THE CHARM NEGLECTED
"Few people realize that Love is a hybernating animal."
Extract from Private Letter.
Olwen Howel-jones sat at her War work in room 0369 on the sixth floor of some Government offices called——
We will call them The Honeycomb.
The entrance to this hive of activity was near Charing Cross, and its courtyard was one continual procession of cars, cyclists, motor-cyclists, dispatch cycles with little side-car mail vans, also of men in every conceivable uniform; most of them (as befitted a swarm of such bees!) were decorated with wings.... Goodness knows how many telephone extensions The Honeycomb possessed! Lifts carried you up to floor after floor. Each floor was packed with cells that had been bedrooms and private sitting-rooms, each cell with workers making Victory-honey (and perhaps with odd drones watching them do it). The whole place with its come-and-go of clerks, messengers, telephone girls, civilians, typists, switchboard girls, and their khakied male superiors, was in a never-ending buzz.
The small cell marked 0369 had big windows that looked up and down the Strand: it held three workers.
Olwen's roll-top desk stood back to back with another; the two backs screening off her colleague of the other desk. This other desk had an unusual feature. From behind it there came a stream of comments in different voices, so that it seemed as if several unseen people were sitting there. These voices were:
First Voice—A natural girlish treble that slightly rolled its R's; being the voice of one Mrs. Newton, in charge of cell 0369, who possessed the gift of mimicry.
Second Voice—A masculine drawl that died away of sheer superiority in the roof of the mouth, after the fashion of one Major Leefe of that Department.
Third Voice—Rollicking and boyish, intersected by loud "Ha's" and "Bai Jove's" in the manner of Lieutenant Harold Ellerton, also of The Honeycomb.
Mingling with the click of the typewriter, at which the third girl sat in a further corner, came the sound of one or other of these voices. Thus:
First Voice—"Miss Howel-Jones, what is the French for 'land'? Aeroplanes, I mean?"
A murmured "atterrir" came from Olwen, immersed in her work, which meant dividing the morning's correspondence into four batches: A, B, C, and D.
Second Voice (after a moment of paper-rustling)—"Er—yeh ... yeh! Wha' have we heah? Letters to be translay' into Fren'. Yeh. Mrs. Newton, will you atten' to thi' too?"
Third Voice (after more rustling)—"Damn this nib. Oh, sorry, Mrs. Newton; didn't mean to say damn before you."
First Voice—"Not at all, Mr. Ellerton; I am a married woman myself."
Fourth Voice (A Scots-Canadian accent)—"Is that so? What I demand of a woman is that she shall be a rrreliable worrrrkerr. I don't assk what she does affterr hours, I——"
Here all the voices ceased.
For a quarter of an hour no sound came from behind that desk, but that of papers being turned, regularly and methodically. Then the busy Mrs. Newton, not the mimic, spoke.
"Just turn up the Q. M. G. file for last month and see if there's a letter with this reference."
She gave the reference, and Olwen, after a minute's search in a manilla "jacket," handed over the letter, leaving a slip of paper sticking out of the jacket in its place. Having written "Mrs. Newton" and the date upon that slip, she turned again to her letter-trays. The rustling of papers was resumed. Then the voices again:
Second Voice—"Claim for missing kit, wha'? How do f'las manage to be always losing kit? Do I lose kit? Haven't I always goh' millions pairs bags all beau'fly press'? 'Sides, isn't even in ah sec.' Room Two—Fi'——Fi'."
Third Voice—"Ha! Reference A. B., stroke two bracket nine oh one two two dated two twelve seventeen. Do they, bai Jove!"
First Voice—"Aren't there any more 'C's,' Miss Howel-Jones?"
"Not this morning." Olwen's little black head was bent over the "D" correspondence, which she dealt with herself. "A" letters were handed to the typist, who carried them into cell 0368, next door. "B's" and "C's" were to be thrust into the basket that stood on the top of that desk-screen, from behind which a hand came up ever and anon to take letters.
With real enjoyment the Welsh girl worked on.
How amazingly she had altered, in all these weeks, from the one ideaed, feverish little emotionalist she'd been in the autumn!
Yes. Change of scene and of daily work had laid potent hands upon the plastic, fundamentally sound nature of this young girl. Routine had hypnotized her with its rhythmic monotony. She felt the peculiar attraction of being a tiny cog in all this huge machine of War work. New thoughts, new feelings, new interests packed her life; new friends, too, were a revelation to her.
Now came Mrs. Newton's more frivolous voice.
