"Away till Monday. Wait for me."
"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 timeGwenna 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, "Hesaid he hoped the War would come in his time. I knowhewould think it perfectly awful if England didn't fight. And even I can feel that it would be horribly mean—justlooking onat 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'twe 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 forgetthatphrase," 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'sgotheaps 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'sthe sort of thing that will have done it.... Oh, Leslie's been in it, too, and all her friends. Dancingand 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 WARENGLAND'S DECISION."
"They'll publish a dozen before anythingisdecided," said Leslie. She bought a paper, Gwenna another....
No; nothing in them but surmise—suspense—theories—they walked on, passing Miss Armitage fromthe 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. "Wedon't want any War."
"Or anycountry, 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 herevenings 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'snot 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 willhedo?"
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 thenews," 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. "Gladyou'rehere, 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."
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 readingThe 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 longway 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 "Nameof goodness!"
"What is it, Mr. Lloydbach?" demanded his housekeeper excitedly in Welsh, clutching her black, crochetwool 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."
"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."
"Nameof 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?Whatdid 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."
"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, thatevery 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'sjustlike 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 neverheardof anybody marrying an Airman. (I don't suppose he's ever heard of an Airman at all before now!) Ministers, and quarry-managers, and peoplewith 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. (Justas 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 evendidpropose 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, Icall 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 Aviay-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 raisedthat"—("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 withany.)"
"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 amnot sure. Then I shall get my pay as a Flight-Lieutenant, you see. Shan't want any money much, then. Soshe"—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."
"Ishan'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 anexpense, a burden. A woman, who longs to mean only freedom and gifts and treasure to her lover!
"Oh, a woman ought never,neverto feel she has to bekept," thought Gwenna, rosy again with embarrassment. "If men don't think wemind, very well, then let all the money in the world be taken away from men, and given to us. Letthembe 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 youdogo away, I shall stay on with the Aeroplane Lady, as I told you, Paul. Yes. I'dmuchrather 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 asthe 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! IknewUncle 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!Hewon'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?Haveyou?" 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'thaveto 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 onlywhat 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 nohouse? 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 inhistime. When Gwenna's father, now, was courting Gwenna's mother, well! he, Hugh Lloyd, had never heard such a lot of talk aboutMahoggani.Andtebbel-linen.Andwho was to have the three feather-beds fromthe 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'dsmotherme!" from Gwenna.)
But the House, her Uncle Hugh hadOlwêsunderstood, 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, washe? (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 findhim?"
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—quitea 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—thethe privilege of seeing Gwenna at your place——" Yet another start. "We had noidea, 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 havebeenall 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!
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 tobe 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 meanoneof 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."
"Isaw 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—thatwasnew, 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 themanwho 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 interesther."
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 bitmuchsometimes? Oh, she's all right, but—I mean, I shouldn't likeyouto 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!Thatseemed 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, "Inever saw anything like the waymychildren 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, grownstout!...
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,fancythe 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 asingleeye left at the neck of this dress? Always the way with that laundry! It's nothing toitthat 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, youarea little pocket-Venus? No, I'mnotpiling 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 ahat?"
"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!Realorange-blossoms," cried Gwenna, delightedly sniffing up the sensuous perfume of them. "Oh, butwheredid 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 theworst 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'thelpit! 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. "Whata pity he isn't thirty years younger! Come along. He's waiting. I'm going to kisshim, anyhow. Got your gloves? Right. Got my hankerfish? You won'twantto 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'tkiss 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 wishesnowfor 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 theymightnot 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. Vaguelyshe 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. Itwastoo 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 justas 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!"
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.
Shewas 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 agood 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 thetrousseaushe 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: