THE FORTUNE OF WAR
=DAWN= was hardly breaking on the morning of May 21st, when Lucy woke
from the heavy sleep into which she had fallen early the night before.
Nothing—not the crash of the bombardment nor the ceaseless anxiety of
her own thoughts—could have kept her awake for long after her head
touched the pillow the evening of Bob’s visit. Sleep had been stronger
than all fears, though now she wondered that it had ever come, for the
shock of the battle seemed louder and more terrible as it struck her
protesting ears. Miss Pearse and her companion were already up, and Lucy
hastily dressed herself, eager to learn what Major Greyson had decided
about her departure. Last night the plan had still been unsettled, as it
must be while trains and motor trucks had three times their normal work
to do. It was a bitter disappointment to give up all hope of seeing her
mother, though Major Greyson had told her that the renewed bombardment
might last for days and that Mr. Leslie would have reached
Château-Plessis before this, had any sort of undelayed travel been
possible.
She was swayed by alternate hopes and fears as she brushed her hair in
the half-darkness, and felt about on the little table for her comb and
ribbons. It was so desperately hard to think at all with that unearthly
noise dazing her brain, but in spite of her tormenting uncertainty she
clung steadfastly to one consoling thought. She had helped to bring her
father out of danger. Her journey had not been in vain, however hopeless
her longing to do more than stand weakly by watching the struggle in
which Bob and the rest fought so gallantly. She knew she could help—even
here on the battle-front. Last year it seemed impossible that she could
do anything toward winning Bob’s freedom, and yet did she not have a
hand in sending Mr. Leslie on that long, hard journey? Lucy had not much
conceit in her nature, but she did have a good deal of her brother’s
confident energy, and, her courage once firmly grasped, she could
persevere in a cause on which her heart was set, like a true soldier’s
daughter.
“I’m ready, Miss Pearse,” she called presently, waking from her serious
thoughts as the nurse came to her door.
They went in silence down the stairs into the street, for this morning
Miss Pearse did not try any of her usual kind and encouraging means of
bolstering up Lucy’s cheerfulness. She was strangely silent and
preoccupied. In the street a hurrying throng of soldiers, women and
children were passing by, dim shadows in the first light of the dawn.
Lucy wondered at their numbers as she made her way among them, her eyes
turning with a fearful fascination toward the east, where the light of
bursting shells outshone the pale streaks of day. The hospital was the
scene of a great though orderly confusion. Almost a hundred wounded men
had been brought in during the night, and every spare foot of space had
been used to lay down a mattress or to unfold a narrow army cot.
Doctors, orderlies and nurses were moving in every direction about the
crowded halls, and Lucy stole away with painfully beating heart, and
found refuge in her father’s little room.
A nurse was sitting there, with her arms upon the window-sill, staring
out into the shadowy street. She turned pale cheeks and troubled eyes
toward Lucy, and her faint smile had nothing cheerful in it as she rose
and offered her a chair by her father’s side. Lucy felt a pang of fear
at sight of that tired face. The nurse looked as though she had kept an
anxious watch, and Lucy turned searching eyes upon her father, fearing a
change for the worse.
“He’s doing well,” the nurse said in her ear, guessing her thoughts, and
she accompanied the words with a little encouraging nod, though the
color did not come back to her pale cheeks, nor the apprehension leave
her eyes.
Lucy sat down at her father’s side, wondering greatly, and the nurse
went out. Colonel Gordon was just beginning to wake, but for a few
moments more he lingered in a doze. At last he opened his eyes and
looked at Lucy with a slow understanding smile of recognition.
“You, little daughter?” he asked, reaching out a hand. “What time is it,
anyway? It’s not light yet. What are you doing here?” Then as the full
force of the guns smote upon his ears and brain he started up on his
pillows, saying with quick earnestness, “You’re going to-day, eh—Lucy?
They’ve arranged it? Greyson promised me. Henry’s not back?”
“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?”
“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.
Lucy stared at the American’s hot, tired face, as he bent toward her to
be heard in the uproar. He was a Hospital Corps man whom she had spoken
with often in the past few days. Now, in excuse for his rough handling,
he beckoned her to look quickly through the doorway. As she did so the
explosion of a German shell threw up a great heap of stones and earth
not two hundred feet away, across the square.
