第23章

He made no suggestion of dining with her that evening.Indeed watching him from her small table Sara Lee decided that he had put her entirely out of his mind.He did not so much as glance at her.Save the cashier at her boxed-in desk and money drawer, she was the only woman in that room full of officers.Quite certainly Henri was the only man who did not find some excuse for glancing in her direction.

But finishing early, he paused by the cashier's desk to pay for his meal, and then he gave Sara Lee the stiffest and most ceremonious of bows.

She felt hurt.Alone in her great room, the curtains drawn by order of the police, lest a ray of light betray the town to eyes in the air, she went carefully over the hours she had spent with Henri that day, looking for a cause of offense.She must have hurt him or he would surely have stopped to speak to her.

Perhaps already he was finding her a burden.She flushed with shame when she remembered about the meals he had had to order for her, and she sat up in her great bed until late, studying by candlelight such phrases as:

"Il y a une erreur dans La note," and " Garcon, quels fruits avez- vous?" She tried to write to Harvey that night, but she gave it up at last.There was too much he would not understand.She could not write frankly without telling of Henri, and to this point everything had centered about Henri.It all rather worried her, because there was nothing she was ashamed of, nothing she should have had to conceal.She had yet to learn, had Sara Lee, that many of the concealments of life are based not on wrongdoing but on fear of misunderstanding.

So she got as far as: "Dearest Harvey: I am here in a hotel at Dunkirk"- and then stopped, fairly engulfed in a wave of homesickness.Not so much for Harvey as for familiar things - Uncle James in his chair by the fire, with the phonograph playing "My Little Gray Home in the West"; her own white bedroom; the sun on the red geraniums in the dining-room window; the voices of happy children wandering home from school.

She got up and went to the window, first blowing out the candle.Outside, the town lay asleep, and from a gate in the old wall a sentry witha bugle blew a quiet "All's well." From somewhere near, on top of the mairie perhaps, where eyes all night searched the sky for danger, came the same trumpet call of safety for the time, of a little longer for quiet sleep.

For two days the girl was alone.There was no sign of Henri.She had nothing to read, and her eyes, watching hour after hour the panorama that passed through the square under her window, searched vainly for his battered gray car.In daytime the panorama was chiefly of motor lorries - she called them trucks - piled high with supplies, often fodder for the horses in that vague district beyond ammunition and food.Now and then a battery rumbled through, its gunners on the limbers, detached, with folded arms; and always there were soldiers.

Sometimes, from her window, she saw the market people below, in their striped red-and-white booths, staring up at the sky.She would look up, too, and there would be an aeroplane sliding along, sometimes so low that one could hear the faint report of the exhaust.

But it was the ambulances that Sara Lee looked for.Mostly they came at night, a steady stream of them.Sometimes they moved rapidly.Again one would be going very slowly, and other machines would circle impatiently round it and go on.A silent, grim procession in the moonlight it was, and it helped the girl to bear the solitude of those two interminable days.

Inside those long gray cars with the red crosses painted on the tops - a symbol of mercy that had ceased to protect - inside those cars were wounded men, men who had perhaps lain for hours without food or care.Surely, surely it was right that she had come.The little she could do must count in the great total.She twisted Harvey's ring on her finger and sent a little message to him.

"You will forgive me when you know, dear," was the message."It is so terrible! So pitiful!"Yet during the day the square was gay enough.Officers in spurs clanked across, wide capes blowing in the wind.Common soldiers bought fruit and paper bags of fried potatoes from the booths.Countless dogs fought under the feet of passers-by, and over all leered the sardonic face ofean Bart, pirate and privateer.

Sara Lee went out daily, but never far.And she practiced French with the maid, after this fashion:

"Draps de toile," said the smiling maid, putting the linen sheets on the bed.

Sara Lee would repeat it some six times.

"Taies d'oreiller," when the pillows came.So Sara Lee called pillows by the name of their slips from that time forward! Came a bright hour when she rang the bell for the boy and asked for matches, which she certainly did not need, with entire success.

On the second night Sara Lee slept badly.At two o'clock she heard a sound in the hall, and putting on her kimono, opened the door.On a stiff chair outside, snoring profoundly, sat Jean, fully dressed.

The light from her candle roused him and he was wide awake in an instant.

"Why, Jean!" she said."Isn't there any place for you to sleep?" "I am to remain here, mademoiselle," he replied in English."But surely - not because of me?""It is the captain's order," he said briefly."I don't understand.Why?""All sorts of people come to this place, mademoiselle.But few ladies.It is best that I remain here."She could not move him.He had remained standing while she spoke to him, and now he yawned, striving to conceal it.Sara Lee felt very uncomfortable, but Jean's attitude and voice alike were firm.She thanked him and said good night, but she slept little after that.

Lying there in the darkness, a warm glow of gratitude to Henri, and a feeling of her safety in his care, wrapped her like a mantle.She wondered drowsily if Harvey would ever have thought of all the small things that seemed second nature to this young Belgian officer.

She rather thought not.