Chapter XVI

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

　　Time passed quickly, as always it does when there is work to do. Roundthe ruined houses the gray grass turned green again, and in travestiesof gardens early spring flowers began to show a touch of color.

　　The first of them greeted Sara Lee one morning as she stood on herdoorstep in the early sun. She gathered them and placed them, one oneach grave, in the cemetery near the poplar trees, where small woodencrosses, sometimes surmounted by a cap, marked many graves.

　　Marie, a silent subdued Marie, worked steadily in the little house. Shedid not weep, but now and then Sara Lee found her stirring something onthe stove and looking toward the quiet mill in the fields. And onceSara Lee, surprising that look on her face, put her arms about the girland held her for a moment. But she did not say anything. There wasnothing to say.

　　With the opening up of the spring came increased movement and activityamong the troops. The beach and the sand dunes round La Panne werefilled with drilling men, Belgium's new army. Veterans of the winter,at rest behind the lines, sat in the sun and pared potatoes for themidday meal. Convalescents from the hospital appeared in motleygarments from the Ambulance Ocean and walked along the water front,where the sea, no longer gray and sullen, rolled up in thin white linesof foam to their very feet. Winter straw came out of wooden sabots.Winter-bitten hands turned soft. Canal boats blossomed out with greatwashings. And the sentry at the gun emplacement in the sand up thebeach gave over gathering sticks for his fire, and lay, when no one wasabout, in a hollow in the dune, face to the sky.

　　So spring came to that small fragment of Belgium which had been saved,spring and hope. Soon now the great and powerful Allies would drive outthe Huns, and all would be as it had been. Splendid rumors were about.The Germans were already yielding at La Bassée. There was to be a greatdrive along the entire Front, and hopefully one would return home intime for the spring planting.

　　A sort of informal council took place occasionally in the little house.Maps replaced the dressings on the table in the salle à manger, andjunior officers, armed with Sara Lee's box of pins, thrust back theenemy at various points and proved conclusively that his position wasuntenable. They celebrated these paper victories with Sara Lee's tea,and went away the better for an hour or so of hope and tea and a girl'ssoft voice and quiet eyes.

　　Now and then there was one, of course, who lagged behind his fellows,with a yearning tenderness in his face that a glance from the girl wouldhave quickly turned to love. But Sara Lee had no coquetry. When, asoccasionally happened, there was a bit too much fervor when her hand waskissed, she laid it where it belonged—to loneliness and the spring—andbecame extremely maternal and very, very kind. Which—both of them—aredeath blows to young love.

　　The winter floods were receding. Along the Yser Canal mud-caked flatsbegan to appear, with here and there rusty tangles of barbed wire. Andwith the lessening of the flood came new activities to the little house.The spring drive was coming.

　　There was spring indeed, everywhere but in Henri's heart.

　　Day after day messages were left with Sara Lee by men inuniform—sometimes letters, sometimes a word. And these she faithfullycared for until such time as Jean came for them. Now and then it wasHenri who came, but when he stayed in the village he made hisheadquarters at the house of the mill. There, with sacking over thewindows, he wrote his reports by lamplight, reports which Jean carriedback to the villa in the fishing village by the sea.

　　However, though he no longer came and went as before, Henri made frequentcalls at the house of mercy. But now he came in the evenings, when theplace was full of men. Sara Lee was doing more dressings than before.The semi-armistice of winter was over, and there were nights when a rowof wounded men lay on the floor in the little salle à manger and waited,in a sort of dreadful quiet, to be taken away.

　　Rumors came of hard fighting farther along the line, and sometimes, onnights when the clouds hung low, the flashes of the guns at Ypres lookedlike incessant lightning. From the sand dunes at Nieuport and Dixmudethere was firing also, and the air seemed sometimes to be full ofscouting planes.

　　The Canadians were moving toward the Front at Neuve Chapelle at thattime. And one day a lorry, piled high with boxes, rolled and thumpeddown the street, and halted by René.

　　"Rather think we are lost," explained the driver, grinning sheepishlyat René.

　　There were four boys in khaki on the truck, and not a word of Frenchamong them. Sara Lee, who rolled her own bandages now, heard thespeech and came out.

　　"Good gracious!" she said, and gave an alarmed glance at the sky. Butit was the noon hour, when every good German abandons war for food, andthe sky was empty.

　　The boys cheered perceptibly. Here was at last some one who spoke aChristian tongue.

　　"Must have taken the wrong turning, miss," said one of them, saluting.

　　"Where do you want to go?" she asked. "You are very close to the BelgianFront here. It is not at all safe."

　　They all saluted; then, staring at her curiously, told her.

