Chapter XVII

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

　　There was a question to settle, and it was for Henri to do it. Twoquestions indeed. One was a matter of engineering, and before the bottomfell out of his world Henri had studied engineering. The second wasmore serious.

　　For the first, this thing had happened. Of all the trenches to be held,the Belgians had undeniably the worst. Properly speaking they were nottrenches at all, but shallow gutters dug a foot or two into the saturatedground and then built man-high with bags of earth or sand. Here andthere they were not dug at all, but were purely shelters, against arailway embankment, of planks or sandbags, and reinforced by rails fromthe deserted track behind which they were hidden.

　　For this corner of Belgium had been saved by turning it into a shallowlake. By opening the gates in the dikes the Allies had let in the seaand placed a flood in front of the advancing enemy. The battle frontwas a reeking pond. The opposing armies lived like duck hunters in aswamp. To dig a foot was to encounter water. Machine guns here andthere sat but six inches above the yellow flood. Men lay in pools tofire them. To reach outposts were narrow paths built first of bags ofearth—a life, sometimes for every bag. And, when this filling wassufficient, on top a path of fascines, bound together in bundles, madea footway.

　　For this reason the Belgians approached their trenches not through deepcuts which gave them shelter but with no other cover than the darknessof night. During the day, they lay in their shallow dugouts, cut offfrom any connection with the world behind them. Food, cooked miles away,came up at night, cold and unappetizing. For water, having exhaustedtheir canteens, there was nothing but the brackish tide before them,ill-smelling and reeking of fever. Water carts trundled forward atnight, but often they were far too few.

　　The Belgians, having faced their future through long years of anxiety,had been trained to fight. In a way they had been trained to fight alosing war, for they could not hope to defeat their greedy neighbor onthe east. But now they found themselves fighting almost not at all,condemned to inactivity, to being almost passively slaughtered by enemyartillery, and to living under such conditions as would have sapped thecourage of a less desperate people.

　　To add to the difficulties, not only did the sea encroach, turning afertile land into a salt marsh, but the winter rains, unusually heavythat tragic first winter, and lacking their usual egress to the sea,spread the flood. There were many places well back of the lines wherefields were flooded, and where roads, sadly needed, lost themselves inunfordable wallows of mud and water.

　　Henri then, knowing all this—none better—had his first question tosettle, which was this: As spring advanced the flood had commenced torecede. Time came when, in those trenches now huddled shallow behindthe railway track, one could live in a certain comfort. In the deeperones, the bottom of the trench appeared for the first time.

　　On a day previous, however, the water had commenced to come back. Therehad been no rain, but little by little in a certain place yellow,ill-smelling little streams began to flow sluggishly into the trenches.Seeped, rather than flowed. At first the Belgian officers laid it tothat bad luck that had so persistently pursued them. Then they held aconference in the small brick house with its maps and its pine tablesand its picture of an American harvester on the wall, which was nowheadquarters.

　　Sitting under the hanging lamp, with an orderly making coffee at a stovein the corner, they talked it over. Henri was there, silent before hiselders, but intently listening. And at last they turned to him.

　　"I can go and find out," he said quietly. "It is possible, though I donot see how." He smiled. "They are, I think, only drying themselves atour expense. It is a bit of German humor."

　　But the cry of "Calais in a month!" was in the air, and undoubtedly therehad been renewed activity along the German Front near the sea. Thesecond question to be answered was dependent on the first.

　　Had the Germans, as Henri said, merely shifted the water, by some cleverengineering, to the Belgian trenches, or was there some bigger thing onhand? What, for instance, if they were about to attempt to drain theinundation, smash the Belgian line, and march by the Dunkirk road toCalais?

　　So, that night while Henri jested about Pierre's right elbow and watchedSara Lee for a smile, he had difficult work before him.

　　Sometime near midnight he slipped away. Jean was waiting in the street,and wrung the boy's hand.

　　"I could go with you," he said rather wistfully.

