The Disturbing Charm

  CHAPTER XIV

  CLOUDS UPON THE CHARM

  "The burden of bright colours. Thou shalt see Gold tarnished, and the grey above the green."

  Swinburne.

  After an evening of ecstasy such as Olwen had lived through upon thoseiridescent waves, what could the girl expect?

  It is one of Fate's harshest rules that in one way or another we pay forour ecstasies. The more golden the moment the more dull and clouded mustseem the hours that follow: and that is just because we have seen thatmagic green shimmer on the breaker's crest that the grey of these smoothwaters looks to us so leaden. Ah, better to know the sadness of thisthan never to have set keel in any but the quiet waters! To have noreckoning to pay because no ecstasy has been ours to enjoy is surely thebitterest price that can be demanded of us.... But Olwen was too youngto recognize this.

  So, when the next day she emerged bit by bit from her dream, she wassore and resentful to find all life at its flattest.

  To begin with (and, indeed, to go on with; for this was the whole leavenof discontent), Captain Ross encountered her as if there had been nomagic voyage, no hand clasped in hand, no wildfire, no silent thrillsbetween them. "Ah, good morrrrning, Miss Howel-Jones. Another beautifulday----"

  Beautiful, indeed.... Olwen felt as if by rights the sun should havegone out and the rains should have come to weep over the lagoon. As amatter of fact the weather remained radiant. Her idol's easy, friendlymanner had dealt her a blow that stunned her into a torper of lowspirits, and there seemed nobody to give her a helping hand out of it.

  Mrs. Cartwright, usually so sympathetic and interesting, talked to her(Olwen) as if her thoughts were far, far away: with her serial-people,the girl supposed vexedly, or with those boys of hers at school.

  Young Mr. Awdas--well, he never talked to Olwen. An apathetic young man,she considered him. All flyers were interesting from their veryjob--otherwise _how_ uninteresting was Mr. Awdas! Nobody but Mrs.Cartwright (who was so kind), would bother to draw him out, Olwenthought.

  Then Agatha Walsh--impossible to talk to _her_ today: her SergeantGustave Tronchet's leave was up, and he was to depart to join hisbattery that evening. They could not be married until his next leave.Poor Agatha was paying too for her golden moments.

  Mr. Brown--well, as for Mr. Brown (who had, after all, done all the workin that boat the night before), Olwen felt that she could have slappedhim. Upon Mr. Brown's well-meaning bullet head she felt herself pouringthe resentment that she might have reserved for Captain Ross and hisforgetfulness, his insensibility. Silly little Mr. Brown! Why on earthcouldn't he run away and attract somebody (hadn't Olwen given him atalisman for that very purpose?) instead of hanging about trying to talkto somebody who was already distracted enough as it was, because her owntalisman seemed sometimes so potent, sometimes so useless? That itshould have allured Mr. Brown into being sentimental about her seemedthe last straw! (to Olwen.)

  But it wasn't. For it was Professor Howel-Jones, it was her Unclehimself who contributed to his niece's burden, on this day ofdepression, what was really the last straw.

  It happened as Olwen brought to him, with a little air of triumph, thetyped copy and the duplicate of the last section of the last chapter ofhis book on "Agarics."

  "So that's finished," she said.

  "That's finished," agreed the Professor, his brown gaze running over thesheets. "Olwen, I've done well here. This has been an excellent placefor work; excellent." He laid the copy down on that chaotic work-tableof his, and added, with cheerfulness, "Well! There's nothing to keep ushere any longer, now."

  This Olwen did not take in at once. "Nothing to keep us, Uncle?"

  "Only the passports to be _vise'd_ and made out for Paris," returned theold man. "I want to stay a night or so in Paris before I go on toLondon."

  A great blankness fell upon Olwen's small face. "The passports," sherepeated. "Paris!!! You mean you want us to leave quite soon?"

  The Professor's head was bent over his work-table. "A couple of days, mydear, I suppose. You can be packed up and all that by then. You arebroken in by now, aren't you, to your packing up and getting on withoutmuch warning?"

