CHAPTER XVIII
THE OBVIOUS THING
She was in this mood to win a waiting game on the day that Paul Dampiercame down to the Aircraft Works.
This was just one of the more wonderful happenings that waited round thecorner and that the young girl might hope to encounter any day.
The first she knew of it was from hearing a remark of the AeroplaneLady's to one of her French mechanics at the lathes.
"This will make the eighteenth pattern of machine that we've turned outfrom this place," she said. "I wonder if it's going to answer, Andre?"
"Which machine, madame?" the man asked. He was a big fellow, dark andthick-haired and floridly handsome in his blue overalls; and his brighteyes were fixed interestedly upon his principal as she explained throughthe buzz and the clack and the clang of machinery in the large room,"This new model that Colonel Conyers wants us to make for him."
Gwenna caught the name. She thought breathlessly, "That's _his_ machine!He's got Aircraft Conyers to take it up and have it made for him! It's_his_!"
She'd thought this, even before the Aeroplane Lady concluded, "It's theidea of a young aviator I know. Such a nice boy: Paul Dampier ofHendon."
The French mechanic put some question, and the Aeroplane Lady answered,"Might be an improvement. I hope so. I'd like him to have a show,anyhow. He's sending the engine down to-morrow afternoon. They'll bringit on a lorry. Ask Mr. Ryan to see about the unloading of it; I may notget back from town before the thing comes."
Now Mr. Ryan was that red-haired pupil who had conducted Gwenna from thestation on the day of her first appearance at the Works. Probably LeslieLong would have affirmed that this Mr. Ryan was also a factor in thechange that was coming over Gwenna and her outlook. Leslie consideredthat no beauty treatment has more effect upon the body and mind of awoman than has the regular application of masculine admiration.Admiration was now being lavished by Mr. Ryan upon the little new typistwith the face of a baby-angel and the small, rounded figure; and Mr.Ryan saw no point in hiding his approval. It did not stop at glances.Before a week had gone by he had informed Miss Williams that she was apublic benefactor to bring anything so delightful to look at as herselfinto those beastly, oily, dirty shops; that he hated, though, to see awoman with such pretty fingers having to mess 'em up with that viledope; and that he wondered she hadn't thought of going on the stage.
"But I can't act," Gwenna had told him.
"What's that got to do with it?" the young man had inquired blithely."All they've got to do is to _look_. You could beat 'em at that."
"Oh, what nonsense, Mr. Ryan!" the girl had said, more pleased than sheadmitted to herself, and holding her curly head erect as a brown tulipon a sturdy stem.
"Not nonsense at all," he argued. "I tell you, if you went into musicalcomedy and adopted a strong enough Cockney accent there'd be anotherStage and Society wedding before you could say 'knife.' You could getany young peer to adore you, Miss Gwenna, if you smiled at him over thehead of a toy pom and called him 'Fice.' I can just see you becoming aGaiety puss and marrying some Duke----"
"I don't want to marry any Dukes, thanks."
"I'm sure I don't want you to," Mr. Ryan had said softly. "I'd miss youtoo much myself...."
The fact is that he was a flirt for the moment out of work. He was alsoof the type that delights in the proximity of "Girl"--using the word asone who should say "Game." "Girl" suggested to him, as to many youngmen, a collective mass of that which is pretty, soft, andto-be-made-love-to. He found it pleasant to keep his hand in by payingthese compliments to this new instalment of Girl--who was rather alittle pet, he thought, though _rather_ slow.
As for Gwenna, she bloomed under it, gaining also in poise. She learnedto take a compliment as if it were an offered flower, instead of dodgingit like a brick-bat, which is the very young girl's failing. She foundthat even if receiving a compliment from the wrong man is like wearing aright-hand glove on the left hand, it is better than having no gloves.(Especially it is better than _looking_ as if one had no gloves.)
The attentions of young Ryan, his comment on a new summer frock, therose laid by him on her desk in the morning; these things were notwithout their effect--it was a different effect from any intended by thered-haired pupil, who was her teacher in all this.
She would find herself thinking, "He doesn't look at me nearly so much,I notice, in a trimmed-up hat, or a 'fussy' blouse. Men don't like themon me, perhaps." (That blouse or hat would be discarded.) Or, "Well! ifso-and-so about me pleases him, it'll please other men."
And for "men" she read always, always the same one. She never realisedthat if she had not met Paul Dampier she _might_ have fallen in lovewith young Peter Ryan. Presently he had begged her to call him "Peter."
She wouldn't.
"I think I'd do anything for you," young Ryan had urged, "if you askedfor it, using my Christian name!"
Gwenna had replied: "Very well! If there's anything I ever want,frightfully badly, that you could give me, I shall ask for it likethat."
"You mean there's nothing _I_ could give you?" he had reproached her, inthe true flirt's tone. It can sound so much more tender, at times, thandoes the tone of the truest lover. A note or so of it had found its wayinto Gwenna's soft voice these days.
Yes; she had half unconsciously learned a good deal from Mr. Ryan.
* * * * *
"I say! Miss Gwenna!"
Mr. Ryan's rust-red head was popped round the door of the Wing-roomwhere Gwenna, alone, was pouring dope out of the tilted ten-gallon canon the floor into her little pannikin.
"Come out for just one minute."
"Too busy," demurred the girl. "No time."
"Not just to look," he pleaded, "at the really _pretty_ job I'm makingof unloading this lorry with Dampier's engine?"
Quickly Gwenna set down the can and came out, in her pinafore, to thebreezes and sunshine of the yard outside. It was as much because shewanted to see what there was to be seen of that "_Fiancee_" of theaviator's, as because this other young man wanted her to admire the workof his hands.
Those hands themselves, Gwenna noticed, were masked and thick, half wayup his forearms, with soft soap. This he seemed to have been smearing oncertain boards, making a sliding way for that precious package thatstood on the low lorry. The boards were packed up in banks and stages,an irregular stairway. This another assistant was carefully trying witha long straight edge with a spirit level in the middle of it; and athird man stood on the lorry, resting on a crowbar and considering thepackage that held the heart of Paul Dampier's machine.
"You see if she doesn't come down as light as a bubble and stop exactly_there_," said Mr. Ryan complacently, digging his heel into a pillowyheap of debris. "Lay those other planks to take her inside, Andre." Hewiped his brow on a moderately clear patch of forearm, and moved away tocheck the observations of the man in the shirt-sleeves.
Gwenna, watching, could not help admiring both this self-satisfied youngmudlark and his job. This was how women liked to see men busy: withstrenuous work that covered them with dirt and sweat, taxing theirbrains and their muscles at the same time. Those girls who were so keenon the Enfranchisement of Women and "Equal Opportunities" and thosethings, those suffragettes at her Hampstead Club who "couldn't see wherethe superiority of the male sex was supposed to come in"--Well! Thereason why they "couldn't" was (the more primitive Gwenna thought)simply because they didn't see enough men at _this_ sort of thing. Themen these enlightened young women knew best sat indoors all day,writing--_that_ sort of thing. Or talking about fans, like Mr. Swayne,and about "the right tone of purple in the curtains" for a room. Thewomen, of course, could do that themselves. They could also go tocolleges and pass men's exams. Lots did. But (thought Gwenna) not manyof them could get through the day's work of Mr. Ryan, who had also beenat Oxford, and who not only had forearms that made her own look likeivory toys, but who could plan out his work so that if he said that thatsquat, ponderous case would "
stop exactly _there_"--stop there it would.She watched; the breeze rollicking in her curls, spreading the folds ofher grey-blue pinafore out behind her like a sail, moulding her skirtto her rounded shape as she stood.
Then she turned with a very friendly and pretty smile to young Ryan.
It was thus that Paul Dampier, entering the yard from behind them, cameupon the girl whom he had decided not to see again.
He knew already that "his little friend," as old Hugo insisted uponcalling her, had taken a job at the Aircraft Works. He'd heard that fromhis cousin, who'd been told all about it by Miss Long.
And considering that he'd made up his mind that it would be better allround if he were to drop having anything more to say to the girl, youngDampier was glad, of course, that she'd left town. That would makethings easier. He wouldn't seem to be avoiding her, yet he needn't seteyes upon her again.
Of course he'd been glad. He hadn't _wanted_ to see her.
Then, at the end of his negotiations with Colonel Conyers, he'dunderstood that he would have to go over and pay a visit to theAeroplane Lady. And even in the middle of the new excitement he hadremembered that this was where Gwenna Williams was working. And for amoment he'd hesitated. That would mean seeing the Little Thing againafter all.
Then he'd thought, Well? Fellow can't _look_ as if he were trying tokeep out of a girl's way? Besides, chances were he wouldn't see herwhen he did go, he'd thought.
It wasn't likely that the Aeroplane Lady kept her clerk, or whatever shewas, in her pocket, he'd thought.
He'd just be taken to where the P.D.Q. was being assembled, he'dsupposed. The Little Thing would be kept busy with her typing and onething and another in some special office, he'd expected!
What he had _not_ expected to find was the scene before him. The LittleThing idling about outside the shops here; hatless, pinafored, lookingabsolutely top-hole and perfectly at home, chatting with theginger-haired bloke who was unloading the engine as if he were no end ofa pal of hers! She was smiling up into his face and taking a mostuncommon amount of interest, it seemed, in what the fellow had beendoing!
And, before, she'd said she wasn't interested in machinery! thoughtDampier as he came up, feeling suddenly unconscionably angry.
He forgot the hours that the Little Thing had already passed in hangingon every word, mostly about a machine, that had fallen from his ownlips. He only remembered that moment at the Smiths' dinner-party, whenshe'd admitted that that sort of thing didn't appeal to her.
Yet, here she was! _Deep_ in it, by Jove!
He had come right up to her and this other chap before they noticedhim....
She turned sharply at the sound of the young aviator's rather stiff"Good afternoon."
She had expected that day to see his engine--no more. Here he stood, themaker of the engine, backed by the scorched, flat landscape, in thesunlight that picked out little clean-cut, intense shadows under the rimof his straw hat, below his cleft chin, along his sleeve and the lapelof his jacket, making him look (she thought) like a very good snapshotof himself. He had startled her again; but this time she wasself-possessed.
She came forward and faced him; prettier than ever, somehow (he thoughtagain), with tossed curls and pinafore blowing all about her. She mighthave been a little schoolgirl let loose from some class in those gauntbuildings behind her. But she spoke in a more "grown-up" manner, in someway, than he'd ever heard her speak before. Looking up, she said in thesoft accent that always brought back to him his boyish holidays in hercountry, "How do you do, Mr. Dampier? I'm afraid I can't shake hands.Mine are all sticky with dope."
"Oh, are they," he said, and looked away from her (not without effort)to the ginger-haired fellow.
"This," said Gwenna Williams, a little self-consciously at last, "is Mr.Ryan."
Plenty of self-assurance about _him_! He nodded and said in ahail-fellow-well-met sort of voice, "Hullo; you're Dampier, are you?Glad to meet you. You see we're hard at it unpacking your engine here."Then he looked towards the opening, the road, and the car--borrowed asusual--in which the young aviator had motored down. There was anotherlarge package in the body of the car; a box, iron-clamped, with lettersstencilled upon it, and sealed. "Something else interesting that you'vebrought with you?" said this in sufferable man called Ryan. "Here,Andre, fetch that box down----"
"No," interrupted young Dampier curtly. The curtness was only partly forthis other chap. That sealed box, for reasons of his own and ColonelConyers', was not to be hauled about by any mechanic in the place. "Youand I'll fetch that in presently for Mrs. Crewe."
"Right. She'll be back at three o'clock," Ryan told him. "She told me toask you to have a look round the place or do anything you cared to untilshe came in."
"Oh, thanks," said young Dampier.
At that moment what he would have "cared to do" would have been to getthis girl to himself somewhere where he could say to the Little Humbug,"Look here. You aren't interested in machinery. You said so yourself.What are you getting this carroty-headed Ass to talk to you about itfor?"
Seeing that this was out of the question he hesitated.... He didn't wantto go round the shops with this fellow, to whom he'd taken a dislike. Onsight. He did that sometimes. On the other hand, he couldn't do what hewanted to do--sit and talk to the Little Thing until the Aeroplane Ladyreturned. What about saying he'd got to look up some one in the village,and bolting, until three o'clock? No. No fear! Why should this otherfellow imagine he could have the whole field to himself for talking toHer?
So the trio, the age-old group that is composed of two young men and agirl, stood there for a moment rather awkwardly.
Finally the Little Thing said, "Well, I've got to go back to my wings,"and turned.
Then the fellow Ryan said, "One minute, Miss Gwenna----"
Miss Gwenna! All but her Christian name! And he, Paul Dampier, who'dknown her a good deal longer--he'd never called her anything at all, but"_you_"! Miss _Gwenna_, if you please!
What followed was even more of a bit of dashed cheek.
For the fellow turned quickly aside to her and said, "I say, it's Fridayafternoon. Supposing I don't see you again to-morrow morning--it's allright, isn't it, about your coming up to town for that matinee with me?"
"Oh, yes, thanks," said the Little Thing brightly. "I asked Mrs. Crewe,and it's all right."
Then the new note crept into her voice; the half-unconsciously-acquirednote of coquetry. She said, smiling again at the red-haired Ryan, "I amso looking forward to that."
And, turning again to the Airman, she said with a half-shy, half-airylittle smile that, also, he found new in her, "Have you seen _The CinemaStar_? Mr. Ryan is going to take me to-morrow afternoon."
"Oh, is he?" said Paul Dampier shortly.
_Was_ he, indeed? _Neck!_
"You do come up to town sometimes from here, then?" added Mr. Dampier toMiss Gwenna Williams, speaking a trifle more distinctly than usual, ashe concluded, "I was just going to ask you whether you could manage tocome out with _me_ to-morrow evening?"
Nobody was more surprised to hear these last words than he himself.
Until that moment he hadn't had the faintest intention of ever askingthe girl out anywhere again. Now here he was; he'd done it. The LittleThing had murmured, "Oh----" and was looking--yes, she was lookingpleased. The fellow was looking as if he'd been taken aback. Good. He'dprobably thought he was going to have her to himself for the evening aswell as for the matinee. Dinner at the "Petit Riche"--a music-hallafterwards--travel down home with her. Well, Dampier had put a stopperon that plan. But now that he had asked her, where was he going to takeher himself? To another musical comedy? No. Too like the other chap. Toone of the Exhibitions? No; not good enough. Anyhow, wherever he tookher, he hadn't been out-bidden by this soft-soapy young idiot. Infernalcheek.... Then, all in a flash the brilliant solution came to PaulDampier. Of course! Yes, he could work it! The Aviation Dinner! He'dmeant to go. He would take her. It would involve taking Mrs. Crewe aswell. Never mind
. It was something to which that other young asswouldn't have the chance of taking her, and that was enough.
"Yes," he went on saying, as coolly as if it had all been planned."There's a show on at the Wilbur Club; Wilbur Wright, you know. Ithought I'd ask if you and Mrs. Crewe would care to come with me to thedinner. Will you?--Just break that packing up a bit more," he addednegligently to the red-haired youth. "And check those spaces--Will youtake me into your place, Miss Williams?"
_That_, he thought, was the way to deal with poachers on his particularpreserves!
It was only when he got inside the spacious white Wing-room and satdown, riding a chair, close to the trestle-table where the girl bent hercurly head so conscientiously over the linen strips again, that herealised that this Little Thing wasn't his particular preserves at all!
Hadn't he, only a couple of weeks ago, definitely decided that she wasnever to mean anything of the sort to him? Hadn't he resolved----
Here, with his long arms crossed over the back of the chair as he satfacing and watching her, he put back his head and laughed.
"What are you laughing at?" she asked, straightening herself in the bigpinafore with its front all stiff with that sticky mess she worked with.
He was laughing to think how dashed silly it was to make theseresolutions. Resolutions about which people you were or were not to seeanything of! As if Fate didn't arrange that for you! As if you didn't_have_ to leave that to Fate, and to take your chance!
Possibly Fate meant that he and the Little Thing should be friends,great friends. Not now, of course. Not yet. In some years' time,perhaps, when his position was assured; when he'd achieved some of theBig Things that he'd got to do; when he _had_ got something to offer agirl. Ages to wait.... Still, he could leave it at that, now, hethought.... It might, or might not, come to anything. Only, it wasripping to see her!
He didn't tell her this.
He uttered some conventional boy's joke about being amused to see heractually at work for the first time since he'd met her. And she made alittle bridling of her neck above that vast, gull-like wing that she waspasting; and retorted that, indeed, she worked very hard.
"Really," he teased her. "Always seem to be taking time off, wheneverI've come."
"You've only come twice, Mr. Dampier; and then it's been sort oflunch-time."
"Oh, I see," he said. ("I may smoke, mayn't I?" and he lighted acigarette.) "D'you always take your lunch out of doors, Miss Gwenna?"(He didn't see why _he_ shouldn't call her that.)
She said, "I'd like to." Then she was suddenly afraid he might think shewas thinking of their open-air lunch in that field, weeks ago, and shesaid quickly (still working): "I--I was so glad when I heard about theengine coming, and that Colonel Conyers had ordered the P.D.Q. to bemade here. I--do congratulate you, Mr. Dampier. Tell me about theMachine, won't you?"
He said, "Oh, you'll hear all about that presently; but look here, youhaven't told me about _you_----"
Gwenna could scarcely believe her ears; but yes, it was true. He wasturning, turning from talk about the Machine, the P.D.Q., the _Fiancee_!Asking, for the first time, about herself. She drew a deep breath; sheturned her bright, greeny-brown eyes sideways, longing at that momentfor Leslie with whom to exchange a glance. Her own shyly triumphant lookmet only the deep, wise eyes of the Great Dane, lying in his corner ofthe Wing-room beside his kennel. He blinked, thumped his tail upon thefloor.
"Darling," whispered Gwenna, a little shakily, as she passed the tawnydog. "_Darling!_" She had to say it to something just then.
Paul Dampier pursued, looking at her over his crossed arms on the backof that chair, "You haven't said whether you'll come to-morrow night."
She asked (as if it mattered to her where she went, as long as it waswith him), "What is this dinner?"
"The Wilbur dinner? Oh, there's one every year. Just a meeting of thoseinterested in flying. I thought you might care----"
"Who'll be there?"
"Oh, just people. Not many. Some ladies go. Why?"
"Only because I haven't got anything at all to wear," announced Gwenna,much more confidently, however, than she could have done before Mr. Ryanhad told her so much about her own looks, "except my everlasting whiteand the blue sash like at the Smiths'."
"Well, that was awfully pretty; wasn't it? Only----"
"What?"
"Well, may I say something?"
"Well, what is it?"
"Frightfully rude, really," said Paul Dampier, tilting himself back onhis chair, and still looking at her over a puff of smoke, staring even.She was something to stare at. Why was she such a lot prettier? Had he_forgotten_ what her looks were? She seemed--she seemed, to-day, so muchmore of a woman than he'd ever seen her. He forgot that he was going tosay something. She, with a little fluttering laugh for which he couldhave clasped her, reminded him.
"What's the rude thing you were going to say to me?"
"Oh! It's only this. Don't go muffling your neck up in that sort of ruffaffair this time; looks ever so much nicer without," said the boy.
The girl retorted with quite a good show of disdainfulness, "I don'tthink there's anything _quite_ so funny as men talking about what wewear."
"Oh, all right," said the boy, and pretended to be offended. Then helaughed again and said, "I've still got something of yours that youwear, as a matter of fact----"
"Of mine?"
"Yes, I have; I've never given it you back yet. That locket of yoursthat you lost."
"Oh----!" she exclaimed.
That locket! That little heart-shaped pendant of mother-o'-pearl thatshe had worn the first evening that she'd ever seen him; and thatshe had dropped in the car as they were driving back. So much hadhappened ... she felt she was not even the same Gwenna as the girl whohad snapped the slender silver chain about her neck before they set outfor the party.... She'd given up wondering if her Airman had forgottento give it back to her. She'd forgotten all about it herself. And he'dhad it, one of her own personal belongings, somewhere in his keeping allthis time.
"Oh, yes; my--my little mascot," she said. "Have you got it?"
"Not here. It's in my other jac--it's at my rooms, I'll bring it to thedinner for you. And--er--look here, Miss Gwenna----"
He tilted forward again as the girl passed his side of the table toreach for the little wooden pattern by which she cut out a patch for theend of the strip, and then passed back again.
"I say," he began again, a trifle awkwardly, "if you don't mind, I wantyou to give me something in exchange for that locket."
"Oh, do you?" murmured Gwenna. "What?"
And a chill took her.
She didn't want him, here and now, to ask for--what Mr. Ryan might haveasked.
But it was not a kiss he asked for, after all.
He said, "You know those little white wings you put in your shoes? Youremember, the night of that river dance? Well, I wish you'd let me haveone of those to keep as my mascot."
He hadn't thought of wishing it until there had intruded into his kenthat other young man who made appointments--and who might havethe--cheek to ask for keepsakes, but who shouldn't be first, after all!
Anxiously, as if it were for much more than that feathered trifle of amascot that he asked, he said, "Will you?"
"Oh! If you like!"
"Sure you don't mind?"
"Mind? I should like you to have it," said Gwenna softly. "Really."
And across the great white aeroplane wing the girl looked very sweetlyand soberly at her Aviator, who had just asked that other tiny wing ofher, as a knight begged his lady's favour.
* * * * *
It was at this moment that the Aeroplane Lady, an alert figure in darkblue, came into a room where a young man and a girl had been talkingidly enough together while one smoked and the other went on working withthat five-foot barrier of the wing between them.
The Aeroplane Lady, being a woman, was sensitive to atmosphere--not thespirit-and-solution-scented at
mosphere of this place of which she wasmistress, but another.
In it she caught a vibration of something that made her say to herself,"Bless me, what's _this_? I never knew those two had even met! 'Notsaying so,' I suppose. But certainly engaged, or on the verge of it!"
--Which all went to prove that the rebuked, the absent Leslie, was notfar wrong in saying that it is the Obvious Thing that always succeeds!