GI Brides (29 page)

But day after day Lexie kept looking for another letter. And still the days went on and none arrived.

Morning after morning Lexie scanned the newspapers, noting the disasters reported to transport ships and other modes of soldier travel—a mail plane crashed and burned, all other possibilities—and then breathed a prayer that her soldier might not be involved. But though she scanned the lists of names of killed and wounded whenever there were any, still she found no Benedict Barron. But what had become of him?

Of course there were ways of searching out what had happened to missing soldiers, and perhaps she could write somewhere in Washington and find out—perhaps, but had she, a young stranger practically, and not a relative, nor even a friend of long standing, a
right
to go to headquarters asking for his whereabouts? Perhaps he was tired of his correspondence with her, and had taken this way to vanish out of her life entirely. Well, perhaps—but certainly she would not feel justified in going to any government headquarters to trace out knowledge of him. Just an acquaintance was all she could possibly claim. There was just one place, one all-powerful Person to whom she might go, and that was her God, and his God. She would have to let it rest with that. After all it was God who was managing this whole thing, and He knew what He was doing.

There came a bright, beautiful Sunday morning after a day of heavy rain, with a cool crispness in the air so heartening after the heat of the week that was just past.

Lexie was wearing a new dress, just a cheap little blue dimity she had seen when she went to the store to get a few things for the children, and her preference now was always for
blue
dresses because she felt that it brought her back to the days when she used to swing on the gate, and the soldier had noticed that her dress was like her eyes. It was silly of course, and she often reproved this tendency in herself to buy blue things, but still they seemed to draw her irresistibly. And now she was wearing the dress for the first time.

The children had been invited to go to some kind of a children’s Sunday school celebration with their playmates across the road, and they had cried to go, so Lexie had brought home some simple garments for them bought at a sale. Their mother had rather contemptuously allowed them to wear them and go.

So it was very still around the little white house. Only the sweet notes of some wood thrushes could be heard now and then, and the mountains in the distance had on their smiling, holy look as if the night’s rain had brought them comfort and serenity. The neighborhood was quiet, for they had all gone with their children to see the exercises in which some of their little ones were to have a part. The day seemed perfect.

Elaine had retired to her room to weep, after she had watched her children in their new cheap garments trip happily away. Lexie sat down on the porch with her Bible, gazing off at the mountains, and taking in sweetness of the flowers that were blooming along the little front walk down to the white gate. And then she heard footsteps, brisk footsteps, coming up the street. Turning, she saw it was a soldier, tall, good looking, well set up, his uniform gleaming with its touches of gold emblems and brass buttons.

Of course she watched him. Soldiers were always interesting to everybody now, during wartime, and especially to her, for there was one soldier that she longed very much to see. She made no excuses to herself about that now. He was her own soldier. She cared a very great deal about him. But of course, she probably never would see him again.

The soldier came on, walking straight toward the white house as if he knew the way, had been there before, and had an aim in coming. He paused by the little white gate and looked at her with a nice smile. A smile she remembered from long ago.

She started to her feet, and dropped her Bible on the chair. It was her soldier! It was Benedict Barron in the flesh, looking just like that picture she had of him up in her room. Smiling and looking as if he might ask her what her name was. And then he called it, and his voice was just as she remembered.

“Lexie!” he said. He didn’t put a question mark after it as if he wasn’t certain about her. There was assurance in his tone.

“Yes?” she said and flew down that path to the gate straight as a bird to its nest.

When she reached the gate she stood there looking radiantly up into his face as he was looking down into her eyes with a deep, sweet, searching gaze as if he wanted to make sure it was really the girl he knew. Then he put his hands out and laid them on her slender shoulders, looked down deeper into her eyes, and said: “May I kiss you, Lexie?” He stooped and laid his lips upon hers, and it seemed to her as if all heaven looked down and held its breath in joy as their two souls came together at last.

