The Disturbing Charm Part 37

Hop in.'

"In I hopped into that side-car; and off we buzzed to Harrods', and we were just in time before they closed for her to buy half a dozen pair of the best quality brown silk stockings for herself. (I'd seen she was a lady, you know, and all that.) She said she hadn't a stocking left to her foot----Tiny feet she's got, Miss Olwen! Reminded me of yours, honest, they did. Same sort of hands, too. Coming out of her great gauntlets like snowdrops, growing in a drift of brown leaves----No, I didn't make that up, that's what she told me some a.s.s of an old Colonel that she used to drive the cars for said to her once. I think it's neck, the way some of those old Johnnies with one foot in the grave go on giving the Glad to any pretty young girl that's near them....

"Well, after Harrods' shut, we went on to some place where she could get a wash and brush up, and we had a spot of lunch together. She was a real jolly little thing to go about with, I thought. We sat talking--you know the way ones does--until it was nearly tea-time.

"Tea we had out, too. She would stand me tea, said it was her shout, and because I was wounded. Seemed to think that because a fellow had been pipped once he was helpless for evermore. Generally I loathe women fussing over one for that, but she was different.... Struck one as so comic, you know, that tiny little thing with those hands and feet to be got up like any old mechanic, and to do all that hefty work in all weathers----and for her to get frightened that I might be tired!

"Well, so we went to Rumplemayer's.

"Afterwards I went with her to take her bike back to the Park. You know she's attached to the Royal Flying Corps there; yes, that's what she does now. Carries their letters and messages for them all over the show, to your people at the Honeycomb too, sometimes. Sometimes she drives out officers to the various training schools for flying, all about. Has to clean her own bike, too! Wouldn't let me give her a hand, said it didn't look well. Extraordinary, the lot she gets through!... And I used to hate girls being 'independent,' too.

"I asked her what put it into her head to do all this, and she said it was because one had to do one's bit somehow, and the harder the better, so that it sent one to bed tired enough to sleep.

"Dashed sporting little girl I thought her.

"It was dinner-time before I knew, and I asked her if she'd come out. (I had got just one pound note left on me!)

"She said, as naturally as if we always fed together, 'Shall I go up to my rooms and get into respectable clothes, or d'you mind if I came in my uniform?'

"I said, 'Oh, come along!' And we went off to a quiet little place at the back of the Palace.

"By that time, d'you know, I felt as if I'd known that little girl for years and years and years.

"She seemed just like the best little pal a man could have. We talked--oh, about any old thing. I sort of felt at home with her. So she did with me. She told me so. But it was me that did most of the talking. Only, what d'you think? We never bothered to ask each other's names. That was the funny part. I'd told her all about me being in a shop before the War----Lace, forward----and how I thought of having a shot at in Canada, p'raps, and all that sort of rot. Miles I'd yapped to her; even about my mother dying when I was a nipper....

"I wonder the girl wasn't bored stiff. I can't make out now why she wasn't. However, as I say, they might never have named this child N or M for all she was given to hear about _that_.

"Fact was, I clean forgot about names until I took her home----she's got two rooms in one of those big old-fas.h.i.+oned houses in a street off Baker Street. Then, as I said good night to her on the doorstep, I said, 'Oh, by the way, who do I ask for tomorrow?'

"She said, 'Coming tomorrow?'

"I said, 'Well, you told me it was your three days' leave, and I thought p'raps you'd come for a walk'----thinking to myself that I might be able to raise another quid or so for meals from some man at the Regent Palace, which I was.

"'Oh,' she said, with a little sort of laugh. 'Rightoh. And I haven't told you, of course, my name's Robinson,' she said as she went into the house; big dark hall, it seemed to swallow her up.

"I said, 'Brown's mine,' and off I went----and I couldn't simply get the little thing out of my head all night, and what a jolly little chum she was. Don't laugh at me, Miss Olwen; no, I know you're not really laughing, but I am, I can tell you. 'They laugh last who laugh laughs,'

as that chap says at the Hippodrome.

"Next morning I was round at that house so early that I hadn't the nerve to ring the bell. I had to patrol the street for another half an hour before I rang.

