For four days the gray car did not come again. Supplies appeared in
another gray car, driven by a surly Fleming. The waking hours were full,
as usual. Sara Lee grew a little thin, and seemed to be always
listening. But there was no Henri, and something that was vivid and
joyous seemed to have gone out of the little house.
Even Marie no longer sang as she swept or washed the kettles, and Sara
Lee, making up the records to send home, put little spirit into the
letter that went with them.
On the second day she wrote to Harvey.
"I am sorry that you feel as you do," she wrote, perhaps unconsciously
using Henri's last words to her. "I have not meant to be cruel. And
if you were here you would realize that whether others could have done
what I am doing or not--and of course many could--it is worth doing.
I hear that other women are establishing houses like this, but the
British and the French will not allow women so near the lines. The men
come in at night from the trenches so tired, so hungry and so cold.
Some of them are wounded too. I dress the little wounds. I do give
them something, Harvey dear--if it is only a reminder that there are
homes in the world, and everything is not mud and waiting and killing."
She told him that his picture was on her mantel, but she did not say
that a corner of her room had been blown away or that the mantel was
but a plank from a destroyed house. And she sent a great deal of love,
but she did not say that she no longer wore his ring on her finger.
And, of course, she was coming back to him if he still wanted her.
More than Henri's absence was troubling Sara Lee those days. Indeed she
herself laid all her anxiety to one thing, a serious one at that. With
all the marvels of Henri's buying, and Jean's, her money was not holding
out. The scope of the little house had grown with its fame. Now and
then there were unexpected calls, too--Marie's mother, starving in
Havre; sickness and death in the little town at the crossroads: a dozen
small emergencies, but adding to the demands on her slender income. She
had, as a matter of fact, already begun to draw on her private capital.
And during the days when no gray car appeared she faced the situation,
took stock, as it were, and grew heavy-eyed and wistful.
On the fifth day the gray car came again, but Jean drove it alone. He
disclaimed any need for sympathy over his wound, and with Rene's aid
carried in the supplies.