No woman could lift a finger to help either her own love-affair or anybody else"s. The pity of it!
But wait----Again the delighted thought thrilled her----If that discovery were true?... The Disturbing Charm! If that could really help. _If_ ...
after all?
What was it that Mrs. Cartwright had said to her?
"_You look as if a charm had touched you._"
Could that have meant more than her friend had known?
Olwen threw another wondering, searching look into her gla.s.s.... Was it her imagination, or did she look prettier already than she had ever before seen herself? _Oh...._
She stood there, reflected; an image of Uncertainty hovering between belief and doubt. "Uncle wouldn"t believe a word of it, I"m sure," she told herself. "I"m sure he thought he"d thrown the letter away. He may be quite right, of course. It sounds nonsense. Yet----"
("_As if a charm had touched you_," Mrs. Cartwright said, knowing nothing.)
"The writer of the letter said it was the result of years of research,"
pondered Olwen. "If he could give years, surely I can give just--just a _try_?"
She paused, hands clasped upon her breast.
"Shall I? Shall I?... Supposing I tried the effect of the Charm upon somebody else, first? Somebody here? There are at least two people besides myself in this hotel whom it could help...."
Then she thought defiantly, "The inventor said he shirked responsibility. Well, _I_ wouldn"t! If it doesn"t do any good--well!
There"s no _harm_ done! I----"
Another second"s pause. Then the decision.
"I will. Yes! I _will_ try it!"
Half believing, half longing to believe, and wholly excited by the thing, the girl began busying herself as if in answer to some mysterious Command.
She opened a drawer of her toilette-table, taking out a square work-basket in which reels, scissors, thimble, and darning skeins were packed into the smallest possible compa.s.s; Olwen being as neat in her habits as her uncle was chaotic. From another corner of the drawer she took a carefully rolled-up length of the mauve satin ribbon she used for slotting through her underclothes. From this she cut enough to sew up into a tiny sachet.
Then she sat by the window and st.i.tched, the young Welsh girl into whose busy, dimpled hands there had fallen this maybe tremendous Power. While the autumn sun glowed redly on the bodies of those pines without, while the border of far-off Biscay rollers tossed their cloud-like columns of white against the sky-line, she sat at her needle like a Fate with a face of a grave-eyed child, the mouth of a flower.
In a few minutes she had the square of satin ready for filling. She drew the packet from her bosom; opened it with a hundred precautions; poured into the sachet a little--a very little!--of the musky scented powder.
The packet itself she bestowed at the bottom of her work-basket, locking that carefully away. Yes; some of that was for _her_ to wear again, but not now. Later on.
The curious fact persisted that she would wish to see first the effect of that Charm upon another wearer.
She had st.i.tched up the sachet before she had answered her own question, "Whom shall I give it to first?"
CHAPTER III
THE LAUNCHING OF THE CHARM
"A field untilled, a web unwove, A flower withheld from sun or bee, An alien in the courts of Love----"
Kipling.
Accident decided it for her.
As she was running down the broad red and white steps at the front of the hotel, Olwen met, coming up, the woman whom Mrs. Cartwright had noticed at lunch for her hopeless well-off spinsterishness. The Spinster carried a guide book, a flowering-plant in a pot with paper round it, and a bound map.
She wore over those expensive tweeds of hers those furs which none but the young and radiant should venture to wear; grey squirrel. Her face was blank.
It lighted into a tentative smile as the young girl turned and ran back a few steps to the top, waiting for her.
"Good afternoon; we mustn"t cross on the stairs," Olwen called. "It"s unlucky!"
Was it her fancy, or did the Spinster look pathetically pleased because some one had said "good afternoon" and had made a playful remark?
Up the steps she hastened, rather stiffly, her figure being of the kind that seems all clothes.
When she got to the top she said, with a shy, effusive little laugh, "Oh, are you superst.i.tious?" and before Olwen could answer, she hurried on, "Oh, can one order tea here, at any time one likes? Could I order it in my own room, do you think?"
"I think so," said Olwen, surprised.
In spite of the gap in their ages, this woman of thirty-five seemed to speak as if she were a new girl, just arrived at school. In spite of her "set" figure, her mode of dressing, her big nose, there was--yes!
something of suppressed schoolgirlishness about her yet. Some are born with the saddle to wear, some with the spur, says the proverb. This Spinster had the look, not only of having been born with the saddle, but of having been for years under the spur of others. Her timid eyes were those of a dog who has been turned adrift. They fastened upon Olwen.
"This is a lovely place, isn"t it?" she hurried on as if afraid the girl would leave her. "Have you been here long?"
"About a week."
"Oh, have you? I have only just come. I came just before lunch. I saw you at lunch, with a tall lady in brown. Are you staying with her?"
"No," Olwen said, "I"m here with my uncle; I am his secretary."
"Oh, are you? How nice. I am not with anybody," volunteered the Spinster. Clutching her guide-book and plant and fixing the girl with that timid yet persistent eye, she seemed ready to stand there and talk for half an hour. "You are the first person I have spoken to here. I"m quite alone."
These were the three words which--with all the unspoken, unconscious pathos behind them--went to Olwen"s heart. She tightened her fingers upon what she held in her hand, and she thought to herself, "_Here"s_ someone who needs the Charm!" Then she thought, caught back a little, "I can"t give it just to the first person I meet. Oughtn"t I to see a little more of her, first?"
The Spinster"s next remarks seemed to fall in with this plan.
"I oughtn"t to keep you here talking, without any hat on.... Oh, d"you always go without a hat in the woods?... I must just put this plant down; do come into my room a minute, won"t you? It"s only on the first floor, just at the top of the stairs; yes, do----"
It was the best room in the hotel to which Olwen followed this new acquaintance of hers; and it seemed crowded with belongings, all very obviously costly, and all--curiously enough!--quite incredibly _new_.
"Oh--couldn"t you--couldn"t you have tea with me?" was the Spinster"s next suggestion. "My name is Walsh; Agatha Walsh. Do have tea with me.
Please. I"ll order some now----"
She rang the waiter"s bell; and in halting French she ordered the sallow little Italian to bring up to her room tea for two.