A GLIMPSE OF BOB
=LUCY= knew she could sleep no more that night. She got up and began to
dress, with pounding heart and uncertain fingers. There was no use
trying to talk. Miss Pearse and her companion, Miss Willis, were also
getting dressed, intending to return to duty at the hospital in
anticipation of heavy casualties from the front. Dawn was just breaking
through the shadowy darkness. Lucy stood by the open window, her
ear-drums ringing from the quivering air, and thought of the peace of a
Surrey morning, when often she had looked out at dawn on the quiet
woodland, and of the first soft notes of the birds around them when she
and Janet had started out early to their gardens. If she were only back
there! As this thought came unbidden she tied her hair-ribbon with a
sharp, reproachful jerk, and answered herself with genuine scorn.
“Is this what all your longing to get nearer to the front and be as
brave as Bob amounts to? Slacker! Heavens, what a big one,” she
breathed, her mind distracted from all else as a mighty explosion shook
the house.
“Lucy, are you ready?” asked Miss Pearse in her ear. “I don’t want to
leave you here alone. Come to the hospital.”
Out in the street in the half darkness, figures of men were hurrying
past, calling to each other in scraps of French or English that went
unheard in the increasing uproar. The eastern sky was illumined before
the dawn by bursts of red and yellow fire, and the air smelt thickly of
smoke and dust. Lucy thought dazedly of her father, then of her mother,
remembering thankfully Miss Pearse’s confidence that she must be further
from the guns than Château-Plessis. Perhaps Mr. Leslie might be with
her—he must surely be almost back by now. Lastly, her anxious thoughts
hovered about her brother and could find no comfort there. Was Bob in
the midst of that awful conflict? She knew he was, since the attack must
reach as far as Cantigny. At that moment, though, it did not seem
possible that such a bombardment could last many hours.
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.
He pointed to where the sky was touched with pale rose above the clouds
of smoke. Three little specks were darting up toward the blue. “Can you
see those planes? The Germans are trying hard to get a detailed plan of
our new batteries. Their airmen have been up for hours, but so far our
scouts have been too much for them. Look there!”
Above the mounting specks appeared two others, seeming to pounce down
upon them. Lucy held her breath as the newcomers swooped and circled,
closing in upon the three below, until a feathery cloud cut them off
from the eager, watching eyes.
The moment of suspense among the little group changed to a stirring of
anxiety and disappointment, felt rather than heard in the cannon’s roar.
Most of the hospital staff members tore themselves away to return to
their duties, but Lucy could not take her dazzled eyes from that glowing
sky. Half unconsciously she followed the little group of townspeople
who, seeking a place in the open, away from the pointed towers of the
old town hall, moved step by step down the ruined street to the square
of which the hospital made a corner. The sun had risen higher now, and
beneath it the planes were again visible against a background of pearl
and rose. As they gazed breathlessly up at those moving dots that were
men in desperate struggle, one of the planes fell swiftly toward the
earth. Lucy gave a quick gasp of anguish. She could not bear to watch,
but neither could she turn her eyes away. Was the plane just brought
down Allied or enemy? She inquired of her nearest neighbor in disjointed
shouts of French, but the woman shook her head sadly, knowing no more
than she. Was Bob among them? Lucy longed most to know that, for better
or worse. “It’s waiting I never can bear,” she had said to Marian Leslie
months before. Now it seemed as though the war was all made up of
waiting.
The young doctor had left her his binoculars, but she found it hard to
use them in the quivering roar of the guns against the glaring sky. If
the airplanes would come a little nearer she thought she could find out
something. That wish at least was quickly granted. Out of the distance
the specks grew bigger with amazing swiftness. Lucy winked her eyes,
before which disks of red and black were dizzily floating, from the
glowing sunlight. Around her, fingers were pointed in excited gestures,
and her ears caught fragments of shouts and exclamations. On came the
airplanes, until in what seemed but a breath of time they had grown to
big winged objects that hovered in plain sight, far overhead, but not a
mile away in horizontal flight. Now they were out of the sun’s path, and
the watching eyes could look at them undazzled. There were six, as
nearly as Lucy with fast beating heart could count them in among the
feathery clouds that flecked the sky. The little crowd had gathered to
three times its size, and for all the thunder of the guns, the cries of
the excited people could be heard in their anxious expectancy.
