Chapter 1

Hendon!

An exquisite May afternoon, still and sunny. Above, a canopy of
unflecked sapphire-blue. Below, the broad khaki-green expanse of the
flying-ground, whence the tall, red-white-and-blue pylons pointed giant
fingers to the sky.

Against the iron railings of the ground the border of chairs was
thronged with spectators; women and girls in summery frocks, men in
light overcoats with field-glasses slung by a strap about them. The
movement of this crowd was that of a breeze in a drift of coloured
petals; the talk and laughter rose and fell as people looked about at
the great sheds with their huge lettered names, at the big stand, at the
parked-up motors behind the seats; at the men in uniform carrying their
brass instruments slowly across to the bandstand on the left.

At intervals everybody said to everybody else: "Isn't this just a
perfect afternoon for the flying?"

* * * * *

Presently, there passed the turnstile entrance at the back of the parked
motor-cars a group of three young girls, chattering together.

One was in pink; one was in cornflower-blue. The girl who walked
between them wore all white, with a sunshine-yellow jersey-coat flung
over her arm. Crammed well down upon her head she wore a shady white
hat, bristling with a flight of white wings; it seemed to overshadow the
whole of her small compact, but supple little person, which was finished
off by a pair of tiny, white-canvas-shod feet. She was the youngest as
well as the smallest of the trio standing at the turnstile. (Observe
her, if you please; then leave or follow her, for she is the Girl of
this story.)

"This is my show!" she declared. Her softly-modulated voice had a trace
of Welsh accent as she added, "I'm paying for this, indeed!"

"No, you aren't, then, Gwenna Williams!" protested the girl in pink
(whose accent was Higher Cockney). "We were all to pay for ourselves!"

"Yes; but wasn't it me that made you come into the half-crown places
because I was so keen to see a flying-machine _close_?... I'll pay the
difference then, if you _must_ make a fuss. We'll settle up at the
office on Monday," said the girl who had been addressed as Gwenna
Williams.

With a girlish, self-conscious little gesture she took half a sovereign
out of her wash-leather glove and handed it to the tall, be-medalledd
commissionaire.

"Come on, now, girls," she said. "This is going to be lovely!" And she
led the way forward to that line of seats, where there were just three
green chairs vacant together.

Laughing, chattering, gay with the ease of Youth in its own company,
the three, squeezed rather close together by the press, sat down;
Gwenna, the Welsh girl, in the middle. The broad brim of her hat brushed
against the roses of the pink-clad girl's cheaper hat as Gwenna leaned
forward.

"Sorry, Butcher," she said. She moved.

This time one of the white wings caught a pin in the hat of the plump
blonde in blue, who exclaimed resignedly and in an accent that was
neither of Wales nor of England, "Now komm I also into this hat-business
of Candlestick-maker. It _is_ a bit of oll right!"

"_So_ sorry, Baker," apologised the girl in white again, putting up her
hands to disengage the hat. "I'll take it off, like a matinee. Yes, I
will, indeed. We shall all see better." She removed the hat from a small
head that was very prettily overgrown with brown, thick, cropped curls.
The bright eyes with which she blinked at first in the strong sunlight
were of the colour of the flying-ground before them: earth-brown and
turf-green mixed.

"I will hold your hat, since it is for me that you take him off," said
the girl whom they called Baker.

Her real name was Becker; Ottilie Becker. She worked at the German
correspondence of that London office where the other two girls, Gwenna
Williams and Mabel Butcher, were typists. It was one of the many small
jokes of the place to allude to themselves as the Butcher, the Baker,
and the Candlestick-maker.

All three were excellent friends....

The other two scarcely realised that Gwenna, the Celt, was different
from themselves; more absent-minded, yet more alive. A passer-by might
have summed her up as "a pretty, commonplace little thing;" a girl like
millions of others. But under the ready-made muslin blouse of that
season's style there was ripening, all unsuspected, the dormant bud of
Passion. This is no flower of the commonplace. And her eyes were full of
dreams, innocent dreams. Some of them had come true already. For hadn't
she broken away from home to follow them? Hadn't she left the valley
where nothing ever went on except the eternal Welsh rain that blurred
the skylines of the mountains opposite, and that drooped in curtains of
silver-grey gauze over the slate roofs of the quarry-village, set in
that brook-threaded wedge between wooded hillsides? Hadn't she escaped
from that cage of a chapel house sitting-room with its kitchen-range and
its many bookshelves and its steel print of John Bunyan and its
maddening old grandfather-clock that _always_ said half-pastt two and
its everlasting smell of singeing hearthrug, and _never_ a window open?
Yes! she'd given her uncle-guardian no peace until he'd washed his hands
over Gwenna's coming up to London. So here she was in London now, making
fresh discoveries every day, and enjoying that mixture of drudgery and
frivolling that makes up the life of the London bachelor-girl. She was
still "fancy-free," as people say of a girl who loves and lives in
fancies, and she was still at the age for bosom-friendships. One
sincerely adored girl-chum had her confidence. This was a young woman at
the Residential Club, where Gwenna lived; not one of these from the
office.

