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 little
plotter for the commonweal, Olwen Howel-Jones.
No Mrs. Cartwright at _dejeuner_!
Olwen (knowing nothing of that vigil of the night before, or of the
slumber into which the woman, drained of vitality, had dropped as soon
as 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 not
begin at once then, that Darby-and-Joan pairing-off that so suitable
match which little Olwen had planned. What a pity! Still it was not put
off for long, she cheerfully hoped.
The other wearer of the Charm was also absent from the midday gathering
in the _salle_, but that was all to the good, Olwen had passed Miss
Walsh, with her hair done in that new way! speeding off as excitedly as
an Early Victorian to her first dance; speeding down to the pier, where
the motor-boat awaited her, with Sergeant Tronchet. Madame Leroux had
put up a basket of provisions for them, and they were going to make a
picnic of their excursion across the lagoon.
Captain Ross came in to lunch with his friend Mr. Awdas, but so late
that the two young men crossed the path of Olwen and her Uncle (who had
finished their meal early) in the hall. The girl had paused here for a
moment to slip into the Red Cross collection-box that hundred-franc note
which 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, and
smiled as he might have smiled at one of the little pigtailed daughters
of the manageress. "That's not the box you put ten centimes into and get
two sticks of candy."
Olwen, half in delight that he had spoken to her, half in resentment
that it was in the tone he might have used to a child, raised her
pointed chin on its white childish neck, looked down under her lids, and
demanded, with what she considered great stateliness, "Who wants
_candy_?"
"All little girls, I guess," returned Captain Ross, his robin's eyes
twinkling, his perfect teeth flashing in another teasing smile. Olwen,
glancing under those dropped lids at this somewhat showy vision of
black-and-white-and-brown-and-scarlet-and-khaki, felt that she would die
for him.
There was a magic about him, she thought; even if he were dictatorial or
teasing, or seemed to think rather a lot of himself--a magic! At the
same instant she remembered that, yes! There was a secret magic about
her too, now. A magic that had proved itself unmistakably once; a Charm
that she herself was wearing. Confidence seemed to rush, in a warming
flood, about her heart.
Quite defiantly she tilted her black head, and looking straight over
Captain Ross's shoulder, she laughed, for pure joy of her secret.
"_You_ don't know everything about girls!" she told the finest judge of
women in Europe.
And before the young Staff-Officer could retort, before he could even
open his eyes over the temerity of this chit, this schoolgirl, who had
said this thing to him (_Him!_), those little French boots of hers had
skipped away, carrying her upstairs towards the study where she must
type out the notes which she had taken down for her Uncle in shorthand
that morning. Those boots fitted the chit's ankles like a coat of black
paint, he noticed as he looked after her, too amused to be annoyed, of
course. The piece of Impertinence----! Awfully neat.... They
disappeared, the little twinkling heels. He went on to join Jack Awdas
at 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 much
of an age and much of a race, for Marie came from Brittany, and already
the Professor and his niece had amused themselves by finding out how
many Welsh words the Breton maid could understand; the simple words
which were the same in her own tongue.
"I come from cleaning the buttons of the English monsieur, his better
tunic," explained Marie, in French, smiling as she held out the khaki
coat.
"It is not of Monsieur de l'Audace?" asked Olwen.
"No, Mademoiselle. Of the other English officer, young, young, who does
not talk French too well; Lieutenant Brrrrrrown," returned Marie. "Can
Mademoiselle tell me what decoration is that he has?" Olwen gave a look
at it.
"It is the ribbon of the Military Cross--it's like your Croix de
Guerre," she said. "I didn't notice that he'd got that."
"He" was the pink-faced New Army officer of whom Mrs. Cartwright had
spoken to her.
She remembered, in a flash, that it was he for whom she had intended
that fourth share of the Charm, still in the pocket of the serge dress
that she wore. She had not yet made up any plan as to how she was to
press the Charm upon him. The plan came to her then and there, as she
stood in that corridor.
