The Boy with Wings

by Berta Ruck

  CHAPTER II

  THE BOSOM-CHUMS

  Through leafy side-streets and little squares of Georgian houses,Gwenna's taxi took her to a newer road that sloped sharply from theHeath at the top to the church and schools at the bottom.

  The taxi stopped at the glass porch of the large, red-brick buildingwith the many casement-windows, out of which some enterprising committeehad formed the Ladies' Residential Club. It was a place where a mixedassembly of young women (governesses, art-students, earnest suffrageworkers, secretaries and so on) lived cheaply enough and with a gooddeal of fun and noise, of feud and good-fellowship. The head of it was aclergyman's widow and the sort of lady who is never to be seen otherwisethan wearing a neat delaine blouse of the Edwardian era, a gold curbtie-pin, a hairnet and a disapproving glance.

  Gwenna passed this lady in the tessellated hall; she then almostcollided with the object of the lady's most constant disapproval.

  This was a very tall, dark girl with an impish face, a figure boyishlyslim. She looked almost insolently untidy, for she wore a shabby brownhat, something after the pattern of a Boy Scout's, under which her blackhair was preparing to slide down over the collar of a rain-coat which(as its owner would have told you) had seen at least two reigns. It wasalso covered with loose white hairs, after the fashion of garments whosewearers are continually with dogs.

  Gwenna caught joyously at the long arm in the crumpled sleeve.

  "Oh, Leslie!" she cried eagerly.

  For this was the bosom-chum.

  "Ha, Taffy-child! Got back early for this orgie of ours? Good,"exclaimed Leslie Long in a clear, nonchalant voice. It was very much thesame voice, Gwenna noticed now, as those people's at the flying-ground,who belonged to that easy, lordly world of which Gwenna knew nothing.Leslie, now, did seem to know something about it. Yet she was thehardest-up girl in the whole club. She had been for a short time a Sladestudent, for a shorter time still a probationer at some hospital. Nowall her days were given up to being paid companion to an old lady inHighgate who kept seventeen toy-Poms; but her evenings remained her own.

  "Afraid this party isn't going to be much of a spree for you," she toldGwenna as they went upstairs. "I don't know who's going, but mybrother-in-law's friends seldom are what you could describe as 'men.'Being a stockbroker and rich, he feels he must go in heavily for Art andMusic. Long hair to take you in, probably. Hope you don't awfully mindcoming to the rescue----"

  "Don't mind what it is, as long as I'm going out somewhere, and withyou, Leslie!" the younger girl returned blithely. "Will you do me up theback, presently?"

  "Rather! I'm dressing in your room. There's a better light there. Hurryup!"

  * * * * *

  Gwenna's long, narrowish front bedroom at the club was soon breathing ofthat characteristic atmosphere that surrounds the making of a full-dresstoilette; warm, scented soap-suds, hot curling-irons, powder, Odol,perfume. The room possessed a large dressing-table, a long wardrobe, anda fairly spacious chest-of-drawers. But all this did not prevent theheaping of Gwenna's bed with the garments, with the gilded, high-heeledcothurns and with the other gauds belonging to her self-invited guest.

  That guest, with her hair turbaned in a towel and her lengthy young bodysheathed in tricot, towered above the toilet-table like some modern'sillustration of a genie in the Arabian Nights. The small, moreclosely-knit Welsh girl, who wore a kimono of pink cotton crepe slippingfrom shoulders noticeably well modelled for so young a girl, tried tosteal a glimpse at herself from under her friend's arm.

  "Get out, Taffy," ordered the other coolly. "You're in my way."

  "I like _that_," remonstrated Gwenna, laughing. "It's _my_ glass,Leslie!"

