This very morning he had attracted the attention of his colleague, Major

Leefe, to the window, and, pointing down upon a hurrying young figure in

khaki with a sword, had announced with a grim and pitying smile, "There

goes another good man to his doom."

Even as he pronounced the last word (which he did as though it were the

German for "stupid"), he observed the hurrying figure below to raise its

head for a moment as it looked quickly around.

He had recognized Jack Awdas.

Five minutes afterwards he had seen Golden in all her bridal glory, step

out of a taxi with Mr. van Huysen.

You could have knocked Captain Ross down with a feather.

What was everybody coming to? he had pondered irritably ever since.

_All_ his friends....

* * * * *

"I congrrratulate----" he began stiffly, but at that very moment a

clamour broke out above the music in the room they had left.

"Where is he?"

"Fetch him in----"

"Fancy bolting like that----" came the muffled cries.

The door was flung suddenly open as Brown, Ellerton, the Highlander,

Sergeant Tronchet and the Master of the House burst suddenly into the

lobby.

"Here he is!"

"Now, you rascal----"

"Dark horse, what?"

"Come in, you dog----"

"Ah, _farceur_! Felicita----"

"Bai Jove, trying to hush it up----"

"Mr. Awdas, I say. Mr. Awdas----"

"Ah, would you----"

"Monsieur de l'Audace!"

"Priceless!"

Among them they almost carried Jack's Herculean young form back into the

sitting-room.

Captain Ross followed.

The golden head of the Sunburst Girl towered above the heads of Olwen

and of Miss Walsh as they pressed upon her their enthusiastic good

wishes. Laughing, flushed, sparkling, she was giving her version of that

dilatory courtship of Jack's; while Mrs. Cartwright in the corner by

that desk of hers, was hunting in some _cache_ of hers for something (to

wit, the last drop of Bubbly she possessed).

"Here's more surprises about your English ways," the American bride was

laughing. "Here's this Bird-boy of mine----well, you all know the quick

and sudden start of our engagement! There was father and I thinking

maybe it wouldn't matter so much provided we had a sensible time to get

to know one another in after say a year! Then yesterday Jack gets

suddenly scared that we'll both be grey and rheumatic fossils if we

aren't married half an hour from then.... Say, Olwen? What could I say?

I don't know how he does it--it's mesmerism or a charm, I guess, for

when once Jack takes it into his head----"

Here the laughter and cheering of the men broke out. The Master of the

House was seen to be advancing, carrying at the full length of his young

arms a tray of glasses. Mrs. Cartwright rose from the chest, smilingly

holding a gold-topped bottle in either hand.

"Who's going to open these?"

Already Mr. Brown had whisked a skirt of his tunic under his arm and was

slipping his sapper's knife from its swivel. "Stand from under!" sang

out the little second lieutenant as pop! went a cork. "Right! I'll fill

'em, Mrs. C. I'm the next starter for the matrimonial stakes, after the

giddy bridegroom. Out o' the way, Ross! Don't take up the earth....

Invited out to supper, and staying to wedding-breakfast, eh?... Here's

yours, Miss Olwen; a bridesmaid, are you?... No, you don't, Ellerton;

_I'm_ booked for best man.... I'm going to have one from everybody....

_After_ you've finished with my feet, Ross----"

Captain Ross, glaring above his glass at the group about that tall and

resplendent bridal pair, found his bad temper of the day culminating in

a very curious decision.

He was going to leave directly he'd finished this glass of champagne in

which they toasted the young Awdases. And he was going to take with him,

Olwen Howel-Jones. He was going to see her home. He was; not that

gibbering idiot Brown, who was engaged anyway, nor that hopeless ass

Ellerton, that Naval outfitter's dummy; no fear. Most certainly not. As

for that fellow Jack, what the Hades did he mean by looking as if he

were the only man on God's earth whose wedding-night it had ever been or

ever could be? Was Jack Awdas the first young fool who'd ever managed to

get himself marked down and married by a girl?... The whole party seemed

to be one confounded whirl of tomfoolery.... Well, he, Ross, was

leaving, and taking that chit home. (It was high time.) Drive her all

the way, too; because he'd got something to say to her. Straight away

he'd say to her, "Now, see here, damn it, there's going to be no more of

_this_, there's been enough of it, and I won't have it."

Just that was what he intended to say, and----

At this instant the Master of the House, in the treble one of his

voices, called, "I say, Captain Ross, please--they're asking for _you_."

The telephone-bell had rung a moment before, and Keith had run out of

the room to answer it.

The telephone was just outside; Captain Ross went to it....

In a minute or so he returned. He was seen to draw his hostess aside, to

murmur something to her. Mrs. Cartwright nodded quickly. Then he went up

for the second time that evening to catch hold, with his one remaining

hand, of the arm of Jack Awdas. The young flying officer gave a jerk of

his fair head; a whisper to Golden, another to his hostess.... Before

the rest of the group had realized that they were going, those two, Ross

and Awdas, were out of the flat, down the one flight of steps and out

into the clear moonlight above Westminster.

Then, composedly and carelessly, Mrs. Cartwright slipped her arm through

Golden's, and turned to her other guests.

"I'm so sorry to be inhospitable, dear people, but I think it would be

better if you went, now!" she announced, smilingly. "There's heaps of

time. You see Captain Ross gets the warning from the Honeycomb half an

hour before any of us, and they've just rung him up to say----"

"Raid on!" ejaculated Keith's highest squeak.

"Probably, he thinks," said his mother with a shrug. "Tiresome people

these Huns are; _no_ sense of fitness. Well--finish your bubbly and off

with you."

There was a scurrying of the women-folk to get their wraps from Mrs.

Cartwright's bedroom; a chorus of comment half exasperated, half amused.

Raids were less of a terror by night than a source of deep boredom to

Londoners by this time.... They had all been in them before; they knew

(with luck) just what would happen from the first whistling signals of

the "Take cover" to the "All clear."

"_Bother_ them," exclaimed little Olwen, disgusted. "In the middle of

the party for _you_, Golden!"

The men, coated and capped, thronged the tiny lobby, waiting.... Mr.

Brown and Captain Ross's friend would escort Mrs. Cartwright's niece to

her hotel. Young Mr. Ellerton was all eagerness to see Miss Howel-Jones

all the way home again. Agatha's sergeant had secured a taxi to take his

_fiancee_ Victoria-wards; they offered a lift to Golden, imagining that

the young bride would now return to her father's house in Grosvenor

Gardens. But in the midst of the little bustle of departure Mrs.

Cartwright had given a gentle clasp to the American girl's arm.

"Don't go," she said softly. "I am going to put you up, Golden. You are

to stay with me. He told me he wanted you to stay with me tonight----"

As she finished speaking, the first warning maroon went off with a

bang.

CHAPTER X

HER BRIDAL NIGHT

"An airy devil hovers in the sky

And pours down mischief."

Shakespeare.

Presently the growling of the guns began to reverberate over London.

First came the far-off rumbling that is felt rather than heard; the hint

whereat the mothers of households drop book or work to exclaim,

"Hush!... It _is_!..."

"Don't think so, dear," return the men folk; to retract a couple of

minutes later with an "Ah, yes; blast 'em. Here they are. I'll bring the

kids down."

Then came the long, nerve-irritating pause.

In Mrs. Cartwright's Westminster flat there were no children to cause

those anxieties with which the enemy had made himself more detested than

by any legitimate act of war. Her son, as he would have wished you to

note, was hardly a kid to be roused from his sleep. As he strolled back

from the staircase window, hands in pockets, his manner was nonchalant

in the extreme. He was no callow scout, either, to wait in a

police-station for that thrilling moment when he should be allowed out

to sound the bugle-call.

"Like the gramophone on again?" he suggested (luckily in the more manly

of his two voices). "It would drown that boring noise for you."

"I don't think so, darling, thanks," said his mother. A pause; silence.

"They may not get through after all. Won't you go to bed, Keith?"

"Oh, I don't know"--the over-grown lad was already dropping with sleep.

"Wouldn't you women rather I stopped up with you?"

Golden and Mrs. Cartwright exchanged a tiny smile before the mother

said, "Do you know, I don't think we'll stop up. I am going to show Mrs.

Awdas to her room now. You do as you like."

The Master of the House moved from the traditional attitude, flat back

against the sitting-room mantelpiece, feet wide apart on the Persian

rug. "Oh, well, I don't see why I should hang about, waiting up for

those wretched Huns, either," he pronounced, his pink mouth twisting

sidewards as he strangled his yawns. "I'll turn in too, if you're sure

you don't mind."

And he walked across the sitting-room to hold the door open for his

mother and her guest to precede him.

Golden, who considered this English schoolboy "perfectly lovely," gave

him a smiling good night over her shoulder.

"Good night, Precious," whispered his mother.

Very prettily the boy returned her kiss as he responded, "Good night,

old Bean."

He turned out the lights behind him and betook himself to his room on

the left of the corridor that skirted the flat. On the right were

Reggie's room and his mother's; her old Belgian _femme de menage_ came

in by the day. Her younger son's room was unoccupied tonight, but it was

her own bedroom that Mrs. Cartwright gave up to Golden Awdas. Here she

left her to undress, promising to come back.

She did not think that Golden would sleep at once.

She wandered back to turn up the lights again in the sitting-room, still

full of cigarette smoke, and with its atmosphere still vibrant as if

with young voices and laughter. And as she set chairs into their places,

plumped up cushions, and, putting her hand carefully through the

curtains, set a window open and wheeled her standing-desk back ready for

her morning's work tomorrow, she thought smilingly of those guests of

hers; all so many years behind her, in age, in emotion, in experience.

She delighted in them, these young men who felt themselves masters of

all wisdom, these girls on the right side of a barrier.... The passing

of it had been an agony to Claudia Cartwright.

It did not take all women in the same way, she reflected. Many went

through life so entirely satisfied with inessentials; so half-awake.

Most had never been lovers or had lovers. But those who had----!

No death of a sweetheart in early youth, no cruel jilting, no bitter

matrimonial experience, nothing, nothing! could compare with the

poignant, crushing, rending pain of those years when Youth and Love slip

away from the woman. It is a long black tunnel of misery from which she

emerges (having lost much but accepted, bowed her head, folded her

hands) into the grey afternoon of Life.

And then----Heaven's blessing on the maternal sense that is rich in any

real woman's character, even if she never has a child at all! For it is

this that comes to her aid; and she spreads it out over the girls and

the men she knows; caring, helping, sympathizing with all their love

emotions (or lack or them).

Henceforward everything must be vicariously felt by her. She must live

in the lives of her children; in their professions and interests; she

must love through her young friends ... Little Olwen ... Golden.... As

she thought of these Untried, their friend smiled over a tag of verse

that came into her mind with the image that seemed its illustration.

