The Boy with Wings Page 38

  POSTSCRIPT

  MYRTLE AND LAUREL LEAF

  It was the week before Christmas, Nineteen-fourteen.

  London wore her dreariest winter livery of mud-brown and fog-yellow, andat three o'clock on such an afternoon there would have been brilliantlights everywhere ... any other, ordinary year.

  This year, Londoners had to find their way as best they could throughthe gloom.

  Across a wide Square with a railed and shrubberied garden in the centreof it, there picked her way a very tall girl in furs that clung abouther as bushy ivy hangs about some slender tree. She wore a dark velvetcoat broadly belted over her strait hips, and upon her impish head therewas perched one of the little, back velvet, half-military caps that werestill the mode. This girl peered up at the numbers of the great housesat the side of the Square; finally, seeing the gilt-lettered inscriptionthat she sought above one of the doors,

  "ANNEXE TO THE CONVALESCENT HOME FOR WOUNDED OFFICERS,"

  she rang the bell.

  The door was opened to her by a small trim damsel in the garb of theGirl-Guides, who ushered her into a large and ornate hall, and into thepresence of a fresh-coloured, fair-haired Personage--she was evidentlyno less--in nurse's uniform.

  This Personage gazed upon the visitor with a suspicious and disapprovinglook.

  "I wonder why? It isn't because I'm not blamelessly tidy for once in mylife, and she can't guess that the furs and the brown velvet suit arecast-offs from the opulent," thought the visitor swiftly. Aloud sheadded in her clear, nonchalant tone: "I have come to see Mr. Scott,please."

  "There is the visiting-hour. It is not quite three yet," said the nurseforbiddingly.

  "I'll wait, then," said the visitor. For two minutes she waited. Thenthe nurse approached her with a note-book and a pencil.

  "Will you write your name down here?" she said austerely. And upon apage inscribed "_Mr. M. Scott_" the visitor wrote her name, "Miss LeslieLong."

  "Will you come up?" the nurse said reluctantly. And Leslie ascended abroad red-carpeted stairway, and was shown into a great room of parquetfloors and long windows and painted panels that had been a drawing-room,and that was now turned by a row of small beds on great castors and byseveral screens into a hospital-ward.

  A blonde youth in a pink pyjama jacket, and with his arm in a blacksilken sling, was sitting up in bed and chatting to a white-moustachedgentleman beside him; another of the wounded was sitting by one of thegreat fire-places, reading; a couple were playing picquet in a corner,under a smiling Academy portrait of the mistress of the mansion.

  "Mr. Scott is sitting up to-day, in the ante-room," vouchsafed thenurse. And Leslie Long entered, through a connecting door, a small roomto the right.

  One wall of it was hung with a drapery of ancient brown tapestry,showing giant figures amidst giant foliage; beneath it was a low couch.Upon this, covered with a black, panther-skin rug, there lay, halfsitting up, supported on his elbow, the young wounded officer whomLeslie had come to see.

  "Frightfully good of you, this," he said cheerfully, as she appeared.

  She looked down at him.

  For the moment she could not speak. She set down on his couch the sheafof golden chrysanthemums that she had brought, and the copy of the_Natal Newsletter_ that she had thought might cheer him. She foundherself about to say a very foolish thing: "So they left you yourhandsome eyes, Monty."

  The face in which those eyes shone now was thin and drawn; and it seemedas if all the blood had been drained from it. His crutches stood in thecorner at the foot of the couch. He was Monty Scott, the Dean's son,once a medical student and would-be sculptor. Yes; he had been adilettante artist once, but he looked a thorough soldier now. The smallmoustache and the close-cropped hair suited him well. He had enlisted inthe Halberdiers at the beginning of the War. He had got his commissionand had lost his leg at Ypres.

  Not again would he wear that Black Panther get-up to any fancy-dressdance.... Never again.

  This was the thought, trivial and irrelevant enough, that flashedthrough Leslie's mind, bringing with it a rush of tears that she had tobite her lips to check. She had to clench her nails into her palms, toopen her black eyes widely and smilingly, and to speak in the clearestand most flippant tone that she could summon.

  "Hullo, Monty! Nice to see you again; now that I _can_ see you. Youwounded warriors _are_ guarded by a dragon!--thanks, I'll sit downhere." She turned the low chair by the couch with its back to the light."Yes, I could hardly get your Ministering-Angel-Thou to let me through.Glared at me as if she thought I was after the spoons. (I suppose that'sexactly what some of them _are_ after," suggested Miss Long, laughingquite naturally.) "She evidently took me for just another predatoryfeline come to send the patient's temperature soaring upwards. It's notoften I'm crushed, but----"

  "Oh, Nurse Elsa is all right," said the patient, laughing too. "Youknow, I think she feels bound to be careful about new people. She seemsto have a mania for imagining that everybody fresh may be a German spy!"

  "A _German_? Why should she think that?"

