by Berta Ruck
CHAPTER XIII
WILD-FIRE AND THE CHARM
"A light that shifts, a glare that drifts, Rekindling thus and thus."
Kipling.
A little earlier, on that same evening, the disturbing Charm had set towork in other directions.
Little Mr. Brown, who had taken his dinner as usual at the hotel, waslingering on the terrace on the other side of the building from thepiazza. He was smoking a cigarette, which the "_Defense_" notices wouldforbid him at every turn on the forest; but, apart from this, it was notto be wondered at that the gregarious little Londoner was in no hurry toget back to that sylvan shanty of his. The contrast, after that evening,would have been as great as that between a chandeliered ballroom and acave.
Oh, the loneliness of that hut at night! His cheerful urbansoul got fairly fed-up, as he would express it, with all thatwind-sighing-in-the-pine-tops business. Of course, as he'd have toldyou, the little old hut was good enough for lolling outside of with abook, or for writing his letters in of a morning. If only they'd allowhim to smoke there he would be quite fond of the dashed little dug-outby now, but he didn't pretend to find it a very attractive spot of anevening.
Even of an evening, perhaps, it wouldn't have been so dusty if he'd hadsomebody with him. With his cigarette between his teeth he found himselfhumming a song of seven years back:
"It's all right if there's a girl there, That's the place where I'd like----"
At that moment Olwen Howel-Jones, her slim shape buried in a bigdriving-coat, appeared upon the terrace.
He approached her joyously.
"Going for a little stroll round the houses, Miss Olwen?"
Olwen shrank within herself. She did not want any more of the obviousadmiration of this quite nice boy; it had dismayed her to find that inshooting at a star (Captain Ross) she had hit a blackberry-bush (littleMr. Brown). After that declaration of his in the wood she had feltalmost inclined to tear that misleading Charm she wore from its ribbonand to toss it down the wind into the _Baissin_! However, she could notbe rude to him just because he didn't happen to be somebody else.Hesitatingly she replied that she had thought of going for a little walkwith Mrs. Cartwright, who seemed to have disappeared.
(She, as we know, was at the moment pacing the sands beside Jack Awdas.)
"Ah, you're at a loose end, then, are you," returned Mr. Brown,cheerfully. "Well, if I might have the pleasure----?"
Before Olwen could either grant or refuse "the pleasure," there steppedout on to the terrace Captain Ross, who with a note of some purpose inhis "good evening," took up his position on the other side of the girl.
Now, all through that thrilling day, something (heard quite at thebeginning of it) had been humming in Olwen's heart like a wind-harp thatresponds to every passing breath. It was that something let fall byMadame Leroux, and it had tossed Olwen far too high up into the rosyclouds to take more than a quite superficial notice of the subsequentevents of that rousing day. She had helped Miss Walsh, had listened andwatched with Mrs. Cartwright, had drunk healths--but all the time shehad been secretly hearing, over and over again, one lightly-utteredremark.
"_Monsieur le Capitaine, he with one arm, who admires Mademoisellealready----_"
Madame had thought that! There must be truth in it. The Charm wasworking and not only in the wrong direction. It was true that CaptainRoss had talked to Olwen as if she were a little girl; he had avoidedher in the forest when he was carrying that table-top for Mr. Brown, andhe had blackened this evening for her by taking not the smallest noticeof her at dinner; he hadn't even come up to touch his glass to hers whenthe toast had been proposed to the next engaged person for that hotel.To set off against all this, Madame Leroux (that piercingly acuteFrenchwoman) had given it as her opinion that he admired Mademoiselle.
Now he joined her and Mr. Brown on the terrace.
His coming had a curious effect. Olwen became filled with apparentanimation and delight in the company of little Mr. Brown. This was notdeliberate coquetry, but pure instinct. The kindest-hearted girl in theworld, the most kernel-sweet maid never hesitates before one form offeminine cruelty--_to make use of the admirer for whom she does not carein order to spur the man she loves_. It is not an admirable instinct.But it is a form of self-preservation in Woman, for which Man alone isresponsible....