"Oh, tarnish late on Wenlock Edge, Gold that I never see! Lie

long, high snowdrifts on the hedge, That will not shower on

me."

Prayer, she thought, can take odd forms----well, this was hers for the

happiness of her girl-friends.

Golden, she thought, would be in bed by now.

A nearer growling of guns, from the north, she judged, sounded as she

tapped at the door.

"Come!" called the charming un-English voice.

Mrs. Cartwright entered her own familiar room with its known mingling of

kuss-kuss, rose, and orris scent. The toilet silver, the Indian numnah

on the floor, her husband's sword and sash over the bookshelf, and the

enlarged photograph of him laughing under the black, semi-lune shadow of

his solar-topi----these things were Claudia's background. Her eyes

opened upon them each morning. Tonight they all seemed suddenly new to

her....

It was because they were now a background to this radiant stranger in

her room. Out of that cloud of loosened gold on her pillow there looked

the face of a beauty as rare as any that had ever been kissed awake by a

fairy prince.

"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Mrs. Cartwright, involuntarily. "How lovely you

are, Golden; how lovely!"

Paradoxical enough it might seem to some women, but this woman thanked

Heaven it was a girl so beautiful who had supplanted her, or rather, to

whom she had relinquished that beautiful boy. She could not have endured

to see Jack choose a bride unworthy in body or mind, least of all one

who might be as the ordinary "nice" pretty girl often is, a bundle of

mere sentiment and frigidity. To Golden she could give him. Actually she

had brought them together. And now it was to his best woman-friend that

the young flier confided his sweetheart.

On this, of all nights! Their bridal night!

Mrs. Cartwright could have laughed outright at the strangeness of it.

Jack's wedding-night!

She remembered that other night, months ago, when in a French hotel

bedroom she had outwatched the hours with a nightmare-haunted man. In

the very attitude that she had taken then, she sat down now on the edge

of this other bed, tucking the eider-down about her as she began

chatting, quietly and cheerfully, with his bride. Through speech and

pause alike the elder woman's mind was echoing with memories. It was

Jack Awdas's husky voice that she heard, clearly as when it was his face

upon a pillow that she watched. How feverishly he had muttered, "That's

why I always shout in my dream.... I was falling, falling, and calling

out to my observer.... We _were_ pals!... I don't think it could ever be

exactly like that with a girl."

She, Claudia, had told him, "The girl is more to you or less to you, but

not the same."

And now she lay in her beauty, the girl; that worshipped "girl" of

Jack's. And this----_This!_--was her bridal night.

Guns! The nearer guns were uttering now. Bark after vicious bark set

windows rattling. The racket died away only to break out afresh....

In an interval, Golden said suddenly. "Jack told me what a really fine

friend you'd always been to him. And, d'you know? I've always known I

should be friends with you."

"Have you?"

"Why, yes. I said so before we left Les Pins.... D'you remember, I saw

you for a moment that very first evening, sitting with him in the

lounge? But who would have thought where we should all be tonight?"

mused the girl, lifting the throat that rose so pillar-wise and white

above the silken edge of a night-dress of her hostess's. "In London, and

me married to the Bird-boy, and an air raid going on outside. But do I

have to keep you up this way? You're all dressed and everything: I'm so

afraid you'll be dead tired."

"Not I. I shouldn't be able to sleep if I did undress. There'll be

another hullabaloo on in another minute, I expect," said Mrs.

Cartwright, cheerfully. The sound of the guns had died down for a

moment. "And--well, it won't be the first time, Golden, that I've stayed

up with somebody who could not sleep.... Ah, they're starting again."

Yes, they were starting again....

Throughout London, nurses in hospitals set their teeth angrily over

patients whom they had hoped to drag back to life, out of the horrors

of shock. Other nurses, in maternity homes, could have wrung dismayed

hands over this terror added to Nature's ordeal. And in operating rooms

the white-coated surgeons cursed below their breath the hellish

interruption that might cause a slip of the hand or the instrument and

leave all care, all science vain. These things were the danger and the

damage; not merely the bomb dropped at random; the crumbling masonry.

These, and the mischief to countless little children, disturbed past

soothing now, with tender nerves a-fret, heads gathered to their

parents' shoulders. Little heads! They ought never to have been visited

by such questions as punctuated the din in homes where baby voices

asked, _"Was that a gun or a bomb, daddy?" ... "Where was that firing

from?" ... "If a raid came right on Billy's cot, mamsie, what would you

do?"_

Then there came to their ears a new sound--the gutteral, syncopated

drone of twin engines--beating over the roofs.

"Ah! There's one got through, then," said Mrs. Cartwright.

Following on her words came the outburst of nearer gunnery,

to which the whole house seemed to shake; in twos and

threes--"_Brroum--brrroum!--brrroum!--brroum!--brrrroum!_"

then a more ponderous crash than all.

Then, a light tap at the door and a voice in two keys, calling with

zest, "Mums! Are you all right? Is Mrs. Awdas? There's nothing to be

frightened at really."

"No; all right, Keith darling. You're all right, aren't you?"

"Top-hole. I say, did you hear that last? I'm sure it was a dud shell

just outside on the pavement, so----"

"Keith, you're to _promise_ you won't go outside until they've gone,"

called his mother, starting up. "Go to your room!"

"Oh ... all right, then. I'll nip out as soon as the all-clear goes

though." The Master of the House pattered off down the corridor to his

room.

"I wonder if any others will get through tonight," said Mrs. Cartwright,

listening.

Golden, who had not yet lost any of her kin or seen them broken in this

War, suggested that these German flyers were, anyway, brave.

"So are other beasts of prey," returned the Englishwoman.

Again the firing rolled away in the distance, following the raiders'

course....

But a thoughtfulness seemed to have fallen upon the wakeful girl. For

the first time she had given a little shiver at the sound of that

receding turmoil.

"Now I hope it isn't too cowardly of me, what I'm going to say," she

began, suddenly, turning on her rounded elbow. "But I can't help

thinking of boys flying up there in the dark, in the teeth of guns like

that.... _He_ was doing it, of course, until he crashed. My Bird-boy!...

He's always glad when he goes up; he was grousing to me, as you call it,

yesterday, because he hadn't been off the ground for a week ... but, oh,

Mrs. Cartwright! do you know, _I'm_ real glad, just for tonight, that

Jack can't be up."

Mrs. Cartwright smiled at her, answering her in two words that seemed

ordinary enough.

"I know."

But they meant, to the elder woman, something very different from the

gentle agreement that they conveyed to the girl.

Claudia Cartwright heard again the hasty whisper with which Jack had

taken leave of her those hours ago. "I want _Her_ to stay here," he told

her. "I'd want you to take care of her."

At the time Mrs. Cartwright had been paralyzed with surprise. Golden

Awdas to stay with her? Why?

Why on earth should Jack leave her----tonight of all nights? She, the

bride, had seemed to see nothing stupefying in his action in going off

with Captain Ross when the warning came through.

But Mrs. Cartwright knew that Captain Ross had his own duty, not

anything in which Jack must help him. Jack was free, she'd heard, until

ten o'clock tomorrow morning. It was not Jack's pidgin to do anything

until then.... Therefore why in the name of all that was extraordinary

hadn't he taken his bride away when the others all went? Why hadn't he

taken her off home with him, or to the hotel where he put up, or

wherever it was?

Then, very quickly, she'd seen why.

One of the cleverest soldiers of her acquaintance had already told

Claudia that, could the true history of these campaigns ever be written,

it would read not merely like _another version_ of the War, but like

_another War_. She guessed how many things planned never happen and how

many things happen that were never planned, and how few of either get

into the papers. Oh, the difference between the published account and

the story of the man who was there! Tomorrow would see a report of this

raid, which would say nothing at all of the men whose duty ... it had

_not_ been to beat back the raiders. It was _not_ Jack's duty to go up

that night. It was his duty not to go.

But----

Up there he was now, she knew it. Up there, in the darkness and the din!

Perhaps over the house now, the joyous eaglet-boy, fighting those

circling hawks ... now, at this moment!...

She knew it in her heart.

And, thinking of that, she sat there smiling at the white and golden

bride who was glad to think of her boy safe from this danger at

least.... There was no reason why Golden should know it too.

The woman he had loved continued to watch with the girl he loved, during

her bridal night.

CHAPTER XI

HIS BRIDAL NIGHT

"Tell me not, Sweet, I am unkind

That from the nunnery

Of thy chaste breast and quiet mind

To war and arms I fly.

Yet this inconstancy is such

As you too shall adore,

I could not love thee, Dear, so much,

Loved I not Honour more."

Lovelace.

Mrs. Cartwright's intuition had been perfectly right.

Jack Awdas was up during the raid over London. He was up to some

purpose, as his comrades and three other airmen (prisoners of war) could

tell.

But here is his own version of the affair, as told by him, on the

following day, to his young wife.

"When that warning came through, you see, I felt that it was

for me too. I don't know what my own idea was when I went off

with old Ross. He said, 'What the something do _you_ want to

come along for?' I said, 'All right; shut up.' I didn't know,

you know. Queer, wasn't it? All I knew was that I had got to go

too, instead of bringing you back here as I'd thought.... I'd

_got_ to leave you, girl."

She listened, leaning back now in his happy arms. She listened, all

eyes. His own blue eyes had been deep in hers, locked to them with the

lover's look that is another embrace. But now he took them from hers.

He glanced aside and away, and into Jack Awdas's eyes there crept back

one of those two other looks which were characteristic of him. It was

the "yonderly" look that sees what is not for all to see.

"Somehow," he said, "I knew I just couldn't stay with you. I'd got to go

up, and Lord only knew how it was going to be managed, or how I was

going to get out of the 'drome in time, even. There wasn't a taxi in

sight. Ross and I walked on to the Honeycomb, or half ran, half walked.

Going up Whitehall he said, 'Jack, you darned fool, go back; what's

wrong?' I said, 'Nothing; shut up, old thing, if you don't mind.'

"In the courtyard of the Honeycomb we nearly ran into a tiny little

dispatch-rider girl with a side-car. I didn't know until just now that

it was young Brown's widow that he was going to marry, that we'd heard

about at dinner! She'd brought some man in, and was just starting up; I

said to her, 'Where are you for?' She said, 'Home! and time, too.'

'Where's home?' said I, and I believe she told me it was Baker

Street.... But just as I was asking her I began to see what I'd got to

do. It began to come to me then, d'you see?

"I said to the girl, 'Look here, I'm sorry, you can't go home yet.

You've got to drive me out to my 'drome, and I told her where that was.

Half an hour's ride into the country. We did it in less. I told her I'd

got to get to my 'bus, and that she'd got to go hell-for-leather; and we

did it in less....

