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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/36223-8.txt b/36223-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea09640 --- /dev/null +++ b/36223-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11585 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boy with Wings, by Berta Ruck + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Boy with Wings + +Author: Berta Ruck + +Release Date: May 27, 2011 [EBook #36223] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY WITH WINGS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE BOY WITH WINGS + + + + The Boy With Wings + + By BERTA RUCK + (MRS. OLIVER ONIONS) + + AUTHOR OF + + "His Official Fiancée," + "The Wooing of Rosamond Fayre," + "In Another Girl's Shoes," Etc. + + + [Illustration] + + + A. L. BURT COMPANY + Publishers New York + + Published by arrangement with DODD, MEAD & COMPANY + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1915, + By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY + + Published in England under the title of + "The Lad With Wings." + + + + DEDICATED, WITH AFFECTION + TO THAT BRAINLESS ARMY TYPE. + MY YOUNGEST BROTHER + + "The men of my own stock + Bitter-bad they may be, + But at least they hear the things I hear. + They see the things I see." + + KIPLING. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART I + +_MAY, JUNE, JULY, 1914_ + + CHAPTER PAGE + I AERIAL LIGHT HORSE 3 + II THE BOSOM-CHUMS 19 + III THE EYES OF ICARUS 34 + IV THE SONG OF ALL THE AGES 54 + V THE WORKADAY WORLD 62 + VI THE INVITATION 71 + VII A BACHELOR'S TEA-PARTY 75 + VIII LAUGHING ODDS 82 + IX A DAY IN THE COUNTRY 89 + X LESLIE, ON "THE ROOTS OF THE ROSE" 107 + XI THE HEELS OF MERCURY 122 + XII THE KISS WITHHELD 128 + XIII THE FLYING DREAM 144 + XIV AN AWAKENING 152 + XV LESLIE ON "TOO MUCH LOVE" 168 + XVI THE AEROPLANE LADY 178 + XVII LESLIE ON "MARRIAGE" 186 + XVIII THE OBVIOUS THING 193 + XIX THE SEALED BOX 212 + + +PART II + +_JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914_ + + I THE AVIATION DINNER 223 + II THE WHISPER OF WAR 235 + III THE LAST SUNDAY OF PEACE 241 + IV THAT WEEK-END 259 + V THE DIE IS CAST 265 + VI HER GUARDIAN'S CONSENT 267 + VII HASTE TO THE WEDDING! 280 + VIII THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM 293 + IX THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT" 300 + X LESLIE, ON "THE MOTLEY OF MARS" 310 + XI A LOVE-LETTER--AND A ROSE 321 + + +PART III + +_SEPTEMBER, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN_ + + I A WAR-TIME HONEYMOON 335 + II THE SOUL OF UNDINE 345 + III A LAST FAVOUR 350 + IV THE DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE 361 + V THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 364 + VI THE WINGED VICTORY 370 + POSTSCRIPT--MYRTLE AND LAUREL LEAF 376 + + + + +PART I + +_MAY, JUNE, JULY, 1914_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +AERIAL LIGHT HORSE + + +Hendon! + +An exquisite May afternoon, still and sunny. Above, a canopy of +unflecked sapphire-blue. Below, the broad khaki-green expanse of the +flying-ground, whence the tall, red-white-and-blue pylons pointed giant +fingers to the sky. + +Against the iron railings of the ground the border of chairs was +thronged with spectators; women and girls in summery frocks, men in +light overcoats with field-glasses slung by a strap about them. The +movement of this crowd was that of a breeze in a drift of coloured +petals; the talk and laughter rose and fell as people looked about at +the great sheds with their huge lettered names, at the big stand, at the +parked-up motors behind the seats; at the men in uniform carrying their +brass instruments slowly across to the bandstand on the left. + +At intervals everybody said to everybody else: "Isn't this just a +perfect afternoon for the flying?" + + * * * * * + +Presently, there passed the turnstile entrance at the back of the parked +motor-cars a group of three young girls, chattering together. + +One was in pink; one was in cornflower-blue. The girl who walked +between them wore all white, with a sunshine-yellow jersey-coat flung +over her arm. Crammed well down upon her head she wore a shady white +hat, bristling with a flight of white wings; it seemed to overshadow the +whole of her small compact, but supple little person, which was finished +off by a pair of tiny, white-canvas-shod feet. She was the youngest as +well as the smallest of the trio standing at the turnstile. (Observe +her, if you please; then leave or follow her, for she is the Girl of +this story.) + +"This is my show!" she declared. Her softly-modulated voice had a trace +of Welsh accent as she added, "I'm paying for this, indeed!" + +"No, you aren't, then, Gwenna Williams!" protested the girl in pink +(whose accent was Higher Cockney). "We were all to pay for ourselves!" + +"Yes; but wasn't it me that made you come into the half-crown places +because I was so keen to see a flying-machine _close_?... I'll pay the +difference then, if you _must_ make a fuss. We'll settle up at the +office on Monday," said the girl who had been addressed as Gwenna +Williams. + +With a girlish, self-conscious little gesture she took half a sovereign +out of her wash-leather glove and handed it to the tall, be-medalledd +commissionaire. + +"Come on, now, girls," she said. "This is going to be lovely!" And she +led the way forward to that line of seats, where there were just three +green chairs vacant together. + +Laughing, chattering, gay with the ease of Youth in its own company, +the three, squeezed rather close together by the press, sat down; +Gwenna, the Welsh girl, in the middle. The broad brim of her hat brushed +against the roses of the pink-clad girl's cheaper hat as Gwenna leaned +forward. + +"Sorry, Butcher," she said. She moved. + +This time one of the white wings caught a pin in the hat of the plump +blonde in blue, who exclaimed resignedly and in an accent that was +neither of Wales nor of England, "Now komm I also into this hat-business +of Candlestick-maker. It _is_ a bit of oll right!" + +"_So_ sorry, Baker," apologised the girl in white again, putting up her +hands to disengage the hat. "I'll take it off, like a matinée. Yes, I +will, indeed. We shall all see better." She removed the hat from a small +head that was very prettily overgrown with brown, thick, cropped curls. +The bright eyes with which she blinked at first in the strong sunlight +were of the colour of the flying-ground before them: earth-brown and +turf-green mixed. + +"I will hold your hat, since it is for me that you take him off," said +the girl whom they called Baker. + +Her real name was Becker; Ottilie Becker. She worked at the German +correspondence of that London office where the other two girls, Gwenna +Williams and Mabel Butcher, were typists. It was one of the many small +jokes of the place to allude to themselves as the Butcher, the Baker, +and the Candlestick-maker. + +All three were excellent friends.... + +The other two scarcely realised that Gwenna, the Celt, was different +from themselves; more absent-minded, yet more alive. A passer-by might +have summed her up as "a pretty, commonplace little thing;" a girl like +millions of others. But under the ready-made muslin blouse of that +season's style there was ripening, all unsuspected, the dormant bud of +Passion. This is no flower of the commonplace. And her eyes were full of +dreams, innocent dreams. Some of them had come true already. For hadn't +she broken away from home to follow them? Hadn't she left the valley +where nothing ever went on except the eternal Welsh rain that blurred +the skylines of the mountains opposite, and that drooped in curtains of +silver-grey gauze over the slate roofs of the quarry-village, set in +that brook-threaded wedge between wooded hillsides? Hadn't she escaped +from that cage of a chapel house sitting-room with its kitchen-range and +its many bookshelves and its steel print of John Bunyan and its +maddening old grandfather-clock that _always_ said half-pastt two and +its everlasting smell of singeing hearthrug, and _never_ a window open? +Yes! she'd given her uncle-guardian no peace until he'd washed his hands +over Gwenna's coming up to London. So here she was in London now, making +fresh discoveries every day, and enjoying that mixture of drudgery and +frivolling that makes up the life of the London bachelor-girl. She was +still "fancy-free," as people say of a girl who loves and lives in +fancies, and she was still at the age for bosom-friendships. One +sincerely adored girl-chum had her confidence. This was a young woman at +the Residential Club, where Gwenna lived; not one of these from the +office. + +But the office trio could take an occasional Saturday jaunt together as +enjoyingly as if they never met during the week. + + * * * * * + +"Postcards, picture postcards!" chanted a shrill treble voice above the +buzz of the talking, waiting crowds. + +Before the seats a small boy passed with a tray of photographs. These +showed views of the hangars and of the ground; portraits of the +aviators. + +"Postcards!" He paused before that cluster of blue and white and pink +frocks. "Any picture postcards?" + +"Yes! Wait a minute. Let's choose some," said Miss Butcher. And three +heads bent together over the display of glazed cards. "Tell you what, +Baker; we'll send one off to your soldier-brother in Germany. Shall we? +All sign it, like we did that one to your mother, from the Zoo." + +"Ah, yes. A _bier-karte_!" said the German girl, with her good-natured +giggle. "Here, I choose this one. View of Hendon. We write '_Es lassen +grüssen unbekannter Weise_'--'there send greeting to Karl, the +Unknown.'" + +"Oh, but hadn't we better send him this awfully nice-looking airman, +just as a sort of example of what a young man really can do in the way +of appearance, what?" suggested Miss Butcher, picking out another card. +"Peach, isn't he? Look! He's standing up in the thingamagig _just_ like +an archangel in his car; or do I mean Apollo?--Gwenna'd know.... Which +are you going to choose, Gwenna?" + +Gwenna had picked out three cards. A view of the ground, a picture of a +biplane in mid-air, and a portrait of one of the other airmen. + +He had been taken in his machine against the blank background of sky. +The big, boyish hands gripped the wheel, the cap, goggles in front, peak +behind, was pushed back from the careless, clean-shaven lad's face, with +its cheeks creased with deep dimples of a smile. + +"This one," said Gwenna Williams. And there was no whisper of Fate at +her heart as she announced lightly, "This is _my_ love." (She did not +guess, as you do, that here was the portrait of the Boy of this story.) + +The other girls leaned across her to look as she added: "_He's_ the most +like Icarus, I think." + +"Who's Icarus, when he's at home?" inquired Miss Butcher. And Gwenna, +out of one of her skimmed books, gave a hurried explanation of Icarus, +the first flying-man, the classic youth who "dared the sun" on wings of +wax.... Together the girls inspected the postcard of his modern type, +the Hendon aviator. They laughed; they read aloud the name "_P. +Dampier_;" they compared his looks with those of other airmen, treating +the whole subject precisely as they would have treated the dancing or +singing of their favourite actresses in the revues.... + +For it was still May, Nineteen-fourteen in England. The feeling of warm +and drowsy peace in the air was only intensified by the brisk, sharp +strains of the military band on the left of the flying-ground, playing +the "Light-Cavalry" march.... + + +"Dear me! Are we going on like this for ever?" remonstrated Gwenna +presently. "Aren't they _ever_ going up?" + +She was answered by a shattering roar from the right. + +It ceased. Then, on the field before her excited eyes, there was brought +out of one of the hangars by a cluster of mechanics in khaki-brown +overalls the Winged Romance that came into this tired and _blasé_ world +with that most wondrous of all Ages--the Twentieth Century. At first +only a long gleaming upper plane, jolting over the uneven ground, could +be seen over the heads of the watchers. Then it reached the enclosure. +For the first time in her life Gwenna beheld a Maurice Farman biplane. + +And for the moment she was a little disappointed, for she had said it +was "going to be so lovely!" + +She had expected--what? Something that would look more like what it was, +the new Bird of man's making. Here the sunlight gleamed on the taut, +cambered wings, on the bamboo spars, the varnished blade of the +motionless propeller, all shiny as a new toyshop. But the girl saw no +grace in it. Its skids rested on the sunburned grass like a couple of +_ski_ in the _Sketch_ photographs of winter sports. It had absurd +little wheels, too, looking as if, when it had finished skiing, the +machine might take to roller-skating. The whole thing seemed gaunt and +cumbrous and clogged to the earth. Gwenna did not then know that, unlike +Antæus, this half-godlike creature only awoke to life and beauty when it +felt the earth no more. + +Then, as she watched, a mechanic, the Dædalus who strapped on the wings +for the Icarus seized the propeller, which kicked thrice, rebelliously, +and then, with another roar, dissolved into a circle of mist. Other +brown figures were clinging to the under parts of the structure, holding +it back; Gwenna did not see the signal to let go. All that she saw was +the clumsy forward run of the thing as, like a swan that tries to clear +its feet of the water, the biplane struggled to free itself from the +drag of Earth.... + +Then, as the wonder happened, the untried and imaginative little Welsh +country-girl, watching, gave a gasp. "_Ah----!_" + +The machine was fettered no longer. + +Suddenly those absurd skids and wheels had become no more than the tiny +feet that a seagull tucks away under itself, and like a gull the biplane +rose. It soared, its engine shouting triumph as it sped. Gwenna's heart +beat as tensely as that engine. Her eyes sparkled. What they saw was not +now a machine, but the beauty of those curves it cut in the conquered +air. It soared, it banked, it swayed gently as if on a keel. Swiftly +circling, up and up it went, until it seemed to dwindle to something not +even larger than the seagull it resembled; then it was a flying-fish, +then a dragonfly wheeling in the blue immensity above. + +Suddenly, like a fog-signal, there boomed out the voice of the man with +the megaphone, the man who made from the judges' stand, behind the +committee-enclosure all announcements for the meeting: + + "Ladies and gentul MEN," it boomed. + + "Mis ter Paul Dampier on a Maurice Farman bi plane!" + +The huge convolvulus-trumpet of the megaphone swung round. The +announcement was made from the other side of the stand; the sound of +that booming voice being subdued as it reached the group of three girls. + + "Mister Paul Dampier----" + +"You hear, Gwenna? It is _your_ young man," said Miss Baker; Miss +Butcher adding, "Hope you had a good look at him and saw if that photo +did him justice?" + +"From here? Well, how could I? It's not much I could see of him," +complained Gwenna, laughing. "He only looked about as big as a knot in a +cat's cradle!" + +Another roar, another small commotion on the ground. Another of those +ramshackle looking giant grasshoppers slid forward and upward into the +air. Presently three aeroplanes, then four together were circling and +soaring together in the sapphire-blue arena. + +Below, a pair of swallows, swift as light, chased each other over the +ground, above their own shadows, towards the tea-pavilion. + +Yet another flyer winged his tireless way across the aerodrome. He was a +droning bee, buzzing and hovering unheeded over a tuft of dusty white +clover growing by the rails that were so closely thronged by human +beings come to watch and wonder over man's still new miracle of flight. + + +"Oh, flying! Mustn't it be too glorious!" sighed the Welsh girl, +watching the aeroplane that was now scarcely larger than a winged bullet +in the blue. "Oh, wouldn't I love to go up! Wouldn't it be Heaven!" + +"It's been Heaven for several poor fellows lately," suggested the +shrewd, Cockney-voiced little Miss Butcher, grimly, from her right. +"What about that poor young What's-his-name, fallen and killed on the +spot at twenty-one!" + +"I don't call him 'poor,'" declared Gwenna Williams softly. "I should +think there could be worse things happen to one than get killed, +quickly, right in the middle of being so young and jolly and doing such +things----" + +"Ah, look! That's it! See that?" murmured a voice near them. "Flying +upside down, now, that first one--see him?" + +And now Gwenna, at gaze, watched breathlessly the wonder that seemed +already natural enough to the multitude; the swoop and curve, the loop +and dash and recover of the biplane that seemed for the moment a winged +white quill held in a hand unseen, writing its challenge on the blue +wall of Heaven itself. + + +Again the megaphone boomed out through the still and soft June air: + + "Ladies and gentul MEN! Pass enger flights from this + aer riodrome may now be booked at the office un der + this Stand!" + +"Two guineas, my dears, for the chance of breaking your necks," +commented Miss Butcher. "Three guineas for a longer flight, I believe; +that is, a better chance. Well, I bet that if I did happen to have two +gleaming golden jimmyohgoblins to my name, I'd find something else to +spend 'em on, first!" + +"I also!" agreed Miss Baker. + +Gwenna moved a little impatiently. She hadn't two guineas, either, to +spend. She still owed a guinea, now, for that unjustifiable +extravagance, that white hat with the wings. In spite of earning her own +living, in spite of having a little money of her own, left her by her +father who had owned shares in a Welsh quarry, she _never_ had any +guineas! But oh, if she had! _Wouldn't_ she go straight off to that +stand and book for a passenger-flight!... + +While her covetous eyes were still on the biplane, her ears caught a +stir of discussion that came from the motor nearest to the chairs. + +A lady was speaking in a softly dominant voice, the voice of a class +that recognises no overhearing save by its chosen friends. + +"My dear woman, it's as safe as the Tubes and the motor-buses. These +exhibition passenger-flights aren't really _flying_, Cuckoo said. Didn't +you, Cuckoo?" + +A short deep masculine laugh sounded from behind the ladies, then a +drawled "What are they then, what? Haw? Flip-flap, White City, what?" + +"Men always pretend afterwards that they've never said _anything_. +Cuckoo told me that when these people 'mean business' they can fly +_millions_ of times higher and faster than we _ever_ see them here. He +said there wasn't the _slightest_ reason why Muriel shouldn't----" + +Here the sound, hard and clear as an icicle, of a very young girl's +voice, ringing out: + +"And anyhow, mother, I'm _going_ to!" + +Glancing round, Gwenna saw a lanky girl younger than herself spring down +from the big, dove-grey car, and stride, followed by a tall man wearing +a top-hat, to the booking-office below the stand. This girl wore a long +brown oilskin coat over her white sweater and her short, admirably-cut +skirt; a brown chiffon veil tied over her head showed the shape and the +auburn gleam of it without giving a hair to the breeze. + +"Lovely to be those sort of people," sighed the enviously watching +Gwenna, as other girls from the cars strolled into the enclosure with +the notice "COMMITTEE ONLY," and seemed to be discussing, laying bets, +perhaps, about the impending race for machines carrying a +lady-passenger. "Fancy, whenever any of _them_ want to do or to see or +even to _be_ anything, they've only got to say, 'Anyhow, I'm going to!' +and there they are! _That's_ the way to live!" + +Presently the three London typists were sitting at a table under the +green awning and the hanging flower-baskets; one of a score of tables +where folk sat and chattered and turned their eyes ceaselessly upwards +to the blue sky, pointed at by those giant pylon-fingers, invaded by +those soaring, whirring, insolent, space daring creatures of man. + + +The first biplane had been preparing for the Ladies' Race. Now came the +start; with the dropped white flag the announcement from that dominating +magnified voice: + + "Mis ter Damp ier on a Maurice Far man bi plane ac + companied by Miss Mu riel Con yers----" + +The German girl put in, "Your man again, Gwenna!" + +"My man indeed. And I haven't seen him, even yet," complained the Welsh +girl again, laughing over her cup of cooling tea, "only in the +photograph! Don't suppose I ever shall, either. It's my fate, girls. +Nothing really exciting ever happens to me!" She sighed, then +brightened again as she remembered something. "I must be off now.... +I've got to go out this evening." + +"Anywhere thrilling?" asked Miss Butcher. + +"I don't know what it'll be like. It's Leslie Long; it's my friend at +the Club's married sister somewhere in Kensington, giving a +dinner-party," Gwenna answered in the scrambling New English in which +she was learning to disguise her Welshiness, "and there's a girl fallen +through at the last minute. So she 'phoned through this morning to ask +if this girl could rake any one up." + +"How mouldy for you, my dear," said Mabel Butcher in her sympathetic +Cockney as the Welsh girl rose, took up her sunshine-yellow coat from +the back of her chair and chinked down a shilling upon her thick white +plate. "Means you'll have to sit next some youth who only forced himself +into his dress-suit for the sake of taking that 'fallen through' girl +into dinner. He'll be scowling fit to murder you, I expect, for being +you and not her. (I know their ways.) Never mind. Pinch a couple of +liqueur-choc'lates off the table for me when the Blighted Being isn't +looking, will you? And tell us what he's like on Monday, won't you?" + +"All right," promised the Welsh girl, smiling back at her friends. She +threaded her way through the tables with the plates of coloured cakes, +the brown teapots, the coarse white crockery. She passed behind that +park of cars with that leisured, well-dressed, upward-gazing throng. She +turned her back on the glimpse beyond them of the green field where the +brown-clad mechanics ran up towards the slowly downward swooping +biplane. + +As she reached the entrance she caught again the announcement of that +distant megaphone: + + "Ladies and gentul men Pass enger flights may now + be booked----" + +The band in the distance was playing the dashing tune of the +"Uhlanenritt." + +Gwenna Williams passed out of the gates beside the big poster of the +aeroplane in full flight carrying a girl-passenger who waved a scarf. It +was everywhere, that Spring. So was the other notice: + +"_An afternoon in the country is always refreshing! Flying is always +interesting to watch!_" + +In the dusty bit of lane mended by the wooden sleepers a line of +grass-green taxis was drawn up. + +Gwenna hesitated. + +Should she----? Taxi all the way home to the Ladies' Residential Club in +Hampstead where she lived? + +Four shillings, perhaps.... Extravagance again! "But it's not an +everyday sort of day," Gwenna told herself as she hailed the taxi. "This +afternoon, the flying! This evening, a party with Leslie! Oh, and there +was I saying to the other girls that nothing exciting ever happened to +me!" + +For even now every day of her life seemed to this enjoying Welsh +_ingénue_, packed with thrills. Thrills of anticipation, of +amusement--sometimes of disappointment and embarrassment. But what did +those matter? Supreme through all there glowed the conviction of youth +that, at any moment, Something-More-Exciting still might happen.... + +It might be waiting to happen, waiting now, just round the corner.... + +All young people know that feeling. And to many it remains the most +poignant pleasure that they are to know--that thought of "the party +to-night," that wonder "what may happen at it!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE BOSOM-CHUMS + + +Through leafy side-streets and little squares of Georgian houses, +Gwenna's taxi took her to a newer road that sloped sharply from the +Heath at the top to the church and schools at the bottom. + +The taxi stopped at the glass porch of the large, red-brick building +with the many casement-windows, out of which some enterprising committee +had formed the Ladies' Residential Club. It was a place where a mixed +assembly of young women (governesses, art-students, earnest suffrage +workers, secretaries and so on) lived cheaply enough and with a good +deal of fun and noise, of feud and good-fellowship. The head of it was a +clergyman's widow and the sort of lady who is never to be seen otherwise +than wearing a neat delaine blouse of the Edwardian era, a gold curb +tie-pin, a hairnet and a disapproving glance. + +Gwenna passed this lady in the tessellated hall; she then almost +collided with the object of the lady's most constant disapproval. + +This was a very tall, dark girl with an impish face, a figure boyishly +slim. She looked almost insolently untidy, for she wore a shabby brown +hat, something after the pattern of a Boy Scout's, under which her black +hair was preparing to slide down over the collar of a rain-coat which +(as its owner would have told you) had seen at least two reigns. It was +also covered with loose white hairs, after the fashion of garments whose +wearers are continually with dogs. + +Gwenna caught joyously at the long arm in the crumpled sleeve. + +"Oh, Leslie!" she cried eagerly. + +For this was the bosom-chum. + +"Ha, Taffy-child! Got back early for this orgie of ours? Good," +exclaimed Leslie Long in a clear, nonchalant voice. It was very much the +same voice, Gwenna noticed now, as those people's at the flying-ground, +who belonged to that easy, lordly world of which Gwenna knew nothing. +Leslie, now, did seem to know something about it. Yet she was the +hardest-up girl in the whole club. She had been for a short time a Slade +student, for a shorter time still a probationer at some hospital. Now +all her days were given up to being paid companion to an old lady in +Highgate who kept seventeen toy-Poms; but her evenings remained her own. + +"Afraid this party isn't going to be much of a spree for you," she told +Gwenna as they went upstairs. "I don't know who's going, but my +brother-in-law's friends seldom are what you could describe as 'men.' +Being a stockbroker and rich, he feels he must go in heavily for Art and +Music. Long hair to take you in, probably. Hope you don't awfully mind +coming to the rescue----" + +"Don't mind what it is, as long as I'm going out somewhere, and with +you, Leslie!" the younger girl returned blithely. "Will you do me up the +back, presently?" + +"Rather! I'm dressing in your room. There's a better light there. Hurry +up!" + + * * * * * + +Gwenna's long, narrowish front bedroom at the club was soon breathing of +that characteristic atmosphere that surrounds the making of a full-dress +toilette; warm, scented soap-suds, hot curling-irons, powder, Odol, +perfume. The room possessed a large dressing-table, a long wardrobe, and +a fairly spacious chest-of-drawers. But all this did not prevent the +heaping of Gwenna's bed with the garments, with the gilded, high-heeled +cothurns and with the other gauds belonging to her self-invited guest. + +That guest, with her hair turbaned in a towel and her lengthy young body +sheathed in tricot, towered above the toilet-table like some modern's +illustration of a genie in the Arabian Nights. The small, more +closely-knit Welsh girl, who wore a kimono of pink cotton crêpe slipping +from shoulders noticeably well modelled for so young a girl, tried to +steal a glimpse at herself from under her friend's arm. + +"Get out, Taffy," ordered the other coolly. "You're in my way." + +"I like _that_," remonstrated Gwenna, laughing. "It's _my_ glass, +Leslie!" + +But she was ready to give up her glass or any of her belongings to this +freakish-tongued, kind-hearted, unconventional Leslie Long. Nearly +everybody at the club, whether they were of the advanced suffrage party +or the orthodox set, were "shocked" at her. Gwenna loved her. Leslie had +taken a very homesick little Welsh exile under her wing from her first +night at the club; Leslie had mothered her with introductions, loans, +advice. Leslie had bestowed upon her that last favour which woman shows +to sister-woman when she tells her "_at which shops to buy what_." +Leslie had, practically, dressed her. And it was thanks to this that +Gwenna had all the freshness and bloom of the country-girl without any +of the country-girl's all-concealing frumpiness. + +Leslie talked an obligato to everything that Leslie did. + +"I must dress first. I need it more, because I'm so much plainer than +you," said she. "But never mind; it won't take me more than half an hour +to transform myself into a credit to my brother-in-law's table. '_I am +a chrysoberyl, and 'tis night._' The Sometimes-Lvely Girl, that's the +type I belong to. I was told that, once, by one of the nicest boys who +ever loved me. Once I get my hair done, I'll show you. In the meantime +you get well out of my way on the bed, Taffy, like a sweet little cherub +that sits up aloft. And then I'll explain to you why Romance is +dead--oh, shove that anywhere; on the floor--and what the matter is with +us modern girls. Fact is, we're losing our Femininity. We're losing the +power, dear Miss Williams, to please Men." + +She took up a jar of some white paste, and smeared it in a scented mask +above her features. As she did so she did not for one moment cease to +rattle. + +"Men--that is, Nice Men," she gave out unctuously, as she worked the +paste with her palms over her Pierrot-like face, "detest all this +skin-food--and massage. It's Pampering the Person. No nice girl would +think of it. As for this powder-to-finish business, it's only another +form of make-up. They always see through it. (Hem!) And they abhor +anything that makes a girl--a nice girl--look in the least----" The +mocking voice was lowered at the word--"Actressy ...! This is what I was +told to-day, Taff, dear, by my old lady I take the Poms and Pekes out +for. I suppose she's never heard of any actress marrying. But she's a +mine of information. Always telling me where I've missed it, and how." + +Here the tall girl reached for the silver shoe-horn off Gwenna's +dressing-table, and proceeded to use it as the Greek youth used his +strigil, stripping the warmed unguent from her face and neck. She went +on talking while Gwenna, putting a gloss on her short curls with a brush +in each hand, listened and laughed, and watched her from the bed with +greeny-brown eyes full of an unreserved admiration. So far, Leslie +Long's was the society in which Gwenna Williams most delighted. The +younger, less sophisticated girl poured out upon her chum that affection +which is not to be bribed or begged. It is not even to be found in any +but a heart which is yet untouched, save in its dreams, by Love. + +"No Charm about us modern girls. No Mystery," enlarged Miss Long. "No +Glamour. (What is glamour? Is it a herb? State reasons for your answer.) +What Nice Men love to see in a girl is The Being Apart. (Gem of +Information Number Sixty-three.) Sweet, refined, modest; in every look +and tone the _gentlewoman_. Not a mere slangy imitation of themselves. +(Chuck us that other towel.) Not a creature who makes herself cheap, +calls out 'Hi!' and waves to them from the top of omnibuses. Ah, no, my +dear; the girl who'll laugh and 'lark' with men on equal terms may +_seem_ popular with them in a way, but"--here the voice was again +lowered impressively--"that's not the girl they marry. She's just 'very +good fun,' 'a good sort,' a 'pal.' She's treated just as they'd treat +another young man. (I'd watch it!) Which is the girl with whom they fall +in love, though? The shrinking, clinging, feminine creature who is +all-wool--I mean all-woman, Taffy. _She_"--with enormous expression--"is +_never_ left long without her mate!" + +"But," objected Gwenna doubtfully, "she--this old lady of yours--wasn't +married ever?" + +"Oh, never. Always lets you know that she has 'loved and lost.' Whether +that means 'Killed at the Battle of Waterloo' or merely 'Didn't propose' +I couldn't say.... Poor old dear, she's rather lonely, in spite of the +great cloud of Poms," said the old lady's paid "daily companion," +dropping the mockery for the moment, "and I believe she's thankful to +have even me to talk to and scold about the horrid, unsexed girl of +To-day.... Our lack of ... everything! Our clothes! Why, she, as a girl, +would have sunk into the ground rather than be seen in--you know the +kind of thing. Our general shapelessness!--Well, of course," turning to +meet that adoring glance from the little heroine-worshipper on the bed, +"you never see a young woman nowadays with what you could call a +_figure_!" + +Here Leslie, reaching for the giant powder-puff she had flung on to the +foot of the bed, gave a backward bend and a "straighten" that would not +have disgraced an acrobat. + +"No waists! Now if there is a feature that a man admires in a girl it's +her tiny, trimly-corseted waist. My old lady went to a fancy-dress dance +once, in a black-and-yellow plush bodice as '_A Wasp_,' and everybody +said how splendid. She never allowed herself to spread into anything +more than Eighteens until she was thirty! But now the girls are allowed +to slop about in these loud, fast-looking, golf-jackets or whatever they +call them, made just like a man's--and the young men simply aren't +marrying any more. No wonder!" + +"Oh, Leslie! do you think it's true?" put in Gwenna, a trifle nervously. + +"So she told me, my dear. Told Bonnie Leslie, whose bag had been two +proposals that same week," said Miss Long nonchalantly. "One of 'em with +me in the act of wearing that Futurist Harlequin's get-up at the Art +Rebel's Revel. You know; the one I got the idea of from noticing the +reflections of the ground-glass diamond patterns on me through the +bath-room window. I say! she'd have sunk pretty well through into the +Antipodes at the sight of me in that rig, what? Yet here was an +infatuated youth swearing that: + + '_He would like to have the chance + All his life with me to dance, + For he liked his partner best of all!_'" + +Leslie hummed the old musical-comedy tune. "Son of a _Dean_, too!" + +Gwenna looked wistfully thrilled. "Wasn't he--nice enough?" + +"Oh, a sweet boy. Handsome eyes. (I always want to pick them out with a +fork and put them into my own head.) But too simple for me, thanks," +said Leslie lightly. "He was _rather_ cut up when I told him so." + +"Didn't you tell your old lady--anything about it, Leslie?" + +"Does that kind of woman _ever_ get told the truth, Gwenna? I trow not. +That's why the dear old legends live on and on about what men like and +who they propose to. Also the kind old rules, drawn up by people who are +past taking a hand in the game." + +Again she mimicked the old lady's voice: "Nice men have one standard for +the women they marry, and another (a very different standard!) for +the--er--women they flirt with. (So satisfactory, don't you know, for +the girl they marry. No _wonder_ we never find those marriages being a +complete washout!) But supposing that a sort of Leslie-girl came along +and insisted upon Marriage being brought up to the flirtation +standard--_hein_?" + +"But your old lady, Leslie? D'you mean you just let her go on thinking +that you've never had any admiration, and that you've got to agree with +everything she says?" + +"Rather!" said Miss Long with her enjoying laugh. "I take it in with +r-r-rapt attention, looking my worst, as I always do when I'm behaving +my best. Partly because one's bound to listen respectfully to one's +bread-and-butter speaking. And partly because I am genuinely interested +in her remarks," said Leslie Long. "It's the interest of a rather smart +young soldier--if I may say so--let loose in a museum of obsolete +small-arms!" + +Even as she spoke her hands were busy with puff and brush, with +hair-pad, pins, and pencil. Gwenna still regarded her with that full, +discriminating admiration which is never grudged by one attractive girl +to another--of an opposite type. + +With the admiration for this was mixed a tiny dread, well known to the +untried girl--"If she is what They like, _they won't like me_!" ... Also +a wonder, "What in the world would Uncle have said to _her_?" + +And a mental picture rose before Gwenna of the guardian she had left in +the valley. She saw his shock of white, bog-cotton hair, his face of a +Jesuit priest and his voice of a Welsh dissenting minister. She heard +that much-resented voice declaiming slowly. "Yes, Yes. I know the +meaning of London and _self-respect and earning one's own living_. I +know all about these College girls and these girls going to business and +working same as the men, 'shoulder to shoulder'--Indeed, it's very +likely! _'Something better to do, nowadays, than sit at home frowsting +over drawn-thread work until a husband chooses to appear'_--All the same +thing! All the same thing! As it was in the beginning! _'A wider +field'_--for making eyes! And only two eyes to make them with. Oh, +forget-ful Providence, not to let a modern girl have four! _'Larger +opportunities'_--more chance of finding a young man! Yes, yes. That's +it, Gwenna!" + +Gwenna, at the mere memory of it, broke out indignantly, "Sometimes I +should like to _stab_ old people!" + +"Meaning the celebrated Uncle Hugh? Too wise, isn't he?" laughed Leslie +lightly, with her hands at her hair. "Too full of home-truths about the +business girl's typewriter, and the art-student's palette and the +shilling thermometer of the hospital nurse, eh? _He_ knows that they're +the modern girl's equivalent of the silken rope-ladder--what, what? And +the chaise to Gretna Green! _This Way Out. This Way--to Romance._ Why +not? Allow me, Madam----" + +Here she took up an oval box of eighteenth-century enamel, picked out a +tiny black velvet patch and placed it to the left of a careless red +mouth. + +"Effective, I think?" + +"Yes; and how can you say there's such a thing as 'obsolete' in the +middle of all this?" protested Gwenna. "_Look_, how the old fashions +come up again!" + +"Child, curb your dialect. '_Look_,'" Leslie mimicked the Welsh girl's +rising accent. "'The old fashshons.' Of course we modify the fashions +now to suit ourselves. My old lady had to follow them just as they were. +We," said this twentieth-century sage, "are just the same as she was in +lots of ways. The all-important thing to us is still what she calls the +Mate!" + +"M'm,--I don't believe it would be to me," said Gwenna simply. And +thinking of the other possibilities of Life--fresh experiences, work, +friendship, adventure (flying, say!)--she meant what she said. That was +the truth. + +Side by side with this, not contradicting but emphasising it, was +another truth. + +For, as in a house one may arrange roses in a drawing-room and reck +nothing of the homely business of the kitchen--then presently descend +and forget, in the smell of baking bread, the flowers behind those other +doors, so divided, so uncommunicating, so pigeon-holed are the +compartments, lived in one at a time, of a young maid's mind. + +Clearer to Gwenna's inner eyes than the larch green and slate purple of +her familiar valley had been the colours of a secret picture; herself in +a pink summer frock (always a summer frock, regardless of time, season +or place) being proposed to by a blonde youth with eyes as blue as +lupins.... + +Mocking Leslie was urging her, again in the old lady's tone, to "wait +until Mr. Right came along. Jewelled phrase! Such an old world +fragrance about it; moth powder, I suppose. Yet we know what it means, +and they didn't. We know it isn't just anybody in trousers that would +_be_ Mr. Right. (My dear! I use such strange expressions; I quite shock +me sometimes)," she interpolated; adding, "It's a mercy for us in some +ways; so good if we do get the right man. Worse than it used to be if we +don't. Swings and roundabouts again. But it's still true that + + Two things greater than all things are, + The first is Love and the second is War." + +"I can't imagine such a thing as war, now," mused Gwenna on the bed. +"Can you?" + +"Oh, vaguely; yes," said Leslie Long. "You know my people, poor +darlings, were all in the Army. But the poisonously rich man my sister +married says there'll never be any war again, except perhaps among a few +dying-out savage races. He does so grudge every ha'penny to the Navy +Estimates; and he's quite violent about these useless standing armies! +You know he's no sahib. '_His tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances +to fantastic tunes._' However, never mind him. _I'm_ the central figure. +Which is to be my frock of fascination to-night? '_The White Hope?_' or +'_The Yellow Peril?_' You're wearing your white, Taffy. Righto, then +I'll put on _this_," decided the elder girl. + +She stepped into and drew up about her a moulding sheath of +amber-coloured satin that clung to her limbs as a wave clings to a +bather--such was the fleeting fashion now defunct! There was a corolla +of escholtzia-yellow about the strait hips, a heavy golden girdle +dangling. + +"There! Now! How's the Bakst view?" demanded Leslie. + +She turned slowly, rising on her toes, lifting the glossy black head +above a generous display of creamy shoulder-blades; posing, laughing +while Gwenna caught her breath. + +"Les-lie!... And where _did_ you get it?" + +"Cast-off from an opulent cousin. What I should do if I didn't get a few +clothes given me I don't know; I should be sent back by the policeman at +the corner, I suppose. One can't _live_ at fancy dances at the Albert +Hall," said Miss Long philosophically. "Don't I look like a Rilette +advertisement on the end page of _Punch_? Don't I vary? Would anybody +think I was the same wispy rag-bag you met in the hall? Nay. 'From +Slattern to Show-girl,' that's my gamut. But you, Taff, I've never seen +you look really plain. It's partly your curls. You've got the sort of +hair some boys have and all women envy. Come here, now, and let's +arrange you. I've already been attending to your frock." + +The frock which Gwenna was to wear that evening at the dinner-party was +one which she had bought, without advice, out of an Oxford Street shop +window during a summer sale. It was of satin of which the dead-white +gleam was softened by a misty over-dress. So far, so good; but what of +the heavy, expensive-looking garniture--sash, knots, and what-nots of +lurid colour--with which the French artist's conception had been +"brightened up" in this English version? + +"Ripped off," explained Leslie Long, firmly, as its owner gazed in +horror at a mutilated gown. "No cerise--it's a 'married' colour--No +mural decorations for you, Taffy, my child. '_Oh, what a power has white +simplicity._' White, pure white, with these little transparent ruffles +that kind Leslie has sewn into the sleeves and round the fichu +arrangement for you; and a sash of _very_ pale sky-blue." + +"Shan't I look like a baby?" + +"Yes; the sweetest portrait of one, by Sir Joshua Reynolds." + +"Oh! And I'd bought a cerise and _diamanté_ hair-ornament." + +"Quite imposs. A hair-ornament? One of the housemaids will love it for +her next tango tea in Camden Town. As for you, don't dare to touch your +curls again--no, nor to put anything round your neck! Take away that +bauble!" + +"Aren't I even to wear my gold Liberty beads?" + +"No! you aren't. Partly because I am, in my hair. Besides, what d'you +want them for, with a throat like that? Necklaces are such a mistake," +decreed Leslie. "If a girl's got a nice neck, it hides the line; if she +hasn't, it shows the defect up!" + +"Well," protested Gwenna doubtfully, "but mightn't you say that of +anything to wear?" + +"Precisely. Still, you can't live up to every counsel of perfection. Not +in this climate!" + +"You might let me have my thin silver chain, whatever, and my little +heart that my Auntie Margie gave me--in fact, I'm going to. It's a +mascot," said Gwenna, as she hung the little mother-o'-pearl pendant +obstinately about her neck. "There!" + +"Very well. Spoil the look of that lovely little dimply hollow you've +got just at the base there if you must. A man," said Gwenna's chum with +a quick, critical glance, "a man would find that very easy to kiss." + +"Easy!" said Gwenna, with a quicker blush of anger. "He wouldn't then, +indeed!" + +"Oh, my dear, I didn't mean that," explained Leslie as she caught up her +gloves and wrap and prepared to lead the way out of the room and +downstairs to the hall. They would walk as far as the Tube, then book to +South Kensington. "All I meant was, that a man would--- that is, +_might_--er--possibly get the better--ah--of his--say, his natural +repugnance to _trying_----" + +A little wistfully, Gwenna volunteered: "One never has." + +"I know, Taffy. Not yet," said Leslie Long. "But one will. '_Cheer up, +girls, he is getting on his boots!_' Ready? Come along." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE EYES OF ICARUS + + +Gwenna, who was always bubbling over with young curiosity about the +fresh _people_ whom she was to meet at a party, had never taken overmuch +interest in the _places_ where the party might be held. + +She had not yet reached the age when, for information about new +acquaintances, one glances first at their background. + +To her the well-appointed though slightly "Art"-y Smith establishment +where her friend was taking her to dine was merely "a married house." +She took for granted the arrangements thereof. She lumped them all--from +the slim, deferential parlour-maid who ushered them through a +thickly-carpeted corridor with framed French etchings into a spacious +bedroom where the girls removed their wraps, down to the ivory, +bemonogrammed pin-tray and powder-box in front of the big mirror--she +lumped these all together as "things you have when you're _married_." + +It never struck her--it never strikes eight out of ten young girls--that +Marriage does not necessarily bring these "things" with their subtle +assurance of ease, security, and dignity in its train. She never thought +about it. Marriage indeed seemed to her a sort of dullish postscript to +what she imagined must be a thrilling letter. + +Why _must_ nearly all married people become so stodgy? Gwenna simply +couldn't imagine herself getting stodgy--or fat, like this married +sister of Leslie Long's, who was receiving her guests in the large +upstairs drawing-room into which the two girls were now shown. + +This room, golden and creamy, seemed softly aglow. There were standard +lamps with huge amber crinolines, bead-fringed; and flowers--yellow +roses and white lilies--seemed everywhere. + +Leslie Long drew one of the lilies out of a Venetian vase and held it +out, like an usher's rod, towards Gwenna as she followed her into the +bright, bewildering room, full of people. She announced, "Maudie, here's +the stop-gap. Taffy Williams, your hostess." + +Her hostess was a version of Leslie grown incredibly matronly. Her +auricula-coloured velvet tea-gown looked as if it had been clutched +about her at the last moment. (Which in point of fact it had. Mrs. Smith +was quite an old-fashioned mother.) Yet from her eyes smiled the +indestructible Girl that is embedded in so many a respectable matron, +and she looked down very kindly at Gwenna, the cherub-headed, in her +white frock. + +Mr. Smith, who had a large smooth face and a bald head, gave Gwenna a +less cordial glance. Had the truth been known, he was sulking over the +non-appearance of the intelligent young woman (from the Poets' Club) +whose place was taken by this vacuous-looking flapper (his summing-up +of Miss Gwenna Williams). For Gwenna this bald and wedded patriarch of +forty-five scarcely existed. She glanced, nervous and fluttered and +interested, towards the group of other guests gathered about the nearer +of the two flower-filled fireplaces; a pretty woman in rose-colour and +two men of thirty or thereabouts, one of whom (rather stout, with an +eye-glass, a black stock-tie, and a lock of brown hair brought down +beside his ear like a tiny side-whisker) made straight for Leslie Long. + +"Now _don't_ attempt to pretend we haven't met," Gwenna heard him say in +a voice of flirtatious yearning. "Last time you cut my dance----" + +Here the maid announced, from the door, some name.... Gwenna, standing +shyly, as if on the brink of the party, heard the hostess saying: "We +hardly hoped you'd come ... we know you people always are besieged by +invitations----" + +"Dear me! All these people seem dreat-fully grand," thought the Welsh +girl hastily to herself. "I wonder if it wouldn't have been better, now, +if Leslie had left that cerise velvet trimming as it was on my dress?" + +Instinctively she glanced about for the nearest mirror. There was a big +oval gilt-framed one over the yellow brocaded Empire couch near which +Gwenna stood. Her rather bewildered brown eyes strayed from the stranger +faces about her to the reflection of the face and figure that she best +knew. In the oval of gilded leaves she beheld herself framed. She looked +small and very young with her cherub's curls and her soft babyish +white gown and that heaven-coloured sash. But she looked pretty. She +hoped she did.... + +Then suddenly in that mirror she caught sight of another face, a face +she saw for the first time. + + +She beheld, looking over her white-mirrored shoulder, the reflection of +a young man. Clear-featured, sunburnt but blonde, he carried his fair +head tilted a little backward, and his eyes--strange eyes!--were looking +straight into hers. They were clear and blue and space-daring eyes, with +something about them that Gwenna, not recognising, would have summed up +vaguely as "like a sailor's." ... They were eyes that seemed to have +borrowed light and colour from long scanning of far horizons. And now +all that keenness of theirs was turned, like a searchlight, to gaze into +the wondering, receptive glance of a girl.... + +Who was this? + +Before Gwenna turned to face this stranger who had followed their +hostess up to her, his gaze seemed to hold hers, as a hand might have +held her own, for longer than a minute.... + + +Afterwards she told herself that it seemed, not a minute, but an age +before that first look was loosed, before she had turned round to her +hostess's, "I want to introduce Mr.----" + +(Something or other. She did not catch the name.) + +"_He's_ nice!" was the young girl's pristine and uncoloured first +impression. + +Then she thought, "Oh, if it's this one who's going to take me in to +dinner, I _am_ glad!" + +It was he who was to take her in. + +For Mr. Smith took the pretty lady whose name, as far as Gwenna was +concerned, remained "Mrs. Rose-colour." Her husband, a neutral-tinted +being, went in with Mrs. Smith. The man with the side-whisker (who, if +he'd been thinner, certainly might have looked rather like the portrait +of Chopin) laughed and chattered to Leslie as they went downstairs +together. Gwenna, falling to the lot of the blue-eyed young man as a +dinner-partner, altered her mind about her "gladness" almost before she +came to her third spoonful of clear soup. + +For it seemed as if this young man whose name she hadn't caught were not +really "nice" after all! That is, of course, he wasn't "_not_ nice." But +he seemed stupid! Nothing in him! Nothing to say! Or else very +absent-minded, which is just as bad as far as the other people at a +party are concerned. Or worse, because it's rude. + +Gwenna, taking in every detail of the pretty round table and the lights +under the enormous parasol of a pink shade, approving the banked +flowers, the silver, the glass, those delicious-looking chocolates in +the filigree dishes, the tiny "Steinlen-kitten" menu-holders, Gwenna, +dazed yet stimulated by the soft glitter in her eyes, the subdued buzz +of talk in her ears, stole a glance at Leslie (who was looking her best +and probably behaving her worst) and felt that every prospect was +pleasing--except that of spending all this time beside that silent, +stodgy young man. + +"Perhaps he thinks it's me that's too silly to talk to. I knew Leslie'd +made me look too young with this sash! Yes! _indeed_ I look like some +advertisement for Baby's Outfitting Department," thought Gwenna, vexed. +"Or is it because he's the kind of young man that just sits and eats and +never really sees or thinks about anything at all?" + +Now, had she known it at the time, the thoughts of the blonde and +blue-eyed youth beside her were, with certain modifications, something +on these lines. + +"Dash that stud! Dash the thing. This pin's going into the back of my +neck directly. I know it is. That beastly stud must have gone through a +crack in the boards.... I shall buy a bushel of 'em to-morrow. Why a +man's such a fool as to depend upon one stud.... I know this pin's going +into the back of my neck when I'm not thinking about it. I shall squawk +blue murder and terrify 'em into fits.... What have we here?" (with a +glance from those waking eyes at the menu). "Good. Smiths always do +themselves thundering well.... Now, who are all these frocks? The Pink +'Un. That's a Mrs.... Damsel in the bright yellow lampshade affair +about six foot high, that old Hugo's giving the glad eye to. Old +Hugo weighs about a stone and a half too much. Does _him_self +a lot _too_ well. Revolting sight. I wonder if I can work the +blood-is-thicker-than-water touch on him for a fiver afterwards?... +This little girl I've got to talk to, this little thing with the neck +and the curly hair. Pretty. _Very_ pretty. Knocks the shine out of the +others. I know if I turn my head to speak to her, though, that dashed +pin will cut adrift and run into the back of my neck. _Dash_ that stud. +Here goes, though----" + +And, stiffly and cautiously moving his head in a piece with his +shoulders, he turned, remarking at last to Gwenna in a voice that, +though deep-toned and boyish, was almost womanishly gentle, "You don't +live in town, I suppose?" + +The girl from that remote Welsh valley straightened her back a little. +"Yes, I do live in town, indeed!" she returned a trifle defensively. +"What made you think I lived in the country?" + +"Came up yesterday, I s'pose," the young man told himself as the +soup-plates were whisked away. + +Gwenna suspected a twinkle in those unusual blue eyes as he said next, +"_Haven't_ you lived in Wales, though?" + +"Well, yes, I have," admitted Gwenna Williams in her soft, quaint +accent, "but how did you know?" + +"Oh, I guessed. I've stayed there myself, fishing, one time and +another," her neighbour told her. "Used to go down to a farmhouse there, +sort of place that's all slate slabs, and china dogs, and light-cakes +for tea; ages ago, with my cousin. _That_ cousin," and he gave a little +jerk of his fair head towards the black-stocked, Trelawney-whiskered +young man who was engrossed with Miss Long. "We used to--Ah! _Dash!_" +he broke off suddenly and violently. "It's gone down my back now." + +Gwenna, startled, gazed upon this stranger who was so good to look at +and so extremely odd to listen to. Gone down his back? She simply could +not help asking, "What has?" + +"That pin," he answered ruefully. + +Then he tilted back his fair head and smiled, with deep dimples creasing +his sunburnt cheeks and a flash of even white showing between his +care-free, strongly-modelled lips. And hereupon Gwenna realised that +after all she'd been right. He _was_ "nice." He began to laugh outright, +adding, "You must think me an absolute lunatic: I'd better tell you what +it's all about----" + +He took a mouthful of sole and told her, "Fact is, I lost my collar-stud +when I was dressing, the stud for the back of my collar; and I had to +fasten my collar down at the last minute with a pin. It's been getting +on my nerves. Has, really. I've been waiting for it to run into the back +of my neck----" + +"So that was why he seemed so absent-minded!" thought Gwenna, feeling +quite disproportionately glad and amused over this trifle. She said, "I +_thought_ you turned as if you'd got a stiff neck! I thought you'd been +sitting in a draught." + +He made another puzzling remark. + +"Draught, by Jove!" he laughed. "It's always fairly _draughty_ where I +have to sit!" + +He went on again to mourn over his collar. "Worse than before, now," he +said. "It's going to hitch up to the back of my head, and I shall have +to keep wiggling my shoulder-blades about as if I'd got St. Vitus's +dance!" + +Gwenna felt she would have liked to have taken a tiny safety-pin that +there was hidden away under her sky-blue sash, and to have given it to +him to fasten that collar securely and without danger of pricking. +Leslie, she knew, would have done that. She, Gwenna, would have been too +shy, with a perfect stranger--only, now that he'd broken the ice with +that collar-stud, so to speak, she couldn't feel as if this keen-eyed, +deep-voiced young man were any longer quite a stranger. In her own +dialect, he seemed, now, "so homely, like----" + +And over the next course he was talking to her about home, about the +places where he'd fished in Wales. + +"There was one topping little trout-stream," he told her in that deep +and gentle voice. "Bubbly as soda-water, green and clear as +bottle-glass. Awfully jolly pools under the shade of the branches. You +look right down and it's all speckly at the bottom, with brown-and-grey +stones and slates and things, under the green water. It's like----" + +He was looking straight at her, and suddenly he stopped. He had caught +her eyes, full; as he had caught them before dinner in that mirror. Now +that he was so close to them he saw that they were clear and +browny-green, with speckles of slate-colour. They were not unlike those +pools themselves, by Jove.... Almost as if he had been fishing for +something out of those depths he still looked down, hard into them.... +He forgot that he had stopped talking. And then under his own eyes he +saw the little thing begin to colour up; blushing from that sturdy white +throat of hers to the brow where those thick brown cherub's-curls began +to grow. He looked away, hastily. Hastily he said, "It--er--it had a +pretty name, that stream. Quite a pronounceable Welsh name, for once: +The Dulas." + +"Oh, dear me! Do _you_ know the Dulas?" cried Gwenna Williams in +delight, forgetting that she had just been feeling acutely conscious and +shy under the fixed stare of a pair of searching blue eyes. "Why! It's +not very far from there that's my home!" + +They went on talking--about places. Unconsciously they were leading the +whole table after them; the jerkiness went out of sentences; the pitch +of the talk rose. It was all a buzz to Gwenna; but when, at the joint, +her neighbour turned at last to answer a comment of the rose-coloured +lady on his other hand, she amused herself by seeking to find out what +all the others were talking about. + + +"I like some of his things very much. Now, his water-colours at the----" +This was Mr. Smith, holding forth about pictures.... There appeared to +be a good deal of it. Ending up with, "And I know for a fact that he +only got two hundred guineas for that; two hundred! Incredible!" + +It certainly did seem to Gwenna an incredible amount of money for a +picture, a thing you just hang on a wall and forgot all about. Two +hundred guineas! What couldn't she, Gwenna, do with that! Travel all +over the place for a year! Go flying every week, at Hendon! + +"What an experience! What a change it's made in the whole of English +thought!" the pretty, rose-coloured lady was saying earnestly. "We can +never be the same again now. It's set us, as a nation, such an entirely +new and higher standard----" + +This was very solemn, Gwenna thought. What was it about? + +"I can't imagine, now, how we can have existed for so long without that +point of view," went on Mrs. Rose-colour. "As I say, the first time I +ever saw the Russian Ballet----" + +The Russian Ballet--Ah! Gwenna had been with Leslie to see that; she had +thought herself in a fairyland of dazzling colour, and of movement as +wonderful as that of the flying biplanes. It had been a magic world of +enchanted creatures that seemed half-bird, half-flower, who whirled and +leaped, light as blown flame, to strangest music.... Gwenna had been +dazed with delight; but she could not have talked about it as these +people talked. "Mr. Rose-colour," Mr. Smith, and Leslie's whiskered +young man were all joining in together now. + +"You won't deny that a trace of the Morbid----" + +"But that hint of savagery is really the attraction," Mr. Smith +explained rather pompously. "We over-civilised peoples, who know no +savagery in modern life, who have done with that aspect of evolution, I +suppose we welcome something so----" + +"Elemental----" + +"Primitive----" + +"Brutal?" suggested Mrs. Rose-colour, appreciatively. + +"And that infinitude of gesture----" murmured the whiskered man, eating +asparagus. + +"Yes, but Isadora----" + +"Ah, but Karsavina!" + +"You must admit that Nijinski is ultra-romantic----" + +"_Define_ Romance!" + +"Geltzer----" + +"Scheherazade----" + +Utterly bewildered by the strange words of the language spoken by half +London in early summer, Nineteen-fourteen, the young girl from the wilds +sought a glimpse of her friend's black-swathed head and vivid, impish +face above the banked flowers of the table-centre. Did Leslie know all +these words? Was she talking? She was laughing flippantly enough; +speaking as nonchalantly. + +"Yes, I'm going to the next Chelsea Arts Ball in that all-mauve rig he +wears in the 'Spectre de la Rose.' I am. Watch the effect. 'Oh, Hades, +the Ladies! They'll leave their wooden huts!' _You_ needn't laugh, Mr. +Swayne"--this to the Chopin young man. "_Any_body would be taken in. I +can look quite as much of a man as Nijinski does. In fact, far----" + +Here suddenly Gwenna's neighbour leaned forward over the table towards +his hostess and broke in, his deep, gentle voice carrying above the +buzz. + +"Mrs. Smith! I say! I beg your pardon," he exclaimed quickly, "but isn't +that a baby crying like anything somewhere?" + +This remark of the young man's, and that which followed it, surprised +and puzzled Gwenna even more than his curious remark about draughts. Who +was he? What sort of a young man was this who always sat in draughts and +who could catch the sound of a baby's cry when even its own mother +hadn't heard it through the thick _portière_, the doors, the walls and +that high-pitched buzz of conversation round about the table? + +For Mrs. Smith had fled from the table with a murmured word of apology, +and had presently returned just as the ornate fruit-and-jelly mould was +being handed round, and Gwenna heard her saying to Mrs. Rose-colour, +"Yes, it was. He's off again now. He simply won't go down for Nurse--I +always have to rush----" + +Gwenna turned to her companion, whose collar was now well up over the +back of his neck. Wondering, she said to him, "_Fancy_ your hearing +that, through all this other noise!" + +"Ah, one gets pretty quick at listening to, and placing, noises," he +told her, helping himself to the jelly and shrugging his shoulders and +that collar at the same time. "It's being accustomed to notice any +squeak that oughtn't to be there, you know, in the engines. One gets to +hear the tiniest sound, through anything." + +Gwenna, more puzzled than before, turned from that delectable pudding on +her plate, to this strangely interesting young man beside her. She said: +"Are you an engineer?" + +"I used to be," he said. "A mechanic, you know, in the shops, before I +got to be a pilot." + +"A pilot?" She wondered if he thought it rude of her, if it bothered him +to be asked questions about himself like this, by just a girl? And still +she couldn't help asking yet another question. + +She said, "Are you a sailor, then?" + +"Me?" he said, as if surprised. "Oh, no----" + +And then, quite simply and as if it were nothing, he made what was to +Gwenna an epic announcement. + +"I'm an airman," he said. + +She gasped. + +He went on. "Belong to a firm that sends me flying. Taking up passengers +at Hendon, that sort of thing." + +"An airman? _Are_ you?" was all that Gwenna could for the moment reply. +"Oh ... _Oh!_" + +Perhaps her eyes, widening upon the face above her, were more eloquent +of what she felt. + +That it was to her a miracle to find herself actually sitting next to +him! Actually speaking to one of these scarcely credible beings whom she +had watched this afternoon! _An airman_.... There was something about +the very word that seemed mysterious, uncanny. Was it because of its +comparative newness in the speech of man? Perhaps, ages ago, primitive +maids found something as arresting in the term "_A seaman_"? But this +was an airman! It was his part to ride the Winged Victory, the aeroplane +that dared those sapphire heights above the flying-ground. Oh! And she +had been chattering to him about the slate-margined brooks and the ferny +glens of her low-lying valley, just as if he'd been what this ingenuous +maid called to herself "_Any_ young man" who had spent holidays fishing +in Wales? She hadn't known. _That_ was why he had those queer, keen +eyes: blue and reckless, yet measuring. + +Not a sailor's, not a soldier's ... but the eyes of Icarus!... + +"I--I never heard your name," said Gwenna, a little breathless, timid. +"Which is it, please?" + +For reply he dabbed a big, boyish finger down on the slender name-card +among the crumbs of his bread. "Here you are," he said, "Dampier; Paul +Dampier." + + +So whirling and bewildered was Gwenna's mind by this time that she +scarcely wondered over the added surprise. This, she just realised, was +the name she had first heard bellowed aloud through the megaphone from +the judges' stand. She hardly remembered then that a photograph of this +same aviator was tossed in among her wash-leather gloves, velvet +hair-bands, and her handkerchief-sachet in the top right-hand drawer of +her dressing-table at the Club. Certainly she did not remember at this +minute what she had said, laughing, over that portrait, to her two +friends on the flying-ground. + +There, she had admired the machine; that un-Antæus-like thing that was +not itself until it had shaken off the fetters of Earth from its skids +and wheels. Here, she marvelled over the man; _for he was part of it_. +He was its skill and its will. He was the planner of those curves and +bankings and soarings, those vol-planés that had left, as it were, +their lovely lines visible in the air. His Icarian mind had +determined--his large but supple body had executed them. + +A girl could understand that, without understanding how it was all done. +Those big, boyish hands of his, of course, would grasp certain +mechanisms; his feet, too, would be busy; his knees--every inch of his +lithe length and breadth--every muscle of him; yes! even to the tiny +muscles that moved his wonderful eyes. + +"I saw you, then," she told him, in a dazed little voice. "I was at +Hendon this afternoon! It was the first time in my life...." + +"Really?" he said. "What did you think of it all?" + +"Oh, splendid!" she said, ardently, though vaguely. + +How she longed to be able to talk quickly and easily to anybody, as +Leslie could! How stupid he--the Airman--must think her! A little +shakily she forced herself to go on: "I did think it so wonderful, but I +can't explain, like. Ever. I _never_ can. But----" + +Perhaps, again, she was explaining better than she knew, with that +small, eager face raised to his. + +"Oh!" she begged. "Do _tell_ me about it!" + +He laughed. "Tell you what? Isn't much to tell." + +"Oh, yes, there must be! You tell me," she urged softly, unconscious +that her very tone was pure and concentrated flattery. "Do!" + +And with another short, deprecating laugh, another shrug to his collar, +the boy began to "tell" her things, though the girl did not pretend to +understand. She listened to that voice, strong and deep, but womanishly +gentle. She forgot that by rights she ought to pay some attention to her +neighbour, the imitation Chopin. She listened to this other. + +Words like "_controls_," "_pockets_," "_yawing_," went in at one of the +ears under her brown curls and out at the other, leaving nothing but a +quivering atmosphere of "the wonderfulness" of it all. Presently she saw +those hands of his, big, sensitive, clever, arranging forks and spoons +upon the sheeny tablecloth before her. + +"Imagine that's your machine," he said. "Now you see there are three +possible movements. _This_"--he tilted a dessert-knife from side to +side--"_and this_"--he dipped it--"_and this_, which is yawing--you +understand?" + +"No!" she confessed, with the quickest little gesture. "I couldn't +understand those sort of things. I shouldn't want to. What I really want +to know is--well, about _it_, like!" + +"About what?" + +"About _flying_!" + +He laughed outright again. "But, that _is_ flying!" + +She shook her head. "No, not what I mean. That's all--machinery!" She +pronounced the word "machinery" with something almost like disdain. He +looked at her as if puzzled. + +"Sorry you aren't interested in machinery," he said quite reprovingly, +"because, you know, that's just what I _am_ interested in. I'm up to my +eyes in it just now, pretty well every minute that I can spare. In fact +I've got a machine--only the drawings for it, of course, but----" + +"Do you mean you've _invented_ one?" + +"Oh, I don't know about 'invent.' Call it an improvement. It should be +about as different from the lumbering concern you saw me go up in to-day +as that's different from--say from one of those old Cambrian Railway +steam engines," he declared exultantly. "It's----" + +Here, he plunged into another vortex of mysterious jargon about +"automatic stability," about "skin friction," and a hundred other +matters that left the listening girl as giddy as a flight itself might +have done. + +What she did understand from all this was that here, after all, in the +Machine, must be the secret of all the magic. This was what interested +the Man. An inventor, too, he talked as if he loved to talk of it--even +to her; his steel-blue eyes holding her own. Perhaps he didn't even see +her, she thought; perhaps he scarcely remembered there was a girl there, +leaving strawberries and cream untasted on an apple-green plate, +listening with all her ears, with all of _herself_--as he, with all of +himself, guided a machine. Ah, he talked of a just-invented machine as +in the same tone Gwenna had heard young mothers talk of their new-born +babies. + +This was what he lived for! + +"Yes," concluded the enthusiast with a long sigh, "if I could get that +completed, and upon the market----" + +"Well?" Gwenna took up softly; ignorant, but following his every change +of tone. "Why can't you?" + +"Why not? For the usual reason that people who are keen to get things +done can't do 'em," the boy said ruefully, watching that responsive +shadow cloud her face as he told her. "It's a question of the dashed +money." + +"Oh!" said the girl more softly still. "I see." + +So he, too, even he knew what it was to find that fettering want of +guineas clog a soaring impulse? What a _shame_, she thought.... + +He thought (as many another young man with a Subject has thought of +some rapt and girlish listener!) that the little thing was jolly +intelligent, _for_ a girl, more so than you were supposed to expect of +such a pretty face---- Pretty? Come to look at her she was quite lovely. +Made that baggage in the yellow dress and the Mrs. in the Pink look like +a couple of half-artificial florists' blooms by the side of a +lily-of-the-valley freshly-plucked from some country garden, sappy and +sturdy, and sweet. And her skin was like the bit of mother-of-pearl she +was wearing as a heart-shaped locket. + +Quite suddenly he said to her: "Look here! Should you care to go up?" + +Gwenna gasped. + +The whole room, the bright table and the chattering guests seemed now to +whirl about her in a circle of shiny mist--as that aeroplane propeller +had whirled.... Care to go up? "_Care!_" Would she? Would she _not_? + +"Oh----" she began. + +But this throbbing moment was the moment chosen by her hostess to glance +smilingly at Mrs. Rose-colour and to rise, marshalling the women from +the room. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE SONG OF ALL THE AGES + + +"Now isn't life _extraordinary_?" thought Gwenna Williams, incoherently +in the drawing-room as she sat on the yellow Empire sofa under the +mirror, holding a tiny coffee-cup and answering the small-talk of kindly +Mrs. Smith. "Fancy, before this afternoon I'd never seen any flying! And +now on the very same evening I'm asked to go flying myself! Me! Just +like that girl who was with him in the race! (I wonder is she a great +friend of his.) I wonder when he'll take me? Will he come and settle +about it--oh, I do hope so!--before we all have to go away?" + +But there was no chance of "settling" this for some time after the door +opened to a little commotion of bass laughter, a trail of cigar-scent, +and the entrance of the man. + +Mrs. Rose-colour, with some coquettish remark that Gwenna didn't catch, +summoned the tall airman to the yellow-brocaded pouffe at her feet. Her +husband crossed over to Gwenna (who suddenly discovered that she hated +him) and began talking Welsh folk-songs. Whereupon Hugo Swayne, fondling +his Chopin curl, asked Leslie, who towered above him near the piano, if +she were going to sing. + +"I'm in such a mood," he told her, "to listen to something rawly and +entirely modern!" + +"You shall, then," agreed Miss Long, suddenly demure. "D'you know +the--er--_Skizzen Macabres_, those deliciously perverse little things of +Wedekind's? They've been quite well translated.... Righto, my dear"--in +answer to a nervous glance from her sister, "I'll only sing the +_primmer_ verses. The music is by that wonderful new Hungarian +person--er--Sjambok." + +Her tall golden figure reflected itself in the ebony mirror of the piano +as Leslie, with a malicious gleam in the tail of her eye, sat down. + +"I shan't sing for _him_, all the same," she thought. "I shall sing for +Taffy and that Air-boy. I bet I can hit on something that _they'll_ both +like.... Yes...." + +And she struck the first chords of her accompaniment. + +And what was it, this "crudely modern" song that Leslie had chosen for +the sake of the two youngest people present at that party? + +There is a quintette of banjo-players and harpists who are sometimes +"on" at the Coliseum in London, but who are more often touring our +Colonies from Capetown to Salter, Sask. And wherever they may go, it +seems, they bring down the house with that same song. For, to the hearts +of exiled and homesick and middle-aged toilers that simple tune means +England, Home and Beauty still. They waltzed to it, long ago in the +Nineteenth Century. They "turned over" for some pretty girl who +"practised" it. So, when they hear it, they encore it still, with a lump +in their throats.... + +It was the last verse of this song that drifted in Leslie's deep +contralto, across this more enlightened drawing-room audience of +Nineteen-fourteen. Softly the crooning, simply phrased melody stole out: + + "_Even to-day we hear Love's song of yore! + Low in our hearts it rings for evermore. + Footsteps may falter, weary grow the way, + Still we can hear it at the close of day!_" + +--"and it's at least as pleasant as any of their beastly 'artistic' +music," thought Leslie, rebelliously, as she sang: + + "_Still to the end_," (chord) "_while Life's dim shadows fall, + Love will be found the sweetest song of all_!" + +She ended in a ripple of arpeggios, triumphantly, for she had glanced at +the two youngest people in the room. Little Gwenna's eyes were full of +the facile tears of her race; and the Dampier boy's face was grave with +enjoyment. Alas, for the musical taste of these two! They _had_ liked +the old song.... + +The enlightened others were puzzled for a moment. _What_ was that +thing----? + +Mr. Swayne explained languidly. "Priceless old ditty entitled 'Love's +Old Sweet Song.' A favourite of the dear late Queen's, long before any +of US were thought of. Miss Long has been trying to pull our legs with +it!" + +"Oh, Leslie, dear, you are so amusing always," said Mrs. Rose-colour, +turning with her little superior smile to the singer. "But won't you +sing something _really_?" + +Leslie's quick black eyes caught a glance of half-conscious, +half-inarticulate sympathy that was passing between the youngest girl in +the room and the man who had taken her in to dinner. It was as if they'd +said, together, "I wish she'd sing again. I wish she'd sing something +like _that_ again...." + +They were alone in their wish! + +For now Mrs. Smith sat down and played something. Something very +long.... + +And still what Gwenna longed to happen did not happen. In spite of that +glance of sympathy just now, it did not happen. + +The Airman, sitting there on that brocaded _pouffe_, his long legs +stretched out over the soft putty-coloured carpet, did _not_ come up to +her to speak again of that so miraculously proffered flight in his +aeroplane. He went on being talked to by Mrs. Rose-colour. + +And when that pretty lady and her husband rose to go, the young girl in +her corner had a very blank and tense moment. For she heard those people +offer to take Mr. Dampier with them and drop him at his rooms. Oh, that +would mean that she, Gwenna, wouldn't have another word with him! He'd +go! And his invitation had been unanswered! + +"Care to go up?" he'd said--and Gwenna hadn't even had time to tell him +"Yes!" + +Ah, it would have been too good to be true!---- + +Very likely he'd forgotten what he'd said at, dinner.... + +He hadn't meant it.... + +He'd thought she'd meant "No." + +He was going now---- + +But no. To her unspeakable relief she heard his deep "Thanks awfully, +but I'm going on with Hugo presently. Taking him to meet some people at +the Aero Club." + + +Now, just imagine that! thought the country girl. Here it was already +half-past ten at night; but he was going on to meet some more people +somewhere else. This wonderful party, which had marked an epoch in her +life, was nothing to him; it was just the beginning of the evening. And, +after days in the skies, all his evenings were like this! Hadn't Mrs. +Smith said when he came in, "We know you are besieged with invitations?" +Oh, the inconceivably interesting life that was his! Why, why was Gwenna +nothing but a girl, a creature who, even nowadays, had to stay within +the circumscribed limits where she was put, who could not see or be or +do _anything_, really! Might as well be born a _tortoise_.... + +Here the voice of Mr. Hugo Swayne (to which she'd paid scant attention +so far) said something about taking Miss Long and her friend up to +Hampstead first, and that Paul could come along. + +Gwenna, enraptured, discovered that this meant in his, Mr. Swayne's, +car. The four of them were to motor up to her and Leslie's Club +together. All that lovely long drive? + +But though "lovely," that journey back to Hampstead, speeding through +the broad, uncrowded streets that the lights showed smooth and polished +as a ballroom floor, with the giant shadows of plane-tree leaves +a-dance upon the pavement--that journey was unbelievably, relentlessly +short. + +Mr. Swayne seemed to tear along! He was driving, with Leslie, gay and +talkative and teasing, beside him in front. The younger girl sat behind +with his cousin. The Airman was hatless; and he wore a light loose +overcoat of which the big sleeve brushed the black satin of Gwenna's +wrap. + +"Warm enough?" he asked, gently, and (as carefully as if she'd been some +old invalid, she thought) he tucked a rug about her. Eagerly Gwenna +longed for him to return to that absorbing question he'd put to her at +the dinner-table. But there seemed scarcely time to say a single word +before, with a jarring of brakes, the car drew up in the slanting road +before the big square block of the Club. The arc-lights blazed into the +depths of the tall chestnut-trees beside the street, while the four +young people stood for a moment clustered together on the asphalt walk +before the glass-porch. + +"All over now," thought Gwenna with quite a ridiculously sharp little +pang as good-nights and good-byes were said. + +Oh! Wasn't he going to say anything else? About the flying? _She_ +couldn't! + +He was holding her hand (for good-night) while Mr. Swayne still laughed +with Leslie. + +"Look here," the Airman said abruptly. "About that flying----" + +"Yes! Oh, yes!" Gwenna returned in a breathless little flurry. There +mustn't be any _mistake_ about what she wished. She looked up into his +holding eyes once more, and said quiveringly, "I would so love it!" + +"You would. Right," he said, and seemed to have forgotten that they had +shaken hands, and that he had not yet loosed her fingers from his large +and hearty grip. He shook hands again. "Then I'll come round And fix it +up----" + +And the next instant, it seemed, he was whirled away from her again, +this Stranger who had dropped into the middle of her life as it were +from the skies which were his hunting-ground. There was the noise of a +retreating car droning down the hill (not unlike the receding drone of a +biplane in full flight), then the grating of a key in the lock of the +Club door.... + +Gwenna sighed. Then she went upstairs, humming softly, without knowing +what the tune was, Leslie's song: + + "_Once in the dear, dead days beyond recall----_" + +Leslie followed her into her room where she turned up the gas. + +"I'll undo you, Taffy, shall I?... Enjoyed yourself rather, after all, +didn't you?" said the elder girl, adding quickly, "What's the matter?" + +For Gwenna before the glass stood with a dismayed look upon her face. +Her hand was up to her round white throat, touching the dimpled hollow +where there had rested--where there rested no longer--that +mother-of-pearl pendant. + +"It's gone," she exclaimed ruefully. + +"What has, child? What have you dropped?" + +Gwenna, still with her hand at her throat, explained, "I've lost my +heart". + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE WORKADAY WORLD + + +The day after the dinner-party was spent by Gwenna metaphorically, at +least, in the clouds. + +By her vivid day-dreams she was carried off, as Ganymede was carried by +the eagle, sky-high; she felt the rush of keen air on her face; she saw +the khaki-green flying-ground beneath her with the clustered onlookers, +as small as ants. And--thus she imagined it--she heard that megaphone +announcement: + + "Ladies and gentul MEN! Mis ter Paul Dampier on + a Maurice Farman bi plane ac companied by Miss + Williams!" + +with the sound of it dying down, faintly, below her. + + +Then in her musing mind she went over and over what had already +happened. Those throbbing moments when her new friend had said, "Look +here! Would you care to come up?" and, "Then I'll come up here and fix +it----" + +Would he? Oh, when would he? It was of course hardly to be thought that +this flying-man ("besieged with invitations" as he was) would come to +ratify his offer on Sunday, the very day after he'd made it. Too much +to expect.... + +Therefore that Sunday Gwenna Williams refused to go out, even on the +Heath for the shortest loitering stroll. Leslie Long, with an +indescribable look that the younger girl did not catch, went out without +her. Gwenna stayed on the green bench in the small, leafy garden at the +back of the Club, reading and listening, listening for the sound of the +bell at the front door, or for the summons to the telephone. + +None came, of course. + + +Also, of course, no note to make an appointment to go flying appeared at +that long, crowded breakfast-table of the Club on Monday morning for +Miss Gwenna Williams. + +That, too, she could hardly have expected. + +Quite possibly he'd forgotten that the appointment had ever been made. A +young man of that sort had got so many things to think about. So many +people to make appointments with. So many other girls to take up. + +"I wonder if he's promised to go up again soon with that girl called +Muriel," she thought. "Sure to know millions of girls----" + +And it was in a very chastened mood of reaction that Gwenna Williams, +typist--now dressed in the business-girl's uniform of serge costume, +light blouse, and small hat--left her Club that morning. She walked down +the sunny morning road to the stopping-place of the motor-omnibuses and +got on to a big scarlet "24" bus, bound for Charing Cross and her day's +work. + +The place where she worked was a huge new building in process of +construction on the south side of the Embankment near Westminster +Bridge. + +Above the slowly sliding tides of the river, with its barges and boats, +there towered several courses of granite blocks, clean as a +freshly-split kernel. In contrast to them were the half demolished, +dingy shells of houses on either side, where the varied squares of +wallpaper and the rusting, floorless fireplaces showed where one room +had ended and the next begun. The scaffolding rose above the new pile +like a mighty web. Above this again the enormous triangular lattice rose +so high that it seemed like a length of ironwork lace stretched out on +two crochet-needles against the blue-grey and hot vault of the London +sky. + +As she passed the entrance Gwenna's eyes rose to this lattice. + +"It looks almost as high up in the air as one could fly in that +biplane," she thought. "Oh, to be right _up_! Looking down on +everything, with the blue _beneath one_ instead of only above!" + +She crossed the big yard, which was already vocal with the noises of +chipping and hammering, the trampling and the voices of men. Two of +them--the genial young electrician called Grant and the Yorkshire +foreman who was a regular father to his gang, nodded good-morning to +the youngest typist as she passed. She walked quickly past the stacks of +new timber and the gantries and travelling cranes (plenty of machinery +here; it ought to please Mr. Dampier, since he'd said that was what he +was interested in!). One great square of the hewn granite was swinging +in mid-air from a crane as she left the hot sunlight and noise outside +and entered the door of the square, corrugated iron building that held +the office where she worked. + +To reach it she had to pass through the clerk-of-the-works' offices, +with long drawing-benches with brass handled drawers beneath, full of +plans, and elevations. These details seemed mysteriously, tantalisingly +incomprehensible and yet irritating to Gwenna's feminine mind. She was +imaginative enough to realise that all these details, these +"man's-things," from the T-squares on the benches to the immense iron +safe in the corner, seemed to put her, Gwenna, "in her place." She was +merely another detail in the big whole of man's work that was going on +here. The place made her feel tiny, unimportant. She went on to the +light and airy room, smelling of new wood and tracing-paper, the +extension of the clerk-of-the-works' office that she shared with her two +colleagues. + +In the centre of this room there was a large square table with a +telephone, a telephone-book, various other books of reference and a +shallow wicker basket for letters. Besides this there were the typing +tables for each of the three girl-clerks. Gwenna's and Miss Baker's +were side by side. The German girl sat nearest to the window that gave +the view up the river, with Lambeth Bridge and the Houses of Parliament +looming grey and stately against the smiling June sky, and a distant +glimpse of Westminster Abbey. On the frame of the pane just above her +Miss Baker had fastened, with drawing-pins, two photographs. One was a +crude coloured postcard of a red-roofed village among pine-forests. The +other was a portrait of a young man, moustached and smiling under a +spiked German helmet; across this photograph ran the autograph, "_Karl +Becker_." Thus the blue and guileless eyes of this young foreigner in +our midst could rest upon mementoes of her Fatherland and her family any +time she raised her blonde head from bending over her work. Both girls +looked up this morning as Gwenna, the last arrival, came in. They +scolded her good-naturedly because she'd brought none of those +chocolates she'd promised from the dinner-table. They asked how she'd +enjoyed herself at that party. + +It would have been presumably natural to the young Welsh girl to have +broken out into a bubblingly excited--"And, girls! _Who_ d'you suppose I +sat next. A real live airman! _And_, my dears!" (with a rapturous gasp), +"who should it be but the one I bought the photo of on Saturday! You +know; the one you called my young man--Mr. Dampier--Paul Dampier--Yes, +but wait; that isn't all. Just fancy! He talked to me yards and yards +about his new aeroplane, and I say, _what_ do you think! This was the +best. He's asked me to come up one day--yes, indeed! He's going to take +me flying--with him!" + +But, as it was, Gwenna said not one word of all this. She could not have +explained why, even to herself. Only she replied to Miss Butcher's, +"What was the party like?" with a flavourless, "Oh, it was all right, +thanks." + +That sounded _so_ English, she thought! + + +She had a dull day at the office. Dry-as-dust letters and +specifications, builders' quantities, and so on, to type out. Tiresome +calls on the telephone that had to be put through to the other +office.... + +Never before had she seemed to mind the monotony of those clicking keys +and that "_I'll inquire. Hold the line, please._" Never before had she +found herself irritated by the constant procession of men who were in +and out all day; including Mr. Grant, who sometimes seemed to _make_ +errands to talk to Miss Butcher, but who never stayed for more than a +moment, concluding invariably with the cheerful remark, "Well! Duty +calls, I must away." Men seemed actually to _enjoy_ "duty," Gwenna +thought. At least the men here did. All of them, from Mr. Henderson in +the other office to the brown-faced men in the yard with their +shirt-sleeves rolled up above tattooed arms, seemed to be "keen" on the +building, on the job in hand. They seemed glad to be together. Gwenna +wondered how they could.... + +To-day she was all out of tune. She was quite cross when, for the +second time, Albert, the seventeen-year old Cockney office-boy, bustled +in, stamping a little louder than was strictly necessary on the echoing +boards. He rubbed his hands together importantly, demanding in a voice +that began in a bass roar and ended in a treble squeak, "Those +specifications, miss. Quick, too, or you'll hear about it!" + +"Goodness _me_, what an ugly way you London boys do have of talking!" +retorted the Welsh girl pettishly. "_Sut_-ch an accent!" + +The rebuked Albert only snorted with laughter as he took her sheaf of +papers. Then, looking back over his shoulder at the pretty typist +perched on the edge of the centre table to refill her fountain pen, he +added in his breaking treble, "Don't you sit on that tyble, Miss! +_Sittin' on the tyble's s'posed to mean you want to be kissed_, and it +looks so bad! Don't it, Miss Butcher? There's other ways of gittin' orf +than that, isn't there?" + +"Outside!" snapped Miss Butcher, blushing, as the boy stumped away. + +Gwenna sighed angrily and longed for lunch-time, so that she could get +out. + + +At one o'clock, an hour after the buzzer had sounded for the mid-day +meal of the yard-men, the other two girls in the office would not even +come out for a breath of air. They had brought fruit and cake. They made +Bovril (with a kettle of hot water begged from the fatherly foreman) and +lunched where they'd sat all the morning. Miss Butcher, munching, was +deep in a library-book lent to her by the young electrician. Miss Baker +counted stitches in a new pattern for a crochet-work _Kante_, or length +of fine thread insertion. It was not unlike the pattern of the iron +trellis above the scaffolding, that tapered black against the sky; man's +fancy-work. + +What hideously tame things women had to fill their lives with, Gwenna +thought as she sat in the upper window of her tea-shop at the corner of +the Embankment. She watched the luncheon-time crowd walking over +Westminster Bridge. So many of these people were business-girls just +like herself and the Butcher and the Baker! Would anything more amusing +ever happen to them, or to her? + +But that German girl, Gwenna thought, would stare to hear her work +called "hideous" or "tame." It was her greatest interest. Already, she'd +told Gwenna, her bottom drawer at her boarding-house was crammed with +long, rolled-up crochet-work strips of white or creamy lace. There were +also her piles of tray-cloths, petticoat flounces and chemise-tops, all +hand-embroidered and bemonogrammed by Miss Baker herself. She was not +engaged to be married, but, as she'd artlessly said, "_Something_ a +young girl can have always ready." + +Day-dreams in crochet! + +"I'd rather never fall in love than have it all spoilt by mixing it up +with such a lot of sewing and cookery that it wouldn't get disentangled, +like," thought the dreamy, impatient Gwenna. She returned, to find the +German girl measuring her crochet lace against her arm and crying, +"Since Saturday I have made till there." ... + +Then Miss Baker turned to her German version of an English trade firm's +letter. Miss Butcher unfastened another packet of stationery. Miss +Williams fetched a number of envelopes from the inner office to be +addressed.... + +Would the afternoon _never_ come to an end? + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE INVITATION + + +At last six o'clock found her, released from the day's work and back at +her Club. + +But still, still there was no envelope addressed to Miss Gwenna Williams +stuck up in the criss-cross tapes of the green-baize-covered +letter-board in the hall. + +She went upstairs rather slowly to take off her hat. On the landing the +voice of Leslie Long called to her from the bathroom. + +"Come in here, Taffy. I'm washing blouses. I want to tell you some +news." + +Gwenna entered the steamy bathroom, to find her chum's tall figure bent +in two over the bath and up to its bare elbows in suds of Lux. + +"I say, child, you know your locket that you lost at my sister's?" +announced Leslie. "It's all right. It's been found." + +"Has it?" said Gwenna, not very enthusiastically. "Did I leave it in +Mrs. Smith's room?" + +"You didn't. You left it in Hugo Swayne's car," said Leslie, wringing +out the wet handful of transparent net that would presently serve her as +a garment. "That young man came up about half an hour ago to tell you." + +"Mr. Swayne did? How kind of him." + +"Yes, wasn't it? But not of Mr. Swayne," said Leslie, wringing. "It +was--just let out the water and turn me on some fresh hot, will you?--It +was the other one that came: the aviator boy." + +"What?" cried Gwenna sharply. "Mr. Dampier?" + +"Yes. Your bird-man. He came up here--in full plumage and song! Nice +grey suit--rather old; brown boots awfully well cleaned--by himself; +blue tie, very expensive Burlington Arcade one--lifted from his cousin +Hugo, I bet," enlarged Leslie, spreading the blouse out over the white +china edge of the bath. "I met him at the gate just as I got back from +my old lady's. He asked for my friend--meaning you. Hadn't grasped your +name. He came in for ten minutes. But he couldn't wait, Taffy, so----" + +Here, straightening herself, Leslie suddenly stopped. She stopped at the +sight of the small, blankly dismayed face with which her chum had been +listening to this chatter. + +And Gwenna, standing aghast against the frosted glass panes of the +bathroom door, pronounced, in her softest, most agitated Welsh accent, +an everyday Maid's Tragedy in just six words: + +"_He came! When I was out!_" + +"He was awfully sorry----" + +But Gwenna, seeming not to hear her friend, broke out: "He _said_ he'd +come and settle about taking me flying, and there was I _think_-ing he'd +forgotten all about it, and then he did come after all, and I wasn't +here! Oh, _Leslie_!----" + +Leslie, sitting on the edge of the bath, gave her a glance that was +serious and whimsical, rueful and tender, all at once. + +"Yes, you can't understand," mourned Gwenna, "but I _did_ so want to go +up in an aeroplane for once in my life! I'd set my heart on it, Leslie, +ever since he said about it. It's only now I see how badly I wanted it," +explained the younger girl, flushed with emotion, and relapsing into her +Welshiest accent, as do all the Welsh in their moments of stress. "And +_now_ I shan't get another chance. I know I shan't----" + +And such was the impetus of her grief that Leslie could hardly get her +to listen to the rest of the news that should be balm for this wound of +disappointment; namely, that Mr. Dampier was going to make an +appointment with both girls to come and have tea with him at his rooms, +either on Saturday or Sunday. + +"He'll write to you," concluded Leslie Long, "and let you know which. I +said we'd go either day, Taffy." + +Gwenna, caught up into delight again from the lowest depths of +disappointment, could hardly trust herself to speak. Surely Leslie must +think her a most _awful_ baby, nearly crying because she'd had an outing +postponed! So the young girl (laughing a little shakily) put up quite +a plucky fight to treat it all as quite a trifle.... + +Even the next morning at breakfast she took it quite casually that there +was a note upon her plate stamped with the address of the Aero Club. She +even waited a moment before she opened it and read in a handwriting as +small as if it had been traced by a crow-quill: + + "Monday night. + + "DEAR MISS WILLIAMS, + + "Will you and Miss Long come to tea with me at my place about 4.30 + on Sunday? I find I shall not have to go to Hendon on that day. + I'll come and call for you if I may. + + "Yours sincerely, + "P. DAMPIER." + +"At last!" thought Gwenna to herself, rather breathlessly, as she put +the note back into the envelope. "Now he'll settle about when I'm to go +flying with him. Oh! I do, _do_ hope there's nothing going to get in the +way of that!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +A BACHELOR'S TEA-PARTY + + +The first of a series of "things that got in the way" of Gwenna's making +an appointment to go flying occurred on that Sunday afternoon, when +Leslie and she were to have tea at Paul Dampier's place. + + +"A mixture of chaos and comfy chairs, I expect; ash everywhere, and +_beastly_ cakes. (I know these bachelor tea-parties.) That," Leslie +said, "is what his 'place' will be like." + +Gwenna, as usual, hadn't wasted any thoughts over this. She had been too +full of what their host himself would say and do--about the flying. She +was all ready, in the white dress, the white hat with the wings, half an +hour after Sunday mid-day dinner at the Ladies' Club. But it was very +nearly half-past four by the time Mr. Dampier did come, as he had +promised, to fetch the two girls. + +He came in the car that had driven them back on the night of the +dinner-party. + +And he was hurried, and apologetic for his lateness. He even seemed a +little shy. This had the effect of making Gwenna feel quite +self-possessed as she took the seat beside him ("I hate sitting by the +driver, really. Makes me _so_ nervous!" Leslie had declared) and +inquired whether he borrowed his cousin's car any time he had visitors. + +"Well, but Hugo's _got_ everything," he told her, with a twinkle, "so I +always borrow anything of his that I can collar!" + +"Studs, too?" asked Gwenna, quickly. + +"Oh, come! I didn't think it of you. _What_ a pun!" he retorted. + +She coloured a little, shy again, hurt. But he turned his head to look +at her, confided to her: "It was _on_ the chest-of-drawers, all the +time!" + +And, as the car whizzed westwards, they laughed together. That +dinner-table incident of the collar--or collared--stud brought, for the +second time, a sudden homely glow of friendly feeling between this boy +and girl. + +She thought, "He's just as easy to get on with as if he were another +girl, like Leslie----" + +For always, at the beginning of things, the very young woman compares +her first man-friend with the dearest girl-chum she has known. + +--"Or as if he were just nobody, instead of being so wonder-ful, and an +airman, good gracious!" + +Appropriately enough for an airman, his place seemed to be nearly on the +house-tops of a block of buildings near Victoria Street. + +The lift carried them up past six landings and many boards inscribed +with names of firms. It stopped at the seventh story, almost directly +opposite a cream-coloured door with a small, old-fashioned brass +knocker, polished like gold. + +Paul Dampier tapped sharply at it. + +The door was opened by a thick-set man in an excellent suit of clothes +and with the face of a wooden sphinx. + +"Tea as soon as you can, Johnson," said the young Airman over his +shoulder, as the trio passed in. + +The long sitting-room occupied half the flat and its windows took up the +whole of one side. It was to these open windows that Gwenna turned. + +"Oh, what a view!" she cried, looking out, enraptured at the height and +airiness, looking past the leads, with their wooden tubs of standard +laurel-bushes, among which pigeons were strutting and bridling and +pecking crumbs. She looked down, down, at the bird's-eye view of London, +spread far below her in a map of grey roofs and green tree-tops under a +soft mist of smoke that seemed of the clouds themselves. + +"Oh, can't you see for miles!" exclaimed Gwenna. "There's St. Paul's, +looks like a big grey soap-bubble, coming up out of the mist! Oh, you +can see between a crack in the houses, our place at Westminster! It's +like a cottage from here! Oh, and that iron lacey thing on the roof! +Even this must be something like being up in an aeroplane, I should +think! Look, Leslie!" + +Miss Long seemed more engrossed in looking round Mr. Dampier's bachelor +sitting-room. It was incredibly luxurious compared to what she'd +expected. The polished floor was black and shiny as the wood of the +piano at the further end, the Persian rugs softly brilliant. In the +middle of the Adams mantelpiece simpered an exquisite Chelsea +shepherdess; to the left and right of her there stood squat toys in +ivory, old slender-stalked champagne-glasses holding sweet-peas. And +upon the leaf-brown walls were decorations that seemed complacently to +draw attention to the catholic taste of their owner. A rare +eighteenth-century print of Tom Jones upon his knees, asking +"forgiveness" of his Sophia, hung just above a Futurist's grimace in +paint; and there was a frieze of ultra-modern French fashion-designs, +framed in _passe-partout_, from the "_Bon Ton_." + +"What a--what a surprising number of pictures you have, Mr. Dampier," +said Leslie, mildly. "Hasn't he, Taffy?" + +Gwenna, turning at last from the window, realised dimly that this +sophisticated room did seem somehow out of keeping as an eyrie for this +eagle. The view outside, yes! But these armchairs? And she wouldn't have +thought that he would have bothered to have things _pretty_, like +this---- + +"And what a lot of books you've got," she said. For the wall opposite to +the windows was taken up by bookshelves, set under a trophy of swords of +out-of-date patterns, and arranged with some thought. + +The top shelves held volumes of verse, and of plays, from Beaumont and +Fletcher to Galsworthy. The Russian novelists were ranged together; also +the French. There was a corner for Sudermann and Schnitzler. A shelf +further down came all the English moderns, and below that all the +_Yellow Books_, a long blue line of all the _English Reviews_, from the +beginning; a stack of _The New Age_, and a lurid pink-covered copy of +_Blast_. + +But before Gwenna could wonder further over these possessions of this +young man, more incongruous possessions were brought in by the +Sphinx-faced man-servant; a tea-table of beaten copper, a +peasant-embroidered cloth, a tea-service of old Coalport; with a silver +spirit-kettle, with an iced cake, with toast, and wafer, +bread-and-butter and cress-sandwiches and Parisian _petits-fours_ that +all seemed, as the young girl put it simply to herself, "So unlike +_him_!" + +Her chum had already guessed the meaning of it all. + +The Dampier boy's rooms? _His_ library and ornaments? Ah, no. He'd never +read one of all those books there. Not he! And these were not the type +of "things" he'd buy, even if he'd had the money to throw away, thought +Leslie. It was no surprise to that young woman when the legitimate owner +of this lavishly appointed _garçonnière_ made his sudden appearance in +the middle of tea. + + +The click of a latchkey outside. Two masculine voices in the hall. Then +the door was thrown open. + +There walked in a foreign-looking young man, with bright dark eyes and a +small moustache, followed by Mr. Hugo Swayne, attired in a Victorian +mode that, as Leslie put it afterwards, "cried '_Horse, horse!_' where +there was no horse." His tall bowler was dove-grey; his black stock +allowed a quarter-inch of white collar to appear; below his striking +waistcoat dangled a bunch of seals and a fob. This costume Leslie +recognised as a revival of the Beggarstaff Touch. Gwenna wondered why +this young man seemed always to be in fancy dress. Leslie could have +told her that Mr. Swayne's laziness and vanity had led him to abandon +himself on the coast of Bohemia, where he had not been born. His father +had been quite a distinguished soldier in Egypt. His father's son took +things more easily at the Grafton Gallery and the Café Royal and +Artists' Clubs. He neither painted, wrote, nor composed, but his life +was set largely among flatterers who did these things--after a fashion. + +He came in saying, "Now this is where I live when I'm----" + +He broke off with a start at the sight of the party within. The girls +turned to him with surprised and smiling greeting. + +Paul Dampier, fixing him with those blue eyes, remarked composedly, +"Hullo, my dear chap. Have some tea, won't you? I'll ring for Johnson to +bring in two more cups." + +"That will be very nice," said Hugo Swayne, rising to the occasion with +all the more grace because he was backed up by a tiny understanding +glance from Miss Long. And he introduced his young Frenchman by a name +that made Leslie exclaim, "Why! You are that Post-Impressionist painter, +aren't you?" + +"Not I, mademoiselle, but my brother," returned Hugo's French friend, +slowly and very politely. His dark face was simple and intelligent as +that of a nice child; he sat up as straight in his chair as he talked. +"It is for that Mr. Swayne, who is admirer of my brother's pictures, is +so amiable for to show me London. Me, I am not artiste. I am ingénieur +only." + +"'Only'!" thought Gwenna over her teacup. + +Surely any one should be proud of being an engineer, considering that +Mr. Dampier had thus begun _his_ career; he who was now in what the +romantic girl considered the First of All Professions? Perhaps her +attitude towards the Airman as such was noted by the Airman's cousin. +Hugo, who had dropped a little heavily into the softest chair near Miss +Long, turned his Chopinesque profile against a purple cushion to shoot a +rather satirical glance at the cleaner-built youth in the worn grey +suit. + +"Now, how like a man! He doesn't admire Taffy particularly, but he's +piqued to see her admire another type." Leslie summed this up quickly to +herself. "Not really a bad sort; he behaved well about the invasion of +these rooms. But he's like all these well-off young men who potter about +antique shops when they ought to be taking exercise--he's plenty of +feminine little ways. Since they call spitefulness 'feminine'!" + +There was a distinctly spiteful note in the young man's voice as he made +his next remark to his cousin. + +This remark surprised even Leslie for a moment. + +And to Gwenna's heart it struck with a sudden, unreasonable shock of +consternation. + +For Mr. Swayne inquired blandly across the tea-table: + +"Well, Paul; how's your _fiancée_?" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +LAUGHING ODDS + + +Before he answered, Gwenna had time to think smartingly, "His _fiancée_! +There! I might have _known_ he was engaged. I might have guessed it! +It's nothing to do with me.... Only ... I believe _that's_ what's going +to get in the way of my flying with him. She won't let him. I mean he'll +always be taking her up! And I know who it is, too. It's sure to be the +one called Muriel that I saw go up with him at Hendon with the red hair +and the scarf. I sort of guessed when I heard they were going up +together that she must be his _fiancée_." + +And all the while her eyes were, apparently, on the silver stand of the +spirit-kettle, they watched the young Airman's face (which looked a +little sheepish). She listened, tensely, for his reply. Quite shortly +Paul Dampier, still munching cake, said, "Who? Oh! Going on as usual, +thanks." + +"Now I may tell you that _that's_ merely a pose to conceal devotion," +laughed his cousin, turning to Gwenna. "Just as if every moment were not +grudged that he spends away from HER!" + +"Is it?" said the young girl with a smile. There was a bad lump in her +throat, but she spoke with her most carefully-fostered "English" +accent. "I--I suppose that's natural!" she remarked. + +Hugo, fondling his Chopin curl again, went on amusing himself with this +chosen subject. + +"But, as is so often the case with a young man's fancy," he announced, +"nobody else sees anything in 'her'!" + +The stricken Gwenna looked quickly at young Dampier, who was cutting the +Titan wedges that men call "slices," of cake. How would _he_ take it +that it had been said of his adored one that no one saw anything in her? + +He only gave a short laugh, a confident nod of his fair head and said, +"They will, though." + +"Infatuated youth!" commented Hugo Swayne, resignedly, leaning back. +"And he tries to cover it up by seeming casual. '_Going on as usual_' is +said just as a blind. It sounds so much more like a mere wife than a +_fiancée_, don't you think?" + +"Ah, but you are cynique, monsieur," protested the young Frenchman, +looking mildly shocked. "For you it is not sacred, the love for a wife?" + +"Oh, look here! Hadn't you better explain to them," broke in Paul +Dampier boyishly, having finished a large mouthful of his cake, "that +you're rotting? _Fiancée_, indeed. Haven't got such a thing in the +world, of course." + +At this Gwenna suddenly felt as if some crushing weight of +disappointment had fallen from her. "It's because I shall be able to go +flying with him after all," she thought. + +Young Dampier, rising to take her cup, grumbled laughingly, "D'you +suppose girls will look at a man nowadays who can't afford to spend the +whole of his time gadding about after 'em, Hugo, as you can, or blowing +what's my salary for an entire year on their engagement-rings----" + +"My dear fellow, no girl in the world exacts as much of a man's time and +money as that _grande passion_ of yours does," retorted Hugo Swayne, not +ill-naturedly. And turning to Leslie, he explained: "What I call Paul's +_fiancée_ is that eternal aeroplane he's supposed to be making." + +"Ah!" said Gwenna, and then blushed violently; partly because she hadn't +meant to speak, and partly because this had drawn the blue eyes of the +Airman quickly upon herself. + +"Yes, that incessant flying-machine of his," enlarged Mr. Swayne, +lolling back in his chair and addressing the meeting. "She--I believe +it's correct to call the thing 'she'?--is more of a nuisance even than +any engaged girl I've ever met. She interferes with everything this man +does. Ask him to come along to a dance or the Opera or to see some +amusing people, and it's always 'Can't; I'm working on the cylinder or +the spiral or the Fourth Dimension' or whatever it is he does think he's +working on. Practically 'she' spends all the time he's away from her +ringing him up, or getting him rung up, on the telephone. 'She' eats all +his spare cash, too----" + +"In steel instead of chocolate, I suppose?" smiled Leslie. "And must +she be humoured? She seems to have every drawback of a young woman with +'a diamond half-hoop.' Is she jealous, as well?" + +And then, while taking a cigarette from Hugo's case, the elder girl +made, lightly, a suggestion that the listening Gwenna was fated to +remember. + +"What would happen," asked Leslie dryly, "if a real flesh-and-blood +_fiancée_ were to come along as a rival to the one of machinery?" + +"Nothing would happen," Hugo assured her, holding out a lighted match. +"That's why it would be rather interesting to watch. The complication of +the Aeroplane or the Lady. The struggle in the mind of the young +Inventor, what? The Girl"--he tossed aside the match and glanced +fleetingly at the grave cherub's-face under Gwenna's white-winged +hat--"The Girl versus the Flying Machine. I'd lay fifteen to one on the +Machine, Miss Long." + +"Done," said Leslie, demurely but promptly. "In half-crowns." + +"Yes! You'd back your sex, of course," Hugo took up gaily. The young +Frenchman murmured: "But the Machine--the Machine is also of the sex of +Mademoiselle." + + +Here, suddenly, the silently listening Gwenna gave a tiny shiver. She +turned her head abruptly towards the open windows behind her with the +strutting pigeons and the sailing clouds beyond. It had seemed to the +fanciful Celt that there in that too dainty room now hazy with +cigarette-smoke, in that careless company of two girls and three young +men, she had felt the hint of another Presence. It was rather horrid and +ghostly--all this talk of a Machine that was made more of than a Woman! +A Machine who "clawed" the man that owned her, just like a jealous +betrothed who will not let her lover out of her sight! And supposing +that Conflict did come, on which Gwenna's chum and Mr. Dampier's cousin +had laid their laughing bets? The struggle between the sweetheart of +steel springs and the sweetheart of soft flesh and warm blood? For one +clear instant Gwenna knew that this fight would, must come. It was +coming---- + + +Then she turned her head and forgot her presentiments; coming back to +the light-hearted Present. She watched Leslie, to whom the young +Frenchman had been talking; he was now fixing dark earnest eyes upon +"Mademoiselle Langue" as she, in the rather stilted phraseology with +which our nation speaks its own language for the benefit of foreigners, +expounded to him an English story. + +There was a short pause. + +Then the room rang to the laughter of the foreigner. "Ha! Yes! I have +understood him! It is very amusing, that! It is good!" he cried +delightedly, with a flash of white teeth and dark eyes. "He say, 'There +are parts of it that are excellent!' Aha! _Très spirituel_," and he +laughed again joyously over the story of the Curate's Egg, while Hugo +murmured something about how stimulating it was to hear, for once, the +Immemorial Anecdote fall upon Virgin Soil. + +The young Airman moved nearer to Gwenna, who, still watching Leslie, +gave a little start to hear that deep and gentle voice so close beside +her as he spoke. + +"Look here, we haven't settled up yet," he said, his voice gentle but +carrying above the chatter of the others. "About that flying. Sunday +this week I have got to be off somewhere. Now, are you free next +Saturday?" + +Gwenna, eager and tremulous, was just about to say, "Yes." But Hugo +Swayne interrupted. + +"I say, I hate to make mischief. But if you're talking about +Saturday----? D'you remember, Paul? It was the only day I could take you +down to Ascot to see Colonel Conyers." + +"Oh, Lord, so it was," said the young Airman, turning an apologetic face +to the girl. "I'm so sorry," he explained, "but this is a man I've +simply got to get hold of if I can. It's the Air-craft Conyers--'Cuckoo' +Conyers they call him. And he was a friend of Hugo's father, and what +I've been trying to see him about is working the War-office to take up +my new Machine----" + +"The _Fiancée_ again, you notice," laughed his cousin, with an +imperceptible aside to Leslie. "Score to the Aeroplane." + +"Yes, I see," said Gwenna, nodding at the Airman. "Of course! I mean of +course I don't mind!" + +"Then shall we say Saturday week for you to come up with me instead?" +suggested young Dampier. + +And Gwenna agreed to the date, thinking, "If only nothing stops it +again! If only there isn't something else, then, to do with his Machine! +That Machine! I----" Here she paused. + +After all, it would be too ridiculous to allow oneself even to think +that one "_hated_" a machine! + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A DAY IN THE COUNTRY + + +Eagerly as Gwenna longed to fly, she was not to do so even yet. + +After that appointment made at Hugo Swayne's rooms she lived through a +fortnight of dreaming, tingling anticipation. Then came another of those +brief direct notes from "_hers, P. Dampier_." The girl jumped for joy. +It was not to be at Hendon this time, but at Brooklands. Was she not +rapidly gaining experiences? First Hendon, then Brooklands; at this rate +she would soon know all the flying-grounds--Shoreham, Eastchurch, +Farnborough, all of them! + +"I'll call for you," the note said, "in the car." + +"'_The_' car is good," commented Leslie, arranging a mist-blue scarf +over Gwenna's small hat just before she started off on this expedition. +"_In the Army all things are in common, including money and tobacco_ but +the Dampier boy isn't in the Army." + +"Why shouldn't he?" took up Gwenna, ungrammatically and defiantly. She +considered Mr. Swayne's motor was honoured by this other young man who +condescended to drive it, to fetch and whirl away with him a girl who +felt herself a nymph about to be swept up and up above the clouds to +some modern version of Elysium. + +So twelve o'clock that Saturday morning (Gwenna having obtained special +leave of absence from the office) found the young man and the girl +speeding through Kensington and Hammersmith, on the Woking Road. + +The sun was hot above them; the road white; the hedges so dusty that +they seemed grey ribbons streaming past. Gwenna scarcely realised how +they went. She sat there beside him, thrilled and breathless, hardly +knowing to which delight to give herself up, that of the coming flight, +that of the present swift drive in the fresh breeze, or that of the +companionship of this Demigod of Modern Times, whose arm almost touched +hers sometimes as he moved or turned, or put on the brake. + +Except for an occasional remark to the car: "Come on, don't be funny, +old lady, don't be funny," or "Now for the hills; watch her sit down and +laugh at 'em!" he spoke little; Gwenna didn't particularly want him to +speak. The girl was in a golden and moving dream, and scarcely knew +where it carried her. + + +She came out of that dream, not with a shock, but gradually. Was the car +slowing down? It stopped; stopped in a wide part of that dust-white road +between the tall, dust-grey hedges, opposite to a creosoted +telegraph-pole spiked with nails. Through a gap in the hedge Gwenna +caught sight of a moon-daisied field, with a dark hedge and trees +beyond. Not a house, not a cottage in sight. This couldn't be +Brooklands? + + +"Hul-lo," the boy was muttering. "What's up now?" + +"What is it?" she asked. + +He did not reply. This was not rudeness, as she guessed, but intentness; +he took it for granted that she would not understand the mechanical +explanation. Resignedly she said to herself, "Machinery gone wrong? +Sometimes it really seems as if that were all machinery ever _did_ do! +Yet that's what he said he was interested in, more than anything!" + +He was out of the car and had flung back the bonnet. Then he took off +his coat and hung it up on one of the nails on that telegraph-pole. He +pushed up his shirt-sleeves and bent over the tool-box on the step. + +Sitting there on the hot leather, Gwenna watched him, she heard the +chinking of wrenches and spanners. Then he returned to the bonnet again, +fumbling, handling, burrowing, grunting at things.... Ten minutes +elapsed.... + +He then broke out emphatically: "Oh, _Lord_! I _have_ done it _now_!" + +"Done what?" asked the girl anxiously. + +In tightening a nut with a spanner the spanner had slipped. He had +broken the porcelain insulation of the plug controlling the current. + +And now, good-humouredly smiling at his guest, he leaned on the door of +the car with his brown forearms crossed and said, "Short circuited. Yes. +I'm afraid that's killed it." + +"Killed what?" asked little Gwenna, in affright. + +"Our flying for to-day," he said. + +He went on to speak about "spare parts," and how it would be necessary +to send some one back to fetch--something--Gwenna didn't care what it +was. Her heart sank in dismay. No flying? Must they go back after all, +now? + +"Can't we get on?" she sighed. + +He shook his shining head. + +"We can make a picnic of it, anyhow," he said more encouragingly. "Shall +you be all right here if I run back to that inn we passed just now with +the bit of green outside? I shan't be ten minutes. Send some one off on +a bicycle, and bring some grub back here." + +He jerked on his coat and was off. + + +Little Gwenna, sitting there waiting in the useless car--her small, +disconsolate face framed in the gauze scarf with which she'd meant to +bind her curls for the flying--was passed by half a dozen other motors +on the road to Brooklands. It did not strike her, dreamily downcast as +she was, that surely what the messenger from the inn was being +despatched to fetch might have been borrowed from one of these other +motorists? Some of them, surely, would be men who knew young Paul +Dampier quite well. Any of them might have come to the rescue? + +This, as a matter of fact, had struck Paul Dampier at once. But he +didn't want to go on to Brooklands! Brooklands? Beastly hot day; crowds +of people; go up in an affair like an old Vanguard? + +What he wanted, after a hard day's work yesterday on his own (so +different) Machine, was a day's peace and quiet and to think things a +bit over about her (the Machine) lying on his back somewhere shady, with +a pipe. Actually, he would rather have been alone. But this little girl, +Miss Williams.... She was all right. Not only pretty ... but such a +quiet, sensible sort of little thing. He'd take her up another time, +since she was keen. He certainly would take her up. Not to-day. To-day +they'd just picnic. _She_ wouldn't want to be giggling and chattering +about herself the whole time, and all that sort of thing, like some of +them. She liked to listen. + +She'd be interested to hear what he'd been doing lately, about the +Machine. For a girl, she was pretty bright, and even if she didn't grasp +things at once, she evidently liked hearing about the Machine; besides +which, it often cleared one's own ideas to one's self, to have to set +'em out and explain about the machinery very simply, to some one who was +keen, but who hadn't a notion. They'd have a nice, peaceful time, this +afternoon; somewhere cool, instead of Brooklands. And a nice long +talk--_all_ about the Machine. + + +He returned to the girl waiting in the car. Gwenna, cheering up at the +sight of him, saw that his pockets were bulging with bottles, and that +he carried a square, straw basket. + +"There. I might have taken Hugo's luncheon-basket and filled that while +I was about it; only I forgot there was one," he said, standing on the +road and screwing up his eyes a little in the midday sun as he faced +the car. "It's nicer eating out of doors, when you get a chance. Beastly +dusty on the road here, though, and things going by all the time and +kicking up clouds of it all over you. We'll find a pitch in that field." + +So she jumped down from her seat and the two left the glaring road and +got through that gap in the hedgerow where maybush and blackberry trail +and grass and campion alike were all thickly powdered and drooping with +dust. + +The boy and girl skirted another hedge that ran at right angles to the +road. Half-way up that field a big elm tree spread a patch of shade at +its base like a dark-green rug for them to sit on. Paul Dampier put his +coat down also. They sat, with moon-daisies and branching buttercups, +and cow-parsley all sweet and clean about them. + +Here the country-bred girl, forgetting her disappointment, gave a quick +little sigh of content. She glanced about her at the known faces of +flower-friends in the grass; a diaper of colours. Each year she had +loved the time when white daisies and red sorrel and yellow rattle +flaunted together over the heads of the lower-growing clovers and +speedwells and potentillas. This year it seemed lovelier than ever. She +put out her hand and pulled up a lance of jointed grass, nibbling the +soft, pale-green end of it. + +"Here, are you as hungry as all that?" laughed young Dampier at her +side. "We'll feed." + +He let Gwenna spread out upon the clean dinner-napkin in which they were +wrapped the provisions that he had brought from the inn. + +"All I could get. Bread-and-cheese. Couple of hunks of cold beef. +Butter--salt," he said, giving her the things as he named them. "Plates +I said we wouldn't worry about; chuck the crumbs to the birds. Here's +what I got to drink; cider. D'you like it?" + +"Love it," said Gwenna, who had never happened to taste it. But she knew +that she would love it. + +"Good. Oh! _Now_ I've forgotten the glass, though," exclaimed young +Dampier, sitting up on his knees on the shaded patch of grass beside +her. "We shall both have to use the lower half of my flask. Sorry--hope +you don't mind." + +Gwenna, taking her first taste of cider in bird-like sips from that +oblong silver thing, remembered the old saying, "Drink from my cup and +you will think my thoughts." Then he put down upon the dinner napkin the +half-loaf and the lump of cheese that he had been munching. He took the +half of the flask, simply, out of the girl's hand, poured out more +cider, and drank in turn. + +"That's better," he said, smiling. She smiled back at him. + +She had ceased to feel any shyness of this fair-haired aviator who +rested there beside her in this oasis of shade from the elm, while +beyond them stretched the wide, dazzlingly bright desert of the +flowering meadow, bounded by its hedges. He cut off the crusty part of +the loaf for her (since she said she liked it). He sliced for her the +damp and pinkish beef, since she would not confide to him her deep and +feminine loathing of this fare. The woman is not yet born who can look +upon cold meat as a food. And they drank in turn from his silver flask. +This was their third meal together; yet Gwenna felt that she had been +grown-up and conscious of delight in the world about her only since they +had met. + +Ease and gaiety rose between them in a haze like that which vibrated +over the warm hay-field where they feasted. + +"I say, I shall have to give a lunch at the Carlton to everybody I +know," he laughed, half to himself, presently, "if I do get Colonel +Conyers to make 'em take up the P.D.Q." Then, turning more directly to +her. "Sorry--you don't know that joke. It's my Aeroplane, you know." + +"Oh, yes, the one Mr. Swayne calls your _Fiancée_!" took up Gwenna +quickly. Then she wished she hadn't said that. She reddened. She turned +her supple little body to toss crumbs to a yellow-hammer that was eyeing +them from a branch in the hedge behind her. And then she asked. "Why +'the P.D.Q.'?" + +"Because she will be the Paul Dampier One, I hope," explained the young +inventor, "and I always think of her as that other because it means +'Pretty Dam--Dashed Quick.'" + +"Oh, is that it?" said Gwenna. + +She echoed crossly to herself, "'_I always think of her_' indeed! It +sounds like----" + +And she finished her thought with the hardest-working word in her native +tongue; the Welsh for sweetheart. + +"It does sound just as if he were talking about his _cariad_." + +Absently she brushed more crumbs off her side of the dinner-napkin. + +For one-half only of Gwenna now seemed to note that they were eating +crusty loaf and drinking cider out of doors between a lupin-blue sky and +a flowerful meadow; the other was conscious of nothing but her +companion; of the clear friendliness of his eyes, those eyes of Icarus! +Of his deep and gentle voice saying, "Mind if I smoke? You don't, I +know," of those brown hard-looking forearms from which he had not +troubled to pull down the sleeves, of his nearness. + +Suddenly he came nearer still. + +He had not stopped talking of his aeroplane, but she hardly remembered +that she had asked him the meaning of one of the expressions that he had +used. + +He was repeating it. + +"'Camber?' ... Well, it's a curve. A curve like----" He glanced about +for an example of the soft, end-wise curve on the great wings of an +aeroplane; his eyes passing quickly from the green hedge to the ground, +to the things on the picnic cloth, to Gwenna Williams's small hand as it +rested in the grass. + +She wondered, thrilled, if the young Airman were actually going to take +hold of her hand. + +He did take her hand, as simply as he had taken the silver cup from it. +He bent it over so that her wrist made a gentle curve. He passed his own +large fingers across it. + +"Yes; there--that's the curve," he said. "Almost exactly." + +It might have been a caress. + +But, done as he did it, the light movement was nothing of the kind. +Instinct told the girl that. It wasn't her small and soft and +pink-palmed hand that he was thinking of holding. She looked at him as +he said, "That's the curve," and she caught a gleam of quickened +interest in his eyes. But in one mortified flash she knew that this had +nothing to do with her. She guessed that at this moment he'd forgotten +that there was a girl sitting there beside him at all. + +And she knew why. + +Angrily she said to herself, "He's thinking of nothing but that old +machine of his! And I do--yes, I do, _do_ hate her!" + +Then she sat for a moment still as the elm-trunk against which she'd +been leaning. + +She had been struck thus motionless by a thought. + +Something had been brought home to her by that sharp and sudden twinge +of--Jealousy! + +Yes! She knew now! What she felt, and must have been feeling for days +past, was what they meant by falling in love. + +"That's what I've done!" she thought rapidly; half in consternation, +half in delight. "It's beginning to happen what Mr. Swayne was talking +about at that tea: the Girl or the Flying Machine!" + +She glanced towards the gap in the hedge as if to look at the car that +had brought them, motionless by the road-side; she turned her face away +from the Airman, who sat lighting a pipe with the shadows of the +elm-branches dappling his fair head and shirt-sleeved shoulders. + +She was blushing warmly at her own thoughts. + +"It's only the flying-machine he cares about! He does like me, too; in a +way.... If only he'd forget that other for a minute! But if he won't," +thought Gwenna, happening upon an ancient piece of feminine philosophy, +"I'd rather have him talking about _her_ than not talking to me at all!" + +She spoke aloud, sedately but interestedly. + +"Oh, is _that_ a camber?" That light touch of his seemed still upon her +wrist, though he had withdrawn it carelessly at once. She paused, then +said, "And what was that other thing, Mr. Dampier? Something about an +angle?" + +"A dihedral angle?" he said, drawing at that pipe. "Oh, that's the angle +you see from the front of the thing. It's--look, it's like that." + +This time it was not her hand he took as an illustration. He pointed, +pipe in hand, to where, above the opposite hedge, a crow was sailing +slowly, a vandyke of black across the cloudless blue. + +"See that bird? It's that very slight V he makes; _now_." + +"And this machine of yours?" persisted the girl, with a little twitch of +her mouth for the rival whom he, it seemed, always thought of as "the +P.D.Q." and whom Gwenna must always think of as "the _Fiancée_." She +wondered where it lived, the creature that meant all to him. She said, +"Where--where d'you _make_ that machine?" + +"Oh, I'm afraid it isn't a machine yet, you see. It's only a model of +one, so far. You know, like a model yacht," he explained. "That's the +worst of it. You see, you can make a model do anything. It's when you +get the thing life-size that the trouble begins. Model doesn't give a +really fair idea of what you've got to get. The difficulties--it's never +the real thing." + +Gwenna thought, "It must be like making love to the person you aren't +really in love with!" But what she said, with her hand stripping a spike +of flowering grass, was, "I suppose it's like practising scales and all +that on a mute piano?" + +"Never tried", he said. Then: "_The model's_ at my own place, my rooms +in"----here he broke off with a laugh. He looked straight into her face +and said, still laughing, and in a more personal tone: + +"Not in Victoria Street. I say, you spotted that _that_ place wasn't +mine, didn't you?" + +"Leslie 'spotted' and said so, afterwards," admitted Gwenna demurely, +picking and sniffing at a piece of pink clover before she fastened it +into her white blouse. "I did think at the time that it wasn't--wasn't +the sort of place where you'd find a man living who _did_ things, like." + +"Rather rough on old Hugo." + +"Well, but _does_ he do things?" + +"He doesn't have to. He'd be all right if he did. Sweat some of that +beef off him, give him something to think about," averred his cousin, +carelessly knocking out his pipe against the heel of his shoe. "But, you +know, my place is in Camden Town; most inferior. Three rooms over a +paper shop; two small cubby-holes where I sleep and eat, and a rather +bigger one where I keep the 'P.D.Q.' stuff. I couldn't have you there +that Sunday." + +"Why not?" Gwenna asked sharply, and jealous again. It was almost as if +the _Fiancée_ had said to him, "_No, not here_!" + +"Because," he said with a chuckle, "because at the last moment, when I'd +got the tea ready and everything"--he tossed his fair head back--"a fall +of soot down the chimney! Everything in the most ghastly mess! Pitch +black wherever you put a finger. I simply couldn't--it was four o'clock +then; I expect you both thought it rotten of me. Still," he concluded, +rather ruefully, "I couldn't give you the sort of polite tea Hugo can, +anyhow." + +"I don't want polite teas!" Gwenna protested, looking round at the field +where she had feasted as if in Elysium. "You don't suppose I care for +things all grand like that, do you?" + +He responded, "Would you care to see my Camden Town place, then, and the +model? You and Miss Long. It's quite near you, you know." + +"Yes, I should," said Gwenna quietly, stripping her grass. + + +How could he, she wondered, ask if she "cared" for these things that +opened out new worlds to her? If he only knew, just to be with him was +part of that new, soaring freedom which to her was summed up in the idea +of flying! This, she felt, _was_ flying. She didn't care, after all, if +there were no other flying that afternoon. Care? _She_ wouldn't mind +sitting there until the sun slipped slowly downwards towards the western +hedge and the moon-daisies closed in the tall grass, and clouds of other +tiny flying creatures poised and hovered above them. _She_ wasn't sorry +that the mechanic did not return in haste to minister to that +broken-down car. When she did remember about it, it was almost to hope +that he would not be back! Not just yet! Not to put an end to this +golden afternoon of talk that, trivial as it was, seemed to her to be +the endowment of a new faculty, and of comradeship that was as beguiling +and satisfying as that of her bosom-chum, Leslie. Only newer, only more +complete. So it seemed to Gwenna, as the shadows moved further up the +grass where she sat with her new boy-friend. + +For it is a commonplace that in all comradeship between man and woman +passionate love claims a share. But also in all passionate love there is +more comradeship than the unimaginative choose to admit; there is a +happy inner meaning to the cottage phrase, "To keep company with." + + +What he thought about it she did not know. Except that he surely must +like talking to her? He could not go on like this out of politeness. + +Ah, besides--! Besides, she knew, without reasoning about it, that, even +with that absorbing interest of the aeroplane in the background, he did +like her. Just as Leslie, her other friend, who also knew so much more +than she did, had liked her at once. + +"Only," decided Gwenna, in the uttermost depths of her shy and daring +heart, "only he's _got_ to like me, some day, better than Leslie ever +could. He must. Yes; he _must_!" + +And she thought it so ardently that she almost expected him, catching +her thought, to answer it in words. She looked--no, he had caught +nothing. But, meeting his eyes again, her own read a message that her +fluttered mind had been told before this, but would scarcely let her +believe. He thought she was pretty to look at. She had taken off her hat +now, as she liked to do in the open air, and the light breeze tossed her +short locks about. + +"I _believe_ he thinks," Gwenna told herself, "that my hair's nice." + + +As a matter of fact she was right. If she could have read her +companion's thoughts at the moment she would have known of a quite +foolish but recurrent wish on his part. A wish that he might just run +his fingers through all those brown and thickly-twisting curls, to find +out if they felt as silky as they looked. + +A lark was carolling over her head, soaring, poising, poising, soaring, +and singing all the while.... + +"That's what we can't do, even yet; _hover_," he said. And again he went +on talking to the Little Thing (in his mind this babyish-faced but quite +quick-witted girl was now always to be "the Little Thing") about the +chance of getting Colonel Conyers to take up that invention of his. + +"I'm to go to spend the week-end at Ascot with him and have another talk +about it," he said. "I know he's dead keen. _He_ knows that it's +aeroplanes that are going to make all the difference; simply knock out, +under some conditions, any other form of scouting. In modern warfare, +you know--it's bound to come, some time--anybody with any sense knows +that----" + +"Yes, of course," agreed Gwenna, watching him as he stretched himself +lazily out, chest downwards, elbows in, on the grass, chin propped in +his hands, talking (all about the Machine). + +"If he gave me a chance to build Her--make trial flights in the P.D.Q.! +If he'd only back me----" + +"Oh, he will, surely!" said Gwenna, her whole small face brightening or +sobering in response to every modulation of his voice. + +It was jolly, he thought, to find a girl who wasn't in the least bored +by "Shop." She _was_ a very jolly Little Thing. So sensible. No +nonsense about her, thought the boy. + + +And she, when at last they rose and left the place, threw a last look +back at that patch of sky above the hedge, where the black crow had made +a dihedral angle, at that brooding elm, at that hay field, golden in the +level rays, at that patch of dusty road where the car had pulled up, at +that black telegraph-pole where he had hung up his coat. That picture +was graven, as by a tool, into the very heart of the girl. + + +At the end of an expedition that a young woman of more experience and +less imagination would have pronounced "tame enough," Gwenna, +bright-eyed and rosy from her day in the sunshine, could hardly believe +that a whole lifetime had not elapsed since last she'd seen the +everyday, the humdrum and incredibly dull Club where she lived. + +She burst into her chum's bedroom as Leslie was going to bed. + +"Taffy--back at last?" smiled Leslie, between the curtains of black hair +on either side of her nightgown. "How's flying?--_What?_" she exclaimed, +"you didn't go up at all? Broke down on the way to Brooklands? I say! +How rotten for you, my poor lamb. Had anything to eat?" + +"I think so--I mean, rather! He gave me a _lovely_ lunch on the road +while we were waiting for the man to mend the car--and then we'd tea at +a cottage while he was doing it--and then there wasn't time to do +anything but come back to town," explained Gwenna breathlessly, +untying her scarf; "and then we'd sort of dinner at the inn before we +started back; they brought out a table and things into the garden under +the trees." + +"What did you have for dinner?" + +"I don't know. Oh, there were gooseberries," said Gwenna vaguely, "and a +lamp. And the moths all came. Oh, Leslie! It's _been_ so splendid!" She +caught her breath. "I mean, it was _dreat_ful about no flying, but----" + +"Glad the afternoon wasn't entirely a washout," said Miss Long, in an +even voice as she plaited her hair. + +"By the way, did the Dampier boy give you back that locket of yours?" + +"I forgot all about it," said Gwenna, picking up the head of pink clover +that had fallen out of her blouse. "I'll ask him next time. He's going +to take me up soon, you know, again." + +Just as an alarm is "set" to sound at some given hour, so the whole of +the girl's innocent being was set, to wait and wait for that "next time" +of meeting him--whenever it should be. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +LESLIE, ON "THE ROOTS OF THE ROSE" + + +Leslie Long was lounging in a rickety deck-chair under the acacia tree +that overshadowed the small lawn behind the Ladies' Residential Club. +Miss Long looked nonchalantly untidy and her hair was coming down again. +But she had an eye to an occasion on which she meant to shine. She was +carefully darning a pair of silk stockings, stockings she was to wear +with her all-mauve Nijinski rig at a costume dance in a week's time. She +was looking forward to that dance. + +It was a late Saturday afternoon, a fortnight after that Saturday that +Gwenna Williams had spent in the country with the Dampier boy. Most of +the girls in the Club were out somewhere now. Only one of the students +from the College of Music was practising Liszt's "Liebestraum." +Presently however, a sunshine-yellow jersey coat appeared on the steps +at the back entrance of the Club. Gwenna Williams was looking out. She +saw her chum in the garden and ran down to her; dropping upon the lawn +at her feet, and nestling her curly head down upon the lengthy knee that +supported the darning-basket. + +Gwenna's small face looked petulant, miserable. She felt it. Leslie, to +whom, of course, the other girl was as an open book, asked no question. +She left that to Gwenna, who had never, so far, made any spoken +admission of what had happened--or not happened--since the evening when +they had dressed together to go to that dinner-party at the Smiths'. It +was Gwenna who asked the first question. + +With a stormy and troubled sigh, she broke out, à propos of nothing: +"How is one to make him? I mean how is one ever to get a young man to +like one if he hardly ever sees one?" + +Leslie looked down at her over the second mauve stocking that she was +drawing over a yellow wooden darning mushroom. + +"Tut," said Leslie, with her usual mock unction. "What is all this about +'getting' a young man to like one? What an expression, my love. And, +worse; what a _sentiment_! Surely you know that men (nice men) think +very lightly of a girl who does not have to be _wooed_. With deference, +Taffy. With _reverence_. With hovering uncertainty and suspense +and--er--the rest of that bag of tricks." + +The soft, persistent notes of the "Liebestraum" coming through the open +Club windows filled a short pause. Leslie threaded her needle with mauve +silk, then took up her mushroom--and her theme--once more. + +"Men care little for the girl who drops like a ripe plum (unripe fruit +being obviously so much sweeter) into their mouths. (Query, why go about +with their mouths open?) Not so. The girl who pleases is the girl who is +hard to please." + +A small discouraged sigh from Gwenna, as she sat there with her yellow +jersey coat spread round her like a great dandelion in the grass. + +"Oh, but supposing she _isn't_ hard to please?" she faltered. "Supposing +somebody pleased her awfully? If he'd let her, I mean--oh, I daresay you +think I'm dreadful?" + +"You outrage my most sacred what's-their-names--convictions, Taffy," +declared Leslie, solemnly running her needle in and out of the stretched +silk. "How many times must you be told that the girl a man prizes is she +who knows how to set the very highest Value upon herself? The sweetly +reserved Girl who keeps Him Guessing. The ter-_ruly_ maidenly type who +puts a Barrier about herself, and, as it were, says, 'Mind the barbed +wire. Thus far--unless it's going to be made worth my while, for good.' +Haggling little Hebrew!" concluded Miss Long. + +For the girl at whom everybody is shocked has standards of her own. Yes! +There are things at which she, even she, is shocked in turn. + +Leslie, speaking of that other, belauded type, quoted: + + "'_Oh, the glory of the winning when she's won!_' + +(per-haps!)." + +And in her voice there was honest disgust. + +"No, but Leslie! _Stop_ laughing about it all! And tell me, really, +now--" appealed the younger girl, leaning an arm upon her friend's knee +and looking up with eyes imploring guidance. "_You've_ known lots of +men. _You've_ had them--well, admiring you and telling you so?" + +"Thank you, yes," said Leslie, demurely darning. "You mightn't think it, +to look at me in this blouse, but I have been--er--stood plenty of +emotional drinks of that kind." + +"Then you know. You tell me--" pleaded Gwenna, pathetically earnest. "Is +it true that men don't like you if they think you like them very much?" + +Leslie's impish face peeped at her over the silk stocking held up over +the mushroom. And Leslie's mouth was one crooked scarlet curve of +derision. + +But it straightened into gravity again as she said, "I don't know, +Taffy. Honest injun! One woman can't lay down rules for another woman. +She's got to reckon with her own type--just pick up that hairpin, will +you--and his. I can only tell you that what is one man's meat +is--another man's won't meet." + +Gwenna, at her knee, sighed stormily again. + +Leslie, rearranging herself cautiously in the insecure deck-chair, put a +finger through one of Gwenna's curls, and said very gently, "Doesn't the +Dampier boy come to meet it, then?" + +Gwenna, carnation red, cried, "Oh _no_! Of _course_ not. I wasn't +_thinking_ of him." + +In the same breath she added shamefacedly, "How did you know, Leslie? +You are clever!" And then, in a soft burst of confidence, "Oh, I _have_ +been so worrying! All these days and days, Leslie! And to-day I felt I +simply _had_ to tell you about it--or _burst_! I haven't really been +able to think of anything but him. And he--he _hates_ me, I know." + +She used that word to console herself. Hate is so infinitely less +discouraging than polite indifference! + +Leslie glanced very kindly at the flushed face, at the compact yet +lissom little body sitting up on its heels on the Club lawn. She asked, +"Doesn't the creature _look_ at you? The other day when he took you out +and broke down the motor? Didn't he then?" + +"Yes, he did," admitted Gwenna, "a little." + +"That's a start, then. So 'Cheer up, Taff, don't let your spirits go +down,'" hummed Leslie. "Ask your Fräulein at the works if she knows an +excellent slang German phrase for falling in love. 'Der hat sich aber +man ordentlich verguckt?' 'He's been and looked himself well into it'--I +am glad the Dampier boy did look. It _is_ engendered in the eyes, as +poor old Bernard Shaw used to say. It will be all right." + +"Will it, d'you think? Will it?" + +Gwenna, kneeling beside the dishevelled, graceful figure with its long +limbs stretched out far beyond the deck-chair, gazed up as if into the +face of an oracle. + +"What do I _do_," she persisted innocently, "to make him look--to make +him like me?" + +"You don't 'do.' You 'be,' and pretty hard too. You, my child, sit +tight. It's what they call the Passive Rôle of Woman," explained Leslie, +with a twinkle. "Like _this_." And she drew out of her darning-basket a +slender horseshoe-shaped implement such as workwomen use to pick up a +dropped needle, painted scarlet to within half an inch of its end. She +held it motionless a little away from her darning. There was a flash in +the sunlight and a sharp little "click" as the needle flew up and clung +to the magnet. + +"D'you see, Turtle-dove?" + +"Yes; but _that_ isn't what you seemed to be talking about just now," +objected Gwenna. "You seemed to think that a girl _needn't mind_ 'doing' +something about it. Letting a person see that she liked him." + +"That isn't 'doing.' A girl can get in such a lot of useful +execution--excuse my calling spade work spade work--all the time she is +going on being as passive as--as that magnet," pronounced the mentor. +"Of course you've got to take care to look as nice as you know how to +all the time. + +"And here you score, Miss Williams. Allow a friend to say that you're +not only as pretty as they make 'em, but you know how to take care that +you're as pretty _as they're made_!" + +The younger girl, puzzled, asked the difference. + +"I mean that you've cultivated the garden, and haven't got to start +digging up the weeds and sweeping the lawn five minutes before you +expect the garden-party," explained Leslie, in the analogies that she +loved. "Some girls don't seem to think of 'making the most of +themselves' until the man comes along that they want to make much of +_them_. Then it's so often a scramble. You've had the instinct. You +haven't got your appearance into any of the little ways that put a man +off without his knowing quite what he's been put off _by_. One excellent +thing about you----" + +"Yes?" said Gwenna, rapt, expectant. + +The particular unsolicited testimonial that followed was unexpected +enough. + +"For one thing, Taffy, you're always--_washed_!" + +"Why, of course. But, Leslie--surely--so's _everybody_!" + +"_Are_ they?" ejaculated Miss Long darkly. "They think they are. They +simply haven't grasped how much soap and water and loofah go to that, in +big towns. Half the girls aren't what _I_ call tubbed. How many of them, +with bathrooms a yard from their bedrooms, bother to have a scrub at +night as well as in the mornings? It's at night they're grimy, Taff. +It's at night they leave it on, powder and all, to work into themselves +until that 'unfresh' look gets chronic. My dear, I tell you that the +two-bath-a-day rule would give us much less of the Lonely-and-Neglected +Women Problem. There!" + +Gwenna Williams, twisting between finger and thumb the stalk of a daisy +she had picked off the lawn, murmured something about it's being funny, +love having anything to do with how often a girl _washed_! + +"Of course you think Leslie is revoltingly unpoetic to suggest it. But +it's sound enough," declared the elder girl. "Flowers don't look as if +'anything to do with' earth had ever touched them, do they? But aren't +their roots bedded deep down in it right enough? All these hints I give +you about Health and Body-culture, these are the Roots of the Rose. +Some of them, anyhow. Especially _washing_. I tell you, Taff"--she spoke +sepulchrally--"_half the 'nice' girls we know don't wash enough_. +_That's_ why they don't get half the attention they'd like. Men like +what they call a 'healthy-looking' girl. As often as not it simply means +the girl happens to be specially _clean_. Beauty's skin-deep; moral, +look after your skin. Now, you do. No soap on your face, Taff?" + +"No; just a 'clean' after washing, with Oatine and things like that." + +"Right. Costs you about fourpence a week. It might cost four guineas, to +judge from the economical spirit of some girls over that," said Leslie. +"Then, to go on with this grossly material subject that is really the +root of Poetry, do you shampoo your hair nice and often? It looks thick +and soft and glossy and with the curls all big, as if you did." + +"Oh, yes, I do. But then that's easy for me; it's short." + +"Mine's long enough, but I do it religiously every fortnight. Pays me," +said Miss Long candidly as she went on working. "Untidy it may be, but +it does feel and smell all right. One of my medical students at the +hospital where I trained for five minutes--the boy Monty, the Dean's +son--_he_ said once that the scent of my hair was like cherry-wood. +'Course I didn't confide in _him_ that I watered it well with bay rum +and rosemary every night. Better than being like Miss Armitage, the +suffragette-woman here, who's so nice-minded that she's 'above' +pampering the body. What's the consequence? She, and half the girls +here, go about smelling--to put it plainly--like cold grease and +goloshes! Can they wonder that men don't seem to think they'd be--be +very nice to marry?" + +"Some suffragettes, and sort of brainy women," hesitated Gwenna, "are +married." + +"Yes; and _have_ you observed the usual type of their husbands?" scoffed +Leslie. "Eugh!" + +Gwenna, set upon her own subject, drew her back with innocent directness +to the matter in hand. + +"What else ought one to do? Besides lots of washing, besides taking care +of one's hair and skin?" + +"One's shape, of course," mused Leslie. "There you're all right. Thank +goodness--_and me_--that you've left off those weird, those unearthly +stays you came up to town in. My dear, they were like a hamper strapped +round the middle of you and sending your shoulders up, squared, into +your ears! You've got a pretty slope there now, besides setting free all +your 'lines.' I suppose elastic has pretty well solved the great corset +question at last." + +"Thirty shillings was a dreat-ful lot to give for just an elastic belt," +murmured Gwenna, with her little hand at her supple waist. "Still, you +said I must, even if I didn't have a new blouse over it for eighteen +months." Again she looked up for guidance. "What else? What's a good +_thing_, Leslie? About clothes and that?" + +"Oh, child, you know it all now, practically. Let's see--shoes"--she +glanced at the tiny brown one half-tucked under Gwenna's knee. "_Boots +and shoes_ men seem to notice as much as any other part of your get-up. +Attractive shoes, even with an unfashionable skirt, will pull you +through, when shabby shoes would ruin the look of the smartest rig. They +see that, even when they've no idea what colour you've got on." + +She went on to another hole in the stocking and continued: "As for +colours, a man does seem to notice 'a girl in black,' or all-white, or +pale blue. I read once that pale blue is 'the sex colour'--couldn't tell +you, never worn it myself. Managed well enough without it, too!" mused +Leslie. "Then 'a girl in pink' is very often a success in the evening. +Men seem to have settled vaguely that pink is 'the pretty girl's +colour.' So then they fondly imagine that anything that dares to wear +it must be lovely. _You_ needn't yet. Keep it for later. Pink--judicious +pink--takes off ten years, Taffy!" + +"I--I suppose I shall still care what I look like," murmured the young +girl wistfully, "at thirty-two...." + +"Pearl of Wisdom Number Forty-eight: When in doubt, wear the +coat-and-skirt (if it's decently cut) rather than the frock," decreed +Leslie. "White silk shirts they seem to like, always. (I'm glad +I weaned you of the pin-on tie, Taffy. It always looked like +'sixpence-three-farthings.' Whereas you buy a piece of narrow ribbon for +'six-three,' you _tie_ it, you fasten it with a plain silver brooch to +your shirt, and it looks _good_.)" + +"I'll remember," murmured Gwenna devoutly, from the grass. + +Leslie said, "One of the housemaids here--(never stoop to gossip with +the servants, dearest. It _is_ so unhelpful and demoralising to both +classes)--one of the housemaids once told me that _her_ young man had +told her that 'nothing in the wide world set a young woman off like a +nice, fresh, clean, simple shirt blouse, same as what she was wearing +then!' Of course, _he_ was a policeman. Not an aviator or a dean's son. +But when it comes to a girl in the case, I expect they're _'brothers +under their skins_,'" said Leslie Long. + +Husky with much talking, she cleared her throat. + +"Pearl of Wisdom Number Forty-nine: Be awfully careful about your +collar, the ends of your sleeves and the hem of your skirt. (Keeping a +strong force on the Frontier; that is always important.) Don't ever let +your clothes be 'picturesque,' except for indoors. A man loathes walking +along beside anything that flaps in the wind, or anything that looks +like what he calls 'fancy dress.' Outside, don't wear anything that you +can't skip easily on to the last bus in. Don't have 'bits' of anything +about you. Try to be as neat as the very dowdiest girl you know, +_without the dowdiness_. Neatness, my belovèd sisters, is the---- (Here +am I talking like this; but why," she interrupted herself, laughing, +"_why_ aren't I neater myself when in mufti? I mean, when there's nobody +about? '_In time of Peace, prepare for War._' It would be better. Might +get my hair out of its _habit_ of descending at the wrong moment.) And +then, then, when all your good points are mobilised, you wait for the +Enemy." + +"The _enemy_?" said little Gwenna, doubtfully. + +"Yes. The Man. The opposing force, if you like. You can think and think +and wish and wish about him then until the whole air about you goes +shivery-quivery with it. 'Creating an atmosphere' is what they call it, +I believe. And get him well into the zone of _that_," advised Leslie. +"For it's no use the magnet being a magnet if it doesn't allow itself to +get within miles of a needle, is it? Might as well be any old bit of +scrap-iron. Plenty of girls--_nice_ girls, I mean--not like that +deplorably vulgar Miss Long. What _she's_ doing in a Club that's +supposed to be for _ladies_ I don't know. The _horrid_ things she says! +Bad! _Bad_ form! And I'm sure if she says those here, she must have +heaps of other worse things she _could_ say, and probably _does_, to +some people! Er--oh, where _was_ I? Ah, yes!" rattled on Leslie, with +her black head flung against the striped canvas back of the chair, her +eyes on her surprisingly neat darning. "I was going to say--plenty of +nice girls muff everything by putting too much distance that doesn't +lend enchantment to the view between themselves and the men that aren't +often sharp enough to deserve being called 'the needle.' Don't you make +the mistake of those nice girls, Taffy." + +"Well, do I _want_ to? But how can I help it? How can I even try to 'be' +anything, if he isn't there to know anything at all about it? I don't +see him! I don't meet him!" mourned the Welsh girl in the soft accent +that was very unmistakable to-day. "It's a whole fortnight, Leslie, +since that lovely day in the fields. It seems years. He hasn't written +or anything. I've waited and waited.... And sometimes I feel as if +perhaps I _shouldn't_ ever see him again. After all, I never did see him +properly before we went to your sister's that night. Oh, isn't it awful +to think what little _chances_ make all the difference to who one sees +or doesn't see? I can't know for certain that I shall _ever_ see him +again. Oh, Leslie!" + +Leslie cut her last needleful of lilac silk and answered in the most +reassuringly matter-of-fact tone: + +"But of course you will. If you want to enough. For instance--should you +like to see him at this dance?" + +"Dance?" inquired Gwenna, dazed. + +"Yes. This fancy-dress affair that I'm doing these stockings for. (I won +these in a bet from one of my Woolwich cadets.) This tamasha next week?" + +"But--_he_ isn't going, is he? And I'm not even asked." + +"And can't these things ever be arranged?" demanded her chum, laughing. +"Can do, Taffy. Leslie will manage." + +"Oh--but that's so _kind_!" murmured the younger girl, overcome. + +"Do you expect me _not_ to be 'kind'? To another girl, in love? Nay, oh +Taffy! I leave that to the 'nicest' of the girls who think it 'horrid' +to think about young men, even. Gem of Truth Number Eighty: It isn't the +little girl who's _had_ plenty to eat who's ready to snatch the bun out +of the hand of the next little girl," said Leslie. She rolled the silk +stockings into a ball, and rose in sections from that sagging chair. +"Leslie will see you're done all right. All that remains to be discussed +is the question of what you're to wear at the dance." + +This question Leslie settled as the two girls went for an after-supper +stroll. They went past the summer crowd patrolling the Spaniards Road, +past the patch of common and the benches and the pond by the flagstaff +that make that part of Hampstead so like a bit of the seaside. It was a +golden evening. In the hazy distance a small, greyish, winged object +rose above the plane which was Hendon, and moved to the left towards the +blue taper of Harrow Church, then sank out of sight again. + +"There's one," sighed Gwenna, her eyes on the glowing sky, where the +biplane had been circling. "He's in it, perhaps." + +"Little recking what plans are now being made for his welfare by me," +observed Miss Long, as the two girls descended the hill and found at +last a birch thicket that was not held by Cockney lovers. She let +herself down cross-legged into the bracken. The Welsh girl perched +herself on a branch of the birch tree that was polished smooth as an old +bench. Thus she sat among the stirring leaves, head on one side, +listening, her babyish face looking down intent against the sky. + +"Ah! That's _you_! '_A Cherub._' That's what your fancy dress is to be," +pronounced the elder girl. "Just your own little crop-curled head with +nothing on it; and a ruff of cherub's wings up to your chin. Those +little wings off your hat will do beautifully. Below the ruff, clouds. +Appropriate background for cherubs. Your misty-white frock with no sash +this time, and one of those soap-bubble coloured scarves of Liberty +gauze draped over it to represent a rainbow. Little silver shoes. +_Strictly_ speaking, cherubs don't have those, of course. But if you +can't become a Queen of Spain--if you can't be realistic, be pretty. +Your own, nearly-always expression of dreamy innocence will come in +nicely for the costume," added Leslie. "Quite in keeping." + +"I'm sure I'm not that," protested the Welsh girl, piqued. "_I'm_ not +what they call 'innocent.'" + +"No, I don't think you are. 'What they call innocent' in a girl is such +a mixture. It means (a) no sense of humour at all; (b) the chilliest +temperament you can shiver at, and (c) a complete absence of +observation. But I believe _you_ have '_beneath your little frostings +the brilliance of your fires_,' Taffy. Yours is the real innocence." + +"It isn't, indeed," protested the girl, who was young enough to wish to +be everything but what she was. "Why, look at the way you say anything +to me, Leslie!" + +Leslie laughed, with a remoter glance. Then suddenly she dropped her +black head and put a light caress on the corner of the sunshine-yellow +jersey coat. + +"Be as sweet always," she said, lightly too. "Look as sweet--at the +dance!" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE HEELS OF MERCURY + + +This injunction Gwenna carried out to the letter a week later. Never had +she looked so pretty as when she smiled at her own reflection in her +bedroom mirror above the cherub's ruff of wings on the evening of the +dance. + +It was given by some wealthy theatrical people whose "set" often +intermingled with that to which Hugo Swayne belonged. And it was held in +a couple of big marquees that had been set up on the lawn behind their +house; a lawn of which the banks sloped down to the willows that fringed +the river. There was a houseboat as buffet. There were Japanese lanterns +and fairy-lights. Red carpet had been put down to save costumes from +dewy grass or gravel. + +For this dance was held at the height of that brief and grotesque period +in the English history when dancing and costume--more particularly when +the two were combined--became an affair of national moment. That was the +time when tickets for an Artists' Ball were gambled with even as stocks +and shares; when prizes for costume were given of which the value ran +into hundreds of pounds. When columns of responsible newspapers were +given up to descriptions of some "brilliant carnival." When Society, +the Arts, Commerce, the Stage and the Middle Class joined hands to dance +the maddest ring-o'-roses round some mulberry bush rooted in Heaven knew +what soil of slackness. That was the time when women who were mothers +and able-bodied men were ready to fritter away the remnant of their +youth on what could be no longer pleasure, since they chased it with +such deadly ardour, discussing the lightest types of merrymaking as if +thereupon hung the fate of an empire! + +Even little cherub-headed Gwenna Williams found something disquieting +about the sight of this throng as she scanned it with anxious eyes, +for--no, HE hadn't come! He was late. Not here. Perhaps it was merely +this that caused her to dislike the look of some of these other people? +That buxomly-formed young woman of twenty-five tricked out in the +costume of a child of three! That tall, fragile youth in black +grave-clothes, mouthing falsetto patter! That pretty "lady" in spreading +Georgian brocade and a white wig, from whose crimsoned lips there came +presently a robust masculine shout! That Madame Potiphar in the--Good +gracious!--it was another boy! No! Gwenna _didn't_ like them, +somehow.... Perhaps it was just because they were here and he, the only +partner she wished for, had not arrived. Oh, _supposing_ he were not +coming, after all? + +Under the canvas roof where garlands swung and an installation of +electric light had been improvised, the crowd eddied and chattered and +laughed from one end to the other of the marquee where the long tables +were laid out. For it was a theatrical ball, late in beginning. Supper +was to come first. Gwenna, sitting beside a Futurist Folly whom her +friend Leslie had introduced vaguely as "one of my medical students," +watched that supper-crowd (still he did not come), as they feasted, +leaning across the tables to laugh and shriek to acquaintances. It was +not the girls or the younger men who seemed most boisterous, but those +well over thirty. This surprised her. And even when they were most +unrestrained "they seemed," as the Welsh girl put it, "to be _making_ +themselves do it, like." ... + +Then she saw, by an opening in the canvas of the marquee, the apparition +of a steady man's figure, dead-white against the purple gloom outside. A +figure erect and neatly-shouldered under the close linen jacket of a +Continental waiter. Gwenna wondered where she had seen him before? In a +photograph? Or perhaps attending to one of the tables at Appenrodt's, +when she and Leslie had had tea after a matinée somewhere? She _had_ +seen that young waiter, whose appearance was in such arresting contrast +to the bizarre costumes and painted faces of the noisy, laughing rabble +about him. His face was restrained and grave as that of some very young +Daniel at the feast of some modern Belshazzar. + +Suddenly besides that still, watching apparition there came up another +boyish figure--typically English, in ordinary evening dress, and tall, +towering above the young German waiter of whom he was making some +inquiry. For a second they stood so; the waiter glancinc up, the +newcomer, Paul Dampier, with his blonde head tilted a little back, his +eyes raking the crowd. + +"Ah! he's come," cried Gwenna aloud, but unheard in the universal +clatter. Her heart leaped.... + +But Paul Dampier, the airman, was swallowed up again almost directly in +a forest of odd, luridly-coloured head-dresses. He had not seen her. + +And she did not see him again until some time after supper was ended, +and the throng was whirling and writhing in one-step and ragtime in the +other marquee. + +Gwenna had danced with an Apache, with a Primitive Man, with Mr. Hugo +Swayne (in a mask and crazy-work domino as a Simultaneous Dynamism of +Something), and she was standing waiting, one of a figure in a revived +cotillon. + +While the Viennese band swooped and tore through the waltz "Nights of +Gladness" a sheet had been fetched and was held up at the end of the +ballroom between a Morris-dancer and an incredibly handsome "Turco" (who +presently revealed himself as Mr. Swayne's French engineer), as a screen +before six of the girls. Six men were to be led up to it in turn; each +to choose his partner by the feet that were just allowed to show below +the sheet. + +Soft laughter and twittering went on at the side where the half-dozen +girls stood. + +"I say," exclaimed a damsel dressed as an Austrian Peasant to her +crinolined neighbour, "_now_ we see why you were so anxious to explain +why you were wearing scarlet----" + +"Of course he'd know yours anywhere," retorted the next girl. + +"Ssh! Play fair!" protested the next. "Mustn't be recognised by your +voice!" + +"Oh, look at the Cherub girl's little shoes! Aren't they sweet? Just +like silver minnows peeping out----" + +Here Gwenna, standing sedately beside the scintillating, mauve-limbed +Nijinski, Leslie, lifted her head in quick attention. She had recognised +a voice on the other side of the sheet. A voice deep and gentle and +carrying through the clatter of talk and the mad, syncopated music. It +protested with a laugh, "But, look _here_! I can't dance all these +weird----" It was the Airman--her Airman. + +"Oh, he's just there. He's going to choose. If only he'd choose me," +thought Gwenna, breathlessly fluttering where she stood. Then she +remembered. "Oh, but he won't know me. He doesn't know I was to have +silver shoes. If there was only _some_thing! Something to show him which +I was, I believe he'd choose me. What could I do?" + +Suddenly she thought what she could do.... Yes! Winged feet, of course, +for a girl who longed to fly! + +Hurriedly she put her hands up to the ruff made of those white wings. +Hastily she plucked two of them out. How was she to fasten them to her +feet, though? Alas, for the short curls that deprived her of woman's +universal tool! She turned to her chum who was impatiently jigging in +time to the music, with her long black hair swathed for once securely +under that purple casque. + +"Leslie, quick, a hairpin! Lend me two hairpins," she whispered and +snatched them from her friend's hand. Then, holding on to Leslie's mauve +silken shoulder to support herself, Gwenna raised first one small foot, +and then the other, fastening to each between the stocking and the +silver shoe, one of those tiny wings. + +They were the feathered heels of Mercury, the flying-god, that the girl +who loved a flying-man allowed to peep under the curtain behind which +she stood. + +Above the commotion of people laughing and talking all about her and the +music she felt that he was close, only just behind that sheet. She could +have put out a hand and, through that sheet, have touched his +shoulder.... Mustn't, of course.... Must play fair. Would he note the +message of the winged feet? Would he stop and choose her? + +Or would he pass on? + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE KISS WITHHELD + + +He did not pass. + +He stopped--Gwenna felt the touch of his finger on the silver tip of her +shoe. All a-tremble with delight she moved aside, and stepped from +behind the screen to face the partner who had chosen her. + +"_Hullo_!" exclaimed Paul Dampier, with real surprise in his smile. "I +didn't know it was _you_!" + +Gwenna felt a little dashed, even as he slipped his arm about her and +they began to waltz. She looked up into the blonde face that seemed +burned so very brown against his dress-shirt, and she ventured, "You +didn't know it was me? I thought that was why you chose me--I mean, I +thought because I was somebody you knew----" + +"Didn't know you were here. I never thought those were your feet!" he +said in that adorably deep and gentle voice of his. Adding, as they +turned with the turning throng, something that lifted her heart again, +"I chose them because they were the prettiest, I thought." + +It was simply stated, as a fact. But this, the first compliment he'd +paid her, kept her silent with delight. Even as they waltzed, his arm +about her rainbow scarf, the girl felt the strongest wish--the wish that +the dance were at an end and she back in her bedroom at the Club, +alone, so that she might think and think again over what he had said. +He'd thought she had the prettiest feet! + +"D'you think you could manage to spare me some others?" he asked at the +end of that waltz. "You know, you're about the only girl here that I +know except Miss Long." + +"Leslie would introduce you to anybody you liked"--suggested little +Gwenna, feeling very good for having done so. And virtue brought its +reward. For with a glance about him at that coloured noisy crowd that +seemed a handful of confetti tossed by a whirlwind, he told her he +didn't think he wanted to be introduced, much. He wasn't really keen on +a lot of people he'd never seen. But if she and Miss Long would give him +a few dances----? + +The girl from the country thought it almost too good to be true that she +need not share him with any of these dangerously fascinating London +people here, except Leslie! + +In a pause they went up to where Leslie was standing near the band. +Close beside her the Morris-dancer was wrangling with Hugo Swayne in his +crazy-work domino, who declared, "Miss Long promised _me_ every other +dance. A week ago, my dear man. Ten days ago----" + +Yes; Leslie seemed to be engaged for every dance and every extra. She +tossed a "_so_ sorry, Mr. Dampier!" over her shoulder, following it with +an imperceptible feminine grimace for Gwenna's benefit. With the first +bars of the next waltz she was whirled away by a tall youth garbed, +becomingly enough, as a Black Panther. The room was still clear. The +Black Panther and the boyishly slim girl in mauve tunic and tights +waltzed, for one recurrence of the tune, alone.... + +Gwenna, looking after that shapely couple, knew who _he_ was; Monty +Scott, the Dean's son who had been a medical student when Leslie was at +the Hospital. He had followed her to the Slade to study sculpture, and +already he had proposed to her twice. + +The tall and supple youth held Leslie, now, by his black-taloned gloves +on her strait hips. Leslie waltzed with hands clasped at the back of his +neck. Then, with a backward fling of her head and body, she twisted +herself out of his hold. She waltzed, holding the flat palms of her +hands pressed lightly to the palms of his. The music altered; Leslie +varying her step to suit it. She threw back her head again. Round and +round her partner she revolved, undulating from nape to heels, not +touching him, not holding him save by the attraction of her black eyes +set upon his handsome eyes, and of her red lips of a flirt, from which +(it was evident!) the boy could not take his gaze. Once more she shook +her purple-casqued head; once more she let him catch her about the hips. +Over the canvas floor they spun, Leslie and Monty, black-and-mauve, +moving together with a voluptuous swing and zest that marked them as the +best-matched dancers in the room. Well-matched, perhaps, for life, +thought Leslie's chum.... But no; as they passed Gwenna saw that the +black eyes and the red mouth were laughing cynically together; she +caught, through the music, Leslie's clear "Don't _talk_! _don't_ talk +when you're dancing, my good boy.... Spoils everything.... You _can_ +waltz.... You know you've never anything to _say_, Mont!" + +"I have. I say----" + +Leslie waltzed on unheeding. Whatever he had to say she did not take it +seriously. She laughed over his shoulder to little Gwenna, watching.... + +Couple after couple had joined in now, following the swift tall graceful +black shape and the light-limbed mauve one as they circled by. A flutter +of draperies and tinsel, a toss and jingle of stage accoutrements; the +dancers were caught and sped by the music like a wreath of +rainbow-bubbles on the rise and fall of a wave. + +Gwenna, the Cherub-girl, was left standing for a wistful moment by the +side of the tall Airman in evening dress. + +He said, through the music, "Who's your partner for this?" + +She had forgotten. It was the Futurist Folly again. He had to find +another partner. Gwenna danced with her Airman again ... and again.... + +Scarcely realising how it happened--indeed, how do these arrangements +make themselves?--this boy and girl from a simpler world than that of +this tinsel Bohemia spent almost the whole of the rest of that evening +as they had spent that day in the country, as she would have asked to +spend the rest of their lives together. + +Some of the time they danced in the brilliant, heated marquee under the +swinging garlands and the lamps. Then again they strolled out into the +Riverside garden. Here it was cool and dewy and dim except where, from +the tent-openings, there was flung upon the grass a broad path of light, +across which flitted, moth-like, the figures of the dancers. Above the +marquee the summer night was purple velvet, be-diamonded with stars. At +the end of the lawn the river whispered to the willows and reflected, +here the point of a star, there the red blot of a lantern caught in a +tree. + +Hugo Swayne went by in this bewildering stage, light-and-shade with a +very naughty-looking lady who declared that her white frock was merely +"'Milk,' out of 'The Blue Bird.'" In passing he announced to his cousin +that the whole scene was like a Conder fan that he had at his rooms. +Groups of his friends were simply sitting about and _making_ themselves +into quite good Fragonards. Little Gwenna did not even try to remember +what Fragonard was. None of these people in this place seemed real to +her but herself and her partner. And the purple dusk and velvet shadows, +the lights and colours, the throb and thrill of the music were just the +setting for this "night of gladness" that was only a little more +substantial than her other fancies. + +More quickly it seemed to be passing! Every now and again she exultantly +reminded herself, "I am here, with him, out of all these people! He is +only speaking to me! I have him to myself--I must feel that as hard as I +can all the time now, for we shall be going home at the end of this +Ball, and then I shall be alone again.... If _only_ I could be with him +for always! How extraordinary, that just to be with one particular +person out of all the world should be enough to make all this +happiness!" + +With her crop-curled head close against his shoulder as they danced, she +stole at her boyish partner the shy, defiantly possessive glance that a +child gives sometimes to the favourite toy, the toy that focusses all +his dreams. This was "the one particular person out of all the world" +whose company answered every conscious and unconscious demand of the +young girl's nature even as his waltz-step suited her own. + +Yet she guessed that this special quiet rapture could not last. Even +before the end of the dance the end of _this_ must surely come. + + +It must have been long hours after the waltz-cotillon that they strolled +down to a sitting-out arbour that had been arranged at the end of the +path nearest the river. It was softly lighted by two big Chinese +lanterns, primrose-coloured, ribbed like caterpillars, with a black base +and a splash of patterned colour upon each; a rug had been thrown on the +grass, and there were two big white-cane chairs, with house-boat +cushions. + +Here the two sat down, to munch sandwiches, drink hock-cup. + +"I remembered to bring two glasses, this time," said Paul Dampier. + +Gwenna smiled as she nodded. Her eyes were on those silver white-finned +minnows of her feet, that he had called pretty. + +He followed her glance as he took another sandwich. "Rather a good idea, +wings to your shoes because you're supposed to be a cherub." + +"Oh, but that's not what the wings were supposed to be for," she said +quickly. "I only put those in at the waltz-cotillon so that----" + +Here she stopped dead, wishing that the carpeted grass might open at +those winged feet of hers and swallow her up! + +How could she have given herself away like this? Let him _know_ how she +had wanted him to choose her! when he hadn't even known she was there; +hadn't been thinking about her! + +She flurried on: "S-so that they should look more like fancy-dress shoes +instead of real ones!" + +He turned his head, dark and clean-cut against the lambent swaying +lantern. He said, out of the gloom that spared her whelming blush, "Oh, +was that it! I thought," he added with a teasing note in his voice, "I +thought you were going to say it was to remind me that I'd promised to +take you flying, and that it's never come off yet!" + +Gwenna, hesitating for a moment, sat back against the cushions of the +wicker-chair. She looked away from him, and then ventured a retort--a +tiny reproach. + +"Well--it _hasn't_ come off." + +"No, you know--it's too bad, really. I have been most frightfully busy," +he apologised. "But we'll fix it up before you go to-night, shall we? +You must come." At this he was glad to see that the Little Thing looked +really pleased. + +She was awfully nice and sensible, he thought for the severalth time. +Again the odd wish took him that had taken him in that field. Yes! He +_would_ like to touch those babyish-looking curls of hers with a finger. +Or even to rumple them against his cheek.... Another most foolish and +incomprehensible wish had occurred to him about this girl, even in her +absence. Apropos of nothing, one evening in his rooms he had remembered +the look of that throat of hers; round and sturdy and white above her +low collar. And he had thought he would rather like to put his own hands +about it, and to pretend--quite gently, of course--to throttle the +Little Thing. To-night she'd bundled it all up in that sort of feather +boa.... Pity.... She was ever so much prettier without. + +Fellow can't say that sort of thing to a girl, though, thought the +simple Paul. + +So he merely said, instead, "Let me stick that down for you somewhere," +and he leant forward and took from her the plate that had held her +cress-and-chicken sandwiches. Then he crossed his long legs and leant +back again. It was jolly and restful here in the dim arbour with her; +the sound of music and laughter came, much softened, from the marquee. +Nearer to them, on the water below the willows, there was a little +splashing and twittering of the moor-hen, roused by something, and the +scarcely audible murmur of the Thames, speeding past House-boat Country +to London ... the workaday Embankment.... It was jolly to be so +quiet.... + + +Then, into the happy silence that had fallen between them, there came a +sound--the sound of the crunching of gravel. Gwenna looked up. Two +figures sauntered past down the path; both tall and shapely and black +against the paling, star-sprinkled sky above the frieze of sighing +willows. Then Leslie's clear, careless voice drifted to their ears. + +"Afraid not.... Anyhow, what on earth would be the good of caring '_a +little_'?... I look upon you as such an infant--in arms----" + +Here there was a bass mutter of, "Make it _your_ arms, and I don't +mind!" + +Then Leslie's insouciant: "I _knew_ you'd say that obvious thing. I +always do know what you're going to do or say next ... fatal, that.... A +girl _can't_ want to marry a man when----" + +Apparently, then, the Dean's son was proposing again? + +As the couple of free-limbed black shadows passed nearer, Paul Dampier +kicked his heel against his chair. He moved in it to make it creak more +noisily. + +Good manners wasted! + +For Leslie, as she afterwards told her chum, took for her motto upon +such occasions, "_And if the others see, what matter they_?" + +Her partner seemed oblivious that there were any "others" sitting in +the shadows. The couple passed, leaving upon the night-breeze a trail of +cigarette-smoke (Leslie's), and an indistinguishable growl, presumably +from the Black Panther. + +Leslie's voice floated back, "Not in the mood. Besides! You _had_, last +time, 'to soften the edges,' as you call it." + +More audibly her partner grumbled, "What's a kiss you've _had_? About as +satisfying as last summer's strawberry-ice----" + + +A mere nothing--the incident. + +Yet it brought (or hastened) a change into the atmosphere of that arbour +where, under the giant glowworms of lights swinging above them, two +young people sat at ease together without speaking. + +For Gwenna, envious, thought, "Leslie can make a man think of nothing +but her, even when she's 'not in the mood!' I can't. Yet I believe I +could, but for one thing. Even now I don't know that he isn't thinking +about That Other----" + +"That Other" was her rival, that machine of his that Gwenna had not +mentioned all the evening.... + +It had come, she knew, that duel between the Girl and the Aeroplane for +the first place in the heart of a Flying Man. A duel as old as the +world, between the thing a man greatly loves, and that which he loves +more greatly still. She thought of Lovelace who "_loved Honour more_." +She thought of the cold Sea that robs the patient, warm-hearted women +ashore, of the icy Pole whose magnetism drew men from their wives. The +work that drew the thoughts of her Airman was that Invention that was +known already as his _Fiancée_.... + +"Leslie says it's not as bad as if it were another woman, but I see her +as a woman," thought the silent, fanciful girl, "I see her as a sort of +winged dragon with a figure-head--aeroplanes don't have figure-heads, +but this one seems to me to have, just like some of those vessels that +come into the harbour at Aberdovey. Or like those pictures of harps that +are half a woman. Smooth red hair she has, and a long neck stretched +out, and a rather thin, pale, don't-care sort of face like that girl +called Muriel. And--and eagle's talons for hands. That's how I see that +_Fiancée_ of his, with claws for hands that won't, _won't_ ever let him +go...." + +A puff of wind knocked one of the lanterns above their heads softly +against the other; the willows rustled silkily outside. Gwenna sat +motionless, holding her breath. Suddenly her reverie had broken off with +an abrupt, unspoken--"but it's me he's thinking of _now_...." + +Paul Dampier had been lightly amused by that passing of the other +couple. That friend of hers, Miss Long, was more than a bit of a flirt, +he considered. This Little Thing wasn't. Couldn't imagine _her_ giving a +kiss as some girls give a dance; or even to "soften" a refusal.... Her +mouth, he found himself noticing, was full and curly and exactly the +colour of the buds of those fox-gloves that grew all over the shop at +her place in Wales. It was probably softer than those curls of hers +that he would (also) like to touch. + +Idiotic idea, though---- + +But an idea which is transmittable. + +Gwenna, thrilled by this message which she had caught by a method older +and less demonstrable than Marconi's, realised: "He heard _that_, just +now; that boy wanting to kiss Leslie.... He's thinking, now, that he +might kiss me." + +The boy scarcely at arm's length from her thought a little confusedly, +"I say, though.... Rotten thing to do...." + +The girl thought, "He would like to. _What_ is he waiting about? We +shall have to go directly----" + +For the sky outside had been swiftly paling. Now that pure pallor was +changing to the glow of Abyssinian gold. Dawn! From the marquee came a +louder blare of music; two long cornet notes and then a rollicking +tune--The old "Post Horn" Galop--the last dance. Presently a distant +noise of clapping and calls for "Extra"! There would be no time for +extras, she'd heard. They would have to go after this. People were +beginning to go. Already they had heard the noise of a car. His chair +creaked as he moved a little sidewards. + +He told himself, more emphatically, "Beastly rotten thing to do. This +Little Thing would never speak to me again----" + +And the girl sat there, without stirring, without glancing at him. Yet +every curve of her little body, every eyelash, every soft breath she +drew was calling him, was set upon "making" him. What could she do more +to make herself, as Leslie called it, a magnet? Love and innocent +longing filled her to the eyes, the tender fox-glove buds of lips that +could have asked for nothing better. Even if this _were_ the only time! +Even if she never saw him again! + +Wasn't he going to set the crown upon her wonderful dream of a summer +night? + +"No, look _here_," the boy remonstrated silently with something in +himself; something that seemed to mock him. He lifted his fair head with +a gleam of that pride that goes so often before a fall. "Dash it +all----" + +"He will!" the girl thought breathlessly. And with her thought she +seemed to cast all of her heart into the spell.... + + +And then, quite suddenly, something happened whereby that spell was +snapped. Even as she thought "_he will_," he rose from his chair. + +He took a step to the entrance of their arbour, his shoulders blotting +out the glowing light. + +"Listen," he said. + +And Gwenna, rising too, listened, breathlessly, angrily. He would +_not_--she had been cheated. What was it that had--_interfered_? +Presently she heard it, she heard what she would have taken for the +noise of another of the departing motors. + +Through the clatter from the last galop it was like, yet unlike, the +noise of a starting car. But there was in it an _angrier_ note than +that. + +It is angry for want of any help but its own. A motor-car has solid +earth against which to drive; a steamship has dense water. But the +Machine that caused this noise was beating her metal thews against +invisible air. + +It was an aeroplane. + +"Look!" said Paul Dampier. + +Far away over the still benighted land she rose, and into that glory of +Abyssinian gold beyond the river. Gwenna, moving out on to the path, +watched the flight. Before, she had wondered that these soaring things +didn't come down. Now, she would have wondered if they had done so. + +Steady as if running on rails, the aeroplane came on overhead; her sound +as she came now loud, now soft, but always angry, harsh--harshness like +that of a woman who lives to herself and her strivings, with no +comradeship of Earth on which to lean. Against the sky that was her +playground she showed as a slate-coloured dragonfly--a purple Empress of +the Air soaring on and on into the growing dazzle of the day. + +"Oh, it _is_ beautiful, though," cried the girl on the path, looking up, +and losing for that moment the angry sense that had fallen upon her of +pleasure past, of the end of the song. "It is wonderful." + +"Pooh, that old horse-bus," laughed Paul Dampier above her shoulder, +and mentioned the names of the machine, the flyer in her. He could pick +them out of the note of her angry song. + +"That will be nothing to my P.D.Q.," he declared exultantly as they +walked on up the path towards the marquee. "You wait until I've got my +aeroplane working! That'll be something new in aviation, you know. +Nearest thing yet to the absolute identity of the Man with the Machine." + +He yawned a little with natural sleepiness, but his interest was +wide-awake. He could have gone on until breakfast-time explaining some +fresh point about his invention, while the girl in those little +silver-heeled shoes paced slowly up the path beside him.... He was going +on. + +"Make all those other types, English or foreign, as clumsy as the +old-fashioned bone-shake bicycle. Fact," he declared. "Now, take the +Taube--Hullo----" + +"_Bitte_," said a voice. + +The German word came across a pile of plates deftly balanced upon a +young man's forearm. That arm was clad in the sleeve of a trim white +jacket, buttoned over a thick and compact little chest. The waiter's +hair was a short, upright golden stubble, and another little stubble of +gold sprouted upon his steady upper lip. He had come up, very softly, +behind them. + +He spoke again in excellent English. + +"By your leave, sir." + +Dampier made way for him, and he passed. Gwenna, with a little shiver, +looked after him. The sight of the young waiter whom she had noticed at +the beginning of the evening had given her an unreasonable little +chill.... Perhaps it was because his softly-moving, white figure against +those willows had loomed so like a ghost.... + +Dampier said, "Rotten job for a man, I always think, hanging about and +picking up things for other people like that." + +"Yes," said Gwenna, absently, sadly. It _was_ the end now. Quite the +end. They'd got to go home. Back to everyday life. The Club, the Works. +Nothing to live for, except--Ah, yes! His promise that he _would_ take +her flying, soon.... + +Above in the glowing sky the aeroplane was dwindling--to disappear. The +waiter, turning a corner of the dark shrubbery, had also disappeared as +they passed. From behind the shelter of the branches he was watching, +watching.... + +He was looking after Paul Dampier, the Airman--the inventor of the +newest aeroplane. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE FLYING DREAM + +"_Those dreams come true that are dreamed on Midsummer night!_" + + +This saying Gwenna had read somewhere. But she had forgotten all about +it until, on the night of June 24th, 1914, she dreamed the most vivid +dream of all her twenty-two years. + +Many people have that same dream--or versions of it--often in a +lifetime. Scientists have written papers on the whys and hows of it. +They tack a long name to it. But little Gwenna Williams had never heard +of "_levitation_." To herself she called it afterwards "_that flying +dream_." + +It seemed to her that when it began she was still half-awake, lying in +her narrow white bed with the blankets tossed on to the floor of her +Club bedroom, for it was a sultry night and close, in spite of her +window on to the garden being wide open and allowing what breeze there +was to blow full upon the girl's face, stirring her curls on the pillow, +the ruffle of her night-gown as she lay. + +Suddenly a violent start ran over the whole of her body. And with that +one jerk she seemed to have come out of herself. She realised, first, +that she was no longer lying down, curled up in the kitten-like ball +which was her attitude for sleeping. She was upright as if she were +standing. + +But she was not standing. Her feet were not resting on anything. Looking +down, she found, without very much surprise, that she was poised, as a +lark is poised, in mid-air, at some immeasurable height. It was night, +and the earth--a distant hassock of dim trees and fields--was far, far +below her. + +She found herself moving downwards through the air. + +_She was flying!_ + +Gently, gently, she sped, full of a quiet happiness in her new power, +which, after all, did not seem to be something new, but something +restored to her. + +"Dear me, I've flown before, I know I have," said Gwenna to herself as +she swooped downwards in her dream, with the breeze cool on the soles of +her little bare feet. "This is as lovely as swimming! It's lovelier, +because one doesn't have to _do_ anything. So silly to imagine that one +has to have _wings_ to fly!" + +Now she was nearer to earth, she was hovering over a dark stream of +water with reflections that circled and broke. And beside it she saw +something that seemed like a huge lambent mushroom set in the dim fields +below her. This was a lighted tent, and from it there floated up to her +faintly the throb and thrill of dance-music, the two long-drawn-out +notes of the "Post Horn" Galop, the noise of laughter and clapping.... +She wondered whom she would see, if she were to alight. But the Force +in her dream bore her up again, higher, and away. She found presently +that she had left the dancing-tent far behind, and that what streamed +below her was no longer a river with reflections, but a road, white with +dust, and by the side of it a car was standing idle by the dusty hedge. +On the other side of the hedge, as she flew over, the grass was clean +and full of flowers, and half-way up the field stood a brooding elm that +cast a patch of shadow. + +"Sunshine, now!" wondered Gwenna. "How quickly it's changed from night!" + +She felt from head to foot her body light and buoyant as a drifting +thistle-down as on she went through the air. Close beside her, against a +bank of cloud, she noticed some black V-shaped thing that slanted and +flapped slow wings, then planed downwards out of her sight. "That's that +crow. A dihedral angle, they call it," said the dreaming girl. Her next +downward glance, as she sped upwards now, without effort, above the +earth, showed her a map of distant grey roofs and green trees, and +something that looked like a giant soap-bubble looming out of the mist. + +"St. Paul's! London!" thought Gwenna. "I wonder shall I be able to look +down on our Westminster place." + +Then, glancing about her, she saw that the scene had suddenly changed. +She was no longer in the free air with clouds about her as she flew like +a little white windblown feather with the earth small as a toy puzzle +below. She was between walls, with her feet not further than her own +height from the ground. Night again in a room. A long, narrowish room +with an open window through which came the light of a street-lamp that +flung a bright patch upon the carpet, the edge of a dressing-table, the +end of a white bed. Upon the bed, from which the coverings had been +flung down, there lay sleeping, curled up like a kitten, a figure in a +white, ruffled night-gown, with a cherub's head thrown backwards against +the pillow. Gwenna, looking down, thought, "Where have I seen _her_?" + +In the next flash she had realised. + +Herself!... Her own sleeping body that her dreaming soul had left for +this brief flight.... + +A start more violent than that with which her dream had begun shook the +dreamer as she came to herself again. + +She woke. With a pitiful little "Oh," sounding in her own ears, she sat +up in bed and stared about her Club bedroom with its patches of light +from the street-lamp outside. She was trembling from head to foot, her +curls were wet with fright, and her first thought as she sprang out of +bed and to the door of that ghostly room was "I must go to Leslie." + +But Leslie's bedroom was a story higher. Gwenna paused in the corridor +outside the nearest bedroom to her own. A thread of light showed below +the door. It was a Miss Armitage's, and she was one of the Club members, +who wrote pamphlets on the Suffrage, and like topics, far into the +night. Gwenna, feeling already more normal and cheered by the sense of +any human nearness, decided, "I won't go to her. She'll only want to +read aloud to me.... She laughed at me because I said I adored 'The +Forest Lovers,' but what books does _she_ like? Only those _dreat_-ful +long novels all about nothing, except the diseases of people in the +Potteries. Or else it'll be one of her own tracts.... Somehow she does +make everything she's interested in sound so _ugly_. All those +intellectual ones here do! Whether it's Marriage or Not-getting-married, +you really don't know which would be the most _dull_, from these +suffragettes," reflected the young girl, pattering down the corridor +again. "I'll go back to bed." + +She went back, snuggling under the clothes. But she could not go to +sleep again for some time. She lay curled up, thinking. + +She had thought too often and too long of that dance now three whole +weeks behind her. She had recalled, too many times! every moment of it; +every word and gesture of her partner's, going over and over his look, +his laugh, the tone in which he'd said, "Give _me_ this waltz, will +you?" All that memory had had the sweetness smelt out of it like a +child's posy. By this time it was worn thin as heirloom silver. She +turned from it.... It was then she remembered that saying about the +Midsummer Night's Dream. If that were true, then Gwenna might expect +soon to fly in reality. + +For after all her plans and hopes, she had not even yet been taken up +by Paul Dampier in an aeroplane! + +In that silent, unacknowledged conflict between the Girl and the +Machine, so far scarcely a score could have been put down to the credit +of the Girl. It was she who had always found herself put back, +disappointed, frustrated. This had been by the merest accidents. + +First of all, the Airman hadn't been able to ask her and Miss Long to +his rooms in Camden Town to look at his model aeroplane. He had been +kept hanging on, not knowing which Saturday-to-Monday Colonel Conyers +("the great Air-craft Conyers") was going to ask him down to stay at +that house in Ascot, to have another talk over the subject of the new +Machine. ("A score for the Machine," thought the girl; wakeful, tossing +on her bed.) + +She did not even know that the week after, on a glorious and cloudless +Saturday, young Dampier, blankly unaware that there was any conflict +going on in his world! had settled to ask "the Little Thing" to Hendon. +On the Friday afternoon, however, his firm had sent him out of town, +down to the factory near Aldershot. Here he had stayed until the +following Tuesday, putting up at the house of a kindred soul employed at +that factory, and wallowing in "Shop." ... Another win for the Machine! + +The following Sunday the cup had been almost to Gwenna's lips. He had +called for her. Not in the car, this time. They had taken the Tube to +Golders Green; the motor-bus to Hendon Church; and then the path over +the fields together. Ah, delight! For even walking over the dusty grass +beside that swinging boy's figure in the grey tweed jacket was a joyous +adventure. It had been another when he had presently stooped and said, +"Shoelace come untied; might trip over that. I'll do it up," and had +fastened her broad brown shoe-ribbon securely for her. Her shoes had +been powdered white. He had taken his handkerchief out of his pocket and +had flicked the dust off, saying, as he did so, in a tone of some +interest, "I say, what tiny feet girls do have!" + +("Pie for you, Taffy, of course," as Leslie had said later, when she'd +heard of this. "Second time he'd noticed them.") + +Gwenna, in a tone half pleased, half piqued, had told him, "_All_ girls +don't have them so small! And yet you don't seem to notice anything +about people but their feet." She had walked on, delightedly conscious +of his laugh, his amused, "Oh, don't I?" and his downward glance.... +Wasn't this, she had thought, something of a score at last for the Girl! + +But hadn't even that small score been wiped out on the flying-ground? +There Gwenna had stood, waiting, gleeful and agitated; her mist-blue +scarf aflutter in the brisk breeze, but not fluttering as wildly as her +heart.... + +And then had come frustration once again! Paul Dampier's deep and +womanishly-soft tone saying, "I say, I'm afraid it's going to be a bit +too blowy, after all. Wind's rising all the time;" and that other giant +voice from the megaphone announcing: + + "Ladies and gentul Men! As the wind is now blowing + forty miles an hour it will be im possible to make + passenger flights!" + +Oh, bitter defeat for the Girl! For, this time, there had been no +idyllic picnic _à deux_ to console her for any disappointment. There had +been nothing but a rather noisy tea in the Pavilion, with a whole +chattering party of the young Airman's acquaintances; with another young +woman who had meant to fly, but who had seemed resigned enough that it +was "not to be, _this_ afternoon," and with half a dozen strange, +irrelevant young men; quite _silly_, Gwenna had thought them. Two of +them had given Gwenna a lift back to Hampstead in their car afterwards, +since Paul Dampier had explained that he "rather wanted to go on with +one of the other fellows"--somewhere! Gwenna didn't know where. Only, +out of her sight! Out of her world! And she was quite certain, even +though he hadn't said so, that he had been bent on some quest that had +something to do with the _Fianceé_ of his, the "P.D.Q.," the Machine! + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +AN AWAKENING + + +The sore of that jealousy still smarted in the girl's mind as she turned +her pillow restlessly.... She could not sleep until long after the +starlings had been twittering and the milk-carts rattling by in the +suburban road outside. She awoke, dispirited. She came down late for +breakfast; Leslie had already gone off to her old lady in Highgate. Over +the disordered breakfast-table Miss Armitage was making plans, with some +of the other Suffrage-workers, to "speak" at a meeting of the Fabian +Nursery. Those young women talked loudly enough, but they didn't +pronounce the ends of any of their words; hideously slipshod it all +sounded, thought the Welsh girl fretfully. Her world was a desert to +her, this fine June morning. For at the Westminster office things seemed +as dreary as they had at the Club. She began to see what people meant +when they said that on long sea-voyages one of the greatest hardships +was never to see a fresh face, but always the same ones, day after day, +well-known to weariness, all about one. It was just like that when one +was shut up to work day after day in an office with the same people. She +was sick to death of all the faces of all the people here. Miss Butcher +with her Cockney accent! Miss Baker with her eternal crochet! The men in +the yards with their _awful_ tobacco and trousers! Nearly all men, she +thought, were ugly. All old men. And most of the young ones; _round_ +backs, _horrid_ hands, _disgusting_ skins--Mr. Grant, for instance! +(with a glance at that well-meaning engineer, when he brought in some +note for Mabel Butcher). Those swarthy men never looked as if they had +baths and proper shaves. He'd a head like a black hatpin. And his +accent, thought the girl from the land where every letter of a word is +pronounced, his accent was more excruciating than any in Westminster. + +"Needn't b'lieve me, if you don't want. But it's true-oo! Vis'ters this +aft'noon," he was saying to Miss Butcher. "Young French Dook or Comp or +something, he is; taking out a patent for a new crane. Coming in early +with some swagger friends of his. Wants to be shown the beauties of the +buildin', I s'pose. Better bring him in here and let him have a good +look at you girls first thing, hadn't I? S'long! Duty calls. I must +away." + +And away he went, leaving Miss Butcher smiling fondly after him, while +Miss Williams wondered how on earth any girl ever managed to fall in +love, considering there was nothing but young men to fall in love with. +All ordinary young men were awful. And all young men _were_ ordinary.... +Except, now and again, one ... far away ... out of reach.... Who just +showed how different and wonderful a thing a lover might be! If one +could only, only ever get near him!