Perhaps it is not fair to allege that every man in his heart is a dog inthe manger, hating to see his fellow-men smiled upon by a pretty girl?Perhaps it's not true that his interest in the girl is awakened when hesees her interested in another? No! Perhaps it's a libellous old theorythat simply doesn't hold water as a rule.
Only, what myriads of exceptions it does take to prove that rule!
In her happiest voice Olwen, standing between the two men, began talkingto Mr. Brown. "I do think that hut of yours must be a delightful placeto live in! No cleaning! No sweeping! and you've only to put out yourhand to get those lovely blackberries for breakfast----"
Captain Ross, leaning on the balustrade, was seen to hump his back alittle.
"Can't say I fancy blackberries as a breakfast myself, but I daresayit'll come to that," grumbled Mr. Brown, cheerily. "Blackberries, and'bright _water is my drink from the crystal spring_.' Can you makeanything out of this tangle about allowances, Ross?"
Captain Ross was apparently _not_ the finest judge of pay-warrants inEurope. A short "nope" came from over his humped shoulder. Olwen noticedthat his one hand was resting on his left-side-jacket-pocket, thatappeared to be bulging with something he had slipped into it.
"Dashed if I can make 'em out," said Mr. Brown, pleasantly. "Accordingto my reckoning, Miss Olwen, there was my regimental pay for July,rations and lodgings for August, and they'll be in arrears forSeptember--and no hospital stoppages.... Cox's do make mistakes; askanybody. Anybody!"
Olwen agreed that Cox's did make mistakes. Honeyed sympathy informed hertone as she said so.
"Well, that's just that," Mr. Brown concluded, beaming upon her. "But,as I was just asking you, what about a turn on the prom. in themoonlight?"
Here the hump of Captain Ross's square shoulders suddenly straightenedout.
He took his hand away from the packet in his pocket, gave a hitch to hisbelt, then, turning to Olwen, and in the most matter-of-fact voiceimaginable, he told the fib that took her breath away.
"I guess Miss Howel-Jones is engaged to me for this dance. Isn't thatso, Miss Howel-Jones?"
"Dance? But----" gasped little Olwen, stupefied. "Nobody is dancing!"
"Then I guess we'll have to sit it out together on the old cannon orsomewhairrr," said Captain Ross, coolly. "Shall you be all right withoutanything on your head?"
Now if Captain Ross expected that upon this hint Mr. Brown would retirein good order to his hut, there to brood upon allowances for the rest ofthe evening, he was no very fine judge of subalterns in the London RifleBrigade.
Mr. Brown, M.C., stood firm. "Look here, Ross----" he was beginning,when another voice, a deep, genial, elderly voice, was heard behind theshutters of the window through which Captain Ross had come out upon theterrace.
The voice enquired, "Has anybody seen my niece?"
Little Olwen jumped.
"Oh, it's my Uncle. Do open the shutters, Uncle! I'm out here, with Mr.Brown and Captain Ross," explained Olwen, hurriedly. "It's--it's ever soearly, you know! We were all just thinking of going for a littlewalk----"
"No; I've got it," put in the unquenchable Mr. Brown. "What about a pullon the lagoon, to look at the phosphorescence? You too, Ross," he added,hospitably; guessing that Professor Howel-Jones was of an age that mightallow its young nieces to go for moonlight rows in boats on lakes withtwo young men, but scarcely with one. "I saw a skiff drawn up by thejetty. You don't mind, Professor, do you?"
"At this hour?" demurred the Professor, looking out into the light thatmade of his massive old head the summit of Mynedd Mawr in a snowyDecember. "For you to take your death of cold, Olwen _fach_, in thenight air?"
Little Olwen, pulling up her storm-collar, murmured appealingly aboveit. "Oh, _darling_! I shall be as warm as warm! Do let me go."
She did not know that in her coaxing she was helped by a girl long dead.It was to a certain note in the voice that she had from her mother thatthe Professor ceded now.
With a little nod he said, "Very well," and all but added "Mary." "Verywell, Olwen _fach_. I trust you gentlemen not to keep her out long. Iwish you a pleasant row; good night to you, good night!" And he went in.
