The Liberty Girl

Philip, who sat leaning against a tree, with his arm around Jean, softly stroked the lad’s dark head. Somehow he had shown more than the usual interest in the little refugee, undoubtedly drawn to him in recognition of the fact that he was also a victim of German barbarity, and because they both spoke the same language. Nathalie, with a thrill of joy, had noticed his tender, protecting watchfulness over the boy, and how Jean’s big eyes would gaze up at the young man with a gleam in their depths like that of some adoring dog, who yearns for the hand of his master in silent caress!

“There is not much to tell,” returned Philip after a pause, with the hesitancy of one who dislikes to talk about himself, “for you must know I am no hero.” He smiled at the girlish faces so eagerly watching him. Suddenly he sat bolt upright, unconsciously pushing Jean from him. “I am an American,” he exclaimed abruptly, “for my father came of good old New England stock, although I was born in the South. But my heart has been strangely stirred since I came over here, for the Americans are asleep,—they do not sense what they are up against in this war of the nations.” His dark gray eyes flashed into flame. “Sometimes I feel I would like to be another Paul Revere, and ride like the wind, knocking on doors and windows, shouting to the slumberers, ‘The Huns are coming!’ They must be roused to the truth that this war is their war, and that they have not buckled to their job.”

He paused a moment, the fire dying out of his eyes as he continued, “I was feeling in unusually good spirits that summer of 1914, for I had just formed a partnership with a well-known architect, and business gave assurance of giving me a very comfortable income, and place me in a position to repay my mother, who had denied herself in order to put me through college.

“Into this mood of complacent satisfaction with myself and world in general, came a jar one day in June when the newspapers announced, in glaring headlines, the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand. And, almost before we had digested its portent, came Austria’s ultimatum to little Serbia. People began to grow restive, alarm-fired, keyed to a tense state of expectancy that something was in the air, but—what? Then tongues were loosened and eyes flashed fire as the Prime Minister’s scathing denunciation of Germany’s ‘infamous proposal’ was bandied from mouth to mouth, followed by Great Britain’s ultimatum that Belgium’s neutrality must be respected.

“Then came hours of anxious suspense, a harrowing waiting-time, with every one’s heart aquiver, while a little group of men in Downing Street held their watches in their hands as they awaited Germany’s reply. It came. The deep-toned clang of Big Ben told to English hearts that the world’s decades of peace had been shattered, and that the Prussian barbarians had struck their first blow at civilization.

“From every corner and window now glared forth, ‘Your King and your Country need you.’ Those words seared my heart like fire, but no, I argued, I must make good with mother. But no matter how I tried to cajole myself, the words seemed to follow me around like an accusing finger. No, he wasn’t my king. I was an American by right of birth, but still they blazoned at me until I could see them with my eyes shut. They starred the darkness of night; why, even in my sleep they clutched me in a ghostly dream. The next day and for many days I saw them aflame on the pavement, they were written on the sky in white letters, but still I fought.

“When England’s young manhood sprang, as it were, from the earth, armed to the teeth, and marched shoulder to shoulder in regular beat,—it seemed like the pulsation of my own heart—as they swung along through the streets of London, my head swam, my throat tightened, and—But when I read of heroic little Belgium so nobly holding out against the ruthless destroyer of justice and honor, I gave in and became one of Kitchener’s mob.

“Those were not pleasant hours,” continued Philip, “waiting at the Horse Guard Parade to read when I must report at the regimental depot at Hounslow, for I felt I was a misfit, in with a lot of men that, to my inexperienced eyes, seemed the scum of England, and I sickened of my job.

“But when the news continued to pour in that Liège had fallen, that the Germans had entered Brussels, that the British Expeditionary Forces were retreating, heroically fighting, that Namur, Louvain, and other towns were being ruthlessly seized and devastated by the enemy, and their hellish atrocities began to be rumored about, the past, together with all hopes and desires for the future, were wiped out as clean as a slate in a spirit of forgetfulness. I lived in the moment, buoyed by the grim determination to fight like hell to down the oppressor of men’s rights, to lose my life if need be, in order to give freedom to those who were to come after.

“My spirits took a leap when I registered at the Hounslow Barracks as a Royal Fusileer, although I grinned humorously, for if I had felt like a misfit in London I was a guy now, appareled like a bloomin’ lay-figure in the cast-off rags of some old-clothes shop, and had sensed that I was only a steel rivet in a big machine. I was no duck either, taking to the drills like water, for I would stand hopelessly bewildered at the sharp orders, ‘Form fours! One-one-two! Platoon! Form Fours!’ and similar commands, that were like kicks on a befuddled brain. But I gritted my teeth and stuck to my guns.