Lucy gave a quick look around her as she lowered her head for an instant
to ease the aching muscles of her eyes and throat. A few people from the
hospital had rejoined the crowd and familiar faces were among them. A
queer sensation of having caught a glimpse of some one intently watching
her—of a keen pair of eyes looking out from among the group of shawled
women and old men and boys gathered from the near-by streets—made her
glance around once more. There was no one now whose gaze was not turned
upward, and she looked at the clouds again, the strange impression
forgotten.
The six planes had separated into two groups. Two were high among the
clouds, the remaining four moving here and there below them. Of the four
one was clearly out of the fight, for in another moment it turned and
veered off in the direction of the French and German lines, sinking
slowly as it flew.
“That’s a Boche,” said a voice in Lucy’s ear. Captain Lewis was at her
side and, taking the glasses she held, he leveled them at the sky. “Now
they are in range again,” he added. “Our men are above in those little
Nieuports. The Boches below are in big Fokker battle-planes. They could
eat up our little fellows if they could reach them. Luckily the
Nieuports can keep above. That fourth who was put out of the game leaves
them three to two—pretty close.” Lucy leaned nearer to catch his words,
for in his preoccupation he forgot to speak loud enough. A burst of fire
from a big German plane made one of the Nieuports veer sharply from its
level poise above the enemy. The glasses stiffened in the young
officer’s hands, but in a moment the Nieuport righted itself and rose
again beside its fellow. From the French trenches anti-aircraft guns
were sending shots that burst below the German craft in spouts of flame.
But they fell short of the targets, the gunners evidently fearing to hit
the little Nieuports so close above them.
As the battle shifted nearer the planes flew over the eastern end of the
town. In another five minutes Captain Lewis seized Lucy’s arm, saying,
“Come on—come back to the hospital. They may be over us in a moment.” As
Lucy, too lost in that terrible and thrilling struggle to even hear his
words, stood silent and unheeding he shook her arm and shouted in her
ear, “Come on! Look, here’s the patrol come to break up the crowd. You
can’t stay here.”
A guard of a dozen French soldiers with a sergeant had arrived to
disperse the people, who, oblivious like Lucy to possible danger, still
stood gazing spellbound into the sky. Even when ordered with shouts and
unceremonious gestures to get under shelter they walked slowly from the
spot, turning again and again toward the clouds among which the five
planes darted, each pouring a deadly fire upon its enemy.
Lucy got back somehow into the hospital garden, but there she stopped,
and Captain Lewis, seeing the planes were not directly overhead, stopped
with her. They were not alone, but the few others stood like them in
tense silence, watching the two little Nieuports still swooping about
their big opponents in quick attack or momentary retreat, and every
watcher awaited with eager hopes and prayers the final decision. Lucy’s
racing heart beat until her throat ached intolerably and her head began
to swim. She clutched at the stone heap that was the gate-post, trying
to quiet her panting breath. Suddenly a shout went up around her. One of
the big German Fokkers had tilted oddly on its side. One wing was
drooping helplessly, its wire supports cut by machine-gun bullets; and
now flames darted from the body of the plane and it began to fall. Lucy
covered her face with her hands. Then an arm stole around her shoulders
and Miss Pearse’s kind voice said in her ear, “Oh, Lucy, don’t tremble
so! I know it is awful to see for the first time—but it’s war, you know.
And I think the fight is ours!”
Lucy looked up again, not trying to answer. The German plane was gone. A
quick stir among the little group told her that things were happening
swiftly. At that moment the tide of battle turned.
The two enemy biplanes, unwilling to remain beneath the galling fire of
the little Nieuports which hung like deadly hornets above them, had made
tremendous efforts to rise to a level with their antagonists. But fast
as they rose, the lighter planes rose still faster, until a cloud drove
in between Allied and German craft, concealing each from the other. Only
the Germans were visible to the watchers below. They evidently saw in
the momentary check a good chance of escape and sped off swiftly like
great birds through the bright morning air toward the safe shelter of
the German lines. A perfect hail of fire from the French and American
trenches met them as they passed this perilous frontier. Puffs of smoke
and balls of red and yellow fire enveloped them, while from behind the
drifting cloud the Nieuports darted in pursuit. But the target was
beyond the reach of the anti-aircraft gunners. The German planes sailed
majestically on, and the little Nieuports, remembering that discretion
is a part of valor, forbore to cross into German territory.