But the office trio could take an occasional Saturday jaunt together as
enjoyingly as if they never met during the week.

* * * * *

"Postcards, picture postcards!" chanted a shrill treble voice above the
buzz of the talking, waiting crowds.

Before the seats a small boy passed with a tray of photographs. These
showed views of the hangars and of the ground; portraits of the
aviators.

"Postcards!" He paused before that cluster of blue and white and pink
frocks. "Any picture postcards?"

"Yes! Wait a minute. Let's choose some," said Miss Butcher. And three
heads bent together over the display of glazed cards. "Tell you what,
Baker; we'll send one off to your soldier-brother in Germany. Shall we?
All sign it, like we did that one to your mother, from the Zoo."

"Ah, yes. A _bier-karte_!" said the German girl, with her good-natured
giggle. "Here, I choose this one. View of Hendon. We write '_Es lassen
gruessen unbekannter Weise_'--'there send greeting to Karl, the
Unknown.'"

"Oh, but hadn't we better send him this awfully nice-looking airman,
just as a sort of example of what a young man really can do in the way
of appearance, what?" suggested Miss Butcher, picking out another card.
"Peach, isn't he? Look! He's standing up in the thingamagig _just_ like
an archangel in his car; or do I mean Apollo?--Gwenna'd know.... Which
are you going to choose, Gwenna?"

Gwenna had picked out three cards. A view of the ground, a picture of a
biplane in mid-air, and a portrait of one of the other airmen.

He had been taken in his machine against the blank background of sky.
The big, boyish hands gripped the wheel, the cap, goggles in front, peak
behind, was pushed back from the careless, clean-shaven lad's face, with
its cheeks creased with deep dimples of a smile.

"This one," said Gwenna Williams. And there was no whisper of Fate at
her heart as she announced lightly, "This is _my_ love." (She did not
guess, as you do, that here was the portrait of the Boy of this story.)

The other girls leaned across her to look as she added: "_He's_ the most
like Icarus, I think."

"Who's Icarus, when he's at home?" inquired Miss Butcher. And Gwenna,
out of one of her skimmed books, gave a hurried explanation of Icarus,
the first flying-man, the classic youth who "dared the sun" on wings of
wax.... Together the girls inspected the postcard of his modern type,
the Hendon aviator. They laughed; they read aloud the name "_P.
Dampier_;" they compared his looks with those of other airmen, treating
the whole subject precisely as they would have treated the dancing or
singing of their favourite actresses in the revues....

For it was still May, Nineteen-fourteen in England. The feeling of warm
and drowsy peace in the air was only intensified by the brisk, sharp
strains of the military band on the left of the flying-ground, playing
the "Light-Cavalry" march....

"Dear me! Are we going on like this for ever?" remonstrated Gwenna
presently. "Aren't they _ever_ going up?"

She was answered by a shattering roar from the right.

It ceased. Then, on the field before her excited eyes, there was brought
out of one of the hangars by a cluster of mechanics in khaki-brown
overalls the Winged Romance that came into this tired and _blase_ world
with that most wondrous of all Ages--the Twentieth Century. At first
only a long gleaming upper plane, jolting over the uneven ground, could
be seen over the heads of the watchers. Then it reached the enclosure.
For the first time in her life Gwenna beheld a Maurice Farman biplane.

And for the moment she was a little disappointed, for she had said it
was "going to be so lovely!"

She had expected--what? Something that would look more like what it was,
the new Bird of man's making. Here the sunlight gleamed on the taut,
cambered wings, on the bamboo spars, the varnished blade of the
motionless propeller, all shiny as a new toyshop. But the girl saw no
grace in it. Its skids rested on the sunburned grass like a couple of
_ski_ in the _Sketch_ photographs of winter sports. It had absurd
little wheels, too, looking as if, when it had finished skiing, the
machine might take to roller-skating. The whole thing seemed gaunt and
cumbrous and clogged to the earth. Gwenna did not then know that, unlike
Antaeus, this half-godlike creature only awoke to life and beauty when it
felt the earth no more.

Then, as she watched, a mechanic, the Daedalus who strapped on the wings
for the Icarus seized the propeller, which kicked thrice, rebelliously,
and then, with another roar, dissolved into a circle of mist. Other
brown figures were clinging to the under parts of the structure, holding
it back; Gwenna did not see the signal to let go. All that she saw was
the clumsy forward run of the thing as, like a swan that tries to clear
its feet of the water, the biplane struggled to free itself from the
drag of Earth....

