The Disturbing Charm Part 24

And having given her order to the smiling French landlady (who wore a black shawl, a bright blue ap.r.o.n, and a brighter blue gla.s.s comb in her black hair), she led the others to a table in the sunny yard, under the wooden veranda. Its green paint had flaked off beneath those noisy gales, but the latticework was over-grown with pa.s.sion-flower vines and other vines, richly cl.u.s.tered with bunches of sweet white grapes.

"Our dessert," said Mrs. Cartwright, nodding towards the fruit. "Madame will come and cut the bunches while we are eating the Biscay sole."

Lunch was brought; before she began upon the sole Mrs. Cartwright threw off the loose brown coat that she had worn for the crossing in the motor-boat, and appeared in a frock that Olwen had never seen before.

Yesterday, the girl had noticed, a carton-box had arrived for the writer at the hotel; doubtless this was the dress that it had contained....

It was of rough sky-blue crepy stuff with touches of creamy edging and of dull pink st.i.tchery, very simple, for all Mrs. Cartwright's clothes were simply cut. This was something more than simple, though, almost ...

trivial, was it? A frock for a more insignificant person? Olwen could not have told you why she shouldn't quite like that frock. It wasn't altogether that it seemed too young; and it did fit her, perfectly.

Perhaps the fact that Olwen noticed it at all showed how well the elder woman's clothes generally did suit her.

Today--not only her frock was different, but her mood was different. It puzzled little Olwen entirely....

As the sole and the potatoes in their jackets gave place to an admirably-cooked ham omelette, Mrs. Cartwright was saying almost audacious things, that pa.s.sed as swiftly as the shadows of the gulls swooped over the sands. And she seemed conscious that she was "being different...." Why? It was almost as though she were playing at some game; she thought feverishly. As if half of her sat apart, watching the play, criticizing, exchanging notes with people who were not Miss Walsh, not Olwen.

The girl, having never before looked upon her friend as a riddle, sat wondering at her.... In that sheltered corner the savoury scents of the meal mingled with the inevitable pine scent and the tang of sea while the sun flung blue shadows upon the bright table and the plates; dancing delicate silhouettes of vine leaves and tendrils and pa.s.sion flowers.

There drifted to them from the woods the sound of the cow bells; "tonkle--tankle--tonkle--" and from the sh.o.r.e the distant roar of breakers.

Suddenly, as the inn servant removed and brought coffee, Mrs. Cartwright broke out, apparently a propos of nothing.

"Ah, well!

"'Better an omelette _aux fines herbes_ where Love is, than the Carlton and a chaperon therewith.'

Forgive my quoting my own works, but I was thinking of one of those books of mine that I--that we never write. Plenty of other things in Life like that. Men we didn't marry, their babies that we've never had----"

Then she laughed.

"I wonder what people would have thought if I'd ever written that book.

It's the one I threatened your friend Captain Ross with, Olwen, the other night. Would you like to hear a bit of it, girls?"

And without waiting to hear whether they would or not, she went on in that deep, whimsical attractive voice of hers:

"'Don't tell your mother beforehand that I am a lady. Possibly I'm not. You won't know. But she will.'

I remember thinking of that when a great friend of mine in the navy told me about his engagement. He made a joke at the time about sailors and their _culte_ for _mesalliances_.... Here's another bit:

"'Always write to me when you're away. Never mind if you've nothing to say. It doesn't matter if you don't say anything.

Only write!'

I can see the young man now that I said that to," said Mrs. Cartwright, and the expression in her eyes was of one who looks down from a hill-top upon the landmarks pa.s.sed, far back. "He'd only been married a month to a school chum of mine, and was suddenly ordered off. He couldn't take her. I told him that even if the mail only went out twice a week there was no reason that it should not take three letters each time----"

Here Miss Walsh, who did not seem to be listening, broke in. "I think that's very true." She fingered in her bag an envelope with the printed label, "Controle Postale Militaire," and looked cheered.

"This young man numbered his letters after that. Then I remember a girl friend--ah! she's a grand-mamma now--married before I did. I remember her once saying something that I should have stolen from her.

"'Do you mind not giving me these useful solid, durable presents of leather, which you men love and which are hideous in our eyes? Why not something charming that won't last; scent, powder, or chocolates in a pretty box?'

