THE STRANGE LETTER
“Oh, Helen, mother received the strangest letter last night,” cried
Nathalie suddenly the following day, as she stood with her friend and
Nita in the Red Cross booth at the Liberty Sale. “And I am afraid it
means,” the girl’s eyes shadowed, “that I shall have to resign as
president of the club.”
“Resign?” exclaimed Helen and Nita simultaneously. “Oh, Nathalie, you
must not do that.”
“Well, I fear it will be necessary,” sighed the girl dolefully, “for the
home duties come first, especially the duties to mother, and she wants
to go—she really needs the change—and—”
“Go where?” questioned Helen sharply. “Oh, Nathalie, you are talking
Dutch to us, and—”
“Sure she is,” voiced Nita quickly, “jumbling letters and resignations
all together in a very queer way. Now suppose, young lady,” she
commanded imperiously, seizing her friend by the arm impulsively, “that
you unravel our tangled brains and tell us what you are aiming at.”
“Well, I guess I shall have to, from the stew you two girls have sizzled
into,” replied Blue Robin laughingly. “Well, as I said,” she continued
more soberly, “mother received a letter last night. But I shall have to
tell you a bit of family history, if you want to understand,” she added
hesitatingly.
As the two girls laughingly assured her that that would only make her
explanation more interesting, Nathalie gathered up her threads and went
on with her story. “Father had an older half-sister, whose mother—who
came of very wealthy people in Boston—left her all of her money, so
that she was quite wealthy, and in due time became very eccentric.
Father said she was spoiled with her pot of gold.
“She married when quite young and had one son, who, shortly after the
death of his father,—as soon as he was graduated from college,—went to
Europe, fell in love with a pretty girl, and married her. I have never
heard the details of this marriage, but I believe the girl was French.
No, she may have been English; anyway it was quite a romance, and the
young couple were quite happy.
“My aunt, however, was deeply wounded to think that her only son, her
idol, had spoiled all her plans and married some one whom she considered
beneath him. So when Philip came to America with his young wife, my aunt
refused to see her. This angered him so deeply that they quarreled, and
Philip rushed from his mother’s presence, declaring that she should
never see his face again.
“And she never did,” asserted Nathalie with grave emphasis. “Presumably
he immediately returned to Europe with his young wife, for although Mrs.
Renwick soon repented of her folly, as father called it, and wrote her
son again and again, she heard nothing from him. After employing
detectives by the score with no result, she finally went abroad and
endeavored herself to find some trace of him, but was not successful.
She finally returned to America and started to seek him here, but found
no clew to his whereabouts.
“As time passed—I think the matter preyed on her mind—she began to
have queer spells. No, she wasn’t crazy, or anything like _that_, but
just worried and unhappy, going off alone by herself for months at a
time, presumably still trying to find her boy. After a time she would
return from one of these erratic journeys, but she never told where she
had been, and never mentioned her son’s name.
“Now we have come to the letter mother received yesterday. It was from
my aunt’s lawyer, who summers in Littleton, New Hampshire. You see, Mrs.
Renwick had considerable property in Boston and other places, but she
was very fond of the White Mountains and always summered on Sugar Hill,
where she had a lovely place called Seven Pillars, only a few miles from
Littleton, and just a short distance from the mountain village of
Franconia.
“The lawyer,” continued Nathalie, who by this time had quite an
interested audience, “writes mother that Aunt Mary went off on one of
her queer jaunts over a year ago and has not returned. In accordance
with her wishes,—she always leaves a letter of instruction when she
goes off this way,—mother and two cousins of mine from the West have
been invited to spend the summer at this place on Sugar Hill. Mother
wants to go, and I feel that she needs the change, so I shall have to go
with her, and give up being a Liberty Girl.”
“But why should _you_ have to go?” questioned Nita insistently.
“Couldn’t your cousin, Lucille, or your sister, Dorothy, go with her?
And then, oh, Nathalie, you could stay with us! Oh, that would be the
dandiest thing! Oh, say yes, Nathalie; say yes.”