Then, as the wonder happened, the untried and imaginative little Welsh
country-girl, watching, gave a gasp. "_Ah----!_"

The machine was fettered no longer.

Suddenly those absurd skids and wheels had become no more than the tiny
feet that a seagull tucks away under itself, and like a gull the biplane
rose. It soared, its engine shouting triumph as it sped. Gwenna's heart
beat as tensely as that engine. Her eyes sparkled. What they saw was not
now a machine, but the beauty of those curves it cut in the conquered
air. It soared, it banked, it swayed gently as if on a keel. Swiftly
circling, up and up it went, until it seemed to dwindle to something not
even larger than the seagull it resembled; then it was a flying-fish,
then a dragonfly wheeling in the blue immensity above.

Suddenly, like a fog-signal, there boomed out the voice of the man with
the megaphone, the man who made from the judges' stand, behind the
committee-enclosure all announcements for the meeting:

"Ladies and gentul MEN," it boomed.

"Mis ter Paul Dampier on a Maurice Farman bi plane!"

The huge convolvulus-trumpet of the megaphone swung round. The
announcement was made from the other side of the stand; the sound of
that booming voice being subdued as it reached the group of three girls.

"Mister Paul Dampier----"

"You hear, Gwenna? It is _your_ young man," said Miss Baker; Miss
Butcher adding, "Hope you had a good look at him and saw if that photo
did him justice?"

"From here? Well, how could I? It's not much I could see of him,"
complained Gwenna, laughing. "He only looked about as big as a knot in a
cat's cradle!"

Another roar, another small commotion on the ground. Another of those
ramshackle looking giant grasshoppers slid forward and upward into the
air. Presently three aeroplanes, then four together were circling and
soaring together in the sapphire-blue arena.

Below, a pair of swallows, swift as light, chased each other over the
ground, above their own shadows, towards the tea-pavilion.

Yet another flyer winged his tireless way across the aerodrome. He was a
droning bee, buzzing and hovering unheeded over a tuft of dusty white
clover growing by the rails that were so closely thronged by human
beings come to watch and wonder over man's still new miracle of flight.

"Oh, flying! Mustn't it be too glorious!" sighed the Welsh girl,
watching the aeroplane that was now scarcely larger than a winged bullet
in the blue. "Oh, wouldn't I love to go up! Wouldn't it be Heaven!"

"It's been Heaven for several poor fellows lately," suggested the
shrewd, Cockney-voiced little Miss Butcher, grimly, from her right.
"What about that poor young What's-his-name, fallen and killed on the
spot at twenty-one!"

"I don't call him 'poor,'" declared Gwenna Williams softly. "I should
think there could be worse things happen to one than get killed,
quickly, right in the middle of being so young and jolly and doing such
things----"

"Ah, look! That's it! See that?" murmured a voice near them. "Flying
upside down, now, that first one--see him?"

And now Gwenna, at gaze, watched breathlessly the wonder that seemed
already natural enough to the multitude; the swoop and curve, the loop
and dash and recover of the biplane that seemed for the moment a winged
white quill held in a hand unseen, writing its challenge on the blue
wall of Heaven itself.

Again the megaphone boomed out through the still and soft June air:

"Ladies and gentul MEN! Pass enger flights from this
aer riodrome may now be booked at the office un der
this Stand!"

"Two guineas, my dears, for the chance of breaking your necks,"
commented Miss Butcher. "Three guineas for a longer flight, I believe;
that is, a better chance. Well, I bet that if I did happen to have two
gleaming golden jimmyohgoblins to my name, I'd find something else to
spend 'em on, first!"

"I also!" agreed Miss Baker.

Gwenna moved a little impatiently. She hadn't two guineas, either, to
spend. She still owed a guinea, now, for that unjustifiable
extravagance, that white hat with the wings. In spite of earning her own
living, in spite of having a little money of her own, left her by her
father who had owned shares in a Welsh quarry, she _never_ had any
guineas! But oh, if she had! _Wouldn't_ she go straight off to that
stand and book for a passenger-flight!...

While her covetous eyes were still on the biplane, her ears caught a
stir of discussion that came from the motor nearest to the chairs.

A lady was speaking in a softly dominant voice, the voice of a class
that recognises no overhearing save by its chosen friends.

"My dear woman, it's as safe as the Tubes and the motor-buses. These
exhibition passenger-flights aren't really _flying_, Cuckoo said. Didn't
you, Cuckoo?"

A short deep masculine laugh sounded from behind the ladies, then a
drawled "What are they then, what? Haw? Flip-flap, White City, what?"

