The Boy with Wings
another partner. Gwenna danced with her Airman again ... and again....
Scarcely realising how it happened--indeed, how do these arrangements
make themselves?--this boy and girl from a simpler world than that of
this tinsel Bohemia spent almost the whole of the rest of that evening
as they had spent that day in the country, as she would have asked to
spend the rest of their lives together.
Some of the time they danced in the brilliant, heated marquee under the
swinging garlands and the lamps. Then again they strolled out into the
Riverside garden. Here it was cool and dewy and dim except where, from
the tent-openings, there was flung upon the grass a broad path of light,
across which flitted, moth-like, the figures of the dancers. Above the
marquee the summer night was purple velvet, be-diamonded with stars. At
the end of the lawn the river whispered to the willows and reflected,
here the point of a star, there the red blot of a lantern caught in a
tree.
Hugo Swayne went by in this bewildering stage, light-and-shade with a
very naughty-looking lady who declared that her white frock was merely
"'Milk,' out of 'The Blue Bird.'" In passing he announced to his cousin
that the whole scene was like a Conder fan that he had at his rooms.
Groups of his friends were simply sitting about and _making_ themselves
into quite good Fragonards. Little Gwenna did not even try to remember
what Fragonard was. None of these people in this place seemed real to
her but herself and her partner. And the purple dusk and velvet shadows,
the lights and colours, the throb and thrill of the music were just the
setting for this "night of gladness" that was only a little more
substantial than her other fancies.
More quickly it seemed to be passing! Every now and again she exultantly
reminded herself, "I am here, with him, out of all these people! He is
only speaking to me! I have him to myself--I must feel that as hard as I
can all the time now, for we shall be going home at the end of this
Ball, and then I shall be alone again.... If _only_ I could be with him
for always! How extraordinary, that just to be with one particular
person out of all the world should be enough to make all this
happiness!"
With her crop-curled head close against his shoulder as they danced, she
stole at her boyish partner the shy, defiantly possessive glance that a
child gives sometimes to the favourite toy, the toy that focusses all
his dreams. This was "the one particular person out of all the world"
whose company answered every conscious and unconscious demand of the
young girl's nature even as his waltz-step suited her own.
Yet she guessed that this special quiet rapture could not last. Even
before the end of the dance the end of _this_ must surely come.
It must have been long hours after the waltz-cotillon that they strolled
down to a sitting-out arbour that had been arranged at the end of the
path nearest the river. It was softly lighted by two big Chinese
lanterns, primrose-coloured, ribbed like caterpillars, with a black base
and a splash of patterned colour upon each; a rug had been thrown on the
grass, and there were two big white-cane chairs, with house-boat
cushions.
Here the two sat down, to munch sandwiches, drink hock-cup.
"I remembered to bring two glasses, this time," said Paul Dampier.
Gwenna smiled as she nodded. Her eyes were on those silver white-finned
minnows of her feet, that he had called pretty.
He followed her glance as he took another sandwich. "Rather a good idea,
wings to your shoes because you're supposed to be a cherub."
"Oh, but that's not what the wings were supposed to be for," she said
quickly. "I only put those in at the waltz-cotillon so that----"
Here she stopped dead, wishing that the carpeted grass might open at
those winged feet of hers and swallow her up!
How could she have given herself away like this? Let him _know_ how she
had wanted him to choose her! when he hadn't even known she was there;
hadn't been thinking about her!
She flurried on: "S-so that they should look more like fancy-dress shoes
instead of real ones!"
He turned his head, dark and clean-cut against the lambent swaying
lantern. He said, out of the gloom that spared her whelming blush, "Oh,
was that it! I thought," he added with a teasing note in his voice, "I
thought you were going to say it was to remind me that I'd promised to
take you flying, and that it's never come off yet!"
Gwenna, hesitating for a moment, sat back against the cushions of the
wicker-chair. She looked away from him, and then ventured a retort--a
tiny reproach.
"Well--it _hasn't_ come off."
"No, you know--it's too bad, really. I have been most frightfully busy,"
he apologised. "But we'll fix it up before you go to-night, shall we?
You must come." At this he was glad to see that the Little Thing looked
really pleased.
She was awfully nice and sensible, he thought for the severalth time.
Again the odd wish took him that had taken him in that field. Yes! He
_would_ like to touch those babyish-looking curls of hers with a finger.
Or even to rumple them against his cheek.... Another most foolish and
incomprehensible wish had occurred to him about this girl, even in her
absence. Apropos of nothing, one evening in his rooms he had remembered
the look of that throat of hers; round and sturdy and white above her
low collar. And he had thought he would rather like to put his own hands
about it, and to pretend--quite gently, of course--to throttle the
Little Thing. To-night she'd bundled it all up in that sort of feather
boa.... Pity.... She was ever so much prettier without.
Fellow can't say that sort of thing to a girl, though, thought the
simple Paul.
So he merely said, instead, "Let me stick that down for you somewhere,"
and he leant forward and took from her the plate that had held her
cress-and-chicken sandwiches. Then he crossed his long legs and leant
back again. It was jolly and restful here in the dim arbour with her;
the sound of music and laughter came, much softened, from the marquee.
