GI Brides (52 page)

But that kind of talk had never stopped Aunt Blanche, and she kept right at it, harping on it whenever her children came to see her. Blaming Dale for not doing something about it. But the most Dale could say was that she would speak to the doctor about it.

And then she began to clamor again to see her lawyer. But when the nurse tried to reach him, he as always out of town. The plain truth being that he did not want to see her, for having gotten all the money out of her that he reasonably could, he felt it was time to be away from the vicinity. And neither Dale nor the children made any response to Mrs. Huntley’s requests to see her lawyer. They were not in sympathy with her on this subject. The son, at least, had reached the stage where he began to see just what kind of a man this lawyer was. He could not argue with his mother now, while she was sick and unable to leave the hospital and look after her affairs, so he said nothing. That had been his habit in dealing with things he did not like in the past, always to ignore them, so now his mother was not surprised at his attitude. But she spoke to him bitterly about his unwillingness to help her, and sometimes Dale could see that it was very hard for him to hear her faultfindings. Just once he did say, “Mother, I don’t have much faith in that lawyer,” but his remark brought about such a torrent of abuse and scorn that he did not venture to oppose her again. Dale could see he shrank from hearing his mother shriek out, “Powelton! Stop! How dare you speak that way about my lawyer?”

It was on the day that that happened first that the boy was very silent on the way home, until they got quite near to the house, and then he said quietly, “I wish you folks would begin to call me by my right name. I just hate that name Powelton! I wasn’t rightly named that, anyway. Dad wanted me named after himself, George Harold, and I want to use George now. It sounds more like something real, and not that sissy name of Powelton.”

“All right,” said Dale. “I’ll call you George. I like that name. But—will your mother mind?”

“I expect she will,” he said bitterly. “Powelton was her maiden name. But I’d rather have my father’s whole name.”

“I think you have a right to be called what you want to,” said Corliss unexpectedly. “I know Mother used to want to call me Clarissa, and I wouldn’t stand for it. But now she seems to like Corliss. Anyhow, I think you can do what you like. Mother won’t be around for a while till we get used to it. I like George best, too.”

The lad looked pleased and nothing more was said, but they were careful after that to call him George.

After dinner that night, Dale brought out a new jigsaw puzzle and they grew almost happy at times as they worked over it. They were beginning to really enjoy each other’s company, and since the mother was away there was no one to find fault.

So the days settled into a quiet routine, and it was good for Dale that she had something pleasant to occupy her mind, for David’s last letter had intimated that he was being sent off on some mission from which he would not be able to write to her, perhaps for a long time.

Nightly she read over that last precious letter and prayed for him, wondering where he was, trusting him to the care of the heavenly Father, and then reading a few verses in the Bible, verses they had agreed together to read at night while he was gone.

So they got through the days, wondering always what was coming when the invalid recovered and was able to walk. Would she come to the house that Dale owned, where they were staying? And what would it be like if she did?

It is safe to say that all three of these young people thought a great deal about this subject. Dale knew that of course she must invite her aunt if she seemed to want to come but that it would bring dissension on every side. Corliss and George both knew that this quiet time while they were waiting for the recovery of the mother was heaven compared to what it would be if she returned. Then there was the subject of a nurse. Corliss knew
she
would never be able to take care of her mother, for there would be no satisfying her ever with anything. Oh, it was all a sore subject, and none of them liked to think about it. And only Dale could throw it off by laying it all in the keeping of her heavenly Father. “All through the night,” and all through the days, also.

Of course Dale was the one who dreaded it most, perhaps, for she would be the butt of all the faultfinding, and she would be the one who would have to sweat and bear it as if it were nothing. Could she do it? Yes, but not in her own strength. In the strength of her Lord she could lie back and take it sweetly, remembering that it was not herself who was bearing the responsibility but her Lord who had promised to undertake for her. She had put her all in His hands, and she must only be careful that she did not interfere in the matter but let her Lord manage it all for her.

It was very still in the room for a few minutes, with only the soft sound of the flickering flames in the fireplace, where a quiet wood fire brightened the dusk in the corners of the room, mingling with the silvery beam of the new moon shining across the floor as if to meet and caress the firelight.

Troubled thoughts were going through the minds of the young people as they sat working over the new jigsaw puzzle. At last Corliss broke the silence. “What are we going to do, Dale, when Mother begins to get well? I tried to ask her today while you went to speak to the nurse, but she looked at me so strangely and just said, ‘
Stop!
Don’t torment me with questions like that when I’m sick.’ And then you came back with the nurse and I couldn’t say anything more, but what
are
we going to do?”

“I think the way will open somehow when the time comes,” said Dale with a sweet smile. “There’s really nothing to worry about, you know. There will be a way.”

“Yes, but we can’t stay here,” said the boy. “You want to start a school or something, and we are taking up all your time and your house. And goodness knows it will be work when Mom comes here with a nurse in the bargain. We ought not to put you out this way.”

It was a manly speech, and it thrilled Dale’s heart to think her cousin had had kind thoughts for her comfort.

“But I’m not worried, George,” she said pleasantly. “Maybe that school wasn’t in God’s plan for me just now, and certainly having you here was, for the present, anyway. And somehow I think it was nice that you stayed here and we got better acquainted with each other, don’t you?”

“Swell!” said George heartily. “I never knew you were so nice, and I’ll always be glad I got to know you. You’ve been wonderful to Corrie and me. You couldn’t have been better. But all the same, that’s another reason why we ought to get out and let you have your house to yourself.”

“No,” said Dale earnestly. “You mustn’t think that way. I’m just glad you are here, and I know we’re going to have a nice time together, in spite of worry and anxieties and maybe some discomforts in the days ahead. But I’m sure there’s something good coming out of it all.”

