Olwen darted forward to help with the table-top, but the two young men had managed without her.
"That"s the ticket. Now, Ross! What about this for a scene in a Canadian lumber camp? Yes; there"s water over there, and I"ve got my old spirit-kettle. Might turn an honest penny, too, by giving teas in the forest. Parties catered for, eh? The Old Bull and Bush touch. Who speaks for the job of the pretty waitress?" with a cheerful grin at Olwen.
"What, are you going on, Ross? I thought you"d come to lend a hand at my flit. Don"t go. Stop and watch me work, anyway."
"I guess not," said the Staff Officer, with a flash of his splendid teeth, and with the gesture that always tore at Olwen"s sympathy, the forward shrug of the shoulder that should have moved his right arm. "I"d just hate to think I was in anybody"s _way_----" He saluted, without looking at Miss Howel-Jones any more than she was looking at him.
Another moment and his scarlet tabs had ceased to brighten that glade of a French wood, that heart of a Welsh maid.
Poor little Olwen sat there by Mr. Brown"s hut, feeling as if she could with her own hands have pulled it down about his ears, just for sheer exasperation. It"s true that he, Mr. Brown, was wearing the Charm that her own hand had tucked into his pocket--but that had no power over her here. Here she was, left! Left for the rest of the afternoon, possibly, in the company of a young man whom she didn"t care if she never saw again. _He_ could talk to her, it seemed; _he_ could pick blackberries for her; _he_ could suggest that she would make a pretty waitress.
But the one and only young man for whose attentions and compliments she would have wished--what did _he_ do? Just chucked down, with a careless word, the table-top that he had been to fetch, and made off without a look or a thought for her, she told herself.
Yet she was wearing, as she always wore, hidden away next her heart, the disturbing Charm!
What was the meaning of that?
But for the engagement which it had already brought about, Olwen would have been forced to the conclusion that it was all a fraud, that Charm.
Couldn"t be that for some people it possessed power, for others none at all?
Had it only no effect when it was worn by her, Olwen?
The "no" to this question came almost as she was asking it; but not in the way that the girl had wished.
Little Mr. Brown, having been busy as he chattered, unheeded by her! for the last ten minutes, had now moved into position the whole of his effects--except the canvas chair on which Olwen was sitting. His blue bulging eyes had glanced in her direction several times, as he pulled and shifted and set straight. Now he looked again, and at length.
"I say, you know, you do look top-hole, sitting there like that," he told her, suddenly. "Wish I"d got my little kodak that I had to leave at Southampton after all; I"d take a snap of you, just as you are. Sitting there, as if it were your own little place, and all----"
He paused, still looking at her with his head on one side. He had taken his coat down from the bough, and stood, one arm in a sleeve of it, while he considered Olwen as if from a new point of view.
He said: "It"s just what it wants--what any house or cottage or anything wants. The little missus.... You"ll be having a house of your own, o" course, one day."
Olwen shook her head. "Never," she said, with all the gloom of a temporary conviction.
"Oh! Come! Don"t say that," Mr. Brown besought her, cheerily. "Course you will. All girls say they"ll never marry, and all girls _do_, after all. All the pretty----All the ones like you, I"m sure."
"I shan"t," persisted Olwen, a trifle cheered however. "_I"m_ not pretty."
"Oh! Who"s fishing for compliments?" laughed Mr. Brown. He jerked the other arm into his coat and began to fasten it. "If you don"t mind me saying so, you"re the prettiest girl in the place by miles. You are. I"m not the only person in the hotel who thinks so, either."
"Aren"t you?" said Olwen, with a lift of her head, and of her heart.
"Who----?"
"Why that old boy who keeps the hotel; old Leroux. He said you were "_tres jolie_" the other day, when you were pa.s.sing the steps. I said "wee, wee, _tres_." You"ve got such ripping eyes."
"I don"t think they"re anything," said Olwen, disconsolate again.
