The Boy with Wings
this young man seemed always to be in fancy dress. Leslie could have
told her that Mr. Swayne's laziness and vanity had led him to abandon
himself on the coast of Bohemia, where he had not been born. His father
had been quite a distinguished soldier in Egypt. His father's son took
things more easily at the Grafton Gallery and the Cafe Royal and
Artists' Clubs. He neither painted, wrote, nor composed, but his life
was set largely among flatterers who did these things--after a fashion.
He came in saying, "Now this is where I live when I'm----"
He broke off with a start at the sight of the party within. The girls
turned to him with surprised and smiling greeting.
Paul Dampier, fixing him with those blue eyes, remarked composedly,
"Hullo, my dear chap. Have some tea, won't you? I'll ring for Johnson to
bring in two more cups."
"That will be very nice," said Hugo Swayne, rising to the occasion with
all the more grace because he was backed up by a tiny understanding
glance from Miss Long. And he introduced his young Frenchman by a name
that made Leslie exclaim, "Why! You are that Post-Impressionist painter,
aren't you?"
"Not I, mademoiselle, but my brother," returned Hugo's French friend,
slowly and very politely. His dark face was simple and intelligent as
that of a nice child; he sat up as straight in his chair as he talked.
"It is for that Mr. Swayne, who is admirer of my brother's pictures, is
so amiable for to show me London. Me, I am not artiste. I am ingenieur
only."
"'Only'!" thought Gwenna over her teacup.
Surely any one should be proud of being an engineer, considering that
Mr. Dampier had thus begun _his_ career; he who was now in what the
romantic girl considered the First of All Professions? Perhaps her
attitude towards the Airman as such was noted by the Airman's cousin.
Hugo, who had dropped a little heavily into the softest chair near Miss
Long, turned his Chopinesque profile against a purple cushion to shoot a
rather satirical glance at the cleaner-built youth in the worn grey
suit.
"Now, how like a man! He doesn't admire Taffy particularly, but he's
piqued to see her admire another type." Leslie summed this up quickly to
herself. "Not really a bad sort; he behaved well about the invasion of
these rooms. But he's like all these well-off young men who potter about
antique shops when they ought to be taking exercise--he's plenty of
feminine little ways. Since they call spitefulness 'feminine'!"
There was a distinctly spiteful note in the young man's voice as he made
his next remark to his cousin.
This remark surprised even Leslie for a moment.
And to Gwenna's heart it struck with a sudden, unreasonable shock of
consternation.
For Mr. Swayne inquired blandly across the tea-table:
"Well, Paul; how's your _fiancee_?"
CHAPTER VIII
LAUGHING ODDS
Before he answered, Gwenna had time to think smartingly, "His _fiancee_!
There! I might have _known_ he was engaged. I might have guessed it!
It's nothing to do with me.... Only ... I believe _that's_ what's going
to get in the way of my flying with him. She won't let him. I mean he'll
always be taking her up! And I know who it is, too. It's sure to be the
one called Muriel that I saw go up with him at Hendon with the red hair
and the scarf. I sort of guessed when I heard they were going up
together that she must be his _fiancee_."
And all the while her eyes were, apparently, on the silver stand of the
spirit-kettle, they watched the young Airman's face (which looked a
little sheepish). She listened, tensely, for his reply. Quite shortly
Paul Dampier, still munching cake, said, "Who? Oh! Going on as usual,
thanks."
"Now I may tell you that _that's_ merely a pose to conceal devotion,"
laughed his cousin, turning to Gwenna. "Just as if every moment were not
grudged that he spends away from HER!"
"Is it?" said the young girl with a smile. There was a bad lump in her
throat, but she spoke with her most carefully-fostered "English"
accent. "I--I suppose that's natural!" she remarked.
Hugo, fondling his Chopin curl again, went on amusing himself with this
chosen subject.
"But, as is so often the case with a young man's fancy," he announced,
"nobody else sees anything in 'her'!"
The stricken Gwenna looked quickly at young Dampier, who was cutting the
Titan wedges that men call "slices," of cake. How would _he_ take it
that it had been said of his adored one that no one saw anything in her?
He only gave a short laugh, a confident nod of his fair head and said,
"They will, though."
"Infatuated youth!" commented Hugo Swayne, resignedly, leaning back.
"And he tries to cover it up by seeming casual. '_Going on as usual_' is
said just as a blind. It sounds so much more like a mere wife than a
_fiancee_, don't you think?"
"Ah, but you are cynique, monsieur," protested the young Frenchman,
looking mildly shocked. "For you it is not sacred, the love for a wife?"
"Oh, look here! Hadn't you better explain to them," broke in Paul
Dampier boyishly, having finished a large mouthful of his cake, "that
you're rotting? _Fiancee_, indeed. Haven't got such a thing in the
world, of course."
At this Gwenna suddenly felt as if some crushing weight of
disappointment had fallen from her. "It's because I shall be able to go
flying with him after all," she thought.
Young Dampier, rising to take her cup, grumbled laughingly, "D'you
suppose girls will look at a man nowadays who can't afford to spend the
whole of his time gadding about after 'em, Hugo, as you can, or blowing
what's my salary for an entire year on their engagement-rings----"
"My dear fellow, no girl in the world exacts as much of a man's time and
money as that _grande passion_ of yours does," retorted Hugo Swayne, not
ill-naturedly. And turning to Leslie, he explained: "What I call Paul's
_fiancee_ is that eternal aeroplane he's supposed to be making."
