all these chairs, I say to you, and with a dry duster, I +pray you, not a wet one; dry, dry, dry, dry, dry----" + +In this exalting hubbub did Olwen pass the whole morning with her friend +until the sallow little Italian waiter came down to announce that +_dejeuner_ was served. + +They went up. How cool and quiet, it struck them, were those upper +reaches of the hotel.... + +But as they were seeking their places a quick "Oh, come and look!" from +Miss Walsh brought Olwen running to the side window. "Oh, here are the +people----" + +The procession of the French _invites_ was coming down the road from the +little tramway terminus. It was solemnly headed by the three little +pigtailed Leroux girls, each holding by the hand another child, bare +from mid-thigh to ankle, and wearing an adaptation of the sailor suit. +After them, in a broken line of twos and ones and threes, came the +grown-up people. + +First and most resplendent of them appeared the individual whom Olwen +rightly guessed to be the _notaire_ from Bordeaux. He wore a white +bowler hat, a white waistcoat, and he carried in his hands, which he +held well out in front of him, a large bouquet tied with tricolour +streamers and the Union Jacques which Madame Leroux had desired, and he +overshadowed even his rotund _endimanchee_ wife in her purple costume +and forward raking hat, who bobbed in his wake. She was escorted by +Monsieur Leroux. Next came Monsieur Popinot, the clerk from the +passports office, all in black, but carrying Madame Popinot's pink +parasol. She, a plump and pretty little woman, carried a year-old baby +in a corolla of lace. + +Then came a sister of Madame Leroux, as dark, as mercilessly intelligent +as the manageress herself, talking eagerly to Pierre Tronchet, effective +in his blue and red. + +Another _artilleriste_ on leave, evidently a comrade from the regiment, +walked a pace or so behind them, between two silent young girls; then a +trio of stout, bearded old men gesticulating freely, then a lady in +another forward raking hat, then a party wearing deepest mourning, but +wreathed in smiles, then others ... then again others.... Tronchets, +Leroux, ramifications of both families, relatives, friends, and those +whom it was intended to dazzle.... + +Olwen, gazing upon this _cortege_, suppressed a wish to think aloud of a +rhyme of her childhood: + + "The animals went in four by four, + Hurray, Hurray! + The animals went in four by four + And the big hippopotamus stuck in the door." + +This last line, she considered, might almost have applied to several of +the _invites_! + +All of them, as they approached the hotel, stiffened, pulled themselves +together as if they were going past the saluting point of a review, +assumed photographically unnatural expressions, and walked delicately; +then they seemed to deflate and hurry as they slipped past the corner to +the back entrance to the premises. + +"Oh, I'm not a bit hungry," sighed the agitated Miss Walsh as she turned +from the window and sat down next to Olwen at the long table. The +_dejeuner_ was as perfectly cooked and served as if no subterranean +banquet had been in preparation. "Oh, fancy having to be 'shown' to a +host of people! Oh, I can't help feeling almost glad that Gustave's +father and mother aren't alive! If they had been, you know, he would +have had to ask their consent to marry me, even though he is +thirty-eight. Oh, it is such a mercy that Madame didn't want me to sit +through the whole of lunch." + +"Much the best plan!" agreed Mrs. Cartwright from her side of the table. + +"Oh, yes; I don't appear till they have to drink my health--oh, but I am +so nervous! And do you think I look all right in this, Mrs. +Cartwright?... honestly?" + +She wore an expensive new dress of prune-coloured _glace_ silk, +ornamented with a kind of lace bib and with rows and rows of little +crimson buttons that fastened nothing. Both Mrs. Cartwright and Olwen +fibbed valiantly, and had their reward. The loveliest frock in Paris +could not have been more becoming to Agatha Walsh than her flush of +pleasure. + + * * * * * + +That _dejeuner_ downstairs was supposed to be _intime_ and private; but +the distant sounds of it were already becoming audible to the more +public part of the hotel. + +First a soft but thunderous drumming as of applause upon the table-top +was heard. + +Then a skirl of laughter, the piercingness of which, near to, could only +be guessed at. + +Then, booming fragments of a voice that rose above others just as an +occasional column of foam spouted higher than those other Biscay +rollers on the reef. Then an uninterrupted booming.... Apparently a +speech was in progress. + +An involuntary and smiling silence seemed to fall upon the luncheon +parties in the _salle_ above, almost as if they would have felt it +impolite to talk through what was going on below. Truly, Miss Walsh was +making the hotel one that day--the hotel to which she had only come +because of that hat-pin stuck in a guide-book and pricking at random a +name on a page! + +Then suddenly, the door of the _salle a manger_ opened. The blue-and-red +apparition of Sergeant Tronchet stood to attention just inside it: +darkly flushed, beaming, silent. + +(It may here be said that none of the visitors ever had known this +swarthy well-set-up French soldier anything but silent. All that most of +them had ever heard of his voice had been the murmured "Madame ... +Mademoiselle ... Messieurs ..." that accompanied his heel-clicking +bows. Only Miss Walsh had ever had any conversation with him. But had +not this been to some purpose?) + +"Oh, he's come to fetch me," she exclaimed now in a voice that failed. +"Good-bye, Olwen dear," she added, as if she never expected to come back +alive. "I shall see you and Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor at +tea-time----you are all coming to _my_ tea, aren't you?" she finished +appealingly. + +Then she disappeared, with her peacock-proud _fiance_. + + * * * * * + +"The day has only just begun, my dear child!" declared Mrs. Cartwright +to Olwen, rising. "Come to my room and take a rest before _we_ come on +in the next act. Run up, will you? I'll follow." + +Olwen ran up; glad of a breathing space. + +That party, three floors and five or six rooms away, did still dominate +the whole hotel! She was glad to lie back in Mrs. Cartwright's +basket-chair and to draw a long breath. She had nothing to do that +afternoon, she thanked goodness.... + +But Mrs. Cartwright, as soon as she came in, drew a chair up to her +writing-table and began to make notes, chuckling from time to time. + +"Tell me when the people begin to go," she begged Olwen. "I had to make +an errand about the tea, and take a peep in just now, I couldn't miss +it.... My dear! The heat! And the din down there! Poor Miss Walsh! How +Madame crammed them all in I don't know.... And Monsieur Leroux with his +black domino beard and his pouchy eyes, _and_ all those women exactly +the same height whether they sit down or stand up...." + +She was scribbling sketches of them all to send to her boys.... + +The noise downstairs rose to sounds of confused singing--_Le Chanson des +Baisers_, then fell at last. + +"I think they're all going away now," said Olwen from the balconied +window, and Mrs. Cartwright ran to join her and to watch the +homeward-faring procession filing by. + +First the notary, his white bowler hat a little dinted, appeared round +the corner of the hotel. He was arm in arm with Monsieur Popinot, who +still carried his wife's pink parasol, and who seemed to have an idea +of putting it up over the pair of them as they went by the windows, but +was restrained by a gesture, suppressed but fierce, from the notary. His +purple-clad wife hustled the children ahead of her; the party in +mourning were giggling joyously together, then assumed a gravity. + +With the same effect of pompously pulling themselves together with which +they had passed the front of the hotel, they all repassed it now. + +Even as they turned their backs upon it, the strain was seen to relax +again. Up went the pink parasol in the distance. + +"Ah, there; there goes Gustave's comrade the _artilleriste_," commented +Mrs. Cartwright. "First at the fight--and last at the feast; yes, he's +the last." + +The _artilleriste_ swaggered delightfully, turning to wave a farewell, +and obviously caring little whether it were to the front of the hotel or +the back.... + +And then, about seventy yards behind the last of these revellers there +went by two other figures. + +They were those of Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas, who had been making +themselves scarce for the day. + +And perhaps it was because Olwen was busy with her own effort not to +look at one of them that she did not notice Mrs. Cartwright's swift +glance at the other; the flying boy. + +As if he felt that glance upon him, Jack Awdas looked up and put a hand +to his cap; a smile rippling all over his face. + +Olwen would not have read the purpose behind the smile. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +MOONLIGHT AND THE CHARM + + "O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, + That monthly changes in her circled orb, + Lest thy love prove likewise variable." + + Shakespeare. + + +Now let us take the roof off, as is done in fairy stories about other +charms. + +Let us steal a peep, that is, inside various rooms of that hotel, where +this story is laid. + +In the basement, first of all, let us cast a glance at the _appartement_ +that had echoed to the feasting of that luncheon party, and had been +later the scene of a sedate and ultra-English tea. Nobody there now, +except the hotel manageress and her husband. Monsieur Leroux with that +black domino beard of his, is dozing in the most capacious chair; Madame +is poring over her accounts. Every now and then her eye lights up with a +spark from the smouldering fire of pride within her; for who but she has +such a right of feeling proud at the end of that day of meals and +acclamations (and washing-up?). She thinks of her nephew Gustave's +brilliant _partie_, and of the bedazzling of all her friends, most +especially of the notary's wife, here in this very room. The little +close room seems to her once more a-glitter with the glass and the +silver and the display.... Only the prune-coloured velvet curtains are +tightly drawn before the pots of imitation cyclamen, and there enters no +gleam of the light that is bathing the forest and the sea +without--light of the waning moon, melting and cool at once, at once +disdainful and seductive. + +Upstairs in the _salle a manger_ the engaged couple have been dining as +guests of the guests. Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had suggested +this, and their proposal was cordially received. The health of the +_fiances_ had been drunk, and the old French gentleman with the red +button-hole has added the toast to the next betrothed from that party +there present tonight. + +And now Gustave Tronchet and his bride-elect are still moving from group +to group in the _salon_, and the diffident, old-maidish Englishwoman is +transfigured. It astonishes her to think that she could ever have felt +that violent shyness so early in the day. She has forgotten how her +knees trembled as she faced that perfect zoo of foreigners, all beards +and bosoms, come to inspect Mees Ouallshe. + +She feels now that she carried it off admirably. She has been amplifying +to herself since the ten words of French that she had managed to stammer +out then, and by now they appear to her a classic oration. She feels she +was born to this kind of thing. On her _fiance's_ stout arm she moves +about the room like a spoon that is keeping on the stir a pan of hot and +incredibly sweet social jam. As Mrs. Cartwright says to herself, "No +ordinary English engagement to a man out of her own world could ever +have brought the dear good creature these triumphs; let her enjoy +them,"----and everybody enjoys seeing Miss Agatha Walsh radiant, while +she even more enjoys being so seen. + +As for Sergeant Gustave Tronchet, if he were not enjoying it, also, who +should be? Accepted, _range_, adored! + +He marshals her about from _salle_ to _salon_ and lounge, drawing her +back as she peeps through the chink of the big hall door at the +beckoning moonlight without. + +"No, Agathe! You will _inrhume_ yourself----" + +She turns to beam brighter than the moon itself at the comely dark face +of the only man who has ever protested whether she took cold or not. He, +too, has been studying a speech in the language of the country into +which he is marrying. + +He brings it out, and the ears of love are quick to understand even his +English, even his accent. + +"I oueelle trai to you rendaire 'appeee, Agathe!" + +"Oh," she breathed, with a little clutch to the blue-sleeved arm. "Oh, +but you do, you _have_!" + +They return to the _salle_.... + +But the assembled visitors cannot spend the whole evening in +contemplating the happiness of Miss Walsh and of Gustave Tronchet, +_serjent d'artillerie_. + +Other groups begin to make their own arrangements; in one of the +bedrooms the Madonna-like French mother and the Brittany nurse are +putting to bed Lucien, the little damson-dark boy, who was also at Miss +Walsh's tea; he is repeating, with the correct pronunciation of a child +to whom all language is new, a little prayer that she has taught him: + + "I see the moon and the moon sees me, + God bless the moon and God bless me!" + +In another bedroom Olwen Howel-Jones has just run up to get into her big +driving-coat; she thinks of going out for a breath of fresh air and of +moonlight. Why not? Mrs. Cartwright will probably come if she's asked. + + * * * * * + +Roof on again here, please. For at this point of the story Mrs. +Cartwright was standing just outside the _salle_ windows beside the dark +spiky shape of a cactus; she had put on a pale-hued wrap, and in the +puzzling light and shade she appeared gleaming and straight as the +flowering rod of the plant. Just as she was looking out to where a few +riding lights showed in the _Baissin_, Jack Awdas strode up beside her. + +"Come for a turn down on the sands," he suggested, cheerfully. "It's not +cold; it is one perfectly good night for a walk." + +Now it is almost easier to take the roof off an hotel and to look down +unchecked into its various rooms than it is to unveil and take stock of +the contents of a woman's mind with its strata upon strata of confusing +elements. + +So, for what Mrs. Cartwright was feeling, we will take her word as she +told herself that she felt relieved and settled about the _affaire_ Jack +Awdas. + +She was glad it was all over. The boy had imagined himself in love with +her. + +A great mercy that he had not, after the manner of some men, allowed +himself to dangle and sigh and create an atmosphere in which one did not +quite know where one was. He had voiced his absurd and youthful passion +at once. He had actually proposed to her--to her who might be his +mother. So much the better, as it happened; because _now_ she had been +able to say "No" definitely. It had all been definitely settled and +tidied up in that wood on the way from the oyster park. + +Now, it was finished. + +Now, it was quite safe again. + +It would be silly to avoid the boy since both of them knew where they +were. + +Besides, he had had that horrible nightmare. He would have to go flying +again. Not even yet were his jangled nerves quite healed, poor child! He +ought, he really ought to have some one to look after him, to give a +thought to his welfare now and again ... some nice, sensible woman.... + +Mrs. Cartwright, in thus describing herself to herself, did not for one +moment admit that if the boy had already proposed to her in the +sunlight, he simply couldn't help himself in the moonlight. + +So she answered him lightly and conventionally; she fell into step +beside him. They walked. + +She was too old for him, as she'd told him. A generation too old! But +she was still not too old to walk with him, to listen to him. And ... +When is a woman too old to wish she were young enough? + +It was brusquely enough that Jack Awdas broke into speech. + +"I say," he began, "how old should I have to be, then, before you'd want +to marry me?" + +She had been looking away across the _Baissin_ with its twinkling +lights, its guardian jewel flashing from white to red. She turned +abruptly, dismayed, as one is dismayed when some trouble, dimly foreseen +(and defied) descends upon one's head. + +Oh dear.... Oh dear.... It was not quite at an end then? She had not yet +definitely put a stop to this very young man's folly? + +"Oh," she returned. "Oh, but we had agreed, I think, not to talk +about ... _that_, any more...." + +"Had we?" he retorted. "You had 'agreed,' perhaps. I hadn't." + +"But----Please! There must be no more of it." + +"What?" He threw up his head. "We must have it out, you know. We are +going to." + +"No, no----" + +"Yes, I say. Yes. As I was saying----How old should I have to be before +you'd want to marry me?" + +Mrs. Cartwright gave a little hopeless sort of laugh to herself as she +threw upon him that quick glance that seemed to be not looking. + +He put on his coat (at her orders), his flyer's coat with the wide +collar that made his head seem even smaller and the oval of his face +more perfect as it rested against the fur. That young, young face +topping the athlete's body that towered above her own, that spring and +lilt of his walk had never before made such appeal to the sense of +physical beauty that was in her. + +Claudia Cartwright thought that in this faculty she brought up the +arrears of the countless members of her own sex who would seem to be +entirely without it. A woman had once said to her, "_I don't find any +man much under forty-five worth considering. Youth doesn't appeal to me. +I never can see the attraction!_" and to Mrs. Cartwright this was +exactly as though her friend had boasted, "_I am colour-blind! I can't +tell one tune from another, either! Also, I never care for flowers._" + +The boy at her side was beautiful, in the diffused and shifting light, +as a young marble Hermes dressed in the trappings of today and come to +life to court her. The next twenty years might teach him many, many +things--but they must strip from him one by one the charms of which he +was all unconscious, as he demanded of her how old he must be to please +her. + +She should stop him there, she knew. Since he had not seen that it had +been the end, she should put the definite end to it; go in. + +She should not dally or coquet with this thing. + +Instincts that she had thought long dead were lifting their heads within +her; too strong to be beaten down at once. For the life of her the woman +could not help dallying with that passing moment to which every woman +alive cries out within herself, "Oh _stay_! _Thou art so fair_----" + +Aloud she said (truthfully enough, but in a sense that he did not +follow), "I might not want to marry you if you _were_ older." + +"Why not? Why not? The other day in the wood you said it was my age that +you barred," he went on, persistently. "It isn't that you don't like +_me_, is it? _Is_ it? If you just happened to be my own age, then, you'd +take me, wouldn't you?" + +Would she? Ah, wouldn't she, she thought, vainly. And again for the life +of her she could not keep that subtlest, faintest trace of coquetry out +of her voice as she replied, "You seem very sure of that." + +"Mustn't I be? Tell me at least. _Tell_ me what you think of me!" + +She seemed to catch herself back just in time from uttering follies. "I +think you are a dear boy; one of the dearest that I have seen," she +said, evenly. "But I know that you're wasting your time with an ageing +woman like me." + +"A what?" he almost snorted. + +She repeated it all the more firmly, perhaps, because she knew that she +was looking her youngest in that soft light of the waning moon. + +"An ageing woman like me. For I am that. Just think of it, quite +sensibly, for a moment. In a little while you would see me getting to be +just the same as friends of your mother's, that you're specially nice to +and talk to because they are old. Yes! Listen! It's coming. Before you +have a line on your face or a grey thread in your hair." + +"I shall get as bald as a coot. All flyers will; it's the tight leather +caps, here----" + +"Nonsense! Ages before that, my hair will be growing grey all over." + +"It's quite grey now; absolutely white in the moonlight--silver! And it +looks top-hole," he assured her, laughing down at her. "Why, you look +wonderful. You always do. You can't talk about the usual sort of women +getting old, and pretend you're going to be like that, because you +aren't. How could you ever be? You're different." + +"Only to you," she sighed, "and only for the moment." + +"Moment! I swear _I_ shouldn't ever alter----" + +"No? Let's turn." They retraced on the sands the lines of their own +footprints; his boot-marks making a contrast with the slim, light +prints of the woman's shoes. + +"What have you got on your feet?" he asked her presently, almost +roughly, stopping to look down. "I never saw anything like the things +women go out in. Haven't you got _any_ sensible boots?... You aren't fit +to take care of yourself, as a matter of fact. You've got to let me take +care of you." + +"My dear boy," she smiled, shaking the head on which the moonlight was +spinning those prophetic webs of silver, "all nice men at your age begin +to feel that need of taking care of something. A young girl, that's what +you ought to be seeing to the shoes of, and looking for wraps for, and +all that. Not me, not me. A young girl." + +"What young girl?" he demanded mutinously. + +Mrs. Cartwright was silent as they passed into the darkness under the +wooden jetty. Out into the light again they came, and up the beach, +back, in the direction of the hotel piazza, and of the old cannon that +stood on its stone plinth at the foot of the stone steps. They reached +the cannon, and still she had not spoken. + +She was thinking, hard. + +A young girl, she had said; and she could think without "minding" it in +the least, that the best thing this lad of twenty-two could do would be +to fall in love with a young girl. She had thought so several times +lately. It was odd, however, that she always thought of this solution as +"a" young girl, not any particular one. Not little Olwen Howel-Jones, +for instance; oh, no! Nor her (Mrs. Cartwright's) young niece Stella, +not any of the Mabels or Ethels or Dorothys that she knew at home, and +to whom she might have introduced the boy. None of these could she think +of for one instant in connection with Jack Awdas. Yet, one of these +days, some lucky girl must be responsible for the happiness of all his +days (not just of one glamorous afternoon in the forest) and all his +nights (not just of one night when the power of darkness had been kept +at bay, and when he had fallen at last asleep "as one whom his mother +comforteth"). Yes, later on, there must be "a" young girl for him.... + +He stopped by the cannon. + +"Don't go in. Just a little minute," he coaxed, softly. "I can't talk to +you in there." + +"It's no use talking," murmured Mrs. Cartwright. + +But she did pause. + +And, as he sat down on the body of that obsolete gun, and then, +unfastening his thick coat, spread a flap of it out, she did yield so +far as to sit down, in her pale wrap, on that corner of his coat beside +him. + +He leant an arm on the cannon behind her. Both looked in silence over +the lagoon, towards the reef. + +White, red; white, red--flashed the warning light. + +She felt herself at the beginning of a conflict that must tear her this +way and that; but his mind was single and set. He was just blind, +obstinate, and keen. + +He said, "I told you that night when you sat up with me what I thought +of girls. I don't want 'em. I want _you_, and you're all I want; or ever +shall. I can swear to that. Oh, I know myself! I can swear to it." + +The arm behind her trembled a little with his earnestness. + +For one mad moment Mrs. Cartwright admitted to herself that if she could +be twenty-two again for one year, she would buy that year with the rest +of the time that she had to live. Ah, to be twenty-two! To let that hard +boyish arm close round her, clasp her, crush her! To turn, with lips and +eyes aglow, to turn to him as she felt herself drawn to do--drawn, +driven---- + +But because she felt thus she kept around herself that invisible, +intangible armour of refusal which is every woman's at need and which no +outside power can pierce. She did not need to move one half-inch away +from that corner of his coat on which she sat. Yet ... Yet she could +hardly believe that he did not guess at the growing disturbance in the +heart that beat not so far, after all, from his own. + +Appealingly he broke out. "_You_ must marry me. I don't know why on +earth you want to talk about other girls to me!" + +"_'Other_' girls----!" + +"Yes. You're just a girl to me. You _are_ a girl, yourself. I can't see +you as anything but a girl!" + +She made a little gesture with her long arms, lithe and elastic still as +when she was a schoolgirl, only more rounding in modelling; she pressed +a hand to her hair, still brown and thickly growing. She turned away the +face that showed lines brought by years of worry, of concentration upon +her work; ah, they were there even in the moonlight and even though she +tended her skin as prettier women often neglect to do. She could feel +that in every inch and ounce of him this boy was alert and conscious of +her nearness, of her suppleness of body, of that faint scent of rose, +kuss-kuss and orris that clung about her. + +It couldn't be. It mustn't be. + +Lightly as little Olwen could have sprung up, Mrs. Cartwright sprang up +from her seat upon the muzzled cannon and said quickly, "I am going in." + +As she set her foot upon the first step of the piazza, she turned to +young Jack Awdas with what she told herself would be, definitely, her +last word upon the subject. Her little laugh was whimsical and mirthless +as she said it. + +"You think you see me as a girl? Ah! Wait until you see me beside a +_real_ girl!" + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +WILD-FIRE AND THE CHARM + + "A light that shifts, a glare that drifts, + Rekindling thus and thus." + + Kipling. + + +A little earlier, on that same evening, the disturbing Charm had set to +work in other directions. + +Little Mr. Brown, who had taken his dinner as usual at the hotel, was +lingering on the terrace on the other side of the building from the +piazza. He was smoking a cigarette, which the "_Defense_" notices would +forbid him at every turn on the forest; but, apart from this, it was not +to be wondered at that the gregarious little Londoner was in no hurry to +get back to that sylvan shanty of his. The contrast, after that evening, +would have been as great as that between a chandeliered ballroom and a +cave. + +Oh, the loneliness of that hut at night! His cheerful urban +soul got fairly fed-up, as he would express it, with all that +wind-sighing-in-the-pine-tops business. Of course, as he'd have told +you, the little old hut was good enough for lolling outside of with a +book, or for writing his letters in of a morning. If only they'd allow +him to smoke there he would be quite fond of the dashed little dug-out +by now, but he didn't pretend to find it a very attractive spot of an +evening. + +Even of an evening, perhaps, it wouldn't have been so dusty if he'd had +somebody with him. With his cigarette between his teeth he found himself +humming a song of seven years back: + + "It's all right if there's a girl there, + That's the place where I'd like----" + +At that moment Olwen Howel-Jones, her slim shape buried in a big +driving-coat, appeared upon the terrace. + +He approached her joyously. + +"Going for a little stroll round the houses, Miss Olwen?" + +Olwen shrank within herself. She did not want any more of the obvious +admiration of this quite nice boy; it had dismayed her to find that in +shooting at a star (Captain Ross) she had hit a blackberry-bush (little +Mr. Brown). After that declaration of his in the wood she had felt +almost inclined to tear that misleading Charm she wore from its ribbon +and to toss it down the wind into the _Baissin_! However, she could not +be rude to him just because he didn't happen to be somebody else. +Hesitatingly she replied that she had thought of going for a little walk +with Mrs. Cartwright, who seemed to have disappeared. + +(She, as we know, was at the moment pacing the sands beside Jack Awdas.) + +"Ah, you're at a loose end, then, are you," returned Mr. Brown, +cheerfully. "Well, if I might have the pleasure----?" + +Before Olwen could either grant or refuse "the pleasure," there stepped +out on to the terrace Captain Ross, who with a note of some purpose in +his "good evening," took up his position on the other side of the girl. + +Now, all through that thrilling day, something (heard quite at the +beginning of it) had been humming in Olwen's heart like a wind-harp that +responds to every passing breath. It was that something let fall by +Madame Leroux, and it had tossed Olwen far too high up into the rosy +clouds to take more than a quite superficial notice of the subsequent +events of that rousing day. She had helped Miss Walsh, had listened and +watched with Mrs. Cartwright, had drunk healths--but all the time she +had been secretly hearing, over and over again, one lightly-uttered +remark. + +"_Monsieur le Capitaine, he with one arm, who admires Mademoiselle +already----_" + +Madame had thought that! There must be truth in it. The Charm was +working and not only in the wrong direction. It was true that Captain +Ross had talked to Olwen as if she were a little girl; he had avoided +her in the forest when he was carrying that table-top for Mr. Brown, and +he had blackened this evening for her by taking not the smallest notice +of her at dinner; he hadn't even come up to touch his glass to hers when +the toast had been proposed to the next engaged person for that hotel. +To set off against all this, Madame Leroux (that piercingly acute +Frenchwoman) had given it as her opinion that he admired Mademoiselle. + +Now he joined her and Mr. Brown on the terrace. + +His coming had a curious effect. Olwen became filled with apparent +animation and delight in the company of little Mr. Brown. This was not +deliberate coquetry, but pure instinct. The kindest-hearted girl in the +world, the most kernel-sweet maid never hesitates before one form of +feminine cruelty--_to make use of the admirer for whom she does not care +in order to spur the man she loves_. It is not an admirable instinct. +But it is a form of self-preservation in Woman, for which Man alone is +responsible.... + +Perhaps it is not fair to allege that every man in his heart is a dog in +the manger, hating to see his fellow-men smiled upon by a pretty girl? +Perhaps it's not true that his interest in the girl is awakened when he +sees her interested in another? No! Perhaps it's a libellous old theory +that simply doesn't hold water as a rule. + +Only, what myriads of exceptions it does take to prove that rule! + +In her happiest voice Olwen, standing between the two men, began talking +to Mr. Brown. "I do think that hut of yours must be a delightful place +to live in! No cleaning! No sweeping! and you've only to put out your +hand to get those lovely blackberries for breakfast----" + +Captain Ross, leaning on the balustrade, was seen to hump his back a +little. + +"Can't say I fancy blackberries as a breakfast myself, but I daresay +it'll come to that," grumbled Mr. Brown, cheerily. "Blackberries, and +'bright _water is my drink from the crystal spring_.' Can you make +anything out of this tangle about allowances, Ross?" + +Captain Ross was apparently _not_ the finest judge of pay-warrants in +Europe. A short "nope" came from over his humped shoulder. Olwen noticed +that his one hand was resting on his left-side-jacket-pocket, that +appeared to be bulging with something he had slipped into it. + +"Dashed if I can make 'em out," said Mr. Brown, pleasantly. "According +to my reckoning, Miss Olwen, there was my regimental pay for July, +rations and lodgings for August, and they'll be in arrears for +September--and no hospital stoppages.... Cox's do make mistakes; ask +anybody. Anybody!" + +Olwen agreed that Cox's did make mistakes. Honeyed sympathy informed her +tone as she said so. + +"Well, that's just that," Mr. Brown concluded, beaming upon her. "But, +as I was just asking you, what about a turn on the prom. in the +moonlight?" + +Here the hump of Captain Ross's square shoulders suddenly straightened +out. + +He took his hand away from the packet in his pocket, gave a hitch to his +belt, then, turning to Olwen, and in the most matter-of-fact voice +imaginable, he told the fib that took her breath away. + +"I guess Miss Howel-Jones is engaged to me for this dance. Isn't that +so, Miss Howel-Jones?" + +"Dance? But----" gasped little Olwen, stupefied. "Nobody is dancing!" + +"Then I guess we'll have to sit it out together on the old cannon or +somewhairrr," said Captain Ross, coolly. "Shall you be all right without +anything on your head?" + +Now if Captain Ross expected that upon this hint Mr. Brown would retire +in good order to his hut, there to brood upon allowances for the rest of +the evening, he was no very fine judge of subalterns in the London Rifle +Brigade. + +Mr. Brown, M.C., stood firm. "Look here, Ross----" he was beginning, +when another voice, a deep, genial, elderly voice, was heard behind the +shutters of the window through which Captain Ross had come out upon the +terrace. + +The voice enquired, "Has anybody seen my niece?" + +Little Olwen jumped. + +"Oh, it's my Uncle. Do open the shutters, Uncle! I'm out here, with Mr. +Brown and Captain Ross," explained Olwen, hurriedly. "It's--it's ever so +early, you know! We were all just thinking of going for a little +walk----" + +"No; I've got it," put in the unquenchable Mr. Brown. "What about a pull +on the lagoon, to look at the phosphorescence? You too, Ross," he added, +hospitably; guessing that Professor Howel-Jones was of an age that might +allow its young nieces to go for moonlight rows in boats on lakes with +two young men, but scarcely with one. "I saw a skiff drawn up by the +jetty. You don't mind, Professor, do you?" + +"At this hour?" demurred the Professor, looking out into the light that +made of his massive old head the summit of Mynedd Mawr in a snowy +December. "For you to take your death of cold, Olwen _fach_, in the +night air?" + +Little Olwen, pulling up her storm-collar, murmured appealingly above +it. "Oh, _darling_! I shall be as warm as warm! Do let me go." + +She did not know that in her coaxing she was helped by a girl long dead. +It was to a certain note in the voice that she had from her mother that +the Professor ceded now. + +With a little nod he said, "Very well," and all but added "Mary." "Very +well, Olwen _fach_. I trust you gentlemen not to keep her out long. I +wish you a pleasant row; good night to you, good night!" And he went in. + +"Come on; let's make a dash for it," said young Brown. + +He led the way; followed by Olwen and Captain Ross, the latter in a +worse temper than he had been in since he left the hospital. + +"Jump in," said Mr. Brown, as they came up to the little empty skiff +moored at the foot of the jetty. + +In the skiff little Mr. Brown, cheerfully resigned to doing all the +work, took both oars; as he would naively have said, he rather fancied +himself in a boat. He pushed his shirt-sleeves up above a pair of short +but neatly-turned forearms, and as he rowed on that foreign lagoon +margined by that French sea-wall, his cheerful chatter was all of the +Thames above Richmond, of sunny Sundays and of parties on Eel-Pie +Island. The two in the stern sat rather silently, letting him talk; +Captain Ross sulking as he would never have admitted he sulked, Olwen +uttering now and again a little "Ah" of delight at the phosphorescence +on the water. + +For it was wonderful, that sea that flamed as they pushed out into it. +The boat's keel cut into the shimmer of pale green as into a field of +glow-worms; it lighted up to left and right, blazing, dying down, +rekindling fitfully as love itself; raining in spangles from the oars, +dripping in jewels from Olwen's fingers as she dipped them over the side +of the boat. + +"Trim, Miss Olwen," said Mr. Brown, jerking his bullet head. "A bit +nearer to Ross, if you don't mind." + +Olwen moved; in the softly rocking boat overbalancing a trifle, she +bumped against something hard and angular on the seat close to her +companion. It felt like a camera or a book. + +"Oh," she said, "did I knock you, Captain Ross?" + +"No----" he said--and then he brought out of his jacket-pocket that +which she had seen bulging it into that square shape on the terrace. It +was a box covered with coloured satin and tied with gay ribbons. + +"Candy," explained Captain Ross, somewhat curtly. He lifted the lid and +offered the chocolates to Olwen, then perforce to Mr. Brown, who stopped +rowing and leant forward, opening his mouth as he had done to the +blackberries. + +"Pop one in, Miss Olwen, please," he laughed, hands on the oars; but it +was Captain Ross who leant forward in the boat and stuffed the sweet +into his mouth. + +"Thanks," said little Mr. Brown, with his mouth full. "Very pretty +attention of yours, Ross, I must say, bringing out chocs for me when I +like 'em." + +Captain Ross planted the box on Olwen's lap. + +"Don't," she laughed shyly. "I shall eat them all up." + +"I guess you're meant to," he said shortly. "I got them for you in +Bordeaux." + +"For _me_?" + +"Sure. I wanted to see if you'd eat candies, after what you said the +other day to me in the lounge." + +Through the soft noises of the water Olwen's soft voice took up "What I +said?" + +"Yes--when you said, 'Who wants candy?'" + +"Oh, that," said Olwen, looking down at the green lambent water of which +the rippling light beat up, soft and magical upon a face whose young +curves could have dared a harsher radiance. She then looked back across +the lagoon towards the big block of the hotel, picked out against the +pale sky. She also glanced to her right, at the sand dunes that +barricaded the waters of the _Baissin_ from those of Biscay Bay, and at +the lighthouse, winking white and red. She looked, in fact, anywhere but +at Captain Ross, sitting so close beside her in that boat. + +She was bathed in such a rapturous dream of moonlight and +phosphorescence and