  But she was ready to give up her glass or any of her belongings to thisfreakish-tongued, kind-hearted, unconventional Leslie Long. Nearlyeverybody at the club, whether they were of the advanced suffrage partyor the orthodox set, were "shocked" at her. Gwenna loved her. Leslie hadtaken a very homesick little Welsh exile under her wing from her firstnight at the club; Leslie had mothered her with introductions, loans,advice. Leslie had bestowed upon her that last favour which woman showsto sister-woman when she tells her "_at which shops to buy what_."Leslie had, practically, dressed her. And it was thanks to this thatGwenna had all the freshness and bloom of the country-girl without anyof the country-girl's all-concealing frumpiness.

  Leslie talked an obligato to everything that Leslie did.

  "I must dress first. I need it more, because I'm so much plainer thanyou," said she. "But never mind; it won't take me more than half an hourto transform myself into a credit to my brother-in-law's table. '_I ama chrysoberyl, and 'tis night._' The Sometimes-Lvely Girl, that's thetype I belong to. I was told that, once, by one of the nicest boys whoever loved me. Once I get my hair done, I'll show you. In the meantimeyou get well out of my way on the bed, Taffy, like a sweet little cherubthat sits up aloft. And then I'll explain to you why Romance isdead--oh, shove that anywhere; on the floor--and what the matter is withus modern girls. Fact is, we're losing our Femininity. We're losing thepower, dear Miss Williams, to please Men."

  She took up a jar of some white paste, and smeared it in a scented maskabove her features. As she did so she did not for one moment cease torattle.

  "Men--that is, Nice Men," she gave out unctuously, as she worked thepaste with her palms over her Pierrot-like face, "detest all thisskin-food--and massage. It's Pampering the Person. No nice girl wouldthink of it. As for this powder-to-finish business, it's only anotherform of make-up. They always see through it. (Hem!) And they abhoranything that makes a girl--a nice girl--look in the least----" Themocking voice was lowered at the word--"Actressy ...! This is what I wastold to-day, Taff, dear, by my old lady I take the Poms and Pekes outfor. I suppose she's never heard of any actress marrying. But she's amine of information. Always telling me where I've missed it, and how."

  Here the tall girl reached for the silver shoe-horn off Gwenna'sdressing-table, and proceeded to use it as the Greek youth used hisstrigil, stripping the warmed unguent from her face and neck. She wenton talking while Gwenna, putting a gloss on her short curls with a brushin each hand, listened and laughed, and watched her from the bed withgreeny-brown eyes full of an unreserved admiration. So far, LeslieLong's was the society in which Gwenna Williams most delighted. Theyounger, less sophisticated girl poured out upon her chum that affectionwhich is not to be bribed or begged. It is not even to be found in anybut a heart which is yet untouched, save in its dreams, by Love.

  "No Charm about us modern girls. No Mystery," enlarged Miss Long. "NoGlamour. (What is glamour? Is it a herb? State reasons for your answer.)What Nice Men love to see in a girl is The Being Apart. (Gem ofInformation Number Sixty-three.) Sweet, refined, modest; in every lookand tone the _gentlewoman_. Not a mere slangy imitation of themselves.(Chuck us that other towel.) Not a creature who makes herself cheap,calls out 'Hi!' and waves to them from the top of omnibuses. Ah, no, mydear; the girl who'll laugh and 'lark' with men on equal terms may_seem_ popular with them in a way, but"--here the voice was againlowered impressively--"that's not the girl they marry. She's just 'verygood fun,' 'a good sort,' a 'pal.' She's treated just as they'd treatanother young man. (I'd watch it!) Which is the girl with whom they fallin love, though? The shrinking, clinging, feminine creature who isall-wool--I mean all-woman, Taffy. _She_"--with enormous expression--"is_never_ left long without her mate!"

  "But," objected Gwenna doubtfully, "she--this old lady of yours--wasn'tmarried ever?"

