CHAPTER V CAMOUFLAGE

“A camouflaged dory! Well, if that isn’t a joke! If that isn’t original!”

The cry came, in laughing accents, from three or four Camp Fire Girls lounging upon a milk-white beach, absorbed in the occupation of another of their number, whose wet paint-brush dripped sky-beams upon the sands--blue sky-beams that winked dazzlingly in the August sun, as if filched from heaven’s own arch above.

“Original! About as original as Sara herself! Nobody else would think of it! A humble little dory that doesn’t go more than a mile from shore, and couldn’t come in on a sea-chase of any kind!

“How--how do you know what she’ll come in on?” The artist swung her azure-dripping brush, contemplating her dory’s dazzling side, as she lazily replied to her companions’ further comments. “How do I know what I’ll come in on myself? Queer times these--war-times! I shouldn’t be surprised, some fine morning, to find myself scouring cloud-land as a sky-skimmer, or--or----Now! where did I see that face before?

“Not on this beach, anyway. He’s the first man I’ve noticed around here. Goody! I welcome the sight of him.”

It was Arline Champion, Sara Davenport’s oldest friend, and closest chum, who spoke, digging in the sands with the toe of her tan boot, as she darted a demure glance along a rainbow bridge of sunbeams in pursuit of a prepossessing pedestrian who had passed at the moment upon the extreme edge of the beach where the white sands gleamed through sunlit tide-ripples, like milk in a golden vase.

“Well! wherever I’ve seen him, I’ve seen him. And, what’s more, he has run across me before, too! I felt the thrill (now, which of the colors shall I daub her with next, sky-blue, white, or dark slate?) the thrill that shot from one to the other of us when he passed. ’Twas more than the mere shock of surprise--admiration--of me and my three paint-pots.”

The impressionist artist, Sara, laughed--she who was reproducing, or trying to, with many a glance at the horizon, the dazzling light and shade of this August day in great bold smears upon her small boat’s side--the magical, baffling tints of sky-blue sea, dark, shadowy wave-hollows, white noonday light--to reproduce them as she saw them.

“Why, he was almost on the point of twirling his little mustache, when he first shot a sidelong glance at me--and such a start as he gave!”--the paintress went on. “He caught himself up just in time. If one’s to judge by his dress--sportsman’s suit--he’s not of the class to be rude, exactly.”

“Pshaw! What man living mightn’t be betrayed into twirling his mustache over a camouflaged dory: a little boat all smeared--like a Merry Andrew--with sky-blue, white, and splashing dark spots? Perfect clown! He couldn’t be mortal and not be amused. I wonder he didn’t smile outright as he passed.”

It was an older girl who spoke, a girl whose clear white skin was now slightly tanned, whose dark eyes held a golden spark in their depths, lit by the thrill of her response to the blue-and-white beauty of the August day about her--a response even more elastic than that of her companions.

“Smile! Pshaw! I’d have liked it better if he had smiled. I’d have liked it better if he had--even--spoken! Now--now you needn’t get off ‘tut, tut!’ Olive, in your character of Assistant Guardian; I’ll say it for you.” Sara’s dancing flame was saucy as she rinsed her camouflaging brush in the tide, then dipped it into a dazzling pot of white paint standing beside the blue. “What I mean is that if he had spoken, or--or merely smiled a little, I might”--musingly smearing on the paint--“might have remembered, all of a sudden, where I’ve seen him before.... Now--’twill haunt----”

“Whe-ew! Fancy Sally Davenport, shadow-haunted, ghost-haunted!” Olive burst into a low laugh.

“Oh-h! We know that no ghost fazes you, not even the ghost of chlorine gas. You don’t knuckle under to it!”

The kneeling artist slapped her brush suddenly against her dory’s side, drew it vehemently across the bow in a great white, dazzling smear, then turned impulsively and gazed along the still more dazzling beach upon which the stranger had passed, her gold-tipped eyelashes twinkling, her brown eyebrows drawn together hard, as if thought were dipping a paint-brush into some camouflaging pot of memory and trying to produce a picture--trying with all its might.