rosy clouds and proximity that she was afraid to +look at him. Fear lest he might read a confession in her eyes did for +her what wisdom itself might have prompted. + +A sophisticated woman in Simla, for example, had once told Mrs. +Cartwright that she found no variation of the Glad Eye more successful +with some men than the glance withheld. How dogmatically would this have +been combated by Captain Ross! More than once had this expert in Woman's +Ways affirmed, "_If there's a woman on this airrrrth that I've no use +for, it's the woman who looks away when I'm speaking to her. I don't +dawdle talking to a woman who doesn't look at ME all the time----_" + +His impulse at that moment was to catch this little chit beside him by +her slender shoulders and shake her good and hard. If he'd had two arms, +he thought savagely, that's what he'd have wanted to do with 'em. He'd +have loved to do that, then and there, and be hanged to that young +butter-in of a Brown! Young Brown could be ignored, anyway. Let him get +the boat along; the only pity was that he couldn't row with his back to +the stern. + +Captain Ross, turned a little sideways on the cushions of the skiff, +attempted, by looking the girl full in the face, to make the girl look +straight back at him. Not a successful method. Olwen's soft bright +glance slid away from him even as the phosphorescence slid away from the +oars. + +Curtly he demanded, "You _do_ like candy, after all?" + +"I don't call it 'candy.' That's American, or Canadian," Olwen said with +that indifference which was her only idea of Love's camouflage. "I say, +'chocolate,' or 'sweets.'" + +"Is that so?" + +"Yes," said Olwen, looking now at the box that was, as she knew, to +become her most precious and inseparable treasure, her first gift--from +Him! + +As she sat holding it, backed by luminous sky and luminous sea, the +little slim Pandora with her casket, he too looked at it between her +hands; touched the bow of it. + +"That'll do for a hair-ribbon for you, I guess," he remarked. + +All that Olwen could think of to say was "I don't ever wear any +ribbons." + +"Is that so?" retorted Captain Ross maliciously. "Then what's that +little pink tie-thing you've gotten coming out over your coat-collar at +the back?" + +Precipitately, Olwen's hand went up to the ribbon that was sewn to her +Charm, and that, according to the mysterious and osmotic nature of +ribbons, had let an end work up and out again. She tucked it in, with +the eyes of the two young men upon her little dark, ducking head, and +the small hand white in the moonlight. + +That moonlight flashed too on the line of Captain Ross's fine teeth. A +great alteration had suddenly come over his dour mood. He had two +reasons for laughing good-humouredly. One, because he had just given a +welcome present (event that always adds to one's good will towards the +receiver), and two, because he had scored off the little chit now, with +her ribbon! Ha! + +His bad temper had vanished as her pretty confusion appeared. Again she +dipped her fingers into that gleaming wake; she shook them, dried them +against the thick skirt of her coat. + +"You've gotten your hands cold now," said Captain Ross, in a pleased +tone, and his left hand caught hold of the fingers of her little chilled +right hand as if to verify the fact. + +His own was a short and rather stumpy hand, Olwen had often noticed, +with beautifully kept nails and with the cushions of the palm developed +and muscular from the double share of work that was put upon it; +generally she had seen it held half-closed above the watch-bracelet on a +sturdy wrist. She had never shaken hands with him.... + +She thought he meant only to touch her fingers and to let them go. But +he held them. He held the little soft fingers, in the shadow of her +loose cuff and under a fold of her thick coat. They lay, firmly tucked +into that clever magnetic left hand of the soldier who had only that one +hand to do everything with. + +Olwen, a prisoner enraptured with her chain, sat silent and still. She +thought, "I suppose I ought to take my hand away. Oh, need I? No; I +can't. He's only holding it to warm it, perhaps. And then if I took it +away he might think I thought he thought he was _really_ holding it!" + +She sat in the boat that glided through that fairy mere of lambert +waves, shimmering with green. Little shivers seemed to start in her +elapsed hand and to run up her arm quick as wildfire, and spreading like +wildfire through the whole of her slight frame. Yet she was now, as she +had promised the Professor that she would be, "as warm as warm." Once +she moved her hand a little in its prison, but that was only as a bird +might stir and nestle in its cosy haunt. The man's clasp tightened a +trifle, but she had made no effort to take away the hand that he was +describing to himself as "a little bit of velvet." + +As she assured herself some time afterwards, "Well, how _could_ I? How +can you possibly take your hand away from a man's who's only got one arm +to hold you with?" + +The boat sped on ... and the thrills that trembled through the girl did +not, surely, leave the man unstirred. + +"Well, what about it, Ross?" broke in the making-the-best-of-it voice of +little Mr. Brown, resting at last on his oars. "What about another of +those chocolates?" + +With one of his quickest movements Captain Ross's hand left the shadow +of Olwen's cuff and grabbed the biggest chocolate walnut out of the box. +He crammed it into the other young man's mouth as if it were a gag. + +Then, unseen, his hand sought the girl's again, found it, held it close. + +The boat sped on through the whispering wildfire.... + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +CLOUDS UPON THE CHARM + + "The burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see + Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green." + + Swinburne. + + +After an evening of ecstasy such as Olwen had lived through upon those +iridescent waves, what could the girl expect? + +It is one of Fate's harshest rules that in one way or another we pay for +our ecstasies. The more golden the moment the more dull and clouded must +seem the hours that follow: and that is just because we have seen that +magic green shimmer on the breaker's crest that the grey of these smooth +waters looks to us so leaden. Ah, better to know the sadness of this +than never to have set keel in any but the quiet waters! To have no +reckoning to pay because no ecstasy has been ours to enjoy is surely the +bitterest price that can be demanded of us.... But Olwen was too young +to recognize this. + +So, when the next day she emerged bit by bit from her dream, she was +sore and resentful to find all life at its flattest. + +To begin with (and, indeed, to go on with; for this was the whole leaven +of discontent), Captain Ross encountered her as if there had been no +magic voyage, no hand clasped in hand, no wildfire, no silent thrills +between them. "Ah, good morrrrning, Miss Howel-Jones. Another beautiful +day----" + +Beautiful, indeed.... Olwen felt as if by rights the sun should have +gone out and the rains should have come to weep over the lagoon. As a +matter of fact the weather remained radiant. Her idol's easy, friendly +manner had dealt her a blow that stunned her into a torper of low +spirits, and there seemed nobody to give her a helping hand out of it. + +Mrs. Cartwright, usually so sympathetic and interesting, talked to her +(Olwen) as if her thoughts were far, far away: with her serial-people, +the girl supposed vexedly, or with those boys of hers at school. + +Young Mr. Awdas--well, he never talked to Olwen. An apathetic young man, +she considered him. All flyers were interesting from their very +job--otherwise _how_ uninteresting was Mr. Awdas! Nobody but Mrs. +Cartwright (who was so kind), would bother to draw him out, Olwen +thought. + +Then Agatha Walsh--impossible to talk to _her_ today: her Sergeant +Gustave Tronchet's leave was up, and he was to depart to join his +battery that evening. They could not be married until his next leave. +Poor Agatha was paying too for her golden moments. + +Mr. Brown--well, as for Mr. Brown (who had, after all, done all the work +in that boat the night before), Olwen felt that she could have slapped +him. Upon Mr. Brown's well-meaning bullet head she felt herself pouring +the resentment that she might have reserved for Captain Ross and his +forgetfulness, his insensibility. Silly little Mr. Brown! Why on earth +couldn't he run away and attract somebody (hadn't Olwen given him a +talisman for that very purpose?) instead of hanging about trying to talk +to somebody who was already distracted enough as it was, because her own +talisman seemed sometimes so potent, sometimes so useless? That it +should have allured Mr. Brown into being sentimental about her seemed +the last straw! (to Olwen.) + +But it wasn't. For it was Professor Howel-Jones, it was her Uncle +himself who contributed to his niece's burden, on this day of +depression, what was really the last straw. + +It happened as Olwen brought to him, with a little air of triumph, the +typed copy and the duplicate of the last section of the last chapter of +his book on "Agarics." + +"So that's finished," she said. + +"That's finished," agreed the Professor, his brown gaze running over the +sheets. "Olwen, I've done well here. This has been an excellent place +for work; excellent." He laid the copy down on that chaotic work-table +of his, and added, with cheerfulness, "Well! There's nothing to keep us +here any longer, now." + +This Olwen did not take in at once. "Nothing to keep us, Uncle?" + +"Only the passports to be _vise'd_ and made out for Paris," returned the +old man. "I want to stay a night or so in Paris before I go on to +London." + +A great blankness fell upon Olwen's small face. "The passports," she +repeated. "Paris!!! You mean you want us to leave quite soon?" + +The Professor's head was bent over his work-table. "A couple of days, my +dear, I suppose. You can be packed up and all that by then. You are +broken in by now, aren't you, to your packing up and getting on without +much warning?" + +But this had taken Olwen without any warning, it appeared. + +She stood there as if frozen, and said, "Away from here!" and in her +heart exclaimed, "Away from _him_!" She stood aghast, an image of all +the maids in love who have ever been sentenced to banishment from the +presence of the beloved. She had put away from her up to now all thought +of such a dreadful thing happening. Simply, she could not have imagined +it. Going away from the hotel in the pine forest, while he still was +left in it! Going away, before he had ever said to her a word that +counted? Going away--with that Charm unproved? + +[Illustration: She stood there as if frozen, and said: "Away from here!" +and in her heart exclaimed: "Away from him!"] + + * * * * * + +It was time the Charm required; Olwen was agitatedly certain of that +now. Time. + +It had taken so many days before he had even held her hand; given so +many other days, and what might not happen? But she was not to know. +Those days were not to be allowed to her. She clenched into her palm the +nails of those little fingers that Captain Ross had held in that +warmly-caressing clasp. She was to go ... never to see him any more.... + +She cleared her throat, pulled herself together, and asked, "And after +Paris, Uncle, where do we go; London, you said?" + +Now, this was a gleam of hope; London! + +For she had once heard Captain Ross, in talking to Mrs. Cartwright, tell +the writer that when his sick leave was up and after he had been +boarded, he had prospects of an office job in town. If he were in +London, and if her Uncle and she were also in London ... well, then the +outlook would not be entirely so black. It would not be the every day +and several times a day encountering of this French hotel; but there +surely might be meetings, if they were together, in London? + +But the Professor, eyes still upon his papers, said, "London for a week +or so, but I'm always glad enough to get out of the place. I shall be +going down to Wales, then; I can leave you at your Auntie Margaret's, +dear, before I go on to Liverpool. My plans will be unsettled----" + +"You're not going to have me with you, then Uncle?" + +"No, Olwen _fach_. For the present, not," he told her above the rustling +of the papers. "I shan't require you for the work in hand for the +next----Let me see, four or six months, perhaps. You will be able to go +home; have a nice rest from work; help your Auntie in the house, see a +little bit of your sisters and of your old friends." + +Olwen felt precisely as if the genial-voiced old man were condemning her +to penal servitude for the rest of her natural life. + +"Uncle!" she exclaimed in horror. + +It was met by a mildly surprised glance from the old man. + +"What's the matter, small lass? Aren't you glad to be seeing your home +again?" + +"No," blurted out Olwen. "I don't want to go. Oh, I don't. Uncle! I'd +rather be with you. Much. But if you can't have me, I--I--I won't go +back----" + +She put up her little head, shaking it violently as if in the face of a +vision of the home in which she'd been brought up. Comfortable, +old-fashioned, rambling place that it was, set in wild beauty, and +echoing with gay voices, it repelled her; it seemed to her a prison +from which there would be no further escaping towards the Heart's +Desire. At work as her Uncle's secretary, there still seemed chances of +movement in her life, there still seemed possibilities.... But as a girl +at home, she felt she would be chained and bound by a thousand chances +against. + +She told herself rebelliously, "Down there, I should never see him +again! I won't go!" + +Unconsciously her hands clasped themselves upon her breast, upon that +slender talisman that she was wearing. + +The old man regarded her, at a loss why the child should be agitated, +she who had always seemed happy enough with her sisters at home. + +"But, Olwen _fach_, if you don't go back, what do you want to do?" + +"I want to stay on in London, Uncle!" + +"In London--dear me--curious taste! Why? What could you do there?" + +"I could do War work, like lots and lots--like every other girl!" + +"Tut," retorted the Professor. Being a Welshman, he pronounced this word +to rhyme with "foot." Being a man of his generation, he still disliked +to think of any girl at work except domestically or for him. + +"What d'you want to do that for, Olwen _fach_?" + +To this question Olwen could hardly answer with the whole truth. + +How many girls insist upon working in London because there, also, is +working their particular Captain Ross? + +Olwen's mind was set upon a plan. + +She would think out the "hows" as soon as she left this place. + +Only a couple more days in which the Charm might work for her, here! + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE LOSING OF THE CHARM + + "Farewell, thou latter Spring! Farewell, All-hallown summer!" + + Shakespeare. + + +"It's perfectly easy to have a good time in this world without any men," +declared Mrs. Cartwright, smiling. "In fact, as easy as it is with them. +In many ways, easier!" + +Her listeners looked at her without conviction. For they were Miss Walsh +and Olwen Howel-Jones. Poor Miss Walsh, having passed thirty-four years +of her life in a manless world, having been then caught up into a +Paradise for two, and, further, having been banished from it again with +the departure of her Gustave, felt that nothing could be more untrue +than this remark of the writer's. + +As for Olwen--well, this was on the morning after her Uncle had sprung +upon her the news that all _her_ "good time" was to end in two days' +time. And one whole precious day of that remaining two was to be wasted; +_wasted_! + +A somewhat mysterious message had come from Bordeaux, asking all three +of the British officers then sojourning at Les Pins to go over and spend +the day with their comrades-in-arms at a base about which none of these +soldiers would answer any questions. They had gone, all three of them; +Captain Ross, Mr. Awdas, and little Mr. Brown. They wouldn't be back +all day. Not all day would Olwen have a glimpse of him whom presently +she might never be seeing at all--and still Mrs. Cartwright affirmed +that it would be possible to have a good time! + +Probably Mrs. Cartwright guessed at the young girl's frame of mind as +easily as at the less disguised feelings of Sergeant Tronchet's +betrothed; it had not been for long that the writer had wondered "Who +that child's so desperately in love with?" But brooding was a thing that +Claudia Cartwright considered a wasteful and useless proceeding on the +part of any young girl. She determined to put a stop to it, if possible, +and that was why she went on gaily, "I often think of how Eve would have +got on if she had been made first; probably she'd have thoroughly +enjoyed having the whole of that Garden to herself, whereas Adam----! +Bored to tears, of course. Not good for man to be alone.... Well, since +all the men have gone from here, why shouldn't we have a party of our +own?" + +"A party!" echoed Miss Walsh, lugubriously. "Oh, Mrs. Cartwright!" + +"Why not? I am sure Sergeant Gustave doesn't want you to shut yourself +up because he's gone back to the front; come and see something to put +into your lovely long letters to him. And since those other three young +men have gone off on a stag party to Bordeaux, we'll organize a dove +lunch, as the American girls call it, and go off to Cap Ferret. It's +perfectly lovely there. Olwen, where's the Professor? I'm going to beg +leave for you. Come along, Miss Walsh----" + +There was about Mrs. Cartwright that day an almost schoolgirlish flow of +vitality that the other two found it impossible to resist; their own +being at a low ebb, they let themselves drift with the current of hers. +The corners of Miss Walsh's mouth ceased to turn quite so definitely +downward, and the clouds in Olwen's bright eyes seemed about to +disperse. In half an hour they were all ready, and setting out for this +trip to Cap Ferret, which lay beyond the _Baissin_, the dunes, and the +lighthouse. + +In the bright autumn sunlight the little motor-boat buzzed with them +across the lagoon that had set such a fairy scene, that night.... But +there was a gay wind blowing now, sending the big white clouds rolling +across the sky in towering columns like those of the Biscay waves, seen +from afar. + +"We'll go right down to Biscay, after lunch," planned Mrs. Cartwright, +as they landed at the small iron pier above the oyster parks. Then she +guided them through the belt of pine woods that lay between the two +borders of sandhills, past the lighthouse which they saw every day as a +warning finger, but with which they now made acquaintance as the huge +tower it was; she led them to the inn where they were to lunch. This was +a long white building, its corners rounded and scoured by the flying +sands borne on the gales of winter. + +"Outside is the best dining-room," said Mrs. Cartwright. "I daresay +Madame will think us mad--but it's an Indian summer day today. The +Professor told me that you Welsh people call it '_the little summer of +the Angels_.' Come along!" + +And having given her order to the smiling French landlady (who wore a +black shawl, a bright blue apron, and a brighter blue glass comb in her +black hair), she led the others to a table in the sunny yard, under the +wooden veranda. Its green paint had flaked off beneath those noisy +gales, but the latticework was over-grown with passion-flower vines and +other vines, richly clustered with bunches of sweet white grapes. + +"Our dessert," said Mrs. Cartwright, nodding towards the fruit. "Madame +will come and cut the bunches while we are eating the Biscay sole." + +Lunch was brought; before she began upon the sole Mrs. Cartwright threw +off the loose brown coat that she had worn for the crossing in the +motor-boat, and appeared in a frock that Olwen had never seen before. +Yesterday, the girl had noticed, a carton-box had arrived for the writer +at the hotel; doubtless this was the dress that it had contained.... + +It was of rough sky-blue crepy stuff with touches of creamy edging and +of dull pink stitchery, very simple, for all Mrs. Cartwright's clothes +were simply cut. This was something more than simple, though, almost ... +trivial, was it? A frock for a more insignificant person? Olwen could +not have told you why she shouldn't quite like that frock. It wasn't +altogether that it seemed too young; and it did fit her, perfectly. +Perhaps the fact that Olwen noticed it at all showed how well the elder +woman's clothes generally did suit her. + +Today--not only her frock was different, but her mood was different. It +puzzled little Olwen entirely.... + +As the sole and the potatoes in their jackets gave place to an +admirably-cooked ham omelette, Mrs. Cartwright was saying almost +audacious things, that passed as swiftly as the shadows of the gulls +swooped over the sands. And she seemed conscious that she was "being +different...." Why? It was almost as though she were playing at some +game; she thought feverishly. As if half of her sat apart, watching the +play, criticizing, exchanging notes with people who were not Miss Walsh, +not Olwen. + +The girl, having never before looked upon her friend as a riddle, sat +wondering at her.... In that sheltered corner the savoury scents of the +meal mingled with the inevitable pine scent and the tang of sea while +the sun flung blue shadows upon the bright table and the plates; dancing +delicate silhouettes of vine leaves and tendrils and passion flowers. +There drifted to them from the woods the sound of the cow bells; +"tonkle--tankle--tonkle--" and from the shore the distant roar of +breakers. + +Suddenly, as the inn servant removed and brought coffee, Mrs. Cartwright +broke out, apparently a propos of nothing. + +"Ah, well! + + "'Better an omelette _aux fines herbes_ where Love is, than the + Carlton and a chaperon therewith.' + +Forgive my quoting my own works, but I was thinking of one of those +books of mine that I--that we never write. Plenty of other things in +Life like that. Men we didn't marry, their babies that we've never +had----" + +Then she laughed. + +"I wonder what people would have thought if I'd ever written that book. +It's the one I threatened your friend Captain Ross with, Olwen, the +other night. Would you like to hear a bit of it, girls?" + +And without waiting to hear whether they would or not, she went on in +that deep, whimsical attractive voice of hers: + + "'Don't tell your mother beforehand that I am a lady. Possibly + I'm not. You won't know. But she will.' + +I remember thinking of that when a great friend of mine in the navy told +me about his engagement. He made a joke at the time about sailors and +their _culte_ for _mesalliances_.... Here's another bit: + + "'Always write to me when you're away. Never mind if you've + nothing to say. It doesn't matter if you don't say anything. + Only write!' + +I can see the young man now that I said that to," said Mrs. Cartwright, +and the expression in her eyes was of one who looks down from a hill-top +upon the landmarks passed, far back. "He'd only been married a month to +a school chum of mine, and was suddenly ordered off. He couldn't take +her. I told him that even if the mail only went out twice a week there +was no reason that it should not take three letters each time----" + +Here Miss Walsh, who did not seem to be listening, broke in. "I think +that's very true." She fingered in her bag an envelope with the printed +label, "Controle Postale Militaire," and looked cheered. + +"This young man numbered his letters after that. Then I remember a girl +friend--ah! she's a grand-mamma now--married before I did. I remember +her once saying something that I should have stolen from her. + + "'Do you mind not giving me these useful solid, durable + presents of leather, which you men love and which are hideous + in our eyes? Why not something charming that won't last; scent, + powder, or chocolates in a pretty box?' + +And this, which is the last that I shall inflict upon you, dear yawners, +nobody at all told me. I made it up, unaided, and by my little self." +She looked away above her coffee-cup as she quoted it, and her eyes were +the eyes of all the girls that be, appealing to all the plighted lovers: + + "'Remember that nine out of ten women in the world will never + know what Love can be, and that _six out of those nine are + married women_. Please won't you try to make me the happy + Tenth?' + +And now, when all the people have said Amen, what about a walk down to +Biscay?----No, Miss Walsh! Please. This is my _day_. I proposed this, +and I know you won't grudge me this little pleasure." + +She paid the _addition_ and drew on her loose white gloves. + +Through the woods they went, and over the sandhills planted with grass +in lines to keep that barrier together. + +Olwen, in her red woolly coat, walked between Mrs. Cartwright, whose +short blue skirts flapped like a wind-blown succory flower above her +ankles, and Miss Walsh, who was holding on to her hat. Little Olwen +thought irrelevantly--"and, fancy! we're all three wearing that Charm!" + +They descended from the dunes, passed the loose shuffling upper sands, +and came on to the stretch of other sands, smooth, hard, and firm as a +ballroom floor set down in the widest landscape that any of them had +trodden yet. Soaring skies, illimitable beach, and oh, how empty seemed +the sea far, far behind the breakers of Biscay Bay! + +At the sight of those breakers, whose sound had been growing in her +ears, Olwen gave an involuntary "Oh! _Look_ at them!" + +From the hotel windows they seemed nothing more than a crawling white +line. Here they were rushing monsters that seemed to shake the shore +where they broke. They broke and spouted not more than fifty yards away, +then swirled and seethed almost to the feet of the women in surf, in the +lines that would be taken by boiling milk. + +Olwen stood nearest with spray on her cheeks, thunder in her ears, and a +storm of unimagined whiteness before her eyes, finding it all riotously +beautiful. But the last thing in the world that she expected was what +Mrs. Cartwright then said: + +"I say! Let's bathe. It would be too gorgeous in there!" + +Miss Walsh, behind her, looked as if she could not believe her ears. + +"In _October_, dear Mrs. Cartwright?" + +Dear Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she threw out her arm towards the +waters, soaring to crash, soaring again to crash.... "_That_," she +cried, "was going on before the months had names!" + +"Oh, but I never knew any one dreamed of bathing after August," murmured +Miss Walsh, still clutching her hat, "and, besides!" (as if that +settled it), "you haven't brought your things with you." + +"That's just what I meant," declared Mrs. Cartwright, taking a deep +breath. "I'm going in." + +"Oh, please don't!" protested Olwen. "I can swim quite well, but any one +can see _that's_ dangerous. Supposing you were caught in and swept away. +Oh, I wouldn't." + +"I shouldn't dream of letting you, child," cried Mrs. Cartwright gaily. +"I'm going in," and she stooped to unlace the brown thongs of her +sandalettes. + +"Oh! I'll go on and gather shells, then," said Agatha Walsh (hurriedly +turning her back as if she dreaded to let her eyes fall upon some +repellent sight, reflected Mrs. Cartwright, with amusement). + +The elder woman was of the type that, under such circumstances, makes no +more ado about getting out of her clothes than she would about taking +off her hat. She was of that type--and of that build. + +They dropped from about her, the flapper's frock of succory blue and the +silken under-garments, and with them she seemed to cast off as well that +rather feverish sprightliness of the last hour. It was a genuinely +girlish delight that shone from her eyes as she ran, lightly and +free-limbed, over the sand and into the surf that flung itself towards +her body of a slender statue, white as those crests. She revelled in +that hour that was hers, Claudia Cartwright's--hers and that girl's who +had been Claudia Crane's. + +"Not too far in!" warned Olwen from higher up the beach. + +"Right!" called her friend's voice from out of the dazzling sunlight +spray; the sound of it lost in the crash of the breakers and the scream +of the gulls that wheeled and dived like a flight of white-winged +aeroplanes above her. + +She sprang and dipped; threw herself forward, breasted the waves, and +tried to swim, always frustrated by those tossing waters that made of +her a plaything, all panting and aglow with joyous life. + +Olwen watched; anxious. But Claudia Cartwright was not to be caught in +and swept away; not she. It was something else that was to be so lost; +unseen by Olwen, unthought about at all. + +From where the bather's garments lay in a soft heap under a smooth heavy +stone that she had set down to keep them from blowing away, there +disentangled itself a ribbon that she had worn about her neck and that +she had untied, carelessly, just before she ran down to plunge into the +sea. + +It blew along the sands above the scatter of shells. + +It blew along, fast and faster, the pink thread holding that +feather-light Charm that the wind had swept away. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE COUNTER-CHARM + + "Too old, by Heaven; let still the woman take + An elder than herself; so wears she to him, + So sways she level in her husband's heart." + + Shakespeare. + + +The two parties (those of the stag gathering and the dove lunch) +returned to the hotel at almost the same moment, just before +dinner-time. + +"_We've_ had a ripping time!" Mrs. Cartwright said gaily, in answer to +an enquiry from Captain Ross; young Jack Awdas, hearing, gave her a +reproachful glance. But there was no time for reproaches. Madame had +announced "_On va servir!_" and there was a rush for rooms. But not +before Awdas, at the door that was next to his own, had murmured +urgently, "I want to talk to you afterwards, there's something that I +_must_ say to you. Come down quickly, won't you?" + +The others tore through their dressing. Miss Walsh wanted to retire to +Madame's sitting-room, there to have a soul-satisfying "mourn" with +Madame over the departure of Gustave, and to pick out of Madame's stream +of reminiscences a pearl or so to remember of the boyhood of that +excellent nephew. Little Olwen, who had overheard Mr. Brown saying, +"Look here, Ross, none of your shoving me out of my place at table--even +if I do sleep out, there's no reason why I should be made to sit with +the back of my head towards everybody I want to look at, dashed if +there is," was eager to run down to the _salle_, and with a glance or a +greeting make an excuse for the right young man to be sitting facing +her. + +Only Mrs. Cartwright took her time and was rather late for dinner. As +she redressed her hair, still damp from her bathe, and slipped into her +tawny-golden tea-gown, the writer's face was intent. She was thinking, +thinking hard. Even in moving about her room she kept glancing at a +couple of pig-skin bags stowed into a corner. One of them bore the name +of Captain Keith Cartwright, and of his regiment; what service it had +seen since it had first gone out with them to India. She knew what she +ought to be doing with those bags at this moment. + +Packing them up, to go. + +Yes, she ought to be folding her skirts and wrapping up her boots and +shoes and sorting her manuscripts. One word to Madame, and a _fiacre_ +could be obtained that same evening to take the bags, and herself with +them, to the hotel at the Ville d'Hiver, where she had already spent a +night on her way here. There she could stay until her passport was made +out for England, and then she could go back to her rooms in town, back +to be near her boys at school, and right away from this place of +conflict and too sweet disturbance--away from Jack Awdas, who wanted to +say something to her after dinner. + +She knew well what it was. Ever since that moonlight walk he had been +besieging her--not with words again, but with every glance of his blue +eyes, every turn of his head towards her, every husky, beseeching note +of his voice. + +Now for a third time he was going to put it into words. She did not know +how to check him. It was because she wished--she so wished that she need +not. + +Again and again already, by night, when she was tossing sleeplessly, by +day, when she was talking of other things, she had gone over the +question. + +Marriage----with that boy. + +He was not the first, he would not be the last who had adored a woman +old enough to be his mother. And she herself was not the first woman +who, past what is considered the age for Love, had received, offered to +her as a bouquet, the gathered share of love that could have sufficed a +score of young girls. + +Had this been always a wrong and an unlovely thing? + + * * * * * + +As she slipped on her bangles after washing, Mrs. Cartwright found +herself thinking, with a half-mutinous, half-deprecating little smile, +of some of the greatest love affairs of the world. They stood out in the +history of human kind just as the lighthouse yonder towered above the +low-rising dunes. Their passions blazed white-hot and rosy-red through +the night of centuries; but were they stories of the loves of immature +women? + +Antony's Cleopatra--how old was she when she romped in the public street +to show her defiance of Age and Conventions generally? + +How old was Ninon, beloved of lads not one, but two generations after +her girlhood? + +"I'd never wish for _that_," thought Claudia Cartwright, "but what about +Diane de Poictiers?" + +She mused a moment upon that story, upon those sweetest of love-letters +written by a young and ardent king to "_Madame ma Mie_." They bore the +dates of many years, those letters signed by the cypher which was the +"_Lac d'Amour_" for Henri and his Diane--the first Frenchwoman, Mrs. +Cartwright reminded herself, to go in for the exotic practice of the +cold tub. And she was forty--_forty_ when that affair was in blossom! +Her statue as Diana, the bather, Mrs. Cartwright had seen in pictures, +and the tall slim Englishwoman's vanity had recognized a familiar pose. + +"I _am_ like her," she thought now. + +But in the middle of her thought she pulled herself together, tossing +aside the towel as she laughed without amusement. + +What was the use of it; what? Why dwell on the outstanding Exceptions, +of whom the very fame went to prove the relentless rule that a waning +woman and a boy may not find lasting happiness together? These stories +of Cleopatra, Ninon, and Diane were lamentably beside the mark. But the +stories of matrons of today who had married their sons' contemporaries +hadn't drifted across the writer's experience. + +Stories of mistakes recognized almost at once, but too late. Of passion +that died quickly down on the one side, leaving on the other side an +unrequited and consuming flame. Of sad-faced, elderly, neglected wives +at home. Of desperate efforts to retain fading attractions; of grotesque +make-up, of golden hair and gaiety, both false. Of the interests of +separated generations, their claims, their mental outlook, always at +war! Of youth, fettered and fuming, straining towards his kind.... + +At best they were pathetic, these stories. + +At worst they were ugly enough. They justified the contempt in the term +"Baby-snatcher!" They established the principle, "A middle-aged woman +who will _marry_ a young boy is no sportswoman." + +Now Mrs. Cartwright had always hoped that, with all her faults, she +could never be accused of being unsportsmanlike. Still confident of +this, she ran downstairs to dinner. + +Her lateness only postponed by a little the hour of reckoning. + +The flying boy, rather pale but with a smile in his eyes, told her that +he had ordered coffee for her and himself to be brought into the lounge, +since all the other people seemed to be drifting into the _salon_ +after dinner. In the further corner of that lounge, under an +artificial-looking palm, he drew up for her a wicker-chair. + +"Sit down there!" he ordered her with a new masterfulness in his husky +charming voice. "And listen to me. You'll sit there until you've given +me the answer that I want." + +She sat, leaning back, lax and graceful. + +He fastened his eyes upon her. + +She could not meet them, but she was aware of every line of his face, +printed upon her heart. She loved him. She did not deny to herself that +she had come to love every look and every tone of him; and the facts +that their mental outlook must be different and that her own experience, +her wider knowledge must yawn as a gulf between them did not lessen his +attraction for her, as it might have done for another woman. Claudia +Cartwright had often smiled when she heard certain prattlers of her own +sex avow their demand to have "their mentality fed, and their need of +being in perfect intellectual sympathy" with the men (sometimes elderly +men) whom they married. + +In Mrs. Cartwright, as we know, the sense of physical perfection was +better developed ... the worse for her, all the worse for her now. + +Jack Awdas, standing over her, was saying, "I can't go on like this, you +know. You've got to have me, or I've got to get away. It's come to +that." + +Her heart, it seemed to her, seemed to miss a beat at this, then to beat +faster as she sat there. She shook her head, almost abstractedly, for +her thoughts were racing ahead of the words she would have tried to +frame. They were slipping from her, those wise and too true arguments to +which she had submitted, alone in her own room and without his eyes upon +her, disarming her of all her wisdom. Instinct within her clamoured, +"But I love him so! I want him!" + +She ought to be upstairs now, she knew, packing those bags for dear +life. + +She ground the heel of her slender slipper into the floor of the lounge +before her as she thought of this, and she thought, "Ah, if marriage +were for a year, say! _Then!..._ If I could marry him and die before he +began to tire--even his mother would not hate me then." Then came the +breath-taking thought, "He will be flying again presently. He may crash +again.... Ah!..." This was unendurable. She thrust it from her to think, +"_For a time_ I could make him gloriously happy! Happier than any girl +alive has power to do----" + +And she thought wildly that there were plenty of girls in their early +twenties who were older than she; as well as colder, with less gift for +Passion. Girls who were narrower in their outlook, girls who were less +generous, less sympathetic, less adaptable than she, as his wife, could +be. There were girls with petty minds and tongues that could say little, +jealous, spiteful things about other women. These had nothing but their +ignorant youth; did that outweigh all that she had to give? Ah, she +could point to girls still in their teens who were already nearer the +end of their powers than she was, even nearer the end of their looks. +Was it really better for him to choose a girl? It was her, Claudia, the +woman, that he wanted.... + +She could surely make of herself another exception to the unpitying rule +that Youth must mate with Youth. + +"Say 'yes' to me; say 'yes,'" urged Jack Awdas, and he let himself down, +softly, to sit on the wide wicker arm of the chair. She felt that if it +were to save her life, her lips could not now frame the word "no." + +There was a short and agonizing pause in which both listened, without +hearing it, to the sound of the wheels of a _fiacre_, drawing up outside +the door of the hotel. + +"Say 'yes,'" repeated young Awdas, more urgently, "or I clear right +out." + +"_Better_," she forced herself to murmur. + +"Better?