  "Oh, never. Always lets you know that she has 'loved and lost.' Whetherthat means 'Killed at the Battle of Waterloo' or merely 'Didn't propose'I couldn't say.... Poor old dear, she's rather lonely, in spite of thegreat cloud of Poms," said the old lady's paid "daily companion,"dropping the mockery for the moment, "and I believe she's thankful tohave even me to talk to and scold about the horrid, unsexed girl ofTo-day.... Our lack of ... everything! Our clothes! Why, she, as a girl,would have sunk into the
ground rather than be seen in--you know thekind of thing. Our general shapelessness!--Well, of course," turning tomeet that adoring glance from the little heroine-worshipper on the bed,"you never see a young woman nowadays with what you could call a_figure_!"

  Here Leslie, reaching for the giant powder-puff she had flung on to thefoot of the bed, gave a backward bend and a "straighten" that would nothave disgraced an acrobat.

  "No waists! Now if there is a feature that a man admires in a girl it'sher tiny, trimly-corseted waist. My old lady went to a fancy-dress danceonce, in a black-and-yellow plush bodice as '_A Wasp_,' and everybodysaid how splendid. She never allowed herself to spread into anythingmore than Eighteens until she was thirty! But now the girls are allowedto slop about in these loud, fast-looking, golf-jackets or whatever theycall them, made just like a man's--and the young men simply aren'tmarrying any more. No wonder!"

  "Oh, Leslie! do you think it's true?" put in Gwenna, a trifle nervously.

  "So she told me, my dear. Told Bonnie Leslie, whose bag had been twoproposals that same week," said Miss Long nonchalantly. "One of 'em withme in the act of wearing that Futurist Harlequin's get-up at the ArtRebel's Revel. You know; the one I got the idea of from noticing thereflections of the ground-glass diamond patterns on me through thebath-room window. I say! she'd have sunk pretty well through into theAntipodes at the sight of me in that rig, what? Yet here was aninfatuated youth swearing that:

  '_He would like to have the chance All his life with me to dance, For he liked his partner best of all!_'"

  Leslie hummed the old musical-comedy tune. "Son of a _Dean_, too!"

  Gwenna looked wistfully thrilled. "Wasn't he--nice enough?"

  "Oh, a sweet boy. Handsome eyes. (I always want to pick them out with afork and put them into my own head.) But too simple for me, thanks,"said Leslie lightly. "He was _rather_ cut up when I told him so."

  "Didn't you tell your old lady--anything about it, Leslie?"

  "Does that kind of woman _ever_ get told the truth, Gwenna? I trow not.That's why the dear old legends live on and on about what men like andwho they propose to. Also the kind old rules, drawn up by people who arepast taking a hand in the game."

  Again she mimicked the old lady's voice: "Nice men have one standard forthe women they marry, and another (a very different standard!) forthe--er--women they flirt with. (So satisfactory, don't you know, forthe girl they marry. No _wonder_ we never find those marriages being acomplete washout!) But supposing that a sort of Leslie-girl came alongand insisted upon Marriage being brought up to the flirtationstandard--_hein_?"

  "But your old lady, Leslie? D'you mean you just let her go on thinkingthat you've never had any admiration, and that you've got to agree witheverything she says?"

  "Rather!" said Miss Long with her enjoying laugh. "I take it in withr-r-rapt attention, looking my worst, as I always do when I'm behavingmy best. Partly because one's bound to listen respectfully to one'sbread-and-butter speaking. And partly because I am genuinely interestedin her remarks," said Leslie Long. "It's the interest of a rather smartyoung soldier--if I may say so--let loose in a museum of obsoletesmall-arms!"

  Even as she spoke her hands were busy with puff and brush, withhair-pad, pins, and pencil. Gwenna still regarded her with that full,discriminating admiration which is never grudged by one attractive girlto another--of an opposite type.

  With the admiration for this was mixed a tiny dread, well known to theuntried girl--"If she is what They like, _they won't like me_!" ... Alsoa wonder, "What in the world would Uncle have said to _her_?"