"'Miss Robinson?' says I to the old girl who opened the door, but before she could answer I could hear the little girl herself singing out over the banisters, 'Hullo, I think I know that voice! Come up, Mr.

Brown----'

"I legged it up to the first floor. Her sitting-room door was open; well, in I went, and there I got a nasty one."

Here Mr. Brown stopped to draw a breath, to finish his cooling tea, and to offer a cigarette to Olwen, listening with all her ears. There is no audience to a love-story so intent and so satisfactory as the girl to whom one has been attracted. Curiosity as to her supplanter burns in the breast of the woman whether or no she had been attracted to the man; curiosity made of varied elements--sympathy is one, and compet.i.tion is one, and the undying yearning to compare notes is another....

Little Mr. Brown went on.

"Well, it was a pretty room, full of sun in the morning. Pretty coloured curtains and cus.h.i.+ons about; and lots of flowers and that yellow bobbly thingummybob scented stuff--mimosa. And then.... Her in the middle of it all----_all different...._

"I stopped dead and stared at her, never even saying good morning. Miss Olwen, I can tell you it was a shock to me.

"Last night, you see, I'd left her looking like a saucy little tomboy in that khaki working kit of hers with a cap the same as my own on her head and a black-and-white badge of the R. F. C. on her shoulder, and those brown riding bags....

"This morning here she stood all in a dead-black frock, with a widow's hat on and a long black veil streaming away from her little face.

"I stared, I tell you. I saw the situation absobloominglutely changed, in one.

"'Good Lord,' I said, 'you've been married?'

"She opened her eyes at me and said, 'Why shouldn't I?'

"I looked at her, such a little woman in her girl's clothes, but taller than she seemed in t'other rig-out, and I said, 'I didn't know you were married. I thought you were a kid of a girl. A widow. You didn't tell me.'

"'You didn't ask me,' she says. 'You might have seen I wore a wedding-ring. Men never do seem to notice rings--or anything else, I can't think why.'

"I stood there like a silly a.s.s and said, 'I never thought of you being married. I s'pose I only looked at your face----'

"And I suppose I'd been magging so hard all yesterday about myself that I hadn't given the girl a chance to put her life history across me!

"She told me then, all quickly as I stood there, that she'd been married last year to her cousin, just before he went out. He was in the Flying Corps. He crashed in France just three months after they'd been married.

Then she joined this Women's Legion. (You know they're jolly particular who they let into it, Miss Olwen: have to have no end of refs. from _padres_ and lawyers and people.) She threw herself into her job....

She'd been working like a n.i.g.g.e.r ever since....

"All I could think to say was 'Well, this knocks me out.'

"She laughed and asked me why it should make any difference, her being Mrs. Robinson instead of Miss? She asked me if I didn't like her in those things she'd got on? She said, 'Most people think it's rather becoming, all this black.'

"It made her little face look like a wild rose coming out of a coal-bucket, but what could I say to her? I tell you I was so flummoxed I stood there like a stuck pig--I don't know what I said next; honest, I don't.

"So then she offered me cigarettes, and I took one in a sort of dream, and felt all over myself for matches. Couldn't find any.

"Only, then----

"D'you know what I found, Miss Olwen? Blessed if I didn't stick my fingers into my belt pocket here, and feel something soft. I brought it out. It was that little mascot of yours. She asked me quickly what it was.

"'Oh,' I said, 'something a girl put there once, to bring me luck,' and I stuck it back again.

"'Oh,' she said. I saw her looking at that pocket.

"Then she said, 'What about going for that walk we've heard so much about?'

"'Right you are,' I says, pulling myself together. 'I'm ready if you are, Mrs. Robinson.'

"Then she said, 'No; I'm not quite. I shall have to keep you five minutes, not longer.'

"She popped through a door at the other end of the room and left me gazing at a big photograph in a silver frame on her table with violets in front of it. 'Yours, JIM,' on it. Him, of course. Fine-looking chap in R. F. C. uniform. I didn't wonder she'd taken him. Anyhow, he'd had a short life and a merry; a topping time! Marrying _her_, and then getting shot down in action before he knew he was for it. I was envying him when the door opened and in she came again----