CHAPTER IX
UNFORSEEN EFFECTS OF THE CHARM
"Does the wood-pecker flit round the young ferash? Does the grass clothe a new-built wall?
Is she under thirty, the woman who holds a boy in her thrall?"
Kipling.
It would have been a shock to little Olwen had she realized what other result of the Charm was manifesting itself already at that moment.
Probably the first, imperceptible manifestations would have been lost upon this quite young girl.
Had she noticed the gravitating towards Mrs. Cartwright's chair of an evening of Captain Ross's friend, the young flyer, had she observed the gradual way in which it was becoming a matter of course that when the writer was not working he was in attendance upon her, had she known of a bouquet of late roses, bought in the Ville d'Hiver and sent by the chambermaid to Room 23, had she heard what boyish confidences about flying, and Work, and Other Fellows, and even Home were being poured into an ear well used to hearing of such things by a tongue not well used to talking to women—well! Even had she known all this, Olwen would have looked upon it much as she looked upon her own impulses when she stooped quickly to pick up a pair of dropped spectacles for the old French lady, the little dark boy's grandmother, or held open the door of the salle for her to pass out. It was merely "manners."
Further, if she had known of that night which Mrs. Cartwright had watched through with him, putting all her own Force between him and the forces of Horror, little Olwen would have thought she saw the whole reason for the young man's attentions to a woman nearly twenty years his senior. It was gratitude. How natural!
Manners, and gratitude....