“As soon as my rawness wore off and I began to get the hang of it, the martial spirit asserted itself. I began to be obsessed by the desire to show that I was the right stuff, that the heroism of my American ancestors, the spirit of ’76, was in me. Through all my intensive training I was feverishly eager to know every detail of company and battalion drill, musketry and target-practice, and all the daily grind of the other sundry factors in military discipline.

“When I began to ‘matey’ my comrades, I soon understood why a Tommy Atkins is not like an American, who is born with a fine sense of personal independence, and who feels that he is as good as any Lord or Duke; or like a volatile Frenchman, with his easy grace of manner and buoyant spirit. I realized that although there may be a ‘Sentimental Tommy’ here and there, the average Tommy Atkins is a stolid chap, humdrum and prosaic, but with as kind a heart as any rookie in the world.

“As spring came along, after months of soldiering in many different quarters, which meant roughing it in leaky tents where cold, rain, and mud played a large part, and poor equipment a larger, we were no longer raw rookies, parading or drilling before an unadmiring public,—a target for pretty girls’ laughter, or the ire of a berating sergeant,—for our battalion had acquired a high degree of efficiency.

“Our arms were one with us, we had done with squad, platoon formation, and company drills, had shown our metal at the rifle-range at Aldershot, taken part in field maneuvers, bayonet charges, and mimic battles. We had become experts at trench-digging, bomb-throwing, and sniping, while the machine-gunners were quite up to the mark in that important weapon; in fact, we had become familiar with all branches of the army service.

“Then when every man was ‘in the pink’ the marching orders came, and we assembled on the barrack-square at Aldershot. Not only were we physically fit, fine specimens of the trained soldier, but we were completely equipped, even to the identification tag, which registered your name, regimental number, regiment, and religion; besides, we carried the first-aid field dressing,—an antiseptic gauze pad and bandage, and a small bottle of iodine. Also, each soldier carried a copy of Lord Kitchener’s letter, as to what was expected of every British soldier. The words ‘Do your duty bravely. Fear God. Honor your King,’ meant much to me, although I was an American.

“And then we were off, merry and blithe, no matter what our hearts registered, cheering like fiends when some of the boys in khaki chalked the gun-carriages ‘at Berlin,’ a new challenge to each Tommy to do his stunt in making the Huns pay. Then came a drifting period when we were herded like cattle from one train to another, or made long, weary marches in the blind,—for nobody seemed to know our destination. But at last we were in the shadow of the great battle, down in the earth, in one sector of a long line of a serpentine trench, zigzagging from the sea to the Alps.

“This burrowing underground like a mole, digging trenches, or holes, in No Man’s Land, to string up barbed wire entanglements, or to pile sand-bags on the parapet, or to clean out the wreckage of a trench that had been battered by German gunners, or a trench-mortar—sometimes to gather up the pieces of some ‘matey’ whom you had chummed with,—all meant new activities. They were experiences and sounds—the sounds of hell—and sights that cut deep, with an impelling remembrance haunting you like grewsome shadows.

“Yes, it was a strange new life,” the young soldier paused musingly, “for this kind of fighting is no battlefield with glittering helmets and bayonets, the furling of colors, the prancing of horses, the roll of gun-carriages, but stinging eyelids and a choking in thick gray smoke, with the roar of cannonading, the sharp screech of shrapnel, the bursting of star-shells, or the whir of strange, queer monsters above your head.

“There was the turning of night into day,”—Philip’s face had a weary expression,—“the daily mental strain, the danger constantly facing you, the learning to know the sounds of the different shells and in what direction they were going to fall. Involuntarily, with stilled breath, you waited, and then came the sinking of your heart when you sensed that it was your turn now, and then to find yourself still there, but to realize that some of your mates had ‘gone West.’

“And the gas. Oh, the horror of the great, greenish balls that came rolling towards you, close to the earth, the celerity of getting into your gas-masks, and the horrible thing that a comrade became if he failed to accomplish this job on time, and lay writhing in an ugly, venomous atmosphere of green.

“Then there were the cooties, the parasites that feed on you, and with whom you maintain a constant warfare,” Philip smiled as he saw the girls squirm; “and the rats, as big as cats, with sharp, ferret-like eyes, darting from some dark crevice, or playing leap-frog over your legs at night, or mistaking your head for their nest. Ugh! But the dead-and-gone feeling—exhausted nature asserting her rights—which assailed you at some critical moment, perhaps when you were trying to be a man at your job, just got you through and through.

“Ah, there was the first ‘over-the-top’ experience, when you stood on the fire-step with gun in hand, palefaced, but with clenched teeth, in an oppressive silence, waiting to hear the command come down the line,—whispered from mouth to mouth. Then you leaped wildly over into long-anticipated perils, to become entangled in barbed wire, or perhaps to get your first shock, as the man next you dropped like lead at the first ‘ptt’ of a German sharpshooter’s bullet.

