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."