CHAPTER XVIII

THE OBVIOUS THING

She was in this mood to win a waiting game on the day that Paul Dampier

came down to the Aircraft Works.

This was just one of the more wonderful happenings that waited round the

corner and that the young girl might hope to encounter any day.

The first she knew of it was from hearing a remark of the Aeroplane

Lady's to one of her French mechanics at the lathes.

"This will make the eighteenth pattern of machine that we've turned out

from this place," she said. "I wonder if it's going to answer, Andre?"

"Which machine, madame?" the man asked. He was a big fellow, dark and

thick-haired and floridly handsome in his blue overalls; and his bright

eyes were fixed interestedly upon his principal as she explained through

the buzz and the clack and the clang of machinery in the large room,

"This new model that Colonel Conyers wants us to make for him."

Gwenna caught the name. She thought breathlessly, "That's _his_ machine!

He's got Aircraft Conyers to take it up and have it made for him! It's

_his_!"

She'd thought this, even before the Aeroplane Lady concluded, "It's the

idea of a young aviator I know. Such a nice boy: Paul Dampier of

Hendon."

The French mechanic put some question, and the Aeroplane Lady answered,

"Might be an improvement. I hope so. I'd like him to have a show,

anyhow. He's sending the engine down to-morrow afternoon. They'll bring

it on a lorry. Ask Mr. Ryan to see about the unloading of it; I may not

get back from town before the thing comes."

Now Mr. Ryan was that red-haired pupil who had conducted Gwenna from the

station on the day of her first appearance at the Works. Probably Leslie

Long would have affirmed that this Mr. Ryan was also a factor in the

change that was coming over Gwenna and her outlook. Leslie considered

that no beauty treatment has more effect upon the body and mind of a

woman than has the regular application of masculine admiration.

Admiration was now being lavished by Mr. Ryan upon the little new typist

with the face of a baby-angel and the small, rounded figure; and Mr.

Ryan saw no point in hiding his approval. It did not stop at glances.

Before a week had gone by he had informed Miss Williams that she was a

public benefactor to bring anything so delightful to look at as herself

into those beastly, oily, dirty shops; that he hated, though, to see a

woman with such pretty fingers having to mess 'em up with that vile

dope; and that he wondered she hadn't thought of going on the stage.

"But I can't act," Gwenna had told him.

"What's that got to do with it?" the young man had inquired blithely.

"All they've got to do is to _look_. You could beat 'em at that."

"Oh, what nonsense, Mr. Ryan!" the girl had said, more pleased than she

admitted to herself, and holding her curly head erect as a brown tulip

on a sturdy stem.

"Not nonsense at all," he argued. "I tell you, if you went into musical

comedy and adopted a strong enough Cockney accent there'd be another

Stage and Society wedding before you could say 'knife.' You could get

any young peer to adore you, Miss Gwenna, if you smiled at him over the

head of a toy pom and called him 'Fice.' I can just see you becoming a

Gaiety puss and marrying some Duke----"

"I don't want to marry any Dukes, thanks."

"I'm sure I don't want you to," Mr. Ryan had said softly. "I'd miss you

too much myself...."

The fact is that he was a flirt for the moment out of work. He was also

of the type that delights in the proximity of "Girl"--using the word as

one who should say "Game." "Girl" suggested to him, as to many young

men, a collective mass of that which is pretty, soft, and

to-be-made-love-to. He found it pleasant to keep his hand in by paying

these compliments to this new instalment of Girl--who was rather a

little pet, he thought, though _rather_ slow.

As for Gwenna, she bloomed under it, gaining also in poise. She learned

to take a compliment as if it were an offered flower, instead of dodging

it like a brick-bat, which is the very young girl's failing. She found

that even if receiving a compliment from the wrong man is like wearing a

right-hand glove on the left hand, it is better than having no gloves.

(Especially it is better than _looking_ as if one had no gloves.)

The attentions of young Ryan, his comment on a new summer frock, the

rose laid by him on her desk in the morning; these things were not

without their effect--it was a different effect from any intended by the

red-haired pupil, who was her teacher in all this.

She would find herself thinking, "He doesn't look at me nearly so much,

I notice, in a trimmed-up hat, or a 'fussy' blouse. Men don't like them

on me, perhaps." (That blouse or hat would be discarded.) Or, "Well! if

so-and-so about me pleases him, it'll please other men."

And for "men" she read always, always the same one. She never realised

that if she had not met Paul Dampier she _might_ have fallen in love

with young Peter Ryan. Presently he had begged her to call him "Peter."

She wouldn't.

