The Boy with Wings
only living until Monday, until his return to tell her something. In the
evening the two girls sat out on a seat on Parliament Hill; near where
the man with the standing telescope used to offer peeps at London for a
penny a time. Far, far below, lay London under her web of twinkling
lights. London, England's heart, with that silver ribbon of the river
running through it. Leslie looked away over that prospect as though she
had never seen it before. Little Gwenna turned from it to the view on
the other side--the grass spaces and the trees towards Hendon. She
thought, "On a night as clear as this, aeroplanes could easily go up,
even late."
As the two girls reached the Club again they found a motor drawn up
beside the entrance. Steps came out of the darkness behind them. A man's
voice said "Miss Long." Leslie turned.
There moved into the light of the street-lamp Hugo Swayne. His face,
somehow, had never looked less like an imitation of Chopin; or more like
an ordinary commonplace Englishman's. It was serious, set. Yet it was
exultant. For he, too, was a soldier's son.
He spoke. "I say, I thought I'd bring you the news," he began gravely.
"It's all right. England goes in."
"Is that official?" Leslie asked sharply.
There was a shaky little "War?" from Gwenna.
Then came other, quick steps on the asphalt path, and the girls saw over
Hugo's rather portly shoulder a taller, slighter figure coming up the
road behind him.
It was hatless; the lamplight shone golden on its blonde head. Gwenna's
heart leaped to her lips.
"Paul!" she cried, and made a running step towards him. In a moment
young Dampier was up with the others; the quartette standing as they had
stood on that spring night in this same place, after the Smiths'
dinner-party. There were hasty greetings, murmurs of "Not official?"
"Ah, that's all right----"
"They won't say for a day or so, but----"
Then, clear and distinct, young Dampier's boyish voice rang out in a
curious announcement. "Glad _you're_ here, Hugo. I was coming to you. I
want to borrow rather a lot of money of you, at once. Forty pounds, I
think it is. Sorry. Must have it. It's for a marriage-licence!"
Hugo, utterly taken aback, stared and murmured, "My dear
chap---- Certain---- A m----?"
"Yes. I shall have to be off, you know. Of course. And I shall get
married before I go," announced Paul Dampier, brusquely. He turned as
brusquely to the girl.
"You and I are going to get married by special licence," he told her,
"the day after to-morrow."
CHAPTER VI
HER GUARDIAN'S CONSENT
The Reverend Hugh Lloyd, who was Gwenna Williams' only relative and
guardian and therefore the person from whom consent might be asked if
ever the girl wished to be engaged, sat reading _The Cambrian News_. He
sat, over his breakfast eggs and tea, in the kitchen-sitting-room of his
Chapel House. Inside, the grandfather clock ticked slowly but still
pointed (as ever) to half-past two; and the cosy room, with its Welsh
dresser and its book-shelves, still held its characteristic smell of
singeing hearthrug. Outside, quiet brooded over the valley that fine
August morning. The smoke from the village chimneys rose blue and
straight against the larches of the hill-side. The more distant hills of
that landscape were faintly mauve against the cloudless, fainter blue of
the late-summer sky. All the world seemed so peaceful!
And the expression on the Reverend Hugh's face of a Jesuit priest under
its thatch of bog-cotton hair was that of a man at peace with all the
world.
True, there were rumours, in some of the newspapers, of some War going
on somewhere in the world outside.
But it was a long way from here to that old Continent, as they called
it! For the matter of that, it was a long way to London, where they
settled what they were going to do about Germany....
What they were going to do about Welsh Disestablishment was a good deal
more important, to a Welshman. There were some very good things about
that in this very article. The Reverend Hugh had written it himself.
Presently, in the midst of his reading, his housekeeper (who was a
small, middle-aged woman, rather like a black hen) entered the room at a
run.
"Telegram for you, sir."
"Ah, yes; thank you, Margat," her master said as he took it.
He had guessed already what was in it. Some arrangement to do with his
next Sabbath-day's journey. For he was a very popular preacher, invited
to give sermons by exchange in every country town in Wales.
"This," he told his housekeeper complacently, as he tore open the
envelope, "will be to say am I ex Pected in Carnarvon on the Sat Teudeh,
or----"
Here he broke off, staring at the message in his hand. It was a long
one.
There was a moment's silence while the clock ticked. Then that silence
was broken by an exclamation, in Welsh, from a man startled out of all
professional decorum. He added, with more restraint, but also in Welsh,
"Great King!"
Then he exclaimed, "Dear father!" and "_Name_ of goodness!"
"What is it, Mr. Lloyd _bach_?" demanded his housekeeper excitedly in
Welsh, clutching her black, crochet wool shawl about her shoulders as
she waited by the side of the breakfast.
"Is it somebody died?" In her mind's eye she saw already that loved orgy
of her kind--a funeral.
The Reverend Hugh shook his handsome white head. Again he read through
the longest telegraph message that he had ever received:
It ran:
"_Dear Sir am going to marry your niece Gwenna to-morrow Tuesday
morning at Hampstead regret forced to give you this short notice
but impossible to do otherwise owing military duties trust you will
excuse apparent casualness will write further particulars yours
sincerely Paul Dampier Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps._"
"_Name_ of goodness!" breathed the Reverend Hugh, brushing back his
white locks in consternation. And at short intervals he continued to
ejaculate. "What did I tell her? _What_ did I tell her!... Indeed, it's
a great pity I ever let her go away from home.... It was my fault; my
fault.... Young men----! This one sounds as if he was gone quite mad,
whatever."
