Part 5

Cherry was booked for a return to her subway studio on the following evening. Dave spent the greater part of that day teaching her a new song. He knew the tune and could pick it out for her on the piano. By great good fortune he found the words written out in longhand on a scrap of paper in his Sunday clothes.

“It’s not a new song,” he told her. “In fact, it’s more than twenty years old. An orchestra leader named Orrin Tucker dug it out of the file and gave it to his little five-foot singing doll named Bonnie Baker. It’s gone across America like a Nebraska cyclone. This is it:

“Oh! Johnny! Oh! Johnny! How you can love! Oh! Johnny! Oh! Johnny! Heavens above.”

“Catchy,” said Cherry, beginning to hum it.

Catchy was right, and Cherry was the one person in all the world to set England on fire with it.

That night in the chill damp of the subway, she sang it over and over. Next day in the airdromes and factories, barracks, schools, stores and on the street, one might hear: “Oh! Johnny! Oh! Johnny!”

The song was made. So too was Cherry. In the days that followed she was to become the sweetheart of all England. Newspapers were to print her picture in color. These pictures were to appear on the rough board walls of cantonments all over England, and in the cabins of boats, large and small, sailing the dangerous North Sea.

She was to be taken up by the nobility. Lady Perkins, a friend of the Young Lord, who lived in London, was to make her a part of her household, with privilege of coming and going as she pleased.

Only now and then did she sleep with some working girls in the subway. Most nights after the “all clear” had sounded, she sped away to creep beneath downy covers in a wing of Lady Perkins’ mammoth old home.

“It’s not that I crave magnificence,” she confided to Dave, “It’s just that I must have rest. It—well, you see—it all must seem so simple and easy, my singing. And it truly is, but,”—she heaved a sigh—“when it’s all over, I’m a rag.”

“I know,” Dave agreed. “It’s always that way. The thing you do with apparent ease because you have yourself under perfect carefree control, is just the thing that takes it out of you.”

By himself later, Dave recalled words of a great old poem:

“If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, And walk with kings, nor lose the common touch,—”

“That,” he told himself, “is just what Cherry can do. And nothing can ever spoil her.”

If he had quoted from that same poem:

“If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same,—”

he would have been telling Cherry’s fortune, for Cherry was to meet with both Triumph and Disaster.

_Chapter_ XII “The House Is Gone”

It happened, or shall we say began, on a Sunday night. During the many days previous to this, things had picked up little by little in Cherry’s subway radio studio. One evening the little Irish girl who played the piano had brought in a young fellow with a shabby violin case under his arm. “Can you play it?” Cherry asked.

“A little,” was the modest reply.

The young fellow, who had gone through all the horrors of the Battle of Flanders and Dunkirk, was Scotch. He could do weird things with that violin. With it alone he could make you believe that a score or more of bagpipers were marching down the street. And when it came to that mellow old Scotch song:

“Flow gently, Sweet Afton Among thy green braes Flow gently. I’ll sing thee A song in thy praise.”

he could bring a happy tear to many a tired eye. So he was given a place on the program, and weary Cherry sang a little less than before.

Other musicians wandered in. Where they all came from no one will ever know. Next there came a cellist, then a drummer, two bass viols, two clarinets, two more violins, a gypsy girl with tambourine and castanets,—all these and half a dozen others wandered in. After that they had an orchestra. There was not an “artist” in the hard and fast meaning of the word among them all, but they could roll the barrel, set Johnny loving, swing the chariot low, roll the old chariot along, and do a hundred other songs dear to the hearts of the good common people of old England and to many another who did not consider himself quite so common.

All this gave Cherry a breathing spell now and then. But when the members of the orchestra had each done his bit for just so long, there would come calls from all down the subway:

“Cherry! Cherry! We want Cherry! We want the Singin’ Angel.”

The Singin’ Angel, that is what they came at last to call her. That was because of Sunday nights, for on that night they left the Old Chariot at home, put lovin’ Johnny to bed early, rolled the barrel far back in the corner, and pushed “The Old Rugged Cross” right out in front.

No one seemed to mind. Indeed they appeared to love that hour of the week best of all. In times such as this people cling to their religion. One moment “Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me” would go rolling on and on from end to end of the subway.

Some one in the orchestra would start “Throw Out The Lifeline to danger frought men.”

Then Cherry in her strong young voice would sing:

“When all my trials and troubles are o’er And I am safe on that beautiful shore That will be glory, be glory for me.”

“Now!” she would cry. “Everybody sing!”

“Oh! That will be glory for me, 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.