The Disturbing Charm Part 11

"I come from cleaning the b.u.t.tons of the English monsieur, his better tunic," explained Marie, in French, smiling as she held out the khaki coat.

"It is not of Monsieur de l'Audace?" asked Olwen.

"No, Mademoiselle. Of the other English officer, young, young, who does not talk French too well; Lieutenant Brrrrrrown," returned Marie. "Can Mademoiselle tell me what decoration is that he has?" Olwen gave a look at it.

"It is the ribbon of the Military Cross--it's like your Croix de Guerre," she said. "I didn't notice that he'd got that."

"He" was the pink-faced New Army officer of whom Mrs. Cartwright had spoken to her.

She remembered, in a flash, that it was he for whom she had intended that fourth share of the Charm, still in the pocket of the serge dress that she wore. She had not yet made up any plan as to how she was to press the Charm upon him. The plan came to her then and there, as she stood in that corridor.

"Hold Marie," she said, suddenly. "I have a _porte-bonheur_ for this officer." She took out the sachet. "Say nothing to Monsieur," she impressed it upon the little maid, all smiles and delight to be included in a secret. "I am going to hide it in his coat."

And, taking hold of the coat, she slipped the sachet full of the enchanted powder into the slit-like pocket at the waist where men keep tickets.

"There!... Probably Monsieur will not find it; but all the better. It won't matter, even if he does not know it is there."

The Breton maid nodded. "A _sachet a preservation_ then? I know them. We have them also, Mademoiselle. It is to avert all danger from the soldier who is to wear it, is it not?"

"No. Not precisely that," said the young Welsh girl. "It is to bring to him--well, Happiness of the best."

"Love, then. Ah, _la la_! I doubted myself of that!" declared the young _bonne_, bursting into ripples of laughter. "I go now to take the coat to Monsieur, who does not suspect. But no, Mademoiselle, I will say nothing to him of this; nothing, nothing, nothing at all!"

Olwen thought, as she went on: "Now Marie probably imagines that I am in love with this dreadfully uninteresting little Mr. Brown, and want to attract him to being in love with me! When I've never spoken to him in my life, or even seen what he's like when he's close to one!"

But that afternoon she both saw and spoke to this Mr. Brown.

They were returning, she and her Uncle, from one of those wanderings which the Professor loved to take out westwards from the hotel. For a couple of miles they had tramped along the hard sands at the foot of the great dunes wherein pine-trees were buried up to their lower boughs; then, leaving the sands, they had scrambled up the sandhills into the pine-forest that bordered them.

Its fragrant aisles stretched for miles bisected by paths, spread with a rich terra-cotta carpet of pine-needles. Already the Professor had slipped his pipe back into his pocket, for the notice "_Defense a fumer_" appeared again and again tacked up on the trunks of the great pines that made of those miles a perfect factory of turpentine.

With their faces towards home, they caught sight through the pines of a figure that repeated for an instant the effect of the pine-trunks themselves, brown-clad, long-lined, and slender. It stooped at the foot of a tree.

"My dear lady," said the Professor, taking off his hat to the figure, which was that of Mrs. Cartwright, "you look like Daphne, being changed into a pine rather than a laurel."

Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she rose to her feet. She had been putting into position a fallen tin cup, shaped like a flower-pot, and left to catch the resin as it oozed stickily from the trunk. Most of the firs in this part of the forest had a tin blade, that had scored them down, left plunged into the bark.

"Delightful, to be able to turn into any sort of plant, rather than be bored by the wrong man," remarked Mrs. Cartwright lightly, dusting her hands.

"What a pull for those nymphs! Must have made it worth while to live in a world where there was no tea. I am ready for mine, though----"

The three went on homewards together, the Professor walking between Olwen and the writer, who found herself once more admiring his Druidic head and still-active frame. In precisely the same spirit she would have admired some stately, ivy-grown keep that had once echoed to the shouts of archers; she was scarcely the type of woman who becomes an "old man's darling----"

But little Olwen was busily thinking: "Now! I do believe the Charm has begun to work. Didn't Uncle say she was like Daphne?--and doesn't she really look younger today? It's _begun_! And see how she's smiling at him and talking to him about Anatole France.... But I wish they'd leave off about books and begin about themselves. I wish I could run on and leave them to come home together (but they both walk as fast as I do any day, bother them!). If only we could meet somebody that I could fall behind with, and let Mrs. Cartwright have Uncle all to herself----"

This wish was fulfilled at a turn in the path where there was a clearing in the symmetrically s.p.a.ced pines. Three paths converged towards a sort of oasis of heather and undergrowth, surrounding a hut of untrimmed pine-branches. Huge blackberry runners, purple and green, flung themselves before the door of it. And there stood, fixedly regarding the place, a boyish figure in khaki with an ultra-floppy cap at a rakish angle on his head.