"Hold Marie," she said, suddenly. "I have a _porte-bonheur_ for this
officer." She took out the sachet. "Say nothing to Monsieur," she
impressed it upon the little maid, all smiles and delight to be included
in a secret. "I am going to hide it in his coat."
And, taking hold of the coat, she slipped the sachet full of the
enchanted powder into the slit-like pocket at the waist where men keep
tickets.
"There!... Probably Monsieur will not find it; but all the better. It
won't matter, even if he does not know it is there."
The Breton maid nodded. "A _sachet a preservation_ then? I know them. We
have them also, Mademoiselle. It is to avert all danger from the soldier
who is to wear it, is it not?"
"No. Not precisely that," said the young Welsh girl. "It is to bring to
him--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 coat
to Monsieur, who does not suspect. But no, Mademoiselle, I will say
nothing to him of this; nothing, nothing, nothing at all!"
Olwen thought, as she went on: "Now Marie probably imagines that I am in
love with this dreadfully uninteresting little Mr. Brown, and want to
attract him to being in love with me! When I've never spoken to him in
my 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 wanderings
which the Professor loved to take out westwards from the hotel. For a
couple of miles they had tramped along the hard sands at the foot of the
great dunes wherein pine-trees were buried up to their lower boughs;
then, leaving the sands, they had scrambled up the sandhills into the
pine-forest that bordered them.
Its fragrant aisles stretched for miles bisected by paths, spread with
a rich terra-cotta carpet of pine-needles. Already the Professor had
slipped his pipe back into his pocket, for the notice "_Defense a
fumer_" appeared again and again tacked up on the trunks of the great
pines that made of those miles a perfect factory of turpentine.
With their faces towards home, they caught sight through the pines of a
figure that repeated for an instant the effect of the pine-trunks
themselves, brown-clad, long-lined, and slender. It stooped at the foot
of 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 changed
into a pine rather than a laurel."
Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she rose to her feet. She had been putting
into position a fallen tin cup, shaped like a flower-pot, and left to
catch the resin as it oozed stickily from the trunk. Most of the firs in
this part of the forest had a tin blade, that had scored them down, left
plunged into the bark.
"Delightful, to be able to turn into any sort of plant, rather than be
bored by the wrong man," remarked Mrs. Cartwright lightly, dusting her
hands.
"What a pull for those nymphs! Must have made it worth while to live in
a world where there was no tea. I am ready for mine, though----"
The three went on homewards together, the Professor walking between
Olwen and the writer, who found herself once more admiring his Druidic
head and still-active frame. In precisely the same spirit she would have
admired some stately, ivy-grown keep that had once echoed to the shouts
of archers; she was scarcely the type of woman who becomes an "old man's
darling----"
But little Olwen was busily thinking: "Now! I do believe the Charm has
begun to work. Didn't Uncle say she was like Daphne?--and doesn't she
really look younger today? It's _begun_! And see how she's smiling at
him and talking to him about Anatole France.... But I wish they'd leave
off about books and begin about themselves. I wish I could run on and
leave them to come home together (but they both walk as fast as I do any
day, bother them!). If only we could meet somebody that I could fall
behind with, and let Mrs. Cartwright have Uncle all to herself----"
This wish was fulfilled at a turn in the path where there was a clearing
in the symmetrically spaced pines. Three paths converged towards a sort
of oasis of heather and undergrowth, surrounding a hut of untrimmed
pine-branches. Huge blackberry runners, purple and green, flung
themselves before the door of it. And there stood, fixedly regarding the
place, a boyish figure in khaki with an ultra-floppy cap at a rakish
angle on his head.
