Not that she said all that, even to herself. There was a wave of
gladness and then a surge of remorse. That is all. But it was a very
sober Sara Lee who put on her black suit with the white collar that
afternoon and ordered, by Jean's suggestion, the evening's preparations
as though nothing was to happen.
She looked round her little room before she left it. It might not be
there when she returned. So she placed Harvey's photograph under her
mattress for safety, and rather uncomfortably she laid beside it the
small ivory crucifix that Henri had found in a ruined house and brought
to her. Harvey was not a Catholic. He did not believe in visualizing
his religion. And she had a distinct impression that he considered such
things as did so as bordering on idolatry.
Sometime after dusk that evening the ammunition train moved out. At a
point a mile or so from the village a dispatch rider on a motor cycle
stopped the rumbling lorry at the head of the procession and delivered
a message, which the guide read by the light of a sheltered match. The
train moved on, but it did not turn down to the village. It went beyond
to a place of safety, and there remained for the night.
But before that time Henri, lying close in a field, had seen a skulking
figure run from the road to the mill, and soon after had seen the mill
wheel turn once, describing a great arc; and on one of the wings, showing
only toward the poplar trees, was a lighted lantern.
Five minutes later, exactly time enough for the train to have reached
the village street, German shells began to fall in it. Henri, lying
flat on the ground, swore silently and deeply.
In every land during this war there have been those who would sell their
country for a price. Sometimes money. Sometimes protection. And of all
betrayals that of the man who sells his own country is the most dastardly.
Henri, lying face down, bit the grass beneath him in sheer rage.
One thing he had not counted on, he who foresaw most things. The miller
and his son, being what they were, were cowards as well. Doubtless the
mill had been promised protection. It was too valuable to the Germans
to be destroyed. But with the first shot both men left the house by the
mill and scurried like rabbits for the open fields.
Maurice, poor Marie's lover by now, almost trampled on Henri's prostrate
body. And Henri was alone, and his work was to take them alive. They
had information he must have--how the modus vivendi had been arranged,
through what channels. And under suitable treatment they would tell.