The Boy with Wings Read online

  CHAPTER III

  THE EYES OF ICARUS

  Gwenna, who was always bubbling over with young curiosity about thefresh _people_ whom she was to meet at a party, had never taken overmuchinterest in the _places_ where the party might be held.

  She had not yet reached the age when, for information about newacquaintances, one glances first at their background.

  To her the well-appointed though slightly "Art"-y Smith establishmentwhere her friend was taking her to dine was merely "a married house."She took for granted the arrangements thereof. She lumped them all--fromthe slim, deferential parlour-maid who ushered them through athickly-carpeted corridor with framed French etchings into a spaciousbedroom where the girls removed their wraps, down to the ivory,bemonogrammed pin-tray and powder-box in front of the big mirror--shelumped these all together as "things you have when you're _married_."

  It never struck her--it never strikes eight out of ten young girls--thatMarriage does not necessarily bring these "things" with their subtleassurance of ease, security, and dignity in its train. She never thoughtabout it. Marriage indeed seemed to her a sort of dullish postscript towhat she imagined must be a thrilling letter.

  Why _must_ nearly all married people become so stodgy? Gwenna simplycouldn't imagine herself getting stodgy--or fat, like this marriedsister of Leslie Long's, who was receiving her guests in the largeupstairs drawing-room into which the two girls were now shown.

  This room, golden and creamy, seemed softly aglow. There were standardlamps with huge amber crinolines, bead-fringed; and flowers--yellowroses and white lilies--seemed everywhere.

  Leslie Long drew one of the lilies out of a Venetian vase and held itout, like an usher's rod, towards Gwenna as she followed her into thebright, bewildering room, full of people. She announced, "Maudie, here'sthe stop-gap. Taffy Williams, your hostess."

  Her hostess was a version of Leslie grown incredibly matronly. Herauricula-coloured velvet tea-gown looked as if it had been clutchedabout her at the last moment. (Which in point of fact it had. Mrs. Smithwas quite an old-fashioned mother.) Yet from her eyes smiled theindestructible Girl that is embedded in so many a respectable matron,and she looked down very kindly at Gwenna, the cherub-headed, in herwhite frock.

  Mr. Smith, who had a large smooth face and a bald head, gave Gwenna aless cordial glance. Had the truth been known, he was sulking over thenon-appearance of the intelligent young woman (from the Poets' Club)whose place was taken by this vacuous-looking flapper (his summing-upof Miss Gwenna Williams). For Gwenna this bald and wedded patriarch offorty-five scarcely existed. She glanced, nervous and fluttered andinterested, towards the group of other guests gathered about the nearerof the two flower-filled fireplaces; a pretty woman in rose-colour andtwo men of thirty or thereabouts, one of whom (rather stout, with aneye-glass, a black stock-tie, and a lock of brown hair brought downbeside his ear like a tiny side-whisker) made straight for Leslie Long.

  "Now _don't_ attempt to pretend we haven't met," Gwenna heard him say ina voice of flirtatious yearning. "Last time you cut my dance----"

  Here the maid announced, from the door, some name.... Gwenna, standingshyly, as if on the brink of the party, heard the hostess saying: "Wehardly hoped you'd come ... we know you people always are besieged byinvitations----"

  "Dear me! All these people seem dreat-fully grand," thought the Welshgirl hastily to herself. "I wonder if it wouldn't have been better, now,if Leslie had left that cerise velvet trimming as it was on my dress?"

  Instinctively she glanced about for the nearest mirror. There was a bigoval gilt-framed one over the yellow brocaded Empire couch near whichGwenna stood. Her rather bewildered brown eyes strayed from the strangerfaces about her to the reflection of the face and figure that she bestknew. In the oval of gilded leaves she beheld herself framed. She lookedsmall and very young with her cherub's curls and her soft babyishwhite gown and that heaven-coloured sash. But she looked pretty. Shehoped she did....

  Then suddenly in that mirror she caught sight of another face, a faceshe saw for the first time.

