The Disturbing Charm

by Berta Ruck

  CHAPTER VII

  THE SPREADING OF THE CHARM

  "When England needs The sons she breeds, And there's fighting to be done, No matter where, You will find him _there_, The Man behind the Gun.... It's Bill, Bill, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy, Billy Brown, Of Putney, Piccadilly, Camden Town; Why! It's Mister---- Bill, Billy Brown---- Of London!"

  Fragson's Song.

  The following morning brought a small disappointment to that littleplotter for the commonweal, Olwen Howel-Jones.

  No Mrs. Cartwright at _dejeuner_!

  Olwen (knowing nothing of that vigil of the night before, or of theslumber into which the woman, drained of vitality, had dropped as soonas she returned to her room) imagined her working through luncheon-time.

  Too bad! For now it must be postponed, the sight of how that Charm,given to the writer, would affect Professor Howel-Jones. It could notbegin at once then, that Darby-and-Joan pairing-off that so suitablematch which little Olwen had planned. What a pity! Still it was not putoff for long, she cheerfully hoped.

  The other wearer of the Charm was also absent from the midday gatheringin the _salle_, but that was all to the good, Olwen had passed MissWalsh, with her hair done in that new way! speeding off as excitedly asan Early Victorian to her first dance; speeding down to the pier, wherethe motor-boat awaited her, with Sergeant Tronchet. Madame Leroux hadput up a basket of provisions for them, and they were going to make apicnic of their excursion across the lagoon.

  Captain Ross came in to lunch with his friend Mr. Awdas, but so latethat the two young men crossed the path of Olwen and her Uncle (who hadfinished their meal early) in the hall. The girl had paused here for amoment to slip into the Red Cross collection-box that hundred-franc notewhich had been bestowed upon her yesterday by Miss Walsh.

  Captain Ross noticed her action.

  "You're making a mistake, Miss Howel-Jones," he said banteringly, andsmiled as he might have smiled at one of the little pigtailed daughtersof the manageress. "That's not the box you put ten centimes into and gettwo sticks of candy."

  Olwen, half in delight that he had spoken to her, half in resentmentthat it was in the tone he might have used to a child, raised herpointed chin on its white childish neck, looked down under her lids, anddemanded, with what she considered great stateliness, "Who wants_candy_?"

  "All little girls, I guess," returned Captain Ross, his robin's eyestwinkling, his perfect teeth flashing in another teasing smile. Olwen,glancing under those dropped lids at this somewhat showy vision ofblack-and-white-and-brown-and-scarlet-and-khaki, felt that she would diefor him.

  There was a magic about him, she thought; even if he were dictatorial orteasing, or seemed to think rather a lot of himself--a magic! At thesame instant she remembered that, yes! There was a secret magic abouther too, now. A magic that had proved itself unmistakably once; a Charmthat she herself was wearing. Confidence seemed to rush, in a warmingflood, about her heart.

  Quite defiantly she tilted her black head, and looking straight overCaptain Ross's shoulder, she laughed, for pure joy of her secret.

  "_You_ don't know everything about girls!" she told the finest judge ofwomen in Europe.

  And before the young Staff-Officer could retort, before he could evenopen his eyes over the temerity of this chit, this schoolgirl, who hadsaid this thing to him (_Him!_), those little French boots of hers hadskipped away, carrying her upstairs towards the study where she musttype out the notes which she had taken down for her Uncle in shorthandthat morning. Those boots fitted the chit's ankles like a coat of blackpaint, he noticed as he looked after her, too amused to be annoyed, ofcourse. The piece of Impertinence----! Awfully neat.... Theydisappeared, the little twinkling heels. He went on to join Jack Awdasat table.

  Olwen, at an angle in the corridor a floor higher, ran into the young_femme-de-chambre_ for that floor, carrying over her arm a khaki tunic.

  They stopped to smile and to exchange "_bonjours_," these two girls muchof an age and much of a race, for Marie came from Brittany, and alreadythe Professor and his niece had amused themselves by finding out howmany Welsh words the Breton maid could understand; the simple wordswhich were the same in her own tongue.

