"I am doing this," Henri finished, a trifle ashamed of himself, "not for mademoiselle, but for our army. And since when have you felt that the best we can give is too much for such a purpose?"
Which was, however lofty, only a part of the truth.
So supplies came in plentifully, and Sara Lee pared vegetables and sang a bit under her breath, and glowed with good will when at night the weary vanguard of a weary little army stopped at her door and scraped the mud off its boots and edged in shyly.
She was very happy, and her soup was growing famous. It is true that the beef she used was not often beef, but she did not know that, and merely complained that the meat was stringy. Now and then there was no beef at all, and she used hares instead. On quiet days, when there was little firing beyond the poplar trees, she went about with a basket through the neglected winter gardens of the town. There were Brussels sprouts, and sometimes she found in a cellar carrots or cabbages. She had potatoes always.
It was at night then, from seven in the evening until one, that the little house was busiest. Word had gone out through the trenches beyond the poplar trees that slightly wounded men needing rest before walking back to their billets, exhausted and sick men, were welcome to the little house. It was soon necessary to give the officers tickets for the men. René took them in at the door, with his rifle in the hollow of his arm, and he was as implacable as a ticket taker at the opera.
Never once in all the months of her life there did Sara Lee have an ugly word, an offensive glance. But, though she never knew this, many half articulate and wholly earnest prayers were offered for her in those little churches behind the lines where sometimes the men slept, and often they prayed.
She was very businesslike. She sent home to the Ladies' Aid Society a weekly record of what had been done: So many bowls of soup; so many cups of chocolate; so many minor injuries dressed. Because, very soon, she found first aid added to her activities. She sickened somewhat at first. Later she allowed to Marie much of the serving of food, and in the little salle à manger she had ready on the table basins, water, cotton, iodine and bandages.
Henri explained the method to her.
"It is a matter of cleanliness," he said. "First one washes the wound and then there is the iodine. Then cotton, a bandage, and--a surgeon could do little more."
Henri and Jean came often. And more than once during the first ten days Jean spent the night rolled in a blanket by the kitchen fire, and Henri disappeared. He was always back in the morning, however, looking dirty and very tired. Sara Lee sewed more than one rent for him, those days, but she was strangely incurious. It was as though, where everything was strange, Henri's erratic comings and goings were but a part with the rest.
Then one night the unexpected happened. The village was shelled.
Sara Lee had received her first letter from Harvey that day. The maid at Morley's had forwarded it to her, and Henri had brought it up.
"I think I have brought you something you wish for very much," he said, looking down at her.
"Mutton?" she inquired anxiously.
"Better than that."
"Sugar?"
"A letter, mademoiselle."
Afterward he could not quite understand the way she had suddenly drawn in her breath. He had no memory, as she had, of Harvey's obstinate anger at her going, his conviction that she was doing a thing criminally wrong and cruel.
"Give it to me, please."
She took it into her room and closed the door. When she came out again she was composed and quiet, but rather white. Poor Henri! He was half mad that day with jealousy. Her whiteness he construed as longing.
This is a part of Harvey's letter:
You may think that I have become reconciled, but I have not. If I could see any reason for it I might. But what reason is there? So many others, older and more experienced, could do what you are doing, and more safely.
In your letter from the steamer you tell me not to worry. Good God, Sara Lee, how can I help worrying? I do not even know where you are! If you are in England, well and good. If you are abroad I do not want to know it. I know these foreigners. I run into them every day. And they do not understand American women. I get crazy when I think about it. I have had to let the Leete house go. There is not likely to be such a chance soon again. Business is good, but I don't seem to care much about it any more. Honestly, dear, I think you have treated me very badly. I always feel as though the people I meet are wondering if we have quarreled or what on earth took you away on this wild-goose chase. I don't know myself, so how can I tell them?
I shall always love you, Sara Lee. I guess I'm that sort. But sometimes I wonder if, when we are married, you will leave me again in some such uncalled-for way. I warn you now, dear, that I won't stand for it. I'm suffering too much.
HARVEY.
Sara Lee wore the letter next her heart, but it did not warm her. She went through the next few hours in a sort of frozen composure and ate nothing at all.
Then came the bombardment.
Henri and Jean, driving out from Dunkirk, had passed on the road ammunition trains, waiting in the road until dark before moving on to the Front. Henri had given Sara Lee her letter, had watched jealously for its effect on her, and then, his own face white and set, had gone on down the ruined street.
Here within the walls of a destroyed house he disappeared. The place was evidently familiar to him, for he moved without hesitation. Broken furniture still stood in the roofless rooms, and in front of a battered bureau Henri paused. Still whistling under his breath, he took off his uniform and donned a strange one, of greenish gray. In the pocket of the blouse he stuffed a soft round cap of the same color. Then, resuming his cape and Belgian cap, with its tassel over his forehead, he went out into the street again. He carried in his belt a pistol, but it was not the one he had brought in with him. As a matter of fact, by the addition of the cap in his pocket, Henri was at that moment in the full uniform of a lieutenant of a Bavarian infantry regiment, pistol and all.
He went down the street and along the road toward the poplars. He met the first detachment of men out of the trenches just beyond the trees, and stepped aside into the mud to let them pass, calling a greeting to them out of the darkness.
"Bonsoir!" they replied, and saluted stiffly. There were few among them who did not know his voice, and fewer still who did not suspect his business.
"A brave man," they said among themselves as they went on.
"How long will he last?" asked one young soldier, a boy in his teens.
"One cannot live long who does as he does," replied a gaunt and bearded man. "But it is a fine life while it continues. A fine life!"
The boy stepped out of the shuffling line and looked behind him. He could see only the glow of Henri's eternal cigarette. "I should like to go with him," he muttered wistfully.
The ammunition train was in the village now. It kept the center of the road, lest it should slide into the mud on either side and be mired. The men moved out of its way into the ditch, grumbling.
Henri went whistling softly down the road.
The first shell fell in the neglected square. The second struck the rear wagons of the ammunition train. Henri heard the terrific explosion that followed, and turning ran madly back into the village. More shells fell into the road. The men scattered like partridges, running for the fields, but the drivers of the ammunition wagons beat their horses and came lurching and shouting down the road.
There was cold terror in Henri's heart. He ran madly, throwing aside his cape as he went. More shells fell ahead in the street. Once in the darkness he fell flat over the body of a horse. There was a steady groaning from the ditch near by. But he got up and ran on, a strange figure with his flying hair and his German uniform.
He was all but stabbed by René when he entered the little house.
"Mademoiselle?" Henri gasped, holding René's bayonet away from his heaving chest.
"I am here," said Sara Lee's voice from the little
salle à manger. "Let them carry in the wounded. I am getting ready hot water and bandages. There is not much space, for the corner of the room has been shot away."
She was as dead white in the candlelight, but very calm.
"You cannot stay here," Henri panted. "At any time--"
Another shell fell, followed by the rumble of falling walls.
"Some one must stay," said Sara Lee. "There must be wounded in the streets. Marie is in the cellar."
Henri pleaded passionately with her to go to the cellar, but she refused. He would have gathered her up in his arms and carried her there, but Jean came in, leading a wounded man, and Henri gave up in despair.
All that night they worked, a ghastly business. More than one man died that night in the little house, while a blond young man in a German uniform gave him a last mouthful of water or took down those pitifully vague addresses which were all the dying Belgians had to give.
"I have not heard--last at Aarschot, but now--God knows where."
No more shells fell. At dawn, with all done that could be done, Sara Lee fainted quietly in the hallway. Henri carried her in and placed her on her bed. A corner of the room was indeed gone. The mantel was shattered and the little stove. But on the floor lay Harvey's photograph uninjured. Henri lifted it and looked at it. Then he placed it on the table, and very reverently he kissed the palm of Sara Lee's quiet hand.
Daylight found the street pitiful indeed. Henri, whose costume René had been casting wondering glances at all night, sent a request for men from the trenches to clear away the bodies of the horses and bury them, and somewhat later over a single grave in the fields there was a simple ceremony of burial for the men who had fallen. Henri had changed again by that time, but he sternly forbade Sara Lee to attend.
"On pain," he said, "of no more supplies, mademoiselle. These things must be. They are war. But you can do nothing to help, and it will be very sad."
Ambulances took away the wounded at dawn, and the little house became quiet once more. With planks René repaired the damage to the corner, and triumphantly produced and set up another stove. He even put up a mantelshelf, and on it, smiling somewhat, he placed Harvey's picture.
Sara Lee saw it there, and a tiny seed of resentment took root and grew.
"If there had been no one here last night," she said to the photograph, "many more would have died. How can you say I am cruel to you? Isn't this worth the doing?"
But Harvey remained impassive, detached, his eyes on the photographer's white muslin screen. And the angle of his jaw was set and dogged.
[Illustration: Henri explained the method.]
XII
That morning there was a conference in the little house--Colonel Lilias, who had come in before for a mute but appreciative call on Sara Lee, and for a cup of chocolate; Captain Tournay, Jean and Henri. It was held round the little table in the salle à manger, after Marie had brought coffee and gone out.
"They had information undoubtedly," said the colonel. "The same thing happened at Pervyse when an ammunition train went through. They had the place, and what is more they had the time. Of course there are the airmen."
"It did not leave the main road until too late for observation from the air," Henri put in shortly.
"Yet any one who saw it waiting at the crossroads might have learned its destination. The drivers talk sometimes."
"But the word had to be carried across," said Captain Tournay. "That is the point. My men report flashes of lights from the fields. We have followed them up and found no houses, no anything. In this flat country a small light travels far."
"I shall try to learn to-night," Henri said. "It is, of course, possible that some one from over there--" He shrugged his shoulders.
"I think not." Colonel Lilias put a hand on Henri's shoulder affectionately. "They have not your finesse, boy. And I doubt if, in all their army, they have so brave a man."
Henri flushed.
"There is a courage under fire, with their fellows round--that is one thing. And a courage of attack--that is even more simple. But the bravest man is the one who works alone--the man to whom capture is death without honor."