“Yes, Nita,” smiled Nathalie teasingly, as she placed her arm
affectionately about the young girl, “it would be just dandy, as you
say, for indeed I would like a rest myself this summer, because when the
warm weather comes, housework does drag on one so. But Lucille is going
to California to visit some cousins of hers, and has planned to take
Dorothy with her. Dorothy is wild to go, and mother would not disappoint
the child for the world. And then, too, the lawyer wrote mother that I
was to come with her, as my aunt had given instructions. Oh, I just hate
to give up my Liberty work!”
“But you will be back in the fall, Nathalie,” suggested Helen, “so why
not let Lillie Bell take charge—she is vice-president—for the summer?
It will give her something to think about, too, for she is possessed
with the idea of going on the stage, and her mother is worrying herself
ill over it.”
“Lillie wants to go on the stage?” repeated Nathalie in surprise. “Why,
I didn’t know she had aspirations in that line. But do you think she
would care to take charge of the club? O dear!” she broke off abruptly,
“we had planned to do so many things this summer.” The girl’s voice was
almost a wail.
“Why not carry your plans to the mountains with you,” inquired her
friend, “and form a club of Liberty Girls up there? I am sure there will
be some one who will be glad to belong, and you have such a fine way of
getting people interested in things, Nathalie.”
“Possibly mother may change her mind and decide not to go,” returned
Nathalie, brightening a little, “for she wants to be near Dick; you know
he is now stationed at the Aviation Camp, Hazlehurst, at Mineola, near
Camp Mills. And then, too, she says she hates to leave the house alone
for so long a period.”
“Why don’t you rent the house for the summer?” suggested Helen
practically. “You know that Westport is getting to be quite a
summer-resort since the new hotel was built on the bluff.”
“No such good luck for us, I’m afraid,” answered Nathalie dejectedly,
“but I’ll look up Lillie and see what—” But Helen had hurried away in
answer to a call for the captain of the Red Cross Squad. Nathalie stood
a moment watching her friend, as she helped one of the “white-veiled”
girls into her white head-covering, starred with its cross, and then
went slowly out of the booth.
As her eyes swept over the lawn in search of Lillie her glance fell upon
the little flag with its Red Cross insignia floating cheerily from the
top of the booth she had just left, as if in a salute to its companion
cross placed below on the front, so that its arms stretched outward,
dividing the booth into two sections.
Ah, here was the poster drawn by Barbara Worth representing a Red Cross
nurse standing by an invalid chair, in which sat a soldier boy with
bandaged eyes. The girl’s face saddened at its implication, and then she
had bent forward and was reading the placard persuasively held forth by
the nurse, on which was written:
“Please buy a Liberty bond of me,
It’s for the soldiers across the sea,
Bravely fighting to make the world free,
Wounded, and dying, for you and me.”
But now her eyes were held by the poster of a white-robed
figure,—representing the Spirit of Liberty which had heralded the
pageant of the day before,—waving a flag victoriously above her head,
while holding a shield with the Biblical quotation:
“I have fought a good fight ... I have kept the faith.”
The face of this water-color sketch of Freedom, although bearing no
resemblance to Nita’s, was so bright with hope that it thrilled the
girl’s heart with the suggestion that the Allies, by their faith in God
and their desire to do right, would finally win a victory over sin and
wrong.
At this moment she heard the voice of Nita as she called her to come and
see the display of small dolls, miniature Red Cross nurses, to be used
as weights, door-holders, or pincushions, which were on sale. But some
real dolls, as Nita called them, proved more interesting to Nathalie,
because they were the work of a shut-in, as her bit towards winning the
war, and because they were impersonations of some of the crowned heads
of the allied nations. They were queer little things, stiff and
stilted-looking, although several were excellent imitations, especially
those of their majesties, King George and Queen Mary, and the little
Princess Marie of Belgium.
