CHAPTER II

THE BOSOM-CHUMS

Through leafy side-streets and little squares of Georgian houses,

Gwenna's taxi took her to a newer road that sloped sharply from the

Heath at the top to the church and schools at the bottom.

The taxi stopped at the glass porch of the large, red-brick building

with the many casement-windows, out of which some enterprising committee

had formed the Ladies' Residential Club. It was a place where a mixed

assembly of young women (governesses, art-students, earnest suffrage

workers, secretaries and so on) lived cheaply enough and with a good

deal of fun and noise, of feud and good-fellowship. The head of it was a

clergyman's widow and the sort of lady who is never to be seen otherwise

than wearing a neat delaine blouse of the Edwardian era, a gold curb

tie-pin, a hairnet and a disapproving glance.

Gwenna passed this lady in the tessellated hall; she then almost

collided with the object of the lady's most constant disapproval.

This was a very tall, dark girl with an impish face, a figure boyishly

slim. She looked almost insolently untidy, for she wore a shabby brown

hat, something after the pattern of a Boy Scout's, under which her black

hair was preparing to slide down over the collar of a rain-coat which

(as its owner would have told you) had seen at least two reigns. It was

also covered with loose white hairs, after the fashion of garments whose

wearers are continually with dogs.

Gwenna caught joyously at the long arm in the crumpled sleeve.

"Oh, Leslie!" she cried eagerly.

For this was the bosom-chum.

"Ha, Taffy-child! Got back early for this orgie of ours? Good,"

exclaimed Leslie Long in a clear, nonchalant voice. It was very much the

same voice, Gwenna noticed now, as those people's at the flying-ground,

who belonged to that easy, lordly world of which Gwenna knew nothing.

Leslie, now, did seem to know something about it. Yet she was the

hardest-up girl in the whole club. She had been for a short time a Slade

student, for a shorter time still a probationer at some hospital. Now

all her days were given up to being paid companion to an old lady in

Highgate who kept seventeen toy-Poms; but her evenings remained her own.

"Afraid this party isn't going to be much of a spree for you," she told

Gwenna as they went upstairs. "I don't know who's going, but my

brother-in-law's friends seldom are what you could describe as 'men.'

Being a stockbroker and rich, he feels he must go in heavily for Art and

Music. Long hair to take you in, probably. Hope you don't awfully mind

coming to the rescue----"

"Don't mind what it is, as long as I'm going out somewhere, and with

you, Leslie!" the younger girl returned blithely. "Will you do me up the

back, presently?"

"Rather! I'm dressing in your room. There's a better light there. Hurry

up!"

* * * * *

Gwenna's long, narrowish front bedroom at the club was soon breathing of

that characteristic atmosphere that surrounds the making of a full-dress

toilette; warm, scented soap-suds, hot curling-irons, powder, Odol,

perfume. The room possessed a large dressing-table, a long wardrobe, and

a fairly spacious chest-of-drawers. But all this did not prevent the

heaping of Gwenna's bed with the garments, with the gilded, high-heeled

cothurns and with the other gauds belonging to her self-invited guest.

That guest, with her hair turbaned in a towel and her lengthy young body

sheathed in tricot, towered above the toilet-table like some modern's

illustration of a genie in the Arabian Nights. The small, more

closely-knit Welsh girl, who wore a kimono of pink cotton crepe slipping

from shoulders noticeably well modelled for so young a girl, tried to

steal a glimpse at herself from under her friend's arm.

"Get out, Taffy," ordered the other coolly. "You're in my way."

"I like _that_," remonstrated Gwenna, laughing. "It's _my_ glass,

Leslie!"

But she was ready to give up her glass or any of her belongings to this

freakish-tongued, kind-hearted, unconventional Leslie Long. Nearly

everybody at the club, whether they were of the advanced suffrage party

or the orthodox set, were "shocked" at her. Gwenna loved her. Leslie had

taken a very homesick little Welsh exile under her wing from her first

night at the club; Leslie had mothered her with introductions, loans,

advice. Leslie had bestowed upon her that last favour which woman shows

to sister-woman when she tells her "_at which shops to buy what_."