“But on you rush in a mad frenzy with red-misted eyes, in the face of a heavy artillery fire and a pitiless gale of shrapnel, through a dense smoke-screen, split with lurid flashes of flame, over a ground pitted with shell-holes—to stumble over some dead Tommy, whose glazed eyes stare up at you as if in mockery of your determination to play the man in this crusade for humanity.

“Then my adventure came,—a raid on a German trench, an undertaking attended with great peril. With blackened faces, each man, with his bag of bombs and automatic, at the flicker of a white light crawled stealthily into the sable blackness of ‘dead man’s yard,’ and, in a downpour of drenching rain, crept on hands and knees, sometimes wiggling on his stomach,—quickly rolling into a shell-hole if a sound was heard,—until the German trench loomed menacingly only a few feet beyond.

“Everything was deadly still. Then the signal came, and with a rush we clambered stealthily up and peeped over, to see a yellow-haired Heinie asleep in the little alcove back of his gun-emplacement, the head of the sentry-on-post tipsily nodding on his chest, and two big fellows snoring like porpoises on the floor near. In just one minute we had slid into that trench and had our men with hands up. Sure it was a surprise-party for Fritz, for the Germans came running out of their dug-outs, wrapped in blankets, noisily demanding to know what was up. They soon knew, and then came a riot of a time as we let our hand-grenades fly, and our bayonets too, aided by a lively fire from our machine-guns. And then we were out, making a quick run for our own trenches with our trophies, and several of the surprised ones, with the German guns thundering in our rear.

“Yes, I had captured my first Hun, and mighty proud I was of my achievement, and pictured my delight-to-be when retailing my adventure to my comrades, when Zipp! and I was downed by the pieces of a bursting shell that got me in the hand and foot. And the prisoner? Oh, the dirty Boche saw his chance. I saw his hand go up,—he must have had a stiletto hidden somewhere,—but I was too quick for him for I let fly a hand-grenade, and—well, he bothered me no more.

“For hours I crawled, or wiggled, along, dropping into a chalk-pit or a shell-hole every few moments, for it was like hell under that liquid fire, Fritzie’s aërial bombs and the machine-gun fire; in fact, it seemed as if every kind of projectile had been let loose, for now the Germans were mad clean through. Finally, being too exhausted to make any further headway, I crept into a shell-hole, where I lay for a day and a night, lying on my face most of the time, playing dead, for the German fiends would sneak out into No Man’s Land at night after a bombardment, and kill every wounded enemy soldier they could find.

“What did I think about, you ask, Miss Nathalie, while lying in that shell-hole?” Philip smiled a little sadly. “Well, at first I was crazed with thirst and hunger, and the cold—oh, it was something fierce. And then the doubts and misgivings that had assailed me at times, as to whether there was a God in heaven, returned with renewed force. I dumbly felt that my faith was leaving me, for why this useless slaughter of men’s bodies, this agonizing devil’s gas, this torturing of the aged and weak, this violating of womanhood, this maiming of little, innocent children? Ah, the agony of body was nothing compared to the agony of my soul, as I lay in that hole.

“Then that night—there was no moon, and everything was a dead calm, for a lull had come in fighting—I turned over, face upward, to ease the aching that racked my body. As I lie gazing up at the stars,—they seemed unusually bright,—something white suddenly flashed before me, and then I saw a face bend down and gaze at me. It was a marvelously beautiful face, with such calm serenity of expression as the eyes smiled into mine, that a strange peace came into my soul, my pains were eased, I was filled with a wonderful joy, and—then I knew;—it was the face of the Great White Comrade,—the face of Christ!

“It may have been a delusion from overwrought nerves,—I may have been dreaming,—I don’t know, for there had been great talk among the soldiers of seeing the white apparition of Christ on the battlefield. He was said to have appeared to the soldiers, showed them His bleeding side and hands, and then the suffering ones had felt a wonderful peace come into their souls, and their very agonies had made them triumphant in the thought that as He had died to make men holy, so He had given them the great privilege of suffering and dying to make men free. No, I didn’t see any bleeding side, or the nail-prints on the hands, but I saw Christ’s face, and, oh, it was Heaven!

“Then my brain cleared. I realized that I had been groping in a great darkness, but that a wonderful light had come, and I knew God was in His Heaven. That smile had brought revelation. It had told me that we were no better than Christ, and He had suffered,—He, an innocent soul. And as He had agonized on the cross, and God had suffered with Him, so every moan, sob, and cry had reached His ears in this great wail from humanity. It told me that this bruising of bodies, this rending of women’s hearts, this wringing of men’s souls, had wrung His heart with a suffering greater than men could know.

“It told me that it was all the working-out of God’s great plan for the good of mankind. It told me that the men, women, and children, who had passed through these seas of blood were to come forth with white garments, to be a great host led by the Angel of His Presence, and that their deeds were to live after them, to bring light into the dark places in men’s souls. It told me that these blood-soaked battlefields were to become gardens, where flowers would spring, the glorious flowers of freedom, and that every tear shed was to become great waters, to flow like a river of peace to all nations.”

