The Disturbing Charm

by Berta Ruck

  CHAPTER XV

  THE CHARM ACKNOWLEDGED

  "'Even he that flies shall follow for thy sake-- Shall kiss that would not kiss thee' (yea, kiss me), 'When thou wouldst not' (when I would not kiss thee!)"

  Swinburne.

  Olwen's bright eyes opened in real astonishment. Here was a bewilderingsex!

  "_Long enough_," it said. "_Hasn't this been going on longenough._" ... When----well, whose was the fault that anything had been_long_?

  Or did Captain Ross mean that? Or what did he mean?

  "I don't know what you mean," she confessed, standing there all at sea.Then she put out a hand to the draperies of that door. Bewilderment gaveplace for the moment to a stronger impulse; hospitality. The littleWelshwoman must feed her guest. "Do come into the dining-room," shebegged, "and have some tea first, anyhow----"

  But Captain Ross stood rock-like. He had seen that rookery of blackheads through the dining-room window.

  "Thanks; I had tea in the train," he said curtly.

  "I came to ask you something, and I'd like to know about it right now."

  "But----oh----very well," murmured Olwen.

  "It's this," said Captain Ross, peremptorily, "are you or are you notengaged to that----to Ellerton?"

  Olwen had known her Chief sharp and abrupt before. For weeks she'd neverknown him anything else. This was his sharpest yet. She wasintimidated.... Then suddenly that went, and she had all the boldness ofthe kitten turning to face the big dog.

  "Engaged?" she repeated. "What do you mean?"

  "What do I mean? Engaged to be married." Captain Ross explained. "May Ihave a straight answer to that, please?"

  There was a pause. Perhaps Olwen was sorting her thoughts. She smiled,at first uncertainly. Then, also uncertainly, she said, "But surely,Captain Ross, you didn't come down from London specially to ask methat?"

  With ominous patience Captain Ross nodded that sleek, black, Tom-cathead of his, almost as if to some old enemy he had expected to seecropping up at some time. "Why, of course, it's a lot to ask of a woman,a plain answer to a plain question. Right away, that is. But perhaps inhaff a minute or so?" he suggested, adding, at once, "Are you engaged tohim or are you not? Yes or no?"

  Olwen, wondering at her own boldness, parried with, "If--if it _wasn't_worth coming down specially for, h-have you the right to ask me?"

  "Say I came down specially, then," Captain Ross conceded reluctantly."Now are you going to tell me?"

  "Who said," asked Olwen, with a glance out of the window, "that therewas anything to tell?"

  "He's asked you to marry him, I know that," said Captain Ross with suchconviction that Olwen coloured a little with surprise. How did CaptainRoss know about that? It was true, of course.... But he couldn't knowquite _what_ had happened. She almost laughed at the memory of HaroldEllerton's face in the light of the torch.

  She hesitated....

  It doesn't always follow that because a man is obstinate he may not bequick as well. It was very quickly that Captain Ross seized upon Olwen'shesitation, declaring, "He asked you on the night of the raid."

  As quickly Olwen asked, "Did he _tell_ you?"

  A pause. Then "There was no nid, Miss Howel-Jones. I thought, somehow,that there'd be somebody else I'd have to be congrrrrratulating verysoon," said Captain Ross, with a sort of grim triumph in his tone.

  He straightened his back, giving that little forward shrug of an armlessshoulder that Olwen could never see unmoved. But her eyes were on thewindow and on the glimpse of variegated Welsh landscape beyond.

  "Since that is so," concluded Captain Ross in his most final tone, "willyou allow me to offer my very best wishes to yourself and to Mr.Ell----"

  "No! Please don't!" protested Olwen quickly.

  She felt that this misunderstanding had gone on long enough. Longenough. She turned from the window and looked straight----not at CaptainRoss, that she couldn't do! but at a water-colour drawing of CarnarvonCastle on the wall. She said, "You see, I am not engaged or anything toMr. Ellerton!"

  And even as she said it, she knew what a change her words had made.

  Without looking at him, she knew that Captain Ross's dark face hadlighted up like a lantern into which a candle is put. She knew what hemeant by that quick movement that he gave, as if rolling aside someweight that he'd been carrying. She knew, for sure and certain, why he'dcome. Would he have cared about her being engaged to Mr. Ellerton if hehadn't wanted her himself? Of course he did want her....