But the only result was a vague smear. Sesooā, to give her her Camp Fire name, turned again to her boat-painting, with a baffled sigh--and to her occasional studious glances at the horizon.

“I think I’ll take the camp skiff and row over to the Bar,” she remarked presently. “I might get a few new impressions of how sea and sky and wavy horizon look from there--a broader view of the ocean.”

“You’ll have a hollow impression if you go before dinner,” Olive Deering laughed. “What on earth put this whim into your brain, Sara, of painting your little dory up as a harlequin--a freak?”

“Freak! Harlequin! Well, maybe so. But I’m only putting her into the motley uniform of the high seas, at present, because--because Iver gave her to me. I wouldn’t let anybody else--another soul--touch a paint-brush to her, though.”

There was a low, jealous catch in the girlish voice--almost a sob--which swept the light puzzle of the passing stranger entirely out of mind. For it was August now, not April--early April--and Lieutenant Iver Davenport had had his real baptism of fire, over the top in the bleak No Man’s Land of France--liquid fire and bursting shrapnel, to which a wandering powder-puff was but a waspish prelude.

He had had his “bleeding stand-to--stifling stand-to”--facing the worst horrors in the shape of poison gas that the enemy could put over, had been wounded and citied for gallantry; and his blue-pointed service-star was enshrined forever against the red background of his sister’s heart. She would have given a good deal to know whether another girl did homage in her heart of hearts to that star, too--the tall girl, Olive Deering, Torch-Bearer, whose dark eyes could kindle with the golden spark of a Joan of Arc fire.

Sesooā shot a little measuring flame of inquiry, in the shape of a glance, up at her now and again, as she went on with her blue-and-white daubing, dressing her little boat in the party-colored uniform of the seas, with many a wavy figure and crude hieroglyphic thrown in, to make the disguising dazzle more complete.

“Ah! Madonna! Scusa me! But--but w’at for you painta her like dat--de leetla boat--eh?”

It was a new voice, suddenly drawn near, a voice with a sunny sparkle--a liquid softness--in it which hinted at its having first flowered into speech under skies as radiantly azure, as fleecily flecked, as the dory’s side.

“Why, hullo, Flamina!... Hullo! Little Nébis, our Green Leaf, is that you?” Sara, lowering her paint-brush, which dripped silver tribute now upon the sands, looked up into the new eyes, brown as the velvety barnacles clinging to some sea-rocks near, shyly daring, merrily challenging, through their black upcurling lashes.

Flamina, little foreign-born Camp Fire Sister, only two years in America--adopted some months before by the Morning-Glory Group, who, working for patriotic honors along lines of Americanization, were teaching her the Camp Fire ritual, with the meaning of her Indian name and symbol--Flamina dimpled shyly, like the ebbing tide.

“Ah, bella! Bella! But w’y you make her looka like dat--so fine--so fine?” she cried again, lost in primitive admiration of the boat’s elemental dazzle.

“So fine! Glad I’ve found one appreciative spirit, anyway! I’m painting her in big blue smears and wavy lines as they paint the great ships--American ships--going from here across the ocean now, little Green Leaf Sister, so that they may melt into the colors of the sea and sky and no horrid submarine--you know what a submarine is--coming to the surface may fire a tin fish at them--sink them. See?”

W’at for you painta her like dat--de leetla boat--eh?

“Ha! Tin--feesh?” Flamina, wrinkling her childish brows--she was barely fourteen--looked out at the broad bay, as if she expected to see the brilliant gleam of a metallic fin swimming around there.

“Pshaw! That’s a nickname the sailors have for a torpedo, childie; you know what that is--a big dark bomb that’s fired from a submarine, which skims along just under the surface of the water like a fish, leaving a white streak behind it--swish-h, like that!” Sara drew her level white brush through a sea of sunbeams, to illustrate. “When it strikes a fine ship, then it bursts--blows the ship up. D’you understand?”

