第38章

The man Henri watched went slowly, for he carried a bag of grain on his back.Henri no longed watched him, He watched the wind wheel.It had been broken, and one plane was now patched with what looked like a red cloth.There was a good wind, but clearly the miller was idle that day.The great wings were not turning.

Henri sat still and smoked.He thought of many things - of Sara Lee'seyes when in the center of the London traffic she had held the dying donkey; of her small and radiant figure at the Savoy; of the morning he had found her at Calais, in the Gare Maritime, quietly unconscious that she had done a courageous thing.And he thought, too, of the ring and the photograph she carried.But mostly he remembered the things she had said to him on their last meeting.

Perhaps there came to him his temptation too.It would be so easy that night, if things went well, to make a brave showing before her, to let her see that these odd jobs he did had their value and their risks.But he put that from him.The little house of mercy must be empty that night, for her sake.He shivered as he remembered the room where she slept, the corner that was shot away and left open to the street.So he sat and watched.And at one o'clock the mill wheel began turning.It was easy to count the revolutions by the red wing.Nine times it turned, and stopped.After five minutes or so it turned again, thirty times.Henri smiled: an ugly smile.

"A good guess," he said to himself."But it must be more than a guess."His work for the afternoon was done.Still with the bent-kneed swing he struck back to the road, and avoiding the crossroads, went across more fields to a lane where Jean waited with the car.Henri took a plunge into the canal when he had removed his French uniform, and producing a towel from under a hush rubbed himself dry.His lean boyish body gleamed, arms and legs brown from much swimming under peaceful summer suns.On his chest he showed two scars, still pink.Shrapnel bites, he called them.But he had, it is to be feared, a certain young satisfaction in them.

He was in high good humor.The water was icy, and Jean had refused to join him.

My passion for cleanliness," Henri said blithely, "is the result of my English school days.You would have been the better for an English education, Jean."A canal in March!" Jean grunted."You will end badly." Henri looked longingly at the water.

"Had I a dry towel," he said, "I would go in again" Jean looked at him with his one eye.

"You would be prettier without those scars" he observed.But in his heart he prayed that there might be no others added to them, that nothing might mar or destroy that bright and youthful body.

"Depechez-vous! Vous sommes Presses!" he added.

But Henri was minded to play.He girded himself with the towel and struck an attitude."The Russian ballet, Jean!" he said, and capering madly sent Jean into deep grumbles of laughter by his burlesque.

"I must have exercise," Henri said at last when, breathless and with flying hair, he began to dress.That, too, is my English schooling.If you, Jean.-""To the devil with your English schooling!" Jean remonstrated.

Henri sobered quickly after that.The exhilaration of his cold plunge was over.

"The American lady?" he asked."She is all right?" "She is worried.There is not enough money." Henri frowned."And I have nothing!"This opened up an old wound with Jean.

"If you would be practical and take pay for what you are doing," he began.

Henri cut him short.

"Pay!" he said."What is there to pay me with? And what is the use of reopening the matter? A man may be a spy for love of his country.God knows there is enough lying and deceit in the business.But to be a spy or money-never!"There was a little silence.Then: "Now for mademoiselle," said Henri."She must be out of the village to-night.And that, dear friend, must be your affair.She does not like me."All the life had gone out of his voice.