As Philip ceased speaking, the faces of his young listeners became very grave, and for a moment there was an impressive stillness, as if each one had been hushed to a reverent silence. “Well, after that, I was strangely happy,” continued the young man slowly. “I think I must have fallen asleep, for I was suddenly aroused by the cold snout of a dog nosing into my face. He was a little beast, not much bigger than Tige here,” softly stroking the refugee’s yellow dog as he spoke, at which Jean’s eyes grew soft and bright, for with the lad it was “Love me, love my dog.”

“Yes, it was a Red Cross dog, whose beautiful eyes seemed almost human as they told me that help was near, and—” Philip stopped abruptly. He had had a weary, tired look for some time, but now a sudden pallor overspread his face, and Janet, who had been watching him nervously, stepped quickly to his side, crying, “And now you must stop talking, Mr. de Brie, for you are overdoing.”

Philip smiled into her blue eyes, but waved her aside as he cried, sitting up with sudden resolution, “But no, you must let me finish my story.”

“Oh, yes, do let him finish his story!” came a chorus of eager voices.

But at this moment Nathalie, whose face had suddenly brightened, cried, “Oh, no; let’s wait, for a big idea has suddenly come to me, and,” the girl’s eyes sparkled, “if it turns out all right it will add to our enjoyment if we wait to hear Mr. de Brie’s story some other time.”

“A big idea,” cried Nita, all aquiver with curiosity. “Oh, Nathalie, do tell us what it is!”

“No, not now,” answered the girl. “It will keep; but in the meantime let us have a story from Mr. Darrell. You know he promised to tell us about Lovewell, the Ranger, and now is his chance, and we are not going to let him off.”

As Nathalie was ably seconded by the rest of the Liberty Cheerers, Van—he claimed he was a chump at story-telling—began the story of Lovewell, the Ranger, by saying that it was like one of the old Norse Sagas, for it had been told and retold by the mountaineer’s fireside for many generations.

“When the white settlers were being harassed in the early times by marauding bands from the neighboring tribe of Sokoki Indians,” said the young soldier, “John Lovewell, a hardy ranger, set out from the Indian village of Pigswacket, now Fryeburg, near North Conway, and made his way, with forty-five of his followers, to Ossipee. Here they built a fort, and his scouts having found Indian tracks, they pushed farther on to a lake by whose shores they encamped for the night. The following morning, while trailing an Indian in the woods, Paugas, an Indian chieftain, whose name was a terror to every white settler on the frontier, stole up behind the rangers, to their encampment, which unfortunately they had left unguarded, and counted their packs. Finding that they were only thirty-four in number, the Indians placed themselves in ambush in the woods near, and when the rangers returned it was to be surrounded by the redmen, while the air was filled with their deadly fire and hideous warwhoops.

“Here, by this little lake, under the very shadow of Mount Kearsarge, fifty miles from any settlement, was fought one of the bloodiest battles in Indian warfare, as the loyal rangers fought for their lives. They finally compelled the Indians to flee, but not before Lovewell and many of his men had been killed. The survivors made their way back to the fort at Ossipee, only to find it empty, for the guard, on hearing that Lovewell and his band had been killed, had deserted it.

“After many incredible hardships,” continued Van, “twenty emaciated men finally reached the white settlement, many of them only to fall dead from wounds, or from hunger and exhaustion. But, practically, Lovewell’s band had won a great victory, for Paugas had been killed, and the remainder of the tribe forsook their strongholds among the foothills, and the white settlers were molested no more.”

Van also related how a ranger, the only remaining one of three brothers who had set forth with Lovewell, when one of his brothers fell dead at his feet from the wounds inflicted by the savages, had started for their village, only to find his other brother’s body riddled with bullets.

“Determined to be revenged, he pursued the Indians to the mountain fastnesses, where the defeated tribe, under the chief Chocorua, still lingered. He finally sighted the chieftain, who had ascended a high mountain to see if the white men had departed. As he started to descend he was confronted by the ranger, who, with his gun in hand, slowly forced the Indian back, step by step, until he stood on the verge of the precipice where he had been standing. As the chieftain saw that his end had come,—as he had no alternative between the precipitous cliff and the white man’s weapon,—with a cry of bitter defiance he leaped from the pinnacle, to be dashed to pieces on the rocks below. Hence the name, Chocorua Mountain.”

A mountain romance was now told by Janet, in the story of Nancy Stairs, a native of Jefferson, who had fallen in love, and become engaged to a farm-hand. On the eve of the wedding the girl’s lover disappeared, carrying with him a small sum of money, her dot. How Nancy set forth, to overtake him at a camp many miles away, walking at night through the dark woods, clambering over rocks and fording the Saco, finally to reach the place where he had encamped, to find it deserted, aroused the sympathies of all. “Finally,” continued Janet, “the girl sank exhausted on the banks of a brook, to be found some time later in the calm repose of a deathless sleep, almost buried under the snow, under a canopy of friendly evergreen that stretched above her.

