Chapter XXIX

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

　　Late in October Sara Lee went back to the little house of mercy; wentunaccredited, and with her own money. She had sold her bit of property.

　　In London she went to the Traverses, as before. But with a differencetoo. For Sara Lee had learned the strangeness of the English, who areslow to friendships but who never forget. Indeed a telegram met her atLiverpool asking her to stop with them in London. She replied, refusing,but thanking them, and saying she would call the next afternoon.

　　Everything was the same at Morley's: Rather a larger percentage of menin uniform, perhaps; greater crowds in the square; a little less of theoptimism which in the spring had predicted victory before autumn. Butthe same high courage, for all that.

　　August greeted her like an old friend. Even the waiters bowed to her,and upstairs the elderly chambermaid fussed over her like a mother.

　　"And you're going back!" she exclaimed. "Fancy that, now! You arebrave, miss."

　　But her keen eyes saw a change in Sara Lee. Her smile was the same, butthere were times when she forgot to finish a sentence, and she stood,that first morning, for an hour by the window, looking out as if she sawnothing.

　　She went, before the visit to the Traverses, to the Church of SaintMartin in the Fields. It was empty, save for a woman in a corner, whodid not kneel, but sat staring quietly before her. Sara Lee prayed aninarticulate bit of a prayer, that what the Traverses would have to tellher should not be the thing that she feared, but that, if it were, shebe given courage to meet it and to go on with her work.

　　The Traverses would know; Mrs. Cameron was a friend. They would knowabout Henri, and about Jean. Soon, within the hour, she would learneverything. So she asked for strength, and then sat there for a time,letting the peace of the old church quiet her, as had the broken wallsand shattered altar of that other church, across the channel.

　　It was rather a surprise to Sara Lee to have Mrs. Travers put her armsabout her and kiss her. Mr. Travers, too, patted her hand when he tookit. But they had, for all that, the reserve of their class. Much thatthey felt about Sara Lee they did not express even to each other.

　　"We are so grateful to you," Mrs. Travers said. "I am only one mother,and of course now—" She looked down at her black dress. "But how manyothers there are who will want to thank you, when this terrible thing isover and they learn about you!"

　　Mr. Travers had been eying Sara Lee.

　　"Didn't use you up, did it?" he asked. "You're not looking quite fit."

　　Sara Lee was very pale just then. In a moment she would know.

　　"I'm quite well," she said. "I—do you hear from Mrs. Cameron?"

　　"Frequently. She has worked hard, but she is not young." It was Mrs.Travers who spoke. "She's afraid of the winter there. I rather think,since you want to go back, that she will be glad to turn your domainover to you for a time."

　　"Then—the little house is still there?"

　　"Indeed, yes! A very famous little house, indeed. But it is alwaysknown as your house. She has felt like a temporary chatelaine. Shealways thought you would come back."

　　Tea had come, as before. The momentary stir gave her a chance to braceherself. Mr. Travers brought her cup to her and smiled gently downat her.

　　"We have a plan to talk over," he said, "when you have had your tea. Ihope you will agree to it."

　　He went back to the hearthrug.

　　"When I was there before," Sara Lee said, trying to hold her cup steady,"there was a young Belgian officer who was very kind to me. Indeed, allthe credit for what I did belongs to him. And since I went home Ihaven't heard—"

　　Her voice broke suddenly. Mr. Travers glanced at his wife. Not fornothing had Mrs. Cameron written her long letters to these old friends,in the quiet summer afternoons when the sun shone down on the lifelessstreet before the little house.

　　"I'm afraid we have bad news for you." Mrs. Travers put down heruntasted tea. "Or rather, we have no news. Of course," she added,seeing Sara Lee's eyes, "in this war no news may be the best—that is,he may be a prisoner."

　　"That," Sara Lee heard herself say, "is impossible. If they capturedhim they would shoot him."

　　Mrs. Travers nodded silently. They knew Henri's business, too, by thattime, and that there was no hope for a captured spy.

