Her quick, unbalanced Celtic fancy had already shown her as clearly as if she had seen it with her eyes that image of his Aeroplane as a winged and taloned Woman-rival. Now it flashed before her, in a twink, another picture:
Paul Dampier, seated in that Aeroplane, swooping through the air, _armed and in danger_!
The danger was from below. She did not see that danger. She saw only the image, against grey, scudding clouds, of the Beloved. But she could feel it, that poignant Threat to him, to him in every second of his flight.
It was not the mere risk of accident or falling. It was a new peril of which the shadow, cast before, fell upon the receptive fancy of the girl who loved the adventurer. And, set to that shadow-picture in her mind, there rang out to some inner sense of hers a Voice that sounded clear and ominous words.
They called to her: "_Fired at both by friend and foe----_"
Then stopped.
The young girl didn"t remember ever to have heard or even to have read these words. How should she? It was the warning fore-echo of a phrase now historic, but then as yet unuttered, that had transmitted itself to some heightened sense of hers:
"_Fired at both by friend and foe!_"[A]
[A] This phrase occurred in a despatch from Sir David Henderson.
There! It was gone, the waking vision that left her trembling, with a certainty.
Yes; here was the meaning of the sealed box, of the long confabulation of her Airman with the Aeroplane Lady.... War was coming. And _they knew_.
Gwenna, standing there in the doorway, drawing a long breath and feeling suddenly rather giddy, knew that she had come upon something that she had not been meant to guess.
What was she to do about it?
Her hand was on the k.n.o.b of the door.
Must she close it upon herself, or behind her?
Should she come forward and cry, "Oh, if it was a dreadful secret, why didn"t you lock the door?"
Or should she go out noiselessly, taking that burden of a secret with her? She might confess to the Aeroplane Lady afterwards....
Here she saw that the Airman had half turned. His boyish, determined profile was dark in shadow against the plan on the wall; the plan of the P.D.Q. Sunlight through the office window touched and gilded the edge of his blonde head.
"Yes; I thought so. Have to be a rifle after all," he repeated in a matter-of-fact tone. Then, turning more round, his glance met the startled eyes of the girl in the doorway.
And that finished the dilemma for Gwenna.
Something rose up in her and was too strong to let her be silent.
"Oh! I"ve _seen_ it!" she cried sharply. "_Paul!_"
He took one stride towards her and slipped his arm about her as she swayed. She was white to the lips.
"Is there any water----" began young Dampier, but already the Aeroplane Lady had poured out a gla.s.sful.
It was he, however, who put it to Gwenna"s lips, holding her still.
"It"s all _right_, darling," he said rea.s.suringly (and the give-away word slipped very easily from his tongue). "Better, aren"t you?
Frightfully muggy in that room with those radiators! You oughtn"t to be---- Here!" He took some of the cold water and dabbed it on her curls.
"I suppose he knew he could trust the child," thought the Aeroplane Lady as she closed the door of the Wing-room between herself and those two in the office, "but I don"t know that I should have engaged her if I"d known. I don"t want lovers about the place, here. Of course, this explains his Aviation dinner and everything----"
Little Gwenna, standing with her small face buried against the Aviator"s tweed jacket, was sighing out that she hadn"t _meant_ to come in, hadn"t _meant_ to look at that horrible gun....
The girl didn"t know what she was saying. The boy scarcely heard it. He was rumpling with his cheek the short, silky curls he had always longed to touch. Presently he tilted her cherub"s head back against his shoulder, then put both his hands about that throat of hers.
She gave an unsteady little laugh.
"You"ll throttle me," she murmured.
Without loosening his clasp, he bent his fair head further down, and kissed her, very gently, on the mouth.
"Don"t mind, do you?" he said, into another kiss. "_Do_ you?"
At that moment the Little Thing in his arms had banished all thought of those Big Things from his mind.
PART II
_JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914_
CHAPTER I
THE AVIATION DINNER
Gwenna began to feel a little nervous and intimidated, even in the car that took herself and the Aeroplane Lady and the Airman to the Aviation dinner.
A hundred yards before they reached the portals of the Club in Pall Mall that car stopped. Then it began to advance again a yard or two at a time. A long row of other cars and taxis was ahead, and from them alighted guests in dull black opera hats, with m.u.f.flers; once or twice there was the light and jewelled gleam of a woman"s wrap, but they were mostly men who were driving up.
"Colonel Conyers," said Paul Dampier to the attendant in the great marble-tiled entrance.
Then he was shown off to the right; Gwenna and the Aeroplane Lady to the dressing-rooms on the left. Before an immense gla.s.s they removed their wraps and came out to the waiting-room, the girl all misty-white with the sky-blue sash and the dancing-shoes; the Lady gowned in grey satin that had just the gleam of aluminium in that factory of hers, and with her brooch of the winged serpents fastened at her breast.
They sat down at one of the little polished tables in the waiting-room under the long windows on to Pall Mall; it was a high, light-panelled room, with a frieze of giant roses. A couple of ladies went by to the dressing-room, greeting Mrs. Crew as they pa.s.sed.
Then there stopped to speak to her a third and older and very handsome lady all in black, with diamonds ablaze in her laces and in her grey, piled-up hair.
"There should be some good speeches to-night, shouldn"t there?" said this lady. "All these splendid men!... You know, my dear, take us for all in all"--and she gave a little laugh--"we _are_ splendid!"