The Boy with Wings Page 8

  CHAPTER VII

  A BACHELOR'S TEA-PARTY

  The first of a series of "things that got in the way" of Gwenna's makingan appointment to go flying occurred on that Sunday afternoon, whenLeslie and she were to have tea at Paul Dampier's place.

  "A mixture of chaos and comfy chairs, I expect; ash everywhere, and_beastly_ cakes. (I know these bachelor tea-parties.) That," Lesliesaid, "is what his 'place' will be like."

  Gwenna, as usual, hadn't wasted any thoughts over this. She had been toofull of what their host himself would say and do--about the flying. Shewas all ready, in the white dress, the white hat with the wings, half anhour after Sunday mid-day dinner at the Ladies' Club. But it was verynearly half-past four by the time Mr. Dampier did come, as he hadpromised, to fetch the two girls.

  He came in the car that had driven them back on the night of thedinner-party.

  And he was hurried, and apologetic for his lateness. He even seemed alittle shy. This had the effect of making Gwenna feel quiteself-possessed as she took the seat beside him ("I hate sitting by thedriver, really. Makes me _so_ nervous!" Leslie had declared) andinquired whether he borrowed his cousin's car any time he had visitors.

  "Well, but Hugo's _got_ everything," he told her, with a twinkle, "so Ialways borrow anything of his that I can collar!"

  "Studs, too?" asked Gwenna, quickly.

  "Oh, come! I didn't think it of you. _What_ a pun!" he retorted.

  She coloured a little, shy again, hurt. But he turned his head to lookat her, confided to her: "It was _on_ the chest-of-drawers, all thetime!"

  And, as the car whizzed westwards, they laughed together. Thatdinner-table incident of the collar--or collared--stud brought, for thesecond time, a sudden homely glow of friendly feeling between this boyand girl.

  She thought, "He's just as easy to get on with as if he were anothergirl, like Leslie----"

  For always, at the beginning of things, the very young woman comparesher first man-friend with the dearest girl-chum she has known.

  --"Or as if he were just nobody, instead of being so wonder-ful, and anairman, good gracious!"

  Appropriately enough for an airman, his place seemed to be nearly on thehouse-tops of a block of buildings near Victoria Street.

  The lift carried them up past six landings and many boards inscribedwith names of firms. It stopped at the seventh story, almost directlyopposite a cream-coloured door with a small, old-fashioned brassknocker, polished like gold.

  Paul Dampier tapped sharply at it.

  The door was opened by a thick-set man in an excellent suit of clothesand with the face of a wooden sphinx.

  "Tea as soon as you can, Johnson," said the young Airman over hisshoulder, as the trio passed in.

  The long sitting-room occupied half the flat and its windows took up thewhole of one side. It was to these open windows that Gwenna turned.

  "Oh, what a view!" she cried, looking out, enraptured at the height andairiness, looking past the leads, with their wooden tubs of standardlaurel-bushes, among which pigeons were strutting and bridling andpecking crumbs. She looked down, down, at the bird's-eye view of London,spread far below her in a map of grey roofs and green tree-tops under asoft mist of smoke that seemed of the clouds themselves.

  "Oh, can't you see for miles!" exclaimed Gwenna. "There's St. Paul's,looks like a big grey soap-bubble, coming up out of the mist! Oh, youcan see between a crack in the houses, our place at Westminster! It'slike a cottage from here! Oh, and that iron lacey thing on the roof!Even this must be something like being up in an aeroplane, I shouldthink! Look, Leslie!"

  Miss Long seemed more engrossed in looking round Mr. Dampier's bachelorsitting-room. It was incredibly luxurious compared to what she'dexpected. The polished floor was black and shiny as the wood of thepiano at the further end, the Persian rugs softly brilliant. In themiddle of the Adams mantelpiece simpered an exquisite Chelseashepherdess; to the left and right of her there stood squat toys inivory, old slender-stalked champagne-glasses holding sweet-peas. Andupon the leaf-brown walls were decorations that seemed complacently todraw attention to the catholic taste of their owner. A rareeighteenth-century print of Tom Jones upon his knees, asking"forgiveness" of his Sophia, hung just above a Futurist's grimace inpaint; and there was a frieze of ultra-modern French fashion-designs,framed in _passe-partout_, from the "_Bon Ton_."

  "What a--what a surprising number of pictures you have, Mr. Dampier,"said Leslie, mildly. "Hasn't he, Taffy?"

