第55章

"Good night, little brother," Henri said to him, and left him there with a heavy heart.Never again would Rene sit and whittle on the doorstep and sing his tuneless Tipperaree.Never again would he gaze with boyish adoring eyes at Sara Lee as she moved back and forth in the little house.

Henri stared up at the sky.The moon looked down, cold.and cruelly bright, on the vanishing squadron of death, on the destroyed town and on the boy's white face.Somewhere, Henri felt, vanishing like the German taubes, but to peace instead of war, was moving Rene's brave and smiling spirit - a boyish angel, eager and dauntless, and still looking up.

Henri took off his cap and crossed himself.

Another sentry took Rene's place the next day, but the little house hadlost something it could not regain.And a greater loss was to come.

Jean brought out the mail that day.For Sara Lee, moving about silent and red-eyed, there was a letter from Mr.Travers.He inclosed a hundred pounds and a clipping from a London newspaper entitled The Little House of Mercy.

"Evidently," he wrote, "you were right and we were wrong.One-half of the inclosed check is from my wife, who takes this method of showing her affectionate gratitude.The balance is from myself.Once, some months ago, I said to you that almost you restored my faith in human nature.To- day I may say that, in these hours of sorrow for us all, what you have done and are doing has brought into my gray day a breath of hope."There was another clipping, but no comment.It recorded the death of a Reginald Alexander Travers, aged thirty.

It was then that Sara Lee, who was by way of thinking for herself those days, and of thinking clearly, recognized the strange new self- abnegation of the English - their attitude not so much of suppressing their private griefs as of refusing to obtrude them.A strongly individualistic people, they were already commencing to think nationally.Grief was a private matter, to be borne privately.To the world they must present an unbroken front, an unshaken and unshakable faith.A new attitude, and a strange one, for grumbling, crochety, gouty-souled England.

A people who had for centuries insisted not only on its rights but on its privileges was now giving as freely as ever it had demanded.It was as though, having hoarded all those years, it had but been hoarding against the day of payment.As it had received it gave - in money, in effort, in life.And without pretext.

So the Traverses, having given up all that had made life for them, sent a clipping only, and no comment.Sara Lee, through' a mist of tears, saw them alone in their drawing-room, having tea as usual, and valiantly speaking of small things, and bravely facing the future, but never, in the bitterest moments, making complaint or protest.

Would America, she wondered, if her hour came, be so brave? Harvey had a phrase for such things.It was "stand the gaff." Would America standthe gaff so well? Courage was America's watchword, but a courage of the body rather than of the soul - physical courage, not moral.What would happen if America entered the strnggle and the papers were filled, as were the British and the French, with long casualty lists, each name a knife thrust somewhere?

She wondered.

And then, before long, it was Sara Lee's turn to, stand the gaff.There was another letter, a curiously incoherent one from Harvey's sister.She referred to something that the society had done, and hoped that Sara Lee would take it in kindness, as it was meant.Harvey was well and much happier.She was to try to understand Harvey's part.He had been almost desperate.Evidently the letter had preceded one that should have arrived at the same time.Sara Lee was sadly puzzled.She went to Henri with it, but he could make nothing out of it.There was nothing to do but to wait.

The next night Henri was to go through the lines again.Since his wounding he had been working on the Allied side, and fewer lights there were in his district that flashed the treacherous message across the flood, between night and morning.But now it was imperative that he go through the German lines again.It was feared that with grappling hooks the enemy was slowly and cautiously withdrawing the barbed wire from the inundated fields; and that could mean but one thing.

On the night he was to go Henri called Sara Lee from the crowded salle a manger and drawing her into the room across closed the door.

"Mademoiselle," he said gravely, "once before, long ago, you permitted me to kiss you.Will you do that for me again?"She kissed him at once gravely.Once she would have flushed.She did not now.For there was a change in Sara Lee as well as in her outlook.She had been seeing for months the shortness of life, the brief tenure men held on it, the value of such happiness as might be for the hours that remained.She was a woman now, for all her slim young body and her charm of youth.Values had changed.To love, and to show that love, to cheer, to comfort and help - that was necessary, because soon the chance might be gone, and there would be long aching years of regret.

So she kissed him gravely and looked up into his eyes, her own full of tears.

"God bless and keep you, dear Henri," she said.Then she went back to her work.