CHAPTER XII

THE KISS WITHHELD

He did not pass.

He stopped--Gwenna felt the touch of his finger on the silver tip of her

shoe. All a-tremble with delight she moved aside, and stepped from

behind the screen to face the partner who had chosen her.

"_Hullo_!" exclaimed Paul Dampier, with real surprise in his smile. "I

didn't know it was _you_!"

Gwenna felt a little dashed, even as he slipped his arm about her and

they began to waltz. She looked up into the blonde face that seemed

burned so very brown against his dress-shirt, and she ventured, "You

didn't know it was me? I thought that was why you chose me--I mean, I

thought because I was somebody you knew----"

"Didn't know you were here. I never thought those were your feet!" he

said in that adorably deep and gentle voice of his. Adding, as they

turned with the turning throng, something that lifted her heart again,

"I chose them because they were the prettiest, I thought."

It was simply stated, as a fact. But this, the first compliment he'd

paid her, kept her silent with delight. Even as they waltzed, his arm

about her rainbow scarf, the girl felt the strongest wish--the wish that

the dance were at an end and she back in her bedroom at the Club,

alone, so that she might think and think again over what he had said.

He'd thought she had the prettiest feet!

"D'you think you could manage to spare me some others?" he asked at the

end of that waltz. "You know, you're about the only girl here that I

know except Miss Long."

"Leslie would introduce you to anybody you liked"--suggested little

Gwenna, feeling very good for having done so. And virtue brought its

reward. For with a glance about him at that coloured noisy crowd that

seemed a handful of confetti tossed by a whirlwind, he told her he

didn't think he wanted to be introduced, much. He wasn't really keen on

a lot of people he'd never seen. But if she and Miss Long would give him

a few dances----?

The girl from the country thought it almost too good to be true that she

need not share him with any of these dangerously fascinating London

people here, except Leslie!

In a pause they went up to where Leslie was standing near the band.

Close beside her the Morris-dancer was wrangling with Hugo Swayne in his

crazy-work domino, who declared, "Miss Long promised _me_ every other

dance. A week ago, my dear man. Ten days ago----"

Yes; Leslie seemed to be engaged for every dance and every extra. She

tossed a "_so_ sorry, Mr. Dampier!" over her shoulder, following it with

an imperceptible feminine grimace for Gwenna's benefit. With the first

bars of the next waltz she was whirled away by a tall youth garbed,

becomingly enough, as a Black Panther. The room was still clear. The

Black Panther and the boyishly slim girl in mauve tunic and tights

waltzed, for one recurrence of the tune, alone....

Gwenna, looking after that shapely couple, knew who _he_ was; Monty

Scott, the Dean's son who had been a medical student when Leslie was at

the Hospital. He had followed her to the Slade to study sculpture, and

already he had proposed to her twice.

The tall and supple youth held Leslie, now, by his black-taloned gloves

on her strait hips. Leslie waltzed with hands clasped at the back of his

neck. Then, with a backward fling of her head and body, she twisted

herself out of his hold. She waltzed, holding the flat palms of her

hands pressed lightly to the palms of his. The music altered; Leslie

varying her step to suit it. She threw back her head again. Round and

round her partner she revolved, undulating from nape to heels, not

touching him, not holding him save by the attraction of her black eyes

set upon his handsome eyes, and of her red lips of a flirt, from which

(it was evident!) the boy could not take his gaze. Once more she shook

her purple-casqued head; once more she let him catch her about the hips.

Over the canvas floor they spun, Leslie and Monty, black-and-mauve,

moving together with a voluptuous swing and zest that marked them as the

best-matched dancers in the room. Well-matched, perhaps, for life,

thought Leslie's chum.... But no; as they passed Gwenna saw that the

black eyes and the red mouth were laughing cynically together; she

caught, through the music, Leslie's clear "Don't _talk_! _don't_ talk

when you're dancing, my good boy.... Spoils everything.... You _can_

waltz.... You know you've never anything to _say_, Mont!"

"I have. I say----"

Leslie waltzed on unheeding. Whatever he had to say she did not take it

seriously. She laughed over his shoulder to little Gwenna, watching....

Couple after couple had joined in now, following the swift tall graceful

black shape and the light-limbed mauve one as they circled by. A flutter

of draperies and tinsel, a toss and jingle of stage accoutrements; the

dancers were caught and sped by the music like a wreath of

rainbow-bubbles on the rise and fall of a wave.

Gwenna, the Cherub-girl, was left standing for a wistful moment by the

side of the tall Airman in evening dress.

He said, through the music, "Who's your partner for this?"

She had forgotten. It was the Futurist Folly again. He had to find

another partner. Gwenna danced with her Airman again ... and again....

