The Disturbing Charm Part 47

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 pa.s.sed 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 a.s.s.... 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 emanc.i.p.ated 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 a.s.s young Brown!

Look at her here in London, with that even worse a.s.s, 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?