第10章

"A young girl!" exclaimed the M.P."Why, deuce take it, it's no place for a young girl.""An American," explained Mr.Travers uncomfortably." She's perfectly able to look after herself.""Probably a correspondent in disguise.They'll go to any lengths." "She's not a correspondent.""Let her stay in Boulogne.There's work there in the hospitals." "She's not a nurse.She's a - well, she's a cook.Or so she says."The M.P.stared at Mr.Travers, and Mr.Travers stared back defiantly."What in the name of God is she going to cook?""Soup," said Mr.Travers in a voice of suppressed irritation."She's got a little money, and she wants to establish a soup kitchen behind the Belgian trenches on a line of communication.I suppose," he continued angrily, "even you will admit that the Belgian Army needs all the soup it can get.""I don't approve of women near the lines.""Neither do I.But I'm exceedingly glad that a few of them have the courage to go there.""What's she going to make soup out of?"

"I'm not a cooking expert.But I know her and I fancy she'll manage." It ended by the M.P.agreeing to use his influence with the War Officeto 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, ofcourse, 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.

The lights were up now, beyond the back drop, the stage darkened.A new scene with a vengeance, a scene laid in strange surroundings, with men, whole men and wounded men and spying men - and Sara Lee and this young Belgian, whose name was Henri and whose other name, because of what he suffered and what be did, we may not know.