The Disturbing Charm

by Berta Ruck

  Produced by Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan and the OnlineDistributed 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 Yearsfor Rachel," etc.

  ILLUSTRATED BY EDWARD C. CASWELL

 

  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

  _Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen'sfeet._]

  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 heartexclaimed, "Away from him!"

  And there was nothing to tell them what it was, the Sachet of theDisturbing 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 typewrittenletter, addressed to him, with the rest of his large mail, at the hotelin Western France where he was staying in the fourth autumn of the Warwith his young niece and secretary. He smiled as he came to the lastwords. "Had he ever wondered!" How many nights of his youth had beenwasted in stormily "wondering----?" Strangers who write to celebritiesdo 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 oldwhite head. He had been on the point of tossing the letter into thewaste-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 whenhe had worn his Rugby International cap with more pride than he now worehis foreign degrees. That memory set him staring out of the bigbalconied window of his room, over the wide French lagoon, past thebarrier of sandhills with their pointing phare, to where, miles away,the irregular white line of the Atlantic rollers crashed and spouted onthe reefs. They had been crashing out those thunderous questions to thesands on his football days, they would be tossing their appeals to thesky 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, thegirl he had never married, the girl who had passed him over for hisbrother the sea-captain, and who had become the mother of Olwen, hisniece. Olwen would be coming in a few minutes to straighten and sort allthose drifts of paper on the roomy work-table which no hand but hers, inthe 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 hisnotes for the chapter on "Edible Fungi."

  "Mad--sentimental mad!" he commented. "Most lunatics think themselvesinventors, that's why most inventors are considered lunatics." He drewup a chair and began making hay of the papers before him, in search ofthe other file of notes.

  The large room which the Professor had had cleared of the bed and mostof the other furniture was full of air and sunshine and of that polishedcleanliness which few English rooms achieve. White walls and parquetfloor shone like mirrors, mirrors like diamonds; the glass of the openwindows was clear as the morning air that lay between the hotel and thepine
-forest on the one side, the lagoon on the other. The resinous sighof the pines mingled with the warm, lung-lifting breath of the sea. Itwas a glorious morning--too glorious for work indoors....

  Professor Howel-Jones looked hard at his notes, but for once he scarcelysaw them. He knew that the letter he had just read was the work of asentimental lunatic, but for all that it had set a string vibrating. Asthe old man sat there, his brown eyes abstracted under the thatch ofhair as white as seeding clematis, he looked like some clean-shavenmodern 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 offluff."

  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 forlife to the affection that is true as steel. (Dreadful for both ofthem!)

  Also the young men who treat Love as a cross between a meal and amusic-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 ofcharm 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 Blunderof the mis-mating of the world.

  * * * * *

  No doubt it was all crystallized for him in one tender image; Olwen'sdead mother, the girl he should have married. He sighed and smiled.

  "Pity there's no putting things right, as that lunatic suggests," hethought. "There would be an invention worth boasting about! Wirelesswouldn'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 voicesasked, "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 softnessin a skimpy one-piece frock. A pale, three-cornered morsel of a face setoff by sleek hair as black as her little French boots. Large eyes thatseemed sometimes brown, sometimes grey; a mouth tremulous, but vivid asa red carnation--such was Olwen. She brought a ripple of Youth into thatbare temple of Science that was her uncle's study. Something else shebrought--a breath of tension, of impatience. A man would have passed itover; not so a woman. Already one woman in the hotel had said toherself, "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 theanswer to her question flame suddenly into the young girl's face as shestepped up to the table by the window. Under the balcony there was asound of footsteps. Olwen pushed aside a great jar full of arbutus thatstood 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 frombelow the balcony. He caught a glimpse of the two wounded Britishofficers swinging off towards the _plage_. He caught the gleam ofscarlet on khaki; heard a snatch of the rather husky boyish laughter ofone of them; a scrap talk of the other. In a resonant voice with thatparticularly dominant form of accent, Scots with a dash of Canadian,there floated up through the clear morning air this somewhat arrestedannouncement:

  "I'm the finest judge of women in Europe."

  This the Professor caught, vaguely. What he did not catch was thesudden, still alertness into which there seemed to spring the whole bodyof the girl behind him. She was "aware" from head to foot; her whitethroat seemed to stretch, her whole being to strain; listening. Thefootsteps passed, the husky charming laugh of the one, the loudconfident voice of the other.... Life relaxed again in Olwen;mechanically her hands began sorting papers. No; the Professor had notnoticed, her male relatives being avowedly the worst observers of agirl's psychology ... even had he seen, he probably would not haveguessed which of the two young men who had gone by was responsible forthat sudden transitory illumination of his niece's face; whether it wasthe 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; shetossed up her head with a rather forced sprightliness, and laughed.

  "_What_ a mess! Worse than ever, and I'd put everything so beautifullytidy last night! You _are_ dreadful!"

  "Never mind, Olwen _fach_," he said, with a hand on her shoulder. "Therewon't be much work done this morning. I'm going into the woods. Justhand me my specimen-case ... ah, here. And file the June numbers of thatDanish magazine--where on earth did I put 'em?--ah, there. Then thereare a couple of letters to copy into the book, and that's all. You cancome 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 apaper weight, one of the enormous pine-cones that he had picked up inthe forest. Then he slung on his specimen-case, took up his indentedgrey hat, smiled and nodded to the girlish figure at the table, and wentout.

  Olwen, left alone, stretched her arms over her head. "_Oh!_" she sighed,desperately. She moved the jar of arbutus into place again; picked out aspray, dark-leafed, berried with scarlet and orange, tried it againstthe dull serge of her frock. Then she tilted her chair back so that shecould just see herself in one of the gilt-framed mirrors. It showed hera 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 worklistlessly 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 aletter 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 tothe little packet that had been enclosed in it. Then she turned to theletter 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 ifit had been turpinite, or something else capable of blowing her outthrough the window and past the long wooden pier, across the sparkling_Baissin_, over the sandhills with their lighthouse and into the Bay ofBiscay where those rollers foamed and roared....

  The old Scientist had said "Madness!" This girl longed to accept everyword of it; partly, perhaps, because every loving woman secretlybelieves there must be some Power of this kind, could she but findit--the power to compel the love she covets. Here it was.

  Hastily she broke the wrapping; it disclosed an inner packet and apaper. In small characters there was written on the paper:

  DIRECTIONS FOR USE.

  "This charm must b
e 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 pleasantmusky scent that rose from it.

  "_Oh!..._" she breathed.... Were those steps outside the passage?... Shesprang up.... Swiftly, almost guiltily, she dragged down the low collarof her frock; she thrust the packet and paper into her bosom. Theycrackled against the soft mauve ribbons of her underbodice.

  "Supposing I'd _got_ it!" she thought, and her whole heart lifted. Shepressed her hands to her breast.

  Supposing that under her own small and fevered hands (dimpled, faintlystained from the carbon of her typewriter) she held it, that recipe forsetting right the Blunder of the world! Ah, if she'd got hold of itreally, the Love-germ, the microbe of mischief and delight!

  The Disturbing Charm itself!

  _Then_ what would come of it?