“Si--yes! Catcha wise!... I catcha wise!” murmured Flamina, entranced, her curly lashes twinkling above the night-like flash beneath them. “But, bah! your greata Uncle Sam, he not goin’ to let badda submarine stay in sea much longa--eugh?”

“No! No, you bet he isn’t!” The artist slapped the slang with her brush-tip vehemently against the boat’s side. “But he’s your ‘greata Uncle Sam,’ too, now, little Green Leaf. You run over and see the dress--the pretty ceremonial dress with leather fringes--that those two girls are finishing off for you to wear at our next Council Fire meeting here on the white sands. They’re embroidering it with a green leaf, too--your symbol.”

Excitedly Flamina ran off, singing with airy gaiety, a merry dialect song of her childhood, of girlish love for the green country:
“Pascarella vieni in campagna,
Al sole chè monterà,
Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah-h!
Quando il sole chè monterà.
“Marianna vieni in campagna,
Quando chè il sole monterà,
Ah! Ah! Ah! ... Ah!
Quando il sole monterà.”

“Did you ever hear such gladness as there is in that soaring ‘Ah’? She’s just as full of song as a skylark, isn’t she?” commented Olive, who still lingered near the boat-painter. “In ceremonial dress she’ll be a fairy! I can hardly get over the fact that it’s Sybil--Sybil who’s embroidering it for her with a green leaf, who has shown her how to weave her headband, too; Sybil who, a little while ago, hated to be tied down even to fancy-work for half an hour!”

“Um-m!” Sara cast a musing, half-whimsical glance over her shoulder at a point, about a dozen yards distant, where two girls sat, engaged in fine needlework, upon the sands, with a loose garment of golden-brown khaki between them.

One, the elder, was garnishing it artistically with soft leathern fringes, weaving into them the smiling rainbows of her own thought--she being Arline, the Camp Fire Rainbow--which craved a very happy future for this little foreign-born Camp Fire Sister, adopted temporarily by the Morning-Glory Group.

The other, whose needle was threaded with sunbeams and the green of spring, bent her golden head over her embroidery with equal assiduity and sisterhood of interest; a sight which sent Sesooā’s thoughts leaping back to a city playground, crowded with foreign-born children, the cradle of her contact with these two girls from the wealthier avenues of life--Olive and Sybil--whom she, with the racy flame in her for the moment a spitting powder-puff, had scathingly pronounced “all fluff and stuff!”

Well! the early loss of a mother, the spoiling of a bereaved father had, perhaps, rendered their youthful ideals rather fluffy in a downy nest of self.

Three years of Camp Fire life at the most impressionable period, of feelings quickened by a romantic ritual, of heart knit to other girl-heart by the entwining flame of the outdoor Council Fire--of coming, as Olive had said, very near to the Father Heart in which lay their unity--this, and more, had brought one to kneeling, undaunted, by a gassed soldier, the other to embroidering an elm leaf--symbolic American elm--upon the dress of a little immigrant of not two years’ standing.

“Your brother Iver said that it ought to be a laurel leaf for Little Italy,” remarked Olive now, with just the slightest reminiscent quiver of the lip and deepening of color, as she seated herself upon the sands at a safe distance from the camouflaging artist, with her three flashing paint-pots, and drew forth a half-knit stocking from a home-woven bag that was like Joseph’s coat of many colors.

“Laurel leaf! It ought to be that for all our allies!” panted Sesooā, halting in her choice between blue and dark slate-color for her next broad harlequin smear.

“Of course!... The brave Belgians! The women of England! The French--oh! aren’t they wonderful! I had a letter from my cousin, Clayton Forrest, this morning. I wanted to tell you about it. He says the little French women are such--such out-an’-out bricks! He never saw anything like their spirit!” Olive’s dark eyes glowed as she turned the “silver” heel of her stocking for the Red Cross.

“Humph!” grunted Sesooā and daubed passionately, in a blue mood, the discounting energy of her exclamation not being at all leveled at the heroines of sunny France, but at Olive’s male cousins, about whom she quite agreed with her brother Iver, that they were altogether too many and too spectacular for such an attractive girl.

