The Boy with Wings Part 22

So the two "inseparables" strolled on together up past the Club, pa.s.sing at the crest of the hill a troop of Boy Scouts with their band.

"Only chance one ever gets of hearing a drum; jolly sound," sighed Leslie, watching the brown faces, the st.u.r.dy legs marching by. "I wonder how many of those lads will be soldiers? Very few, I suppose. We're told that the authorities are _so_ careful to keep the Boy Scout Movement apart from any pernicious militarism, and ideas about National Service!"

And the girls took the road that dips downward from Hampstead, and the chestnut avenue that leads into the Park of Golders Green. They pa.s.sed the Bandstand ringed by nurse-girls and perambulators. They crossed the rustic bridge above the lily-pond, where children tossed crumbs to the minnows. They went in at the door of the little flower-garden.

Here, except for an occasional sauntering couple, London seemed shut out. In the late sunlight above the maze of paths, the roses were just at their best. Over the pergolas and arbours they hung in garlands, they were ma.s.sed in great posies of pink and cream and crimson. The little fountain set in the square of velvet turf tossed up a spray of white mist touched with a rainbow, not unlike Gwenna's dance-frock.

The girls sat down on a shaded seat facing that fountain. Gwenna, turning to her chum, said, "Now do tell me about that job you asked if I'd take. What is it?"

"Oh! it's a woman who used to know some of my people; she came to the Club this afternoon, and then on to my old lady's to see me about it,"

said Leslie. "She wants a girl--partly to do secretarial work, partly to keep her company, partly to help her in the 'odd bits' of her work down there where she has her business."

Gwenna, rather listlessly thinking of typewriting offices, of blouses, or tea-shops, asked what the lady did.

Leslie gave the extraordinary answer, "She builds aeroplanes."

"_She_ does?" cried Gwenna, all thrilled. "_Aeroplanes?_"

"Yes. She's the only woman who's got an Aircraft Factory, men, shops and all. It's about an hour's run from town. She's a pilot herself, and her son's an aviator," said Leslie, speaking as though of everyday things.

"Everything supplied, from the Man to the Machine, what?"

"Oh! But what a _gorgeous_ sort of Life for a woman, Leslie!" cried the younger girl, her face suddenly alight. "Fancy spending her time making things like _that_! Things that are going to make a difference to the whole world! Instead of her just 'settling down' and embroidering 'd.u.c.h.esse sets,' and sitting with tea-cups, like Uncle Hugh's 'Lady paris.h.i.+oners,' and talking to callers about servants; and operations!

Oh, oh, don't _you_ want to take her job?"

"I'm not especially keen on one job more than another. And my old lady would be rather upset if I did leave her in the lurch," said Leslie, more unselfishly than her chum suspected. The truth was that this much disapproved-of Leslie had resigned a congenial post because it might mean what Gwenna loved. "I told the Aeroplane Lady about you," she added. "And she'd like you to go down and interview her at the Factory next Sat.u.r.day, if you'd care to."

"Care? Of _course_ I'd care! Aeroplanes! After silly buildings and specifications!" exclaimed Gwenna, clasping her hands in her grey linen lap. But her face fell suddenly as she added, "But--it's an hour's run from London, you say? I should have to live there?"

"'_Away from Troilus, and away from Troy_,'" quoted Leslie, smiling.

"You could come back to Troy for week-ends, Taffy. And I'll tell you what. _It's no bad thing for a young man who's always thought of a girl as being planted in one particular place, to realise suddenly that she's been uprooted and set up in quite another place._ Gives him just a little jerk. By the way, is there any fresh news of Troilus--of the Dampier boy?"

And Gwenna, sitting there with troubled eyes upon the roses, gave her the history of that afternoon's adventure. She ended up sadly, "Never even said 'Good-bye' to me!"

"Getting nervous that he's going to like you too well!" translated Leslie, without difficulty. "Probably deciding at this minute that he'd better not see much more of you----"

"Oh, Leslie!" exclaimed the younger girl, alarmed.

"Sort of thing they _do_ decide," said Leslie, lightly. "Well, we'll see what it amounts to. And we'll wire to-morrow to the Aeroplane Lady. Or telephone down to-night. I am going to telephone to Hugo Swayne to tell him I don't feel in the mood to have dinner out to-night again."

"Again?" said Gwenna, rather wistfully, as they rose from the arbour and walked slowly down the path by the peach-houses. "Has he been asking you out _several_ times, then?"

"Several," said Leslie with a laugh. She added in her insouciant way, "You know, _he_ wants to marry me now."

Gwenna regarded her with envy. Leslie spoke of what should be the eighth wonder of the world, the making or rejecting of a man's life, as if it were an everyday affair.

"Don't look so unflatteringly _surprised_, Taffy. Strictly pretty I may not be. But a scrupulously neat and lady-like appearance," mocked Leslie, putting out a long arm in a faded-silk sleeve that was torn at the cuff, "has often (they tell one) done more to win husbands than actual good looks!"

