That thought at the heart of Gwenna seemed to grow with every hour that passed.
And they were passing now so rapidly, the hours that remained to her with her husband! One more blissful day spent on the mountains (but always with that growing thought behind it: "He has to go soon. Perhaps he will not come back this time. The new machine may let him down somehow, perhaps").
One more train-journey, whizzing through country of twenty different aspects, just him and her together (but still in her mind that thriving dread: "Very likely he may not come back. He has had so many narrow escapes! That time he told me about when he came down from behind the clouds and the machine was hit on both sides at once: our men firing on him as well, thinking his was an enemy craft! He got up into the clouds again and escaped that time. Next time as likely as not....").
One more night they were together in the London hotel where Uncle Hugh had always put up. Paul slept, with a smile on his face that looked so utterly boyish while he was asleep: his blonde head nestled into her neck. Gwenna, waking uneasily once or twice, and with his arms still about her, was haunted by her fear as by a nightmare. "It's more than likely that he may not come back this time. This time I feel that he is not going to come back!" And the feeling grew with the growing light outside the window, until she told herself: "I know it! I know that I am right----"
Then came the wonder in her mind, "Why am I not wretched about this? Why do I feel that it's not going to matter after all, and that it's going to be 'all right'?"
Still wondering, she fell asleep again.
But in the morning her presentiment was a thing full-grown.
Paul, off to the Front, would never come back again.
Quite early they were at the Aircraft Works where he was to leave his young wife and to fetch his machine, the completed P.D.Q. that was to take him out to France.
He had spoken of her--that machine--in the train coming along. And Gwenna, the dazed and fanciful, had thought sharply: "Ah! That's her revenge. That's what's going to be the end of this fight between the Girl and the Machine. I won. I got him from her. This is how she takes him back, the fiancee! He will be killed in that machine of his."
Her headstrong, girlish fancy persisted. It was as real to her as any of the crowd of everyday and concrete realities that they found, presently, at the bustling Aircraft Works.
When Paul (who was to start at midday, flying across to France) changed into his uniform and flying-kit, it seemed to her to set the seal upon her premonition.
He would never wear other kit again now, upon this earth.
The Aeroplane Lady, bracingly cheerful, met them with a sheaf of official documents for the young Army aviator.
"I'm going to steal him from you for a quarter of an hour, Mrs. Dampier," she said with a little nod; and she took the young man into her office.
Gwenna, left alone outside, walked up and down the sunny yard mechanically.
She could not have said what her thoughts were. Probably she had no thoughts. Nothing but the steady throb, quiet and reiterated as the pulse of the machinery in the shops, of that conviction of fatality that she felt.
It seemed to run on in her head as the belting ran on the shaft: "He won't come back. He won't come back!"
It was in the middle of this monotonous inward muttering that the door of the office opened, and there came out a shortish figure, leather-jacketed and with enveloping overalls and wearing a cap with goggles, peak behind. It was young Mr. Ryan.
He raised his cap and would have passed Gwenna quickly, but she stopped him.
She didn't know why. Since her marriage she had (ungratefully enough) almost forgotten the red-haired young man's existence, and perhaps it was not so much himself as his cap and mufflings that caught her eye now.
"Why, are you going up?" she asked.
"Yes," said young Ryan gloomily.
He seemed to be in the worst of tempers as he went on, grumblingly. He was going up. Just his luck. Plenty of times he'd wanted to go and hadn't been allowed. Now he'd got to go, just when he didn't want to.
"You don't want to?" Gwenna repeated.
Mr. Ryan coloured a little. "Well, if I've got to, that doesn't matter."
"Why don't you want to?" Gwenna asked, half indifferent, half surprised. To her it had always appeared the one thing to want to do. She had been put off time after time. Now here was he, grumbling that it was just his luck to go.
Then she thought she could guess why he didn't want to go up just now. She smiled faintly. Was it that Mr. Ryan had--somebody--to see?
