The Disturbing Charm

by Berta Ruck

  CHAPTER XIV

  HOME AND THE CHARM

  "A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne'er met with elsewhere."

  Still-Popular Song.

  There was one thing that struck Olwen very forcibly as soon as she gotdown to that house of her Aunt Margaret's in Wales.

  It was the first time for many months that she had entered adwelling-place that was also a home.

  Where had she been all this time? In places of which the keynote was"Here today and gone tomorrow"; places that she had never even seen ayear ago; places without associations, without responsibilities for thepilgrim-guest.

  There had been Les Pins; its hotel.... Cap Ferret and its charming inn.Other hotels in Paris and London. There had been the Honeycomb; itsbusyness still informed by the hotel spirit of "_Dwell as if about todepart_."

  Then there had been her Aunt's villa at Wembley Park; delightful littlered-roofed, rose-wreathed doll's-house! There was an impermanency aboutthat, too; it looked as if a gale of wind would carry it off, with therow of other red-and-white toy-dwellings in the midst of which it stood.It was a place to picnic and to sleep in, and of one which one turnedthe latch-key without giving it all day a further thought.

  The same note was struck by Mrs. Cartwright's prettily-arranged flat.In three hours, perhaps, she could pack up and move ... somewhere,anywhere that suited her! (People lived where they liked, after all,instead of making it a religion to like where they lived.)

  The same could be said of Mrs. Newton's rooms at her hotel, and of thebachelor-diggings of half a dozen War-working girls whom Olwen knew inLondon. The new note was spreading. Domestic life as lived under QueenVictoria seemed at a discount. And to more and more of England's youngwomanhood one might apply the plaintive remark of the straphanger to theother occupants of the crowded 'bus: "Ain't _none_ o' you got no 'omes?"

  But here, on the outskirts of this provincial town where generations ofthe Howel-Joneses had been born, had lived and married and died----hereone found oneself swept back to the domestic conditions of more thanhalf a century ago.

  Ah, the solidity of this square grey house, padded with ancient ivy androofed with purple slate! Oh, the density of that laurel hedge,screening its lawn from the road that wound up towards the mountains!Heavens, the ponderous comfort of the furniture; every mahogany "piece,"every _portiere_, every vast Landseer steel engraving upon the wallsseemed to remind Olwen "We were here in your grandmamma's time, and yourgreat-grandmother's and you, little superficial upstart, what right haveyou to turn up your nose at what was good enough for them?"

  Yes; it had taken three reigns to bring these things together; detailsthat dragged the generations behind them as they settled down, heavily,into a permanent, complete and dominant whole, which it would now takean earthquake or a revolution to shift.

  But Olwen, as it happened, felt no desire to "turn up her nose." She wasenjoying this return to the days of old. It was a rest and a refreshmentto her after all her war-time gipsying, after her eating in Sohorestaurants, after her coming and going, after that whole life of thebird on the twig. For there is no place like home, the old, established,sturdy, stolid British home ... when one knows that one is only there onten days' leave.

  Then there were the home-dwellers. Olwen had never before realized howpretty and amusing were her young sisters Peggy and Myfanwy; especiallyPeggy, in her V.A.D. kit! She had wrested three days' leave from herhospital in the town in order to be with her sister from London; andthere were also gathered together on a visit in the old home a selectionof cousins--Howel-Joneses, Pritchards, and little Llewella Price--towelcome the wanderer home. Never before had they "made such a fuss ofher," or she of them.

  Even Auntie Margaret (who was THE Miss Howel-Jones, the head of thehousehold, and a despotic version of the Professor in petticoats), evenAuntie Margaret did not seem nearly as "trying" to Olwen as in thosepre-War days when the present Honeycomb war-worker was a girl at home.

  Why, Olwen had been in the house for two whole days, and Auntie hadonly been really exasperating once! And even then she had almostimmediately afterwards bestowed upon Olwen an exquisite old coral broochand a bristly kiss. After all, there were no people like one'shome-people ... once one wasn't obliged always to live with them.

  Yes; Olwen enjoyed them. She enjoyed the accent of the young creaturewho brought up hot water to her old bedroom (and who was described byAuntie as "no servant, but a colt off the mountains!"). And she enjoyedthe forgotten ambrosia of the Welsh butter, and the family tea to whichthey all sat down about the family table, and the family jokes--all asold as her beloved hills.

  There was no news, except of a bazaar in aid of comforts for the town'srecruits; that had happened a month since, but it seemed still asimportant to the family as anything that Olwen could tell them of whathad been happening in London. It was only on the Sunday when thisfunction had been described to the last detail by each relation in turnthat they left it at last to enquire about what raid; had Olwen seenanything of this?

  The question was put to her at tea-time.

  Olwen, munching Auntie's hot cakes, told them of the interrupted partyand of her delayed journey home.

  "In one of those wretchedly draughty trains! I wonder you didn't takeyour death," was her aunt's aghast comment.

  A Pritchard cousin added, "In the dark! Weren't you terrified allalone?"

  Olwen explained.

  "Oh! _With_ somebody," exclaimed another cousin.

  "Sitting with a man from that place of yours.... In khaki, then? No; a_sailor_? Oh, how _lovely_!... How old; twenty-four--five? It must havefelt just like being at the Cinema. Olwen, what _did_ he talk about?"

