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[Illustration: “THOSE ARE OUR GUNS THAT SOUND SO CLOSE”]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CAPTAIN LUCY
IN FRANCE
BY
ALINE HAVARD
_Author of_
“CAPTAIN LUCY AND LIEUTENANT BOB”
[Illustration: Logo]
_Illustrated by_
RALPH P. COLEMAN
PHILADELPHIA
THE PENN PUBLISHING COMPANY
1919
------------------------------------------------------------------------
COPYRIGHT
1919 BY
THE PENN
PUBLISHING
COMPANY
[Illustration: Logo]
Captain Lucy in France
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Introduction
=TO= those who made friends with Lucy Gordon on Governor’s Island it
will seem a great change to find her, in this second story, so far away
from home. She is only one of thousands, though, to whom a few months of
the great war brought more changes than they ever thought could be
crowded into a lifetime.
Lucy can look back over less than a year to her old life at the army
post in New York Harbor before the Colonel was ordered overseas. To that
brief summer time when the Gordon family was united during her brother
Bob’s West Point graduation leave, and to the dark days of the winter of
1917 when Bob was in a German prison.
Even then Lucy never lost hope, and her brave confidence was gloriously
rewarded with Bob’s freedom. But in those dreadful weeks of waiting she
outgrew her childhood, as though even in that pleasant home on
Governor’s Island she knew that peace and content could never come back
to her and to those she loved until America had fired her final shot at
Germany’s crumbling lines.
She could not guess what lay before her,—what old friends she was to
meet again in strange new places. Yet she had resolved, even before she
had any hope of crossing to the other side, that, come what might, she
would serve in her own way as steadfastly as her father served, as
valiantly as Bob.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Contents
CHAP. PAGE
I. THE SUMMONS 9
II. ON THE ALLIED FRONT 34
III. A GLIMPSE OF BOB 56
IV. THE FORTUNE OF WAR 82
V. THE ENGLISH PRISONER 97
VI. A GERMAN ALLY 115
VII. BOB GORDON AND CAPTAIN BEATTIE 141
VIII. A LITTLE FRENCH HEROINE 170
IX. THE FIGHT OVER ARGENTON 194
X. THE PLAN OF THE DEFENSES 216
XI. A CHANCE IN A THOUSAND 235
XII. MRS. GORDON AND BOB 261
XIII. THE PRICE OF VICTORY 281
XIV. A DESPERATE RESOLVE 302
XV. ACROSS THE LINES 326
XVI. THE YANKS ARE COMING 356
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Illustrations
PAGE
“THOSE ARE OUR GUNS THAT SOUND SO CLOSE” _Frontispiece_
“THIS MEADOW IS THE BEST LANDING-PLACE” 77
“WHO’S THAT WITH YOU?” 145
“WHAT’S YOUR BUSINESS HERE?” 253
SHE APPROACHED THE CHIMNEY 336
Captain Lucy in France
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Captain Lucy in France
CHAPTER I
THE SUMMONS
“=THE= really nice part about doing hard work is that you feel so happy
when you’ve left off,” remarked Janet Leslie, stretching her lazy length
on the shady grass with arms beneath her head. “Lie down again, Lucy. We
have still half an hour to rest.”
“I’m not tired. I haven’t worked as hard as you and Edith, because I
stopped to read Bob’s letter,” said Lucy Gordon, turning toward the
other girl of the trio, who was likewise lying on the grass, her heavy
pigtail fallen across one sunburned cheek.
“U-h!” grunted Edith Morris with closed eyelids. “That last row of beans
was almost too much for me. Gardening isn’t my strong point. I’d rather
be junior hospital aide all day.”
Lucy’s hazel eyes wandered from her two companions across the wide,
level stretch of green, lit by the noonday sun, to where the light,
spring shadows of the oak groves checkered its edges. The smooth turf
was all cut up into a dozen big truck-gardens. With reckless disregard
of the beautiful velvet lawn, busy hands had plowed and planted, until
everywhere were springing up young corn and beans, peas, lentils and
potato plants. Mr. Arthur Leslie’s big estate was given up to raising
food for hungry mouths, and this little corner of it showed but a part
of the changes that had come to Highland House since the beginning of
the war.
It was the second week of May, 1918, and Lucy Gordon was in England.
Though only a few miles from London, this quiet countryside seemed very
peaceful, but that was only when you looked up at the clear, bright sky,
or across the green fields. To watch the people at their daily tasks was
to see that not one of them, from school children to old men and women,
was for one moment idle, or forgetful of the burden each had to share.
Certainly Lucy could not forget it, but she often thanked the constant
work for the distraction it gave her anxious thoughts. It was two months
since her father, now Colonel Gordon, had been ordered from his home
station at Governor’s Island, in New York Harbor, to the western front.
His departure had followed quickly her brother Bob’s convalescence after
his German captivity, and on top of it had come her mother’s decision to
put her knowledge of the care of the sick and of children to some use in
the country which held her son and husband. Six weeks ago Mrs. Gordon
had sailed to join English and American workers in the reclaimed French
villages behind the lines, and with her had gone Lucy, after countless
prayers to her mother, as well as to Mr. Leslie, her kind and
sympathetic Cousin Henry, to be allowed to accept her English cousins’
invitation and remain as near as she could to her family.
“I’ll take care of her, Sally,—let her come,” Mr. Leslie had begged for
her in those last, hurried days at Governor’s Island. “Arthur Leslie’s
girl will love to have her there, and it’s tough leaving her behind,
even at your mother’s. I’ll be back and forth often from the Continent,
you know, and can bring you news of each other.” For Mr. Leslie, giving
up the active superintendence of his big lumber camps, had organized and
equipped a Red Cross unit which he meant to accompany to the French
front. In the end he had his way, and Mrs. Gordon, only too glad to have
Lucy near her so long as she was safe, had given her consent.
That was six weeks ago, and they had passed more quickly than any weeks
in the fifteen years of Lucy’s life. For since coming to the beautiful
Surrey home of her unknown English cousins, she had worked, like them,
in almost every waking moment, and longed like them to do more, far more
than was in their power, for the cause of the Allies.
Presently Janet roused herself to say thoughtfully, as she blinked up at
the sun, “It is harder for Lucy than for us, because her family are all
away. Our brothers are gone, Edie, and my father, but we both have our
mothers left—though Mum wants to join Cousin Sally this summer, Lucy, so
perhaps we’ll be left alone. You know your mother wrote how few there
are over there to help, and how many of those poor French children are
without homes. I wish I were old enough to go.”
Lucy’s eyes flashed instant response to her cousin’s words. In spite of
her hard daily tasks her eager, restless spirit was still unsatisfied,
and she dreamed, as in the year gone by, of greater and braver efforts.
“That’s so,” assented Edith, lazily opening her eyes, as she pondered
Janet’s first words. “Of course Janet is your cousin, but she’s Scotch
and English, and you’re American. Is all your family in France, Lucy?”
“No—there’s William,” said Lucy, smiling to herself as a little figure
came before her mind’s eye with the name. “He’s my six-year-old brother,
at my grandmother’s in Connecticut. But my father is with the A.E.F.[1]
So is Bob—in aviation—and Mother is behind the lines.” She sighed, but a
quick realization of the truth made her add more cheerfully, “Still,
it’s a lot to be as near to them as I am.”
Footnote 1:
American Expedition to France.
“I should think so!” exclaimed Janet, sitting up with a sudden return of
energy at sight of a quick moving figure among the gardens. “Think if
you’d been left way off in America.” She turned to her cousin as she
spoke with a look of real understanding, for already frank, generous
Janet felt a warm friendship for the courageous little American, and
found in Lucy no less a devotion than her own to the Allies’ cause.
“Here comes Mary Lee,” she said, nodding toward the advancing figure of
a tall girl of eighteen, dressed, like themselves, in khaki working
suit. “Time’s up, I guess.”
The two rose quickly to their feet, and gathered up rakes and hoes.
“Time, Mary?” asked Edith, lingering for a final stretch. “It seems
about ten minutes to-day since we came out from luncheon.”
“It’s a whole hour, lazybones,” said Mary Lee, smiling as she showed the
watch on her tanned wrist. “I want you three to finish hoeing the corn
over here, if you will.”
With no great enthusiasm but with obedient alacrity, the young
farm-hands shouldered their hoes and walked off across the grass, for
the Junior War Workers were under orders, and submitted like good
soldiers to discipline. For days after her arrival in England Lucy had
marveled at the organization which had marshaled thousands of schoolboys
and schoolgirls in efficient squads, under the direction of their
elders, and told them off for countless duties throughout the land.
