Glory for me, glory for me.”
Yes, religion seemed very real on these Sunday nights. On this
particular night, it was midnight when Cherry reached Lady Perkins’
home. She remembered it afterward, for at that very moment Big Ben was
gloriously booming the hour of twelve.
She had walked home alone. It was not far. She let herself in with her
latchkey. The “all clear” had sounded, so, feeling weary and happy all
in one, she stretched out on her bed fully dressed, and fell asleep.
She was dreaming of quiet, sleepy hours, with Flash at her side, while
her sheep wandered over the hillside at Ramsey Farm, when suddenly it
seemed that a mighty thunderstorm had stolen upon her unawares and that
the very hill was being rocked by its roaring.
She awoke standing in the center of the room. Her knees trembled so she
could scarcely stand. The floor beneath her vibrated like a ship in a
storm. From all about her came strange crashes like walls falling one
upon another.
She tried to call, but could only whisper. A narrow crack of light
appeared before her. A board in the door had been split. She stepped to
the door and opened it. Then, catching herself, she started back to
whisper in dismay:
“It’s gone! The house is gone! Only my room is here!”
That was not quite true. Of that spacious home only three rooms
remained—her own and two others. A half-ton bomb had scattered the rest.
Recalling that the French windows of her room opened out on a court, she
sprang to the nearest one. Then she was out and away.
A weird light from a flare sent down by the enemy illuminated the
street. Once on that street she began to run. In all her fright and
confusion she had a vague plan. Dave was spending the night with his
uncle. She knew the address. Was it far? She did not know. All she knew
was that somehow she must get there.
She had gone but a block when she ran squarely into the arms of a
six-foot policeman.
“Here now, Miss! What’s this?” His voice had a kindly rumble.
“The house!” she cried. “Lady Perkins’ house! It’s gone!”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It was a terrible bomb. The firemen are just there
now. Thank God Lady Perkins and all were away.”
“No!” Cherry whispered. “I was there.”
“You?” The Bobby looked her over. “You were there? And who now might you
be?”
“I—I’m Cherry.”
“What? The Singin’ Angel?” He looked her in the face. “Bless me heart it
is now! What do you know about that! Bless the Lord you are safe.”
“I can’t talk.” The girl’s head drooped. “I can’t sing. I—I want to go
to Dave’s Uncle’s place.” In her fright she was like a child.
“And where would that be?”
She gave him the address. He read it, then blew a whistle. A man
appeared.
“Jim,” he said, “this is Cherry, the Singin’ Angel. God’s own child she
is.”
“The Singin’ Angel!” Jim’s jaw dropped.
“None other,” said the Bobby. “An’ you’re to take her to this address.
Mind you drive careful, careful and steady as ye would if it were the
Christ Child you’re ’avin in yer car.”
Jim’s car was old and dilapidated, but to Cherry it was the latest model
of a Rolls Royce and its cushions as soft as down, for was it not taking
her to her friends?
Arrived at the house, in the presence of Dave’s tall, gray-haired uncle,
she disgraced herself by throwing herself in Dave’s arms. Then she wept
like a child.
This storm over, she felt better. Two cups of strong tea revived her
spirits but not her voice. She could only whisper as she said: “Dave,
please take me home, back to the farm.”
“At this hour of the night?” Dave stared.
“I’ll have a car for you at once,” said the kindly gray-haired uncle.
“Dave, my boy, London’s no place for a girl who has gone through what
this girl has tonight.”
All the way home Dave had an arm about Cherry. She cuddled close to him,
as a scared child would and they were not ashamed.
Arrived at the farm, they quietly dismissed the driver. Arousing no one,
they sat before the half-burned-out kitchen fire for a time. When at
last Dave felt the trembling quiver of her shoulders pass away, he said
huskily:
“You’d better turn in for a little sleep.”
“Dave,” she whispered. “My voice is gone. I can’t sing any more.”
“Fright. That’s all.” Dave tried to reassure her. “It will come back.”
Would it? He wondered as he watched her make her way slowly, dreamily,
like a sleep-walker, up the stairs.
_Chapter_ XIII
Lull Before the Storm
Until one P. M. the next day Cherry was lost to the world. At last she
stirred beneath her rare old English blankets, opened her eyes, stared
about her, tried to remember, then began trying to forget.
In slippers and bathrobe she crept down to the kitchen where the cook
served her with very strong tea and a small, delicious meat pie. After
that she curled up in the big chair before the fire and once again fell
asleep.