“They’re coming back. They’re quite all right, you see!” cried Captain
Lewis at Lucy’s side. From the little group a wild cheer went up at
sight of the two daring little scouts returning unharmed from a battle
which had cost the enemy dearly without the compensation of a glimpse at
the Allies’ defenses.
“They are looking for a place to land,” continued Captain Lewis, his
glasses pointed again at the sky. “One fellow has a badly riddled wing.
There they come—they are going to land on that big meadow just outside
the town, inside our lines.”
As he spoke the Nieuports slowly dropped in a long slanting course until
in a moment the hospital towers hid them from sight.
Lucy stirred and sighed as though waking from a dream. Her neck and
shoulders ached so she could hardly straighten them, and her eyes were
almost blinded by long gazing at the sunny sky. She looked around,
blinking, at the little crowd of people who seemed, like herself, slowly
coming back to earth to take up their tasks again. The street had once
more filled with people, chiefly women who had paused with baskets on
their arms, oblivious of what they set out to do. Now they moved on with
hurried steps as if trying to overtake the time. Lucy suddenly
remembered the face that she had seen watching her with such furtive
intentness from among the townspeople in the square. The impression,
made at a moment when she was too preoccupied to give it any thought,
was too strong to be forgotten. Some one’s eyes had been fixed upon her
with a piercing earnestness, but beyond that she had seen nothing—no
definiteness of face or figure. In the midst of wondering she remembered
her father and ran back at once to the hospital.
Colonel Gordon was awake, lying quietly upon his pillows, his lips set
and his eyes keen and thoughtful as the crash of the bombardment struck
his ears. At sight of Lucy he smiled and held out a welcoming hand, but
the searching look did not fade from his eyes, and his thin face wore
some of the old confident determination that Lucy so well remembered.
For a moment joy at the change in his appearance overwhelmed her, until
the look in his eyes deepened to one of painful anxiety as he said,
struggling to make himself heard above the guns:
“You must go, Lucy—you can’t stay here. Where is Cousin Henry?”
Eager to relieve his mind, Lucy shouted, “I’m going, Father—soon! Cousin
Henry will be back to-night or to-morrow. Major Greyson says he is held
up somewhere. Like Mother, you know—she’s on her way here too. I’m going
back to England just as soon as he can take me. Anyway, the Germans
haven’t got ahead a bit, and the bombardment is letting up—so Captain
Lewis says.” She stopped, breathless, wondering if the firing really had
slackened, as in her ears the merciless pounding still continued.
Colonel Gordon’s face remained unchanged, and drawing Lucy down to him
he kissed her, saying, “Send Major Greyson to me as soon as he can
manage it. You are going back now if it is any way possible.”
Lucy went thoughtfully out into the ward and, meeting Major Greyson,
sent him to her father’s room. Then Miss Pearse found her and took her
off to lunch, at which she sat down tired and famished.
“I guess you are hungry,” remarked the young nurse, helping her to a
steaming ladleful of cabbage soup. “I would lie down a little while
after this if I were you,” she added, with a glance at Lucy’s flushed
cheeks. “You mustn’t be too tired for your journey back to Calais, for
I’m afraid it will be a long and tiresome one.”
She rose from the table as she spoke in answer to a knock at the door.
Almost at once she came back saying, “Major Greyson would like to speak
to you a minute, Lucy.”
Outside the door the officer gave Lucy a nod of greeting and spoke
quickly.
“I wanted to tell you that we have arranged for you to leave here
to-morrow morning. One of the nurses sent back for rest to Calais is
going too. I can’t stop to give you the details now, but your father
will not have you wait for Leslie, in case he does not get here
to-night.” He gave an emphatic nod at sight of Lucy’s troubled face.
“He’s right, you know. Leslie would have taken you off before this; but
things turn up so quickly, one can’t plan everything. Go back and eat
your lunch now. I’ll see you later.”