"Are you thinking of taking that house, Mr. Brown?" Mrs. Cartwright asked him laughingly, as they came up.

Mr. Brown gave quite a jump before he turned and saluted the party.

Up to now they had known this young man as one very fond of his food, always sitting on the back of his neck in the most comfortable chair he could find, eternally smoking cigarettes, and evidently bent on getting his money's worth out of the hotel. But it was a different young man who now turned his pink face and pop-eyes on them. They'd evidently interrupted him in thinking over something; thinking hard.

He echoed Mrs. Cartwright's last words. "Thinking of taking that hut?"

he repeated, in a voice that seemed to bring a breath of crowded A B C shops, of Tube-lifts and cheerful workaday London generally into that stately French glade. "Well, d'you know, that's a wheeze. It's a dashed good idea. I was just that moment thinking that something would have to be done!"

"What about?" asked Mrs. Cartwright, as the party halted.

"Why, about everything, the whole blooming thing," returned Mr. Brown, pus.h.i.+ng his floppy cap to the back of his head. "This is just about beating me, I give you _my_ word. Look at me, what am _I_ doing here?"

Mrs. Cartwright said: "Evidently you're having a look at your new house?"

He said: "I don't mean here this minute, in this Epping Forest sort of show. I mean _here_!"--he spread out his hands as if to take in the whole of Western France. "Of course, they told me I'd got to go to pine-woods when they gave me three months, and a cavalry fellow, at Sister Agnes's, told me here was better than Surrey, and gave me the address, and it seemed quite natural to take it and think--Blow the expense. But I wish--I tell you what I wish."

He dropped his voice confidentially.

"I wish this blessed War was over, and me riding in a third-cla.s.s carriage again!"

Before any one could speak, he went on with his candid and good-humoured grouse.

"I've got to go first, with these colonels and company promotors, and people. The trouble is, I like it. Too dashed well I've got to like it.

I never used to think of all these things coming to me when I was serving behind the counter; nor the customers neither, I'll bet. And now nothing but the tip-toppest hotel's good enough for me, and me posted in c.o.x's 'star' department. R. D., refer to drawer! Got it in my pocket now; show it to you. I could have sworn I'd got the money, you know.

Still, here's the cheque--"

He said it with a disarming and engaging honesty, as if the whole story might be read anyhow in his pink, snub-nosed, and ordinary face. Mrs.

Cartwright and the Professor found it impossible to help liking him as he stood there, the little Briton who gave no further thought to the tense horrors of Suvla Bay, where he had won his Cross, but who confessed his liking for the best hotels. But as for Olwen, she was watching him anxiously; for his hand had gone to the pocket where she herself had hidden that "_porte bonheur_." He fumbled. At that moment his finger and thumb must have encountered it....

"No--what's this?--that's not the cheque--must be in my case," he went on, taking the hand out of the pocket. (Olwen breathed again.) "Well, now something's got to be done. They'll wait at the hotel, I daresay, if I don't leave this place altogether. And I like this place." He looked round the empty hut again, as if he half expected to see a Willesden estate agent's name round the corner. "Not half a bad idea of yours, Mrs. C. I might send for some camp-kit; sleep here--do the picnic touch----"

For a few moments they stood, discussing forest regulations and to whom the would-be camper-out must apply. Then, four abreast, they turned to go on, the sea-breeze meeting them.

"Mind the barbed wire," exclaimed Mr. Brown, flipping with his cane at one of those giant brambles. "It's caught your skirt," to Olwen. "Allow me."

He bent down and unfastened the hook-like thorns from her frock. This kept the two behind the Professor and Mrs. Cartwright, whereat the innocent Olwen rejoiced. She could not guess that not only did the Professor seem at least as old to Mrs. Cartwright as he did to his own niece, but that the Professor himself, though he found her a sympathetic listener, could never at any age have wished to make love to this lady.

For he was a "type"-lover. To him any woman who was not tiny and black-haired (as Olwen's own mother had been) was only, to quote Captain Ross, "half a woman...."

But they were talking together, easily, interestedly, as they walked ahead through the wood. And even though the subject might only be of Celtic Folk-lore, Olwen felt already that she saw her wish coming to pa.s.s before her eyes.

She turned to her other experiment with the Charm.

Mr. Brown had slipped his fingers again into the pocket into which he had first hunted for his dishonoured cheque. And this time he brought out the hidden sachet.

He stared at the small mauve object.

"Now what the d.i.c.kens is this?" he demanded, genially bewildered.

"Don't remember where this came from----"

Olwen, inwardly terrified lest the young man might in his ignorance toss the precious thing into the arbutus bushes, said with outward carelessness, "It looks like a mascot; better not lose it."