"Come on; let's make a dash for it," said young Brown.
He led the way; followed by Olwen and Captain Ross, the latter in aworse temper than he had been in since he left the hospital.
"Jump in," said Mr. Brown, as they came up to the little empty skiffmoored at the foot of the jetty.
In the skiff little Mr. Brown, cheerfully resigned to doing all thework, took both oars; as he would naively have said, he rather fanciedhimself in a boat. He pushed his shirt-sleeves up above a pair of shortbut neatly-turned forearms, and as he rowed on that foreign lagoonmargined by that French sea-wall, his cheerful chatter was all of theThames above Richmond, of sunny Sundays and of parties on Eel-PieIsland. The two in the stern sat rather silently, letting him talk;Captain Ross sulking as he would never have admitted he sulked, Olwenuttering now and again a little "Ah" of delight at the phosphorescenceon the water.
For it was wonderful, that sea that flamed as they pushed out into it.The boat's keel cut into the shimmer of pale green as into a field ofglow-worms; it lighted up to left and right, blazing, dying down,rekindling fitfully as love itself; raining in spangles from the oars,dripping in jewels from Olwen's fingers as she dipped them over the sideof the boat.
"Trim, Miss Olwen," said Mr. Brown, jerking his bullet head. "A bitnearer to Ross, if you don't mind."
Olwen moved; in the softly rocking boat overbalancing a trifle, shebumped against something hard and angular on the seat close to hercompanion. It felt like a camera or a book.
"Oh," she said, "did I knock you, Captain Ross?"
"No----" he said--and then he brought out of his jacket-pocket thatwhich she had seen bulging it into that square shape on the terrace. Itwas a box covered with coloured satin and tied with gay ribbons.
"Candy," explained Captain Ross, somewhat curtly. He lifted the lid andoffered the chocolates to Olwen, then perforce to Mr. Brown, who stoppedrowing and leant forward, opening his mouth as he had done to theblackberries.
"Pop one in, Miss Olwen, please," he laughed, hands on the oars; but itwas Captain Ross who leant forward in the boat and stuffed the sweetinto his mouth.
"Thanks," said little Mr. Brown, with his mouth full. "Very prettyattention of yours, Ross, I must say, bringing out chocs for me when Ilike 'em."
Captain Ross planted the box on Olwen's lap.
"Don't," she laughed shyly. "I shall eat them all up."
"I guess you're meant to," he said shortly. "I got them for you inBordeaux."
"For _me_?"
"Sure. I wanted to see if you'd eat candies, after what you said theother day to me in the lounge."
Through the soft noises of the water Olwen's soft voice took up "What Isaid?"
"Yes--when you said, 'Who wants candy?'"
"Oh, that," said Olwen, looking down at the green lambent water of whichthe rippling light beat up, soft and magical upon a face whose youngcurves could have dared a harsher radiance. She then looked back acrossthe lagoon towards the big block of the hotel, picked out against thepale sky. She also glanced to her right, at the sand dunes thatbarricaded the waters of the _Baissin_ from those of Biscay Bay, and atthe lighthouse, winking white and red. She looked, in fact, anywhere butat Captain Ross, sitting so close beside her in that boat.
She was bathed in such a rapturous dream of moonlight andphosphorescence and rosy clouds and proximity that she was afraid tolook at him. Fear lest he might read a confession in her eyes did forher what wisdom itself might have prompted.
A sophisticated woman in Simla, for example, had once told Mrs.Cartwright that she found no variation of the Glad Eye more successfulwith some men than the glance withheld. How dogmatically would this havebeen combated by Captain Ross! More than once had this expert in Woman'sWays affirmed, "_If there's a woman on this airrrrth that I've no usefor, it's the woman who looks away when I'm speaking to her. I don'tdawdle talking to a woman who doesn't look at ME all the time----_"
His impulse at that moment was to catch this little chit beside him byher slender shoulders and shake her good and hard. If he'd had two arms,he thought savagely, that's what he'd have wanted to do with 'em. He'dhave loved to do that, then and there, and be hanged to that youngbutter-in of a Brown! Young Brown could be ignored, anyway. Let him getthe boat along; the only pity was that he couldn't row with his back tothe stern.
