The Boy with Wings
bet! Scrap's bound to come; yes. Sooner or later."
"Yes, Paul; but _when_?"
"How should I know, my _dear_ child?" retorted the young Airman. "Why
didn't you ask Lord Thingummy, or Conyers at the Club just now?" he
laughed. "Good speech of his, wasn't it?"
"Does _he_ know?" persisted Gwenna, paling. "About the war coming, I
mean?"
"More likely to know than I am, those people. Not that they'd give it
away if they did. It won't be to-morrow, anyway. To-morrow; that's
Sunday. _Our_ holiday. Another day we shall have all to ourselves. Tell
me what time I'm to call for you at the Club."
Not to be put off, she retorted, timid, persistent, "Tell me when _you_
think it would come. Soon?"
Half laughing, half impatient, he said, "I _don't_ know. Soon enough for
it to be in my time, I hope."
"But--" she said, with a little catch in her voice, "you're not a
soldier?"
He said quietly, "I'm an aviator."
An aviator; yes. That was what she meant. He belonged to the most daring
and romantic of professions; the most dangerous, but not _that_ danger.
An inventor, part of his time; the rest of his time an airman at Hendon
who made flights above what the man with the megaphone called the
"Aer-rio-drome" above the khaki-green ground with the pylons and the
border of summer-frocked spectators. _Her_ boy! An aviator.... Would
that mean presently a man flying above enemy country, to shoot and be
shot at? ("_Fired at by both friend and foe._"). She said quiveringly:
"_You_ wouldn't have to fight?"
He said: "Hope so, I'm sure."
"Oh, Paul!" she cried, aghast, her hands on his arm. "Just when--when
I've only just _got_ you! To lose you again so soon----! Oh, no----!"
"Oh, I say, darling, don't be so silly," he said briskly and
reassuringly. He patted the little hands. "We're not going to talk about
this sort of thing, d'you hear? There's nothing to talk _about_.
Actually, there's nothing. Understand?"
"Yes," she murmured slowly. She thought, "Actually, 'there's nothing to
talk about' in what's between him and me. _But it's there all the
time._"
And then, gradually, that presentiment of War began to fade in the
reality of her joy at being with him now, with him still....
They turned up the Hampstead Road, flaring with naphtha-lights above the
stalls, noisy with shouts of costers, crowded with the humble shoppers
of Saturday night.
"Well, and what about to-morrow?" Dampier took up.
"I _was_ going with Leslie to----"
"So you said. With Leslie, indeed! D'you think you're going to be
allowed to go anywhere again, except with _me_?" he muttered as he put
his arms about her.
He held her as close as he had done on the scaffolding, that afternoon
when he had arranged with himself never to see the Little Thing again;
close as he'd done next time he did see her, at the Factory.
"Oh, _you_ don't know!" he said quite resentfully (while she laughed
softly and happily in his hold), "you _don't_ know how I've wanted you
with me. I--I haven't been able to think of anything--You _have_ got a
fellow fond of you in a jolly short time, haven't you? How've you done
it? M'm? I--Here!" he broke off savagely, "what _is_ this dashed idiot
stopping the taxi for?"
"Because I get out here. It's the Club," Gwenna explained to him
gravely, opening the door of the cab for herself. "Good-night."
"What? No, you don't," protested the boy. "We're going up the Spaniards
Road and down by the Whitestone Pond, and round by Hendon first. I must
take you for a drive. It's not so late. Hang it, I haven't _seen_ you to
speak to----"
She had made a dash out and across the lamp-lighted asphalt, and now
she nodded to him from the top step of the house, with her key already
clicking in the lock.
"There," she thought.
For even in the tie that binds the most adoring heart there is twisted
some little gay strand of retaliation.
Let _him_ feel that after a whole evening of sitting in her pocket he
hadn't seen anything of her. She'd known that sort of feeling long
enough. Let _him_ take his turn; let _him_ have just a taste of it!
"Good-night!" she called softly to her lover before she disappeared.
"See you to-morrow!"
CHAPTER III
THE LAST SUNDAY OF PEACE
Never had Gwenna risen so early after having spent so little of a night
in sleep!
Into the small hours she had crouched in her kimono on the edge of
Leslie's camp bedstead in the light that came from the street lamp
outside the window; and she had talked and talked and talked.
For by "not saying anything about it" she had never meant keeping her
happiness from that close chum.
Miss Long, sincerely delighted, had listened and had nodded her wise
black head from the pillow. She had thrown in the confidante's running
comments of "There! What did Leslie tell you?... Oh, he would, of
course.... Good.... Oh, my dear, _how_ exactly like them all.... No, no;
I didn't mean that. (Of course there's nobody like _him_); I meant
'Fancy!' ... Yes and then what did Paul say, Virginia?" At last
repetitions had cropped up again and again into the softly chattered
recital, with all its girlish italics of: "Oh, but you _don't_ know what
he's like; oh, Leslie, no, you _can't_ imagine!"--At last Leslie had
sighed, a trifle enviously. And little Gwenna, pattering to the head of
the bed, had put her cheek to the other girl's and had whispered
earnestly: "Oh, Leslie, if I only could, d'you know what I'd do? I'd
arrange so that he had a twin-brother _exactly_ like him, to fall in
love with _you_!"
"Taffy! you are too ... _sweet_," the elder girl had whispered back in a
stifled voice.
Gwenna never guessed how Leslie Long had had much ado not to giggle
aloud over that idea. To think of her, Leslie, finding rapture with any
one of the type of the Dampier boy....
