He had arrived at this point by the time that the rushing by of cars began to be heard up the Strand, down the Embankment and along every street within earshot; cars containing joyously important children in Scout"s kit who "_woke to find that Noise was Duty_," and who now roused London"s echoes with their bugle calls of two long notes:
"_All clear----! All----clear!_"
Yes; the raid was over. Captain Ross of the Honeycomb found himself drawing a long breath and realizing that he did most bitterly resent these raids on account of the women that he knew who were in the danger zone. That child Olwen, now; had she been frightened? Very likely indeed. Scared to death, no doubt.
Poor wee girl!...
With the return to the thought of her, there suddenly stirred within him a feeling that lay so deep down and under so many other mere immediate things that he seldom allowed himself the chance of leisure to delve towards it....
It was----how express it? A gentle, reverent unspoilt tenderness. It was That which makes the difference in the ingrainedly sentimental mind of Man, between Woman----and his own women-folk. The key to the hearts of these finest judges of women in Europe is to be found held in the hands of a mother, a wife, or (most surely) of a baby-daughter.... This particular Scot had denied _in toto_ that that chit of a Welsh girl could ever have part or lot in any of his jealously-secret dreams.
But denied it he had; yes! Already he was so far gone as all that.
Therefore it will be seen that he had reached the moment when a man pulls himself resolutely together and determines that having gone so far, he will go no further.
The moment had arrived when he told himself that, having taken all things into consideration, he had done with the girl.
Yes; he had done with this Olwen.
What was meant by this could only be judged by subsequent events. One cannot but surmise that it meant the following:
To come to that office on Monday and, as usual, to treat her as part of the office furniture. To speak to her as usual with the charm of manner of a bear with a sore head. To glower at her as usual in the Strand if she pa.s.sed him with young Ellerton. To have lunch on Friday as usual at that restaurant where she had lunch and, still as usual, to spar and wrangle with her until it was time to get back to work. To meet her as usual at Mrs. Cartwright"s; to meet her perhaps with her friend Mrs.
Awdas; to----well, to carry on in the usual way, as he had done up to now, and so, indefinitely, to continue....
"Yes! I"ve done with her," he meditated aloud in the solitude of whatever place it was in which he found himself. The sound of his own voice p.r.o.nouncing these resolute words was balm to his irritated, exasperated mood. "I"ve done with her. _That"s_ sett----"
Into the word there broke the shrill whirring call of the telephone.
He snapped it up. The silence of the place where he sat seemed to ring to the now irritated bark of his voice, answering.
"Spikkin"! Who is that?"
"Ell--what? Oh, Ellerton? Yes; what is it?" He listened, scowling, to the clear boyish voice that came through, obviously in the joyous high feather. "Oh, yes; I know the raid"s over, yes.... Nothing of consequence; nothing at all.... You saw _what_? Miss Howel-Jones home safely? That"s all?... You were held up? Is that so? Where? For _how_----For two hours, was it? All the lights turned out, I suppose?...
Indid.... Ah.... Well! I don"t know that I was worrying specially about either of you; not so as you"d notice it. But thanks all the same for rea.s.suring me, Ellerton----"
(This with the bitter sarcasm which, the Celt maintains, is ever lost upon the Saxon.)
"And I suppose Miss Howel-Jones will make it her excuse for turrrning up late on Monday morrrrning.... _Whatt?_ She won"t be coming Monday? How"s that?... _Leave?_"
His voice jumped up three notes.
"Going on leave?... Where"s she going? Wales?... What part of Wales?...
I said what part of Wales.... Aber-_which_?... Ah.... "Night."
The finest judge of women snapped up the receiver and sat for a moment motionless: only the shapely feminine mouth under the hogged moustache moving to the form of inaudible words.
Then he sprung up and grabbed a paper-covered book from a shelf of reference books. He stood holding it.
Ellerton and she!
Held up for two mortal hours in the dark!
And the cub sounded in racing spirits....
Proposed to her! Not a doubt of it! And would he sound like that if he hadn"t been acc----?
Here he slammed the book down on the table (it was an A B C), and, with his one hand, began violently fluttering the pages. Aber----Aber----
Gone, had she? Without a word.... How dare she? Got leave without telling him....
Leave, indeed....
He"d got some leave coming to him.
Right now was where he"d take it, and at this Aber-where-was-it--ah, here....
Done with the girl? He realized that he had not yet begun with her.
CHAPTER XIV
HOME AND THE CHARM
"A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which, seek through the world, is ne"er met with elsewhere."
Still-Popular Song.
There was one thing that struck Olwen very forcibly as soon as she got down to that house of her Aunt Margaret"s in Wales.
It was the first time for many months that she had entered a dwelling-place that was also a home.
Where had she been all this time? In places of which the keynote was "Here today and gone tomorrow"; places that she had never even seen a year ago; places without a.s.sociations, without responsibilities for the pilgrim-guest.
There had been Les Pins; its hotel.... Cap Ferret and its charming inn.
Other hotels in Paris and London. There had been the Honeycomb; its busyness still informed by the hotel spirit of "_Dwell as if about to depart_."
Then there had been her Aunt"s villa at Wembley Park; delightful little red-roofed, rose-wreathed doll"s-house! There was an impermanency about that, too; it looked as if a gale of wind would carry it off, with the row of other red-and-white toy-dwellings in the midst of which it stood.
It was a place to picnic and to sleep in, and of one which one turned the latch-key without giving it all day a further thought.
The same note was struck by Mrs. Cartwright"s prettily-arranged flat.
In three hours, perhaps, she could pack up and move ... somewhere, anywhere that suited her! (People lived where they liked, after all, instead of making it a religion to like where they lived.)
The same could be said of Mrs. Newton"s rooms at her hotel, and of the bachelor-diggings of half a dozen War-working girls whom Olwen knew in London. The new note was spreading. Domestic life as lived under Queen Victoria seemed at a discount. And to more and more of England"s young womanhood one might apply the plaintive remark of the straphanger to the other occupants of the crowded "bus: "Ain"t _none_ o" you got no "omes?"
But here, on the outskirts of this provincial town where generations of the Howel-Joneses had been born, had lived and married and died----here one found oneself swept back to the domestic conditions of more than half a century ago.