The Boy with Wings
absolutely top-hole and perfectly at home, chatting with the
ginger-haired bloke who was unloading the engine as if he were no end of
a pal of hers! She was smiling up into his face and taking a most
uncommon amount of interest, it seemed, in what the fellow had been
doing!
And, before, she'd said she wasn't interested in machinery! thought
Dampier as he came up, feeling suddenly unconscionably angry.
He forgot the hours that the Little Thing had already passed in hanging
on every word, mostly about a machine, that had fallen from his own
lips. He only remembered that moment at the Smiths' dinner-party, when
she'd admitted that that sort of thing didn't appeal to her.
Yet, here she was! _Deep_ in it, by Jove!
He had come right up to her and this other chap before they noticed
him....
She turned sharply at the sound of the young aviator's rather stiff
"Good afternoon."
She had expected that day to see his engine--no more. Here he stood, the
maker of the engine, backed by the scorched, flat landscape, in the
sunlight that picked out little clean-cut, intense shadows under the rim
of his straw hat, below his cleft chin, along his sleeve and the lapel
of his jacket, making him look (she thought) like a very good snapshot
of himself. He had startled her again; but this time she was
self-possessed.
She came forward and faced him; prettier than ever, somehow (he thought
again), with tossed curls and pinafore blowing all about her. She might
have been a little schoolgirl let loose from some class in those gaunt
buildings behind her. But she spoke in a more "grown-up" manner, in some
way, than he'd ever heard her speak before. Looking up, she said in the
soft accent that always brought back to him his boyish holidays in her
country, "How do you do, Mr. Dampier? I'm afraid I can't shake hands.
Mine are all sticky with dope."
"Oh, are they," he said, and looked away from her (not without effort)
to the ginger-haired fellow.
"This," said Gwenna Williams, a little self-consciously at last, "is Mr.
Ryan."
Plenty of self-assurance about _him_! He nodded and said in a
hail-fellow-well-met sort of voice, "Hullo; you're Dampier, are you?
Glad to meet you. You see we're hard at it unpacking your engine here."
Then he looked towards the opening, the road, and the car--borrowed as
usual--in which the young aviator had motored down. There was another
large package in the body of the car; a box, iron-clamped, with letters
stencilled upon it, and sealed. "Something else interesting that you've
brought with you?" said this in sufferable man called Ryan. "Here,
Andre, fetch that box down----"
"No," interrupted young Dampier curtly. The curtness was only partly for
this other chap. That sealed box, for reasons of his own and Colonel
Conyers', was not to be hauled about by any mechanic in the place. "You
and I'll fetch that in presently for Mrs. Crewe."
"Right. She'll be back at three o'clock," Ryan told him. "She told me to
ask you to have a look round the place or do anything you cared to until
she came in."
"Oh, thanks," said young Dampier.
At that moment what he would have "cared to do" would have been to get
this girl to himself somewhere where he could say to the Little Humbug,
"Look here. You aren't interested in machinery. You said so yourself.
What are you getting this carroty-headed Ass to talk to you about it
for?"
Seeing that this was out of the question he hesitated.... He didn't want
to go round the shops with this fellow, to whom he'd taken a dislike. On
sight. He did that sometimes. On the other hand, he couldn't do what he
wanted to do--sit and talk to the Little Thing until the Aeroplane Lady
returned. What about saying he'd got to look up some one in the village,
and bolting, until three o'clock? No. No fear! Why should this other
fellow imagine he could have the whole field to himself for talking to
Her?
So the trio, the age-old group that is composed of two young men and a
girl, stood there for a moment rather awkwardly.
Finally the Little Thing said, "Well, I've got to go back to my wings,"
and turned.
Then the fellow Ryan said, "One minute, Miss Gwenna----"
Miss Gwenna! All but her Christian name! And he, Paul Dampier, who'd
known her a good deal longer--he'd never called her anything at all, but
"_you_"! Miss _Gwenna_, if you please!
What followed was even more of a bit of dashed cheek.
For the fellow turned quickly aside to her and said, "I say, it's Friday
afternoon. Supposing I don't see you again to-morrow morning--it's all
right, isn't it, about your coming up to town for that matinee with me?"
"Oh, yes, thanks," said the Little Thing brightly. "I asked Mrs. Crewe,
and it's all right."
Then the new note crept into her voice; the half-unconsciously-acquired
note of coquetry. She said, smiling again at the red-haired Ryan, "I am
so looking forward to that."
And, turning again to the Airman, she said with a half-shy, half-airy
little smile that, also, he found new in her, "Have you seen _The Cinema
Star_? Mr. Ryan is going to take me to-morrow afternoon."
"Oh, is he?" said Paul Dampier shortly.
_Was_ he, indeed? _Neck!_
"You do come up to town sometimes from here, then?" added Mr. Dampier to
Miss Gwenna Williams, speaking a trifle more distinctly than usual, as
he concluded, "I was just going to ask you whether you could manage to
come out with _me_ to-morrow evening?"
Nobody was more surprised to hear these last words than he himself.
