"Rinehart, Mary Roberts - The Amazing Interlude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rinehart Mary Roberts)

one she sent it to him by mail, with the word "Please" in the corner.
Harvey groaned over it, and got it out at night and scolded it wildly;
and then slept with it under his pillows, when he slept at all.

Not Sara Lee, and certainly not Harvey, knew what was calling her. And
even later, when waves of homesickness racked her with wild remorse, she
knew that she had had to go and that she could not return until she had
done the thing for which she had been sent, whatever that might be.



III


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 roIled, "Vingt, vii gt-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 bead 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, an4 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.