"You see, I'd got to take that machine across at ten o'clock next

morning. Had to: duty. (You knew about that, of course.) But if I could

only get her up a few hours before that! I thought.... There she was,

waiting. There were dozens of our chaps up already, I knew. Here was

I----and I couldn't stand it, somehow. Not last night. Just because it

_was_ that night. It would have spoilt it. You see, don't you? Yes; I

thought you would. I wouldn't think of you then; except to think 'It's

_her_ I'm going to give Them.' I don't even know what 'them'

meant----(This sounds such rot, girl, that I couldn't possibly tell

anybody else, but there you are.... I won't kiss you again until I've

told you the end of this.)

"Well, we chased along the roads in the moonlight at the deuce of a

lick, coming round the corners on the edge of one wheel. Just imagine

it! Me and that side-car, and that girl of Brown's----No more idea it

was his girl----! She's only about so-size; I thought she was a kid of

fifteen like one of those little brown messengers with pigtails that go

trotting about the corridors, and by Jove, I tried to _tip_ her! I did!

I didn't know. I hadn't any silver on me after all those tips and things

in the afternoon, after we were married. I just lugged out my note-case

and got out a couple of John Bradburys--the last. I stuffed 'em into her

hand. 'Here, thanks awfully!' I said; 'do buy yourself a hat-pin or some

sweets or something----' She did laugh! 'You won't?' I said--she

stuffing them back for all she was worth. 'Oh well, sorry if I've made a

break,' I said, 'can't stop to explain now--thanks awfully--Good night!'

and up I legged it to the gates, holding those notes in my hand all the

time....

"You know, I hadn't my papers or orders or anything! Neck, wasn't it?

_I_ didn't know what on earth I was going to ask the Adjutant!

Sometimes when you want a thing it's a good deal better not to ask ...

just go and grab it, and explain afterwards.

"Well, then I had a bit of luck.

"Scurrying through the gates, I ran straight into Dashmold himself; that

is the Adjutant. (A stinker on duty.)

"'Ha, Awdas!' he said, 'can't stop now, the Colonel's just rung me up

from his house. See you in half an hour.'

"'Rightoh,' I said, and dashed ahead, thanking my lucky stars--for this

only left me with our assistant adjutant, always a bit of an ass. I

chased off to the orderly-room and found him.

"'Hello, Awdas,' he squeaked. (Voice rather like George Clarke at the

Empire; pink and white face.)

"'I suppose you know there's a raid on?' I said. 'I've come for that

'bus.' He said, 'What about your papers?' I said, 'Yes, hand 'em over,

that's all right. I've just this moment spoken to Dashmold.' (So I had;

just said 'Rightoh' to him.) 'Those are my orders,' I said, 'in that

pile there. Chuck 'em over. Thanks.' So that was _that_....

"Then off I streaked to the Officers' Quarters to get into my things.

Not a soul there. You know. It's a long corridor with a row of little

cubicles not much bigger than the dressing-rooms at the swimming bath.

Just hold a camp-bed and a chest of drawers and a row of pegs.... By

Jove, if some thief hadn't pinched my kit. Some one got into the first

that was handy, I suppose, when they got the warning. I'll have his

blood for that, later. So in I nipped to one cubicle after another. All

empty. I thought I wasn't going to find a stitch. However! At last I

came to one; there it was, a lovely outfit all hanging ready on the

pegs. Man called Jackson. He'd got leave. Well! I plunged into his coat

and overalls and flying-cap and goggles, all the lot! quicker than

anything I've ever done in my life. I remember I'd got those blessed

pound notes still in my hand. I shoved them into my teeth while I

dressed. Then down I doubled to the hangars.

"About a dozen of the ac emmas--those are mechanics, dear--were waiting

about there. I switched the lights on.

"There was my 'bus all ready for tomorrow morning--ah, a beauty! Yes,

the one you saw on Thursday, that I'd been making the trial flight in;

the single-seater Scout monoplane. I'd always fancied her. She ran a

little light, but I liked that. I'd got her balanced; just right for me.

I.T. All ready, tanks filled up and everything. The gun was on her,

but----Dash it! No ammunition, of course. That did me.

"Then I saw Smithers. (He's the Quartermaster's nephew.) I said,

'Smithers! Jump to it ... here you are, take this' (the last two quid I

had on me, that Brown's widow refused), 'and get me two drums of

ammunition. How? _I_ don't know. Somehow. Off with you and give you five

minutes to get back in.' Off he streaked. Then I said to the others,

'Now, you men, get a move on. Get her out.' They wheeled her out of the

hangar and into the moonlight.

"Oh! I nearly forgot to tell you all about something, though. Even at

the time I noticed it. (The sort of funny little thing you do notice

when you aren't really thinking of anything except getting on with

what's on.) It was tied round the joy-stick! You know, dear, your bit of

ribbon that I've always kept as a mascot since that day on the beach.

I'd tied it on just before the trial flight. It's always been on, you

know, on whatever 'bus I've been flying. I meant it to, until you were

mine, and then I was going to give it back to you, Girl, because it

wouldn't matter which of us two had the Luck _then_; it would be the

same thing.

"I looked at it once as I was waiting, and I remember thinking to myself

quickly, in the sort of rum way, like you think of things in dreams, 'By

Jove, I suppose that's the most precious prize I've owned, up to now.'

"But after that I just looked at my watch and stamped as I stood waiting

for those blighted drums. I'd given Smithers five minutes. Lord, if he

couldn't do it. I----It seemed a thundering important thing to me, you

see: the most important I'd ever had to do. You do know why, don't you?

You do understand?"

Golden's great eyes upon his face were as full of understanding as the

tone of her simple "yes." Her young husband gave a short, contented nod,

then he went on:

"Well! So then I saw Smithers, coming running back. 'Got 'em?' I

shouted. 'Right, sir!' he shouted back. Up he came with those two drums

he'd got (God knows _how_). I fixed one on the gun myself, and put the

other handy.

"'Start her up,' I said. I climbed in, and the boys swung the propeller.

I gave 'em 'Contact,' and then I was up and off.... Hadn't been off the

earth for a week. And, by the way, I hadn't gone up to fight since the

time I crashed.

"Yes, of course, it was a perfectly idiotic thing to do. I hadn't got

the night's Orders any more than I'd orders to go and stand by with

Ross, where you thought I was. I didn't know if we were fighting with

guns or planes or both, nor where nor when nor anything about it.

However!----.

"What did London look like from up there? Oh, just all dark, you know:

like a great turned-up field below you, with the river winding through

it. What you do see very plainly is that silver ribbon of the Thames,

reflecting the light of the sky.

"You think the sky's big, don't you? Well, it isn't so big when you can

bumble into your own barrage at any moment, or when a Hun you can

neither see nor hear lets fly suddenly. But I could see shrapnel

breaking away to the south-west, so I just beetled off after that....

"Then I'm dashed if those three blighters in their big plane didn't

nearly run me down. Yes, I s'pose she'd be the plane you and Mrs.

Cartwright heard over the house. Was she missing it all?"

"Missing?" repeated the fascinated Golden. "Why, how could I know?"

"Well, anyway, she was somewhere over that part of town. They'd jumped

the barrage and got in. I circled round, climbing all I knew, and then I

guess they dropped those two bombs to lighten themselves.

"The searchlight fellows down below were dazzling away to beat the band.

You could see nothing but jumping flashes all over the show, putting 'em

off their aim. Me too. Perfectly poisonous. I cursed, but I knew I'd no

business there....

"Well, that Scout of mine could climb as quick as any Gotha built yet,

so I gave them twenty rounds or so right into 'em. They didn't like

that, so I gave 'em some more. They fired back, but nothing to hurt. The

next go, they decided to give it up, I think. They headed for the

south-west again. Evidently they were going to chance the barrage. Bon!

Anyway, if they were, so was I.

"And oh, Girl, if you knew how I wanted to get them! I wanted to get

those raiding Huns, if I had to chase them to the coast and across and

right to Berlin. As Ross says, 'I wanted to let 'em have it where Dora

wore the beads.' I felt 'I must. I'll die if I don't, and I----'

"D'you know what I did? This is one of the most idiotic bits yet, but

I'm going to tell you the lot.... Generally, I don't think I'm

superstitious. Some fellows are; well, I'd known one perfectly sane and

sensible fellow, who, when he was mad keen after something he wanted,

winning some event, or something----he'd turn money out of his pocket--a

sovereign, say, in the days when we had sovereigns, or a handful of

silver----and throw it away. Pitch it right away, you know, to buy him

luck. Well, I thought of it then. If I could buy that German plane!

So----

"I pulled off my glove as I buzzed along after 'em and made a dive

inside my jacket for money. Then I remembered I hadn't a bean on me. I'd

given my last two quid to Smithers, and here I was, and I wanted to buy

that Gotha, I tell you! I'd have bought her with anything I'd got,

money, ring, every last thing----

"Then I remembered.

"It was on the joy-stick, the thing I valued. Your little mascot! I

ripped it off. I gave one look round to where those beggars were heading

for the barrage, and then chucked that bit of ribbon out over where I

guessed you might be. (Perfectly absurd, of course. The wind whisked it

away.) ... And as I chucked it I shouted something out. Somebody's name.

"No! You can't guess whose name it was. Nobody'd have thought it. The

funny thing about it was, it wasn't even the name I meant to shout. I

meant to shout out 'Cheer O, Girl!' I heard myself yelling out instead,

'Cheer O, _Ferris_!'

"He was the observer I used to have. Killed, last year.... Somehow, just

then, I forgot that; I felt as if he were with me. Then! I thought 'Good

Lord, fancy if old Ferris----'

"Then I didn't think any more; I settled down to business. Well, as you

know, I did have to chase 'em to the coast, those dashed Archies popping

all the way. _At_ the coast the Archies were----say really hot. Then

those sea-planes took a hand, but it wasn't the seaplane that got her.

_I_ got her! Got her right over Beachy Head.

"I knew I'd done it the moment he turned about. I'd put half a drum

right into her engines, and she wouldn't want to land in the sea (rather

Irish).

"Suddenly a searchlight blazed right on the pair of us, and the Archies

stopped, just like the band stops and the limelight concentrates for the

really tricky bit of the show with those acrobats at a music-hall....

"But this was dead easy, the rest of it. I just circled above her like a

buzzard, driving her down, down, all the time. I didn't fire at her any

more, because you could tell within twenty yards where she was going to

land, and I knew the lads of the village were all ready and waiting for

her. One bad wobble she gave and pitched straight down. I sheered off a

bit for fear of getting any bombs, but she'd drop her last one on the

way. She simply came down end on like shying a lump of clay at a board.

Then I landed, tumbled out, and legged it up the slope as fast as I

could; just in time to see 'em getting out all the three Huns alive.