The meeting broke up. Jean and Henri went away in the car, and though supplies came up regularly Sara Lee did not see the battered gray car for four days. At the end of that time Henri came alone. Jean, he said briefly, was laid up for a little while with a flesh wound in his shoulder. He would be well very soon. In the meantime here at last was mutton. It had come from England, and he, Henri, had found it lying forgotten and lonely and very sad and had brought it along.
After that Henri disappeared on foot. It was midafternoon and a sunny day. Sara Lee saw him walking briskly across the fields and watched him out of sight. She spoke some French now, and she had gathered from René, who had no scruples about listening at a door, that Henri was the bravest man in the Belgian Army.
Until now Sara Lee had given small thought to Henri's occupation. She knew nothing of war, and the fact that Henri, while wearing a uniform, was unattached, had not greatly impressed her. Had she known the constitution of a modern army she might have wondered over his freedom, his powerful car, his passes and maps. But his detachment had not seemed odd to her. Even his appearance during the bombardment in the uniform of a German lieutenant had meant nothing to her. She had never seen a German uniform.
That evening, however, when he returned she ventured a question. They dined together, the two of them, for the first time at the little house alone. Always before Jean had made the third. And it was a real meal, for Sara Lee had sacrificed a bit of mutton from her soup, and Henri had produced from his pocket a few small and withered oranges.
"A gift!" he said gayly, and piled them in a precarious heap in the center of the table. On the exact top he placed a walnut.
"Now speak gently and walk softly," he said. "It is a work of art and not to be lightly demolished."
He was alternately gay and silent during the meal, and more than once Sara Lee found his eyes on her, with something new and different in them.
"Just you and I together!" he said once. "It is very wonderful."
And again: "When you go back to him, shall you tell him of your good friend who has tried hard to serve you?"
"Of course I shall," said Sara Lee. "And he will write you, I know. He will be very grateful."
But it was she who was silent after that, because somehow it would be hard to make Harvey understand. And as for his being grateful--
"Mademoiselle," said Henri later on, "would you object if I make a suggestion? You wear a very valuable ring. I think it is entirely safe, but--who can tell? And also it is not entirely kind to remind men who are far from all they love that you--"
Sara Lee flushed and took off her ring.
"I am glad you told me," she said. And Henri did not explain that the Belgian soldiers would not recognize the ring as either a diamond or a symbol, but that to him it was close to torture.
It was when he insisted on carrying out the dishes, singing a little French song as he did so, that Sara Lee decided to speak what was in her mind. He was in high spirits then.
"Mademoiselle," he said, "shall I show you something that the eye of no man has seen before, and that, when we have seen it, shall never be seen again?"
On her interested consent he called in Marie and René, making a great ceremony of the matter, and sending Marie into hysterical giggling.
"Now see!" he said earnestly. "No eye before has ever seen or will again. Will you guess, mademoiselle? Or you, Marie? René?"
"A tear?" ventured Sara Lee.
"But--do I look like weeping?"
He did not, indeed. He stood, tall and young and smiling before them, and produced from his pocket the walnut.
"Perceive!" he said, breaking it open and showing the kernel. "Has human eye ever before seen it?" He thrust it into Marie's open mouth. "And it is gone! Voilà tout!"
It was that evening, while Sara Lee cut bandages and Henri r
olled them, that she asked him what his work was. He looked rather surprised, and rolled for a moment without replying. Then: "I am a man of all work," he said. "What you call odd jobs."
"Then you don't do any fighting?"
"In the trenches--no. But now and then I have a little skirmish."
A sort of fear had been formulating itself in Sara Lee's mind. The trenches she could understand or was beginning to understand. But this alternately joyous and silent idler, this soldier of no regiment and no detail--was he playing a man's part in the war?
"Why don't you go into the trenches?" she asked with her usual directness. "You say there are too few men. Yet--I can understand Monsieur Jean, because he has only one eye. But you!"
"I do something," he said, avoiding her eyes. "It is not a great deal. It is the thing I can do best. That is all."
He went away some time after that, leaving the little house full and busy justifying its existence. The miller's son, who came daily to chat with Marie, was helping in the kitchen. By the warm stove, and only kept from standing over it by Marie's sharp orders, were as many men as could get near. Each held a bowl of hot soup, and--that being a good day--a piece of bread. Tall soldiers and little ones, all dirty, all weary, almost all smiling, they peered over each other's shoulders, to catch, if might be, a glimpse of Marie's face.
When they came too close she poked an elbow into some hulking fellow and sent him back.
"Elbow-room, in the name of God," she would beg.
Over all the room hung the warm steam from the kettles, and a delicious odor, and peace.
Sara Lee had never heard of the word morale. She would have been astonished to have been told that she was helping the morale of an army. But she gave each night in that little house of mercy something that nothing else could give--warmth and welcome, but above all a touch of home.
That night Henri did not come back. She stood by her table bandaging, washing small wounds, talking her bits of French, until one o'clock. Then, the last dressing done, she went to the kitchen. Marie was there, with Maurice, the miller's son.
"Has the captain returned?" she asked.
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