WILD-FIRE AND THE CHARM
"A light that shifts, a glare that drifts,
Rekindling thus and thus."
Kipling.
A little earlier, on that same evening, the disturbing Charm had set to work in other directions.
Little Mr. Brown, who had taken his dinner as usual at the hotel, was lingering on the terrace on the other side of the building from the piazza. He was smoking a cigarette, which the "Défense" notices would forbid him at every turn on the forest; but, apart from this, it was not to be wondered at that the gregarious little Londoner was in no hurry to get back to that sylvan shanty of his. The contrast, after that evening, would have been as great as that between a chandeliered ballroom and a cave.
Oh, the loneliness of that hut at night! His cheerful urban soul got fairly fed-up, as he would express it, with all that wind-sighing-in-the-pine-tops business. Of course, as he'd have told you, the little old hut was good enough for lolling outside of with a book, or for writing his letters in of a morning. If only they'd allow him to smoke there he would be quite fond of the dashed little dug-out by now, but he didn't pretend to find it a very attractive spot of an evening.
Even of an evening, perhaps, it wouldn't have been so dusty if he'd had somebody with him. With his cigarette between his teeth he found himself humming a song of seven years back:
"It's all right if there's a girl there,
That's the place where I'd like——"
At that moment Olwen Howel-Jones, her slim shape buried in a big driving-coat, appeared upon the terrace.
He approached her joyously.
"Going for a little stroll round the houses, Miss Olwen?"
Olwen shrank within herself. She did not want any more of the obvious admiration of this quite nice boy; it had dismayed her to find that in shooting at a star (Captain Ross) she had hit a blackberry-bush (little Mr. Brown). After that declaration of his in the wood she had felt almost inclined to tear that misleading Charm she wore from its ribbon and to toss it down the wind into the Baissin! However, she could not be rude to him just because he didn't happen to be somebody else. Hesitatingly she replied that she had thought of going for a little walk with Mrs. Cartwright, who seemed to have disappeared.
(She, as we know, was at the moment pacing the sands beside Jack Awdas.)
"Ah, you're at a loose end, then, are you," returned Mr. Brown, cheerfully. "Well, if I might have the pleasure——?"
Before Olwen could either grant or refuse "the pleasure," there stepped out on to the terrace Captain Ross, who with a note of some purpose in his "good evening," took up his position on the other side of the girl.
Now, all through that thrilling day, something (heard quite at the beginning of it) had been humming in Olwen's heart like a wind-harp that responds to every passing breath. It was that something let fall by Madame Leroux, and it had tossed Olwen far too high up into the rosy clouds to take more than a quite superficial notice of the subsequent events of that rousing day. She had helped Miss Walsh, had listened and watched with Mrs. Cartwright, had drunk healths—but all the time she had been secretly hearing, over and over again, one lightly-uttered remark.
"Monsieur le Capitaine, he with one arm, who admires Mademoiselle already——"
Madame had thought that! There must be truth in it. The Charm was working and not only in the wrong direction. It was true that Captain Ross had talked to Olwen as if she were a little girl; he had avoided her in the forest when he was carrying that table-top for Mr. Brown, and he had blackened this evening for her by taking not the smallest notice of her at dinner; he hadn't even come up to touch his glass to hers when the toast had been proposed to the next engaged person for that hotel. To set off against all this, Madame Leroux (that piercingly acute Frenchwoman) had given it as her opinion that he admired Mademoiselle.
Now he joined her and Mr. Brown on the terrace.
His coming had a curious effect. Olwen became filled with apparent animation and delight in the company of little Mr. Brown. This was not deliberate coquetry, but pure instinct. The kindest-hearted girl in the world, the most kernel-sweet maid never hesitates before one form of feminine cruelty—to make use of the admirer for whom she does not care in order to spur the man she loves. It is not an admirable instinct. But it is a form of self-preservation in Woman, for which Man alone is responsible....