“But Nancy had her revenge,” smiled the storyteller, “for when the farm-hand heard of her fate he lost his reason, and tradition tells us that, on the anniversary of her death, the mountain-passes through which she pushed, in her weary pursuit of her lover, resound to his cries of grief.”

Nita’s contribution to the Liberty Cheer was a little tale of an Indian maiden, who was so beautiful that no hunter was found worthy of her. Suddenly she disappeared, and was never seen again, until one day an Indian chief, on returning from the chase, told how he had seen her disporting in the limpid waters of the river Ellis, with a youth as peerless as she. When the bathers saw the chieftain they had immediately vanished from sight, thus showing the girl’s parents that her companion must have been a mountain-spirit. From now on they would go into the wilds and call upon him for a moose, a deer, or whatever animal they chose, and lo! it would immediately appear, running towards them.

Danny’s story was about some white settlers captured by the Indians on their way to Canada. When they came to the banks of a beautiful stream, one of the captives, a mother with several children, from a babe in arms to a girl of sixteen, gathered her little ones about her in dumb despair. She had toiled through trackless forests, forded swollen streams, climbed rocky heights, slept on the cold, bare earth, and then, when she had refused to obey the commands of an Indian chieftain, from lack of strength, she had been goaded with blows, or the gory scalps of two of her children, which still hung from his belt, had been flourished menacingly before her eyes.

As she stood on the banks of the river, feeling that her reason would forsake her from anguish, she suddenly heard one of the Indians ask her oldest daughter to sing. The girl stood speechless with amazement, not knowing what to do for a moment, and then there floated out through the vast solitudes of these lonely mountains a curiously fresh young voice, as the girl chanted the sublime words of the psalmist in the plaintive river-song.

There was a slight pause, and then Danny’s voice, sweet and clear, to the accompaniment of the soft strains of Tony’s violin, was heard as he chanted:

Tony’s hands lovingly fingered his bow, and the music, like the rippling flow of the river Ellis, continued its sweet low murmur, as the little newsie told how the magic charm of these beautiful words must have touched some chord in the savage breasts, for, as the girl ceased, the fiercest Indian caught the babe gently from the mother’s arms and carried it across the river. One of his companions also softened, and, picking up another child, bore it safely over the stream.

Nathalie chose the familiar Willey story, about the family who lived in an inn on the side of Mount Willey, at the entrance to the great Notch. “In 1826,” said the girl, “one evening in June they heard a queer, rumbling noise, and hurried out to see an avalanche of stones and uprooted trees making its way with great speed down the mountain. Fortunately, before it reached the house it swerved one side, and the Willeys, believing it quite safe, returned to the house, and, as time passed on, carelessly forgot the warning that had been given them.

“In August a severe storm occurred, which raged with indescribable fury for a day and a night, the rain falling in sheets, while the Saco overflowed its banks, thus creating a state of general upheaval. Two days later, a tourist traveling through the Notch arrived at the inn, to find it uninjured, but deserted, with the exception of a half-starved dog who was whining dismally. He made his way to Bartlett, and the mountaineers, hurrying to the scene, finally discovered the bodies of Mr. and Mrs. Willey and two hired men, who were buried in a mass of wreckage not far from the inn. The bodies of the children were never discovered.

“It is supposed,” explained Nathalie, “that they had all rushed out on again hearing the rumbling noises, and had evidently tried to seek the shelter of a cave near. But they were too late,” she ended with a pathetic sigh, “for the avalanche was upon them before they reached it. If they had only remained in the house they would have been saved.”

A little later, as Philip and Van became engaged in a conversation about the war, a topic of which they never seemed to weary, Nathalie and Nita, with arms intertwined in long-cemented camaraderie, wandered to the high, jutting rock which Nathalie called “Heaven’s window.” Here in awed silence they gazed at the faraway, scintillating blue peaks, huge escarpments, and yawning mountain crevasses towering above the alpine meadow, that, rich in many shades of verdure, darkened with cloud-shadows, and cut with ribbon-like trails of forest foliage, were a

In the sun-dyed splendor it was like a cloth of gold, a wondrous tapestry woven by Nature in her most majestic mood, a picture that held them with the calm of its infinite beauty.

Suddenly Nita, who never was quiet very long, cried: “Oh, Nathalie, you must tell us what you meant when you said that you had a big idea. Don’t you remember, it was when Janet made Philip stop his story?”

“I don’t know as it is a very big idea,” replied her companion, “for its bigness depends, as Dick says, on whether we make a go of it or not. I spoke of it then, not only because I had just thought of it, but because I wanted to second Janet, for Philip was as white as a ghost.

