The Disturbing Charm

by Berta Ruck

  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 herson 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, floodedwith moonlight; white light that showed up, clearer than a star-shell,the figure of Mr. Awdas, the young wounded flying-officer, sitting boltupright 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 whichhad 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 wildstare met the woman's face, the woman's white-clad figure bending overhim. "Oh Lord! Sister," he muttered. "It all came again. Oh, Lord! Ithought I was crashing. I----"

  "_It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I wascrashing!----_"]

  Shuddering again, shaking like a leaf, he threw out his hands andgrasped Mrs. Cartwright's arms, his fingers burying themselves in herflesh. "Don't leave me," he sobbed, hoarsely. "For God's sake don'tleave me, Sister!"

  Before Mrs. Cartwright could speak the door of his bedroom was flungopen. There burst in a group of people in night attire, a groupheterogeneous and agitated as on a raid night or at a fire, roused bythe alarm of that sudden scream in the darkness, demanding "Qu'est-cequ'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 perfectadvertisement for Michelin tyres, and Captain Ross, in violently-stripedpyjamas, when she saw the door gently but firmly closing upon all of theinvaders 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 beendrrrriming 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-gownedshoulders, and then the door clicked upon the murmuring, dispersingthrong. Captain Ross, barefoot, turned back to the bed where his friend,utterly unnerved, was shaking as if with fever. His fingers stillgripped the arms that had first been held out to him; his wet foreheadwas now pressed to a woman's shoulder, as if to shut out from his sighta 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 hershoulder, beheld a Captain Ross quite new to her; not merely the finestjudge of women in Europe, but the fine comrade of men. It was with anadmirable mixture of gentleness and matter-of-factness that he spoke,moving as he did so quietly and quickly about the room; closing theshutters, to banish the ghastly radiance of the moon; turning up theyellow, mercifully ordinary lights; finding flask, a tobacco, pipe, andmatches; 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; Ithought we were clear of these attacks. It's this darned moon.... He wasshot down in the moonlight, I heard.... We used to get 'em every weekone time, Mrs. Cartwright; the whole ward pulled up standing, and thegirls on night duty thinking it was blue murder, I guess, the firsttime. 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 upbefore he'd finished hollering," said Captain Ross, with a glance at thespent 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 thewoman beside the bed, "There won't be much sleeping for him or me; butit'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 quickinvoluntary appeal, feeling herself caught back to the times when littleKeith, waking in fright, had clutched her, and cried: "_Don't go Mums! Iwant you to stay with me!_"

  "I'm not going," she said, just as she had said then. She let herselfslip 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 CaptainRoss with a nod. He glanced about, picked up the thick dressing-gownthat 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 wantanything, just call, ever so softly. I shall hear."

  He went out, leaving Mrs. Cartwright to the oddest vigil she had everspent. For the first time she found herself watching through the smallhours in the company of a wounded lad who had come through that Hellwhich is not always left behind on the battlefield. They bring some ofit away with them, too many of these boys! its fiery traces stillimpressed upon mind and brain and nerve, however plucky. Its memorypersists, robbing them of laughter, despoiling them of that dreamlessperfect sleep which is Youth's heritage, making of night a thing to bedreaded.

  So this young airman, who had been shot down in an air duel onemoonlight night last spring, must live it through again and again beforehe might live it away....

  Presently he raised his head. He began to mutter.

  She listened, pitifully, knowing that the lad scarcely knew even yetwhom he was holding--save that it was human, and friendly, and warm. Hescarcely 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 knowwhat splendid fine chaps.... I had to watch.... I was lying ... outthere ... pinned under the wing. They ... they tried to get at me withstretchers--six times they tried ... came across No Man's Land...."

  "Yes; but you were dreaming," she said, in the most soothing tone of herdeep voice. "You just had a bad dream----"

  "No, No! It was what happened," he said hoarsely. "They were trying tobring me in after I'd crashed. Those blighters ... turned a machine-gunon 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 theknown gesture of the flyer who adjusts his crest like cap, then returnedhis clasp to her arm.

