THE LOSING OF THE CHARM
"Farewell, thou latter Spring! Farewell, All-hallown summer!"
Shakespeare.
"It's perfectly easy to have a good time in this world without any men,"
declared Mrs. Cartwright, smiling. "In fact, as easy as it is with them.
In many ways, easier!"
Her listeners looked at her without conviction. For they were Miss Walsh
and Olwen Howel-Jones. Poor Miss Walsh, having passed thirty-four years
of her life in a manless world, having been then caught up into a
Paradise for two, and, further, having been banished from it again with
the departure of her Gustave, felt that nothing could be more untrue
than this remark of the writer's.
As for Olwen--well, this was on the morning after her Uncle had sprung
upon her the news that all _her_ "good time" was to end in two days'
time. And one whole precious day of that remaining two was to be wasted;
_wasted_!
A somewhat mysterious message had come from Bordeaux, asking all three
of the British officers then sojourning at Les Pins to go over and spend
the day with their comrades-in-arms at a base about which none of these
soldiers would answer any questions. They had gone, all three of them;
Captain Ross, Mr. Awdas, and little Mr. Brown. They wouldn't be back
all day. Not all day would Olwen have a glimpse of him whom presently
she might never be seeing at all--and still Mrs. Cartwright affirmed
that it would be possible to have a good time!
Probably Mrs. Cartwright guessed at the young girl's frame of mind as
easily as at the less disguised feelings of Sergeant Tronchet's
betrothed; it had not been for long that the writer had wondered "Who
that child's so desperately in love with?" But brooding was a thing that
Claudia Cartwright considered a wasteful and useless proceeding on the
part of any young girl. She determined to put a stop to it, if possible,
and that was why she went on gaily, "I often think of how Eve would have
got on if she had been made first; probably she'd have thoroughly
enjoyed having the whole of that Garden to herself, whereas Adam----!
Bored to tears, of course. Not good for man to be alone.... Well, since
all the men have gone from here, why shouldn't we have a party of our
own?"
"A party!" echoed Miss Walsh, lugubriously. "Oh, Mrs. Cartwright!"
"Why not? I am sure Sergeant Gustave doesn't want you to shut yourself
up because he's gone back to the front; come and see something to put
into your lovely long letters to him. And since those other three young
men have gone off on a stag party to Bordeaux, we'll organize a dove
lunch, as the American girls call it, and go off to Cap Ferret. It's
perfectly lovely there. Olwen, where's the Professor? I'm going to beg
leave for you. Come along, Miss Walsh----"
There was about Mrs. Cartwright that day an almost schoolgirlish flow of
vitality that the other two found it impossible to resist; their own
being at a low ebb, they let themselves drift with the current of hers.
The corners of Miss Walsh's mouth ceased to turn quite so definitely
downward, and the clouds in Olwen's bright eyes seemed about to
disperse. In half an hour they were all ready, and setting out for this
trip to Cap Ferret, which lay beyond the _Baissin_, the dunes, and the
lighthouse.
In the bright autumn sunlight the little motor-boat buzzed with them
across the lagoon that had set such a fairy scene, that night.... But
there was a gay wind blowing now, sending the big white clouds rolling
across the sky in towering columns like those of the Biscay waves, seen
from afar.
"We'll go right down to Biscay, after lunch," planned Mrs. Cartwright,
as they landed at the small iron pier above the oyster parks. Then she
guided them through the belt of pine woods that lay between the two
borders of sandhills, past the lighthouse which they saw every day as a
warning finger, but with which they now made acquaintance as the huge
tower it was; she led them to the inn where they were to lunch. This was
a long white building, its corners rounded and scoured by the flying
sands borne on the gales of winter.
"Outside is the best dining-room," said Mrs. Cartwright. "I daresay
Madame will think us mad--but it's an Indian summer day today. The
Professor told me that you Welsh people call it '_the little summer of
the Angels_.' Come along!"
And having given her order to the smiling French landlady (who wore a
black shawl, a bright blue apron, and a brighter blue glass comb in her
black hair), she led the others to a table in the sunny yard, under the
wooden veranda. Its green paint had flaked off beneath those noisy
gales, but the latticework was over-grown with passion-flower vines and
other vines, richly clustered with bunches of sweet white grapes.
