FURTHER PLANS FOR THE CHARM
"Je dirai qu'une femme ne doit jamais ecrire....
"Je ne vois qu'une exception; c'est une femme qui fait des livres
pour nourrier ou elever sa famille.
"Alors elle doit toujours se retrancher dans l'interet d'argent
en parlant de ses ouvrages, et dire, par exemple, a un chef
d'escadron: 'Votre etat vous donne quatre mille francs par an,
et moi, avec mes deux traductions de l'anglais, j'ai pu, l'annee
derniere, consacrer trois mille cinq cents francs de plus a l'education
de mes deux fils.'"
Stendhal.
Now so far one charm-sachet was accounted for. It was safety-pinned into
the high busk of Miss Walsh's almost obsolete corset. The second Olwen
now hung about her own neck. Even in sleep she would never be parted
from it. Let her absorb its potency every hour of the day or night!
Therefore she sewed to the square of mauve satin a piece of pink
baby-ribbon, tied it in a bow and slipped it over her head. _Her_ charm!
There were (until she obtained more of that magic stuff) two sachets
left.
Over these she pondered, running her needle into the flannel leaf of her
needle-book.
"There's one thing to be seen yet," she meditated. "I've seen it work
once. It's been a success all right with a woman. The question is--Will
it work with a man? I must try."
So the destination of the third sachet was decided. That young and
pink-faced subaltern should have it; he who had such blushing struggles
with his French and who seemed to have no more friends than had Miss
Walsh; he who had told Mrs. Cartwright so frankly that he was an ex-shop
assistant, with the joys of travelling first-class (and of living to
match) gone to his boyish head. Yes; the disturbing Charm should be
applied to help him. She would think out the "how" tomorrow.
But the fourth sachet? To whom should she give that?
Perhaps it was the passing thought of her writer-friend that brought in
its train a bright idea.
Mrs. Cartwright!
"Why shouldn't I give her the Charm? Why shouldn't she enjoy life a
little bit more before she's quite, quite an old woman?" thought the
girl. "Of course she's not young; older than Miss Walsh even. And not
pretty--well, how could any one be pretty at forty--even though her
clothes do seem to fit her, and she does run up and down those sandhills
as fast as I can. She's awfully jolly and nice, though; so kind, too! I
daresay she'd like to be married again. I daresay she's tired of always
writing and writing. Tired of living all by herself when those boys of
hers are at school. I daresay she'd like to have somebody nice and sort
of settled-down to help her with them. Now if only she could attract
somebody! Somebody like that----"
Here a second brilliant idea flashed into that well-willing, impulsive
little black head of Olwen's. She uttered it aloud, the name of this
"somebody" who might be suitably attracted by Mrs. Cartwright--even at
forty.
"_Uncle!_"
All alone in her room, Olwen clapped her hands over this idea. Swiftly
it began to enlarge itself.
"Yes; why not Uncle? The very person! He's old, but then that's all the
better; for her. He's just the right age, in fact!"
Professor Howel-Jones was a sturdy seventy; and to Nineteen the gap
between forty and seventy, seen vaguely down the perspective of the
years, is scarcely noticeable, particularly when it is the man who is
seventy--men generally being of themselves younger than women. (Or so we
are told.)
"Yes; it must be Uncle. He's such a dear. A widower, too; and I'm sure
he ought to have somebody nice to be a comfort to him, always there. Not
only me. Besides, I might be----"
She hardly dared yet to finish to herself the thought, "Besides, I might
be getting married and leaving him any time now!"
So she pursued her ingenuous scheme. "He ought to have a nice wife. He
really ought. And Mrs. Cartwright would be splendid--for him. He does
like her. He was talking to her for hours in the Forest the other day
about that essay of his on Welsh Flower-names. He calls her 'My dear
lady' always. And she likes him; why, only at lunch today she said
something about 'that wonderful-looking old Uncle of yours.' She admires
him. Now, if she only had enough Charm to _attract_ him," thought Olwen,
"so that he would ask her to marry him, I'm sure she'd be only too glad
to! I don't suppose any one else has ever asked her to marry again ...
but I would so like her for a kind of Auntie," decided the young girl,
hastily taking out her needle again and threading it with pink silk.
Another length of narrow ribbon was stitched to one end of the fourth
sachet.
It was destined for the neck of Mrs. Cartwright.
At Olwen's age a thing is considered better left undone, than not done
at once.
At once she decided to take this gift to her friend.