----And if I go, I won't remember what you did for me that +night. I shall try to forget it; d'you hear? I shall try----" + +"Don't," she said, very low. "I couldn't forget it if I tried." + +"_Ah!_" It broke from him exultantly. "Then you do care! I knew you +would, I knew I could make you! The other was rot; I knew you did." + +She threw her head back and aside; she made a last struggle. She would +have risen. + +"No, you don't," he triumphed. "Now say 'yes,' and then perhaps you may +get up, darling; _darling_----!" + +At the delight of hearing it from his lips she shut her eyes even as a +sweetheart of little Olwen's age might have done. It was her moment of +ecstasy, poignant and ageless and pure.... + +A moment only. + +There broke into it footsteps and a girl's voice, a charming voice, but +of an inflection most un-English. + +"Why, yes! Wasn't I expected? I wrote the hotel anyway.... _J'ai +ecrit_.... Miss Golden van Huysen.... Oh, pardon me----" + +Mrs. Cartwright's eyes had opened upon something that seemed like a +sunburst breaking in upon the dim and formal, Frenchily-furnished +lounge. A vision it was of gold and colour. Radiance seemed to emanate +from it--from her.... For it was just a girl, a blonde and +generously-built girl, whose coat, thrown open, showed a crisp light +uniform with the Red Cross. Her head, proudly carried, was backed by the +hanging lamp that made a glory around it, and Miss Golden van Huysen, +self-introduced, might have stood for a symbolical figure of Young +America breaking into the War, descending upon the Old Continent with +help in her hands. + +She moved, and the light fell directly on her face. It had the contours +and the bloom of a peach, and under her slouch hat her eyes, large and +wonderfully wide apart, shone out with candour and young eagerness for +life. Yes, youth, youth! That was the keynote of her. That, and the +sweetness of honey, coloured like her hair; the kindliness of milk, +white as her skin. + +Mrs. Cartwright, with doom at her heart, looked at this young girl. So +did Jack Awdas, who had sprung to his feet and off the wicker chair-arm. +The girl frankly returned the glances of the lady sitting back there, +and of the boyish English officer who was (as she ingenuously put it to +herself) "the loveliest looking young man she'd ever seen." + +Jack Awdas did not know that he was staring almost rudely.... Mrs. +Cartwright knew. She also knew what a kiss had been interrupted by that +look at another. + +And when the bustle of this arrival and of Madame and the _chasseur_ and +the "grips" and the Franco-American explanations had died away to the +first landing, it was Mrs Cartwright, standing, who spoke. + +She spoke quite lightly and with a smile on her lips. She came of +soldier people. + +"Dear Jack, there's nothing more to be said. I know I'm right. But _you_ +needn't go. I'm going instead. I must get back to my boys for half-term. +I shall be off early in the morning, so this is good-bye." + +"But----" he protested, in a voice that was not quite that of five +minutes before. + +"No. That's all. I hope----No, don't come with me. Good night!" + +Before he knew, she was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +DROP-SCENE + + "There is no man that imparteth his griefs to his friend but he + grieveth the less." + + Bacon. + + +Mrs. Cartwright went up to her room, but she did not pack those bags of +hers at once. + +Instead, she put on her coat, tied a scarf over her head, changed her +shoes, and went for a walk. + +She knew that she must tire herself out. She had thought she was rather +tired already from her tussle with the waves that afternoon, but that +wasn't enough. She must be more exhausted before she could sleep for a +few hours. She would order them to call her very early in the morning, +so that she could be packed and off before any of the other visitors had +left their rooms. + +She set out, and she couldn't have told anybody in what direction. A +path was soft--probably with pine-needles--beneath her feet. Before her +eyes there was a striping of light on darkness; still a moon between the +trees. + +She walked. She could not have said off-hand what she thought about as +she swung along. Not many definite thoughts filled her mind. Only a very +definite picture of young Awdas's fair eaglet face, looking with +startled and pleased surprise into the face of that beautiful girl. One +look; the boy had just been taken aback at the sight of a stranger, and +such an unusually pretty one. Then and there Claudia Cartwright didn't +herself know _why_ she knew that this, the look that did not seem to +mean anything, meant ... everything. + +It meant that she, the woman at her last love affair who had been within +an inch of accepting the proposal of that boy, must begin to pay, +already, for her one moment of ecstasy. + +The coming of that girl had stopped not one, but all kisses for her. + +She knew what was coming between that boy, all awakened and malleable +from his first passion, and that girl. They were heritors of an age in +which Love has quickened his pace to keep up with the double-march of +war. + +She was resigned. She had foreseen it. Hadn't she said to him, "Wait +until you see me beside a real young girl"? It had come upon her rather +abruptly, that was all, but she need not really allow herself to +suffer.... + +She whistled a little tune between her teeth as she swung along. She was +thinking of nothing, she was just moving quickly and regularly, as a +mechanical toy that has been wound up to go for a certain time before +the machinery runs down. + +So mechanically, so fast she covered the ground. Suddenly a voice called +out, "Halt! Who's there? Mrs. Cartwright?" + +With a start, she found that she was in the forest, approaching the +clearing and the woodcutter's hut. The sturdy, square-set figure that, +coming away from the hut, had encountered her on the moon-dappled path, +was that of Captain Ross. + +"Hullo!" she returned, brightly. "Have you been cat-calling on Mr. +Brown? Isn't it perfectly lovely? After all, this is the time of day to +go for walks, I find." + +"Is that so? I thought this was the time of day you sat writing your +great worrrks." + +"Sometimes; but how did you know?" + +"You told me you were sitting up working that last time Awdas had that +infairrrnal dream of his," said the Staff-officer. "That was how." + +But at this the machinery that had kept Mrs. + +Cartwright going so steadily for the last hour or more, broke down +without warning. Without warning, she blurted out in a low, unnatural +voice, "Oh, Captain Ross! I am----in such trouble." + +Her limbs failed her and she would have fallen. + +The next moment she found that she was sitting upon a pine-log, with her +head upon the solid support of Captain Ross's shoulder, and with his arm +thrown very comfortingly about her. She wept, copiously and silently, +all her tears; the only tears a man had ever seen Claudia Cartwright +shed. + +This man, to his eternal honour, made no attempt to check them or to +enquire into them. He sat there, supporting her, clasping her with the +arm of a brother--this man whom she had not before regarded as any +particular friend of hers. She wept, taking his handkerchief, large and +scented with cigarettes, that he presently stuffed into her hands. She +knew that she must be making him feel miserably uncomfortable and upset; +she cried on, unashamed in the silence of the wood, telling herself that +it would be for the one and only time that she would give herself this +relief. Presently she sobbed out, "I loved him----" + +Captain Ross's "Is that so?" was entirely unstartled and matter-of-fact. + +Actually he had been too pole-axed with amazement to do anything but the +natural thing; but a finer judge of women might have been less of a +comfort to her. He sat holding her stolidly until she gave the +long-drawn breath and the apology that mark the ebbing of the storm. + +"Thank you so much," she was able to say presently, almost as lightly as +if he had put a coffee-cup down for it. "You'll forget it, I know. I +must just tell you that it was in my own hands. I refused him. I shall +be glad, presently. But----" + +She paused, and the man muttered awkwardly something about wishing there +were anything he could do---- + +She spoke softly but gravely now. "Captain Ross! Be very gentle, won't +you, with that little, young girl?" + +Captain Ross did not ask what young girl she meant. + + + + +PART II + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE CHARM NEGLECTED + + "Few people realize that Love is a hybernating animal." + + Extract from Private Letter. + + +Olwen Howel-jones sat at her War work in room 0369 on the sixth floor of +some Government offices called---- + +We will call them The Honeycomb. + +The entrance to this hive of activity was near Charing Cross, and its +courtyard was one continual procession of cars, cyclists, +motor-cyclists, dispatch cycles with little side-car mail vans, also of +men in every conceivable uniform; most of them (as befitted a swarm of +such bees!) were decorated with wings.... Goodness knows how many +telephone extensions The Honeycomb possessed! Lifts carried you up to +floor after floor. Each floor was packed with cells that had been +bedrooms and private sitting-rooms, each cell with workers making +Victory-honey (and perhaps with odd drones watching them do it). The +whole place with its come-and-go of clerks, messengers, telephone girls, +civilians, typists, switchboard girls, and their khakied male superiors, +was in a never-ending buzz. + +The small cell marked 0369 had big windows that looked up and down the +Strand: it held three workers. + +Olwen's roll-top desk stood back to back with another; the two backs +screening off her colleague of the other desk. This other desk had an +unusual feature. From behind it there came a stream of comments in +different voices, so that it seemed as if several unseen people were +sitting there. These voices were: + + FIRST VOICE--A natural girlish treble that slightly rolled its + R's; being the voice of one Mrs. Newton, in charge of cell + 0369, who possessed the gift of mimicry. + + SECOND VOICE--A masculine drawl that died away of sheer + superiority in the roof of the mouth, after the fashion of one + Major Leefe of that Department. + + THIRD VOICE--Rollicking and boyish, intersected by loud "Ha's" + and "Bai Jove's" in the manner of Lieutenant Harold Ellerton, + also of The Honeycomb. + +Mingling with the click of the typewriter, at which the third girl sat +in a further corner, came the sound of one or other of these voices. +Thus: + + FIRST VOICE--"Miss Howel-Jones, what is the French for 'land'? + Aeroplanes, I mean?" + +A murmured "_atterrir_" came from Olwen, immersed in her work, which +meant dividing the morning's correspondence into four batches: A, B, C, +and D. + + SECOND VOICE (after a moment of paper-rustling)--"Er--yeh ... + yeh! Wha' have we heah? Letters to be translay' into Fren'. + Yeh. Mrs. Newton, will you atten' to thi' too?" + + THIRD VOICE (after more rustling)--"_Damn_ this nib. Oh, sorry, + Mrs. Newton; didn't mean to say damn before you." + + FIRST VOICE--"Not at all, Mr. Ellerton; I am a married woman + myself." + + FOURTH VOICE (A Scots-Canadian accent)--"Is that so? What I + demand of a woman is that she shall be a rrreliable worrrrkerr. + I don't assk what she does affterr hours, I----" + +Here all the voices ceased. + +For a quarter of an hour no sound came from behind that desk, but that +of papers being turned, regularly and methodically. Then the busy Mrs. +Newton, not the mimic, spoke. + +"Just turn up the Q. M. G. file for last month and see if there's a +letter with this reference." + +She gave the reference, and Olwen, after a minute's search in a manilla +"jacket," handed over the letter, leaving a slip of paper sticking out +of the jacket in its place. Having written "Mrs. Newton" and the date +upon that slip, she turned again to her letter-trays. The rustling of +papers was resumed. Then the voices again: + + SECOND VOICE--"Claim for missing kit, wha'? How do f'las manage + to be always losing kit? Do _I_ lose kit? Haven't _I_ always + goh' millions pairs bags all beau'fly press'? 'Sides, isn't + even in ah sec.' Room Two--Fi'----Fi'." + + THIRD VOICE--"Ha! Reference A. B., stroke two bracket nine oh + one two two dated two twelve seventeen. Do they, bai Jove!" + + FIRST VOICE--"Aren't there any more 'C's,' Miss Howel-Jones?" + +"Not this morning." Olwen's little black head was bent over the "D" +correspondence, which she dealt with herself. "A" letters were handed to +the typist, who carried them into cell 0368, next door. "B's" and "C's" +were to be thrust into the basket that stood on the top of that +desk-screen, from behind which a hand came up ever and anon to take +letters. + +With real enjoyment the Welsh girl worked on. + +How amazingly she had altered, in all these weeks, from the one ideaed, +feverish little emotionalist she'd been in the autumn! + +Yes. Change of scene and of daily work had laid potent hands upon the +plastic, fundamentally sound nature of this young girl. Routine had +hypnotized her with its rhythmic monotony. She felt the peculiar +attraction of being a tiny cog in all this huge machine of War work. New +thoughts, new feelings, new interests packed her life; new friends, too, +were a revelation to her. + +Now came Mrs. Newton's more frivolous voice. + +"_Arlette_, _Bubbly_, and _Cheep_, that's my record so far _this_ week; +and tonight I'm going to _Pamela_ for the second time; all thanks to one +very young youth getting four days' leave from the Front!" + +Olwen laughed. The solemn little typist, however, rose to take the +letters with a look that practically said, "Some people may be heads of +rooms, but they don't seem to realize there's a war on!" and as she took +the sheaf of papers to be signed in cell 0368 she all but slammed the +door behind her. + +"Seventeen; _not_ the best phase of English maidenhood, neither washed +nor kissed," went on the voice of the unseen Mrs. Newton. "Ah! It's +nearly lunch time." + +"I shan't be able to lunch with you today, Mrs. Newton," Olwen said +rather quickly. "My Aunt that I stay with is shopping in town today, +so----" + +"Say no more," returned Mrs. Newton's voice. "I've got Aunts myself. I +mean I had before I was married. By the way, I told Fascinating Fergus +that I can hear him telephoning his dinner engagements in the next room. +He said, with that aggressive face of his, that there was nothing +prrivatt in those. I said, "Then why drop your voice when you're doing +it?" And why does he, I ask you, insist on being a Tower of Silence in +here, when he _longs_ to be considered a perfect Devil outside? Keeping +his girl friends _well_ round the corner, nobody ever having seen +_one_!... Swank!" + +"Oh, he's not as bad as all that," murmured Olwen. + +"He's all right at heart perhaps," came from the other side, "but I +_should_ like to take a scraper to him!" + +And herewith there merged from behind the desk the source of all the +voices that had been holding forth, in the person of Mrs. Newton. + +Her Nile-green silken sports coat alone had cost more than her month's +salary could have paid; her hair was arranged as carefully as though +there was no thought but of her own extremely pretty looks beneath the +broad velvet band that snooded her, but for all that, she was efficient. +Clever, too, at darting the arrows of a bright mind at chiefs and +colleagues alike. She "took in" most things, not in any disguised +fashion, but by turning full upon whatever it was she wished to observe +a pair of large, pale grey and pretty eyes, amused and passionless as +those of a sea-maid. Their stare was even emphasized at times by the +gesture of a slender forefinger and by the clearly-audible "Ah" of that +treble voice. + +Olwen enjoyed her thoroughly; her appreciation mingling with a wonder +why she did not sometimes bitterly resent Mrs. Newton and her remarks. + +Yes, two months of War work on The Honeycomb had taught Olwen already +more than the A, B, C, and D of her job. Self-possession, serenity and +poise, all newly acquired, were to be noticed now about the young girl +as she sorted her letters (very different from the leisured +correspondence of her Uncle), and smiled, partly at some thought that +she was holding in reserve, and partly at her fellow-worker. + +Mrs. Newton began again, "Do you know what I think is the keynote of F. +F.'s character?" + +"Fascination, you seem to make out," suggested Olwen, that divided smile +deepening upon her lips. She sometimes thought that Mrs. Newton dwelt +upon the subject of their chief for her (Olwen's) benefit, and she was +prepared for it. + +"Ah! But I mean the _real_ keynote. It's _jealousy_," declared the young +married woman. "He's a _jealous_ thing. Hates any other man to have a +show at all. Must have everybody doing their best work, just for his +_beaux yeux_ (not that he's got any, except those teeth). Yes; our +Fergus must be IT in this Honeycomb. He must be _The_ Great Captain----" + +She stopped abruptly as the door of cell 0369 opened to frame the black +head, square shoulders, red tabs, and empty sleeve of the man of whom +she'd been speaking; the chief of their section, Captain Fergus Ross +himself. + +"Mrs. Newton," he said, in the tone of business unalloyed, "have they +sent up to you a letter that was taken in error to room 0720? A letter +from A G 6, dated the 22nd?" + +"It's here, Captain Ross," replied the head of the room in her demurest +treble. "Miss Howel-Jones was attending to it.... Here it is." + +"Right. Thank you," said Captain Ross. + +His bright dark glance took in the letter that Mrs. Newton handed him; +it passed over the filed stack of other letters; it swept over the two +desks, the typing-table, Miss Lennon's back, the calendar, the pinned-up +Matania drawing on the wall, the green electric-light shades, the glass +on the mantelpiece holding freesias, the chairs, the waste-paper +basket--in short, over every object in the room but one. + +For Olwen Howel-Jones, bending absorbed over her work, Captain Ross did +not spare a fraction of his glance. + +"Mrs. Newton, I am going out to lunch now," he announced. "Should there +be any enquiries, I shall be back before two-thirty." + +"Very well, Captain Ross." + +(Exit Captain Ross.) + +Then Mrs. Newton in Major Leefe's voice, "Wha'? Old Ferg' gone t' lunch? +_Bet_ you he's taking out some gir', Miss Howel-Jo'." + +Olwen smiled undisturbed as she went to put on her her hat. + +Twenty minutes later she was sitting at a table for two in a Soho +restaurant, opposite to Captain Ross. + +This meeting was not due to any arrangement. + +What had happened was that some weeks before, Olwen, having explored all +lunch-time haunts within a mile of the Honeycomb, had found this tiny, +Continentally-appointed restaurant that she chose to call "The Aunt in +Town." This had been on a fishday, and the fish had been deliciously +cooked, as Olwen had reported afterwards. Perhaps Captain Ross did not +overhear her mentioning the restaurant's real name to Major Leefe. +Anyhow, there is no reason to suppose that it was not by chance that +Captain Ross happened upon "The Aunt in Town" upon the very next Friday. +As he saw Miss Howel-Jones sitting at a little table by herself, wasn't +it natural that he should join her? He knew the girl, apart from the +office, knew her Uncle. Absurd if he hadn't come up. But, as you see, +there was a vast difference between his just taking the chair opposite +to her, and his having planned to meet her. He did not attempt to pay +for the chit's lunch. So that was that. + +Certainly the fish-curry was excellent. + +Captain Ross had already announced that he was fond of fish for lunch. + +Consequently he took to haunting that restaurant on Fridays. Why shun +it, merely because Miss Howel-Jones lunched there on that day? + +As he would have told you, however, he made a definite rule of never +"going out to lunch" with any woman working on The Honeycomb. With other +girls, from other Government offices--well, that was another story. +There was, for instance, a fair-haired Miss Somebody (who rang him up, +Mrs. Newton had declared, three times a day), but she worked at the +institution we will call The Rabbit Warren. There was also a pretty +little friend of his on The Ant Hill. But from The Honeycomb +itself--nope. Work and social relations must be kept strictly apart. + +Olwen had been made to realize that from the first time she had set foot +in the courtyard under those arches and that clock. She had been first +astounded, then hurt, then finally she actually wanted to laugh at the +different Captain Ross he now was from the one she had met at Les Pins. + +The change had been sudden as the cut of a knife. + +Over there on leave he had idled about the pine-woods and the _plage_; +he had teased her as if she were no more than a pretty child; once he +had given her chocolates; once--ah, that once!--he had held her hand.... + +Here, idleness was the last thing of which he could be accused. He no +longer teased her with laughter and allusions to "_most_ little girls." +He had given her no more chocolates. As for hand-holding, why! She might +not have had any hands. To be a fellow-worker with him on The Honeycomb +seemed enough to transform any young woman into teak or granite as far +as Captain Ross was concerned. + +He had his code. + +"I guess no girl friend of mine would ask me for a job where I work, +twice," he'd told Olwen when they had first met in London at her Uncle's +hotel. The Professor's niece, greatly daring, had retorted, "Do you mean +she'd get it the first time of asking?" + +"She'd get 'it,' sure thing. In the neck," the young Staff-officer had +explained grimly. "She'd know better than to ask the second time." + +So, exactly as he was not taking her out to lunch, Captain Ross had not +secured for her this post on The Honeycomb. He had told Jack Awdas to +get it for her, through his friend Major Leefe. A very different thing. + +Olwen had "given up" the subtle reasonings of the sex. + +Today he was obviously in a bad temper. Why? After he had ordered his +own lunch, he turned to her with an edgy politeness. + +"I hope you enjoyed the show last night, Miss Howel-Jones." + +"Show----?" said Olwen, forgetting for a second that she had been taken +to the theatre by Mr. Ellerton, the young R.N.A.S. officer. + +"Yes; you were too occupied to notice who else was in the house, I +guess. I was in the dress-sairrcle. I looked right down upon you in the +stalls." + +Now, Olwen was losing her habit of the vivid blush that used to scorch +her. She merely coloured up slightly but prettily as she returned, "Oh, +were you?" and proceeded to eat her fish and to discuss the play--which +had been _Romance_. She had thought it lovely. + +Captain Ross informed her definitely that he himself had no use for such +sentimental balderdash; and then told her he guessed it made her pretty +late, going back all the way to Wembley Park (where her Aunt lived) +after the theatre. He hoped that at least young Ellerton took her all +the way home. + +"Yes, thank you; he did." + +"M'm. Last train from Baker Street, I presume. And then you've a long +trail from the station to your house. In the drive, isn't it?" + +"Yes, but we didn't go by train at all," the girl explained. "Mr. +Ellerton managed to get a taxi to take us all the way back from town." + +"In war-time?" Captain Ross's black-cat-like face was a study in +righteous indignation. Then he took a lighter tone, tilting his chin +contemptuously. "Well! If Mr. Ellerton's got money to burn that way it's +no concairrrrn of mine. Taxis out to Wembley Park with a girl who's +employed in the same office as he is. That's Ellerton's lookout. Not the +kind of thing I'd care to be seen doing myself. (No, I won't have +anything to drink. A ginger-ale, waiter.) Still, if he thinks that's all +right in war-time and for folks on War work together, I've nothing to +say." + +The ghost of a smile hovered about Olwen's red mouth as Captain Ross +went on saying this "nothing." + +"Sweet as honey to any girl he takes out, no doubt. The regular naval +flirt. He held your hand in the theatre, or some foolishness of that +sort, I daresay." + +"He didn't!" retorted little Olwen, quickly, and then a message seemed +to come to her, whispered, perhaps by the generations of girls in love +who still survived in her blood. Upon that instinct she added, "He did +_not_ hold my hand----in the theatre." + +The finest judge of women in Europe rose swiftly enough to this. "Is +that so? You mean he only held it in the taxi going home. A much better +scheme altogether." + +Olwen, still refusing to meet the aggressive brown eyes that challenged +her over the jar of mimosa on the table, retorted, "I didn't say so." + +"It was so, though. Wasn't it?" + +"I shan't tell you," said the girl, whose hand had not been held by +anyone since that magic evening in a boat. "Why should I?" + +"Don't trouble to tell me. I know." + +"Then why d'you ask me?" she returned with a little ripple of laughter. +"Besides, why should you mind?" + +"'_Mind?_'" retorted Captain Ross, laughing in his turn, but louder. "If +I'd nothing worse than that to 'mind' about, I shouldn't be the busy man +I am." + +He turned to the menu; and Olwen, going on with her lunch, remembered +Mrs. Newton's verdict, "He's a _jealous_ thing!" + +She ought to have been wildly delighted.... + +Curious! She was only flattered; amused. + +She felt oddly conscious today, that (to parody a superannuated song), +she was _not_ the only girl in the world, and he was not the only boy. +That little restaurant alone was crowded with girl workers, busy as she +was, being taken out to lunch by khaki of every grade and age; and, by +the way, there was something to be noticed about all these girls and +young women from Government offices. Once, a girl worker found it hard +to hit the mean between being fluffily unsuitable or unbecomingly +severe. Today these girls were approximating to a new type; pretty but +_durable_. The London day that began in the office and ended in +restaurant and theatre with an "on-leaver" without the possibility of +going home to change, had done way with fripperies, but had brought +decorativeness into the worker's kit. _That_ was why skirts were short, +coats impertinently neat, and hair done so that it stayed done. + +"Sensible" shoes, too, were now made in pretty styles; and since taxis +were problematical on wet days, rain-coats and rain-hats were at last +becoming things. This mixture of utility and attractiveness was a gift +of war-time to British girlhood. + +Olwen gained by it. She also gained by the consciousness that there was +male companionship in the world besides that of Captain Ross. Further, +she knew him so much better, now! Possibly, she was not left +uninfluenced by the daily sallies of Mrs. Newton at the young officer's +expense (for who knows the power of the comment that shows friend or +lover from another's point of view?). No longer was she lacerated by the +thoughts of those other girl friends "kept well around the corner." +Altogether Olwen realized that it was a good thing she no longer +imagined herself desperately in love with Captain Ross, since he, though +interested in all girls, was not "seriously" attracted by her. +(Otherwise, she concluded, he would have said so by this time.) She was +cured; she no longer wore a Charm to win him.... + +That Charm! One night at Wembley Park the ribbon that held it had come +unsewn. She hadn't had time to stitch it. It hung over her mirror. One +day, perhaps, she would attend to it; but she was always busy now. It +didn't seem to matter.... + +Captain Ross rose to go. Olwen could picture the expression with which +he'd presently look into cell 0369 to "see" if the workers had all +returned. + +She was generally just five minutes behind him. + +Today he paused, and said abruptly, "Speaking of theatres--there's a +concert or show of some sort on at the Phoenix Hut, that American +place, next Monday. Awdas rang me up about it. He'd be very pleased if +you'd go." + +Mischief danced in Olwen's averted glance. "How jolly! But how funny of +Mr. Awdas not to ask me himself! What time is this concert, Captain +Ross?" + +In a wooden voice Captain Ross said, "It starts at eight. If you'd +dinner, say, at seven o'clock here, I could take you along afterwards." + +"_You_ could? But you never take girls out from The Honeycomb." + +"That's so," agreed Captain Ross, with firmness. "But this is Awdas's +show. You'll be with him. So shall I. Good-bye." + +He put on his red-banded hat, thrust his stick and gloves for a moment +into the cross of his belt as he saluted woodenly, and turned. + +Olwen burst into a merry laugh. "Captain Ross!" + +He turned again. + +"It's all right; I was going to that concert anyhow," she told him. + +"I'm going with the girl who sings; you know Miss van Huysen!" + +Miss Golden van Huysen was now one of Olwen's best friends. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE LAST ALLIES + + "They have looked each other between the eyes, and there they have + found no fault, + They have taken the Oath of the Brother-in-Blood on leavened bread + and salt." + + Kipling. + + +The War-missioner on the platform paused for a moment to look at his +watch. + +Then he resumed, in the rich deep voice that spoke English not as the +English speak it, the voice that had done so much to bring the help of +his great country into the War. + +"But you'd rather be hearing Miss van Huysen sing; and if you wouldn't, +I would. So I'll just say this one thing to you men and women at the +Phoenix Hut tonight. I want you to look at this flag." He pointed to +the right-hand one of the two flags that backed him where he stood; the +Stars and Stripes. + +"And now--I want to think of another flag. Our stars only stand for +stars that are older still." + +The orator's fine grey head was lifted as if he could see those stars +above the many-pointed roof of the hut; stars of the night sky. + +"Those stars don't change. They're rising all the while, right round the +world. They were there, those stars, before you or I were heard of. They +will be there when we are gone. I see them as the stars of Love and +Home. And I'll tell you, friends, what I see in those stripes, too. I +see the whole world turning round to Daybreak, and those stripes are the +rays of the Dawn." + +Measured as the roll of distant drums, as soft, as stirring, the +War-missionary's voice sounded through a silence which could be felt. + +"The Dawn seems a long time in coming, but that it is coming is sure; +sure as our men are on the ocean now! That's all I have to say. It +wouldn't be any truer if I said it twenty times, and it wouldn't be any +less true if I never said it at all.... So now--Mr. Reynolds?" + +The orator smiled to the dark, clean-shaven official with the high khaki +collar and stepped quickly down off the platform. Just as he did so he +looked back at the Stars and Stripes. "Not 'Old Glory' now," he added as +if the thought had just come to him. "'New Glory,' joined with the Old," +and his smile was for the Union Jack. + +His talk, as homely as the gossip of a camp, yet somehow as high as the +stars to which it pointed, was not of the kind that provokes violent +applause. The whole assembly in that big hall felt that it was not mere +applause that the orater and his kind were out to win. Quiet brooded for +a moment over the meeting, over the mingling of Allies in khaki; and +over the rows of big-framed, bold-featured Americans in uniforms of +brown and blue, all clean-shaven as were those Normans of whom King +Harold said, "_Those priests will make good soldiers._" + +Then the spell was relaxed; there was a little sputtering of matches as +pipes were relighted. Men began to talk. And little Olwen Howel-Jones, +who was one of the visitors occupying the two front rows of chairs +settled herself for the singing. + +On her lap was a great soft heap of leopard-skin furs. They belonged to +Miss van Huysen (the girl who was going to sing as soon as she could be +fetched from saying good-bye to a party of sailors who were taking their +leave in the billiard-room). Miss van Huysen's seat, next to Olwen, had +just been slid into by Captain Ross, who would have to leave it as soon +as the singer had finished; Olwen thought he must have something to say +to her, but apparently he hadn't. On her other side sat Mrs. Cartwright, +serene and smiling, with her hand lying in that of the very young man +who accompanied her. This very young man, aged fifteen, was Keith, her +elder son, now in London with his mother on account of measles at his +school. In the row behind them, his long legs rather cramped, sat Jack +Awdas, the flyer, with the rest of the party from The Honeycomb; Leefe, +Ellerton, little Mrs. Newton, and one or two other R.F.C. officers. + +Since Captain Ross did not seem to have anything to say to her, Olwen +found time to glance about this great hall which was only one room of +the Phoenix Hut. + +The keynote to the whole place--with its spaciousness of comfort, its +shields of Harvard, Yale, and the other colleges, its flags, its palms, +its theatrical posters, and its three glowing fireplaces, might be found +in the great pedestalled image of the American Eagle, carved in grey +stone and set up in the middle of the hall. Stately he stood with +outstretched wings, poised and ready to strike; and from one of those +wings dangled the blue jacket of some American sailor, while upon the +huge bird's head there was perched an American soldier's cowboy hat. + +It seemed so typical, that mixture of dignity and gaiety! + +Suddenly a rustle and a buzz went round the hall, then the applause +broke out in a storm as of summer rain. + +Miss Golden van Huysen, the singer, had come quickly through the doors +that led from the billiard-room smiling an apology for her absence. +Olwen's glance flew back to the platform as her friend stepped forward +up to it. + +There she stood facing all eyes, a vision of white and gold. There she +shone, in front of all the illuminating lights. Into that place, already +bright, she brought an added radiance as of the June sun on a field of +buttercups. Golden was her name; golden her hair, golden the girdle that +clipped her, its long ends falling to the hem of her skirt. Olwen looked +at the glorious young form, symbolical as that of a goddess on a golden +coin. + +"Isn't she beautiful tonight!" she breathed. + +Every man in the hall must have agreed with her, and the blue eyes of at +least one Englishman there said as much. + +They were the eyes of Jack Awdas. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +RECOVERY OF THE CHARM + + "One sudden gleam of a face, and my cherished Ideal is real! + There moved my miracle, there passed my Fate whom to see is + to love." + + Brunton Stephens. + + +Those eyes of Jack Awdas's had known their business from the start. + +Wise Mrs. Cartwright, to have known what would happen, even as she sat +in that basket-chair in that hotel lounge at Les Pins, all those weeks +ago! + +It had happened instantaneously. The electric flash had not been quicker +than the glance that had passed from young eyes to young eyes. + +Those months ago!... + +Mrs. Cartwright had left the French hotel the morning after--had left +Les Pins and the man she had refused. Her place at table next to Jack +Awdas had been given (as she guessed it would be given) to her +successor. + +That goddess-built young American had made friends with everybody, +easily and at once. The French families had regarded her as if she'd +been a visitant from another planet. Olwen Howel-Jones had been +subjugated on the spot. But Jack Awdas from the very first _dejeuner_ +had scarcely for a moment left her side. + +Never before had he seen a girl so frank, yet so apart, so boyish in +her unaffected good-fellowship, yet so womanly. + +Unchaperoned she had travelled from the States to join her father in +London, where he was attached to the Embassy, and where she meant to +continue her special War work. But upon landing at Bordeaux she had +found a cable from him stating that he would be out town for some days. +She'd had no use for an empty house. So she had decided to stay in +France and by the sea for those few days. + +To young Jack Awdas they were a gift from Destiny! + + * * * * * + +Some people consider that the truest and most human touch in the world's +greatest love drama is that which pitches the young man already +infatuated with one woman into the purest passion for another. There is +no hiatus of feeling between the gloomy "_I am done_" of Romeo sighing +for Rosaline, and his quick "_What lady's that?_" when Juliet appears; +there is no thought of that first lady afterwards. + +Yet who shall measure what Juliet owes to Rosaline?--what rough ways +made smooth, what cold young crudities softened and warmed, what +kindling of susceptibility, what speeding-up of passion? + +And, for all this, what thanks may Rosaline expect? "_Oh, she was just +someone he used to think he cared for._" Or, "_I'm sure she couldn't +have been a very nice woman._" Or even "_Horrid! Robbing the cradle, I +call it; I don't know how any woman can!_" + +But none of these verdicts would ever be passed by Golden van Huysen, +either upon Claudia Cartwright or upon any other woman. She had read of +the theory that women are "catty" to their own sex; smilingly she +disbelieved it. Like attracts like. Just as her own heart had never +known an ungenerous prompting, so her own lips had never uttered a +spiteful remark. She therefore never heard one. If she had, she would +probably have widened her blue eyes and exclaimed with a little air of +discovery, "Why, that's not _kind_!" + +And this big and innocent creature was the very type which (if she'd had +her choice) Mrs. Cartwright would have chosen for the man whom she +herself was too old to choose. + + * * * * * + +He didn't ask Golden van Huysen to marry him on the first day of their +acquaintance. No! He had waited until the third day. + +"Mustn't rush things," he'd told himself, as if those three days had +been three years' duteous service of a knight of old. So he had merely +made himself into this young girl's shadow. + +To her it was no novelty to be attended and worshipped. Wasn't every +girl that she cared to know accustomed to this setting of masculine +worship? Golden took as naturally as she took air and food the existence +of a train of such young knights. + +Only ... from the first she realized vaguely that this one was somehow +different from the others she had known and liked. This tall young man +with the small crested head set on his sweeping, wing-like shoulders, +who had drawn her first quick glance in the lounge. She admitted it +quite frankly to herself this young flying-man _fascinated_ her. + +Why was it? + +She had met plenty of flying-men before. Hadn't she talked to them in +the aerodromes of her own country--which was also the birthplace of that +very marvel, flying? Hadn't she been introduced to her aviators who had +broken records for altitude, distance, and time? Hadn't she danced at +balls with some of the very first pilots who'd ever looped? Flying and +flyers had been no new proposition to her, but _this_ flyer.... + +Presently the young American girl began to realize what it was that was +new and special about "this flyer." + +It was symbolized in the little gold stripe on the cuff of his +flying-jacket. He was the very first _fighting_ flyer who had crossed +her path. The first she'd met who had already given battle to men in the +air, the first she'd known who had been shot down in fighting for the +cause which was now her country's too. + +Never before had she seen a man who had actually used her country's +invention of flying as the instrument of battle. + +She, with her whole country, had wished to use this invention as a +beneficent gift. + +Her country had seen that _before this gift could be so used_, stern +work lay before the men of the air. She saw it, too.... As that +War-missioner had said. Her country was looking with other eyes upon her +Allies. + +For Golden these new friends were typified in the young Briton who wore +the wound stripe as well as the wings. + +She told herself wonderingly, "Now isn't it queer that I should ever +come to like one of the English so well. This Bird-boy is quite nice +enough to be an American...." + +Neither of the young people remembered afterwards at what exact moment +of that second day she had called him "Bird-boy." Though he took it +with a hidden lift of the heart, he did not use any name at all to her +until the third day. + +On the morning of that day she announced to him that it would be her +last day at Les Pins. + +"What? Going?" he cried aghast, as if the idea that she must one day go +had never occurred to him. + +"Why, yes! I'd never meant to stay here at all. It was just because of +father, and now he cables me he'll be back in London before I shall." + +"Well, but I say!" Jack Awdas broke in in consternation. "Shan't I see +you any more?" It seemed unspeakable. + +"Didn't you tell me you were coming back to London at the end of the +fall, to a Board or something? My father would be pleased if you came +and saw us then." + +"But that's not for ages!" he cried, his face blank. "I'm not due back +in town for another month! When are you going? Tonight? Tomorrow?" + + +"Tomorrow morning early, to Bordeaux; then on to Paris, then London." + +"All by yourself?" exclaimed the young Englishman stupefied. + +She laughed. "Why, certainly, 'all by myself.' That's funny! Why, I've +made all the travelling arrangements for father and myself since I was +twelve! I'm a lot more useful than he is, that way. I've been most all +over the world. 'All by myself.' Why, yes! You're shocked? Now isn't +that real old-fashioned, and English? It's the way they talk in those +novels with the sweet little heroine in book-muslin, whatever that is, +in the days of Queen Victoria. Haven't you got past that, in this War? +If you haven't it's time America did come in and teach you a few things! +I guess I'm as capable as you are of looking after myself, Bird-boy!" + +"You certainly aren't," he declared resolutely. "I shouldn't let you, +if--if I were anything to do with you." He pulled himself together and +added, "Well, there's all today, anyhow. Look here, can't you let me +take you somewhere jolly all by myself, just for today?" + +He could never have made this suggestion to a young woman of the +traditions and upbringing of, say Miss Agatha Walsh. But already he knew +that SHE would take it as it was meant. + +"Why, yes, if you like," she said. + +So they'd gone off to Cap Ferret. Midday had found this tall girl and +boy upon Biscay shore where four days before Mrs. Cartwright's +dove-lunch party had walked, watching those rollers. Soaring to crash, +gathering and soaring once again to crash, those great waves boomed the +chorus that had sounded across wide sea and wide shore long "before the +months had names." It would go on sounding long after the names of those +two on the seashore had ceased to be music to those who loved them. + +But this was the moment when the waves sang for them, only for them. + +Golden van Huysen had said something about surf-riding. The young +aviator, his eyes turning for a moment from her to the tumultuous +waters, had muttered, "Dangerous game for a girl!" + +She laughed. "What a lot of things there are that you English think a +girl can't do! It would do you lots of good to get to know some +American girls. Then you'd see!" + +He made no reply. His eyes were again upon her. + +She wore what he had come to know were (out of uniform) her only +colours; white and gold. Her dress of some creamy white stuff, perfectly +cut, and over it she had slipped a knitted coat of yellowy silk. Crisp +as a gardenia-petal, her skirt blew out above her ankles, and her feet, +not small, but shapely as those of a sandalled Hermes. No hat hid her +hair, which glinted like a casque in the sun as they turned away from +the sea towards the dunes. + +Here Jack Awdas took the plunge. + +"See some American girls, you say? You're all the girl I want to see," +he declared, not knowing that he spoke with the boyish vehemence that +had so lately taken Claudia Cartwright's breath. The persistence with +which he'd wooed that first love he now turned upon this--this only love +of his. + +"You're all the girls in the world to me," said he. "D'you understand?" + +She did, and she did not. She stared at him: her uncovered gold head +almost on a level with his own fair head, crested by that flyer's cap. + +"Yes, rather!" continued the lad, definitely. "Now, what about it?" + +He held out a hand to help her up the dunes, but she climbed as lightly +as he. + +"What about it, please?" he repeated. "What about your belonging to me +for keeps, I mean?" + +The girl had a curious little gesture as she looked at him, then away. + +Surprise was in it, and protest, and a virginal dignity; also amusement, +unpreparedness, and wonder.... + +She repeated his words. "'Belong' to you? To you? Oh! No, I----" + +"Don't you like me?" he shot out. + +"Oh! I like you very well," she answered quickly, almost hurt herself by +the thought that she might have hurt him. "I like you so well! I like to +be with you. I like to talk to you. I--yes, I like to look at you," and +she turned one of her frank and friendly glances upon that handsome +figure striding by her side, that fresh face, all pink in the +sea-breezes. "But I guess I'd never want to 'belong' to any man!" + +He smiled into the sweet bewildered eyes. It was the smiling side of his +obstinacy; obstinate and keen again, in love as in war! + +"I say----How old are you?" he asked. + +"Twenty-one," she told him. + +"Well, then! You don't mind my asking, do you? Hasn't any man ever +wanted you to belong to him before?" + +"You mean asked me to marry them?" + +"Yes." + +"Why, yes," she admitted with her crystal straightness. "Men, proposed +to me? Why, stacks of them! But they didn't do it that way." + +She looked back and out to sea, as though she could see on the other +side of that severing Atlantic the half-score of her splendid young +countrymen who had offered her marriage as tribute is offered to a young +queen. + +"You are--queer people over here," she said softly. + +"Queer?" + +"The way you talk of 'belonging.'" + +"Queer, if it's the right man and the girl he wants?" Jack Awdas asked. + +"But," she said, sweet and stately, "I should always want to belong to +myself." + +Then he understood. He said quickly, "Of course I'd always want that for +you, too. But--oh, look here! Would the other stop that? As I see it, it +might help it." + +The puzzled wonder grew in her look. All this was strange to her; she +had read of it, heard of it. All this was unexpectedly different from +books, from college, from life until now. The old was so unexplored to +the new, embodied in its modern Diana. At twenty she had seen half the +capitals of two hemispheres, yet she was in his eyes more backward in +some ways than a girl who had never left her native village. + +Mrs. Cartwright could have told her that it is by "belonging" that a +woman forms her individuality, and that it is only by giving that she +can either gain or keep what she has. + +He went on softly talking. Presently he said, "I know now what people +mean by being made for each other. You were, for me. Yes, but I was for +you. Oh, yes. Oh, yes!... You can't tell me you honestly don't think +so.... You don't want to send me away; you don't want not to see me +again." + +"Oh, _no_," she agreed, quickly, looking away from him as if to face a +situation. She was of the type that faces, losing no time in wondering +what she ought to think. And this was the very first time she had ever +wondered _what_ she thought. + +She did like him. How it had grown, that first "fascination," born from +a look! But----At last she seemed to find the words that summed it up. + +"This is a big thing," she said, gravely. "It might be the biggest thing +that's happened to me; but, Bird-boy, there's no hurry about it." + +"No hurry?" He seemed to think that "hurry" was now the main point. + +She shook her head. "We don't have to settle anything about it, right +here and right now. Now _do_ we?" + +"Yes. _Yes!_" urged the boy. + +"No," denied the girl's wise young voice. "See here; I'll be in London, +and you will be there in a month. There's plenty of time. You'll come +over then.... Then we can think of it.... Then maybe we'll talk of it +again...." + +"Oh, will we," muttered Jack Awdas in a voice of utter +expressionlessness. For the moment he was ready to say nothing more. + +Silence fell between them. + +Each full of thought, they ascended and descended the belt of +softly-rolling dunes and came to where the sand had drifted half-way up +the trunks of the growing pines. + +Suddenly Golden gave a little exclamation. "Oh, look; what's this?" + +"What's what?" he asked, stopping beside her. + +"I thought it was a cute little flower that was growing up the tree," +said the girl with down-bent head, "but look, it's sown on to a ribbon, +and it's got itself wound way round the branch----" + +She was disentangling the object that had taken her eye; a couple of +lengths of ribbon, faded to white by the sea breeze and stitched to a +little padded square of satin, once mauve, now pale as the sand. + +"What is it?" she wondered. + +Half-absently Jack Awdas caught hold of the other ribbon as he looked at +the thing. + +And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the sachet of the +Disturbing Charm that had hung about Mrs. Cartwright's neck just before +she had plunged into the waters of Biscay Bay; the Charm that the wind +had caught and whirled away across the sands until at last it had been +in that pine branch from which a girl's hand unwound it. + +[Illustration: _And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the +sachet of the Disturbing Charm._ ] + +"Something from a wreck?" mused Golden. + +The Charm dangled between them. + +He was scarcely thinking of what he was doing as he twisted that ribbon +over his own fingers. + +He was set, so that he would not have realized, now, that he had set +before. This was a universe away from that. _She_ knew that, the other +one.... She'd been kind.... It wasn't that she hadn't liked him, he +believed. She _had_ begun to like him near her, she _had_ liked it when +he said "darling." Ah, to think that he had ever wanted to say "darling" +to any woman before! Here was his darling, and she must be made to see +it, not later, not in London, but "right here and now." + +As he twisted the ribbon, he spoke in the tone that had caused that +other woman to shut her eyes; for it was the note of the mating call. + +"I say, darling----" + +Again the girl shook her head, but--was there now the least quiver of +indecision in her gesture? + +"I say, if nobody else has ever been allowed to call you that----" + +"Oh, no!" she cried, sincerity itself. + +He was mechanically twisting up that ribbon between them; another inch +he took, another. + +"Then if there's nobody else you liked well enough for that, there's a +chance for me," persisted the soft husky voice of her lover above the +faint distant crashing of those breakers behind them. + +"Shall I tell you what?" + +"What----?" she asked, slowly, no longer looking at him. A kind of +arrogance seemed to shine up in him. Somewhere deep down in his heart he +was cheering himself on by the reminder that he knew more than she. He +seemed vaguely conscious of some force upon his side.... He would not +have believed anyone who had told him that a woman's strongest love, +poured out upon him, had lent him magnetism, charged him. He fastened +his blue eyes upon this girl, as upon some doggedly desired objective +seen from his battle 'plane as he drove through the blue, but he did not +reply. He smiled, with all that is far-away in those searching eyes of +his. + +He had twisted up the last inch of that ribbon. Now he caught hold of +the Charm that hung between the two ties, then came to the twin ribbon +that she held. Before she knew what he would do with it, he wound that +ribbon about her fingers and palm, binding her hand to his own with the +Charm in it. + +Close, close and warm his pulses beat to hers. + +"I've caught you," he ventured, very softly, eyes intent upon her. He +smiled more broadly at the first faint dawning of lovely trouble in her +face. "Yes! This is what they'd call marriage-by-capture, I suppose?" + +She didn't speak. She didn't move as he caught hold of her free hand as +well. He held his crested head gaily as he said to her, "Of course I'm +English and old-fashioned, and I know American girls are independent, +and I ought to see the things they could teach me! But there's something +I could teach one of them. Let me try?" + +Softly he muttered the word which was to mean everything as his own name +for her. "Girl! _Girl!_ ... I say, let's learn from each other?" + +Still she didn't speak. How find words, when at a nearness, a name, a +touch, some spell seems snapped and the meanings of all words thereafter +seem entirely to have altered? This stranger who had become her friend +so soon had even more quickly changed to---- + +"_What?_" + +Her lover nodded, saying below his breath, "It will be all right." + +Then, loosing one of her hands, he deftly unwound the ribbon that was +about the other. As he was stuffing the Charm with its ribbons inside +the breast of his flyer's coat, words came at last to his love. + +Laughing tremulously, she asked, "Why, what are you doing that for?" + +"Putting it by, safely," he smiled at her as he stood just a step away +from her on the sand. "It'll never leave me now, not that ribbon +that--that tied our hands together for me. I say, I shall fasten it to +my 'bus later on, to bring me luck, Girl. It's started already, what?" +He jerked his belt straight. "Hasn't it?" + +And with the words he took that one step nearer that brought her into +his arms. + +"Ah, please," he said, more softly than ever. "Please...." + +He drew down to his shoulder the face so full of sweet disturbance, he +folded her close, close to the wide breast beneath the white-embroidered +wings. As if swayed by a Charm, she drew a long breath, then smiled in +wonder, nestled, and yielded to his kisses--the first for both of +them.... + +"What about America coming in now, Girl? She will, won't she?... Yes, +but say yes; you _must_! Say it!" + +"No, Bird-boy! I just won't _say_ it," was her last touch of mutiny. +"And--and I guess we'll see about that 'belonging' later on." + +"Yes," triumphed Jack Awdas. "I 'guess' so too!" + +That was all those months ago. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE VOICE OF THE CHARMER + + "She is singing an air that is known to me; + A passionate ballad gallant and gay, + A martial song like a trumpet's call." + + Tennyson. + + +All that had been in November. It was now January--which brings me back +to the Phoenix Hut, where Golden van Huysen was preparing to sing. + +Advancing to the edge of the platform, she said, smiling, but as quietly +as if she'd been proposing a game in a room full of children: + +"What'll I sing you, boys?" + +An instantaneous chorus of men's voices answered her, and she laughed. +Evidently she had heard, though Olwen hadn't caught a word of which song +it was they all wanted. + +It was "the" sentimental song of the moment, that song whose name varies +from season to season. As I write, it is called differently from what it +will be called by the time you read. Once it was "Until," once "Roses of +Picardy." The soul of it remains the same. "Cheap and common," smile the +superior. Yes! Cheap as the air we breathe. Common as sunlight. + +Golden van Huysen pronounced its present name to the accompanist, who +struck four cords on the piano. Then, into a dead silence, her voice +stole out. + +It might have been the gushing of honey from a suddenly broken comb. +Already her speaking voice could set Olwen's heartstrings vibrating in +response to the sound, but Golden's singing voice (a rich mezzo-soprano) +was almost more than her little Welsh friend could endure for pleasure. +It cleft the middle of the note, the middle of the heart. Olwen sat, her +hands clenched under those furs, listening, listening. She could not +have told you what the words were about. She only knew that when the +immortal nightingale sang to his rose, it must be in some such song as +this.... The two verses of the song ended, and the applause that +followed them was as much a murmur of deep voices as it was a clapping +of hands from Americans, British tars, Canadian, kilties.... Without a +pause, the singer whispered to her accompanist. The wonderful voice rose +in a second song, of which the words might have been trivial, but which +were music because of their singer. Not a man or woman in that hut made +a movement.... In all she sang three songs. + +Just before her last song she took a couple of steps backward, and +stood, tall and resplendent, between the two flags with a hand upon +each. + +She had not sung three notes before the audience had risen to their +feet, with every soldier and sailor in the hall standing to attention. +For it was "The Star-Spangled Banner" that Golden van Huysen was singing +now. + +There are some songs that never age. Of these are those a mother sings +to her child; of these, too, are those a Motherland sings to her absent +sons. This one----Well, all in that hall had heard it a thousand times +before, yet this might have been the first time. Golden sang it as once +Sims Reeves sang "Maud," as Patti sang "Home, Sweet Home"--in the +perfection of simplicity. + +At the end she neither bowed nor smiled. She just backed out, as before +some Royalty of emotion, between the English and the American flags. + +With a deep breath the audience felt that it was as though a light had +been put out.... + +It was this radiant personality of hers, as well as her power of holding +her hearers spellbound in hut, hospital, theatre, and soldiers' club, +that had gained her the name by which half London knew her now--"that +wonderful American they call the Sunburst Girl." + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE BEST GIRL-FRIEND + + "She was Sweet of Heart." + + Epitaph on the Tomb of an Egyptian Princess, 700 b.c. + + +Olwen, with Golden's furs, hurried through the billiard-room to the +outer hall with the "Enquiries" counter, the long bar, and the rows of +refreshment-tables crowded by soldiers and sailors. + +One table was empty, reserved for Mr. Awdas's party, but the young +flying officer had been called away on duty just after his _fiancee's_ +second song. Olwen was sorry for him, but his loss was her chance; and +she saw so little of this friend of hers. + +As she handed over the great leopard-skin muff, she said, rather +appealingly, "Are you staying, Golden?" + +"Why, aren't you?" Golden said, glancing towards the group who were +ordering coffee. "It's quite early." + +"Yes; and I felt like a walk," said the other girl, wistfully, "and I +thought if we got out of this crush I might see you to speak to----" + +Golden laughed. "Very well," she agreed. "I'll come with you; wait while +I shake hands with Mrs. Cartwright...." + +The two young girls bade a quick good night to the party, and before it +was quite realized that they were leaving, they had passed through the +hall, descended the wooden staircase, and reached the entrance to the +Strand. + +It was a clear and sparkling night above the murky lamp-glasses, with a +touch of frost. Away to the west the spoke of a single searchlight could +be seen creeping this way and that like a snail's horn. + +The tall girl and the little one turned to take the quieter streets in +the direction of Baker Street, Olwen's terminus. + +Already they had walked many a mile together, those oddly contrasted +girl-friends, during that growth of this quick, firm friendship. Several +times the Welsh girl had been invited to the big house near Grosvenor +Gardens, which was Golden's home; the little house at Wembley Park had +in its turn welcomed the American. There had been appointments for +matinees together, and for lunch. Olwen, in fact, would have wished to +claim the Sunburst girl whenever Jack Awdas was out of town, bound for +France with a new machine. Taking aeroplanes across the Channel was now +his job. Little Olwen had been the first of her girl friends to whom +Golden had confided the pact on Biscay Beach that had made of her +Bird-boy the happiest man flying. + +But as Golden was not of the type that lets any Third (however dear) +into details that concern a happy two, Olwen had never heard of the part +played in that scene by a trifle of pink ribbon and satin in which her +own hand had bestowed a Charm.... + +If she had known of it, it might have been better for her. It might have +startled her out of the lines that her own life was taking; humdrum +lines, she knew--she scarcely realized that they were also growing +towards the lines of disillusionment, even of cynicism. Being gloriously +in love was a thing for the few, she thought. Certainly a bright fixed +star seemed to shine over this girl by her side and over the Jack she +appeared to adore. But what gleam of it touched the life of Olwen? She +had now reached twenty, and the phase when a girl believes herself to +have outgrown everything she ever used to feel. Certainly she had +gained, by that casting off of some of her feverish emotionalism and +credulities, but was there nothing this young girl was in danger of +losing? + +It was as they were turning into Cranbourne Street that Golden van +Huysen, who had been swinging along without speaking, did startle her by +a sudden remark: + +"Olwen! I didn't know you could be so cruel." + +Quickly Olwen's little head went up. "Cruel, Golden? What can you mean?" + +"I mean just plain cruel. What made you say good night in the way you +said it, as if you didn't care if it were good night, or good-bye, or +good riddance?" + +"'Good night' to whom? I spoke to Mrs. Cartwright; she was the one who +mattered," Olwen said a little defensively. "All those other people from +the Honeycomb----well, I wanted to get away with you, and I see _them_ +every day." + +"And are '_they_' all the same to you?" + +"Of course," said Olwen in a resigned voice, "you _mean_ Captain Ross." + +"Certainly I didn't mean your little Major Leefe, who talks as if it +hurt him, not your young sailor-boy, who loves to laugh." + +"Well, I see Captain Ross every day, and I expect he thinks that's far +too much." + +Golden's reply was a soft laugh. "Oh, you British, you are the funniest +things! Either you want to grab a thing before you take another breath, +or else you wait staring at it until you can't see it!----Why, Olwen, +that man's crazy about you." + +"Not he!" returned Olwen, decidedly, and with another sort of laugh--a +slightly bitter one. + +For she had just remembered that this was the second time some one had +thought this thing. She heard again the mercilessly shrewd voice of that +French manageress at Les Pins. + +"_Monsieur le Capitaine, he with the one arm, who admires +Mademoiselle._" + +She, Olwen, had actually been silly enough to believe it, then. She +didn't believe it now; how could she? Did she have any reason? Those +Fridays were the only time she saw him to speak to, and even those, as +he'd practically pointed out to her, were the purest accident. + +The rest of the time--she laughed again. + +"My _dear_ Golden, if you could _only_ see him at the Honeycomb!" + +And there seemed to resound in her mind echoes of Captain Ross's voice +at the Honeycomb--or were they echoes of Mrs. Newton's mimicries of +Captain Ross? + +"Hullo--yes?" curtly down the telephone in his office where Olwen had +come for instructions. "Yes; Miss Howel-Jones _is_ working on the +Honeycomb. You will find her number in room 0369----" Then, in an iron +tone to Olwen, "Miss Howel-Jones, I should be glad if you would give +your _correct_ telephone number to any friends whom you wish to ring you +up...." + +And so on. Was that the manner of a man who cares? + +More echoes were broken in upon by the gentler voice of Golden. + +"I don't need to see him at any Honeycomb. I saw it in one, at the Eagle +Hut. If he's different in the office, why, that's his fine sense of +duty, and you ought to like him for that.... Jack thinks a deal of +Captain Ross. So does Mrs. Cartwright, and she's a real, intelligent +woman. Why, do you know, just before Captain Ross came on to the meeting +tonight, your little friend Mrs. Newton said something about him; I +think she likes to make fun of him a little. Mrs. Cartwright said, quite +quietly, '_I have a great affection for Captain Ross!_' + +"I guess she wouldn't have said that without some reason for liking him. +Jack thinks he's fine," young Awdas's sweetheart concluded her plea for +the absent. "Don't you like him, Olwen?" + +There was a silence as the two girls walked up Tottenham Court Road, +comparatively empty at this time of the evening. + +Then Olwen drew a quick little breath, turned up her face to her +friend's, and let out an emphatic "I did like him." Then in a soft hurry +of words, "I liked him all that time in France. Yes. Awfully! I thought +of him and thought of him, Golden. It seemed to make everything ... +beautiful to me." Then a little ashamed laugh, "I was----silly, then!" + +"Silly?" repeated her friend gently. "That's not the way it seems to +me. That's a lovely thing in a girl's life." She lifted her chin over +the leopard-skin stole and looked ahead to the stars above the murky +lamps, to the skies in which lay her own lover's pathless way. "Make +everything beautiful; that's what love should do. I _know_," said +Golden, shyly, but proudly. "I didn't know for certain, until Jack +showed me. I'm so pleased you know too...." + +"Oh, but--that's not new," Olwen protested quickly. "That's over." + +"Over? Then--if you don't mind telling me, what do you feel about +Captain Ross now? What does he mean in your life?" + +Little Olwen had asked herself this very same question until she'd given +it up, and now she scarcely knew whether to laugh or to shrug her +shoulders. + +"I'll tell you," she said lightly, after a moment, "exactly how I feel +about Captain Ross. I would have told you before, if you'd asked me. To +start with, I work all day at the Honeycomb, where there are hundreds of +other girls, and men. Some of these people amuse me, and some don't, +so----" + +"But----'_amuse_'----" repeated Golden, blankly. "Does that stand for +anything big?" + +The soft Welsh voice of the other girl retorted, "It does, when you are +working, and--and there isn't anything else. Isn't it natural that one +likes the amusing people best? Mrs. Newton is amusing. Major Leefe +doesn't mean to be, but he is. Mr. Ellerton is nice to go about +with----" + +Again Golden broke in gently. "Olwen! I don't like to hear you talk that +way." + +"Why not? Les Pins is over. And when a thing's over," pronounced this +sage of twenty, "sensible people don't waste any more time on it." + +"When you say that, it seems to me to be belittling a very----" Golden +made the characteristic American pause after the adverb--"beautiful +thing." + +"It's different for you who have one man meaning the whole world to you. +As I haven't. Well, I want to be amused, Golden." + +More gently still Golden repeated, "I don't like to hear you talk that +way, Olwen. Don't you feel any more that Captain Ross is different from +the others?" + +"I feel he's less amusing," declared the girl, walking beside her. + +"And how," asked Golden, "does that young Mr. Ellerton 'amuse' you, +then?" + +"Well, he gives me a good time. I like being with him. He rattles away +all the time. _He_ doesn't snap my head off----" + +For half a minute there was silence as they walked along. Then Golden +stopped by one of those dimly-gleaming lamps and peered down into her +friend's small, mutinous face; her voice dropped a whole note as she +said slowly: + +"Olwen! You wouldn't do such a thing as play Mr. Ellerton off against +Captain Ross to make Captain Ross jealous?" + +"Oh, no," Olwen said quite honestly; forgetting something as entirely as +a change of mood can cause one to forget. She had mischievously enough, +allowed Captain Ross to go on thinking that the young R.N.A.S. officer +had held her hand.... She didn't even care enough to remember it.... + +But at her answer the American girl heaved quite a sigh of relief. +"Forgive me," she begged. "Forget I said that. I ought to have known it +wasn't like you." + +And here Olwen really felt herself humbled by the standards of the +straight young goddess at her side. For the first time the younger, less +womanly but more feminine and complex girl suffered a pang of remorse on +account of a certain little Mr. Brown. Him she had certainly made use of +at Les Pins to annoy Captain Ross. The blackberry time was not +intentional; but that time on the terrace? Would Golden ever have talked +to a young man "at" another young man? It would be better, she knew, if +every girl could think and act like Golden ... it would be better.... +But to every girl her problems. + +Golden went on, "You've done it without wanting to, then. He was scared +tonight that Mr. Ellerton would sit by you. You aren't out to make him +jealous, but have you wondered if he thinks that's what you're doing? +I've told you that he watched every look of yours!" + +"But I don't believe it," persisted Olwen, feeling somehow more +disturbed, less contented with life as it was then she had been that +day. "Why should I?" and into her voice there crept another note. + +It was a note of unspoken irritation, exasperation, and appeal. In how +many soft girl voices does it not sound, telling of budding emotions +nipped by the frost of silence--of hopes that had grown tired of raising +their heads--of womanly impulse turned back upon itself--of influences +that might have made the sunshine of two lives, but that dies of +forbiddance because some man has shown himself so near to +speaking----and has not spoken! + +"He cares," said Golden with the conviction of some young great-eyed +oracle. + +A passer-by separated the two girls for the moment. As they came +together again Olwen retorted, "Then why can't he say so? Men do, when +they like a girl well enough. Your Jack did, in a minute." + +Golden gave a happy little laugh. "But, as I say most every day, you +British are so queer! You're so different! Some of your men want to +propose before they even say 'Pleased to meet you.' Others seem to have +this habit of waiting and waiting until some cows of their own come +home, I guess." + +"It's the second sort that I don't understand," sighed the Welsh girl. +"If a man is fond of a girl, why doesn't he want to say so at once?" + +Golden shook her head. "Now that is something that I can't tell you." + +Presently Olwen said, as if getting rid of something that had been a +little on her mind, "I read in a book of essays about engagements and +things, that Mrs. Newton lent me, that '_a Proposal was one-half the +Engineering of Some Girl, and one-half the False Pretences of Some +Man_' ... but I hope that's not quite true...." + +"It is not true," said the American girl serenely. "It's ugly." + +With this profoundly simple remark, uttered as if it were some creed, +she turned with Olwen down Warren Street; and they were half-way to +Baker Street station before either of them spoke again. + +Then said the Sunburst Girl, "I wouldn't have missed this walk. I think +you needed to talk to somebody who knows Love's lovely." + +"Somebody who seems to upset things I thought were _settled_," grumbled +Olwen, affectionately. + +"That's why I'm glad I came with you. I just hate to see you in a hurry +to settle all the wrong things!" + +Olwen persisted. "For the umpteenth time, as Mr. Ellerton would say, +that man doesn't care two-pence about me, Golden." + +"Just because he hasn't proposed?" smiled Golden as she took the last +word. "But he will. Watch out for it. Good night, dear." + +The heavy furs lifted to her gesture as she turned, then swung away +under the stars towards the South. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE CHARM REMEMBERED + + "A is happy, oh, so happy! + A is happy, B is not." + + Gilbert. + + +The words of Golden remained with her friend all the way back to Wembley +Park, down the Drive of little red-roofed villas, and up the +short-flagged path between the standard rose-bushes that led to her +Aunt's front door. + +Olwen took her latch-key from her bag and let herself in; as she did so +she heard the voice of the Aunt from the sitting-room, "Is that you, +dear?" + +"Yes! I'll be down in a minute," she called back, and ran straight +upstairs to the bedroom with the pink-curtained window that overlooked +the back lawn. + +She wanted to be alone for a moment or so. She had just told the +Sunburst Girl that what she wanted was amusement, but what she would +have liked now would have been solitude. + +Why had Golden unsettled her again like this, when she had been getting +along so cheerfully? + +She sat down on the edge of the springy brass-railed bed drawn up +against the window. It was open, and the breeze stirred in the curtain +behind her head, full of uneasy thought.... As she drew the hat-pins +from her head she glanced restlessly about her room, bright, girlishly +pink-and-white, with the atmosphere of a room that had been lived in +happily enough. Mechanically Olwen's eyes fell upon the dressing-table, +upon the crystal powder-box, upon the signed photograph of Professor +Howel-Jones--about the frame of which there was twisted a long piece of +pink ribbon, sewn to---- + +Why, it was that half-forgotten Charm of her days in France! + +Half scornfully she smiled now at the memories that it brought to her. + +It seemed another Olwen that she remembered, poring over typewritten +directions for the use of that Charm.... Fancy an Olwen who believed in +that! What a simple way out of the problems of Love, to wear a mascot +and to have everything happen that one could wish! + +This did happen to some people, Olwen mused. To Golden van Huysen it had +come without the help of any talisman. Golden possessed within her all +that quality of Charm of which that "inventor" claimed to have found the +secret. She was one of the lucky people who hold that secret without +knowing what it is.... + +But as for materializing it into something that might be annexed and +worn----well, thought the new and more sophisticated Olwen, what had +been the success of that, so far? Half laughing now, she considered it. + +That other, romantic little Olwen had (in her first enthusiasm!) written +to that newspaper address for more of the Charm. + +No answer had been vouchsafed to her. + +Therefore her experiments had been limited to four. She had planted out +her Charm upon four people: Miss Agatha Walsh, Mrs. Cartwright, little +Mr. Brown, and herself. + +With what results? + +This older, wiser Olwen ticked them off now on her fingers. + +_One_, Agatha Walsh--successful. She had become engaged to her Gustave +and was perfectly happy. + +_Two_, Mrs. Cartwright--unsuccessful. Absolutely nothing had happened, +thought Olwen, vexedly; her friend the writer had received not one word +of added attention from her Uncle, and had remained unclaimed except by +that work and those boys of hers. + +_Three_, little Mr. Brown--more than unsuccessful. Not only had he +failed to attract anybody on his own account, but he had shown symptoms +of becoming attracted to a girl who didn't want him. + +_Four_, Herself--unsuccessful again. No results at all. You can't count +as "results" two attacks of masculine dog-in-the-mangerishness, one box +of chocolates, a few ragging remarks, and an evening of having one's +hand held in a boat. No results.... + +That left one out of four cases in which the Charm had worked. _Only one +out of four people lucky in Love!