It was only on the morning of the second day that she found courage to
face life as it was. The home in London in which she had been given
royal welcome was gone. She could barely whisper. Would her voice come
back? What of her people there in the subway? The little Irish girl, the
Scotch fiddler, and all the rest, were they carrying on?
“Yes,” she assured herself as a fresh glow of hope overflowed her being,
“They are right there doing their bit.”
Breakfast over, with Flash at her heels, she once again led her small
flock of sheep out to the frostbitten, sunlit pasture. There, after
spreading a blanket on a rock, she lay for a long time staring up at the
sun. It seemed to her, at that moment, that all that terrible war was
but a bad dream, that it never had happened, that all the world was as
much at peace as was her sunny pasture.
The drone of airplane motors, followed by machine-guns tearing at the
sky drove this illusion from her mind. The war was real, terribly real.
It must be faced with eyes open and mind alert.
It was there on the rock that her brother found her. “So they drove you
out of London? The dirty Huns!” he exclaimed, dropping to a seat beside
her. “Cherry!” There were lines of fierce determination in his face,
“I’m going to join up with the Royal Air Force.”
For a full minute she made no reply, just sat staring at the cloudless
sky. Perhaps she was thinking of the good times they had had together,
fishing and swimming in summer, tobogganing and skiing in winter. And on
rainy days there had been games before the open fire.
“Yes,” she whispered at last, as color flooded back into her face, “you
must join up, Brand. Everyone must. Those marvelous people, the women,
the children must come out of the subway. They must sleep again in their
own homes in peace.”
“I—I’m glad you feel that way.” Brand swallowed hard. “That—that’s going
to make it easier. You and I have been pals, Cherry, all these years.
“I’ll tell you,” his voice picked up. “It’s a great secret. We’ve been
training, Dave and I, training for two weeks. Training like everything.”
“D—Dave,” she whispered. “Why! He’s an American! This is not his war.”
“That’s what he thought,” Brand laughed low. “Perhaps he still thinks
it, in a way. But he’ll join up. You wait! The young Lord says he will,
and he usually knows.”
“The—the young Lord?” Cherry whispered.
“Yes, there’s part of the secret. He’s had two week’s leave. He’s been
training us in the back pasture. Of course we’ve each done a lot of
flying but this is special, regular fighting stuff, parachutes and
everything. And, Cherry, cross your heart and hope to die if I tell
you?”
“Cross—cross my heart.”
“All right. Dave’s already been in a day fight. He and the young Lord
got a Dornier! Boy, that was great! I wish I’d been in it with them.”
“Dave in an air battle?” The girl stared.
“Certainly was, and did his part nobly.”
While Cherry sat listening, breathless, Brand described Dave’s adventure
in the clouds that day over England and the channel.
“Dave never whispered a word about it to me,” she said when the story
was told. Her shining eyes showed that the American boy stood out in her
mind as a hero.
“Dave can keep a secret,” said Brand. “That’s why we all like him.”
“But you shouldn’t try to drag him into the war,” Cherry replied
thoughtfully. “England is not his country.”
“He’ll decide about that for himself when the time comes.” Brand sent a
small rock skipping down the hill. “He talked it all over with his uncle
in London two weeks ago. His uncle advised him to get all the flying
experience he could. He thinks America will be in the war soon. Then
Dave will be in it for sure. Great old boy, his uncle, a real sport. He
was in the other war, an ace flyer. Thinks the air service is trumps.
And who wouldn’t?” Brand’s face shone with enthusiasm. “Boy it’s great!
All of it.” He sprang to his feet. “Even baling out. First time I
stepped into space with a parachute on my back I thought my heart would
jump out of my mouth. But when the old silk took hold and I drifted
slowly down, Baby! That was swell! I’ve baled out twenty times since
then—just practice you know. Now it’s as natural as swimming.”
“Brand?” Cherry whispered. “I’ve lost my voice. They say it will come
back. I—I don’t know. Can’t do my share. You’ll have to carry on. How I
wish I’d been born a boy!”
“Buck up, old girl!” Brand exclaimed cheerfully, “you’ll be right back
in there again before you know it.
“And even if you aren’t,” he added soberly, “you’ve already done more
than any other gal in Merry England to help folks keep heads up and
hopes high. That’s a whole great big lot.”
At that he went marching back down the hill.
“Great doings these last two weeks,” he thought to himself. They had
worked hard all of them. Truck loads of Brussels sprouts, turnips,
carrots, apples and pears had been sent rumbling on their way to London.