"'My bird, I think,' says I, running up all out of breath.

"Then a chap beside me spoke out of the dark, 'Hi! Who are you?'

"I couldn't see him, so I said, 'D'you mind telling me who _you_ are?'

"He pulled a torch out of his pocket and showed it on himself. A

Staff-major. So we shook hands, and he congratulated me.... Then I felt

rather a fool," laughed Jack Awdas, "for he asked me my name.

"'Well, as a matter of fact, Sir,' I said, and stopped.

"'Well what?' he asked.

"'Well, as a matter of fact, I'm not supposed to be here at all.'

"'Oh?' he barked. 'Got any orders on you?'

"I had; from the Assistant Adjutant. I pulled 'em out and he read them

by the light of his torch.

"'H'm,' he said, 'taking a machine to France, but I see by this you're

not due to start until tomorrow morning. It's now two, ac emma. How's

this?'

"Well, when you're cornered like that I always think there's only one

thing for it; pure cheek. So, as bold as brass, I gave a look at the

orders myself, and then said, 'I rather fancy this must be a clerical

error, sir. My verbal orders were to start today, and I can't have been

two hours on the way yet?'

"I fancied I heard him give a chuckle in the dark, but all he said was,

'Well, this will be a serious matter for you.'

"'Oh, I hope not, Sir,' I said.

"'A serious matter,' says he. 'If you'd been sent up to chase Hun planes

you might have got the D.S.O. for this. But you see what it means now?'

"'What?' I asked.

"'Well! This being an act outside the course of your duty,' he said, 'it

_may_ mean the Victoria Cross!'"

Golden Awdas gasped. "Then, think of it, Bird-boy! You'll only have

traded _my_ ribbon," she exclaimed, "for that wonderful other! Now

wasn't that a prize----"

But the wide and distant stare had gone now from her airman's eyes.

These had returned to her; his sweet American who had journeyed across a

world before he had found her, his love whom he had loved enough to

leave, knowing that it might be for ever.... His blue eyes were locked

into hers again for a moment with his lover's look that now sent a wave

of pink fire flaming into her face and down her throat. Against that

perfect throat he buried eyes and lips.

"'Think?' I needn't think of anything else now, Girl," he whispered.

"_You're_ my prize!"

* * * * *

That was Jack Awdas's story of his share in the raid.

The evening papers announced:

"Bombs were dropped in several districts, but no material damage was

caused. A woman and two children were slightly injured.

"One German aeroplane was brought down on the coast by a pilot of the

Royal Flying Corps."

The German account read:

"A successful raid was carried out by our airmen over London last night.

Good results were obtained, and large fires were seen to break out in

various districts.

"All our aeroplanes returned safely."

CHAPTER XII

SHRAPNEL AND THE CHARM

"Never the time and the place and the loved one all together!"

Browning.

And what of the other people who had been at Mrs. Cartwright's party

when that raid alarm came through?

Olwen Howel-Jones and young Ellerton had imagined that by taking "the

Metropolitan" from Baker Street Station they might arrive at Wembley

Park before the raid started in earnest.

This hope proved to be vain before their train reached Willesden

Junction. Out went the lights as the train came to a dead stand between

two stations. Up went the windows; above the iron bars that guarded them

there craned the heads of passengers asking in every key what the matter

was.

They were answered by the distant growling of those first guns.

"Bai Jove! Held up for the blessed raid," exclaimed the cheerful voice

of young Ellerton, who was alone with Olwen in a first-class carriage in

the front of the train. "How priceless! Here we are and here we stay

until the blighters choose to finish their little call, I s'pose. That's

all right.... Hope you don't feel nervous, Miss Howel-Jones?"

The soft voice of little Olwen came to him out of the dark. (She was

sitting in the corner seat, opposite to him.) "Oh, no! I'm not nervous

at all, thanks. I think it's quite exciting! I only hope Lizzie (that's

my Aunt) won't be worrying about me; but then she knew where I was;

she'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept me."

"Ah, yes. She'll probably think Mrs. Cartwright kept you," agreed

Olwen's companion. "I thought it looked a likely night for our friends."

He had made this remark, by the way, twice on their way to Baker Street.

"Yes," said Olwen.

Silence, punctuated by a nearer muttering of the guardian guns fell

between the two young people in the carriage to themselves. The voices

of other passengers could be heard further along the train; and the

guard appeared to be exchanging repartee with the engine-driver, whose

name (as that of all drivers of 'bus or engine seems to be), was Bill.

Olwen gave a little laugh as "Bill's" comments were shouted forth on the

night air, and her companion chuckled also. But he started no

conversation about it. Or about any other subject.

The whole truth of the matter was that this quite good-looking and

pleasant young man Harold Ellerton hadn't got very much conversation.

Others besides Captain Ross (who was never inclined to be fair to him)

had noticed this. Olwen herself had noticed it before now. It had been

noticed by various girls whom he had taken out; for he was fond of

taking out girls. But, unlike the majority of his sex, he preferred

_them_ to talk to _him_. He was perfectly happy to punctuate their

treble twitter with his appreciative bass, "Ha!" "Bai Jove!" and

"Priceless!" But (except for one other detail to be presently

specified), he hardly knew what else to say to a young woman who was out

with him. That was why he felt most at ease sitting beside her at a

theatre (where, during two enjoyable hours, all the talking necessary

was done for him by Mr. Owen Nares, or Mr. Leslie Henson, or somebody

like that). Or at a restaurant, preferably at a table near the band;

listening to that could always fill up any awkward pause. At dances,

again, one could dance. At a little dinner party like tonight's, for

instance, there was a crowd where everybody talked; made everything so

much more cheery at once. But it was when these things came to an end,

when one had the girl all to oneself to bring home----_That_, he found,

was the crab!

Why was it, he wondered, that he found it so difficult to talk to her,

except upon one subject?

He remembered delightful evenings, ending in these painful and tedious

journeys _a deux_. Tonight, for instance, it was going to be the very

dickens with this little Miss Howel-Jones. A jolly nice little kid,

thought the sailor, a pretty kid! But here they might be held up

together in this confounded train for another hour, perhaps, and he

couldn't even see her face, and he was blessed if he knew what more to

say to her----Why, he'd said everything as he sat next to her at dinner,

he and that funny little Brown chap. He did envy the flow of chaps like

that! Chaps who could yarn away upon this, that, and the other subject

for three years or the duration of the War. Talk to girls for ever, they

could, without repeating themselves!

"I thought it looked a likely sort of evening for a raid," he heard

himself say at this point.

"Yes," said the girl opposite to him in the dark.

Of course he'd said everything there was to be said on the subject of

air-raids in general and this air-raid in particular on the way to Baker

Street. Yet he couldn't sit here in the dark opposite to her for the

whole length of the raid, saying nothing?

Still the guns made distant thunder....

"I do hope you aren't frightened," he said. "It's quite all right, you

know."

"Oh, I know. I'm not a bit frightened," came from Olwen; truthfully

enough.

She was not frightened as she settled herself back against the padding

of the carriage. She was only a little sleepy, a little anxious for the

kind-hearted Lizzie, who would be waiting up for her in that pretty

villa at Wembley Park; she was also excited and elated still after her

lovely party.

She was thinking far more of that party than she was of her companion of

the raid!

She was also wondering about Captain Ross.

What a _disgusting_ temper the man had been in all that evening!

Positively scowling at her! Was he jealous, really? _Was_ he?

Then she wondered what Captain Ross was doing at that moment.

If there had been no raid----! If it had been he who was seeing her home

she might have asked him what she had done that he should scowl at her

like that.

Or if only it were Captain Ross who was sitting with her here in this

darkened carriage all smelling of engine-dust and cigarette smoke,

waiting for the raid to finish....

Hurriedly Olwen put the thought away. It was no use allowing oneself to

dwell on thoughts of things that were too good to be true. No, no, not

too good. She told herself firmly that she did not wish Captain Ross

were in this railway-carriage instead of Mr. Ellerton. Captain Ross

would only be disagreeable.

Only----Well! She could imagine some girls feeling glad of a raid in

these circumstances. Some girls to whom it would be as one long, long

lovely dance "sat out" in a dark corner with their favourite partner of

all. Perhaps there were girls "hung up" in this very train, feeling that

it was the evening of their lives.

Whereas all she could feel was apologetic to Mr. Ellerton. He liked her,

but she was sure he had never bargained for sitting out with her a dance

of this length. Still, what was to be done? Here the train stuck. They

couldn't get out and walk to Wembley!

"Shall we smoke?" suggested Mr. Ellerton. "You'll have a cigarette,

won't you?"

He fumbled in his pockets and brought out his torch. Its tiny beams made

rounds of light in the carriage and upon his face and upon the gold

braid and gold rings of his uniform. He found case and matches. He

lighted a cigarette for Olwen, who puffed at it with secret distaste

(for the moderate smoker is not found among her sex; a woman being

either a cigarette fiend or a passive objector).

The two red glow-worms winked and wavered in the dark carriage, their

reflections shining in the glass of photographs over the rack. Outside

the searchlights pointed, and now and again the sky showed the alien

star of a shrapnel-burst.

Then, without warning, crash after crash seemed to rock the train on the

rails. Some guns, very near, that had not yet spoken, were barking

savagely, and between the barks a shrill "whee-you! whee-you!" hissed

past the telegraph wires....

The start that Olwen gave made her drop her cigarette on to the floor of

the carriage. She dug her little French heel into the spark. Young

Ellerton threw his cigarette down beside it and rose quickly. Snapping

up the arm of the seat by Olwen, he sat down close to her.

"You needn't be frightened," he said, encouragingly.

"I'm not frightened," she assured him. "Only it makes me jump."

"Brutes, frightening you!" exclaimed young Ellerton. "I say, I do wish

I'd thought of bringing some chocolates or something for you."

"I'm not hungry either, thank you," laughed Olwen into the barking of

those guns, but young Ellerton's voice repeated, "I wish I'd got any

sweets for you. I've only this----"

She felt him move against her arm as he leant nearer to her to get

something else out of his pocket: it was a phial of saccharine tablets,

carried about since the sugar restrictions.

"Have some of these," he said. "Put out your hand ... here, where are

you?" He shook half a dozen tablets out into her palm.

As it happened, Olwen disliked saccharine worse than she disliked

Virginian cigarettes, yet she munched the substitute-sweets to please

this young man who, according to his lights, was being nice and kind and

protective towards her.

For the severalth time he informed her that she was not to be

frightened.... Then, in a new tone, he added, "Dear little girl." Then,

more softly still, "For you _are_ a dear little girl, you know. Do you

know, you're just about the sweetest I've ever met."

