The Disturbing Charm Part 12

"Looks more like the little square bags they used to fasten on to the ladies' covered coathangers in the Haberdashery. With scent inside 'em.

I've no use for perfumery----"

Olwen was now sure he meant to throw this gift of the G.o.ds away. With a hasty gesture she s.n.a.t.c.hed it out of the young man's hand.

"It is a mascot; I've seen others like them!" she told him, as they came in sight of the hotel. On the piazza Captain Ross was smoking, with his friend, the aviator; Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had joined them.

Olwen realized that Captain Ross was also staring down on to the pine-bordered road, at herself and young Mr. Brown, who had stopped short, and was still looking at what she held, the treasure that he had discovered in his pocket.

"But how did it get in there?" he demanded.

"Somebody might have slipped it in without your knowing. But anyhow,"

said Olwen, taking a resolution, "_I'm_ going to slip it back for you now, to bring you luck!" And she did slip it back into the khaki pocket.

"There! You know where it's come from this time. You'll keep it there, won't you?"

"Anything to oblige," laughed Mr. Brown, and the two young people walked on to join the party on the piazza, who were waiting for them.

Olwen thought, "It's rather annoying that he's going to leave the hotel, and live in a hut like the Wild Man of the Woods _just_ when I want to watch how the Charm will work with him! But if it _does_ work, that's the main thing, after all."

She added aloud, looking into the pink and puggy face that had outstared Danger and was now staring at Bankruptcy, "Take care of it, won't you?

You won't throw it away or let it get lost or anything?"

"Not for all the Eau in Cologne!" Mr. Brown a.s.sured her with a mock-flourish as they ran up the piazza steps together.

Those robin-like eyes of Captain Ross were fixed very watchfuly upon this young Mr. Brown as he appeared, laughing and chatting as if he were quite old friends with the Professor's niece. Then the young Staff officer looked from him to her.

For a girl who wasn't bland, she was (he thought again) quite neat....

The chit didn't look at him....

And what (Captain Ross wondered) was that keep-sake that she was handing to that fellow?

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST ENGAGEMENT BY THE CHARM

"Artill. 38 ans, celib., ser., demande marraine affect, desinteressee."

La Vie Parisienne.

Astonishment, incredulity, excitement and delight, reigned in the hotel at Les Pins.

One thought only pervaded the place, from the topmost attics inhabited by Marie the Bretonne and the other _femmes-de-chambre_, down through the other floors to the wide _salons_ and to the shut-off wing that was the domain of the management. One topic alone set all tongues there chattering, in English, French, or Canadian-Scots. One piece of news was now being discussed before any _communique_ from any of the fronts.

It was the news about Miss Agatha Walsh and the nephew of "the management," Sergeant Tronchet.

They were engaged to be married.

This was sudden, as everybody commented one after another. This was quick work. For, how long had Miss Walsh been staying at the hotel?

Two--three days? And had she ever met this man before? Never?

One moonlight walk in the pine-forest, one expedition by motor-boat across the lagoon, half a dozen conversations at table d'hote, an encounter at the post office where Miss Walsh had gone to buy picture postcards of the Cote d'Azur, another stroll in the forest, a game of draughts together--this had been all the preparation necessary for a declaration from the bull-necked, swarthy French sergeant to the English lady-all-alone. The deed was done. He had asked her to become his wife.

She had accepted him. No; there was no mistake. The pair were going about looking as if they were newly-elected king and queen of the Gironde, and those visitors to whom the engagement had not been announced in French by Sergeant Tronchet, had been told in English by the radiant, tremulous, blissful Miss Walsh herself.

Madame Leroux, all smiles, had confirmed the news herself in each instance. Monsieur Leroux had taken the little tramway into Arcachon to blaze it abroad at his cafe. The three little pigtailed daughters fluttered about the villas of Les Pins in their red-and-white check frocks, twittering like starlings on the subject of the _fiancailles_, and spreading the news that Mademoiselle Ouallshe was sending to Paris for presents for each of them, and had said that they were to call her Tante Agathe! The wedding was for soon--for almost immediately!

Excitement rose higher and higher; it might be observed that the delight seemed, if anything, on the French side; the astonishment on that of the English visitors.

Little Mr. Brown turned from his plans for furnishing the woodcutter's hut for himself to open his candid and bulging blue eyes upon this new event in the hotel. He was, as a matter of fact, the first of those who heard the news to refer to a certain element in it.

