The Boy with Wings
before!--and the white silk stockings, and the little white suede shoes.
"'_Something old_, _something new_, _something borrowed_, _something
blue_,'" Leslie capped her quotation. "Where's the '_something blue_,'
Taffy?"
"Ribbons in my camisole; and I shall 'borrow' your real lace
handkerchief, may I?" said the bride-elect.
"Rather! All that I have, even unto the half of the best-man's
attention!" said Leslie, smiling gaily into the cherub face opposite.
But, even as she smiled, she felt that pang which is supposed to be
known only to the _man_ who sees his chosen pal prepare to be "married
and done for."
* * * * *
For this morning, that turned an adoring sweetheart into a wife, was
taking something of her own, of the bridesmaid's youth away.
Gwenna Williams married!
That meant one more girl-chum who would never, never be quite the same
again to a once-treasured companion. That bubbling fountain of innocent
confidences would now run low, as far as Leslie was concerned. No longer
would the elder, quickly-sympathising, rebellious-tongued girl be the
first to hear what happened to her little, ingenuous friend.
The girlish gossip would have a masculine censor to pass.
Leslie could foretell the little scene when it first happened.
She could hear Gwenna's eager, "Oh, Paul! Leslie would so laugh at----"
whatever the little incident might be. "I must tell her that!"
Leslie, the bachelor-girl, could imagine the tilt of the young husband's
blonde head, and his doubtful, "Don't see why it should be supposed to
interest _her_."
She could imagine the little wife's agreeing, "Oh! Perhaps not."
And again the young husband's, "Don't you think Miss Long gets a little
bit _much_ sometimes? Oh, she's all right, but--I mean, I shouldn't like
_you_ to go on quite like that."
It would be only after years of marriage that the once-close chum would
turn for sympathy to Leslie Long. And then it would not be the same....
The last of Leslie's forebodings seemed the most inevitable. She heard
Gwenna's soft Welsh voice, once so full of unexpectedness, now grown
almost unrecognisably sedate. She heard it utter that finally
"settled-down"-sounding phrase:
"_Say 'how d'you do' nicely to Auntie Leslie, now!_"
Ah! _That_ seemed to bring a shadow of Autumn already into the summer
sunshine of that bridal room with its white, prepared attire, its
bonnie, bright-eyed occupant. It seemed to show what must some day come:
Taffy middle-aged!
Also what probably would come: Taffy matter-of-fact! Taffy with all the
dreams out of her eyes! Taffy whose only preoccupations were, "Really
that stair-carpet's getting to look awful; I wonder if I could manage to
get a new one and put it on the upper flight?" or, "_I_ never saw
anything like the way _my_ children wear through their boots: it was
only the other day I got that quite expensive pair of Peter Pans for
little Hughie. And now look at them. _Look!..._"
Yes! This sort of change was wrought, by time and marriage and
domesticity, in girl after golden girl. Leslie had seen it. She would
probably see Taffy, the fanciful Celt, grown stodgy; Taffy, even Taffy,
the compactly supple, with all her fruit-like contours, grown
_stout_!...
Horrible thought....
Then Miss Long gave a protesting shrug of her slim shoulders. This
wouldn't do. Come, come! Not on the wedding-morning itself should one
give way to thoughts of coming middle-age! The rose, that must, some
day, be overblown, was only just a pouting bud as yet. There were days
and fragrant days of beauty still before her.
So Leslie picked up her chum's rough towels, her loofah and her
verbena-scented soap.
"I'll turn on the bath for you, Taffy, shall I? Hot or cold?"
"Cold, please," said the Welsh girl, springing out of bed and pattering
over the oil-cloth to fetch her kimono. "Perhaps to-morrow I shall be
able to have a real swim! Oh, won't that be gorgeous?" For the couple
had decided upon Brighton for the honeymoon. It was near enough to
London in case young Dampier received a summons; yet near also to
country-tramps and sea-bathing. "I haven't had a swim this year, except
in the baths. And you can't count that. Oh, _fancy_ the sea again,
Leslie!"
Leslie could guess what was at the back of that little exultant skip of
the younger girl's through the bathroom door. It was sheer innocent
delight over the prospect of being able to display to her lover at last
something that she did really well.
For they had never been by the sea together, he and she.
And she was a pretty swimmer.
* * * * *
"Now I'll be your maid for the last time, and fasten you up," said
Leslie, when she returned from the bathroom. "I suppose you know there
isn't a _single_ eye left at the neck of this dress? Always the way with
that laundry! It's nothing to _it_ that untidiness puts a man off worse
than anything else (this from me). Never mind, I'll hook it into the
lace.... That's all right. '_A bonnie bride is soon buskit._' Almost a
pity the girls will all have gone--though I know you'd hate to have them
staring. D'you know, you _are_ a little pocket-Venus? No, I'm _not_
piling it on. You're lovely, Taffy. I hope the Dampier boy tells you so,
very often and much. He's vastly lucky."
"It's me that's lucky," said the girl in all-white devoutly. "Now
where's my hat?"
"Do you think you're going to be allowed to get married in a _hat_?"
"My best white one with the wings, I meant."
"Pooh! I've arranged for you to have these," said Leslie, and brought
out a cardboard box that she had been to fetch while Gwenna was having
her bath. From it she drew a slender chaplet of dark leaves, with round
white buds with waxen flowers.