　　"You don't speak their ugly tongue."

　　"I could be mute—shell shock. You could be helping me back."

　　But Henri only held his hand a moment and shook his head.

　　"You would double the risk, and—what good would it do?"

　　"Two pistols are better than one."

　　"I have two pistols, my friend," said Henri, and turned the corner ofthe building, past the boards René had built in, toward the house ofthe mill. But once out of Jean's sight he stopped a moment, his handresting against that frail wall to Sara Lee's room. It was his good-byto her.

　　For three days Jean stayed in the village. He slept at the mill, buthe came for his meals to the little house. Once he went to Dunkirk andbrought out provisions and the mail, including Sara Lee's monthlyallowance. But mostly he sat in the mill house and waited. He couldnot read.

　　"You do not eat at all, Jean," Sara Lee said to him more than once. Andtwice she insisted that he was feverish, and placed a hand that wassomewhat marred with much peeling of vegetables, on his forehead.

　　"I am entirely well, mademoiselle," he would say, and draw back. He hadanxieties enough just now without being reminded by the touch of awoman's hand of all that he had lost.

　　Long before that Sara Lee had learned not to question Jean about Henri'sabsences. Even his knowledge, now, that she knew something of Henri'swork, did not remove the barrier. So Sara Lee waited, as did Jean, butmore helplessly. She knew something was wrong, but she had not Jean'sprivilege of going at night to the trenches and there waiting, staringover the gray water with its ugly floating shadows, for Henri to emergefrom the flood.

　　Something rather forced and mechanical there was those days in her work.Her smile was rather set. She did not sleep well. And one night sheviolated Henri's orders and walked across the softened fields to beyondthe poplar trees.

　　There was nothing to see except an intermittent flash from the cloudsthat hung low over the sea at Nieuport, where British gunboats werebombarding the coast; or the steady streaks from the Ypres salient, wherenight and day the guns never rested.

　　From the Belgian trenches, fifteen hundred feet or so away, there was nosound. A German electric signal blazed its message in code, and went outquickly. Now and then a rifle shot, thin and sharp, rang out from where,under the floating starlights, keen eyes on each side watched formovements on the other.

　　Sara Lee sat down under a tree and watched for a while. Then she foundherself crying softly. It was all so sad, and useless, and cruel. Andsomewhere there ahead was Henri, Henri with his blue eyes, his smile,the ardor of his young arms—Henri, who had been to her many friends.

　　Sara Lee had never deceived herself about Henri. She loved him. Butshe was quite certain she was not in love with him, which is entirelydifferent. She knew that this last was impossible, because she wasengaged to Harvey. What was probably the truth was that she loved themboth in entirely different ways. Men have always insisted on suchpossibilities, and have even asserted their right, now and then, tolove two women at the same time. But women are less frank withthemselves.

　　And, in such cases, there is no grand passion. There are tenderness,and the joy of companionship, and sometimes a touching dependence. Butit is not a love that burns with a white fire.

　　Perhaps Sara Lee was one of those women who are always loved more thanthey love. There are such women, not selfish, not seeking love, butsoftly feminine, kind, appealing and genuine. Men need, after all, butan altar on which to lay tribute. And the high, remote white altar thatwas Sara Lee had already received the love of two strong men.

　　She was not troubling her head that night, however, about being an altar,of a sort. She cried a little at first, because she was terrified forHenri and because Jean's face was growing pinched and gray. Then shecried very hard, prone on the ground and face down, because Henri wasyoung, and all of life should have been before him. And he was missing.

　　Henri was undeniably missing. Even the King knew it now, and set downin his heart, among the other crosses there, Henri's full name, whichwe may not know, and took to pacing his little study and looking out atthe spring sea.

　　That night Marie, having ladled to the bottom of her kettle, found SaraLee missing, and was told by René of the direction she had taken. Marie,muttering to herself, set out to find her, and almost stumbled over herin the wood by the road.