  And a mental picture rose before Gwenna of the guardian she had left inthe valley. She saw his shock of white, bog-cotton hair, his face of aJesuit priest and his voice of a Welsh dissenting minister. She heardthat much-resented voice declaiming slowly. "Yes, Yes. I know themeaning of London and _self-respect and earning one's own living_. Iknow all about these College girls and these girls going to business andworking same as the men, 'shoulder to shoulder'--Indeed, it's verylikely! _'Something better to do, nowadays, than sit at home frowstingover drawn-thread work until a husband chooses to appear'_--All the samething! All the same thing! As it was in the beginning! _'A widerfield'_--for making eyes! And only two eyes to make them with. Oh,forget-ful Providence, not to let a modern girl have four! _'Largeropportunities'_--more chance of finding a young man! Yes, yes. That'sit, Gwenna!"

  Gwenna, at the mere memory of it, broke out indignantly, "Sometimes Ishould like to _stab_ old people!"

  "Meaning the celebrated Uncle Hugh? Too wise, isn't he?" laughed Leslielightly, with her hands at her hair. "Too full of home-truths about thebusiness girl's typewriter, and the art-student's palette and theshilling thermometer of the hospital nurse, eh? _He_ knows that they'rethe modern girl's equivalent of the silken rope-ladder--what, what? Andthe chaise to Gretna Green! _This Way Out. This Way--to Romance._ Whynot? Allow me, Madam----"

  Here she took up an oval box of eighteenth-century enamel, picked out atiny black velvet patch and placed it to the left of a careless redmouth.

  "Effective, I think?"

  "Yes; and how can you say there's such a thing as 'obsolete' in themiddle of all this?" protested Gwenna. "_Look_, how the old fashionscome up again!"

  "Child, curb your dialect. '_Look_,'" Leslie mimicked the Welsh girl'srising accent. "'The old fashshons.' Of course we modify the fashionsnow to suit ourselves. My old lady had to follow them just as they were.We," said this twentieth-century sage, "are just the same as she was inlots of ways. The all-important thing to us is still what she calls theMate!"

  "M'm,--I don't believe it would be to me," said Gwenna simply. Andthinking of the other possibilities of Life--fresh experiences, work,friendship, adventure (flying, say!)--she meant what she said. That wasthe truth.

  Side by side with this, not contradicting but emphasising it, wasanother truth.

  For, as in a house one may arrange roses in a drawing-room and recknothing of the homely business of the kitchen--then presently descendand forget, in the smell of baking bread, the flowers behind those otherdoors, so divided, so uncommunicating, so pigeon-holed are thecompartments, lived in one at a time, of a young maid's mind.

  Clearer to Gwenna's inner eyes than the larch green and slate purple ofher familiar valley had been the colours of a secret picture; herself ina pink summer frock (always a summer frock, regardless of time, seasonor place) being proposed to by a blonde youth with eyes as blue aslupins....

  Mocking Leslie was urging her, again in the old lady's tone, to "waituntil Mr. Right came along. Jewelled phrase! Such an old worldfragrance about it; moth powder, I suppose. Yet we know what it means,and they didn't. We know it isn't just anybody in trousers that would_be_ Mr. Right. (My dear! I use such strange expressions; I quite shockme sometimes)," she interpolated; adding, "It's a mercy for us in someways; so good if we do get the right man. Worse than it used to be if wedon't. Swings and roundabouts again. But it's still true that

  Two things greater than all things are, The first is Love and the second is War."

  "I can't imagine such a thing as war, now," mused Gwenna on the bed."Can you?"

  "Oh, vaguely; yes," said Leslie Long. "You know my people, poordarlings, were all in the Army. But the poisonously rich man my sistermarried says there'll never be any war again, except perhaps among a fewdying-out savage races. He does so grudge every ha'penny to the NavyEstimates; and he's quite violent about these useless standing armies!You know he's no sahib. '_His tongue is like a scarlet snake that dancesto fantastic tunes._' However, never mind him. _I'm_ the central figure.Which is to be my frock of fascination to-night? '_The White Hope?_' or'_The Yellow Peril?_' You're wearing your white, Taffy. Righto, thenI'll put on _this_," decided the elder girl.