--instead of being stuck down here, +in this perfectly beastly place---- + +As the morning wore on, she found herself more and more dissatisfied +with all her surroundings. And for a girl of Gwenna's sort to be +thoroughly dissatisfied predicts one thing only. She will not long stay +where she is. + +Impatiently she sighed over her typing-table. Irritably she fidgeted in +her chair. This was what jerked the plump arm of Ottilie Becker, who was +passing behind her, and who now dropped a handful of papers on to the +new boards. + +"Zere! Now see what you have made me do," said the German girl +good-naturedly enough. "My letter! Pick him up, Candlesticks-maker." + +"Oh, pick him up yourself," retorted Gwenna school-girlishly, crossly. +"It wasn't my fault." + +At this tone from a colleague of whom she was genuinely fond, tears rose +to Miss Becker's blue eyes. Miss Butcher, coming across to the centre +table, saw those tears. + +"Well, really, anybody might _apologise_," she remarked reproachfully, +"when they've _upset_ anybody." + +At this rebuke Gwenna's strained nerves snapped. + +An Aberystwith Collegiate School expression rose naturally to her +lips--"_Cau dy gêg_!" She translated it: "Shut _up_!" she said, quite +rudely. + +Then, the moment after she had given way to this little outburst of +temper she felt better. She was ready to be on the best of terms again +with her fellow-typists. They, as Miss Butcher would have said, "weren't +having any." They turned offended backs upon her. They talked pointedly +to each other, not to her. + +"That's a precious long letter you've got written there, Baker," said +Miss Butcher, helping to gather up the half-dozen thin foreign sheets, +covered with neat, pointed German writing. "Is that to the beloved +brother?" + +Miss Becker nodded her plait-wreathed head as she put the letter that +began: "_Geliebter Karl!_" into the grey-lined envelope. + +"He likes to hear what they make--do--at the works. Always he ask," she +said, "after what they do. And who come hier; and where everythings is +kept." + +"Gracious! I do believe he's a regular German spy, like in the +magazines, this brother of yours," smiled Miss Butcher lightly. "Don't +you give away any of our State secrets, Baker, will you? We'd be having +the authorities, whoever they are, poking round and inquiring. Awful if +England and your country went to war, wouldn't it?--and you were +supposed to be 'the Enemy'!" + +She spoke as if of something that was more fantastic than Gwenna's +flying dream of the night before. The German typist answered in the same +strain. + +"If it _was_ war, I would speak to Karlchen's regiment that your house +in Clapham and your people should be saved," she promised. "But he is +not thinking now of war; he interests himself very much for buildings +(because our father is architect). And for maps of the river, and such. +So I must write on him every week a long letter.... We go out to-day to +have our lunch, yes?" + +The two went out together towards Whitehall. The Welsh girl was left in +Coventry--and the deserted offices. + +She didn't want any lunch. She drank a glass of tepid tap-water from the +dressing-room. She ate some strawberries, bought in their little flat +basket as she had come along. Then, hatless, and in her thin, one-piece +dress of grey linen, she strolled out into the yard for a breath of air. + +It was empty and hot and sunny. Gwenna looked up from the wood-littered +ground where the ubiquitous London pigeons strutted and flirted and +"Croo--_croo_--do--I--do"-ed about her feet. Overhead, that giant +lacework on its iron crochet-hooks looked as if its pattern had been +drawn with a pen and black ink against the opaque blue-grey sky. The +sight of that far-off pinnacle put into her head again the thought of +flying. + +"I don't believe that I shall ever be as high up as that, with the blue +beneath me, like I've always wanted!" reflected the young girl, +dolefully looking up. "I believe that last night in my dream is all the +flying I'm ever going to have had!" + +And again that longing took her. That pure longing to be high; above the +Law that clogs the children of Man to the Earth from which he came. To +feel the unfettered air above and below and about her all at once!... +But what could she do to gratify the impulse even a little? + +Only one thing. + +She might _climb_. + +The idea with which she started off on her mad prank was to climb up to +that iron lattice of lacework; to run up that as a sailor climbs the +rope-ladders of his masts, and thence from the very highest peak +attainable to look down on London, even as last night she had looked +down on it from her dream. + +Her start was not in the open air at all, but from the bottom of the +scaffolding inside, where it was all beams and uprights and floors of +planks. It reminded Gwenna of being underneath the old wooden pier at +Aberdovey, and looking up. She went up ladders, through trap-doors, +walked over wooden floors to other ladders until she got up to the last +trap-door and through it out of the shadow and the stuffiness to the +sunshine and the fresh air again. She stood on the top platform of the +gantry which supported that engine and the wheels that worked (she +supposed) the iron lattice that was still far above her head. + +Presently she would climb that. She knew that she could. She was never +afraid of heights. Her head was steady enough. Her feet in their brown +shoes were as sure as the feet of the tiny sheep that picked their way +up the rocky steeps of her Welsh mountains. She could climb as well as +any of the men ... but for the moment she rested, standing by the +platform hand-railing, breathing in the freshened breeze. + +The birds of the City--pigeons and sparrows--were taking their short +flights far beneath her perch. All London was spread below her, as it +had been in that flying dream, and with as strong a sense of security +as in the dream she looked down upon it. + +There, between the forests of chimney-pots, gleamed that highway of the +Thames, blue-grey now as it reflected the sky, winding out of the +distance that meant the clean, green country and the willows below the +lawns where people had danced; flowing on into London that sullied it, +and burdened it with her barges, and spanned it with her bridges, but +could not stay it; on and out its waters passed towards Greenwich and +the Docks and the tall ships and the North Sea! + +And there on its bank was the office, the dwindled yard from which +Gwenna had started. The men returning.... + +The whole place looked nothing more than a hen-run full of fowls. Their +voices ascended, more loudly than she would have expected to hear from +their diminished figures. How funny to see what midgets the creatures +looked from here, and to remember how majestically important each +considered himself! thought little Gwenna, forgetting that from the yard +she herself, with her grey linen frock, her brown feet and ankles, must +look no larger than a roosting pigeon. + +She looked down, past the railing and the ends of timbers, feeling +immeasurably aloof from everybody in her world. She wished she need +never go down to it again. + +"I've a _good_ mind to give notice at the office, whatever, and go +somewhere quite different!" she thought defiantly, and immediately she +felt elated. A weight of depression seemed to have dropped from her +already. Up, up went the feather-weight spirits of Youth. She had +forgotten for this moment the longing and frustration of the last weeks, +the exasperations of this morning, her squabble with those other girls. +She had climbed out of all that.... + +Now, before she left this place, she would do something that none of the +girls she knew would dare. She'd climb further. + +She turned to take a step towards the crane. + + +Then something gave her a start as violent as that in which she had, +that night before, been jerked out of her dream. + +For now, into her absorbed musing there had broken without warning the +sound of a voice. It had seemed to have come out of nothing, from behind +her, and it had said, with a laugh deep and soft at once, "_My_ machine? +Oh, yes.... Good of you to remember her----" + +Paul Dampier's voice! + +Little Gwenna, with her back to the trap-door, and wrapped in her own +thoughts, had heard nothing of the steps of five pairs of feet coming up +the way that she had come. In the violence of her surprise of hearing a +voice, so often heard in her daydreams now, here, in this unexpected +place between sky and ground, she started so that she lost her balance. + +The girl's foot slipped. She fell. She was half over the platform--one +small foot and ankle stretched out over the giddy height as that crane +was stretched. She clutched on the crook of a slender grey arm, the +railing of the platform--So, for an agonised moment, she hung. + +But hardly had she cried out before there was the dash of a tall man's +figure across the planks from the trap-door. + +"It's all right--I've got you," said Paul Dampier, and caught her up +from the edge, in his arms. + +They held her. That armful of a girl, soft and warm as one of the grey +pigeons, was crushed for a moment against the boy's chest. She was +closer to him than she had been in any of those waltzes. Yet it seemed +no strangeness to be so near--feeling his heart beat below hers, feeling +the roughness of his tweed jacket through the thin linen of her frock. +She felt as she'd felt about flying, in that dream of hers. "I must have +known it all before." + +Then, dazed but happy, resting where she seemed to belong, she thought +in a twink, "I shall have to let go. _Why_ can't I stay like this?... +Oh, it's very cruel. There! Now I have let go. But he won't.... He's +getting his balance." + +He had taken a step backwards. + +Then she slid through his arms. She slipped, lightly as a squirrel slips +down the length of a beech, to the wooden floor of the platform. + +Cruel; yes, _cruel_! And to add to the cruelty that such a moment must +end, the Airman, when she left his enforced clasp, scarcely looked at +her. He barely returned her greeting. He did not answer her breathless +thanks. He turned away from her--whom he had saved. Yes! He left her to +the meaningless babble of the others (she recognised now, in a dazed +way, that there were other men with him on the scaffolding). He left her +to the politenesses of his cousin Hugo and of that young French engineer +(Mr. Grant's "Comp" who had come up to inspect the crane). He never +looked again as Miss Williams was guided down the trap-door and the +ladders by the scolding Yorkshire foreman, who didn't leave her until +she was safely at the bottom. + +She was met by the two other typists who had, from the office window, +seen her perched up, small as a bird, on the heights. Both girls had +been terrified. Miss Butcher now brought lavender salts. Miss Becker's +pink moon of a face was blanched with horror over her colleague's +danger. + +"Do you know what could have happened, Candlesticks-maker, my dear?" +cried the German girl with real emotion, as they all made tea together +in the varnished, stifling office. "You could have been killed, you!" + +Gwenna thought, "That would have been too bad. Because then--_then_ I +shouldn't have known when he held me!" + + * * * * * + +As it was, there were several things about that incident that the young +girl--passionate and infatuated and innocent--did not know. + +For one thing, there was the resolution that Paul Dampier took just +after he had turned abruptly from her, had taken short leave of the +others, and when he was striding down Whitehall to the bus that went +past the door of his Camden Town rooms. And for another thing, there was +the reason for that resolution. + +Now, in the fairy-stories of modern life, it is (of the two principals) +not always the Princess who has to be woken by a kiss, a touch, from the +untroubled sleep of years. Sometimes it is the Prince who is suddenly +stirred, jarred, or jolted broad awake by the touch, in some form or +other, of Love. In Paul Dampier's case the every-day miracle had been +wrought by the soft weight of that dove-breasted girl against his heart +for no longer than he could count ten, by her sliding to the earth +through an embrace that he had not intended for an embrace at all. + +It hadn't seemed to matter what _he_ had intended! + +In a flock as of homing pigeons there flew back upon the young aviator +all at once his thoughts of the Little Thing ever since he'd met her. + +How he'd thought her so jolly to look at ("So sensible"--this he +forgot). How topping and natural it had seemed to sit there with her in +that field, talking to her, drinking with her out of one silver cup. How +he'd found himself wanting to touch her curls; to span and squeeze her +throat with his hands. How he'd been within an inch of summarily kissing +that fox-glove pink mouth of hers, that night at the Dance.... + +And to-day, when he'd come to Westminster for another talk with that +rather decent young Frenchman of Hugo's, when he hadn't thought of +seeing the girl at all, what had happened? He'd actually held her +clasped in his arms, as a sweetheart is clasped. + +Only by a sheer accident, of course. + +Yes, but an accident that had left impressed on every fibre of him the +feeling of that warm and breathing burden which seemed even yet to rest +against his quickened heart. + +In that heart there surged up a clamorous impulse to go back at once. To +snatch her up for the second time in his arms, and not to let her go +again, either. To satisfy that hunger of his fingers and lips for the +touch of her---- + +"_Hold_ hard!" muttered the boy to himself. "Hang it all, this won't +do." + +For he had found himself actually turning back, his face set towards the +Abbey. + +He spun round on the hot pavement towards home again. + +"Look here; can't have this!" he told himself grimly as he walked on, +swinging his straw hat in his hand, towards Trafalgar Square. "At this +rate I shall be making an ass of myself before I know where I am; going +and falling in--going and getting myself much too dashed fond of the +Little Thing." + +Yes! He now saw that he was in some danger of that. + +And if it did come to anything, he mused, walking among the London +summer crowd, it wouldn't be one of these Fancy-dress-dance +flirtations. Not that sort of girl. "Nor was he; really." Not that sort +of man, he meant. Sort of thing never had amused him, much; not, he +knew, because he was cold-blooded ("Lord, no!") but partly because he'd +had such stacks of other things to do, partly because--because he'd +always thought it ought to be (and could be) so much more--well, amusing +than it was. This other. This with the Little Thing--he somehow knew +that it would have to be "for keeps." + +And _that_ he couldn't have. Good Lord, no! There could be no +question--Great Scott! + +For yes, if there _was_ anything between him and the Little Thing, it +would have to be an engagement. Marriage, and all that. + +And Paul Dampier didn't intend to get married. Out of the question for +him. + +He'd only just managed to scrape through and make "some sort of a +footing" for himself in the world as it was. His father, a hard-up Civil +engineer, and his mother (who had been looked askance at by her people, +the Swaynes, for marrying the penniless and undistinguished Paul +Dampier, senior)--they'd only just managed to give their boy "some kind +of an education" before they pegged out. Lessons at home when he'd been +a little fellow. Afterwards one of the (much) smaller public-schools. +For friends and pleasures and holidays he had been dependent on what he +could "pick up" for himself. Old Hugo had been decent enough. He'd asked +his cousin to fish with him in Wales, twice, and he hadn't allowed Paul +to feel that he was--the poor relation. + +Only Paul remembered the day that Hugo was going back to Harrow for the +last time. He, Paul, had then been a year in the shops, to the day. He +remembered the sudden resentment of that. It was not snobbery, not envy. +It was Youth in him crying out, "I will be served! I won't be put off, +and stopped doing things, and shoved out of things for ever, just +because I'm poor. If being poor means being 'out of it,' having no Power +of any kind, I'm dashed if I _stay_ poor. I'll show that I can make +good----" + +And, gradually, step by step, the young mechanic, pilot, aero-racer and +inventor had been "making good." + +He'd made friends, too. People had been decent. He'd been made to feel +that _they_ felt he was going to be a useful sort of chap. He'd quailed +a bit under the eyes of butlers in these houses where he'd stayed, but +he'd been asked again. That Mrs. What's-her-name (the woman in the pink +frock at the Smiths) had been awfully kind. Introducing him to her +brothers with capital; asking him down to the New Forest to meet some +other influential person; and knowing that he couldn't entertain in +return. (He'd just sent her some flowers and some tickets for +Brooklands.) Then there was Colonel Conyers. He'd asked whether he +(Dampier) were engaged. And, at his answer, had replied, "Good. Much +easier for a bachelor, these days." + +And now! Supposing he got married? + +On his screw? Paul Dampier laughed bitterly. + +Well, but supposing he got engaged; got some wretched girl to wait +for---- + +Years of it! Thanks! + +Then, quite apart from the money-question, what about all his work? + +Everything he wanted to do! Everything he was really in earnest about. + +His scheme--his invention--his Machine! + +"End of it all, if he went complicating matters by starting a _girl_!" + +Take up all his time. Interrupt--putting him off his job--yes, he knew! +Putting him off, like this afternoon in the yard, and that other night +at the Dance. Only more so. Incessant. "Mustn't have it; quite simply, +he must _not_." + +Messing up his whole chance of a career, if---- + +But he was pulling himself up in time from that danger. + +Up to now he hadn't realised that there might be something in all that +rot of old Hugo's about the struggle in a man's mind between an +Aeroplane and a Girl. Now--well, he'd realised. All the better. Now he +was forewarned. Good thing he could take a side for himself now. + +By the time he'd reached the door of the National Portrait Gallery and +stood waiting for his motor omnibus, he had definitely taken that +resolution of which Gwenna Williams did not know. + +Namely, that he must drop seeing the Girl. Have nothing more to say to +her. It was better so; wiser. Whatever he'd promised about taking her up +would have to be "off." + +A pity--! Dashed shame a man couldn't have _everything_! She was ... so +awfully sweet.... + +Still, got to decide one way or the other. + +This would fix it before it was too late, before he'd perhaps managed to +put ideas into the head of the Little Thing. She shouldn't ever come +flying, with him! + +That _ended_ it! he thought. He'd made up _his_ mind. He would not allow +himself to wonder what _she_ might think. + +After all, what _would_ a girl think? Probably nothing. + +Nothing at all, probably. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +LESLIE ON "TOO MUCH LOVE" + + +It seemed to be decided for Gwenna that she should, after all, give +notice at the office. + +For on the evening of the day of her climb up the scaffolding she met +the tall, sketchily-dressed figure of her chum coming down the hill that +she was ascending on her way to the Club. And Leslie accosted her with +the words, "Child, d'you happen to want to leave your place and take +another job? Because, if so, come along for a walk and we'll talk about +it." + +So the two "inseparables" strolled on together up past the Club, passing +at the crest of the hill a troop of Boy Scouts with their band. + +"Only chance one ever gets of hearing a drum; jolly sound," sighed +Leslie, watching the brown faces, the sturdy legs marching by. "I wonder +how many of those lads will be soldiers? Very few, I suppose. We're told +that the authorities are _so_ careful to keep the Boy Scout Movement +apart from any pernicious militarism, and ideas about National Service!" + +And the girls took the road that dips downward from Hampstead, and the +chestnut avenue that leads into the Park of Golders Green. They passed +the Bandstand ringed by nurse-girls and perambulators. They crossed the +rustic bridge above the lily-pond, where children tossed crumbs to the +minnows. They went in at the door of the little flower-garden. + +Here, except for an occasional sauntering couple, London seemed shut +out. In the late sunlight above the maze of paths, the roses were just +at their best. Over the pergolas and arbours they hung in garlands, they +were massed in great posies of pink and cream and crimson. The little +fountain set in the square of velvet turf tossed up a spray of white +mist touched with a rainbow, not unlike Gwenna's dance-frock. + +The girls sat down on a shaded seat facing that fountain. Gwenna, +turning to her chum, said, "Now do tell me about that job you asked if +I'd take. What is it?" + +"Oh! it's a woman who used to know some of my people; she came to the +Club this afternoon, and then on to my old lady's to see me about it," +said Leslie. "She wants a girl--partly to do secretarial work, partly to +keep her company, partly to help her in the 'odd bits' of her work down +there where she has her business." + +Gwenna, rather listlessly thinking of typewriting offices, of blouses, +or tea-shops, asked what the lady did. + +Leslie gave the extraordinary answer, "She builds aeroplanes." + +"_She_ does?" cried Gwenna, all thrilled. "_Aeroplanes?_" + +"Yes. She's the only woman who's got an Aircraft Factory, men, shops and +all. It's about an hour's run from town. She's a pilot herself, and her +son's an aviator," said Leslie, speaking as though of everyday things. +"Everything supplied, from the Man to the Machine, what?" + +"Oh! But what a _gorgeous_ sort of Life for a woman, Leslie!" cried the +younger girl, her face suddenly alight. "Fancy spending her time making +things like _that_! Things that are going to make a difference to the +whole world! Instead of her just 'settling down' and embroidering +'duchesse sets,' and sitting with tea-cups, like Uncle Hugh's 'Lady +parishioners,' and talking to callers about servants; and operations! +Oh, oh, don't _you_ want to take her job?" + +"I'm not especially keen on one job more than another. And my old lady +would be rather upset if I did leave her in the lurch," said Leslie, +more unselfishly than her chum suspected. The truth was that this much +disapproved-of Leslie had resigned a congenial post because it might +mean what Gwenna loved. "I told the Aeroplane Lady about you," she +added. "And she'd like you to go down and interview her at the Factory +next Saturday, if you'd care to." + +"Care? Of _course_ I'd care! Aeroplanes! After silly buildings and +specifications!" exclaimed Gwenna, clasping her hands in her grey linen +lap. But her face fell suddenly as she added, "But--it's an hour's run +from London, you say? I should have to live there?" + +"'_Away from Troilus, and away from Troy_,'" quoted Leslie, smiling. +"You could come back to Troy for week-ends, Taffy. And I'll tell you +what. _It's no bad thing for a young man who's always thought of a girl +as being planted in one particular place, to realise suddenly that +she's been uprooted and set up in quite another place._ Gives him just a +little jerk. By the way, is there any fresh news of Troilus--of the +Dampier boy?" + +And Gwenna, sitting there with troubled eyes upon the roses, gave her +the history of that afternoon's adventure. She ended up sadly, "Never +even said 'Good-bye' to me!" + +"Getting nervous that he's going to like you too well!" translated +Leslie, without difficulty. "Probably deciding at this minute that he'd +better not see much more of you----" + +"Oh, Leslie!" exclaimed the younger girl, alarmed. + +"Sort of thing they _do_ decide," said Leslie, lightly. "Well, we'll see +what it amounts to. And we'll wire to-morrow to the Aeroplane Lady. Or +telephone down to-night. I am going to telephone to Hugo Swayne to tell +him I don't feel in the mood to have dinner out to-night again." + +"Again?" said Gwenna, rather wistfully, as they rose from the arbour and +walked slowly down the path by the peach-houses. "Has he been asking you +out _several_ times, then?" + +"Several," said Leslie with a laugh. She added in her insouciant way, +"You know, _he_ wants to marry me now." + +Gwenna regarded her with envy. Leslie spoke of what should be the eighth +wonder of the world, the making or rejecting of a man's life, as if it +were an everyday affair. + +"Don't look so unflatteringly _surprised_, Taffy. Strictly pretty I may +not be. But a scrupulously neat and lady-like appearance," mocked +Leslie, putting out a long arm in a faded-silk sleeve that was torn at +the cuff, "has often (they tell one) done more to win husbands than +actual good looks!" + +Little Gwenna said, startled, "You aren't--aren't going to _let_ Mr. +Swayne be your husband, are you?" + +"I don't know," said Leslie, reflectively, a little wearily. "I don't +know, yet. He's fat--but of course _that_ would come off after I'd +worried him for a year or so. He's flabby. He's rather like Kipling's +person whose '_rooms at College was beastly_!' but he's good-natured, +and his people were all right, and, Taffy, he's delightfully well-off. +And when one's turned twenty-six, one does want to be _sure_ of what's +coming. One must have some investment that'll bring in one's frocks and +one's railway-fares and one's proper setting." + +"There are other things," protested little Gwenna with a warm memory of +that moment's clasping on the heights that afternoon. "There are things +one wants more." + +"Not me." + +"Ah! That's because you don't _know_ them," declared Gwenna, flushed. + +And at that the elder girl gave a very rueful laugh. + +"Not know them? I've known them too well," she admitted. "Listen, Taffy, +I'll tell you the sort of girl I am. I'm afraid there are plenty of us +about." + +She sighed, and went on with a little nod. + +"We're the girl who works in the sweetshop and who never wants to touch +chocolates again. We're the sort of girl who's been turned loose too +early at dances and studio-parties and theatricals and so forth. The +girl who's come in for too much excitement and flattery and love-making. +Yes! For in spite of all my natural disadvantages (tuck in that bit of +hair for me, will you?) and in _spite_ of not being quite a fool--I've +been made too much of, by men. The Monties and so forth. _Here's where I +pay for it._ I and the girls like me. We can't ever take a real live +interest in men again!" + +"But----!" objected Gwenna, seeing a mental image of Leslie as she had +been at that dance, whirling and flushed and radiant. "You _seem_ to +like----" + +"'_The chase, not the quarry_,'" quoted Leslie. "For when I've brought +down my bird, what happens?--He doesn't amuse me any more! It's like +having sweets to eat and such a cold that one can't taste 'em." + +"But--that's such a _pity_!" + +"D'you suppose I don't _know_ that?" retorted Miss Long. "D'you suppose +I don't wish to Heaven that I could be 'in Love' with somebody? I can't +though. I see through men. And I don't see as much in them as there is +in myself. They can't boss _me_, or take _me_ out of myself, or surprise +_me_ into admiring them. Why can't they, _dash_ them? they can't even +_say_ anything that I can't think of, quicker, first!" complained the +girl with many admirers, resentfully. "And that's a fatal thing to any +woman's happiness. Remember, there's no fun for a woman in just _being_ +adored!" + +The girl in love, kicking her small brown shoe against the pebbles of +the garden path, sighed that she wished that she could try "being +adored." Just for a change. + +"Ah, but you, Taffy, you're lucky. You're so fresh, so eager. You're as +much in love with that aviator's job as you are with anything else about +him. You're as much amused by 'ordinary things' as any other girl is +amused by getting a young man. As for what you feel about the young man +himself, well!--I suppose _that's_ a tune played half a yard to the +right of the keyboard of an ordinary girl's capacity. You're keen for +Life; you've got what men call '_a thirst you couldn't buy_.' Wish I +were like that!" + +"Well, but it's so easy to be," argued Gwenna, "when you _do_ meet some +one so wonderful----" + +"It's not so easy to see 'wonder,' let me tell you. It's a gift. I've +had it; lost it; spoilt it," mourned the elder girl. "To you +everything's thrilling: their blessed airships--the men in them--the Air +itself. All miracles to you! Everything's an Adventure. So would +Marriage be----" + +"Oh, I don't--don't ever think of _that_. Being always _with_ a person! +Oh, it would be _too_ wonderful---- I shouldn't expect--Even to be a +little _liked_, if he once told me so, would be enough," whispered the +little Welsh girl, so softly that her chum did not catch it. + +Leslie, striding along, said, "To a girl like me all that's as far +behind as the school-room. At the stage where I am, a girl looks upon +Marriage--how? As '_The Last 'Bus Home, or A Settled Job at last_.' +That's why she so often ends up as an old man's darling--with some very +young man as her slave. That's what makes me ready to accept Hugo +Swayne. And now forget I ever told you so." + +The two girls turned homewards; Gwenna a little sad. + +To think that Leslie should lack what even ordinary little Mabel Butcher +had! To think that Leslie, underneath all her gaiety and rattle, should +not know any more the taste of real delight! + +Gwenna, the simple-hearted, did not know the ways of self-critics. She +did not guess that possibly Miss Long had been analysing her own +character with less truth than gusto.... And she was surprised when, as +they passed the Park gates again, her chum broke the silence with all +her old lightness of tone. + +"Talking of young men--a habit for which Leslie never bothers to +apologise--talking of young men, I believe there might be some at the +Aeroplane Lady's place. She often has some one there. A +gentleman--'prentice or pupil or something of that sort. Might be rather +glad to see a new pretty face about with real curls." + +It was then that Gwenna turned up that blushing but rather indignant +little face. "But, Leslie! Don't you _understand_? If there were a +million other young men about, all thinking me--all thinking what you +say, it wouldn't make a _bit_ of difference to _me_!" + +"Possibly not," said Miss Long, "but there's no reason why it shouldn't +be made to make a difference to the Dampier boy, is there?" + +"What d'you mean, Leslie?" demanded the other girl as they climbed the +hill together. For the first time a look of austerity crossed Gwenna's +small face. For the first time it seemed to her that the adored +girl-chum was in the wrong. Yes! She had never before been shocked at +Leslie, whatever wild thing she said. But now--now she was shocked. She +was disappointed in her. She repeated, rebukefully, "What do you mean?" + +"What," took up Leslie, defiantly, "do you think I meant?" + +"Well--_did_ you mean make--make Mr. Dampier think other people liked +me, and that I might like somebody else better than _him_?" + +"Something of the sort _had_ crossed the mind of Leslie the Limit." + +"Well, then, it isn't _like_ you----" + +"Think not?" There was more than a hint of quarrel in both the girlish +voices. Up to now they had never exchanged a word that was not of +affection, of comradeship. + +Gwenna, flushing deeper, said, "It's--it's _horrid_ of you, Leslie." + +"Why, pray?" + +"Because it would be sort of _deceiving_ Mr. Dampier, for one thing. +It's a _trick_." + +"M'yes!" + +"And not a pretty one, either," said little Gwenna, red and angry now. +"It's--it's----" + +"What?" + +"Well, it's what I should have thought that you yourself, Leslie, would +have called '_so obvious_.'" + +"Exactly," agreed Miss Long, with a flippant little laugh that covered +smarting feelings. _Taffy_ had turned against her now! Taffy, who used +to think that Leslie could do no wrong! This was what happened when +one's inseparable chum fell in love.... + +Leslie said impenitently, "I've never yet found that '_the obvious +thing_' was '_the unsuccessful thing_.' Especially when it comes to +anything to do with young men. My good child, you and the Dampier boy, +you + + '_Really constitute a pair, + Each being rather like an artless woodland elf._' + +I mean, can't you see that the dear old-fashioned simple remedies and +recipes remain the best? For a sore throat, black-currant tea. (Never +fails!) For the hair, Macassar oil. (Unsurpassed since the Year +Eighteen-dot!) For the stimulation of an admirer's interest, jealousy. +Jealousy and competition, Taffy." + +"He isn't an admirer," protested the younger girl, mollified. Then they +smiled together. The cloud of the first squabble had passed. + +Leslie said, "Never mind. If you don't approve of my specific, don't +think of it again." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE AEROPLANE LADY + + +Curiously enough, Gwenna did think of it again. + +On the Saturday morning after that walk and talk she took that long dull +train-journey. The only bright spot on it was the passing of Hendon +Flying Ground. Over an hour afterwards she arrived at the little +station, set in a sunburnt waste, for the Aircraft Works. + +She asked her way of the ticket-collector at the booking-office. But +before he could speak, she was answered by some one else, who had come +down to the station for a parcel. This was a shortish young man in +greasy blue overalls. He had a smiling, friendly, freckled face under a +thatch of brilliant red hair; and a voice that seemed oddly out of +keeping with his garments. It was an "Oxford" voice. + +"The Works? I'm just going on there myself. I'll come with you and show +you, if I may," he said with evident zest. + +Gwenna, walking beside him, wished that she had not immediately +remembered Leslie's remarks about young men at aircraft works who might +be glad of the arrival of a new pretty face. This young man, piloting +her down a straggling village street that seemed neither town nor +country, told her at once that he was a pupil at the Works and asked +whether she herself were going to help Mrs. Crewe there. + +"I don't know yet," said Gwenna. "I hope so." + +"So do I," said the young man gravely, but with a glint of unreserved +admiration in the eyes under the red thatch. + +Little Gwenna, walking very erect, wished that she were strong and +self-reliant enough not to feel cheered by that admiration. + +(But she was cheered. No denying that!) + +The young man took her down a road flanked on either hand by sparse +hedges dividing it from that parched and uninteresting plain. The +mountain-bred girl found all this flat country incredibly ugly. Only, on +her purple Welsh heights and in the green ferny depths threaded by +crystal water, nothing ever happened. It was here, in this half-rural +desert littered by builders' rubbish and empty cans, that Enterprise was +afoot. Strange! + + * * * * * + +On the right came an opening. She saw a yard with wooden debris and what +looked like the wrecks of a couple of motor-cars. Beyond was a cluster +of buildings with corrugated iron roofs. + +The red-haired pupil mentioned the name of the Aeroplane Lady and said, +"I think you'll find her in the new Wing-room, over here----" + +"What a wonderful name for it," thought the little enthusiast, catching +her breath, as she was shown through a door. "The Wing-room!" + +It was high and clean and spacious, with white distempered walls and a +floor of wood-dura, firm yet comforting to the feet. The atmosphere of +it was, on that July day, somewhat overpowering. Two radiators were +working, and the air was heavy with a smell of what seemed like +rubber-solution and spirits mixed: this, Gwenna presently found, was the +"dope" to varnish the strong linen stretched across the wings of +aeroplanes. Two of those great wings were laid out horizontally on +trestles to dry. Another of the huge sails with cambered sections was +set up on end across a corner; and from behind it there moved, stepping +daintily and majestically across the floor, the tawny shape of a Great +Dane, who came inquiringly up to the stranger. + +Then from behind the screening wing there came a slight, woman's figure +in dark blue. She followed the dog. Little Gwenna Williams, standing +timidly in that great room so strange and white, and characteristically +scented, found herself face to face with the mistress of the place; the +Aeroplane Lady. + +Her hair was greying and fluffy as a head of windblown Traveller's +Joy; beneath it her eyes were blue and young and bright and--yes! with a +little glad start Gwenna recognised that in these eyes too there was +something of that space-daring gleam of the eyes of Icarus, of her own +Flying Man. + +"Ah ... I know," said the lady briskly. "You're the girl Leslie's sent +down to see me." + +"Yes," said Gwenna, thinking it nice of her to say "Leslie" and not +"Miss Long." She noticed also that the Aeroplane Lady wore at the collar +of her shirt a rather wonderful brooch in the shape of the _caducæus_, +the serpent-twisted rod of Mercury. "Oh, I _do_ hope she'll take me!" +thought the young girl, agitated. "I do want more than anything to come +here to work with her. Oh, supposing she thinks I'm too silly and young +to be any use--supposing she won't take me----" + +She was tense with nervousness while the Aeroplane Lady, fondling the +Great Dane's tawny ear with a small, capable hand as she spoke, put the +girl through a short catechism; asking questions about her age, her +people, her previous experience, her salary.... And then she was told +that she might come and work on a month's trial at the Factory, +occupying a room in the Aeroplane Lady's own cottage in the village. The +young girl, enraptured, put down her success to the certificates from +that Aberystwith school of hers, where she had passed "with distinction" +the Senior Cambridge and other examinations. She did not guess that the +Aeroplane Lady had taken less than two minutes to make sure that this +little Welsh typist-girl carried out what Leslie Long had said of her. + +Namely that "she was so desperately keen on anything to do with flying +and flyers that she'd scrub the floors of the shops for you if you +wished it, besides doing your business letters as carefully as if each +one was about some important Diplomatic secret ... try her!" + +So on the following Monday Gwenna began her new life. + +At first this new work of Gwenna's consisted very largely of what Leslie +had mentioned; the writing-out of business letters at the table set +under the window in the small private office adjoining the great +Wing-room. + +(Curious that the Wings for Airships, the giant butterfly aeroplanes +themselves, should grow out of a chrysalis of ordinary business, with +letters that began, "_Sir, we beg to thank you for your favour of the +2nd instant, and to assure you that same shall receive our immediate +attention_," exactly the sort of letters that Gwenna had typed during +all those weeks at Westminster!) + +Then there were orders to send off for more bales of the linen that was +stretched over the membranes of those wings; or for the great reels of +wire which strung the machines, and which cost fifteen pounds apiece; +orders for the metal which was to be worked in the shops across the +parched yard, where men of three nationalities toiled at the +lathe; turning-screws, strainers, washers, and all the tiny, +complicated-looking parts that were to be the bones and the sinews +and the muscles of the finished Flying Machine. + +Gwenna, the typist, had at first only a glimpse or so of these other +sides of the Works. + +Once, on a message from some visitor to the Aeroplane Lady she passed +through the great central room, larger than her Uncle's chapel at home, +with its concrete floor and the clear diffused light coming through the +many windows, and the never-ceasing throb of the gas-driven engine +pulsing through the lighter sounds of chinking and hammering. Mechanics +were busy all down the sides of this hall; in the aisle of it, three +machines in the making were set up on the stands. One was ready all but +the wings; its body seemed now more than it would ever seem that of a +giant fish; it was covered with the doped linen that was laced at the +seams with braid, eyelets and cord, like an old-fashioned woman's +corset. The second was half-covered. The third was all as yet uncovered, +and looked like the skeleton of a vast seagull cast up on some +prehistoric shore. + +Wondering, the girl passed on, to find her employer. She found her in +the fitter's shop. In a corner, the red-haired pupil, with goggles over +his eyes, was sitting at a stand working an acetylene blow-pipe; holding +in his hand the intense jet that shot out showers of squib-like sparks, +and wielding a socket, the Lady directing him. She took the girl's +message, then walked back with her to the office, her tawny dog +following at her heels. + +"Letters finished?... then I'd like you to help me on with the wings of +that machine that's all but done," she said. "That is"--she smiled--"if +you don't mind getting your hands all over this beastly stuff----" + +Mind? Gwenna would have plastered her whole little white body with that +warmed and strongly-smelling dope if she'd thought that by so doing she +was actually taking a hand in the launching of a Ship for the Clouds. + +The rest of the afternoon she spent in the hot and reeking Wing-room, +working side by side with the Aeroplane Lady. Industriously she pasted +the linen strips, patting them down with her little fingers on to the +seams of those wide sails that would presently be spread--for whom? + +In her mind it was always one large and springy figure that she saw +ascending into the small plaited wicker seat of the Machine. It was +always the same careless, blonde, lad's face that she saw tilted +slightly against the background of plane and wires.... + +"I would love to work, even a little, on a machine that he was going to +fly in," thought Gwenna. + +She stood, enveloped in a grey-blue overall, at the trestle-table, +cutting out fresh strips of linen with scissors that were sticky and +clogged with dope. She peeled the stuff from her hands in flakes like +the bark of a silver-birch as she added to her thought, "But I shouldn't +want to do anything for that aeroplane; his _Fiancée_, for the P.D.Q. +Hateful creature, with her claws that she doesn't think are going to let +him go!" + +Here she set the pannikin of dope to reheat, and there was a smile of +defiance on the girl's lips as she moved about from the trestles to the +radiator or the sewing-table. + +For ever since she had been at the Works a change had come over Gwenna. + +Curiously enough, she was happier now than she had been in her life. She +was more contented with what the present brought her; more steadily +hopeful about the future. It didn't seem to matter to her now that, the +last time she had seen him, her Aviator had turned almost sullenly away. +She laughed to herself over that, for she believed at last in Leslie's +theory: "Afraid he's going to like me." She did not fret because she +hadn't had even one of his brief notes since she had left London; nor +sigh over the fact that she, living down here in this Bedfordshire +village, was so much further away from those rooms of his at Camden Town +than she had been when she had stayed at the Hampstead Club. + +For somehow she felt nearer to him now. + +Absence can, in some subtle, unexplained way, spin fine threads of +communication over the gulf between a boy and a girl.... + +She found a conviction growing stronger and stronger in her girl's mind, +that gay, tangled chaos where faults and faculties, blindness and +intuitions flourish entwined and inseparable. _She was meant to be his._ + +She'd no "reason" for thinking so, of course. There was very little +reason about Gwenna's whole make-up. + +For instance, Leslie had tried "reasoning" with her, the night before +she'd left the Hampstead Club. Leslie had taken it into her impish black +head to be philosophical, and to attempt to talk her chum into the same +mood. + +Leslie, the nonchalant, had given a full hour to her comments on +Marriage. We will allow her a full chapter--but a short one. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +LESLIE ON "MARRIAGE" + + +She'd said, "Supposing the moon _did_ fall into your lap, Taffy? Suppose +that young Cloud-Dweller of yours did (a) take you flying, and (b) +propose to you?" and she'd recited solemnly: + + "_Somewhere I've read that the gods, waxing wroth at our mad + importunity, + Hurl us our boon and it falls with the weight of a curse at our feet; + Perilous thing to intrude on their lofty Olympian immunity! + 'Take it and die,' say the gods, and we die of our fondest conceit._" + +"Yes; 'of' it! After _having_ it. Who'd mind dying _then_?" + +"But if it hadn't been worth it, Taffy? Suppose you were air-sick?" +Leslie had suggested. "Worse, suppose you were Paul-sick?" + +"_What?_" + +"Yes, supposing that Super-Boy of yours himself was the disappointment? +Suppose none of his 'little ways' happened to please you? Men don't +realise it, but, in love, a man is much easier to please than a woman!" + +"No, Leslie. No," had come from the girl who knew nothing of +love-making--less than nothing, since she _thought_ she knew. + +Leslie had persisted. "The first pet-name a man calls you--awfully +important, that!--may hash up Love's young dream for ever. Some men, I +believe, begin with 'Dear old--something or other.' That's the _end_. Or +something that you know you're obviously _not_. Such as 'Little Woman,' +to _me_. Or they don't notice something that's specially there for them +to notice. That's unforgivable. Or they do notice something that's quite +beside the mark. Or they repeat themselves. Not good enough, a man who +can't think of _one_ new way of saying he cares, each day. (Even a +calendar can do that.) Saying the wrong thing, though, isn't as bad as +being _silent_. That's fatal. Gives a girl _such_ a lot of time to +imagine all the things that another man might have been saying at the +time. That's why men with no vocabularies ought never to get engaged or +married. '_I'm a man of few words_,' they say. They ought to be told, +'_Very well. Outside! It simply means you won't trouble to amuse me._' +Exit the Illusion. + + '_Alas, how easily things go wrong! + A look too short, or a kiss too long----_' + +(Especially with a look too short.) Yes," Leslie had concluded +impressively, "suppose the worst tragedy happened? _Suppose_ the Dampier +boy did get engaged to you, and then you found out that he didn't in the +least know how to make love? To make love to _you_, I mean." + +"There wouldn't have to be any love '_made_,'" little Gwenna had +murmured, flushing. "Where he was, the love would _be_." + +"My dear, you _are_ what Hugo Swayne calls '_a Passé-iste_' in love. +Why, why wasn't _I_ brought up in the heart of the mountains (and far +away from any other kind of heart) until I was twenty-two, and then +hurled into a love-affair with the first decent-looking young man?" +Leslie had cried, with exaggerated envy. "The happier you! But, Taff, do +remember that 'Love is a Lad with Wings'--like yours. Even if the +engagement were all your fancy painted, that Grand Firework Display sort +of feeling couldn't _last_. Don't shoot! It's true. People couldn't go +on living their lives and earning their livings and making their careers +and having their babies if it _did_ last. It _must_ alter. It _must_ die +down into the usual dear old sun rising every morning. So, when your +'_Oiseau de feu_' married you, and you found he was just--a husband, +like everybody else's----" + +"Not 'like' anybody!"--indignantly. + +"How d'you know _what_ he's like?" Leslie had demanded. "What d'you know +of his temper? Men with that heather-honey kind of smile and those deep +dimples very often have a beastly temper. Probably jealous----" + +"I would _love_ him to be that." + +"You wouldn't love to be poor, though," Leslie had gone off on another +tack. "Poor, and uncomfortable." + +"I shall never be comfortable again without him," Gwenna had said +obstinately. "Might as well be uncomfortable _with_ him!" + +"In a nasty little brick villa near Hendon, so as to be close to the +flying, perhaps? With a horrid dark bathroom? And the smell of cooking +haddocks and of Lux all over it!" Leslie had enlarged. "And you having +to use up all your own little tiny income to help pay the butcher, and +the Gas Light and Coke Company, and the rates, and loathsome details of +that sort that a woman never feels a ha'porth the better for! Instead of +being able to get yourself fresh gloves and silk stockings and a few +trifles of that sort that make absolutely _all_ the difference to a +woman's life!" + +"Not _all_ the difference, indeed," Gwenna had said softly. But Leslie +had continued to draw these fancy pictures of married life as lived with +Mr. Paul Dampier. + +"Taffy, for one thing, you've never seen him anything but nicely-groomed +and attractive to look at. You try to imagine him in what Kipling calls +'_the ungirt hour_.' They talk of a woman's slatternliness killing love. +Have they seen a _man_ when he '_hasn't bothered_' to groom himself? +That sight----" + +She had shaken her black head ineffably over the mental image of it, and +had averred, "That sight ought to be added to the Valid and Legitimate +Causes for Divorce! A wife ought to be able to consider herself as free +as air after the first time that she sees her husband going about the +house without a collar. Sordid, unbecoming grey flannel about his neck. +Three half buttons, smashed in the wringer, hanging by their last +threads to his shirt. And his old slippers bursting out at the side of +the toe. And his 'comfortable' jacket on, with matches and fur in all +the pockets and a dab of marmalade--also furred--on the front. And +himself unshaved, with a zig-zag parting to his hair. I believe some men +do go about like this before their wives, and then write wistful letters +to the _Daily Mirror_ about, 'Why is Marriage the Tomb of Romance?'" + +Gwenna had sniffed. "Oh! _Some_ men! _Those!_" + +"Valid cause for Divorce Number Ninety-three: The state of the bedroom +floor," Leslie had pursued. "I, slut as I am, do pick things up +sometimes. Men, never. Ask any married woman you know. Maudie told _me_. +Everything is hurled down, or stepped out of, or merely dropped. And +left. Left, my child, for _you_ to gather up. Everything out of the +chest-of-drawers tossed upon the carpet. Handkerchiefs, dirty old pipes, +shirts, ties, '_in one red burial blent_.' That means he's been 'looking +for' something. Mind, _you've_ got to find it. Men are born +'find-silly.' Men never yet have found anything (except the North Pole +and a few things like that, that are no earthly good in a villa), but +they are for ever _losing_ things!" + +Gwenna had given a smile to the memory of a certain missing collar-stud +that she had heard much of. + +"Yes, I suppose to be allowed to find his collar-studs is what he'd +consider '_Paradise enow_' for any girl!" Leslie had mocked. "I misdoubt +me that the Dampier boy would settle down after a year of marriage into +a regular Sultan of the Hearthrug. Looking upon his wife as something +that belongs to him, and goes about with him; like a portmanteau. +Putting you in your place as '_less than the dust beneath his +chariot_,' that is, '_beneath his biplane wheels_.'" + +"Leslie! I shouldn't mind! I'd _like_ to be! I believe it _is_ my +place," Gwenna had interrupted, lifting towards her friend a small face +quivering with conviction. "He could make anything he liked or chose of +me. What do I care----" + +"Not for clothes flung down in rings all over the floor like when a +trout's been rising? Nor for trousers left standing there like a pair of +opera-glasses--or concertinas? Braces all tangled up on the gas-bracket? +Overcoat and boots crushing your new hat on the bed? Seventeen holey +socks for you to mend? _All_ odd ones--for _you_ to sort----" + +Little Gwenna had cried out: "I'd _want_ to!" + +"I'm not afraid you won't get what you want," Leslie had said finally. +"All I hope is that your wish won't fail when you get it!" + +And of that Gwenna was never afraid. + +"I should not care for him so much if he were not the only one who could +make me so happy," she told herself; "and _unless_ the woman's very +happy, surely the man can't be. It must mean, then, that he'll feel, +some day, that this would be the way to happiness. I'm sure there are +_some_ marriages that are different from what Leslie says. Some where +you go on being sweethearts even after you're quite old friends, like. +I--I could make it like that for him. I _feel_ I could!" + +Yes; she felt that some day (perhaps not soon) she must win him. + +Sometimes she thought that this might be when her rival, the perfected +machine, had made his name and absorbed him no longer. Sometimes, again, +she told herself that he might have no success at all. + +"Then, _then_ he'd see there was _something_ else in the world. Then he +would turn to me," said the girl to herself. She added, as every girl in +love must add, "No one _could_ care as I do." + +And one day she found on the leaf of the tear-off calendar in her +cottage bedroom a line of verse that seemed to have been written for +her. It remained the whole of Browning as far as Gwenna Williams was +concerned. And it said: + + "_What's Death? You'll love me yet!_" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE OBVIOUS THING + + +She was in this mood to win a waiting game on the day that Paul Dampier +came down to the Aircraft Works. + +This was just one of the more wonderful happenings that waited round the +corner and that the young girl might hope to encounter any day. + +The first she knew of it was from hearing a remark of the Aeroplane +Lady's to one of her French mechanics at the lathes. + +"This will make the eighteenth pattern of machine that we've turned out +from this place," she said. "I wonder if it's going to answer, André?" + +"Which machine, madame?" the man asked. He was a big fellow, dark and +thick-haired and floridly handsome in his blue overalls; and his bright +eyes were fixed interestedly upon his principal as she explained through +the buzz and the clack and the clang of machinery in the large room, +"This new model that Colonel Conyers wants us to make for him." + +Gwenna caught the name. She thought breathlessly, "That's _his_ machine! +He's got Aircraft Conyers to take it up and have it made for him! It's +_his_!" + +She'd thought this, even before the Aeroplane Lady concluded, "It's the +idea of a young aviator I know. Such a nice boy: Paul Dampier of +Hendon." + +The French mechanic put some question, and the Aeroplane Lady answered, +"Might be an improvement. I hope so. I'd like him to have a show, +anyhow. He's sending the engine down to-morrow afternoon. They'll bring +it on a lorry. Ask Mr. Ryan to see about the unloading of it; I may not +get back from town before the thing comes." + +Now Mr. Ryan was that red-haired pupil who had conducted Gwenna from the +station on the day of her first appearance at the Works. Probably Leslie +Long would have affirmed that this Mr. Ryan was also a factor in the +change that was coming over Gwenna and her outlook. Leslie considered +that no beauty treatment has more effect upon the body and mind of a +woman than has the regular application of masculine admiration. +Admiration was now being lavished by Mr. Ryan upon the little new typist +with the face of a baby-angel and the small, rounded figure; and Mr. +Ryan saw no point in hiding his approval. It did not stop at glances. +Before a week had gone by he had informed Miss Williams that she was a +public benefactor to bring anything so delightful to look at as herself +into those beastly, oily, dirty shops; that he hated, though, to see a +woman with such pretty fingers having to mess 'em up with that vile +dope; and that he wondered she hadn't thought of going on the stage. + +"But I can't act," Gwenna had told him. + +"What's that got to do with it?" the young man had inquired blithely. +"All they've got to do is to _look_. You could beat 'em at that." + +"Oh, what nonsense, Mr. Ryan!" the girl had said, more pleased than she +admitted to herself, and holding her curly head erect as a brown tulip +on a sturdy stem. + +"Not nonsense at all," he argued. "I tell you, if you went into musical +comedy and adopted a strong enough Cockney accent there'd be another +Stage and Society wedding before you could say 'knife.' You could get +any young peer to adore you, Miss Gwenna, if you smiled at him over the +head of a toy pom and called him 'Fice.' I can just see you becoming a +Gaiety puss and marrying some Duke----" + +"I don't want to marry any Dukes, thanks." + +"I'm sure I don't want you to," Mr. Ryan had said softly. "I'd miss you +too much myself...." + +The fact is that he was a flirt for the moment out of work. He was also +of the type that delights in the proximity of "Girl"--using the word as +one who should say "Game." "Girl" suggested to him, as to many young +men, a collective mass of that which is pretty, soft, and +to-be-made-love-to. He found it pleasant to keep his hand in by paying +these compliments to this new instalment of Girl--who was rather a +little pet, he thought, though _rather_ slow. + +As for Gwenna, she bloomed under it, gaining also in poise. She learned +to take a compliment as if it were an offered flower, instead of dodging +it like a brick-bat, which is the very young girl's failing. She found +that even if receiving a compliment from the wrong man is like wearing a +right-hand glove on the left hand, it is better than having no gloves. +(Especially it is better than _looking_ as if one had no gloves.) + +The attentions of young Ryan, his comment on a new summer frock, the +rose laid by him on her desk in the morning; these things were not +without their effect--it was a different effect from any intended by the +red-haired pupil, who was her teacher in all this. + +She would find herself thinking, "He doesn't look at me nearly so much, +I notice, in a trimmed-up hat, or a 'fussy' blouse. Men don't like them +on me, perhaps." (That blouse or hat would be discarded.) Or, "Well! if +so-and-so about me pleases him, it'll please other men." + +And for "men" she read always, always the same one. She never realised +that if she had not met Paul Dampier she _might_ have fallen in love +with young Peter Ryan. Presently he had begged her to call him "Peter." + +She wouldn't. + +"I think I'd do anything for you," young Ryan had urged, "if you asked +for it, using my Christian name!" + +Gwenna had replied: "Very well! If there's anything I ever want, +frightfully badly, that you could give me, I shall ask for it like +that." + +"You mean there's nothing _I_ could give you?" he had reproached her, in +the true flirt's tone. It can sound so much more tender, at times, than +does the tone of the truest lover. A note or so of it had found its way +into Gwenna's soft voice these days. + +Yes; she had half unconsciously learned a good deal from Mr. Ryan. + + * * * * * + +"I say! Miss Gwenna!" + +Mr. Ryan's rust-red head was popped round the door of the Wing-room +where Gwenna, alone, was pouring dope out of the tilted ten-gallon can +on the floor into her little pannikin. + +"Come out for just one minute." + +"Too busy," demurred the girl. "No time." + +"Not just to look," he pleaded, "at the really _pretty_ job I'm making +of unloading this lorry with Dampier's engine?" + +Quickly Gwenna set down the can and came out, in her pinafore, to the +breezes and sunshine of the yard outside. It was as much because she +wanted to see what there was to be seen of that "_Fiancée_" of the +aviator's, as because this other young man wanted her to admire the work +of his hands. + +Those hands themselves, Gwenna noticed, were masked and thick, half way +up his forearms, with soft soap. This he seemed to have been smearing on +certain boards, making a sliding way for that precious package that +stood on the low lorry. The boards were packed up in banks and stages, +an irregular stairway. This another assistant was carefully trying with +a long straight edge with a spirit level in the middle of it; and a +third man stood on the lorry, resting on a crowbar and considering the +package that held the heart of Paul Dampier's machine. + +"You see if she doesn't come down as light as a bubble and stop exactly +_there_," said Mr. Ryan complacently, digging his heel into a pillowy +heap of debris. "Lay those other planks to take her inside, André." He +wiped his brow on a moderately clear patch of forearm, and moved away to +check the observations of the man in the shirt-sleeves. + +Gwenna, watching, could not help admiring both this self-satisfied young +mudlark and his job. This was how women liked to see men busy: with +strenuous work that covered them with dirt and sweat, taxing their +brains and their muscles at the same time. Those girls who were so keen +on the Enfranchisement of Women and "Equal Opportunities" and those +things, those suffragettes at her Hampstead Club who "couldn't see where +the superiority of the male sex was supposed to come in"--Well! The +reason why they "couldn't" was (the more primitive Gwenna thought) +simply because they didn't see enough men at _this_ sort of thing. The +men these enlightened young women knew best sat indoors all day, +writing--_that_ sort of thing. Or talking about fans, like Mr. Swayne, +and about "the right tone of purple in the curtains" for a room. The +women, of course, could do that themselves. They could also go to +colleges and pass men's exams. Lots did. But (thought Gwenna) not many +of them could get through the day's work of Mr. Ryan, who had also been +at Oxford, and who not only had forearms that made her own look like +ivory toys, but who could plan out his work so that if he said that that +squat, ponderous case would "stop exactly _there_"--stop there it would. +She watched; the breeze rollicking in her curls, spreading the folds of +her grey-blue pinafore out behind her like a sail, moulding her skirt +to her rounded shape as she stood. + +Then she turned with a very friendly and pretty smile to young Ryan. + +It was thus that Paul Dampier, entering the yard from behind them, came +upon the girl whom he had decided not to see again. + + +He knew already that "his little friend," as old Hugo insisted upon +calling her, had taken a job at the Aircraft Works. He'd heard that from +his cousin, who'd been told all about it by Miss Long. + +And considering that he'd made up his mind that it would be better all +round if he were to drop having anything more to say to the girl, young +Dampier was glad, of course, that she'd left town. That would make +things easier. He wouldn't seem to be avoiding her, yet he needn't set +eyes upon her again. + +Of course he'd been glad. He hadn't _wanted_ to see her. + +Then, at the end of his negotiations with Colonel Conyers, he'd +understood that he would have to go over and pay a visit to the +Aeroplane Lady. And even in the middle of the new excitement he had +remembered that this was where Gwenna Williams was working. And for a +moment he'd hesitated. That would mean seeing the Little Thing again +after all. + +Then he'd thought, Well? Fellow can't _look_ as if he were trying to +keep out of a girl's way? Besides, chances were he wouldn't see her +when he did go, he'd thought. + +It wasn't likely that the Aeroplane Lady kept her clerk, or whatever she +was, in her pocket, he'd thought. + +He'd just be taken to where the P.D.Q. was being assembled, he'd +supposed. The Little Thing would be kept busy with her typing and one +thing and another in some special office, he'd expected! + + +What he had _not_ expected to find was the scene before him. The Little +Thing idling about outside the shops here; hatless, pinafored, looking +absolutely top-hole and perfectly at home, chatting with the +ginger-haired bloke who was unloading the engine as if he were no end of +a pal of hers! She was smiling up into his face and taking a most +uncommon amount of interest, it seemed, in what the fellow had been +doing! + +And, before, she'd said she wasn't interested in machinery! thought +Dampier as he came up, feeling suddenly unconscionably angry. + +He forgot the hours that the Little Thing had already passed in hanging +on every word, mostly about a machine, that had fallen from his own +lips. He only remembered that moment at the Smiths' dinner-party, when +she'd admitted that that sort of thing didn't appeal to her. + +Yet, here she was! _Deep_ in it, by Jove! + +He had come right up to her and this other chap before they noticed +him.... + +She turned sharply at the sound of the young aviator's rather stiff +"Good afternoon." + +She had expected that day to see his engine--no more. Here he stood, the +maker of the engine, backed by the scorched, flat landscape, in the +sunlight that picked out little clean-cut, intense shadows under the rim +of his straw hat, below his cleft chin, along his sleeve and the lapel +of his jacket, making him look (she thought) like a very good snapshot +of himself. He had startled her again; but this time she was +self-possessed. + +She came forward and faced him; prettier than ever, somehow (he thought +again), with tossed curls and pinafore blowing all about her. She might +have been a little schoolgirl let loose from some class in those gaunt +buildings behind her. But she spoke in a more "grown-up" manner, in some +way, than he'd ever heard her speak before. Looking up, she said in the +soft accent that always brought back to him his boyish holidays in her +country, "How do you do, Mr. Dampier? I'm afraid I can't shake hands. +Mine are all sticky with dope." + +"Oh, are they," he said, and looked away from her (not without effort) +to the ginger-haired fellow. + +"This," said Gwenna Williams, a little self-consciously at last, "is Mr. +Ryan." + +Plenty of self-assurance about _him_! He nodded and said in a +hail-fellow-well-met sort of voice, "Hullo; you're Dampier, are you? +Glad to meet you. You see we're hard at it unpacking your engine here." +Then he looked towards the opening, the road, and the car--borrowed as +usual--in which the young aviator had motored down. There was another +large package in the body of the car; a box, iron-clamped, with letters +stencilled upon it, and sealed. "Something else interesting that you've +brought with you?" said this in sufferable man called Ryan. "Here, +André, fetch that box down----" + +"No," interrupted young Dampier curtly. The curtness was only partly for +this other chap. That sealed box, for reasons of his own and Colonel +Conyers', was not to be hauled about by any mechanic in the place. "You +and I'll fetch that in presently for Mrs. Crewe." + +"Right. She'll be back at three o'clock," Ryan told him. "She told me to +ask you to have a look round the place or do anything you cared to until +she came in." + +"Oh, thanks," said young Dampier. + +At that moment what he would have "cared to do" would have been to get +this girl to himself somewhere where he could say to the Little Humbug, +"Look here. You aren't interested in machinery. You said so yourself. +What are you getting this carroty-headed Ass to talk to you about it +for?" + +Seeing that this was out of the question he hesitated.... He didn't want +to go round the shops with this fellow, to whom he'd taken a dislike. On +sight. He did that sometimes. On the other hand, he couldn't do what he +wanted to do--sit and talk to the Little Thing until the Aeroplane Lady +returned. What about saying he'd got to look up some one in the village, +and bolting, until three o'clock? No. No fear! Why should this other +fellow imagine he could have the whole field to himself for talking to +Her? + +So the trio, the age-old group that is composed of two young men and a +girl, stood there for a moment rather awkwardly. + +Finally the Little Thing said, "Well, I've got to go back to my wings," +and turned. + +Then the fellow Ryan said, "One minute, Miss Gwenna----" + +Miss Gwenna! All but her Christian name! And he, Paul Dampier, who'd +known her a good deal longer--he'd never called her anything at all, but +"_you_"! Miss _Gwenna_, if you please! + +What followed was even more of a bit of dashed cheek. + +For the fellow turned quickly aside to her and said, "I say, it's Friday +afternoon. Supposing I don't see you again to-morrow morning--it's all +right, isn't it, about your coming up to town for that matinée with me?" + +"Oh, yes, thanks," said the Little Thing brightly. "I asked Mrs. Crewe, +and it's all right." + +Then the new note crept into her voice; the half-unconsciously-acquired +note of coquetry. She said, smiling again at the red-haired Ryan, "I am +so looking forward to that." + +And, turning again to the Airman, she said with a half-shy, half-airy +little smile that, also, he found new in her, "Have you seen _The Cinema +Star_? Mr. Ryan is going to take me to-morrow afternoon." + +"Oh, is he?" said Paul Dampier shortly. + +_Was_ he, indeed? _Neck!_ + +"You do come up to town sometimes from here, then?" added Mr. Dampier to +Miss Gwenna Williams, speaking a trifle more distinctly than usual, as +he concluded, "I was just going to ask you whether you could manage to +come out with _me_ to-morrow evening?" + +Nobody was more surprised to hear these last words than he himself. + +Until that moment he hadn't had the faintest intention of ever asking +the girl out anywhere again. Now here he was; he'd done it. The Little +Thing had murmured, "Oh----" and was looking--yes, she was looking +pleased. The fellow was looking as if he'd been taken aback. Good. He'd +probably thought he was going to have her to himself for the evening as +well as for the matinée. Dinner at the "Petit Riche"--a music-hall +afterwards--travel down home with her. Well, Dampier had put a stopper +on that plan. But now that he had asked her, where was he going to take +her himself? To another musical comedy? No. Too like the other chap. To +one of the Exhibitions? No; not good enough. Anyhow, wherever he took +her, he hadn't been out-bidden by this soft-soapy young idiot. Infernal +cheek.... Then, all in a flash the brilliant solution came to Paul +Dampier. Of course! Yes, he could work it! The Aviation Dinner! He'd +meant to go. He would take her. It would involve taking Mrs. Crewe as +well. Never mind. It was something to which that other young ass +wouldn't have the chance of taking her, and that was enough. + +"Yes," he went on saying, as coolly as if it had all been planned. +"There's a show on at the Wilbur Club; Wilbur Wright, you know. I +thought I'd ask if you and Mrs. Crewe would care to come with me to the +dinner. Will you?--Just break that packing up a bit more," he added +negligently to the red-haired youth. "And check those spaces--Will you +take me into your place, Miss Williams?" + +_That_, he thought, was the way to deal with poachers on his particular +preserves! + +It was only when he got inside the spacious white Wing-room and sat +down, riding a chair, close to the trestle-table where the girl bent her +curly head so conscientiously over the linen strips again, that he +realised that this Little Thing wasn't his particular preserves at all! + +Hadn't he, only a couple of weeks ago, definitely decided that she was +never to mean anything of the sort to him? Hadn't he resolved---- + +Here, with his long arms crossed over the back of the chair as he sat +facing and watching her, he put back his head and laughed. + +"What are you laughing at?" she asked, straightening herself in the big +pinafore with its front all stiff with that sticky mess she worked with. + +He was laughing to think how dashed silly it was to make these +resolutions. Resolutions about which people you were or were not to see +anything of! As if Fate didn't arrange that for you! As if you didn't +_have_ to leave that to Fate, and to take your chance! + +Possibly Fate meant that he and the Little Thing should be friends, +great friends. Not now, of course. Not yet. In some years' time, +perhaps, when his position was assured; when he'd achieved some of the +Big Things that he'd got to do; when he _had_ got something to offer a +girl. Ages to wait.... Still, he could leave it at that, now, he +thought.... It might, or might not, come to anything. Only, it was +ripping to see her! + +He didn't tell her this. + +He uttered some conventional boy's joke about being amused to see her +actually at work for the first time since he'd met her. And she made a +little bridling of her neck above that vast, gull-like wing that she was +pasting; and retorted that, indeed, she worked very hard. + +"Really," he teased her. "Always seem to be taking time off, whenever +I've come." + +"You've only come twice, Mr. Dampier; and then it's been sort of +lunch-time." + +"Oh, I see," he said. ("I may smoke, mayn't I?" and he lighted a +cigarette.) "D'you always take your lunch out of doors, Miss Gwenna?" +(He didn't see why _he_ shouldn't call her that.) + +She said, "I'd like to." Then she was suddenly afraid he might think she +was thinking of their open-air lunch in that field, weeks ago, and she +said quickly (still working): "I--I was so glad when I heard about the +engine coming, and that Colonel Conyers had ordered the P.D.Q. to be +made here. I--do congratulate you, Mr. Dampier. Tell me about the +Machine, won't you?" + +He said, "Oh, you'll hear all about that presently; but look here, you +haven't told me about _you_----" + +Gwenna could scarcely believe her ears; but yes, it was true. He was +turning, turning from talk about the Machine, the P.D.Q., the _Fiancée_! +Asking, for the first time, about herself. She drew a deep breath; she +turned her bright, greeny-brown eyes sideways, longing at that moment +for Leslie with whom to exchange a glance. Her own shyly triumphant look +met only the deep, wise eyes of the Great Dane, lying in his corner of +the Wing-room beside his kennel. He blinked, thumped his tail upon the +floor. + +"Darling," whispered Gwenna, a little shakily, as she passed the tawny +dog. "_Darling!_" She had to say it to something just then. + +Paul Dampier pursued, looking at her over his crossed arms on the back +of that chair, "You haven't said whether you'll come to-morrow night." + +She asked (as if it mattered to her where she went, as long as it was +with him), "What is this dinner?" + +"The Wilbur dinner? Oh, there's one every year. Just a meeting of those +interested in flying. I thought you might care----" + +"Who'll be there?" + +"Oh, just people. Not many. Some ladies go. Why?" + +"Only because I haven't got anything at all to wear," announced Gwenna, +much more confidently, however, than she could have done before Mr. Ryan +had told her so much about her own looks, "except my everlasting white +and the blue sash like at the Smiths'." + +"Well, that was awfully pretty; wasn't it? Only----" + +"What?" + +"Well, may I say something?" + +"Well, what is it?" + +"Frightfully rude, really," said Paul Dampier, tilting himself back on +his chair, and still looking at her over a puff of smoke, staring even. +She was something to stare at. Why was she such a lot prettier? Had he +_forgotten_ what her looks were? She seemed--she seemed, to-day, so much +more of a woman than he'd ever seen her. He forgot that he was going to +say something. She, with a little fluttering laugh for which he could +have clasped her, reminded him. + +"What's the rude thing you were going to say to me?" + +"Oh! It's only this. Don't go muffling your neck up in that sort of ruff +affair this time; looks ever so much nicer without," said the boy. + +The girl retorted with quite a good show of disdainfulness, "I don't +think there's anything _quite_ so funny as men talking about what we +wear." + +"Oh, all right," said the boy, and pretended to be offended. Then he +laughed again and said, "I've still got something of yours that you +wear, as a matter of fact----" + +"Of mine?" + +"Yes, I have; I've never given it you back yet. That locket of yours +that you lost." + +"Oh----!" she exclaimed. + +That locket! That little heart-shaped pendant of mother-o'-pearl that +she had worn the first evening that she'd ever seen him; and that +she had dropped in the car as they were driving back. So much had +happened ... she felt she was not even the same Gwenna as the girl who +had snapped the slender silver chain about her neck before they set out +for the party.... She'd given up wondering if her Airman had forgotten +to give it back to her. She'd forgotten all about it herself. And he'd +had it, one of her own personal belongings, somewhere in his keeping all +this time. + +"Oh, yes; my--my little mascot," she said. "Have you got it?" + +"Not here. It's in my other jac--it's at my rooms, I'll bring it to the +dinner for you. And--er--look here, Miss Gwenna----" + +He tilted forward again as the girl passed his side of the table to +reach for the little wooden pattern by which she cut out a patch for the +end of the strip, and then passed back again. + +"I say," he began again, a trifle awkwardly, "if you don't mind, I want +you to give me something in exchange for that locket." + +"Oh, do you?" murmured Gwenna. "What?" + +And a chill took her. + +She didn't want him, here and now, to ask for--what Mr. Ryan might have +asked. + +But it was not a kiss he asked for, after all. + +He said, "You know those little white wings you put in your shoes? You +remember, the night of that river dance? Well, I wish you'd let me have +one of those to keep as my mascot." + +He hadn't thought of wishing it until there had intruded into his ken +that other young man who made appointments--and who might have +the--cheek to ask for keepsakes, but who shouldn't be first, after all! + +Anxiously, as if it were for much more than that feathered trifle of a +mascot that he asked, he said, "Will you?" + +"Oh! If you like!" + +"Sure you don't mind?" + +"Mind? I should like you to have it," said Gwenna softly. "Really." + +And across the great white aeroplane wing the girl looked very sweetly +and soberly at her Aviator, who had just asked that other tiny wing of +her, as a knight begged his lady's favour. + + * * * * * + +It was at this moment that the Aeroplane Lady, an alert figure in dark +blue, came into a room where a young man and a girl had been talking +idly enough together while one smoked and the other went on working with +that five-foot barrier of the wing between them. + +The Aeroplane Lady, being a woman, was sensitive to atmosphere--not the +spirit-and-solution-scented atmosphere of this place of which she was +mistress, but another. + +In it she caught a vibration of something that made her say to herself, +"Bless me, what's _this_? I never knew those two had even met! 'Not +saying so,' I suppose. But certainly engaged, or on the verge of it!" + +--Which all went to prove that the rebuked, the absent Leslie, was not +far wrong in saying that it is the Obvious Thing that always succeeds! + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE SEALED BOX + + +Whatever the Aeroplane Lady thought to herself about the two in the +Wing-room, there was no trace of it in her brisk greeting to Paul +Dampier. + +"I hope you haven't been waiting long?" she said. "I'm ready now." + +Then she turned to her girl-assistant, who was once more laying the +tacky strips of linen along the seams. "That's right," she said. "You +can go straight on with that wing; that will take you some time. One of +the wings for _your_ machine," she added to the aviator. "I'm ready, Mr. +Dampier." + +She and the young man left the Wing-room together and entered the +adjoining office, closing the door behind them. + +Left alone, Gwenna went on swiftly working, and as swiftly dreaming. +Rapidly, but none the less surely, seam after long seam was covered; and +the busyness of her fingers seemed to help the fancies of her brain. + +"One of the wings for _his_ Machine!" she thought. "And there was I, +thinking I should mind working for that--for 'Her,'" she smiled. "I +don't, after all. I needn't care, now." + +Her heart seemed singing within her. Nothing had happened, really. Only, +she was sure of her lover. That was all. All! She worked; and her small +feet on the floor seemed set on air, as in that flying dream. + +"Such a great, huge wing for 'Her,'" she murmured to herself. "Such a +little, little wing for himself that he asked for. My tiny one that I +put in my shoe. It was for him I put it there! And now it's begun to +bring him to me. It _has_!" she exulted. "He's begun to care. I _know_ +he does." + +From the other side of the door came a heightened murmur of voices in +the office. Something heavy seemed to be set down on the floor. That +sealed box, perhaps, that he'd brought with him in the car. Then came +the shutting of the outer door. Mr. Ryan passed the window. Then a sound +of hammering in the office, and the long squeak of a nail being prized +out of wood. They were opening that mysterious package of his. Gwenna's +fingers flew over her own task to the tune of her joyous thoughts. + +"I don't care how long it lasts before _anything_ else happens. Don't +care how this flying-machine of his does try to keep him from me. She +won't. She can't. Nothing can!" triumphed the girl, smoothing the canvas +that was her Rival's plumage. "He's going to be mine, with everything +that he knows. So much better, and cleverer, and belonging to different +sort of people as he is, and yet he's going to have _me_ belonging to +him. She's had the last of him putting her always first!" + +She heard in the office Paul Dampier's short laugh and his "Oh? you +think so?" to the Aeroplane Lady. Gwenna scarcely wondered what this +might be about. Some business to do with the Machine; but he would come +to an end of that, soon. He'd come back to her, with that look in his +blue eyes, that tone in his deep voice. She could wait patiently now for +the day, whenever it came, when he should tell her definitely that he +loved her and wanted her to be his. There would be that, of +course--Gwenna, the inexperienced, still saw "the proposal" as the scene +set and prepared; the inevitable milestone beside the course of true +love. Never mind that now, though. It didn't matter when. What mattered +was that it _would_ come. Then she would always be with him. It would be +for ever, like that blissful day in the hayfield, that summer night by +the river at the dance, those few bewildering seconds on the Westminster +scaffolding. And with no cruelty of separation afterwards to spoil it. +Nothing--nothing was going to part them, after all. + + * * * * * + +She had finished the wing. She looked about for the next thing to do. + +There were three wings in the room, and all were finished. A fourth wing +still lay, a skeleton of fretted and glued wood, in the workshops; the +skin was not yet stretched over it. + +And there were no more letters to write for the firm. + +Gwenna had nothing to do. + +"I shall _have_ to go into the office and ask," she said, admitting to +herself that she was glad enough to go. So often she had painted for +herself, out of mere memories, the picture of her Airman. He was now in +the office, in the flesh! She need not have to satisfy herself with +pictures of him. She slipped off her sticky pinafore; the white muslin +blouse beneath it was fresh and pretty enough. She moved to the +office-door. It was her room; she had never yet had to knock at that +door. + +She pushed it open and stood waiting. For a moment she only saw the +Aeroplane Lady and the tall Aviator. They had their backs to her; they +were standing side by side and examining a plan that they had pinned up +on the matchboarding wall. Paul Dampier's finger was tracing a little +arc on the plan, and he was slowly shaking his head, with the gesture of +a man who says that something "won't do." The Aeroplane Lady's fingers +were meditatively at her lips, and her attitude echoed that of the young +man. Something that they had planned wouldn't do---- + +Then Gwenna's eyes fell, from these two people, to that "_Something_." +It was something that she had never seen about the Aircraft Works +before. Indeed, she did not remember having seen it ever before, +anywhere, except in pictures. This object was on the floor, half in and +half out of the sealed wooden box that Paul Dampier had brought down +with him in the car, and that he wouldn't let the workmen handle.... So +this was why.... + +This was it. Aghast, she stared at it. + +It was a long, khaki-painted cylinder, and from one end of it a +wicked-looking little nozzle projected for an inch or so. The other +end, which disappeared into the box, showed a peep of a magazine and a +pistol-grip. + +Even to Gwenna's unskilled eyes the thing appeared instantly what it +was. + +A machine-gun. + +"A gun?" she thought, stupefied; "dear me--on an aeroplane?" + +"No," said Paul Dampier's voice suddenly, decisively, speaking to the +Aeroplane Lady, "it'll have to be a rifle after all." + +And with the sudden breaking of his voice upon her ear, there seemed to +be torn from before the girl's eyes a corner of some veil. + +Quite suddenly (how, she could not explain) she knew what all this +meant. + +That plan for that new flying-machine. That gun. The whole object of the +ambitions of these people with their so romantic profession. Scraps of +her Aviator's talk about "scouting," and "the new Arm," and "modern +warfare." ... + +Just now she had been swept up aloft by his look and tone into the +seventh heaven of a woman's delight. That was Love. Here, epitomised in +that cylinder with that vicious little nozzle, she saw the Power that +could take him from her yet. This was War! + +A shudder ran over her. + +Her mind took no notice of the facts that there was no War for him to go +to, that this grim preparation must be for experimenting only, for +manoeuvres, sham fights; that this was July, Nineteen-fourteen, an era +of sleepy peace (except for that gossip, half a joke, that we might +have civil war in Ireland yet), and that she and he and everybody they +had to do with lived in the Twentieth Century, in England.... + +Perhaps it was because she was not English, but British, Welsh. She +entirely lacked that Anglo-Saxon "balance" of which the English are so +proud, and that stolidity and that unimaginativeness. Her imagination +caught some of those unheard, unsuspected messages with which the air +must have been vibrant, all those midsummer weeks. + +Her quick, unbalanced Celtic fancy had already shown her as clearly as +if she had seen it with her eyes that image of his Aeroplane as a winged +and taloned Woman-rival. Now it flashed before her, in a twink, another +picture: + +Paul Dampier, seated in that Aeroplane, swooping through the air, _armed +and in danger_! + +The danger was from below. She did not see that danger. She saw only the +image, against grey, scudding clouds, of the Beloved. But she could feel +it, that poignant Threat to him, to him in every second of his flight. +It was not the mere risk of accident or falling. It was a new peril of +which the shadow, cast before, fell upon the receptive fancy of the girl +who loved the adventurer. And, set to that shadow-picture in her mind, +there rang out to some inner sense of hers a Voice that sounded clear +and ominous words. + +They called to her: "_Fired at both by friend and foe----_" + +Then stopped. + +The young girl didn't remember ever to have heard or even to have read +these words. How should she? It was the warning fore-echo of a phrase +now historic, but then as yet unuttered, that had transmitted itself to +some heightened sense of hers: + +"_Fired at both by friend and foe!_"[A] + + [A] This phrase occurred in a despatch from Sir David Henderson. + + +There! It was gone, the waking vision that left her trembling, with a +certainty. + +Yes; here was the meaning of the sealed box, of the long confabulation +of her Airman with the Aeroplane Lady.... War was coming. And _they +knew_. + +Gwenna, standing there in the doorway, drawing a long breath and feeling +suddenly rather giddy, knew that she had come upon something that she +had not been meant to guess. + +What was she to do about it? + +Her hand was on the knob of the door. + +Must she close it upon herself, or behind her? + +Should she come forward and cry, "Oh, if it was a dreadful secret, why +didn't you lock the door?" + +Or should she go out noiselessly, taking that burden of a secret with +her? She might confess to the Aeroplane Lady afterwards.... + +Here she saw that the Airman had half turned. His boyish, determined +profile was dark in shadow against the plan on the wall; the plan of the +P.D.Q. Sunlight through the office window touched and gilded the edge +of his blonde head. + +"Yes; I thought so. Have to be a rifle after all," he repeated in a +matter-of-fact tone. Then, turning more round, his glance met the +startled eyes of the girl in the doorway. + +And that finished the dilemma for Gwenna. + +Something rose up in her and was too strong to let her be silent. + +"Oh! I've _seen_ it!" she cried sharply. "_Paul!_" + +He took one stride towards her and slipped his arm about her as she +swayed. She was white to the lips. + +"Is there any water----" began young Dampier, but already the Aeroplane +Lady had poured out a glassful. + +It was he, however, who put it to Gwenna's lips, holding her still. + +"It's all _right_, darling," he said reassuringly (and the give-away +word slipped very easily from his tongue). "Better, aren't you? +Frightfully muggy in that room with those radiators! You oughtn't to +be---- Here!" He took some of the cold water and dabbed it on her curls. + +"I suppose he knew he could trust the child," thought the Aeroplane Lady +as she closed the door of the Wing-room between herself and those two in +the office, "but I don't know that I should have engaged her if I'd +known. I don't want lovers about the place, here. Of course, this +explains his Aviation dinner and everything----" + + * * * * * + +Little Gwenna, standing with her small face buried against the Aviator's +tweed jacket, was sighing out that she hadn't _meant_ to come in, hadn't +_meant_ to look at that horrible gun.... + +The girl didn't know what she was saying. The boy scarcely heard it. He +was rumpling with his cheek the short, silky curls he had always longed +to touch. Presently he tilted her cherub's head back against his +shoulder, then put both his hands about that throat of hers. + +She gave an unsteady little laugh. + +"You'll throttle me," she murmured. + +Without loosening his clasp, he bent his fair head further down, and +kissed her, very gently, on the mouth. + +"Don't mind, do you?" he said, into another kiss. "_Do_ you?" + +At that moment the Little Thing in his arms had banished all thought of +those Big Things from his mind. + + + + +PART II + +_JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE AVIATION DINNER + + +Gwenna began to feel a little nervous and intimidated, even in the car +that took herself and the Aeroplane Lady and the Airman to the Aviation +dinner. + +A hundred yards before they reached the portals of the Club in Pall Mall +that car stopped. Then it began to advance again a yard or two at a +time. A long row of other cars and taxis was ahead, and from them +alighted guests in dull black opera hats, with mufflers; once or twice +there was the light and jewelled gleam of a woman's wrap, but they were +mostly men who were driving up. + +"Colonel Conyers," said Paul Dampier to the attendant in the great +marble-tiled entrance. + +Then he was shown off to the right; Gwenna and the Aeroplane Lady to the +dressing-rooms on the left. Before an immense glass they removed their +wraps and came out to the waiting-room, the girl all misty-white with +the sky-blue sash and the dancing-shoes; the Lady gowned in grey satin +that had just the gleam of aluminium in that factory of hers, and with +her brooch of the winged serpents fastened at her breast. + +They sat down at one of the little polished tables in the waiting-room +under the long windows on to Pall Mall; it was a high, light-panelled +room, with a frieze of giant roses. A couple of ladies went by to the +dressing-room, greeting Mrs. Crew as they passed. + +Then there stopped to speak to her a third and older and very handsome +lady all in black, with diamonds ablaze in her laces and in her grey, +piled-up hair. + +"There should be some good speeches to-night, shouldn't there?" said +this lady. "All these splendid men!... You know, my dear, take us for +all in all"--and she gave a little laugh--"we _are_ splendid!" + +"But there are so few of us," said the Aeroplane Lady, ruefully. + +The other woman, about to pass on, stopped for a moment again, and +looking over her white shoulder said, very seriously, something that +both her hearers were to remember. "If England is ever to be saved, it +will be by a few." + +She went out; and Mrs. Crewe said to Gwenna, "That was Lady----" +(Something) "the wife of the man who's as responsible as most people for +the security of this Empire----" + +Most of the people there seemed to know the Aeroplane Lady quite well, +Gwenna noticed, when Paul Dampier came up and took them out into the +Central Hall again, where the guests were assembling. The place seemed +as high as a cathedral, with a marble floor, and alcoves, and tall, +classic, brass tripod things to hold the end of men's cigarettes and +ashes. The Aeroplane Lady was at once surrounded by a group of men. +Gwenna, feeling very shy and little and of no account, turned to her +Airman. + +"You said," she murmured reproachfully, "that there _weren't_ going to +be a lot of grand people." + +"These aren't 'grand,' bless you! People aren't, who are really--well, +who 'do things,' as you say. Not nearly as frilly here as at the Smiths, +that other dinner," he said, smiling down at her. "I'm going to bring up +Colonel Conyers and introduce him to you----" + +"_Him?_ Good _gracious_!" thought the little Welsh girl in consternation +to herself. "Colonel Conyers!--oh, no, please--I should be much too +frightened----" + +But the tall figure had detached itself from a group at a word from Paul +Dampier, and Colonel Conyers came up. Gwenna recognised the lean, +smiling, half-mischievous face of the soldier who--those ages ago!--had +talked to those ladies in the motor-car at Hendon. + +This was the man they called "Aircraft Conyers," the man practically at +the head of Aeronautics, Paul had, said, the man in whose hands rested +(among so many, many other things) the whole career of the inventor of +the P.D.Q.! Gwenna, with her curly head whirling, felt inclined to drop +a schoolchild's curtsy to this Great One of the Councils of the Earth. + +He took her hand into his own long, lean one. + +"How d'you do?" he drawled, smiling cheerfully. "Starving, what? I am, I +can tell you. Always late here. Won't be long, now. You're at my table, +I believe." Then, almost anxiously, "Fond of chocolates? You are? Good. +Then I can collect the lot of those little silver dishes around us and +pretend it's all for you. It's for me, really." + +Gwenna, who was not able to help laughing at this unexpectedness on the +part of the great Aircraft Conyers, said: "Are _you_ fond of them?" + +"Passionately. Passionately!" said Colonel Conyers with a nod, as he +turned to find his own dinner-partner. + +"Didn't frighten you much, did he?" laughed Paul Dampier to the Little +Thing at his side. "Course he didn't. I'll tell you who most of the +others are when we get into the supper-room." + +In the great supper-room with its painted ceiling and gilded pillars +dinner was laid on a number of small tables for parties of six or eight. +Gwenna found herself the only woman at their table, the Aeroplane Lady +sitting far down at the other end of the room. + +All dazed, the young girl looked about her like a stray bird that has +fluttered in through an open window. Beside her, Paul Dampier pointed +out to her this celebrity and that at the tables. + +"Colonel Conyers you've seen...." (That personage had nodded to the +young girl over a stack of pink roses and had made a little movement to +show the basket of sweets beside his plate.) "Now that man with the +Order, that's Lord" (So-and-So), "Director of Coast Defence. And that" +(So-and-So), "Chief Engineer. And that little man one down--in the +opposite direction from where I'm looking--that's" (So-and-So), "editor +of _The Air_. Wonderful chap; brains enough to sink a ship." + +An extraordinary mixture of men, Gwenna thought, as her glance followed +his direction, and he went on talking. Soldiers, sailors, chemists, +scientists, ministers; all banded together. Ranks and fortunes were +merged. Here were men of position, men of brains, men of money. Men +whose names were in all the newspapers, and men the papers had never +heard of, all with one aim and object, the furtherance of Civilisation's +newest advance: the Conquest of the Air. + +The dinner proceeded. Pale amber wine whispered and bubbled in her +glass, dishes came and went, but the girl scarcely knew what she ate or +drank. She was in a new world, and _he_ had brought her there. She felt +it so intensely that presently it almost numbed her. She was long past +the stage of excitement that manifests itself in gasps and exclamations. +She could speak ordinarily and calmly when Paul Dampier, turning from +his talk to a Physical Laboratory man in a very badly brushed coat, +asked her: "Well? Find it interesting?" + +"You know I do," she said, with a grave little glance. + +He said, smiling, "What did you say to the red-haired youth about not +going to the matinée with him first?" + +"Mr. Ryan? Oh! I just told him I hadn't got over my headache from the +smell of dope, and that I was afraid it would tire me too much to do +both." + +"Pretty annoyed, I expect, wasn't he?" + +"Yes, he was," replied Gwenna, with the absolute callousness of a woman +in love towards the feelings of any but the one man. She did not even +trouble whether it had been the feelings or the vanity of Mr. Peter Ryan +that had been hurt. What mattered was that Paul Dampier had not wished +her to go to that matinée. + +Paul Dampier said, "Well, I cried off an engagement to-night, too. +Colonel Conyers wanted to take me back with him. But I'm seeing you +home." + +"Oh, but you mustn't; you needn't!" she protested happily. "I'm not +going down to the Works, you know, to-night. I'm sleeping at the Club. +I'm staying this week-end with Leslie." + +"With Leslie, are you? M'm. But I'm taking you up to the Club +afterwards," he persisted. "A fellow's got to look after"--here he +laughed a little as if it were a joke that pleased him--"a fellow's got +to look after his _fiancée_, hasn't he?" + +She was a little subdued. She thought for the moment that he had put +Colonel Conyers off, not for her, after all! but for that Machine of +his. Then she thought: No!--the machine was second now. She said, half +in hope, half in dread, "D'you mean the P.D.Q.?" + +He turned, with his mouth full of salad, staring whimsically at her. + +"The P.D.Q.? What you thinking of? I meant _you_." + +"_Me?_" She gave a little gasp. + +Life and happiness were too much for her again. She felt as if that +whispering untouched champagne in her glass had gone to her head. Was +it really true--_that_, that he had said? + +"Well, aren't you?" he said gaily, but dropping his voice a little as +the conversation rose about them. "Aren't you that to me? Engaged, +aren't we?" + +"Oh, I don't know," the young girl said, breathlessly. It was as if the +moon that one had cried for had suddenly dropped, to lie like a round, +silver mirror in one's lap. "Did you mean _that_, yesterday afternoon?" + +"Didn't I mean it before that?" he said, half to himself. "What about +all those dances? that time when Hugo dragged me off to that place by +the river? Those would have been _most_ incorrect," he teased her, "if +we hadn't been. We shall have to be, my dear." + +Then an impulse took her. (It is known to any young girl who is +sincerely in Love.) + +"No. Don't let's----" she said suddenly. "Don't let's be 'engaged'!" + +For it seemed to her that a winged Dream was just about to alight and to +become a clumsy creature of Earth--like that Aeroplane on the Flying +Ground. The boy said, staring at her, "_Not_ be engaged? Why on earth? +How d'you mean?" + +"I mean, everybody gets '_engaged_,'" she explained very softly and +rapidly over the bread that she was crumbling in her little fingers. +"And it's such a sort of _fuss_, with writing home, and congratulations, +and how-long-has-this-been-going-on, and all that sort of thing! People +at tea-parties and things _talking_ about us! I _know_ they would!" +declared the Welsh girl with distaste, "and saying, 'Dear me, she looks +very young' and _wondering_ about us! Oh, no, _don't_ let's have it! It +would seem to _spoil_ it, for me! Don't let's _call_ it anything, need +we? Don't let's say anything yet, except to--just US." + +"All right," said the boy with an easy shrug. (He was too young to know +what he was escaping.) "Sure I don't mind, as long as you're just with +me, all the time we can." + +She said, wonderfully sedate above the tumult in her heart, "Did you +bring my locket with you to-night?" + +"No. I didn't. D'you know why? Can't you guess? Because I wanted to give +it back to you when _I_ could put it round my Girl's neck," he told her. +And she turned away from him, so happily confused again that she could +not speak. + +She was his Girl; his. And because he was one of this band of brothers, +sitting here feasting and talking, each making it his business to +contribute his share to the sum of what was to be one of the World's +greatest Forces, why! because of that, even she, little Gwenna Williams, +could feel herself to be a tiny part of that Force. She was an Aviator's +girl--even if it were a wonderful secret that nobody knew, so far, but +he and she. + +(Already everybody at that table and many others in the room had +remarked what a pretty little creature young Dampier's sweetheart was.) + + * * * * * + +"_The King!_" announced the President of the Dinner. + +There was a movement and a rustle all round the great supper-room as the +guests rose to the toast; another rustle as they reseated themselves. +One of the celebrities whom Paul had pointed out to her began to speak +upon the achievements of Wilbur Wright. At the table next to Gwenna some +journalists bent absorbed over scribbling pads. Speech followed speech +as the toasts were gone through. The opal-blue haze of cigarette smoke +drifted up above the white tables with their rose-pink and ferny +decorations. Chairs were pushed sidewards as guests turned alert and +listening faces towards the head of the room; and every now and again +the grave and concise and pleasantly modulated tones of some +speaker-on-the-subject of his heart were broken in upon by a soft storm +of applause. + +"Colonel Conyers to speak now," murmured Paul to Gwenna, as the long, +lean figure that had been sitting opposite to them rose. He stepped +backwards, to stand against one of those gilded pillars as he made his +speech, responding to the toast that had coupled his name with that of +the Flying Wing of the Army. + +Gwenna listened with even more breathless attention than she had paid to +the other speakers. + +Colonel Conyers spoke easily and lightly, as if he had been, not making +a speech, but talking to a knot of friends at his house. He reviewed, in +terms so simple that even the young girl at his table could follow all +he said, the difficulties and the risks of aviation, and the steps that +had been taken to minimise those risks. Wind, it seemed, had been in a +great measure overcome. Risk from faulty workmanship of machines--that, +too, was overcome. Workmanship was now well-nigh as perfect as it could +be made. + +Here Gwenna glowed with pride, exchanging a glance with her employer far +down the tables. This meant _their_ workmanship at Aircraft Factories; +their Factory, too! This meant the labours of Mrs. Crewe and of Mr. +Ryan, and of André, and of the workmen in overalls at the lathes in that +noisy central shop. Even the brushful of dope that she, Gwenna, spread +conscientiously over each seam of the great wings, played its tiny part +in helping to preserve a Flyer's life! + +The risk in stability, too, Colonel Conyers said, had been successfully +combatted by the gyroscope. There remained, however, Fog and Darkness as +the chief perils, which, at the present moment, of July, +Nineteen-fourteen, our Airmen had to fight.... + +In the soldier's lean face that shrewd, half-mischievous smile was +flickering as he spoke; his grey trim head turning now and again against +the gilded column, his keen eyes fixed upon some objective of his own, +his strong hand fidgeting in the small mechanical gesture of a man who +is less accustomed to speaking about things than to doing them. + +Gwenna thought how different, how entirely different were all these +people here from that other dinner-party at the house of the prosperous +and artistic Smiths who had found so much to say about the Russian +Ballet! + +Definitely now Gwenna saw what the chief difference between them was. + +_Those other people treated and spoke of a pastime as though it were a +matter of Life and Death. These people here made Life and Death matters +their pastime._ + +"And these splendid real people are the ones I'm going to belong to," +the girl told herself with a glance at the tall boy beside her who had +decided her fate. That thought was to glow in the very depths of her, +like a firefly nestling at the heart of a rose, for as long as she +lived. + +The even, pleasant tones of Colonel Conyers went on to give as one of +the most hopeful features of aviation the readiness of the quite young +man of the present day to volunteer. No sooner was a fatality announced +than for one airman who, cheerfully giving his life for the service of +his country, had been put out of action, half a dozen promising young +fellows were eager to come forward and take his place. + +"Two of 'em again yesterday.... Two of his lieutenants, killed in +Yorkshire," whispered Paul Dampier, leaning to Gwenna. + +She missed the next sentence of Colonel Conyers, which concluded +cheerily enough with the hard-worked but heartening reminder that whom +the Gods love die young.... + +Then, with a broadening of that humorous smile and with a glint in his +eyes, he referred to "those other people (plump and well-to-do--and +quite young people) who do, still, really appear to consider that the +whole of a man's duty to his country is to preserve his health for as +long as possible and then, having reached a ripe old age, to die +comfortably and respectably in his bed!----" + +There was a short ripple of laughter about the room; but after this +Gwenna heard very little. + +Not only was she incapable of taking any more in, but this last sentence +pulled her up with a sudden memory of what she had seen, yesterday. + +_That gun at the Aircraft Works. That pictured presentiment in her own +mind._ + +And she heard again, through Colonel Conyers' pleasant voice, the queer, +unexplained words that had haunted her: + +"_Fired at by both friend and foe._" + +She thought, "I must ask! I must say something to Paul about that----" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE "WHISPER OF WAR" + + +She said it after the dinner had broken up. + +In the great hall young Dampier had turned to the Aeroplane Lady with +his offer of motoring her to her Hotel first. She had good-naturedly +laughed at him and said, "No. I'm going to be driven back by the +rightful owner of the car this time. You take Miss Williams." + +And then she had gone off with some friend of Paul's who had motors to +lend, and Paul had taken Gwenna to find a taxi to drive up to Hampstead. + +They drove slowly through Piccadilly Circus, now brighter than at +midday. It was thronged with the theatre-crowds that surged towards the +crossings. Coloured restaurant-coats and jewelled head-gear and laughing +faces were gay in the lights that made that broad blazing belt about the +fountain. Higher up the whole air was a soft haze of gold, melting into +the hot, star-strewn purple of the night-sky. And against this there +tapered, black and slender, the apex of the fountain, the +downward-swooping shape that is not Mercury, but the flying Love--the +Lad with Wings. + +Paul Dampier leant back in the closed cab and would have drawn the girl +to him. + +She put both hands on his broad chest to hold him a little away from +her. + +"I want to ask you something," she began a little tremulously. "It's +just--Is there going to be----" + +"Well, what?" he asked, smiling close to her. + +Of all things that he least expected came what the girl had to say. + +"Is there going to be--a War, Paul?" + +"A _what_?" he asked, thinking he had not heard aright. + +She repeated it, tremulously. "A war. Real war." + +"War?" he echoed, blankly, taken aback. He was silent from puzzled +astonishment over her asking this, as they turned up Shaftesbury Avenue. +They were held up outside the Hippodrome for some minutes. He was still +silent. The taxi gave a jerk and went on. And she still waited for his +reply. She had to remind him. + +"Well," she said again, tremulous. "_Is_ there going to be?" + +"A war? A _war_ indeed," he said again. "What an +extraordinary--Who's--What put such a thing into your head?" + +She said, "_Is_ there?" + +The boy gave a half-amazed, half-uneasy laugh. He retorted, "What d'you +mean, Gwenna? A war _where_?" + +She said flutteringly, "Anywhere." + +"Oh," he said, and laughed as if relieved. "Always some war, somewhere. +Frontier shows in India, and so on. There is some scrapping going on in +Europe too, now, you know. Looks as if Austria and Servia were going to +have a set-to. You mean that." + +"No, I don't," persisted the Welsh girl, to whom these places seemed +indescribably remote and beside the mark. "I mean ... a war to do with +_us_, like." + +"Us----?" + +"To do with England." + +"But----" he said, frowning. "Why, how absurd! A war with England? +Why ... of course not. Why should you think of it?" + +She cleared her throat and answered with another tremulous question. + +"Why should you have--that gun-thing--on your aeroplane?" + +"Not going to. Not on the P.D.Q.," he said, shaking his head. "Only an +experiment, anyhow." + +"Why should you have 'experiments' with those things?" she faltered. +"'_Have to be a rifle_,' you said. Why should you talk about 'scouting' +and 'modern warfare'?" + +"I wasn't!" he said quite hotly. + +"Yes, you were. That day we were together. That day in the field when +you were talking to me about the Machine." + +"Oh, _then_! Weeks ago." + +"Yes. Why should there _be_ all that, unless you meant that there'd be a +war, with England in it. _Paul!_" she cried, almost accusingly, "you +said yourself that it was '_bound to come_!'" + +"Oh, well! Everybody said _that_," he assured her lightly. "Can't help +seeing Germany and that Fleet of hers, and her Zeppelins and things, +going on build, build, build. They don't do that for their health, you +bet! Scrap's bound to come; yes. Sooner or later." + +"Yes, Paul; but _when_?" + +"How should I know, my _dear_ child?" retorted the young Airman. "Why +didn't you ask Lord Thingummy, or Conyers at the Club just now?" he +laughed. "Good speech of his, wasn't it?" + +"Does _he_ know?" persisted Gwenna, paling. "About the war coming, I +mean?" + +"More likely to know than I am, those people. Not that they'd give it +away if they did. It won't be to-morrow, anyway. To-morrow; that's +Sunday. _Our_ holiday. Another day we shall have all to ourselves. Tell +me what time I'm to call for you at the Club." + +Not to be put off, she retorted, timid, persistent, "Tell me when _you_ +think it would come. Soon?" + +Half laughing, half impatient, he said, "I _don't_ know. Soon enough for +it to be in my time, I hope." + +"But--" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you're not a +soldier?" + +He said quietly, "I'm an aviator." + +An aviator; yes. That was what she meant. He belonged to the most daring +and romantic of professions; the most dangerous, but not _that_ danger. +An inventor, part of his time; the rest of his time an airman at Hendon +who made flights above what the man with the megaphone called the +"Aer-rio-drome" above the khaki-green ground with the pylons and the +border of summer-frocked spectators. _Her_ boy! An aviator.... Would +that mean presently a man flying above enemy country, to shoot and be +shot at? ("_Fired at by both friend and foe._"). She said quiveringly: +"_You_ wouldn't have to fight?" + +He said: "Hope so, I'm sure." + +"Oh, Paul!" she cried, aghast, her hands on his arm. "Just when--when +I've only just _got_ you! To lose you again so soon----! Oh, no----!" + +"Oh, I say, darling, don't be so silly," he said briskly and +reassuringly. He patted the little hands. "We're not going to talk about +this sort of thing, d'you hear? There's nothing to talk _about_. +Actually, there's nothing. Understand?" + +"Yes," she murmured slowly. She thought, "Actually, 'there's nothing to +talk about' in what's between him and me. _But it's there all the +time._" + +And then, gradually, that presentiment of War began to fade in the +reality of her joy at being with him now, with him still.... + +They turned up the Hampstead Road, flaring with naphtha-lights above the +stalls, noisy with shouts of costers, crowded with the humble shoppers +of Saturday night. + +"Well, and what about to-morrow?" Dampier took up. + +"I _was_ going with Leslie to----" + +"So you said. With Leslie, indeed! D'you think you're going to be +allowed to go anywhere again, except with _me_?" he muttered as he put +his arms about her. + +He held her as close as he had done on the scaffolding, that afternoon +when he had arranged with himself never to see the Little Thing again; +close as he'd done next time he did see her, at the Factory. + +"Oh, _you_ don't know!" he said quite resentfully (while she laughed +softly and happily in his hold), "you _don't_ know how I've wanted you +with me. I--I haven't been able to think of anything--You _have_ got a +fellow fond of you in a jolly short time, haven't you? How've you done +it? M'm? I--Here!" he broke off savagely, "what _is_ this dashed idiot +stopping the taxi for?" + +"Because I get out here. It's the Club," Gwenna explained to him +gravely, opening the door of the cab for herself. "Good-night." + +"What? No, you don't," protested the boy. "We're going up the Spaniards +Road and down by the Whitestone Pond, and round by Hendon first. I must +take you for a drive. It's not so late. Hang it, I haven't _seen_ you to +speak to----" + +She had made a dash out and across the lamp-lighted asphalt, and now +she nodded to him from the top step of the house, with her key already +clicking in the lock. + +"There," she thought. + +For even in the tie that binds the most adoring heart there is twisted +some little gay strand of retaliation. + +Let _him_ feel that after a whole evening of sitting in her pocket he +hadn't seen anything of her. She'd known that sort of feeling long +enough. Let _him_ take his turn; let _him_ have just a taste of it! + +"Good-night!" she called softly to her lover before she disappeared. +"See you to-morrow!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE LAST SUNDAY OF PEACE + + +Never had Gwenna risen so early after having spent so little of a night +in sleep! + + +Into the small hours she had crouched in her kimono on the edge of +Leslie's camp bedstead in the light that came from the street lamp +outside the window; and she had talked and talked and talked. + +For by "not saying anything about it" she had never meant keeping her +happiness from that close chum. + +Miss Long, sincerely delighted, had listened and had nodded her wise +black head from the pillow. She had thrown in the confidante's running +comments of "There! What did Leslie tell you?... Oh, he would, of +course.... Good.... Oh, my dear, _how_ exactly like them all.... No, no; +I didn't mean that. (Of course there's nobody like _him_); I meant +'Fancy!' ... Yes and then what did Paul say, Virginia?" At last +repetitions had cropped up again and again into the softly chattered +recital, with all its girlish italics of: "Oh, but you _don't_ know what +he's like; oh, Leslie, no, you _can't_ imagine!"--At last Leslie had +sighed, a trifle enviously. And little Gwenna, pattering to the head of +the bed, had put her cheek to the other girl's and had whispered +earnestly: "Oh, Leslie, if I only could, d'you know what I'd do? I'd +arrange so that he had a twin-brother _exactly_ like him, to fall in +love with _you_!" + +"Taffy! you are too ... _sweet_," the elder girl had whispered back in a +stifled voice. + +Gwenna never guessed how Leslie Long had had much ado not to giggle +aloud over that idea. To think of her, Leslie, finding rapture with any +one of the type of the Dampier boy.... + +A twin-brother of _his_? Another equally bread-and-buttery blonde +infant--an infant-in-arms who was even "simpler" than Monty Scott? Oh, +Ishtar!... For thus does one woman count as profoundest boredom what +brings to her sister Ecstasy itself. + + +And now here was Gwenna, all in white, coming down to the Club's Sunday +breakfast with her broad hat already on her head and her gloves and her +vanity-bag in her hand. + +At the head of the table sat the Vicar's widow with the gold curb brooch +and the look of resigned disapproval. Over the table Miss Armitage and +the other suffrage-workers were discussing the Cat-and-Mouse Act. +Opposite to them one of the art-students, with her hair cut à la Trilby, +was listening bewildered, ready to be convinced.... Not one of the usual +things remained unsaid.... + +Presently Gwenna's neighbour and _bête noire_, Miss Armitage, was +denouncing the few remaining members of her sex who still seemed to +acquiesce in the Oriental attitude towards Woman; who still remained +serfs or chattels or toys. + +"However! _Thy_ needn't think thy _caount_," declared the lecturer +firmly, stretching without apology across her neighbour to get the salt. +With some distaste Gwenna regarded her. She had spots on her face. +"Pleasers of Men!" she pursued, with noble scorn. "The remnant of the +Slyve-girl Type, now happily extinct----" + +"Loud cheers," from Leslie Long. + +"The serpent's tile," continued the suffragette, "the serpent's tile +that, after the reptile has been beaten to death, still gows on feebly +wriggling----" + +"Better wriggle off now, Taffy, my child," murmured Leslie, who sat +facing the breakfast-room window. "Here's a degraded Oriental coming up +the path now to call for his serf." + +"_You_ come," said Gwenna, warmly flushed as she rose. And she held her +chum's long arm, dragging her with her as she came into the hall where +the tall, typically English figure of her Airman stood, his straw hat in +his hand. A splash of scarlet from the stained glass of the hall door +fell upon his fair head and across his cheek as he turned. + +"Good-morning," said Gwenna sedately, and without giving him so much as +a glance. She felt at that moment that she would rather keep him at +arm's length for ever than allow him even to hold her hand, with Leslie +there. For it takes those who are cooler in temperament than was the +little Welsh girl, or those who care less for their lovers than she did, +to show themselves warmer in the presence of others. + +"Hullo," said Paul Dampier to her. Then, "Hullo, Miss Long! How d'you +do?" + +Leslie gave him a very hearty shake of the hand, a more friendly glance +and a still more demure inquiry about that Machine of his. + +Paul Dampier laughed, returning her glance. + +She was a sport, he thought. She could be trusted not to claim, just +yet, the bet she'd won from his cousin; the laughing wager about the +Aeroplane versus the Girl. Fifteen to one on the Girl, wasn't it? And +here was the Girl home in his heart now, with the whole of a gorgeous +July Sunday before them for their first holiday together. + +"I say, I'm not too early now, am I?" he asked as he and the girl walked +down the Club steps together. "I was the first time, so I just went for +a walk round the cricket-pitch and back. Sickening thing I couldn't rake +up a car anywhere for to-day. Put up with trains or tubes and taxis +instead, I'm afraid. D'you mind? Where shall we go?" + + * * * * * + +"Flying, of course," was Gwenna's first thought. "Now at last he'll take +me up." But that would be for the afternoon. + +For the morning they wanted country, and grass, and trees to sit +under.... Not Hampstead; Richmond Park was finally decided upon. + +"We'll taxi to Waterloo," the boy said, with an inward doubt. He dived a +long brown hand into his pocket as they walked together down the road +that Gwenna used to take every morning to her Westminster bus. He was +particularly short of money just then. Dashed nuisance! Just when he +would have wished to be particularly flush! That's what came of buying a +clock for the Machine before it was wanted. Still, he couldn't let the +Little Thing here know that. Manage somehow. A taxi came rattling down +the Pond Street Hill from Belsize Park as they reached the +stopping-place of the buses, and Paul held up his hand. + +"Taxi!" + +But the driver shook his head. He pulled up the taxi in front of a +small, rather mean-looking house close to where Gwenna and Paul were +standing on the pavement. Then his fare came out of the house, a kit-bag +in each hand and a steamer-rug thrown over his arm; he was a small, +compactly-built young man in clothes so new and so smart that they +seemed oddly out of place with the slatternly entrance of his +lodging-house. It was this that made Paul Dampier look a little hard at +him. Gwenna was wondering where she'd seen that blonde, grave face of +his before. + +He sprang lightly into the cab; a pink-faced girl was sitting there, +whom Gwenna did not see. If she had seen her, she would have recognised +her Westminster colleague, Ottilie Becker. + +"Liverpool Street," ordered Miss Becker's companion, setting down his +luggage. + +Then, raising his head, he caught the eyes upon him of the other young +man in the street. He put a hand to his hat, gave a quick little odd +smile, and leaned forward out of the cab. + +"_Auf Wiedersehen!_" he called, as the taxi started off--for Liverpool +Street. + +"Deuce did he mean by that?" exclaimed the young Englishman, staring +after the cab. "Who on earth was that fellow? I didn't know him." + +"Nor did I. But I _have_ seen him," said Gwenna. + +"I believe I have, somewhere," said Paul, musing. + +They puzzled over it for a bit as they went on to Waterloo on the top of +their bus. + +And then, when they were passing "The Horse Shoe" in Tottenham Court +Road, and when they were talking about something quite different (about +the river-dance, in fact), they both broke off talking sharply. Gwenna, +with a little jump on the slanting front seat, exclaimed, "I know--!" +Just as Paul said, "By Jove! I've got it! I know who that fellow was. +That German fellow just now. He was one of the waiters at that very +dance, Gwenna!" + +Gwenna, turning, said breathlessly, "Yes, I know. The one who passed us +on the path. But I've thought of something else, too. I thought then his +face reminded me of somebody's; I know now who it is. It's that fair +young man who came down to try and be taken on at the Works." + +"At Westminster?" Paul asked quickly. + +"No; at the Aircraft Works one afternoon. He talked English awfully +well, and he said he was Swiss. And then André--you know, the big, dark +French workman--talked to him for quite a long time in French; he said +he seemed very intelligent. But he wouldn't give him a job, whatever." + +"He wouldn't?" + +"No. I heard him tell the Aeroplane Lady that the young man ('_ce +garçon-là_') came from the wrong canton," said Gwenna. "So he went away. +I saw him go out. He was awfully _like_ that German waiter. I suppose +most Germans look alike, to us." + +"S'pose so," said the Aviator, adding, "Was that the day that drawing of +mine was missing from the Aircraft Works, I wonder?" + +She looked at him, surprised. "I didn't know one of your drawings was +missing, Paul." + +"Yes. It didn't matter, as it happened. Drawing of a detail for my +Machine. I've taken jolly good care not to have complete drawings of it +anywhere," he said, with a little nod. + +And some minutes later they had begun to talk of something else again, +as the bus lurched on through the hot, deserted Sunday streets. + + * * * * * + +The morning that had brought Gwenna to her lover left Gwenna's chum for +once at a loose end. + +"Leslie, my child, aren't you a little tired of being the looker-on who +sees most of the game? Won't you take a hand?" Miss Long asked herself +as she went back into her Club bedroom. It was scented with the fresh +smell of the rosemary and bay-rum that Leslie used for her ink-black +sheaf of hair, and there drifted in through the open window the sound of +bells from all the churches. + +"Sunday. My free morning! '_The better the day._' So I'll settle up at +last what I am going to do about this little matter of my future," she +decided. + +She sat down at the little bamboo writing-table set against the bedroom +wall. Above it there hung (since this was a girl's room!) a +looking-glass; and about the looking-glass there was festooned a little +garland made up of dance-programmes, dangling by their pencils, of gaudy +paper-fans from restaurants, and of strung beads. Stuck crookedly into a +corner of the glass there was a cockling snapshot. It showed Monty +Scott's dark head above his sculptor's blouse. Leslie picked it out and +looked at it. + +"Handsome, wicked eyes," she said to it lightly. "The only wicked things +about you, you unsophisticated infant-in-arms!" Then she said, "You and +your sculpturing!... _Just_ like a baby with its box of bricks. Besides, +I don't suppose you'll ever have a penny. One doesn't marry a man +because one may like the _look_ of him. No, boy." + +She flicked the snapshot aside. There was conscientious carelessness in +the flick. + +Then she took out the leather-cased ink-bottle from her dressing-bag, +and some paper. + +She wrote: "MY DEAR HUGO----" + +Then she stopped and thought--"Maudie and Hilary Smith will be pleased +with me. So will the cousins, the opulent cousins who've always been +kind about clothes they've finished wearing, and invitations to parties +where they want another girl to brighten things up. You can give some +bright parties for _them_ now, Leslie! Good Reason Number Ninety-nine +for saying 'Yes.'" + +She took up her pen. + +"Nothing," she murmured, "_Nothing_ will ever kill the idea that _the +girl who isn't married is the girl who hasn't been asked_. Nothing will +ever spoil the satisfaction of that girl when showing that she _has_!" + +She wrote down the date, which she had forgotten. + +"Poor Monty would be so much more decorative for 'show' purposes. But I +explained quite frankly to Hugo that it would be his money I'd want!" + +She wrote, "_After thinking it well over_----" + +Then again she meditated. + +"Great things, reasons! The reason why so many marriages aren't a +success is because they haven't _enough_ 'reasons why' behind them. Now, +how far had I got with mine--ah, yes. Reason Number a Hundred: I'm +twenty-six; I shall never been any better-looking than I am now. Not +unless I'm better-dressed. Which (Reason a Hundred and One) I should be +if I married Hugo. Reason a Hundred and Two: my old lady won't live for +ever, and I should never get a better job than hers. Except his. Reason +Number a Hundred and Two and a Half: I do quite like him. He doesn't +expect anything more, so there's the other half-reason for taking him. +Reason a Hundred and Four: _he's_ never disapproved of me. Whereas Monty +always likes me against his better judgment. Much nicer for me, but +annoying for a husband. I should make Hugo an excellent wife." She added +this half-aloud (to the snapshot). + +"I should never shock _him_. Never bore him. Never interfere with him. +Never make him look silly--any sillier than he can't help looking with +that hair and that necktie he will wear. Leslie would have the sense, +when she wasn't amusing him at the moment, to retire to her _own rooms_ +(Reason a Hundred and Five for marrying well), and to stay there until +she was fetched. Reason a----" + +Here, in the full flow of her reasoning, Miss Long cast suddenly and +rather violently down her pen, and tore the sheet with Hugo's name in it +into tiny strips that she cast into the empty fireplace. + +"I can't _think_ to write a good letter to-day!" she excused herself to +herself as she got up from her chair. "I'm tired.... It was all that +talking from Taffy last night. Bother the child. _Bother_ her. _It's +unsettling!_--Bother _all_ engaged girls. (_And all the people shall say +Amen._) I wonder where they went to?... I shall ring up somebody to take +me on the river, I think. Plenty of time to say 'Yes' to Hugo later." + +The letter to Hugo, between the lines of which there had come the vision +of an engaged girl's happy face, remained, for the present, unfinished. + +Leslie went to the telephone. + +"O-o-o Chelsea," she called. "I want to speak to Mr. Scott, please." + +She thought, "This shall be my last free Sunday, and I'll have it in +peace!" + + * * * * * + +In Richmond Park the grass was doubly cool and green beneath the shade +both of the oaks and of the breast-high bracken where Gwenna and Paul +Dampier sat, eating the fruit and cake that they had bought on the way, +and talking with long stretches of contented silence. + +They were near enough actually to London and the multitude. But town and +people seemed far away, out of their world to-day. + +Gwenna's soft, oddly-accented voice said presently into the warm +stillness, "You'll take me up this afternoon?" + +"Up?" he said idly. "Where to?" + +"Up flying, of course." + +"No, I don't think so," said the young Airman quietly, putting his chin +in his hand as he lay in his favourite attitude, chest downwards in the +grass, looking at her. + +"Not flying? Not this afternoon?" + +"Don't think so, Little Thing." + +"Oh, you're lazy," she teased him, touching a finger to his fair head +and taking it quickly back again. "You don't want to move." + +"Not going to move, either; not until I've got to." + +She sighed, not too disappointed. + +Here in the dappled shade and the solitude with him it was heavenly +enough; even if she did glance upward at the peeps of sapphire-blue +through the leaves and wonder what added rapture it would be to soar to +those heights with her lover. + +"D'you know how many times you've put me off?" she said presently, +fanning the midges away from herself with her broad white hat. "Always +you've said you'd take me flying with you, Paul. And always there's been +something to stop it. Let's settle it now. Now, when will you?" + +"Ah," he said, and flung the stone of the peach he'd been eating into +the dark green jungle of bracken ahead of them. "Good shot. I wanted to +see if I could get that knob on that branch." + +She moved nearer to him and said coaxingly, "What about next Sunday?" + +"Hope it'll be as fine as this," he said, smiling at her. "I'd like all +the Sundays to be just like this one. Can't think what I did with all +the ripping days before this, Gwenna." + +She said, "I meant, what about your taking me up next Sunday?" + +"Nothing about it," he said, shaking his head. There was a little pause. +He crossed his long legs in the grass and said, "Not next Sunday. Nor +the Sunday after that. Nor any Sunday. Nor any time. I may as well tell +you now. You aren't ever coming flying," said the young aviator firmly +to his sweetheart. "I've settled _that_." + +The cherub face of the girl looked blankly into his. "But, Paul! No +flying? Why? Surely--It's safe enough now!" + +"Safe enough for me--and for most people." + +"But you've taken Miss Conyers and plenty of girls flying." + +"Girls. Yes." + +"And you _promised_ to take me!" + +"That was ages ago. That was when you were a girl too." + +"Well, what am I now, pray?" + +"Don't you know? Not '_a_ girl.' _My_ Girl!" he said. + +Then he moved. He knelt up beside her. He made love to her sweetly +enough to cause her to forget all else for a time. And presently, +flushed and shy and enraptured, she brought out of her vanity-bag the +tiny white wing that was to be his mascot, and she safety-pinned it +inside the breast of his old grey jacket. + +"That ought to be fastened somewhere to the P.D.Q.," he suggested. But +she shook her head. No. It was not for the P.D.Q. It was for him to +wear. + +Then she saw him weighing in his hand her own mascot, the little +mother-of-pearl heart with the silver chain. + +"Ah! You did remember to bring it, at last?" she said. + +Nestling against his arm, she lifted her chin and waited for him to snap +the trinket about her neck. + +He laughed and hesitated. She looked at him rather wonderingly. Then he +made a confession. + +"D'you know, I--I do hate to have to give it back again, Gwenna. I've +had it _so_ long. Might as well let me hold on to it. May I?" + +"Oh, you are greedy for keepsakes," she said, delighted. "What would you +_do_ with a thing like that?" + +"I've thought of something," said he, nodding at her. + +She asked, "What?" + +"Tell you another time," he smiled, with the locket clutched in the hand +that was about her waist. She flung back her head happily against his +shoulder, curling herself up like a kitten in his hold. They had settled +that they were going to walk on to Kew Gardens to tea, but it was not +time yet, and it was so peaceful here. Scarcely any one passed them in +that nook of the Park. Another happy silence fell upon the lovers. It +was long before the boy broke it, asking softly, "You do like being with +me, don't you?" There was no answer from the girl. + +"Do you, Gwenna?" It seemed still odd to be able to call her whatever he +liked, now! "Do you, my Little Sweet Thing?" + +Still she didn't answer. He bent closer to look at her.... Her long +eyelashes lay like two little dark half-moons upon her cheeks and her +white blouse fell and rose softly to her breathing. Drowsy from the late +hours she'd kept last night and from the sun-warmed silence under the +trees, she had fallen asleep in his arms. Her eyes were still shut when +at last she heard his deep and gentle voice again in her ear, "I suppose +you know you owe me several pairs of gloves, miss!" + +She laughed sleepily, returning (still a little shyly and unfamiliarly!) +the next kiss that he put on her parted lips. + +"I was _nearly_ asleep," she said, with a little sudden stretch that ran +all over her like a shake given to a sheet of white aluminium at the +Works. "Isn't it quiet? Feels as if _everything_ was asleep." She opened +her eyes, blinking at the rays of the sun, now level in her face. "Oh, I +_should_ like some tea, wouldn't you?" + +They rose to go and find a place for tea in Kew Gardens, among the +happy, lazing Sunday crowds of those whom it has been the fashion to +treat so condescendingly: England's big Middle-classes. There were the +conventional young married couples; "She" wearing out the long tussore +coat that seemed so voluminous; "He," pipe in mouth, wheeling the wicker +mail-cart that held their pink-and-white bud of a baby. There were also +courting couples innumerable.... + +(Not all of these were as reticent in the public eye as Gwenna had been +with her lover before Leslie.) + +To Gwenna the bright landscape and the coloured figures seemed a page +out of some picture-book that she turned idly, her lover beside her. She +had to remind herself that to these other lovers she herself and Paul +were also part of a half-seen picture.... + +They sat down at one of the green wooden tea-tables, and a waiter in a +greasy black coat came out under the trees to take Dampier's order. +Perhaps that started another train of thought in the girl's mind, for +quite suddenly she exclaimed, "Ah! I've thought of _another_ German now +that he was like!" + +"Who was that?" asked Paul. + +"Only a picture I used to see every day. A photograph that our Miss +Baker kept pinned up over her desk at the works in Westminster," +explained Gwenna. "The photograph of that brother of hers that she was +always writing those long letters to." + +"Always writing, was she? Was _he_ a waiter?" + +"No, he was a soldier. He was in uniform in that photo," Gwenna said, as +the little tray was set before her. "Karl was his name, Karl Becker.... +Do you take sugar?" + +"Yes. You'll have to remember that for later on," he said, looking at +her with his head tilted back and a laugh in his eyes, as she poured out +his tea. She handed it to him, and then sat sipping her own, looking +dreamily over the English gardens, over the green spaces flowered with +the light frocks and white flannels of other couples who perhaps called +themselves "in love," and who possibly imagined they could ever feel as +she and her lover felt. (Deluded beings!) + +She murmured, "What do you suppose all these people are thinking +about?" + +"Oh! Whether they'll go to Brighton or to South-end for their fortnight, +I expect," returned Paul Dampier. "Everybody's thinking about holidays +just now." + +Later, they stood together in the hushed gloom of the big chestnut aisle +beside the river that slipped softly under Kew Bridge, passing the +willows and islands and the incongruously rural-looking street of +Strand-on-the-Green. One of the cottage-windows there showed red blinds, +lighted up and homely. + +Young Dampier whispered to his girl--"Going on holidays myself, perhaps, +presently, eh?" + +"Oh, Paul!" she said blankly, "you aren't going away for a holiday, are +you?" + +"Not yet, thanks. Not without you." + +"Oh!" she said. Then she sighed happily, watching the stars. "To-day's +been the loveliest holiday I've ever had in my life. Hasn't it been +perfect?" + +"Not quite," he said, with his eyes on those red-lighted windows on the +opposite bank. "Not perfect, Gwen." + +"Not----?" she took up quickly, wondering if she had said something that +he didn't like. + +Almost roughly he broke out, "Oh, I say, darling! _Don't_ let's go and +have one of these infernally long engagements, shall we?" + +She turned, surprised. + +"We said," she reminded him, "that we weren't 'engaged' at all." + +"I know," he said. Then he laughed as he stooped and kissed her little +ringless fingers and the palms of her hands. "But----" + +There was a pause. + +"Got to _marry_ me one day, you know," said young Paul Dampier +seriously. + +He might have spoken more seriously still if he had known that what he +said must happen in ten days' time from then. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THAT WEEK-END + + +For the following week-end saw, among many other things that had not +been bargained for, those lovers apart again. + +The very next Saturday after that Aviation Dinner was that +not-to-be-forgotten day in England, when this country, still uncertain, +weighed the part that she was to play in the Great War. + +Late on the Friday night of an eventful week, Paul Dampier, the Airman, +had received a summons from Colonel Conyers. + +And Gwenna, who had left the Aircraft Works on Saturday morning to come +up to her Hampstead Club, found there her lover's message: + + "_Away till Monday. Wait for me._" + +She waited with Leslie. + +On that bright afternoon the two girls had walked, as they had so often +walked together, about the summer-burnt Heath that was noisy with +cricketers on the grass. They had turned down by the ponds where bathers +dived from the platforms set above the willows; clean-built English +youths splashing and shouting and laughing joyously over their sport. +Last time Gwenna had been with her chum it was she, the girl in love, +who had done all the talking, while Leslie listened. + +Now it was Leslie who was restless, strung-up, talkative.... A new +Leslie, her dark eyes anxious and sombre, her usually nonchalant voice +strained as she talked. + +"Taffy! D'you realise what it all means? Supposing we don't go in. We +may not go in to war with the others. I know lots of people in this +country will do their best so that we don't lift a finger. People like +the Smiths; my brother-in-law's people. Well-to-do, hating anything that +might get in the way of their having a good year and grubbing up as much +money as usual.... Oh! If we don't go in, I shall emigrate--I shall turn +American--I shan't want to call myself English any more! P'raps you +don't mind because you're Welsh." + +Little Gwenna, who was rather pale, but who had a curious stillness over +the growing anxiety in her heart, said, "Of course I mind." + +She did not add her thoughts, "_He_ said he hoped the War would come in +his time. I know _he_ would think it perfectly awful if England didn't +fight. And even I can feel that it would be horribly mean--just _looking +on_ at fighting when it came." + +Leslie, striding beside her up the hill, went on bitterly, "War! Oh, it +can't come. For years we've said so. Haven't we taken good care not to +let ourselves get 'hysterical' over the German 'scare'? Haven't we +disbanded regiments? Haven't we beaten our swords into cash-registers? +Haven't we even kept down the Navy? Haven't we spread and spread the +idea that soldiering was a silly, obsolete kind of game? Aren't we quite +clever and enlightened enough to look down upon soldiers as a kind of +joke? The brainless Army type. Don't let's forget _that_ phrase," urged +the soldier's daughter. "Why, Taffy, I'll tell you what happened only +last May. I went to Gamage's to get a birthday present for Hilary, my +sister Maudie's little boy. Of course he's _got_ heaps of everything a +child wants. Delightful floor games. Beautiful hand-wrought artistic +toys (made in Munich). Still, I thought he might like a change. I told +the man in the shop I wanted a toy-book of soldiers. Nice simple +drawings and jolly, crude, bright colours of all the different +regiments. Like we used to have at home. And what d'you suppose the +shopman said? He was very sorry, but 'they' hadn't stocked that class of +thing for some time now; so little demand for it! So little demand for +anything that reminds us we've got an Empire to keep!" + +Gwenna said half absently, "It was only toys, Leslie." + +"Only one more sign of what we're coming to! _Teaching the young idea +not to shoot_," said Leslie gloomily. "That, and a million other +trifles, are going to settle it, I'm afraid. If England is to come down, +_that's_ the sort of thing that will have done it.... Oh, Leslie's been +in it, too, and all her friends. Dancing and drifting and dressing-up +while Rome's been burning.... There'll be no war, Taffy." + +Gwenna said, quietly and convinced, "Yes, there will." And she quoted +the saying of the lady at the Aviation Dinner, "_If England is ever to +be saved, it will be by the few._" + + * * * * * + +They walked round the Highgate Ponds and down the steep hill between the +little, ramshackle, Victorian-looking shops of Heath Street. It was busy +as ever on a Saturday afternoon. They passed the usual troop of Boy +Scouts; the usual straggle of cricketers and lovers from or for the +Heath, and then a knot of rather boyish-looking girls and +girlish-looking boys wearing the art-green school-cap of some +co-educational institution. + +"What sort of soldiers do we expect those boys ever to make?" demanded +Leslie. + +Outside the dark-red-tiled entrance to the Hampstead Tube there was a +little crowd of people gathered about the paper-sellers with their pink +arresting posters of + + "RUMOURS OF WAR + ENGLAND'S DECISION." + +"They'll publish a dozen before anything _is_ decided," said Leslie. She +bought a paper, Gwenna another.... + +No; nothing in them but surmise--suspense--theories--they walked on, +passing Miss Armitage from the Club who had paused on the kerb to talk +to one of her friends, a long-haired man in a broad-leafed brown hat. He +seemed to be dispensing pamphlets to people in the street. As Miss +Armitage smiled and nodded good-bye to him the two other girls came up. +He of the locks slipped a pamphlet into the hand of Leslie Long. + +She glanced at it, stopped, and looked at it again. It was headed: + + "BRITAIN, STAND ASIDE!" + +Leslie stood for a moment and regarded this male. She said very gently, +"You don't want any War?" + +The long-haired person in the gutter gave a shrug and a little superior +smile. "Oh, well, that's assumed, isn't it?" he said. "_We_ don't want +any War." + +"Or any _country_, I suppose?" said Leslie, walking on. She held the +pamphlet a little gingerly between her finger and thumb. She had thought +of tossing it into the gutter--but no. She kept it as a curiosity. + + * * * * * + +Late that night she sat on Gwenna Williams' bed at the Club, suspense +eating at her heart. For all the soldier blood in her had taken her back +to old times in barracks, or in shabby lodging-houses in garrison towns, +or on echoing, sunny parade-grounds.... Times before she had drifted +into the gay fringes of the cosmopolitan jungle of Bohemian life in +London. Before the Hospital, the Art-school, the daily "job," with her +evenings for the theatre and the Crab-tree Club, and the dances she +loved. It is the first ten years of a child's life that are said to +"count." They counted now. The twenty-six-year-old Leslie, whose +childhood had been passed within sound of the bugle-call, waited, +waited, waited to know if the ideas of honour and country and glory +which she had taken in unconsciously in those far-off times were now to +be tossed down into the gutter as she would have tossed the leaflet of +that coward. These things, as Miss Armitage and her friends could have +told her, were mere sentimentalities--names--ideas. Yet what has ever +proved stronger than an Idea? + +"Oh, _Taffy_!" she sighed impatiently. "If we're told that we're to sit +still and nothing will happen?" + +And little Gwenna, lying curled up with a hand in her chum's, murmured +again, "_That's_ not what's coming." + +She was quiet because she was dazed with the sheer intensity of her own +more personal anxiety. "What will happen about Paul? What will _he_ +do?" + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE DIE IS CAST + + +On Sunday morning she and Leslie went to Church. + +In the afternoon they walked again, aimlessly. She felt that she was +only living until Monday, until his return to tell her something. In the +evening the two girls sat out on a seat on Parliament Hill; near where +the man with the standing telescope used to offer peeps at London for a +penny a time. Far, far below, lay London under her web of twinkling +lights. London, England's heart, with that silver ribbon of the river +running through it. Leslie looked away over that prospect as though she +had never seen it before. Little Gwenna turned from it to the view on +the other side--the grass spaces and the trees towards Hendon. She +thought, "On a night as clear as this, aeroplanes could easily go up, +even late." + +As the two girls reached the Club again they found a motor drawn up +beside the entrance. Steps came out of the darkness behind them. A man's +voice said "Miss Long." Leslie turned. + +There moved into the light of the street-lamp Hugo Swayne. His face, +somehow, had never looked less like an imitation of Chopin; or more like +an ordinary commonplace Englishman's. It was serious, set. Yet it was +exultant. For he, too, was a soldier's son. + +He spoke. "I say, I thought I'd bring you the news," he began gravely. +"It's all right. England goes in." + +"Is that official?" Leslie asked sharply. + +There was a shaky little "War?" from Gwenna. + +Then came other, quick steps on the asphalt path, and the girls saw over +Hugo's rather portly shoulder a taller, slighter figure coming up the +road behind him. + +It was hatless; the lamplight shone golden on its blonde head. Gwenna's +heart leaped to her lips. + +"Paul!" she cried, and made a running step towards him. In a moment +young Dampier was up with the others; the quartette standing as they had +stood on that spring night in this same place, after the Smiths' +dinner-party. There were hasty greetings, murmurs of "Not official?" + +"Ah, that's all right----" + +"They won't say for a day or so, but----" + +Then, clear and distinct, young Dampier's boyish voice rang out in a +curious announcement. "Glad _you're_ here, Hugo. I was coming to you. I +want to borrow rather a lot of money of you, at once. Forty pounds, I +think it is. Sorry. Must have it. It's for a marriage-licence!" + +Hugo, utterly taken aback, stared and murmured, "My dear +chap---- Certain---- A m----?" + +"Yes. I shall have to be off, you know. Of course. And I shall get +married before I go," announced Paul Dampier, brusquely. He turned as +brusquely to the girl. + +"You and I are going to get married by special licence," he told her, +"the day after to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +HER GUARDIAN'S CONSENT + + +The Reverend Hugh Lloyd, who was Gwenna Williams' only relative and +guardian and therefore the person from whom consent might be asked if +ever the girl wished to be engaged, sat reading _The Cambrian News_. He +sat, over his breakfast eggs and tea, in the kitchen-sitting-room of his +Chapel House. Inside, the grandfather clock ticked slowly but still +pointed (as ever) to half-past two; and the cosy room, with its Welsh +dresser and its book-shelves, still held its characteristic smell of +singeing hearthrug. Outside, quiet brooded over the valley that fine +August morning. The smoke from the village chimneys rose blue and +straight against the larches of the hill-side. The more distant hills of +that landscape were faintly mauve against the cloudless, fainter blue of +the late-summer sky. All the world seemed so peaceful! + +And the expression on the Reverend Hugh's face of a Jesuit priest under +its thatch of bog-cotton hair was that of a man at peace with all the +world. + +True, there were rumours, in some of the newspapers, of some War going +on somewhere in the world outside. + +But it was a long way from here to that old Continent, as they called +it! For the matter of that, it was a long way to London, where they +settled what they were going to do about Germany.... + +What they were going to do about Welsh Disestablishment was a good deal +more important, to a Welshman. There were some very good things about +that in this very article. The Reverend Hugh had written it himself. + +Presently, in the midst of his reading, his housekeeper (who was a +small, middle-aged woman, rather like a black hen) entered the room at a +run. + +"Telegram for you, sir." + +"Ah, yes; thank you, Margat," her master said as he took it. + +He had guessed already what was in it. Some arrangement to do with his +next Sabbath-day's journey. For he was a very popular preacher, invited +to give sermons by exchange in every country town in Wales. + +"This," he told his housekeeper complacently, as he tore open the +envelope, "will be to say am I ex Pected in Carnarvon on the Sat Teudêh, +or----" + +Here he broke off, staring at the message in his hand. It was a long +one. + +There was a moment's silence while the clock ticked. Then that silence +was broken by an exclamation, in Welsh, from a man startled out of all +professional decorum. He added, with more restraint, but also in Welsh, +"Great King!" + +Then he exclaimed, "Dear father!" and "_Name_ of goodness!" + +"What is it, Mr. Lloyd _bach_?" demanded his housekeeper excitedly in +Welsh, clutching her black, crochet wool shawl about her shoulders as +she waited by the side of the breakfast. + +"Is it somebody died?" In her mind's eye she saw already that loved orgy +of her kind--a funeral. + +The Reverend Hugh shook his handsome white head. Again he read through +the longest telegraph message that he had ever received: + +It ran: + + "_Dear Sir am going to marry your niece Gwenna to-morrow Tuesday + morning at Hampstead regret forced to give you this short notice + but impossible to do otherwise owing military duties trust you will + excuse apparent casualness will write further particulars yours + sincerely Paul Dampier Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps._" + +"_Name_ of goodness!" breathed the Reverend Hugh, brushing back his +white locks in consternation. And at short intervals he continued to +ejaculate. "What did I tell her? _What_ did I tell her!... Indeed, it's +a great pity I ever let her go away from home.... It was my fault; my +fault.... Young men----! This one sounds as if he was gone quite mad, +whatever." + +So the Reverend Hugh addressed his answer to Miss Gwenna Williams at her +Club. + +And it said: + + "_Coming up to see you nine-thirty Euston to-night. Uncle._" + + * * * * * + +"I'm sure he'll be simply horrid about it," Gwenna rather tremulously +told her betrothed that evening, as they walked, the small, curly-haired +girl in dark blue and the tall, grey-clad aviator, up and down the +platform at Euston Station, waiting for the Welsh train to come in. + +Little Gwenna was experiencing a feeling not unknown among those shortly +to be married; namely, that _every prospect was pleasing--save that of +having to face one's relatives with the affair_! + +"He was always rather a dret-ful old man," she confided anxiously to +Paul, as they paced the sooty flags of the platform. "It's _just_ like +him to be sixteen minutes late already just when I want to get this +over. He never understands anything about--about people when they're +young. And the first thing he's sure to ask is whether you've got any +money. Have you, Paul?" + +"Stacks," said the Airman, reassuringly. "Old Hugo made it sixty, as a +wedding-present. Decent of him, wasn't it?" + +They turned by the blackboard with the chalked-up notices of arrivals +and departures, and Gwenna ruefully went on with her prophecy of what +her Uncle would say. + +"He'll say he never _heard_ of anybody marrying an Airman. (I don't +suppose he's ever heard of an Airman at all before now!) Ministers, and +quarry-managers, and people _with some prospects_; that's the sort of +thing they've always married in Uncle Hugh's family," she said +anxiously. "And he'll say we've both behaved awfully badly not to let +him know before this. (Just as if there was anything to know.) And +he'll say you turned my silly head when I was much too young to know my +own mind! And then he's quite, quite sure to say that you only proposed +to me because---- Well, of course," she broke off a little reproachfully, +"you never even _did_ propose to me properly!" + +"Too late to start it now," said her lover, laughing, as the knot of +porters surged forward to the side of the platform. "Here's the train +coming in!" + + * * * * * + +Now Gwenna was right about the first thing that Uncle Hugh would ask, +when, after a searching glance and a handshake to this tall young man +that his niece introduced to him at the carriage-door, he carried off +the pair of them to the near-by hotel where the Minister always put up +on his few and short visits to London. + +"Well, young gentleman," he began, in his crisp yet deliberate Welsh +accent. He settled himself on the red plush sofa, and gazed steadily at +Paul Dampier on one of the red plush armchairs. "Well! And have you got +the money reck-quisite to keep a wife?" + +"No. I'm afraid I haven't, sir, really," returned the young man, looking +frankly back at him. "Of course I'd my screw. Three pounds ten a week, I +was getting as a pilot. But that was only just enough for myself--with +what I had to do for the Machine. Of course I'm going to have her--the +Flying Machine--taken up now, so----" + +"It's very little faith I have in such things as flying machines. +Flying? Yes, in the face of Providence, I call it," said the Reverend +Hugh, discouragingly, but with the dawn of some amusement in his +searching eyes. "What I say about the whole idea of Avi_ay_-shon +is--_Kite-high lunacy!_" + +"Uncle!" scolded Gwenna; blushing for him. But the young Airman took the +rebuke soberly enough. + +"And out of that income," went on Uncle Hugh, still looking hard, at +this modern suitor in that incongruous red-plush setting with its +Nineteenth Century clocks and ornaments, "out of that income you will +not have saved very much." + +"Afraid not, sir," agreed young Dampier, who, last night, had been down +to his last eightpence ha'penny and a book of stamps. "Not much to put +by, you know----" + +"Not even," took up the Reverend Hugh, shrewdly, "enough to pay for a +special marriage licence?" + +"Oh, yes, I had that. That is, I've raised _that_"--("Good old Hugo!" he +thought.)--"and a bit over," he added, "to take us for some sort of a +little trip. To the sea, perhaps. Before I go on Service." + +"Military service, do you mean?" said the Reverend Hugh. "Mmph! (I never +have held with soldiery. I do not think that I have ever come into +act--ual con--tackt with _any_.)" + +"Yes, I probably am going on Service, Mr. Lloyd," answered the young +man, quickly, and with a glance at the girl that seemed to indicate that +this subject was only to be lightly dealt with at present. "When, I am +not sure. Then I shall get my pay as a Flight-Lieutenant, you see. +Shan't want any money much, then. So _she_"--with a little nod towards +the small, defensively set face of Gwenna, sitting very straight in the +other red-plush armchair--"she will get that sent home, to her." + +"_I_ shan't want all your pay, indeed," interrupted the girl, hastily. +It seemed to her too revoltingly horrible, this talk about money +combined with this sense that a woman, married, must be an _expense_, a +burden. A woman, who longs to mean only freedom and gifts and treasure +to her lover! + +"Oh, a woman ought never, _never_ to feel she has to be _kept_," thought +Gwenna, rosy again with embarrassment. "If men don't think we _mind_, +very well, then let all the money in the world be taken away from men, +and given to us. Let _them_ be kept. And if they don't mind it--well, +then it will be a happier world, all round!" + +And as she was thinking this, she announced eagerly, "If--if you _do_ go +away, I shall stay on with the Aeroplane Lady, as I told you, Paul. Yes. +I'd _much_ rather I should have something to do. And I'd get nearly a +pound a week, and my keep. Besides! I've got my own money." + +"Which money, dear?" asked Paul Dampier. + +The quick eyes of the Reverend Hugh had not left the young man's face. + +They were fixed still more scrutinisingly upon it as the old man +interposed, "Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Dampier, that you were not +aware that my niece had got a little bit of her own?" + +"There! I _knew_ Uncle would say that!" burst out the young girl, angry +and blushing and ashamed. "I knew he'd say you were only marrying me +because of that! _He_ won't believe that it wouldn't make any difference +to you that I've got seventy-five pounds a year!" + +"Seventy-five pounds a year? _Have_ you?" said the young man, surprised. +"Really?" + +And it was Gwenna's turn to be surprised as his frank face cleared and +his voice took a very relieved note. + +"I say, how topping! Make no difference to me? But it does. Rather!" he +declared. "Don't you see that I shall know you won't _have_ to work, and +that I shall be ever so much more comfortable about you? Why did you +never tell me?" + +"I forgot," said Gwenna truly. + +And the Reverend Hugh suddenly laughed aloud. + +At the same time he hoped he had concealed his relief, which was great. +His youngest sister's girl was not going to be snapped up by a +fortune-hunter after all. That had always been his anxiety. Seventy-five +pounds a year (certain) remained a considerable fortune to this +Victorian. In his valley quite a large house, with a nice bit of garden, +too (running steeply up a mountain-side), was to be had for a rent of +sixteen pounds. He would have thought of that himself.... But the leggy, +fair-haired boy who was now smiling across the oval hotel table at his +Gwenna had meant only what he had said. The older man realised that. +So, waiving for the present the question of means, the Reverend Hugh +went on, in rather a modified tone, to ask other questions. + +Asking questions of the newly accepted suitor seems to be all that +remains for the parent or guardian of our times. It is the sole survival +of that potent authority which once disposed (or said it disposed) of +the young lady's hand. Clearing his throat with the same little sound +that so often heralded the words of some text from his pulpit, the +Reverend Hugh began by inquiring where Gwenna, after her short +honeymoon, was supposed to be going to live. + +Nowhere new, it appeared! She had her berth at the Aircraft Factory, her +room at Mrs. Crewe's cottage for when young Dampier was away. (Yes; from +his tone when he spoke of it, evidently that parting was to be kept in +the background and evaded as much as possible for the present.) And if +he were in London, he had his rooms in Camden Town. Do for them both, +perhaps.... His bachelor digs.; not bad ones.... + +Well, but no _house_? Dear me. That was a gipsyish sort of plan, wasn't +it? That was a new idea of setting up housekeeping to Uncle Hugh. He, +himself, was an old bachelor. But he could see that this was all very +different from the ideas of all the young couples in _his_ time. When +Gwenna's father, now, was courting Gwenna's mother, well! he, Hugh +Lloyd, had never heard such a lot of talk about _Mahoggani_. _And_ +tebbel-linen. _And_ who was to have the three feather-beds from the +old Quarry-house; Gwenna's mother, or Gwenna's mother's sister---- + +(All this the Reverend Hugh declaimed in his most distinct Chapel voice, +but still with his searching eyes upon the face of the husband-to-be.) + +The idea of most young girls, in getting married, he thought, was to get +a nice home of their own, as soon as possible. A comfortable house---- + +("I hate comfortable houses. So stuffy. Just like a tea-cosy. They'd +_smother_ me!" from Gwenna.) + +But the House, her Uncle Hugh had _Olwês_ understood, was the Woman's +fetish. Spring-cleaning, now; the yearly rites! And that furniture. "The +Lares," he went on in an ever-strengthening Welsh accent. "The +Pen--nates----!" + +"Oh, _those_!" scoffed the girl in love. "_Those_----!" + +So Gwenna didn't seem to think she would miss these things? She was +willing to marry without them? Yes? Strange!... Well, well! + +And what about this marriage-in-haste? Where was it to take place? In +that Church in Hampstead? A Church. Well! He, as an orthodox dissenting +minister, ought not, perhaps, to enter such a place of worship. But, +after all, this was not at home. This was only up here, in England. +Perhaps it wouldn't matter, just this once. + +And who was the clergyman who was going to officiate at the cerrymonny? +And what sort of a preacher, now, was _he_? (This was not known.) + +And Mr. Dampier's own relations? Would they all be at the Church? + +Only one cousin, he was told. That was the only relation Paul Dampier +had left. + +"Same as myself," said the Reverend Hugh, a little quietly. "A big +family, we were. Six boys, two girls; like people used to have. All +gone. Nothing left, but----" + +Here, for the first time taking his eyes from young Dampier, he turned +upon his niece with an abrupt question. With a quick nod towards her +husband-to-be, he demanded: "And where did you find _him_?" + +Little Gwenna, still on the defensive, but thawing gradually (since, +after all, Uncle Hugh had spoken in friendly tones to the Beloved), +Gwenna asked, "When, Uncle?" + +"The time that counts, my girl," said the Reverend Hugh; "the first +time." + +"Oh! I think it was--it was at a party I went to with my friend, Miss +Long, that I've told you about," explained Gwenna, a little nervously. +"And--and he was there. It's--_quite_ a long time ago, now." + +"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh. "Dukes! There is a lot of things seem +to go on, still, under the name of 'Party.'" And there was a sudden and +quite young twinkle in the eyes under the white thatch. + +Paul Dampier, not seeing it, began hastily: "I hope you understand, sir, +that we were only keeping all this to ourselves, because--well----" He +cleared his throat and made another start. "If I'd had the--er--the the +privilege of seeing Gwenna at your place----" Yet another start. "We had +no _idea_, of course," said Paul Dampier, "until fairly recently----" + +"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh again. Then, turning to the young man +whom Gwenna had said he would accuse of turning the head of one too +young to know her own mind, he remarked with some feeling, "I dare say +she had made up her mind, that first time, not to give you a bit of +peace until you'd sent off that telly-gram to me!" + + * * * * * + +As he was taking the bride-to-be back to her Club, young Dampier said, +smiling: "Why, darling, he's not a bad old chap at all! You said he +wouldn't understand anything!" + +"Well, he doesn't," persisted the mutinous Gwenna. But she laughed a +little, relentingly. + +Twenty minutes later her lover took his leave with a whispered +"Good-night. Do you know that I shan't ever have to say it again +at this blessed door, after this?... And another, for luck.... +Good-_night_--er--Miss Williams!" + +She ran upstairs humming a tune. + +She was so happy that she could feel kind even to old and unsympathetic +and cynical people to-night. + +To-morrow she was to be Paul Dampier's wife. + +It was hardly believable, still it was true! + +War, now threatening to tear him from her, had at least brought him to +her, first, sooner than she had ever hoped. Even if he were forced to +leave her quite soon, say in a month's time!--she would have had him +all to herself first, without any of these small, fretting good-byes +that came so punctually following every meeting! She would have _been_ +all his; his very own, she thought. + +And here it may be said that upon this subject Gwenna Williams' thoughts +were curiously, almost incredibly vague. That dormant bud of passion +knew so little of its own hidden root. + +Marriage! To this young girl it was a journey into a country of which +she had never formed any clear idea. Her own dreams had been the rosy +mists that obscured alike the heights and depths of that scarcely +guessed-at land. All she saw, clearly, was her fellow traveller; the +dear boy-comrade and sweetheart who would not now leave her side. What +did it matter where he took her, so that it was with him always? + +Only one more night, now, in the long, narrow Club bedroom where she had +dreamed that queer flying dream, and so many others, so many longing +daydreams about him! + +To-morrow was her wedding-day! + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HASTE TO THE WEDDING! + + +The Tuesday morning that brought Gwenna's wedding-day as the morning of +the official declaration of war. + +It was in all the papers over which the girls at the Hampstead Club +pored, before they went off to their various avocations, staring, +half-realising only. + +"Can it be true?... War?... Nowadays?... Good gracious!... D'you suppose +it means we shall really have to send an army of ours--an English +Army--over to France?... What do you think, Miss Armitage?" + +Miss Armitage, the suffragette, then became voluble on the subject of +how very different all would have been if women had had the casting vote +in the matter. Intelligent women. Women with some insight into the wider +interests of their sex.... Not mere---- Here, by way of illustration, +this Feminist shot a vicious glance at Miss Long. Now, Leslie, dressed +in a lilac river-frock and wearing her black picture hat, was going +round the breakfast-table, under the very eye of the disapproving Lady +Principal with the gold curb brooch, on an errand of her own. She was +collecting from it the daintiest bits of dry toast, the nicest-looking +pats of butter, a white rose from the nosegay in the centre bowl, and +all that was left of the marmalade. + +For to Leslie Long the question whether War was to be or not to be +seemed now to have been settled an age ago. The burden of that anxiety +was lifted. The other anxieties ahead could be put aside for the +present. And she turned, with a tranquil face, to the immediate matter +in hand. She was going to take a little tray up to Gwenna, whom she had +advised to have her breakfast in bed and not to dress until she should +make herself all ready for her wedding at that church at the foot of the +hill. + +"'Good-morning, Madam Bride!'" said Leslie, smiling, as she came, tray +in hand, into the little room where Gwenna was still drowsily curled up +against her pillow. "Here's a little bit of sugar for the bird." She sat +down on the side of the bed, cutting the dry buttered toast into narrow +strips for her chum, taking the top off her egg for her. + +"But I won't '_help to salt, help to sorrow_' for you," she went on +talking, just a trifle more brightly than naturally. "Curious thing +about a wedding, Taff--I mean _one_ of the curious things about a +wedding, is the wide desire it gives you to quote every aged, half-pay +proverb and tag that you've ever heard. '_Marriage is a_----" + +"Not '_lottery_,' Leslie! Not that one!" begged the bride-to-be, sitting +up and laughing with her mouth full of toast. "We had it four times from +Uncle Hugh before we left him last night. '_Few prizes! Many blanks!_'" +she quoted joyously. All Monday she had been tremulously nervous. The +reaction had come at the right moment. + +"'_Happy is the Bride that the sun shines on_,' then," amended Leslie. +"You'll be glad to hear it's shining like Billy-oh this morning." + +"_I_ saw it," said Gwenna, nodding her curls towards the open casement. +"And I shall be getting '_Married in white, sure to be right_,' too!" + +The white lingerie frock she was to put on was not new, but it was the +prettiest that she had. It lay, folded, crisp as a butterfly's wing and +fresh from the wash, on the top of her chest-of-drawers, with the white +Princesse slip--that _was_ new, bought by her in a hurry the day +before!--and the white silk stockings, and the little white suède shoes. + +"'_Something old_, _something new_, _something borrowed_, _something +blue_,'" Leslie capped her quotation. "Where's the '_something blue_,' +Taffy?" + +"Ribbons in my camisole; and I shall 'borrow' your real lace +handkerchief, may I?" said the bride-elect. + +"Rather! All that I have, even unto the half of the best-man's +attention!" said Leslie, smiling gaily into the cherub face opposite. + +But, even as she smiled, she felt that pang which is supposed to be +known only to the _man_ who sees his chosen pal prepare to be "married +and done for." + + * * * * * + +For this morning, that turned an adoring sweetheart into a wife, was +taking something of her own, of the bridesmaid's youth away. + +Gwenna Williams married! + +That meant one more girl-chum who would never, never be quite the same +again to a once-treasured companion. That bubbling fountain of innocent +confidences would now run low, as far as Leslie was concerned. No longer +would the elder, quickly-sympathising, rebellious-tongued girl be the +first to hear what happened to her little, ingenuous friend. + +The girlish gossip would have a masculine censor to pass. + +Leslie could foretell the little scene when it first happened. + +She could hear Gwenna's eager, "Oh, Paul! Leslie would so laugh at----" +whatever the little incident might be. "I must tell her that!" + +Leslie, the bachelor-girl, could imagine the tilt of the young husband's +blonde head, and his doubtful, "Don't see why it should be supposed to +interest _her_." + +She could imagine the little wife's agreeing, "Oh! Perhaps not." + +And again the young husband's, "Don't you think Miss Long gets a little +bit _much_ sometimes? Oh, she's all right, but--I mean, I shouldn't like +_you_ to go on quite like that." + +It would be only after years of marriage that the once-close chum would +turn for sympathy to Leslie Long. And then it would not be the same.... + +The last of Leslie's forebodings seemed the most inevitable. She heard +Gwenna's soft Welsh voice, once so full of unexpectedness, now grown +almost unrecognisably sedate. She heard it utter that finally +"settled-down"-sounding phrase: + +"_Say 'how d'you do' nicely to Auntie Leslie, now!_" + +Ah! _That_ seemed to bring a shadow of Autumn already into the summer +sunshine of that bridal room with its white, prepared attire, its +bonnie, bright-eyed occupant. It seemed to show what must some day come: +Taffy middle-aged! + +Also what probably would come: Taffy matter-of-fact! Taffy with all the +dreams out of her eyes! Taffy whose only preoccupations were, "Really +that stair-carpet's getting to look awful; I wonder if I could manage to +get a new one and put it on the upper flight?" or, "_I_ never saw +anything like the way _my_ children wear through their boots: it was +only the other day I got that quite expensive pair of Peter Pans for +little Hughie. And now look at them. _Look!..._" + +Yes! This sort of change was wrought, by time and marriage and +domesticity, in girl after golden girl. Leslie had seen it. She would +probably see Taffy, the fanciful Celt, grown stodgy; Taffy, even Taffy, +the compactly supple, with all her fruit-like contours, grown +_stout_!... + +Horrible thought.... + +Then Miss Long gave a protesting shrug of her slim shoulders. This +wouldn't do. Come, come! Not on the wedding-morning itself should one +give way to thoughts of coming middle-age! The rose, that must, some +day, be overblown, was only just a pouting bud as yet. There were days +and fragrant days of beauty still before her. + +So Leslie picked up her chum's rough towels, her loofah and her +verbena-scented soap. + +"I'll turn on the bath for you, Taffy, shall I? Hot or cold?" + +"Cold, please," said the Welsh girl, springing out of bed and pattering +over the oil-cloth to fetch her kimono. "Perhaps to-morrow I shall be +able to have a real swim! Oh, won't that be gorgeous?" For the couple +had decided upon Brighton for the honeymoon. It was near enough to +London in case young Dampier received a summons; yet near also to +country-tramps and sea-bathing. "I haven't had a swim this year, except +in the baths. And you can't count that. Oh, _fancy_ the sea again, +Leslie!" + +Leslie could guess what was at the back of that little exultant skip of +the younger girl's through the bathroom door. It was sheer innocent +delight over the prospect of being able to display to her lover at last +something that she did really well. + +For they had never been by the sea together, he and she. + +And she was a pretty swimmer. + + * * * * * + +"Now I'll be your maid for the last time, and fasten you up," said +Leslie, when she returned from the bathroom. "I suppose you know there +isn't a _single_ eye left at the neck of this dress? Always the way with +that laundry! It's nothing to _it_ that untidiness puts a man off worse +than anything else (this from me). Never mind, I'll hook it into the +lace.... That's all right. '_A bonnie bride is soon buskit._' Almost a +pity the girls will all have gone--though I know you'd hate to have them +staring. D'you know, you _are_ a little pocket-Venus? No, I'm _not_ +piling it on. You're lovely, Taffy. I hope the Dampier boy tells you so, +very often and much. He's vastly lucky." + +"It's me that's lucky," said the girl in all-white devoutly. "Now +where's my hat?" + +"Do you think you're going to be allowed to get married in a _hat_?" + +"My best white one with the wings, I meant." + +"Pooh! I've arranged for you to have these," said Leslie, and brought +out a cardboard box that she had been to fetch while Gwenna was having +her bath. From it she drew a slender chaplet of dark leaves, with round +white buds with waxen flowers. + +"Orange-blossoms! _Real_ orange-blossoms," cried Gwenna, delightedly +sniffing up the sensuous perfume of them. "Oh, but _where_ did you get +them?" + +"Covent Garden. I went down there this morning at five, with one of the +housemaids whose young man is at a florist's," explained Leslie, +standing above her to set the pretty wreath upon the pretty head. "Now +you look like a print of 'Cupid's Coronation,' or something like that. +'_Through his curls as the crown on them slips_'--I'll twist this a tiny +bit tighter. And here's the veil." + +Gwenna stared. "A veil, too, Leslie?" + +"Rather. Only chance you get of appearing in this thoroughly becoming +kit that carries us all back to the worst days of Woman's Enslavement. +May as well take that chance!" remarked Miss Long cheerfully, as she +shook out soft, transparent folds of finest white net that she herself +had embroidered, working late into the night, with a border of leaves in +white silk. "This is from me." + +"Oh, _Les_-lie! You got it as a surprise for me," said the little bride, +much touched. "You worked all these beautiful little laurel-leaves----" + +"Not laurel, child. Meant for myrtle. Pity your geography is so weak," +rattled on Leslie, as she heard, outside the Club, the stopping of the +taxi which had brought the Reverend Hugh Lloyd to call for his +detachment of the bridal party. "Refreshingly unconventional sort of +wedding you're having in some ways, aren't you? '_The presents were few +and inexpensive_' (such a change from the usual report). '_The bride was +attended by one bridesmaid: her friend Miss Long, clad in mauve linen, +mystic, wonderful_'--(taking into consideration that it had done her +cousin for Henley last year). '_The ceremony proceeded without a hitch, +except for the usual attempt on the part of the officiating clergyman to +marry the bride to the best man._' Which must not be, Taffy. You must +remember that I've got designs on Mr. Hugo Swayne myself----" + +"Don't, Leslie!" protested the bride. "You know I do so hate to think of +you getting engaged in that sort of horrible way--instead of just +because you can't _help_ it! If only there were somebody you could be +really in love with----" + +"I shall be really rather in love with Uncle Hugh, I know," prophesied +the bridesmaid. "_What_ a pity he isn't thirty years younger! Come +along. He's waiting. I'm going to kiss _him_, anyhow. Got your gloves? +Right. Got my hankerfish? You won't _want_ to shed any tears into it, +but----" + +But there was an added brightness in the green-brown eyes of the little +bride as she glanced round the girlish room where Leslie would pack up +and put everything to rights for her after she had gone. + +Impulsively she put her arms round that good chum. + +"You've been so--so frightfully sweet to me, Leslie, always. Thanks so +awfully----" + +"_Don't_ kiss me through a veil, my child!" protested Leslie, drawing +back. "D'you want to bring me ill luck?" + +"Oh, Leslie! I should want to bring you all the good luck in the world," +cried the younger girl, earnestly, over her shoulder as they went out. +"If I were given three wishes _now_ for a wedding-present, one of them +would be that you would some day be as happy as me!" + +"My dear lamb!" said Leslie lightly, running downstairs after her, "How +do you know I'm not quite as happy in another--in my own way?" + +Gwenna shook the curly head under the orange-blossom wreath and the +misty veil. It seemed to her that there was only The One Way in which a +woman could be happy. + +"And the other two wishes?" suggested Leslie, at the sitting-room door. +"What are they?" + +"Mustn't tell," smiled the little bride of Superstition with her finger +at her lips. "If I told they _might_ not come true!" + + * * * * * + +Very earnestly she hoped that those two wishes might come true. She +thought of them again, presently, as she stood, there in church, a +small, white-mist-clad figure, backed by the coloured window and the +crimson altar. She had the kindly glances upon her of her uncle, of her +tall girl-chum, and of Hugo Swayne--who wore a perfect morning coat with +a white flower and grey trousers, admirably pressed by his man Johnson. +Hugo, but for his Chopin stock, would have looked the very model of a +prosperous and conventional bridegroom. He did, in fact, look far more +like the popular conception of a bridegroom than did young Paul Dampier +in his well-cut but ancient grey tweed suit. + +--"The only togs I've got in the wide world," he'd confided to Gwenna, +"except working clothes and evening things!" + +She stood with her hand in his large, boyish one, repeating in her soft, +un-English accent the vows that once seemed to her such a vast and +solemn and relentless undertaking. + +"_To love, honour, and obey ... as long as we both shall live...._" + +It seemed now so little to have to promise! It seemed only a fraction of +all that her heart gave gladly to the lord of it! + +"_Till Death us do part_," she repeated quietly. + +And it was then she thought of the two wishes. One was that Paul should +be always as much in love with her as he was at that moment. + +She was too young fully to realise the greater wisdom of her own second +wish. + +_It was that she herself should always remain as much in love with +Paul._ + +If only God would be very, very kind to them, she thought, and allow +just this to be! + + * * * * * + +"And you sign your name here," said the clergyman in the vestry to the +newly-made husband, who put down in his small neat handwriting, "Paul +Dampier, Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps," on the grey-blue sheet, which, +duly witnessed and blotted, he was going to tuck away into the +breast-pocket of his tweed jacket. + +"No. Those marriage lines are not yours," the parson stopped him with a +smile. "Those are the property of your wife." + +Gwenna, dazed, realised that this referred to herself. She took the +folded marriage-certificate and slipped it into the white satin ribbon +girding her pretty frock. She looked very childish for "a wife"! But for +that bright wedding-ring on her finger (half a size too large for it) +she might have passed for one of the veiled and white-clad First +Communicants of an Easter Sunday in Paris. Then she turned up the little +face, from which the veil had been thrown back, to be kissed by the +others who had followed them into the vestry. Vaguely she heard +Leslie's voice, arranging in murmurs with Hugo Swayne. "No. Perhaps I'll +come on afterwards.... After I've helped her to change.... No; you take +Mr. Lloyd and feed him somewhere. No! I'm sure those two won't want to +come on to any lunch. Lunch? My dear man!... Send them in your car to +Victoria and Johnson can bring it back.... They'll be getting away at +once." + +At once! Gwenna looked up into her young husband's blue eyes. + +He caught her hand. + +"Got you now," he said softly. "Can't run away this time." + +By rights she should have walked down the church on his arm. But he did +not loose her hand. So it was hand-in-hand, like children, that they +hurried out again, ahead of the others, into the sunshine of the porch. +The merry breeze took the bride's veil and spread it, a curtain of mist, +across the pair of them. Gwenna Dampier caught it aside, laughing +gleefully as they stepped out of the porch. The gravity of the service +had sparkled into gaiety in their eyes. He crushed her fingers in his. +Her heart sang. They would be off----! It was almost too lovely to be +true, but---- + +Yes. It _was_ too lovely to be true. + +A shadow fell across the path; across the bride's white shoe. + +Johnson, Hugo's man, who had been waiting with the car, stepped quickly +up to the bridegroom. + +"Excuse me, sir, but this message.... Came just as you'd gone into +church. I waited. The woman brought it on from your rooms, sir." + +Paul Dampier took the wire and read it. + +The white-frocked girl he had just married stood at the church entrance +watching him, while the breeze lifted her veil and stirred her curls and +tossed a couple of creamy petals, from her wreath, on to the breast of +his coat. She herself stood motionless, stony. + +She knew that this was no wire of congratulation such as any bridal +couple may expect to receive as they come out of church from their +wedding. She knew, even before she heard his deep voice saying--blankly +and hurriedly: + +"I say. It's from the War Office. I shall have to go. I've got to leave +you. Now. I'm ordered to join at once!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM + + +Gwenna Dampier was always to be truly thankful that at that thunderbolt +moment of parting at the church door from the lover who had only been +her husband for the last quarter of an hour she had been too dazed to +show any emotion. + +As at the Aviation Dinner she had been numbed by excess of joy, so, now, +the shock had left her stony. She knew that she had turned quite a calm +little face to the concerned and startled faces of the others as they +hurried up to ask what was happening that Paul should be getting into +that car alone. It was as quiet and calm to receive Paul's last kiss as +he held her strained for a moment almost painfully close to him, +muttering, "Take care of yourself, Little Thing." + +At the moment it struck her as rather funny, that. + +_She_ was to take care of herself! She, who was just to stay quietly at +home, doing nothing. And this was what he told her; he, who was going +off on service, _where_, he himself didn't know. Off, to serve as an +Army Aviator, a flyer who swooped above enemy country, to shoot and to +be shot at; every instant in peril of his life. + +She even smiled a little as the motor rattled down the hill with him, +leaving her to Leslie, and to Uncle Hugh, and to Mr. Hugo Swayne. + +She found herself thinking, sedately, that it was a good thing Paul had +got most of his field service equipment yesterday; shopping while she +had shopped, while she had bought the white shoes and the silk +stockings, the Princesse slip and the handful of other dainty girlish +things that had been all the _trousseau_ she could collect in such a +hurry. Yes, Paul was all ready, she told her friends. She wouldn't see +him again before he left London, she expected. + +She did not see him again. + +That night at the Club, when she was still dazedly quiet--it was Leslie +Long who had to swallow lumps in her own throat, and to blink back +starting tears from her eyes--that night there arrived the first note of +his that had ever been addressed to: + + "_Mrs. Paul Dampier._" + +It was scrawled and hurried and in pencil. It began: + + "My darling Wife." It told her to address to the War Office until + she heard from him, and that she would hear from him whenever he + could manage it. It ended up, "_I was so jolly proud of you because + you took it like that, you can't think. I always thought you were a + sweet Little Thing. I knew you'd be a plucky Little Thing too. + Bless you. It's going to be all right._ + + "_Your affectionate husband_, + "P. D." + +It was Leslie who cried herself to sleep that night; not Gwenna Dampier. + +Only gradually the girl came out of the stupor that had helped her, to +the realisation of what had really happened. He'd gone! She'd been +left--without him! But as one source of help disappeared, another came +to hand. + +It was that queer mixture of feelings that the more enlightened young +women at the Club would have called "The conventional point of view." + +Miss Armitage at the Club tea-table said to her friends, "Nayowh, I +don't consider them at all 'splendid,' as you call it, these girls who +go about quite smiling and happily after their husbands have embarked +for the War. Saying good-bye without shedding a tear, indeed; and all +that kind of thing. Shows they can't _care_ much. Heartless! +Unsensitive! Callous, I call them." + +The art-student with the Trilby hair, who was never quite certain +whether she agreed with all Miss Armitage's views or whether she didn't, +remarked that really--really anybody who'd seen Miss Williams' face when +that young man called for her _couldn't_ help thinking that she cared. +Most awfully. If _she_ didn't make a fuss, it must be because she was +rather brave. + +"Brive? _I_ don't call it that," declared Miss Armitage. "It's just 'the +thing to do' among those people. They've made a regular idol of this +stupid, deadening Convention of theirs. They all want to be alike. +'Plucky.' 'Not showing anything.' Pah! I call it crushing out their own +individuality for the sake of an ideal that isn't anything very _much_, +if you ask me. They all catch it from each other, these wretched Army +men's wives. It's no more _credit_ to them than it is to some kinds of +dogs not to howl when you hold them up by their tiles." + +The Trilby art-student put in shyly, "Doesn't that show that they're +well bred?" + +Miss Armitage, the Socialist, fixing her through her glasses, demanded, +"When you sy 'Well bred' d'you mean the dogs are--or the women that +don't cry?" + +"Well--both, perhaps," ventured the art-student, blushing as she helped +herself to jam. Miss Armitage, with her little superior smile, gave out, +"There's no such thing as well bred, what _you_ mean by it. What you +mean's just pewer snobbery. The reel meaning of well bred is somebody +who is specially gifted in mind and body. Well, all you _can_ say of the +minds of Army people is that they haven't got any. And I don't know that +_I'm_ impressed by their bodies." + +Here a student of music from the other side of the table said she saw +what Miss Armitage meant, exactly. Only, as for Army people, Gwenna +Williams couldn't have been called that. Her people were just sort of +Welsh Dissenters, awfully _against_ soldiers and that kind of thing. + +"Doesn't matter. She's the sort of girl who's just like a chameleon: +takes all her colour from the man she's supposed to be in love with," +said Miss Armitage loftily. "She'll know that she'll never _keep_ him +unless she's just like the class of women he thinks most of. (As it is, +I don't see what that empty-headed girl's got to keep a man _with_.) +So, as I say, she'll _suppress_ her own identity, and grow the kind 'He' +happens to like." + +The art-student murmured that she supposed it didn't really _matter_, a +girl doing that. Provided that the new "identity" which was "grown to +please the man" were a better one than the old. + +Miss Armitage the Feminist, sniffed; silent with contempt for this idea. +Then she turned again to the student of music, to conclude the +summing-up of the new bride's character. + +"She'll be positively stimulated and buoyed-up, all the time, by the +thought that 'He' considered it plucky of her to go on as if she was +quite pleased that he was fighting!" declared the lecturer. "You see! By +and by she'll believe she _is_ pleased. She'll catch the whole +detestable Jingow spirit, _I_ know. Syme attitude of mind as the Zulu +who runs amuck at the sound of a drum. Hysterical, that's what _I_ call +what's at the root of it all!" + + * * * * * + +But whatever Miss Armitage, the Cockney suffragette, chose to call it, +it was there, that Spirit. + +In those few weeks after the declaration of war it spread and throve +over all England. It made Life still worth living, and well worth +living, for thousands of anxious sweethearts, and of mothers giving only +sons for their country, and of wives who missed closest comrades, and of +young widows who had but lately been made brides. + +It inspired, through the girl he left behind him, the man who went to +war; and thus its influence became part of that subtle but crucial thing +which is known as the Moral of an Army, and of an Empire and of a +Civilisation. + +It was, as Leslie Long, the lover of quotations, often quoted to herself +in those days: + + "The Voice to Kingly boys + To lift them through the fight; + And comfortress of Unsuccess + To give the dead Good-night. + + "A rule to trick the arithmetic + Too base of leaguing odds, + The spur of trust, the curb of lust, + The hand-maid of the gods." + + * * * * * + +Little Gwenna, the wife who had been left at the church door, took all +the help that Spirit gave her. + +Two days after her wedding her Uncle Hugh went back to the slate-roofed +village that was wedged between those steep, larch-grown Welch hills. +But, though his niece found that this "dreat-ful" old man could be all +that was gentle and kind for her, she refused to go home, as he begged +her, with him. + +She said she must live somewhere where she could "see a little bit of +what was going on." She must have some work, real work, to fill her +time. She thanked him; she would let him know directly she felt she +could come down to Wales. But just now, please, she wanted nothing but +to get back to Mrs. Crewe, her Aeroplane Lady at the Works. She'd go +back just as if nothing had happened. + +She returned, to find changes at that Aircraft Factory. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT" + + +The first of these changes at the Aircraft Works was the sight of the +khaki-clad sentry at the entrance. + +He was pacing up and down the bit of dusty road outside the shops; and +he stopped Gwenna peremptorily, not knowing that she was one of the +staff. + +She told him, and went on. She found the big central shop in a ferment +of activity. Mr. Ryan, striding out on some hurried errand, nearly +knocked her over. He called an "Awfully sorry, Miss Gwenna--Mrs. +Dampier, I mean," over his shoulder. She saw that his day of dalliance +was past, even had she been still "Miss Gwenna." He had less time for +Girl, nowadays. The frames of no fewer than four aeroplanes were set up +on the stocks; and out of the body of the most nearly completed one +there climbed the slight figure of the Aeroplane Lady. Her blue and +youthful eyes lighted up at the sight of the girl standing in the clear, +diffused light of the many windows and backed by the spinning shafting. + +"Ah! You've arrived, Mrs. Dampier," she said briskly, using the new name +without a pause or a smile, for which Gwenna blessed her. "Thank Heaven +I shall have a reliable clerk again.... No end of correspondence now, my +dear. A sheaf of it waiting in the office. Come on and see to it now, +will you? And for goodness' sake remind me that I am 'theirs +obediently,' instead of merely 'truly,' to the Admiralty. I always +forget. If I were left to myself my letters would sound just like the +aviator's who wrote to the POWERS-THAT-BE: '_Commander So-and-So +presents his compliments and begs respectfully to submit that don't you +think it would be a jolly good thing if we started a repairing +shop?