The Boy with Wings
what soil of slackness. That was the time when women who were mothers
and able-bodied men were ready to fritter away the remnant of their
youth on what could be no longer pleasure, since they chased it with
such deadly ardour, discussing the lightest types of merrymaking as if
thereupon hung the fate of an empire!
Even little cherub-headed Gwenna Williams found something disquieting
about the sight of this throng as she scanned it with anxious eyes,
for--no, HE hadn't come! He was late. Not here. Perhaps it was merely
this that caused her to dislike the look of some of these other people?
That buxomly-formed young woman of twenty-five tricked out in the
costume of a child of three! That tall, fragile youth in black
grave-clothes, mouthing falsetto patter! That pretty "lady" in spreading
Georgian brocade and a white wig, from whose crimsoned lips there came
presently a robust masculine shout! That Madame Potiphar in the--Good
gracious!--it was another boy! No! Gwenna _didn't_ like them,
somehow.... Perhaps it was just because they were here and he, the only
partner she wished for, had not arrived. Oh, _supposing_ he were not
coming, after all?
Under the canvas roof where garlands swung and an installation of
electric light had been improvised, the crowd eddied and chattered and
laughed from one end to the other of the marquee where the long tables
were laid out. For it was a theatrical ball, late in beginning. Supper
was to come first. Gwenna, sitting beside a Futurist Folly whom her
friend Leslie had introduced vaguely as "one of my medical students,"
watched that supper-crowd (still he did not come), as they feasted,
leaning across the tables to laugh and shriek to acquaintances. It was
not the girls or the younger men who seemed most boisterous, but those
well over thirty. This surprised her. And even when they were most
unrestrained "they seemed," as the Welsh girl put it, "to be _making_
themselves do it, like." ...
Then she saw, by an opening in the canvas of the marquee, the apparition
of a steady man's figure, dead-white against the purple gloom outside. A
figure erect and neatly-shouldered under the close linen jacket of a
Continental waiter. Gwenna wondered where she had seen him before? In a
photograph? Or perhaps attending to one of the tables at Appenrodt's,
when she and Leslie had had tea after a matinee somewhere? She _had_
seen that young waiter, whose appearance was in such arresting contrast
to the bizarre costumes and painted faces of the noisy, laughing rabble
about him. His face was restrained and grave as that of some very young
Daniel at the feast of some modern Belshazzar.
Suddenly besides that still, watching apparition there came up another
boyish figure--typically English, in ordinary evening dress, and tall,
towering above the young German waiter of whom he was making some
inquiry. For a second they stood so; the waiter glancinc up, the
newcomer, Paul Dampier, with his blonde head tilted a little back, his
eyes raking the crowd.
"Ah! he's come," cried Gwenna aloud, but unheard in the universal
clatter. Her heart leaped....
But Paul Dampier, the airman, was swallowed up again almost directly in
a forest of odd, luridly-coloured head-dresses. He had not seen her.
And she did not see him again until some time after supper was ended,
and the throng was whirling and writhing in one-step and ragtime in the
other marquee.
Gwenna had danced with an Apache, with a Primitive Man, with Mr. Hugo
Swayne (in a mask and crazy-work domino as a Simultaneous Dynamism of
Something), and she was standing waiting, one of a figure in a revived
cotillon.
While the Viennese band swooped and tore through the waltz "Nights of
Gladness" a sheet had been fetched and was held up at the end of the
ballroom between a Morris-dancer and an incredibly handsome "Turco" (who
presently revealed himself as Mr. Swayne's French engineer), as a screen
before six of the girls. Six men were to be led up to it in turn; each
to choose his partner by the feet that were just allowed to show below
the sheet.
Soft laughter and twittering went on at the side where the half-dozen
girls stood.
"I say," exclaimed a damsel dressed as an Austrian Peasant to her
crinolined neighbour, "_now_ we see why you were so anxious to explain
why you were wearing scarlet----"
"Of course he'd know yours anywhere," retorted the next girl.
"Ssh! Play fair!" protested the next. "Mustn't be recognised by your
voice!"
"Oh, look at the Cherub girl's little shoes! Aren't they sweet? Just
like silver minnows peeping out----"
Here Gwenna, standing sedately beside the scintillating, mauve-limbed
Nijinski, Leslie, lifted her head in quick attention. She had recognised
a voice on the other side of the sheet. A voice deep and gentle and
carrying through the clatter of talk and the mad, syncopated music. It
protested with a laugh, "But, look _here_! I can't dance all these
weird----" It was the Airman--her Airman.
"Oh, he's just there. He's going to choose. If only he'd choose me,"
thought Gwenna, breathlessly fluttering where she stood. Then she
remembered. "Oh, but he won't know me. He doesn't know I was to have
silver shoes. If there was only _some_thing! Something to show him which
I was, I believe he'd choose me. What could I do?"
Suddenly she thought what she could do.... Yes! Winged feet, of course,
for a girl who longed to fly!
Hurriedly she put her hands up to the ruff made of those white wings.
Hastily she plucked two of them out. How was she to fasten them to her
feet, though? Alas, for the short curls that deprived her of woman's
universal tool! She turned to her chum who was impatiently jigging in
time to the music, with her long black hair swathed for once securely
under that purple casque.