The girl could not forbear giving Shep—a big, tawny-colored collie
belonging to the Morrow twins—a love-pat, as he stood in front of the
booth with red-hanging tongue and patient resignation in his brown eyes,
while several young nurses fussed over him. They were trying to fasten a
strip of white cloth around the center of his body, with a red cross on
each side, in imitation of a war-dog who had served with a Red Cross
hospital in France, and who had become famous by his acts of bravery,
running into shell-holes and dug-outs in search of wounded soldiers.
But Shep was no patriot, and evidently did not realize the honor of that
big red cross, for suddenly he gave his huge body a shake, slipped from
beneath the fussing fingers, and bounded away after his young masters,
leaving a gentle friend to humanity lying sprawling on the grass.
As Nathalie turned, her eyes traveled slowly from one booth to another.
There were seven of them, three on the left and three on the right of
the Red Cross booth, which was in the center of the lawn, at one end,
fronting its sister booths. The war booth, on the left, ablaze with the
flags of the Allies, was curiously decorated on its front and posts with
the paper coverings from magazines and books. On its counter were
displayed the latest war books,—all donated after a sharp drive by the
hostesses, the Camp Fire Girls, who wore embroidered deerskin robes
aglisten with many-colored beads, and trench-caps stuck jauntily on one
side of their heads, which gave them a very coquettish and natty
appearance.
Scrap-books, in which were pasted funny verses, tidbits of news from all
over the world, with many-colored pictures, and songs and rhymes to
amuse the convalescents in the hospitals, were also on sale. Little
candles of paper added to the attractiveness of this booth’s display,
while one or two Camp Fire Girls were in attendance, who, on the payment
of a nickel, taught the uninitiated the knack of making these
trench-candles.
But the booth that held the first place in Nathalie’s heart was the
Liberty-Garden booth, a leaf-embowered tent. Here were brilliant
splashes of color from the vegetables piled on wicker mats, as carrots,
turnips, beans, onions, beets, and other products, artistically softened
by the light green of lettuce, the red of beet-leaves, and the delicate,
lacy leaves of the carrot.
Here and there herbs tied in bunches, as thyme, caraway seeds, catnip,
sweet lavender, and other herbs, suggested the days of long ago, when
these little garden accessories held a higher place with the housewife
as necessities of the day. Unwieldy tomatoes and potatoes, lazily
resting on plates, added to the picturesque effect of the display, as
well as the festoons of peppers, radishes, parsnips, and vegetables of
similar character that were hung from side to side of the tent.
This booth was certainly a brilliant showing of the work done by the
Pioneers. Oh, how they had scrubbed and polished those vegetables to
bring out their colors, so they would not be messy or huddled-looking!
And the time it had taken to print the little labels so neatly fastened
to each exhibit!
Yes, through the sweat of her brow Nathalie had come to realize that
gardening was not merely a matter of digging, plowing, or even planting
or weeding, but that it meant straying into many paths of knowledge that
hitherto had been closed to her. Then, too, there was the trench
warfare, as she called the unceasing onslaught against the bugs,
insects, and garden slugs, by a constant fire of hand-grenades and
bombs, as the girls had come to call the spraying and powdering of the
plants.
Ah, there was Lillie, with a number of Girl Pioneers, who, in
bright-colored overalls and shirt-waists, and coquettish little
sunbonnets tied under their chins, were rather gay editions of
farmerettes, as they stood in picturesque attitudes, with their rakes
and hoes. But a moment later Lillie was forgotten, for as Nathalie
reached the booth she burst into a sudden squeal of delight on suddenly
perceiving, on the top of a wall of canned vegetables, a little green
imp, ingeniously made from a string-bean. He not only had a most rakish
air, with his tiny soldier-hat cocked on one side, as he stood at
attention with a flag for a gun, but he held forth a little placard on
which was written:
“Little Beans, little Beans, whence did you come?”
“We came from the ground at the sound of the drum.”
“Little Beans, little Beans, why are you here?”
“We were scalded and canned by a Girl Pioneer.”
“Oh, who wrote that?” merrily inquired the girl of one of the Pioneers,
for it was something she had not seen before.
“Why, one of the Pioneer directors,” answered the farmerette smilingly,
pleased at the young president’s surprise.
