Chapter VIII

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

　　Here were more things to do. Sara Lee's money must be exchanged at abank for French gold. She had three hundred dollars, and it had beengiven her in a tiny brown canvas bag. And then there was the matter ofgoing from Calais toward the Front. She had expected to find a train,but there were no trains. All cars were being used for troops. Shestared at Henri in blank dismay.

　　"No trains!" she said blankly. "Would an automobile be very expensive?"

　　"They are all under government control, mademoiselle. Even the petrol."

　　She stopped in the street.

　　"Then I shall have to go back."

　　Henri laughed boyishly.

　　"Mademoiselle," he said, "I have been requested to take you to a placewhere you may render us the service we so badly need. For the presentthat is my duty, and nothing else. So if you will accept the offer ofmy car, which is a shameful one but travels well, we can continue ourjourney."

　　Long, long afterward, Sara Lee found a snapshot of Henri's car, takenby a light-hearted British officer. Found it and sat for a long timewith it in her hand, thinking and remembering that first day she saw it,in the sun at Calais. A long low car it was, once green, but nowroughly painted gray. But it was not the crude painting, significantas it was, that brought so close the thing she was going to. It wasthat the car was but a shell of a car. The mud guards were crumpled upagainst the side. Body and hood were pitted with shrapnel. A door hadbeen shot away, and the wind shield was but a frame set round withbroken glass. Even the soldier-chauffeur wore a patch over one eye,and his uniform was ragged.

　　"Not a beautiful car, mademoiselle, as I warned you! But a fast one!"

　　Henri was having a double enjoyment. He was watching Sara Lee's faceand his chauffeur's remaining eye.

　　"But fast; eh, Jean?" he said to the chauffeur. The man nodded andsaid something in French. It was probably the thing Henri had hoped for,and he threw back his head and laughed.

　　"Jean is reminding me," he said gayly, "that it is forbidden to officersto take a lady along the road that we shall travel." But when he sawhow Sara Lee flushed he turned to the man.

　　"Mademoiselle has come from America to help us, Jean," he said quietly."And now for Dunkirk."

　　The road from Dunkirk to Calais was well guarded in those days. FromNieuport for some miles inland only the shattered remnant of the BelgianArmy held the line. For the cry "On to Paris!" the Germans hadsubstituted "On to Calais!"

　　So, on French soil at least, the road was well guarded. A few miles inthe battered car, then a slowing up, a showing of passports, the clatterof a great chain as it dropped to the road, a lowering of leveled rifles,and a salute from the officer—that was the method by which theyadvanced.

　　Henri sat with the driver and talked in a low tone. Sometimes he satquiet, looking ahead. He seemed, somehow, older, more careworn. Hisboyishness had gone. Now and then he turned to ask if she wascomfortable, but in the intervals she felt that he had entirely forgottenher. Once, at something Jean said, he got out a pocket map and wentover it carefully. It was a long time after that before he turned tosee if she was all right.

　　Sara Lee sat forward and watched everything. She saw little evidence ofwar, beyond the occasional sentries and chains. Women were walking alongthe roads. Children stopped and pointed, smiling, at the battered car.One very small boy saluted, and Henri as gravely returned the salute.

　　Some time after that he turned to her.

　　"I find that I shall have to leave you in Dunkirk," he said. "A matterof a day only, probably. But I will see before I go that you arecomfortable."

　　"I shall be quite all right, of course."

　　But something had gone out of the day for her.

　　Sara Lee learned one thing that day, learned it as some women do learn,by the glance of an eye, the tone of a voice. The chauffeur adoredHenri. His one unbandaged eye stole moments from the road to glanceat him. When he spoke, while Henri read his map, his very voice betrayedhim. And while she pondered the thing, woman-fashion they drew intothe square of Dunkirk, where the statue of Jean Bart, pirate andprivateer stared down at this new procession of war which passed dailyand nightly under his cold eyes.

　　Jean and a porter carried in her luggage. Henri and a voluble andsmiling Frenchwoman showed her to her room. She felt like an island ofsilence in a rapid-rolling sea of French. The Frenchwoman threw openthe door.

　　A great room with high curtained windows; a huge bed with a faded giltcanopy and heavy draperies; a wardrobe as vast as the bed; and for atoilet table an enormous mirror reaching to the ceiling and with amarble shelf below—that was her room.

　　"I think you will be comfortable here, mademoiselle."

　　Sara Lee, who still clutched her small bag of gold, shook her head.

　　"Comfortable, yes," she said. "But I am afraid it is very expensive."

　　Henri named an extremely low figure—an exact fourth, to be accurate,of its real cost. A surprising person Henri, with his worn uniform andhis capacity for kindly mendacity. And seeing something in theFrenchwoman's face that perhaps he had expected, he turned to heralmost fiercely:

　　"You are to understand, madame, that this lady has been placed in mycare by authority that will not be questioned. She is to have everydeference."

　　That was all, but was enough. And from that time on Sara Lee Kennedy,of Ohio, was called, in the tiny box downstairs which constituted theoffice, "Mademoiselle La Princesse."

　　Henri did a characteristic and kindly thing for Sara Lee before he leftthat evening on one of the many mysterious journeys that he was to makeduring the time Sara Lee knew him. He came to her door, menus in hand,and painstakingly ordered for her a dinner for that night, and thethree meals for the day following.

