第28章

"It is very simple," Jean said to him in French."You have no otherduties of course; so each day you shall buy in the market place at Dunkirk, with American money.And I shall become a delivery boy and bring out food for mademoiselle, and whatever is needed."Henri smiled back at him cheerfully."An excellent plan, Jean," he said."Not every day, but frequently."Jean growled and disappeared.

However, there was the immediate present to think of, and while Jean thawed his hands at the fire and Sara Lee was taking housewifely stock of her new home, Henri disappeared.

He came back in a half hour, carrying in a small basket butter, eggs, bread and potatoes.

"The miller!" he explained cheerfully to Sara Lee."He has still a few hens, and hidden somewhere a cow.We can have milk - is there a pail for Marie to take to the mill? - and bread and an omelet.That is a meal!"There was but one lamp, which hung over the kitchen stove.The room across from Sara Lee's bedroom contained a small round dining table and chairs.Sara Lee, enveloped in a large pinafore apron, made the omelet in the kitchen.Marie brought a pail of fresh milk.Henri, with a towel over his left arm, and in absurd mimicry of a Parisian waiter, laid the table; and Jean, dour Jean, caught a bit of the infection, and finding four bottles set to work with his pocketknife to fit candles into their necks.

Standing in corners, smiling, useless against the cheerful English that flowed from the kitchen stove to the dining room and back again, were Rene and Marie.It was of no use to attempt to help.Did the fire burn low, it was the young officer who went out for fresh wood.But Rene could not permit that twice.He brought in great armfuls of firewood and piled them neatly by the stove.

Henri was absurdly happy again.He would come to the door gravely, with Sara Lee's little phrase book in hand, and read from it in a solemn tone:

"'Shall we have duck or chicken?' 'Where can we get a good dinner at a moderate price?' 'Waiter, you have spilled wine on my dress.' 'Will you have a cigar?' 'No, thank you.I prefer a pipe.'"And Sara Lee beat up the eggs and found, after a bad moment, some salt in a box, and then poured her omelet into the pan.She was very anxious that it be a good omelet.She must make good her claim as a cook or Henri's sublime faith in her would die.

It was a divine omelet.Even Jean said so.They sat, the three of them, in the cold little dining room and never knew that it was cold, and they ate prodigious quantities of omelet and bread and butter, and bully beef out of a tin, and drank a great deal of milk.

Even Jean thawed at last, under the influence of food and Sara Lee.Before the meal was over he was planning how to get her supplies to her and making notes on a piece of paper as to what she would need at once.They adjourned to Sara Lee's bedroom, where Marie had kindled a fire in the little iron stove, and sat there in the warmth with two candles, still planning.By that time Sara Lee had quite forgotten that at home one did not have visitors in one's bedroom.

Suddenly Henri held up his hand."Listen!" he said.

That was the first time Sara Lee had ever heard the quiet shuffling step of tired men, leaving their trenches under cover of darkness.Henri threw his military cape over her shoulders and she stood in the dark doorway, watching.

The empty street was no longer empty.From gutter to gutter flowed a stream of men, like a sluggish river which narrowed where a fallen house partly filled the way; not talking, not singing, just moving, bent under their heavy and mud-covered equipment.Here and there the clack of wooden sabots on the cobbles told of one poor fellow not outfitted with leather shoes.The light of a match here and there showed some few lucky enough to have still remaining cigarettes, and revealed also, in the immediate vicinity, a white bandage or two.Some few, recognizing Henri's officer's cap, saluted.Most of them stumbled on, too weary to so much as glance aside.

Nothing that Sara Lee had dreamed of war was like this.This was dreary and sodden and hopeless.Those fresh troops at the crossroads thatday had been blithe and smiling.There had been none of the glitter and panoply of war, but there had been movement, the beating of a drum, the sharp cries of officers as the lines re-formed.

Here there were no lines.Just such a stream of men as at home might issue at night from a coal mine, too weary for speech.Only here they were packed together closely, and they did not speak, and some of them were wounded.

"There are so many!" she whispered to Henri."A hundred such efforts as mine would not be enough.""I would to God there were more!" Henri replied, through shut teeth."Listen, mademoiselle," he said later."You cannot do all the kind workof the world.But you can do your part.And you will start by caring for only such as are wounded or ill.The others can go on.But every night some twenty or thirty, or even more, will come to your door - men slightly wounded or too weary to go on without a rest.And for those there will be a chair by the fire, and something hot, or perhapps a clean bandage.It sounds small? But in a month, think! You will have given comfort to perhaps a thousand men.You - alone!""I - alone!" she said in a queer choking voice."And what about you? It is you who have made it possible."But Henri was looking down the street to where the row of poplars hid what lay beyond.Far beyond a star shell had risen above the flat fields and floated there, a pure and lovely thing, shedding its white light over the terrain below.It gleamed for some thirty seconds and went out.

"Like that!" Henri said to her, but in French."Like that you are to me.Bright and shining - and so soon gone."Sara Lee thought he had asked her if she was cold.