"Ah! You did remember to bring it, at last?" she said.
Nestling against his arm, she lifted her chin and waited for him to snap the trinket about her neck.
He laughed and hesitated. She looked at him rather wonderingly. Then he made a confession.
"D"you know, I--I do hate to have to give it back again, Gwenna. I"ve had it _so_ long. Might as well let me hold on to it. May I?"
"Oh, you are greedy for keepsakes," she said, delighted. "What would you _do_ with a thing like that?"
"I"ve thought of something," said he, nodding at her.
She asked, "What?"
"Tell you another time," he smiled, with the locket clutched in the hand that was about her waist. She flung back her head happily against his shoulder, curling herself up like a kitten in his hold. They had settled that they were going to walk on to Kew Gardens to tea, but it was not time yet, and it was so peaceful here. Scarcely any one pa.s.sed them in that nook of the Park. Another happy silence fell upon the lovers. It was long before the boy broke it, asking softly, "You do like being with me, don"t you?" There was no answer from the girl.
"Do you, Gwenna?" It seemed still odd to be able to call her whatever he liked, now! "Do you, my Little Sweet Thing?"
Still she didn"t answer. He bent closer to look at her.... Her long eyelashes lay like two little dark half-moons upon her cheeks and her white blouse fell and rose softly to her breathing. Drowsy from the late hours she"d kept last night and from the sun-warmed silence under the trees, she had fallen asleep in his arms. Her eyes were still shut when at last she heard his deep and gentle voice again in her ear, "I suppose you know you owe me several pairs of gloves, miss!"
She laughed sleepily, returning (still a little shyly and unfamiliarly!) the next kiss that he put on her parted lips.
"I was _nearly_ asleep," she said, with a little sudden stretch that ran all over her like a shake given to a sheet of white aluminium at the Works. "Isn"t it quiet? Feels as if _everything_ was asleep." She opened her eyes, blinking at the rays of the sun, now level in her face. "Oh, I _should_ like some tea, wouldn"t you?"
They rose to go and find a place for tea in Kew Gardens, among the happy, lazing Sunday crowds of those whom it has been the fashion to treat so condescendingly: England"s big Middle-cla.s.ses. There were the conventional young married couples; "She" wearing out the long tussore coat that seemed so voluminous; "He," pipe in mouth, wheeling the wicker mail-cart that held their pink-and-white bud of a baby. There were also courting couples innumerable....
(Not all of these were as reticent in the public eye as Gwenna had been with her lover before Leslie.)
To Gwenna the bright landscape and the coloured figures seemed a page out of some picture-book that she turned idly, her lover beside her. She had to remind herself that to these other lovers she herself and Paul were also part of a half-seen picture....
They sat down at one of the green wooden tea-tables, and a waiter in a greasy black coat came out under the trees to take Dampier"s order.
Perhaps that started another train of thought in the girl"s mind, for quite suddenly she exclaimed, "Ah! I"ve thought of _another_ German now that he was like!"
"Who was that?" asked Paul.
"Only a picture I used to see every day. A photograph that our Miss Baker kept pinned up over her desk at the works in Westminster,"
explained Gwenna. "The photograph of that brother of hers that she was always writing those long letters to."
"Always writing, was she? Was _he_ a waiter?"
"No, he was a soldier. He was in uniform in that photo," Gwenna said, as the little tray was set before her. "Karl was his name, Karl Becker....
Do you take sugar?"
"Yes. You"ll have to remember that for later on," he said, looking at her with his head tilted back and a laugh in his eyes, as she poured out his tea. She handed it to him, and then sat sipping her own, looking dreamily over the English gardens, over the green s.p.a.ces flowered with the light frocks and white flannels of other couples who perhaps called themselves "in love," and who possibly imagined they could ever feel as she and her lover felt. (Deluded beings!)
She murmured, "What do you suppose all these people are thinking about?"
"Oh! Whether they"ll go to Brighton or to South-end for their fortnight, I expect," returned Paul Dampier. "Everybody"s thinking about holidays just now."
Later, they stood together in the hushed gloom of the big chestnut aisle beside the river that slipped softly under Kew Bridge, pa.s.sing the willows and islands and the incongruously rural-looking street of Strand-on-the-Green. One of the cottage-windows there showed red blinds, lighted up and homely.
Young Dampier whispered to his girl--"Going on holidays myself, perhaps, presently, eh?"
"Oh, Paul!" she said blankly, "you aren"t going away for a holiday, are you?"
"Not yet, thanks. Not without you."
"Oh!" she said. Then she sighed happily, watching the stars. "To-day"s been the loveliest holiday I"ve ever had in my life. Hasn"t it been perfect?"
"Not quite," he said, with his eyes on those red-lighted windows on the opposite bank. "Not perfect, Gwen."
"Not----?" she took up quickly, wondering if she had said something that he didn"t like.
Almost roughly he broke out, "Oh, I say, darling! _Don"t_ let"s go and have one of these infernally long engagements, shall we?"
She turned, surprised.
"We said," she reminded him, "that we weren"t "engaged" at all."
"I know," he said. Then he laughed as he stooped and kissed her little ringless fingers and the palms of her hands. "But----"
There was a pause.
"Got to _marry_ me one day, you know," said young Paul Dampier seriously.
He might have spoken more seriously still if he had known that what he said must happen in ten days" time from then.
CHAPTER IV
THAT WEEK-END
For the following week-end saw, among many other things that had not been bargained for, those lovers apart again.
The very next Sat.u.r.day after that Aviation Dinner was that not-to-be-forgotten day in England, when this country, still uncertain, weighed the part that she was to play in the Great War.
Late on the Friday night of an eventful week, Paul Dampier, the Airman, had received a summons from Colonel Conyers.
And Gwenna, who had left the Aircraft Works on Sat.u.r.day morning to come up to her Hampstead Club, found there her lover"s message:
"_Away till Monday. Wait for me._"
She waited with Leslie.
On that bright afternoon the two girls had walked, as they had so often walked together, about the summer-burnt Heath that was noisy with cricketers on the gra.s.s. They had turned down by the ponds where bathers dived from the platforms set above the willows; clean-built English youths splashing and shouting and laughing joyously over their sport.
Last time Gwenna had been with her chum it was she, the girl in love, who had done all the talking, while Leslie listened.