The Amazing Interlude by Mary Roberts Rinehart (pdf to ebook reader txt) 📖

The first thing that struck Sara Lee was the way she was saying her nightly prayers in all sorts of odd places. In trains and in hotels and, after sufficient interval, in the steamer. She prayed under these novel circumstances to be made a better girl, and to do a lot of good over there, and to be forgiven for hurting Harvey. She did this every night, and then got into her narrow bed and studied French nouns—because she had decided that there was no time for verbs—and numbers, which put her to sleep.

"Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq," Sara Lee would begin, and go on, rocking gently in her berth as the steamer rolled, "Vingt, vingt-et-un, vingt-deux, trente, trente-et-un—" Her voice would die away. The book on the floor and Harvey's picture on the tiny table, Sara Lee would sleep. And as the ship trembled the light over her head would shine on Harvey's ring, and it glistened like a tear.

One thing surprised her as she gradually met some of her fellow passengers. She was not alone on her errand. Others there were on board, young and old women, and men, too, who had felt the call of mercy and were going, as ignorant as she, to help. As ignorant, but not so friendless. Most of them were accredited somewhere. They had definite objectives. But what was more alarming—they talked in big figures. Great organizations were behind them. She heard of the rehabilitation of Belgium, and portable hospitals, and millions of dollars, and Red Cross trains.

Not once did Sara Lee hear of anything so humble as a soup kitchen. The war was a vast thing, they would observe. It could only be touched by great organizations. Individual effort was negligible.

Once she took her courage in her hands.

"But I should think," she said, "that even great organizations depend on the—on individual efforts."

The portable hospital woman turned to her patronizingly.

"Certainly, my dear," she said. "But coördinated—coördinated."

It is hard to say just when the lights went down on Sara Lee's quiet stage and the interlude began. Not on the steamer, for after three days of discouragement and good weather they struck a storm; and Sara Lee's fine frenzy died for a time, of nausea. She did not appear again until the boat entered the Mersey, a pale and shaken angel of mercy, not at all sure of her wings, and most terribly homesick.

That night Sara Lee made a friend, one that Harvey would have approved of, an elderly Englishman named Travers. He was standing by the rail in the rain looking out at the blinking signal lights on both sides of the river. The ship for the first time had abandoned its policy of darkness and the decks were bathed in light.

Overhead the yardarm blinkers were signaling, and directly over Sara Lee's head a great white searchlight swept the water ahead. The wind was blowing a gale, and the red and green lights of the pilot boat swung in great arcs that seemed to touch the waves on either side.

Sara Lee stood beside Mr. Travers, for companionship only. He had preserved a typically British aloofness during the voyage, and he had never spoken to her. But there was something forlorn in Sara Lee that night as she clutched her hat with both hands and stared out at the shore lights. And if he had been silent during the voyage he had not been deaf. So he knew why almost every woman on the ship was making the voyage; but he knew nothing about Sara Lee.

"Bad night," said Mr. Travers.

"I was wondering what they are trying to do with that little boat."

Mr. Travers concealed the surprise of a man who was making his seventy-second voyage.

"That's the pilot boat," he explained. "We are picking up a pilot."

"But," marveled Sara Lee rather breathlessly, "have we come all the way without any pilot?"

He explained that to her, and showed her a few moments later how the pilot came with incredible rapidity up the swaying rope ladder and over the side.

To be honest, he had been watching for the pilot boat, not to see what to Sara Lee was the thrilling progress of the pilot up the ladder, but to get the newspapers he would bring on with him. It is perhaps explanatory of the way things went for Sara Lee from that time on that he quite forgot his newspapers.

The chairs were gone from the decks, preparatory to the morning landing, so they walked about and Sara Lee at last told him her story—the ladies of the Methodist Church, and the one hundred dollars a month she was to have, outside of her traveling expenses, to found and keep going a soup kitchen behind the lines.

"A hundred dollars a month," he said. "That's twenty pounds. Humph! Good God!"

But this last was under his breath.

Then she told him of Mabel Andrews' letter, and at last read it to him. He listened attentively. "Of course," she said when she had put the letter back into her bag, "I can't feed a lot, even with soup. But if I only help a few, it's worth doing, isn't it?"

"Very much worth doing," he said gravely. "I suppose you are not, by any chance, going to write a weekly article for one of your newspapers about what you are doing?"

"I hadn't thought of it. Do you think I should?"

Quite unexpectedly Mr. Travers patted her shoulder.

"My dear child," he said, "now and then I find somebody who helps to revive my faith in human nature. Thank you."

Sara Lee did not understand. The touch on the shoulder had made her think suddenly of Uncle James, and her chin quivered.

"I'm just a little frightened," she said in a small voice.

"Twenty pounds!" repeated Mr. Travers to himself. "Twenty pounds!" And aloud: "Of course you speak French?"

"Very little. I've had six lessons, and I can count—some."

The sense of unreality which the twenty pounds had roused in Mr. Travers' cautious British mind grew. No money, no French, no objective, just a great human desire to be useful in her own small way—this was a new type to him. What a sporting chance this frail bit of a girl was taking! And he noticed now something that had escaped him before—a dauntlessness, a courage of the spirit