A moment’s inspection of the fine display of canned goods, and Nathalie
turned to seek Lillie, but that young lady had mysteriously disappeared.
One of the girls, suggesting that Lillie had gone to the Liberty Tea
booth to regale herself with a cup of tea, Nathalie hurried on to that
booth, where the Daughters of Liberty, attired in quaint, old-time
costumes, dispensed that beverage.
But Lillie was not drinking tea, and again Nathalie hurried across the
lawn, on her way to the opposite booth, a mass of vines and flowers, the
result of the labors of the Girl Scouts in their garden, which they had
named the Garden of Freedom.
Ah, here was Lillie talking to a brown-clad soldier-boy by the big
Liberty pole that had been erected in the center of the lawn, facing the
Red Cross booth. It flew the Stars and Stripes and the club’s ensign, a
little red banner blazoned with the white stars of hope, while a big
liberty bell was hung from a cross-beam. On its flag-bedecked platform
Carol Tyke was stationed as the bell-ringer, for later in the afternoon
she was to strike the big bell to announce some patriotic speech, or
fiery oration, to be made in a sharp drive to sell the Liberty bonds.
Lillie, seeing Nathalie coming in her direction, advanced towards her,
and immediately presented her soldier-friend, and in a few moments the
three young people were having a sprightly chat. But Nathalie, soon
recalled to the business on hand, turned and told the young
vice-president why she was so anxious to see her.
“Yes; yes, indeed, Nathalie,” cried the girl quickly. “I am Hooverizing
this summer, and as I do not expect to leave town until late in the
fall, I shall be most delighted to accept the office of acting president
for the summer.”
A few moments later, relieved of her anxiety as to what would become of
the Liberty Girls in case she went to the mountains, Nathalie thanked
her friend, and hastened over to the Garden of Freedom, where
nasturtiums, pink poppies, sweet peas, phlox, and other old-fashioned
blooms peered at her in a riotous flaunt of color.
The Girl Scouts, who were charmingly gotten up to represent flowers,
beamed with pleasure as their president complimented them on the
splendid display they made, and the honor they had won by their hard
labor. They not only sold cut flowers, but potted plants, as well as
toothsome sweets, made without sugar, they declared, as they coaxingly
tempted Nathalie to sample a few.
But she had time only for a nibble or two, and then she was off to the
knitting booth, where a bewildering assortment of sweaters, helmets,
mufflers, socks, and other knitted articles stared at her in a
“homespuney” sort of way that reminded her of her grandmother. She
remembered how, as a child, she used to watch her as she sat by the fire
knitting, and the fun it was when the ball went rolling under the table
and she scrambled after it.
No, she could not hurry by this booth, for Marie’s eyes, big but shy,
and bright with a beautiful soft blackness, shone so pleadingly from the
clear pallor of her ivory-tinted skin, that they could not be resisted.
“Oh, Mees President,” cried the girl in her soft musical voice, “I shall
tell somethings on you. I likes that you look at mine table—iss it not
shmardt, hein? My mamma she says it iss stylish. Shure, und the
peoples—oh, they buys und buys lots and lots of sweaters, und mufflers,
und the helmets—yiss, ma’am, they have a glad on them, for they go fast
mit the wind.”
“Yes, isn’t it lovely, Marie,” returned Nathalie, smiling into the
limpid eyes, “to think that every one is so patriotic, and so anxious to
make the soldier-boys who are to fight for us, happy and comfortable?”
“Shure, Mees, that iss because they are lovin’ much mit the liberty. Oh,
here comes mine papa. He buys sweater of me. I likes that you speak mit
mine papa, Mees,” exclaimed the little Jewess shyly, as her eyes again
pleaded with Nathalie.
The young president turned, to see a rather crumpled, mussy-looking
little man by her side, who stared at her with sudden embarrassment as
she quickly extended her hand in a cordial greeting to him.
Mr. Katzkamof seized the outstretched hand and shook it nervously, while
his bright black eyes beamed with good-natured surprise. “I be glad to
meet young Mees,” he cried hurriedly, “who makes mine little girl be so
happy. She sing, she smile all the day mit the liberty that you gives to
her.”
