The Disturbing Charm Part 30

His talk, as homely as the gossip of a camp, yet somehow as high as the stars to which it pointed, was not of the kind that provokes violent applause. The whole a.s.sembly in that big hall felt that it was not mere applause that the orater and his kind were out to win. Quiet brooded for a moment over the meeting, over the mingling of Allies in khaki; and over the rows of big-framed, bold-featured Americans in uniforms of brown and blue, all clean-shaven as were those Normans of whom King Harold said, "_Those priests will make good soldiers._"

Then the spell was relaxed; there was a little sputtering of matches as pipes were relighted. Men began to talk. And little Olwen Howel-Jones, who was one of the visitors occupying the two front rows of chairs settled herself for the singing.

On her lap was a great soft heap of leopard-skin furs. They belonged to Miss van Huysen (the girl who was going to sing as soon as she could be fetched from saying good-bye to a party of sailors who were taking their leave in the billiard-room). Miss van Huysen's seat, next to Olwen, had just been slid into by Captain Ross, who would have to leave it as soon as the singer had finished; Olwen thought he must have something to say to her, but apparently he hadn't. On her other side sat Mrs. Cartwright, serene and smiling, with her hand lying in that of the very young man who accompanied her. This very young man, aged fifteen, was Keith, her elder son, now in London with his mother on account of measles at his school. In the row behind them, his long legs rather cramped, sat Jack Awdas, the flyer, with the rest of the party from The Honeycomb; Leefe, Ellerton, little Mrs. Newton, and one or two other R.F.C. officers.

Since Captain Ross did not seem to have anything to say to her, Olwen found time to glance about this great hall which was only one room of the Phoenix Hut.

The keynote to the whole place--with its s.p.a.ciousness of comfort, its shields of Harvard, Yale, and the other colleges, its flags, its palms, its theatrical posters, and its three glowing fireplaces, might be found in the great pedestalled image of the American Eagle, carved in grey stone and set up in the middle of the hall. Stately he stood with outstretched wings, poised and ready to strike; and from one of those wings dangled the blue jacket of some American sailor, while upon the huge bird's head there was perched an American soldier's cowboy hat.

It seemed so typical, that mixture of dignity and gaiety!

Suddenly a rustle and a buzz went round the hall, then the applause broke out in a storm as of summer rain.

Miss Golden van Huysen, the singer, had come quickly through the doors that led from the billiard-room smiling an apology for her absence.

Olwen's glance flew back to the platform as her friend stepped forward up to it.

There she stood facing all eyes, a vision of white and gold. There she shone, in front of all the illuminating lights. Into that place, already bright, she brought an added radiance as of the June sun on a field of b.u.t.tercups. Golden was her name; golden her hair, golden the girdle that clipped her, its long ends falling to the hem of her skirt. Olwen looked at the glorious young form, symbolical as that of a G.o.ddess on a golden coin.

"Isn't she beautiful tonight!" she breathed.

Every man in the hall must have agreed with her, and the blue eyes of at least one Englishman there said as much.

They were the eyes of Jack Awdas.

CHAPTER III

RECOVERY OF THE CHARM

"One sudden gleam of a face, and my cherished Ideal is real!

There moved my miracle, there pa.s.sed my Fate whom to see is to love."

Brunton Stephens.

Those eyes of Jack Awdas's had known their business from the start.

Wise Mrs. Cartwright, to have known what would happen, even as she sat in that basket-chair in that hotel lounge at Les Pins, all those weeks ago!

It had happened instantaneously. The electric flash had not been quicker than the glance that had pa.s.sed from young eyes to young eyes.

Those months ago!...

Mrs. Cartwright had left the French hotel the morning after--had left Les Pins and the man she had refused. Her place at table next to Jack Awdas had been given (as she guessed it would be given) to her successor.

That G.o.ddess-built young American had made friends with everybody, easily and at once. The French families had regarded her as if she'd been a visitant from another planet. Olwen Howel-Jones had been subjugated on the spot. But Jack Awdas from the very first _dejeuner_ had scarcely for a moment left her side.

