GI Brides (22 page)

Then she knelt down by her bed and talked to the Lord about it, and it really seemed as she knelt in the dark room that the Lord Himself stood there and showed her how this might be, if she would yield herself utterly to Him.

W
hen Ben Barron received Lexie’s letter, he was sitting up in a very crude deck chair on the meager little upper veranda of the tiny hospital, a building hastily assembled from what material could be found in the vicinity.

He had had a long hard siege, a bad time getting well, and perhaps little heart to help the doctors who were doing their best with the supplies at hand and within the necessary limitations of the war. But now it seemed fairly certain that he was to recover, and to that end he was ordered out in the chair to do nothing, which wasn’t very helpful to a person of Benedict Barron’s eager, restless temperament.

For Ben Barron was lonely. Definitely lonely. This wasn’t like being among his comrades in camp, or on the march, or even under fire with a lot of friends who had grown to be closer than brothers because they had fought together, had bled together, and some of them had died. His clan had grown during this season of war to be a part of him. But now there were none of them here. The few who had come to the hospital when he came had either got well and gone or died from their wounds. He had no one here. He was looking forward to going away himself very soon, he hoped, yet he had no special place to go unless they would let him go back into action. The doctor had said that must not be for some time, if ever. He would have to await developments in his recovery. So, he had to sit here and try to build a new philosophy of life.

When his thoughts turned back to home they seemed to come up against a blank wall. His father had died three years before he went to war, and his mother died in the hospital while he was fighting fire. He would never see her again on this earth. The thought of his native country was gloomed with sadness because she was gone. There seemed to be no one left over there whom he wanted to see just now, no one who would really care whether he lived or died. Oh, there were a couple of aunts and an uncle, several cousins. The girls had written a letter apiece to him after he entered the army, just stupid sort of formal letters because they had a duty toward all soldiers, and he was moreover their cousin. One of them had recently written him that she was married to a flier and described her elaborate wedding in detail, said she wished he had been there to add his uniform to the procession. Another one had joined the WACs, and still a third was an army nurse and going overseas. They were enthusiastic and eager over the war as if it were a new game. They spoke of their uniforms and training as they used to tell him about their new permanents and lipsticks. They were giddy girls full of rollick with no thought for serious things, though perhaps if they got into the real war it might put some sense into them. But they and their crowd were not interesting to him now. He might get over this feeling during the years perhaps, but just at present he was not interested in them at all.

There had been another girl, a girl he had almost decided to take for his girl. Then, one day just before he left for camp, she came smiling to him to show him her new ring. She was engaged to another soldier. He had waited too long. He had lost out! Or had he? He hadn’t been sure she was the girl he wanted, until somebody else got her, and that put a gloom on things for a while until he got interested in war. He had nearly forgotten about her now, the way she lifted her sunny lashes, the dark look of her big, soft eyes. But it had closed one volume of the book of regret for him when he went away from his own land. Perhaps that was why it had been so easy to take the thought of a little child in a blue dress from long ago to think about out there on that dark hot field of fire when memory needed a relief, instead of some girl of his own age who had been a companion. That girl who had shown him her new ring had been a friend of years, yet she had turned so easily to the new soldier who had only been in town a week or two visiting some of her friends, when she got that ring. He felt she had been rather faithless to him. But perhaps she had never counted him as closer than just a playmate. Well, he had a feeling that women were rather undependable. And so after he had waited for several weeks since writing his letter and sending it out into a world that had likely forgotten him, he had come to class Lexie with all other girls. She wouldn’t likely even bother to acknowledge his letter. She was grown up, maybe married, no longer a little girl, and never really knew him anyway. So he must forget that letter. He had acknowledged his debt for her little memory, and that was that. It had been a crazy idea to write to her anyway.

And that was what he was thinking when the nurse brought him the letter. Her letter. Little Lexie!