Mr. Ryan blushed richly. Probably he did so not on this somebody's account, but because it was Gwenna who asked the question. One does not care for the sympathetic questions of the late idol, even when another fills the shrine. He told Gwenna: "I've got to go with your husband as a passenger. He's had a wire to bring another man over to one of the repairing bases; and so he's spotted me."
"To bring over? D'you mean to France?"
"Yes. Not that they want me, of course; but just somebody. So I've got to go, I suppose."
Gwenna was silent, absorbed. She glanced away across the flat eighty-acre field beyond the yards, where the planes of Paul's new biplane gleamed like a parallel ruler in the sun. A ruler marked with inches, each inch being one of the seams that Gwenna had carefully doped over. About the machine two or three dark figures moved, giving finishing touches, seeing that all was right.
And young Ryan was to fly in her, with Paul!
It wasn't Ryan they wanted, but "just somebody." ... And then, all in a moment, Gwenna, thinking, had a very curious little mental experience. As once before she had had that "flying dream," and had floated up from earth and had seen her own body lying inert and soulless on her bed, so now the same thing happened. She seemed to see herself in the yard. Herself, quite still and nonchalant, talking to this young man in cap and goggles who had to go to France just when he particularly wanted to go somewhere else. She saw all the details, quite clearly: his leather jacket, herself, in her blouse and skirt, the cylindrical iron, steam chambers where they steamed the skids, the Wing-room door, and beyond it the new biplane waiting in the field two hundred yards away.
Then she saw herself put her hand on the young man's leathern sleeve. She heard her own voice ascending, as it were, to her. It was saying what seemed to be the most matter-of-fact thing in the world.
"Then don't go. You go later, Mr. Ryan. Follow him on. You go and meet your girl instead; it will be all right."
He was staring blankly at her. She wondered what he saw to stare at.
"What? What d'you mean, Mrs. Dampier? I'm bound to go. Military orders."
"Yes; they are for him, not for you. You aren't under military orders." This was in her own, quite calm and detached little voice with its un-English accent. "You say anybody'd do. He can take--somebody else."
"Isn't anybody else," she heard young Ryan say. Then she heard from her own lips the most surprising thing of all.
"Yes, there's somebody. You give me those things of yours. I'm going instead of you."
Then Mr. Ryan laughed loudly. He seemed to see a joke that Gwenna did not see. "Well, for a film-drama, that takes it!" he laughed.
She did not laugh. She heard herself say, softly, earnestly, swiftly: "Listen to me. Paul is going away and I have never been up with him yet. I was always promised a flight. And always something got in the way of it. And now he's going. He will never----"
Her voice corrected itself.
"He may never come back. I may never get another chance of flying with him. Let me--let me have it! Say you will!"
But Mr. Ryan, instead of saying he would, became suddenly firm and peremptory. Perhaps it was the change in his voice that brought Gwenna Dampier, with a start, back to herself. She was no longer watching herself. She was watching young Ryan's face, intently, desperately. But she was still quite calm. It seemed to her that since an idea and a plan had come to her out of nowhere, it would be mad to throw them away again untried.
"Let me go; it will be all right! Let me get into your things."
"Quite out of the question," said young Ryan, with growing firmness--the iron mask of the man who knows himself liable to turn wax in the hands of a woman. "Not to be thought of."
She set her teeth. It was life and death to her now, what he refused. She could have flown at him like a fury for his obstinacy. She knew, however, that this is no road to a woman's attainment of her desires. With honeyed sweetness, and always calmly, she murmured: "You were always so nice to me, Mr. Ryan. I liked you so!"
"I say, don't----"
"I am sure that girl must be devoted to you. Isn't she? The one you want to see? Oh, yes! Well, think if it were she who begged to be with you," pleaded Gwenna softly and deadly calm. Her knuckles were white on the hands that she held clasped against her breast. "Think if she begged for one last, last little time!"
"Look here; it's imposs----"
"I never begged for any one anything before, in my whole life. Never! Not even my husband. Only you! It's the first--the last favour, Mr. Ryan! You used to say you'd do anything----"
"No, please; I say----!"
