The Boy with Wings

by Berta Ruck

  CHAPTER VIII

  LAUGHING ODDS

  Before he answered, Gwenna had time to think smartingly, "His _fiancee_!There! I might have _known_ he was engaged. I might have guessed it!It's nothing to do with me.... Only ... I believe _that's_ what's goingto get in the way of my flying with him. She won't let him. I mean he'llalways be taking her up! And I know who it is, too. It's sure to be theone called Muriel that I saw go up with him at Hendon with the red hairand the scarf. I sort of guessed when I heard they were going uptogether that she must be his _fiancee_."

  And all the while her eyes were, apparently, on the silver stand of thespirit-kettle, they watched the young Airman's face (which looked alittle sheepish). She listened, tensely, for his reply. Quite shortlyPaul Dampier, still munching cake, said, "Who? Oh! Going on as usual,thanks."

  "Now I may tell you that _that's_ merely a pose to conceal devotion,"laughed his cousin, turning to Gwenna. "Just as if every moment were notgrudged that he spends away from HER!"

  "Is it?" said the young girl with a smile. There was a bad lump in herthroat, but she spoke with her most carefully-fostered "English"accent. "I--I suppose that's natural!" she remarked.

  Hugo, fondling his Chopin curl again, went on amusing himself with thischosen subject.

  "But, as is so often the case with a young man's fancy," he announced,"nobody else sees anything in 'her'!"

  The stricken Gwenna looked quickly at young Dampier, who was cutting theTitan wedges that men call "slices," of cake. How would _he_ take itthat it had been said of his adored one that no one saw anything in her?

  He only gave a short laugh, a confident nod of his fair head and said,"They will, though."

  "Infatuated youth!" commented Hugo Swayne, resignedly, leaning back."And he tries to cover it up by seeming casual. '_Going on as usual_' issaid just as a blind. It sounds so much more like a mere wife than a_fiancee_, don't you think?"

  "Ah, but you are cynique, monsieur," protested the young Frenchman,looking mildly shocked. "For you it is not sacred, the love for a wife?"

  "Oh, look here! Hadn't you better explain to them," broke in PaulDampier boyishly, having finished a large mouthful of his cake, "thatyou're rotting? _Fiancee_, indeed. Haven't got such a thing in theworld, of course."

  At this Gwenna suddenly felt as if some crushing weight ofdisappointment had fallen from her. "It's because I shall be able to goflying with him after all," she thought.

  Young Dampier, rising to take her cup, grumbled laughingly, "D'yousuppose girls will look at a man nowadays who can't afford to spend thewhole of his time gadding about after 'em, Hugo, as you can, or blowingwhat's my salary for an entire year on their engagement-rings----"

  "My dear fellow, no girl in the world exacts as much of a man's time andmoney as that _grande passion_ of yours does," retorted Hugo Swayne, notill-naturedly. And turning to Leslie, he explained: "What I call Paul's_fiancee_ is that eternal aeroplane he's supposed to be making."

  "Ah!" said Gwenna, and then blushed violently; partly because she hadn'tmeant to speak, and partly because this had drawn the blue eyes of theAirman quickly upon herself.

  "Yes, that incessant flying-machine of his," enlarged Mr. Swayne,lolling back in his chair and addressing the meeting. "She--I believeit's correct to call the thing 'she'?--is more of a nuisance even thanany engaged girl I've ever met. She interferes with everything this mandoes. Ask him to come along to a dance or the Opera or to see someamusing people, and it's always 'Can't; I'm working on the cylinder orthe spiral or the Fourth Dimension' or whatever it is he does think he'sworking on. Practically 'she' spends all the time he's away from herringing him up, or getting him rung up, on the telephone. 'She' eats allhis spare cash, too----"

  "In steel instead of chocolate, I suppose?" smiled Leslie. "And mustshe be humoured? She seems to have every drawback of a young woman with'a diamond half-hoop.' Is she jealous, as well?"

  And then, while taking a cigarette from Hugo's case, the elder girlmade, lightly, a suggestion that the listening Gwenna was fated toremember.