Lucy went back and sat down again, her appetite chased away. Now that
departure was really at hand her thoughts and feelings were very
conflicting. Longing for the peace of Surrey and its freedom from the
terrible sights and sounds about her was mixed with a great and growing
sense of pride and satisfaction in her nearness to the heart of the
great struggle; in the never-dying hope that she might be of service to
the cause she loved so well. Thinking these things she choked down her
bread untasted, wishing desperately that her mother would come. Suddenly
something struck her ears like a great shock. She started up, gasping,
and saw that the nurses had started up likewise, but now they were
dropping back into their chairs, with faint smiles of pure relief. In a
flash she understood. The bombardment had ceased. Not died away to utter
silence, but compared with the ear-splitting din of the night and
morning the scattering fire remaining seemed no more than rifle shots.
Miss Pearse said, “Sit down, Lucy. It’s stopped, thank heaven!”
She spoke in her ordinary tone of voice, and Lucy, answering her, did
not know how to pitch her own voice and half shouted, uncertain if she
could be heard. “Is it all over?” she stammered, wanting to cry,
strangely enough, and swallowing hard to keep from it.
“Oh, I don’t know,” was the doubtful reply. “Be thankful, anyhow, that
it has stopped for a little while.”
Just the low sound of the voices around the table was a pleasure, after
the fragments shouted in each other’s ears so long. It took some minutes
to get used to the sudden change—the long continued noise left a great
vacancy not at once filled up by ordinary sounds. The nurses hurried
through their meal and rose one by one to go back to their duties.
Outside the door a nurse whom Lucy did not know had come up and was
speaking to Miss Pearse.
“They came down on that biggest hay-field—the one right outside the
town,” Lucy heard her saying. “Just two of them. One of the airplanes
had a badly cut wing. I stopped to see them as I was coming back from
the farmhouse with the orderly, after getting old Mère Breton’s eggs and
milk.”
“Who were the aviators? Do you know their names?” interrupted Lucy,
forgetting everything but her eagerness.
“Yes,” said the nurse, turning toward her with a pleasant nod and a look
of curiosity on her own part at sight of the little stranger. “One of
them is Captain Jourdin of the French Flying Corps. The other is an
American—Lieutenant Gordon.”
Lucy’s heart gave such a bound she could hardly gasp out to Miss Pearse
the wonderful truth.
“Your _brother_, Lucy?” the nurse exclaimed. “Are you sure? Of course it
must be!”
“Oh, I’m sure! There’s not another Gordon in the Aviation Corps. How can
I get to him? Who will take me?” cried Lucy, each moment’s delay beyond
words unbearable.
“I’ll go with you myself—I can get off for an hour. We’ll have to run
all the way,” said Miss Pearse in one hasty breath, Lucy’s wild
eagerness awaking instant sympathy in her kind heart. “Wait here until I
get permission.”
She was off as she spoke, leaving Lucy standing at the doorway to the
garden trying to calm her whirling thoughts and to realize the truth of
the happy chance that had come to her. So it had really been Bob all the
time whom she had watched with such desperate hope and fear as he fought
for his life in the clouds above her! At that moment it seemed days and
days since she had risen from troubled dreams to the thunder of the guns
that morning.
Miss Pearse came up behind her saying, “All right—come on!”
Together they ran through the garden and out into the street. It was a
mile to the big level meadow just east of Château-Plessis, through
streets heaped with fallen stones and rubbish, the houses scarred and
battered by flying shrapnel, and here and there collapsed in utter ruin.
As Lucy ran on tirelessly, looking only to the goal ahead, thoughts
raced tumultuously through her excited brain until her father, mother,
Bob and William, the past and the uncertain present, were jumbled
together into a maze of doubt and wondering. Only to see Bob—to talk to
him—somehow everything would then be straightened out. She thought of
Captain Jourdin. What ages since she had bound up his injured hand on
Governor’s Island. For two months now he had been back in the French
Service and Bob’s letters had told her of his new and brilliant
exploits. How Bob had dreamed of having a part in all this, that was now
coming true! With a rush of strange happiness Lucy felt that she herself
had now a part in it as well. For a moment she had forgotten the
leave-taking so near at hand.
“Tired, Lucy?” asked Miss Pearse, slowing up to catch her breath. “We’re
almost there.”
