The Boy with Wings 25Part II · Her Guardian'S Consent
18
Literature · Romance
The Boy with Wings 25
Part II · Her Guardian'S Consent
RuckEnglish
The Reverend Hugh Lloyd, who was Gwenna Williams' only relative and guardian and therefore the person from whom consent might be asked if ever the girl wished to be engaged, sat reading The Cambrian News. He sat, over his breakfast eggs and tea, in the kitchen-sitting-room of his Chapel House. Inside, the grandfather clock ticked slowly but still pointed (as ever) to half-past two; and the cosy room, with its Welsh dresser and its book-shelves, still held its characteristic smell of singeing hearthrug. Outside, quiet brooded over the valley that fine August morning. The smoke from the village chimneys rose blue and straight against the larches of the hill-side. The more distant hills of that landscape were faintly mauve against the cloudless, fainter blue of the late-summer sky. All the world seemed so peaceful!
And the expression on the Reverend Hugh's face of a Jesuit priest under its thatch of bog-cotton hair was that of a man at peace with all the world.
True, there were rumours, in some of the newspapers, of some War going on somewhere in the world outside.
But it was a long way from here to that old Continent, as they called it! For the matter of that, it was a long way to London, where they settled what they were going to do about Germany....
What they were going to do about Welsh Disestablishment was a good deal more important, to a Welshman. There were some very good things about that in this very article. The Reverend Hugh had written it himself.
Presently, in the midst of his reading, his housekeeper (who was a small, middle-aged woman, rather like a black hen) entered the room at a run.
"Telegram for you, sir."
"Ah, yes; thank you, Margat," her master said as he took it.
He had guessed already what was in it. Some arrangement to do with his next Sabbath-day's journey. For he was a very popular preacher, invited to give sermons by exchange in every country town in Wales.
"This," he told his housekeeper complacently, as he tore open the envelope, "will be to say am I ex Pected in Carnarvon on the Sat Teudeh, or----"
Here he broke off, staring at the message in his hand. It was a long one.
There was a moment's silence while the clock ticked. Then that silence was broken by an exclamation, in Welsh, from a man startled out of all professional decorum. He added, with more restraint, but also in Welsh, "Great King!"
Then he exclaimed, "Dear father!" and "Name of goodness!"
"What is it, Mr. Lloyd bach?" demanded his housekeeper excitedly in Welsh, clutching her black, crochet wool shawl about her shoulders as she waited by the side of the breakfast.
"Is it somebody died?" In her mind's eye she saw already that loved orgy of her kind--a funeral.
The Reverend Hugh shook his handsome white head. Again he read through the longest telegraph message that he had ever received:
It ran:
"Dear Sir am going to marry your niece Gwenna to-morrow Tuesday morning at Hampstead regret forced to give you this short notice but impossible to do otherwise owing military duties trust you will excuse apparent casualness will write further particulars yours sincerely Paul Dampier Lieutenant Royal Flying Corps."
"Name of goodness!" breathed the Reverend Hugh, brushing back his white locks in consternation. And at short intervals he continued to ejaculate. "What did I tell her? What did I tell her!... Indeed, it's a great pity I ever let her go away from home.... It was my fault; my fault.... Young men----! This one sounds as if he was gone quite mad, whatever."
So the Reverend Hugh addressed his answer to Miss Gwenna Williams at her Club.
And it said:
"Coming up to see you nine-thirty Euston to-night. Uncle."
"I'm sure he'll be simply horrid about it," Gwenna rather tremulously told her betrothed that evening, as they walked, the small, curly-haired girl in dark blue and the tall, grey-clad aviator, up and down the platform at Euston Station, waiting for the Welsh train to come in.
Little Gwenna was experiencing a feeling not unknown among those shortly to be married; namely, that every prospect was pleasing--save that of having to face one's relatives with the affair!
"He was always rather a dret-ful old man," she confided anxiously to Paul, as they paced the sooty flags of the platform. "It's just like him to be sixteen minutes late already just when I want to get this over. He never understands anything about--about people when they're young. And the first thing he's sure to ask is whether you've got any money. Have you, Paul?"
"Stacks," said the Airman, reassuringly. "Old Hugo made it sixty, as a wedding-present. Decent of him, wasn't it?"
They turned by the blackboard with the chalked-up notices of arrivals and departures, and Gwenna ruefully went on with her prophecy of what her Uncle would say.
"He'll say he never heard of anybody marrying an Airman. (I don't suppose he's ever heard of an Airman at all before now!) Ministers, and quarry-managers, and people with some prospects; that's the sort of thing they've always married in Uncle Hugh's family," she said anxiously. "And he'll say we've both behaved awfully badly not to let him know before this. (Just as if there was anything to know.) And he'll say you turned my silly head when I was much too young to know my own mind! And then he's quite, quite sure to say that you only proposed to me because---- Well, of course," she broke off a little reproachfully, "you never even did propose to me properly!"
"Too late to start it now," said her lover, laughing, as the knot of porters surged forward to the side of the platform. "Here's the train coming in!"