"Oh, pooh!" laughed Olwen, taken by surprise, nevertheless. She rather

wished she could see the face of the young man sitting so close beside

her. Had she done so, she would have seen it was what is known as "a

study." For during the last half-hour or so the young man had become the

prey to conflicting emotions indeed. Chief of these, perhaps, was a

helpless fascination; the fascination of some one with a weak head who

watches himself draw nearer and nearer to the brink of some giddy

height.

Harold Ellerton knew he was drifting, as he'd done times and again,

towards a fatal habit of his. Times and again, since before he had left

Dartmouth, this thing had happened to him. It was as characteristic of

him as was his lack of general conversation where women were concerned.

In fact, it's not impossible that one of these characteristics may have

led to the other.

He didn't know what to say to girls unless he were making love to them,

and his sole conception of love-making was to ask them to marry him!

He saw it coming now in the dark accomplice solitude of this railway

carriage. He knew that he was going to say a few more tender things to

this little Howel-Jones girl, about her eyelashes and how sweet she'd

looked at that party and how she ought to have a bridal party of her

own, directly--dear little sweetheart she'd make to any fellow!

He said these things.

He knew the other was coming.

It came.

"Look here, d'you think you could care enough to be _mine_?" he heard

himself say. "Bai Jove, if you would----! If you'd marry _me_! Would

you? Would you?"

There! He'd done it again.

Now came the agonizing moment.

Now again he'd have to wait for the girl's answer. That always seemed to

him to be at least two hours in coming: except once, an anguished once

when the girl had said, "Yes" directly. What would this one say; what?

He waited in the dark; and sweat broke out on the young brow under the

peaked cap.

In a long, uncertain breath the girl said, "Oh----"

Then, "D'you mean it, Mr. Ellerton?"

"Of _course_!" returned Mr. Ellerton, ardently, but digging his nails

into the palms of his hands.

The soft voice beside him said, rather waveringly, "Wait a minute----"

The young man who had just proposed again set his teeth and waited. This

was Hades. Serve him right for being such a double-blanked fool again!

But this was the worst yet. Never before had he not been able to see the

girl's face when he asked her to marry him. Never again, he vowed

incoherently to himself, never again would he be such an ass as to

propose to a girl during a raid with all the lights out! But then, never

again would he let himself in for this with any girl alive! Not if he

got safely out of this! Oh, Lord, the fool he'd been!... Could he

possibly light a cigarette?... No, only wait.... "A minute" this little

thing had said....

Before she spoke again, aeons seemed to elapse.

Actually they were a few moments only, during which the mind of Olwen

Howel-Jones dashed swiftly through four distinct phases of thought. The

first was pure surprise.

The second was a "No" that came from the bed-rock of woman's nature,

that fundamental thing which Convention must blast and quarry into

acceptable shapes.

The third was a "Yes" compounded of a thousand artificialities

inherited, acquired, fostered, observed, and taught. Fear was among

them; fear handed down from generations of dowerless girls who accepted

the first proposal lest they might die as old maids. Why not! thought

little Olwen. Engaged! Fancy if she were! What would her Aunts think,

and Uncle, and her sisters! She would be the first of her sisters to

become engaged! And she had got her leave, too, and would be going down

to Wales; fancy going home to tell them! Fancy telling them at the

Honeycomb; Mrs. Newton and everybody! What fun! Engaged to Mr. Ellerton.

She did like him so much; she did, she did! He was awfully nice, and

jolly with people, and so good-looking and so----it appeared, so fond of

her!... More than could be said for Captain Ross. Wouldn't it be

absolutely ridiculous to miss a real thing like this, for just a fancy

like that? Girls had to get engaged while they could. It was the

happiest thing; getting engaged and having a ripping time for a bit,

then getting married and having everybody congratulating you. Getting

engaged in the middle of a raid, too! Nobody could say that wasn't

romantic. Love?... Well, Captain Ross had said that men couldn't bear

"that Love-with-a-capital-L" business. It wasn't for everybody. And why

do without all the fun of getting engaged, simply for the sake of some

man who evidently didn't care two-pence.... It would be awfully silly to

say "No."

Swiftly as the flash of the guns this phase passed; swiftly as the

following report there followed the fourth phase in the girl's mind. It

flung her back to phase the second. But that had been composed of dumb

Instinct. This was articulate.

No, no! She must not say "Yes" to this young man. However nice, however

good-looking, however fond, he was not the man. She knew it. She did not

love him. Golden said Love must be Lovely. What more unlovely than a

loveless pact? The "fun" of this engagement? What would that be? A

wretched substitute; no more real, sweet fun than the saccharine tablets

which she had been munching were real sugar. Sugar in tea; Love in

Life.... Some people put up with makeshifts cheerfully; but not she.

Some other people (she pursued the childish analogy) never did take

sugar in their tea. The luckier they! They missed nothing; Olwen would

crave it forever. But better a thousand times to go without everything

than to accept the wrong thing!

She came out of her swift inner reverie, back to the dark railway

carriage and the young man.

"Oh, Mr. Ellerton," she said hurriedly and remorsefully. "I am

dreadfully sorry but I can't possibly. I don't care for you. Not that

way. I do like you ever so much. But if--if you don't mind, I _couldn't_

marry you."

She heard the young man near her give, in the darkness, the profoundest

sigh that she had ever heard torn from any human breast....

Remorsefully she repeated, "I am so sorry----" Then stopped abruptly.

She seemed, in the darkness and the vibrating atmosphere, to have caught

a floating idea that startled her somewhat.

She began again gravely. "Will you lend me your torch for a minute?"

She felt it put into her hand.

Quickly Olwen said, "It's very rude of me, but I _must_ look at you,

please: I must see your face!"

Then she turned the little beam right upon him.

Then she exclaimed, "Mr. Ellerton!"

"Yes----" he said, unmistakably sheepish.

Olwen burst out laughing. "You are a fraud," she exclaimed gaily. "You

aren't one bit sorry that I refused you. You're trying not to, but

you're looking----yes, _relieved_. You're glad! Don't pretend!"

"Oh, I say----"

"No! Don't pretend! You were laughing. You're feeling gladder than

you've ever felt over anything in your life because I don't want to

marry you! I _know_!"

Young Ellerton dragged his handkerchief from his cuff, pushed back his

cap and wiped his forehead. "Bai Jove," he said with the sincerest

admiration in his tone, "you _are_ a clever little thing. I--I don't

think any of the others have ever tumbled to that."

A moment later he found himself talking to her with more real ease and

enjoyment than he had ever talked to a girl in his life; with real

fluency. To her (during the second hour for which they were hung up) he

confessed that no, he didn't want to get married. There were

people----anyhow, men, who _didn't_. Not to the sweetest and prettiest

girl in the world. Not to _anybody_. To tie himself up like that for

life, declared the young sailor, was what he wouldn't want to do for

anything under the sun; certainly not for anything under a hat. Never!

Olwen, finding she had ceased to be bored by him for the first time

since she had left Mrs. Cartwright's turned her face towards him in the

dark and plied him with question after laughing question.

"But you ask people to marry you!"

"Can't stop myself! It's the devil!"

"And none of them have accepted you?"

"Yes; one! A girl who was at college with my sister. A nice girl. I did

get to loathe her!" with feeling. "We were engaged for one whole awful

week!"

"How did you break it off, then?"

"She did. I loved her for that. She said I was too much like the young

man in Stevenson who said being engaged was all right as long as her

sisters were there. So she chucked me. And after that I've been

lucky----I mean, you know what I mean!"

Olwen shook with laughter. "But, then, why d'you _do_ it?" she

persisted.

"I tell you I can't help it. It happens!"

"Why? For instance, why did you let it happen tonight? Quite frankly,

_why_ did you ask me?"

"Oh, you----!" he began, and he paused for a minute. "Oh, come," he

said, "you are an awful nice little girl, you know. Anybody might be

excused for losing his head. You were looking extra pretty at the party

tonight, too. Some _peach_, you looked, if I may say so; and it wasn't

just looks either. There was _something_ about you. Sort of

disturbing.... I swear there was. You attracted me till I----"

"Don't propose to me again," Olwen warned him. "I might think better of

it."

"Oh, no," laughed Harold Ellerton. "You're an absolute little

sportswoman, I know."

The little sportswoman, while she continued to laugh and chat with him

in the friendliest way until the signal sounded for the train to start

again, the little sportswoman had been really arrested by one of his

remarks.

"_Something about her_" tonight, he thought. She'd heard something like

that before. She thought she might know what it meant.

She went back to early on the afternoon of that eventful day.

* * * * *

Very late she had found herself as she was dressing for her tea with Mr.

Brown at the Regent Palace; even as she was putting on her nicest silk

stockings she had known that it would mean a scamper down the drive if

she meant to catch that train....

Then in her hurry a suspender had snapped.

"Dash!" she had cried.

No time to stitch it.

She had cast round for the nearest bit of ribbon wherewith to garter

herself securely, and had snatched it up from where it dangled on her

dressing-table, hardly seeing which bit of pink ribbon it was with what

satin sachet attached. She'd wound it hastily about her slim and

silk-sheathed leg and forgotten all about it. That's how she had come to

be wearing it that evening, not in the orthodox way round her neck, but

wearing it nevertheless; the Disturbing Charm!

Hidden thus, it almost seemed as if it had done its work again?

* * * * *

As they said good-bye at the wicket gate of her Aunt's house, she found

herself quite affectionately promising to write, while on leave, to this

young sailor who never would be anything but a friend to her. She found

herself submitting quite naturally to one of those flavourless and

definite kisses on the cheek, of which the entirely brotherly quality

can never be mistaken by the recipient.

A looker-on may be more easily mistaken.

Olwen's Aunt Lizzie was coming up the Drive behind her, having been

delayed in another carriage of that very same train, since she had also

been dining in town. From some distance she had observed the farewell at

the gate. But she exchanged greetings, quite unprejudiced, with the

young sailor who passed her. She was a modern Aunt....

At the house she found her niece already in the bedroom, so busy with

her little straw work-basket and two lengths of pink ribbon, that before

any talk even of the raid, she asked, "What have you got there, Olwen?"

"I'm just mending something," returned the intent Olwen, "that I've got

to wear."

CHAPTER XIII

VIGIL

"The raid is still in progress."

Morning Paper.

To other members of the party that raid had been less (obviously)

eventful.

Little Mr. Brown, after he had seen Mrs. Cartwright's niece, the nurse,

back to her rooms, trotted back to the Regent Palace Hotel all in a

dither of undeniable funk.

Not funk for himself! Gallipoli and the Somme had found him "sticking

it" with a music-hall joke between his teeth. But here he had something

to be frightened about. The danger-zone was no place for women. At once

he rang up his _fiancee_, Mrs. Robinson, in Baker Street. There was no

reply!... On duty still? And Lord knew where....