All their winter’s supplies had been safely stowed away. Beside this
they had found time each day for two hours of practice flying. “There’s
mother,” he thought soberly. “Somehow, I’ll have to win her over.” Had
he but known it his hated enemies, the Jerries, were to give him a lift
with his mother.
Dave too had been thinking of his mother. As he sat by the open fire
with Cherry that evening, he said:
“Just had a letter from my mother.”
“I hope she’s well,” Cherry replied in her polite, English manner.
“Oh! Always!” Dave laughed. “She’s closing our New England home and
going with my aunt to Florida. She has an independent income so she gets
about.”
“What does one do in Florida?” Cherry asked.
“Oh, bask in the sun until you’re brown, swim, play tennis, go tarpon
fishing,” Dave drawled lazily.
“Sounds rather dreamy.”
“It is, and unreal too. Do you know?” Dave exclaimed, “I haven’t thought
of it before but since I came to England I’ve really just started to
live.”
“I—I’m glad,” Cherry whispered. “I’ve often thought—” She broke off to
listen.
“Enemy planes,” she whispered.
“Bombers!” Dave nodded.
“Sound as if they were right overhead. And they seem so low.” Cherry
shuddered.
A half minute followed without a sound save the tick-tock of the tall
old clock and the drone overhead.
Then, of a sudden, with a throaty whisper ten times more startling than
a cry, Cherry sprang from her seat.
The stillness of the countryside had been shattered by a crash that
appeared to come from their own farmyard. Truth was, a bomb had fallen
on their village two miles away.
_Chapter_ XIV
A Dungeon Night
There came a second blast. A deathlike silence followed. This was soon
enough shattered by the anxious call of the cook, demanding to know if
all were well and by the excited cry of the children. Then, from
outside, came the honk of an auto horn.
The door swung open. A voice shouted:
“All out for a moonlit visit to the ancient Norman castle.”
It was the young Lord Applegate. “Pile into the car, all of you.” His
tone was sharp, commanding. “This is going to be bad. A dozen Jerry
bombers circling around looking for targets, and the moon making
everything bright as day. Your broad roof shows up all too clearly.”
Dashing to the corner of the room, Dave seized two buckets of water to
drench the fire. They were to recall this act later, with thanksgiving.
In an incredibly short time they were all crowded into the big car and
away.
Through the back window of the racing car Alice caught a fleeting
glimpse of her home, the only home she had ever known. Standing there in
the cool, shadowy moonlight, with great trees banked behind it, the old
house seemed a thing of indescribable beauty. Yet the word that came to
the girl’s mind was “lonely”. For a space of seconds it seemed to her
that she must leap from the car and race back to be with the dear old
house in its great time of trial.
This was but a fleeting fancy. A turn in the road shut the place from
her view. She heard the young Lord saying:
“I’ve fixed up an air raid shelter in the dungeon of the castle. It’s
thirty steps down, walled over with massive rocks. Even had an oil
heater installed. We’ll be safe and comfortable there.”
“Safe and comfortable,” Alice thought angrily. “In an insane, upside
down world such as this, who wanted to be comfortable and safe?”
This too she realized was a wrong slant on life. “Comfort and safety,”
she assured herself, “are two of the great necessities of life. For, on
the morrow, there is work to be done.” At that she did not know the half
of it.
Warmington Castle, a great, square mass of masonry, looming a hundred
feet above the meadows, greeted them as they took one more curve in the
road. A minute more and there they were.
With the droning of heavy motors still in their ears, they hurried down
one narrow stairs, then another, to find themselves in a rather large
windowless room where candles blinked at them from every corner and an
oil stove glowed warmly up at them.
Lady Applegate, a frail, nervous little lady, greeted them with jittery
handshakes and an uncertain smile. Her husband had died from wounds
received in that other war. And now this! “Poor soul,” thought Alice.
As if to guard her from bombs, the Lady’s servants, butler, cook, and
two maids, sat clustered about her.
Dave was not long in the dungeon. Having wished to witness an air-raid
he took the thing by the bit and hurried back up the stairs. Flash, the
collie, it would seem, was of the same mind. He followed him out.
As if in search of fresh targets, just any roof gleaming up from the
moonlit night, giant planes were still circling. Dave strained his eyes
for a glimpse of them.
“That’s the plague of it,” he grumbled. “If you could see them you could
blast them from the sky even at night.”
