GI Brides (87 page)

“Right!”
said little Mrs. Frazee in alarm. “You don’t think we ought to sit around and weep all the time till the boys come back, do you?”

“Mercy no, what good would that do?” said Mrs. Butler. “But I don’t think we should get up big blowouts and spend a lot of money and eat up a lot of unnecessary food, when there are folks who are starving.”

“But if we make plenty of money having parties and buy a lot of war bonds with it, that would make it all right, wouldn’t it?” Mrs. Frazee’s big baby-blue eyes were lifted pitifully.

“You can’t make a wrong thing right by doing good with it,” said Mrs. Butler grimly.

“But, Mrs. Butler, you can’t think it is
wrong
to have parties can you?”

“Well, there are times that are more suitable for parties than the present,” said Mrs. Butler fiercely. “Personally, if my son was out there fighting, I wouldn’t feel like going to a merrymaking.” Mrs. Butler’s face had a self-righteous glow. “It certainly isn’t good taste to be giddy when the nation is in sorrow.”

“Do you mean the government is against parties?” asked Mrs. Frazee, “I thought they were saying we must keep cheerful.”

“They do,” said Mrs. Felton. “Don’t be silly. You’ve got to go ahead with your party now it’s started. Mrs. Butler just means we’ve got so much really necessary work to do in more practical lines that it seems a pity to waste time hand-painting invitations, but maybe there are some people who couldn’t do anything else, so why worry? Mrs. Butler, will you pass me those scissors? I seem to have left my own at home.”

There was quiet in the room for a little while as the women thought over and sifted out the ideas that had been brought forth. Very few of those women in that room had stopped to think that this war wasn’t just a game, just another function in which they could be delightfully active. Somehow life seemed to be taking on a more serious attitude, and they were not sure it was going to be quite so interesting.

Then at last with a little glad escape of a sigh Mrs. Frazee said, “Well, anyhow, it’s too late to give up this party, isn’t it? The invitations are all sent and the tickets are paid for. It wouldn’t be honest not to have the party now, would it?”

Then they all laughed. Mrs. Frazee was so delightfully childlike, so full of the little frilly things of life, and so empty where anything real was concerned. She couldn’t even baste up a baby’s nightie without getting the shoulders all hindside-before. And today, no matter how many of them had to be ripped out and done over again, she promptly put the next day’s shoulders all at loggerheads, and she finally cast them down in despair, saying:

“Well, I don’t see what earthly difference it makes anyhow. Why won’t they be all right when you get the sleeves sewed in?” And then she dropped down on her chair and burst into childish tears. So they finally decided that Mrs. Frazee would be invaluable pulling out bastings. And strangely, she was pleased. Why, pulling out bastings was something she could really understand, and her heart thrilled as she worked away at it, feeling that with every basting that came out she was pulling down a whole battalion of enemy soldiers.

So Mrs. Frazee worked happily away at her bastings, jubilant over the fact that at least this party had to go on, this party on which she had spent so much time and thought, and for which she had developed so many original ideas. She smiled to herself to think that what she used for a conscience was released from obligation to these women, at least, and she could go on and enjoy herself and her plans.

But the other women sat thinking, planning what the world should be when the war was over and Utopia perhaps would arrive, which was a development of their part-pagan religion they had developed from within, communing with self and their own desires. It was so much easier for them to explain life and religion in terms of their own wishes than to try and understand a book called the Bible. They felt, as they put away their work and got ready to go back to their world again, that they had been thinking some great thoughts, and that it was practically up to them as women to make the postwar world what it should be.

That afternoon Blythe, with her big bundle of babies’ nighties by her side and her gold thimble on her flying fingers, sat in her mother’s room, not far from the big chair where the invalid rested, and made buttonholes, with a lovely smile on her lips and a happy light in her eyes. She was so glad to have her mother getting well, and to be able to do some real work again. The days of anxiety had been long and trying, and it was good to have sunshine in the home and mother beginning to look as she used to look when Blythe was a little girl. Mother with that rested look on her face again, and no longer a strained, anxious expression.