[The little dispatch rider was at that moment, as we know,

scorching along the road out of London and past the Kilburn

Empire.]

Mr. Brown, M.C., took his cold feet and his pipe to another man's room,

and sat there talking feverishly to drown the guns; from here he rang up

at intervals, getting through to her at last.

"Worrying?... What about?" her cheeky little voice called back to him.

"Been? Why I've been carting some young lunatic who's lost his 'bus or

something, back to his 'drome.... I say! He tried to give me two pounds.

Got off again, didn't I?... Yes, and I'm just going to turn in.... Silly

ass.... Worrying about me? Well, drop it. I'm not marrying any worries,

they're too old-fash. Go to bed!"

"Right you are," called back her future lord on the note of cheery

docility which was to resound throughout his married life. "See you

demang. Good night, Pet!"

"Good night, Pug."

She rang off; he sought his room, and slept through the rest of the

raid.

* * * * *

Miss Agatha Walsh sat up for it. She sat up in the private sitting-room

of her hotel, where there was also staying, on business, the old family

lawyer who transacted her business. There she sat with him and her

_fiance_ at midnight, feeling delightfully emancipated if not "fast,"

drinking stone ginger-beer and translating the lawyer's remarks to her

half-dozing sergeant. Agatha was entirely happy, for the talk was all

about arrangements for her approaching marriage, settlements for her

husband, and so on. What, compared to these things, was the noise of

gun-fire? The only attention that she paid to it was to exclaim once,

"Oh, I do wish I could have a bit of the shrapnel set in gold as a

paper-weight or something for Gustave, just as a souvenir of the first

raid we've been through together!"

* * * * *

And now we come to Captain Ross.

Captain Ross would have allowed no questions as to where he was and what

doing whilst that raid was in progress. Suffice it to say that he was on

duty.

Not active duty; not strenuous duty, but duty which, unfortunately for

him, gave him plenty of leisure to think, and to feel, as he himself put

it curtly, "sick."

Very sick he felt.

First there was the standing grouse of his not being able to take a

man's job, ever, in that sort of show. They would never allow a

one-armed chap to go up in a plane, of course. Not even by altering the

mechanism of the whole thing so that he could work the controls

left-handed--that was off for good; and he was sick of it.

He also felt sick with young Jack. What on earth had he been trying to

play at? He had no duty. He was married that morning; hadn't he, Ross,

seen him married? What the something did he mean by leaving his wife and

chasing off like that? Saying "All right; shut up----" What did the

young fool mean by it?

Further, there was that little hussy that Captain Ross was sick with.

Sitting----wherever he was sitting while the raid-guns scolded outside,

he went over and over in his mind the many grouses that he had against

that little hussy Olwen Howel-Jones. She didn't know how to treat him

right.

She was a darned little flirt.

Look at her at Les Pins with that ass young Brown!

Look at her here in London, with that even worse ass, young Ellerton!

Scandalous.... Scandalous....

To Ellerton he meant to give such a telling-off as the young man had

never heard in his life before.

And to the girl he was going to speak about it this very evening. Then

the raid had come....

Of course Ellerton would see that child all the way home.

He'd done it before....

She admitted that herself.

She practically admitted that the fellow made love to her on the way

home.

No doubt he was doing it again at that moment! Captain Ross could

picture it. He did picture it....

Nothing could have been less like his picture than the reality of that

proposal scene in the railway carriage of the train held up outside

Willesden Junction at that moment, but how should this jealous brooder

be expected to guess that?

He continued to brood so intently that it is unlikely he heard any of

the firing....

That little hussy! How was it she always contrived to irritate him so?

Always! Every time she spoke! The more meek and mild she was in the

office the more downright impairrrtinence she managed to infuse,

somehow, into the very meekness and mildness of the tone in which she

spoke to her chief. Yep! Even if she were only putting somebody through

to him on the telephone, she managed to convey an impression of--of--of

_something_.

And why any busy man should waste a moment thinking of her the finest

judge of women in Europe did not know.... How had she done it?

Yes; she was pretty; confound her! Awfully neat.... but weren't other

girls? Why think of her, more than of all the others, dozens, scores,

yes, hundreds of 'em that he'd known? What he demanded of a girl's

society was that it should be kept in its right proporrrrtion as a

relaxation for when a man wasn't occupied with a job.

Woman, it could not too often be reiterated, was the Plaything of

Man----but not of young Ellerton, by the way. Why should any sensible

man be obsessed by one more than another of these toys?

Let them keep in their places.

Dashed pretty she was! Taking little face, dandy little figure, hands

and feet _it_.... Still, if she thought that he, with all his

experience, was going to say that Miss Olwen Howel-Jones was the

best-looking girl he'd ever struck, she had another guess coming to her.

Casual little ways she had! Those spoilt her. Pursing up her

mouth----which was as red as if she shoved on carmine by the stick every

five minutes, though he could see she didn't. It would sairrrrrrrrve her

jolly well right if a man (not young Ellerton) were to catch ahold of

her and kiss her good and hard a couple of dozen times running and then

leave her, having had all he wanted of her. That other maddening habit

of hers, too; looking 'way over a man's shoulder when he was speaking to

her! Refusing to meet his eyes ... though she could look straight enough

into young Ellerton's.... What colour _were_ her eyes when all was said:

brown, green, or hazel?

He had arrived at this point by the time that the rushing by of cars

began to be heard up the Strand, down the Embankment and along every

street within earshot; cars containing joyously important children in

Scout's kit who "_woke to find that Noise was Duty_," and who now

roused London's echoes with their bugle calls of two long notes:

"_All clear----! All----clear!_"

Yes; the raid was over. Captain Ross of the Honeycomb found himself

drawing a long breath and realizing that he did most bitterly resent

these raids on account of the women that he knew who were in the danger

zone. That child Olwen, now; had she been frightened? Very likely

indeed. Scared to death, no doubt.

Poor wee girl!...

With the return to the thought of her, there suddenly stirred within him

a feeling that lay so deep down and under so many other mere immediate

things that he seldom allowed himself the chance of leisure to delve

towards it....

It was----how express it? A gentle, reverent unspoilt tenderness. It was

That which makes the difference in the ingrainedly sentimental mind of

Man, between Woman----and his own women-folk. The key to the hearts of

these finest judges of women in Europe is to be found held in the hands

of a mother, a wife, or (most surely) of a baby-daughter.... This

particular Scot had denied _in toto_ that that chit of a Welsh girl

could ever have part or lot in any of his jealously-secret dreams.

But denied it he had; yes! Already he was so far gone as all that.

Therefore it will be seen that he had reached the moment when a man

pulls himself resolutely together and determines that having gone so

far, he will go no further.

The moment had arrived when he told himself that, having taken all

things into consideration, he had done with the girl.

Yes; he had done with this Olwen.

What was meant by this could only be judged by subsequent events. One

cannot but surmise that it meant the following:

To come to that office on Monday and, as usual, to treat her as part of

the office furniture. To speak to her as usual with the charm of manner

of a bear with a sore head. To glower at her as usual in the Strand if

she passed him with young Ellerton. To have lunch on Friday as usual at

that restaurant where she had lunch and, still as usual, to spar and

wrangle with her until it was time to get back to work. To meet her as

usual at Mrs. Cartwright's; to meet her perhaps with her friend Mrs.

Awdas; to----well, to carry on in the usual way, as he had done up to

now, and so, indefinitely, to continue....

"Yes! I've done with her," he meditated aloud in the solitude of

whatever place it was in which he found himself. The sound of his own

voice pronouncing these resolute words was balm to his irritated,

exasperated mood. "I've done with her. _That's_ sett----"

Into the word there broke the shrill whirring call of the telephone.

He snapped it up. The silence of the place where he sat seemed to ring

to the now irritated bark of his voice, answering.

"Spikkin'! Who is that?"

"Ell--what? Oh, Ellerton? Yes; what is it?" He listened, scowling, to

the clear boyish voice that came through, obviously in the joyous high

feather. "Oh, yes; I know the raid's over, yes.... Nothing of

consequence; nothing at all.... You saw _what_? Miss Howel-Jones home

safely? That's all?... You were held up? Is that so? Where? For

_how_----For two hours, was it? All the lights turned out, I suppose?...

Indid.... Ah.... Well! I don't know that I was worrying specially about

either of you; not so as you'd notice it. But thanks all the same for

reassuring me, Ellerton----"

(This with the bitter sarcasm which, the Celt maintains, is ever lost

upon the Saxon.)

"And I suppose Miss Howel-Jones will make it her excuse for turrrning up

late on Monday morrrrning.... _Whatt?_ She won't be coming Monday? How's

that?... _Leave?_"

His voice jumped up three notes.

"Going on leave?... Where's she going? Wales?... What part of Wales?...

I said what part of Wales.... Aber-_which_?... Ah.... 'Night."

The finest judge of women snapped up the receiver and sat for a moment

motionless: only the shapely feminine mouth under the hogged moustache

moving to the form of inaudible words.

Then he sprung up and grabbed a paper-covered book from a shelf of

reference books. He stood holding it.

Ellerton and she!

Held up for two mortal hours in the dark!

And the cub sounded in racing spirits....

Proposed to her! Not a doubt of it! And would he sound like that if he

hadn't been acc----?

Here he slammed the book down on the table (it was an A B C), and, with

his one hand, began violently fluttering the pages. Aber----Aber----

Gone, had she? Without a word.... How dare she? Got leave without

telling him....

Leave, indeed....

He'd got some leave coming to him.

Right now was where he'd take it, and at this Aber-where-was-it--ah,

here....

Done with the girl? He realized that he had not yet begun with her.

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 got

down to that house of her Aunt Margaret's in Wales.

It was the first time for many months that she had entered a

dwelling-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 a

year ago; places without associations, without responsibilities for the

pilgrim-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; its

busyness still informed by the hotel spirit of "_Dwell as if about to

depart_."

Then there had been her Aunt's villa at Wembley Park; delightful little

red-roofed, rose-wreathed doll's-house! There was an impermanency about

that, too; it looked as if a gale of wind would carry it off, with the

row 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 turned

the 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 the

bachelor-diggings of half a dozen War-working girls whom Olwen knew in

London. The new note was spreading. Domestic life as lived under Queen

Victoria seemed at a discount. And to more and more of England's young

womanhood one might apply the plaintive remark of the straphanger to the

other occupants of the crowded 'bus: "Ain't _none_ o' you got no 'omes?"

But here, on the outskirts of this provincial town where generations of

the Howel-Joneses had been born, had lived and married and died----here

one found oneself swept back to the domestic conditions of more than

half a century ago.

Ah, the solidity of this square grey house, padded with ancient ivy and

roofed 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 walls

seemed to remind Olwen "We were here in your grandmamma's time, and your

great-grandmother's and you, little superficial upstart, what right have

you to turn up your nose at what was good enough for them?"