A twin-brother of _his_? Another equally bread-and-buttery blonde
infant--an infant-in-arms who was even "simpler" than Monty Scott? Oh,
Ishtar!... For thus does one woman count as profoundest boredom what
brings to her sister Ecstasy itself.
And now here was Gwenna, all in white, coming down to the Club's Sunday
breakfast with her broad hat already on her head and her gloves and her
vanity-bag in her hand.
At the head of the table sat the Vicar's widow with the gold curb brooch
and the look of resigned disapproval. Over the table Miss Armitage and
the other suffrage-workers were discussing the Cat-and-Mouse Act.
Opposite to them one of the art-students, with her hair cut a la Trilby,
was listening bewildered, ready to be convinced.... Not one of the usual
things remained unsaid....
Presently Gwenna's neighbour and _bete noire_, Miss Armitage, was
denouncing the few remaining members of her sex who still seemed to
acquiesce in the Oriental attitude towards Woman; who still remained
serfs or chattels or toys.
"However! _Thy_ needn't think thy _caount_," declared the lecturer
firmly, stretching without apology across her neighbour to get the salt.
With some distaste Gwenna regarded her. She had spots on her face.
"Pleasers of Men!" she pursued, with noble scorn. "The remnant of the
Slyve-girl Type, now happily extinct----"
"Loud cheers," from Leslie Long.
"The serpent's tile," continued the suffragette, "the serpent's tile
that, after the reptile has been beaten to death, still gows on feebly
wriggling----"
"Better wriggle off now, Taffy, my child," murmured Leslie, who sat
facing the breakfast-room window. "Here's a degraded Oriental coming up
the path now to call for his serf."
"_You_ come," said Gwenna, warmly flushed as she rose. And she held her
chum's long arm, dragging her with her as she came into the hall where
the tall, typically English figure of her Airman stood, his straw hat in
his hand. A splash of scarlet from the stained glass of the hall door
fell upon his fair head and across his cheek as he turned.
"Good-morning," said Gwenna sedately, and without giving him so much as
a glance. She felt at that moment that she would rather keep him at
arm's length for ever than allow him even to hold her hand, with Leslie
there. For it takes those who are cooler in temperament than was the
little Welsh girl, or those who care less for their lovers than she did,
to show themselves warmer in the presence of others.
"Hullo," said Paul Dampier to her. Then, "Hullo, Miss Long! How d'you
do?"
Leslie gave him a very hearty shake of the hand, a more friendly glance
and a still more demure inquiry about that Machine of his.
Paul Dampier laughed, returning her glance.
She was a sport, he thought. She could be trusted not to claim, just
yet, the bet she'd won from his cousin; the laughing wager about the
Aeroplane versus the Girl. Fifteen to one on the Girl, wasn't it? And
here was the Girl home in his heart now, with the whole of a gorgeous
July Sunday before them for their first holiday together.
"I say, I'm not too early now, am I?" he asked as he and the girl walked
down the Club steps together. "I was the first time, so I just went for
a walk round the cricket-pitch and back. Sickening thing I couldn't rake
up a car anywhere for to-day. Put up with trains or tubes and taxis
instead, I'm afraid. D'you mind? Where shall we go?"
* * * * *
"Flying, of course," was Gwenna's first thought. "Now at last he'll take
me up." But that would be for the afternoon.
For the morning they wanted country, and grass, and trees to sit
under.... Not Hampstead; Richmond Park was finally decided upon.
"We'll taxi to Waterloo," the boy said, with an inward doubt. He dived a
long brown hand into his pocket as they walked together down the road
that Gwenna used to take every morning to her Westminster bus. He was
particularly short of money just then. Dashed nuisance! Just when he
would have wished to be particularly flush! That's what came of buying a
clock for the Machine before it was wanted. Still, he couldn't let the
Little Thing here know that. Manage somehow. A taxi came rattling down
the Pond Street Hill from Belsize Park as they reached the
stopping-place of the buses, and Paul held up his hand.
"Taxi!"
But the driver shook his head. He pulled up the taxi in front of a
small, rather mean-looking house close to where Gwenna and Paul were
standing on the pavement. Then his fare came out of the house, a kit-bag
in each hand and a steamer-rug thrown over his arm; he was a small,
compactly-built young man in clothes so new and so smart that they
seemed oddly out of place with the slatternly entrance of his
lodging-house. It was this that made Paul Dampier look a little hard at
him. Gwenna was wondering where she'd seen that blonde, grave face of
his before.
He sprang lightly into the cab; a pink-faced girl was sitting there,
whom Gwenna did not see. If she had seen her, she would have recognised
her Westminster colleague, Ottilie Becker.
"Liverpool Street," ordered Miss Becker's companion, setting down his
luggage.
Then, raising his head, he caught the eyes upon him of the other young
man in the street. He put a hand to his hat, gave a quick little odd
smile, and leaned forward out of the cab.
"_Auf Wiedersehen!_" he called, as the taxi started off--for Liverpool
Street.
"Deuce did he mean by that?" exclaimed the young Englishman, staring
after the cab. "Who on earth was that fellow? I didn't know him."
"Nor did I. But I _have_ seen him," said Gwenna.
"I believe I have, somewhere," said Paul, musing.
They puzzled over it for a bit as they went on to Waterloo on the top of
their bus.
And then, when they were passing "The Horse Shoe" in Tottenham Court
Road, and when they were talking about something quite different (about
the river-dance, in fact), they both broke off talking sharply. Gwenna,