Since she herself became a member of the army of war workers she had
gardened for endless hot, weary, satisfying hours. She had mended linen
and sewed on buttons in the wardrobe room of the near-by base hospital,
and had canvassed the countryside with Janet in the little donkey-cart,
for eggs and other delicacies promised for the sick and wounded. It was
extraordinary the amount of work that could be got, at no great
hardship, from one willing and active girl; and when the three got
together it really seemed as though they accomplished something, in
spite of all Lucy’s unsatisfied longings.
It was four o’clock, and the sun had commenced to throw long shadows
from the oak trees on the grass, when Mary Lee called to the dozen
girls, busy here and there among the gardens, to stop work for the day.
“Phew!” breathed Janet, pushing back the thick, dark hair from her hot
face, and stepping gingerly along the well cultivated row of tiny green
shoots. “I know what I’m going to do. I’m going in to lie down on my
sofa, and just be perfectly worthless until it’s time for tea. Perhaps
I’ll play with the kitten, but nothing more strenuous.”
Lucy said nothing, but inwardly she knew what she should do. At the noon
rest she had only skimmed over Bob’s letter, and now it fairly burned
the pocket of her khaki blouse. She had not seen her brother since they
said good-bye on the Governor’s Island dock in September, 1917. She
shouldered her hoe and followed quickly in her cousin’s footsteps,
waving to Edith, who had started homeward through the grove as Lucy and
Janet set off toward the house.
Half an hour later, bathed and free from clinging chunks of Surrey
earth, Lucy was sitting in the window-seat of her bedroom in the
beautiful old house, beside the diamond-paned bay window. Her soft, fair
hair was smoothly brushed and tied with a black ribbon, and her khaki
uniform changed for a blue linen dress. With a sigh of satisfaction she
took Bob’s hastily written letter from its envelope and settled back
among the cushions to read.
“DEAR OLD LUCY:
“Hope you are not too homesick for the U.S.A. It’s no use, so cheer
up and do all you can to help. But I know there’s no need to tell
you that.
“I am as well as possible, and, as you may imagine, frightfully busy
since the Boches began their last big slugging at our lines. I can’t
tell you where I am, but it is, I’m sorry to say, nowhere near
Mother or Dad, so I haven’t seen either of them for a month. I hope
you got my last letter telling the good news that I brought down my
first German plane. I am a full-fledged pilot at last, and a first
lieutenant, with some sweet little Nieuports of my own that can do
wonders in the air. Cousin Henry watched me fly the other day. His
work brought him near here last week, and he gave me news of Mother,
which I was awfully glad to get. Transportation in these parts is
pretty crowded just now and letters come through slowly. I shouldn’t
be surprised if you heard from her oftener than I do. Cousin Henry,
like the trump he is, is working for all he’s worth. Time and money
are nothing for him to give where they will help, and I wish I could
write you some of the fine things he has done. I didn’t see him
long, for we are on pretty constant duty now, and most of my outlook
lately consists of German trenches seen eight thousand feet below
me, with shrapnel spouting up from them like fireworks. I float
around among the clouds and keep out of reach, while my observer
makes his maps or gets his little machine gun ready if the German
taubes come buzzing too near.”
“Out of reach,” Lucy murmured, with a quick frown. “Not if I know him!”
and a worried wrinkle persisted on her forehead as she turned to the
last page.
“The Yanks are doing their good little bit on the battle line. I
wish there were more of us, but we’re not to be despised. Fritz
doesn’t seem to think so, anyway, from the bombing he gives our
trenches whenever our Allies give him a little respite. Father’s
regiment did a fine piece of work the other day near you know where.
I can’t write more definitely now, but he, with a number of his
officers, was recommended for decoration by the French divisional
commander.”
Lucy’s forehead cleared a little over this, and her serious eyes
brightened as she read the words. Bob had only written a few lines more:
“I know you like the Leslies. If they are Cousin Henry’s sort you
couldn’t help it. Janet’s brother Arthur is not far from here, and I
intend to meet him as soon as we can manage it. I saw him last when
I was ten and he was about seventeen. I haven’t a second more to
write, so good-bye. Love and best wishes from
“Yours as ever,
“BOB.”
“Lucy!” called Janet’s soft voice outside the door, after half an hour
had stolen by. “Aren’t you coming down to tea?”
Lucy sat up and recalled her thoughts from where Bob’s letter had led
them, and her eyes from the darkening fields and woods beyond the leaded
panes.
“I’m coming, Janet,” she answered, putting back the letter in its
envelope and rising swiftly from the window-seat.