Perhaps it is not fair to allege that every man in his heart is a dog in the manger, hating to see his fellow-men smiled upon by a pretty girl? Perhaps it's not true that his interest in the girl is awakened when he sees her interested in another? No! Perhaps it's a libellous old theory that simply doesn't hold water as a rule.
Only, what myriads of exceptions it does take to prove that rule!
In her happiest voice Olwen, standing between the two men, began talking to Mr. Brown. "I do think that hut of yours must be a delightful place to live in! No cleaning! No sweeping! and you've only to put out your hand to get those lovely blackberries for breakfast——"
Captain Ross, leaning on the balustrade, was seen to hump his back a little.
"Can't say I fancy blackberries as a breakfast myself, but I daresay it'll come to that," grumbled Mr. Brown, cheerily. "Blackberries, and 'bright water is my drink from the crystal spring.' Can you make anything out of this tangle about allowances, Ross?"
Captain Ross was apparently not the finest judge of pay-warrants in Europe. A short "nope" came from over his humped shoulder. Olwen noticed that his one hand was resting on his left-side-jacket-pocket, that appeared to be bulging with something he had slipped into it.
"Dashed if I can make 'em out," said Mr. Brown, pleasantly. "According to my reckoning, Miss Olwen, there was my regimental pay for July, rations and lodgings for August, and they'll be in arrears for September—and no hospital stoppages.... Cox's do make mistakes; ask anybody. Anybody!"
Olwen agreed that Cox's did make mistakes. Honeyed sympathy informed her tone as she said so.
"Well, that's just that," Mr. Brown concluded, beaming upon her. "But, as I was just asking you, what about a turn on the prom. in the moonlight?"
Here the hump of Captain Ross's square shoulders suddenly straightened out.
He took his hand away from the packet in his pocket, gave a hitch to his belt, then, turning to Olwen, and in the most matter-of-fact voice imaginable, he told the fib that took her breath away.
"I guess Miss Howel-Jones is engaged to me for this dance. Isn't that so, Miss Howel-Jones?"
"Dance? But——" gasped little Olwen, stupefied. "Nobody is dancing!"
"Then I guess we'll have to sit it out together on the old cannon or somewhairrr," said Captain Ross, coolly. "Shall you be all right without anything on your head?"
Now if Captain Ross expected that upon this hint Mr. Brown would retire in good order to his hut, there to brood upon allowances for the rest of the evening, he was no very fine judge of subalterns in the London Rifle Brigade.
Mr. Brown, M.C., stood firm. "Look here, Ross——" he was beginning, when another voice, a deep, genial, elderly voice, was heard behind the shutters of the window through which Captain Ross had come out upon the terrace.
The voice enquired, "Has anybody seen my niece?"
Little Olwen jumped.
"Oh, it's my Uncle. Do open the shutters, Uncle! I'm out here, with Mr. Brown and Captain Ross," explained Olwen, hurriedly. "It's—it's ever so early, you know! We were all just thinking of going for a little walk——"
"No; I've got it," put in the unquenchable Mr. Brown. "What about a pull on the lagoon, to look at the phosphorescence? You too, Ross," he added, hospitably; guessing that Professor Howel-Jones was of an age that might allow its young nieces to go for moonlight rows in boats on lakes with two young men, but scarcely with one. "I saw a skiff drawn up by the jetty. You don't mind, Professor, do you?"
"At this hour?" demurred the Professor, looking out into the light that made of his massive old head the summit of Mynedd Mawr in a snowy December. "For you to take your death of cold, Olwen fach, in the night air?"
Little Olwen, pulling up her storm-collar, murmured appealingly above it. "Oh, darling! I shall be as warm as warm! Do let me go."
She did not know that in her coaxing she was helped by a girl long dead. It was to a certain note in the voice that she had from her mother that the Professor ceded now.
With a little nod he said, "Very well," and all but added "Mary." "Very well, Olwen fach. I trust you gentlemen not to keep her out long. I wish you a pleasant row; good night to you, good night!" And he went in.