  She beheld, looking over her white-mirrored shoulder, the reflection ofa young man. Clear-featured, sunburnt but blonde, he carried his fairhead tilted a little backward, and his eyes--strange eyes!--were lookingstraight into hers. They were clear and blue and space-daring eyes, withsomething about them that Gwenna, not recognising, would have summed upvaguely as "like a sailor's." ... They were eyes that seemed to haveborrowed light and colour from long scanning of far horizons. And nowall that keenness of theirs was turned, like a searchlight, to gaze intothe wondering, receptive glance of a girl....

  Who was this?

  Before Gwenna turned to face this stranger who had followed theirhostess up to her, his gaze seemed to hold hers, as a hand might haveheld her own, for longer than a minute....

  Afterwards she told herself that it seemed, not a minute, but an agebefore that first look was loosed, before she had turned round to herhostess's, "I want to introduce Mr.----"

  (Something or other. She did not catch the name.)

  "_He's_ nice!" was the young girl's pristine and uncoloured firstimpression.

  Then she thought, "Oh, if it's this one who's going to take me in todinner, I _am_ glad!"

  It was he who was to take her in.

  For Mr. Smith took the pretty lady whose name, as far as Gwenna wasconcerned, remained "Mrs. Rose-colour." Her husband, a neutral-tintedbeing, went in with Mrs. Smith. The man with the side-whisker (who, ifhe'd been thinner, certainly might have looked rather like the portraitof Chopin) laughed and chattered to Leslie as they went downstairstogether. Gwenna, falling to the lot of the blue-eyed young man as adinner-partner, altered her mind about her "gladness" almost before shecame to her third spoonful of clear soup.

  For it seemed as if this young man whose name she hadn't caught were notreally "nice" after all! That is, of course, he wasn't "_not_ nice." Buthe seemed stupid! Nothing in him! Nothing to say! Or else veryabsent-minded, which is just as bad as far as the other people at aparty are concerned. Or worse, because it's rude.

  Gwenna, taking in every detail of the pretty round table and the lightsunder the enormous parasol of a pink shade, approving the bankedflowers, the silver, the glass, those delicious-looking chocolates inthe filigree dishes, the tiny "Steinlen-kitten" menu-holders, Gwenna,dazed yet stimulated by the soft glitter in her eyes, the subdued buzzof talk in her ears, stole a glance at Leslie (who was looking her bestand probably behaving her worst) and felt that every prospect waspleasing--except that of spending all this time beside that silent,stodgy young man.

  "Perhaps he thinks it's me that's too silly to talk to. I knew Leslie'dmade me look too young with this sash! Yes! _indeed_ I look like someadvertisement for Baby's Outfitting Department," thought Gwenna, vexed."Or is it because he's the kind of young man that just sits and eats andnever really sees or thinks about anything at all?"

  Now, had she known it at the time, the thoughts of the blonde andblue-eyed youth beside her were, with certain modifications, somethingon these lines.

  "Dash that stud! Dash the thing. This pin's going into the back of myneck directly. I know it is. That beastly stud must have gone through acrack in the boards.... I shall buy a bushel of 'em to-morrow. Why aman's such a fool as to depend upon one stud.... I know this pin's goinginto the back of my neck when I'm not thinking about it. I shall squawkblue murder and terrify 'em into fits.... What have we here?" (with aglance from those waking eyes at the menu). "Good. Smiths always dothemselves thundering well.... Now, who are all these frocks? The Pink'Un. That's a Mrs.... Damsel in the bright yellow lampshade affairabout six foot high, that old Hugo's giving the glad eye to. OldHugo weighs about a stone and a half too much. Does _him_selfa lot _too_ well. Revolting sight. I wonder if I can work theblood-is-thicker-than-water touch on him for a fiver afterwards?...This little girl I've got to talk to, this little thing with the neckand the curly hair. Pretty. _Very_ pretty. Knocks the shine out of theothers. I know if
I turn my head to speak to her, though, that dashedpin will cut adrift and run into the back of my neck. _Dash_ that stud.Here goes, though----"

  And, stiffly and cautiously moving his head in a piece with hisshoulders, he turned, remarking at last to Gwenna in a voice that,though deep-toned and boyish, was almost womanishly gentle, "You don'tlive in town, I suppose?"

  The girl from that remote Welsh valley straightened her back a little."Yes, I do live in town, indeed!" she returned a trifle defensively."What made you think I lived in the country?"

