The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  She had lost the past and she dared not look into the future. So she was living each day as it came, with its labor, its love, its prayers and at last its sleep. Even Harvey seemed remote and stern and bitter. She reread his letters often, but they were forced. And after a time she realized another quality in them. They were self-centered. It was his anxiety, his loneliness, his humiliation. Sara Lee's eyes were looking out, those days, over a suffering world. Harvey's eyes were turned in on himself.

  She realized this, but she never formulated it, even to herself. What she did acknowledge was a growing fear of the reunion which must come sometime--that he was cherishing still further bitterness against that day, that he would say things that he would regret later. Sometimes the thought of that day came to her when she was doing a dressing, and her hands would tremble.

  Henri had not returned when, the second day after René's death, the letter came which recalled her. She opened it eagerly. Though from Harvey there usually came at the best veiled reproach, the society had always sent its enthusiastic approval.

  She read it twice before she understood, and it was only when she read Belle's letter again that she began to comprehend. She was recalled; and the recall was Harvey's work.

  She was very close to hating him that day. He had never understood. She would go back to him, as she had promised; but always, all the rest of their lives, there would be this barrier between them. To the barrier of his bitterness would be added her own resentment. She could never even talk to him of her work, of those great days when in her small way she had felt herself a part of the machinery of mercy of the war.

  Harvey had lost something out of Sara Lee's love for him. He had done it himself, madly, despairingly. She still loved him, she felt. Nothing could change that or her promise to him. But with that love there was something now of fear. And she felt, too, that after all the years she had known him she had not known him at all. The Harvey she had known was a tender and considerate man, soft-spoken, slow to wrath, always gentle. But the Harvey of his letters and of the recall was a stranger.

  It was the result of her upbringing, probably, that she had no thought of revolt. Her tie to Harvey was a real tie. By her promise to him her life was no longer hers to order. It belonged to some one else, to be ordered for her. But, though she accepted, she was too clear a thinker not to resent.

  When Henri returned, toward dawn of the following night, he did not come alone. Sara Lee, rising early, found two men in her kitchen--one of them Henri, who was making coffee, and a soldier in a gray-green uniform, with a bad bruise over one eye and a sulky face. His hands were tied, but otherwise he sat at ease, and Henri, having made the coffee, held a cup to his lips.

  "It is good for the spirits, man," he said in German. "Drink it."

  The German took it, first gingerly, then eagerly. Henri was in high good humor.

  "See, I have brought you a gift!" he exclaimed on seeing Sara Lee. "What shall we do with him? Send him to America? To show the appearance of the madmen of Europe?"

  The prisoner was only a boy, such a boy as Henri himself; but a peasant, and muscular. Beside his bulk Henri looked slim as a reed. Henri eyed him with a certain tolerant humor.

  "He is young, and a Bavarian," he said. "Other wise I should have killed him, for he fought hard. He has but just been called."

  There was another conference in the little house that morning, but Henri's prisoner could tell little. He had heard nothing of an advance. Further along the line it was said that there was much fighting. He sat there, pale and bewildered and very civil, and in the end his frightened politeness brought about a change in the attitude of the men who questioned him. Hate all Germans as they must, who had suffered so grossly, this boy was not of those who had outraged them.

  They sent him on at last, and Sara Lee was free to tell Henri her news. But she had grown very wise as to Henri's moods, and she hesitated. A certain dissatisfaction had been growing in the boy for some time, a sense of hopelessness. Further along the spring had brought renewed activity to the Allied armies. Great movements were taking place.

  But his own men stood in their trenches, or what passed for trenches, or lay on their hours of relief in such wretched quarters as could be found, still with no prospect of action. No great guns, drawn by heavy tractors, came down the roads toward the trenches by the sea. Steady bombarding, incessant sniping and no movement on either side--that was the Belgian Front during the first year of the war. Inaction, with that eating anxiety as to what was going on in the occupied territory, was the portion of the heroic small army that stretched from Nieuport to Dixmude.