"Are you thinking of taking that house, Mr. Brown?" Mrs. Cartwright
asked 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 he
could find, eternally smoking cigarettes, and evidently bent on getting
his money's worth out of the hotel. But it was a different young man
who now turned his pink face and pop-eyes on them. They'd evidently
interrupted 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 C
shops, of Tube-lifts and cheerful workaday London generally into that
stately French glade. "Well, d'you know, that's a wheeze. It's a dashed
good idea. I was just that moment thinking that something would have to
be 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 about
beating 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 new
house?"
He said: "I don't mean here this minute, in this Epping Forest sort of
show. I mean _here_!"--he spread out his hands as if to take in the
whole of Western France. "Of course, they told me I'd got to go to
pine-woods when they gave me three months, and a cavalry fellow, at
Sister Agnes's, told me here was better than Surrey, and gave me the
address, and it seemed quite natural to take it and think--Blow the
expense. 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-class
carriage again!"
Before any one could speak, he went on with his candid and good-humoured
grouse.
"I've got to go first, with these colonels and company promotors, and
people. 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 was
serving behind the counter; nor the customers neither, I'll bet. And now
nothing but the tip-toppest hotel's good enough for me, and me posted in
Cox's 'star' department. R. D., refer to drawer! Got it in my pocket
now; 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 story
might be read anyhow in his pink, snub-nosed, and ordinary face. Mrs.
Cartwright and the Professor found it impossible to help liking him as
he stood there, the little Briton who gave no further thought to the
tense horrors of Suvla Bay, where he had won his Cross, but who
confessed his liking for the best hotels. But as for Olwen, she was
watching him anxiously; for his hand had gone to the pocket where she
herself had hidden that "_porte bonheur_." He fumbled. At that moment
his finger and thumb must have encountered it....
"No--what's this?--that's not the cheque--must be in my case," he went
on, 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, if
I don't leave this place altogether. And I like this place." He looked
round the empty hut again, as if he half expected to see a Willesden
estate 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 picnic
touch----"
For a few moments they stood, discussing forest regulations and to whom
the would-be camper-out must apply. Then, four abreast, they turned to
go on, the sea-breeze meeting them.
"Mind the barbed wire," exclaimed Mr. Brown, flipping with his cane at
one of those giant brambles. "It's caught your skirt," to Olwen. "Allow
me."
He bent down and unfastened the hook-like thorns from her frock. This
kept the two behind the Professor and Mrs. Cartwright, whereat the
innocent Olwen rejoiced. She could not guess that not only did the
Professor seem at least as old to Mrs. Cartwright as he did to his own
niece, but that the Professor himself, though he found her a sympathetic
listener, 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 and
black-haired (as Olwen's own mother had been) was only, to quote Captain
Ross, "half a woman...."
But they were talking together, easily, interestedly, as they walked
ahead through the wood. And even though the subject might only be of
Celtic Folk-lore, Olwen felt already that she saw her wish coming to
pass before her eyes.
She turned to her other experiment with the Charm.
Mr. Brown had slipped his fingers again into the pocket into which he
had first hunted for his dishonoured cheque. And this time he brought
out 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 toss
the precious thing into the arbutus bushes, said with outward
carelessness, "It looks like a mascot; better not lose it."
"Looks more like the little square bags they used to fasten on to the
ladies' 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 a
hasty 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 came
in sight of the hotel. On the piazza Captain Ross was smoking, with his
friend, the aviator; Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had joined them.
Olwen realized that Captain Ross was also staring down on to the
pine-bordered road, at herself and young Mr. Brown, who had stopped
short, and was still looking at what she held, the treasure that he had
discovered 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 you
now, 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 walked
on 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 to
watch how the Charm will work with him! But if it _does_ work, that's
the main thing, after all."
She added aloud, looking into the pink and puggy face that had outstared
Danger 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 a
mock-flourish as they ran up the piazza steps together.
Those robin-like eyes of Captain Ross were fixed very watchfuly upon
this young Mr. Brown as he appeared, laughing and chatting as if he were
quite old friends with the Professor's niece. Then the young Staff
officer 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 handing
to that fellow?