_'--somewhere or other. Well! Here we are, you see. Stacks of it!" +she went on as they reached that office where an airman's sweetheart had +first realised the idea that an aeroplane might mean a ship of war--war +in the clouds. + +"We shall have as much work as we can get through now," said the +Aeroplane Lady. "Look at this order from the War Office. And this--and +this!" + +For to all intents and purposes the War Office and the Admiralty had +"taken over" Mrs. Crewe's Aircraft Factory. + +The place rang and echoed, long after the hours of the ordinary working +man's working day, with the clinking and whirring and hammering of those +labours that went to bring forth these great wings of War. + +Some of the French mechanics whom Gwenna had known well by sight had +disappeared. They had been served with their mobilisation papers and +were now off to serve under the Tricolour. + +One or two of the English fitters, who were Reservists, had rejoined. +One had enlisted. + +But now, the Aeroplane Lady explained, the enlisting of any more of her +men had been discouraged. _They_ were too useful where they were. They, +with many other sturdy Britons who fretted because they were not to take +up other, riskier work on the other side of the Channel, were kept busy +enough preparing the arms which those other, envied men were to use. + +It was for the encouragement of them and their fellow-workers in +Armament and Ammunition factories that a bundle of blue-lettered posters +came down presently to the Works. + +Gwenna, once more arrayed in the grey-blue, dope-stiffened pinafore, +had the job of pinning up here and there, in the shops and sheds, these +notices. They announced to the Man at the Bench that he was as needful +to his country as the Man in the Trench. They gave out: + + "YOU CAN HIT THE ENEMY AS HARD WITH + HAMMER AND RIVET AS YOU CAN WITH + RIFLE AND BULLET. + HIT HIM! + HURRY UP WITH THE SHIPS AND GUNS!" + + * * * * * + +And she, too, little Gwenna Dampier, clerk and odd-job-girl, felt +herself respond to the appeal. As she typed letters and orders, as she +heated dope, as she varnished for the men's handling those huge blue +prints with the white, spider's-web-like "working drawings," or as she +tested square inches of the fine wing-linen, she felt that she, too, +was helping in her way to hurry up with those needed ships and guns. + +Was she not lucky in her job? + +For always she was buoyed up by the notion that whatever she touched +might be of service, not only to the country which the Beloved was +serving, but to the Beloved himself. Who knew? He himself might have to +fly in any one of these very machines! Every least part, every atom of +metal about them bore the visible, indestructible stamp of the English +War Office. And Gwenna herself bore that unseen but indelible stamp of +her love to her absent lad in every inch of her pliant girl's body, in +every thought of her malleable girl's mind. + +So the late summer weeks passed as she worked, glad in the thought that +any or all of it might be for him. She felt sorry for those women who, +when their man is away, have nothing but purely feminine work with which +to fill the empty days. Sewing, household cares, knitting.... She +herself knitted, snatching minutes from the twelve-o'clock dinner-hour +in the cottage with Mrs. Crewe to add rows to the khaki woollen +cap-comforter that she had started for Paul. It was just a detail in her +own busy life. But it struck her that for countless left-behind women +this detail remained all that they had to do; to knit all day, thinking, +wondering, fretting over the Absent. + +"That must be so _awful_! I don't think I should want to _live_," she +told the Aeroplane Lady one dinner-hour, "if there wasn't something else +really wanted by the men themselves, that I could have to do with! +Every soldier's wife," said Gwenna, drawing herself up above the table +with a pretty and very proud little gesture which made Mrs. Crewe smile +a little, "I think every soldier's wife ought to have the chance of a +job in some factory of this sort. Or in a shop for soldiers' comforts, +perhaps. Like that woman has in Bond Street where I bought those +extra-nice khaki handkerchiefs for Paul. _She's_ always thinking out +some sort of new 'dodge' for the Front. A new sleeping-rug or +trench-boots or something. A woman can feel she's taking some part in +the actual campaign then. Don't you think so, Mrs. Crewe? But there +aren't many other things she can do," concluded the girl with that soft, +up-and-down accent, "unless she's actually a Red Cross nurse looking +after the wounded. There's nothing else." + +"Oh, isn't there? Surely----" began the Aeroplane Lady. Then she +stopped, with a half-humorous, half-sad little smile in her eyes. + +She was going to have suggested that the biggest Job that a woman can +achieve has, at the root of things, everything to do with the carrying +on of a campaign. Those English workmen in the shops were responsible +for the perfect and reliable workmanship of the ships and guns. It was +only the women of England who could make themselves responsible for the +soundness and reliability of the men of the next generation, their +little sons now growing up, to be perhaps the soldiers of the next war. +All this flashed through the mind of the Aeroplane Lady, who was also +the mother of a fighting airman. + +But, on second thoughts, she decided that she would not say anything +about it. Not to this cherub-headed, guileless girl who bore Paul +Dampier's name, and who wore his glitteringly new wedding-ring on her +finger (that is, when she hadn't forgotten it, where it lay in the +soap-dish in the bathroom or hanging up on a peg in the Wing-room beside +her sunshine-yellow jersey coat. It was, as the newly-married Mrs. +Dampier explained, miles too big for her, and she hated getting it a +mass of dope). + +So, instead of saying what she was going to say, the Aeroplane Lady +drank tea out of a workman-like-looking, saucerless Brittany cup with +two handles, and presently asked if there were anything exciting that +she might be allowed to hear out of the letter that had arrived that +morning from Mr. Dampier. + +Those eagerly-looked-for, greedily-devoured letters from the young +Airman to his wife were uncertain qualities enough. + +Sometimes they came regularly, frequently, even two in a day, for Gwenna +to kiss, and to learn by heart, and to slip under her pillow at night. + +Then for days and weeks there would be nothing from him; and Gwenna +would seem to herself to be going about with her flesh holding its +breath in suspense all over her body. + +That suspense was not (curiously enough) too agonised for his safety. + +She had laughed quite easily the day that one of the older workmen had +said to her kindly, if tactlessly: + +"Ah, Miss Williams--or ma'am, as I s'pose I ought to say--I do feel +sorry for you, I do. You here, same as when you was a single young lady. +Your young gentleman God knows where, and you knowing that as likely as +not you never _will_ see him again, p'raps." + +"If I were not going to see him again," the girl had said tranquilly, "I +should know. I should feel it. And I haven't that feeling at all, Mr. +Harris. I'm one of those people who believe in presentiments. And I know +I _shall_ see him, though I don't know when." + +That was the only trouble! When? _When?_ When would she have something +for her love to live on, besides just messages on lifeless paper? + +Paul's letters were sometimes mere hasty scrawls. An "All's well," a +darling or so, and his name on a bit of thin ruled paper torn from a +note-book and scented vaguely with tobacco.... + +To-day it was a longer one. + +"It's dated four days ago only, and it's just headed 'FRANCE,'" said +young Mrs. Dampier, sitting, backed by the cottage window, with the +level Berkshire landscape, flowering now into lines of white tents for +the New Army in training, behind her curly head. "He says: + + "'Last week I had a day, if you like! Engaged with two Taubes in the + morning. Machine hit in four places. In the afternoon, as I was up + reconnoitring, I saw below me a railway train, immensely long, + going along as slow as a slug, with two engines. Sent in my report + to Head Quarters, and wasn't believed, if you please. They said + there couldn't be a train there. Line was destroyed. However, they + did condescend to go and look. Afterwards I was told my report was + of the greatest value----' + +"There! Think of that," broke off Gwenna, with shining eyes. + + "'And it's leaked out now that what I saw was a train crammed with + ammunition. Afterwards (same day) went and dropped bombs on some + works at--I'd better not say where!--and hope I get to know what + damage was done. I know one was a clinking shot. A great game, + isn't it?' + +"_Isn't_ it!" murmured the girl who had shuddered so at her first +realisation of her lover as a possible fighter. But now, after these +weeks, she shrank no longer. Gradually she had come to look upon War as +a stupendous Adventure from which it would have been cruelty to shut him +out. She saw it now as the reward of his years of working, waiting, +experimenting. And she said to herself fancifully, "It must be because +I've 'drunk of his cup,' and now I've come to 'think his thoughts.' I +don't care what those suffragettes say about losing one's individuality. +_I_ do think it's a great game!" + +She read on: + + "'Got three letters and _Punch_ from you in the evening. Thanks + awfully. You will write to me all you can, darling, won't you? The + little wing is quite safe in my tunic-pocket. Give my love to Mrs. + Crewe and to your Uncle and to Leslie Long. Heard from old Hugo + that he was actually going to enlist. Do him lots of good.' + +"Then he sort of ends up," said Gwenna, dimpling to herself a little +over the ending: + + ("'YOUR ALWAYS BOY.'), + +"and then there's a postscript: + + "'Wouldn't it be top-hole if I could get some leave to come over + and fetch the P.D.Q.? Guess the Censor will be puzzled to know who + _she_ is; who's your lady friend? in fact. + + "'P. D.'" + +"Thank you, Mrs. Dampier," said the Aeroplane Lady as she rose briskly +to return with her assistant to the Works. "Give him my love, too (if I +may), when you write. And I should like to tell you to write and ask +Leslie Long down to see us one Saturday afternoon," she added as they +came through the gap in the dusty hedge to the entrance road. "But +really we're too rushed to think of such relaxations as visitors!" + +For since Gwenna had come back to the Works neither she nor her +employer had taken any sort of holiday. That sacred right of the English +worker, the "Saturday half-day off," existed no more at those busy +Aircraft Works. Just as if it were any ordinary day of the week, the +whistle sounded after the midday rest. And just as if it were any other +day of the week, Mrs. Crewe's men (all picked workers, of whom not one +happened to be a Trades Unionist) stacked up the bicycles on which +they'd ridden back from their meal at home in the near-by town, and +trooped into the shops. They continued to hurry up with those ships and +guns. + +Again the whirring and the chinking and the other forge-like noises +would fill the place. Again the quick, achieving movements of clever +hands, black and soaked in oil, would be carried on, sometimes until, +from the training-camps on the surrounding ugly, useful plains, the +bugles had sounded "_Lights Out_." ... + + + + +CHAPTER X + +LESLIE, ON "THE MOTLEY OF MARS" + + +Now, as it happened, Miss Leslie Long did not choose to wait for her +invitation to the Aircraft Works. Unasked and unexpected, she turned up +there the very next Saturday afternoon. + +She was given a chair in that spacious, white, +characteristically-scented room where Mrs. Crewe and Gwenna were again +busy with the wings. She was told not to expect either of them to stop +work to look at her, but to go on talking and to tell them if there were +anything new going on in London. + +"Anything? Why, everything's new," Leslie told them gaily. + +She wore the mauve linen frock and the shady hat that had been her +bridesmaid's attire for Gwenna's wedding. And she was looking well, +Gwenna noticed, as she stole a glance at her chum; well, and happier +than she had seen Leslie look since the beginning of this eventful +summer. + +Leslie then gossiped to them of the many changes in London. These are +now very ancient history to a whole nation. But at that time (in +September, Nineteen-fourteen) they sounded still strange enough to those +who lived out of town. + +She spoke of the darkened streets. The bright, purposely-misleading +lights in the Park. Of the recruiting posters; the recruiting results. +Of the first of the refugees. Leslie's old lady had given hospitality to +two ladies, a mother and a daughter from Brussels, and it was Leslie's +new duty to translate English to them. Also of the departure of +regiments she talked.... + +"Of course there are only two classes into which you _can_ divide the +young men who aren't getting ready to go out," decreed Leslie, the +whole-hearted. "Either they're Objects of Pity, or else they're Objects +of Contempt." + +"Come, come!" put in the Aeroplane Lady, laughing a little, but without +raising her eyes from the stretched canvas on the trestles before her. +"What about my men outside there?" + +"I bet they envy the rawest recruit in K.'s Army!" declared Leslie. "The +most anæmic little plucky shop-assistant who's only just scraped through +on his chest-measurement and who's never spent so many consecutive hours +in the open air in his whole life before!" She patted the stately head +of the Great Dane as he stepped up to her from his big wooden kennel in +the corner, and went on to say how she loved the New Armies. + +"We see plenty of their doings up at Hampstead now, Taffy," she said. +"'_The Heath has Armies plenty, and semi-warlike bands!_' Queen's +Westminsters coming up in sweaters and shorts to do Physical Ekkers on +the cricket-pitch. Swagger young men, some of them, too. Driving up in +cars. Wearing their Jermyn Street winter-sports kit of last year under +common privates' overcoats." + +"Mars in motley!" said the Aeroplane Lady. + +Leslie said, "It is a _mixture_! New Army Type Number One, Section A: +the boy who was born to be a soldier and bred to be a clerk. The fighter +who wouldn't have got a chance to _live_ if it hadn't been for this war. +The Dear Duck who's being taken to the water for the first time after +twenty years!... Then, of course, there's the New Army Type Number +Forty-three: the Honest Striver in Khaki, putting his back into learning +a job that wasn't ever meant to be his. Not one bit thrilled by the idea +of a scrap. No fun to him. Civilian down to his bones. But--'_It is his +duty, and he does_.'" + +"All the more credit," the Aeroplane Lady reminded her quietly, "to the +born civilian." + +"Yes, I know, Mrs. Crewe. One thoroughly respects him for it," agreed +the soldier's daughter warmly. + +Adding meditatively, "But it's rather an effort to _like_ him as much as +the other kind!" + +"Talking of duty, Mr. Grant has gone," said Gwenna as she worked. "You +know, Leslie: the engineer at our Westminster place who was always +talking to Mabel Butcher and then saying, 'Well! Duty calls. I must +away.' I'm _sure_ he said that before he went off to enlist. He's in the +R.E. And the office-boy that had such an _awful_ accent went with him. +_He's_ in the Halberdiers now; billeted in the country in some garage +with six other men." + +"How funny! D'you know who one of the men is? My friend, Monty Scott, +the Dean's son," said Leslie, laughing again. "You remember him, Taffy, +at that dance? He wore that Black Panther get-up.... He came up to see +me, in uniform, last Sunday. I told him he'd only joined the Halberdiers +because he thought the touch of black suited him. Then he told me of his +weird billet in the country with these five other men. Two of them had +lately come out of prison, he said; and they were really awfully +interesting, comparing the grub they'd had there with what was served +out to them here. I asked him (Monty) how he was getting on. He summed +up the lot of the New Ranker rather well, I thought. He said, 'I've +_never_ been so uncomfortable or laughed so much in my life'!" + +The Aeroplane Lady, working, said she thought he must be a dear. + +"He is, rather," agreed the girl who had thrice refused to marry this +young man. + +"Why d'you sigh?" asked Gwenna quickly. A sigh meant, to her, only one +thing. Impatience over the absence of the Beloved! + +"I--perhaps I was thinking of Monty Scott's eyes," said Leslie lightly, +bending over to smooth the dog's neck. "They _are_ so absurdly handsome. +_Such_ a pity one can't have them to wear as brooches!" Then, quickly, +she turned from the subject of Monty Scott. She drew something out of +her black silk bag. A picture postcard. + +"From one of our Allies," said Leslie, showing it. + +It gave a view of a French Regiment, still wearing the picturesque +uniform of Eighteen-seventy, marching down a sunny, chestnut-bordered +boulevard. The soldier in the immediate foreground showed under the +jaunty _képi_ a dark, intelligent, mobile face that Gwenna recognised. + +She sighed and smiled over the card. It brought back to her that tea at +Hugo Swayne's rooms with Leslie, and the tall, blonde Englishman who was +to be her husband, and that dark young French engineer who had said, +"But the Machine is also of the sex of Mademoiselle!" He had written on +this card in sprawling French writing and blue French ink, "_À +Mademoiselle Langue. Salutation amicale. Remember, please, the private +soldier Gaston, who carries always in his knapsack the memory of the +Curate's Egg!_" + +"Fancy, two of the men who were at Mr. Swayne's that afternoon are off +at the Front to-day," said Gwenna Dampier. "That is, all three, perhaps. +Paul said something about his cousin enlisting." + +"Poor Hugo Swayne," said Leslie, with a laugh, that she stopped as if +she were sorry she had begun it. "It's too bad, really." + +"What is? _Isn't_ he enlisting?" + +"Yes. Oh, yes, Taffy, he has. But merely enlisting isn't the whole job," +said Leslie. "He--to begin with, he could hardly get them to pass +him----" + +"Why? Too fat?" asked Gwenna mercilessly. + +"Fat--Oh, no. They said three weeks' Swedish exercise _and_ drill would +take that off. He was quite fit, they said, physically. It was his +_mental_ capacity they seemed to doubt," explained Leslie. "Of course +that was rather a shock to Hugo to hear, after the years he's been +looking up to himself as a rather advanced and enlightened and thinking +person. However, he took it very well. He saw what they meant." + +"Who were 'they'?" asked Mrs. Crewe. + +"The soldier-men he went to first of all, old brother-officers of his +father's, who'd been with his father in Egypt, and whom he asked to find +him a job of some sort. They told him, quite gently, of course, that +they were afraid he was not 'up' to any soldiering job. They said they +were afraid there were heaps of young Englishmen like him, awfully +anxious to 'do their bits,' but simply _not clever enough_! (Rather +nice, isn't it, the revenge, at last, of the Brainless Army Type on the +Cultured Civilian?) And he said to the old Colonel or General or +whatever it was, 'I know, sir. I see, sir. Yes, I suppose I have addled +myself up by too much reading and too much talk. I know I'm a +Stage-Society-and-Café-Royal rotter, and no earthly good at this +crisis.' And then he turned round and said quite angrily, 'Why wasn't I +brought up to be some use when the time came?' And the old soldier-man +said quite quietly, 'My dear Swayne, none of you "enlightened" people +believed us that there was any "time" coming. You see now that we were +right.' And Hugo said, 'You ought to have hammered it into me. Isn't +there anything that I can do, sir?' And at last they got him +something." + +"What?" demanded Gwenna. + +"Well, of course it sounds _rather_ ludicrous when you come to say what +it is," admitted Leslie, her mouth curling into a smile that she could +not suppress. "But it just shows the Philistines that there _is_ some +use (if not beauty) in Futurist painting, after all. One always knew +'_there must be something, if one could but find it out_.'" + +"But your friend Mr. Swayne can't do Futurist paintings," objected the +Aeroplane Lady, "at the Front!" + +"Well, but that's just what he _is_ doing! He's in France; at Quisait. +Painting motor-buses to be used for transport wagons," explained Leslie. +"You know the most disguising colour for those things at a distance is +said to be not khaki, or feld-grau, or dull green, or any other _single_ +colour. You have to have a sort of heather-mixture of all the most +brilliant colours that can be got! This simply makes the thing invisible +a certain way off. It's the idea of the game-feather tweed on the moors, +you know. So Hugo's using his talents by painting emerald-green and +magenta and scarlet and black triangles and cubes and splodges all over +those big Vanguards----" + +"Why, _I_ could do that," murmured the girl who was so busy varnishing +the aeroplane wings. "Sure I could." + +"Oh, but, Taffy, you haven't been educated up to it," protested Leslie +gravely. "You _couldn't_ get it sufficiently dynamic and simultaneous +and marinetic!" + +A message from the Central Shop to the Aeroplane Lady left the two girls +alone presently in the Wing-room. Then Leslie, putting her hand on the +rounded arm below the loose sleeve of Gwenna's working-pinafore, said +softly and quickly, "Look here, I came down because I had something to +tell you, Taffy." + +The Welsh girl glanced quickly up into her chum's black eyes. + +"Something to tell me?" Gwenna's heart sank. + +She didn't want to hear of Leslie having definitely made up her mind at +last to marry a--well, a man who was good-natured and well bred and +generous enough about wedding-presents, but who confessed himself to be +of "no earthly good" when "it came to the real things of life." "Oh, +Leslie, is it----" + +"It is that you can congratulate me." + +"Oh, dear. I was _afraid_--You mean you _are_ engaged to him, Leslie. To +Mr. Swayne." + +"No," said Leslie, holding her black head high. "No, not to Mr. Swayne. +Why must 'congratulations' always mean 'Mister' Anybody? They don't, +here. I mean you can congratulate me on coming to see reason. I know, +now, that I mustn't think of marrying him." + +Gwenna drew a big breath of relief. + +She laid her dope-thickened brush carefully down in the tin, and clapped +her little sticky hands. + +"I'm _so_ thankful," she cried childishly. "It wouldn't have done, +Leslie!" + +"No," said Miss Long. + +"He wasn't a quarter good enough." + +"Pooh. What's _that_ got to do with caring? Nothing," declared Leslie, +tilting her loose-limbed, mauve-clad figure back on the chair that Paul +Dampier had sat in, the day before the Aviation Dinner. "It's caring +that counts." + +"Haven't I _always_ been saying so?" said Gwenna earnestly as she took +up her brush again. "Not just because I'm a happily-married woman +myself, my dear." + +Here she drew herself up with the same little gesture of matronly +dignity that had made Mrs. Crewe smile. It forced Leslie to bite her +lips into gravity. And Paul Dampier's girl concluded innocently, "_I've_ +always known how much Love means. What's _money_?" + +"Nothing to run down, I assure you. Money's gorgeous. Money means +_Power_," affirmed Leslie. "Apart from the silk-stockinged aspect of it, +it lets you live a much fuller life mentally and spiritually. It can +make you almost everything you want to be, to yourself and to other +people, Taff. It's worth almost anything to get it. But there's one +thing it's not worth," said Leslie Long, really gravely: "_It's not +worth marrying the wrong person for._" + +"I don't know why you didn't know that _before_," said little Gwenna, +feeling for once in her life _so_ much older and much wiser than her +chum. "What makes you know it now, Leslie?" + +"The War, perhaps. Everything's put down to the War nowadays.... But it +has simplified things. One knows better what's what. What one must keep, +what one can throw overboard," said Leslie Long. "Everything is +changed." + +Gwenna thought for a moment of telling her that one thing did not +change. Love! + +Then she thought that that was not quite true, either. + +In its own way Love, too, was changed by this War. + +"There's _more_ of it!" thought Gwenna simply. + +For had not her own love to her absent lover burned with more steady a +flame within her ever since the morning when she had seen him depart to +take his own share in the struggle? And so she guessed it must be with +many a girl, less ardently in love than she had been, but now doubly +proud of her man--and her soldier. She thought of the other hurried +War-bridals and betrothals all over the country. She thought of the +gentler voice and manner that she had noticed between the husbands and +wives among the cottagers down here. They realised, perhaps, how many +couples were being swept apart by War. Yes, this thought seemed to give +Man and Woman an added value in the eyes of each other, Gwenna thought. +She thought of the gradual disappearance of the suffragette type with +her indictments against Man. She thought of the new courtesy with which +every woman and girl seemed to be treated in the streets and tubes and +omnibuses by every man who wore the livery of War. + +Of the two things greater than all things in this world, one fulfilled +the other. And, because War was in the world again, it was bringing home +undeniably to man and maid alike that "_the first is Love_." + +Then Gwenna sighed from her heart. + +How long? How much longer would it be before she could see her own lover +again? + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +A LOVE LETTER--AND A ROSE + + +A couple of days after Leslie's visit Gwenna was moving about the +bedroom at Mrs. Crewe's cottage. + +It was an old-fashioned, quaintly pretty room. The low ceiling, on which +the lamplight gleamed, was crossed by two sturdy black oak beams. +Straw-matting covered the uneven floor, and the wall-paper was sprinkled +with a pattern of little prim posies in baskets. The chintz of the +casement-curtains showed flowering sprays on which parrots perched; +there was a patchwork quilt on the oaken bed. + +Gwenna had come up early; it was only nine o'clock. So, having undressed +and got into her soft white ruffled night-gown and her kimono of pink +cotton-crêpe, she proceeded to indulge in one of those "bedroom +potterings" so dear to girlhood's heart. + +First there was a drawer to be tidied in the dressing-table that stood +in the casement-window. Ribbons to be smoothed out and rolled up; white +embroidered collars to be put in a separate heap. Next there was the +frilling to be ripped out of the neck and sleeves of her grey linen +dress, that she had just taken off, and to be rolled up in a little +ball, and tossed into the wastepaper basket. Then, two Cash's +marking-tapes with her name, GWENNA DAMPIER, to be sewn on to the couple +of fine, Irish linen handkerchiefs that had been brought down to her as +a little offering from Leslie. Then there was her calendar to be brought +up to date; three leaves to tear off until she came to the day's +quotation: + + "Don't call the score at half-time." + +Then there was the last button to sew on to a filmy camisole that she +had found leisure, even with her work and her knitting, to make for +herself. Gradually, young Mrs. Dampier meant to accumulate quite a lot +of "pretties" for the Bottom Drawers, that Ideal which woman never +utterly relinquishes. The house and furniture of married life Gwenna +could let go without a sigh. "The nest"--pooh! But the ideal of "the +plumage" was another matter. Even if the trousseau did have to come +after the wedding, never mind! A trousseau she would have by the time +Paul came home again. + +Having finished her stitching, she put her little wicker-work basket +aside on the chest-of-drawers and took out the handkerchief-sachet in +which she kept all his letters. She read each one over again.... "I'll +finish mine to him to-night," she decided. "It'll go off before eight in +the morning, then; save a post." + +From under her work-basket she took her blotting-pad. The letter to Paul +was between the leaves, with her fountain-pen that she'd used at school. +She sat down in the wicker-seated chair before the dressing-table and +leaned her pad up against the edge of that table, with her brushes and +comb, her wicker-cased bottle of eau-de-Cologne, her pot of skin-cream +and her oval hand-mirror, its silver back embossed by Reynolds' immortal +group of cherubs whose curly heads and soft, tip-tilted faces were not +unlike Gwenna's own as she sat there, reading over what she had already +put in that letter to the Front. + +It began in what Gwenna considered an admirably sedate and old-fashioned +style: "_My dearest Husband._" She thought: "The Censor, whoever he is! +that Paul talks about--when he reads that he'll think it's from somebody +quite old and been married for ten years, perhaps; instead of only +just--what is it--seven weeks!" + +It went on to acknowledge the last note from Paul and to ask him if she +should send him some more cigarettes, and to beg that he would, if he +could possibly, possibly manage it, get one of his friends to take a +snapshot of him--Paul--in uniform, as Gwenna had never yet seen him. + +Beside the swung oval mirror on the dressing-table there was set up in a +silver frame the only portrait that she possessed of her boy-husband: +the glazed picture postcard that Gwenna had bought that Saturday in May, +when she had gone to see the flying at Hendon with her two friends from +the Westminster Office, Mabel Butcher and Ottilie Becker. + +Gwenna's eyes fell on that photograph as she raised them from her pad. +Her thoughts, going back to that afternoon, suggested the next item to +be written to Paul. + +And the young girl wrote on, in much the same style as she would have +talked, with few full stops and so much underlining that some words +seemed to have a bar of music below them. + + "You remember my telling you about Miss Becker, the German girl + that I used to be at Westminster with, when we used to call + ourselves the Butcher, the Baker, and the Candlestick-maker? Well, + what _do_ you think? She has been _taken away_ from her + boarding-house where she was in Bloomsbury, and interned in some + camp as an alien enemy, although she is a girl, and they say she + _nearly_ was just on trial _as a spy_! + + "Mabel Butcher wrote and told me about it. She (Miss Butcher) went + with Ottilie Baker when she had to register herself as an alien at + Somerset House, just after the War broke out, and she said it was + _awful_, a great place like six National Galleries rolled into one, + and _miles_ of immense long corridors, and _simply crowds_ of all + kinds of Germans and Austrians, just like a queue at the theatre, + waiting to be registered, and all looking scared to _death_, quite + a lot of pretty girls among them, too. + + "Poor Ottilie Becker cried like anything at having to go, and to be + an enemy alien, you know she'd got such heaps of friends in England + and liked lots of English ways. She used to have a bath every + morning, even. I hate to think of _her_ being a prisoner. Of course + I know one ought to feel that all Germans ought to be wiped out + now," wrote Gwenna, "but it makes you feel sort of different when + it's a girl you've _known_ and had lots of little jokes with, and I + was with her the very first time I heard of _you_, so I shan't be + able to help always feeling a little kinder about her. + + "The reason she was arrested was because they found in her room at + the boarding-house a lot of notes about the engineering-works, our + works, which she had been going to send off to that soldier-brother + of hers, Karl. She declared _she_ didn't know she wasn't supposed + to, and that she hadn't an _idea_ of our going to War with her + country or anything, and I'm _sure_ she didn't _mean_ any harm at + all. She said she'd seen her brother Karl in England the week + before War was declared, and that _he_ hadn't said a word to her + then. And so perhaps he _was_ that waiter all the time. You know, + the one we saw, in the cab that last Sunday of peace-time. I expect + _he_ is fighting us now, isn't it _extraordinary_?" + +This was the end of the sheet. Gwenna took another. Her letters to the +Front were always at least six times as long as the answers that she +received to them, but this was only to be expected. And Paul had said he +loved long letters and that she was to tell him absolutely everything +she could. All about herself. + +She went on: + + "You tell me to take care of myself and not to work too hard; well, + I am not. And I am quite well and Mrs. Crewe is most _awfully_ + kind to me, and the little maid here _spoils_ me. Every night when + I am in bed she _insists_ on bringing me up a glass of hot milk and + two biscuits, though what for I don't know. + + "_Is_ there anything more about your coming back from the Front to + fetch the P.D.Q.? Oh, it _would_ be so lovely to see you even for a + _few days_. I sometimes feel as if I had _never, never_ seen + you----" + +She sighed deeply in the quiet, lamp-lit room, where the chintz-casement +curtains stirred faintly above the open window. It had been so long, so +long, all this time of being without him. Why, she had scarcely had a +week of knowing him hers, before there had come that rushed War-bridal +and the Good-bye! And all she had to live on were her memories and a +glazed picture postcard, and a packet of pencil-scrawled letters of +which the folds were worn into slits. She couldn't even write to him as +she would have wished. Always there brooded over her that spectre "The +Censor," who possibly read every letter that was addressed to a man at +the Front. Gwenna knew that some people at home wrote anything they +wished, heedless that a stranger's eye might see it. Leslie, for +instance, wrote to one of her medical students, now working with the +R.A.M.C. in Paris, as "My dear Harry--and the Censor," adding an +occasional parenthesis: "_You won't understand this expression, Mr. +Censor, as it is merely a quite silly family joke!_" She, Gwenna, felt +utterly unable to write down more than a tithe of the tender things that +she would have liked to say. To-night she had a longing to pour out her +heart to him ... oh, and she would say _something_! Even if she tore up +that sheet and wrote another. She scribbled down hastily: "Darling boy, +do you know I miss you more _every day_; nobody has _ever_ missed +anybody _so dreadfully_." + +Here she was wrong, though she did not know it. It was true that she +longed hungrily for the sight of that dear blonde face, with its blue, +intrepid eyes, for the sound of that deep and gentle voice, and for the +touch of those hands, those strongly modelled lips. But all these things +had been a new joy, scarcely realised before it was gone. She would have +told you that it made it worse for her. Actually it meant that she was +spared much. Her lover's presence had been a gift given and snatched +away; not the comradeship of years that, missing, would seem even as the +loss of a limb to her. The ties of daily habit and custom which +strengthen that many-stranded cord of Love had not yet been woven +between these two lovers. + + "I sometimes think it was really _awfully selfish_ of me to _marry_ + you," Gwenna wrote, thinking to herself, "Oh, bother that old + Censor, just for once." She went on more hurriedly: + + "You might have married somebody like that Miss Muriel Conyers, + with those frightfully lovely clothes and _all_ her people able to + help you on in the Army, or somebody very beautiful and _rich_, + anybody would have been glad to have you, and I _know_ I am just a + little _nobody_, and not a bit clever and even Leslie used to say + I had a Welshy accent sometimes when I speak, and I daresay _lots_ + of people will think, oh, 'how _could_ he!--why, she isn't even + very _pretty_!'" + +She raised her eyes, deeper and brighter in the lamplight, and gave a +questioning glance at her reflection in the oval, swung mirror on the +dressing-table at which she wrote. It would have been a captious critic +indeed that could have called her anything less than very pretty at that +moment; with her little face flushed and intent, a mixture of child and +woman in the expression of her eyes and about her soft, parted lips. +Above the ruffle of her night-gown her throat rose proudly; thick and +creamy and smooth. She remembered something he'd told her that afternoon +at Kew. He'd said that she always reminded him of any kind of white +flower that was sturdy and sweet; a posy of white clover, a white, +night-blooming stock, some kinds of white roses.... She would like to +send him a flower, in this letter, to remind him. + +She glanced towards the open casement, where the curtain waved. Under +the shading foliage of the clematis that grew up to the cottage-roof +there had climbed the spray of a belated rose. "Rose Ménie" was its +name. Mrs. Crewe had said that it would not flower that year. But there +was one bud, half-hidden by leaves, swelling on its sappy twig, close to +Gwenna's window-sill. + +"It'll come out in a day or so," Gwenna thought. + +"I'll send it to him, if it comes out white.... _He_ was pleased with my +looks!" + +So, reassured, she turned to the letter again, and added: + + "The only thing is, that whatever sort of wife you'd married, they + _couldn't_ have loved you like I do, or been so proud of being your + wife; _really_ sometimes I can _hardly believe_ that I am really + and truly married to----" + +She broke off, and again lifted her curly head from bending above the +paper. + +There had been a light tap at the door behind her. + +"Come in," called Gwenna, writing down as she did so, "here is the +little maid coming to bring me up my hot milk; now, darling, darling +boy, I _do hope_ they give you enough to eat wherever you are----" + +Behind her the white door opened and shut. But the maid did not appear +at Gwenna's elbow with the tray that held that glass of hot milk and the +plate of biscuits. The person who had entered gazed silently across the +quiet girlish room at the little lissom figure clad in that soft crumple +of pink and white, sitting writing by the dressing-table, at the +cherub's head, backed by the globe of the lamp that spun a golden +aureole into that wreath of curls. + +There was a pause so long that Gwenna, wondering, raised her head. + +She gave another glance into the oval mirror that stood on the +dressing-table just in front of her.... And there she saw, not the +homely, aproned figure of the little maid that she had expected to see, +but the last thing that she had expected. + +It was a picture like, and unlike, a scene she had beheld long, long +ago, framed in the ornate gold-bordered oval mirror in the drawing-room +at the Smiths'. Over her pink-clad shoulder, she saw reflected a broad, +khaki-covered chest, a khaki sleeve, a blonde boy's face that moved +nearer to her own. Even as she sat there, transfixed by surprise, those +blue and intrepid eyes of Icarus looked, laughing joyously, full into +hers, and held her gaze as a hand might have held her own. + +"It's only me," said a deep and gentle voice, almost shyly. "I say----" + +"_You!_" she cried, in a voice that rang with amazement, but not with +fright; though he, it seemed, was hurrying out hasty warnings to the +Little Thing not to be frightened.... He'd thought it better than +startling her with a wire.... Mrs. Crewe had met him at the door ... +he'd come straight up: hoped she didn't think he was a ghost---- Not for +a second had she thought so! + +Instantly she had known him for her granted and incarnate heart's +desire, her Flyer, home from the Front, her husband to whom she had that +moment been writing as she sat there. + +She sprang to her feet. + +She whirled round. + +She could not have told whether she had first flung herself into those +strong arms of his, or whether he had snatched her up into them. + +All that mattered was that they were round her now, lifting and holding +her as though they would never let her go again. + +When Reveillé sounded from the Camp on the plain, the sun was bright on +that clematis-grown wall outside the window of Gwenna's bridal-room. + +It gilded the September foliage about the window-sill It also touched a +gem of passionate colour, set among the leaves of the Rose Ménie. + +That red rose had broken into blossom in the night. + + + + +PART III + +_SEPTEMBER, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A WAR-TIME HONEYMOON + + +The morning after Paul Dampier's arrival from the Front he and his wife +started off on the honeymoon trip that had been for so many weeks +deferred. + +They motored from the Aircraft Works to London, where they stopped to do +a little shopping, and where Gwenna was in raptures of pride to see the +effect produced by the Beloved in the uniform that suited him so well. + +For every passer-by in the street must turn to look, with quickened +interest now, at an Army Aviator. Even the young men in their uniforms +gave a glance at the soldier whose tunic buttoned at the side and whose +cap had the tilt that gave to the shape of his blonde head something +bird-like, falcon-like. And every girl in the restaurant where they +lunched murmured, "Look," to her companion, "that's some one in the +Royal Flying Corps," and was all eyes for that kit which, at a time when +all khaki was romantic, had a special, super-glamour of its own. + +But the blue eyes of the man who wore it were for no one but the girl +with whom he was taking his first meal alone together since they had +been man and wife. + +Her own glance was still hazy with delight. Oh, to see him there facing +her, over the little round table set in a corner! + +They ate cold beef and crusty loaf and cheese in memory of their first +lunch together in that field, long ago. They drank cider, touching +glasses and wishing each other all luck and a happy life. + +"And fine weather for the whole of our week's honeymoon," added the +bridegroom as he set down his glass. "Lord, I know how it _can_ pour in +your Wales." + +For it was to Wales that they went on by the afternoon train from +Euston; to Gwenna's home, arriving late that evening. The Reverend Hugh +Lloyd was away on a round of preaching-visits about Dolgelly. They had +his black-henlike housekeeper to chirp and bustle about them with much +adoring service; and they would have the Chapel House to themselves. + +"But we won't be _in_ the house much," Gwenna decided, "unless it +pours." + +It did not pour the next morning. It was cloudless and windless and +warm. And looking round on the familiar landscape that she had known +when she was a little child, it seemed now to Gwenna as if War could not +be. As if it were all a dream and a delusion. There was no khaki to be +met in that little hillside village of purple slate and grey stone. Only +one or two well-known figures were missing from it. A keeper from one of +the big houses on the other side of the river, and an English chauffeur +had joined the colours, but that nine-days' wonder was over now. Peace +had made her retreat in these mountain fastnesses that had once echoed +to the war-shouts and the harp-music of a race so martial. + +It was the music that had survived.... + +Paul Dampier had put on again that well-known and well-worn grey tweed +jacket of his, so that he also no longer recalled War. He had come right +away from all that, as she had known he would; come safely back to her. +Here he was, with her, and with a miracle between them, in this valley +of crystal brooks and golden bracken and purple slopes. It was meant +that they two should be together thus. Nothing could have stopped it. +She felt herself exulting and triumphing over all the Fates who might +have tried to stop it; and over all the Forces that might have tried to +keep him from her. His work on the Machine? Pooh! That had actually +helped to bring them together! The Great War? Here he was, home from the +War! + +"I've always, always wanted to be with you in the real country, and I +never have," she told him, as together they ran down the slate steps of +Uncle Hugh's porch after breakfast and turned up a path between the +sunny larch-grown steeps. That path would be a torrent in the winter +time. Now the slate pebbles of it were hot under the sun. "I don't +really count that _country_, that field, that day----" + +"Didn't seem to mind it when we were there," he teased her as he walked +beside her swinging the luncheon basket that Margaret had put up for +them. "I mean of course when _I_ was there." + +Gwenna affected to gasp over the conceit of men. "If I've _got_ to be +with one," she told him as if wearily, "I'd rather it was in a nice +place for me to listen to his nonsense." + +"Wasn't any 'nonsense,' as you call it, in that field." + +"No," agreed Gwenna, "there wasn't." + +He looked sideways and down at her as she climbed that hill-path, +hatless, sure-footed and supple. Then a narrow turn in the path made her +walk a little ahead of him. She was wearing a very simple little sheath +of a grey cotton or muslin or something frock, with a white turn-down +collar that he hadn't seen her in before, he thought. Suited her awfully +well. (Being a man, he could not be expected to recognise it for the +grey linen that she'd had on when he'd come upon her that afternoon, +high up on the scaffolding at Westminster.) + +"Yes, though, there was 'nonsense,'" he said, now suddenly answering her +last speech. "Fact of the matter is, it was dashed nonsense to waste +such a lot of time." + +"Time, how?" asked Gwenna guilelessly, without turning her head. + +"Oh! As if you didn't know!" he retorted. "Wasting time talking about +the Machine, to you. Catching hold of your hand, to show you what the +camber was--and then letting it go! Instead of owning up at once, '_Yes. +All right. You've got me. Pax!_' And starting to do this----" + +He was close up behind her now on the mountain-path, and because of the +steep ground on which they stood, her head was on a higher level than +his own. He drew it downwards and backwards, that brown, sun-warmed +head, to his tweed-clad shoulder. + +"You'll break my neck. I know you will, one day. You are so _rough_," +complained Gwenna; twisting round, however, and taking a step down to +him. + +"I love you to be," she whispered. She kissed his coat-lapel. All the +red of that rose bloomed now on her mouth.... They walked on, with his +arm a close, close girdle about her. The luncheon basket was forgotten +on the turfy slope on which he'd dropped it. So they lunched, late, in +the farm-house four hundred feet above the Quarry village. It was a +lonely place enough, a hillside outpost, fenced by stunted damson trees; +a short slate-flagged end of path led to the open door where a great red +baking crock stood, full of water. Inside, the kitchen was a dark, cool +cave, with ancient, smooth-worn oaken furniture that squeaked on the +slate-slabbed floor, with a dresser rich with willow-pattern and lustre, +and an open fire-place, through which, looking up, they could see +through the wood smoke a glimpse of the blue sky. + +And in this sort of place people still lived and worked as if it were +Seventeen Hundred and Something--and scarcely a day's journey away was +the Aircraft Factory where people lived for the work that will remake +the modern world; oh, most romantic of all ages, that can set such sharp +contrasts side by side! + +An old Welshwoman, left there by her sheep-farming sons at home in the +chimney corner, set butter-milk before the lovers, and ambrosial +home-churned butter, and a farm-house loaf that tasted of nuts and +peatsmoke. They ate with astonishing appetites; Gwenna sitting in the +window-seat under the sill crowded with flower-pots and a family Bible. +Paul, man-like, stood as near as he could to the comfort of the fire +even on that warm day. The old woman, who wore clumping clogs on her +feet and a black mutch-cap on her head, beamed upon the pair with smiles +as toothless and as irresistible as those of an infant. + +"You must have a plenty, whatever," she urged them, bringing out another +loaf, of _bara breeth_ (or currant bread). "Come on, Sir! Come, Miss +Williams, now. Mam, I mean. Yess, yess. You married lady now. Your +husband," with a skinny hand on his grey sleeve, "your husband is _not_ +a minnyster?" + +"He's a soldier, Mrs. Jones," explained Gwenna, proudly, and with a +strengthening of her own accent, such as occurs in any of her race when +revisiting their wilds. "He's an Airman." + +"Ur?" queried Mrs. Jones, beaming. + +"He goes flying. You know. On a machine. Up in the sky." + +"Well, _oh_!" ejaculated the old woman. And laughed shrilly. To her this +was some eccentric form of English joke. Flying? Like the birds! _Dear_, +dear. "What else does he do, _cariad fâch_?" she asked of Gwenna. + +"He's been over in France, fighting the Germans," said the girl, while +the old woman on her settle by the fire nodded her mutched head with +the intense, delighted expression of some small child listening to a +fairy story. It was indeed no more, to her. She said, "Well, indeed. He +took a very _kind_ one, too." Then she added, "I not much English. +Pitty, pitty!" and said something in Welsh at which Gwenna coloured +richly and laughed a little and shook her head. + +"What's she say?" demanded Paul, munching; but his girl-wife said it was +nothing--and turned her tip-tilted profile, dark against the diamond +window panes, to admire one of the geranium plants in the pots. + +Afterwards, when the couple were outside again in the fresh sunlight on +the mountain lands, young Dampier persisted with his questioning about +what that old woman had said. He betted that he could guess what it was +all about. And he guessed. + +Gwenna admitted that he had guessed right. + +"She said," she told him shyly, "that it ought to be 'a very pretty one, +whatever.'" + +"I've got a very pretty present for it," Paul whispered presently. + +"What?" + +"Don't you remember a locket I once took? A little mother-of-pearl +heart," he said. "That's what I shall keep it for----" + +And there fell a little silence between them as they walked on, swinging +hands above the turf, gravely contented. + +They had _had_ to spend the day together thus. It seemed to Gwenna that +all her life before had been just a waiting for this day. + +Below the upland on which they swung along, grey figures on the green, +there lay other wide hill-spaces, spread as with turf-green carpets, on +which the squares of mellowing, golden-brown autumn woods seemed rugs +and skins cast down; below these again stretched the further valley with +the marsh, with the silver loops and windings of the river, and the +little white moving caterpillar of smoke from the distant train. There +was also a blue haze above the slate roofs of a town. + +But here, in this sun-washed loneliness far above, here was their world; +hers and his. + +They walked, sometimes climbing a crest where stag's-horn moss branched +and spread through the springy turf beneath their feet, sometimes +dipping into a hollow, for two miles and more. They could have walked +there for half a day and seen no face except that of a tiny mountain +sheep, cropping among the gorse; heard no voice but those of the calling +plovers, beating their wings in the free air. Then, passing a gap in two +hills, they came quite suddenly upon the cottage and the lake. + +The sheet of water, silent, deserted, reflected the warm blue of the +afternoon sky and the deep green of the overhanging boughs of great +hassock-shaped bushes that covered two islands set upon its breast. + +"Rhododendron bushes. When they're in blossom they're all simply +_covered_ with flowers, pink and rose-colour, and reflected in the +water! It _is_ so lovely," Gwenna told the lover beside her. "Oh, Paul! +You _must_ come here again and see that with me in the spring!" + +On the further bank was another jungle of rhododendron and lauristinus, +half-hiding the grey stone walls and the latticed windows of the square +cottage, a fishing box of a place that had evidently been built for some +one who loved solitude. + +Paul Dampier peered in through one of the cobwebby lattices. Just inside +on the sill there stood, left there long since, a man's shaving-tackle. +Blue mildew coated the piece of soap that lay in the dish. Further in he +caught a glimpse of dusty furniture, of rugs thrown down on a wooden +floor, of a man's old coat on a peg. A wall was decorated with sets of +horns, with a couple of framed photographs, with old fishing-rods. + +"Make a jolly decent billet, for some one, this," said Paul. + +Gwenna said, "It belongs to some people.... They're away, I think. It's +all locked up now. So's the boat for the lake, I expect. They used to +keep a boat up here for fishing." + +The long flat boat they found moored to one of the stout-trunked +rhododendron bushes that dipped its pointed leaves in the peat-brown +water fringed with rushes. + +Paul stepped in, examining her, picking up the oars. "Nice afternoon for +a row, Ma'am?" he said, smiling up at the girl clad in dove-grey on the +rushy bank, with the spongy dark-green moss about her shoes. + +"Jump in, Gwenna. I'll row you across the lake." + +"You can't row that old tub, boy." + +"Can't I?" + +"I'll race you round, then!" + +"Right you are!" + +The girl skipped round the clump of rhodos that hid the last flicker of +her skirt; and the boy bent to the short, home-made sculls. + +The boat was a crank, unhandy little craft; and lacked thole-pins on one +side. Therefore Gwenna, swift-footed Little Thing that she was, had as +good a chance of winning as he. + +"Like trying to row a bucket!" he laughed, as the boat spun. "Hi, Gwen! +I ought to have some start, you know!" + +He rowed. Presently he rested on his oars and called, "Hullo, have you +started?" + +"Started--" came back only the echo from the cottage roof. There was no +sign of any grey-frocked running figure on the bank. He scanned it on +both sides of him, gave a look towards each of those shrub-covered +islands on the smooth expanse. + +"Gwenna--Why, where are you? What's become of the girl," he muttered. +"Gwen-na!" + +She was nowhere to be seen. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE SOUL OF UNDINE + + +"Hul-lo!" he shouted. The echo answered as he sat in the boat staring +about him.... + +Then he felt a twitch at one of his sculls. It turned in his hand; was +wrenched from him. + +"What the deuce----" he began, surprised. + +Then he heard a laugh. + +"What on earth----" + +It was nothing on earth that had greeted him. It was something of the +water that laughed up into his face and called, "Hullo, husband!" + +A mermaid, a water-nymph, a little white-shouldered Undine was peeping +up and mocking him! She trod water, turned over on her side, swam with +easy strokes. + +For always Gwenna had been proud of her swimming. + +She had won a medal for it at that Aberystwith school of hers; but she +wanted more than a mere medal for it now. She wanted her boy to see her +swimming, and to praise her stroke. She had looked forward to that. She +wanted to show him that she could make as graceful movements with her +own body in the water as he could make with his biplane in the air. She +could! He should see! She made these movements. She had thought of +making them--just _so_--on the morning of her marriage. Only then she +had thought it would be in the sea off Brighton beach, with whole +crowds of other stupid people about in dark-blue or Turkey-red +"costumes." Here it was so much lovelier; a whole mountain-side and a +clear lake to herself in which to show off her pet accomplishment to her +lover. She was one innocent and pretty Vanity incarnate as she glided +along beside his boat. She gave a quick twist. There was a commotion of +translucent amber water, a gleam of coral white that shaded down into +peaty brown as she dived, reappearing on the other side of the boat, +looking up at him, blinking as her curls streamed water into her eyes. + +His eyes, blue and direct and adoring, were upon her. + +"I say," he said admiringly, "I didn't know you could _swim_ like that. +Jolly!" + +This moment of achievement was possibly the most exquisite in the whole +of Gwenna's life. + +Shaking the wet from her hair, she laughed with pure, completed, +rapturous joy; glorying in her youth, in the life that charged each +little blue vein of her, in this power of swimming that she felt had +been given her only to please him. + +"Why, I could swim you to--Oh! Mind you don't upset!" she exclaimed. + +For Paul had stooped; leaning over the side of the boat he had passed +one arm beneath her shoulders; he was bending over her to take a kiss, +all fresh with lake-water. + +"You'll topple over," she warned him. + +"Pooh," he said. "One, Gwenna!" + +He always said her name as if it were "darling"--he did not call her +"dear" or "darling" much. She found that she adored him for this, as for +everything that he said or did. Once, in one of those old-time talks of +theirs, Leslie had said, "For every three times a man asks for a kiss +refuse him twice. An excellent plan, Taffy----" The happy girl-wife +thought there need be no use of "plans" with him and her. She teased +him--if she wanted to. + +Eyes laughed into eyes now. She threw back her head, evading him, but +only for a second. His mouth met hers, dewy as a lotus-bud. The boy and +girl kissed closely. Nothing could come between that kiss, she thought. + +Then, sudden as a flash of summer lightning, _something came_. + +A thought; a shadow; a fear at last. + +All these halcyon hours she had known no fear. All those weeks that her +husband had been in France she had been certain, at the bottom of her +heart, of his safety. She had known by that queer sense of presentiment +she possessed that he would come back to her. He'd come back to make +this perfect time for which all her unawakened girlhood had been +waiting. And now, by that same queer sixth sense, she suddenly found +herself realising that he would not--No, no! _That he might not come +back to her the second time...._ Suddenly, suddenly the shadow crept +over her, taking the glow and colour out of their idyll even at this +golden moment. With his lips warms on hers she shivered as if the water +in which she swayed had suddenly grown many degrees colder. Supposing he +should not return? In two days' time now he was leaving her. Supposing +that she were never to see him again? She shut her eyes, felt herself +for a horrible second surrounded by darkness, and alone.... She heard +his sharp question, "What's the matter?" and opened her eyes again. + +His head was dark against the blue little ripples of light passed over +his blonde face; ripples cast up from the water. The boat tilted, and +his arm held her more tightly. He said again, "What is it?" + +Then, in her own ears, her voice said serenely, "It's all right." + +The cloud had passed, as suddenly as it had fallen. She knew, somehow, +that it would be "all right." Whatever happened, this worst catastrophe +of all was not going to fall upon her. She was not going to be left +alone and in darkness, her sun of Love gone down. Such a light could not +have been kindled, just to be put out again. She would not be forced to +live without him. _That_ could not be. Why, the thing was unthinkable. +Yet, somehow that was going to be made "all right." + +"You swim back again and get your things on, as quick as you can," he +ordered her. "That was a touch of cramp you got, I expect." + +"I'm all right now," she again said. + +She sighed when at last they left that lovely Paradise of theirs behind +them. + +They went down hill at a good swinging pace, his arm again girdling the +dove-grey frock. He said, "We'll get tea and topping light-cakes at one +of those cottages before we come to the village, shall we? Are you +starving, Little Thing? I know I am. Soon be there now." + +"I know," she said, "I wasn't sighing because I wanted my tea. Only +because ... It seems such a pity that we _ever_ have to come down from +here!" she told him, nestling in his arm. + +But she did not tell him of her sudden fear, nor of its sudden passing, +though (in her heart that beat below his hand) the thought of both +remained. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +A LAST FAVOUR + + +That thought at the heart of Gwenna seemed to grow with every hour that +passed. + +And they were passing now so rapidly, the hours that remained to her +with her husband! One more blissful day spent on the mountains (but +always with that growing thought behind it: "_He has to go soon. Perhaps +he will not come back this time. The new machine may let him down +somehow, perhaps_"). + +One more train-journey, whizzing through country of twenty different +aspects, just him and her together (but still in her mind that thriving +dread: "_Very likely he may not come back. He has had so many narrow +escapes! That time he told me about when he came down from behind the +clouds and the machine was hit on both sides at once: our men firing on +him as well, thinking his was an enemy craft! He got up into the clouds +again and escaped that time. Next time as likely as not...._"). + +One more night they were together in the London hotel where Uncle Hugh +had always put up. Paul slept, with a smile on his face that looked so +utterly boyish while he was asleep: his blonde head nestled into her +neck. Gwenna, waking uneasily once or twice, and with his arms still +about her, was haunted by her fear as by a nightmare. "_It's more than +likely that he may not come back this time. This time I feel that he is +not going to come back!_" And the feeling grew with the growing light +outside the window, until she told herself: "_I know it! I know that I +am right_----" + +Then came the wonder in her mind, "_Why am I not wretched about this? +Why do I feel that it's not going to matter after all, and that it's +going to be 'all right'?_" + +Still wondering, she fell asleep again. + +But in the morning her presentiment was a thing full-grown. + +Paul, off to the Front, would never come back again. + +Quite early they were at the Aircraft Works where he was to leave his +young wife and to fetch his machine, the completed P.D.Q. that was to +take him out to France. + +He had spoken of her--that machine--in the train coming along. And +Gwenna, the dazed and fanciful, had thought sharply: "_Ah! That's her +revenge. That's what's going to be the end of this fight between the +Girl and the Machine. I won. I got him from her. This is how she takes +him back, the fiancée! He will be killed in that machine of his._" + +Her headstrong, girlish fancy persisted. It was as real to her as any of +the crowd of everyday and concrete realities that they found, presently, +at the bustling Aircraft Works. + +When Paul (who was to start at midday, flying across to France) changed +into his uniform and flying-kit, it seemed to her to set the seal upon +her premonition. + +He would never wear other kit again now, upon this earth. + +The Aeroplane Lady, bracingly cheerful, met them with a sheaf of +official documents for the young Army aviator. + +"I'm going to steal him from you for a quarter of an hour, Mrs. +Dampier," she said with a little nod; and she took the young man into +her office. + +Gwenna, left alone outside, walked up and down the sunny yard +mechanically. + +She could not have said what her thoughts were. Probably she had no +thoughts. Nothing but the steady throb, quiet and reiterated as the +pulse of the machinery in the shops, of that conviction of fatality that +she felt. + +It seemed to run on in her head as the belting ran on the shaft: "He +won't come back. He won't come back!" + +It was in the middle of this monotonous inward muttering that the door +of the office opened, and there came out a shortish figure, +leather-jacketed and with enveloping overalls and wearing a cap with +goggles, peak behind. It was young Mr. Ryan. + +He raised his cap and would have passed Gwenna quickly, but she stopped +him. + +She didn't know why. Since her marriage she had (ungratefully enough) +almost forgotten the red-haired young man's existence, and perhaps it +was not so much himself as his cap and mufflings that caught her eye +now. + +"Why, are you going up?" she asked. + +"Yes," said young Ryan gloomily. + +He seemed to be in the worst of tempers as he went on, grumblingly. He +was going up. Just his luck. Plenty of times he'd wanted to go and +hadn't been allowed. Now he'd got to go, just when he didn't want to. + +"You don't want to?" Gwenna repeated. + +Mr. Ryan coloured a little. "Well, if I've got to, that doesn't matter." + +"Why don't you want to?" Gwenna asked, half indifferent, half surprised. +To her it had always appeared the one thing to want to do. She had been +put off time after time. Now here was he, grumbling that it was just his +luck to go. + +Then she thought she could guess why he didn't want to go up just now. +She smiled faintly. Was it that Mr. Ryan had--somebody--to see? + +Mr. Ryan blushed richly. Probably he did so not on this somebody's +account, but because it was Gwenna who asked the question. One does not +care for the sympathetic questions of the late idol, even when another +fills the shrine. He told Gwenna: "I've got to go with your husband as a +passenger. He's had a wire to bring another man over to one of the +repairing bases; and so he's spotted me." + +"To bring over? D'you mean to France?" + +"Yes. Not that they want _me_, of course; but just somebody. So I've got +to go, I suppose." + +Gwenna was silent, absorbed. She glanced away across the flat +eighty-acre field beyond the yards, where the planes of Paul's new +biplane gleamed like a parallel ruler in the sun. A ruler marked with +inches, each inch being one of the seams that Gwenna had carefully doped +over. About the machine two or three dark figures moved, giving +finishing touches, seeing that all was right. + +And young Ryan was to fly in her, with Paul! + +It wasn't Ryan they wanted, but "just somebody." ... And then, all in a +moment, Gwenna, thinking, had a very curious little mental experience. +As once before she had had that "flying dream," and had floated up from +earth and had seen her own body lying inert and soulless on her bed, so +now the same thing happened. She seemed to see herself in the yard. +Herself, quite still and nonchalant, talking to this young man in cap +and goggles who had to go to France just when he particularly wanted to +go somewhere else. She saw all the details, quite clearly: his leather +jacket, herself, in her blouse and skirt, the cylindrical iron, steam +chambers where they steamed the skids, the Wing-room door, and beyond it +the new biplane waiting in the field two hundred yards away. + +Then she saw herself put her hand on the young man's leathern sleeve. +She heard her own voice ascending, as it were, to her. It was saying +what seemed to be the most matter-of-fact thing in the world. + +"Then don't go. You go later, Mr. Ryan. Follow him on. You go and meet +your girl instead; it will be all right." + +He was staring blankly at her. She wondered what he saw to stare at. + +"What? What d'you mean, Mrs. Dampier? I'm bound to go. Military orders." + +"Yes; they are for him, not for you. _You_ aren't under military +orders." This was in her own, quite calm and detached little voice with +its un-English accent. "You say anybody'd do. He can take--somebody +else." + +"Isn't anybody else," she heard young Ryan say. Then she heard from her +own lips the most surprising thing of all. + +"Yes, there's somebody. You give me those things of yours. I'm going +instead of you." + +Then Mr. Ryan laughed loudly. He seemed to see a joke that Gwenna did +not see. "Well, for a film-drama, that takes it!" he laughed. + +She did not laugh. She heard herself say, softly, earnestly, swiftly: +"Listen to me. Paul is going away and I have never been up with him yet. +I was always promised a flight. And always something got in the way of +it. And now he's going. He will never----" + +Her voice corrected itself. + +"He _may_ never come back. I may never get another chance of flying with +him. Let me--let me have it! Say you will!" + +But Mr. Ryan, instead of saying he would, became suddenly firm and +peremptory. Perhaps it was the change in his voice that brought Gwenna +Dampier, with a start, back to herself. She was no longer watching +herself. She was watching young Ryan's face, intently, desperately. But +she was still quite calm. It seemed to her that since an idea and a plan +had come to her out of nowhere, it would be mad to throw them away again +untried. + +"Let me go; it will be all right! Let me get into your things." + +"Quite out of the question," said young Ryan, with growing firmness--the +iron mask of the man who knows himself liable to turn wax in the hands +of a woman. "Not to be thought of." + +She set her teeth. It was life and death to her now, what he refused. +She could have flown at him like a fury for his obstinacy. She knew, +however, that this is no road to a woman's attainment of her desires. +With honeyed sweetness, and always calmly, she murmured: "You were +always so nice to me, Mr. Ryan. I liked you so!" + +"I say, don't----" + +"I am sure that girl must be devoted to you. Isn't she? The one you want +to see? Oh, yes! Well, think if it were _she_ who begged to be with +_you_," pleaded Gwenna softly and deadly calm. Her knuckles were white +on the hands that she held clasped against her breast. "Think if she +begged for one last, last little time!" + +"Look here; it's imposs----" + +"I never begged for any one anything before, in my whole life. Never! +Not even my husband. Only you! It's the first--the last favour, Mr. +Ryan! You used to say you'd do anything----" + +"No, please; I say----!" + +"He's always said he would take me. You can follow us on. Yes, indeed it +will be all right----" + +Here Paul, passing with the Aeroplane Lady at the end of the yard, on +his way to the machine in the field, saw by the steam reservoir his +young wife talking earnestly to the red-haired Ryan chap, who was to be +his passenger. He heard her say: "You must, Peter, you _must_!" + +He hadn't known that the Little Thing called that fellow by his +Christian name, but he thought he knew the kind of thing that she would +be saying to Ryan; begging him to keep an eye upon her husband, to do +anything he could for him (Paul) since they were both going over to +France together. + +"It will be all right," repeated Gwenna to young Ryan in a settled kind +of tone. "You'll give me your things, and then you'll stay here, out of +the way until we've gone. You will!" + +Thereupon Mr. Ryan became firmer than ever. + +"Can't be done, Mrs. Dampier," he said curtly. "Afraid that ends it!" + + * * * * * + +In the meantime Paul was making a last tour of the P.D.Q. + +"Just start her, will you?" he said to one of his mechanics. + +A harsh roar rattled out over the countryside. Paul touched parts here +and there. + +"All right," he said; and the engine was shut off again. Then he turned +to Mrs. Crewe. + +"Well," he said, "if you don't mind----" He glanced first at his +wrist-watch and then in the direction of the buildings. The Aeroplane +Lady smiled. + +"I think you'll find her in the office," she replied. + +He crossed the field and walked straight into the office, but Gwenna was +not there. He passed into the Wing-room where he had seen her at work. +She was not there, either; only two of the lads in blue overalls were +bringing in a wing. He said to them: "Is Mrs. Dampier in the central +shop? Just tell her I'm here, will you? I shall have to be off very +soon." In a moment one of the lads returned to say that Mrs. Dampier was +not in the shops. + +"Go out that way and find her, will you, then?" he said. "I'll go out +the other way; ask her to wait for me in the Wing-room if you find her +first." He went out to search for his wife. He sought her in the shops +and in the sheds. She was not to be found. He came back to the +Wing-room; it was empty, except for the Great Dane, lying in his corner +blinking wisely, with his head on his paws. Dismayed (for he would have +not more than a moment to spare with her now) young Dampier came out and +sent a lad on a bicycle up to Mrs. Crewe's cottage to find out if his +wife were there. Perhaps the Little Thing had forgotten the +cap-comforter she was going to give him, and had gone to fetch that. +Mrs. Crewe herself walked back from the field, and found him almost +running about the yards again. + +"What, haven't you found her? Isn't she anywhere about?" cried the +Aeroplane Lady in astonishment. "This is most extraordinary. She must be +here somewhere----" + +"I've been and I've sent all over the place," said the young aviator, +distressed. "Here, I've got to start in a minute, and she isn't here to +see me before I go. I can't imagine what's become of her!" + +The Aeroplane Lady could imagine. She had had the quick thought that +Gwenna Dampier, at the last moment, had gone away, hidden herself from +that ordeal of last farewells. "Perhaps the little creature couldn't +stand it," she thought. It was, when all was said, a heart-breaking +moment.... + +The Aeroplane Lady said softly: "Perhaps your wife's one of the people +who don't want to say any good-bye, Mr. Dampier. Like some people +thinking it's unlucky to watch people out of sight!" + +"Well, I've hunted all over the place," he said, turning away, agitated +and dismayed. "Tell her, will you, Mrs. Crewe, I shan't be able to wait +any longer. I was to start at midday. I shall be late. You explain to +her, please. Where's Ryan--ah, there he is." + +For across the field he saw a short, muffled-up, brown figure, climbing, +rather hurriedly, into the passenger's seat. It sat, waiting without +looking round. + +The last stroke of twelve sounded from the clock of the factory. The +whistle blew. The men trooped out of the works; every one of them cast a +glance towards the field where the biplane was ready. Several of them in +a group turned off there to watch the start. + +Paul joined them and walked across the field. + +His brows were knitted; it was dashed hard lines that he couldn't see +_her_ for good-bye. His wife! She ought to have seen him off.... Poor +Little sweet Thing, she thought she couldn't stick it---- He wondered +where on earth she'd gone and hidden herself. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE + + +Gwenna sat, for the first time in her life, in an aeroplane. + +She had very little actual notion of how she came to be there. It was +all confused in her mind, that which had happened between Mr. Ryan's so +resolute "Can't be done, Mrs. Dampier," and its having been "done." What +had prevailed? Her own begging? Mr. Ryan's wish to see his girl? Or her, +Gwenna's, calm assurances, repeated from that day in Wales, that it +would be "all right"? She wasn't sure which of all these things had +brought her here safely where she was, in the passenger-seat of Paul's +biplane. She hardly remembered putting on the rough and voluminous brown +clothes while Mr. Ryan mounted guard over the little stokehole of the +steam chambers. + +She only knew that she had walked, easily and undiscovered, across the +field before the whistle blew. That she'd climbed unassisted into that +small wicker seat, and that she was now waiting there, muffled up to the +tip of her nose, the edge of the cap almost meeting the muffler, goggles +down, and gloves hiding her little hands. She was no more to be +distinguished from a man than if she had been a diver encased for a +descent into the sea. + +She did not even trouble to wonder at her own wonderful luck in the +affair. + +A thousand little accidents might have betrayed her--and and she had +escaped them all. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to her. +Once or twice one of the men had spoken to her, but a wave of the hand +had been answer enough for him. It had been all right. And of course +everything was going to be all right. + +She was not going to be put off by pretexts any longer. + +And she was not going to be left behind, without him. In another +minute--two minutes--they would be off, he and she! + +Furtively she glanced round. + +Paul was holding both the Aeroplane Lady's small, capable hands in those +big boy's paws of his. + +"Good-bye," he was saying. "So long, I mean. I say, you'll----" + +"I'll look after _her_," promised the Aeroplane Lady, very brightly. + +"Thanks awfully. You would," said Paul. "Bless you." + +"My dear boy----" began the Aeroplane Lady as if she were going to say +something grave, but she ended lightly, "Well, you've a glorious day for +it. The best of luck!--And to you, Mr. Ryan!" + +Again the passenger waved a gloved hand in reply. + +Then Gwenna felt the tip and creak of the machine, as Paul climbed into +his place behind her. + +André dashed up to grasp his hand, calling "_Bonne chance!_" + +"Thanks!" said Paul. "Right away." + +Then, as the propeller pulsed like an angry nerve, Gwenna gave a start. + +An appalling roar and wind seemed all about her. Faintly, very faintly, +the noise of the good-bye cheer rose through it. The hat-waving group of +men with wide-open mouths seemed to slide back. The Aeroplane bumped +over the rough field. And then it ceased to bump. Gwenna drew in her +breath, sharply. To right of her, to left of her, the horizon seemed to +sway ever so gently. She thought, but was not sure, that she heard +Paul's voice behind her, bawling, "Trim." + +As she settled herself in her seat, the horizon fell away altogether.... +All was sunlit blue! The swiftest run in the motor down the smoothest +bit of hill had been nothing to this that was coming; faster, faster.... + +"There's only one pity," she thought hastily. "He's thinking now that I +let him go without saying good-bye!" + +Here she had a glimpse of the khaki-green earth far below, as blurred +with height and speed as was the raving invisible propeller itself. + +For at last--at last--it was flight! + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT + + +Yes; at last it was flight. + +She now, too, was perched up on this structure that had tucked those +little bicycle wheels and skids underneath it, as a bird tucks its no +longer required feet; she, too, was being borne up aloft on those vast +cambered pinions that let the sunlight half through, like the roof of a +transparent marquee. In this new machine of Paul's, the passenger-seat +was set on a slightly projecting platform, with aluminium-like uprights +of a peculiar section. At first, all that Gwenna knew of this easy +balancing and dipping and banking of the machine, was that there was a +bright triangle of sunlight about her feet, and that this triangle grew +sometimes small, sometimes large, and sometimes spread so that half of +her was sitting in the warm September sunlight; presently to swerve into +the shadow again. + +Mechanically tightening her grip on one or other of the aluminium stays, +instinctively yielding her body to this unexpected angle or that, she +watched that triangle of sunlight. She was not giddy or breathless; she +felt no fear at all, only a growing triumph and delight as the soaring +biplane sped on--on---- + +Once she gave a little "Oh, look!" lost in the hum of the engine. It was +when a tiny flicker of shadow fell upon her patch of sunlight and was +gone; the shadow of some bird flying higher than they, a crow, perhaps. +It was just after this that she noticed, near that advancing and +retiring wedge of sunlight at her feet, something else. This was a +little oval hole in the floor of the platform. A hole for observation. +It brought home to her how frail a floor supported her weight and his; +still she felt no terror; only wonder. She smiled under her mufflings, +thinking that hole was like a knot-hole in a wooden bridge over the +river at home. As a small child she had always been fascinated by that +hole, and had gazed down through it at the rushing bottle-green water +and the bubbles and the boulders below. She glanced down this one, but +her unaccustomed eyes could hardly see anything. She leaned forward and +looked down below the machine, but still could distinguish little. +Woods, roads, meadows, or whatever they were crossing, were still only a +warm and moving blur. Once they passed, quickly, a big patch of pink and +purple, she thought it might be a town, but wasn't sure. + +She sat up again in her seat, giving herself up to her own feelings in +this new and breathless experience; her feelings, that were as +undistinguishable as the landscape over which the biplane swept--a warm +blur of delights. + +She gripped the stays; she laughed happily to herself behind the +mufflings, she even sang aloud, knowing that it was drowned in the noise +of the engine. She hummed the sheerest medley of scraps of things, tags +of Musical Comedy picked up at Westminster--some verses out of Leslie's +love-songs. Once it was the then universal "Tipperary." And presently it +resolved itself into a Welsh folk-song that the singing-class at her +school had practised over and over again--"The Rising of the Lark," a +blithely defiant tune that seemed best to match her mood as the biplane +sped. + +Yes! All the bird-like, soaring spirit in her had come to its own. +Everything else was cast behind her.... She'd always felt, dimly and +uncomfortably, that a great part of herself, Gwenna, was just an +uninteresting, commonplace little girl.... That part had gone! It had +been left behind her, just as her bodily form had been left sleeping on +her bed, that midsummer night, while her soul flew through dreams. + +"Dreams!" she thought incoherently. "It's _not_ true what people say +about the dream-come-true, and how one's always disappointed in it. I'm +not--ah, I'm not! This flying! This is more glorious than I +expected--even with _him_----!" + +Then came a thought that checked her singing rapture. + +"If only _he_ knew! But he doesn't." + +Behind her, Paul, driving, had made no sign to the passenger. She could +guess at the busyness of him. His dear, strong hands, she knew, were on +the wheel. They were giving a touch to the throttle here and there. His +feet, too, must be vigilantly busy; now this one doing something +essential, now that. She supposed his whole body must be dipping from +time to time, just as that triangle of sunlight dipped and crept. It +was all automatic to him, she expected. He could work that machine +while he was thinking, just as she herself could knit and think. + +"He's thinking of me," she told herself with a rueful little pang. "He's +wondering about my not saying good-bye. He must have minded that. +That'll be all right, though. I'll let him know, presently; I'll pull +down my muffler and look round. Presently. Not yet. Not until it's too +late for him to turn back or set me down----" + +And again she hummed to herself in her little tune; inaudible, exultant. +The shining triangle of sunlight disappeared from the platform. All +became level light about her. It seemed growing colder. And beyond her, +far ahead, she spied a sweep of monotonous grey. + +She guessed what that meant. + +"The sea!" she told herself, thrilled. "We'll be flying over the sea +soon. _Then_ he can't do anything about sending me back. Then I shall +put up these goggles and push this cap off my curls. Then he'll see. +He'll know that it's me that's flying with him!" And she held away from +herself that thought that even so this flight could not last for ever, +there would be the descent in France, the good-bye that she had +evaded--No! It must last! + +Again she forgot all else in the rushing joy of it. + +Suddenly she felt something jolt hard against her left arm, for the +first time Paul was trying to attract his passenger's attention. Twice +her arm was jolted by something. Then she put out her brown gloved hand +to it, grasping what had jolted her. She drew it forward as he loosed it +to her clutch. + +It was a gun; a carbine. + +What--Why----? + +She remembered something that she had heard Paul say, dim ages ago, when +she had watched him in the office, consulting with the Aeroplane Lady +over that machine-gun with that wicked-looking little nozzle that he had +decided not to mount upon the P.D.Q. + +"_It'll have to be a rifle after all._" + +Little Gwenna in her brown disguise sat with this rifle across her +knees, wondering. + +Why did Paul wish Mr. Ryan to be armed with this? Why hadn't he handed +over that carbine just when they were about to start? Why only now, just +when they had got as far as the sea? + +For she was certain now that what was below them was the sea. There was +a bright, silvery glitter to the right, but the floating floor of the +biplane shut that out again. To the left all was of a slaty grey. The +sun's level rays shot along the length of the biplane as if it were down +a gallery. + +Gwenna sat there, holding that carbine across her brown wrapped knees, +and still puzzling over it. Why had Paul handed the thing over, so +suddenly? She could not see the reason. + + +Even when it appeared she did not at first see the reason. + +Paul Dampier had been quicker to see it than she. + +Of a sudden there broke out--there is no other word for it--a silence +more startling than all that harsh raving of the propeller that had been +stopped. At the same instant Gwenna felt the floor fall away suddenly on +her left and mount as dizzily on her right. The biplane was tilted up in +the air just as a ladder is tilted against the side of the house. And +the engine was giving short staccato roars into the silences as Paul +kept her going. He had shut off, and was making a giddy swoop down, down +to the left. She heard his voice. Sharply he cried out: + +"There! Out to the left! The Taube! There he is!" + +The next moment the engine was roaring again. The biplane had lifted to +the opposite curve of a swooping figure eight. + +And now the girl in the passenger-seat saw in the air beside them, +scarcely two hundred yards away, what the pilot had seen. + +It was another aeroplane; a monoplane. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE WINGED VICTORY + + +Now Gwenna, although she'd been clerk and assistant to the Aeroplane +Lady herself, and although she loved the idea of aeroplanes as other +girls have loved the idea of jewels, scarcely knew one pattern of +monoplane from another. + +They were all the same to her as far as overlapping the seams with the +doped strips was concerned. Nevertheless, in this machine that seemed +suddenly to have appeared out of nowhere, there struck her something +that was quite unfamiliar. Never before had she seen that little +blade-shaped drag from the tips of the wings. It gave to this machine +the look of a flying pigeon.... She had only noticed it for a moment, as +the monoplane had lurched, as it were, into view over the edge of their +own lower plane. Then it lurched out of sight again. + +Again their engine was shut off; and again she heard Paul's voice, +excited, curt. + +"Can you get him, do you think?" + +Get him? Bewilderingly she wondered what Paul could mean. Then came +another staccato rush of sound. Then another silence, and Paul's voice +through it. + +"All right. I'll get above him; and you can shoot through the floor." + +The engine brayed again, this time continuously. + +"Shoot!" gasped Gwenna. + +Shoot at that machine through the hole in the floor of this one? It was +a German craft, then? And Paul meant Mr. Ryan to shoot whoever was in +that machine. And she, Gwenna, who had never had a gun in her hands +before in her life, found herself in the midst of War, told to shoot---- + +Hardly knowing one end of the thing from the other, she grasped the +carbine. She guessed that the flyer in the other machine must have +realised what Paul meant to do. + +They were rising; he was rising too. + +And suddenly she became aware that there was sunlight about them no +longer. All was a dun and chilly white. Paul, trying to get above the +other, and the other trying to prevent him, had both run up together +into a cloud. Once before the Welsh girl had had this experience. On a +rocky mountain-path up Cader Idris she had walked into a thick mist that +wrapped her from seeing anything in front of her, even though she could +hear the voices of tourists just a little ahead. + +And now here they saw nothing, but they could hear. + +Even through the noise of their propeller Gwenna's ears caught a smaller +noise. It seemed to come from just below. + +She had got the muzzle of the carbine through the hole at her feet. +Desperately, blindly she fumbled at what she thought must be the +trigger. Behind her goggles, she shut her eyes tightly. The thing went +off before she knew how it had done so. + +Then, nothing.... + +Then the propeller had stopped again. She felt her shoulder touched +from behind. Paul's voice called, "Got him, Ryan?" + +"I--I don't know," she gasped, turning. "I--_Paul! It's me!_" + +It was a wonder that the biplane did not completely overturn. + +Paul Dampier had wrenched himself forward out of the straps and had +taken one hand from the wheel. His other clutched Gwenna's shoulder, and +the clutch dragged away the muffler at her white throat and her goggles +slipped aside. Aghast he glared at her. The Little Thing herself? Here? + +"Good---- here, keep still. Great----! For Heaven's sake, don't move. +I'll run for it. He can't catch me. I was trying to catch him. He can't +touch us---- We'll race--hold tight, Gwen--ready." He opened the throttle +again; while Gwenna, white-faced, took in the tornado of wind with +parted lips and turned sideways to stare with wide-open eyes. + +Then a number of things seemed to happen very quickly. + +The first of these was a sharp "Ping!" on one of the aluminium stays. +Gwenna found herself gazing blankly at the round hole in the wing a yard +to the right of her. The next thing was that the fog--mist--or cloud, +had disappeared. All was clear sky about them once more. The third thing +was that, hardly a stone's toss away, and only missed by a miracle in +the cloud, they saw the monoplane and the aviator in her. + +He was bareheaded, for that blind, wild shot of the British girl's had +stripped away his head-covering, and there was a trickle of scarlet down +his cheek. His hair was a gilded stubble, his eyes hard and blue and +Teutonic. His flying-gear was buttoned plastron-wise above his chest, +just as that white linen jacket of his had been; and Karl Becker, +waiter, spy and aviator, gave a little nod, as much as to say that he +recognised that they were meeting not for the first time.... + +One glimpse showed all this. The next instant both German and Englishman +had turned to avoid the imminent collision. But the German did more than +turn. + +He had been fired on and hit; now was his shot. Dampier, with no thought +now but to get his wife out of danger, crowded the biplane on. As the +machines missed one another by hardly ten feet, she heard the four +cracks of Paul's revolver. + +Little Gwenna thought she had never heard anything so fascinating, +horrible, and sweet. He was fighting not for his own life only. And he +was not now being fired at, far from her, hoping that she need never +know. For she also, she was in danger with him; she who did not want to +die before him but who would not wish to live for one moment after him. + +Moments? When every moment was a whole life, what could be more +perilously, unimaginedly sweet than this? + +"I knew I had to come," she gasped to herself. "Never away from him +again! Never----" + +Her heart was racing like the propeller itself with just such speed, +such power. More love than it could bear was crowded into every throb of +it. For one more of those moments that were more than years she must +look at him and see him look at her.... + +One look! + +As they tore through the air she turned in her straps, pushing the curls +back from her brow. Her eyes met his, set and intent over the wheel. + +She smiled at him. + +Up out of the depths of his intentness she saw the answering smile come +into his own eyes. He nodded. He meant that it was all right. His lips +moved. + +"He can't--touch--us!" he was shouting. His girl threw back her head as +far as it would go, offering her face for the kiss that she knew he +could not give. He nodded again, laughed outright, and stretched his own +head forward. It was all a kiss, despite the constraining straps--or +almost all. + +More of a kiss than many lovers know, more of a marriage! + +For then it was that the German's shot rang out, completing their +caress. Never was dearer nor more precious union, never less pain, so +lost was it in rapture. As gently as if he had only just said Good-night +the boy's head sank on the wheel; as for hers, it never moved. She still +lay, leaning back with lips parted, as if to-morrow would see her kissed +awake again.... His hands twitched once only. That movement cut off the +throttle. Again, for the last time, the propeller stopped. + +The Taube was already a vanishing speck in the distance.... + +The P.D.Q. yawed, hung poised, began to slide tail first, and gathered +speed. + +Up, up came the silver waves of the English Channel. + + + + +POSTSCRIPT + +MYRTLE AND LAUREL LEAF + + +It was the week before Christmas, Nineteen-fourteen. + +London wore her dreariest winter livery of mud-brown and fog-yellow, and +at three o'clock on such an afternoon there would have been brilliant +lights everywhere ... any other, ordinary year. + +This year, Londoners had to find their way as best they could through +the gloom. + +Across a wide Square with a railed and shrubberied garden in the centre +of it, there picked her way a very tall girl in furs that clung about +her as bushy ivy hangs about some slender tree. She wore a dark velvet +coat broadly belted over her strait hips, and upon her impish head there +was perched one of the little, back velvet, half-military caps that were +still the mode. This girl peered up at the numbers of the great houses +at the side of the Square; finally, seeing the gilt-lettered inscription +that she sought above one of the doors, + + "ANNEXE TO THE CONVALESCENT HOME + FOR WOUNDED OFFICERS," + +she rang the bell. + +The door was opened to her by a small trim damsel in the garb of the +Girl-Guides, who ushered her into a large and ornate hall, and into the +presence of a fresh-coloured, fair-haired Personage--she was evidently +no less--in nurse's uniform. + +This Personage gazed upon the visitor with a suspicious and disapproving +look. + +"I wonder why? It isn't because I'm not blamelessly tidy for once in my +life, and she can't guess that the furs and the brown velvet suit are +cast-offs from the opulent," thought the visitor swiftly. Aloud she +added in her clear, nonchalant tone: "I have come to see Mr. Scott, +please." + +"There is the visiting-hour. It is not quite three yet," said the nurse +forbiddingly. + +"I'll wait, then," said the visitor. For two minutes she waited. Then +the nurse approached her with a note-book and a pencil. + +"Will you write your name down here?" she said austerely. And upon a +page inscribed "_Mr. M. Scott_" the visitor wrote her name, "Miss Leslie +Long." + +"Will you come up?" the nurse said reluctantly. And Leslie ascended a +broad red-carpeted stairway, and was shown into a great room of parquet +floors and long windows and painted panels that had been a drawing-room, +and that was now turned by a row of small beds on great castors and by +several screens into a hospital-ward. + +A blonde youth in a pink pyjama jacket, and with his arm in a black +silken sling, was sitting up in bed and chatting to a white-moustached +gentleman beside him; another of the wounded was sitting by one of the +great fire-places, reading; a couple were playing picquet in a corner, +under a smiling Academy portrait of the mistress of the mansion. + +"Mr. Scott is sitting up to-day, in the ante-room," vouchsafed the +nurse. And Leslie Long entered, through a connecting door, a small room +to the right. + +One wall of it was hung with a drapery of ancient brown tapestry, +showing giant figures amidst giant foliage; beneath it was a low couch. +Upon this, covered with a black, panther-skin rug, there lay, half +sitting up, supported on his elbow, the young wounded officer whom +Leslie had come to see. + +"Frightfully good of you, this," he said cheerfully, as she appeared. + +She looked down at him. + +For the moment she could not speak. She set down on his couch the sheaf +of golden chrysanthemums that she had brought, and the copy of the +_Natal Newsletter_ that she had thought might cheer him. She found +herself about to say a very foolish thing: "So they left you your +handsome eyes, Monty." + +The face in which those eyes shone now was thin and drawn; and it seemed +as if all the blood had been drained from it. His crutches stood in the +corner at the foot of the couch. He was Monty Scott, the Dean's son, +once a medical student and would-be sculptor. Yes; he had been a +dilettante artist once, but he looked a thorough soldier now. The small +moustache and the close-cropped hair suited him well. He had enlisted in +the Halberdiers at the beginning of the War. He had got his commission +and had lost his leg at Ypres. + +Not again would he wear that Black Panther get-up to any fancy-dress +dance.... Never again. + +This was the thought, trivial and irrelevant enough, that flashed +through Leslie's mind, bringing with it a rush of tears that she had to +bite her lips to check. She had to clench her nails into her palms, to +open her black eyes widely and smilingly, and to speak in the clearest +and most flippant tone that she could summon. + +"Hullo, Monty! Nice to see you again; now that I _can_ see you. You +wounded warriors _are_ guarded by a dragon!--thanks, I'll sit down +here." She turned the low chair by the couch with its back to the light. +"Yes, I could hardly get your Ministering-Angel-Thou to let me through. +Glared at me as if she thought I was after the spoons. (I suppose that's +exactly what some of them _are_ after," suggested Miss Long, laughing +quite naturally.) "She evidently took me for just another predatory +feline come to send the patient's temperature soaring upwards. It's not +often I'm crushed, but----" + +"Oh, Nurse Elsa is all right," said the patient, laughing too. "You +know, I think she feels bound to be careful about new people. She seems +to have a mania for imagining that everybody fresh may be a German spy!" + +"A _German_? Why should she think that?" + +"Oh, possibly because--well----" Young Scott lowered his voice and +glanced towards that connecting door. But it had been shut. "Because she +happens to be 'naturalised' herself, you know!" + +They talked; Leslie ever more lightly as she was more deeply touched by +the sight of the young man on his couch. So helpless, he who had been so +full of movement and fitness and supple youth! So pluckily, resolutely +gay, he who had been so early put out of the fun! + +Lightly he told Leslie the bare details of his wound. It had been in a +field of beet that he had been pipped; when he had been seeing to some +barbed wire with a sergeant and a couple of his men, at nightfall. One +of those snipers had got him. + +"And I was downed in a second," he said ruefully. "_I_ couldn't get the +beggar!" + +Leslie thought of the young, mortally-wounded Mercutio and his impatient +cry of "_What! Is he gone, and hath nothing?_" It was the only complaint +at his lot that was ever to pass the lips of this other fighter. + +She looked at him, and her heart swelled with pride for him. It sank +with shame for herself. She had always held him--well, not as lightly as +she said she had. There had been always the sneaking tenderness for the +tall, infatuated boy whom she'd laughed at. But why "sneaking"? Why had +she laughed? She had thought him so much less than herself. She said she +knew so much more. What vanity and crass, superficial folly! A new +thrill took her suddenly. Could it be that War, that had cut everybody's +life in two, had worked another wonder? + +Presently he remarked, "I say, your friends, the poor Dampiers! I +suppose nothing's ever been heard of them, after that day that they +found out at the Works that his wife had started with him, when he set +off for France, and disappeared?" + +"Nothing," said Leslie quietly, "Whether it was an accident with his new +engine, or whether they were killed by a shot from a German aeroplane +they met, we shan't ever know now. It must have been over the sea.... +Nothing has ever been found. Much the best way, I think. I said so to +poor young Mr. Ryan, the man who let her take his place. He was beside +himself when he turned up at the Aircraft place again and found that +nothing had been heard. He said he'd killed her. I told him she would +think he'd done more for her than anybody she knew. The best time to go +out! No growing old and growing dull and perhaps growing ill and being +kept half alive by bothering doctors, for years.... No growing out of +love with each other, ever! They, at least, have had something that +nothing can spoil." + +Monty Scott, turning his small, close-cropped head of a soldier and his +white face towards the tapestry, blurted out: "Well! At all events +they've _had_ it. But even having it 'spoilt' is better than never +having had any----" + +He checked himself abruptly. + +He was not going to whine now over his own ill-luck in love to her, to +Leslie, who had turned him down three times. Not much. + +In the suddenly tense atmosphere of the little room overlooking the +wide, dim Square, the girl felt the young man's resolution--a +resolution that he would keep. He would never ask her for another +favour. + +He cleared his throat and spoke in an altered tone, casual, +matter-of-fact. + +"Awfully pretty, the little girl that Dampier married, wasn't she? +Usen't she to live at that Club of yours? I think I saw her once, +somewhere or other----" + +"Yes. You did," said Leslie quickly, and a little breathlessly as though +she, too, had just taken a resolution. "At that dance. That river dance. +She was the Cherub-girl. And I wore my mauve Nijinski things. You +remember that time, Monty?" + +"Oh, yes," said the wounded man shortly, "I remember." + +There was a slight, uneasy movement under the panther-skin rug. + +He hadn't thought that Leslie would have reminded him of those times. +Not of that dance, when, with his hands on her hips and her hands +clasped at the back of his neck, he had swung round with her in the +maddest of waltzes.... He wouldn't have expected her to _remind_ him! + +Nor was he expecting the next thing that Leslie did. She slipped from +that low chair on to her knees by the couch. Her furs touched his hand, +delicate and whiter now than a woman's, and he took it quickly away. He +could not look at the vivid, impish face with the black, mocking eyes +and the red, mocking mouth that had always bewitched him. Had he looked, +he would have seen that the mockery was gone from both. It was gone, +too, from Leslie's voice when she next spoke, close to him. + +"Monty! At that dance---- Have you forgotten? We were walking by the +river--and you said--you asked----" + +"Yes, yes; all right. Please don't mind," muttered the man who had been +the Black Panther hastily. It was pretty awful, having girls _sorry_ for +one! + +She went on kneeling by him. "I told you that I wasn't in the mood!" + +"Yes; but--I say, it doesn't matter one scrap, thanks," declared Monty +Scott, very hoarsely. + +This was the hardest thing he'd ever yet had to bear; harder than lying +out wounded in that wet beetroot-field for nine hours before he could be +picked up; harder than the pain, the agonising, jolting journeys; harder +even than the sleepless nights when he had tossed and turned on his bed, +next to the bed where a delirious man who had won the D.S.O. cried out +in his nightmare unceasingly: "Stick it, boys! Stick it, boys! Stick it, +boys!" He (Monty) didn't think he could stick this. There could never be +any one in the world but Leslie for him, that laughing, devil-may-care +Leslie at whom "nice" girls looked askance. Leslie who didn't care. +Leslie who _pitied_ him! Ghastly! Desperately he wished she'd get up and +go--_go_---- + +Suddenly her voice sounded in his ear. Far from being pitying it was so +petulant as to convince even him. It cried: "Monty! I said then that +you were an infant-in-arms! If you weren't an infant you could _see_!" + +He turned his head quickly on the couch-cushion. But even then he didn't +really see. Even then he scarcely took in, for the moment, what he +heard. + +For the kneeling, radiant girl had to go on, laughing shakily: "I always +liked you.... After everything I said! After everything I've thought, it +comes round to this. _It's better to have loved and settled down than +never to have loved at all.... Oh!_ I've got my head into as bright a +rainbow as any of them!..." scolded Leslie, laughing again as +flutteringly as Paul Ðampier's sweetheart might have done. "Oh, I +thought that just because one liked a man in the kind of way I liked +you, it was no reason to accept him ... _fool_ that I was----" + +"Leslie!" he cried very sharply, scarcely believing his ears. "Could you +have?--_could_ you? And you tell me _now_! When it's too late----" + +"Too _late_? _Won't_ you have me? Can't you see that I think you so much +more of a man when you're getting about as well as you can on one leg +than I did when you were just dancing and fooling about on two? As for +me----" + +She turned her bright face away. + +"It's the same old miracle that never stops happening. I shan't even be +a woman, ever," faltered Leslie Long, "unless you help to make me one!" + +"You can't mean it? You can't----" + +"Can't I? I am 'in the mood' _now_, Monty!" she said, very softly. +"Believe me!" + +And her long arm was flung, gently and carefully, about her soldier's +neck; her lips were close to his. + + * * * * * + +When at last she left her lover, Leslie Long walked down the darkened +streets near Victoria, quietly and meditatively. And her thoughts were +only partly with the man whom she had left so happy. Partly they were +claimed by the girl-friend whose marriage morning wish had been for her, +Leslie, to be happy in the same way. + +It seemed to Leslie that she was very near her now. + +Even as she walked along the tall girl was conscious, in a way not to be +described, of a Presence that seemed to follow her and to beset her and +to surround her with a sense of loving, laughing, girlish pleasure and +fellowship. She saw, _without seeing_, the small, eager, tip-tilted face +with bright eyes of river-green and brown, crowned by the wreath of +short, thick curls. _Without hearing_, she caught the tone of the soft, +un-English, delighted voice that cried, "Oh, _Les_--lie----!" + + +"Little Taffy! She'd be so full of it, of course.... Of _course_ she'd +be glad! Of _course_ she'd know; I can't think she doesn't. Not she, who +was so much in love herself," mused Leslie, putting up her hand with her +characteristic gesture to tuck in the stray tress of black hair that had +come loose under her trim velvet cap. + +"And the people we've loved can't forget at once, as soon as they've +left us. I don't believe that. _She knows._ If _I_ could only say +something--send some sort of message! Even if it were only like waving a +hand! If _I_ could make some sign that I shall always care----" + +As she thought of it she was passing a row of shops. The subdued light +from one of them fell upon swinging garlands of greenery festooned +outside; decorations ready for Christmas. + +On an impulse Leslie Long turned into this florist's shop. "I want one +of those wreaths you have, please," she said. + +"Yes, Madam; a holly-wreath?" + +"No. One of those. Laurel." + +And while the man fetched down the wreath of broad, dark, pointed +leaves, Leslie Long took out one of her cards and a pencil, and +scribbled the message that she presently fastened to the wreath. She +would not have it wrapped up in paper, but carried it as it was. Then +she turned down a side-street to the Embankment, near Vauxhall Bridge. +She leaned over the parapet and saw the black, full tide, here and there +only jewelled with lights, flowing on, on, past the spanning bridges and +the town, away to the sea that had been at last the great, silver, +restless resting-place for such young and ardent hearts.... + +There was a soft splash as she flung the laurel wreath into the flowing +water. + +Leslie glanced over and watched it carried swiftly past. In a patch of +light she saw the tiny white gleam of the card that was tied to the +leaves of victory. + +This was what she had written upon it: + + "For Gwenna and Paul. + + '_Envy, ah, even to tears! + The fortune of their years, + Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended._'" + + +THE END + + + * * * * * + + + + +Popular Copyright Novels + +_AT MODERATE PRICES_ + +Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + + =Abner Daniel.= By Will N. Harben. + =Adventures of Gerard.= By A. Conan Doyle. + =Adventures of a Modest Man.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.= By A. Conan Doyle. + =Adventures of Jimmie Dale, The.= By Frank L. Packard. + =After House, The.= By Mary Roberts Rinehart. + =Alisa Paige.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Alton of Somasco.= By Harold Bindloss. + =A Man's Man.= By Ian Hay. + =Amateur Gentleman, The.= By Jeffery Farnol. + =Andrew The Glad.= By Maria Thompson Daviess. + =Ann Boyd.= By Will N. Harben. + =Anna the Adventuress.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Another Man's Shoes.= By Victor Bridges. + =Ariadne of Allan Water.= By Sidney McCall. + =Armchair at the Inn, The.= By F. Hopkinson Smith. + =Around Old Chester.= By Margaret Deland. + =Athalie.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =At the Mercy of Tiberius.= By Augusta Evans Wilson. + =Auction Block, The.= By Rex Beach. + =Aunt Jane.= By Jeanette Lee. + =Aunt Jane of Kentucky.= By Eliza C. Hall. + =Awakening of Helena Richie.= By Margaret Deland. + + =Bambi.= By Marjorie Benton Cooke. + =Bandbox, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance. + =Barbara of the Snows.= By Harry Irving Green. + =Bar 20.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =Bar 20 Days.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =Barrier, The.= By Rex Beach. + =Beasts of Tarzan, The.= By Edgar Rice Burroughs. + =Beechy.= By Bettina Von Hutten. + =Bella Donna.= By Robert Hichens. + =Beloved Vagabond, The.= By Wm. J. Locke. + =Beltane the Smith.= By Jeffery Farnol. + =Ben Blair.= By Will Lillibridge. + =Betrayal, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Better Man, The.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady. + =Beulah.= (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans. + =Beyond the Frontier.= By Randall Parrish. + =Black Is White.= By George Barr McCutcheon. + =Blind Man's Eyes, The.= By Wm. MacHarg & Edwin Balmer. + =Bob Hampton of Placer.= By Randall Parrish. + =Bob, Son of Battle.= By Alfred Ollivant. + =Britton of the Seventh.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady. + =Broad Highway, The.= By Jeffery Farnol. + =Bronze Bell, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance. + =Bronze Eagle, The.= By Baroness Orczy. + =Buck Peters, Ranchman.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =Business of Life, The.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =By Right of Purchase.= By Harold Bindloss. + + =Cabbages and Kings.= By O. Henry. + =Calling of Dan Matthews, The.= By Harold Bell Wright. + =Cape Cod Stories.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Cap'n Dan's Daughter.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Cap'n Eri.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Cap'n Warren's Wards.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Cardigan.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Carpet From Bagdad, The.= By Harold MacGrath. + =Cease Firing.= By Mary Johnson. + =Chain of Evidence, A.= By Carolyn Wells. + =Chief Legatee, The.= By Anna Katharine Green. + =Cleek of Scotland Yard.= By T. W. Hanshew. + =Clipped Wings.= By Rupert Hughes. + =Coast of Adventure, The.= By Harold Bindloss. + =Colonial Free Lance, A.= By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. + =Coming of Cassidy, The.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =Coming of the Law, The.= By Chas. A. Seltzer. + =Conquest of Canaan, The.= By Booth Tarkington. + =Conspirators, The.= By Robt. W. Chambers. + =Counsel for the Defense.= By Leroy Scott. + =Court of Inquiry, A.= By Grace S. Richmond. + =Crime Doctor, The.= By E. W. Hornung. + =Crimson Gardenia, The, and Other Tales of Adventure.= By Rex Beach. + =Cross Currents.= By Eleanor H. Porter. + =Cry in the Wilderness, A.= By Mary E. Waller. + =Cynthia of the Minute.= By Louis Jos. Vance. + + =Dark Hollow, The.= By Anna Katharine Green. + =Dave's Daughter.= By Patience Bevier Cole. + =Day of Days, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance. + =Day of the Dog, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon. + =Depot Master, The.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Desired Woman, The.= By Will N. Harben. + =Destroying Angel, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance. + =Dixie Hart.= By Will N. Harben. + =Double Traitor, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Drusilla With a Million.= By Elizabeth Cooper. + + =Eagle of the Empire, The.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady. + =El Dorado.= By Baroness Orczy. + =Elusive Isabel.= By Jacques Futrelle. + =Empty Pockets.= By Rupert Hughes. + =Enchanted Hat, The.= By Harold MacGrath. + =Eye of Dread, The.= By Payne Erskine. + =Eyes of the World, The.= By Harold Bell Wright. + + =Felix O'Day.= By F. Hopkinson Smith. + =50-40 or Fight.= By Emerson Hough. + =Fighting Chance, The.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Financier, The.= By Theodore Dreiser. + =Flamsted Quarries.= By Mary E. Waller. + =Flying Mercury, The.= By Eleanor M. Ingram. + =For a Maiden Brave.= By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. + =Four Million, The.= By O. Henry. + =Four Pool's Mystery, The.= By Jean Webster. + =Fruitful Vine, The.= By Robert Hichens. + + =Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.= By George Randolph Chester. + =Gilbert Neal.= By Will N. Harben. + =Girl From His Town, The.= By Marie Van Vorst. + =Girl of the Blue Ridge, A.= By Payne Erskine. + =Girl Who lived in the Woods, The.= By Marjorie Benton Cook. + =Girl Who Won, The.= By Beth Ellis. + =Glory of Clementina, The.= By Wm. J. Locke. + =Glory of the Conquered, The.= By Susan Glaspell. + =God's Country and the Woman.= By James Oliver Curwood. + =God's Good Man.= By Marie Corelli. + =Going Some.= By Rex Beach. + =Gold Bag, The.= By Carolyn Wells. + =Golden Slipper, The.= By Anna Katharine Green. + =Golden Web, The.= By Anthony Partridge. + =Gordon Craig.= By Randall Parrish. + =Greater Love Hath No Man.= By Frank L. Packard. + =Greyfriars Bobby.= By Eleanor Atkinson. + =Guests of Hercules, The.= By C. N. & A. M. Williamson. + + =Halcyone.= By Elinor Glyn. + =Happy Island= (Sequel to Uncle William). By Jeannette Lee. + =Havoc.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Heart of Philura, The.= By Florence Kingsley. + =Heart of the Desert, The.= By Honoré Willsie. + =Heart of the Hills, The.= By John Fox, Jr. + =Heart of the Sunset.= By Rex Beach. + =Heart of Thunder Mountain, The.= By Elfrid A. Bingham. + =Heather-Moon, The.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson. + =Her Weight in Gold.= By Geo. B. McCutcheon. + =Hidden Children, The.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Hoosier Volunteer, The.= By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles. + =Hopalong Cassidy.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =How Leslie Loved.= By Anne Warner. + =Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker.= By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D. + =Husbands of Edith, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon. + + =I Conquered.= By Harold Titus. + =Illustrious Prince, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Idols.= By William J. Locke. + =Indifference of Juliet, The.= By Grace S. Richmond. + =Inez.= (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans. + =Infelice.= By Augusta Evans Wilson. + =In Her Own Right.= By John Reed Scott. + =Initials Only.= By Anna Katharine Green. + =In Another Girl's Shoes.= By Berta Ruck. + =Inner Law, The.= By Will N. Harben. + =Innocent.= By Marie Corelli. + =Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, The.= By Sax Rohmer. + =In the Brooding Wild.= By Ridgwell Cullum. + =Intrigues, The.= By Harold Bindloss. + =Iron Trail, The.= By Rex Beach. + =Iron Woman, The.= By Margaret Deland. + =Ishmael= (Ill.) By Mrs. Southworth. + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: + + +1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_ and the ones in +bold are indicated by =bold=. + +2. Obvious punctuation errors have been silently closed, while those +requiring interpretation have been left as such. + +3. The word manoeuvres uses an oe ligature in the original. + +4. The following misprints have been corrected: + "kimona" corrected to "kimono" (page 21) + "beseiged" corrected to "besieged" (page 62) + "Esctasy" corrected to "Ecstasy" (page 242) + "ass" corrected to "as" (page 277) + "husabnd" corrected to "husband" (page 353) + +5. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in +spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boy with Wings, by Berta Ruck + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY WITH WINGS *** + +***** This file should be named 36223-8.txt or 36223-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/2/2/36223/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Boy with Wings + +Author: Berta Ruck + +Release Date: May 27, 2011 [EBook #36223] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY WITH WINGS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + + +<h1>THE BOY<br />WITH WINGS</h1> + +<h1><span class="smcap">Berta Ruck</span></h1> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 466px;"> +<img src="images/cover01.jpg" width="466" height="640" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + + +<p> </p> +<h3>THE BOY WITH WINGS</h3> +<p> </p> + + + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 410px;"> +<img src="images/tp01.png" width="410" height="640" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<div class="bbox"> + +<div class="bbox1"> +<h1>The<br /> +Boy With Wings</h1> +</div> + +<div class="bbox1"> +<h3>By BERTA RUCK<br /> +<small>(MRS. OLIVER ONIONS)</small></h3> +</div> + +<div class="bbox1"> +<h5>AUTHOR OF<br /> + +"His Official Fiancée,"<br /> +"The Wooing of Rosamond Fayre,"<br /> +"In Another Girl's Shoes," Etc.</h5> +</div> + +<div class="bbox1"> +<h4>A. L. BURT COMPANY<br /> +Publishers New York</h4> + +<h5>Published by arrangement with <span class="smcap">Dodd, Mead & Company</span></h5> +</div> +</div> + + +<h5><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1915,<br /> +By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY<br /> +<br /> +Published in England under the title of<br /> +"The Lad With Wings."</h5> + +<hr style="width: 15%;" /> + +<h4>DEDICATED, WITH AFFECTION<br /> +TO THAT BRAINLESS ARMY TYPE.<br /> +MY YOUNGEST BROTHER</h4> + + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='left'>"The men of my own stock</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> Bitter-bad they may be,</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'>But at least they hear the things I hear.</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> They see the things I see."</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'><span class="smcap">Kipling.</span></td></tr> +</table></div> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr><td align='center' colspan='3'><a href="#PART_I"><b>PART I</b></a><br /><i>MAY, JUNE, JULY, 1914</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='left' colspan='2'><small>CHAPTER</small></td><td align='right'><small>PAGE</small></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>I</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Aerial Light Horse</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>II</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Bosom-chums</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_19">19</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>III</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Eyes of Icarus</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IV</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Song of All the Ages</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>V</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Workaday World</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_62">62</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VI</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Invitation</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_71">71</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VII</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Bachelor's Tea-party</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_75">75</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VIII</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Laughing Odds</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IX</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Day in the Country</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_89">89</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>X</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Leslie, on "The Roots of the Rose"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XI</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Heels of Mercury</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_122">122</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XII</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Kiss Withheld</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_128">128</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XIII</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Flying Dream</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_144">144</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XIV</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">An Awakening</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XV</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Leslie on "Too Much Love"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XVI</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Aeroplane Lady</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_178">178</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XVII</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Leslie on "Marriage"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XVIII</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Obvious Thing</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_193">193</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XIX</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Sealed Box</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_212">212</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='center' colspan='3'><br /><a href="#PART_II"><b>PART II</b></a><br /><i>JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>I</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Aviation Dinner</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_223">223</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>II</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Whisper of War</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_235">235</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>III</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Last Sunday of Peace</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_241">241</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IV</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">That Week-end</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_259">259</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>V</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Die is Cast</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_265">265</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VI</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Her Guardian's Consent</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_267">267</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VII</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Haste to the Wedding!</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_280">280</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VIII</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Girl He Left Behind Him</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_293">293</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IX</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">This Side of "the Front"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_300">300</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>X</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Leslie, on "The Motley of Mars"</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_310">310</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>XI</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Love-letter—and a Rose</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_321">321</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='center' colspan='3'><br /><a href="#PART_III"><b>PART III</b></a><br /><i>SEPTEMBER, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>I</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A War-time Honeymoon</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_335">335</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>II</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Soul of Undine</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_345">345</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>III</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">A Last Favour</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_350">350</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>IV</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Departure for France</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_361">361</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>V</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Nuptial Flight</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_364">364</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>VI</td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">The Winged Victory</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_370">370</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'></td><td align='left'><span class="smcap">Postscript—Myrtle and Laurel Leaf</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_376">376</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p> +<h1><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I<br /> +<br /> +<i>MAY, JUNE, JULY, 1914</i></h1> + + + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>AERIAL LIGHT HORSE</h3> + + +<p>Hendon!</p> + +<p>An exquisite May afternoon, still and sunny. Above, a canopy of +unflecked sapphire-blue. Below, the broad khaki-green expanse of the +flying-ground, whence the tall, red-white-and-blue pylons pointed giant +fingers to the sky.</p> + +<p>Against the iron railings of the ground the border of chairs was +thronged with spectators; women and girls in summery frocks, men in +light overcoats with field-glasses slung by a strap about them. The +movement of this crowd was that of a breeze in a drift of coloured +petals; the talk and laughter rose and fell as people looked about at +the great sheds with their huge lettered names, at the big stand, at the +parked-up motors behind the seats; at the men in uniform carrying their +brass instruments slowly across to the bandstand on the left.</p> + +<p>At intervals everybody said to everybody else: "Isn't this just a +perfect afternoon for the flying?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>Presently, there passed the turnstile entrance at the back of the parked +motor-cars a group of three young girls, chattering together.</p> + +<p>One was in pink; one was in cornflower-blue. The +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span> +girl who walked between them wore all white, with a sunshine-yellow jersey-coat +flung over her arm. Crammed well down upon her head she wore a shady white +hat, bristling with a flight of white wings; it seemed to overshadow the +whole of her small compact, but supple little person, which was finished +off by a pair of tiny, white-canvas-shod feet. She was the youngest as +well as the smallest of the trio standing at the turnstile. (Observe +her, if you please; then leave or follow her, for she is the Girl of +this story.)</p> + +<p>"This is my show!" she declared. Her softly-modulated voice had a trace +of Welsh accent as she added, "I'm paying for this, indeed!"</p> + +<p>"No, you aren't, then, Gwenna Williams!" protested the girl in pink +(whose accent was Higher Cockney). "We were all to pay for ourselves!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; but wasn't it me that made you come into the half-crown places +because I was so keen to see a flying-machine <i>close</i>?... I'll pay the +difference then, if you <i>must</i> make a fuss. We'll settle up at the +office on Monday," said the girl who had been addressed as Gwenna +Williams.</p> + +<p>With a girlish, self-conscious little gesture she took half a sovereign +out of her wash-leather glove and handed it to the tall, be-medalledd +commissionaire.</p> + +<p>"Come on, now, girls," she said. "This is going to be lovely!" And she +led the way forward to that line of seats, where there were just three +green chairs vacant together.</p> + +<p>Laughing, chattering, gay with the ease of Youth in +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> +its own company, the three, squeezed rather close together by the press, +sat down; Gwenna, the Welsh girl, in the middle. The broad brim of her hat +brushed against the roses of the pink-clad girl's cheaper hat as Gwenna leaned +forward.</p> + +<p>"Sorry, Butcher," she said. She moved.</p> + +<p>This time one of the white wings caught a pin in the hat of the plump +blonde in blue, who exclaimed resignedly and in an accent that was +neither of Wales nor of England, "Now komm I also into this hat-business +of Candlestick-maker. It <i>is</i> a bit of oll right!"</p> + +<p>"<i>So</i> sorry, Baker," apologised the girl in white again, putting up her +hands to disengage the hat. "I'll take it off, like a matinée. Yes, I +will, indeed. We shall all see better." She removed the hat from a small +head that was very prettily overgrown with brown, thick, cropped curls. +The bright eyes with which she blinked at first in the strong sunlight +were of the colour of the flying-ground before them: earth-brown and +turf-green mixed.</p> + +<p>"I will hold your hat, since it is for me that you take him off," said +the girl whom they called Baker.</p> + +<p>Her real name was Becker; Ottilie Becker. She worked at the German +correspondence of that London office where the other two girls, Gwenna +Williams and Mabel Butcher, were typists. It was one of the many small +jokes of the place to allude to themselves as the Butcher, the Baker, +and the Candlestick-maker.</p> + +<p>All three were excellent friends....</p> + +<p>The other two scarcely realised that Gwenna, the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> +Celt, was different from themselves; more absent-minded, yet more alive. +A passer-by might have summed her up as "a pretty, commonplace little thing;" +a girl like millions of others. But under the ready-made muslin blouse of that +season's style there was ripening, all unsuspected, the dormant bud of +Passion. This is no flower of the commonplace. And her eyes were full of +dreams, innocent dreams. Some of them had come true already. For hadn't +she broken away from home to follow them? Hadn't she left the valley +where nothing ever went on except the eternal Welsh rain that blurred +the skylines of the mountains opposite, and that drooped in curtains of +silver-grey gauze over the slate roofs of the quarry-village, set in +that brook-threaded wedge between wooded hillsides? Hadn't she escaped +from that cage of a chapel house sitting-room with its kitchen-range and +its many bookshelves and its steel print of John Bunyan and its +maddening old grandfather-clock that <i>always</i> said half-pastt two and +its everlasting smell of singeing hearthrug, and <i>never</i> a window open? +Yes! she'd given her uncle-guardian no peace until he'd washed his hands +over Gwenna's coming up to London. So here she was in London now, making +fresh discoveries every day, and enjoying that mixture of drudgery and +frivolling that makes up the life of the London bachelor-girl. She was +still "fancy-free," as people say of a girl who loves and lives in +fancies, and she was still at the age for bosom-friendships. One +sincerely adored girl-chum had her confidence. This was a young woman at the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> +Residential Club, where Gwenna lived; not one of these from the +office.</p> + +<p>But the office trio could take an occasional Saturday jaunt together as +enjoyingly as if they never met during the week.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>"Postcards, picture postcards!" chanted a shrill treble voice above the +buzz of the talking, waiting crowds.</p> + +<p>Before the seats a small boy passed with a tray of photographs. These +showed views of the hangars and of the ground; portraits of the +aviators.</p> + + +<p>"Postcards!" He paused before that cluster of blue and white and pink +frocks. "Any picture postcards?"</p> + +<p>"Yes! Wait a minute. Let's choose some," said Miss Butcher. And three +heads bent together over the display of glazed cards. "Tell you what, +Baker; we'll send one off to your soldier-brother in Germany. Shall we? +All sign it, like we did that one to your mother, from the Zoo."</p> + +<p>"Ah, yes. A <i>bier-karte</i>!" said the German girl, with her good-natured +giggle. "Here, I choose this one. View of Hendon. We write '<i>Es lassen +grüssen unbekannter Weise</i>'—'there send greeting to Karl, the +Unknown.'"</p> + +<p>"Oh, but hadn't we better send him this awfully nice-looking airman, +just as a sort of example of what a young man really can do in the way +of appearance, what?" suggested Miss Butcher, picking out another +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span> +card. "Peach, isn't he? Look! He's standing up in the thingamagig <i>just</i> like +an archangel in his car; or do I mean Apollo?—Gwenna'd know.... Which +are you going to choose, Gwenna?"</p> + +<p>Gwenna had picked out three cards. A view of the ground, a picture of a +biplane in mid-air, and a portrait of one of the other airmen.</p> + +<p>He had been taken in his machine against the blank background of sky. +The big, boyish hands gripped the wheel, the cap, goggles in front, peak +behind, was pushed back from the careless, clean-shaven lad's face, with +its cheeks creased with deep dimples of a smile.</p> + +<p>"This one," said Gwenna Williams. And there was no whisper of Fate at +her heart as she announced lightly, "This is <i>my</i> love." (She did not +guess, as you do, that here was the portrait of the Boy of this story.)</p> + +<p>The other girls leaned across her to look as she added: "<i>He's</i> the most +like Icarus, I think."</p> + +<p>"Who's Icarus, when he's at home?" inquired Miss Butcher. And Gwenna, +out of one of her skimmed books, gave a hurried explanation of Icarus, +the first flying-man, the classic youth who "dared the sun" on wings of +wax.... Together the girls inspected the postcard of his modern type, +the Hendon aviator. They laughed; they read aloud the name "<i>P. +Dampier</i>;" they compared his looks with those of other airmen, treating +the whole subject precisely as they would have treated the dancing or +singing of their favourite actresses in the revues....</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>For +it was still May, Nineteen-fourteen in England. The feeling of warm +and drowsy peace in the air was only intensified by the brisk, sharp +strains of the military band on the left of the flying-ground, playing +the "Light-Cavalry" march....</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>"Dear me! Are we going on like this for ever?" remonstrated Gwenna +presently. "Aren't they <i>ever</i> going up?"</p> + +<p>She was answered by a shattering roar from the right.</p> + +<p>It ceased. Then, on the field before her excited eyes, there was brought +out of one of the hangars by a cluster of mechanics in khaki-brown +overalls the Winged Romance that came into this tired and <i>blasé</i> world +with that most wondrous of all Ages—the Twentieth Century. At first +only a long gleaming upper plane, jolting over the uneven ground, could +be seen over the heads of the watchers. Then it reached the enclosure. +For the first time in her life Gwenna beheld a Maurice Farman biplane.</p> + +<p>And for the moment she was a little disappointed, for she had said it +was "going to be so lovely!"</p> + +<p>She had expected—what? Something that would look more like what it was, +the new Bird of man's making. Here the sunlight gleamed on the taut, +cambered wings, on the bamboo spars, the varnished blade of the +motionless propeller, all shiny as a new toyshop. But the girl saw no +grace in it. Its skids rested on the sunburned grass like a couple of +<i>ski</i> in the <i>Sketch</i> photographs of winter sports. It had absurd little +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> +wheels, too, looking as if, when it had finished skiing, the +machine might take to roller-skating. The whole thing seemed gaunt and +cumbrous and clogged to the earth. Gwenna did not then know that, unlike +Antæus, this half-godlike creature only awoke to life and beauty when it +felt the earth no more.</p> + +<p>Then, as she watched, a mechanic, the Dædalus who strapped on the wings +for the Icarus seized the propeller, which kicked thrice, rebelliously, +and then, with another roar, dissolved into a circle of mist. Other +brown figures were clinging to the under parts of the structure, holding +it back; Gwenna did not see the signal to let go. All that she saw was +the clumsy forward run of the thing as, like a swan that tries to clear +its feet of the water, the biplane struggled to free itself from the +drag of Earth....</p> + +<p>Then, as the wonder happened, the untried and imaginative little Welsh +country-girl, watching, gave a gasp. "<i>Ah——!</i>"</p> + +<p>The machine was fettered no longer.</p> + +<p>Suddenly those absurd skids and wheels had become no more than the tiny +feet that a seagull tucks away under itself, and like a gull the biplane +rose. It soared, its engine shouting triumph as it sped. Gwenna's heart +beat as tensely as that engine. Her eyes sparkled. What they saw was not +now a machine, but the beauty of those curves it cut in the conquered +air. It soared, it banked, it swayed gently as if on a keel. Swiftly +circling, up and up it went, until it seemed to dwindle to something not +even larger than the seagull it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> resembled; then it was a flying-fish, +then a dragonfly wheeling in the blue immensity above.</p> + +<p>Suddenly, like a fog-signal, there boomed out the voice of the man with +the megaphone, the man who made from the judges' stand, behind the +committee-enclosure all announcements for the meeting:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ladies +and +gentul +MEN," +it +boomed.<br /> +"Mis +ter +Paul +Dampier +on +a +Maurice +Farman +bi +plane!"</p></div> + +<p>The huge convolvulus-trumpet of the megaphone swung round. The +announcement was made from the other side of the stand; the sound of +that booming voice being subdued as it reached the group of three girls.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mister +Paul +Dampier——"</p></div> + +<p>"You hear, Gwenna? It is <i>your</i> young man," said Miss Baker; Miss +Butcher adding, "Hope you had a good look at him and saw if that photo +did him justice?"</p> + +<p>"From here? Well, how could I? It's not much I could see of him," +complained Gwenna, laughing. "He only looked about as big as a knot in a +cat's cradle!"</p> + +<p>Another roar, another small commotion on the ground. Another of those +ramshackle looking giant grasshoppers slid forward and upward into the +air. Presently three aeroplanes, then four together were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> circling and +soaring together in the sapphire-blue arena.</p> + +<p>Below, a pair of swallows, swift as light, chased each other over the +ground, above their own shadows, towards the tea-pavilion.</p> + +<p>Yet another flyer winged his tireless way across the aerodrome. He was a +droning bee, buzzing and hovering unheeded over a tuft of dusty white +clover growing by the rails that were so closely thronged by human +beings come to watch and wonder over man's still new miracle of flight.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>"Oh, flying! Mustn't it be too glorious!" sighed the Welsh girl, +watching the aeroplane that was now scarcely larger than a winged bullet +in the blue. "Oh, wouldn't I love to go up! Wouldn't it be Heaven!"</p> + +<p>"It's been Heaven for several poor fellows lately," suggested the +shrewd, Cockney-voiced little Miss Butcher, grimly, from her right. +"What about that poor young What's-his-name, fallen and killed on the +spot at twenty-one!"</p> + +<p>"I don't call him 'poor,'" declared Gwenna Williams softly. "I should +think there could be worse things happen to one than get killed, +quickly, right in the middle of being so young and jolly and doing such +things——"</p> + +<p>"Ah, look! That's it! See that?" murmured a voice near them. "Flying +upside down, now, that first one—see him?"</p> + +<p>And now Gwenna, at gaze, watched breathlessly the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> wonder that seemed +already natural enough to the multitude; the swoop and curve, the loop +and dash and recover of the biplane that seemed for the moment a winged +white quill held in a hand unseen, writing its challenge on the blue +wall of Heaven itself.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Again the megaphone boomed out through the still and soft June air:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ladies +and +gentul +MEN! +Pass +enger +flights +from +this +aer +riodrome +may +now +be +booked +at +the +office +un +der +this +Stand!"</p></div> + +<p>"Two guineas, my dears, for the chance of breaking your necks," +commented Miss Butcher. "Three guineas for a longer flight, I believe; +that is, a better chance. Well, I bet that if I did happen to have two +gleaming golden jimmyohgoblins to my name, I'd find something else to +spend 'em on, first!"</p> + +<p>"I also!" agreed Miss Baker.</p> + +<p>Gwenna moved a little impatiently. She hadn't two guineas, either, to +spend. She still owed a guinea, now, for that unjustifiable +extravagance, that white hat with the wings. In spite of earning her own +living, in spite of having a little money of her own, left her by her +father who had owned shares in a Welsh quarry, she <i>never</i> had any +guineas! But oh, if she had! <i>Wouldn't</i> she go straight off to that +stand and book for a passenger-flight!...<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p> + +<p>While her covetous eyes were still on the biplane, her ears caught a +stir of discussion that came from the motor nearest to the chairs.</p> + +<p>A lady was speaking in a softly dominant voice, the voice of a class +that recognises no overhearing save by its chosen friends.</p> + +<p>"My dear woman, it's as safe as the Tubes and the motor-buses. These +exhibition passenger-flights aren't really <i>flying</i>, Cuckoo said. Didn't +you, Cuckoo?"</p> + +<p>A short deep masculine laugh sounded from behind the ladies, then a +drawled "What are they then, what? Haw? Flip-flap, White City, what?"</p> + +<p>"Men always pretend afterwards that they've never said <i>anything</i>. +Cuckoo told me that when these people 'mean business' they can fly +<i>millions</i> of times higher and faster than we <i>ever</i> see them here. He +said there wasn't the <i>slightest</i> reason why Muriel shouldn't——"</p> + +<p>Here the sound, hard and clear as an icicle, of a very young girl's +voice, ringing out:</p> + +<p>"And anyhow, mother, I'm <i>going</i> to!"</p> + +<p>Glancing round, Gwenna saw a lanky girl younger than herself spring down +from the big, dove-grey car, and stride, followed by a tall man wearing +a top-hat, to the booking-office below the stand. This girl wore a long +brown oilskin coat over her white sweater and her short, admirably-cut +skirt; a brown chiffon veil tied over her head showed the shape and the +auburn gleam of it without giving a hair to the breeze.</p> + +<p>"Lovely to be those sort of people," sighed the enviously watching +Gwenna, as other girls from the cars<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> strolled into the enclosure with +the notice "COMMITTEE ONLY," and seemed to be discussing, laying bets, +perhaps, about the impending race for machines carrying a +lady-passenger. "Fancy, whenever any of <i>them</i> want to do or to see or +even to <i>be</i> anything, they've only got to say, 'Anyhow, I'm going to!' +and there they are! <i>That's</i> the way to live!"</p> + +<p>Presently the three London typists were sitting at a table under the +green awning and the hanging flower-baskets; one of a score of tables +where folk sat and chattered and turned their eyes ceaselessly upwards +to the blue sky, pointed at by those giant pylon-fingers, invaded by +those soaring, whirring, insolent, space daring creatures of man.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>The first biplane had been preparing for the Ladies' Race. Now came the +start; with the dropped white flag the announcement from that dominating +magnified voice:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Mis +ter +Damp +ier +on +a +Maurice +Far +man +bi +plane +ac +companied +by +Miss +Mu +riel +Con +yers——"</p></div> + +<p>The German girl put in, "Your man again, Gwenna!"</p> + +<p>"My man indeed. And I haven't seen him, even yet," complained the Welsh +girl again, laughing over her cup of cooling tea, "only in the +photograph! Don't suppose I ever shall, either. It's my fate, girls. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span>Nothing really exciting ever happens to me!" She sighed, then +brightened again as she remembered something. "I must be off now.... +I've got to go out this evening."</p> + +<p>"Anywhere thrilling?" asked Miss Butcher.</p> + +<p>"I don't know what it'll be like. It's Leslie Long; it's my friend at +the Club's married sister somewhere in Kensington, giving a +dinner-party," Gwenna answered in the scrambling New English in which +she was learning to disguise her Welshiness, "and there's a girl fallen +through at the last minute. So she 'phoned through this morning to ask +if this girl could rake any one up."</p> + +<p>"How mouldy for you, my dear," said Mabel Butcher in her sympathetic +Cockney as the Welsh girl rose, took up her sunshine-yellow coat from +the back of her chair and chinked down a shilling upon her thick white +plate. "Means you'll have to sit next some youth who only forced himself +into his dress-suit for the sake of taking that 'fallen through' girl +into dinner. He'll be scowling fit to murder you, I expect, for being +you and not her. (I know their ways.) Never mind. Pinch a couple of +liqueur-choc'lates off the table for me when the Blighted Being isn't +looking, will you? And tell us what he's like on Monday, won't you?"</p> + +<p>"All right," promised the Welsh girl, smiling back at her friends. She +threaded her way through the tables with the plates of coloured cakes, +the brown teapots, the coarse white crockery. She passed behind that +park of cars with that leisured, well-dressed, upward-gazing throng. She +turned her back on the glimpse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> beyond them of the green field where the +brown-clad mechanics ran up towards the slowly downward swooping +biplane.</p> + +<p>As she reached the entrance she caught again the announcement of that +distant megaphone:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ladies +and +gentul +men +Pass +enger +flights +may +now +be +booked——"</p></div> + +<p>The band in the distance was playing the dashing tune of the +"Uhlanenritt."</p> + +<p>Gwenna Williams passed out of the gates beside the big poster of the +aeroplane in full flight carrying a girl-passenger who waved a scarf. It +was everywhere, that Spring. So was the other notice:</p> + +<p>"<i>An afternoon in the country is always refreshing! Flying is always +interesting to watch!</i>"</p> + +<p>In the dusty bit of lane mended by the wooden sleepers a line of +grass-green taxis was drawn up.</p> + +<p>Gwenna hesitated.</p> + +<p>Should she——? Taxi all the way home to the Ladies' Residential Club in +Hampstead where she lived?</p> + +<p>Four shillings, perhaps.... Extravagance again! "But it's not an +everyday sort of day," Gwenna told herself as she hailed the taxi. "This +afternoon, the flying! This evening, a party with Leslie! Oh, and there +was I saying to the other girls that nothing exciting ever happened to +me!"</p> + +<p>For even now every day of her life seemed to this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> enjoying Welsh +<i>ingénue</i>, packed with thrills. Thrills of anticipation, of +amusement—sometimes of disappointment and embarrassment. But what did +those matter? Supreme through all there glowed the conviction of youth +that, at any moment, Something-More-Exciting still might happen....</p> + +<p>It might be waiting to happen, waiting now, just round the corner....</p> + +<p>All young people know that feeling. And to many it remains the most +poignant pleasure that they are to know—that thought of "the party +to-night," that wonder "what may happen at it!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE BOSOM-CHUMS</h3> + + +<p>Through leafy side-streets and little squares of Georgian houses, +Gwenna's taxi took her to a newer road that sloped sharply from the +Heath at the top to the church and schools at the bottom.</p> + +<p>The taxi stopped at the glass porch of the large, red-brick building +with the many casement-windows, out of which some enterprising committee +had formed the Ladies' Residential Club. It was a place where a mixed +assembly of young women (governesses, art-students, earnest suffrage +workers, secretaries and so on) lived cheaply enough and with a good +deal of fun and noise, of feud and good-fellowship. The head of it was a +clergyman's widow and the sort of lady who is never to be seen otherwise +than wearing a neat delaine blouse of the Edwardian era, a gold curb +tie-pin, a hairnet and a disapproving glance.</p> + +<p>Gwenna passed this lady in the tessellated hall; she then almost +collided with the object of the lady's most constant disapproval.</p> + +<p>This was a very tall, dark girl with an impish face, a figure boyishly +slim. She looked almost insolently untidy, for she wore a shabby brown +hat, something after the pattern of a Boy Scout's, under which her black +hair was preparing to slide down over the collar<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> of a rain-coat which +(as its owner would have told you) had seen at least two reigns. It was +also covered with loose white hairs, after the fashion of garments whose +wearers are continually with dogs.</p> + +<p>Gwenna caught joyously at the long arm in the crumpled sleeve.</p> + +<p>"Oh, Leslie!" she cried eagerly.</p> + +<p>For this was the bosom-chum.</p> + +<p>"Ha, Taffy-child! Got back early for this orgie of ours? Good," +exclaimed Leslie Long in a clear, nonchalant voice. It was very much the +same voice, Gwenna noticed now, as those people's at the flying-ground, +who belonged to that easy, lordly world of which Gwenna knew nothing. +Leslie, now, did seem to know something about it. Yet she was the +hardest-up girl in the whole club. She had been for a short time a Slade +student, for a shorter time still a probationer at some hospital. Now +all her days were given up to being paid companion to an old lady in +Highgate who kept seventeen toy-Poms; but her evenings remained her own.</p> + +<p>"Afraid this party isn't going to be much of a spree for you," she told +Gwenna as they went upstairs. "I don't know who's going, but my +brother-in-law's friends seldom are what you could describe as 'men.' +Being a stockbroker and rich, he feels he must go in heavily for Art and +Music. Long hair to take you in, probably. Hope you don't awfully mind +coming to the rescue——"</p> + +<p>"Don't mind what it is, as long as I'm going out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> somewhere, and with +you, Leslie!" the younger girl returned blithely. "Will you do me up the +back, presently?"</p> + +<p>"Rather! I'm dressing in your room. There's a better light there. Hurry +up!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>Gwenna's long, narrowish front bedroom at the club was soon breathing of +that characteristic atmosphere that surrounds the making of a full-dress +toilette; warm, scented soap-suds, hot curling-irons, powder, Odol, +perfume. The room possessed a large dressing-table, a long wardrobe, and +a fairly spacious chest-of-drawers. But all this did not prevent the +heaping of Gwenna's bed with the garments, with the gilded, high-heeled +cothurns and with the other gauds belonging to her self-invited guest.</p> + +<p>That guest, with her hair turbaned in a towel and her lengthy young body +sheathed in tricot, towered above the toilet-table like some modern's +illustration of a genie in the Arabian Nights. The small, more +closely-knit Welsh girl, who wore a kimono of pink cotton crêpe slipping +from shoulders noticeably well modelled for so young a girl, tried to +steal a glimpse at herself from under her friend's arm.</p> + +<p>"Get out, Taffy," ordered the other coolly. "You're in my way."</p> + +<p>"I like <i>that</i>," remonstrated Gwenna, laughing. "It's <i>my</i> glass, +Leslie!"</p> + +<p>But she was ready to give up her glass or any of her belongings to this +freakish-tongued, kind-hearted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> unconventional Leslie Long. Nearly +everybody at the club, whether they were of the advanced suffrage party +or the orthodox set, were "shocked" at her. Gwenna loved her. Leslie had +taken a very homesick little Welsh exile under her wing from her first +night at the club; Leslie had mothered her with introductions, loans, +advice. Leslie had bestowed upon her that last favour which woman shows +to sister-woman when she tells her "<i>at which shops to buy what</i>." +Leslie had, practically, dressed her. And it was thanks to this that +Gwenna had all the freshness and bloom of the country-girl without any +of the country-girl's all-concealing frumpiness.</p> + +<p>Leslie talked an obligato to everything that Leslie did.</p> + +<p>"I must dress first. I need it more, because I'm so much plainer than +you," said she. "But never mind; it won't take me more than half an hour +to transform myself into a credit to my brother-in-law's table. '<i>I am +a chrysoberyl, and 'tis night.</i>' The Sometimes-Lvely Girl, that's the +type I belong to. I was told that, once, by one of the nicest boys who +ever loved me. Once I get my hair done, I'll show you. In the meantime +you get well out of my way on the bed, Taffy, like a sweet little cherub +that sits up aloft. And then I'll explain to you why Romance is +dead—oh, shove that anywhere; on the floor—and what the matter is with +us modern girls. Fact is, we're losing our Femininity. We're losing the +power, dear Miss Williams, to please Men."</p> + +<p>She took up a jar of some white paste, and smeared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> it in a scented mask +above her features. As she did so she did not for one moment cease to +rattle.</p> + +<p>"Men—that is, Nice Men," she gave out unctuously, as she worked the +paste with her palms over her Pierrot-like face, "detest all this +skin-food—and massage. It's Pampering the Person. No nice girl would +think of it. As for this powder-to-finish business, it's only another +form of make-up. They always see through it. (Hem!) And they abhor +anything that makes a girl—a nice girl—look in the least——" The +mocking voice was lowered at the word—"Actressy ...! This is what I was +told to-day, Taff, dear, by my old lady I take the Poms and Pekes out +for. I suppose she's never heard of any actress marrying. But she's a +mine of information. Always telling me where I've missed it, and how."</p> + +<p>Here the tall girl reached for the silver shoe-horn off Gwenna's +dressing-table, and proceeded to use it as the Greek youth used his +strigil, stripping the warmed unguent from her face and neck. She went +on talking while Gwenna, putting a gloss on her short curls with a brush +in each hand, listened and laughed, and watched her from the bed with +greeny-brown eyes full of an unreserved admiration. So far, Leslie +Long's was the society in which Gwenna Williams most delighted. The +younger, less sophisticated girl poured out upon her chum that affection +which is not to be bribed or begged. It is not even to be found in any +but a heart which is yet untouched, save in its dreams, by Love.</p> + +<p>"No Charm about us modern girls. No Mystery,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> enlarged Miss Long. "No +Glamour. (What is glamour? Is it a herb? State reasons for your answer.) +What Nice Men love to see in a girl is The Being Apart. (Gem of +Information Number Sixty-three.) Sweet, refined, modest; in every look +and tone the <i>gentlewoman</i>. Not a mere slangy imitation of themselves. +(Chuck us that other towel.) Not a creature who makes herself cheap, +calls out 'Hi!' and waves to them from the top of omnibuses. Ah, no, my +dear; the girl who'll laugh and 'lark' with men on equal terms may +<i>seem</i> popular with them in a way, but"—here the voice was again +lowered impressively—"that's not the girl they marry. She's just 'very +good fun,' 'a good sort,' a 'pal.' She's treated just as they'd treat +another young man. (I'd watch it!) Which is the girl with whom they fall +in love, though? The shrinking, clinging, feminine creature who is +all-wool—I mean all-woman, Taffy. <i>She</i>"—with enormous expression—"is +<i>never</i> left long without her mate!"</p> + +<p>"But," objected Gwenna doubtfully, "she—this old lady of yours—wasn't +married ever?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, never. Always lets you know that she has 'loved and lost.' Whether +that means 'Killed at the Battle of Waterloo' or merely 'Didn't propose' +I couldn't say.... Poor old dear, she's rather lonely, in spite of the +great cloud of Poms," said the old lady's paid "daily companion," +dropping the mockery for the moment, "and I believe she's thankful to +have even me to talk to and scold about the horrid, unsexed girl of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> +To-day.... Our lack of ... everything! Our clothes! Why, she, as a girl, +would have sunk into the ground rather than be seen in—you know the +kind of thing. Our general shapelessness!—Well, of course," turning to +meet that adoring glance from the little heroine-worshipper on the bed, +"you never see a young woman nowadays with what you could call a +<i>figure</i>!"</p> + +<p>Here Leslie, reaching for the giant powder-puff she had flung on to the +foot of the bed, gave a backward bend and a "straighten" that would not +have disgraced an acrobat.</p> + +<p>"No waists! Now if there is a feature that a man admires in a girl it's +her tiny, trimly-corseted waist. My old lady went to a fancy-dress dance +once, in a black-and-yellow plush bodice as '<i>A Wasp</i>,' and everybody +said how splendid. She never allowed herself to spread into anything +more than Eighteens until she was thirty! But now the girls are allowed +to slop about in these loud, fast-looking, golf-jackets or whatever they +call them, made just like a man's—and the young men simply aren't +marrying any more. No wonder!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Leslie! do you think it's true?" put in Gwenna, a trifle nervously.</p> + +<p>"So she told me, my dear. Told Bonnie Leslie, whose bag had been two +proposals that same week," said Miss Long nonchalantly. "One of 'em with +me in the act of wearing that Futurist Harlequin's get-up at the Art +Rebel's Revel. You know; the one I got the idea of from noticing the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span>reflections of the ground-glass diamond patterns on me through the +bath-room window. I say! she'd have sunk pretty well through into the +Antipodes at the sight of me in that rig, what? Yet here was an +infatuated youth swearing that:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'<i>He would like to have the chance</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>All his life with me to dance,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>For he liked his partner best of all!</i>'"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Leslie hummed the old musical-comedy tune. "Son of a <i>Dean</i>, too!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna looked wistfully thrilled. "Wasn't he—nice enough?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, a sweet boy. Handsome eyes. (I always want to pick them out with a +fork and put them into my own head.) But too simple for me, thanks," +said Leslie lightly. "He was <i>rather</i> cut up when I told him so."</p> + +<p>"Didn't you tell your old lady—anything about it, Leslie?"</p> + +<p>"Does that kind of woman <i>ever</i> get told the truth, Gwenna? I trow not. +That's why the dear old legends live on and on about what men like and +who they propose to. Also the kind old rules, drawn up by people who are +past taking a hand in the game."</p> + +<p>Again she mimicked the old lady's voice: "Nice men have one standard for +the women they marry, and another (a very different standard!) for +the—er—women they flirt with. (So satisfactory, don't you know, for +the girl they marry. No <i>wonder</i> we never find those marriages being a +complete washout!) But supposing that a sort of Leslie-girl came along +and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> insisted upon Marriage being brought up to the flirtation +standard—<i>hein</i>?"</p> + +<p>"But your old lady, Leslie? D'you mean you just let her go on thinking +that you've never had any admiration, and that you've got to agree with +everything she says?"</p> + +<p>"Rather!" said Miss Long with her enjoying laugh. "I take it in with +r-r-rapt attention, looking my worst, as I always do when I'm behaving +my best. Partly because one's bound to listen respectfully to one's +bread-and-butter speaking. And partly because I am genuinely interested +in her remarks," said Leslie Long. "It's the interest of a rather smart +young soldier—if I may say so—let loose in a museum of obsolete +small-arms!"</p> + +<p>Even as she spoke her hands were busy with puff and brush, with +hair-pad, pins, and pencil. Gwenna still regarded her with that full, +discriminating admiration which is never grudged by one attractive girl +to another—of an opposite type.</p> + +<p>With the admiration for this was mixed a tiny dread, well known to the +untried girl—"If she is what They like, <i>they won't like me</i>!" ... Also +a wonder, "What in the world would Uncle have said to <i>her</i>?"</p> + +<p>And a mental picture rose before Gwenna of the guardian she had left in +the valley. She saw his shock of white, bog-cotton hair, his face of a +Jesuit priest and his voice of a Welsh dissenting minister. She heard +that much-resented voice declaiming slowly. "Yes, Yes. I know the +meaning of London and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> +<i>self-respect and earning one's own living</i>. I +know all about these College girls and these girls going to business and +working same as the men, 'shoulder to shoulder'—Indeed, it's very +likely! <i>'Something better to do, nowadays, than sit at home frowsting +over drawn-thread work until a husband chooses to appear'</i>—All the same +thing! All the same thing! As it was in the beginning! <i>'A wider +field'</i>—for making eyes! And only two eyes to make them with. Oh, +forget-ful Providence, not to let a modern girl have four! <i>'Larger +opportunities'</i>—more chance of finding a young man! Yes, yes. That's +it, Gwenna!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, at the mere memory of it, broke out indignantly, "Sometimes I +should like to <i>stab</i> old people!"</p> + +<p>"Meaning the celebrated Uncle Hugh? Too wise, isn't he?" laughed Leslie +lightly, with her hands at her hair. "Too full of home-truths about the +business girl's typewriter, and the art-student's palette and the +shilling thermometer of the hospital nurse, eh? <i>He</i> knows that they're +the modern girl's equivalent of the silken rope-ladder—what, what? And +the chaise to Gretna Green! <i>This Way Out. This Way—to Romance.</i> Why +not? Allow me, Madam——"</p> + +<p>Here she took up an oval box of eighteenth-century enamel, picked out a +tiny black velvet patch and placed it to the left of a careless red +mouth.</p> + +<p>"Effective, I think?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; and how can you say there's such a thing as 'obsolete' in the +middle of all this?" protested Gwenna. "<i>Look</i>, how the old fashions +come up again!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Child, curb your dialect. '<i>Look</i>,'" Leslie mimicked the Welsh girl's +rising accent. "'The old fashshons.' Of course we modify the fashions +now to suit ourselves. My old lady had to follow them just as they were. +We," said this twentieth-century sage, "are just the same as she was in +lots of ways. The all-important thing to us is still what she calls the +Mate!"</p> + +<p>"M'm,—I don't believe it would be to me," said Gwenna simply. And +thinking of the other possibilities of Life—fresh experiences, work, +friendship, adventure (flying, say!)—she meant what she said. That was +the truth.</p> + +<p>Side by side with this, not contradicting but emphasising it, was +another truth.</p> + +<p>For, as in a house one may arrange roses in a drawing-room and reck +nothing of the homely business of the kitchen—then presently descend +and forget, in the smell of baking bread, the flowers behind those other +doors, so divided, so uncommunicating, so pigeon-holed are the +compartments, lived in one at a time, of a young maid's mind.</p> + +<p>Clearer to Gwenna's inner eyes than the larch green and slate purple of +her familiar valley had been the colours of a secret picture; herself in +a pink summer frock (always a summer frock, regardless of time, season +or place) being proposed to by a blonde youth with eyes as blue as +lupins....</p> + +<p>Mocking Leslie was urging her, again in the old lady's tone, to "wait +until Mr. Right came along. Jewelled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> phrase! Such an old world +fragrance about it; moth powder, I suppose. Yet we know what it means, +and they didn't. We know it isn't just anybody in trousers that would +<i>be</i> Mr. Right. (My dear! I use such strange expressions; I quite shock +me sometimes)," she interpolated; adding, "It's a mercy for us in some +ways; so good if we do get the right man. Worse than it used to be if we +don't. Swings and roundabouts again. But it's still true that</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">Two things greater than all things are,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The first is Love and the second is War."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"I can't imagine such a thing as war, now," mused Gwenna on the bed. +"Can you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, vaguely; yes," said Leslie Long. "You know my people, poor +darlings, were all in the Army. But the poisonously rich man my sister +married says there'll never be any war again, except perhaps among a few +dying-out savage races. He does so grudge every ha'penny to the Navy +Estimates; and he's quite violent about these useless standing armies! +You know he's no sahib. '<i>His tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances +to fantastic tunes.</i>' However, never mind him. <i>I'm</i> the central figure. +Which is to be my frock of fascination to-night? '<i>The White Hope?</i>' or +'<i>The Yellow Peril?</i>' You're wearing your white, Taffy. Righto, then +I'll put on <i>this</i>," decided the elder girl.</p> + +<p>She stepped into and drew up about her a moulding sheath of +amber-coloured satin that clung to her limbs as a wave clings to a +bather—such was the fleeting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> fashion now defunct! There was a corolla +of escholtzia-yellow about the strait hips, a heavy golden girdle +dangling.</p> + +<p>"There! Now! How's the Bakst view?" demanded Leslie.</p> + +<p>She turned slowly, rising on her toes, lifting the glossy black head +above a generous display of creamy shoulder-blades; posing, laughing +while Gwenna caught her breath.</p> + +<p>"Les-lie!... And where <i>did</i> you get it?"</p> + +<p>"Cast-off from an opulent cousin. What I should do if I didn't get a few +clothes given me I don't know; I should be sent back by the policeman at +the corner, I suppose. One can't <i>live</i> at fancy dances at the Albert +Hall," said Miss Long philosophically. "Don't I look like a Rilette +advertisement on the end page of <i>Punch</i>? Don't I vary? Would anybody +think I was the same wispy rag-bag you met in the hall? Nay. 'From +Slattern to Show-girl,' that's my gamut. But you, Taff, I've never seen +you look really plain. It's partly your curls. You've got the sort of +hair some boys have and all women envy. Come here, now, and let's +arrange you. I've already been attending to your frock."</p> + +<p>The frock which Gwenna was to wear that evening at the dinner-party was +one which she had bought, without advice, out of an Oxford Street shop +window during a summer sale. It was of satin of which the dead-white +gleam was softened by a misty over-dress. So far, so good; but what of +the heavy, expensive-looking garniture—sash, knots, and what-nots of +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>lurid colour—with which the French artist's conception had been +"brightened up" in this English version?</p> + +<p>"Ripped off," explained Leslie Long, firmly, as its owner gazed in +horror at a mutilated gown. "No cerise—it's a 'married' colour—No +mural decorations for you, Taffy, my child. '<i>Oh, what a power has white +simplicity.</i>' White, pure white, with these little transparent ruffles +that kind Leslie has sewn into the sleeves and round the fichu +arrangement for you; and a sash of <i>very</i> pale sky-blue."</p> + +<p>"Shan't I look like a baby?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; the sweetest portrait of one, by Sir Joshua Reynolds."</p> + +<p>"Oh! And I'd bought a cerise and <i>diamanté</i> hair-ornament."</p> + +<p>"Quite imposs. A hair-ornament? One of the housemaids will love it for +her next tango tea in Camden Town. As for you, don't dare to touch your +curls again—no, nor to put anything round your neck! Take away that +bauble!"</p> + +<p>"Aren't I even to wear my gold Liberty beads?"</p> + +<p>"No! you aren't. Partly because I am, in my hair. Besides, what d'you +want them for, with a throat like that? Necklaces are such a mistake," +decreed Leslie. "If a girl's got a nice neck, it hides the line; if she +hasn't, it shows the defect up!"</p> + +<p>"Well," protested Gwenna doubtfully, "but mightn't you say that of +anything to wear?"</p> + +<p>"Precisely. Still, you can't live up to every counsel of perfection. Not +in this climate!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You might let me have my thin silver chain, whatever, and my little +heart that my Auntie Margie gave me—in fact, I'm going to. It's a +mascot," said Gwenna, as she hung the little mother-o'-pearl pendant +obstinately about her neck. "There!"</p> + +<p>"Very well. Spoil the look of that lovely little dimply hollow you've +got just at the base there if you must. A man," said Gwenna's chum with +a quick, critical glance, "a man would find that very easy to kiss."</p> + +<p>"Easy!" said Gwenna, with a quicker blush of anger. "He wouldn't then, +indeed!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, my dear, I didn't mean that," explained Leslie as she caught up her +gloves and wrap and prepared to lead the way out of the room and +downstairs to the hall. They would walk as far as the Tube, then book to +South Kensington. "All I meant was, that a man would—- that is, +<i>might</i>—er—possibly get the better—ah—of his—say, his natural +repugnance to <i>trying</i>——"</p> + +<p>A little wistfully, Gwenna volunteered: "One never has."</p> + +<p>"I know, Taffy. Not yet," said Leslie Long. "But one will. '<i>Cheer up, +girls, he is getting on his boots!</i>' Ready? Come along."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>THE EYES OF ICARUS</h3> + + +<p>Gwenna, who was always bubbling over with young curiosity about the +fresh <i>people</i> whom she was to meet at a party, had never taken overmuch +interest in the <i>places</i> where the party might be held.</p> + +<p>She had not yet reached the age when, for information about new +acquaintances, one glances first at their background.</p> + +<p>To her the well-appointed though slightly "Art"-y Smith establishment +where her friend was taking her to dine was merely "a married house." +She took for granted the arrangements thereof. She lumped them all—from +the slim, deferential parlour-maid who ushered them through a +thickly-carpeted corridor with framed French etchings into a spacious +bedroom where the girls removed their wraps, down to the ivory, +bemonogrammed pin-tray and powder-box in front of the big mirror—she +lumped these all together as "things you have when you're <i>married</i>."</p> + +<p>It never struck her—it never strikes eight out of ten young girls—that +Marriage does not necessarily bring these "things" with their subtle +assurance of ease, security, and dignity in its train. She never thought +about it. Marriage indeed seemed to her a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> sort of dullish postscript to +what she imagined must be a thrilling letter.</p> + +<p>Why <i>must</i> nearly all married people become so stodgy? Gwenna simply +couldn't imagine herself getting stodgy—or fat, like this married +sister of Leslie Long's, who was receiving her guests in the large +upstairs drawing-room into which the two girls were now shown.</p> + +<p>This room, golden and creamy, seemed softly aglow. There were standard +lamps with huge amber crinolines, bead-fringed; and flowers—yellow +roses and white lilies—seemed everywhere.</p> + +<p>Leslie Long drew one of the lilies out of a Venetian vase and held it +out, like an usher's rod, towards Gwenna as she followed her into the +bright, bewildering room, full of people. She announced, "Maudie, here's +the stop-gap. Taffy Williams, your hostess."</p> + +<p>Her hostess was a version of Leslie grown incredibly matronly. Her +auricula-coloured velvet tea-gown looked as if it had been clutched +about her at the last moment. (Which in point of fact it had. Mrs. Smith +was quite an old-fashioned mother.) Yet from her eyes smiled the +indestructible Girl that is embedded in so many a respectable matron, +and she looked down very kindly at Gwenna, the cherub-headed, in her +white frock.</p> + +<p>Mr. Smith, who had a large smooth face and a bald head, gave Gwenna a +less cordial glance. Had the truth been known, he was sulking over the +non-appearance of the intelligent young woman (from the Poets' Club) +whose place was taken by this vacuous-looking flapper<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> (his summing-up +of Miss Gwenna Williams). For Gwenna this bald and wedded patriarch of +forty-five scarcely existed. She glanced, nervous and fluttered and +interested, towards the group of other guests gathered about the nearer +of the two flower-filled fireplaces; a pretty woman in rose-colour and +two men of thirty or thereabouts, one of whom (rather stout, with an +eye-glass, a black stock-tie, and a lock of brown hair brought down +beside his ear like a tiny side-whisker) made straight for Leslie Long.</p> + +<p>"Now <i>don't</i> attempt to pretend we haven't met," Gwenna heard him say in +a voice of flirtatious yearning. "Last time you cut my dance——"</p> + +<p>Here the maid announced, from the door, some name.... Gwenna, standing +shyly, as if on the brink of the party, heard the hostess saying: "We +hardly hoped you'd come ... we know you people always are besieged by +invitations——"</p> + +<p>"Dear me! All these people seem dreat-fully grand," thought the Welsh +girl hastily to herself. "I wonder if it wouldn't have been better, now, +if Leslie had left that cerise velvet trimming as it was on my dress?"</p> + +<p>Instinctively she glanced about for the nearest mirror. There was a big +oval gilt-framed one over the yellow brocaded Empire couch near which +Gwenna stood. Her rather bewildered brown eyes strayed from the stranger +faces about her to the reflection of the face and figure that she best +knew. In the oval of gilded leaves she beheld herself framed. She looked +small and very young with her cherub's curls and her soft babyish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> +white gown and that heaven-coloured sash. But she looked pretty. She +hoped she did....</p> + +<p>Then suddenly in that mirror she caught sight of another face, a face +she saw for the first time.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>She beheld, looking over her white-mirrored shoulder, the reflection of +a young man. Clear-featured, sunburnt but blonde, he carried his fair +head tilted a little backward, and his eyes—strange eyes!—were looking +straight into hers. They were clear and blue and space-daring eyes, with +something about them that Gwenna, not recognising, would have summed up +vaguely as "like a sailor's." ... They were eyes that seemed to have +borrowed light and colour from long scanning of far horizons. And now +all that keenness of theirs was turned, like a searchlight, to gaze into +the wondering, receptive glance of a girl....</p> + +<p>Who was this?</p> + +<p>Before Gwenna turned to face this stranger who had followed their +hostess up to her, his gaze seemed to hold hers, as a hand might have +held her own, for longer than a minute....</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Afterwards she told herself that it seemed, not a minute, but an age +before that first look was loosed, before she had turned round to her +hostess's, "I want to introduce Mr.——"</p> + +<p>(Something or other. She did not catch the name.)</p> + +<p>"<i>He's</i> nice!" was the young girl's pristine and uncoloured first +impression.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then she thought, "Oh, if it's this one who's going to take me in to +dinner, I <i>am</i> glad!"</p> + +<p>It was he who was to take her in.</p> + +<p>For Mr. Smith took the pretty lady whose name, as far as Gwenna was +concerned, remained "Mrs. Rose-colour." Her husband, a neutral-tinted +being, went in with Mrs. Smith. The man with the side-whisker (who, if +he'd been thinner, certainly might have looked rather like the portrait +of Chopin) laughed and chattered to Leslie as they went downstairs +together. Gwenna, falling to the lot of the blue-eyed young man as a +dinner-partner, altered her mind about her "gladness" almost before she +came to her third spoonful of clear soup.</p> + +<p>For it seemed as if this young man whose name she hadn't caught were not +really "nice" after all! That is, of course, he wasn't "<i>not</i> nice." But +he seemed stupid! Nothing in him! Nothing to say! Or else very +absent-minded, which is just as bad as far as the other people at a +party are concerned. Or worse, because it's rude.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, taking in every detail of the pretty round table and the lights +under the enormous parasol of a pink shade, approving the banked +flowers, the silver, the glass, those delicious-looking chocolates in +the filigree dishes, the tiny "Steinlen-kitten" menu-holders, Gwenna, +dazed yet stimulated by the soft glitter in her eyes, the subdued buzz +of talk in her ears, stole a glance at Leslie (who was looking her best +and probably behaving her worst) and felt that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> every prospect was +pleasing—except that of spending all this time beside that silent, +stodgy young man.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps he thinks it's me that's too silly to talk to. I knew Leslie'd +made me look too young with this sash! Yes! <i>indeed</i> I look like some +advertisement for Baby's Outfitting Department," thought Gwenna, vexed. +"Or is it because he's the kind of young man that just sits and eats and +never really sees or thinks about anything at all?"</p> + +<p>Now, had she known it at the time, the thoughts of the blonde and +blue-eyed youth beside her were, with certain modifications, something +on these lines.</p> + +<p>"Dash that stud! Dash the thing. This pin's going into the back of my +neck directly. I know it is. That beastly stud must have gone through a +crack in the boards.... I shall buy a bushel of 'em to-morrow. Why a +man's such a fool as to depend upon one stud.... I know this pin's going +into the back of my neck when I'm not thinking about it. I shall squawk +blue murder and terrify 'em into fits.... What have we here?" (with a +glance from those waking eyes at the menu). "Good. Smiths always do +themselves thundering well.... Now, who are all these frocks? The Pink +'Un. That's a Mrs.... Damsel in the bright yellow lampshade affair +about six foot high, that old Hugo's giving the glad eye to. Old +Hugo weighs about a stone and a half too much. Does <i>him</i>self +a lot <i>too</i> well. Revolting sight. I wonder if I can work the +blood-is-thicker-than-water touch on him for a fiver afterwards?... +This little girl<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> I've got to talk to, this little thing with the neck +and the curly hair. Pretty. <i>Very</i> pretty. Knocks the shine out of the +others. I know if I turn my head to speak to her, though, that dashed +pin will cut adrift and run into the back of my neck. <i>Dash</i> that stud. +Here goes, though——"</p> + +<p>And, stiffly and cautiously moving his head in a piece with his +shoulders, he turned, remarking at last to Gwenna in a voice that, +though deep-toned and boyish, was almost womanishly gentle, "You don't +live in town, I suppose?"</p> + +<p>The girl from that remote Welsh valley straightened her back a little. +"Yes, I do live in town, indeed!" she returned a trifle defensively. +"What made you think I lived in the country?"</p> + +<p>"Came up yesterday, I s'pose," the young man told himself as the +soup-plates were whisked away.</p> + +<p>Gwenna suspected a twinkle in those unusual blue eyes as he said next, +"<i>Haven't</i> you lived in Wales, though?"</p> + +<p>"Well, yes, I have," admitted Gwenna Williams in her soft, quaint +accent, "but how did you know?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I guessed. I've stayed there myself, fishing, one time and +another," her neighbour told her. "Used to go down to a farmhouse there, +sort of place that's all slate slabs, and china dogs, and light-cakes +for tea; ages ago, with my cousin. <i>That</i> cousin," and he gave a little +jerk of his fair head towards the black-stocked, Trelawney-whiskered +young man who was engrossed with Miss Long. "We used to—Ah!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> <i>Dash!</i>" +he broke off suddenly and violently. "It's gone down my back now."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, startled, gazed upon this stranger who was so good to look at +and so extremely odd to listen to. Gone down his back? She simply could +not help asking, "What has?"</p> + +<p>"That pin," he answered ruefully.</p> + +<p>Then he tilted back his fair head and smiled, with deep dimples creasing +his sunburnt cheeks and a flash of even white showing between his +care-free, strongly-modelled lips. And hereupon Gwenna realised that +after all she'd been right. He <i>was</i> "nice." He began to laugh outright, +adding, "You must think me an absolute lunatic: I'd better tell you what +it's all about——"</p> + +<p>He took a mouthful of sole and told her, "Fact is, I lost my collar-stud +when I was dressing, the stud for the back of my collar; and I had to +fasten my collar down at the last minute with a pin. It's been getting +on my nerves. Has, really. I've been waiting for it to run into the back +of my neck——"</p> + +<p>"So that was why he seemed so absent-minded!" thought Gwenna, feeling +quite disproportionately glad and amused over this trifle. She said, "I +<i>thought</i> you turned as if you'd got a stiff neck! I thought you'd been +sitting in a draught."</p> + +<p>He made another puzzling remark.</p> + +<p>"Draught, by Jove!" he laughed. "It's always fairly <i>draughty</i> where I +have to sit!"</p> + +<p>He went on again to mourn over his collar. "Worse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> than before, now," he +said. "It's going to hitch up to the back of my head, and I shall have +to keep wiggling my shoulder-blades about as if I'd got St. Vitus's +dance!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna felt she would have liked to have taken a tiny safety-pin that +there was hidden away under her sky-blue sash, and to have given it to +him to fasten that collar securely and without danger of pricking. +Leslie, she knew, would have done that. She, Gwenna, would have been too +shy, with a perfect stranger—only, now that he'd broken the ice with +that collar-stud, so to speak, she couldn't feel as if this keen-eyed, +deep-voiced young man were any longer quite a stranger. In her own +dialect, he seemed, now, "so homely, like——"</p> + +<p>And over the next course he was talking to her about home, about the +places where he'd fished in Wales.</p> + +<p>"There was one topping little trout-stream," he told her in that deep +and gentle voice. "Bubbly as soda-water, green and clear as +bottle-glass. Awfully jolly pools under the shade of the branches. You +look right down and it's all speckly at the bottom, with brown-and-grey +stones and slates and things, under the green water. It's like——"</p> + +<p>He was looking straight at her, and suddenly he stopped. He had caught +her eyes, full; as he had caught them before dinner in that mirror. Now +that he was so close to them he saw that they were clear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> and +browny-green, with speckles of slate-colour. They were not unlike those +pools themselves, by Jove.... Almost as if he had been fishing for +something out of those depths he still looked down, hard into them.... +He forgot that he had stopped talking. And then under his own eyes he +saw the little thing begin to colour up; blushing from that sturdy white +throat of hers to the brow where those thick brown cherub's-curls began +to grow. He looked away, hastily. Hastily he said, "It—er—it had a +pretty name, that stream. Quite a pronounceable Welsh name, for once: +The Dulas."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear me! Do <i>you</i> know the Dulas?" cried Gwenna Williams in +delight, forgetting that she had just been feeling acutely conscious and +shy under the fixed stare of a pair of searching blue eyes. "Why! It's +not very far from there that's my home!"</p> + +<p>They went on talking—about places. Unconsciously they were leading the +whole table after them; the jerkiness went out of sentences; the pitch +of the talk rose. It was all a buzz to Gwenna; but when, at the joint, +her neighbour turned at last to answer a comment of the rose-coloured +lady on his other hand, she amused herself by seeking to find out what +all the others were talking about.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>"I like some of his things very much. Now, his water-colours at the——" +This was Mr. Smith, holding forth about pictures.... There appeared to +be a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span> good deal of it. Ending up with, "And I know for a fact that he +only got two hundred guineas for that; two hundred! Incredible!"</p> + +<p>It certainly did seem to Gwenna an incredible amount of money for a +picture, a thing you just hang on a wall and forgot all about. Two +hundred guineas! What couldn't she, Gwenna, do with that! Travel all +over the place for a year! Go flying every week, at Hendon!</p> + +<p>"What an experience! What a change it's made in the whole of English +thought!" the pretty, rose-coloured lady was saying earnestly. "We can +never be the same again now. It's set us, as a nation, such an entirely +new and higher standard——"</p> + +<p>This was very solemn, Gwenna thought. What was it about?</p> + +<p>"I can't imagine, now, how we can have existed for so long without that +point of view," went on Mrs. Rose-colour. "As I say, the first time I +ever saw the Russian Ballet——"</p> + +<p>The Russian Ballet—Ah! Gwenna had been with Leslie to see that; she had +thought herself in a fairyland of dazzling colour, and of movement as +wonderful as that of the flying biplanes. It had been a magic world of +enchanted creatures that seemed half-bird, half-flower, who whirled and +leaped, light as blown flame, to strangest music.... Gwenna had been +dazed with delight; but she could not have talked about it as these +people talked. "Mr. Rose-colour," Mr. Smith,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> and Leslie's whiskered +young man were all joining in together now.</p> + +<p>"You won't deny that a trace of the Morbid——"</p> + +<p>"But that hint of savagery is really the attraction," Mr. Smith +explained rather pompously. "We over-civilised peoples, who know no +savagery in modern life, who have done with that aspect of evolution, I +suppose we welcome something so——"</p> + +<p>"Elemental——"</p> + +<p>"Primitive——"</p> + +<p>"Brutal?" suggested Mrs. Rose-colour, appreciatively.</p> + +<p>"And that infinitude of gesture——" murmured the whiskered man, eating +asparagus.</p> + +<p>"Yes, but Isadora——"</p> + +<p>"Ah, but Karsavina!"</p> + +<p>"You must admit that Nijinski is ultra-romantic——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Define</i> Romance!"</p> + +<p>"Geltzer——"</p> + +<p>"Scheherazade——"</p> + +<p>Utterly bewildered by the strange words of the language spoken by half +London in early summer, Nineteen-fourteen, the young girl from the wilds +sought a glimpse of her friend's black-swathed head and vivid, impish +face above the banked flowers of the table-centre. Did Leslie know all +these words? Was she talking? She was laughing flippantly enough; +speaking as nonchalantly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes, I'm going to the next Chelsea Arts Ball in that all-mauve rig he +wears in the 'Spectre de la Rose.' I am. Watch the effect. 'Oh, Hades, +the Ladies! They'll leave their wooden huts!' <i>You</i> needn't laugh, Mr. +Swayne"—this to the Chopin young man. "<i>Any</i>body would be taken in. I +can look quite as much of a man as Nijinski does. In fact, far——"</p> + +<p>Here suddenly Gwenna's neighbour leaned forward over the table towards +his hostess and broke in, his deep, gentle voice carrying above the +buzz.</p> + +<p>"Mrs. Smith! I say! I beg your pardon," he exclaimed quickly, "but isn't +that a baby crying like anything somewhere?"</p> + +<p>This remark of the young man's, and that which followed it, surprised +and puzzled Gwenna even more than his curious remark about draughts. Who +was he? What sort of a young man was this who always sat in draughts and +who could catch the sound of a baby's cry when even its own mother +hadn't heard it through the thick <i>portière</i>, the doors, the walls and +that high-pitched buzz of conversation round about the table?</p> + +<p>For Mrs. Smith had fled from the table with a murmured word of apology, +and had presently returned just as the ornate fruit-and-jelly mould was +being handed round, and Gwenna heard her saying to Mrs. Rose-colour, +"Yes, it was. He's off again now. He simply won't go down for Nurse—I +always have to rush——"</p> + +<p>Gwenna turned to her companion, whose collar was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span> now well up over the +back of his neck. Wondering, she said to him, "<i>Fancy</i> your hearing +that, through all this other noise!"</p> + +<p>"Ah, one gets pretty quick at listening to, and placing, noises," he +told her, helping himself to the jelly and shrugging his shoulders and +that collar at the same time. "It's being accustomed to notice any +squeak that oughtn't to be there, you know, in the engines. One gets to +hear the tiniest sound, through anything."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, more puzzled than before, turned from that delectable pudding on +her plate, to this strangely interesting young man beside her. She said: +"Are you an engineer?"</p> + +<p>"I used to be," he said. "A mechanic, you know, in the shops, before I +got to be a pilot."</p> + +<p>"A pilot?" She wondered if he thought it rude of her, if it bothered him +to be asked questions about himself like this, by just a girl? And still +she couldn't help asking yet another question.</p> + +<p>She said, "Are you a sailor, then?"</p> + +<p>"Me?" he said, as if surprised. "Oh, no——"</p> + +<p>And then, quite simply and as if it were nothing, he made what was to +Gwenna an epic announcement.</p> + +<p>"I'm an airman," he said.</p> + +<p>She gasped.</p> + +<p>He went on. "Belong to a firm that sends me flying. Taking up passengers +at Hendon, that sort of thing."</p> + +<p>"An airman? <i>Are</i> you?" was all that Gwenna could for the moment reply. +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span>"Oh ... <i>Oh!</i>"</p> + +<p>Perhaps her eyes, widening upon the face above her, were more eloquent +of what she felt.</p> + +<p>That it was to her a miracle to find herself actually sitting next to +him! Actually speaking to one of these scarcely credible beings whom she +had watched this afternoon! <i>An airman</i>.... There was something about +the very word that seemed mysterious, uncanny. Was it because of its +comparative newness in the speech of man? Perhaps, ages ago, primitive +maids found something as arresting in the term "<i>A seaman</i>"? But this +was an airman! It was his part to ride the Winged Victory, the aeroplane +that dared those sapphire heights above the flying-ground. Oh! And she +had been chattering to him about the slate-margined brooks and the ferny +glens of her low-lying valley, just as if he'd been what this ingenuous +maid called to herself "<i>Any</i> young man" who had spent holidays fishing +in Wales? She hadn't known. <i>That</i> was why he had those queer, keen +eyes: blue and reckless, yet measuring.</p> + +<p>Not a sailor's, not a soldier's ... but the eyes of Icarus!...</p> + +<p>"I—I never heard your name," said Gwenna, a little breathless, timid. +"Which is it, please?"</p> + +<p>For reply he dabbed a big, boyish finger down on the slender name-card +among the crumbs of his bread. "Here you are," he said, "Dampier; Paul +Dampier."</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>So whirling and bewildered was Gwenna's mind by this time that she +scarcely wondered over the added<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> surprise. This, she just realised, was +the name she had first heard bellowed aloud through the megaphone from +the judges' stand. She hardly remembered then that a photograph of this +same aviator was tossed in among her wash-leather gloves, velvet +hair-bands, and her handkerchief-sachet in the top right-hand drawer of +her dressing-table at the Club. Certainly she did not remember at this +minute what she had said, laughing, over that portrait, to her two +friends on the flying-ground.</p> + +<p>There, she had admired the machine; that un-Antæus-like thing that was +not itself until it had shaken off the fetters of Earth from its skids +and wheels. Here, she marvelled over the man; <i>for he was part of it</i>. +He was its skill and its will. He was the planner of those curves and +bankings and soarings, those vol-planés that had left, as it were, +their lovely lines visible in the air. His Icarian mind had +determined—his large but supple body had executed them.</p> + +<p>A girl could understand that, without understanding how it was all done. +Those big, boyish hands of his, of course, would grasp certain +mechanisms; his feet, too, would be busy; his knees—every inch of his +lithe length and breadth—every muscle of him; yes! even to the tiny +muscles that moved his wonderful eyes.</p> + +<p>"I saw you, then," she told him, in a dazed little voice. "I was at +Hendon this afternoon! It was the first time in my life...."</p> + +<p>"Really?" he said. "What did you think of it all?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh, splendid!" she said, ardently, though vaguely.</p> + +<p>How she longed to be able to talk quickly and easily to anybody, as +Leslie could! How stupid he—the Airman—must think her! A little +shakily she forced herself to go on: "I did think it so wonderful, but I +can't explain, like. Ever. I <i>never</i> can. But——"</p> + +<p>Perhaps, again, she was explaining better than she knew, with that +small, eager face raised to his.</p> + +<p>"Oh!" she begged. "Do <i>tell</i> me about it!"</p> + +<p>He laughed. "Tell you what? Isn't much to tell."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, there must be! You tell me," she urged softly, unconscious +that her very tone was pure and concentrated flattery. "Do!"</p> + +<p>And with another short, deprecating laugh, another shrug to his collar, +the boy began to "tell" her things, though the girl did not pretend to +understand. She listened to that voice, strong and deep, but womanishly +gentle. She forgot that by rights she ought to pay some attention to her +neighbour, the imitation Chopin. She listened to this other.</p> + +<p>Words like "<i>controls</i>," "<i>pockets</i>," "<i>yawing</i>," went in at one of the +ears under her brown curls and out at the other, leaving nothing but a +quivering atmosphere of "the wonderfulness" of it all. Presently she saw +those hands of his, big, sensitive, clever, arranging forks and spoons +upon the sheeny tablecloth before her.</p> + +<p>"Imagine that's your machine," he said. "Now you see there are three +possible movements. <i>This</i>"—he tilted a dessert-knife from side to +side—<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>"<i>and this</i>"—he dipped it—"<i>and this</i>, which is yawing—you +understand?"</p> + +<p>"No!" she confessed, with the quickest little gesture. "I couldn't +understand those sort of things. I shouldn't want to. What I really want +to know is—well, about <i>it</i>, like!"</p> + +<p>"About what?"</p> + +<p>"About <i>flying</i>!"</p> + +<p>He laughed outright again. "But, that <i>is</i> flying!"</p> + +<p>She shook her head. "No, not what I mean. That's all—machinery!" She +pronounced the word "machinery" with something almost like disdain. He +looked at her as if puzzled.</p> + +<p>"Sorry you aren't interested in machinery," he said quite reprovingly, +"because, you know, that's just what I <i>am</i> interested in. I'm up to my +eyes in it just now, pretty well every minute that I can spare. In fact +I've got a machine—only the drawings for it, of course, but——"</p> + +<p>"Do you mean you've <i>invented</i> one?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know about 'invent.' Call it an improvement. It should be +about as different from the lumbering concern you saw me go up in to-day +as that's different from—say from one of those old Cambrian Railway +steam engines," he declared exultantly. "It's——"</p> + +<p>Here, he plunged into another vortex of mysterious jargon about +"automatic stability," about "skin friction," and a hundred other +matters that left the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> listening girl as giddy as a flight itself might +have done.</p> + +<p>What she did understand from all this was that here, after all, in the +Machine, must be the secret of all the magic. This was what interested +the Man. An inventor, too, he talked as if he loved to talk of it—even +to her; his steel-blue eyes holding her own. Perhaps he didn't even see +her, she thought; perhaps he scarcely remembered there was a girl there, +leaving strawberries and cream untasted on an apple-green plate, +listening with all her ears, with all of <i>herself</i>—as he, with all of +himself, guided a machine. Ah, he talked of a just-invented machine as +in the same tone Gwenna had heard young mothers talk of their new-born +babies.</p> + +<p>This was what he lived for!</p> + +<p>"Yes," concluded the enthusiast with a long sigh, "if I could get that +completed, and upon the market——"</p> + +<p>"Well?" Gwenna took up softly; ignorant, but following his every change +of tone. "Why can't you?"</p> + +<p>"Why not? For the usual reason that people who are keen to get things +done can't do 'em," the boy said ruefully, watching that responsive +shadow cloud her face as he told her. "It's a question of the dashed +money."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" said the girl more softly still. "I see."</p> + +<p>So he, too, even he knew what it was to find that fettering want of +guineas clog a soaring impulse? What a <i>shame</i>, she thought....</p> + +<p>He thought (as many another young man with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> Subject has thought of +some rapt and girlish listener!) that the little thing was jolly +intelligent, <i>for</i> a girl, more so than you were supposed to expect of +such a pretty face—— Pretty? Come to look at her she was quite lovely. +Made that baggage in the yellow dress and the Mrs. in the Pink look like +a couple of half-artificial florists' blooms by the side of a +lily-of-the-valley freshly-plucked from some country garden, sappy and +sturdy, and sweet. And her skin was like the bit of mother-of-pearl she +was wearing as a heart-shaped locket.</p> + +<p>Quite suddenly he said to her: "Look here! Should you care to go up?"</p> + +<p>Gwenna gasped.</p> + +<p>The whole room, the bright table and the chattering guests seemed now to +whirl about her in a circle of shiny mist—as that aeroplane propeller +had whirled.... Care to go up? "<i>Care!</i>" Would she? Would she <i>not</i>?</p> + +<p>"Oh——" she began.</p> + +<p>But this throbbing moment was the moment chosen by her hostess to glance +smilingly at Mrs. Rose-colour and to rise, marshalling the women from +the room.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE SONG OF ALL THE AGES</h3> + + +<p>"Now isn't life <i>extraordinary</i>?" thought Gwenna Williams, incoherently +in the drawing-room as she sat on the yellow Empire sofa under the +mirror, holding a tiny coffee-cup and answering the small-talk of kindly +Mrs. Smith. "Fancy, before this afternoon I'd never seen any flying! And +now on the very same evening I'm asked to go flying myself! Me! Just +like that girl who was with him in the race! (I wonder is she a great +friend of his.) I wonder when he'll take me? Will he come and settle +about it—oh, I do hope so!—before we all have to go away?"</p> + +<p>But there was no chance of "settling" this for some time after the door +opened to a little commotion of bass laughter, a trail of cigar-scent, +and the entrance of the man.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Rose-colour, with some coquettish remark that Gwenna didn't catch, +summoned the tall airman to the yellow-brocaded pouffe at her feet. Her +husband crossed over to Gwenna (who suddenly discovered that she hated +him) and began talking Welsh folk-songs. Whereupon Hugo Swayne, fondling +his Chopin curl, asked Leslie, who towered above him near the piano, if +she were going to sing.</p> + +<p>"I'm in such a mood," he told her, "to listen to something rawly and +entirely modern!"</p> + +<p>"You shall, then," agreed Miss Long, suddenly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> demure. "D'you know +the—er—<i>Skizzen Macabres</i>, those deliciously perverse little things of +Wedekind's? They've been quite well translated.... Righto, my dear"—in +answer to a nervous glance from her sister, "I'll only sing the +<i>primmer</i> verses. The music is by that wonderful new Hungarian +person—er—Sjambok."