"Ah!" said Gwenna, and then blushed violently; partly because she hadn't
meant to speak, and partly because this had drawn the blue eyes of the
Airman quickly upon herself.
"Yes, that incessant flying-machine of his," enlarged Mr. Swayne,
lolling back in his chair and addressing the meeting. "She--I believe
it's correct to call the thing 'she'?--is more of a nuisance even than
any engaged girl I've ever met. She interferes with everything this man
does. Ask him to come along to a dance or the Opera or to see some
amusing people, and it's always 'Can't; I'm working on the cylinder or
the spiral or the Fourth Dimension' or whatever it is he does think he's
working on. Practically 'she' spends all the time he's away from her
ringing him up, or getting him rung up, on the telephone. 'She' eats all
his spare cash, too----"
"In steel instead of chocolate, I suppose?" smiled Leslie. "And must
she be humoured? She seems to have every drawback of a young woman with
'a diamond half-hoop.' Is she jealous, as well?"
And then, while taking a cigarette from Hugo's case, the elder girl
made, lightly, a suggestion that the listening Gwenna was fated to
remember.
"What would happen," asked Leslie dryly, "if a real flesh-and-blood
_fiancee_ were to come along as a rival to the one of machinery?"
"Nothing would happen," Hugo assured her, holding out a lighted match.
"That's why it would be rather interesting to watch. The complication of
the Aeroplane or the Lady. The struggle in the mind of the young
Inventor, what? The Girl"--he tossed aside the match and glanced
fleetingly at the grave cherub's-face under Gwenna's white-winged
hat--"The Girl versus the Flying Machine. I'd lay fifteen to one on the
Machine, Miss Long."
"Done," said Leslie, demurely but promptly. "In half-crowns."
"Yes! You'd back your sex, of course," Hugo took up gaily. The young
Frenchman murmured: "But the Machine--the Machine is also of the sex of
Mademoiselle."
Here, suddenly, the silently listening Gwenna gave a tiny shiver. She
turned her head abruptly towards the open windows behind her with the
strutting pigeons and the sailing clouds beyond. It had seemed to the
fanciful Celt that there in that too dainty room now hazy with
cigarette-smoke, in that careless company of two girls and three young
men, she had felt the hint of another Presence. It was rather horrid and
ghostly--all this talk of a Machine that was made more of than a Woman!
A Machine who "clawed" the man that owned her, just like a jealous
betrothed who will not let her lover out of her sight! And supposing
that Conflict did come, on which Gwenna's chum and Mr. Dampier's cousin
had laid their laughing bets? The struggle between the sweetheart of
steel springs and the sweetheart of soft flesh and warm blood? For one
clear instant Gwenna knew that this fight would, must come. It was
coming----
Then she turned her head and forgot her presentiments; coming back to
the light-hearted Present. She watched Leslie, to whom the young
Frenchman had been talking; he was now fixing dark earnest eyes upon
"Mademoiselle Langue" as she, in the rather stilted phraseology with
which our nation speaks its own language for the benefit of foreigners,
expounded to him an English story.
There was a short pause.
Then the room rang to the laughter of the foreigner. "Ha! Yes! I have
understood him! It is very amusing, that! It is good!" he cried
delightedly, with a flash of white teeth and dark eyes. "He say, 'There
are parts of it that are excellent!' Aha! _Tres spirituel_," and he
laughed again joyously over the story of the Curate's Egg, while Hugo
murmured something about how stimulating it was to hear, for once, the
Immemorial Anecdote fall upon Virgin Soil.
The young Airman moved nearer to Gwenna, who, still watching Leslie,
gave a little start to hear that deep and gentle voice so close beside
her as he spoke.
"Look here, we haven't settled up yet," he said, his voice gentle but
carrying above the chatter of the others. "About that flying. Sunday
this week I have got to be off somewhere. Now, are you free next
Saturday?"
Gwenna, eager and tremulous, was just about to say, "Yes." But Hugo
Swayne interrupted.
"I say, I hate to make mischief. But if you're talking about
Saturday----? D'you remember, Paul? It was the only day I could take you
down to Ascot to see Colonel Conyers."
"Oh, Lord, so it was," said the young Airman, turning an apologetic face
to the girl. "I'm so sorry," he explained, "but this is a man I've
simply got to get hold of if I can. It's the Air-craft Conyers--'Cuckoo'
Conyers they call him. And he was a friend of Hugo's father, and what
I've been trying to see him about is working the War-office to take up
my new Machine----"
"The _Fiancee_ again, you notice," laughed his cousin, with an
imperceptible aside to Leslie. "Score to the Aeroplane."
"Yes, I see," said Gwenna, nodding at the Airman. "Of course! I mean of
course I don't mind!"
"Then shall we say Saturday week for you to come up with me instead?"
suggested young Dampier.
And Gwenna agreed to the date, thinking, "If only nothing stops it
again! If only there isn't something else, then, to do with his Machine!
That Machine! I----" Here she paused.
After all, it would be too ridiculous to allow oneself even to think
that one "_hated_" a machine!
CHAPTER IX
A DAY IN THE COUNTRY
Eagerly as Gwenna longed to fly, she was not to do so even yet.
After that appointment made at Hugo Swayne's rooms she lived through a
fortnight of dreaming, tingling anticipation. Then came another of those
brief direct notes from "_hers, P. Dampier_." The girl jumped for joy.
It was not to be at Hendon this time, but at Brooklands. Was she not
rapidly gaining experiences? First Hendon, then Brooklands; at this rate