_ Was it so the world over? One in four +meant a quarter of the people in the world!... Well, perhaps that wasn't +such a very poor percentage, Olwen told herself more briskly as she gave +herself a little shake out of her meditations and ran downstairs to the +sitting-room, where a cup of cocoa and a plate of those neutral objects +known as War-biscuits had been set ready for her by the Aunt. + +This Aunt was Professor Howel-Jones's youngest sister, a small demure +woman of forty-five, with the air of constantly saying, "Of course _I_ +am the failure of the family." She had been left a widow very young, +and it was her pose to give out that she had never been asked to marry +again. But her pretty eyes laughed, most disconcertingly, while the rest +of her face remained prim. She smoked, sang Clarice Mayne's songs and +forbade Olwen to call her "Aunt" anything. + +"Thank you, Lizzie," said her niece, as this lady handed her over a +letter that had arrived by the last post. Then, glancing at the +signature, Olwen gave a little exclamation of surprise. It was over the +well-known type of coincidence that brings a letter from some one almost +immediately following one's own thoughts of that some one. + +For the letter was signed, "Yours affectionately, AGATHA WALSH." + +Miss Walsh wrote from Paris, where she had just been having "Oh, such a +lovely time shopping with Madame Leroux, who had taken a month away from +the hotel, and had been looking up some of the relations----" + +Followed an account of these relations who had evidently taken the +English _fiancee_ to their bosoms; Agatha, who had been English and +provincial, was rapidly becoming a good French _bourgeoise_. + +She went on, "Oh, and there is such news, Olwen. Figure to yourself that +Gustave is coming to London with General Chose next week! Coming as his +orderly! Just think how lovely for me! Of course I shall come over at +once. I have not been in England since September! We must all meet, we +and you and the Professor and dear Mrs. Cartwright, if she is in town! +And won't it be like old times again! and oh, Olwen, I may even be +getting married----" + +This last word was so heavily underlined that Olwen had to laugh, and +the Aunt asked her what she was so pleased at. + +"Oh, only that there _are_ some very happy people in the world even +now," said Olwen. + +"'Some' pessimist", murmured the Aunt, whose vocabulary was not of her +epoch. "Never mind, Olwen; I have just remembered something. An admirer +rang you up on the telephone this afternoon, and would you ring him up +at the Regent Palace Hotel as soon as you came in----?" + +"What?" said Olwen, astonished. "What was his name, and why d'you think +he was an admirer, Lizzie?" + +"I think he admired you by the tone of his voice, in which he said, +'Miss Olwen,'" said the demure Aunt, who had a private and vicarious +delight in watching all the activities of her young niece. "As for his +name----what was it now? Something rather out of the way." + +"I don't know," wondered Olwen. "Was it Mr. Ellerton?" + +"Oh, no; not our young Naval man who finished our last drop of whisky, +by the way--no, I thought at once of him, dear, but it wasn't. It +was--oh, yes! He said, '_Ask her to ring up Lieutenant Brown_.'" + +"What? _Not_ Little Mr. Brown?" + +"I couldn't tell you what height he was," murmured the Aunt, but already +Olwen, amused, had run out into the hall and had taken up the telephone. + +(Coincidence, then, had been busying itself with another of the Les Pins +party!) + +After some little delay the Regent Palace found Mr. Brown. + +"Hul-_lo!_" the familiar boy's voice sounded over the wires as cheerily +as it had sounded over the waves and through the pine woods. "That you, +Miss Olwen?... That's great. How are you?... That's top-hole.... Me? Oh, +I'm fine, thanks. Yes; I'm up for a Board. I say, Miss Olwen, when can +we for-gather?... Can I see you tomorrow?... Dinner? What are you +doing?" + +Olwen said, "I'm going to a party at Mrs. Cartwright's----" + +"No! By Jove, are you? I say, I'm glad you mentioned it. I nearly +forgot. I'm booked for Mrs. C. too. Rang her up and she asked me to roll +up at seven. Can I take you along? Miss Olwen, can't I have tea with you +in town somewhere first?" + +"Er----" began Olwen, doubtfully. Truth to tell she had not wanted to +see very much of little Mr. Brown; she had not wished to encourage his +boyish sentimentality for her. + +He took up quickly, "Won't you have tea with me, here, tomorrow? I've +got something very particular to say to you, Miss Olwen." + +"Oh? What is it?" + +"Give you three guesses. I say, you know that mascot you gave me?" + +"Yes?" + +"Well! It's brought me luck, I reckon." + +"Oh, has it? Well, what is it?" + +"That's what I want to talk about tomorrow," came with a joyous giggle +from the other end of the wires; evidently the speaker could scarcely +wait until tomorrow's talk. "I say, can't you guess, Miss Olwen? +Master's got off, this time." + +"Got _what_?" + +"_Off!_" + +"I can't quite hear what you say," called Olwen, puzzled. "Who has got +what?" + +"Oh, spare my blushes," begged the voice of Mr. Brown, and then brought +out the announcement, "I'm engaged to be married, Miss Olwen, that's +what!" + +"Oh--_oh!_" gasped Olwen. "I'm so glad----" + +"Thanks! Thought you would be! You wait till you hear all about it +though. You prepare for a shock, Miss O. Tea tomorrow. Four o'clock. +That suit you? I'll meet you at the door--you know, in the hall just in +front of the big place where all the animals feed. Right! So long! +Chin-chin!" + +"Good night!" called Olwen, and rang off. Then she stood gazing at the +telephone almost as if it were the small figure in khaki coming towards +her out of the forest. + +Engaged----Little Mr. Brown! + +The Charm had worked with him, then, after all? + +That made two out of four.... + +Well, that was a better percentage than she had thought she might hope +for, thought Olwen as she turned away. + +Did it mean that after all _half_ the people in the world were lucky in +love? + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +PETROL AND THE CHARM + + "For your own ladies, and pale-visaged maids, + Like Amazons, come tripping after drums; + Their thimbles into armed gauntlets change, + Their needles to lances." + + Shakespeare. + + +"I've got a table in the corner over here," said little Mr. Brown to +Olwen through the buzz of talk that drowned all but the louder strains +of the band in the tea-room of the Regent Palace Hotel. + +It was, as ever on a Sunday afternoon, a welter of khaki and girls. The +wicker chairs could not be seen for shrubberies of furs, coloured forest +of millinery; there was scarcely a space on the floor clear of muffs, +vanity bags, and feet; big feet in brown boots, little feet in +high-heeled coloured shoes; swathed feet in hospital wrappings. It took +Mr. Brown and Olwen minutes to steer their way through this labyrinth to +the further corner by a window that the little campaigner had marked +down and engaged just after lunch. + +"Now, that's better," he said. "Nobody will come and walk over us here, +and nobody can hear what I say through this racket, not that I care if +they do.... Well, it's nice to see you again, Miss Olwen. I've been +fairly bursting to have a good old mag with you, ever since all this +happened.... What? Yes, two teas, please, Miss, if you can call 'em +teas. Spelling it with an E at the end is nearer the mark nowadays; +sort of reminding you of what once was tea. I've got some sugar here; +pinched some out of HER cupboard yesterday--good start, wasn't it? Are +you one of those people who miss lump sugar with every breath they draw, +Miss Olwen?" + +Olwen smiled into the pink, pug-dog face that looked pinker, more +pertinacious than ever; the boy held his head even more assuredly in the +air, but his blue, prominent eyes were humble as well as joyous, and the +whole of him radiated amazement at Fortune as well as delight. + +"Tell me about 'all this,'" Olwen begged, and little Mr. Brown zestfully +drawing in his chair and letting a pleased grin crumple his cheeks, +broke into his story.... + +Here and there Olwen interposed a question, a "Really," a "Why," a "What +did she say to that?" but for the rest she listened mutely as a woman +must, with the widening of her eyes, with a nod, a turn of the attentive +head, while the cheerful boy's voice--a thread in that closely woven +pattern of other voices all about them--ran on and on. + +"It was only last Saturday it started. Imagine that! Seems ages ago to +me now, so much happening.... However, to begin at the beginning. I'd +been to my Board in the morning, and the silly old blighters had given +me another three weeks' leave before putting me on light duty. I was in +a taxi, coming away from them, because I was in a hurry, promised to +meet a fellow I knew for lunch at the Troc.... + +"By Jove, I never even rang him up after! I've only just thought of that +fellow who used to be in the Lace Department at that old show of mine, +and I hadn't seen him since '14. Too bad. I'll have to write him. Anyhow +I can't help it; absolutely everything seems to have gone straight out +of my head. + +"Well, I was going to lunch with this fellow, and then I thought after +that I'd ring you up, Miss Olwen, and see what you were doing, and if +you'd perhaps care to come with me to the Alhambra or something. If I +couldn't get hold of you I was going to look up Ross, I thought, and +Mrs. Cartwright.... This was where I was mapping out things that came +rather different, as it happened! + +"We were coming along Piccadilly towards the Circus when my taxi-man (an +absolutely dud driver, as I'd noticed) barged straight into a +motor-cycle and side-car that were going along at no end of a lick for +Knightsbridge. He only pulled up in the very nick of time; the cycle and +the rider were over and into the mud; a filthy day it was, p'raps you'll +remember--drizzling and the streets like a soap-slide. + +"Out I nipped, before the crowd had even begun to collect, and picked up +the motor-cyclist with one hand, and started saying what I thought of +the taxi-driver with the other--he was swearing away like a trooper at +'these here so and so and so and so side-cars'; and the little nipper +who had been upset was cursing him to blazes, an octave higher. The +voice took me by surprise, of course.... The little thing was so covered +in mud that I couldn't have told you off-hand if it were a boy or girl +or a retriever dog. + +"A girl; yes, it was a girl, of course. + +"One of those lady dispatch-riders, they call them. Cap like mine, +trench-coat down to her knees, top-boots, riding-breeches ... laughing +all over her little splashed face.... + +"Well, in about two twos I'd pushed his fare at the taxi-driver and sent +him off and was assessing the damages to that motor-cycle of +hers--nothing wrong at all luckily! while she wiped her face on a huge +khaki handkerchief and put her cap straight. Short hair, of course, +rather sticking out, curly.... I always thought I loathed short hair on +a girl. Suits her A1, and it's most awfully soft and jolly to run your +fingers through.... + +"What? Oh, no, not _then_. Give us a chance. I wasn't allowed a chance +to touch her hair for ages--you'll see. + +"All this time I was being all over myself with apologies, and she +laughing and saying it was all part of the day's work, only the taxi-man +had put her back up; taxi-drivers did always seem to be women haters! +She told me (standing there by the kerb) that she was just coming off +anyway before her three days' leave that she gets in a month, and that +she was dashing up to Harrod's before they closed, because she was on +duty from eight to six ordinarily, and never got any time to do any +shopping for herself. + +"(Mind you, that's the only grouse she seems to have at all after doing +a man's job day in, day out; no time to get her shopping done!) + +"I thought to myself at once, the way one does, 'H'm, here's a nice +little bit of skirt, if you could see it for mud.' Not that it _wore_ a +skirt, but still. So I said, pretending to be rather fed, 'I don't +suppose there's another taxi to be had for love or butter now, so I'll +just push on to Harrods' on my flat feet.' + +"'Oh,' she says, 'were you going to Harrods'?' + +"'I am,' said I, determined to now, anyway. + +"'And you're wounded, too, aren't you,' says she. 'I'll give you a lift. +Hop in.' + +"In I hopped into that side-car; and off we buzzed to Harrods', and we +were just in time before they closed for her to buy half a dozen pair of +the best quality brown silk stockings for herself. (I'd seen she was a +lady, you know, and all that.) She said she hadn't a stocking left to +her foot----Tiny feet she's got, Miss Olwen! Reminded me of yours, +honest, they did. Same sort of hands, too. Coming out of her great +gauntlets like snowdrops, growing in a drift of brown leaves----No, I +didn't make that up, that's what she told me some ass of an old Colonel +that she used to drive the cars for said to her once. I think it's neck, +the way some of those old Johnnies with one foot in the grave go on +giving the Glad to any pretty young girl that's near them.... + +"Well, after Harrods' shut, we went on to some place where she could get +a wash and brush up, and we had a spot of lunch together. She was a real +jolly little thing to go about with, I thought. We sat talking--you know +the way ones does--until it was nearly tea-time. + +"Tea we had out, too. She would stand me tea, said it was her shout, and +because I was wounded. Seemed to think that because a fellow had been +pipped once he was helpless for evermore. Generally I loathe women +fussing over one for that, but she was different.... Struck one as so +comic, you know, that tiny little thing with those hands and feet to be +got up like any old mechanic, and to do all that hefty work in all +weathers----and for her to get frightened that I might be tired! + +"Well, so we went to Rumplemayer's. + +"Afterwards I went with her to take her bike back to the Park. You know +she's attached to the Royal Flying Corps there; yes, that's what she +does now. Carries their letters and messages for them all over the show, +to your people at the Honeycomb too, sometimes. Sometimes she drives out +officers to the various training schools for flying, all about. Has to +clean her own bike, too! Wouldn't let me give her a hand, said it didn't +look well. Extraordinary, the lot she gets through!... And I used to +hate girls being 'independent,' too. + +"I asked her what put it into her head to do all this, and she said it +was because one had to do one's bit somehow, and the harder the better, +so that it sent one to bed tired enough to sleep. + +"Dashed sporting little girl I thought her. + +"It was dinner-time before I knew, and I asked her if she'd come out. (I +had got just one pound note left on me!) + +"She said, as naturally as if we always fed together, 'Shall I go up to +my rooms and get into respectable clothes, or d'you mind if I came in my +uniform?' + +"I said, 'Oh, come along!' And we went off to a quiet little place at +the back of the Palace. + +"By that time, d'you know, I felt as if I'd known that little girl for +years and years and years. + +"She seemed just like the best little pal a man could have. We +talked--oh, about any old thing. I sort of felt at home with her. So she +did with me. She told me so. But it was me that did most of the +talking. Only, what d'you think? We never bothered to ask each other's +names. That was the funny part. I'd told her all about me being in a +shop before the War----Lace, forward----and how I thought of having a +shot at in Canada, p'raps, and all that sort of rot. Miles I'd yapped to +her; even about my mother dying when I was a nipper.... + +"I wonder the girl wasn't bored stiff. I can't make out now why she +wasn't. However, as I say, they might never have named this child N or M +for all she was given to hear about _that_. + +"Fact was, I clean forgot about names until I took her home----she's got +two rooms in one of those big old-fashioned houses in a street off Baker +Street. Then, as I said good night to her on the doorstep, I said, 'Oh, +by the way, who do I ask for tomorrow?' + +"She said, 'Coming tomorrow?' + +"I said, 'Well, you told me it was your three days' leave, and I thought +p'raps you'd come for a walk'----thinking to myself that I might be able +to raise another quid or so for meals from some man at the Regent +Palace, which I was. + +"'Oh,' she said, with a little sort of laugh. 'Rightoh. And I haven't +told you, of course, my name's Robinson,' she said as she went into the +house; big dark hall, it seemed to swallow her up. + +"I said, 'Brown's mine,' and off I went----and I couldn't simply get the +little thing out of my head all night, and what a jolly little chum she +was. Don't laugh at me, Miss Olwen; no, I know you're not really +laughing, but I am, I can tell you. 'They laugh last who laugh laughs,' +as that chap says at the Hippodrome. + +"Next morning I was round at that house so early that I hadn't the nerve +to ring the bell. I had to patrol the street for another half an hour +before I rang. + +"'Miss Robinson?' says I to the old girl who opened the door, but before +she could answer I could hear the little girl herself singing out over +the banisters, 'Hullo, I think I know that voice! Come up, Mr. +Brown----' + +"I legged it up to the first floor. Her sitting-room door was open; +well, in I went, and there I got a nasty one." + +Here Mr. Brown stopped to draw a breath, to finish his cooling tea, and +to offer a cigarette to Olwen, listening with all her ears. There is no +audience to a love-story so intent and so satisfactory as the girl to +whom one has been attracted. Curiosity as to her supplanter burns in the +breast of the woman whether or no she had been attracted to the man; +curiosity made of varied elements--sympathy is one, and competition is +one, and the undying yearning to compare notes is another.... + +Little Mr. Brown went on. + +"Well, it was a pretty room, full of sun in the morning. Pretty coloured +curtains and cushions about; and lots of flowers and that yellow bobbly +thingummybob scented stuff--mimosa. And then.... Her in the middle of it +all----_all different...._ + +"I stopped dead and stared at her, never even saying good morning. Miss +Olwen, I can tell you it was a shock to me. + +"Last night, you see, I'd left her looking like a saucy little tomboy in +that khaki working kit of hers with a cap the same as my own on her +head and a black-and-white badge of the R. F. C. on her shoulder, and +those brown riding bags.... + +"This morning here she stood all in a dead-black frock, with a widow's +hat on and a long black veil streaming away from her little face. + +"I stared, I tell you. I saw the situation absobloominglutely changed, +in one. + +"'Good Lord,' I said, 'you've been married?' + +"She opened her eyes at me and said, 'Why shouldn't I?' + +"I looked at her, such a little woman in her girl's clothes, but taller +than she seemed in t'other rig-out, and I said, 'I didn't know you were +married. I thought you were a kid of a girl. A widow. You didn't tell +me.' + +"'You didn't ask me,' she says. 'You might have seen I wore a +wedding-ring. Men never do seem to notice rings--or anything else, I +can't think why.' + +"I stood there like a silly ass and said, 'I never thought of you being +married. I s'pose I only looked at your face----' + +"And I suppose I'd been magging so hard all yesterday about myself that +I hadn't given the girl a chance to put her life history across me! + +"She told me then, all quickly as I stood there, that she'd been married +last year to her cousin, just before he went out. He was in the Flying +Corps. He crashed in France just three months after they'd been married. +Then she joined this Women's Legion. (You know they're jolly particular +who they let into it, Miss Olwen: have to have no end of refs. from +_padres_ and lawyers and people.) She threw herself into her job.... +She'd been working like a nigger ever since.... + +"All I could think to say was 'Well, this knocks me out.' + +"She laughed and asked me why it should make any difference, her being +Mrs. Robinson instead of Miss? She asked me if I didn't like her in +those things she'd got on? She said, 'Most people think it's rather +becoming, all this black.' + +"It made her little face look like a wild rose coming out of a +coal-bucket, but what could I say to her? I tell you I was so flummoxed +I stood there like a stuck pig--I don't know what I said next; honest, I +don't. + +"So then she offered me cigarettes, and I took one in a sort of dream, +and felt all over myself for matches. Couldn't find any. + +"Only, then---- + +"D'you know what I found, Miss Olwen? Blessed if I didn't stick my +fingers into my belt pocket here, and feel something soft. I brought it +out. It was that little mascot of yours. She asked me quickly what it +was. + +"'Oh,' I said, 'something a girl put there once, to bring me luck,' and +I stuck it back again. + +"'Oh,' she said. I saw her looking at that pocket. + +"Then she said, 'What about going for that walk we've heard so much +about?' + +"'Right you are,' I says, pulling myself together. 'I'm ready if you +are, Mrs. Robinson.' + +"Then she said, 'No; I'm not quite. I shall have to keep you five +minutes, not longer.' + +"She popped through a door at the other end of the room and left me +gazing at a big photograph in a silver frame on her table with violets +in front of it. 'Yours, JIM,' on it. Him, of course. Fine-looking chap +in R. F. C. uniform. I didn't wonder she'd taken him. Anyhow, he'd had a +short life and a merry; a topping time! Marrying _her_, and then getting +shot down in action before he knew he was for it. I was envying him when +the door opened and in she came again---- + +"By Jove, she had done a quick change in five minutes and no mistake! + +"She'd got out of the widow's weeds again and into khaki the same as +yesterday, except that there was nothing on her curls, and she'd put on +a short skirt and little brown brogues and a pair of those silk +stockings she bought yesterday; and she came straight up to me and said +quietly, 'Now, look here----why were you all upset when you came in? +What's put you out? My being a widow?' + +"'No,' I said, straight. 'It wasn't just that, but never mind.' + +"'Yes, let's have it out,' she said, and I looked at her standing there +in her khaki, but somehow I only saw her in a frock again, and I thought +to myself all in a rush, 'All right, you asked to have it out, and you +shall,' and so I just blurted out, 'It was seeing you, and knowing all +in a minute how much I wanted you myself--and remembering.' + +"'Remembering what?' she says as sharp as a needle. + +"And I said, 'My dear, I haven't a _bean_.' + +"And I grabbed up my hat and gloves and I think I would have said +'Good-bye' and bolted. + +"But she just looked at me so that I couldn't. + +"Then she looked away and said, 'If beans are all that matter----!' and +then she picked a couple of violets out of the vase by that photograph, +and tucked them into her jacket, and, just like a kid, said, 'Jim always +loved me to have a good time. Jim would like me to have everything I +liked, I _know_ he would----' + +"And here's where the room seemed to go round and round until it +steadied down with me holding her tight.... + +"Well, then, Miss Olwen----well, then, there we were; engaged! Or +practically then," amended little Mr. Brown, his pink face deepening in +hue. "It was hours after that that I began to grasp how little it +mattered about my not having anything but debts to ask any girl to marry +me on; why, great Scott, d'you know who she is? Her Uncle, her hubby's +father, is old Jack Robinson of Robinson and Mott; he's got the biggest +aeroplane-body business in the Midlands, and he, this Jim of +hers----well, she's got all he was to have. He arranged it so. She was +to marry again if she liked, and whom she liked. And----Well, she's a +girl who might have her pick; apart from the money. Then there's all her +money as well; and yet----yet----" + +He paused for words just as the band at the other end of the tea-room +got the upper hand of the buzz of talk and sent a lilt of insistent +melody through the air above the parties. + +"_Fancy you fancying me_" was the tune. + + "Fancy you fancying me, + I can fancy anybody fancying you, + But fancy you fancying me." + +"Incidental music; jolly appropriate," laughed little Mr. Brown, +happily. "What that girl could possibly see in your humble beats me. I +expect most people who meet us thinks she's balmy----" + +But Olwen, smiling and interested and sympathetically murmuring, was +thinking again (secretly) of the Charm. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +RATIONS AND THE CHARM + + "A dinner of herbs where Love is." + + Proverbs. + + +"If there is one thing that bores a man," gave out Captain Ross, in a +voice like the clashing together of Tube lift-gates--a tone that he had +adopted all that evening, since nothing seemed to be going right, "if +there is one thing that bores a man stiff, it's when some woman starts +in to '_Love_' him." + +He paused to glance across the table at Olwen, gaily chattering with Mr. +Ellerton. + +"It don't matter what woman," pursued the young Staff-officer +inexorably. "_Any_ woman. If he's keen before, that chokes him dead off. +He's not out for any of this Love-with-a-capital-L business that women +are such nuts on. Once he's done the chasing, he's gotten all he wants +out of it, I guess. Man's a hunter, Mrs. Cartwright." + +"I know," cooed his hostess. Inwardly she exclaimed, "Dear Ass!... But +is he going on like this for the whole of my party?" + +Up to then Captain Ross had only spoken to her and to the other young +Scotsman whom he had brought with him. At Olwen he had simply glowered. +At Miss van Huysen on the other side he had not looked. + +"What's Love?" he continued, still to Mrs. Cartwright. "It's an +amusement. That's what it ought to be. An Episode. It's the Women who +insist on spoiling it; taking it seriously. Nothing in this world is +worth taking seriously; barring a man's job.... What's woman? The +Plaything of Man. And what's Marriage?" + +It was, as he pronounced it, a word of one syllable. + +"Marriage," he answered his own question, "is an idea that the sensible +man looks at from every angle, and then cuts right out until he can't +find anything better to do. If he is really a sensible man, he +invariably can find it." + +"Ah," uttered Mrs. Cartwright with the little appreciative laugh of one +who hears for the first time an original thought brilliantly phrased. + +But she wanted to be soothing; she was fond of Captain Ross. One does +not sob out one's weakness on a man's shoulder once and think of him as +a stranger thereafter. She had asked him to forget. She never forgot.... + +A pity he'd come in this absurd mood, she thought. + +Her party, at her flat in Westminster, had arrived at the stage of the +feast when tongues were loosed and the young guests were gossiping and +chirruping in merry twos and threes. + +Little Mr. Brown was beamingly loquacious in spite of the absence of his +khakied _fiancee_, kept out of town that evening on late duty. Between +Mr. Brown and the fresh-faced naval boy, Mr. Ellerton sat little Olwen +Howel-Jones, enjoying herself without disguise and looking her very +best. She was a girl who had "days"; this was one of them. Never had her +glossy black hair "gone up" so well, or her face lighted up so vividly; +never, against her pale skin, had her laughing mouth bloomed in such a +carnation-red. Never had any dress suited her so well as that flapper's +frock of succory-blue with touches of cream, and dull pink. It was the +frock Mrs. Cartwright had worn once on Biscay beach; she had pressed it +upon Olwen as she said good-bye at Les Pins, telling her it was a young +girl's colour after all. There Olwen sat in it now, laughing and being +talked to by two young men at once and looking a picture in it.... + +It was from this picture that Captain Ross's dark eyes looked so +pertinaciously away, as with new sardonic energy he informed Mrs. +Cartwright that by the time a man had learnt to handle women he'd learnt +that their place in his life was not all that important that he wanted +to handle them at all. + +Mrs. Cartwright passed him the Sauterne. + +"Thank goodness that there is at least enough to _drink_," she reflected +with a quick whimsical glance about the well-cleared dishes on her +supper-table that had held: + + 1. Remains of chicken, with an intolerable deal of + rice and curry to a very little fowl. + + 2. Allotment potatoes. + + 3. A pound of Normandy butter bought that morning + in Boulogne and brought over in Sergeant Tronchet's + haversack. + + 4. Pease-pudding. + + 5. Beetroot.... + + 6. Green salad. + +Well, they'd seemed to enjoy what there was. + +"Ah!" exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, here catching a remark from over the +table. "A penny from _you_, Mr. Brown!" And she pushed over to him a +money-box with the Blue Cross upon it, known as "The Fine-box." + +This claimed a penny from whomsoever entering Mrs. Cartwright's abode +should make any allusion to a subject which she declared was now +inadmissibly boring: namely, food. One met quite intelligent people who +became hopelessly tedious about "recipes," "how they managed," and so +on. Rations had to be; and catering, food-cards, and substitute foods. +But why intensify the Unspeakable by unnecessary speaking about it? +Hence this box. + +She took Mr. Brown's penny (a fine for some cheese anecdote or other), +rattled the box, and glanced, as usual without seeming to do so, at her +other guests. + +Next to young Ellerton sat a niece of her own; a pretty girl in grey and +scarlet nursing kit; the red- and blue _artilleriste_ uniform of Gustave +Tronchet next; delighting the eyes of his _fiancee_ opposite. + +Agatha Walsh had taken off years, Mrs. Cartwright thought, since they +had parted at Les Pins. In place of the "old-maid" look, she was +acquiring that of the young and prosperous woman--her smile seeming not +yet entirely her own, and she had a new gesture or two modelled on those +of Madame Leroux, her aunt-to-be. Also, her speech was altered. Some one +must have rallied her on her "English" habit of beginning every sentence +with "Oh"----Mrs. Cartwright missed it as she caught fragments of Miss +Walsh's talk to Jack Awdas, who sat on her left. + +"Now could _you_ tell me, Mr. Awdas, the really best sort of man's wrist +watch?... I want to get a really _special_ one for Gustave--it is his +'_fete_' on Thursday ... not time to engrave anything, I'm afraid.... +Ah, yes, if you could come with me on Monday, you and Miss van Huysen, +to help choose! That would be so amiable of you--nice, I mean. So +stupid of me. I _keep_ putting in the French words for things always, +now! + +"Ah, a bracelet-watch like yours, that would be perfect.... + +"Was there a _cadeau de fiancailles_--let's see, what do you call it in +English, an engagement present?" + +And she put her carefully dressed head on one side as she inspected the +watch that Jack Awdas, smiling, held out towards her. Jack was silent +this evening, Mrs. Cartwright had noticed already, as she noticed every +detail, still, of the young flyer's looks and manner.... He was in some +happy abstraction, she saw, worlds away from the brightly-lighted table +thronged with these young people chattering over their grapes and +oranges.... + +There was a light behind those horizon-blue eyes of his even when they +were not turned upon the sweetheart at his other side. There was an +undernote of something new and joyous in the tone of his voice as he +spoke to her. + +("What _d'you_ think about it, girl?") + +From the Sunburst Girl, as ever, a radiance seemed to emanate that was +more than the effulgence of her white-and-golden dress. But she, too, +was quieter than usual as she sat; now giving a little friendly smile to +her hostess across Captain Ross and his dogmas, now leaning to the right +and putting in a word about the matter of the engagement present. + +("But, Bird-boy, if Miss Walsh _wants_ it in platinum----!") + +Now turning her wide eyes affectionately upon the girl friend opposite +to her. Olwen was not flirting with the young sailor who talked so much +and had so little to say beyond his "Bai Joves" and "Ha's"; she was only +blooming in what Mr. Brown had already called "the sunshine of his +smile"; she was also caught in and made beautiful by some of that +happiness that flowed in a current about the table under the pink +inverted parasol of lights, flowed from Golden and her Jack.... + +Golden and Jack.... What pretty lover's secrets was between them now? + +Still watching them covertly, Mrs. Cartwright could only wonder why, +since it was possible for young human beings to be grown so big and +beautiful--why in the name of a thousand pities did Nature turn out so +many samples of the stunted, the plain, the commonplace? Must this +well-matched pair stand for the exception rather than the rule? She +watched them, and that scene of physical perfection which had so nearly +brought Claudia Cartwright to shipwreck over a boy-lover was no longer +her torment, but her comfort. + +She had wept all her tears; she had tossed sleeplessly through all her +hours of fierce rebellion; she had gone through the most agonizing +ordeal of her woman's life. But thank God it was over now.... + +It was over! and her eyes travelled now to that which is a woman's only +balm for such wounds as hers had been. + +He sat, the master of the house, with a school-fellow between himself +and Agatha Walsh. This school-fellow was sixteen, a year older but three +inches shorter than young Keith Cartwright. Keith was already well over +six foot. Coltish at present, with great wrists shooting ever too +quickly beyond his cuffs, and feet that seemed four sizes too large for +his ankles, but wait until he began to fill out! thought Claudia +proudly. Her rightness of bone, her limbs, her suppleness had gone to +her boys; Reggie, on a visit in the country, was just as good, but it +was her elder son who seemed the child of her soul as well as of her +body. He had her tastes, her impatiences. Her own ardour would presently +be breaking into flame in his heart. She felt (as even the mute-bird +mothers feel) that she at least would not fail to understand him. She +smiled across the table into his face, pink and free of care, with its +clear eyes, thick lashes (those were from his father's side), and the +fruit-like, perfect oval that does not outlast twenty-five. She, the +mother, faded; but she had set in these young plants and they were +budding. + +Keith's voice (or rather voices, for he himself never knew in what +octave his words might break forth) came roughly but affectionately +across the table to his mother. + +"I say, mums! What about coffee----" so far in the bass, and now a +treble squeak of "if you don't mind. Harrison says he's got to get back +home, and I wanted to put on these new records"--relapse into the bass, +"for him first?... Rightoh...." + +They had coffee before they adjourned to the sitting-room. It was a +low-ceilinged, soothing place with soft brown walls, low cushiony seats, +a richly-glowing Persian rug, some brass, and a few pictures. Mrs. +Cartwright's standing-desk at which she worked had been wheeled away +into a corner near an old oak coffer. Its place was usurped by the tall +stand of a gramophone. About this the young people clustered, talking +"records" ... + +"I say, have you got that topping thing of George Graves's----?" + +"Not a talking one; Miss Walsh wanted something _pretty_----" + +"Well, what about 'The Naughty Sporty Girl,' Miss Olwen?" + +"Bai Jove, did you hear him in----?" + +"Heaps of room to dance, if----" + +"Look out, please," said Keith Cartwright, lugging at a heavy flat +packet; and presently he put on a loud "selection" from some revue. + +It was under cover of this music that Captain Ross who had been carrying +on with his Scots friend a conversation that seemed to consist of +variations on the letter R, suddenly left him in the middle of a +question as to the "Pairrrrrrrrrrsonnel" at the Honeycomb, and came up +to Awdas, who was making his way to a vacant place on the arm of the +couch whereon Golden was sitting. + +With some force, Captain Ross gripped him by the upper arm. In the tone +of one who has been for hours storing up some accumulated grievance, he +muttered, "Say, Jack. I've got to have a word with you. _Now_," he +added, peremptorily, "Come out here, will you?" + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +CHAMPAGNE AND THE CHARM + + "Here's to the Wings of Love, + May they never moult a feather." + + Toast. + + +Almost roughly he dragged Jack Awdas into the little entrance lobby, +where, under a couple of mounted ibex heads, a carved oak chest was +piled up with khaki caps, gloves, and British warms. The red silk-shaded +hanging-lamp glowed down on the two young men reflected in a convex +mirror on the other wall; Captain Ross's black head was therein enlarged +until his figure had the proportions of a tadpole; his face showed the +expression of a deeply-injured man, of one whom his friend had "let in" +for something uncalled-for and gratuitous. + +"See here," he began abruptly. "I've got to tell you. There's something +I know that I don't know if I'm supposed to know." + +Jack Awdas gave his husky boy's laugh. + +"Well, dash it, there are a few things that a Captain on the staff is +supposed to know after all. '_Wearing red things round his hat, he's +employed at this and----_'" + +"Don't rag, Jack. This thing's about _you_." Then, almost violently, "I +saw you this morning." + +That red light glowed on a change in the fair one of the two faces as +the young flying officer looked down upon his friend, "I say, d'you +mean----?" + +"Yep. I saw you." + +Awdas, still startled, broke into another laugh. "Sorry, Ross. I didn't +mean to steal a march upon you, you know. But look here, old thing, how +the devil did you see me? You weren't there. Nobody was, ex----" + +"I was in my office. Saw you all right from the window there." + +"The deuce you did!... I say, if you let it get known about the +Honeycomb, that you've got a view like that, you'll have some of the +Mandarins snaffling that office of yours for themselves." + +Captain Ross did not smile as he returned curtly, "There must be a dozen +of our windows looking, straight out on to the entrance to the Adelphi +Chapel." + +Then a broad grin overspread Jack Awdas's fair face. "Well, is that all, +old thing?" he asked, tucking his handkerchief up his sleeve and making +as though he would turn back to the door, through which there rollicked, +but subdued, the strains of "Me and My Girl" put on very quickly. +"Weren't you going to congratulate me, Ross?" + +Ross growled, "I guess a fellow doesn't want to put his foot into it by +throwing about congratulations for a secret marriage----" + +"Secret? Good Lord, nothing secret about it," the other young officer +took up quickly, as he sat down for a moment on the edge of that +heaped-up chest. "Look here! We haven't told anybody about it because +there simply hasn't been time yet. When we came here tonight we were +going to tell you. We wouldn't put off Mrs. Cartwright; we were going to +come as if nothing had happened, and then make a wedding party of it; +tell you all, first thing. But how've I been able to get a word in? +First there was our gallant ally the Sergeant that everybody had to make +a fuss over in French, and then there was young Brown and his widow, +_that_ announcement! and then there was you----" + +"_Me?