The Disturbing Charm Part 5

"Er----Not quite like that," from Olwen. "It--I believe it has to be worn hidden. Out of sight somewhere."

"Oh, yes. Very well." (Sachet unpinned, and refastened to the brocade lining of the tweed coat.) "There!"

"But you take off your coat in the evening, don't you?" demurred Olwen, quite anxiously.

Not alone this woman's history might be changed by the wearing of a Charm, but her own. It was her love-story, Olwen's! for which that Charm was to be put on trial, too. She drew breath quickly.

"Miss Walsh! I'm so sorry to bother you! But it's something that has to be _always_ worn about you. Please would you mind pinning it right inside your blouse? Or--or to the top of your stays! French people often do wear a sachet there, don't they? Then I shall--I mean you'll always be sure about it...."

"Oh, very well!" agreed Miss Walsh, smiling. She turned her back modestly upon Olwen, and by the movement of her elbows seemed to be busy with countless fastenings. Then she reached for a gold lace-pin from her pin-cushion. There were more jerks and fastenings-up, and presently she turned smiling to the girl.

"I have safety-pinned it right in _there_," she announced, patting a slab of satin over Heaven (and Heaven alone) knew how many layers of Jaeger, whale-bone, coutille, and solid white embroidery, and long-cloth. "There! Will that be all right?"

Olwen gave a little sigh; a breeze to carry the ship of this Adventure.

It was launched!

"Thank you," she said. Then she glanced at the hundred franc note in her hand. "But I do rather feel as if I'd got this under false pretences!"

"Oh, no!" smiled the Spinster. "If the little mascot does really bring me so much Luck, it will be worth a few more francs, won't it?"

"Yes, indeed," agreed the demure Olwen, feeling as if she exchanged a mental glance with the unknown Inventor of that Charm. "It will be worth it."

CHAPTER IV

THE CHARM BEGINS TO WORK

"Bescheidenheit ist eine Zier', Doch weiter kommt man ohne ihr."

Boche Proverbs.

"No woman can get me to call her pretty," enunciated Captain Ross, "until I've seen her walk."

The fiat, delivered in that ice-ax voice of his, cut through the polyglot murmur of the visitors gathered in the shining bare salon, all mirrors and decorations of artificial iris. The voice continued to hold forth.

"Feet first; then figure. That's how it comes with me. Then hair.

Fairrrr hairrr. Must be fair-to-golden. A woman who isn't bland"--this is how he p.r.o.nounced it, but his hearers a.s.sumed it to mean blonde--"a woman who isn't bland is only half a woman to me."

This saying was given out on the evening of the day when the Charm had fallen into the hands of Olwen Howel-Jones.

She was sitting there at the time, on a red plush sofa next to her Uncle, at the edge of the group formed by Mrs. Cartwright (who wore a tawny-golden tea-gown and was knitting a khaki sock), Mr. Awdas, the young flying officer who looked so appropriately like an eagle with his bold features and the head that was so narrow in comparison with his wide, wing-like shoulders, and Captain Ross, the one-armed Staff Captain, who was discoursing to them on the subject of Women, of whom (as he had been known to remark) he was the finest judge in Europe.

Olwen's little jet-black head was buried in the current number of "Femina," which she had picked up from the oval, crimson-covered table in front of her, but she was devouring every word of the homily on Women.

That Captain Ross should notice a girl's feet was glad news; her own feet being not merely tiny, but of a gratifying shapeliness. But her heart seemed to sink suddenly down into the slippers that shod them, when she heard the further "demmannd" that Beauty must be fair-haired.

Ah, he would never look at _her_, then!

She never, apparently, looked at him. For, regarding this one man for whom she would have given her eyes, the artless Welsh maiden had learnt Mrs. Cartwright's art of seeing without seeming to do so.

What she seemed to see were those glazed full-page French fashion-plates.

What she did see were every look and turn of the man at two arms-lengths from her, lounging in the red plush chair with its ornate ecru mats.

What she saw can be seen by each girl in love; "the Heart-wish Incarnate," a glamorous, radiant creature indeed!

And----What was really _there_?

Let us borrow the eyes of the others, who were not in Love with this Captain Ross, to describe him.

Young Awdas, the flyer, would have told you, "_A top-hole fellow. Bucks rather; but you get used to it. Capital chap._"

Professor Howel-Jones might have said, mildly, "_He has somewhat definite opinions, even for a man of his youth; but we allow that to those youngsters who have endured more in three years than we in three-score._"

Mrs. Cartwright, in writing to her sisters at home descriptions of every one staying at Les Pins, had set down:

"_Captain Ross. Special Reserve man. Keen soldier. Came over from Canada to join in '14. Arm lost on the Somme. Sh.e.l.l-shock; and gas--that's why he's here for his chest, which is bad again._

"_About 30; looks more. Thick-set, dark. Scarlet tabs suit him.

Imagine Charles Hawtrey when young and two stone lighter; imagine a handsome black Tom-cat with a woman's mouth, from which issues a strong accent with the eternal 'Is that so--o--oh?' punctuating its speech; well, there you are.

Sometimes he seems entirely Canadian; at other moments the complete Scot with every R burring like a c.o.c.kchafer on a window-pane._

"_Right sleeve tucked into pocket. Amazingly quick and clever at doing everything with left hand; getting notes out of case, managing siphon, lighting cigar._

"_Eyes, hard brown, watchful as a robin's (I don't think they see anything, but he hates me)._

"_Would not be good-looking but for the lower half of his face; that mouth really beautiful, tenderly curved and sensitive, and constantly showing an even row of the milkiest teeth in the world._

"_Intensely sure of self (to put it kindly)._

"_Has the look that one recognizes as the trace of women's eyes and lips upon his face, but nothing that counts up to now, I think._"

The man thus unknowingly summed up brought out his cigarette-case with that clever left hand of his and proffered it first to the woman who had summed him up and then to Jack Awdas.

This was the tall blonde flyer, who was sitting beside her; a striking young figure. A woman would have noticed first his eyes and the changeful expressions that darted swift as racing planes across their blueness. One was an eager, antic.i.p.atory look. "_What have you for me?_"

it demanded of Life. "_Will you be wonderful? Shall I be satisfied?_"

One was a look of joyous mastery. "_Love me_," it seemed to say to Fate herself. "_Give me and tell me all that I ask, for I am impatient Youth, and must be served._" One was a look less often seen; it was the "yonderly" look, the glance of those favoured (or cursed) with a glimpse now and then beyond the kindly curtains of the Flesh and of Everyday....

It seemed to question a surprised "_What? I can't quite see.... What?...

I heard something...._"

Needless to say that the youth himself was entirely ignorant that any of these signals could be read. Generally, he was healthily unconscious that there was anything to be signalled.

To the French people in that hotel he was known as Monsieur de l'Audace.

His observer, his squadron, and several enemy airmen could have told you that he deserved the nickname, but no other decoration had been granted to him. In that last ghastly dive from the clouds he had so nearly lost, too, everything that was his; however, health and strength and full power of limb were returning now, and youth, and sleep o' nights, and careless gaiety. Quite often now his laugh rang out; it was still a trifle husky, as was his boyish, nonchalant voice. (One of his many wounds had been in his throat.)

"Go on, Ross," he jeered amicably. "Let's have some more of your priceless pointers on the s.e.x. What was the one you gave me today going along the sea-wall? Oh, yes; 'Never make love to a woman with a pink chin; she's older than she looks.'"