"I think I'd do anything for you," young Ryan had urged, "if you asked

for it, using my Christian name!"

Gwenna had replied: "Very well! If there's anything I ever want,

frightfully badly, that you could give me, I shall ask for it like

that."

"You mean there's nothing _I_ could give you?" he had reproached her, in

the true flirt's tone. It can sound so much more tender, at times, than

does the tone of the truest lover. A note or so of it had found its way

into Gwenna's soft voice these days.

Yes; she had half unconsciously learned a good deal from Mr. Ryan.

* * * * *

"I say! Miss Gwenna!"

Mr. Ryan's rust-red head was popped round the door of the Wing-room

where Gwenna, alone, was pouring dope out of the tilted ten-gallon can

on the floor into her little pannikin.

"Come out for just one minute."

"Too busy," demurred the girl. "No time."

"Not just to look," he pleaded, "at the really _pretty_ job I'm making

of unloading this lorry with Dampier's engine?"

Quickly Gwenna set down the can and came out, in her pinafore, to the

breezes and sunshine of the yard outside. It was as much because she

wanted to see what there was to be seen of that "_Fiancee_" of the

aviator's, as because this other young man wanted her to admire the work

of his hands.

Those hands themselves, Gwenna noticed, were masked and thick, half way

up his forearms, with soft soap. This he seemed to have been smearing on

certain boards, making a sliding way for that precious package that

stood on the low lorry. The boards were packed up in banks and stages,

an irregular stairway. This another assistant was carefully trying with

a long straight edge with a spirit level in the middle of it; and a

third man stood on the lorry, resting on a crowbar and considering the

package that held the heart of Paul Dampier's machine.

"You see if she doesn't come down as light as a bubble and stop exactly

_there_," said Mr. Ryan complacently, digging his heel into a pillowy

heap of debris. "Lay those other planks to take her inside, Andre." He

wiped his brow on a moderately clear patch of forearm, and moved away to

check the observations of the man in the shirt-sleeves.

Gwenna, watching, could not help admiring both this self-satisfied young

mudlark and his job. This was how women liked to see men busy: with

strenuous work that covered them with dirt and sweat, taxing their

brains and their muscles at the same time. Those girls who were so keen

on the Enfranchisement of Women and "Equal Opportunities" and those

things, those suffragettes at her Hampstead Club who "couldn't see where

the superiority of the male sex was supposed to come in"--Well! The

reason why they "couldn't" was (the more primitive Gwenna thought)

simply because they didn't see enough men at _this_ sort of thing. The

men these enlightened young women knew best sat indoors all day,

writing--_that_ sort of thing. Or talking about fans, like Mr. Swayne,

and about "the right tone of purple in the curtains" for a room. The

women, of course, could do that themselves. They could also go to

colleges and pass men's exams. Lots did. But (thought Gwenna) not many

of them could get through the day's work of Mr. Ryan, who had also been

at Oxford, and who not only had forearms that made her own look like

ivory toys, but who could plan out his work so that if he said that that

squat, ponderous case would "stop exactly _there_"--stop there it would.

She watched; the breeze rollicking in her curls, spreading the folds of

her grey-blue pinafore out behind her like a sail, moulding her skirt

to her rounded shape as she stood.

Then she turned with a very friendly and pretty smile to young Ryan.

It was thus that Paul Dampier, entering the yard from behind them, came

upon the girl whom he had decided not to see again.

He knew already that "his little friend," as old Hugo insisted upon

calling her, had taken a job at the Aircraft Works. He'd heard that from

his cousin, who'd been told all about it by Miss Long.

And considering that he'd made up his mind that it would be better all

round if he were to drop having anything more to say to the girl, young

Dampier was glad, of course, that she'd left town. That would make

things easier. He wouldn't seem to be avoiding her, yet he needn't set

eyes upon her again.

Of course he'd been glad. He hadn't _wanted_ to see her.

Then, at the end of his negotiations with Colonel Conyers, he'd

understood that he would have to go over and pay a visit to the

Aeroplane Lady. And even in the middle of the new excitement he had

remembered that this was where Gwenna Williams was working. And for a

moment he'd hesitated. That would mean seeing the Little Thing again

after all.

Then he'd thought, Well? Fellow can't _look_ as if he were trying to

keep out of a girl's way? Besides, chances were he wouldn't see her

when he did go, he'd thought.

It wasn't likely that the Aeroplane Lady kept her clerk, or whatever she

was, in her pocket, he'd thought.

He'd just be taken to where the P.D.Q. was being assembled, he'd

supposed. The Little Thing would be kept busy with her typing and one

thing and another in some special office, he'd expected!