"He's always said he would take me. You can follow us on. Yes, indeed it will be all right----"
Here Paul, passing with the Aeroplane Lady at the end of the yard, on his way to the machine in the field, saw by the steam reservoir his young wife talking earnestly to the red-haired Ryan chap, who was to be his passenger. He heard her say: "You must, Peter, you must!"
He hadn't known that the Little Thing called that fellow by his Christian name, but he thought he knew the kind of thing that she would be saying to Ryan; begging him to keep an eye upon her husband, to do anything he could for him (Paul) since they were both going over to France together.
"It will be all right," repeated Gwenna to young Ryan in a settled kind of tone. "You'll give me your things, and then you'll stay here, out of the way until we've gone. You will!"
Thereupon Mr. Ryan became firmer than ever.
"Can't be done, Mrs. Dampier," he said curtly. "Afraid that ends it!"
In the meantime Paul was making a last tour of the P.D.Q.
"Just start her, will you?" he said to one of his mechanics.
A harsh roar rattled out over the countryside. Paul touched parts here and there.
"All right," he said; and the engine was shut off again. Then he turned to Mrs. Crewe.
"Well," he said, "if you don't mind----" He glanced first at his wrist-watch and then in the direction of the buildings. The Aeroplane Lady smiled.
"I think you'll find her in the office," she replied.
He crossed the field and walked straight into the office, but Gwenna was not there. He passed into the Wing-room where he had seen her at work. She was not there, either; only two of the lads in blue overalls were bringing in a wing. He said to them: "Is Mrs. Dampier in the central shop? Just tell her I'm here, will you? I shall have to be off very soon." In a moment one of the lads returned to say that Mrs. Dampier was not in the shops.
"Go out that way and find her, will you, then?" he said. "I'll go out the other way; ask her to wait for me in the Wing-room if you find her first." He went out to search for his wife. He sought her in the shops and in the sheds. She was not to be found. He came back to the Wing-room; it was empty, except for the Great Dane, lying in his corner blinking wisely, with his head on his paws. Dismayed (for he would have not more than a moment to spare with her now) young Dampier came out and sent a lad on a bicycle up to Mrs. Crewe's cottage to find out if his wife were there. Perhaps the Little Thing had forgotten the cap-comforter she was going to give him, and had gone to fetch that. Mrs. Crewe herself walked back from the field, and found him almost running about the yards again.
"What, haven't you found her? Isn't she anywhere about?" cried the Aeroplane Lady in astonishment. "This is most extraordinary. She must be here somewhere----"
"I've been and I've sent all over the place," said the young aviator, distressed. "Here, I've got to start in a minute, and she isn't here to see me before I go. I can't imagine what's become of her!"
The Aeroplane Lady could imagine. She had had the quick thought that Gwenna Dampier, at the last moment, had gone away, hidden herself from that ordeal of last farewells. "Perhaps the little creature couldn't stand it," she thought. It was, when all was said, a heart-breaking moment....
The Aeroplane Lady said softly: "Perhaps your wife's one of the people who don't want to say any good-bye, Mr. Dampier. Like some people thinking it's unlucky to watch people out of sight!"
"Well, I've hunted all over the place," he said, turning away, agitated and dismayed. "Tell her, will you, Mrs. Crewe, I shan't be able to wait any longer. I was to start at midday. I shall be late. You explain to her, please. Where's Ryan--ah, there he is."
For across the field he saw a short, muffled-up, brown figure, climbing, rather hurriedly, into the passenger's seat. It sat, waiting without looking round.
The last stroke of twelve sounded from the clock of the factory. The whistle blew. The men trooped out of the works; every one of them cast a glance towards the field where the biplane was ready. Several of them in a group turned off there to watch the start.
Paul joined them and walked across the field.
His brows were knitted; it was dashed hard lines that he couldn't see her for good-bye. His wife! She ought to have seen him off.... Poor Little sweet Thing, she thought she couldn't stick it---- He wondered where on earth she'd gone and hidden herself.