  Hadn't Golden said so? Wasn't that serene and lovely American alwaysright?

  Hadn't Madame Leroux thought so, too?

  And hadn't she, Olwen herself, always known it too, in the very depthsof her heart? Yes! Hadn't she always, always suspected his curt speechand his off-hand manner and his judgment of women?

  Always!

  A great and glowing delight filled the girl. For if he wanted her----oh,wasn't she his! Hadn't she been his all that time ago? All her denialsof him since had been fibbing to herself, they had been making the bestof things, they had been the hybernating sleep from which Love awakes asa giant refreshed! It had all been camouflage, and now there was no moreneed of it....

  But even with this sweet and thrilling knowledge warm at her heart, thewoman's Will-to-Prolong was strong within her, too.

  She was a human little person enough and she had her dignity, shethought. Also she had to have her laugh--oh, quite a little one! overthis man.

  He said, "Then----" in a voice that there was no misunderstanding. Hissurliness had vanished like a mist. His eyes shone. He said, happily,"Then if you aren't engaged to him----!"

  He seemed to think that she could take for granted what must follow.

  But Olwen was mutinous. Had he come down here to propose? Let him do it!she thought. She resolved that she would not be cheated out of a singleword of it. "Then----" in itself was not going to count as a proposal."Then----," indeed!

  "_Then----!_" Oh, dear no.

  Immediately Olwen put on that look which is scarcely a look, but is forall that a defence past which no man's love-making may come. ImmediatelyCaptain Ross's own look changed to one of dashed and angry surprise. Hehad put out his arm. It dropped to his side while he watched this girl.

  She sat down, her little figure almost lost in the embrace of a chairlike a cretonne-covered bed. "Won't you sit down?" she said in the voiceof a hostess, pointing to an opposite chair.

  He did not move.

  She, feeling that never before had she been mistress of the situation,and that perhaps never again would she have the opportunity, spoke firstwith a composure which startled herself.

  "Why," she asked, "should it be supposed to have anything to do with youwhether or not I was going to marry Mr. Ellerton?"

  And now Captain Ross moved so abruptly against the mantelpiece that heshifted one of the handleless china teacups out of its place and set theprisms tinkling on the candlesticks.

  He opened his mouth, then shut it as if he'd thought better of theanswer which he meant to make to this chit. And then, in the tone ofstinging reproof which he reserved for some careless error in thereading of some letter at the Honeycomb, he said, looking down upon her,"I should have thought that a girl of your intelligence would have hadthe sense to guess by this time what my object was in wanting to knowwhat your ideas were on the subject of getting married."

  Olwen, with a tiny turn of her head, remained silent, watching thesunset, which could just be seen over the Rival mountains out of theother window. This last remark of Captain Ross's she was not going totake as a proposal either.

  From the lack of expression on her small face no man would have guessedat the happy tumult in the heart under that ribbon-and-satin of a hiddenmascot that it rocked.

  "Well?" demanded Captain Ross with outward patience. "How much longer doyou intend to keep me dangling around and guessing?"

  "About what?"

  "About whether you're going to marry _me_ or not," said Captain Ros
s,dourly.

  Olwen stuffed a cushion behind her back and laughed quite naturally."But, Captain Ross! You said Marriage was a thing the sensible manlooked at from every angle and then decided to cut out. I neverimagined----"

  "Ah, cut _that_ out," Captain Ross begged her, with the unsmiling mienof one who sees himself about to be routed from his last defences. "Youknew all the time; you knew."

  "I didn't!"

  "What?" Captain Ross thrust out his jaw. "You ought to know me wellenough by this time. You've seen me plenty."

  "Yes," said Olwen, with feeling, "and always being----"

  "Well?"

  "Perfectly horrid to me."

  "'Horrid,' you think?" barked Captain Ross. "In the office? You don'tunderstand that I'm as much on active service there behind a pen as Iwas when I was able to be behind a gun? 'Horrid.' Because I didn't makelove to you there, and both of us on duty? If you imagine that I'm thekind of man who'd do that ever, I am afraid you are under a seriousmisapprehen----"

  "But you weren't always in the office," protested Olwen, quickly, "andyou were _always_ horrid to me!"