“But _I_ didn’t give it to her,” answered Nathalie quickly. “God gave it
to her. I am only trying to show her how to give it to those who haven’t
learned what liberty means. But you,” she added quickly, “you are an
American,—you love the liberty, too?” The girl raised her eyebrows
inquiringly, somewhat frightened at her temerity, for she suddenly
remembered that she had heard Edith say that the newsdealer was a fiery
socialist.
“Yes, Mees, I be an American. I vote for the President. But I no like
the war,” the black eyes hardened. “It makes me cold in mine heart. I
think it no right for the people to fight mit one und the other, likes
the cat und the dog. They spill much of the blood. I am lovin’ mit the
peace. I no fight.”
“Yes, it is a terrible thing to have to fight and kill one another,”
replied the girl sadly. “And the mothers,—oh, I feel so sorry for them,
when they have to give up their boys to go and fight. But it must be
done,” she added valiantly, although there was a catch in her breath as
the thought of Dick came to her.
“Oh, no, Mees, if all the people say _no fight_, they be no soldiers,
they be no war, we have the peace.”
“Yes, but what kind of a peace,” exclaimed the girl. And then a sudden
thought looming big. “Ah, Mr. Katzkamof, you love the Christ. Did He not
die to make men free? Shall we not die to give liberty to the world?”
“No, Mees, I ain’t lovin’ mit Krisht. I make nothings mit Him.” The
man’s tone was surly, although he shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
“I beg your pardon,” cried Nathalie with reddening cheeks. And then, as
if to recover lost ground. “But you believe in God, _your_ God, _the
God_ who brought the Israelites dry-shod over the Red Sea? And did _He_
not command you to fight and drive out the enemies of God, the heathen,
who did not serve him, and who were in the Promised Land? And is not the
Kaiser a Hun, a heathen, when he tortures and kills little children and
women? Yes,” continued Blue Robin, impelled by some indefinable feeling
to rush blindly on, “this is _God’s_ war. He has commanded us to fight,
to do away with tyranny and oppression. They must be overcome, so that
all the world shall have liberty, and then,—why then we shall have
peace, a peace that the Germans can’t destroy.” And then Nathalie
smiled, although her heart was leaping in great bounds at her sudden
boldness. But another thought had come, and, turning towards her
companion, for she had turned to leave him, she added smilingly, “And I
am sure that you are big-hearted enough to be willing to fight, so that
you can give to others the liberty that gives so much happiness to you.”
The man’s eyes had brightened with a sudden strange light, and he opened
his mouth to reply, but Nathalie had passed on, angry at herself for
being so outspoken. But O dear! she felt so sorry for those poor
ignorant people, who thought and did violent things just because they
couldn’t reason, and didn’t understand.
But she had reached the Love booth, the name given by the girls to the
tent where the comfort-kits were sold. By a pile on a seat in the rear
she knew that business had been brisk, and that people had not only
donated kits and then bought them back again, but had patriotically
returned them to the sellers, so that they could be given to the
soldier-boys.
Blue Robin stood a moment and watched the girls, who, busy as bees, were
selling their wares, as they chatted merrily over their sales, and then
she turned to cross the lawn to the Red Cross booth. She had not gone
more than a step or so, however, when a sudden clang of the liberty bell
brought her to a halt. Oh, some one had bought a Liberty bond; yes,
three bonds, for the three clangs of the bell announced the number sold.
Oh, it was still ringing! What did it mean?
She started to rush towards the booth where the bonds were being sold,
and then glanced back at the booth she had just left, to see that the
girls, in their eagerness to know who was buying so many bonds,—for the
bell was still clanging,—had dropped their work and were rushing in
frantic haste towards the booth.
Nathalie smiled, and turned to follow after the group of girls who were
speeding past her, when a sudden thought leaped into her mind. She
halted and again glanced back at the Comfort-Kit booth. Not a girl was
to be seen. Ah, now was her chance to get rid of that letter. The next
moment she had turned and was flying back to the now deserted booth.