  Gwenna, turning at last from the window, realised dimly that thissophisticated room did seem somehow out of keeping as an eyrie for thiseagle. The view outside, yes! But these armchairs? And she wouldn't havethought that he would have bothered to have things _pretty_, likethis----

  "And what a lot of books you've got," she said. For the wall opposite tothe windows was taken up by bookshelves, set under a trophy of swords ofout-of-date patterns, and arranged with some thought.

  The top shelves held volumes of verse, and of plays, from Beaumont andFletcher to Galsworthy. The Russian novelists were ranged together; alsothe French. There was a corner for Sudermann and Schnitzler. A shelffurther down came all the English moderns, and below that all the_Yellow Books_, a long blue line of all the _English Reviews_, from thebeginning; a stack of _The New Age_, and a lurid pink-covered copy of_Blast_.

  But before Gwenna could wonder further over these possessions of thisyoung man, more incongruous possessions were brought in by theSphinx-faced man-servant; a tea-table of beaten copper, apeasant-embroidered cloth, a tea-service of old Coalport; with a silverspirit-kettle, with an iced cake, with toast, and wafer,bread-and-butter and cress-sandwiches and Parisian _petits-fours_ thatall seemed, as the young girl put it simply to herself, "So unlike_him_!"

  Her chum had already guessed the meaning of it all.

  The Dampier boy's rooms? _His_ library and ornaments? Ah, no. He'd neverread one of all those books there. Not he! And these were not the typeof "things" he'd buy, even if he'd had the money to throw away, thoughtLeslie. It was no surprise to that young woman when the legitimate ownerof this lavishly appointed _garconniere_ made his sudden appearance inthe middle of tea.

  The click of a latchkey outside. Two masculine voices in the hall. Thenthe door was thrown open.

  There walked in a foreign-looking young man, with bright dark eyes and asmall moustache, followed by Mr. Hugo Swayne, attired in a Victorianmode that, as Leslie put it afterwards, "cried '_Horse, horse!_' wherethere was no horse." His tall bowler was dove-grey; his black stockallowed a quarter-inch of white collar to appear; below his strikingwaistcoat dangled a bunch of seals and a fob. This costume Leslierecognised as a revival of the Beggarstaff Touch. Gwenna wondered whythis young man seemed always to be in fancy dress. Leslie could havetold her that Mr. Swayne's laziness and vanity had led him to abandonhimself on the coast of Bohemia, where he had not been born. His fatherhad been quite a distinguished soldier in Egypt. His father's son tookthings more easily at the Grafton Gallery and the Cafe Royal andArtists' Clubs. He neither painted, wrote, nor composed, but his lifewas set largely among flatterers who did these things--after a fashion.

  He came in saying, "Now this is where I live when I'm----"

  He broke off with a start at the sight of the party within. The girlsturned to him with surprised and smiling greeting.

  Paul Dampier, fixing him with those blue eyes, remarked composedly,"Hullo, my dear chap. Have some tea, won't you? I'll ring for Johnson tobring in two more cups."

  "That will be very nice," said Hugo Swayne, rising to the occasion withall the more grace because he was backed up by a tiny understandingglance from Miss Long. And he introduced his young Frenchman by a namethat made Leslie exclaim, "Why! You are that Post-Impressionist painter,aren't you?"

  "Not I, mademoiselle, but my brother," returned Hugo's French friend,slowly and very politely. His dark face was simple and intelligent asthat of a nice child; he sat up as straight in his chair as he talked."It is for that Mr. Swayne
, who is admirer of my brother's pictures, isso amiable for to show me London. Me, I am not artiste. I am ingenieuronly."

  "'Only'!" thought Gwenna over her teacup.

  Surely any one should be proud of being an engineer, considering thatMr. Dampier had thus begun _his_ career; he who was now in what theromantic girl considered the First of All Professions? Perhaps herattitude towards the Airman as such was noted by the Airman's cousin.Hugo, who had dropped a little heavily into the softest chair near MissLong, turned his Chopinesque profile against a purple cushion to shoot arather satirical glance at the cleaner-built youth in the worn greysuit.

  "Now, how like a man! He doesn't admire Taffy particularly, but he'spiqued to see her admire another type." Leslie summed this up quickly toherself. "Not really a bad sort; he behaved well about the invasion ofthese rooms. But he's like all these well-off young men who potter aboutantique shops when they ought to be taking exercise--he's plenty offeminine little ways. Since they call spitefulness 'feminine'!"

  There was a distinctly spiteful note in the young man's voice as he madehis next remark to his cousin.

  This remark surprised even Leslie for a moment.

  And to Gwenna's heart it struck with a sudden, unreasonable shock ofconsternation.

  For Mr. Swayne inquired blandly across the tea-table:

  "Well, Paul; how's your _fiancee_?"