“I don’t know yet,” Lucy answered, bending over him to be heard. “I haven’t seen Major Greyson, he’s so busy, but I think he’s going to send me off some time to-day.” Just then it was real happiness to hear her father’s voice so full of energy and purpose—so nearly like his old confident self. She smiled and forgot her worries for a moment. In all Colonel Gordon’s eager interest of the evening before at the news of Bob’s visit he had seemed tired and restless, but this morning even Lucy’s unskilled eyes could see a real improvement. She began to tell him about Bob once more.
“If you could only have watched him yesterday morning in the air, Father! You’ve seen him fly though, of course. They were so wonderful, he and Captain Jourdin, keeping after those big German planes until they drove them home. He looks well, I think.” She checked herself and added truthfully, “But he’s thinner than he was.” She did not tell her father of the anxiety Bob had undergone in his behalf. She wanted to describe his surprise at their meeting, but the effort needed to talk was terrific. It was like speaking in a never-ending peal of thunder.
Soon Colonel Gordon’s nurse came back and told Lucy that breakfast was ready. It was daylight now in the wards, where the workers still passed from one patient to the next, along the rows of cots and mattresses. Lucy glanced down the long room with a little shuddering tremor of pity and horror, not daring to look too closely at those silent bandaged figures. But in the depths of her heart the longing still persisted, first roused months ago at that little nursing class on Governor’s Island, to do something to help from the stores of her own health and energy.
She went on into the nurses’ rest and dining-room and, finding no one yet at the table, stood by one of the quaint, narrow windows, from which the glass had been shattered long ago, looking out across the garden into the street. The crowd of people had grown dense in the last hour. Now it was entirely made up of townspeople; women, old men and children, who seemed to-day to have forgotten their orderly routine and to be hurrying blindly through the streets with baskets on their arms and bundles on their shoulders. The children clung to their mothers’ skirts with looks of fear and bewilderment. In the few minutes that Lucy stood there not a person passed by going toward the eastern side of Château-Plessis. They were fleeing from the battle-front toward the other end of the town, where already the transport lines were overloaded until not a horse or mule was to be had for miles around. As she watched a deadly fear crept over Lucy’s heart. She tried to stifle it, but could not. Her eyes did not deceive her, and had not Miss Pearse’s face two hours ago first stirred her to uneasiness? She went to the door of the room, wondering why the nurses did not come, and caught sight of Major Greyson and another medical officer talking earnestly together. They were forced to speak so loud that the words came plainly to her ears, as uncertainly she started forward.
“It’s impossible, Major!” exclaimed the younger man. “She can’t go now. She’s better off here than lost in that raging torrent of humanity behind the town. We may be——”
A shell that seemed to burst over the hospital itself drowned his last words, and Lucy could not hear Major Greyson’s reply as the two moved off together. Her heart had begun to pound with terror, and she longed desperately to follow Major Greyson and find out the worst. But the wards were a place of battle now, where the workers strained every nerve to do what their small number could for the growing hundreds of wounded men. She could not enter it yet, and hastily deciding to go back to her father, who was often alone in these crowded hours, she dropped down on a chair for a moment until she could calm her frightened breathing. She buried her face in her hands, and while she sat there, running steps came up behind her and Miss Pearse fell on her knees beside the chair and caught hold of Lucy’s hands. The young nurse’s cheeks were deadly pale, but her brave, honest blue eyes met Lucy’s frankly. She took the terrified girl by the shoulders and spoke close to her ear.
“They said for me to tell you, but you’ll need all your courage, so don’t you let it go. Oh, Lucy, Lucy! The French and Americans are far outnumbered! They are retreating on both sides of us, and Château-Plessis will soon be inside the German lines.” In spite of all her self-control her voice trembled and broke, and for a second she hid her face on Lucy’s shoulder, while the two clung together.
Too dazed to realize at that moment the extent of the catastrophe, Lucy tried to put her whirling thoughts together and make this awful thing seem real. “The Germans will take Château-Plessis,” she told herself, and still the words had little meaning for her. She felt that somewhere she had stopped living and begun to dream, but just where was the question. Only Miss Pearse’s face recalled her a little—that brave, young face with lips tight closed to hide their trembling and undaunted purpose in her clear eyes.
“It began with a new push against our lines at Argenton,” Lucy heard her saying. “They’ve given countless lives to take it, but now they are there we have to fall back to straighten out our line. It was all in an hour of the early morning,—the turning-point of the battle. Our reserves were held up somewhere, and the Germans brought two divisions for every one of ours into the fight.” She stopped, breathless, and Lucy, beginning to understand, asked suddenly:
“All those people running by; can they get away?”