The streets became lanes as they neared the outskirts of
Château-Plessis. The houses thinned to scattered cottages set among
neglected gardens—almost all empty and forlorn, for this side of the
town had been most exposed during the bombardment which ended in its
capture. In another few moments they passed the last house of the lane
and, beyond what was left of a grove of bright green poplars, opened a
wide grassy meadow. It stretched with several others, in broad
undulating lines as far as the wood which lay between the fields and the
French trenches. The nearest meadow was a favorite landing-place for
aviators scouting above the town.
A few hundred yards to the left a little crowd of people had gathered
around two airplanes resting on the grass. At sight of them Miss Pearse
and Lucy both cried out with the little breath left them. For a second
they stood still, panting aloud, with crimson cheeks and hair stuck in
damp wisps to their hot foreheads. Then they ran on to the edge of the
crowd which had collected close about the aviators, eager to offer help
and friendly greetings.
Bob Gordon was standing by one of the planes, his hands full of tools.
His gloves and helmet he had flung upon the grass, but now his work was
done, and he stood idly by while his companion put the finishing touches
to the repair of his bullet-riddled wing. Bob’s face was hot and
streaked with oil and dust to the roots of his brown hair. His sunburned
cheeks were thinner than when he had left West Point less than a year
ago. He looked calm and self-reliant beyond his years, his whole lean
figure filled with energy and decision. He was not yet twenty-one, but
to Lucy he seemed a boy no longer.
The crowd made way for her in astonishment as she begged and pushed her
panting way among them. Then Bob turned at the disturbance and caught
sight of her. His face was a study of unbelieving wonder and delight as
he let fall the tools and sprang to meet her. Lucy flung her arms about
his neck and he hugged her so close he could feel her heart beating as
she fought for breath. For a moment neither of them spoke a word, Lucy
too breathless and Bob too overcome. Around them the friendly little
crowd broke into delighted cries of sympathy and pleasure. Captain
Jourdin lifted astonished eyes from his forgotten work, and Miss Pearse,
with swimming head and parching throat, dropped down upon the grass.
“Lucy! You!” said Bob at last, drawing back from his little sister and
holding both her hands to look into her face. “You’re here at
Château-Plessis!” Still he seemed almost incredulous, and his eyes
wandered over Lucy, while he held her hands, as though he thought his
eyes had tricked him.
“Oh, Bob, how are you?” Lucy faltered, getting her breath at last, but
struggling desperately with the strangling emotion that caught her at
sight of her brother. September, 1917—how long ago that seemed since she
had said good-bye to him that morning at Governor’s Island. And what
dreadful days they had been through since then!
Bob pulled her down beside him on the grass with an eager, searching
look into her face. “How is Father? Tell me that first.”
“He’s better—truly, Bob—much better,” Lucy answered quickly.
“He’s safe—he will get well?” Bob whispered, and Lucy, seeing the lines
of anxiety that had chased away the smile about his lips and the look of
tired suffering in his eyes, almost choked before she managed to say,
“Oh, Bob dear, he’s safe! He talks to me just like himself. He made me
promise to go back to England to-morrow.”
[Illustration: “THIS MEADOW IS THE BEST LANDING-PLACE”]
“And Mother—where is she?” Bob asked, after a moment’s silent
thankfulness. Lucy’s words had brought back a little of the old
brightness to his face. He spoke hurriedly in sudden realization of the
short time they had together. Then, as Lucy shook her head, he added, “I
had telegrams, you know. One reached me at Cantigny from Cousin Henry
saying you had come to Father and that he had improved a little. But of
course the name of the town was suppressed, so I didn’t know where you
were. If I could have come myself I should have learned at General
Headquarters where Father was. But I never thought to drop down on the
lucky spot like this! I was here before, you know, nearly a month
ago—before the Germans took the town. This meadow is the best
landing-place around here.”
The little crowd of people had dwindled, some moving off to leave
brother and sister alone together, for Miss Pearse had been questioned
until every one there knew the story of Bob and Lucy’s meeting. Others,
too interested to go, still stood watching with smiling faces, and
neither Bob nor Lucy minded them. But in another moment Lucy sprang up
from the grass and held out her hand to Captain Jourdin. He took it with
a quick bow, his face lighting up as he returned her greeting, in a
voice deeply touched with friendly feeling.
