The Disturbing Charm

  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 othercharms.

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

  In the basement, first of all, let us cast a glance at the _appartement_that had echoed to the feasting of that luncheon party, and had beenlater the scene of a sedate and ultra-English tea. Nobody there now,except the hotel manageress and her husband. Monsieur Leroux with thatblack domino beard of his, is dozing in the most capacious chair; Madameis poring over her accounts. Every now and then her eye lights up with aspark from the smouldering fire of pride within her; for who but she hassuch a right of feeling proud at the end of that day of meals andacclamations (and washing-up?). She thinks of her nephew Gustave'sbrilliant _partie_, and of the bedazzling of all her friends, mostespecially of the notary's wife, here in this very room. The littleclose room seems to her once more a-glitter with the glass and thesilver and the display.... Only the prune-coloured velvet curtains aretightly drawn before the pots of imitation cyclamen, and there enters nogleam of the light that is bathing the forest and the seawithout--light of the waning moon, melting and cool at once, at oncedisdainful and seductive.

  Upstairs in the _salle a manger_ the engaged couple have been dining asguests of the guests. Mrs. Cartwright and the Professor had suggestedthis, and their proposal was cordially received. The health of the_fiances_ had been drunk, and the old French gentleman with the redbutton-hole has added the toast to the next betrothed from that partythere present tonight.

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

  She feels now that she carried it off admirably. She has been amplifyingto herself since the ten words of French that she had managed to stammerout then, and by now they appear to her a classic oration. She feels shewas born to this kind of thing. On her _fiance's_ stout arm she movesabout the room like a spoon that is keeping on the stir a pan of hot andincredibly sweet social jam. As Mrs. Cartwright says to herself, "Noordinary English engagement to a man out of her own world could everhave brought the dear good creature these triumphs; let her enjoythem,"----and everybody enjoys seeing Miss Agatha Walsh radiant, whileshe even more enjoys being so seen.

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

  He marshals her about from _salle_ to _salon_ and lounge, drawing herback as she peeps through the chink of the big hall door at thebeckoning moonlight without.

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

  She turns to beam brighter than the moon itself at the comely dark faceof 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 intowhich he is marrying.

  He brings it out, and the ears of love are quick to understand even hisEnglish, 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_....

  But the assembled visitors cannot spend the whole evening incontemplating the happiness of Miss Walsh and of Gustave Tronchet,_serjent d'artillerie_.

  Other groups begin to make their own arrangements; in one of thebedrooms the Madonna-like French mother and the Brittany nurse areputting to bed Lucien, the little damson-dark boy, who was also at MissWalsh's tea; he is repeating, with the correct pronunciation of a childto whom all language is new, a little prayer that she has taught him:

  "I see the moon and the moon sees me, God bless the moon and God bless me!"

  In another bedroom Olwen Howel-Jones has just run up to get into her bigdriving-coat; she thinks of going out for a breath of fresh air and ofmoonlight. Why not? Mrs. Cartwright will probably come if she's asked.

  * * * * *

  Roof on again here, please. For at this point of the story Mrs.Cartwright was standing just outside the _salle_ windows beside the darkspiky shape of a cactus; she had put on a pale-hued wrap, and in thepuzzling light and shade she appeared gleaming and straight as theflowering rod of the plant. Just as she was looking out to where a fewriding lights showed in the _Baissin_, Jack Awdas strode up beside her.

  "Come for a turn down on the sands," he suggested, cheerfully. "It's notcold; it is one perfectly good night for a walk."

  Now it is almost easier to take the roof off an hotel and to look downunchecked into its various rooms than it is to unveil and take stock ofthe contents of a woman's mind with its strata upon strata of confusingelements.

  So, for what Mrs. Cartwright was feeling, we will take her word as shetold herself that she felt relieved and settled about the _affaire_ JackAwdas.

  She was glad it was all over. The boy had imagined himself in love withher.

  A great mercy that he had not, after the manner of some men, allowedhimself to dangle and sigh and create an atmosphere in which one did notquite know where one was. He had voiced his absurd and youthful passionat once. He had actually proposed to her--to her who might be hismother. So much the better, as it happened; because _now_ she had beenable to say "No" definitely. It had all been definitely settled andtidied up in that wood on the way from the oyster park.

  Now, it was finished.

  Now, it was quite safe again.

  It would be silly to avoid the boy since both of them knew where theywere.

  Besides, he had had that horrible nightmare. He would have to go flyingagain. Not even yet were his jangled nerves quite healed, poor child! Heought, he really ought to have some one to look after him, to give athought to his welfare now and again ... some nice, sensible woman....

