The Disturbing Charm Part 15

"Ah----" she said, and checked a little s.h.i.+ver. 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, s.h.i.+ning 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-gra.s.s--_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 Carnarvons.h.i.+re 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 b.u.t.terflies) on regatta day, and one of a wave, marbled with foam, about to break on Biscay sh.o.r.e. 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 cl.u.s.tered 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 st.u.r.dy 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 s.h.i.+rt-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 cl.u.s.ters 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 p.r.i.c.kly 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 s.h.i.+es 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----"