(Curious that the Wings for Airships, the giant b.u.t.terfly aeroplanes themselves, should grow out of a chrysalis of ordinary business, with letters that began, "_Sir, we beg to thank you for your favour of the 2nd instant, and to a.s.sure you that same shall receive our immediate attention_," exactly the sort of letters that Gwenna had typed during all those weeks at Westminster!)
Then there were orders to send off for more bales of the linen that was stretched over the membranes of those wings; or for the great reels of wire which strung the machines, and which cost fifteen pounds apiece; orders for the metal which was to be worked in the shops across the parched yard, where men of three nationalities toiled at the lathe; turning-screws, strainers, washers, and all the tiny, complicated-looking parts that were to be the bones and the sinews and the muscles of the finished Flying Machine.
Gwenna, the typist, had at first only a glimpse or so of these other sides of the Works.
Once, on a message from some visitor to the Aeroplane Lady she pa.s.sed through the great central room, larger than her Uncle"s chapel at home, with its concrete floor and the clear diffused light coming through the many windows, and the never-ceasing throb of the gas-driven engine pulsing through the lighter sounds of c.h.i.n.king and hammering. Mechanics were busy all down the sides of this hall; in the aisle of it, three machines in the making were set up on the stands. One was ready all but the wings; its body seemed now more than it would ever seem that of a giant fish; it was covered with the doped linen that was laced at the seams with braid, eyelets and cord, like an old-fashioned woman"s corset. The second was half-covered. The third was all as yet uncovered, and looked like the skeleton of a vast seagull cast up on some prehistoric sh.o.r.e.
Wondering, the girl pa.s.sed on, to find her employer. She found her in the fitter"s shop. In a corner, the red-haired pupil, with goggles over his eyes, was sitting at a stand working an acetylene blow-pipe; holding in his hand the intense jet that shot out showers of squib-like sparks, and wielding a socket, the Lady directing him. She took the girl"s message, then walked back with her to the office, her tawny dog following at her heels.
"Letters finished?... then I"d like you to help me on with the wings of that machine that"s all but done," she said. "That is"--she smiled--"if you don"t mind getting your hands all over this beastly stuff----"
Mind? Gwenna would have plastered her whole little white body with that warmed and strongly-smelling dope if she"d thought that by so doing she was actually taking a hand in the launching of a Ship for the Clouds.
The rest of the afternoon she spent in the hot and reeking Wing-room, working side by side with the Aeroplane Lady. Industriously she pasted the linen strips, patting them down with her little fingers on to the seams of those wide sails that would presently be spread--for whom?
In her mind it was always one large and springy figure that she saw ascending into the small plaited wicker seat of the Machine. It was always the same careless, blonde, lad"s face that she saw tilted slightly against the background of plane and wires....
"I would love to work, even a little, on a machine that he was going to fly in," thought Gwenna.
She stood, enveloped in a grey-blue overall, at the trestle-table, cutting out fresh strips of linen with scissors that were sticky and clogged with dope. She peeled the stuff from her hands in flakes like the bark of a silver-birch as she added to her thought, "But I shouldn"t want to do anything for that aeroplane; his _Fiancee_, for the P.D.Q.
Hateful creature, with her claws that she doesn"t think are going to let him go!"
Here she set the pannikin of dope to reheat, and there was a smile of defiance on the girl"s lips as she moved about from the trestles to the radiator or the sewing-table.
For ever since she had been at the Works a change had come over Gwenna.
Curiously enough, she was happier now than she had been in her life. She was more contented with what the present brought her; more steadily hopeful about the future. It didn"t seem to matter to her now that, the last time she had seen him, her Aviator had turned almost sullenly away.
She laughed to herself over that, for she believed at last in Leslie"s theory: "Afraid he"s going to like me." She did not fret because she hadn"t had even one of his brief notes since she had left London; nor sigh over the fact that she, living down here in this Bedfordshire village, was so much further away from those rooms of his at Camden Town than she had been when she had stayed at the Hampstead Club.
For somehow she felt nearer to him now.
Absence can, in some subtle, unexplained way, spin fine threads of communication over the gulf between a boy and a girl....
She found a conviction growing stronger and stronger in her girl"s mind, that gay, tangled chaos where faults and faculties, blindness and intuitions flourish entwined and inseparable. _She was meant to be his._
She"d no "reason" for thinking so, of course. There was very little reason about Gwenna"s whole make-up.
For instance, Leslie had tried "reasoning" with her, the night before she"d left the Hampstead Club. Leslie had taken it into her impish black head to be philosophical, and to attempt to talk her chum into the same mood.
Leslie, the nonchalant, had given a full hour to her comments on Marriage. We will allow her a full chapter--but a short one.
