CHAPTER VIII

LAUGHING ODDS

Before he answered, Gwenna had time to think smartingly, "His _fiancee_!

There! I might have _known_ he was engaged. I might have guessed it!

It's nothing to do with me.... Only ... I believe _that's_ what's going

to get in the way of my flying with him. She won't let him. I mean he'll

always be taking her up! And I know who it is, too. It's sure to be the

one called Muriel that I saw go up with him at Hendon with the red hair

and the scarf. I sort of guessed when I heard they were going up

together that she must be his _fiancee_."

And all the while her eyes were, apparently, on the silver stand of the

spirit-kettle, they watched the young Airman's face (which looked a

little sheepish). She listened, tensely, for his reply. Quite shortly

Paul Dampier, still munching cake, said, "Who? Oh! Going on as usual,

thanks."

"Now I may tell you that _that's_ merely a pose to conceal devotion,"

laughed his cousin, turning to Gwenna. "Just as if every moment were not

grudged that he spends away from HER!"

"Is it?" said the young girl with a smile. There was a bad lump in her

throat, but she spoke with her most carefully-fostered "English"

accent. "I--I suppose that's natural!" she remarked.

Hugo, fondling his Chopin curl again, went on amusing himself with this

chosen subject.

"But, as is so often the case with a young man's fancy," he announced,

"nobody else sees anything in 'her'!"

The stricken Gwenna looked quickly at young Dampier, who was cutting the

Titan wedges that men call "slices," of cake. How would _he_ take it

that it had been said of his adored one that no one saw anything in her?

He only gave a short laugh, a confident nod of his fair head and said,

"They will, though."

"Infatuated youth!" commented Hugo Swayne, resignedly, leaning back.

"And he tries to cover it up by seeming casual. '_Going on as usual_' is

said just as a blind. It sounds so much more like a mere wife than a

_fiancee_, don't you think?"

"Ah, but you are cynique, monsieur," protested the young Frenchman,

looking mildly shocked. "For you it is not sacred, the love for a wife?"

"Oh, look here! Hadn't you better explain to them," broke in Paul

Dampier boyishly, having finished a large mouthful of his cake, "that

you're rotting? _Fiancee_, indeed. Haven't got such a thing in the

world, of course."

At this Gwenna suddenly felt as if some crushing weight of

disappointment had fallen from her. "It's because I shall be able to go

flying with him after all," she thought.

Young Dampier, rising to take her cup, grumbled laughingly, "D'you

suppose girls will look at a man nowadays who can't afford to spend the

whole of his time gadding about after 'em, Hugo, as you can, or blowing

what's my salary for an entire year on their engagement-rings----"

"My dear fellow, no girl in the world exacts as much of a man's time and

money as that _grande passion_ of yours does," retorted Hugo Swayne, not

ill-naturedly. And turning to Leslie, he explained: "What I call Paul's

_fiancee_ is that eternal aeroplane he's supposed to be making."

"Ah!" said Gwenna, and then blushed violently; partly because she hadn't

meant to speak, and partly because this had drawn the blue eyes of the

Airman quickly upon herself.

"Yes, that incessant flying-machine of his," enlarged Mr. Swayne,

lolling back in his chair and addressing the meeting. "She--I believe

it's correct to call the thing 'she'?--is more of a nuisance even than

any engaged girl I've ever met. She interferes with everything this man

does. Ask him to come along to a dance or the Opera or to see some

amusing people, and it's always 'Can't; I'm working on the cylinder or

the spiral or the Fourth Dimension' or whatever it is he does think he's

working on. Practically 'she' spends all the time he's away from her

ringing him up, or getting him rung up, on the telephone. 'She' eats all

his spare cash, too----"

"In steel instead of chocolate, I suppose?" smiled Leslie. "And must

she be humoured? She seems to have every drawback of a young woman with

'a diamond half-hoop.' Is she jealous, as well?"

And then, while taking a cigarette from Hugo's case, the elder girl

made, lightly, a suggestion that the listening Gwenna was fated to

remember.

