第22章

Here were more things to do.Sara Lee's money must be exchanged at a bank for French gold.She had three hundred dollars, and it had been given her in a tiny brown canvas bag.And then there was the matter of going from Calais toward the Front.She had expected to find a train, but there were no trains.All cars were being used for troops.She stared at Henri in blank dismay.

"No trains!" she said blankly."Would an automobile be very expensive?""They are all under government control, mademoiselle.Even the petrol."She stopped in the street."Then I shall have to go back." Henri laughed boyishly.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I have been requested to take you to a place where you may render us the service we so badly need.For the present that is my duty, and nothing else.So if you will accept the offer of my car, which is a shameful one but travels well, we can continue our journey."Long, long afterward, Sara Lee found a snapshot of Henri's car, taken by a light-hearted British officer.Found it and sat for a long time with it in her hand, thinking and remembering that first day she saw it, in the sun at Calais.A long low car it was, once green, but now roughly painted gray.But it was not the crude painting, significant as it was, that brought so close the thing she was going to.It was that the car was but a shell of a car.The mud guards were crumpled up against the side.Body and hood were pitted with shrapnel.A door had been shot away, and the wind shield was but a frame set round with broken glass.Even the soldier-chauffeur wore a patch over one eye, and his uniform was ragged.

"Not a beautiful car, mademoiselle, as I warned you! But a fast one!"Henri was having a double enjoyment.He was watching Sara Lee's face and his chauffeur's remaining eye.

"But fast; eh, Jean?" he said to the chauffeur.The man nodded and said something in French.It was probably the thing Henri had hoped for, and he threw back his head and laughed.

"Jean is reminding me," he said gayly, "that it is forbidden to officers to take a lady along the road that we shall travel." But when he saw how Sara Lee flushed he turned to the man.

"Mademoiselle has come from America to help us, Jean," he said quietly."And now for Dunkirk."The road from Dunkirk to Calais was well guarded in those days.From Nieuport for some miles inland only the shattered remnant of the Belgian Army held the line.For the cry "On to Paris!" the Germans had substituted "On to Calais!"So, on French soil at least, the road was well guarded.A few miles in the battered car, then a slowing up, a showing of passports, the clatter of a great chain as it dropped to the road, a lowering of leveled rifles, and a salute from the officer - that was the method by which they advanced.

Henri sat with the driver and talked in a low tone.Sometimes he sat quiet, looking ahead.He seemed, somehow, older, more careworn.His boyishness had gone.Now and then he turned to ask if she was comfortable, but in the intervals she felt that he had entirely forgotten her.Once, at something Jean said, he got out a pocket map and went over it carefully.It was a long time after that before he turned to see if she was all right.

Sara Lee sat forward and watched everything.She saw little evidence of war, beyond the occasional sentries and chains.Women were walking along the roads.Children stopped and pointed, smiling, at the battered car.One very small boy saluted, and Henri as gravely returned the salute.

Some time after that he turned to her.

"I find that I shall have to leave you in Dunkirk," he said."A matter of a day only, probably.But I ill see before I go that you are comfortable.""I shall be quite all right, of course."

But something had gone out of the day for her.

Sara Lee learned one thing that day, learned it as some women dolearn, by the glance of an eye, the tone of a voice.The chauffeur adored Henri.His one unbandaged eye stole moments from the road to glance at him.When he spoke, while Henri read his map his very voice betrayed him.And while she pondered the thing, woman-fashion they drew into the square of Dunkirk, where the statue of Jean Bart, pirate and privateer stared down at this new procession of war which passed daily and nightly under his cold eyes.

Jean and a porter carried in her luggage.Henri and a voluble and smiling Frenchwoman showed her to her room.She felt like an island of silence in a rapid-rolling sea of French.The Frenchwoman threw open the door.

A great room with high curtained windows; a huge bed with a faded gilt canopy and heavy draperies; a wardrobe as vast as the bed; and for a toilet table an enormous mirror reaching to the ceiling and with a marble shelf below - that was her room.

"I think you will be comfortable here, mademoiselle."Sara Lee, who still clutched her small bag of gold, Shook her head."Comfortable, yes," she said."But I am afraid it is very expensive." Henri named an extremely low figure - an exact fourth, to be accurate,of its real cost.A surprising person Henri, with his worn uniform and his capacity for kindly mendacity.And seeing something in the Frenchwoman's face that perhaps he had expected, he turned to her almost fiercely:

"You are to understand, madame, that this lady has been placed in my care by authority that will not be questioned.She is to have every deference."That was all, but was enough.And from that time on Sara Lee Kennedy, of Ohio, was called, in the tiny box downstairs which constituted the office, "Mademoiselle La Princesse."Henri did a characteristic and kindly thing for Sara Lee before he left that evening on one of the many mysterious journeys that he was to make during the time Sara Lee knew him.He came to her doors menus in hand, and painstakingly ordered for her a dinner for that night, and the threemeals for the day following.