"Arlette, Bubbly, and Cheep, that's my record so far this week; and tonight I'm going to Pamela for the second time; all thanks to one very young youth getting four days' leave from the Front!"
Olwen laughed. The solemn little typist, however, rose to take the letters with a look that practically said, "Some people may be heads of rooms, but they don't seem to realize there's a war on!" and as she took the sheaf of papers to be signed in cell 0368 she all but slammed the door behind her.
"Seventeen; not the best phase of English maidenhood, neither washed nor kissed," went on the voice of the unseen Mrs. Newton. "Ah! It's nearly lunch time."
"I shan't be able to lunch with you today, Mrs. Newton," Olwen said rather quickly. "My Aunt that I stay with is shopping in town today, so——"
"Say no more," returned Mrs. Newton's voice. "I've got Aunts myself. I mean I had before I was married. By the way, I told Fascinating Fergus that I can hear him telephoning his dinner engagements in the next room. He said, with that aggressive face of his, that there was nothing prrivatt in those. I said, "Then why drop your voice when you're doing it?" And why does he, I ask you, insist on being a Tower of Silence in here, when he longs to be considered a perfect Devil outside? Keeping his girl friends well round the corner, nobody ever having seen one!... Swank!"
"Oh, he's not as bad as all that," murmured Olwen.
"He's all right at heart perhaps," came from the other side, "but I should like to take a scraper to him!"
And herewith there merged from behind the desk the source of all the voices that had been holding forth, in the person of Mrs. Newton.
Her Nile-green silken sports coat alone had cost more than her month's salary could have paid; her hair was arranged as carefully as though there was no thought but of her own extremely pretty looks beneath the broad velvet band that snooded her, but for all that, she was efficient. Clever, too, at darting the arrows of a bright mind at chiefs and colleagues alike. She "took in" most things, not in any disguised fashion, but by turning full upon whatever it was she wished to observe a pair of large, pale grey and pretty eyes, amused and passionless as those of a sea-maid. Their stare was even emphasized at times by the gesture of a slender forefinger and by the clearly-audible "Ah" of that treble voice.
Olwen enjoyed her thoroughly; her appreciation mingling with a wonder why she did not sometimes bitterly resent Mrs. Newton and her remarks.
Yes, two months of War work on The Honeycomb had taught Olwen already more than the A, B, C, and D of her job. Self-possession, serenity and poise, all newly acquired, were to be noticed now about the young girl as she sorted her letters (very different from the leisured correspondence of her Uncle), and smiled, partly at some thought that she was holding in reserve, and partly at her fellow-worker.
Mrs. Newton began again, "Do you know what I think is the keynote of F. F.'s character?"
"Fascination, you seem to make out," suggested Olwen, that divided smile deepening upon her lips. She sometimes thought that Mrs. Newton dwelt upon the subject of their chief for her (Olwen's) benefit, and she was prepared for it.
"Ah! But I mean the real keynote. It's jealousy," declared the young married woman. "He's a jealous thing. Hates any other man to have a show at all. Must have everybody doing their best work, just for his beaux yeux (not that he's got any, except those teeth). Yes; our Fergus must be IT in this Honeycomb. He must be The Great Captain——"
She stopped abruptly as the door of cell 0369 opened to frame the black head, square shoulders, red tabs, and empty sleeve of the man of whom she'd been speaking; the chief of their section, Captain Fergus Ross himself.
"Mrs. Newton," he said, in the tone of business unalloyed, "have they sent up to you a letter that was taken in error to room 0720? A letter from A G 6, dated the 22nd?"
"It's here, Captain Ross," replied the head of the room in her demurest treble. "Miss Howel-Jones was attending to it.... Here it is."
"Right. Thank you," said Captain Ross.
His bright dark glance took in the letter that Mrs. Newton handed him; it passed over the filed stack of other letters; it swept over the two desks, the typing-table, Miss Lennon's back, the calendar, the pinned-up Matania drawing on the wall, the green electric-light shades, the glass on the mantelpiece holding freesias, the chairs, the waste-paper basket—in short, over every object in the room but one.
For Olwen Howel-Jones, bending absorbed over her work, Captain Ross did not spare a fraction of his glance.
"Mrs. Newton, I am going out to lunch now," he announced. "Should there be any enquiries, I shall be back before two-thirty."
"Very well, Captain Ross."
(Exit Captain Ross.)
Then Mrs. Newton in Major Leefe's voice, "Wha'? Old Ferg' gone t' lunch? Bet you he's taking out some gir', Miss Howel-Jo'."
Olwen smiled undisturbed as she went to put on her her hat.