  "I come from cleaning the buttons of the English monsieur, his bettertunic," explained Marie, in French, smiling as she held out the khakicoat.

  "It is not of Monsieur de l'Audace?" asked Olwen.

  "No, Mademoiselle. Of the other English officer, young, young, who doesnot talk French too well; Lieutenant Brrrrrrown," returned Marie. "CanMademoiselle tell me what decoration is that he has?" Olwen gave a lookat it.

  "It is the ribbon of the Military Cross--it's like your Croix deGuerre," she said. "I didn't notice that he'd got that."

  "He" was the pink-faced New Army officer of whom Mrs. Cartwright hadspoken to her.

  She remembered, in a flash, that it was he for whom she had intendedthat fourth share of the Charm, still in the pocket of the serge dressthat she wore. She had not yet made up any plan as to how she was topress the Charm upon him. The plan came to her then and there, as shestood in that corridor.

  "Hold Marie," she said, suddenly. "I have a _porte-bonheur_ for thisofficer." She took out the sachet. "Say nothing to Monsieur," sheimpressed it upon the little maid, all smiles and delight to be includedin a secret. "I am going to hide it in his coat."

  And, taking hold of the coat, she slipped the sachet full of theenchanted powder into the slit-like pocket at the waist where men keeptickets.

  "There!... Probably Monsieur will not find it; but all the better. Itwon't matter, even if he does not know it is there."

  The Breton maid nodded. "A _sachet a preservation_ then? I know them. Wehave them also, Mademoiselle. It is to avert all danger from the soldierwho is to wear it, is it not?"

  "No. Not precisely that," said the young Welsh girl. "It is to bring tohim--well, Happiness of the best."

  "Love, then. Ah, _la la_! I doubted myself of that!" declared the young_bonne_, bursting into ripples of laughter. "I go now to take the coatto Monsieur, who does not suspect. But no, Mademoiselle, I will saynothing to him of this; nothing, nothing, nothing at all!"

  Olwen thought, as she went on: "Now Marie probably imagines that I am inlove with this dreadfully uninteresting little Mr. Brown, and want toattract him to being in love with me! When I've never spoken to him inmy life, or even seen what he's like when he's close to one!"

  But that afternoon she both saw and spoke to this Mr. Brown.

  They were returning, she and her Uncle, from one of those wanderingswhich the Professor loved to take out westwards from the hotel. For acouple of miles they had tramped along the hard sands at the foot of thegreat dunes wherein pine-trees were buried up to their lower boughs;then, leaving the sands, they had scrambled up the sandhills into thepine-forest that bordered them.

  Its fragrant aisles stretched for miles bisected by paths, spread witha rich terra-cotta carpet of pine-needles. Already the Professor hadslipped his pipe back into his pocket, for the notice "_Defense afumer_" appeared again and again tacked up on the trunks of the greatpines that made of those miles a perfect factory of turpentine.

  With their faces towards home, they caught sight through the pines of afigure that repeated for an instant the effect of the pine-trunksthemselves, brown-clad, long-lined, and slender. It stooped at the footof a tree.

  "My dear lady," said the Professor, taking off his hat to the figure,which was that of Mrs. Cartwright, "you look like Daphne, being changedinto a pine rather than a laurel."

  Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she rose to her feet. She had been puttinginto position a fallen tin cup, shaped like a flower-pot, and left tocatch the resin as it oozed stickily from the trunk. Most of the firs inthis part of the forest had a tin blade, that had scored them down, leftplunged into the bark.

  "Delightful, to be able to turn into any sort of plant, rather than bebored by
the wrong man," remarked Mrs. Cartwright lightly, dusting herhands.

