The Boy with Wings Page 29

  CHAPTER IX

  THIS SIDE OF "THE FRONT"

  The first of these changes at the Aircraft Works was the sight of thekhaki-clad sentry at the entrance.

  He was pacing up and down the bit of dusty road outside the shops; andhe stopped Gwenna peremptorily, not knowing that she was one of thestaff.

  She told him, and went on. She found the big central shop in a fermentof activity. Mr. Ryan, striding out on some hurried errand, nearlyknocked her over. He called an "Awfully sorry, Miss Gwenna--Mrs.Dampier, I mean," over his shoulder. She saw that his day of dalliancewas past, even had she been still "Miss Gwenna." He had less time forGirl, nowadays. The frames of no fewer than four aeroplanes were set upon the stocks; and out of the body of the most nearly completed onethere climbed the slight figure of the Aeroplane Lady. Her blue andyouthful eyes lighted up at the sight of the girl standing in the clear,diffused light of the many windows and backed by the spinning shafting.

  "Ah! You've arrived, Mrs. Dampier," she said briskly, using the new namewithout a pause or a smile, for which Gwenna blessed her. "Thank HeavenI shall have a reliable clerk again.... No end of correspondence now, mydear. A sheaf of it waiting in the office. Come on and see to it now,will you? And for goodness' sake remind me that I am 'theirsobediently,' instead of merely 'truly,' to the Admiralty. I alwaysforget. If I were left to myself my letters would sound just like theaviator's who wrote to the POWERS-THAT-BE: '_Commander So-and-Sopresents his compliments and begs respectfully to submit that don't youthink it would be a jolly good thing if we started a repairingshop?_'--somewhere or other. Well! Here we are, you see. Stacks of it!"she went on as they reached that office where an airman's sweetheart hadfirst realised the idea that an aeroplane might mean a ship of war--warin the clouds.

  "We shall have as much work as we can get through now," said theAeroplane Lady. "Look at this order from the War Office. And this--andthis!"

  For to all intents and purposes the War Office and the Admiralty had"taken over" Mrs. Crewe's Aircraft Factory.

  The place rang and echoed, long after the hours of the ordinary workingman's working day, with the clinking and whirring and hammering of thoselabours that went to bring forth these great wings of War.

  Some of the French mechanics whom Gwenna had known well by sight haddisappeared. They had been served with their mobilisation papers andwere now off to serve under the Tricolour.

  One or two of the English fitters, who were Reservists, had rejoined.One had enlisted.

  But now, the Aeroplane Lady explained, the enlisting of any more of hermen had been discouraged. _They_ were too useful where they were. They,with many other sturdy Britons who fretted because they were not to takeup other, riskier work on the other side of the Channel, were kept busyenough preparing the arms which those other, envied men were to use.

  It was for the encouragement of them and their fellow-workers inArmament and Ammunition factories that a bundle of blue-lettered posterscame down presently to the Works.

  Gwenna, once more arrayed in the grey-blue, dope-stiffened pinafore,had the job of pinning up here and there, in the shops and sheds, thesenotices. They announced to the Man at the Bench that he was as needfulto his country as the Man in the Trench. They gave out:

  "YOU CAN HIT THE ENEMY AS HARD WITH HAMMER AND RIVET AS YOU CAN WITH RIFLE AND BULLET. HIT HIM! HURRY UP WITH THE SHIPS AND GUNS!"

  * * * * *

  And she, too, little Gwenna Dampier, clerk and odd-job-girl, feltherself respond to the appeal. As she typed letters and orders, as sheheated dope, as she varnished for the men's handling those huge blueprints with the white, spider's-web-like "working drawings," or as shetested square inches of the fine wing-linen, she felt that she, too,was helping in her way to hurry up with those needed ships and guns.

  Was she not lucky in her job?

