The Amazing Interlude - Mary Roberts Rinehart (accelerated reader books .TXT) 📗
- Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart
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"What is it?" he asked, his arms under his head. "Come, let us have it! It is, of course, about the American lady."
"It is," Jean said bluntly. "You cannot mix women and war."
"And you think I am doing that?"
"I am not an idiot," Jean growled. "You do not know what you are doing. I do. She is young and lonely. You are young and not unattractive to women. Already she turns pale when I so much as ask if she has heard from you."
"You asked her that?"
"You were gone much longer than—"
"And you thought I might send her word, and not you!" Henri's voice was offended. He lay back while the boy brought in the morning coffee and rolls.
"Let me tell you something," he said when the boy had gone. "She is betrothed to an American. She wears a betrothal ring. I am to her—the French language!"
But, though Henri laughed, Jean remained grave and brooding. For Henri had not said what Sara Lee already was to him.
It was later in the morning that Henri broached the subject again. They were in the courtyard of an old house, working over the engine of the car.
"I think I have found a location for the young American lady," he said.
Jean hammered for a considerable time at a refractory rim.
"And where?" he asked at last.
Henri named the little town. Like Henri's family name, it must not be told. Too many things happened there, and perhaps it is even now Henri's headquarters. For that portion of the line has changed very little.
Jean fell to renewed hammering.
"If you will be silent I shall explain a plan," Henri said in a cautious tone. "She will make soup, with help which we shall find. And if coming in for refreshments a soldier shall leave a letter for me it is natural, is it not?"
"She will suspect, of course."
"I think not. And she reads no French. None whatever."
Yet Jean's suspicions were not entirely allayed. The plan had its advantages. It was important that Henri receive certain reports, and already the hotel whispered that Henri was of the secret service. It brought him added deference, of course, but additional danger.
So Jean accepted the plan, but with reservation. And it was not long afterward that he said to Sara Lee, in French: "There is a spider on your neck, mademoiselle."
But Sara Lee only said, "I'm sorry, Jean; you'll have to speak English to me for a while, I'm afraid."
And though he watched her for five minutes she did not put her hand to her neck.
However, that was later on. That afternoon Henri spent an hour with the Minister of War. And at the end of that time he said: "Thank you, Baron. I think you will not regret it. America must learn the truth, and how better than through those friendly people who come to us to help?"
It is as well to state, however, that he left the Minister of War with the undoubted impression that Miss Sara Lee Kennedy was a spinster of uncertain years.
Sara Lee packed her own suitcase that afternoon, doing it rather nervously because Henri was standing in the room by the window waiting for it. He had come in as matter-of-factly as Harvey had entered the parlor at Aunt Harriet's, except that he carried in his arms some six towels, a cake of soap and what looked suspiciously like two sheets.
"The house I have under consideration," he said, "has little to recommend it but the building, and even that—The occupants have gone away, and—you are not a soldier."
Sara Lee eyed the bundle.
"I don't need sheets," she expostulated.
"There are but two. And Jean has placed blankets in the car. You must have a pillow also."
He calmly took one of the hotel pillows from the bed.
"What else?" he asked calmly. "Cigarettes? But no, you do not smoke."
Sara Lee eyed him with something very like despair.
"Aren't you ever going to let me think for myself?"
"Would you have thought of these?" he demanded triumphantly. "You—you think only of soup and tired soldiers. Some one must think of you."
And there was a touch of tenderness in his voice. Sara Lee felt it and trembled slightly. He was so fine, and he must not think of her that way. It was not real. It couldn't be. Men were lonely here, where everything was hard and cruel. They wanted some of the softness of life, and all of kindness and sweetness that she could give should be Henri's. But she must make it clear that there could never be anything more.
There was a tightness about her mouth as she folded the white frock.
"I know that garment," he said boyishly. "Do you remember the night you wore it? And how we wandered in the square and made the plan that has brought us together again?"
Sara Lee reached down into her suitcase and brought up Harvey's picture.
"I would like you to see this," she said a little breathlessly. "It is the man I am to marry."
For a moment she thought Henri was not going to take it. But he came, rather slowly, and held out his hand for it. He went with it to the window and stood there for some time looking down at it.
"When are you going to marry him, mademoiselle?"
"As soon as I go back."
Sara Lee had expected some other comment, but he made none. He put the photograph very quietly on the bed before her, and gathered up the linen and the pillow in his arms.
"I shall send for your luggage, mademoiselle. And you will find me at the car outside, waiting."
And so it was that a very silent Henri sat with Jean going out to that strange land which was to be Sara Lee's home for many months. And a very silent Sara Lee, flanked with pillow and blankets, who sat back alone and tried to recall the tones of Harvey's voice.
And failed.
X
From Dunkirk to the Front, the road, after the Belgian line was passed, was lightly guarded. Henri came out of a reverie to explain to Sara Lee.
"We have not many men," he said. "And those that remain are holding the line. It is very weary, our army."
Now at home Uncle James had thought very highly of the Belgian Army. He had watched the fight they made, and he had tried to interest Sara Lee in it. But without much result. She had generally said: "Isn't it wonderful!" or "horrible," as the case might be, and put out of her mind as soon as possible the ringing words he had been reading. But she had not forgotten, she found. They came back to her as she rode through that deserted countryside. Henri, glancing back somewhat later, found her in tears.
He climbed back at once into the rear of the car and sat down beside her.
"You are homesick, I think?"
"Yes. But not for myself. I am just homesick for all the people who have lost their homes. You—and Jean, and all the rest."
"Some day I shall tell you about my home and what has happened to it," he said gravely. "Not now. It is not pleasant. But you must remember this: We are going back home, we Belgians." And after a little pause: "Just as you are."
He lapsed into silence after that, and Sara Lee, stealing a glance at him, saw his face set and hard. She had a purely maternal impulse to reach over and pat his hand.
Jean did not like Henri's shift 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 glass was everywhere. Jean blew out a tire finally, because of the glass, 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, passionless 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 shell 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.
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