Her mother watched her silently for a while, smiling to think how lovely her girl was, and then thinking about her thoughts over the last few weeks before she was taken sick. At last she spoke:

“It’s so dear to see you sitting there, Blythe, working on those little garments.”

Blythe gave a happy smile.

“Oh, but Mother, it is I who should be saying that. It is so nice to see
you
sitting there so rested and happy-looking and really getting well after your long illness. It was so dreadful when you lay so still and didn’t know us at all. But don’t let’s think about that. I’m just glad, glad, you are
really
better, and will be well pretty soon. The doctor says it won’t be long now. He told Daddy so this morning. I heard him.”

“That’s nice,” said the mother, “but somehow I’m not in a hurry. I’m quite content to rest here and not to have to hurry at present.”

“I only blame myself that I didn’t see how worn out you were getting,” said the daughter. “You know, I thought you liked all that planning and worry and hustling from one thing to another.”

“Why, I guess I did,” said Mrs. Bonniwell reminiscently, “but I’m glad I don’t have to do it now. I just like to lie and watch you sew those cute little nighties.”

The mother was still for a few minutes and then she spoke again:

“Blythe, what about that wedding? Did Dan Seavers get married? I don’t seem to have heard anything about it. Did it finally come off?”

Blythe laughed.

“Don’t ask me,” she said amusedly. “I wasn’t there. I was getting hot water bags, and hunting more blankets and trying to get you warm. You know, Mother, if I hadn’t been so frightened about you that I couldn’t think straight, I believe I would have been grateful to you for creating a really good reason that nobody could question why I didn’t have to go to that wedding. But of course at the time, I was too troubled to even think about the wedding.”

“So it did come off! Well, to think of that! And you didn’t feel badly about it, dear, having your old friend go off with another girl?”

“Feel
badly,
Mother! What do you mean? Did you ever think I wanted to marry Dan? Why Mother, I thought I told you—”

“Oh, yes, I know you did. But I was afraid you might find out afterward that you had made a mistake.”

“No,” said Blythe definitely, “I did
not
find I had made a mistake. I did not
ever
want to marry Dan. He was a playmate in childhood, that was all. He never meant a thing to me. And I strongly suspect he has just the right kind of a wife to suit his plans and ambitions. She’ll climb as far up the social ladder as he wants her to, and she’ll egg him on to get in everywhere and get ahead. And I, why Mother, you don’t know how glad I am that he and his wife are married and gone away from here. It seems somehow as if the atmosphere was clearer for right living.”

The mother’s face was thoughtful as she watched her daughter and listened to her decided pronouncement. After a moment Blythe went on.

“But you know, Mother, you ought to have understood all that after I told you about Charlie. You
couldn’t
think that I could ever want to marry anyone else when I loved Charlie, and since he loved me. Didn’t you understand that, Mother?”

The mother hesitated before she answered.

“Well, dear, I wasn’t sure about that. I thought it might be only a passing fancy, and that it would fade away.”

“Oh
no
, Mother! It can never fade away. It is the real thing, Mother. Love, the kind you and Daddy have for each other. Could you have married anyone else, Mother?”

“Oh no, of course not, dear. But he was—well, I’d known him a long time, and I love him a great deal.”

“Yes, Mother, that’s the way I feel. Of course, we haven’t had the fun together we might have had, because Charlie was too busy, and too humble, but perhaps we’ve loved all the better for that.”

The mother was still again, and then she said slowly, half pitifully: “But, my darling, this lover of yours was going out to war with the avowed expectation of dying, and I couldn’t bear to think of my bright, lovely daughter starting out her life in the shadow of death. Don’t you see? Don’t you understand how I felt, dear?”

“Yes,” said Blythe, trying to speak gently. “I see how you looked at it, from an earthly point of view, but you didn’t understand how great our love was, how great it
is,
I mean. Our love is a thing of our spirits, not entirely of our bodies and souls. Of course, body and soul count some in any loving, but so many loves don’t have anything to do with the spirit. Ours is deeply of the spirit, Mother, I love Charlie even more today than I did the day he went away, and I’m just as glad that he came to tell me of his love as I was then. Even a great deal gladder.”