  And Henri's nerves were not good. He was unhappy--that always--and he was not yet quite recovered from his wounds. There was on his mind, too, a certain gun which moved on a railway track, back and forth, behind the German lines, doing the work of many. He had tried to get to that gun, and failed. And he hated failure.

  Certainly in this story of Sara Lee and of Henri, whose other name must not be known, allowance must be made for all those things. Yet--perhaps no allowance is enough.

  Sara Lee told him that evening of her recall, told him when the shuffling of many feet in the street told of the first weary men from the trenches coming up the road.

  He heard her in a dazed silence. Then:

  "But you will not go?" he said. "It is impossible! You--you are needed, mademoiselle."

  "What can I do, Henri? They have recalled me. My money will not come now."

  "Perhaps we can arrange that. It does not cost so much. I have friends--and think, mademoiselle, how many know now of what you are doing, and love you for it. Some of them would contribute, surely."

  He was desperately revolving expedients in his mind. He could himself do no more than he had done. He, or rather Jean and he together, had been bearing a full half of the expense of the little house since the beginning. But he dared not tell her that. And though he spoke hopefully, he knew well that he could raise nothing from the Belgians he knew best. Henri came of a class that held its fortunes in land, and that land was now in German hands.

  "We will arrange it somehow," he said with forced cheerfulness. "No beautiful thing--and this is surely beautiful--must die because of money."

  It was then that Sara Lee took the plunge.

  "It is not only money, Henri."

  "He has sent for you!"

  Harvey was always "he" to Henri.

  "Not exactly. But I think he went to some one and said I should not be here alone. You can understand how he feels. We were going to be married very soon, and then I decided to come. It made an awful upset."

  Henri stood with folded arms and listened. At first he said nothing. When he spoke it was in a voice of ominous calm:

  "So for a stupid convention he would destroy this beautiful thing you have made! Does he know your work? Does he know what you are to the men here? Have you ever told him?"

  "I have, of course, but--"

  "Do you want to go back?"

  "No, Henri. Not yet. I--"

  "That is enough. You are needed. You are willing to stay. I shall attend to the money. It is arranged."

  "You don't understand," said Sara Lee desperately. "I am engaged to him. I can't wreck his life, can I?"

  "Would it wreck your life?" he demanded. "Tell me that and I shall know how to reason with you."

  But she only looked at him helplessly.

  Heavy tramping in the passage told of the arrival of the first men. They did not talk and laugh as usual. As well as they could they came quietly. For René had been a good friend to many of them, and had admitted on slack nights many a weary man who had no ticket. Much as the neighbors had entered the house back home after Uncle James had gone away, came these bearded men that night. And Sara Lee, hearing their muffled voices, brushed a hand over her eyes and tried to smile.

  "We can talk about it later," she said. "We mustn't quarrel. I owe so much to you, Henri."

  Suddenly Henri caught her by the ar
m and turned her about so that she faced the lamp.

  "Do you love him?" he demanded. "Sara Lee, look at me!" Only he pronounced it Saralie. "He has done a very cruel thing. Do you still love him?"

  Sara Lee shut her eyes.

  "I don't know. I think I do. He is very unhappy, and it is my fault."

  "Your fault!"

  "I must go, Henri. The men are waiting."

  But he still held her arm.

  "Does he love you as I love you?" he demanded. "Would he die for you?"

  "That's rather silly, isn't it? Men don't die for the people they love."

  "I would die for you, Saralie."

  She eyed him rather helplessly.

  "I don't think you mean that." Bad strategy that, for he drew her to him. His arms were like steel, and it was a rebellious and very rigid Sara Lee who found she could not free herself.

  "I would die for you, Saralie!" he repeated fiercely. "That would be easier, far, than living without you. There is nothing that matters but you. Listen--I would put everything I have--my honor, my life, my hope of eternity--on one side of the scale and you on the other. And I would choose you. Is that love?" He freed her.

