by Berta Ruck
CHAPTER V
THE WORKADAY WORLD
The day after the dinner-party was spent by Gwenna metaphorically, atleast, in the clouds.
By her vivid day-dreams she was carried off, as Ganymede was carried bythe eagle, sky-high; she felt the rush of keen air on her face; she sawthe khaki-green flying-ground beneath her with the clustered onlookers,as small as ants. And--thus she imagined it--she heard that megaphoneannouncement:
"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 alreadyhappened. Those throbbing moments when her new friend had said, "Lookhere! Would you care to come up?" and, "Then I'll come up here and fixit----"
Would he? Oh, when would he? It was of course hardly to be thought thatthis flying-man ("besieged with invitations" as he was) would come toratify his offer on Sunday, the very day after he'd made it. Too muchto expect....
Therefore that Sunday Gwenna Williams refused to go out, even on theHeath for the shortest loitering stroll. Leslie Long, with anindescribable look that the younger girl did not catch, went out withouther. Gwenna stayed on the green bench in the small, leafy garden at theback of the Club, reading and listening, listening for the sound of thebell 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 atthat long, crowded breakfast-table of the Club on Monday morning forMiss Gwenna Williams.
That, too, she could hardly have expected.
Quite possibly he'd forgotten that the appointment had ever been made. Ayoung man of that sort had got so many things to think about. So manypeople 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 calledMuriel," 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 downthe sunny morning road to the stopping-place of the motor-omnibuses andgot on to a big scarlet "24" bus, bound for Charing Cross and her day'swork.
The place where she worked was a huge new building in process ofconstruction on the south side of the Embankment near WestminsterBridge.
Above the slowly sliding tides of the river, with its barges and boats,there towered several courses of granite blocks, clean as afreshly-split kernel. In contrast to them were the half demolished,dingy shells of houses on either side, where the varied squares ofwallpaper and the rusting, floorless fireplaces showed where one roomhad ended and the next begun. The scaffolding rose above the new pilelike a mighty web. Above this again the enormous triangular lattice roseso high that it seemed like a length of ironwork lace stretched out ontwo crochet-needles against the blue-grey and hot vault of the Londonsky.
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 thatbiplane," she thought. "Oh, to be right _up_! Looking down oneverything, with the blue _beneath one_ instead of only above!"
She crossed the big yard, which was already vocal with the noises ofchipping and hammering, the trampling and the voices of men. Two ofthem--the genial young electrician called Grant and the Yorkshireforeman who was a regular father to his gang, nodded good-morning tothe youngest typist as she passed. She walked quickly past the stacks ofnew timber and the gantries and travelling cranes (plenty of machineryhere; it ought to please Mr. Dampier, since he'd said that was what hewas interested in!). One great square of the hewn granite was swingingin mid-air from a crane as she left the hot sunlight and noise outsideand entered the door of the square, corrugated iron building that heldthe 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 ofplans, and elevations. These details seemed mysteriously, tantalisinglyincomprehensible and yet irritating to Gwenna's feminine mind. She wasimaginative enough to realise that all these details, these"man's-things," from the T-squares on the benches to the immense ironsafe in the corner, seemed to put her, Gwenna, "in her place." She wasmerely another detail in the big whole of man's work that was going onhere. The place made her feel tiny, unimportant. She went on to thelight and airy room, smelling of new wood and tracing-paper, theextension of the clerk-of-the-works' office that she shared with her twocolleagues.
In the centre of this room there was a large square table with atelephone, a telephone-book, various other books of reference and ashallow wicker basket for letters. Besides this there were the typingtables for each of the three girl-clerks. Gwenna's and Miss Baker'swere side by side. The German girl sat nearest to the window that gavethe view up the river, with Lambeth Bridge and the Houses of Parliamentlooming grey and stately against the smiling June sky, and a distantglimpse of Westminster Abbey. On the frame of the pane just above herMiss Baker had fastened, with drawing-pins, two photographs. One was acrude coloured postcard of a red-roofed village among pine-forests. Theother was a portrait of a young man, moustached and smiling under aspiked German helmet; across this photograph ran the autograph, "_KarlBecker_." Thus the blue and guileless eyes of this young foreigner inour midst could rest upon mementoes of her Fatherland and her family anytime she raised her blonde head from bending over her work. Both girlslooked up this morning as Gwenna, the last arrival, came in. Theyscolded her good-naturedly because she'd brought none of thosechocolates she'd promised from the dinner-table. They asked how she'denjoyed herself at that party.
