The Amazing Interlude Part 14

While she was breakfasting the next morning there was a tap at the door, and thinking it the maid she called to her to come in.

But it was Jean, an anxious Jean, twisting his cap in his hands.

"You have had a message from the captain, mademoiselle?"

"No, Jean."

"He was to have returned during the night. He has not come, mademoiselle."

Sara Lee forgot her morning negligee in Jean's hara.s.sed face.

"But--where did he go?"

Jean shrugged his shoulders and did not reply.

"Are you worried about him?"

"I am anxious, mademoiselle. But I am often anxious; and--he always returns."

He smiled almost sheepishly. Sara Lee, who had no subtlety but a great deal of intuition, felt that there was a certain relief in the smile, as though Jean, having had no message from his master, was pleased that she had none. Which was true enough, at that. Also she felt that Jean's one eye was inspecting her closely, which was also true. A new factor had come into Henri's life--by Jean's reasoning, a new and dangerous one. And there were dangers enough already.

Highly dangerous, Jean reflected in the back of his head as he backed out with a bow. A young girl unafraid of the morning sun and sitting at a little breakfast table as fresh as herself--that was a picture for a war-weary man.

Jean forgot for a moment his anxiety for Henri's safety in his fear for his peace of mind. For a doubt had been removed. The girl was straight.

Jean's one sophisticated eye had grasped that at once. A good girl, alone, and far from home! And Henri, like all soldiers, woman-hungry for good women, for unpainted skins and clear eyes and the freshness and bloom of youth.

All there, behind that little breakfast table which might so pleasantly have been laid for two.

Jean took a walk that morning, and stood staring for twenty minutes into a clock maker's window, full of clocks. After which he drew out his watch and looked at the time!

At two in the afternoon Sara Lee saw Henri's car come into the square.

It was, if possible, more dilapidated than before, and he came like a gray whirlwind, scattering people and dogs out of his way. Almost before he had had time to enter the hotel Sara Lee heard him in the hall, and the next moment he was bowing before her.

"I have been longer than I expected," he explained. "Have you been quite comfortable?"

Sara Lee, however, was gazing at him with startled eyes. He was dirty, unshaven, and his eyes looked hollow and bloodshot. From his neck to his heels he was smeared with mud, and his tidy tunic was torn into ragged holes.

"But you--you have been fighting!" she gasped.

"I? No, mademoiselle. There has been no battle." His eyes left her and traveled over the room. "They are doing everything for you? They are attentive?"

"Everything is splendid," said Sara Lee. "If you won't tell me how you got into that condition, at least you can send your coat down to me to mend."

"My tunic!" He looked at it smilingly. "You would do that?"

"I am nearly frantic for something to do."

He smiled, and suddenly bending down he took her hand and kissed it.

"You are not only very beautiful, mademoiselle, but you are very good."

He went away then, and Sara Lee got out her sewing things. The tunic came soon, carefully brushed and very ragged. But it was not Jean who brought it; it was the Flemish boy.

And upstairs in a small room with two beds Sara Lee might have been surprised to find Jean, the chauffeur, lying on one, while Henri shaved himself beside the other. For Jean, of the ragged uniform and the patch over one eye, was a count of Belgium, and served Henri because he loved him. And because, too, he was no longer useful in that little army where lay his heart.

Sometime a book will be written about the Jeans of this war, the great friendships it has brought forth between men. And not the least of its stories will be that of this Jean of the one eye. But its place is not here.

And perhaps there will be a book about the Henris, also. But not for a long time, and even then with care. For the heroes of one department of an army in the field live and die unsung. Their bravest exploits are buried in secrecy. And that is as it must be. But it is a fine tale to go untold.

After he had bathed and shaved, Henri sat down at a tiny table and wrote.

He drew a plan also, from a rough one before him. Then he took a match and burned the original drawing until it was but charred black ashes.

When he had finished Jean got up from the bed and put on his overcoat.

"To the King?" he said.

"To the King, old friend."

Jean took the letter and went out.

Down below, Sara Lee sat with Henri's ragged tunic on her lap and st.i.tched carefully. Sometime, she reflected, she would be mending worn garments for another man, now far away. A little flood of tenderness came over her. So helpless these men! There was so much to do for them!

And soon, please G.o.d, she would be helping other tired and weary men, with food, and perhaps a word--when she had acquired some French--and perhaps a thread and needle.

She dined alone that night, as usual. Henri did not appear, though she had sent what she suspected was his only tunic back to him neatly mended at five o'clock. As a matter of fact Henri was sound asleep. He had meant to rest only for an hour a body that was crying aloud with fatigue.

But Jean, coming in quietly, had found him sleeping like a child, and had put his own blanket over him and left him. Henri slept until morning, when Jean, coming up from his vigil outside the American girl's door, found him waking and rested, and rang for coffee.

Jean sat down on the edge of his bed and put on his shoes and puttees.

He was a taciturn man, but now he had something to say that he did not like to say. And Henri knew it.

"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.