CHAPTER V

THE WORKADAY WORLD

The day after the dinner-party was spent by Gwenna metaphorically, at

least, in the clouds.

By her vivid day-dreams she was carried off, as Ganymede was carried by

the eagle, sky-high; she felt the rush of keen air on her face; she saw

the khaki-green flying-ground beneath her with the clustered onlookers,

as small as ants. And--thus she imagined it--she heard that megaphone

announcement:

"Ladies and gentul MEN! Mis ter Paul Dampier on

a Maurice Farman bi plane ac companied by Miss

Williams!"

with the sound of it dying down, faintly, below her.

Then in her musing mind she went over and over what had already

happened. Those throbbing moments when her new friend had said, "Look

here! Would you care to come up?" and, "Then I'll come up here and fix

it----"

Would he? Oh, when would he? It was of course hardly to be thought that

this flying-man ("besieged with invitations" as he was) would come to

ratify his offer on Sunday, the very day after he'd made it. Too much

to expect....

Therefore that Sunday Gwenna Williams refused to go out, even on the

Heath for the shortest loitering stroll. Leslie Long, with an

indescribable look that the younger girl did not catch, went out without

her. Gwenna stayed on the green bench in the small, leafy garden at the

back of the Club, reading and listening, listening for the sound of the

bell at the front door, or for the summons to the telephone.

None came, of course.

Also, of course, no note to make an appointment to go flying appeared at

that long, crowded breakfast-table of the Club on Monday morning for

Miss Gwenna Williams.

That, too, she could hardly have expected.

Quite possibly he'd forgotten that the appointment had ever been made. A

young man of that sort had got so many things to think about. So many

people to make appointments with. So many other girls to take up.

"I wonder if he's promised to go up again soon with that girl called

Muriel," she thought. "Sure to know millions of girls----"

And it was in a very chastened mood of reaction that Gwenna Williams,

typist--now dressed in the business-girl's uniform of serge costume,

light blouse, and small hat--left her Club that morning. She walked down

the sunny morning road to the stopping-place of the motor-omnibuses and

got on to a big scarlet "24" bus, bound for Charing Cross and her day's

work.

The place where she worked was a huge new building in process of

construction on the south side of the Embankment near Westminster

Bridge.

Above the slowly sliding tides of the river, with its barges and boats,

there towered several courses of granite blocks, clean as a

freshly-split kernel. In contrast to them were the half demolished,

dingy shells of houses on either side, where the varied squares of

wallpaper and the rusting, floorless fireplaces showed where one room

had ended and the next begun. The scaffolding rose above the new pile

like a mighty web. Above this again the enormous triangular lattice rose

so high that it seemed like a length of ironwork lace stretched out on

two crochet-needles against the blue-grey and hot vault of the London

sky.

As she passed the entrance Gwenna's eyes rose to this lattice.

"It looks almost as high up in the air as one could fly in that

biplane," she thought. "Oh, to be right _up_! Looking down on

everything, with the blue _beneath one_ instead of only above!"

She crossed the big yard, which was already vocal with the noises of

chipping and hammering, the trampling and the voices of men. Two of

them--the genial young electrician called Grant and the Yorkshire

foreman who was a regular father to his gang, nodded good-morning to

the youngest typist as she passed. She walked quickly past the stacks of

new timber and the gantries and travelling cranes (plenty of machinery

here; it ought to please Mr. Dampier, since he'd said that was what he

was interested in!). One great square of the hewn granite was swinging

in mid-air from a crane as she left the hot sunlight and noise outside

and entered the door of the square, corrugated iron building that held

the office where she worked.

To reach it she had to pass through the clerk-of-the-works' offices,

with long drawing-benches with brass handled drawers beneath, full of

plans, and elevations. These details seemed mysteriously, tantalisingly

incomprehensible and yet irritating to Gwenna's feminine mind. She was

imaginative enough to realise that all these details, these

"man's-things," from the T-squares on the benches to the immense iron

safe in the corner, seemed to put her, Gwenna, "in her place." She was

merely another detail in the big whole of man's work that was going on

here. The place made her feel tiny, unimportant. She went on to the

light and airy room, smelling of new wood and tracing-paper, the

extension of the clerk-of-the-works' office that she shared with her two

colleagues.

In the centre of this room there was a large square table with a

telephone, a telephone-book, various other books of reference and a

shallow wicker basket for letters. Besides this there were the typing

tables for each of the three girl-clerks. Gwenna's and Miss Baker's

were side by side. The German girl sat nearest to the window that gave

the view up the river, with Lambeth Bridge and the Houses of Parliament

looming grey and stately against the smiling June sky, and a distant

glimpse of Westminster Abbey. On the frame of the pane just above her

Miss Baker had fastened, with drawing-pins, two photographs. One was a

crude coloured postcard of a red-roofed village among pine-forests. The

other was a portrait of a young man, moustached and smiling under a

spiked German helmet; across this photograph ran the autograph, "_Karl

Becker_." Thus the blue and guileless eyes of this young foreigner in

our midst could rest upon mementoes of her Fatherland and her family any

time she raised her blonde head from bending over her work. Both girls

looked up this morning as Gwenna, the last arrival, came in. They

scolded her good-naturedly because she'd brought none of those

chocolates she'd promised from the dinner-table. They asked how she'd

enjoyed herself at that party.

