The Boy with Wings
itself. All miracles to you! Everything's an Adventure. So would
Marriage be----"
"Oh, I don't--don't ever think of _that_. Being always _with_ a person!
Oh, it would be _too_ wonderful---- I shouldn't expect--Even to be a
little _liked_, if he once told me so, would be enough," whispered the
little Welsh girl, so softly that her chum did not catch it.
Leslie, striding along, said, "To a girl like me all that's as far
behind as the school-room. At the stage where I am, a girl looks upon
Marriage--how? As '_The Last 'Bus Home, or A Settled Job at last_.'
That's why she so often ends up as an old man's darling--with some very
young man as her slave. That's what makes me ready to accept Hugo
Swayne. And now forget I ever told you so."
The two girls turned homewards; Gwenna a little sad.
To think that Leslie should lack what even ordinary little Mabel Butcher
had! To think that Leslie, underneath all her gaiety and rattle, should
not know any more the taste of real delight!
Gwenna, the simple-hearted, did not know the ways of self-critics. She
did not guess that possibly Miss Long had been analysing her own
character with less truth than gusto.... And she was surprised when, as
they passed the Park gates again, her chum broke the silence with all
her old lightness of tone.
"Talking of young men--a habit for which Leslie never bothers to
apologise--talking of young men, I believe there might be some at the
Aeroplane Lady's place. She often has some one there. A
gentleman--'prentice or pupil or something of that sort. Might be rather
glad to see a new pretty face about with real curls."
It was then that Gwenna turned up that blushing but rather indignant
little face. "But, Leslie! Don't you _understand_? If there were a
million other young men about, all thinking me--all thinking what you
say, it wouldn't make a _bit_ of difference to _me_!"
"Possibly not," said Miss Long, "but there's no reason why it shouldn't
be made to make a difference to the Dampier boy, is there?"
"What d'you mean, Leslie?" demanded the other girl as they climbed the
hill together. For the first time a look of austerity crossed Gwenna's
small face. For the first time it seemed to her that the adored
girl-chum was in the wrong. Yes! She had never before been shocked at
Leslie, whatever wild thing she said. But now--now she was shocked. She
was disappointed in her. She repeated, rebukefully, "What do you mean?"
"What," took up Leslie, defiantly, "do you think I meant?"
"Well--_did_ you mean make--make Mr. Dampier think other people liked
me, and that I might like somebody else better than _him_?"
"Something of the sort _had_ crossed the mind of Leslie the Limit."
"Well, then, it isn't _like_ you----"
"Think not?" There was more than a hint of quarrel in both the girlish
voices. Up to now they had never exchanged a word that was not of
affection, of comradeship.
Gwenna, flushing deeper, said, "It's--it's _horrid_ of you, Leslie."
"Why, pray?"
"Because it would be sort of _deceiving_ Mr. Dampier, for one thing.
It's a _trick_."
"M'yes!"
"And not a pretty one, either," said little Gwenna, red and angry now.
"It's--it's----"
"What?"
"Well, it's what I should have thought that you yourself, Leslie, would
have called '_so obvious_.'"
"Exactly," agreed Miss Long, with a flippant little laugh that covered
smarting feelings. _Taffy_ had turned against her now! Taffy, who used
to think that Leslie could do no wrong! This was what happened when
one's inseparable chum fell in love....
Leslie said impenitently, "I've never yet found that '_the obvious
thing_' was '_the unsuccessful thing_.' Especially when it comes to
anything to do with young men. My good child, you and the Dampier boy,
you
'_Really constitute a pair,
Each being rather like an artless woodland elf._'
I mean, can't you see that the dear old-fashioned simple remedies and
recipes remain the best? For a sore throat, black-currant tea. (Never
fails!) For the hair, Macassar oil. (Unsurpassed since the Year
Eighteen-dot!) For the stimulation of an admirer's interest, jealousy.
Jealousy and competition, Taffy."
"He isn't an admirer," protested the younger girl, mollified. Then they
smiled together. The cloud of the first squabble had passed.
Leslie said, "Never mind. If you don't approve of my specific, don't
think of it again."
CHAPTER XVI
THE AEROPLANE LADY
Curiously enough, Gwenna did think of it again.
On the Saturday morning after that walk and talk she took that long dull
train-journey. The only bright spot on it was the passing of Hendon
Flying Ground. Over an hour afterwards she arrived at the little
station, set in a sunburnt waste, for the Aircraft Works.
She asked her way of the ticket-collector at the booking-office. But
before he could speak, she was answered by some one else, who had come
down to the station for a parcel. This was a shortish young man in
greasy blue overalls. He had a smiling, friendly, freckled face under a
thatch of brilliant red hair; and a voice that seemed oddly out of
keeping with his garments. It was an "Oxford" voice.
"The Works? I'm just going on there myself. I'll come with you and show
you, if I may," he said with evident zest.
Gwenna, walking beside him, wished that she had not immediately
remembered Leslie's remarks about young men at aircraft works who might
be glad of the arrival of a new pretty face. This young man, piloting
her down a straggling village street that seemed neither town nor
country, told her at once that he was a pupil at the Works and asked
whether she herself were going to help Mrs. Crewe there.
"I don't know yet," said Gwenna. "I hope so."