Now Gwenna was right about the first thing that Uncle Hugh would ask, when, after a searching glance and a handshake to this tall young man that his niece introduced to him at the carriage-door, he carried off the pair of them to the near-by hotel where the Minister always put up on his few and short visits to London.
"Well, young gentleman," he began, in his crisp yet deliberate Welsh accent. He settled himself on the red plush sofa, and gazed steadily at Paul Dampier on one of the red plush armchairs. "Well! And have you got the money reck-quisite to keep a wife?"
"No. I'm afraid I haven't, sir, really," returned the young man, looking frankly back at him. "Of course I'd my screw. Three pounds ten a week, I was getting as a pilot. But that was only just enough for myself--with what I had to do for the Machine. Of course I'm going to have her--the Flying Machine--taken up now, so----"
"It's very little faith I have in such things as flying machines. Flying? Yes, in the face of Providence, I call it," said the Reverend Hugh, discouragingly, but with the dawn of some amusement in his searching eyes. "What I say about the whole idea of Aviay-shon is--Kite-high lunacy!"
"Uncle!" scolded Gwenna; blushing for him. But the young Airman took the rebuke soberly enough.
"And out of that income," went on Uncle Hugh, still looking hard, at this modern suitor in that incongruous red-plush setting with its Nineteenth Century clocks and ornaments, "out of that income you will not have saved very much."
"Afraid not, sir," agreed young Dampier, who, last night, had been down to his last eightpence ha'penny and a book of stamps. "Not much to put by, you know----"
"Not even," took up the Reverend Hugh, shrewdly, "enough to pay for a special marriage licence?"
"Oh, yes, I had that. That is, I've raised that"--("Good old Hugo!" he thought.)--"and a bit over," he added, "to take us for some sort of a little trip. To the sea, perhaps. Before I go on Service."
"Military service, do you mean?" said the Reverend Hugh. "Mmph! (I never have held with soldiery. I do not think that I have ever come into act--ual con--tackt with any.)"
"Yes, I probably am going on Service, Mr. Lloyd," answered the young man, quickly, and with a glance at the girl that seemed to indicate that this subject was only to be lightly dealt with at present. "When, I am not sure. Then I shall get my pay as a Flight-Lieutenant, you see. Shan't want any money much, then. So she"--with a little nod towards the small, defensively set face of Gwenna, sitting very straight in the other red-plush armchair--"she will get that sent home, to her."
"I shan't want all your pay, indeed," interrupted the girl, hastily. It seemed to her too revoltingly horrible, this talk about money combined with this sense that a woman, married, must be an expense, a burden. A woman, who longs to mean only freedom and gifts and treasure to her lover!
"Oh, a woman ought never, never to feel she has to be kept," thought Gwenna, rosy again with embarrassment. "If men don't think we mind, very well, then let all the money in the world be taken away from men, and given to us. Let them be kept. And if they don't mind it--well, then it will be a happier world, all round!"
And as she was thinking this, she announced eagerly, "If--if you do go away, I shall stay on with the Aeroplane Lady, as I told you, Paul. Yes. I'd much rather I should have something to do. And I'd get nearly a pound a week, and my keep. Besides! I've got my own money."
"Which money, dear?" asked Paul Dampier.
The quick eyes of the Reverend Hugh had not left the young man's face.
They were fixed still more scrutinisingly upon it as the old man interposed, "Do you mean to tell me, Mr. Dampier, that you were not aware that my niece had got a little bit of her own?"
"There! I knew Uncle would say that!" burst out the young girl, angry and blushing and ashamed. "I knew he'd say you were only marrying me because of that! He won't believe that it wouldn't make any difference to you that I've got seventy-five pounds a year!"
"Seventy-five pounds a year? Have you?" said the young man, surprised. "Really?"
And it was Gwenna's turn to be surprised as his frank face cleared and his voice took a very relieved note.
"I say, how topping! Make no difference to me? But it does. Rather!" he declared. "Don't you see that I shall know you won't have to work, and that I shall be ever so much more comfortable about you? Why did you never tell me?"
"I forgot," said Gwenna truly.
And the Reverend Hugh suddenly laughed aloud.
At the same time he hoped he had concealed his relief, which was great. His youngest sister's girl was not going to be snapped up by a fortune-hunter after all. That had always been his anxiety. Seventy-five pounds a year (certain) remained a considerable fortune to this Victorian. In his valley quite a large house, with a nice bit of garden, too (running steeply up a mountain-side), was to be had for a rent of sixteen pounds. He would have thought of that himself.... But the leggy, fair-haired boy who was now smiling across the oval hotel table at his Gwenna had meant only what he had said. The older man realised that. So, waiving for the present the question of means, the Reverend Hugh went on, in rather a modified tone, to ask other questions.
Asking questions of the newly accepted suitor seems to be all that remains for the parent or guardian of our times. It is the sole survival of that potent authority which once disposed (or said it disposed) of the young lady's hand. Clearing his throat with the same little sound that so often heralded the words of some text from his pulpit, the Reverend Hugh began by inquiring where Gwenna, after her short honeymoon, was supposed to be going to live.