</p> + +<p>Her tall golden figure reflected itself in the ebony mirror of the piano +as Leslie, with a malicious gleam in the tail of her eye, sat down.</p> + +<p>"I shan't sing for <i>him</i>, all the same," she thought. "I shall sing for +Taffy and that Air-boy. I bet I can hit on something that <i>they'll</i> both +like.... Yes...."</p> + +<p>And she struck the first chords of her accompaniment.</p> + +<p>And what was it, this "crudely modern" song that Leslie had chosen for +the sake of the two youngest people present at that party?</p> + +<p>There is a quintette of banjo-players and harpists who are sometimes +"on" at the Coliseum in London, but who are more often touring our +Colonies from Capetown to Salter, Sask. And wherever they may go, it +seems, they bring down the house with that same song. For, to the hearts +of exiled and homesick and middle-aged toilers that simple tune means +England, Home and Beauty still. They waltzed to it, long ago in the +Nineteenth Century. They "turned over" for some pretty girl who +"practised" it. So, when they hear it, they encore it still, with a lump +in their throats....</p> + +<p>It was the last verse of this song that drifted in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> Leslie's deep +contralto, across this more enlightened drawing-room audience of +Nineteen-fourteen. Softly the crooning, simply phrased melody stole out:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>Even to-day we hear Love's song of yore!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Low in our hearts it rings for evermore.</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Footsteps may falter, weary grow the way,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Still we can hear it at the close of day!</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>—"and it's at least as pleasant as any of their beastly 'artistic' +music," thought Leslie, rebelliously, as she sang:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>Still to the end</i>," (chord) "<i>while Life's dim shadows fall,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Love will be found the sweetest song of all</i>!"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>She ended in a ripple of arpeggios, triumphantly, for she had glanced at +the two youngest people in the room. Little Gwenna's eyes were full of +the facile tears of her race; and the Dampier boy's face was grave with +enjoyment. Alas, for the musical taste of these two! They <i>had</i> liked +the old song....</p> + +<p>The enlightened others were puzzled for a moment. <i>What</i> was that +thing——?</p> + +<p>Mr. Swayne explained languidly. "Priceless old ditty entitled 'Love's +Old Sweet Song.' A favourite of the dear late Queen's, long before any +of US were thought of. Miss Long has been trying to pull our legs with +it!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Leslie, dear, you are so amusing always," said Mrs. Rose-colour, +turning with her little superior smile to the singer. "But won't you +sing something <i>really</i>?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p> + +<p>Leslie's quick black eyes caught a glance of half-conscious, +half-inarticulate sympathy that was passing between the youngest girl in +the room and the man who had taken her in to dinner. It was as if they'd +said, together, "I wish she'd sing again. I wish she'd sing something +like <i>that</i> again...."</p> + +<p>They were alone in their wish!</p> + +<p>For now Mrs. Smith sat down and played something. Something very +long....</p> + +<p>And still what Gwenna longed to happen did not happen. In spite of that +glance of sympathy just now, it did not happen.</p> + +<p>The Airman, sitting there on that brocaded <i>pouffe</i>, his long legs +stretched out over the soft putty-coloured carpet, did <i>not</i> come up to +her to speak again of that so miraculously proffered flight in his +aeroplane. He went on being talked to by Mrs. Rose-colour.</p> + +<p>And when that pretty lady and her husband rose to go, the young girl in +her corner had a very blank and tense moment. For she heard those people +offer to take Mr. Dampier with them and drop him at his rooms. Oh, that +would mean that she, Gwenna, wouldn't have another word with him! He'd +go! And his invitation had been unanswered!</p> + +<p>"Care to go up?" he'd said—and Gwenna hadn't even had time to tell him +"Yes!"</p> + +<p>Ah, it would have been too good to be true!——</p> + +<p>Very likely he'd forgotten what he'd said at, dinner....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span></p> + +<p>He hadn't meant it....</p> + +<p>He'd thought she'd meant "No."</p> + +<p>He was going now——</p> + +<p>But no. To her unspeakable relief she heard his deep "Thanks awfully, +but I'm going on with Hugo presently. Taking him to meet some people at +the Aero Club."</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Now, just imagine that! thought the country girl. Here it was already +half-past ten at night; but he was going on to meet some more people +somewhere else. This wonderful party, which had marked an epoch in her +life, was nothing to him; it was just the beginning of the evening. And, +after days in the skies, all his evenings were like this! Hadn't Mrs. +Smith said when he came in, "We know you are besieged with invitations?" +Oh, the inconceivably interesting life that was his! Why, why was Gwenna +nothing but a girl, a creature who, even nowadays, had to stay within +the circumscribed limits where she was put, who could not see or be or +do <i>anything</i>, really! Might as well be born a <i>tortoise</i>....</p> + +<p>Here the voice of Mr. Hugo Swayne (to which she'd paid scant attention +so far) said something about taking Miss Long and her friend up to +Hampstead first, and that Paul could come along.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, enraptured, discovered that this meant in his, Mr. Swayne's, +car. The four of them were to motor up to her and Leslie's Club +together. All that lovely long drive?<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p> + +<p>But though "lovely," that journey back to Hampstead, speeding through +the broad, uncrowded streets that the lights showed smooth and polished +as a ballroom floor, with the giant shadows of plane-tree leaves +a-dance upon the pavement—that journey was unbelievably, relentlessly +short.</p> + +<p>Mr. Swayne seemed to tear along! He was driving, with Leslie, gay and +talkative and teasing, beside him in front. The younger girl sat behind +with his cousin. The Airman was hatless; and he wore a light loose +overcoat of which the big sleeve brushed the black satin of Gwenna's +wrap.</p> + +<p>"Warm enough?" he asked, gently, and (as carefully as if she'd been some +old invalid, she thought) he tucked a rug about her. Eagerly Gwenna +longed for him to return to that absorbing question he'd put to her at +the dinner-table. But there seemed scarcely time to say a single word +before, with a jarring of brakes, the car drew up in the slanting road +before the big square block of the Club. The arc-lights blazed into the +depths of the tall chestnut-trees beside the street, while the four +young people stood for a moment clustered together on the asphalt walk +before the glass-porch.</p> + +<p>"All over now," thought Gwenna with quite a ridiculously sharp little +pang as good-nights and good-byes were said.</p> + +<p>Oh! Wasn't he going to say anything else? About the flying? <i>She</i> +couldn't!</p> + +<p>He was holding her hand (for good-night) while Mr. Swayne still laughed +with Leslie.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Look here," the Airman said abruptly. "About that flying——"</p> + +<p>"Yes! Oh, yes!" Gwenna returned in a breathless little flurry. There +mustn't be any <i>mistake</i> about what she wished. She looked up into his +holding eyes once more, and said quiveringly, "I would so love it!"</p> + +<p>"You would. Right," he said, and seemed to have forgotten that they had +shaken hands, and that he had not yet loosed her fingers from his large +and hearty grip. He shook hands again. "Then I'll come round And fix it +up——"</p> + +<p>And the next instant, it seemed, he was whirled away from her again, +this Stranger who had dropped into the middle of her life as it were +from the skies which were his hunting-ground. There was the noise of a +retreating car droning down the hill (not unlike the receding drone of a +biplane in full flight), then the grating of a key in the lock of the +Club door....</p> + +<p>Gwenna sighed. Then she went upstairs, humming softly, without knowing +what the tune was, Leslie's song:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>Once in the dear, dead days beyond recall——</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>Leslie followed her into her room where she turned up the gas.</p> + +<p>"I'll undo you, Taffy, shall I?... Enjoyed yourself rather, after all, +didn't you?" said the elder girl, adding quickly, "What's the matter?"</p> + +<p>For Gwenna before the glass stood with a dismayed look upon her face. +Her hand was up to her round<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> white throat, touching the dimpled hollow +where there had rested—where there rested no longer—that +mother-of-pearl pendant.</p> + +<p>"It's gone," she exclaimed ruefully.</p> + +<p>"What has, child? What have you dropped?"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, still with her hand at her throat, explained, "I've lost my +heart".</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE WORKADAY WORLD</h3> + + +<p>The day after the dinner-party was spent by Gwenna metaphorically, at +least, in the clouds.</p> + +<p>By her vivid day-dreams she was carried off, as Ganymede was carried by +the eagle, sky-high; she felt the rush of keen air on her face; she saw +the khaki-green flying-ground beneath her with the clustered onlookers, +as small as ants. And—thus she imagined it—she heard that megaphone +announcement:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ladies +and +gentul +MEN! +Mis +ter +Paul +Dampier +on +a +Maurice +Farman +bi +plane +ac +companied +by +Miss +Williams!"</p></div> + +<p>with the sound of it dying down, faintly, below her.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Then in her musing mind she went over and over what had already +happened. Those throbbing moments when her new friend had said, "Look +here! Would you care to come up?" and, "Then I'll come up here and fix +it——"</p> + +<p>Would he? Oh, when would he? It was of course hardly to be thought that +this flying-man ("besieged with invitations" as he was) would come to +ratify his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> offer on Sunday, the very day after he'd made it. Too much +to expect....</p> + +<p>Therefore that Sunday Gwenna Williams refused to go out, even on the +Heath for the shortest loitering stroll. Leslie Long, with an +indescribable look that the younger girl did not catch, went out without +her. Gwenna stayed on the green bench in the small, leafy garden at the +back of the Club, reading and listening, listening for the sound of the +bell at the front door, or for the summons to the telephone.</p> + +<p>None came, of course.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Also, of course, no note to make an appointment to go flying appeared at +that long, crowded breakfast-table of the Club on Monday morning for +Miss Gwenna Williams.</p> + +<p>That, too, she could hardly have expected.</p> + +<p>Quite possibly he'd forgotten that the appointment had ever been made. A +young man of that sort had got so many things to think about. So many +people to make appointments with. So many other girls to take up.</p> + +<p>"I wonder if he's promised to go up again soon with that girl called +Muriel," she thought. "Sure to know millions of girls——"</p> + +<p>And it was in a very chastened mood of reaction that Gwenna Williams, +typist—now dressed in the business-girl's uniform of serge costume, +light blouse, and small hat—left her Club that morning. She walked down +the sunny morning road to the stopping-place<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> of the motor-omnibuses and +got on to a big scarlet "24" bus, bound for Charing Cross and her day's +work.</p> + +<p>The place where she worked was a huge new building in process of +construction on the south side of the Embankment near Westminster +Bridge.</p> + +<p>Above the slowly sliding tides of the river, with its barges and boats, +there towered several courses of granite blocks, clean as a +freshly-split kernel. In contrast to them were the half demolished, +dingy shells of houses on either side, where the varied squares of +wallpaper and the rusting, floorless fireplaces showed where one room +had ended and the next begun. The scaffolding rose above the new pile +like a mighty web. Above this again the enormous triangular lattice rose +so high that it seemed like a length of ironwork lace stretched out on +two crochet-needles against the blue-grey and hot vault of the London +sky.</p> + +<p>As she passed the entrance Gwenna's eyes rose to this lattice.</p> + +<p>"It looks almost as high up in the air as one could fly in that +biplane," she thought. "Oh, to be right <i>up</i>! Looking down on +everything, with the blue <i>beneath one</i> instead of only above!"</p> + +<p>She crossed the big yard, which was already vocal with the noises of +chipping and hammering, the trampling and the voices of men. Two of +them—the genial young electrician called Grant and the Yorkshire +foreman who was a regular father to his gang,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> nodded good-morning to +the youngest typist as she passed. She walked quickly past the stacks of +new timber and the gantries and travelling cranes (plenty of machinery +here; it ought to please Mr. Dampier, since he'd said that was what he +was interested in!). One great square of the hewn granite was swinging +in mid-air from a crane as she left the hot sunlight and noise outside +and entered the door of the square, corrugated iron building that held +the office where she worked.</p> + +<p>To reach it she had to pass through the clerk-of-the-works' offices, +with long drawing-benches with brass handled drawers beneath, full of +plans, and elevations. These details seemed mysteriously, tantalisingly +incomprehensible and yet irritating to Gwenna's feminine mind. She was +imaginative enough to realise that all these details, these +"man's-things," from the T-squares on the benches to the immense iron +safe in the corner, seemed to put her, Gwenna, "in her place." She was +merely another detail in the big whole of man's work that was going on +here. The place made her feel tiny, unimportant. She went on to the +light and airy room, smelling of new wood and tracing-paper, the +extension of the clerk-of-the-works' office that she shared with her two +colleagues.</p> + +<p>In the centre of this room there was a large square table with a +telephone, a telephone-book, various other books of reference and a +shallow wicker basket for letters. Besides this there were the typing +tables for each of the three girl-clerks. Gwenna's and Miss<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> Baker's +were side by side. The German girl sat nearest to the window that gave +the view up the river, with Lambeth Bridge and the Houses of Parliament +looming grey and stately against the smiling June sky, and a distant +glimpse of Westminster Abbey. On the frame of the pane just above her +Miss Baker had fastened, with drawing-pins, two photographs. One was a +crude coloured postcard of a red-roofed village among pine-forests. The +other was a portrait of a young man, moustached and smiling under a +spiked German helmet; across this photograph ran the autograph, "<i>Karl +Becker</i>." Thus the blue and guileless eyes of this young foreigner in +our midst could rest upon mementoes of her Fatherland and her family any +time she raised her blonde head from bending over her work. Both girls +looked up this morning as Gwenna, the last arrival, came in. They +scolded her good-naturedly because she'd brought none of those +chocolates she'd promised from the dinner-table. They asked how she'd +enjoyed herself at that party.</p> + +<p>It would have been presumably natural to the young Welsh girl to have +broken out into a bubblingly excited—"And, girls! <i>Who</i> d'you suppose I +sat next. A real live airman! <i>And</i>, my dears!" (with a rapturous gasp), +"who should it be but the one I bought the photo of on Saturday! You +know; the one you called my young man—Mr. Dampier—Paul Dampier—Yes, +but wait; that isn't all. Just fancy! He talked to me yards and yards +about his new aeroplane, and I say, <i>what</i> do you think! This was the +best. He's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> asked me to come up one day—yes, indeed! He's going to take +me flying—with him!"</p> + +<p>But, as it was, Gwenna said not one word of all this. She could not have +explained why, even to herself. Only she replied to Miss Butcher's, +"What was the party like?" with a flavourless, "Oh, it was all right, +thanks."</p> + +<p>That sounded <i>so</i> English, she thought!</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>She had a dull day at the office. Dry-as-dust letters and +specifications, builders' quantities, and so on, to type out. Tiresome +calls on the telephone that had to be put through to the other +office....</p> + +<p>Never before had she seemed to mind the monotony of those clicking keys +and that "<i>I'll inquire. Hold the line, please.</i>" Never before had she +found herself irritated by the constant procession of men who were in +and out all day; including Mr. Grant, who sometimes seemed to <i>make</i> +errands to talk to Miss Butcher, but who never stayed for more than a +moment, concluding invariably with the cheerful remark, "Well! Duty +calls, I must away." Men seemed actually to <i>enjoy</i> "duty," Gwenna +thought. At least the men here did. All of them, from Mr. Henderson in +the other office to the brown-faced men in the yard with their +shirt-sleeves rolled up above tattooed arms, seemed to be "keen" on the +building, on the job in hand. They seemed glad to be together. Gwenna +wondered how they could....</p> + +<p>To-day she was all out of tune. She was quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> cross when, for the +second time, Albert, the seventeen-year old Cockney office-boy, bustled +in, stamping a little louder than was strictly necessary on the echoing +boards. He rubbed his hands together importantly, demanding in a voice +that began in a bass roar and ended in a treble squeak, "Those +specifications, miss. Quick, too, or you'll hear about it!"</p> + +<p>"Goodness <i>me</i>, what an ugly way you London boys do have of talking!" +retorted the Welsh girl pettishly. "<i>Sut</i>-ch an accent!"</p> + +<p>The rebuked Albert only snorted with laughter as he took her sheaf of +papers. Then, looking back over his shoulder at the pretty typist +perched on the edge of the centre table to refill her fountain pen, he +added in his breaking treble, "Don't you sit on that tyble, Miss! +<i>Sittin' on the tyble's s'posed to mean you want to be kissed</i>, and it +looks so bad! Don't it, Miss Butcher? There's other ways of gittin' orf +than that, isn't there?"</p> + +<p>"Outside!" snapped Miss Butcher, blushing, as the boy stumped away.</p> + +<p>Gwenna sighed angrily and longed for lunch-time, so that she could get +out.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>At one o'clock, an hour after the buzzer had sounded for the mid-day +meal of the yard-men, the other two girls in the office would not even +come out for a breath of air. They had brought fruit and cake. They made +Bovril (with a kettle of hot water begged from the fatherly foreman) and +lunched where they'd sat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> all the morning. Miss Butcher, munching, was +deep in a library-book lent to her by the young electrician. Miss Baker +counted stitches in a new pattern for a crochet-work <i>Kante</i>, or length +of fine thread insertion. It was not unlike the pattern of the iron +trellis above the scaffolding, that tapered black against the sky; man's +fancy-work.</p> + +<p>What hideously tame things women had to fill their lives with, Gwenna +thought as she sat in the upper window of her tea-shop at the corner of +the Embankment. She watched the luncheon-time crowd walking over +Westminster Bridge. So many of these people were business-girls just +like herself and the Butcher and the Baker! Would anything more amusing +ever happen to them, or to her?</p> + +<p>But that German girl, Gwenna thought, would stare to hear her work +called "hideous" or "tame." It was her greatest interest. Already, she'd +told Gwenna, her bottom drawer at her boarding-house was crammed with +long, rolled-up crochet-work strips of white or creamy lace. There were +also her piles of tray-cloths, petticoat flounces and chemise-tops, all +hand-embroidered and bemonogrammed by Miss Baker herself. She was not +engaged to be married, but, as she'd artlessly said, "<i>Something</i> a +young girl can have always ready."</p> + +<p>Day-dreams in crochet!</p> + +<p>"I'd rather never fall in love than have it all spoilt by mixing it up +with such a lot of sewing and cookery that it wouldn't get disentangled, +like," thought the dreamy, impatient Gwenna. She returned, to find the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> +German girl measuring her crochet lace against her arm and crying, +"Since Saturday I have made till there." ...</p> + +<p>Then Miss Baker turned to her German version of an English trade firm's +letter. Miss Butcher unfastened another packet of stationery. Miss +Williams fetched a number of envelopes from the inner office to be +addressed....</p> + +<p>Would the afternoon <i>never</i> come to an end?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>THE INVITATION</h3> + + +<p>At last six o'clock found her, released from the day's work and back at +her Club.</p> + +<p>But still, still there was no envelope addressed to Miss Gwenna Williams +stuck up in the criss-cross tapes of the green-baize-covered +letter-board in the hall.</p> + +<p>She went upstairs rather slowly to take off her hat. On the landing the +voice of Leslie Long called to her from the bathroom.</p> + +<p>"Come in here, Taffy. I'm washing blouses. I want to tell you some +news."</p> + +<p>Gwenna entered the steamy bathroom, to find her chum's tall figure bent +in two over the bath and up to its bare elbows in suds of Lux.</p> + +<p>"I say, child, you know your locket that you lost at my sister's?" +announced Leslie. "It's all right. It's been found."</p> + +<p>"Has it?" said Gwenna, not very enthusiastically. "Did I leave it in +Mrs. Smith's room?"</p> + +<p>"You didn't. You left it in Hugo Swayne's car," said Leslie, wringing +out the wet handful of transparent net that would presently serve her as +a garment. "That young man came up about half an hour ago to tell you."</p> + +<p>"Mr. Swayne did? How kind of him."</p> + +<p>"Yes, wasn't it? But not of Mr. Swayne," said<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> Leslie, wringing. "It +was—just let out the water and turn me on some fresh hot, will you?—It +was the other one that came: the aviator boy."</p> + +<p>"What?" cried Gwenna sharply. "Mr. Dampier?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Your bird-man. He came up here—in full plumage and song! Nice +grey suit—rather old; brown boots awfully well cleaned—by himself; +blue tie, very expensive Burlington Arcade one—lifted from his cousin +Hugo, I bet," enlarged Leslie, spreading the blouse out over the white +china edge of the bath. "I met him at the gate just as I got back from +my old lady's. He asked for my friend—meaning you. Hadn't grasped your +name. He came in for ten minutes. But he couldn't wait, Taffy, so——"</p> + +<p>Here, straightening herself, Leslie suddenly stopped. She stopped at the +sight of the small, blankly dismayed face with which her chum had been +listening to this chatter.</p> + +<p>And Gwenna, standing aghast against the frosted glass panes of the +bathroom door, pronounced, in her softest, most agitated Welsh accent, +an everyday Maid's Tragedy in just six words:</p> + +<p>"<i>He came! When I was out!</i>"</p> + +<p>"He was awfully sorry——"</p> + +<p>But Gwenna, seeming not to hear her friend, broke out: "He <i>said</i> he'd +come and settle about taking me flying, and there was I <i>think</i>-ing he'd +forgotten all about it, and then he did come after all, and I wasn't +here! Oh, <i>Leslie</i>!—--"</p> + +<p>Leslie, sitting on the edge of the bath, gave her a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> glance that was +serious and whimsical, rueful and tender, all at once.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you can't understand," mourned Gwenna, "but I <i>did</i> so want to go +up in an aeroplane for once in my life! I'd set my heart on it, Leslie, +ever since he said about it. It's only now I see how badly I wanted it," +explained the younger girl, flushed with emotion, and relapsing into her +Welshiest accent, as do all the Welsh in their moments of stress. "And +<i>now</i> I shan't get another chance. I know I shan't——"</p> + +<p>And such was the impetus of her grief that Leslie could hardly get her +to listen to the rest of the news that should be balm for this wound of +disappointment; namely, that Mr. Dampier was going to make an +appointment with both girls to come and have tea with him at his rooms, +either on Saturday or Sunday.</p> + +<p>"He'll write to you," concluded Leslie Long, "and let you know which. I +said we'd go either day, Taffy."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, caught up into delight again from the lowest depths of +disappointment, could hardly trust herself to speak. Surely Leslie must +think her a most <i>awful</i> baby, nearly crying because she'd had an outing +postponed! So the young girl (laughing a little shakily) put up quite +a plucky fight to treat it all as quite a trifle....</p> + +<p>Even the next morning at breakfast she took it quite casually that there +was a note upon her plate stamped with the address of the Aero Club. She +even waited a moment before she opened it and read in a handwriting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> as +small as if it had been traced by a crow-quill:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="ralign">"Monday night.</p> + +<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Miss Williams</span>,</p> + +<p>"Will you and Miss Long come to tea with me at my place about 4.30 +on Sunday? I find I shall not have to go to Hendon on that day. +I'll come and call for you if I may.</p> + +<p class="ralign"> +"Yours sincerely, <br /> +"<span class="smcap">P. Dampier.</span>"</p> +</div> + +<p>"At last!" thought Gwenna to herself, rather breathlessly, as she put +the note back into the envelope. "Now he'll settle about when I'm to go +flying with him. Oh! I do, <i>do</i> hope there's nothing going to get in the +way of that!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>A BACHELOR'S TEA-PARTY</h3> + + +<p>The first of a series of "things that got in the way" of Gwenna's making +an appointment to go flying occurred on that Sunday afternoon, when +Leslie and she were to have tea at Paul Dampier's place.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>"A mixture of chaos and comfy chairs, I expect; ash everywhere, and +<i>beastly</i> cakes. (I know these bachelor tea-parties.) That," Leslie +said, "is what his 'place' will be like."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, as usual, hadn't wasted any thoughts over this. She had been too +full of what their host himself would say and do—about the flying. She +was all ready, in the white dress, the white hat with the wings, half an +hour after Sunday mid-day dinner at the Ladies' Club. But it was very +nearly half-past four by the time Mr. Dampier did come, as he had +promised, to fetch the two girls.</p> + +<p>He came in the car that had driven them back on the night of the +dinner-party.</p> + +<p>And he was hurried, and apologetic for his lateness. He even seemed a +little shy. This had the effect of making Gwenna feel quite +self-possessed as she took the seat beside him ("I hate sitting by the +driver, really.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> Makes me <i>so</i> nervous!" Leslie had declared) and +inquired whether he borrowed his cousin's car any time he had visitors.</p> + +<p>"Well, but Hugo's <i>got</i> everything," he told her, with a twinkle, "so I +always borrow anything of his that I can collar!"</p> + +<p>"Studs, too?" asked Gwenna, quickly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come! I didn't think it of you. <i>What</i> a pun!" he retorted.</p> + +<p>She coloured a little, shy again, hurt. But he turned his head to look +at her, confided to her: "It was <i>on</i> the chest-of-drawers, all the +time!"</p> + +<p>And, as the car whizzed westwards, they laughed together. That +dinner-table incident of the collar—or collared—stud brought, for the +second time, a sudden homely glow of friendly feeling between this boy +and girl.</p> + +<p>She thought, "He's just as easy to get on with as if he were another +girl, like Leslie——"</p> + +<p>For always, at the beginning of things, the very young woman compares +her first man-friend with the dearest girl-chum she has known.</p> + +<p>—"Or as if he were just nobody, instead of being so wonder-ful, and an +airman, good gracious!"</p> + +<p>Appropriately enough for an airman, his place seemed to be nearly on the +house-tops of a block of buildings near Victoria Street.</p> + +<p>The lift carried them up past six landings and many boards inscribed +with names of firms. It stopped at the seventh story, almost directly +opposite a cream-coloured<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> door with a small, old-fashioned brass +knocker, polished like gold.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier tapped sharply at it.</p> + +<p>The door was opened by a thick-set man in an excellent suit of clothes +and with the face of a wooden sphinx.</p> + +<p>"Tea as soon as you can, Johnson," said the young Airman over his +shoulder, as the trio passed in.</p> + +<p>The long sitting-room occupied half the flat and its windows took up the +whole of one side. It was to these open windows that Gwenna turned.</p> + +<p>"Oh, what a view!" she cried, looking out, enraptured at the height and +airiness, looking past the leads, with their wooden tubs of standard +laurel-bushes, among which pigeons were strutting and bridling and +pecking crumbs. She looked down, down, at the bird's-eye view of London, +spread far below her in a map of grey roofs and green tree-tops under a +soft mist of smoke that seemed of the clouds themselves.</p> + +<p>"Oh, can't you see for miles!" exclaimed Gwenna. "There's St. Paul's, +looks like a big grey soap-bubble, coming up out of the mist! Oh, you +can see between a crack in the houses, our place at Westminster! It's +like a cottage from here! Oh, and that iron lacey thing on the roof! +Even this must be something like being up in an aeroplane, I should +think! Look, Leslie!"</p> + +<p>Miss Long seemed more engrossed in looking round Mr. Dampier's bachelor +sitting-room. It was incredibly luxurious compared to what she'd +expected. The polished floor was black and shiny as the wood of the +piano at the further end, the Persian rugs softly brilliant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> In the +middle of the Adams mantelpiece simpered an exquisite Chelsea +shepherdess; to the left and right of her there stood squat toys in +ivory, old slender-stalked champagne-glasses holding sweet-peas. And +upon the leaf-brown walls were decorations that seemed complacently to +draw attention to the catholic taste of their owner. A rare +eighteenth-century print of Tom Jones upon his knees, asking +"forgiveness" of his Sophia, hung just above a Futurist's grimace in +paint; and there was a frieze of ultra-modern French fashion-designs, +framed in <i>passe-partout</i>, from the "<i>Bon Ton</i>."</p> + +<p>"What a—what a surprising number of pictures you have, Mr. Dampier," +said Leslie, mildly. "Hasn't he, Taffy?"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, turning at last from the window, realised dimly that this +sophisticated room did seem somehow out of keeping as an eyrie for this +eagle. The view outside, yes! But these armchairs? And she wouldn't have +thought that he would have bothered to have things <i>pretty</i>, like +this——</p> + +<p>"And what a lot of books you've got," she said. For the wall opposite to +the windows was taken up by bookshelves, set under a trophy of swords of +out-of-date patterns, and arranged with some thought.</p> + +<p>The top shelves held volumes of verse, and of plays, from Beaumont and +Fletcher to Galsworthy. The Russian novelists were ranged together; also +the French. There was a corner for Sudermann and Schnitzler. A shelf +further down came all the English moderns, and below that all the +<i>Yellow Books</i>, a long blue line of all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> the <i>English Reviews</i>, from the +beginning; a stack of <i>The New Age</i>, and a lurid pink-covered copy of +<i>Blast</i>.</p> + +<p>But before Gwenna could wonder further over these possessions of this +young man, more incongruous possessions were brought in by the +Sphinx-faced man-servant; a tea-table of beaten copper, a +peasant-embroidered cloth, a tea-service of old Coalport; with a silver +spirit-kettle, with an iced cake, with toast, and wafer, +bread-and-butter and cress-sandwiches and Parisian <i>petits-fours</i> that +all seemed, as the young girl put it simply to herself, "So unlike +<i>him</i>!"</p> + +<p>Her chum had already guessed the meaning of it all.</p> + +<p>The Dampier boy's rooms? <i>His</i> library and ornaments? Ah, no. He'd never +read one of all those books there. Not he! And these were not the type +of "things" he'd buy, even if he'd had the money to throw away, thought +Leslie. It was no surprise to that young woman when the legitimate owner +of this lavishly appointed <i>garçonnière</i> made his sudden appearance in +the middle of tea.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>The click of a latchkey outside. Two masculine voices in the hall. Then +the door was thrown open.</p> + +<p>There walked in a foreign-looking young man, with bright dark eyes and a +small moustache, followed by Mr. Hugo Swayne, attired in a Victorian +mode that, as Leslie put it afterwards, "cried '<i>Horse, horse!</i>' where +there was no horse." His tall bowler was dove-grey; his black stock +allowed a quarter-inch of white collar to appear; below his striking +waistcoat dangled a bunch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> of seals and a fob. This costume Leslie +recognised as a revival of the Beggarstaff Touch. Gwenna wondered why +this young man seemed always to be in fancy dress. Leslie could have +told her that Mr. Swayne's laziness and vanity had led him to abandon +himself on the coast of Bohemia, where he had not been born. His father +had been quite a distinguished soldier in Egypt. His father's son took +things more easily at the Grafton Gallery and the Café Royal and +Artists' Clubs. He neither painted, wrote, nor composed, but his life +was set largely among flatterers who did these things—after a fashion.</p> + +<p>He came in saying, "Now this is where I live when I'm——"</p> + +<p>He broke off with a start at the sight of the party within. The girls +turned to him with surprised and smiling greeting.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier, fixing him with those blue eyes, remarked composedly, +"Hullo, my dear chap. Have some tea, won't you? I'll ring for Johnson to +bring in two more cups."</p> + +<p>"That will be very nice," said Hugo Swayne, rising to the occasion with +all the more grace because he was backed up by a tiny understanding +glance from Miss Long. And he introduced his young Frenchman by a name +that made Leslie exclaim, "Why! You are that Post-Impressionist painter, +aren't you?"</p> + +<p>"Not I, mademoiselle, but my brother," returned Hugo's French friend, +slowly and very politely. His dark face was simple and intelligent as +that of a nice<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> child; he sat up as straight in his chair as he talked. +"It is for that Mr. Swayne, who is admirer of my brother's pictures, is +so amiable for to show me London. Me, I am not artiste. I am ingénieur +only."</p> + +<p>"'Only'!" thought Gwenna over her teacup.</p> + +<p>Surely any one should be proud of being an engineer, considering that +Mr. Dampier had thus begun <i>his</i> career; he who was now in what the +romantic girl considered the First of All Professions? Perhaps her +attitude towards the Airman as such was noted by the Airman's cousin. +Hugo, who had dropped a little heavily into the softest chair near Miss +Long, turned his Chopinesque profile against a purple cushion to shoot a +rather satirical glance at the cleaner-built youth in the worn grey +suit.</p> + +<p>"Now, how like a man! He doesn't admire Taffy particularly, but he's +piqued to see her admire another type." Leslie summed this up quickly to +herself. "Not really a bad sort; he behaved well about the invasion of +these rooms. But he's like all these well-off young men who potter about +antique shops when they ought to be taking exercise—he's plenty of +feminine little ways. Since they call spitefulness 'feminine'!"</p> + +<p>There was a distinctly spiteful note in the young man's voice as he made +his next remark to his cousin.</p> + +<p>This remark surprised even Leslie for a moment.</p> + +<p>And to Gwenna's heart it struck with a sudden, unreasonable shock of +consternation.</p> + +<p>For Mr. Swayne inquired blandly across the tea-table:</p> + +<p>"Well, Paul; how's your <i>fiancée</i>?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>LAUGHING ODDS</h3> + + +<p>Before he answered, Gwenna had time to think smartingly, "His <i>fiancée</i>! +There! I might have <i>known</i> he was engaged. I might have guessed it! +It's nothing to do with me.... Only ... I believe <i>that's</i> what's going +to get in the way of my flying with him. She won't let him. I mean he'll +always be taking her up! And I know who it is, too. It's sure to be the +one called Muriel that I saw go up with him at Hendon with the red hair +and the scarf. I sort of guessed when I heard they were going up +together that she must be his <i>fiancée</i>."</p> + +<p>And all the while her eyes were, apparently, on the silver stand of the +spirit-kettle, they watched the young Airman's face (which looked a +little sheepish). She listened, tensely, for his reply. Quite shortly +Paul Dampier, still munching cake, said, "Who? Oh! Going on as usual, +thanks."</p> + +<p>"Now I may tell you that <i>that's</i> merely a pose to conceal devotion," +laughed his cousin, turning to Gwenna. "Just as if every moment were not +grudged that he spends away from HER!"</p> + +<p>"Is it?" said the young girl with a smile. There was a bad lump in her +throat, but she spoke with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> most carefully-fostered "English" +accent. "I—I suppose that's natural!" she remarked.</p> + +<p>Hugo, fondling his Chopin curl again, went on amusing himself with this +chosen subject.</p> + +<p>"But, as is so often the case with a young man's fancy," he announced, +"nobody else sees anything in 'her'!"</p> + +<p>The stricken Gwenna looked quickly at young Dampier, who was cutting the +Titan wedges that men call "slices," of cake. How would <i>he</i> take it +that it had been said of his adored one that no one saw anything in her?</p> + +<p>He only gave a short laugh, a confident nod of his fair head and said, +"They will, though."</p> + +<p>"Infatuated youth!" commented Hugo Swayne, resignedly, leaning back. +"And he tries to cover it up by seeming casual. '<i>Going on as usual</i>' is +said just as a blind. It sounds so much more like a mere wife than a +<i>fiancée</i>, don't you think?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, but you are cynique, monsieur," protested the young Frenchman, +looking mildly shocked. "For you it is not sacred, the love for a wife?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, look here! Hadn't you better explain to them," broke in Paul +Dampier boyishly, having finished a large mouthful of his cake, "that +you're rotting? <i>Fiancée</i>, indeed. Haven't got such a thing in the +world, of course."</p> + +<p>At this Gwenna suddenly felt as if some crushing weight of +disappointment had fallen from her. "It's because I shall be able to go +flying with him after all," she thought.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span></p> + +<p>Young Dampier, rising to take her cup, grumbled laughingly, "D'you +suppose girls will look at a man nowadays who can't afford to spend the +whole of his time gadding about after 'em, Hugo, as you can, or blowing +what's my salary for an entire year on their engagement-rings——"</p> + +<p>"My dear fellow, no girl in the world exacts as much of a man's time and +money as that <i>grande passion</i> of yours does," retorted Hugo Swayne, not +ill-naturedly. And turning to Leslie, he explained: "What I call Paul's +<i>fiancée</i> is that eternal aeroplane he's supposed to be making."</p> + +<p>"Ah!" said Gwenna, and then blushed violently; partly because she hadn't +meant to speak, and partly because this had drawn the blue eyes of the +Airman quickly upon herself.</p> + +<p>"Yes, that incessant flying-machine of his," enlarged Mr. Swayne, +lolling back in his chair and addressing the meeting. "She—I believe +it's correct to call the thing 'she'?—is more of a nuisance even than +any engaged girl I've ever met. She interferes with everything this man +does. Ask him to come along to a dance or the Opera or to see some +amusing people, and it's always 'Can't; I'm working on the cylinder or +the spiral or the Fourth Dimension' or whatever it is he does think he's +working on. Practically 'she' spends all the time he's away from her +ringing him up, or getting him rung up, on the telephone. 'She' eats all +his spare cash, too——"</p> + +<p>"In steel instead of chocolate, I suppose?" smiled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> Leslie. "And must +she be humoured? She seems to have every drawback of a young woman with +'a diamond half-hoop.' Is she jealous, as well?"</p> + +<p>And then, while taking a cigarette from Hugo's case, the elder girl +made, lightly, a suggestion that the listening Gwenna was fated to +remember.</p> + +<p>"What would happen," asked Leslie dryly, "if a real flesh-and-blood +<i>fiancée</i> were to come along as a rival to the one of machinery?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing would happen," Hugo assured her, holding out a lighted match. +"That's why it would be rather interesting to watch. The complication of +the Aeroplane or the Lady. The struggle in the mind of the young +Inventor, what? The Girl"—he tossed aside the match and glanced +fleetingly at the grave cherub's-face under Gwenna's white-winged +hat—"The Girl versus the Flying Machine. I'd lay fifteen to one on the +Machine, Miss Long."</p> + +<p>"Done," said Leslie, demurely but promptly. "In half-crowns."</p> + +<p>"Yes! You'd back your sex, of course," Hugo took up gaily. The young +Frenchman murmured: "But the Machine—the Machine is also of the sex of +Mademoiselle."</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Here, suddenly, the silently listening Gwenna gave a tiny shiver. She +turned her head abruptly towards the open windows behind her with the +strutting pigeons and the sailing clouds beyond. It had seemed to the +fanciful Celt that there in that too dainty room now hazy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> with +cigarette-smoke, in that careless company of two girls and three young +men, she had felt the hint of another Presence. It was rather horrid and +ghostly—all this talk of a Machine that was made more of than a Woman! +A Machine who "clawed" the man that owned her, just like a jealous +betrothed who will not let her lover out of her sight! And supposing +that Conflict did come, on which Gwenna's chum and Mr. Dampier's cousin +had laid their laughing bets? The struggle between the sweetheart of +steel springs and the sweetheart of soft flesh and warm blood? For one +clear instant Gwenna knew that this fight would, must come. It was +coming——</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Then she turned her head and forgot her presentiments; coming back to +the light-hearted Present. She watched Leslie, to whom the young +Frenchman had been talking; he was now fixing dark earnest eyes upon +"Mademoiselle Langue" as she, in the rather stilted phraseology with +which our nation speaks its own language for the benefit of foreigners, +expounded to him an English story.</p> + +<p>There was a short pause.</p> + +<p>Then the room rang to the laughter of the foreigner. "Ha! Yes! I have +understood him! It is very amusing, that! It is good!" he cried +delightedly, with a flash of white teeth and dark eyes. "He say, 'There +are parts of it that are excellent!' Aha! <i>Très spirituel</i>," and he +laughed again joyously over the story of the Curate's Egg, while Hugo +murmured something<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> about how stimulating it was to hear, for once, the +Immemorial Anecdote fall upon Virgin Soil.</p> + +<p>The young Airman moved nearer to Gwenna, who, still watching Leslie, +gave a little start to hear that deep and gentle voice so close beside +her as he spoke.</p> + +<p>"Look here, we haven't settled up yet," he said, his voice gentle but +carrying above the chatter of the others. "About that flying. Sunday +this week I have got to be off somewhere. Now, are you free next +Saturday?"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, eager and tremulous, was just about to say, "Yes." But Hugo +Swayne interrupted.</p> + +<p>"I say, I hate to make mischief. But if you're talking about +Saturday——? D'you remember, Paul? It was the only day I could take you +down to Ascot to see Colonel Conyers."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Lord, so it was," said the young Airman, turning an apologetic face +to the girl. "I'm so sorry," he explained, "but this is a man I've +simply got to get hold of if I can. It's the Air-craft Conyers—'Cuckoo' +Conyers they call him. And he was a friend of Hugo's father, and what +I've been trying to see him about is working the War-office to take up +my new Machine——"</p> + +<p>"The <i>Fiancée</i> again, you notice," laughed his cousin, with an +imperceptible aside to Leslie. "Score to the Aeroplane."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I see," said Gwenna, nodding at the Airman. "Of course! I mean of +course I don't mind!"</p> + +<p>"Then shall we say Saturday week for you to come up with me instead?" +suggested young Dampier.</p> + +<p>And Gwenna agreed to the date, thinking, "If only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> nothing stops it +again! If only there isn't something else, then, to do with his Machine! +That Machine! I——" Here she paused.</p> + +<p>After all, it would be too ridiculous to allow oneself even to think +that one "<i>hated</i>" a machine!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>A DAY IN THE COUNTRY</h3> + + +<p>Eagerly as Gwenna longed to fly, she was not to do so even yet.</p> + +<p>After that appointment made at Hugo Swayne's rooms she lived through a +fortnight of dreaming, tingling anticipation. Then came another of those +brief direct notes from "<i>hers, P. Dampier</i>." The girl jumped for joy. +It was not to be at Hendon this time, but at Brooklands. Was she not +rapidly gaining experiences? First Hendon, then Brooklands; at this rate +she would soon know all the flying-grounds—Shoreham, Eastchurch, +Farnborough, all of them!</p> + +<p>"I'll call for you," the note said, "in the car."</p> + +<p>"'<i>The</i>' car is good," commented Leslie, arranging a mist-blue scarf +over Gwenna's small hat just before she started off on this expedition. +"<i>In the Army all things are in common, including money and tobacco</i> but +the Dampier boy isn't in the Army."</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't he?" took up Gwenna, ungrammatically and defiantly. She +considered Mr. Swayne's motor was honoured by this other young man who +condescended to drive it, to fetch and whirl away with him a girl who +felt herself a nymph about to be swept up and up above the clouds to +some modern version of Elysium.</p> + +<p>So twelve o'clock that Saturday morning (Gwenna having obtained special +leave of absence from the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> office) found the young man and the girl +speeding through Kensington and Hammersmith, on the Woking Road.</p> + +<p>The sun was hot above them; the road white; the hedges so dusty that +they seemed grey ribbons streaming past. Gwenna scarcely realised how +they went. She sat there beside him, thrilled and breathless, hardly +knowing to which delight to give herself up, that of the coming flight, +that of the present swift drive in the fresh breeze, or that of the +companionship of this Demigod of Modern Times, whose arm almost touched +hers sometimes as he moved or turned, or put on the brake.</p> + +<p>Except for an occasional remark to the car: "Come on, don't be funny, +old lady, don't be funny," or "Now for the hills; watch her sit down and +laugh at 'em!" he spoke little; Gwenna didn't particularly want him to +speak. The girl was in a golden and moving dream, and scarcely knew +where it carried her.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>She came out of that dream, not with a shock, but gradually. Was the car +slowing down? It stopped; stopped in a wide part of that dust-white road +between the tall, dust-grey hedges, opposite to a creosoted +telegraph-pole spiked with nails. Through a gap in the hedge Gwenna +caught sight of a moon-daisied field, with a dark hedge and trees +beyond. Not a house, not a cottage in sight. This couldn't be +Brooklands?</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>"Hul-lo," the boy was muttering. "What's up now?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What is it?" she asked.</p> + +<p>He did not reply. This was not rudeness, as she guessed, but intentness; +he took it for granted that she would not understand the mechanical +explanation. Resignedly she said to herself, "Machinery gone wrong? +Sometimes it really seems as if that were all machinery ever <i>did</i> do! +Yet that's what he said he was interested in, more than anything!"</p> + +<p>He was out of the car and had flung back the bonnet. Then he took off +his coat and hung it up on one of the nails on that telegraph-pole. He +pushed up his shirt-sleeves and bent over the tool-box on the step.</p> + +<p>Sitting there on the hot leather, Gwenna watched him, she heard the +chinking of wrenches and spanners. Then he returned to the bonnet again, +fumbling, handling, burrowing, grunting at things.... Ten minutes +elapsed....</p> + +<p>He then broke out emphatically: "Oh, <i>Lord</i>! I <i>have</i> done it <i>now</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Done what?" asked the girl anxiously.</p> + +<p>In tightening a nut with a spanner the spanner had slipped. He had +broken the porcelain insulation of the plug controlling the current.</p> + +<p>And now, good-humouredly smiling at his guest, he leaned on the door of +the car with his brown forearms crossed and said, "Short circuited. Yes. +I'm afraid that's killed it."</p> + +<p>"Killed what?" asked little Gwenna, in affright.</p> + +<p>"Our flying for to-day," he said.</p> + +<p>He went on to speak about "spare parts," and how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> it would be necessary +to send some one back to fetch—something—Gwenna didn't care what it +was. Her heart sank in dismay. No flying? Must they go back after all, +now?</p> + +<p>"Can't we get on?" she sighed.</p> + +<p>He shook his shining head.</p> + +<p>"We can make a picnic of it, anyhow," he said more encouragingly. "Shall +you be all right here if I run back to that inn we passed just now with +the bit of green outside? I shan't be ten minutes. Send some one off on +a bicycle, and bring some grub back here."</p> + +<p>He jerked on his coat and was off.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Little Gwenna, sitting there waiting in the useless car—her small, +disconsolate face framed in the gauze scarf with which she'd meant to +bind her curls for the flying—was passed by half a dozen other motors +on the road to Brooklands. It did not strike her, dreamily downcast as +she was, that surely what the messenger from the inn was being +despatched to fetch might have been borrowed from one of these other +motorists? Some of them, surely, would be men who knew young Paul +Dampier quite well. Any of them might have come to the rescue?</p> + +<p>This, as a matter of fact, had struck Paul Dampier at once. But he +didn't want to go on to Brooklands! Brooklands? Beastly hot day; crowds +of people; go up in an affair like an old Vanguard?</p> + +<p>What he wanted, after a hard day's work yesterday on his own (so +different) Machine, was a day's peace and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> quiet and to think things a +bit over about her (the Machine) lying on his back somewhere shady, with +a pipe. Actually, he would rather have been alone. But this little girl, +Miss Williams.... She was all right. Not only pretty ... but such a +quiet, sensible sort of little thing. He'd take her up another time, +since she was keen. He certainly would take her up. Not to-day. To-day +they'd just picnic. <i>She</i> wouldn't want to be giggling and chattering +about herself the whole time, and all that sort of thing, like some of +them. She liked to listen.</p> + +<p>She'd be interested to hear what he'd been doing lately, about the +Machine. For a girl, she was pretty bright, and even if she didn't grasp +things at once, she evidently liked hearing about the Machine; besides +which, it often cleared one's own ideas to one's self, to have to set +'em out and explain about the machinery very simply, to some one who was +keen, but who hadn't a notion. They'd have a nice, peaceful time, this +afternoon; somewhere cool, instead of Brooklands. And a nice long +talk—<i>all</i> about the Machine.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>He returned to the girl waiting in the car. Gwenna, cheering up at the +sight of him, saw that his pockets were bulging with bottles, and that +he carried a square, straw basket.</p> + +<p>"There. I might have taken Hugo's luncheon-basket and filled that while +I was about it; only I forgot there was one," he said, standing on the +road and screwing up his eyes a little in the midday sun as he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> faced +the car. "It's nicer eating out of doors, when you get a chance. Beastly +dusty on the road here, though, and things going by all the time and +kicking up clouds of it all over you. We'll find a pitch in that field."</p> + +<p>So she jumped down from her seat and the two left the glaring road and +got through that gap in the hedgerow where maybush and blackberry trail +and grass and campion alike were all thickly powdered and drooping with +dust.</p> + +<p>The boy and girl skirted another hedge that ran at right angles to the +road. Half-way up that field a big elm tree spread a patch of shade at +its base like a dark-green rug for them to sit on. Paul Dampier put his +coat down also. They sat, with moon-daisies and branching buttercups, +and cow-parsley all sweet and clean about them.</p> + +<p>Here the country-bred girl, forgetting her disappointment, gave a quick +little sigh of content. She glanced about her at the known faces of +flower-friends in the grass; a diaper of colours. Each year she had +loved the time when white daisies and red sorrel and yellow rattle +flaunted together over the heads of the lower-growing clovers and +speedwells and potentillas. This year it seemed lovelier than ever. She +put out her hand and pulled up a lance of jointed grass, nibbling the +soft, pale-green end of it.</p> + +<p>"Here, are you as hungry as all that?" laughed young Dampier at her +side. "We'll feed."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p> + +<p>He let Gwenna spread out upon the clean dinner-napkin in which they were +wrapped the provisions that he had brought from the inn.</p> + +<p>"All I could get. Bread-and-cheese. Couple of hunks of cold beef. +Butter—salt," he said, giving her the things as he named them. "Plates +I said we wouldn't worry about; chuck the crumbs to the birds. Here's +what I got to drink; cider. D'you like it?"</p> + +<p>"Love it," said Gwenna, who had never happened to taste it. But she knew +that she would love it.</p> + +<p>"Good. Oh! <i>Now</i> I've forgotten the glass, though," exclaimed young +Dampier, sitting up on his knees on the shaded patch of grass beside +her. "We shall both have to use the lower half of my flask. Sorry—hope +you don't mind."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, taking her first taste of cider in bird-like sips from that +oblong silver thing, remembered the old saying, "Drink from my cup and +you will think my thoughts." Then he put down upon the dinner napkin the +half-loaf and the lump of cheese that he had been munching. He took the +half of the flask, simply, out of the girl's hand, poured out more +cider, and drank in turn.</p> + +<p>"That's better," he said, smiling. She smiled back at him.</p> + +<p>She had ceased to feel any shyness of this fair-haired aviator who +rested there beside her in this oasis of shade from the elm, while +beyond them stretched the wide,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> dazzlingly bright desert of the +flowering meadow, bounded by its hedges. He cut off the crusty part of +the loaf for her (since she said she liked it). He sliced for her the +damp and pinkish beef, since she would not confide to him her deep and +feminine loathing of this fare. The woman is not yet born who can look +upon cold meat as a food. And they drank in turn from his silver flask. +This was their third meal together; yet Gwenna felt that she had been +grown-up and conscious of delight in the world about her only since they +had met.</p> + +<p>Ease and gaiety rose between them in a haze like that which vibrated +over the warm hay-field where they feasted.</p> + +<p>"I say, I shall have to give a lunch at the Carlton to everybody I +know," he laughed, half to himself, presently, "if I do get Colonel +Conyers to make 'em take up the P.D.Q." Then, turning more directly to +her. "Sorry—you don't know that joke. It's my Aeroplane, you know."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, the one Mr. Swayne calls your <i>Fiancée</i>!" took up Gwenna +quickly. Then she wished she hadn't said that. She reddened. She turned +her supple little body to toss crumbs to a yellow-hammer that was eyeing +them from a branch in the hedge behind her. And then she asked. "Why +'the P.D.Q.'?"</p> + +<p>"Because she will be the Paul Dampier One, I hope," explained the young +inventor, "and I always think of her as that other because it means +'Pretty Dam—Dashed Quick.'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh, is that it?" said Gwenna.</p> + +<p>She echoed crossly to herself, "'<i>I always think of her</i>' indeed! It +sounds like——"</p> + +<p>And she finished her thought with the hardest-working word in her native +tongue; the Welsh for sweetheart.</p> + +<p>"It does sound just as if he were talking about his <i>cariad</i>."</p> + +<p>Absently she brushed more crumbs off her side of the dinner-napkin.</p> + +<p>For one-half only of Gwenna now seemed to note that they were eating +crusty loaf and drinking cider out of doors between a lupin-blue sky and +a flowerful meadow; the other was conscious of nothing but her +companion; of the clear friendliness of his eyes, those eyes of Icarus! +Of his deep and gentle voice saying, "Mind if I smoke? You don't, I +know," of those brown hard-looking forearms from which he had not +troubled to pull down the sleeves, of his nearness.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he came nearer still.</p> + +<p>He had not stopped talking of his aeroplane, but she hardly remembered +that she had asked him the meaning of one of the expressions that he had +used.</p> + +<p>He was repeating it.</p> + +<p>"'Camber?' ... Well, it's a curve. A curve like——" He glanced about +for an example of the soft, end-wise curve on the great wings of an +aeroplane; his eyes passing quickly from the green hedge to the ground, +to the things on the picnic cloth, to Gwenna Williams's small hand as it +rested in the grass.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p> + +<p>She wondered, thrilled, if the young Airman were actually going to take +hold of her hand.</p> + +<p>He did take her hand, as simply as he had taken the silver cup from it. +He bent it over so that her wrist made a gentle curve. He passed his own +large fingers across it.</p> + +<p>"Yes; there—that's the curve," he said. "Almost exactly."</p> + +<p>It might have been a caress.</p> + +<p>But, done as he did it, the light movement was nothing of the kind. +Instinct told the girl that. It wasn't her small and soft and +pink-palmed hand that he was thinking of holding. She looked at him as +he said, "That's the curve," and she caught a gleam of quickened +interest in his eyes. But in one mortified flash she knew that this had +nothing to do with her. She guessed that at this moment he'd forgotten +that there was a girl sitting there beside him at all.</p> + +<p>And she knew why.</p> + +<p>Angrily she said to herself, "He's thinking of nothing but that old +machine of his! And I do—yes, I do, <i>do</i> hate her!"</p> + +<p>Then she sat for a moment still as the elm-trunk against which she'd +been leaning.</p> + +<p>She had been struck thus motionless by a thought.</p> + +<p>Something had been brought home to her by that sharp and sudden twinge +of—Jealousy!</p> + +<p>Yes! She knew now! What she felt, and must have been feeling for days +past, was what they meant by falling in love.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That's what I've done!" she thought rapidly; half in consternation, +half in delight. "It's beginning to happen what Mr. Swayne was talking +about at that tea: the Girl or the Flying Machine!"</p> + +<p>She glanced towards the gap in the hedge as if to look at the car that +had brought them, motionless by the road-side; she turned her face away +from the Airman, who sat lighting a pipe with the shadows of the +elm-branches dappling his fair head and shirt-sleeved shoulders.</p> + +<p>She was blushing warmly at her own thoughts.</p> + +<p>"It's only the flying-machine he cares about! He does like me, too; in a +way.... If only he'd forget that other for a minute! But if he won't," +thought Gwenna, happening upon an ancient piece of feminine philosophy, +"I'd rather have him talking about <i>her</i> than not talking to me at all!"</p> + +<p>She spoke aloud, sedately but interestedly.</p> + +<p>"Oh, is <i>that</i> a camber?" That light touch of his seemed still upon her +wrist, though he had withdrawn it carelessly at once. She paused, then +said, "And what was that other thing, Mr. Dampier? Something about an +angle?"</p> + +<p>"A dihedral angle?" he said, drawing at that pipe. "Oh, that's the angle +you see from the front of the thing. It's—look, it's like that."</p> + +<p>This time it was not her hand he took as an illustration. He pointed, +pipe in hand, to where, above the opposite hedge, a crow was sailing +slowly, a vandyke of black across the cloudless blue.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p> + +<p>"See that bird? It's that very slight V he makes; <i>now</i>."</p> + +<p>"And this machine of yours?" persisted the girl, with a little twitch of +her mouth for the rival whom he, it seemed, always thought of as "the +P.D.Q." and whom Gwenna must always think of as "the <i>Fiancée</i>." She +wondered where it lived, the creature that meant all to him. She said, +"Where—where d'you <i>make</i> that machine?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I'm afraid it isn't a machine yet, you see. It's only a model of +one, so far. You know, like a model yacht," he explained. "That's the +worst of it. You see, you can make a model do anything. It's when you +get the thing life-size that the trouble begins. Model doesn't give a +really fair idea of what you've got to get. The difficulties—it's never +the real thing."</p> + +<p>Gwenna thought, "It must be like making love to the person you aren't +really in love with!" But what she said, with her hand stripping a spike +of flowering grass, was, "I suppose it's like practising scales and all +that on a mute piano?"</p> + +<p>"Never tried", he said. Then: "<i>The model's</i> at my own place, my rooms +in"——here he broke off with a laugh. He looked straight into her face +and said, still laughing, and in a more personal tone:</p> + +<p>"Not in Victoria Street. I say, you spotted that <i>that</i> place wasn't +mine, didn't you?"</p> + +<p>"Leslie 'spotted' and said so, afterwards," admitted Gwenna demurely, +picking and sniffing at a piece of pink clover before she fastened it +into her white blouse. "I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> did think at the time that it wasn't—wasn't +the sort of place where you'd find a man living who <i>did</i> things, like."</p> + +<p>"Rather rough on old Hugo."</p> + +<p>"Well, but <i>does</i> he do things?"</p> + +<p>"He doesn't have to. He'd be all right if he did. Sweat some of that +beef off him, give him something to think about," averred his cousin, +carelessly knocking out his pipe against the heel of his shoe. "But, you +know, my place is in Camden Town; most inferior. Three rooms over a +paper shop; two small cubby-holes where I sleep and eat, and a rather +bigger one where I keep the 'P.D.Q.' stuff. I couldn't have you there +that Sunday."</p> + +<p>"Why not?" Gwenna asked sharply, and jealous again. It was almost as if +the <i>Fiancée</i> had said to him, "<i>No, not here</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Because," he said with a chuckle, "because at the last moment, when I'd +got the tea ready and everything"—he tossed his fair head back—"a fall +of soot down the chimney! Everything in the most ghastly mess! Pitch +black wherever you put a finger. I simply couldn't—it was four o'clock +then; I expect you both thought it rotten of me. Still," he concluded, +rather ruefully, "I couldn't give you the sort of polite tea Hugo can, +anyhow."</p> + +<p>"I don't want polite teas!" Gwenna protested, looking round at the field +where she had feasted as if in Elysium. "You don't suppose I care for +things all grand like that, do you?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span></p> + +<p>He responded, "Would you care to see my Camden Town place, then, and the +model? You and Miss Long. It's quite near you, you know."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I should," said Gwenna quietly, stripping her grass.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>How could he, she wondered, ask if she "cared" for these things that +opened out new worlds to her? If he only knew, just to be with him was +part of that new, soaring freedom which to her was summed up in the idea +of flying! This, she felt, <i>was</i> flying. She didn't care, after all, if +there were no other flying that afternoon. Care? <i>She</i> wouldn't mind +sitting there until the sun slipped slowly downwards towards the western +hedge and the moon-daisies closed in the tall grass, and clouds of other +tiny flying creatures poised and hovered above them. <i>She</i> wasn't sorry +that the mechanic did not return in haste to minister to that +broken-down car. When she did remember about it, it was almost to hope +that he would not be back! Not just yet! Not to put an end to this +golden afternoon of talk that, trivial as it was, seemed to her to be +the endowment of a new faculty, and of comradeship that was as beguiling +and satisfying as that of her bosom-chum, Leslie. Only newer, only more +complete. So it seemed to Gwenna, as the shadows moved further up the +grass where she sat with her new boy-friend.</p> + +<p>For it is a commonplace that in all comradeship between man and woman +passionate love claims a share. But also in all passionate love there is +more comradeship<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> than the unimaginative choose to admit; there is a +happy inner meaning to the cottage phrase, "To keep company with."</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>What he thought about it she did not know. Except that he surely must +like talking to her? He could not go on like this out of politeness.</p> + +<p>Ah, besides—! Besides, she knew, without reasoning about it, that, even +with that absorbing interest of the aeroplane in the background, he did +like her. Just as Leslie, her other friend, who also knew so much more +than she did, had liked her at once.</p> + +<p>"Only," decided Gwenna, in the uttermost depths of her shy and daring +heart, "only he's <i>got</i> to like me, some day, better than Leslie ever +could. He must. Yes; he <i>must</i>!"</p> + +<p>And she thought it so ardently that she almost expected him, catching +her thought, to answer it in words. She looked—no, he had caught +nothing. But, meeting his eyes again, her own read a message that her +fluttered mind had been told before this, but would scarcely let her +believe. He thought she was pretty to look at. She had taken off her hat +now, as she liked to do in the open air, and the light breeze tossed her +short locks about.</p> + +<p>"I <i>believe</i> he thinks," Gwenna told herself, "that my hair's nice."</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>As a matter of fact she was right. If she could have read her +companion's thoughts at the moment she would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> have known of a quite +foolish but recurrent wish on his part. A wish that he might just run +his fingers through all those brown and thickly-twisting curls, to find +out if they felt as silky as they looked.</p> + +<p>A lark was carolling over her head, soaring, poising, poising, soaring, +and singing all the while....</p> + +<p>"That's what we can't do, even yet; <i>hover</i>," he said. And again he went +on talking to the Little Thing (in his mind this babyish-faced but quite +quick-witted girl was now always to be "the Little Thing") about the +chance of getting Colonel Conyers to take up that invention of his.</p> + +<p>"I'm to go to spend the week-end at Ascot with him and have another talk +about it," he said. "I know he's dead keen. <i>He</i> knows that it's +aeroplanes that are going to make all the difference; simply knock out, +under some conditions, any other form of scouting. In modern warfare, +you know—it's bound to come, some time—anybody with any sense knows +that——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, of course," agreed Gwenna, watching him as he stretched himself +lazily out, chest downwards, elbows in, on the grass, chin propped in +his hands, talking (all about the Machine).</p> + +<p>"If he gave me a chance to build Her—make trial flights in the P.D.Q.! +If he'd only back me——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, he will, surely!" said Gwenna, her whole small face brightening or +sobering in response to every modulation of his voice.</p> + +<p>It was jolly, he thought, to find a girl who wasn't in the least bored +by "Shop." She <i>was</i> a very jolly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> Little Thing. So sensible. No +nonsense about her, thought the boy.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>And she, when at last they rose and left the place, threw a last look +back at that patch of sky above the hedge, where the black crow had made +a dihedral angle, at that brooding elm, at that hay field, golden in the +level rays, at that patch of dusty road where the car had pulled up, at +that black telegraph-pole where he had hung up his coat. That picture +was graven, as by a tool, into the very heart of the girl.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>At the end of an expedition that a young woman of more experience and +less imagination would have pronounced "tame enough," Gwenna, +bright-eyed and rosy from her day in the sunshine, could hardly believe +that a whole lifetime had not elapsed since last she'd seen the +everyday, the humdrum and incredibly dull Club where she lived.</p> + +<p>She burst into her chum's bedroom as Leslie was going to bed.</p> + +<p>"Taffy—back at last?" smiled Leslie, between the curtains of black hair +on either side of her nightgown. "How's flying?—<i>What?</i>" she exclaimed, +"you didn't go up at all? Broke down on the way to Brooklands? I say! +How rotten for you, my poor lamb. Had anything to eat?"</p> + +<p>"I think so—I mean, rather! He gave me a <i>lovely</i> lunch on the road +while we were waiting for the man to mend the car—and then we'd tea at +a cottage while<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> he was doing it—and then there wasn't time to do +anything but come back to town," explained Gwenna breathlessly, +untying her scarf; "and then we'd sort of dinner at the inn before we +started back; they brought out a table and things into the garden under +the trees."</p> + +<p>"What did you have for dinner?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know. Oh, there were gooseberries," said Gwenna vaguely, "and a +lamp. And the moths all came. Oh, Leslie! It's <i>been</i> so splendid!" She +caught her breath. "I mean, it was <i>dreat</i>ful about no flying, but——"</p> + +<p>"Glad the afternoon wasn't entirely a washout," said Miss Long, in an +even voice as she plaited her hair.</p> + +<p>"By the way, did the Dampier boy give you back that locket of yours?"</p> + +<p>"I forgot all about it," said Gwenna, picking up the head of pink clover +that had fallen out of her blouse. "I'll ask him next time. He's going +to take me up soon, you know, again."</p> + +<p>Just as an alarm is "set" to sound at some given hour, so the whole of +the girl's innocent being was set, to wait and wait for that "next time" +of meeting him—whenever it should be.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>LESLIE, ON "THE ROOTS OF THE ROSE"</h3> + + +<p>Leslie Long was lounging in a rickety deck-chair under the acacia tree +that overshadowed the small lawn behind the Ladies' Residential Club. +Miss Long looked nonchalantly untidy and her hair was coming down again. +But she had an eye to an occasion on which she meant to shine. She was +carefully darning a pair of silk stockings, stockings she was to wear +with her all-mauve Nijinski rig at a costume dance in a week's time. She +was looking forward to that dance.</p> + +<p>It was a late Saturday afternoon, a fortnight after that Saturday that +Gwenna Williams had spent in the country with the Dampier boy. Most of +the girls in the Club were out somewhere now. Only one of the students +from the College of Music was practising Liszt's "Liebestraum." +Presently however, a sunshine-yellow jersey coat appeared on the steps +at the back entrance of the Club. Gwenna Williams was looking out. She +saw her chum in the garden and ran down to her; dropping upon the lawn +at her feet, and nestling her curly head down upon the lengthy knee that +supported the darning-basket.</p> + +<p>Gwenna's small face looked petulant, miserable. She felt it. Leslie, to +whom, of course, the other girl was as an open book, asked no question. +She left that to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> Gwenna, who had never, so far, made any spoken +admission of what had happened—or not happened—since the evening when +they had dressed together to go to that dinner-party at the Smiths'. It +was Gwenna who asked the first question.</p> + +<p>With a stormy and troubled sigh, she broke out, à propos of nothing: +"How is one to make him? I mean how is one ever to get a young man to +like one if he hardly ever sees one?"</p> + +<p>Leslie looked down at her over the second mauve stocking that she was +drawing over a yellow wooden darning mushroom.</p> + +<p>"Tut," said Leslie, with her usual mock unction. "What is all this about +'getting' a young man to like one? What an expression, my love. And, +worse; what a <i>sentiment</i>! Surely you know that men (nice men) think +very lightly of a girl who does not have to be <i>wooed</i>. With deference, +Taffy. With <i>reverence</i>. With hovering uncertainty and suspense +and—er—the rest of that bag of tricks."</p> + +<p>The soft, persistent notes of the "Liebestraum" coming through the open +Club windows filled a short pause. Leslie threaded her needle with mauve +silk, then took up her mushroom—and her theme—once more.</p> + +<p>"Men care little for the girl who drops like a ripe plum (unripe fruit +being obviously so much sweeter) into their mouths. (Query, why go about +with their mouths open?) Not so. The girl who pleases is the girl who is +hard to please."</p> + +<p>A small discouraged sigh from Gwenna, as she sat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> there with her yellow +jersey coat spread round her like a great dandelion in the grass.</p> + +<p>"Oh, but supposing she <i>isn't</i> hard to please?" she faltered. "Supposing +somebody pleased her awfully? If he'd let her, I mean—oh, I daresay you +think I'm dreadful?"</p> + +<p>"You outrage my most sacred what's-their-names—convictions, Taffy," +declared Leslie, solemnly running her needle in and out of the stretched +silk. "How many times must you be told that the girl a man prizes is she +who knows how to set the very highest Value upon herself? The sweetly +reserved Girl who keeps Him Guessing. The ter-<i>ruly</i> maidenly type who +puts a Barrier about herself, and, as it were, says, 'Mind the barbed +wire. Thus far—unless it's going to be made worth my while, for good.' +Haggling little Hebrew!" concluded Miss Long.</p> + +<p>For the girl at whom everybody is shocked has standards of her own. Yes! +There are things at which she, even she, is shocked in turn.</p> + +<p>Leslie, speaking of that other, belauded type, quoted:</p> + +<p class="center">"'<i>Oh, the glory of the winning when she's won!</i>'</p> + +<p>(per-haps!)."</p> + +<p>And in her voice there was honest disgust.</p> + +<p>"No, but Leslie! <i>Stop</i> laughing about it all! And tell me, really, +now—" appealed the younger girl, leaning an arm upon her friend's knee +and looking up with eyes imploring guidance. "<i>You've</i> known lots of +men. <i>You've</i> had them—well, admiring you and telling you so?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Thank you, yes," said Leslie, demurely darning. "You mightn't think it, +to look at me in this blouse, but I have been—er—stood plenty of +emotional drinks of that kind."</p> + +<p>"Then you know. You tell me—" pleaded Gwenna, pathetically earnest. "Is +it true that men don't like you if they think you like them very much?"</p> + +<p>Leslie's impish face peeped at her over the silk stocking held up over +the mushroom. And Leslie's mouth was one crooked scarlet curve of +derision.</p> + +<p>But it straightened into gravity again as she said, "I don't know, +Taffy. Honest injun! One woman can't lay down rules for another woman. +She's got to reckon with her own type—just pick up that hairpin, will +you—and his. I can only tell you that what is one man's meat +is—another man's won't meet."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, at her knee, sighed stormily again.</p> + +<p>Leslie, rearranging herself cautiously in the insecure deck-chair, put a +finger through one of Gwenna's curls, and said very gently, "Doesn't the +Dampier boy come to meet it, then?"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, carnation red, cried, "Oh <i>no</i>! Of <i>course</i> not. I wasn't +<i>thinking</i> of him."</p> + +<p>In the same breath she added shamefacedly, "How did you know, Leslie? +You are clever!" And then, in a soft burst of confidence, "Oh, I <i>have</i> +been so worrying! All these days and days, Leslie! And to-day I felt I +simply <i>had</i> to tell you about it—or <i>burst</i>! I haven't really been +able to think of anything but him. And he—he <i>hates</i> me, I know."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p> + +<p>She used that word to console herself. Hate is so infinitely less +discouraging than polite indifference!</p> + +<p>Leslie glanced very kindly at the flushed face, at the compact yet +lissom little body sitting up on its heels on the Club lawn. She asked, +"Doesn't the creature <i>look</i> at you? The other day when he took you out +and broke down the motor? Didn't he then?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he did," admitted Gwenna, "a little."</p> + +<p>"That's a start, then. So 'Cheer up, Taff, don't let your spirits go +down,'" hummed Leslie. "Ask your Fräulein at the works if she knows an +excellent slang German phrase for falling in love. 'Der hat sich aber +man ordentlich verguckt?' 'He's been and looked himself well into it'—I +am glad the Dampier boy did look. It <i>is</i> engendered in the eyes, as +poor old Bernard Shaw used to say. It will be all right."</p> + +<p>"Will it, d'you think? Will it?"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, kneeling beside the dishevelled, graceful figure with its long +limbs stretched out far beyond the deck-chair, gazed up as if into the +face of an oracle.</p> + +<p>"What do I <i>do</i>," she persisted innocently, "to make him look—to make +him like me?"</p> + +<p>"You don't 'do.' You 'be,' and pretty hard too. You, my child, sit +tight. It's what they call the Passive Rôle of Woman," explained Leslie, +with a twinkle. "Like <i>this</i>." And she drew out of her darning-basket a +slender horseshoe-shaped implement such as workwomen use to pick up a +dropped needle, painted scarlet to within half an inch of its end. She +held it motionless a little away from her darning. There was a flash<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> in +the sunlight and a sharp little "click" as the needle flew up and clung +to the magnet.</p> + +<p>"D'you see, Turtle-dove?"</p> + +<p>"Yes; but <i>that</i> isn't what you seemed to be talking about just now," +objected Gwenna. "You seemed to think that a girl <i>needn't mind</i> 'doing' +something about it. Letting a person see that she liked him."</p> + +<p>"That isn't 'doing.' A girl can get in such a lot of useful +execution—excuse my calling spade work spade work—all the time she is +going on being as passive as—as that magnet," pronounced the mentor. +"Of course you've got to take care to look as nice as you know how to +all the time.</p> + +<p>"And here you score, Miss Williams. Allow a friend to say that you're +not only as pretty as they make 'em, but you know how to take care that +you're as pretty <i>as they're made</i>!"</p> + +<p>The younger girl, puzzled, asked the difference.</p> + +<p>"I mean that you've cultivated the garden, and haven't got to start +digging up the weeds and sweeping the lawn five minutes before you +expect the garden-party," explained Leslie, in the analogies that she +loved. "Some girls don't seem to think of 'making the most of +themselves' until the man comes along that they want to make much of +<i>them</i>. Then it's so often a scramble. You've had the instinct. You +haven't got your appearance into any of the little ways that put a man +off without his knowing quite what he's been put off <i>by</i>. One excellent +thing about you——"</p> + +<p>"Yes?" said Gwenna, rapt, expectant.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span></p> + +<p>The particular unsolicited testimonial that followed was unexpected +enough.</p> + +<p>"For one thing, Taffy, you're always—<i>washed</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Why, of course. But, Leslie—surely—so's <i>everybody</i>!"</p> + +<p>"<i>Are</i> they?" ejaculated Miss Long darkly. "They think they are. They +simply haven't grasped how much soap and water and loofah go to that, in +big towns. Half the girls aren't what <i>I</i> call tubbed. How many of them, +with bathrooms a yard from their bedrooms, bother to have a scrub at +night as well as in the mornings? It's at night they're grimy, Taff. +It's at night they leave it on, powder and all, to work into themselves +until that 'unfresh' look gets chronic. My dear, I tell you that the +two-bath-a-day rule would give us much less of the Lonely-and-Neglected +Women Problem. There!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna Williams, twisting between finger and thumb the stalk of a daisy +she had picked off the lawn, murmured something about it's being funny, +love having anything to do with how often a girl <i>washed</i>!</p> + +<p>"Of course you think Leslie is revoltingly unpoetic to suggest it. But +it's sound enough," declared the elder girl. "Flowers don't look as if +'anything to do with' earth had ever touched them, do they? But aren't +their roots bedded deep down in it right enough? All these hints I give +you about Health and Body-culture, these are the Roots of the Rose. +Some of them, anyhow. Especially <i>washing</i>. I tell you, Taff"—she spoke +sepulchrally—"<i>half the 'nice' girls we</i> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> +<i>know don't wash enough</i>. +<i>That's</i> why they don't get half the attention they'd like. Men like +what they call a 'healthy-looking' girl. As often as not it simply means +the girl happens to be specially <i>clean</i>. Beauty's skin-deep; moral, +look after your skin. Now, you do. No soap on your face, Taff?"</p> + +<p>"No; just a 'clean' after washing, with Oatine and things like that."</p> + +<p>"Right. Costs you about fourpence a week. It might cost four guineas, to +judge from the economical spirit of some girls over that," said Leslie. +"Then, to go on with this grossly material subject that is really the +root of Poetry, do you shampoo your hair nice and often? It looks thick +and soft and glossy and with the curls all big, as if you did."</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I do. But then that's easy for me; it's short."</p> + +<p>"Mine's long enough, but I do it religiously every fortnight. Pays me," +said Miss Long candidly as she went on working. "Untidy it may be, but +it does feel and smell all right. One of my medical students at the +hospital where I trained for five minutes—the boy Monty, the Dean's +son—<i>he</i> said once that the scent of my hair was like cherry-wood. +'Course I didn't confide in <i>him</i> that I watered it well with bay rum +and rosemary every night. Better than being like Miss Armitage, the +suffragette-woman here, who's so nice-minded that she's 'above' +pampering the body. What's the consequence? She, and half the girls +here, go about smelling—to put it plainly—like cold<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> grease and +goloshes! Can they wonder that men don't seem to think they'd be—be +very nice to marry?"</p> + +<p>"Some suffragettes, and sort of brainy women," hesitated Gwenna, "are +married."</p> + +<p>"Yes; and <i>have</i> you observed the usual type of their husbands?" scoffed +Leslie. "Eugh!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, set upon her own subject, drew her back with innocent directness +to the matter in hand.</p> + +<p>"What else ought one to do? Besides lots of washing, besides taking care +of one's hair and skin?"</p> + +<p>"One's shape, of course," mused Leslie. "There you're all right. Thank +goodness—<i>and me</i>—that you've left off those weird, those unearthly +stays you came up to town in. My dear, they were like a hamper strapped +round the middle of you and sending your shoulders up, squared, into +your ears! You've got a pretty slope there now, besides setting free all +your 'lines.' I suppose elastic has pretty well solved the great corset +question at last."</p> + +<p>"Thirty shillings was a dreat-ful lot to give for just an elastic belt," +murmured Gwenna, with her little hand at her supple waist. "Still, you +said I must, even if I didn't have a new blouse over it for eighteen +months." Again she looked up for guidance. "What else? What's a good +<i>thing</i>, Leslie? About clothes and that?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, child, you know it all now, practically. Let's see—shoes"—she +glanced at the tiny brown one half-tucked under Gwenna's knee. "<i>Boots +and shoes</i> men seem to notice as much as any other part of your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> get-up. +Attractive shoes, even with an unfashionable skirt, will pull you +through, when shabby shoes would ruin the look of the smartest rig. They +see that, even when they've no idea what colour you've got on."</p> + +<p>She went on to another hole in the stocking and continued: "As for +colours, a man does seem to notice 'a girl in black,' or all-white, or +pale blue. I read once that pale blue is 'the sex colour'—couldn't tell +you, never worn it myself. Managed well enough without it, too!" mused +Leslie. "Then 'a girl in pink' is very often a success in the evening. +Men seem to have settled vaguely that pink is 'the pretty girl's +colour.' So then they fondly imagine that anything that dares to wear +it must be lovely. <i>You</i> needn't yet. Keep it for later. Pink—judicious +pink—takes off ten years, Taffy!"</p> + +<p>"I—I suppose I shall still care what I look like," murmured the young +girl wistfully, "at thirty-two...."</p> + +<p>"Pearl of Wisdom Number Forty-eight: When in doubt, wear the +coat-and-skirt (if it's decently cut) rather than the frock," decreed +Leslie. "White silk shirts they seem to like, always. (I'm glad +I weaned you of the pin-on tie, Taffy. It always looked like +'sixpence-three-farthings.' Whereas you buy a piece of narrow ribbon for +'six-three,' you <i>tie</i> it, you fasten it with a plain silver brooch to +your shirt, and it looks <i>good</i>.)"</p> + +<p>"I'll remember," murmured Gwenna devoutly, from the grass.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p> + +<p>Leslie said, "One of the housemaids here—(never stoop to gossip with +the servants, dearest. It <i>is</i> so unhelpful and demoralising to both +classes)—one of the housemaids once told me that <i>her</i> young man had +told her that 'nothing in the wide world set a young woman off like a +nice, fresh, clean, simple shirt blouse, same as what she was wearing +then!' Of course, <i>he</i> was a policeman. Not an aviator or a dean's son. +But when it comes to a girl in the case, I expect they're <i>'brothers +under their skins</i>,'" said Leslie Long.</p> + +<p>Husky with much talking, she cleared her throat.</p> + +<p>"Pearl of Wisdom Number Forty-nine: Be awfully careful about your +collar, the ends of your sleeves and the hem of your skirt. (Keeping a +strong force on the Frontier; that is always important.) Don't ever let +your clothes be 'picturesque,' except for indoors. A man loathes walking +along beside anything that flaps in the wind, or anything that looks +like what he calls 'fancy dress.' Outside, don't wear anything that you +can't skip easily on to the last bus in. Don't have 'bits' of anything +about you. Try to be as neat as the very dowdiest girl you know, +<i>without the dowdiness</i>. Neatness, my belovèd sisters, is the—— (Here +am I talking like this; but why," she interrupted herself, laughing, +"<i>why</i> aren't I neater myself when in mufti? I mean, when there's nobody +about? '<i>In time of Peace, prepare for War.</i>' It would be better. Might +get my hair out of its <i>habit</i> of descending at the wrong moment.) And +then, then, when all your good points are mobilised, you wait for the +Enemy."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p> + +<p>"The <i>enemy</i>?" said little Gwenna, doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"Yes. The Man. The opposing force, if you like. You can think and think +and wish and wish about him then until the whole air about you goes +shivery-quivery with it. 'Creating an atmosphere' is what they call it, +I believe. And get him well into the zone of <i>that</i>," advised Leslie. +"For it's no use the magnet being a magnet if it doesn't allow itself to +get within miles of a needle, is it? Might as well be any old bit of +scrap-iron. Plenty of girls—<i>nice</i> girls, I mean—not like that +deplorably vulgar Miss Long. What <i>she's</i> doing in a Club that's +supposed to be for <i>ladies</i> I don't know. The <i>horrid</i> things she says! +Bad! <i>Bad</i> form! And I'm sure if she says those here, she must have +heaps of other worse things she <i>could</i> say, and probably <i>does</i>, to +some people! Er—oh, where <i>was</i> I? Ah, yes!" rattled on Leslie, with +her black head flung against the striped canvas back of the chair, her +eyes on her surprisingly neat darning. "I was going to say—plenty of +nice girls muff everything by putting too much distance that doesn't +lend enchantment to the view between themselves and the men that aren't +often sharp enough to deserve being called 'the needle.' Don't you make +the mistake of those nice girls, Taffy."</p> + +<p>"Well, do I <i>want</i> to? But how can I help it? How can I even try to 'be' +anything, if he isn't there to know anything at all about it? I don't +see him! I don't meet him!" mourned the Welsh girl in the soft accent +that was very unmistakable to-day. "It's a whole fortnight, Leslie, +since that lovely day in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> fields. It seems years. He hasn't written +or anything. I've waited and waited.... And sometimes I feel as if +perhaps I <i>shouldn't</i> ever see him again. After all, I never did see him +properly before we went to your sister's that night. Oh, isn't it awful +to think what little <i>chances</i> make all the difference to who one sees +or doesn't see? I can't know for certain that I shall <i>ever</i> see him +again. Oh, Leslie!"</p> + +<p>Leslie cut her last needleful of lilac silk and answered in the most +reassuringly matter-of-fact tone:</p> + +<p>"But of course you will. If you want to enough. For instance—should you +like to see him at this dance?"</p> + +<p>"Dance?" inquired Gwenna, dazed.</p> + +<p>"Yes. This fancy-dress affair that I'm doing these stockings for. (I won +these in a bet from one of my Woolwich cadets.) This tamasha next week?"</p> + +<p>"But—<i>he</i> isn't going, is he? And I'm not even asked."</p> + +<p>"And can't these things ever be arranged?" demanded her chum, laughing. +"Can do, Taffy. Leslie will manage."</p> + +<p>"Oh—but that's so <i>kind</i>!" murmured the younger girl, overcome.</p> + +<p>"Do you expect me <i>not</i> to be 'kind'? To another girl, in love? Nay, oh +Taffy! I leave that to the 'nicest' of the girls who think it 'horrid' +to think about young men, even. Gem of Truth Number Eighty: It isn't the +little girl who's <i>had</i> plenty to eat who's ready to snatch the bun out +of the hand of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> next little girl," said Leslie. She rolled the silk +stockings into a ball, and rose in sections from that sagging chair. +"Leslie will see you're done all right. All that remains to be discussed +is the question of what you're to wear at the dance."</p> + +<p>This question Leslie settled as the two girls went for an after-supper +stroll. They went past the summer crowd patrolling the Spaniards Road, +past the patch of common and the benches and the pond by the flagstaff +that make that part of Hampstead so like a bit of the seaside. It was a +golden evening. In the hazy distance a small, greyish, winged object +rose above the plane which was Hendon, and moved to the left towards the +blue taper of Harrow Church, then sank out of sight again.</p> + +<p>"There's one," sighed Gwenna, her eyes on the glowing sky, where the +biplane had been circling. "He's in it, perhaps."</p> + +<p>"Little recking what plans are now being made for his welfare by me," +observed Miss Long, as the two girls descended the hill and found at +last a birch thicket that was not held by Cockney lovers. She let +herself down cross-legged into the bracken. The Welsh girl perched +herself on a branch of the birch tree that was polished smooth as an old +bench. Thus she sat among the stirring leaves, head on one side, +listening, her babyish face looking down intent against the sky.</p> + +<p>"Ah! That's <i>you</i>! '<i>A Cherub.</i>' That's what your fancy dress is to be," +pronounced the elder girl. "Just your own little crop-curled head with +nothing on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> it; and a ruff of cherub's wings up to your chin. Those +little wings off your hat will do beautifully. Below the ruff, clouds. +Appropriate background for cherubs. Your misty-white frock with no sash +this time, and one of those soap-bubble coloured scarves of Liberty +gauze draped over it to represent a rainbow. Little silver shoes. +<i>Strictly</i> speaking, cherubs don't have those, of course. But if you +can't become a Queen of Spain—if you can't be realistic, be pretty. +Your own, nearly-always expression of dreamy innocence will come in +nicely for the costume," added Leslie. "Quite in keeping."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure I'm not that," protested the Welsh girl, piqued. "<i>I'm</i> not +what they call 'innocent.'"</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think you are. 'What they call innocent' in a girl is such +a mixture. It means (a) no sense of humour at all; (b) the chilliest +temperament you can shiver at, and (c) a complete absence of +observation. But I believe <i>you</i> have '<i>beneath your little frostings +the brilliance of your fires</i>,' Taffy. Yours is the real innocence."</p> + +<p>"It isn't, indeed," protested the girl, who was young enough to wish to +be everything but what she was. "Why, look at the way you say anything +to me, Leslie!"</p> + +<p>Leslie laughed, with a remoter glance. Then suddenly she dropped her +black head and put a light caress on the corner of the sunshine-yellow +jersey coat.</p> + +<p>"Be as sweet always," she said, lightly too. "Look as sweet—at the +dance!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>THE HEELS OF MERCURY</h3> + + +<p>This injunction Gwenna carried out to the letter a week later. Never had +she looked so pretty as when she smiled at her own reflection in her +bedroom mirror above the cherub's ruff of wings on the evening of the +dance.</p> + +<p>It was given by some wealthy theatrical people whose "set" often +intermingled with that to which Hugo Swayne belonged. And it was held in +a couple of big marquees that had been set up on the lawn behind their +house; a lawn of which the banks sloped down to the willows that fringed +the river. There was a houseboat as buffet. There were Japanese lanterns +and fairy-lights. Red carpet had been put down to save costumes from +dewy grass or gravel.</p> + +<p>For this dance was held at the height of that brief and grotesque period +in the English history when dancing and costume—more particularly when +the two were combined—became an affair of national moment. That was the +time when tickets for an Artists' Ball were gambled with even as stocks +and shares; when prizes for costume were given of which the value ran +into hundreds of pounds. When columns of responsible newspapers were +given up to descriptions of some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> "brilliant carnival." When Society, +the Arts, Commerce, the Stage and the Middle Class joined hands to dance +the maddest ring-o'-roses round some mulberry bush rooted in Heaven knew +what soil of slackness. That was the time when women who were mothers +and able-bodied men were ready to fritter away the remnant of their +youth on what could be no longer pleasure, since they chased it with +such deadly ardour, discussing the lightest types of merrymaking as if +thereupon hung the fate of an empire!</p> + +<p>Even little cherub-headed Gwenna Williams found something disquieting +about the sight of this throng as she scanned it with anxious eyes, +for—no, HE hadn't come! He was late. Not here. Perhaps it was merely +this that caused her to dislike the look of some of these other people? +That buxomly-formed young woman of twenty-five tricked out in the +costume of a child of three! That tall, fragile youth in black +grave-clothes, mouthing falsetto patter! That pretty "lady" in spreading +Georgian brocade and a white wig, from whose crimsoned lips there came +presently a robust masculine shout! That Madame Potiphar in the—Good +gracious!—it was another boy! No! Gwenna <i>didn't</i> like them, +somehow.... Perhaps it was just because they were here and he, the only +partner she wished for, had not arrived. Oh, <i>supposing</i> he were not +coming, after all?</p> + +<p>Under the canvas roof where garlands swung and an installation of +electric light had been improvised, the crowd eddied and chattered and +laughed from one end<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> to the other of the marquee where the long tables +were laid out. For it was a theatrical ball, late in beginning. Supper +was to come first. Gwenna, sitting beside a Futurist Folly whom her +friend Leslie had introduced vaguely as "one of my medical students," +watched that supper-crowd (still he did not come), as they feasted, +leaning across the tables to laugh and shriek to acquaintances. It was +not the girls or the younger men who seemed most boisterous, but those +well over thirty. This surprised her. And even when they were most +unrestrained "they seemed," as the Welsh girl put it, "to be <i>making</i> +themselves do it, like." ...</p> + +<p>Then she saw, by an opening in the canvas of the marquee, the apparition +of a steady man's figure, dead-white against the purple gloom outside. A +figure erect and neatly-shouldered under the close linen jacket of a +Continental waiter. Gwenna wondered where she had seen him before? In a +photograph? Or perhaps attending to one of the tables at Appenrodt's, +when she and Leslie had had tea after a matinée somewhere? She <i>had</i> +seen that young waiter, whose appearance was in such arresting contrast +to the bizarre costumes and painted faces of the noisy, laughing rabble +about him. His face was restrained and grave as that of some very young +Daniel at the feast of some modern Belshazzar.</p> + +<p>Suddenly besides that still, watching apparition there came up another +boyish figure—typically English, in ordinary evening dress, and tall, +towering above the young German waiter of whom he was making some +inquiry. For a second they stood so; the waiter glancinc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> up, the +newcomer, Paul Dampier, with his blonde head tilted a little back, his +eyes raking the crowd.</p> + +<p>"Ah! he's come," cried Gwenna aloud, but unheard in the universal +clatter. Her heart leaped....</p> + +<p>But Paul Dampier, the airman, was swallowed up again almost directly in +a forest of odd, luridly-coloured head-dresses. He had not seen her.</p> + +<p>And she did not see him again until some time after supper was ended, +and the throng was whirling and writhing in one-step and ragtime in the +other marquee.</p> + +<p>Gwenna had danced with an Apache, with a Primitive Man, with Mr. Hugo +Swayne (in a mask and crazy-work domino as a Simultaneous Dynamism of +Something), and she was standing waiting, one of a figure in a revived +cotillon.</p> + +<p>While the Viennese band swooped and tore through the waltz "Nights of +Gladness" a sheet had been fetched and was held up at the end of the +ballroom between a Morris-dancer and an incredibly handsome "Turco" (who +presently revealed himself as Mr. Swayne's French engineer), as a screen +before six of the girls. Six men were to be led up to it in turn; each +to choose his partner by the feet that were just allowed to show below +the sheet.</p> + +<p>Soft laughter and twittering went on at the side where the half-dozen +girls stood.</p> + +<p>"I say," exclaimed a damsel dressed as an Austrian Peasant to her +crinolined neighbour, "<i>now</i> we see why you were so anxious to explain +why you were wearing scarlet——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Of course he'd know yours anywhere," retorted the next girl.</p> + +<p>"Ssh! Play fair!" protested the next. "Mustn't be recognised by your +voice!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, look at the Cherub girl's little shoes! Aren't they sweet? Just +like silver minnows peeping out——"</p> + +<p>Here Gwenna, standing sedately beside the scintillating, mauve-limbed +Nijinski, Leslie, lifted her head in quick attention. She had recognised +a voice on the other side of the sheet. A voice deep and gentle and +carrying through the clatter of talk and the mad, syncopated music. It +protested with a laugh, "But, look <i>here</i>! I can't dance all these +weird——" It was the Airman—her Airman.</p> + +<p>"Oh, he's just there. He's going to choose. If only he'd choose me," +thought Gwenna, breathlessly fluttering where she stood. Then she +remembered. "Oh, but he won't know me. He doesn't know I was to have +silver shoes. If there was only <i>some</i>thing! Something to show him which +I was, I believe he'd choose me. What could I do?"</p> + +<p>Suddenly she thought what she could do.... Yes! Winged feet, of course, +for a girl who longed to fly!</p> + +<p>Hurriedly she put her hands up to the ruff made of those white wings. +Hastily she plucked two of them out. How was she to fasten them to her +feet, though? Alas, for the short curls that deprived her of woman's +universal tool! She turned to her chum who was impatiently jigging in +time to the music, with her long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> black hair swathed for once securely +under that purple casque.</p> + +<p>"Leslie, quick, a hairpin! Lend me two hairpins," she whispered and +snatched them from her friend's hand. Then, holding on to Leslie's mauve +silken shoulder to support herself, Gwenna raised first one small foot, +and then the other, fastening to each between the stocking and the +silver shoe, one of those tiny wings.</p> + +<p>They were the feathered heels of Mercury, the flying-god, that the girl +who loved a flying-man allowed to peep under the curtain behind which +she stood.</p> + +<p>Above the commotion of people laughing and talking all about her and the +music she felt that he was close, only just behind that sheet. She could +have put out a hand and, through that sheet, have touched his +shoulder.... Mustn't, of course.... Must play fair. Would he note the +message of the winged feet? Would he stop and choose her?</p> + +<p>Or would he pass on?</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<h3>THE KISS WITHHELD</h3> + + +<p>He did not pass.</p> + +<p>He stopped—Gwenna felt the touch of his finger on the silver tip of her +shoe. All a-tremble with delight she moved aside, and stepped from +behind the screen to face the partner who had chosen her.</p> + +<p>"<i>Hullo</i>!" exclaimed Paul Dampier, with real surprise in his smile. "I +didn't know it was <i>you</i>!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna felt a little dashed, even as he slipped his arm about her and +they began to waltz. She looked up into the blonde face that seemed +burned so very brown against his dress-shirt, and she ventured, "You +didn't know it was me? I thought that was why you chose me—I mean, I +thought because I was somebody you knew——"</p> + +<p>"Didn't know you were here. I never thought those were your feet!" he +said in that adorably deep and gentle voice of his. Adding, as they +turned with the turning throng, something that lifted her heart again, +"I chose them because they were the prettiest, I thought."</p> + +<p>It was simply stated, as a fact. But this, the first compliment he'd +paid her, kept her silent with delight. Even as they waltzed, his arm +about her rainbow scarf, the girl felt the strongest wish—the wish that +the dance<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> were at an end and she back in her bedroom at the Club, +alone, so that she might think and think again over what he had said. +He'd thought she had the prettiest feet!</p> + +<p>"D'you think you could manage to spare me some others?" he asked at the +end of that waltz. "You know, you're about the only girl here that I +know except Miss Long."</p> + +<p>"Leslie would introduce you to anybody you liked"—suggested little +Gwenna, feeling very good for having done so. And virtue brought its +reward. For with a glance about him at that coloured noisy crowd that +seemed a handful of confetti tossed by a whirlwind, he told her he +didn't think he wanted to be introduced, much. He wasn't really keen on +a lot of people he'd never seen. But if she and Miss Long would give him +a few dances——?</p> + +<p>The girl from the country thought it almost too good to be true that she +need not share him with any of these dangerously fascinating London +people here, except Leslie!</p> + +<p>In a pause they went up to where Leslie was standing near the band. +Close beside her the Morris-dancer was wrangling with Hugo Swayne in his +crazy-work domino, who declared, "Miss Long promised <i>me</i> every other +dance. A week ago, my dear man. Ten days ago——"</p> + +<p>Yes; Leslie seemed to be engaged for every dance and every extra. She +tossed a "<i>so</i> sorry, Mr. Dampier!" over her shoulder, following it with +an imperceptible feminine grimace for Gwenna's benefit. With the first<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> +bars of the next waltz she was whirled away by a tall youth garbed, +becomingly enough, as a Black Panther. The room was still clear. The +Black Panther and the boyishly slim girl in mauve tunic and tights +waltzed, for one recurrence of the tune, alone....</p> + +<p>Gwenna, looking after that shapely couple, knew who <i>he</i> was; Monty +Scott, the Dean's son who had been a medical student when Leslie was at +the Hospital. He had followed her to the Slade to study sculpture, and +already he had proposed to her twice.</p> + +<p>The tall and supple youth held Leslie, now, by his black-taloned gloves +on her strait hips. Leslie waltzed with hands clasped at the back of his +neck. Then, with a backward fling of her head and body, she twisted +herself out of his hold. She waltzed, holding the flat palms of her +hands pressed lightly to the palms of his. The music altered; Leslie +varying her step to suit it. She threw back her head again. Round and +round her partner she revolved, undulating from nape to heels, not +touching him, not holding him save by the attraction of her black eyes +set upon his handsome eyes, and of her red lips of a flirt, from which +(it was evident!) the boy could not take his gaze. Once more she shook +her purple-casqued head; once more she let him catch her about the hips. +Over the canvas floor they spun, Leslie and Monty, black-and-mauve, +moving together with a voluptuous swing and zest that marked them as the +best-matched dancers in the room. Well-matched, perhaps, for life, +thought Leslie's chum.... But no; as they passed Gwenna saw that the +black eyes and the red<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> mouth were laughing cynically together; she +caught, through the music, Leslie's clear "Don't <i>talk</i>! <i>don't</i> talk +when you're dancing, my good boy.... Spoils everything.... You <i>can</i> +waltz.... You know you've never anything to <i>say</i>, Mont!"</p> + +<p>"I have. I say——"</p> + +<p>Leslie waltzed on unheeding. Whatever he had to say she did not take it +seriously. She laughed over his shoulder to little Gwenna, watching....</p> + +<p>Couple after couple had joined in now, following the swift tall graceful +black shape and the light-limbed mauve one as they circled by. A flutter +of draperies and tinsel, a toss and jingle of stage accoutrements; the +dancers were caught and sped by the music like a wreath of +rainbow-bubbles on the rise and fall of a wave.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, the Cherub-girl, was left standing for a wistful moment by the +side of the tall Airman in evening dress.</p> + +<p>He said, through the music, "Who's your partner for this?"</p> + +<p>She had forgotten. It was the Futurist Folly again. He had to find +another partner. Gwenna danced with her Airman again ... and again....</p> + +<p>Scarcely realising how it happened—indeed, how do these arrangements +make themselves?—this boy and girl from a simpler world than that of +this tinsel Bohemia spent almost the whole of the rest of that evening +as they had spent that day in the country, as she would have asked to +spend the rest of their lives together.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p> + +<p>Some of the time they danced in the brilliant, heated marquee under the +swinging garlands and the lamps. Then again they strolled out into the +Riverside garden. Here it was cool and dewy and dim except where, from +the tent-openings, there was flung upon the grass a broad path of light, +across which flitted, moth-like, the figures of the dancers. Above the +marquee the summer night was purple velvet, be-diamonded with stars. At +the end of the lawn the river whispered to the willows and reflected, +here the point of a star, there the red blot of a lantern caught in a +tree.</p> + +<p>Hugo Swayne went by in this bewildering stage, light-and-shade with a +very naughty-looking lady who declared that her white frock was merely +"'Milk,' out of 'The Blue Bird.'" In passing he announced to his cousin +that the whole scene was like a Conder fan that he had at his rooms. +Groups of his friends were simply sitting about and <i>making</i> themselves +into quite good Fragonards. Little Gwenna did not even try to remember +what Fragonard was. None of these people in this place seemed real to +her but herself and her partner. And the purple dusk and velvet shadows, +the lights and colours, the throb and thrill of the music were just the +setting for this "night of gladness" that was only a little more +substantial than her other fancies.</p> + +<p>More quickly it seemed to be passing! Every now and again she exultantly +reminded herself, "I am here, with him, out of all these people! He is +only speaking to me! I have him to myself—I must feel that as hard as I +can all the time now, for we shall be going home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> at the end of this +Ball, and then I shall be alone again.... If <i>only</i> I could be with him +for always! How extraordinary, that just to be with one particular +person out of all the world should be enough to make all this +happiness!"</p> + +<p>With her crop-curled head close against his shoulder as they danced, she +stole at her boyish partner the shy, defiantly possessive glance that a +child gives sometimes to the favourite toy, the toy that focusses all +his dreams. This was "the one particular person out of all the world" +whose company answered every conscious and unconscious demand of the +young girl's nature even as his waltz-step suited her own.</p> + +<p>Yet she guessed that this special quiet rapture could not last. Even +before the end of the dance the end of <i>this</i> must surely come.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>It must have been long hours after the waltz-cotillon that they strolled +down to a sitting-out arbour that had been arranged at the end of the +path nearest the river. It was softly lighted by two big Chinese +lanterns, primrose-coloured, ribbed like caterpillars, with a black base +and a splash of patterned colour upon each; a rug had been thrown on the +grass, and there were two big white-cane chairs, with house-boat +cushions.</p> + +<p>Here the two sat down, to munch sandwiches, drink hock-cup.</p> + +<p>"I remembered to bring two glasses, this time," said Paul Dampier.</p> + +<p>Gwenna smiled as she nodded. Her eyes were on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> those silver white-finned +minnows of her feet, that he had called pretty.</p> + +<p>He followed her glance as he took another sandwich. "Rather a good idea, +wings to your shoes because you're supposed to be a cherub."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but that's not what the wings were supposed to be for," she said +quickly. "I only put those in at the waltz-cotillon so that——"</p> + +<p>Here she stopped dead, wishing that the carpeted grass might open at +those winged feet of hers and swallow her up!</p> + +<p>How could she have given herself away like this? Let him <i>know</i> how she +had wanted him to choose her! when he hadn't even known she was there; +hadn't been thinking about her!</p> + +<p>She flurried on: "S-so that they should look more like fancy-dress shoes +instead of real ones!"</p> + +<p>He turned his head, dark and clean-cut against the lambent swaying +lantern. He said, out of the gloom that spared her whelming blush, "Oh, +was that it! I thought," he added with a teasing note in his voice, "I +thought you were going to say it was to remind me that I'd promised to +take you flying, and that it's never come off yet!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, hesitating for a moment, sat back against the cushions of the +wicker-chair. She looked away from him, and then ventured a retort—a +tiny reproach.</p> + +<p>"Well—it <i>hasn't</i> come off."</p> + +<p>"No, you know—it's too bad, really. I have been most frightfully busy," +he apologised. "But we'll fix<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> it up before you go to-night, shall we? +You must come." At this he was glad to see that the Little Thing looked +really pleased.</p> + +<p>She was awfully nice and sensible, he thought for the severalth time. +Again the odd wish took him that had taken him in that field. Yes! He +<i>would</i> like to touch those babyish-looking curls of hers with a finger. +Or even to rumple them against his cheek.... Another most foolish and +incomprehensible wish had occurred to him about this girl, even in her +absence. Apropos of nothing, one evening in his rooms he had remembered +the look of that throat of hers; round and sturdy and white above her +low collar. And he had thought he would rather like to put his own hands +about it, and to pretend—quite gently, of course—to throttle the +Little Thing. To-night she'd bundled it all up in that sort of feather +boa.... Pity.... She was ever so much prettier without.</p> + +<p>Fellow can't say that sort of thing to a girl, though, thought the +simple Paul.</p> + +<p>So he merely said, instead, "Let me stick that down for you somewhere," +and he leant forward and took from her the plate that had held her +cress-and-chicken sandwiches. Then he crossed his long legs and leant +back again. It was jolly and restful here in the dim arbour with her; +the sound of music and laughter came, much softened, from the marquee. +Nearer to them, on the water below the willows, there was a little +splashing and twittering of the moor-hen, roused by something, and the +scarcely audible murmur of the Thames, speeding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> past House-boat Country +to London ... the workaday Embankment.... It was jolly to be so +quiet....</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Then, into the happy silence that had fallen between them, there came a +sound—the sound of the crunching of gravel. Gwenna looked up. Two +figures sauntered past down the path; both tall and shapely and black +against the paling, star-sprinkled sky above the frieze of sighing +willows. Then Leslie's clear, careless voice drifted to their ears.</p> + +<p>"Afraid not.... Anyhow, what on earth would be the good of caring '<i>a +little</i>'?... I look upon you as such an infant—in arms——"</p> + +<p>Here there was a bass mutter of, "Make it <i>your</i> arms, and I don't +mind!"</p> + +<p>Then Leslie's insouciant: "I <i>knew</i> you'd say that obvious thing. I +always do know what you're going to do or say next ... fatal, that.... A +girl <i>can't</i> want to marry a man when——"</p> + +<p>Apparently, then, the Dean's son was proposing again?</p> + +<p>As the couple of free-limbed black shadows passed nearer, Paul Dampier +kicked his heel against his chair. He moved in it to make it creak more +noisily.</p> + +<p>Good manners wasted!</p> + +<p>For Leslie, as she afterwards told her chum, took for her motto upon +such occasions, "<i>And if the others see, what matter they</i>?"</p> + +<p>Her partner seemed oblivious that there were any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> "others" sitting in +the shadows. The couple passed, leaving upon the night-breeze a trail of +cigarette-smoke (Leslie's), and an indistinguishable growl, presumably +from the Black Panther.</p> + +<p>Leslie's voice floated back, "Not in the mood. Besides! You <i>had</i>, last +time, 'to soften the edges,' as you call it."</p> + +<p>More audibly her partner grumbled, "What's a kiss you've <i>had</i>? About as +satisfying as last summer's strawberry-ice——"</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>A mere nothing—the incident.</p> + +<p>Yet it brought (or hastened) a change into the atmosphere of that arbour +where, under the giant glowworms of lights swinging above them, two +young people sat at ease together without speaking.</p> + +<p>For Gwenna, envious, thought, "Leslie can make a man think of nothing +but her, even when she's 'not in the mood!' I can't. Yet I believe I +could, but for one thing. Even now I don't know that he isn't thinking +about That Other——"</p> + +<p>"That Other" was her rival, that machine of his that Gwenna had not +mentioned all the evening....</p> + +<p>It had come, she knew, that duel between the Girl and the Aeroplane for +the first place in the heart of a Flying Man. A duel as old as the +world, between the thing a man greatly loves, and that which he loves +more greatly still. She thought of Lovelace who "<i>loved Honour more</i>." +She thought of the cold Sea that robs the patient, warm-hearted women +ashore, of the icy Pole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> whose magnetism drew men from their wives. The +work that drew the thoughts of her Airman was that Invention that was +known already as his <i>Fiancée</i>....</p> + +<p>"Leslie says it's not as bad as if it were another woman, but I see her +as a woman," thought the silent, fanciful girl, "I see her as a sort of +winged dragon with a figure-head—aeroplanes don't have figure-heads, +but this one seems to me to have, just like some of those vessels that +come into the harbour at Aberdovey. Or like those pictures of harps that +are half a woman. Smooth red hair she has, and a long neck stretched +out, and a rather thin, pale, don't-care sort of face like that girl +called Muriel. And—and eagle's talons for hands. That's how I see that +<i>Fiancée</i> of his, with claws for hands that won't, <i>won't</i> ever let him +go...."</p> + +<p>A puff of wind knocked one of the lanterns above their heads softly +against the other; the willows rustled silkily outside. Gwenna sat +motionless, holding her breath. Suddenly her reverie had broken off with +an abrupt, unspoken—"but it's me he's thinking of <i>now</i>...."</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier had been lightly amused by that passing of the other +couple. That friend of hers, Miss Long, was more than a bit of a flirt, +he considered. This Little Thing wasn't. Couldn't imagine <i>her</i> giving a +kiss as some girls give a dance; or even to "soften" a refusal.... Her +mouth, he found himself noticing, was full and curly and exactly the +colour of the buds of those fox-gloves that grew all over the shop at +her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> place in Wales. It was probably softer than those curls of hers +that he would (also) like to touch.</p> + +<p>Idiotic idea, though——</p> + +<p>But an idea which is transmittable.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, thrilled by this message which she had caught by a method older +and less demonstrable than Marconi's, realised: "He heard <i>that</i>, just +now; that boy wanting to kiss Leslie.... He's thinking, now, that he +might kiss me."</p> + +<p>The boy scarcely at arm's length from her thought a little confusedly, +"I say, though.... Rotten thing to do...."</p> + +<p>The girl thought, "He would like to. <i>What</i> is he waiting about? We +shall have to go directly——"</p> + +<p>For the sky outside had been swiftly paling. Now that pure pallor was +changing to the glow of Abyssinian gold. Dawn! From the marquee came a +louder blare of music; two long cornet notes and then a rollicking +tune—The old "Post Horn" Galop—the last dance. Presently a distant +noise of clapping and calls for "Extra"! There would be no time for +extras, she'd heard. They would have to go after this. People were +beginning to go. Already they had heard the noise of a car. His chair +creaked as he moved a little sidewards.</p> + +<p>He told himself, more emphatically, "Beastly rotten thing to do. This +Little Thing would never speak to me again——"</p> + +<p>And the girl sat there, without stirring, without glancing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> at him. Yet +every curve of her little body, every eyelash, every soft breath she +drew was calling him, was set upon "making" him. What could she do more +to make herself, as Leslie called it, a magnet? Love and innocent +longing filled her to the eyes, the tender fox-glove buds of lips that +could have asked for nothing better. Even if this <i>were</i> the only time! +Even if she never saw him again!</p> + +<p>Wasn't he going to set the crown upon her wonderful dream of a summer +night?</p> + +<p>"No, look <i>here</i>," the boy remonstrated silently with something in +himself; something that seemed to mock him. He lifted his fair head with +a gleam of that pride that goes so often before a fall. "Dash it +all——"</p> + +<p>"He will!" the girl thought breathlessly. And with her thought she +seemed to cast all of her heart into the spell....</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>And then, quite suddenly, something happened whereby that spell was +snapped. Even as she thought "<i>he will</i>," he rose from his chair.</p> + +<p>He took a step to the entrance of their arbour, his shoulders blotting +out the glowing light.</p> + +<p>"Listen," he said.</p> + +<p>And Gwenna, rising too, listened, breathlessly, angrily. He would +<i>not</i>—she had been cheated. What was it that had—<i>interfered</i>? +Presently she heard it, she heard what she would have taken for the +noise of another of the departing motors.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p> + +<p>Through the clatter from the last galop it was like, yet unlike, the +noise of a starting car. But there was in it an <i>angrier</i> note than +that.</p> + +<p>It is angry for want of any help but its own. A motor-car has solid +earth against which to drive; a steamship has dense water. But the +Machine that caused this noise was beating her metal thews against +invisible air.</p> + +<p>It was an aeroplane.</p> + +<p>"Look!" said Paul Dampier.</p> + +<p>Far away over the still benighted land she rose, and into that glory of +Abyssinian gold beyond the river. Gwenna, moving out on to the path, +watched the flight. Before, she had wondered that these soaring things +didn't come down. Now, she would have wondered if they had done so.</p> + +<p>Steady as if running on rails, the aeroplane came on overhead; her sound +as she came now loud, now soft, but always angry, harsh—harshness like +that of a woman who lives to herself and her strivings, with no +comradeship of Earth on which to lean. Against the sky that was her +playground she showed as a slate-coloured dragonfly—a purple Empress of +the Air soaring on and on into the growing dazzle of the day.</p> + +<p>"Oh, it <i>is</i> beautiful, though," cried the girl on the path, looking up, +and losing for that moment the angry sense that had fallen upon her of +pleasure past, of the end of the song. "It is wonderful."</p> + +<p>"Pooh, that old horse-bus," laughed Paul Dampier<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> above her shoulder, +and mentioned the names of the machine, the flyer in her. He could pick +them out of the note of her angry song.</p> + +<p>"That will be nothing to my P.D.Q.," he declared exultantly as they +walked on up the path towards the marquee. "You wait until I've got my +aeroplane working! That'll be something new in aviation, you know. +Nearest thing yet to the absolute identity of the Man with the Machine."</p> + +<p>He yawned a little with natural sleepiness, but his interest was +wide-awake. He could have gone on until breakfast-time explaining some +fresh point about his invention, while the girl in those little +silver-heeled shoes paced slowly up the path beside him.... He was going +on.</p> + +<p>"Make all those other types, English or foreign, as clumsy as the +old-fashioned bone-shake bicycle. Fact," he declared. "Now, take the +Taube—Hullo——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Bitte</i>," said a voice.</p> + +<p>The German word came across a pile of plates deftly balanced upon a +young man's forearm. That arm was clad in the sleeve of a trim white +jacket, buttoned over a thick and compact little chest. The waiter's +hair was a short, upright golden stubble, and another little stubble of +gold sprouted upon his steady upper lip. He had come up, very softly, +behind them.</p> + +<p>He spoke again in excellent English.</p> + +<p>"By your leave, sir."</p> + +<p>Dampier made way for him, and he passed. Gwenna, with a little shiver, +looked after him. The sight of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> young waiter whom she had noticed at +the beginning of the evening had given her an unreasonable little +chill.... Perhaps it was because his softly-moving, white figure against +those willows had loomed so like a ghost....</p> + +<p>Dampier said, "Rotten job for a man, I always think, hanging about and +picking up things for other people like that."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Gwenna, absently, sadly. It <i>was</i> the end now. Quite the +end. They'd got to go home. Back to everyday life. The Club, the Works. +Nothing to live for, except—Ah, yes! His promise that he <i>would</i> take +her flying, soon....</p> + +<p>Above in the glowing sky the aeroplane was dwindling—to disappear. The +waiter, turning a corner of the dark shrubbery, had also disappeared as +they passed. From behind the shelter of the branches he was watching, +watching....</p> + +<p>He was looking after Paul Dampier, the Airman—the inventor of the +newest aeroplane.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<h3>THE FLYING DREAM</h3> + + +<p>"<i>Those dreams come true that are dreamed on Midsummer night!</i>"</p> + +<p>This saying Gwenna had read somewhere. But she had forgotten all about +it until, on the night of June 24th, 1914, she dreamed the most vivid +dream of all her twenty-two years.</p> + +<p>Many people have that same dream—or versions of it—often in a +lifetime. Scientists have written papers on the whys and hows of it. +They tack a long name to it. But little Gwenna Williams had never heard +of "<i>levitation</i>." To herself she called it afterwards "<i>that flying +dream</i>."</p> + +<p>It seemed to her that when it began she was still half-awake, lying in +her narrow white bed with the blankets tossed on to the floor of her +Club bedroom, for it was a sultry night and close, in spite of her +window on to the garden being wide open and allowing what breeze there +was to blow full upon the girl's face, stirring her curls on the pillow, +the ruffle of her night-gown as she lay.</p> + +<p>Suddenly a violent start ran over the whole of her body. And with that +one jerk she seemed to have come out of herself. She realised, first, +that she was no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> longer lying down, curled up in the kitten-like ball +which was her attitude for sleeping. She was upright as if she were +standing.</p> + +<p>But she was not standing. Her feet were not resting on anything. Looking +down, she found, without very much surprise, that she was poised, as a +lark is poised, in mid-air, at some immeasurable height. It was night, +and the earth—a distant hassock of dim trees and fields—was far, far +below her.</p> + +<p>She found herself moving downwards through the air.</p> + +<p><i>She was flying!</i></p> + +<p>Gently, gently, she sped, full of a quiet happiness in her new power, +which, after all, did not seem to be something new, but something +restored to her.</p> + +<p>"Dear me, I've flown before, I know I have," said Gwenna to herself as +she swooped downwards in her dream, with the breeze cool on the soles of +her little bare feet. "This is as lovely as swimming! It's lovelier, +because one doesn't have to <i>do</i> anything. So silly to imagine that one +has to have <i>wings</i> to fly!"</p> + +<p>Now she was nearer to earth, she was hovering over a dark stream of +water with reflections that circled and broke. And beside it she saw +something that seemed like a huge lambent mushroom set in the dim fields +below her. This was a lighted tent, and from it there floated up to her +faintly the throb and thrill of dance-music, the two long-drawn-out +notes of the "Post Horn" Galop, the noise of laughter and clapping.... +She wondered whom she would see, if she were to alight. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> the Force +in her dream bore her up again, higher, and away. She found presently +that she had left the dancing-tent far behind, and that what streamed +below her was no longer a river with reflections, but a road, white with +dust, and by the side of it a car was standing idle by the dusty hedge. +On the other side of the hedge, as she flew over, the grass was clean +and full of flowers, and half-way up the field stood a brooding elm that +cast a patch of shadow.</p> + +<p>"Sunshine, now!" wondered Gwenna. "How quickly it's changed from night!"</p> + +<p>She felt from head to foot her body light and buoyant as a drifting +thistle-down as on she went through the air. Close beside her, against a +bank of cloud, she noticed some black V-shaped thing that slanted and +flapped slow wings, then planed downwards out of her sight. "That's that +crow. A dihedral angle, they call it," said the dreaming girl. Her next +downward glance, as she sped upwards now, without effort, above the +earth, showed her a map of distant grey roofs and green trees, and +something that looked like a giant soap-bubble looming out of the mist.</p> + +<p>"St. Paul's! London!" thought Gwenna. "I wonder shall I be able to look +down on our Westminster place."</p> + +<p>Then, glancing about her, she saw that the scene had suddenly changed. +She was no longer in the free air with clouds about her as she flew like +a little white windblown feather with the earth small as a toy puzzle +below.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> She was between walls, with her feet not further than her own +height from the ground. Night again in a room. A long, narrowish room +with an open window through which came the light of a street-lamp that +flung a bright patch upon the carpet, the edge of a dressing-table, the +end of a white bed. Upon the bed, from which the coverings had been +flung down, there lay sleeping, curled up like a kitten, a figure in a +white, ruffled night-gown, with a cherub's head thrown backwards against +the pillow. Gwenna, looking down, thought, "Where have I seen <i>her</i>?"</p> + +<p>In the next flash she had realised.</p> + +<p>Herself!... Her own sleeping body that her dreaming soul had left for +this brief flight....</p> + +<p>A start more violent than that with which her dream had begun shook the +dreamer as she came to herself again.</p> + +<p>She woke. With a pitiful little "Oh," sounding in her own ears, she sat +up in bed and stared about her Club bedroom with its patches of light +from the street-lamp outside. She was trembling from head to foot, her +curls were wet with fright, and her first thought as she sprang out of +bed and to the door of that ghostly room was "I must go to Leslie."</p> + +<p>But Leslie's bedroom was a story higher. Gwenna paused in the corridor +outside the nearest bedroom to her own. A thread of light showed below +the door. It was a Miss Armitage's, and she was one of the Club members, +who wrote pamphlets on the Suffrage, and like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> topics, far into the +night. Gwenna, feeling already more normal and cheered by the sense of +any human nearness, decided, "I won't go to her. She'll only want to +read aloud to me.... She laughed at me because I said I adored 'The +Forest Lovers,' but what books does <i>she</i> like? Only those <i>dreat</i>-ful +long novels all about nothing, except the diseases of people in the +Potteries. Or else it'll be one of her own tracts.... Somehow she does +make everything she's interested in sound so <i>ugly</i>. All those +intellectual ones here do! Whether it's Marriage or Not-getting-married, +you really don't know which would be the most <i>dull</i>, from these +suffragettes," reflected the young girl, pattering down the corridor +again. "I'll go back to bed."</p> + +<p>She went back, snuggling under the clothes. But she could not go to +sleep again for some time. She lay curled up, thinking.</p> + +<p>She had thought too often and too long of that dance now three whole +weeks behind her. She had recalled, too many times! every moment of it; +every word and gesture of her partner's, going over and over his look, +his laugh, the tone in which he'd said, "Give <i>me</i> this waltz, will +you?" All that memory had had the sweetness smelt out of it like a +child's posy. By this time it was worn thin as heirloom silver. She +turned from it.... It was then she remembered that saying about the +Midsummer Night's Dream. If that were true, then Gwenna might expect +soon to fly in reality.</p> + +<p>For after all her plans and hopes, she had not even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> yet been taken up +by Paul Dampier in an aeroplane!</p> + +<p>In that silent, unacknowledged conflict between the Girl and the +Machine, so far scarcely a score could have been put down to the credit +of the Girl. It was she who had always found herself put back, +disappointed, frustrated. This had been by the merest accidents.</p> + +<p>First of all, the Airman hadn't been able to ask her and Miss Long to +his rooms in Camden Town to look at his model aeroplane. He had been +kept hanging on, not knowing which Saturday-to-Monday Colonel Conyers +("the great Air-craft Conyers") was going to ask him down to stay at +that house in Ascot, to have another talk over the subject of the new +Machine. ("A score for the Machine," thought the girl; wakeful, tossing +on her bed.)</p> + +<p>She did not even know that the week after, on a glorious and cloudless +Saturday, young Dampier, blankly unaware that there was any conflict +going on in his world! had settled to ask "the Little Thing" to Hendon. +On the Friday afternoon, however, his firm had sent him out of town, +down to the factory near Aldershot. Here he had stayed until the +following Tuesday, putting up at the house of a kindred soul employed at +that factory, and wallowing in "Shop." ... Another win for the Machine!</p> + +<p>The following Sunday the cup had been almost to Gwenna's lips. He had +called for her. Not in the car, this time. They had taken the Tube to +Golders Green; the motor-bus to Hendon Church; and then the path<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> over +the fields together. Ah, delight! For even walking over the dusty grass +beside that swinging boy's figure in the grey tweed jacket was a joyous +adventure. It had been another when he had presently stooped and said, +"Shoelace come untied; might trip over that. I'll do it up," and had +fastened her broad brown shoe-ribbon securely for her. Her shoes had +been powdered white. He had taken his handkerchief out of his pocket and +had flicked the dust off, saying, as he did so, in a tone of some +interest, "I say, what tiny feet girls do have!"</p> + +<p>("Pie for you, Taffy, of course," as Leslie had said later, when she'd +heard of this. "Second time he'd noticed them.")</p> + +<p>Gwenna, in a tone half pleased, half piqued, had told him, "<i>All</i> girls +don't have them so small! And yet you don't seem to notice anything +about people but their feet." She had walked on, delightedly conscious +of his laugh, his amused, "Oh, don't I?" and his downward glance.... +Wasn't this, she had thought, something of a score at last for the Girl!</p> + +<p>But hadn't even that small score been wiped out on the flying-ground? +There Gwenna had stood, waiting, gleeful and agitated; her mist-blue +scarf aflutter in the brisk breeze, but not fluttering as wildly as her +heart....</p> + +<p>And then had come frustration once again! Paul Dampier's deep and +womanishly-soft tone saying, "I say, I'm afraid it's going to be a bit +too blowy, after all.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> Wind's rising all the time;" and that other giant +voice from the megaphone announcing:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"Ladies +and +gentul +Men! +As +the +wind +is +now +blowing +forty +miles +an +hour +it +will +be +im +possible +to +make +passenger +flights!"</p></div> + +<p>Oh, bitter defeat for the Girl! For, this time, there had been no +idyllic picnic <i>à deux</i> to console her for any disappointment. There had +been nothing but a rather noisy tea in the Pavilion, with a whole +chattering party of the young Airman's acquaintances; with another young +woman who had meant to fly, but who had seemed resigned enough that it +was "not to be, <i>this</i> afternoon," and with half a dozen strange, +irrelevant young men; quite <i>silly</i>, Gwenna had thought them. Two of +them had given Gwenna a lift back to Hampstead in their car afterwards, +since Paul Dampier had explained that he "rather wanted to go on with +one of the other fellows"—somewhere! Gwenna didn't know where. Only, +out of her sight! Out of her world! And she was quite certain, even +though he hadn't said so, that he had been bent on some quest that had +something to do with the <i>Fianceé</i> of his, the "P.D.Q.," the Machine!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<h3>AN AWAKENING</h3> + + +<p>The sore of that jealousy still smarted in the girl's mind as she turned +her pillow restlessly.... She could not sleep until long after the +starlings had been twittering and the milk-carts rattling by in the +suburban road outside. She awoke, dispirited. She came down late for +breakfast; Leslie had already gone off to her old lady in Highgate. Over +the disordered breakfast-table Miss Armitage was making plans, with some +of the other Suffrage-workers, to "speak" at a meeting of the Fabian +Nursery. Those young women talked loudly enough, but they didn't +pronounce the ends of any of their words; hideously slipshod it all +sounded, thought the Welsh girl fretfully. Her world was a desert to +her, this fine June morning. For at the Westminster office things seemed +as dreary as they had at the Club. She began to see what people meant +when they said that on long sea-voyages one of the greatest hardships +was never to see a fresh face, but always the same ones, day after day, +well-known to weariness, all about one. It was just like that when one +was shut up to work day after day in an office with the same people. She +was sick to death of all the faces of all the people here. Miss Butcher +with her Cockney accent! Miss Baker with her eternal crochet! The men in +the yards with their <i>awful</i> tobacco and trousers! Nearly all men, she +thought, were ugly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> All old men. And most of the young ones; <i>round</i> +backs, <i>horrid</i> hands, <i>disgusting</i> skins—Mr. Grant, for instance! +(with a glance at that well-meaning engineer, when he brought in some +note for Mabel Butcher). Those swarthy men never looked as if they had +baths and proper shaves. He'd a head like a black hatpin. And his +accent, thought the girl from the land where every letter of a word is +pronounced, his accent was more excruciating than any in Westminster.</p> + +<p>"Needn't b'lieve me, if you don't want. But it's true-oo! Vis'ters this +aft'noon," he was saying to Miss Butcher. "Young French Dook or Comp or +something, he is; taking out a patent for a new crane. Coming in early +with some swagger friends of his. Wants to be shown the beauties of the +buildin', I s'pose. Better bring him in here and let him have a good +look at you girls first thing, hadn't I? S'long! Duty calls. I must +away."</p> + +<p>And away he went, leaving Miss Butcher smiling fondly after him, while +Miss Williams wondered how on earth any girl ever managed to fall in +love, considering there was nothing but young men to fall in love with. +All ordinary young men were awful. And all young men <i>were</i> ordinary.... +Except, now and again, one ... far away ... out of reach.... Who just +showed how different and wonderful a thing a lover might be! If one +could only, only ever get near him!—instead of being stuck down here, +in this perfectly beastly place——</p> + +<p>As the morning wore on, she found herself more and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> more dissatisfied +with all her surroundings. And for a girl of Gwenna's sort to be +thoroughly dissatisfied predicts one thing only. She will not long stay +where she is.</p> + +<p>Impatiently she sighed over her typing-table. Irritably she fidgeted in +her chair. This was what jerked the plump arm of Ottilie Becker, who was +passing behind her, and who now dropped a handful of papers on to the +new boards.</p> + +<p>"Zere! Now see what you have made me do," said the German girl +good-naturedly enough. "My letter! Pick him up, Candlesticks-maker."</p> + +<p>"Oh, pick him up yourself," retorted Gwenna school-girlishly, crossly. +"It wasn't my fault."</p> + +<p>At this tone from a colleague of whom she was genuinely fond, tears rose +to Miss Becker's blue eyes. Miss Butcher, coming across to the centre +table, saw those tears.</p> + +<p>"Well, really, anybody might <i>apologise</i>," she remarked reproachfully, +"when they've <i>upset</i> anybody."</p> + +<p>At this rebuke Gwenna's strained nerves snapped.</p> + +<p>An Aberystwith Collegiate School expression rose naturally to her +lips—"<i>Cau dy gêg</i>!" She translated it: "Shut <i>up</i>!" she said, quite +rudely.</p> + +<p>Then, the moment after she had given way to this little outburst of +temper she felt better. She was ready to be on the best of terms again +with her fellow-typists. They, as Miss Butcher would have said, "weren't +having any." They turned offended backs upon her. They talked pointedly +to each other, not to her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p> + +<p>"That's a precious long letter you've got written there, Baker," said +Miss Butcher, helping to gather up the half-dozen thin foreign sheets, +covered with neat, pointed German writing. "Is that to the beloved +brother?"</p> + +<p>Miss Becker nodded her plait-wreathed head as she put the letter that +began: "<i>Geliebter Karl!</i>" into the grey-lined envelope.</p> + +<p>"He likes to hear what they make—do—at the works. Always he ask," she +said, "after what they do. And who come hier; and where everythings is +kept."</p> + +<p>"Gracious! I do believe he's a regular German spy, like in the +magazines, this brother of yours," smiled Miss Butcher lightly. "Don't +you give away any of our State secrets, Baker, will you? We'd be having +the authorities, whoever they are, poking round and inquiring. Awful if +England and your country went to war, wouldn't it?—and you were +supposed to be 'the Enemy'!"</p> + +<p>She spoke as if of something that was more fantastic than Gwenna's +flying dream of the night before. The German typist answered in the same +strain.</p> + +<p>"If it <i>was</i> war, I would speak to Karlchen's regiment that your house +in Clapham and your people should be saved," she promised. "But he is +not thinking now of war; he interests himself very much for buildings +(because our father is architect). And for maps of the river, and such. +So I must write on him every week a long letter.... We go out to-day to +have our lunch, yes?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p> + +<p>The two went out together towards Whitehall. The Welsh girl was left in +Coventry—and the deserted offices.</p> + +<p>She didn't want any lunch. She drank a glass of tepid tap-water from the +dressing-room. She ate some strawberries, bought in their little flat +basket as she had come along. Then, hatless, and in her thin, one-piece +dress of grey linen, she strolled out into the yard for a breath of air.</p> + +<p>It was empty and hot and sunny. Gwenna looked up from the wood-littered +ground where the ubiquitous London pigeons strutted and flirted and +"Croo—<i>croo</i>—do—I—do"-ed about her feet. Overhead, that giant +lacework on its iron crochet-hooks looked as if its pattern had been +drawn with a pen and black ink against the opaque blue-grey sky. The +sight of that far-off pinnacle put into her head again the thought of +flying.</p> + +<p>"I don't believe that I shall ever be as high up as that, with the blue +beneath me, like I've always wanted!" reflected the young girl, +dolefully looking up. "I believe that last night in my dream is all the +flying I'm ever going to have had!"</p> + +<p>And again that longing took her. That pure longing to be high; above the +Law that clogs the children of Man to the Earth from which he came. To +feel the unfettered air above and below and about her all at once!... +But what could she do to gratify the impulse even a little?</p> + +<p>Only one thing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p> + +<p>She might <i>climb</i>.</p> + +<p>The idea with which she started off on her mad prank was to climb up to +that iron lattice of lacework; to run up that as a sailor climbs the +rope-ladders of his masts, and thence from the very highest peak +attainable to look down on London, even as last night she had looked +down on it from her dream.</p> + +<p>Her start was not in the open air at all, but from the bottom of the +scaffolding inside, where it was all beams and uprights and floors of +planks. It reminded Gwenna of being underneath the old wooden pier at +Aberdovey, and looking up. She went up ladders, through trap-doors, +walked over wooden floors to other ladders until she got up to the last +trap-door and through it out of the shadow and the stuffiness to the +sunshine and the fresh air again. She stood on the top platform of the +gantry which supported that engine and the wheels that worked (she +supposed) the iron lattice that was still far above her head.</p> + +<p>Presently she would climb that. She knew that she could. She was never +afraid of heights. Her head was steady enough. Her feet in their brown +shoes were as sure as the feet of the tiny sheep that picked their way +up the rocky steeps of her Welsh mountains. She could climb as well as +any of the men ... but for the moment she rested, standing by the +platform hand-railing, breathing in the freshened breeze.</p> + +<p>The birds of the City—pigeons and sparrows—were taking their short +flights far beneath her perch. All London was spread below her, as it +had been in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> flying dream, and with as strong a sense of security +as in the dream she looked down upon it.</p> + +<p>There, between the forests of chimney-pots, gleamed that highway of the +Thames, blue-grey now as it reflected the sky, winding out of the +distance that meant the clean, green country and the willows below the +lawns where people had danced; flowing on into London that sullied it, +and burdened it with her barges, and spanned it with her bridges, but +could not stay it; on and out its waters passed towards Greenwich and +the Docks and the tall ships and the North Sea!</p> + +<p>And there on its bank was the office, the dwindled yard from which +Gwenna had started. The men returning....</p> + +<p>The whole place looked nothing more than a hen-run full of fowls. Their +voices ascended, more loudly than she would have expected to hear from +their diminished figures. How funny to see what midgets the creatures +looked from here, and to remember how majestically important each +considered himself! thought little Gwenna, forgetting that from the yard +she herself, with her grey linen frock, her brown feet and ankles, must +look no larger than a roosting pigeon.</p> + +<p>She looked down, past the railing and the ends of timbers, feeling +immeasurably aloof from everybody in her world. She wished she need +never go down to it again.</p> + +<p>"I've a <i>good</i> mind to give notice at the office, whatever, and go +somewhere quite different!" she thought defiantly, and immediately she +felt elated. A weight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> of depression seemed to have dropped from her +already. Up, up went the feather-weight spirits of Youth. She had +forgotten for this moment the longing and frustration of the last weeks, +the exasperations of this morning, her squabble with those other girls. +She had climbed out of all that....</p> + +<p>Now, before she left this place, she would do something that none of the +girls she knew would dare. She'd climb further.</p> + +<p>She turned to take a step towards the crane.</p> + +<p> </p> + + +<p>Then something gave her a start as violent as that in which she had, +that night before, been jerked out of her dream.</p> + +<p>For now, into her absorbed musing there had broken without warning the +sound of a voice. It had seemed to have come out of nothing, from behind +her, and it had said, with a laugh deep and soft at once, "<i>My</i> machine? +Oh, yes.... Good of you to remember her——"</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier's voice!</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna, with her back to the trap-door, and wrapped in her own +thoughts, had heard nothing of the steps of five pairs of feet coming up +the way that she had come. In the violence of her surprise of hearing a +voice, so often heard in her daydreams now, here, in this unexpected +place between sky and ground, she started so that she lost her balance.</p> + +<p>The girl's foot slipped. She fell. She was half over the platform—one +small foot and ankle stretched out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> over the giddy height as that crane +was stretched. She clutched on the crook of a slender grey arm, the +railing of the platform—So, for an agonised moment, she hung.</p> + +<p>But hardly had she cried out before there was the dash of a tall man's +figure across the planks from the trap-door.</p> + +<p>"It's all right—I've got you," said Paul Dampier, and caught her up +from the edge, in his arms.</p> + +<p>They held her. That armful of a girl, soft and warm as one of the grey +pigeons, was crushed for a moment against the boy's chest. She was +closer to him than she had been in any of those waltzes. Yet it seemed +no strangeness to be so near—feeling his heart beat below hers, feeling +the roughness of his tweed jacket through the thin linen of her frock. +She felt as she'd felt about flying, in that dream of hers. "I must have +known it all before."</p> + +<p>Then, dazed but happy, resting where she seemed to belong, she thought +in a twink, "I shall have to let go. <i>Why</i> can't I stay like this?... +Oh, it's very cruel. There! Now I have let go. But he won't.... He's +getting his balance."</p> + +<p>He had taken a step backwards.</p> + +<p>Then she slid through his arms. She slipped, lightly as a squirrel slips +down the length of a beech, to the wooden floor of the platform.</p> + +<p>Cruel; yes, <i>cruel</i>! And to add to the cruelty that such a moment must +end, the Airman, when she left his enforced clasp, scarcely looked at +her. He barely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> returned her greeting. He did not answer her breathless +thanks. He turned away from her—whom he had saved. Yes! He left her to +the meaningless babble of the others (she recognised now, in a dazed +way, that there were other men with him on the scaffolding). He left her +to the politenesses of his cousin Hugo and of that young French engineer +(Mr. Grant's "Comp" who had come up to inspect the crane). He never +looked again as Miss Williams was guided down the trap-door and the +ladders by the scolding Yorkshire foreman, who didn't leave her until +she was safely at the bottom.</p> + +<p>She was met by the two other typists who had, from the office window, +seen her perched up, small as a bird, on the heights. Both girls had +been terrified. Miss Butcher now brought lavender salts. Miss Becker's +pink moon of a face was blanched with horror over her colleague's +danger.</p> + +<p>"Do you know what could have happened, Candlesticks-maker, my dear?" +cried the German girl with real emotion, as they all made tea together +in the varnished, stifling office. "You could have been killed, you!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna thought, "That would have been too bad. Because then—<i>then</i> I +shouldn't have known when he held me!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>As it was, there were several things about that incident that the young +girl—passionate and infatuated and innocent—did not know.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p> + +<p>For one thing, there was the resolution that Paul Dampier took just +after he had turned abruptly from her, had taken short leave of the +others, and when he was striding down Whitehall to the bus that went +past the door of his Camden Town rooms. And for another thing, there was +the reason for that resolution.</p> + +<p>Now, in the fairy-stories of modern life, it is (of the two principals) +not always the Princess who has to be woken by a kiss, a touch, from the +untroubled sleep of years. Sometimes it is the Prince who is suddenly +stirred, jarred, or jolted broad awake by the touch, in some form or +other, of Love. In Paul Dampier's case the every-day miracle had been +wrought by the soft weight of that dove-breasted girl against his heart +for no longer than he could count ten, by her sliding to the earth +through an embrace that he had not intended for an embrace at all.</p> + +<p>It hadn't seemed to matter what <i>he</i> had intended!</p> + +<p>In a flock as of homing pigeons there flew back upon the young aviator +all at once his thoughts of the Little Thing ever since he'd met her.</p> + +<p>How he'd thought her so jolly to look at ("So sensible"—this he +forgot). How topping and natural it had seemed to sit there with her in +that field, talking to her, drinking with her out of one silver cup. How +he'd found himself wanting to touch her curls; to span and squeeze her +throat with his hands. How he'd been within an inch of summarily kissing +that fox-glove pink mouth of hers, that night at the Dance....</p> + +<p>And to-day, when he'd come to Westminster for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> another talk with that +rather decent young Frenchman of Hugo's, when he hadn't thought of +seeing the girl at all, what had happened? He'd actually held her +clasped in his arms, as a sweetheart is clasped.</p> + +<p>Only by a sheer accident, of course.</p> + +<p>Yes, but an accident that had left impressed on every fibre of him the +feeling of that warm and breathing burden which seemed even yet to rest +against his quickened heart.</p> + +<p>In that heart there surged up a clamorous impulse to go back at once. To +snatch her up for the second time in his arms, and not to let her go +again, either. To satisfy that hunger of his fingers and lips for the +touch of her——</p> + +<p>"<i>Hold</i> hard!" muttered the boy to himself. "Hang it all, this won't +do."</p> + +<p>For he had found himself actually turning back, his face set towards the +Abbey.</p> + +<p>He spun round on the hot pavement towards home again.</p> + +<p>"Look here; can't have this!" he told himself grimly as he walked on, +swinging his straw hat in his hand, towards Trafalgar Square. "At this +rate I shall be making an ass of myself before I know where I am; going +and falling in—going and getting myself much too dashed fond of the +Little Thing."</p> + +<p>Yes! He now saw that he was in some danger of that.</p> + +<p>And if it did come to anything, he mused, walking among the London +summer crowd, it wouldn't be one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> of these Fancy-dress-dance +flirtations. Not that sort of girl. "Nor was he; really." Not that sort +of man, he meant. Sort of thing never had amused him, much; not, he +knew, because he was cold-blooded ("Lord, no!") but partly because he'd +had such stacks of other things to do, partly because—because he'd +always thought it ought to be (and could be) so much more—well, amusing +than it was. This other. This with the Little Thing—he somehow knew +that it would have to be "for keeps."</p> + +<p>And <i>that</i> he couldn't have. Good Lord, no! There could be no +question—Great Scott!</p> + +<p>For yes, if there <i>was</i> anything between him and the Little Thing, it +would have to be an engagement. Marriage, and all that.</p> + +<p>And Paul Dampier didn't intend to get married. Out of the question for +him.</p> + +<p>He'd only just managed to scrape through and make "some sort of a +footing" for himself in the world as it was. His father, a hard-up Civil +engineer, and his mother (who had been looked askance at by her people, +the Swaynes, for marrying the penniless and undistinguished Paul +Dampier, senior)—they'd only just managed to give their boy "some kind +of an education" before they pegged out. Lessons at home when he'd been +a little fellow. Afterwards one of the (much) smaller public-schools. +For friends and pleasures and holidays he had been dependent on what he +could "pick up" for himself. Old Hugo had been decent enough. He'd asked +his cousin to fish with him in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> Wales, twice, and he hadn't allowed Paul +to feel that he was—the poor relation.</p> + +<p>Only Paul remembered the day that Hugo was going back to Harrow for the +last time. He, Paul, had then been a year in the shops, to the day. He +remembered the sudden resentment of that. It was not snobbery, not envy. +It was Youth in him crying out, "I will be served! I won't be put off, +and stopped doing things, and shoved out of things for ever, just +because I'm poor. If being poor means being 'out of it,' having no Power +of any kind, I'm dashed if I <i>stay</i> poor. I'll show that I can make +good——"</p> + +<p>And, gradually, step by step, the young mechanic, pilot, aero-racer and +inventor had been "making good."</p> + +<p>He'd made friends, too. People had been decent. He'd been made to feel +that <i>they</i> felt he was going to be a useful sort of chap. He'd quailed +a bit under the eyes of butlers in these houses where he'd stayed, but +he'd been asked again. That Mrs. What's-her-name (the woman in the pink +frock at the Smiths) had been awfully kind. Introducing him to her +brothers with capital; asking him down to the New Forest to meet some +other influential person; and knowing that he couldn't entertain in +return. (He'd just sent her some flowers and some tickets for +Brooklands.) Then there was Colonel Conyers. He'd asked whether he +(Dampier) were engaged. And, at his answer, had replied, "Good. Much +easier for a bachelor, these days."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span></p> + +<p>And now! Supposing he got married?</p> + +<p>On his screw? Paul Dampier laughed bitterly.</p> + +<p>Well, but supposing he got engaged; got some wretched girl to wait +for——</p> + +<p>Years of it! Thanks!</p> + +<p>Then, quite apart from the money-question, what about all his work?</p> + +<p>Everything he wanted to do! Everything he was really in earnest about.</p> + +<p>His scheme—his invention—his Machine!</p> + +<p>"End of it all, if he went complicating matters by starting a <i>girl</i>!"</p> + +<p>Take up all his time. Interrupt—putting him off his job—yes, he knew! +Putting him off, like this afternoon in the yard, and that other night +at the Dance. Only more so. Incessant. "Mustn't have it; quite simply, +he must <i>not</i>."</p> + +<p>Messing up his whole chance of a career, if——</p> + +<p>But he was pulling himself up in time from that danger.</p> + +<p>Up to now he hadn't realised that there might be something in all that +rot of old Hugo's about the struggle in a man's mind between an +Aeroplane and a Girl. Now—well, he'd realised. All the better. Now he +was forewarned. Good thing he could take a side for himself now.</p> + +<p>By the time he'd reached the door of the National Portrait Gallery and +stood waiting for his motor omnibus, he had definitely taken that +resolution of which Gwenna Williams did not know.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span></p> + +<p>Namely, that he must drop seeing the Girl. Have nothing more to say to +her. It was better so; wiser. Whatever he'd promised about taking her up +would have to be "off."</p> + +<p>A pity—! Dashed shame a man couldn't have <i>everything</i>! She was ... so +awfully sweet....</p> + +<p>Still, got to decide one way or the other.</p> + +<p>This would fix it before it was too late, before he'd perhaps managed to +put ideas into the head of the Little Thing. She shouldn't ever come +flying, with him!</p> + +<p>That <i>ended</i> it! he thought. He'd made up <i>his</i> mind. He would not allow +himself to wonder what <i>she</i> might think.</p> + +<p>After all, what <i>would</i> a girl think? Probably nothing.</p> + +<p>Nothing at all, probably.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<h3>LESLIE ON "TOO MUCH LOVE"</h3> + + +<p>It seemed to be decided for Gwenna that she should, after all, give +notice at the office.</p> + +<p>For on the evening of the day of her climb up the scaffolding she met +the tall, sketchily-dressed figure of her chum coming down the hill that +she was ascending on her way to the Club. And Leslie accosted her with +the words, "Child, d'you happen to want to leave your place and take +another job? Because, if so, come along for a walk and we'll talk about +it."</p> + +<p>So the two "inseparables" strolled on together up past the Club, passing +at the crest of the hill a troop of Boy Scouts with their band.</p> + +<p>"Only chance one ever gets of hearing a drum; jolly sound," sighed +Leslie, watching the brown faces, the sturdy legs marching by. "I wonder +how many of those lads will be soldiers? Very few, I suppose. We're told +that the authorities are <i>so</i> careful to keep the Boy Scout Movement +apart from any pernicious militarism, and ideas about National Service!"</p> + +<p>And the girls took the road that dips downward from Hampstead, and the +chestnut avenue that leads into the Park of Golders Green. They passed +the Bandstand ringed by nurse-girls and perambulators. They crossed the +rustic bridge above the lily-pond, where children tossed crumbs to the +minnows. They<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> went in at the door of the little flower-garden.</p> + +<p>Here, except for an occasional sauntering couple, London seemed shut +out. In the late sunlight above the maze of paths, the roses were just +at their best. Over the pergolas and arbours they hung in garlands, they +were massed in great posies of pink and cream and crimson. The little +fountain set in the square of velvet turf tossed up a spray of white +mist touched with a rainbow, not unlike Gwenna's dance-frock.</p> + +<p>The girls sat down on a shaded seat facing that fountain. Gwenna, +turning to her chum, said, "Now do tell me about that job you asked if +I'd take. What is it?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! it's a woman who used to know some of my people; she came to the +Club this afternoon, and then on to my old lady's to see me about it," +said Leslie. "She wants a girl—partly to do secretarial work, partly to +keep her company, partly to help her in the 'odd bits' of her work down +there where she has her business."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, rather listlessly thinking of typewriting offices, of blouses, +or tea-shops, asked what the lady did.</p> + +<p>Leslie gave the extraordinary answer, "She builds aeroplanes."</p> + +<p>"<i>She</i> does?" cried Gwenna, all thrilled. "<i>Aeroplanes?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Yes. She's the only woman who's got an Aircraft Factory, men, shops and +all. It's about an hour's run from town. She's a pilot herself, and her +son's an aviator," said Leslie, speaking as though of everyday<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> things. +"Everything supplied, from the Man to the Machine, what?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! But what a <i>gorgeous</i> sort of Life for a woman, Leslie!" cried the +younger girl, her face suddenly alight. "Fancy spending her time making +things like <i>that</i>! Things that are going to make a difference to the +whole world! Instead of her just 'settling down' and embroidering +'duchesse sets,' and sitting with tea-cups, like Uncle Hugh's 'Lady +parishioners,' and talking to callers about servants; and operations! +Oh, oh, don't <i>you</i> want to take her job?"</p> + +<p>"I'm not especially keen on one job more than another. And my old lady +would be rather upset if I did leave her in the lurch," said Leslie, +more unselfishly than her chum suspected. The truth was that this much +disapproved-of Leslie had resigned a congenial post because it might +mean what Gwenna loved. "I told the Aeroplane Lady about you," she +added. "And she'd like you to go down and interview her at the Factory +next Saturday, if you'd care to."</p> + +<p>"Care? Of <i>course</i> I'd care! Aeroplanes! After silly buildings and +specifications!" exclaimed Gwenna, clasping her hands in her grey linen +lap. But her face fell suddenly as she added, "But—it's an hour's run +from London, you say? I should have to live there?"</p> + +<p>"'<i>Away from Troilus, and away from Troy</i>,'" quoted Leslie, smiling. +"You could come back to Troy for week-ends, Taffy. And I'll tell you +what. <i>It's no bad thing for a young man who's always thought of a girl +as being planted in one particular place, to realise</i> +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> +<i>suddenly that she's been uprooted and set up in quite another place.</i> Gives him +just a little jerk. By the way, is there any fresh news of Troilus—of the +Dampier boy?"</p> + +<p>And Gwenna, sitting there with troubled eyes upon the roses, gave her +the history of that afternoon's adventure. She ended up sadly, "Never +even said 'Good-bye' to me!"</p> + +<p>"Getting nervous that he's going to like you too well!" translated +Leslie, without difficulty. "Probably deciding at this minute that he'd +better not see much more of you——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Leslie!" exclaimed the younger girl, alarmed.</p> + +<p>"Sort of thing they <i>do</i> decide," said Leslie, lightly. "Well, we'll see +what it amounts to. And we'll wire to-morrow to the Aeroplane Lady. Or +telephone down to-night. I am going to telephone to Hugo Swayne to tell +him I don't feel in the mood to have dinner out to-night again."</p> + +<p>"Again?" said Gwenna, rather wistfully, as they rose from the arbour and +walked slowly down the path by the peach-houses. "Has he been asking you +out <i>several</i> times, then?"</p> + +<p>"Several," said Leslie with a laugh. She added in her insouciant way, +"You know, <i>he</i> wants to marry me now."</p> + +<p>Gwenna regarded her with envy. Leslie spoke of what should be the eighth +wonder of the world, the making or rejecting of a man's life, as if it +were an everyday affair.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Don't look so unflatteringly <i>surprised</i>, Taffy. Strictly pretty I may +not be. But a scrupulously neat and lady-like appearance," mocked +Leslie, putting out a long arm in a faded-silk sleeve that was torn at +the cuff, "has often (they tell one) done more to win husbands than +actual good looks!"</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna said, startled, "You aren't—aren't going to <i>let</i> Mr. +Swayne be your husband, are you?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," said Leslie, reflectively, a little wearily. "I don't +know, yet. He's fat—but of course <i>that</i> would come off after I'd +worried him for a year or so. He's flabby. He's rather like Kipling's +person whose '<i>rooms at College was beastly</i>!' but he's good-natured, +and his people were all right, and, Taffy, he's delightfully well-off. +And when one's turned twenty-six, one does want to be <i>sure</i> of what's +coming. One must have some investment that'll bring in one's frocks and +one's railway-fares and one's proper setting."</p> + +<p>"There are other things," protested little Gwenna with a warm memory of +that moment's clasping on the heights that afternoon. "There are things +one wants more."</p> + +<p>"Not me."</p> + +<p>"Ah! That's because you don't <i>know</i> them," declared Gwenna, flushed.</p> + +<p>And at that the elder girl gave a very rueful laugh.</p> + +<p>"Not know them? I've known them too well," she admitted. "Listen, Taffy, +I'll tell you the sort of girl I am. I'm afraid there are plenty of us +about."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p> + +<p>She sighed, and went on with a little nod.</p> + +<p>"We're the girl who works in the sweetshop and who never wants to touch +chocolates again. We're the sort of girl who's been turned loose too +early at dances and studio-parties and theatricals and so forth. The +girl who's come in for too much excitement and flattery and love-making. +Yes! For in spite of all my natural disadvantages (tuck in that bit of +hair for me, will you?) and in <i>spite</i> of not being quite a fool—I've +been made too much of, by men. The Monties and so forth. <i>Here's where I +pay for it.</i> I and the girls like me. We can't ever take a real live +interest in men again!"</p> + +<p>"But——!" objected Gwenna, seeing a mental image of Leslie as she had +been at that dance, whirling and flushed and radiant. "You <i>seem</i> to +like——"</p> + +<p>"'<i>The chase, not the quarry</i>,'" quoted Leslie. "For when I've brought +down my bird, what happens?—He doesn't amuse me any more! It's like +having sweets to eat and such a cold that one can't taste 'em."</p> + +<p>"But—that's such a <i>pity</i>!"</p> + +<p>"D'you suppose I don't <i>know</i> that?" retorted Miss Long. "D'you suppose +I don't wish to Heaven that I could be 'in Love' with somebody? I can't +though. I see through men. And I don't see as much in them as there is +in myself. They can't boss <i>me</i>, or take <i>me</i> out of myself, or surprise +<i>me</i> into admiring them. Why can't they, <i>dash</i> them? they can't even +<i>say</i> anything that I can't think of, quicker, first!" complained the +girl with many admirers, resentfully. "And that's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> a fatal thing to any +woman's happiness. Remember, there's no fun for a woman in just <i>being</i> +adored!"</p> + +<p>The girl in love, kicking her small brown shoe against the pebbles of +the garden path, sighed that she wished that she could try "being +adored." Just for a change.</p> + +<p>"Ah, but you, Taffy, you're lucky. You're so fresh, so eager. You're as +much in love with that aviator's job as you are with anything else about +him. You're as much amused by 'ordinary things' as any other girl is +amused by getting a young man. As for what you feel about the young man +himself, well!—I suppose <i>that's</i> a tune played half a yard to the +right of the keyboard of an ordinary girl's capacity. You're keen for +Life; you've got what men call '<i>a thirst you couldn't buy</i>.' Wish I +were like that!"</p> + +<p>"Well, but it's so easy to be," argued Gwenna, "when you <i>do</i> meet some +one so wonderful——"</p> + +<p>"It's not so easy to see 'wonder,' let me tell you. It's a gift. I've +had it; lost it; spoilt it," mourned the elder girl. "To you +everything's thrilling: their blessed airships—the men in them—the Air +itself. All miracles to you! Everything's an Adventure. So would +Marriage be——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't—don't ever think of <i>that</i>. Being always <i>with</i> a person! +Oh, it would be <i>too</i> wonderful—— I shouldn't expect—Even to be a +little <i>liked</i>, if he once told me so, would be enough," whispered the +little Welsh girl, so softly that her chum did not catch it.</p> + +<p>Leslie, striding along, said, "To a girl like me all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> that's as far +behind as the school-room. At the stage where I am, a girl looks upon +Marriage—how? As '<i>The Last 'Bus Home, or A Settled Job at last</i>.' +That's why she so often ends up as an old man's darling—with some very +young man as her slave. That's what makes me ready to accept Hugo +Swayne. And now forget I ever told you so."</p> + +<p>The two girls turned homewards; Gwenna a little sad.</p> + +<p>To think that Leslie should lack what even ordinary little Mabel Butcher +had! To think that Leslie, underneath all her gaiety and rattle, should +not know any more the taste of real delight!</p> + +<p>Gwenna, the simple-hearted, did not know the ways of self-critics. She +did not guess that possibly Miss Long had been analysing her own +character with less truth than gusto.... And she was surprised when, as +they passed the Park gates again, her chum broke the silence with all +her old lightness of tone.</p> + +<p>"Talking of young men—a habit for which Leslie never bothers to +apologise—talking of young men, I believe there might be some at the +Aeroplane Lady's place. She often has some one there. A +gentleman—'prentice or pupil or something of that sort. Might be rather +glad to see a new pretty face about with real curls."</p> + +<p>It was then that Gwenna turned up that blushing but rather indignant +little face. "But, Leslie! Don't you <i>understand</i>? If there were a +million other young men about, all thinking me—all thinking what you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> +say, it wouldn't make a <i>bit</i> of difference to <i>me</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Possibly not," said Miss Long, "but there's no reason why it shouldn't +be made to make a difference to the Dampier boy, is there?"</p> + +<p>"What d'you mean, Leslie?" demanded the other girl as they climbed the +hill together. For the first time a look of austerity crossed Gwenna's +small face. For the first time it seemed to her that the adored +girl-chum was in the wrong. Yes! She had never before been shocked at +Leslie, whatever wild thing she said. But now—now she was shocked. She +was disappointed in her. She repeated, rebukefully, "What do you mean?"</p> + +<p>"What," took up Leslie, defiantly, "do you think I meant?"</p> + +<p>"Well—<i>did</i> you mean make—make Mr. Dampier think other people liked +me, and that I might like somebody else better than <i>him</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Something of the sort <i>had</i> crossed the mind of Leslie the Limit."</p> + +<p>"Well, then, it isn't <i>like</i> you——"</p> + +<p>"Think not?" There was more than a hint of quarrel in both the girlish +voices. Up to now they had never exchanged a word that was not of +affection, of comradeship.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, flushing deeper, said, "It's—it's <i>horrid</i> of you, Leslie."</p> + +<p>"Why, pray?"</p> + +<p>"Because it would be sort of <i>deceiving</i> Mr. Dampier, for one thing. +It's a <i>trick</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p> + +<p>"M'yes!"</p> + +<p>"And not a pretty one, either," said little Gwenna, red and angry now. +"It's—it's——"</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Well, it's what I should have thought that you yourself, Leslie, would +have called '<i>so obvious</i>.'"</p> + +<p>"Exactly," agreed Miss Long, with a flippant little laugh that covered +smarting feelings. <i>Taffy</i> had turned against her now! Taffy, who used +to think that Leslie could do no wrong! This was what happened when +one's inseparable chum fell in love....</p> + +<p>Leslie said impenitently, "I've never yet found that '<i>the obvious +thing</i>' was '<i>the unsuccessful thing</i>.' Especially when it comes to +anything to do with young men. My good child, you and the Dampier boy, +you</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i2">'<i>Really constitute a pair,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Each being rather like an artless woodland elf.</i>'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>I mean, can't you see that the dear old-fashioned simple remedies and +recipes remain the best? For a sore throat, black-currant tea. (Never +fails!) For the hair, Macassar oil. (Unsurpassed since the Year +Eighteen-dot!) For the stimulation of an admirer's interest, jealousy. +Jealousy and competition, Taffy."</p> + +<p>"He isn't an admirer," protested the younger girl, mollified. Then they +smiled together. The cloud of the first squabble had passed.</p> + +<p>Leslie said, "Never mind. If you don't approve of my specific, don't +think of it again."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<h3>THE AEROPLANE LADY</h3> + + +<p>Curiously enough, Gwenna did think of it again.</p> + +<p>On the Saturday morning after that walk and talk she took that long dull +train-journey. The only bright spot on it was the passing of Hendon +Flying Ground. Over an hour afterwards she arrived at the little +station, set in a sunburnt waste, for the Aircraft Works.</p> + +<p>She asked her way of the ticket-collector at the booking-office. But +before he could speak, she was answered by some one else, who had come +down to the station for a parcel. This was a shortish young man in +greasy blue overalls. He had a smiling, friendly, freckled face under a +thatch of brilliant red hair; and a voice that seemed oddly out of +keeping with his garments. It was an "Oxford" voice.</p> + +<p>"The Works? I'm just going on there myself. I'll come with you and show +you, if I may," he said with evident zest.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, walking beside him, wished that she had not immediately +remembered Leslie's remarks about young men at aircraft works who might +be glad of the arrival of a new pretty face. This young man, piloting +her down a straggling village street that seemed neither town nor +country, told her at once that he was a pupil<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> at the Works and asked +whether she herself were going to help Mrs. Crewe there.</p> + +<p>"I don't know yet," said Gwenna. "I hope so."</p> + +<p>"So do I," said the young man gravely, but with a glint of unreserved +admiration in the eyes under the red thatch.</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna, walking very erect, wished that she were strong and +self-reliant enough not to feel cheered by that admiration.</p> + +<p>(But she was cheered. No denying that!)</p> + +<p>The young man took her down a road flanked on either hand by sparse +hedges dividing it from that parched and uninteresting plain. The +mountain-bred girl found all this flat country incredibly ugly. Only, on +her purple Welsh heights and in the green ferny depths threaded by +crystal water, nothing ever happened. It was here, in this half-rural +desert littered by builders' rubbish and empty cans, that Enterprise was +afoot. Strange!</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>On the right came an opening. She saw a yard with wooden debris and what +looked like the wrecks of a couple of motor-cars. Beyond was a cluster +of buildings with corrugated iron roofs.</p> + +<p>The red-haired pupil mentioned the name of the Aeroplane Lady and said, +"I think you'll find her in the new Wing-room, over here——"</p> + +<p>"What a wonderful name for it," thought the little enthusiast, catching +her breath, as she was shown through a door. "The Wing-room!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p> + +<p>It was high and clean and spacious, with white distempered walls and a +floor of wood-dura, firm yet comforting to the feet. The atmosphere of +it was, on that July day, somewhat overpowering. Two radiators were +working, and the air was heavy with a smell of what seemed like +rubber-solution and spirits mixed: this, Gwenna presently found, was the +"dope" to varnish the strong linen stretched across the wings of +aeroplanes. Two of those great wings were laid out horizontally on +trestles to dry. Another of the huge sails with cambered sections was +set up on end across a corner; and from behind it there moved, stepping +daintily and majestically across the floor, the tawny shape of a Great +Dane, who came inquiringly up to the stranger.</p> + +<p>Then from behind the screening wing there came a slight, woman's figure +in dark blue. She followed the dog. Little Gwenna Williams, standing +timidly in that great room so strange and white, and characteristically +scented, found herself face to face with the mistress of the place; the +Aeroplane Lady.</p> + +<p>Her hair was greying and fluffy as a head of windblown Traveller's +Joy; beneath it her eyes were blue and young and bright and—yes! with a +little glad start Gwenna recognised that in these eyes too there was +something of that space-daring gleam of the eyes of Icarus, of her own +Flying Man.</p> + +<p>"Ah ... I know," said the lady briskly. "You're the girl Leslie's sent +down to see me."</p> + +<p>"Yes," said Gwenna, thinking it nice of her to say<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> "Leslie" and not +"Miss Long." She noticed also that the Aeroplane Lady wore at the collar +of her shirt a rather wonderful brooch in the shape of the <i>caducæus</i>, +the serpent-twisted rod of Mercury. "Oh, I <i>do</i> hope she'll take me!" +thought the young girl, agitated. "I do want more than anything to come +here to work with her. Oh, supposing she thinks I'm too silly and young +to be any use—supposing she won't take me——"</p> + +<p>She was tense with nervousness while the Aeroplane Lady, fondling the +Great Dane's tawny ear with a small, capable hand as she spoke, put the +girl through a short catechism; asking questions about her age, her +people, her previous experience, her salary.... And then she was told +that she might come and work on a month's trial at the Factory, +occupying a room in the Aeroplane Lady's own cottage in the village. The +young girl, enraptured, put down her success to the certificates from +that Aberystwith school of hers, where she had passed "with distinction" +the Senior Cambridge and other examinations. She did not guess that the +Aeroplane Lady had taken less than two minutes to make sure that this +little Welsh typist-girl carried out what Leslie Long had said of her.</p> + +<p>Namely that "she was so desperately keen on anything to do with flying +and flyers that she'd scrub the floors of the shops for you if you +wished it, besides doing your business letters as carefully as if each +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>one was about some important Diplomatic secret ... try her!"</p> + +<p>So on the following Monday Gwenna began her new life.</p> + +<p>At first this new work of Gwenna's consisted very largely of what Leslie +had mentioned; the writing-out of business letters at the table set +under the window in the small private office adjoining the great +Wing-room.</p> + +<p>(Curious that the Wings for Airships, the giant butterfly aeroplanes +themselves, should grow out of a chrysalis of ordinary business, with +letters that began, "<i>Sir, we beg to thank you for your favour of the +2nd instant, and to assure you that same shall receive our immediate +attention</i>," exactly the sort of letters that Gwenna had typed during +all those weeks at Westminster!)</p> + +<p>Then there were orders to send off for more bales of the linen that was +stretched over the membranes of those wings; or for the great reels of +wire which strung the machines, and which cost fifteen pounds apiece; +orders for the metal which was to be worked in the shops across the +parched yard, where men of three nationalities toiled at the +lathe; turning-screws, strainers, washers, and all the tiny, +complicated-looking parts that were to be the bones and the sinews +and the muscles of the finished Flying Machine.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, the typist, had at first only a glimpse or so of these other +sides of the Works.</p> + +<p>Once, on a message from some visitor to the Aeroplane Lady she passed +through the great central room, larger than her Uncle's chapel at home, +with its concrete floor and the clear diffused light coming through<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> the +many windows, and the never-ceasing throb of the gas-driven engine +pulsing through the lighter sounds of chinking and hammering. Mechanics +were busy all down the sides of this hall; in the aisle of it, three +machines in the making were set up on the stands. One was ready all but +the wings; its body seemed now more than it would ever seem that of a +giant fish; it was covered with the doped linen that was laced at the +seams with braid, eyelets and cord, like an old-fashioned woman's +corset. The second was half-covered. The third was all as yet uncovered, +and looked like the skeleton of a vast seagull cast up on some +prehistoric shore.</p> + +<p>Wondering, the girl passed on, to find her employer. She found her in +the fitter's shop. In a corner, the red-haired pupil, with goggles over +his eyes, was sitting at a stand working an acetylene blow-pipe; holding +in his hand the intense jet that shot out showers of squib-like sparks, +and wielding a socket, the Lady directing him. She took the girl's +message, then walked back with her to the office, her tawny dog +following at her heels.</p> + +<p>"Letters finished?... then I'd like you to help me on with the wings of +that machine that's all but done," she said. "That is"—she smiled—"if +you don't mind getting your hands all over this beastly stuff——"</p> + +<p>Mind? Gwenna would have plastered her whole little white body with that +warmed and strongly-smelling dope if she'd thought that by so doing she +was actually taking a hand in the launching of a Ship for the Clouds.</p> + +<p>The rest of the afternoon she spent in the hot and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> reeking Wing-room, +working side by side with the Aeroplane Lady. Industriously she pasted +the linen strips, patting them down with her little fingers on to the +seams of those wide sails that would presently be spread—for whom?</p> + +<p>In her mind it was always one large and springy figure that she saw +ascending into the small plaited wicker seat of the Machine. It was +always the same careless, blonde, lad's face that she saw tilted +slightly against the background of plane and wires....</p> + +<p>"I would love to work, even a little, on a machine that he was going to +fly in," thought Gwenna.</p> + +<p>She stood, enveloped in a grey-blue overall, at the trestle-table, +cutting out fresh strips of linen with scissors that were sticky and +clogged with dope. She peeled the stuff from her hands in flakes like +the bark of a silver-birch as she added to her thought, "But I shouldn't +want to do anything for that aeroplane; his <i>Fiancée</i>, for the P.D.Q. +Hateful creature, with her claws that she doesn't think are going to let +him go!"</p> + +<p>Here she set the pannikin of dope to reheat, and there was a smile of +defiance on the girl's lips as she moved about from the trestles to the +radiator or the sewing-table.</p> + +<p>For ever since she had been at the Works a change had come over Gwenna.</p> + +<p>Curiously enough, she was happier now than she had been in her life. She +was more contented with what the present brought her; more steadily +hopeful about the future. It didn't seem to matter to her now that, the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> +last time she had seen him, her Aviator had turned almost sullenly away. +She laughed to herself over that, for she believed at last in Leslie's +theory: "Afraid he's going to like me." She did not fret because she +hadn't had even one of his brief notes since she had left London; nor +sigh over the fact that she, living down here in this Bedfordshire +village, was so much further away from those rooms of his at Camden Town +than she had been when she had stayed at the Hampstead Club.</p> + +<p>For somehow she felt nearer to him now.</p> + +<p>Absence can, in some subtle, unexplained way, spin fine threads of +communication over the gulf between a boy and a girl....</p> + +<p>She found a conviction growing stronger and stronger in her girl's mind, +that gay, tangled chaos where faults and faculties, blindness and +intuitions flourish entwined and inseparable. <i>She was meant to be his.</i></p> + +<p>She'd no "reason" for thinking so, of course. There was very little +reason about Gwenna's whole make-up.</p> + +<p>For instance, Leslie had tried "reasoning" with her, the night before +she'd left the Hampstead Club. Leslie had taken it into her impish black +head to be philosophical, and to attempt to talk her chum into the same +mood.</p> + +<p>Leslie, the nonchalant, had given a full hour to her comments on +Marriage. We will allow her a full chapter—but a short one.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<h3>LESLIE ON "MARRIAGE"</h3> + + +<p>She'd said, "Supposing the moon <i>did</i> fall into your lap, Taffy? Suppose +that young Cloud-Dweller of yours did (a) take you flying, and (b) +propose to you?" and she'd recited solemnly:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"<i>Somewhere I've read that the gods, waxing wroth at our mad importunity,</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Hurl us our boon and it falls with the weight of a curse at our feet;</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>Perilous thing to intrude on their lofty Olympian immunity!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>'Take it and die,' say the gods, and we die of our fondest conceit.</i>"<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>"Yes; 'of' it! After <i>having</i> it. Who'd mind dying <i>then</i>?"</p> + +<p>"But if it hadn't been worth it, Taffy? Suppose you were air-sick?" +Leslie had suggested. "Worse, suppose you were Paul-sick?"</p> + +<p>"<i>What?</i>"</p> + +<p>"Yes, supposing that Super-Boy of yours himself was the disappointment? +Suppose none of his 'little ways' happened to please you? Men don't +realise it, but, in love, a man is much easier to please than a woman!"</p> + +<p>"No, Leslie. No," had come from the girl who knew nothing of +love-making—less than nothing, since she <i>thought</i> she knew.</p> + +<p>Leslie had persisted. "The first pet-name a man calls you—awfully +important, that!—may hash up Love's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> young dream for ever. Some men, I +believe, begin with 'Dear old—something or other.' That's the <i>end</i>. Or +something that you know you're obviously <i>not</i>. Such as 'Little Woman,' +to <i>me</i>. Or they don't notice something that's specially there for them +to notice. That's unforgivable. Or they do notice something that's quite +beside the mark. Or they repeat themselves. Not good enough, a man who +can't think of <i>one</i> new way of saying he cares, each day. (Even a +calendar can do that.) Saying the wrong thing, though, isn't as bad as +being <i>silent</i>. That's fatal. Gives a girl <i>such</i> a lot of time to +imagine all the things that another man might have been saying at the +time. That's why men with no vocabularies ought never to get engaged or +married. '<i>I'm a man of few words</i>,' they say. They ought to be told, +'<i>Very well. Outside! It simply means you won't trouble to amuse me.</i>' +Exit the Illusion.</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">'<i>Alas, how easily things go wrong!</i><br /></span> +<span class="i0"><i>A look too short, or a kiss too long——</i>'<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<p>(Especially with a look too short.) Yes," Leslie had concluded +impressively, "suppose the worst tragedy happened? <i>Suppose</i> the Dampier +boy did get engaged to you, and then you found out that he didn't in the +least know how to make love? To make love to <i>you</i>, I mean."</p> + +<p>"There wouldn't have to be any love '<i>made</i>,'" little Gwenna had +murmured, flushing. "Where he was, the love would <i>be</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p> + +<p>"My dear, you <i>are</i> what Hugo Swayne calls '<i>a Passé-iste</i>' in love. +Why, why wasn't <i>I</i> brought up in the heart of the mountains (and far +away from any other kind of heart) until I was twenty-two, and then +hurled into a love-affair with the first decent-looking young man?" +Leslie had cried, with exaggerated envy. "The happier you! But, Taff, do +remember that 'Love is a Lad with Wings'—like yours. Even if the +engagement were all your fancy painted, that Grand Firework Display sort +of feeling couldn't <i>last</i>. Don't shoot! It's true. People couldn't go +on living their lives and earning their livings and making their careers +and having their babies if it <i>did</i> last. It <i>must</i> alter. It <i>must</i> die +down into the usual dear old sun rising every morning. So, when your +'<i>Oiseau de feu</i>' married you, and you found he was just—a husband, +like everybody else's——"</p> + +<p>"Not 'like' anybody!"—indignantly.</p> + +<p>"How d'you know <i>what</i> he's like?" Leslie had demanded. "What d'you know +of his temper? Men with that heather-honey kind of smile and those deep +dimples very often have a beastly temper. Probably jealous——"</p> + +<p>"I would <i>love</i> him to be that."</p> + +<p>"You wouldn't love to be poor, though," Leslie had gone off on another +tack. "Poor, and uncomfortable."</p> + +<p>"I shall never be comfortable again without him," Gwenna had said +obstinately. "Might as well be uncomfortable <i>with</i> him!"</p> + +<p>"In a nasty little brick villa near Hendon, so as to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> be close to the +flying, perhaps? With a horrid dark bathroom? And the smell of cooking +haddocks and of Lux all over it!" Leslie had enlarged. "And you having +to use up all your own little tiny income to help pay the butcher, and +the Gas Light and Coke Company, and the rates, and loathsome details of +that sort that a woman never feels a ha'porth the better for! Instead of +being able to get yourself fresh gloves and silk stockings and a few +trifles of that sort that make absolutely <i>all</i> the difference to a +woman's life!"</p> + +<p>"Not <i>all</i> the difference, indeed," Gwenna had said softly. But Leslie +had continued to draw these fancy pictures of married life as lived with +Mr. Paul Dampier.</p> + +<p>"Taffy, for one thing, you've never seen him anything but nicely-groomed +and attractive to look at. You try to imagine him in what Kipling calls +'<i>the ungirt hour</i>.' They talk of a woman's slatternliness killing love. +Have they seen a <i>man</i> when he '<i>hasn't bothered</i>' to groom himself? +That sight——"</p> + +<p>She had shaken her black head ineffably over the mental image of it, and +had averred, "That sight ought to be added to the Valid and Legitimate +Causes for Divorce! A wife ought to be able to consider herself as free +as air after the first time that she sees her husband going about the +house without a collar. Sordid, unbecoming grey flannel about his neck. +Three half buttons, smashed in the wringer, hanging by their last +threads to his shirt. And his old slippers bursting out at the side of +the toe. And his 'comfortable' jacket<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> on, with matches and fur in all +the pockets and a dab of marmalade—also furred—on the front. And +himself unshaved, with a zig-zag parting to his hair. I believe some men +do go about like this before their wives, and then write wistful letters +to the <i>Daily Mirror</i> about, 'Why is Marriage the Tomb of Romance?'"</p> + +<p>Gwenna had sniffed. "Oh! <i>Some</i> men! <i>Those!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Valid cause for Divorce Number Ninety-three: The state of the bedroom +floor," Leslie had pursued. "I, slut as I am, do pick things up +sometimes. Men, never. Ask any married woman you know. Maudie told <i>me</i>. +Everything is hurled down, or stepped out of, or merely dropped. And +left. Left, my child, for <i>you</i> to gather up. Everything out of the +chest-of-drawers tossed upon the carpet. Handkerchiefs, dirty old pipes, +shirts, ties, '<i>in one red burial blent</i>.' That means he's been 'looking +for' something. Mind, <i>you've</i> got to find it. Men are born +'find-silly.' Men never yet have found anything (except the North Pole +and a few things like that, that are no earthly good in a villa), but +they are for ever <i>losing</i> things!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna had given a smile to the memory of a certain missing collar-stud +that she had heard much of.