Little Gwenna said, startled, "You aren't--aren't going to _let_ Mr.

Swayne be your husband, are you?"

"I don't know," said Leslie, reflectively, a little wearily. "I don't know, yet. He's fat--but of course _that_ would come off after I'd worried him for a year or so. He's flabby. He's rather like Kipling's person whose '_rooms at College was beastly_!' but he's good-natured, and his people were all right, and, Taffy, he's delightfully well-off.

And when one's turned twenty-six, one does want to be _sure_ of what's coming. One must have some investment that'll bring in one's frocks and one's railway-fares and one's proper setting."

"There are other things," protested little Gwenna with a warm memory of that moment's clasping on the heights that afternoon. "There are things one wants more."

"Not me."

"Ah! That's because you don't _know_ them," declared Gwenna, flushed.

And at that the elder girl gave a very rueful laugh.

"Not know them? I've known them too well," she admitted. "Listen, Taffy, I'll tell you the sort of girl I am. I'm afraid there are plenty of us about."

She sighed, and went on with a little nod.

"We're the girl who works in the sweetshop and who never wants to touch chocolates again. We're the sort of girl who's been turned loose too early at dances and studio-parties and theatricals and so forth. The girl who's come in for too much excitement and flattery and love-making.

Yes! For in spite of all my natural disadvantages (tuck in that bit of hair for me, will you?) and in _spite_ of not being quite a fool--I've been made too much of, by men. The Monties and so forth. _Here's where I pay for it._ I and the girls like me. We can't ever take a real live interest in men again!"

"But----!" objected Gwenna, seeing a mental image of Leslie as she had been at that dance, whirling and flushed and radiant. "You _seem_ to like----"

"'_The chase, not the quarry_,'" quoted Leslie. "For when I've brought down my bird, what happens?--He doesn't amuse me any more! It's like having sweets to eat and such a cold that one can't taste 'em."

"But--that's such a _pity_!"

"D'you suppose I don't _know_ that?" retorted Miss Long. "D'you suppose I don't wish to Heaven that I could be 'in Love' with somebody? I can't though. I see through men. And I don't see as much in them as there is in myself. They can't boss _me_, or take _me_ out of myself, or surprise _me_ into admiring them. Why can't they, _dash_ them? they can't even _say_ anything that I can't think of, quicker, first!" complained the girl with many admirers, resentfully. "And that's a fatal thing to any woman's happiness. Remember, there's no fun for a woman in just _being_ adored!"

The girl in love, kicking her small brown shoe against the pebbles of the garden path, sighed that she wished that she could try "being adored." Just for a change.

"Ah, but you, Taffy, you're lucky. You're so fresh, so eager. You're as much in love with that aviator's job as you are with anything else about him. You're as much amused by 'ordinary things' as any other girl is amused by getting a young man. As for what you feel about the young man himself, well!--I suppose _that's_ a tune played half a yard to the right of the keyboard of an ordinary girl's capacity. You're keen for Life; you've got what men call '_a thirst you couldn't buy_.' Wish I were like that!"

"Well, but it's so easy to be," argued Gwenna, "when you _do_ meet some one so wonderful----"

"It's not so easy to see 'wonder,' let me tell you. It's a gift. I've had it; lost it; spoilt it," mourned the elder girl. "To you everything's thrilling: their blessed airs.h.i.+ps--the men in them--the Air itself. All miracles to you! Everything's an Adventure. So would Marriage be----"

"Oh, I don't--don't ever think of _that_. Being always _with_ a person!

Oh, it would be _too_ wonderful---- I shouldn't expect--Even to be a little _liked_, if he once told me so, would be enough," whispered the little Welsh girl, so softly that her chum did not catch it.

Leslie, striding along, said, "To a girl like me all that's as far behind as the school-room. At the stage where I am, a girl looks upon Marriage--how? As '_The Last 'Bus Home, or A Settled Job at last_.'

That's why she so often ends up as an old man's darling--with some very young man as her slave. That's what makes me ready to accept Hugo Swayne. And now forget I ever told you so."

The two girls turned homewards; Gwenna a little sad.

To think that Leslie should lack what even ordinary little Mabel Butcher had! To think that Leslie, underneath all her gaiety and rattle, should not know any more the taste of real delight!

Gwenna, the simple-hearted, did not know the ways of self-critics. She did not guess that possibly Miss Long had been a.n.a.lysing her own character with less truth than gusto.... And she was surprised when, as they pa.s.sed the Park gates again, her chum broke the silence with all her old lightness of tone.

"Talking of young men--a habit for which Leslie never bothers to apologise--talking of young men, I believe there might be some at the Aeroplane Lady's place. She often has some one there. A gentleman--'prentice or pupil or something of that sort. Might be rather glad to see a new pretty face about with real curls."

It was then that Gwenna turned up that blus.h.i.+ng but rather indignant little face. "But, Leslie! Don't you _understand_? If there were a million other young men about, all thinking me--all thinking what you say, it wouldn't make a _bit_ of difference to _me_!"