Lucy seldom indulged now in the reveries she had once been so fond of.
They were too apt to become sad ones, and she wanted only to follow the
example of her cousins and do each day’s work cheerfully. Rebellious
moments came, and this last half hour had been one of them, when nothing
seemed to matter but the endless salt waves that separated her from all
she loved the best. But Lucy had gained stores of both patience and
courage since that dark day in December of the year before when Bob had
been reported missing.
She went out of her room and ran down the wide staircase to the floor
below. The big, many-windowed drawing-room on the right had most of the
furniture removed or pushed close to the wall to make place for bales of
gauze and muslin, for Highland House was the headquarters of the
district Red Cross Chapter. Beyond the drawing-room was the library, and
there a table at one side was set with kettle and teacups, and the
jingle of china and silver sounded from the doorway.
“Here I am, Cousin Janet. I hope you’ve kept a muffin for me?” said
Lucy, looking inquiringly at the table and at the small, bright-eyed
lady who presided at it with quick-moving fingers.
“Of course we have,” declared Mrs. Leslie with a nod and smile, as she
handed Lucy a cup of hot milk and water, with a dash of tea in it.
“We’ve kept two, even,” said Janet, pointing to the muffin plate from
her lazy seat in a big chair. “It’s wonderful what an appetite hoeing
corn gives one—even for war rations.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever again complain of food at home,” sighed Lucy as
she sank into a chair. She had learned some lessons about the value of a
hearty meal during those eight weeks in England. There was enough to eat
at Highland House, but it was simple food, limited to each one’s needs.
“This looks wonderful,” she added, carefully spreading the hot, split
muffin with a slender share of margarine, for butter was an unknown
luxury outside the hospitals.
“That must have been a long letter you had from Bob,” remarked Janet,
searching her cousin’s face for signs of unusual worry or homesickness,
after her hour’s seclusion. “But perhaps you weren’t reading it much of
the time?”
“No, I wasn’t,” said Lucy. “I was thinking about—oh, you know—all sorts
of things. But everything Bob wrote was pretty good news. He’s a pilot,
as he told me last week, and doing the work he loves to do. He spoke of
seeing Arthur very soon, as they’re not far apart.”
“Then he’s near Cantigny,” said Mrs. Leslie quickly, “for that’s where
Arthur is now.”
At mention of her eldest son she flushed a little, chiefly with pride,
but that feeling was always mixed with fear, and more than ever now,
since the opening of the great offensive. Arthur Leslie had served for
over three years, had received four wounds, and had been decorated with
the Victoria Cross and the Croix de Guerre. In his mother’s anxious
thoughts it seemed almost too much to hope that he should be longer
spared.
Lucy glanced up at Mrs. Leslie’s face, in that moment when her thoughts
were far away from the tea-table and the cheerful room, thinking as she
had often done before, how gay and merry Cousin Janet must have been in
the happy days before the war. She was cheerful still, in spite of the
daily crushing weight upon her, but her lips were close set, and her
dark eyes had a sad earnestness behind their glancing brightness. “Two
sons and her husband,” Lucy thought. “That’s one more than Mother has to
worry for.”
“Come, children,” Mrs. Leslie said, rousing herself after a moment.
“Let’s go in and get the gauze cut and arranged for to-morrow’s work. I
expect a good many will be here.”
The two girls rose obediently, and as they did so, the ring of the front
door-bell sounded through the house.
“Perhaps that’s some one come to help us,” suggested Janet, while her
mother, putting behind her the ever-present dread of a telegram from the
War Office, said:
“More likely it’s old Mrs. Fry with those eggs she promised to collect
for me.”
She turned as she spoke to learn from the servant who the visitor was.
The newcomer, however, did not wait for announcement, but came straight
on, and in another moment Mr. Henry Leslie walked into the room.
“Cousin Henry!” cried Lucy and Janet in one amazed breath.
He carried his hat and gloves still in his hand, and his kind, bright
face was heavily marked with weariness and anxiety.
“Your boys were both well, Janet—Arthur too,” were his first words as he
met Mrs. Leslie’s eyes.
“You’re not on leave again so soon?” Lucy faltered, and as she spoke a
dreadful fear clutched at her heart and she caught tight hold of Janet’s
shoulder as she stood beside her.
“Only for two days,” was Mr. Leslie’s still unsmiling answer, and as
Lucy’s frightened eyes searched his he reached out for her hand and took
it in a warm clasp.
