"What I demand in Women is, firstly——"
"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! sheisthe 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. Iwill. 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! Ican'ttake 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 goodthere, 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 commissioningherto 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 pleaseme," said Olwen. "I mean to please the Red Cross! If you'dwearit!"
"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 bealwaysworn 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 inthere," 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."
"Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier',Doch weiter kommt man ohne ihr."Boche Proverbs.
"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 ather, 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 reallythere?
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."
"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.Ishould 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——"
"Olwenfach," 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, theartilleriste. I heard all about him the other day. Gustave Tronchet his name is. Madame told me that he was coming hereen permeas her guest, seeing she had no son, and that he loved to eat well and to bebiengenerally. 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 aman, triumphed Olwen. There'd be others, people that Miss Agatha Walsh could think seriously about; but he was thebeginning! He'd shown the success of her experiment. The Charmcouldwork. That letter wasnotall 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 thesalon, 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 havenotbeen 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'veneverseen 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 hismarraine. 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 knewsucha 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: "Whata pity that I've only got enough here for four of us!"
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.
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.Hercharm!
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 toattracthim," 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 thesalon, 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 remembervingt-deuxbecause 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.
"MydearClaudia, 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 simplesuèdeshoes. 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. TheBaissinwas 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.Shewas 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, "Gothim!" Then another cry, of agony; a scream....
What was it?
"Fights all his battles o'er again;And thrice he charged the foe, and thrice he slew the slain."Dryden.
"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 terredoit être courte. (La lumière dont ils procèdent les rappellebientôt. On croit qu'ils tombent, mais ils remontent.)"Marcel Astruc.
"Un aviateur, un de ces demi-dieux dont l'existence sur terredoit être courte. (La lumière dont ils procèdent les rappellebientôt. 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——"