Leslie had, practically, dressed her. And it was thanks to this that

Gwenna had all the freshness and bloom of the country-girl without any

of the country-girl's all-concealing frumpiness.

Leslie talked an obligato to everything that Leslie did.

"I must dress first. I need it more, because I'm so much plainer than

you," said she. "But never mind; it won't take me more than half an hour

to transform myself into a credit to my brother-in-law's table. '_I am

a chrysoberyl, and 'tis night._' The Sometimes-Lvely Girl, that's the

type I belong to. I was told that, once, by one of the nicest boys who

ever loved me. Once I get my hair done, I'll show you. In the meantime

you get well out of my way on the bed, Taffy, like a sweet little cherub

that sits up aloft. And then I'll explain to you why Romance is

dead--oh, shove that anywhere; on the floor--and what the matter is with

us modern girls. Fact is, we're losing our Femininity. We're losing the

power, dear Miss Williams, to please Men."

She took up a jar of some white paste, and smeared it in a scented mask

above her features. As she did so she did not for one moment cease to

rattle.

"Men--that is, Nice Men," she gave out unctuously, as she worked the

paste with her palms over her Pierrot-like face, "detest all this

skin-food--and massage. It's Pampering the Person. No nice girl would

think of it. As for this powder-to-finish business, it's only another

form of make-up. They always see through it. (Hem!) And they abhor

anything that makes a girl--a nice girl--look in the least----" The

mocking voice was lowered at the word--"Actressy ...! This is what I was

told to-day, Taff, dear, by my old lady I take the Poms and Pekes out

for. I suppose she's never heard of any actress marrying. But she's a

mine of information. Always telling me where I've missed it, and how."

Here the tall girl reached for the silver shoe-horn off Gwenna's

dressing-table, and proceeded to use it as the Greek youth used his

strigil, stripping the warmed unguent from her face and neck. She went

on talking while Gwenna, putting a gloss on her short curls with a brush

in each hand, listened and laughed, and watched her from the bed with

greeny-brown eyes full of an unreserved admiration. So far, Leslie

Long's was the society in which Gwenna Williams most delighted. The

younger, less sophisticated girl poured out upon her chum that affection

which is not to be bribed or begged. It is not even to be found in any

but a heart which is yet untouched, save in its dreams, by Love.

"No Charm about us modern girls. No Mystery," enlarged Miss Long. "No

Glamour. (What is glamour? Is it a herb? State reasons for your answer.)

What Nice Men love to see in a girl is The Being Apart. (Gem of

Information Number Sixty-three.) Sweet, refined, modest; in every look

and tone the _gentlewoman_. Not a mere slangy imitation of themselves.

(Chuck us that other towel.) Not a creature who makes herself cheap,

calls out 'Hi!' and waves to them from the top of omnibuses. Ah, no, my

dear; the girl who'll laugh and 'lark' with men on equal terms may

_seem_ popular with them in a way, but"--here the voice was again

lowered impressively--"that's not the girl they marry. She's just 'very

good fun,' 'a good sort,' a 'pal.' She's treated just as they'd treat

another young man. (I'd watch it!) Which is the girl with whom they fall

in love, though? The shrinking, clinging, feminine creature who is

all-wool--I mean all-woman, Taffy. _She_"--with enormous expression--"is

_never_ left long without her mate!"

"But," objected Gwenna doubtfully, "she--this old lady of yours--wasn't

married ever?"

