GI Brides (3 page)

Lexie grew weak all over and, turning, tottered into the house closing the door behind her. She went into the dining room and dropped down into a chair beside that lunch she had not eaten, laying her head down on her folded arms on the corner of the table, her heart crying out in discouragement. Now what was she to do? How like Elaine to spring a thing like this on her without warning. Giving orders as if she were a rich woman! Sending her word at the last minute so that it would be impossible to stop her.

Lexie felt her head and looked at her watch. Could she possibly send a telegram to the train and stop her? Turn her back? Tell her she was about to leave for college? Her own train left at two thirty. There was no other train that night. What if she were to pay no attention to the telegram? Just let Elaine come on with her nurse and her three children and see what she had done! It was time she had a good lesson of course. She simply couldn’t expect her sister to take over the burden of her life this way.

On the other hand, there was her promise to her mother, and in fact, what would Elaine do if she arrived and found no car waiting, no house open, no key to open it?

Well, she had a nurse with her, let them go to a hotel!

But suppose she had no money? Still, she must have some money or she could not have bought her tickets and started. She couldn’t have afforded a nurse. But then, of course, Elaine never bothered about affording anything. She always got what she wanted first and let somebody else worry about paying for it.

But how did Elaine happen to telegraph to her here? Ah! She had not told her sister that she was expecting to go back to college during the midyear vacation and do a little studying while things were quiet. Elaine expected her to be here in the home of course, during holidays, as she invariably had been previously. If she had carried out her plans and that telegram had been a couple of hours later in arriving, she would have been gone and the telegram would not have found her. What then would have happened to Elaine? Well, why not
go
and let happen what would happen? Surely Elaine would find some way of taking care of her children. She couldn’t exactly come down upon her at college. She wouldn’t know where she had gone either. Why not
go
?

It must have been five minutes that Lexie sat with her forehead down upon her folded hands trying to think this thing through. The same old fight that had shadowed all her life thus far! Was it going on to the end for her as it had gone on for her mother? Or should she make a stand now and stop it?

And then would come the thought that Elaine seemed to be in real trouble now, her husband probably dead, herself sick—and very likely she really was! It didn’t take much to make Elaine sick when things didn’t happen her way. And those three children! She
couldn’t
let them suffer because they happened to have an insufferable mother! She had never seen those three children, but children were always pathetic if they were in trouble! Oh, what should she do?

Here she was ready to leave, just time to eat those cold scrambled eggs that had been so nice and hot when that telegram arrived. Her house was all ready either to close for the present or to rent if a tenant came, her things packed away under lock and key in the attic, and all her arrangements for the rest of the college year made. There was still time to take a taxi to the North Station and get her train before that western train arrived with the onslaught of the enemy, and yet she wasn’t going to have the nerve to do it! She felt it in her heart behind all her indignation and bitter disappointment that she wasn’t going to leave Elaine in a tight spot. She had been brought up a lady, and she couldn’t do it. She had been taught to give even a little more than was asked, and she was going to go on doing it the rest of her life… maybe.

But no! She
wouldn’t
! She
mustn’t
! She would just stay long enough to have a showdown with her sister. She would make her understand that there was no money anywhere and the job she had secured was on condition that she had finished her college course. She must do that or her whole life would suffer. She would let Elaine understand that she could not shoulder the burden of her family. She would stay long enough for that. It was what her mother probably should have done, and now it was
her
duty. She would try to be kind and sympathetic with Elaine in her sorrow, and she would try to help her back to a degree of health, but then she would make her understand that it was only right
she
should get a job herself and support her children. Yes, she would do that! She would not weaken. She had a right and a responsibility to think of herself and her own career, too. Of course even if she had to help Elaine financially, it was essential that she finish her course and get ready to earn as much as possible for them all. Yes, that was what she would do!

And now, just how should she go about all this? Shouldn’t she begin at once to be firm with Elaine? To let her understand that she couldn’t afford taxis and cars? What ought she to do? Wire the train that Elaine must get a taxi, or just not make any reply at all? And how should she prepare for this unexpected invasion? For, indeed, it seemed to her as she lifted tear-filled eyes and looked about the room, like an invasion of an enemy.

She felt condemned as the thought framed itself into words in her mind, but she had to accept the way she felt about it. And thinking back over the years and her mother’s words from time to time, she knew this was something her mother would have told her she must do as far as was possible. Perhaps it would not turn out to be as bad as it promised. Perhaps it was only for a brief space while Elaine adjusted herself to her circumstances, but whatever it was, it was something that her mother would have expected her to do, something that perhaps God expected her to do.

Not that Lexie had ever thought much about God except in a faraway, general way, but somewhere there was a Power that was commanding her. It was as if there was an ordeal ahead that challenged her. Why? Was it right she should go? It was like a wall of fire before her, through which she must pass, and there was now no longer a question whether she would go. She knew she would. The only thing was to work out just what was the wisest way to do it.

With her eyes shut tight to force back the two tears that persisted in coming into them, Lexie kept her face down and pressed her temples to try and think. Whatever she was going to do for the winter, it was
now, today,
that she had to settle. She wasn’t going to run away from the message that had come at this last minute. If this was an emergency, and a time of grief—and obviously it was—just common decency required that she do something about it. Therefore she
must
stay here in the house until Elaine came, and they could talk it out. She must see if her sister was really sick, sicker than she used to be sometimes when she just didn’t want to go places and do things that seemed to be her duty. If she was really sick, of course, Lexie must stay and do something about it until some other arrangement could be made, sometime, somewhere. That could be held in abeyance until Elaine was here.

