_Was_ he, indeed? _Neck!_
"You do come up to town sometimes from here, then?" added Mr. Dampier to Miss Gwenna Williams, speaking a trifle more distinctly than usual, as he concluded, "I was just going to ask you whether you could manage to come out with _me_ to-morrow evening?"
n.o.body was more surprised to hear these last words than he himself.
Until that moment he hadn"t had the faintest intention of ever asking the girl out anywhere again. Now here he was; he"d done it. The Little Thing had murmured, "Oh----" and was looking--yes, she was looking pleased. The fellow was looking as if he"d been taken aback. Good. He"d probably thought he was going to have her to himself for the evening as well as for the matinee. Dinner at the "Pet.i.t Riche"--a music-hall afterwards--travel down home with her. Well, Dampier had put a stopper on that plan. But now that he had asked her, where was he going to take her himself? To another musical comedy? No. Too like the other chap. To one of the Exhibitions? No; not good enough. Anyhow, wherever he took her, he hadn"t been out-bidden by this soft-soapy young idiot. Infernal cheek.... Then, all in a flash the brilliant solution came to Paul Dampier. Of course! Yes, he could work it! The Aviation Dinner! He"d meant to go. He would take her. It would involve taking Mrs. Crewe as well. Never mind. It was something to which that other young a.s.s wouldn"t have the chance of taking her, and that was enough.
"Yes," he went on saying, as coolly as if it had all been planned.
"There"s a show on at the Wilbur Club; Wilbur Wright, you know. I thought I"d ask if you and Mrs. Crewe would care to come with me to the dinner. Will you?--Just break that packing up a bit more," he added negligently to the red-haired youth. "And check those s.p.a.ces--Will you take me into your place, Miss Williams?"
_That_, he thought, was the way to deal with poachers on his particular preserves!
It was only when he got inside the s.p.a.cious white Wing-room and sat down, riding a chair, close to the trestle-table where the girl bent her curly head so conscientiously over the linen strips again, that he realised that this Little Thing wasn"t his particular preserves at all!
Hadn"t he, only a couple of weeks ago, definitely decided that she was never to mean anything of the sort to him? Hadn"t he resolved----
Here, with his long arms crossed over the back of the chair as he sat facing and watching her, he put back his head and laughed.
"What are you laughing at?" she asked, straightening herself in the big pinafore with its front all stiff with that sticky mess she worked with.
He was laughing to think how dashed silly it was to make these resolutions. Resolutions about which people you were or were not to see anything of! As if Fate didn"t arrange that for you! As if you didn"t _have_ to leave that to Fate, and to take your chance!
Possibly Fate meant that he and the Little Thing should be friends, great friends. Not now, of course. Not yet. In some years" time, perhaps, when his position was a.s.sured; when he"d achieved some of the Big Things that he"d got to do; when he _had_ got something to offer a girl. Ages to wait.... Still, he could leave it at that, now, he thought.... It might, or might not, come to anything. Only, it was ripping to see her!
He didn"t tell her this.
He uttered some conventional boy"s joke about being amused to see her actually at work for the first time since he"d met her. And she made a little bridling of her neck above that vast, gull-like wing that she was pasting; and retorted that, indeed, she worked very hard.
"Really," he teased her. "Always seem to be taking time off, whenever I"ve come."
"You"ve only come twice, Mr. Dampier; and then it"s been sort of lunch-time."
"Oh, I see," he said. ("I may smoke, mayn"t I?" and he lighted a cigarette.) "D"you always take your lunch out of doors, Miss Gwenna?"
(He didn"t see why _he_ shouldn"t call her that.)
She said, "I"d like to." Then she was suddenly afraid he might think she was thinking of their open-air lunch in that field, weeks ago, and she said quickly (still working): "I--I was so glad when I heard about the engine coming, and that Colonel Conyers had ordered the P.D.Q. to be made here. I--do congratulate you, Mr. Dampier. Tell me about the Machine, won"t you?"
He said, "Oh, you"ll hear all about that presently; but look here, you haven"t told me about _you_----"
Gwenna could scarcely believe her ears; but yes, it was true. He was turning, turning from talk about the Machine, the P.D.Q., the _Fiancee_!
Asking, for the first time, about herself. She drew a deep breath; she turned her bright, greeny-brown eyes sideways, longing at that moment for Leslie with whom to exchange a glance. Her own shyly triumphant look met only the deep, wise eyes of the Great Dane, lying in his corner of the Wing-room beside his kennel. He blinked, thumped his tail upon the floor.
"Darling," whispered Gwenna, a little shakily, as she pa.s.sed the tawny dog. "_Darling!_" She had to say it to something just then.
Paul Dampier pursued, looking at her over his crossed arms on the back of that chair, "You haven"t said whether you"ll come to-morrow night."
She asked (as if it mattered to her where she went, as long as it was with him), "What is this dinner?"
"The Wilbur dinner? Oh, there"s one every year. Just a meeting of those interested in flying. I thought you might care----"
"Who"ll be there?"
"Oh, just people. Not many. Some ladies go. Why?"
"Only because I haven"t got anything at all to wear," announced Gwenna, much more confidently, however, than she could have done before Mr. Ryan had told her so much about her own looks, "except my everlasting white and the blue sash like at the Smiths"."
"Well, that was awfully pretty; wasn"t it? Only----"
"What?"
"Well, may I say something?"
"Well, what is it?"
"Frightfully rude, really," said Paul Dampier, tilting himself back on his chair, and still looking at her over a puff of smoke, staring even.
She was something to stare at. Why was she such a lot prettier? Had he _forgotten_ what her looks were? She seemed--she seemed, to-day, so much more of a woman than he"d ever seen her. He forgot that he was going to say something. She, with a little fluttering laugh for which he could have clasped her, reminded him.
"What"s the rude thing you were going to say to me?"
"Oh! It"s only this. Don"t go m.u.f.fling your neck up in that sort of ruff affair this time; looks ever so much nicer without," said the boy.
The girl retorted with quite a good show of disdainfulness, "I don"t think there"s anything _quite_ so funny as men talking about what we wear."
"Oh, all right," said the boy, and pretended to be offended. Then he laughed again and said, "I"ve still got something of yours that you wear, as a matter of fact----"
"Of mine?"
"Yes, I have; I"ve never given it you back yet. That locket of yours that you lost."
"Oh----!" she exclaimed.
That locket! That little heart-shaped pendant of mother-o"-pearl that she had worn the first evening that she"d ever seen him; and that she had dropped in the car as they were driving back. So much had happened ... she felt she was not even the same Gwenna as the girl who had snapped the slender silver chain about her neck before they set out for the party.... She"d given up wondering if her Airman had forgotten to give it back to her. She"d forgotten all about it herself. And he"d had it, one of her own personal belongings, somewhere in his keeping all this time.
"Oh, yes; my--my little mascot," she said. "Have you got it?"
"Not here. It"s in my other jac--it"s at my rooms, I"ll bring it to the dinner for you. And--er--look here, Miss Gwenna----"
He tilted forward again as the girl pa.s.sed his side of the table to reach for the little wooden pattern by which she cut out a patch for the end of the strip, and then pa.s.sed back again.
"I say," he began again, a trifle awkwardly, "if you don"t mind, I want you to give me something in exchange for that locket."
"Oh, do you?" murmured Gwenna. "What?"
And a chill took her.
She didn"t want him, here and now, to ask for--what Mr. Ryan might have asked.
But it was not a kiss he asked for, after all.