Captain Ross, turned a little sideways on the cushions of the skiff,attempted, by looking the girl full in the face, to make the girl lookstraight back at him. Not a successful method. Olwen's soft brightglance slid away from him even as the phosphorescence slid away from theoars.
Curtly he demanded, "You _do_ like candy, after all?"
"I don't call it 'candy.' That's American, or Canadian," Olwen said withthat indifference which was her only idea of Love's camouflage. "I say,'chocolate,' or 'sweets.'"
"Is that so?"
"Yes," said Olwen, looking now at the box that was, as she knew, tobecome her most precious and inseparable treasure, her first gift--fromHim!
As she sat holding it, backed by luminous sky and luminous sea, thelittle slim Pandora with her casket, he too looked at it between herhands; touched the bow of it.
"That'll do for a hair-ribbon for you, I guess," he remarked.
All that Olwen could think of to say was "I don't ever wear anyribbons."
"Is that so?" retorted Captain Ross maliciously. "Then what's thatlittle pink tie-thing you've gotten coming out over your coat-collar atthe back?"
Precipitately, Olwen's hand went up to the ribbon that was sewn to herCharm, and that, according to the mysterious and osmotic nature ofribbons, had let an end work up and out again. She tucked it in, withthe eyes of the two young men upon her little dark, ducking head, andthe small hand white in the moonlight.
That moonlight flashed too on the line of Captain Ross's fine teeth. Agreat alteration had suddenly come over his dour mood. He had tworeasons for laughing good-humouredly. One, because he had just given awelcome present (event that always adds to one's good will towards thereceiver), and two, because he had scored off the little chit now, withher ribbon! Ha!
His bad temper had vanished as her pretty confusion appeared. Again shedipped her fingers into that gleaming wake; she shook them, dried themagainst the thick skirt of her coat.
"You've gotten your hands cold now," said Captain Ross, in a pleasedtone, and his left hand caught hold of the fingers of her little chilledright hand as if to verify the fact.
His own was a short and rather stumpy hand, Olwen had often noticed,with beautifully kept nails and with the cushions of the palm developedand muscular from the double share of work that was put upon it;generally she had seen it held half-closed above the watch-bracelet on asturdy wrist. She had never shaken hands with him....
She thought he meant only to touch her fingers and to let them go. Buthe held them. He held the little soft fingers, in the shadow of herloose cuff and under a fold of her thick coat. They lay, firmly tuckedinto that clever magnetic left hand of the soldier who had only that onehand to do everything with.
Olwen, a prisoner enraptured with her chain, sat silent and still. Shethought, "I suppose I ought to take my hand away. Oh, need I? No; Ican't. He's only holding it to warm it, perhaps. And then if I took itaway he might think I thought he thought he was _really_ holding it!"
She sat in the boat that glided through that fairy mere of lambertwaves, shimmering with green. Little shivers seemed to start in herelapsed hand and to run up her arm quick as wildfir
e, and spreading likewildfire through the whole of her slight frame. Yet she was now, as shehad promised the Professor that she would be, "as warm as warm." Onceshe moved her hand a little in its prison, but that was only as a birdmight stir and nestle in its cosy haunt. The man's clasp tightened atrifle, but she had made no effort to take away the hand that he wasdescribing to himself as "a little bit of velvet."
As she assured herself some time afterwards, "Well, how _could_ I? Howcan you possibly take your hand away from a man's who's only got one armto hold you with?"
The boat sped on ... and the thrills that trembled through the girl didnot, surely, leave the man unstirred.
"Well, what about it, Ross?" broke in the making-the-best-of-it voice oflittle Mr. Brown, resting at last on his oars. "What about another ofthose chocolates?"
With one of his quickest movements Captain Ross's hand left the shadowof Olwen's cuff and grabbed the biggest chocolate walnut out of the box.He crammed it into the other young man's mouth as if it were a gag.
Then, unseen, his hand sought the girl's again, found it, held it close.
The boat sped on through the whispering wildfire....