</p> + +<p>"Yes, I suppose to be allowed to find his collar-studs is what he'd +consider '<i>Paradise enow</i>' for any girl!" Leslie had mocked. "I misdoubt +me that the Dampier boy would settle down after a year of marriage into +a regular Sultan of the Hearthrug. Looking upon his wife as something +that belongs to him, and goes about with him; like a portmanteau. +Putting you in your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> place as '<i>less than the dust beneath his +chariot</i>,' that is, '<i>beneath his biplane wheels</i>.'"</p> + +<p>"Leslie! I shouldn't mind! I'd <i>like</i> to be! I believe it <i>is</i> my +place," Gwenna had interrupted, lifting towards her friend a small face +quivering with conviction. "He could make anything he liked or chose of +me. What do I care——"</p> + +<p>"Not for clothes flung down in rings all over the floor like when a +trout's been rising? Nor for trousers left standing there like a pair of +opera-glasses—or concertinas? Braces all tangled up on the gas-bracket? +Overcoat and boots crushing your new hat on the bed? Seventeen holey +socks for you to mend? <i>All</i> odd ones—for <i>you</i> to sort——"</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna had cried out: "I'd <i>want</i> to!"</p> + +<p>"I'm not afraid you won't get what you want," Leslie had said finally. +"All I hope is that your wish won't fail when you get it!"</p> + +<p>And of that Gwenna was never afraid.</p> + +<p>"I should not care for him so much if he were not the only one who could +make me so happy," she told herself; "and <i>unless</i> the woman's very +happy, surely the man can't be. It must mean, then, that he'll feel, +some day, that this would be the way to happiness. I'm sure there are +<i>some</i> marriages that are different from what Leslie says. Some where +you go on being sweethearts even after you're quite old friends, like. +I—I could make it like that for him. I <i>feel</i> I could!"</p> + +<p>Yes; she felt that some day (perhaps not soon) she must win him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span></p> + +<p>Sometimes she thought that this might be when her rival, the perfected +machine, had made his name and absorbed him no longer. Sometimes, again, +she told herself that he might have no success at all.</p> + +<p>"Then, <i>then</i> he'd see there was <i>something</i> else in the world. Then he +would turn to me," said the girl to herself. She added, as every girl in +love must add, "No one <i>could</i> care as I do."</p> + +<p>And one day she found on the leaf of the tear-off calendar in her +cottage bedroom a line of verse that seemed to have been written for +her. It remained the whole of Browning as far as Gwenna Williams was +concerned. And it said:</p> + +<p class="center">"<i>What's Death? You'll love me yet!</i>"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<h3>THE OBVIOUS THING</h3> + + +<p>She was in this mood to win a waiting game on the day that Paul Dampier +came down to the Aircraft Works.</p> + +<p>This was just one of the more wonderful happenings that waited round the +corner and that the young girl might hope to encounter any day.</p> + +<p>The first she knew of it was from hearing a remark of the Aeroplane +Lady's to one of her French mechanics at the lathes.</p> + +<p>"This will make the eighteenth pattern of machine that we've turned out +from this place," she said. "I wonder if it's going to answer, André?"</p> + +<p>"Which machine, madame?" the man asked. He was a big fellow, dark and +thick-haired and floridly handsome in his blue overalls; and his bright +eyes were fixed interestedly upon his principal as she explained through +the buzz and the clack and the clang of machinery in the large room, +"This new model that Colonel Conyers wants us to make for him."</p> + +<p>Gwenna caught the name. She thought breathlessly, "That's <i>his</i> machine! +He's got Aircraft Conyers to take it up and have it made for him! It's +<i>his</i>!"</p> + +<p>She'd thought this, even before the Aeroplane Lady concluded, "It's the +idea of a young aviator I know. Such a nice boy: Paul Dampier of +Hendon."</p> + +<p>The French mechanic put some question, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span> Aeroplane Lady answered, +"Might be an improvement. I hope so. I'd like him to have a show, +anyhow. He's sending the engine down to-morrow afternoon. They'll bring +it on a lorry. Ask Mr. Ryan to see about the unloading of it; I may not +get back from town before the thing comes."</p> + +<p>Now Mr. Ryan was that red-haired pupil who had conducted Gwenna from the +station on the day of her first appearance at the Works. Probably Leslie +Long would have affirmed that this Mr. Ryan was also a factor in the +change that was coming over Gwenna and her outlook. Leslie considered +that no beauty treatment has more effect upon the body and mind of a +woman than has the regular application of masculine admiration. +Admiration was now being lavished by Mr. Ryan upon the little new typist +with the face of a baby-angel and the small, rounded figure; and Mr. +Ryan saw no point in hiding his approval. It did not stop at glances. +Before a week had gone by he had informed Miss Williams that she was a +public benefactor to bring anything so delightful to look at as herself +into those beastly, oily, dirty shops; that he hated, though, to see a +woman with such pretty fingers having to mess 'em up with that vile +dope; and that he wondered she hadn't thought of going on the stage.</p> + +<p>"But I can't act," Gwenna had told him.</p> + +<p>"What's that got to do with it?" the young man had inquired blithely. +"All they've got to do is to <i>look</i>. You could beat 'em at that."</p> + +<p>"Oh, what nonsense, Mr. Ryan!" the girl had said,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> more pleased than she +admitted to herself, and holding her curly head erect as a brown tulip +on a sturdy stem.</p> + +<p>"Not nonsense at all," he argued. "I tell you, if you went into musical +comedy and adopted a strong enough Cockney accent there'd be another +Stage and Society wedding before you could say 'knife.' You could get +any young peer to adore you, Miss Gwenna, if you smiled at him over the +head of a toy pom and called him 'Fice.' I can just see you becoming a +Gaiety puss and marrying some Duke——"</p> + +<p>"I don't want to marry any Dukes, thanks."</p> + +<p>"I'm sure I don't want you to," Mr. Ryan had said softly. "I'd miss you +too much myself...."</p> + +<p>The fact is that he was a flirt for the moment out of work. He was also +of the type that delights in the proximity of "Girl"—using the word as +one who should say "Game." "Girl" suggested to him, as to many young +men, a collective mass of that which is pretty, soft, and +to-be-made-love-to. He found it pleasant to keep his hand in by paying +these compliments to this new instalment of Girl—who was rather a +little pet, he thought, though <i>rather</i> slow.</p> + +<p>As for Gwenna, she bloomed under it, gaining also in poise. She learned +to take a compliment as if it were an offered flower, instead of dodging +it like a brick-bat, which is the very young girl's failing. She found +that even if receiving a compliment from the wrong man is like wearing a +right-hand glove on the left hand, it is better than having no gloves. +(Especially it is better than <i>looking</i> as if one had no gloves.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span></p> + +<p>The attentions of young Ryan, his comment on a new summer frock, the +rose laid by him on her desk in the morning; these things were not +without their effect—it was a different effect from any intended by the +red-haired pupil, who was her teacher in all this.</p> + +<p>She would find herself thinking, "He doesn't look at me nearly so much, +I notice, in a trimmed-up hat, or a 'fussy' blouse. Men don't like them +on me, perhaps." (That blouse or hat would be discarded.) Or, "Well! if +so-and-so about me pleases him, it'll please other men."</p> + +<p>And for "men" she read always, always the same one. She never realised +that if she had not met Paul Dampier she <i>might</i> have fallen in love +with young Peter Ryan. Presently he had begged her to call him "Peter."</p> + +<p>She wouldn't.</p> + +<p>"I think I'd do anything for you," young Ryan had urged, "if you asked +for it, using my Christian name!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna had replied: "Very well! If there's anything I ever want, +frightfully badly, that you could give me, I shall ask for it like +that."</p> + +<p>"You mean there's nothing <i>I</i> could give you?" he had reproached her, in +the true flirt's tone. It can sound so much more tender, at times, than +does the tone of the truest lover. A note or so of it had found its way +into Gwenna's soft voice these days.</p> + +<p>Yes; she had half unconsciously learned a good deal from Mr. Ryan.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p><hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>"I say! Miss Gwenna!"</p> + +<p>Mr. Ryan's rust-red head was popped round the door of the Wing-room +where Gwenna, alone, was pouring dope out of the tilted ten-gallon can +on the floor into her little pannikin.</p> + +<p>"Come out for just one minute."</p> + +<p>"Too busy," demurred the girl. "No time."</p> + +<p>"Not just to look," he pleaded, "at the really <i>pretty</i> job I'm making +of unloading this lorry with Dampier's engine?"</p> + +<p>Quickly Gwenna set down the can and came out, in her pinafore, to the +breezes and sunshine of the yard outside. It was as much because she +wanted to see what there was to be seen of that "<i>Fiancée</i>" of the +aviator's, as because this other young man wanted her to admire the work +of his hands.</p> + +<p>Those hands themselves, Gwenna noticed, were masked and thick, half way +up his forearms, with soft soap. This he seemed to have been smearing on +certain boards, making a sliding way for that precious package that +stood on the low lorry. The boards were packed up in banks and stages, +an irregular stairway. This another assistant was carefully trying with +a long straight edge with a spirit level in the middle of it; and a +third man stood on the lorry, resting on a crowbar and considering the +package that held the heart of Paul Dampier's machine.</p> + +<p>"You see if she doesn't come down as light as a bubble and stop exactly +<i>there</i>," said Mr. Ryan complacently, digging his heel into a pillowy +heap of debris.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> "Lay those other planks to take her inside, André." He +wiped his brow on a moderately clear patch of forearm, and moved away to +check the observations of the man in the shirt-sleeves.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, watching, could not help admiring both this self-satisfied young +mudlark and his job. This was how women liked to see men busy: with +strenuous work that covered them with dirt and sweat, taxing their +brains and their muscles at the same time. Those girls who were so keen +on the Enfranchisement of Women and "Equal Opportunities" and those +things, those suffragettes at her Hampstead Club who "couldn't see where +the superiority of the male sex was supposed to come in"—Well! The +reason why they "couldn't" was (the more primitive Gwenna thought) +simply because they didn't see enough men at <i>this</i> sort of thing. The +men these enlightened young women knew best sat indoors all day, +writing—<i>that</i> sort of thing. Or talking about fans, like Mr. Swayne, +and about "the right tone of purple in the curtains" for a room. The +women, of course, could do that themselves. They could also go to +colleges and pass men's exams. Lots did. But (thought Gwenna) not many +of them could get through the day's work of Mr. Ryan, who had also been +at Oxford, and who not only had forearms that made her own look like +ivory toys, but who could plan out his work so that if he said that that +squat, ponderous case would "stop exactly <i>there</i>"—stop there it would. +She watched; the breeze rollicking in her curls, spreading the folds of +her grey-blue<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> pinafore out behind her like a sail, moulding her skirt +to her rounded shape as she stood.</p> + +<p>Then she turned with a very friendly and pretty smile to young Ryan.</p> + +<p>It was thus that Paul Dampier, entering the yard from behind them, came +upon the girl whom he had decided not to see again.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>He knew already that "his little friend," as old Hugo insisted upon +calling her, had taken a job at the Aircraft Works. He'd heard that from +his cousin, who'd been told all about it by Miss Long.</p> + +<p>And considering that he'd made up his mind that it would be better all +round if he were to drop having anything more to say to the girl, young +Dampier was glad, of course, that she'd left town. That would make +things easier. He wouldn't seem to be avoiding her, yet he needn't set +eyes upon her again.</p> + +<p>Of course he'd been glad. He hadn't <i>wanted</i> to see her.</p> + +<p>Then, at the end of his negotiations with Colonel Conyers, he'd +understood that he would have to go over and pay a visit to the +Aeroplane Lady. And even in the middle of the new excitement he had +remembered that this was where Gwenna Williams was working. And for a +moment he'd hesitated. That would mean seeing the Little Thing again +after all.</p> + +<p>Then he'd thought, Well? Fellow can't <i>look</i> as if he were trying to +keep out of a girl's way? Besides,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> chances were he wouldn't see her +when he did go, he'd thought.</p> + +<p>It wasn't likely that the Aeroplane Lady kept her clerk, or whatever she +was, in her pocket, he'd thought.</p> + +<p>He'd just be taken to where the P.D.Q. was being assembled, he'd +supposed. The Little Thing would be kept busy with her typing and one +thing and another in some special office, he'd expected!</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>What he had <i>not</i> expected to find was the scene before him. The Little +Thing idling about outside the shops here; hatless, pinafored, looking +absolutely top-hole and perfectly at home, chatting with the +ginger-haired bloke who was unloading the engine as if he were no end of +a pal of hers! She was smiling up into his face and taking a most +uncommon amount of interest, it seemed, in what the fellow had been +doing!</p> + +<p>And, before, she'd said she wasn't interested in machinery! thought +Dampier as he came up, feeling suddenly unconscionably angry.</p> + +<p>He forgot the hours that the Little Thing had already passed in hanging +on every word, mostly about a machine, that had fallen from his own +lips. He only remembered that moment at the Smiths' dinner-party, when +she'd admitted that that sort of thing didn't appeal to her.</p> + +<p>Yet, here she was! <i>Deep</i> in it, by Jove!</p> + +<p>He had come right up to her and this other chap before they noticed +him....<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p> + +<p>She turned sharply at the sound of the young aviator's rather stiff +"Good afternoon."</p> + +<p>She had expected that day to see his engine—no more. Here he stood, the +maker of the engine, backed by the scorched, flat landscape, in the +sunlight that picked out little clean-cut, intense shadows under the rim +of his straw hat, below his cleft chin, along his sleeve and the lapel +of his jacket, making him look (she thought) like a very good snapshot +of himself. He had startled her again; but this time she was +self-possessed.</p> + +<p>She came forward and faced him; prettier than ever, somehow (he thought +again), with tossed curls and pinafore blowing all about her. She might +have been a little schoolgirl let loose from some class in those gaunt +buildings behind her. But she spoke in a more "grown-up" manner, in some +way, than he'd ever heard her speak before. Looking up, she said in the +soft accent that always brought back to him his boyish holidays in her +country, "How do you do, Mr. Dampier? I'm afraid I can't shake hands. +Mine are all sticky with dope."</p> + +<p>"Oh, are they," he said, and looked away from her (not without effort) +to the ginger-haired fellow.</p> + +<p>"This," said Gwenna Williams, a little self-consciously at last, "is Mr. +Ryan."</p> + +<p>Plenty of self-assurance about <i>him</i>! He nodded and said in a +hail-fellow-well-met sort of voice, "Hullo; you're Dampier, are you? +Glad to meet you. You<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> see we're hard at it unpacking your engine here." +Then he looked towards the opening, the road, and the car—borrowed as +usual—in which the young aviator had motored down. There was another +large package in the body of the car; a box, iron-clamped, with letters +stencilled upon it, and sealed. "Something else interesting that you've +brought with you?" said this in sufferable man called Ryan. "Here, +André, fetch that box down——"</p> + +<p>"No," interrupted young Dampier curtly. The curtness was only partly for +this other chap. That sealed box, for reasons of his own and Colonel +Conyers', was not to be hauled about by any mechanic in the place. "You +and I'll fetch that in presently for Mrs. Crewe."</p> + +<p>"Right. She'll be back at three o'clock," Ryan told him. "She told me to +ask you to have a look round the place or do anything you cared to until +she came in."</p> + +<p>"Oh, thanks," said young Dampier.</p> + +<p>At that moment what he would have "cared to do" would have been to get +this girl to himself somewhere where he could say to the Little Humbug, +"Look here. You aren't interested in machinery. You said so yourself. +What are you getting this carroty-headed Ass to talk to you about it +for?"</p> + +<p>Seeing that this was out of the question he hesitated.... He didn't want +to go round the shops with this fellow, to whom he'd taken a dislike. On +sight. He did that sometimes. On the other hand, he couldn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> do what he +wanted to do—sit and talk to the Little Thing until the Aeroplane Lady +returned. What about saying he'd got to look up some one in the village, +and bolting, until three o'clock? No. No fear! Why should this other +fellow imagine he could have the whole field to himself for talking to +Her?</p> + +<p>So the trio, the age-old group that is composed of two young men and a +girl, stood there for a moment rather awkwardly.</p> + +<p>Finally the Little Thing said, "Well, I've got to go back to my wings," +and turned.</p> + +<p>Then the fellow Ryan said, "One minute, Miss Gwenna——"</p> + +<p>Miss Gwenna! All but her Christian name! And he, Paul Dampier, who'd +known her a good deal longer—he'd never called her anything at all, but +"<i>you</i>"! Miss <i>Gwenna</i>, if you please!</p> + +<p>What followed was even more of a bit of dashed cheek.</p> + +<p>For the fellow turned quickly aside to her and said, "I say, it's Friday +afternoon. Supposing I don't see you again to-morrow morning—it's all +right, isn't it, about your coming up to town for that matinée with me?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, thanks," said the Little Thing brightly. "I asked Mrs. Crewe, +and it's all right."</p> + +<p>Then the new note crept into her voice; the half-unconsciously-acquired +note of coquetry. She said, smiling again at the red-haired Ryan, "I am +so looking forward to that."</p> + +<p>And, turning again to the Airman, she said with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> half-shy, half-airy +little smile that, also, he found new in her, "Have you seen <i>The Cinema +Star</i>? Mr. Ryan is going to take me to-morrow afternoon."</p> + +<p>"Oh, is he?" said Paul Dampier shortly.</p> + +<p><i>Was</i> he, indeed? <i>Neck!</i></p> + +<p>"You do come up to town sometimes from here, then?" added Mr. Dampier to +Miss Gwenna Williams, speaking a trifle more distinctly than usual, as +he concluded, "I was just going to ask you whether you could manage to +come out with <i>me</i> to-morrow evening?"</p> + +<p>Nobody was more surprised to hear these last words than he himself.</p> + +<p>Until that moment he hadn't had the faintest intention of ever asking +the girl out anywhere again. Now here he was; he'd done it. The Little +Thing had murmured, "Oh——" and was looking—yes, she was looking +pleased. The fellow was looking as if he'd been taken aback. Good. He'd +probably thought he was going to have her to himself for the evening as +well as for the matinée. Dinner at the "Petit Riche"—a music-hall +afterwards—travel down home with her. Well, Dampier had put a stopper +on that plan. But now that he had asked her, where was he going to take +her himself? To another musical comedy? No. Too like the other chap. To +one of the Exhibitions? No; not good enough. Anyhow, wherever he took +her, he hadn't been out-bidden by this soft-soapy young idiot. Infernal +cheek.... Then, all in a flash the brilliant solution came to Paul +Dampier. Of course! Yes, he could work it! The Aviation Dinner! He'd +meant to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> go. He would take her. It would involve taking Mrs. Crewe as +well. Never mind. It was something to which that other young ass +wouldn't have the chance of taking her, and that was enough.</p> + +<p>"Yes," he went on saying, as coolly as if it had all been planned. +"There's a show on at the Wilbur Club; Wilbur Wright, you know. I +thought I'd ask if you and Mrs. Crewe would care to come with me to the +dinner. Will you?—Just break that packing up a bit more," he added +negligently to the red-haired youth. "And check those spaces—Will you +take me into your place, Miss Williams?"</p> + +<p><i>That</i>, he thought, was the way to deal with poachers on his particular +preserves!</p> + +<p>It was only when he got inside the spacious white Wing-room and sat +down, riding a chair, close to the trestle-table where the girl bent her +curly head so conscientiously over the linen strips again, that he +realised that this Little Thing wasn't his particular preserves at all!</p> + +<p>Hadn't he, only a couple of weeks ago, definitely decided that she was +never to mean anything of the sort to him? Hadn't he resolved——</p> + +<p>Here, with his long arms crossed over the back of the chair as he sat +facing and watching her, he put back his head and laughed.</p> + +<p>"What are you laughing at?" she asked, straightening herself in the big +pinafore with its front all stiff with that sticky mess she worked with.</p> + +<p>He was laughing to think how dashed silly it was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> to make these +resolutions. Resolutions about which people you were or were not to see +anything of! As if Fate didn't arrange that for you! As if you didn't +<i>have</i> to leave that to Fate, and to take your chance!</p> + +<p>Possibly Fate meant that he and the Little Thing should be friends, +great friends. Not now, of course. Not yet. In some years' time, +perhaps, when his position was assured; when he'd achieved some of the +Big Things that he'd got to do; when he <i>had</i> got something to offer a +girl. Ages to wait.... Still, he could leave it at that, now, he +thought.... It might, or might not, come to anything. Only, it was +ripping to see her!</p> + +<p>He didn't tell her this.</p> + +<p>He uttered some conventional boy's joke about being amused to see her +actually at work for the first time since he'd met her. And she made a +little bridling of her neck above that vast, gull-like wing that she was +pasting; and retorted that, indeed, she worked very hard.</p> + +<p>"Really," he teased her. "Always seem to be taking time off, whenever +I've come."</p> + +<p>"You've only come twice, Mr. Dampier; and then it's been sort of +lunch-time."</p> + +<p>"Oh, I see," he said. ("I may smoke, mayn't I?" and he lighted a +cigarette.) "D'you always take your lunch out of doors, Miss Gwenna?" +(He didn't see why <i>he</i> shouldn't call her that.)</p> + +<p>She said, "I'd like to." Then she was suddenly afraid he might think she +was thinking of their open-air lunch in that field, weeks ago, and she +said quickly (still working): "I—I was so glad when I heard<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> about the +engine coming, and that Colonel Conyers had ordered the P.D.Q. to be +made here. I—do congratulate you, Mr. Dampier. Tell me about the +Machine, won't you?"</p> + +<p>He said, "Oh, you'll hear all about that presently; but look here, you +haven't told me about <i>you</i>——"</p> + +<p>Gwenna could scarcely believe her ears; but yes, it was true. He was +turning, turning from talk about the Machine, the P.D.Q., the <i>Fiancée</i>! +Asking, for the first time, about herself. She drew a deep breath; she +turned her bright, greeny-brown eyes sideways, longing at that moment +for Leslie with whom to exchange a glance. Her own shyly triumphant look +met only the deep, wise eyes of the Great Dane, lying in his corner of +the Wing-room beside his kennel. He blinked, thumped his tail upon the +floor.</p> + +<p>"Darling," whispered Gwenna, a little shakily, as she passed the tawny +dog. "<i>Darling!</i>" She had to say it to something just then.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier pursued, looking at her over his crossed arms on the back +of that chair, "You haven't said whether you'll come to-morrow night."</p> + +<p>She asked (as if it mattered to her where she went, as long as it was +with him), "What is this dinner?"</p> + +<p>"The Wilbur dinner? Oh, there's one every year. Just a meeting of those +interested in flying. I thought you might care——"</p> + +<p>"Who'll be there?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, just people. Not many. Some ladies go. Why?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Only because I haven't got anything at all to wear," announced Gwenna, +much more confidently, however, than she could have done before Mr. Ryan +had told her so much about her own looks, "except my everlasting white +and the blue sash like at the Smiths'."</p> + +<p>"Well, that was awfully pretty; wasn't it? Only——"</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Well, may I say something?"</p> + +<p>"Well, what is it?"</p> + +<p>"Frightfully rude, really," said Paul Dampier, tilting himself back on +his chair, and still looking at her over a puff of smoke, staring even. +She was something to stare at. Why was she such a lot prettier? Had he +<i>forgotten</i> what her looks were? She seemed—she seemed, to-day, so much +more of a woman than he'd ever seen her. He forgot that he was going to +say something. She, with a little fluttering laugh for which he could +have clasped her, reminded him.</p> + +<p>"What's the rude thing you were going to say to me?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! It's only this. Don't go muffling your neck up in that sort of ruff +affair this time; looks ever so much nicer without," said the boy.</p> + +<p>The girl retorted with quite a good show of disdainfulness, "I don't +think there's anything <i>quite</i> so funny as men talking about what we +wear."</p> + +<p>"Oh, all right," said the boy, and pretended to be offended. Then he +laughed again and said, "I've still<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> got something of yours that you +wear, as a matter of fact——"</p> + +<p>"Of mine?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I have; I've never given it you back yet. That locket of yours +that you lost."</p> + +<p>"Oh——!" she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>That locket! That little heart-shaped pendant of mother-o'-pearl that +she had worn the first evening that she'd ever seen him; and that she +had dropped in the car as they were driving back. So much had happened +... she felt she was not even the same Gwenna as the girl who had +snapped the slender silver chain about her neck before they set out for +the party.... She'd given up wondering if her Airman had forgotten to +give it back to her. She'd forgotten all about it herself. And he'd had +it, one of her own personal belongings, somewhere in his keeping all +this time.</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes; my—my little mascot," she said. "Have you got it?"</p> + +<p>"Not here. It's in my other jac—it's at my rooms, I'll bring it to the +dinner for you. And—er—look here, Miss Gwenna——"</p> + +<p>He tilted forward again as the girl passed his side of the table to +reach for the little wooden pattern by which she cut out a patch for the +end of the strip, and then passed back again.</p> + +<p>"I say," he began again, a trifle awkwardly, "if you don't mind, I want +you to give me something in exchange for that locket."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh, do you?" murmured Gwenna. "What?"</p> + +<p>And a chill took her.</p> + +<p>She didn't want him, here and now, to ask for—what Mr. Ryan might have +asked.</p> + +<p>But it was not a kiss he asked for, after all.</p> + +<p>He said, "You know those little white wings you put in your shoes? You +remember, the night of that river dance? Well, I wish you'd let me have +one of those to keep as my mascot."</p> + +<p>He hadn't thought of wishing it until there had intruded into his ken +that other young man who made appointments—and who might have +the—cheek to ask for keepsakes, but who shouldn't be first, after all!</p> + +<p>Anxiously, as if it were for much more than that feathered trifle of a +mascot that he asked, he said, "Will you?"</p> + +<p>"Oh! If you like!"</p> + +<p>"Sure you don't mind?"</p> + +<p>"Mind? I should like you to have it," said Gwenna softly. "Really."</p> + +<p>And across the great white aeroplane wing the girl looked very sweetly +and soberly at her Aviator, who had just asked that other tiny wing of +her, as a knight begged his lady's favour.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>It was at this moment that the Aeroplane Lady, an alert figure in dark +blue, came into a room where a young man and a girl had been talking +idly enough together while one smoked and the other went on working with +that five-foot barrier of the wing between them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Aeroplane Lady, being a woman, was sensitive to atmosphere—not the +spirit-and-solution-scented atmosphere of this place of which she was +mistress, but another.</p> + +<p>In it she caught a vibration of something that made her say to herself, +"Bless me, what's <i>this</i>? I never knew those two had even met! 'Not +saying so,' I suppose. But certainly engaged, or on the verge of it!"</p> + +<p>—Which all went to prove that the rebuked, the absent Leslie, was not +far wrong in saying that it is the Obvious Thing that always succeeds!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<h3>THE SEALED BOX</h3> + + +<p>Whatever the Aeroplane Lady thought to herself about the two in the +Wing-room, there was no trace of it in her brisk greeting to Paul +Dampier.</p> + +<p>"I hope you haven't been waiting long?" she said. "I'm ready now."</p> + +<p>Then she turned to her girl-assistant, who was once more laying the +tacky strips of linen along the seams. "That's right," she said. "You +can go straight on with that wing; that will take you some time. One of +the wings for <i>your</i> machine," she added to the aviator. "I'm ready, Mr. +Dampier."</p> + +<p>She and the young man left the Wing-room together and entered the +adjoining office, closing the door behind them.</p> + +<p>Left alone, Gwenna went on swiftly working, and as swiftly dreaming. +Rapidly, but none the less surely, seam after long seam was covered; and +the busyness of her fingers seemed to help the fancies of her brain.</p> + +<p>"One of the wings for <i>his</i> Machine!" she thought. "And there was I, +thinking I should mind working for that—for 'Her,'" she smiled. "I +don't, after all. I needn't care, now."</p> + +<p>Her heart seemed singing within her. Nothing had happened, really. Only, +she was sure of her lover.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> That was all. All! She worked; and her small +feet on the floor seemed set on air, as in that flying dream.</p> + +<p>"Such a great, huge wing for 'Her,'" she murmured to herself. "Such a +little, little wing for himself that he asked for. My tiny one that I +put in my shoe. It was for him I put it there! And now it's begun to +bring him to me. It <i>has</i>!" she exulted. "He's begun to care. I <i>know</i> +he does."</p> + +<p>From the other side of the door came a heightened murmur of voices in +the office. Something heavy seemed to be set down on the floor. That +sealed box, perhaps, that he'd brought with him in the car. Then came +the shutting of the outer door. Mr. Ryan passed the window. Then a sound +of hammering in the office, and the long squeak of a nail being prized +out of wood. They were opening that mysterious package of his. Gwenna's +fingers flew over her own task to the tune of her joyous thoughts.</p> + +<p>"I don't care how long it lasts before <i>anything</i> else happens. Don't +care how this flying-machine of his does try to keep him from me. She +won't. She can't. Nothing can!" triumphed the girl, smoothing the canvas +that was her Rival's plumage. "He's going to be mine, with everything +that he knows. So much better, and cleverer, and belonging to different +sort of people as he is, and yet he's going to have <i>me</i> belonging to +him. She's had the last of him putting her always first!"</p> + +<p>She heard in the office Paul Dampier's short laugh and his "Oh? you +think so?" to the Aeroplane Lady.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> Gwenna scarcely wondered what this +might be about. Some business to do with the Machine; but he would come +to an end of that, soon. He'd come back to her, with that look in his +blue eyes, that tone in his deep voice. She could wait patiently now for +the day, whenever it came, when he should tell her definitely that he +loved her and wanted her to be his. There would be that, of +course—Gwenna, the inexperienced, still saw "the proposal" as the scene +set and prepared; the inevitable milestone beside the course of true +love. Never mind that now, though. It didn't matter when. What mattered +was that it <i>would</i> come. Then she would always be with him. It would be +for ever, like that blissful day in the hayfield, that summer night by +the river at the dance, those few bewildering seconds on the Westminster +scaffolding. And with no cruelty of separation afterwards to spoil it. +Nothing—nothing was going to part them, after all.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>She had finished the wing. She looked about for the next thing to do.</p> + +<p>There were three wings in the room, and all were finished. A fourth wing +still lay, a skeleton of fretted and glued wood, in the workshops; the +skin was not yet stretched over it.</p> + +<p>And there were no more letters to write for the firm.</p> + +<p>Gwenna had nothing to do.</p> + +<p>"I shall <i>have</i> to go into the office and ask," she said, admitting to +herself that she was glad enough to go. So often she had painted for +herself, out of mere<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> memories, the picture of her Airman. He was now in +the office, in the flesh! She need not have to satisfy herself with +pictures of him. She slipped off her sticky pinafore; the white muslin +blouse beneath it was fresh and pretty enough. She moved to the +office-door. It was her room; she had never yet had to knock at that +door.</p> + +<p>She pushed it open and stood waiting. For a moment she only saw the +Aeroplane Lady and the tall Aviator. They had their backs to her; they +were standing side by side and examining a plan that they had pinned up +on the matchboarding wall. Paul Dampier's finger was tracing a little +arc on the plan, and he was slowly shaking his head, with the gesture of +a man who says that something "won't do." The Aeroplane Lady's fingers +were meditatively at her lips, and her attitude echoed that of the young +man. Something that they had planned wouldn't do——</p> + +<p>Then Gwenna's eyes fell, from these two people, to that "<i>Something</i>." +It was something that she had never seen about the Aircraft Works +before. Indeed, she did not remember having seen it ever before, +anywhere, except in pictures. This object was on the floor, half in and +half out of the sealed wooden box that Paul Dampier had brought down +with him in the car, and that he wouldn't let the workmen handle.... So +this was why....</p> + +<p>This was it. Aghast, she stared at it.</p> + +<p>It was a long, khaki-painted cylinder, and from one end of it a +wicked-looking little nozzle projected for an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> inch or so. The other +end, which disappeared into the box, showed a peep of a magazine and a +pistol-grip.</p> + +<p>Even to Gwenna's unskilled eyes the thing appeared instantly what it +was.</p> + +<p>A machine-gun.</p> + +<p>"A gun?" she thought, stupefied; "dear me—on an aeroplane?"</p> + +<p>"No," said Paul Dampier's voice suddenly, decisively, speaking to the +Aeroplane Lady, "it'll have to be a rifle after all."</p> + +<p>And with the sudden breaking of his voice upon her ear, there seemed to +be torn from before the girl's eyes a corner of some veil.</p> + +<p>Quite suddenly (how, she could not explain) she knew what all this +meant.</p> + +<p>That plan for that new flying-machine. That gun. The whole object of the +ambitions of these people with their so romantic profession. Scraps of +her Aviator's talk about "scouting," and "the new Arm," and "modern +warfare." ...</p> + +<p>Just now she had been swept up aloft by his look and tone into the +seventh heaven of a woman's delight. That was Love. Here, epitomised in +that cylinder with that vicious little nozzle, she saw the Power that +could take him from her yet. This was War!</p> + +<p>A shudder ran over her.</p> + +<p>Her mind took no notice of the facts that there was no War for him to go +to, that this grim preparation must be for experimenting only, for +manœuvres, sham fights; that this was July, Nineteen-fourteen, an era +of sleepy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> peace (except for that gossip, half a joke, that we might +have civil war in Ireland yet), and that she and he and everybody they +had to do with lived in the Twentieth Century, in England....</p> + +<p>Perhaps it was because she was not English, but British, Welsh. She +entirely lacked that Anglo-Saxon "balance" of which the English are so +proud, and that stolidity and that unimaginativeness. Her imagination +caught some of those unheard, unsuspected messages with which the air +must have been vibrant, all those midsummer weeks.</p> + +<p>Her quick, unbalanced Celtic fancy had already shown her as clearly as +if she had seen it with her eyes that image of his Aeroplane as a winged +and taloned Woman-rival. Now it flashed before her, in a twink, another +picture:</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier, seated in that Aeroplane, swooping through the air, <i>armed +and in danger</i>!</p> + +<p>The danger was from below. She did not see that danger. She saw only the +image, against grey, scudding clouds, of the Beloved. But she could feel +it, that poignant Threat to him, to him in every second of his flight. +It was not the mere risk of accident or falling. It was a new peril of +which the shadow, cast before, fell upon the receptive fancy of the girl +who loved the adventurer. And, set to that shadow-picture in her mind, +there rang out to some inner sense of hers a Voice that sounded clear +and ominous words.</p> + +<p>They called to her: "<i>Fired at both by friend and foe</i>——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then stopped.</p> + +<p>The young girl didn't remember ever to have heard or even to have read +these words. How should she? It was the warning fore-echo of a phrase +now historic, but then as yet unuttered, that had transmitted itself to +some heightened sense of hers:</p> + +<p>"<i>Fired at both by friend and foe!</i>"<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a></p> + +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> This phrase occurred in a despatch from Sir David Henderson.</p></div> + +<p> </p> + +<p>There! It was gone, the waking vision that left her trembling, with a +certainty.</p> + +<p>Yes; here was the meaning of the sealed box, of the long confabulation +of her Airman with the Aeroplane Lady.... War was coming. And <i>they +knew</i>.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, standing there in the doorway, drawing a long breath and feeling +suddenly rather giddy, knew that she had come upon something that she +had not been meant to guess.</p> + +<p>What was she to do about it?</p> + +<p>Her hand was on the knob of the door.</p> + +<p>Must she close it upon herself, or behind her?</p> + +<p>Should she come forward and cry, "Oh, if it was a dreadful secret, why +didn't you lock the door?"</p> + +<p>Or should she go out noiselessly, taking that burden of a secret with +her? She might confess to the Aeroplane Lady afterwards....</p> + +<p>Here she saw that the Airman had half turned. His boyish, determined +profile was dark in shadow against the plan on the wall; the plan of the +P.D.Q. Sunlight through the office window touched and gilded the edge +of his blonde head.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p> +<p>"Yes; I thought so. Have to be a rifle after all," he repeated in a +matter-of-fact tone. Then, turning more round, his glance met the +startled eyes of the girl in the doorway.</p> + +<p>And that finished the dilemma for Gwenna.</p> + +<p>Something rose up in her and was too strong to let her be silent.</p> + +<p>"Oh! I've <i>seen</i> it!" she cried sharply. "<i>Paul!</i>"</p> + +<p>He took one stride towards her and slipped his arm about her as she +swayed. She was white to the lips.</p> + +<p>"Is there any water——" began young Dampier, but already the Aeroplane +Lady had poured out a glassful.</p> + +<p>It was he, however, who put it to Gwenna's lips, holding her still.</p> + +<p>"It's all <i>right</i>, darling," he said reassuringly (and the give-away +word slipped very easily from his tongue). "Better, aren't you? +Frightfully muggy in that room with those radiators! You oughtn't to +be—— Here!" He took some of the cold water and dabbed it on her curls.</p> + +<p>"I suppose he knew he could trust the child," thought the Aeroplane Lady +as she closed the door of the Wing-room between herself and those two in +the office, "but I don't know that I should have engaged her if I'd +known. I don't want lovers about the place, here. Of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> course, this +explains his Aviation dinner and everything——"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>Little Gwenna, standing with her small face buried against the Aviator's +tweed jacket, was sighing out that she hadn't <i>meant</i> to come in, hadn't +<i>meant</i> to look at that horrible gun....</p> + +<p>The girl didn't know what she was saying. The boy scarcely heard it. He +was rumpling with his cheek the short, silky curls he had always longed +to touch. Presently he tilted her cherub's head back against his +shoulder, then put both his hands about that throat of hers.</p> + +<p>She gave an unsteady little laugh.</p> + +<p>"You'll throttle me," she murmured.</p> + +<p>Without loosening his clasp, he bent his fair head further down, and +kissed her, very gently, on the mouth.</p> + +<p>"Don't mind, do you?" he said, into another kiss. "<i>Do</i> you?"</p> + +<p>At that moment the Little Thing in his arms had banished all thought of +those Big Things from his mind.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span></p> +<h1><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II<br /> +<br /> +<i>JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914</i></h1> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>THE AVIATION DINNER</h3> + + +<p>Gwenna began to feel a little nervous and intimidated, even in the car +that took herself and the Aeroplane Lady and the Airman to the Aviation +dinner.</p> + +<p>A hundred yards before they reached the portals of the Club in Pall Mall +that car stopped. Then it began to advance again a yard or two at a +time. A long row of other cars and taxis was ahead, and from them +alighted guests in dull black opera hats, with mufflers; once or twice +there was the light and jewelled gleam of a woman's wrap, but they were +mostly men who were driving up.</p> + +<p>"Colonel Conyers," said Paul Dampier to the attendant in the great +marble-tiled entrance.</p> + +<p>Then he was shown off to the right; Gwenna and the Aeroplane Lady to the +dressing-rooms on the left. Before an immense glass they removed their +wraps and came out to the waiting-room, the girl all misty-white with +the sky-blue sash and the dancing-shoes; the Lady gowned in grey satin +that had just the gleam of aluminium in that factory of hers, and with +her brooch of the winged serpents fastened at her breast.</p> + +<p>They sat down at one of the little polished tables in the waiting-room +under the long windows on to Pall Mall; it was a high, light-panelled +room, with a frieze<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> of giant roses. A couple of ladies went by to the +dressing-room, greeting Mrs. Crew as they passed.</p> + +<p>Then there stopped to speak to her a third and older and very handsome +lady all in black, with diamonds ablaze in her laces and in her grey, +piled-up hair.</p> + +<p>"There should be some good speeches to-night, shouldn't there?" said +this lady. "All these splendid men!... You know, my dear, take us for +all in all"—and she gave a little laugh—"we <i>are</i> splendid!"</p> + +<p>"But there are so few of us," said the Aeroplane Lady, ruefully.</p> + +<p>The other woman, about to pass on, stopped for a moment again, and +looking over her white shoulder said, very seriously, something that +both her hearers were to remember. "If England is ever to be saved, it +will be by a few."</p> + +<p>She went out; and Mrs. Crewe said to Gwenna, "That was Lady——" +(Something) "the wife of the man who's as responsible as most people for +the security of this Empire——"</p> + +<p>Most of the people there seemed to know the Aeroplane Lady quite well, +Gwenna noticed, when Paul Dampier came up and took them out into the +Central Hall again, where the guests were assembling. The place seemed +as high as a cathedral, with a marble floor, and alcoves, and tall, +classic, brass tripod things to hold the end of men's cigarettes and +ashes. The Aeroplane Lady was at once surrounded by a group of men. +Gwenna, feeling very shy and little and of no account, turned to her +Airman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span></p> + +<p>"You said," she murmured reproachfully, "that there <i>weren't</i> going to +be a lot of grand people."</p> + +<p>"These aren't 'grand,' bless you! People aren't, who are really—well, +who 'do things,' as you say. Not nearly as frilly here as at the Smiths, +that other dinner," he said, smiling down at her. "I'm going to bring up +Colonel Conyers and introduce him to you——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Him?</i> Good <i>gracious</i>!" thought the little Welsh girl in consternation +to herself. "Colonel Conyers!—oh, no, please—I should be much too +frightened——"</p> + +<p>But the tall figure had detached itself from a group at a word from Paul +Dampier, and Colonel Conyers came up. Gwenna recognised the lean, +smiling, half-mischievous face of the soldier who—those ages ago!—had +talked to those ladies in the motor-car at Hendon.</p> + +<p>This was the man they called "Aircraft Conyers," the man practically at +the head of Aeronautics, Paul had, said, the man in whose hands rested +(among so many, many other things) the whole career of the inventor of +the P.D.Q.! Gwenna, with her curly head whirling, felt inclined to drop +a schoolchild's curtsy to this Great One of the Councils of the Earth.</p> + +<p>He took her hand into his own long, lean one.</p> + +<p>"How d'you do?" he drawled, smiling cheerfully. "Starving, what? I am, I +can tell you. Always late here. Won't be long, now. You're at my table, +I believe." Then, almost anxiously, "Fond of chocolates? You are? Good. +Then I can collect the lot<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span> of those little silver dishes around us and +pretend it's all for you. It's for me, really."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, who was not able to help laughing at this unexpectedness on the +part of the great Aircraft Conyers, said: "Are <i>you</i> fond of them?"</p> + +<p>"Passionately. Passionately!" said Colonel Conyers with a nod, as he +turned to find his own dinner-partner.</p> + +<p>"Didn't frighten you much, did he?" laughed Paul Dampier to the Little +Thing at his side. "Course he didn't. I'll tell you who most of the +others are when we get into the supper-room."</p> + +<p>In the great supper-room with its painted ceiling and gilded pillars +dinner was laid on a number of small tables for parties of six or eight. +Gwenna found herself the only woman at their table, the Aeroplane Lady +sitting far down at the other end of the room.</p> + +<p>All dazed, the young girl looked about her like a stray bird that has +fluttered in through an open window. Beside her, Paul Dampier pointed +out to her this celebrity and that at the tables.</p> + +<p>"Colonel Conyers you've seen...." (That personage had nodded to the +young girl over a stack of pink roses and had made a little movement to +show the basket of sweets beside his plate.) "Now that man with the +Order, that's Lord" (So-and-So), "Director of Coast Defence. And that" +(So-and-So), "Chief Engineer. And that little man one down—in the +opposite direction from where I'm looking—that's" (So-and-So), "editor +of <i>The Air</i>. Wonderful chap; brains enough to sink a ship."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p> + +<p>An extraordinary mixture of men, Gwenna thought, as her glance followed +his direction, and he went on talking. Soldiers, sailors, chemists, +scientists, ministers; all banded together. Ranks and fortunes were +merged. Here were men of position, men of brains, men of money. Men +whose names were in all the newspapers, and men the papers had never +heard of, all with one aim and object, the furtherance of Civilisation's +newest advance: the Conquest of the Air.</p> + +<p>The dinner proceeded. Pale amber wine whispered and bubbled in her +glass, dishes came and went, but the girl scarcely knew what she ate or +drank. She was in a new world, and <i>he</i> had brought her there. She felt +it so intensely that presently it almost numbed her. She was long past +the stage of excitement that manifests itself in gasps and exclamations. +She could speak ordinarily and calmly when Paul Dampier, turning from +his talk to a Physical Laboratory man in a very badly brushed coat, +asked her: "Well? Find it interesting?"</p> + +<p>"You know I do," she said, with a grave little glance.</p> + +<p>He said, smiling, "What did you say to the red-haired youth about not +going to the matinée with him first?"</p> + +<p>"Mr. Ryan? Oh! I just told him I hadn't got over my headache from the +smell of dope, and that I was afraid it would tire me too much to do +both."</p> + +<p>"Pretty annoyed, I expect, wasn't he?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, he was," replied Gwenna, with the absolute callousness of a woman +in love towards the feelings of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> any but the one man. She did not even +trouble whether it had been the feelings or the vanity of Mr. Peter Ryan +that had been hurt. What mattered was that Paul Dampier had not wished +her to go to that matinée.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier said, "Well, I cried off an engagement to-night, too. +Colonel Conyers wanted to take me back with him. But I'm seeing you +home."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but you mustn't; you needn't!" she protested happily. "I'm not +going down to the Works, you know, to-night. I'm sleeping at the Club. +I'm staying this week-end with Leslie."</p> + +<p>"With Leslie, are you? M'm. But I'm taking you up to the Club +afterwards," he persisted. "A fellow's got to look after"—here he +laughed a little as if it were a joke that pleased him—"a fellow's got +to look after his <i>fiancée</i>, hasn't he?"</p> + +<p>She was a little subdued. She thought for the moment that he had put +Colonel Conyers off, not for her, after all! but for that Machine of +his. Then she thought: No!—the machine was second now. She said, half +in hope, half in dread, "D'you mean the P.D.Q.?"</p> + +<p>He turned, with his mouth full of salad, staring whimsically at her.</p> + +<p>"The P.D.Q.? What you thinking of? I meant <i>you</i>."</p> + +<p>"<i>Me?</i>" She gave a little gasp.</p> + +<p>Life and happiness were too much for her again. She felt as if that +whispering untouched champagne<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> in her glass had gone to her head. Was +it really true—<i>that</i>, that he had said?</p> + +<p>"Well, aren't you?" he said gaily, but dropping his voice a little as +the conversation rose about them. "Aren't you that to me? Engaged, +aren't we?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I don't know," the young girl said, breathlessly. It was as if the +moon that one had cried for had suddenly dropped, to lie like a round, +silver mirror in one's lap. "Did you mean <i>that</i>, yesterday afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Didn't I mean it before that?" he said, half to himself. "What about +all those dances? that time when Hugo dragged me off to that place by +the river? Those would have been <i>most</i> incorrect," he teased her, "if +we hadn't been. We shall have to be, my dear."</p> + +<p>Then an impulse took her. (It is known to any young girl who is +sincerely in Love.)</p> + +<p>"No. Don't let's——" she said suddenly. "Don't let's be 'engaged'!"</p> + +<p>For it seemed to her that a winged Dream was just about to alight and to +become a clumsy creature of Earth—like that Aeroplane on the Flying +Ground. The boy said, staring at her, "<i>Not</i> be engaged? Why on earth? +How d'you mean?"</p> + +<p>"I mean, everybody gets '<i>engaged</i>,'" she explained very softly and +rapidly over the bread that she was crumbling in her little fingers. +"And it's such a sort of <i>fuss</i>, with writing home, and congratulations, +and how-long-has-this-been-going-on, and all that sort of thing! People +at tea-parties and things <i>talking</i> about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> us! I <i>know</i> they would!" +declared the Welsh girl with distaste, "and saying, 'Dear me, she looks +very young' and <i>wondering</i> about us! Oh, no, <i>don't</i> let's have it! It +would seem to <i>spoil</i> it, for me! Don't let's <i>call</i> it anything, need +we? Don't let's say anything yet, except to—just US."</p> + +<p>"All right," said the boy with an easy shrug. (He was too young to know +what he was escaping.) "Sure I don't mind, as long as you're just with +me, all the time we can."</p> + +<p>She said, wonderfully sedate above the tumult in her heart, "Did you +bring my locket with you to-night?"</p> + +<p>"No. I didn't. D'you know why? Can't you guess? Because I wanted to give +it back to you when <i>I</i> could put it round my Girl's neck," he told her. +And she turned away from him, so happily confused again that she could +not speak.</p> + +<p>She was his Girl; his. And because he was one of this band of brothers, +sitting here feasting and talking, each making it his business to +contribute his share to the sum of what was to be one of the World's +greatest Forces, why! because of that, even she, little Gwenna Williams, +could feel herself to be a tiny part of that Force. She was an Aviator's +girl—even if it were a wonderful secret that nobody knew, so far, but +he and she.</p> + +<p>(Already everybody at that table and many others in the room had +remarked what a pretty little creature young Dampier's sweetheart was.)</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span></p><hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>"<i>The King!</i>" announced the President of the Dinner.</p> + +<p>There was a movement and a rustle all round the great supper-room as the +guests rose to the toast; another rustle as they reseated themselves. +One of the celebrities whom Paul had pointed out to her began to speak +upon the achievements of Wilbur Wright. At the table next to Gwenna some +journalists bent absorbed over scribbling pads. Speech followed speech +as the toasts were gone through. The opal-blue haze of cigarette smoke +drifted up above the white tables with their rose-pink and ferny +decorations. Chairs were pushed sidewards as guests turned alert and +listening faces towards the head of the room; and every now and again +the grave and concise and pleasantly modulated tones of some +speaker-on-the-subject of his heart were broken in upon by a soft storm +of applause.</p> + +<p>"Colonel Conyers to speak now," murmured Paul to Gwenna, as the long, +lean figure that had been sitting opposite to them rose. He stepped +backwards, to stand against one of those gilded pillars as he made his +speech, responding to the toast that had coupled his name with that of +the Flying Wing of the Army.</p> + +<p>Gwenna listened with even more breathless attention than she had paid to +the other speakers.</p> + +<p>Colonel Conyers spoke easily and lightly, as if he had been, not making +a speech, but talking to a knot of friends at his house. He reviewed, in +terms so simple that even the young girl at his table could follow all +he said, the difficulties and the risks of aviation, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> the steps that +had been taken to minimise those risks. Wind, it seemed, had been in a +great measure overcome. Risk from faulty workmanship of machines—that, +too, was overcome. Workmanship was now well-nigh as perfect as it could +be made.</p> + +<p>Here Gwenna glowed with pride, exchanging a glance with her employer far +down the tables. This meant <i>their</i> workmanship at Aircraft Factories; +their Factory, too! This meant the labours of Mrs. Crewe and of Mr. +Ryan, and of André, and of the workmen in overalls at the lathes in that +noisy central shop. Even the brushful of dope that she, Gwenna, spread +conscientiously over each seam of the great wings, played its tiny part +in helping to preserve a Flyer's life!</p> + +<p>The risk in stability, too, Colonel Conyers said, had been successfully +combatted by the gyroscope. There remained, however, Fog and Darkness as +the chief perils, which, at the present moment, of July, +Nineteen-fourteen, our Airmen had to fight....</p> + +<p>In the soldier's lean face that shrewd, half-mischievous smile was +flickering as he spoke; his grey trim head turning now and again against +the gilded column, his keen eyes fixed upon some objective of his own, +his strong hand fidgeting in the small mechanical gesture of a man who +is less accustomed to speaking about things than to doing them.</p> + +<p>Gwenna thought how different, how entirely different were all these +people here from that other dinner-party at the house of the prosperous +and artistic Smiths who had found so much to say about the Russian +Ballet!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span></p> + +<p>Definitely now Gwenna saw what the chief difference between them was.</p> + +<p><i>Those other people treated and spoke of a pastime as though it were a +matter of Life and Death. These people here made Life and Death matters +their pastime.</i></p> + +<p>"And these splendid real people are the ones I'm going to belong to," +the girl told herself with a glance at the tall boy beside her who had +decided her fate. That thought was to glow in the very depths of her, +like a firefly nestling at the heart of a rose, for as long as she +lived.</p> + +<p>The even, pleasant tones of Colonel Conyers went on to give as one of +the most hopeful features of aviation the readiness of the quite young +man of the present day to volunteer. No sooner was a fatality announced +than for one airman who, cheerfully giving his life for the service of +his country, had been put out of action, half a dozen promising young +fellows were eager to come forward and take his place.</p> + +<p>"Two of 'em again yesterday.... Two of his lieutenants, killed in +Yorkshire," whispered Paul Dampier, leaning to Gwenna.</p> + +<p>She missed the next sentence of Colonel Conyers, which concluded +cheerily enough with the hard-worked but heartening reminder that whom +the Gods love die young....</p> + +<p>Then, with a broadening of that humorous smile and with a glint in his +eyes, he referred to "those other people (plump and well-to-do—and +quite young people) who do, still, really appear to consider that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> +whole of a man's duty to his country is to preserve his health for as +long as possible and then, having reached a ripe old age, to die +comfortably and respectably in his bed!—--"</p> + +<p>There was a short ripple of laughter about the room; but after this +Gwenna heard very little.</p> + +<p>Not only was she incapable of taking any more in, but this last sentence +pulled her up with a sudden memory of what she had seen, yesterday.</p> + +<p><i>That gun at the Aircraft Works. That pictured presentiment in her own +mind.</i></p> + +<p>And she heard again, through Colonel Conyers' pleasant voice, the queer, +unexplained words that had haunted her:</p> + +<p>"<i>Fired at by both friend and foe.</i>"</p> + +<p>She thought, "I must ask! I must say something to Paul about that——"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE "WHISPER OF WAR"</h3> + + +<p>She said it after the dinner had broken up.</p> + +<p>In the great hall young Dampier had turned to the Aeroplane Lady with +his offer of motoring her to her Hotel first. She had good-naturedly +laughed at him and said, "No. I'm going to be driven back by the +rightful owner of the car this time. You take Miss Williams."</p> + +<p>And then she had gone off with some friend of Paul's who had motors to +lend, and Paul had taken Gwenna to find a taxi to drive up to Hampstead.</p> + +<p>They drove slowly through Piccadilly Circus, now brighter than at +midday. It was thronged with the theatre-crowds that surged towards the +crossings. Coloured restaurant-coats and jewelled head-gear and laughing +faces were gay in the lights that made that broad blazing belt about the +fountain. Higher up the whole air was a soft haze of gold, melting into +the hot, star-strewn purple of the night-sky. And against this there +tapered, black and slender, the apex of the fountain, the +downward-swooping shape that is not Mercury, but the flying Love—the +Lad with Wings.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier leant back in the closed cab and would have drawn the girl +to him.</p> + +<p>She put both hands on his broad chest to hold him a little away from +her.</p> + +<p>"I want to ask you something," she began a little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> tremulously. "It's +just—Is there going to be——"</p> + +<p>"Well, what?" he asked, smiling close to her.</p> + +<p>Of all things that he least expected came what the girl had to say.</p> + +<p>"Is there going to be—a War, Paul?"</p> + +<p>"A <i>what</i>?" he asked, thinking he had not heard aright.</p> + +<p>She repeated it, tremulously. "A war. Real war."</p> + +<p>"War?" he echoed, blankly, taken aback. He was silent from puzzled +astonishment over her asking this, as they turned up Shaftesbury Avenue. +They were held up outside the Hippodrome for some minutes. He was still +silent. The taxi gave a jerk and went on. And she still waited for his +reply. She had to remind him.</p> + +<p>"Well," she said again, tremulous. "<i>Is</i> there going to be?"</p> + +<p>"A war? A <i>war</i> indeed," he said again. "What an +extraordinary—Who's—What put such a thing into your head?"</p> + +<p>She said, "<i>Is</i> there?"</p> + +<p>The boy gave a half-amazed, half-uneasy laugh. He retorted, "What d'you +mean, Gwenna? A war <i>where</i>?"</p> + +<p>She said flutteringly, "Anywhere."</p> + +<p>"Oh," he said, and laughed as if relieved. "Always some war, somewhere. +Frontier shows in India, and so on. There is some scrapping going on in +Europe too, now, you know. Looks as if Austria and Servia were going to +have a set-to. You mean that."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span></p> + +<p>"No, I don't," persisted the Welsh girl, to whom these places seemed +indescribably remote and beside the mark. "I mean ... a war to do with +<i>us</i>, like."</p> + +<p>"Us——?"</p> + +<p>"To do with England."</p> + +<p>"But——" he said, frowning. "Why, how absurd! A war with England? Why +... of course not. Why should you think of it?"</p> + +<p>She cleared her throat and answered with another tremulous question.</p> + +<p>"Why should you have—that gun-thing—on your aeroplane?"</p> + +<p>"Not going to. Not on the P.D.Q.," he said, shaking his head. "Only an +experiment, anyhow."</p> + +<p>"Why should you have 'experiments' with those things?" she faltered. +"'<i>Have to be a rifle</i>,' you said. Why should you talk about 'scouting' +and 'modern warfare'?"</p> + +<p>"I wasn't!" he said quite hotly.</p> + +<p>"Yes, you were. That day we were together. That day in the field when +you were talking to me about the Machine."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>then</i>! Weeks ago."</p> + +<p>"Yes. Why should there <i>be</i> all that, unless you meant that there'd be a +war, with England in it. <i>Paul!</i>" she cried, almost accusingly, "you +said yourself that it was '<i>bound to come</i>!'"</p> + +<p>"Oh, well! Everybody said <i>that</i>," he assured her lightly. "Can't help +seeing Germany and that Fleet of hers, and her Zeppelins and things, +going on build,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> build, build. They don't do that for their health, you +bet! Scrap's bound to come; yes. Sooner or later."</p> + +<p>"Yes, Paul; but <i>when</i>?"</p> + +<p>"How should I know, my <i>dear</i> child?" retorted the young Airman. "Why +didn't you ask Lord Thingummy, or Conyers at the Club just now?" he +laughed. "Good speech of his, wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>"Does <i>he</i> know?" persisted Gwenna, paling. "About the war coming, I +mean?"</p> + +<p>"More likely to know than I am, those people. Not that they'd give it +away if they did. It won't be to-morrow, anyway. To-morrow; that's +Sunday. <i>Our</i> holiday. Another day we shall have all to ourselves. Tell +me what time I'm to call for you at the Club."</p> + +<p>Not to be put off, she retorted, timid, persistent, "Tell me when <i>you</i> +think it would come. Soon?"</p> + +<p>Half laughing, half impatient, he said, "I <i>don't</i> know. Soon enough for +it to be in my time, I hope."</p> + +<p>"But—" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you're not a +soldier?"</p> + +<p>He said quietly, "I'm an aviator."</p> + +<p>An aviator; yes. That was what she meant. He belonged to the most daring +and romantic of professions; the most dangerous, but not <i>that</i> danger. +An inventor, part of his time; the rest of his time an airman at Hendon +who made flights above what the man with the megaphone called the +"Aer-rio-drome" above the khaki-green ground with the pylons and the +border of summer-frocked spectators. <i>Her</i> boy! An aviator.... Would +that mean presently a man flying above<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> enemy country, to shoot and be +shot at? ("<i>Fired at by both friend and foe.</i>"). She said quiveringly: +"<i>You</i> wouldn't have to fight?"</p> + +<p>He said: "Hope so, I'm sure."</p> + +<p>"Oh, Paul!" she cried, aghast, her hands on his arm. "Just when—when +I've only just <i>got</i> you! To lose you again so soon——! Oh, no——!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, I say, darling, don't be so silly," he said briskly and +reassuringly. He patted the little hands. "We're not going to talk about +this sort of thing, d'you hear? There's nothing to talk <i>about</i>. +Actually, there's nothing. Understand?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she murmured slowly. She thought, "Actually, 'there's nothing to +talk about' in what's between him and me. <i>But it's there all the +time.</i>"</p> + +<p>And then, gradually, that presentiment of War began to fade in the +reality of her joy at being with him now, with him still....</p> + +<p>They turned up the Hampstead Road, flaring with naphtha-lights above the +stalls, noisy with shouts of costers, crowded with the humble shoppers +of Saturday night.</p> + +<p>"Well, and what about to-morrow?" Dampier took up.</p> + +<p>"I <i>was</i> going with Leslie to——"</p> + +<p>"So you said. With Leslie, indeed! D'you think you're going to be +allowed to go anywhere again, except with <i>me</i>?" he muttered as he put +his arms about her.</p> + +<p>He held her as close as he had done on the scaffolding, that afternoon +when he had arranged with himself never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> to see the Little Thing again; +close as he'd done next time he did see her, at the Factory.</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>you</i> don't know!" he said quite resentfully (while she laughed +softly and happily in his hold), "you <i>don't</i> know how I've wanted you +with me. I—I haven't been able to think of anything—You <i>have</i> got a +fellow fond of you in a jolly short time, haven't you? How've you done +it? M'm? I—Here!" he broke off savagely, "what <i>is</i> this dashed idiot +stopping the taxi for?"</p> + +<p>"Because I get out here. It's the Club," Gwenna explained to him +gravely, opening the door of the cab for herself. "Good-night."</p> + +<p>"What? No, you don't," protested the boy. "We're going up the Spaniards +Road and down by the Whitestone Pond, and round by Hendon first. I must +take you for a drive. It's not so late. Hang it, I haven't <i>seen</i> you to +speak to——"</p> + +<p>She had made a dash out and across the lamp-lighted asphalt, and now +she nodded to him from the top step of the house, with her key already +clicking in the lock.</p> + +<p>"There," she thought.</p> + +<p>For even in the tie that binds the most adoring heart there is twisted +some little gay strand of retaliation.</p> + +<p>Let <i>him</i> feel that after a whole evening of sitting in her pocket he +hadn't seen anything of her. She'd known that sort of feeling long +enough. Let <i>him</i> take his turn; let <i>him</i> have just a taste of it!</p> + +<p>"Good-night!" she called softly to her lover before she disappeared. +"See you to-morrow!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>THE LAST SUNDAY OF PEACE</h3> + + +<p>Never had Gwenna risen so early after having spent so little of a night +in sleep!</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Into the small hours she had crouched in her kimono on the edge of +Leslie's camp bedstead in the light that came from the street lamp +outside the window; and she had talked and talked and talked.</p> + +<p>For by "not saying anything about it" she had never meant keeping her +happiness from that close chum.</p> + +<p>Miss Long, sincerely delighted, had listened and had nodded her wise +black head from the pillow. She had thrown in the confidante's running +comments of "There! What did Leslie tell you?... Oh, he would, of +course.... Good.... Oh, my dear, <i>how</i> exactly like them all.... No, no; +I didn't mean that. (Of course there's nobody like <i>him</i>); I meant +'Fancy!' ... Yes and then what did Paul say, Virginia?" At last +repetitions had cropped up again and again into the softly chattered +recital, with all its girlish italics of: "Oh, but you <i>don't</i> know what +he's like; oh, Leslie, no, you <i>can't</i> imagine!"—At last Leslie had +sighed, a trifle enviously. And little Gwenna, pattering to the head of +the bed, had put her cheek to the other girl's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> and had whispered +earnestly: "Oh, Leslie, if I only could, d'you know what I'd do? I'd +arrange so that he had a twin-brother <i>exactly</i> like him, to fall in +love with <i>you</i>!"</p> + +<p>"Taffy! you are too ... <i>sweet</i>," the elder girl had whispered back in a +stifled voice.</p> + +<p>Gwenna never guessed how Leslie Long had had much ado not to giggle +aloud over that idea. To think of her, Leslie, finding rapture with any +one of the type of the Dampier boy....</p> + +<p>A twin-brother of <i>his</i>? Another equally bread-and-buttery blonde +infant—an infant-in-arms who was even "simpler" than Monty Scott? Oh, +Ishtar!... For thus does one woman count as profoundest boredom what +brings to her sister Ecstasy itself.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>And now here was Gwenna, all in white, coming down to the Club's Sunday +breakfast with her broad hat already on her head and her gloves and her +vanity-bag in her hand.</p> + +<p>At the head of the table sat the Vicar's widow with the gold curb brooch +and the look of resigned disapproval. Over the table Miss Armitage and +the other suffrage-workers were discussing the Cat-and-Mouse Act. +Opposite to them one of the art-students, with her hair cut à la Trilby, +was listening bewildered, ready to be convinced.... Not one of the usual +things remained unsaid....</p> + +<p>Presently Gwenna's neighbour and <i>bête noire</i>, Miss Armitage, was +denouncing the few remaining members<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> of her sex who still seemed to +acquiesce in the Oriental attitude towards Woman; who still remained +serfs or chattels or toys.</p> + +<p>"However! <i>Thy</i> needn't think thy <i>caount</i>," declared the lecturer +firmly, stretching without apology across her neighbour to get the salt. +With some distaste Gwenna regarded her. She had spots on her face. +"Pleasers of Men!" she pursued, with noble scorn. "The remnant of the +Slyve-girl Type, now happily extinct——"</p> + +<p>"Loud cheers," from Leslie Long.</p> + +<p>"The serpent's tile," continued the suffragette, "the serpent's tile +that, after the reptile has been beaten to death, still gows on feebly +wriggling——"</p> + +<p>"Better wriggle off now, Taffy, my child," murmured Leslie, who sat +facing the breakfast-room window. "Here's a degraded Oriental coming up +the path now to call for his serf."</p> + +<p>"<i>You</i> come," said Gwenna, warmly flushed as she rose. And she held her +chum's long arm, dragging her with her as she came into the hall where +the tall, typically English figure of her Airman stood, his straw hat in +his hand. A splash of scarlet from the stained glass of the hall door +fell upon his fair head and across his cheek as he turned.</p> + +<p>"Good-morning," said Gwenna sedately, and without giving him so much as +a glance. She felt at that moment that she would rather keep him at +arm's length for ever than allow him even to hold her hand, with Leslie +there. For it takes those who are cooler in temperament<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> than was the +little Welsh girl, or those who care less for their lovers than she did, +to show themselves warmer in the presence of others.</p> + +<p>"Hullo," said Paul Dampier to her. Then, "Hullo, Miss Long! How d'you +do?"</p> + +<p>Leslie gave him a very hearty shake of the hand, a more friendly glance +and a still more demure inquiry about that Machine of his.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier laughed, returning her glance.</p> + +<p>She was a sport, he thought. She could be trusted not to claim, just +yet, the bet she'd won from his cousin; the laughing wager about the +Aeroplane versus the Girl. Fifteen to one on the Girl, wasn't it? And +here was the Girl home in his heart now, with the whole of a gorgeous +July Sunday before them for their first holiday together.</p> + +<p>"I say, I'm not too early now, am I?" he asked as he and the girl walked +down the Club steps together. "I was the first time, so I just went for +a walk round the cricket-pitch and back. Sickening thing I couldn't rake +up a car anywhere for to-day. Put up with trains or tubes and taxis +instead, I'm afraid. D'you mind? Where shall we go?"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>"Flying, of course," was Gwenna's first thought. "Now at last he'll take +me up." But that would be for the afternoon.</p> + +<p>For the morning they wanted country, and grass, and trees to sit +under.... Not Hampstead; Richmond Park was finally decided upon.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span></p> + +<p>"We'll taxi to Waterloo," the boy said, with an inward doubt. He dived a +long brown hand into his pocket as they walked together down the road +that Gwenna used to take every morning to her Westminster bus. He was +particularly short of money just then. Dashed nuisance! Just when he +would have wished to be particularly flush! That's what came of buying a +clock for the Machine before it was wanted. Still, he couldn't let the +Little Thing here know that. Manage somehow. A taxi came rattling down +the Pond Street Hill from Belsize Park as they reached the +stopping-place of the buses, and Paul held up his hand.</p> + +<p>"Taxi!"</p> + +<p>But the driver shook his head. He pulled up the taxi in front of a +small, rather mean-looking house close to where Gwenna and Paul were +standing on the pavement. Then his fare came out of the house, a kit-bag +in each hand and a steamer-rug thrown over his arm; he was a small, +compactly-built young man in clothes so new and so smart that they +seemed oddly out of place with the slatternly entrance of his +lodging-house. It was this that made Paul Dampier look a little hard at +him. Gwenna was wondering where she'd seen that blonde, grave face of +his before.</p> + +<p>He sprang lightly into the cab; a pink-faced girl was sitting there, +whom Gwenna did not see. If she had seen her, she would have recognised +her Westminster colleague, Ottilie Becker.</p> + +<p>"Liverpool Street," ordered Miss Becker's companion, setting down his +luggage.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then, raising his head, he caught the eyes upon him of the other young +man in the street. He put a hand to his hat, gave a quick little odd +smile, and leaned forward out of the cab.</p> + +<p>"<i>Auf Wiedersehen!</i>" he called, as the taxi started off—for Liverpool +Street.</p> + +<p>"Deuce did he mean by that?" exclaimed the young Englishman, staring +after the cab. "Who on earth was that fellow? I didn't know him."</p> + +<p>"Nor did I. But I <i>have</i> seen him," said Gwenna.</p> + +<p>"I believe I have, somewhere," said Paul, musing.</p> + +<p>They puzzled over it for a bit as they went on to Waterloo on the top of +their bus.</p> + +<p>And then, when they were passing "The Horse Shoe" in Tottenham Court +Road, and when they were talking about something quite different (about +the river-dance, in fact), they both broke off talking sharply. Gwenna, +with a little jump on the slanting front seat, exclaimed, "I know—!" +Just as Paul said, "By Jove! I've got it! I know who that fellow was. +That German fellow just now. He was one of the waiters at that very +dance, Gwenna!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna, turning, said breathlessly, "Yes, I know. The one who passed us +on the path. But I've thought of something else, too. I thought then his +face reminded me of somebody's; I know now who it is. It's that fair +young man who came down to try and be taken on at the Works."</p> + +<p>"At Westminster?" Paul asked quickly.</p> + +<p>"No; at the Aircraft Works one afternoon. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> talked English awfully +well, and he said he was Swiss. And then André—you know, the big, dark +French workman—talked to him for quite a long time in French; he said +he seemed very intelligent. But he wouldn't give him a job, whatever."</p> + +<p>"He wouldn't?"</p> + +<p>"No. I heard him tell the Aeroplane Lady that the young man ('<i>ce +garçon-là</i>') came from the wrong canton," said Gwenna. "So he went away. +I saw him go out. He was awfully <i>like</i> that German waiter. I suppose +most Germans look alike, to us."</p> + +<p>"S'pose so," said the Aviator, adding, "Was that the day that drawing of +mine was missing from the Aircraft Works, I wonder?"</p> + +<p>She looked at him, surprised. "I didn't know one of your drawings was +missing, Paul."</p> + +<p>"Yes. It didn't matter, as it happened. Drawing of a detail for my +Machine. I've taken jolly good care not to have complete drawings of it +anywhere," he said, with a little nod.</p> + +<p>And some minutes later they had begun to talk of something else again, +as the bus lurched on through the hot, deserted Sunday streets.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>The morning that had brought Gwenna to her lover left Gwenna's chum for +once at a loose end.</p> + +<p>"Leslie, my child, aren't you a little tired of being the looker-on who +sees most of the game? Won't you take a hand?" Miss Long asked herself +as she went back into her Club bedroom. It was scented with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span> fresh +smell of the rosemary and bay-rum that Leslie used for her ink-black +sheaf of hair, and there drifted in through the open window the sound of +bells from all the churches.</p> + +<p>"Sunday. My free morning! '<i>The better the day.</i>' So I'll settle up at +last what I am going to do about this little matter of my future," she +decided.</p> + +<p>She sat down at the little bamboo writing-table set against the bedroom +wall. Above it there hung (since this was a girl's room!) a +looking-glass; and about the looking-glass there was festooned a little +garland made up of dance-programmes, dangling by their pencils, of gaudy +paper-fans from restaurants, and of strung beads. Stuck crookedly into a +corner of the glass there was a cockling snapshot. It showed Monty +Scott's dark head above his sculptor's blouse. Leslie picked it out and +looked at it.</p> + +<p>"Handsome, wicked eyes," she said to it lightly. "The only wicked things +about you, you unsophisticated infant-in-arms!" Then she said, "You and +your sculpturing!... <i>Just</i> like a baby with its box of bricks. Besides, +I don't suppose you'll ever have a penny. One doesn't marry a man +because one may like the <i>look</i> of him. No, boy."</p> + +<p>She flicked the snapshot aside. There was conscientious carelessness in +the flick.</p> + +<p>Then she took out the leather-cased ink-bottle from her dressing-bag, +and some paper.</p> + +<p>She wrote: "<span class="smcap">My dear Hugo</span>——"</p> + +<p>Then she stopped and thought—"Maudie and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> Hilary Smith will be pleased +with me. So will the cousins, the opulent cousins who've always been +kind about clothes they've finished wearing, and invitations to parties +where they want another girl to brighten things up. You can give some +bright parties for <i>them</i> now, Leslie! Good Reason Number Ninety-nine +for saying 'Yes.'"</p> + +<p>She took up her pen.</p> + +<p>"Nothing," she murmured, "<i>Nothing</i> will ever kill the idea that <i>the +girl who isn't married is the girl who hasn't been asked</i>. Nothing will +ever spoil the satisfaction of that girl when showing that she <i>has</i>!"</p> + +<p>She wrote down the date, which she had forgotten.</p> + +<p>"Poor Monty would be so much more decorative for 'show' purposes. But I +explained quite frankly to Hugo that it would be his money I'd want!"</p> + +<p>She wrote, "<i>After thinking it well over</i>——"</p> + +<p>Then again she meditated.</p> + +<p>"Great things, reasons! The reason why so many marriages aren't a +success is because they haven't <i>enough</i> 'reasons why' behind them. Now, +how far had I got with mine—ah, yes. Reason Number a Hundred: I'm +twenty-six; I shall never been any better-looking than I am now. Not +unless I'm better-dressed. Which (Reason a Hundred and One) I should be +if I married Hugo. Reason a Hundred and Two: my old lady won't live for +ever, and I should never get a better job than hers. Except his. Reason +Number a Hundred and Two and a Half: I do quite like him. He doesn't +expect anything more, so there's the other half-reason<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> for taking him. +Reason a Hundred and Four: <i>he's</i> never disapproved of me. Whereas Monty +always likes me against his better judgment. Much nicer for me, but +annoying for a husband. I should make Hugo an excellent wife." She added +this half-aloud (to the snapshot).</p> + +<p>"I should never shock <i>him</i>. Never bore him. Never interfere with him. +Never make him look silly—any sillier than he can't help looking with +that hair and that necktie he will wear. Leslie would have the sense, +when she wasn't amusing him at the moment, to retire to her <i>own rooms</i> +(Reason a Hundred and Five for marrying well), and to stay there until +she was fetched. Reason a——"</p> + +<p>Here, in the full flow of her reasoning, Miss Long cast suddenly and +rather violently down her pen, and tore the sheet with Hugo's name in it +into tiny strips that she cast into the empty fireplace.</p> + +<p>"I can't <i>think</i> to write a good letter to-day!" she excused herself to +herself as she got up from her chair. "I'm tired.... It was all that +talking from Taffy last night. Bother the child. <i>Bother</i> her. <i>It's +unsettling!</i>—Bother <i>all</i> engaged girls. (<i>And all the people shall say +Amen.</i>) I wonder where they went to?... I shall ring up somebody to take +me on the river, I think. Plenty of time to say 'Yes' to Hugo later."</p> + +<p>The letter to Hugo, between the lines of which there had come the vision +of an engaged girl's happy face, remained, for the present, unfinished.</p> + +<p>Leslie went to the telephone.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p> + +<p>"O-o-o Chelsea," she called. "I want to speak to Mr. Scott, please."</p> + +<p>She thought, "This shall be my last free Sunday, and I'll have it in +peace!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>In Richmond Park the grass was doubly cool and green beneath the shade +both of the oaks and of the breast-high bracken where Gwenna and Paul +Dampier sat, eating the fruit and cake that they had bought on the way, +and talking with long stretches of contented silence.</p> + +<p>They were near enough actually to London and the multitude. But town and +people seemed far away, out of their world to-day.</p> + +<p>Gwenna's soft, oddly-accented voice said presently into the warm +stillness, "You'll take me up this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Up?" he said idly. "Where to?"</p> + +<p>"Up flying, of course."</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think so," said the young Airman quietly, putting his chin +in his hand as he lay in his favourite attitude, chest downwards in the +grass, looking at her.</p> + +<p>"Not flying? Not this afternoon?"</p> + +<p>"Don't think so, Little Thing."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you're lazy," she teased him, touching a finger to his fair head +and taking it quickly back again. "You don't want to move."</p> + +<p>"Not going to move, either; not until I've got to."</p> + +<p>She sighed, not too disappointed.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span></p> + +<p>Here in the dappled shade and the solitude with him it was heavenly +enough; even if she did glance upward at the peeps of sapphire-blue +through the leaves and wonder what added rapture it would be to soar to +those heights with her lover.</p> + +<p>"D'you know how many times you've put me off?" she said presently, +fanning the midges away from herself with her broad white hat. "Always +you've said you'd take me flying with you, Paul. And always there's been +something to stop it. Let's settle it now. Now, when will you?"</p> + +<p>"Ah," he said, and flung the stone of the peach he'd been eating into +the dark green jungle of bracken ahead of them. "Good shot. I wanted to +see if I could get that knob on that branch."</p> + +<p>She moved nearer to him and said coaxingly, "What about next Sunday?"</p> + +<p>"Hope it'll be as fine as this," he said, smiling at her. "I'd like all +the Sundays to be just like this one. Can't think what I did with all +the ripping days before this, Gwenna."</p> + +<p>She said, "I meant, what about your taking me up next Sunday?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing about it," he said, shaking his head. There was a little pause. +He crossed his long legs in the grass and said, "Not next Sunday. Nor +the Sunday after that. Nor any Sunday. Nor any time. I may as well tell +you now. You aren't ever coming flying," said the young aviator firmly +to his sweetheart. "I've settled <i>that</i>."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span></p> + +<p>The cherub face of the girl looked blankly into his. "But, Paul! No +flying? Why? Surely—It's safe enough now!"</p> + +<p>"Safe enough for me—and for most people."</p> + +<p>"But you've taken Miss Conyers and plenty of girls flying."</p> + +<p>"Girls. Yes."</p> + +<p>"And you <i>promised</i> to take me!"</p> + +<p>"That was ages ago. That was when you were a girl too."</p> + +<p>"Well, what am I now, pray?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you know? Not '<i>a</i> girl.' <i>My</i> Girl!" he said.</p> + +<p>Then he moved. He knelt up beside her. He made love to her sweetly +enough to cause her to forget all else for a time. And presently, +flushed and shy and enraptured, she brought out of her vanity-bag the +tiny white wing that was to be his mascot, and she safety-pinned it +inside the breast of his old grey jacket.</p> + +<p>"That ought to be fastened somewhere to the P.D.Q.," he suggested. But +she shook her head. No. It was not for the P.D.Q. It was for him to +wear.</p> + +<p>Then she saw him weighing in his hand her own mascot, the little +mother-of-pearl heart with the silver chain.</p> + +<p>"Ah! You did remember to bring it, at last?" she said.</p> + +<p>Nestling against his arm, she lifted her chin and waited for him to snap +the trinket about her neck.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p> + +<p>He laughed and hesitated. She looked at him rather wonderingly. Then he +made a confession.</p> + +<p>"D'you know, I—I do hate to have to give it back again, Gwenna. I've +had it <i>so</i> long. Might as well let me hold on to it. May I?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, you are greedy for keepsakes," she said, delighted. "What would you +<i>do</i> with a thing like that?"</p> + +<p>"I've thought of something," said he, nodding at her.</p> + +<p>She asked, "What?"</p> + +<p>"Tell you another time," he smiled, with the locket clutched in the hand +that was about her waist. She flung back her head happily against his +shoulder, curling herself up like a kitten in his hold. They had settled +that they were going to walk on to Kew Gardens to tea, but it was not +time yet, and it was so peaceful here. Scarcely any one passed them in +that nook of the Park. Another happy silence fell upon the lovers. It +was long before the boy broke it, asking softly, "You do like being with +me, don't you?" There was no answer from the girl.</p> + +<p>"Do you, Gwenna?" It seemed still odd to be able to call her whatever he +liked, now! "Do you, my Little Sweet Thing?"</p> + +<p>Still she didn't answer. He bent closer to look at her.... Her long +eyelashes lay like two little dark half-moons upon her cheeks and her +white blouse fell and rose softly to her breathing. Drowsy from the late +hours she'd kept last night and from the sun-warmed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span> silence under the +trees, she had fallen asleep in his arms. Her eyes were still shut when +at last she heard his deep and gentle voice again in her ear, "I suppose +you know you owe me several pairs of gloves, miss!"</p> + +<p>She laughed sleepily, returning (still a little shyly and unfamiliarly!) +the next kiss that he put on her parted lips.</p> + +<p>"I was <i>nearly</i> asleep," she said, with a little sudden stretch that ran +all over her like a shake given to a sheet of white aluminium at the +Works. "Isn't it quiet? Feels as if <i>everything</i> was asleep." She opened +her eyes, blinking at the rays of the sun, now level in her face. "Oh, I +<i>should</i> like some tea, wouldn't you?"</p> + +<p>They rose to go and find a place for tea in Kew Gardens, among the +happy, lazing Sunday crowds of those whom it has been the fashion to +treat so condescendingly: England's big Middle-classes. There were the +conventional young married couples; "She" wearing out the long tussore +coat that seemed so voluminous; "He," pipe in mouth, wheeling the wicker +mail-cart that held their pink-and-white bud of a baby. There were also +courting couples innumerable....</p> + +<p>(Not all of these were as reticent in the public eye as Gwenna had been +with her lover before Leslie.)</p> + +<p>To Gwenna the bright landscape and the coloured figures seemed a page +out of some picture-book that she turned idly, her lover beside her. She +had to remind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> herself that to these other lovers she herself and Paul +were also part of a half-seen picture....</p> + +<p>They sat down at one of the green wooden tea-tables, and a waiter in a +greasy black coat came out under the trees to take Dampier's order. +Perhaps that started another train of thought in the girl's mind, for +quite suddenly she exclaimed, "Ah! I've thought of <i>another</i> German now +that he was like!"</p> + +<p>"Who was that?" asked Paul.</p> + +<p>"Only a picture I used to see every day. A photograph that our Miss +Baker kept pinned up over her desk at the works in Westminster," +explained Gwenna. "The photograph of that brother of hers that she was +always writing those long letters to."</p> + +<p>"Always writing, was she? Was <i>he</i> a waiter?"</p> + +<p>"No, he was a soldier. He was in uniform in that photo," Gwenna said, as +the little tray was set before her. "Karl was his name, Karl Becker.... +Do you take sugar?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. You'll have to remember that for later on," he said, looking at +her with his head tilted back and a laugh in his eyes, as she poured out +his tea. She handed it to him, and then sat sipping her own, looking +dreamily over the English gardens, over the green spaces flowered with +the light frocks and white flannels of other couples who perhaps called +themselves "in love," and who possibly imagined they could ever feel as +she and her lover felt. (Deluded beings!)</p> + +<p>She murmured, "What do you suppose all these people are thinking +about?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Oh! Whether they'll go to Brighton or to South-end for their fortnight, +I expect," returned Paul Dampier. "Everybody's thinking about holidays +just now."</p> + +<p>Later, they stood together in the hushed gloom of the big chestnut aisle +beside the river that slipped softly under Kew Bridge, passing the +willows and islands and the incongruously rural-looking street of +Strand-on-the-Green. One of the cottage-windows there showed red blinds, +lighted up and homely.</p> + +<p>Young Dampier whispered to his girl—"Going on holidays myself, perhaps, +presently, eh?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Paul!" she said blankly, "you aren't going away for a holiday, are +you?"</p> + +<p>"Not yet, thanks. Not without you."</p> + +<p>"Oh!" she said. Then she sighed happily, watching the stars. "To-day's +been the loveliest holiday I've ever had in my life. Hasn't it been +perfect?"</p> + +<p>"Not quite," he said, with his eyes on those red-lighted windows on the +opposite bank. "Not perfect, Gwen."</p> + +<p>"Not——?" she took up quickly, wondering if she had said something that +he didn't like.</p> + +<p>Almost roughly he broke out, "Oh, I say, darling! <i>Don't</i> let's go and +have one of these infernally long engagements, shall we?"</p> + +<p>She turned, surprised.</p> + +<p>"We said," she reminded him, "that we weren't 'engaged' at all."</p> + +<p>"I know," he said. Then he laughed as he stooped<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> and kissed her little +ringless fingers and the palms of her hands. "But——"</p> + +<p>There was a pause.</p> + +<p>"Got to <i>marry</i> me one day, you know," said young Paul Dampier +seriously.</p> + +<p>He might have spoken more seriously still if he had known that what he +said must happen in ten days' time from then.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THAT WEEK-END</h3> + + +<p>For the following week-end saw, among many other things that had not +been bargained for, those lovers apart again.</p> + +<p>The very next Saturday after that Aviation Dinner was that +not-to-be-forgotten day in England, when this country, still uncertain, +weighed the part that she was to play in the Great War.</p> + +<p>Late on the Friday night of an eventful week, Paul Dampier, the Airman, +had received a summons from Colonel Conyers.</p> + +<p>And Gwenna, who had left the Aircraft Works on Saturday morning to come +up to her Hampstead Club, found there her lover's message:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Away till Monday. Wait for me.</i>"</p></div> + +<p>She waited with Leslie.</p> + +<p>On that bright afternoon the two girls had walked, as they had so often +walked together, about the summer-burnt Heath that was noisy with +cricketers on the grass. They had turned down by the ponds where bathers +dived from the platforms set above the willows; clean-built English +youths splashing and shouting and laughing joyously over their sport. +Last time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span> Gwenna had been with her chum it was she, the girl in love, +who had done all the talking, while Leslie listened.</p> + +<p>Now it was Leslie who was restless, strung-up, talkative.... A new +Leslie, her dark eyes anxious and sombre, her usually nonchalant voice +strained as she talked.</p> + +<p>"Taffy! D'you realise what it all means? Supposing we don't go in. We +may not go in to war with the others. I know lots of people in this +country will do their best so that we don't lift a finger. People like +the Smiths; my brother-in-law's people. Well-to-do, hating anything that +might get in the way of their having a good year and grubbing up as much +money as usual.... Oh! If we don't go in, I shall emigrate—I shall turn +American—I shan't want to call myself English any more! P'raps you +don't mind because you're Welsh."</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna, who was rather pale, but who had a curious stillness over +the growing anxiety in her heart, said, "Of course I mind."</p> + +<p>She did not add her thoughts, "<i>He</i> said he hoped the War would come in +his time. I know <i>he</i> would think it perfectly awful if England didn't +fight. And even I can feel that it would be horribly mean—just <i>looking +on</i> at fighting when it came."</p> + +<p>Leslie, striding beside her up the hill, went on bitterly, "War! Oh, it +can't come. For years we've said so. Haven't we taken good care not to +let ourselves get 'hysterical' over the German 'scare'? Haven't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> we +disbanded regiments? Haven't we beaten our swords into cash-registers? +Haven't we even kept down the Navy? Haven't we spread and spread the +idea that soldiering was a silly, obsolete kind of game? Aren't we quite +clever and enlightened enough to look down upon soldiers as a kind of +joke? The brainless Army type. Don't let's forget <i>that</i> phrase," urged +the soldier's daughter. "Why, Taffy, I'll tell you what happened only +last May. I went to Gamage's to get a birthday present for Hilary, my +sister Maudie's little boy. Of course he's <i>got</i> heaps of everything a +child wants. Delightful floor games. Beautiful hand-wrought artistic +toys (made in Munich). Still, I thought he might like a change. I told +the man in the shop I wanted a toy-book of soldiers. Nice simple +drawings and jolly, crude, bright colours of all the different +regiments. Like we used to have at home. And what d'you suppose the +shopman said? He was very sorry, but 'they' hadn't stocked that class of +thing for some time now; so little demand for it! So little demand for +anything that reminds us we've got an Empire to keep!"</p> + +<p>Gwenna said half absently, "It was only toys, Leslie."</p> + +<p>"Only one more sign of what we're coming to! <i>Teaching the young idea +not to shoot</i>," said Leslie gloomily. "That, and a million other +trifles, are going to settle it, I'm afraid. If England is to come down, +<i>that's</i> the sort of thing that will have done it.... Oh, Leslie's been +in it, too, and all her friends. Dancing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> and drifting and dressing-up +while Rome's been burning.... There'll be no war, Taffy."</p> + +<p>Gwenna said, quietly and convinced, "Yes, there will." And she quoted +the saying of the lady at the Aviation Dinner, "<i>If England is ever to +be saved, it will be by the few.</i>"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>They walked round the Highgate Ponds and down the steep hill between the +little, ramshackle, Victorian-looking shops of Heath Street. It was busy +as ever on a Saturday afternoon. They passed the usual troop of Boy +Scouts; the usual straggle of cricketers and lovers from or for the +Heath, and then a knot of rather boyish-looking girls and +girlish-looking boys wearing the art-green school-cap of some +co-educational institution.</p> + +<p>"What sort of soldiers do we expect those boys ever to make?" demanded +Leslie.</p> + +<p>Outside the dark-red-tiled entrance to the Hampstead Tube there was a +little crowd of people gathered about the paper-sellers with their pink +arresting posters of</p> + +<p class="center">"RUMOURS OF WAR<br /> +ENGLAND'S DECISION."</p> + +<p>"They'll publish a dozen before anything <i>is</i> decided," said Leslie. She +bought a paper, Gwenna another....</p> + +<p>No; nothing in them but surmise—suspense—theories—they walked on, +passing Miss Armitage from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> the Club who had paused on the kerb to talk +to one of her friends, a long-haired man in a broad-leafed brown hat. He +seemed to be dispensing pamphlets to people in the street. As Miss +Armitage smiled and nodded good-bye to him the two other girls came up. +He of the locks slipped a pamphlet into the hand of Leslie Long.</p> + +<p>She glanced at it, stopped, and looked at it again. It was headed:</p> + +<p class="center">"BRITAIN, STAND ASIDE!"</p> + +<p>Leslie stood for a moment and regarded this male. She said very gently, +"You don't want any War?"</p> + +<p>The long-haired person in the gutter gave a shrug and a little superior +smile. "Oh, well, that's assumed, isn't it?" he said. "<i>We</i> don't want +any War."</p> + +<p>"Or any <i>country</i>, I suppose?" said Leslie, walking on. She held the +pamphlet a little gingerly between her finger and thumb. She had thought +of tossing it into the gutter—but no. She kept it as a curiosity.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>Late that night she sat on Gwenna Williams' bed at the Club, suspense +eating at her heart. For all the soldier blood in her had taken her back +to old times in barracks, or in shabby lodging-houses in garrison towns, +or on echoing, sunny parade-grounds.... Times before she had drifted +into the gay fringes of the cosmopolitan jungle of Bohemian life in +London. Before the Hospital, the Art-school, the daily "job," with her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> +evenings for the theatre and the Crab-tree Club, and the dances she +loved. It is the first ten years of a child's life that are said to +"count." They counted now. The twenty-six-year-old Leslie, whose +childhood had been passed within sound of the bugle-call, waited, +waited, waited to know if the ideas of honour and country and glory +which she had taken in unconsciously in those far-off times were now to +be tossed down into the gutter as she would have tossed the leaflet of +that coward. These things, as Miss Armitage and her friends could have +told her, were mere sentimentalities—names—ideas. Yet what has ever +proved stronger than an Idea?</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>Taffy</i>!" she sighed impatiently. "If we're told that we're to sit +still and nothing will happen?"</p> + +<p>And little Gwenna, lying curled up with a hand in her chum's, murmured +again, "<i>That's</i> not what's coming."</p> + +<p>She was quiet because she was dazed with the sheer intensity of her own +more personal anxiety. "What will happen about Paul? What will <i>he</i> +do?"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE DIE IS CAST</h3> + + +<p>On Sunday morning she and Leslie went to Church.</p> + +<p>In the afternoon they walked again, aimlessly. She felt that she was +only living until Monday, until his return to tell her something. In the +evening the two girls sat out on a seat on Parliament Hill; near where +the man with the standing telescope used to offer peeps at London for a +penny a time. Far, far below, lay London under her web of twinkling +lights. London, England's heart, with that silver ribbon of the river +running through it. Leslie looked away over that prospect as though she +had never seen it before. Little Gwenna turned from it to the view on +the other side—the grass spaces and the trees towards Hendon. She +thought, "On a night as clear as this, aeroplanes could easily go up, +even late."</p> + +<p>As the two girls reached the Club again they found a motor drawn up +beside the entrance. Steps came out of the darkness behind them. A man's +voice said "Miss Long." Leslie turned.</p> + +<p>There moved into the light of the street-lamp Hugo Swayne. His face, +somehow, had never looked less like an imitation of Chopin; or more like +an ordinary commonplace Englishman's. It was serious, set. Yet it was +exultant. For he, too, was a soldier's son.</p> + +<p>He spoke. "I say, I thought I'd bring you the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span> news," he began gravely. +"It's all right. England goes in."</p> + +<p>"Is that official?" Leslie asked sharply.</p> + +<p>There was a shaky little "War?" from Gwenna.</p> + +<p>Then came other, quick steps on the asphalt path, and the girls saw over +Hugo's rather portly shoulder a taller, slighter figure coming up the +road behind him.</p> + +<p>It was hatless; the lamplight shone golden on its blonde head. Gwenna's +heart leaped to her lips.</p> + +<p>"Paul!" she cried, and made a running step towards him. In a moment +young Dampier was up with the others; the quartette standing as they had +stood on that spring night in this same place, after the Smiths' +dinner-party. There were hasty greetings, murmurs of "Not official?"</p> + +<p>"Ah, that's all right——"</p> + +<p>"They won't say for a day or so, but——"</p> + +<p>Then, clear and distinct, young Dampier's boyish voice rang out in a +curious announcement. "Glad <i>you're</i> here, Hugo. I was coming to you. I +want to borrow rather a lot of money of you, at once. Forty pounds, I +think it is. Sorry. Must have it. It's for a marriage-licence!"</p> + +<p>Hugo, utterly taken aback, stared and murmured, "My dear +chap—— Certain—— A m——?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. I shall have to be off, you know. Of course. And I shall get +married before I go," announced Paul Dampier, brusquely. He turned as +brusquely to the girl.</p> + +<p>"You and I are going to get married by special licence," he told her, +"the day after to-morrow."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>HER GUARDIAN'S CONSENT</h3> + + +<p>The Reverend Hugh Lloyd, who was Gwenna Williams' only relative and +guardian and therefore the person from whom consent might be asked if +ever the girl wished to be engaged, sat reading <i>The Cambrian News</i>. He +sat, over his breakfast eggs and tea, in the kitchen-sitting-room of his +Chapel House. Inside, the grandfather clock ticked slowly but still +pointed (as ever) to half-past two; and the cosy room, with its Welsh +dresser and its book-shelves, still held its characteristic smell of +singeing hearthrug. Outside, quiet brooded over the valley that fine +August morning. The smoke from the village chimneys rose blue and +straight against the larches of the hill-side. The more distant hills of +that landscape were faintly mauve against the cloudless, fainter blue of +the late-summer sky. All the world seemed so peaceful!</p> + +<p>And the expression on the Reverend Hugh's face of a Jesuit priest under +its thatch of bog-cotton hair was that of a man at peace with all the +world.</p> + +<p>True, there were rumours, in some of the newspapers, of some War going +on somewhere in the world outside.</p> + +<p>But it was a long way from here to that old Continent, as they called +it! For the matter of that, it was a long<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> way to London, where they +settled what they were going to do about Germany....</p> + +<p>What they were going to do about Welsh Disestablishment was a good deal +more important, to a Welshman. There were some very good things about +that in this very article. The Reverend Hugh had written it himself.</p> + +<p>Presently, in the midst of his reading, his housekeeper (who was a +small, middle-aged woman, rather like a black hen) entered the room at a +run.</p> + +<p>"Telegram for you, sir."</p> + +<p>"Ah, yes; thank you, Margat," her master said as he took it.</p> + +<p>He had guessed already what was in it. Some arrangement to do with his +next Sabbath-day's journey. For he was a very popular preacher, invited +to give sermons by exchange in every country town in Wales.</p> + +<p>"This," he told his housekeeper complacently, as he tore open the +envelope, "will be to say am I ex Pected in Carnarvon on the Sat Teudêh, +or——"</p> + +<p>Here he broke off, staring at the message in his hand. It was a long +one.</p> + +<p>There was a moment's silence while the clock ticked. Then that silence +was broken by an exclamation, in Welsh, from a man startled out of all +professional decorum. He added, with more restraint, but also in Welsh, +"Great King!"</p> + +<p>Then he exclaimed, "Dear father!" and "<i>Name</i> of goodness!"</p> + +<p>"What is it, Mr. Lloyd <i>bach</i>?" demanded his housekeeper excitedly in +Welsh, clutching her black, crochet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> wool shawl about her shoulders as +she waited by the side of the breakfast.</p> + +<p>"Is it somebody died?" In her mind's eye she saw already that loved orgy +of her kind—a funeral.</p> + +<p>The Reverend Hugh shook his handsome white head. Again he read through +the longest telegraph message that he had ever received:</p> + +<p>It ran:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Dear Sir am going to marry your niece Gwenna to-morrow Tuesday +morning at Hampstead regret forced to give you this short notice +but impossible to do otherwise owing military duties trust you will +excuse apparent casualness will write further particulars yours +sincerely Paul Dampier Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps.</i>"</p></div> + +<p>"<i>Name</i> of goodness!" breathed the Reverend Hugh, brushing back his +white locks in consternation. And at short intervals he continued to +ejaculate. "What did I tell her? <i>What</i> did I tell her!... Indeed, it's +a great pity I ever let her go away from home.... It was my fault; my +fault.... Young men——! This one sounds as if he was gone quite mad, +whatever."</p> + +<p>So the Reverend Hugh addressed his answer to Miss Gwenna Williams at her +Club.</p> + +<p>And it said:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"<i>Coming up to see you nine-thirty Euston to-night. Uncle.</i>"</p></div> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>"I'm sure he'll be simply horrid about it," Gwenna rather tremulously +told her betrothed that evening, as they walked, the small, curly-haired +girl in dark blue and the tall, grey-clad aviator, up and down the +platform at Euston Station, waiting for the Welsh train to come in.</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna was experiencing a feeling not unknown among those shortly +to be married; namely, that <i>every prospect was pleasing—save that of +having to face one's relatives with the affair</i>!</p> + +<p>"He was always rather a dret-ful old man," she confided anxiously to +Paul, as they paced the sooty flags of the platform. "It's <i>just</i> like +him to be sixteen minutes late already just when I want to get this +over. He never understands anything about—about people when they're +young. And the first thing he's sure to ask is whether you've got any +money. Have you, Paul?"</p> + +<p>"Stacks," said the Airman, reassuringly. "Old Hugo made it sixty, as a +wedding-present. Decent of him, wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>They turned by the blackboard with the chalked-up notices of arrivals +and departures, and Gwenna ruefully went on with her prophecy of what +her Uncle would say.</p> + +<p>"He'll say he never <i>heard</i> of anybody marrying an Airman. (I don't +suppose he's ever heard of an Airman at all before now!) Ministers, and +quarry-managers, and people <i>with some prospects</i>; that's the sort of +thing they've always married in Uncle Hugh's family," she said +anxiously. "And he'll say we've both behaved awfully badly not to let +him know before this. (Just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> as if there was anything to know.) And +he'll say you turned my silly head when I was much too young to know my +own mind! And then he's quite, quite sure to say that you only proposed +to me because—— Well, of course," she broke off a little reproachfully, +"you never even <i>did</i> propose to me properly!"</p> + +<p>"Too late to start it now," said her lover, laughing, as the knot of +porters surged forward to the side of the platform. "Here's the train +coming in!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>Now Gwenna was right about the first thing that Uncle Hugh would ask, +when, after a searching glance and a handshake to this tall young man +that his niece introduced to him at the carriage-door, he carried off +the pair of them to the near-by hotel where the Minister always put up +on his few and short visits to London.</p> + +<p>"Well, young gentleman," he began, in his crisp yet deliberate Welsh +accent. He settled himself on the red plush sofa, and gazed steadily at +Paul Dampier on one of the red plush armchairs. "Well! And have you got +the money reck-quisite to keep a wife?"</p> + +<p>"No. I'm afraid I haven't, sir, really," returned the young man, looking +frankly back at him. "Of course I'd my screw. Three pounds ten a week, I +was getting as a pilot. But that was only just enough for myself—with +what I had to do for the Machine. Of course I'm going to have her—the +Flying Machine—taken up now, so——"</p> + +<p>"It's very little faith I have in such things as flying machines. +Flying? Yes, in the face of Providence, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span> call it," said the Reverend +Hugh, discouragingly, but with the dawn of some amusement in his +searching eyes. "What I say about the whole idea of Avi<i>ay</i>-shon +is—<i>Kite-high lunacy!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Uncle!" scolded Gwenna; blushing for him. But the young Airman took the +rebuke soberly enough.</p> + +<p>"And out of that income," went on Uncle Hugh, still looking hard, at +this modern suitor in that incongruous red-plush setting with its +Nineteenth Century clocks and ornaments, "out of that income you will +not have saved very much."</p> + +<p>"Afraid not, sir," agreed young Dampier, who, last night, had been down +to his last eightpence ha'penny and a book of stamps. "Not much to put +by, you know——"</p> + +<p>"Not even," took up the Reverend Hugh, shrewdly, "enough to pay for a +special marriage licence?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes, I had that. That is, I've raised <i>that</i>"—("Good old Hugo!" he +thought.)—"and a bit over," he added, "to take us for some sort of a +little trip. To the sea, perhaps. Before I go on Service."</p> + +<p>"Military service, do you mean?" said the Reverend Hugh. "Mmph! (I never +have held with soldiery. I do not think that I have ever come into +act—ual con—tackt with <i>any</i>.)"</p> + +<p>"Yes, I probably am going on Service, Mr. Lloyd," answered the young +man, quickly, and with a glance at the girl that seemed to indicate that +this subject was only to be lightly dealt with at present. "When, I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> +not sure. Then I shall get my pay as a Flight-Lieutenant, you see. +Shan't want any money much, then. So <i>she</i>"—with a little nod towards +the small, defensively set face of Gwenna, sitting very straight in the +other red-plush armchair—"she will get that sent home, to her."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> shan't want all your pay, indeed," interrupted the girl, hastily. +It seemed to her too revoltingly horrible, this talk about money +combined with this sense that a woman, married, must be an <i>expense</i>, a +burden. A woman, who longs to mean only freedom and gifts and treasure +to her lover!</p> + +<p>"Oh, a woman ought never, <i>never</i> to feel she has to be <i>kept</i>," thought +Gwenna, rosy again with embarrassment. "If men don't think we <i>mind</i>, +very well, then let all the money in the world be taken away from men, +and given to us. Let <i>them</i> be kept. And if they don't mind it—well, +then it will be a happier world, all round!"</p> + +<p>And as she was thinking this, she announced eagerly, "If—if you <i>do</i> go +away, I shall stay on with the Aeroplane Lady, as I told you, Paul. Yes. +I'd <i>much</i> rather I should have something to do. And I'd get nearly a +pound a week, and my keep. Besides! I've got my own money."</p> + +<p>"Which money, dear?" asked Paul Dampier.</p> + +<p>The quick eyes of the Reverend Hugh had not left the young man's face.</p> + +<p>They were fixed still more scrutinisingly upon it as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> the old man +interposed, "Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Dampier, that you were not +aware that my niece had got a little bit of her own?"</p> + +<p>"There! I <i>knew</i> Uncle would say that!" burst out the young girl, angry +and blushing and ashamed. "I knew he'd say you were only marrying me +because of that! <i>He</i> won't believe that it wouldn't make any difference +to you that I've got seventy-five pounds a year!"</p> + +<p>"Seventy-five pounds a year? <i>Have</i> you?" said the young man, surprised. +"Really?"</p> + +<p>And it was Gwenna's turn to be surprised as his frank face cleared and +his voice took a very relieved note.</p> + +<p>"I say, how topping! Make no difference to me? But it does. Rather!" he +declared. "Don't you see that I shall know you won't <i>have</i> to work, and +that I shall be ever so much more comfortable about you? Why did you +never tell me?"</p> + +<p>"I forgot," said Gwenna truly.</p> + +<p>And the Reverend Hugh suddenly laughed aloud.</p> + +<p>At the same time he hoped he had concealed his relief, which was great. +His youngest sister's girl was not going to be snapped up by a +fortune-hunter after all. That had always been his anxiety. Seventy-five +pounds a year (certain) remained a considerable fortune to this +Victorian. In his valley quite a large house, with a nice bit of garden, +too (running steeply up a mountain-side), was to be had for a rent of +sixteen pounds. He would have thought of that himself.... But the leggy, +fair-haired boy who was now smiling across the oval hotel table at his +Gwenna had meant only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> what he had said. The older man realised that. +So, waiving for the present the question of means, the Reverend Hugh +went on, in rather a modified tone, to ask other questions.</p> + +<p>Asking questions of the newly accepted suitor seems to be all that +remains for the parent or guardian of our times. It is the sole survival +of that potent authority which once disposed (or said it disposed) of +the young lady's hand. Clearing his throat with the same little sound +that so often heralded the words of some text from his pulpit, the +Reverend Hugh began by inquiring where Gwenna, after her short +honeymoon, was supposed to be going to live.</p> + +<p>Nowhere new, it appeared! She had her berth at the Aircraft Factory, her +room at Mrs. Crewe's cottage for when young Dampier was away. (Yes; from +his tone when he spoke of it, evidently that parting was to be kept in +the background and evaded as much as possible for the present.) And if +he were in London, he had his rooms in Camden Town. Do for them both, +perhaps.... His bachelor digs.; not bad ones....</p> + +<p>Well, but no <i>house</i>? Dear me. That was a gipsyish sort of plan, wasn't +it? That was a new idea of setting up housekeeping to Uncle Hugh. He, +himself, was an old bachelor. But he could see that this was all very +different from the ideas of all the young couples in <i>his</i> time. When +Gwenna's father, now, was courting Gwenna's mother, well! he, Hugh +Lloyd, had never heard such a lot of talk about <i>Mahoggani</i>. <i>And</i> +tebbel-linen. <i>And</i> who was to have the three feather-beds from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> the +old Quarry-house; Gwenna's mother, or Gwenna's mother's sister——</p> + +<p>(All this the Reverend Hugh declaimed in his most distinct Chapel voice, +but still with his searching eyes upon the face of the husband-to-be.)</p> + +<p>The idea of most young girls, in getting married, he thought, was to get +a nice home of their own, as soon as possible. A comfortable house——</p> + +<p>("I hate comfortable houses. So stuffy. Just like a tea-cosy. They'd +<i>smother</i> me!" from Gwenna.)</p> + +<p>But the House, her Uncle Hugh had <i>Olwês</i> understood, was the Woman's +fetish. Spring-cleaning, now; the yearly rites! And that furniture. "The +Lares," he went on in an ever-strengthening Welsh accent. "The +Pen—nates——!"</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>those</i>!" scoffed the girl in love. "<i>Those</i>——!"</p> + +<p>So Gwenna didn't seem to think she would miss these things? She was +willing to marry without them? Yes? Strange!... Well, well!</p> + +<p>And what about this marriage-in-haste? Where was it to take place? In +that Church in Hampstead? A Church. Well! He, as an orthodox dissenting +minister, ought not, perhaps, to enter such a place of worship. But, +after all, this was not at home. This was only up here, in England. +Perhaps it wouldn't matter, just this once.</p> + +<p>And who was the clergyman who was going to officiate at the cerrymonny? +And what sort of a preacher, now, was <i>he</i>? (This was not known.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p> + +<p>And Mr. Dampier's own relations? Would they all be at the Church?</p> + +<p>Only one cousin, he was told. That was the only relation Paul Dampier +had left.</p> + +<p>"Same as myself," said the Reverend Hugh, a little quietly. "A big +family, we were. Six boys, two girls; like people used to have. All +gone. Nothing left, but——"</p> + +<p>Here, for the first time taking his eyes from young Dampier, he turned +upon his niece with an abrupt question. With a quick nod towards her +husband-to-be, he demanded: "And where did you find <i>him</i>?"</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna, still on the defensive, but thawing gradually (since, +after all, Uncle Hugh had spoken in friendly tones to the Beloved), +Gwenna asked, "When, Uncle?"</p> + +<p>"The time that counts, my girl," said the Reverend Hugh; "the first +time."</p> + +<p>"Oh! I think it was—it was at a party I went to with my friend, Miss +Long, that I've told you about," explained Gwenna, a little nervously. +"And—and he was there. It's—<i>quite</i> a long time ago, now."</p> + +<p>"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh. "Dukes! There is a lot of things seem +to go on, still, under the name of 'Party.'" And there was a sudden and +quite young twinkle in the eyes under the white thatch.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier, not seeing it, began hastily: "I hope you understand, sir, +that we were only keeping all this to ourselves, because—well——" He +cleared his throat and made another start. "If I'd had the—er—the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> the +privilege of seeing Gwenna at your place——" Yet another start. "We had +no <i>idea</i>, of course," said Paul Dampier, "until fairly recently——"</p> + +<p>"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh again. Then, turning to the young man +whom Gwenna had said he would accuse of turning the head of one too +young to know her own mind, he remarked with some feeling, "I dare say +she had made up her mind, that first time, not to give you a bit of +peace until you'd sent off that telly-gram to me!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>As he was taking the bride-to-be back to her Club, young Dampier said, +smiling: "Why, darling, he's not a bad old chap at all! You said he +wouldn't understand anything!"</p> + +<p>"Well, he doesn't," persisted the mutinous Gwenna. But she laughed a +little, relentingly.</p> + +<p>Twenty minutes later her lover took his leave with a whispered +"Good-night. Do you know that I shan't ever have to say it again +at this blessed door, after this?... And another, for luck.... +Good-<i>night</i>—er—Miss Williams!"</p> + +<p>She ran upstairs humming a tune.</p> + +<p>She was so happy that she could feel kind even to old and unsympathetic +and cynical people to-night.</p> + +<p>To-morrow she was to be Paul Dampier's wife.</p> + +<p>It was hardly believable, still it was true!</p> + +<p>War, now threatening to tear him from her, had at least brought him to +her, first, sooner than she had ever hoped. Even if he were forced to +leave her quite soon,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> say in a month's time!—she would have had him +all to herself first, without any of these small, fretting good-byes +that came so punctually following every meeting! She would have <i>been</i> +all his; his very own, she thought.</p> + +<p>And here it may be said that upon this subject Gwenna Williams' thoughts +were curiously, almost incredibly vague. That dormant bud of passion +knew so little of its own hidden root.</p> + +<p>Marriage! To this young girl it was a journey into a country of which +she had never formed any clear idea. Her own dreams had been the rosy +mists that obscured alike the heights and depths of that scarcely +guessed-at land. All she saw, clearly, was her fellow traveller; the +dear boy-comrade and sweetheart who would not now leave her side. What +did it matter where he took her, so that it was with him always?</p> + +<p>Only one more night, now, in the long, narrow Club bedroom where she had +dreamed that queer flying dream, and so many others, so many longing +daydreams about him!</p> + +<p>To-morrow was her wedding-day!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<h3>HASTE TO THE WEDDING!</h3> + + +<p>The Tuesday morning that brought Gwenna's wedding-day as the morning of +the official declaration of war.</p> + +<p>It was in all the papers over which the girls at the Hampstead Club +pored, before they went off to their various avocations, staring, +half-realising only.</p> + +<p>"Can it be true?... War?... Nowadays?... Good gracious!... D'you suppose +it means we shall really have to send an army of ours—an English +Army—over to France?... What do you think, Miss Armitage?"</p> + +<p>Miss Armitage, the suffragette, then became voluble on the subject of +how very different all would have been if women had had the casting vote +in the matter. Intelligent women. Women with some insight into the wider +interests of their sex.... Not mere—— Here, by way of illustration, +this Feminist shot a vicious glance at Miss Long. Now, Leslie, dressed +in a lilac river-frock and wearing her black picture hat, was going +round the breakfast-table, under the very eye of the disapproving Lady +Principal with the gold curb brooch, on an errand of her own. She was +collecting from it the daintiest bits of dry toast, the nicest-looking +pats of butter, a white rose from the nosegay in the centre bowl, and +all that was left of the marmalade.</p> + +<p>For to Leslie Long the question whether War was to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> be or not to be +seemed now to have been settled an age ago. The burden of that anxiety +was lifted. The other anxieties ahead could be put aside for the +present. And she turned, with a tranquil face, to the immediate matter +in hand. She was going to take a little tray up to Gwenna, whom she had +advised to have her breakfast in bed and not to dress until she should +make herself all ready for her wedding at that church at the foot of the +hill.</p> + +<p>"'Good-morning, Madam Bride!'" said Leslie, smiling, as she came, tray +in hand, into the little room where Gwenna was still drowsily curled up +against her pillow. "Here's a little bit of sugar for the bird." She sat +down on the side of the bed, cutting the dry buttered toast into narrow +strips for her chum, taking the top off her egg for her.</p> + +<p>"But I won't '<i>help to salt, help to sorrow</i>' for you," she went on +talking, just a trifle more brightly than naturally. "Curious thing +about a wedding, Taff—I mean <i>one</i> of the curious things about a +wedding, is the wide desire it gives you to quote every aged, half-pay +proverb and tag that you've ever heard. '<i>Marriage is a</i>——"</p> + +<p>"Not '<i>lottery</i>,' Leslie! Not that one!" begged the bride-to-be, sitting +up and laughing with her mouth full of toast. "We had it four times from +Uncle Hugh before we left him last night. '<i>Few prizes! Many blanks!</i>'" +she quoted joyously. All Monday she had been tremulously nervous. The +reaction had come at the right moment.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p> + +<p>"'<i>Happy is the Bride that the sun shines on</i>,' then," amended Leslie. +"You'll be glad to hear it's shining like Billy-oh this morning."</p> + +<p>"<i>I</i> saw it," said Gwenna, nodding her curls towards the open casement. +"And I shall be getting '<i>Married in white, sure to be right</i>,' too!"</p> + +<p>The white lingerie frock she was to put on was not new, but it was the +prettiest that she had. It lay, folded, crisp as a butterfly's wing and +fresh from the wash, on the top of her chest-of-drawers, with the white +Princesse slip—that <i>was</i> new, bought by her in a hurry the day +before!—and the white silk stockings, and the little white suède shoes.</p> + +<p>"'<i>Something old</i>, <i>something new</i>, <i>something borrowed</i>, <i>something +blue</i>,'" Leslie capped her quotation. "Where's the '<i>something blue</i>,' +Taffy?"</p> + +<p>"Ribbons in my camisole; and I shall 'borrow' your real lace +handkerchief, may I?" said the bride-elect.</p> + +<p>"Rather! All that I have, even unto the half of the best-man's +attention!" said Leslie, smiling gaily into the cherub face opposite.</p> + +<p>But, even as she smiled, she felt that pang which is supposed to be +known only to the <i>man</i> who sees his chosen pal prepare to be "married +and done for."</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>For this morning, that turned an adoring sweetheart into a wife, was +taking something of her own, of the bridesmaid's youth away.</p> + +<p>Gwenna Williams married!</p> + +<p>That meant one more girl-chum who would never,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span> never be quite the same +again to a once-treasured companion. That bubbling fountain of innocent +confidences would now run low, as far as Leslie was concerned. No longer +would the elder, quickly-sympathising, rebellious-tongued girl be the +first to hear what happened to her little, ingenuous friend.</p> + +<p>The girlish gossip would have a masculine censor to pass.</p> + +<p>Leslie could foretell the little scene when it first happened.</p> + +<p>She could hear Gwenna's eager, "Oh, Paul! Leslie would so laugh at——" +whatever the little incident might be. "I must tell her that!"</p> + +<p>Leslie, the bachelor-girl, could imagine the tilt of the young husband's +blonde head, and his doubtful, "Don't see why it should be supposed to +interest <i>her</i>."</p> + +<p>She could imagine the little wife's agreeing, "Oh! Perhaps not."</p> + +<p>And again the young husband's, "Don't you think Miss Long gets a little +bit <i>much</i> sometimes? Oh, she's all right, but—I mean, I shouldn't like +<i>you</i> to go on quite like that."</p> + +<p>It would be only after years of marriage that the once-close chum would +turn for sympathy to Leslie Long. And then it would not be the same....</p> + +<p>The last of Leslie's forebodings seemed the most inevitable. She heard +Gwenna's soft Welsh voice, once so full of unexpectedness, now grown +almost unrecognisably sedate. She heard it utter that finally +"settled-down"-sounding phrase:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p> + +<p>"<i>Say 'how d'you do' nicely to Auntie Leslie, now!</i>"</p> + +<p>Ah! <i>That</i> seemed to bring a shadow of Autumn already into the summer +sunshine of that bridal room with its white, prepared attire, its +bonnie, bright-eyed occupant. It seemed to show what must some day come: +Taffy middle-aged!</p> + +<p>Also what probably would come: Taffy matter-of-fact! Taffy with all the +dreams out of her eyes! Taffy whose only preoccupations were, "Really +that stair-carpet's getting to look awful; I wonder if I could manage to +get a new one and put it on the upper flight?" or, "<i>I</i> never saw +anything like the way <i>my</i> children wear through their boots: it was +only the other day I got that quite expensive pair of Peter Pans for +little Hughie. And now look at them. <i>Look!...</i>"</p> + +<p>Yes! This sort of change was wrought, by time and marriage and +domesticity, in girl after golden girl. Leslie had seen it. She would +probably see Taffy, the fanciful Celt, grown stodgy; Taffy, even Taffy, +the compactly supple, with all her fruit-like contours, grown +<i>stout</i>!...</p> + +<p>Horrible thought....</p> + +<p>Then Miss Long gave a protesting shrug of her slim shoulders. This +wouldn't do. Come, come! Not on the wedding-morning itself should one +give way to thoughts of coming middle-age! The rose, that must, some +day, be overblown, was only just a pouting bud as yet. There were days +and fragrant days of beauty still before her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span></p> + +<p>So Leslie picked up her chum's rough towels, her loofah and her +verbena-scented soap.</p> + +<p>"I'll turn on the bath for you, Taffy, shall I? Hot or cold?"</p> + +<p>"Cold, please," said the Welsh girl, springing out of bed and pattering +over the oil-cloth to fetch her kimono. "Perhaps to-morrow I shall be +able to have a real swim! Oh, won't that be gorgeous?" For the couple +had decided upon Brighton for the honeymoon. It was near enough to +London in case young Dampier received a summons; yet near also to +country-tramps and sea-bathing. "I haven't had a swim this year, except +in the baths. And you can't count that. Oh, <i>fancy</i> the sea again, +Leslie!"</p> + +<p>Leslie could guess what was at the back of that little exultant skip of +the younger girl's through the bathroom door. It was sheer innocent +delight over the prospect of being able to display to her lover at last +something that she did really well.</p> + +<p>For they had never been by the sea together, he and she.</p> + +<p>And she was a pretty swimmer.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>"Now I'll be your maid for the last time, and fasten you up," said +Leslie, when she returned from the bathroom. "I suppose you know there +isn't a <i>single</i> eye left at the neck of this dress? Always the way with +that laundry! It's nothing to <i>it</i> that untidiness puts a man off worse +than anything else (this from me). Never mind, I'll hook it into the +lace.... That's all right.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> '<i>A bonnie bride is soon buskit.</i>' Almost a +pity the girls will all have gone—though I know you'd hate to have them +staring. D'you know, you <i>are</i> a little pocket-Venus? No, I'm <i>not</i> +piling it on. You're lovely, Taffy. I hope the Dampier boy tells you so, +very often and much. He's vastly lucky."</p> + +<p>"It's me that's lucky," said the girl in all-white devoutly. "Now +where's my hat?"</p> + +<p>"Do you think you're going to be allowed to get married in a <i>hat</i>?"</p> + +<p>"My best white one with the wings, I meant."</p> + +<p>"Pooh! I've arranged for you to have these," said Leslie, and brought +out a cardboard box that she had been to fetch while Gwenna was having +her bath. From it she drew a slender chaplet of dark leaves, with round +white buds with waxen flowers.</p> + +<p>"Orange-blossoms! <i>Real</i> orange-blossoms," cried Gwenna, delightedly +sniffing up the sensuous perfume of them. "Oh, but <i>where</i> did you get +them?"</p> + +<p>"Covent Garden. I went down there this morning at five, with one of the +housemaids whose young man is at a florist's," explained Leslie, +standing above her to set the pretty wreath upon the pretty head. "Now +you look like a print of 'Cupid's Coronation,' or something like that. +'<i>Through his curls as the crown on them slips</i>'—I'll twist this a tiny +bit tighter. And here's the veil."</p> + +<p>Gwenna stared. "A veil, too, Leslie?"</p> + +<p>"Rather. Only chance you get of appearing in this thoroughly becoming +kit that carries us all back to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> worst days of Woman's Enslavement. +May as well take that chance!" remarked Miss Long cheerfully, as she +shook out soft, transparent folds of finest white net that she herself +had embroidered, working late into the night, with a border of leaves in +white silk. "This is from me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, <i>Les</i>-lie! You got it as a surprise for me," said the little bride, +much touched. "You worked all these beautiful little laurel-leaves——"</p> + +<p>"Not laurel, child. Meant for myrtle. Pity your geography is so weak," +rattled on Leslie, as she heard, outside the Club, the stopping of the +taxi which had brought the Reverend Hugh Lloyd to call for his +detachment of the bridal party. "Refreshingly unconventional sort of +wedding you're having in some ways, aren't you? '<i>The presents were few +and inexpensive</i>' (such a change from the usual report). '<i>The bride was +attended by one bridesmaid: her friend Miss Long, clad in mauve linen, +mystic, wonderful</i>'—(taking into consideration that it had done her +cousin for Henley last year). '<i>The ceremony proceeded without a hitch, +except for the usual attempt on the part of the officiating clergyman to +marry the bride to the best man.</i>' Which must not be, Taffy. You must +remember that I've got designs on Mr. Hugo Swayne myself——"</p> + +<p>"Don't, Leslie!" protested the bride. "You know I do so hate to think of +you getting engaged in that sort of horrible way—instead of just +because you can't <i>help</i> it! If only there were somebody you could be +really in love with——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I shall be really rather in love with Uncle Hugh, I know," prophesied +the bridesmaid. "<i>What</i> a pity he isn't thirty years younger! Come +along. He's waiting. I'm going to kiss <i>him</i>, anyhow. Got your gloves? +Right. Got my hankerfish? You won't <i>want</i> to shed any tears into it, +but——"</p> + +<p>But there was an added brightness in the green-brown eyes of the little +bride as she glanced round the girlish room where Leslie would pack up +and put everything to rights for her after she had gone.</p> + +<p>Impulsively she put her arms round that good chum.</p> + +<p>"You've been so—so frightfully sweet to me, Leslie, always. Thanks so +awfully——"</p> + +<p>"<i>Don't</i> kiss me through a veil, my child!" protested Leslie, drawing +back. "D'you want to bring me ill luck?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Leslie! I should want to bring you all the good luck in the world," +cried the younger girl, earnestly, over her shoulder as they went out. +"If I were given three wishes <i>now</i> for a wedding-present, one of them +would be that you would some day be as happy as me!"</p> + +<p>"My dear lamb!" said Leslie lightly, running downstairs after her, "How +do you know I'm not quite as happy in another—in my own way?"</p> + +<p>Gwenna shook the curly head under the orange-blossom wreath and the +misty veil. It seemed to her that there was only The One Way in which a +woman could be happy.</p> + +<p>"And the other two wishes?" suggested Leslie, at the sitting-room door. +"What are they?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Mustn't tell," smiled the little bride of Superstition with her finger +at her lips. "If I told they <i>might</i> not come true!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>Very earnestly she hoped that those two wishes might come true. She +thought of them again, presently, as she stood, there in church, a +small, white-mist-clad figure, backed by the coloured window and the +crimson altar. She had the kindly glances upon her of her uncle, of her +tall girl-chum, and of Hugo Swayne—who wore a perfect morning coat with +a white flower and grey trousers, admirably pressed by his man Johnson. +Hugo, but for his Chopin stock, would have looked the very model of a +prosperous and conventional bridegroom. He did, in fact, look far more +like the popular conception of a bridegroom than did young Paul Dampier +in his well-cut but ancient grey tweed suit.</p> + +<p>—"The only togs I've got in the wide world," he'd confided to Gwenna, +"except working clothes and evening things!"</p> + +<p>She stood with her hand in his large, boyish one, repeating in her soft, +un-English accent the vows that once seemed to her such a vast and +solemn and relentless undertaking.</p> + +<p>"<i>To love, honour, and obey ... as long as we both shall live....</i>"</p> + +<p>It seemed now so little to have to promise! It seemed only a fraction of +all that her heart gave gladly to the lord of it!</p> + +<p>"<i>Till Death us do part</i>," she repeated quietly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p> + +<p>And it was then she thought of the two wishes. One was that Paul should +be always as much in love with her as he was at that moment.</p> + +<p>She was too young fully to realise the greater wisdom of her own second +wish.</p> + +<p><i>It was that she herself should always remain as much in love with +Paul.</i></p> + +<p>If only God would be very, very kind to them, she thought, and allow +just this to be!</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>"And you sign your name here," said the clergyman in the vestry to the +newly-made husband, who put down in his small neat handwriting, "Paul +Dampier, Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps," on the grey-blue sheet, which, +duly witnessed and blotted, he was going to tuck away into the +breast-pocket of his tweed jacket.</p> + +<p>"No. Those marriage lines are not yours," the parson stopped him with a +smile. "Those are the property of your wife."</p> + +<p>Gwenna, dazed, realised that this referred to herself. She took the +folded marriage-certificate and slipped it into the white satin ribbon +girding her pretty frock. She looked very childish for "a wife"! But for +that bright wedding-ring on her finger (half a size too large for it) +she might have passed for one of the veiled and white-clad First +Communicants of an Easter Sunday in Paris. Then she turned up the little +face, from which the veil had been thrown back, to be kissed by the +others who had followed them into the vestry. Vaguely<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> she heard +Leslie's voice, arranging in murmurs with Hugo Swayne. "No. Perhaps I'll +come on afterwards.... After I've helped her to change.... No; you take +Mr. Lloyd and feed him somewhere. No! I'm sure those two won't want to +come on to any lunch. Lunch? My dear man!... Send them in your car to +Victoria and Johnson can bring it back.... They'll be getting away at +once."</p> + +<p>At once! Gwenna looked up into her young husband's blue eyes.</p> + +<p>He caught her hand.</p> + +<p>"Got you now," he said softly. "Can't run away this time."</p> + +<p>By rights she should have walked down the church on his arm. But he did +not loose her hand. So it was hand-in-hand, like children, that they +hurried out again, ahead of the others, into the sunshine of the porch. +The merry breeze took the bride's veil and spread it, a curtain of mist, +across the pair of them. Gwenna Dampier caught it aside, laughing +gleefully as they stepped out of the porch. The gravity of the service +had sparkled into gaiety in their eyes. He crushed her fingers in his. +Her heart sang. They would be off——! It was almost too lovely to be +true, but——</p> + +<p>Yes. It <i>was</i> too lovely to be true.</p> + +<p>A shadow fell across the path; across the bride's white shoe.</p> + +<p>Johnson, Hugo's man, who had been waiting with the car, stepped quickly +up to the bridegroom.</p> + +<p>"Excuse me, sir, but this message.... Came just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> as you'd gone into +church. I waited. The woman brought it on from your rooms, sir."</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier took the wire and read it.</p> + +<p>The white-frocked girl he had just married stood at the church entrance +watching him, while the breeze lifted her veil and stirred her curls and +tossed a couple of creamy petals, from her wreath, on to the breast of +his coat. She herself stood motionless, stony.</p> + +<p>She knew that this was no wire of congratulation such as any bridal +couple may expect to receive as they come out of church from their +wedding. She knew, even before she heard his deep voice saying—blankly +and hurriedly:</p> + +<p>"I say. It's from the War Office. I shall have to go. I've got to leave +you. Now. I'm ordered to join at once!"</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<h3>THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM</h3> + + +<p>Gwenna Dampier was always to be truly thankful that at that thunderbolt +moment of parting at the church door from the lover who had only been +her husband for the last quarter of an hour she had been too dazed to +show any emotion.</p> + +<p>As at the Aviation Dinner she had been numbed by excess of joy, so, now, +the shock had left her stony. She knew that she had turned quite a calm +little face to the concerned and startled faces of the others as they +hurried up to ask what was happening that Paul should be getting into +that car alone. It was as quiet and calm to receive Paul's last kiss as +he held her strained for a moment almost painfully close to him, +muttering, "Take care of yourself, Little Thing."</p> + +<p>At the moment it struck her as rather funny, that.</p> + +<p><i>She</i> was to take care of herself! She, who was just to stay quietly at +home, doing nothing. And this was what he told her; he, who was going +off on service, <i>where</i>, he himself didn't know. Off, to serve as an +Army Aviator, a flyer who swooped above enemy country, to shoot and to +be shot at; every instant in peril of his life.</p> + +<p>She even smiled a little as the motor rattled down the hill with him, +leaving her to Leslie, and to Uncle Hugh, and to Mr. Hugo Swayne.</p> + +<p>She found herself thinking, sedately, that it was a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span> good thing Paul had +got most of his field service equipment yesterday; shopping while she +had shopped, while she had bought the white shoes and the silk +stockings, the Princesse slip and the handful of other dainty girlish +things that had been all the <i>trousseau</i> she could collect in such a +hurry. Yes, Paul was all ready, she told her friends. She wouldn't see +him again before he left London, she expected.</p> + +<p>She did not see him again.</p> + +<p>That night at the Club, when she was still dazedly quiet—it was Leslie +Long who had to swallow lumps in her own throat, and to blink back +starting tears from her eyes—that night there arrived the first note of +his that had ever been addressed to:</p> + +<p class="center">"<i>Mrs. Paul Dampier.</i>"</p> + +<p>It was scrawled and hurried and in pencil. It began:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"My darling Wife." It told her to address to the War Office until +she heard from him, and that she would hear from him whenever he +could manage it. It ended up, "<i>I was so jolly proud of you because +you took it like that, you can't think. I always thought you were a +sweet Little Thing. I knew you'd be a plucky Little Thing too. +Bless you. It's going to be all right.</i></p> + +<p class="ralign">"<i>Your affectionate husband</i>, <br /> +"P. D."</p> +</div> + +<p>It was Leslie who cried herself to sleep that night; not Gwenna Dampier.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span></p> + +<p>Only gradually the girl came out of the stupor that had helped her, to +the realisation of what had really happened. He'd gone! She'd been +left—without him! But as one source of help disappeared, another came +to hand.</p> + +<p>It was that queer mixture of feelings that the more enlightened young +women at the Club would have called "The conventional point of view."</p> + +<p>Miss Armitage at the Club tea-table said to her friends, "Nayowh, I +don't consider them at all 'splendid,' as you call it, these girls who +go about quite smiling and happily after their husbands have embarked +for the War. Saying good-bye without shedding a tear, indeed; and all +that kind of thing. Shows they can't <i>care</i> much. Heartless! +Unsensitive! Callous, I call them."</p> + +<p>The art-student with the Trilby hair, who was never quite certain +whether she agreed with all Miss Armitage's views or whether she didn't, +remarked that really—really anybody who'd seen Miss Williams' face when +that young man called for her <i>couldn't</i> help thinking that she cared. +Most awfully. If <i>she</i> didn't make a fuss, it must be because she was +rather brave.</p> + +<p>"Brive? <i>I</i> don't call it that," declared Miss Armitage. "It's just 'the +thing to do' among those people. They've made a regular idol of this +stupid, deadening Convention of theirs. They all want to be alike. +'Plucky.' 'Not showing anything.' Pah! I call it crushing out their own +individuality for the sake of an ideal that isn't anything very <i>much</i>, +if you ask me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> They all catch it from each other, these wretched Army +men's wives. It's no more <i>credit</i> to them than it is to some kinds of +dogs not to howl when you hold them up by their tiles."</p> + +<p>The Trilby art-student put in shyly, "Doesn't that show that they're +well bred?"</p> + +<p>Miss Armitage, the Socialist, fixing her through her glasses, demanded, +"When you sy 'Well bred' d'you mean the dogs are—or the women that +don't cry?"</p> + +<p>"Well—both, perhaps," ventured the art-student, blushing as she helped +herself to jam. Miss Armitage, with her little superior smile, gave out, +"There's no such thing as well bred, what <i>you</i> mean by it. What you +mean's just pewer snobbery. The reel meaning of well bred is somebody +who is specially gifted in mind and body. Well, all you <i>can</i> say of the +minds of Army people is that they haven't got any. And I don't know that +<i>I'm</i> impressed by their bodies."</p> + +<p>Here a student of music from the other side of the table said she saw +what Miss Armitage meant, exactly. Only, as for Army people, Gwenna +Williams couldn't have been called that. Her people were just sort of +Welsh Dissenters, awfully <i>against</i> soldiers and that kind of thing.</p> + +<p>"Doesn't matter. She's the sort of girl who's just like a chameleon: +takes all her colour from the man she's supposed to be in love with," +said Miss Armitage loftily. "She'll know that she'll never <i>keep</i> him +unless she's just like the class of women he thinks most of. (As it is, +I don't see what that empty-headed girl's got to keep a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span> man <i>with</i>.) +So, as I say, she'll <i>suppress</i> her own identity, and grow the kind 'He' +happens to like."</p> + +<p>The art-student murmured that she supposed it didn't really <i>matter</i>, a +girl doing that. Provided that the new "identity" which was "grown to +please the man" were a better one than the old.</p> + +<p>Miss Armitage the Feminist, sniffed; silent with contempt for this idea. +Then she turned again to the student of music, to conclude the +summing-up of the new bride's character.</p> + +<p>"She'll be positively stimulated and buoyed-up, all the time, by the +thought that 'He' considered it plucky of her to go on as if she was +quite pleased that he was fighting!" declared the lecturer. "You see! By +and by she'll believe she <i>is</i> pleased. She'll catch the whole +detestable Jingow spirit, <i>I</i> know. Syme attitude of mind as the Zulu +who runs amuck at the sound of a drum. Hysterical, that's what <i>I</i> call +what's at the root of it all!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>But whatever Miss Armitage, the Cockney suffragette, chose to call it, +it was there, that Spirit.</p> + +<p>In those few weeks after the declaration of war it spread and throve +over all England. It made Life still worth living, and well worth +living, for thousands of anxious sweethearts, and of mothers giving only +sons for their country, and of wives who missed closest comrades, and of +young widows who had but lately been made brides.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p> + +<p>It inspired, through the girl he left behind him, the man who went to +war; and thus its influence became part of that subtle but crucial thing +which is known as the Moral of an Army, and of an Empire and of a +Civilisation.</p> + +<p>It was, as Leslie Long, the lover of quotations, often quoted to herself +in those days:</p> + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"The Voice to Kingly boys<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To lift them through the fight;<br /></span> +<span class="i0">And comfortress of Unsuccess<br /></span> +<span class="i1">To give the dead Good-night.<br /></span> +</div><div class="stanza"> +<span class="i0">"A rule to trick the arithmetic<br /></span> +<span class="i1">Too base of leaguing odds,<br /></span> +<span class="i0">The spur of trust, the curb of lust,<br /></span> +<span class="i1">The hand-maid of the gods."<br /></span> +</div></div> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>Little Gwenna, the wife who had been left at the church door, took all +the help that Spirit gave her.</p> + +<p>Two days after her wedding her Uncle Hugh went back to the slate-roofed +village that was wedged between those steep, larch-grown Welch hills. +But, though his niece found that this "dreat-ful" old man could be all +that was gentle and kind for her, she refused to go home, as he begged +her, with him.</p> + +<p>She said she must live somewhere where she could "see a little bit of +what was going on." She must have some work, real work, to fill her +time. She thanked him; she would let him know directly she felt she +could come down to Wales. But just now, please, she wanted nothing but +to get back to Mrs. Crewe, her Aeroplane Lady<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> at the Works. She'd go +back just as if nothing had happened.</p> + +<p>She returned, to find changes at that Aircraft Factory.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<h3>THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT"</h3> + + +<p>The first of these changes at the Aircraft Works was the sight of the +khaki-clad sentry at the entrance.</p> + +<p>He was pacing up and down the bit of dusty road outside the shops; and +he stopped Gwenna peremptorily, not knowing that she was one of the +staff.</p> + +<p>She told him, and went on. She found the big central shop in a ferment +of activity. Mr. Ryan, striding out on some hurried errand, nearly +knocked her over. He called an "Awfully sorry, Miss Gwenna—Mrs. +Dampier, I mean," over his shoulder. She saw that his day of dalliance +was past, even had she been still "Miss Gwenna." He had less time for +Girl, nowadays. The frames of no fewer than four aeroplanes were set up +on the stocks; and out of the body of the most nearly completed one +there climbed the slight figure of the Aeroplane Lady. Her blue and +youthful eyes lighted up at the sight of the girl standing in the clear, +diffused light of the many windows and backed by the spinning shafting.</p> + +<p>"Ah! You've arrived, Mrs. Dampier," she said briskly, using the new name +without a pause or a smile, for which Gwenna blessed her. "Thank Heaven +I shall have a reliable clerk again.... No end of correspondence now, my +dear. A sheaf of it waiting in the office.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> Come on and see to it now, +will you? And for goodness' sake remind me that I am 'theirs +obediently,' instead of merely 'truly,' to the Admiralty. I always +forget. If I were left to myself my letters would sound just like the +aviator's who wrote to the <small>POWERS-THAT-BE</small>: '<i>Commander So-and-So +presents his compliments and begs respectfully to submit that don't you +think it would be a jolly good thing if we started a repairing +shop?</i>'—somewhere or other. Well! Here we are, you see. Stacks of it!" +she went on as they reached that office where an airman's sweetheart had +first realised the idea that an aeroplane might mean a ship of war—war +in the clouds.</p> + +<p>"We shall have as much work as we can get through now," said the +Aeroplane Lady. "Look at this order from the War Office. And this—and +this!"</p> + +<p>For to all intents and purposes the War Office and the Admiralty had +"taken over" Mrs. Crewe's Aircraft Factory.</p> + +<p>The place rang and echoed, long after the hours of the ordinary working +man's working day, with the clinking and whirring and hammering of those +labours that went to bring forth these great wings of War.</p> + +<p>Some of the French mechanics whom Gwenna had known well by sight had +disappeared. They had been served with their mobilisation papers and +were now off to serve under the Tricolour.</p> + +<p>One or two of the English fitters, who were Reservists, had rejoined. +One had enlisted.</p> + +<p>But now, the Aeroplane Lady explained, the enlisting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> of any more of her +men had been discouraged. <i>They</i> were too useful where they were. They, +with many other sturdy Britons who fretted because they were not to take +up other, riskier work on the other side of the Channel, were kept busy +enough preparing the arms which those other, envied men were to use.</p> + +<p>It was for the encouragement of them and their fellow-workers in +Armament and Ammunition factories that a bundle of blue-lettered posters +came down presently to the Works.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, once more arrayed in the grey-blue, dope-stiffened pinafore, +had the job of pinning up here and there, in the shops and sheds, these +notices. They announced to the Man at the Bench that he was as needful +to his country as the Man in the Trench. They gave out:</p> + +<p class="center"> +"YOU CAN HIT THE ENEMY AS HARD WITH<br /> +HAMMER AND RIVET AS YOU CAN WITH<br /> +RIFLE AND BULLET.<br /> +HIT HIM!<br /> +HURRY UP WITH THE SHIPS AND GUNS!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>And she, too, little Gwenna Dampier, clerk and odd-job-girl, felt +herself respond to the appeal. As she typed letters and orders, as she +heated dope, as she varnished for the men's handling those huge blue +prints with the white, spider's-web-like "working drawings," or as she +tested square inches of the fine wing-linen,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> she felt that she, too, +was helping in her way to hurry up with those needed ships and guns.</p> + +<p>Was she not lucky in her job?</p> + +<p>For always she was buoyed up by the notion that whatever she touched +might be of service, not only to the country which the Beloved was +serving, but to the Beloved himself. Who knew? He himself might have to +fly in any one of these very machines! Every least part, every atom of +metal about them bore the visible, indestructible stamp of the English +War Office. And Gwenna herself bore that unseen but indelible stamp of +her love to her absent lad in every inch of her pliant girl's body, in +every thought of her malleable girl's mind.</p> + +<p>So the late summer weeks passed as she worked, glad in the thought that +any or all of it might be for him. She felt sorry for those women who, +when their man is away, have nothing but purely feminine work with which +to fill the empty days. Sewing, household cares, knitting.... She +herself knitted, snatching minutes from the twelve-o'clock dinner-hour +in the cottage with Mrs. Crewe to add rows to the khaki woollen +cap-comforter that she had started for Paul. It was just a detail in her +own busy life. But it struck her that for countless left-behind women +this detail remained all that they had to do; to knit all day, thinking, +wondering, fretting over the Absent.</p> + +<p>"That must be so <i>awful</i>! I don't think I should want to <i>live</i>," she +told the Aeroplane Lady one dinner-hour, "if there wasn't something else +really wanted by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> the men themselves, that I could have to do with! +Every soldier's wife," said Gwenna, drawing herself up above the table +with a pretty and very proud little gesture which made Mrs. Crewe smile +a little, "I think every soldier's wife ought to have the chance of a +job in some factory of this sort. Or in a shop for soldiers' comforts, +perhaps. Like that woman has in Bond Street where I bought those +extra-nice khaki handkerchiefs for Paul. <i>She's</i> always thinking out +some sort of new 'dodge' for the Front. A new sleeping-rug or +trench-boots or something. A woman can feel she's taking some part in +the actual campaign then. Don't you think so, Mrs. Crewe? But there +aren't many other things she can do," concluded the girl with that soft, +up-and-down accent, "unless she's actually a Red Cross nurse looking +after the wounded. There's nothing else."</p> + +<p>"Oh, isn't there? Surely——" began the Aeroplane Lady. Then she +stopped, with a half-humorous, half-sad little smile in her eyes.</p> + +<p>She was going to have suggested that the biggest Job that a woman can +achieve has, at the root of things, everything to do with the carrying +on of a campaign. Those English workmen in the shops were responsible +for the perfect and reliable workmanship of the ships and guns. It was +only the women of England who could make themselves responsible for the +soundness and reliability of the men of the next generation, their +little sons now growing up, to be perhaps the soldiers of the next war. +All this flashed through the mind of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> Aeroplane Lady, who was also +the mother of a fighting airman.</p> + +<p>But, on second thoughts, she decided that she would not say anything +about it. Not to this cherub-headed, guileless girl who bore Paul +Dampier's name, and who wore his glitteringly new wedding-ring on her +finger (that is, when she hadn't forgotten it, where it lay in the +soap-dish in the bathroom or hanging up on a peg in the Wing-room beside +her sunshine-yellow jersey coat. It was, as the newly-married Mrs. +Dampier explained, miles too big for her, and she hated getting it a +mass of dope).</p> + +<p>So, instead of saying what she was going to say, the Aeroplane Lady +drank tea out of a workman-like-looking, saucerless Brittany cup with +two handles, and presently asked if there were anything exciting that +she might be allowed to hear out of the letter that had arrived that +morning from Mr. Dampier.</p> + +<p>Those eagerly-looked-for, greedily-devoured letters from the young +Airman to his wife were uncertain qualities enough.</p> + +<p>Sometimes they came regularly, frequently, even two in a day, for Gwenna +to kiss, and to learn by heart, and to slip under her pillow at night.</p> + +<p>Then for days and weeks there would be nothing from him; and Gwenna +would seem to herself to be going about with her flesh holding its +breath in suspense all over her body.</p> + +<p>That suspense was not (curiously enough) too agonised for his safety.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p> + +<p>She had laughed quite easily the day that one of the older workmen had +said to her kindly, if tactlessly:</p> + +<p>"Ah, Miss Williams—or ma'am, as I s'pose I ought to say—I do feel +sorry for you, I do. You here, same as when you was a single young lady. +Your young gentleman God knows where, and you knowing that as likely as +not you never <i>will</i> see him again, p'raps."</p> + +<p>"If I were not going to see him again," the girl had said tranquilly, "I +should know. I should feel it. And I haven't that feeling at all, Mr. +Harris. I'm one of those people who believe in presentiments. And I know +I <i>shall</i> see him, though I don't know when."</p> + +<p>That was the only trouble! When? <i>When?</i> When would she have something +for her love to live on, besides just messages on lifeless paper?</p> + +<p>Paul's letters were sometimes mere hasty scrawls. An "All's well," a +darling or so, and his name on a bit of thin ruled paper torn from a +note-book and scented vaguely with tobacco....</p> + +<p>To-day it was a longer one.</p> + +<p>"It's dated four days ago only, and it's just headed '<span class="smcap">France,</span>'" said +young Mrs. Dampier, sitting, backed by the cottage window, with the +level Berkshire landscape, flowering now into lines of white tents for +the New Army in training, behind her curly head. "He says:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Last week I had a day, if you like! Engaged with two Taubes in the +morning. Machine hit in four places. In the afternoon, as I was up +reconnoitring,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> I saw below me a railway train, immensely long, +going along as slow as a slug, with two engines. Sent in my report +to Head Quarters, and wasn't believed, if you please. They said +there couldn't be a train there. Line was destroyed. However, they +did condescend to go and look. Afterwards I was told my report was +of the greatest value——'</p></div> + +<p>"There! Think of that," broke off Gwenna, with shining eyes.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"'And it's leaked out now that what I saw was a train crammed with +ammunition. Afterwards (same day) went and dropped bombs on some +works at—I'd better not say where!—and hope I get to know what +damage was done. I know one was a clinking shot. A great game, +isn't it?'</p></div> + +<p>"<i>Isn't</i> it!" murmured the girl who had shuddered so at her first +realisation of her lover as a possible fighter. But now, after these +weeks, she shrank no longer. Gradually she had come to look upon War as +a stupendous Adventure from which it would have been cruelty to shut him +out. She saw it now as the reward of his years of working, waiting, +experimenting. And she said to herself fancifully, "It must be because +I've 'drunk of his cup,' and now I've come to 'think his thoughts.' I +don't care what those suffragettes say about losing one's individuality. +<i>I</i> do think it's a great game!"</p> + +<p>She read on:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span></p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Got three letters and <i>Punch</i> from you in the evening. Thanks +awfully. You will write to me all you can, darling, won't you? The +little wing is quite safe in my tunic-pocket. Give my love to Mrs. +Crewe and to your Uncle and to Leslie Long. Heard from old Hugo +that he was actually going to enlist. Do him lots of good.'</p></div> + +<p>"Then he sort of ends up," said Gwenna, dimpling to herself a little +over the ending:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"> +<p class="ralign">("'<span class="smcap">Your always Boy.</span>'),</p> +</div> + +<p>"and then there's a postscript:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"'Wouldn't it be top-hole if I could get some leave to come over +and fetch the P.D.Q.? Guess the Censor will be puzzled to know who +<i>she</i> is; who's your lady friend? in fact.</p> + +<p class="ralign">"'P. D.'"</p></div> + + +<p>"Thank you, Mrs. Dampier," said the Aeroplane Lady as she rose briskly +to return with her assistant to the Works. "Give him my love, too (if I +may), when you write. And I should like to tell you to write and ask +Leslie Long down to see us one Saturday afternoon," she added as they +came through the gap in the dusty hedge to the entrance road. "But +really we're too rushed to think of such relaxations as visitors!"</p> + +<p>For since Gwenna had come back to the Works<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> neither she nor her +employer had taken any sort of holiday. That sacred right of the English +worker, the "Saturday half-day off," existed no more at those busy +Aircraft Works. Just as if it were any ordinary day of the week, the +whistle sounded after the midday rest. And just as if it were any other +day of the week, Mrs. Crewe's men (all picked workers, of whom not one +happened to be a Trades Unionist) stacked up the bicycles on which +they'd ridden back from their meal at home in the near-by town, and +trooped into the shops. They continued to hurry up with those ships and +guns.</p> + +<p>Again the whirring and the chinking and the other forge-like noises +would fill the place. Again the quick, achieving movements of clever +hands, black and soaked in oil, would be carried on, sometimes until, +from the training-camps on the surrounding ugly, useful plains, the +bugles had sounded "<i>Lights Out</i>." ...</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<h3>LESLIE, ON "THE MOTLEY OF MARS"</h3> + + +<p>Now, as it happened, Miss Leslie Long did not choose to wait for her +invitation to the Aircraft Works. Unasked and unexpected, she turned up +there the very next Saturday afternoon.</p> + +<p>She was given a chair in that spacious, white, +characteristically-scented room where Mrs. Crewe and Gwenna were again +busy with the wings. She was told not to expect either of them to stop +work to look at her, but to go on talking and to tell them if there were +anything new going on in London.</p> + +<p>"Anything? Why, everything's new," Leslie told them gaily.</p> + +<p>She wore the mauve linen frock and the shady hat that had been her +bridesmaid's attire for Gwenna's wedding. And she was looking well, +Gwenna noticed, as she stole a glance at her chum; well, and happier +than she had seen Leslie look since the beginning of this eventful +summer.</p> + +<p>Leslie then gossiped to them of the many changes in London. These are +now very ancient history to a whole nation. But at that time (in +September, Nineteen-fourteen) they sounded still strange enough to those +who lived out of town.</p> + +<p>She spoke of the darkened streets. The bright, purposely-misleading +lights in the Park. Of the recruiting<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> posters; the recruiting results. +Of the first of the refugees. Leslie's old lady had given hospitality to +two ladies, a mother and a daughter from Brussels, and it was Leslie's +new duty to translate English to them. Also of the departure of +regiments she talked....</p> + +<p>"Of course there are only two classes into which you <i>can</i> divide the +young men who aren't getting ready to go out," decreed Leslie, the +whole-hearted. "Either they're Objects of Pity, or else they're Objects +of Contempt."</p> + +<p>"Come, come!" put in the Aeroplane Lady, laughing a little, but without +raising her eyes from the stretched canvas on the trestles before her. +"What about my men outside there?"</p> + +<p>"I bet they envy the rawest recruit in K.'s Army!" declared Leslie. "The +most anæmic little plucky shop-assistant who's only just scraped through +on his chest-measurement and who's never spent so many consecutive hours +in the open air in his whole life before!" She patted the stately head +of the Great Dane as he stepped up to her from his big wooden kennel in +the corner, and went on to say how she loved the New Armies.</p> + +<p>"We see plenty of their doings up at Hampstead now, Taffy," she said. +"'<i>The Heath has Armies plenty, and semi-warlike bands!</i>' Queen's +Westminsters coming up in sweaters and shorts to do Physical Ekkers on +the cricket-pitch. Swagger young men, some of them, too. Driving up in +cars. Wearing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> their Jermyn Street winter-sports kit of last year under +common privates' overcoats."</p> + +<p>"Mars in motley!" said the Aeroplane Lady.</p> + +<p>Leslie said, "It is a <i>mixture</i>! New Army Type Number One, Section A: +the boy who was born to be a soldier and bred to be a clerk. The fighter +who wouldn't have got a chance to <i>live</i> if it hadn't been for this war. +The Dear Duck who's being taken to the water for the first time after +twenty years!... Then, of course, there's the New Army Type Number +Forty-three: the Honest Striver in Khaki, putting his back into learning +a job that wasn't ever meant to be his. Not one bit thrilled by the idea +of a scrap. No fun to him. Civilian down to his bones. But—'<i>It is his +duty, and he does</i>.'"</p> + +<p>"All the more credit," the Aeroplane Lady reminded her quietly, "to the +born civilian."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I know, Mrs. Crewe. One thoroughly respects him for it," agreed +the soldier's daughter warmly.</p> + +<p>Adding meditatively, "But it's rather an effort to <i>like</i> him as much as +the other kind!"</p> + +<p>"Talking of duty, Mr. Grant has gone," said Gwenna as she worked. "You +know, Leslie: the engineer at our Westminster place who was always +talking to Mabel Butcher and then saying, 'Well! Duty calls. I must +away.' I'm <i>sure</i> he said that before he went off to enlist. He's in the +R.E. And the office-boy that had such an <i>awful</i> accent went with him. +<i>He's</i> in the Halberdiers now; billeted in the country in some garage +with six other men."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span></p> + +<p>"How funny! D'you know who one of the men is? My friend, Monty Scott, +the Dean's son," said Leslie, laughing again. "You remember him, Taffy, +at that dance? He wore that Black Panther get-up.... He came up to see +me, in uniform, last Sunday. I told him he'd only joined the Halberdiers +because he thought the touch of black suited him. Then he told me of his +weird billet in the country with these five other men. Two of them had +lately come out of prison, he said; and they were really awfully +interesting, comparing the grub they'd had there with what was served +out to them here. I asked him (Monty) how he was getting on. He summed +up the lot of the New Ranker rather well, I thought. He said, 'I've +<i>never</i> been so uncomfortable or laughed so much in my life'!"</p> + +<p>The Aeroplane Lady, working, said she thought he must be a dear.</p> + +<p>"He is, rather," agreed the girl who had thrice refused to marry this +young man.</p> + +<p>"Why d'you sigh?" asked Gwenna quickly. A sigh meant, to her, only one +thing. Impatience over the absence of the Beloved!</p> + +<p>"I—perhaps I was thinking of Monty Scott's eyes," said Leslie lightly, +bending over to smooth the dog's neck. "They <i>are</i> so absurdly handsome. +<i>Such</i> a pity one can't have them to wear as brooches!" Then, quickly, +she turned from the subject of Monty Scott. She drew something out of +her black silk bag. A picture postcard.</p> + +<p>"From one of our Allies," said Leslie, showing it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p> + +<p>It gave a view of a French Regiment, still wearing the picturesque +uniform of Eighteen-seventy, marching down a sunny, chestnut-bordered +boulevard. The soldier in the immediate foreground showed under the +jaunty <i>képi</i> a dark, intelligent, mobile face that Gwenna recognised.</p> + +<p>She sighed and smiled over the card. It brought back to her that tea at +Hugo Swayne's rooms with Leslie, and the tall, blonde Englishman who was +to be her husband, and that dark young French engineer who had said, +"But the Machine is also of the sex of Mademoiselle!" He had written on +this card in sprawling French writing and blue French ink, "<i>À +Mademoiselle Langue. Salutation amicale. Remember, please, the private +soldier Gaston, who carries always in his knapsack the memory of the +Curate's Egg!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Fancy, two of the men who were at Mr. Swayne's that afternoon are off +at the Front to-day," said Gwenna Dampier. "That is, all three, perhaps. +Paul said something about his cousin enlisting."</p> + +<p>"Poor Hugo Swayne," said Leslie, with a laugh, that she stopped as if +she were sorry she had begun it. "It's too bad, really."</p> + +<p>"What is? <i>Isn't</i> he enlisting?"</p> + +<p>"Yes. Oh, yes, Taffy, he has. But merely enlisting isn't the whole job," +said Leslie. "He—to begin with, he could hardly get them to pass +him——"</p> + +<p>"Why? Too fat?" asked Gwenna mercilessly.</p> + +<p>"Fat—Oh, no. They said three weeks' Swedish exercise <i>and</i> drill would +take that off. He was quite<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> fit, they said, physically. It was his +<i>mental</i> capacity they seemed to doubt," explained Leslie. "Of course +that was rather a shock to Hugo to hear, after the years he's been +looking up to himself as a rather advanced and enlightened and thinking +person. However, he took it very well. He saw what they meant."</p> + +<p>"Who were 'they'?" asked Mrs. Crewe.</p> + +<p>"The soldier-men he went to first of all, old brother-officers of his +father's, who'd been with his father in Egypt, and whom he asked to find +him a job of some sort. They told him, quite gently, of course, that +they were afraid he was not 'up' to any soldiering job. They said they +were afraid there were heaps of young Englishmen like him, awfully +anxious to 'do their bits,' but simply <i>not clever enough</i>! (Rather +nice, isn't it, the revenge, at last, of the Brainless Army Type on the +Cultured Civilian?) And he said to the old Colonel or General or +whatever it was, 'I know, sir. I see, sir. Yes, I suppose I have addled +myself up by too much reading and too much talk. I know I'm a +Stage-Society-and-Café-Royal rotter, and no earthly good at this +crisis.' And then he turned round and said quite angrily, 'Why wasn't I +brought up to be some use when the time came?' And the old soldier-man +said quite quietly, 'My dear Swayne, none of you "enlightened" people +believed us that there was any "time" coming. You see now that we were +right.' And Hugo said, 'You ought to have hammered it into me. Isn't +there anything that I can do, sir?' And at last they got him +something."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span></p> + +<p>"What?" demanded Gwenna.</p> + +<p>"Well, of course it sounds <i>rather</i> ludicrous when you come to say what +it is," admitted Leslie, her mouth curling into a smile that she could +not suppress. "But it just shows the Philistines that there <i>is</i> some +use (if not beauty) in Futurist painting, after all. One always knew +'<i>there must be something, if one could but find it out</i>.'"</p> + +<p>"But your friend Mr. Swayne can't do Futurist paintings," objected the +Aeroplane Lady, "at the Front!"</p> + +<p>"Well, but that's just what he <i>is</i> doing! He's in France; at Quisait. +Painting motor-buses to be used for transport wagons," explained Leslie. +"You know the most disguising colour for those things at a distance is +said to be not khaki, or feld-grau, or dull green, or any other <i>single</i> +colour. You have to have a sort of heather-mixture of all the most +brilliant colours that can be got! This simply makes the thing invisible +a certain way off. It's the idea of the game-feather tweed on the moors, +you know. So Hugo's using his talents by painting emerald-green and +magenta and scarlet and black triangles and cubes and splodges all over +those big Vanguards——"</p> + +<p>"Why, <i>I</i> could do that," murmured the girl who was so busy varnishing +the aeroplane wings. "Sure I could."</p> + +<p>"Oh, but, Taffy, you haven't been educated up to it," protested Leslie +gravely. "You <i>couldn't</i> get it sufficiently dynamic and simultaneous +and marinetic!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span></p> + +<p>A message from the Central Shop to the Aeroplane Lady left the two girls +alone presently in the Wing-room. Then Leslie, putting her hand on the +rounded arm below the loose sleeve of Gwenna's working-pinafore, said +softly and quickly, "Look here, I came down because I had something to +tell you, Taffy."</p> + +<p>The Welsh girl glanced quickly up into her chum's black eyes.</p> + +<p>"Something to tell me?" Gwenna's heart sank.</p> + +<p>She didn't want to hear of Leslie having definitely made up her mind at +last to marry a—well, a man who was good-natured and well bred and +generous enough about wedding-presents, but who confessed himself to be +of "no earthly good" when "it came to the real things of life." "Oh, +Leslie, is it——"</p> + +<p>"It is that you can congratulate me."</p> + +<p>"Oh, dear. I was <i>afraid</i>—You mean you <i>are</i> engaged to him, Leslie. To +Mr. Swayne."</p> + +<p>"No," said Leslie, holding her black head high. "No, not to Mr. Swayne. +Why must 'congratulations' always mean 'Mister' Anybody? They don't, +here. I mean you can congratulate me on coming to see reason. I know, +now, that I mustn't think of marrying him."</p> + +<p>Gwenna drew a big breath of relief.</p> + +<p>She laid her dope-thickened brush carefully down in the tin, and clapped +her little sticky hands.</p> + +<p>"I'm <i>so</i> thankful," she cried childishly. "It wouldn't have done, +Leslie!"</p> + +<p>"No," said Miss Long.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p> + +<p>"He wasn't a quarter good enough."</p> + +<p>"Pooh. What's <i>that</i> got to do with caring? Nothing," declared Leslie, +tilting her loose-limbed, mauve-clad figure back on the chair that Paul +Dampier had sat in, the day before the Aviation Dinner. "It's caring +that counts."</p> + +<p>"Haven't I <i>always</i> been saying so?" said Gwenna earnestly as she took +up her brush again. "Not just because I'm a happily-married woman +myself, my dear."</p> + +<p>Here she drew herself up with the same little gesture of matronly +dignity that had made Mrs. Crewe smile. It forced Leslie to bite her +lips into gravity. And Paul Dampier's girl concluded innocently, "<i>I've</i> +always known how much Love means. What's <i>money</i>?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing to run down, I assure you. Money's gorgeous. Money means +<i>Power</i>," affirmed Leslie. "Apart from the silk-stockinged aspect of it, +it lets you live a much fuller life mentally and spiritually. It can +make you almost everything you want to be, to yourself and to other +people, Taff. It's worth almost anything to get it. But there's one +thing it's not worth," said Leslie Long, really gravely: "<i>It's not +worth marrying the wrong person for.</i>"</p> + +<p>"I don't know why you didn't know that <i>before</i>," said little Gwenna, +feeling for once in her life <i>so</i> much older and much wiser than her +chum. "What makes you know it now, Leslie?"</p> + +<p>"The War, perhaps. Everything's put down to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> War nowadays.... But it +has simplified things. One knows better what's what. What one must keep, +what one can throw overboard," said Leslie Long. "Everything is +changed."</p> + +<p>Gwenna thought for a moment of telling her that one thing did not +change. Love!</p> + +<p>Then she thought that that was not quite true, either.</p> + +<p>In its own way Love, too, was changed by this War.</p> + +<p>"There's <i>more</i> of it!" thought Gwenna simply.</p> + +<p>For had not her own love to her absent lover burned with more steady a +flame within her ever since the morning when she had seen him depart to +take his own share in the struggle? And so she guessed it must be with +many a girl, less ardently in love than she had been, but now doubly +proud of her man—and her soldier. She thought of the other hurried +War-bridals and betrothals all over the country. She thought of the +gentler voice and manner that she had noticed between the husbands and +wives among the cottagers down here. They realised, perhaps, how many +couples were being swept apart by War. Yes, this thought seemed to give +Man and Woman an added value in the eyes of each other, Gwenna thought. +She thought of the gradual disappearance of the suffragette type with +her indictments against Man. She thought of the new courtesy with which +every woman and girl seemed to be treated in the streets and tubes and +omnibuses by every man who wore the livery of War.</p> + +<p>Of the two things greater than all things in this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> world, one fulfilled +the other. And, because War was in the world again, it was bringing home +undeniably to man and maid alike that "<i>the first is Love</i>."</p> + +<p>Then Gwenna sighed from her heart.</p> + +<p>How long? How much longer would it be before she could see her own lover +again?</p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<h3>A LOVE LETTER—AND A ROSE</h3> + + +<p>A couple of days after Leslie's visit Gwenna was moving about the +bedroom at Mrs. Crewe's cottage.</p> + +<p>It was an old-fashioned, quaintly pretty room. The low ceiling, on which +the lamplight gleamed, was crossed by two sturdy black oak beams. +Straw-matting covered the uneven floor, and the wall-paper was sprinkled +with a pattern of little prim posies in baskets. The chintz of the +casement-curtains showed flowering sprays on which parrots perched; +there was a patchwork quilt on the oaken bed.</p> + +<p>Gwenna had come up early; it was only nine o'clock. So, having undressed +and got into her soft white ruffled night-gown and her kimono of pink +cotton-crêpe, she proceeded to indulge in one of those "bedroom +potterings" so dear to girlhood's heart.</p> + +<p>First there was a drawer to be tidied in the dressing-table that stood +in the casement-window. Ribbons to be smoothed out and rolled up; white +embroidered collars to be put in a separate heap. Next there was the +frilling to be ripped out of the neck and sleeves of her grey linen +dress, that she had just taken off, and to be rolled up in a little +ball, and tossed into the wastepaper basket. Then, two Cash's +marking-tapes with her name, <span class="smcap">Gwenna Dampier</span>, to be sewn on to the couple +of fine, Irish linen handkerchiefs that had been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> brought down to her as +a little offering from Leslie. Then there was her calendar to be brought +up to date; three leaves to tear off until she came to the day's +quotation:</p> + +<p class="center">"Don't call the score at half-time."</p> + +<p>Then there was the last button to sew on to a filmy camisole that she +had found leisure, even with her work and her knitting, to make for +herself. Gradually, young Mrs. Dampier meant to accumulate quite a lot +of "pretties" for the Bottom Drawers, that Ideal which woman never +utterly relinquishes. The house and furniture of married life Gwenna +could let go without a sigh. "The nest"—pooh! But the ideal of "the +plumage" was another matter. Even if the trousseau did have to come +after the wedding, never mind! A trousseau she would have by the time +Paul came home again.</p> + +<p>Having finished her stitching, she put her little wicker-work basket +aside on the chest-of-drawers and took out the handkerchief-sachet in +which she kept all his letters. She read each one over again.... "I'll +finish mine to him to-night," she decided. "It'll go off before eight in +the morning, then; save a post."</p> + +<p>From under her work-basket she took her blotting-pad. The letter to Paul +was between the leaves, with her fountain-pen that she'd used at school. +She sat down in the wicker-seated chair before the dressing-table and +leaned her pad up against the edge of that table, with her brushes and +comb, her wicker-cased<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> bottle of eau-de-Cologne, her pot of skin-cream +and her oval hand-mirror, its silver back embossed by Reynolds' immortal +group of cherubs whose curly heads and soft, tip-tilted faces were not +unlike Gwenna's own as she sat there, reading over what she had already +put in that letter to the Front.</p> + +<p>It began in what Gwenna considered an admirably sedate and old-fashioned +style: "<i>My dearest Husband.</i>" She thought: "The Censor, whoever he is! +that Paul talks about—when he reads that he'll think it's from somebody +quite old and been married for ten years, perhaps; instead of only +just—what is it—seven weeks!"</p> + +<p>It went on to acknowledge the last note from Paul and to ask him if she +should send him some more cigarettes, and to beg that he would, if he +could possibly, possibly manage it, get one of his friends to take a +snapshot of him—Paul—in uniform, as Gwenna had never yet seen him.</p> + +<p>Beside the swung oval mirror on the dressing-table there was set up in a +silver frame the only portrait that she possessed of her boy-husband: +the glazed picture postcard that Gwenna had bought that Saturday in May, +when she had gone to see the flying at Hendon with her two friends from +the Westminster Office, Mabel Butcher and Ottilie Becker.</p> + +<p>Gwenna's eyes fell on that photograph as she raised them from her pad. +Her thoughts, going back to that afternoon, suggested the next item to +be written to Paul.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span></p> + +<p>And the young girl wrote on, in much the same style as she would have +talked, with few full stops and so much underlining that some words +seemed to have a bar of music below them.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"You remember my telling you about Miss Becker, the German girl +that I used to be at Westminster with, when we used to call +ourselves the Butcher, the Baker, and the Candlestick-maker? Well, +what <i>do</i> you think? She has been <i>taken away</i> from her +boarding-house where she was in Bloomsbury, and interned in some +camp as an alien enemy, although she is a girl, and they say she +<i>nearly</i> was just on trial <i>as a spy</i>!</p> + +<p>"Mabel Butcher wrote and told me about it. She (Miss Butcher) went +with Ottilie Baker when she had to register herself as an alien at +Somerset House, just after the War broke out, and she said it was +<i>awful</i>, a great place like six National Galleries rolled into one, +and <i>miles</i> of immense long corridors, and <i>simply crowds</i> of all +kinds of Germans and Austrians, just like a queue at the theatre, +waiting to be registered, and all looking scared to <i>death</i>, quite +a lot of pretty girls among them, too.</p> + +<p>"Poor Ottilie Becker cried like anything at having to go, and to be +an enemy alien, you know she'd got such heaps of friends in England +and liked lots of English ways. She used to have a bath every +morning, even. I hate to think of <i>her</i> being a prisoner. Of course +I know one ought to feel that all Germans ought to be wiped out +now," wrote Gwenna, "but it makes <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span>you feel sort of different when +it's a girl you've <i>known</i> and had lots of little jokes with, and I +was with her the very first time I heard of <i>you</i>, so I shan't be +able to help always feeling a little kinder about her.</p> + +<p>"The reason she was arrested was because they found in her room at +the boarding-house a lot of notes about the engineering-works, our +works, which she had been going to send off to that soldier-brother +of hers, Karl. She declared <i>she</i> didn't know she wasn't supposed +to, and that she hadn't an <i>idea</i> of our going to War with her +country or anything, and I'm <i>sure</i> she didn't <i>mean</i> any harm at +all. She said she'd seen her brother Karl in England the week +before War was declared, and that <i>he</i> hadn't said a word to her +then. And so perhaps he <i>was</i> that waiter all the time. You know, +the one we saw, in the cab that last Sunday of peace-time. I expect +<i>he</i> is fighting us now, isn't it <i>extraordinary</i>?"</p></div> + +<p>This was the end of the sheet. Gwenna took another. Her letters to the +Front were always at least six times as long as the answers that she +received to them, but this was only to be expected. And Paul had said he +loved long letters and that she was to tell him absolutely everything +she could. All about herself.</p> + +<p>She went on:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"You tell me to take care of myself and not to work too hard; well, +I am not. And I am quite well and Mrs. Crewe is most <i>awfully</i> +kind to me, and the little maid here <i>spoils</i> me. Every night when +I am in bed she <i>insists<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span></i> on bringing me up a glass of hot milk and +two biscuits, though what for I don't know.</p> + +<p>"<i>Is</i> there anything more about your coming back from the Front to +fetch the P.D.Q.? Oh, it <i>would</i> be so lovely to see you even for a +<i>few days</i>. I sometimes feel as if I had <i>never, never</i> seen +you——"</p></div> + +<p>She sighed deeply in the quiet, lamp-lit room, where the chintz-casement +curtains stirred faintly above the open window. It had been so long, so +long, all this time of being without him. Why, she had scarcely had a +week of knowing him hers, before there had come that rushed War-bridal +and the Good-bye! And all she had to live on were her memories and a +glazed picture postcard, and a packet of pencil-scrawled letters of +which the folds were worn into slits. She couldn't even write to him as +she would have wished. Always there brooded over her that spectre "The +Censor," who possibly read every letter that was addressed to a man at +the Front. Gwenna knew that some people at home wrote anything they +wished, heedless that a stranger's eye might see it. Leslie, for +instance, wrote to one of her medical students, now working with the +R.A.M.C. in Paris, as "My dear Harry—and the Censor," adding an +occasional parenthesis: "<i>You won't understand this expression, Mr. +Censor, as it is merely a quite silly family joke!</i>" She, Gwenna, felt +utterly unable to write down more than a tithe of the tender things that +she would have liked to say. To-night she had a longing to pour out her +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span>heart to him ... oh, and she would say <i>something</i>! Even if she tore up +that sheet and wrote another. She scribbled down hastily: "Darling boy, +do you know I miss you more <i>every day</i>; nobody has <i>ever</i> missed +anybody <i>so dreadfully</i>."</p> + +<p>Here she was wrong, though she did not know it. It was true that she +longed hungrily for the sight of that dear blonde face, with its blue, +intrepid eyes, for the sound of that deep and gentle voice, and for the +touch of those hands, those strongly modelled lips. But all these things +had been a new joy, scarcely realised before it was gone. She would have +told you that it made it worse for her. Actually it meant that she was +spared much. Her lover's presence had been a gift given and snatched +away; not the comradeship of years that, missing, would seem even as the +loss of a limb to her. The ties of daily habit and custom which +strengthen that many-stranded cord of Love had not yet been woven +between these two lovers.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"I sometimes think it was really <i>awfully selfish</i> of me to <i>marry</i> +you," Gwenna wrote, thinking to herself, "Oh, bother that old +Censor, just for once." She went on more hurriedly:</p> + +<p>"You might have married somebody like that Miss Muriel Conyers, +with those frightfully lovely clothes and <i>all</i> her people able to +help you on in the Army, or somebody very beautiful and <i>rich</i>, +anybody would have been glad to have you, and I <i>know</i> I am just a +little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_328" id="Page_328">[Pg 328]</a></span><i>nobody</i>, and not a bit clever and even Leslie used to say +I had a Welshy accent sometimes when I speak, and I daresay <i>lots</i> +of people will think, oh, 'how <i>could</i> he!—why, she isn't even +very <i>pretty</i>!'"</p></div> + +<p>She raised her eyes, deeper and brighter in the lamplight, and gave a +questioning glance at her reflection in the oval, swung mirror on the +dressing-table at which she wrote. It would have been a captious critic +indeed that could have called her anything less than very pretty at that +moment; with her little face flushed and intent, a mixture of child and +woman in the expression of her eyes and about her soft, parted lips. +Above the ruffle of her night-gown her throat rose proudly; thick and +creamy and smooth. She remembered something he'd told her that afternoon +at Kew. He'd said that she always reminded him of any kind of white +flower that was sturdy and sweet; a posy of white clover, a white, +night-blooming stock, some kinds of white roses.... She would like to +send him a flower, in this letter, to remind him.</p> + +<p>She glanced towards the open casement, where the curtain waved. Under +the shading foliage of the clematis that grew up to the cottage-roof +there had climbed the spray of a belated rose. "Rose Ménie" was its +name. Mrs. Crewe had said that it would not flower that year. But there +was one bud, half-hidden by leaves, swelling on its sappy twig, close to +Gwenna's window-sill.</p> + +<p>"It'll come out in a day or so," Gwenna thought.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_329" id="Page_329">[Pg 329]</a></span></p> + +<p>"I'll send it to him, if it comes out white.... <i>He</i> was pleased with my +looks!"</p> + +<p>So, reassured, she turned to the letter again, and added:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>"The only thing is, that whatever sort of wife you'd married, they +<i>couldn't</i> have loved you like I do, or been so proud of being your +wife; <i>really</i> sometimes I can <i>hardly believe</i> that I am really +and truly married to——"</p></div> + +<p>She broke off, and again lifted her curly head from bending above the +paper.</p> + +<p>There had been a light tap at the door behind her.</p> + +<p>"Come in," called Gwenna, writing down as she did so, "here is the +little maid coming to bring me up my hot milk; now, darling, darling +boy, I <i>do hope</i> they give you enough to eat wherever you are——"</p> + +<p>Behind her the white door opened and shut. But the maid did not appear +at Gwenna's elbow with the tray that held that glass of hot milk and the +plate of biscuits. The person who had entered gazed silently across the +quiet girlish room at the little lissom figure clad in that soft crumple +of pink and white, sitting writing by the dressing-table, at the +cherub's head, backed by the globe of the lamp that spun a golden +aureole into that wreath of curls.</p> + +<p>There was a pause so long that Gwenna, wondering, raised her head.</p> + +<p>She gave another glance into the oval mirror that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_330" id="Page_330">[Pg 330]</a></span> stood on the +dressing-table just in front of her.... And there she saw, not the +homely, aproned figure of the little maid that she had expected to see, +but the last thing that she had expected.</p> + +<p>It was a picture like, and unlike, a scene she had beheld long, long +ago, framed in the ornate gold-bordered oval mirror in the drawing-room +at the Smiths'. Over her pink-clad shoulder, she saw reflected a broad, +khaki-covered chest, a khaki sleeve, a blonde boy's face that moved +nearer to her own. Even as she sat there, transfixed by surprise, those +blue and intrepid eyes of Icarus looked, laughing joyously, full into +hers, and held her gaze as a hand might have held her own.</p> + +<p>"It's only me," said a deep and gentle voice, almost shyly. "I say——"</p> + +<p>"<i>You!</i>" she cried, in a voice that rang with amazement, but not with +fright; though he, it seemed, was hurrying out hasty warnings to the +Little Thing not to be frightened.... He'd thought it better than +startling her with a wire.... Mrs. Crewe had met him at the door ... +he'd come straight up: hoped she didn't think he was a ghost—— Not for +a second had she thought so!</p> + +<p>Instantly she had known him for her granted and incarnate heart's +desire, her Flyer, home from the Front, her husband to whom she had that +moment been writing as she sat there.</p> + +<p>She sprang to her feet.</p> + +<p>She whirled round.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_331" id="Page_331">[Pg 331]</a></span></p> + +<p>She could not have told whether she had first flung herself into those +strong arms of his, or whether he had snatched her up into them.</p> + +<p>All that mattered was that they were round her now, lifting and holding +her as though they would never let her go again.