"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-b.u.t.tery 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 s.e.x who still seemed to acquiesce in the Oriental att.i.tude 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 n.o.ble 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 gla.s.s 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 gra.s.s, 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 pa.s.sing "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, with a little jump on the slanting front seat, exclaimed, "I know--!"
Just as Paul said, "By Jove! I"ve got it! I know who that fellow was.
That German fellow just now. He was one of the waiters at that very dance, Gwenna!"
Gwenna, turning, said breathlessly, "Yes, I know. The one who pa.s.sed us on the path. But I"ve thought of something else, too. I thought then his face reminded me of somebody"s; I know now who it is. It"s that fair young man who came down to try and be taken on at the Works."
"At Westminster?" Paul asked quickly.
"No; at the Aircraft Works one afternoon. He talked English awfully well, and he said he was Swiss. And then Andre--you know, the big, dark French workman--talked to him for quite a long time in French; he said he seemed very intelligent. But he wouldn"t give him a job, whatever."
"He wouldn"t?"
"No. I heard him tell the Aeroplane Lady that the young man ("_ce garcon-la_") came from the wrong canton," said Gwenna. "So he went away.
I saw him go out. He was awfully _like_ that German waiter. I suppose most Germans look alike, to us."
"S"pose so," said the Aviator, adding, "Was that the day that drawing of mine was missing from the Aircraft Works, I wonder?"
She looked at him, surprised. "I didn"t know one of your drawings was missing, Paul."
"Yes. It didn"t matter, as it happened. Drawing of a detail for my Machine. I"ve taken jolly good care not to have complete drawings of it anywhere," he said, with a little nod.
And some minutes later they had begun to talk of something else again, as the bus lurched on through the hot, deserted Sunday streets.
The morning that had brought Gwenna to her lover left Gwenna"s chum for once at a loose end.
"Leslie, my child, aren"t you a little tired of being the looker-on who sees most of the game? Won"t you take a hand?" Miss Long asked herself as she went back into her Club bedroom. It was scented with the fresh smell of the rosemary and bay-rum that Leslie used for her ink-black sheaf of hair, and there drifted in through the open window the sound of bells from all the churches.
"Sunday. My free morning! "_The better the day._" So I"ll settle up at last what I am going to do about this little matter of my future," she decided.
She sat down at the little bamboo writing-table set against the bedroom wall. Above it there hung (since this was a girl"s room!) a looking-gla.s.s; and about the looking-gla.s.s there was festooned a little garland made up of dance-programmes, dangling by their pencils, of gaudy paper-fans from restaurants, and of strung beads. Stuck crookedly into a corner of the gla.s.s there was a c.o.c.kling snapshot. It showed Monty Scott"s dark head above his sculptor"s blouse. Leslie picked it out and looked at it.