The Amazing Interlude Part 19

"Let them carry in the wounded. I am getting ready hot water and bandages. There is not much s.p.a.ce, for the corner of the room has been shot away."

She was as dead white in the candlelight, but very calm.

"You cannot stay here," Henri panted. "At any time--"

Another sh.e.l.l fell, followed by the rumble of falling walls.

"Some one must stay," said Sara Lee. "There must be wounded in the streets. Marie is in the cellar."

Henri pleaded pa.s.sionately with her to go to the cellar, but she refused.

He would have gathered her up in his arms and carried her there, but Jean came in, leading a wounded man, and Henri gave up in despair.

All that night they worked, a ghastly business. More than one man died that night in the little house, while a blond young man in a German uniform gave him a last mouthful of water or took down those pitifully vague addresses which were all the dying Belgians had to give.

"I have not heard--last at Aarschot, but now--G.o.d knows where."

No more sh.e.l.ls fell. At dawn, with all done that could be done, Sara Lee fainted quietly in the hallway. Henri carried her in and placed her on her bed. A corner of the room was indeed gone. The mantel was shattered and the little stove. But on the floor lay Harvey's photograph uninjured. Henri lifted it and looked at it. Then he placed it on the table, and very reverently he kissed the palm of Sara Lee's quiet hand.

Daylight found the street pitiful indeed. Henri, whose costume Rene had been casting wondering glances at all night, sent a request for men from the trenches to clear away the bodies of the horses and bury them, and somewhat later over a single grave in the fields there was a simple ceremony of burial for the men who had fallen. Henri had changed again by that time, but he sternly forbade Sara Lee to attend.

"On pain," he said, "of no more supplies, mademoiselle. These things must be. They are war. But you can do nothing to help, and it will be very sad."

Ambulances took away the wounded at dawn, and the little house became quiet once more. With planks Rene repaired the damage to the corner, and triumphantly produced and set up another stove. He even put up a mantelshelf, and on it, smiling somewhat, he placed Harvey's picture.

Sara Lee saw it there, and a tiny seed of resentment took root and grew.

"If there had been no one here last night," she said to the photograph, "many more would have died. How can you say I am cruel to you? Isn't this worth the doing?"

But Harvey remained impa.s.sive, detached, his eyes on the photographer's white muslin screen. And the angle of his jaw was set and dogged.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Henri explained the method.]

XII

That morning there was a conference in the little house--Colonel Lilias, who had come in before for a mute but appreciative call on Sara Lee, and for a cup of chocolate; Captain Tournay, Jean and Henri. It was held round the little table in the _salle a manger_, after Marie had brought coffee and gone out.

"They had information undoubtedly," said the colonel. "The same thing happened at Pervyse when an ammunition train went through. They had the place, and what is more they had the time. Of course there are the airmen."

"It did not leave the main road until too late for observation from the air," Henri put in shortly.

"Yet any one who saw it waiting at the crossroads might have learned its destination. The drivers talk sometimes."

"But the word had to be carried across," said Captain Tournay. "That is the point. My men report flashes of lights from the fields. We have followed them up and found no houses, no anything. In this flat country a small light travels far."

"I shall try to learn to-night," Henri said. "It is, of course, possible that some one from over there--" He shrugged his shoulders.

"I think not." Colonel Lilias put a hand on Henri's shoulder affectionately. "They have not your finesse, boy. And I doubt if, in all their army, they have so brave a man."

Henri flushed.

"There is a courage under fire, with their fellows round--that is one thing. And a courage of attack--that is even more simple. But the bravest man is the one who works alone--the man to whom capture is death without honor."

The meeting broke up. Jean and Henri went away in the car, and though supplies came up regularly Sara Lee did not see the battered gray car for four days. At the end of that time Henri came alone. Jean, he said briefly, was laid up for a little while with a flesh wound in his shoulder. He would be well very soon. In the meantime here at last was mutton. It had come from England, and he, Henri, had found it lying forgotten and lonely and very sad and had brought it along.

After that Henri disappeared on foot. It was midafternoon and a sunny day. Sara Lee saw him walking briskly across the fields and watched him out of sight. She spoke some French now, and she had gathered from Rene, who had no scruples about listening at a door, that Henri was the bravest man in the Belgian Army.

Until now Sara Lee had given small thought to Henri's occupation. She knew nothing of war, and the fact that Henri, while wearing a uniform, was unattached, had not greatly impressed her. Had she known the const.i.tution of a modern army she might have wondered over his freedom, his powerful car, his pa.s.ses and maps. But his detachment had not seemed odd to her. Even his appearance during the bombardment in the uniform of a German _lieutenant_ had meant nothing to her. She had never seen a German uniform.

That evening, however, when he returned she ventured a question. They dined together, the two of them, for the first time at the little house alone. Always before Jean had made the third. And it was a real meal, for Sara Lee had sacrificed a bit of mutton from her soup, and Henri had produced from his pocket a few small and withered oranges.

"A gift!" he said gayly, and piled them in a precarious heap in the center of the table. On the exact top he placed a walnut.

"Now speak gently and walk softly," he said. "It is a work of art and not to be lightly demolished."

He was alternately gay and silent during the meal, and more than once Sara Lee found his eyes on her, with something new and different in them.

"Just you and I together!" he said once. "It is very wonderful."

And again: "When you go back to him, shall you tell him of your good friend who has tried hard to serve you?"

"Of course I shall," said Sara Lee. "And he will write you, I know. He will be very grateful."

But it was she who was silent after that, because somehow it would be hard to make Harvey understand. And as for his being grateful--

"Mademoiselle," said Henri later on, "would you object if I make a suggestion? You wear a very valuable ring. I think it is entirely safe, but--who can tell? And also it is not entirely kind to remind men who are far from all they love that you--"

Sara Lee flushed and took off her ring.

"I am glad you told me," she said. And Henri did not explain that the Belgian soldiers would not recognize the ring as either a diamond or a symbol, but that to him it was close to torture.

It was when he insisted on carrying out the dishes, singing a little French song as he did so, that Sara Lee decided to speak what was in her mind. He was in high spirits then.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "shall I show you something that the eye of no man has seen before, and that, when we have seen it, shall never be seen again?"

On her interested consent he called in Marie and Rene, making a great ceremony of the matter, and sending Marie into hysterical giggling.

"Now see!" he said earnestly. "No eye before has ever seen or will again.

Will you guess, mademoiselle? Or you, Marie? Rene?"

"A tear?" ventured Sara Lee.

"But--do I look like weeping?"

He did not, indeed. He stood, tall and young and smiling before them, and produced from his pocket the walnut.