</p> + +<p>When Reveillé sounded from the Camp on the plain, the sun was bright on +that clematis-grown wall outside the window of Gwenna's bridal-room.</p> + +<p>It gilded the September foliage about the window-sill It also touched a +gem of passionate colour, set among the leaves of the Rose Ménie.</p> + +<p>That red rose had broken into blossom in the night.</p> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_332" id="Page_332">[Pg 332]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_333" id="Page_333">[Pg 333]</a></span></p> +<h1><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III<br /> +<br /> +<i>SEPTEMBER, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN</i></h1> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_334" id="Page_334">[Pg 334]</a></span></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_335" id="Page_335">[Pg 335]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<h3>A WAR-TIME HONEYMOON</h3> + + +<p>The morning after Paul Dampier's arrival from the Front he and his wife +started off on the honeymoon trip that had been for so many weeks +deferred.</p> + +<p>They motored from the Aircraft Works to London, where they stopped to do +a little shopping, and where Gwenna was in raptures of pride to see the +effect produced by the Beloved in the uniform that suited him so well.</p> + +<p>For every passer-by in the street must turn to look, with quickened +interest now, at an Army Aviator. Even the young men in their uniforms +gave a glance at the soldier whose tunic buttoned at the side and whose +cap had the tilt that gave to the shape of his blonde head something +bird-like, falcon-like. And every girl in the restaurant where they +lunched murmured, "Look," to her companion, "that's some one in the +Royal Flying Corps," and was all eyes for that kit which, at a time when +all khaki was romantic, had a special, super-glamour of its own.</p> + +<p>But the blue eyes of the man who wore it were for no one but the girl +with whom he was taking his first meal alone together since they had +been man and wife.</p> + +<p>Her own glance was still hazy with delight. Oh, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_336" id="Page_336">[Pg 336]</a></span> see him there facing +her, over the little round table set in a corner!</p> + +<p>They ate cold beef and crusty loaf and cheese in memory of their first +lunch together in that field, long ago. They drank cider, touching +glasses and wishing each other all luck and a happy life.</p> + +<p>"And fine weather for the whole of our week's honeymoon," added the +bridegroom as he set down his glass. "Lord, I know how it <i>can</i> pour in +your Wales."</p> + +<p>For it was to Wales that they went on by the afternoon train from +Euston; to Gwenna's home, arriving late that evening. The Reverend Hugh +Lloyd was away on a round of preaching-visits about Dolgelly. They had +his black-henlike housekeeper to chirp and bustle about them with much +adoring service; and they would have the Chapel House to themselves.</p> + +<p>"But we won't be <i>in</i> the house much," Gwenna decided, "unless it +pours."</p> + +<p>It did not pour the next morning. It was cloudless and windless and +warm. And looking round on the familiar landscape that she had known +when she was a little child, it seemed now to Gwenna as if War could not +be. As if it were all a dream and a delusion. There was no khaki to be +met in that little hillside village of purple slate and grey stone. Only +one or two well-known figures were missing from it. A keeper from one of +the big houses on the other side of the river, and an English chauffeur +had joined the colours, but that nine-days' wonder was over now. Peace +had made her retreat in these mountain fastnesses that had once<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_337" id="Page_337">[Pg 337]</a></span> echoed +to the war-shouts and the harp-music of a race so martial.</p> + +<p>It was the music that had survived....</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier had put on again that well-known and well-worn grey tweed +jacket of his, so that he also no longer recalled War. He had come right +away from all that, as she had known he would; come safely back to her. +Here he was, with her, and with a miracle between them, in this valley +of crystal brooks and golden bracken and purple slopes. It was meant +that they two should be together thus. Nothing could have stopped it. +She felt herself exulting and triumphing over all the Fates who might +have tried to stop it; and over all the Forces that might have tried to +keep him from her. His work on the Machine? Pooh! That had actually +helped to bring them together! The Great War? Here he was, home from the +War!</p> + +<p>"I've always, always wanted to be with you in the real country, and I +never have," she told him, as together they ran down the slate steps of +Uncle Hugh's porch after breakfast and turned up a path between the +sunny larch-grown steeps. That path would be a torrent in the winter +time. Now the slate pebbles of it were hot under the sun. "I don't +really count that <i>country</i>, that field, that day——"</p> + +<p>"Didn't seem to mind it when we were there," he teased her as he walked +beside her swinging the luncheon basket that Margaret had put up for +them. "I mean of course when <i>I</i> was there."</p> + +<p>Gwenna affected to gasp over the conceit of men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_338" id="Page_338">[Pg 338]</a></span> "If I've <i>got</i> to be +with one," she told him as if wearily, "I'd rather it was in a nice +place for me to listen to his nonsense."</p> + +<p>"Wasn't any 'nonsense,' as you call it, in that field."</p> + +<p>"No," agreed Gwenna, "there wasn't."</p> + +<p>He looked sideways and down at her as she climbed that hill-path, +hatless, sure-footed and supple. Then a narrow turn in the path made her +walk a little ahead of him. She was wearing a very simple little sheath +of a grey cotton or muslin or something frock, with a white turn-down +collar that he hadn't seen her in before, he thought. Suited her awfully +well. (Being a man, he could not be expected to recognise it for the +grey linen that she'd had on when he'd come upon her that afternoon, +high up on the scaffolding at Westminster.)</p> + +<p>"Yes, though, there was 'nonsense,'" he said, now suddenly answering her +last speech. "Fact of the matter is, it was dashed nonsense to waste +such a lot of time."</p> + +<p>"Time, how?" asked Gwenna guilelessly, without turning her head.</p> + +<p>"Oh! As if you didn't know!" he retorted. "Wasting time talking about +the Machine, to you. Catching hold of your hand, to show you what the +camber was—and then letting it go! Instead of owning up at once, '<i>Yes. +All right. You've got me. Pax!</i>' And starting to do this——"</p> + +<p>He was close up behind her now on the mountain-path, and because of the +steep ground on which they<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_339" id="Page_339">[Pg 339]</a></span> stood, her head was on a higher level than +his own. He drew it downwards and backwards, that brown, sun-warmed +head, to his tweed-clad shoulder.</p> + +<p>"You'll break my neck. I know you will, one day. You are so <i>rough</i>," +complained Gwenna; twisting round, however, and taking a step down to +him.</p> + +<p>"I love you to be," she whispered. She kissed his coat-lapel. All the +red of that rose bloomed now on her mouth.... They walked on, with his +arm a close, close girdle about her. The luncheon basket was forgotten +on the turfy slope on which he'd dropped it. So they lunched, late, in +the farm-house four hundred feet above the Quarry village. It was a +lonely place enough, a hillside outpost, fenced by stunted damson trees; +a short slate-flagged end of path led to the open door where a great red +baking crock stood, full of water. Inside, the kitchen was a dark, cool +cave, with ancient, smooth-worn oaken furniture that squeaked on the +slate-slabbed floor, with a dresser rich with willow-pattern and lustre, +and an open fire-place, through which, looking up, they could see +through the wood smoke a glimpse of the blue sky.</p> + +<p>And in this sort of place people still lived and worked as if it were +Seventeen Hundred and Something—and scarcely a day's journey away was +the Aircraft Factory where people lived for the work that will remake +the modern world; oh, most romantic of all ages, that can set such sharp +contrasts side by side!</p> + +<p>An old Welshwoman, left there by her sheep-farming sons at home in the +chimney corner, set butter-milk<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_340" id="Page_340">[Pg 340]</a></span> before the lovers, and ambrosial +home-churned butter, and a farm-house loaf that tasted of nuts and +peatsmoke. They ate with astonishing appetites; Gwenna sitting in the +window-seat under the sill crowded with flower-pots and a family Bible. +Paul, man-like, stood as near as he could to the comfort of the fire +even on that warm day. The old woman, who wore clumping clogs on her +feet and a black mutch-cap on her head, beamed upon the pair with smiles +as toothless and as irresistible as those of an infant.</p> + +<p>"You must have a plenty, whatever," she urged them, bringing out another +loaf, of <i>bara breeth</i> (or currant bread). "Come on, Sir! Come, Miss +Williams, now. Mam, I mean. Yess, yess. You married lady now. Your +husband," with a skinny hand on his grey sleeve, "your husband is <i>not</i> +a minnyster?"</p> + +<p>"He's a soldier, Mrs. Jones," explained Gwenna, proudly, and with a +strengthening of her own accent, such as occurs in any of her race when +revisiting their wilds. "He's an Airman."</p> + +<p>"Ur?" queried Mrs. Jones, beaming.</p> + +<p>"He goes flying. You know. On a machine. Up in the sky."</p> + +<p>"Well, <i>oh</i>!" ejaculated the old woman. And laughed shrilly. To her this +was some eccentric form of English joke. Flying? Like the birds! <i>Dear</i>, +dear. "What else does he do, <i>cariad fâch</i>?" she asked of Gwenna.</p> + +<p>"He's been over in France, fighting the Germans," said the girl, while +the old woman on her settle by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_341" id="Page_341">[Pg 341]</a></span> fire nodded her mutched head with +the intense, delighted expression of some small child listening to a +fairy story. It was indeed no more, to her. She said, "Well, indeed. He +took a very <i>kind</i> one, too." Then she added, "I not much English. +Pitty, pitty!" and said something in Welsh at which Gwenna coloured +richly and laughed a little and shook her head.</p> + +<p>"What's she say?" demanded Paul, munching; but his girl-wife said it was +nothing—and turned her tip-tilted profile, dark against the diamond +window panes, to admire one of the geranium plants in the pots.</p> + +<p>Afterwards, when the couple were outside again in the fresh sunlight on +the mountain lands, young Dampier persisted with his questioning about +what that old woman had said. He betted that he could guess what it was +all about. And he guessed.</p> + +<p>Gwenna admitted that he had guessed right.</p> + +<p>"She said," she told him shyly, "that it ought to be 'a very pretty one, +whatever.'"</p> + +<p>"I've got a very pretty present for it," Paul whispered presently.</p> + +<p>"What?"</p> + +<p>"Don't you remember a locket I once took? A little mother-of-pearl +heart," he said. "That's what I shall keep it for——"</p> + +<p>And there fell a little silence between them as they walked on, swinging +hands above the turf, gravely contented.</p> + +<p>They had <i>had</i> to spend the day together thus. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_342" id="Page_342">[Pg 342]</a></span> seemed to Gwenna that +all her life before had been just a waiting for this day.</p> + +<p>Below the upland on which they swung along, grey figures on the green, +there lay other wide hill-spaces, spread as with turf-green carpets, on +which the squares of mellowing, golden-brown autumn woods seemed rugs +and skins cast down; below these again stretched the further valley with +the marsh, with the silver loops and windings of the river, and the +little white moving caterpillar of smoke from the distant train. There +was also a blue haze above the slate roofs of a town.</p> + +<p>But here, in this sun-washed loneliness far above, here was their world; +hers and his.</p> + +<p>They walked, sometimes climbing a crest where stag's-horn moss branched +and spread through the springy turf beneath their feet, sometimes +dipping into a hollow, for two miles and more. They could have walked +there for half a day and seen no face except that of a tiny mountain +sheep, cropping among the gorse; heard no voice but those of the calling +plovers, beating their wings in the free air. Then, passing a gap in two +hills, they came quite suddenly upon the cottage and the lake.</p> + +<p>The sheet of water, silent, deserted, reflected the warm blue of the +afternoon sky and the deep green of the overhanging boughs of great +hassock-shaped bushes that covered two islands set upon its breast.</p> + +<p>"Rhododendron bushes. When they're in blossom they're all simply +<i>covered</i> with flowers, pink and rose-colour, and reflected in the +water! It <i>is</i> so lovely,"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_343" id="Page_343">[Pg 343]</a></span> Gwenna told the lover beside her. "Oh, Paul! +You <i>must</i> come here again and see that with me in the spring!"</p> + +<p>On the further bank was another jungle of rhododendron and lauristinus, +half-hiding the grey stone walls and the latticed windows of the square +cottage, a fishing box of a place that had evidently been built for some +one who loved solitude.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier peered in through one of the cobwebby lattices. Just inside +on the sill there stood, left there long since, a man's shaving-tackle. +Blue mildew coated the piece of soap that lay in the dish. Further in he +caught a glimpse of dusty furniture, of rugs thrown down on a wooden +floor, of a man's old coat on a peg. A wall was decorated with sets of +horns, with a couple of framed photographs, with old fishing-rods.</p> + +<p>"Make a jolly decent billet, for some one, this," said Paul.</p> + +<p>Gwenna said, "It belongs to some people.... They're away, I think. It's +all locked up now. So's the boat for the lake, I expect. They used to +keep a boat up here for fishing."</p> + +<p>The long flat boat they found moored to one of the stout-trunked +rhododendron bushes that dipped its pointed leaves in the peat-brown +water fringed with rushes.</p> + +<p>Paul stepped in, examining her, picking up the oars. "Nice afternoon for +a row, Ma'am?" he said, smiling up at the girl clad in dove-grey on the +rushy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_344" id="Page_344">[Pg 344]</a></span> bank, with the spongy dark-green moss about her shoes.</p> + +<p>"Jump in, Gwenna. I'll row you across the lake."</p> + +<p>"You can't row that old tub, boy."</p> + +<p>"Can't I?"</p> + +<p>"I'll race you round, then!"</p> + +<p>"Right you are!"</p> + +<p>The girl skipped round the clump of rhodos that hid the last flicker of +her skirt; and the boy bent to the short, home-made sculls.</p> + +<p>The boat was a crank, unhandy little craft; and lacked thole-pins on one +side. Therefore Gwenna, swift-footed Little Thing that she was, had as +good a chance of winning as he.</p> + +<p>"Like trying to row a bucket!" he laughed, as the boat spun. "Hi, Gwen! +I ought to have some start, you know!"</p> + +<p>He rowed. Presently he rested on his oars and called, "Hullo, have you +started?"</p> + +<p>"Started—" came back only the echo from the cottage roof. There was no +sign of any grey-frocked running figure on the bank. He scanned it on +both sides of him, gave a look towards each of those shrub-covered +islands on the smooth expanse.</p> + +<p>"Gwenna—Why, where are you? What's become of the girl," he muttered. +"Gwen-na!"</p> + +<p>She was nowhere to be seen.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_345" id="Page_345">[Pg 345]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<h3>THE SOUL OF UNDINE</h3> + + +<p>"Hul-lo!" he shouted. The echo answered as he sat in the boat staring +about him....</p> + +<p>Then he felt a twitch at one of his sculls. It turned in his hand; was +wrenched from him.</p> + +<p>"What the deuce——" he began, surprised.</p> + +<p>Then he heard a laugh.</p> + +<p>"What on earth——"</p> + +<p>It was nothing on earth that had greeted him. It was something of the +water that laughed up into his face and called, "Hullo, husband!"</p> + +<p>A mermaid, a water-nymph, a little white-shouldered Undine was peeping +up and mocking him! She trod water, turned over on her side, swam with +easy strokes.</p> + +<p>For always Gwenna had been proud of her swimming.</p> + +<p>She had won a medal for it at that Aberystwith school of hers; but she +wanted more than a mere medal for it now. She wanted her boy to see her +swimming, and to praise her stroke. She had looked forward to that. She +wanted to show him that she could make as graceful movements with her +own body in the water as he could make with his biplane in the air. She +could! He should see! She made these movements. She had thought of +making them—just <i>so</i>—on the morning of her marriage. Only then she +had thought it would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_346" id="Page_346">[Pg 346]</a></span> be in the sea off Brighton beach, with whole +crowds of other stupid people about in dark-blue or Turkey-red +"costumes." Here it was so much lovelier; a whole mountain-side and a +clear lake to herself in which to show off her pet accomplishment to her +lover. She was one innocent and pretty Vanity incarnate as she glided +along beside his boat. She gave a quick twist. There was a commotion of +translucent amber water, a gleam of coral white that shaded down into +peaty brown as she dived, reappearing on the other side of the boat, +looking up at him, blinking as her curls streamed water into her eyes.</p> + +<p>His eyes, blue and direct and adoring, were upon her.</p> + +<p>"I say," he said admiringly, "I didn't know you could <i>swim</i> like that. +Jolly!"</p> + +<p>This moment of achievement was possibly the most exquisite in the whole +of Gwenna's life.</p> + +<p>Shaking the wet from her hair, she laughed with pure, completed, +rapturous joy; glorying in her youth, in the life that charged each +little blue vein of her, in this power of swimming that she felt had +been given her only to please him.</p> + +<p>"Why, I could swim you to—Oh! Mind you don't upset!" she exclaimed.</p> + +<p>For Paul had stooped; leaning over the side of the boat he had passed +one arm beneath her shoulders; he was bending over her to take a kiss, +all fresh with lake-water.</p> + +<p>"You'll topple over," she warned him.</p> + +<p>"Pooh," he said. "One, Gwenna!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_347" id="Page_347">[Pg 347]</a></span></p> + +<p>He always said her name as if it were "darling"—he did not call her +"dear" or "darling" much. She found that she adored him for this, as for +everything that he said or did. Once, in one of those old-time talks of +theirs, Leslie had said, "For every three times a man asks for a kiss +refuse him twice. An excellent plan, Taffy——" The happy girl-wife +thought there need be no use of "plans" with him and her. She teased +him—if she wanted to.</p> + +<p>Eyes laughed into eyes now. She threw back her head, evading him, but +only for a second. His mouth met hers, dewy as a lotus-bud. The boy and +girl kissed closely. Nothing could come between that kiss, she thought.</p> + +<p>Then, sudden as a flash of summer lightning, <i>something came</i>.</p> + +<p>A thought; a shadow; a fear at last.</p> + +<p>All these halcyon hours she had known no fear. All those weeks that her +husband had been in France she had been certain, at the bottom of her +heart, of his safety. She had known by that queer sense of presentiment +she possessed that he would come back to her. He'd come back to make +this perfect time for which all her unawakened girlhood had been +waiting. And now, by that same queer sixth sense, she suddenly found +herself realising that he would not—No, no! <i>That he might not come +back to her the second time....</i> Suddenly, suddenly the shadow crept +over her, taking the glow and colour out of their idyll even at this +golden moment. With his lips warms on hers she shivered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_348" id="Page_348">[Pg 348]</a></span> as if the water +in which she swayed had suddenly grown many degrees colder. Supposing he +should not return? In two days' time now he was leaving her. Supposing +that she were never to see him again? She shut her eyes, felt herself +for a horrible second surrounded by darkness, and alone.... She heard +his sharp question, "What's the matter?" and opened her eyes again.</p> + +<p>His head was dark against the blue little ripples of light passed over +his blonde face; ripples cast up from the water. The boat tilted, and +his arm held her more tightly. He said again, "What is it?"</p> + +<p>Then, in her own ears, her voice said serenely, "It's all right."</p> + +<p>The cloud had passed, as suddenly as it had fallen. She knew, somehow, +that it would be "all right." Whatever happened, this worst catastrophe +of all was not going to fall upon her. She was not going to be left +alone and in darkness, her sun of Love gone down. Such a light could not +have been kindled, just to be put out again. She would not be forced to +live without him. <i>That</i> could not be. Why, the thing was unthinkable. +Yet, somehow that was going to be made "all right."</p> + +<p>"You swim back again and get your things on, as quick as you can," he +ordered her. "That was a touch of cramp you got, I expect."</p> + +<p>"I'm all right now," she again said.</p> + +<p>She sighed when at last they left that lovely Paradise of theirs behind +them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_349" id="Page_349">[Pg 349]</a></span></p> + +<p>They went down hill at a good swinging pace, his arm again girdling the +dove-grey frock. He said, "We'll get tea and topping light-cakes at one +of those cottages before we come to the village, shall we? Are you +starving, Little Thing? I know I am. Soon be there now."</p> + +<p>"I know," she said, "I wasn't sighing because I wanted my tea. Only +because ... It seems such a pity that we <i>ever</i> have to come down from +here!" she told him, nestling in his arm.</p> + +<p>But she did not tell him of her sudden fear, nor of its sudden passing, +though (in her heart that beat below his hand) the thought of both +remained.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_350" id="Page_350">[Pg 350]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<h3>A LAST FAVOUR</h3> + + +<p>That thought at the heart of Gwenna seemed to grow with every hour that +passed.</p> + +<p>And they were passing now so rapidly, the hours that remained to her +with her husband! One more blissful day spent on the mountains (but +always with that growing thought behind it: "<i>He has to go soon. Perhaps +he will not come back this time. The new machine may let him down +somehow, perhaps</i>").</p> + +<p>One more train-journey, whizzing through country of twenty different +aspects, just him and her together (but still in her mind that thriving +dread: "<i>Very likely he may not come back. He has had so many narrow +escapes! That time he told me about when he came down from behind the +clouds and the machine was hit on both sides at once: our men firing on +him as well, thinking his was an enemy craft! He got up into the clouds +again and escaped that time. Next time as likely as not....</i>").</p> + +<p>One more night they were together in the London hotel where Uncle Hugh +had always put up. Paul slept, with a smile on his face that looked so +utterly boyish while he was asleep: his blonde head nestled into her +neck. Gwenna, waking uneasily once or twice, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_351" id="Page_351">[Pg 351]</a></span> with his arms still +about her, was haunted by her fear as by a nightmare. "<i>It's more than +likely that he may not come back this time. This time I feel that he is +not going to come back!</i>" And the feeling grew with the growing light +outside the window, until she told herself: "<i>I know it! I know that I +am right</i>——"</p> + +<p>Then came the wonder in her mind, "<i>Why am I not wretched about this? +Why do I feel that it's not going to matter after all, and that it's +going to be 'all right'?</i>"</p> + +<p>Still wondering, she fell asleep again.</p> + +<p>But in the morning her presentiment was a thing full-grown.</p> + +<p>Paul, off to the Front, would never come back again.</p> + +<p>Quite early they were at the Aircraft Works where he was to leave his +young wife and to fetch his machine, the completed P.D.Q. that was to +take him out to France.</p> + +<p>He had spoken of her—that machine—in the train coming along. And +Gwenna, the dazed and fanciful, had thought sharply: "<i>Ah! That's her +revenge. That's what's going to be the end of this fight between the +Girl and the Machine. I won. I got him from her. This is how she takes +him back, the fiancée! He will be killed in that machine of his.</i>"</p> + +<p>Her headstrong, girlish fancy persisted. It was as real to her as any of +the crowd of everyday and concrete realities that they found, presently, +at the bustling Aircraft Works.</p> + +<p>When Paul (who was to start at midday, flying<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_352" id="Page_352">[Pg 352]</a></span> across to France) changed +into his uniform and flying-kit, it seemed to her to set the seal upon +her premonition.</p> + +<p>He would never wear other kit again now, upon this earth.</p> + +<p>The Aeroplane Lady, bracingly cheerful, met them with a sheaf of +official documents for the young Army aviator.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to steal him from you for a quarter of an hour, Mrs. +Dampier," she said with a little nod; and she took the young man into +her office.</p> + +<p>Gwenna, left alone outside, walked up and down the sunny yard +mechanically.</p> + +<p>She could not have said what her thoughts were. Probably she had no +thoughts. Nothing but the steady throb, quiet and reiterated as the +pulse of the machinery in the shops, of that conviction of fatality that +she felt.</p> + +<p>It seemed to run on in her head as the belting ran on the shaft: "He +won't come back. He won't come back!"</p> + +<p>It was in the middle of this monotonous inward muttering that the door +of the office opened, and there came out a shortish figure, +leather-jacketed and with enveloping overalls and wearing a cap with +goggles, peak behind. It was young Mr. Ryan.</p> + +<p>He raised his cap and would have passed Gwenna quickly, but she stopped +him.</p> + +<p>She didn't know why. Since her marriage she had (ungratefully enough) +almost forgotten the red-haired<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_353" id="Page_353">[Pg 353]</a></span> young man's existence, and perhaps it +was not so much himself as his cap and mufflings that caught her eye +now.</p> + +<p>"Why, are you going up?" she asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes," said young Ryan gloomily.</p> + +<p>He seemed to be in the worst of tempers as he went on, grumblingly. He +was going up. Just his luck. Plenty of times he'd wanted to go and +hadn't been allowed. Now he'd got to go, just when he didn't want to.</p> + +<p>"You don't want to?" Gwenna repeated.</p> + +<p>Mr. Ryan coloured a little. "Well, if I've got to, that doesn't matter."</p> + +<p>"Why don't you want to?" Gwenna asked, half indifferent, half surprised. +To her it had always appeared the one thing to want to do. She had been +put off time after time. Now here was he, grumbling that it was just his +luck to go.</p> + +<p>Then she thought she could guess why he didn't want to go up just now. +She smiled faintly. Was it that Mr. Ryan had—somebody—to see?</p> + +<p>Mr. Ryan blushed richly. Probably he did so not on this somebody's +account, but because it was Gwenna who asked the question. One does not +care for the sympathetic questions of the late idol, even when another +fills the shrine. He told Gwenna: "I've got to go with your husband as a +passenger. He's had a wire to bring another man over to one of the +repairing bases; and so he's spotted me."</p> + +<p>"To bring over? D'you mean to France?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_354" id="Page_354">[Pg 354]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Yes. Not that they want <i>me</i>, of course; but just somebody. So I've got +to go, I suppose."</p> + +<p>Gwenna was silent, absorbed. She glanced away across the flat +eighty-acre field beyond the yards, where the planes of Paul's new +biplane gleamed like a parallel ruler in the sun. A ruler marked with +inches, each inch being one of the seams that Gwenna had carefully doped +over. About the machine two or three dark figures moved, giving +finishing touches, seeing that all was right.</p> + +<p>And young Ryan was to fly in her, with Paul!</p> + +<p>It wasn't Ryan they wanted, but "just somebody." ... And then, all in a +moment, Gwenna, thinking, had a very curious little mental experience. +As once before she had had that "flying dream," and had floated up from +earth and had seen her own body lying inert and soulless on her bed, so +now the same thing happened. She seemed to see herself in the yard. +Herself, quite still and nonchalant, talking to this young man in cap +and goggles who had to go to France just when he particularly wanted to +go somewhere else. She saw all the details, quite clearly: his leather +jacket, herself, in her blouse and skirt, the cylindrical iron, steam +chambers where they steamed the skids, the Wing-room door, and beyond it +the new biplane waiting in the field two hundred yards away.</p> + +<p>Then she saw herself put her hand on the young man's leathern sleeve. +She heard her own voice ascending, as it were, to her. It was saying +what seemed to be the most matter-of-fact thing in the world.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_355" id="Page_355">[Pg 355]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Then don't go. You go later, Mr. Ryan. Follow him on. You go and meet +your girl instead; it will be all right."</p> + +<p>He was staring blankly at her. She wondered what he saw to stare at.</p> + +<p>"What? What d'you mean, Mrs. Dampier? I'm bound to go. Military orders."</p> + +<p>"Yes; they are for him, not for you. <i>You</i> aren't under military +orders." This was in her own, quite calm and detached little voice with +its un-English accent. "You say anybody'd do. He can take—somebody +else."</p> + +<p>"Isn't anybody else," she heard young Ryan say. Then she heard from her +own lips the most surprising thing of all.</p> + +<p>"Yes, there's somebody. You give me those things of yours. I'm going +instead of you."</p> + +<p>Then Mr. Ryan laughed loudly. He seemed to see a joke that Gwenna did +not see. "Well, for a film-drama, that takes it!" he laughed.</p> + +<p>She did not laugh. She heard herself say, softly, earnestly, swiftly: +"Listen to me. Paul is going away and I have never been up with him yet. +I was always promised a flight. And always something got in the way of +it. And now he's going. He will never——"</p> + +<p>Her voice corrected itself.</p> + +<p>"He <i>may</i> never come back. I may never get another chance of flying with +him. Let me—let me have it! Say you will!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_356" id="Page_356">[Pg 356]</a></span></p> + +<p>But Mr. Ryan, instead of saying he would, became suddenly firm and +peremptory. Perhaps it was the change in his voice that brought Gwenna +Dampier, with a start, back to herself. She was no longer watching +herself. She was watching young Ryan's face, intently, desperately. But +she was still quite calm. It seemed to her that since an idea and a plan +had come to her out of nowhere, it would be mad to throw them away again +untried.</p> + +<p>"Let me go; it will be all right! Let me get into your things."</p> + +<p>"Quite out of the question," said young Ryan, with growing firmness—the +iron mask of the man who knows himself liable to turn wax in the hands +of a woman. "Not to be thought of."</p> + +<p>She set her teeth. It was life and death to her now, what he refused. +She could have flown at him like a fury for his obstinacy. She knew, +however, that this is no road to a woman's attainment of her desires. +With honeyed sweetness, and always calmly, she murmured: "You were +always so nice to me, Mr. Ryan. I liked you so!"</p> + +<p>"I say, don't——"</p> + +<p>"I am sure that girl must be devoted to you. Isn't she? The one you want +to see? Oh, yes! Well, think if it were <i>she</i> who begged to be with +<i>you</i>," pleaded Gwenna softly and deadly calm. Her knuckles were white +on the hands that she held clasped against her breast. "Think if she +begged for one last, last little time!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_357" id="Page_357">[Pg 357]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Look here; it's imposs——"</p> + +<p>"I never begged for any one anything before, in my whole life. Never! +Not even my husband. Only you! It's the first—the last favour, Mr. +Ryan! You used to say you'd do anything——"</p> + +<p>"No, please; I say——!"</p> + +<p>"He's always said he would take me. You can follow us on. Yes, indeed it +will be all right——"</p> + +<p>Here Paul, passing with the Aeroplane Lady at the end of the yard, on +his way to the machine in the field, saw by the steam reservoir his +young wife talking earnestly to the red-haired Ryan chap, who was to be +his passenger. He heard her say: "You must, Peter, you <i>must</i>!"</p> + +<p>He hadn't known that the Little Thing called that fellow by his +Christian name, but he thought he knew the kind of thing that she would +be saying to Ryan; begging him to keep an eye upon her husband, to do +anything he could for him (Paul) since they were both going over to +France together.</p> + +<p>"It will be all right," repeated Gwenna to young Ryan in a settled kind +of tone. "You'll give me your things, and then you'll stay here, out of +the way until we've gone. You will!"</p> + +<p>Thereupon Mr. Ryan became firmer than ever.</p> + +<p>"Can't be done, Mrs. Dampier," he said curtly. "Afraid that ends it!"</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>In the meantime Paul was making a last tour of the P.D.Q.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_358" id="Page_358">[Pg 358]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Just start her, will you?" he said to one of his mechanics.</p> + +<p>A harsh roar rattled out over the countryside. Paul touched parts here +and there.</p> + +<p>"All right," he said; and the engine was shut off again. Then he turned +to Mrs. Crewe.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "if you don't mind——" He glanced first at his +wrist-watch and then in the direction of the buildings. The Aeroplane +Lady smiled.</p> + +<p>"I think you'll find her in the office," she replied.</p> + +<p>He crossed the field and walked straight into the office, but Gwenna was +not there. He passed into the Wing-room where he had seen her at work. +She was not there, either; only two of the lads in blue overalls were +bringing in a wing. He said to them: "Is Mrs. Dampier in the central +shop? Just tell her I'm here, will you? I shall have to be off very +soon." In a moment one of the lads returned to say that Mrs. Dampier was +not in the shops.</p> + +<p>"Go out that way and find her, will you, then?" he said. "I'll go out +the other way; ask her to wait for me in the Wing-room if you find her +first." He went out to search for his wife. He sought her in the shops +and in the sheds. She was not to be found. He came back to the +Wing-room; it was empty, except for the Great Dane, lying in his corner +blinking wisely, with his head on his paws. Dismayed (for he would have +not more than a moment to spare with her now) young Dampier came out and +sent a lad on a bicycle up to Mrs. Crewe's cottage to find out if his +wife were there.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_359" id="Page_359">[Pg 359]</a></span> Perhaps the Little Thing had forgotten the +cap-comforter she was going to give him, and had gone to fetch that. +Mrs. Crewe herself walked back from the field, and found him almost +running about the yards again.</p> + +<p>"What, haven't you found her? Isn't she anywhere about?" cried the +Aeroplane Lady in astonishment. "This is most extraordinary. She must be +here somewhere——"</p> + +<p>"I've been and I've sent all over the place," said the young aviator, +distressed. "Here, I've got to start in a minute, and she isn't here to +see me before I go. I can't imagine what's become of her!"</p> + +<p>The Aeroplane Lady could imagine. She had had the quick thought that +Gwenna Dampier, at the last moment, had gone away, hidden herself from +that ordeal of last farewells. "Perhaps the little creature couldn't +stand it," she thought. It was, when all was said, a heart-breaking +moment....</p> + +<p>The Aeroplane Lady said softly: "Perhaps your wife's one of the people +who don't want to say any good-bye, Mr. Dampier. Like some people +thinking it's unlucky to watch people out of sight!"</p> + +<p>"Well, I've hunted all over the place," he said, turning away, agitated +and dismayed. "Tell her, will you, Mrs. Crewe, I shan't be able to wait +any longer. I was to start at midday. I shall be late. You explain to +her, please. Where's Ryan—ah, there he is."</p> + +<p>For across the field he saw a short, muffled-up, brown figure, climbing, +rather hurriedly, into the passenger's seat. It sat, waiting without +looking round.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_360" id="Page_360">[Pg 360]</a></span></p> + +<p>The last stroke of twelve sounded from the clock of the factory. The +whistle blew. The men trooped out of the works; every one of them cast a +glance towards the field where the biplane was ready. Several of them in +a group turned off there to watch the start.</p> + +<p>Paul joined them and walked across the field.</p> + +<p>His brows were knitted; it was dashed hard lines that he couldn't see +<i>her</i> for good-bye. His wife! She ought to have seen him off.... Poor +Little sweet Thing, she thought she couldn't stick it—— He wondered +where on earth she'd gone and hidden herself.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_361" id="Page_361">[Pg 361]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<h3>THE DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE</h3> + + +<p>Gwenna sat, for the first time in her life, in an aeroplane.</p> + +<p>She had very little actual notion of how she came to be there. It was +all confused in her mind, that which had happened between Mr. Ryan's so +resolute "Can't be done, Mrs. Dampier," and its having been "done." What +had prevailed? Her own begging? Mr. Ryan's wish to see his girl? Or her, +Gwenna's, calm assurances, repeated from that day in Wales, that it +would be "all right"? She wasn't sure which of all these things had +brought her here safely where she was, in the passenger-seat of Paul's +biplane. She hardly remembered putting on the rough and voluminous brown +clothes while Mr. Ryan mounted guard over the little stokehole of the +steam chambers.</p> + +<p>She only knew that she had walked, easily and undiscovered, across the +field before the whistle blew. That she'd climbed unassisted into that +small wicker seat, and that she was now waiting there, muffled up to the +tip of her nose, the edge of the cap almost meeting the muffler, goggles +down, and gloves hiding her little hands. She was no more to be +distinguished from a man than if she had been a diver encased for a +descent into the sea.</p> + +<p>She did not even trouble to wonder at her own wonderful luck in the +affair.</p> + +<p>A thousand little accidents might have betrayed her—and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_362" id="Page_362">[Pg 362]</a></span> and she had +escaped them all. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to her. +Once or twice one of the men had spoken to her, but a wave of the hand +had been answer enough for him. It had been all right. And of course +everything was going to be all right.</p> + +<p>She was not going to be put off by pretexts any longer.</p> + +<p>And she was not going to be left behind, without him. In another +minute—two minutes—they would be off, he and she!</p> + +<p>Furtively she glanced round.</p> + +<p>Paul was holding both the Aeroplane Lady's small, capable hands in those +big boy's paws of his.</p> + +<p>"Good-bye," he was saying. "So long, I mean. I say, you'll——"</p> + +<p>"I'll look after <i>her</i>," promised the Aeroplane Lady, very brightly.</p> + +<p>"Thanks awfully. You would," said Paul. "Bless you."</p> + +<p>"My dear boy——" began the Aeroplane Lady as if she were going to say +something grave, but she ended lightly, "Well, you've a glorious day for +it. The best of luck!—And to you, Mr. Ryan!"</p> + +<p>Again the passenger waved a gloved hand in reply.</p> + +<p>Then Gwenna felt the tip and creak of the machine, as Paul climbed into +his place behind her.</p> + +<p>André dashed up to grasp his hand, calling "<i>Bonne chance!</i>"</p> + +<p>"Thanks!" said Paul. "Right away."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_363" id="Page_363">[Pg 363]</a></span></p> + +<p>Then, as the propeller pulsed like an angry nerve, Gwenna gave a start.</p> + +<p>An appalling roar and wind seemed all about her. Faintly, very faintly, +the noise of the good-bye cheer rose through it. The hat-waving group of +men with wide-open mouths seemed to slide back. The Aeroplane bumped +over the rough field. And then it ceased to bump. Gwenna drew in her +breath, sharply. To right of her, to left of her, the horizon seemed to +sway ever so gently. She thought, but was not sure, that she heard +Paul's voice behind her, bawling, "Trim."</p> + +<p>As she settled herself in her seat, the horizon fell away altogether.... +All was sunlit blue! The swiftest run in the motor down the smoothest +bit of hill had been nothing to this that was coming; faster, faster....</p> + +<p>"There's only one pity," she thought hastily. "He's thinking now that I +let him go without saying good-bye!"</p> + +<p>Here she had a glimpse of the khaki-green earth far below, as blurred +with height and speed as was the raving invisible propeller itself.</p> + +<p>For at last—at last—it was flight!</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_364" id="Page_364">[Pg 364]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<h3>THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT</h3> + + +<p>Yes; at last it was flight.</p> + +<p>She now, too, was perched up on this structure that had tucked those +little bicycle wheels and skids underneath it, as a bird tucks its no +longer required feet; she, too, was being borne up aloft on those vast +cambered pinions that let the sunlight half through, like the roof of a +transparent marquee. In this new machine of Paul's, the passenger-seat +was set on a slightly projecting platform, with aluminium-like uprights +of a peculiar section. At first, all that Gwenna knew of this easy +balancing and dipping and banking of the machine, was that there was a +bright triangle of sunlight about her feet, and that this triangle grew +sometimes small, sometimes large, and sometimes spread so that half of +her was sitting in the warm September sunlight; presently to swerve into +the shadow again.</p> + +<p>Mechanically tightening her grip on one or other of the aluminium stays, +instinctively yielding her body to this unexpected angle or that, she +watched that triangle of sunlight. She was not giddy or breathless; she +felt no fear at all, only a growing triumph and delight as the soaring +biplane sped on—on——</p> + +<p>Once she gave a little "Oh, look!" lost in the hum of the engine. It was +when a tiny flicker of shadow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_365" id="Page_365">[Pg 365]</a></span> fell upon her patch of sunlight and was +gone; the shadow of some bird flying higher than they, a crow, perhaps. +It was just after this that she noticed, near that advancing and +retiring wedge of sunlight at her feet, something else. This was a +little oval hole in the floor of the platform. A hole for observation. +It brought home to her how frail a floor supported her weight and his; +still she felt no terror; only wonder. She smiled under her mufflings, +thinking that hole was like a knot-hole in a wooden bridge over the +river at home. As a small child she had always been fascinated by that +hole, and had gazed down through it at the rushing bottle-green water +and the bubbles and the boulders below. She glanced down this one, but +her unaccustomed eyes could hardly see anything. She leaned forward and +looked down below the machine, but still could distinguish little. +Woods, roads, meadows, or whatever they were crossing, were still only a +warm and moving blur. Once they passed, quickly, a big patch of pink and +purple, she thought it might be a town, but wasn't sure.</p> + +<p>She sat up again in her seat, giving herself up to her own feelings in +this new and breathless experience; her feelings, that were as +undistinguishable as the landscape over which the biplane swept—a warm +blur of delights.</p> + +<p>She gripped the stays; she laughed happily to herself behind the +mufflings, she even sang aloud, knowing that it was drowned in the noise +of the engine. She hummed the sheerest medley of scraps of things, tags +of Musical Comedy picked up at Westminster—some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_366" id="Page_366">[Pg 366]</a></span> verses out of Leslie's +love-songs. Once it was the then universal "Tipperary." And presently it +resolved itself into a Welsh folk-song that the singing-class at her +school had practised over and over again—"The Rising of the Lark," a +blithely defiant tune that seemed best to match her mood as the biplane +sped.</p> + +<p>Yes! All the bird-like, soaring spirit in her had come to its own. +Everything else was cast behind her.... She'd always felt, dimly and +uncomfortably, that a great part of herself, Gwenna, was just an +uninteresting, commonplace little girl.... That part had gone! It had +been left behind her, just as her bodily form had been left sleeping on +her bed, that midsummer night, while her soul flew through dreams.</p> + +<p>"Dreams!" she thought incoherently. "It's <i>not</i> true what people say +about the dream-come-true, and how one's always disappointed in it. I'm +not—ah, I'm not! This flying! This is more glorious than I +expected—even with <i>him</i>——!"</p> + +<p>Then came a thought that checked her singing rapture.</p> + +<p>"If only <i>he</i> knew! But he doesn't."</p> + +<p>Behind her, Paul, driving, had made no sign to the passenger. She could +guess at the busyness of him. His dear, strong hands, she knew, were on +the wheel. They were giving a touch to the throttle here and there. His +feet, too, must be vigilantly busy; now this one doing something +essential, now that. She supposed his whole body must be dipping from +time to time, just as that triangle of sunlight dipped and crept. It +was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_367" id="Page_367">[Pg 367]</a></span> all automatic to him, she expected. He could work that machine +while he was thinking, just as she herself could knit and think.</p> + +<p>"He's thinking of me," she told herself with a rueful little pang. "He's +wondering about my not saying good-bye. He must have minded that. +That'll be all right, though. I'll let him know, presently; I'll pull +down my muffler and look round. Presently. Not yet. Not until it's too +late for him to turn back or set me down——"</p> + +<p>And again she hummed to herself in her little tune; inaudible, exultant. +The shining triangle of sunlight disappeared from the platform. All +became level light about her. It seemed growing colder. And beyond her, +far ahead, she spied a sweep of monotonous grey.</p> + +<p>She guessed what that meant.</p> + +<p>"The sea!" she told herself, thrilled. "We'll be flying over the sea +soon. <i>Then</i> he can't do anything about sending me back. Then I shall +put up these goggles and push this cap off my curls. Then he'll see. +He'll know that it's me that's flying with him!" And she held away from +herself that thought that even so this flight could not last for ever, +there would be the descent in France, the good-bye that she had +evaded—No! It must last!</p> + +<p>Again she forgot all else in the rushing joy of it.</p> + +<p>Suddenly she felt something jolt hard against her left arm, for the +first time Paul was trying to attract his passenger's attention. Twice +her arm was jolted by something. Then she put out her brown gloved<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_368" id="Page_368">[Pg 368]</a></span> hand +to it, grasping what had jolted her. She drew it forward as he loosed it +to her clutch.</p> + +<p>It was a gun; a carbine.</p> + +<p>What—Why——?</p> + +<p>She remembered something that she had heard Paul say, dim ages ago, when +she had watched him in the office, consulting with the Aeroplane Lady +over that machine-gun with that wicked-looking little nozzle that he had +decided not to mount upon the P.D.Q.</p> + +<p>"<i>It'll have to be a rifle after all.</i>"</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna in her brown disguise sat with this rifle across her +knees, wondering.</p> + +<p>Why did Paul wish Mr. Ryan to be armed with this? Why hadn't he handed +over that carbine just when they were about to start? Why only now, just +when they had got as far as the sea?</p> + +<p>For she was certain now that what was below them was the sea. There was +a bright, silvery glitter to the right, but the floating floor of the +biplane shut that out again. To the left all was of a slaty grey. The +sun's level rays shot along the length of the biplane as if it were down +a gallery.</p> + +<p>Gwenna sat there, holding that carbine across her brown wrapped knees, +and still puzzling over it. Why had Paul handed the thing over, so +suddenly? She could not see the reason.</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>Even when it appeared she did not at first see the reason.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier had been quicker to see it than she.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_369" id="Page_369">[Pg 369]</a></span></p> + +<p>Of a sudden there broke out—there is no other word for it—a silence +more startling than all that harsh raving of the propeller that had been +stopped. At the same instant Gwenna felt the floor fall away suddenly on +her left and mount as dizzily on her right. The biplane was tilted up in +the air just as a ladder is tilted against the side of the house. And +the engine was giving short staccato roars into the silences as Paul +kept her going. He had shut off, and was making a giddy swoop down, down +to the left. She heard his voice. Sharply he cried out:</p> + +<p>"There! Out to the left! The Taube! There he is!"</p> + +<p>The next moment the engine was roaring again. The biplane had lifted to +the opposite curve of a swooping figure eight.</p> + +<p>And now the girl in the passenger-seat saw in the air beside them, +scarcely two hundred yards away, what the pilot had seen.</p> + +<p>It was another aeroplane; a monoplane.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_370" id="Page_370">[Pg 370]</a></span></p> +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<h3>THE WINGED VICTORY</h3> + + +<p>Now Gwenna, although she'd been clerk and assistant to the Aeroplane +Lady herself, and although she loved the idea of aeroplanes as other +girls have loved the idea of jewels, scarcely knew one pattern of +monoplane from another.</p> + +<p>They were all the same to her as far as overlapping the seams with the +doped strips was concerned. Nevertheless, in this machine that seemed +suddenly to have appeared out of nowhere, there struck her something +that was quite unfamiliar. Never before had she seen that little +blade-shaped drag from the tips of the wings. It gave to this machine +the look of a flying pigeon.... She had only noticed it for a moment, as +the monoplane had lurched, as it were, into view over the edge of their +own lower plane. Then it lurched out of sight again.</p> + +<p>Again their engine was shut off; and again she heard Paul's voice, +excited, curt.</p> + +<p>"Can you get him, do you think?"</p> + +<p>Get him? Bewilderingly she wondered what Paul could mean. Then came +another staccato rush of sound. Then another silence, and Paul's voice +through it.</p> + +<p>"All right. I'll get above him; and you can shoot through the floor."</p> + +<p>The engine brayed again, this time continuously.</p> + +<p>"Shoot!" gasped Gwenna.</p> + +<p>Shoot at that machine through the hole in the floor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_371" id="Page_371">[Pg 371]</a></span> of this one? It was +a German craft, then? And Paul meant Mr. Ryan to shoot whoever was in +that machine. And she, Gwenna, who had never had a gun in her hands +before in her life, found herself in the midst of War, told to shoot——</p> + +<p>Hardly knowing one end of the thing from the other, she grasped the +carbine. She guessed that the flyer in the other machine must have +realised what Paul meant to do.</p> + +<p>They were rising; he was rising too.</p> + +<p>And suddenly she became aware that there was sunlight about them no +longer. All was a dun and chilly white. Paul, trying to get above the +other, and the other trying to prevent him, had both run up together +into a cloud. Once before the Welsh girl had had this experience. On a +rocky mountain-path up Cader Idris she had walked into a thick mist that +wrapped her from seeing anything in front of her, even though she could +hear the voices of tourists just a little ahead.</p> + +<p>And now here they saw nothing, but they could hear.</p> + +<p>Even through the noise of their propeller Gwenna's ears caught a smaller +noise. It seemed to come from just below.</p> + +<p>She had got the muzzle of the carbine through the hole at her feet. +Desperately, blindly she fumbled at what she thought must be the +trigger. Behind her goggles, she shut her eyes tightly. The thing went +off before she knew how it had done so.</p> + +<p>Then, nothing....</p> + +<p>Then the propeller had stopped again. She felt her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_372" id="Page_372">[Pg 372]</a></span> shoulder touched +from behind. Paul's voice called, "Got him, Ryan?"</p> + +<p>"I—I don't know," she gasped, turning. "I—<i>Paul! It's me!</i>"</p> + +<p>It was a wonder that the biplane did not completely overturn.</p> + +<p>Paul Dampier had wrenched himself forward out of the straps and had +taken one hand from the wheel. His other clutched Gwenna's shoulder, and +the clutch dragged away the muffler at her white throat and her goggles +slipped aside. Aghast he glared at her. The Little Thing herself? Here?</p> + +<p>"Good—— here, keep still. Great——! For Heaven's sake, don't move. +I'll run for it. He can't catch me. I was trying to catch him. He can't +touch us—— We'll race—hold tight, Gwen—ready." He opened the throttle +again; while Gwenna, white-faced, took in the tornado of wind with +parted lips and turned sideways to stare with wide-open eyes.</p> + +<p>Then a number of things seemed to happen very quickly.</p> + +<p>The first of these was a sharp "Ping!" on one of the aluminium stays. +Gwenna found herself gazing blankly at the round hole in the wing a yard +to the right of her. The next thing was that the fog—mist—or cloud, +had disappeared. All was clear sky about them once more. The third thing +was that, hardly a stone's toss away, and only missed by a miracle in +the cloud, they saw the monoplane and the aviator in her.</p> + +<p>He was bareheaded, for that blind, wild shot of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_373" id="Page_373">[Pg 373]</a></span> British girl's had +stripped away his head-covering, and there was a trickle of scarlet down +his cheek. His hair was a gilded stubble, his eyes hard and blue and +Teutonic. His flying-gear was buttoned plastron-wise above his chest, +just as that white linen jacket of his had been; and Karl Becker, +waiter, spy and aviator, gave a little nod, as much as to say that he +recognised that they were meeting not for the first time....</p> + +<p>One glimpse showed all this. The next instant both German and Englishman +had turned to avoid the imminent collision. But the German did more than +turn.</p> + +<p>He had been fired on and hit; now was his shot. Dampier, with no thought +now but to get his wife out of danger, crowded the biplane on. As the +machines missed one another by hardly ten feet, she heard the four +cracks of Paul's revolver.</p> + +<p>Little Gwenna thought she had never heard anything so fascinating, +horrible, and sweet. He was fighting not for his own life only. And he +was not now being fired at, far from her, hoping that she need never +know. For she also, she was in danger with him; she who did not want to +die before him but who would not wish to live for one moment after him.</p> + +<p>Moments? When every moment was a whole life, what could be more +perilously, unimaginedly sweet than this?</p> + +<p>"I knew I had to come," she gasped to herself. "Never away from him +again! Never——"</p> + +<p>Her heart was racing like the propeller itself with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_374" id="Page_374">[Pg 374]</a></span> just such speed, +such power. More love than it could bear was crowded into every throb of +it. For one more of those moments that were more than years she must +look at him and see him look at her....</p> + +<p>One look!</p> + +<p>As they tore through the air she turned in her straps, pushing the curls +back from her brow. Her eyes met his, set and intent over the wheel.</p> + +<p>She smiled at him.</p> + +<p>Up out of the depths of his intentness she saw the answering smile come +into his own eyes. He nodded. He meant that it was all right. His lips +moved.</p> + +<p>"He can't—touch—us!" he was shouting. His girl threw back her head as +far as it would go, offering her face for the kiss that she knew he +could not give. He nodded again, laughed outright, and stretched his own +head forward. It was all a kiss, despite the constraining straps—or +almost all.</p> + +<p>More of a kiss than many lovers know, more of a marriage!</p> + +<p>For then it was that the German's shot rang out, completing their +caress. Never was dearer nor more precious union, never less pain, so +lost was it in rapture. As gently as if he had only just said Good-night +the boy's head sank on the wheel; as for hers, it never moved. She still +lay, leaning back with lips parted, as if to-morrow would see her kissed +awake again.... His hands twitched once only. That movement cut off the +throttle. Again, for the last time, the propeller stopped.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_375" id="Page_375">[Pg 375]</a></span></p> + +<p>The Taube was already a vanishing speck in the distance....</p> + +<p>The P.D.Q. yawed, hung poised, began to slide tail first, and gathered +speed.</p> + +<p>Up, up came the silver waves of the English Channel.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_376" id="Page_376">[Pg 376]</a></span></p> +<h2>POSTSCRIPT</h2> + +<h3>MYRTLE AND LAUREL LEAF</h3> + + +<p>It was the week before Christmas, Nineteen-fourteen.</p> + +<p>London wore her dreariest winter livery of mud-brown and fog-yellow, and +at three o'clock on such an afternoon there would have been brilliant +lights everywhere ... any other, ordinary year.</p> + +<p>This year, Londoners had to find their way as best they could through +the gloom.</p> + +<p>Across a wide Square with a railed and shrubberied garden in the centre +of it, there picked her way a very tall girl in furs that clung about +her as bushy ivy hangs about some slender tree. She wore a dark velvet +coat broadly belted over her strait hips, and upon her impish head there +was perched one of the little, back velvet, half-military caps that were +still the mode. This girl peered up at the numbers of the great houses +at the side of the Square; finally, seeing the gilt-lettered inscription +that she sought above one of the doors,</p> + +<p class="center"> +"ANNEXE TO THE CONVALESCENT HOME<br /> +FOR WOUNDED OFFICERS,"</p> + +<p>she rang the bell.</p> + +<p>The door was opened to her by a small trim damsel in the garb of the +Girl-Guides, who ushered her into a large and ornate hall, and into the +presence of a fresh-coloured,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_377" id="Page_377">[Pg 377]</a></span> fair-haired Personage—she was evidently +no less—in nurse's uniform.</p> + +<p>This Personage gazed upon the visitor with a suspicious and disapproving +look.</p> + +<p>"I wonder why? It isn't because I'm not blamelessly tidy for once in my +life, and she can't guess that the furs and the brown velvet suit are +cast-offs from the opulent," thought the visitor swiftly. Aloud she +added in her clear, nonchalant tone: "I have come to see Mr. Scott, +please."</p> + +<p>"There is the visiting-hour. It is not quite three yet," said the nurse +forbiddingly.</p> + +<p>"I'll wait, then," said the visitor. For two minutes she waited. Then +the nurse approached her with a note-book and a pencil.</p> + +<p>"Will you write your name down here?" she said austerely. And upon a +page inscribed "<i>Mr. M. Scott</i>" the visitor wrote her name, "Miss Leslie +Long."</p> + +<p>"Will you come up?" the nurse said reluctantly. And Leslie ascended a +broad red-carpeted stairway, and was shown into a great room of parquet +floors and long windows and painted panels that had been a drawing-room, +and that was now turned by a row of small beds on great castors and by +several screens into a hospital-ward.</p> + +<p>A blonde youth in a pink pyjama jacket, and with his arm in a black +silken sling, was sitting up in bed and chatting to a white-moustached +gentleman beside him; another of the wounded was sitting by one of the +great fire-places, reading; a couple were playing picquet in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_378" id="Page_378">[Pg 378]</a></span> corner, +under a smiling Academy portrait of the mistress of the mansion.</p> + +<p>"Mr. Scott is sitting up to-day, in the ante-room," vouchsafed the +nurse. And Leslie Long entered, through a connecting door, a small room +to the right.</p> + +<p>One wall of it was hung with a drapery of ancient brown tapestry, +showing giant figures amidst giant foliage; beneath it was a low couch. +Upon this, covered with a black, panther-skin rug, there lay, half +sitting up, supported on his elbow, the young wounded officer whom +Leslie had come to see.</p> + +<p>"Frightfully good of you, this," he said cheerfully, as she appeared.</p> + +<p>She looked down at him.</p> + +<p>For the moment she could not speak. She set down on his couch the sheaf +of golden chrysanthemums that she had brought, and the copy of the +<i>Natal Newsletter</i> that she had thought might cheer him. She found +herself about to say a very foolish thing: "So they left you your +handsome eyes, Monty."</p> + +<p>The face in which those eyes shone now was thin and drawn; and it seemed +as if all the blood had been drained from it. His crutches stood in the +corner at the foot of the couch. He was Monty Scott, the Dean's son, +once a medical student and would-be sculptor. Yes; he had been a +dilettante artist once, but he looked a thorough soldier now. The small +moustache and the close-cropped hair suited him well. He had enlisted in +the Halberdiers at the beginning of the War. He had got his commission +and had lost his leg at Ypres.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_379" id="Page_379">[Pg 379]</a></span></p> + +<p>Not again would he wear that Black Panther get-up to any fancy-dress +dance.... Never again.</p> + +<p>This was the thought, trivial and irrelevant enough, that flashed +through Leslie's mind, bringing with it a rush of tears that she had to +bite her lips to check. She had to clench her nails into her palms, to +open her black eyes widely and smilingly, and to speak in the clearest +and most flippant tone that she could summon.</p> + +<p>"Hullo, Monty! Nice to see you again; now that I <i>can</i> see you. You +wounded warriors <i>are</i> guarded by a dragon!—thanks, I'll sit down +here." She turned the low chair by the couch with its back to the light. +"Yes, I could hardly get your Ministering-Angel-Thou to let me through. +Glared at me as if she thought I was after the spoons. (I suppose that's +exactly what some of them <i>are</i> after," suggested Miss Long, laughing +quite naturally.) "She evidently took me for just another predatory +feline come to send the patient's temperature soaring upwards. It's not +often I'm crushed, but——"</p> + +<p>"Oh, Nurse Elsa is all right," said the patient, laughing too. "You +know, I think she feels bound to be careful about new people. She seems +to have a mania for imagining that everybody fresh may be a German spy!"</p> + +<p>"A <i>German</i>? Why should she think that?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, possibly because—well——" Young Scott lowered his voice and +glanced towards that connecting door. But it had been shut. "Because she +happens to be 'naturalised' herself, you know!"</p> + +<p>They talked; Leslie ever more lightly as she was more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_380" id="Page_380">[Pg 380]</a></span> deeply touched by +the sight of the young man on his couch. So helpless, he who had been so +full of movement and fitness and supple youth! So pluckily, resolutely +gay, he who had been so early put out of the fun!</p> + +<p>Lightly he told Leslie the bare details of his wound. It had been in a +field of beet that he had been pipped; when he had been seeing to some +barbed wire with a sergeant and a couple of his men, at nightfall. One +of those snipers had got him.</p> + +<p>"And I was downed in a second," he said ruefully. "<i>I</i> couldn't get the +beggar!"</p> + +<p>Leslie thought of the young, mortally-wounded Mercutio and his impatient +cry of "<i>What! Is he gone, and hath nothing?</i>" It was the only complaint +at his lot that was ever to pass the lips of this other fighter.</p> + +<p>She looked at him, and her heart swelled with pride for him. It sank +with shame for herself. She had always held him—well, not as lightly as +she said she had. There had been always the sneaking tenderness for the +tall, infatuated boy whom she'd laughed at. But why "sneaking"? Why had +she laughed? She had thought him so much less than herself. She said she +knew so much more. What vanity and crass, superficial folly! A new +thrill took her suddenly. Could it be that War, that had cut everybody's +life in two, had worked another wonder?</p> + +<p>Presently he remarked, "I say, your friends, the poor Dampiers! I +suppose nothing's ever been heard of them, after that day that they +found out at the Works<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_381" id="Page_381">[Pg 381]</a></span> that his wife had started with him, when he set +off for France, and disappeared?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing," said Leslie quietly, "Whether it was an accident with his new +engine, or whether they were killed by a shot from a German aeroplane +they met, we shan't ever know now. It must have been over the sea.... +Nothing has ever been found. Much the best way, I think. I said so to +poor young Mr. Ryan, the man who let her take his place. He was beside +himself when he turned up at the Aircraft place again and found that +nothing had been heard. He said he'd killed her. I told him she would +think he'd done more for her than anybody she knew. The best time to go +out! No growing old and growing dull and perhaps growing ill and being +kept half alive by bothering doctors, for years.... No growing out of +love with each other, ever! They, at least, have had something that +nothing can spoil."</p> + +<p>Monty Scott, turning his small, close-cropped head of a soldier and his +white face towards the tapestry, blurted out: "Well! At all events +they've <i>had</i> it. But even having it 'spoilt' is better than never +having had any——"</p> + +<p>He checked himself abruptly.</p> + +<p>He was not going to whine now over his own ill-luck in love to her, to +Leslie, who had turned him down three times. Not much.</p> + +<p>In the suddenly tense atmosphere of the little room overlooking the +wide, dim Square, the girl felt the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_382" id="Page_382">[Pg 382]</a></span> young man's resolution—a +resolution that he would keep. He would never ask her for another +favour.</p> + +<p>He cleared his throat and spoke in an altered tone, casual, +matter-of-fact.</p> + +<p>"Awfully pretty, the little girl that Dampier married, wasn't she? +Usen't she to live at that Club of yours? I think I saw her once, +somewhere or other——"</p> + +<p>"Yes. You did," said Leslie quickly, and a little breathlessly as though +she, too, had just taken a resolution. "At that dance. That river dance. +She was the Cherub-girl. And I wore my mauve Nijinski things. You +remember that time, Monty?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes," said the wounded man shortly, "I remember."</p> + +<p>There was a slight, uneasy movement under the panther-skin rug.</p> + +<p>He hadn't thought that Leslie would have reminded him of those times. +Not of that dance, when, with his hands on her hips and her hands +clasped at the back of his neck, he had swung round with her in the +maddest of waltzes.... He wouldn't have expected her to <i>remind</i> him!</p> + +<p>Nor was he expecting the next thing that Leslie did. She slipped from +that low chair on to her knees by the couch. Her furs touched his hand, +delicate and whiter now than a woman's, and he took it quickly away. He +could not look at the vivid, impish face with the black, mocking eyes +and the red, mocking mouth that had always bewitched him. Had he looked, +he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_383" id="Page_383">[Pg 383]</a></span> have seen that the mockery was gone from both. It was gone, +too, from Leslie's voice when she next spoke, close to him.</p> + +<p>"Monty! At that dance—— Have you forgotten? We were walking by the +river—and you said—you asked——"</p> + +<p>"Yes, yes; all right. Please don't mind," muttered the man who had been +the Black Panther hastily. It was pretty awful, having girls <i>sorry</i> for +one!</p> + +<p>She went on kneeling by him. "I told you that I wasn't in the mood!"</p> + +<p>"Yes; but—I say, it doesn't matter one scrap, thanks," declared Monty +Scott, very hoarsely.</p> + +<p>This was the hardest thing he'd ever yet had to bear; harder than lying +out wounded in that wet beetroot-field for nine hours before he could be +picked up; harder than the pain, the agonising, jolting journeys; harder +even than the sleepless nights when he had tossed and turned on his bed, +next to the bed where a delirious man who had won the D.S.O. cried out +in his nightmare unceasingly: "Stick it, boys! Stick it, boys! Stick it, +boys!" He (Monty) didn't think he could stick this. There could never be +any one in the world but Leslie for him, that laughing, devil-may-care +Leslie at whom "nice" girls looked askance. Leslie who didn't care. +Leslie who <i>pitied</i> him! Ghastly! Desperately he wished she'd get up and +go—<i>go</i>——</p> + +<p>Suddenly her voice sounded in his ear. Far from being pitying it was so +petulant as to convince even<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_384" id="Page_384">[Pg 384]</a></span> him. It cried: "Monty! I said then that +you were an infant-in-arms! If you weren't an infant you could <i>see</i>!"</p> + +<p>He turned his head quickly on the couch-cushion. But even then he didn't +really see. Even then he scarcely took in, for the moment, what he +heard.</p> + +<p>For the kneeling, radiant girl had to go on, laughing shakily: "I always +liked you.... After everything I said! After everything I've thought, it +comes round to this. <i>It's better to have loved and settled down than +never to have loved at all.... Oh!</i> I've got my head into as bright a +rainbow as any of them!..." scolded Leslie, laughing again as +flutteringly as Paul Ðampier's sweetheart might have done. "Oh, I +thought that just because one liked a man in the kind of way I liked +you, it was no reason to accept him ... <i>fool</i> that I was——"</p> + +<p>"Leslie!" he cried very sharply, scarcely believing his ears. "Could you +have?—<i>could</i> you? And you tell me <i>now</i>! When it's too late——"</p> + +<p>"Too <i>late</i>? <i>Won't</i> you have me? Can't you see that I think you so much +more of a man when you're getting about as well as you can on one leg +than I did when you were just dancing and fooling about on two? As for +me——"</p> + +<p>She turned her bright face away.</p> + +<p>"It's the same old miracle that never stops happening. I shan't even be +a woman, ever," faltered Leslie Long, "unless you help to make me one!"</p> + +<p>"You can't mean it? You can't——"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_385" id="Page_385">[Pg 385]</a></span></p> + +<p>"Can't I? I am 'in the mood' <i>now</i>, Monty!" she said, very softly. +"Believe me!"</p> + +<p>And her long arm was flung, gently and carefully, about her soldier's +neck; her lips were close to his.</p> + +<hr style='width: 15%;' /> + +<p>When at last she left her lover, Leslie Long walked down the darkened +streets near Victoria, quietly and meditatively. And her thoughts were +only partly with the man whom she had left so happy. Partly they were +claimed by the girl-friend whose marriage morning wish had been for her, +Leslie, to be happy in the same way.</p> + +<p>It seemed to Leslie that she was very near her now.</p> + +<p>Even as she walked along the tall girl was conscious, in a way not to be +described, of a Presence that seemed to follow her and to beset her and +to surround her with a sense of loving, laughing, girlish pleasure and +fellowship. She saw, <i>without seeing</i>, the small, eager, tip-tilted face +with bright eyes of river-green and brown, crowned by the wreath of +short, thick curls. <i>Without hearing</i>, she caught the tone of the soft, +un-English, delighted voice that cried, "Oh, <i>Les</i>—lie——!"</p> + +<p> </p> + +<p>"Little Taffy! She'd be so full of it, of course.... Of <i>course</i> she'd +be glad! Of <i>course</i> she'd know; I can't think she doesn't. Not she, who +was so much in love herself," mused Leslie, putting up her hand with her +characteristic gesture to tuck in the stray tress of black hair that had +come loose under her trim velvet cap.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_386" id="Page_386">[Pg 386]</a></span></p> + +<p>"And the people we've loved can't forget at once, as soon as they've +left us. I don't believe that. <i>She knows.</i> If <i>I</i> could only say +something—send some sort of message! Even if it were only like waving a +hand! If <i>I</i> could make some sign that I shall always care——"</p> + +<p>As she thought of it she was passing a row of shops. The subdued light +from one of them fell upon swinging garlands of greenery festooned +outside; decorations ready for Christmas.</p> + +<p>On an impulse Leslie Long turned into this florist's shop. "I want one +of those wreaths you have, please," she said.</p> + +<p>"Yes, Madam; a holly-wreath?"</p> + +<p>"No. One of those. Laurel."</p> + +<p>And while the man fetched down the wreath of broad, dark, pointed +leaves, Leslie Long took out one of her cards and a pencil, and +scribbled the message that she presently fastened to the wreath. She +would not have it wrapped up in paper, but carried it as it was. Then +she turned down a side-street to the Embankment, near Vauxhall Bridge. +She leaned over the parapet and saw the black, full tide, here and there +only jewelled with lights, flowing on, on, past the spanning bridges and +the town, away to the sea that had been at last the great, silver, +restless resting-place for such young and ardent hearts....</p> + +<p>There was a soft splash as she flung the laurel wreath into the flowing +water.</p> + +<p>Leslie glanced over and watched it carried swiftly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_387" id="Page_387">[Pg 387]</a></span> past. In a patch of +light she saw the tiny white gleam of the card that was tied to the +leaves of victory.</p> + +<p>This was what she had written upon it:</p> + + +<div class="blockquot"><p> +<span style="margin-left: 6em;">"For Gwenna and Paul.</span><br /> +<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">'<i>Envy, ah, even to tears!</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>The fortune of their years,</i></span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;"><i>Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended.</i>'"</span><br /> +</p></div> + + +<h4>THE END</h4> + + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>Popular Copyright Novels</h2> + +<h4><i>AT MODERATE PRICES</i></h4> + +<p class="center">Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction</p> + +<p> +<b>Abner Daniel.</b> By Will N. Harben.<br /> +<b>Adventures of Gerard.</b> By A. Conan Doyle.<br /> +<b>Adventures of a Modest Man.</b> By Robert W. Chambers.<br /> +<b>Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.</b> By A. Conan Doyle.<br /> +<b>Adventures of Jimmie Dale, The.</b> By Frank L. Packard.<br /> +<b>After House, The.</b> By Mary Roberts Rinehart.<br /> +<b>Alisa Paige.</b> By Robert W. Chambers.<br /> +<b>Alton of Somasco.</b> By Harold Bindloss.<br /> +<b>A Man's Man.</b> By Ian Hay.<br /> +<b>Amateur Gentleman, The.</b> By Jeffery Farnol.<br /> +<b>Andrew The Glad.</b> By Maria Thompson Daviess.<br /> +<b>Ann Boyd.</b> By Will N. Harben.<br /> +<b>Anna the Adventuress.</b> By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /> +<b>Another Man's Shoes.</b> By Victor Bridges.<br /> +<b>Ariadne of Allan Water.</b> By Sidney McCall.<br /> +<b>Armchair at the Inn, The.</b> By F. Hopkinson Smith.<br /> +<b>Around Old Chester.</b> By Margaret Deland.<br /> +<b>Athalie.</b> By Robert W. Chambers.<br /> +<b>At the Mercy of Tiberius.</b> By Augusta Evans Wilson.<br /> +<b>Auction Block, The.</b> By Rex Beach.<br /> +<b>Aunt Jane.</b> By Jeanette Lee.<br /> +<b>Aunt Jane of Kentucky.</b> By Eliza C. Hall.<br /> +<b>Awakening of Helena Richie.</b> By Margaret Deland.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Bambi.</b> By Marjorie Benton Cooke.<br /> +<b>Bandbox, The.</b> By Louis Joseph Vance.<br /> +<b>Barbara of the Snows.</b> By Harry Irving Green.<br /> +<b>Bar 20.</b> By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /> +<b>Bar 20 Days.</b> By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /> +<b>Barrier, The.</b> By Rex Beach.<br /> +<b>Beasts of Tarzan, The.</b> By Edgar Rice Burroughs.<br /> +<b>Beechy.</b> By Bettina Von Hutten.<br /> +<b>Bella Donna.</b> By Robert Hichens.<br /> +<b>Beloved Vagabond, The.</b> By Wm. J. Locke.<br /> +<b>Beltane the Smith.</b> By Jeffery Farnol.<br /> +<b>Ben Blair.</b> By Will Lillibridge.<br /> +<b>Betrayal, The.</b> By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /> +<b>Better Man, The.</b> By Cyrus Townsend Brady.<br /> +<b>Beulah.</b> (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans.<br /> +<b>Beyond the Frontier.</b> By Randall Parrish.<br /> +<b>Black Is White.</b> By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /> +<b>Blind Man's Eyes, The.</b> By Wm. MacHarg & Edwin Balmer.<br /> +<b>Bob Hampton of Placer.</b> By Randall Parrish.<br /> +<b>Bob, Son of Battle.</b> By Alfred Ollivant.<br /> +<b>Britton of the Seventh.</b> By Cyrus Townsend Brady.<br /> +<b>Broad Highway, The.</b> By Jeffery Farnol.<br /> +<b>Bronze Bell, The.</b> By Louis Joseph Vance.<br /> +<b>Bronze Eagle, The.</b> By Baroness Orczy.<br /> +<b>Buck Peters, Ranchman.</b> By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /> +<b>Business of Life, The.</b> By Robert W. Chambers.<br /> +<b>By Right of Purchase.</b> By Harold Bindloss.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Cabbages and Kings.</b> By O. Henry.<br /> +<b>Calling of Dan Matthews, The.</b> By Harold Bell Wright.<br /> +<b>Cape Cod Stories.</b> By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /> +<b>Cap'n Dan's Daughter.</b> By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /> +<b>Cap'n Eri.</b> By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /> +<b>Cap'n Warren's Wards.</b> By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /> +<b>Cardigan.</b> By Robert W. Chambers.<br /> +<b>Carpet From Bagdad, The.</b> By Harold MacGrath.<br /> +<b>Cease Firing.</b> By Mary Johnson.<br /> +<b>Chain of Evidence, A.</b> By Carolyn Wells.<br /> +<b>Chief Legatee, The.</b> By Anna Katharine Green.<br /> +<b>Cleek of Scotland Yard.</b> By T. W. Hanshew.<br /> +<b>Clipped Wings.</b> By Rupert Hughes.<br /> +<b>Coast of Adventure, The.</b> By Harold Bindloss.<br /> +<b>Colonial Free Lance, A.</b> By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.<br /> +<b>Coming of Cassidy, The.</b> By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /> +<b>Coming of the Law, The.</b> By Chas. A. Seltzer.<br /> +<b>Conquest of Canaan, The.</b> By Booth Tarkington.<br /> +<b>Conspirators, The.</b> By Robt. W. Chambers.<br /> +<b>Counsel for the Defense.</b> By Leroy Scott.<br /> +<b>Court of Inquiry, A.</b> By Grace S. Richmond.<br /> +<b>Crime Doctor, The.</b> By E. W. Hornung.<br /> +<b>Crimson Gardenia, The, and Other Tales of Adventure.</b> By Rex Beach.<br /> +<b>Cross Currents.</b> By Eleanor H. Porter.<br /> +<b>Cry in the Wilderness, A.</b> By Mary E. Waller.<br /> +<b>Cynthia of the Minute.</b> By Louis Jos. Vance.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Dark Hollow, The.</b> By Anna Katharine Green.<br /> +<b>Dave's Daughter.</b> By Patience Bevier Cole.<br /> +<b>Day of Days, The.</b> By Louis Joseph Vance.<br /> +<b>Day of the Dog, The.</b> By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /> +<b>Depot Master, The.</b> By Joseph C. Lincoln.<br /> +<b>Desired Woman, The.</b> By Will N. Harben.<br /> +<b>Destroying Angel, The.</b> By Louis Joseph Vance.<br /> +<b>Dixie Hart.</b> By Will N. Harben.<br /> +<b>Double Traitor, The.</b> By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /> +<b>Drusilla With a Million.</b> By Elizabeth Cooper.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Eagle of the Empire, The.</b> By Cyrus Townsend Brady.<br /> +<b>El Dorado.</b> By Baroness Orczy.<br /> +<b>Elusive Isabel.</b> By Jacques Futrelle.<br /> +<b>Empty Pockets.</b> By Rupert Hughes.<br /> +<b>Enchanted Hat, The.</b> By Harold MacGrath.<br /> +<b>Eye of Dread, The.</b> By Payne Erskine.<br /> +<b>Eyes of the World, The.</b> By Harold Bell Wright.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Felix O'Day.</b> By F. Hopkinson Smith.<br /> +<b>50-40 or Fight.</b> By Emerson Hough.<br /> +<b>Fighting Chance, The.</b> By Robert W. Chambers.<br /> +<b>Financier, The.</b> By Theodore Dreiser.<br /> +<b>Flamsted Quarries.</b> By Mary E. Waller.<br /> +<b>Flying Mercury, The.</b> By Eleanor M. Ingram.<br /> +<b>For a Maiden Brave.</b> By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss.<br /> +<b>Four Million, The.</b> By O. Henry.<br /> +<b>Four Pool's Mystery, The.</b> By Jean Webster.<br /> +<b>Fruitful Vine, The.</b> By Robert Hichens.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.</b> By George Randolph Chester.<br /> +<b>Gilbert Neal.</b> By Will N. Harben.<br /> +<b>Girl From His Town, The.</b> By Marie Van Vorst.<br /> +<b>Girl of the Blue Ridge, A.</b> By Payne Erskine.<br /> +<b>Girl Who lived in the Woods, The.</b> By Marjorie Benton Cook.<br /> +<b>Girl Who Won, The.</b> By Beth Ellis.<br /> +<b>Glory of Clementina, The.</b> By Wm. J. Locke.<br /> +<b>Glory of the Conquered, The.</b> By Susan Glaspell.<br /> +<b>God's Country and the Woman.</b> By James Oliver Curwood.<br /> +<b>God's Good Man.</b> By Marie Corelli.<br /> +<b>Going Some.</b> By Rex Beach.<br /> +<b>Gold Bag, The.</b> By Carolyn Wells.<br /> +<b>Golden Slipper, The.</b> By Anna Katharine Green.<br /> +<b>Golden Web, The.</b> By Anthony Partridge.<br /> +<b>Gordon Craig.</b> By Randall Parrish.<br /> +<b>Greater Love Hath No Man.</b> By Frank L. Packard.<br /> +<b>Greyfriars Bobby.</b> By Eleanor Atkinson.<br /> +<b>Guests of Hercules, The.</b> By C. N. & A. M. Williamson.<br /> +<br /> +<b>Halcyone.</b> By Elinor Glyn.<br /> +<b>Happy Island</b> (Sequel to Uncle William). By Jeannette Lee.<br /> +<b>Havoc.</b> By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /> +<b>Heart of Philura, The.</b> By Florence Kingsley.<br /> +<b>Heart of the Desert, The.</b> By Honoré Willsie.<br /> +<b>Heart of the Hills, The.</b> By John Fox, Jr.<br /> +<b>Heart of the Sunset.</b> By Rex Beach.<br /> +<b>Heart of Thunder Mountain, The.</b> By Elfrid A. Bingham.<br /> +<b>Heather-Moon, The.</b> By C. N. and A. M. Williamson.<br /> +<b>Her Weight in Gold.</b> By Geo. B. McCutcheon.<br /> +<b>Hidden Children, The.</b> By Robert W. Chambers.<br /> +<b>Hoosier Volunteer, The.</b> By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles.<br /> +<b>Hopalong Cassidy.</b> By Clarence E. Mulford.<br /> +<b>How Leslie Loved.</b> By Anne Warner.<br /> +<b>Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker.</b> By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D.<br /> +<b>Husbands of Edith, The.</b> By George Barr McCutcheon.<br /> +<br /> +<b>I Conquered.</b> By Harold Titus.<br /> +<b>Illustrious Prince, The.</b> By E. Phillips Oppenheim.<br /> +<b>Idols.</b> By William J. Locke.<br /> +<b>Indifference of Juliet, The.</b> By Grace S. Richmond.<br /> +<b>Inez.</b> (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans.<br /> +<b>Infelice.</b> By Augusta Evans Wilson.<br /> +<b>In Her Own Right.</b> By John Reed Scott.<br /> +<b>Initials Only.</b> By Anna Katharine Green.<br /> +<b>In Another Girl's Shoes.</b> By Berta Ruck.<br /> +<b>Inner Law, The.</b> By Will N. Harben.<br /> +<b>Innocent.</b> By Marie Corelli.<br /> +<b>Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, The.</b> By Sax Rohmer.<br /> +<b>In the Brooding Wild.</b> By Ridgwell Cullum.<br /> +<b>Intrigues, The.</b> By Harold Bindloss.<br /> +<b>Iron Trail, The.</b> By Rex Beach.<br /> +<b>Iron Woman, The.</b> By Margaret Deland.<br /> +<b>Ishmael</b> (Ill.) By Mrs. Southworth. +</p> + + +<div class="tnote"> + +<p><b>TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:</b> + +Obvious punctuation errors have been silently closed, while those +requiring interpretation have been left as such. +Apart from the misprint corrections listed below, printer's inconsistencies in +spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p> + "kimona" corrected to "kimono" (page 21)<br /> + "beseiged" corrected to "besieged" (page 62)<br /> + "Esctasy" corrected to "Ecstasy" (page 242)<br /> + "ass" corrected to "as" (page 277)<br /> + "husabnd" corrected to "husband" (page 353) +</p></div> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boy with Wings, by Berta Ruck + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY WITH WINGS *** + +***** This file should be named 36223-h.htm or 36223-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/2/2/36223/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Boy with Wings + +Author: Berta Ruck + +Release Date: May 27, 2011 [EBook #36223] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY WITH WINGS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + + + + + THE BOY WITH WINGS + + + + The Boy With Wings + + By BERTA RUCK + (MRS. OLIVER ONIONS) + + AUTHOR OF + + "His Official Fiancee," + "The Wooing of Rosamond Fayre," + "In Another Girl's Shoes," Etc. + + + [Illustration] + + + A. L. BURT COMPANY + Publishers New York + + Published by arrangement with DODD, MEAD & COMPANY + + + + COPYRIGHT, 1915, + By DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY + + Published in England under the title of + "The Lad With Wings." + + + + DEDICATED, WITH AFFECTION + TO THAT BRAINLESS ARMY TYPE. + MY YOUNGEST BROTHER + + "The men of my own stock + Bitter-bad they may be, + But at least they hear the things I hear. + They see the things I see." + + KIPLING. + + + + +CONTENTS + + +PART I + +_MAY, JUNE, JULY, 1914_ + + CHAPTER PAGE + I AERIAL LIGHT HORSE 3 + II THE BOSOM-CHUMS 19 + III THE EYES OF ICARUS 34 + IV THE SONG OF ALL THE AGES 54 + V THE WORKADAY WORLD 62 + VI THE INVITATION 71 + VII A BACHELOR'S TEA-PARTY 75 + VIII LAUGHING ODDS 82 + IX A DAY IN THE COUNTRY 89 + X LESLIE, ON "THE ROOTS OF THE ROSE" 107 + XI THE HEELS OF MERCURY 122 + XII THE KISS WITHHELD 128 + XIII THE FLYING DREAM 144 + XIV AN AWAKENING 152 + XV LESLIE ON "TOO MUCH LOVE" 168 + XVI THE AEROPLANE LADY 178 + XVII LESLIE ON "MARRIAGE" 186 + XVIII THE OBVIOUS THING 193 + XIX THE SEALED BOX 212 + + +PART II + +_JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914_ + + I THE AVIATION DINNER 223 + II THE WHISPER OF WAR 235 + III THE LAST SUNDAY OF PEACE 241 + IV THAT WEEK-END 259 + V THE DIE IS CAST 265 + VI HER GUARDIAN'S CONSENT 267 + VII HASTE TO THE WEDDING! 280 + VIII THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM 293 + IX THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT" 300 + X LESLIE, ON "THE MOTLEY OF MARS" 310 + XI A LOVE-LETTER--AND A ROSE 321 + + +PART III + +_SEPTEMBER, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN_ + + I A WAR-TIME HONEYMOON 335 + II THE SOUL OF UNDINE 345 + III A LAST FAVOUR 350 + IV THE DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE 361 + V THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 364 + VI THE WINGED VICTORY 370 + POSTSCRIPT--MYRTLE AND LAUREL LEAF 376 + + + + +PART I + +_MAY, JUNE, JULY, 1914_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +AERIAL LIGHT HORSE + + +Hendon! + +An exquisite May afternoon, still and sunny. Above, a canopy of +unflecked sapphire-blue. Below, the broad khaki-green expanse of the +flying-ground, whence the tall, red-white-and-blue pylons pointed giant +fingers to the sky. + +Against the iron railings of the ground the border of chairs was +thronged with spectators; women and girls in summery frocks, men in +light overcoats with field-glasses slung by a strap about them. The +movement of this crowd was that of a breeze in a drift of coloured +petals; the talk and laughter rose and fell as people looked about at +the great sheds with their huge lettered names, at the big stand, at the +parked-up motors behind the seats; at the men in uniform carrying their +brass instruments slowly across to the bandstand on the left. + +At intervals everybody said to everybody else: "Isn't this just a +perfect afternoon for the flying?" + + * * * * * + +Presently, there passed the turnstile entrance at the back of the parked +motor-cars a group of three young girls, chattering together. + +One was in pink; one was in cornflower-blue. The girl who walked +between them wore all white, with a sunshine-yellow jersey-coat flung +over her arm. Crammed well down upon her head she wore a shady white +hat, bristling with a flight of white wings; it seemed to overshadow the +whole of her small compact, but supple little person, which was finished +off by a pair of tiny, white-canvas-shod feet. She was the youngest as +well as the smallest of the trio standing at the turnstile. (Observe +her, if you please; then leave or follow her, for she is the Girl of +this story.) + +"This is my show!" she declared. Her softly-modulated voice had a trace +of Welsh accent as she added, "I'm paying for this, indeed!" + +"No, you aren't, then, Gwenna Williams!" protested the girl in pink +(whose accent was Higher Cockney). "We were all to pay for ourselves!" + +"Yes; but wasn't it me that made you come into the half-crown places +because I was so keen to see a flying-machine _close_?... I'll pay the +difference then, if you _must_ make a fuss. We'll settle up at the +office on Monday," said the girl who had been addressed as Gwenna +Williams. + +With a girlish, self-conscious little gesture she took half a sovereign +out of her wash-leather glove and handed it to the tall, be-medalledd +commissionaire. + +"Come on, now, girls," she said. "This is going to be lovely!" And she +led the way forward to that line of seats, where there were just three +green chairs vacant together. + +Laughing, chattering, gay with the ease of Youth in its own company, +the three, squeezed rather close together by the press, sat down; +Gwenna, the Welsh girl, in the middle. The broad brim of her hat brushed +against the roses of the pink-clad girl's cheaper hat as Gwenna leaned +forward. + +"Sorry, Butcher," she said. She moved. + +This time one of the white wings caught a pin in the hat of the plump +blonde in blue, who exclaimed resignedly and in an accent that was +neither of Wales nor of England, "Now komm I also into this hat-business +of Candlestick-maker. It _is_ a bit of oll right!" + +"_So_ sorry, Baker," apologised the girl in white again, putting up her +hands to disengage the hat. "I'll take it off, like a matinee. Yes, I +will, indeed. We shall all see better." She removed the hat from a small +head that was very prettily overgrown with brown, thick, cropped curls. +The bright eyes with which she blinked at first in the strong sunlight +were of the colour of the flying-ground before them: earth-brown and +turf-green mixed. + +"I will hold your hat, since it is for me that you take him off," said +the girl whom they called Baker. + +Her real name was Becker; Ottilie Becker. She worked at the German +correspondence of that London office where the other two girls, Gwenna +Williams and Mabel Butcher, were typists. It was one of the many small +jokes of the place to allude to themselves as the Butcher, the Baker, +and the Candlestick-maker. + +All three were excellent friends.... + +The other two scarcely realised that Gwenna, the Celt, was different +from themselves; more absent-minded, yet more alive. A passer-by might +have summed her up as "a pretty, commonplace little thing;" a girl like +millions of others. But under the ready-made muslin blouse of that +season's style there was ripening, all unsuspected, the dormant bud of +Passion. This is no flower of the commonplace. And her eyes were full of +dreams, innocent dreams. Some of them had come true already. For hadn't +she broken away from home to follow them? Hadn't she left the valley +where nothing ever went on except the eternal Welsh rain that blurred +the skylines of the mountains opposite, and that drooped in curtains of +silver-grey gauze over the slate roofs of the quarry-village, set in +that brook-threaded wedge between wooded hillsides? Hadn't she escaped +from that cage of a chapel house sitting-room with its kitchen-range and +its many bookshelves and its steel print of John Bunyan and its +maddening old grandfather-clock that _always_ said half-pastt two and +its everlasting smell of singeing hearthrug, and _never_ a window open? +Yes! she'd given her uncle-guardian no peace until he'd washed his hands +over Gwenna's coming up to London. So here she was in London now, making +fresh discoveries every day, and enjoying that mixture of drudgery and +frivolling that makes up the life of the London bachelor-girl. She was +still "fancy-free," as people say of a girl who loves and lives in +fancies, and she was still at the age for bosom-friendships. One +sincerely adored girl-chum had her confidence. This was a young woman at +the Residential Club, where Gwenna lived; not one of these from the +office. + +But the office trio could take an occasional Saturday jaunt together as +enjoyingly as if they never met during the week. + + * * * * * + +"Postcards, picture postcards!" chanted a shrill treble voice above the +buzz of the talking, waiting crowds. + +Before the seats a small boy passed with a tray of photographs. These +showed views of the hangars and of the ground; portraits of the +aviators. + +"Postcards!" He paused before that cluster of blue and white and pink +frocks. "Any picture postcards?" + +"Yes! Wait a minute. Let's choose some," said Miss Butcher. And three +heads bent together over the display of glazed cards. "Tell you what, +Baker; we'll send one off to your soldier-brother in Germany. Shall we? +All sign it, like we did that one to your mother, from the Zoo." + +"Ah, yes. A _bier-karte_!" said the German girl, with her good-natured +giggle. "Here, I choose this one. View of Hendon. We write '_Es lassen +gruessen unbekannter Weise_'--'there send greeting to Karl, the +Unknown.'" + +"Oh, but hadn't we better send him this awfully nice-looking airman, +just as a sort of example of what a young man really can do in the way +of appearance, what?" suggested Miss Butcher, picking out another card. +"Peach, isn't he? Look! He's standing up in the thingamagig _just_ like +an archangel in his car; or do I mean Apollo?--Gwenna'd know.... Which +are you going to choose, Gwenna?" + +Gwenna had picked out three cards. A view of the ground, a picture of a +biplane in mid-air, and a portrait of one of the other airmen. + +He had been taken in his machine against the blank background of sky. +The big, boyish hands gripped the wheel, the cap, goggles in front, peak +behind, was pushed back from the careless, clean-shaven lad's face, with +its cheeks creased with deep dimples of a smile. + +"This one," said Gwenna Williams. And there was no whisper of Fate at +her heart as she announced lightly, "This is _my_ love." (She did not +guess, as you do, that here was the portrait of the Boy of this story.) + +The other girls leaned across her to look as she added: "_He's_ the most +like Icarus, I think." + +"Who's Icarus, when he's at home?" inquired Miss Butcher. And Gwenna, +out of one of her skimmed books, gave a hurried explanation of Icarus, +the first flying-man, the classic youth who "dared the sun" on wings of +wax.... Together the girls inspected the postcard of his modern type, +the Hendon aviator. They laughed; they read aloud the name "_P. +Dampier_;" they compared his looks with those of other airmen, treating +the whole subject precisely as they would have treated the dancing or +singing of their favourite actresses in the revues.... + +For it was still May, Nineteen-fourteen in England. The feeling of warm +and drowsy peace in the air was only intensified by the brisk, sharp +strains of the military band on the left of the flying-ground, playing +the "Light-Cavalry" march.... + + +"Dear me! Are we going on like this for ever?" remonstrated Gwenna +presently. "Aren't they _ever_ going up?" + +She was answered by a shattering roar from the right. + +It ceased. Then, on the field before her excited eyes, there was brought +out of one of the hangars by a cluster of mechanics in khaki-brown +overalls the Winged Romance that came into this tired and _blase_ world +with that most wondrous of all Ages--the Twentieth Century. At first +only a long gleaming upper plane, jolting over the uneven ground, could +be seen over the heads of the watchers. Then it reached the enclosure. +For the first time in her life Gwenna beheld a Maurice Farman biplane. + +And for the moment she was a little disappointed, for she had said it +was "going to be so lovely!" + +She had expected--what? Something that would look more like what it was, +the new Bird of man's making. Here the sunlight gleamed on the taut, +cambered wings, on the bamboo spars, the varnished blade of the +motionless propeller, all shiny as a new toyshop. But the girl saw no +grace in it. Its skids rested on the sunburned grass like a couple of +_ski_ in the _Sketch_ photographs of winter sports. It had absurd +little wheels, too, looking as if, when it had finished skiing, the +machine might take to roller-skating. The whole thing seemed gaunt and +cumbrous and clogged to the earth. Gwenna did not then know that, unlike +Antaeus, this half-godlike creature only awoke to life and beauty when it +felt the earth no more. + +Then, as she watched, a mechanic, the Daedalus who strapped on the wings +for the Icarus seized the propeller, which kicked thrice, rebelliously, +and then, with another roar, dissolved into a circle of mist. Other +brown figures were clinging to the under parts of the structure, holding +it back; Gwenna did not see the signal to let go. All that she saw was +the clumsy forward run of the thing as, like a swan that tries to clear +its feet of the water, the biplane struggled to free itself from the +drag of Earth.... + +Then, as the wonder happened, the untried and imaginative little Welsh +country-girl, watching, gave a gasp. "_Ah----!_" + +The machine was fettered no longer. + +Suddenly those absurd skids and wheels had become no more than the tiny +feet that a seagull tucks away under itself, and like a gull the biplane +rose. It soared, its engine shouting triumph as it sped. Gwenna's heart +beat as tensely as that engine. Her eyes sparkled. What they saw was not +now a machine, but the beauty of those curves it cut in the conquered +air. It soared, it banked, it swayed gently as if on a keel. Swiftly +circling, up and up it went, until it seemed to dwindle to something not +even larger than the seagull it resembled; then it was a flying-fish, +then a dragonfly wheeling in the blue immensity above. + +Suddenly, like a fog-signal, there boomed out the voice of the man with +the megaphone, the man who made from the judges' stand, behind the +committee-enclosure all announcements for the meeting: + + "Ladies and gentul MEN," it boomed. + + "Mis ter Paul Dampier on a Maurice Farman bi plane!" + +The huge convolvulus-trumpet of the megaphone swung round. The +announcement was made from the other side of the stand; the sound of +that booming voice being subdued as it reached the group of three girls. + + "Mister Paul Dampier----" + +"You hear, Gwenna? It is _your_ young man," said Miss Baker; Miss +Butcher adding, "Hope you had a good look at him and saw if that photo +did him justice?" + +"From here? Well, how could I? It's not much I could see of him," +complained Gwenna, laughing. "He only looked about as big as a knot in a +cat's cradle!" + +Another roar, another small commotion on the ground. Another of those +ramshackle looking giant grasshoppers slid forward and upward into the +air. Presently three aeroplanes, then four together were circling and +soaring together in the sapphire-blue arena. + +Below, a pair of swallows, swift as light, chased each other over the +ground, above their own shadows, towards the tea-pavilion. + +Yet another flyer winged his tireless way across the aerodrome. He was a +droning bee, buzzing and hovering unheeded over a tuft of dusty white +clover growing by the rails that were so closely thronged by human +beings come to watch and wonder over man's still new miracle of flight. + + +"Oh, flying! Mustn't it be too glorious!" sighed the Welsh girl, +watching the aeroplane that was now scarcely larger than a winged bullet +in the blue. "Oh, wouldn't I love to go up! Wouldn't it be Heaven!" + +"It's been Heaven for several poor fellows lately," suggested the +shrewd, Cockney-voiced little Miss Butcher, grimly, from her right. +"What about that poor young What's-his-name, fallen and killed on the +spot at twenty-one!" + +"I don't call him 'poor,'" declared Gwenna Williams softly. "I should +think there could be worse things happen to one than get killed, +quickly, right in the middle of being so young and jolly and doing such +things----" + +"Ah, look! That's it! See that?" murmured a voice near them. "Flying +upside down, now, that first one--see him?" + +And now Gwenna, at gaze, watched breathlessly the wonder that seemed +already natural enough to the multitude; the swoop and curve, the loop +and dash and recover of the biplane that seemed for the moment a winged +white quill held in a hand unseen, writing its challenge on the blue +wall of Heaven itself. + + +Again the megaphone boomed out through the still and soft June air: + + "Ladies and gentul MEN! Pass enger flights from this + aer riodrome may now be booked at the office un der + this Stand!" + +"Two guineas, my dears, for the chance of breaking your necks," +commented Miss Butcher. "Three guineas for a longer flight, I believe; +that is, a better chance. Well, I bet that if I did happen to have two +gleaming golden jimmyohgoblins to my name, I'd find something else to +spend 'em on, first!" + +"I also!" agreed Miss Baker. + +Gwenna moved a little impatiently. She hadn't two guineas, either, to +spend. She still owed a guinea, now, for that unjustifiable +extravagance, that white hat with the wings. In spite of earning her own +living, in spite of having a little money of her own, left her by her +father who had owned shares in a Welsh quarry, she _never_ had any +guineas! But oh, if she had! _Wouldn't_ she go straight off to that +stand and book for a passenger-flight!... + +While her covetous eyes were still on the biplane, her ears caught a +stir of discussion that came from the motor nearest to the chairs. + +A lady was speaking in a softly dominant voice, the voice of a class +that recognises no overhearing save by its chosen friends. + +"My dear woman, it's as safe as the Tubes and the motor-buses. These +exhibition passenger-flights aren't really _flying_, Cuckoo said. Didn't +you, Cuckoo?" + +A short deep masculine laugh sounded from behind the ladies, then a +drawled "What are they then, what? Haw? Flip-flap, White City, what?" + +"Men always pretend afterwards that they've never said _anything_. +Cuckoo told me that when these people 'mean business' they can fly +_millions_ of times higher and faster than we _ever_ see them here. He +said there wasn't the _slightest_ reason why Muriel shouldn't----" + +Here the sound, hard and clear as an icicle, of a very young girl's +voice, ringing out: + +"And anyhow, mother, I'm _going_ to!" + +Glancing round, Gwenna saw a lanky girl younger than herself spring down +from the big, dove-grey car, and stride, followed by a tall man wearing +a top-hat, to the booking-office below the stand. This girl wore a long +brown oilskin coat over her white sweater and her short, admirably-cut +skirt; a brown chiffon veil tied over her head showed the shape and the +auburn gleam of it without giving a hair to the breeze. + +"Lovely to be those sort of people," sighed the enviously watching +Gwenna, as other girls from the cars strolled into the enclosure with +the notice "COMMITTEE ONLY," and seemed to be discussing, laying bets, +perhaps, about the impending race for machines carrying a +lady-passenger. "Fancy, whenever any of _them_ want to do or to see or +even to _be_ anything, they've only got to say, 'Anyhow, I'm going to!' +and there they are! _That's_ the way to live!" + +Presently the three London typists were sitting at a table under the +green awning and the hanging flower-baskets; one of a score of tables +where folk sat and chattered and turned their eyes ceaselessly upwards +to the blue sky, pointed at by those giant pylon-fingers, invaded by +those soaring, whirring, insolent, space daring creatures of man. + + +The first biplane had been preparing for the Ladies' Race. Now came the +start; with the dropped white flag the announcement from that dominating +magnified voice: + + "Mis ter Damp ier on a Maurice Far man bi plane ac + companied by Miss Mu riel Con yers----" + +The German girl put in, "Your man again, Gwenna!" + +"My man indeed. And I haven't seen him, even yet," complained the Welsh +girl again, laughing over her cup of cooling tea, "only in the +photograph! Don't suppose I ever shall, either. It's my fate, girls. +Nothing really exciting ever happens to me!" She sighed, then +brightened again as she remembered something. "I must be off now.... +I've got to go out this evening." + +"Anywhere thrilling?" asked Miss Butcher. + +"I don't know what it'll be like. It's Leslie Long; it's my friend at +the Club's married sister somewhere in Kensington, giving a +dinner-party," Gwenna answered in the scrambling New English in which +she was learning to disguise her Welshiness, "and there's a girl fallen +through at the last minute. So she 'phoned through this morning to ask +if this girl could rake any one up." + +"How mouldy for you, my dear," said Mabel Butcher in her sympathetic +Cockney as the Welsh girl rose, took up her sunshine-yellow coat from +the back of her chair and chinked down a shilling upon her thick white +plate. "Means you'll have to sit next some youth who only forced himself +into his dress-suit for the sake of taking that 'fallen through' girl +into dinner. He'll be scowling fit to murder you, I expect, for being +you and not her. (I know their ways.) Never mind. Pinch a couple of +liqueur-choc'lates off the table for me when the Blighted Being isn't +looking, will you? And tell us what he's like on Monday, won't you?" + +"All right," promised the Welsh girl, smiling back at her friends. She +threaded her way through the tables with the plates of coloured cakes, +the brown teapots, the coarse white crockery. She passed behind that +park of cars with that leisured, well-dressed, upward-gazing throng. She +turned her back on the glimpse beyond them of the green field where the +brown-clad mechanics ran up towards the slowly downward swooping +biplane. + +As she reached the entrance she caught again the announcement of that +distant megaphone: + + "Ladies and gentul men Pass enger flights may now + be booked----" + +The band in the distance was playing the dashing tune of the +"Uhlanenritt." + +Gwenna Williams passed out of the gates beside the big poster of the +aeroplane in full flight carrying a girl-passenger who waved a scarf. It +was everywhere, that Spring. So was the other notice: + +"_An afternoon in the country is always refreshing! Flying is always +interesting to watch!_" + +In the dusty bit of lane mended by the wooden sleepers a line of +grass-green taxis was drawn up. + +Gwenna hesitated. + +Should she----? Taxi all the way home to the Ladies' Residential Club in +Hampstead where she lived? + +Four shillings, perhaps.... Extravagance again! "But it's not an +everyday sort of day," Gwenna told herself as she hailed the taxi. "This +afternoon, the flying! This evening, a party with Leslie! Oh, and there +was I saying to the other girls that nothing exciting ever happened to +me!" + +For even now every day of her life seemed to this enjoying Welsh +_ingenue_, packed with thrills. Thrills of anticipation, of +amusement--sometimes of disappointment and embarrassment. But what did +those matter? Supreme through all there glowed the conviction of youth +that, at any moment, Something-More-Exciting still might happen.... + +It might be waiting to happen, waiting now, just round the corner.... + +All young people know that feeling. And to many it remains the most +poignant pleasure that they are to know--that thought of "the party +to-night," that wonder "what may happen at it!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE BOSOM-CHUMS + + +Through leafy side-streets and little squares of Georgian houses, +Gwenna's taxi took her to a newer road that sloped sharply from the +Heath at the top to the church and schools at the bottom. + +The taxi stopped at the glass porch of the large, red-brick building +with the many casement-windows, out of which some enterprising committee +had formed the Ladies' Residential Club. It was a place where a mixed +assembly of young women (governesses, art-students, earnest suffrage +workers, secretaries and so on) lived cheaply enough and with a good +deal of fun and noise, of feud and good-fellowship. The head of it was a +clergyman's widow and the sort of lady who is never to be seen otherwise +than wearing a neat delaine blouse of the Edwardian era, a gold curb +tie-pin, a hairnet and a disapproving glance. + +Gwenna passed this lady in the tessellated hall; she then almost +collided with the object of the lady's most constant disapproval. + +This was a very tall, dark girl with an impish face, a figure boyishly +slim. She looked almost insolently untidy, for she wore a shabby brown +hat, something after the pattern of a Boy Scout's, under which her black +hair was preparing to slide down over the collar of a rain-coat which +(as its owner would have told you) had seen at least two reigns. It was +also covered with loose white hairs, after the fashion of garments whose +wearers are continually with dogs. + +Gwenna caught joyously at the long arm in the crumpled sleeve. + +"Oh, Leslie!" she cried eagerly. + +For this was the bosom-chum. + +"Ha, Taffy-child! Got back early for this orgie of ours? Good," +exclaimed Leslie Long in a clear, nonchalant voice. It was very much the +same voice, Gwenna noticed now, as those people's at the flying-ground, +who belonged to that easy, lordly world of which Gwenna knew nothing. +Leslie, now, did seem to know something about it. Yet she was the +hardest-up girl in the whole club. She had been for a short time a Slade +student, for a shorter time still a probationer at some hospital. Now +all her days were given up to being paid companion to an old lady in +Highgate who kept seventeen toy-Poms; but her evenings remained her own. + +"Afraid this party isn't going to be much of a spree for you," she told +Gwenna as they went upstairs. "I don't know who's going, but my +brother-in-law's friends seldom are what you could describe as 'men.' +Being a stockbroker and rich, he feels he must go in heavily for Art and +Music. Long hair to take you in, probably. Hope you don't awfully mind +coming to the rescue----" + +"Don't mind what it is, as long as I'm going out somewhere, and with +you, Leslie!" the younger girl returned blithely. "Will you do me up the +back, presently?" + +"Rather! I'm dressing in your room. There's a better light there. Hurry +up!" + + * * * * * + +Gwenna's long, narrowish front bedroom at the club was soon breathing of +that characteristic atmosphere that surrounds the making of a full-dress +toilette; warm, scented soap-suds, hot curling-irons, powder, Odol, +perfume. The room possessed a large dressing-table, a long wardrobe, and +a fairly spacious chest-of-drawers. But all this did not prevent the +heaping of Gwenna's bed with the garments, with the gilded, high-heeled +cothurns and with the other gauds belonging to her self-invited guest. + +That guest, with her hair turbaned in a towel and her lengthy young body +sheathed in tricot, towered above the toilet-table like some modern's +illustration of a genie in the Arabian Nights. The small, more +closely-knit Welsh girl, who wore a kimono of pink cotton crepe slipping +from shoulders noticeably well modelled for so young a girl, tried to +steal a glimpse at herself from under her friend's arm. + +"Get out, Taffy," ordered the other coolly. "You're in my way." + +"I like _that_," remonstrated Gwenna, laughing. "It's _my_ glass, +Leslie!" + +But she was ready to give up her glass or any of her belongings to this +freakish-tongued, kind-hearted, unconventional Leslie Long. Nearly +everybody at the club, whether they were of the advanced suffrage party +or the orthodox set, were "shocked" at her. Gwenna loved her. Leslie had +taken a very homesick little Welsh exile under her wing from her first +night at the club; Leslie had mothered her with introductions, loans, +advice. Leslie had bestowed upon her that last favour which woman shows +to sister-woman when she tells her "_at which shops to buy what_." +Leslie had, practically, dressed her. And it was thanks to this that +Gwenna had all the freshness and bloom of the country-girl without any +of the country-girl's all-concealing frumpiness. + +Leslie talked an obligato to everything that Leslie did. + +"I must dress first. I need it more, because I'm so much plainer than +you," said she. "But never mind; it won't take me more than half an hour +to transform myself into a credit to my brother-in-law's table. '_I am +a chrysoberyl, and 'tis night._' The Sometimes-Lvely Girl, that's the +type I belong to. I was told that, once, by one of the nicest boys who +ever loved me. Once I get my hair done, I'll show you. In the meantime +you get well out of my way on the bed, Taffy, like a sweet little cherub +that sits up aloft. And then I'll explain to you why Romance is +dead--oh, shove that anywhere; on the floor--and what the matter is with +us modern girls. Fact is, we're losing our Femininity. We're losing the +power, dear Miss Williams, to please Men." + +She took up a jar of some white paste, and smeared it in a scented mask +above her features. As she did so she did not for one moment cease to +rattle. + +"Men--that is, Nice Men," she gave out unctuously, as she worked the +paste with her palms over her Pierrot-like face, "detest all this +skin-food--and massage. It's Pampering the Person. No nice girl would +think of it. As for this powder-to-finish business, it's only another +form of make-up. They always see through it. (Hem!) And they abhor +anything that makes a girl--a nice girl--look in the least----" The +mocking voice was lowered at the word--"Actressy ...! This is what I was +told to-day, Taff, dear, by my old lady I take the Poms and Pekes out +for. I suppose she's never heard of any actress marrying. But she's a +mine of information. Always telling me where I've missed it, and how." + +Here the tall girl reached for the silver shoe-horn off Gwenna's +dressing-table, and proceeded to use it as the Greek youth used his +strigil, stripping the warmed unguent from her face and neck. She went +on talking while Gwenna, putting a gloss on her short curls with a brush +in each hand, listened and laughed, and watched her from the bed with +greeny-brown eyes full of an unreserved admiration. So far, Leslie +Long's was the society in which Gwenna Williams most delighted. The +younger, less sophisticated girl poured out upon her chum that affection +which is not to be bribed or begged. It is not even to be found in any +but a heart which is yet untouched, save in its dreams, by Love. + +"No Charm about us modern girls. No Mystery," enlarged Miss Long. "No +Glamour. (What is glamour? Is it a herb? State reasons for your answer.) +What Nice Men love to see in a girl is The Being Apart. (Gem of +Information Number Sixty-three.) Sweet, refined, modest; in every look +and tone the _gentlewoman_. Not a mere slangy imitation of themselves. +(Chuck us that other towel.) Not a creature who makes herself cheap, +calls out 'Hi!' and waves to them from the top of omnibuses. Ah, no, my +dear; the girl who'll laugh and 'lark' with men on equal terms may +_seem_ popular with them in a way, but"--here the voice was again +lowered impressively--"that's not the girl they marry. She's just 'very +good fun,' 'a good sort,' a 'pal.' She's treated just as they'd treat +another young man. (I'd watch it!) Which is the girl with whom they fall +in love, though? The shrinking, clinging, feminine creature who is +all-wool--I mean all-woman, Taffy. _She_"--with enormous expression--"is +_never_ left long without her mate!" + +"But," objected Gwenna doubtfully, "she--this old lady of yours--wasn't +married ever?" + +"Oh, never. Always lets you know that she has 'loved and lost.' Whether +that means 'Killed at the Battle of Waterloo' or merely 'Didn't propose' +I couldn't say.... Poor old dear, she's rather lonely, in spite of the +great cloud of Poms," said the old lady's paid "daily companion," +dropping the mockery for the moment, "and I believe she's thankful to +have even me to talk to and scold about the horrid, unsexed girl of +To-day.... Our lack of ... everything! Our clothes! Why, she, as a girl, +would have sunk into the ground rather than be seen in--you know the +kind of thing. Our general shapelessness!--Well, of course," turning to +meet that adoring glance from the little heroine-worshipper on the bed, +"you never see a young woman nowadays with what you could call a +_figure_!" + +Here Leslie, reaching for the giant powder-puff she had flung on to the +foot of the bed, gave a backward bend and a "straighten" that would not +have disgraced an acrobat. + +"No waists! Now if there is a feature that a man admires in a girl it's +her tiny, trimly-corseted waist. My old lady went to a fancy-dress dance +once, in a black-and-yellow plush bodice as '_A Wasp_,' and everybody +said how splendid. She never allowed herself to spread into anything +more than Eighteens until she was thirty! But now the girls are allowed +to slop about in these loud, fast-looking, golf-jackets or whatever they +call them, made just like a man's--and the young men simply aren't +marrying any more. No wonder!" + +"Oh, Leslie! do you think it's true?" put in Gwenna, a trifle nervously. + +"So she told me, my dear. Told Bonnie Leslie, whose bag had been two +proposals that same week," said Miss Long nonchalantly. "One of 'em with +me in the act of wearing that Futurist Harlequin's get-up at the Art +Rebel's Revel. You know; the one I got the idea of from noticing the +reflections of the ground-glass diamond patterns on me through the +bath-room window. I say! she'd have sunk pretty well through into the +Antipodes at the sight of me in that rig, what? Yet here was an +infatuated youth swearing that: + + '_He would like to have the chance + All his life with me to dance, + For he liked his partner best of all!_'" + +Leslie hummed the old musical-comedy tune. "Son of a _Dean_, too!" + +Gwenna looked wistfully thrilled. "Wasn't he--nice enough?" + +"Oh, a sweet boy. Handsome eyes. (I always want to pick them out with a +fork and put them into my own head.) But too simple for me, thanks," +said Leslie lightly. "He was _rather_ cut up when I told him so." + +"Didn't you tell your old lady--anything about it, Leslie?" + +"Does that kind of woman _ever_ get told the truth, Gwenna? I trow not. +That's why the dear old legends live on and on about what men like and +who they propose to. Also the kind old rules, drawn up by people who are +past taking a hand in the game." + +Again she mimicked the old lady's voice: "Nice men have one standard for +the women they marry, and another (a very different standard!) for +the--er--women they flirt with. (So satisfactory, don't you know, for +the girl they marry. No _wonder_ we never find those marriages being a +complete washout!) But supposing that a sort of Leslie-girl came along +and insisted upon Marriage being brought up to the flirtation +standard--_hein_?" + +"But your old lady, Leslie? D'you mean you just let her go on thinking +that you've never had any admiration, and that you've got to agree with +everything she says?" + +"Rather!" said Miss Long with her enjoying laugh. "I take it in with +r-r-rapt attention, looking my worst, as I always do when I'm behaving +my best. Partly because one's bound to listen respectfully to one's +bread-and-butter speaking. And partly because I am genuinely interested +in her remarks," said Leslie Long. "It's the interest of a rather smart +young soldier--if I may say so--let loose in a museum of obsolete +small-arms!" + +Even as she spoke her hands were busy with puff and brush, with +hair-pad, pins, and pencil. Gwenna still regarded her with that full, +discriminating admiration which is never grudged by one attractive girl +to another--of an opposite type. + +With the admiration for this was mixed a tiny dread, well known to the +untried girl--"If she is what They like, _they won't like me_!" ... Also +a wonder, "What in the world would Uncle have said to _her_?" + +And a mental picture rose before Gwenna of the guardian she had left in +the valley. She saw his shock of white, bog-cotton hair, his face of a +Jesuit priest and his voice of a Welsh dissenting minister. She heard +that much-resented voice declaiming slowly. "Yes, Yes. I know the +meaning of London and _self-respect and earning one's own living_. I +know all about these College girls and these girls going to business and +working same as the men, 'shoulder to shoulder'--Indeed, it's very +likely! _'Something better to do, nowadays, than sit at home frowsting +over drawn-thread work until a husband chooses to appear'_--All the same +thing! All the same thing! As it was in the beginning! _'A wider +field'_--for making eyes! And only two eyes to make them with. Oh, +forget-ful Providence, not to let a modern girl have four! _'Larger +opportunities'_--more chance of finding a young man! Yes, yes. That's +it, Gwenna!" + +Gwenna, at the mere memory of it, broke out indignantly, "Sometimes I +should like to _stab_ old people!" + +"Meaning the celebrated Uncle Hugh? Too wise, isn't he?" laughed Leslie +lightly, with her hands at her hair. "Too full of home-truths about the +business girl's typewriter, and the art-student's palette and the +shilling thermometer of the hospital nurse, eh? _He_ knows that they're +the modern girl's equivalent of the silken rope-ladder--what, what? And +the chaise to Gretna Green! _This Way Out. This Way--to Romance._ Why +not? Allow me, Madam----" + +Here she took up an oval box of eighteenth-century enamel, picked out a +tiny black velvet patch and placed it to the left of a careless red +mouth. + +"Effective, I think?" + +"Yes; and how can you say there's such a thing as 'obsolete' in the +middle of all this?" protested Gwenna. "_Look_, how the old fashions +come up again!" + +"Child, curb your dialect. '_Look_,'" Leslie mimicked the Welsh girl's +rising accent. "'The old fashshons.' Of course we modify the fashions +now to suit ourselves. My old lady had to follow them just as they were. +We," said this twentieth-century sage, "are just the same as she was in +lots of ways. The all-important thing to us is still what she calls the +Mate!" + +"M'm,--I don't believe it would be to me," said Gwenna simply. And +thinking of the other possibilities of Life--fresh experiences, work, +friendship, adventure (flying, say!)--she meant what she said. That was +the truth. + +Side by side with this, not contradicting but emphasising it, was +another truth. + +For, as in a house one may arrange roses in a drawing-room and reck +nothing of the homely business of the kitchen--then presently descend +and forget, in the smell of baking bread, the flowers behind those other +doors, so divided, so uncommunicating, so pigeon-holed are the +compartments, lived in one at a time, of a young maid's mind. + +Clearer to Gwenna's inner eyes than the larch green and slate purple of +her familiar valley had been the colours of a secret picture; herself in +a pink summer frock (always a summer frock, regardless of time, season +or place) being proposed to by a blonde youth with eyes as blue as +lupins.... + +Mocking Leslie was urging her, again in the old lady's tone, to "wait +until Mr. Right came along. Jewelled phrase! Such an old world +fragrance about it; moth powder, I suppose. Yet we know what it means, +and they didn't. We know it isn't just anybody in trousers that would +_be_ Mr. Right. (My dear! I use such strange expressions; I quite shock +me sometimes)," she interpolated; adding, "It's a mercy for us in some +ways; so good if we do get the right man. Worse than it used to be if we +don't. Swings and roundabouts again. But it's still true that + + Two things greater than all things are, + The first is Love and the second is War." + +"I can't imagine such a thing as war, now," mused Gwenna on the bed. +"Can you?" + +"Oh, vaguely; yes," said Leslie Long. "You know my people, poor +darlings, were all in the Army. But the poisonously rich man my sister +married says there'll never be any war again, except perhaps among a few +dying-out savage races. He does so grudge every ha'penny to the Navy +Estimates; and he's quite violent about these useless standing armies! +You know he's no sahib. '_His tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances +to fantastic tunes._' However, never mind him. _I'm_ the central figure. +Which is to be my frock of fascination to-night? '_The White Hope?_' or +'_The Yellow Peril?_' You're wearing your white, Taffy. Righto, then +I'll put on _this_," decided the elder girl. + +She stepped into and drew up about her a moulding sheath of +amber-coloured satin that clung to her limbs as a wave clings to a +bather--such was the fleeting fashion now defunct! There was a corolla +of escholtzia-yellow about the strait hips, a heavy golden girdle +dangling. + +"There! Now! How's the Bakst view?" demanded Leslie. + +She turned slowly, rising on her toes, lifting the glossy black head +above a generous display of creamy shoulder-blades; posing, laughing +while Gwenna caught her breath. + +"Les-lie!... And where _did_ you get it?" + +"Cast-off from an opulent cousin. What I should do if I didn't get a few +clothes given me I don't know; I should be sent back by the policeman at +the corner, I suppose. One can't _live_ at fancy dances at the Albert +Hall," said Miss Long philosophically. "Don't I look like a Rilette +advertisement on the end page of _Punch_? Don't I vary? Would anybody +think I was the same wispy rag-bag you met in the hall? Nay. 'From +Slattern to Show-girl,' that's my gamut. But you, Taff, I've never seen +you look really plain. It's partly your curls. You've got the sort of +hair some boys have and all women envy. Come here, now, and let's +arrange you. I've already been attending to your frock." + +The frock which Gwenna was to wear that evening at the dinner-party was +one which she had bought, without advice, out of an Oxford Street shop +window during a summer sale. It was of satin of which the dead-white +gleam was softened by a misty over-dress. So far, so good; but what of +the heavy, expensive-looking garniture--sash, knots, and what-nots of +lurid colour--with which the French artist's conception had been +"brightened up" in this English version? + +"Ripped off," explained Leslie Long, firmly, as its owner gazed in +horror at a mutilated gown. "No cerise--it's a 'married' colour--No +mural decorations for you, Taffy, my child. '_Oh, what a power has white +simplicity._' White, pure white, with these little transparent ruffles +that kind Leslie has sewn into the sleeves and round the fichu +arrangement for you; and a sash of _very_ pale sky-blue." + +"Shan't I look like a baby?" + +"Yes; the sweetest portrait of one, by Sir Joshua Reynolds." + +"Oh! And I'd bought a cerise and _diamante_ hair-ornament." + +"Quite imposs. A hair-ornament? One of the housemaids will love it for +her next tango tea in Camden Town. As for you, don't dare to touch your +curls again--no, nor to put anything round your neck! Take away that +bauble!" + +"Aren't I even to wear my gold Liberty beads?" + +"No! you aren't. Partly because I am, in my hair. Besides, what d'you +want them for, with a throat like that? Necklaces are such a mistake," +decreed Leslie. "If a girl's got a nice neck, it hides the line; if she +hasn't, it shows the defect up!" + +"Well," protested Gwenna doubtfully, "but mightn't you say that of +anything to wear?" + +"Precisely. Still, you can't live up to every counsel of perfection. Not +in this climate!" + +"You might let me have my thin silver chain, whatever, and my little +heart that my Auntie Margie gave me--in fact, I'm going to. It's a +mascot," said Gwenna, as she hung the little mother-o'-pearl pendant +obstinately about her neck. "There!" + +"Very well. Spoil the look of that lovely little dimply hollow you've +got just at the base there if you must. A man," said Gwenna's chum with +a quick, critical glance, "a man would find that very easy to kiss." + +"Easy!" said Gwenna, with a quicker blush of anger. "He wouldn't then, +indeed!" + +"Oh, my dear, I didn't mean that," explained Leslie as she caught up her +gloves and wrap and prepared to lead the way out of the room and +downstairs to the hall. They would walk as far as the Tube, then book to +South Kensington. "All I meant was, that a man would--- that is, +_might_--er--possibly get the better--ah--of his--say, his natural +repugnance to _trying_----" + +A little wistfully, Gwenna volunteered: "One never has." + +"I know, Taffy. Not yet," said Leslie Long. "But one will. '_Cheer up, +girls, he is getting on his boots!_' Ready? Come along." + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE EYES OF ICARUS + + +Gwenna, who was always bubbling over with young curiosity about the +fresh _people_ whom she was to meet at a party, had never taken overmuch +interest in the _places_ where the party might be held. + +She had not yet reached the age when, for information about new +acquaintances, one glances first at their background. + +To her the well-appointed though slightly "Art"-y Smith establishment +where her friend was taking her to dine was merely "a married house." +She took for granted the arrangements thereof. She lumped them all--from +the slim, deferential parlour-maid who ushered them through a +thickly-carpeted corridor with framed French etchings into a spacious +bedroom where the girls removed their wraps, down to the ivory, +bemonogrammed pin-tray and powder-box in front of the big mirror--she +lumped these all together as "things you have when you're _married_." + +It never struck her--it never strikes eight out of ten young girls--that +Marriage does not necessarily bring these "things" with their subtle +assurance of ease, security, and dignity in its train. She never thought +about it. Marriage indeed seemed to her a sort of dullish postscript to +what she imagined must be a thrilling letter. + +Why _must_ nearly all married people become so stodgy? Gwenna simply +couldn't imagine herself getting stodgy--or fat, like this married +sister of Leslie Long's, who was receiving her guests in the large +upstairs drawing-room into which the two girls were now shown. + +This room, golden and creamy, seemed softly aglow. There were standard +lamps with huge amber crinolines, bead-fringed; and flowers--yellow +roses and white lilies--seemed everywhere. + +Leslie Long drew one of the lilies out of a Venetian vase and held it +out, like an usher's rod, towards Gwenna as she followed her into the +bright, bewildering room, full of people. She announced, "Maudie, here's +the stop-gap. Taffy Williams, your hostess." + +Her hostess was a version of Leslie grown incredibly matronly. Her +auricula-coloured velvet tea-gown looked as if it had been clutched +about her at the last moment. (Which in point of fact it had. Mrs. Smith +was quite an old-fashioned mother.) Yet from her eyes smiled the +indestructible Girl that is embedded in so many a respectable matron, +and she looked down very kindly at Gwenna, the cherub-headed, in her +white frock. + +Mr. Smith, who had a large smooth face and a bald head, gave Gwenna a +less cordial glance. Had the truth been known, he was sulking over the +non-appearance of the intelligent young woman (from the Poets' Club) +whose place was taken by this vacuous-looking flapper (his summing-up +of Miss Gwenna Williams). For Gwenna this bald and wedded patriarch of +forty-five scarcely existed. She glanced, nervous and fluttered and +interested, towards the group of other guests gathered about the nearer +of the two flower-filled fireplaces; a pretty woman in rose-colour and +two men of thirty or thereabouts, one of whom (rather stout, with an +eye-glass, a black stock-tie, and a lock of brown hair brought down +beside his ear like a tiny side-whisker) made straight for Leslie Long. + +"Now _don't_ attempt to pretend we haven't met," Gwenna heard him say in +a voice of flirtatious yearning. "Last time you cut my dance----" + +Here the maid announced, from the door, some name.... Gwenna, standing +shyly, as if on the brink of the party, heard the hostess saying: "We +hardly hoped you'd come ... we know you people always are besieged by +invitations----" + +"Dear me! All these people seem dreat-fully grand," thought the Welsh +girl hastily to herself. "I wonder if it wouldn't have been better, now, +if Leslie had left that cerise velvet trimming as it was on my dress?" + +Instinctively she glanced about for the nearest mirror. There was a big +oval gilt-framed one over the yellow brocaded Empire couch near which +Gwenna stood. Her rather bewildered brown eyes strayed from the stranger +faces about her to the reflection of the face and figure that she best +knew. In the oval of gilded leaves she beheld herself framed. She looked +small and very young with her cherub's curls and her soft babyish +white gown and that heaven-coloured sash. But she looked pretty. She +hoped she did.... + +Then suddenly in that mirror she caught sight of another face, a face +she saw for the first time. + + +She beheld, looking over her white-mirrored shoulder, the reflection of +a young man. Clear-featured, sunburnt but blonde, he carried his fair +head tilted a little backward, and his eyes--strange eyes!--were looking +straight into hers. They were clear and blue and space-daring eyes, with +something about them that Gwenna, not recognising, would have summed up +vaguely as "like a sailor's." ... They were eyes that seemed to have +borrowed light and colour from long scanning of far horizons. And now +all that keenness of theirs was turned, like a searchlight, to gaze into +the wondering, receptive glance of a girl.... + +Who was this? + +Before Gwenna turned to face this stranger who had followed their +hostess up to her, his gaze seemed to hold hers, as a hand might have +held her own, for longer than a minute.... + + +Afterwards she told herself that it seemed, not a minute, but an age +before that first look was loosed, before she had turned round to her +hostess's, "I want to introduce Mr.----" + +(Something or other. She did not catch the name.) + +"_He's_ nice!" was the young girl's pristine and uncoloured first +impression. + +Then she thought, "Oh, if it's this one who's going to take me in to +dinner, I _am_ glad!" + +It was he who was to take her in. + +For Mr. Smith took the pretty lady whose name, as far as Gwenna was +concerned, remained "Mrs. Rose-colour." Her husband, a neutral-tinted +being, went in with Mrs. Smith. The man with the side-whisker (who, if +he'd been thinner, certainly might have looked rather like the portrait +of Chopin) laughed and chattered to Leslie as they went downstairs +together. Gwenna, falling to the lot of the blue-eyed young man as a +dinner-partner, altered her mind about her "gladness" almost before she +came to her third spoonful of clear soup. + +For it seemed as if this young man whose name she hadn't caught were not +really "nice" after all! That is, of course, he wasn't "_not_ nice." But +he seemed stupid! Nothing in him! Nothing to say! Or else very +absent-minded, which is just as bad as far as the other people at a +party are concerned. Or worse, because it's rude. + +Gwenna, taking in every detail of the pretty round table and the lights +under the enormous parasol of a pink shade, approving the banked +flowers, the silver, the glass, those delicious-looking chocolates in +the filigree dishes, the tiny "Steinlen-kitten" menu-holders, Gwenna, +dazed yet stimulated by the soft glitter in her eyes, the subdued buzz +of talk in her ears, stole a glance at Leslie (who was looking her best +and probably behaving her worst) and felt that every prospect was +pleasing--except that of spending all this time beside that silent, +stodgy young man. + +"Perhaps he thinks it's me that's too silly to talk to. I knew Leslie'd +made me look too young with this sash! Yes! _indeed_ I look like some +advertisement for Baby's Outfitting Department," thought Gwenna, vexed. +"Or is it because he's the kind of young man that just sits and eats and +never really sees or thinks about anything at all?" + +Now, had she known it at the time, the thoughts of the blonde and +blue-eyed youth beside her were, with certain modifications, something +on these lines. + +"Dash that stud! Dash the thing. This pin's going into the back of my +neck directly. I know it is. That beastly stud must have gone through a +crack in the boards.... I shall buy a bushel of 'em to-morrow. Why a +man's such a fool as to depend upon one stud.... I know this pin's going +into the back of my neck when I'm not thinking about it. I shall squawk +blue murder and terrify 'em into fits.... What have we here?" (with a +glance from those waking eyes at the menu). "Good. Smiths always do +themselves thundering well.... Now, who are all these frocks? The Pink +'Un. That's a Mrs.... Damsel in the bright yellow lampshade affair +about six foot high, that old Hugo's giving the glad eye to. Old +Hugo weighs about a stone and a half too much. Does _him_self +a lot _too_ well. Revolting sight. I wonder if I can work the +blood-is-thicker-than-water touch on him for a fiver afterwards?... +This little girl I've got to talk to, this little thing with the neck +and the curly hair. Pretty. _Very_ pretty. Knocks the shine out of the +others. I know if I turn my head to speak to her, though, that dashed +pin will cut adrift and run into the back of my neck. _Dash_ that stud. +Here goes, though----" + +And, stiffly and cautiously moving his head in a piece with his +shoulders, he turned, remarking at last to Gwenna in a voice that, +though deep-toned and boyish, was almost womanishly gentle, "You don't +live in town, I suppose?" + +The girl from that remote Welsh valley straightened her back a little. +"Yes, I do live in town, indeed!" she returned a trifle defensively. +"What made you think I lived in the country?" + +"Came up yesterday, I s'pose," the young man told himself as the +soup-plates were whisked away. + +Gwenna suspected a twinkle in those unusual blue eyes as he said next, +"_Haven't_ you lived in Wales, though?" + +"Well, yes, I have," admitted Gwenna Williams in her soft, quaint +accent, "but how did you know?" + +"Oh, I guessed. I've stayed there myself, fishing, one time and +another," her neighbour told her. "Used to go down to a farmhouse there, +sort of place that's all slate slabs, and china dogs, and light-cakes +for tea; ages ago, with my cousin. _That_ cousin," and he gave a little +jerk of his fair head towards the black-stocked, Trelawney-whiskered +young man who was engrossed with Miss Long. "We used to--Ah! _Dash!_" +he broke off suddenly and violently. "It's gone down my back now." + +Gwenna, startled, gazed upon this stranger who was so good to look at +and so extremely odd to listen to. Gone down his back? She simply could +not help asking, "What has?" + +"That pin," he answered ruefully. + +Then he tilted back his fair head and smiled, with deep dimples creasing +his sunburnt cheeks and a flash of even white showing between his +care-free, strongly-modelled lips. And hereupon Gwenna realised that +after all she'd been right. He _was_ "nice." He began to laugh outright, +adding, "You must think me an absolute lunatic: I'd better tell you what +it's all about----" + +He took a mouthful of sole and told her, "Fact is, I lost my collar-stud +when I was dressing, the stud for the back of my collar; and I had to +fasten my collar down at the last minute with a pin. It's been getting +on my nerves. Has, really. I've been waiting for it to run into the back +of my neck----" + +"So that was why he seemed so absent-minded!" thought Gwenna, feeling +quite disproportionately glad and amused over this trifle. She said, "I +_thought_ you turned as if you'd got a stiff neck! I thought you'd been +sitting in a draught." + +He made another puzzling remark. + +"Draught, by Jove!" he laughed. "It's always fairly _draughty_ where I +have to sit!" + +He went on again to mourn over his collar. "Worse than before, now," he +said. "It's going to hitch up to the back of my head, and I shall have +to keep wiggling my shoulder-blades about as if I'd got St. Vitus's +dance!" + +Gwenna felt she would have liked to have taken a tiny safety-pin that +there was hidden away under her sky-blue sash, and to have given it to +him to fasten that collar securely and without danger of pricking. +Leslie, she knew, would have done that. She, Gwenna, would have been too +shy, with a perfect stranger--only, now that he'd broken the ice with +that collar-stud, so to speak, she couldn't feel as if this keen-eyed, +deep-voiced young man were any longer quite a stranger. In her own +dialect, he seemed, now, "so homely, like----" + +And over the next course he was talking to her about home, about the +places where he'd fished in Wales. + +"There was one topping little trout-stream," he told her in that deep +and gentle voice. "Bubbly as soda-water, green and clear as +bottle-glass. Awfully jolly pools under the shade of the branches. You +look right down and it's all speckly at the bottom, with brown-and-grey +stones and slates and things, under the green water. It's like----" + +He was looking straight at her, and suddenly he stopped. He had caught +her eyes, full; as he had caught them before dinner in that mirror. Now +that he was so close to them he saw that they were clear and +browny-green, with speckles of slate-colour. They were not unlike those +pools themselves, by Jove.... Almost as if he had been fishing for +something out of those depths he still looked down, hard into them.... +He forgot that he had stopped talking. And then under his own eyes he +saw the little thing begin to colour up; blushing from that sturdy white +throat of hers to the brow where those thick brown cherub's-curls began +to grow. He looked away, hastily. Hastily he said, "It--er--it had a +pretty name, that stream. Quite a pronounceable Welsh name, for once: +The Dulas." + +"Oh, dear me! Do _you_ know the Dulas?" cried Gwenna Williams in +delight, forgetting that she had just been feeling acutely conscious and +shy under the fixed stare of a pair of searching blue eyes. "Why! It's +not very far from there that's my home!" + +They went on talking--about places. Unconsciously they were leading the +whole table after them; the jerkiness went out of sentences; the pitch +of the talk rose. It was all a buzz to Gwenna; but when, at the joint, +her neighbour turned at last to answer a comment of the rose-coloured +lady on his other hand, she amused herself by seeking to find out what +all the others were talking about. + + +"I like some of his things very much. Now, his water-colours at the----" +This was Mr. Smith, holding forth about pictures.... There appeared to +be a good deal of it. Ending up with, "And I know for a fact that he +only got two hundred guineas for that; two hundred! Incredible!" + +It certainly did seem to Gwenna an incredible amount of money for a +picture, a thing you just hang on a wall and forgot all about. Two +hundred guineas! What couldn't she, Gwenna, do with that! Travel all +over the place for a year! Go flying every week, at Hendon! + +"What an experience! What a change it's made in the whole of English +thought!" the pretty, rose-coloured lady was saying earnestly. "We can +never be the same again now. It's set us, as a nation, such an entirely +new and higher standard----" + +This was very solemn, Gwenna thought. What was it about? + +"I can't imagine, now, how we can have existed for so long without that +point of view," went on Mrs. Rose-colour. "As I say, the first time I +ever saw the Russian Ballet----" + +The Russian Ballet--Ah! Gwenna had been with Leslie to see that; she had +thought herself in a fairyland of dazzling colour, and of movement as +wonderful as that of the flying biplanes. It had been a magic world of +enchanted creatures that seemed half-bird, half-flower, who whirled and +leaped, light as blown flame, to strangest music.... Gwenna had been +dazed with delight; but she could not have talked about it as these +people talked. "Mr. Rose-colour," Mr. Smith, and Leslie's whiskered +young man were all joining in together now. + +"You won't deny that a trace of the Morbid----" + +"But that hint of savagery is really the attraction," Mr. Smith +explained rather pompously. "We over-civilised peoples, who know no +savagery in modern life, who have done with that aspect of evolution, I +suppose we welcome something so----" + +"Elemental----" + +"Primitive----" + +"Brutal?" suggested Mrs. Rose-colour, appreciatively. + +"And that infinitude of gesture----" murmured the whiskered man, eating +asparagus. + +"Yes, but Isadora----" + +"Ah, but Karsavina!" + +"You must admit that Nijinski is ultra-romantic----" + +"_Define_ Romance!" + +"Geltzer----" + +"Scheherazade----" + +Utterly bewildered by the strange words of the language spoken by half +London in early summer, Nineteen-fourteen, the young girl from the wilds +sought a glimpse of her friend's black-swathed head and vivid, impish +face above the banked flowers of the table-centre. Did Leslie know all +these words? Was she talking? She was laughing flippantly enough; +speaking as nonchalantly. + +"Yes, I'm going to the next Chelsea Arts Ball in that all-mauve rig he +wears in the 'Spectre de la Rose.' I am. Watch the effect. 'Oh, Hades, +the Ladies! They'll leave their wooden huts!' _You_ needn't laugh, Mr. +Swayne"--this to the Chopin young man. "_Any_body would be taken in. I +can look quite as much of a man as Nijinski does. In fact, far----" + +Here suddenly Gwenna's neighbour leaned forward over the table towards +his hostess and broke in, his deep, gentle voice carrying above the +buzz. + +"Mrs. Smith! I say! I beg your pardon," he exclaimed quickly, "but isn't +that a baby crying like anything somewhere?" + +This remark of the young man's, and that which followed it, surprised +and puzzled Gwenna even more than his curious remark about draughts. Who +was he? What sort of a young man was this who always sat in draughts and +who could catch the sound of a baby's cry when even its own mother +hadn't heard it through the thick _portiere_, the doors, the walls and +that high-pitched buzz of conversation round about the table? + +For Mrs. Smith had fled from the table with a murmured word of apology, +and had presently returned just as the ornate fruit-and-jelly mould was +being handed round, and Gwenna heard her saying to Mrs. Rose-colour, +"Yes, it was. He's off again now. He simply won't go down for Nurse--I +always have to rush----" + +Gwenna turned to her companion, whose collar was now well up over the +back of his neck. Wondering, she said to him, "_Fancy_ your hearing +that, through all this other noise!" + +"Ah, one gets pretty quick at listening to, and placing, noises," he +told her, helping himself to the jelly and shrugging his shoulders and +that collar at the same time. "It's being accustomed to notice any +squeak that oughtn't to be there, you know, in the engines. One gets to +hear the tiniest sound, through anything." + +Gwenna, more puzzled than before, turned from that delectable pudding on +her plate, to this strangely interesting young man beside her. She said: +"Are you an engineer?" + +"I used to be," he said. "A mechanic, you know, in the shops, before I +got to be a pilot." + +"A pilot?" She wondered if he thought it rude of her, if it bothered him +to be asked questions about himself like this, by just a girl? And still +she couldn't help asking yet another question. + +She said, "Are you a sailor, then?" + +"Me?" he said, as if surprised. "Oh, no----" + +And then, quite simply and as if it were nothing, he made what was to +Gwenna an epic announcement. + +"I'm an airman," he said. + +She gasped. + +He went on. "Belong to a firm that sends me flying. Taking up passengers +at Hendon, that sort of thing." + +"An airman? _Are_ you?" was all that Gwenna could for the moment reply. +"Oh ... _Oh!_" + +Perhaps her eyes, widening upon the face above her, were more eloquent +of what she felt. + +That it was to her a miracle to find herself actually sitting next to +him! Actually speaking to one of these scarcely credible beings whom she +had watched this afternoon! _An airman_.... There was something about +the very word that seemed mysterious, uncanny. Was it because of its +comparative newness in the speech of man? Perhaps, ages ago, primitive +maids found something as arresting in the term "_A seaman_"? But this +was an airman! It was his part to ride the Winged Victory, the aeroplane +that dared those sapphire heights above the flying-ground. Oh! And she +had been chattering to him about the slate-margined brooks and the ferny +glens of her low-lying valley, just as if he'd been what this ingenuous +maid called to herself "_Any_ young man" who had spent holidays fishing +in Wales? She hadn't known. _That_ was why he had those queer, keen +eyes: blue and reckless, yet measuring. + +Not a sailor's, not a soldier's ... but the eyes of Icarus!... + +"I--I never heard your name," said Gwenna, a little breathless, timid. +"Which is it, please?" + +For reply he dabbed a big, boyish finger down on the slender name-card +among the crumbs of his bread. "Here you are," he said, "Dampier; Paul +Dampier." + + +So whirling and bewildered was Gwenna's mind by this time that she +scarcely wondered over the added surprise. This, she just realised, was +the name she had first heard bellowed aloud through the megaphone from +the judges' stand. She hardly remembered then that a photograph of this +same aviator was tossed in among her wash-leather gloves, velvet +hair-bands, and her handkerchief-sachet in the top right-hand drawer of +her dressing-table at the Club. Certainly she did not remember at this +minute what she had said, laughing, over that portrait, to her two +friends on the flying-ground. + +There, she had admired the machine; that un-Antaeus-like thing that was +not itself until it had shaken off the fetters of Earth from its skids +and wheels. Here, she marvelled over the man; _for he was part of it_. +He was its skill and its will. He was the planner of those curves and +bankings and soarings, those vol-planes that had left, as it were, +their lovely lines visible in the air. His Icarian mind had +determined--his large but supple body had executed them. + +A girl could understand that, without understanding how it was all done. +Those big, boyish hands of his, of course, would grasp certain +mechanisms; his feet, too, would be busy; his knees--every inch of his +lithe length and breadth--every muscle of him; yes! even to the tiny +muscles that moved his wonderful eyes. + +"I saw you, then," she told him, in a dazed little voice. "I was at +Hendon this afternoon! It was the first time in my life...." + +"Really?" he said. "What did you think of it all?" + +"Oh, splendid!" she said, ardently, though vaguely. + +How she longed to be able to talk quickly and easily to anybody, as +Leslie could! How stupid he--the Airman--must think her! A little +shakily she forced herself to go on: "I did think it so wonderful, but I +can't explain, like. Ever. I _never_ can. But----" + +Perhaps, again, she was explaining better than she knew, with that +small, eager face raised to his. + +"Oh!" she begged. "Do _tell_ me about it!" + +He laughed. "Tell you what? Isn't much to tell." + +"Oh, yes, there must be! You tell me," she urged softly, unconscious +that her very tone was pure and concentrated flattery. "Do!" + +And with another short, deprecating laugh, another shrug to his collar, +the boy began to "tell" her things, though the girl did not pretend to +understand. She listened to that voice, strong and deep, but womanishly +gentle. She forgot that by rights she ought to pay some attention to her +neighbour, the imitation Chopin. She listened to this other. + +Words like "_controls_," "_pockets_," "_yawing_," went in at one of the +ears under her brown curls and out at the other, leaving nothing but a +quivering atmosphere of "the wonderfulness" of it all. Presently she saw +those hands of his, big, sensitive, clever, arranging forks and spoons +upon the sheeny tablecloth before her. + +"Imagine that's your machine," he said. "Now you see there are three +possible movements. _This_"--he tilted a dessert-knife from side to +side--"_and this_"--he dipped it--"_and this_, which is yawing--you +understand?" + +"No!" she confessed, with the quickest little gesture. "I couldn't +understand those sort of things. I shouldn't want to. What I really want +to know is--well, about _it_, like!" + +"About what?" + +"About _flying_!" + +He laughed outright again. "But, that _is_ flying!" + +She shook her head. "No, not what I mean. That's all--machinery!" She +pronounced the word "machinery" with something almost like disdain. He +looked at her as if puzzled. + +"Sorry you aren't interested in machinery," he said quite reprovingly, +"because, you know, that's just what I _am_ interested in. I'm up to my +eyes in it just now, pretty well every minute that I can spare. In fact +I've got a machine--only the drawings for it, of course, but----" + +"Do you mean you've _invented_ one?" + +"Oh, I don't know about 'invent.' Call it an improvement. It should be +about as different from the lumbering concern you saw me go up in to-day +as that's different from--say from one of those old Cambrian Railway +steam engines," he declared exultantly. "It's----" + +Here, he plunged into another vortex of mysterious jargon about +"automatic stability," about "skin friction," and a hundred other +matters that left the listening girl as giddy as a flight itself might +have done. + +What she did understand from all this was that here, after all, in the +Machine, must be the secret of all the magic. This was what interested +the Man. An inventor, too, he talked as if he loved to talk of it--even +to her; his steel-blue eyes holding her own. Perhaps he didn't even see +her, she thought; perhaps he scarcely remembered there was a girl there, +leaving strawberries and cream untasted on an apple-green plate, +listening with all her ears, with all of _herself_--as he, with all of +himself, guided a machine. Ah, he talked of a just-invented machine as +in the same tone Gwenna had heard young mothers talk of their new-born +babies. + +This was what he lived for! + +"Yes," concluded the enthusiast with a long sigh, "if I could get that +completed, and upon the market----" + +"Well?" Gwenna took up softly; ignorant, but following his every change +of tone. "Why can't you?" + +"Why not? For the usual reason that people who are keen to get things +done can't do 'em," the boy said ruefully, watching that responsive +shadow cloud her face as he told her. "It's a question of the dashed +money." + +"Oh!" said the girl more softly still. "I see." + +So he, too, even he knew what it was to find that fettering want of +guineas clog a soaring impulse? What a _shame_, she thought.... + +He thought (as many another young man with a Subject has thought of +some rapt and girlish listener!) that the little thing was jolly +intelligent, _for_ a girl, more so than you were supposed to expect of +such a pretty face---- Pretty? Come to look at her she was quite lovely. +Made that baggage in the yellow dress and the Mrs. in the Pink look like +a couple of half-artificial florists' blooms by the side of a +lily-of-the-valley freshly-plucked from some country garden, sappy and +sturdy, and sweet. And her skin was like the bit of mother-of-pearl she +was wearing as a heart-shaped locket. + +Quite suddenly he said to her: "Look here! Should you care to go up?" + +Gwenna gasped. + +The whole room, the bright table and the chattering guests seemed now to +whirl about her in a circle of shiny mist--as that aeroplane propeller +had whirled.... Care to go up? "_Care!_" Would she? Would she _not_? + +"Oh----" she began. + +But this throbbing moment was the moment chosen by her hostess to glance +smilingly at Mrs. Rose-colour and to rise, marshalling the women from +the room. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE SONG OF ALL THE AGES + + +"Now isn't life _extraordinary_?" thought Gwenna Williams, incoherently +in the drawing-room as she sat on the yellow Empire sofa under the +mirror, holding a tiny coffee-cup and answering the small-talk of kindly +Mrs. Smith. "Fancy, before this afternoon I'd never seen any flying! And +now on the very same evening I'm asked to go flying myself! Me! Just +like that girl who was with him in the race! (I wonder is she a great +friend of his.) I wonder when he'll take me? Will he come and settle +about it--oh, I do hope so!--before we all have to go away?" + +But there was no chance of "settling" this for some time after the door +opened to a little commotion of bass laughter, a trail of cigar-scent, +and the entrance of the man. + +Mrs. Rose-colour, with some coquettish remark that Gwenna didn't catch, +summoned the tall airman to the yellow-brocaded pouffe at her feet. Her +husband crossed over to Gwenna (who suddenly discovered that she hated +him) and began talking Welsh folk-songs. Whereupon Hugo Swayne, fondling +his Chopin curl, asked Leslie, who towered above him near the piano, if +she were going to sing. + +"I'm in such a mood," he told her, "to listen to something rawly and +entirely modern!" + +"You shall, then," agreed Miss Long, suddenly demure. "D'you know +the--er--_Skizzen Macabres_, those deliciously perverse little things of +Wedekind's? They've been quite well translated.... Righto, my dear"--in +answer to a nervous glance from her sister, "I'll only sing the +_primmer_ verses. The music is by that wonderful new Hungarian +person--er--Sjambok." + +Her tall golden figure reflected itself in the ebony mirror of the piano +as Leslie, with a malicious gleam in the tail of her eye, sat down. + +"I shan't sing for _him_, all the same," she thought. "I shall sing for +Taffy and that Air-boy. I bet I can hit on something that _they'll_ both +like.... Yes...." + +And she struck the first chords of her accompaniment. + +And what was it, this "crudely modern" song that Leslie had chosen for +the sake of the two youngest people present at that party? + +There is a quintette of banjo-players and harpists who are sometimes +"on" at the Coliseum in London, but who are more often touring our +Colonies from Capetown to Salter, Sask. And wherever they may go, it +seems, they bring down the house with that same song. For, to the hearts +of exiled and homesick and middle-aged toilers that simple tune means +England, Home and Beauty still. They waltzed to it, long ago in the +Nineteenth Century. They "turned over" for some pretty girl who +"practised" it. So, when they hear it, they encore it still, with a lump +in their throats.... + +It was the last verse of this song that drifted in Leslie's deep +contralto, across this more enlightened drawing-room audience of +Nineteen-fourteen. Softly the crooning, simply phrased melody stole out: + + "_Even to-day we hear Love's song of yore! + Low in our hearts it rings for evermore. + Footsteps may falter, weary grow the way, + Still we can hear it at the close of day!_" + +--"and it's at least as pleasant as any of their beastly 'artistic' +music," thought Leslie, rebelliously, as she sang: + + "_Still to the end_," (chord) "_while Life's dim shadows fall, + Love will be found the sweetest song of all_!" + +She ended in a ripple of arpeggios, triumphantly, for she had glanced at +the two youngest people in the room. Little Gwenna's eyes were full of +the facile tears of her race; and the Dampier boy's face was grave with +enjoyment. Alas, for the musical taste of these two! They _had_ liked +the old song.... + +The enlightened others were puzzled for a moment. _What_ was that +thing----? + +Mr. Swayne explained languidly. "Priceless old ditty entitled 'Love's +Old Sweet Song.' A favourite of the dear late Queen's, long before any +of US were thought of. Miss Long has been trying to pull our legs with +it!" + +"Oh, Leslie, dear, you are so amusing always," said Mrs. Rose-colour, +turning with her little superior smile to the singer. "But won't you +sing something _really_?" + +Leslie's quick black eyes caught a glance of half-conscious, +half-inarticulate sympathy that was passing between the youngest girl in +the room and the man who had taken her in to dinner. It was as if they'd +said, together, "I wish she'd sing again. I wish she'd sing something +like _that_ again...." + +They were alone in their wish! + +For now Mrs. Smith sat down and played something. Something very +long.... + +And still what Gwenna longed to happen did not happen. In spite of that +glance of sympathy just now, it did not happen. + +The Airman, sitting there on that brocaded _pouffe_, his long legs +stretched out over the soft putty-coloured carpet, did _not_ come up to +her to speak again of that so miraculously proffered flight in his +aeroplane. He went on being talked to by Mrs. Rose-colour. + +And when that pretty lady and her husband rose to go, the young girl in +her corner had a very blank and tense moment. For she heard those people +offer to take Mr. Dampier with them and drop him at his rooms. Oh, that +would mean that she, Gwenna, wouldn't have another word with him! He'd +go! And his invitation had been unanswered! + +"Care to go up?" he'd said--and Gwenna hadn't even had time to tell him +"Yes!" + +Ah, it would have been too good to be true!---- + +Very likely he'd forgotten what he'd said at, dinner.... + +He hadn't meant it.... + +He'd thought she'd meant "No." + +He was going now---- + +But no. To her unspeakable relief she heard his deep "Thanks awfully, +but I'm going on with Hugo presently. Taking him to meet some people at +the Aero Club." + + +Now, just imagine that! thought the country girl. Here it was already +half-past ten at night; but he was going on to meet some more people +somewhere else. This wonderful party, which had marked an epoch in her +life, was nothing to him; it was just the beginning of the evening. And, +after days in the skies, all his evenings were like this! Hadn't Mrs. +Smith said when he came in, "We know you are besieged with invitations?" +Oh, the inconceivably interesting life that was his! Why, why was Gwenna +nothing but a girl, a creature who, even nowadays, had to stay within +the circumscribed limits where she was put, who could not see or be or +do _anything_, really! Might as well be born a _tortoise_.... + +Here the voice of Mr. Hugo Swayne (to which she'd paid scant attention +so far) said something about taking Miss Long and her friend up to +Hampstead first, and that Paul could come along. + +Gwenna, enraptured, discovered that this meant in his, Mr. Swayne's, +car. The four of them were to motor up to her and Leslie's Club +together. All that lovely long drive? + +But though "lovely," that journey back to Hampstead, speeding through +the broad, uncrowded streets that the lights showed smooth and polished +as a ballroom floor, with the giant shadows of plane-tree leaves +a-dance upon the pavement--that journey was unbelievably, relentlessly +short. + +Mr. Swayne seemed to tear along! He was driving, with Leslie, gay and +talkative and teasing, beside him in front. The younger girl sat behind +with his cousin. The Airman was hatless; and he wore a light loose +overcoat of which the big sleeve brushed the black satin of Gwenna's +wrap. + +"Warm enough?" he asked, gently, and (as carefully as if she'd been some +old invalid, she thought) he tucked a rug about her. Eagerly Gwenna +longed for him to return to that absorbing question he'd put to her at +the dinner-table. But there seemed scarcely time to say a single word +before, with a jarring of brakes, the car drew up in the slanting road +before the big square block of the Club. The arc-lights blazed into the +depths of the tall chestnut-trees beside the street, while the four +young people stood for a moment clustered together on the asphalt walk +before the glass-porch. + +"All over now," thought Gwenna with quite a ridiculously sharp little +pang as good-nights and good-byes were said. + +Oh! Wasn't he going to say anything else? About the flying? _She_ +couldn't! + +He was holding her hand (for good-night) while Mr. Swayne still laughed +with Leslie. + +"Look here," the Airman said abruptly. "About that flying----" + +"Yes! Oh, yes!" Gwenna returned in a breathless little flurry. There +mustn't be any _mistake_ about what she wished. She looked up into his +holding eyes once more, and said quiveringly, "I would so love it!" + +"You would. Right," he said, and seemed to have forgotten that they had +shaken hands, and that he had not yet loosed her fingers from his large +and hearty grip. He shook hands again. "Then I'll come round And fix it +up----" + +And the next instant, it seemed, he was whirled away from her again, +this Stranger who had dropped into the middle of her life as it were +from the skies which were his hunting-ground. There was the noise of a +retreating car droning down the hill (not unlike the receding drone of a +biplane in full flight), then the grating of a key in the lock of the +Club door.... + +Gwenna sighed. Then she went upstairs, humming softly, without knowing +what the tune was, Leslie's song: + + "_Once in the dear, dead days beyond recall----_" + +Leslie followed her into her room where she turned up the gas. + +"I'll undo you, Taffy, shall I?... Enjoyed yourself rather, after all, +didn't you?" said the elder girl, adding quickly, "What's the matter?" + +For Gwenna before the glass stood with a dismayed look upon her face. +Her hand was up to her round white throat, touching the dimpled hollow +where there had rested--where there rested no longer--that +mother-of-pearl pendant. + +"It's gone," she exclaimed ruefully. + +"What has, child? What have you dropped?" + +Gwenna, still with her hand at her throat, explained, "I've lost my +heart". + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE WORKADAY WORLD + + +The day after the dinner-party was spent by Gwenna metaphorically, at +least, in the clouds. + +By her vivid day-dreams she was carried off, as Ganymede was carried by +the eagle, sky-high; she felt the rush of keen air on her face; she saw +the khaki-green flying-ground beneath her with the clustered onlookers, +as small as ants. And--thus she imagined it--she heard that megaphone +announcement: + + "Ladies and gentul MEN! Mis ter Paul Dampier on + a Maurice Farman bi plane ac companied by Miss + Williams!" + +with the sound of it dying down, faintly, below her. + + +Then in her musing mind she went over and over what had already +happened. Those throbbing moments when her new friend had said, "Look +here! Would you care to come up?" and, "Then I'll come up here and fix +it----" + +Would he? Oh, when would he? It was of course hardly to be thought that +this flying-man ("besieged with invitations" as he was) would come to +ratify his offer on Sunday, the very day after he'd made it. Too much +to expect.... + +Therefore that Sunday Gwenna Williams refused to go out, even on the +Heath for the shortest loitering stroll. Leslie Long, with an +indescribable look that the younger girl did not catch, went out without +her. Gwenna stayed on the green bench in the small, leafy garden at the +back of the Club, reading and listening, listening for the sound of the +bell at the front door, or for the summons to the telephone. + +None came, of course. + + +Also, of course, no note to make an appointment to go flying appeared at +that long, crowded breakfast-table of the Club on Monday morning for +Miss Gwenna Williams. + +That, too, she could hardly have expected. + +Quite possibly he'd forgotten that the appointment had ever been made. A +young man of that sort had got so many things to think about. So many +people to make appointments with. So many other girls to take up. + +"I wonder if he's promised to go up again soon with that girl called +Muriel," she thought. "Sure to know millions of girls----" + +And it was in a very chastened mood of reaction that Gwenna Williams, +typist--now dressed in the business-girl's uniform of serge costume, +light blouse, and small hat--left her Club that morning. She walked down +the sunny morning road to the stopping-place of the motor-omnibuses and +got on to a big scarlet "24" bus, bound for Charing Cross and her day's +work. + +The place where she worked was a huge new building in process of +construction on the south side of the Embankment near Westminster +Bridge. + +Above the slowly sliding tides of the river, with its barges and boats, +there towered several courses of granite blocks, clean as a +freshly-split kernel. In contrast to them were the half demolished, +dingy shells of houses on either side, where the varied squares of +wallpaper and the rusting, floorless fireplaces showed where one room +had ended and the next begun. The scaffolding rose above the new pile +like a mighty web. Above this again the enormous triangular lattice rose +so high that it seemed like a length of ironwork lace stretched out on +two crochet-needles against the blue-grey and hot vault of the London +sky. + +As she passed the entrance Gwenna's eyes rose to this lattice. + +"It looks almost as high up in the air as one could fly in that +biplane," she thought. "Oh, to be right _up_! Looking down on +everything, with the blue _beneath one_ instead of only above!" + +She crossed the big yard, which was already vocal with the noises of +chipping and hammering, the trampling and the voices of men. Two of +them--the genial young electrician called Grant and the Yorkshire +foreman who was a regular father to his gang, nodded good-morning to +the youngest typist as she passed. She walked quickly past the stacks of +new timber and the gantries and travelling cranes (plenty of machinery +here; it ought to please Mr. Dampier, since he'd said that was what he +was interested in!). One great square of the hewn granite was swinging +in mid-air from a crane as she left the hot sunlight and noise outside +and entered the door of the square, corrugated iron building that held +the office where she worked. + +To reach it she had to pass through the clerk-of-the-works' offices, +with long drawing-benches with brass handled drawers beneath, full of +plans, and elevations. These details seemed mysteriously, tantalisingly +incomprehensible and yet irritating to Gwenna's feminine mind. She was +imaginative enough to realise that all these details, these +"man's-things," from the T-squares on the benches to the immense iron +safe in the corner, seemed to put her, Gwenna, "in her place." She was +merely another detail in the big whole of man's work that was going on +here. The place made her feel tiny, unimportant. She went on to the +light and airy room, smelling of new wood and tracing-paper, the +extension of the clerk-of-the-works' office that she shared with her two +colleagues. + +In the centre of this room there was a large square table with a +telephone, a telephone-book, various other books of reference and a +shallow wicker basket for letters. Besides this there were the typing +tables for each of the three girl-clerks. Gwenna's and Miss Baker's +were side by side. The German girl sat nearest to the window that gave +the view up the river, with Lambeth Bridge and the Houses of Parliament +looming grey and stately against the smiling June sky, and a distant +glimpse of Westminster Abbey. On the frame of the pane just above her +Miss Baker had fastened, with drawing-pins, two photographs. One was a +crude coloured postcard of a red-roofed village among pine-forests. The +other was a portrait of a young man, moustached and smiling under a +spiked German helmet; across this photograph ran the autograph, "_Karl +Becker_." Thus the blue and guileless eyes of this young foreigner in +our midst could rest upon mementoes of her Fatherland and her family any +time she raised her blonde head from bending over her work. Both girls +looked up this morning as Gwenna, the last arrival, came in. They +scolded her good-naturedly because she'd brought none of those +chocolates she'd promised from the dinner-table. They asked how she'd +enjoyed herself at that party. + +It would have been presumably natural to the young Welsh girl to have +broken out into a bubblingly excited--"And, girls! _Who_ d'you suppose I +sat next. A real live airman! _And_, my dears!" (with a rapturous gasp), +"who should it be but the one I bought the photo of on Saturday! You +know; the one you called my young man--Mr. Dampier--Paul Dampier--Yes, +but wait; that isn't all. Just fancy! He talked to me yards and yards +about his new aeroplane, and I say, _what_ do you think! This was the +best. He's asked me to come up one day--yes, indeed! He's going to take +me flying--with him!" + +But, as it was, Gwenna said not one word of all this. She could not have +explained why, even to herself. Only she replied to Miss Butcher's, +"What was the party like?" with a flavourless, "Oh, it was all right, +thanks." + +That sounded _so_ English, she thought! + + +She had a dull day at the office. Dry-as-dust letters and +specifications, builders' quantities, and so on, to type out. Tiresome +calls on the telephone that had to be put through to the other +office.... + +Never before had she seemed to mind the monotony of those clicking keys +and that "_I'll inquire. Hold the line, please._" Never before had she +found herself irritated by the constant procession of men who were in +and out all day; including Mr. Grant, who sometimes seemed to _make_ +errands to talk to Miss Butcher, but who never stayed for more than a +moment, concluding invariably with the cheerful remark, "Well! Duty +calls, I must away." Men seemed actually to _enjoy_ "duty," Gwenna +thought. At least the men here did. All of them, from Mr. Henderson in +the other office to the brown-faced men in the yard with their +shirt-sleeves rolled up above tattooed arms, seemed to be "keen" on the +building, on the job in hand. They seemed glad to be together. Gwenna +wondered how they could.... + +To-day she was all out of tune. She was quite cross when, for the +second time, Albert, the seventeen-year old Cockney office-boy, bustled +in, stamping a little louder than was strictly necessary on the echoing +boards. He rubbed his hands together importantly, demanding in a voice +that began in a bass roar and ended in a treble squeak, "Those +specifications, miss. Quick, too, or you'll hear about it!" + +"Goodness _me_, what an ugly way you London boys do have of talking!" +retorted the Welsh girl pettishly. "_Sut_-ch an accent!" + +The rebuked Albert only snorted with laughter as he took her sheaf of +papers. Then, looking back over his shoulder at the pretty typist +perched on the edge of the centre table to refill her fountain pen, he +added in his breaking treble, "Don't you sit on that tyble, Miss! +_Sittin' on the tyble's s'posed to mean you want to be kissed_, and it +looks so bad! Don't it, Miss Butcher? There's other ways of gittin' orf +than that, isn't there?" + +"Outside!" snapped Miss Butcher, blushing, as the boy stumped away. + +Gwenna sighed angrily and longed for lunch-time, so that she could get +out. + + +At one o'clock, an hour after the buzzer had sounded for the mid-day +meal of the yard-men, the other two girls in the office would not even +come out for a breath of air. They had brought fruit and cake. They made +Bovril (with a kettle of hot water begged from the fatherly foreman) and +lunched where they'd sat all the morning. Miss Butcher, munching, was +deep in a library-book lent to her by the young electrician. Miss Baker +counted stitches in a new pattern for a crochet-work _Kante_, or length +of fine thread insertion. It was not unlike the pattern of the iron +trellis above the scaffolding, that tapered black against the sky; man's +fancy-work. + +What hideously tame things women had to fill their lives with, Gwenna +thought as she sat in the upper window of her tea-shop at the corner of +the Embankment. She watched the luncheon-time crowd walking over +Westminster Bridge. So many of these people were business-girls just +like herself and the Butcher and the Baker! Would anything more amusing +ever happen to them, or to her? + +But that German girl, Gwenna thought, would stare to hear her work +called "hideous" or "tame." It was her greatest interest. Already, she'd +told Gwenna, her bottom drawer at her boarding-house was crammed with +long, rolled-up crochet-work strips of white or creamy lace. There were +also her piles of tray-cloths, petticoat flounces and chemise-tops, all +hand-embroidered and bemonogrammed by Miss Baker herself. She was not +engaged to be married, but, as she'd artlessly said, "_Something_ a +young girl can have always ready." + +Day-dreams in crochet! + +"I'd rather never fall in love than have it all spoilt by mixing it up +with such a lot of sewing and cookery that it wouldn't get disentangled, +like," thought the dreamy, impatient Gwenna. She returned, to find the +German girl measuring her crochet lace against her arm and crying, +"Since Saturday I have made till there." ... + +Then Miss Baker turned to her German version of an English trade firm's +letter. Miss Butcher unfastened another packet of stationery. Miss +Williams fetched a number of envelopes from the inner office to be +addressed.... + +Would the afternoon _never_ come to an end? + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE INVITATION + + +At last six o'clock found her, released from the day's work and back at +her Club. + +But still, still there was no envelope addressed to Miss Gwenna Williams +stuck up in the criss-cross tapes of the green-baize-covered +letter-board in the hall. + +She went upstairs rather slowly to take off her hat. On the landing the +voice of Leslie Long called to her from the bathroom. + +"Come in here, Taffy. I'm washing blouses. I want to tell you some +news." + +Gwenna entered the steamy bathroom, to find her chum's tall figure bent +in two over the bath and up to its bare elbows in suds of Lux. + +"I say, child, you know your locket that you lost at my sister's?" +announced Leslie. "It's all right. It's been found." + +"Has it?" said Gwenna, not very enthusiastically. "Did I leave it in +Mrs. Smith's room?" + +"You didn't. You left it in Hugo Swayne's car," said Leslie, wringing +out the wet handful of transparent net that would presently serve her as +a garment. "That young man came up about half an hour ago to tell you." + +"Mr. Swayne did? How kind of him." + +"Yes, wasn't it? But not of Mr. Swayne," said Leslie, wringing. "It +was--just let out the water and turn me on some fresh hot, will you?--It +was the other one that came: the aviator boy." + +"What?" cried Gwenna sharply. "Mr. Dampier?" + +"Yes. Your bird-man. He came up here--in full plumage and song! Nice +grey suit--rather old; brown boots awfully well cleaned--by himself; +blue tie, very expensive Burlington Arcade one--lifted from his cousin +Hugo, I bet," enlarged Leslie, spreading the blouse out over the white +china edge of the bath. "I met him at the gate just as I got back from +my old lady's. He asked for my friend--meaning you. Hadn't grasped your +name. He came in for ten minutes. But he couldn't wait, Taffy, so----" + +Here, straightening herself, Leslie suddenly stopped. She stopped at the +sight of the small, blankly dismayed face with which her chum had been +listening to this chatter. + +And Gwenna, standing aghast against the frosted glass panes of the +bathroom door, pronounced, in her softest, most agitated Welsh accent, +an everyday Maid's Tragedy in just six words: + +"_He came! When I was out!_" + +"He was awfully sorry----" + +But Gwenna, seeming not to hear her friend, broke out: "He _said_ he'd +come and settle about taking me flying, and there was I _think_-ing he'd +forgotten all about it, and then he did come after all, and I wasn't +here! Oh, _Leslie_!----" + +Leslie, sitting on the edge of the bath, gave her a glance that was +serious and whimsical, rueful and tender, all at once. + +"Yes, you can't understand," mourned Gwenna, "but I _did_ so want to go +up in an aeroplane for once in my life! I'd set my heart on it, Leslie, +ever since he said about it. It's only now I see how badly I wanted it," +explained the younger girl, flushed with emotion, and relapsing into her +Welshiest accent, as do all the Welsh in their moments of stress. "And +_now_ I shan't get another chance. I know I shan't----" + +And such was the impetus of her grief that Leslie could hardly get her +to listen to the rest of the news that should be balm for this wound of +disappointment; namely, that Mr. Dampier was going to make an +appointment with both girls to come and have tea with him at his rooms, +either on Saturday or Sunday. + +"He'll write to you," concluded Leslie Long, "and let you know which. I +said we'd go either day, Taffy." + +Gwenna, caught up into delight again from the lowest depths of +disappointment, could hardly trust herself to speak. Surely Leslie must +think her a most _awful_ baby, nearly crying because she'd had an outing +postponed! So the young girl (laughing a little shakily) put up quite +a plucky fight to treat it all as quite a trifle.... + +Even the next morning at breakfast she took it quite casually that there +was a note upon her plate stamped with the address of the Aero Club. She +even waited a moment before she opened it and read in a handwriting as +small as if it had been traced by a crow-quill: + + "Monday night. + + "DEAR MISS WILLIAMS, + + "Will you and Miss Long come to tea with me at my place about 4.30 + on Sunday? I find I shall not have to go to Hendon on that day. + I'll come and call for you if I may. + + "Yours sincerely, + "P. DAMPIER." + +"At last!" thought Gwenna to herself, rather breathlessly, as she put +the note back into the envelope. "Now he'll settle about when I'm to go +flying with him. Oh! I do, _do_ hope there's nothing going to get in the +way of that!" + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +A BACHELOR'S TEA-PARTY + + +The first of a series of "things that got in the way" of Gwenna's making +an appointment to go flying occurred on that Sunday afternoon, when +Leslie and she were to have tea at Paul Dampier's place. + + +"A mixture of chaos and comfy chairs, I expect; ash everywhere, and +_beastly_ cakes. (I know these bachelor tea-parties.) That," Leslie +said, "is what his 'place' will be like." + +Gwenna, as usual, hadn't wasted any thoughts over this. She had been too +full of what their host himself would say and do--about the flying. She +was all ready, in the white dress, the white hat with the wings, half an +hour after Sunday mid-day dinner at the Ladies' Club. But it was very +nearly half-past four by the time Mr. Dampier did come, as he had +promised, to fetch the two girls. + +He came in the car that had driven them back on the night of the +dinner-party. + +And he was hurried, and apologetic for his lateness. He even seemed a +little shy. This had the effect of making Gwenna feel quite +self-possessed as she took the seat beside him ("I hate sitting by the +driver, really. Makes me _so_ nervous!" Leslie had declared) and +inquired whether he borrowed his cousin's car any time he had visitors. + +"Well, but Hugo's _got_ everything," he told her, with a twinkle, "so I +always borrow anything of his that I can collar!" + +"Studs, too?" asked Gwenna, quickly. + +"Oh, come! I didn't think it of you. _What_ a pun!" he retorted. + +She coloured a little, shy again, hurt. But he turned his head to look +at her, confided to her: "It was _on_ the chest-of-drawers, all the +time!" + +And, as the car whizzed westwards, they laughed together. That +dinner-table incident of the collar--or collared--stud brought, for the +second time, a sudden homely glow of friendly feeling between this boy +and girl. + +She thought, "He's just as easy to get on with as if he were another +girl, like Leslie----" + +For always, at the beginning of things, the very young woman compares +her first man-friend with the dearest girl-chum she has known. + +--"Or as if he were just nobody, instead of being so wonder-ful, and an +airman, good gracious!" + +Appropriately enough for an airman, his place seemed to be nearly on the +house-tops of a block of buildings near Victoria Street. + +The lift carried them up past six landings and many boards inscribed +with names of firms. It stopped at the seventh story, almost directly +opposite a cream-coloured door with a small, old-fashioned brass +knocker, polished like gold. + +Paul Dampier tapped sharply at it. + +The door was opened by a thick-set man in an excellent suit of clothes +and with the face of a wooden sphinx. + +"Tea as soon as you can, Johnson," said the young Airman over his +shoulder, as the trio passed in. + +The long sitting-room occupied half the flat and its windows took up the +whole of one side. It was to these open windows that Gwenna turned. + +"Oh, what a view!" she cried, looking out, enraptured at the height and +airiness, looking past the leads, with their wooden tubs of standard +laurel-bushes, among which pigeons were strutting and bridling and +pecking crumbs. She looked down, down, at the bird's-eye view of London, +spread far below her in a map of grey roofs and green tree-tops under a +soft mist of smoke that seemed of the clouds themselves. + +"Oh, can't you see for miles!" exclaimed Gwenna. "There's St. Paul's, +looks like a big grey soap-bubble, coming up out of the mist! Oh, you +can see between a crack in the houses, our place at Westminster! It's +like a cottage from here! Oh, and that iron lacey thing on the roof! +Even this must be something like being up in an aeroplane, I should +think! Look, Leslie!" + +Miss Long seemed more engrossed in looking round Mr. Dampier's bachelor +sitting-room. It was incredibly luxurious compared to what she'd +expected. The polished floor was black and shiny as the wood of the +piano at the further end, the Persian rugs softly brilliant. In the +middle of the Adams mantelpiece simpered an exquisite Chelsea +shepherdess; to the left and right of her there stood squat toys in +ivory, old slender-stalked champagne-glasses holding sweet-peas. And +upon the leaf-brown walls were decorations that seemed complacently to +draw attention to the catholic taste of their owner. A rare +eighteenth-century print of Tom Jones upon his knees, asking +"forgiveness" of his Sophia, hung just above a Futurist's grimace in +paint; and there was a frieze of ultra-modern French fashion-designs, +framed in _passe-partout_, from the "_Bon Ton_." + +"What a--what a surprising number of pictures you have, Mr. Dampier," +said Leslie, mildly. "Hasn't he, Taffy?" + +Gwenna, turning at last from the window, realised dimly that this +sophisticated room did seem somehow out of keeping as an eyrie for this +eagle. The view outside, yes! But these armchairs? And she wouldn't have +thought that he would have bothered to have things _pretty_, like +this---- + +"And what a lot of books you've got," she said. For the wall opposite to +the windows was taken up by bookshelves, set under a trophy of swords of +out-of-date patterns, and arranged with some thought. + +The top shelves held volumes of verse, and of plays, from Beaumont and +Fletcher to Galsworthy. The Russian novelists were ranged together; also +the French. There was a corner for Sudermann and Schnitzler. A shelf +further down came all the English moderns, and below that all the +_Yellow Books_, a long blue line of all the _English Reviews_, from the +beginning; a stack of _The New Age_, and a lurid pink-covered copy of +_Blast_. + +But before Gwenna could wonder further over these possessions of this +young man, more incongruous possessions were brought in by the +Sphinx-faced man-servant; a tea-table of beaten copper, a +peasant-embroidered cloth, a tea-service of old Coalport; with a silver +spirit-kettle, with an iced cake, with toast, and wafer, +bread-and-butter and cress-sandwiches and Parisian _petits-fours_ that +all seemed, as the young girl put it simply to herself, "So unlike +_him_!" + +Her chum had already guessed the meaning of it all. + +The Dampier boy's rooms? _His_ library and ornaments? Ah, no. He'd never +read one of all those books there. Not he! And these were not the type +of "things" he'd buy, even if he'd had the money to throw away, thought +Leslie. It was no surprise to that young woman when the legitimate owner +of this lavishly appointed _garconniere_ made his sudden appearance in +the middle of tea. + + +The click of a latchkey outside. Two masculine voices in the hall. Then +the door was thrown open. + +There walked in a foreign-looking young man, with bright dark eyes and a +small moustache, followed by Mr. Hugo Swayne, attired in a Victorian +mode that, as Leslie put it afterwards, "cried '_Horse, horse!_' where +there was no horse." His tall bowler was dove-grey; his black stock +allowed a quarter-inch of white collar to appear; below his striking +waistcoat dangled a bunch of seals and a fob. This costume Leslie +recognised as a revival of the Beggarstaff Touch. Gwenna wondered why +this young man seemed always to be in fancy dress. Leslie could have +told her that Mr. Swayne's laziness and vanity had led him to abandon +himself on the coast of Bohemia, where he had not been born. His father +had been quite a distinguished soldier in Egypt. His father's son took +things more easily at the Grafton Gallery and the Cafe Royal and +Artists' Clubs. He neither painted, wrote, nor composed, but his life +was set largely among flatterers who did these things--after a fashion. + +He came in saying, "Now this is where I live when I'm----" + +He broke off with a start at the sight of the party within. The girls +turned to him with surprised and smiling greeting. + +Paul Dampier, fixing him with those blue eyes, remarked composedly, +"Hullo, my dear chap. Have some tea, won't you? I'll ring for Johnson to +bring in two more cups." + +"That will be very nice," said Hugo Swayne, rising to the occasion with +all the more grace because he was backed up by a tiny understanding +glance from Miss Long. And he introduced his young Frenchman by a name +that made Leslie exclaim, "Why! You are that Post-Impressionist painter, +aren't you?" + +"Not I, mademoiselle, but my brother," returned Hugo's French friend, +slowly and very politely. His dark face was simple and intelligent as +that of a nice child; he sat up as straight in his chair as he talked. +"It is for that Mr. Swayne, who is admirer of my brother's pictures, is +so amiable for to show me London. Me, I am not artiste. I am ingenieur +only." + +"'Only'!" thought Gwenna over her teacup. + +Surely any one should be proud of being an engineer, considering that +Mr. Dampier had thus begun _his_ career; he who was now in what the +romantic girl considered the First of All Professions? Perhaps her +attitude towards the Airman as such was noted by the Airman's cousin. +Hugo, who had dropped a little heavily into the softest chair near Miss +Long, turned his Chopinesque profile against a purple cushion to shoot a +rather satirical glance at the cleaner-built youth in the worn grey +suit. + +"Now, how like a man! He doesn't admire Taffy particularly, but he's +piqued to see her admire another type." Leslie summed this up quickly to +herself. "Not really a bad sort; he behaved well about the invasion of +these rooms. But he's like all these well-off young men who potter about +antique shops when they ought to be taking exercise--he's plenty of +feminine little ways. Since they call spitefulness 'feminine'!" + +There was a distinctly spiteful note in the young man's voice as he made +his next remark to his cousin. + +This remark surprised even Leslie for a moment. + +And to Gwenna's heart it struck with a sudden, unreasonable shock of +consternation. + +For Mr. Swayne inquired blandly across the tea-table: + +"Well, Paul; how's your _fiancee_?" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +LAUGHING ODDS + + +Before he answered, Gwenna had time to think smartingly, "His _fiancee_! +There! I might have _known_ he was engaged. I might have guessed it! +It's nothing to do with me.... Only ... I believe _that's_ what's going +to get in the way of my flying with him. She won't let him. I mean he'll +always be taking her up! And I know who it is, too. It's sure to be the +one called Muriel that I saw go up with him at Hendon with the red hair +and the scarf. I sort of guessed when I heard they were going up +together that she must be his _fiancee_." + +And all the while her eyes were, apparently, on the silver stand of the +spirit-kettle, they watched the young Airman's face (which looked a +little sheepish). She listened, tensely, for his reply. Quite shortly +Paul Dampier, still munching cake, said, "Who? Oh! Going on as usual, +thanks." + +"Now I may tell you that _that's_ merely a pose to conceal devotion," +laughed his cousin, turning to Gwenna. "Just as if every moment were not +grudged that he spends away from HER!" + +"Is it?" said the young girl with a smile. There was a bad lump in her +throat, but she spoke with her most carefully-fostered "English" +accent. "I--I suppose that's natural!" she remarked. + +Hugo, fondling his Chopin curl again, went on amusing himself with this +chosen subject. + +"But, as is so often the case with a young man's fancy," he announced, +"nobody else sees anything in 'her'!" + +The stricken Gwenna looked quickly at young Dampier, who was cutting the +Titan wedges that men call "slices," of cake. How would _he_ take it +that it had been said of his adored one that no one saw anything in her? + +He only gave a short laugh, a confident nod of his fair head and said, +"They will, though." + +"Infatuated youth!" commented Hugo Swayne, resignedly, leaning back. +"And he tries to cover it up by seeming casual. '_Going on as usual_' is +said just as a blind. It sounds so much more like a mere wife than a +_fiancee_, don't you think?" + +"Ah, but you are cynique, monsieur," protested the young Frenchman, +looking mildly shocked. "For you it is not sacred, the love for a wife?" + +"Oh, look here! Hadn't you better explain to them," broke in Paul +Dampier boyishly, having finished a large mouthful of his cake, "that +you're rotting? _Fiancee_, indeed. Haven't got such a thing in the +world, of course." + +At this Gwenna suddenly felt as if some crushing weight of +disappointment had fallen from her. "It's because I shall be able to go +flying with him after all," she thought. + +Young Dampier, rising to take her cup, grumbled laughingly, "D'you +suppose girls will look at a man nowadays who can't afford to spend the +whole of his time gadding about after 'em, Hugo, as you can, or blowing +what's my salary for an entire year on their engagement-rings----" + +"My dear fellow, no girl in the world exacts as much of a man's time and +money as that _grande passion_ of yours does," retorted Hugo Swayne, not +ill-naturedly. And turning to Leslie, he explained: "What I call Paul's +_fiancee_ is that eternal aeroplane he's supposed to be making." + +"Ah!" said Gwenna, and then blushed violently; partly because she hadn't +meant to speak, and partly because this had drawn the blue eyes of the +Airman quickly upon herself. + +"Yes, that incessant flying-machine of his," enlarged Mr. Swayne, +lolling back in his chair and addressing the meeting. "She--I believe +it's correct to call the thing 'she'?--is more of a nuisance even than +any engaged girl I've ever met. She interferes with everything this man +does. Ask him to come along to a dance or the Opera or to see some +amusing people, and it's always 'Can't; I'm working on the cylinder or +the spiral or the Fourth Dimension' or whatever it is he does think he's +working on. Practically 'she' spends all the time he's away from her +ringing him up, or getting him rung up, on the telephone. 