“Let me speak to this child a minute, Janet,” he said to Mrs. Leslie,
and the next moment she and Janet had left the room and Lucy was staring
pale and trembling into his face.
“Mother—Father—Bob,” were the thoughts that whirled through her brain.
“Yes, Lucy dear, I have bad news for you,” said Mr. Leslie in answer to
that unspoken question. “Bob is safe, thank God, but your father is
seriously wounded. Now be brave, little girl,” he added as Lucy’s hand
grew cold beneath his clasp. Leading her to a chair he made her sit down
and knelt beside her. “Listen to every word I say, for I can’t waste a
moment.”
The awful dizziness in Lucy’s brain seemed to subside a little. In a
dazed sort of calmness she forced herself to listen.
“Your mother is only twenty miles away from him, but that stretch of
twenty miles is impassable just now. There are not trains enough to
carry shells and reinforcements to our hard pressed trenches, and Bob,
farther up the line, where the press is hardest on the American front,
cannot desert his post. Your father wants most awfully to see one of
you, and you are the only one I can reach now. I’ve got permission where
it seemed impossible. I’m going to take you to him to-night.”
There was not the slightest doubt of Lucy’s consent in Mr. Leslie’s
words, and there was no longer any fear or shrinking in the hazel eyes
from which Lucy shook the tears before she met his gaze. While he spoke
she had buried her face in her hands, and the promise, made when Bob
came out of German captivity, never again to give way to despair, seemed
suddenly very hard to keep. But she stopped trembling and sat erect. For
months she had breathed the atmosphere of brave endurance. Now the
thought uppermost in her mind was this, “I must think only of Father.
How we can get to him most quickly.” Aloud she asked, “When do we start,
Cousin Henry?”
“You’re a brick!” said Mr. Leslie, but under his breath, for his own
voice would not obey him just then, at sight of Lucy’s pale and
tear-stained face. He managed to say, “We must leave here by seven
o’clock.”
The next two hours seemed all one hurried flight to Lucy, with dinner
forced upon her, which she choked down somehow, and Cousin Henry and
Janet hovering about her with hopeful words and tender, sympathetic
hands, and eyes that would fill up with tears in spite of them. Then
hurried farewells, and the train that drew up in the gloom of the little
station. After that came the long ride to Dover. It was not more than a
few hours, but to Lucy it was endless.
It seemed to her that days already had gone by, when in the darkness of
the first hours of the morning she felt beneath her feet the gangway of
the ship that was to carry them across the channel. And here for a
moment she forgot her surroundings and stood on the wind-swept deck,
silent and motionless. All at once she seemed to have come very close to
the great battle-field, for, borne through the misty darkness, she
heard, for the first time clearly audible, the distant thunder of the
guns.
The water was whipped into choppy waves by the shifting wind, and Lucy,
standing by the cabin window at Mr. Leslie’s side, saw the dim lights of
Dover bob up and down as the ship got under way. The cabin and decks
were crowded with people, officers and men returning to duty from brief
leaves at home, as well as a number of nurses and women war workers of
various kinds. More than one of these cast a friendly, pitying glance in
Lucy’s direction, but they were strangers to her, and she could not so
much as return their smiles just then. The courage she had so resolutely
summoned up at Highland House was fast sinking. She dropped down in the
chair Mr. Leslie offered her in a secluded corner, and, sheltered by the
darkness enforced by lurking submarines, buried her face in her hands
and cried until the tears ran down between her fingers. Mr. Leslie let
her alone for a while, but presently she felt his arm steal about her
shaking shoulders, and raising her wet face she faltered, suddenly
ashamed, “I guess I’m a coward, Cousin Henry, but I couldn’t help it.”
“I guess you’re _not_ a coward,” was the quick answer, and, as he had
done months before, the day he promised to go in search of Bob in
prison, Mr. Leslie sat silent and patted his little cousin’s shoulder,
with a tender, comforting hand. His thoughts went back to his own little
daughter, whom Lucy’s unselfish care and comradeship had restored to
health and strength. “It isn’t always easy to be brave, Lucy,” he said
at last, “not for the bravest of us.”