  "Came up yesterday, I s'pose," the young man told himself as thesoup-plates were whisked away.

  Gwenna suspected a twinkle in those unusual blue eyes as he said next,"_Haven't_ you lived in Wales, though?"

  "Well, yes, I have," admitted Gwenna Williams in her soft, quaintaccent, "but how did you know?"

  "Oh, I guessed. I've stayed there myself, fishing, one time andanother," her neighbour told her. "Used to go down to a farmhouse there,sort of place that's all slate slabs, and china dogs, and light-cakesfor tea; ages ago, with my cousin. _That_ cousin," and he gave a littlejerk of his fair head towards the black-stocked, Trelawney-whiskeredyoung man who was engrossed with Miss Long. "We used to--Ah! _Dash!_"he broke off suddenly and violently. "It's gone down my back now."

  Gwenna, startled, gazed upon this stranger who was so good to look atand so extremely odd to listen to. Gone down his back? She simply couldnot help asking, "What has?"

  "That pin," he answered ruefully.

  Then he tilted back his fair head and smiled, with deep dimples creasinghis sunburnt cheeks and a flash of even white showing between hiscare-free, strongly-modelled lips. And hereupon Gwenna realised thatafter all she'd been right. He _was_ "nice." He began to laugh outright,adding, "You must think me an absolute lunatic: I'd better tell you whatit's all about----"

  He took a mouthful of sole and told her, "Fact is, I lost my collar-studwhen I was dressing, the stud for the back of my collar; and I had tofasten my collar down at the last minute with a pin. It's been gettingon my nerves. Has, really. I've been waiting for it to run into the backof my neck----"

  "So that was why he seemed so absent-minded!" thought Gwenna, feelingquite disproportionately glad and amused over this trifle. She said, "I_thought_ you turned as if you'd got a stiff neck! I thought you'd beensitting in a draught."

  He made another puzzling remark.

  "Draught, by Jove!" he laughed. "It's always fairly _draughty_ where Ihave to sit!"

  He went on again to mourn over his collar. "Worse than before, now," hesaid. "It's going to hitch up to the back of my head, and I shall haveto keep wiggling my shoulder-blades about as if I'd got St. Vitus'sdance!"

  Gwenna felt she would have liked to have taken a tiny safety-pin thatthere was hidden away under her sky-blue sash, and to have given it tohim to fasten that collar securely and without danger of pricking.Leslie, she knew, would have done that. She, Gwenna, would have been tooshy, with a perfect stranger--only, now that he'd broken the ice withthat collar-stud, so to speak, she couldn't feel as if this keen-eyed,deep-voiced young man were any longer quite a stranger. In her owndialect, he seemed, now, "so homely, like----"

  And over the next course he was talking to her about home, about theplaces where he'd fished in Wales.

  "There was one topping little trout-stream," he told her in that deepand gentle voice. "Bubbly as soda-water, green and clear asbottle-glass. Awfully jolly pools under the shade of the branches. Youlook right down and it's all speckly at the bottom, with brown-and-greystones and slates and things, under the green water. It's like----"

  He was looking straight at her, and suddenly he stopped. He had caughther eyes, full; as he had caught them before dinner in that mirror. Nowthat he was so close to them he saw that they were clear andbrowny-green, with speckles of slate-colour. They were not unlike thosepools themselves, by Jove.... Almost as if he had been fishing forsomething out of those depths he still looked down, hard into them....He forgot that he had stopped talking. And then under his own eyes hesaw the little thing begin to colour up; blushing from that sturdy whitethroat of hers to the brow where those thick brown cherub's-curls beganto grow. He looked away, hastily. Hastily he said, "It--er--it had apretty name, that stream. Quite a pronounceable Welsh name, for once:The Dulas."

  "Oh, dear me! Do _you_ know the Dulas?" cried Gwenna Williams indelight, forgetting that she had just been feeling acutely conscious andshy under the fixed stare of a pair of searching blue eyes. "Why! It'snot very far from there that's my home!"