CHAPTER XVII
LESLIE ON "MARRIAGE"
She"d said, "Supposing the moon _did_ fall into your lap, Taffy? Suppose that young Cloud-Dweller of yours did (a) take you flying, and (b) propose to you?" and she"d recited solemnly:
"_Somewhere I"ve read that the G.o.ds, waxing wroth at our mad importunity, Hurl us our boon and it falls with the weight of a curse at our feet; Perilous thing to intrude on their lofty Olympian immunity!
"Take it and die," say the G.o.ds, and we die of our fondest conceit._"
"Yes; "of" it! After _having_ it. Who"d mind dying _then_?"
"But if it hadn"t been worth it, Taffy? Suppose you were air-sick?"
Leslie had suggested. "Worse, suppose you were Paul-sick?"
"_What?_"
"Yes, supposing that Super-Boy of yours himself was the disappointment?
Suppose none of his "little ways" happened to please you? Men don"t realise it, but, in love, a man is much easier to please than a woman!"
"No, Leslie. No," had come from the girl who knew nothing of love-making--less than nothing, since she _thought_ she knew.
Leslie had persisted. "The first pet-name a man calls you--awfully important, that!--may hash up Love"s young dream for ever. Some men, I believe, begin with "Dear old--something or other." That"s the _end_. Or something that you know you"re obviously _not_. Such as "Little Woman,"
to _me_. Or they don"t notice something that"s specially there for them to notice. That"s unforgivable. Or they do notice something that"s quite beside the mark. Or they repeat themselves. Not good enough, a man who can"t think of _one_ new way of saying he cares, each day. (Even a calendar can do that.) Saying the wrong thing, though, isn"t as bad as being _silent_. That"s fatal. Gives a girl _such_ a lot of time to imagine all the things that another man might have been saying at the time. That"s why men with no vocabularies ought never to get engaged or married. "_I"m a man of few words_," they say. They ought to be told, "_Very well. Outside! It simply means you won"t trouble to amuse me._"
Exit the Illusion.
"_Alas, how easily things go wrong!
A look too short, or a kiss too long----_"
(Especially with a look too short.) Yes," Leslie had concluded impressively, "suppose the worst tragedy happened? _Suppose_ the Dampier boy did get engaged to you, and then you found out that he didn"t in the least know how to make love? To make love to _you_, I mean."
"There wouldn"t have to be any love "_made_,"" little Gwenna had murmured, flushing. "Where he was, the love would _be_."
"My dear, you _are_ what Hugo Swayne calls "_a Pa.s.se-iste_" in love.
Why, why wasn"t _I_ brought up in the heart of the mountains (and far away from any other kind of heart) until I was twenty-two, and then hurled into a love-affair with the first decent-looking young man?"
Leslie had cried, with exaggerated envy. "The happier you! But, Taff, do remember that "Love is a Lad with Wings"--like yours. Even if the engagement were all your fancy painted, that Grand Firework Display sort of feeling couldn"t _last_. Don"t shoot! It"s true. People couldn"t go on living their lives and earning their livings and making their careers and having their babies if it _did_ last. It _must_ alter. It _must_ die down into the usual dear old sun rising every morning. So, when your "_Oiseau de feu_" married you, and you found he was just--a husband, like everybody else"s----"
"Not "like" anybody!"--indignantly.
"How d"you know _what_ he"s like?" Leslie had demanded. "What d"you know of his temper? Men with that heather-honey kind of smile and those deep dimples very often have a beastly temper. Probably jealous----"
"I would _love_ him to be that."
"You wouldn"t love to be poor, though," Leslie had gone off on another tack. "Poor, and uncomfortable."
"I shall never be comfortable again without him," Gwenna had said obstinately. "Might as well be uncomfortable _with_ him!"
"In a nasty little brick villa near Hendon, so as to be close to the flying, perhaps? With a horrid dark bathroom? And the smell of cooking haddocks and of Lux all over it!" Leslie had enlarged. "And you having to use up all your own little tiny income to help pay the butcher, and the Gas Light and c.o.ke Company, and the rates, and loathsome details of that sort that a woman never feels a ha"porth the better for! Instead of being able to get yourself fresh gloves and silk stockings and a few trifles of that sort that make absolutely _all_ the difference to a woman"s life!"
"Not _all_ the difference, indeed," Gwenna had said softly. But Leslie had continued to draw these fancy pictures of married life as lived with Mr. Paul Dampier.
"Taffy, for one thing, you"ve never seen him anything but nicely-groomed and attractive to look at. You try to imagine him in what Kipling calls "_the ungirt hour_." They talk of a woman"s slatternliness killing love.
Have they seen a _man_ when he "_hasn"t bothered_" to groom himself?
That sight----"