The Boy with Wings Part 39

The Tuesday morning that brought Gwenna's wedding-day as the morning of the official declaration of war.

It was in all the papers over which the girls at the Hampstead Club pored, before they went off to their various avocations, staring, half-realising only.

"Can it be true?... War?... Nowadays?... Good gracious!... D'you suppose it means we shall really have to send an army of ours--an English Army--over to France?... What do you think, Miss Armitage?"

Miss Armitage, the suffragette, then became voluble on the subject of how very different all would have been if women had had the casting vote in the matter. Intelligent women. Women with some insight into the wider interests of their s.e.x.... Not mere---- Here, by way of ill.u.s.tration, this Feminist shot a vicious glance at Miss Long. Now, Leslie, dressed in a lilac river-frock and wearing her black picture hat, was going round the breakfast-table, under the very eye of the disapproving Lady Princ.i.p.al with the gold curb brooch, on an errand of her own. She was collecting from it the daintiest bits of dry toast, the nicest-looking pats of b.u.t.ter, a white rose from the nosegay in the centre bowl, and all that was left of the marmalade.

For to Leslie Long the question whether War was to be or not to be seemed now to have been settled an age ago. The burden of that anxiety was lifted. The other anxieties ahead could be put aside for the present. And she turned, with a tranquil face, to the immediate matter in hand. She was going to take a little tray up to Gwenna, whom she had advised to have her breakfast in bed and not to dress until she should make herself all ready for her wedding at that church at the foot of the hill.

"'Good-morning, Madam Bride!'" said Leslie, smiling, as she came, tray in hand, into the little room where Gwenna was still drowsily curled up against her pillow. "Here's a little bit of sugar for the bird." She sat down on the side of the bed, cutting the dry b.u.t.tered toast into narrow strips for her chum, taking the top off her egg for her.

"But I won't '_help to salt, help to sorrow_' for you," she went on talking, just a trifle more brightly than naturally. "Curious thing about a wedding, Taff--I mean _one_ of the curious things about a wedding, is the wide desire it gives you to quote every aged, half-pay proverb and tag that you've ever heard. '_Marriage is a_----"

"Not '_lottery_,' Leslie! Not that one!" begged the bride-to-be, sitting up and laughing with her mouth full of toast. "We had it four times from Uncle Hugh before we left him last night. '_Few prizes! Many blanks!_'"

she quoted joyously. All Monday she had been tremulously nervous. The reaction had come at the right moment.

"'_Happy is the Bride that the sun s.h.i.+nes on_,' then," amended Leslie.

"You'll be glad to hear it's s.h.i.+ning like Billy-oh this morning."

"_I_ saw it," said Gwenna, nodding her curls towards the open cas.e.m.e.nt.

"And I shall be getting '_Married in white, sure to be right_,' too!"

The white lingerie frock she was to put on was not new, but it was the prettiest that she had. It lay, folded, crisp as a b.u.t.terfly's wing and fresh from the wash, on the top of her chest-of-drawers, with the white Princesse slip--that _was_ new, bought by her in a hurry the day before!--and the white silk stockings, and the little white suede shoes.

"'_Something old_, _something new_, _something borrowed_, _something blue_,'" Leslie capped her quotation. "Where's the '_something blue_,'

Taffy?"

"Ribbons in my camisole; and I shall 'borrow' your real lace handkerchief, may I?" said the bride-elect.

"Rather! All that I have, even unto the half of the best-man's attention!" said Leslie, smiling gaily into the cherub face opposite.

But, even as she smiled, she felt that pang which is supposed to be known only to the _man_ who sees his chosen pal prepare to be "married and done for."

For this morning, that turned an adoring sweetheart into a wife, was taking something of her own, of the bridesmaid's youth away.

Gwenna Williams married!

That meant one more girl-chum who would never, never be quite the same again to a once-treasured companion. That bubbling fountain of innocent confidences would now run low, as far as Leslie was concerned. No longer would the elder, quickly-sympathising, rebellious-tongued girl be the first to hear what happened to her little, ingenuous friend.

The girlish gossip would have a masculine censor to pa.s.s.

Leslie could foretell the little scene when it first happened.

She could hear Gwenna's eager, "Oh, Paul! Leslie would so laugh at----"

whatever the little incident might be. "I must tell her that!"

Leslie, the bachelor-girl, could imagine the tilt of the young husband's blonde head, and his doubtful, "Don't see why it should be supposed to interest _her_."