  But this had taken Olwen without any warning, it appeared.

  She stood there as if frozen, and said, "Away from here!" and in herheart exclaimed, "Away from _him_!" She stood aghast, an image of allthe maids in love who have ever been sentenced to banishment from thepresence of the beloved. She had put away from her up to now all thoughtof such a dreadful thing happening. Simply, she could not have imaginedit. Going away from the hotel in the pine forest, while he still wasleft in it! Going away, before he had ever said to her a word thatcounted? Going away--with that Charm unproved?

  She stood there as if frozen, and said: "Away from here!"and in her heart exclaimed: "Away from him!"]

  * * * * *

  It was time the Charm required; Olwen was agitatedly certain of thatnow. Time.

  It had taken so many days before he had even held her hand; given somany other days, and what might not happen? But she was not to know.Those days were not to be allowed to her. She clenched into her palm thenails of those little fingers that Captain Ross had held in thatwarmly-caressing clasp. She was to go ... never to see him any more....

  She cleared her throat, pulled herself together, and asked, "And afterParis, Uncle, where do we go; London, you said?"

  Now, this was a gleam of hope; London!

  For she had once heard Captain Ross, in talking to Mrs. Cartwright, tellthe writer that when his sick leave was up and after he had beenboarded, he had prospects of an office job in town. If he were inLondon, and if her Uncle and she were also in London ... well, then theoutlook would not be entirely so black. It would not be the every dayand several times a day encountering of this French hotel; but theresurely might be meetings, if they were together, in London?

  But the Professor, eyes still upon his papers, said, "London for a weekor so, but I'm always glad enough to get out of the place. I shall begoing down to Wales, then; I can leave you at your Auntie Margaret's,dear, before I go on to Liverpool. My plans will be unsettled----"

  "You're not going to have me with you, then Uncle?"

  "No, Olwen _fach_. For the present, not," he told her above the rustlingof the papers. "I shan't require you for the work in hand for thenext----Let me see, four or six months, perhaps. You will be able to gohome; have a nice rest from work; help your Auntie in the house, see alittle bit of your sisters and of your old friends."

  Olwen felt precisely as if the genial-voiced old man were condemning herto penal servitude for the rest of her natural life.

  "Uncle!" she exclaimed in horror.

  It was met by a mildly surprised glance from the old man.

  "What's the matter, small lass? Aren't you glad to be seeing your homeagain?"

  "No," blurted out Olwen. "I don't want to go. Oh, I don't. Uncle! I'drather be with you. Much. But if you can't have me, I--I--I won't goback----"

  She put up her little head, shaking it violently as if in the face of avision of the home in which she'd been brought up. Comfortable,old-fashioned, rambling place that it was, set in wild beauty, andechoing with gay voices, it repelled her; it seemed to her a prisonfrom which there would be no further escaping towards the Heart'sDesire. At work as her Uncle's secretary, there still seemed chances ofmovement in her life, there still seemed possibilities.... But as a girlat home, she felt she would be chained and bound by a thousand chancesagainst.

  She told herself rebelliously, "Down there, I should never see himagain! I won't go!"

  Unconsciously her hands clasped themselves upon her breast, upon thatslender talisman that she was wearing.

  The old man regarded her, at a loss why the child should be agitated,she who had always seemed happy enough with her sisters at home.

  "But, Olwen _fach_, if you don't go back, what do you want to do?"

  "I want to stay on in London, Un
cle!"

  "In London--dear me--curious taste! Why? What could you do there?"

  "I could do War work, like lots and lots--like every other girl!"

  "Tut," retorted the Professor. Being a Welshman, he pronounced this wordto rhyme with "foot." Being a man of his generation, he still dislikedto think of any girl at work except domestically or for him.

  "What d'you want to do that for, Olwen _fach_?"

  To this question Olwen could hardly answer with the whole truth.

  How many girls insist upon working in London because there, also, isworking their particular Captain Ross?

  Olwen's mind was set upon a plan.

  She would think out the "hows" as soon as she left this place.

  Only a couple more days in which the Charm might work for her, here!