  She stepped into and drew up about her a moulding sheath ofamber-coloured satin that clung to her limbs as a wave clings to abather--such was the fleeting fashion now defunct! There was a corollaof escholtzia-yellow about the strait hips, a heavy gold
en girdledangling.

  "There! Now! How's the Bakst view?" demanded Leslie.

  She turned slowly, rising on her toes, lifting the glossy black headabove a generous display of creamy shoulder-blades; posing, laughingwhile Gwenna caught her breath.

  "Les-lie!... And where _did_ you get it?"

  "Cast-off from an opulent cousin. What I should do if I didn't get a fewclothes given me I don't know; I should be sent back by the policeman atthe corner, I suppose. One can't _live_ at fancy dances at the AlbertHall," said Miss Long philosophically. "Don't I look like a Riletteadvertisement on the end page of _Punch_? Don't I vary? Would anybodythink I was the same wispy rag-bag you met in the hall? Nay. 'FromSlattern to Show-girl,' that's my gamut. But you, Taff, I've never seenyou look really plain. It's partly your curls. You've got the sort ofhair some boys have and all women envy. Come here, now, and let'sarrange you. I've already been attending to your frock."

  The frock which Gwenna was to wear that evening at the dinner-party wasone which she had bought, without advice, out of an Oxford Street shopwindow during a summer sale. It was of satin of which the dead-whitegleam was softened by a misty over-dress. So far, so good; but what ofthe heavy, expensive-looking garniture--sash, knots, and what-nots oflurid colour--with which the French artist's conception had been"brightened up" in this English version?

  "Ripped off," explained Leslie Long, firmly, as its owner gazed inhorror at a mutilated gown. "No cerise--it's a 'married' colour--Nomural decorations for you, Taffy, my child. '_Oh, what a power has whitesimplicity._' White, pure white, with these little transparent rufflesthat kind Leslie has sewn into the sleeves and round the fichuarrangement for you; and a sash of _very_ pale sky-blue."

  "Shan't I look like a baby?"

  "Yes; the sweetest portrait of one, by Sir Joshua Reynolds."

  "Oh! And I'd bought a cerise and _diamante_ hair-ornament."

  "Quite imposs. A hair-ornament? One of the housemaids will love it forher next tango tea in Camden Town. As for you, don't dare to touch yourcurls again--no, nor to put anything round your neck! Take away thatbauble!"

  "Aren't I even to wear my gold Liberty beads?"

  "No! you aren't. Partly because I am, in my hair. Besides, what d'youwant them for, with a throat like that? Necklaces are such a mistake,"decreed Leslie. "If a girl's got a nice neck, it hides the line; if shehasn't, it shows the defect up!"

  "Well," protested Gwenna doubtfully, "but mightn't you say that ofanything to wear?"

  "Precisely. Still, you can't live up to every counsel of perfection. Notin this climate!"

  "You might let me have my thin silver chain, whatever, and my littleheart that my Auntie Margie gave me--in fact, I'm going to. It's amascot," said Gwenna, as she hung the little mother-o'-pearl pendantobstinately about her neck. "There!"

  "Very well. Spoil the look of that lovely little dimply hollow you'vegot just at the base there if you must. A man," said Gwenna's chum witha quick, critical glance, "a man would find that very easy to kiss."

  "Easy!" said Gwenna, with a quicker blush of anger. "He wouldn't then,indeed!"

  "Oh, my dear, I didn't mean that," explained Leslie as she caught up hergloves and wrap and prepared to lead the way out of the room anddownstairs to the hall. They would walk as far as the Tube, then book toSouth Kensington. "All I meant was, that a man would--- that is,_might_--er--possibly get the better--ah--of his--say, his naturalrepugnance to _trying_----"

  A little wistfully, Gwenna volunteered: "One never has."

  "I know, Taffy. Not yet," said Leslie Long. "But one will. '_Cheer up,girls, he is getting on his boots!_' Ready? Come along."