The Boy with Wings
"Well, aren't you?" he said gaily, but dropping his voice a little as
the conversation rose about them. "Aren't you that to me? Engaged,
aren't we?"
"Oh, I don't know," the young girl said, breathlessly. It was as if the
moon that one had cried for had suddenly dropped, to lie like a round,
silver mirror in one's lap. "Did you mean _that_, yesterday afternoon?"
"Didn't I mean it before that?" he said, half to himself. "What about
all those dances? that time when Hugo dragged me off to that place by
the river? Those would have been _most_ incorrect," he teased her, "if
we hadn't been. We shall have to be, my dear."
Then an impulse took her. (It is known to any young girl who is
sincerely in Love.)
"No. Don't let's----" she said suddenly. "Don't let's be 'engaged'!"
For it seemed to her that a winged Dream was just about to alight and to
become a clumsy creature of Earth--like that Aeroplane on the Flying
Ground. The boy said, staring at her, "_Not_ be engaged? Why on earth?
How d'you mean?"
"I mean, everybody gets '_engaged_,'" she explained very softly and
rapidly over the bread that she was crumbling in her little fingers.
"And it's such a sort of _fuss_, with writing home, and congratulations,
and how-long-has-this-been-going-on, and all that sort of thing! People
at tea-parties and things _talking_ about us! I _know_ they would!"
declared the Welsh girl with distaste, "and saying, 'Dear me, she looks
very young' and _wondering_ about us! Oh, no, _don't_ let's have it! It
would seem to _spoil_ it, for me! Don't let's _call_ it anything, need
we? Don't let's say anything yet, except to--just US."
"All right," said the boy with an easy shrug. (He was too young to know
what he was escaping.) "Sure I don't mind, as long as you're just with
me, all the time we can."
She said, wonderfully sedate above the tumult in her heart, "Did you
bring my locket with you to-night?"
"No. I didn't. D'you know why? Can't you guess? Because I wanted to give
it back to you when _I_ could put it round my Girl's neck," he told her.
And she turned away from him, so happily confused again that she could
not speak.
She was his Girl; his. And because he was one of this band of brothers,
sitting here feasting and talking, each making it his business to
contribute his share to the sum of what was to be one of the World's
greatest Forces, why! because of that, even she, little Gwenna Williams,
could feel herself to be a tiny part of that Force. She was an Aviator's
girl--even if it were a wonderful secret that nobody knew, so far, but
he and she.
(Already everybody at that table and many others in the room had
remarked what a pretty little creature young Dampier's sweetheart was.)
* * * * *
"_The King!_" announced the President of the Dinner.
There was a movement and a rustle all round the great supper-room as the
guests rose to the toast; another rustle as they reseated themselves.
One of the celebrities whom Paul had pointed out to her began to speak
upon the achievements of Wilbur Wright. At the table next to Gwenna some
journalists bent absorbed over scribbling pads. Speech followed speech
as the toasts were gone through. The opal-blue haze of cigarette smoke
drifted up above the white tables with their rose-pink and ferny
decorations. Chairs were pushed sidewards as guests turned alert and
listening faces towards the head of the room; and every now and again
the grave and concise and pleasantly modulated tones of some
speaker-on-the-subject of his heart were broken in upon by a soft storm
of applause.
"Colonel Conyers to speak now," murmured Paul to Gwenna, as the long,
lean figure that had been sitting opposite to them rose. He stepped
backwards, to stand against one of those gilded pillars as he made his
speech, responding to the toast that had coupled his name with that of
the Flying Wing of the Army.
Gwenna listened with even more breathless attention than she had paid to
the other speakers.
Colonel Conyers spoke easily and lightly, as if he had been, not making
a speech, but talking to a knot of friends at his house. He reviewed, in
terms so simple that even the young girl at his table could follow all
he said, the difficulties and the risks of aviation, and the steps that
had been taken to minimise those risks. Wind, it seemed, had been in a
great measure overcome. Risk from faulty workmanship of machines--that,
too, was overcome. Workmanship was now well-nigh as perfect as it could
be made.
Here Gwenna glowed with pride, exchanging a glance with her employer far
down the tables. This meant _their_ workmanship at Aircraft Factories;
their Factory, too! This meant the labours of Mrs. Crewe and of Mr.
Ryan, and of Andre, and of the workmen in overalls at the lathes in that
noisy central shop. Even the brushful of dope that she, Gwenna, spread
conscientiously over each seam of the great wings, played its tiny part
in helping to preserve a Flyer's life!
The risk in stability, too, Colonel Conyers said, had been successfully
combatted by the gyroscope. There remained, however, Fog and Darkness as
the chief perils, which, at the present moment, of July,
Nineteen-fourteen, our Airmen had to fight....
In the soldier's lean face that shrewd, half-mischievous smile was
flickering as he spoke; his grey trim head turning now and again against
the gilded column, his keen eyes fixed upon some objective of his own,
his strong hand fidgeting in the small mechanical gesture of a man who
is less accustomed to speaking about things than to doing them.
Gwenna thought how different, how entirely different were all these
people here from that other dinner-party at the house of the prosperous
and artistic Smiths who had found so much to say about the Russian
Ballet!
Definitely now Gwenna saw what the chief difference between them was.