  Mrs. Cartwright, in thus describing herself to herself, did not for onemoment admit that if the boy had already proposed to her in thesunlight, he simply couldn't help himself in the moonlight.

  So she answered him lightly and conventionally; she fell into stepbeside him. They walked.

  She was too old for him, as she'd told him. A generation too old! Butshe was still not too old to walk with him, to listen to him. And ...When is a woman too old to wish she were young enough?

  It was brusquely enough that Jack Awdas broke into speech.

  "I say," he began, "how old should I have to be, then, before you'd wantto marry me?"

  She had been looking away across the _Baissin_ with its twinklinglights, its guardian jewel flashing from white to red. She turnedabruptly, dismayed, as one is dismayed when some trouble, dimly foreseen(and defied) descends upon one's head.

  Oh dear.... Oh dear.... It was not quite at an end then? She had not yetdefinitely put a stop to this very young man's folly?

  "Oh," she returned. "Oh, but we had agreed, I think, not to talkabout ... _that_, any more...."

  "Had we?" he retorted. "You had 'agreed,' perhaps. I hadn't."

  "But----Please! There must be no more of it."

  "What?" He threw up his head. "We must have it out, you know. We aregoing to."

  "No, no----"

  "Yes, I say. Yes. As I was saying----How old should I have to be beforeyou'd want to marry me?"

  Mrs. Cartwright gave a little hopeless sort of laugh to herself as shethrew upon him that quick glance that seemed to be not looking.

  He put on his coat (at her orders), his flyer's coat with the widecollar that made his head seem even smaller and the oval of his facemore perfect as it rested agai
nst the fur. That young, young facetopping the athlete's body that towered above her own, that spring andlilt of his walk had never before made such appeal to the sense ofphysical beauty that was in her.

  Claudia Cartwright thought that in this faculty she brought up thearrears of the countless members of her own sex who would seem to beentirely without it. A woman had once said to her, "_I don't find anyman much under forty-five worth considering. Youth doesn't appeal to me.I never can see the attraction!_" and to Mrs. Cartwright this wasexactly as though her friend had boasted, "_I am colour-blind! I can'ttell one tune from another, either! Also, I never care for flowers._"

  The boy at her side was beautiful, in the diffused and shifting light,as a young marble Hermes dressed in the trappings of today and come tolife to court her. The next twenty years might teach him many, manythings--but they must strip from him one by one the charms of which hewas all unconscious, as he demanded of her how old he must be to pleaseher.

  She should stop him there, she knew. Since he had not seen that it hadbeen the end, she should put the definite end to it; go in.

  She should not dally or coquet with this thing.

  Instincts that she had thought long dead were lifting their heads withinher; too strong to be beaten down at once. For the life of her the womancould not help dallying with that passing moment to which every womanalive cries out within herself, "Oh _stay_! _Thou art so fair_----"

  Aloud she said (truthfully enough, but in a sense that he did notfollow), "I might not want to marry you if you _were_ older."

  "Why not? Why not? The other day in the wood you said it was my age thatyou barred," he went on, persistently. "It isn't that you don't like_me_, is it? _Is_ it? If you just happened to be my own age, then, you'dtake me, wouldn't you?"

  Would she? Ah, wouldn't she, she thought, vainly. And again for the lifeof her she could not keep that subtlest, faintest trace of coquetry outof her voice as she replied, "You seem very sure of that."

  "Mustn't I be? Tell me at least. _Tell_ me what you think of me!"

  She seemed to catch herself back just in time from uttering follies. "Ithink you are a dear boy; one of the dearest that I have seen," shesaid, evenly. "But I know that you're wasting your time with an ageingwoman like me."

  "A what?" he almost snorted.

  She repeated it all the more firmly, perhaps, because she knew that shewas looking her youngest in that soft light of the waning moon.

  "An ageing woman like me. For I am that. Just think of it, quitesensibly, for a moment. In a little while you would see me getting to bejust the same as friends of your mother's, that you're specially nice toand talk to because they are old. Yes! Listen! It's coming. Before youhave a line on your face or a grey thread in your hair."

  "I shall get as bald as a coot. All flyers will; it's the tight leathercaps, here----"

  "Nonsense! Ages before that, my hair will be growing grey all over."

  "It's quite grey now; absolutely white in the moonlight--silver! And itlooks top-hole," he assured her, laughing down at her. "Why, you lookwonderful. You always do. You can't talk about the usual sort of womengetting old, and pretend you're going to be like that, because youaren't. How could you ever be? You're different."

  "Only to you," she sighed, "and only for the moment."

  "Moment! I swear _I_ shouldn't ever alter----"

  "No? Let's turn." They retraced on the sands the lines of their ownfootprints; his boot-marks making a contrast with the slim, lightprints of the woman's shoes.