Backing away, he studied the mass of masonry above him. More a fort than
a castle, it had stood there for hundreds of years. Bombs had shattered
it more than twenty years before. But the tower, with stairway leading
to the top, still stood. He was considering climbing those stairs for a
better view of the sky, when, a sudden discovery left him standing there
quite motionless. From the very top of that tower had come a flash of
light.
“Spy!” His mind registered like a recording machine. “Flashing signals!”
That was enough. Two steps at a time, with the collie at his heels, he
went up those stairs. What was he to do? There were times when he
believed in revelations straight from the Divine Will. He would know
what was to be done when the time came.
Approaching the top, he went on tiptoe. Unfortunately Flash could not
know the need for breathless silence. He uttered a low growl.
Instantly there came a crash. Something had fallen. There was the sound
of shuffling footsteps.
The tower, a mass of standing pillars and tumbled stone, offered a
splendid hiding place. One might hide from a man, not from a dog. Dave
had, for the instant, forgotten the dog. Springing forward, he all but
fell over some large, dark object. Bending over, he picked the thing up.
“Some instrument, perhaps a—”
His thoughts broke off. The dog had found the fugitive. There came a
muttered guttural curse, a sound of a solid impact, the howl of the dog,
and after that scurrying footsteps.
At that instant the instrument in Dave’s hand gave forth a flood of
light. The light fell full upon the fleeting figure of a man. The man
turned half about. Having caught the fellow’s profile in bold relief,
Dave recognized him instantly. And then the fugitive, with the dog at
his heels, plunged down the narrow, winding stairs.
Dave was fast, but not fast enough. Once, as he raced down those stairs,
he caught a glimpse of man and dog. Then he tripped over a broken step,
plunged downward, hit his head against the wall, was out for thirty
seconds, and so lost the race.
He arrived at the castle door just in time to see two fleeting shadows,
a man and a dog, lose themselves in the deeper shadow of a small, low
stone structure fifty yards or more from the castle.
As he stood balanced on the threshold he suddenly became conscious of a
tremendous roar overhead. It seemed that one of those tri-motored
bombers must crash against the castle’s tower. And then?
In sudden terror he fairly tumbled down two flights of stairs, banged
against the massive iron-bound door to the dungeon, tumbled through and
slammed the door behind him, just as a terrific blast set the castle
shuddering from towers to dungeon.
In the moments that followed they could hear the dull thud of masonry
falling. But it all seemed very far away, like part of a bad dream.
There came a second crash, a third. Then all was silent and the ghosts
that perhaps haunted this dungeon, spirits of those who suffered here in
solitary confinement centuries ago, might, Dave supposed, walk in peace.
It was Alice who broke that silence. Her voice was as calm and restful
as it would have been were she seated before the fire in her own
kitchen. She was speaking to the two waifs from London’s slums. They
were curled up beside her on an ancient stone bench.
“Yes, children,” was her answer to a whispered question, “Louise and
Charlotte, the two lady spies, lived and worked as spies for a long
time. They performed many daring feats.
“You know,” she went on, and they were all listening now, “Louise and
Charlotte always had messages to carry across the line. In places there
was a river to cross. Always there was the terrible wall of barbed wire
and traps. Louise, who could not swim and dared not trust a boat, went
across the river many times on a large chopping bowl.”
“Funny little boat,” Peggy whispered.
“They used strange devices for hiding their messages.” Alice had a good
memory. “Once when Louise was arrested she threw a black ball of yarn
into the brush at the side of the road but held to the end until it had
landed. The message was wound inside the ball of yarn.”
“They didn’t find it. That was good!” Tillie whispered. “Go on! What
else?”
“Once the two girl spies seemed to be going on a picnic. They were
munching bread and sausages as they marched along. Once more they were
searched. Nothing was found. The message was in Louise’s sausage.
“Oh yes,” Alice drew a heavy sigh. “Those two girls did marvelous things
for their country. They set up a secret radio and sent over messages.
They trained carrier pigeons to take messages across the line. Daring
Frenchmen were carried over the line in airplanes to spy out the enemy’s
defenses. Louise helped them.
“And after that,” the story teller sighed more deeply, “there came
darker days. The enemy counter-spies wove a web of evidence about them.
They were arrested. Evidence was produced. They were court-martialed.
The sentence was: ‘For Louise, death. For Charlotte, death.’”
“And—and were they really shot?” Peggy whispered with a shudder.
“Not yet.” Alice’s voice was low. “Their prison keeper had come to
respect and love them as if they were his children.
“‘Poor souls’, he said, ‘So they have condemned you to die? Ask what you
will. It shall be granted.’