Scarcely realising how it happened--indeed, how do these arrangements

make themselves?--this boy and girl from a simpler world than that of

this tinsel Bohemia spent almost the whole of the rest of that evening

as they had spent that day in the country, as she would have asked to

spend the rest of their lives together.

Some of the time they danced in the brilliant, heated marquee under the

swinging garlands and the lamps. Then again they strolled out into the

Riverside garden. Here it was cool and dewy and dim except where, from

the tent-openings, there was flung upon the grass a broad path of light,

across which flitted, moth-like, the figures of the dancers. Above the

marquee the summer night was purple velvet, be-diamonded with stars. At

the end of the lawn the river whispered to the willows and reflected,

here the point of a star, there the red blot of a lantern caught in a

tree.

Hugo Swayne went by in this bewildering stage, light-and-shade with a

very naughty-looking lady who declared that her white frock was merely

"'Milk,' out of 'The Blue Bird.'" In passing he announced to his cousin

that the whole scene was like a Conder fan that he had at his rooms.

Groups of his friends were simply sitting about and _making_ themselves

into quite good Fragonards. Little Gwenna did not even try to remember

what Fragonard was. None of these people in this place seemed real to

her but herself and her partner. And the purple dusk and velvet shadows,

the lights and colours, the throb and thrill of the music were just the

setting for this "night of gladness" that was only a little more

substantial than her other fancies.

More quickly it seemed to be passing! Every now and again she exultantly

reminded herself, "I am here, with him, out of all these people! He is

only speaking to me! I have him to myself--I must feel that as hard as I

can all the time now, for we shall be going home at the end of this

Ball, and then I shall be alone again.... If _only_ I could be with him

for always! How extraordinary, that just to be with one particular

person out of all the world should be enough to make all this

happiness!"

With her crop-curled head close against his shoulder as they danced, she

stole at her boyish partner the shy, defiantly possessive glance that a

child gives sometimes to the favourite toy, the toy that focusses all

his dreams. This was "the one particular person out of all the world"

whose company answered every conscious and unconscious demand of the

young girl's nature even as his waltz-step suited her own.

Yet she guessed that this special quiet rapture could not last. Even

before the end of the dance the end of _this_ must surely come.

It must have been long hours after the waltz-cotillon that they strolled

down to a sitting-out arbour that had been arranged at the end of the

path nearest the river. It was softly lighted by two big Chinese

lanterns, primrose-coloured, ribbed like caterpillars, with a black base

and a splash of patterned colour upon each; a rug had been thrown on the

grass, and there were two big white-cane chairs, with house-boat

cushions.

Here the two sat down, to munch sandwiches, drink hock-cup.

"I remembered to bring two glasses, this time," said Paul Dampier.

Gwenna smiled as she nodded. Her eyes were on those silver white-finned

minnows of her feet, that he had called pretty.

He followed her glance as he took another sandwich. "Rather a good idea,

wings to your shoes because you're supposed to be a cherub."

"Oh, but that's not what the wings were supposed to be for," she said

quickly. "I only put those in at the waltz-cotillon so that----"

Here she stopped dead, wishing that the carpeted grass might open at

those winged feet of hers and swallow her up!

How could she have given herself away like this? Let him _know_ how she

had wanted him to choose her! when he hadn't even known she was there;

hadn't been thinking about her!

She flurried on: "S-so that they should look more like fancy-dress shoes

instead of real ones!"

He turned his head, dark and clean-cut against the lambent swaying

lantern. He said, out of the gloom that spared her whelming blush, "Oh,

was that it! I thought," he added with a teasing note in his voice, "I

thought you were going to say it was to remind me that I'd promised to

take you flying, and that it's never come off yet!"

Gwenna, hesitating for a moment, sat back against the cushions of the

wicker-chair. She looked away from him, and then ventured a retort--a

tiny reproach.

"Well--it _hasn't_ come off."

"No, you know--it's too bad, really. I have been most frightfully busy,"

he apologised. "But we'll fix it up before you go to-night, shall we?

You must come." At this he was glad to see that the Little Thing looked

really pleased.

She was awfully nice and sensible, he thought for the severalth time.

Again the odd wish took him that had taken him in that field. Yes! He

_would_ like to touch those babyish-looking curls of hers with a finger.

Or even to rumple them against his cheek.... Another most foolish and

incomprehensible wish had occurred to him about this girl, even in her

absence. Apropos of nothing, one evening in his rooms he had remembered

the look of that throat of hers; round and sturdy and white above her

low collar. And he had thought he would rather like to put his own hands

about it, and to pretend--quite gently, of course--to throttle the

Little Thing. To-night she'd bundled it all up in that sort of feather

boa.... Pity.... She was ever so much prettier without.

Fellow can't say that sort of thing to a girl, though, thought the

simple Paul.