  "What would happen," asked Leslie dryly, "if a real flesh-and-blood_fiancee_ were to come along as a rival to the one of machinery?"

  "Nothing would happen," Hugo assured her, holding out a lighted match."That's why it would be rather interesting to watch. The complication ofthe Aeroplane or the Lady. The struggle in the mind of the youngInventor, what? The Girl"--he tossed aside the match and glancedfleetingly at the grave cherub's-face under Gwenna's white-wingedhat--"The Girl versus the Flying Machine. I'd lay fifteen to one on theMachine, Miss Long."

  "Done," said Leslie, demurely but promptly. "In half-crowns."

  "Yes! You'd back your sex, of course," Hugo took up gaily. The youngFrenchman murmured: "But the Machine--the Machine is also of the sex ofMademoiselle."

  Here, suddenly, the silently listening Gwenna gave a tiny shiver. Sheturned her head abruptly towards the open windows behind her with thestrutting pigeons and the sailing clouds beyond. It had seemed to thefanciful Celt that there in that too dainty room now hazy withcigarette-smoke, in that careless company of two girls and three youngmen, she had felt the hint of another Presence. It was rather horrid andghostly--all this talk of a Machine that was made more of than a Woman!A Machine who "clawed" the man that owned her, just like a jealousbetrothed who will not let her lover out of her sight! And supposingthat Conflict did come, on which Gwenna's chum and Mr. Dampier's cousinhad laid their laughing bets? The struggle between the sweetheart ofsteel springs and the sweetheart of soft flesh and warm blood? For oneclear instant Gwenna knew that this fight would, must come. It wascoming----

  Then she turned her head and forgot her presentiments; coming back tothe light-hearted Present. She watched Leslie, to whom the youngFrenchman had been talking; he was now fixing dark earnest eyes upon"Mademoiselle Langue" as she, in the rather stilted phraseology withwhich our nation speaks its own language for the benefit of foreigners,expounded to him an English story.

  There was a short pause.

  Then the room rang to the laughter of the foreigner. "Ha! Yes! I haveunderstood him! It is very amusing, that! It is good!" he crieddelightedly, with a flash of white teeth and dark eyes. "He say, 'Thereare parts of it that are excellent!' Aha! _Tres spirituel_," and helaughed again joyously over the story of the Curate's Egg, while Hugomurmured something about how stimulating it was to hear, for once, theImmemorial Anecdote fall upon Virgin Soil.

  The young Airman moved nearer to Gwenna, who, still watching Leslie,gave a little start to hear that deep and gentle voice so close besideher as he spoke.

  "Look here, we haven't settled up yet," he said, his voice gentle butcarrying above the chatter of the others. "About that flying. Sundaythis week I have got to be off somewhere. Now, are you free nextSaturday?"

  Gwenna, eager and tremulous, was just about to say, "Yes." But HugoSwayne interrupted.

  "I say, I hate to make mischief. But if you're talking aboutSaturday----? D'you remember, Paul? It was the only day I could take youdown to Ascot to see Colonel Conyers."

  "Oh, Lord, so it was," said the young Airman, turning an apologetic faceto the girl. "I'm so sorry," he explained, "but this is a man I'vesimply got to get hold of if I can. It's the Air-craft Conyers--'Cuckoo'Conyers they call him. And he was a friend of Hugo's father, and whatI've been trying to see him about is working the War-office to take upmy new Machine----"

  "The _Fiancee_ again, you notice," laughed his cousin, with animperceptible aside to Leslie. "Score to the Aeroplane."

  "Yes, I see," said Gwenna, nodding at the Airman. "Of course! I mean ofcourse I don't mind!"

  "Then shall we say Saturday week for you to come up with me instead?"suggested young Dampier.

  And Gwenna agreed to the date, thinking, "If only nothing stops itagain! If only there isn't something else, then, to do with his Machine!That Machine! I----" Here she paused.

  After all, it would be too ridiculous to allow oneself even to thinkthat one "_hated_" a ma
chine!