And this, which is the last that I shall inflict upon you, dear yawners, n.o.body at all told me. I made it up, unaided, and by my little self."

She looked away above her coffee-cup as she quoted it, and her eyes were the eyes of all the girls that be, appealing to all the plighted lovers:

"'Remember that nine out of ten women in the world will never know what Love can be, and that _six out of those nine are married women_. Please won't you try to make me the happy Tenth?'

And now, when all the people have said Amen, what about a walk down to Biscay?----No, Miss Wals.h.!.+ Please. This is my _day_. I proposed this, and I know you won't grudge me this little pleasure."

She paid the _addition_ and drew on her loose white gloves.

Through the woods they went, and over the sandhills planted with gra.s.s in lines to keep that barrier together.

Olwen, in her red woolly coat, walked between Mrs. Cartwright, whose short blue skirts flapped like a wind-blown succory flower above her ankles, and Miss Walsh, who was holding on to her hat. Little Olwen thought irrelevantly--"and, fancy! we're all three wearing that Charm!"

They descended from the dunes, pa.s.sed the loose shuffling upper sands, and came on to the stretch of other sands, smooth, hard, and firm as a ballroom floor set down in the widest landscape that any of them had trodden yet. Soaring skies, illimitable beach, and oh, how empty seemed the sea far, far behind the breakers of Biscay Bay!

At the sight of those breakers, whose sound had been growing in her ears, Olwen gave an involuntary "Oh! _Look_ at them!"

From the hotel windows they seemed nothing more than a crawling white line. Here they were rus.h.i.+ng monsters that seemed to shake the sh.o.r.e where they broke. They broke and spouted not more than fifty yards away, then swirled and seethed almost to the feet of the women in surf, in the lines that would be taken by boiling milk.

Olwen stood nearest with spray on her cheeks, thunder in her ears, and a storm of unimagined whiteness before her eyes, finding it all riotously beautiful. But the last thing in the world that she expected was what Mrs. Cartwright then said:

"I say! Let's bathe. It would be too gorgeous in there!"

Miss Walsh, behind her, looked as if she could not believe her ears.

"In _October_, dear Mrs. Cartwright?"

Dear Mrs. Cartwright laughed as she threw out her arm towards the waters, soaring to crash, soaring again to crash.... "_That_," she cried, "was going on before the months had names!"

"Oh, but I never knew any one dreamed of bathing after August," murmured Miss Walsh, still clutching her hat, "and, besides!" (as if that settled it), "you haven't brought your things with you."

"That's just what I meant," declared Mrs. Cartwright, taking a deep breath. "I'm going in."

"Oh, please don't!" protested Olwen. "I can swim quite well, but any one can see _that's_ dangerous. Supposing you were caught in and swept away.

Oh, I wouldn't."

"I shouldn't dream of letting you, child," cried Mrs. Cartwright gaily.

"I'm going in," and she stooped to unlace the brown thongs of her sandalettes.

"Oh! I'll go on and gather sh.e.l.ls, then," said Agatha Walsh (hurriedly turning her back as if she dreaded to let her eyes fall upon some repellent sight, reflected Mrs. Cartwright, with amus.e.m.e.nt).

The elder woman was of the type that, under such circ.u.mstances, makes no more ado about getting out of her clothes than she would about taking off her hat. She was of that type--and of that build.

They dropped from about her, the flapper's frock of succory blue and the silken under-garments, and with them she seemed to cast off as well that rather feverish sprightliness of the last hour. It was a genuinely girlish delight that shone from her eyes as she ran, lightly and free-limbed, over the sand and into the surf that flung itself towards her body of a slender statue, white as those crests. She revelled in that hour that was hers, Claudia Cartwright's--hers and that girl's who had been Claudia Crane's.

"Not too far in!" warned Olwen from higher up the beach.

"Right!" called her friend's voice from out of the dazzling sunlight spray; the sound of it lost in the crash of the breakers and the scream of the gulls that wheeled and dived like a flight of white-winged aeroplanes above her.

She sprang and dipped; threw herself forward, breasted the waves, and tried to swim, always frustrated by those tossing waters that made of her a plaything, all panting and aglow with joyous life.