'She' eats all +his spare cash, too----" + +"In steel instead of chocolate, I suppose?" smiled Leslie. "And must +she be humoured? She seems to have every drawback of a young woman with +'a diamond half-hoop.' Is she jealous, as well?" + +And then, while taking a cigarette from Hugo's case, the elder girl +made, lightly, a suggestion that the listening Gwenna was fated to +remember. + +"What would happen," asked Leslie dryly, "if a real flesh-and-blood +_fiancee_ were to come along as a rival to the one of machinery?" + +"Nothing would happen," Hugo assured her, holding out a lighted match. +"That's why it would be rather interesting to watch. The complication of +the Aeroplane or the Lady. The struggle in the mind of the young +Inventor, what? The Girl"--he tossed aside the match and glanced +fleetingly at the grave cherub's-face under Gwenna's white-winged +hat--"The Girl versus the Flying Machine. I'd lay fifteen to one on the +Machine, Miss Long." + +"Done," said Leslie, demurely but promptly. "In half-crowns." + +"Yes! You'd back your sex, of course," Hugo took up gaily. The young +Frenchman murmured: "But the Machine--the Machine is also of the sex of +Mademoiselle." + + +Here, suddenly, the silently listening Gwenna gave a tiny shiver. She +turned her head abruptly towards the open windows behind her with the +strutting pigeons and the sailing clouds beyond. It had seemed to the +fanciful Celt that there in that too dainty room now hazy with +cigarette-smoke, in that careless company of two girls and three young +men, she had felt the hint of another Presence. It was rather horrid and +ghostly--all this talk of a Machine that was made more of than a Woman! +A Machine who "clawed" the man that owned her, just like a jealous +betrothed who will not let her lover out of her sight! And supposing +that Conflict did come, on which Gwenna's chum and Mr. Dampier's cousin +had laid their laughing bets? The struggle between the sweetheart of +steel springs and the sweetheart of soft flesh and warm blood? For one +clear instant Gwenna knew that this fight would, must come. It was +coming---- + + +Then she turned her head and forgot her presentiments; coming back to +the light-hearted Present. She watched Leslie, to whom the young +Frenchman had been talking; he was now fixing dark earnest eyes upon +"Mademoiselle Langue" as she, in the rather stilted phraseology with +which our nation speaks its own language for the benefit of foreigners, +expounded to him an English story. + +There was a short pause. + +Then the room rang to the laughter of the foreigner. "Ha! Yes! I have +understood him! It is very amusing, that! It is good!" he cried +delightedly, with a flash of white teeth and dark eyes. "He say, 'There +are parts of it that are excellent!' Aha! _Tres spirituel_," and he +laughed again joyously over the story of the Curate's Egg, while Hugo +murmured something about how stimulating it was to hear, for once, the +Immemorial Anecdote fall upon Virgin Soil. + +The young Airman moved nearer to Gwenna, who, still watching Leslie, +gave a little start to hear that deep and gentle voice so close beside +her as he spoke. + +"Look here, we haven't settled up yet," he said, his voice gentle but +carrying above the chatter of the others. "About that flying. Sunday +this week I have got to be off somewhere. Now, are you free next +Saturday?" + +Gwenna, eager and tremulous, was just about to say, "Yes." But Hugo +Swayne interrupted. + +"I say, I hate to make mischief. But if you're talking about +Saturday----? D'you remember, Paul? It was the only day I could take you +down to Ascot to see Colonel Conyers." + +"Oh, Lord, so it was," said the young Airman, turning an apologetic face +to the girl. "I'm so sorry," he explained, "but this is a man I've +simply got to get hold of if I can. It's the Air-craft Conyers--'Cuckoo' +Conyers they call him. And he was a friend of Hugo's father, and what +I've been trying to see him about is working the War-office to take up +my new Machine----" + +"The _Fiancee_ again, you notice," laughed his cousin, with an +imperceptible aside to Leslie. "Score to the Aeroplane." + +"Yes, I see," said Gwenna, nodding at the Airman. "Of course! I mean of +course I don't mind!" + +"Then shall we say Saturday week for you to come up with me instead?" +suggested young Dampier. + +And Gwenna agreed to the date, thinking, "If only nothing stops it +again! If only there isn't something else, then, to do with his Machine! +That Machine! I----" Here she paused. + +After all, it would be too ridiculous to allow oneself even to think +that one "_hated_" a machine! + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A DAY IN THE COUNTRY + + +Eagerly as Gwenna longed to fly, she was not to do so even yet. + +After that appointment made at Hugo Swayne's rooms she lived through a +fortnight of dreaming, tingling anticipation. Then came another of those +brief direct notes from "_hers, P. Dampier_." The girl jumped for joy. +It was not to be at Hendon this time, but at Brooklands. Was she not +rapidly gaining experiences? First Hendon, then Brooklands; at this rate +she would soon know all the flying-grounds--Shoreham, Eastchurch, +Farnborough, all of them! + +"I'll call for you," the note said, "in the car." + +"'_The_' car is good," commented Leslie, arranging a mist-blue scarf +over Gwenna's small hat just before she started off on this expedition. +"_In the Army all things are in common, including money and tobacco_ but +the Dampier boy isn't in the Army." + +"Why shouldn't he?" took up Gwenna, ungrammatically and defiantly. She +considered Mr. Swayne's motor was honoured by this other young man who +condescended to drive it, to fetch and whirl away with him a girl who +felt herself a nymph about to be swept up and up above the clouds to +some modern version of Elysium. + +So twelve o'clock that Saturday morning (Gwenna having obtained special +leave of absence from the office) found the young man and the girl +speeding through Kensington and Hammersmith, on the Woking Road. + +The sun was hot above them; the road white; the hedges so dusty that +they seemed grey ribbons streaming past. Gwenna scarcely realised how +they went. She sat there beside him, thrilled and breathless, hardly +knowing to which delight to give herself up, that of the coming flight, +that of the present swift drive in the fresh breeze, or that of the +companionship of this Demigod of Modern Times, whose arm almost touched +hers sometimes as he moved or turned, or put on the brake. + +Except for an occasional remark to the car: "Come on, don't be funny, +old lady, don't be funny," or "Now for the hills; watch her sit down and +laugh at 'em!" he spoke little; Gwenna didn't particularly want him to +speak. The girl was in a golden and moving dream, and scarcely knew +where it carried her. + + +She came out of that dream, not with a shock, but gradually. Was the car +slowing down? It stopped; stopped in a wide part of that dust-white road +between the tall, dust-grey hedges, opposite to a creosoted +telegraph-pole spiked with nails. Through a gap in the hedge Gwenna +caught sight of a moon-daisied field, with a dark hedge and trees +beyond. Not a house, not a cottage in sight. This couldn't be +Brooklands? + + +"Hul-lo," the boy was muttering. "What's up now?" + +"What is it?" she asked. + +He did not reply. This was not rudeness, as she guessed, but intentness; +he took it for granted that she would not understand the mechanical +explanation. Resignedly she said to herself, "Machinery gone wrong? +Sometimes it really seems as if that were all machinery ever _did_ do! +Yet that's what he said he was interested in, more than anything!" + +He was out of the car and had flung back the bonnet. Then he took off +his coat and hung it up on one of the nails on that telegraph-pole. He +pushed up his shirt-sleeves and bent over the tool-box on the step. + +Sitting there on the hot leather, Gwenna watched him, she heard the +chinking of wrenches and spanners. Then he returned to the bonnet again, +fumbling, handling, burrowing, grunting at things.... Ten minutes +elapsed.... + +He then broke out emphatically: "Oh, _Lord_! I _have_ done it _now_!" + +"Done what?" asked the girl anxiously. + +In tightening a nut with a spanner the spanner had slipped. He had +broken the porcelain insulation of the plug controlling the current. + +And now, good-humouredly smiling at his guest, he leaned on the door of +the car with his brown forearms crossed and said, "Short circuited. Yes. +I'm afraid that's killed it." + +"Killed what?" asked little Gwenna, in affright. + +"Our flying for to-day," he said. + +He went on to speak about "spare parts," and how it would be necessary +to send some one back to fetch--something--Gwenna didn't care what it +was. Her heart sank in dismay. No flying? Must they go back after all, +now? + +"Can't we get on?" she sighed. + +He shook his shining head. + +"We can make a picnic of it, anyhow," he said more encouragingly. "Shall +you be all right here if I run back to that inn we passed just now with +the bit of green outside? I shan't be ten minutes. Send some one off on +a bicycle, and bring some grub back here." + +He jerked on his coat and was off. + + +Little Gwenna, sitting there waiting in the useless car--her small, +disconsolate face framed in the gauze scarf with which she'd meant to +bind her curls for the flying--was passed by half a dozen other motors +on the road to Brooklands. It did not strike her, dreamily downcast as +she was, that surely what the messenger from the inn was being +despatched to fetch might have been borrowed from one of these other +motorists? Some of them, surely, would be men who knew young Paul +Dampier quite well. Any of them might have come to the rescue? + +This, as a matter of fact, had struck Paul Dampier at once. But he +didn't want to go on to Brooklands! Brooklands? Beastly hot day; crowds +of people; go up in an affair like an old Vanguard? + +What he wanted, after a hard day's work yesterday on his own (so +different) Machine, was a day's peace and quiet and to think things a +bit over about her (the Machine) lying on his back somewhere shady, with +a pipe. Actually, he would rather have been alone. But this little girl, +Miss Williams.... She was all right. Not only pretty ... but such a +quiet, sensible sort of little thing. He'd take her up another time, +since she was keen. He certainly would take her up. Not to-day. To-day +they'd just picnic. _She_ wouldn't want to be giggling and chattering +about herself the whole time, and all that sort of thing, like some of +them. She liked to listen. + +She'd be interested to hear what he'd been doing lately, about the +Machine. For a girl, she was pretty bright, and even if she didn't grasp +things at once, she evidently liked hearing about the Machine; besides +which, it often cleared one's own ideas to one's self, to have to set +'em out and explain about the machinery very simply, to some one who was +keen, but who hadn't a notion. They'd have a nice, peaceful time, this +afternoon; somewhere cool, instead of Brooklands. And a nice long +talk--_all_ about the Machine. + + +He returned to the girl waiting in the car. Gwenna, cheering up at the +sight of him, saw that his pockets were bulging with bottles, and that +he carried a square, straw basket. + +"There. I might have taken Hugo's luncheon-basket and filled that while +I was about it; only I forgot there was one," he said, standing on the +road and screwing up his eyes a little in the midday sun as he faced +the car. "It's nicer eating out of doors, when you get a chance. Beastly +dusty on the road here, though, and things going by all the time and +kicking up clouds of it all over you. We'll find a pitch in that field." + +So she jumped down from her seat and the two left the glaring road and +got through that gap in the hedgerow where maybush and blackberry trail +and grass and campion alike were all thickly powdered and drooping with +dust. + +The boy and girl skirted another hedge that ran at right angles to the +road. Half-way up that field a big elm tree spread a patch of shade at +its base like a dark-green rug for them to sit on. Paul Dampier put his +coat down also. They sat, with moon-daisies and branching buttercups, +and cow-parsley all sweet and clean about them. + +Here the country-bred girl, forgetting her disappointment, gave a quick +little sigh of content. She glanced about her at the known faces of +flower-friends in the grass; a diaper of colours. Each year she had +loved the time when white daisies and red sorrel and yellow rattle +flaunted together over the heads of the lower-growing clovers and +speedwells and potentillas. This year it seemed lovelier than ever. She +put out her hand and pulled up a lance of jointed grass, nibbling the +soft, pale-green end of it. + +"Here, are you as hungry as all that?" laughed young Dampier at her +side. "We'll feed." + +He let Gwenna spread out upon the clean dinner-napkin in which they were +wrapped the provisions that he had brought from the inn. + +"All I could get. Bread-and-cheese. Couple of hunks of cold beef. +Butter--salt," he said, giving her the things as he named them. "Plates +I said we wouldn't worry about; chuck the crumbs to the birds. Here's +what I got to drink; cider. D'you like it?" + +"Love it," said Gwenna, who had never happened to taste it. But she knew +that she would love it. + +"Good. Oh! _Now_ I've forgotten the glass, though," exclaimed young +Dampier, sitting up on his knees on the shaded patch of grass beside +her. "We shall both have to use the lower half of my flask. Sorry--hope +you don't mind." + +Gwenna, taking her first taste of cider in bird-like sips from that +oblong silver thing, remembered the old saying, "Drink from my cup and +you will think my thoughts." Then he put down upon the dinner napkin the +half-loaf and the lump of cheese that he had been munching. He took the +half of the flask, simply, out of the girl's hand, poured out more +cider, and drank in turn. + +"That's better," he said, smiling. She smiled back at him. + +She had ceased to feel any shyness of this fair-haired aviator who +rested there beside her in this oasis of shade from the elm, while +beyond them stretched the wide, dazzlingly bright desert of the +flowering meadow, bounded by its hedges. He cut off the crusty part of +the loaf for her (since she said she liked it). He sliced for her the +damp and pinkish beef, since she would not confide to him her deep and +feminine loathing of this fare. The woman is not yet born who can look +upon cold meat as a food. And they drank in turn from his silver flask. +This was their third meal together; yet Gwenna felt that she had been +grown-up and conscious of delight in the world about her only since they +had met. + +Ease and gaiety rose between them in a haze like that which vibrated +over the warm hay-field where they feasted. + +"I say, I shall have to give a lunch at the Carlton to everybody I +know," he laughed, half to himself, presently, "if I do get Colonel +Conyers to make 'em take up the P.D.Q." Then, turning more directly to +her. "Sorry--you don't know that joke. It's my Aeroplane, you know." + +"Oh, yes, the one Mr. Swayne calls your _Fiancee_!" took up Gwenna +quickly. Then she wished she hadn't said that. She reddened. She turned +her supple little body to toss crumbs to a yellow-hammer that was eyeing +them from a branch in the hedge behind her. And then she asked. "Why +'the P.D.Q.'?" + +"Because she will be the Paul Dampier One, I hope," explained the young +inventor, "and I always think of her as that other because it means +'Pretty Dam--Dashed Quick.'" + +"Oh, is that it?" said Gwenna. + +She echoed crossly to herself, "'_I always think of her_' indeed! It +sounds like----" + +And she finished her thought with the hardest-working word in her native +tongue; the Welsh for sweetheart. + +"It does sound just as if he were talking about his _cariad_." + +Absently she brushed more crumbs off her side of the dinner-napkin. + +For one-half only of Gwenna now seemed to note that they were eating +crusty loaf and drinking cider out of doors between a lupin-blue sky and +a flowerful meadow; the other was conscious of nothing but her +companion; of the clear friendliness of his eyes, those eyes of Icarus! +Of his deep and gentle voice saying, "Mind if I smoke? You don't, I +know," of those brown hard-looking forearms from which he had not +troubled to pull down the sleeves, of his nearness. + +Suddenly he came nearer still. + +He had not stopped talking of his aeroplane, but she hardly remembered +that she had asked him the meaning of one of the expressions that he had +used. + +He was repeating it. + +"'Camber?' ... Well, it's a curve. A curve like----" He glanced about +for an example of the soft, end-wise curve on the great wings of an +aeroplane; his eyes passing quickly from the green hedge to the ground, +to the things on the picnic cloth, to Gwenna Williams's small hand as it +rested in the grass. + +She wondered, thrilled, if the young Airman were actually going to take +hold of her hand. + +He did take her hand, as simply as he had taken the silver cup from it. +He bent it over so that her wrist made a gentle curve. He passed his own +large fingers across it. + +"Yes; there--that's the curve," he said. "Almost exactly." + +It might have been a caress. + +But, done as he did it, the light movement was nothing of the kind. +Instinct told the girl that. It wasn't her small and soft and +pink-palmed hand that he was thinking of holding. She looked at him as +he said, "That's the curve," and she caught a gleam of quickened +interest in his eyes. But in one mortified flash she knew that this had +nothing to do with her. She guessed that at this moment he'd forgotten +that there was a girl sitting there beside him at all. + +And she knew why. + +Angrily she said to herself, "He's thinking of nothing but that old +machine of his! And I do--yes, I do, _do_ hate her!" + +Then she sat for a moment still as the elm-trunk against which she'd +been leaning. + +She had been struck thus motionless by a thought. + +Something had been brought home to her by that sharp and sudden twinge +of--Jealousy! + +Yes! She knew now! What she felt, and must have been feeling for days +past, was what they meant by falling in love. + +"That's what I've done!" she thought rapidly; half in consternation, +half in delight. "It's beginning to happen what Mr. Swayne was talking +about at that tea: the Girl or the Flying Machine!" + +She glanced towards the gap in the hedge as if to look at the car that +had brought them, motionless by the road-side; she turned her face away +from the Airman, who sat lighting a pipe with the shadows of the +elm-branches dappling his fair head and shirt-sleeved shoulders. + +She was blushing warmly at her own thoughts. + +"It's only the flying-machine he cares about! He does like me, too; in a +way.... If only he'd forget that other for a minute! But if he won't," +thought Gwenna, happening upon an ancient piece of feminine philosophy, +"I'd rather have him talking about _her_ than not talking to me at all!" + +She spoke aloud, sedately but interestedly. + +"Oh, is _that_ a camber?" That light touch of his seemed still upon her +wrist, though he had withdrawn it carelessly at once. She paused, then +said, "And what was that other thing, Mr. Dampier? Something about an +angle?" + +"A dihedral angle?" he said, drawing at that pipe. "Oh, that's the angle +you see from the front of the thing. It's--look, it's like that." + +This time it was not her hand he took as an illustration. He pointed, +pipe in hand, to where, above the opposite hedge, a crow was sailing +slowly, a vandyke of black across the cloudless blue. + +"See that bird? It's that very slight V he makes; _now_." + +"And this machine of yours?" persisted the girl, with a little twitch of +her mouth for the rival whom he, it seemed, always thought of as "the +P.D.Q." and whom Gwenna must always think of as "the _Fiancee_." She +wondered where it lived, the creature that meant all to him. She said, +"Where--where d'you _make_ that machine?" + +"Oh, I'm afraid it isn't a machine yet, you see. It's only a model of +one, so far. You know, like a model yacht," he explained. "That's the +worst of it. You see, you can make a model do anything. It's when you +get the thing life-size that the trouble begins. Model doesn't give a +really fair idea of what you've got to get. The difficulties--it's never +the real thing." + +Gwenna thought, "It must be like making love to the person you aren't +really in love with!" But what she said, with her hand stripping a spike +of flowering grass, was, "I suppose it's like practising scales and all +that on a mute piano?" + +"Never tried", he said. Then: "_The model's_ at my own place, my rooms +in"----here he broke off with a laugh. He looked straight into her face +and said, still laughing, and in a more personal tone: + +"Not in Victoria Street. I say, you spotted that _that_ place wasn't +mine, didn't you?" + +"Leslie 'spotted' and said so, afterwards," admitted Gwenna demurely, +picking and sniffing at a piece of pink clover before she fastened it +into her white blouse. "I did think at the time that it wasn't--wasn't +the sort of place where you'd find a man living who _did_ things, like." + +"Rather rough on old Hugo." + +"Well, but _does_ he do things?" + +"He doesn't have to. He'd be all right if he did. Sweat some of that +beef off him, give him something to think about," averred his cousin, +carelessly knocking out his pipe against the heel of his shoe. "But, you +know, my place is in Camden Town; most inferior. Three rooms over a +paper shop; two small cubby-holes where I sleep and eat, and a rather +bigger one where I keep the 'P.D.Q.' stuff. I couldn't have you there +that Sunday." + +"Why not?" Gwenna asked sharply, and jealous again. It was almost as if +the _Fiancee_ had said to him, "_No, not here_!" + +"Because," he said with a chuckle, "because at the last moment, when I'd +got the tea ready and everything"--he tossed his fair head back--"a fall +of soot down the chimney! Everything in the most ghastly mess! Pitch +black wherever you put a finger. I simply couldn't--it was four o'clock +then; I expect you both thought it rotten of me. Still," he concluded, +rather ruefully, "I couldn't give you the sort of polite tea Hugo can, +anyhow." + +"I don't want polite teas!" Gwenna protested, looking round at the field +where she had feasted as if in Elysium. "You don't suppose I care for +things all grand like that, do you?" + +He responded, "Would you care to see my Camden Town place, then, and the +model? You and Miss Long. It's quite near you, you know." + +"Yes, I should," said Gwenna quietly, stripping her grass. + + +How could he, she wondered, ask if she "cared" for these things that +opened out new worlds to her? If he only knew, just to be with him was +part of that new, soaring freedom which to her was summed up in the idea +of flying! This, she felt, _was_ flying. She didn't care, after all, if +there were no other flying that afternoon. Care? _She_ wouldn't mind +sitting there until the sun slipped slowly downwards towards the western +hedge and the moon-daisies closed in the tall grass, and clouds of other +tiny flying creatures poised and hovered above them. _She_ wasn't sorry +that the mechanic did not return in haste to minister to that +broken-down car. When she did remember about it, it was almost to hope +that he would not be back! Not just yet! Not to put an end to this +golden afternoon of talk that, trivial as it was, seemed to her to be +the endowment of a new faculty, and of comradeship that was as beguiling +and satisfying as that of her bosom-chum, Leslie. Only newer, only more +complete. So it seemed to Gwenna, as the shadows moved further up the +grass where she sat with her new boy-friend. + +For it is a commonplace that in all comradeship between man and woman +passionate love claims a share. But also in all passionate love there is +more comradeship than the unimaginative choose to admit; there is a +happy inner meaning to the cottage phrase, "To keep company with." + + +What he thought about it she did not know. Except that he surely must +like talking to her? He could not go on like this out of politeness. + +Ah, besides--! Besides, she knew, without reasoning about it, that, even +with that absorbing interest of the aeroplane in the background, he did +like her. Just as Leslie, her other friend, who also knew so much more +than she did, had liked her at once. + +"Only," decided Gwenna, in the uttermost depths of her shy and daring +heart, "only he's _got_ to like me, some day, better than Leslie ever +could. He must. Yes; he _must_!" + +And she thought it so ardently that she almost expected him, catching +her thought, to answer it in words. She looked--no, he had caught +nothing. But, meeting his eyes again, her own read a message that her +fluttered mind had been told before this, but would scarcely let her +believe. He thought she was pretty to look at. She had taken off her hat +now, as she liked to do in the open air, and the light breeze tossed her +short locks about. + +"I _believe_ he thinks," Gwenna told herself, "that my hair's nice." + + +As a matter of fact she was right. If she could have read her +companion's thoughts at the moment she would have known of a quite +foolish but recurrent wish on his part. A wish that he might just run +his fingers through all those brown and thickly-twisting curls, to find +out if they felt as silky as they looked. + +A lark was carolling over her head, soaring, poising, poising, soaring, +and singing all the while.... + +"That's what we can't do, even yet; _hover_," he said. And again he went +on talking to the Little Thing (in his mind this babyish-faced but quite +quick-witted girl was now always to be "the Little Thing") about the +chance of getting Colonel Conyers to take up that invention of his. + +"I'm to go to spend the week-end at Ascot with him and have another talk +about it," he said. "I know he's dead keen. _He_ knows that it's +aeroplanes that are going to make all the difference; simply knock out, +under some conditions, any other form of scouting. In modern warfare, +you know--it's bound to come, some time--anybody with any sense knows +that----" + +"Yes, of course," agreed Gwenna, watching him as he stretched himself +lazily out, chest downwards, elbows in, on the grass, chin propped in +his hands, talking (all about the Machine). + +"If he gave me a chance to build Her--make trial flights in the P.D.Q.! +If he'd only back me----" + +"Oh, he will, surely!" said Gwenna, her whole small face brightening or +sobering in response to every modulation of his voice. + +It was jolly, he thought, to find a girl who wasn't in the least bored +by "Shop." She _was_ a very jolly Little Thing. So sensible. No +nonsense about her, thought the boy. + + +And she, when at last they rose and left the place, threw a last look +back at that patch of sky above the hedge, where the black crow had made +a dihedral angle, at that brooding elm, at that hay field, golden in the +level rays, at that patch of dusty road where the car had pulled up, at +that black telegraph-pole where he had hung up his coat. That picture +was graven, as by a tool, into the very heart of the girl. + + +At the end of an expedition that a young woman of more experience and +less imagination would have pronounced "tame enough," Gwenna, +bright-eyed and rosy from her day in the sunshine, could hardly believe +that a whole lifetime had not elapsed since last she'd seen the +everyday, the humdrum and incredibly dull Club where she lived. + +She burst into her chum's bedroom as Leslie was going to bed. + +"Taffy--back at last?" smiled Leslie, between the curtains of black hair +on either side of her nightgown. "How's flying?--_What?_" she exclaimed, +"you didn't go up at all? Broke down on the way to Brooklands? I say! +How rotten for you, my poor lamb. Had anything to eat?" + +"I think so--I mean, rather! He gave me a _lovely_ lunch on the road +while we were waiting for the man to mend the car--and then we'd tea at +a cottage while he was doing it--and then there wasn't time to do +anything but come back to town," explained Gwenna breathlessly, +untying her scarf; "and then we'd sort of dinner at the inn before we +started back; they brought out a table and things into the garden under +the trees." + +"What did you have for dinner?" + +"I don't know. Oh, there were gooseberries," said Gwenna vaguely, "and a +lamp. And the moths all came. Oh, Leslie! It's _been_ so splendid!" She +caught her breath. "I mean, it was _dreat_ful about no flying, but----" + +"Glad the afternoon wasn't entirely a washout," said Miss Long, in an +even voice as she plaited her hair. + +"By the way, did the Dampier boy give you back that locket of yours?" + +"I forgot all about it," said Gwenna, picking up the head of pink clover +that had fallen out of her blouse. "I'll ask him next time. He's going +to take me up soon, you know, again." + +Just as an alarm is "set" to sound at some given hour, so the whole of +the girl's innocent being was set, to wait and wait for that "next time" +of meeting him--whenever it should be. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +LESLIE, ON "THE ROOTS OF THE ROSE" + + +Leslie Long was lounging in a rickety deck-chair under the acacia tree +that overshadowed the small lawn behind the Ladies' Residential Club. +Miss Long looked nonchalantly untidy and her hair was coming down again. +But she had an eye to an occasion on which she meant to shine. She was +carefully darning a pair of silk stockings, stockings she was to wear +with her all-mauve Nijinski rig at a costume dance in a week's time. She +was looking forward to that dance. + +It was a late Saturday afternoon, a fortnight after that Saturday that +Gwenna Williams had spent in the country with the Dampier boy. Most of +the girls in the Club were out somewhere now. Only one of the students +from the College of Music was practising Liszt's "Liebestraum." +Presently however, a sunshine-yellow jersey coat appeared on the steps +at the back entrance of the Club. Gwenna Williams was looking out. She +saw her chum in the garden and ran down to her; dropping upon the lawn +at her feet, and nestling her curly head down upon the lengthy knee that +supported the darning-basket. + +Gwenna's small face looked petulant, miserable. She felt it. Leslie, to +whom, of course, the other girl was as an open book, asked no question. +She left that to Gwenna, who had never, so far, made any spoken +admission of what had happened--or not happened--since the evening when +they had dressed together to go to that dinner-party at the Smiths'. It +was Gwenna who asked the first question. + +With a stormy and troubled sigh, she broke out, a propos of nothing: +"How is one to make him? I mean how is one ever to get a young man to +like one if he hardly ever sees one?" + +Leslie looked down at her over the second mauve stocking that she was +drawing over a yellow wooden darning mushroom. + +"Tut," said Leslie, with her usual mock unction. "What is all this about +'getting' a young man to like one? What an expression, my love. And, +worse; what a _sentiment_! Surely you know that men (nice men) think +very lightly of a girl who does not have to be _wooed_. With deference, +Taffy. With _reverence_. With hovering uncertainty and suspense +and--er--the rest of that bag of tricks." + +The soft, persistent notes of the "Liebestraum" coming through the open +Club windows filled a short pause. Leslie threaded her needle with mauve +silk, then took up her mushroom--and her theme--once more. + +"Men care little for the girl who drops like a ripe plum (unripe fruit +being obviously so much sweeter) into their mouths. (Query, why go about +with their mouths open?) Not so. The girl who pleases is the girl who is +hard to please." + +A small discouraged sigh from Gwenna, as she sat there with her yellow +jersey coat spread round her like a great dandelion in the grass. + +"Oh, but supposing she _isn't_ hard to please?" she faltered. "Supposing +somebody pleased her awfully? If he'd let her, I mean--oh, I daresay you +think I'm dreadful?" + +"You outrage my most sacred what's-their-names--convictions, Taffy," +declared Leslie, solemnly running her needle in and out of the stretched +silk. "How many times must you be told that the girl a man prizes is she +who knows how to set the very highest Value upon herself? The sweetly +reserved Girl who keeps Him Guessing. The ter-_ruly_ maidenly type who +puts a Barrier about herself, and, as it were, says, 'Mind the barbed +wire. Thus far--unless it's going to be made worth my while, for good.' +Haggling little Hebrew!" concluded Miss Long. + +For the girl at whom everybody is shocked has standards of her own. Yes! +There are things at which she, even she, is shocked in turn. + +Leslie, speaking of that other, belauded type, quoted: + + "'_Oh, the glory of the winning when she's won!_' + +(per-haps!)." + +And in her voice there was honest disgust. + +"No, but Leslie! _Stop_ laughing about it all! And tell me, really, +now--" appealed the younger girl, leaning an arm upon her friend's knee +and looking up with eyes imploring guidance. "_You've_ known lots of +men. _You've_ had them--well, admiring you and telling you so?" + +"Thank you, yes," said Leslie, demurely darning. "You mightn't think it, +to look at me in this blouse, but I have been--er--stood plenty of +emotional drinks of that kind." + +"Then you know. You tell me--" pleaded Gwenna, pathetically earnest. "Is +it true that men don't like you if they think you like them very much?" + +Leslie's impish face peeped at her over the silk stocking held up over +the mushroom. And Leslie's mouth was one crooked scarlet curve of +derision. + +But it straightened into gravity again as she said, "I don't know, +Taffy. Honest injun! One woman can't lay down rules for another woman. +She's got to reckon with her own type--just pick up that hairpin, will +you--and his. I can only tell you that what is one man's meat +is--another man's won't meet." + +Gwenna, at her knee, sighed stormily again. + +Leslie, rearranging herself cautiously in the insecure deck-chair, put a +finger through one of Gwenna's curls, and said very gently, "Doesn't the +Dampier boy come to meet it, then?" + +Gwenna, carnation red, cried, "Oh _no_! Of _course_ not. I wasn't +_thinking_ of him." + +In the same breath she added shamefacedly, "How did you know, Leslie? +You are clever!" And then, in a soft burst of confidence, "Oh, I _have_ +been so worrying! All these days and days, Leslie! And to-day I felt I +simply _had_ to tell you about it--or _burst_! I haven't really been +able to think of anything but him. And he--he _hates_ me, I know." + +She used that word to console herself. Hate is so infinitely less +discouraging than polite indifference! + +Leslie glanced very kindly at the flushed face, at the compact yet +lissom little body sitting up on its heels on the Club lawn. She asked, +"Doesn't the creature _look_ at you? The other day when he took you out +and broke down the motor? Didn't he then?" + +"Yes, he did," admitted Gwenna, "a little." + +"That's a start, then. So 'Cheer up, Taff, don't let your spirits go +down,'" hummed Leslie. "Ask your Fraeulein at the works if she knows an +excellent slang German phrase for falling in love. 'Der hat sich aber +man ordentlich verguckt?' 'He's been and looked himself well into it'--I +am glad the Dampier boy did look. It _is_ engendered in the eyes, as +poor old Bernard Shaw used to say. It will be all right." + +"Will it, d'you think? Will it?" + +Gwenna, kneeling beside the dishevelled, graceful figure with its long +limbs stretched out far beyond the deck-chair, gazed up as if into the +face of an oracle. + +"What do I _do_," she persisted innocently, "to make him look--to make +him like me?" + +"You don't 'do.' You 'be,' and pretty hard too. You, my child, sit +tight. It's what they call the Passive Role of Woman," explained Leslie, +with a twinkle. "Like _this_." And she drew out of her darning-basket a +slender horseshoe-shaped implement such as workwomen use to pick up a +dropped needle, painted scarlet to within half an inch of its end. She +held it motionless a little away from her darning. There was a flash in +the sunlight and a sharp little "click" as the needle flew up and clung +to the magnet. + +"D'you see, Turtle-dove?" + +"Yes; but _that_ isn't what you seemed to be talking about just now," +objected Gwenna. "You seemed to think that a girl _needn't mind_ 'doing' +something about it. Letting a person see that she liked him." + +"That isn't 'doing.' A girl can get in such a lot of useful +execution--excuse my calling spade work spade work--all the time she is +going on being as passive as--as that magnet," pronounced the mentor. +"Of course you've got to take care to look as nice as you know how to +all the time. + +"And here you score, Miss Williams. Allow a friend to say that you're +not only as pretty as they make 'em, but you know how to take care that +you're as pretty _as they're made_!" + +The younger girl, puzzled, asked the difference. + +"I mean that you've cultivated the garden, and haven't got to start +digging up the weeds and sweeping the lawn five minutes before you +expect the garden-party," explained Leslie, in the analogies that she +loved. "Some girls don't seem to think of 'making the most of +themselves' until the man comes along that they want to make much of +_them_. Then it's so often a scramble. You've had the instinct. You +haven't got your appearance into any of the little ways that put a man +off without his knowing quite what he's been put off _by_. One excellent +thing about you----" + +"Yes?" said Gwenna, rapt, expectant. + +The particular unsolicited testimonial that followed was unexpected +enough. + +"For one thing, Taffy, you're always--_washed_!" + +"Why, of course. But, Leslie--surely--so's _everybody_!" + +"_Are_ they?" ejaculated Miss Long darkly. "They think they are. They +simply haven't grasped how much soap and water and loofah go to that, in +big towns. Half the girls aren't what _I_ call tubbed. How many of them, +with bathrooms a yard from their bedrooms, bother to have a scrub at +night as well as in the mornings? It's at night they're grimy, Taff. +It's at night they leave it on, powder and all, to work into themselves +until that 'unfresh' look gets chronic. My dear, I tell you that the +two-bath-a-day rule would give us much less of the Lonely-and-Neglected +Women Problem. There!" + +Gwenna Williams, twisting between finger and thumb the stalk of a daisy +she had picked off the lawn, murmured something about it's being funny, +love having anything to do with how often a girl _washed_! + +"Of course you think Leslie is revoltingly unpoetic to suggest it. But +it's sound enough," declared the elder girl. "Flowers don't look as if +'anything to do with' earth had ever touched them, do they? But aren't +their roots bedded deep down in it right enough? All these hints I give +you about Health and Body-culture, these are the Roots of the Rose. +Some of them, anyhow. Especially _washing_. I tell you, Taff"--she spoke +sepulchrally--"_half the 'nice' girls we know don't wash enough_. +_That's_ why they don't get half the attention they'd like. Men like +what they call a 'healthy-looking' girl. As often as not it simply means +the girl happens to be specially _clean_. Beauty's skin-deep; moral, +look after your skin. Now, you do. No soap on your face, Taff?" + +"No; just a 'clean' after washing, with Oatine and things like that." + +"Right. Costs you about fourpence a week. It might cost four guineas, to +judge from the economical spirit of some girls over that," said Leslie. +"Then, to go on with this grossly material subject that is really the +root of Poetry, do you shampoo your hair nice and often? It looks thick +and soft and glossy and with the curls all big, as if you did." + +"Oh, yes, I do. But then that's easy for me; it's short." + +"Mine's long enough, but I do it religiously every fortnight. Pays me," +said Miss Long candidly as she went on working. "Untidy it may be, but +it does feel and smell all right. One of my medical students at the +hospital where I trained for five minutes--the boy Monty, the Dean's +son--_he_ said once that the scent of my hair was like cherry-wood. +'Course I didn't confide in _him_ that I watered it well with bay rum +and rosemary every night. Better than being like Miss Armitage, the +suffragette-woman here, who's so nice-minded that she's 'above' +pampering the body. What's the consequence? She, and half the girls +here, go about smelling--to put it plainly--like cold grease and +goloshes! Can they wonder that men don't seem to think they'd be--be +very nice to marry?" + +"Some suffragettes, and sort of brainy women," hesitated Gwenna, "are +married." + +"Yes; and _have_ you observed the usual type of their husbands?" scoffed +Leslie. "Eugh!" + +Gwenna, set upon her own subject, drew her back with innocent directness +to the matter in hand. + +"What else ought one to do? Besides lots of washing, besides taking care +of one's hair and skin?" + +"One's shape, of course," mused Leslie. "There you're all right. Thank +goodness--_and me_--that you've left off those weird, those unearthly +stays you came up to town in. My dear, they were like a hamper strapped +round the middle of you and sending your shoulders up, squared, into +your ears! You've got a pretty slope there now, besides setting free all +your 'lines.' I suppose elastic has pretty well solved the great corset +question at last." + +"Thirty shillings was a dreat-ful lot to give for just an elastic belt," +murmured Gwenna, with her little hand at her supple waist. "Still, you +said I must, even if I didn't have a new blouse over it for eighteen +months." Again she looked up for guidance. "What else? What's a good +_thing_, Leslie? About clothes and that?" + +"Oh, child, you know it all now, practically. Let's see--shoes"--she +glanced at the tiny brown one half-tucked under Gwenna's knee. "_Boots +and shoes_ men seem to notice as much as any other part of your get-up. +Attractive shoes, even with an unfashionable skirt, will pull you +through, when shabby shoes would ruin the look of the smartest rig. They +see that, even when they've no idea what colour you've got on." + +She went on to another hole in the stocking and continued: "As for +colours, a man does seem to notice 'a girl in black,' or all-white, or +pale blue. I read once that pale blue is 'the sex colour'--couldn't tell +you, never worn it myself. Managed well enough without it, too!" mused +Leslie. "Then 'a girl in pink' is very often a success in the evening. +Men seem to have settled vaguely that pink is 'the pretty girl's +colour.' So then they fondly imagine that anything that dares to wear +it must be lovely. _You_ needn't yet. Keep it for later. Pink--judicious +pink--takes off ten years, Taffy!" + +"I--I suppose I shall still care what I look like," murmured the young +girl wistfully, "at thirty-two...." + +"Pearl of Wisdom Number Forty-eight: When in doubt, wear the +coat-and-skirt (if it's decently cut) rather than the frock," decreed +Leslie. "White silk shirts they seem to like, always. (I'm glad +I weaned you of the pin-on tie, Taffy. It always looked like +'sixpence-three-farthings.' Whereas you buy a piece of narrow ribbon for +'six-three,' you _tie_ it, you fasten it with a plain silver brooch to +your shirt, and it looks _good_.)" + +"I'll remember," murmured Gwenna devoutly, from the grass. + +Leslie said, "One of the housemaids here--(never stoop to gossip with +the servants, dearest. It _is_ so unhelpful and demoralising to both +classes)--one of the housemaids once told me that _her_ young man had +told her that 'nothing in the wide world set a young woman off like a +nice, fresh, clean, simple shirt blouse, same as what she was wearing +then!' Of course, _he_ was a policeman. Not an aviator or a dean's son. +But when it comes to a girl in the case, I expect they're _'brothers +under their skins_,'" said Leslie Long. + +Husky with much talking, she cleared her throat. + +"Pearl of Wisdom Number Forty-nine: Be awfully careful about your +collar, the ends of your sleeves and the hem of your skirt. (Keeping a +strong force on the Frontier; that is always important.) Don't ever let +your clothes be 'picturesque,' except for indoors. A man loathes walking +along beside anything that flaps in the wind, or anything that looks +like what he calls 'fancy dress.' Outside, don't wear anything that you +can't skip easily on to the last bus in. Don't have 'bits' of anything +about you. Try to be as neat as the very dowdiest girl you know, +_without the dowdiness_. Neatness, my beloved sisters, is the---- (Here +am I talking like this; but why," she interrupted herself, laughing, +"_why_ aren't I neater myself when in mufti? I mean, when there's nobody +about? '_In time of Peace, prepare for War._' It would be better. Might +get my hair out of its _habit_ of descending at the wrong moment.) And +then, then, when all your good points are mobilised, you wait for the +Enemy." + +"The _enemy_?" said little Gwenna, doubtfully. + +"Yes. The Man. The opposing force, if you like. You can think and think +and wish and wish about him then until the whole air about you goes +shivery-quivery with it. 'Creating an atmosphere' is what they call it, +I believe. And get him well into the zone of _that_," advised Leslie. +"For it's no use the magnet being a magnet if it doesn't allow itself to +get within miles of a needle, is it? Might as well be any old bit of +scrap-iron. Plenty of girls--_nice_ girls, I mean--not like that +deplorably vulgar Miss Long. What _she's_ doing in a Club that's +supposed to be for _ladies_ I don't know. The _horrid_ things she says! +Bad! _Bad_ form! And I'm sure if she says those here, she must have +heaps of other worse things she _could_ say, and probably _does_, to +some people! Er--oh, where _was_ I? Ah, yes!" rattled on Leslie, with +her black head flung against the striped canvas back of the chair, her +eyes on her surprisingly neat darning. "I was going to say--plenty of +nice girls muff everything by putting too much distance that doesn't +lend enchantment to the view between themselves and the men that aren't +often sharp enough to deserve being called 'the needle.' Don't you make +the mistake of those nice girls, Taffy." + +"Well, do I _want_ to? But how can I help it? How can I even try to 'be' +anything, if he isn't there to know anything at all about it? I don't +see him! I don't meet him!" mourned the Welsh girl in the soft accent +that was very unmistakable to-day. "It's a whole fortnight, Leslie, +since that lovely day in the fields. It seems years. He hasn't written +or anything. I've waited and waited.... And sometimes I feel as if +perhaps I _shouldn't_ ever see him again. After all, I never did see him +properly before we went to your sister's that night. Oh, isn't it awful +to think what little _chances_ make all the difference to who one sees +or doesn't see? I can't know for certain that I shall _ever_ see him +again. Oh, Leslie!" + +Leslie cut her last needleful of lilac silk and answered in the most +reassuringly matter-of-fact tone: + +"But of course you will. If you want to enough. For instance--should you +like to see him at this dance?" + +"Dance?" inquired Gwenna, dazed. + +"Yes. This fancy-dress affair that I'm doing these stockings for. (I won +these in a bet from one of my Woolwich cadets.) This tamasha next week?" + +"But--_he_ isn't going, is he? And I'm not even asked." + +"And can't these things ever be arranged?" demanded her chum, laughing. +"Can do, Taffy. Leslie will manage." + +"Oh--but that's so _kind_!" murmured the younger girl, overcome. + +"Do you expect me _not_ to be 'kind'? To another girl, in love? Nay, oh +Taffy! I leave that to the 'nicest' of the girls who think it 'horrid' +to think about young men, even. Gem of Truth Number Eighty: It isn't the +little girl who's _had_ plenty to eat who's ready to snatch the bun out +of the hand of the next little girl," said Leslie. She rolled the silk +stockings into a ball, and rose in sections from that sagging chair. +"Leslie will see you're done all right. All that remains to be discussed +is the question of what you're to wear at the dance." + +This question Leslie settled as the two girls went for an after-supper +stroll. They went past the summer crowd patrolling the Spaniards Road, +past the patch of common and the benches and the pond by the flagstaff +that make that part of Hampstead so like a bit of the seaside. It was a +golden evening. In the hazy distance a small, greyish, winged object +rose above the plane which was Hendon, and moved to the left towards the +blue taper of Harrow Church, then sank out of sight again. + +"There's one," sighed Gwenna, her eyes on the glowing sky, where the +biplane had been circling. "He's in it, perhaps." + +"Little recking what plans are now being made for his welfare by me," +observed Miss Long, as the two girls descended the hill and found at +last a birch thicket that was not held by Cockney lovers. She let +herself down cross-legged into the bracken. The Welsh girl perched +herself on a branch of the birch tree that was polished smooth as an old +bench. Thus she sat among the stirring leaves, head on one side, +listening, her babyish face looking down intent against the sky. + +"Ah! That's _you_! '_A Cherub._' That's what your fancy dress is to be," +pronounced the elder girl. "Just your own little crop-curled head with +nothing on it; and a ruff of cherub's wings up to your chin. Those +little wings off your hat will do beautifully. Below the ruff, clouds. +Appropriate background for cherubs. Your misty-white frock with no sash +this time, and one of those soap-bubble coloured scarves of Liberty +gauze draped over it to represent a rainbow. Little silver shoes. +_Strictly_ speaking, cherubs don't have those, of course. But if you +can't become a Queen of Spain--if you can't be realistic, be pretty. +Your own, nearly-always expression of dreamy innocence will come in +nicely for the costume," added Leslie. "Quite in keeping." + +"I'm sure I'm not that," protested the Welsh girl, piqued. "_I'm_ not +what they call 'innocent.'" + +"No, I don't think you are. 'What they call innocent' in a girl is such +a mixture. It means (a) no sense of humour at all; (b) the chilliest +temperament you can shiver at, and (c) a complete absence of +observation. But I believe _you_ have '_beneath your little frostings +the brilliance of your fires_,' Taffy. Yours is the real innocence." + +"It isn't, indeed," protested the girl, who was young enough to wish to +be everything but what she was. "Why, look at the way you say anything +to me, Leslie!" + +Leslie laughed, with a remoter glance. Then suddenly she dropped her +black head and put a light caress on the corner of the sunshine-yellow +jersey coat. + +"Be as sweet always," she said, lightly too. "Look as sweet--at the +dance!" + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE HEELS OF MERCURY + + +This injunction Gwenna carried out to the letter a week later. Never had +she looked so pretty as when she smiled at her own reflection in her +bedroom mirror above the cherub's ruff of wings on the evening of the +dance. + +It was given by some wealthy theatrical people whose "set" often +intermingled with that to which Hugo Swayne belonged. And it was held in +a couple of big marquees that had been set up on the lawn behind their +house; a lawn of which the banks sloped down to the willows that fringed +the river. There was a houseboat as buffet. There were Japanese lanterns +and fairy-lights. Red carpet had been put down to save costumes from +dewy grass or gravel. + +For this dance was held at the height of that brief and grotesque period +in the English history when dancing and costume--more particularly when +the two were combined--became an affair of national moment. That was the +time when tickets for an Artists' Ball were gambled with even as stocks +and shares; when prizes for costume were given of which the value ran +into hundreds of pounds. When columns of responsible newspapers were +given up to descriptions of some "brilliant carnival." When Society, +the Arts, Commerce, the Stage and the Middle Class joined hands to dance +the maddest ring-o'-roses round some mulberry bush rooted in Heaven knew +what soil of slackness. That was the time when women who were mothers +and able-bodied men were ready to fritter away the remnant of their +youth on what could be no longer pleasure, since they chased it with +such deadly ardour, discussing the lightest types of merrymaking as if +thereupon hung the fate of an empire! + +Even little cherub-headed Gwenna Williams found something disquieting +about the sight of this throng as she scanned it with anxious eyes, +for--no, HE hadn't come! He was late. Not here. Perhaps it was merely +this that caused her to dislike the look of some of these other people? +That buxomly-formed young woman of twenty-five tricked out in the +costume of a child of three! That tall, fragile youth in black +grave-clothes, mouthing falsetto patter! That pretty "lady" in spreading +Georgian brocade and a white wig, from whose crimsoned lips there came +presently a robust masculine shout! That Madame Potiphar in the--Good +gracious!--it was another boy! No! Gwenna _didn't_ like them, +somehow.... Perhaps it was just because they were here and he, the only +partner she wished for, had not arrived. Oh, _supposing_ he were not +coming, after all? + +Under the canvas roof where garlands swung and an installation of +electric light had been improvised, the crowd eddied and chattered and +laughed from one end to the other of the marquee where the long tables +were laid out. For it was a theatrical ball, late in beginning. Supper +was to come first. Gwenna, sitting beside a Futurist Folly whom her +friend Leslie had introduced vaguely as "one of my medical students," +watched that supper-crowd (still he did not come), as they feasted, +leaning across the tables to laugh and shriek to acquaintances. It was +not the girls or the younger men who seemed most boisterous, but those +well over thirty. This surprised her. And even when they were most +unrestrained "they seemed," as the Welsh girl put it, "to be _making_ +themselves do it, like." ... + +Then she saw, by an opening in the canvas of the marquee, the apparition +of a steady man's figure, dead-white against the purple gloom outside. A +figure erect and neatly-shouldered under the close linen jacket of a +Continental waiter. Gwenna wondered where she had seen him before? In a +photograph? Or perhaps attending to one of the tables at Appenrodt's, +when she and Leslie had had tea after a matinee somewhere? She _had_ +seen that young waiter, whose appearance was in such arresting contrast +to the bizarre costumes and painted faces of the noisy, laughing rabble +about him. His face was restrained and grave as that of some very young +Daniel at the feast of some modern Belshazzar. + +Suddenly besides that still, watching apparition there came up another +boyish figure--typically English, in ordinary evening dress, and tall, +towering above the young German waiter of whom he was making some +inquiry. For a second they stood so; the waiter glancinc up, the +newcomer, Paul Dampier, with his blonde head tilted a little back, his +eyes raking the crowd. + +"Ah! he's come," cried Gwenna aloud, but unheard in the universal +clatter. Her heart leaped.... + +But Paul Dampier, the airman, was swallowed up again almost directly in +a forest of odd, luridly-coloured head-dresses. He had not seen her. + +And she did not see him again until some time after supper was ended, +and the throng was whirling and writhing in one-step and ragtime in the +other marquee. + +Gwenna had danced with an Apache, with a Primitive Man, with Mr. Hugo +Swayne (in a mask and crazy-work domino as a Simultaneous Dynamism of +Something), and she was standing waiting, one of a figure in a revived +cotillon. + +While the Viennese band swooped and tore through the waltz "Nights of +Gladness" a sheet had been fetched and was held up at the end of the +ballroom between a Morris-dancer and an incredibly handsome "Turco" (who +presently revealed himself as Mr. Swayne's French engineer), as a screen +before six of the girls. Six men were to be led up to it in turn; each +to choose his partner by the feet that were just allowed to show below +the sheet. + +Soft laughter and twittering went on at the side where the half-dozen +girls stood. + +"I say," exclaimed a damsel dressed as an Austrian Peasant to her +crinolined neighbour, "_now_ we see why you were so anxious to explain +why you were wearing scarlet----" + +"Of course he'd know yours anywhere," retorted the next girl. + +"Ssh! Play fair!" protested the next. "Mustn't be recognised by your +voice!" + +"Oh, look at the Cherub girl's little shoes! Aren't they sweet? Just +like silver minnows peeping out----" + +Here Gwenna, standing sedately beside the scintillating, mauve-limbed +Nijinski, Leslie, lifted her head in quick attention. She had recognised +a voice on the other side of the sheet. A voice deep and gentle and +carrying through the clatter of talk and the mad, syncopated music. It +protested with a laugh, "But, look _here_! I can't dance all these +weird----" It was the Airman--her Airman. + +"Oh, he's just there. He's going to choose. If only he'd choose me," +thought Gwenna, breathlessly fluttering where she stood. Then she +remembered. "Oh, but he won't know me. He doesn't know I was to have +silver shoes. If there was only _some_thing! Something to show him which +I was, I believe he'd choose me. What could I do?" + +Suddenly she thought what she could do.... Yes! Winged feet, of course, +for a girl who longed to fly! + +Hurriedly she put her hands up to the ruff made of those white wings. +Hastily she plucked two of them out. How was she to fasten them to her +feet, though? Alas, for the short curls that deprived her of woman's +universal tool! She turned to her chum who was impatiently jigging in +time to the music, with her long black hair swathed for once securely +under that purple casque. + +"Leslie, quick, a hairpin! Lend me two hairpins," she whispered and +snatched them from her friend's hand. Then, holding on to Leslie's mauve +silken shoulder to support herself, Gwenna raised first one small foot, +and then the other, fastening to each between the stocking and the +silver shoe, one of those tiny wings. + +They were the feathered heels of Mercury, the flying-god, that the girl +who loved a flying-man allowed to peep under the curtain behind which +she stood. + +Above the commotion of people laughing and talking all about her and the +music she felt that he was close, only just behind that sheet. She could +have put out a hand and, through that sheet, have touched his +shoulder.... Mustn't, of course.... Must play fair. Would he note the +message of the winged feet? Would he stop and choose her? + +Or would he pass on? + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE KISS WITHHELD + + +He did not pass. + +He stopped--Gwenna felt the touch of his finger on the silver tip of her +shoe. All a-tremble with delight she moved aside, and stepped from +behind the screen to face the partner who had chosen her. + +"_Hullo_!" exclaimed Paul Dampier, with real surprise in his smile. "I +didn't know it was _you_!" + +Gwenna felt a little dashed, even as he slipped his arm about her and +they began to waltz. She looked up into the blonde face that seemed +burned so very brown against his dress-shirt, and she ventured, "You +didn't know it was me? I thought that was why you chose me--I mean, I +thought because I was somebody you knew----" + +"Didn't know you were here. I never thought those were your feet!" he +said in that adorably deep and gentle voice of his. Adding, as they +turned with the turning throng, something that lifted her heart again, +"I chose them because they were the prettiest, I thought." + +It was simply stated, as a fact. But this, the first compliment he'd +paid her, kept her silent with delight. Even as they waltzed, his arm +about her rainbow scarf, the girl felt the strongest wish--the wish that +the dance were at an end and she back in her bedroom at the Club, +alone, so that she might think and think again over what he had said. +He'd thought she had the prettiest feet! + +"D'you think you could manage to spare me some others?" he asked at the +end of that waltz. "You know, you're about the only girl here that I +know except Miss Long." + +"Leslie would introduce you to anybody you liked"--suggested little +Gwenna, feeling very good for having done so. And virtue brought its +reward. For with a glance about him at that coloured noisy crowd that +seemed a handful of confetti tossed by a whirlwind, he told her he +didn't think he wanted to be introduced, much. He wasn't really keen on +a lot of people he'd never seen. But if she and Miss Long would give him +a few dances----? + +The girl from the country thought it almost too good to be true that she +need not share him with any of these dangerously fascinating London +people here, except Leslie! + +In a pause they went up to where Leslie was standing near the band. +Close beside her the Morris-dancer was wrangling with Hugo Swayne in his +crazy-work domino, who declared, "Miss Long promised _me_ every other +dance. A week ago, my dear man. Ten days ago----" + +Yes; Leslie seemed to be engaged for every dance and every extra. She +tossed a "_so_ sorry, Mr. Dampier!" over her shoulder, following it with +an imperceptible feminine grimace for Gwenna's benefit. With the first +bars of the next waltz she was whirled away by a tall youth garbed, +becomingly enough, as a Black Panther. The room was still clear. The +Black Panther and the boyishly slim girl in mauve tunic and tights +waltzed, for one recurrence of the tune, alone.... + +Gwenna, looking after that shapely couple, knew who _he_ was; Monty +Scott, the Dean's son who had been a medical student when Leslie was at +the Hospital. He had followed her to the Slade to study sculpture, and +already he had proposed to her twice. + +The tall and supple youth held Leslie, now, by his black-taloned gloves +on her strait hips. Leslie waltzed with hands clasped at the back of his +neck. Then, with a backward fling of her head and body, she twisted +herself out of his hold. She waltzed, holding the flat palms of her +hands pressed lightly to the palms of his. The music altered; Leslie +varying her step to suit it. She threw back her head again. Round and +round her partner she revolved, undulating from nape to heels, not +touching him, not holding him save by the attraction of her black eyes +set upon his handsome eyes, and of her red lips of a flirt, from which +(it was evident!) the boy could not take his gaze. Once more she shook +her purple-casqued head; once more she let him catch her about the hips. +Over the canvas floor they spun, Leslie and Monty, black-and-mauve, +moving together with a voluptuous swing and zest that marked them as the +best-matched dancers in the room. Well-matched, perhaps, for life, +thought Leslie's chum.... But no; as they passed Gwenna saw that the +black eyes and the red mouth were laughing cynically together; she +caught, through the music, Leslie's clear "Don't _talk_! _don't_ talk +when you're dancing, my good boy.... Spoils everything.... You _can_ +waltz.... You know you've never anything to _say_, Mont!" + +"I have. I say----" + +Leslie waltzed on unheeding. Whatever he had to say she did not take it +seriously. She laughed over his shoulder to little Gwenna, watching.... + +Couple after couple had joined in now, following the swift tall graceful +black shape and the light-limbed mauve one as they circled by. A flutter +of draperies and tinsel, a toss and jingle of stage accoutrements; the +dancers were caught and sped by the music like a wreath of +rainbow-bubbles on the rise and fall of a wave. + +Gwenna, the Cherub-girl, was left standing for a wistful moment by the +side of the tall Airman in evening dress. + +He said, through the music, "Who's your partner for this?" + +She had forgotten. It was the Futurist Folly again. He had to find +another partner. Gwenna danced with her Airman again ... and again.... + +Scarcely realising how it happened--indeed, how do these arrangements +make themselves?--this boy and girl from a simpler world than that of +this tinsel Bohemia spent almost the whole of the rest of that evening +as they had spent that day in the country, as she would have asked to +spend the rest of their lives together. + +Some of the time they danced in the brilliant, heated marquee under the +swinging garlands and the lamps. Then again they strolled out into the +Riverside garden. Here it was cool and dewy and dim except where, from +the tent-openings, there was flung upon the grass a broad path of light, +across which flitted, moth-like, the figures of the dancers. Above the +marquee the summer night was purple velvet, be-diamonded with stars. At +the end of the lawn the river whispered to the willows and reflected, +here the point of a star, there the red blot of a lantern caught in a +tree. + +Hugo Swayne went by in this bewildering stage, light-and-shade with a +very naughty-looking lady who declared that her white frock was merely +"'Milk,' out of 'The Blue Bird.'" In passing he announced to his cousin +that the whole scene was like a Conder fan that he had at his rooms. +Groups of his friends were simply sitting about and _making_ themselves +into quite good Fragonards. Little Gwenna did not even try to remember +what Fragonard was. None of these people in this place seemed real to +her but herself and her partner. And the purple dusk and velvet shadows, +the lights and colours, the throb and thrill of the music were just the +setting for this "night of gladness" that was only a little more +substantial than her other fancies. + +More quickly it seemed to be passing! Every now and again she exultantly +reminded herself, "I am here, with him, out of all these people! He is +only speaking to me! I have him to myself--I must feel that as hard as I +can all the time now, for we shall be going home at the end of this +Ball, and then I shall be alone again.... If _only_ I could be with him +for always! How extraordinary, that just to be with one particular +person out of all the world should be enough to make all this +happiness!" + +With her crop-curled head close against his shoulder as they danced, she +stole at her boyish partner the shy, defiantly possessive glance that a +child gives sometimes to the favourite toy, the toy that focusses all +his dreams. This was "the one particular person out of all the world" +whose company answered every conscious and unconscious demand of the +young girl's nature even as his waltz-step suited her own. + +Yet she guessed that this special quiet rapture could not last. Even +before the end of the dance the end of _this_ must surely come. + + +It must have been long hours after the waltz-cotillon that they strolled +down to a sitting-out arbour that had been arranged at the end of the +path nearest the river. It was softly lighted by two big Chinese +lanterns, primrose-coloured, ribbed like caterpillars, with a black base +and a splash of patterned colour upon each; a rug had been thrown on the +grass, and there were two big white-cane chairs, with house-boat +cushions. + +Here the two sat down, to munch sandwiches, drink hock-cup. + +"I remembered to bring two glasses, this time," said Paul Dampier. + +Gwenna smiled as she nodded. Her eyes were on those silver white-finned +minnows of her feet, that he had called pretty. + +He followed her glance as he took another sandwich. "Rather a good idea, +wings to your shoes because you're supposed to be a cherub." + +"Oh, but that's not what the wings were supposed to be for," she said +quickly. "I only put those in at the waltz-cotillon so that----" + +Here she stopped dead, wishing that the carpeted grass might open at +those winged feet of hers and swallow her up! + +How could she have given herself away like this? Let him _know_ how she +had wanted him to choose her! when he hadn't even known she was there; +hadn't been thinking about her! + +She flurried on: "S-so that they should look more like fancy-dress shoes +instead of real ones!" + +He turned his head, dark and clean-cut against the lambent swaying +lantern. He said, out of the gloom that spared her whelming blush, "Oh, +was that it! I thought," he added with a teasing note in his voice, "I +thought you were going to say it was to remind me that I'd promised to +take you flying, and that it's never come off yet!" + +Gwenna, hesitating for a moment, sat back against the cushions of the +wicker-chair. She looked away from him, and then ventured a retort--a +tiny reproach. + +"Well--it _hasn't_ come off." + +"No, you know--it's too bad, really. I have been most frightfully busy," +he apologised. "But we'll fix it up before you go to-night, shall we? +You must come." At this he was glad to see that the Little Thing looked +really pleased. + +She was awfully nice and sensible, he thought for the severalth time. +Again the odd wish took him that had taken him in that field. Yes! He +_would_ like to touch those babyish-looking curls of hers with a finger. +Or even to rumple them against his cheek.... Another most foolish and +incomprehensible wish had occurred to him about this girl, even in her +absence. Apropos of nothing, one evening in his rooms he had remembered +the look of that throat of hers; round and sturdy and white above her +low collar. And he had thought he would rather like to put his own hands +about it, and to pretend--quite gently, of course--to throttle the +Little Thing. To-night she'd bundled it all up in that sort of feather +boa.... Pity.... She was ever so much prettier without. + +Fellow can't say that sort of thing to a girl, though, thought the +simple Paul. + +So he merely said, instead, "Let me stick that down for you somewhere," +and he leant forward and took from her the plate that had held her +cress-and-chicken sandwiches. Then he crossed his long legs and leant +back again. It was jolly and restful here in the dim arbour with her; +the sound of music and laughter came, much softened, from the marquee. +Nearer to them, on the water below the willows, there was a little +splashing and twittering of the moor-hen, roused by something, and the +scarcely audible murmur of the Thames, speeding past House-boat Country +to London ... the workaday Embankment.... It was jolly to be so +quiet.... + + +Then, into the happy silence that had fallen between them, there came a +sound--the sound of the crunching of gravel. Gwenna looked up. Two +figures sauntered past down the path; both tall and shapely and black +against the paling, star-sprinkled sky above the frieze of sighing +willows. Then Leslie's clear, careless voice drifted to their ears. + +"Afraid not.... Anyhow, what on earth would be the good of caring '_a +little_'?... I look upon you as such an infant--in arms----" + +Here there was a bass mutter of, "Make it _your_ arms, and I don't +mind!" + +Then Leslie's insouciant: "I _knew_ you'd say that obvious thing. I +always do know what you're going to do or say next ... fatal, that.... A +girl _can't_ want to marry a man when----" + +Apparently, then, the Dean's son was proposing again? + +As the couple of free-limbed black shadows passed nearer, Paul Dampier +kicked his heel against his chair. He moved in it to make it creak more +noisily. + +Good manners wasted! + +For Leslie, as she afterwards told her chum, took for her motto upon +such occasions, "_And if the others see, what matter they_?" + +Her partner seemed oblivious that there were any "others" sitting in +the shadows. The couple passed, leaving upon the night-breeze a trail of +cigarette-smoke (Leslie's), and an indistinguishable growl, presumably +from the Black Panther. + +Leslie's voice floated back, "Not in the mood. Besides! You _had_, last +time, 'to soften the edges,' as you call it." + +More audibly her partner grumbled, "What's a kiss you've _had_? About as +satisfying as last summer's strawberry-ice----" + + +A mere nothing--the incident. + +Yet it brought (or hastened) a change into the atmosphere of that arbour +where, under the giant glowworms of lights swinging above them, two +young people sat at ease together without speaking. + +For Gwenna, envious, thought, "Leslie can make a man think of nothing +but her, even when she's 'not in the mood!' I can't. Yet I believe I +could, but for one thing. Even now I don't know that he isn't thinking +about That Other----" + +"That Other" was her rival, that machine of his that Gwenna had not +mentioned all the evening.... + +It had come, she knew, that duel between the Girl and the Aeroplane for +the first place in the heart of a Flying Man. A duel as old as the +world, between the thing a man greatly loves, and that which he loves +more greatly still. She thought of Lovelace who "_loved Honour more_." +She thought of the cold Sea that robs the patient, warm-hearted women +ashore, of the icy Pole whose magnetism drew men from their wives. The +work that drew the thoughts of her Airman was that Invention that was +known already as his _Fiancee_.... + +"Leslie says it's not as bad as if it were another woman, but I see her +as a woman," thought the silent, fanciful girl, "I see her as a sort of +winged dragon with a figure-head--aeroplanes don't have figure-heads, +but this one seems to me to have, just like some of those vessels that +come into the harbour at Aberdovey. Or like those pictures of harps that +are half a woman. Smooth red hair she has, and a long neck stretched +out, and a rather thin, pale, don't-care sort of face like that girl +called Muriel. And--and eagle's talons for hands. That's how I see that +_Fiancee_ of his, with claws for hands that won't, _won't_ ever let him +go...." + +A puff of wind knocked one of the lanterns above their heads softly +against the other; the willows rustled silkily outside. Gwenna sat +motionless, holding her breath. Suddenly her reverie had broken off with +an abrupt, unspoken--"but it's me he's thinking of _now_...." + +Paul Dampier had been lightly amused by that passing of the other +couple. That friend of hers, Miss Long, was more than a bit of a flirt, +he considered. This Little Thing wasn't. Couldn't imagine _her_ giving a +kiss as some girls give a dance; or even to "soften" a refusal.... Her +mouth, he found himself noticing, was full and curly and exactly the +colour of the buds of those fox-gloves that grew all over the shop at +her place in Wales. It was probably softer than those curls of hers +that he would (also) like to touch. + +Idiotic idea, though---- + +But an idea which is transmittable. + +Gwenna, thrilled by this message which she had caught by a method older +and less demonstrable than Marconi's, realised: "He heard _that_, just +now; that boy wanting to kiss Leslie.... He's thinking, now, that he +might kiss me." + +The boy scarcely at arm's length from her thought a little confusedly, +"I say, though.... Rotten thing to do...." + +The girl thought, "He would like to. _What_ is he waiting about? We +shall have to go directly----" + +For the sky outside had been swiftly paling. Now that pure pallor was +changing to the glow of Abyssinian gold. Dawn! From the marquee came a +louder blare of music; two long cornet notes and then a rollicking +tune--The old "Post Horn" Galop--the last dance. Presently a distant +noise of clapping and calls for "Extra"! There would be no time for +extras, she'd heard. They would have to go after this. People were +beginning to go. Already they had heard the noise of a car. His chair +creaked as he moved a little sidewards. + +He told himself, more emphatically, "Beastly rotten thing to do. This +Little Thing would never speak to me again----" + +And the girl sat there, without stirring, without glancing at him. Yet +every curve of her little body, every eyelash, every soft breath she +drew was calling him, was set upon "making" him. What could she do more +to make herself, as Leslie called it, a magnet? Love and innocent +longing filled her to the eyes, the tender fox-glove buds of lips that +could have asked for nothing better. Even if this _were_ the only time! +Even if she never saw him again! + +Wasn't he going to set the crown upon her wonderful dream of a summer +night? + +"No, look _here_," the boy remonstrated silently with something in +himself; something that seemed to mock him. He lifted his fair head with +a gleam of that pride that goes so often before a fall. "Dash it +all----" + +"He will!" the girl thought breathlessly. And with her thought she +seemed to cast all of her heart into the spell.... + + +And then, quite suddenly, something happened whereby that spell was +snapped. Even as she thought "_he will_," he rose from his chair. + +He took a step to the entrance of their arbour, his shoulders blotting +out the glowing light. + +"Listen," he said. + +And Gwenna, rising too, listened, breathlessly, angrily. He would +_not_--she had been cheated. What was it that had--_interfered_? +Presently she heard it, she heard what she would have taken for the +noise of another of the departing motors. + +Through the clatter from the last galop it was like, yet unlike, the +noise of a starting car. But there was in it an _angrier_ note than +that. + +It is angry for want of any help but its own. A motor-car has solid +earth against which to drive; a steamship has dense water. But the +Machine that caused this noise was beating her metal thews against +invisible air. + +It was an aeroplane. + +"Look!" said Paul Dampier. + +Far away over the still benighted land she rose, and into that glory of +Abyssinian gold beyond the river. Gwenna, moving out on to the path, +watched the flight. Before, she had wondered that these soaring things +didn't come down. Now, she would have wondered if they had done so. + +Steady as if running on rails, the aeroplane came on overhead; her sound +as she came now loud, now soft, but always angry, harsh--harshness like +that of a woman who lives to herself and her strivings, with no +comradeship of Earth on which to lean. Against the sky that was her +playground she showed as a slate-coloured dragonfly--a purple Empress of +the Air soaring on and on into the growing dazzle of the day. + +"Oh, it _is_ beautiful, though," cried the girl on the path, looking up, +and losing for that moment the angry sense that had fallen upon her of +pleasure past, of the end of the song. "It is wonderful." + +"Pooh, that old horse-bus," laughed Paul Dampier above her shoulder, +and mentioned the names of the machine, the flyer in her. He could pick +them out of the note of her angry song. + +"That will be nothing to my P.D.Q.," he declared exultantly as they +walked on up the path towards the marquee. "You wait until I've got my +aeroplane working! That'll be something new in aviation, you know. +Nearest thing yet to the absolute identity of the Man with the Machine." + +He yawned a little with natural sleepiness, but his interest was +wide-awake. He could have gone on until breakfast-time explaining some +fresh point about his invention, while the girl in those little +silver-heeled shoes paced slowly up the path beside him.... He was going +on. + +"Make all those other types, English or foreign, as clumsy as the +old-fashioned bone-shake bicycle. Fact," he declared. "Now, take the +Taube--Hullo----" + +"_Bitte_," said a voice. + +The German word came across a pile of plates deftly balanced upon a +young man's forearm. That arm was clad in the sleeve of a trim white +jacket, buttoned over a thick and compact little chest. The waiter's +hair was a short, upright golden stubble, and another little stubble of +gold sprouted upon his steady upper lip. He had come up, very softly, +behind them. + +He spoke again in excellent English. + +"By your leave, sir." + +Dampier made way for him, and he passed. Gwenna, with a little shiver, +looked after him. The sight of the young waiter whom she had noticed at +the beginning of the evening had given her an unreasonable little +chill.... Perhaps it was because his softly-moving, white figure against +those willows had loomed so like a ghost.... + +Dampier said, "Rotten job for a man, I always think, hanging about and +picking up things for other people like that." + +"Yes," said Gwenna, absently, sadly. It _was_ the end now. Quite the +end. They'd got to go home. Back to everyday life. The Club, the Works. +Nothing to live for, except--Ah, yes! His promise that he _would_ take +her flying, soon.... + +Above in the glowing sky the aeroplane was dwindling--to disappear. The +waiter, turning a corner of the dark shrubbery, had also disappeared as +they passed. From behind the shelter of the branches he was watching, +watching.... + +He was looking after Paul Dampier, the Airman--the inventor of the +newest aeroplane. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE FLYING DREAM + +"_Those dreams come true that are dreamed on Midsummer night!_" + + +This saying Gwenna had read somewhere. But she had forgotten all about +it until, on the night of June 24th, 1914, she dreamed the most vivid +dream of all her twenty-two years. + +Many people have that same dream--or versions of it--often in a +lifetime. Scientists have written papers on the whys and hows of it. +They tack a long name to it. But little Gwenna Williams had never heard +of "_levitation_." To herself she called it afterwards "_that flying +dream_." + +It seemed to her that when it began she was still half-awake, lying in +her narrow white bed with the blankets tossed on to the floor of her +Club bedroom, for it was a sultry night and close, in spite of her +window on to the garden being wide open and allowing what breeze there +was to blow full upon the girl's face, stirring her curls on the pillow, +the ruffle of her night-gown as she lay. + +Suddenly a violent start ran over the whole of her body. And with that +one jerk she seemed to have come out of herself. She realised, first, +that she was no longer lying down, curled up in the kitten-like ball +which was her attitude for sleeping. She was upright as if she were +standing. + +But she was not standing. Her feet were not resting on anything. Looking +down, she found, without very much surprise, that she was poised, as a +lark is poised, in mid-air, at some immeasurable height. It was night, +and the earth--a distant hassock of dim trees and fields--was far, far +below her. + +She found herself moving downwards through the air. + +_She was flying!_ + +Gently, gently, she sped, full of a quiet happiness in her new power, +which, after all, did not seem to be something new, but something +restored to her. + +"Dear me, I've flown before, I know I have," said Gwenna to herself as +she swooped downwards in her dream, with the breeze cool on the soles of +her little bare feet. "This is as lovely as swimming! It's lovelier, +because one doesn't have to _do_ anything. So silly to imagine that one +has to have _wings_ to fly!" + +Now she was nearer to earth, she was hovering over a dark stream of +water with reflections that circled and broke. And beside it she saw +something that seemed like a huge lambent mushroom set in the dim fields +below her. This was a lighted tent, and from it there floated up to her +faintly the throb and thrill of dance-music, the two long-drawn-out +notes of the "Post Horn" Galop, the noise of laughter and clapping.... +She wondered whom she would see, if she were to alight. But the Force +in her dream bore her up again, higher, and away. She found presently +that she had left the dancing-tent far behind, and that what streamed +below her was no longer a river with reflections, but a road, white with +dust, and by the side of it a car was standing idle by the dusty hedge. +On the other side of the hedge, as she flew over, the grass was clean +and full of flowers, and half-way up the field stood a brooding elm that +cast a patch of shadow. + +"Sunshine, now!" wondered Gwenna. "How quickly it's changed from night!" + +She felt from head to foot her body light and buoyant as a drifting +thistle-down as on she went through the air. Close beside her, against a +bank of cloud, she noticed some black V-shaped thing that slanted and +flapped slow wings, then planed downwards out of her sight. "That's that +crow. A dihedral angle, they call it," said the dreaming girl. Her next +downward glance, as she sped upwards now, without effort, above the +earth, showed her a map of distant grey roofs and green trees, and +something that looked like a giant soap-bubble looming out of the mist. + +"St. Paul's! London!" thought Gwenna. "I wonder shall I be able to look +down on our Westminster place." + +Then, glancing about her, she saw that the scene had suddenly changed. +She was no longer in the free air with clouds about her as she flew like +a little white windblown feather with the earth small as a toy puzzle +below. She was between walls, with her feet not further than her own +height from the ground. Night again in a room. A long, narrowish room +with an open window through which came the light of a street-lamp that +flung a bright patch upon the carpet, the edge of a dressing-table, the +end of a white bed. Upon the bed, from which the coverings had been +flung down, there lay sleeping, curled up like a kitten, a figure in a +white, ruffled night-gown, with a cherub's head thrown backwards against +the pillow. Gwenna, looking down, thought, "Where have I seen _her_?" + +In the next flash she had realised. + +Herself!... Her own sleeping body that her dreaming soul had left for +this brief flight.... + +A start more violent than that with which her dream had begun shook the +dreamer as she came to herself again. + +She woke. With a pitiful little "Oh," sounding in her own ears, she sat +up in bed and stared about her Club bedroom with its patches of light +from the street-lamp outside. She was trembling from head to foot, her +curls were wet with fright, and her first thought as she sprang out of +bed and to the door of that ghostly room was "I must go to Leslie." + +But Leslie's bedroom was a story higher. Gwenna paused in the corridor +outside the nearest bedroom to her own. A thread of light showed below +the door. It was a Miss Armitage's, and she was one of the Club members, +who wrote pamphlets on the Suffrage, and like topics, far into the +night. Gwenna, feeling already more normal and cheered by the sense of +any human nearness, decided, "I won't go to her. She'll only want to +read aloud to me.... She laughed at me because I said I adored 'The +Forest Lovers,' but what books does _she_ like? Only those _dreat_-ful +long novels all about nothing, except the diseases of people in the +Potteries. Or else it'll be one of her own tracts.... Somehow she does +make everything she's interested in sound so _ugly_. All those +intellectual ones here do! Whether it's Marriage or Not-getting-married, +you really don't know which would be the most _dull_, from these +suffragettes," reflected the young girl, pattering down the corridor +again. "I'll go back to bed." + +She went back, snuggling under the clothes. But she could not go to +sleep again for some time. She lay curled up, thinking. + +She had thought too often and too long of that dance now three whole +weeks behind her. She had recalled, too many times! every moment of it; +every word and gesture of her partner's, going over and over his look, +his laugh, the tone in which he'd said, "Give _me_ this waltz, will +you?" All that memory had had the sweetness smelt out of it like a +child's posy. By this time it was worn thin as heirloom silver. She +turned from it.... It was then she remembered that saying about the +Midsummer Night's Dream. If that were true, then Gwenna might expect +soon to fly in reality. + +For after all her plans and hopes, she had not even yet been taken up +by Paul Dampier in an aeroplane! + +In that silent, unacknowledged conflict between the Girl and the +Machine, so far scarcely a score could have been put down to the credit +of the Girl. It was she who had always found herself put back, +disappointed, frustrated. This had been by the merest accidents. + +First of all, the Airman hadn't been able to ask her and Miss Long to +his rooms in Camden Town to look at his model aeroplane. He had been +kept hanging on, not knowing which Saturday-to-Monday Colonel Conyers +("the great Air-craft Conyers") was going to ask him down to stay at +that house in Ascot, to have another talk over the subject of the new +Machine. ("A score for the Machine," thought the girl; wakeful, tossing +on her bed.) + +She did not even know that the week after, on a glorious and cloudless +Saturday, young Dampier, blankly unaware that there was any conflict +going on in his world! had settled to ask "the Little Thing" to Hendon. +On the Friday afternoon, however, his firm had sent him out of town, +down to the factory near Aldershot. Here he had stayed until the +following Tuesday, putting up at the house of a kindred soul employed at +that factory, and wallowing in "Shop." ... Another win for the Machine! + +The following Sunday the cup had been almost to Gwenna's lips. He had +called for her. Not in the car, this time. They had taken the Tube to +Golders Green; the motor-bus to Hendon Church; and then the path over +the fields together. Ah, delight! For even walking over the dusty grass +beside that swinging boy's figure in the grey tweed jacket was a joyous +adventure. It had been another when he had presently stooped and said, +"Shoelace come untied; might trip over that. I'll do it up," and had +fastened her broad brown shoe-ribbon securely for her. Her shoes had +been powdered white. He had taken his handkerchief out of his pocket and +had flicked the dust off, saying, as he did so, in a tone of some +interest, "I say, what tiny feet girls do have!" + +("Pie for you, Taffy, of course," as Leslie had said later, when she'd +heard of this. "Second time he'd noticed them.") + +Gwenna, in a tone half pleased, half piqued, had told him, "_All_ girls +don't have them so small! And yet you don't seem to notice anything +about people but their feet." She had walked on, delightedly conscious +of his laugh, his amused, "Oh, don't I?" and his downward glance.... +Wasn't this, she had thought, something of a score at last for the Girl! + +But hadn't even that small score been wiped out on the flying-ground? +There Gwenna had stood, waiting, gleeful and agitated; her mist-blue +scarf aflutter in the brisk breeze, but not fluttering as wildly as her +heart.... + +And then had come frustration once again! Paul Dampier's deep and +womanishly-soft tone saying, "I say, I'm afraid it's going to be a bit +too blowy, after all. Wind's rising all the time;" and that other giant +voice from the megaphone announcing: + + "Ladies and gentul Men! As the wind is now blowing + forty miles an hour it will be im possible to make + passenger flights!" + +Oh, bitter defeat for the Girl! For, this time, there had been no +idyllic picnic _a deux_ to console her for any disappointment. There had +been nothing but a rather noisy tea in the Pavilion, with a whole +chattering party of the young Airman's acquaintances; with another young +woman who had meant to fly, but who had seemed resigned enough that it +was "not to be, _this_ afternoon," and with half a dozen strange, +irrelevant young men; quite _silly_, Gwenna had thought them. Two of +them had given Gwenna a lift back to Hampstead in their car afterwards, +since Paul Dampier had explained that he "rather wanted to go on with +one of the other fellows"--somewhere! Gwenna didn't know where. Only, +out of her sight! Out of her world! And she was quite certain, even +though he hadn't said so, that he had been bent on some quest that had +something to do with the _Fiancee_ of his, the "P.D.Q.," the Machine! + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +AN AWAKENING + + +The sore of that jealousy still smarted in the girl's mind as she turned +her pillow restlessly.... She could not sleep until long after the +starlings had been twittering and the milk-carts rattling by in the +suburban road outside. She awoke, dispirited. She came down late for +breakfast; Leslie had already gone off to her old lady in Highgate. Over +the disordered breakfast-table Miss Armitage was making plans, with some +of the other Suffrage-workers, to "speak" at a meeting of the Fabian +Nursery. Those young women talked loudly enough, but they didn't +pronounce the ends of any of their words; hideously slipshod it all +sounded, thought the Welsh girl fretfully. Her world was a desert to +her, this fine June morning. For at the Westminster office things seemed +as dreary as they had at the Club. She began to see what people meant +when they said that on long sea-voyages one of the greatest hardships +was never to see a fresh face, but always the same ones, day after day, +well-known to weariness, all about one. It was just like that when one +was shut up to work day after day in an office with the same people. She +was sick to death of all the faces of all the people here. Miss Butcher +with her Cockney accent! Miss Baker with her eternal crochet! The men in +the yards with their _awful_ tobacco and trousers! Nearly all men, she +thought, were ugly. All old men. And most of the young ones; _round_ +backs, _horrid_ hands, _disgusting_ skins--Mr. Grant, for instance! +(with a glance at that well-meaning engineer, when he brought in some +note for Mabel Butcher). Those swarthy men never looked as if they had +baths and proper shaves. He'd a head like a black hatpin. And his +accent, thought the girl from the land where every letter of a word is +pronounced, his accent was more excruciating than any in Westminster. + +"Needn't b'lieve me, if you don't want. But it's true-oo! Vis'ters this +aft'noon," he was saying to Miss Butcher. "Young French Dook or Comp or +something, he is; taking out a patent for a new crane. Coming in early +with some swagger friends of his. Wants to be shown the beauties of the +buildin', I s'pose. Better bring him in here and let him have a good +look at you girls first thing, hadn't I? S'long! Duty calls. I must +away." + +And away he went, leaving Miss Butcher smiling fondly after him, while +Miss Williams wondered how on earth any girl ever managed to fall in +love, considering there was nothing but young men to fall in love with. +All ordinary young men were awful. And all young men _were_ ordinary.... +Except, now and again, one ... far away ... out of reach.... Who just +showed how different and wonderful a thing a lover might be! If one +could only, only ever get near him!--instead of being stuck down here, +in this perfectly beastly place---- + +As the morning wore on, she found herself more and more dissatisfied +with all her surroundings. And for a girl of Gwenna's sort to be +thoroughly dissatisfied predicts one thing only. She will not long stay +where she is. + +Impatiently she sighed over her typing-table. Irritably she fidgeted in +her chair. This was what jerked the plump arm of Ottilie Becker, who was +passing behind her, and who now dropped a handful of papers on to the +new boards. + +"Zere! Now see what you have made me do," said the German girl +good-naturedly enough. "My letter! Pick him up, Candlesticks-maker." + +"Oh, pick him up yourself," retorted Gwenna school-girlishly, crossly. +"It wasn't my fault." + +At this tone from a colleague of whom she was genuinely fond, tears rose +to Miss Becker's blue eyes. Miss Butcher, coming across to the centre +table, saw those tears. + +"Well, really, anybody might _apologise_," she remarked reproachfully, +"when they've _upset_ anybody." + +At this rebuke Gwenna's strained nerves snapped. + +An Aberystwith Collegiate School expression rose naturally to her +lips--"_Cau dy geg_!" She translated it: "Shut _up_!" she said, quite +rudely. + +Then, the moment after she had given way to this little outburst of +temper she felt better. She was ready to be on the best of terms again +with her fellow-typists. They, as Miss Butcher would have said, "weren't +having any." They turned offended backs upon her. They talked pointedly +to each other, not to her. + +"That's a precious long letter you've got written there, Baker," said +Miss Butcher, helping to gather up the half-dozen thin foreign sheets, +covered with neat, pointed German writing. "Is that to the beloved +brother?" + +Miss Becker nodded her plait-wreathed head as she put the letter that +began: "_Geliebter Karl!_" into the grey-lined envelope. + +"He likes to hear what they make--do--at the works. Always he ask," she +said, "after what they do. And who come hier; and where everythings is +kept." + +"Gracious! I do believe he's a regular German spy, like in the +magazines, this brother of yours," smiled Miss Butcher lightly. "Don't +you give away any of our State secrets, Baker, will you? We'd be having +the authorities, whoever they are, poking round and inquiring. Awful if +England and your country went to war, wouldn't it?--and you were +supposed to be 'the Enemy'!" + +She spoke as if of something that was more fantastic than Gwenna's +flying dream of the night before. The German typist answered in the same +strain. + +"If it _was_ war, I would speak to Karlchen's regiment that your house +in Clapham and your people should be saved," she promised. "But he is +not thinking now of war; he interests himself very much for buildings +(because our father is architect). And for maps of the river, and such. +So I must write on him every week a long letter.... We go out to-day to +have our lunch, yes?" + +The two went out together towards Whitehall. The Welsh girl was left in +Coventry--and the deserted offices. + +She didn't want any lunch. She drank a glass of tepid tap-water from the +dressing-room. She ate some strawberries, bought in their little flat +basket as she had come along. Then, hatless, and in her thin, one-piece +dress of grey linen, she strolled out into the yard for a breath of air. + +It was empty and hot and sunny. Gwenna looked up from the wood-littered +ground where the ubiquitous London pigeons strutted and flirted and +"Croo--_croo_--do--I--do"-ed about her feet. Overhead, that giant +lacework on its iron crochet-hooks looked as if its pattern had been +drawn with a pen and black ink against the opaque blue-grey sky. The +sight of that far-off pinnacle put into her head again the thought of +flying. + +"I don't believe that I shall ever be as high up as that, with the blue +beneath me, like I've always wanted!" reflected the young girl, +dolefully looking up. "I believe that last night in my dream is all the +flying I'm ever going to have had!" + +And again that longing took her. That pure longing to be high; above the +Law that clogs the children of Man to the Earth from which he came. To +feel the unfettered air above and below and about her all at once!... +But what could she do to gratify the impulse even a little? + +Only one thing. + +She might _climb_. + +The idea with which she started off on her mad prank was to climb up to +that iron lattice of lacework; to run up that as a sailor climbs the +rope-ladders of his masts, and thence from the very highest peak +attainable to look down on London, even as last night she had looked +down on it from her dream. + +Her start was not in the open air at all, but from the bottom of the +scaffolding inside, where it was all beams and uprights and floors of +planks. It reminded Gwenna of being underneath the old wooden pier at +Aberdovey, and looking up. She went up ladders, through trap-doors, +walked over wooden floors to other ladders until she got up to the last +trap-door and through it out of the shadow and the stuffiness to the +sunshine and the fresh air again. She stood on the top platform of the +gantry which supported that engine and the wheels that worked (she +supposed) the iron lattice that was still far above her head. + +Presently she would climb that. She knew that she could. She was never +afraid of heights. Her head was steady enough. Her feet in their brown +shoes were as sure as the feet of the tiny sheep that picked their way +up the rocky steeps of her Welsh mountains. She could climb as well as +any of the men ... but for the moment she rested, standing by the +platform hand-railing, breathing in the freshened breeze. + +The birds of the City--pigeons and sparrows--were taking their short +flights far beneath her perch. All London was spread below her, as it +had been in that flying dream, and with as strong a sense of security +as in the dream she looked down upon it. + +There, between the forests of chimney-pots, gleamed that highway of the +Thames, blue-grey now as it reflected the sky, winding out of the +distance that meant the clean, green country and the willows below the +lawns where people had danced; flowing on into London that sullied it, +and burdened it with her barges, and spanned it with her bridges, but +could not stay it; on and out its waters passed towards Greenwich and +the Docks and the tall ships and the North Sea! + +And there on its bank was the office, the dwindled yard from which +Gwenna had started. The men returning.... + +The whole place looked nothing more than a hen-run full of fowls. Their +voices ascended, more loudly than she would have expected to hear from +their diminished figures. How funny to see what midgets the creatures +looked from here, and to remember how majestically important each +considered himself! thought little Gwenna, forgetting that from the yard +she herself, with her grey linen frock, her brown feet and ankles, must +look no larger than a roosting pigeon. + +She looked down, past the railing and the ends of timbers, feeling +immeasurably aloof from everybody in her world. She wished she need +never go down to it again. + +"I've a _good_ mind to give notice at the office, whatever, and go +somewhere quite different!" she thought defiantly, and immediately she +felt elated. A weight of depression seemed to have dropped from her +already. Up, up went the feather-weight spirits of Youth. She had +forgotten for this moment the longing and frustration of the last weeks, +the exasperations of this morning, her squabble with those other girls. +She had climbed out of all that.... + +Now, before she left this place, she would do something that none of the +girls she knew would dare. She'd climb further. + +She turned to take a step towards the crane. + + +Then something gave her a start as violent as that in which she had, +that night before, been jerked out of her dream. + +For now, into her absorbed musing there had broken without warning the +sound of a voice. It had seemed to have come out of nothing, from behind +her, and it had said, with a laugh deep and soft at once, "_My_ machine? +Oh, yes.... Good of you to remember her----" + +Paul Dampier's voice! + +Little Gwenna, with her back to the trap-door, and wrapped in her own +thoughts, had heard nothing of the steps of five pairs of feet coming up +the way that she had come. In the violence of her surprise of hearing a +voice, so often heard in her daydreams now, here, in this unexpected +place between sky and ground, she started so that she lost her balance. + +The girl's foot slipped. She fell. She was half over the platform--one +small foot and ankle stretched out over the giddy height as that crane +was stretched. She clutched on the crook of a slender grey arm, the +railing of the platform--So, for an agonised moment, she hung. + +But hardly had she cried out before there was the dash of a tall man's +figure across the planks from the trap-door. + +"It's all right--I've got you," said Paul Dampier, and caught her up +from the edge, in his arms. + +They held her. That armful of a girl, soft and warm as one of the grey +pigeons, was crushed for a moment against the boy's chest. She was +closer to him than she had been in any of those waltzes. Yet it seemed +no strangeness to be so near--feeling his heart beat below hers, feeling +the roughness of his tweed jacket through the thin linen of her frock. +She felt as she'd felt about flying, in that dream of hers. "I must have +known it all before." + +Then, dazed but happy, resting where she seemed to belong, she thought +in a twink, "I shall have to let go. _Why_ can't I stay like this?... +Oh, it's very cruel. There! Now I have let go. But he won't.... He's +getting his balance." + +He had taken a step backwards. + +Then she slid through his arms. She slipped, lightly as a squirrel slips +down the length of a beech, to the wooden floor of the platform. + +Cruel; yes, _cruel_! And to add to the cruelty that such a moment must +end, the Airman, when she left his enforced clasp, scarcely looked at +her. He barely returned her greeting. He did not answer her breathless +thanks. He turned away from her--whom he had saved. Yes! He left her to +the meaningless babble of the others (she recognised now, in a dazed +way, that there were other men with him on the scaffolding). He left her +to the politenesses of his cousin Hugo and of that young French engineer +(Mr. Grant's "Comp" who had come up to inspect the crane). He never +looked again as Miss Williams was guided down the trap-door and the +ladders by the scolding Yorkshire foreman, who didn't leave her until +she was safely at the bottom. + +She was met by the two other typists who had, from the office window, +seen her perched up, small as a bird, on the heights. Both girls had +been terrified. Miss Butcher now brought lavender salts. Miss Becker's +pink moon of a face was blanched with horror over her colleague's +danger. + +"Do you know what could have happened, Candlesticks-maker, my dear?" +cried the German girl with real emotion, as they all made tea together +in the varnished, stifling office. "You could have been killed, you!" + +Gwenna thought, "That would have been too bad. Because then--_then_ I +shouldn't have known when he held me!" + + * * * * * + +As it was, there were several things about that incident that the young +girl--passionate and infatuated and innocent--did not know. + +For one thing, there was the resolution that Paul Dampier took just +after he had turned abruptly from her, had taken short leave of the +others, and when he was striding down Whitehall to the bus that went +past the door of his Camden Town rooms. And for another thing, there was +the reason for that resolution. + +Now, in the fairy-stories of modern life, it is (of the two principals) +not always the Princess who has to be woken by a kiss, a touch, from the +untroubled sleep of years. Sometimes it is the Prince who is suddenly +stirred, jarred, or jolted broad awake by the touch, in some form or +other, of Love. In Paul Dampier's case the every-day miracle had been +wrought by the soft weight of that dove-breasted girl against his heart +for no longer than he could count ten, by her sliding to the earth +through an embrace that he had not intended for an embrace at all. + +It hadn't seemed to matter what _he_ had intended! + +In a flock as of homing pigeons there flew back upon the young aviator +all at once his thoughts of the Little Thing ever since he'd met her. + +How he'd thought her so jolly to look at ("So sensible"--this he +forgot). How topping and natural it had seemed to sit there with her in +that field, talking to her, drinking with her out of one silver cup. How +he'd found himself wanting to touch her curls; to span and squeeze her +throat with his hands. How he'd been within an inch of summarily kissing +that fox-glove pink mouth of hers, that night at the Dance.... + +And to-day, when he'd come to Westminster for another talk with that +rather decent young Frenchman of Hugo's, when he hadn't thought of +seeing the girl at all, what had happened? He'd actually held her +clasped in his arms, as a sweetheart is clasped. + +Only by a sheer accident, of course. + +Yes, but an accident that had left impressed on every fibre of him the +feeling of that warm and breathing burden which seemed even yet to rest +against his quickened heart. + +In that heart there surged up a clamorous impulse to go back at once. To +snatch her up for the second time in his arms, and not to let her go +again, either. To satisfy that hunger of his fingers and lips for the +touch of her---- + +"_Hold_ hard!" muttered the boy to himself. "Hang it all, this won't +do." + +For he had found himself actually turning back, his face set towards the +Abbey. + +He spun round on the hot pavement towards home again. + +"Look here; can't have this!" he told himself grimly as he walked on, +swinging his straw hat in his hand, towards Trafalgar Square. "At this +rate I shall be making an ass of myself before I know where I am; going +and falling in--going and getting myself much too dashed fond of the +Little Thing." + +Yes! He now saw that he was in some danger of that. + +And if it did come to anything, he mused, walking among the London +summer crowd, it wouldn't be one of these Fancy-dress-dance +flirtations. Not that sort of girl. "Nor was he; really." Not that sort +of man, he meant. Sort of thing never had amused him, much; not, he +knew, because he was cold-blooded ("Lord, no!") but partly because he'd +had such stacks of other things to do, partly because--because he'd +always thought it ought to be (and could be) so much more--well, amusing +than it was. This other. This with the Little Thing--he somehow knew +that it would have to be "for keeps." + +And _that_ he couldn't have. Good Lord, no! There could be no +question--Great Scott! + +For yes, if there _was_ anything between him and the Little Thing, it +would have to be an engagement. Marriage, and all that. + +And Paul Dampier didn't intend to get married. Out of the question for +him. + +He'd only just managed to scrape through and make "some sort of a +footing" for himself in the world as it was. His father, a hard-up Civil +engineer, and his mother (who had been looked askance at by her people, +the Swaynes, for marrying the penniless and undistinguished Paul +Dampier, senior)--they'd only just managed to give their boy "some kind +of an education" before they pegged out. Lessons at home when he'd been +a little fellow. Afterwards one of the (much) smaller public-schools. +For friends and pleasures and holidays he had been dependent on what he +could "pick up" for himself. Old Hugo had been decent enough. He'd asked +his cousin to fish with him in Wales, twice, and he hadn't allowed Paul +to feel that he was--the poor relation. + +Only Paul remembered the day that Hugo was going back to Harrow for the +last time. He, Paul, had then been a year in the shops, to the day. He +remembered the sudden resentment of that. It was not snobbery, not envy. +It was Youth in him crying out, "I will be served! I won't be put off, +and stopped doing things, and shoved out of things for ever, just +because I'm poor. If being poor means being 'out of it,' having no Power +of any kind, I'm dashed if I _stay_ poor. I'll show that I can make +good----" + +And, gradually, step by step, the young mechanic, pilot, aero-racer and +inventor had been "making good." + +He'd made friends, too. People had been decent. He'd been made to feel +that _they_ felt he was going to be a useful sort of chap. He'd quailed +a bit under the eyes of butlers in these houses where he'd stayed, but +he'd been asked again. That Mrs. What's-her-name (the woman in the pink +frock at the Smiths) had been awfully kind. Introducing him to her +brothers with capital; asking him down to the New Forest to meet some +other influential person; and knowing that he couldn't entertain in +return. (He'd just sent her some flowers and some tickets for +Brooklands.) Then there was Colonel Conyers. He'd asked whether he +(Dampier) were engaged. And, at his answer, had replied, "Good. Much +easier for a bachelor, these days." + +And now! Supposing he got married? + +On his screw? Paul Dampier laughed bitterly. + +Well, but supposing he got engaged; got some wretched girl to wait +for---- + +Years of it! Thanks! + +Then, quite apart from the money-question, what about all his work? + +Everything he wanted to do! Everything he was really in earnest about. + +His scheme--his invention--his Machine! + +"End of it all, if he went complicating matters by starting a _girl_!" + +Take up all his time. Interrupt--putting him off his job--yes, he knew! +Putting him off, like this afternoon in the yard, and that other night +at the Dance. Only more so. Incessant. "Mustn't have it; quite simply, +he must _not_." + +Messing up his whole chance of a career, if---- + +But he was pulling himself up in time from that danger. + +Up to now he hadn't realised that there might be something in all that +rot of old Hugo's about the struggle in a man's mind between an +Aeroplane and a Girl. Now--well, he'd realised. All the better. Now he +was forewarned. Good thing he could take a side for himself now. + +By the time he'd reached the door of the National Portrait Gallery and +stood waiting for his motor omnibus, he had definitely taken that +resolution of which Gwenna Williams did not know. + +Namely, that he must drop seeing the Girl. Have nothing more to say to +her. It was better so; wiser. Whatever he'd promised about taking her up +would have to be "off." + +A pity--! Dashed shame a man couldn't have _everything_! She was ... so +awfully sweet.... + +Still, got to decide one way or the other. + +This would fix it before it was too late, before he'd perhaps managed to +put ideas into the head of the Little Thing. She shouldn't ever come +flying, with him! + +That _ended_ it! he thought. He'd made up _his_ mind. He would not allow +himself to wonder what _she_ might think. + +After all, what _would_ a girl think? Probably nothing. + +Nothing at all, probably. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +LESLIE ON "TOO MUCH LOVE" + + +It seemed to be decided for Gwenna that she should, after all, give +notice at the office. + +For on the evening of the day of her climb up the scaffolding she met +the tall, sketchily-dressed figure of her chum coming down the hill that +she was ascending on her way to the Club. And Leslie accosted her with +the words, "Child, d'you happen to want to leave your place and take +another job? Because, if so, come along for a walk and we'll talk about +it." + +So the two "inseparables" strolled on together up past the Club, passing +at the crest of the hill a troop of Boy Scouts with their band. + +"Only chance one ever gets of hearing a drum; jolly sound," sighed +Leslie, watching the brown faces, the sturdy legs marching by. "I wonder +how many of those lads will be soldiers? Very few, I suppose. We're told +that the authorities are _so_ careful to keep the Boy Scout Movement +apart from any pernicious militarism, and ideas about National Service!" + +And the girls took the road that dips downward from Hampstead, and the +chestnut avenue that leads into the Park of Golders Green. They passed +the Bandstand ringed by nurse-girls and perambulators. They crossed the +rustic bridge above the lily-pond, where children tossed crumbs to the +minnows. They went in at the door of the little flower-garden. + +Here, except for an occasional sauntering couple, London seemed shut +out. In the late sunlight above the maze of paths, the roses were just +at their best. Over the pergolas and arbours they hung in garlands, they +were massed in great posies of pink and cream and crimson. The little +fountain set in the square of velvet turf tossed up a spray of white +mist touched with a rainbow, not unlike Gwenna's dance-frock. + +The girls sat down on a shaded seat facing that fountain. Gwenna, +turning to her chum, said, "Now do tell me about that job you asked if +I'd take. What is it?" + +"Oh! it's a woman who used to know some of my people; she came to the +Club this afternoon, and then on to my old lady's to see me about it," +said Leslie. "She wants a girl--partly to do secretarial work, partly to +keep her company, partly to help her in the 'odd bits' of her work down +there where she has her business." + +Gwenna, rather listlessly thinking of typewriting offices, of blouses, +or tea-shops, asked what the lady did. + +Leslie gave the extraordinary answer, "She builds aeroplanes." + +"_She_ does?" cried Gwenna, all thrilled. "_Aeroplanes?_" + +"Yes. She's the only woman who's got an Aircraft Factory, men, shops and +all. It's about an hour's run from town. She's a pilot herself, and her +son's an aviator," said Leslie, speaking as though of everyday things. +"Everything supplied, from the Man to the Machine, what?" + +"Oh! But what a _gorgeous_ sort of Life for a woman, Leslie!" cried the +younger girl, her face suddenly alight. "Fancy spending her time making +things like _that_! Things that are going to make a difference to the +whole world! Instead of her just 'settling down' and embroidering +'duchesse sets,' and sitting with tea-cups, like Uncle Hugh's 'Lady +parishioners,' and talking to callers about servants; and operations! +Oh, oh, don't _you_ want to take her job?" + +"I'm not especially keen on one job more than another. And my old lady +would be rather upset if I did leave her in the lurch," said Leslie, +more unselfishly than her chum suspected. The truth was that this much +disapproved-of Leslie had resigned a congenial post because it might +mean what Gwenna loved. "I told the Aeroplane Lady about you," she +added. "And she'd like you to go down and interview her at the Factory +next Saturday, if you'd care to." + +"Care? Of _course_ I'd care! Aeroplanes! After silly buildings and +specifications!" exclaimed Gwenna, clasping her hands in her grey linen +lap. But her face fell suddenly as she added, "But--it's an hour's run +from London, you say? I should have to live there?" + +"'_Away from Troilus, and away from Troy_,'" quoted Leslie, smiling. +"You could come back to Troy for week-ends, Taffy. And I'll tell you +what. _It's no bad thing for a young man who's always thought of a girl +as being planted in one particular place, to realise suddenly that +she's been uprooted and set up in quite another place._ Gives him just a +little jerk. By the way, is there any fresh news of Troilus--of the +Dampier boy?" + +And Gwenna, sitting there with troubled eyes upon the roses, gave her +the history of that afternoon's adventure. She ended up sadly, "Never +even said 'Good-bye' to me!" + +"Getting nervous that he's going to like you too well!" translated +Leslie, without difficulty. "Probably deciding at this minute that he'd +better not see much more of you----" + +"Oh, Leslie!" exclaimed the younger girl, alarmed. + +"Sort of thing they _do_ decide," said Leslie, lightly. "Well, we'll see +what it amounts to. And we'll wire to-morrow to the Aeroplane Lady. Or +telephone down to-night. I am going to telephone to Hugo Swayne to tell +him I don't feel in the mood to have dinner out to-night again." + +"Again?" said Gwenna, rather wistfully, as they rose from the arbour and +walked slowly down the path by the peach-houses. "Has he been asking you +out _several_ times, then?" + +"Several," said Leslie with a laugh. She added in her insouciant way, +"You know, _he_ wants to marry me now." + +Gwenna regarded her with envy. Leslie spoke of what should be the eighth +wonder of the world, the making or rejecting of a man's life, as if it +were an everyday affair. + +"Don't look so unflatteringly _surprised_, Taffy. Strictly pretty I may +not be. But a scrupulously neat and lady-like appearance," mocked +Leslie, putting out a long arm in a faded-silk sleeve that was torn at +the cuff, "has often (they tell one) done more to win husbands than +actual good looks!" + +Little Gwenna said, startled, "You aren't--aren't going to _let_ Mr. +Swayne be your husband, are you?" + +"I don't know," said Leslie, reflectively, a little wearily. "I don't +know, yet. He's fat--but of course _that_ would come off after I'd +worried him for a year or so. He's flabby. He's rather like Kipling's +person whose '_rooms at College was beastly_!' but he's good-natured, +and his people were all right, and, Taffy, he's delightfully well-off. +And when one's turned twenty-six, one does want to be _sure_ of what's +coming. One must have some investment that'll bring in one's frocks and +one's railway-fares and one's proper setting." + +"There are other things," protested little Gwenna with a warm memory of +that moment's clasping on the heights that afternoon. "There are things +one wants more." + +"Not me." + +"Ah! That's because you don't _know_ them," declared Gwenna, flushed. + +And at that the elder girl gave a very rueful laugh. + +"Not know them? I've known them too well," she admitted. "Listen, Taffy, +I'll tell you the sort of girl I am. I'm afraid there are plenty of us +about." + +She sighed, and went on with a little nod. + +"We're the girl who works in the sweetshop and who never wants to touch +chocolates again. We're the sort of girl who's been turned loose too +early at dances and studio-parties and theatricals and so forth. The +girl who's come in for too much excitement and flattery and love-making. +Yes! For in spite of all my natural disadvantages (tuck in that bit of +hair for me, will you?) and in _spite_ of not being quite a fool--I've +been made too much of, by men. The Monties and so forth. _Here's where I +pay for it._ I and the girls like me. We can't ever take a real live +interest in men again!" + +"But----!" objected Gwenna, seeing a mental image of Leslie as she had +been at that dance, whirling and flushed and radiant. "You _seem_ to +like----" + +"'_The chase, not the quarry_,'" quoted Leslie. "For when I've brought +down my bird, what happens?--He doesn't amuse me any more! It's like +having sweets to eat and such a cold that one can't taste 'em." + +"But--that's such a _pity_!" + +"D'you suppose I don't _know_ that?" retorted Miss Long. "D'you suppose +I don't wish to Heaven that I could be 'in Love' with somebody? I can't +though. I see through men. And I don't see as much in them as there is +in myself. They can't boss _me_, or take _me_ out of myself, or surprise +_me_ into admiring them. Why can't they, _dash_ them? they can't even +_say_ anything that I can't think of, quicker, first!" complained the +girl with many admirers, resentfully. "And that's a fatal thing to any +woman's happiness. Remember, there's no fun for a woman in just _being_ +adored!" + +The girl in love, kicking her small brown shoe against the pebbles of +the garden path, sighed that she wished that she could try "being +adored." Just for a change. + +"Ah, but you, Taffy, you're lucky. You're so fresh, so eager. You're as +much in love with that aviator's job as you are with anything else about +him. You're as much amused by 'ordinary things' as any other girl is +amused by getting a young man. As for what you feel about the young man +himself, well!--I suppose _that's_ a tune played half a yard to the +right of the keyboard of an ordinary girl's capacity. You're keen for +Life; you've got what men call '_a thirst you couldn't buy_.' Wish I +were like that!" + +"Well, but it's so easy to be," argued Gwenna, "when you _do_ meet some +one so wonderful----" + +"It's not so easy to see 'wonder,' let me tell you. It's a gift. I've +had it; lost it; spoilt it," mourned the elder girl. "To you +everything's thrilling: their blessed airships--the men in them--the Air +itself. All miracles to you! Everything's an Adventure. So would +Marriage be----" + +"Oh, I don't--don't ever think of _that_. Being always _with_ a person! +Oh, it would be _too_ wonderful---- I shouldn't expect--Even to be a +little _liked_, if he once told me so, would be enough," whispered the +little Welsh girl, so softly that her chum did not catch it. + +Leslie, striding along, said, "To a girl like me all that's as far +behind as the school-room. At the stage where I am, a girl looks upon +Marriage--how? As '_The Last 'Bus Home, or A Settled Job at last_.' +That's why she so often ends up as an old man's darling--with some very +young man as her slave. That's what makes me ready to accept Hugo +Swayne. And now forget I ever told you so." + +The two girls turned homewards; Gwenna a little sad. + +To think that Leslie should lack what even ordinary little Mabel Butcher +had! To think that Leslie, underneath all her gaiety and rattle, should +not know any more the taste of real delight! + +Gwenna, the simple-hearted, did not know the ways of self-critics. She +did not guess that possibly Miss Long had been analysing her own +character with less truth than gusto.... And she was surprised when, as +they passed the Park gates again, her chum broke the silence with all +her old lightness of tone. + +"Talking of young men--a habit for which Leslie never bothers to +apologise--talking of young men, I believe there might be some at the +Aeroplane Lady's place. She often has some one there. A +gentleman--'prentice or pupil or something of that sort. Might be rather +glad to see a new pretty face about with real curls." + +It was then that Gwenna turned up that blushing but rather indignant +little face. "But, Leslie! Don't you _understand_? If there were a +million other young men about, all thinking me--all thinking what you +say, it wouldn't make a _bit_ of difference to _me_!" + +"Possibly not," said Miss Long, "but there's no reason why it shouldn't +be made to make a difference to the Dampier boy, is there?" + +"What d'you mean, Leslie?" demanded the other girl as they climbed the +hill together. For the first time a look of austerity crossed Gwenna's +small face. For the first time it seemed to her that the adored +girl-chum was in the wrong. Yes! She had never before been shocked at +Leslie, whatever wild thing she said. But now--now she was shocked. She +was disappointed in her. She repeated, rebukefully, "What do you mean?" + +"What," took up Leslie, defiantly, "do you think I meant?" + +"Well--_did_ you mean make--make Mr. Dampier think other people liked +me, and that I might like somebody else better than _him_?" + +"Something of the sort _had_ crossed the mind of Leslie the Limit." + +"Well, then, it isn't _like_ you----" + +"Think not?" There was more than a hint of quarrel in both the girlish +voices. Up to now they had never exchanged a word that was not of +affection, of comradeship. + +Gwenna, flushing deeper, said, "It's--it's _horrid_ of you, Leslie." + +"Why, pray?" + +"Because it would be sort of _deceiving_ Mr. Dampier, for one thing. +It's a _trick_." + +"M'yes!" + +"And not a pretty one, either," said little Gwenna, red and angry now. +"It's--it's----" + +"What?" + +"Well, it's what I should have thought that you yourself, Leslie, would +have called '_so obvious_.'" + +"Exactly," agreed Miss Long, with a flippant little laugh that covered +smarting feelings. _Taffy_ had turned against her now! Taffy, who used +to think that Leslie could do no wrong! This was what happened when +one's inseparable chum fell in love.... + +Leslie said impenitently, "I've never yet found that '_the obvious +thing_' was '_the unsuccessful thing_.' Especially when it comes to +anything to do with young men. My good child, you and the Dampier boy, +you + + '_Really constitute a pair, + Each being rather like an artless woodland elf._' + +I mean, can't you see that the dear old-fashioned simple remedies and +recipes remain the best? For a sore throat, black-currant tea. (Never +fails!) For the hair, Macassar oil. (Unsurpassed since the Year +Eighteen-dot!) For the stimulation of an admirer's interest, jealousy. +Jealousy and competition, Taffy." + +"He isn't an admirer," protested the younger girl, mollified. Then they +smiled together. The cloud of the first squabble had passed. + +Leslie said, "Never mind. If you don't approve of my specific, don't +think of it again." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +THE AEROPLANE LADY + + +Curiously enough, Gwenna did think of it again. + +On the Saturday morning after that walk and talk she took that long dull +train-journey. The only bright spot on it was the passing of Hendon +Flying Ground. Over an hour afterwards she arrived at the little +station, set in a sunburnt waste, for the Aircraft Works. + +She asked her way of the ticket-collector at the booking-office. But +before he could speak, she was answered by some one else, who had come +down to the station for a parcel. This was a shortish young man in +greasy blue overalls. He had a smiling, friendly, freckled face under a +thatch of brilliant red hair; and a voice that seemed oddly out of +keeping with his garments. It was an "Oxford" voice. + +"The Works? I'm just going on there myself. I'll come with you and show +you, if I may," he said with evident zest. + +Gwenna, walking beside him, wished that she had not immediately +remembered Leslie's remarks about young men at aircraft works who might +be glad of the arrival of a new pretty face. This young man, piloting +her down a straggling village street that seemed neither town nor +country, told her at once that he was a pupil at the Works and asked +whether she herself were going to help Mrs. Crewe there. + +"I don't know yet," said Gwenna. "I hope so." + +"So do I," said the young man gravely, but with a glint of unreserved +admiration in the eyes under the red thatch. + +Little Gwenna, walking very erect, wished that she were strong and +self-reliant enough not to feel cheered by that admiration. + +(But she was cheered. No denying that!) + +The young man took her down a road flanked on either hand by sparse +hedges dividing it from that parched and uninteresting plain. The +mountain-bred girl found all this flat country incredibly ugly. Only, on +her purple Welsh heights and in the green ferny depths threaded by +crystal water, nothing ever happened. It was here, in this half-rural +desert littered by builders' rubbish and empty cans, that Enterprise was +afoot. Strange! + + * * * * * + +On the right came an opening. She saw a yard with wooden debris and what +looked like the wrecks of a couple of motor-cars. Beyond was a cluster +of buildings with corrugated iron roofs. + +The red-haired pupil mentioned the name of the Aeroplane Lady and said, +"I think you'll find her in the new Wing-room, over here----" + +"What a wonderful name for it," thought the little enthusiast, catching +her breath, as she was shown through a door. "The Wing-room!" + +It was high and clean and spacious, with white distempered walls and a +floor of wood-dura, firm yet comforting to the feet. The atmosphere of +it was, on that July day, somewhat overpowering. Two radiators were +working, and the air was heavy with a smell of what seemed like +rubber-solution and spirits mixed: this, Gwenna presently found, was the +"dope" to varnish the strong linen stretched across the wings of +aeroplanes. Two of those great wings were laid out horizontally on +trestles to dry. Another of the huge sails with cambered sections was +set up on end across a corner; and from behind it there moved, stepping +daintily and majestically across the floor, the tawny shape of a Great +Dane, who came inquiringly up to the stranger. + +Then from behind the screening wing there came a slight, woman's figure +in dark blue. She followed the dog. Little Gwenna Williams, standing +timidly in that great room so strange and white, and characteristically +scented, found herself face to face with the mistress of the place; the +Aeroplane Lady. + +Her hair was greying and fluffy as a head of windblown Traveller's +Joy; beneath it her eyes were blue and young and bright and--yes! with a +little glad start Gwenna recognised that in these eyes too there was +something of that space-daring gleam of the eyes of Icarus, of her own +Flying Man. + +"Ah ... I know," said the lady briskly. "You're the girl Leslie's sent +down to see me." + +"Yes," said Gwenna, thinking it nice of her to say "Leslie" and not +"Miss Long." She noticed also that the Aeroplane Lady wore at the collar +of her shirt a rather wonderful brooch in the shape of the _caducaeus_, +the serpent-twisted rod of Mercury. "Oh, I _do_ hope she'll take me!" +thought the young girl, agitated. "I do want more than anything to come +here to work with her. Oh, supposing she thinks I'm too silly and young +to be any use--supposing she won't take me----" + +She was tense with nervousness while the Aeroplane Lady, fondling the +Great Dane's tawny ear with a small, capable hand as she spoke, put the +girl through a short catechism; asking questions about her age, her +people, her previous experience, her salary.... And then she was told +that she might come and work on a month's trial at the Factory, +occupying a room in the Aeroplane Lady's own cottage in the village. The +young girl, enraptured, put down her success to the certificates from +that Aberystwith school of hers, where she had passed "with distinction" +the Senior Cambridge and other examinations. She did not guess that the +Aeroplane Lady had taken less than two minutes to make sure that this +little Welsh typist-girl carried out what Leslie Long had said of her. + +Namely that "she was so desperately keen on anything to do with flying +and flyers that she'd scrub the floors of the shops for you if you +wished it, besides doing your business letters as carefully as if each +one was about some important Diplomatic secret ... try her!" + +So on the following Monday Gwenna began her new life. + +At first this new work of Gwenna's consisted very largely of what Leslie +had mentioned; the writing-out of business letters at the table set +under the window in the small private office adjoining the great +Wing-room. + +(Curious that the Wings for Airships, the giant butterfly aeroplanes +themselves, should grow out of a chrysalis of ordinary business, with +letters that began, "_Sir, we beg to thank you for your favour of the +2nd instant, and to assure you that same shall receive our immediate +attention_," exactly the sort of letters that Gwenna had typed during +all those weeks at Westminster!) + +Then there were orders to send off for more bales of the linen that was +stretched over the membranes of those wings; or for the great reels of +wire which strung the machines, and which cost fifteen pounds apiece; +orders for the metal which was to be worked in the shops across the +parched yard, where men of three nationalities toiled at the +lathe; turning-screws, strainers, washers, and all the tiny, +complicated-looking parts that were to be the bones and the sinews +and the muscles of the finished Flying Machine. + +Gwenna, the typist, had at first only a glimpse or so of these other +sides of the Works. + +Once, on a message from some visitor to the Aeroplane Lady she passed +through the great central room, larger than her Uncle's chapel at home, +with its concrete floor and the clear diffused light coming through the +many windows, and the never-ceasing throb of the gas-driven engine +pulsing through the lighter sounds of chinking and hammering. Mechanics +were busy all down the sides of this hall; in the aisle of it, three +machines in the making were set up on the stands. One was ready all but +the wings; its body seemed now more than it would ever seem that of a +giant fish; it was covered with the doped linen that was laced at the +seams with braid, eyelets and cord, like an old-fashioned woman's +corset. The second was half-covered. The third was all as yet uncovered, +and looked like the skeleton of a vast seagull cast up on some +prehistoric shore. + +Wondering, the girl passed on, to find her employer. She found her in +the fitter's shop. In a corner, the red-haired pupil, with goggles over +his eyes, was sitting at a stand working an acetylene blow-pipe; holding +in his hand the intense jet that shot out showers of squib-like sparks, +and wielding a socket, the Lady directing him. She took the girl's +message, then walked back with her to the office, her tawny dog +following at her heels. + +"Letters finished?... then I'd like you to help me on with the wings of +that machine that's all but done," she said. "That is"--she smiled--"if +you don't mind getting your hands all over this beastly stuff----" + +Mind? Gwenna would have plastered her whole little white body with that +warmed and strongly-smelling dope if she'd thought that by so doing she +was actually taking a hand in the launching of a Ship for the Clouds. + +The rest of the afternoon she spent in the hot and reeking Wing-room, +working side by side with the Aeroplane Lady. Industriously she pasted +the linen strips, patting them down with her little fingers on to the +seams of those wide sails that would presently be spread--for whom? + +In her mind it was always one large and springy figure that she saw +ascending into the small plaited wicker seat of the Machine. It was +always the same careless, blonde, lad's face that she saw tilted +slightly against the background of plane and wires.... + +"I would love to work, even a little, on a machine that he was going to +fly in," thought Gwenna. + +She stood, enveloped in a grey-blue overall, at the trestle-table, +cutting out fresh strips of linen with scissors that were sticky and +clogged with dope. She peeled the stuff from her hands in flakes like +the bark of a silver-birch as she added to her thought, "But I shouldn't +want to do anything for that aeroplane; his _Fiancee_, for the P.D.Q. +Hateful creature, with her claws that she doesn't think are going to let +him go!" + +Here she set the pannikin of dope to reheat, and there was a smile of +defiance on the girl's lips as she moved about from the trestles to the +radiator or the sewing-table. + +For ever since she had been at the Works a change had come over Gwenna. + +Curiously enough, she was happier now than she had been in her life. She +was more contented with what the present brought her; more steadily +hopeful about the future. It didn't seem to matter to her now that, the +last time she had seen him, her Aviator had turned almost sullenly away. +She laughed to herself over that, for she believed at last in Leslie's +theory: "Afraid he's going to like me." She did not fret because she +hadn't had even one of his brief notes since she had left London; nor +sigh over the fact that she, living down here in this Bedfordshire +village, was so much further away from those rooms of his at Camden Town +than she had been when she had stayed at the Hampstead Club. + +For somehow she felt nearer to him now. + +Absence can, in some subtle, unexplained way, spin fine threads of +communication over the gulf between a boy and a girl.... + +She found a conviction growing stronger and stronger in her girl's mind, +that gay, tangled chaos where faults and faculties, blindness and +intuitions flourish entwined and inseparable. _She was meant to be his._ + +She'd no "reason" for thinking so, of course. There was very little +reason about Gwenna's whole make-up. + +For instance, Leslie had tried "reasoning" with her, the night before +she'd left the Hampstead Club. Leslie had taken it into her impish black +head to be philosophical, and to attempt to talk her chum into the same +mood. + +Leslie, the nonchalant, had given a full hour to her comments on +Marriage. We will allow her a full chapter--but a short one. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +LESLIE ON "MARRIAGE" + + +She'd said, "Supposing the moon _did_ fall into your lap, Taffy? Suppose +that young Cloud-Dweller of yours did (a) take you flying, and (b) +propose to you?" and she'd recited solemnly: + + "_Somewhere I've read that the gods, waxing wroth at our mad + importunity, + Hurl us our boon and it falls with the weight of a curse at our feet; + Perilous thing to intrude on their lofty Olympian immunity! + 'Take it and die,' say the gods, and we die of our fondest conceit._" + +"Yes; 'of' it! After _having_ it. Who'd mind dying _then_?" + +"But if it hadn't been worth it, Taffy? Suppose you were air-sick?" +Leslie had suggested. "Worse, suppose you were Paul-sick?" + +"_What?_" + +"Yes, supposing that Super-Boy of yours himself was the disappointment? +Suppose none of his 'little ways' happened to please you? Men don't +realise it, but, in love, a man is much easier to please than a woman!" + +"No, Leslie. No," had come from the girl who knew nothing of +love-making--less than nothing, since she _thought_ she knew. + +Leslie had persisted. "The first pet-name a man calls you--awfully +important, that!--may hash up Love's young dream for ever. Some men, I +believe, begin with 'Dear old--something or other.' That's the _end_. Or +something that you know you're obviously _not_. Such as 'Little Woman,' +to _me_. Or they don't notice something that's specially there for them +to notice. That's unforgivable. Or they do notice something that's quite +beside the mark. Or they repeat themselves. Not good enough, a man who +can't think of _one_ new way of saying he cares, each day. (Even a +calendar can do that.) Saying the wrong thing, though, isn't as bad as +being _silent_. That's fatal. Gives a girl _such_ a lot of time to +imagine all the things that another man might have been saying at the +time. That's why men with no vocabularies ought never to get engaged or +married. '_I'm a man of few words_,' they say. They ought to be told, +'_Very well. Outside! It simply means you won't trouble to amuse me._' +Exit the Illusion. + + '_Alas, how easily things go wrong! + A look too short, or a kiss too long----_' + +(Especially with a look too short.) Yes," Leslie had concluded +impressively, "suppose the worst tragedy happened? _Suppose_ the Dampier +boy did get engaged to you, and then you found out that he didn't in the +least know how to make love? To make love to _you_, I mean." + +"There wouldn't have to be any love '_made_,'" little Gwenna had +murmured, flushing. "Where he was, the love would _be_." + +"My dear, you _are_ what Hugo Swayne calls '_a Passe-iste_' in love. +Why, why wasn't _I_ brought up in the heart of the mountains (and far +away from any other kind of heart) until I was twenty-two, and then +hurled into a love-affair with the first decent-looking young man?" +Leslie had cried, with exaggerated envy. "The happier you! But, Taff, do +remember that 'Love is a Lad with Wings'--like yours. Even if the +engagement were all your fancy painted, that Grand Firework Display sort +of feeling couldn't _last_. Don't shoot! It's true. People couldn't go +on living their lives and earning their livings and making their careers +and having their babies if it _did_ last. It _must_ alter. It _must_ die +down into the usual dear old sun rising every morning. So, when your +'_Oiseau de feu_' married you, and you found he was just--a husband, +like everybody else's----" + +"Not 'like' anybody!"--indignantly. + +"How d'you know _what_ he's like?" Leslie had demanded. "What d'you know +of his temper? Men with that heather-honey kind of smile and those deep +dimples very often have a beastly temper. Probably jealous----" + +"I would _love_ him to be that." + +"You wouldn't love to be poor, though," Leslie had gone off on another +tack. "Poor, and uncomfortable." + +"I shall never be comfortable again without him," Gwenna had said +obstinately. "Might as well be uncomfortable _with_ him!" + +"In a nasty little brick villa near Hendon, so as to be close to the +flying, perhaps? With a horrid dark bathroom? And the smell of cooking +haddocks and of Lux all over it!" Leslie had enlarged. "And you having +to use up all your own little tiny income to help pay the butcher, and +the Gas Light and Coke Company, and the rates, and loathsome details of +that sort that a woman never feels a ha'porth the better for! Instead of +being able to get yourself fresh gloves and silk stockings and a few +trifles of that sort that make absolutely _all_ the difference to a +woman's life!" + +"Not _all_ the difference, indeed," Gwenna had said softly. But Leslie +had continued to draw these fancy pictures of married life as lived with +Mr. Paul Dampier. + +"Taffy, for one thing, you've never seen him anything but nicely-groomed +and attractive to look at. You try to imagine him in what Kipling calls +'_the ungirt hour_.' They talk of a woman's slatternliness killing love. +Have they seen a _man_ when he '_hasn't bothered_' to groom himself? +That sight----" + +She had shaken her black head ineffably over the mental image of it, and +had averred, "That sight ought to be added to the Valid and Legitimate +Causes for Divorce! A wife ought to be able to consider herself as free +as air after the first time that she sees her husband going about the +house without a collar. Sordid, unbecoming grey flannel about his neck. +Three half buttons, smashed in the wringer, hanging by their last +threads to his shirt. And his old slippers bursting out at the side of +the toe. And his 'comfortable' jacket on, with matches and fur in all +the pockets and a dab of marmalade--also furred--on the front. And +himself unshaved, with a zig-zag parting to his hair. I believe some men +do go about like this before their wives, and then write wistful letters +to the _Daily Mirror_ about, 'Why is Marriage the Tomb of Romance?'" + +Gwenna had sniffed. "Oh! _Some_ men! _Those!_" + +"Valid cause for Divorce Number Ninety-three: The state of the bedroom +floor," Leslie had pursued. "I, slut as I am, do pick things up +sometimes. Men, never. Ask any married woman you know. Maudie told _me_. +Everything is hurled down, or stepped out of, or merely dropped. And +left. Left, my child, for _you_ to gather up. Everything out of the +chest-of-drawers tossed upon the carpet. Handkerchiefs, dirty old pipes, +shirts, ties, '_in one red burial blent_.' That means he's been 'looking +for' something. Mind, _you've_ got to find it. Men are born +'find-silly.' Men never yet have found anything (except the North Pole +and a few things like that, that are no earthly good in a villa), but +they are for ever _losing_ things!" + +Gwenna had given a smile to the memory of a certain missing collar-stud +that she had heard much of. + +"Yes, I suppose to be allowed to find his collar-studs is what he'd +consider '_Paradise enow_' for any girl!" Leslie had mocked. "I misdoubt +me that the Dampier boy would settle down after a year of marriage into +a regular Sultan of the Hearthrug. Looking upon his wife as something +that belongs to him, and goes about with him; like a portmanteau. +Putting you in your place as '_less than the dust beneath his +chariot_,' that is, '_beneath his biplane wheels_.'" + +"Leslie! I shouldn't mind! I'd _like_ to be! I believe it _is_ my +place," Gwenna had interrupted, lifting towards her friend a small face +quivering with conviction. "He could make anything he liked or chose of +me. What do I care----" + +"Not for clothes flung down in rings all over the floor like when a +trout's been rising? Nor for trousers left standing there like a pair of +opera-glasses--or concertinas? Braces all tangled up on the gas-bracket? +Overcoat and boots crushing your new hat on the bed? Seventeen holey +socks for you to mend? _All_ odd ones--for _you_ to sort----" + +Little Gwenna had cried out: "I'd _want_ to!" + +"I'm not afraid you won't get what you want," Leslie had said finally. +"All I hope is that your wish won't fail when you get it!" + +And of that Gwenna was never afraid. + +"I should not care for him so much if he were not the only one who could +make me so happy," she told herself; "and _unless_ the woman's very +happy, surely the man can't be. It must mean, then, that he'll feel, +some day, that this would be the way to happiness. I'm sure there are +_some_ marriages that are different from what Leslie says. Some where +you go on being sweethearts even after you're quite old friends, like. +I--I could make it like that for him. I _feel_ I could!" + +Yes; she felt that some day (perhaps not soon) she must win him. + +Sometimes she thought that this might be when her rival, the perfected +machine, had made his name and absorbed him no longer. Sometimes, again, +she told herself that he might have no success at all. + +"Then, _then_ he'd see there was _something_ else in the world. Then he +would turn to me," said the girl to herself. She added, as every girl in +love must add, "No one _could_ care as I do." + +And one day she found on the leaf of the tear-off calendar in her +cottage bedroom a line of verse that seemed to have been written for +her. It remained the whole of Browning as far as Gwenna Williams was +concerned. And it said: + + "_What's Death? You'll love me yet!_" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +THE OBVIOUS THING + + +She was in this mood to win a waiting game on the day that Paul Dampier +came down to the Aircraft Works. + +This was just one of the more wonderful happenings that waited round the +corner and that the young girl might hope to encounter any day. + +The first she knew of it was from hearing a remark of the Aeroplane +Lady's to one of her French mechanics at the lathes. + +"This will make the eighteenth pattern of machine that we've turned out +from this place," she said. "I wonder if it's going to answer, Andre?" + +"Which machine, madame?" the man asked. He was a big fellow, dark and +thick-haired and floridly handsome in his blue overalls; and his bright +eyes were fixed interestedly upon his principal as she explained through +the buzz and the clack and the clang of machinery in the large room, +"This new model that Colonel Conyers wants us to make for him." + +Gwenna caught the name. She thought breathlessly, "That's _his_ machine! +He's got Aircraft Conyers to take it up and have it made for him! It's +_his_!" + +She'd thought this, even before the Aeroplane Lady concluded, "It's the +idea of a young aviator I know. Such a nice boy: Paul Dampier of +Hendon." + +The French mechanic put some question, and the Aeroplane Lady answered, +"Might be an improvement. I hope so. I'd like him to have a show, +anyhow. He's sending the engine down to-morrow afternoon. They'll bring +it on a lorry. Ask Mr. Ryan to see about the unloading of it; I may not +get back from town before the thing comes." + +Now Mr. Ryan was that red-haired pupil who had conducted Gwenna from the +station on the day of her first appearance at the Works. Probably Leslie +Long would have affirmed that this Mr. Ryan was also a factor in the +change that was coming over Gwenna and her outlook. Leslie considered +that no beauty treatment has more effect upon the body and mind of a +woman than has the regular application of masculine admiration. +Admiration was now being lavished by Mr. Ryan upon the little new typist +with the face of a baby-angel and the small, rounded figure; and Mr. +Ryan saw no point in hiding his approval. It did not stop at glances. +Before a week had gone by he had informed Miss Williams that she was a +public benefactor to bring anything so delightful to look at as herself +into those beastly, oily, dirty shops; that he hated, though, to see a +woman with such pretty fingers having to mess 'em up with that vile +dope; and that he wondered she hadn't thought of going on the stage. + +"But I can't act," Gwenna had told him. + +"What's that got to do with it?" the young man had inquired blithely. +"All they've got to do is to _look_. You could beat 'em at that." + +"Oh, what nonsense, Mr. Ryan!" the girl had said, more pleased than she +admitted to herself, and holding her curly head erect as a brown tulip +on a sturdy stem. + +"Not nonsense at all," he argued. "I tell you, if you went into musical +comedy and adopted a strong enough Cockney accent there'd be another +Stage and Society wedding before you could say 'knife.' You could get +any young peer to adore you, Miss Gwenna, if you smiled at him over the +head of a toy pom and called him 'Fice.' I can just see you becoming a +Gaiety puss and marrying some Duke----" + +"I don't want to marry any Dukes, thanks." + +"I'm sure I don't want you to," Mr. Ryan had said softly. "I'd miss you +too much myself...." + +The fact is that he was a flirt for the moment out of work. He was also +of the type that delights in the proximity of "Girl"--using the word as +one who should say "Game." "Girl" suggested to him, as to many young +men, a collective mass of that which is pretty, soft, and +to-be-made-love-to. He found it pleasant to keep his hand in by paying +these compliments to this new instalment of Girl--who was rather a +little pet, he thought, though _rather_ slow. + +As for Gwenna, she bloomed under it, gaining also in poise. She learned +to take a compliment as if it were an offered flower, instead of dodging +it like a brick-bat, which is the very young girl's failing. She found +that even if receiving a compliment from the wrong man is like wearing a +right-hand glove on the left hand, it is better than having no gloves. +(Especially it is better than _looking_ as if one had no gloves.) + +The attentions of young Ryan, his comment on a new summer frock, the +rose laid by him on her desk in the morning; these things were not +without their effect--it was a different effect from any intended by the +red-haired pupil, who was her teacher in all this. + +She would find herself thinking, "He doesn't look at me nearly so much, +I notice, in a trimmed-up hat, or a 'fussy' blouse. Men don't like them +on me, perhaps." (That blouse or hat would be discarded.) Or, "Well! if +so-and-so about me pleases him, it'll please other men." + +And for "men" she read always, always the same one. She never realised +that if she had not met Paul Dampier she _might_ have fallen in love +with young Peter Ryan. Presently he had begged her to call him "Peter." + +She wouldn't. + +"I think I'd do anything for you," young Ryan had urged, "if you asked +for it, using my Christian name!" + +Gwenna had replied: "Very well! If there's anything I ever want, +frightfully badly, that you could give me, I shall ask for it like +that." + +"You mean there's nothing _I_ could give you?" he had reproached her, in +the true flirt's tone. It can sound so much more tender, at times, than +does the tone of the truest lover. A note or so of it had found its way +into Gwenna's soft voice these days. + +Yes; she had half unconsciously learned a good deal from Mr. Ryan. + + * * * * * + +"I say! Miss Gwenna!" + +Mr. Ryan's rust-red head was popped round the door of the Wing-room +where Gwenna, alone, was pouring dope out of the tilted ten-gallon can +on the floor into her little pannikin. + +"Come out for just one minute." + +"Too busy," demurred the girl. "No time." + +"Not just to look," he pleaded, "at the really _pretty_ job I'm making +of unloading this lorry with Dampier's engine?" + +Quickly Gwenna set down the can and came out, in her pinafore, to the +breezes and sunshine of the yard outside. It was as much because she +wanted to see what there was to be seen of that "_Fiancee_" of the +aviator's, as because this other young man wanted her to admire the work +of his hands. + +Those hands themselves, Gwenna noticed, were masked and thick, half way +up his forearms, with soft soap. This he seemed to have been smearing on +certain boards, making a sliding way for that precious package that +stood on the low lorry. The boards were packed up in banks and stages, +an irregular stairway. This another assistant was carefully trying with +a long straight edge with a spirit level in the middle of it; and a +third man stood on the lorry, resting on a crowbar and considering the +package that held the heart of Paul Dampier's machine. + +"You see if she doesn't come down as light as a bubble and stop exactly +_there_," said Mr. Ryan complacently, digging his heel into a pillowy +heap of debris. "Lay those other planks to take her inside, Andre." He +wiped his brow on a moderately clear patch of forearm, and moved away to +check the observations of the man in the shirt-sleeves. + +Gwenna, watching, could not help admiring both this self-satisfied young +mudlark and his job. This was how women liked to see men busy: with +strenuous work that covered them with dirt and sweat, taxing their +brains and their muscles at the same time. Those girls who were so keen +on the Enfranchisement of Women and "Equal Opportunities" and those +things, those suffragettes at her Hampstead Club who "couldn't see where +the superiority of the male sex was supposed to come in"--Well! The +reason why they "couldn't" was (the more primitive Gwenna thought) +simply because they didn't see enough men at _this_ sort of thing. The +men these enlightened young women knew best sat indoors all day, +writing--_that_ sort of thing. Or talking about fans, like Mr. Swayne, +and about "the right tone of purple in the curtains" for a room. The +women, of course, could do that themselves. They could also go to +colleges and pass men's exams. Lots did. But (thought Gwenna) not many +of them could get through the day's work of Mr. Ryan, who had also been +at Oxford, and who not only had forearms that made her own look like +ivory toys, but who could plan out his work so that if he said that that +squat, ponderous case would "stop exactly _there_"--stop there it would. +She watched; the breeze rollicking in her curls, spreading the folds of +her grey-blue pinafore out behind her like a sail, moulding her skirt +to her rounded shape as she stood. + +Then she turned with a very friendly and pretty smile to young Ryan. + +It was thus that Paul Dampier, entering the yard from behind them, came +upon the girl whom he had decided not to see again. + + +He knew already that "his little friend," as old Hugo insisted upon +calling her, had taken a job at the Aircraft Works. He'd heard that from +his cousin, who'd been told all about it by Miss Long. + +And considering that he'd made up his mind that it would be better all +round if he were to drop having anything more to say to the girl, young +Dampier was glad, of course, that she'd left town. That would make +things easier. He wouldn't seem to be avoiding her, yet he needn't set +eyes upon her again. + +Of course he'd been glad. He hadn't _wanted_ to see her. + +Then, at the end of his negotiations with Colonel Conyers, he'd +understood that he would have to go over and pay a visit to the +Aeroplane Lady. And even in the middle of the new excitement he had +remembered that this was where Gwenna Williams was working. And for a +moment he'd hesitated. That would mean seeing the Little Thing again +after all. + +Then he'd thought, Well? Fellow can't _look_ as if he were trying to +keep out of a girl's way? Besides, chances were he wouldn't see her +when he did go, he'd thought. + +It wasn't likely that the Aeroplane Lady kept her clerk, or whatever she +was, in her pocket, he'd thought. + +He'd just be taken to where the P.D.Q. was being assembled, he'd +supposed. The Little Thing would be kept busy with her typing and one +thing and another in some special office, he'd expected! + + +What he had _not_ expected to find was the scene before him. The Little +Thing idling about outside the shops here; hatless, pinafored, looking +absolutely top-hole and perfectly at home, chatting with the +ginger-haired bloke who was unloading the engine as if he were no end of +a pal of hers! She was smiling up into his face and taking a most +uncommon amount of interest, it seemed, in what the fellow had been +doing! + +And, before, she'd said she wasn't interested in machinery! thought +Dampier as he came up, feeling suddenly unconscionably angry. + +He forgot the hours that the Little Thing had already passed in hanging +on every word, mostly about a machine, that had fallen from his own +lips. He only remembered that moment at the Smiths' dinner-party, when +she'd admitted that that sort of thing didn't appeal to her. + +Yet, here she was! _Deep_ in it, by Jove! + +He had come right up to her and this other chap before they noticed +him.... + +She turned sharply at the sound of the young aviator's rather stiff +"Good afternoon." + +She had expected that day to see his engine--no more. Here he stood, the +maker of the engine, backed by the scorched, flat landscape, in the +sunlight that picked out little clean-cut, intense shadows under the rim +of his straw hat, below his cleft chin, along his sleeve and the lapel +of his jacket, making him look (she thought) like a very good snapshot +of himself. He had startled her again; but this time she was +self-possessed. + +She came forward and faced him; prettier than ever, somehow (he thought +again), with tossed curls and pinafore blowing all about her. She might +have been a little schoolgirl let loose from some class in those gaunt +buildings behind her. But she spoke in a more "grown-up" manner, in some +way, than he'd ever heard her speak before. Looking up, she said in the +soft accent that always brought back to him his boyish holidays in her +country, "How do you do, Mr. Dampier? I'm afraid I can't shake hands. +Mine are all sticky with dope." + +"Oh, are they," he said, and looked away from her (not without effort) +to the ginger-haired fellow. + +"This," said Gwenna Williams, a little self-consciously at last, "is Mr. +Ryan." + +Plenty of self-assurance about _him_! He nodded and said in a +hail-fellow-well-met sort of voice, "Hullo; you're Dampier, are you? +Glad to meet you. You see we're hard at it unpacking your engine here." +Then he looked towards the opening, the road, and the car--borrowed as +usual--in which the young aviator had motored down. There was another +large package in the body of the car; a box, iron-clamped, with letters +stencilled upon it, and sealed. "Something else interesting that you've +brought with you?" said this in sufferable man called Ryan. "Here, +Andre, fetch that box down----" + +"No," interrupted young Dampier curtly. The curtness was only partly for +this other chap. That sealed box, for reasons of his own and Colonel +Conyers', was not to be hauled about by any mechanic in the place. "You +and I'll fetch that in presently for Mrs. Crewe." + +"Right. She'll be back at three o'clock," Ryan told him. "She told me to +ask you to have a look round the place or do anything you cared to until +she came in." + +"Oh, thanks," said young Dampier. + +At that moment what he would have "cared to do" would have been to get +this girl to himself somewhere where he could say to the Little Humbug, +"Look here. You aren't interested in machinery. You said so yourself. +What are you getting this carroty-headed Ass to talk to you about it +for?" + +Seeing that this was out of the question he hesitated.... He didn't want +to go round the shops with this fellow, to whom he'd taken a dislike. On +sight. He did that sometimes. On the other hand, he couldn't do what he +wanted to do--sit and talk to the Little Thing until the Aeroplane Lady +returned. What about saying he'd got to look up some one in the village, +and bolting, until three o'clock? No. No fear! Why should this other +fellow imagine he could have the whole field to himself for talking to +Her? + +So the trio, the age-old group that is composed of two young men and a +girl, stood there for a moment rather awkwardly. + +Finally the Little Thing said, "Well, I've got to go back to my wings," +and turned. + +Then the fellow Ryan said, "One minute, Miss Gwenna----" + +Miss Gwenna! All but her Christian name! And he, Paul Dampier, who'd +known her a good deal longer--he'd never called her anything at all, but +"_you_"! Miss _Gwenna_, if you please! + +What followed was even more of a bit of dashed cheek. + +For the fellow turned quickly aside to her and said, "I say, it's Friday +afternoon. Supposing I don't see you again to-morrow morning--it's all +right, isn't it, about your coming up to town for that matinee with me?" + +"Oh, yes, thanks," said the Little Thing brightly. "I asked Mrs. Crewe, +and it's all right." + +Then the new note crept into her voice; the half-unconsciously-acquired +note of coquetry. She said, smiling again at the red-haired Ryan, "I am +so looking forward to that." + +And, turning again to the Airman, she said with a half-shy, half-airy +little smile that, also, he found new in her, "Have you seen _The Cinema +Star_? Mr. Ryan is going to take me to-morrow afternoon." + +"Oh, is he?" said Paul Dampier shortly. + +_Was_ he, indeed? _Neck!_ + +"You do come up to town sometimes from here, then?" added Mr. Dampier to +Miss Gwenna Williams, speaking a trifle more distinctly than usual, as +he concluded, "I was just going to ask you whether you could manage to +come out with _me_ to-morrow evening?" + +Nobody was more surprised to hear these last words than he himself. + +Until that moment he hadn't had the faintest intention of ever asking +the girl out anywhere again. Now here he was; he'd done it. The Little +Thing had murmured, "Oh----" and was looking--yes, she was looking +pleased. The fellow was looking as if he'd been taken aback. Good. He'd +probably thought he was going to have her to himself for the evening as +well as for the matinee. Dinner at the "Petit Riche"--a music-hall +afterwards--travel down home with her. Well, Dampier had put a stopper +on that plan. But now that he had asked her, where was he going to take +her himself? To another musical comedy? No. Too like the other chap. To +one of the Exhibitions? No; not good enough. Anyhow, wherever he took +her, he hadn't been out-bidden by this soft-soapy young idiot. Infernal +cheek.... Then, all in a flash the brilliant solution came to Paul +Dampier. Of course! Yes, he could work it! The Aviation Dinner! He'd +meant to go. He would take her. It would involve taking Mrs. Crewe as +well. Never mind. It was something to which that other young ass +wouldn't have the chance of taking her, and that was enough. + +"Yes," he went on saying, as coolly as if it had all been planned. +"There's a show on at the Wilbur Club; Wilbur Wright, you know. I +thought I'd ask if you and Mrs. Crewe would care to come with me to the +dinner. Will you?--Just break that packing up a bit more," he added +negligently to the red-haired youth. "And check those spaces--Will you +take me into your place, Miss Williams?" + +_That_, he thought, was the way to deal with poachers on his particular +preserves! + +It was only when he got inside the spacious white Wing-room and sat +down, riding a chair, close to the trestle-table where the girl bent her +curly head so conscientiously over the linen strips again, that he +realised that this Little Thing wasn't his particular preserves at all! + +Hadn't he, only a couple of weeks ago, definitely decided that she was +never to mean anything of the sort to him? Hadn't he resolved---- + +Here, with his long arms crossed over the back of the chair as he sat +facing and watching her, he put back his head and laughed. + +"What are you laughing at?" she asked, straightening herself in the big +pinafore with its front all stiff with that sticky mess she worked with. + +He was laughing to think how dashed silly it was to make these +resolutions. Resolutions about which people you were or were not to see +anything of! As if Fate didn't arrange that for you! As if you didn't +_have_ to leave that to Fate, and to take your chance! + +Possibly Fate meant that he and the Little Thing should be friends, +great friends. Not now, of course. Not yet. In some years' time, +perhaps, when his position was assured; when he'd achieved some of the +Big Things that he'd got to do; when he _had_ got something to offer a +girl. Ages to wait.... Still, he could leave it at that, now, he +thought.... It might, or might not, come to anything. Only, it was +ripping to see her! + +He didn't tell her this. + +He uttered some conventional boy's joke about being amused to see her +actually at work for the first time since he'd met her. And she made a +little bridling of her neck above that vast, gull-like wing that she was +pasting; and retorted that, indeed, she worked very hard. + +"Really," he teased her. "Always seem to be taking time off, whenever +I've come." + +"You've only come twice, Mr. Dampier; and then it's been sort of +lunch-time." + +"Oh, I see," he said. ("I may smoke, mayn't I?" and he lighted a +cigarette.) "D'you always take your lunch out of doors, Miss Gwenna?" +(He didn't see why _he_ shouldn't call her that.) + +She said, "I'd like to." Then she was suddenly afraid he might think she +was thinking of their open-air lunch in that field, weeks ago, and she +said quickly (still working): "I--I was so glad when I heard about the +engine coming, and that Colonel Conyers had ordered the P.D.Q. to be +made here. I--do congratulate you, Mr. Dampier. Tell me about the +Machine, won't you?" + +He said, "Oh, you'll hear all about that presently; but look here, you +haven't told me about _you_----" + +Gwenna could scarcely believe her ears; but yes, it was true. He was +turning, turning from talk about the Machine, the P.D.Q., the _Fiancee_! +Asking, for the first time, about herself. She drew a deep breath; she +turned her bright, greeny-brown eyes sideways, longing at that moment +for Leslie with whom to exchange a glance. Her own shyly triumphant look +met only the deep, wise eyes of the Great Dane, lying in his corner of +the Wing-room beside his kennel. He blinked, thumped his tail upon the +floor. + +"Darling," whispered Gwenna, a little shakily, as she passed the tawny +dog. "_Darling!_" She had to say it to something just then. + +Paul Dampier pursued, looking at her over his crossed arms on the back +of that chair, "You haven't said whether you'll come to-morrow night." + +She asked (as if it mattered to her where she went, as long as it was +with him), "What is this dinner?" + +"The Wilbur dinner? Oh, there's one every year. Just a meeting of those +interested in flying. I thought you might care----" + +"Who'll be there?" + +"Oh, just people. Not many. Some ladies go. Why?" + +"Only because I haven't got anything at all to wear," announced Gwenna, +much more confidently, however, than she could have done before Mr. Ryan +had told her so much about her own looks, "except my everlasting white +and the blue sash like at the Smiths'." + +"Well, that was awfully pretty; wasn't it? Only----" + +"What?" + +"Well, may I say something?" + +"Well, what is it?" + +"Frightfully rude, really," said Paul Dampier, tilting himself back on +his chair, and still looking at her over a puff of smoke, staring even. +She was something to stare at. Why was she such a lot prettier? Had he +_forgotten_ what her looks were? She seemed--she seemed, to-day, so much +more of a woman than he'd ever seen her. He forgot that he was going to +say something. She, with a little fluttering laugh for which he could +have clasped her, reminded him. + +"What's the rude thing you were going to say to me?" + +"Oh! It's only this. Don't go muffling your neck up in that sort of ruff +affair this time; looks ever so much nicer without," said the boy. + +The girl retorted with quite a good show of disdainfulness, "I don't +think there's anything _quite_ so funny as men talking about what we +wear." + +"Oh, all right," said the boy, and pretended to be offended. Then he +laughed again and said, "I've still got something of yours that you +wear, as a matter of fact----" + +"Of mine?" + +"Yes, I have; I've never given it you back yet. That locket of yours +that you lost." + +"Oh----!" she exclaimed. + +That locket! That little heart-shaped pendant of mother-o'-pearl that +she had worn the first evening that she'd ever seen him; and that +she had dropped in the car as they were driving back. So much had +happened ... she felt she was not even the same Gwenna as the girl who +had snapped the slender silver chain about her neck before they set out +for the party.... She'd given up wondering if her Airman had forgotten +to give it back to her. She'd forgotten all about it herself. And he'd +had it, one of her own personal belongings, somewhere in his keeping all +this time. + +"Oh, yes; my--my little mascot," she said. "Have you got it?" + +"Not here. It's in my other jac--it's at my rooms, I'll bring it to the +dinner for you. And--er--look here, Miss Gwenna----" + +He tilted forward again as the girl passed his side of the table to +reach for the little wooden pattern by which she cut out a patch for the +end of the strip, and then passed back again. + +"I say," he began again, a trifle awkwardly, "if you don't mind, I want +you to give me something in exchange for that locket." + +"Oh, do you?" murmured Gwenna. "What?" + +And a chill took her. + +She didn't want him, here and now, to ask for--what Mr. Ryan might have +asked. + +But it was not a kiss he asked for, after all. + +He said, "You know those little white wings you put in your shoes? You +remember, the night of that river dance? Well, I wish you'd let me have +one of those to keep as my mascot." + +He hadn't thought of wishing it until there had intruded into his ken +that other young man who made appointments--and who might have +the--cheek to ask for keepsakes, but who shouldn't be first, after all! + +Anxiously, as if it were for much more than that feathered trifle of a +mascot that he asked, he said, "Will you?" + +"Oh! If you like!" + +"Sure you don't mind?" + +"Mind? I should like you to have it," said Gwenna softly. "Really." + +And across the great white aeroplane wing the girl looked very sweetly +and soberly at her Aviator, who had just asked that other tiny wing of +her, as a knight begged his lady's favour. + + * * * * * + +It was at this moment that the Aeroplane Lady, an alert figure in dark +blue, came into a room where a young man and a girl had been talking +idly enough together while one smoked and the other went on working with +that five-foot barrier of the wing between them. + +The Aeroplane Lady, being a woman, was sensitive to atmosphere--not the +spirit-and-solution-scented atmosphere of this place of which she was +mistress, but another. + +In it she caught a vibration of something that made her say to herself, +"Bless me, what's _this_? I never knew those two had even met! 'Not +saying so,' I suppose. But certainly engaged, or on the verge of it!" + +--Which all went to prove that the rebuked, the absent Leslie, was not +far wrong in saying that it is the Obvious Thing that always succeeds! + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +THE SEALED BOX + + +Whatever the Aeroplane Lady thought to herself about the two in the +Wing-room, there was no trace of it in her brisk greeting to Paul +Dampier. + +"I hope you haven't been waiting long?" she said. "I'm ready now." + +Then she turned to her girl-assistant, who was once more laying the +tacky strips of linen along the seams. "That's right," she said. "You +can go straight on with that wing; that will take you some time. One of +the wings for _your_ machine," she added to the aviator. "I'm ready, Mr. +Dampier." + +She and the young man left the Wing-room together and entered the +adjoining office, closing the door behind them. + +Left alone, Gwenna went on swiftly working, and as swiftly dreaming. +Rapidly, but none the less surely, seam after long seam was covered; and +the busyness of her fingers seemed to help the fancies of her brain. + +"One of the wings for _his_ Machine!" she thought. "And there was I, +thinking I should mind working for that--for 'Her,'" she smiled. "I +don't, after all. I needn't care, now." + +Her heart seemed singing within her. Nothing had happened, really. Only, +she was sure of her lover. That was all. All! She worked; and her small +feet on the floor seemed set on air, as in that flying dream. + +"Such a great, huge wing for 'Her,'" she murmured to herself. "Such a +little, little wing for himself that he asked for. My tiny one that I +put in my shoe. It was for him I put it there! And now it's begun to +bring him to me. It _has_!" she exulted. "He's begun to care. I _know_ +he does." + +From the other side of the door came a heightened murmur of voices in +the office. Something heavy seemed to be set down on the floor. That +sealed box, perhaps, that he'd brought with him in the car. Then came +the shutting of the outer door. Mr. Ryan passed the window. Then a sound +of hammering in the office, and the long squeak of a nail being prized +out of wood. They were opening that mysterious package of his. Gwenna's +fingers flew over her own task to the tune of her joyous thoughts. + +"I don't care how long it lasts before _anything_ else happens. Don't +care how this flying-machine of his does try to keep him from me. She +won't. She can't. Nothing can!" triumphed the girl, smoothing the canvas +that was her Rival's plumage. "He's going to be mine, with everything +that he knows. So much better, and cleverer, and belonging to different +sort of people as he is, and yet he's going to have _me_ belonging to +him. She's had the last of him putting her always first!" + +She heard in the office Paul Dampier's short laugh and his "Oh? you +think so?" to the Aeroplane Lady. Gwenna scarcely wondered what this +might be about. Some business to do with the Machine; but he would come +to an end of that, soon. He'd come back to her, with that look in his +blue eyes, that tone in his deep voice. She could wait patiently now for +the day, whenever it came, when he should tell her definitely that he +loved her and wanted her to be his. There would be that, of +course--Gwenna, the inexperienced, still saw "the proposal" as the scene +set and prepared; the inevitable milestone beside the course of true +love. Never mind that now, though. It didn't matter when. What mattered +was that it _would_ come. Then she would always be with him. It would be +for ever, like that blissful day in the hayfield, that summer night by +the river at the dance, those few bewildering seconds on the Westminster +scaffolding. And with no cruelty of separation afterwards to spoil it. +Nothing--nothing was going to part them, after all. + + * * * * * + +She had finished the wing. She looked about for the next thing to do. + +There were three wings in the room, and all were finished. A fourth wing +still lay, a skeleton of fretted and glued wood, in the workshops; the +skin was not yet stretched over it. + +And there were no more letters to write for the firm. + +Gwenna had nothing to do. + +"I shall _have_ to go into the office and ask," she said, admitting to +herself that she was glad enough to go. So often she had painted for +herself, out of mere memories, the picture of her Airman. He was now in +the office, in the flesh! She need not have to satisfy herself with +pictures of him. She slipped off her sticky pinafore; the white muslin +blouse beneath it was fresh and pretty enough. She moved to the +office-door. It was her room; she had never yet had to knock at that +door. + +She pushed it open and stood waiting. For a moment she only saw the +Aeroplane Lady and the tall Aviator. They had their backs to her; they +were standing side by side and examining a plan that they had pinned up +on the matchboarding wall. Paul Dampier's finger was tracing a little +arc on the plan, and he was slowly shaking his head, with the gesture of +a man who says that something "won't do." The Aeroplane Lady's fingers +were meditatively at her lips, and her attitude echoed that of the young +man. Something that they had planned wouldn't do---- + +Then Gwenna's eyes fell, from these two people, to that "_Something_." +It was something that she had never seen about the Aircraft Works +before. Indeed, she did not remember having seen it ever before, +anywhere, except in pictures. This object was on the floor, half in and +half out of the sealed wooden box that Paul Dampier had brought down +with him in the car, and that he wouldn't let the workmen handle.... So +this was why.... + +This was it. Aghast, she stared at it. + +It was a long, khaki-painted cylinder, and from one end of it a +wicked-looking little nozzle projected for an inch or so. The other +end, which disappeared into the box, showed a peep of a magazine and a +pistol-grip. + +Even to Gwenna's unskilled eyes the thing appeared instantly what it +was. + +A machine-gun. + +"A gun?" she thought, stupefied; "dear me--on an aeroplane?" + +"No," said Paul Dampier's voice suddenly, decisively, speaking to the +Aeroplane Lady, "it'll have to be a rifle after all." + +And with the sudden breaking of his voice upon her ear, there seemed to +be torn from before the girl's eyes a corner of some veil. + +Quite suddenly (how, she could not explain) she knew what all this +meant. + +That plan for that new flying-machine. That gun. The whole object of the +ambitions of these people with their so romantic profession. Scraps of +her Aviator's talk about "scouting," and "the new Arm," and "modern +warfare." ... + +Just now she had been swept up aloft by his look and tone into the +seventh heaven of a woman's delight. That was Love. Here, epitomised in +that cylinder with that vicious little nozzle, she saw the Power that +could take him from her yet. This was War! + +A shudder ran over her. + +Her mind took no notice of the facts that there was no War for him to go +to, that this grim preparation must be for experimenting only, for +manoeuvres, sham fights; that this was July, Nineteen-fourteen, an era +of sleepy peace (except for that gossip, half a joke, that we might +have civil war in Ireland yet), and that she and he and everybody they +had to do with lived in the Twentieth Century, in England.... + +Perhaps it was because she was not English, but British, Welsh. She +entirely lacked that Anglo-Saxon "balance" of which the English are so +proud, and that stolidity and that unimaginativeness. Her imagination +caught some of those unheard, unsuspected messages with which the air +must have been vibrant, all those midsummer weeks. + +Her quick, unbalanced Celtic fancy had already shown her as clearly as +if she had seen it with her eyes that image of his Aeroplane as a winged +and taloned Woman-rival. Now it flashed before her, in a twink, another +picture: + +Paul Dampier, seated in that Aeroplane, swooping through the air, _armed +and in danger_! + +The danger was from below. She did not see that danger. She saw only the +image, against grey, scudding clouds, of the Beloved. But she could feel +it, that poignant Threat to him, to him in every second of his flight. +It was not the mere risk of accident or falling. It was a new peril of +which the shadow, cast before, fell upon the receptive fancy of the girl +who loved the adventurer. And, set to that shadow-picture in her mind, +there rang out to some inner sense of hers a Voice that sounded clear +and ominous words. + +They called to her: "_Fired at both by friend and foe----_" + +Then stopped. + +The young girl didn't remember ever to have heard or even to have read +these words. How should she? It was the warning fore-echo of a phrase +now historic, but then as yet unuttered, that had transmitted itself to +some heightened sense of hers: + +"_Fired at both by friend and foe!_"[A] + + [A] This phrase occurred in a despatch from Sir David Henderson. + + +There! It was gone, the waking vision that left her trembling, with a +certainty. + +Yes; here was the meaning of the sealed box, of the long confabulation +of her Airman with the Aeroplane Lady.... War was coming. And _they +knew_. + +Gwenna, standing there in the doorway, drawing a long breath and feeling +suddenly rather giddy, knew that she had come upon something that she +had not been meant to guess. + +What was she to do about it? + +Her hand was on the knob of the door. + +Must she close it upon herself, or behind her? + +Should she come forward and cry, "Oh, if it was a dreadful secret, why +didn't you lock the door?" + +Or should she go out noiselessly, taking that burden of a secret with +her? She might confess to the Aeroplane Lady afterwards.... + +Here she saw that the Airman had half turned. His boyish, determined +profile was dark in shadow against the plan on the wall; the plan of the +P.D.Q. Sunlight through the office window touched and gilded the edge +of his blonde head. + +"Yes; I thought so. Have to be a rifle after all," he repeated in a +matter-of-fact tone. Then, turning more round, his glance met the +startled eyes of the girl in the doorway. + +And that finished the dilemma for Gwenna. + +Something rose up in her and was too strong to let her be silent. + +"Oh! I've _seen_ it!" she cried sharply. "_Paul!_" + +He took one stride towards her and slipped his arm about her as she +swayed. She was white to the lips. + +"Is there any water----" began young Dampier, but already the Aeroplane +Lady had poured out a glassful. + +It was he, however, who put it to Gwenna's lips, holding her still. + +"It's all _right_, darling," he said reassuringly (and the give-away +word slipped very easily from his tongue). "Better, aren't you? +Frightfully muggy in that room with those radiators! You oughtn't to +be---- Here!" He took some of the cold water and dabbed it on her curls. + +"I suppose he knew he could trust the child," thought the Aeroplane Lady +as she closed the door of the Wing-room between herself and those two in +the office, "but I don't know that I should have engaged her if I'd +known. I don't want lovers about the place, here. Of course, this +explains his Aviation dinner and everything----" + + * * * * * + +Little Gwenna, standing with her small face buried against the Aviator's +tweed jacket, was sighing out that she hadn't _meant_ to come in, hadn't +_meant_ to look at that horrible gun.... + +The girl didn't know what she was saying. The boy scarcely heard it. He +was rumpling with his cheek the short, silky curls he had always longed +to touch. Presently he tilted her cherub's head back against his +shoulder, then put both his hands about that throat of hers. + +She gave an unsteady little laugh. + +"You'll throttle me," she murmured. + +Without loosening his clasp, he bent his fair head further down, and +kissed her, very gently, on the mouth. + +"Don't mind, do you?" he said, into another kiss. "_Do_ you?" + +At that moment the Little Thing in his arms had banished all thought of +those Big Things from his mind. + + + + +PART II + +_JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +THE AVIATION DINNER + + +Gwenna began to feel a little nervous and intimidated, even in the car +that took herself and the Aeroplane Lady and the Airman to the Aviation +dinner. + +A hundred yards before they reached the portals of the Club in Pall Mall +that car stopped. Then it began to advance again a yard or two at a +time. A long row of other cars and taxis was ahead, and from them +alighted guests in dull black opera hats, with mufflers; once or twice +there was the light and jewelled gleam of a woman's wrap, but they were +mostly men who were driving up. + +"Colonel Conyers," said Paul Dampier to the attendant in the great +marble-tiled entrance. + +Then he was shown off to the right; Gwenna and the Aeroplane Lady to the +dressing-rooms on the left. Before an immense glass they removed their +wraps and came out to the waiting-room, the girl all misty-white with +the sky-blue sash and the dancing-shoes; the Lady gowned in grey satin +that had just the gleam of aluminium in that factory of hers, and with +her brooch of the winged serpents fastened at her breast. + +They sat down at one of the little polished tables in the waiting-room +under the long windows on to Pall Mall; it was a high, light-panelled +room, with a frieze of giant roses. A couple of ladies went by to the +dressing-room, greeting Mrs. Crew as they passed. + +Then there stopped to speak to her a third and older and very handsome +lady all in black, with diamonds ablaze in her laces and in her grey, +piled-up hair. + +"There should be some good speeches to-night, shouldn't there?" said +this lady. "All these splendid men!... You know, my dear, take us for +all in all"--and she gave a little laugh--"we _are_ splendid!" + +"But there are so few of us," said the Aeroplane Lady, ruefully. + +The other woman, about to pass on, stopped for a moment again, and +looking over her white shoulder said, very seriously, something that +both her hearers were to remember. "If England is ever to be saved, it +will be by a few." + +She went out; and Mrs. Crewe said to Gwenna, "That was Lady----" +(Something) "the wife of the man who's as responsible as most people for +the security of this Empire----" + +Most of the people there seemed to know the Aeroplane Lady quite well, +Gwenna noticed, when Paul Dampier came up and took them out into the +Central Hall again, where the guests were assembling. The place seemed +as high as a cathedral, with a marble floor, and alcoves, and tall, +classic, brass tripod things to hold the end of men's cigarettes and +ashes. The Aeroplane Lady was at once surrounded by a group of men. +Gwenna, feeling very shy and little and of no account, turned to her +Airman. + +"You said," she murmured reproachfully, "that there _weren't_ going to +be a lot of grand people." + +"These aren't 'grand,' bless you! People aren't, who are really--well, +who 'do things,' as you say. Not nearly as frilly here as at the Smiths, +that other dinner," he said, smiling down at her. "I'm going to bring up +Colonel Conyers and introduce him to you----" + +"_Him?_ Good _gracious_!" thought the little Welsh girl in consternation +to herself. "Colonel Conyers!--oh, no, please--I should be much too +frightened----" + +But the tall figure had detached itself from a group at a word from Paul +Dampier, and Colonel Conyers came up. Gwenna recognised the lean, +smiling, half-mischievous face of the soldier who--those ages ago!--had +talked to those ladies in the motor-car at Hendon. + +This was the man they called "Aircraft Conyers," the man practically at +the head of Aeronautics, Paul had, said, the man in whose hands rested +(among so many, many other things) the whole career of the inventor of +the P.D.Q.! Gwenna, with her curly head whirling, felt inclined to drop +a schoolchild's curtsy to this Great One of the Councils of the Earth. + +He took her hand into his own long, lean one. + +"How d'you do?" he drawled, smiling cheerfully. "Starving, what? I am, I +can tell you. Always late here. Won't be long, now. You're at my table, +I believe." Then, almost anxiously, "Fond of chocolates? You are? Good. +Then I can collect the lot of those little silver dishes around us and +pretend it's all for you. It's for me, really." + +Gwenna, who was not able to help laughing at this unexpectedness on the +part of the great Aircraft Conyers, said: "Are _you_ fond of them?" + +"Passionately. Passionately!" said Colonel Conyers with a nod, as he +turned to find his own dinner-partner. + +"Didn't frighten you much, did he?" laughed Paul Dampier to the Little +Thing at his side. "Course he didn't. I'll tell you who most of the +others are when we get into the supper-room." + +In the great supper-room with its painted ceiling and gilded pillars +dinner was laid on a number of small tables for parties of six or eight. +Gwenna found herself the only woman at their table, the Aeroplane Lady +sitting far down at the other end of the room. + +All dazed, the young girl looked about her like a stray bird that has +fluttered in through an open window. Beside her, Paul Dampier pointed +out to her this celebrity and that at the tables. + +"Colonel Conyers you've seen...." (That personage had nodded to the +young girl over a stack of pink roses and had made a little movement to +show the basket of sweets beside his plate.) "Now that man with the +Order, that's Lord" (So-and-So), "Director of Coast Defence. And that" +(So-and-So), "Chief Engineer. And that little man one down--in the +opposite direction from where I'm looking--that's" (So-and-So), "editor +of _The Air_. Wonderful chap; brains enough to sink a ship." + +An extraordinary mixture of men, Gwenna thought, as her glance followed +his direction, and he went on talking. Soldiers, sailors, chemists, +scientists, ministers; all banded together. Ranks and fortunes were +merged. Here were men of position, men of brains, men of money. Men +whose names were in all the newspapers, and men the papers had never +heard of, all with one aim and object, the furtherance of Civilisation's +newest advance: the Conquest of the Air. + +The dinner proceeded. Pale amber wine whispered and bubbled in her +glass, dishes came and went, but the girl scarcely knew what she ate or +drank. She was in a new world, and _he_ had brought her there. She felt +it so intensely that presently it almost numbed her. She was long past +the stage of excitement that manifests itself in gasps and exclamations. +She could speak ordinarily and calmly when Paul Dampier, turning from +his talk to a Physical Laboratory man in a very badly brushed coat, +asked her: "Well? Find it interesting?" + +"You know I do," she said, with a grave little glance. + +He said, smiling, "What did you say to the red-haired youth about not +going to the matinee with him first?" + +"Mr. Ryan? Oh! I just told him I hadn't got over my headache from the +smell of dope, and that I was afraid it would tire me too much to do +both." + +"Pretty annoyed, I expect, wasn't he?" + +"Yes, he was," replied Gwenna, with the absolute callousness of a woman +in love towards the feelings of any but the one man. She did not even +trouble whether it had been the feelings or the vanity of Mr. Peter Ryan +that had been hurt. What mattered was that Paul Dampier had not wished +her to go to that matinee. + +Paul Dampier said, "Well, I cried off an engagement to-night, too. +Colonel Conyers wanted to take me back with him. But I'm seeing you +home." + +"Oh, but you mustn't; you needn't!" she protested happily. "I'm not +going down to the Works, you know, to-night. I'm sleeping at the Club. +I'm staying this week-end with Leslie." + +"With Leslie, are you? M'm. But I'm taking you up to the Club +afterwards," he persisted. "A fellow's got to look after"--here he +laughed a little as if it were a joke that pleased him--"a fellow's got +to look after his _fiancee_, hasn't he?" + +She was a little subdued. She thought for the moment that he had put +Colonel Conyers off, not for her, after all! but for that Machine of +his. Then she thought: No!--the machine was second now. She said, half +in hope, half in dread, "D'you mean the P.D.Q.?" + +He turned, with his mouth full of salad, staring whimsically at her. + +"The P.D.Q.? What you thinking of? I meant _you_." + +"_Me?_" She gave a little gasp. + +Life and happiness were too much for her again. She felt as if that +whispering untouched champagne in her glass had gone to her head. Was +it really true--_that_, that he had said? + +"Well, aren't you?" he said gaily, but dropping his voice a little as +the conversation rose about them. "Aren't you that to me? Engaged, +aren't we?" + +"Oh, I don't know," the young girl said, breathlessly. It was as if the +moon that one had cried for had suddenly dropped, to lie like a round, +silver mirror in one's lap. "Did you mean _that_, yesterday afternoon?" + +"Didn't I mean it before that?" he said, half to himself. "What about +all those dances? that time when Hugo dragged me off to that place by +the river? Those would have been _most_ incorrect," he teased her, "if +we hadn't been. We shall have to be, my dear." + +Then an impulse took her. (It is known to any young girl who is +sincerely in Love.) + +"No. Don't let's----" she said suddenly. "Don't let's be 'engaged'!" + +For it seemed to her that a winged Dream was just about to alight and to +become a clumsy creature of Earth--like that Aeroplane on the Flying +Ground. The boy said, staring at her, "_Not_ be engaged? Why on earth? +How d'you mean?" + +"I mean, everybody gets '_engaged_,'" she explained very softly and +rapidly over the bread that she was crumbling in her little fingers. +"And it's such a sort of _fuss_, with writing home, and congratulations, +and how-long-has-this-been-going-on, and all that sort of thing! People +at tea-parties and things _talking_ about us! I _know_ they would!" +declared the Welsh girl with distaste, "and saying, 'Dear me, she looks +very young' and _wondering_ about us! Oh, no, _don't_ let's have it! It +would seem to _spoil_ it, for me! Don't let's _call_ it anything, need +we? Don't let's say anything yet, except to--just US." + +"All right," said the boy with an easy shrug. (He was too young to know +what he was escaping.) "Sure I don't mind, as long as you're just with +me, all the time we can." + +She said, wonderfully sedate above the tumult in her heart, "Did you +bring my locket with you to-night?" + +"No. I didn't. D'you know why? Can't you guess? Because I wanted to give +it back to you when _I_ could put it round my Girl's neck," he told her. +And she turned away from him, so happily confused again that she could +not speak. + +She was his Girl; his. And because he was one of this band of brothers, +sitting here feasting and talking, each making it his business to +contribute his share to the sum of what was to be one of the World's +greatest Forces, why! because of that, even she, little Gwenna Williams, +could feel herself to be a tiny part of that Force. She was an Aviator's +girl--even if it were a wonderful secret that nobody knew, so far, but +he and she. + +(Already everybody at that table and many others in the room had +remarked what a pretty little creature young Dampier's sweetheart was.) + + * * * * * + +"_The King!_" announced the President of the Dinner. + +There was a movement and a rustle all round the great supper-room as the +guests rose to the toast; another rustle as they reseated themselves. +One of the celebrities whom Paul had pointed out to her began to speak +upon the achievements of Wilbur Wright. At the table next to Gwenna some +journalists bent absorbed over scribbling pads. Speech followed speech +as the toasts were gone through. The opal-blue haze of cigarette smoke +drifted up above the white tables with their rose-pink and ferny +decorations. Chairs were pushed sidewards as guests turned alert and +listening faces towards the head of the room; and every now and again +the grave and concise and pleasantly modulated tones of some +speaker-on-the-subject of his heart were broken in upon by a soft storm +of applause. + +"Colonel Conyers to speak now," murmured Paul to Gwenna, as the long, +lean figure that had been sitting opposite to them rose. He stepped +backwards, to stand against one of those gilded pillars as he made his +speech, responding to the toast that had coupled his name with that of +the Flying Wing of the Army. + +Gwenna listened with even more breathless attention than she had paid to +the other speakers. + +Colonel Conyers spoke easily and lightly, as if he had been, not making +a speech, but talking to a knot of friends at his house. He reviewed, in +terms so simple that even the young girl at his table could follow all +he said, the difficulties and the risks of aviation, and the steps that +had been taken to minimise those risks. Wind, it seemed, had been in a +great measure overcome. Risk from faulty workmanship of machines--that, +too, was overcome. Workmanship was now well-nigh as perfect as it could +be made. + +Here Gwenna glowed with pride, exchanging a glance with her employer far +down the tables. This meant _their_ workmanship at Aircraft Factories; +their Factory, too! This meant the labours of Mrs. Crewe and of Mr. +Ryan, and of Andre, and of the workmen in overalls at the lathes in that +noisy central shop. Even the brushful of dope that she, Gwenna, spread +conscientiously over each seam of the great wings, played its tiny part +in helping to preserve a Flyer's life! + +The risk in stability, too, Colonel Conyers said, had been successfully +combatted by the gyroscope. There remained, however, Fog and Darkness as +the chief perils, which, at the present moment, of July, +Nineteen-fourteen, our Airmen had to fight.... + +In the soldier's lean face that shrewd, half-mischievous smile was +flickering as he spoke; his grey trim head turning now and again against +the gilded column, his keen eyes fixed upon some objective of his own, +his strong hand fidgeting in the small mechanical gesture of a man who +is less accustomed to speaking about things than to doing them. + +Gwenna thought how different, how entirely different were all these +people here from that other dinner-party at the house of the prosperous +and artistic Smiths who had found so much to say about the Russian +Ballet! + +Definitely now Gwenna saw what the chief difference between them was. + +_Those other people treated and spoke of a pastime as though it were a +matter of Life and Death. These people here made Life and Death matters +their pastime._ + +"And these splendid real people are the ones I'm going to belong to," +the girl told herself with a glance at the tall boy beside her who had +decided her fate. That thought was to glow in the very depths of her, +like a firefly nestling at the heart of a rose, for as long as she +lived. + +The even, pleasant tones of Colonel Conyers went on to give as one of +the most hopeful features of aviation the readiness of the quite young +man of the present day to volunteer. No sooner was a fatality announced +than for one airman who, cheerfully giving his life for the service of +his country, had been put out of action, half a dozen promising young +fellows were eager to come forward and take his place. + +"Two of 'em again yesterday.... Two of his lieutenants, killed in +Yorkshire," whispered Paul Dampier, leaning to Gwenna. + +She missed the next sentence of Colonel Conyers, which concluded +cheerily enough with the hard-worked but heartening reminder that whom +the Gods love die young.... + +Then, with a broadening of that humorous smile and with a glint in his +eyes, he referred to "those other people (plump and well-to-do--and +quite young people) who do, still, really appear to consider that the +whole of a man's duty to his country is to preserve his health for as +long as possible and then, having reached a ripe old age, to die +comfortably and respectably in his bed!----" + +There was a short ripple of laughter about the room; but after this +Gwenna heard very little. + +Not only was she incapable of taking any more in, but this last sentence +pulled her up with a sudden memory of what she had seen, yesterday. + +_That gun at the Aircraft Works. That pictured presentiment in her own +mind._ + +And she heard again, through Colonel Conyers' pleasant voice, the queer, +unexplained words that had haunted her: + +"_Fired at by both friend and foe._" + +She thought, "I must ask! I must say something to Paul about that----" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE "WHISPER OF WAR" + + +She said it after the dinner had broken up. + +In the great hall young Dampier had turned to the Aeroplane Lady with +his offer of motoring her to her Hotel first. She had good-naturedly +laughed at him and said, "No. I'm going to be driven back by the +rightful owner of the car this time. You take Miss Williams." + +And then she had gone off with some friend of Paul's who had motors to +lend, and Paul had taken Gwenna to find a taxi to drive up to Hampstead. + +They drove slowly through Piccadilly Circus, now brighter than at +midday. It was thronged with the theatre-crowds that surged towards the +crossings. Coloured restaurant-coats and jewelled head-gear and laughing +faces were gay in the lights that made that broad blazing belt about the +fountain. Higher up the whole air was a soft haze of gold, melting into +the hot, star-strewn purple of the night-sky. And against this there +tapered, black and slender, the apex of the fountain, the +downward-swooping shape that is not Mercury, but the flying Love--the +Lad with Wings. + +Paul Dampier leant back in the closed cab and would have drawn the girl +to him. + +She put both hands on his broad chest to hold him a little away from +her. + +"I want to ask you something," she began a little tremulously. "It's +just--Is there going to be----" + +"Well, what?" he asked, smiling close to her. + +Of all things that he least expected came what the girl had to say. + +"Is there going to be--a War, Paul?" + +"A _what_?" he asked, thinking he had not heard aright. + +She repeated it, tremulously. "A war. Real war." + +"War?" he echoed, blankly, taken aback. He was silent from puzzled +astonishment over her asking this, as they turned up Shaftesbury Avenue. +They were held up outside the Hippodrome for some minutes. He was still +silent. The taxi gave a jerk and went on. And she still waited for his +reply. She had to remind him. + +"Well," she said again, tremulous. "_Is_ there going to be?" + +"A war? A _war_ indeed," he said again. "What an +extraordinary--Who's--What put such a thing into your head?" + +She said, "_Is_ there?" + +The boy gave a half-amazed, half-uneasy laugh. He retorted, "What d'you +mean, Gwenna? A war _where_?" + +She said flutteringly, "Anywhere." + +"Oh," he said, and laughed as if relieved. "Always some war, somewhere. +Frontier shows in India, and so on. There is some scrapping going on in +Europe too, now, you know. Looks as if Austria and Servia were going to +have a set-to. You mean that." + +"No, I don't," persisted the Welsh girl, to whom these places seemed +indescribably remote and beside the mark. "I mean ... a war to do with +_us_, like." + +"Us----?" + +"To do with England." + +"But----" he said, frowning. "Why, how absurd! A war with England? +Why ... of course not. Why should you think of it?" + +She cleared her throat and answered with another tremulous question. + +"Why should you have--that gun-thing--on your aeroplane?" + +"Not going to. Not on the P.D.Q.," he said, shaking his head. "Only an +experiment, anyhow." + +"Why should you have 'experiments' with those things?" she faltered. +"'_Have to be a rifle_,' you said. Why should you talk about 'scouting' +and 'modern warfare'?" + +"I wasn't!" he said quite hotly. + +"Yes, you were. That day we were together. That day in the field when +you were talking to me about the Machine." + +"Oh, _then_! Weeks ago." + +"Yes. Why should there _be_ all that, unless you meant that there'd be a +war, with England in it. _Paul!