  "Oh, possibly because--well----" Young Scott lowered his voice andglanced towards that connecting door. But it had been shut. "Because shehappens to be 'naturalised' herself, you know!"

  They talked; Leslie ever more lightly as she was more deeply touched bythe sight of the young man on his couch. So helpless, he who had been sofull of movement and fitness and supple youth! So pluckily, resolutelygay, he who had been so early put out of the fun!

  Lightly he told Leslie the bare details of his wound. It had been in afield of beet that he had been pipped; when he had been seeing to somebarbed wire with a sergeant and a couple of his men, at nightfall. Oneof those snipers had got him.

  "And I was downed in a second," he said ruefully. "_I_ couldn't get thebeggar!"

  Leslie thought of the young, mortally-wounded Mercutio and his impatientcry of "_What! Is he gone, and hath nothing?_" It was the only complaintat his lot that was ever to pass the lips of this other fighter.

  She looked at him, and her heart swelled with pride for him. It sankwith shame for herself. She had always held him--well, not as lightly asshe said she had. There had been always the sneaking tenderness for thetall, infatuated boy whom she'd laughed at. But why "sneaking"? Why hadshe laughed? She had thought him so much less than herself. She said sheknew so much more. What vanity and crass, superficial folly! A newthrill took her suddenly. Could it be that War, that had cut everybody'slife in two, had worked another wonder?

  Presently he remarked, "I say, your friends, the poor Dampiers! Isuppose nothing's ever been heard of them, after that day that theyfound out at the Works that his wife had started with him, when he setoff for France, and disappeared?"

  "Nothing," said Leslie quietly, "Whether it was an accident with his newengine, or whether they were killed by a shot from a German aeroplanethey met, we shan't ever know now. It must have been over the sea....Nothing has ever been found. Much the best way, I think. I said so topoor young Mr. Ryan, the man who let her take his place. He was besidehimself when he turned up at the Aircraft place again and found thatnothing had been heard. He said he'd killed her. I told him she wouldthink he'd done more for her than anybody she knew. The best time to goout! No growing old and growing dull and perhaps growing ill and beingkept half alive by bothering doctors, for years.... No growing out oflove with each other, ever! They, at least, have had something thatnothing can spoil."

  Monty Scott, turning his small, close-cropped head of a soldier and hiswhite face towards the tapestry, blurted out: "Well! At all eventsthey've _had_ it. But even having it 'spoilt' is better than neverhaving had any----"

  He checked himself abruptly.

  He was not going to whine now over his own ill-luck in love to her, toLeslie, who had turned him down three times. Not much.

  In the suddenly tense atmosphere of the little room overlooking thewide, dim Square, the girl felt the young man's resolution--a
resolution that he would keep. He would never ask her for anotherfavour.

  He cleared his throat and spoke in an altered tone, casual,matter-of-fact.

  "Awfully pretty, the little girl that Dampier married, wasn't she?Usen't she to live at that Club of yours? I think I saw her once,somewhere or other----"

  "Yes. You did," said Leslie quickly, and a little breathlessly as thoughshe, too, had just taken a resolution. "At that dance. That river dance.She was the Cherub-girl. And I wore my mauve Nijinski things. Youremember that time, Monty?"

  "Oh, yes," said the wounded man shortly, "I remember."

  There was a slight, uneasy movement under the panther-skin rug.

  He hadn't thought that Leslie would have reminded him of those times.Not of that dance, when, with his hands on her hips and her handsclasped at the back of his neck, he had swung round with her in themaddest of waltzes.... He wouldn't have expected her to _remind_ him!

  Nor was he expecting the next thing that Leslie did. She slipped fromthat low chair on to her knees by the couch. Her furs touched his hand,delicate and whiter now than a woman's, and he took it quickly away. Hecould not look at the vivid, impish face with the black, mocking eyesand the red, mocking mouth that had always bewitched him. Had he looked,he would have seen that the mockery was gone from both. It was gone,too, from Leslie's voice when she next spoke, close to him.

  "Monty! At that dance---- Have you forgotten? We were walking by theriver--and you said--you asked----"

  "Yes, yes; all right. Please don't mind," muttered the man who had beenthe Black Panther hastily. It was pretty awful, having girls _sorry_ forone!

  She went on kneeling by him. "I told you that I wasn't in the mood!"

  "Yes; but--I say, it doesn't matter one scrap, thanks," declared MontyScott, very hoarsely.

  This was the hardest thing he'd ever yet had to bear; harder than lyingout wounded in that wet beetroot-field for nine hours before he could bepicked up; harder than the pain, the agonising, jolting journeys; hardereven than the sleepless nights when he had tossed and turned on his bed,next to the bed where a delirious man who had won the D.S.O. cried outin his nightmare unceasingly: "Stick it, boys! Stick it, boys! Stick it,boys!" He (Monty) didn't think he could stick this. There could never beany one in the world but Leslie for him, that laughing, devil-may-careLeslie at whom "nice" girls looked askance. Leslie who didn't care.Leslie who _pitied_ him! Ghastly! Desperately he wished she'd get up andgo--_go_----

  Suddenly her voice sounded in his ear. Far from being pitying it was sopetulant as to convince even him. It cried: "Monty! I said then thatyou were an infant-in-arms! If you weren't an infant you could _see_!"

