The Amazing Interlude Part 29

He got up then, and carried the tiny photograph over close to the gas jet. There he stood for a long time, gazing at it. There was Rene with his rifle and his smile. There was Marie in her white ap.r.o.n. And in the center, the wind blowing her soft hair, was Sara Lee.

Harvey groaned and Belle came over and putting her hand on his shoulder looked at the photograph with him.

"Do you know what I think, Harvey?" she said. "I think Sara Lee is right and you are wrong."

He turned on her almost savagely.

"That's not the point!" he snapped out. "I don't begrudge the poor devils their soup. What I feel is this: If she'd cared a tinker's d.a.m.n for me she'd never have gone. That's all."

He returned to a moody survey of the picture.

"Look at it!" he said. "She insists that she's safe. But that fellow's got a gun. What for, if she's so safe? And look at that house! There's a corner shot away; and it's got no upper floor. Safe!"

Belle held out her hand.

"I must return the picture to the society, Harve."

"Not just yet," he said ominously. "I want to look at it. I haven't got it all yet. And I'll return it myself--with a short speech."

"Harvey!"

"Well," he retorted, "why shouldn't I tell that lot of old scandalmongers what I think of them? They'll sit here safe at home and beg money--G.o.d, one of them was in the office to-day!--and send a young girl over to--You'd better get out, Belle. I'm not company for any one to-night."

She turned away, but he came after her, and suddenly putting his arms round her he kissed her.

"Don't worry about me," he said. "I'm done with wearing my heart on my sleeve. She looks happy, so I guess I can be." He released her. "Good night. I'll return the picture."

He sat up very late, alternately reading the report and looking at the picture. It was unfortunate that Sara Lee had smiled into the camera.

Coupled with her blowing hair it had given her a light-heartedness, a sort of joyousness, that hurt him to the soul.

He made some mad plans after he had turned out the lights--to flirt wildly with the unattached girls he knew; to go to France and confront Sara Lee and then bring her home. Or--He had found a way. He lay there and thought it over, and it bore the test of the broken sleep that followed. In the morning, dressing, he wondered he had not thought of it before. He was more cheerful at breakfast than he had been for weeks.

XIX

In the little house of mercy two weeks went by, and then a third.

Soldiers marching out to the trenches sometimes wore flowers tucked gayly in their caps. More and more Allied aeroplanes were in the air. Sometimes, standing in the streets, Sara Lee saw one far overhead, while balloon-shaped clouds of bursting sh.e.l.ls hung far below it.

Once or twice in the early morning a German plane, flying so low that one could easily see the black cross on each wing, reconnoitered the village for wagon trains or troops. Always they found it empty.

Hope had almost fled now. In the afternoons Marie went to the ruined church, and there knelt before the heap of marble and masonry that had once been the altar, and prayed. And Sara Lee, who had been brought up a Protestant and had never before entered a Catholic church, took to going there too. In some strange fashion the peace of former days seemed to cling to the little structure, roofless as it was. On quiet days its silence was deeper than elsewhere. On days of much firing the sound from within its broken walls seemed deadened, far away.

Marie burned a candle as she prayed, for that soul in purgatory which she had once loved, and now pitied. Sara Lee burned no candle, but she knelt, sometimes beside Marie, sometimes alone, and prayed for many things: that Henri should be living, somewhere; that the war might end; that that day there would be little wounding; that some day the Belgians might go home again; and that back in America Harvey might grow to understand and forgive her. And now and then she looked into the very depths of her soul, and on those days she prayed that her homeland might, before it was too late, see this thing as she was seeing it. The wanton waste of it all, the ghastly cruelty the Germans had brought into this war.

Sara Lee's vague thinking began to crystallize. This war was not a judgment sent from on high to a sinful world. It was the wicked imposition of one nation on other nations. It was national. It was almost racial. But most of all it was a war of hate on the German side. She had never believed in hate. There were ugly pa.s.sions in the world--jealousy, envy, suspicion; but not hate. The word was not in her rather limited vocabulary.

There was no hate on the part of the men she knew. The officers who stopped in on their way to and from the trenches were gentlemen and soldiers. They were determined and grave; they resented, they even loathed. But they did not hate. The little Belgian soldiers were bewildered, puzzled, desperately resentful. But of hate, as translated into terms of frightfulness, they had no understanding.

Yet from the other side were coming methods of war so wantonly cruel, so useless save as inflicting needless agony, as only hate could devise.