  "It's insanity," said Sara Lee angrily. "You don't mean it. And I don't want that kind of love, if that is what you call it."

  "And you will go back to that man who loves himself better than he loves you?"

  "That's not true!" she flashed at him. "He is sending for me, not to get me back to him, but to get me back to safety."

  "What sort of safety?" Henri demanded in an ominous tone. "Is he afraid of me?"

  "He doesn't know anything about you."

  "You have never told him? Why?" His eyes narrowed.

  "He wouldn't have understood, Henri."

  "You are going back to him," he said slowly; "and you will always keep these days of ours buried in your heart. Is that it?" His eyes softened. "I am to be a memory! Do you know what I think? I think you care for me more than you know. We have lived a lifetime together in these months. You know me better than you know him, already. We have faced death together. That is a strong tie. And I have held you in my arms. Do you think you can forget that?"

  "I shall never want to forget you."

  "I shall not let you forget me. You may go--I cannot prevent that perhaps. But wherever I am; Saralie, I shall stand between that lover of yours and you. And sometime I shall come from this other side of the world, and I shall find you, and you will come back with me. Back to this country--our country."

  They were boyish words, but back of them was the iron determination of a man. His eyes seemed sunken in his head. His face was white. But there was almost a prophetic ring in his voice.

  Sara Lee went out and left him there, went out rather terrified and bewildered, and refusing absolutely to look into her own heart.

  XXIII

  Late in May she started for home. It had not been necessary to close the little house. An Englishwoman of mature years and considerable wealth, hearing from Mr. Travers of Sara Lee's recall, went out a day or two before she left and took charge. She was a kindly woman, in deep mourning; and some of the ache left Sara Lee's heart when she had talked with her successor.

  Perhaps, too, Mrs. Cameron understood some of the things that had puzzled her before. She had been a trifle skeptical perhaps about Sara Lee before she saw her. A young girl alone among an army of men! She was a good woman herself, and not given to harsh judgments, but the thing had seemed odd. But Sara Lee in her little house, as virginal, as without sex-consciousness as a child, Sara Lee with her shabby clothes and her stained hands and her honest eyes--this was not only a good girl, this was a brave and high-spirited and idealistic woman.

  And after an evening in the house of mercy, with the soldiers openly adoring and entirely respectful, Mrs. Cameron put her arms round Sara Lee and kissed her.

  "You must let me thank you," she said. "You have made me feel what I have not felt since--"

  She stopped. Her mourning was only a month old. "I see to-night that, after all, many things may be gone, but that while service remains there is something worth while in life."

  The next day she asked Sara Lee to stay with her, at least through the summer. Sara Lee hesitated, but at last she agreed to cable. As Henri had disappeared with the arrival of Mrs. Cameron it was that lady's chauffeur who took the message to Dunkirk and sent it off.

  She had sent the cable to Harvey. It was no longer a matter of the Ladies' Aid. It was between Harvey and herself.

  The reply came on the second day. It was curt and decisive.

  "Now or never," was the message Harvey sent out of his black despair, across the Atlantic to the little house so close under the guns of Belgium.

  Henri was half mad those last days. Jean tried to counsel him, but he was irritable, almost savage. And Jean understood. The girl had grown deep into his own heart. Like Henri, he believed that she was going back to unhappiness; he even said so to her in the car, on that last sad day when Sara Lee, having visited René's grave and prayed in the ruined church, said good-by to the little house, and went away, tearless at the last, because she was too sad for tears.

  It was not for some time that Jean spoke what was in his mind, and when he had done so she turned to him gravely:

  "You are wrong, Jean. He is the kindest of men. Once I am back, and safe, he will be very different. I'm afraid I've given you a wrong impression of him."

  "You think then, mademoiselle, that he will forget all these months--he will never be unhappy over them?"