　　She sat down on the ground without a word and placed a clumsy hand onthe girl's shoulder. It was not until Sara Lee ceased sobbing thatshe spoke:

　　"It is far from hopeless, mademoiselle."

　　They had by now established a system of communication. Sara Lee spokeher orders in halting French, but general conversation was beyond her.And much hearing of English had taught the Belgian girl enough to follow.

　　Sara Lee replied, then, in smothered English:

　　"He is gone, Marie. He will never come back."

　　"Who can tell? There are many missing who are not dead."

　　Sara Lee shuddered. For spies were not made prisoners. They had norights as prisoners of war. Their own governments did not protect them.To Henri capture was death. But she could not say this to Marie.

　　Marie sat softly stroking Sara Lee's hair, her own eyes tragic andtearless.

　　"Even if it were—the other," she said, "it is not so bad to die forone's country. The thing that is terrible, that leaves behind it onlybitterness and grief and no hope, mademoiselle, even with many prayers,is that one has died a traitor."

　　She coaxed Sara Lee back at last. They went through the fields, forfresh troops were being thrown into the Belgian trenches and the streetwas full of men. Great dray horses were dragging forward batteries, theheavy guns sliding and slipping In the absence of such information asonly Henri had been wont to bring it was best to provide for the worst.

　　The next day Jean did not come over for breakfast, and René handed SaraLee a note.

　　"I am going to England," Jean had written that dawn in the house of themill. "And from there to Holland. I can get past the barrier and shallwork down toward the Front. I must learn what has happened, mademoiselle.As you know, if he was captured, there is no hope. But there is anexcellent chance that he is in hiding, unable to get back. Look for mein two weeks."

　　There followed what instructions he had given as to her supplies, whichwould come as before. Beautifully written in Jean's small fine hand, itspelled for Sara Lee the last hope. She read Jean's desperation throughits forced cheerfulness. And she faced for the first time a long periodof loneliness in the crowded little house.

　　She tried very hard to fill the gap that Henri had left—tried to jokewith the men in her queer bits of French; was more smiling than ever,for fear she might be less. But now and then in cautious whispers sheheard Henri's name, and her heart contracted with very terror.

　　A week. Two weeks. Twice the village was bombarded severely, but thelittle house escaped by a miracle. Marie considered it the same miraclethat left holy pictures unhurt on the walls of destroyed houses, andallowed the frailest of old ebony and rosewood crucifixes to remainunharmed.

　　Great generals, often as tall as they were great, stopped at the littlehouse to implore Sara Lee to leave. But she only shook her head.

　　"Not unless you send me away," she always said; "and that would breakmy heart."

　　"But to move, mademoiselle, only to the next village!" they wouldremonstrate, and as a final argument: "You are too valuable to risk aninjury."

　　"I must remain here," she said. And some of them thought theyunderstood. When an unusually obdurate officer came along, Sara Leewould insist on taking him to the cellar.

　　"You see!" she would say, holding her candle high. "It is a nice cellar,warm and dry. It is"—proudly—"one of the best cellars in the village.It is a really homelike cellar."

　　The officer would go away then, and send her cigarettes for her men or,as in more than one case, a squad with bags of earth and other thingsto protect the little house as much as possible. After a time the littlehouse began to represent the ideas in protection and camouflage, then inits early stages, of many different minds.

　　René shot a man there one night, a skulking figure working its way inthe shadows up the street. It was just before dawn, and René, who wassleepless those days, like the others, called to him. The man startedto run, dodging behind walls. But René ran faster and killed him.

　　He was a German in Belgian peasant's clothing. But he wore the greatshoes of the German soldier, and he had been making a rough map of theBelgian trenches.

　　Sara Lee did not see him. But when she heard the shot she went out, andRené told her breathlessly.

　　From that time on her terrors took the definite form of Henri lying deadin a ruined street, and being buried, as this man was buried, withoutceremony and without a prayer, in some sodden spring field.