“You know,” she continued slowly, “the afternoon teas at the Sweet Pea Tea-House have not been very well attended lately. I presume the minds of the people have been diverted by some new form of amusement. I’m awfully sorry, too, for I think my dear Sweet-Pea ladies need the money. Now what do you think of having Philip tell the rest of his story some afternoon at the Tea-House? We’ll get Jean to tell his story, too, and the boys can sing patriotic songs; and then, there’s Tony, with his violin. I think we can get up a real good entertainment, and we can call it a Liberty Tea.”

“Oh, Nathalie, that’s a peach of an idea!” Nita’s blue eyes glowed enthusiastically.

“You see,” returned her friend, “it would attract the people to the Tea-House again, and also bring Philip into notice. I think his story would interest every one, and it might get him a few more pupils.”

As the little party wended their way down the trail, they were busy making plans and devising ways to make Nathalie’s “big idea” feasible. They had broached the subject to Philip,—Nathalie being careful not to make it appear as if he would gain by the performance,—and he had readily consented to do his part. Janet, too, was won over, and as for the children, they were in a beatific state at the idea of appearing on a platform, and “speaking a piece,” as Sheila called it.

Miss Whipple, when the idea was suggested to her, Nathalie making it appear that Philip would derive great benefit from it, heartily favored the plan. So, for the next two days Nita and Nathalie were as busy as bees, drilling the children, making posters to feature the event at the different hotels, and then motoring to each one, and tacking them up, after getting the desired permission, so that the affair would be well advertised.

The boys and Van Darrell, with the help of some friends of Nita’s at the Sunset Hill House, the morning of the event decorated the Tea-House with greens, goldenrod, and flags. Sam assisted by erecting a small platform so gaudily festooned with red, blue, and white bunting that Nita said it was a regular “call to the colors,” as she stood off and surveyed his work. Chairs, rustic seats, in fact, everything that could be used for a seat was now brought into the room, while the veranda was not only decorated with bunting and Japanese lanterns, the posts being twined with the national colors in crêpe paper, but filled with small tea-tables and chairs.

At the hour designated for the performance to begin—to the girls’ delight, the room was crowded—Janet began to play softly on the piano, suddenly breaking into “Hail Columbia,” then a patriotic march, following these selections with “The Royal March of Italy,” the “Lorraine March” and several other well-known favorites either of the Americans or the Allies, ending with France’s adored march, “Sambre et Meuse.”

The boys, in their khaki suits, each one carrying his gun, now marched before the audience. They were headed by Sheila, who, as a little Goddess of Liberty, acted as the color-bearer. As she stepped to one side of the stage and stood at attention, the boys saluted the flag and then repeated the oath of allegiance.

Sheila now fell in line, and they went through a manual-of-arms, and then, amid loud applause, broke into the “Red, White, and Blue.” This was followed by a number of patriotic airs, and the national anthem, when all rose to their feet and joined in the singing with patriotic fervor. After a short pause Danny started to whistle “La Marseillaise”—Janet playing the accompaniment on the piano very softly—as the children joined in, coming out with startling effect with the words:

Van Darrell now appeared in front of the little platform—he had modestly refused to ascend it—and introduced Mr. Philip de Brie as a British soldier, a member of “Kitchener’s mob,” known as the greatest volunteer army in the world. As Philip stepped forward in response to an enthusiastic ovation he bowed courteously, but with a certain diffidence of manner that showed that this was a more trying ordeal than being under fire at the front.

The personal part of Philip’s story was quickly told,—how he came to join the army,—the audience cheering lustily when he claimed he was an American, while a tenseness seized them as he related his strange experience while lying in a shell-hole, and the revelation the apparition of the White Comrade had brought to him.

Their interest continued as he told how, in the British offensive south of the Somme, he and his company, with four machine-guns, had cleaned out a Prussian machine-gun nest that had been making havoc with their men. They peppered the enemy so severely, he asserted, while playing a crisscross game with their guns, that the only remaining German gunner was captured, surrounded by his dead comrades.

When their ammunition failed, and they attempted to return to their lines under a fierce artillery fire, with bursting shells and shrapnel flying around them, they were compelled to take refuge under a bridge, where they remained for four hours under a fierce gas attack. He was again cheered as he told how, in another attempt to regain the firing-line, a bomb exploded, killing several of their men, and how, when their lieutenant was missed, noted for his bravery and daring, he started out to find him.

This recital was made graphic as he told of crawling on his stomach to dodge a bomb, or wiggling along to peer into shell-pits, and how, when a flare was thrown up by the enemy, illuminating the battlefield like some big electric show, he suddenly found himself, as it were, back to the wall,—for he had no ammunition,—desperately fighting a big, husky German who was fumbling in his pocket, evidently for a hand-grenade. Another cheer, and then almost a groan went through the room as Philip continued, and told how, as he tried to get him by the throat, he made a lunge at him and thrust his bayonet through his arm. The German finished off his work by knocking him on the head with his rifle, finally leading him, dazed and blinded, behind the German lines, a prisoner.