Yes; it had taken three reigns to bring these things together; details

that dragged the generations behind them as they settled down, heavily,

into a permanent, complete and dominant whole, which it would now take

an earthquake or a revolution to shift.

But Olwen, as it happened, felt no desire to "turn up her nose." She was

enjoying this return to the days of old. It was a rest and a refreshment

to her after all her war-time gipsying, after her eating in Soho

restaurants, after her coming and going, after that whole life of the

bird 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 on

ten days' leave.

Then there were the home-dwellers. Olwen had never before realized how

pretty and amusing were her young sisters Peggy and Myfanwy; especially

Peggy, in her V.A.D. kit! She had wrested three days' leave from her

hospital in the town in order to be with her sister from London; and

there were also gathered together on a visit in the old home a selection

of cousins--Howel-Joneses, Pritchards, and little Llewella Price--to

welcome the wanderer home. Never before had they "made such a fuss of

her," or she of them.

Even Auntie Margaret (who was THE Miss Howel-Jones, the head of the

household, and a despotic version of the Professor in petticoats), even

Auntie Margaret did not seem nearly as "trying" to Olwen as in those

pre-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 had

only been really exasperating once! And even then she had almost

immediately afterwards bestowed upon Olwen an exquisite old coral brooch

and a bristly kiss. After all, there were no people like one's

home-people ... once one wasn't obliged always to live with them.

Yes; Olwen enjoyed them. She enjoyed the accent of the young creature

who brought up hot water to her old bedroom (and who was described by

Auntie as "no servant, but a colt off the mountains!"). And she enjoyed

the forgotten ambrosia of the Welsh butter, and the family tea to which

they all sat down about the family table, and the family jokes--all as

old as her beloved hills.

There was no news, except of a bazaar in aid of comforts for the town's

recruits; that had happened a month since, but it seemed still as

important to the family as anything that Olwen could tell them of what

had been happening in London. It was only on the Sunday when this

function had been described to the last detail by each relation in turn

that they left it at last to enquire about what raid; had Olwen seen

anything of this?

The question was put to her at tea-time.

Olwen, munching Auntie's hot cakes, told them of the interrupted party

and of her delayed journey home.

"In one of those wretchedly draughty trains! I wonder you didn't take

your death," was her aunt's aghast comment.

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

alone?"

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 have

felt just like being at the Cinema. Olwen, what _did_ he talk about?"

"Asked me to marry him," Olwen replied, tranquil in the assurance that

this unembellished truth would never be believed.

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

feminine questions.

The Welsh speaking-voice, which normally resembles the coo of the

ring-dove (_vide_ a paper on "Timbre" read by a college-friend of

Professor Howel-Jones), is capable of rising, in excitement, above the

corncrake note of the average Saxon, to the parrot-screech of the

Continental. It did so now, as the stay-at-homes cross-examined their

wanderer.

"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; might

as well describe to us what one looks like----"

It was at this very moment that the young man who was passing the

dining-room windows on his way to the front door caught a glimpse of

clustered black heads all alike and heard a breaking wave of talk and

giggling. This tide rose until it swamped the sound of his ring at the

bell.

Presently, without warning, there burst into the dining-room that

aproned colt from the mountains who had answered the door.

In an explosive whisper she announced, "Some _gent----tleman_! Some

gentleman is in the drawing-room!"

"Who is it?" asked the mistress.

"Some gentleman wanting to see Miss S'Olwen," the little maid hissed on

every "S." (A sudden quiet fell upon the party.) "Some _Captain_, or

something, he say."

"Of course!" shrilled Olwen's youngest cousin Llewella, in a voice that

could (and did) carry easily across the hall into the drawing-room and

beyond the lawn outside, "This _must_ be her _sailor_ young man!"

But Olwen (rising from the tea-table with the sudden sensation of having

had no tea or any other meal for about a fortnight) knew better. She was

the only one at that tea-table who had not been too absorbed in talk to

notice the caller passing the window. Against the dark green laurel

hedge and the lavender mountains beyond she had caught the flash of

gayer colour, scarlet on khaki.

_Captain Ross----!_

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

say!"

Her heart seemed to stand still as she crossed the hall. On the mat she

waited for one second. She must look as if absolutely nothing had

happened or could happen. Then she opened the heavily-draped door and

went into the drawing-room.

Captain Ross had planted himself just where she had expected that he

might; 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-edged

glass screen before the fender. The mantelpiece was of white alabaster

and hung with looped drapery of peacock-blue brocade, lustrous and

pompous and ball-fringed, dating from 1889. Upon the mantelshelf itself

there stood under a tall glass shade an ormolu clock, with figures of

nymphs and Cupid. On each side of this gleamed candlesticks with

dangling prisms.

There were also china ornaments, a miniature of Margaret Howel-Jones at

eighteen and another glass shade protecting a branch of white coral; the

whole reflected in a gilt-framed mirror.

Everything in that drawing-room was in key with that mantelpiece. And

into that complete and Victorian harmony there broke the Neo-Georgian

note of a girl wearing the little modern serge frock, the pert effective

shoes, and the hair-dressing of the instant.

But Captain Ross, turning abruptly did not see the dramatic

contradiction 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 grimy

offices or fly-blown, cotton-glove restaurants! A girl like that ought

never to leave a place like this. The place into which any decent man

instinctively 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 been

questioned 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 be

worshipped, yes! worshipped.

But there was nothing of this to be read in Captain Ross's face as he

returned her soft-voiced, surprised-sounding greeting. He was positively

scowling.

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 going

astray. On the way down in the train he'd had everything beautifully

planned. He'd intended to tell this little Olwen casually but quite

authoritatively that he'd something to say to her, and that "as he was

in Wales" he guessed he'd look in and say it right then. (These women

had to be handled--firmly.) He thought that a darned good opening ... in

the train.

But suddenly that "was in Wales" didn't seem the strong card he'd

thought. It seemed, in fact, remarkably weak. He admitted that as he

glanced round that immutably Victorian room. It might have done for the

Honeycomb, but not here. Set-back Number One.

Next, he must look as if he'd come down here on purpose to see this

aggravating chit. Which of course, he had not done. Or at least hadn't

meant to. Or, anyway, wouldn't have done if there had been any other

way. Captain Ross could explain this position to himself, perfectly. But

appearances were all against him.... Set-back Number Two.

For Set-back Number Three, had he not just heard half a sentence (before

a 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 first

sentence that he addressed to the girl.

With a forward jerk of his head he brought out the startling abrupt

remark, "Look, Miss Howel-Jones, don't you think this has gone on long

enough?"

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 bewildering

sex!

"_Long enough_," it said. "_Hasn't this been going on long

enough._" ... 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 gave

place for the moment to a stronger impulse; hospitality. The little

Welshwoman must feed her guest. "Do come into the dining-room," she

begged, "and have some tea first, anyhow----"

But Captain Ross stood rock-like. He had seen that rookery of black

heads 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 not

engaged to that----to Ellerton?"

Olwen had known her Chief sharp and abrupt before. For weeks she'd never

known him anything else. This was his sharpest yet. She was

intimidated.... Then suddenly that went, and she had all the boldness of

the 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 I

have 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 me

that?"

With ominous patience Captain Ross nodded that sleek, black, Tom-cat

head of his, almost as if to some old enemy he had expected to see

cropping 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 in

haff a minute or so?" he suggested, adding, at once, "Are you engaged to

him 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 there

was anything to tell?"

"He's asked you to marry him, I know that," said Captain Ross with such

conviction that Olwen coloured a little with surprise. How did Captain

Ross know about that? It was true, of course.... But he couldn't know

quite _what_ had happened. She almost laughed at the memory of Harold

Ellerton's face in the light of the torch.

She hesitated....

It doesn't always follow that because a man is obstinate he may not be

quick as well. It was very quickly that Captain Ross seized upon Olwen's

hesitation, 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 very

soon," said Captain Ross, with a sort of grim triumph in his tone.

He straightened his back, giving that little forward shrug of an armless

shoulder that Olwen could never see unmoved. But her eyes were on the

window and on the glimpse of variegated Welsh landscape beyond.

"Since that is so," concluded Captain Ross in his most final tone, "will

you 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. Long

enough. She turned from the window and looked straight----not at Captain

Ross, that she couldn't do! but at a water-colour drawing of Carnarvon

Castle on the wall. She said, "You see, I am not engaged or anything to

Mr. 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 had

lighted up like a lantern into which a candle is put. She knew what he

meant by that quick movement that he gave, as if rolling aside some

weight that he'd been carrying. She knew, for sure and certain, why he'd

come. Would he have cared about her being engaged to Mr. Ellerton if he

hadn't wanted her himself? Of course he did want her....

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

right?

Hadn't Madame Leroux thought so, too?

And hadn't she, Olwen herself, always known it too, in the very depths

of her heart? Yes! Hadn't she always, always suspected his curt speech

and 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 denials

of him since had been fibbing to herself, they had been making the best

of things, they had been the hybernating sleep from which Love awakes as

a giant refreshed! It had all been camouflage, and now there was no more

need of it....

But even with this sweet and thrilling knowledge warm at her heart, the

woman's Will-to-Prolong was strong within her, too.

She was a human little person enough and she had her dignity, she

thought. Also she had to have her laugh--oh, quite a little one! over

this man.

He said, "Then----" in a voice that there was no misunderstanding. His

surliness 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 single

word 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 for

all that a defence past which no man's love-making may come. Immediately

Captain Ross's own look changed to one of dashed and angry surprise. He

had 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 chair

like a cretonne-covered bed. "Won't you sit down?" she said in the voice

of 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 first

with a composure which startled herself.

"Why," she asked, "should it be supposed to have anything to do with you

whether or not I was going to marry Mr. Ellerton?"

And now Captain Ross moved so abruptly against the mantelpiece that he

shifted one of the handleless china teacups out of its place and set the

prisms tinkling on the candlesticks.

He opened his mouth, then shut it as if he'd thought better of the

answer which he meant to make to this chit. And then, in the tone of

stinging reproof which he reserved for some careless error in the

reading of some letter at the Honeycomb, he said, looking down upon her,

"I should have thought that a girl of your intelligence would have had

the sense to guess by this time what my object was in wanting to know

what your ideas were on the subject of getting married."

Olwen, with a tiny turn of her head, remained silent, watching the

sunset, which could just be seen over the Rival mountains out of the

other window. This last remark of Captain Ross's she was not going to

take as a proposal either.

From the lack of expression on her small face no man would have guessed

at the happy tumult in the heart under that ribbon-and-satin of a hidden

mascot that it rocked.

"Well?" demanded Captain Ross with outward patience. "How much longer do

you intend to keep me dangling around and guessing?"