Nowhere new, it appeared! She had her berth at the Aircraft Factory, her room at Mrs. Crewe's cottage for when young Dampier was away. (Yes; from his tone when he spoke of it, evidently that parting was to be kept in the background and evaded as much as possible for the present.) And if he were in London, he had his rooms in Camden Town. Do for them both, perhaps.... His bachelor digs.; not bad ones....
Well, but no house? Dear me. That was a gipsyish sort of plan, wasn't it? That was a new idea of setting up housekeeping to Uncle Hugh. He, himself, was an old bachelor. But he could see that this was all very different from the ideas of all the young couples in his time. When Gwenna's father, now, was courting Gwenna's mother, well! he, Hugh Lloyd, had never heard such a lot of talk about Mahoggani. And tebbel-linen. And who was to have the three feather-beds from the old Quarry-house; Gwenna's mother, or Gwenna's mother's sister----
(All this the Reverend Hugh declaimed in his most distinct Chapel voice, but still with his searching eyes upon the face of the husband-to-be.)
The idea of most young girls, in getting married, he thought, was to get a nice home of their own, as soon as possible. A comfortable house----
("I hate comfortable houses. So stuffy. Just like a tea-cosy. They'd smother me!" from Gwenna.)
But the House, her Uncle Hugh had Olwes understood, was the Woman's fetish. Spring-cleaning, now; the yearly rites! And that furniture. "The Lares," he went on in an ever-strengthening Welsh accent. "The Pen--nates----!"
"Oh, those!" scoffed the girl in love. "Those----!"
So Gwenna didn't seem to think she would miss these things? She was willing to marry without them? Yes? Strange!... Well, well!
And what about this marriage-in-haste? Where was it to take place? In that Church in Hampstead? A Church. Well! He, as an orthodox dissenting minister, ought not, perhaps, to enter such a place of worship. But, after all, this was not at home. This was only up here, in England. Perhaps it wouldn't matter, just this once.
And who was the clergyman who was going to officiate at the cerrymonny? And what sort of a preacher, now, was he? (This was not known.)
And Mr. Dampier's own relations? Would they all be at the Church?
Only one cousin, he was told. That was the only relation Paul Dampier had left.
"Same as myself," said the Reverend Hugh, a little quietly. "A big family, we were. Six boys, two girls; like people used to have. All gone. Nothing left, but----"
Here, for the first time taking his eyes from young Dampier, he turned upon his niece with an abrupt question. With a quick nod towards her husband-to-be, he demanded: "And where did you find him?"
Little Gwenna, still on the defensive, but thawing gradually (since, after all, Uncle Hugh had spoken in friendly tones to the Beloved), Gwenna asked, "When, Uncle?"
"The time that counts, my girl," said the Reverend Hugh; "the first time."
"Oh! I think it was--it was at a party I went to with my friend, Miss Long, that I've told you about," explained Gwenna, a little nervously. "And--and he was there. It's--quite a long time ago, now."
"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh. "Dukes! There is a lot of things seem to go on, still, under the name of 'Party.'" And there was a sudden and quite young twinkle in the eyes under the white thatch.
Paul Dampier, not seeing it, began hastily: "I hope you understand, sir, that we were only keeping all this to ourselves, because--well----" He cleared his throat and made another start. "If I'd had the--er--the the privilege of seeing Gwenna at your place----" Yet another start. "We had no idea, of course," said Paul Dampier, "until fairly recently----"
"Dear me," said the Reverend Hugh again. Then, turning to the young man whom Gwenna had said he would accuse of turning the head of one too young to know her own mind, he remarked with some feeling, "I dare say she had made up her mind, that first time, not to give you a bit of peace until you'd sent off that telly-gram to me!"
As he was taking the bride-to-be back to her Club, young Dampier said, smiling: "Why, darling, he's not a bad old chap at all! You said he wouldn't understand anything!"
"Well, he doesn't," persisted the mutinous Gwenna. But she laughed a little, relentingly.
Twenty minutes later her lover took his leave with a whispered "Good-night. Do you know that I shan't ever have to say it again at this blessed door, after this?... And another, for luck.... Good-night--er--Miss Williams!"
She ran upstairs humming a tune.
She was so happy that she could feel kind even to old and unsympathetic and cynical people to-night.
To-morrow she was to be Paul Dampier's wife.
It was hardly believable, still it was true!
War, now threatening to tear him from her, had at least brought him to her, first, sooner than she had ever hoped. Even if he were forced to leave her quite soon, say in a month's time!--she would have had him all to herself first, without any of these small, fretting good-byes that came so punctually following every meeting! She would have been all his; his very own, she thought.
And here it may be said that upon this subject Gwenna Williams' thoughts were curiously, almost incredibly vague. That dormant bud of passion knew so little of its own hidden root.
Marriage! To this young girl it was a journey into a country of which she had never formed any clear idea. Her own dreams had been the rosy mists that obscured alike the heights and depths of that scarcely guessed-at land. All she saw, clearly, was her fellow traveller; the dear boy-comrade and sweetheart who would not now leave her side. What did it matter where he took her, so that it was with him always?
Only one more night, now, in the long, narrow Club bedroom where she had dreamed that queer flying dream, and so many others, so many longing daydreams about him!