  "Why should he?" said Sara Lee proudly. "When I tell him everything he will understand. And he will be very proud that I have done my share."

  But Jean's one eye was dubious.

  At the wharf in Dunkirk they found Henri, a pale but composed Henri. Jean's brows contracted. He had thought that the boy would follow his advice and stay away. But Henri was there.

  It was as well, perhaps, for Sara Lee had brought him a letter, one of those missives from the trenches which had been so often left at the little house.

  Henri thrust it into his pocket without reading it.

  "Everything is prepared," he said. "It is the British Admiralty boat, and one of the officers has offered his cabin. You will be quite comfortable."

  He appeared entirely calm. He saw to carrying Sara Lee's small bag on board; he chatted with the officers; he even wandered over to a hospital ship moored near by and exchanged civilities with a wounded man in a chair on the deck. Perhaps he swaggered a bit too much, for Jean watched him with some anxiety. He saw that the boy was taking it hard. His eyes were very sunken now, and he moved his right arm stiffly, as though the old wound troubled him.

  Jean did not like leave-takings. Particularly he did not like taking leave of Sara Lee. Some time before the boat sailed he kissed her hand, and then patted it and went away in the car without looking back.

  The boat was preparing to get under way. Henri was standing by her very quietly. He had not slept the night before, but then there were many nights when Henri did not sleep. He had wandered about, smoking incessantly, trying to picture the black future.

  He could see no hope anywhere. America was far away, and peaceful. Very soon the tranquillity of it all would make the last months seem dreamlike and unreal. She would forget Belgium, forget him. Or she would remember him as a soldier who had once loved her. Once loved her, because she had never seemed to realize the lasting quality of his love. She had always felt that he would forget her. If he could only make her believe that he would not, it would not be so hopeless.

  He had written a bit of a love letter on the little table at Dunkirk that morning, written it with the hope that the sight of the written words might carry conviction where all his protests had failed.

  "I shall love you all the years of my life," he wrote. "At any time, in any place, you may come to me and know that I am waiting. Great love like this comes only once to any man, and once come to him it never goes away. At any
time in the years to come you may know with certainty that you are still to me what you are now, the love of my life.

  "Sometimes I think, dearest--I may call you that once, now that you have left me--that far away you will hear this call of mine and come back to me. Perhaps you will never come. Perhaps I shall not live. I feel to-day that I do not care greatly to live.

  "If that is to be, then think of me somewhere, perhaps with René by my side, since he, too, loved you. And I shall still be calling you, and waiting. Perhaps even beyond the stars they have need of a little house of mercy; and, God knows, wherever I am I shall have need of you."

  He had the letter in the pocket of his tunic, and at last the moment came when the boat must leave. Suddenly Henri knew that he could not allow her to cross to England alone. The last few days had brought many stories of submarine attacks. Here, so far north, the Germans were particularly active. They had for a long time lurked in waiting for this British Admiralty boat, with its valuable cargo, its officers and the government officials who used it.

  "Good-by, Henri," said Sara Lee. "I--of course it is no use to try to tell you--"

  "I am going across with you."

  "But--"

  "I allowed you to come over alone. I shiver when I think of it. I shall take you back myself."

  "Is it very dangerous?"

  "Probably not. But can you think of me standing safe on that quay and letting you go into danger alone?"

  "I am not afraid."

  "I know that. I have never seen you afraid. But if you wish to see a coward, look at me. I am a coward for you."

  He put his hand into his pocket. It occurred to him to give her the letter now so that if anything happened she would at least have had it. He wanted no mistake about that appointment beyond the stars. But the great world of eternity was very large, and they must have a definite understanding about that meeting at the little house of mercy Over There.

  Perhaps he had a little fever that day. He was alternately flushed and pale; and certainly he was not quite rational. His hand shook as he brought out her letter--and with it the other letter, from the Front.