　　He made no suggestion of dining with her that evening. Indeed, watchinghim from her small table, Sara Lee decided that he had put her entirelyout of his mind. He did not so much as glance at her. Save the cashierat her boxed-in desk and money drawer, she was the only woman in thatroom full of officers. Quite certainly Henri was the only man who didnot find some excuse for glancing in her direction.

　　But finishing early, he paused by the cashier's desk to pay for his meal,and then he gave Sara Lee the stiffest and most ceremonious of bows.

　　She felt hurt. Alone in her great room, the curtains drawn by order ofthe police, lest a ray of light betray the town to eyes in the air, shewent carefully over the hours she had spent with Henri that day,looking for a cause of offense. She must have hurt him or he wouldsurely have stopped to speak to her.

　　Perhaps already he was finding her a burden. She flushed with shamewhen she remembered about the meals he had had to order for her, andshe sat up in her great bed until late, studying by candlelight suchphrases as:

　　"Il y a une erreur dans la note," and "Garçon, quels fruitsavez-vous?"

　　She tried to write to Harvey that night, but she gave it up at last.There was too much he would not understand. She could not write franklywithout telling of Henri, and to this point everything had centeredabout Henri. It all rather worried her, because there was nothing shewas ashamed of, nothing she should have had to conceal. She had yet tolearn, had Sara Lee, that many of the concealments of life are basednot on wrongdoing but on fear of misunderstanding.

　　So she got as far as: "Dearest Harvey: I am here in a hotel atDunkirk"—and then stopped, fairly engulfed in a wave of homesickness.Not so much for Harvey as for familiar things—Uncle James in his chairby the fire, with the phonograph playing "My Little Gray Home in theWest"; her own white bedroom; the sun on the red geraniums in thedining-room window; the voices of happy children wandering home fromschool.

　　She got up and went to the window, first blowing out the candle.Outside, the town lay asleep, and from a gate in the old wall a sentrywith a bugle blew a quiet "All's well." From somewhere near, on topof the mairie perhaps, where eyes all night searched the sky for danger,came the same trumpet call of safety for the time, of a little longerfor quiet sleep.

　　For two days the girl was alone. There was no sign of Henri. She hadnothing to read, and her eyes, watching hour after hour the panoramathat passed through the square under her window, searched vainly forhis battered gray car. In daytime the panorama was chiefly of motorlorries—she called them trucks—piled high with supplies, oftenfodder for the horses in that vague district beyond ammunition and food.Now and then a battery rumbled through, its gunners on the limbers,detached, with folded arms; and always there were soldiers.

　　Sometimes, from her window, she saw the market people below, in theirstriped red-and-white booths, staring up at the sky. She would look up,too, and there would be an aëroplane sliding along, sometimes so lowthat one could hear the faint report of the exhaust.

　　But it was the ambulances that Sara Lee looked for. Mostly they cameat night, a steady stream of them. Sometimes they moved rapidly.Again, one would be going very slowly, and other machines would circleimpatiently round it and go on. A silent, grim procession in themoonlight it was, and it helped the girl to bear the solitude of thosetwo interminable days.

　　Inside those long gray cars with the red crosses painted on the tops—asymbol of mercy that had ceased to protect—inside those cars werewounded men, men who had perhaps lain for hours without food or care.Surely, surely it was right that she had come. The little she could domust count in the great total. She twisted Harvey's ring on her fingerand sent a little message to him.

　　"You will forgive me when you know, dear," was the message. "It is soterrible! So pitiful!"

　　Yet during the day the square was gay enough. Officers in spurs clankedacross, wide capes blowing in the wind. Common soldiers bought fruitand paper bags of fried potatoes from the booths. Countless dogs foughtunder the feet of passers-by, and over all leered the sardonic face ofJean Bart, pirate and privateer.

　　Sara Lee went out daily, but never far. And she practiced French withthe maid, after this fashion:

　　"Draps de toile," said the smiling maid, putting the linen sheets onthe bed.

　　Sara Lee would repeat it some six times.

　　"Taies d'oreiller," when the pillows came. So Sara Lee called pillowsby the name of their slips from that time forward! Came a bright hourwhen she rang the bell for the boy and asked for matches, which shecertainly did not need, with entire success.

　　On the second night Sara Lee slept badly. At two o'clock she heard asound in the hall, and putting on her kimono, opened the door. On astiff chair outside, snoring profoundly, sat Jean, fully dressed.

　　The light from her candle roused him and he was wide awake in an instant.

　　"Why, Jean!" she said. "Isn't there any place for you to sleep?"

　　"I am to remain here, mademoiselle," he replied in English.

　　"But surely—not because of me?"

　　"It is the captain's order," he said briefly.

　　"I don't understand. Why?"

　　"All sorts of people come to this place, mademoiselle. But few ladies.It is best that I remain here."

　　She could not move him. He had remained standing while she spoke to him,and now he yawned, striving to conceal it. Sara Lee felt veryuncomfortable, but Jean's attitude and voice alike were firm. Shethanked him and said good night, but she slept little after that.

　　Lying there in the darkness, a warm glow of gratitude to Henri, and afeeling of her safety in his care, wrapped her like a mantle. Shewondered drowsily if Harvey would ever have thought of all the smallthings that seemed second nature to this young Belgian officer.

　　She rather thought not.