Until that moment he hadn't had the faintest intention of ever asking
the girl out anywhere again. Now here he was; he'd done it. The Little
Thing had murmured, "Oh----" and was looking--yes, she was looking
pleased. The fellow was looking as if he'd been taken aback. Good. He'd
probably thought he was going to have her to himself for the evening as
well as for the matinee. Dinner at the "Petit Riche"--a music-hall
afterwards--travel down home with her. Well, Dampier had put a stopper
on that plan. But now that he had asked her, where was he going to take
her himself? To another musical comedy? No. Too like the other chap. To
one of the Exhibitions? No; not good enough. Anyhow, wherever he took
her, he hadn't been out-bidden by this soft-soapy young idiot. Infernal
cheek.... Then, all in a flash the brilliant solution came to Paul
Dampier. Of course! Yes, he could work it! The Aviation Dinner! He'd
meant to go. He would take her. It would involve taking Mrs. Crewe as
well. Never mind. It was something to which that other young ass
wouldn't have the chance of taking her, and that was enough.
"Yes," he went on saying, as coolly as if it had all been planned.
"There's a show on at the Wilbur Club; Wilbur Wright, you know. I
thought I'd ask if you and Mrs. Crewe would care to come with me to the
dinner. Will you?--Just break that packing up a bit more," he added
negligently to the red-haired youth. "And check those spaces--Will you
take me into your place, Miss Williams?"
_That_, he thought, was the way to deal with poachers on his particular
preserves!
It was only when he got inside the spacious white Wing-room and sat
down, riding a chair, close to the trestle-table where the girl bent her
curly head so conscientiously over the linen strips again, that he
realised that this Little Thing wasn't his particular preserves at all!
Hadn't he, only a couple of weeks ago, definitely decided that she was
never to mean anything of the sort to him? Hadn't he resolved----
Here, with his long arms crossed over the back of the chair as he sat
facing and watching her, he put back his head and laughed.
"What are you laughing at?" she asked, straightening herself in the big
pinafore with its front all stiff with that sticky mess she worked with.
He was laughing to think how dashed silly it was to make these
resolutions. Resolutions about which people you were or were not to see
anything of! As if Fate didn't arrange that for you! As if you didn't
_have_ to leave that to Fate, and to take your chance!
Possibly Fate meant that he and the Little Thing should be friends,
great friends. Not now, of course. Not yet. In some years' time,
perhaps, when his position was assured; when he'd achieved some of the
Big Things that he'd got to do; when he _had_ got something to offer a
girl. Ages to wait.... Still, he could leave it at that, now, he
thought.... It might, or might not, come to anything. Only, it was
ripping to see her!
He didn't tell her this.
He uttered some conventional boy's joke about being amused to see her
actually at work for the first time since he'd met her. And she made a
little bridling of her neck above that vast, gull-like wing that she was
pasting; and retorted that, indeed, she worked very hard.
"Really," he teased her. "Always seem to be taking time off, whenever
I've come."
"You've only come twice, Mr. Dampier; and then it's been sort of
lunch-time."
"Oh, I see," he said. ("I may smoke, mayn't I?" and he lighted a
cigarette.) "D'you always take your lunch out of doors, Miss Gwenna?"
(He didn't see why _he_ shouldn't call her that.)
She said, "I'd like to." Then she was suddenly afraid he might think she
was thinking of their open-air lunch in that field, weeks ago, and she
said quickly (still working): "I--I was so glad when I heard about the
engine coming, and that Colonel Conyers had ordered the P.D.Q. to be
made here. I--do congratulate you, Mr. Dampier. Tell me about the
Machine, won't you?"
He said, "Oh, you'll hear all about that presently; but look here, you
haven't told me about _you_----"
Gwenna could scarcely believe her ears; but yes, it was true. He was
turning, turning from talk about the Machine, the P.D.Q., the _Fiancee_!
Asking, for the first time, about herself. She drew a deep breath; she
turned her bright, greeny-brown eyes sideways, longing at that moment
for Leslie with whom to exchange a glance. Her own shyly triumphant look
met only the deep, wise eyes of the Great Dane, lying in his corner of
the Wing-room beside his kennel. He blinked, thumped his tail upon the
floor.
"Darling," whispered Gwenna, a little shakily, as she passed the tawny
dog. "_Darling!_" She had to say it to something just then.
Paul Dampier pursued, looking at her over his crossed arms on the back
of that chair, "You haven't said whether you'll come to-morrow night."
She asked (as if it mattered to her where she went, as long as it was
with him), "What is this dinner?"
"The Wilbur dinner? Oh, there's one every year. Just a meeting of those
interested in flying. I thought you might care----"
"Who'll be there?"
"Oh, just people. Not many. Some ladies go. Why?"
"Only because I haven't got anything at all to wear," announced Gwenna,
much more confidently, however, than she could have done before Mr. Ryan
had told her so much about her own looks, "except my everlasting white
and the blue sash like at the Smiths'."
"Well, that was awfully pretty; wasn't it? Only----"
"What?"
"Well, may I say something?"
"Well, what is it?"
"Frightfully rude, really," said Paul Dampier, tilting himself back on
his chair, and still looking at her over a puff of smoke, staring even.
She was something to stare at. Why was she such a lot prettier? Had he
_forgotten_ what her looks were? She seemed--she seemed, to-day, so much
more of a woman than he'd ever seen her. He forgot that he was going to
say something. She, with a little fluttering laugh for which he could
have clasped her, reminded him.
"What's the rude thing you were going to say to me?"
"Oh! It's only this. Don't go muffling your neck up in that sort of ruff
affair this time; looks ever so much nicer without," said the boy.
The girl retorted with quite a good show of disdainfulness, "I don't