The Boy with Wings Part 31

"_The King!_" announced the President of the Dinner.

There was a movement and a rustle all round the great supper-room as the guests rose to the toast; another rustle as they reseated themselves.

One of the celebrities whom Paul had pointed out to her began to speak upon the achievements of Wilbur Wright. At the table next to Gwenna some journalists bent absorbed over scribbling pads. Speech followed speech as the toasts were gone through. The opal-blue haze of cigarette smoke drifted up above the white tables with their rose-pink and ferny decorations. Chairs were pushed sidewards as guests turned alert and listening faces towards the head of the room; and every now and again the grave and concise and pleasantly modulated tones of some speaker-on-the-subject of his heart were broken in upon by a soft storm of applause.

"Colonel Conyers to speak now," murmured Paul to Gwenna, as the long, lean figure that had been sitting opposite to them rose. He stepped backwards, to stand against one of those gilded pillars as he made his speech, responding to the toast that had coupled his name with that of the Flying Wing of the Army.

Gwenna listened with even more breathless attention than she had paid to the other speakers.

Colonel Conyers spoke easily and lightly, as if he had been, not making a speech, but talking to a knot of friends at his house. He reviewed, in terms so simple that even the young girl at his table could follow all he said, the difficulties and the risks of aviation, and the steps that had been taken to minimise those risks. Wind, it seemed, had been in a great measure overcome. Risk from faulty workmans.h.i.+p of machines--that, too, was overcome. Workmans.h.i.+p was now well-nigh as perfect as it could be made.

Here Gwenna glowed with pride, exchanging a glance with her employer far down the tables. This meant _their_ workmans.h.i.+p at Aircraft Factories; their Factory, too! This meant the labours of Mrs. Crewe and of Mr.

Ryan, and of Andre, and of the workmen in overalls at the lathes in that noisy central shop. Even the brushful of dope that she, Gwenna, spread conscientiously over each seam of the great wings, played its tiny part in helping to preserve a Flyer's life!

The risk in stability, too, Colonel Conyers said, had been successfully combatted by the gyroscope. There remained, however, Fog and Darkness as the chief perils, which, at the present moment, of July, Nineteen-fourteen, our Airmen had to fight....

In the soldier's lean face that shrewd, half-mischievous smile was flickering as he spoke; his grey trim head turning now and again against the gilded column, his keen eyes fixed upon some objective of his own, his strong hand fidgeting in the small mechanical gesture of a man who is less accustomed to speaking about things than to doing them.

Gwenna thought how different, how entirely different were all these people here from that other dinner-party at the house of the prosperous and artistic Smiths who had found so much to say about the Russian Ballet!

Definitely now Gwenna saw what the chief difference between them was.

_Those other people treated and spoke of a pastime as though it were a matter of Life and Death. These people here made Life and Death matters their pastime._

"And these splendid real people are the ones I'm going to belong to,"

the girl told herself with a glance at the tall boy beside her who had decided her fate. That thought was to glow in the very depths of her, like a firefly nestling at the heart of a rose, for as long as she lived.

The even, pleasant tones of Colonel Conyers went on to give as one of the most hopeful features of aviation the readiness of the quite young man of the present day to volunteer. No sooner was a fatality announced than for one airman who, cheerfully giving his life for the service of his country, had been put out of action, half a dozen promising young fellows were eager to come forward and take his place.

"Two of 'em again yesterday.... Two of his lieutenants, killed in Yorks.h.i.+re," whispered Paul Dampier, leaning to Gwenna.

She missed the next sentence of Colonel Conyers, which concluded cheerily enough with the hard-worked but heartening reminder that whom the G.o.ds love die young....

Then, with a broadening of that humorous smile and with a glint in his eyes, he referred to "those other people (plump and well-to-do--and quite young people) who do, still, really appear to consider that the whole of a man's duty to his country is to preserve his health for as long as possible and then, having reached a ripe old age, to die comfortably and respectably in his bed!----"

There was a short ripple of laughter about the room; but after this Gwenna heard very little.

Not only was she incapable of taking any more in, but this last sentence pulled her up with a sudden memory of what she had seen, yesterday.

_That gun at the Aircraft Works. That pictured presentiment in her own mind._

And she heard again, through Colonel Conyers' pleasant voice, the queer, unexplained words that had haunted her:

"_Fired at by both friend and foe._"

She thought, "I must ask! I must say something to Paul about that----"

CHAPTER II

THE "WHISPER OF WAR"

She said it after the dinner had broken up.

In the great hall young Dampier had turned to the Aeroplane Lady with his offer of motoring her to her Hotel first. She had good-naturedly laughed at him and said, "No. I'm going to be driven back by the rightful owner of the car this time. You take Miss Williams."

And then she had gone off with some friend of Paul's who had motors to lend, and Paul had taken Gwenna to find a taxi to drive up to Hampstead.

They drove slowly through Piccadilly Circus, now brighter than at midday. It was thronged with the theatre-crowds that surged towards the crossings. Coloured restaurant-coats and jewelled head-gear and laughing faces were gay in the lights that made that broad blazing belt about the fountain. Higher up the whole air was a soft haze of gold, melting into the hot, star-strewn purple of the night-sky. And against this there tapered, black and slender, the apex of the fountain, the downward-swooping shape that is not Mercury, but the flying Love--the Lad with Wings.

Paul Dampier leant back in the closed cab and would have drawn the girl to him.

She put both hands on his broad chest to hold him a little away from her.

"I want to ask you something," she began a little tremulously. "It's just--Is there going to be----"

"Well, what?" he asked, smiling close to her.

Of all things that he least expected came what the girl had to say.

"Is there going to be--a War, Paul?"

"A _what_?" he asked, thinking he had not heard aright.

She repeated it, tremulously. "A war. Real war."

"War?" he echoed, blankly, taken aback. He was silent from puzzled astonishment over her asking this, as they turned up Shaftesbury Avenue.

They were held up outside the Hippodrome for some minutes. He was still silent. The taxi gave a jerk and went on. And she still waited for his reply. She had to remind him.

"Well," she said again, tremulous. "_Is_ there going to be?"

"A war? A _war_ indeed," he said again. "What an extraordinary--Who's--What put such a thing into your head?"

She said, "_Is_ there?"

The boy gave a half-amazed, half-uneasy laugh. He retorted, "What d'you mean, Gwenna? A war _where_?"

She said flutteringly, "Anywhere."

"Oh," he said, and laughed as if relieved. "Always some war, somewhere.

Frontier shows in India, and so on. There is some sc.r.a.pping going on in Europe too, now, you know. Looks as if Austria and Servia were going to have a set-to. You mean that."

"No, I don't," persisted the Welsh girl, to whom these places seemed indescribably remote and beside the mark. "I mean ... a war to do with _us_, like."