　　"And—Jean?"

　　They did not know of Jean; so she told them, still in that far-awayvoice. And at last Mrs. Travers brought an early letter of Mrs.Cameron's and read a part of it aloud.

　　"He seems to have been delirious," she read, holding her reading glassesto her eyes. "A friend of his, very devoted to him, was missing, and helearned this somehow.

　　"He escaped from the hospital and got away in an ambulance. He camestraight here and wakened us. There had been a wounded man in themachine, and he left him on our doorstep. When I got to the door thecar was going wildly toward the Front, with both lamps lighted. We didnot understand then, of course, and no one thought of following it. Theambulance was found smashed by a shell the next morning, and at first wethought that he had been in it. But there was no sign that he had been,and that night one of the men from the trenches insisted that he hadclimbed out of a firing trench where the soldier stood, and had goneforward, bareheaded, toward the German lines.

　　"I am afraid it was the end. The men, however, who all loved him, donot think so. It seems that he has done miracles again and again. Iunderstand that along the whole Belgian line they watch for him at night.The other night a German on reconnoissance got very close to our wire,and was greeted not by shots but by a wild hurrah. He was almostparalyzed with surprise. They brought him here on the way back to theprison camp, and he still looked dazed."

　　Sara Lee sat with her hands clenched. Mrs. Travers folded the letterand put it back into its envelope.

　　"How long ago was that?" Sara Lee asked in a low tone. "Because, if hewas coming back at all—"

　　"Four months."

　　Suddenly Sara Lee stood up.

　　"I think I ought to tell you," she said with a dead-white face, "that Iam responsible. He cared for me; and I was in love with him too. OnlyI didn't know it then. I let him bring me to England, because—Isuppose it was because I loved him. I didn't think then that it wasthat. I was engaged to a man at home."

　　"Sit down," said Mr. Travers. "My dear child, nothing can be your fault."

　　"He came with me, and the Germans got through. He had had word, but—"

　　"Have you your salts?" Mr. Travers asked quietly of his wife.

　　"I'm not fainting. I'm only utterly wretched."

　　The Traverses looked at each other. They were English. They had takentheir own great loss quietly, because it was an individual grief andmust not be intruded on the sorrow of a nation. But they found thiswhite-faced girl infinitely appealing, a small and fragile figure, towhose grief must be added, without any fault of hers, a bitter andlasting remorse.

　　Sara Lee stood up and tried to smile.

　　"Please don't worry about me," she said. "I need something to do, that'sall. You see, I've been worrying for so long. If I can get to work andtry to make up I'll not be so hopeless. But I am not quite hopeless,either," she added hastily. It was as though by the very word she hadconsigned Henri to death. "You see, I am like the men; I won't give himup. And perhaps some night he will come across from the other side, outof the dark."

　　Mr. Travers took her back to the hotel. When he returned from payingoff the taxi he found her looking across at the square.

　　"Do you remember," she asked him, "the time when the little donkey washurt over there?"

　　"I shall never forget it."

　　"And the young officer who ran out when I did, and shot the poor thing?"

　　Mr. Travers remembered.

　　"That was he—the man we have been speaking of."

　　For the first time that day her eyes filled with tears.

　　Sara Lee, at twenty, was already living in her memories.

　　So again the lights went down in front, and the back drop became but aveil, and invisible. And to Sara Lee there came back again some of thecharacters of the early mise en scène—marching men, forage wagons,squadrons of French cavalry escorting various staffs, commandeered farmhorses with shaggy fetlocks fastened in rope corrals, artillery rumblingalong rutted roads which shook the gunners almost off the limbers.

　　Nothing was changed—and everything. There was no René to smile hisadoring smile, but Marie came out, sobbing and laughing, and threwherself into the girl's arms. The little house was the same, save fora hole in the kitchen wall. There were the great piles of white bowlsand the shining kettles. There was the corner of her room, patched byRené's hands, now so long quiet. A few more shell holes in the street,many more little crosses in the field near the poplar trees, more Alliedaëroplanes in the air—that was all that was changed.