_Those other people treated and spoke of a pastime as though it were a
matter of Life and Death. These people here made Life and Death matters
their pastime._
"And these splendid real people are the ones I'm going to belong to,"
the girl told herself with a glance at the tall boy beside her who had
decided her fate. That thought was to glow in the very depths of her,
like a firefly nestling at the heart of a rose, for as long as she
lived.
The even, pleasant tones of Colonel Conyers went on to give as one of
the most hopeful features of aviation the readiness of the quite young
man of the present day to volunteer. No sooner was a fatality announced
than for one airman who, cheerfully giving his life for the service of
his country, had been put out of action, half a dozen promising young
fellows were eager to come forward and take his place.
"Two of 'em again yesterday.... Two of his lieutenants, killed in
Yorkshire," whispered Paul Dampier, leaning to Gwenna.
She missed the next sentence of Colonel Conyers, which concluded
cheerily enough with the hard-worked but heartening reminder that whom
the Gods love die young....
Then, with a broadening of that humorous smile and with a glint in his
eyes, he referred to "those other people (plump and well-to-do--and
quite young people) who do, still, really appear to consider that the
whole of a man's duty to his country is to preserve his health for as
long as possible and then, having reached a ripe old age, to die
comfortably and respectably in his bed!----"
There was a short ripple of laughter about the room; but after this
Gwenna heard very little.
Not only was she incapable of taking any more in, but this last sentence
pulled her up with a sudden memory of what she had seen, yesterday.
_That gun at the Aircraft Works. That pictured presentiment in her own
mind._
And she heard again, through Colonel Conyers' pleasant voice, the queer,
unexplained words that had haunted her:
"_Fired at by both friend and foe._"
She thought, "I must ask! I must say something to Paul about that----"
CHAPTER II
THE "WHISPER OF WAR"
She said it after the dinner had broken up.
In the great hall young Dampier had turned to the Aeroplane Lady with
his offer of motoring her to her Hotel first. She had good-naturedly
laughed at him and said, "No. I'm going to be driven back by the
rightful owner of the car this time. You take Miss Williams."
And then she had gone off with some friend of Paul's who had motors to
lend, and Paul had taken Gwenna to find a taxi to drive up to Hampstead.
They drove slowly through Piccadilly Circus, now brighter than at
midday. It was thronged with the theatre-crowds that surged towards the
crossings. Coloured restaurant-coats and jewelled head-gear and laughing
faces were gay in the lights that made that broad blazing belt about the
fountain. Higher up the whole air was a soft haze of gold, melting into
the hot, star-strewn purple of the night-sky. And against this there
tapered, black and slender, the apex of the fountain, the
downward-swooping shape that is not Mercury, but the flying Love--the
Lad with Wings.
Paul Dampier leant back in the closed cab and would have drawn the girl
to him.
She put both hands on his broad chest to hold him a little away from
her.
"I want to ask you something," she began a little tremulously. "It's
just--Is there going to be----"
"Well, what?" he asked, smiling close to her.
Of all things that he least expected came what the girl had to say.
"Is there going to be--a War, Paul?"
"A _what_?" he asked, thinking he had not heard aright.
She repeated it, tremulously. "A war. Real war."
"War?" he echoed, blankly, taken aback. He was silent from puzzled
astonishment over her asking this, as they turned up Shaftesbury Avenue.
They were held up outside the Hippodrome for some minutes. He was still
silent. The taxi gave a jerk and went on. And she still waited for his
reply. She had to remind him.
"Well," she said again, tremulous. "_Is_ there going to be?"
"A war? A _war_ indeed," he said again. "What an
extraordinary--Who's--What put such a thing into your head?"
She said, "_Is_ there?"
The boy gave a half-amazed, half-uneasy laugh. He retorted, "What d'you
mean, Gwenna? A war _where_?"
She said flutteringly, "Anywhere."
"Oh," he said, and laughed as if relieved. "Always some war, somewhere.
Frontier shows in India, and so on. There is some scrapping going on in
Europe too, now, you know. Looks as if Austria and Servia were going to
have a set-to. You mean that."
"No, I don't," persisted the Welsh girl, to whom these places seemed
indescribably remote and beside the mark. "I mean ... a war to do with
_us_, like."
"Us----?"
"To do with England."
"But----" he said, frowning. "Why, how absurd! A war with England?
Why ... of course not. Why should you think of it?"
She cleared her throat and answered with another tremulous question.
"Why should you have--that gun-thing--on your aeroplane?"
"Not going to. Not on the P.D.Q.," he said, shaking his head. "Only an
experiment, anyhow."
"Why should you have 'experiments' with those things?" she faltered.
"'_Have to be a rifle_,' you said. Why should you talk about 'scouting'
and 'modern warfare'?"
"I wasn't!" he said quite hotly.
"Yes, you were. That day we were together. That day in the field when
you were talking to me about the Machine."
"Oh, _then_! Weeks ago."
"Yes. Why should there _be_ all that, unless you meant that there'd be a
war, with England in it. _Paul!_" she cried, almost accusingly, "you
said yourself that it was '_bound to come_!'"
"Oh, well! Everybody said _that_," he assured her lightly. "Can't help
seeing Germany and that Fleet of hers, and her Zeppelins and things,
going on build, build, build. They don't do that for their health, you