  "What a pull for those nymphs! Must have made it worth while to live ina world where there was no tea. I am ready for mine, though----"

  The three went on homewards together, the Professor walking betweenOlwen and the writer, who found herself once more admiring his Druidichead and still-active frame. In precisely the same spirit she would haveadmired some stately, ivy-grown keep that had once echoed to the shoutsof archers; she was scarcely the type of woman who becomes an "old man'sdarling----"

  But little Olwen was busily thinking: "Now! I do believe the Charm hasbegun to work. Didn't Uncle say she was like Daphne?--and doesn't shereally look younger today? It's _begun_! And see how she's smiling athim and talking to him about Anatole France.... But I wish they'd leaveoff about books and begin about themselves. I wish I could run on andleave them to come home together (but they both walk as fast as I do anyday, bother them!). If only we could meet somebody that I could fallbehind with, and let Mrs. Cartwright have Uncle all to herself----"

  This wish was fulfilled at a turn in the path where there was a clearingin the symmetrically spaced pines. Three paths converged towards a sortof oasis of heather and undergrowth, surrounding a hut of untrimmedpine-branches. Huge blackberry runners, purple and green, flungthemselves before the door of it. And there stood, fixedly regarding theplace, a boyish figure in khaki with an ultra-floppy cap at a rakishangle on his head.

  "Are you thinking of taking that house, Mr. Brown?" Mrs. Cartwrightasked him laughingly, as they came up.

  Mr. Brown gave quite a jump before he turned and saluted the party.

  Up to now they had known this young man as one very fond of his food,always sitting on the back of his neck in the most comfortable chair hecould find, eternally smoking cigarettes, and evidently bent on gettinghis money's worth out of the hotel. But it was a different young manwho now turned his pink face and pop-eyes on them. They'd evidentlyinterrupted him in thinking over something; thinking hard.

  He echoed Mrs. Cartwright's last words. "Thinking of taking that hut?"he repeated, in a voice that seemed to bring a breath of crowded A B Cshops, of Tube-lifts and cheerful workaday London generally into thatstately French glade. "Well, d'you know, that's a wheeze. It's a dashedgood idea. I was just that moment thinking that something would have tobe done!"

  "What about?" asked Mrs. Cartwright, as the party halted.

  "Why, about everything, the whole blooming thing," returned Mr. Brown,pushing his floppy cap to the back of his head. "This is just aboutbeating me, I give you _my_ word. Look at me, what am _I_ doing here?"

  Mrs. Cartwright said: "Evidently you're having a look at your newhouse?"

  He said: "I don't mean here this minute, in this Epping Forest sort ofshow. I mean _here_!"--he spread out his hands as if to take in thewhole of Western France. "Of course, they told me I'd got to go topine-woods when they gave me three months, and a cavalry fellow, atSister Agnes's, told me here was better than Surrey, and gave me theaddress, and it seemed quite natural to take it and think--Blow theexpense. But I wish--I tell you what I wish."

  He dropped his voice confidentially.

  "I wish this blessed War was over, and me riding in a third-classcarriage again!"

  Before any one could speak, he went on with his candid and good-humouredgrouse.

  "I've got to go first, with these colonels and company promotors, andpeople. The trouble is, I like it. Too dashed well I've got to like it.I never used to think of all these things coming to me when I wasserving behind the counter; nor the customers neither, I'll bet. And nownothing but the tip-toppest hotel's good enough for me, and me posted inCox's 'star' department. R. D., refer to drawer! Got it in my pocketnow; show it to you. I could have sworn I'd got the money, you know.Still, here's the cheque--"

  He said it with a disarming and engaging honesty, as if the whole storymight be read anyhow in his pink, snub-nosed, and ordinary face. Mrs.Cartwright and the Professor found it impossible to help liking him ashe stood there, the little Briton who gave no further thought to thetense horrors of Suvla Bay, where he had won his Cross, but whoconfessed his liking for the best hotels. But as for Olwen, she waswatching him anxiously; for his hand had gone to the pocket where sheherself had hidden that "_porte bonheur_." He fumbled. At that momenthis finger and thumb must have encountered it....