"Oh, never. Always lets you know that she has 'loved and lost.' Whether

that means 'Killed at the Battle of Waterloo' or merely 'Didn't propose'

I couldn't say.... Poor old dear, she's rather lonely, in spite of the

great cloud of Poms," said the old lady's paid "daily companion,"

dropping the mockery for the moment, "and I believe she's thankful to

have even me to talk to and scold about the horrid, unsexed girl of

To-day.... Our lack of ... everything! Our clothes! Why, she, as a girl,

would have sunk into the ground rather than be seen in--you know the

kind of thing. Our general shapelessness!--Well, of course," turning to

meet that adoring glance from the little heroine-worshipper on the bed,

"you never see a young woman nowadays with what you could call a

_figure_!"

Here Leslie, reaching for the giant powder-puff she had flung on to the

foot of the bed, gave a backward bend and a "straighten" that would not

have disgraced an acrobat.

"No waists! Now if there is a feature that a man admires in a girl it's

her tiny, trimly-corseted waist. My old lady went to a fancy-dress dance

once, in a black-and-yellow plush bodice as '_A Wasp_,' and everybody

said how splendid. She never allowed herself to spread into anything

more than Eighteens until she was thirty! But now the girls are allowed

to slop about in these loud, fast-looking, golf-jackets or whatever they

call them, made just like a man's--and the young men simply aren't

marrying any more. No wonder!"

"Oh, Leslie! do you think it's true?" put in Gwenna, a trifle nervously.

"So she told me, my dear. Told Bonnie Leslie, whose bag had been two

proposals that same week," said Miss Long nonchalantly. "One of 'em with

me in the act of wearing that Futurist Harlequin's get-up at the Art

Rebel's Revel. You know; the one I got the idea of from noticing the

reflections of the ground-glass diamond patterns on me through the

bath-room window. I say! she'd have sunk pretty well through into the

Antipodes at the sight of me in that rig, what? Yet here was an

infatuated youth swearing that:

'_He would like to have the chance

All his life with me to dance,

For he liked his partner best of all!_'"

Leslie hummed the old musical-comedy tune. "Son of a _Dean_, too!"

Gwenna looked wistfully thrilled. "Wasn't he--nice enough?"

"Oh, a sweet boy. Handsome eyes. (I always want to pick them out with a

fork and put them into my own head.) But too simple for me, thanks,"

said Leslie lightly. "He was _rather_ cut up when I told him so."

"Didn't you tell your old lady--anything about it, Leslie?"

"Does that kind of woman _ever_ get told the truth, Gwenna? I trow not.

That's why the dear old legends live on and on about what men like and

who they propose to. Also the kind old rules, drawn up by people who are

past taking a hand in the game."

Again she mimicked the old lady's voice: "Nice men have one standard for

the women they marry, and another (a very different standard!) for

the--er--women they flirt with. (So satisfactory, don't you know, for

the girl they marry. No _wonder_ we never find those marriages being a

complete washout!) But supposing that a sort of Leslie-girl came along

and insisted upon Marriage being brought up to the flirtation

standard--_hein_?"

"But your old lady, Leslie? D'you mean you just let her go on thinking

that you've never had any admiration, and that you've got to agree with

everything she says?"

"Rather!" said Miss Long with her enjoying laugh. "I take it in with

r-r-rapt attention, looking my worst, as I always do when I'm behaving

my best. Partly because one's bound to listen respectfully to one's

bread-and-butter speaking. And partly because I am genuinely interested

in her remarks," said Leslie Long. "It's the interest of a rather smart

young soldier--if I may say so--let loose in a museum of obsolete

small-arms!"

Even as she spoke her hands were busy with puff and brush, with

hair-pad, pins, and pencil. Gwenna still regarded her with that full,

discriminating admiration which is never grudged by one attractive girl

to another--of an opposite type.

With the admiration for this was mixed a tiny dread, well known to the

untried girl--"If she is what They like, _they won't like me_!" ... Also

a wonder, "What in the world would Uncle have said to _her_?"