  For always she was buoyed up by the notion that whatever she touchedmight be of service, not only to the country which the Beloved wasserving, but to the Beloved himself. Who knew? He himself might have tofly in any one of these very machines! Every least part, every atom ofmetal about them bore the visible, indestructible stamp of the EnglishWar Office. And Gwenna herself bore that unseen but indelible stamp ofher love to her absent lad in every inch of her pliant girl's body, inevery thought of her malleable girl's mind.

  So the late summer weeks passed as she worked, glad in the thought thatany or all of it might be for him. She felt sorry for those women who,when their man is away, have nothing but purely feminine work with whichto fill the empty days. Sewing, household cares, knitting.... Sheherself knitted, snatching minutes from the twelve-o'clock dinner-hourin the cottage with Mrs. Crewe to add rows to the khaki woollencap-comforter that she had started for Paul. It was just a detail in herown busy life. But it struck her that for countless left-behind womenthis detail remained all that they had to do; to knit all day, thinking,wondering, fretting over the Absent.

  "That must be so _awful_! I don't think I should want to _live_," shetold the Aeroplane Lady one dinner-hour, "if there wasn't something elsereally wanted by the men themselves, that I could have to do with!Every soldier's wife," said Gwenna, drawing herself up above the tablewith a pretty and very proud little gesture which made Mrs. Crewe smilea little, "I think every soldier's wife ought to have the chance of ajob in some factory of this sort. Or in a shop for soldiers' comforts,perhaps. Like that woman has in Bond Street where I bought thoseextra-nice khaki handkerchiefs for Paul. _She's_ always thinking outsome sort of new 'dodge' for the Front. A new sleeping-rug ortrench-boots or something. A woman can feel she's taking some part inthe actual campaign then. Don't you think so, Mrs. Crewe? But therearen't many other things she can do," concluded the girl with that soft,up-and-down accent, "unless she's actually a Red Cross nurse lookingafter the wounded. There's nothing else."

  "Oh, isn't there? Surely----" began the Aeroplane Lady. Then shestopped, with a half-humorous, half-sad little smile in her eyes.

  She was going to have suggested that the biggest Job that a woman canachieve has, at the root of things, everything to do with the carryingon of a campaign. Those English workmen in the shops were responsiblefor the perfect and reliable workmanship of the ships and guns. It wasonly the women of England who could make themselves responsible for thesoundness and reliability of the men of the next generation, theirlittle sons now growing up, to be perhaps the soldiers of the next war.All this flashed through the mind of the Aeroplane Lady, who was alsothe mother of a fighting airman.

  But, on second thoughts, she decided that she would not say anythingabout it. Not to this cherub-headed, guileless girl who bore PaulDampier's name, and who wore his glitteringly new wedding-ring on herfinger (that is, when she hadn't forgotten it, where it lay in thesoap-dish in the bathroom or hanging up on a peg in the Wing-room besideher sunshine-yellow jersey coat. It was, as the newly-married Mrs.Dampier explained, miles too big for her, and she hated getting it amass of dope).

  So, instead of saying what she was going to say, the Aeroplane Ladydrank tea out of a workman-like-looking, saucerless Brittany cup withtwo handles, and presently asked if there were anything exciting thatshe might be allowed to hear out of the letter that had arrived thatmorning from Mr. Dampier.

  Those eagerly-looked-for, greedily-devoured letters from the youngAirman to his wife were uncertain qualities enough.

  Sometimes they came regularly, frequently, even two in a day, for Gwennato kiss, and to learn by heart, and to slip under her pillow at night.

  Then for days and weeks there would be nothing from him; and Gwennawould seem to herself to be going about with her flesh holding itsbreath in suspense all over her body.

  That suspense was not (curiously enough) too agonised for his safety.

  She had laughed quite easily the day that one of the older workmen hadsaid to her kindly, if tactlessly:

&n
bsp; "Ah, Miss Williams--or ma'am, as I s'pose I ought to say--I do feelsorry for you, I do. You here, same as when you was a single young lady.Your young gentleman God knows where, and you knowing that as likely asnot you never _will_ see him again, p'raps."