Never before had he seen a girl so frank, yet so apart, so boyish in her unaffected good-fellowship, yet so womanly.

Unchaperoned she had travelled from the States to join her father in London, where he was attached to the Emba.s.sy, and where she meant to continue her special War work. But upon landing at Bordeaux she had found a cable from him stating that he would be out town for some days.

She'd had no use for an empty house. So she had decided to stay in France and by the sea for those few days.

To young Jack Awdas they were a gift from Destiny!

Some people consider that the truest and most human touch in the world's greatest love drama is that which pitches the young man already infatuated with one woman into the purest pa.s.sion for another. There is no hiatus of feeling between the gloomy "_I am done_" of Romeo sighing for Rosaline, and his quick "_What lady's that?_" when Juliet appears; there is no thought of that first lady afterwards.

Yet who shall measure what Juliet owes to Rosaline?--what rough ways made smooth, what cold young crudities softened and warmed, what kindling of susceptibility, what speeding-up of pa.s.sion?

And, for all this, what thanks may Rosaline expect? "_Oh, she was just someone he used to think he cared for._" Or, "_I'm sure she couldn't have been a very nice woman._" Or even "_Horrid! Robbing the cradle, I call it; I don't know how any woman can!_"

But none of these verdicts would ever be pa.s.sed by Golden van Huysen, either upon Claudia Cartwright or upon any other woman. She had read of the theory that women are "catty" to their own s.e.x; smilingly she disbelieved it. Like attracts like. Just as her own heart had never known an ungenerous prompting, so her own lips had never uttered a spiteful remark. She therefore never heard one. If she had, she would probably have widened her blue eyes and exclaimed with a little air of discovery, "Why, that's not _kind_!"

And this big and innocent creature was the very type which (if she'd had her choice) Mrs. Cartwright would have chosen for the man whom she herself was too old to choose.

He didn't ask Golden van Huysen to marry him on the first day of their acquaintance. No! He had waited until the third day.

"Mustn't rush things," he'd told himself, as if those three days had been three years' duteous service of a knight of old. So he had merely made himself into this young girl's shadow.

To her it was no novelty to be attended and worshipped. Wasn't every girl that she cared to know accustomed to this setting of masculine worship? Golden took as naturally as she took air and food the existence of a train of such young knights.

Only ... from the first she realized vaguely that this one was somehow different from the others she had known and liked. This tall young man with the small crested head set on his sweeping, wing-like shoulders, who had drawn her first quick glance in the lounge. She admitted it quite frankly to herself this young flying-man _fascinated_ her.

Why was it?

She had met plenty of flying-men before. Hadn't she talked to them in the aerodromes of her own country--which was also the birthplace of that very marvel, flying? Hadn't she been introduced to her aviators who had broken records for alt.i.tude, distance, and time? Hadn't she danced at b.a.l.l.s with some of the very first pilots who'd ever looped? Flying and flyers had been no new proposition to her, but _this_ flyer....

Presently the young American girl began to realize what it was that was new and special about "this flyer."

It was symbolized in the little gold stripe on the cuff of his flying-jacket. He was the very first _fighting_ flyer who had crossed her path. The first she'd met who had already given battle to men in the air, the first she'd known who had been shot down in fighting for the cause which was now her country's too.

Never before had she seen a man who had actually used her country's invention of flying as the instrument of battle.

She, with her whole country, had wished to use this invention as a beneficent gift.

Her country had seen that _before this gift could be so used_, stern work lay before the men of the air. She saw it, too.... As that War-missioner had said. Her country was looking with other eyes upon her Allies.

For Golden these new friends were typified in the young Briton who wore the wound stripe as well as the wings.

She told herself wonderingly, "Now isn't it queer that I should ever come to like one of the English so well. This Bird-boy is quite nice enough to be an American...."

Neither of the young people remembered afterwards at what exact moment of that second day she had called him "Bird-boy." Though he took it with a hidden lift of the heart, he did not use any name at all to her until the third day.