“They’ve got our range,” he said, close to her ear. “But this old
building’s pretty solid. It will stand some hammering.” His voice was
steady as ever and Lucy looked at him with respect and admiration in her
frightened eyes, longing for his courage. But he had faced the enemy
before. He had told her of service on Filipino and Mexican
battle-fields.
Would there be fighting in the streets, in which the Germans would be
victorious? Lucy had seen fighting once in the streets of a village in
the island of Jolo. But then the enemy had been Filipino savages,
quickly overpowered by the soldiers, and she had been too little to do
more than cling to her mother’s skirts in wonder. As she turned back
toward the street another shell struck a house close to the hospital,
leaving a huge, gaping hole in the brick wall when the smoke and dust
cleared away. Still she stood frozen to the spot, her heart beating in
great throbs, helplessly waiting for she knew not what. Presently Major
Greyson’s hand was laid on her trembling arm and he was saying:
“Come away from here, Lucy. Come into your father’s room.”
It was the only spot free from hurrying workers making their difficult
way among beds too close together. Even here cots had been brought in
and made ready for two more wounded officers. Colonel Gordon still slept
on, unconscious of the day’s calamity, and Lucy breathed a quivering
sigh of misery as her eyes rested on his peaceful face. Major Greyson
led her to the window and pointed toward the sky above the square. “It’s
almost over,” he said. “These last shots are only for bravado. Don’t you
notice the slackening of the fire?”
In the sky the clouds of dust and smoke were clearing, and Lucy did
distinguish a lessening in the terrific wave of sound. Its quality had
changed, too. As the German infantry engaged the retreating troops,
rifle and machine-gun fire was mingled with the bursting shells. In
another few minutes the bombardment had sunk to single explosions at
irregular intervals. Even at that awful moment the relief to her ears
seemed almost like peace.
“Our batteries in the wood have been withdrawn to the new line, or
silenced,” Major Greyson went on. “The Germans will stop firing until
their airmen get the range again.” He took Lucy’s hand in his and held
it in a strong clasp. “We’ll just have to bear up, Lucy, shan’t we? I
have no fear for your courage. You’ve got the good American stuff in
you—the sort that never fails. We’ll show them their new enemy is worthy
of their steel.” His eyes flashed in his haggard and anxious face as he
searched the street with watchful gaze. “We’ll do well enough here, you
know. They’ll want us to look after their own wounded. With any luck in
the counter-attack our troops will recover the town.”
At these words a great flood of hope swept back to Lucy’s heart The
Germans could not hold Château-Plessis! Then she _would_ be brave. For
only a few days she could face it as Bob would do.
Suddenly she felt Major Greyson’s hand leave hers to steal about her
shoulders, as though warning her to summon all her strength of will. She
looked through the broken window and that arm about her shoulder
tightened. Up the street were advancing a squad of mounted officers,
gray-clad figures with helmets like no others in the world. Behind them
came a company of infantry. The noise of the guns had died down almost
to silence. Lucy’s throat began to choke her until she pressed one cold
hand against it, struggling for breath. Her eyes could not bear to look
upon that hateful sight, and still she could not force herself to turn
away. On they came, another company behind the first and still another.
She was looking at the Kaiser’s soldiers, servants of the man who was
the author of all this horror—who had made the world into a
battle-field. These were a part of Germany’s army, of the greedy power
which had roused even peaceful America at last in furious self-defense.
It had torn apart the Gordons’ happy home, sent Bob to prison and to
hourly peril, and brought her father close to death.
Lucy did not put these flying thoughts in words. They passed through her
mind in half-formed images of trembling dread and bitter indignation.
From the hopeless conflict of her brain a despairing sigh escaped her
lips, and Major Greyson’s eyes left the advancing troops to look at her.
“Come, Lucy, be a soldier,” he begged, pity shining in his eyes at sight
of her white face, struggling for composure, beneath the childish mop of
fair hair. Then as she turned her wide hazel eyes, filled with a
desperate resolution, upon him, he said with stubborn confidence, “This
isn’t the end of things, you know, Lucy. This is only the dark hour
before the dawn.”
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