The Boy with Wings
Page 28
CHAPTER VIII
THE GIRL HE LEFT BEHIND HIM
Gwenna Dampier was always to be truly thankful that at that thunderboltmoment of parting at the church door from the lover who had only beenher husband for the last quarter of an hour she had been too dazed toshow any emotion.
As at the Aviation Dinner she had been numbed by excess of joy, so, now,the shock had left her stony. She knew that she had turned quite a calmlittle face to the concerned and startled faces of the others as theyhurried up to ask what was happening that Paul should be getting intothat car alone. It was as quiet and calm to receive Paul's last kiss ashe held her strained for a moment almost painfully close to him,muttering, "Take care of yourself, Little Thing."
At the moment it struck her as rather funny, that.
_She_ was to take care of herself! She, who was just to stay quietly athome, doing nothing. And this was what he told her; he, who was goingoff on service, _where_, he himself didn't know. Off, to serve as anArmy Aviator, a flyer who swooped above enemy country, to shoot and tobe shot at; every instant in peril of his life.
She even smiled a little as the motor rattled down the hill with him,leaving her to Leslie, and to Uncle Hugh, and to Mr. Hugo Swayne.
She found herself thinking, sedately, that it was a good thing Paul hadgot most of his field service equipment yesterday; shopping while shehad shopped, while she had bought the white shoes and the silkstockings, the Princesse slip and the handful of other dainty girlishthings that had been all the _trousseau_ she could collect in such ahurry. Yes, Paul was all ready, she told her friends. She wouldn't seehim again before he left London, she expected.
She did not see him again.
That night at the Club, when she was still dazedly quiet--it was LeslieLong who had to swallow lumps in her own throat, and to blink backstarting tears from her eyes--that night there arrived the first note ofhis that had ever been addressed to:
"_Mrs. Paul Dampier._"
It was scrawled and hurried and in pencil. It began:
"My darling Wife." It told her to address to the War Office until she heard from him, and that she would hear from him whenever he could manage it. It ended up, "_I was so jolly proud of you because you took it like that, you can't think. I always thought you were a sweet Little Thing. I knew you'd be a plucky Little Thing too. Bless you. It's going to be all right._
"_Your affectionate husband_, "P. D."
It was Leslie who cried herself to sleep that night; not Gwenna Dampier.
Only gradually the girl came out of the stupor that had helped her, tothe realisation of what had really happened. He'd gone! She'd beenleft--without him! But as one source of help disappeared, another cameto hand.
It was that queer mixture of feelings that the more enlightened youngwomen at the Club would have called "The conventional point of view."
Miss Armitage at the Club tea-table said to her friends, "Nayowh, Idon't consider them at all 'splendid,' as you call it, these girls whogo about quite smiling and happily after their husbands have embarkedfor the War. Saying good-bye without shedding a tear, indeed; and allthat kind of thing. Shows they can't _care_ much. Heartless!Unsensitive! Callous, I call them."
The art-student with the Trilby hair, who was never quite certainwhether she agreed with all Miss Armitage's views or whether she didn't,remarked that really--really anybody who'd seen Miss Williams' face whenthat young man called for her _couldn't_ help thinking that she cared.Most awfully. If _she_ didn't make a fuss, it must be because she wasrather brave.
"Brive? _I_ don't call it that," declared Miss Armitage. "It's just 'thething to do' among those people. They've made a regular idol of thisstupid, deadening Convention of theirs. They all want to be alike.'Plucky.' 'Not showing anything.' Pah! I call it crushing out their ownindividuality for the sake of an ideal that isn't anything very _much_,if you ask me. They all catch it from each other, these wretched Armymen's wives. It's no more _credit_ to them than it is to some kinds ofdogs not to howl when you hold them up by their tiles."
The Trilby art-student put in shyly, "Doesn't that show that they'rewell bred?"
Miss Armitage, the Socialist, fixing her through her glasses, demanded,"When you sy 'Well bred' d'you mean the dogs are--or the women thatdon't cry?"
"Well--both, perhaps," ventured the art-student, blushing as she helpedherself to jam. Miss Armitage, with her little superior smile, gave out,"There's no such thing as well bred, what _you_ mean by it. What youmean's just pewer snobbery. The reel meaning of well bred is somebodywho is specially gifted in mind and body. Well, all you _can_ say of theminds of Army people is that they haven't got any. And I don't know that_I'm_ impressed by their bodies."
Here a student of music from the other side of the table said she sawwhat Miss Armitage meant, exactly. Only, as for Army people, GwennaWilliams couldn't have been called that. Her people were just sort ofWelsh Dissenters, awfully _against_ soldiers and that kind of thing.
"Doesn't matter. She's the sort of girl who's just like a chameleon:takes all her colour from the man she's supposed to be in love with,"said Miss Armitage loftily. "She'll know that she'll never _keep_ himunless she's just like the class of women he thinks most of. (As it is,I don't see what that empty-headed girl's got to keep a man _with_.)So, as I say, she'll _suppress_ her own identity, and grow the kind 'He'happens to like."
The art-student murmured that she supposed it didn't really _matter_, agirl doing that. Provided that the new "identity" which was "grown toplease the man" were a better one than the old.
Miss Armitage the Feminist, sniffed; silent with contempt for this idea.Then she turned again to the student of music, to conclude thesumming-up of the new bride's character.
"She'll be positively stimulated and buoyed-up, all the time, by thethought that 'He' considered it plucky of her to go on as if she wasquite pleased that he was fighting!" declared the lecturer. "You see! Byand by she'll believe she _is_ pleased. She'll catch the wholedetestable Jingow spirit, _I_ know. Syme attitude of mind as the Zuluwho runs amuck at the sound of a drum. Hysterical, that's what _I_ callwhat's at the root of it all!"
* * * * *
But whatever Miss Armitage, the Cockney suffragette, chose to call it,it was there, that Spirit.
In those few weeks after the declaration of war it spread and throveover all England. It made Life still worth living, and well worthliving, for thousands of anxious sweethearts, and of mothers giving onlysons for their country, and of wives who missed closest comrades, and ofyoung widows who had but lately been made brides.
It inspired, through the girl he left behind him, the man who went towar; and thus its influence became part of that subtle but crucial thingwhich is known as the Moral of an Army, and of an Empire and of aCivilisation.
It was, as Leslie Long, the lover of quotations, often quoted to herselfin those days:
"The Voice to Kingly boys To lift them through the fight; And comfortress of Unsuccess To give the dead Good-night.
"A rule to trick the arithmetic Too base of leaguing odds, The spur of trust, the curb of lust, The hand-maid of the gods."
* * * * *
Little Gwenna, the wife who had been left at the church door, took allthe help that Spirit gave her.
Two days after her wedding her Uncle Hugh went back to the slate-roofedvillage that was wedged between those steep, larch-grown Welch hills.But, though his niece found that this "dreat-ful" old man could be allthat was gentle and kind for her, she refused to go home, as he beggedher, with him.
She said she must live somewhere where she could "see a little bit ofwhat was going on." She must have some work, real work, to fill hertime. She thanked him; she would let him know directly she felt shecould come down to Wales. But just now, please, she wanted nothing butto get back to Mr
s. Crewe, her Aeroplane Lady at the Works. She'd goback just as if nothing had happened.
She returned, to find changes at that Aircraft Factory.