"Leslie, quick, a hairpin! Lend me two hairpins," she whispered and
snatched them from her friend's hand. Then, holding on to Leslie's mauve
silken shoulder to support herself, Gwenna raised first one small foot,
and then the other, fastening to each between the stocking and the
silver shoe, one of those tiny wings.
They were the feathered heels of Mercury, the flying-god, that the girl
who loved a flying-man allowed to peep under the curtain behind which
she stood.
Above the commotion of people laughing and talking all about her and the
music she felt that he was close, only just behind that sheet. She could
have put out a hand and, through that sheet, have touched his
shoulder.... Mustn't, of course.... Must play fair. Would he note the
message of the winged feet? Would he stop and choose her?
Or would he pass on?
CHAPTER XII
THE KISS WITHHELD
He did not pass.
He stopped--Gwenna felt the touch of his finger on the silver tip of her
shoe. All a-tremble with delight she moved aside, and stepped from
behind the screen to face the partner who had chosen her.
"_Hullo_!" exclaimed Paul Dampier, with real surprise in his smile. "I
didn't know it was _you_!"
Gwenna felt a little dashed, even as he slipped his arm about her and
they began to waltz. She looked up into the blonde face that seemed
burned so very brown against his dress-shirt, and she ventured, "You
didn't know it was me? I thought that was why you chose me--I mean, I
thought because I was somebody you knew----"
"Didn't know you were here. I never thought those were your feet!" he
said in that adorably deep and gentle voice of his. Adding, as they
turned with the turning throng, something that lifted her heart again,
"I chose them because they were the prettiest, I thought."
It was simply stated, as a fact. But this, the first compliment he'd
paid her, kept her silent with delight. Even as they waltzed, his arm
about her rainbow scarf, the girl felt the strongest wish--the wish that
the dance were at an end and she back in her bedroom at the Club,
alone, so that she might think and think again over what he had said.
He'd thought she had the prettiest feet!
"D'you think you could manage to spare me some others?" he asked at the
end of that waltz. "You know, you're about the only girl here that I
know except Miss Long."
"Leslie would introduce you to anybody you liked"--suggested little
Gwenna, feeling very good for having done so. And virtue brought its
reward. For with a glance about him at that coloured noisy crowd that
seemed a handful of confetti tossed by a whirlwind, he told her he
didn't think he wanted to be introduced, much. He wasn't really keen on
a lot of people he'd never seen. But if she and Miss Long would give him
a few dances----?
The girl from the country thought it almost too good to be true that she
need not share him with any of these dangerously fascinating London
people here, except Leslie!
In a pause they went up to where Leslie was standing near the band.
Close beside her the Morris-dancer was wrangling with Hugo Swayne in his
crazy-work domino, who declared, "Miss Long promised _me_ every other
dance. A week ago, my dear man. Ten days ago----"
Yes; Leslie seemed to be engaged for every dance and every extra. She
tossed a "_so_ sorry, Mr. Dampier!" over her shoulder, following it with
an imperceptible feminine grimace for Gwenna's benefit. With the first
bars of the next waltz she was whirled away by a tall youth garbed,
becomingly enough, as a Black Panther. The room was still clear. The
Black Panther and the boyishly slim girl in mauve tunic and tights
waltzed, for one recurrence of the tune, alone....
Gwenna, looking after that shapely couple, knew who _he_ was; Monty
Scott, the Dean's son who had been a medical student when Leslie was at
the Hospital. He had followed her to the Slade to study sculpture, and
already he had proposed to her twice.
The tall and supple youth held Leslie, now, by his black-taloned gloves
on her strait hips. Leslie waltzed with hands clasped at the back of his
neck. Then, with a backward fling of her head and body, she twisted
herself out of his hold. She waltzed, holding the flat palms of her
hands pressed lightly to the palms of his. The music altered; Leslie
varying her step to suit it. She threw back her head again. Round and
round her partner she revolved, undulating from nape to heels, not
touching him, not holding him save by the attraction of her black eyes
set upon his handsome eyes, and of her red lips of a flirt, from which
(it was evident!) the boy could not take his gaze. Once more she shook
her purple-casqued head; once more she let him catch her about the hips.
Over the canvas floor they spun, Leslie and Monty, black-and-mauve,
moving together with a voluptuous swing and zest that marked them as the
best-matched dancers in the room. Well-matched, perhaps, for life,
thought Leslie's chum.... But no; as they passed Gwenna saw that the
black eyes and the red mouth were laughing cynically together; she
caught, through the music, Leslie's clear "Don't _talk_! _don't_ talk
when you're dancing, my good boy.... Spoils everything.... You _can_
waltz.... You know you've never anything to _say_, Mont!"
"I have. I say----"
Leslie waltzed on unheeding. Whatever he had to say she did not take it
seriously. She laughed over his shoulder to little Gwenna, watching....
Couple after couple had joined in now, following the swift tall graceful
black shape and the light-limbed mauve one as they circled by. A flutter
of draperies and tinsel, a toss and jingle of stage accoutrements; the
dancers were caught and sped by the music like a wreath of
rainbow-bubbles on the rise and fall of a wave.
Gwenna, the Cherub-girl, was left standing for a wistful moment by the
side of the tall Airman in evening dress.
He said, through the music, "Who's your partner for this?"
She had forgotten. It was the Futurist Folly again. He had to find