  "No--what's this?--that's not the cheque--must be in my case," he wenton, taking the hand out of the pocket. (Olwen breathed again.) "Well,now something's got to be done. They'll wait at the hotel, I daresay, ifI don't leave this place altogether. And I like this place." He lookedround the empty hut again, as if he half expected to see a Willesdenestate agent's name round the corner. "Not half a bad idea of yours,Mrs. C. I might send for some camp-kit; sleep here--do the picnictouch----"

  For a few moments they stood, discussing forest regulations and to whomthe would-be camper-out must apply. Then, four abreast, they turned togo on, the sea-breeze meeting them.

  "Mind the barbed wire," exclaimed Mr. Brown, flipping with his cane atone of those giant brambles. "It's caught your skirt," to Olwen. "Allowme."

  He bent down and unfastened the hook-like thorns from her frock. Thiskept the two behind the Professor and Mrs. Cartwright, whereat theinnocent Olwen rejoiced. She could not guess that not only did theProfessor seem at least as old to Mrs. Cartwright as he did to his ownniece, but that the Professor himself, though he found her a sympatheticlistener, could never at any age have wished to make love to this lady.For he was a "type"-lover. To him any woman who was not tiny andblack-haired (as Olwen's own mother had been) was only, to quote CaptainRoss, "half a woman...."

  But they were talking together, easily, interestedly, as they walkedahead through the wood. And even though the subject might only be ofCeltic Folk-lore, Olwen felt already that she saw her wish coming topass before her eyes.

  She turned to her other experiment with the Charm.

  Mr. Brown had slipped his fingers again into the pocket into which hehad first hunted for his dishonoured cheque. And this time he broughtout the hidden sachet.

  He stared at the small mauve object.

  "Now what the dickens is this?" he demanded, genially bewildered."Don't remember where this came from----"

  Olwen, inwardly terrified lest the young man might in his ignorance tossthe precious thing into the arbutus bushes, said with outwardcarelessness, "It looks like a mascot; better not lose it."

  "Looks more like the little square bags they used to fasten on to theladies' covered coathangers in the Haberdashery. With scent inside 'em.I've no use for perfumery----"

  Olwen was now sure he meant to throw this gift of the gods away. With ahasty gesture she snatched it out of the young man's hand.

  "It is a mascot; I've seen others like them!" she told him, as they camein sight of the hotel. On the piazza Captain Ross was smoking, with hisfriend, the aviator; Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had joined them.

  Olwen realized that Captain Ross was also staring down on to thepine-bordered road, at herself and young Mr. Brown, who had stoppedshort, and was still looking at what she held, the treasure that he haddiscovered in his pocket.

  "But how did it get in there?" he demanded.

  "Somebody might have slipped it in without your knowing. But anyhow,"said Olwen, taking a resolution, "_I'm_ going to slip it back for younow, to bring you luck!" And she did slip it back into the khaki pocket."There! You know where it's come from this time. You'll keep it there,won't you?"

  "Anything to oblige," laughed Mr. Brown, and the two young people walkedon to join the party on the piazza, who were waiting for them.

  Olwen thought, "It's rather annoying that he's going to leave the hotel,and live in a hut like the Wild Man of the Woods _just_ when I want towatch how the Charm will work with him! But if it _does_ work, that'sthe main thing, after all."

  She added aloud, looking into the pink and puggy face that had outstaredDanger and was now staring at
Bankruptcy, "Take care of it, won't you?You won't throw it away or let it get lost or anything?"

  "Not for all the Eau in Cologne!" Mr. Brown assured her with amock-flourish as they ran up the piazza steps together.

  Those robin-like eyes of Captain Ross were fixed very watchfuly uponthis young Mr. Brown as he appeared, laughing and chatting as if he werequite old friends with the Professor's niece. Then the young Staffofficer looked from him to her.

  For a girl who wasn't bland, she was (he thought again) quite neat....

  The chit didn't look at him....

  And what (Captain Ross wondered) was that keep-sake that she was handingto that fellow?