"So do I," said the young man gravely, but with a glint of unreserved
admiration in the eyes under the red thatch.
Little Gwenna, walking very erect, wished that she were strong and
self-reliant enough not to feel cheered by that admiration.
(But she was cheered. No denying that!)
The young man took her down a road flanked on either hand by sparse
hedges dividing it from that parched and uninteresting plain. The
mountain-bred girl found all this flat country incredibly ugly. Only, on
her purple Welsh heights and in the green ferny depths threaded by
crystal water, nothing ever happened. It was here, in this half-rural
desert littered by builders' rubbish and empty cans, that Enterprise was
afoot. Strange!
* * * * *
On the right came an opening. She saw a yard with wooden debris and what
looked like the wrecks of a couple of motor-cars. Beyond was a cluster
of buildings with corrugated iron roofs.
The red-haired pupil mentioned the name of the Aeroplane Lady and said,
"I think you'll find her in the new Wing-room, over here----"
"What a wonderful name for it," thought the little enthusiast, catching
her breath, as she was shown through a door. "The Wing-room!"
It was high and clean and spacious, with white distempered walls and a
floor of wood-dura, firm yet comforting to the feet. The atmosphere of
it was, on that July day, somewhat overpowering. Two radiators were
working, and the air was heavy with a smell of what seemed like
rubber-solution and spirits mixed: this, Gwenna presently found, was the
"dope" to varnish the strong linen stretched across the wings of
aeroplanes. Two of those great wings were laid out horizontally on
trestles to dry. Another of the huge sails with cambered sections was
set up on end across a corner; and from behind it there moved, stepping
daintily and majestically across the floor, the tawny shape of a Great
Dane, who came inquiringly up to the stranger.
Then from behind the screening wing there came a slight, woman's figure
in dark blue. She followed the dog. Little Gwenna Williams, standing
timidly in that great room so strange and white, and characteristically
scented, found herself face to face with the mistress of the place; the
Aeroplane Lady.
Her hair was greying and fluffy as a head of windblown Traveller's
Joy; beneath it her eyes were blue and young and bright and--yes! with a
little glad start Gwenna recognised that in these eyes too there was
something of that space-daring gleam of the eyes of Icarus, of her own
Flying Man.
"Ah ... I know," said the lady briskly. "You're the girl Leslie's sent
down to see me."
"Yes," said Gwenna, thinking it nice of her to say "Leslie" and not
"Miss Long." She noticed also that the Aeroplane Lady wore at the collar
of her shirt a rather wonderful brooch in the shape of the _caducaeus_,
the serpent-twisted rod of Mercury. "Oh, I _do_ hope she'll take me!"
thought the young girl, agitated. "I do want more than anything to come
here to work with her. Oh, supposing she thinks I'm too silly and young
to be any use--supposing she won't take me----"
She was tense with nervousness while the Aeroplane Lady, fondling the
Great Dane's tawny ear with a small, capable hand as she spoke, put the
girl through a short catechism; asking questions about her age, her
people, her previous experience, her salary.... And then she was told
that she might come and work on a month's trial at the Factory,
occupying a room in the Aeroplane Lady's own cottage in the village. The
young girl, enraptured, put down her success to the certificates from
that Aberystwith school of hers, where she had passed "with distinction"
the Senior Cambridge and other examinations. She did not guess that the
Aeroplane Lady had taken less than two minutes to make sure that this
little Welsh typist-girl carried out what Leslie Long had said of her.
Namely that "she was so desperately keen on anything to do with flying
and flyers that she'd scrub the floors of the shops for you if you
wished it, besides doing your business letters as carefully as if each
one was about some important Diplomatic secret ... try her!"
So on the following Monday Gwenna began her new life.
At first this new work of Gwenna's consisted very largely of what Leslie
had mentioned; the writing-out of business letters at the table set
under the window in the small private office adjoining the great
Wing-room.
(Curious that the Wings for Airships, the giant butterfly aeroplanes
themselves, should grow out of a chrysalis of ordinary business, with
letters that began, "_Sir, we beg to thank you for your favour of the
2nd instant, and to assure you that same shall receive our immediate
attention_," exactly the sort of letters that Gwenna had typed during
all those weeks at Westminster!)
Then there were orders to send off for more bales of the linen that was
stretched over the membranes of those wings; or for the great reels of
wire which strung the machines, and which cost fifteen pounds apiece;
orders for the metal which was to be worked in the shops across the
parched yard, where men of three nationalities toiled at the
lathe; turning-screws, strainers, washers, and all the tiny,
complicated-looking parts that were to be the bones and the sinews
and the muscles of the finished Flying Machine.
Gwenna, the typist, had at first only a glimpse or so of these other
sides of the Works.
Once, on a message from some visitor to the Aeroplane Lady she passed
through the great central room, larger than her Uncle's chapel at home,
with its concrete floor and the clear diffused light coming through the
many windows, and the never-ceasing throb of the gas-driven engine
pulsing through the lighter sounds of chinking and hammering. Mechanics
were busy all down the sides of this hall; in the aisle of it, three
machines in the making were set up on the stands. One was ready all but
the wings; its body seemed now more than it would ever seem that of a
giant fish; it was covered with the doped linen that was laced at the