　　"Dear me!" said Sara Lee. "You are a long way off. And a long wayfrom home too."

　　They smiled. They looked, with their clean-shaven faces, absurdly youngafter the bearded Belgian soldiers.

　　"I am an American, too," said Sara Lee with just a touch of homesicknessin her voice. She had been feeling lonely lately. "If you have time tocome in I could give you luncheon. René can tell us if any German airmachines come over."

　　Would they come in? Indeed, yes! They crawled down off the lorry, andtook off their caps, and ate every particle of food in the house. And,though they were mutely curious at first, soon they were asking questions.How long had she been there? What did she do? Wasn't it dangerous?

　　"Not so dangerous as it looks," said Sara Lee, smiling. "The Germansseldom bother the town now. It is not worth while."

　　Later on they went over the house. They climbed the broken staircaseand stared toward the break in the poplar trees, from the roofless floorabove.

　　"Some girl!" one of them said in an undertone.

　　The others were gazing intently toward the Front. Never before had theybeen so close. Never had they seen a ruined town. War, until now, hadbeen a thing of Valcartier, of a long voyage, of much drill in the mudat Salisbury Plain. Now here they saw, at their feet, what war could do.

　　"Damn them!" said one of the boys suddenly. "Fellows, we'll get back atthem soon."

　　So they went away, a trifle silent and very grateful. But before theyleft they had a glimpse of Sara Lee's room, with the corner gone, andHarvey's picture on the mantel.

　　"Some girl!" they repeated as they drove up the street. It was thetribute of inarticulate youth.

　　Sara Lee went back to her bandages and her thoughts. She had not a greatdeal of time to think, what with the officers stopping in to fight theirpaper-and-pin battles, and with letters to write and dressings to makeand supplies to order. She began to have many visitors—officers fromthe French lines, correspondents on tours of the Front, and once even anEnglish cabinet member, who took six precious lumps of sugar in his teaand dug a piece of shell out of the wall with his pocketknife as asouvenir.

　　Once a British aviator brought his machine down in the field by the mill,and walked over with the stiff stride of a man who has been for hours inthe air. She gave him tea and bread and butter, and she learned then ofthe big fighting that was to come.

　　When she was alone she thought about Henri. Generally her thoughts weretender; always they were grateful. But she was greatly puzzled. He hadsaid that he loved her. Then, if he loved her, why should he not begentle and kind to her? Men did not hurt the women they loved. Andbecause she was hurt, she was rather less than just. He had not askedher to marry him. He had said that he loved her, but that was different.And the insidious poison of Harvey's letter about foreigners began tohave its effect.

　　The truth was that she was tired. The strain was telling on her. Andat a time when she needed every moral support Henri had drawn off behinda wall of misery, and all her efforts at a renewal of their oldfriendship only brought up against a sort of stony despair.

　　There were times, too, when she grew a little frightened. She was soalone. What if Henri went away altogether? What if he took away thelittle car, and his protection, and the supplies that came so regularly?It was not a selfish fear. It was for her work that she trembled.

　　For the first time she realized her complete dependence on his goodwill. And now and then she felt that it would be good to see Harveyagain, and be safe from all worry, and not have to depend on a man wholoved her as Henri did. For that she never doubted. Inexperienced asshe was in such matters, she knew that the boy loved her. Just howwildly she did not know until later, too late to undo what the madnesshad done.

　　Then one day a strange thing happened. It had been raining, and when inthe late afternoon the sun came out it gleamed in the puddles that filledthe shell holes in the road and set to a red blaze the windows of thehouse of the mill.

　　First, soaring overhead, came a half dozen friendly planes. Next, theeyes of the enemy having thus been blinded, so to speak, there came aregiment of fresh troops, swinging down the street for all the world asthough the German Army was safely drinking beer in Munich. They passedRené, standing open-mouthed in the doorway, and one wag of a Belgian boy,out of sheer joy of spring, did the goose step as he passed the littlesentry and, head screwed round in the German salute, crossed his eyesover his impudent nose.

　　Came, then, the planes. Came the regiment, which turned off into a fieldand there spread itself, like a snake uncoiling, into a double line.Came a machine, gray and battered, containing officers. Came a generalwith gold braid on his shoulder, and a pleasant smile. Came the strangeevent.

　　The general found Sara Lee in the salle à manger cutting cotton intothree-inch squares, and he stood in the doorway and bowed profoundly.

　　"Mademoiselle Kennedy?" he inquired.

　　Sara Lee replied to that, and then gave a quick thought to her larder.Because generals usually meant tea. But this time at last, Sara Lee wasto receive something, not to give. She turned very white when she wastold, and said she had not deserved it; she was indeed on the verge ofdeclining, not knowing that there are certain things one does notdecline. But Marie brought her hat and jacket—a smiling, tremulousMarie—and Sara Lee put them on.