  "If I were not going to see him again," the girl had said tranquilly, "Ishould know. I should feel it. And I haven't that feeling at all, Mr.Harris. I'm one of those people who believe in presentiments. And I knowI _shall_ see him, though I don't know when."

  That was the only trouble! When? _When?_ When would she have somethingfor her love to live on, besides just messages on lifeless paper?

  Paul's letters were sometimes mere hasty scrawls. An "All's well," adarling or so, and his name on a bit of thin ruled paper torn from anote-book and scented vaguely with tobacco....

  To-day it was a longer one.

  "It's dated four days ago only, and it's just headed 'FRANCE,'" saidyoung Mrs. Dampier, sitting, backed by the cottage window, with thelevel Berkshire landscape, flowering now into lines of white tents forthe New Army in training, behind her curly head. "He says:

  "'Last week I had a day, if you like! Engaged with two Taubes in the morning. Machine hit in four places. In the afternoon, as I was up reconnoitring, I saw below me a railway train, immensely long, going along as slow as a slug, with two engines. Sent in my report to Head Quarters, and wasn't believed, if you please. They said there couldn't be a train there. Line was destroyed. However, they did condescend to go and look. Afterwards I was told my report was of the greatest value----'

  "There! Think of that," broke off Gwenna, with shining eyes.

  "'And it's leaked out now that what I saw was a train crammed with ammunition. Afterwards (same day) went and dropped bombs on some works at--I'd better not say where!--and hope I get to know what damage was done. I know one was a clinking shot. A great game, isn't it?'

  "_Isn't_ it!" murmured the girl who had shuddered so at her firstrealisation of her lover as a possible fighter. But now, after theseweeks, she shrank no longer. Gradually she had come to look upon War asa stupendous Adventure from which it would have been cruelty to shut himout. She saw it now as the reward of his years of working, waiting,experimenting. And she said to herself fancifully, "It must be becauseI've 'drunk of his cup,' and now I've come to 'think his thoughts.' Idon't care what those suffragettes say about losing one's individuality._I_ do think it's a great game!"

  She read on:

  "'Got three letters and _Punch_ from you in the evening. Thanks awfully. You will write to me all you can, darling, won't you? The little wing is quite safe in my tunic-pocket. Give my love to Mrs. Crewe and to your Uncle and to Leslie Long. Heard from old Hugo that he was actually going to enlist. Do him lots of good.'

  "Then he sort of ends up," said Gwenna, dimpling to herself a littleover the ending:

  ("'YOUR ALWAYS BOY.'),

  "and then there's a postscript:

  "'Wouldn't it be top-hole if I could get some leave to come over and fetch the P.D.Q.? Guess the Censor will be puzzled to know who _she_ is; who's your lady friend? in fact.

  "'P. D.'"

  "Thank you, Mrs. Dampier," said the Aeroplane Lady as she rose brisklyto return with her assistant to the Works. "Give him my love, too (if Imay), when you write. And I should like to tell you to write and askLeslie Long down to see us one Saturday afternoon," she added as theycame through the gap in the dusty hedge to the entrance road. "Butreally we're too rushed to think of such relaxations as visitors!"

  For since Gwenna had come back to the Works neither she nor heremployer had taken any sort of holiday. That sacred right of the Englishworker, the "Saturday half-day off," existed no more at those busyAircraft Works. Just as if it were any ordinary day of the week, thewhistle sounded after the midday rest. And just as if it were any otherday of the week, Mrs. Crewe's men (all picked workers, of whom not onehappened to be a Trades Unionist) stacked up the bicycles on whichthey'd ridden back from their meal at home in the near-by town, andtrooped into the shops. They continued to hurry up with those ships andguns.

  Again the whirring and the chinking and the other forge-like noiseswould fill the place. Again the quick, achieving movements of cleverhands, black and soaked in oil, would be carried on, sometimes until,from the training-camps on the surrounding ugly, useful plains, thebugles had sounded "_Lights Out_." ...