The neglect he received in the field and base hospital and the horrible treatment he was compelled to witness, as endured by the wounded prisoners, was received with a storm of hisses. How he was pronounced cured, although he had been rendered dumb, either from nerve-shock or the force of the blow on the head, and then taken to a German prison-camp, and crowded in with hundreds of men in a wooden shed, with a flooring of mud four inches thick, aroused renewed indignation. Here, with no blankets, no ventilation, overcoat, or personal belongings, he slept on a straw tick, with insufficient food, and that of such a horrible quality that he grew emaciated and covered with boils.

When some of the prisoners were transferred to another camp Philip told how he had the good luck to be one of them, and how, when the train was struck by a bursting bomb, crashing in the roof when going at a speed of thirty miles an hour, he, with two other prisoners, climbed up and jumped to the ground, one man being killed.

This was the beginning of his race for life, in which he dodged guards and sentries, cut his way through barbed wire, and hid in a forest for three days, and, after many other thrilling adventures, finally came to a field within a few miles of the British lines.

“Here,” Philip continued, “as we lay concealed in a dugout under a bank, we heard a familiar whirr, and looked up to see an air-battle taking place between a French and Boche plane. With taut breath I watched the planes circle round and round in the air, while keeping up a steady fire at one another, until the French plane began to drive its enemy back and back, until they were directly over the British entrenchments. Then we heard the rat-tat-tat, and knew that one of the planes had been fired upon from below. Suddenly it burst into flames, lunged to one side, and then, in a long sweep through the air, began to circle downward like a great flash of fire, sending forth a shower of sparks as it fell. And then I screamed from sheer joy, for I recognized that it was the Boche plane that had fallen. It is needless to say that my speech had returned.”

After telling how they had regained the British lines, and how he had finally reached a hospital in London, where he remained for some weeks in a miserably depressed state of mind, on learning that his mother had died during his absence, Philip finished his story by telling how he came to sail for America. He told of his search for his grandmother, and how he came to live in the little cabin on the mountain. From the plaudits that greeted him, as he bowed and retired from the platform, it was evident that his story had been greatly enjoyed by his listeners.

When Tony a moment or so later, in his old velveteen vest, with his violin under his arm, and his velvety black eyes aglow in a beatific smile, bobbed a funny little bow to his audience, he was warmly received. But a sudden hush succeeded as the little violinist, with his instrument tucked under his chubby chin, fingered the bow lovingly as he moved it over the strings, evoking such sweet, rich music that the violin seemed like some enchanted thing.

Surely this little slum lad, with no training to guide him, of his own volition could not have produced such ravishing melody as floated through the room. As he played his face lost its smile, and there came a play of expression, now tender and sad, now dreamy or grave, in accord with the varied moods of the music, as he played on and on with a passion, a rich tenderness, every note in tune, that seemed almost marvelous. When he ended with a vehement little shake of his head—that sent his waving hair flying about—in much the same manner that great musicians affect, it brought down the house in loud applause.

As an encore he played several Italian airs, weird, dreamy music, finally ending with “Traumerei,” Schumann’s “Dream Song.” No, he didn’t play it all, only snatches, and these were not always rendered according to the score, but he held his audience in a hushed stillness, until, with a little shake of his bow, and a low bow, he turned and ran quickly from the platform.

Sheila hid her face in Nathalie’s skirt when her turn came to ascend the platform and speak her “liberty piece.” Nathalie was in the throes of despair, for fear that she was going to fail her, when Tony leaned forward and teasingly whispered, “Oh, Boy!” This reminiscent remark caused the little lady’s head to go up, and her chin, too, and in angry defiance she marched up on the platform. As Nathalie, who was sitting down in the front row of chairs, gave her the cue, her little treble was heard repeating James Whitcomb Riley’s poem “Liberty,” her voice ringing out loud and clear when she came to the stanza:

It was pathetic to see the little empty-sleeved Jean, as he straightened up his slender form, and, in an attempt at bravery, hurried on the platform. Without waiting for the accompanist,—forgetting to greet his audience in his fright,—he burst into the words of Belgium’s national anthem, “Brabanconne,” singing it with a verve and spirit,—as he stood, with his one hand nervously clinched in front of him and his eyes uplifted,—that showed that the soul of Belgium was not dead.

This impassioned appeal from the boy as he ended, and stood in mute bewilderment, his eyes again haunted by that look of hopeless terror, aroused the audience to prolonged applause. Philip now stepped to his side, and, as he laid his hand reassuringly on the little shoulder, the refugee began his pitiful tale.