So the Reverend Hugh addressed his answer to Miss Gwenna Williams at her
Club.
And it said:
"_Coming up to see you nine-thirty Euston to-night. Uncle._"
* * * * *
"I'm sure he'll be simply horrid about it," Gwenna rather tremulously
told her betrothed that evening, as they walked, the small, curly-haired
girl in dark blue and the tall, grey-clad aviator, up and down the
platform at Euston Station, waiting for the Welsh train to come in.
Little Gwenna was experiencing a feeling not unknown among those shortly
to be married; namely, that _every prospect was pleasing--save that of
having to face one's relatives with the affair_!
"He was always rather a dret-ful old man," she confided anxiously to
Paul, as they paced the sooty flags of the platform. "It's _just_ like
him to be sixteen minutes late already just when I want to get this
over. He never understands anything about--about people when they're
young. And the first thing he's sure to ask is whether you've got any
money. Have you, Paul?"
"Stacks," said the Airman, reassuringly. "Old Hugo made it sixty, as a
wedding-present. Decent of him, wasn't it?"
They turned by the blackboard with the chalked-up notices of arrivals
and departures, and Gwenna ruefully went on with her prophecy of what
her Uncle would say.
"He'll say he never _heard_ of anybody marrying an Airman. (I don't
suppose he's ever heard of an Airman at all before now!) Ministers, and
quarry-managers, and people _with some prospects_; that's the sort of
thing they've always married in Uncle Hugh's family," she said
anxiously. "And he'll say we've both behaved awfully badly not to let
him know before this. (Just as if there was anything to know.) And
he'll say you turned my silly head when I was much too young to know my
own mind! And then he's quite, quite sure to say that you only proposed
to me because---- Well, of course," she broke off a little reproachfully,
"you never even _did_ propose to me properly!"
"Too late to start it now," said her lover, laughing, as the knot of
porters surged forward to the side of the platform. "Here's the train
coming in!"
* * * * *
Now Gwenna was right about the first thing that Uncle Hugh would ask,
when, after a searching glance and a handshake to this tall young man
that his niece introduced to him at the carriage-door, he carried off
the pair of them to the near-by hotel where the Minister always put up
on his few and short visits to London.
"Well, young gentleman," he began, in his crisp yet deliberate Welsh
accent. He settled himself on the red plush sofa, and gazed steadily at
Paul Dampier on one of the red plush armchairs. "Well! And have you got
the money reck-quisite to keep a wife?"
"No. I'm afraid I haven't, sir, really," returned the young man, looking
frankly back at him. "Of course I'd my screw. Three pounds ten a week, I
was getting as a pilot. But that was only just enough for myself--with
what I had to do for the Machine. Of course I'm going to have her--the
Flying Machine--taken up now, so----"
"It's very little faith I have in such things as flying machines.
Flying? Yes, in the face of Providence, I call it," said the Reverend
Hugh, discouragingly, but with the dawn of some amusement in his
searching eyes. "What I say about the whole idea of Avi_ay_-shon
is--_Kite-high lunacy!_"
"Uncle!" scolded Gwenna; blushing for him. But the young Airman took the
rebuke soberly enough.
"And out of that income," went on Uncle Hugh, still looking hard, at
this modern suitor in that incongruous red-plush setting with its
Nineteenth Century clocks and ornaments, "out of that income you will
not have saved very much."
"Afraid not, sir," agreed young Dampier, who, last night, had been down
to his last eightpence ha'penny and a book of stamps. "Not much to put
by, you know----"
"Not even," took up the Reverend Hugh, shrewdly, "enough to pay for a
special marriage licence?"
"Oh, yes, I had that. That is, I've raised _that_"--("Good old Hugo!" he
thought.)--"and a bit over," he added, "to take us for some sort of a
little trip. To the sea, perhaps. Before I go on Service."
"Military service, do you mean?" said the Reverend Hugh. "Mmph! (I never
have held with soldiery. I do not think that I have ever come into
act--ual con--tackt with _any_.)"
"Yes, I probably am going on Service, Mr. Lloyd," answered the young
man, quickly, and with a glance at the girl that seemed to indicate that
this subject was only to be lightly dealt with at present. "When, I am
not sure. Then I shall get my pay as a Flight-Lieutenant, you see.
Shan't want any money much, then. So _she_"--with a little nod towards
the small, defensively set face of Gwenna, sitting very straight in the
other red-plush armchair--"she will get that sent home, to her."
"_I_ shan't want all your pay, indeed," interrupted the girl, hastily.
It seemed to her too revoltingly horrible, this talk about money
combined with this sense that a woman, married, must be an _expense_, a
burden. A woman, who longs to mean only freedom and gifts and treasure
to her lover!
"Oh, a woman ought never, _never_ to feel she has to be _kept_," thought
Gwenna, rosy again with embarrassment. "If men don't think we _mind_,
very well, then let all the money in the world be taken away from men,
and given to us. Let _them_ be kept. And if they don't mind it--well,
then it will be a happier world, all round!"
And as she was thinking this, she announced eagerly, "If--if you _do_ go
away, I shall stay on with the Aeroplane Lady, as I told you, Paul. Yes.