  He began again:

  "I ... I never take an Australian's salute in the street withoutremembering ... that!... I had to lie there ... couldn't lift ...finger. Five of them, were stretched out ... killed.... Just for me! MyGod! 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 finestthings a soldier is called to do," interrupted the soldier's widow,
quickly. "Remember that their people would be proud to know how ithappened. They volunteered to save you; took their chance. Think howyour own people would have been proud, Mr. Awdas----"

  "Yes," he muttered, letting her hold his eyes, clinging to her for thestrength that had slipped.

  She repeated, firmly: "When you see Australians in the street, thinkonly 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 quitefed-up in the hospital.... I couldn't help it.... Falling, falling--oh,it's beastly.... So weird, too.... You wouldn't think.... Well, Icouldn't _take_ more than about two and a half minutes to crash, couldI?"

  "I suppose not," she said, forcing herself to be as matter-of-fact asCaptain 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 seemedto have time to think ... no end of things. I yelled out to myobserver.... That's why I always shout in those dreams of mine.... I wasfalling, falling; and calling out to my observer, trying to make himhear. 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 uptogether over the Boche lines, I remember his saying to me: 'Now, whenyou 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 flowedfrom her caught him in some restoring current. His voice grew lessstrained with every sentence.

  "It's--it's a funny thing how fond one gets of one's observer; the manone's always with. Each of you depending so much on the other, Isuppose; being for it together, always together. You've no idea whatpals 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, thatseemed to fill this room of a sleeping, silent French hotel, and hearingalso in her heart that immortal plaint of the young fellow-soldiermourning down the ages--"_I am distressed for thee, my brotherJonathan...._"

  "D'you know, I sometimes think there can be nothing else in the world asgood as just friendship. To be absolute friends with some other fellow,"young Awdas said presently; shyly, but earnestly looking into thewoman-face so near him. Without speaking a word, Mrs Cartwright wasencouraging him to talk on and on. Yes; let him talk--of Friendship orthe Differential Calculus, if he liked; anything, rather than let him behaunted again by this useless, this unreasoning Remorse that he had beenthe 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 chapmeans, or doesn't mean. Not minding if he's ratty sometimes; being rattyyourself if you want to, and going off on your own, knowing it'll be allright whenever you come back. Good times or rotten times, always withhim. Not seeing each other for ages, perhaps. Then finding him just thesame. Caring for all the things you're keenest about; barring the samethings. 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 lessto you, but not the same."

  "A girl would never be more to me," said young Awdas, and now his voicesounded almost normal. He broke off suddenly, and turned to herprotestingly. "Mrs. Cartwright, I don't know what you must think of me.Keeping you up like this----Good Lord! it's three o'clock. Sittingthere, 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 onnight-duty. You called me 'Sister' yourself when I came in. I am goingto be 'Sister' for once."

  "You're too good," he said, with a sigh of obvious relief that she wasnot 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 justfinished working when you called out. I shall stay"--she tucked thedressing-gown a little more closely about her--"and----No, I won't havea cigarette. I'll light one for you, however. And here's your drink, andI shall just stay and talk to you until you go to sleep."

  "Too good," he said again, taking the cigarette from her hand and givingher a shyly grateful glance. "I've been bucking no end--I don't knowwhy--I don't generally talk a lot."

  She knew it; knew also that the distraught boy would not have talked toa man as he had let himself babble, almost hysterically, to her. (It isonly women, the so-called talkative sex, who could give statistics ofhow much men talk, and of what they will talk, upon occasion!) Up tothat night, he had not exchanged a dozen sentences with her since theyhad been staying at the hotel. That same evening, when Mrs. Cartwrightand his friend Ross had chipped each other in the _salon_ over her"Manual of Courtship," had been the first occasion that Awdas had foundhimself sitting next to this tall countrywoman of his.

  But now he turned his eyes upon her as if she were all that is meant bythe word Home.

  These wakeful, solitary, strange hours had made them friends such as twoyears of ordinary companionship could not have seen them. Both knew thatnever 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 theblue eyes. He lifted that small head, set so eagle-wise upon the wideshoulders, breathed more deeply; and she knew that it was she who hadrestored him, this fallen cloud-sweeper. Fancifully she thought of hisdaring job as something still verging on the super-human; after all,these flying lads, with their freedom of one element more, are thehalf-gods of our time. She thought of that myth of the other half-godAntaeus, who, to gain fresh life, must draw it from the touch of earth;and she remembered that Woman (that last creature to be civilized) isstill generations nearer than man to the healing soil. Yes; she hadhealed him.

  Without showing him that she did so, she studied his face, with its softfruit-like oval that does not survive the first quarter of a century.Twenty-two! He seemed, as most young soldiers do nowadays, more than hisage. Yet in some ways he looked younger.

  After a puff or two of cigarette-smoke had risen into the air, she askedgently, "Why did you say, just now, that a girl could never mean more toyou than friendship?"

  He said simply, "I don't know. Perhaps it is because I don't really knowany 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 onehasn't any sisters. I haven't any; there were just three of us; me, andmy brother in the Navy, and the Nipper--the youngest. (Cadet Corps.) Mypeople 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 thepaddock. We had quite a decent time. But there were no girls in thehouse."

  Mrs. Cartwright suggested "Other people's sisters?"

  "Not often. My mother used to try and get girls to stay with hersometimes, but----" He moved his wide shoulders. "It was rather awash-out. When there aren't other girls to come for, you know. There's asort of feeling of their having been dragged in. Everybody's shy andstiff. At least, they were; the girls who came. I suppose that's why Ihaven't thought much of girls. They always seemed a nuisance, andself-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, gavethanks inwardly that her Keith and Reggie possessed countlessgirl-cousins who
were to them as sisters; creatures dispossessed ofglamour, but a channel into those fields where glamour ripens. Then shesaid, softly, to this other boy: "But when you went away from Home, whenyou came up to Town, and--oh, all that sort of thing, like other youngmen of your age, surely you met plenty of girls who were--well! Easyenough to talk to?"

  He nodded slightly. "Oh, yes; one met those. But----" There crept overhis face the look that some think is more often to be seen in these daysof Emancipation than in more guarded times; the scrutiny of the youngman who is at least as fastidious in his love affairs as the youngwoman. "They weren't very amusing either--or, probably, I wasn't--tothem. Of course, one knows lots of top-hole fellows who were alwaysabout with girls. Permanent address: 'Stagedoor, Frivolity,' sort ofthing. 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 onthe pillow.

  Mrs. Cartwright, watching it, knew suddenly and certainly that--but forhis own mother and his nurses at that hospital--she was the first womanwho had seen it thus.

  Then she could hardly check the smile that rose to her lips; for therewas stealing over his face a look that made it not merely boyish, butlittle-boyish. A film was blurring those keen blue eyes; he opened themmore widely, precisely as she had seen the eyes of little Keith openwidely, obstinately, against her breast when he was dropping with thesleep that he defied. Young Awdas, she saw, was fighting down awell-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 andread until it's time to get up."

  "Don't do that," she said. "I suppose you wouldn't try and go to sleepfor 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 hischeeks, 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 thesleeper, she sat on, watching that peaceful face, that broad chestheaving rhythmically. She sat, watching him; or letting her glance takein the room with his neat, soldier-like appointments; his folding-casefor brushes and shaving-kit, his one photograph (obviously of hismother) in a celluloid glazed frame, his leather writing-case, with hisname and the name of his Corps printed in ink on the cover. Her eyesupturned to him, as she sat--thinking ... thinking....

  It was nearly five o'clock when the door opened cautiously, and CaptainRoss, that adequate campaigner, entered, with a Service dressing-gownover his zebra-stripes, and carrying two steaming cups ofexcellently-made tea. His glance fell upon Jack Awdas, slumbering likea child. Mrs. Cartwright, rather cramped, rather chilled, and ratherdrawn in the face between her straight-falling plaits of hair, was stillsitting there like a statue, in a white robe with gold patterns, fromthe folds of which there peeped an end of narrow pink ribbon--the ribbonwhich held, hidden at her breast, and all unsuspected, a Charm.