_" she cried, almost accusingly, "you +said yourself that it was '_bound to come_!'" + +"Oh, well! Everybody said _that_," he assured her lightly. "Can't help +seeing Germany and that Fleet of hers, and her Zeppelins and things, +going on build, build, build. They don't do that for their health, you +bet! Scrap's bound to come; yes. Sooner or later." + +"Yes, Paul; but _when_?" + +"How should I know, my _dear_ child?" retorted the young Airman. "Why +didn't you ask Lord Thingummy, or Conyers at the Club just now?" he +laughed. "Good speech of his, wasn't it?" + +"Does _he_ know?" persisted Gwenna, paling. "About the war coming, I +mean?" + +"More likely to know than I am, those people. Not that they'd give it +away if they did. It won't be to-morrow, anyway. To-morrow; that's +Sunday. _Our_ holiday. Another day we shall have all to ourselves. Tell +me what time I'm to call for you at the Club." + +Not to be put off, she retorted, timid, persistent, "Tell me when _you_ +think it would come. Soon?" + +Half laughing, half impatient, he said, "I _don't_ know. Soon enough for +it to be in my time, I hope." + +"But--" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you're not a +soldier?" + +He said quietly, "I'm an aviator." + +An aviator; yes. That was what she meant. He belonged to the most daring +and romantic of professions; the most dangerous, but not _that_ danger. +An inventor, part of his time; the rest of his time an airman at Hendon +who made flights above what the man with the megaphone called the +"Aer-rio-drome" above the khaki-green ground with the pylons and the +border of summer-frocked spectators. _Her_ boy! An aviator.... Would +that mean presently a man flying above enemy country, to shoot and be +shot at? ("_Fired at by both friend and foe._"). She said quiveringly: +"_You_ wouldn't have to fight?" + +He said: "Hope so, I'm sure." + +"Oh, Paul!" she cried, aghast, her hands on his arm. "Just when--when +I've only just _got_ you! To lose you again so soon----! Oh, no----!" + +"Oh, I say, darling, don't be so silly," he said briskly and +reassuringly. He patted the little hands. "We're not going to talk about +this sort of thing, d'you hear? There's nothing to talk _about_. +Actually, there's nothing. Understand?" + +"Yes," she murmured slowly. She thought, "Actually, 'there's nothing to +talk about' in what's between him and me. _But it's there all the +time._" + +And then, gradually, that presentiment of War began to fade in the +reality of her joy at being with him now, with him still.... + +They turned up the Hampstead Road, flaring with naphtha-lights above the +stalls, noisy with shouts of costers, crowded with the humble shoppers +of Saturday night. + +"Well, and what about to-morrow?" Dampier took up. + +"I _was_ going with Leslie to----" + +"So you said. With Leslie, indeed! D'you think you're going to be +allowed to go anywhere again, except with _me_?" he muttered as he put +his arms about her. + +He held her as close as he had done on the scaffolding, that afternoon +when he had arranged with himself never to see the Little Thing again; +close as he'd done next time he did see her, at the Factory. + +"Oh, _you_ don't know!" he said quite resentfully (while she laughed +softly and happily in his hold), "you _don't_ know how I've wanted you +with me. I--I haven't been able to think of anything--You _have_ got a +fellow fond of you in a jolly short time, haven't you? How've you done +it? M'm? I--Here!" he broke off savagely, "what _is_ this dashed idiot +stopping the taxi for?" + +"Because I get out here. It's the Club," Gwenna explained to him +gravely, opening the door of the cab for herself. "Good-night." + +"What? No, you don't," protested the boy. "We're going up the Spaniards +Road and down by the Whitestone Pond, and round by Hendon first. I must +take you for a drive. It's not so late. Hang it, I haven't _seen_ you to +speak to----" + +She had made a dash out and across the lamp-lighted asphalt, and now +she nodded to him from the top step of the house, with her key already +clicking in the lock. + +"There," she thought. + +For even in the tie that binds the most adoring heart there is twisted +some little gay strand of retaliation. + +Let _him_ feel that after a whole evening of sitting in her pocket he +hadn't seen anything of her. She'd known that sort of feeling long +enough. Let _him_ take his turn; let _him_ have just a taste of it! + +"Good-night!" she called softly to her lover before she disappeared. +"See you to-morrow!" + + + + +CHAPTER III + +THE LAST SUNDAY OF PEACE + + +Never had Gwenna risen so early after having spent so little of a night +in sleep! + + +Into the small hours she had crouched in her kimono on the edge of +Leslie's camp bedstead in the light that came from the street lamp +outside the window; and she had talked and talked and talked. + +For by "not saying anything about it" she had never meant keeping her +happiness from that close chum. + +Miss Long, sincerely delighted, had listened and had nodded her wise +black head from the pillow. She had thrown in the confidante's running +comments of "There! What did Leslie tell you?... Oh, he would, of +course.... Good.... Oh, my dear, _how_ exactly like them all.... No, no; +I didn't mean that. (Of course there's nobody like _him_); I meant +'Fancy!' ... Yes and then what did Paul say, Virginia?" At last +repetitions had cropped up again and again into the softly chattered +recital, with all its girlish italics of: "Oh, but you _don't_ know what +he's like; oh, Leslie, no, you _can't_ imagine!"--At last Leslie had +sighed, a trifle enviously. And little Gwenna, pattering to the head of +the bed, had put her cheek to the other girl's and had whispered +earnestly: "Oh, Leslie, if I only could, d'you know what I'd do? I'd +arrange so that he had a twin-brother _exactly_ like him, to fall in +love with _you_!" + +"Taffy! you are too ... _sweet_," the elder girl had whispered back in a +stifled voice. + +Gwenna never guessed how Leslie Long had had much ado not to giggle +aloud over that idea. To think of her, Leslie, finding rapture with any +one of the type of the Dampier boy.... + +A twin-brother of _his_? Another equally bread-and-buttery blonde +infant--an infant-in-arms who was even "simpler" than Monty Scott? Oh, +Ishtar!... For thus does one woman count as profoundest boredom what +brings to her sister Ecstasy itself. + + +And now here was Gwenna, all in white, coming down to the Club's Sunday +breakfast with her broad hat already on her head and her gloves and her +vanity-bag in her hand. + +At the head of the table sat the Vicar's widow with the gold curb brooch +and the look of resigned disapproval. Over the table Miss Armitage and +the other suffrage-workers were discussing the Cat-and-Mouse Act. +Opposite to them one of the art-students, with her hair cut a la Trilby, +was listening bewildered, ready to be convinced.... Not one of the usual +things remained unsaid.... + +Presently Gwenna's neighbour and _bete noire_, Miss Armitage, was +denouncing the few remaining members of her sex who still seemed to +acquiesce in the Oriental attitude towards Woman; who still remained +serfs or chattels or toys. + +"However! _Thy_ needn't think thy _caount_," declared the lecturer +firmly, stretching without apology across her neighbour to get the salt. +With some distaste Gwenna regarded her. She had spots on her face. +"Pleasers of Men!" she pursued, with noble scorn. "The remnant of the +Slyve-girl Type, now happily extinct----" + +"Loud cheers," from Leslie Long. + +"The serpent's tile," continued the suffragette, "the serpent's tile +that, after the reptile has been beaten to death, still gows on feebly +wriggling----" + +"Better wriggle off now, Taffy, my child," murmured Leslie, who sat +facing the breakfast-room window. "Here's a degraded Oriental coming up +the path now to call for his serf." + +"_You_ come," said Gwenna, warmly flushed as she rose. And she held her +chum's long arm, dragging her with her as she came into the hall where +the tall, typically English figure of her Airman stood, his straw hat in +his hand. A splash of scarlet from the stained glass of the hall door +fell upon his fair head and across his cheek as he turned. + +"Good-morning," said Gwenna sedately, and without giving him so much as +a glance. She felt at that moment that she would rather keep him at +arm's length for ever than allow him even to hold her hand, with Leslie +there. For it takes those who are cooler in temperament than was the +little Welsh girl, or those who care less for their lovers than she did, +to show themselves warmer in the presence of others. + +"Hullo," said Paul Dampier to her. Then, "Hullo, Miss Long! How d'you +do?" + +Leslie gave him a very hearty shake of the hand, a more friendly glance +and a still more demure inquiry about that Machine of his. + +Paul Dampier laughed, returning her glance. + +She was a sport, he thought. She could be trusted not to claim, just +yet, the bet she'd won from his cousin; the laughing wager about the +Aeroplane versus the Girl. Fifteen to one on the Girl, wasn't it? And +here was the Girl home in his heart now, with the whole of a gorgeous +July Sunday before them for their first holiday together. + +"I say, I'm not too early now, am I?" he asked as he and the girl walked +down the Club steps together. "I was the first time, so I just went for +a walk round the cricket-pitch and back. Sickening thing I couldn't rake +up a car anywhere for to-day. Put up with trains or tubes and taxis +instead, I'm afraid. D'you mind? Where shall we go?" + + * * * * * + +"Flying, of course," was Gwenna's first thought. "Now at last he'll take +me up." But that would be for the afternoon. + +For the morning they wanted country, and grass, and trees to sit +under.... Not Hampstead; Richmond Park was finally decided upon. + +"We'll taxi to Waterloo," the boy said, with an inward doubt. He dived a +long brown hand into his pocket as they walked together down the road +that Gwenna used to take every morning to her Westminster bus. He was +particularly short of money just then. Dashed nuisance! Just when he +would have wished to be particularly flush! That's what came of buying a +clock for the Machine before it was wanted. Still, he couldn't let the +Little Thing here know that. Manage somehow. A taxi came rattling down +the Pond Street Hill from Belsize Park as they reached the +stopping-place of the buses, and Paul held up his hand. + +"Taxi!" + +But the driver shook his head. He pulled up the taxi in front of a +small, rather mean-looking house close to where Gwenna and Paul were +standing on the pavement. Then his fare came out of the house, a kit-bag +in each hand and a steamer-rug thrown over his arm; he was a small, +compactly-built young man in clothes so new and so smart that they +seemed oddly out of place with the slatternly entrance of his +lodging-house. It was this that made Paul Dampier look a little hard at +him. Gwenna was wondering where she'd seen that blonde, grave face of +his before. + +He sprang lightly into the cab; a pink-faced girl was sitting there, +whom Gwenna did not see. If she had seen her, she would have recognised +her Westminster colleague, Ottilie Becker. + +"Liverpool Street," ordered Miss Becker's companion, setting down his +luggage. + +Then, raising his head, he caught the eyes upon him of the other young +man in the street. He put a hand to his hat, gave a quick little odd +smile, and leaned forward out of the cab. + +"_Auf Wiedersehen!_" he called, as the taxi started off--for Liverpool +Street. + +"Deuce did he mean by that?" exclaimed the young Englishman, staring +after the cab. "Who on earth was that fellow? I didn't know him." + +"Nor did I. But I _have_ seen him," said Gwenna. + +"I believe I have, somewhere," said Paul, musing. + +They puzzled over it for a bit as they went on to Waterloo on the top of +their bus. + +And then, when they were passing "The Horse Shoe" in Tottenham Court +Road, and when they were talking about something quite different (about +the river-dance, in fact), they both broke off talking sharply. Gwenna, +with a little jump on the slanting front seat, exclaimed, "I know--!" +Just as Paul said, "By Jove! I've got it! I know who that fellow was. +That German fellow just now. He was one of the waiters at that very +dance, Gwenna!" + +Gwenna, turning, said breathlessly, "Yes, I know. The one who passed us +on the path. But I've thought of something else, too. I thought then his +face reminded me of somebody's; I know now who it is. It's that fair +young man who came down to try and be taken on at the Works." + +"At Westminster?" Paul asked quickly. + +"No; at the Aircraft Works one afternoon. He talked English awfully +well, and he said he was Swiss. And then Andre--you know, the big, dark +French workman--talked to him for quite a long time in French; he said +he seemed very intelligent. But he wouldn't give him a job, whatever." + +"He wouldn't?" + +"No. I heard him tell the Aeroplane Lady that the young man ('_ce +garcon-la_') came from the wrong canton," said Gwenna. "So he went away. +I saw him go out. He was awfully _like_ that German waiter. I suppose +most Germans look alike, to us." + +"S'pose so," said the Aviator, adding, "Was that the day that drawing of +mine was missing from the Aircraft Works, I wonder?" + +She looked at him, surprised. "I didn't know one of your drawings was +missing, Paul." + +"Yes. It didn't matter, as it happened. Drawing of a detail for my +Machine. I've taken jolly good care not to have complete drawings of it +anywhere," he said, with a little nod. + +And some minutes later they had begun to talk of something else again, +as the bus lurched on through the hot, deserted Sunday streets. + + * * * * * + +The morning that had brought Gwenna to her lover left Gwenna's chum for +once at a loose end. + +"Leslie, my child, aren't you a little tired of being the looker-on who +sees most of the game? Won't you take a hand?" Miss Long asked herself +as she went back into her Club bedroom. It was scented with the fresh +smell of the rosemary and bay-rum that Leslie used for her ink-black +sheaf of hair, and there drifted in through the open window the sound of +bells from all the churches. + +"Sunday. My free morning! '_The better the day._' So I'll settle up at +last what I am going to do about this little matter of my future," she +decided. + +She sat down at the little bamboo writing-table set against the bedroom +wall. Above it there hung (since this was a girl's room!) a +looking-glass; and about the looking-glass there was festooned a little +garland made up of dance-programmes, dangling by their pencils, of gaudy +paper-fans from restaurants, and of strung beads. Stuck crookedly into a +corner of the glass there was a cockling snapshot. It showed Monty +Scott's dark head above his sculptor's blouse. Leslie picked it out and +looked at it. + +"Handsome, wicked eyes," she said to it lightly. "The only wicked things +about you, you unsophisticated infant-in-arms!" Then she said, "You and +your sculpturing!... _Just_ like a baby with its box of bricks. Besides, +I don't suppose you'll ever have a penny. One doesn't marry a man +because one may like the _look_ of him. No, boy." + +She flicked the snapshot aside. There was conscientious carelessness in +the flick. + +Then she took out the leather-cased ink-bottle from her dressing-bag, +and some paper. + +She wrote: "MY DEAR HUGO----" + +Then she stopped and thought--"Maudie and Hilary Smith will be pleased +with me. So will the cousins, the opulent cousins who've always been +kind about clothes they've finished wearing, and invitations to parties +where they want another girl to brighten things up. You can give some +bright parties for _them_ now, Leslie! Good Reason Number Ninety-nine +for saying 'Yes.'" + +She took up her pen. + +"Nothing," she murmured, "_Nothing_ will ever kill the idea that _the +girl who isn't married is the girl who hasn't been asked_. Nothing will +ever spoil the satisfaction of that girl when showing that she _has_!" + +She wrote down the date, which she had forgotten. + +"Poor Monty would be so much more decorative for 'show' purposes. But I +explained quite frankly to Hugo that it would be his money I'd want!" + +She wrote, "_After thinking it well over_----" + +Then again she meditated. + +"Great things, reasons! The reason why so many marriages aren't a +success is because they haven't _enough_ 'reasons why' behind them. Now, +how far had I got with mine--ah, yes. Reason Number a Hundred: I'm +twenty-six; I shall never been any better-looking than I am now. Not +unless I'm better-dressed. Which (Reason a Hundred and One) I should be +if I married Hugo. Reason a Hundred and Two: my old lady won't live for +ever, and I should never get a better job than hers. Except his. Reason +Number a Hundred and Two and a Half: I do quite like him. He doesn't +expect anything more, so there's the other half-reason for taking him. +Reason a Hundred and Four: _he's_ never disapproved of me. Whereas Monty +always likes me against his better judgment. Much nicer for me, but +annoying for a husband. I should make Hugo an excellent wife." She added +this half-aloud (to the snapshot). + +"I should never shock _him_. Never bore him. Never interfere with him. +Never make him look silly--any sillier than he can't help looking with +that hair and that necktie he will wear. Leslie would have the sense, +when she wasn't amusing him at the moment, to retire to her _own rooms_ +(Reason a Hundred and Five for marrying well), and to stay there until +she was fetched. Reason a----" + +Here, in the full flow of her reasoning, Miss Long cast suddenly and +rather violently down her pen, and tore the sheet with Hugo's name in it +into tiny strips that she cast into the empty fireplace. + +"I can't _think_ to write a good letter to-day!" she excused herself to +herself as she got up from her chair. "I'm tired.... It was all that +talking from Taffy last night. Bother the child. _Bother_ her. _It's +unsettling!_--Bother _all_ engaged girls. (_And all the people shall say +Amen._) I wonder where they went to?... I shall ring up somebody to take +me on the river, I think. Plenty of time to say 'Yes' to Hugo later." + +The letter to Hugo, between the lines of which there had come the vision +of an engaged girl's happy face, remained, for the present, unfinished. + +Leslie went to the telephone. + +"O-o-o Chelsea," she called. "I want to speak to Mr. Scott, please." + +She thought, "This shall be my last free Sunday, and I'll have it in +peace!" + + * * * * * + +In Richmond Park the grass was doubly cool and green beneath the shade +both of the oaks and of the breast-high bracken where Gwenna and Paul +Dampier sat, eating the fruit and cake that they had bought on the way, +and talking with long stretches of contented silence. + +They were near enough actually to London and the multitude. But town and +people seemed far away, out of their world to-day. + +Gwenna's soft, oddly-accented voice said presently into the warm +stillness, "You'll take me up this afternoon?" + +"Up?" he said idly. "Where to?" + +"Up flying, of course." + +"No, I don't think so," said the young Airman quietly, putting his chin +in his hand as he lay in his favourite attitude, chest downwards in the +grass, looking at her. + +"Not flying? Not this afternoon?" + +"Don't think so, Little Thing." + +"Oh, you're lazy," she teased him, touching a finger to his fair head +and taking it quickly back again. "You don't want to move." + +"Not going to move, either; not until I've got to." + +She sighed, not too disappointed. + +Here in the dappled shade and the solitude with him it was heavenly +enough; even if she did glance upward at the peeps of sapphire-blue +through the leaves and wonder what added rapture it would be to soar to +those heights with her lover. + +"D'you know how many times you've put me off?" she said presently, +fanning the midges away from herself with her broad white hat. "Always +you've said you'd take me flying with you, Paul. And always there's been +something to stop it. Let's settle it now. Now, when will you?" + +"Ah," he said, and flung the stone of the peach he'd been eating into +the dark green jungle of bracken ahead of them. "Good shot. I wanted to +see if I could get that knob on that branch." + +She moved nearer to him and said coaxingly, "What about next Sunday?" + +"Hope it'll be as fine as this," he said, smiling at her. "I'd like all +the Sundays to be just like this one. Can't think what I did with all +the ripping days before this, Gwenna." + +She said, "I meant, what about your taking me up next Sunday?" + +"Nothing about it," he said, shaking his head. There was a little pause. +He crossed his long legs in the grass and said, "Not next Sunday. Nor +the Sunday after that. Nor any Sunday. Nor any time. I may as well tell +you now. You aren't ever coming flying," said the young aviator firmly +to his sweetheart. "I've settled _that_." + +The cherub face of the girl looked blankly into his. "But, Paul! No +flying? Why? Surely--It's safe enough now!" + +"Safe enough for me--and for most people." + +"But you've taken Miss Conyers and plenty of girls flying." + +"Girls. Yes." + +"And you _promised_ to take me!" + +"That was ages ago. That was when you were a girl too." + +"Well, what am I now, pray?" + +"Don't you know? Not '_a_ girl.' _My_ Girl!" he said. + +Then he moved. He knelt up beside her. He made love to her sweetly +enough to cause her to forget all else for a time. And presently, +flushed and shy and enraptured, she brought out of her vanity-bag the +tiny white wing that was to be his mascot, and she safety-pinned it +inside the breast of his old grey jacket. + +"That ought to be fastened somewhere to the P.D.Q.," he suggested. But +she shook her head. No. It was not for the P.D.Q. It was for him to +wear. + +Then she saw him weighing in his hand her own mascot, the little +mother-of-pearl heart with the silver chain. + +"Ah! You did remember to bring it, at last?" she said. + +Nestling against his arm, she lifted her chin and waited for him to snap +the trinket about her neck. + +He laughed and hesitated. She looked at him rather wonderingly. Then he +made a confession. + +"D'you know, I--I do hate to have to give it back again, Gwenna. I've +had it _so_ long. Might as well let me hold on to it. May I?" + +"Oh, you are greedy for keepsakes," she said, delighted. "What would you +_do_ with a thing like that?" + +"I've thought of something," said he, nodding at her. + +She asked, "What?" + +"Tell you another time," he smiled, with the locket clutched in the hand +that was about her waist. She flung back her head happily against his +shoulder, curling herself up like a kitten in his hold. They had settled +that they were going to walk on to Kew Gardens to tea, but it was not +time yet, and it was so peaceful here. Scarcely any one passed them in +that nook of the Park. Another happy silence fell upon the lovers. It +was long before the boy broke it, asking softly, "You do like being with +me, don't you?" There was no answer from the girl. + +"Do you, Gwenna?" It seemed still odd to be able to call her whatever he +liked, now! "Do you, my Little Sweet Thing?" + +Still she didn't answer. He bent closer to look at her.... Her long +eyelashes lay like two little dark half-moons upon her cheeks and her +white blouse fell and rose softly to her breathing. Drowsy from the late +hours she'd kept last night and from the sun-warmed silence under the +trees, she had fallen asleep in his arms. Her eyes were still shut when +at last she heard his deep and gentle voice again in her ear, "I suppose +you know you owe me several pairs of gloves, miss!" + +She laughed sleepily, returning (still a little shyly and unfamiliarly!) +the next kiss that he put on her parted lips. + +"I was _nearly_ asleep," she said, with a little sudden stretch that ran +all over her like a shake given to a sheet of white aluminium at the +Works. "Isn't it quiet? Feels as if _everything_ was asleep." She opened +her eyes, blinking at the rays of the sun, now level in her face. "Oh, I +_should_ like some tea, wouldn't you?" + +They rose to go and find a place for tea in Kew Gardens, among the +happy, lazing Sunday crowds of those whom it has been the fashion to +treat so condescendingly: England's big Middle-classes. There were the +conventional young married couples; "She" wearing out the long tussore +coat that seemed so voluminous; "He," pipe in mouth, wheeling the wicker +mail-cart that held their pink-and-white bud of a baby. There were also +courting couples innumerable.... + +(Not all of these were as reticent in the public eye as Gwenna had been +with her lover before Leslie.) + +To Gwenna the bright landscape and the coloured figures seemed a page +out of some picture-book that she turned idly, her lover beside her. She +had to remind herself that to these other lovers she herself and Paul +were also part of a half-seen picture.... + +They sat down at one of the green wooden tea-tables, and a waiter in a +greasy black coat came out under the trees to take Dampier's order. +Perhaps that started another train of thought in the girl's mind, for +quite suddenly she exclaimed, "Ah! I've thought of _another_ German now +that he was like!" + +"Who was that?" asked Paul. + +"Only a picture I used to see every day. A photograph that our Miss +Baker kept pinned up over her desk at the works in Westminster," +explained Gwenna. "The photograph of that brother of hers that she was +always writing those long letters to." + +"Always writing, was she? Was _he_ a waiter?" + +"No, he was a soldier. He was in uniform in that photo," Gwenna said, as +the little tray was set before her. "Karl was his name, Karl Becker.... +Do you take sugar?" + +"Yes. You'll have to remember that for later on," he said, looking at +her with his head tilted back and a laugh in his eyes, as she poured out +his tea. She handed it to him, and then sat sipping her own, looking +dreamily over the English gardens, over the green spaces flowered with +the light frocks and white flannels of other couples who perhaps called +themselves "in love," and who possibly imagined they could ever feel as +she and her lover felt. (Deluded beings!) + +She murmured, "What do you suppose all these people are thinking +about?" + +"Oh! Whether they'll go to Brighton or to South-end for their fortnight, +I expect," returned Paul Dampier. "Everybody's thinking about holidays +just now." + +Later, they stood together in the hushed gloom of the big chestnut aisle +beside the river that slipped softly under Kew Bridge, passing the +willows and islands and the incongruously rural-looking street of +Strand-on-the-Green. One of the cottage-windows there showed red blinds, +lighted up and homely. + +Young Dampier whispered to his girl--"Going on holidays myself, perhaps, +presently, eh?" + +"Oh, Paul!" she said blankly, "you aren't going away for a holiday, are +you?" + +"Not yet, thanks. Not without you." + +"Oh!" she said. Then she sighed happily, watching the stars. "To-day's +been the loveliest holiday I've ever had in my life. Hasn't it been +perfect?" + +"Not quite," he said, with his eyes on those red-lighted windows on the +opposite bank. "Not perfect, Gwen." + +"Not----?" she took up quickly, wondering if she had said something that +he didn't like. + +Almost roughly he broke out, "Oh, I say, darling! _Don't_ let's go and +have one of these infernally long engagements, shall we?" + +She turned, surprised. + +"We said," she reminded him, "that we weren't 'engaged' at all." + +"I know," he said. Then he laughed as he stooped and kissed her little +ringless fingers and the palms of her hands. "But----" + +There was a pause. + +"Got to _marry_ me one day, you know," said young Paul Dampier +seriously. + +He might have spoken more seriously still if he had known that what he +said must happen in ten days' time from then. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THAT WEEK-END + + +For the following week-end saw, among many other things that had not +been bargained for, those lovers apart again. + +The very next Saturday after that Aviation Dinner was that +not-to-be-forgotten day in England, when this country, still uncertain, +weighed the part that she was to play in the Great War. + +Late on the Friday night of an eventful week, Paul Dampier, the Airman, +had received a summons from Colonel Conyers. + +And Gwenna, who had left the Aircraft Works on Saturday morning to come +up to her Hampstead Club, found there her lover's message: + + "_Away till Monday. Wait for me._" + +She waited with Leslie. + +On that bright afternoon the two girls had walked, as they had so often +walked together, about the summer-burnt Heath that was noisy with +cricketers on the grass. They had turned down by the ponds where bathers +dived from the platforms set above the willows; clean-built English +youths splashing and shouting and laughing joyously over their sport. +Last time Gwenna had been with her chum it was she, the girl in love, +who had done all the talking, while Leslie listened. + +Now it was Leslie who was restless, strung-up, talkative.... A new +Leslie, her dark eyes anxious and sombre, her usually nonchalant voice +strained as she talked. + +"Taffy! D'you realise what it all means? Supposing we don't go in. We +may not go in to war with the others. I know lots of people in this +country will do their best so that we don't lift a finger. People like +the Smiths; my brother-in-law's people. Well-to-do, hating anything that +might get in the way of their having a good year and grubbing up as much +money as usual.... Oh! If we don't go in, I shall emigrate--I shall turn +American--I shan't want to call myself English any more! P'raps you +don't mind because you're Welsh." + +Little Gwenna, who was rather pale, but who had a curious stillness over +the growing anxiety in her heart, said, "Of course I mind." + +She did not add her thoughts, "_He_ said he hoped the War would come in +his time. I know _he_ would think it perfectly awful if England didn't +fight. And even I can feel that it would be horribly mean--just _looking +on_ at fighting when it came." + +Leslie, striding beside her up the hill, went on bitterly, "War! Oh, it +can't come. For years we've said so. Haven't we taken good care not to +let ourselves get 'hysterical' over the German 'scare'? Haven't we +disbanded regiments? Haven't we beaten our swords into cash-registers? +Haven't we even kept down the Navy? Haven't we spread and spread the +idea that soldiering was a silly, obsolete kind of game? Aren't we quite +clever and enlightened enough to look down upon soldiers as a kind of +joke? The brainless Army type. Don't let's forget _that_ phrase," urged +the soldier's daughter. "Why, Taffy, I'll tell you what happened only +last May. I went to Gamage's to get a birthday present for Hilary, my +sister Maudie's little boy. Of course he's _got_ heaps of everything a +child wants. Delightful floor games. Beautiful hand-wrought artistic +toys (made in Munich). Still, I thought he might like a change. I told +the man in the shop I wanted a toy-book of soldiers. Nice simple +drawings and jolly, crude, bright colours of all the different +regiments. Like we used to have at home. And what d'you suppose the +shopman said? He was very sorry, but 'they' hadn't stocked that class of +thing for some time now; so little demand for it! So little demand for +anything that reminds us we've got an Empire to keep!" + +Gwenna said half absently, "It was only toys, Leslie." + +"Only one more sign of what we're coming to! _Teaching the young idea +not to shoot_," said Leslie gloomily. "That, and a million other +trifles, are going to settle it, I'm afraid. If England is to come down, +_that's_ the sort of thing that will have done it.... Oh, Leslie's been +in it, too, and all her friends. Dancing and drifting and dressing-up +while Rome's been burning.... There'll be no war, Taffy." + +Gwenna said, quietly and convinced, "Yes, there will." And she quoted +the saying of the lady at the Aviation Dinner, "_If England is ever to +be saved, it will be by the few._" + + * * * * * + +They walked round the Highgate Ponds and down the steep hill between the +little, ramshackle, Victorian-looking shops of Heath Street. It was busy +as ever on a Saturday afternoon. They passed the usual troop of Boy +Scouts; the usual straggle of cricketers and lovers from or for the +Heath, and then a knot of rather boyish-looking girls and +girlish-looking boys wearing the art-green school-cap of some +co-educational institution. + +"What sort of soldiers do we expect those boys ever to make?" demanded +Leslie. + +Outside the dark-red-tiled entrance to the Hampstead Tube there was a +little crowd of people gathered about the paper-sellers with their pink +arresting posters of + + "RUMOURS OF WAR + ENGLAND'S DECISION." + +"They'll publish a dozen before anything _is_ decided," said Leslie. She +bought a paper, Gwenna another.... + +No; nothing in them but surmise--suspense--theories--they walked on, +passing Miss Armitage from the Club who had paused on the kerb to talk +to one of her friends, a long-haired man in a broad-leafed brown hat. He +seemed to be dispensing pamphlets to people in the street. As Miss +Armitage smiled and nodded good-bye to him the two other girls came up. +He of the locks slipped a pamphlet into the hand of Leslie Long. + +She glanced at it, stopped, and looked at it again. It was headed: + + "BRITAIN, STAND ASIDE!" + +Leslie stood for a moment and regarded this male. She said very gently, +"You don't want any War?" + +The long-haired person in the gutter gave a shrug and a little superior +smile. "Oh, well, that's assumed, isn't it?" he said. "_We_ don't want +any War." + +"Or any _country_, I suppose?" said Leslie, walking on. She held the +pamphlet a little gingerly between her finger and thumb. She had thought +of tossing it into the gutter--but no. She kept it as a curiosity. + + * * * * * + +Late that night she sat on Gwenna Williams' bed at the Club, suspense +eating at her heart. For all the soldier blood in her had taken her back +to old times in barracks, or in shabby lodging-houses in garrison towns, +or on echoing, sunny parade-grounds.... Times before she had drifted +into the gay fringes of the cosmopolitan jungle of Bohemian life in +London. Before the Hospital, the Art-school, the daily "job," with her +evenings for the theatre and the Crab-tree Club, and the dances she +loved. It is the first ten years of a child's life that are said to +"count." They counted now. The twenty-six-year-old Leslie, whose +childhood had been passed within sound of the bugle-call, waited, +waited, waited to know if the ideas of honour and country and glory +which she had taken in unconsciously in those far-off times were now to +be tossed down into the gutter as she would have tossed the leaflet of +that coward. These things, as Miss Armitage and her friends could have +told her, were mere sentimentalities--names--ideas. Yet what has ever +proved stronger than an Idea? + +"Oh, _Taffy_!" she sighed impatiently. "If we're told that we're to sit +still and nothing will happen?" + +And little Gwenna, lying curled up with a hand in her chum's, murmured +again, "_That's_ not what's coming." + +She was quiet because she was dazed with the sheer intensity of her own +more personal anxiety. "What will happen about Paul? What will _he_ +do?" + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE DIE IS CAST + + +On Sunday morning she and Leslie went to Church. + +In the afternoon they walked again, aimlessly. She felt that she was +only living until Monday, until his return to tell her something. In the +evening the two girls sat out on a seat on Parliament Hill; near where +the man with the standing telescope used to offer peeps at London for a +penny a time. Far, far below, lay London under her web of twinkling +lights. London, England's heart, with that silver ribbon of the river +running through it. Leslie looked away over that prospect as though she +had never seen it before. Little Gwenna turned from it to the view on +the other side--the grass spaces and the trees towards Hendon. She +thought, "On a night as clear as this, aeroplanes could easily go up, +even late." + +As the two girls reached the Club again they found a motor drawn up +beside the entrance. Steps came out of the darkness behind them. A man's +voice said "Miss Long." Leslie turned. + +There moved into the light of the street-lamp Hugo Swayne. His face, +somehow, had never looked less like an imitation of Chopin; or more like +an ordinary commonplace Englishman's. It was serious, set. Yet it was +exultant. For he, too, was a soldier's son. + +He spoke. "I say, I thought I'd bring you the news," he began gravely. +"It's all right. England goes in." + +"Is that official?" Leslie asked sharply. + +There was a shaky little "War?" from Gwenna. + +Then came other, quick steps on the asphalt path, and the girls saw over +Hugo's rather portly shoulder a taller, slighter figure coming up the +road behind him. + +It was hatless; the lamplight shone golden on its blonde head. Gwenna's +heart leaped to her lips. + +"Paul!" she cried, and made a running step towards him. In a moment +young Dampier was up with the others; the quartette standing as they had +stood on that spring night in this same place, after the Smiths' +dinner-party. There were hasty greetings, murmurs of "Not official?" + +"Ah, that's all right----" + +"They won't say for a day or so, but----" + +Then, clear and distinct, young Dampier's boyish voice rang out in a +curious announcement. "Glad _you're_ here, Hugo. I was coming to you. I +want to borrow rather a lot of money of you, at once. Forty pounds, I +think it is. Sorry. Must have it. It's for a marriage-licence!" + +Hugo, utterly taken aback, stared and murmured, "My dear +chap---- Certain---- A m----?" + +"Yes. I shall have to be off, you know. Of course. And I shall get +married before I go," announced Paul Dampier, brusquely. He turned as +brusquely to the girl. + +"You and I are going to get married by special licence," he told her, +"the day after to-morrow." + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +HER GUARDIAN'S CONSENT + + +The Reverend Hugh Lloyd, who was Gwenna Williams' only relative and +guardian and therefore the person from whom consent might be asked if +ever the girl wished to be engaged, sat reading _The Cambrian News_. He +sat, over his breakfast eggs and tea, in the kitchen-sitting-room of his +Chapel House. Inside, the grandfather clock ticked slowly but still +pointed (as ever) to half-past two; and the cosy room, with its Welsh +dresser and its book-shelves, still held its characteristic smell of +singeing hearthrug. Outside, quiet brooded over the valley that fine +August morning. The smoke from the village chimneys rose blue and +straight against the larches of the hill-side. The more distant hills of +that landscape were faintly mauve against the cloudless, fainter blue of +the late-summer sky. All the world seemed so peaceful! + +And the expression on the Reverend Hugh's face of a Jesuit priest under +its thatch of bog-cotton hair was that of a man at peace with all the +world. + +True, there were rumours, in some of the newspapers, of some War going +on somewhere in the world outside. + +But it was a long way from here to that old Continent, as they called +it! For the matter of that, it was a long way to London, where they +settled what they were going to do about Germany.... + +What they were going to do about Welsh Disestablishment was a good deal +more important, to a Welshman. There were some very good things about +that in this very article. The Reverend Hugh had written it himself. + +Presently, in the midst of his reading, his housekeeper (who was a +small, middle-aged woman, rather like a black hen) entered the room at a +run. + +"Telegram for you, sir." + +"Ah, yes; thank you, Margat," her master said as he took it. + +He had guessed already what was in it. Some arrangement to do with his +next Sabbath-day's journey. For he was a very popular preacher, invited +to give sermons by exchange in every country town in Wales. + +"This," he told his housekeeper complacently, as he tore open the +envelope, "will be to say am I ex Pected in Carnarvon on the Sat Teudeh, +or----" + +Here he broke off, staring at the message in his hand. It was a long +one. + +There was a moment's silence while the clock ticked. Then that silence +was broken by an exclamation, in Welsh, from a man startled out of all +professional decorum. He added, with more restraint, but also in Welsh, +"Great King!" + +Then he exclaimed, "Dear father!" and "_Name_ of goodness!" + +"What is it, Mr. Lloyd _bach_?" demanded his housekeeper excitedly in +Welsh, clutching her black, crochet wool shawl about her shoulders as +she waited by the side of the breakfast. + +"Is it somebody died?" In her mind's eye she saw already that loved orgy +of her kind--a funeral. + +The Reverend Hugh shook his handsome white head. Again he read through +the longest telegraph message that he had ever received: + +It ran: + + "_Dear Sir am going to marry your niece Gwenna to-morrow Tuesday + morning at Hampstead regret forced to give you this short notice + but impossible to do otherwise owing military duties trust you will + excuse apparent casualness will write further particulars yours + sincerely Paul Dampier Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps._" + +"_Name_ of goodness!" breathed the Reverend Hugh, brushing back his +white locks in consternation. And at short intervals he continued to +ejaculate. "What did I tell her? _What_ did I tell her!... Indeed, it's +a great pity I ever let her go away from home.... It was my fault; my +fault.... Young men----! This one sounds as if he was gone quite mad, +whatever." + +So the Reverend Hugh addressed his answer to Miss Gwenna Williams at her +Club. + +And it said: + + "_Coming up to see you nine-thirty Euston to-night. Uncle._" + + * * * * * + +"I'm sure he'll be simply horrid about it," Gwenna rather tremulously +told her betrothed that evening, as they walked, the small, curly-haired +girl in dark blue and the tall, grey-clad aviator, up and down the +platform at Euston Station, waiting for the Welsh train to come in. + +Little Gwenna was experiencing a feeling not unknown among those shortly +to be married; namely, that _every prospect was pleasing--save that of +having to face one's relatives with the affair_! + +"He was always rather a dret-ful old man," she confided anxiously to +Paul, as they paced the sooty flags of the platform. "It's _just_ like +him to be sixteen minutes late already just when I want to get this +over. He never understands anything about--about people when they're +young. And the first thing he's sure to ask is whether you've got any +money. Have you, Paul?" + +"Stacks," said the Airman, reassuringly. "Old Hugo made it sixty, as a +wedding-present. Decent of him, wasn't it?" + +They turned by the blackboard with the chalked-up notices of arrivals +and departures, and Gwenna ruefully went on with her prophecy of what +her Uncle would say. + +"He'll say he never _heard_ of anybody marrying an Airman. (I don't +suppose he's ever heard of an Airman at all before now!) Ministers, and +quarry-managers, and people _with some prospects_; that's the sort of +thing they've always married in Uncle Hugh's family," she said +anxiously. "And he'll say we've both behaved awfully badly not to let +him know before this. (Just as if there was anything to know.) And +he'll say you turned my silly head when I was much too young to know my +own mind! And then he's quite, quite sure to say that you only proposed +to me because---- Well, of course," she broke off a little reproachfully, +"you never even _did_ propose to me properly!" + +"Too late to start it now," said her lover, laughing, as the knot of +porters surged forward to the side of the platform. "Here's the train +coming in!" + + * * * * * + +Now Gwenna was right about the first thing that Uncle Hugh would ask, +when, after a searching glance and a handshake to this tall young man +that his niece introduced to him at the carriage-door, he carried off +the pair of them to the near-by hotel where the Minister always put up +on his few and short visits to London. + +"Well, young gentleman," he began, in his crisp yet deliberate Welsh +accent. He settled himself on the red plush sofa, and gazed steadily at +Paul Dampier on one of the red plush armchairs. "Well! And have you got +the money reck-quisite to keep a wife?" + +"No. I'm afraid I haven't, sir, really," returned the young man, looking +frankly back at him. "Of course I'd my screw. Three pounds ten a week, I +was getting as a pilot. But that was only just enough for myself--with +what I had to do for the Machine. Of course I'm going to have her--the +Flying Machine--taken up now, so----" + +"It's very little faith I have in such things as flying machines. +Flying? Yes, in the face of Providence, I call it," said the Reverend +Hugh, discouragingly, but with the dawn of some amusement in his +searching eyes. "What I say about the whole idea of Avi_ay_-shon +is--_Kite-high lunacy!_" + +"Uncle!" scolded Gwenna; blushing for him. But the young Airman took the +rebuke soberly enough. + +"And out of that income," went on Uncle Hugh, still looking hard, at +this modern suitor in that incongruous red-plush setting with its +Nineteenth Century clocks and ornaments, "out of that income you will +not have saved very much." + +"Afraid not, sir," agreed young Dampier, who, last night, had been down +to his last eightpence ha'penny and a book of stamps. "Not much to put +by, you know----" + +"Not even," took up the Reverend Hugh, shrewdly, "enough to pay for a +special marriage licence?" + +"Oh, yes, I had that. That is, I've raised _that_"--("Good old Hugo!" he +thought.)--"and a bit over," he added, "to take us for some sort of a +little trip. To the sea, perhaps. Before I go on Service." + +"Military service, do you mean?" said the Reverend Hugh. "Mmph! (I never +have held with soldiery. I do not think that I have ever come into +act--ual con--tackt with _any_.)" + +"Yes, I probably am going on Service, Mr. Lloyd," answered the young +man, quickly, and with a glance at the girl that seemed to indicate that +this subject was only to be lightly dealt with at present. "When, I am +not sure. Then I shall get my pay as a Flight-Lieutenant, you see. +Shan't want any money much, then. So _she_"--with a little nod towards +the small, defensively set face of Gwenna, sitting very straight in the +other red-plush armchair--"she will get that sent home, to her." + +"_I_ shan't want all your pay, indeed," interrupted the girl, hastily. +It seemed to her too revoltingly horrible, this talk about money +combined with this sense that a woman, married, must be an _expense_, a +burden. A woman, who longs to mean only freedom and gifts and treasure +to her lover! + +"Oh, a woman ought never, _never_ to feel she has to be _kept_," thought +Gwenna, rosy again with embarrassment. "If men don't think we _mind_, +very well, then let all the money in the world be taken away from men, +and given to us. Let _them_ be kept. And if they don't mind it--well, +then it will be a happier world, all round!" + +And as she was thinking this, she announced eagerly, "If--if you _do_ go +away, I shall stay on with the Aeroplane Lady, as I told you, Paul. Yes. +I'd _much_ rather I should have something to do. And I'd get nearly a +pound a week, and my keep. Besides! I've got my own money." + +"Which money, dear?" asked Paul Dampier. + +The quick eyes of the Reverend Hugh had not left the young man's face. + +They were fixed still more scrutinisingly upon it as the old man +interposed, "Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Dampier, that you were not +aware that my niece had got a little bit of her own?" + +"There! I _knew_ Uncle would say that!" burst out the young girl, angry +and blushing and ashamed. "I knew he'd say you were only marrying me +because of that! _He_ won't believe that it wouldn't make any difference +to you that I've got seventy-five pounds a year!" + +"Seventy-five pounds a year? _Have_ you?" said the young man, surprised. +"Really?" + +And it was Gwenna's turn to be surprised as his frank face cleared and +his voice took a very relieved note. + +"I say, how topping! Make no difference to me? But it does. Rather!" he +declared. "Don't you see that I shall know you won't _have_ to work, and +that I shall be ever so much more comfortable about you? Why did you +never tell me?" + +"I forgot," said Gwenna truly. + +And the Reverend Hugh suddenly laughed aloud. + +At the same time he hoped he had concealed his relief, which was great. +His youngest sister's girl was not going to be snapped up by a +fortune-hunter after all. That had always been his anxiety. Seventy-five +pounds a year (certain) remained a considerable fortune to this +Victorian. In his valley quite a large house, with a nice bit of garden, +too (running steeply up a mountain-side), was to be had for a rent of +sixteen pounds. He would have thought of that himself.... But the leggy, +fair-haired boy who was now smiling across the oval hotel table at his +Gwenna had meant only what he had said. The older man realised that. +So, waiving for the present the question of means, the Reverend Hugh +went on, in rather a modified tone, to ask other questions. + +Asking questions of the newly accepted suitor seems to be all that +remains for the parent or guardian of our times. It is the sole survival +of that potent authority which once disposed (or said it disposed) of +the young lady's hand. Clearing his throat with the same little sound +that so often heralded the words of some text from his pulpit, the +Reverend Hugh began by inquiring where Gwenna, after her short +honeymoon, was supposed to be going to live. + +Nowhere new, it appeared! She had her berth at the Aircraft Factory, her +room at Mrs. Crewe's cottage for when young Dampier was away. (Yes; from +his tone when he spoke of it, evidently that parting was to be kept in +the background and evaded as much as possible for the present.) And if +he were in London, he had his rooms in Camden Town. Do for them both, +perhaps.... His bachelor digs.; not bad ones.... + +Well, but no _house_? Dear me. That was a gipsyish sort of plan, wasn't +it? That was a new idea of setting up housekeeping to Uncle Hugh. He, +himself, was an old bachelor. But he could see that this was all very +different from the ideas of all the young couples in _his_ time. When +Gwenna's father, now, was courting Gwenna's mother, well! he, Hugh +Lloyd, had never heard such a lot of talk about _Mahoggani_. _And_ +tebbel-linen. _And_ who was to have the three feather-beds from the +old Quarry-house; Gwenna's mother, or Gwenna's mother's sister---- + +(All this the Reverend Hugh declaimed in his most distinct Chapel voice, +but still with his searching eyes upon the face of the husband-to-be.) + +The idea of most young girls, in getting married, he thought, was to get +a nice home of their own, as soon as possible. A comfortable house---- + +("I hate comfortable houses. So stuffy. Just like a tea-cosy. They'd +_smother_ me!" from Gwenna.) + +But the House, her Uncle Hugh had _Olwes_ understood, was the Woman's +fetish. Spring-cleaning, now; the yearly rites! And that furniture. "The +Lares," he went on in an ever-strengthening Welsh accent. "The +Pen--nates----!" + +"Oh, _those_!" scoffed the girl in love. "_Those_----!" + +So Gwenna didn't seem to think she would miss these things? She was +willing to marry without them? Yes? Strange!... Well, well! + +And what about this marriage-in-haste? Where was it to take place? In +that Church in Hampstead? A Church. Well! He, as an orthodox dissenting +minister, ought not, perhaps, to enter such a place of worship. But, +after all, this was not at home. This was only up here, in England. +Perhaps it wouldn't matter, just this once. + +And who was the clergyman who was going to officiate at the cerrymonny? +And what sort of a preacher, now, was _he_? (This was not known.) + +And Mr. Dampier's own relations? Would they all be at the Church? + +Only one cousin, he was told. That was the only relation Paul Dampier +had left. + +"Same as myself," said the Reverend Hugh, a little quietly. "A big +family, we were. Six boys, two girls; like people used to have. All +gone. Nothing left, but----" + +Here, for the first time taking his eyes from young Dampier, he turned +upon his niece with an abrupt question. With a quick nod towards her +husband-to-be, he demanded: "And where did you find _him_?" + +Little Gwenna, still on the defensive, but thawing gradually (since, +after all, Uncle Hugh had spoken in friendly tones to the Beloved), +Gwenna asked, "When, Uncle?" + +"The time that counts, my girl," said the Reverend Hugh; "the first +time." + +"Oh! I think it was--it was at a party I went to with my friend, Miss +Long, that I've told you about," explained Gwenna, a little nervously. +"And--and he was there. It's--_quite_ a long time ago, now." + +"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh. "Dukes! There is a lot of things seem +to go on, still, under the name of 'Party.'" And there was a sudden and +quite young twinkle in the eyes under the white thatch. + +Paul Dampier, not seeing it, began hastily: "I hope you understand, sir, +that we were only keeping all this to ourselves, because--well----" He +cleared his throat and made another start. "If I'd had the--er--the the +privilege of seeing Gwenna at your place----" Yet another start. "We had +no _idea_, of course," said Paul Dampier, "until fairly recently----" + +"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh again. Then, turning to the young man +whom Gwenna had said he would accuse of turning the head of one too +young to know her own mind, he remarked with some feeling, "I dare say +she had made up her mind, that first time, not to give you a bit of +peace until you'd sent off that telly-gram to me!" + + * * * * * + +As he was taking the bride-to-be back to her Club, young Dampier said, +smiling: "Why, darling, he's not a bad old chap at all! You said he +wouldn't understand anything!" + +"Well, he doesn't," persisted the mutinous Gwenna. But she laughed a +little, relentingly. + +Twenty minutes later her lover took his leave with a whispered +"Good-night. Do you know that I shan't ever have to say it again +at this blessed door, after this?... And another, for luck.... +Good-_night_--er--Miss Williams!" + +She ran upstairs humming a tune. + +She was so happy that she could feel kind even to old and unsympathetic +and cynical people to-night. + +To-morrow she was to be Paul Dampier's wife. + +It was hardly believable, still it was true! + +War, now threatening to tear him from her, had at least brought him to +her, first, sooner than she had ever hoped. Even if he were forced to +leave her quite soon, say in a month's time!--she would have had him +all to herself first, without any of these small, fretting good-byes +that came so punctually following every meeting! She would have _been_ +all his; his very own, she thought. + +And here it may be said that upon this subject Gwenna Williams' thoughts +were curiously, almost incredibly vague. That dormant bud of passion +knew so little of its own hidden root. + +Marriage! To this young girl it was a journey into a country of which +she had never formed any clear idea. Her own dreams had been the rosy +mists that obscured alike the heights and depths of that scarcely +guessed-at land. All she saw, clearly, was her fellow traveller; the +dear boy-comrade and sweetheart who would not now leave her side. What +did it matter where he took her, so that it was with him always? + +Only one more night, now, in the long, narrow Club bedroom where she had +dreamed that queer flying dream, and so many others, so many longing +daydreams about him! + +To-morrow was her wedding-day! + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +HASTE TO THE WEDDING! + + +The Tuesday morning that brought Gwenna's wedding-day as the morning of +the official declaration of war. + +It was in all the papers over which the girls at the Hampstead Club +pored, before they went off to their various avocations, staring, +half-realising only. + +"Can it be true?... War?... Nowadays?... Good gracious!... D'you suppose +it means we shall really have to send an army of ours--an English +Army--over to France?... What do you think, Miss Armitage?" + +Miss Armitage, the suffragette, then became voluble on the subject of +how very different all would have been if women had had the casting vote +in the matter. Intelligent women. Women with some insight into the wider +interests of their sex.... Not mere---- Here, by way of illustration, +this Feminist shot a vicious glance at Miss Long. Now, Leslie, dressed +in a lilac river-frock and wearing her black picture hat, was going +round the breakfast-table, under the very eye of the disapproving Lady +Principal with the gold curb brooch, on an errand of her own. She was +collecting from it the daintiest bits of dry toast, the nicest-looking +pats of butter, a white rose from the nosegay in the centre bowl, and +all that was left of the marmalade. + +For to Leslie Long the question whether War was to be or not to be +seemed now to have been settled an age ago. The burden of that anxiety +was lifted. The other anxieties ahead could be put aside for the +present. And she turned, with a tranquil face, to the immediate matter +in hand. She was going to take a little tray up to Gwenna, whom she had +advised to have her breakfast in bed and not to dress until she should +make herself all ready for her wedding at that church at the foot of the +hill. + +"'Good-morning, Madam Bride!'" said Leslie, smiling, as she came, tray +in hand, into the little room where Gwenna was still drowsily curled up +against her pillow. "Here's a little bit of sugar for the bird." She sat +down on the side of the bed, cutting the dry buttered toast into narrow +strips for her chum, taking the top off her egg for her. + +"But I won't '_help to salt, help to sorrow_' for you," she went on +talking, just a trifle more brightly than naturally. "Curious thing +about a wedding, Taff--I mean _one_ of the curious things about a +wedding, is the wide desire it gives you to quote every aged, half-pay +proverb and tag that you've ever heard. '_Marriage is a_----" + +"Not '_lottery_,' Leslie! Not that one!" begged the bride-to-be, sitting +up and laughing with her mouth full of toast. "We had it four times from +Uncle Hugh before we left him last night. '_Few prizes! Many blanks!_'" +she quoted joyously. All Monday she had been tremulously nervous. The +reaction had come at the right moment. + +"'_Happy is the Bride that the sun shines on_,' then," amended Leslie. +"You'll be glad to hear it's shining like Billy-oh this morning." + +"_I_ saw it," said Gwenna, nodding her curls towards the open casement. +"And I shall be getting '_Married in white, sure to be right_,' too!" + +The white lingerie frock she was to put on was not new, but it was the +prettiest that she had. It lay, folded, crisp as a butterfly's wing and +fresh from the wash, on the top of her chest-of-drawers, with the white +Princesse slip--that _was_ new, bought by her in a hurry the day +before!--and the white silk stockings, and the little white suede shoes. + +"'_Something old_, _something new_, _something borrowed_, _something +blue_,'" Leslie capped her quotation. "Where's the '_something blue_,' +Taffy?" + +"Ribbons in my camisole; and I shall 'borrow' your real lace +handkerchief, may I?" said the bride-elect. + +"Rather! All that I have, even unto the half of the best-man's +attention!" said Leslie, smiling gaily into the cherub face opposite. + +But, even as she smiled, she felt that pang which is supposed to be +known only to the _man_ who sees his chosen pal prepare to be "married +and done for." + + * * * * * + +For this morning, that turned an adoring sweetheart into a wife, was +taking something of her own, of the bridesmaid's youth away. + +Gwenna Williams married! + +That meant one more girl-chum who would never, never be quite the same +again to a once-treasured companion. That bubbling fountain of innocent +confidences would now run low, as far as Leslie was concerned. No longer +would the elder, quickly-sympathising, rebellious-tongued girl be the +first to hear what happened to her little, ingenuous friend. + +The girlish gossip would have a masculine censor to pass. + +Leslie could foretell the little scene when it first happened. + +She could hear Gwenna's eager, "Oh, Paul! Leslie would so laugh at----" +whatever the little incident might be. "I must tell her that!" + +Leslie, the bachelor-girl, could imagine the tilt of the young husband's +blonde head, and his doubtful, "Don't see why it should be supposed to +interest _her_." + +She could imagine the little wife's agreeing, "Oh! Perhaps not." + +And again the young husband's, "Don't you think Miss Long gets a little +bit _much_ sometimes? Oh, she's all right, but--I mean, I shouldn't like +_you_ to go on quite like that." + +It would be only after years of marriage that the once-close chum would +turn for sympathy to Leslie Long. And then it would not be the same.... + +The last of Leslie's forebodings seemed the most inevitable. She heard +Gwenna's soft Welsh voice, once so full of unexpectedness, now grown +almost unrecognisably sedate. She heard it utter that finally +"settled-down"-sounding phrase: + +"_Say 'how d'you do' nicely to Auntie Leslie, now!_" + +Ah! _That_ seemed to bring a shadow of Autumn already into the summer +sunshine of that bridal room with its white, prepared attire, its +bonnie, bright-eyed occupant. It seemed to show what must some day come: +Taffy middle-aged! + +Also what probably would come: Taffy matter-of-fact! Taffy with all the +dreams out of her eyes! Taffy whose only preoccupations were, "Really +that stair-carpet's getting to look awful; I wonder if I could manage to +get a new one and put it on the upper flight?" or, "_I_ never saw +anything like the way _my_ children wear through their boots: it was +only the other day I got that quite expensive pair of Peter Pans for +little Hughie. And now look at them. _Look!..._" + +Yes! This sort of change was wrought, by time and marriage and +domesticity, in girl after golden girl. Leslie had seen it. She would +probably see Taffy, the fanciful Celt, grown stodgy; Taffy, even Taffy, +the compactly supple, with all her fruit-like contours, grown +_stout_!... + +Horrible thought.... + +Then Miss Long gave a protesting shrug of her slim shoulders. This +wouldn't do. Come, come! Not on the wedding-morning itself should one +give way to thoughts of coming middle-age! The rose, that must, some +day, be overblown, was only just a pouting bud as yet. There were days +and fragrant days of beauty still before her. + +So Leslie picked up her chum's rough towels, her loofah and her +verbena-scented soap. + +"I'll turn on the bath for you, Taffy, shall I? Hot or cold?" + +"Cold, please," said the Welsh girl, springing out of bed and pattering +over the oil-cloth to fetch her kimono. "Perhaps to-morrow I shall be +able to have a real swim! Oh, won't that be gorgeous?" For the couple +had decided upon Brighton for the honeymoon. It was near enough to +London in case young Dampier received a summons; yet near also to +country-tramps and sea-bathing. "I haven't had a swim this year, except +in the baths. And you can't count that. Oh, _fancy_ the sea again, +Leslie!" + +Leslie could guess what was at the back of that little exultant skip of +the younger girl's through the bathroom door. It was sheer innocent +delight over the prospect of being able to display to her lover at last +something that she did really well. + +For they had never been by the sea together, he and she. + +And she was a pretty swimmer. + + * * * * * + +"Now I'll be your maid for the last time, and fasten you up," said +Leslie, when she returned from the bathroom. "I suppose you know there +isn't a _single_ eye left at the neck of this dress? Always the way with +that laundry! It's nothing to _it_ that untidiness puts a man off worse +than anything else (this from me). Never mind, I'll hook it into the +lace.... That's all right. '_A bonnie bride is soon buskit._' Almost a +pity the girls will all have gone--though I know you'd hate to have them +staring. D'you know, you _are_ a little pocket-Venus? No, I'm _not_ +piling it on. You're lovely, Taffy. I hope the Dampier boy tells you so, +very often and much. He's vastly lucky." + +"It's me that's lucky," said the girl in all-white devoutly. "Now +where's my hat?" + +"Do you think you're going to be allowed to get married in a _hat_?" + +"My best white one with the wings, I meant." + +"Pooh! I've arranged for you to have these," said Leslie, and brought +out a cardboard box that she had been to fetch while Gwenna was having +her bath. From it she drew a slender chaplet of dark leaves, with round +white buds with waxen flowers. + +"Orange-blossoms! _Real_ orange-blossoms," cried Gwenna, delightedly +sniffing up the sensuous perfume of them. "Oh, but _where_ did you get +them?" + +"Covent Garden. I went down there this morning at five, with one of the +housemaids whose young man is at a florist's," explained Leslie, +standing above her to set the pretty wreath upon the pretty head. "Now +you look like a print of 'Cupid's Coronation,' or something like that. +'_Through his curls as the crown on them slips_'--I'll twist this a tiny +bit tighter. And here's the veil." + +Gwenna stared. "A veil, too, Leslie?" + +"Rather. Only chance you get of appearing in this thoroughly becoming +kit that carries us all back to the worst days of Woman's Enslavement. +May as well take that chance!" remarked Miss Long cheerfully, as she +shook out soft, transparent folds of finest white net that she herself +had embroidered, working late into the night, with a border of leaves in +white silk. "This is from me." + +"Oh, _Les_-lie! You got it as a surprise for me," said the little bride, +much touched. "You worked all these beautiful little laurel-leaves----" + +"Not laurel, child. Meant for myrtle. Pity your geography is so weak," +rattled on Leslie, as she heard, outside the Club, the stopping of the +taxi which had brought the Reverend Hugh Lloyd to call for his +detachment of the bridal party. "Refreshingly unconventional sort of +wedding you're having in some ways, aren't you? '_The presents were few +and inexpensive_' (such a change from the usual report). '_The bride was +attended by one bridesmaid: her friend Miss Long, clad in mauve linen, +mystic, wonderful_'--(taking into consideration that it had done her +cousin for Henley last year). '_The ceremony proceeded without a hitch, +except for the usual attempt on the part of the officiating clergyman to +marry the bride to the best man._' Which must not be, Taffy. You must +remember that I've got designs on Mr. Hugo Swayne myself----" + +"Don't, Leslie!" protested the bride. "You know I do so hate to think of +you getting engaged in that sort of horrible way--instead of just +because you can't _help_ it! If only there were somebody you could be +really in love with----" + +"I shall be really rather in love with Uncle Hugh, I know," prophesied +the bridesmaid. "_What_ a pity he isn't thirty years younger! Come +along. He's waiting. I'm going to kiss _him_, anyhow. Got your gloves? +Right. Got my hankerfish? You won't _want_ to shed any tears into it, +but----" + +But there was an added brightness in the green-brown eyes of the little +bride as she glanced round the girlish room where Leslie would pack up +and put everything to rights for her after she had gone. + +Impulsively she put her arms round that good chum. + +"You've been so--so frightfully sweet to me, Leslie, always. Thanks so +awfully----" + +"_Don't_ kiss me through a veil, my child!" protested Leslie, drawing +back. "D'you want to bring me ill luck?" + +"Oh, Leslie! I should want to bring you all the good luck in the world," +cried the younger girl, earnestly, over her shoulder as they went out. +"If I were given three wishes _now_ for a wedding-present, one of them +would be that you would some day be as happy as me!" + +"My dear lamb!" said Leslie lightly, running downstairs after her, "How +do you know I'm not quite as happy in another--in my own way?" + +Gwenna shook the curly head under the orange-blossom wreath and the +misty veil. It seemed to her that there was only The One Way in which a +woman could be happy. + +"And the other two wishes?" suggested Leslie, at the sitting-room door. +"What are they?" + +"Mustn't tell," smiled the little bride of Superstition with her finger +at her lips. "If I told they _might_ not come true!" + + * * * * * + +Very earnestly she hoped that those two wishes might come true. She +thought of them again, presently, as she stood, there in church, a +small, white-mist-clad figure, backed by the coloured window and the +crimson altar. She had the kindly glances upon her of her uncle, of her +tall girl-chum, and of Hugo Swayne--who wore a perfect morning coat with +a white flower and grey trousers, admirably pressed by his man Johnson. +Hugo, but for his Chopin stock, would have looked the very model of a +prosperous and conventional bridegroom. He did, in fact, look far more +like the popular conception of a bridegroom than did young Paul Dampier +in his well-cut but ancient grey tweed suit. + +--"The only togs I've got in the wide world," he'd confided to Gwenna, +"except working clothes and evening things!" + +She stood with her hand in his large, boyish one, repeating in her soft, +un-English accent the vows that once seemed to her such a vast and +solemn and relentless undertaking. + +"_To love, honour, and obey ... as long as we both shall live...._" + +It seemed now so little to have to promise! It seemed only a fraction of +all that her heart gave gladly to the lord of it! + +"_Till Death us do part_," she repeated quietly. + +And it was then she thought of the two wishes. One was that Paul should +be always as much in love with her as he was at that moment. + +She was too young fully to realise the greater wisdom of her own second +wish. + +_It was that she herself should always remain as much in love with +Paul._ + +If only God would be very, very kind to them, she thought, and allow +just this to be! + + * * * * * + +"And you sign your name here," said the clergyman in the vestry to the +newly-made husband, who put down in his small neat handwriting, "Paul +Dampier, Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps," on the grey-blue sheet, which, +duly witnessed and blotted, he was going to tuck away into the +breast-pocket of his tweed jacket. + +"No. Those marriage lines are not yours," the parson stopped him with a +smile. "Those are the property of your wife." + +Gwenna, dazed, realised that this referred to herself. She took the +folded marriage-certificate and slipped it into the white satin ribbon +girding her pretty frock. She looked very childish for "a wife"! But for +that bright wedding-ring on her finger (half a size too large for it) +she might have passed for one of the veiled and white-clad First +Communicants of an Easter Sunday in Paris. Then she turned up the little +face, from which the veil had been thrown back, to be kissed by the +others who had followed them into the vestry. Vaguely she heard +Leslie's voice, arranging in murmurs with Hugo Swayne. "No. Perhaps I'll +come on afterwards.... After I've helped her to change.... No; you take +Mr. Lloyd and feed him somewhere. No! I'm sure those two won't want to +come on to any lunch. Lunch? My dear man!... Send them in your car to +Victoria and Johnson can bring it back.... They'll be getting away at +once." + +At once! Gwenna looked up into her young husband's blue eyes. + +He caught her hand. + +"Got you now," he said softly. "Can't run away this time." + +By rights she should have walked down the church on his arm. But he did +not loose her hand. So it was hand-in-hand, like children, that they +hurried out again, ahead of the others, into the sunshine of the porch. +The merry breeze took the bride's veil and spread it, a curtain of mist, +across the pair of them. Gwenna Dampier caught it aside, laughing +gleefully as they stepped out of the porch. The gravity of the service +had sparkled into gaiety in their eyes. He crushed her fingers in his. +Her heart sang. They would be off----! It was almost too lovely to be +true, but---- + +Yes. It _was_ too lovely to be true. + +A shadow fell across the path; across the bride's white shoe. + +Johnson, Hugo's man, who had been waiting with the car, stepped quickly +up to the bridegroom. + +"Excuse me, sir, but this message.... Came just as you'd gone into +church. I waited. The woman brought it on from your rooms, sir." + +Paul Dampier took the wire and read it. + +The white-frocked girl he had just married stood at the church entrance +watching him, while the breeze lifted her veil and stirred her curls and +tossed a couple of creamy petals, from her wreath, on to the breast of +his coat. She herself stood motionless, stony. + +She knew that this was no wire of congratulation such as any bridal +couple may expect to receive as they come out of church from their +wedding. She knew, even before she heard his deep voice saying--blankly +and hurriedly: + +"I say. It's from the War Office. I shall have to go. I've got to leave +you. Now. I'm ordered to join at once!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM + + +Gwenna Dampier was always to be truly thankful that at that thunderbolt +moment of parting at the church door from the lover who had only been +her husband for the last quarter of an hour she had been too dazed to +show any emotion. + +As at the Aviation Dinner she had been numbed by excess of joy, so, now, +the shock had left her stony. She knew that she had turned quite a calm +little face to the concerned and startled faces of the others as they +hurried up to ask what was happening that Paul should be getting into +that car alone. It was as quiet and calm to receive Paul's last kiss as +he held her strained for a moment almost painfully close to him, +muttering, "Take care of yourself, Little Thing." + +At the moment it struck her as rather funny, that. + +_She_ was to take care of herself! She, who was just to stay quietly at +home, doing nothing. And this was what he told her; he, who was going +off on service, _where_, he himself didn't know. Off, to serve as an +Army Aviator, a flyer who swooped above enemy country, to shoot and to +be shot at; every instant in peril of his life. + +She even smiled a little as the motor rattled down the hill with him, +leaving her to Leslie, and to Uncle Hugh, and to Mr. Hugo Swayne. + +She found herself thinking, sedately, that it was a good thing Paul had +got most of his field service equipment yesterday; shopping while she +had shopped, while she had bought the white shoes and the silk +stockings, the Princesse slip and the handful of other dainty girlish +things that had been all the _trousseau_ she could collect in such a +hurry. Yes, Paul was all ready, she told her friends. She wouldn't see +him again before he left London, she expected. + +She did not see him again. + +That night at the Club, when she was still dazedly quiet--it was Leslie +Long who had to swallow lumps in her own throat, and to blink back +starting tears from her eyes--that night there arrived the first note of +his that had ever been addressed to: + + "_Mrs. Paul Dampier._" + +It was scrawled and hurried and in pencil. It began: + + "My darling Wife." It told her to address to the War Office until + she heard from him, and that she would hear from him whenever he + could manage it. It ended up, "_I was so jolly proud of you because + you took it like that, you can't think. I always thought you were a + sweet Little Thing. I knew you'd be a plucky Little Thing too. + Bless you. It's going to be all right._ + + "_Your affectionate husband_, + "P. D." + +It was Leslie who cried herself to sleep that night; not Gwenna Dampier. + +Only gradually the girl came out of the stupor that had helped her, to +the realisation of what had really happened. He'd gone! She'd been +left--without him! But as one source of help disappeared, another came +to hand. + +It was that queer mixture of feelings that the more enlightened young +women at the Club would have called "The conventional point of view." + +Miss Armitage at the Club tea-table said to her friends, "Nayowh, I +don't consider them at all 'splendid,' as you call it, these girls who +go about quite smiling and happily after their husbands have embarked +for the War. Saying good-bye without shedding a tear, indeed; and all +that kind of thing. Shows they can't _care_ much. Heartless! +Unsensitive! Callous, I call them." + +The art-student with the Trilby hair, who was never quite certain +whether she agreed with all Miss Armitage's views or whether she didn't, +remarked that really--really anybody who'd seen Miss Williams' face when +that young man called for her _couldn't_ help thinking that she cared. +Most awfully. If _she_ didn't make a fuss, it must be because she was +rather brave. + +"Brive? _I_ don't call it that," declared Miss Armitage. "It's just 'the +thing to do' among those people. They've made a regular idol of this +stupid, deadening Convention of theirs. They all want to be alike. +'Plucky.' 'Not showing anything.' Pah! I call it crushing out their own +individuality for the sake of an ideal that isn't anything very _much_, +if you ask me. They all catch it from each other, these wretched Army +men's wives. It's no more _credit_ to them than it is to some kinds of +dogs not to howl when you hold them up by their tiles." + +The Trilby art-student put in shyly, "Doesn't that show that they're +well bred?" + +Miss Armitage, the Socialist, fixing her through her glasses, demanded, +"When you sy 'Well bred' d'you mean the dogs are--or the women that +don't cry?" + +"Well--both, perhaps," ventured the art-student, blushing as she helped +herself to jam. Miss Armitage, with her little superior smile, gave out, +"There's no such thing as well bred, what _you_ mean by it. What you +mean's just pewer snobbery. The reel meaning of well bred is somebody +who is specially gifted in mind and body. Well, all you _can_ say of the +minds of Army people is that they haven't got any. And I don't know that +_I'm_ impressed by their bodies." + +Here a student of music from the other side of the table said she saw +what Miss Armitage meant, exactly. Only, as for Army people, Gwenna +Williams couldn't have been called that. Her people were just sort of +Welsh Dissenters, awfully _against_ soldiers and that kind of thing. + +"Doesn't matter. She's the sort of girl who's just like a chameleon: +takes all her colour from the man she's supposed to be in love with," +said Miss Armitage loftily. "She'll know that she'll never _keep_ him +unless she's just like the class of women he thinks most of. (As it is, +I don't see what that empty-headed girl's got to keep a man _with_.) +So, as I say, she'll _suppress_ her own identity, and grow the kind 'He' +happens to like." + +The art-student murmured that she supposed it didn't really _matter_, a +girl doing that. Provided that the new "identity" which was "grown to +please the man" were a better one than the old. + +Miss Armitage the Feminist, sniffed; silent with contempt for this idea. +Then she turned again to the student of music, to conclude the +summing-up of the new bride's character. + +"She'll be positively stimulated and buoyed-up, all the time, by the +thought that 'He' considered it plucky of her to go on as if she was +quite pleased that he was fighting!" declared the lecturer. "You see! By +and by she'll believe she _is_ pleased. She'll catch the whole +detestable Jingow spirit, _I_ know. Syme attitude of mind as the Zulu +who runs amuck at the sound of a drum. Hysterical, that's what _I_ call +what's at the root of it all!" + + * * * * * + +But whatever Miss Armitage, the Cockney suffragette, chose to call it, +it was there, that Spirit. + +In those few weeks after the declaration of war it spread and throve +over all England. It made Life still worth living, and well worth +living, for thousands of anxious sweethearts, and of mothers giving only +sons for their country, and of wives who missed closest comrades, and of +young widows who had but lately been made brides. + +It inspired, through the girl he left behind him, the man who went to +war; and thus its influence became part of that subtle but crucial thing +which is known as the Moral of an Army, and of an Empire and of a +Civilisation. + +It was, as Leslie Long, the lover of quotations, often quoted to herself +in those days: + + "The Voice to Kingly boys + To lift them through the fight; + And comfortress of Unsuccess + To give the dead Good-night. + + "A rule to trick the arithmetic + Too base of leaguing odds, + The spur of trust, the curb of lust, + The hand-maid of the gods." + + * * * * * + +Little Gwenna, the wife who had been left at the church door, took all +the help that Spirit gave her. + +Two days after her wedding her Uncle Hugh went back to the slate-roofed +village that was wedged between those steep, larch-grown Welch hills. +But, though his niece found that this "dreat-ful" old man could be all +that was gentle and kind for her, she refused to go home, as he begged +her, with him. + +She said she must live somewhere where she could "see a little bit of +what was going on." She must have some work, real work, to fill her +time. She thanked him; she would let him know directly she felt she +could come down to Wales. But just now, please, she wanted nothing but +to get back to Mrs. Crewe, her Aeroplane Lady at the Works. She'd go +back just as if nothing had happened. + +She returned, to find changes at that Aircraft Factory. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT" + + +The first of these changes at the Aircraft Works was the sight of the +khaki-clad sentry at the entrance. + +He was pacing up and down the bit of dusty road outside the shops; and +he stopped Gwenna peremptorily, not knowing that she was one of the +staff. + +She told him, and went on. She found the big central shop in a ferment +of activity. Mr. Ryan, striding out on some hurried errand, nearly +knocked her over. He called an "Awfully sorry, Miss Gwenna--Mrs. +Dampier, I mean," over his shoulder. She saw that his day of dalliance +was past, even had she been still "Miss Gwenna." He had less time for +Girl, nowadays. The frames of no fewer than four aeroplanes were set up +on the stocks; and out of the body of the most nearly completed one +there climbed the slight figure of the Aeroplane Lady. Her blue and +youthful eyes lighted up at the sight of the girl standing in the clear, +diffused light of the many windows and backed by the spinning shafting. + +"Ah! You've arrived, Mrs. Dampier," she said briskly, using the new name +without a pause or a smile, for which Gwenna blessed her. "Thank Heaven +I shall have a reliable clerk again.... No end of correspondence now, my +dear. A sheaf of it waiting in the office. Come on and see to it now, +will you? And for goodness' sake remind me that I am 'theirs +obediently,' instead of merely 'truly,' to the Admiralty. I always +forget. If I were left to myself my letters would sound just like the +aviator's who wrote to the POWERS-THAT-BE: '_Commander So-and-So +presents his compliments and begs respectfully to submit that don't you +think it would be a jolly good thing if we started a repairing +shop?_'--somewhere or other. Well! Here we are, you see. Stacks of it!" +she went on as they reached that office where an airman's sweetheart had +first realised the idea that an aeroplane might mean a ship of war--war +in the clouds. + +"We shall have as much work as we can get through now," said the +Aeroplane Lady. "Look at this order from the War Office. And this--and +this!" + +For to all intents and purposes the War Office and the Admiralty had +"taken over" Mrs. Crewe's Aircraft Factory. + +The place rang and echoed, long after the hours of the ordinary working +man's working day, with the clinking and whirring and hammering of those +labours that went to bring forth these great wings of War. + +Some of the French mechanics whom Gwenna had known well by sight had +disappeared. They had been served with their mobilisation papers and +were now off to serve under the Tricolour. + +One or two of the English fitters, who were Reservists, had rejoined. +One had enlisted. + +But now, the Aeroplane Lady explained, the enlisting of any more of her +men had been discouraged. _They_ were too useful where they were. They, +with many other sturdy Britons who fretted because they were not to take +up other, riskier work on the other side of the Channel, were kept busy +enough preparing the arms which those other, envied men were to use. + +It was for the encouragement of them and their fellow-workers in +Armament and Ammunition factories that a bundle of blue-lettered posters +came down presently to the Works. + +Gwenna, once more arrayed in the grey-blue, dope-stiffened pinafore, +had the job of pinning up here and there, in the shops and sheds, these +notices. They announced to the Man at the Bench that he was as needful +to his country as the Man in the Trench. They gave out: + + "YOU CAN HIT THE ENEMY AS HARD WITH + HAMMER AND RIVET AS YOU CAN WITH + RIFLE AND BULLET. + HIT HIM! + HURRY UP WITH THE SHIPS AND GUNS!" + + * * * * * + +And she, too, little Gwenna Dampier, clerk and odd-job-girl, felt +herself respond to the appeal. As she typed letters and orders, as she +heated dope, as she varnished for the men's handling those huge blue +prints with the white, spider's-web-like "working drawings," or as she +tested square inches of the fine wing-linen, she felt that she, too, +was helping in her way to hurry up with those needed ships and guns. + +Was she not lucky in her job? + +For always she was buoyed up by the notion that whatever she touched +might be of service, not only to the country which the Beloved was +serving, but to the Beloved himself. Who knew? He himself might have to +fly in any one of these very machines! Every least part, every atom of +metal about them bore the visible, indestructible stamp of the English +War Office. And Gwenna herself bore that unseen but indelible stamp of +her love to her absent lad in every inch of her pliant girl's body, in +every thought of her malleable girl's mind. + +So the late summer weeks passed as she worked, glad in the thought that +any or all of it might be for him. She felt sorry for those women who, +when their man is away, have nothing but purely feminine work with which +to fill the empty days. Sewing, household cares, knitting.... She +herself knitted, snatching minutes from the twelve-o'clock dinner-hour +in the cottage with Mrs. Crewe to add rows to the khaki woollen +cap-comforter that she had started for Paul. It was just a detail in her +own busy life. But it struck her that for countless left-behind women +this detail remained all that they had to do; to knit all day, thinking, +wondering, fretting over the Absent. + +"That must be so _awful_! I don't think I should want to _live_," she +told the Aeroplane Lady one dinner-hour, "if there wasn't something else +really wanted by the men themselves, that I could have to do with! +Every soldier's wife," said Gwenna, drawing herself up above the table +with a pretty and very proud little gesture which made Mrs. Crewe smile +a little, "I think every soldier's wife ought to have the chance of a +job in some factory of this sort. Or in a shop for soldiers' comforts, +perhaps. Like that woman has in Bond Street where I bought those +extra-nice khaki handkerchiefs for Paul. _She's_ always thinking out +some sort of new 'dodge' for the Front. A new sleeping-rug or +trench-boots or something. A woman can feel she's taking some part in +the actual campaign then. Don't you think so, Mrs. Crewe? But there +aren't many other things she can do," concluded the girl with that soft, +up-and-down accent, "unless she's actually a Red Cross nurse looking +after the wounded. There's nothing else." + +"Oh, isn't there? Surely----" began the Aeroplane Lady. Then she +stopped, with a half-humorous, half-sad little smile in her eyes. + +She was going to have suggested that the biggest Job that a woman can +achieve has, at the root of things, everything to do with the carrying +on of a campaign. Those English workmen in the shops were responsible +for the perfect and reliable workmanship of the ships and guns. It was +only the women of England who could make themselves responsible for the +soundness and reliability of the men of the next generation, their +little sons now growing up, to be perhaps the soldiers of the next war. +All this flashed through the mind of the Aeroplane Lady, who was also +the mother of a fighting airman. + +But, on second thoughts, she decided that she would not say anything +about it. Not to this cherub-headed, guileless girl who bore Paul +Dampier's name, and who wore his glitteringly new wedding-ring on her +finger (that is, when she hadn't forgotten it, where it lay in the +soap-dish in the bathroom or hanging up on a peg in the Wing-room beside +her sunshine-yellow jersey coat. It was, as the newly-married Mrs. +Dampier explained, miles too big for her, and she hated getting it a +mass of dope). + +So, instead of saying what she was going to say, the Aeroplane Lady +drank tea out of a workman-like-looking, saucerless Brittany cup with +two handles, and presently asked if there were anything exciting that +she might be allowed to hear out of the letter that had arrived that +morning from Mr. Dampier. + +Those eagerly-looked-for, greedily-devoured letters from the young +Airman to his wife were uncertain qualities enough. + +Sometimes they came regularly, frequently, even two in a day, for Gwenna +to kiss, and to learn by heart, and to slip under her pillow at night. + +Then for days and weeks there would be nothing from him; and Gwenna +would seem to herself to be going about with her flesh holding its +breath in suspense all over her body. + +That suspense was not (curiously enough) too agonised for his safety. + +She had laughed quite easily the day that one of the older workmen had +said to her kindly, if tactlessly: + +"Ah, Miss Williams--or ma'am, as I s'pose I ought to say--I do feel +sorry for you, I do. You here, same as when you was a single young lady. +Your young gentleman God knows where, and you knowing that as likely as +not you never _will_ see him again, p'raps." + +"If I were not going to see him again," the girl had said tranquilly, "I +should know. I should feel it. And I haven't that feeling at all, Mr. +Harris. I'm one of those people who believe in presentiments. And I know +I _shall_ see him, though I don't know when." + +That was the only trouble! When? _When?_ When would she have something +for her love to live on, besides just messages on lifeless paper? + +Paul's letters were sometimes mere hasty scrawls. An "All's well," a +darling or so, and his name on a bit of thin ruled paper torn from a +note-book and scented vaguely with tobacco.... + +To-day it was a longer one. + +"It's dated four days ago only, and it's just headed 'FRANCE,'" said +young Mrs. Dampier, sitting, backed by the cottage window, with the +level Berkshire landscape, flowering now into lines of white tents for +the New Army in training, behind her curly head. "He says: + + "'Last week I had a day, if you like! Engaged with two Taubes in the + morning. Machine hit in four places. In the afternoon, as I was up + reconnoitring, I saw below me a railway train, immensely long, + going along as slow as a slug, with two engines. Sent in my report + to Head Quarters, and wasn't believed, if you please. They said + there couldn't be a train there. Line was destroyed. However, they + did condescend to go and look. Afterwards I was told my report was + of the greatest value----' + +"There! Think of that," broke off Gwenna, with shining eyes. + + "'And it's leaked out now that what I saw was a train crammed with + ammunition. Afterwards (same day) went and dropped bombs on some + works at--I'd better not say where!--and hope I get to know what + damage was done. I know one was a clinking shot. A great game, + isn't it?' + +"_Isn't_ it!" murmured the girl who had shuddered so at her first +realisation of her lover as a possible fighter. But now, after these +weeks, she shrank no longer. Gradually she had come to look upon War as +a stupendous Adventure from which it would have been cruelty to shut him +out. She saw it now as the reward of his years of working, waiting, +experimenting. And she said to herself fancifully, "It must be because +I've 'drunk of his cup,' and now I've come to 'think his thoughts.' I +don't care what those suffragettes say about losing one's individuality. +_I_ do think it's a great game!" + +She read on: + + "'Got three letters and _Punch_ from you in the evening. Thanks + awfully. You will write to me all you can, darling, won't you? The + little wing is quite safe in my tunic-pocket. Give my love to Mrs. + Crewe and to your Uncle and to Leslie Long. Heard from old Hugo + that he was actually going to enlist. Do him lots of good.' + +"Then he sort of ends up," said Gwenna, dimpling to herself a little +over the ending: + + ("'YOUR ALWAYS BOY.'), + +"and then there's a postscript: + + "'Wouldn't it be top-hole if I could get some leave to come over + and fetch the P.D.Q.? Guess the Censor will be puzzled to know who + _she_ is; who's your lady friend? in fact. + + "'P. D.'" + +"Thank you, Mrs. Dampier," said the Aeroplane Lady as she rose briskly +to return with her assistant to the Works. "Give him my love, too (if I +may), when you write. And I should like to tell you to write and ask +Leslie Long down to see us one Saturday afternoon," she added as they +came through the gap in the dusty hedge to the entrance road. "But +really we're too rushed to think of such relaxations as visitors!" + +For since Gwenna had come back to the Works neither she nor her +employer had taken any sort of holiday. That sacred right of the English +worker, the "Saturday half-day off," existed no more at those busy +Aircraft Works. Just as if it were any ordinary day of the week, the +whistle sounded after the midday rest. And just as if it were any other +day of the week, Mrs. Crewe's men (all picked workers, of whom not one +happened to be a Trades Unionist) stacked up the bicycles on which +they'd ridden back from their meal at home in the near-by town, and +trooped into the shops. They continued to hurry up with those ships and +guns. + +Again the whirring and the chinking and the other forge-like noises +would fill the place. Again the quick, achieving movements of clever +hands, black and soaked in oil, would be carried on, sometimes until, +from the training-camps on the surrounding ugly, useful plains, the +bugles had sounded "_Lights Out_." ... + + + + +CHAPTER X + +LESLIE, ON "THE MOTLEY OF MARS" + + +Now, as it happened, Miss Leslie Long did not choose to wait for her +invitation to the Aircraft Works. Unasked and unexpected, she turned up +there the very next Saturday afternoon. + +She was given a chair in that spacious, white, +characteristically-scented room where Mrs. Crewe and Gwenna were again +busy with the wings. She was told not to expect either of them to stop +work to look at her, but to go on talking and to tell them if there were +anything new going on in London. + +"Anything? Why, everything's new," Leslie told them gaily. + +She wore the mauve linen frock and the shady hat that had been her +bridesmaid's attire for Gwenna's wedding. And she was looking well, +Gwenna noticed, as she stole a glance at her chum; well, and happier +than she had seen Leslie look since the beginning of this eventful +summer. + +Leslie then gossiped to them of the many changes in London. These are +now very ancient history to a whole nation. But at that time (in +September, Nineteen-fourteen) they sounded still strange enough to those +who lived out of town. + +She spoke of the darkened streets. The bright, purposely-misleading +lights in the Park. Of the recruiting posters; the recruiting results. +Of the first of the refugees. Leslie's old lady had given hospitality to +two ladies, a mother and a daughter from Brussels, and it was Leslie's +new duty to translate English to them. Also of the departure of +regiments she talked.... + +"Of course there are only two classes into which you _can_ divide the +young men who aren't getting ready to go out," decreed Leslie, the +whole-hearted. "Either they're Objects of Pity, or else they're Objects +of Contempt." + +"Come, come!" put in the Aeroplane Lady, laughing a little, but without +raising her eyes from the stretched canvas on the trestles before her. +"What about my men outside there?" + +"I bet they envy the rawest recruit in K.'s Army!" declared Leslie. "The +most anaemic little plucky shop-assistant who's only just scraped through +on his chest-measurement and who's never spent so many consecutive hours +in the open air in his whole life before!" She patted the stately head +of the Great Dane as he stepped up to her from his big wooden kennel in +the corner, and went on to say how she loved the New Armies. + +"We see plenty of their doings up at Hampstead now, Taffy," she said. +"'_The Heath has Armies plenty, and semi-warlike bands!_' Queen's +Westminsters coming up in sweaters and shorts to do Physical Ekkers on +the cricket-pitch. Swagger young men, some of them, too. Driving up in +cars. Wearing their Jermyn Street winter-sports kit of last year under +common privates' overcoats." + +"Mars in motley!" said the Aeroplane Lady. + +Leslie said, "It is a _mixture_! New Army Type Number One, Section A: +the boy who was born to be a soldier and bred to be a clerk. The fighter +who wouldn't have got a chance to _live_ if it hadn't been for this war. +The Dear Duck who's being taken to the water for the first time after +twenty years!... Then, of course, there's the New Army Type Number +Forty-three: the Honest Striver in Khaki, putting his back into learning +a job that wasn't ever meant to be his. Not one bit thrilled by the idea +of a scrap. No fun to him. Civilian down to his bones. But--'_It is his +duty, and he does_.'" + +"All the more credit," the Aeroplane Lady reminded her quietly, "to the +born civilian." + +"Yes, I know, Mrs. Crewe. One thoroughly respects him for it," agreed +the soldier's daughter warmly. + +Adding meditatively, "But it's rather an effort to _like_ him as much as +the other kind!" + +"Talking of duty, Mr. Grant has gone," said Gwenna as she worked. "You +know, Leslie: the engineer at our Westminster place who was always +talking to Mabel Butcher and then saying, 'Well! Duty calls. I must +away.' I'm _sure_ he said that before he went off to enlist. He's in the +R.E. And the office-boy that had such an _awful_ accent went with him. +_He's_ in the Halberdiers now; billeted in the country in some garage +with six other men." + +"How funny! D'you know who one of the men is? My friend, Monty Scott, +the Dean's son," said Leslie, laughing again. "You remember him, Taffy, +at that dance? He wore that Black Panther get-up.... He came up to see +me, in uniform, last Sunday. I told him he'd only joined the Halberdiers +because he thought the touch of black suited him. Then he told me of his +weird billet in the country with these five other men. Two of them had +lately come out of prison, he said; and they were really awfully +interesting, comparing the grub they'd had there with what was served +out to them here. I asked him (Monty) how he was getting on. He summed +up the lot of the New Ranker rather well, I thought. He said, 'I've +_never_ been so uncomfortable or laughed so much in my life'!" + +The Aeroplane Lady, working, said she thought he must be a dear. + +"He is, rather," agreed the girl who had thrice refused to marry this +young man. + +"Why d'you sigh?" asked Gwenna quickly. A sigh meant, to her, only one +thing. Impatience over the absence of the Beloved! + +"I--perhaps I was thinking of Monty Scott's eyes," said Leslie lightly, +bending over to smooth the dog's neck. "They _are_ so absurdly handsome. +_Such_ a pity one can't have them to wear as brooches!" Then, quickly, +she turned from the subject of Monty Scott. She drew something out of +her black silk bag. A picture postcard. + +"From one of our Allies," said Leslie, showing it. + +It gave a view of a French Regiment, still wearing the picturesque +uniform of Eighteen-seventy, marching down a sunny, chestnut-bordered +boulevard. The soldier in the immediate foreground showed under the +jaunty _kepi_ a dark, intelligent, mobile face that Gwenna recognised. + +She sighed and smiled over the card. It brought back to her that tea at +Hugo Swayne's rooms with Leslie, and the tall, blonde Englishman who was +to be her husband, and that dark young French engineer who had said, +"But the Machine is also of the sex of Mademoiselle!" He had written on +this card in sprawling French writing and blue French ink, "_A +Mademoiselle Langue. Salutation amicale. Remember, please, the private +soldier Gaston, who carries always in his knapsack the memory of the +Curate's Egg!_" + +"Fancy, two of the men who were at Mr. Swayne's that afternoon are off +at the Front to-day," said Gwenna Dampier. "That is, all three, perhaps. +Paul said something about his cousin enlisting." + +"Poor Hugo Swayne," said Leslie, with a laugh, that she stopped as if +she were sorry she had begun it. "It's too bad, really." + +"What is? _Isn't_ he enlisting?" + +"Yes. Oh, yes, Taffy, he has. But merely enlisting isn't the whole job," +said Leslie. "He--to begin with, he could hardly get them to pass +him----" + +"Why? Too fat?" asked Gwenna mercilessly. + +"Fat--Oh, no. They said three weeks' Swedish exercise _and_ drill would +take that off. He was quite fit, they said, physically. It was his +_mental_ capacity they seemed to doubt," explained Leslie. "Of course +that was rather a shock to Hugo to hear, after the years he's been +looking up to himself as a rather advanced and enlightened and thinking +person. However, he took it very well. He saw what they meant." + +"Who were 'they'?" asked Mrs. Crewe. + +"The soldier-men he went to first of all, old brother-officers of his +father's, who'd been with his father in Egypt, and whom he asked to find +him a job of some sort. They told him, quite gently, of course, that +they were afraid he was not 'up' to any soldiering job. They said they +were afraid there were heaps of young Englishmen like him, awfully +anxious to 'do their bits,' but simply _not clever enough_! (Rather +nice, isn't it, the revenge, at last, of the Brainless Army Type on the +Cultured Civilian?) And he said to the old Colonel or General or +whatever it was, 'I know, sir. I see, sir. Yes, I suppose I have addled +myself up by too much reading and too much talk. I know I'm a +Stage-Society-and-Cafe-Royal rotter, and no earthly good at this +crisis.' And then he turned round and said quite angrily, 'Why wasn't I +brought up to be some use when the time came?' And the old soldier-man +said quite quietly, 'My dear Swayne, none of you "enlightened" people +believed us that there was any "time" coming. You see now that we were +right.' And Hugo said, 'You ought to have hammered it into me. Isn't +there anything that I can do, sir?' And at last they got him +something." + +"What?" demanded Gwenna. + +"Well, of course it sounds _rather_ ludicrous when you come to say what +it is," admitted Leslie, her mouth curling into a smile that she could +not suppress. "But it just shows the Philistines that there _is_ some +use (if not beauty) in Futurist painting, after all. One always knew +'_there must be something, if one could but find it out_.'" + +"But your friend Mr. Swayne can't do Futurist paintings," objected the +Aeroplane Lady, "at the Front!" + +"Well, but that's just what he _is_ doing! He's in France; at Quisait. +Painting motor-buses to be used for transport wagons," explained Leslie. +"You know the most disguising colour for those things at a distance is +said to be not khaki, or feld-grau, or dull green, or any other _single_ +colour. You have to have a sort of heather-mixture of all the most +brilliant colours that can be got! This simply makes the thing invisible +a certain way off. It's the idea of the game-feather tweed on the moors, +you know. So Hugo's using his talents by painting emerald-green and +magenta and scarlet and black triangles and cubes and splodges all over +those big Vanguards----" + +"Why, _I_ could do that," murmured the girl who was so busy varnishing +the aeroplane wings. "Sure I could." + +"Oh, but, Taffy, you haven't been educated up to it," protested Leslie +gravely. "You _couldn't_ get it sufficiently dynamic and simultaneous +and marinetic!" + +A message from the Central Shop to the Aeroplane Lady left the two girls +alone presently in the Wing-room. Then Leslie, putting her hand on the +rounded arm below the loose sleeve of Gwenna's working-pinafore, said +softly and quickly, "Look here, I came down because I had something to +tell you, Taffy." + +The Welsh girl glanced quickly up into her chum's black eyes. + +"Something to tell me?" Gwenna's heart sank. + +She didn't want to hear of Leslie having definitely made up her mind at +last to marry a--well, a man who was good-natured and well bred and +generous enough about wedding-presents, but who confessed himself to be +of "no earthly good" when "it came to the real things of life." "Oh, +Leslie, is it----" + +"It is that you can congratulate me." + +"Oh, dear. I was _afraid_--You mean you _are_ engaged to him, Leslie. To +Mr. Swayne." + +"No," said Leslie, holding her black head high. "No, not to Mr. Swayne. +Why must 'congratulations' always mean 'Mister' Anybody? They don't, +here. I mean you can congratulate me on coming to see reason. I know, +now, that I mustn't think of marrying him." + +Gwenna drew a big breath of relief. + +She laid her dope-thickened brush carefully down in the tin, and clapped +her little sticky hands. + +"I'm _so_ thankful," she cried childishly. "It wouldn't have done, +Leslie!" + +"No," said Miss Long. + +"He wasn't a quarter good enough." + +"Pooh. What's _that_ got to do with caring? Nothing," declared Leslie, +tilting her loose-limbed, mauve-clad figure back on the chair that Paul +Dampier had sat in, the day before the Aviation Dinner. "It's caring +that counts." + +"Haven't I _always_ been saying so?" said Gwenna earnestly as she took +up her brush again. "Not just because I'm a happily-married woman +myself, my dear." + +Here she drew herself up with the same little gesture of matronly +dignity that had made Mrs. Crewe smile. It forced Leslie to bite her +lips into gravity. And Paul Dampier's girl concluded innocently, "_I've_ +always known how much Love means. What's _money_?" + +"Nothing to run down, I assure you. Money's gorgeous. Money means +_Power_," affirmed Leslie. "Apart from the silk-stockinged aspect of it, +it lets you live a much fuller life mentally and spiritually. It can +make you almost everything you want to be, to yourself and to other +people, Taff. It's worth almost anything to get it. But there's one +thing it's not worth," said Leslie Long, really gravely: "_It's not +worth marrying the wrong person for._" + +"I don't know why you didn't know that _before_," said little Gwenna, +feeling for once in her life _so_ much older and much wiser than her +chum. "What makes you know it now, Leslie?" + +"The War, perhaps. Everything's put down to the War nowadays.... But it +has simplified things. One knows better what's what. What one must keep, +what one can throw overboard," said Leslie Long. "Everything is +changed." + +Gwenna thought for a moment of telling her that one thing did not +change. Love! + +Then she thought that that was not quite true, either. + +In its own way Love, too, was changed by this War. + +"There's _more_ of it!" thought Gwenna simply. + +For had not her own love to her absent lover burned with more steady a +flame within her ever since the morning when she had seen him depart to +take his own share in the struggle? And so she guessed it must be with +many a girl, less ardently in love than she had been, but now doubly +proud of her man--and her soldier. She thought of the other hurried +War-bridals and betrothals all over the country. She thought of the +gentler voice and manner that she had noticed between the husbands and +wives among the cottagers down here. They realised, perhaps, how many +couples were being swept apart by War. Yes, this thought seemed to give +Man and Woman an added value in the eyes of each other, Gwenna thought. +She thought of the gradual disappearance of the suffragette type with +her indictments against Man. She thought of the new courtesy with which +every woman and girl seemed to be treated in the streets and tubes and +omnibuses by every man who wore the livery of War. + +Of the two things greater than all things in this world, one fulfilled +the other. And, because War was in the world again, it was bringing home +undeniably to man and maid alike that "_the first is Love_." + +Then Gwenna sighed from her heart. + +How long? How much longer would it be before she could see her own lover +again? + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +A LOVE LETTER--AND A ROSE + + +A couple of days after Leslie's visit Gwenna was moving about the +bedroom at Mrs. Crewe's cottage. + +It was an old-fashioned, quaintly pretty room. The low ceiling, on which +the lamplight gleamed, was crossed by two sturdy black oak beams. +Straw-matting covered the uneven floor, and the wall-paper was sprinkled +with a pattern of little prim posies in baskets. The chintz of the +casement-curtains showed flowering sprays on which parrots perched; +there was a patchwork quilt on the oaken bed. + +Gwenna had come up early; it was only nine o'clock. So, having undressed +and got into her soft white ruffled night-gown and her kimono of pink +cotton-crepe, she proceeded to indulge in one of those "bedroom +potterings" so dear to girlhood's heart. + +First there was a drawer to be tidied in the dressing-table that stood +in the casement-window. Ribbons to be smoothed out and rolled up; white +embroidered collars to be put in a separate heap. Next there was the +frilling to be ripped out of the neck and sleeves of her grey linen +dress, that she had just taken off, and to be rolled up in a little +ball, and tossed into the wastepaper basket. Then, two Cash's +marking-tapes with her name, GWENNA DAMPIER, to be sewn on to the couple +of fine, Irish linen handkerchiefs that had been brought down to her as +a little offering from Leslie. Then there was her calendar to be brought +up to date; three leaves to tear off until she came to the day's +quotation: + + "Don't call the score at half-time." + +Then there was the last button to sew on to a filmy camisole that she +had found leisure, even with her work and her knitting, to make for +herself. Gradually, young Mrs. Dampier meant to accumulate quite a lot +of "pretties" for the Bottom Drawers, that Ideal which woman never +utterly relinquishes. The house and furniture of married life Gwenna +could let go without a sigh. "The nest"--pooh! But the ideal of "the +plumage" was another matter. Even if the trousseau did have to come +after the wedding, never mind! A trousseau she would have by the time +Paul came home again. + +Having finished her stitching, she put her little wicker-work basket +aside on the chest-of-drawers and took out the handkerchief-sachet in +which she kept all his letters. She read each one over again.... "I'll +finish mine to him to-night," she decided. "It'll go off before eight in +the morning, then; save a post." + +From under her work-basket she took her blotting-pad. The letter to Paul +was between the leaves, with her fountain-pen that she'd used at school. +She sat down in the wicker-seated chair before the dressing-table and +leaned her pad up against the edge of that table, with her brushes and +comb, her wicker-cased bottle of eau-de-Cologne, her pot of skin-cream +and her oval hand-mirror, its silver back embossed by Reynolds' immortal +group of cherubs whose curly heads and soft, tip-tilted faces were not +unlike Gwenna's own as she sat there, reading over what she had already +put in that letter to the Front. + +It began in what Gwenna considered an admirably sedate and old-fashioned +style: "_My dearest Husband._" She thought: "The Censor, whoever he is! +that Paul talks about--when he reads that he'll think it's from somebody +quite old and been married for ten years, perhaps; instead of only +just--what is it--seven weeks!" + +It went on to acknowledge the last note from Paul and to ask him if she +should send him some more cigarettes, and to beg that he would, if he +could possibly, possibly manage it, get one of his friends to take a +snapshot of him--Paul--in uniform, as Gwenna had never yet seen him. + +Beside the swung oval mirror on the dressing-table there was set up in a +silver frame the only portrait that she possessed of her boy-husband: +the glazed picture postcard that Gwenna had bought that Saturday in May, +when she had gone to see the flying at Hendon with her two friends from +the Westminster Office, Mabel Butcher and Ottilie Becker. + +Gwenna's eyes fell on that photograph as she raised them from her pad. +Her thoughts, going back to that afternoon, suggested the next item to +be written to Paul. + +And the young girl wrote on, in much the same style as she would have +talked, with few full stops and so much underlining that some words +seemed to have a bar of music below them. + + "You remember my telling you about Miss Becker, the German girl + that I used to be at Westminster with, when we used to call + ourselves the Butcher, the Baker, and the Candlestick-maker? Well, + what _do_ you think? She has been _taken away_ from her + boarding-house where she was in Bloomsbury, and interned in some + camp as an alien enemy, although she is a girl, and they say she + _nearly_ was just on trial _as a spy_! + + "Mabel Butcher wrote and told me about it. She (Miss Butcher) went + with Ottilie Baker when she had to register herself as an alien at + Somerset House, just after the War broke out, and she said it was + _awful_, a great place like six National Galleries rolled into one, + and _miles_ of immense long corridors, and _simply crowds_ of all + kinds of Germans and Austrians, just like a queue at the theatre, + waiting to be registered, and all looking scared to _death_, quite + a lot of pretty girls among them, too. + + "Poor Ottilie Becker cried like anything at having to go, and to be + an enemy alien, you know she'd got such heaps of friends in England + and liked lots of English ways. She used to have a bath every + morning, even. I hate to think of _her_ being a prisoner. Of course + I know one ought to feel that all Germans ought to be wiped out + now," wrote Gwenna, "but it makes you feel sort of different when + it's a girl you've _known_ and had lots of little jokes with, and I + was with her the very first time I heard of _you_, so I shan't be + able to help always feeling a little kinder about her. + + "The reason she was arrested was because they found in her room at + the boarding-house a lot of notes about the engineering-works, our + works, which she had been going to send off to that soldier-brother + of hers, Karl. She declared _she_ didn't know she wasn't supposed + to, and that she hadn't an _idea_ of our going to War with her + country or anything, and I'm _sure_ she didn't _mean_ any harm at + all. She said she'd seen her brother Karl in England the week + before War was declared, and that _he_ hadn't said a word to her + then. And so perhaps he _was_ that waiter all the time. You know, + the one we saw, in the cab that last Sunday of peace-time. I expect + _he_ is fighting us now, isn't it _extraordinary_?" + +This was the end of the sheet. Gwenna took another. Her letters to the +Front were always at least six times as long as the answers that she +received to them, but this was only to be expected. And Paul had said he +loved long letters and that she was to tell him absolutely everything +she could. All about herself. + +She went on: + + "You tell me to take care of myself and not to work too hard; well, + I am not. And I am quite well and Mrs. Crewe is most _awfully_ + kind to me, and the little maid here _spoils_ me. Every night when + I am in bed she _insists_ on bringing me up a glass of hot milk and + two biscuits, though what for I don't know. + + "_Is_ there anything more about your coming back from the Front to + fetch the P.D.Q.? Oh, it _would_ be so lovely to see you even for a + _few days_. I sometimes feel as if I had _never, never_ seen + you----" + +She sighed deeply in the quiet, lamp-lit room, where the chintz-casement +curtains stirred faintly above the open window. It had been so long, so +long, all this time of being without him. Why, she had scarcely had a +week of knowing him hers, before there had come that rushed War-bridal +and the Good-bye! And all she had to live on were her memories and a +glazed picture postcard, and a packet of pencil-scrawled letters of +which the folds were worn into slits. She couldn't even write to him as +she would have wished. Always there brooded over her that spectre "The +Censor," who possibly read every letter that was addressed to a man at +the Front. Gwenna knew that some people at home wrote anything they +wished, heedless that a stranger's eye might see it. Leslie, for +instance, wrote to one of her medical students, now working with the +R.A.M.C. in Paris, as "My dear Harry--and the Censor," adding an +occasional parenthesis: "_You won't understand this expression, Mr. +Censor, as it is merely a quite silly family joke!_" She, Gwenna, felt +utterly unable to write down more than a tithe of the tender things that +she would have liked to say. To-night she had a longing to pour out her +heart to him ... oh, and she would say _something_! Even if she tore up +that sheet and wrote another. She scribbled down hastily: "Darling boy, +do you know I miss you more _every day_; nobody has _ever_ missed +anybody _so dreadfully_." + +Here she was wrong, though she did not know it. It was true that she +longed hungrily for the sight of that dear blonde face, with its blue, +intrepid eyes, for the sound of that deep and gentle voice, and for the +touch of those hands, those strongly modelled lips. But all these things +had been a new joy, scarcely realised before it was gone. She would have +told you that it made it worse for her. Actually it meant that she was +spared much. Her lover's presence had been a gift given and snatched +away; not the comradeship of years that, missing, would seem even as the +loss of a limb to her. The ties of daily habit and custom which +strengthen that many-stranded cord of Love had not yet been woven +between these two lovers. + + "I sometimes think it was really _awfully selfish_ of me to _marry_ + you," Gwenna wrote, thinking to herself, "Oh, bother that old + Censor, just for once." She went on more hurriedly: + + "You might have married somebody like that Miss Muriel Conyers, + with those frightfully lovely clothes and _all_ her people able to + help you on in the Army, or somebody very beautiful and _rich_, + anybody would have been glad to have you, and I _know_ I am just a + little _nobody_, and not a bit clever and even Leslie used to say + I had a Welshy accent sometimes when I speak, and I daresay _lots_ + of people will think, oh, 'how _could_ he!--why, she isn't even + very _pretty_!'" + +She raised her eyes, deeper and brighter in the lamplight, and gave a +questioning glance at her reflection in the oval, swung mirror on the +dressing-table at which she wrote. It would have been a captious critic +indeed that could have called her anything less than very pretty at that +moment; with her little face flushed and intent, a mixture of child and +woman in the expression of her eyes and about her soft, parted lips. +Above the ruffle of her night-gown her throat rose proudly; thick and +creamy and smooth. She remembered something he'd told her that afternoon +at Kew. He'd said that she always reminded him of any kind of white +flower that was sturdy and sweet; a posy of white clover, a white, +night-blooming stock, some kinds of white roses.... She would like to +send him a flower, in this letter, to remind him. + +She glanced towards the open casement, where the curtain waved. Under +the shading foliage of the clematis that grew up to the cottage-roof +there had climbed the spray of a belated rose. "Rose Menie" was its +name. Mrs. Crewe had said that it would not flower that year. But there +was one bud, half-hidden by leaves, swelling on its sappy twig, close to +Gwenna's window-sill. + +"It'll come out in a day or so," Gwenna thought. + +"I'll send it to him, if it comes out white.... _He_ was pleased with my +looks!" + +So, reassured, she turned to the letter again, and added: + + "The only thing is, that whatever sort of wife you'd married, they + _couldn't_ have loved you like I do, or been so proud of being your + wife; _really_ sometimes I can _hardly believe_ that I am really + and truly married to----" + +She broke off, and again lifted her curly head from bending above the +paper. + +There had been a light tap at the door behind her. + +"Come in," called Gwenna, writing down as she did so, "here is the +little maid coming to bring me up my hot milk; now, darling, darling +boy, I _do hope_ they give you enough to eat wherever you are----" + +Behind her the white door opened and shut. But the maid did not appear +at Gwenna's elbow with the tray that held that glass of hot milk and the +plate of biscuits. The person who had entered gazed silently across the +quiet girlish room at the little lissom figure clad in that soft crumple +of pink and white, sitting writing by the dressing-table, at the +cherub's head, backed by the globe of the lamp that spun a golden +aureole into that wreath of curls. + +There was a pause so long that Gwenna, wondering, raised her head. + +She gave another glance into the oval mirror that stood on the +dressing-table just in front of her.... And there she saw, not the +homely, aproned figure of the little maid that she had expected to see, +but the last thing that she had expected. + +It was a picture like, and unlike, a scene she had beheld long, long +ago, framed in the ornate gold-bordered oval mirror in the drawing-room +at the Smiths'. Over her pink-clad shoulder, she saw reflected a broad, +khaki-covered chest, a khaki sleeve, a blonde boy's face that moved +nearer to her own. Even as she sat there, transfixed by surprise, those +blue and intrepid eyes of Icarus looked, laughing joyously, full into +hers, and held her gaze as a hand might have held her own. + +"It's only me," said a deep and gentle voice, almost shyly. "I say----" + +"_You!_" she cried, in a voice that rang with amazement, but not with +fright; though he, it seemed, was hurrying out hasty warnings to the +Little Thing not to be frightened.... He'd thought it better than +startling her with a wire.... Mrs. Crewe had met him at the door ... +he'd come straight up: hoped she didn't think he was a ghost---- Not for +a second had she thought so! + +Instantly she had known him for her granted and incarnate heart's +desire, her Flyer, home from the Front, her husband to whom she had that +moment been writing as she sat there. + +She sprang to her feet. + +She whirled round. + +She could not have told whether she had first flung herself into those +strong arms of his, or whether he had snatched her up into them. + +All that mattered was that they were round her now, lifting and holding +her as though they would never let her go again. + +When Reveille sounded from the Camp on the plain, the sun was bright on +that clematis-grown wall outside the window of Gwenna's bridal-room. + +It gilded the September foliage about the window-sill It also touched a +gem of passionate colour, set among the leaves of the Rose Menie. + +That red rose had broken into blossom in the night. + + + + +PART III + +_SEPTEMBER, NINETEEN-FOURTEEN_ + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A WAR-TIME HONEYMOON + + +The morning after Paul Dampier's arrival from the Front he and his wife +started off on the honeymoon trip that had been for so many weeks +deferred. + +They motored from the Aircraft Works to London, where they stopped to do +a little shopping, and where Gwenna was in raptures of pride to see the +effect produced by the Beloved in the uniform that suited him so well. + +For every passer-by in the street must turn to look, with quickened +interest now, at an Army Aviator. Even the young men in their uniforms +gave a glance at the soldier whose tunic buttoned at the side and whose +cap had the tilt that gave to the shape of his blonde head something +bird-like, falcon-like. And every girl in the restaurant where they +lunched murmured, "Look," to her companion, "that's some one in the +Royal Flying Corps," and was all eyes for that kit which, at a time when +all khaki was romantic, had a special, super-glamour of its own. + +But the blue eyes of the man who wore it were for no one but the girl +with whom he was taking his first meal alone together since they had +been man and wife. + +Her own glance was still hazy with delight. Oh, to see him there facing +her, over the little round table set in a corner! + +They ate cold beef and crusty loaf and cheese in memory of their first +lunch together in that field, long ago. They drank cider, touching +glasses and wishing each other all luck and a happy life. + +"And fine weather for the whole of our week's honeymoon," added the +bridegroom as he set down his glass. "Lord, I know how it _can_ pour in +your Wales." + +For it was to Wales that they went on by the afternoon train from +Euston; to Gwenna's home, arriving late that evening. The Reverend Hugh +Lloyd was away on a round of preaching-visits about Dolgelly. They had +his black-henlike housekeeper to chirp and bustle about them with much +adoring service; and they would have the Chapel House to themselves. + +"But we won't be _in_ the house much," Gwenna decided, "unless it +pours." + +It did not pour the next morning. It was cloudless and windless and +warm. And looking round on the familiar landscape that she had known +when she was a little child, it seemed now to Gwenna as if War could not +be. As if it were all a dream and a delusion. There was no khaki to be +met in that little hillside village of purple slate and grey stone. Only +one or two well-known figures were missing from it. A keeper from one of +the big houses on the other side of the river, and an English chauffeur +had joined the colours, but that nine-days' wonder was over now. Peace +had made her retreat in these mountain fastnesses that had once echoed +to the war-shouts and the harp-music of a race so martial. + +It was the music that had survived.... + +Paul Dampier had put on again that well-known and well-worn grey tweed +jacket of his, so that he also no longer recalled War. He had come right +away from all that, as she had known he would; come safely back to her. +Here he was, with her, and with a miracle between them, in this valley +of crystal brooks and golden bracken and purple slopes. It was meant +that they two should be together thus. Nothing could have stopped it. +She felt herself exulting and triumphing over all the Fates who might +have tried to stop it; and over all the Forces that might have tried to +keep him from her. His work on the Machine? Pooh! That had actually +helped to bring them together! The Great War? Here he was, home from the +War! + +"I've always, always wanted to be with you in the real country, and I +never have," she told him, as together they ran down the slate steps of +Uncle Hugh's porch after breakfast and turned up a path between the +sunny larch-grown steeps. That path would be a torrent in the winter +time. Now the slate pebbles of it were hot under the sun. "I don't +really count that _country_, that field, that day----" + +"Didn't seem to mind it when we were there," he teased her as he walked +beside her swinging the luncheon basket that Margaret had put up for +them. "I mean of course when _I_ was there." + +Gwenna affected to gasp over the conceit of men. "If I've _got_ to be +with one," she told him as if wearily, "I'd rather it was in a nice +place for me to listen to his nonsense." + +"Wasn't any 'nonsense,' as you call it, in that field." + +"No," agreed Gwenna, "there wasn't." + +He looked sideways and down at her as she climbed that hill-path, +hatless, sure-footed and supple. Then a narrow turn in the path made her +walk a little ahead of him. She was wearing a very simple little sheath +of a grey cotton or muslin or something frock, with a white turn-down +collar that he hadn't seen her in before, he thought. Suited her awfully +well. (Being a man, he could not be expected to recognise it for the +grey linen that she'd had on when he'd come upon her that afternoon, +high up on the scaffolding at Westminster.) + +"Yes, though, there was 'nonsense,'" he said, now suddenly answering her +last speech. "Fact of the matter is, it was dashed nonsense to waste +such a lot of time." + +"Time, how?" asked Gwenna guilelessly, without turning her head. + +"Oh! As if you didn't know!" he retorted. "Wasting time talking about +the Machine, to you. Catching hold of your hand, to show you what the +camber was--and then letting it go! Instead of owning up at once, '_Yes. +All right. You've got me. Pax!_' And starting to do this----" + +He was close up behind her now on the mountain-path, and because of the +steep ground on which they stood, her head was on a higher level than +his own. He drew it downwards and backwards, that brown, sun-warmed +head, to his tweed-clad shoulder. + +"You'll break my neck. I know you will, one day. You are so _rough_," +complained Gwenna; twisting round, however, and taking a step down to +him. + +"I love you to be," she whispered. She kissed his coat-lapel. All the +red of that rose bloomed now on her mouth.... They walked on, with his +arm a close, close girdle about her. The luncheon basket was forgotten +on the turfy slope on which he'd dropped it. So they lunched, late, in +the farm-house four hundred feet above the Quarry village. It was a +lonely place enough, a hillside outpost, fenced by stunted damson trees; +a short slate-flagged end of path led to the open door where a great red +baking crock stood, full of water. Inside, the kitchen was a dark, cool +cave, with ancient, smooth-worn oaken furniture that squeaked on the +slate-slabbed floor, with a dresser rich with willow-pattern and lustre, +and an open fire-place, through which, looking up, they could see +through the wood smoke a glimpse of the blue sky. + +And in this sort of place people still lived and worked as if it were +Seventeen Hundred and Something--and scarcely a day's journey away was +the Aircraft Factory where people lived for the work that will remake +the modern world; oh, most romantic of all ages, that can set such sharp +contrasts side by side! + +An old Welshwoman, left there by her sheep-farming sons at home in the +chimney corner, set butter-milk before the lovers, and ambrosial +home-churned butter, and a farm-house loaf that tasted of nuts and +peatsmoke. They ate with astonishing appetites; Gwenna sitting in the +window-seat under the sill crowded with flower-pots and a family Bible. +Paul, man-like, stood as near as he could to the comfort of the fire +even on that warm day. The old woman, who wore clumping clogs on her +feet and a black mutch-cap on her head, beamed upon the pair with smiles +as toothless and as irresistible as those of an infant. + +"You must have a plenty, whatever," she urged them, bringing out another +loaf, of _bara breeth_ (or currant bread). "Come on, Sir! Come, Miss +Williams, now. Mam, I mean. Yess, yess. You married lady now. Your +husband," with a skinny hand on his grey sleeve, "your husband is _not_ +a minnyster?" + +"He's a soldier, Mrs. Jones," explained Gwenna, proudly, and with a +strengthening of her own accent, such as occurs in any of her race when +revisiting their wilds. "He's an Airman." + +"Ur?" queried Mrs. Jones, beaming. + +"He goes flying. You know. On a machine. Up in the sky." + +"Well, _oh_!" ejaculated the old woman. And laughed shrilly. To her this +was some eccentric form of English joke. Flying? Like the birds! _Dear_, +dear. "What else does he do, _cariad fach_?" she asked of Gwenna. + +"He's been over in France, fighting the Germans," said the girl, while +the old woman on her settle by the fire nodded her mutched head with +the intense, delighted expression of some small child listening to a +fairy story. It was indeed no more, to her. She said, "Well, indeed. He +took a very _kind_ one, too." Then she added, "I not much English. +Pitty, pitty!" and said something in Welsh at which Gwenna coloured +richly and laughed a little and shook her head. + +"What's she say?" demanded Paul, munching; but his girl-wife said it was +nothing--and turned her tip-tilted profile, dark against the diamond +window panes, to admire one of the geranium plants in the pots. + +Afterwards, when the couple were outside again in the fresh sunlight on +the mountain lands, young Dampier persisted with his questioning about +what that old woman had said. He betted that he could guess what it was +all about. And he guessed. + +Gwenna admitted that he had guessed right. + +"She said," she told him shyly, "that it ought to be 'a very pretty one, +whatever.'" + +"I've got a very pretty present for it," Paul whispered presently. + +"What?" + +"Don't you remember a locket I once took? A little mother-of-pearl +heart," he said. "That's what I shall keep it for----" + +And there fell a little silence between them as they walked on, swinging +hands above the turf, gravely contented. + +They had _had_ to spend the day together thus. It seemed to Gwenna that +all her life before had been just a waiting for this day. + +Below the upland on which they swung along, grey figures on the green, +there lay other wide hill-spaces, spread as with turf-green carpets, on +which the squares of mellowing, golden-brown autumn woods seemed rugs +and skins cast down; below these again stretched the further valley with +the marsh, with the silver loops and windings of the river, and the +little white moving caterpillar of smoke from the distant train. There +was also a blue haze above the slate roofs of a town. + +But here, in this sun-washed loneliness far above, here was their world; +hers and his. + +They walked, sometimes climbing a crest where stag's-horn moss branched +and spread through the springy turf beneath their feet, sometimes +dipping into a hollow, for two miles and more. They could have walked +there for half a day and seen no face except that of a tiny mountain +sheep, cropping among the gorse; heard no voice but those of the calling +plovers, beating their wings in the free air. Then, passing a gap in two +hills, they came quite suddenly upon the cottage and the lake. + +The sheet of water, silent, deserted, reflected the warm blue of the +afternoon sky and the deep green of the overhanging boughs of great +hassock-shaped bushes that covered two islands set upon its breast. + +"Rhododendron bushes. When they're in blossom they're all simply +_covered_ with flowers, pink and rose-colour, and reflected in the +water! It _is_ so lovely," Gwenna told the lover beside her. "Oh, Paul! +You _must_ come here again and see that with me in the spring!" + +On the further bank was another jungle of rhododendron and lauristinus, +half-hiding the grey stone walls and the latticed windows of the square +cottage, a fishing box of a place that had evidently been built for some +one who loved solitude. + +Paul Dampier peered in through one of the cobwebby lattices. Just inside +on the sill there stood, left there long since, a man's shaving-tackle. +Blue mildew coated the piece of soap that lay in the dish. Further in he +caught a glimpse of dusty furniture, of rugs thrown down on a wooden +floor, of a man's old coat on a peg. A wall was decorated with sets of +horns, with a couple of framed photographs, with old fishing-rods. + +"Make a jolly decent billet, for some one, this," said Paul. + +Gwenna said, "It belongs to some people.... They're away, I think. It's +all locked up now. So's the boat for the lake, I expect. They used to +keep a boat up here for fishing." + +The long flat boat they found moored to one of the stout-trunked +rhododendron bushes that dipped its pointed leaves in the peat-brown +water fringed with rushes. + +Paul stepped in, examining her, picking up the oars. "Nice afternoon for +a row, Ma'am?" he said, smiling up at the girl clad in dove-grey on the +rushy bank, with the spongy dark-green moss about her shoes. + +"Jump in, Gwenna. I'll row you across the lake." + +"You can't row that old tub, boy." + +"Can't I?" + +"I'll race you round, then!" + +"Right you are!" + +The girl skipped round the clump of rhodos that hid the last flicker of +her skirt; and the boy bent to the short, home-made sculls. + +The boat was a crank, unhandy little craft; and lacked thole-pins on one +side. Therefore Gwenna, swift-footed Little Thing that she was, had as +good a chance of winning as he. + +"Like trying to row a bucket!" he laughed, as the boat spun. "Hi, Gwen! +I ought to have some start, you know!" + +He rowed. Presently he rested on his oars and called, "Hullo, have you +started?" + +"Started--" came back only the echo from the cottage roof. There was no +sign of any grey-frocked running figure on the bank. He scanned it on +both sides of him, gave a look towards each of those shrub-covered +islands on the smooth expanse. + +"Gwenna--Why, where are you? What's become of the girl," he muttered. +"Gwen-na!" + +She was nowhere to be seen. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +THE SOUL OF UNDINE + + +"Hul-lo!" he shouted. The echo answered as he sat in the boat staring +about him.... + +Then he felt a twitch at one of his sculls. It turned in his hand; was +wrenched from him. + +"What the deuce----" he began, surprised. + +Then he heard a laugh. + +"What on earth----" + +It was nothing on earth that had greeted him. It was something of the +water that laughed up into his face and called, "Hullo, husband!" + +A mermaid, a water-nymph, a little white-shouldered Undine was peeping +up and mocking him! She trod water, turned over on her side, swam with +easy strokes. + +For always Gwenna had been proud of her swimming. + +She had won a medal for it at that Aberystwith school of hers; but she +wanted more than a mere medal for it now. She wanted her boy to see her +swimming, and to praise her stroke. She had looked forward to that. She +wanted to show him that she could make as graceful movements with her +own body in the water as he could make with his biplane in the air. She +could! He should see! She made these movements. She had thought of +making them--just _so_--on the morning of her marriage. Only then she +had thought it would be in the sea off Brighton beach, with whole +crowds of other stupid people about in dark-blue or Turkey-red +"costumes." Here it was so much lovelier; a whole mountain-side and a +clear lake to herself in which to show off her pet accomplishment to her +lover. She was one innocent and pretty Vanity incarnate as she glided +along beside his boat. She gave a quick twist. There was a commotion of +translucent amber water, a gleam of coral white that shaded down into +peaty brown as she dived, reappearing on the other side of the boat, +looking up at him, blinking as her curls streamed water into her eyes. + +His eyes, blue and direct and adoring, were upon her. + +"I say," he said admiringly, "I didn't know you could _swim_ like that. +Jolly!" + +This moment of achievement was possibly the most exquisite in the whole +of Gwenna's life. + +Shaking the wet from her hair, she laughed with pure, completed, +rapturous joy; glorying in her youth, in the life that charged each +little blue vein of her, in this power of swimming that she felt had +been given her only to please him. + +"Why, I could swim you to--Oh! Mind you don't upset!" she exclaimed. + +For Paul had stooped; leaning over the side of the boat he had passed +one arm beneath her shoulders; he was bending over her to take a kiss, +all fresh with lake-water. + +"You'll topple over," she warned him. + +"Pooh," he said. "One, Gwenna!" + +He always said her name as if it were "darling"--he did not call her +"dear" or "darling" much. She found that she adored him for this, as for +everything that he said or did. Once, in one of those old-time talks of +theirs, Leslie had said, "For every three times a man asks for a kiss +refuse him twice. An excellent plan, Taffy----" The happy girl-wife +thought there need be no use of "plans" with him and her. She teased +him--if she wanted to. + +Eyes laughed into eyes now. She threw back her head, evading him, but +only for a second. His mouth met hers, dewy as a lotus-bud. The boy and +girl kissed closely. Nothing could come between that kiss, she thought. + +Then, sudden as a flash of summer lightning, _something came_. + +A thought; a shadow; a fear at last. + +All these halcyon hours she had known no fear. All those weeks that her +husband had been in France she had been certain, at the bottom of her +heart, of his safety. She had known by that queer sense of presentiment +she possessed that he would come back to her. He'd come back to make +this perfect time for which all her unawakened girlhood had been +waiting. And now, by that same queer sixth sense, she suddenly found +herself realising that he would not--No, no! _That he might not come +back to her the second time...._ Suddenly, suddenly the shadow crept +over her, taking the glow and colour out of their idyll even at this +golden moment. With his lips warms on hers she shivered as if the water +in which she swayed had suddenly grown many degrees colder. Supposing he +should not return? In two days' time now he was leaving her. Supposing +that she were never to see him again? She shut her eyes, felt herself +for a horrible second surrounded by darkness, and alone.... She heard +his sharp question, "What's the matter?" and opened her eyes again. + +His head was dark against the blue little ripples of light passed over +his blonde face; ripples cast up from the water. The boat tilted, and +his arm held her more tightly. He said again, "What is it?" + +Then, in her own ears, her voice said serenely, "It's all right." + +The cloud had passed, as suddenly as it had fallen. She knew, somehow, +that it would be "all right." Whatever happened, this worst catastrophe +of all was not going to fall upon her. She was not going to be left +alone and in darkness, her sun of Love gone down. Such a light could not +have been kindled, just to be put out again. She would not be forced to +live without him. _That_ could not be. Why, the thing was unthinkable. +Yet, somehow that was going to be made "all right." + +"You swim back again and get your things on, as quick as you can," he +ordered her. "That was a touch of cramp you got, I expect." + +"I'm all right now," she again said. + +She sighed when at last they left that lovely Paradise of theirs behind +them. + +They went down hill at a good swinging pace, his arm again girdling the +dove-grey frock. He said, "We'll get tea and topping light-cakes at one +of those cottages before we come to the village, shall we? Are you +starving, Little Thing? I know I am. Soon be there now." + +"I know," she said, "I wasn't sighing because I wanted my tea. Only +because ... It seems such a pity that we _ever_ have to come down from +here!" she told him, nestling in his arm. + +But she did not tell him of her sudden fear, nor of its sudden passing, +though (in her heart that beat below his hand) the thought of both +remained. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +A LAST FAVOUR + + +That thought at the heart of Gwenna seemed to grow with every hour that +passed. + +And they were passing now so rapidly, the hours that remained to her +with her husband! One more blissful day spent on the mountains (but +always with that growing thought behind it: "_He has to go soon. Perhaps +he will not come back this time. The new machine may let him down +somehow, perhaps_"). + +One more train-journey, whizzing through country of twenty different +aspects, just him and her together (but still in her mind that thriving +dread: "_Very likely he may not come back. He has had so many narrow +escapes! That time he told me about when he came down from behind the +clouds and the machine was hit on both sides at once: our men firing on +him as well, thinking his was an enemy craft! He got up into the clouds +again and escaped that time. Next time as likely as not...._"). + +One more night they were together in the London hotel where Uncle Hugh +had always put up. Paul slept, with a smile on his face that looked so +utterly boyish while he was asleep: his blonde head nestled into her +neck. Gwenna, waking uneasily once or twice, and with his arms still +about her, was haunted by her fear as by a nightmare. "_It's more than +likely that he may not come back this time. This time I feel that he is +not going to come back!_" And the feeling grew with the growing light +outside the window, until she told herself: "_I know it! I know that I +am right_----" + +Then came the wonder in her mind, "_Why am I not wretched about this? +Why do I feel that it's not going to matter after all, and that it's +going to be 'all right'?_" + +Still wondering, she fell asleep again. + +But in the morning her presentiment was a thing full-grown. + +Paul, off to the Front, would never come back again. + +Quite early they were at the Aircraft Works where he was to leave his +young wife and to fetch his machine, the completed P.D.Q. that was to +take him out to France. + +He had spoken of her--that machine--in the train coming along. And +Gwenna, the dazed and fanciful, had thought sharply: "_Ah! That's her +revenge. That's what's going to be the end of this fight between the +Girl and the Machine. I won. I got him from her. This is how she takes +him back, the fiancee! He will be killed in that machine of his._" + +Her headstrong, girlish fancy persisted. It was as real to her as any of +the crowd of everyday and concrete realities that they found, presently, +at the bustling Aircraft Works. + +When Paul (who was to start at midday, flying across to France) changed +into his uniform and flying-kit, it seemed to her to set the seal upon +her premonition. + +He would never wear other kit again now, upon this earth. + +The Aeroplane Lady, bracingly cheerful, met them with a sheaf of +official documents for the young Army aviator. + +"I'm going to steal him from you for a quarter of an hour, Mrs. +Dampier," she said with a little nod; and she took the young man into +her office. + +Gwenna, left alone outside, walked up and down the sunny yard +mechanically. + +She could not have said what her thoughts were. Probably she had no +thoughts. Nothing but the steady throb, quiet and reiterated as the +pulse of the machinery in the shops, of that conviction of fatality that +she felt. + +It seemed to run on in her head as the belting ran on the shaft: "He +won't come back. He won't come back!" + +It was in the middle of this monotonous inward muttering that the door +of the office opened, and there came out a shortish figure, +leather-jacketed and with enveloping overalls and wearing a cap with +goggles, peak behind. It was young Mr. Ryan. + +He raised his cap and would have passed Gwenna quickly, but she stopped +him. + +She didn't know why. Since her marriage she had (ungratefully enough) +almost forgotten the red-haired young man's existence, and perhaps it +was not so much himself as his cap and mufflings that caught her eye +now. + +"Why, are you going up?" she asked. + +"Yes," said young Ryan gloomily. + +He seemed to be in the worst of tempers as he went on, grumblingly. He +was going up. Just his luck. Plenty of times he'd wanted to go and +hadn't been allowed. Now he'd got to go, just when he didn't want to. + +"You don't want to?" Gwenna repeated. + +Mr. Ryan coloured a little. "Well, if I've got to, that doesn't matter." + +"Why don't you want to?" Gwenna asked, half indifferent, half surprised. +To her it had always appeared the one thing to want to do. She had been +put off time after time. Now here was he, grumbling that it was just his +luck to go. + +Then she thought she could guess why he didn't want to go up just now. +She smiled faintly. Was it that Mr. Ryan had--somebody--to see? + +Mr. Ryan blushed richly. Probably he did so not on this somebody's +account, but because it was Gwenna who asked the question. One does not +care for the sympathetic questions of the late idol, even when another +fills the shrine. He told Gwenna: "I've got to go with your husband as a +passenger. He's had a wire to bring another man over to one of the +repairing bases; and so he's spotted me." + +"To bring over? D'you mean to France?" + +"Yes. Not that they want _me_, of course; but just somebody. So I've got +to go, I suppose." + +Gwenna was silent, absorbed. She glanced away across the flat +eighty-acre field beyond the yards, where the planes of Paul's new +biplane gleamed like a parallel ruler in the sun. A ruler marked with +inches, each inch being one of the seams that Gwenna had carefully doped +over. About the machine two or three dark figures moved, giving +finishing touches, seeing that all was right. + +And young Ryan was to fly in her, with Paul! + +It wasn't Ryan they wanted, but "just somebody." ... And then, all in a +moment, Gwenna, thinking, had a very curious little mental experience. +As once before she had had that "flying dream," and had floated up from +earth and had seen her own body lying inert and soulless on her bed, so +now the same thing happened. She seemed to see herself in the yard. +Herself, quite still and nonchalant, talking to this young man in cap +and goggles who had to go to France just when he particularly wanted to +go somewhere else. She saw all the details, quite clearly: his leather +jacket, herself, in her blouse and skirt, the cylindrical iron, steam +chambers where they steamed the skids, the Wing-room door, and beyond it +the new biplane waiting in the field two hundred yards away. + +Then she saw herself put her hand on the young man's leathern sleeve. +She heard her own voice ascending, as it were, to her. It was saying +what seemed to be the most matter-of-fact thing in the world. + +"Then don't go. You go later, Mr. Ryan. Follow him on. You go and meet +your girl instead; it will be all right." + +He was staring blankly at her. She wondered what he saw to stare at. + +"What? What d'you mean, Mrs. Dampier? I'm bound to go. Military orders." + +"Yes; they are for him, not for you. _You_ aren't under military +orders." This was in her own, quite calm and detached little voice with +its un-English accent. "You say anybody'd do. He can take--somebody +else." + +"Isn't anybody else," she heard young Ryan say. Then she heard from her +own lips the most surprising thing of all. + +"Yes, there's somebody. You give me those things of yours. I'm going +instead of you." + +Then Mr. Ryan laughed loudly. He seemed to see a joke that Gwenna did +not see. "Well, for a film-drama, that takes it!" he laughed. + +She did not laugh. She heard herself say, softly, earnestly, swiftly: +"Listen to me. Paul is going away and I have never been up with him yet. +I was always promised a flight. And always something got in the way of +it. And now he's going. He will never----" + +Her voice corrected itself. + +"He _may_ never come back. I may never get another chance of flying with +him. Let me--let me have it! Say you will!" + +But Mr. Ryan, instead of saying he would, became suddenly firm and +peremptory. Perhaps it was the change in his voice that brought Gwenna +Dampier, with a start, back to herself. She was no longer watching +herself. She was watching young Ryan's face, intently, desperately. But +she was still quite calm. It seemed to her that since an idea and a plan +had come to her out of nowhere, it would be mad to throw them away again +untried. + +"Let me go; it will be all right! Let me get into your things." + +"Quite out of the question," said young Ryan, with growing firmness--the +iron mask of the man who knows himself liable to turn wax in the hands +of a woman. "Not to be thought of." + +She set her teeth. It was life and death to her now, what he refused. +She could have flown at him like a fury for his obstinacy. She knew, +however, that this is no road to a woman's attainment of her desires. +With honeyed sweetness, and always calmly, she murmured: "You were +always so nice to me, Mr. Ryan. I liked you so!" + +"I say, don't----" + +"I am sure that girl must be devoted to you. Isn't she? The one you want +to see? Oh, yes! Well, think if it were _she_ who begged to be with +_you_," pleaded Gwenna softly and deadly calm. Her knuckles were white +on the hands that she held clasped against her breast. "Think if she +begged for one last, last little time!" + +"Look here; it's imposs----" + +"I never begged for any one anything before, in my whole life. Never! +Not even my husband. Only you! It's the first--the last favour, Mr. +Ryan! You used to say you'd do anything----" + +"No, please; I say----!" + +"He's always said he would take me. You can follow us on. Yes, indeed it +will be all right----" + +Here Paul, passing with the Aeroplane Lady at the end of the yard, on +his way to the machine in the field, saw by the steam reservoir his +young wife talking earnestly to the red-haired Ryan chap, who was to be +his passenger. He heard her say: "You must, Peter, you _must_!" + +He hadn't known that the Little Thing called that fellow by his +Christian name, but he thought he knew the kind of thing that she would +be saying to Ryan; begging him to keep an eye upon her husband, to do +anything he could for him (Paul) since they were both going over to +France together. + +"It will be all right," repeated Gwenna to young Ryan in a settled kind +of tone. "You'll give me your things, and then you'll stay here, out of +the way until we've gone. You will!" + +Thereupon Mr. Ryan became firmer than ever. + +"Can't be done, Mrs. Dampier," he said curtly. "Afraid that ends it!" + + * * * * * + +In the meantime Paul was making a last tour of the P.D.Q. + +"Just start her, will you?" he said to one of his mechanics. + +A harsh roar rattled out over the countryside. Paul touched parts here +and there. + +"All right," he said; and the engine was shut off again. Then he turned +to Mrs. Crewe. + +"Well," he said, "if you don't mind----" He glanced first at his +wrist-watch and then in the direction of the buildings. The Aeroplane +Lady smiled. + +"I think you'll find her in the office," she replied. + +He crossed the field and walked straight into the office, but Gwenna was +not there. He passed into the Wing-room where he had seen her at work. +She was not there, either; only two of the lads in blue overalls were +bringing in a wing. He said to them: "Is Mrs. Dampier in the central +shop? Just tell her I'm here, will you? I shall have to be off very +soon." In a moment one of the lads returned to say that Mrs. Dampier was +not in the shops. + +"Go out that way and find her, will you, then?" he said. "I'll go out +the other way; ask her to wait for me in the Wing-room if you find her +first." He went out to search for his wife. He sought her in the shops +and in the sheds. She was not to be found. He came back to the +Wing-room; it was empty, except for the Great Dane, lying in his corner +blinking wisely, with his head on his paws. Dismayed (for he would have +not more than a moment to spare with her now) young Dampier came out and +sent a lad on a bicycle up to Mrs. Crewe's cottage to find out if his +wife were there. Perhaps the Little Thing had forgotten the +cap-comforter she was going to give him, and had gone to fetch that. +Mrs. Crewe herself walked back from the field, and found him almost +running about the yards again. + +"What, haven't you found her? Isn't she anywhere about?" cried the +Aeroplane Lady in astonishment. "This is most extraordinary. She must be +here somewhere----" + +"I've been and I've sent all over the place," said the young aviator, +distressed. "Here, I've got to start in a minute, and she isn't here to +see me before I go. I can't imagine what's become of her!" + +The Aeroplane Lady could imagine. She had had the quick thought that +Gwenna Dampier, at the last moment, had gone away, hidden herself from +that ordeal of last farewells. "Perhaps the little creature couldn't +stand it," she thought. It was, when all was said, a heart-breaking +moment.... + +The Aeroplane Lady said softly: "Perhaps your wife's one of the people +who don't want to say any good-bye, Mr. Dampier. Like some people +thinking it's unlucky to watch people out of sight!" + +"Well, I've hunted all over the place," he said, turning away, agitated +and dismayed. "Tell her, will you, Mrs. Crewe, I shan't be able to wait +any longer. I was to start at midday. I shall be late. You explain to +her, please. Where's Ryan--ah, there he is." + +For across the field he saw a short, muffled-up, brown figure, climbing, +rather hurriedly, into the passenger's seat. It sat, waiting without +looking round. + +The last stroke of twelve sounded from the clock of the factory. The +whistle blew. The men trooped out of the works; every one of them cast a +glance towards the field where the biplane was ready. Several of them in +a group turned off there to watch the start. + +Paul joined them and walked across the field. + +His brows were knitted; it was dashed hard lines that he couldn't see +_her_ for good-bye. His wife! She ought to have seen him off.... Poor +Little sweet Thing, she thought she couldn't stick it---- He wondered +where on earth she'd gone and hidden herself. + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +THE DEPARTURE FOR FRANCE + + +Gwenna sat, for the first time in her life, in an aeroplane. + +She had very little actual notion of how she came to be there. It was +all confused in her mind, that which had happened between Mr. Ryan's so +resolute "Can't be done, Mrs. Dampier," and its having been "done." What +had prevailed? Her own begging? Mr. Ryan's wish to see his girl? Or her, +Gwenna's, calm assurances, repeated from that day in Wales, that it +would be "all right"? She wasn't sure which of all these things had +brought her here safely where she was, in the passenger-seat of Paul's +biplane. She hardly remembered putting on the rough and voluminous brown +clothes while Mr. Ryan mounted guard over the little stokehole of the +steam chambers. + +She only knew that she had walked, easily and undiscovered, across the +field before the whistle blew. That she'd climbed unassisted into that +small wicker seat, and that she was now waiting there, muffled up to the +tip of her nose, the edge of the cap almost meeting the muffler, goggles +down, and gloves hiding her little hands. She was no more to be +distinguished from a man than if she had been a diver encased for a +descent into the sea. + +She did not even trouble to wonder at her own wonderful luck in the +affair. + +A thousand little accidents might have betrayed her--and and she had +escaped them all. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to her. +Once or twice one of the men had spoken to her, but a wave of the hand +had been answer enough for him. It had been all right. And of course +everything was going to be all right. + +She was not going to be put off by pretexts any longer. + +And she was not going to be left behind, without him. In another +minute--two minutes--they would be off, he and she! + +Furtively she glanced round. + +Paul was holding both the Aeroplane Lady's small, capable hands in those +big boy's paws of his. + +"Good-bye," he was saying. "So long, I mean. I say, you'll----" + +"I'll look after _her_," promised the Aeroplane Lady, very brightly. + +"Thanks awfully. You would," said Paul. "Bless you." + +"My dear boy----" began the Aeroplane Lady as if she were going to say +something grave, but she ended lightly, "Well, you've a glorious day for +it. The best of luck!--And to you, Mr. Ryan!" + +Again the passenger waved a gloved hand in reply. + +Then Gwenna felt the tip and creak of the machine, as Paul climbed into +his place behind her. + +Andre dashed up to grasp his hand, calling "_Bonne chance!_" + +"Thanks!" said Paul. "Right away." + +Then, as the propeller pulsed like an angry nerve, Gwenna gave a start. + +An appalling roar and wind seemed all about her. Faintly, very faintly, +the noise of the good-bye cheer rose through it. The hat-waving group of +men with wide-open mouths seemed to slide back. The Aeroplane bumped +over the rough field. And then it ceased to bump. Gwenna drew in her +breath, sharply. To right of her, to left of her, the horizon seemed to +sway ever so gently. She thought, but was not sure, that she heard +Paul's voice behind her, bawling, "Trim." + +As she settled herself in her seat, the horizon fell away altogether.... +All was sunlit blue! The swiftest run in the motor down the smoothest +bit of hill had been nothing to this that was coming; faster, faster.... + +"There's only one pity," she thought hastily. "He's thinking now that I +let him go without saying good-bye!" + +Here she had a glimpse of the khaki-green earth far below, as blurred +with height and speed as was the raving invisible propeller itself. + +For at last--at last--it was flight! + + + + +CHAPTER V + +THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT + + +Yes; at last it was flight. + +She now, too, was perched up on this structure that had tucked those +little bicycle wheels and skids underneath it, as a bird tucks its no +longer required feet; she, too, was being borne up aloft on those vast +cambered pinions that let the sunlight half through, like the roof of a +transparent marquee. In this new machine of Paul's, the passenger-seat +was set on a slightly projecting platform, with aluminium-like uprights +of a peculiar section. At first, all that Gwenna knew of this easy +balancing and dipping and banking of the machine, was that there was a +bright triangle of sunlight about her feet, and that this triangle grew +sometimes small, sometimes large, and sometimes spread so that half of +her was sitting in the warm September sunlight; presently to swerve into +the shadow again. + +Mechanically tightening her grip on one or other of the aluminium stays, +instinctively yielding her body to this unexpected angle or that, she +watched that triangle of sunlight. She was not giddy or breathless; she +felt no fear at all, only a growing triumph and delight as the soaring +biplane sped on--on---- + +Once she gave a little "Oh, look!" lost in the hum of the engine. It was +when a tiny flicker of shadow fell upon her patch of sunlight and was +gone; the shadow of some bird flying higher than they, a crow, perhaps. +It was just after this that she noticed, near that advancing and +retiring wedge of sunlight at her feet, something else. This was a +little oval hole in the floor of the platform. A hole for observation. +It brought home to her how frail a floor supported her weight and his; +still she felt no terror; only wonder. She smiled under her mufflings, +thinking that hole was like a knot-hole in a wooden bridge over the +river at home. As a small child she had always been fascinated by that +hole, and had gazed down through it at the rushing bottle-green water +and the bubbles and the boulders below. She glanced down this one, but +her unaccustomed eyes could hardly see anything. She leaned forward and +looked down below the machine, but still could distinguish little. +Woods, roads, meadows, or whatever they were crossing, were still only a +warm and moving blur. Once they passed, quickly, a big patch of pink and +purple, she thought it might be a town, but wasn't sure. + +She sat up again in her seat, giving herself up to her own feelings in +this new and breathless experience; her feelings, that were as +undistinguishable as the landscape over which the biplane swept--a warm +blur of delights. + +She gripped the stays; she laughed happily to herself behind the +mufflings, she even sang aloud, knowing that it was drowned in the noise +of the engine. She hummed the sheerest medley of scraps of things, tags +of Musical Comedy picked up at Westminster--some verses out of Leslie's +love-songs. Once it was the then universal "Tipperary." And presently it +resolved itself into a Welsh folk-song that the singing-class at her +school had practised over and over again--"The Rising of the Lark," a +blithely defiant tune that seemed best to match her mood as the biplane +sped. + +Yes! All the bird-like, soaring spirit in her had come to its own. +Everything else was cast behind her.... She'd always felt, dimly and +uncomfortably, that a great part of herself, Gwenna, was just an +uninteresting, commonplace little girl.... That part had gone! It had +been left behind her, just as her bodily form had been left sleeping on +her bed, that midsummer night, while her soul flew through dreams. + +"Dreams!" she thought incoherently. "It's _not_ true what people say +about the dream-come-true, and how one's always disappointed in it. I'm +not--ah, I'm not! This flying! This is more glorious than I +expected--even with _him_----!" + +Then came a thought that checked her singing rapture. + +"If only _he_ knew! But he doesn't." + +Behind her, Paul, driving, had made no sign to the passenger. She could +guess at the busyness of him. His dear, strong hands, she knew, were on +the wheel. They were giving a touch to the throttle here and there. His +feet, too, must be vigilantly busy; now this one doing something +essential, now that. She supposed his whole body must be dipping from +time to time, just as that triangle of sunlight dipped and crept. It +was all automatic to him, she expected. He could work that machine +while he was thinking, just as she herself could knit and think. + +"He's thinking of me," she told herself with a rueful little pang. "He's +wondering about my not saying good-bye. He must have minded that. +That'll be all right, though. I'll let him know, presently; I'll pull +down my muffler and look round. Presently. Not yet. Not until it's too +late for him to turn back or set me down----" + +And again she hummed to herself in her little tune; inaudible, exultant. +The shining triangle of sunlight disappeared from the platform. All +became level light about her. It seemed growing colder. And beyond her, +far ahead, she spied a sweep of monotonous grey. + +She guessed what that meant. + +"The sea!" she told herself, thrilled. "We'll be flying over the sea +soon. _Then_ he can't do anything about sending me back. Then I shall +put up these goggles and push this cap off my curls. Then he'll see. +He'll know that it's me that's flying with him!" And she held away from +herself that thought that even so this flight could not last for ever, +there would be the descent in France, the good-bye that she had +evaded--No! It must last! + +Again she forgot all else in the rushing joy of it. + +Suddenly she felt something jolt hard against her left arm, for the +first time Paul was trying to attract his passenger's attention. Twice +her arm was jolted by something. Then she put out her brown gloved hand +to it, grasping what had jolted her. She drew it forward as he loosed it +to her clutch. + +It was a gun; a carbine. + +What--Why----? + +She remembered something that she had heard Paul say, dim ages ago, when +she had watched him in the office, consulting with the Aeroplane Lady +over that machine-gun with that wicked-looking little nozzle that he had +decided not to mount upon the P.D.Q. + +"_It'll have to be a rifle after all._" + +Little Gwenna in her brown disguise sat with this rifle across her +knees, wondering. + +Why did Paul wish Mr. Ryan to be armed with this? Why hadn't he handed +over that carbine just when they were about to start? Why only now, just +when they had got as far as the sea? + +For she was certain now that what was below them was the sea. There was +a bright, silvery glitter to the right, but the floating floor of the +biplane shut that out again. To the left all was of a slaty grey. The +sun's level rays shot along the length of the biplane as if it were down +a gallery. + +Gwenna sat there, holding that carbine across her brown wrapped knees, +and still puzzling over it. Why had Paul handed the thing over, so +suddenly? She could not see the reason. + + +Even when it appeared she did not at first see the reason. + +Paul Dampier had been quicker to see it than she. + +Of a sudden there broke out--there is no other word for it--a silence +more startling than all that harsh raving of the propeller that had been +stopped. At the same instant Gwenna felt the floor fall away suddenly on +her left and mount as dizzily on her right. The biplane was tilted up in +the air just as a ladder is tilted against the side of the house. And +the engine was giving short staccato roars into the silences as Paul +kept her going. He had shut off, and was making a giddy swoop down, down +to the left. She heard his voice. Sharply he cried out: + +"There! Out to the left! The Taube! There he is!" + +The next moment the engine was roaring again. The biplane had lifted to +the opposite curve of a swooping figure eight. + +And now the girl in the passenger-seat saw in the air beside them, +scarcely two hundred yards away, what the pilot had seen. + +It was another aeroplane; a monoplane. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +THE WINGED VICTORY + + +Now Gwenna, although she'd been clerk and assistant to the Aeroplane +Lady herself, and although she loved the idea of aeroplanes as other +girls have loved the idea of jewels, scarcely knew one pattern of +monoplane from another. + +They were all the same to her as far as overlapping the seams with the +doped strips was concerned. Nevertheless, in this machine that seemed +suddenly to have appeared out of nowhere, there struck her something +that was quite unfamiliar. Never before had she seen that little +blade-shaped drag from the tips of the wings. It gave to this machine +the look of a flying pigeon.... She had only noticed it for a moment, as +the monoplane had lurched, as it were, into view over the edge of their +own lower plane. Then it lurched out of sight again. + +Again their engine was shut off; and again she heard Paul's voice, +excited, curt. + +"Can you get him, do you think?" + +Get him? Bewilderingly she wondered what Paul could mean. Then came +another staccato rush of sound. Then another silence, and Paul's voice +through it. + +"All right. I'll get above him; and you can shoot through the floor." + +The engine brayed again, this time continuously. + +"Shoot!" gasped Gwenna. + +Shoot at that machine through the hole in the floor of this one? It was +a German craft, then? And Paul meant Mr. Ryan to shoot whoever was in +that machine. And she, Gwenna, who had never had a gun in her hands +before in her life, found herself in the midst of War, told to shoot---- + +Hardly knowing one end of the thing from the other, she grasped the +carbine. She guessed that the flyer in the other machine must have +realised what Paul meant to do. + +They were rising; he was rising too. + +And suddenly she became aware that there was sunlight about them no +longer. All was a dun and chilly white. Paul, trying to get above the +other, and the other trying to prevent him, had both run up together +into a cloud. Once before the Welsh girl had had this experience. On a +rocky mountain-path up Cader Idris she had walked into a thick mist that +wrapped her from seeing anything in front of her, even though she could +hear the voices of tourists just a little ahead. + +And now here they saw nothing, but they could hear. + +Even through the noise of their propeller Gwenna's ears caught a smaller +noise. It seemed to come from just below. + +She had got the muzzle of the carbine through the hole at her feet. +Desperately, blindly she fumbled at what she thought must be the +trigger. Behind her goggles, she shut her eyes tightly. The thing went +off before she knew how it had done so. + +Then, nothing.... + +Then the propeller had stopped again. She felt her shoulder touched +from behind. Paul's voice called, "Got him, Ryan?" + +"I--I don't know," she gasped, turning. "I--_Paul! It's me!_" + +It was a wonder that the biplane did not completely overturn. + +Paul Dampier had wrenched himself forward out of the straps and had +taken one hand from the wheel. His other clutched Gwenna's shoulder, and +the clutch dragged away the muffler at her white throat and her goggles +slipped aside. Aghast he glared at her. The Little Thing herself? Here? + +"Good---- here, keep still. Great----! For Heaven's sake, don't move. +I'll run for it. He can't catch me. I was trying to catch him. He can't +touch us---- We'll race--hold tight, Gwen--ready." He opened the throttle +again; while Gwenna, white-faced, took in the tornado of wind with +parted lips and turned sideways to stare with wide-open eyes. + +Then a number of things seemed to happen very quickly. + +The first of these was a sharp "Ping!" on one of the aluminium stays. +Gwenna found herself gazing blankly at the round hole in the wing a yard +to the right of her. The next thing was that the fog--mist--or cloud, +had disappeared. All was clear sky about them once more. The third thing +was that, hardly a stone's toss away, and only missed by a miracle in +the cloud, they saw the monoplane and the aviator in her. + +He was bareheaded, for that blind, wild shot of the British girl's had +stripped away his head-covering, and there was a trickle of scarlet down +his cheek. His hair was a gilded stubble, his eyes hard and blue and +Teutonic. His flying-gear was buttoned plastron-wise above his chest, +just as that white linen jacket of his had been; and Karl Becker, +waiter, spy and aviator, gave a little nod, as much as to say that he +recognised that they were meeting not for the first time.... + +One glimpse showed all this. The next instant both German and Englishman +had turned to avoid the imminent collision. But the German did more than +turn. + +He had been fired on and hit; now was his shot. Dampier, with no thought +now but to get his wife out of danger, crowded the biplane on. As the +machines missed one another by hardly ten feet, she heard the four +cracks of Paul's revolver. + +Little Gwenna thought she had never heard anything so fascinating, +horrible, and sweet. He was fighting not for his own life only. And he +was not now being fired at, far from her, hoping that she need never +know. For she also, she was in danger with him; she who did not want to +die before him but who would not wish to live for one moment after him. + +Moments? When every moment was a whole life, what could be more +perilously, unimaginedly sweet than this? + +"I knew I had to come," she gasped to herself. "Never away from him +again! Never----" + +Her heart was racing like the propeller itself with just such speed, +such power. More love than it could bear was crowded into every throb of +it. For one more of those moments that were more than years she must +look at him and see him look at her.... + +One look! + +As they tore through the air she turned in her straps, pushing the curls +back from her brow. Her eyes met his, set and intent over the wheel. + +She smiled at him. + +Up out of the depths of his intentness she saw the answering smile come +into his own eyes. He nodded. He meant that it was all right. His lips +moved. + +"He can't--touch--us!" he was shouting. His girl threw back her head as +far as it would go, offering her face for the kiss that she knew he +could not give. He nodded again, laughed outright, and stretched his own +head forward. It was all a kiss, despite the constraining straps--or +almost all. + +More of a kiss than many lovers know, more of a marriage! + +For then it was that the German's shot rang out, completing their +caress. Never was dearer nor more precious union, never less pain, so +lost was it in rapture. As gently as if he had only just said Good-night +the boy's head sank on the wheel; as for hers, it never moved. She still +lay, leaning back with lips parted, as if to-morrow would see her kissed +awake again.... His hands twitched once only. That movement cut off the +throttle. Again, for the last time, the propeller stopped. + +The Taube was already a vanishing speck in the distance.... + +The P.D.Q. yawed, hung poised, began to slide tail first, and gathered +speed. + +Up, up came the silver waves of the English Channel. + + + + +POSTSCRIPT + +MYRTLE AND LAUREL LEAF + + +It was the week before Christmas, Nineteen-fourteen. + +London wore her dreariest winter livery of mud-brown and fog-yellow, and +at three o'clock on such an afternoon there would have been brilliant +lights everywhere ... any other, ordinary year. + +This year, Londoners had to find their way as best they could through +the gloom. + +Across a wide Square with a railed and shrubberied garden in the centre +of it, there picked her way a very tall girl in furs that clung about +her as bushy ivy hangs about some slender tree. She wore a dark velvet +coat broadly belted over her strait hips, and upon her impish head there +was perched one of the little, back velvet, half-military caps that were +still the mode. This girl peered up at the numbers of the great houses +at the side of the Square; finally, seeing the gilt-lettered inscription +that she sought above one of the doors, + + "ANNEXE TO THE CONVALESCENT HOME + FOR WOUNDED OFFICERS," + +she rang the bell. + +The door was opened to her by a small trim damsel in the garb of the +Girl-Guides, who ushered her into a large and ornate hall, and into the +presence of a fresh-coloured, fair-haired Personage--she was evidently +no less--in nurse's uniform. + +This Personage gazed upon the visitor with a suspicious and disapproving +look. + +"I wonder why? It isn't because I'm not blamelessly tidy for once in my +life, and she can't guess that the furs and the brown velvet suit are +cast-offs from the opulent," thought the visitor swiftly. Aloud she +added in her clear, nonchalant tone: "I have come to see Mr. Scott, +please." + +"There is the visiting-hour. It is not quite three yet," said the nurse +forbiddingly. + +"I'll wait, then," said the visitor. For two minutes she waited. Then +the nurse approached her with a note-book and a pencil. + +"Will you write your name down here?" she said austerely. And upon a +page inscribed "_Mr. M. Scott_" the visitor wrote her name, "Miss Leslie +Long." + +"Will you come up?" the nurse said reluctantly. And Leslie ascended a +broad red-carpeted stairway, and was shown into a great room of parquet +floors and long windows and painted panels that had been a drawing-room, +and that was now turned by a row of small beds on great castors and by +several screens into a hospital-ward. + +A blonde youth in a pink pyjama jacket, and with his arm in a black +silken sling, was sitting up in bed and chatting to a white-moustached +gentleman beside him; another of the wounded was sitting by one of the +great fire-places, reading; a couple were playing picquet in a corner, +under a smiling Academy portrait of the mistress of the mansion. + +"Mr. Scott is sitting up to-day, in the ante-room," vouchsafed the +nurse. And Leslie Long entered, through a connecting door, a small room +to the right. + +One wall of it was hung with a drapery of ancient brown tapestry, +showing giant figures amidst giant foliage; beneath it was a low couch. +Upon this, covered with a black, panther-skin rug, there lay, half +sitting up, supported on his elbow, the young wounded officer whom +Leslie had come to see. + +"Frightfully good of you, this," he said cheerfully, as she appeared. + +She looked down at him. + +For the moment she could not speak. She set down on his couch the sheaf +of golden chrysanthemums that she had brought, and the copy of the +_Natal Newsletter_ that she had thought might cheer him. She found +herself about to say a very foolish thing: "So they left you your +handsome eyes, Monty." + +The face in which those eyes shone now was thin and drawn; and it seemed +as if all the blood had been drained from it. His crutches stood in the +corner at the foot of the couch. He was Monty Scott, the Dean's son, +once a medical student and would-be sculptor. Yes; he had been a +dilettante artist once, but he looked a thorough soldier now. The small +moustache and the close-cropped hair suited him well. He had enlisted in +the Halberdiers at the beginning of the War. He had got his commission +and had lost his leg at Ypres. + +Not again would he wear that Black Panther get-up to any fancy-dress +dance.... Never again. + +This was the thought, trivial and irrelevant enough, that flashed +through Leslie's mind, bringing with it a rush of tears that she had to +bite her lips to check. She had to clench her nails into her palms, to +open her black eyes widely and smilingly, and to speak in the clearest +and most flippant tone that she could summon. + +"Hullo, Monty! Nice to see you again; now that I _can_ see you. You +wounded warriors _are_ guarded by a dragon!--thanks, I'll sit down +here." She turned the low chair by the couch with its back to the light. +"Yes, I could hardly get your Ministering-Angel-Thou to let me through. +Glared at me as if she thought I was after the spoons. (I suppose that's +exactly what some of them _are_ after," suggested Miss Long, laughing +quite naturally.) "She evidently took me for just another predatory +feline come to send the patient's temperature soaring upwards. It's not +often I'm crushed, but----" + +"Oh, Nurse Elsa is all right," said the patient, laughing too. "You +know, I think she feels bound to be careful about new people. She seems +to have a mania for imagining that everybody fresh may be a German spy!" + +"A _German_? Why should she think that?" + +"Oh, possibly because--well----" Young Scott lowered his voice and +glanced towards that connecting door. But it had been shut. "Because she +happens to be 'naturalised' herself, you know!" + +They talked; Leslie ever more lightly as she was more deeply touched by +the sight of the young man on his couch. So helpless, he who had been so +full of movement and fitness and supple youth! So pluckily, resolutely +gay, he who had been so early put out of the fun! + +Lightly he told Leslie the bare details of his wound. It had been in a +field of beet that he had been pipped; when he had been seeing to some +barbed wire with a sergeant and a couple of his men, at nightfall. One +of those snipers had got him. + +"And I was downed in a second," he said ruefully. "_I_ couldn't get the +beggar!" + +Leslie thought of the young, mortally-wounded Mercutio and his impatient +cry of "_What! Is he gone, and hath nothing?_" It was the only complaint +at his lot that was ever to pass the lips of this other fighter. + +She looked at him, and her heart swelled with pride for him. It sank +with shame for herself. She had always held him--well, not as lightly as +she said she had. There had been always the sneaking tenderness for the +tall, infatuated boy whom she'd laughed at. But why "sneaking"? Why had +she laughed? She had thought him so much less than herself. She said she +knew so much more. What vanity and crass, superficial folly! A new +thrill took her suddenly. Could it be that War, that had cut everybody's +life in two, had worked another wonder? + +Presently he remarked, "I say, your friends, the poor Dampiers! I +suppose nothing's ever been heard of them, after that day that they +found out at the Works that his wife had started with him, when he set +off for France, and disappeared?" + +"Nothing," said Leslie quietly, "Whether it was an accident with his new +engine, or whether they were killed by a shot from a German aeroplane +they met, we shan't ever know now. It must have been over the sea.... +Nothing has ever been found. Much the best way, I think. I said so to +poor young Mr. Ryan, the man who let her take his place. He was beside +himself when he turned up at the Aircraft place again and found that +nothing had been heard. He said he'd killed her. I told him she would +think he'd done more for her than anybody she knew. The best time to go +out! No growing old and growing dull and perhaps growing ill and being +kept half alive by bothering doctors, for years.... No growing out of +love with each other, ever! They, at least, have had something that +nothing can spoil." + +Monty Scott, turning his small, close-cropped head of a soldier and his +white face towards the tapestry, blurted out: "Well! At all events +they've _had_ it. But even having it 'spoilt' is better than never +having had any----" + +He checked himself abruptly. + +He was not going to whine now over his own ill-luck in love to her, to +Leslie, who had turned him down three times. Not much. + +In the suddenly tense atmosphere of the little room overlooking the +wide, dim Square, the girl felt the young man's resolution--a +resolution that he would keep. He would never ask her for another +favour. + +He cleared his throat and spoke in an altered tone, casual, +matter-of-fact. + +"Awfully pretty, the little girl that Dampier married, wasn't she? +Usen't she to live at that Club of yours? I think I saw her once, +somewhere or other----" + +"Yes. You did," said Leslie quickly, and a little breathlessly as though +she, too, had just taken a resolution. "At that dance. That river dance. +She was the Cherub-girl. And I wore my mauve Nijinski things. You +remember that time, Monty?" + +"Oh, yes," said the wounded man shortly, "I remember." + +There was a slight, uneasy movement under the panther-skin rug. + +He hadn't thought that Leslie would have reminded him of those times. +Not of that dance, when, with his hands on her hips and her hands +clasped at the back of his neck, he had swung round with her in the +maddest of waltzes.... He wouldn't have expected her to _remind_ him! + +Nor was he expecting the next thing that Leslie did. She slipped from +that low chair on to her knees by the couch. Her furs touched his hand, +delicate and whiter now than a woman's, and he took it quickly away. He +could not look at the vivid, impish face with the black, mocking eyes +and the red, mocking mouth that had always bewitched him. Had he looked, +he would have seen that the mockery was gone from both. It was gone, +too, from Leslie's voice when she next spoke, close to him. + +"Monty! At that dance---- Have you forgotten? We were walking by the +river--and you said--you asked----" + +"Yes, yes; all right. Please don't mind," muttered the man who had been +the Black Panther hastily. It was pretty awful, having girls _sorry_ for +one! + +She went on kneeling by him. "I told you that I wasn't in the mood!" + +"Yes; but--I say, it doesn't matter one scrap, thanks," declared Monty +Scott, very hoarsely. + +This was the hardest thing he'd ever yet had to bear; harder than lying +out wounded in that wet beetroot-field for nine hours before he could be +picked up; harder than the pain, the agonising, jolting journeys; harder +even than the sleepless nights when he had tossed and turned on his bed, +next to the bed where a delirious man who had won the D.S.O. cried out +in his nightmare unceasingly: "Stick it, boys! Stick it, boys! Stick it, +boys!" He (Monty) didn't think he could stick this. There could never be +any one in the world but Leslie for him, that laughing, devil-may-care +Leslie at whom "nice" girls looked askance. Leslie who didn't care. +Leslie who _pitied_ him! Ghastly! Desperately he wished she'd get up and +go--_go_---- + +Suddenly her voice sounded in his ear. Far from being pitying it was so +petulant as to convince even him. It cried: "Monty! I said then that +you were an infant-in-arms! If you weren't an infant you could _see_!" + +He turned his head quickly on the couch-cushion. But even then he didn't +really see. Even then he scarcely took in, for the moment, what he +heard. + +For the kneeling, radiant girl had to go on, laughing shakily: "I always +liked you.... After everything I said! After everything I've thought, it +comes round to this. _It's better to have loved and settled down than +never to have loved at all.... Oh!_ I've got my head into as bright a +rainbow as any of them!..." scolded Leslie, laughing again as +flutteringly as Paul Ethampier's sweetheart might have done. "Oh, I +thought that just because one liked a man in the kind of way I liked +you, it was no reason to accept him ... _fool_ that I was----" + +"Leslie!" he cried very sharply, scarcely believing his ears. "Could you +have?--_could_ you? And you tell me _now_! When it's too late----" + +"Too _late_? _Won't_ you have me? Can't you see that I think you so much +more of a man when you're getting about as well as you can on one leg +than I did when you were just dancing and fooling about on two? As for +me----" + +She turned her bright face away. + +"It's the same old miracle that never stops happening. I shan't even be +a woman, ever," faltered Leslie Long, "unless you help to make me one!" + +"You can't mean it? You can't----" + +"Can't I? I am 'in the mood' _now_, Monty!" she said, very softly. +"Believe me!" + +And her long arm was flung, gently and carefully, about her soldier's +neck; her lips were close to his. + + * * * * * + +When at last she left her lover, Leslie Long walked down the darkened +streets near Victoria, quietly and meditatively. And her thoughts were +only partly with the man whom she had left so happy. Partly they were +claimed by the girl-friend whose marriage morning wish had been for her, +Leslie, to be happy in the same way. + +It seemed to Leslie that she was very near her now. + +Even as she walked along the tall girl was conscious, in a way not to be +described, of a Presence that seemed to follow her and to beset her and +to surround her with a sense of loving, laughing, girlish pleasure and +fellowship. She saw, _without seeing_, the small, eager, tip-tilted face +with bright eyes of river-green and brown, crowned by the wreath of +short, thick curls. _Without hearing_, she caught the tone of the soft, +un-English, delighted voice that cried, "Oh, _Les_--lie----!" + + +"Little Taffy! She'd be so full of it, of course.... Of _course_ she'd +be glad! Of _course_ she'd know; I can't think she doesn't. Not she, who +was so much in love herself," mused Leslie, putting up her hand with her +characteristic gesture to tuck in the stray tress of black hair that had +come loose under her trim velvet cap. + +"And the people we've loved can't forget at once, as soon as they've +left us. I don't believe that. _She knows._ If _I_ could only say +something--send some sort of message! Even if it were only like waving a +hand! If _I_ could make some sign that I shall always care----" + +As she thought of it she was passing a row of shops. The subdued light +from one of them fell upon swinging garlands of greenery festooned +outside; decorations ready for Christmas. + +On an impulse Leslie Long turned into this florist's shop. "I want one +of those wreaths you have, please," she said. + +"Yes, Madam; a holly-wreath?" + +"No. One of those. Laurel." + +And while the man fetched down the wreath of broad, dark, pointed +leaves, Leslie Long took out one of her cards and a pencil, and +scribbled the message that she presently fastened to the wreath. She +would not have it wrapped up in paper, but carried it as it was. Then +she turned down a side-street to the Embankment, near Vauxhall Bridge. +She leaned over the parapet and saw the black, full tide, here and there +only jewelled with lights, flowing on, on, past the spanning bridges and +the town, away to the sea that had been at last the great, silver, +restless resting-place for such young and ardent hearts.... + +There was a soft splash as she flung the laurel wreath into the flowing +water. + +Leslie glanced over and watched it carried swiftly past. In a patch of +light she saw the tiny white gleam of the card that was tied to the +leaves of victory. + +This was what she had written upon it: + + "For Gwenna and Paul. + + '_Envy, ah, even to tears! + The fortune of their years, + Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended._'" + + +THE END + + + * * * * * + + + + +Popular Copyright Novels + +_AT MODERATE PRICES_ + +Ask Your Dealer for a Complete List of A. L. Burt Company's Popular +Copyright Fiction + + + =Abner Daniel.= By Will N. Harben. + =Adventures of Gerard.= By A. Conan Doyle. + =Adventures of a Modest Man.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Adventures of Sherlock Holmes.= By A. Conan Doyle. + =Adventures of Jimmie Dale, The.= By Frank L. Packard. + =After House, The.= By Mary Roberts Rinehart. + =Alisa Paige.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Alton of Somasco.= By Harold Bindloss. + =A Man's Man.= By Ian Hay. + =Amateur Gentleman, The.= By Jeffery Farnol. + =Andrew The Glad.= By Maria Thompson Daviess. + =Ann Boyd.= By Will N. Harben. + =Anna the Adventuress.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Another Man's Shoes.= By Victor Bridges. + =Ariadne of Allan Water.= By Sidney McCall. + =Armchair at the Inn, The.= By F. Hopkinson Smith. + =Around Old Chester.= By Margaret Deland. + =Athalie.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =At the Mercy of Tiberius.= By Augusta Evans Wilson. + =Auction Block, The.= By Rex Beach. + =Aunt Jane.= By Jeanette Lee. + =Aunt Jane of Kentucky.= By Eliza C. Hall. + =Awakening of Helena Richie.= By Margaret Deland. + + =Bambi.= By Marjorie Benton Cooke. + =Bandbox, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance. + =Barbara of the Snows.= By Harry Irving Green. + =Bar 20.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =Bar 20 Days.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =Barrier, The.= By Rex Beach. + =Beasts of Tarzan, The.= By Edgar Rice Burroughs. + =Beechy.= By Bettina Von Hutten. + =Bella Donna.= By Robert Hichens. + =Beloved Vagabond, The.= By Wm. J. Locke. + =Beltane the Smith.= By Jeffery Farnol. + =Ben Blair.= By Will Lillibridge. + =Betrayal, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Better Man, The.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady. + =Beulah.= (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans. + =Beyond the Frontier.= By Randall Parrish. + =Black Is White.= By George Barr McCutcheon. + =Blind Man's Eyes, The.= By Wm. MacHarg & Edwin Balmer. + =Bob Hampton of Placer.= By Randall Parrish. + =Bob, Son of Battle.= By Alfred Ollivant. + =Britton of the Seventh.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady. + =Broad Highway, The.= By Jeffery Farnol. + =Bronze Bell, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance. + =Bronze Eagle, The.= By Baroness Orczy. + =Buck Peters, Ranchman.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =Business of Life, The.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =By Right of Purchase.= By Harold Bindloss. + + =Cabbages and Kings.= By O. Henry. + =Calling of Dan Matthews, The.= By Harold Bell Wright. + =Cape Cod Stories.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Cap'n Dan's Daughter.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Cap'n Eri.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Cap'n Warren's Wards.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Cardigan.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Carpet From Bagdad, The.= By Harold MacGrath. + =Cease Firing.= By Mary Johnson. + =Chain of Evidence, A.= By Carolyn Wells. + =Chief Legatee, The.= By Anna Katharine Green. + =Cleek of Scotland Yard.= By T. W. Hanshew. + =Clipped Wings.= By Rupert Hughes. + =Coast of Adventure, The.= By Harold Bindloss. + =Colonial Free Lance, A.= By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. + =Coming of Cassidy, The.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =Coming of the Law, The.= By Chas. A. Seltzer. + =Conquest of Canaan, The.= By Booth Tarkington. + =Conspirators, The.= By Robt. W. Chambers. + =Counsel for the Defense.= By Leroy Scott. + =Court of Inquiry, A.= By Grace S. Richmond. + =Crime Doctor, The.= By E. W. Hornung. + =Crimson Gardenia, The, and Other Tales of Adventure.= By Rex Beach. + =Cross Currents.= By Eleanor H. Porter. + =Cry in the Wilderness, A.= By Mary E. Waller. + =Cynthia of the Minute.= By Louis Jos. Vance. + + =Dark Hollow, The.= By Anna Katharine Green. + =Dave's Daughter.= By Patience Bevier Cole. + =Day of Days, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance. + =Day of the Dog, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon. + =Depot Master, The.= By Joseph C. Lincoln. + =Desired Woman, The.= By Will N. Harben. + =Destroying Angel, The.= By Louis Joseph Vance. + =Dixie Hart.= By Will N. Harben. + =Double Traitor, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Drusilla With a Million.= By Elizabeth Cooper. + + =Eagle of the Empire, The.= By Cyrus Townsend Brady. + =El Dorado.= By Baroness Orczy. + =Elusive Isabel.= By Jacques Futrelle. + =Empty Pockets.= By Rupert Hughes. + =Enchanted Hat, The.= By Harold MacGrath. + =Eye of Dread, The.= By Payne Erskine. + =Eyes of the World, The.= By Harold Bell Wright. + + =Felix O'Day.= By F. Hopkinson Smith. + =50-40 or Fight.= By Emerson Hough. + =Fighting Chance, The.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Financier, The.= By Theodore Dreiser. + =Flamsted Quarries.= By Mary E. Waller. + =Flying Mercury, The.= By Eleanor M. Ingram. + =For a Maiden Brave.= By Chauncey C. Hotchkiss. + =Four Million, The.= By O. Henry. + =Four Pool's Mystery, The.= By Jean Webster. + =Fruitful Vine, The.= By Robert Hichens. + + =Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford.= By George Randolph Chester. + =Gilbert Neal.= By Will N. Harben. + =Girl From His Town, The.= By Marie Van Vorst. + =Girl of the Blue Ridge, A.= By Payne Erskine. + =Girl Who lived in the Woods, The.= By Marjorie Benton Cook. + =Girl Who Won, The.= By Beth Ellis. + =Glory of Clementina, The.= By Wm. J. Locke. + =Glory of the Conquered, The.= By Susan Glaspell. + =God's Country and the Woman.= By James Oliver Curwood. + =God's Good Man.= By Marie Corelli. + =Going Some.= By Rex Beach. + =Gold Bag, The.= By Carolyn Wells. + =Golden Slipper, The.= By Anna Katharine Green. + =Golden Web, The.= By Anthony Partridge. + =Gordon Craig.= By Randall Parrish. + =Greater Love Hath No Man.= By Frank L. Packard. + =Greyfriars Bobby.= By Eleanor Atkinson. + =Guests of Hercules, The.= By C. N. & A. M. Williamson. + + =Halcyone.= By Elinor Glyn. + =Happy Island= (Sequel to Uncle William). By Jeannette Lee. + =Havoc.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Heart of Philura, The.= By Florence Kingsley. + =Heart of the Desert, The.= By Honore Willsie. + =Heart of the Hills, The.= By John Fox, Jr. + =Heart of the Sunset.= By Rex Beach. + =Heart of Thunder Mountain, The.= By Elfrid A. Bingham. + =Heather-Moon, The.= By C. N. and A. M. Williamson. + =Her Weight in Gold.= By Geo. B. McCutcheon. + =Hidden Children, The.= By Robert W. Chambers. + =Hoosier Volunteer, The.= By Kate and Virgil D. Boyles. + =Hopalong Cassidy.= By Clarence E. Mulford. + =How Leslie Loved.= By Anne Warner. + =Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker.= By S. Weir Mitchell, M.D. + =Husbands of Edith, The.= By George Barr McCutcheon. + + =I Conquered.= By Harold Titus. + =Illustrious Prince, The.= By E. Phillips Oppenheim. + =Idols.= By William J. Locke. + =Indifference of Juliet, The.= By Grace S. Richmond. + =Inez.= (Ill. Ed.) By Augusta J. Evans. + =Infelice.= By Augusta Evans Wilson. + =In Her Own Right.= By John Reed Scott. + =Initials Only.= By Anna Katharine Green. + =In Another Girl's Shoes.= By Berta Ruck. + =Inner Law, The.= By Will N. Harben. + =Innocent.= By Marie Corelli. + =Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, The.= By Sax Rohmer. + =In the Brooding Wild.= By Ridgwell Cullum. + =Intrigues, The.= By Harold Bindloss. + =Iron Trail, The.= By Rex Beach. + =Iron Woman, The.= By Margaret Deland. + =Ishmael= (Ill.) By Mrs. Southworth. + + + + +TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES: + + +1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_ and the ones in +bold are indicated by =bold=. + +2. Obvious punctuation errors have been silently closed, while those +requiring interpretation have been left as such. + +3. The word manoeuvres uses an oe ligature in the original. + +4. The following misprints have been corrected: + "kimona" corrected to "kimono" (page 21) + "beseiged" corrected to "besieged" (page 62) + "Esctasy" corrected to "Ecstasy" (page 242) + "ass" corrected to "as" (page 277) + "husabnd" corrected to "husband" (page 353) + +5. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies in +spelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Boy with Wings, by Berta Ruck + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOY WITH WINGS *** + +***** This file should be named 36223.txt or 36223.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/2/2/36223/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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