So he merely said, instead, "Let me stick that down for you somewhere,"

and he leant forward and took from her the plate that had held her

cress-and-chicken sandwiches. Then he crossed his long legs and leant

back again. It was jolly and restful here in the dim arbour with her;

the sound of music and laughter came, much softened, from the marquee.

Nearer to them, on the water below the willows, there was a little

splashing and twittering of the moor-hen, roused by something, and the

scarcely audible murmur of the Thames, speeding past House-boat Country

to London ... the workaday Embankment.... It was jolly to be so

quiet....

Then, into the happy silence that had fallen between them, there came a

sound--the sound of the crunching of gravel. Gwenna looked up. Two

figures sauntered past down the path; both tall and shapely and black

against the paling, star-sprinkled sky above the frieze of sighing

willows. Then Leslie's clear, careless voice drifted to their ears.

"Afraid not.... Anyhow, what on earth would be the good of caring '_a

little_'?... I look upon you as such an infant--in arms----"

Here there was a bass mutter of, "Make it _your_ arms, and I don't

mind!"

Then Leslie's insouciant: "I _knew_ you'd say that obvious thing. I

always do know what you're going to do or say next ... fatal, that.... A

girl _can't_ want to marry a man when----"

Apparently, then, the Dean's son was proposing again?

As the couple of free-limbed black shadows passed nearer, Paul Dampier

kicked his heel against his chair. He moved in it to make it creak more

noisily.

Good manners wasted!

For Leslie, as she afterwards told her chum, took for her motto upon

such occasions, "_And if the others see, what matter they_?"

Her partner seemed oblivious that there were any "others" sitting in

the shadows. The couple passed, leaving upon the night-breeze a trail of

cigarette-smoke (Leslie's), and an indistinguishable growl, presumably

from the Black Panther.

Leslie's voice floated back, "Not in the mood. Besides! You _had_, last

time, 'to soften the edges,' as you call it."

More audibly her partner grumbled, "What's a kiss you've _had_? About as

satisfying as last summer's strawberry-ice----"

A mere nothing--the incident.

Yet it brought (or hastened) a change into the atmosphere of that arbour

where, under the giant glowworms of lights swinging above them, two

young people sat at ease together without speaking.

For Gwenna, envious, thought, "Leslie can make a man think of nothing

but her, even when she's 'not in the mood!' I can't. Yet I believe I

could, but for one thing. Even now I don't know that he isn't thinking

about That Other----"

"That Other" was her rival, that machine of his that Gwenna had not

mentioned all the evening....

It had come, she knew, that duel between the Girl and the Aeroplane for

the first place in the heart of a Flying Man. A duel as old as the

world, between the thing a man greatly loves, and that which he loves

more greatly still. She thought of Lovelace who "_loved Honour more_."

She thought of the cold Sea that robs the patient, warm-hearted women

ashore, of the icy Pole whose magnetism drew men from their wives. The

work that drew the thoughts of her Airman was that Invention that was

known already as his _Fiancee_....

"Leslie says it's not as bad as if it were another woman, but I see her

as a woman," thought the silent, fanciful girl, "I see her as a sort of

winged dragon with a figure-head--aeroplanes don't have figure-heads,

but this one seems to me to have, just like some of those vessels that

come into the harbour at Aberdovey. Or like those pictures of harps that

are half a woman. Smooth red hair she has, and a long neck stretched

out, and a rather thin, pale, don't-care sort of face like that girl

called Muriel. And--and eagle's talons for hands. That's how I see that

_Fiancee_ of his, with claws for hands that won't, _won't_ ever let him

go...."

A puff of wind knocked one of the lanterns above their heads softly

against the other; the willows rustled silkily outside. Gwenna sat

motionless, holding her breath. Suddenly her reverie had broken off with

an abrupt, unspoken--"but it's me he's thinking of _now_...."

Paul Dampier had been lightly amused by that passing of the other

couple. That friend of hers, Miss Long, was more than a bit of a flirt,

he considered. This Little Thing wasn't. Couldn't imagine _her_ giving a

kiss as some girls give a dance; or even to "soften" a refusal.... Her

mouth, he found himself noticing, was full and curly and exactly the

colour of the buds of those fox-gloves that grew all over the shop at

her place in Wales. It was probably softer than those curls of hers

that he would (also) like to touch.

Idiotic idea, though----

But an idea which is transmittable.

Gwenna, thrilled by this message which she had caught by a method older

and less demonstrable than Marconi's, realised: "He heard _that_, just

now; that boy wanting to kiss Leslie.... He's thinking, now, that he

might kiss me."

The boy scarcely at arm's length from her thought a little confusedly,

"I say, though.... Rotten thing to do...."