_" + +"Yes, you yarning away about what women were and what they weren't, and +if so why not. There hasn't been time to get a word in, man. Secret?" He +laughed joyously. "Why, I expect Golden's just telling Mrs. Cartwright +all about it now." The bridegroom crossed his long legs and grinned up +into the unresponsive face of this bachelor standing before him. "Yes; +this morning! I didn't see what there was to wait for ... here, have one +of mine. Golden thought it was a bit quick, but then so she did when I +wanted to be engaged to her, after three whole blooming days. Thought it +was _sudden_! That's----why, it's nearly four months ago. Anyway I said +to myself yesterday, 'This engagement's been dragging on long enough; +looks like lasting for ever'----so I got the license right away, wired +for my mother, broke it to Golden's governor, who has always been very +decent, and----Well, they were the only guests as far as I knew, never +guessing that you and the rest of the Honeycomb were gazing from the +windows at my girl in her veil and orange-blossoms. So now will you +congratulate me on my marriage?" + +The face of the finest judge of marriage in Europe was a study. + + * * * * * + +For weeks past now, from the windows of cell 0638 at the Honeycomb, +Captain Fergus Ross had been accustomed to glance up from his desk and +to observe through the window various taxis, cars, or broughams drive up +to the door of the Adelphi Chapel. + +He had seen young people and their friends alight in ceremonial kit. He +had watched them go in; and he had seen young couples presently come out +again, sometimes under arches of swords, sometimes under those of +crutches and walking-sticks, sometimes in a simple shower of confetti. +No doubt these sights had confirmed him in his misogynistic broodings. + +This very morning he had attracted the attention of his colleague, Major +Leefe, to the window, and, pointing down upon a hurrying young figure in +khaki with a sword, had announced with a grim and pitying smile, "There +goes another good man to his doom." + +Even as he pronounced the last word (which he did as though it were the +German for "stupid"), he observed the hurrying figure below to raise its +head for a moment as it looked quickly around. + +He had recognized Jack Awdas. + +Five minutes afterwards he had seen Golden in all her bridal glory, step +out of a taxi with Mr. van Huysen. + +You could have knocked Captain Ross down with a feather. + +What was everybody coming to? he had pondered irritably ever since. +_All_ his friends.... + + * * * * * + +"I congrrratulate----" he began stiffly, but at that very moment a +clamour broke out above the music in the room they had left. + +"Where is he?" + +"Fetch him in----" + +"Fancy bolting like that----" came the muffled cries. + +The door was flung suddenly open as Brown, Ellerton, the Highlander, +Sergeant Tronchet and the Master of the House burst suddenly into the +lobby. + +"Here he is!" + +"Now, you rascal----" + +"Dark horse, what?" + +"Come in, you dog----" + +"Ah, _farceur_! Felicita----" + +"Bai Jove, trying to hush it up----" + +"Mr. Awdas, I say. Mr. Awdas----" + +"Ah, would you----" + +"Monsieur de l'Audace!" + +"Priceless!" + +Among them they almost carried Jack's Herculean young form back into the +sitting-room. + +Captain Ross followed. + +The golden head of the Sunburst Girl towered above the heads of Olwen +and of Miss Walsh as they pressed upon her their enthusiastic good +wishes. Laughing, flushed, sparkling, she was giving her version of that +dilatory courtship of Jack's; while Mrs. Cartwright in the corner by +that desk of hers, was hunting in some _cache_ of hers for something (to +wit, the last drop of Bubbly she possessed). + +"Here's more surprises about your English ways," the American bride was +laughing. "Here's this Bird-boy of mine----well, you all know the quick +and sudden start of our engagement! There was father and I thinking +maybe it wouldn't matter so much provided we had a sensible time to get +to know one another in after say a year! Then yesterday Jack gets +suddenly scared that we'll both be grey and rheumatic fossils if we +aren't married half an hour from then.... Say, Olwen? What could I say? +I don't know how he does it--it's mesmerism or a charm, I guess, for +when once Jack takes it into his head----" + +Here the laughter and cheering of the men broke out. The Master of the +House was seen to be advancing, carrying at the full length of his young +arms a tray of glasses. Mrs. Cartwright rose from the chest, smilingly +holding a gold-topped bottle in either hand. + +"Who's going to open these?" + +Already Mr. Brown had whisked a skirt of his tunic under his arm and was +slipping his sapper's knife from its swivel. "Stand from under!" sang +out the little second lieutenant as pop! went a cork. "Right! I'll fill +'em, Mrs. C. I'm the next starter for the matrimonial stakes, after the +giddy bridegroom. Out o' the way, Ross! Don't take up the earth.... +Invited out to supper, and staying to wedding-breakfast, eh?... Here's +yours, Miss Olwen; a bridesmaid, are you?... No, you don't, Ellerton; +_I'm_ booked for best man.... I'm going to have one from everybody.... +_After_ you've finished with my feet, Ross----" + +Captain Ross, glaring above his glass at the group about that tall and +resplendent bridal pair, found his bad temper of the day culminating in +a very curious decision. + +He was going to leave directly he'd finished this glass of champagne in +which they toasted the young Awdases. And he was going to take with him, +Olwen Howel-Jones. He was going to see her home. He was; not that +gibbering idiot Brown, who was engaged anyway, nor that hopeless ass +Ellerton, that Naval outfitter's dummy; no fear. Most certainly not. As +for that fellow Jack, what the Hades did he mean by looking as if he +were the only man on God's earth whose wedding-night it had ever been or +ever could be? Was Jack Awdas the first young fool who'd ever managed to +get himself marked down and married by a girl?... The whole party seemed +to be one confounded whirl of tomfoolery.... Well, he, Ross, was +leaving, and taking that chit home. (It was high time.) Drive her all +the way, too; because he'd got something to say to her. Straight away +he'd say to her, "Now, see here, damn it, there's going to be no more of +_this_, there's been enough of it, and I won't have it." + +Just that was what he intended to say, and---- + +At this instant the Master of the House, in the treble one of his +voices, called, "I say, Captain Ross, please--they're asking for _you_." + +The telephone-bell had rung a moment before, and Keith had run out of +the room to answer it. + +The telephone was just outside; Captain Ross went to it.... + +In a minute or so he returned. He was seen to draw his hostess aside, to +murmur something to her. Mrs. Cartwright nodded quickly. Then he went up +for the second time that evening to catch hold, with his one remaining +hand, of the arm of Jack Awdas. The young flying officer gave a jerk of +his fair head; a whisper to Golden, another to his hostess.... Before +the rest of the group had realized that they were going, those two, Ross +and Awdas, were out of the flat, down the one flight of steps and out +into the clear moonlight above Westminster. + +Then, composedly and carelessly, Mrs. Cartwright slipped her arm through +Golden's, and turned to her other guests. + +"I'm so sorry to be inhospitable, dear people, but I think it would be +better if you went, now!" she announced, smilingly. "There's heaps of +time. You see Captain Ross gets the warning from the Honeycomb half an +hour before any of us, and they've just rung him up to say----" + +"Raid on!" ejaculated Keith's highest squeak. + +"Probably, he thinks," said his mother with a shrug. "Tiresome people +these Huns are; _no_ sense of fitness. Well--finish your bubbly and off +with you." + +There was a scurrying of the women-folk to get their wraps from Mrs. +Cartwright's bedroom; a chorus of comment half exasperated, half amused. +Raids were less of a terror by night than a source of deep boredom to +Londoners by this time.... They had all been in them before; they knew +(with luck) just what would happen from the first whistling signals of +the "Take cover" to the "All clear." + +"_Bother_ them," exclaimed little Olwen, disgusted. "In the middle of +the party for _you_, Golden!" + +The men, coated and capped, thronged the tiny lobby, waiting.... Mr. +Brown and Captain Ross's friend would escort Mrs. Cartwright's niece to +her hotel. Young Mr. Ellerton was all eagerness to see Miss Howel-Jones +all the way home again. Agatha's sergeant had secured a taxi to take his +_fiancee_ Victoria-wards; they offered a lift to Golden, imagining that +the young bride would now return to her father's house in Grosvenor +Gardens. But in the midst of the little bustle of departure Mrs. +Cartwright had given a gentle clasp to the American girl's arm. + +"Don't go," she said softly. "I am going to put you up, Golden. You are +to stay with me. He told me he wanted you to stay with me tonight----" + +As she finished speaking, the first warning maroon went off with a +bang. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +HER BRIDAL NIGHT + + "An airy devil hovers in the sky + And pours down mischief." + + Shakespeare. + + +Presently the growling of the guns began to reverberate over London. + +First came the far-off rumbling that is felt rather than heard; the hint +whereat the mothers of households drop book or work to exclaim, +"Hush!... It _is_!..." + +"Don't think so, dear," return the men folk; to retract a couple of +minutes later with an "Ah, yes; blast 'em. Here they are. I'll bring the +kids down." + +Then came the long, nerve-irritating pause. + +In Mrs. Cartwright's Westminster flat there were no children to cause +those anxieties with which the enemy had made himself more detested than +by any legitimate act of war. Her son, as he would have wished you to +note, was hardly a kid to be roused from his sleep. As he strolled back +from the staircase window, hands in pockets, his manner was nonchalant +in the extreme. He was no callow scout, either, to wait in a +police-station for that thrilling moment when he should be allowed out +to sound the bugle-call. + +"Like the gramophone on again?" he suggested (luckily in the more manly +of his two voices). "It would drown that boring noise for you." + +"I don't think so, darling, thanks," said his mother. A pause; silence. +"They may not get through after all. Won't you go to bed, Keith?" + +"Oh, I don't know"--the over-grown lad was already dropping with sleep. +"Wouldn't you women rather I stopped up with you?" + +Golden and Mrs. Cartwright exchanged a tiny smile before the mother +said, "Do you know, I don't think we'll stop up. I am going to show Mrs. +Awdas to her room now. You do as you like." + +The Master of the House moved from the traditional attitude, flat back +against the sitting-room mantelpiece, feet wide apart on the Persian +rug. "Oh, well, I don't see why I should hang about, waiting up for +those wretched Huns, either," he pronounced, his pink mouth twisting +sidewards as he strangled his yawns. "I'll turn in too, if you're sure +you don't mind." + +And he walked across the sitting-room to hold the door open for his +mother and her guest to precede him. + +Golden, who considered this English schoolboy "perfectly lovely," gave +him a smiling good night over her shoulder. + +"Good night, Precious," whispered his mother. + +Very prettily the boy returned her kiss as he responded, "Good night, +old Bean." + +He turned out the lights behind him and betook himself to his room on +the left of the corridor that skirted the flat. On the right were +Reggie's room and his mother's; her old Belgian _femme de menage_ came +in by the day. Her younger son's room was unoccupied tonight, but it was +her own bedroom that Mrs. Cartwright gave up to Golden Awdas. Here she +left her to undress, promising to come back. + +She did not think that Golden would sleep at once. + +She wandered back to turn up the lights again in the sitting-room, still +full of cigarette smoke, and with its atmosphere still vibrant as if +with young voices and laughter. And as she set chairs into their places, +plumped up cushions, and, putting her hand carefully through the +curtains, set a window open and wheeled her standing-desk back ready for +her morning's work tomorrow, she thought smilingly of those guests of +hers; all so many years behind her, in age, in emotion, in experience. +She delighted in them, these young men who felt themselves masters of +all wisdom, these girls on the right side of a barrier.... The passing +of it had been an agony to Claudia Cartwright. + +It did not take all women in the same way, she reflected. Many went +through life so entirely satisfied with inessentials; so half-awake. + +Most had never been lovers or had lovers. But those who had----! + +No death of a sweetheart in early youth, no cruel jilting, no bitter +matrimonial experience, nothing, nothing! could compare with the +poignant, crushing, rending pain of those years when Youth and Love slip +away from the woman. It is a long black tunnel of misery from which she +emerges (having lost much but accepted, bowed her head, folded her +hands) into the grey afternoon of Life. + +And then----Heaven's blessing on the maternal sense that is rich in any +real woman's character, even if she never has a child at all! For it is +this that comes to her aid; and she spreads it out over the girls and +the men she knows; caring, helping, sympathizing with all their love +emotions (or lack or them). + +Henceforward everything must be vicariously felt by her. She must live +in the lives of her children; in their professions and interests; she +must love through her young friends ... Little Olwen ... Golden.... As +she thought of these Untried, their friend smiled over a tag of verse +that came into her mind with the image that seemed its illustration. + + "Oh, tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see! Lie + long, high snowdrifts on the hedge, That will not shower on + me." + +Prayer, she thought, can take odd forms----well, this was hers for the +happiness of her girl-friends. + +Golden, she thought, would be in bed by now. + +A nearer growling of guns, from the north, she judged, sounded as she +tapped at the door. + +"Come!" called the charming un-English voice. + +Mrs. Cartwright entered her own familiar room with its known mingling of +kuss-kuss, rose, and orris scent. The toilet silver, the Indian numnah +on the floor, her husband's sword and sash over the bookshelf, and the +enlarged photograph of him laughing under the black, semi-lune shadow of +his solar-topi----these things were Claudia's background. Her eyes +opened upon them each morning. Tonight they all seemed suddenly new to +her.... + +It was because they were now a background to this radiant stranger in +her room. Out of that cloud of loosened gold on her pillow there looked +the face of a beauty as rare as any that had ever been kissed awake by a +fairy prince. + +"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, involuntarily. "How lovely you +are, Golden; how lovely!" + +Paradoxical enough it might seem to some women, but this woman thanked +Heaven it was a girl so beautiful who had supplanted her, or rather, to +whom she had relinquished that beautiful boy. She could not have endured +to see Jack choose a bride unworthy in body or mind, least of all one +who might be as the ordinary "nice" pretty girl often is, a bundle of +mere sentiment and frigidity. To Golden she could give him. Actually she +had brought them together. And now it was to his best woman-friend that +the young flier confided his sweetheart. + +On this, of all nights! Their bridal night! + +Mrs. Cartwright could have laughed outright at the strangeness of it. +Jack's wedding-night! + +She remembered that other night, months ago, when in a French hotel +bedroom she had outwatched the hours with a nightmare-haunted man. In +the very attitude that she had taken then, she sat down now on the edge +of this other bed, tucking the eider-down about her as she began +chatting, quietly and cheerfully, with his bride. Through speech and +pause alike the elder woman's mind was echoing with memories. It was +Jack Awdas's husky voice that she heard, clearly as when it was his face +upon a pillow that she watched. How feverishly he had muttered, "That's +why I always shout in my dream.... I was falling, falling, and calling +out to my observer.... We _were_ pals!... I don't think it could ever be +exactly like that with a girl." + +She, Claudia, had told him, "The girl is more to you or less to you, but +not the same." + +And now she lay in her beauty, the girl; that worshipped "girl" of +Jack's. And this----_This!_--was her bridal night. + +Guns! The nearer guns were uttering now. Bark after vicious bark set +windows rattling. The racket died away only to break out afresh.... + +In an interval, Golden said suddenly. "Jack told me what a really fine +friend you'd always been to him. And, d'you know? I've always known I +should be friends with you." + +"Have you?" + +"Why, yes. I said so before we left Les Pins.... D'you remember, I saw +you for a moment that very first evening, sitting with him in the +lounge? But who would have thought where we should all be tonight?" +mused the girl, lifting the throat that rose so pillar-wise and white +above the silken edge of a night-dress of her hostess's. "In London, and +me married to the Bird-boy, and an air raid going on outside. But do I +have to keep you up this way? You're all dressed and everything: I'm so +afraid you'll be dead tired." + +"Not I. I shouldn't be able to sleep if I did undress. There'll be +another hullabaloo on in another minute, I expect," said Mrs. +Cartwright, cheerfully. The sound of the guns had died down for a +moment. "And--well, it won't be the first time, Golden, that I've stayed +up with somebody who could not sleep.... Ah, they're starting again." + +Yes, they were starting again.... + +Throughout London, nurses in hospitals set their teeth angrily over +patients whom they had hoped to drag back to life, out of the horrors +of shock. Other nurses, in maternity homes, could have wrung dismayed +hands over this terror added to Nature's ordeal. And in operating rooms +the white-coated surgeons cursed below their breath the hellish +interruption that might cause a slip of the hand or the instrument and +leave all care, all science vain. These things were the danger and the +damage; not merely the bomb dropped at random; the crumbling masonry. +These, and the mischief to countless little children, disturbed past +soothing now, with tender nerves a-fret, heads gathered to their +parents' shoulders. Little heads! They ought never to have been visited +by such questions as punctuated the din in homes where baby voices +asked, _"Was that a gun or a bomb, daddy?" ... "Where was that firing +from?" ... "If a raid came right on Billy's cot, mamsie, what would you +do?"_ + +Then there came to their ears a new sound--the gutteral, syncopated +drone of twin engines--beating over the roofs. + +"Ah! There's one got through, then," said Mrs. Cartwright. +Following on her words came the outburst of nearer gunnery, +to which the whole house seemed to shake; in twos and +threes--"_Brroum--brrroum!--brrroum!--brroum!--brrrroum!_" +then a more ponderous crash than all. + +Then, a light tap at the door and a voice in two keys, calling with +zest, "Mums! Are you all right? Is Mrs. Awdas? There's nothing to be +frightened at really." + +"No; all right, Keith darling. You're all right, aren't you?" + +"Top-hole. I say, did you hear that last? I'm sure it was a dud shell +just outside on the pavement, so----" + +"Keith, you're to _promise_ you won't go outside until they've gone," +called his mother, starting up. "Go to your room!" + +"Oh ... all right, then. I'll nip out as soon as the all-clear goes +though." The Master of the House pattered off down the corridor to his +room. + +"I wonder if any others will get through tonight," said Mrs. Cartwright, +listening. + +Golden, who had not yet lost any of her kin or seen them broken in this +War, suggested that these German flyers were, anyway, brave. + +"So are other beasts of prey," returned the Englishwoman. + +Again the firing rolled away in the distance, following the raiders' +course.... + +But a thoughtfulness seemed to have fallen upon the wakeful girl. For +the first time she had given a little shiver at the sound of that +receding turmoil. + +"Now I hope it isn't too cowardly of me, what I'm going to say," she +began, suddenly, turning on her rounded elbow. "But I can't help +thinking of boys flying up there in the dark, in the teeth of guns like +that.... _He_ was doing it, of course, until he crashed. My Bird-boy!... +He's always glad when he goes up; he was grousing to me, as you call it, +yesterday, because he hadn't been off the ground for a week ... but, oh, +Mrs. Cartwright! do you know, _I'm_ real glad, just for tonight, that +Jack can't be up." + +Mrs. Cartwright smiled at her, answering her in two words that seemed +ordinary enough. + +"I know." + +But they meant, to the elder woman, something very different from the +gentle agreement that they conveyed to the girl. + +Claudia Cartwright heard again the hasty whisper with which Jack had +taken leave of her those hours ago. "I want _Her_ to stay here," he told +her. "I'd want you to take care of her." + +At the time Mrs. Cartwright had been paralyzed with surprise. Golden +Awdas to stay with her? Why? + +Why on earth should Jack leave her----tonight of all nights? She, the +bride, had seemed to see nothing stupefying in his action in going off +with Captain Ross when the warning came through. + +But Mrs. Cartwright knew that Captain Ross had his own duty, not +anything in which Jack must help him. Jack was free, she'd heard, until +ten o'clock tomorrow morning. It was not Jack's pidgin to do anything +until then.... Therefore why in the name of all that was extraordinary +hadn't he taken his bride away when the others all went? Why hadn't he +taken her off home with him, or to the hotel where he put up, or +wherever it was? + +Then, very quickly, she'd seen why. + +One of the cleverest soldiers of her acquaintance had already told +Claudia that, could the true history of these campaigns ever be written, +it would read not merely like _another version_ of the War, but like +_another War_. She guessed how many things planned never happen and how +many things happen that were never planned, and how few of either get +into the papers. Oh, the difference between the published account and +the story of the man who was there! Tomorrow would see a report of this +raid, which would say nothing at all of the men whose duty ... it had +_not_ been to beat back the raiders. It was _not_ Jack's duty to go up +that night. It was his duty not to go. + +But---- + +Up there he was now, she knew it. Up there, in the darkness and the din! +Perhaps over the house now, the joyous eaglet-boy, fighting those +circling hawks ... now, at this moment!... + +She knew it in her heart. + +And, thinking of that, she sat there smiling at the white and golden +bride who was glad to think of her boy safe from this danger at +least.... There was no reason why Golden should know it too. + +The woman he had loved continued to watch with the girl he loved, during +her bridal night. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +HIS BRIDAL NIGHT + + "Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind + That from the nunnery + Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind + To war and arms I fly. + + Yet this inconstancy is such + As you too shall adore, + I could not love thee, Dear, so much, + Loved I not Honour more." + + Lovelace. + + +Mrs. Cartwright's intuition had been perfectly right. + +Jack Awdas was up during the raid over London. He was up to some +purpose, as his comrades and three other airmen (prisoners of war) could +tell. + +But here is his own version of the affair, as told by him, on the +following day, to his young wife. + + "When that warning came through, you see, I felt that it was + for me too. I don't know what my own idea was when I went off + with old Ross. He said, 'What the something do _you_ want to + come along for?' I said, 'All right; shut up.' I didn't know, + you know. Queer, wasn't it? All I knew was that I had got to go + too, instead of bringing you back here as I'd thought.... I'd + _got_ to leave you, girl." + +She listened, leaning back now in his happy arms. She listened, all +eyes. His own blue eyes had been deep in hers, locked to them with the +lover's look that is another embrace. But now he took them from hers. +He glanced aside and away, and into Jack Awdas's eyes there crept back +one of those two other looks which were characteristic of him. It was +the "yonderly" look that sees what is not for all to see. + +"Somehow," he said, "I knew I just couldn't stay with you. I'd got to go +up, and Lord only knew how it was going to be managed, or how I was +going to get out of the 'drome in time, even. There wasn't a taxi in +sight. Ross and I walked on to the Honeycomb, or half ran, half walked. +Going up Whitehall he said, 'Jack, you darned fool, go back; what's +wrong?' I said, 'Nothing; shut up, old thing, if you don't mind.' + +"In the courtyard of the Honeycomb we nearly ran into a tiny little +dispatch-rider girl with a side-car. I didn't know until just now that +it was young Brown's widow that he was going to marry, that we'd heard +about at dinner! She'd brought some man in, and was just starting up; I +said to her, 'Where are you for?' She said, 'Home! and time, too.' +'Where's home?' said I, and I believe she told me it was Baker +Street.... But just as I was asking her I began to see what I'd got to +do. It began to come to me then, d'you see? + +"I said to the girl, 'Look here, I'm sorry, you can't go home yet. +You've got to drive me out to my 'drome, and I told her where that was. +Half an hour's ride into the country. We did it in less. I told her I'd +got to get to my 'bus, and that she'd got to go hell-for-leather; and we +did it in less.... + +"You see, I'd got to take that machine across at ten o'clock next +morning. Had to: duty. (You knew about that, of course.) But if I could +only get her up a few hours before that! I thought.... There she was, +waiting. There were dozens of our chaps up already, I knew. Here was +I----and I couldn't stand it, somehow. Not last night. Just because it +_was_ that night. It would have spoilt it. You see, don't you? Yes; I +thought you would. I wouldn't think of you then; except to think 'It's +_her_ I'm going to give Them.' I don't even know what 'them' +meant----(This sounds such rot, girl, that I couldn't possibly tell +anybody else, but there you are.... I won't kiss you again until I've +told you the end of this.) + +"Well, we chased along the roads in the moonlight at the deuce of a +lick, coming round the corners on the edge of one wheel. Just imagine +it! Me and that side-car, and that girl of Brown's----No more idea it +was his girl----! She's only about so-size; I thought she was a kid of +fifteen like one of those little brown messengers with pigtails that go +trotting about the corridors, and by Jove, I tried to _tip_ her! I did! +I didn't know. I hadn't any silver on me after all those tips and things +in the afternoon, after we were married. I just lugged out my note-case +and got out a couple of John Bradburys--the last. I stuffed 'em into her +hand. 'Here, thanks awfully!' I said; 'do buy yourself a hat-pin or some +sweets or something----' She did laugh! 'You won't?' I said--she +stuffing them back for all she was worth. 'Oh well, sorry if I've made a +break,' I said, 'can't stop to explain now--thanks awfully--Good night!' +and up I legged it to the gates, holding those notes in my hand all the +time.... + +"You know, I hadn't my papers or orders or anything! Neck, wasn't it? +_I_ didn't know what on earth I was going to ask the Adjutant! +Sometimes when you want a thing it's a good deal better not to ask ... +just go and grab it, and explain afterwards. + +"Well, then I had a bit of luck. + +"Scurrying through the gates, I ran straight into Dashmold himself; that +is the Adjutant. (A stinker on duty.) + +"'Ha, Awdas!' he said, 'can't stop now, the Colonel's just rung me up +from his house. See you in half an hour.' + +"'Rightoh,' I said, and dashed ahead, thanking my lucky stars--for this +only left me with our assistant adjutant, always a bit of an ass. I +chased off to the orderly-room and found him. + +"'Hello, Awdas,' he squeaked. (Voice rather like George Clarke at the +Empire; pink and white face.) + +"'I suppose you know there's a raid on?' I said. 'I've come for that +'bus.' He said, 'What about your papers?' I said, 'Yes, hand 'em over, +that's all right. I've just this moment spoken to Dashmold.' (So I had; +just said 'Rightoh' to him.) 'Those are my orders,' I said, 'in that +pile there. Chuck 'em over. Thanks.' So that was _that_.... + +"Then off I streaked to the Officers' Quarters to get into my things. +Not a soul there. You know. It's a long corridor with a row of little +cubicles not much bigger than the dressing-rooms at the swimming bath. +Just hold a camp-bed and a chest of drawers and a row of pegs.... By +Jove, if some thief hadn't pinched my kit. Some one got into the first +that was handy, I suppose, when they got the warning. I'll have his +blood for that, later. So in I nipped to one cubicle after another. All +empty. I thought I wasn't going to find a stitch. However! At last I +came to one; there it was, a lovely outfit all hanging ready on the +pegs. Man called Jackson. He'd got leave. Well! I plunged into his coat +and overalls and flying-cap and goggles, all the lot! quicker than +anything I've ever done in my life. I remember I'd got those blessed +pound notes still in my hand. I shoved them into my teeth while I +dressed. Then down I doubled to the hangars. + +"About a dozen of the ac emmas--those are mechanics, dear--were waiting +about there. I switched the lights on. + +"There was my 'bus all ready for tomorrow morning--ah, a beauty! Yes, +the one you saw on Thursday, that I'd been making the trial flight in; +the single-seater Scout monoplane. I'd always fancied her. She ran a +little light, but I liked that. I'd got her balanced; just right for me. +I.T. All ready, tanks filled up and everything. The gun was on her, +but----Dash it! No ammunition, of course. That did me. + +"Then I saw Smithers. (He's the Quartermaster's nephew.) I said, +'Smithers! Jump to it ... here you are, take this' (the last two quid I +had on me, that Brown's widow refused), 'and get me two drums of +ammunition. How? _I_ don't know. Somehow. Off with you and give you five +minutes to get back in.' Off he streaked. Then I said to the others, +'Now, you men, get a move on. Get her out.' They wheeled her out of the +hangar and into the moonlight. + +"Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you all about something, though. Even at +the time I noticed it. (The sort of funny little thing you do notice +when you aren't really thinking of anything except getting on with +what's on.) It was tied round the joy-stick! You know, dear, your bit of +ribbon that I've always kept as a mascot since that day on the beach. +I'd tied it on just before the trial flight. It's always been on, you +know, on whatever 'bus I've been flying. I meant it to, until you were +mine, and then I was going to give it back to you, Girl, because it +wouldn't matter which of us two had the Luck _then_; it would be the +same thing. + +"I looked at it once as I was waiting, and I remember thinking to myself +quickly, in the sort of rum way, like you think of things in dreams, 'By +Jove, I suppose that's the most precious prize I've owned, up to now.' + +"But after that I just looked at my watch and stamped as I stood waiting +for those blighted drums. I'd given Smithers five minutes. Lord, if he +couldn't do it. I----It seemed a thundering important thing to me, you +see: the most important I'd ever had to do. You do know why, don't you? +You do understand?" + +Golden's great eyes upon his face were as full of understanding as the +tone of her simple "yes." Her young husband gave a short, contented nod, +then he went on: + +"Well! So then I saw Smithers, coming running back. 'Got 'em?' I +shouted. 'Right, sir!' he shouted back. Up he came with those two drums +he'd got (God knows _how_). I fixed one on the gun myself, and put the +other handy. + +"'Start her up,' I said. I climbed in, and the boys swung the propeller. +I gave 'em 'Contact,' and then I was up and off.... Hadn't been off the +earth for a week. And, by the way, I hadn't gone up to fight since the +time I crashed. + +"Yes, of course, it was a perfectly idiotic thing to do. I hadn't got +the night's Orders any more than I'd orders to go and stand by with +Ross, where you thought I was. I didn't know if we were fighting with +guns or planes or both, nor where nor when nor anything about it. +However!----. + +"What did London look like from up there? Oh, just all dark, you know: +like a great turned-up field below you, with the river winding through +it. What you do see very plainly is that silver ribbon of the Thames, +reflecting the light of the sky. + +"You think the sky's big, don't you? Well, it isn't so big when you can +bumble into your own barrage at any moment, or when a Hun you can +neither see nor hear lets fly suddenly. But I could see shrapnel +breaking away to the south-west, so I just beetled off after that.... + +"Then I'm dashed if those three blighters in their big plane didn't +nearly run me down. Yes, I s'pose she'd be the plane you and Mrs. +Cartwright heard over the house. Was she missing it all?" + +"Missing?" repeated the fascinated Golden. "Why, how could I know?" + +"Well, anyway, she was somewhere over that part of town. They'd jumped +the barrage and got in. I circled round, climbing all I knew, and then I +guess they dropped those two bombs to lighten themselves. + +"The searchlight fellows down below were dazzling away to beat the band. +You could see nothing but jumping flashes all over the show, putting 'em +off their aim. Me too. Perfectly poisonous. I cursed, but I knew I'd no +business there.... + +"Well, that Scout of mine could climb as quick as any Gotha built yet, +so I gave them twenty rounds or so right into 'em. They didn't like +that, so I gave 'em some more. They fired back, but nothing to hurt. The +next go, they decided to give it up, I think. They headed for the +south-west again. Evidently they were going to chance the barrage. Bon! +Anyway, if they were, so was I. + +"And oh, Girl, if you knew how I wanted to get them! I wanted to get +those raiding Huns, if I had to chase them to the coast and across and +right to Berlin. As Ross says, 'I wanted to let 'em have it where Dora +wore the beads.' I felt 'I must. I'll die if I don't, and I----' + +"D'you know what I did? This is one of the most idiotic bits yet, but +I'm going to tell you the lot.... Generally, I don't think I'm +superstitious. Some fellows are; well, I'd known one perfectly sane and +sensible fellow, who, when he was mad keen after something he wanted, +winning some event, or something----he'd turn money out of his pocket--a +sovereign, say, in the days when we had sovereigns, or a handful of +silver----and throw it away. Pitch it right away, you know, to buy him +luck. Well, I thought of it then. If I could buy that German plane! +So---- + +"I pulled off my glove as I buzzed along after 'em and made a dive +inside my jacket for money. Then I remembered I hadn't a bean on me. I'd +given my last two quid to Smithers, and here I was, and I wanted to buy +that Gotha, I tell you! I'd have bought her with anything I'd got, +money, ring, every last thing---- + +"Then I remembered. + +"It was on the joy-stick, the thing I valued. Your little mascot! I +ripped it off. I gave one look round to where those beggars were heading +for the barrage, and then chucked that bit of ribbon out over where I +guessed you might be. (Perfectly absurd, of course. The wind whisked it +away.) ... And as I chucked it I shouted something out. Somebody's name. + +"No! You can't guess whose name it was. Nobody'd have thought it. The +funny thing about it was, it wasn't even the name I meant to shout. I +meant to shout out 'Cheer O, Girl!' I heard myself yelling out instead, +'Cheer O, _Ferris_!' + +"He was the observer I used to have. Killed, last year.... Somehow, just +then, I forgot that; I felt as if he were with me. Then! I thought 'Good +Lord, fancy if old Ferris----' + +"Then I didn't think any more; I settled down to business. Well, as you +know, I did have to chase 'em to the coast, those dashed Archies popping +all the way. _At_ the coast the Archies were----say really hot. Then +those sea-planes took a hand, but it wasn't the seaplane that got her. +_I_ got her! Got her right over Beachy Head. + +"I knew I'd done it the moment he turned about. I'd put half a drum +right into her engines, and she wouldn't want to land in the sea (rather +Irish). + +"Suddenly a searchlight blazed right on the pair of us, and the Archies +stopped, just like the band stops and the limelight concentrates for the +really tricky bit of the show with those acrobats at a music-hall.... + +"But this was dead easy, the rest of it. I just circled above her like a +buzzard, driving her down, down, all the time. I didn't fire at her any +more, because you could tell within twenty yards where she was going to +land, and I knew the lads of the village were all ready and waiting for +her. One bad wobble she gave and pitched straight down. I sheered off a +bit for fear of getting any bombs, but she'd drop her last one on the +way. She simply came down end on like shying a lump of clay at a board. +Then I landed, tumbled out, and legged it up the slope as fast as I +could; just in time to see 'em getting out all the three Huns alive. + +"'My bird, I think,' says I, running up all out of breath. + +"Then a chap beside me spoke out of the dark, 'Hi! Who are you?' + +"I couldn't see him, so I said, 'D'you mind telling me who _you_ are?' + +"He pulled a torch out of his pocket and showed it on himself. A +Staff-major. So we shook hands, and he congratulated me.... Then I felt +rather a fool," laughed Jack Awdas, "for he asked me my name. + +"'Well, as a matter of fact, Sir,' I said, and stopped. + +"'Well what?' he asked. + +"'Well, as a matter of fact, I'm not supposed to be here at all.' + +"'Oh?' he barked. 