The Boy with Wings

by Berta Ruck

  CHAPTER IV

  THE SONG OF ALL THE AGES

  "Now isn't life _extraordinary_?" thought Gwenna Williams, incoherentlyin the drawing-room as she sat on the yellow Empire sofa under themirror, holding a tiny coffee-cup and answering the small-talk of kindlyMrs. Smith. "Fancy, before this afternoon I'd never seen any flying! Andnow on the very same evening I'm asked to go flying myself! Me! Justlike that girl who was with him in the race! (I wonder is she a greatfriend of his.) I wonder when he'll take me? Will he come and settleabout it--oh, I do hope so!--before we all have to go away?"

  But there was no chance of "settling" this for some time after the dooropened to a little commotion of bass laughter, a trail of cigar-scent,and the entrance of the man.

  Mrs. Rose-colour, with some coquettish remark that Gwenna didn't catch,summoned the tall airman to the yellow-brocaded pouffe at her feet. Herhusband crossed over to Gwenna (who suddenly discovered that she hatedhim) and began talking Welsh folk-songs. Whereupon Hugo Swayne, fondlinghis Chopin curl, asked Leslie, who towered above him near the piano, ifshe were going to sing.

  "I'm in such a mood," he told her, "to listen to something rawly andentirely modern!"

  "You shall, then," agreed Miss Long, suddenly demure. "D'you knowthe--er--_Skizzen Macabres_, those deliciously perverse little things ofWedekind's? They've been quite well translated.... Righto, my dear"--inanswer to a nervous glance from her sister, "I'll only sing the_primmer_ verses. The music is by that wonderful new Hungarianperson--er--Sjambok."

  Her tall golden figure reflected itself in the ebony mirror of the pianoas Leslie, with a malicious gleam in the tail of her eye, sat down.

  "I shan't sing for _him_, all the same," she thought. "I shall sing forTaffy and that Air-boy. I bet I can hit on something that _they'll_ bothlike.... Yes...."

  And she struck the first chords of her accompaniment.

  And what was it, this "crudely modern" song that Leslie had chosen forthe sake of the two youngest people present at that party?

  There is a quintette of banjo-players and harpists who are sometimes"on" at the Coliseum in London, but who are more often touring ourColonies from Capetown to Salter, Sask. And wherever they may go, itseems, they bring down the house with that same song. For, to the heartsof exiled and homesick and middle-aged toilers that simple tune meansEngland, Home and Beauty still. They waltzed to it, long ago in theNineteenth Century. They "turned over" for some pretty girl who"practised" it. So, when they hear it, they encore it still, with a lumpin their throats....

  It was the last verse of this song that drifted in Leslie's deepcontralto, across this more enlightened drawing-room audience ofNineteen-fourteen. Softly the crooning, simply phrased melody stole out:

  "_Even to-day we hear Love's song of yore! Low in our hearts it rings for evermore. Footsteps may falter, weary grow the way, Still we can hear it at the close of day!_"

  --"and it's at least as pleasant as any of their beastly 'artistic'music," thought Leslie, rebelliously, as she sang:

  "_Still to the end_," (chord) "_while Life's dim shadows fall, Love will be found the sweetest song of all_!"

  She ended in a ripple of arpeggios, triumphantly, for she had glanced atthe two youngest people in the room. Little Gwenna's eyes were full ofthe facile tears of her race; and the Dampier boy's face was grave withenjoyment. Alas, for the musical taste of these two! They _had_ likedthe old song....

  The enlightened others were puzzled for a moment. _What_ was thatthing----?

  Mr. Swayne explained languidly. "Priceless old ditty entitled 'Love'sOld Sweet Song.' A favourite of the dear late Queen's, long before anyof US were thought of. Miss Long has been trying to pull our legs withit!"

  "Oh, Leslie, dear, you are so amusing always," said Mrs. Rose-colour,turning with her little superior smile to the singer. "But won't yousing something _really_?"

  Leslie's quick black eyes caught a glance of half-conscious,half-inarticulate sympathy that was passing between the youngest girl inthe room and the man who had taken her in to dinner. It was as if they'dsaid, together, "I wish she'd sing again. I wish she'd sing somethinglike _that_ again...."

  They were alone in their wish!

  For now Mrs. Smith sat down and played something. Something verylong....

  And still what Gwenna longed to happen did not happen. In spite of thatglance of sympathy just now, it did not happen.

  The Airman, sitting there on that brocaded _pouffe_, his long legsstretched out over the soft putty-coloured carpet, did _not_ come up toher to speak again of that so miraculously proffered flight in hisaeroplane. He went on being talked to by Mrs. Rose-colour.