He gave a quick glance around after the nurse had handed him the letter to see if anyone near was looking at him. But the man in the next chair was sound asleep, and the two chairs on the other side of him were vacant. Somehow he felt half silly getting a letter from a little girl, and on his own initiative.

He had known at once that it was her letter, partly because there were so few others who would be likely to write to him now as the relatives had all done their kindly duty, one letter apiece; and partly that he had sensed the familiarity of the postmark even before he was able to read it clearly.

So, slowly, carefully, he tore open the envelope and pulled out the sheet of paper, folded so neatly, traced over with such characterful handwriting. He was conscious of being glad that the letter was not too short. He must savor every line of it, for whether it was pleasant or not it was the only letter he had had in a long time, and he wanted to enjoy it, even if it was a cold haughty rebuke from a grown-up young woman who did not like it that he had written to her, recalling such a childish thing as that she had been swinging on a gate!

“Dear Sergeant,” she had written, familiarly, pleasantly, like any girl in a social center, being friendly with a soldier who was lonely!

He read on eagerly now. Yes, she remembered him. She recalled what he had said and had laughed over it by herself! Bless her little heart! Then the next paragraph—yes, she understood the strain he had been under. She knew what dew on a hot forehead would mean. She did not resent it that he had thought of her and acknowledged that she had been a help to him.

As he read on, he was thrilled to think she had answered, glad that he had written her. He had acted on a hunch and he was glad he had. He shut his eyes for an instant, and now he could see her in a blue dress, walking down to the little white gate to meet the postman.

She had just happened to be there or she would not have gotten the letter. Then she must have been away. Where? Had she moved away? Or been away to school, or working somewhere like everybody else?

He opened his eyes and read on. Would the rest of the letter tell where she had been, and why she would not have received his letter if she had not been there?

Ah! She had had hard days! Poor child! She was going through some kind of fire, too, though she didn’t say what kind of fire it was. Her letter really told him nothing about her daily life and circumstances. Yet it did give the general background of a common experience, hard times, dark days, a life under fire that had to be gone through with. She acknowledged that his letter had made a dark day bright for her, and that was as good as making a fiery day cool and restful for him.

He drew a long breath of pleasure and reflected to what a pass he had come that a letter from a young unknown could bring such pleasure to him. He read on to the end. She hoped the war would end and he would come home someday, that she would like to see him. Well, that settled it. He would go home when he got that promised leave that the doctor had hinted might be in the offering for him if he continued to improve as he had been doing lately. Yes, he would certainly go home and seek out the little white house with the white gate, and the little girl with the blue eyes, and they would get acquainted, get really acquainted. That would be something to look forward to.

He lay back in his chair with his eyes closed and the letter held tight in his hand, and when the nurse came padding along on her rubber heels with his glass of milk, he did not hear her. His thoughts were absorbed in what he was going to write back to the little girl.

Yes, he was going to write back at once! He wouldn’t need to wait for courtesy’s sake because a letter took plenty of time to travel across the world and get there without putting unnecessary time between. He would start tomorrow morning and write a good, long letter this time because her letter would likely be longer if he made his long. He needed good, long letters to get through these days until he could go home.

So the next day he wrote a really long letter, taking it at intervals as the nurse would allow, and writing as if he had known her always. It was quite plain from everything he said that her letter had been a great delight to him, and so he wrote:

The letter went off, and then Ben began to worry himself lest it would sound crazy to her when it reached her. People didn’t talk about seeing the Lord in the workaday world where she lived nor where he had lived either. People didn’t have such experiences as he had had every day. They didn’t go through such fire, they didn’t stay alive afterward, and they didn’t meet the Lord. It wouldn’t make any difference how long he lived afterward, nothing, nobody, could even make him believe the Lord had not come to him. If they didn’t believe it, they just didn’t know, that was all. Well, he had given the story to Lexie, and this would be a sort of test of what she was. If she made fun of him, he probably wouldn’t write again, at least not more than once or twice. He would know she just hadn’t met the Lord and couldn’t understand until she did.