"Come on; let's make a dash for it," said young Brown.
He led the way; followed by Olwen and Captain Ross, the latter in a worse temper than he had been in since he left the hospital.
"Jump in," said Mr. Brown, as they came up to the little empty skiff moored at the foot of the jetty.
In the skiff little Mr. Brown, cheerfully resigned to doing all the work, took both oars; as he would naïvely have said, he rather fancied himself in a boat. He pushed his shirt-sleeves up above a pair of short but neatly-turned forearms, and as he rowed on that foreign lagoon margined by that French sea-wall, his cheerful chatter was all of the Thames above Richmond, of sunny Sundays and of parties on Eel-Pie Island. The two in the stern sat rather silently, letting him talk; Captain Ross sulking as he would never have admitted he sulked, Olwen uttering now and again a little "Ah" of delight at the phosphorescence on the water.
For it was wonderful, that sea that flamed as they pushed out into it. The boat's keel cut into the shimmer of pale green as into a field of glow-worms; it lighted up to left and right, blazing, dying down, rekindling fitfully as love itself; raining in spangles from the oars, dripping in jewels from Olwen's fingers as she dipped them over the side of the boat.
"Trim, Miss Olwen," said Mr. Brown, jerking his bullet head. "A bit nearer to Ross, if you don't mind."
Olwen moved; in the softly rocking boat overbalancing a trifle, she bumped against something hard and angular on the seat close to her companion. It felt like a camera or a book.
"Oh," she said, "did I knock you, Captain Ross?"
"No——" he said—and then he brought out of his jacket-pocket that which she had seen bulging it into that square shape on the terrace. It was a box covered with coloured satin and tied with gay ribbons.
"Candy," explained Captain Ross, somewhat curtly. He lifted the lid and offered the chocolates to Olwen, then perforce to Mr. Brown, who stopped rowing and leant forward, opening his mouth as he had done to the blackberries.
"Pop one in, Miss Olwen, please," he laughed, hands on the oars; but it was Captain Ross who leant forward in the boat and stuffed the sweet into his mouth.
"Thanks," said little Mr. Brown, with his mouth full. "Very pretty attention of yours, Ross, I must say, bringing out chocs for me when I like 'em."
Captain Ross planted the box on Olwen's lap.
"Don't," she laughed shyly. "I shall eat them all up."
"I guess you're meant to," he said shortly. "I got them for you in Bordeaux."
"For me?"
"Sure. I wanted to see if you'd eat candies, after what you said the other day to me in the lounge."
Through the soft noises of the water Olwen's soft voice took up "What I said?"
"Yes—when you said, 'Who wants candy?'"
"Oh, that," said Olwen, looking down at the green lambent water of which the rippling light beat up, soft and magical upon a face whose young curves could have dared a harsher radiance. She then looked back across the lagoon towards the big block of the hotel, picked out against the pale sky. She also glanced to her right, at the sand dunes that barricaded the waters of the Baissin from those of Biscay Bay, and at the lighthouse, winking white and red. She looked, in fact, anywhere but at Captain Ross, sitting so close beside her in that boat.
She was bathed in such a rapturous dream of moonlight and phosphorescence and rosy clouds and proximity that she was afraid to look at him. Fear lest he might read a confession in her eyes did for her what wisdom itself might have prompted.
A sophisticated woman in Simla, for example, had once told Mrs. Cartwright that she found no variation of the Glad Eye more successful with some men than the glance withheld. How dogmatically would this have been combated by Captain Ross! More than once had this expert in Woman's Ways affirmed, "If there's a woman on this airrrrth that I've no use for, it's the woman who looks away when I'm speaking to her. I don't dawdle talking to a woman who doesn't look at ME all the time——"
His impulse at that moment was to catch this little chit beside him by her slender shoulders and shake her good and hard. If he'd had two arms, he thought savagely, that's what he'd have wanted to do with 'em. He'd have loved to do that, then and there, and be hanged to that young butter-in of a Brown! Young Brown could be ignored, anyway. Let him get the boat along; the only pity was that he couldn't row with his back to the stern.
