It ended by the M. P. agreeing to use his influence with the War Office
to get Sara Lee to France. He was very unwilling. The spy question was
looming large those days. Even the Red Cross had unwittingly spread its
protection over more than one German agent. The lines were being
drawn in.
"I may possibly get her to France. I don't know, of course," he said in
that ungracious tone in which an Englishman often grants a favor which
he will go to any amount of trouble to do. "After that it's up to her."
Mr. Travers reflected rather grimly that after that it was apparently up
to him.
Sara Lee sat in her room at Morley's Hotel and looked out at the life of
London--policemen with chin straps; schoolboys in high silk hats and
Eton suits, the hats generally in disreputable condition; clerks dressed
as men at home dressed for Easter Sunday church; and men in uniforms.
Only a fair sprinkling of these last, in those early days. On the first
afternoon there was a military funeral. A regiment of Scots, in kilts,
came swinging down from the church of St. Martin in the Fields, tall and
wonderful men, grave and very sad. Behind them, on a gun carriage, was
the body of their officer, with the British flag over the casket and his
sword and cap on the top.
Sara Lee cried bitterly. It was not until they had gone that she
remembered that Harvey had always called the Scots men in women's
petticoats. She felt a thrill of shame for him, and no amount of
looking at his picture seemed to help.
Mr. Travers called the second afternoon and was received by August at
the door as an old friend.
"She's waiting in there," he said. "Very nice young lady, sir. Very
kind to everybody."
Mr. Travers found her by a window looking out. There was a recruiting
meeting going on in Trafalgar Square, the speakers standing on the
monument. Now and then there was a cheer, and some young fellow
sheepishly offered himself. Sara Lee was having a mad desire to go
over and offer herself too. Because, she reflected, she had been in
London almost two days, and she was as far from France as ever. Not
knowing, of course, that three months was a fair time for the slow
methods then in vogue.
There was a young man in the room, but Sara Lee had not noticed him.
He was a tall, very blond young man, in a dark-blue Belgian uniform with
a quaint cap which allowed a gilt tassel to drop over his forehead. He
sat on a sofa, curling up the ends of a very small mustache, his legs,
in cavalry boots, crossed and extending a surprising distance beyond
the sofa.