And a mental picture rose before Gwenna of the guardian she had left in

the valley. She saw his shock of white, bog-cotton hair, his face of a

Jesuit priest and his voice of a Welsh dissenting minister. She heard

that much-resented voice declaiming slowly. "Yes, Yes. I know the

meaning of London and _self-respect and earning one's own living_. I

know all about these College girls and these girls going to business and

working same as the men, 'shoulder to shoulder'--Indeed, it's very

likely! _'Something better to do, nowadays, than sit at home frowsting

over drawn-thread work until a husband chooses to appear'_--All the same

thing! All the same thing! As it was in the beginning! _'A wider

field'_--for making eyes! And only two eyes to make them with. Oh,

forget-ful Providence, not to let a modern girl have four! _'Larger

opportunities'_--more chance of finding a young man! Yes, yes. That's

it, Gwenna!"

Gwenna, at the mere memory of it, broke out indignantly, "Sometimes I

should like to _stab_ old people!"

"Meaning the celebrated Uncle Hugh? Too wise, isn't he?" laughed Leslie

lightly, with her hands at her hair. "Too full of home-truths about the

business girl's typewriter, and the art-student's palette and the

shilling thermometer of the hospital nurse, eh? _He_ knows that they're

the modern girl's equivalent of the silken rope-ladder--what, what? And

the chaise to Gretna Green! _This Way Out. This Way--to Romance._ Why

not? Allow me, Madam----"

Here she took up an oval box of eighteenth-century enamel, picked out a

tiny black velvet patch and placed it to the left of a careless red

mouth.

"Effective, I think?"

"Yes; and how can you say there's such a thing as 'obsolete' in the

middle of all this?" protested Gwenna. "_Look_, how the old fashions

come up again!"

"Child, curb your dialect. '_Look_,'" Leslie mimicked the Welsh girl's

rising accent. "'The old fashshons.' Of course we modify the fashions

now to suit ourselves. My old lady had to follow them just as they were.

We," said this twentieth-century sage, "are just the same as she was in

lots of ways. The all-important thing to us is still what she calls the

Mate!"

"M'm,--I don't believe it would be to me," said Gwenna simply. And

thinking of the other possibilities of Life--fresh experiences, work,

friendship, adventure (flying, say!)--she meant what she said. That was

the truth.

Side by side with this, not contradicting but emphasising it, was

another truth.

For, as in a house one may arrange roses in a drawing-room and reck

nothing of the homely business of the kitchen--then presently descend

and forget, in the smell of baking bread, the flowers behind those other

doors, so divided, so uncommunicating, so pigeon-holed are the

compartments, lived in one at a time, of a young maid's mind.

Clearer to Gwenna's inner eyes than the larch green and slate purple of

her familiar valley had been the colours of a secret picture; herself in

a pink summer frock (always a summer frock, regardless of time, season

or place) being proposed to by a blonde youth with eyes as blue as

lupins....

Mocking Leslie was urging her, again in the old lady's tone, to "wait

until Mr. Right came along. Jewelled phrase! Such an old world

fragrance about it; moth powder, I suppose. Yet we know what it means,

and they didn't. We know it isn't just anybody in trousers that would

_be_ Mr. Right. (My dear! I use such strange expressions; I quite shock

me sometimes)," she interpolated; adding, "It's a mercy for us in some

ways; so good if we do get the right man. Worse than it used to be if we

don't. Swings and roundabouts again. But it's still true that

Two things greater than all things are,

The first is Love and the second is War."

"I can't imagine such a thing as war, now," mused Gwenna on the bed.

"Can you?"

"Oh, vaguely; yes," said Leslie Long. "You know my people, poor

darlings, were all in the Army. But the poisonously rich man my sister

married says there'll never be any war again, except perhaps among a few

dying-out savage races. He does so grudge every ha'penny to the Navy

Estimates; and he's quite violent about these useless standing armies!

You know he's no sahib. '_His tongue is like a scarlet snake that dances

to fantastic tunes._' However, never mind him. _I'm_ the central figure.

Which is to be my frock of fascination to-night? '_The White Hope?_' or

'_The Yellow Peril?_' You're wearing your white, Taffy. Righto, then

I'll put on _this_," decided the elder girl.