What he had _not_ expected to find was the scene before him. The Little

Thing idling about outside the shops here; hatless, pinafored, looking

absolutely top-hole and perfectly at home, chatting with the

ginger-haired bloke who was unloading the engine as if he were no end of

a pal of hers! She was smiling up into his face and taking a most

uncommon amount of interest, it seemed, in what the fellow had been

doing!

And, before, she'd said she wasn't interested in machinery! thought

Dampier as he came up, feeling suddenly unconscionably angry.

He forgot the hours that the Little Thing had already passed in hanging

on every word, mostly about a machine, that had fallen from his own

lips. He only remembered that moment at the Smiths' dinner-party, when

she'd admitted that that sort of thing didn't appeal to her.

Yet, here she was! _Deep_ in it, by Jove!

He had come right up to her and this other chap before they noticed

him....

She turned sharply at the sound of the young aviator's rather stiff

"Good afternoon."

She had expected that day to see his engine--no more. Here he stood, the

maker of the engine, backed by the scorched, flat landscape, in the

sunlight that picked out little clean-cut, intense shadows under the rim

of his straw hat, below his cleft chin, along his sleeve and the lapel

of his jacket, making him look (she thought) like a very good snapshot

of himself. He had startled her again; but this time she was

self-possessed.

She came forward and faced him; prettier than ever, somehow (he thought

again), with tossed curls and pinafore blowing all about her. She might

have been a little schoolgirl let loose from some class in those gaunt

buildings behind her. But she spoke in a more "grown-up" manner, in some

way, than he'd ever heard her speak before. Looking up, she said in the

soft accent that always brought back to him his boyish holidays in her

country, "How do you do, Mr. Dampier? I'm afraid I can't shake hands.

Mine are all sticky with dope."

"Oh, are they," he said, and looked away from her (not without effort)

to the ginger-haired fellow.

"This," said Gwenna Williams, a little self-consciously at last, "is Mr.

Ryan."

Plenty of self-assurance about _him_! He nodded and said in a

hail-fellow-well-met sort of voice, "Hullo; you're Dampier, are you?

Glad to meet you. You see we're hard at it unpacking your engine here."

Then he looked towards the opening, the road, and the car--borrowed as

usual--in which the young aviator had motored down. There was another

large package in the body of the car; a box, iron-clamped, with letters

stencilled upon it, and sealed. "Something else interesting that you've

brought with you?" said this in sufferable man called Ryan. "Here,

Andre, fetch that box down----"

"No," interrupted young Dampier curtly. The curtness was only partly for

this other chap. That sealed box, for reasons of his own and Colonel

Conyers', was not to be hauled about by any mechanic in the place. "You

and I'll fetch that in presently for Mrs. Crewe."

"Right. She'll be back at three o'clock," Ryan told him. "She told me to

ask you to have a look round the place or do anything you cared to until

she came in."

"Oh, thanks," said young Dampier.

At that moment what he would have "cared to do" would have been to get

this girl to himself somewhere where he could say to the Little Humbug,

"Look here. You aren't interested in machinery. You said so yourself.

What are you getting this carroty-headed Ass to talk to you about it

for?"

Seeing that this was out of the question he hesitated.... He didn't want

to go round the shops with this fellow, to whom he'd taken a dislike. On

sight. He did that sometimes. On the other hand, he couldn't do what he

wanted to do--sit and talk to the Little Thing until the Aeroplane Lady

returned. What about saying he'd got to look up some one in the village,

and bolting, until three o'clock? No. No fear! Why should this other

fellow imagine he could have the whole field to himself for talking to

Her?

So the trio, the age-old group that is composed of two young men and a

girl, stood there for a moment rather awkwardly.

Finally the Little Thing said, "Well, I've got to go back to my wings,"

and turned.

Then the fellow Ryan said, "One minute, Miss Gwenna----"

Miss Gwenna! All but her Christian name! And he, Paul Dampier, who'd

known her a good deal longer--he'd never called her anything at all, but

"_you_"! Miss _Gwenna_, if you please!

What followed was even more of a bit of dashed cheek.

For the fellow turned quickly aside to her and said, "I say, it's Friday

afternoon. Supposing I don't see you again to-morrow morning--it's all

right, isn't it, about your coming up to town for that matinee with me?"

"Oh, yes, thanks," said the Little Thing brightly. "I asked Mrs. Crewe,

and it's all right."

Then the new note crept into her voice; the half-unconsciously-acquired

note of coquetry. She said, smiling again at the red-haired Ryan, "I am

so looking forward to that."