The girl thought, "He would like to. _What_ is he waiting about? We

shall have to go directly----"

For the sky outside had been swiftly paling. Now that pure pallor was

changing to the glow of Abyssinian gold. Dawn! From the marquee came a

louder blare of music; two long cornet notes and then a rollicking

tune--The old "Post Horn" Galop--the last dance. Presently a distant

noise of clapping and calls for "Extra"! There would be no time for

extras, she'd heard. They would have to go after this. People were

beginning to go. Already they had heard the noise of a car. His chair

creaked as he moved a little sidewards.

He told himself, more emphatically, "Beastly rotten thing to do. This

Little Thing would never speak to me again----"

And the girl sat there, without stirring, without glancing at him. Yet

every curve of her little body, every eyelash, every soft breath she

drew was calling him, was set upon "making" him. What could she do more

to make herself, as Leslie called it, a magnet? Love and innocent

longing filled her to the eyes, the tender fox-glove buds of lips that

could have asked for nothing better. Even if this _were_ the only time!

Even if she never saw him again!

Wasn't he going to set the crown upon her wonderful dream of a summer

night?

"No, look _here_," the boy remonstrated silently with something in

himself; something that seemed to mock him. He lifted his fair head with

a gleam of that pride that goes so often before a fall. "Dash it

all----"

"He will!" the girl thought breathlessly. And with her thought she

seemed to cast all of her heart into the spell....

And then, quite suddenly, something happened whereby that spell was

snapped. Even as she thought "_he will_," he rose from his chair.

He took a step to the entrance of their arbour, his shoulders blotting

out the glowing light.

"Listen," he said.

And Gwenna, rising too, listened, breathlessly, angrily. He would

_not_--she had been cheated. What was it that had--_interfered_?

Presently she heard it, she heard what she would have taken for the

noise of another of the departing motors.

Through the clatter from the last galop it was like, yet unlike, the

noise of a starting car. But there was in it an _angrier_ note than

that.

It is angry for want of any help but its own. A motor-car has solid

earth against which to drive; a steamship has dense water. But the

Machine that caused this noise was beating her metal thews against

invisible air.

It was an aeroplane.

"Look!" said Paul Dampier.

Far away over the still benighted land she rose, and into that glory of

Abyssinian gold beyond the river. Gwenna, moving out on to the path,

watched the flight. Before, she had wondered that these soaring things

didn't come down. Now, she would have wondered if they had done so.

Steady as if running on rails, the aeroplane came on overhead; her sound

as she came now loud, now soft, but always angry, harsh--harshness like

that of a woman who lives to herself and her strivings, with no

comradeship of Earth on which to lean. Against the sky that was her

playground she showed as a slate-coloured dragonfly--a purple Empress of

the Air soaring on and on into the growing dazzle of the day.

"Oh, it _is_ beautiful, though," cried the girl on the path, looking up,

and losing for that moment the angry sense that had fallen upon her of

pleasure past, of the end of the song. "It is wonderful."

"Pooh, that old horse-bus," laughed Paul Dampier above her shoulder,

and mentioned the names of the machine, the flyer in her. He could pick

them out of the note of her angry song.

"That will be nothing to my P.D.Q.," he declared exultantly as they

walked on up the path towards the marquee. "You wait until I've got my

aeroplane working! That'll be something new in aviation, you know.

Nearest thing yet to the absolute identity of the Man with the Machine."

He yawned a little with natural sleepiness, but his interest was

wide-awake. He could have gone on until breakfast-time explaining some

fresh point about his invention, while the girl in those little

silver-heeled shoes paced slowly up the path beside him.... He was going

on.

"Make all those other types, English or foreign, as clumsy as the

old-fashioned bone-shake bicycle. Fact," he declared. "Now, take the

Taube--Hullo----"

"_Bitte_," said a voice.

The German word came across a pile of plates deftly balanced upon a

young man's forearm. That arm was clad in the sleeve of a trim white

jacket, buttoned over a thick and compact little chest. The waiter's

hair was a short, upright golden stubble, and another little stubble of

gold sprouted upon his steady upper lip. He had come up, very softly,

behind them.

He spoke again in excellent English.

"By your leave, sir."

Dampier made way for him, and he passed. Gwenna, with a little shiver,

looked after him. The sight of the young waiter whom she had noticed at

the beginning of the evening had given her an unreasonable little

chill.... Perhaps it was because his softly-moving, white figure against

those willows had loomed so like a ghost....

Dampier said, "Rotten job for a man, I always think, hanging about and

picking up things for other people like that."

"Yes," said Gwenna, absently, sadly. It _was_ the end now. Quite the

end. They'd got to go home. Back to everyday life. The Club, the Works.

Nothing to live for, except--Ah, yes! His promise that he _would_ take

her flying, soon....

Above in the glowing sky the aeroplane was dwindling--to disappear. The

waiter, turning a corner of the dark shrubbery, had also disappeared as

they passed. From behind the shelter of the branches he was watching,

watching....

He was looking after Paul Dampier, the Airman--the inventor of the

newest aeroplane.