She even pooh-poohed the patriotism of the eighteen-year-old lad, worth a million or two in his own right, who was swinging a mallet now in the country shipbuilding yards not far from here.

“Well! Well, Clay was marching through a deserted French village with his company--they were just straggling along in loose order--when he saw something coming towards him that looked like a great round wicker basket--with the bright handle of a copper saucepan and a turkey-red pillow sticking out over the brim--plodding along of itself on two little clattering wooden shoes.

“As it came nearer, he made out a little gray head in a blue foulard--or handkerchief--nodding above it.... O dear! there I’ve dropped two stitches in my heel.”

Olive drew breath, to pick them up.

“It--it was a refugee, not an animated basket; a little old Frenchwoman returning to her home--or what had been her home,” she went on, winking bright drops from her eyes. “And Clay--Clay, who before the War was never a ‘grind,’ must have asked permission to carry the basket for her, and got it, although one could only read between the lines in his letter, for he spoke of finding the ruin which had been her home, and of setting down all her household belongings with a jerk that made the bright saucepans rattle like chattering teeth when--when he saw that there were only four blackened walls standing, over which the Germans had set up a tin roof, with a horrid, winking old tin door.

“They had stabled horses there.

“Clay says he was just afraid to look at the thin, withered little face under the blue foulard.... But he heard a cluck and a stamp. There she was, the little old peasant-woman, tearing down the ugly sign which the enemy had set up, stamping on it with her wooden shoes, and muttering away to herself, so--so pluckily: ‘Tchu! Tchu! Tchu! C’a ne fait rien! C’est la guerre!’ And then she began singing aloud in a voice like a Victory siren:
“‘Mais ils ne l’aurout plus,
Jamais! Jamais!’
“‘But they’ll never have it again!
Never! Never!’”

Sara, pealing the translated echo, that seemed to come ringing across the ocean, sniffed now to her dory’s side, instinctively exchanging her blue-dripping brush, and its corresponding mood, for a dazzling white one, with which she painted in broad smears radiant dreams of Peace--restoration--reconstruction!

“And our boys have gone over to fight, so that ‘they may never have it again!’” murmured Olive in a voice that must have been like the old Frenchwoman’s, between a sob and a song. “They’ll pay our debt to France, and carry on! Carry on, until the cry of some poor, pale little children, who crept up out of cellars in another village they entered, comes true.”

“What--was their--cry?” Sara sniffed as wetly as the outgoing tide; she had forgotten that Corporal Clayton Forrest was one of the superfluous cousins, whose feet, turning aside from paths of luxury, had enlisted in the plodding infantry with fifty companions from his father’s big loom-works.

She had seen him leading a cotillion or escorting fair maidens--debonair cavalier-in-chief of his little New England town.

She pictured him laden with the pots and kettles, the turkey-red pillows, all the household belongings of a little old peasant woman, compressed into a great wicker basket--with the handle of a copper saucepan sticking out over the rim, like the tail of a sitting bird; and she sniffed again because knighthood had not ceased to flower.

“Oh! what was their cry? The children’s cry!” Olive moistly caught her breath. “Ah!... Why! they simply burst open, like poor little pinched buds that had been kept in a cellar--the enemy had held that village four years--when they saw the American soldiers! Clay says they caught at their hands and kissed them--danced wildly round them, crying: ‘Fini, la Guerre! C’fini--c’fini--la--Guerre!’”

“But it isn’t--isn’t ‘Fini, la Guerre!’ yet. And we’ve got to carry on, too; not--not at camouflaging nonsense like this,”--Sara painted a dazzling hieroglyphic, a riddle of the future, upon her boat’s side--“but at real, steady war work, that’s no joke, in that big garden of ours, a young farm, I call it, over there on the hill--Squawk Hill--was there ever such a name!--called after a relative of yours, Olive, the noisy night-heron.... And just between you an’ me”--painting furiously--“I’m getting awf’ly--awf’ly tired of weeding, spraying, hoeing, raking right along, day in and day out, for an hour an’ a half in the morning--hour an’ a half at night!”