Gradually Lucy dried her tears, and, tired out now almost beyond the
power to think, she leaned back in her chair and fell half asleep. But
even in her dreams her father’s face appeared before her. She could see
plainly his clear gray eyes and bronzed cheeks. She saw him again as he
stood on the Governor’s Island dock, the day he left to join his
regiment,—tall and soldierly, in the uniform which always seemed a part
of himself, and which he had worn for twenty-five years. The dream was
almost a reassuring one, even when she woke, for it seemed somehow as
though her father must still be determined and confident. But on top of
this came the bitter certainty that when Mr. Leslie had said, “He wants
most awfully to see one of you,” he had shrunk from adding “before he
dies.”
At last she made up her mind to ask the question until now evaded.
“Where is Father wounded, Cousin Henry?” she whispered.
“He received a bullet through the lungs. His regiment pushed ahead five
hundred yards, against heavy odds, and took the enemy’s trenches.” Mr.
Leslie bent down toward his little cousin as he spoke, but a slow nod
was her only answer.
At daybreak Calais was but a few miles distant. Lucy went into a cabin
to wash her tear-stained face, and returning to Mr. Leslie’s side was
persuaded to eat a sandwich and drink a glass of milk. The precautions
observed during the crossing were cast aside, and with the French coast
in plain sight beyond a narrow blue stretch of water, tramping feet
filled the decks, and windlasses began hauling goods up from the crowded
hold.
An hour later, after interviews in which Mr. Leslie showed his papers
half a dozen times over to curious officials, he and Lucy walked down
the gangway onto the quay.
“France!” flashed across Lucy’s tired mind, with even then a thrill, as
slowly her eyes wandered over the varied crowd of officers and men,
French, British and Americans, intent on landing and getting their
effects ashore, while stores were lowered after them onto the docks.
American soldiers in campaign hats not yet exchanged for the steel
helmets, French guards with vigilant eyes on everything around them,
British officers and Tommies, with here and there a big Highlander in
kilt and bonnet—all hurried about their business, shouting what must be
said in tones loud enough to rise above the clamor, to which the
continuous firing from the front made a dull rumble of accompaniment.
It was a wonderful picture, but it all seemed strange and indistinct to
Lucy at that moment. Her mind was too oppressed with grief to have a
keen realization of what was going on around her. Mechanically she
followed her cousin’s lead, and found herself in a motor-bus bound for
the Calais station. Half a dozen English and as many American officers
shared the crowded seats. The Americans were strangers to her, and she
was glad of it.
The ride was short, and then, after an hour’s wait, they were on board a
train again, still crowded in with soldiers and war workers. Mr. Leslie
urged Lucy to try to sleep a little, but she could not. The guns were
like thunder in the first mutter of an approaching storm, and they were
nearing the storm every moment. About her sounded shouting voices as the
slow train moved on, with frequent jolting stops and whistled signals.
Beyond the windows a lovely spring sun shone down on the French fields
and orchards, and as the train followed the French coast line toward
Boulogne, her tired eyes brightened at sight of the lovely scene
unfolding on every side.
Here was France unconquered, undespoiled, still in the beauty of its
springtime, as in the days of peace. The guns pounded at its doors and
troop-trains passed and repassed endlessly to its defense through a
world of green meadows and apple blossoms. Women and children thronged
the fields, hard at work cultivating the ripening crops. They stopped to
wave friendly greetings to the soldiers in the train. Near every
red-roofed farmhouse grew a little orchard, laden with pink and
fragrant-smelling blossoms. Through the open windows Lucy caught whiffs
of the sweet air, and, closing her eyes a moment, could not believe she
was nearing the great battle-field.
After an hour they left the countryside behind to enter Boulogne, and in
the noise and confusion of the big station Mr. Leslie insisted on Lucy’s
getting down with him for something to eat. It was a hurried meal, taken
among a crowd of traveling officers and soldiers, for the train made
only a short stop.
“A quarter of our journey is over,” Mr. Leslie told her, trying to put a
little hopeful encouragement into his voice, when they had started on
their way again.
Only a day ago, Lucy thought, as head on hand she stared out at the
flowery meadows, while the train continued its slow way south, this
journey had held for her all that was marvelous and unobtainable. In
fancy she had made it more than once, with quickening breath and beating
heart. To be in France—heroic France—nearing the very field over which
Bob had flown so boldly, the land where the hard-pressed Allies stood
undaunted. But now she no longer looked with pleasure at that lovely
landscape outside the window. She was in a strange, far country; America
was thousands of watery miles away, and her father lay wounded—alone,
and wanting her. The train seemed a cruel tyrant as it lagged along, and
she saw nothing but her father’s face, then her mother’s, tired and
despairing, from where she vainly sought to reach him.
