[A]This phrase occurred in a despatch from Sir David Henderson.
[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. Andthey 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'veseenit!" 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 allright, 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. Ofcourse, 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'tmeantto come in, hadn'tmeantto 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. "Doyou?"
At that moment the Little Thing in his arms had banished all thought of those Big Things from his mind.
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 friezeof 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—"wearesplendid!"
"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 thereweren'tgoing 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?Goodgracious!" 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 lotof 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: "Areyoufond 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 ofThe 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, andhehad 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 ofany 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 hisfiancée, 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 meantyou."
"Me?" She gave a little gasp.
Life and happiness were too much for her again. She felt as if that whispering untouched champagnein 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 meanthat, 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 beenmostincorrect," 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, "Notbe 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 offuss, with writing home, and congratulations, and how-long-has-this-been-going-on, and all that sort of thing! People at tea-parties and thingstalkingaboutus! Iknowthey would!" declared the Welsh girl with distaste, "and saying, 'Dear me, she looks very young' andwonderingabout us! Oh, no,don'tlet's have it! It would seem tospoilit, for me! Don't let'scallit 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 whenIcould 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, andthe 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 meanttheirworkmanship 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 thewhole 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——"
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 littletremulously. "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?"
"Awhat?" 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. "Isthere going to be?"
"A war? Awarindeed," he said again. "What an extraordinary—Who's—What put such a thing into your head?"
She said, "Isthere?"
The boy gave a half-amazed, half-uneasy laugh. He retorted, "What d'you mean, Gwenna? A warwhere?"
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 withus, 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 therebeall 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 saidthat," 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; butwhen?"
"How should I know, mydearchild?" 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?"
"Doesheknow?" 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.Ourholiday. 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 whenyouthink it would come. Soon?"
Half laughing, half impatient, he said, "Idon'tknow. 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 notthatdanger. 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.Herboy! An aviator.... Would that mean presently a man flying aboveenemy country, to shoot and be shot at? ("Fired at by both friend and foe."). She said quiveringly: "Youwouldn'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 justgotyou! 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 talkabout. 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.
"Iwasgoing with Leslie to——"
"So you said. With Leslie, indeed! D'you think you're going to be allowed to go anywhere again, except withme?" 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 neverto see the Little Thing again; close as he'd done next time he did see her, at the Factory.
"Oh,youdon't know!" he said quite resentfully (while she laughed softly and happily in his hold), "youdon'tknow how I've wanted you with me. I—I haven't been able to think of anything—Youhavegot 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, "whatisthis 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'tseenyou 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.
Lethimfeel 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. Lethimtake his turn; lethimhave just a taste of it!
"Good-night!" she called softly to her lover before she disappeared. "See you to-morrow!"
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,howexactly like them all.... No, no; I didn't mean that. (Of course there's nobody likehim); 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 youdon'tknow what he's like; oh, Leslie, no, youcan'timagine!"—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'sand 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-brotherexactlylike him, to fall in love withyou!"
"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 ofhis? 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 andbête noire, Miss Armitage, was denouncing the few remaining membersof her sex who still seemed to acquiesce in the Oriental attitude towards Woman; who still remained serfs or chattels or toys.
"However!Thyneedn't think thycaount," 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."
"Youcome," 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 temperamentthan 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 Ihaveseen 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. Hetalked 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 awfullylikethat 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 thefresh 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!...Justlike 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 thelookof 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 andHilary 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 forthemnow, Leslie! Good Reason Number Ninety-nine for saying 'Yes.'"
She took up her pen.
"Nothing," she murmured, "Nothingwill ever kill the idea thatthe 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 shehas!"
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'tenough'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-reasonfor taking him. Reason a Hundred and Four:he'snever 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 shockhim. 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 herown 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'tthinkto 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.Botherher.It's unsettling!—Botherallengaged 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 settledthat."
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 youpromisedto 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 'agirl.'MyGirl!" 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 itsolong. Might as well let me hold on to it. May I?"
"Oh, you are greedy for keepsakes," she said, delighted. "What would youdowith 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-warmedsilence 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 wasnearlyasleep," 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 ifeverythingwas asleep." She opened her eyes, blinking at the rays of the sun, now level in her face. "Oh, Ishouldlike 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 remindherself 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 ofanotherGerman 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? Washea 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'tlet'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 stoopedand kissed her little ringless fingers and the palms of her hands. "But——"
There was a pause.
"Got tomarryme 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.
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: