The Boy with Wings Part 15

"I mean that you've cultivated the garden, and haven't got to start digging up the weeds and sweeping the lawn five minutes before you expect the garden-party," explained Leslie, in the a.n.a.logies that she loved. "Some girls don't seem to think of 'making the most of themselves' until the man comes along that they want to make much of _them_. Then it's so often a scramble. You've had the instinct. You haven't got your appearance into any of the little ways that put a man off without his knowing quite what he's been put off _by_. One excellent thing about you----"

"Yes?" said Gwenna, rapt, expectant.

The particular unsolicited testimonial that followed was unexpected enough.

"For one thing, Taffy, you're always--_washed_!"

"Why, of course. But, Leslie--surely--so's _everybody_!"

"_Are_ they?" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Long darkly. "They think they are. They simply haven't grasped how much soap and water and loofah go to that, in big towns. Half the girls aren't what _I_ call tubbed. How many of them, with bathrooms a yard from their bedrooms, bother to have a scrub at night as well as in the mornings? It's at night they're grimy, Taff.

It's at night they leave it on, powder and all, to work into themselves until that 'unfresh' look gets chronic. My dear, I tell you that the two-bath-a-day rule would give us much less of the Lonely-and-Neglected Women Problem. There!"

Gwenna Williams, twisting between finger and thumb the stalk of a daisy she had picked off the lawn, murmured something about it's being funny, love having anything to do with how often a girl _washed_!

"Of course you think Leslie is revoltingly unpoetic to suggest it. But it's sound enough," declared the elder girl. "Flowers don't look as if 'anything to do with' earth had ever touched them, do they? But aren't their roots bedded deep down in it right enough? All these hints I give you about Health and Body-culture, these are the Roots of the Rose.

Some of them, anyhow. Especially _was.h.i.+ng_. I tell you, Taff"--she spoke sepulchrally--"_half the 'nice' girls we know don't wash enough_.

_That's_ why they don't get half the attention they'd like. Men like what they call a 'healthy-looking' girl. As often as not it simply means the girl happens to be specially _clean_. Beauty's skin-deep; moral, look after your skin. Now, you do. No soap on your face, Taff?"

"No; just a 'clean' after was.h.i.+ng, with Oatine and things like that."

"Right. Costs you about fourpence a week. It might cost four guineas, to judge from the economical spirit of some girls over that," said Leslie.

"Then, to go on with this grossly material subject that is really the root of Poetry, do you shampoo your hair nice and often? It looks thick and soft and glossy and with the curls all big, as if you did."

"Oh, yes, I do. But then that's easy for me; it's short."

"Mine's long enough, but I do it religiously every fortnight. Pays me,"

said Miss Long candidly as she went on working. "Untidy it may be, but it does feel and smell all right. One of my medical students at the hospital where I trained for five minutes--the boy Monty, the Dean's son--_he_ said once that the scent of my hair was like cherry-wood.

'Course I didn't confide in _him_ that I watered it well with bay rum and rosemary every night. Better than being like Miss Armitage, the suffragette-woman here, who's so nice-minded that she's 'above'

pampering the body. What's the consequence? She, and half the girls here, go about smelling--to put it plainly--like cold grease and goloshes! Can they wonder that men don't seem to think they'd be--be very nice to marry?"

"Some suffragettes, and sort of brainy women," hesitated Gwenna, "are married."

"Yes; and _have_ you observed the usual type of their husbands?" scoffed Leslie. "Eugh!"

Gwenna, set upon her own subject, drew her back with innocent directness to the matter in hand.

"What else ought one to do? Besides lots of was.h.i.+ng, besides taking care of one's hair and skin?"

"One's shape, of course," mused Leslie. "There you're all right. Thank goodness--_and me_--that you've left off those weird, those unearthly stays you came up to town in. My dear, they were like a hamper strapped round the middle of you and sending your shoulders up, squared, into your ears! You've got a pretty slope there now, besides setting free all your 'lines.' I suppose elastic has pretty well solved the great corset question at last."

"Thirty s.h.i.+llings was a dreat-ful lot to give for just an elastic belt,"

murmured Gwenna, with her little hand at her supple waist. "Still, you said I must, even if I didn't have a new blouse over it for eighteen months." Again she looked up for guidance. "What else? What's a good _thing_, Leslie? About clothes and that?"

"Oh, child, you know it all now, practically. Let's see--shoes"--she glanced at the tiny brown one half-tucked under Gwenna's knee. "_Boots and shoes_ men seem to notice as much as any other part of your get-up.

Attractive shoes, even with an unfas.h.i.+onable skirt, will pull you through, when shabby shoes would ruin the look of the smartest rig. They see that, even when they've no idea what colour you've got on."

She went on to another hole in the stocking and continued: "As for colours, a man does seem to notice 'a girl in black,' or all-white, or pale blue. I read once that pale blue is 'the s.e.x colour'--couldn't tell you, never worn it myself. Managed well enough without it, too!" mused Leslie. "Then 'a girl in pink' is very often a success in the evening.

Men seem to have settled vaguely that pink is 'the pretty girl's colour.' So then they fondly imagine that anything that dares to wear it must be lovely. _You_ needn't yet. Keep it for later. Pink--judicious pink--takes off ten years, Taffy!"

"I--I suppose I shall still care what I look like," murmured the young girl wistfully, "at thirty-two...."

"Pearl of Wisdom Number Forty-eight: When in doubt, wear the coat-and-skirt (if it's decently cut) rather than the frock," decreed Leslie. "White silk s.h.i.+rts they seem to like, always. (I'm glad I weaned you of the pin-on tie, Taffy. It always looked like 'sixpence-three-farthings.' Whereas you buy a piece of narrow ribbon for 'six-three,' you _tie_ it, you fasten it with a plain silver brooch to your s.h.i.+rt, and it looks _good_.)"

"I'll remember," murmured Gwenna devoutly, from the gra.s.s.

Leslie said, "One of the housemaids here--(never stoop to gossip with the servants, dearest. It _is_ so unhelpful and demoralising to both cla.s.ses)--one of the housemaids once told me that _her_ young man had told her that 'nothing in the wide world set a young woman off like a nice, fresh, clean, simple s.h.i.+rt blouse, same as what she was wearing then!' Of course, _he_ was a policeman. Not an aviator or a dean's son.

But when it comes to a girl in the case, I expect they're _'brothers under their skins_,'" said Leslie Long.

Husky with much talking, she cleared her throat.

"Pearl of Wisdom Number Forty-nine: Be awfully careful about your collar, the ends of your sleeves and the hem of your skirt. (Keeping a strong force on the Frontier; that is always important.) Don't ever let your clothes be 'picturesque,' except for indoors. A man loathes walking along beside anything that flaps in the wind, or anything that looks like what he calls 'fancy dress.' Outside, don't wear anything that you can't skip easily on to the last bus in. Don't have 'bits' of anything about you. Try to be as neat as the very dowdiest girl you know, _without the dowdiness_. Neatness, my beloved sisters, is the---- (Here am I talking like this; but why," she interrupted herself, laughing, "_why_ aren't I neater myself when in mufti? I mean, when there's n.o.body about? '_In time of Peace, prepare for War._' It would be better. Might get my hair out of its _habit_ of descending at the wrong moment.) And then, then, when all your good points are mobilised, you wait for the Enemy."

"The _enemy_?" said little Gwenna, doubtfully.

"Yes. The Man. The opposing force, if you like. You can think and think and wish and wish about him then until the whole air about you goes s.h.i.+very-quivery with it. 'Creating an atmosphere' is what they call it, I believe. And get him well into the zone of _that_," advised Leslie.

"For it's no use the magnet being a magnet if it doesn't allow itself to get within miles of a needle, is it? Might as well be any old bit of sc.r.a.p-iron. Plenty of girls--_nice_ girls, I mean--not like that deplorably vulgar Miss Long. What _she's_ doing in a Club that's supposed to be for _ladies_ I don't know. The _horrid_ things she says!

Bad! _Bad_ form! And I'm sure if she says those here, she must have heaps of other worse things she _could_ say, and probably _does_, to some people! Er--oh, where _was_ I? Ah, yes!" rattled on Leslie, with her black head flung against the striped canvas back of the chair, her eyes on her surprisingly neat darning. "I was going to say--plenty of nice girls m.u.f.f everything by putting too much distance that doesn't lend enchantment to the view between themselves and the men that aren't often sharp enough to deserve being called 'the needle.' Don't you make the mistake of those nice girls, Taffy."

"Well, do I _want_ to? But how can I help it? How can I even try to 'be'

anything, if he isn't there to know anything at all about it? I don't see him! I don't meet him!" mourned the Welsh girl in the soft accent that was very unmistakable to-day. "It's a whole fortnight, Leslie, since that lovely day in the fields. It seems years. He hasn't written or anything. I've waited and waited.... And sometimes I feel as if perhaps I _shouldn't_ ever see him again. After all, I never did see him properly before we went to your sister's that night. Oh, isn't it awful to think what little _chances_ make all the difference to who one sees or doesn't see? I can't know for certain that I shall _ever_ see him again. Oh, Leslie!"

Leslie cut her last needleful of lilac silk and answered in the most rea.s.suringly matter-of-fact tone:

"But of course you will. If you want to enough. For instance--should you like to see him at this dance?"

"Dance?" inquired Gwenna, dazed.

"Yes. This fancy-dress affair that I'm doing these stockings for. (I won these in a bet from one of my Woolwich cadets.) This tamasha next week?"

"But--_he_ isn't going, is he? And I'm not even asked."

"And can't these things ever be arranged?" demanded her chum, laughing.

"Can do, Taffy. Leslie will manage."

"Oh--but that's so _kind_!" murmured the younger girl, overcome.

"Do you expect me _not_ to be 'kind'? To another girl, in love? Nay, oh Taffy! I leave that to the 'nicest' of the girls who think it 'horrid'

to think about young men, even. Gem of Truth Number Eighty: It isn't the little girl who's _had_ plenty to eat who's ready to s.n.a.t.c.h the bun out of the hand of the next little girl," said Leslie. She rolled the silk stockings into a ball, and rose in sections from that sagging chair.

"Leslie will see you're done all right. All that remains to be discussed is the question of what you're to wear at the dance."

This question Leslie settled as the two girls went for an after-supper stroll. They went past the summer crowd patrolling the Spaniards Road, past the patch of common and the benches and the pond by the flagstaff that make that part of Hampstead so like a bit of the seaside. It was a golden evening. In the hazy distance a small, greyish, winged object rose above the plane which was Hendon, and moved to the left towards the blue taper of Harrow Church, then sank out of sight again.

"There's one," sighed Gwenna, her eyes on the glowing sky, where the biplane had been circling. "He's in it, perhaps."

"Little recking what plans are now being made for his welfare by me,"

observed Miss Long, as the two girls descended the hill and found at last a birch thicket that was not held by c.o.c.kney lovers. She let herself down cross-legged into the bracken. The Welsh girl perched herself on a branch of the birch tree that was polished smooth as an old bench. Thus she sat among the stirring leaves, head on one side, listening, her babyish face looking down intent against the sky.

"Ah! That's _you_! '_A Cherub._' That's what your fancy dress is to be,"

p.r.o.nounced the elder girl. "Just your own little crop-curled head with nothing on it; and a ruff of cherub's wings up to your chin. Those little wings off your hat will do beautifully. Below the ruff, clouds.