“But—even if he never comes back?”

“Yes, Mother, even if he never comes back—to this earth.”

“My dear! That’s very beautiful! I dreaded sorrow for you, but I’m glad that you have found joy in these very hard times. I had hoped you might have forgotten him, but now, well perhaps I understand.”

Blythe suddenly laid down her sewing and went and knelt beside her mother’s chair; then stooping, kissed her forehead and her lips.

“Thank you, Mother dear. That’s the sweetest thing you could have said to me. Now I can be really happy in loving Charlie.”

For some time the girl knelt there by her mother with their hands tenderly clasped. At last the mother said, “You dear, dear child!” Then after a moment, “And have you heard nothing more from—Charlie?” She hesitated over the unaccustomed name, yet spoke it as if giving her sanction to the relationship, and that brought great joy to Blythe’s heart.

“Yes Mother, I’ve had a few more letters. Would you like to see them? Dad has read some of them.”

“Yes,” said the mother interestedly. ‘Yes, I would like to see them, that is, if you don’t mind, dear. If you think Charlie wouldn’t mind.”

“No, he wouldn’t mind, I’m sure, and I’m glad to have you know him. I want you to know him as well as I do. I’ll get them.”

She hurried away to her room and brought the few letters that had come before the great silence enveloped him, and together the mother and daughter read them. And when the reading was over and Blythe had told about the different ones, how and when they came, the mother handed them back.

“I’m glad you let me see them, dear. I do not wonder now how you love him. He must be a remarkable young man. I surely feel that God has greatly blessed you to give you a love like that, even if it was but for a little while. Some women never have such great love. I am glad my girl knows what love is.”

After Blythe had put the letters away and come back to take up her sewing again, they spoke about the different letters.

“But I don’t understand about that little message that came wrapped in cellophane. Who did you say sent it?”

“Mrs. Blake’s youngest son, Mother. He used to admire and love Charlie when he was just a kid and follow him around when Charlie played football in the big college games, and when it happened that they met at a camp before Charlie went over, and were together for two or three days going to those meetings, Charlie knew that Walter was hoping to get home on furlough for a few days before he went overseas, and he asked Walter Blake to bring this to me, his last good-bye. Wasn’t that dear? But Walter didn’t get his furlough after all, and was sent overseas unexpectedly soon, so after he got over there he sent the message to his mother and asked her to give it to me.”

“His mother? Blake? Walter
Blake
did you say? Do you mean it is the son of that sweet little Mrs. Blake who comes in to rub my back for me sometimes when I am very tired? Why how dear of her! I shall like her all the better, now that I know this. I hope she comes soon again. I like the feeling of her strong, warm hands. They are such little, gentle hands, yet they seem to have a power behind them. She was from your Red Cross class, wasn’t she? Is that how you got acquainted?”

“Yes, Mother. I felt she was the most interesting person in the whole class. I felt she was a real friend.”

“She is,” agreed Mrs. Bonniwell. “I like her very much. My dear, I wonder if this war isn’t going to do a lot of things to the world, like getting people to know other people of like tastes and beliefs and making them love one another, where formerly these same people were separated by social lines and things like education and money? Things good in themselves, perhaps, if taken in the right proportion, but deadly when they are exalted beyond their place. When I get well, Blythe, I want to try and straighten out some of these differences between me and my neighbors, both rich and poor. And I would like to begin by getting very well acquainted with Mrs. Blake.”

“Oh Mother! You’re making me so happy!” said Blythe.

“What’s all this?” asked Mr. Bonniwell, suddenly appearing in the doorway. “Let me in on it, won’t you? ‘Mrs. Blake’ I heard you say. Is that the mother of the Walter-lad I know about, Blythe?”

“The same, Daddy,” said happy Blythe, pushing forward her father’s chair and running to get his slippers. “Come sit down, Daddy, and let me tell you what a wonderful mother I have, and what a sweet wife she’s been all these years.”

And so amid laughter, and sometimes a bright tear, they told the father all their talk, and the three of them were happy together.