“What makes you so sure?” asked the boy curiously.

Dale hesitated for an instant. Should she tell him? Would he understand? Yet she felt she must. “Because my heavenly Father is managing it all, and I have trusted my life with Him. I know He will work it out right for our best good. You see, what He wants for us all is to make us like His Son, Jesus Christ, and if He sees that hard things will accomplish that for us in a better, quicker way than anything else would, then that is what He will do for us. I know, for I have told Him I want to rest my life with Him entirely.”

“But you couldn’t have any fun or good times that way, could you?” asked Corliss in wonder.

“Oh yes, definitely so,” said Dale. “You know He loves us, wants us to be happy in Him. So He would want to give us happiness as well as hard things. And I believe He truly loves me. He has given me a great deal of joy in many ways. Sometimes my heart is just thrilled to running over with the things He has handed out to me.”

Corliss looked at her curiously, studied the radiant look on her sweet face, and wondered at it. “Well, I wish I could feel that way about missing things and seeing uncomfortable things coming ahead. But I can’t,” she said.

“Well, perhaps that is because you do not know my Lord Jesus yet. That makes all the difference in the world. When you know somebody well, you know whether you can trust him or not. Do you see?”

“No, I’m not sure I see at all,” said the girl. “What about all those people over in the war and all those people in Europe? Don’t you suppose there are any of those who know God? Don’t
they
pray and trust Him? And He doesn’t do anything for them, does He?”

“Oh yes,” said Dale quickly, “there are a lot of God’s children over there, and a lot who are trusting Him, too. I know. I have a few friends, some among the fighters, some among the people who have lost their homes and their dear ones, and they are just
resting
in the Lord and waiting patiently for Him to set the world right. They believe He will do it. And while they are suffering, they are trusting, too, and they understand that this is all going to work out in the end for righteousness and for good to all.”

“Well, I don’t see that,” said Corliss. “I couldn’t trust that way, not with things going wrong the way they are. It doesn’t seem kind in God.”

“But you see, dear, you just don’t know Him, and you don’t understand what He is working out for the world. There is the question of sin that is everywhere, sin that has to be conquered. Sin for which He died to make a way for us to escape. And just as if
He
had sinned instead of us, He deliberately took our sins upon Himself and bore their punishment as if they had been His sins. We’ve nothing left to do but believe that He did it and accept what He did and take Him as our personal Savior, and we are free from it all.”

The boy had stopped working with the puzzle and was looking at her, taking in all that she said, weighting it, pondering it. “I’d like to hear more about that,” he said at last as he turned back to his puzzle. “It sounds reasonable, but not very likely. I don’t know anybody that would do that for people.
Die
for them. Is all that in the Bible? That’s a book I’ve never read. Just heard a snatch or two now and then read in school. But does it have real things like that in it?”

“Oh yes,” said Dale with shining eyes. “I’d be glad to show you some of them if you would be interested.”

“I think I would,” said the boy.

And then suddenly the doorbell rang and Dale went to see who had come, although both the young people started up anxiously as if they thought they should go, and Dale realized that they always had in the back of their minds now the possibility of some change coming to their mother, the anxiety of what might happen next.

“It’s all right, George,” she said as she hurried to the door. “Probably some neighbor. I would likely have to go anyway.” But they followed to the hall and hovered in the shadow until they heard it was a special-delivery letter, and as they couldn’t possibly figure out how that could have anything to do with their affairs, they went back to the jigsaw puzzle again.

They heard Dale tear open the envelope, saw through the doorway how she paused eagerly to read the brief letter, and they looked up curiously to see the bright color in her cheeks and the glad, yet sorry, look in her eyes. But she went quietly over to her chair and sat down. “It’s only a note from a dear friend who is probably being sent overseas, or somewhere, on a dangerous mission. He wanted me to know that he was starting, though he cannot tell me where. It is just sort of a good-bye, for the time being.”

The two young people were very quiet for a long time, and the jigsaw puzzle grew into a semblance of the story it was to tell when finished. At last Corliss asked a question. “Does he—the one who wrote that letter—know God?”

Dale looked up with a bright smile. “Oh yes,” she said happily. “He knows Him
very well,
and he is trusting in the Lord to help him through, whatever way He will, either to bring him back home or to his heavenly home.”

“Do you mean there is any fighter, a
young
man, who feels that way about war and dying and all that?”

“Yes, I know a good many. Somehow didn’t really trust God before they went over, but who have come to need Him and cry out for Him since they have been surrounded by death and terror. But this man especially really knows and trusts and is
happy
in the Lord.”

It was just at that point that the kitchen door opened and Hattie walked in with a tray bearing three cups of hot chocolate topped with whipped cream and a heaping plate of delicious sandwiches. The young people pounced upon the food eagerly, and the subject for the time being was forgotten. Or was it? Did the two cousins, after they had retired for the night, lie awake pondering these things, which they had never known or thought of before? And Dale knelt long beside her bed praying for them.

But once more before she turned out her light she read the precious letter over again, then folding it she put it under her pillow before she lay down.

The letter was very short.

So when she lay down and closed her eyes, the bright words of faith from that letter illuminated her dark room. Out there beyond her window was the dark night and the hovering images of fears that might be threatening her beloved, but those words of trust made the difference in what might have been a message full of fear. So Dale, trusting, slept sweetly in spite of tomorrow, and more tomorrows, looming large and portentous ahead in a dreadful future, could not disturb her sleep because her faith was fixed upon the Rock, Christ Jesus.

A
nd while they slept, a long way off a ship slid out on the ocean, beginning its perilous way into the night.