The Boy with Wings

by Berta Ruck

He said, through the music, "Who's your partner for this?"

She had forgotten. It was the Futurist Folly again. He had to find another partner. Gwenna danced with her Airman again ... and again....

Scarcely realising how it happened—indeed, how do these arrangements make themselves?—this boy and girl from a simpler world than that of this tinsel Bohemia spent almost the whole of the rest of that evening as they had spent that day in the country, as she would have asked to spend the rest of their lives together.

Some of the time they danced in the brilliant, heated marquee under the swinging garlands and the lamps. Then again they strolled out into the Riverside garden. Here it was cool and dewy and dim except where, from the tent-openings, there was flung upon the grass a broad path of light, across which flitted, moth-like, the figures of the dancers. Above the marquee the summer night was purple velvet, be-diamonded with stars. At the end of the lawn the river whispered to the willows and reflected, here the point of a star, there the red blot of a lantern caught in a tree.

Hugo Swayne went by in this bewildering stage, light-and-shade with a very naughty-looking lady who declared that her white frock was merely "'Milk,' out of 'The Blue Bird.'" In passing he announced to his cousin that the whole scene was like a Conder fan that he had at his rooms. Groups of his friends were simply sitting about and making themselves into quite good Fragonards. Little Gwenna did not even try to remember what Fragonard was. None of these people in this place seemed real to her but herself and her partner. And the purple dusk and velvet shadows, the lights and colours, the throb and thrill of the music were just the setting for this "night of gladness" that was only a little more substantial than her other fancies.

More quickly it seemed to be passing! Every now and again she exultantly reminded herself, "I am here, with him, out of all these people! He is only speaking to me! I have him to myself—I must feel that as hard as I can all the time now, for we shall be going home at the end of this Ball, and then I shall be alone again.... If only I could be with him for always! How extraordinary, that just to be with one particular person out of all the world should be enough to make all this happiness!"

With her crop-curled head close against his shoulder as they danced, she stole at her boyish partner the shy, defiantly possessive glance that a child gives sometimes to the favourite toy, the toy that focusses all his dreams. This was "the one particular person out of all the world" whose company answered every conscious and unconscious demand of the young girl's nature even as his waltz-step suited her own.

Yet she guessed that this special quiet rapture could not last. Even before the end of the dance the end of this must surely come.

It must have been long hours after the waltz-cotillon that they strolled down to a sitting-out arbour that had been arranged at the end of the path nearest the river. It was softly lighted by two big Chinese lanterns, primrose-coloured, ribbed like caterpillars, with a black base and a splash of patterned colour upon each; a rug had been thrown on the grass, and there were two big white-cane chairs, with house-boat cushions.

Here the two sat down, to munch sandwiches, drink hock-cup.