As for Olwen—well, this was on the morning after her Uncle had sprung upon her the news that all her "good time" was to end in two days' time. And one whole precious day of that remaining two was to be wasted; wasted!
A somewhat mysterious message had come from Bordeaux, asking all three of the British officers then sojourning at Les Pins to go over and spend the day with their comrades-in-arms at a base about which none of these soldiers would answer any questions. They had gone, all three of them; Captain Ross, Mr. Awdas, and little Mr. Brown. They wouldn't be back all day. Not all day would Olwen have a glimpse of him whom presently she might never be seeing at all—and still Mrs. Cartwright affirmed that it would be possible to have a good time!
Probably Mrs. Cartwright guessed at the young girl's frame of mind as easily as at the less disguised feelings of Sergeant Tronchet's betrothed; it had not been for long that the writer had wondered "Who that child's so desperately in love with?" But brooding was a thing that Claudia Cartwright considered a wasteful and useless proceeding on the part of any young girl. She determined to put a stop to it, if possible, and that was why she went on gaily, "I often think of how Eve would have got on if she had been made first; probably she'd have thoroughly enjoyed having the whole of that Garden to herself, whereas Adam——! Bored to tears, of course. Not good for man to be alone.... Well, since all the men have gone from here, why shouldn't we have a party of our own?"
"A party!" echoed Miss Walsh, lugubriously. "Oh, Mrs. Cartwright!"
"Why not? I am sure Sergeant Gustave doesn't want you to shut yourself up because he's gone back to the front; come and see something to put into your lovely long letters to him. And since those other three young men have gone off on a stag party to Bordeaux, we'll organize a dove lunch, as the American girls call it, and go off to Cap Ferret. It's perfectly lovely there. Olwen, where's the Professor? I'm going to beg leave for you. Come along, Miss Walsh——"
There was about Mrs. Cartwright that day an almost schoolgirlish flow of vitality that the other two found it impossible to resist; their own being at a low ebb, they let themselves drift with the current of hers. The corners of Miss Walsh's mouth ceased to turn quite so definitely downward, and the clouds in Olwen's bright eyes seemed about to disperse. In half an hour they were all ready, and setting out for this trip to Cap Ferret, which lay beyond the Baissin, the dunes, and the lighthouse.
In the bright autumn sunlight the little motor-boat buzzed with them across the lagoon that had set such a fairy scene, that night.... But there was a gay wind blowing now, sending the big white clouds rolling across the sky in towering columns like those of the Biscay waves, seen from afar.
"We'll go right down to Biscay, after lunch," planned Mrs. Cartwright, as they landed at the small iron pier above the oyster parks. Then she guided them through the belt of pine woods that lay between the two borders of sandhills, past the lighthouse which they saw every day as a warning finger, but with which they now made acquaintance as the huge tower it was; she led them to the inn where they were to lunch. This was a long white building, its corners rounded and scoured by the flying sands borne on the gales of winter.
"Outside is the best dining-room," said Mrs. Cartwright. "I daresay Madame will think us mad—but it's an Indian summer day today. The Professor told me that you Welsh people call it 'the little summer of the Angels.' Come along!"
And having given her order to the smiling French landlady (who wore a black shawl, a bright blue apron, and a brighter blue glass comb in her black hair), she led the others to a table in the sunny yard, under the wooden veranda. Its green paint had flaked off beneath those noisy gales, but the latticework was over-grown with passion-flower vines and other vines, richly clustered with bunches of sweet white grapes.