So, still dressed as she had left the _salon_, Olwen slipped quickly out
of her room and down a sharply-angled corridor, passing as she went the
old Frenchman with the red speck in his button-hole and the elder lady
in mourning.
Olwen glanced up at the numbers on the doors.
... "22," that was Mr. Awdas's room; she had overheard him telling
Madame that he would remember _vingt-deux_ because it was his own age.
"23," next to it on the right; that was Mrs. Cartwright's. Olwen hoped
that she had not yet gone to bed.
She tapped.
"_Entrez!_" called Mrs. Cartwright's deep voice, rather absorbed.
Olwen entered, to find the writer apparently ready for bed, but at work.
Her green shaded lamp was alight on the table, where she sat with a pad
before her.
Her brown hair hung down in two plaits over a Persian robe of raw white
silk, almost seamless, gold-girdled, and with stars and islands worked
in gold thread; a relic of her time in the East. Another relic, perhaps,
was the mingling of faint discreet scents that hung about the room:
sandal-wood, orris, kuss-kuss, and rose.
She looked up; then sprang to her feet as she saw Olwen Howel-Jones,
still dressed as she had gone to bed some time before.
"My dear----Anything wrong?"
"No! No, thanks," said Olwen. Then involuntarily and surprised, "Oh,
Mrs. Cartwright! how wonderful you look in that dressing-gown! Your arm,
when the sleeve fell back, was like a little statue my Uncle's got in
Liverpool, copied from the British Museum. A Tanagra, he calls it. You
look exactly like that statue, you do really."
"Do I?" returned Mrs. Cartwright, with a passing glance down her own
long outlines from the shoulder to the narrow Turkish-slippered foot on
the mat. It was no news to her that she possessed, even yet, some lines
that sculptors centuries dead would have loved. Like many another
plain-faced woman (as she was self-admitted) she had her special vanity.
Her own pride of limb was as arrogant as it was secret.
"My boys are going to inherit my absurdly long legs, I think," was all
she said, lightly, smiling down into the vivid little face of the girl
who had come in, and wondering what had brought her there so late.
Olwen held it out, the Charm dangling at the end of its long ribbons. As
she was hastening along the corrider she had wondered what excuse she
could bring with it. Now she felt that it was unnecessary display, that
invention of the Red Cross Charity Sale which she had palmed off upon
poor Miss Walsh. The truth--or a small portion of it--seemed to blurt
itself out to Mrs. Cartwright.
"I've got something here that I've made for you," explained Olwen,
flushing a little. "It's--it's a luck-charm. Like a touchwood or a
swastika, only--only different. There's something in the sachet that
will bring you very good luck if you always keep it on where it can't be
seen. Don't ask me what it is," she begged, lifting her earnest little
face that the elder woman found so touchingly pretty. "And please don't
open it. Only always wear it, will you, please?"
"Thank you so much; of course I will. I can do with any good luck that's
going just now," smiled Mrs. Cartwright. She slipped the ribbon over her
head and tucked the sachet inside the soft folds of her Persian robe.
"There! It's like a scapular that the little French children have; I
remember seeing a flock of them once, trooping in to bathe off the coast
of Normandy, wearing nothing else; their little bodies each marked by
the black scapular, were like pink tulips freaked with one dark
stripe.... May I take it off when I wash? Good. Now I'll expect it'll
bring me luck for finishing the last chapters of my serial."
"Are you going to sit there and write all night?" asked Olwen, with an
eye on the half-covered pad.
"Oh dear, no! Just another hour or so, perhaps. I was only recopying a
paragraph, and then I found I was in the vein and could go on. But
you--you mustn't lose your beauty-sleep," she added, gently smiling at
the pretty creature in the doorway. "Good night!"
"Good night!" said Olwen, with a final glance at the edge of that pink
ribbon showing above her friend's unconscious neck. She sped away--to
dream, as she hoped, of all that Charm might be expected to bring her,
but in reality to the dreamless perfect sleep that is Youth's heritage.
The half-gentle, half-amused little smile hovered about Mrs.
Cartwright's lips for a moment, then gave way gradually to the look of
blank absorption as she bent her brown head over her pad, writing
rapidly, filling a page, tearing it off, to add to the pile at her feet,
filling another.
* * * * *
It had been a long apprenticeship which she had served to this job of
hers, since she had first been left as a young widow, to fend for
herself and two babies on the pension which her country judged
sufficient for the families of the (Old) Army. Ream after ream she had
written on the once so fully discussed subjects: What to do with the
Cold Mutton; and, How to Keep a Husband's Affection Warm.
