The Disturbing Charm Part 46

But this was the worst yet. Never before had he not been able to see the girl's face when he asked her to marry him. Never again, he vowed incoherently to himself, never again would he be such an a.s.s as to propose to a girl during a raid with all the lights out! But then, never again would he let himself in for this with any girl alive! Not if he got safely out of this! Oh, Lord, the fool he'd been!... Could he possibly light a cigarette?... No, only wait.... "A minute" this little thing had said....

Before she spoke again, aeons seemed to elapse.

Actually they were a few moments only, during which the mind of Olwen Howel-Jones dashed swiftly through four distinct phases of thought. The first was pure surprise.

The second was a "No" that came from the bed-rock of woman's nature, that fundamental thing which Convention must blast and quarry into acceptable shapes.

The third was a "Yes" compounded of a thousand artificialities inherited, acquired, fostered, observed, and taught. Fear was among them; fear handed down from generations of dowerless girls who accepted the first proposal lest they might die as old maids. Why not! thought little Olwen. Engaged! Fancy if she were! What would her Aunts think, and Uncle, and her sisters! She would be the first of her sisters to become engaged! And she had got her leave, too, and would be going down to Wales; fancy going home to tell them! Fancy telling them at the Honeycomb; Mrs. Newton and everybody! What fun! Engaged to Mr. Ellerton.

She did like him so much; she did, she did! He was awfully nice, and jolly with people, and so good-looking and so----it appeared, so fond of her!... More than could be said for Captain Ross. Wouldn't it be absolutely ridiculous to miss a real thing like this, for just a fancy like that? Girls had to get engaged while they could. It was the happiest thing; getting engaged and having a ripping time for a bit, then getting married and having everybody congratulating you. Getting engaged in the middle of a raid, too! n.o.body could say that wasn't romantic. Love?... Well, Captain Ross had said that men couldn't bear "that Love-with-a-capital-L" business. It wasn't for everybody. And why do without all the fun of getting engaged, simply for the sake of some man who evidently didn't care two-pence.... It would be awfully silly to say "No."

Swiftly as the flash of the guns this phase pa.s.sed; swiftly as the following report there followed the fourth phase in the girl's mind. It flung her back to phase the second. But that had been composed of dumb Instinct. This was articulate.

No, no! She must not say "Yes" to this young man. However nice, however good-looking, however fond, he was not the man. She knew it. She did not love him. Golden said Love must be Lovely. What more unlovely than a loveless pact? The "fun" of this engagement? What would that be? A wretched subst.i.tute; no more real, sweet fun than the saccharine tablets which she had been munching were real sugar. Sugar in tea; Love in Life.... Some people put up with makes.h.i.+fts cheerfully; but not she.

Some other people (she pursued the childish a.n.a.logy) never did take sugar in their tea. The luckier they! They missed nothing; Olwen would crave it forever. But better a thousand times to go without everything than to accept the wrong thing!

She came out of her swift inner reverie, back to the dark railway carriage and the young man.

"Oh, Mr. Ellerton," she said hurriedly and remorsefully. "I am dreadfully sorry but I can't possibly. I don't care for you. Not that way. I do like you ever so much. But if--if you don't mind, I _couldn't_ marry you."

She heard the young man near her give, in the darkness, the profoundest sigh that she had ever heard torn from any human breast....

Remorsefully she repeated, "I am so sorry----" Then stopped abruptly.

She seemed, in the darkness and the vibrating atmosphere, to have caught a floating idea that startled her somewhat.

She began again gravely. "Will you lend me your torch for a minute?"

She felt it put into her hand.

Quickly Olwen said, "It's very rude of me, but I _must_ look at you, please: I must see your face!"

Then she turned the little beam right upon him.

Then she exclaimed, "Mr. Ellerton!"

"Yes----" he said, unmistakably sheepish.

Olwen burst out laughing. "You are a fraud," she exclaimed gaily. "You aren't one bit sorry that I refused you. You're trying not to, but you're looking----yes, _relieved_. You're glad! Don't pretend!"

"Oh, I say----"

"No! Don't pretend! You were laughing. You're feeling gladder than you've ever felt over anything in your life because I don't want to marry you! I _know_!"

Young Ellerton dragged his handkerchief from his cuff, pushed back his cap and wiped his forehead. "Bai Jove," he said with the sincerest admiration in his tone, "you _are_ a clever little thing. I--I don't think any of the others have ever tumbled to that."

A moment later he found himself talking to her with more real ease and enjoyment than he had ever talked to a girl in his life; with real fluency. To her (during the second hour for which they were hung up) he confessed that no, he didn't want to get married. There were people----anyhow, men, who _didn't_. Not to the sweetest and prettiest girl in the world. Not to _anybody_. To tie himself up like that for life, declared the young sailor, was what he wouldn't want to do for anything under the sun; certainly not for anything under a hat. Never!

Olwen, finding she had ceased to be bored by him for the first time since she had left Mrs. Cartwright's turned her face towards him in the dark and plied him with question after laughing question.

"But you ask people to marry you!"

"Can't stop myself! It's the devil!"

"And none of them have accepted you?"

"Yes; one! A girl who was at college with my sister. A nice girl. I did get to loathe her!" with feeling. "We were engaged for one whole awful week!"

"How did you break it off, then?"

"She did. I loved her for that. She said I was too much like the young man in Stevenson who said being engaged was all right as long as her sisters were there. So she chucked me. And after that I've been lucky----I mean, you know what I mean!"

Olwen shook with laughter. "But, then, why d'you _do_ it?" she persisted.

"I tell you I can't help it. It happens!"

"Why? For instance, why did you let it happen tonight? Quite frankly, _why_ did you ask me?"

"Oh, you----!" he began, and he paused for a minute. "Oh, come," he said, "you are an awful nice little girl, you know. Anybody might be excused for losing his head. You were looking extra pretty at the party tonight, too. Some _peach_, you looked, if I may say so; and it wasn't just looks either. There was _something_ about you. Sort of disturbing.... I swear there was. You attracted me till I----"

"Don't propose to me again," Olwen warned him. "I might think better of it."

"Oh, no," laughed Harold Ellerton. "You're an absolute little sportswoman, I know."

The little sportswoman, while she continued to laugh and chat with him in the friendliest way until the signal sounded for the train to start again, the little sportswoman had been really arrested by one of his remarks.

"_Something about her_" tonight, he thought. She'd heard something like that before. She thought she might know what it meant.

She went back to early on the afternoon of that eventful day.

Very late she had found herself as she was dressing for her tea with Mr.

Brown at the Regent Palace; even as she was putting on her nicest silk stockings she had known that it would mean a scamper down the drive if she meant to catch that train....

Then in her hurry a suspender had snapped.

"Das.h.!.+" she had cried.

No time to st.i.tch it.

She had cast round for the nearest bit of ribbon wherewith to garter herself securely, and had s.n.a.t.c.hed it up from where it dangled on her dressing-table, hardly seeing which bit of pink ribbon it was with what satin sachet attached. She'd wound it hastily about her slim and silk-sheathed leg and forgotten all about it. That's how she had come to be wearing it that evening, not in the orthodox way round her neck, but wearing it nevertheless; the Disturbing Charm!

Hidden thus, it almost seemed as if it had done its work again?

As they said good-bye at the wicket gate of her Aunt's house, she found herself quite affectionately promising to write, while on leave, to this young sailor who never would be anything but a friend to her. She found herself submitting quite naturally to one of those flavourless and definite kisses on the cheek, of which the entirely brotherly quality can never be mistaken by the recipient.

A looker-on may be more easily mistaken.