Captain Ross, turned a little sideways on the cushions of the skiff, attempted, by looking the girl full in the face, to make the girl look straight back at him. Not a successful method. Olwen's soft bright glance slid away from him even as the phosphorescence slid away from the oars.
Curtly he demanded, "You do like candy, after all?"
"I don't call it 'candy.' That's American, or Canadian," Olwen said with that indifference which was her only idea of Love's camouflage. "I say, 'chocolate,' or 'sweets.'"
"Is that so?"
"Yes," said Olwen, looking now at the box that was, as she knew, to become her most precious and inseparable treasure, her first gift—from Him!
As she sat holding it, backed by luminous sky and luminous sea, the little slim Pandora with her casket, he too looked at it between her hands; touched the bow of it.
"That'll do for a hair-ribbon for you, I guess," he remarked.
All that Olwen could think of to say was "I don't ever wear any ribbons."
"Is that so?" retorted Captain Ross maliciously. "Then what's that little pink tie-thing you've gotten coming out over your coat-collar at the back?"
Precipitately, Olwen's hand went up to the ribbon that was sewn to her Charm, and that, according to the mysterious and osmotic nature of ribbons, had let an end work up and out again. She tucked it in, with the eyes of the two young men upon her little dark, ducking head, and the small hand white in the moonlight.
That moonlight flashed too on the line of Captain Ross's fine teeth. A great alteration had suddenly come over his dour mood. He had two reasons for laughing good-humouredly. One, because he had just given a welcome present (event that always adds to one's good will towards the receiver), and two, because he had scored off the little chit now, with her ribbon! Ha!
His bad temper had vanished as her pretty confusion appeared. Again she dipped her fingers into that gleaming wake; she shook them, dried them against the thick skirt of her coat.
"You've gotten your hands cold now," said Captain Ross, in a pleased tone, and his left hand caught hold of the fingers of her little chilled right hand as if to verify the fact.
His own was a short and rather stumpy hand, Olwen had often noticed, with beautifully kept nails and with the cushions of the palm developed and muscular from the double share of work that was put upon it; generally she had seen it held half-closed above the watch-bracelet on a sturdy wrist. She had never shaken hands with him....
She thought he meant only to touch her fingers and to let them go. But he held them. He held the little soft fingers, in the shadow of her loose cuff and under a fold of her thick coat. They lay, firmly tucked into that clever magnetic left hand of the soldier who had only that one hand to do everything with.
Olwen, a prisoner enraptured with her chain, sat silent and still. She thought, "I suppose I ought to take my hand away. Oh, need I? No; I can't. He's only holding it to warm it, perhaps. And then if I took it away he might think I thought he thought he was really holding it!"
She sat in the boat that glided through that fairy mere of lambert waves, shimmering with green. Little shivers seemed to start in her elapsed hand and to run up her arm quick as wildfire, and spreading like wildfire through the whole of her slight frame. Yet she was now, as she had promised the Professor that she would be, "as warm as warm." Once she moved her hand a little in its prison, but that was only as a bird might stir and nestle in its cosy haunt. The man's clasp tightened a trifle, but she had made no effort to take away the hand that he was describing to himself as "a little bit of velvet."
As she assured herself some time afterwards, "Well, how could I? How can you possibly take your hand away from a man's who's only got one arm to hold you with?"
The boat sped on ... and the thrills that trembled through the girl did not, surely, leave the man unstirred.
"Well, what about it, Ross?" broke in the making-the-best-of-it voice of little Mr. Brown, resting at last on his oars. "What about another of those chocolates?"
With one of his quickest movements Captain Ross's hand left the shadow of Olwen's cuff and grabbed the biggest chocolate walnut out of the box. He crammed it into the other young man's mouth as if it were a gag.
Then, unseen, his hand sought the girl's again, found it, held it close.
The boat sped on through the whispering wildfire....