　　The general was very tall. In her short skirt and with flying hair shelooked like a child beside him as they walked across the fields.Suddenly Sara Lee was terribly afraid she was going to cry.

　　The troops stood rigidly at attention. And a cold wind flapped SaraLee's skirts, and the guns hammered at Ypres, and the general blew onhis fingers. And soon a low open car came down the street and theKing got out. Sara Lee watched him coming—his tall, slightly stoopedfigure, his fair hair, his plain blue uniform. Sara Lee had never seena king before, and she had always thought of them as sitting up on asort of platform—never as trudging through spring mud.

　　"What shall I do?" she asked nervously.

　　"He will shake hands, mademoiselle. Bow as he approaches. That is all."

　　The amazing interlude, indeed! With Sara Lee being decorated by theKing, and troops drawn up to do her honor, and over all the rumbling ofthe great guns. A palpitating and dazed Sara Lee, when the decorationwas fastened to her black jacket, a Sara Lee whose hat blew off atexactly the worst moment and rolled, end on, like a hoop, into a puddle.

　　But, oddly, she did not mind about the hat. She had only one consciousthought just then. She hoped that, wherever Uncle James might be in thatworld of the gone before, he might know what was happening to her—oreven see it. He would have liked it. He had believed in the Belgians andin the King. And now—the King did not go at once. He went back to thelittle house and went through it. And he and one of his generals climbedto the upper floor, and the King stood looking out silently toward theland he loved and which for a time was no longer his.p>He came down after a time, stooping his tall figure in the low doorway,and said he would like some tea. So Marie put the kettle on, and SaraLee and the King talked. It was all rather dazing. Every now and thenshe forgot certain instructions whispered her by the general, and aftera time the King said: "Why do you do that, mademoiselle?"

　　For Sara Lee, with an intent face and moving lips, had been steppingbackward.

　　Sara Lee flushed to the eyes.

　　"Because, sire, I was told to remain at a distance of six feet."

　　"But we are being informal," said the King, smiling. "And it is a verylittle room."

　　Sara Lee, who had been taught in the schoolroom that kings are usurpersof the divine rights of the people—Sara Lee lost just a bit of herstaunch democracy that day. She saw the King of the Belgians for whathe really was, a ruler, but a symbol as well. He represented hiscountry, as the Flag she loved represented hers. The flag was America,the King was Belgium. That was all.

　　It was a very humble and flushed Sara Lee who watched the gray car goflying up the street later on. She went in and told the whole story toHarvey's picture, but it was difficult to feel that he was hearing. Hiseyes were turned away and his face was set and stern. And, at last, shegave it up. This thing which meant so much to her would never meananything to Harvey. She knew, even then, what he would say.

　　"Decorate you! I should think they might. Medals are cheap. Everybodyover there is getting medals. You feed their men and risk your life andyour reputation, and they give you a thing to pin on. It's cheap at theprice."

　　And later on those were Harvey's very words. But to be fair to him theywere but the sloughing of a wound that would not heal.

　　That evening Henri came again. He was, for the first time, his gay selfagain—at least on the surface. It was as though, knowing what he wasgoing into, he would leave with Sara Lee no feeling, if he neverreturned, that she had inflicted a lasting hurt. He was everywhere inthe little house, elbowing his way among the men with his cheerynonsense, bantering the weary ones until they smiled, carrying hot waterfor Sara Lee and helping her now and then with a bad dressing.

　　"If you would do it in this fashion, mademoiselle," he would say, "withone turn of the bandage over the elbow—"

　　"But it won't hold that way."

　　"You say that to me, mademoiselle? I who have taught you all you knowof bandaging?"

　　They would wrangle a bit, and end by doing it in Sara Lee's way.

　　He had a fund of nonsense that he drew on, too, when a dressing waspainful. It would run like this, to an early accompaniment of groans:

　　"Pierre, what can you put in your left hand that you cannot place in theright? Stop grunting like a pig, and think, man!"

　　Pierre would give a final rumble and begin to think deeply.

　　"I cannot think. I—in my left hand, monsieur le capitaine?"

　　"In your left hand."

　　The little crowd in the dressing room would draw in close about the tableto listen.

　　"I do not know, monsieur."

　　"Idiot!" Henri would say. "Your right elbow, man!"

　　And the dressing was done.

　　He had an inexhaustible stock of such riddles, almost never guessed. Hewould tell the answer and then laugh delightedly. And pain seemed toleave the little room when he entered it.

　　It was that night that Henri disappeared.