CHAPTER VII

A BACHELOR'S TEA-PARTY

The first of a series of "things that got in the way" of Gwenna's making

an appointment to go flying occurred on that Sunday afternoon, when

Leslie and she were to have tea at Paul Dampier's place.

"A mixture of chaos and comfy chairs, I expect; ash everywhere, and

_beastly_ cakes. (I know these bachelor tea-parties.) That," Leslie

said, "is what his 'place' will be like."

Gwenna, as usual, hadn't wasted any thoughts over this. She had been too

full of what their host himself would say and do--about the flying. She

was all ready, in the white dress, the white hat with the wings, half an

hour after Sunday mid-day dinner at the Ladies' Club. But it was very

nearly half-past four by the time Mr. Dampier did come, as he had

promised, to fetch the two girls.

He came in the car that had driven them back on the night of the

dinner-party.

And he was hurried, and apologetic for his lateness. He even seemed a

little shy. This had the effect of making Gwenna feel quite

self-possessed as she took the seat beside him ("I hate sitting by the

driver, really. Makes me _so_ nervous!" Leslie had declared) and

inquired whether he borrowed his cousin's car any time he had visitors.

"Well, but Hugo's _got_ everything," he told her, with a twinkle, "so I

always borrow anything of his that I can collar!"

"Studs, too?" asked Gwenna, quickly.

"Oh, come! I didn't think it of you. _What_ a pun!" he retorted.

She coloured a little, shy again, hurt. But he turned his head to look

at her, confided to her: "It was _on_ the chest-of-drawers, all the

time!"

And, as the car whizzed westwards, they laughed together. That

dinner-table incident of the collar--or collared--stud brought, for the

second time, a sudden homely glow of friendly feeling between this boy

and girl.

She thought, "He's just as easy to get on with as if he were another

girl, like Leslie----"

For always, at the beginning of things, the very young woman compares

her first man-friend with the dearest girl-chum she has known.

--"Or as if he were just nobody, instead of being so wonder-ful, and an

airman, good gracious!"

Appropriately enough for an airman, his place seemed to be nearly on the

house-tops of a block of buildings near Victoria Street.

The lift carried them up past six landings and many boards inscribed

with names of firms. It stopped at the seventh story, almost directly

opposite a cream-coloured door with a small, old-fashioned brass

knocker, polished like gold.

Paul Dampier tapped sharply at it.

The door was opened by a thick-set man in an excellent suit of clothes

and with the face of a wooden sphinx.

"Tea as soon as you can, Johnson," said the young Airman over his

shoulder, as the trio passed in.

The long sitting-room occupied half the flat and its windows took up the

whole of one side. It was to these open windows that Gwenna turned.

"Oh, what a view!" she cried, looking out, enraptured at the height and

airiness, looking past the leads, with their wooden tubs of standard

laurel-bushes, among which pigeons were strutting and bridling and

pecking crumbs. She looked down, down, at the bird's-eye view of London,

spread far below her in a map of grey roofs and green tree-tops under a

soft mist of smoke that seemed of the clouds themselves.

"Oh, can't you see for miles!" exclaimed Gwenna. "There's St. Paul's,

looks like a big grey soap-bubble, coming up out of the mist! Oh, you

can see between a crack in the houses, our place at Westminster! It's

like a cottage from here! Oh, and that iron lacey thing on the roof!

Even this must be something like being up in an aeroplane, I should

think! Look, Leslie!"

Miss Long seemed more engrossed in looking round Mr. Dampier's bachelor

sitting-room. It was incredibly luxurious compared to what she'd

expected. The polished floor was black and shiny as the wood of the

piano at the further end, the Persian rugs softly brilliant. In the

middle of the Adams mantelpiece simpered an exquisite Chelsea

shepherdess; to the left and right of her there stood squat toys in

ivory, old slender-stalked champagne-glasses holding sweet-peas. And

upon the leaf-brown walls were decorations that seemed complacently to

draw attention to the catholic taste of their owner. A rare

eighteenth-century print of Tom Jones upon his knees, asking

"forgiveness" of his Sophia, hung just above a Futurist's grimace in

paint; and there was a frieze of ultra-modern French fashion-designs,

framed in _passe-partout_, from the "_Bon Ton_."

"What a--what a surprising number of pictures you have, Mr. Dampier,"

said Leslie, mildly. "Hasn't he, Taffy?"

Gwenna, turning at last from the window, realised dimly that this

sophisticated room did seem somehow out of keeping as an eyrie for this

eagle. The view outside, yes! But these armchairs? And she wouldn't have

thought that he would have bothered to have things _pretty_, like

this----

"And what a lot of books you've got," she said. For the wall opposite to

the windows was taken up by bookshelves, set under a trophy of swords of

out-of-date patterns, and arranged with some thought.

