The Disturbing Charm Part 8

"Good night!" said Olwen, with a final glance at the edge of that pink ribbon showing above her friend's unconscious neck. She sped away--to dream, as she hoped, of all that Charm might be expected to bring her, but in reality to the dreamless perfect sleep that is Youth's heritage.

The half-gentle, half-amused little smile hovered about Mrs.

Cartwright's lips for a moment, then gave way gradually to the look of blank absorption as she bent her brown head over her pad, writing rapidly, filling a page, tearing it off, to add to the pile at her feet, filling another.

It had been a long apprenticeship which she had served to this job of hers, since she had first been left as a young widow, to fend for herself and two babies on the pension which her country judged sufficient for the families of the (Old) Army. Ream after ream she had written on the once so fully discussed subjects: What to do with the Cold Mutton; and, How to Keep a Husband's Affection Warm.

To say that this occupation thrilled her would be overstating the case, but Mrs. Cartwright had preferred it to the thought of letting some other man pay for her board and lodging, some man who was not her Keith.

This alternative had been hers more than once (in spite of little Olwen's conjecture that she had never been asked to marry again). She had refused; working on, in her poky "rooms." ... At all events, those cold-mutton articles had put plenty of nourishing beef-gravy into little Keith; and when Reggie had nearly gone out with bronchitis she had settled the doctor's bills with her brightly-written instructions as to always keep a smiling face and a dainty blouse for when Hubby got back from a hard day's work in the office. A fortnight's fresh air at Margate had been supplied to the small convalescent by his Mother's "Chats to Engaged Girls," which discussed "how many and many a foolish damsel brings shipwreck upon her life's happiness by her failure to realize that her fiance cannot be expected to give up for her sake every hobby, every recreation, every chum that he possesses," etc. etc.

When this sort of journalism became superannuated "Domestica" adapted herself swiftly. Business-like columns on Emigration and Fruit Farming for Women paid for the boys' first reefer-coats. Their school-kits came out of the long serials to which she had at last attained, and which became a never-failing joke with those of her acquaintances who had cultured literary tastes.

"My _dear_ Claudia, I see you've been and gone and done it again, in the 'Morning Mail,'" they had smiled. "Another of your sugary fullertons--I mean 'A thrilling new story, by Miss Claudia Crane! You can begin today!' You don't expect US to, I hope?"

"Oh no," Mrs. Cartwright had said, also smiling.

After all, these literary tastes of her acquaintances were no more "superior" than the thickness of her new woollies that she was then going on to buy for her sons' wear.

Moreover, the woollies were of more use.

(Furthermore, they were harder to come by.)

At the juncture when Mrs. Cartwright enters this story she was able to make any holiday pay for itself twice over; witness her "Wanderings in Western France." It was about this time, too, that she had begun to afford not only the warmest underwear for Keith and Reggie, but the silkiest for herself.

Even yet, she discovered, silk "things" were a joy to her again. So were her perfectly simple _suede_ shoes. All these years she had lived and toiled for Reggie and Keith; she was only just beginning to find herself in this toiler. She was beginning to discover other relics, beside the Eastern embroideries and the scent, of the woman whom she had thought to be left dead beside her merry soldier husband.

Surprising.... Life was still surprising; interesting. Let people take it out of her "fullertons" if it amused them....

She completed the "sugary" paragraph that brought her instalment to the requided "curtain," wrote "_To be continued_" beneath it, and smoothed the blotting-paper down over the pad with a sigh of relief.

"There!"

She rose, stretching the tall symmetry of herself under the Persian robe, then glanced with raised eye-brows at her watch.

So late? She had not realized the flight of the midnight hours.

Everybody else in the hotel would be asleep.

Mrs. Cartwright snapped off the lights. Guided by a thin streak of moonlight on the floor, she stepped to the window, flung first the shutters then the windows open, and stepped out, all shimmering and ghostly, on to her balcony. She stood--accustomed to air about her--looking out on the moon-bathed scene below. The _Baissin_ was a sheet of silver; the belt of sandhills silver-grey. No words can give the whiteness of the Biscay rollers, silent with distance, tossing their columns of foam to the vast and lambent sky. Stars were as pin-points.