“Evening, you mean! Three whole hours--nothing to speak of! But they do string out, when you’re ‘carrying on’!” Blue Heron--Olive--straightened her long, graceful young back; this morning’s stunt of carrying on upon the hill of discordant name had made it feel almost as crooked as an ancient village street, tiled and twisted, in the France which they had been discussing.

“Ah, well, if we show any signs of weakening--we older girls--it’s all up with our pledges as a Group to help feed our boys and the hungry women and children on the other side of the water, for the younger girls don’t take much interest in war-gardening; they’d rather spend all their time, especially at low tide, over there on the long sand-bar, pow-wowing with the seals and birds. And I don’t blame them!” Sara waved a pensive brush towards a distant snow-white, humpy line, just rising like wavy limbs of sea-nymphs from green breakers, the merriest mob of breakers that combed and foamed and shrank as the tide ebbed. “Everything--everything is so wild an’ happy-go-lucky all around us--that----”

“That it makes one feel irresponsible,” sighed Olive; “puts the war a long way off, except--except when one turns the silver heel of a stocking--bah! another stitch down--or gets a letter from over there.”

“Oh! I know how you hate grubbing in the muck, raising vegetables. You were never cut out for a farmerette; that’s your Southern ancestry, on your mother’s side, I suppose--proud planters who left all that sort of thing to slaves!” Sara’s eyebrows went up. “And I must confess”--with a comical shrug--“that there are times when I see very little fun in planting potatoes--and all sorts of other things--with--with about forty-eleven million horrid little bugs just sitting on the fence, as old farmers say, and watching you do it, waiting to pounce on the young shoots directly they come above ground--and not one of them will light on a thistle!... But, bah! C’est la Guerre. And conservation would be nowhere--a lame duck--without cultivation! Besides the hours aren’t--very--long.”

“Yes! if it wasn’t day in and day out, for months at a stretch,” murmured the older girl, arching delicate, dark eyebrows somewhat ruefully over her stocking. “Well, our beets and carrots--all the other vegetable things, too--are coming along. We’ll have quite a cargo soon for Captain Andy to take over in his boat to some of the summer colonies and dispose of. Think of giving a big bunch of profits to the Red Cross!”

“And of having all the little infant carrots that are thinned out--to give others a chance to grow--for our own eating, meantime!” Sara laughed. “Terra-cotta babies, so tender an’ pink! Makes one feel like an ogre to devour them before they ever get a chance to mature.”

“Survival of the fittest, Sally!” Olive sprang lightly to her feet. “I don’t feel as if I could survive another minute without something to eat! Thank goodness! There goes the dear bugle, sounding mess-call--dinner--as if we were military maids. Nothing militant about us, is there, except--except our skirmishes with the big seals, to drive them off the bar. ’Twill be low tide in another hour or so. How about rowing over there?”

“Good!” Sesooā looked out towards that long milk-white, level line, a mile in length, the Ipswich Bar, rising steadily inch by inch from the billowy green of the receding tide. Colonies of birds were settling upon it and brown amphibious forms wallowing up out of the water. “Humph!” she gasped suddenly. “Maybe that sportsman--that man who passed a while ago, whose face I have seen somewhere before, is a seal-hunter, down here shooting seals, those spotted hair-seals. He had a gun over his shoulder. Bah! it just makes me cross to see a pair of eyes that I recognize as I recognized his at once, and not--not be able to place them in any head that I remember.”

“Put them out of your own head, honey, and think of the baby carrots,” counseled Olive, slipping an arm through her companion’s. “Lilia and Betty Ayres have a trick of creaming them to perfection; they’re cooks for to-day.”

“Ah, well, perhaps if we should--should--run across him again----” was the low, still haunted rejoinder, absently completed by a backward glance at a camouflaged dory.