  "When, please?"

  "Well, at lunch!"

  "Because I only had lunch with you once a week?"

  "You didn't 'have lunch _with_ me,'" Olwen demurely reminded him. "Youhappened to be lunching at the same place on Fridays."

  "That's hair-splitting," snapped Captain Ross.

  Exactly as if he never split hairs! As if he had not been splittinghairs for the last six months. That is, the same hair. And with ahatchet.

  He felt that he was burying that hatchet now----if she would only lethim.

  He declared, "You know I only went to that darned little eating-place tosee you," and it was with the manner of one who hands over his revolverthat he had said it. "I loathe fish."

  (But this was not a proposal!)

  Olwen, gazing not at him, but through the window at a cluster of yellowcrocuses on the lawn, exclaimed softly, "As if you didn't know that thisis the first hint you've ever given me of your wanting to see me atall!"

  Captain Ross took a step back on the hearthrug. He gave a short andangry laugh. "The fairrrrrst hint?" he cried, as if aghast.

  "Of course it is," declared Olwen.

  "It's nothing of the kind," doggedly from the man. "Plenty of other ...things of that sort."

  They were both wrong, and they knew it.

  It is unlikely that Olwen had forgotten that Elysian evening on thelagoon when Mr. Brown had pulled and she had sat in the stern-sheetswith Captain Ross. To have your hand held in the moonlight tenderly, andfor an hour on end, might fairly be called "a hint."

  So Captain Ross was right on that point.

  But he was wrong on every other.

  In the whole of their acquaintance that had been the one isolatedinstance in which he had failed to be as forbidding as an Army order.But at that moment (and indeed for several months afterwards) thatincident in the boat was not to be referred to by either of them. Forsome obscure reason both of them felt more shy of that memory than anyof fresh experiences.

  Quickly Olwen got on with this war in the enemy's country. "Hints? I'msure I don't know what they could have been. That box of chocolates atLes Pins. But I've had other boxes of chocolates given to me----"

  "I've no doubt of that" (with grimness).

  "So you can hardly call that a 'hint,' Captain Ross!"

  "Ah!" he said, impatiently. "It's not what one gives or says to a woman,as you know. It's the _manner_----"

  There was real merriment in Olwen's laugh at this. "The manner! The_manner_! Well, really! After the scolding and strafing anddisapproving! After the way you never came near me if we were out----"

  "I did. I did. I sat next you at that concert when Jack Awdas's girl wassinging."

  "For five minutes; yes, I remember," said Olwen, tilting her chin. "Itwas the one and only time."

  "It was not, pardon me. I was coming to sit by you at Mrs. Cartwright'sparty, and I wasn't allowed a look in----"

  "So you had a look _at_, most severely," Olwen countered. "At Mrs.Cartwright's was when you were the horridest of all. You just satopposite to me and glared----"

  * * * * *

  In the dining-room the party of Olwen's relations sat over their lasthalf-cups of tea in a simmer of delighted curiosity.

  This was shared, openly, by the hireling colt from the mountains as sheclattered in at intervals with hot water or more butter. Breathlesslyshe asked at last, "Will I take a tray and some fresh tea into thedrawing-room for Miss S'Olwen and that t'officer?"

  "You will not," ordered her mistress. Even she had been young once.

  "----Yes! glared at me as if you hated the sight of me!" insisted Olwen.

  He said, "And weren't you flirrrting with those two fellows, and simplyout to make me wild?"

  "No," said the girl, quietly and sincerely.

  He could have clasped her for it. "Darling!" said his glance, but aloudhe only retorted, "Maybe you were not out to do it, but you certainlypulled it off."

  "As for _you_," continued Olwen, "weren't you talking at me to Mrs.Cartwright all the time at dinner?"

  "No!" he retorted, flagrantly.

  "You know you were! _All_ about Woman being the Plaything of Man!"

  "Don't rub it in," he entreated, with another glance down at thisplaything so maddeningly near, yet not, perhaps, for him. Yes! If shehad had the boldness of the kitten who strikes with soft paws at theForce which could annihilate her, he had the boding patience of that bigdog who waits, sitting up, with the lump of sugar on his nose.