'Got any orders on you?' + +"I had; from the Assistant Adjutant. I pulled 'em out and he read them +by the light of his torch. + +"'H'm,' he said, 'taking a machine to France, but I see by this you're +not due to start until tomorrow morning. It's now two, ac emma. How's +this?' + +"Well, when you're cornered like that I always think there's only one +thing for it; pure cheek. So, as bold as brass, I gave a look at the +orders myself, and then said, 'I rather fancy this must be a clerical +error, sir. My verbal orders were to start today, and I can't have been +two hours on the way yet?' + +"I fancied I heard him give a chuckle in the dark, but all he said was, +'Well, this will be a serious matter for you.' + +"'Oh, I hope not, Sir,' I said. + +"'A serious matter,' says he. 'If you'd been sent up to chase Hun planes +you might have got the D.S.O. for this. But you see what it means now?' + +"'What?' I asked. + +"'Well! This being an act outside the course of your duty,' he said, 'it +_may_ mean the Victoria Cross!'" + +Golden Awdas gasped. "Then, think of it, Bird-boy! You'll only have +traded _my_ ribbon," she exclaimed, "for that wonderful other! Now +wasn't that a prize----" + +But the wide and distant stare had gone now from her airman's eyes. +These had returned to her; his sweet American who had journeyed across a +world before he had found her, his love whom he had loved enough to +leave, knowing that it might be for ever.... His blue eyes were locked +into hers again for a moment with his lover's look that now sent a wave +of pink fire flaming into her face and down her throat. Against that +perfect throat he buried eyes and lips. + +"'Think?' I needn't think of anything else now, Girl," he whispered. +"_You're_ my prize!" + + * * * * * + +That was Jack Awdas's story of his share in the raid. + +The evening papers announced: + +"Bombs were dropped in several districts, but no material damage was +caused. A woman and two children were slightly injured. + +"One German aeroplane was brought down on the coast by a pilot of the +Royal Flying Corps." + +The German account read: + +"A successful raid was carried out by our airmen over London last night. +Good results were obtained, and large fires were seen to break out in +various districts. + +"All our aeroplanes returned safely." + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +SHRAPNEL AND THE CHARM + + "Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!" + + Browning. + + +And what of the other people who had been at Mrs. Cartwright's party +when that raid alarm came through? + +Olwen Howel-Jones and young Ellerton had imagined that by taking "the +Metropolitan" from Baker Street Station they might arrive at Wembley +Park before the raid started in earnest. + +This hope proved to be vain before their train reached Willesden +Junction. Out went the lights as the train came to a dead stand between +two stations. Up went the windows; above the iron bars that guarded them +there craned the heads of passengers asking in every key what the matter +was. + +They were answered by the distant growling of those first guns. + +"Bai Jove! Held up for the blessed raid," exclaimed the cheerful voice +of young Ellerton, who was alone with Olwen in a first-class carriage in +the front of the train. "How priceless! Here we are and here we stay +until the blighters choose to finish their little call, I s'pose. That's +all right.... Hope you don't feel nervous, Miss Howel-Jones?" + +The soft voice of little Olwen came to him out of the dark. (She was +sitting in the corner seat, opposite to him.) "Oh, no! I'm not nervous +at all, thanks. I think it's quite exciting! I only hope Lizzie (that's +my Aunt) won't be worrying about me; but then she knew where I was; +she'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept me." + +"Ah, yes. She'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept you," agreed +Olwen's companion. "I thought it looked a likely night for our friends." + +He had made this remark, by the way, twice on their way to Baker Street. + +"Yes," said Olwen. + +Silence, punctuated by a nearer muttering of the guardian guns fell +between the two young people in the carriage to themselves. The voices +of other passengers could be heard further along the train; and the +guard appeared to be exchanging repartee with the engine-driver, whose +name (as that of all drivers of 'bus or engine seems to be), was Bill. +Olwen gave a little laugh as "Bill's" comments were shouted forth on the +night air, and her companion chuckled also. But he started no +conversation about it. Or about any other subject. + +The whole truth of the matter was that this quite good-looking and +pleasant young man Harold Ellerton hadn't got very much conversation. +Others besides Captain Ross (who was never inclined to be fair to him) +had noticed this. Olwen herself had noticed it before now. It had been +noticed by various girls whom he had taken out; for he was fond of +taking out girls. But, unlike the majority of his sex, he preferred +_them_ to talk to _him_. He was perfectly happy to punctuate their +treble twitter with his appreciative bass, "Ha!" "Bai Jove!" and +"Priceless!" But (except for one other detail to be presently +specified), he hardly knew what else to say to a young woman who was out +with him. That was why he felt most at ease sitting beside her at a +theatre (where, during two enjoyable hours, all the talking necessary +was done for him by Mr. Owen Nares, or Mr. Leslie Henson, or somebody +like that). Or at a restaurant, preferably at a table near the band; +listening to that could always fill up any awkward pause. At dances, +again, one could dance. At a little dinner party like tonight's, for +instance, there was a crowd where everybody talked; made everything so +much more cheery at once. But it was when these things came to an end, +when one had the girl all to oneself to bring home----_That_, he found, +was the crab! + +Why was it, he wondered, that he found it so difficult to talk to her, +except upon one subject? + +He remembered delightful evenings, ending in these painful and tedious +journeys _a deux_. Tonight, for instance, it was going to be the very +dickens with this little Miss Howel-Jones. A jolly nice little kid, +thought the sailor, a pretty kid! But here they might be held up +together in this confounded train for another hour, perhaps, and he +couldn't even see her face, and he was blessed if he knew what more to +say to her----Why, he'd said everything as he sat next to her at dinner, +he and that funny little Brown chap. He did envy the flow of chaps like +that! Chaps who could yarn away upon this, that, and the other subject +for three years or the duration of the War. Talk to girls for ever, they +could, without repeating themselves! + +"I thought it looked a likely sort of evening for a raid," he heard +himself say at this point. + +"Yes," said the girl opposite to him in the dark. + +Of course he'd said everything there was to be said on the subject of +air-raids in general and this air-raid in particular on the way to Baker +Street. Yet he couldn't sit here in the dark opposite to her for the +whole length of the raid, saying nothing? + +Still the guns made distant thunder.... + +"I do hope you aren't frightened," he said. "It's quite all right, you +know." + +"Oh, I know. I'm not a bit frightened," came from Olwen; truthfully +enough. + +She was not frightened as she settled herself back against the padding +of the carriage. She was only a little sleepy, a little anxious for the +kind-hearted Lizzie, who would be waiting up for her in that pretty +villa at Wembley Park; she was also excited and elated still after her +lovely party. + +She was thinking far more of that party than she was of her companion of +the raid! + +She was also wondering about Captain Ross. + +What a _disgusting_ temper the man had been in all that evening! + +Positively scowling at her! Was he jealous, really? _Was_ he? + +Then she wondered what Captain Ross was doing at that moment. + +If there had been no raid----! If it had been he who was seeing her home +she might have asked him what she had done that he should scowl at her +like that. + +Or if only it were Captain Ross who was sitting with her here in this +darkened carriage all smelling of engine-dust and cigarette smoke, +waiting for the raid to finish.... + +Hurriedly Olwen put the thought away. It was no use allowing oneself to +dwell on thoughts of things that were too good to be true. No, no, not +too good. She told herself firmly that she did not wish Captain Ross +were in this railway-carriage instead of Mr. Ellerton. Captain Ross +would only be disagreeable. + +Only----Well! She could imagine some girls feeling glad of a raid in +these circumstances. Some girls to whom it would be as one long, long +lovely dance "sat out" in a dark corner with their favourite partner of +all. Perhaps there were girls "hung up" in this very train, feeling that +it was the evening of their lives. + +Whereas all she could feel was apologetic to Mr. Ellerton. He liked her, +but she was sure he had never bargained for sitting out with her a dance +of this length. Still, what was to be done? Here the train stuck. They +couldn't get out and walk to Wembley! + +"Shall we smoke?" suggested Mr. Ellerton. "You'll have a cigarette, +won't you?" + +He fumbled in his pockets and brought out his torch. Its tiny beams made +rounds of light in the carriage and upon his face and upon the gold +braid and gold rings of his uniform. He found case and matches. He +lighted a cigarette for Olwen, who puffed at it with secret distaste +(for the moderate smoker is not found among her sex; a woman being +either a cigarette fiend or a passive objector). + +The two red glow-worms winked and wavered in the dark carriage, their +reflections shining in the glass of photographs over the rack. Outside +the searchlights pointed, and now and again the sky showed the alien +star of a shrapnel-burst. + +Then, without warning, crash after crash seemed to rock the train on the +rails. Some guns, very near, that had not yet spoken, were barking +savagely, and between the barks a shrill "whee-you! whee-you!" hissed +past the telegraph wires.... + +The start that Olwen gave made her drop her cigarette on to the floor of +the carriage. She dug her little French heel into the spark. Young +Ellerton threw his cigarette down beside it and rose quickly. Snapping +up the arm of the seat by Olwen, he sat down close to her. + +"You needn't be frightened," he said, encouragingly. + +"I'm not frightened," she assured him. "Only it makes me jump." + +"Brutes, frightening you!" exclaimed young Ellerton. "I say, I do wish +I'd thought of bringing some chocolates or something for you." + +"I'm not hungry either, thank you," laughed Olwen into the barking of +those guns, but young Ellerton's voice repeated, "I wish I'd got any +sweets for you. I've only this----" + +She felt him move against her arm as he leant nearer to her to get +something else out of his pocket: it was a phial of saccharine tablets, +carried about since the sugar restrictions. + +"Have some of these," he said. "Put out your hand ... here, where are +you?" He shook half a dozen tablets out into her palm. + +As it happened, Olwen disliked saccharine worse than she disliked +Virginian cigarettes, yet she munched the substitute-sweets to please +this young man who, according to his lights, was being nice and kind and +protective towards her. + +For the severalth time he informed her that she was not to be +frightened.... Then, in a new tone, he added, "Dear little girl." Then, +more softly still, "For you _are_ a dear little girl, you know. Do you +know, you're just about the sweetest I've ever met." + +"Oh, pooh!" laughed Olwen, taken by surprise, nevertheless. She rather +wished she could see the face of the young man sitting so close beside +her. Had she done so, she would have seen it was what is known as "a +study." For during the last half-hour or so the young man had become the +prey to conflicting emotions indeed. Chief of these, perhaps, was a +helpless fascination; the fascination of some one with a weak head who +watches himself draw nearer and nearer to the brink of some giddy +height. + +Harold Ellerton knew he was drifting, as he'd done times and again, +towards a fatal habit of his. Times and again, since before he had left +Dartmouth, this thing had happened to him. It was as characteristic of +him as was his lack of general conversation where women were concerned. +In fact, it's not impossible that one of these characteristics may have +led to the other. + + +He didn't know what to say to girls unless he were making love to them, +and his sole conception of love-making was to ask them to marry him! + +He saw it coming now in the dark accomplice solitude of this railway +carriage. He knew that he was going to say a few more tender things to +this little Howel-Jones girl, about her eyelashes and how sweet she'd +looked at that party and how she ought to have a bridal party of her +own, directly--dear little sweetheart she'd make to any fellow! + +He said these things. + +He knew the other was coming. + +It came. + +"Look here, d'you think you could care enough to be _mine_?" he heard +himself say. "Bai Jove, if you would----! If you'd marry _me_! Would +you? Would you?" + +There! He'd done it again. + +Now came the agonizing moment. + +Now again he'd have to wait for the girl's answer. That always seemed to +him to be at least two hours in coming: except once, an anguished once +when the girl had said, "Yes" directly. What would this one say; what? +He waited in the dark; and sweat broke out on the young brow under the +peaked cap. + +In a long, uncertain breath the girl said, "Oh----" + +Then, "D'you mean it, Mr. Ellerton?" + +"Of _course_!" returned Mr. Ellerton, ardently, but digging his nails +into the palms of his hands. + +The soft voice beside him said, rather waveringly, "Wait a minute----" + +The young man who had just proposed again set his teeth and waited. This +was Hades. Serve him right for being such a double-blanked fool again! +But this was the worst yet. Never before had he not been able to see the +girl's face when he asked her to marry him. Never again, he vowed +incoherently to himself, never again would he be such an ass as to +propose to a girl during a raid with all the lights out! But then, never +again would he let himself in for this with any girl alive! Not if he +got safely out of this! Oh, Lord, the fool he'd been!... Could he +possibly light a cigarette?... No, only wait.... "A minute" this little +thing had said.... + +Before she spoke again, aeons seemed to elapse. + +Actually they were a few moments only, during which the mind of Olwen +Howel-Jones dashed swiftly through four distinct phases of thought. The +first was pure surprise. + +The second was a "No" that came from the bed-rock of woman's nature, +that fundamental thing which Convention must blast and quarry into +acceptable shapes. + +The third was a "Yes" compounded of a thousand artificialities +inherited, acquired, fostered, observed, and taught. Fear was among +them; fear handed down from generations of dowerless girls who accepted +the first proposal lest they might die as old maids. Why not! thought +little Olwen. Engaged! Fancy if she were! What would her Aunts think, +and Uncle, and her sisters! She would be the first of her sisters to +become engaged! And she had got her leave, too, and would be going down +to Wales; fancy going home to tell them! Fancy telling them at the +Honeycomb; Mrs. Newton and everybody! What fun! Engaged to Mr. Ellerton. +She did like him so much; she did, she did! He was awfully nice, and +jolly with people, and so good-looking and so----it appeared, so fond of +her!... More than could be said for Captain Ross. Wouldn't it be +absolutely ridiculous to miss a real thing like this, for just a fancy +like that? Girls had to get engaged while they could. It was the +happiest thing; getting engaged and having a ripping time for a bit, +then getting married and having everybody congratulating you. Getting +engaged in the middle of a raid, too! Nobody could say that wasn't +romantic. Love?... Well, Captain Ross had said that men couldn't bear +"that Love-with-a-capital-L" business. It wasn't for everybody. And why +do without all the fun of getting engaged, simply for the sake of some +man who evidently didn't care two-pence.... It would be awfully silly to +say "No." + +Swiftly as the flash of the guns this phase passed; swiftly as the +following report there followed the fourth phase in the girl's mind. It +flung her back to phase the second. But that had been composed of dumb +Instinct. This was articulate. + +No, no! She must not say "Yes" to this young man. However nice, however +good-looking, however fond, he was not the man. She knew it. She did not +love him. Golden said Love must be Lovely. What more unlovely than a +loveless pact? The "fun" of this engagement? What would that be? A +wretched substitute; no more real, sweet fun than the saccharine tablets +which she had been munching were real sugar. Sugar in tea; Love in +Life.... Some people put up with makeshifts cheerfully; but not she. +Some other people (she pursued the childish analogy) never did take +sugar in their tea. The luckier they! They missed nothing; Olwen would +crave it forever. But better a thousand times to go without everything +than to accept the wrong thing! + +She came out of her swift inner reverie, back to the dark railway +carriage and the young man. + +"Oh, Mr. Ellerton," she said hurriedly and remorsefully. "I am +dreadfully sorry but I can't possibly. I don't care for you. Not that +way. I do like you ever so much. But if--if you don't mind, I _couldn't_ +marry you." + +She heard the young man near her give, in the darkness, the profoundest +sigh that she had ever heard torn from any human breast.... + +Remorsefully she repeated, "I am so sorry----" Then stopped abruptly. +She seemed, in the darkness and the vibrating atmosphere, to have caught +a floating idea that startled her somewhat. + +She began again gravely. "Will you lend me your torch for a minute?" + +She felt it put into her hand. + +Quickly Olwen said, "It's very rude of me, but I _must_ look at you, +please: I must see your face!" + +Then she turned the little beam right upon him. + +Then she exclaimed, "Mr. Ellerton!" + +"Yes----" he said, unmistakably sheepish. + +Olwen burst out laughing. "You are a fraud," she exclaimed gaily. "You +aren't one bit sorry that I refused you. You're trying not to, but +you're looking----yes, _relieved_. You're glad! Don't pretend!" + +"Oh, I say----" + +"No! Don't pretend! You were laughing. You're feeling gladder than +you've ever felt over anything in your life because I don't want to +marry you! I _know_!" + +Young Ellerton dragged his handkerchief from his cuff, pushed back his +cap and wiped his forehead. "Bai Jove," he said with the sincerest +admiration in his tone, "you _are_ a clever little thing. I--I don't +think any of the others have ever tumbled to that." + +A moment later he found himself talking to her with more real ease and +enjoyment than he had ever talked to a girl in his life; with real +fluency. To her (during the second hour for which they were hung up) he +confessed that no, he didn't want to get married. There were +people----anyhow, men, who _didn't_. Not to the sweetest and prettiest +girl in the world. Not to _anybody_. To tie himself up like that for +life, declared the young sailor, was what he wouldn't want to do for +anything under the sun; certainly not for anything under a hat. Never! + +Olwen, finding she had ceased to be bored by him for the first time +since she had left Mrs. Cartwright's turned her face towards him in the +dark and plied him with question after laughing question. + +"But you ask people to marry you!" + +"Can't stop myself! It's the devil!" + +"And none of them have accepted you?" + +"Yes; one! A girl who was at college with my sister. A nice girl. I did +get to loathe her!" with feeling. "We were engaged for one whole awful +week!" + +"How did you break it off, then?" + +"She did. I loved her for that. She said I was too much like the young +man in Stevenson who said being engaged was all right as long as her +sisters were there. So she chucked me. And after that I've been +lucky----I mean, you know what I mean!" + +Olwen shook with laughter. "But, then, why d'you _do_ it?" she +persisted. + +"I tell you I can't help it. It happens!" + +"Why? For instance, why did you let it happen tonight? Quite frankly, +_why_ did you ask me?" + +"Oh, you----!" he began, and he paused for a minute. "Oh, come," he +said, "you are an awful nice little girl, you know. Anybody might be +excused for losing his head. You were looking extra pretty at the party +tonight, too. Some _peach_, you looked, if I may say so; and it wasn't +just looks either. There was _something_ about you. Sort of +disturbing.... I swear there was. You attracted me till I----" + +"Don't propose to me again," Olwen warned him. "I might think better of +it." + +"Oh, no," laughed Harold Ellerton. "You're an absolute little +sportswoman, I know." + +The little sportswoman, while she continued to laugh and chat with him +in the friendliest way until the signal sounded for the train to start +again, the little sportswoman had been really arrested by one of his +remarks. + +"_Something about her_" tonight, he thought. She'd heard something like +that before. She thought she might know what it meant. + +She went back to early on the afternoon of that eventful day. + + * * * * * + +Very late she had found herself as she was dressing for her tea with Mr. +Brown at the Regent Palace; even as she was putting on her nicest silk +stockings she had known that it would mean a scamper down the drive if +she meant to catch that train.... + +Then in her hurry a suspender had snapped. + +"Dash!" she had cried. + +No time to stitch it. + +She had cast round for the nearest bit of ribbon wherewith to garter +herself securely, and had snatched it up from where it dangled on her +dressing-table, hardly seeing which bit of pink ribbon it was with what +satin sachet attached. She'd wound it hastily about her slim and +silk-sheathed leg and forgotten all about it. That's how she had come to +be wearing it that evening, not in the orthodox way round her neck, but +wearing it nevertheless; the Disturbing Charm! + +Hidden thus, it almost seemed as if it had done its work again? + + * * * * * + +As they said good-bye at the wicket gate of her Aunt's house, she found +herself quite affectionately promising to write, while on leave, to this +young sailor who never would be anything but a friend to her. She found +herself submitting quite naturally to one of those flavourless and +definite kisses on the cheek, of which the entirely brotherly quality +can never be mistaken by the recipient. + +A looker-on may be more easily mistaken. + +Olwen's Aunt Lizzie was coming up the Drive behind her, having been +delayed in another carriage of that very same train, since she had also +been dining in town. From some distance she had observed the farewell at +the gate. But she exchanged greetings, quite unprejudiced, with the +young sailor who passed her. She was a modern Aunt.... + +At the house she found her niece already in the bedroom, so busy with +her little straw work-basket and two lengths of pink ribbon, that before +any talk even of the raid, she asked, "What have you got there, Olwen?" + +"I'm just mending something," returned the intent Olwen, "that I've got +to wear." + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +VIGIL + + "The raid is still in progress." + + Morning Paper. + + +To other members of the party that raid had been less (obviously) +eventful. + +Little Mr. Brown, after he had seen Mrs. Cartwright's niece, the nurse, +back to her rooms, trotted back to the Regent Palace Hotel all in a +dither of undeniable funk. + +Not funk for himself! Gallipoli and the Somme had found him "sticking +it" with a music-hall joke between his teeth. But here he had something +to be frightened about. The danger-zone was no place for women. At once +he rang up his _fiancee_, Mrs. Robinson, in Baker Street. There was no +reply!... On duty still? And Lord knew where.... + + [The little dispatch rider was at that moment, as we know, + scorching along the road out of London and past the Kilburn + Empire.] + +Mr. Brown, M.C., took his cold feet and his pipe to another man's room, +and sat there talking feverishly to drown the guns; from here he rang up +at intervals, getting through to her at last. + +"Worrying?... What about?" her cheeky little voice called back to him. +"Been? Why I've been carting some young lunatic who's lost his 'bus or +something, back to his 'drome.... I say! He tried to give me two pounds. +Got off again, didn't I?... Yes, and I'm just going to turn in.... Silly +ass.... Worrying about me? Well, drop it. I'm not marrying any worries, +they're too old-fash. Go to bed!" + +"Right you are," called back her future lord on the note of cheery +docility which was to resound throughout his married life. "See you +demang. Good night, Pet!" + +"Good night, Pug." + +She rang off; he sought his room, and slept through the rest of the +raid. + + * * * * * + +Miss Agatha Walsh sat up for it. She sat up in the private sitting-room +of her hotel, where there was also staying, on business, the old family +lawyer who transacted her business. There she sat with him and her +_fiance_ at midnight, feeling delightfully emancipated if not "fast," +drinking stone ginger-beer and translating the lawyer's remarks to her +half-dozing sergeant. Agatha was entirely happy, for the talk was all +about arrangements for her approaching marriage, settlements for her +husband, and so on. What, compared to these things, was the noise of +gun-fire? The only attention that she paid to it was to exclaim once, +"Oh, I do wish I could have a bit of the shrapnel set in gold as a +paper-weight or something for Gustave, just as a souvenir of the first +raid we've been through together!" + + * * * * * + +And now we come to Captain Ross. + +Captain Ross would have allowed no questions as to where he was and what +doing whilst that raid was in progress. Suffice it to say that he was on +duty. + +Not active duty; not strenuous duty, but duty which, unfortunately for +him, gave him plenty of leisure to think, and to feel, as he himself put +it curtly, "sick." + +Very sick he felt. + +First there was the standing grouse of his not being able to take a +man's job, ever, in that sort of show. They would never allow a +one-armed chap to go up in a plane, of course. Not even by altering the +mechanism of the whole thing so that he could work the controls +left-handed--that was off for good; and he was sick of it. + +He also felt sick with young Jack. What on earth had he been trying to +play at? He had no duty. He was married that morning; hadn't he, Ross, +seen him married? What the something did he mean by leaving his wife and +chasing off like that? Saying "All right; shut up----" What did the +young fool mean by it? + +Further, there was that little hussy that Captain Ross was sick with. +Sitting----wherever he was sitting while the raid-guns scolded outside, +he went over and over in his mind the many grouses that he had against +that little hussy Olwen Howel-Jones. She didn't know how to treat him +right. + +She was a darned little flirt. + +Look at her at Les Pins with that ass young Brown! + +Look at her here in London, with that even worse ass, young Ellerton! + +Scandalous.... Scandalous.... + +To Ellerton he meant to give such a telling-off as the young man had +never heard in his life before. + +And to the girl he was going to speak about it this very evening. Then +the raid had come.... + +Of course Ellerton would see that child all the way home. + +He'd done it before.... + +She admitted that herself. + +She practically admitted that the fellow made love to her on the way +home. + +No doubt he was doing it again at that moment! Captain Ross could +picture it. He did picture it.... + +Nothing could have been less like his picture than the reality of that +proposal scene in the railway carriage of the train held up outside +Willesden Junction at that moment, but how should this jealous brooder +be expected to guess that? + +He continued to brood so intently that it is unlikely he heard any of +the firing.... + +That little hussy! How was it she always contrived to irritate him so? +Always! Every time she spoke! The more meek and mild she was in the +office the more downright impairrrtinence she managed to infuse, +somehow, into the very meekness and mildness of the tone in which she +spoke to her chief. Yep! Even if she were only putting somebody through +to him on the telephone, she managed to convey an impression of--of--of +_something_. + +And why any busy man should waste a moment thinking of her the finest +judge of women in Europe did not know.... How had she done it? + +Yes; she was pretty; confound her! Awfully neat.... but weren't other +girls? Why think of her, more than of all the others, dozens, scores, +yes, hundreds of 'em that he'd known? What he demanded of a girl's +society was that it should be kept in its right proporrrrtion as a +relaxation for when a man wasn't occupied with a job. + +Woman, it could not too often be reiterated, was the Plaything of +Man----but not of young Ellerton, by the way. Why should any sensible +man be obsessed by one more than another of these toys? + +Let them keep in their places. + +Dashed pretty she was! Taking little face, dandy little figure, hands +and feet _it_.... Still, if she thought that he, with all his +experience, was going to say that Miss Olwen Howel-Jones was the +best-looking girl he'd ever struck, she had another guess coming to her. +Casual little ways she had! Those spoilt her. Pursing up her +mouth----which was as red as if she shoved on carmine by the stick every +five minutes, though he could see she didn't. It would sairrrrrrrrve her +jolly well right if a man (not young Ellerton) were to catch ahold of +her and kiss her good and hard a couple of dozen times running and then +leave her, having had all he wanted of her. That other maddening habit +of hers, too; looking 'way over a man's shoulder when he was speaking to +her! Refusing to meet his eyes ... though she could look straight enough +into young Ellerton's.... What colour _were_ her eyes when all was said: +brown, green, or hazel? + +He had arrived at this point by the time that the rushing by of cars +began to be heard up the Strand, down the Embankment and along every +street within earshot; cars containing joyously important children in +Scout's kit who "_woke to find that Noise was Duty_," and who now +roused London's echoes with their bugle calls of two long notes: + +"_All clear----! All----clear!_" + +Yes; the raid was over. Captain Ross of the Honeycomb found himself +drawing a long breath and realizing that he did most bitterly resent +these raids on account of the women that he knew who were in the danger +zone. That child Olwen, now; had she been frightened? Very likely +indeed. Scared to death, no doubt. + +Poor wee girl!... + +With the return to the thought of her, there suddenly stirred within him +a feeling that lay so deep down and under so many other mere immediate +things that he seldom allowed himself the chance of leisure to delve +towards it.... + +It was----how express it? A gentle, reverent unspoilt tenderness. It was +That which makes the difference in the ingrainedly sentimental mind of +Man, between Woman----and his own women-folk. The key to the hearts of +these finest judges of women in Europe is to be found held in the hands +of a mother, a wife, or (most surely) of a baby-daughter.... This +particular Scot had denied _in toto_ that that chit of a Welsh girl +could ever have part or lot in any of his jealously-secret dreams. + +But denied it he had; yes! Already he was so far gone as all that. + +Therefore it will be seen that he had reached the moment when a man +pulls himself resolutely together and determines that having gone so +far, he will go no further. + +The moment had arrived when he told himself that, having taken all +things into consideration, he had done with the girl. + +Yes; he had done with this Olwen. + +What was meant by this could only be judged by subsequent events. One +cannot but surmise that it meant the following: + +To come to that office on Monday and, as usual, to treat her as part of +the office furniture. To speak to her as usual with the charm of manner +of a bear with a sore head. To glower at her as usual in the Strand if +she passed him with young Ellerton. To have lunch on Friday as usual at +that restaurant where she had lunch and, still as usual, to spar and +wrangle with her until it was time to get back to work. To meet her as +usual at Mrs. Cartwright's; to meet her perhaps with her friend Mrs. +Awdas; to----well, to carry on in the usual way, as he had done up to +now, and so, indefinitely, to continue.... + +"Yes! I've done with her," he meditated aloud in the solitude of +whatever place it was in which he found himself. The sound of his own +voice pronouncing these resolute words was balm to his irritated, +exasperated mood. "I've done with her. _That's_ sett----" + +Into the word there broke the shrill whirring call of the telephone. + +He snapped it up. The silence of the place where he sat seemed to ring +to the now irritated bark of his voice, answering. + +"Spikkin'! Who is that?" + +"Ell--what? Oh, Ellerton? Yes; what is it?" He listened, scowling, to +the clear boyish voice that came through, obviously in the joyous high +feather. "Oh, yes; I know the raid's over, yes.... Nothing of +consequence; nothing at all.... You saw _what_? Miss Howel-Jones home +safely? That's all?... You were held up? Is that so? Where? For +_how_----For two hours, was it? All the lights turned out, I suppose?... +Indid.... Ah.... Well! I don't know that I was worrying specially about +either of you; not so as you'd notice it. But thanks all the same for +reassuring me, Ellerton----" + +(This with the bitter sarcasm which, the Celt maintains, is ever lost +upon the Saxon.) + +"And I suppose Miss Howel-Jones will make it her excuse for turrrning up +late on Monday morrrrning.... _Whatt?_ She won't be coming Monday? How's +that?... _Leave?_" + +His voice jumped up three notes. + +"Going on leave?... Where's she going? Wales?... What part of Wales?... +I said what part of Wales.... Aber-_which_?... Ah.... 'Night." + +The finest judge of women snapped up the receiver and sat for a moment +motionless: only the shapely feminine mouth under the hogged moustache +moving to the form of inaudible words. + +Then he sprung up and grabbed a paper-covered book from a shelf of +reference books. He stood holding it. + +Ellerton and she! + +Held up for two mortal hours in the dark! + +And the cub sounded in racing spirits.... + +Proposed to her! Not a doubt of it! And would he sound like that if he +hadn't been acc----? + +Here he slammed the book down on the table (it was an A B C), and, with +his one hand, began violently fluttering the pages. Aber----Aber---- + +Gone, had she? Without a word.... How dare she? Got leave without +telling him.... + +Leave, indeed.... + +He'd got some leave coming to him. + +Right now was where he'd take it, and at this Aber-where-was-it--ah, +here.... + +Done with the girl? He realized that he had not yet begun with her. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +HOME AND THE CHARM + + "A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, + Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere." + + Still-Popular Song. + + +There was one thing that struck Olwen very forcibly as soon as she got +down to that house of her Aunt Margaret's in Wales. + +It was the first time for many months that she had entered a +dwelling-place that was also a home. + +Where had she been all this time? In places of which the keynote was +"Here today and gone tomorrow"; places that she had never even seen a +year ago; places without associations, without responsibilities for the +pilgrim-guest. + +There had been Les Pins; its hotel.... Cap Ferret and its charming inn. +Other hotels in Paris and London. There had been the Honeycomb; its +busyness still informed by the hotel spirit of "_Dwell as if about to +depart_." + +Then there had been her Aunt's villa at Wembley Park; delightful little +red-roofed, rose-wreathed doll's-house! There was an impermanency about +that, too; it looked as if a gale of wind would carry it off, with the +row of other red-and-white toy-dwellings in the midst of which it stood. +It was a place to picnic and to sleep in, and of one which one turned +the latch-key without giving it all day a further thought. + +The same note was struck by Mrs. Cartwright's prettily-arranged flat. +In three hours, perhaps, she could pack up and move ... somewhere, +anywhere that suited her! (People lived where they liked, after all, +instead of making it a religion to like where they lived.) + +The same could be said of Mrs. Newton's rooms at her hotel, and of the +bachelor-diggings of half a dozen War-working girls whom Olwen knew in +London. The new note was spreading. Domestic life as lived under Queen +Victoria seemed at a discount. And to more and more of England's young +womanhood one might apply the plaintive remark of the straphanger to the +other occupants of the crowded 'bus: "Ain't _none_ o' you got no 'omes?" + +But here, on the outskirts of this provincial town where generations of +the Howel-Joneses had been born, had lived and married and died----here +one found oneself swept back to the domestic conditions of more than +half a century ago. + +Ah, the solidity of this square grey house, padded with ancient ivy and +roofed with purple slate! Oh, the density of that laurel hedge, +screening its lawn from the road that wound up towards the mountains! +Heavens, the ponderous comfort of the furniture; every mahogany "piece," +every _portiere_, every vast Landseer steel engraving upon the walls +seemed to remind Olwen "We were here in your grandmamma's time, and your +great-grandmother's and you, little superficial upstart, what right have +you to turn up your nose at what was good enough for them?" + +Yes; it had taken three reigns to bring these things together; details +that dragged the generations behind them as they settled down, heavily, +into a permanent, complete and dominant whole, which it would now take +an earthquake or a revolution to shift. + +But Olwen, as it happened, felt no desire to "turn up her nose." She was +enjoying this return to the days of old. It was a rest and a refreshment +to her after all her war-time gipsying, after her eating in Soho +restaurants, after her coming and going, after that whole life of the +bird on the twig. For there is no place like home, the old, established, +sturdy, stolid British home ... when one knows that one is only there on +ten days' leave. + +Then there were the home-dwellers. Olwen had never before realized how +pretty and amusing were her young sisters Peggy and Myfanwy; especially +Peggy, in her V.A.D. kit! She had wrested three days' leave from her +hospital in the town in order to be with her sister from London; and +there were also gathered together on a visit in the old home a selection +of cousins--Howel-Joneses, Pritchards, and little Llewella Price--to +welcome the wanderer home. Never before had they "made such a fuss of +her," or she of them. + +Even Auntie Margaret (who was THE Miss Howel-Jones, the head of the +household, and a despotic version of the Professor in petticoats), even +Auntie Margaret did not seem nearly as "trying" to Olwen as in those +pre-War days when the present Honeycomb war-worker was a girl at home. + +Why, Olwen had been in the house for two whole days, and Auntie had +only been really exasperating once! And even then she had almost +immediately afterwards bestowed upon Olwen an exquisite old coral brooch +and a bristly kiss. After all, there were no people like one's +home-people ... once one wasn't obliged always to live with them. + +Yes; Olwen enjoyed them. She enjoyed the accent of the young creature +who brought up hot water to her old bedroom (and who was described by +Auntie as "no servant, but a colt off the mountains!"). And she enjoyed +the forgotten ambrosia of the Welsh butter, and the family tea to which +they all sat down about the family table, and the family jokes--all as +old as her beloved hills. + +There was no news, except of a bazaar in aid of comforts for the town's +recruits; that had happened a month since, but it seemed still as +important to the family as anything that Olwen could tell them of what +had been happening in London. It was only on the Sunday when this +function had been described to the last detail by each relation in turn +that they left it at last to enquire about what raid; had Olwen seen +anything of this? + +The question was put to her at tea-time. + +Olwen, munching Auntie's hot cakes, told them of the interrupted party +and of her delayed journey home. + +"In one of those wretchedly draughty trains! I wonder you didn't take +your death," was her aunt's aghast comment. + +A Pritchard cousin added, "In the dark! Weren't you terrified all +alone?" + +Olwen explained. + +"Oh! _With_ somebody," exclaimed another cousin. + +"Sitting with a man from that place of yours.... In khaki, then? No; a +_sailor_? Oh, how _lovely_!... How old; twenty-four--five? It must have +felt just like being at the Cinema. Olwen, what _did_ he talk about?" + +"Asked me to marry him," Olwen replied, tranquil in the assurance that +this unembellished truth would never be believed. + +A gale of girlish laughter broke out round the table; a clatter of +feminine questions. + +The Welsh speaking-voice, which normally resembles the coo of the +ring-dove (_vide_ a paper on "Timbre" read by a college-friend of +Professor Howel-Jones), is capable of rising, in excitement, above the +corncrake note of the average Saxon, to the parrot-screech of the +Continental. It did so now, as the stay-at-homes cross-examined their +wanderer. + +"No; but really?" + +"Do tell us what sort of a young man he was?" + +"Yes; come on, Olwen _fach_. We never see a young man down here; might +as well describe to us what one looks like----" + +It was at this very moment that the young man who was passing the +dining-room windows on his way to the front door caught a glimpse of +clustered black heads all alike and heard a breaking wave of talk and +giggling. This tide rose until it swamped the sound of his ring at the +bell. + +Presently, without warning, there burst into the dining-room that +aproned colt from the mountains who had answered the door. + + +In an explosive whisper she announced, "Some _gent----tleman_! Some +gentleman is in the drawing-room!" + +"Who is it?" asked the mistress. + +"Some gentleman wanting to see Miss S'Olwen," the little maid hissed on +every "S." (A sudden quiet fell upon the party.) "Some _Captain_, or +something, he say." + +"Of course!" shrilled Olwen's youngest cousin Llewella, in a voice that +could (and did) carry easily across the hall into the drawing-room and +beyond the lawn outside, "This _must_ be her _sailor_ young man!" + +But Olwen (rising from the tea-table with the sudden sensation of having +had no tea or any other meal for about a fortnight) knew better. She was +the only one at that tea-table who had not been too absorbed in talk to +notice the caller passing the window. Against the dark green laurel +hedge and the lavender mountains beyond she had caught the flash of +gayer colour, scarlet on khaki. + +_Captain Ross----!_ + +"He's come," she thought in a whirl of happiest flurry. "What did Golden +say!" + +Her heart seemed to stand still as she crossed the hall. On the mat she +waited for one second. She must look as if absolutely nothing had +happened or could happen. Then she opened the heavily-draped door and +went into the drawing-room. + +Captain Ross had planted himself just where she had expected that he +might; he was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the log fire. + +That hearthrug was wide and white and fluffy; there was a brass-edged +glass screen before the fender. The mantelpiece was of white alabaster +and hung with looped drapery of peacock-blue brocade, lustrous and +pompous and ball-fringed, dating from 1889. Upon the mantelshelf itself +there stood under a tall glass shade an ormolu clock, with figures of +nymphs and Cupid. On each side of this gleamed candlesticks with +dangling prisms. + +There were also china ornaments, a miniature of Margaret Howel-Jones at +eighteen and another glass shade protecting a branch of white coral; the +whole reflected in a gilt-framed mirror. + +Everything in that drawing-room was in key with that mantelpiece. And +into that complete and Victorian harmony there broke the Neo-Georgian +note of a girl wearing the little modern serge frock, the pert effective +shoes, and the hair-dressing of the instant. + +But Captain Ross, turning abruptly did not see the dramatic +contradiction of that girl to this room. + +What he saw was the girl at last in the background that suited her. Yes; +here she was, where she should be. None of your gimcrack hotels or grimy +offices or fly-blown, cotton-glove restaurants! A girl like that ought +never to leave a place like this. The place into which any decent man +instinctively wants to put the sweetest woman he knows----A Nice, +Comfortable Home of her Own. + +(That the woman invariably longs to be "put" there has never yet been +questioned by this type.) + +To him every detail of the place seemed in league to "set" her; sweetly, +worthily. For the first time he saw her as in a shrine--therefore to be +worshipped, yes! worshipped. + +But there was nothing of this to be read in Captain Ross's face as he +returned her soft-voiced, surprised-sounding greeting. He was positively +scowling. + +And why was the finest judge of women in Europe scowling like this? + +It was because of the unforseen way in which all his plans were going +astray. On the way down in the train he'd had everything beautifully +planned. He'd intended to tell this little Olwen casually but quite +authoritatively that he'd something to say to her, and that "as he was +in Wales" he guessed he'd look in and say it right then. (These women +had to be handled--firmly.) He thought that a darned good opening ... in +the train. + +But suddenly that "was in Wales" didn't seem the strong card he'd +thought. It seemed, in fact, remarkably weak. He admitted that as he +glanced round that immutably Victorian room. It might have done for the +Honeycomb, but not here. Set-back Number One. + +Next, he must look as if he'd come down here on purpose to see this +aggravating chit. Which of course, he had not done. Or at least hadn't +meant to. Or, anyway, wouldn't have done if there had been any other +way. Captain Ross could explain this position to himself, perfectly. But +appearances were all against him.... Set-back Number Two. + +For Set-back Number Three, had he not just heard half a sentence (before +a door closed), in a shrill girlish voice, about a "_sailor_ young man"? + +_Damn_ young Ellerton! + +His anger against the sailor gave the send-off to the very first +sentence that he addressed to the girl. + +With a forward jerk of his head he brought out the startling abrupt +remark, "Look, Miss Howel-Jones, don't you think this has gone on long +enough?" + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THE CHARM ACKNOWLEDGED + + "'Even he that flies shall follow for thy sake-- + Shall kiss that would not kiss thee' (yea, kiss me), + 'When thou wouldst not' (when I would not kiss thee!)" + + Swinburne. + + +Olwen's bright eyes opened in real astonishment. Here was a bewildering +sex! + +"_Long enough_," it said. "_Hasn't this been going on long +enough._" ... When----well, whose was the fault that anything had been +_long_? + +Or did Captain Ross mean that? Or what did he mean? + +"I don't know what you mean," she confessed, standing there all at sea. +Then she put out a hand to the draperies of that door. Bewilderment gave +place for the moment to a stronger impulse; hospitality. The little +Welshwoman must feed her guest. "Do come into the dining-room," she +begged, "and have some tea first, anyhow----" + +But Captain Ross stood rock-like. He had seen that rookery of black +heads through the dining-room window. + +"Thanks; I had tea in the train," he said curtly. + +"I came to ask you something, and I'd like to know about it right now." + +"But----oh----very well," murmured Olwen. + +"It's this," said Captain Ross, peremptorily, "are you or are you not +engaged to that----to Ellerton?" + +Olwen had known her Chief sharp and abrupt before. For weeks she'd never +known him anything else. This was his sharpest yet. She was +intimidated.... Then suddenly that went, and she had all the boldness of +the kitten turning to face the big dog. + +"Engaged?" she repeated. "What do you mean?" + +"What do I mean? Engaged to be married." Captain Ross explained. "May I +have a straight answer to that, please?" + +There was a pause. Perhaps Olwen was sorting her thoughts. She smiled, +at first uncertainly. Then, also uncertainly, she said, "But surely, +Captain Ross, you didn't come down from London specially to ask me +that?" + +With ominous patience Captain Ross nodded that sleek, black, Tom-cat +head of his, almost as if to some old enemy he had expected to see +cropping up at some time. "Why, of course, it's a lot to ask of a woman, +a plain answer to a plain question. Right away, that is. But perhaps in +haff a minute or so?" he suggested, adding, at once, "Are you engaged to +him or are you not? Yes or no?" + +Olwen, wondering at her own boldness, parried with, "If--if it _wasn't_ +worth coming down specially for, h-have you the right to ask me?" + +"Say I came down specially, then," Captain Ross conceded reluctantly. +"Now are you going to tell me?" + +"Who said," asked Olwen, with a glance out of the window, "that there +was anything to tell?" + +"He's asked you to marry him, I know that," said Captain Ross with such +conviction that Olwen coloured a little with surprise. How did Captain +Ross know about that? It was true, of course.... But he couldn't know +quite _what_ had happened. She almost laughed at the memory of Harold +Ellerton's face in the light of the torch. + +She hesitated.... + +It doesn't always follow that because a man is obstinate he may not be +quick as well. It was very quickly that Captain Ross seized upon Olwen's +hesitation, declaring, "He asked you on the night of the raid." + +As quickly Olwen asked, "Did he _tell_ you?" + +A pause. Then "There was no nid, Miss Howel-Jones. I thought, somehow, +that there'd be somebody else I'd have to be congrrrrratulating very +soon," said Captain Ross, with a sort of grim triumph in his tone. + +He straightened his back, giving that little forward shrug of an armless +shoulder that Olwen could never see unmoved. But her eyes were on the +window and on the glimpse of variegated Welsh landscape beyond. + +"Since that is so," concluded Captain Ross in his most final tone, "will +you allow me to offer my very best wishes to yourself and to Mr. +Ell----" + +"No! Please don't!" protested Olwen quickly. + +She felt that this misunderstanding had gone on long enough. Long +enough. She turned from the window and looked straight----not at Captain +Ross, that she couldn't do! but at a water-colour drawing of Carnarvon +Castle on the wall. She said, "You see, I am not engaged or anything to +Mr. Ellerton!" + +And even as she said it, she knew what a change her words had made. + +Without looking at him, she knew that Captain Ross's dark face had +lighted up like a lantern into which a candle is put. She knew what he +meant by that quick movement that he gave, as if rolling aside some +weight that he'd been carrying. She knew, for sure and certain, why he'd +come. Would he have cared about her being engaged to Mr. Ellerton if he +hadn't wanted her himself? Of course he did want her.... + +Hadn't Golden said so? Wasn't that serene and lovely American always +right? + +Hadn't Madame Leroux thought so, too? + +And hadn't she, Olwen herself, always known it too, in the very depths +of her heart? Yes! Hadn't she always, always suspected his curt speech +and his off-hand manner and his judgment of women? + +Always! + +A great and glowing delight filled the girl. For if he wanted her----oh, +wasn't she his! Hadn't she been his all that time ago? All her denials +of him since had been fibbing to herself, they had been making the best +of things, they had been the hybernating sleep from which Love awakes as +a giant refreshed! It had all been camouflage, and now there was no more +need of it.... + +But even with this sweet and thrilling knowledge warm at her heart, the +woman's Will-to-Prolong was strong within her, too. + +She was a human little person enough and she had her dignity, she +thought. Also she had to have her laugh--oh, quite a little one! over +this man. + +He said, "Then----" in a voice that there was no misunderstanding. His +surliness had vanished like a mist. His eyes shone. He said, happily, +"Then if you aren't engaged to him----!" + +He seemed to think that she could take for granted what must follow. + +But Olwen was mutinous. Had he come down here to propose? Let him do it! +she thought. She resolved that she would not be cheated out of a single +word of it. "Then----" in itself was not going to count as a proposal. +"Then----," indeed! + +"_Then----!_" Oh, dear no. + +Immediately Olwen put on that look which is scarcely a look, but is for +all that a defence past which no man's love-making may come. Immediately +Captain Ross's own look changed to one of dashed and angry surprise. He +had put out his arm. It dropped to his side while he watched this girl. + +She sat down, her little figure almost lost in the embrace of a chair +like a cretonne-covered bed. "Won't you sit down?" she said in the voice +of a hostess, pointing to an opposite chair. + +He did not move. + +She, feeling that never before had she been mistress of the situation, +and that perhaps never again would she have the opportunity, spoke first +with a composure which startled herself. + +"Why," she asked, "should it be supposed to have anything to do with you +whether or not I was going to marry Mr. Ellerton?" + +And now Captain Ross moved so abruptly against the mantelpiece that he +shifted one of the handleless china teacups out of its place and set the +prisms tinkling on the candlesticks. + +He opened his mouth, then shut it as if he'd thought better of the +answer which he meant to make to this chit. And then, in the tone of +stinging reproof which he reserved for some careless error in the +reading of some letter at the Honeycomb, he said, looking down upon her, +"I should have thought that a girl of your intelligence would have had +the sense to guess by this time what my object was in wanting to know +what your ideas were on the subject of getting married." + +Olwen, with a tiny turn of her head, remained silent, watching the +sunset, which could just be seen over the Rival mountains out of the +other window. This last remark of Captain Ross's she was not going to +take as a proposal either. + +From the lack of expression on her small face no man would have guessed +at the happy tumult in the heart under that ribbon-and-satin of a hidden +mascot that it rocked. + +"Well?" demanded Captain Ross with outward patience. "How much longer do +you intend to keep me dangling around and guessing?" + +"About what?" + +"About whether you're going to marry _me_ or not," said Captain Ross, +dourly. + +Olwen stuffed a cushion behind her back and laughed quite naturally. +"But, Captain Ross! You said Marriage was a thing the sensible man +looked at from every angle and then decided to cut out. I never +imagined----" + +"Ah, cut _that_ out," Captain Ross begged her, with the unsmiling mien +of one who sees himself about to be routed from his last defences. "You +knew all the time; you knew." + +"I didn't!" + +"What?" Captain Ross thrust out his jaw. "You ought to know me well +enough by this time. You've seen me plenty." + +"Yes," said Olwen, with feeling, "and always being----" + +"Well?" + +"Perfectly horrid to me." + +"'Horrid,' you think?" barked Captain Ross. "In the office? You don't +understand that I'm as much on active service there behind a pen as I +was when I was able to be behind a gun? 'Horrid.' Because I didn't make +love to you there, and both of us on duty? If you imagine that I'm the +kind of man who'd do that ever, I am afraid you are under a serious +misapprehen----" + +"But you weren't always in the office," protested Olwen, quickly, "and +you were _always_ horrid to me!" + +"When, please?" + +"Well, at lunch!" + +"Because I only had lunch with you once a week?" + +"You didn't 'have lunch _with_ me,'" Olwen demurely reminded him. "You +happened to be lunching at the same place on Fridays." + +"That's hair-splitting," snapped Captain Ross. + +Exactly as if he never split hairs! As if he had not been splitting +hairs for the last six months. That is, the same hair. And with a +hatchet. + +He felt that he was burying that hatchet now----if she would only let +him. + +He declared, "You know I only went to that darned little eating-place to +see you," and it was with the manner of one who hands over his revolver +that he had said it. "I loathe fish." + +(But this was not a proposal!) + +Olwen, gazing not at him, but through the window at a cluster of yellow +crocuses on the lawn, exclaimed softly, "As if you didn't know that this +is the first hint you've ever given me of your wanting to see me at +all!" + +Captain Ross took a step back on the hearthrug. He gave a short and +angry laugh. "The fairrrrrst hint?" he cried, as if aghast. + +"Of course it is," declared Olwen. + +"It's nothing of the kind," doggedly from the man. "Plenty of other ... +things of that sort." + +They were both wrong, and they knew it. + +It is unlikely that Olwen had forgotten that Elysian evening on the +lagoon when Mr. Brown had pulled and she had sat in the stern-sheets +with Captain Ross. To have your hand held in the moonlight tenderly, and +for an hour on end, might fairly be called "a hint." + +So Captain Ross was right on that point. + +But he was wrong on every other. + +In the whole of their acquaintance that had been the one isolated +instance in which he had failed to be as forbidding as an Army order. +But at that moment (and indeed for several months afterwards) that +incident in the boat was not to be referred to by either of them. For +some obscure reason both of them felt more shy of that memory than any +of fresh experiences. + +Quickly Olwen got on with this war in the enemy's country. "Hints? I'm +sure I don't know what they could have been. That box of chocolates at +Les Pins. But I've had other boxes of chocolates given to me----" + +"I've no doubt of that" (with grimness). + +"So you can hardly call that a 'hint,' Captain Ross!" + +"Ah!" he said, impatiently. "It's not what one gives or says to a woman, +as you know. It's the _manner_----" + +There was real merriment in Olwen's laugh at this. "The manner! The +_manner_! Well, really! After the scolding and strafing and +disapproving! After the way you never came near me if we were out----" + +"I did. I did. I sat next you at that concert when Jack Awdas's girl was +singing." + +"For five minutes; yes, I remember," said Olwen, tilting her chin. "It +was the one and only time." + +"It was not, pardon me. I was coming to sit by you at Mrs. Cartwright's +party, and I wasn't allowed a look in----" + +"So you had a look _at_, most severely," Olwen countered. "At Mrs. +Cartwright's was when you were the horridest of all. You just sat +opposite to me and glared----" + + * * * * * + +In the dining-room the party of Olwen's relations sat over their last +half-cups of tea in a simmer of delighted curiosity. + +This was shared, openly, by the hireling colt from the mountains as she +clattered in at intervals with hot water or more butter. Breathlessly +she asked at last, "Will I take a tray and some fresh tea into the +drawing-room for Miss S'Olwen and that t'officer?" + +"You will not," ordered her mistress. Even she had been young once. + +"----Yes! glared at me as if you hated the sight of me!" insisted Olwen. + +He said, "And weren't you flirrrting with those two fellows, and simply +out to make me wild?" + +"No," said the girl, quietly and sincerely. + +He could have clasped her for it. "Darling!" said his glance, but aloud +he only retorted, "Maybe you were not out to do it, but you certainly +pulled it off." + +"As for _you_," continued Olwen, "weren't you talking at me to Mrs. +Cartwright all the time at dinner?" + +"No!" he retorted, flagrantly. + +"You know you were! _All_ about Woman being the Plaything of Man!" + +"Don't rub it in," he entreated, with another glance down at this +plaything so maddeningly near, yet not, perhaps, for him. Yes! If she +had had the boldness of the kitten who strikes with soft paws at the +Force which could annihilate her, he had the boding patience of that big +dog who waits, sitting up, with the lump of sugar on his nose. + +It was she who kept him so.... She was--oh, she was getting her own back +now! + +She broke off as if by the way, to ask him, "Let me see, what was the +first thing--almost the first I ever heard you say.... _What_ sort of a +judge of women are you?" + +It is not true that the Scot is inevitably without a sense of humour. At +that moment Fergus Ross saw even the joke against himself, since he +thought it would appeal to her. He responded, "What was that about +women? Something I've hairred in a drim?" + +Relentless, Olwen repeated her demand. "What sort of a judge of women +are you?" + +He looked at her, threw up and shook his head with the action of a boxer +who drops his hands as well. + +"I guess I'm about as fine a judge of women as a baby is a judge of +mothers," he told her, frankly and ruefully. "One he knows; his own. And +herrrr he's got to have!" + +But she put it aside. _This_ wasn't enough of a proposal! She harked +back to that party at Mrs. Cartwright's which had witnessed the last +losing fight of this prisoner of hers, taken now with horse, foot and +guns. + +"'What's Love? An amusement,'" she quoted, mischievously, his words upon +that occasion. "That's what you said, four--no! only three days ago," +she insisted, now feeling that she had got well into her stride and +could keep this well-merited strafing of the young man for an hour yet. +"Yes! Just to be horrid to _me_! How you talked! All about how bored a +man got 'when some woman started in to Love' him----" + +Here Olwen stopped, abruptly but too late. She coloured to the deep pink +of the little coral brooch at her throat. She saw what she'd said. + +So did he. + +Very quickly the soldier took advantage of this break in the line of her +defence. + +"Ah!" His voice lifted. "Well, what of that? What has _that_ got to do +with my being 'horrid' to you? What----connection is there between you, +and any woman starting in to love _me_?" + +"Oh, _none_! I didn't mean _that_," Olwen assured him, laughing +flippantly, but dropping her eyes to gaze so hard at the carpet that +only the top of the head was to be seen. Glossily black and shapely +enough was the little head upon which Captain Ross had heaped, in his +mind, every anathema as well as every endearment that he knew, but he +was dashed if he was expected to read what she meant out of the mere top +of it. So---- + +If, a month ago, some one had informed Captain Ross of the Honeycomb +that he would ever be reduced for any possible reason, to go down on his +knees on the floor at a woman's feet, he would not have considered the +idiotic prophecy was worth a laugh. + +But his number was up. + +Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet just +because there seemed no other way at that moment of getting a really +satisfactory glimpse of Olwen's face. + +"Now! my lady," he began, firmly. + +But just as he'd thought he meet her eyes squarely she turned her head +sidewards and directed that bright gaze of hers, as she'd often done +before, over his shoulder and away. She was ready to glance at the blaze +of the log fire, at the wall-paper, at the oval china frame all garlands +and Loves of the standing mirror, at the large portrait of Professor +Howel-Jones in his robes, at anything, yes! anything rather than at the +(late) finest judge of women in Europe, at her feet. It was too much. + +The pent-up, exasperated longing of months broke out in six words. + +"Look at me, you little demon! _look_ at me----" + +But even now she did not look; how could she, when she had shut her eyes +before the change that had come into his own? + +He caught her to him. With his one arm slung about her, he put a +scorching kiss upon her throat, under her ear. Then he took her chin in +his hand and turned her face round; he kissed the childishly red mouth +until little Olwen, all shy and aflame, felt that the shape of his own +would be moulded upon her lips. + +For all his theorizings, his protestations, his boastings about Love, he +was yet a lover ... or perhaps it would be truer to say a lover at last. + +As for her.... The whole of her girl's nature seemed to stretch out +gleeful hands to the gift that he made to her--of herself. Till now she +had resembled--what? The sea-anemone that for weary hours of low-tide +has waited self-contained and folded into itself upon its rock, an inert +lump.... At last the warm waves rise, and lo! the rosy fingers spread to +welcome its own element have turned it to a lovely thing, a star-shaped +flower of flesh. + +Into her sigh of delight he heard her murmur, "No! I _mustn't_----" + +"Mustn't what?" muttered the strange voice of him who was no longer the +Captain Ross of this story, but the Fergus of their love-tale that was +beginning. + +And in Love, after all, all's well that begins well. (Even though there +was no real "proposal" after all.) + +He coaxed, "Mustn't what, Honey?" + +"Mustn't like you any _more_, or you won't like me as _much_!" + +It was Woman's dearly-bought wisdom----but he laughed at it until his +teeth gleamed across his vivid face. + +She? Do anything he would not like? Even if she loved him and showed +it, even that could not cool this man off, now he knew. The chit had got +him going sure enough. Whatever she did or said only added to her +attraction, to her long-contested, her triumphant, her Disturbing +Charm! + + + + +POSTSCRIPT + +THE CHARM CONFESSED + + +With regard to the three words with which the last chapter closed: + +The Disturbing Charm.... + +What was its story, after all, apart from the tangled stories of those +people into whose lives it twined its thread of rose colour? + +Perhaps it was all summed up in a letter that came, one February morning +of Nineteen-Eighteen, to Professor Howel-Jones. + +The old botanist was sitting in his study. It was a wide, cleared room +with a table as chaotic as that had been at Les Pins, set, as at Les +Pins, before a window; but the view here was not of a lagoon with a belt +of dunes and a lighthouse. It showed the roofs of Liverpool. + +Professor Howel-Jones had just returned, after various wanderings, to +find a big mail awaiting him. He sighed, as he opened the letters, for +his little niece and secretary. (Olwen had not been replaced.) + +Then he knit his brows over the letter in his hand. + +It said: + + "DEAR SIR, + + "The writer of this letter has reproached himself more than + once over the rather stupid practical joke that he elected to + play upon a man of your attainments by sending to you what was + alleged to be the discovery of a love-germ, or Disturbing + Charm----" + + "Dear me! What and when was that?" pondered the Professor. "Ah, + yes. I have it. Some lunatic that wrote to me in France. + Something about '_half the trouble in the world arising from + people falling in Love--with the wrong people_.' Yes, yes. And + what was this 'Charm' supposed to do?... Ah, it says now that + the Charm was spoof...." He went on reading the letter; the + belated apology of some pupil at some University where he had + once lectured.... + + He took it in, half thinking of the next letter as he read.... + + Fern seed, it appeared, was all that the "magic" packet had + contained.... + + The Professor scarcely remembered that there had been a packet! + What had he done with it now, and with the letter? Burnt them, + he thought, before that little Olwen got hold of that + nonsense.... + + It would have been just like a very young, imaginative girl + like that to have believed in it! + + Well, this last letter would have to shatter that belief! + thought her Uncle, as he crumpled the practical joker's apology + into a ball and tossed it on to the fire. + +At the moment when her Uncle's thoughts were turning to her, his niece, +young Mrs. Ross, was watching rather a pretty scene. + +She stood at the window of her husband's rooms in Victoria Street, his +old bachelor rooms into which she had brought the new element of her +girlish belongings, her love, herself.... + +Behind her on the table, above a pile of his books on "Reconstruction," +there trailed a dainty litter of her sewing: the lacy whiteness of a +garment that was being reconstructed, feminine-fashion, into some other +garment. + +Beside her stood another war-bride of but a few more weeks' standing, +young Mrs. Awdas. + +Both of them were looking down into the street, where a crowd lined the +pavement to right and left, waiting, watching to see a company of +American soldiers march past on their way to Victoria Station. + +Ah! Here it was, the stream of clean khaki cleaving the motley of the +crowd. Here they came, the boys, tall, fit, and splendid, drilled to the +minute; the pick and cream of the new belligerent country.... Here they +came, spare and useful looking and ah, how faultless in kit and +accoutrements, from straight-brimmed hats to spotlessly-polished boots. +And as they swung past with the unison of a machine in which every part +is perfect, there hove into sight, straggling, slouching towards them +out of the station, a knot of British just back from the firing line. An +officer walked along beside the men. + +Over these there brooded the spectre of three years and more of War. +Their eyes were heavy with lack of sleep as they lurched heavily along, +blinking around them at London once again; they were dirty and loaded +down with gear, they were strung about with mess-tins and water-bottles +and boots and brown-paper parcels and battered shrapnel helmets. One or +two of them had Hun helmets tied to their knapsacks. They wore greasy +remnants of caps, disreputable goatskin coats. All over them was thickly +caked the foul mud of the trenches. + +What a contrast.... + +The mob of straggling scarecrows turned to give a friendly stare, a +"Cheerio" to their smart American comrades as they swung past in their +immaculate fours. + +"See you in ten days!" shouted a Tommy. + +Olwen Ross, up at the window, thrust out her little black head to watch +the Americans. + +"Oh, they are magnificent," she breathed excitedly. "Aren't you proud of +them, Golden?" + +"Am I _proud_ of them!" laughed her friend. + +But while the Welsh girl was all eyes for these new troops, the American +girl's wide gaze turned upon the others with whom they must soon be +standing shoulder to shoulder; the war-worn soldiers, muddy, tattered, +scarred, exhausted, cheery still.... + +"_They_ are magnificent, Olwen, I guess," said she. + +And her opinion seemed to be shared by a countryman. A quick and +graceful thought struck the officer in charge of those Americans. + +Suddenly and clearly, above the buzz of the street, the rhythmic tramp +of feet, there snapped out his order: + +"Company----eyes----RIGHT!" + +Every head under the straight-brimmed hat turned sharply towards those +heroic scallywags their allies. + +Perhaps that young American company officer would have explained, +diplomatically, that the word of command had been for his men to give +the Eyes Right to that British subaltern who was passing with the +leave-men; a white-faced, hollow-eyed stripling with two gold stripes on +his cuff and the black "flash" of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers fluttering +at his nape. But if it were ostensibly for him, it was also for his men. +The new Allies, equipped for Victory, saluted the old, all but broken, +but carrying on.... + +And the bright eyes of the two girls at the windows above shone +suddenly, mistily brighter at the sight. + +As they watched the two bodies of men disappear----those marching +towards Victoria and the boat-train, these straggling towards a +soldiers' hostel in Buckingham Palace Road, Golden said softly, "My +people, Olwen, honouring yours." + +Olwen said, "Yes; but mine are yours now, and yours are mine." + +She turned from the window and into the little sitting-room with her +guest's arm in hers. + +"What's the time?" asked young Mrs. Awdas. "I'm due to sing at the +hospital at four. We'll have to hurry----" + +She lifted, on Olwen's blouse, the tiny pin-on watch which was one of +her friend's wedding presents. Then she exclaimed, "What have you got +tied around here?" + +Golden did not recognize any similarity between this sachet of +pink-and-mauve and the sun-faded ribbon trifle she had picked up on +Biscay beach. But Olwen smiled as she tucked into the place the mascot +that she wore and always would wear, even had she read that letter which +her Uncle held would shatter any belief in that "magic." The old +scientist summed her up as faultily as if he, too, had set out to be the +finest judge, etc.... + +"Golden," she said, "if I tell you about this, will you promise not to +laugh?" + +And as they walked along to the hospital, she gave to her friend the +outlines of the story which you have just read ... so far as she knew +them herself. + +Golden, listening, smiled above her leopard-skins. "Do you think all +these things would not have happened just as they did happen without the +wearing of a Charm?" + +Olwen, with happy dreams in her eyes, did not reply. + +After a pause her friend went on, softly, "When I look at you," she +said, "and when I look at your Fergus, and at my Jack, and at any one +else who is lovely and loving ... why, of course I believe there's a +Charm really, though it just can't be anything you could make up out of +a pinch of powder and a bit of ribbon. A Charm? Why, the world's full of +it! Didn't it send me over the sea to my Bird-boy? Didn't it bring your +men from Canada and France to you? Didn't it let us all meet in a +country that was sweet and friendly, though none of ours? Didn't it +work----why, all the time?" + +"Sometimes----Often--Half the time," suggested Olwen, "it is supposed to +make such mistakes. It takes the wrong people...." + +"We hear of those, just because they're the exceptions, I guess," smiled +her buoyant friend. "We aren't so talked about, we with the happy love +stories, that the Charm has worked!... Olwen, it's making stories now +for each of those splendid boys we saw go marching by, and for each of +the pretty girls who wishes them Luck. It never stops!... But you can't +see it. You can't hold it. You can only feel it is----" + +"But then what is it?" Olwen asked. "What is it in itself?" + +"Who knows?" Golden replied. "Does it matter if we _never_ know?" + + +THE END + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Disturbing Charm, by Berta Ruck + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DISTURBING CHARM *** + +***** This file should be named 36442.txt or 36442.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/4/4/36442/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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