The Boy with Wings 15Part I · Leslie on "Too Much Love"
18
Literature · Romance
The Boy with Wings 15
Part I · Leslie on "Too Much Love"
RuckEnglish
It seemed to be decided for Gwenna that she should, after all, give notice at the office.
For on the evening of the day of her climb up the scaffolding she met the tall, sketchily-dressed figure of her chum coming down the hill that she was ascending on her way to the Club. And Leslie accosted her with the words, "Child, d'you happen to want to leave your place and take another job? Because, if so, come along for a walk and we'll talk about it."
So the two "inseparables" strolled on together up past the Club, passing 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 sturdy 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 passed 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 massed 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 'duchesse sets,' and sitting with tea-cups, like Uncle Hugh's 'Lady parishioners,' 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 Saturday, 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 airships--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 analysing her own character with less truth than gusto.... And she was surprised when, as they passed 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 blushing 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!"
"Possibly not," said Miss Long, "but there's no reason why it shouldn't be made to make a difference to the Dampier boy, is there?"
"What d'you mean, Leslie?" demanded the other girl as they climbed the hill together. For the first time a look of austerity crossed Gwenna's small face. For the first time it seemed to her that the adored girl-chum was in the wrong. Yes! She had never before been shocked at Leslie, whatever wild thing she said. But now--now she was shocked. She was disappointed in her. She repeated, rebukefully, "What do you mean?"
"What," took up Leslie, defiantly, "do you think I meant?"
"Well--did you mean make--make Mr. Dampier think other people liked me, and that I might like somebody else better than him?"
"Something of the sort had crossed the mind of Leslie the Limit."
"Well, then, it isn't like you----"
"Think not?" There was more than a hint of quarrel in both the girlish voices. Up to now they had never exchanged a word that was not of affection, of comradeship.
Gwenna, flushing deeper, said, "It's--it's horrid of you, Leslie."
"Why, pray?"
"Because it would be sort of deceiving Mr. Dampier, for one thing. It's a trick."
"M'yes!"
"And not a pretty one, either," said little Gwenna, red and angry now. "It's--it's----"
"What?"
"Well, it's what I should have thought that you yourself, Leslie, would have called 'so obvious.'"
"Exactly," agreed Miss Long, with a flippant little laugh that covered smarting feelings. Taffy had turned against her now! Taffy, who used to think that Leslie could do no wrong! This was what happened when one's inseparable chum fell in love....
Leslie said impenitently, "I've never yet found that 'the obvious thing' was 'the unsuccessful thing.' Especially when it comes to anything to do with young men. My good child, you and the Dampier boy, you
'_Really constitute a pair,
Each being rather like an artless woodland elf._'
I mean, can't you see that the dear old-fashioned simple remedies and recipes remain the best? For a sore throat, black-currant tea. (Never fails!) For the hair, Macassar oil. (Unsurpassed since the Year Eighteen-dot!) For the stimulation of an admirer's interest, jealousy. Jealousy and competition, Taffy."
"He isn't an admirer," protested the younger girl, mollified. Then they smiled together. The cloud of the first squabble had passed.
Leslie said, "Never mind. If you don't approve of my specific, don't think of it again."