To say that this occupation thrilled her would be overstating the case,
but Mrs. Cartwright had preferred it to the thought of letting some
other man pay for her board and lodging, some man who was not her Keith.
This alternative had been hers more than once (in spite of little
Olwen's conjecture that she had never been asked to marry again). She
had refused; working on, in her poky "rooms." ... At all events, those
cold-mutton articles had put plenty of nourishing beef-gravy into little
Keith; and when Reggie had nearly gone out with bronchitis she had
settled the doctor's bills with her brightly-written instructions as to
always keep a smiling face and a dainty blouse for when Hubby got back
from a hard day's work in the office. A fortnight's fresh air at
Margate had been supplied to the small convalescent by his Mother's
"Chats to Engaged Girls," which discussed "how many and many a foolish
damsel brings shipwreck upon her life's happiness by her failure to
realize that her fiance cannot be expected to give up for her sake every
hobby, every recreation, every chum that he possesses," etc. etc.
When this sort of journalism became superannuated "Domestica" adapted
herself swiftly. Business-like columns on Emigration and Fruit Farming
for Women paid for the boys' first reefer-coats. Their school-kits came
out of the long serials to which she had at last attained, and which
became a never-failing joke with those of her acquaintances who had
cultured literary tastes.
"My _dear_ Claudia, I see you've been and gone and done it again, in the
'Morning Mail,'" they had smiled. "Another of your sugary fullertons--I
mean 'A thrilling new story, by Miss Claudia Crane! You can begin
today!' You don't expect US to, I hope?"
"Oh no," Mrs. Cartwright had said, also smiling.
After all, these literary tastes of her acquaintances were no more
"superior" than the thickness of her new woollies that she was then
going on to buy for her sons' wear.
Moreover, the woollies were of more use.
(Furthermore, they were harder to come by.)
* * * * *
At the juncture when Mrs. Cartwright enters this story she was able to
make any holiday pay for itself twice over; witness her "Wanderings in
Western France." It was about this time, too, that she had begun to
afford not only the warmest underwear for Keith and Reggie, but the
silkiest for herself.
Even yet, she discovered, silk "things" were a joy to her again. So were
her perfectly simple _suede_ shoes. All these years she had lived and
toiled for Reggie and Keith; she was only just beginning to find herself
in this toiler. She was beginning to discover other relics, beside the
Eastern embroideries and the scent, of the woman whom she had thought to
be left dead beside her merry soldier husband.
Surprising.... Life was still surprising; interesting. Let people take
it out of her "fullertons" if it amused them....
She completed the "sugary" paragraph that brought her instalment to the
requided "curtain," wrote "_To be continued_" beneath it, and smoothed
the blotting-paper down over the pad with a sigh of relief.
"There!"
She rose, stretching the tall symmetry of herself under the Persian
robe, then glanced with raised eye-brows at her watch.
So late? She had not realized the flight of the midnight hours.
Everybody else in the hotel would be asleep.
Mrs. Cartwright snapped off the lights. Guided by a thin streak of
moonlight on the floor, she stepped to the window, flung first the
shutters then the windows open, and stepped out, all shimmering and
ghostly, on to her balcony. She stood--accustomed to air about
her--looking out on the moon-bathed scene below. The _Baissin_ was a
sheet of silver; the belt of sandhills silver-grey. No words can give
the whiteness of the Biscay rollers, silent with distance, tossing their
columns of foam to the vast and lambent sky. Stars were as pin-points.
Reassuringly near, the lighthouse raised its taper finger, on which the
light sparkled like a jewel, now white, now red.
Mrs. Cartwright, enjoying all this too much to feel cold, stood
watching.
Why did people sleep away the best part of the twenty-four hours? Why
scuttle away and hide from Beauty within the ugliness of their own
houses? It was only once in months that a woman stood as she was
standing at that virgin hour, able to lose herself in the solitude, the
freshness and silence and light. She stood, dematerialized, part no
longer of a woman's warm and pulsing body, but of the sea and sky
themselves.... White, red.... White, red ... the phare light flashed
almost in time to the soft breathing, that could be heard, in that
perfect stillness of her body. _She_ was outside it.... _Ah!_ What was
that?
With a start so violent that it seemed to wrench her, Mrs. Cartwright
came to herself again, and to--what Horror was this?
Through that perfect stillness a cry had rung out, sudden as a shot.
Close beside her; it came from the right. It was a man's voice crying
hoarsely, "_Got_ him!" Then another cry, of agony; a scream....
What was it?