His arm had been cut off, he told, by a German soldier, who had made his mother cry, when he had rushed up and pounded him with his fists to make him desist. The soldier had dragged his mother away, and then he had been told that she had died. There was a quiver to the lad’s voice as he related this sorrowful incident, but he winked his eyes together to keep back the tears.

Two days later, with his aged grandparents, he had been driven to the town square, and there a soldier had shot his grandfather because the old man had rebuked him for dragging the boy’s grandmother roughly about. She had shrieked and fallen, to be trampled in the crush, for when they picked her up she was very white, and had never opened her eyes again. When all the women and children were herded together like cows, and driven along a road, with a big German soldier pointing his gun at them, Jean had suddenly run away, as fast as he could, and he had run and run with his eyes shut, for he was afraid of the bullets that came whistling on all sides of him.

Finally he had fallen from exhaustion, and then he had crawled into the dark cellar of a shelled house. Here he had remained for a long time, going out at night to a battlefield near and taking what food he could find from the knapsacks of the dead soldiers. At last he could find no more food, and then he had wandered on, walking wearily along for miles and miles, until he had become part of those fleeing throngs of refugees that blocked the roads for many long miles, sleeping on the roadside at night. Sometimes he would have a little bread, or a piece of cheese given to him, and then for days he went hungry. Finally he reached a town, where a lady with a red cross on her white cap had cared for him in a hospital. But the Germans shelled the hospital, and they said the lady was killed, and then— Well, he had gone on again, walking at night, alone, from place to place, when no one could see him, while hiding in the woods by day.

On learning that he was not far from the French army, he had struggled on until he was within a short distance of their lines, where he hid in a forest. When a dark still night came, he stealthily crept into No Man’s Land, and, on his hands and knees, worked his way from hole to hole, quickly wiggling into one if he heard the slightest sound, until he reached the French sentry, who pointed his gun at him and told him to halt.

He was so frightened when he saw that gun aimed at him that he burst into tears, but a moment later attempted to sing “La Marseillaise,” so as to let the soldier know that he was not a German. The soldier took him behind the front, where a regiment of artillery not only fed and cared for him, but adopted him as their “kid mascot,” as Philip interpreted it, when it was learned that his father, who was fighting in the Belgian army, had been captured and carried a prisoner to Germany. When the regiment had left for service at the front he was delivered into the hands of Father Belloy, a French priest, who finally gave him to a kind lady, who had brought him, with a number of other children, to America. As the little lad finished his story, he turned to rush from the stage, and then, as if inspired by a sudden thought, he threw up his one hand and lustily cried, “Vive la Belgique!”

A second more and the audience, caught by the contagion of this cry, and the appeal to their sympathies by the Belgian’s story, broke into enthusiastic clapping and cheering, mingled with loud hurrahs for Belgium. It was at this point that a guest from the Sunset Hill House jumped to his feet, and proposed that a silver collection be taken up, to be divided between the American-British soldier, the little Sons of Liberty, and the ladies of the Tea-House, who had so kindly given it for the entertainment of the guests.

This suggestion was heartily seconded, and while Van and the gentleman were passing the hat, into which flowed a goodly collection of silver coins, the little Sons of Liberty appeared, and, as a finish to the entertainment, gave them a sing-song. The old, sweet songs, the songs that lie very near to the heart of every Anglo-Saxon, were sung by these clear childish voices, Danny either singing or whistling, while Tony accompanied them on his violin, with Janet, Nathalie, and Nita,—even the audience at times,—proving good seconds in this musical song-feast. “Annie Laurie,” “The Blue Bells of Scotland,” “Wearing of the Green,” “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,” “Mother Machree,” “Dixie,” were given, followed by the new war-songs, as, “Keep the Home Fires Burning,” “Pack up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag,” “There’s a Long, Long Trail,” “Over There,” and, as a grand finale, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” when the audience rose and joined in with patriotic fervor.

And then Miss Mona, Janet, Nathalie, Nita, the two soldiers, and even the little “Sons of Liberty” were all busy serving tea, out on the veranda, to the many guests, who all declared that they had not only enjoyed Philip’s and Jean’s stories, but the children’s singing.

Two days later, Nathalie was darning her boys’ socks on the veranda, when Nita drove up in her car. She was so excited that she began to shout that she had good news to tell, as soon as she caught sight of Nathalie’s brown head.

“Oh, Nathalie,” she continued, all out of breath, as her friend hurried to meet her, “what do you think? The manager up at the Sunset Hill House,—you know he is a dear—has asked Mr. de Brie and the whole crowd who took part at the Liberty Tea, to come to the hotel next Saturday night and repeat the performance. And he says there will be another silver collection. And, oh, isn’t it just the dandiest thing that lots of the girls want to join the French class!” And then the young lady, in the exuberance of her joy, fell upon the neck of her friend and began to kiss her with hearty unction.