  And when that pretty lady and her husband rose to go, the young girl inher corner had a very blank and tense moment. For she heard those peopleoffer to take Mr. Dampier with them and drop him at his rooms. Oh, thatwould mean that she, Gwenna, wouldn't have another word with him! He'dgo! And his invitation had been unanswered!

  "Care to go up?" he'd said--and Gwenna hadn't even had time to tell him"Yes!"

  Ah, it would have been too good to be true!----

  Very likely he'd forgotten what he'd said at, dinner....

  He hadn't meant it....

  He'd thought she'd meant "No."

  He was going now----

  But no. To her unspeakable relief she heard his deep "Thanks awfully,but I'm going on with Hugo presently. Taking him to meet some people atthe Aero Club."

  Now, just imagine that! thought the country girl. Here it was alreadyhalf-past ten at night; but he was going on to meet some more peoplesomewhere else. This wonderful party, which had marked an epoch in herlife, was nothing to him; it was just the beginning of the evening. And,after days in the skies, all his evenings were like this! Hadn't Mrs.Smith said when he came in, "We know you are besieged with invitations?"Oh, the inconceivably interesting life that was his! Why, why was Gwennanothing but a girl, a creature who, even nowadays, had to stay withinthe circumscribed limits where she was put, who could not see or be ordo _anything_, really! Might as well be born a _tortoise_....

  Here the voice of Mr. Hugo Swayne (to which she'd paid scant attentionso far) said something about taking Miss Long and her friend up toHampstead first, and that Paul could come along.

  Gwenna, enraptured, discovered that this meant in his, Mr. Swayne's,car. The four of them were to motor up to her and Leslie's Clubtogether. All that lovely long drive?

  But though "lovely," that journey back to Hampstead, speeding throughthe broad, uncrowded streets that the lights showed smooth and polishedas a ballroom floor, with the giant shadows of plane-tree leavesa-dance upon the pavement--that journey was unbelievably, relentlesslyshort.

  Mr. Swayne seemed to tear along! He was driving, with Leslie, gay andtalkative and teasing, beside him in front. The younger girl sat behindwith his cousin. The Airman was hatless; and he wore a light looseovercoat of which the big sleeve brushed the black satin of Gwenna'swrap.

  "Warm enough?" he asked, gently, and (as carefully as if she'd been someold invalid, she thought) he tucked a rug about her. Eagerly Gwennalonged for him to return to that absorbing question he'd put to her atthe dinner-table. But there seemed scarcely time to say a single wordbefore, with a jarring of brakes, the car drew up in the slanting roadbefore the big square block of the Club. The arc-lights blazed into thedepths of the tall chestnut-trees beside the street, while the fouryoung people stood for a moment clustered together on the asphalt walkbefore the glass-porch.

  "All over now," thought Gwenna with quite a ridiculously sharp littlepang as good-nights and good-byes were said.

  Oh! Wasn't he going to say anything else? About the flying? _She_couldn't!

  He was holding her hand (for good-night) while Mr. Swayne still laughedwith Leslie.

  "Look here," the Airman said abruptly. "About that flying----"

  "Yes! Oh, yes!" Gwenna returned in a breathless little flurry. Theremustn't be any _mistake_ about what she wished. She looked up into
hisholding eyes once more, and said quiveringly, "I would so love it!"

  "You would. Right," he said, and seemed to have forgotten that they hadshaken hands, and that he had not yet loosed her fingers from his largeand hearty grip. He shook hands again. "Then I'll come round And fix itup----"

  And the next instant, it seemed, he was whirled away from her again,this Stranger who had dropped into the middle of her life as it werefrom the skies which were his hunting-ground. There was the noise of aretreating car droning down the hill (not unlike the receding drone of abiplane in full flight), then the grating of a key in the lock of theClub door....

  Gwenna sighed. Then she went upstairs, humming softly, without knowingwhat the tune was, Leslie's song:

  "_Once in the dear, dead days beyond recall----_"

  Leslie followed her into her room where she turned up the gas.

  "I'll undo you, Taffy, shall I?... Enjoyed yourself rather, after all,didn't you?" said the elder girl, adding quickly, "What's the matter?"

  For Gwenna before the glass stood with a dismayed look upon her face.Her hand was up to her round white throat, touching the dimpled hollowwhere there had rested--where there rested no longer--thatmother-of-pearl pendant.

  "It's gone," she exclaimed ruefully.

  "What has, child? What have you dropped?"

  Gwenna, still with her hand at her throat, explained, "I've lost myheart".