"Men always pretend afterwards that they've never said _anything_.
Cuckoo told me that when these people 'mean business' they can fly
_millions_ of times higher and faster than we _ever_ see them here. He
said there wasn't the _slightest_ reason why Muriel shouldn't----"

Here the sound, hard and clear as an icicle, of a very young girl's
voice, ringing out:

"And anyhow, mother, I'm _going_ to!"

Glancing round, Gwenna saw a lanky girl younger than herself spring down
from the big, dove-grey car, and stride, followed by a tall man wearing
a top-hat, to the booking-office below the stand. This girl wore a long
brown oilskin coat over her white sweater and her short, admirably-cut
skirt; a brown chiffon veil tied over her head showed the shape and the
auburn gleam of it without giving a hair to the breeze.

"Lovely to be those sort of people," sighed the enviously watching
Gwenna, as other girls from the cars strolled into the enclosure with
the notice "COMMITTEE ONLY," and seemed to be discussing, laying bets,
perhaps, about the impending race for machines carrying a
lady-passenger. "Fancy, whenever any of _them_ want to do or to see or
even to _be_ anything, they've only got to say, 'Anyhow, I'm going to!'
and there they are! _That's_ the way to live!"

Presently the three London typists were sitting at a table under the
green awning and the hanging flower-baskets; one of a score of tables
where folk sat and chattered and turned their eyes ceaselessly upwards
to the blue sky, pointed at by those giant pylon-fingers, invaded by
those soaring, whirring, insolent, space daring creatures of man.

The first biplane had been preparing for the Ladies' Race. Now came the
start; with the dropped white flag the announcement from that dominating
magnified voice:

"Mis ter Damp ier on a Maurice Far man bi plane ac
companied by Miss Mu riel Con yers----"

The German girl put in, "Your man again, Gwenna!"

"My man indeed. And I haven't seen him, even yet," complained the Welsh
girl again, laughing over her cup of cooling tea, "only in the
photograph! Don't suppose I ever shall, either. It's my fate, girls.
Nothing really exciting ever happens to me!" She sighed, then
brightened again as she remembered something. "I must be off now....
I've got to go out this evening."

"Anywhere thrilling?" asked Miss Butcher.

"I don't know what it'll be like. It's Leslie Long; it's my friend at
the Club's married sister somewhere in Kensington, giving a
dinner-party," Gwenna answered in the scrambling New English in which
she was learning to disguise her Welshiness, "and there's a girl fallen
through at the last minute. So she 'phoned through this morning to ask
if this girl could rake any one up."

"How mouldy for you, my dear," said Mabel Butcher in her sympathetic
Cockney as the Welsh girl rose, took up her sunshine-yellow coat from
the back of her chair and chinked down a shilling upon her thick white
plate. "Means you'll have to sit next some youth who only forced himself
into his dress-suit for the sake of taking that 'fallen through' girl
into dinner. He'll be scowling fit to murder you, I expect, for being
you and not her. (I know their ways.) Never mind. Pinch a couple of
liqueur-choc'lates off the table for me when the Blighted Being isn't
looking, will you? And tell us what he's like on Monday, won't you?"

"All right," promised the Welsh girl, smiling back at her friends. She
threaded her way through the tables with the plates of coloured cakes,
the brown teapots, the coarse white crockery. She passed behind that
park of cars with that leisured, well-dressed, upward-gazing throng. She
turned her back on the glimpse beyond them of the green field where the
brown-clad mechanics ran up towards the slowly downward swooping
biplane.

As she reached the entrance she caught again the announcement of that
distant megaphone:

"Ladies and gentul men Pass enger flights may now
be booked----"

The band in the distance was playing the dashing tune of the
"Uhlanenritt."

Gwenna Williams passed out of the gates beside the big poster of the
aeroplane in full flight carrying a girl-passenger who waved a scarf. It
was everywhere, that Spring. So was the other notice:

"_An afternoon in the country is always refreshing! Flying is always
interesting to watch!_"

In the dusty bit of lane mended by the wooden sleepers a line of
grass-green taxis was drawn up.

Gwenna hesitated.

Should she----? Taxi all the way home to the Ladies' Residential Club in
Hampstead where she lived?

Four shillings, perhaps.... Extravagance again! "But it's not an
everyday sort of day," Gwenna told herself as she hailed the taxi. "This
afternoon, the flying! This evening, a party with Leslie! Oh, and there
was I saying to the other girls that nothing exciting ever happened to
me!"

For even now every day of her life seemed to this enjoying Welsh
_ingenue_, packed with thrills. Thrills of anticipation, of
amusement--sometimes of disappointment and embarrassment. But what did
those matter? Supreme through all there glowed the conviction of youth
that, at any moment, Something-More-Exciting still might happen....

It might be waiting to happen, waiting now, just round the corner....

All young people know that feeling. And to many it remains the most
poignant pleasure that they are to know--that thought of "the party
to-night," that wonder "what may happen at it!"