It was after a long morning’s travel that Mr. Leslie pointed out the
majestic walls of Amiens Cathedral above the distant town. Lucy nodded
silently, her eyes upon the noble beauty of it, but her mind wandering
eastward beyond. The noise of the guns, until now merged into one
muffled roar, seemed all at once to break apart into a hundred mighty
voices. Overpowered with a terrible sense of dread she clasped Mr.
Leslie’s hand for comfort, and felt it close over hers with a kind,
understanding pressure.
“Are we almost there?” she asked faintly.
“Only an hour more, when we’ve passed Amiens,” was the hopeful answer.
“Then a short ride in whatever we can find to pick us up, and we’ll be
in the town. It’s Château-Plessis—taken from the Boches only two days
ago—so communications are at loose ends just now. Hold on a little
longer, dear—you’ve been such a trump all day.”
Lucy nodded dully, half deafened by the guns.
They were crashing out in one tremendous thundering volley, till the
tearing din struck on Lucy’s ears and made them ring and tingle, while
she shrank back more than once as from a blow, when two hours later they
entered the paved streets of Château-Plessis. The motor-lorry, which had
made a difficult way among the heaps of broken stone, dropped them
before the old town hall, over which the Red Cross flag now floated. Mr.
Leslie took Lucy’s arm and led her up the wide stone steps. A nurse came
forward, and some men in uniform, but Lucy hardly saw them. They entered
a great, many-windowed hall which had once been a court of justice, but
now was a crowded ward, filled to overflowing with cots on which lay
wounded men. On the floor lay more men, on blankets or mattresses, and
between them stepped nurses and orderlies, intent and earnest, without
time to so much as lift their tired eyes at sight of the newcomers. A
surgeon had exchanged a few quick words with Mr. Leslie, and now he led
the way to a door some distance down the ward. This door he opened, and
after glancing inside the room, made Lucy a silent sign to enter.
Lucy was trembling from head to foot as she crossed the threshold. The
hand that clutched at Mr. Leslie’s left red marks across his fingers.
But she fought desperately to hide her fear as she raised her eyes to
face the nurse who came forward from beside the cot at one end of the
little room. She might have spared herself that effort at self-control
made for her father’s sake. Colonel Gordon lay motionless upon the
pillows, his sun-tanned cheeks not quite hiding the deadly pallor of his
face. His breathing was quick and labored and his eyes were closed. But
when Lucy knelt beside him and, forgetting all else around her, caught
his responseless hand in hers, for a second his lids quivered and parted
and the wide gray eyes looked into hers. Then the lids fluttered down
again, and behind her she heard the surgeon, speaking loud against the
roar of the guns, say, “He will hardly know her now. He’s but half
conscious.”
Lucy bent her head over her father’s hand, and the tears, so long
restrained, poured down her cheeks in a warm, salty shower. Sobs choked
her, but she forced them back, or buried them in the blanket’s woolly
folds. Then the hand she held stirred slowly in her clasp, and at the
same time she felt a soft touch upon her tumbled hair. Incredulous, she
raised her head, winking away the tears, and saw her father’s eyes fixed
full upon her. Puzzled and uncertain, dimmed with pain, they met her
eager, longing gaze, but recognition was somewhere in their depths.
“Lucy—you?” he murmured, and while Lucy, at the faint smile that touched
his weary face, struggled for power to answer him, he added clearly,
“Poor little girl! I wanted so to see you. It was hard for you—this
journey.” His smile had faded to a frown of pain, but his hold on Lucy’s
hand did not relax, and she, suddenly by some help outside of herself
grown strong again, bent down and spoke close to his ear.
“I didn’t mind it, Father! I couldn’t leave you here to get well all
alone.” Could it really be her old cheerful voice that spoke for her—the
voice she had thought never to hear again? She smiled into the wondering
eyes once more upraised to hers and went on confidently: “You’re going
to get well, Father dear, you know. That old bullet in the Spanish War
didn’t get you, and neither will this one. I _know_ it—the way I knew
that Bob was coming back, even when the Germans had him.”
Was it hope or only longing for life that touched with a new light the
eyes until now so dim and sombre? The surgeon leaned forward, his gaze
intently fixed on the wounded officer’s face. To Lucy’s brave and
resolute heart it seemed an echo of her own prayers, as though her
father felt already what in her wakening confidence she so longed to
make him feel—that he was not going to die.
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