The Boy with Wings Read online

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE SEALED BOX

  Whatever the Aeroplane Lady thought to herself about the two in theWing-room, there was no trace of it in her brisk greeting to PaulDampier.

  "I hope you haven't been waiting long?" she said. "I'm ready now."

  Then she turned to her girl-assistant, who was once more laying thetacky strips of linen along the seams. "That's right," she said. "Youcan go straight on with that wing; that will take you some time. One ofthe wings for _your_ machine," she added to the aviator. "I'm ready, Mr.Dampier."

  She and the young man left the Wing-room together and entered theadjoining office, closing the door behind them.

  Left alone, Gwenna went on swiftly working, and as swiftly dreaming.Rapidly, but none the less surely, seam after long seam was covered; andthe busyness of her fingers seemed to help the fancies of her brain.

  "One of the wings for _his_ Machine!" she thought. "And there was I,thinking I should mind working for that--for 'Her,'" she smiled. "Idon't, after all. I needn't care, now."

  Her heart seemed singing within her. Nothing had happened, really. Only,she was sure of her lover. That was all. All! She worked; and her smallfeet on the floor seemed set on air, as in that flying dream.

  "Such a great, huge wing for 'Her,'" she murmured to herself. "Such alittle, little wing for himself that he asked for. My tiny one that Iput in my shoe. It was for him I put it there! And now it's begun tobring him to me. It _has_!" she exulted. "He's begun to care. I _know_he does."

  From the other side of the door came a heightened murmur of voices inthe office. Something heavy seemed to be set down on the floor. Thatsealed box, perhaps, that he'd brought with him in the car. Then camethe shutting of the outer door. Mr. Ryan passed the window. Then a soundof hammering in the office, and the long squeak of a nail being prizedout of wood. They were opening that mysterious package of his. Gwenna'sfingers flew over her own task to the tune of her joyous thoughts.

  "I don't care how long it lasts before _anything_ else happens. Don'tcare how this flying-machine of his does try to keep him from me. Shewon't. She can't. Nothing can!" triumphed the girl, smoothing the canvasthat was her Rival's plumage. "He's going to be mine, with everythingthat he knows. So much better, and cleverer, and belonging to differentsort of people as he is, and yet he's going to have _me_ belonging tohim. She's had the last of him putting her always first!"

  She heard in the office Paul Dampier's short laugh and his "Oh? youthink so?" to the Aeroplane Lady. Gwenna scarcely wondered what thismight be about. Some business to do with the Machine; but he would cometo an end of that, soon. He'd come back to her, with that look in hisblue eyes, that tone in his deep voice. She could wait patiently now forthe day, whenever it came, when he should tell her definitely that heloved her and wanted her to be his. There would be that, ofcourse--Gwenna, the inexperienced, still saw "the proposal" as the sceneset and prepared; the inevitable milestone beside the course of truelove. Never mind that now, though. It didn't matter when. What matteredwas that it _would_ come. Then she would always be with him. It would befor ever, like that blissful day in the hayfield, that summer night bythe river at the dance, those few bewildering seconds on the Westminsterscaffolding. And with no cruelty of separation afterwards to spoil it.Nothing--nothing was going to part them, after all.

  * * * * *

  She had finished the wing. She looked about for the next thing to do.

  There were three wings in the room, and all were finished. A fourth wingstill lay, a skeleton of fretted and glued wood, in the workshops; theskin was not yet stretched over it.

  And there were no more letters to write for the firm.

  Gwenna had nothing to do.

  "I shall _have_ to go into the office and ask," she said, admitting toherself that she was glad enough to go. So often she had painted forherself, out of mere memories, the picture of her Airman. He was now inthe office, in the flesh! She need not have to satisfy herself withpictures of him. She slipped off her sticky pinafore; the white muslinblouse beneath it was fresh and pretty enough. She moved to theoffice-door. It was her room; she had never yet had to knock at thatdoor.

  She pushed it open and stood waiting. For a moment she only saw theAeroplane Lady and the tall Aviator. They had their backs to her; theywere standing side by side and examining a plan that they had pinned upon the matchboarding wall. Paul Dampier's finger was tracing a littlearc on the plan, and he was slowly shaking his head, with the gesture ofa man who says that something "won't do." The Aeroplane Lady's fingerswere meditatively at her lips, and her attitude echoed that of the youngman. Something that they had planned wouldn't do----

  Then Gwenna's eyes fell, from these two people, to that "_Something_."It was something that she had never seen about the Aircraft Worksbefore. Indeed, she did not remember having seen it ever before,anywhere, except in pictures. This object was on the floor, half in andhalf out of the sealed wooden box that Paul Dampier had brought downwith him in the car, and that he wouldn't let the workmen handle.... Sothis was why....

  This was it. Aghast, she stared at it.

  It was a long, khaki-painted cylinder, and from one end of it awicked-looking little nozzle projected for an inch or so. The otherend, which disappeared into the box, showed a peep of a magazine and apistol-grip.

  Even to Gwenna's unskilled eyes the thing appeared instantly what itwas.

  A machine-gun.

  "A gun?" she thought, stupefied; "dear me--on an aeroplane?"

  "No," said Paul Dampier's voice suddenly, decisively, speaking to theAeroplane Lady, "it'll have to be a rifle after all."