“You’re just the same,” he said at last, lifting his head and looking down at her. “My little Lexie! I’d have known you anywhere. The same eyes, the same smile. Oh my dear! To think I’m here again at last! And it’s
really you
!”

Her eyes went up to his, full of delight.

“And you’re the same, too,” she said softly, letting her eyes caress his face. “Oh, I’m so glad you’ve come! I thought I never would see you again. I was afraid something had happened to you!”

He smiled gravely.

“Something did, my Lexie! Our transport was torpedoed, and a couple of us floated for days before we were picked up and carried all around the globe until finally we got to a place where we could contact the right parties. But that’s a long story and I haven’t so much time just now. I’ve got to get back to Washington this afternoon. The army trucks are passing the highway at exactly four o’clock this afternoon, and I’ve got to be waiting for them, for they haven’t time to wait for me. But I’ll be back later, in a week or two, or maybe sooner if I can find out what the plans for me are. And then we can tell the whole story. In the meantime, let’s make the most of this little time. Where were you going this morning before you saw me? I see your hat up there on the porch, and you must have been going somewhere.”

“Oh, I was just going to church, but it isn’t necessary this morning. I want to hear all about you.”

He smiled appreciatively.

“I’d like to go to church with you,” he said tenderly. “Is it time?”

“No, not for an hour yet,” she said.

“Then there’s time to take a walk first,” he said. “Or, was somebody going with you?”

“Oh no,” she said with a laugh. “I usually go everywhere alone.”

He looked down at her tenderly.

“Not anymore,” he said. “Not when I get home to stay! Now come, let’s go. Do you have to tell anyone you’re going?”

“Why, no,” said Lexie. “Only, you’ll have time to come back to dinner, won’t you? I ought to tell Cinda, though she’s liable to have seen you and have something ready.”

“Let’s not bother with dinner today, we haven’t time,” he said. “I’ll come again later. Get your hat and Bible, and we’ll take our walk and find a church before we get back.”

So she got her hat and Bible from the chair, and was back at his side. He drew her hand within his arm and they walked off together, she with her hat in her hand and he with her Bible under his arm.

“There used to be woods up this way. Is it still there, or have they cut it down yet?”

“It’s still there!” said Lexie.

“Then we’ll go there,” he said. And side by side they walked away to the woods, while Elaine stood peering out of her bedroom window watching them eagerly, taking in every item of his uniform, noting a decoration or two, noting his smile, and the way he walked, and everything about him.

And out of her kitchen window that looked toward the woods Cinda was watching.

“That’ll be him,” she said delightedly to herself. “An’ ain’t he the soldier man! He’ll do fer my bairnie. He has it written all over him. Good an’ brave, an’ a looker besides! Wonder what I oughtta do about dinner? Well, there’s fried chicken enough. I don’t needta save any fer meself. It’ll be all right. An’ that cherry pie turned out real good ef I do say so as shouldn’t.”

But the two who were sitting under a great tree in the woods with their feet resting on a bed of velvet moss, and the songs of the thrushes overhead, were not thinking of what they would have for dinner, not even intending to come back for dinner, not today. They were getting acquainted, and looking into the years of eternity ahead of them. Two people who had met God, and trusted Him utterly because He had been with them through the fire and flood and circumstance.

Eventually they went to church. But before they left the woods, they sat hand in hand and read a few of their precious verses from the Bible, and then bowed their heads together and prayed a few words. Shy words, they were. Neither of them was used to formal prayer before others.

“But, you see, I love you,” said Ben Barron as he lifted his head with that grave, sweet smile on his face, “and we had to have some sort of a ceremony or dedication or something to mark it. We belong to each other, now, in God’s eyes, don’t we?” And he searched her face.

“Oh yes,” said Lexie, drawing a deep breath of joy. “I am so glad! Now I won’t ever have to worry again, thinking you don’t care. I was so afraid if anything should happen to you I would never find you if you cared at all.”