She stepped into and drew up about her a moulding sheath of

amber-coloured satin that clung to her limbs as a wave clings to a

bather--such was the fleeting fashion now defunct! There was a corolla

of escholtzia-yellow about the strait hips, a heavy golden girdle

dangling.

"There! Now! How's the Bakst view?" demanded Leslie.

She turned slowly, rising on her toes, lifting the glossy black head

above a generous display of creamy shoulder-blades; posing, laughing

while Gwenna caught her breath.

"Les-lie!... And where _did_ you get it?"

"Cast-off from an opulent cousin. What I should do if I didn't get a few

clothes given me I don't know; I should be sent back by the policeman at

the corner, I suppose. One can't _live_ at fancy dances at the Albert

Hall," said Miss Long philosophically. "Don't I look like a Rilette

advertisement on the end page of _Punch_? Don't I vary? Would anybody

think I was the same wispy rag-bag you met in the hall? Nay. 'From

Slattern to Show-girl,' that's my gamut. But you, Taff, I've never seen

you look really plain. It's partly your curls. You've got the sort of

hair some boys have and all women envy. Come here, now, and let's

arrange you. I've already been attending to your frock."

The frock which Gwenna was to wear that evening at the dinner-party was

one which she had bought, without advice, out of an Oxford Street shop

window during a summer sale. It was of satin of which the dead-white

gleam was softened by a misty over-dress. So far, so good; but what of

the heavy, expensive-looking garniture--sash, knots, and what-nots of

lurid colour--with which the French artist's conception had been

"brightened up" in this English version?

"Ripped off," explained Leslie Long, firmly, as its owner gazed in

horror at a mutilated gown. "No cerise--it's a 'married' colour--No

mural decorations for you, Taffy, my child. '_Oh, what a power has white

simplicity._' White, pure white, with these little transparent ruffles

that kind Leslie has sewn into the sleeves and round the fichu

arrangement for you; and a sash of _very_ pale sky-blue."

"Shan't I look like a baby?"

"Yes; the sweetest portrait of one, by Sir Joshua Reynolds."

"Oh! And I'd bought a cerise and _diamante_ hair-ornament."

"Quite imposs. A hair-ornament? One of the housemaids will love it for

her next tango tea in Camden Town. As for you, don't dare to touch your

curls again--no, nor to put anything round your neck! Take away that

bauble!"

"Aren't I even to wear my gold Liberty beads?"

"No! you aren't. Partly because I am, in my hair. Besides, what d'you

want them for, with a throat like that? Necklaces are such a mistake,"

decreed Leslie. "If a girl's got a nice neck, it hides the line; if she

hasn't, it shows the defect up!"

"Well," protested Gwenna doubtfully, "but mightn't you say that of

anything to wear?"

"Precisely. Still, you can't live up to every counsel of perfection. Not

in this climate!"

"You might let me have my thin silver chain, whatever, and my little

heart that my Auntie Margie gave me--in fact, I'm going to. It's a

mascot," said Gwenna, as she hung the little mother-o'-pearl pendant

obstinately about her neck. "There!"

"Very well. Spoil the look of that lovely little dimply hollow you've

got just at the base there if you must. A man," said Gwenna's chum with

a quick, critical glance, "a man would find that very easy to kiss."

"Easy!" said Gwenna, with a quicker blush of anger. "He wouldn't then,

indeed!"

"Oh, my dear, I didn't mean that," explained Leslie as she caught up her

gloves and wrap and prepared to lead the way out of the room and

downstairs to the hall. They would walk as far as the Tube, then book to

South Kensington. "All I meant was, that a man would--- that is,

_might_--er--possibly get the better--ah--of his--say, his natural

repugnance to _trying_----"

A little wistfully, Gwenna volunteered: "One never has."

"I know, Taffy. Not yet," said Leslie Long. "But one will. '_Cheer up,

girls, he is getting on his boots!_' Ready? Come along."