"Our dessert," said Mrs. Cartwright, nodding towards the fruit. "Madame
will come and cut the bunches while we are eating the Biscay sole."
Lunch was brought; before she began upon the sole Mrs. Cartwright threw
off the loose brown coat that she had worn for the crossing in the
motor-boat, and appeared in a frock that Olwen had never seen before.
Yesterday, the girl had noticed, a carton-box had arrived for the writer
at the hotel; doubtless this was the dress that it had contained....
It was of rough sky-blue crepy stuff with touches of creamy edging and
of dull pink stitchery, very simple, for all Mrs. Cartwright's clothes
were simply cut. This was something more than simple, though, almost ...
trivial, was it? A frock for a more insignificant person? Olwen could
not have told you why she shouldn't quite like that frock. It wasn't
altogether that it seemed too young; and it did fit her, perfectly.
Perhaps the fact that Olwen noticed it at all showed how well the elder
woman's clothes generally did suit her.
Today--not only her frock was different, but her mood was different. It
puzzled little Olwen entirely....
As the sole and the potatoes in their jackets gave place to an
admirably-cooked ham omelette, Mrs. Cartwright was saying almost
audacious things, that passed as swiftly as the shadows of the gulls
swooped over the sands. And she seemed conscious that she was "being
different...." Why? It was almost as though she were playing at some
game; she thought feverishly. As if half of her sat apart, watching the
play, criticizing, exchanging notes with people who were not Miss Walsh,
not Olwen.
The girl, having never before looked upon her friend as a riddle, sat
wondering at her.... In that sheltered corner the savoury scents of the
meal mingled with the inevitable pine scent and the tang of sea while
the sun flung blue shadows upon the bright table and the plates; dancing
delicate silhouettes of vine leaves and tendrils and passion flowers.
There drifted to them from the woods the sound of the cow bells;
"tonkle--tankle--tonkle--" and from the shore the distant roar of
breakers.
Suddenly, as the inn servant removed and brought coffee, Mrs. Cartwright
broke out, apparently a propos of nothing.
"Ah, well!
"'Better an omelette _aux fines herbes_ where Love is, than the
Carlton and a chaperon therewith.'
Forgive my quoting my own works, but I was thinking of one of those
books of mine that I--that we never write. Plenty of other things in
Life like that. Men we didn't marry, their babies that we've never
had----"
Then she laughed.
"I wonder what people would have thought if I'd ever written that book.
It's the one I threatened your friend Captain Ross with, Olwen, the
other night. Would you like to hear a bit of it, girls?"
And without waiting to hear whether they would or not, she went on in
that deep, whimsical attractive voice of hers:
"'Don't tell your mother beforehand that I am a lady. Possibly
I'm not. You won't know. But she will.'
I remember thinking of that when a great friend of mine in the navy told
me about his engagement. He made a joke at the time about sailors and
their _culte_ for _mesalliances_.... Here's another bit:
"'Always write to me when you're away. Never mind if you've
nothing to say. It doesn't matter if you don't say anything.
Only write!'
I can see the young man now that I said that to," said Mrs. Cartwright,
and the expression in her eyes was of one who looks down from a hill-top
upon the landmarks passed, far back. "He'd only been married a month to
a school chum of mine, and was suddenly ordered off. He couldn't take
her. I told him that even if the mail only went out twice a week there
was no reason that it should not take three letters each time----"
Here Miss Walsh, who did not seem to be listening, broke in. "I think
that's very true." She fingered in her bag an envelope with the printed
label, "Controle Postale Militaire," and looked cheered.
"This young man numbered his letters after that. Then I remember a girl
friend--ah! she's a grand-mamma now--married before I did. I remember
her once saying something that I should have stolen from her.
"'Do you mind not giving me these useful solid, durable
presents of leather, which you men love and which are hideous
in our eyes? Why not something charming that won't last; scent,
powder, or chocolates in a pretty box?'
And this, which is the last that I shall inflict upon you, dear yawners,
nobody at all told me. I made it up, unaided, and by my little self."
She looked away above her coffee-cup as she quoted it, and her eyes were
the eyes of all the girls that be, appealing to all the plighted lovers:
"'Remember that nine out of ten women in the world will never
know what Love can be, and that _six out of those nine are
married women_. Please won't you try to make me the happy
Tenth?'