Next, the house must be put in order to accommodate the oncoming guests, or else there must be some room or rooms hired somewhere to accommodate them. Undoubtedly the home would be the cheapest arrangement, unless it might open the way for Elaine to take too much for granted. But there again she must wait until she knew the exact situation. And last, but by no means the least important, was the matter of transportation from the city for an invalid, or a supposed invalid. But that, too, would have to be accepted as a fact until the contrary was proven. And now she began to see how hard her mother’s way must have been. Must she go to the expense of going down to the city after them? There was much to be done in the house to make it habitable if they were coming here. She would have no time to do it if she went to the city.

What she finally did was to run out to a public telephone and call up the Traveler’s Aid at the city station, asking the representative to meet the train and arrange for whatever way of conveyance she felt was necessary, giving a message that she was unable to meet the train herself. She made it plain that none of them had much money to spend for anything that was not a necessity, and unless the invalid felt she could afford taxis, and was utterly unable to travel otherwise, please make some other arrangement.

The woman who answered her call was a sensible person with a voice of understanding and seemed to take in the situation thoroughly. When Lexie came out of the telephone booth there was a relieved feeling in her mind and less trouble in her eyes. At least she had provided a way of transportation, and that matter was disposed of without her having to go into the city. Now she would be able to get a bed ready for Elaine. Even if she wasn’t going to stay in the house all night, there would have to be a suitable bed for her to lie down on as soon as she arrived—if she
really
was sick. Somehow Lexie was more and more uncertain about that. She had known Elaine so long and so well. But she climbed to the well-ordered attic, where everything was put away carefully, and searched out blankets, pillows, sheets and pillowcases, a few towels, and some soap. These would be necessities at once of course.

As she worked, her mind was busy thinking about a most uncertain future. Trying to plan for a way ahead in which her most unwilling feet must go. Some urge within her soul forbade that she shrink back and shirk the necessity.

Yet she was not the only one in the world who had trouble.

T
hey were fighting a war, out across the ocean. Well, she was fighting a war with herself at home. With herself? No, maybe it wasn’t with herself. Maybe it was something that affected the world—that is, a little piece of it. It might even be important to the world how she took this added burden that had come upon her. Could that be possible? From God’s standpoint, perhaps.

So Lexie thought to herself as she went about swiftly putting Elaine’s old room to rights, enough to rights to make a place for her to lie down when she arrived. Of course she would do her best to make her see how impossible it would be for her to stay, but there had to be a place for her to lie down.

Hastily she made up the bed with such things as she had been able to find in the attic without unpacking too many boxes. She wanted Elaine to realize how inconvenient her coming in this sudden way had been for her. And yet all the time as she thought it she knew Elaine
wouldn’t
realize. Elaine would just take it for granted that it was her due to be served and would probably growl at the service, too, considering it inadequate.

She drew a deep sigh and wished with all her heart that the telegram had not arrived until she had left for college. Perhaps Elaine would have been discouraged then and gone back west. Still, of course she wouldn’t. Elaine wasn’t made that way. Elaine demanded service, and if it wasn’t on hand where she chose to be, she turned heaven and earth until it came. Oh, why did this have to come to her after all the other hard things she had been through? Other girls had normal lives with pleasant families and nobody much to torment them. And here she was saddled not only with her unpleasant sister but also her three unknown children who would probably be as unpleasant as their parent, poor little things! And she couldn’t stand it! No, she
couldn’t
! How could a young girl only twenty, with her own way to make and her college finals just at hand, be expected to take over and bring up a family of three children, to say nothing of their mother, who probably by this time was posing as a hopeless invalid and doing it so prettily that everybody else would pity her?

But there was no use thinking such bitter thoughts. Whatever else her sister was not, she certainly was in trouble enough now with her husband as good as dead, for that was what “missing in action” usually meant. And if she really loved him, as she
said
she did, it was hard of course. Although it was hard for Lexie to believe that Elaine really loved anybody but herself.

It was perhaps fortunate for Lexie’s firm resolves to be frank with Elaine and make her understand how hard she was making things, that there was very little time to relent. For Lexie’s sweet temper and natural generosity were apt to make her softhearted, and if there had been a great deal of time to prepare for her unwelcome guest, she might in spite of herself have done much to make the house look homelike and livable again. But there was not much time, and there were limitations due to the fact that most of the pleasant furnishings and treasured things of the family were securely packed and locked away. It would take time to unpack, air, and put them about in their places again. That would hardly be worthwhile if Elaine was only to be there a few hours, or at most a few days. Perhaps if she was really sick she ought to go to a hospital. Although Elaine always hated the very name of hospital and refused to be sent to one, she had been there when her children were born, and perhaps had got over her foolish ideas of prejudice against it. But if she went to the hospital, what would become of the three children? Because, of course, no hospital would allow them to come when they were not sick. And there was no one, no relative, who could be called in to look after them. It would just mean that she, Lexie, would have to stay with them, and she
couldn’t
do that. She
must
go back to college! For economy’s sake if for nothing else, she must finish her course and get her job!