The Boy with Wings
brothers with capital; asking him down to the New Forest to meet some
other influential person; and knowing that he couldn't entertain in
return. (He'd just sent her some flowers and some tickets for
Brooklands.) Then there was Colonel Conyers. He'd asked whether he
(Dampier) were engaged. And, at his answer, had replied, "Good. Much
easier for a bachelor, these days."
And now! Supposing he got married?
On his screw? Paul Dampier laughed bitterly.
Well, but supposing he got engaged; got some wretched girl to wait
for----
Years of it! Thanks!
Then, quite apart from the money-question, what about all his work?
Everything he wanted to do! Everything he was really in earnest about.
His scheme--his invention--his Machine!
"End of it all, if he went complicating matters by starting a _girl_!"
Take up all his time. Interrupt--putting him off his job--yes, he knew!
Putting him off, like this afternoon in the yard, and that other night
at the Dance. Only more so. Incessant. "Mustn't have it; quite simply,
he must _not_."
Messing up his whole chance of a career, if----
But he was pulling himself up in time from that danger.
Up to now he hadn't realised that there might be something in all that
rot of old Hugo's about the struggle in a man's mind between an
Aeroplane and a Girl. Now--well, he'd realised. All the better. Now he
was forewarned. Good thing he could take a side for himself now.
By the time he'd reached the door of the National Portrait Gallery and
stood waiting for his motor omnibus, he had definitely taken that
resolution of which Gwenna Williams did not know.
Namely, that he must drop seeing the Girl. Have nothing more to say to
her. It was better so; wiser. Whatever he'd promised about taking her up
would have to be "off."
A pity--! Dashed shame a man couldn't have _everything_! She was ... so
awfully sweet....
Still, got to decide one way or the other.
This would fix it before it was too late, before he'd perhaps managed to
put ideas into the head of the Little Thing. She shouldn't ever come
flying, with him!
That _ended_ it! he thought. He'd made up _his_ mind. He would not allow
himself to wonder what _she_ might think.
After all, what _would_ a girl think? Probably nothing.
Nothing at all, probably.
CHAPTER XV
LESLIE ON "TOO MUCH LOVE"
It seemed to be decided for Gwenna that she should, after all, give
notice at the office.
For on the evening of the day of her climb up the scaffolding she met
the tall, sketchily-dressed figure of her chum coming down the hill that
she was ascending on her way to the Club. And Leslie accosted her with
the words, "Child, d'you happen to want to leave your place and take
another job? Because, if so, come along for a walk and we'll talk about
it."
So the two "inseparables" strolled on together up past the Club, passing
at the crest of the hill a troop of Boy Scouts with their band.
"Only chance one ever gets of hearing a drum; jolly sound," sighed
Leslie, watching the brown faces, the sturdy legs marching by. "I wonder
how many of those lads will be soldiers? Very few, I suppose. We're told
that the authorities are _so_ careful to keep the Boy Scout Movement
apart from any pernicious militarism, and ideas about National Service!"
And the girls took the road that dips downward from Hampstead, and the
chestnut avenue that leads into the Park of Golders Green. They passed
the Bandstand ringed by nurse-girls and perambulators. They crossed the
rustic bridge above the lily-pond, where children tossed crumbs to the
minnows. They went in at the door of the little flower-garden.
Here, except for an occasional sauntering couple, London seemed shut
out. In the late sunlight above the maze of paths, the roses were just
at their best. Over the pergolas and arbours they hung in garlands, they
were massed in great posies of pink and cream and crimson. The little
fountain set in the square of velvet turf tossed up a spray of white
mist touched with a rainbow, not unlike Gwenna's dance-frock.
The girls sat down on a shaded seat facing that fountain. Gwenna,
turning to her chum, said, "Now do tell me about that job you asked if
I'd take. What is it?"
"Oh! it's a woman who used to know some of my people; she came to the
Club this afternoon, and then on to my old lady's to see me about it,"
said Leslie. "She wants a girl--partly to do secretarial work, partly to
keep her company, partly to help her in the 'odd bits' of her work down
there where she has her business."
Gwenna, rather listlessly thinking of typewriting offices, of blouses,
or tea-shops, asked what the lady did.
Leslie gave the extraordinary answer, "She builds aeroplanes."
"_She_ does?" cried Gwenna, all thrilled. "_Aeroplanes?_"
"Yes. She's the only woman who's got an Aircraft Factory, men, shops and
all. It's about an hour's run from town. She's a pilot herself, and her
son's an aviator," said Leslie, speaking as though of everyday things.
"Everything supplied, from the Man to the Machine, what?"
"Oh! But what a _gorgeous_ sort of Life for a woman, Leslie!" cried the
younger girl, her face suddenly alight. "Fancy spending her time making
things like _that_! Things that are going to make a difference to the
whole world! Instead of her just 'settling down' and embroidering
'duchesse sets,' and sitting with tea-cups, like Uncle Hugh's 'Lady
parishioners,' and talking to callers about servants; and operations!
Oh, oh, don't _you_ want to take her job?"
"I'm not especially keen on one job more than another. And my old lady
would be rather upset if I did leave her in the lurch," said Leslie,
more unselfishly than her chum suspected. The truth was that this much
disapproved-of Leslie had resigned a congenial post because it might
mean what Gwenna loved. "I told the Aeroplane Lady about you," she
added. "And she'd like you to go down and interview her at the Factory
next Saturday, if you'd care to."