“Welcome to France, Miss Lucie! I never thought to see you here.”
There was no use trying to put into words the strangeness of their
meeting. Lucy tried to say a little of what she felt, and could not.
Looking into the Frenchman’s fine grave face she saw again the
snow-covered land by the sea-wall on Governor’s Island, herself and
William standing beside a sled and Captain Jourdin getting out of his
stranded airplane and limping toward them. She had told him that day of
Bob’s imprisonment, hoping against hope that he could give her
encouragement of some sort for his safety. She glanced involuntarily at
his wrist, and he smiled and held it up, saying, “You see, it is quite
all right again, Captain Lucy!”
“You are back in the service—that’s better than anything, isn’t it?” she
said at last, and his eyes, lighting up at her words, told her the depth
of his satisfaction.
“I shall not soon forget that American surgeon,” he answered softly. “He
gave me back to France.”
“Lucy,” said Bob suddenly from behind her, “a fellow I just spoke with
here says the American hospital is not a mile away. I’m going to see
Father. I can run all the way. How about it, Jourdin? Will you wait half
an hour?”
“But certainly! the firing has almost ceased,” was the willing answer.
“We shall have a quiet night, so it appears. I will stay here on guard
until you return.”
“Lucy, don’t try to run again—you’ll kill yourself,” urged Bob, putting
his arm about his little sister’s shoulders and giving her an
involuntary hug. “Stay here, and I’ll be back as soon as possible. This
man who told me where the hospital was will take me there.”
“I can run, Bob, but of course you can go faster alone,” said Lucy
reluctantly, hating to lose her brother for any of these precious
moments. “Go on—Father will love so to see you,” she added quickly. “And
then you will know yourself that he is really getting well.”
Her words were hardly spoken when the heavy crashing boom of a cannon
broke the quiet of the German lines. Other shots followed before the
screaming shell had burst. At once from the wood in front of the meadows
the French and American guns replied. The bursting German shells
increased in number, and now once more a thunderous din reëchoed through
the quivering air.
Speechless with despairing terror, Lucy threw her arms about Bob’s neck,
and he held her while he shouted in her ear, “It’s on again—I can’t go
now! Buck up there, Captain!”
The old name roused Lucy’s sinking courage. She stood erect and dazedly
saw the little crowd around them fast dispersing, Captain Jourdin
putting away the tools and picking up his helmet, and Miss Pearse
running quickly to her side. She did not hear the words the nurse
shouted, but she heard Captain Jourdin speaking hastily to Bob. “——to
get back to the squadron before the fire grows hotter—no time to lose—we
shall be needed if the German lines are stiffening before the town——”
These fragments caught her ear. She understood, too, that Bob was in
greater danger if he delayed, and that was enough to make her forget
everything else. She put her arms about his neck again and said a brief
good-bye, hoping the shake in her voice was drowned by the cannon.
The next moment Bob was seated in his plane, leaning down to her for a
final leave-taking. A mechanic from the town stood ready by the
propeller. Captain Jourdin was in his own machine, and now he turned to
Lucy, raising his hand in a farewell gesture that seemed to speak his
own dauntless courage. In another moment he was off down the meadow like
a skimming bird. Bob’s last words were quickly spoken.
“Give lots of love to Father—and Cousin Henry. You’ll go back to England
to-morrow?” he shouted. Lucy had not even had time to tell him Mr.
Leslie was not there. He nodded to the man at the propeller, then turned
to Lucy once more. “Do you know whom I saw in Château-Plessis a month
ago—might—here—still!” The roaring propeller drowned his words.
“Bob—what?” begged Lucy, straining her ears as she leaped back from the
machine, but Bob could not hear her either. She saw his lips move,
though not a sound came from them. But he thought she understood and
with a last nod and smile which he tried hard to make cheerful, for that
lonely little figure standing there brought an aching pang to his heart,
he pressed forward his control stick and sped off down the field.
Side by side Miss Pearse and Lucy watched the two Nieuports rise into
the air over the wood, soaring far above the bursting shells. Then they
turned and with one accord ran swiftly toward the town, while the
thundering guns shook the earth beneath their feet.
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