It would have been presumably natural to the young Welsh girl to havebroken out into a bubblingly excited--"And, girls! _Who_ d'you suppose Isat 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! Youknow; 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 yardsabout his new aeroplane, and I say, _what_ do you think! This was thebest. He's asked me to come up one day--yes, indeed! He's going to takeme flying--with him!"
But, as it was, Gwenna said not one word of all this. She could not haveexplained 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 andspecifications, builders' quantities, and so on, to type out. Tiresomecalls on the telephone that had to be put through to the otheroffice....
Never before had she seemed to mind the monotony of those clicking keysand that "_I'll inquire. Hold the line, please._" Never before had shefound herself irritated by the constant procession of men who were inand out all day; including Mr. Grant, who sometimes seemed to _make_errands to talk to Miss Butcher, but who never stayed for more than amoment, concluding invariably with the cheerful remark, "Well! Dutycalls, I must away." Men seemed actually to _enjoy_ "duty," Gwennathought. At least the men here did. All of them, from Mr. Henderson inthe other office to the brown-faced men in the yard with theirshirt-sleeves rolled up above tattooed arms, seemed to be "keen" on thebuilding, on the job in hand. They seemed glad to be together. Gwennawondered how they could....
To-day she was all out of tune. She was quite cross when, for thesecond time, Albert, the seventeen-year old Cockney office-boy, bustledin, stamping a little louder than was strictly necessary on the echoingboards. He rubbed his hands together importantly, demanding in a voicethat began in a bass roar and ended in a treble squeak, "Thosespecifications, 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 ofpapers. Then, looking back over his shoulder at the pretty typistperched on the edge of the centre table to refill her fountain pen, headded 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 itlooks so bad! Don't it, Miss Butcher? There's other ways of gittin' orfthan 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 getout.
At one o'clock, an hour after the buzzer had sounded for the mid-daymeal of the yard-men, the other two girls in the office would not evencome out for a breath of air. They had brought fruit and cake. They madeBovril (with a kettle of hot water begged from the fatherly foreman) andlunched where they'd sat all the morning. Miss Butcher, munching, wasdeep in a library-book lent to her by the young electrician. Miss Bakercounted stitches in a new pattern for a crochet-work _Kante_, or lengthof fine thread insertion. It was not unlike the pattern of the irontrellis above the scaffolding, that tapered black against the sky; man'sfancy-work.
What hideously tame things women had to fill their lives with, Gwennathought as she sat in the upper window of her tea-shop at the corner ofthe Embankment. She watched the luncheon-time crowd walking overWestminster Bridge. So many of these people were business-girls justlike herself and the Butcher and the Baker! Would anything more amusingever happen to them, or to her?
But that German girl, Gwenna thought, would stare to hear her workcalled "hideous" or "tame." It was her greatest interest. Already, she'dtold Gwenna, her bottom drawer at her boarding-house was crammed withlong, rolled-up crochet-work strips of white or creamy lace. There werealso her piles of tray-cloths, petticoat flounces and chemise-tops, allhand-embroidered and bemonogrammed by Miss Baker herself. She was notengaged to be married, but, as she'd artlessly said, "_Something_ ayoung girl can have always ready."
Day-dreams in crochet!
"I'd rather never fall in love than have it all spoilt by mixing it upwith such a lot of sewing and cookery that it wouldn't get disentangled,like," thought the dreamy, impatient Gwenna. She returned, to find theGerman 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'sletter. Miss Butcher unfastened another packet of stationery. MissWilliams fetched a number of envelopes from the inner office to beaddressed....
Would the afternoon _never_ come to an end?