This man, to his eternal honour, made no attempt to check them or to enquire into them. He sat there, supporting her, clasping her with the arm of a brother--this man whom she had not before regarded as any particular friend of hers. She wept, taking his handkerchief, large and scented with cigarettes, that he presently stuffed into her hands. She knew that she must be making him feel miserably uncomfortable and upset; she cried on, unashamed in the silence of the wood, telling herself that it would be for the one and only time that she would give herself this relief. Presently she sobbed out, "I loved him----"
Captain Ross"s "Is that so?" was entirely unstartled and matter-of-fact.
Actually he had been too pole-axed with amazement to do anything but the natural thing; but a finer judge of women might have been less of a comfort to her. He sat holding her stolidly until she gave the long-drawn breath and the apology that mark the ebbing of the storm.
"Thank you so much," she was able to say presently, almost as lightly as if he had put a coffee-cup down for it. "You"ll forget it, I know. I must just tell you that it was in my own hands. I refused him. I shall be glad, presently. But----"
She paused, and the man muttered awkwardly something about wishing there were anything he could do----
She spoke softly but gravely now. "Captain Ross! Be very gentle, won"t you, with that little, young girl?"
Captain Ross did not ask what young girl she meant.
PART II
CHAPTER I
THE CHARM NEGLECTED
"Few people realize that Love is a hybernating animal."
Extract from Private Letter.
Olwen Howel-jones sat at her War work in room 0369 on the sixth floor of some Government offices called----
We will call them The Honeycomb.
The entrance to this hive of activity was near Charing Cross, and its courtyard was one continual procession of cars, cyclists, motor-cyclists, dispatch cycles with little side-car mail vans, also of men in every conceivable uniform; most of them (as befitted a swarm of such bees!) were decorated with wings.... Goodness knows how many telephone extensions The Honeycomb possessed! Lifts carried you up to floor after floor. Each floor was packed with cells that had been bedrooms and private sitting-rooms, each cell with workers making Victory-honey (and perhaps with odd drones watching them do it). The whole place with its come-and-go of clerks, messengers, telephone girls, civilians, typists, switchboard girls, and their khakied male superiors, was in a never-ending buzz.
The small cell marked 0369 had big windows that looked up and down the Strand: it held three workers.
Olwen"s roll-top desk stood back to back with another; the two backs screening off her colleague of the other desk. This other desk had an unusual feature. From behind it there came a stream of comments in different voices, so that it seemed as if several unseen people were sitting there. These voices were:
FIRST VOICE--A natural girlish treble that slightly rolled its R"s; being the voice of one Mrs. Newton, in charge of cell 0369, who possessed the gift of mimicry.
SECOND VOICE--A masculine drawl that died away of sheer superiority in the roof of the mouth, after the fashion of one Major Leefe of that Department.
THIRD VOICE--Rollicking and boyish, intersected by loud "Ha"s"
and "Bai Jove"s" in the manner of Lieutenant Harold Ellerton, also of The Honeycomb.
Mingling with the click of the typewriter, at which the third girl sat in a further corner, came the sound of one or other of these voices.
Thus:
FIRST VOICE--"Miss Howel-Jones, what is the French for "land"?
Aeroplanes, I mean?"
A murmured "_atterrir_" came from Olwen, immersed in her work, which meant dividing the morning"s correspondence into four batches: A, B, C, and D.
SECOND VOICE (after a moment of paper-rustling)--"Er--yeh ...
yeh! Wha" have we heah? Letters to be translay" into Fren".
Yeh. Mrs. Newton, will you atten" to thi" too?"
THIRD VOICE (after more rustling)--"_d.a.m.n_ this nib. Oh, sorry, Mrs. Newton; didn"t mean to say d.a.m.n before you."
FIRST VOICE--"Not at all, Mr. Ellerton; I am a married woman myself."
FOURTH VOICE (A Scots-Canadian accent)--"Is that so? What I demand of a woman is that she shall be a rrreliable worrrrkerr.
I don"t a.s.sk what she does affterr hours, I----"
Here all the voices ceased.
For a quarter of an hour no sound came from behind that desk, but that of papers being turned, regularly and methodically. Then the busy Mrs.
Newton, not the mimic, spoke.
"Just turn up the Q. M. G. file for last month and see if there"s a letter with this reference."
She gave the reference, and Olwen, after a minute"s search in a manilla "jacket," handed over the letter, leaving a slip of paper sticking out of the jacket in its place. Having written "Mrs. Newton" and the date upon that slip, she turned again to her letter-trays. The rustling of papers was resumed. Then the voices again:
SECOND VOICE--"Claim for missing kit, wha"? How do f"las manage to be always losing kit? Do _I_ lose kit? Haven"t _I_ always goh" millions pairs bags all beau"fly press"? "Sides, isn"t even in ah sec." Room Two--Fi"----Fi"."
THIRD VOICE--"Ha! Reference A. B., stroke two bracket nine oh one two two dated two twelve seventeen. Do they, bai Jove!"
FIRST VOICE--"Aren"t there any more "C"s," Miss Howel-Jones?"
"Not this morning." Olwen"s little black head was bent over the "D"
correspondence, which she dealt with herself. "A" letters were handed to the typist, who carried them into cell 0368, next door. "B"s" and "C"s"
were to be thrust into the basket that stood on the top of that desk-screen, from behind which a hand came up ever and anon to take letters.
With real enjoyment the Welsh girl worked on.
How amazingly she had altered, in all these weeks, from the one ideaed, feverish little emotionalist she"d been in the autumn!
Yes. Change of scene and of daily work had laid potent hands upon the plastic, fundamentally sound nature of this young girl. Routine had hypnotized her with its rhythmic monotony. She felt the peculiar attraction of being a tiny cog in all this huge machine of War work. New thoughts, new feelings, new interests packed her life; new friends, too, were a revelation to her.
Now came Mrs. Newton"s more frivolous voice.
"_Arlette_, _Bubbly_, and _Cheep_, that"s my record so far _this_ week; and tonight I"m going to _Pamela_ for the second time; all thanks to one very young youth getting four days" leave from the Front!"
Olwen laughed. The solemn little typist, however, rose to take the letters with a look that practically said, "Some people may be heads of rooms, but they don"t seem to realize there"s a war on!" and as she took the sheaf of papers to be signed in cell 0368 she all but slammed the door behind her.
"Seventeen; _not_ the best phase of English maidenhood, neither washed nor kissed," went on the voice of the unseen Mrs. Newton. "Ah! It"s nearly lunch time."