Nearer to them, on the water below the willows, there was a little
splashing and twittering of the moor-hen, roused by something, and the
scarcely audible murmur of the Thames, speeding past House-boat Country
to London ... the workaday Embankment.... It was jolly to be so
quiet....
Then, into the happy silence that had fallen between them, there came a
sound--the sound of the crunching of gravel. Gwenna looked up. Two
figures sauntered past down the path; both tall and shapely and black
against the paling, star-sprinkled sky above the frieze of sighing
willows. Then Leslie's clear, careless voice drifted to their ears.
"Afraid not.... Anyhow, what on earth would be the good of caring '_a
little_'?... I look upon you as such an infant--in arms----"
Here there was a bass mutter of, "Make it _your_ arms, and I don't
mind!"
Then Leslie's insouciant: "I _knew_ you'd say that obvious thing. I
always do know what you're going to do or say next ... fatal, that.... A
girl _can't_ want to marry a man when----"
Apparently, then, the Dean's son was proposing again?
As the couple of free-limbed black shadows passed nearer, Paul Dampier
kicked his heel against his chair. He moved in it to make it creak more
noisily.
Good manners wasted!
For Leslie, as she afterwards told her chum, took for her motto upon
such occasions, "_And if the others see, what matter they_?"
Her partner seemed oblivious that there were any "others" sitting in
the shadows. The couple passed, leaving upon the night-breeze a trail of
cigarette-smoke (Leslie's), and an indistinguishable growl, presumably
from the Black Panther.
Leslie's voice floated back, "Not in the mood. Besides! You _had_, last
time, 'to soften the edges,' as you call it."
More audibly her partner grumbled, "What's a kiss you've _had_? About as
satisfying as last summer's strawberry-ice----"
A mere nothing--the incident.
Yet it brought (or hastened) a change into the atmosphere of that arbour
where, under the giant glowworms of lights swinging above them, two
young people sat at ease together without speaking.
For Gwenna, envious, thought, "Leslie can make a man think of nothing
but her, even when she's 'not in the mood!' I can't. Yet I believe I
could, but for one thing. Even now I don't know that he isn't thinking
about That Other----"
"That Other" was her rival, that machine of his that Gwenna had not
mentioned all the evening....
It had come, she knew, that duel between the Girl and the Aeroplane for
the first place in the heart of a Flying Man. A duel as old as the
world, between the thing a man greatly loves, and that which he loves
more greatly still. She thought of Lovelace who "_loved Honour more_."
She thought of the cold Sea that robs the patient, warm-hearted women
ashore, of the icy Pole whose magnetism drew men from their wives. The
work that drew the thoughts of her Airman was that Invention that was
known already as his _Fiancee_....
"Leslie says it's not as bad as if it were another woman, but I see her
as a woman," thought the silent, fanciful girl, "I see her as a sort of
winged dragon with a figure-head--aeroplanes don't have figure-heads,
but this one seems to me to have, just like some of those vessels that
come into the harbour at Aberdovey. Or like those pictures of harps that
are half a woman. Smooth red hair she has, and a long neck stretched
out, and a rather thin, pale, don't-care sort of face like that girl
called Muriel. And--and eagle's talons for hands. That's how I see that
_Fiancee_ of his, with claws for hands that won't, _won't_ ever let him
go...."
A puff of wind knocked one of the lanterns above their heads softly
against the other; the willows rustled silkily outside. Gwenna sat
motionless, holding her breath. Suddenly her reverie had broken off with
an abrupt, unspoken--"but it's me he's thinking of _now_...."
Paul Dampier had been lightly amused by that passing of the other
couple. That friend of hers, Miss Long, was more than a bit of a flirt,
he considered. This Little Thing wasn't. Couldn't imagine _her_ giving a
kiss as some girls give a dance; or even to "soften" a refusal.... Her
mouth, he found himself noticing, was full and curly and exactly the
colour of the buds of those fox-gloves that grew all over the shop at
her place in Wales. It was probably softer than those curls of hers
that he would (also) like to touch.
Idiotic idea, though----
But an idea which is transmittable.
Gwenna, thrilled by this message which she had caught by a method older
and less demonstrable than Marconi's, realised: "He heard _that_, just
now; that boy wanting to kiss Leslie.... He's thinking, now, that he
might kiss me."
The boy scarcely at arm's length from her thought a little confusedly,
"I say, though.... Rotten thing to do...."
The girl thought, "He would like to. _What_ is he waiting about? We
shall have to go directly----"
For the sky outside had been swiftly paling. Now that pure pallor was
changing to the glow of Abyssinian gold. Dawn! From the marquee came a
louder blare of music; two long cornet notes and then a rollicking
tune--The old "Post Horn" Galop--the last dance. Presently a distant
noise of clapping and calls for "Extra"! There would be no time for
extras, she'd heard. They would have to go after this. People were
beginning to go. Already they had heard the noise of a car. His chair
creaked as he moved a little sidewards.
He told himself, more emphatically, "Beastly rotten thing to do. This
Little Thing would never speak to me again----"
And the girl sat there, without stirring, without glancing at him. Yet
every curve of her little body, every eyelash, every soft breath she