Twenty minutes later she was sitting at a table for two in a Soho restaurant, opposite to Captain Ross.
This meeting was not due to any arrangement.
What had happened was that some weeks before, Olwen, having explored all lunch-time haunts within a mile of the Honeycomb, had found this tiny, Continentally-appointed restaurant that she chose to call "The Aunt in Town." This had been on a fishday, and the fish had been deliciously cooked, as Olwen had reported afterwards. Perhaps Captain Ross did not overhear her mentioning the restaurant's real name to Major Leefe. Anyhow, there is no reason to suppose that it was not by chance that Captain Ross happened upon "The Aunt in Town" upon the very next Friday. As he saw Miss Howel-Jones sitting at a little table by herself, wasn't it natural that he should join her? He knew the girl, apart from the office, knew her Uncle. Absurd if he hadn't come up. But, as you see, there was a vast difference between his just taking the chair opposite to her, and his having planned to meet her. He did not attempt to pay for the chit's lunch. So that was that.
Certainly the fish-curry was excellent.
Captain Ross had already announced that he was fond of fish for lunch.
Consequently he took to haunting that restaurant on Fridays. Why shun it, merely because Miss Howel-Jones lunched there on that day?
As he would have told you, however, he made a definite rule of never "going out to lunch" with any woman working on The Honeycomb. With other girls, from other Government offices—well, that was another story. There was, for instance, a fair-haired Miss Somebody (who rang him up, Mrs. Newton had declared, three times a day), but she worked at the institution we will call The Rabbit Warren. There was also a pretty little friend of his on The Ant Hill. But from The Honeycomb itself—nope. Work and social relations must be kept strictly apart.
Olwen had been made to realize that from the first time she had set foot in the courtyard under those arches and that clock. She had been first astounded, then hurt, then finally she actually wanted to laugh at the different Captain Ross he now was from the one she had met at Les Pins.
The change had been sudden as the cut of a knife.
Over there on leave he had idled about the pine-woods and the plage; he had teased her as if she were no more than a pretty child; once he had given her chocolates; once—ah, that once!—he had held her hand....
Here, idleness was the last thing of which he could be accused. He no longer teased her with laughter and allusions to "most little girls." He had given her no more chocolates. As for hand-holding, why! She might not have had any hands. To be a fellow-worker with him on The Honeycomb seemed enough to transform any young woman into teak or granite as far as Captain Ross was concerned.
He had his code.
"I guess no girl friend of mine would ask me for a job where I work, twice," he'd told Olwen when they had first met in London at her Uncle's hotel. The Professor's niece, greatly daring, had retorted, "Do you mean she'd get it the first time of asking?"
"She'd get 'it,' sure thing. In the neck," the young Staff-officer had explained grimly. "She'd know better than to ask the second time."
So, exactly as he was not taking her out to lunch, Captain Ross had not secured for her this post on The Honeycomb. He had told Jack Awdas to get it for her, through his friend Major Leefe. A very different thing.
Olwen had "given up" the subtle reasonings of the sex.
Today he was obviously in a bad temper. Why? After he had ordered his own lunch, he turned to her with an edgy politeness.
"I hope you enjoyed the show last night, Miss Howel-Jones."
"Show——?" said Olwen, forgetting for a second that she had been taken to the theatre by Mr. Ellerton, the young R.N.A.S. officer.
"Yes; you were too occupied to notice who else was in the house, I guess. I was in the dress-sairrcle. I looked right down upon you in the stalls."
Now, Olwen was losing her habit of the vivid blush that used to scorch her. She merely coloured up slightly but prettily as she returned, "Oh, were you?" and proceeded to eat her fish and to discuss the play—which had been Romance. She had thought it lovely.
Captain Ross informed her definitely that he himself had no use for such sentimental balderdash; and then told her he guessed it made her pretty late, going back all the way to Wembley Park (where her Aunt lived) after the theatre. He hoped that at least young Ellerton took her all the way home.
"Yes, thank you; he did."
"M'm. Last train from Baker Street, I presume. And then you've a long trail from the station to your house. In the drive, isn't it?"
"Yes, but we didn't go by train at all," the girl explained. "Mr. Ellerton managed to get a taxi to take us all the way back from town."
"In war-time?" Captain Ross's black-cat-like face was a study in righteous indignation. Then he took a lighter tone, tilting his chin contemptuously. "Well! If Mr. Ellerton's got money to burn that way it's no concairrrrn of mine. Taxis out to Wembley Park with a girl who's employed in the same office as he is. That's Ellerton's lookout. Not the kind of thing I'd care to be seen doing myself. (No, I won't have anything to drink. A ginger-ale, waiter.) Still, if he thinks that's all right in war-time and for folks on War work together, I've nothing to say."
