"But there are so few of us," said the Aeroplane Lady, ruefully.
The other woman, about to pa.s.s on, stopped for a moment again, and looking over her white shoulder said, very seriously, something that both her hearers were to remember. "If England is ever to be saved, it will be by a few."
She went out; and Mrs. Crewe said to Gwenna, "That was Lady----"
(Something) "the wife of the man who"s as responsible as most people for the security of this Empire----"
Most of the people there seemed to know the Aeroplane Lady quite well, Gwenna noticed, when Paul Dampier came up and took them out into the Central Hall again, where the guests were a.s.sembling. The place seemed as high as a cathedral, with a marble floor, and alcoves, and tall, cla.s.sic, bra.s.s tripod things to hold the end of men"s cigarettes and ashes. The Aeroplane Lady was at once surrounded by a group of men.
Gwenna, feeling very shy and little and of no account, turned to her Airman.
"You said," she murmured reproachfully, "that there _weren"t_ going to be a lot of grand people."
"These aren"t "grand," bless you! People aren"t, who are really--well, who "do things," as you say. Not nearly as frilly here as at the Smiths, that other dinner," he said, smiling down at her. "I"m going to bring up Colonel Conyers and introduce him to you----"
"_Him?_ Good _gracious_!" thought the little Welsh girl in consternation to herself. "Colonel Conyers!--oh, no, please--I should be much too frightened----"
But the tall figure had detached itself from a group at a word from Paul Dampier, and Colonel Conyers came up. Gwenna recognised the lean, smiling, half-mischievous face of the soldier who--those ages ago!--had talked to those ladies in the motor-car at Hendon.
This was the man they called "Aircraft Conyers," the man practically at the head of Aeronautics, Paul had, said, the man in whose hands rested (among so many, many other things) the whole career of the inventor of the P.D.Q.! Gwenna, with her curly head whirling, felt inclined to drop a schoolchild"s curtsy to this Great One of the Councils of the Earth.
He took her hand into his own long, lean one.
"How d"you do?" he drawled, smiling cheerfully. "Starving, what? I am, I can tell you. Always late here. Won"t be long, now. You"re at my table, I believe." Then, almost anxiously, "Fond of chocolates? You are? Good.
Then I can collect the lot of those little silver dishes around us and pretend it"s all for you. It"s for me, really."
Gwenna, who was not able to help laughing at this unexpectedness on the part of the great Aircraft Conyers, said: "Are _you_ fond of them?"
"Pa.s.sionately. Pa.s.sionately!" said Colonel Conyers with a nod, as he turned to find his own dinner-partner.
"Didn"t frighten you much, did he?" laughed Paul Dampier to the Little Thing at his side. "Course he didn"t. I"ll tell you who most of the others are when we get into the supper-room."
In the great supper-room with its painted ceiling and gilded pillars dinner was laid on a number of small tables for parties of six or eight.
Gwenna found herself the only woman at their table, the Aeroplane Lady sitting far down at the other end of the room.
All dazed, the young girl looked about her like a stray bird that has fluttered in through an open window. Beside her, Paul Dampier pointed out to her this celebrity and that at the tables.
"Colonel Conyers you"ve seen...." (That personage had nodded to the young girl over a stack of pink roses and had made a little movement to show the basket of sweets beside his plate.) "Now that man with the Order, that"s Lord" (So-and-So), "Director of Coast Defence. And that"
(So-and-So), "Chief Engineer. And that little man one down--in the opposite direction from where I"m looking--that"s" (So-and-So), "editor of _The Air_. Wonderful chap; brains enough to sink a ship."
An extraordinary mixture of men, Gwenna thought, as her glance followed his direction, and he went on talking. Soldiers, sailors, chemists, scientists, ministers; all banded together. Ranks and fortunes were merged. Here were men of position, men of brains, men of money. Men whose names were in all the newspapers, and men the papers had never heard of, all with one aim and object, the furtherance of Civilisation"s newest advance: the Conquest of the Air.
The dinner proceeded. Pale amber wine whispered and bubbled in her gla.s.s, dishes came and went, but the girl scarcely knew what she ate or drank. She was in a new world, and _he_ had brought her there. She felt it so intensely that presently it almost numbed her. She was long past the stage of excitement that manifests itself in gasps and exclamations.
She could speak ordinarily and calmly when Paul Dampier, turning from his talk to a Physical Laboratory man in a very badly brushed coat, asked her: "Well? Find it interesting?"
"You know I do," she said, with a grave little glance.
He said, smiling, "What did you say to the red-haired youth about not going to the matinee with him first?"
"Mr. Ryan? Oh! I just told him I hadn"t got over my headache from the smell of dope, and that I was afraid it would tire me too much to do both."
"Pretty annoyed, I expect, wasn"t he?"
"Yes, he was," replied Gwenna, with the absolute callousness of a woman in love towards the feelings of any but the one man. She did not even trouble whether it had been the feelings or the vanity of Mr. Peter Ryan that had been hurt. What mattered was that Paul Dampier had not wished her to go to that matinee.
Paul Dampier said, "Well, I cried off an engagement to-night, too.
Colonel Conyers wanted to take me back with him. But I"m seeing you home."
"Oh, but you mustn"t; you needn"t!" she protested happily. "I"m not going down to the Works, you know, to-night. I"m sleeping at the Club.
I"m staying this week-end with Leslie."
"With Leslie, are you? M"m. But I"m taking you up to the Club afterwards," he persisted. "A fellow"s got to look after"--here he laughed a little as if it were a joke that pleased him--"a fellow"s got to look after his _fiancee_, hasn"t he?"
She was a little subdued. She thought for the moment that he had put Colonel Conyers off, not for her, after all! but for that Machine of his. Then she thought: No!--the machine was second now. She said, half in hope, half in dread, "D"you mean the P.D.Q.?"
He turned, with his mouth full of salad, staring whimsically at her.
"The P.D.Q.? What you thinking of? I meant _you_."
"_Me?_" She gave a little gasp.
Life and happiness were too much for her again. She felt as if that whispering untouched champagne in her gla.s.s had gone to her head. Was it really true--_that_, that he had said?
"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 n.o.body 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.)