　　But to Sara Lee everything was changed, for all that. The little housewas grave and still, like a house of the dead. Once it had echoed toyoung laughter, had resounded to the noise and excitement of Henri'severy entrance. Even when he was not there it was as though it butwaited for him to stir it into life, and small echoes of his gayety hadseemed to cling to its old walls.

　　Sara Lee stood on the doorstep and looked within. She had come back.Here she would work and wait, and if in the goodness of providence heshould come back, here he would find her, all the empty months gone andforgotten.

　　If he did not—

　　"I shall still be calling you, and waiting," he had written. She, too,would call and wait, and if not here, then surely in the fullness oftime which is eternity the call would be answered.

　　In October Sara Lee took charge again of the little house. Mrs. Cameronwent back to England, but not until the Traverses' plan had beenrevealed. They would support the little house, as a memorial to the sonwho had died. It was, Mrs. Travers wrote, the finest tribute they couldoffer to his memory, that night after night tired and ill and woundedmen might find sanctuary, even for a little time, under her care.

　　Luxuries began to come across the channel, food and dressings and tobacco.Knitted things, too; for another winter was coming, and already the frostlay white on the fields in the mornings. The little house took on a newair of prosperity. There were days when it seemed almost swaggeringwith opulence.

　　It had need of everything, however. With the prospect of a secondwinter, when an advance was impossible, the Germans took to hammeringagain. Bombardment was incessant. The little village was again undersuspicion, and there came days of terror when it seemed as though eventhe fallen masonry must be reduced to powder. The church went entirely.

　　By December Sara Lee had ceased to take refuge during the bombardments.The fatalism of the Front had got her. She would die or live accordingto the great plan, and nothing could change that. She did not greatlycare which, except for her work, and even that she felt could be carriedon by another as well.

　　There was no news of Henri, but once the King's equerry, going by, hadstopped to see her and had told her the story.

　　"He was ill, undoubtedly," he said. "Even when he went to London he wasill, and not responsible. The King understands that. He was a braveboy, mademoiselle."

　　But the last element of hope seemed to go with that verification of hisillness. He was delirious, and he had gone in that condition into thefilthy chill waters of the inundation. Well and sane there had been achance, but plunging wild-eyed and reckless, into that hell across,there was none.

　　She did her best in the evenings to be cheerful, to take the place, inher small and serious fashion, of Henri's old gayety. But the soldierswhispered among themselves that mademoiselle was in grief, as they were,for the blithe young soldier who was gone.

　　What hope Sara Lee had had died almost entirely early in December. Onthe evening of a day when a steady rain had turned the roads into slimypitfalls, and the ditches to canals, there came, brought by a Belgiancorporal, the man who swore that Henri had passed him in his trenchwhile the others slept, had shoved him aside, which was unlike his usualcourtesy, and had climbed out over the top.

　　To Sara Lee this Hutin told his story. A short man with a red beard anda kindly smile that revealed teeth almost destroyed from neglect, he wasat first diffident in the extreme.

　　"It was the captain, mademoiselle," he asserted. "I know him well. Hehas often gone on his errands from near my post. I am"—he smiled—"Iam usually in the front line."

　　"What did he do?"

　　"He had no cap, mademoiselle. I thought that was odd. And as youknow—he does not wear his own uniform on such occasions. But he worehis own uniform, so that at first I did not know what he intended."

　　"Later on," she asked, "you—did you hear anything?"

　　"The usual sniping, mademoiselle. Nothing more."

　　"He went through the inundation?"

　　"How else could he go? Through the wire first, at the barrier, wherethere is an opening, if one knows the way, I saw him beyond it, by thelight of a fusee. There is a road there, or what was once a road. Hestood there. Then the lights went out."