  It was she who kept him so.... She was--oh, she was getting her own backnow!

  She broke off as if by the way, to ask him, "Let me see, what was thefirst thing--almost the first I ever heard you say.... _What_ sort of ajudge of women are you?"

  It is not true that the Scot is inevitably without a sense of humour. Atthat moment Fergus Ross saw even the joke against himself, since hethought it would appeal to her. He responded, "What was that aboutwomen? Something I've hairred in a drim?"

  Relentless, Olwen repeated her demand. "What sort of a judge of womenare you?"

  He looked at her, threw up and shook his head with the action of a boxerwho drops his hands as well.

  "I guess I'm about as fine a judge of women as a baby is a judge ofmothers," he told her, frankly and ruefully. "One he knows; his own. Andherrrr he's got to have!"

  But she put it aside. _This_ wasn't enough of a proposal! She harkedback to that party at Mrs. Cartwright's which had witnessed the lastlosing fight of this prisoner of hers, taken now with horse, foot andguns.

  "'What's Love? An amusement,'" she quoted, mischievously, his words uponthat occasion. "That's what you said, four--no! only three days ago,"she insisted, now feeling that she had got well into her stride andcould keep this well-merited strafing of the young man for an hour yet."Yes! Just to be horrid to _me_! How you talked! All about how bored aman got 'when some woman started in to Love' him----"

  Here Olwen stopped, abruptly but too late. She coloured to the deep pinkof the little coral brooch at her throat. She saw what she'd said.

  So did he.

  Very quickly the soldier took advantage of this break in the line of herdefence.

  "Ah!" His voice lifted. "Well, what of that? What has _that_ got to dowith my being 'horrid' to you? What----connection is there between you,and any woman starting in to love _me_?"

  "Oh, _none_! I didn't mean _that_," Olwen assured him, laughingflippantly, but dropping her eyes to gaze so hard at the carpet thatonly the top of the head was to be seen. Glossily black and shapelyenough was the little head upon which Captain Ross had heaped, in hismind, every anathema as well as every endearment that he knew, but hewas dashed if he was expected to read what she meant out of the mere topof it. So----

  If, a month ago, some one had informed Captain Ross of the Honeycombthat he would ever be reduced for any possible reason, to
go down on hisknees on the floor at a woman's feet, he would not have considered theidiotic prophecy was worth a laugh.

  But his number was up.

  Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet justbecause there seemed no other way at that moment of getting a reallysatisfactory glimpse of Olwen's face.

  "Now! my lady," he began, firmly.

  But just as he'd thought he meet her eyes squarely she turned her headsidewards and directed that bright gaze of hers, as she'd often donebefore, over his shoulder and away. She was ready to glance at the blazeof the log fire, at the wall-paper, at the oval china frame all garlandsand Loves of the standing mirror, at the large portrait of ProfessorHowel-Jones in his robes, at anything, yes! anything rather than at the(late) finest judge of women in Europe, at her feet. It was too much.

  The pent-up, exasperated longing of months broke out in six words.

  "Look at me, you little demon! _look_ at me----"

  But even now she did not look; how could she, when she had shut her eyesbefore the change that had come into his own?

  He caught her to him. With his one arm slung about her, he put ascorching kiss upon her throat, under her ear. Then he took her chin inhis hand and turned her face round; he kissed the childishly red mouthuntil little Olwen, all shy and aflame, felt that the shape of his ownwould be moulded upon her lips.

  For all his theorizings, his protestations, his boastings about Love, hewas yet a lover ... or perhaps it would be truer to say a lover at last.

  As for her.... The whole of her girl's nature seemed to stretch outgleeful hands to the gift that he made to her--of herself. Till now shehad resembled--what? The sea-anemone that for weary hours of low-tidehas waited self-contained and folded into itself upon its rock, an inertlump.... At last the warm waves rise, and lo! the rosy fingers spread towelcome its own element have turned it to a lovely thing, a star-shapedflower of flesh.

  Into her sigh of delight he heard her murmur, "No! I _mustn't_----"

  "Mustn't what?" muttered the strange voice of him who was no longer theCaptain Ross of this story, but the Fergus of their love-tale that wasbeginning.