  And with the sudden breaking of his voice upon her ear, there seemed tobe torn from before the girl's eyes a corner of some veil.

  Quite suddenly (how, she could not explain) she knew what all thismeant.

  That plan for that new flying-machine. That gun. The whole object of theambitions of these people with their so romantic profession. Scraps ofher Aviator's talk about "scouting," and "the new Arm," and "modernwarfare." ...

  Just now she had been swept up aloft by his look and tone into theseventh heaven of a woman's delight. That was Love. Here, epitomised inthat cylinder with that vicious little nozzle, she saw the Power thatcould take him from her yet. This was War!

  A shudder ran over her.

  Her mind took no notice of the facts that there was no War for him to goto, that this grim preparation must be for experimenting only, formanoeuvres, sham fights; that this was July, Nineteen-fourteen, an eraof sleepy peace (except for that gossip, half a joke, that we mighthave civil war in Ireland yet), and that she and he and everybody theyhad to do with lived in the Twentieth Century, in England....

  Perhaps it was because she was not English, but British, Welsh. Sheentirely lacked that Anglo-Saxon "balance" of which the English are soproud, and that stolidity and that unimaginativeness. Her imaginationcaught some of those unheard, unsuspected messages with which the airmust have been vibrant, all those midsummer weeks.

  Her quick, unbalanced Celtic fancy had already shown her as clearly asif she had seen it with her eyes that image of his Aeroplane as a wingedand taloned Woman-rival. Now it flashed before her, in a twink, anotherpicture:

  Paul Dampier, seated in that Aeroplane, swooping through the air, _armedand in danger_!

  The danger was from below. She did not see that danger. She saw only theimage, against grey, scudding clouds, of the Beloved. But she could feelit, that poignant Threat to him, to him in every second of his flight.It was not the mere risk of accident or falling. It was a new peril ofwhich the shadow, cast before, fell upon the receptive fancy of the girlwho loved the adventurer. And, set to that shadow-picture in her mind,there rang out to some inner sense of hers a Voice that sounded clearand ominous words.

  They called to her: "_Fired at both by friend and foe----_"

  Then stopped.

  The young girl didn't remember ever to have heard or even to have
readthese words. How should she? It was the warning fore-echo of a phrasenow historic, but then as yet unuttered, that had transmitted itself tosome heightened sense of hers:

  "_Fired at both by friend and foe!_"[A]

  [A] This phrase occurred in a despatch from Sir David Henderson.

  There! It was gone, the waking vision that left her trembling, with acertainty.

  Yes; here was the meaning of the sealed box, of the long confabulationof her Airman with the Aeroplane Lady.... War was coming. And _theyknew_.

  Gwenna, standing there in the doorway, drawing a long breath and feelingsuddenly rather giddy, knew that she had come upon something that shehad not been meant to guess.

  What was she to do about it?

  Her hand was on the knob of the door.

  Must she close it upon herself, or behind her?

  Should she come forward and cry, "Oh, if it was a dreadful secret, whydidn't you lock the door?"

  Or should she go out noiselessly, taking that burden of a secret withher? She might confess to the Aeroplane Lady afterwards....

  Here she saw that the Airman had half turned. His boyish, determinedprofile was dark in shadow against the plan on the wall; the plan of theP.D.Q. Sunlight through the office window touched and gilded the edgeof his blonde head.

  "Yes; I thought so. Have to be a rifle after all," he repeated in amatter-of-fact tone. Then, turning more round, his glance met thestartled eyes of the girl in the doorway.

  And that finished the dilemma for Gwenna.

  Something rose up in her and was too strong to let her be silent.

  "Oh! I've _seen_ it!" she cried sharply. "_Paul!_"

  He took one stride towards her and slipped his arm about her as sheswayed. She was white to the lips.

  "Is there any water----" began young Dampier, but already the AeroplaneLady had poured out a glassful.

  It was he, however, who put it to Gwenna's lips, holding her still.

  "It's all _right_, darling," he said reassuringly (and the give-awayword slipped very easily from his tongue). "Better, aren't you?Frightfully muggy in that room with those radiators! You oughtn't tobe---- Here!" He took some of the cold water and dabbed it on her curls.

  "I suppose he knew he could trust the child," thought the Aeroplane Ladyas she closed the door of the Wing-room between herself and those two inthe office, "but I don't know that I should have engaged her if I'dknown. I don't want lovers about the place, here. Of course, thisexplains his Aviation dinner and everything----"

  * * * * *

  Little Gwenna, standing with her small face buried against the Aviator'stweed jacket, was sighing out that she hadn't _meant_ to come in, hadn't_meant_ to look at that horrible gun....

  The girl didn't know what she was saying. The boy scarcely heard it. Hewas rumpling with his cheek the short, silky curls he had always longedto touch. Presently he tilted her cherub's head back against hisshoulder, then put both his hands about that throat of hers.

  She gave an unsteady little laugh.

  "You'll throttle me," she murmured.

  Without loosening his clasp, he bent his fair head further down, andkissed her, very gently, on the mouth.

  "Don't mind, do you?" he said, into another kiss. "_Do_ you?"

  At that moment the Little Thing in his arms had banished all thought ofthose Big Things from his mind.

  PART II

  _JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER, 1914_