Rea.s.suringly near, the lighthouse raised its taper finger, on which the light sparkled like a jewel, now white, now red.

Mrs. Cartwright, enjoying all this too much to feel cold, stood watching.

Why did people sleep away the best part of the twenty-four hours? Why scuttle away and hide from Beauty within the ugliness of their own houses? It was only once in months that a woman stood as she was standing at that virgin hour, able to lose herself in the solitude, the freshness and silence and light. She stood, dematerialized, part no longer of a woman's warm and pulsing body, but of the sea and sky themselves.... White, red.... White, red ... the phare light flashed almost in time to the soft breathing, that could be heard, in that perfect stillness of her body. _She_ was outside it.... _Ah!_ What was that?

With a start so violent that it seemed to wrench her, Mrs. Cartwright came to herself again, and to--what Horror was this?

Through that perfect stillness a cry had rung out, sudden as a shot.

Close beside her; it came from the right. It was a man's voice crying hoa.r.s.ely, "_Got_ him!" Then another cry, of agony; a scream....

What was it?

CHAPTER VI

THE CLUTCHING OF THE CHARM

"Fights all his battles o'er again; And thrice he charged the foe, and thrice he slew the slain."

Dryden.

"Un aviateur, un de ces demi-dieux dont l'existence sur terre doit etre courte. (La lumiere dont ils procedent les rappelle bientot. On croit qu'ils tombent, mais ils remontent.)"

Marcel Astruc.

It came from the right, therefore it must be in the bedroom next to hers on the wall encircled by the balcony.

Quick as thought, Mrs. Cartwright ran a few steps along the balcony.

Yes; the next window stood wide open. She dashed into the room, flooded with moonlight; white light that showed up, clearer than a star-sh.e.l.l, the figure of Mr. Awdas, the young wounded flying-officer, sitting bolt upright in his bed, with his eyes still closed, his mouth too working, and his face as the face of Death itself.

She ran to him, took him by the shoulder.

"Wake up! Wake up!" she called, clearly and firmly, in the voice which had often delivered her small son Keith from the bane of his childhood, nightmare. "Wake up, it's just a dream!"

A great shudder rocked the young man, he opened his eyes. Their wild stare met the woman's face, the woman's white-clad figure bending over him. "Oh Lord! Sister," he muttered. "It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I was crashing. I----"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "_It all came again. Oh, Lord! I thought I was crashing!----_"]

Shuddering again, shaking like a leaf, he threw out his hands and grasped Mrs. Cartwright's arms, his fingers burying themselves in her flesh. "Don't leave me," he sobbed, hoa.r.s.ely. "For G.o.d's sake don't leave me, Sister!"

Before Mrs. Cartwright could speak the door of his bedroom was flung open. There burst in a group of people in night attire, a group heterogeneous and agitated as on a raid night or at a fire, roused by the alarm of that sudden scream in the darkness, demanding "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a donc?" ... "What's up?..."

Mrs. Cartwright, pinned in the grip of the young man's shaking hands, had only time to realize two of these people, the portly French manager, draped in an eider-down and looking (as she afterwards said) a perfect advertis.e.m.e.nt for Michelin tyres, and Captain Ross, in violently-striped pyjamas, when she saw the door gently but firmly closing upon all of the invaders but Captain Ross.

In a curious medley of idiom Captain Ross was rea.s.suring the others.

"It's all right. _C'est seulement_ Monsieur de l'Audace. He's been drrrriming again; _songe_, crasher; _comprenez_? Pardon me, but please _allez vous en_. I guess we can fix him, me and this lady. _Bon nuit!_"

A final glimpse of open-mouthed faces, seen over dressing-gowned shoulders, and then the door clicked upon the murmuring, dispersing throng. Captain Ross, barefoot, turned back to the bed where his friend, utterly unnerved, was shaking as if with fever. His fingers still gripped the arms that had first been held out to him; his wet forehead was now pressed to a woman's shoulder, as if to shut out from his sight a vision of horror.

"Oh Lord!" he groaned.

"All over, Jack. Put a pipe on," said Captain Ross quietly.