And now, when all the people have said Amen, what about a walk down to
Biscay?----No, Miss Walsh! Please. This is my _day_. I proposed this,
and I know you won't grudge me this little pleasure."
She paid the _addition_ and drew on her loose white gloves.
Through the woods they went, and over the sandhills planted with grass
in lines to keep that barrier together.
Olwen, in her red woolly coat, walked between Mrs. Cartwright, whose
short blue skirts flapped like a wind-blown succory flower above her
ankles, and Miss Walsh, who was holding on to her hat. Little Olwen
thought irrelevantly--"and, fancy! we're all three wearing that Charm!"
They descended from the dunes, passed the loose shuffling upper sands,
and came on to the stretch of other sands, smooth, hard, and firm as a
ballroom floor set down in the widest landscape that any of them had
trodden yet. Soaring skies, illimitable beach, and oh, how empty seemed
the sea far, far behind the breakers of Biscay Bay!
At the sight of those breakers, whose sound had been growing in her
ears, Olwen gave an involuntary "Oh! _Look_ at them!"
From the hotel windows they seemed nothing more than a crawling white
line. Here they were rushing monsters that seemed to shake the shore
where they broke. They broke and spouted not more than fifty yards away,
then swirled and seethed almost to the feet of the women in surf, in the
lines that would be taken by boiling milk.
Olwen stood nearest with spray on her cheeks, thunder in her ears, and a
storm of unimagined whiteness before her eyes, finding it all riotously
beautiful. But the last thing in the world that she expected was what
Mrs. Cartwright then said:
"I say! Let's bathe. It would be too gorgeous in there!"
Miss Walsh, behind her, looked as if she could not believe her ears.
"In _October_, dear Mrs. Cartwright?"
Dear Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she threw out her arm towards the
waters, soaring to crash, soaring again to crash.... "_That_," she
cried, "was going on before the months had names!"
"Oh, but I never knew any one dreamed of bathing after August," murmured
Miss Walsh, still clutching her hat, "and, besides!" (as if that
settled it), "you haven't brought your things with you."
"That's just what I meant," declared Mrs. Cartwright, taking a deep
breath. "I'm going in."
"Oh, please don't!" protested Olwen. "I can swim quite well, but any one
can see _that's_ dangerous. Supposing you were caught in and swept away.
Oh, I wouldn't."
"I shouldn't dream of letting you, child," cried Mrs. Cartwright gaily.
"I'm going in," and she stooped to unlace the brown thongs of her
sandalettes.
"Oh! I'll go on and gather shells, then," said Agatha Walsh (hurriedly
turning her back as if she dreaded to let her eyes fall upon some
repellent sight, reflected Mrs. Cartwright, with amusement).
The elder woman was of the type that, under such circumstances, makes no
more ado about getting out of her clothes than she would about taking
off her hat. She was of that type--and of that build.
They dropped from about her, the flapper's frock of succory blue and the
silken under-garments, and with them she seemed to cast off as well that
rather feverish sprightliness of the last hour. It was a genuinely
girlish delight that shone from her eyes as she ran, lightly and
free-limbed, over the sand and into the surf that flung itself towards
her body of a slender statue, white as those crests. She revelled in
that hour that was hers, Claudia Cartwright's--hers and that girl's who
had been Claudia Crane's.
"Not too far in!" warned Olwen from higher up the beach.
"Right!" called her friend's voice from out of the dazzling sunlight
spray; the sound of it lost in the crash of the breakers and the scream
of the gulls that wheeled and dived like a flight of white-winged
aeroplanes above her.
She sprang and dipped; threw herself forward, breasted the waves, and
tried to swim, always frustrated by those tossing waters that made of
her a plaything, all panting and aglow with joyous life.
Olwen watched; anxious. But Claudia Cartwright was not to be caught in
and swept away; not she. It was something else that was to be so lost;
unseen by Olwen, unthought about at all.
From where the bather's garments lay in a soft heap under a smooth heavy
stone that she had set down to keep them from blowing away, there
disentangled itself a ribbon that she had worn about her neck and that
she had untied, carelessly, just before she ran down to plunge into the
sea.
It blew along the sands above the scatter of shells.
It blew along, fast and faster, the pink thread holding that
feather-light Charm that the wind had swept away.