"They are," insisted little Mr. Brown, his pink, ordinary face becoming dignified by his sincerity. "And it"s not only--not only that you"ve got a lovely little face. There"s--well, I don"t know what there is about it."
"A charm, perhaps," suggested Olwen, with would-be irony; but he took up quite gravely: "That"s it! Just what I meant. A charm. One sort of feels glad there is the kind of think walking about. It"s like the song
"When we was in the trenches Fighting beside the Frenchies, We"d "a" given all we "ad for a girl like "er, Wouldn"t we, Bill?
Aye!"
Or something of that sort. Really now. Seriously. It is awfully topping to know there _is_ a girl like you!"
Olwen shook her head again, laughed, deprecated.... Impossible to a.s.sert that she was offended at his homage, even from the wrong young man. She listened as the guileless Brown went on to tell her it was a very lucky man for whom she"d be making a little home, some day; and, by Jove, anybody might envy him----
"Very nice of you to say so," murmured Olwen, pink-eared, and ardently wishing that Captain Ross had stayed on to hear this declaration.
The next remark of Mr. Brown"s seemed to have nothing to do with it.
"Well, the War can"t go on for ever."
"No, I suppose not," said Olwen, uncertainly.
"And I suppose----Well, it oughtn"t to be quite as hard for a chap to get some sort of a posish of his own afterwards," said little Mr. Brown, thoughtfully, and as if he were already looking ahead, to a time when he should no longer wear that uniform, that belt that he was fastening as he came and stood nearer to the girl, looking down.
"I mean to say, I"m not going back to any stuffy shop and serving a lot of old trout--I beg their pardons--ladies with two and a half yards of ecru insertion, pay at the desk, please. Not much. "Tisn"t the life for me; I know it now. They ought to find something different for me, after this. They"ve got to. Don"t you think so?"
"Oh yes," agreed Olwen, a little vaguely.
"Well! There you are! All sorts of things might happen, with luck, even if it"s no good planning "em out now," took up the cheery boyish voice; and then there was silence for a moment under the pines.
Then lowering the voice, he said: "I say, I"ll tell you something. That little mascot I found"--he touched his coat--"that you tucked in there for me, I"ll always keep that. n.o.body else shall touch it, you bet."
Olwen rose from the chair, putting her hand on the back of it. She was suddenly a little fluttered, as if by some ripple in the atmosphere, set stirring by some small and secret Force. The ripple was setting towards her this time; not from her, as she was wont to feel when she was putting out that childish soul of herself towards another man. But it touched her, the tiny Disturbance.
"Don"t you want this chair?" she asked quickly.
Little Mr. Brown put his own hand on the back of it, closing his fingers for one moment over Olwen"s--his fingers that had handled laces in a ladies" shop, had handled a rifle later, and, later still, a blood-stained revolver.... Decency and honesty were written on every line of the little fellow"s face at that moment; and even if he were of a pattern that everyday England turns out by the thousand--well, so much the better for England.
Quite simply, and as one stating a fact, he said to the girl beside him: "I don"t suppose you"ve ever let any fellow kiss you?"
He himself had no doubt kissed girls in dozens, but he knew now that even to mention the word to this girl was a different thing. It did not need Olwen Howel-Jones"s aghast little "_What----?_" to forbid him to go further than the word.
He took his hand away with a little rueful laugh.
""_Archibald_, certainly not!" Eh? _I_ wouldn"t have tried."
"No. Of course not," said Olwen, repressively, but feeling a trifle shaken. Who would have thought of his saying such a thing to her? Who would have dreamt that the Charm would threaten to work to cross-purposes like this? Her small face took an invulnerable look. She swept some bits of blackberry leaves off her skirt, and prepared to turn homewards.
He walked with her to where the trees met the telegraph-posts of the shaded road.
There, as he said good-bye to her, this little young officer added, with a wistfulness: "But I would give anything to!"