  And in Love, after all, all's well that begins well. (Even though therewas no real "proposal" after all.)

  He coaxed, "Mustn't what, Honey?"

  "Mustn't like you any _more_, or you won't like me as _much_!"

  It was Woman's dearly-bought wisdom----but he laughed at it until histeeth gleamed across his vivid face.

  She? Do anything he would not like? Even if she loved him and showedit, even that could not cool this man off, now he knew. The chit had gothim going sure enough. Whatever she did or said only added to herattraction, to her long-contested, her triumphant, her DisturbingCharm!

  POSTSCRIPT

  THE CHARM CONFESSED

  With regard to the three words with which the last chapter closed:

  The Disturbing Charm....

  What was its story, after all, apart from the tangled stories of thosepeople into whose lives it twined its thread of rose colour?

  Perhaps it was all summed up in a letter that came, one February morningof Nineteen-Eighteen, to Professor Howel-Jones.

  The old botanist was sitting in his study. It was a wide, cleared roomwith a table as chaotic as that had been at Les Pins, set, as at LesPins, before a window; but the view here was not of a lagoon with a beltof dunes and a lighthouse. It showed the roofs of Liverpool.

  Professor Howel-Jones had just returned, after various wanderings, tofind a big mail awaiting him. He sighed, as he opened the letters, forhis little niece and secretary. (Olwen had not been replaced.)

  Then he knit his brows over the letter in his hand.

  It said:

  "DEAR SIR,

  "The writer of this letter has reproached himself more than once over the rather stupid practical joke that he elected to play upon a man of your attainments by sending to you what was alleged to be the discovery of a love-germ, or Disturbing Charm----"

  "Dear me! What and when was that?" pondered the Professor. "Ah, yes. I have it. Some lunatic that wrote to me in France. Something about '_half the trouble in the world arising from people falling in Love--with the wrong people_.' Yes, yes. And what was this 'Charm' supposed to do?... Ah, it says now that the Charm was spoof...." He went on reading the letter; the belated apology of some pupil at some University where he had once lectured....

  He took it in, half thinking of the next letter as he read....

  Fern seed, it appeared, was all that the "magic" packet had contained....

  The Professor scarcely remembered that there had been a packet! What had he done with it now, and with the letter? Burnt them, he thought, before that little Olwen got hold of that nonsense....

  It would have been just like a very young, imaginative girl like that to have believed in it!

  Well, this last letter would have to shatter that belief! thought her Uncle, as he crumpled the practical joker's apology into a ball and tossed it on to the fire.

  At the moment when her Uncle's thoughts were turning to her, his niece,young Mrs. Ross, was watching rather a pretty scene.

  She stood at the window of her husband's rooms in Victoria Street, hisold bachelor rooms into which she had brought the new element of hergirlish belongings, her love, herself....

  Behind her on the table, above a pile of his books on "Reconstruction,"there trailed a dainty litter of her sewing: the lacy whiteness of agarment that was being reconstructed, feminine-fashion, into some othergarment.

  Beside her stood another war-bride of but a few more weeks' standing,young Mrs. Awdas.

  Both of them were looking down into the street, where a crowd lined thepavement to right and left, waiting, watching to see a company ofAmerican soldiers march past on their way to Victoria Station.

  Ah! Here it was, the stream of clean khaki cleaving the motley of thecrowd. Here they came, the boys, tall, fit, and splendid, drilled to theminute; the pick and cream of the new belligerent country.... Here theycame, spare and useful looking and ah, how faultless in kit andaccoutrements, from straight-brimmed hats to spotlessly-polished boots.And as they swung past with the unison of a machine in which every partis perfect, there hove into sight, straggling, slouching towards themout of the station, a knot of British just back from the firing line. Anofficer walked along beside the men.

  Over these there brooded the spectre of three years and more of War.Their eyes were heavy with lack of sleep as they lurched heavily along,blinking around them at London once again; they were dirty and loadeddown with gear, they were strung about with mess-tins and water-bottlesand boots and brown-paper parcels and battered shrapnel helmets. One ortwo of them had Hun helmets tied to their knapsacks. They wore greasyremnants of caps, disreputable goatskin coats. All over them was thicklycaked the foul mud of the trenches.