“You dear!” he said stooping to kiss her again, and gathering her in his arms, holding her close. “But I don’t see how you cared when you didn’t really know me. When you hadn’t seen me but once.”

“Oh, but I
did
,” said Lexie. “I grew into loving you before I knew I was doing it, and I was so worried lest I had not right.”

“Precious child!” said Ben. “But you were only a child.”

“Yes, I was only a child!—but—you say
you
loved me!” She gave him an endearing look.

“Well, yes, of course I wasn’t conscious of it when I first saw you, for I wasn’t grown-up either, you know, but something caught in my heart, and came back to me in the fire that night, and I guess God had this planned for us all the time.”

So they talked, and they very nearly didn’t get to church on time. If Ben hadn’t been a soldier used to timing himself, they wouldn’t have.

But they walked into church just as the first hymn was being sung, and were given a hymnbook and stood and sang together:

And their eyes as they met told a story of love and trust that the watching, eager churchgoers read and interpreted.

“My, don’t they make a swell couple!” said one envious girl as she watched them go down the aisle together at the close of church.

“Yes, and did you get on to the way they sang, as if they really
meant it
!” said another.

“Oh,
that
!” said a third girl. “Their looks were for each other, not for the words they were singing.”

“No,” said another girl, “they
meant
it, I
know
they did. You cannot fake
real
things. Not like that!”

“Oh, piffle! There
aren’t
any real things anymore!” said the first girl, whose lad had gone off to war without saying the word that counted.

But the two who were walking in heavenly ways went happily on with their brief, short day, treasuring every second of it for sweet memory.

They took a brief lunch at a little place along the way they walked, for they could not take time out for formalities. Lexie then went with her soldier over to the highway, where they sat under a tree together to wait for the army truck to come. And quietly, just before he had to get on, Lexie started up the lane that led home to the little white gate, and when she got to the turn of the lane, where a tall tree arched over her, she stood, a slender figure in a soft blue dress and a big white hat, waving a small handkerchief toward the great dark army truck that was moving down the highway toward Washington. He was gone, but he was
hers
! Her heart thrilled with the thought. And she was wearing his ring! A sweet, dear ring, its bright clear diamond sparkling on her finger, filling her with continual joy. To think that she should be wearing his ring! And she had a tender thought for the first owner of that ring, Ben’s mother. She must have been a wonderful woman. And Ben had worn that ring on a slender chain around his neck ever since she died. He had worn it all through that awful experience in the fire. It was almost like having something that was a part of him.

She walked slowly home in the quiet of the late Sunday afternoon, and thought what wonderful things God had been preparing for her all these years when she had thought things were so very hard and never would be any different. And now heaven seemed to have opened before her and all around her.

And then she got home, and there was Elaine out on the porch looking fretful and impatient!

W
ell, so you’ve got home at last! Where on earth have you been all day Sunday? This is something new for you!”

Lexie looked up and smiled with that dreamy smile that shows one has been far away in a heaven of one’s own, and for some reason, it made her sister angry and jealous.

“Oh, have you needed me?” said Lexie. “I’m sorry. But I’ve been having a wonderful time. We went to church, and then we took a walk.”

“Oh, you took a walk, did you? All this time? You couldn’t have come home and told us what you were going to do, could you?”

“Why, no, I couldn’t very well,” said Lexie, with a winsome look in her eyes.

“Well, who was the man? Someone you picked up on the road? I didn’t think you were that kind. Your mother certainly wouldn’t have approved of that.”

Lexie laughed.

“No, I didn’t pick him up. I’ve known him a long time.”

“Oh, you
have
? And why did he never turn up before?”

“Why, he’s been overseas,” said Lexie. “We’ve been corresponding for a long time. He’s just home on leave, and he doesn’t know if he may soon be ordered off again. He thinks, though, that he can come back at least for a few hours before he as to go anywhere.”