"About what?"

"About whether you're going to marry _me_ or not," said Captain Ross,

dourly.

Olwen stuffed a cushion behind her back and laughed quite naturally.

"But, Captain Ross! You said Marriage was a thing the sensible man

looked at from every angle and then decided to cut out. I never

imagined----"

"Ah, cut _that_ out," Captain Ross begged her, with the unsmiling mien

of one who sees himself about to be routed from his last defences. "You

knew all the time; you knew."

"I didn't!"

"What?" Captain Ross thrust out his jaw. "You ought to know me well

enough 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't

understand that I'm as much on active service there behind a pen as I

was when I was able to be behind a gun? 'Horrid.' Because I didn't make

love to you there, and both of us on duty? If you imagine that I'm the

kind of man who'd do that ever, I am afraid you are under a serious

misapprehen----"

"But you weren't always in the office," protested Olwen, quickly, "and

you 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. "You

happened 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 splitting

hairs for the last six months. That is, the same hair. And with a

hatchet.

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

him.

He declared, "You know I only went to that darned little eating-place to

see you," and it was with the manner of one who hands over his revolver

that 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 yellow

crocuses on the lawn, exclaimed softly, "As if you didn't know that this

is the first hint you've ever given me of your wanting to see me at

all!"

Captain Ross took a step back on the hearthrug. He gave a short and

angry 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 the

lagoon when Mr. Brown had pulled and she had sat in the stern-sheets

with Captain Ross. To have your hand held in the moonlight tenderly, and

for 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 isolated

instance in which he had failed to be as forbidding as an Army order.

But at that moment (and indeed for several months afterwards) that

incident in the boat was not to be referred to by either of them. For

some obscure reason both of them felt more shy of that memory than any

of fresh experiences.

Quickly Olwen got on with this war in the enemy's country. "Hints? I'm

sure I don't know what they could have been. That box of chocolates at

Les 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 and

disapproving! 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 was

singing."

"For five minutes; yes, I remember," said Olwen, tilting her chin. "It

was the one and only time."

"It was not, pardon me. I was coming to sit by you at Mrs. Cartwright's

party, 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 sat

opposite to me and glared----"

* * * * *

In the dining-room the party of Olwen's relations sat over their last

half-cups of tea in a simmer of delighted curiosity.

This was shared, openly, by the hireling colt from the mountains as she

clattered in at intervals with hot water or more butter. Breathlessly

she asked at last, "Will I take a tray and some fresh tea into the

drawing-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 simply

out to make me wild?"

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

He could have clasped her for it. "Darling!" said his glance, but aloud

he only retorted, "Maybe you were not out to do it, but you certainly

pulled 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 this

plaything so maddeningly near, yet not, perhaps, for him. Yes! If she

had had the boldness of the kitten who strikes with soft paws at the

Force which could annihilate her, he had the boding patience of that big

dog 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 back

now!

She broke off as if by the way, to ask him, "Let me see, what was the

first thing--almost the first I ever heard you say.... _What_ sort of a

judge of women are you?"

It is not true that the Scot is inevitably without a sense of humour. At

that moment Fergus Ross saw even the joke against himself, since he

thought it would appeal to her. He responded, "What was that about

women? Something I've hairred in a drim?"

Relentless, Olwen repeated her demand. "What sort of a judge of women

are you?"

He looked at her, threw up and shook his head with the action of a boxer

who drops his hands as well.

"I guess I'm about as fine a judge of women as a baby is a judge of

mothers," he told her, frankly and ruefully. "One he knows; his own. And

herrrr he's got to have!"

But she put it aside. _This_ wasn't enough of a proposal! She harked

back to that party at Mrs. Cartwright's which had witnessed the last

losing fight of this prisoner of hers, taken now with horse, foot and

guns.

"'What's Love? An amusement,'" she quoted, mischievously, his words upon

that occasion. "That's what you said, four--no! only three days ago,"

she insisted, now feeling that she had got well into her stride and

could 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 a

man got 'when some woman started in to Love' him----"

Here Olwen stopped, abruptly but too late. She coloured to the deep pink

of 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 her

defence.

"Ah!" His voice lifted. "Well, what of that? What has _that_ got to do

with 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, laughing

flippantly, but dropping her eyes to gaze so hard at the carpet that

only the top of the head was to be seen. Glossily black and shapely

enough was the little head upon which Captain Ross had heaped, in his

mind, every anathema as well as every endearment that he knew, but he

was dashed if he was expected to read what she meant out of the mere top

of it. So----

If, a month ago, some one had informed Captain Ross of the Honeycomb

that he would ever be reduced for any possible reason, to go down on his

knees on the floor at a woman's feet, he would not have considered the

idiotic prophecy was worth a laugh.

But his number was up.

Here he found himself kneeling on the carpet at Olwen's feet just

because there seemed no other way at that moment of getting a really

satisfactory 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 head

sidewards and directed that bright gaze of hers, as she'd often done

before, over his shoulder and away. She was ready to glance at the blaze

of the log fire, at the wall-paper, at the oval china frame all garlands

and Loves of the standing mirror, at the large portrait of Professor

Howel-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 eyes

before the change that had come into his own?

He caught her to him. With his one arm slung about her, he put a

scorching kiss upon her throat, under her ear. Then he took her chin in

his hand and turned her face round; he kissed the childishly red mouth

until little Olwen, all shy and aflame, felt that the shape of his own

would be moulded upon her lips.

For all his theorizings, his protestations, his boastings about Love, he

was 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 out

gleeful hands to the gift that he made to her--of herself. Till now she

had resembled--what? The sea-anemone that for weary hours of low-tide

has waited self-contained and folded into itself upon its rock, an inert

lump.... At last the warm waves rise, and lo! the rosy fingers spread to

welcome its own element have turned it to a lovely thing, a star-shaped

flower 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 the

Captain Ross of this story, but the Fergus of their love-tale that was

beginning.

And in Love, after all, all's well that begins well. (Even though there

was 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 his

teeth gleamed across his vivid face.

She? Do anything he would not like? Even if she loved him and showed

it, even that could not cool this man off, now he knew. The chit had got

him going sure enough. Whatever she did or said only added to her

attraction, to her long-contested, her triumphant, her Disturbing

Charm!

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 those

people into whose lives it twined its thread of rose colour?

Perhaps it was all summed up in a letter that came, one February morning

of Nineteen-Eighteen, to Professor Howel-Jones.

The old botanist was sitting in his study. It was a wide, cleared room

with a table as chaotic as that had been at Les Pins, set, as at Les

Pins, before a window; but the view here was not of a lagoon with a belt

of dunes and a lighthouse. It showed the roofs of Liverpool.

Professor Howel-Jones had just returned, after various wanderings, to

find a big mail awaiting him. He sighed, as he opened the letters, for

his 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, his

old bachelor rooms into which she had brought the new element of her

girlish 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 a

garment that was being reconstructed, feminine-fashion, into some other

garment.

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 the

pavement to right and left, waiting, watching to see a company of

American soldiers march past on their way to Victoria Station.

Ah! Here it was, the stream of clean khaki cleaving the motley of the

crowd. Here they came, the boys, tall, fit, and splendid, drilled to the

minute; the pick and cream of the new belligerent country.... Here they

came, spare and useful looking and ah, how faultless in kit and

accoutrements, from straight-brimmed hats to spotlessly-polished boots.

And as they swung past with the unison of a machine in which every part

is perfect, there hove into sight, straggling, slouching towards them

out of the station, a knot of British just back from the firing line. An

officer 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 loaded

down with gear, they were strung about with mess-tins and water-bottles

and boots and brown-paper parcels and battered shrapnel helmets. One or

two of them had Hun helmets tied to their knapsacks. They wore greasy

remnants of caps, disreputable goatskin coats. All over them was thickly

caked 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 their

immaculate fours.

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

Olwen Ross, up at the window, thrust out her little black head to watch

the Americans.

"Oh, they are magnificent," she breathed excitedly. "Aren't you proud of

them, Golden?"

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

But while the Welsh girl was all eyes for these new troops, the American

girl's wide gaze turned upon the others with whom they must soon be

standing 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 and

graceful thought struck the officer in charge of those Americans.

Suddenly and clearly, above the buzz of the street, the rhythmic tramp

of feet, there snapped out his order:

"Company----eyes----RIGHT!"

Every head under the straight-brimmed hat turned sharply towards those

heroic scallywags their allies.

Perhaps that young American company officer would have explained,

diplomatically, that the word of command had been for his men to give

the Eyes Right to that British subaltern who was passing with the

leave-men; a white-faced, hollow-eyed stripling with two gold stripes on

his cuff and the black "flash" of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers fluttering

at 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 shone

suddenly, mistily brighter at the sight.

As they watched the two bodies of men disappear----those marching

towards Victoria and the boat-train, these straggling towards a

soldiers' hostel in Buckingham Palace Road, Golden said softly, "My

people, 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 her

guest's arm in hers.

"What's the time?" asked young Mrs. Awdas. "I'm due to sing at the

hospital at four. We'll have to hurry----"

She lifted, on Olwen's blouse, the tiny pin-on watch which was one of

her friend's wedding presents. Then she exclaimed, "What have you got

tied around here?"

Golden did not recognize any similarity between this sachet of

pink-and-mauve and the sun-faded ribbon trifle she had picked up on

Biscay beach. But Olwen smiled as she tucked into the place the mascot

that she wore and always would wear, even had she read that letter which

her Uncle held would shatter any belief in that "magic." The old

scientist summed her up as faultily as if he, too, had set out to be the

finest judge, etc....

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

laugh?"

And as they walked along to the hospital, she gave to her friend the

outlines of the story which you have just read ... so far as she knew

them herself.

Golden, listening, smiled above her leopard-skins. "Do you think all

these things would not have happened just as they did happen without the

wearing 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," she

said, "and when I look at your Fergus, and at my Jack, and at any one

else who is lovely and loving ... why, of course I believe there's a

Charm really, though it just can't be anything you could make up out of

a pinch of powder and a bit of ribbon. A Charm? Why, the world's full of

it! Didn't it send me over the sea to my Bird-boy? Didn't it bring your

men from Canada and France to you? Didn't it let us all meet in a

country that was sweet and friendly, though none of ours? Didn't it

work----why, all the time?"

"Sometimes----Often--Half the time," suggested Olwen, "it is supposed to

make such mistakes. It takes the wrong people...."

"We hear of those, just because they're the exceptions, I guess," smiled

her buoyant friend. "We aren't so talked about, we with the happy love

stories, that the Charm has worked!... Olwen, it's making stories now

for each of those splendid boys we saw go marching by, and for each of

the pretty girls who wishes them Luck. It never stops!... But you can't

see 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