She could imagine the little wife's agreeing, "Oh! Perhaps not."

And again the young husband's, "Don't you think Miss Long gets a little bit _much_ sometimes? Oh, she's all right, but--I mean, I shouldn't like _you_ to go on quite like that."

It would be only after years of marriage that the once-close chum would turn for sympathy to Leslie Long. And then it would not be the same....

The last of Leslie's forebodings seemed the most inevitable. She heard Gwenna's soft Welsh voice, once so full of unexpectedness, now grown almost unrecognisably sedate. She heard it utter that finally "settled-down"-sounding phrase:

"_Say 'how d'you do' nicely to Auntie Leslie, now!_"

Ah! _That_ seemed to bring a shadow of Autumn already into the summer suns.h.i.+ne of that bridal room with its white, prepared attire, its bonnie, bright-eyed occupant. It seemed to show what must some day come: Taffy middle-aged!

Also what probably would come: Taffy matter-of-fact! Taffy with all the dreams out of her eyes! Taffy whose only preoccupations were, "Really that stair-carpet's getting to look awful; I wonder if I could manage to get a new one and put it on the upper flight?" or, "_I_ never saw anything like the way _my_ children wear through their boots: it was only the other day I got that quite expensive pair of Peter Pans for little Hughie. And now look at them. _Look!..._"

Yes! This sort of change was wrought, by time and marriage and domesticity, in girl after golden girl. Leslie had seen it. She would probably see Taffy, the fanciful Celt, grown stodgy; Taffy, even Taffy, the compactly supple, with all her fruit-like contours, grown _stout_!...

Horrible thought....

Then Miss Long gave a protesting shrug of her slim shoulders. This wouldn't do. Come, come! Not on the wedding-morning itself should one give way to thoughts of coming middle-age! The rose, that must, some day, be overblown, was only just a pouting bud as yet. There were days and fragrant days of beauty still before her.

So Leslie picked up her chum's rough towels, her loofah and her verbena-scented soap.

"I'll turn on the bath for you, Taffy, shall I? Hot or cold?"

"Cold, please," said the Welsh girl, springing out of bed and pattering over the oil-cloth to fetch her kimono. "Perhaps to-morrow I shall be able to have a real swim! Oh, won't that be gorgeous?" For the couple had decided upon Brighton for the honeymoon. It was near enough to London in case young Dampier received a summons; yet near also to country-tramps and sea-bathing. "I haven't had a swim this year, except in the baths. And you can't count that. Oh, _fancy_ the sea again, Leslie!"

Leslie could guess what was at the back of that little exultant skip of the younger girl's through the bathroom door. It was sheer innocent delight over the prospect of being able to display to her lover at last something that she did really well.

For they had never been by the sea together, he and she.

And she was a pretty swimmer.

"Now I'll be your maid for the last time, and fasten you up," said Leslie, when she returned from the bathroom. "I suppose you know there isn't a _single_ eye left at the neck of this dress? Always the way with that laundry! It's nothing to _it_ that untidiness puts a man off worse than anything else (this from me). Never mind, I'll hook it into the lace.... That's all right. '_A bonnie bride is soon buskit._' Almost a pity the girls will all have gone--though I know you'd hate to have them staring. D'you know, you _are_ a little pocket-Venus? No, I'm _not_ piling it on. You're lovely, Taffy. I hope the Dampier boy tells you so, very often and much. He's vastly lucky."

"It's me that's lucky," said the girl in all-white devoutly. "Now where's my hat?"

"Do you think you're going to be allowed to get married in a _hat_?"

"My best white one with the wings, I meant."

"Pooh! I've arranged for you to have these," said Leslie, and brought out a cardboard box that she had been to fetch while Gwenna was having her bath. From it she drew a slender chaplet of dark leaves, with round white buds with waxen flowers.

"Orange-blossoms! _Real_ orange-blossoms," cried Gwenna, delightedly sniffing up the sensuous perfume of them. "Oh, but _where_ did you get them?"

"Covent Garden. I went down there this morning at five, with one of the housemaids whose young man is at a florist's," explained Leslie, standing above her to set the pretty wreath upon the pretty head. "Now you look like a print of 'Cupid's Coronation,' or something like that.

'_Through his curls as the crown on them slips_'--I'll twist this a tiny bit tighter. And here's the veil."