  "Asked me to marry him," Olwen replied, tranquil in the assurance thatthis unembellished truth would never be believed.

  A gale of girlish laughter broke out round the table; a clatter offeminine questions.

  The Welsh speaking-voice, which normally resembles the coo of thering-dove (_vide_ a paper on "Timbre" read by a college-friend ofProfessor Howel-Jones), is capable of rising, in excitement, above thecorncrake note of the average Saxon, to the parrot-screech of theContinental. It did so now, as the stay-at-homes cross-examined theirwanderer.

  "No; but really?"

  "Do tell us what sort of a young man he was?"

  "Yes; come on, Olwen _fach_. We never see a young man down here; mightas well describe to us what one looks like----"

  It was at this very moment that the young man who was passing thedining-room windows on his way to the front door caught a glimpse ofclustered black heads all alike and heard a breaking wave of talk andgiggling. This tide rose until it swamped the sound of his ring at thebell.

  Presently, without warning, there burst into the dining-room thataproned colt from the mountains who had answered the door.

  In an explosive whisper she announced, "Some _gent----tleman_! Somegentleman is in the drawing-room!"

  "Who is it?" asked the mistress.

  "Some gentleman wanting to see Miss S'Olwen," the little maid hissed onevery "S." (A sudden quiet fell upon the party.) "Some _Captain_, orsomething, he say."

  "Of course!" shrilled Olwen's youngest cousin Llewella, in a voice thatcould (and did) carry easily across the hall into the drawing-room andbeyond the lawn outside, "This _must_ be her _sailor_ young man!"

  But Olwen (rising from the tea-table with the sudden sensation of havinghad no tea or any other meal for about a fortnight) knew better. She wasthe only one at that tea-table who had not been too absorbed in talk tonotice the caller passing the window. Against the dark green laurelhedge and the lavender mountains beyond she had caught the flash ofgayer colour, scarlet on khaki.

  _Captain Ross----!_

  "He's come," she thought in a whirl of happiest flurry. "What did Goldensay!"

  Her heart seemed to stand still as she crossed the hall. On the mat shewaited for one second. She must look as if absolutely nothing hadhappened
or could happen. Then she opened the heavily-draped door andwent into the drawing-room.

  Captain Ross had planted himself just where she had expected that hemight; he was standing on the hearthrug with his back to the log fire.

  That hearthrug was wide and white and fluffy; there was a brass-edgedglass screen before the fender. The mantelpiece was of white alabasterand hung with looped drapery of peacock-blue brocade, lustrous andpompous and ball-fringed, dating from 1889. Upon the mantelshelf itselfthere stood under a tall glass shade an ormolu clock, with figures ofnymphs and Cupid. On each side of this gleamed candlesticks withdangling prisms.

  There were also china ornaments, a miniature of Margaret Howel-Jones ateighteen and another glass shade protecting a branch of white coral; thewhole reflected in a gilt-framed mirror.

  Everything in that drawing-room was in key with that mantelpiece. Andinto that complete and Victorian harmony there broke the Neo-Georgiannote of a girl wearing the little modern serge frock, the pert effectiveshoes, and the hair-dressing of the instant.

  But Captain Ross, turning abruptly did not see the dramaticcontradiction of that girl to this room.

  What he saw was the girl at last in the background that suited her. Yes;here she was, where she should be. None of your gimcrack hotels or grimyoffices or fly-blown, cotton-glove restaurants! A girl like that oughtnever to leave a place like this. The place into which any decent maninstinctively wants to put the sweetest woman he knows----A Nice,Comfortable Home of her Own.

  (That the woman invariably longs to be "put" there has never yet beenquestioned by this type.)

  To him every detail of the place seemed in league to "set" her; sweetly,worthily. For the first time he saw her as in a shrine--therefore to beworshipped, yes! worshipped.

  But there was nothing of this to be read in Captain Ross's face as hereturned her soft-voiced, surprised-sounding greeting. He was positivelyscowling.

  And why was the finest judge of women in Europe scowling like this?

  It was because of the unforseen way in which all his plans were goingastray. On the way down in the train he'd had everything beautifullyplanned. He'd intended to tell this little Olwen casually but quiteauthoritatively that he'd something to say to her, and that "as he wasin Wales" he guessed he'd look in and say it right then. (These womenhad to be handled--firmly.) He thought that a darned good opening ... inthe train.

  But suddenly that "was in Wales" didn't seem the strong card he'dthought. It seemed, in fact, remarkably weak. He admitted that as heglanced round that immutably Victorian room. It might have done for theHoneycomb, but not here. Set-back Number One.

  Next, he must look as if he'd come down here on purpose to see thisaggravating chit. Which of course, he had not done. Or at least hadn'tmeant to. Or, anyway, wouldn't have done if there had been any otherway. Captain Ross could explain this position to himself, perfectly. Butappearances were all against him.... Set-back Number Two.

  For Set-back Number Three, had he not just heard half a sentence (beforea door closed), in a shrill girlish voice, about a "_sailor_ young man"?

  _Damn_ young Ellerton!

  His anger against the sailor gave the send-off to the very firstsentence that he addressed to the girl.

  With a forward jerk of his head he brought out the startling abruptremark, "Look, Miss Howel-Jones, don't you think this has gone on longenough?"