  They went on talking--about places. Unconsciously they were leading thewhole table after them; the jerkiness went out of sentences; the pitchof the talk rose. It was all a buzz to Gwenna; but when, at the joint,her neighbour turned at last to answer a comment of the rose-colouredlady on his other hand, she amused herself by seeking to find out whatall the others were talking about.

  "I like some of his things very much. Now, his water-colours at the----"This was Mr. Smith, holding forth about pictures.... There appeared tobe a good deal of it. Ending up with, "And I know for a fact that heonly got two hundred guineas for that; two hundred! Incredible!"

  It certainly did seem to Gwenna an incredible amount of money for apicture, a thing you just hang on a wall and forgot all about. Twohundred guineas! What couldn't she, Gwenna, do with that! Travel allover the place for a year! Go flying every week, at Hendon!

  "What an experience! What a change it's made in the whole of Englishthought!" the pretty, rose-coloured lady was saying earnestly. "We cannever be the same again now. It's set us, as a nation, such an entirelynew and higher standard----"

  This was very solemn, Gwenna thought. What was it about?

  "I can't imagine, now, how we can have existed for so long without thatpoint of view," went on Mrs. Rose-colour. "As I say, the first time Iever saw the Russian Ballet----"

  The Russian Ballet--Ah! Gwenna had been with Leslie to see that; she hadthought herself in a fairyland of dazzling colour, and of movement aswonderful as that of the flying biplanes. It had been a magic world ofenchanted creatures that seemed half-bird, half-flower, who whirled andleaped, light as blown flame, to strangest music.... Gwenna had beendazed with delight; but she could not have talked about it as thesepeople talked. "Mr. Rose-colour," Mr. Smith, and Leslie's whiskeredyoung man were all joining in together now.

  "You won't deny that a trace of the Morbid----"

  "But that hint of savagery is really the attraction," Mr. Smithexplained rather pompously. "We over-civilised peoples, who know nosavagery in modern life, who have done with that aspect of evolution, Isuppose we welcome something so----"

  "Elemental----"

  "Primitive----"

  "Brutal?" suggested Mrs. Rose-colour, appreciatively.

  "And that infinitude of gesture----" murmured the whiskered man, eatingasparagus.

  "Yes, but Isadora----"

  "Ah, but Karsavina!"

  "You must admit that Nijinski is ultra-romantic----"

  "_Define_ Romance!"

  "Geltzer----"

  "Scheherazade----"

  Utterly bewildered by the strange words of the language spoken by halfLondon in early summer, Nineteen-fourteen, the young girl from the wildssought a glimpse of her friend's black-swathed head and vivid, impishface above the banked flowers of the table-centre. Did Leslie know allthese words? Was she talking? She was laughing flippantly enough;speaking as nonchalantly.

  "Yes, I'm going to the next Chelsea Arts Ball in that all-mauve rig hewears in the 'Spectre de la Rose.' I am. Watch the effect. 'Oh, Hades,the Ladies! They'll leave their wooden huts!' _You_ needn't laugh, Mr.Swayne"--this to the Chopin young man. "_Any_body would be taken in. Ican look quite as much of a man as Nijinski does. In fact, far----"

  Here suddenly Gwenna's neighbour leaned forward over the table towardshis hostess and broke in, his deep, gentle voice carrying above thebuzz.

  "Mrs. Smith! I say! I beg your pardon," he exclaimed quickly
, "but isn'tthat a baby crying like anything somewhere?"

  This remark of the young man's, and that which followed it, surprisedand puzzled Gwenna even more than his curious remark about draughts. Whowas he? What sort of a young man was this who always sat in draughts andwho could catch the sound of a baby's cry when even its own motherhadn't heard it through the thick _portiere_, the doors, the walls andthat high-pitched buzz of conversation round about the table?

  For Mrs. Smith had fled from the table with a murmured word of apology,and had presently returned just as the ornate fruit-and-jelly mould wasbeing handed round, and Gwenna heard her saying to Mrs. Rose-colour,"Yes, it was. He's off again now. He simply won't go down for Nurse--Ialways have to rush----"

  Gwenna turned to her companion, whose collar was now well up over theback of his neck. Wondering, she said to him, "_Fancy_ your hearingthat, through all this other noise!"

