The Boy with Wings Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  THAT WEEK-END

  For the following week-end saw, among many other things that had notbeen bargained for, those lovers apart again.

  The very next Saturday after that Aviation Dinner was thatnot-to-be-forgotten day in England, when this country, still uncertain,weighed the part that she was to play in the Great War.

  Late on the Friday night of an eventful week, Paul Dampier, the Airman,had received a summons from Colonel Conyers.

  And Gwenna, who had left the Aircraft Works on Saturday morning to comeup to her Hampstead Club, found there her lover's message:

  "_Away till Monday. Wait for me._"

  She waited with Leslie.

  On that bright afternoon the two girls had walked, as they had so oftenwalked together, about the summer-burnt Heath that was noisy withcricketers on the grass. They had turned down by the ponds where bathersdived from the platforms set above the willows; clean-built Englishyouths splashing and shouting and laughing joyously over their sport.Last time Gwenna had been with her chum it was she, the girl in love,who had done all the talking, while Leslie listened.

  Now it was Leslie who was restless, strung-up, talkative.... A newLeslie, her dark eyes anxious and sombre, her usually nonchalant voicestrained as she talked.

  "Taffy! D'you realise what it all means? Supposing we don't go in. Wemay not go in to war with the others. I know lots of people in thiscountry will do their best so that we don't lift a finger. People likethe Smiths; my brother-in-law's people. Well-to-do, hating anything thatmight get in the way of their having a good year and grubbing up as muchmoney as usual.... Oh! If we don't go in, I shall emigrate--I shall turnAmerican--I shan't want to call myself English any more! P'raps youdon't mind because you're Welsh."

  Little Gwenna, who was rather pale, but who had a curious stillness overthe growing anxiety in her heart, said, "Of course I mind."

  She did not add her thoughts, "_He_ said he hoped the War would come inhis time. I know _he_ would think it perfectly awful if England didn'tfight. And even I can feel that it would be horribly mean--just _lookingon_ at fighting when it came."

  Leslie, striding beside her up the hill, went on bitterly, "War! Oh, itcan't come. For years we've said so. Haven't we taken good care not tolet ourselves get 'hysterical' over the German 'scare'? Haven't wedisbanded regiments? Haven't we beaten our swords into cash-registers?Haven't we even kept down the Navy? Haven't we spread and spread theidea that soldiering was a silly, obsolete kind of game? Aren't we quiteclever and enlightened enough to look down upon soldiers as a kind ofjoke? The brainless Army type. Don't let's forget _that_ phrase," urgedthe soldier's daughter. "Why, Taffy, I'll tell you what happened onlylast May. I went to Gamage's to get a birthday present for Hilary, mysister Maudie's little boy. Of course he's _got_ heaps of everything achild wants. Delightful floor games. Beautiful hand-wrought artistictoys (made in Munich). Still, I thought he might like a change. I toldthe man in the shop I wanted a toy-book of soldiers. Nice simpledrawings and jolly, crude, bright colours of all the differentregiments. Like we used to have at home. And what d'you suppose theshopman said? He was very sorry, but 'they' hadn't stocked that class ofthing for some time now; so little demand for it! So little demand foranything that reminds us we've got an Empire to keep!"

  Gwenna said half absently, "It was only toys, Leslie."

  "Only one more sign of what we're coming to! _Teaching the young ideanot to shoot_," said Leslie gloomily. "That, and a million othertrifles, are going to settle it, I'm afraid. If England is to come down,_that's_ the sort of thing that will have done it.... Oh, Leslie's beenin it, too, and all her friends. Dancing and drifting and dressing-upwhile Rome's been burning.... There'll be no war, Taffy."

  Gwenna said, quietly and convinced, "Yes, there will." And she quotedthe saying of the lady at the Aviation Dinner, "_If England is ever tobe saved, it will be by the few._"

  * * * * *

  They walked round the Highgate Ponds and down the steep hill between thelittle, ramshackle, Victorian-looking shops of Heath Street. It was busyas ever on a Saturday afternoon. They passed the usual troop of BoyScouts; the usual straggle of cricketers and lovers from or for theHeath, and then a knot of rather boyish-looking girls andgirlish-looking boys wearing the art-green school-cap of someco-educational institution.

  "What sort of soldiers do we expect those boys ever to make?" demandedLeslie.

  Outside the dark-red-tiled entrance to the Hampstead Tube there was alittle crowd of people gathered about the paper-sellers with their pinkarresting posters of

  "RUMOURS OF WAR ENGLAND'S DECISION."

  "They'll publish a dozen before anything _is_ decided," said Leslie. Shebought a paper, Gwenna another....

  No; nothing in them but surmise--suspense--theories--they walked on,passing Miss Armitage from the Club who had paused on the kerb to talkto one of her friends, a long-haired man in a broad-leafed brown hat. Heseemed to be dispensing pamphlets to people in the street. As MissArmitage smiled and nodded good-bye to him the two other girls came up.He of the locks slipped a pamphlet into the hand of Leslie Long.

  She glanced at it, stopped, and looked at it again. It was headed:

  "BRITAIN, STAND ASIDE!"

  Leslie stood for a moment and regarded this male. She said very gently,"You don't want any War?"

  The long-haired person in the gutter gave a shrug and a little superiorsmile. "Oh, well, that's assumed, isn't it?" he said. "_We_ don't wantany War."

  "Or any _country_, I suppose?" said Leslie, walking on. She held thepamphlet a little gingerly between her finger and thumb. She had thoughtof tossing it into the gutter--but no. She kept it as a curiosity.

  * * * * *

  Late that night she sat on Gwenna Williams' bed at the Club, suspenseeating at her heart. For all the soldier blood in her had taken her backto old times in barracks, or in shabby lodging-houses in garrison towns,or on echoing, sunny parade-grounds.... Times before she had driftedinto the gay fringes of the cosmopolitan jungle of Bohemian life inLondon. Before the Hospital, the Art-school, the daily "job," with herevenings for the theatre and the Crab-tree Club, and the dances sheloved. It is the first ten years of a child's life that are said to"count." They counted now. The twenty-six-year-old Leslie, whosechildhood had been passed within sound of the bugle-call, waited,waited, waited to know if the ideas of honour and country and glorywhich she had taken in unconsciously in those far-off times were now tobe tossed down into the gutter as she would have tossed the leaflet ofthat coward. These things, as Miss Armitage and her friends could havetold her, were mere sentimentalities--names--ideas. Yet what has everproved stronger than an Idea?

  "Oh, _Taffy_!" she sighed impatiently. "If we're told that we're to sitstill and nothing will happen?"

  And little Gwenna, lying curled up with a hand in her chum's, murmuredagain, "_That's_ not what's coming."

  She was quiet because she was dazed with the sheer intensity of her ownmore personal anxiety. "What will happen about Paul? What will _he_do?"