"I say; look here," was his comment. "That chap's all right, I daresay; but are his people and all that quite cla.s.s enough for the lady's family? I don't know about foreigners, of course. And of course I don't pretend to be Anybody, myself. But what'll her people at home think?

Won't they----Well, _socially_, I should have thought it would have been considered a bit _Rum_!"

Mrs. Cartwright told him, quickly and quietly, that this marriage was not complicated, on "the lady's" side, by any people at home, and turned to Olwen to confirm it. Olwen, who was wide-eyed with a mixture of feelings, which she was surprised to find were not all happy ones, agreed that Miss Walsh hadn't any relations.

And presently Mrs. Cartwright was writing to her sisters: "_A marriage has been arranged between the French Sergeant and the Hotel Spinster I described to you in my last. I think an excellent plan. She wants marriage, he wants money. Translated into English, it is brutal and horrible. But these clear-eyed French make something so different out of all that._

"_She is madly in love with him, for the same reason that Eve fell in love with Adam in that Garden; he's the first man she's ever seen. The gap between their worlds is no wider than the gap between her and the world generally. Up to now (35, my dear!) she's belonged to the Great Unkissed._

"_He is proud of his achievement, and, consequently, proud of her. I expect he will make her an admirable husband. They'll live in this country, his people will be her people. He will be affectionate, and genuinely fond of her, as only a Frenchman can be fond of the wife who has brought him money, and at whom he would not have looked, but for her income!_"

Olwen, behind that startled gaze of hers, was realizing that she, and she alone, was responsible for this projected marriage and for the way in which it would turn out, whether for good or ill.

She had been the first person in the hotel to whom Miss Walsh had confided the great news. With the tremulous face of a girl, with a girl's faltering delight, the Spinster had called into her room an hour before.

"Oh, Olwen, come here a minute. (I'm going to call you Olwen.) Oh, I must tell you first. You were the first person who spoke to me here,"

she cried. "Oh, can you believe that it was only last Thursday?

You said that it would bring me luck--that Charm you gave me. Oh, my little Olwen, it's brought me all the luck and happiness in the world!

That's nonsense--I suppose! Still, I _am_ the happiest person in the world. Kiss me. Pierre is so wonderful! You see what's happened? Oh, yes, you must guess----"

Olwen, hardly believing her ears, still guessed. She left Miss Walsh, her small ears buzzing with the woman's pathetic gush of confidences, her mind a welter of emotions. Perhaps the chief feeling was fright....

It was so powerful, then, that Charm? She had not expected this. Not only the swiftness of the wooing, but a definite engagement!...

And a marriage to be expected shortly.... And to--well, _not_ the sort of person whom Olwen, the disposer of the Charm, had meant to see attracted to the wearer of her amulet. At least, she had not expected to see him _accepted_----! She had hoped--for what? Well, not the first man who asked Miss Walsh; not the man who--who looked rather like their village policeman at home! and not for it to happen in three days! It was rather frightening. Could one count so little upon the way in which that Charm was going to act? Perhaps after all it was not going to prove the unmitigated blessing of the human race which Olwen had at first seen it.... Oh.... Misgivings thronged upon her. For a moment she felt inclined to wish that she could take the Charm by force, if necessary, from Miss Walsh--undo what she had done. That she could steal the Charm away from Mr. Brown's tunic-pocket. That she could snip the ribbon that tied the Charm round Mrs. Cartwright's long slender neck....

As for the Charm that rose and fell with the gentle curve of Olwen's own breast, where it lay, well, that would be all right. For her, Charm or no Charm, there was no question of attracting the wrong man. For her there was only one man in the world; his right sleeve was tucked into his jacket-pocket, and as he smiled teasingly down at her his teeth were a flash of snow across the brown of his self-confident face. For her the Charm that attracted him could only be a beneficent thing.

But what about those others? she mused, doubtfully, over her typewriter.

In Mrs. Cartwright's case, the Charm was not working as swiftly as in the case of Miss Walsh. She seemed, so far, on the same terms with the Professor that she had always been; as ready to listen to his interpretations of Welsh names--"Olwen," for instance, meaning "White Track," and belonging to a maid of Celtic mythology in whose path daisies were wont to spring up--as interested in his special subjects.

As friendly at table d'hote or in the evenings; yes, as friendly ... but no more so! At their age, Olwen thought, people strolled into Love, perhaps, instead of falling into it, as they did at nineteen.

In her own case, she thought--and she hugged the thought!--the Charm did seem to be working. Not at that perilous speed with which it had served Miss Agatha Walsh; not yet with results which meant these definite and pole-axing announcements! Still ... wasn't it working a little?