  "Ah, one gets pretty quick at listening to, and placing, noises," hetold her, helping himself to the jelly and shrugging his shoulders andthat collar at the same time. "It's being accustomed to notice anysqueak that oughtn't to be there, you know, in the engines. One gets tohear the tiniest sound, through anything."

  Gwenna, more puzzled than before, turned from that delectable pudding onher plate, to this strangely interesting young man beside her. She said:"Are you an engineer?"

  "I used to be," he said. "A mechanic, you know, in the shops, before Igot to be a pilot."

  "A pilot?" She wondered if he thought it rude of her, if it bothered himto be asked questions about himself like this, by just a girl? And stillshe couldn't help asking yet another question.

  She said, "Are you a sailor, then?"

  "Me?" he said, as if surprised. "Oh, no----"

  And then, quite simply and as if it were nothing, he made what was toGwenna an epic announcement.

  "I'm an airman," he said.

  She gasped.

  He went on. "Belong to a firm that sends me flying. Taking up passengersat Hendon, that sort of thing."

  "An airman? _Are_ you?" was all that Gwenna could for the moment reply."Oh ... _Oh!_"

  Perhaps her eyes, widening upon the face above her, were more eloquentof what she felt.

  That it was to her a miracle to find herself actually sitting next tohim! Actually speaking to one of these scarcely credible beings whom shehad watched this afternoon! _An airman_.... There was something aboutthe very word that seemed mysterious, uncanny. Was it because of itscomparative newness in the speech of man? Perhaps, ages ago, primitivemaids found something as arresting in the term "_A seaman_"? But thiswas an airman! It was his part to ride the Winged Victory, the aeroplanethat dared those sapphire heights above the flying-ground. Oh! And shehad been chattering to him about the slate-margined brooks and the fernyglens of her low-lying valley, just as if he'd been what this ingenuousmaid called to herself "_Any_ young man" who had spent holidays fishingin Wales? She hadn't known. _That_ was why he had those queer, keeneyes: blue and reckless, yet measuring.

  Not a sailor's, not a soldier's ... but the eyes of Icarus!...

  "I--I never heard your name," said Gwenna, a little breathless, timid."Which is it, please?"

  For reply he dabbed a big, boyish finger down on the slender name-cardamong the crumbs of his bread. "Here you are," he said, "Dampier; PaulDampier."

  So whirling and bewildered was Gwenna's mind by this time that shescarcely wondered over the added surprise. This, she just realised, wasthe name she had first heard bellowed aloud through the megaphone fromthe judges' stand. She hardly remembered then that a photograph of thissame aviator was tossed in among her wash-leather gloves, velvethair-bands, and her handkerchief-sachet in the top right-hand drawer ofher dressing-table at the Club. Certainly she did not remember at thisminute what she had said, laughing, over that portrait, to her twofriends on the flying-ground.

  There, she had admired the machine; that un-Antaeus-like thing that wasnot itself until it had shaken off the fetters of Earth from its skidsand wheels. Here, she marvelled over the man; _for he was part of it_.He was its skill and its will. He was the planner of those curves andbankings and soarings, those vol-planes that had left, as it were,their lovely lines visible in the air. His Icarian mind haddetermined--his large but supple body had executed them.

  A girl could understand that, without understanding how it was all done.Those big, boyish hands of his, of course, would grasp certainmechanisms; his feet, too, would be busy; his knees--every inch of hislithe length and breadth--every muscle of him; yes! even to the tinymuscles that moved his wonderful eyes.

  "I saw you, then," she told him, in a dazed little voice. "I was atHendon this afternoon! It was the first time in my life...."

  "Really?" he said. "What did you think of it all?"

  "Oh, splendid!" she said, ardently, though vaguely.

  How she longed to be able to talk quickly and easily to anybody, asLeslie could! How stupid he--the Airman--must think her! A littleshakily she forced herself to go on: "I did think it so wonderful, but Ican't explain, like. Ever. I _never_ can. But----"

  Perhaps, again, she was explaining better than she knew, with thatsmall, eager face raised to his.

  "Oh!" she begged. "Do _tell_ me about it!"

  He laughed. "Tell you what? Isn't much to tell."