No strategic value justified them. They were spontaneous outgrowths of venom, nursed during the winter deadlock and now grown to full size and destructive power.

The rumor of a gas that seared and killed came to the little house as early as February. In March there came the first victims, poor writhing creatures, deprived of the boon of air, their seared lungs collapsed and agonized, their faces drawn into masks of suffering. Some of them died in the little house, and even after death their faces held the imprint of horror.

To Sara Lee, burying her own anxiety under the cloak of service, there came new and terrible thoughts. This was not war. The Germans had sent their clouds of poisoned gas across the inundation, but had made no attempt to follow. This was killing, for the l.u.s.t of killing; suffering, for the joy of inflicting pain.

And a day or so later she heard of The Hague Convention. She had not known of it before. Now she learned of that gentlemen's agreement among nations, and that it said: "The use of poison or of poisoned weapons is forbidden." She pondered that carefully, trying to think dispa.s.sionately.

Now and then she received a copy of a home newspaper, and she saw that the use of poison gases was being denied by Germans in America and set down to rumor and hysteria.

So, on a cold spring day, she sat down at the table in the _salle a manger_ and wrote a letter to the President, beginning "_Dear Sir_"; and telling what she knew of poison gas. She also, on second thought, wrote one to Andrew Carnegie, who had built a library in her city. She felt that the expense to him of sending some one over to investigate would not be prohibitive, and something must be done.

She never heard from either of her letters, but she felt better for having written them. And a day or two later she received from Mrs.

Travers, in England, a small supply of the first gas masks of the war.

Simple and primitive they were, those first masks; useless, too, as it turned out--a square of folded gauze, soaked in some solution and then dried, with tapes to tie it over the mouth and nose. To adjust them the soldiers had but to stoop and wet them in the ever-present water in the trench, and then to tie them on.

Sara Lee gave them out that night, and there was much mirth in the little house, such mirth as there had not been since Henri went away. The Belgians called it a _bal masque_, and putting them on bowed before one another and requested dances, and even flirted coyly with each other over their bits of white gauze. And in the very middle of the gayety some one propounded one of Henri's idiotic riddles; and Sara Lee went across to her little room and closed the door and stood there with her eyes shut, for fear she would scream.

Then, one day, coming out of the little church, she saw the low broken gray car turn in at the top of the street and come slowly, so very slowly, toward her. There were two men in it.

One was Henri.

She ran, stumbling because of tears, up the street. It was Henri! There was no mistake. There he sat beside Jean, brushed and very neat; and very, very white.

"Mademoiselle!" he said, and came very close to crying himself when he saw her face. He was greatly excited. His sunken eyes devoured her as she ran toward him. Almost he held out his arms. But he could not do that, even if he would, for one was bandaged to his side.

It is rather sad to record how many times Sara Lee wept during her amazing interlude. For here is another time. She wept for joy and wretchedness. She stood on the running board and cried and smiled. And Jean winked his one eye rapidly.

"This idiot, mademoiselle," he said gruffly, "this maniac--he would not remain in Calais, with proper care. He must come on here. And rapidly.

Could he have taken the wheel from me we should have been here an hour ago. But for once I have an advantage."

The car jolted to the little house, and Jean helped Henri out. Such a strange Henri, smiling and joyous, and walking at a crawl, even with Jean's support. He protested violently against being put to bed, and when he found himself led into Sara Lee's small room he openly rebelled.

"Never!" he said stubbornly, halting in the doorway. "This is mademoiselle's boudoir. Her drawing-room as well. I am going to the mill house and--"

He staggered.

So Sara Lee's room had a different occupant for a time, a thin and fine-worn young Belgian, who yielded to Sara Lee when Jean gave up in despair, and who proceeded, most unmanfully, to faint as soon as he was between the blankets.

If Sara Lee hoped to nurse Henri she was doomed to disappointment. Jean it was who took over the care of the boy, a Jean who now ate prodigiously, and whistled occasionally, and slept at night robed in his blanket on the floor beside Henri's bed, lest that rebellious invalid get up and try to move about.

On the first night, with the door closed, against Henri's entreaties, while the little house received its evening complement of men, and with Henri lying back on his pillows, fresh dressed as to the wounds in his arm and chest, fed with Sara Lee's daintiest, and resting, Jean found the boy's eyes resting on the mantel.

"Dear and obstinate friend," said Henri, "do you wish me to be happy?"

"You shall not leave the room or your bed. That is arranged for."

"How?" demanded Henri with interest.