Wings over England

  _Chapter_ XI Cobbler or Spy?

  Dave walked toward Ramsey Farm in a thoughtful mood. Always for him, inthe 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. Withthe Young Lord’s help he had accomplished something that in thiswar-shattered land seemed rather more than well worth doing.

  There was nothing startling about the part he had played. Back inAmerica his uncle, a World War ace, had put him through his paces, thatwas all. In a staunch old two-seater they had banked, rolled, powerdived and looped the loop until he really knew how. What fun it hadbeen! 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 hadalways meant “Go ahead.”

  “I could do it all again,” he assured himself as he thought of the day’sadventure.

  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 andlust for power.”

  “Damn!” he swore softly. Then he hurried on.

  He decided to take the long way home, the road that ran throughWarmington. “Shoemakers,” he thought, “always have your work finishedthe second time, never the first. My boots will be done.”

  “Here you are, sir,” said old John, handing out a neat package andtaking the pay. “I ’opes you find them satisfactory, sir.”

  “Oh, I shall, I am sure,” Dave said absent-mindedly. He was not thinkingof the boots. His eyes were once more upon the young cobbler in the farcorner. 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 theshop.

  Across the street was the village Pub. Its sign proclaimed it to be YeOld Angel Inn. How long did an angel have to live in order to beconsidered really old, Dave asked himself whimsically. He had thought ofangels as being ageless. Perhaps there weren’t any angels after all. Hehad once seen a picture of a French war plane going down in flames, andof two angels waiting, with hands crossed, to catch the unhappy pilot ashe fell. “Shall I ever be in need of two angels?” he asked himselfdreamily.

  He crossed the street to enter Ye Old Angel Inn. He liked these EnglishPubs. They were village clubs. There was about them a pleasant aroma ofbeef roasting over an open fire, of hot toddy and strange Englishtobacco. He could, he thought, stand for one more cup of coffee. Theweather 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 thecorner drinking hot toddy.

  “I’m tellin’ ye now, James,” one voice rose sharply, “’e’s nothin’ morenor 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 inhorder.”

  “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 gitpapers fixed to suit ’is own self.

  “Now look, Jimmy.” Danny’s voice dropped. “Ye mind the last war. Therewere our castle, Warmington Castle, as fine an hedifice as there be inall Hengland. An’ what ’appens? Ramsey, over at the farm, ’e ’ires’imself a Jerry, a prisoner of war ’e was. ’e treats ’im like along-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 thebloomin’ airplane that come over an’ blasted the castle,” Jamesprotested.

  “I know—I know. But who would doubt it?”

  And so the argument ended. Dave finished his coffee, then wandered outinto the chill of falling night. Danny and James had given him freshfood for serious thought.

  Cherry was booked for a return to her subway studio on the followingevening. Dave spent the greater part of that day teaching her a newsong. He knew the tune and could pick it out for her on the piano. Bygreat good fortune he found the words written out in longhand on a scrapof paper in his Sunday clothes.

  “It’s not a new song,” he told her. “In fact, it’s more than twentyyears old. An orchestra leader named Orrin Tucker dug it out of the fileand 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 setEngland 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 andon the street, one might hear: “Oh! Johnny! Oh! Johnny!”

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

  She was to be taken up by the nobility. Lady Perkins, a friend of theYoung Lord, who lived in London, was to make her a part of herhousehold, 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 creepbeneath downy covers in a wing of Lady Perkins’ mammoth old home.

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

  “I know,” Dave agreed. “It’s always that way. The thing you do withapparent 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 canever 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 withboth Triumph and Disaster.