  "Oh, yes, there must be! You tell me," she urged softly, unconsciousthat her very tone was pure and concentrated flattery. "Do!"

  And with another short, deprecating laugh, another shrug to his collar,the boy began to "tell" her things, though the girl did not pretend tounderstand. She listened to that voice, strong and deep, but womanishlygentle. She forgot that by rights she ought to pay some attention to herneighbour, the imitation Chopin. She listened to this other.

  Words like "_controls_," "_pockets_," "_yawing_," went in at one of theears under her brown curls and out at the other, leaving nothing but aquivering atmosphere of "the wonderfulness" of it all. Presently she sawthose hands of his, big, sensitive, clever, arranging forks and spoonsupon the sheeny tablecloth before her.

  "Imagine that's your machine," he said. "Now you see there are threepossible movements. _This_"--he tilted a dessert-knife from side toside--"_and this_"--he dipped it--"_and this_, which is yawing--youunderstand?"

  "No!" she confessed, with the quickest little gesture. "I couldn'tunderstand those sort of things. I shouldn't want to. What I really wantto know is--well, about _it_, like!"

  "About what?"

  "About _flying_!"

  He laughed outright again. "But, that _is_ flying!"

  She shook her head. "No, not what I mean. That's all--machinery!" Shepronounced the word "machinery" with something almost like disdain. Helooked at her as if puzzled.

  "Sorry you aren't interested in machinery," he said quite reprovingly,"because, you know, that's just what I _am_ interested in. I'm up to myeyes in it just now, pretty well every minute that I can spare. In factI've got a machine--only the drawings for it, of course, but----"

  "Do you mean you've _invented_ one?"

  "Oh, I don't know about 'invent.' Call it an improvement. It should beabout as different from the lumbering concern you saw me go up in to-dayas that's different from--say from one of those old Cambrian Railwaysteam engines," he declared exultantly. "It's----"

  Here, he plunged into another vortex of mysterious jargon about"automatic stability," about "skin friction," and a hundred othermatters that left the listening girl as giddy as a flight itself mighthave done.

  What she did understand from all this was that here, after all, in theMachine, must be the secret of all the magic. This was what interestedthe Man. An inventor, too, he talked as if he loved to talk of it--evento her; his steel-blue eyes holding her own. Perhaps he didn't even seeher, she thought; perhaps he scarcely remembered there was a girl there,leaving strawberries and cream untasted on an apple-green plate,listening with all her ears, with all of _herself_--as he, with all ofhimself, guided a machine. Ah, he talked of a just
-invented machine asin the same tone Gwenna had heard young mothers talk of their new-bornbabies.

  This was what he lived for!

  "Yes," concluded the enthusiast with a long sigh, "if I could get thatcompleted, and upon the market----"

  "Well?" Gwenna took up softly; ignorant, but following his every changeof tone. "Why can't you?"

  "Why not? For the usual reason that people who are keen to get thingsdone can't do 'em," the boy said ruefully, watching that responsiveshadow cloud her face as he told her. "It's a question of the dashedmoney."

  "Oh!" said the girl more softly still. "I see."

  So he, too, even he knew what it was to find that fettering want ofguineas clog a soaring impulse? What a _shame_, she thought....

  He thought (as many another young man with a Subject has thought ofsome rapt and girlish listener!) that the little thing was jollyintelligent, _for_ a girl, more so than you were supposed to expect ofsuch a pretty face---- Pretty? Come to look at her she was quite lovely.Made that baggage in the yellow dress and the Mrs. in the Pink look likea couple of half-artificial florists' blooms by the side of alily-of-the-valley freshly-plucked from some country garden, sappy andsturdy, and sweet. And her skin was like the bit of mother-of-pearl shewas wearing as a heart-shaped locket.

  Quite suddenly he said to her: "Look here! Should you care to go up?"

  Gwenna gasped.

  The whole room, the bright table and the chattering guests seemed now towhirl about her in a circle of shiny mist--as that aeroplane propellerhad whirled.... Care to go up? "_Care!_" Would she? Would she _not_?

  "Oh----" she began.

  But this throbbing moment was the moment chosen by her hostess to glancesmilingly at Mrs. Rose-colour and to rise, marshalling the women fromthe room.