The Disturbing Charm Part 18

That _dejeuner_ downstairs was supposed to be _intime_ and private; but the distant sounds of it were already becoming audible to the more public part of the hotel.

First a soft but thunderous drumming as of applause upon the table-top was heard.

Then a skirl of laughter, the piercingness of which, near to, could only be guessed at.

Then, booming fragments of a voice that rose above others just as an occasional column of foam spouted higher than those other Biscay rollers on the reef. Then an uninterrupted booming.... Apparently a speech was in progress.

An involuntary and smiling silence seemed to fall upon the luncheon parties in the _salle_ above, almost as if they would have felt it impolite to talk through what was going on below. Truly, Miss Walsh was making the hotel one that day--the hotel to which she had only come because of that hat-pin stuck in a guide-book and p.r.i.c.king at random a name on a page!

Then suddenly, the door of the _salle a manger_ opened. The blue-and-red apparition of Sergeant Tronchet stood to attention just inside it: darkly flushed, beaming, silent.

(It may here be said that none of the visitors ever had known this swarthy well-set-up French soldier anything but silent. All that most of them had ever heard of his voice had been the murmured "Madame ...

Mademoiselle ... Messieurs ..." that accompanied his heel-clicking bows. Only Miss Walsh had ever had any conversation with him. But had not this been to some purpose?)

"Oh, he's come to fetch me," she exclaimed now in a voice that failed.

"Good-bye, Olwen dear," she added, as if she never expected to come back alive. "I shall see you and Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor at tea-time----you are all coming to _my_ tea, aren't you?" she finished appealingly.

Then she disappeared, with her peac.o.c.k-proud _fiance_.

"The day has only just begun, my dear child!" declared Mrs. Cartwright to Olwen, rising. "Come to my room and take a rest before _we_ come on in the next act. Run up, will you? I'll follow."

Olwen ran up; glad of a breathing s.p.a.ce.

That party, three floors and five or six rooms away, did still dominate the whole hotel! She was glad to lie back in Mrs. Cartwright's basket-chair and to draw a long breath. She had nothing to do that afternoon, she thanked goodness....

But Mrs. Cartwright, as soon as she came in, drew a chair up to her writing-table and began to make notes, chuckling from time to time.

"Tell me when the people begin to go," she begged Olwen. "I had to make an errand about the tea, and take a peep in just now, I couldn't miss it.... My dear! The heat! And the din down there! Poor Miss Walsh! How Madame crammed them all in I don't know.... And Monsieur Leroux with his black domino beard and his pouchy eyes, _and_ all those women exactly the same height whether they sit down or stand up...."

She was scribbling sketches of them all to send to her boys....

The noise downstairs rose to sounds of confused singing--_Le Chanson des Baisers_, then fell at last.

"I think they're all going away now," said Olwen from the balconied window, and Mrs. Cartwright ran to join her and to watch the homeward-faring procession filing by.

First the notary, his white bowler hat a little dinted, appeared round the corner of the hotel. He was arm in arm with Monsieur Popinot, who still carried his wife's pink parasol, and who seemed to have an idea of putting it up over the pair of them as they went by the windows, but was restrained by a gesture, suppressed but fierce, from the notary. His purple-clad wife hustled the children ahead of her; the party in mourning were giggling joyously together, then a.s.sumed a gravity.

With the same effect of pompously pulling themselves together with which they had pa.s.sed the front of the hotel, they all repa.s.sed it now.

Even as they turned their backs upon it, the strain was seen to relax again. Up went the pink parasol in the distance.

"Ah, there; there goes Gustave's comrade the _artilleriste_," commented Mrs. Cartwright. "First at the fight--and last at the feast; yes, he's the last."

The _artilleriste_ swaggered delightfully, turning to wave a farewell, and obviously caring little whether it were to the front of the hotel or the back....

And then, about seventy yards behind the last of these revellers there went by two other figures.

They were those of Captain Ross and Mr. Awdas, who had been making themselves scarce for the day.

And perhaps it was because Olwen was busy with her own effort not to look at one of them that she did not notice Mrs. Cartwright's swift glance at the other; the flying boy.

As if he felt that glance upon him, Jack Awdas looked up and put a hand to his cap; a smile rippling all over his face.

Olwen would not have read the purpose behind the smile.

CHAPTER XII

MOONLIGHT AND THE CHARM

"O, swear not by the moon, the inconstant moon, That monthly changes in her circled orb, Lest thy love prove likewise variable."

Shakespeare.

Now let us take the roof off, as is done in fairy stories about other charms.

Let us steal a peep, that is, inside various rooms of that hotel, where this story is laid.

In the bas.e.m.e.nt, first of all, let us cast a glance at the _appartement_ that had echoed to the feasting of that luncheon party, and had been later the scene of a sedate and ultra-English tea. n.o.body there now, except the hotel manageress and her husband. Monsieur Leroux with that black domino beard of his, is dozing in the most capacious chair; Madame is poring over her accounts. Every now and then her eye lights up with a spark from the smouldering fire of pride within her; for who but she has such a right of feeling proud at the end of that day of meals and acclamations (and washing-up?). She thinks of her nephew Gustave's brilliant _partie_, and of the bedazzling of all her friends, most especially of the notary's wife, here in this very room. The little close room seems to her once more a-glitter with the gla.s.s and the silver and the display.... Only the prune-coloured velvet curtains are tightly drawn before the pots of imitation cyclamen, and there enters no gleam of the light that is bathing the forest and the sea without--light of the waning moon, melting and cool at once, at once disdainful and seductive.

Upstairs in the _salle a manger_ the engaged couple have been dining as guests of the guests. Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had suggested this, and their proposal was cordially received. The health of the _fiances_ had been drunk, and the old French gentleman with the red b.u.t.ton-hole has added the toast to the next betrothed from that party there present tonight.

And now Gustave Tronchet and his bride-elect are still moving from group to group in the _salon_, and the diffident, old-maidish Englishwoman is transfigured. It astonishes her to think that she could ever have felt that violent shyness so early in the day. She has forgotten how her knees trembled as she faced that perfect zoo of foreigners, all beards and bosoms, come to inspect Mees Ouallshe.

She feels now that she carried it off admirably. She has been amplifying to herself since the ten words of French that she had managed to stammer out then, and by now they appear to her a cla.s.sic oration. She feels she was born to this kind of thing. On her _fiance's_ stout arm she moves about the room like a spoon that is keeping on the stir a pan of hot and incredibly sweet social jam. As Mrs. Cartwright says to herself, "No ordinary English engagement to a man out of her own world could ever have brought the dear good creature these triumphs; let her enjoy them,"----and everybody enjoys seeing Miss Agatha Walsh radiant, while she even more enjoys being so seen.

As for Sergeant Gustave Tronchet, if he were not enjoying it, also, who should be? Accepted, _range_, adored!

He marshals her about from _salle_ to _salon_ and lounge, drawing her back as she peeps through the c.h.i.n.k of the big hall door at the beckoning moonlight without.

"No, Agathe! You will _inrhume_ yourself----"

She turns to beam brighter than the moon itself at the comely dark face of the only man who has ever protested whether she took cold or not. He, too, has been studying a speech in the language of the country into which he is marrying.

He brings it out, and the ears of love are quick to understand even his English, even his accent.

"I oueelle trai to you rendaire 'appeee, Agathe!"

"Oh," she breathed, with a little clutch to the blue-sleeved arm. "Oh, but you do, you _have_!"

They return to the _salle_....