The ghost of a smile hovered about Olwen's red mouth as Captain Ross went on saying this "nothing."
"Sweet as honey to any girl he takes out, no doubt. The regular naval flirt. He held your hand in the theatre, or some foolishness of that sort, I daresay."
"He didn't!" retorted little Olwen, quickly, and then a message seemed to come to her, whispered, perhaps by the generations of girls in love who still survived in her blood. Upon that instinct she added, "He did not hold my hand——in the theatre."
The finest judge of women in Europe rose swiftly enough to this. "Is that so? You mean he only held it in the taxi going home. A much better scheme altogether."
Olwen, still refusing to meet the aggressive brown eyes that challenged her over the jar of mimosa on the table, retorted, "I didn't say so."
"It was so, though. Wasn't it?"
"I shan't tell you," said the girl, whose hand had not been held by anyone since that magic evening in a boat. "Why should I?"
"Don't trouble to tell me. I know."
"Then why d'you ask me?" she returned with a little ripple of laughter. "Besides, why should you mind?"
"'Mind?'" retorted Captain Ross, laughing in his turn, but louder. "If I'd nothing worse than that to 'mind' about, I shouldn't be the busy man I am."
He turned to the menu; and Olwen, going on with her lunch, remembered Mrs. Newton's verdict, "He's a jealous thing!"
She ought to have been wildly delighted....
Curious! She was only flattered; amused.
She felt oddly conscious today, that (to parody a superannuated song), she was not the only girl in the world, and he was not the only boy. That little restaurant alone was crowded with girl workers, busy as she was, being taken out to lunch by khaki of every grade and age; and, by the way, there was something to be noticed about all these girls and young women from Government offices. Once, a girl worker found it hard to hit the mean between being fluffily unsuitable or unbecomingly severe. Today these girls were approximating to a new type; pretty but durable. The London day that began in the office and ended in restaurant and theatre with an "on-leaver" without the possibility of going home to change, had done way with fripperies, but had brought decorativeness into the worker's kit. That was why skirts were short, coats impertinently neat, and hair done so that it stayed done.
"Sensible" shoes, too, were now made in pretty styles; and since taxis were problematical on wet days, rain-coats and rain-hats were at last becoming things. This mixture of utility and attractiveness was a gift of war-time to British girlhood.
Olwen gained by it. She also gained by the consciousness that there was male companionship in the world besides that of Captain Ross. Further, she knew him so much better, now! Possibly, she was not left uninfluenced by the daily sallies of Mrs. Newton at the young officer's expense (for who knows the power of the comment that shows friend or lover from another's point of view?). No longer was she lacerated by the thoughts of those other girl friends "kept well around the corner." Altogether Olwen realized that it was a good thing she no longer imagined herself desperately in love with Captain Ross, since he, though interested in all girls, was not "seriously" attracted by her. (Otherwise, she concluded, he would have said so by this time.) She was cured; she no longer wore a Charm to win him....
That Charm! One night at Wembley Park the ribbon that held it had come unsewn. She hadn't had time to stitch it. It hung over her mirror. One day, perhaps, she would attend to it; but she was always busy now. It didn't seem to matter....
Captain Ross rose to go. Olwen could picture the expression with which he'd presently look into cell 0369 to "see" if the workers had all returned.
She was generally just five minutes behind him.
Today he paused, and said abruptly, "Speaking of theatres—there's a concert or show of some sort on at the Phœnix Hut, that American place, next Monday. Awdas rang me up about it. He'd be very pleased if you'd go."
Mischief danced in Olwen's averted glance. "How jolly! But how funny of Mr. Awdas not to ask me himself! What time is this concert, Captain Ross?"
In a wooden voice Captain Ross said, "It starts at eight. If you'd dinner, say, at seven o'clock here, I could take you along afterwards."
"You could? But you never take girls out from The Honeycomb."
"That's so," agreed Captain Ross, with firmness. "But this is Awdas's show. You'll be with him. So shall I. Good-bye."
He put on his red-banded hat, thrust his stick and gloves for a moment into the cross of his belt as he saluted woodenly, and turned.
Olwen burst into a merry laugh. "Captain Ross!"
He turned again.
"It's all right; I was going to that concert anyhow," she told him.
"I'm going with the girl who sings; you know Miss van Huysen!"
Miss Golden van Huysen was now one of Olwen's best friends.