And, turning again to the Airman, she said with a half-shy, half-airy

little smile that, also, he found new in her, "Have you seen _The Cinema

Star_? Mr. Ryan is going to take me to-morrow afternoon."

"Oh, is he?" said Paul Dampier shortly.

_Was_ he, indeed? _Neck!_

"You do come up to town sometimes from here, then?" added Mr. Dampier to

Miss Gwenna Williams, speaking a trifle more distinctly than usual, as

he concluded, "I was just going to ask you whether you could manage to

come out with _me_ to-morrow evening?"

Nobody was more surprised to hear these last words than he himself.

Until that moment he hadn't had the faintest intention of ever asking

the girl out anywhere again. Now here he was; he'd done it. The Little

Thing had murmured, "Oh----" and was looking--yes, she was looking

pleased. The fellow was looking as if he'd been taken aback. Good. He'd

probably thought he was going to have her to himself for the evening as

well as for the matinee. Dinner at the "Petit Riche"--a music-hall

afterwards--travel down home with her. Well, Dampier had put a stopper

on that plan. But now that he had asked her, where was he going to take

her himself? To another musical comedy? No. Too like the other chap. To

one of the Exhibitions? No; not good enough. Anyhow, wherever he took

her, he hadn't been out-bidden by this soft-soapy young idiot. Infernal

cheek.... Then, all in a flash the brilliant solution came to Paul

Dampier. Of course! Yes, he could work it! The Aviation Dinner! He'd

meant to go. He would take her. It would involve taking Mrs. Crewe as

well. Never mind. It was something to which that other young ass

wouldn't have the chance of taking her, and that was enough.

"Yes," he went on saying, as coolly as if it had all been planned.

"There's a show on at the Wilbur Club; Wilbur Wright, you know. I

thought I'd ask if you and Mrs. Crewe would care to come with me to the

dinner. Will you?--Just break that packing up a bit more," he added

negligently to the red-haired youth. "And check those spaces--Will you

take me into your place, Miss Williams?"

_That_, he thought, was the way to deal with poachers on his particular

preserves!

It was only when he got inside the spacious white Wing-room and sat

down, riding a chair, close to the trestle-table where the girl bent her

curly head so conscientiously over the linen strips again, that he

realised that this Little Thing wasn't his particular preserves at all!

Hadn't he, only a couple of weeks ago, definitely decided that she was

never to mean anything of the sort to him? Hadn't he resolved----

Here, with his long arms crossed over the back of the chair as he sat

facing and watching her, he put back his head and laughed.

"What are you laughing at?" she asked, straightening herself in the big

pinafore with its front all stiff with that sticky mess she worked with.

He was laughing to think how dashed silly it was to make these

resolutions. Resolutions about which people you were or were not to see

anything of! As if Fate didn't arrange that for you! As if you didn't

_have_ to leave that to Fate, and to take your chance!

Possibly Fate meant that he and the Little Thing should be friends,

great friends. Not now, of course. Not yet. In some years' time,

perhaps, when his position was assured; when he'd achieved some of the

Big Things that he'd got to do; when he _had_ got something to offer a

girl. Ages to wait.... Still, he could leave it at that, now, he

thought.... It might, or might not, come to anything. Only, it was

ripping to see her!

He didn't tell her this.

He uttered some conventional boy's joke about being amused to see her

actually at work for the first time since he'd met her. And she made a

little bridling of her neck above that vast, gull-like wing that she was

pasting; and retorted that, indeed, she worked very hard.

"Really," he teased her. "Always seem to be taking time off, whenever

I've come."

"You've only come twice, Mr. Dampier; and then it's been sort of

lunch-time."

"Oh, I see," he said. ("I may smoke, mayn't I?" and he lighted a

cigarette.) "D'you always take your lunch out of doors, Miss Gwenna?"

(He didn't see why _he_ shouldn't call her that.)

She said, "I'd like to." Then she was suddenly afraid he might think she

was thinking of their open-air lunch in that field, weeks ago, and she

said quickly (still working): "I--I was so glad when I heard about the

engine coming, and that Colonel Conyers had ordered the P.D.Q. to be

made here. I--do congratulate you, Mr. Dampier. Tell me about the

Machine, won't you?"

He said, "Oh, you'll hear all about that presently; but look here, you

haven't told me about _you_----"

Gwenna could scarcely believe her ears; but yes, it was true. He was

turning, turning from talk about the Machine, the P.D.Q., the _Fiancee_!

Asking, for the first time, about herself. She drew a deep breath; she

turned her bright, greeny-brown eyes sideways, longing at that moment

for Leslie with whom to exchange a glance. Her own shyly triumphant look

met only the deep, wise eyes of the Great Dane, lying in his corner of

the Wing-room beside his kennel. He blinked, thumped his tail upon the

floor.