The top shelves held volumes of verse, and of plays, from Beaumont and

Fletcher to Galsworthy. The Russian novelists were ranged together; also

the French. There was a corner for Sudermann and Schnitzler. A shelf

further down came all the English moderns, and below that all the

_Yellow Books_, a long blue line of all the _English Reviews_, from the

beginning; a stack of _The New Age_, and a lurid pink-covered copy of

_Blast_.

But before Gwenna could wonder further over these possessions of this

young man, more incongruous possessions were brought in by the

Sphinx-faced man-servant; a tea-table of beaten copper, a

peasant-embroidered cloth, a tea-service of old Coalport; with a silver

spirit-kettle, with an iced cake, with toast, and wafer,

bread-and-butter and cress-sandwiches and Parisian _petits-fours_ that

all seemed, as the young girl put it simply to herself, "So unlike

_him_!"

Her chum had already guessed the meaning of it all.

The Dampier boy's rooms? _His_ library and ornaments? Ah, no. He'd never

read one of all those books there. Not he! And these were not the type

of "things" he'd buy, even if he'd had the money to throw away, thought

Leslie. It was no surprise to that young woman when the legitimate owner

of this lavishly appointed _garconniere_ made his sudden appearance in

the middle of tea.

The click of a latchkey outside. Two masculine voices in the hall. Then

the door was thrown open.

There walked in a foreign-looking young man, with bright dark eyes and a

small moustache, followed by Mr. Hugo Swayne, attired in a Victorian

mode that, as Leslie put it afterwards, "cried '_Horse, horse!_' where

there was no horse." His tall bowler was dove-grey; his black stock

allowed a quarter-inch of white collar to appear; below his striking

waistcoat dangled a bunch of seals and a fob. This costume Leslie

recognised as a revival of the Beggarstaff Touch. Gwenna wondered why

this young man seemed always to be in fancy dress. Leslie could have

told her that Mr. Swayne's laziness and vanity had led him to abandon

himself on the coast of Bohemia, where he had not been born. His father

had been quite a distinguished soldier in Egypt. His father's son took

things more easily at the Grafton Gallery and the Cafe Royal and

Artists' Clubs. He neither painted, wrote, nor composed, but his life

was set largely among flatterers who did these things--after a fashion.

He came in saying, "Now this is where I live when I'm----"

He broke off with a start at the sight of the party within. The girls

turned to him with surprised and smiling greeting.

Paul Dampier, fixing him with those blue eyes, remarked composedly,

"Hullo, my dear chap. Have some tea, won't you? I'll ring for Johnson to

bring in two more cups."

"That will be very nice," said Hugo Swayne, rising to the occasion with

all the more grace because he was backed up by a tiny understanding

glance from Miss Long. And he introduced his young Frenchman by a name

that made Leslie exclaim, "Why! You are that Post-Impressionist painter,

aren't you?"

"Not I, mademoiselle, but my brother," returned Hugo's French friend,

slowly and very politely. His dark face was simple and intelligent as

that of a nice child; he sat up as straight in his chair as he talked.

"It is for that Mr. Swayne, who is admirer of my brother's pictures, is

so amiable for to show me London. Me, I am not artiste. I am ingenieur

only."

"'Only'!" thought Gwenna over her teacup.

Surely any one should be proud of being an engineer, considering that

Mr. Dampier had thus begun _his_ career; he who was now in what the

romantic girl considered the First of All Professions? Perhaps her

attitude towards the Airman as such was noted by the Airman's cousin.

Hugo, who had dropped a little heavily into the softest chair near Miss

Long, turned his Chopinesque profile against a purple cushion to shoot a

rather satirical glance at the cleaner-built youth in the worn grey

suit.

"Now, how like a man! He doesn't admire Taffy particularly, but he's

piqued to see her admire another type." Leslie summed this up quickly to

herself. "Not really a bad sort; he behaved well about the invasion of

these rooms. But he's like all these well-off young men who potter about

antique shops when they ought to be taking exercise--he's plenty of

feminine little ways. Since they call spitefulness 'feminine'!"

There was a distinctly spiteful note in the young man's voice as he made

his next remark to his cousin.

This remark surprised even Leslie for a moment.

And to Gwenna's heart it struck with a sudden, unreasonable shock of

consternation.

For Mr. Swayne inquired blandly across the tea-table:

"Well, Paul; how's your _fiancee_?"