"Orange-blossoms! _Real_ orange-blossoms," cried Gwenna, delightedly
sniffing up the sensuous perfume of them. "Oh, but _where_ did you get
them?"
"Covent Garden. I went down there this morning at five, with one of the
housemaids whose young man is at a florist's," explained Leslie,
standing above her to set the pretty wreath upon the pretty head. "Now
you look like a print of 'Cupid's Coronation,' or something like that.
'_Through his curls as the crown on them slips_'--I'll twist this a tiny
bit tighter. And here's the veil."
Gwenna stared. "A veil, too, Leslie?"
"Rather. Only chance you get of appearing in this thoroughly becoming
kit that carries us all back to the worst days of Woman's Enslavement.
May as well take that chance!" remarked Miss Long cheerfully, as she
shook out soft, transparent folds of finest white net that she herself
had embroidered, working late into the night, with a border of leaves in
white silk. "This is from me."
"Oh, _Les_-lie! You got it as a surprise for me," said the little bride,
much touched. "You worked all these beautiful little laurel-leaves----"
"Not laurel, child. Meant for myrtle. Pity your geography is so weak,"
rattled on Leslie, as she heard, outside the Club, the stopping of the
taxi which had brought the Reverend Hugh Lloyd to call for his
detachment of the bridal party. "Refreshingly unconventional sort of
wedding you're having in some ways, aren't you? '_The presents were few
and inexpensive_' (such a change from the usual report). '_The bride was
attended by one bridesmaid: her friend Miss Long, clad in mauve linen,
mystic, wonderful_'--(taking into consideration that it had done her
cousin for Henley last year). '_The ceremony proceeded without a hitch,
except for the usual attempt on the part of the officiating clergyman to
marry the bride to the best man._' Which must not be, Taffy. You must
remember that I've got designs on Mr. Hugo Swayne myself----"
"Don't, Leslie!" protested the bride. "You know I do so hate to think of
you getting engaged in that sort of horrible way--instead of just
because you can't _help_ it! If only there were somebody you could be
really in love with----"
"I shall be really rather in love with Uncle Hugh, I know," prophesied
the bridesmaid. "_What_ a pity he isn't thirty years younger! Come
along. He's waiting. I'm going to kiss _him_, anyhow. Got your gloves?
Right. Got my hankerfish? You won't _want_ to shed any tears into it,
but----"
But there was an added brightness in the green-brown eyes of the little
bride as she glanced round the girlish room where Leslie would pack up
and put everything to rights for her after she had gone.
Impulsively she put her arms round that good chum.
"You've been so--so frightfully sweet to me, Leslie, always. Thanks so
awfully----"
"_Don't_ kiss me through a veil, my child!" protested Leslie, drawing
back. "D'you want to bring me ill luck?"
"Oh, Leslie! I should want to bring you all the good luck in the world,"
cried the younger girl, earnestly, over her shoulder as they went out.
"If I were given three wishes _now_ for a wedding-present, one of them
would be that you would some day be as happy as me!"
"My dear lamb!" said Leslie lightly, running downstairs after her, "How
do you know I'm not quite as happy in another--in my own way?"
Gwenna shook the curly head under the orange-blossom wreath and the
misty veil. It seemed to her that there was only The One Way in which a
woman could be happy.
"And the other two wishes?" suggested Leslie, at the sitting-room door.
"What are they?"
"Mustn't tell," smiled the little bride of Superstition with her finger
at her lips. "If I told they _might_ not come true!"
* * * * *
Very earnestly she hoped that those two wishes might come true. She
thought of them again, presently, as she stood, there in church, a
small, white-mist-clad figure, backed by the coloured window and the
crimson altar. She had the kindly glances upon her of her uncle, of her
tall girl-chum, and of Hugo Swayne--who wore a perfect morning coat with
a white flower and grey trousers, admirably pressed by his man Johnson.
Hugo, but for his Chopin stock, would have looked the very model of a
prosperous and conventional bridegroom. He did, in fact, look far more
like the popular conception of a bridegroom than did young Paul Dampier
in his well-cut but ancient grey tweed suit.
--"The only togs I've got in the wide world," he'd confided to Gwenna,
"except working clothes and evening things!"
She stood with her hand in his large, boyish one, repeating in her soft,
un-English accent the vows that once seemed to her such a vast and
solemn and relentless undertaking.
"_To love, honour, and obey ... as long as we both shall live...._"
It seemed now so little to have to promise! It seemed only a fraction of
all that her heart gave gladly to the lord of it!
"_Till Death us do part_," she repeated quietly.
And it was then she thought of the two wishes. One was that Paul should
be always as much in love with her as he was at that moment.
She was too young fully to realise the greater wisdom of her own second
wish.
_It was that she herself should always remain as much in love with
Paul._
If only God would be very, very kind to them, she thought, and allow
just this to be!
* * * * *
"And you sign your name here," said the clergyman in the vestry to the
newly-made husband, who put down in his small neat handwriting, "Paul
Dampier, Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps," on the grey-blue sheet, which,
duly witnessed and blotted, he was going to tuck away into the
breast-pocket of his tweed jacket.
"No. Those marriage lines are not yours," the parson stopped him with a
smile. "Those are the property of your wife."
Gwenna, dazed, realised that this referred to herself. She took the
folded marriage-certificate and slipped it into the white satin ribbon