“When the day for their execution was near,” Alice went on, “they
requested that they might spend their last night on earth together.
“The keeper carried this request to the governor. He returned with a
radiant face. ‘He has refused it,’ he whispered to Louise. Thank God! It
means that they will not shoot you in the morning. Otherwise he would
not have denied you.”
“Oh, good!” Peggy breathed.
“That morning,” Alice went on after a time, “another beautiful girl,
Gabrielle Petiti, was to be shot as a spy. Louise and Charlotte heard
her walking to the place of her execution and they heard her cry:
‘Salut! O mon dernier matin!’ (Salute, O my last morning!)”
“Oh!” Peggy whispered.
“And were—” Tillie began.
“No, Louise and Charlotte were not shot.” There was a catch in Alice’s
voice. “Because of their loyalty and great bravery they were sent to
prison for life.
“Two months and two days before the great war ended Louise died in
prison. Charlotte lived on and went back to keeping shop. Perhaps she’s
living still.”
“And now perhaps she’s a spy again.” Peggy shuddered with ecstasy. “I’m
going to be a spy some day.”
“Alice, my dear,” said Lady Applegate, “that’s no story to tell to a
child.”
But Tillie whispered very low, “I—I think it is wonderful, Alice. I—I’d
like to kiss you.” And she did.
Just then there came a scratching at the door. “It’s Flash!” Cherry
cried. “We’ve all forgotten him.”
As she threw the door open the dog went creeping across the floor to
curl up, still whining low, at Alice’s feet.
_Chapter_ XV
Until the Very End
For sometime the dog lay quietly at Alice’s feet. At last, once more at
ease, he rose, stretched himself, walked twice across the dungeon floor,
then, marching up to Dave whined low.
“What’s this?” Dave demanded. “You want to go out again? Haven’t you had
enough for one night?”
In answer the dog walked to the door, then whined again.
“O. K.,” said Dave “I don’t hear any motors. Perhaps the big show is
over. Let’s get going.”
“I’ll go with you,” Brand said quietly.
Arrived at the outer castle door, Dave took one look, then let out a low
whistle. “Old boy,” he said in a hoarse voice, looking down at the dog,
“how did you escape?”
“What do you mean, escape?” Brand asked.
“Look!” Dave pointed to a dark spot in the brightly lighted meadow. “See
that black hole? What stood there two hours ago?”
“Say!” Brand stared. “A stone building stood there.”
“But then,” he added after a thought, “what does it matter? It was just
an empty old out building.”
“I’m not so sure it was empty,” Dave replied soberly. “Last time I
looked at that building a man and a dog were going through the door.
That was less than two minutes before the first blast. There,” his was a
dramatic gesture, “question is, where’s the man? If he is at all any
more.”
“Stop talking in riddles,” Brand’s voice rose. “This has been a bad
night.”
“Sit down and I’ll tell you,” Dave invited as he dropped to a place on
the well-worn door sill.
The story of his visit to the top of the tower both astonished and
thrilled his companion.
“And the fellow who went into that shack,” Dave added with a flourish of
his arm, “was none other than the assistant to old John, the shoemaker.
What’s more, his real name is Nicholas Schlitz.”
“No!” Brand sprang to his feet. “It can’t be!”
“It is!” Dave insisted. “Remember that picture you took from the wrecked
plane? The picture of two young fellows?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“They were clear enough. You couldn’t make a mistake if you saw one of
those men. I saw Nicholas tonight, by the bright light of his own signal
torch. I couldn’t be mistaken. In the shoe shop he was always bending
over, half hiding his face. Tonight I really _saw_ him.”
“Where’s his signal torch?” Brand asked suddenly.
“That’s right,” Dave sprang up. “Where is it? In my excitement I might
have—
“Yes. Here it is.” He drank in a deep breath of relief. “I must have put
it down. I—I was afraid he had come back for it.”
“He never will,” said Brand.
“You can’t be sure,” Dave replied thoughtfully. “Flash went in with him.
If Flash escaped, how about Nicholas Schlitz, the spy? After all, there
were three blasts. There was some time between the first and last. Who’s
going to say whether the first or last made that hole out there?”
To this question Brand found no answer.
Brand stood up, gazed at the sky, north, south, east and west, listened
for a full minute, then said: “Storm’s over. Let’s see if we can’t get
them all to go home.”
It took little persuading to get Alice and Cherry started. Soon they
were all on their way.
It was only as they rounded the last curve that brought them in full
view of their home that the full significance of Heinie’s work that
night burst upon them.