The Amazing Interlude Part 16

Jean did not like Henri's s.h.i.+ft to the rear of the car. He drove with a sort of irritable feverishness, until Henri leaned over and touched him on the shoulder.

"We have mademoiselle with us, Jean," he said in French.

"It is not difficult to believe," growled Jean. But he slackened his pace somewhat.

So far the road had been deserted. Now they had come up to a stream of traffic flowing slowly toward the Front. Armored cars, looking tall and top-heavy, rumbled and jolted along. Many lorries, one limousine containing a general, a few Paris buses, all smeared a dingy gray and filled with French soldiers, numberless and nondescript open machines, here and there a horse-drawn vehicle--these filled the road. In and out among them Jean threaded his way, while Sara Lee grew crimson with the effort to see it all, and Henri sat very stiff and silent.

At a crossroads they were halted by troops who had fallen out for a rest.

The men stood at ease, and stared their fill at Sara Lee. Save for a few weary peasants, most of them had seen no women for months. But they were respectful, if openly admiring. And their admiration of her was nothing to Sara Lee's feeling toward them. She loved them all--boys with their first straggly beards on their chins; older men, looking worn and tired; French and Belgian; smiling and sad. But most of all, for Uncle James' sake, she loved the Belgians.

"I cannot tell you," she said breathlessly to Henri. "It is like a dream come true. And I shall help. You look doubtful sometimes, but I am sure."

"You are heaven sent," Henri replied gravely.

They turned into a crossroad after a time, and there in a little village Sara Lee found her new home. A strange village indeed, unoccupied and largely destroyed. Piles of bricks and plaster lined the streets.

Broken gla.s.s was everywhere. Jean blew out a tire finally, because of the gla.s.s, and they were obliged to walk the remainder of the way.

"A poor place, mademoiselle," Henri said as they went along. "A peaceful little town, and quite beautiful, once. And it harbored no troops. But everything is meat for the mouths of their guns."

Sara Lee stopped and looked about her. Her heart was beating fast, but her lips were steady enough.

"And it is here that I--"

"A little distance down the street. You must see before you decide."

Steady, pa.s.sionless firing was going on, not near, but far away, like low thunder before a summer storm. She was for months to live, to eat and sleep and dream to that rumbling from the Ypres salient, to waken when it ceased or to look up from her work at the strange silence. But it was new to her then, and terrible.

"Do they still sh.e.l.l this--this town?" she asked, rather breathlessly.

"Not now. They have done their work. Of course--" he did not finish.

Sara Lee's heart slowed down somewhat. After all, she had asked to be near the Front. And that meant guns and such destruction as was all about her. Only one thing troubled her.

"It is rather far from the trenches, isn't it?"

He smiled slightly.

"Far! It is not very far. Not so far as I would wish, mademoiselle.

But, to do what you desire, it is the best I have to offer."

"How far away are the trenches?"

"A quarter of a mile beyond those poplar trees." He indicated on a slight rise a row of great trees broken somewhat but not yet reduced to the twisted skeletons they were to become later on. In a long line they faced the enemy like sentinels, winter-quiet but dauntless, and behind them lay the wreck of the little village, quiet and empty.

"Will the men know I am here?" Sara Lee asked anxiously.

"But, yes, mademoiselle. At night they come up from the trenches, and fresh troops take their places. They come up this street and go on to wherever they are to rest. And when they find that a house of--mercy is here--and soup, they will come. More than you wish."

"Belgian soldiers?"

"Only Belgian soldiers. That is as you want it to be, I think."

"If only I spoke French!"

"You will learn. And in the meantime, mademoiselle, I have taken the liberty of finding you a servant--a young peasant woman. And you will also have a soldier always on guard."

Something that had been in the back of Sara Lee's mind for some time suddenly went away. She had been thinking of Aunt Harriet and the Ladies'

Aid Society of the Methodist Church. She had, in fact, been wondering how they would feel when they learned that she was living alone, the only woman among thousands of men. It had, oddly enough, never occurred to her before.

"You have thought of everything," she said gratefully.

But Henri said nothing. He had indeed thought of everything with a vengeance, with the net result that he was not looking at Sara Lee more than he could help.

These Americans were strange. An American girl would cross the seas, and come here alone with him--a man and human. And she would take for granted that he would do what he was doing for love of his kind--which was partly true; and she would be beautiful and sweet and amiable and quite unself-conscious. And then she would go back home, warm of heart with grat.i.tude, and marry the man of the picture.

The village had but one street, and that deserted and in ruins. Behind its double row of houses, away from the enemy, lay the fields, a muddy ca.n.a.l and more poplar trees. And from far away, toward Ypres, there came constantly that somewhat casual booming of artillery which marked the first winter of the war.

The sound of the guns had first alarmed, then interested Sara Lee. It was detached then, far away. It meant little to her. It was only later, when she saw some of the results of the sounds she heard, that they became significant. But this is not a tale of the wounding of men.

There are many such. This is the story of a little house of mercy, and of a girl with a dauntless spirit, and of two men who loved her. Only that.

The maid Henri had found was already in the house, sweeping. Henri presented her to Sara Lee, and he also brought a smiling little Belgian boy, in uniform and with a rifle.

"Your staff, mademoiselle!" he said. "And your residence!"

Sara Lee looked about her. With the trifling exception that there was no roof, it was whole. And the roof was not necessary, for the floors of the upper story served instead. There was a narrow pa.s.sage with a room on either side, and a tiny kitchen behind.

Henri threw open a door on the right.

"Your bedroom," he said. "Well furnished, as you will see. It should be, since there has been brought here all the furniture not destroyed in the village."

His blacker mood had fallen away before her naive delight. He went about smiling boyishly, showing her the kettles in the kitchen; the supply, already so rare, of firewood; the little stove. But he stiffened somewhat when she placed her hand rather timidly on his arm.

"How am I ever to thank you?" she asked.

"By doing much good. And by never going beyond the poplar trees."

She promised both very earnestly.

But she was a little sad as she followed Henri about, he volubly expatiating on such advantages as plenty of air owing to the absence of a roof; and the attraction of the stove, which he showed much like a salesman anxious to make a sale. "Such a stove!" he finished contentedly. "It will make soup even in your absence, mademoiselle!

Our peasants eat much soup; therefore it is what you would call a trained stove."

Before Sara Lee's eyes came a picture of Harvey and the Leete house, its white dining room, its bay window for plants, its comfortable charm and prettiness. And Harvey's face, as he planned it for her anxious, pleading, loving. She drew a long breath. If Henri noticed her abstraction he ignored it. He was all over the little house. One moment he was instructing Marie volubly, to her evident confusion. On Rene, the guard, he descended like a young cyclone, with warnings for mademoiselle's safety and comfort. He was everywhere, sitting on the bed to see if it was soft, tramping hard on the upper floor to discover if any plaster might loosen below, and pausing in that process to look keenly at a windmill in the field behind.

When he came down it was to say: "You are not entirely alone in the village, after all, mademoiselle. The miller has come back. I shall visit him now and explain."

He found Sara Lee, however, still depressed. She was sitting in a low chair in the kitchen gazing thoughtfully at the stove.

"I am here," she said. "And here is the house, and a stove, and--everything. But there are no shops; and what shall I make my soup out of?"