It would have been presumably natural to the young Welsh girl to have

broken out into a bubblingly excited--"And, girls! _Who_ d'you suppose I

sat next. A real live airman! _And_, my dears!" (with a rapturous gasp),

"who should it be but the one I bought the photo of on Saturday! You

know; the one you called my young man--Mr. Dampier--Paul Dampier--Yes,

but wait; that isn't all. Just fancy! He talked to me yards and yards

about his new aeroplane, and I say, _what_ do you think! This was the

best. He's asked me to come up one day--yes, indeed! He's going to take

me flying--with him!"

But, as it was, Gwenna said not one word of all this. She could not have

explained why, even to herself. Only she replied to Miss Butcher's,

"What was the party like?" with a flavourless, "Oh, it was all right,

thanks."

That sounded _so_ English, she thought!

She had a dull day at the office. Dry-as-dust letters and

specifications, builders' quantities, and so on, to type out. Tiresome

calls on the telephone that had to be put through to the other

office....

Never before had she seemed to mind the monotony of those clicking keys

and that "_I'll inquire. Hold the line, please._" Never before had she

found herself irritated by the constant procession of men who were in

and out all day; including Mr. Grant, who sometimes seemed to _make_

errands to talk to Miss Butcher, but who never stayed for more than a

moment, concluding invariably with the cheerful remark, "Well! Duty

calls, I must away." Men seemed actually to _enjoy_ "duty," Gwenna

thought. At least the men here did. All of them, from Mr. Henderson in

the other office to the brown-faced men in the yard with their

shirt-sleeves rolled up above tattooed arms, seemed to be "keen" on the

building, on the job in hand. They seemed glad to be together. Gwenna

wondered how they could....

To-day she was all out of tune. She was quite cross when, for the

second time, Albert, the seventeen-year old Cockney office-boy, bustled

in, stamping a little louder than was strictly necessary on the echoing

boards. He rubbed his hands together importantly, demanding in a voice

that began in a bass roar and ended in a treble squeak, "Those

specifications, miss. Quick, too, or you'll hear about it!"

"Goodness _me_, what an ugly way you London boys do have of talking!"

retorted the Welsh girl pettishly. "_Sut_-ch an accent!"

The rebuked Albert only snorted with laughter as he took her sheaf of

papers. Then, looking back over his shoulder at the pretty typist

perched on the edge of the centre table to refill her fountain pen, he

added in his breaking treble, "Don't you sit on that tyble, Miss!

_Sittin' on the tyble's s'posed to mean you want to be kissed_, and it

looks so bad! Don't it, Miss Butcher? There's other ways of gittin' orf

than that, isn't there?"

"Outside!" snapped Miss Butcher, blushing, as the boy stumped away.

Gwenna sighed angrily and longed for lunch-time, so that she could get

out.

At one o'clock, an hour after the buzzer had sounded for the mid-day

meal of the yard-men, the other two girls in the office would not even

come out for a breath of air. They had brought fruit and cake. They made

Bovril (with a kettle of hot water begged from the fatherly foreman) and

lunched where they'd sat all the morning. Miss Butcher, munching, was

deep in a library-book lent to her by the young electrician. Miss Baker

counted stitches in a new pattern for a crochet-work _Kante_, or length

of fine thread insertion. It was not unlike the pattern of the iron

trellis above the scaffolding, that tapered black against the sky; man's

fancy-work.

What hideously tame things women had to fill their lives with, Gwenna

thought as she sat in the upper window of her tea-shop at the corner of

the Embankment. She watched the luncheon-time crowd walking over

Westminster Bridge. So many of these people were business-girls just

like herself and the Butcher and the Baker! Would anything more amusing

ever happen to them, or to her?

But that German girl, Gwenna thought, would stare to hear her work

called "hideous" or "tame." It was her greatest interest. Already, she'd

told Gwenna, her bottom drawer at her boarding-house was crammed with

long, rolled-up crochet-work strips of white or creamy lace. There were

also her piles of tray-cloths, petticoat flounces and chemise-tops, all

hand-embroidered and bemonogrammed by Miss Baker herself. She was not

engaged to be married, but, as she'd artlessly said, "_Something_ a

young girl can have always ready."

Day-dreams in crochet!

"I'd rather never fall in love than have it all spoilt by mixing it up

with such a lot of sewing and cookery that it wouldn't get disentangled,

like," thought the dreamy, impatient Gwenna. She returned, to find the

German girl measuring her crochet lace against her arm and crying,

"Since Saturday I have made till there." ...

Then Miss Baker turned to her German version of an English trade firm's

letter. Miss Butcher unfastened another packet of stationery. Miss

Williams fetched a number of envelopes from the inner office to be

addressed....

Would the afternoon _never_ come to an end?