Ruth, who was driving, halted the car again and again.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“We do not know,” the peasants answered.
Ruth drove on into the little city of Ham, where ambulances bearing the English wounded were arriving in an endless line from the front. Mrs. Mayhew had seen wounded men—many, many of them—in the Paris hospitals; Ruth too had seen wounded—almost two score of people variously hurt aboard the Ribot. But here they came, not as blessés arrived in Paris, but from the battle field and, not by scores, but by hundreds, by thousands!
Ruth went sick when she saw them. She thought of Hubert, her gentle-minded, sensitive Hubert, now helping to handle men so hurt. She thought of Agnes Ertyle when she saw English women, as well as English men, receiving the forms from the ambulances at the great casualty clearing stations where new rows of tents hastily were going up. She thought, of course, of Gerry Hull. She believed that he was far removed from this zone of battle; but she did not yet know—no one yet knew—how far the fighting front was extending. He might be flying at this moment over a front most heavily involved; she knew that he would wish to be; and how he would fight—fight as never before and without regard of himself to check disaster due, as he would believe, to the tardiness of his country.
She saw a boy in the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps lying upon a stretcher in the sunshine; he was smoking, but he took his cigarette from his lips to smile at her as she gazed down at him.
British troops—strong, young, uninjured men—marching in battalions; English guns and ammunition lorries; more English infantry and guns poured into the streets of the city, passed through them and on to the front and more came. The wounded from the front and the French folk from the farms and villages passed on their way to the rear; but no one else came back.
“The line is steadying itself; it’s holding,” the rumor ran in Ham during the afternoon. “The Boche gained at first—everyone on the offensive gains at first—but now we’re holding them; we’re slaughtering them as they come on.” Then more alarming reports spread. “They’ve overrun the first lines at points; but the others are holding or are sure to—the Boche are doing better than at Verdun.” Then that was denied. “They’re not doing so well. We’re holding them now. They’re coming on. They’re driving us back.”
Not even the wounded and the refugees, still streaming from the front, brought reliable report; the battle was too immense for that. And into the battle, English reinforcements steadily went forward. So Ruth was sure only that the great battle, which the world had been awaiting, was begun; she could know nothing of the true fortune of that first tremendous day. She was finding, however, that Mrs. Mayhew and she could not go about their work of restoration. They turned their car upon the road and, inviting refugees, they carried the peasants swift miles along the roads which they had been trudging; let them off ten miles or so to the rear and returned for more.
But they urged no one to flee; they simply assisted those already in flight and who would not be turned back. And that evening, which was more quiet than the evening before—or at least it seemed so in comparison to the day—they returned to Mirevaux. The worst was past, they believed; the line, the English and the French line which for more than three years had stood and held against the Germans, had reformed and reestablished itself after the first shake of the tremendous onslaught.