"Care? Of _course_ I'd care! Aeroplanes! After silly buildings and
specifications!" exclaimed Gwenna, clasping her hands in her grey linen
lap. But her face fell suddenly as she added, "But--it's an hour's run
from London, you say? I should have to live there?"
"'_Away from Troilus, and away from Troy_,'" quoted Leslie, smiling.
"You could come back to Troy for week-ends, Taffy. And I'll tell you
what. _It's no bad thing for a young man who's always thought of a girl
as being planted in one particular place, to realise suddenly that
she's been uprooted and set up in quite another place._ Gives him just a
little jerk. By the way, is there any fresh news of Troilus--of the
Dampier boy?"
And Gwenna, sitting there with troubled eyes upon the roses, gave her
the history of that afternoon's adventure. She ended up sadly, "Never
even said 'Good-bye' to me!"
"Getting nervous that he's going to like you too well!" translated
Leslie, without difficulty. "Probably deciding at this minute that he'd
better not see much more of you----"
"Oh, Leslie!" exclaimed the younger girl, alarmed.
"Sort of thing they _do_ decide," said Leslie, lightly. "Well, we'll see
what it amounts to. And we'll wire to-morrow to the Aeroplane Lady. Or
telephone down to-night. I am going to telephone to Hugo Swayne to tell
him I don't feel in the mood to have dinner out to-night again."
"Again?" said Gwenna, rather wistfully, as they rose from the arbour and
walked slowly down the path by the peach-houses. "Has he been asking you
out _several_ times, then?"
"Several," said Leslie with a laugh. She added in her insouciant way,
"You know, _he_ wants to marry me now."
Gwenna regarded her with envy. Leslie spoke of what should be the eighth
wonder of the world, the making or rejecting of a man's life, as if it
were an everyday affair.
"Don't look so unflatteringly _surprised_, Taffy. Strictly pretty I may
not be. But a scrupulously neat and lady-like appearance," mocked
Leslie, putting out a long arm in a faded-silk sleeve that was torn at
the cuff, "has often (they tell one) done more to win husbands than
actual good looks!"
Little Gwenna said, startled, "You aren't--aren't going to _let_ Mr.
Swayne be your husband, are you?"
"I don't know," said Leslie, reflectively, a little wearily. "I don't
know, yet. He's fat--but of course _that_ would come off after I'd
worried him for a year or so. He's flabby. He's rather like Kipling's
person whose '_rooms at College was beastly_!' but he's good-natured,
and his people were all right, and, Taffy, he's delightfully well-off.
And when one's turned twenty-six, one does want to be _sure_ of what's
coming. One must have some investment that'll bring in one's frocks and
one's railway-fares and one's proper setting."
"There are other things," protested little Gwenna with a warm memory of
that moment's clasping on the heights that afternoon. "There are things
one wants more."
"Not me."
"Ah! That's because you don't _know_ them," declared Gwenna, flushed.
And at that the elder girl gave a very rueful laugh.
"Not know them? I've known them too well," she admitted. "Listen, Taffy,
I'll tell you the sort of girl I am. I'm afraid there are plenty of us
about."
She sighed, and went on with a little nod.
"We're the girl who works in the sweetshop and who never wants to touch
chocolates again. We're the sort of girl who's been turned loose too
early at dances and studio-parties and theatricals and so forth. The
girl who's come in for too much excitement and flattery and love-making.
Yes! For in spite of all my natural disadvantages (tuck in that bit of
hair for me, will you?) and in _spite_ of not being quite a fool--I've
been made too much of, by men. The Monties and so forth. _Here's where I
pay for it._ I and the girls like me. We can't ever take a real live
interest in men again!"
"But----!" objected Gwenna, seeing a mental image of Leslie as she had
been at that dance, whirling and flushed and radiant. "You _seem_ to
like----"
"'_The chase, not the quarry_,'" quoted Leslie. "For when I've brought
down my bird, what happens?--He doesn't amuse me any more! It's like
having sweets to eat and such a cold that one can't taste 'em."
"But--that's such a _pity_!"
"D'you suppose I don't _know_ that?" retorted Miss Long. "D'you suppose
I don't wish to Heaven that I could be 'in Love' with somebody? I can't
though. I see through men. And I don't see as much in them as there is
in myself. They can't boss _me_, or take _me_ out of myself, or surprise
_me_ into admiring them. Why can't they, _dash_ them? they can't even
_say_ anything that I can't think of, quicker, first!" complained the
girl with many admirers, resentfully. "And that's a fatal thing to any
woman's happiness. Remember, there's no fun for a woman in just _being_
adored!"
The girl in love, kicking her small brown shoe against the pebbles of
the garden path, sighed that she wished that she could try "being
adored." Just for a change.
"Ah, but you, Taffy, you're lucky. You're so fresh, so eager. You're as
much in love with that aviator's job as you are with anything else about
him. You're as much amused by 'ordinary things' as any other girl is
amused by getting a young man. As for what you feel about the young man
himself, well!--I suppose _that's_ a tune played half a yard to the
right of the keyboard of an ordinary girl's capacity. You're keen for
Life; you've got what men call '_a thirst you couldn't buy_.' Wish I
were like that!"
"Well, but it's so easy to be," argued Gwenna, "when you _do_ meet some
one so wonderful----"
"It's not so easy to see 'wonder,' let me tell you. It's a gift. I've
had it; lost it; spoilt it," mourned the elder girl. "To you
everything's thrilling: their blessed airships--the men in them--the Air