“Not unless they walk for miles—there is no other chance. Major Greyson is nearly wild because you have not gone. Of course there was no question of evacuating the hospital—we have to stay.”
“And I have to stay,” said Lucy slowly, but Miss Pearse did not hear the words.
“Your father does not know,” she continued. “They have given him something to make him sleep, and he is comfortable.” A sob rose unchecked in Lucy’s throat, but in a moment Miss Pearse had drawn her to her feet, saying earnestly, “Whatever happens, we must look ahead and hope, or we shall have no courage left. They will leave us in the hospital, you know. We shall be safe enough here.”
Safe sounded a strange word to use, Lucy thought, as she walked dully toward the table.
She tried her best, in spite of that numbing paralysis of fear, to capture something of Miss Pearse’s calm and steadfast bravery, but that hurried breakfast and the whole morning after it seemed no more than a great waking nightmare. The other nurses had joined them for a few hasty mouthfuls, every one with that desperate struggle between fear and courage written upon her tired face. For it is harder to be brave when one is spent with weariness, and none of the nurses had slept more than three or four hours out of the twenty-four since the opening of the second attack.
When Lucy was left alone again she sat on the window-ledge, staring at the ever-changing scene outside. Big motor-lorries, loaded with stores and equipment, were making their difficult way through the streets now. Perched on top of the loads were men hanging on somehow, for the convalescent patients who were at all able to stand a journey had begged or stolen transportation for a few miles toward the rear, whence they could strike another blow instead of falling into the enemy’s hands. Along with these came the crowd of civilian refugees, weighed down with the shabby household furnishings that meant too much to them to leave behind, just as their homes had meant so much that they had clung there in desperate hope until escape became all but impossible. The straggling lines looked sadly unable to cover the long, hard miles that lay between them and any refuge. Lucy’s eyes grew blurred with tears of pity as, forgetting her own overpowering fear and dread, she watched a heavily-burdened woman shuffle past, carrying her baby as well as bulky bundles of clothes and bedding. After her toddled two other children, one of them no more than able to walk, stumbling helplessly among the heaps of stone.
“Oh, how dreadful—how terrible!” cried Lucy, burying her face in her trembling hands with a quick sob. Then she thought, “This is war. I never knew what it was until now.”
In another hour fragments of the retreating French and American regiments passed through the town. Field artillery, too, whose wheels and galloping horses were almost unheard in the fire of the German guns. But the greater part of the troops which had so stubbornly held the trenches in front of the wood retreated around the edge of the town to their prepared defenses in the rear, preferring to abandon Château-Plessis at once than to submit the two hospitals to a prolonged bombardment.
Toward noon the noise of the guns seemed to Lucy’s aching ears to have grown intolerable. Too restless to sit still, she visited her father’s room and found him peacefully asleep. She was glad of it, and yet she longed so desperately for the comfort of his companionship. Where were her mother and Cousin Henry? As for Bob, she dared not think of him. She went toward the door leading out into the little garden. The street was filled with dust, but the lines of fleeing people had passed on out of sight. She stepped onto the threshold and as she did so an orderly, opening a box of Red Cross dressings close by, let fall his tools and caught her arm in an iron grip.
“No, Miss! Not another step!” he shouted.