"Darling," whispered Gwenna, a little shakily, as she passed the tawny

dog. "_Darling!_" She had to say it to something just then.

Paul Dampier pursued, looking at her over his crossed arms on the back

of that chair, "You haven't said whether you'll come to-morrow night."

She asked (as if it mattered to her where she went, as long as it was

with him), "What is this dinner?"

"The Wilbur dinner? Oh, there's one every year. Just a meeting of those

interested in flying. I thought you might care----"

"Who'll be there?"

"Oh, just people. Not many. Some ladies go. Why?"

"Only because I haven't got anything at all to wear," announced Gwenna,

much more confidently, however, than she could have done before Mr. Ryan

had told her so much about her own looks, "except my everlasting white

and the blue sash like at the Smiths'."

"Well, that was awfully pretty; wasn't it? Only----"

"What?"

"Well, may I say something?"

"Well, what is it?"

"Frightfully rude, really," said Paul Dampier, tilting himself back on

his chair, and still looking at her over a puff of smoke, staring even.

She was something to stare at. Why was she such a lot prettier? Had he

_forgotten_ what her looks were? She seemed--she seemed, to-day, so much

more of a woman than he'd ever seen her. He forgot that he was going to

say something. She, with a little fluttering laugh for which he could

have clasped her, reminded him.

"What's the rude thing you were going to say to me?"

"Oh! It's only this. Don't go muffling your neck up in that sort of ruff

affair this time; looks ever so much nicer without," said the boy.

The girl retorted with quite a good show of disdainfulness, "I don't

think there's anything _quite_ so funny as men talking about what we

wear."

"Oh, all right," said the boy, and pretended to be offended. Then he

laughed again and said, "I've still got something of yours that you

wear, as a matter of fact----"

"Of mine?"

"Yes, I have; I've never given it you back yet. That locket of yours

that you lost."

"Oh----!" she exclaimed.

That locket! That little heart-shaped pendant of mother-o'-pearl that

she had worn the first evening that she'd ever seen him; and that

she had dropped in the car as they were driving back. So much had

happened ... she felt she was not even the same Gwenna as the girl who

had snapped the slender silver chain about her neck before they set out

for the party.... She'd given up wondering if her Airman had forgotten

to give it back to her. She'd forgotten all about it herself. And he'd

had it, one of her own personal belongings, somewhere in his keeping all

this time.

"Oh, yes; my--my little mascot," she said. "Have you got it?"

"Not here. It's in my other jac--it's at my rooms, I'll bring it to the

dinner for you. And--er--look here, Miss Gwenna----"

He tilted forward again as the girl passed his side of the table to

reach for the little wooden pattern by which she cut out a patch for the

end of the strip, and then passed back again.

"I say," he began again, a trifle awkwardly, "if you don't mind, I want

you to give me something in exchange for that locket."

"Oh, do you?" murmured Gwenna. "What?"

And a chill took her.

She didn't want him, here and now, to ask for--what Mr. Ryan might have

asked.

But it was not a kiss he asked for, after all.

He said, "You know those little white wings you put in your shoes? You

remember, the night of that river dance? Well, I wish you'd let me have

one of those to keep as my mascot."

He hadn't thought of wishing it until there had intruded into his ken

that other young man who made appointments--and who might have

the--cheek to ask for keepsakes, but who shouldn't be first, after all!

Anxiously, as if it were for much more than that feathered trifle of a

mascot that he asked, he said, "Will you?"

"Oh! If you like!"

"Sure you don't mind?"

"Mind? I should like you to have it," said Gwenna softly. "Really."

And across the great white aeroplane wing the girl looked very sweetly

and soberly at her Aviator, who had just asked that other tiny wing of

her, as a knight begged his lady's favour.

* * * * *

It was at this moment that the Aeroplane Lady, an alert figure in dark

blue, came into a room where a young man and a girl had been talking

idly enough together while one smoked and the other went on working with

that five-foot barrier of the wing between them.

The Aeroplane Lady, being a woman, was sensitive to atmosphere--not the

spirit-and-solution-scented atmosphere of this place of which she was

mistress, but another.

In it she caught a vibration of something that made her say to herself,

"Bless me, what's _this_? I never knew those two had even met! 'Not

saying so,' I suppose. But certainly engaged, or on the verge of it!"

--Which all went to prove that the rebuked, the absent Leslie, was not

far wrong in saying that it is the Obvious Thing that always succeeds!