  He turned his head quickly on the couch-cushion. But even then he didn'treally see. Even then he scarcely took in, for the moment, what heheard.

  For the kneeling, radiant girl had to go on, laughing shakily: "I alwaysliked you.... After everything I said! After everything I've thought, itcomes round to this. _It's better to have loved and settled down thannever to have loved at all.... Oh!_ I've got my head into as bright arainbow as any of them!..." scolded Leslie, laughing again asflutteringly as Paul Ethampier's sweetheart might have done. "Oh, Ithought that just because one liked a man in the kind of way I likedyou, it was no reason to accept him ... _fool_ that I was----"

  "Leslie!" he cried very sharply, scarcely believing his ears. "Could youhave?--_could_ you? And you tell me _now_! When it's too late----"

  "Too _late_? _Won't_ you have me? Can't you see that I think you so muchmore of a man when you're getting about as well as you can on one legthan I did when you were just dancing and fooling about on two? As forme----"

  She turned her bright face away.

  "It's the same old miracle that never stops happening. I shan't even bea woman, ever," faltered Leslie Long, "unless you help to make me one!"

  "You can't mean it? You can't----"

  "Can't I? I am 'in the mood' _now_, Monty!" she said, very softly."Believe me!"

  And her long arm was flung, gently and carefully, about her soldier'sneck; her lips were close to his.

  * * * * *

  When at last she left her lover, Leslie Long walked down the darkenedstreets near Victoria, quietly and meditatively. And her thoughts wereonly partly with the man whom she had left so happy. Partly they wereclaimed by the girl-friend whose marriage morning wish had been for her,Leslie, to be happy in the same way.

  It seemed to Leslie that she was very near her now.

  Even as she walked along the tall girl was conscious, in a way not to bedescribed, of a Presence that seemed to follow her and to beset her andto surround her with a sense of loving, laughing, girlish pleasure andfellowship. She saw, _without seeing_, the small, eager, tip-tilted facewith bright eyes of river-green and brown, crowned by the wreath ofshort, thick curls. _Without hearing_, she caught the tone of the soft,un-English, delighted voice that cried, "Oh, _Les_--lie----!"

  "Little Taffy! She'd be so full of it, of course.... Of _course_ she'dbe glad! Of _course_ she'd know; I can't think she doesn't. Not she, whowas so much in love herself," mused Leslie, putting up her hand with hercharacteristic gesture to tuck in the stray tress of black hair that hadcome loose under her trim velvet cap.

  "And the people we've loved can't forget at once, as soon as they'veleft us. I don't believe that. _She knows._ If _I_ could only saysomething--send some sort of message! Even if it were only like waving ahand! If _I_ could make some sign that I shall always care----"

  As she thought of it she was passing a row of shops. The subdued lightfrom one of them fell upon swinging garlands of greenery festoonedoutside; decorations ready for Christmas.

  On an impulse Leslie Long turned into this florist's shop. "I want oneof those wreaths you have, please," she said.

  "Yes, Madam; a holly-wreath?"

  "No. One of those. Laurel."

  And while the man fetched down the wreath of broad, dark, pointedleaves, Leslie Long took out one of her cards and a pencil, andscribbled the message that she presently fastened to the wreath. Shewould not have it wrapped up in paper, but carried it as it was. Thenshe turned down a side-street to the Embankment, near Vauxhall Bridge.She leaned over the parapet and saw the black, full tide, here and thereonly jewelled with lights, flowing on, on, past the spanning bridges andthe town, away to the sea that had been at last the great, silver,restless resting-place for such young and ardent hearts....

  There was a soft splash as she flung the laurel wreath into the flowingwater.

  Leslie glanced over and watched it carried swiftly past. In a patch oflight she saw the tiny white gleam of the card that was tied to theleaves of victory.

  This was what she had written upon it:

  "For Gwenna and Paul.

  '_Envy, ah, even to tears! The fortune of their years, Which, though so few, yet so divinely ended._'"

  THE END

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  TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES:

  1. Passages in italics are surrounded by _underscores_ and the ones inbold are indicated by =bold=.

  2. Obvious punctuation errors have been silently closed, while thoserequiring interpretation have been left as such.

  3. The word manoeuvres uses an oe ligature in the original.

  4. The following misprints have been corrected: "kimona" corrected to "kimono" (page 21) "beseiged" corrected to "besieged" (page 62) "Esctasy" corrected to "Ecstasy" (page 242) "ass" corrected to "as" (page 277) "husabnd" corrected to "husband" (page 353)

  5. Other than the corrections listed above, printer's inconsistencies inspelling, hyphenation, and ligature usage have been retained.