"What would happen," asked Leslie dryly, "if a real flesh-and-blood

_fiancee_ were to come along as a rival to the one of machinery?"

"Nothing would happen," Hugo assured her, holding out a lighted match.

"That's why it would be rather interesting to watch. The complication of

the Aeroplane or the Lady. The struggle in the mind of the young

Inventor, what? The Girl"--he tossed aside the match and glanced

fleetingly at the grave cherub's-face under Gwenna's white-winged

hat--"The Girl versus the Flying Machine. I'd lay fifteen to one on the

Machine, Miss Long."

"Done," said Leslie, demurely but promptly. "In half-crowns."

"Yes! You'd back your sex, of course," Hugo took up gaily. The young

Frenchman murmured: "But the Machine--the Machine is also of the sex of

Mademoiselle."

Here, suddenly, the silently listening Gwenna gave a tiny shiver. She

turned her head abruptly towards the open windows behind her with the

strutting pigeons and the sailing clouds beyond. It had seemed to the

fanciful Celt that there in that too dainty room now hazy with

cigarette-smoke, in that careless company of two girls and three young

men, she had felt the hint of another Presence. It was rather horrid and

ghostly--all this talk of a Machine that was made more of than a Woman!

A Machine who "clawed" the man that owned her, just like a jealous

betrothed who will not let her lover out of her sight! And supposing

that Conflict did come, on which Gwenna's chum and Mr. Dampier's cousin

had laid their laughing bets? The struggle between the sweetheart of

steel springs and the sweetheart of soft flesh and warm blood? For one

clear instant Gwenna knew that this fight would, must come. It was

coming----

Then she turned her head and forgot her presentiments; coming back to

the light-hearted Present. She watched Leslie, to whom the young

Frenchman had been talking; he was now fixing dark earnest eyes upon

"Mademoiselle Langue" as she, in the rather stilted phraseology with

which our nation speaks its own language for the benefit of foreigners,

expounded to him an English story.

There was a short pause.

Then the room rang to the laughter of the foreigner. "Ha! Yes! I have

understood him! It is very amusing, that! It is good!" he cried

delightedly, with a flash of white teeth and dark eyes. "He say, 'There

are parts of it that are excellent!' Aha! _Tres spirituel_," and he

laughed again joyously over the story of the Curate's Egg, while Hugo

murmured something about how stimulating it was to hear, for once, the

Immemorial Anecdote fall upon Virgin Soil.

The young Airman moved nearer to Gwenna, who, still watching Leslie,

gave a little start to hear that deep and gentle voice so close beside

her as he spoke.

"Look here, we haven't settled up yet," he said, his voice gentle but

carrying above the chatter of the others. "About that flying. Sunday

this week I have got to be off somewhere. Now, are you free next

Saturday?"

Gwenna, eager and tremulous, was just about to say, "Yes." But Hugo

Swayne interrupted.

"I say, I hate to make mischief. But if you're talking about

Saturday----? D'you remember, Paul? It was the only day I could take you

down to Ascot to see Colonel Conyers."

"Oh, Lord, so it was," said the young Airman, turning an apologetic face

to the girl. "I'm so sorry," he explained, "but this is a man I've

simply got to get hold of if I can. It's the Air-craft Conyers--'Cuckoo'

Conyers they call him. And he was a friend of Hugo's father, and what

I've been trying to see him about is working the War-office to take up

my new Machine----"

"The _Fiancee_ again, you notice," laughed his cousin, with an

imperceptible aside to Leslie. "Score to the Aeroplane."

"Yes, I see," said Gwenna, nodding at the Airman. "Of course! I mean of

course I don't mind!"

"Then shall we say Saturday week for you to come up with me instead?"

suggested young Dampier.

And Gwenna agreed to the date, thinking, "If only nothing stops it

again! If only there isn't something else, then, to do with his Machine!

That Machine! I----" Here she paused.

After all, it would be too ridiculous to allow oneself even to think

that one "_hated_" a machine!