It was soon after eight o’clock when Lucy bade her Cousin Henry good-night and left the hospital in Miss Pearse’s charge. Mr. Leslie had done his generous best in the past hour to cheer her, but without success, though she had tried hard to respond to his kind efforts. Her eyelids were like leaden weights, her brain seemed to have no thought nor feeling left in it, and she crossed the street, which was cluttered with stones and débris, stumbling as she walked, and vaguely wondering if all this were true. Miss Pearse was very kind and helped the tired girl to bed with gentle hands and in understanding silence. But once in her narrow cot, in the room adjoining that in which Miss Pearse and another nurse slept, Lucy’s dulled mind amazingly awoke and flashed before her pictures of everything she had seen and done in the past day and night. The pounding of the guns, which had become for a while an almost unnoticed part of her surroundings, seemed swelled to a horrible din that beat like hammers on her forehead, and not even with her head buried in the pillow could she find peace enough to sleep.
For months afterward Lucy remembered that first night at Château-Plessis. The misery of her loneliness overwhelmed her as she lay there wide-eyed in the thundering darkness, beset by fears she vainly struggled to put aside, afraid to look back at what seemed peaceful days behind, or ahead, to what might come to-morrow. At last she could bear it no longer, and sitting up in bed she determined to go and beg Miss Pearse’s company, tired though she knew the poor nurse must be after her long day’s work. But Miss Pearse had not quite forgotten the lonely little girl near her. Before Lucy had left her bed she heard some one at the door of her room, and a kind voice said, “Lucy! Can’t you sleep? I’m going to lie down on your bed beside you.”
There was not much room, but Lucy made all she could, with a heart almost too grateful for speech, and her faltered thanks was lost in the roar of the cannon. With Miss Pearse dropping off to exhausted sleep at her side, the thoughts that had tormented her weary mind faded off into blankness. At last she fell asleep.
When morning came Lucy opened her eyes and found she was alone. The sun shining onto her cot had awakened her, and, sitting up, she looked soberly around at the bare, unfurnished room. The plaster on the walls was cracked, and fallen stones had nearly blocked up the chimney. Only in one corner hung a picture, as though forgotten in hurried flight. It was of a dog, jumping up to beg, with ears pricked forward and twinkling eyes behind his silky hair. Lucy smiled at it, wishing it were alive. With heavy heart she shrank from facing the new day, and desperately longed to fall back into dreamland. But, unlike the night before, she felt strength enough within her to summon up her courage and make a prompt and vigorous effort.
“Come on, Lucy Gordon, buck up! You can’t give in. Have they brought you this near the battle line to be a coward, or are you going to help your father and,” scornfully, “they used to call you Captain Lucy?”
Like Alice in Wonderland, she was fond of scolding herself, and could do it as effectively as any one else could have done it for her. Close on top of the scolding she got up and in her anxious eagerness to be dressed and to see her father she forgot to pity herself further, and thought more than anything else that this day might bring her mother to her before it ended. “But if only those guns would stop one minute!” she faltered, as she paused in her dressing to cover her ears, half deafened by the double bombardment.
Out of the bag so hurriedly packed at Highland House she selected a blue gingham dress, for the day was warm and sunny. She gave a hasty glance at her hair-ribbons in the little mirror she had brought with her, and, after putting the bare room in order, went out in search of the stairway. It was close at hand, beyond the adjoining bedroom, the foot of it opening directly on the street. Lucy ran down it, the sound of voices coming to her from outside above the cannons’ noise.
The street was crowded with French soldiers, together with a scattering of Americans, who looked very much a part of things as they passed by, joined in friendly groups with the poilus. One and all were hot, dusty and loaded down with field equipment, for there were few permissions just now, and these men had been sent back for but a few hours’ respite from the fighting-line. Lucy’s eager, shining eyes followed each American soldier as he passed, all else forgotten but those dear familiar figures, until two women, coming by with baskets on their arms, stopping to smile and point in her direction, recalled her to herself. She returned their smiles as cheerfully as she could, wondering much at the patient endurance which had left their thin faces neither frightened nor despairing. A dozen women passed her as she stood on the threshold breathing the soft spring air, and several children too. All were hurrying, intent upon their errands, but they looked quiet and self-possessed, not seeming even to hear the never ceasing explosions which forced them to speak loudly in each other’s ears.
A minute later Lucy caught sight of Miss Pearse and Mr. Leslie crossing the street from the hospital, and she quickly made her way among the broken paving stones to meet them. With beating heart she searched both their faces, and drew a sigh of relief when Mr. Leslie met her anxious eyes with a nod and smile of greeting.
“It’s all right, Lucy,” were his first words. “Your father is, if anything, better. He is waiting to see you now.” He looked with some concern into her face, which was pale after the hours she had lain awake, but she smiled with quick reassurance.