  "What have you got on your feet?" he asked her presently, almostroughly, stopping to look down. "I never saw anything like the thingswomen go out in. Haven't you got _any_ sensible boots?... You aren't fitto take care of yourself, as a matter of fact. You've got to let me takecare of you."

  "My dear boy," she smiled, shaking the head on which the moonlight wasspinning those prophetic webs of silver, "all nice men at your age beginto feel that need of taking care of something. A young girl, that's whatyou ought to be seeing to the shoes of, and looking for wraps for, andall that. Not me, not me. A young girl."

  "What young girl?" he demanded mutinously.

  Mrs. Cartwright was silent as they passed into the darkness under thewooden jetty. Out into the light again they came, and up the beach,back, in the direction of the hotel piazza, and of the old cannon thatstood on its stone plinth at the foot of the stone steps. They reachedthe cannon, and still she had not spoken.

  She was thinking, hard.

  A young girl, she had said; and she could think without "minding" it inthe least, that the best thing this lad of twenty-two could do would beto fall in love with a young girl. She had thought so several timeslately. It was odd, however, that she always thought of this solution as"a" young girl, not any particular one. Not little Olwen Howel-Jones,for instance; oh, no! Nor her (Mrs. Cartwright's) young niece Stella,not any of the Mabels or Ethels or Dorothys that she knew at home, andto whom she might have introduced the boy. None of these could she thinkof for one instant in connection with Jack Awdas. Yet, one of thesedays, some lucky girl must be responsible for the happiness of all hisdays (not just of one glamorous afternoon in the forest) and all hisnights (not just of one night when the power of darkness had been keptat bay, and when he had fallen at last asleep "as one whom his mothercomforteth"). Yes, later on, there must be "a" young girl for him....

  He stopped by the cannon.

  "Don't go in. Just a little minute," he coaxed, softly. "I can't talk toyou in there."

  "It's no use talking," murmured Mrs. Cartwright.

  But she did pause.

  And, as he sat down on the body of that obsolete gun, and then,unfastening his thick coat, spread a flap of it out, she did yield sofar as to sit down, in her pale wrap, on that corner of his coat besidehim.

  He leant an arm on the cannon behind her. Both looked in silence overthe lagoon, towards the reef.

  White, red; white, red--flashed the warning light.

  She felt herself at the beginning of a conflict that must tear her thisway and that; but his mind was single and set. He was just blind,obstinate, and keen.

  He said, "I told you that night when you sat up with me what I thoughtof girls. I don't want 'em. I want _you_, and you're all I want; or evershall. I can swear to that. Oh, I know myself! I can swear to it."

  The arm behind her trembled a little with his earnestness.

  For one mad moment Mrs. Cartwright admitted to herself that if she couldbe twenty-two again for one year, she would buy that year with the restof the time that she had to live. Ah, to be twenty-two! To let that hardboyish arm close round her, clasp her, crush her! To turn, with lips andeyes aglow, to turn to him as she felt herself drawn to do--drawn,driven----

  But because she felt thus she kept around herself that invisible,intangible armour of refusal which is every woman's at need and which nooutside power can pierce. She did not need to move one half-inch awayfrom that corner of his coat on which she sat. Yet ... Yet she couldhardly believe that he did not guess at the growing disturbance in theheart that beat not so far, after all, from his own.

  Appealingly he broke out. "_You_ must marry me. I don't know why onearth you want to talk about other girls to me!"

  "_'Other_' girls----!"

  "Yes. You're just a girl to me. You _are_ a girl, yourself. I can't seeyou as anything but a girl!"

  She made a little gesture with her long arms, lithe and elastic still aswhen she was a schoolgirl, only more rounding in modelling; she presseda hand to her hair, still brown and thickly growing. She turned away theface that showed lines brought by years of worry, of concentration uponher work; ah, they were there even in the moonlight and even though shetended her skin as prettier women often neglect to do. She could feelthat in every inch and ounce of him this boy was alert and conscious ofher nearness, of her suppleness of body, of that faint scent of rose,kuss-kuss and orris that clung about her.

  It couldn't be. It mustn't be.

  Lightly as
little Olwen could have sprung up, Mrs. Cartwright sprang upfrom her seat upon the muzzled cannon and said quickly, "I am going in."

  As she set her foot upon the first step of the piazza, she turned toyoung Jack Awdas with what she told herself would be, definitely, herlast word upon the subject. Her little laugh was whimsical and mirthlessas she said it.

  "You think you see me as a girl? Ah! Wait until you see me beside a_real_ girl!"