  Dave walked toward Ramsey Farm in a thoughtful mood. Always for him, in the past, the ability to do a thing well had meant a clear track ahead. “But now,” he whispered, stopping stock still in the road to think. With the Young Lord’s help he had accomplished something that in this war-shattered land seemed rather more than well worth doing. There was nothing startling about the part he had played. Back in America his uncle, a World War ace, had put him through his paces, that was all. In a staunch old two-seater they had banked, rolled, power dived and looped the loop until he really knew how. What fun it had been! He had not thought of it as preparation for anything. Yet today, when the test came, he was prepared. Yes, the ability to do a thing had always meant “Go ahead.” “I could do it all again,” he assured himself as he thought of the day’s adventure. For a moment more he stood there looking at the blue sky, white clouds, and gay autumn leaves that were England at her best. “This is England,” he whispered, “Bit by bit it is being destroyed by one man’s hate and lust for power.” “Damn!” he swore softly. Then he hurried on. He decided to take the long way home, the road that ran through Warmington. “Shoemakers,” he thought, “always have your work finished the second time, never the first. My boots will be done.” “Here you are, sir,” said old John, handing out a neat package and taking the pay. “I ’opes you find them satisfactory, sir.” “Oh, I shall, I am sure,” Dave said absent-mindedly. He was not thinking of the boots. His eyes were once more upon the young cobbler in the far corner. As before, his face hidden, he was bent low over his work. “I ’opes you’ve ’ad a pleasant afternoon,” said old John. “Oh! Very!” said Dave. “If he only knew,” he murmured with a low laugh after he had left the shop. Across the street was the village Pub. Its sign proclaimed it to be Ye Old Angel Inn. How long did an angel have to live in order to be considered really old, Dave asked himself whimsically. He had thought of angels as being ageless. Perhaps there weren’t any angels after all. He had once seen a picture of a French war plane going down in flames, and of two angels waiting, with hands crossed, to catch the unhappy pilot as he fell. “Shall I ever be in need of two angels?” he asked himself dreamily. He crossed the street to enter Ye Old Angel Inn. He liked these English Pubs. They were village clubs. There was about them a pleasant aroma of beef roasting over an open fire, of hot toddy and strange English tobacco. He could, he thought, stand for one more cup of coffee. The weather had suddenly turned cloudy, damp and cold. The coffee was good. He lingered over it, then ordered a second cup. As he sat there he heard voices. Two villagers sat at a table in the corner drinking hot toddy. “I’m tellin’ ye now, James,” one voice rose sharply, “’e’s nothin’ more nor less than a bloomin’ Jerry. ’E’s a spy, that ’e is.” “Aw now, Danny,” the other admonished, “you know what old John told you ’e is. ’E’s ’Ollander, no more, nor no less. ’Is papers they is all in horder.” “I know. I know,” Danny agreed petulantly. “But that don’t make it so. You know as well as I know ’ow easy as nothin’ it is fer a Jerry to git papers fixed to suit ’is own self. “Now look, Jimmy.” Danny’s voice dropped. “Ye mind the last war. There were our castle, Warmington Castle, as fine an hedifice as there be in all Hengland. An’ what ’appens? Ramsey, over at the farm, ’e ’ires ’imself a Jerry, a prisoner of war ’e was. ’e treats ’im like a long-lost brother, Ramsey does. An’ what ’appens? I asks you, what ’appens?” “It weren’t never proved that it were this Jerry that signaled to the bloomin’ airplane that come over an’ blasted the castle,” James protested. “I know—I know. But who would doubt it?” And so the argument ended. Dave finished his coffee, then wandered out into the chill of falling night. Danny and James had given him fresh food for serious thought. 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. |
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