Chapter 2

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."