Outside the ward Major Greyson was talking with a convalescent infantry officer whom Lucy knew. At sight of her they both came forward, and Captain Lewis said close to her ear, “Don’t be frightened. We are holding them well. Half of this infernal racket comes from our own guns, you know.”
“It isn’t pleasant to hear, though, is it, Lucy?” asked Major Greyson. “Your father had a little morphine, so he is sleeping. He’s doing splendidly. Think of that instead of your other worries. It will soon be daylight now, and this won’t last forever.”
Lucy nodded without speaking, for even in shouts she could hardly hear her own voice. The officers left her, each bound on a different errand, and she followed Miss Pearse into the nurses’ dining-room.
The first shafts of light were stealing through the narrow windows and in the dusk a dozen nurses were hurriedly breakfasting. Miss Pearse made room for Lucy beside her and handed her a plate and cup. A general haste of preparation filled the air. As they ate in silence, the bursting shells making speech next to impossible, other nurses and orderlies went back and forth outside the room, carrying blankets and mattresses in a last effort to find more room in the already crowded building. This hospital, improvised by the American Medical Corps, and a second, in charge of a French staff, were the only ones in Château-Plessis, and the need had grown overwhelming.
Before the nurses scattered Miss Pearse brought word to Lucy that she might go to her father’s room. The darkness had vanished now, and the clear light of dawn filled the hospital. Lucy found Major Greyson by Colonel Gordon’s bedside.
“He’s still asleep,” he said when she was close enough to hear him, nodding his head toward the quiet figure on the cot. “His pulse is good, and he breathes easily. You may stay here a while, if you like—he may wake any minute.”
Major Greyson had risen from the chair and, seeing him ready to go, Lucy hastily asked the questions that were trembling on her tongue. “Major Greyson, where do you think Mother is? And Cousin Henry promised to be back last night!” She shouted into his ear as he bent down to listen, but the bursting shells almost drowned her words. He nodded quickly to show he understood.
“They are held up,” he said with certainty. “The railroad is open to nothing but troop-trains to-day. With luck they may manage to get on a supply-train, but I’m afraid they’re blocked somewhere along the road. You mustn’t worry,” he added, speaking as hopefully as he could in a voice which in a quiet place would have carried across a field. “They are well out of danger—further from the front than we are.”
Lucy sat down beside her father, thankful that he had slept through this much of the tumult, and fell to thinking of Bob until her fear for him grew greater than her courage, and resolutely she tried to turn her thoughts away. Had not Bob come back once from deadly peril? From the merciless hands of the enemy? Remembering her own despair in that dreadful December of 1917, Lucy never failed to find some hope for her brother’s safety. Her father did not wake, and when a nurse came to take her place she left him and went out into the little garden. The sun was rising gloriously behind the clouds of dust and smoke blown from the batteries before the town. The pounding of the cannon seemed for a moment to have slackened, even a slight lessening of the din bringing a quick relief to her tired ears. Down by the ruined gate there was a little crowd of people, and she made haste to join them. They were doctors, nurses and convalescents together with a few people of the town, their eyes all turned toward the rising sun, and their hands lifted as a shield against its rays.
“What is it?” asked Lucy of a medical officer who stood beside her, binoculars in hand.