  What a contrast....

  The mob of straggling scarecrows turned to give a friendly stare, a"Cheerio" to their smart American comrades as they swung past in theirimmaculate fours.

  "See you in ten days!" shouted a Tommy.

  Olwen Ross, up at the window, thrust out her little black head to watchthe Americans.

  "Oh, they are magnificent," she breathed excitedly. "Aren't you proud ofthem, Golden?"

  "Am I _proud_ of them!" laughed her friend.

  But while the Welsh girl was all eyes for these new troops, the Americangirl's wide gaze turned upon the others with whom they must soon bestanding shoulder to shoulder; the war-worn soldiers, muddy, tattered,scarred, exhausted, cheery still....

  "_They_ are magnificent, Olwen, I guess," said she.

  And her opinion seemed to be shared by a countryman. A quick andgraceful thought struck the officer in charge of those Americans.

  Suddenly and clearly, above the buzz of the street, the rhythmic trampof feet, there snapped out his order:

  "C
ompany----eyes----RIGHT!"

  Every head under the straight-brimmed hat turned sharply towards thoseheroic scallywags their allies.

  Perhaps that young American company officer would have explained,diplomatically, that the word of command had been for his men to givethe Eyes Right to that British subaltern who was passing with theleave-men; a white-faced, hollow-eyed stripling with two gold stripes onhis cuff and the black "flash" of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers flutteringat his nape. But if it were ostensibly for him, it was also for his men.The new Allies, equipped for Victory, saluted the old, all but broken,but carrying on....

  And the bright eyes of the two girls at the windows above shonesuddenly, mistily brighter at the sight.

  As they watched the two bodies of men disappear----those marchingtowards Victoria and the boat-train, these straggling towards asoldiers' hostel in Buckingham Palace Road, Golden said softly, "Mypeople, Olwen, honouring yours."

  Olwen said, "Yes; but mine are yours now, and yours are mine."

  She turned from the window and into the little sitting-room with herguest's arm in hers.

  "What's the time?" asked young Mrs. Awdas. "I'm due to sing at thehospital at four. We'll have to hurry----"

  She lifted, on Olwen's blouse, the tiny pin-on watch which was one ofher friend's wedding presents. Then she exclaimed, "What have you gottied around here?"

  Golden did not recognize any similarity between this sachet ofpink-and-mauve and the sun-faded ribbon trifle she had picked up onBiscay beach. But Olwen smiled as she tucked into the place the mascotthat she wore and always would wear, even had she read that letter whichher Uncle held would shatter any belief in that "magic." The oldscientist summed her up as faultily as if he, too, had set out to be thefinest judge, etc....

  "Golden," she said, "if I tell you about this, will you promise not tolaugh?"

  And as they walked along to the hospital, she gave to her friend theoutlines of the story which you have just read ... so far as she knewthem herself.

  Golden, listening, smiled above her leopard-skins. "Do you think allthese things would not have happened just as they did happen without thewearing of a Charm?"

  Olwen, with happy dreams in her eyes, did not reply.

  After a pause her friend went on, softly, "When I look at you," shesaid, "and when I look at your Fergus, and at my Jack, and at any oneelse who is lovely and loving ... why, of course I believe there's aCharm really, though it just can't be anything you could make up out ofa pinch of powder and a bit of ribbon. A Charm? Why, the world's full ofit! Didn't it send me over the sea to my Bird-boy? Didn't it bring yourmen from Canada and France to you? Didn't it let us all meet in acountry that was sweet and friendly, though none of ours? Didn't itwork----why, all the time?"

  "Sometimes----Often--Half the time," suggested Olwen, "it is supposed tomake such mistakes. It takes the wrong people...."

  "We hear of those, just because they're the exceptions, I guess," smiledher buoyant friend. "We aren't so talked about, we with the happy lovestories, that the Charm has worked!... Olwen, it's making stories nowfor each of those splendid boys we saw go marching by, and for each ofthe pretty girls who wishes them Luck. It never stops!... But you can'tsee it. You can't hold it. You can only feel it is----"

  "But then what is it?" Olwen asked. "What is it in itself?"

  "Who knows?" Golden replied. "Does it matter if we _never_ know?"

  THE END