But after the tray had been administered, Elaine still refused to be on good terms with Lexie, to Cinda’s great disgust, and went back to her bed and her novel. So Lexie sent Cinda off for a walk, and a little time to visit an old friend in the neighborhood. Lexie sat on the quiet porch and had opportunity to think over the remarkable letter she had received. A soldier in the midst of the fire! She likened his situation to her own. For in a way they were alike. Although no physical harm was coming to herself, she was in no danger to her health, she had no pain nor actual fear to endure, yet on the other hand, what could be hotter than her sister’s scorching words? What could be lonelier than this existence, day after day in company with one who apparently hated her, and lived only to do her harm, to subjugate her?
But she must not get to pitying herself. Her soldier boy was not doing that. He was drawing comfort from a distant picture of mountain strength, dewy grass, and a child’s small cool hand. And she must find the comfort that surely was somewhere about for her. And if she didn’t find it she must press on anyway. Oh yes, there was comfort, there must be comfort in the thought that God was with her, and God cared, had promised to be with her through water or through fire. Yes, this lad from her childhood past had helped her just as he claimed that she had helped him. The thought of him was pleasant, like something out of a story, when all had been unhappy prose before the letter came. It certainly was a strangely beautiful thing for that grand boy to have grown up and yet to have remembered her, an insignificant little girl, remembered her well enough to take the trouble to write her a letter.
There was one thing that made her sad for him. He must feel strangely alone in this world that he should bother to write to a mere thought-shadow of a child he had seen but once. There must be something almost occult about this. Lexie couldn’t understand it, but she liked it. Perhaps God had made him do it! What a wonderful thought!
And then she heard Elaine groaning, heard her flinging her book away upon the floor and bursting out into heartbreaking sobs.
Lexie hesitated for just a moment. Should she go to her? And then she heard her calling Cinda petulantly like a child’s wail, and she hesitated no longer. Stepping to the bedroom door she said gently: “Is something the matter, Elaine? Are you feeling worse? Can I do anything for you?”
Elaine stopped her sobbing and looked up.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” she said in a voice like an icicle. “I didn’t call you, I called Cinda. I wouldn’t want to trouble you, who are so utterly unaccommodating. Where is Cinda?”
“Cinda went out for a little while,” said Lexie pleasantly. “Tell me what you want, Elaine. I’ll be glad to do anything I can for you. I don’t want to be unaccommodating.”
“Oh, you don’t, don’t you?” taunted the unhappy woman. “Well then, come clean and tell me what I want to know about that money!”
“I’m sorry, Elaine. I’ve told you all I know. You don’t believe me. There is nothing else to say!”
“Oh, be still!” snapped Elaine, kicking her slipper off at her. “I’m sick of such lying prattle. I wish you would go upstairs and let me alone. Here I am, a widow if there ever was one, or worse than a widow perhaps. The only man I ever loved, either dead or a prisoner of war, and I all alone having to battle my way with an unfriendly world, and penniless, having to fend for my poor, dear little children. And my only sister, instead of showing sympathy and kindness and being ready to sacrifice some part of the fortune that she has been enjoying, remains silent and smug and refuses to divulge what has been done with the booty!”
Elaine was working herself up to a fine fury now, and turned to Lexie fiercely. “Get out!” she cried. “I say, get out! I don’t want to see you again, ever, anymore!”
Lexie quietly stepped out of the room and said no more.
What was she to do with a situation like this? There seemed to be no possible way of making Elaine believe what she had told her. How could she go on from day to day under conditions like this? Certainly she couldn’t hope to do much worthwhile studying.
But then, this wasn’t any worse than that soldier over on the other side of the world had it. There was no actual fire here. And God let that young man go through that, probably for some reason she wasn’t wise enough to understand. And He wanted her to go through this, and walk worthy of Him, worthy of having God for her Companion, Christ for her Savior. Could there possibly be glory in this walk? Would any witness she could manifest be a testimony, to her unbelieving sister, for instance? What and if somehow by her life she might show forth to Elaine what Christ wanted to be to her? It didn’t seem possible that anything she could do would do any good, but if it did, wouldn’t it be worth doing? Of course she could never do it alone. It would have to be Christ living in her, and not herself.
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.
Chapter 14
When 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 be
en 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:
Dear Lexie:
You don’t mind if I call you that, do you? Because you know you told me that was your name, and I’m not so well acquainted with the Kendall part; and it doesn’t seem right to call you “Miss,” though of course you must be by this time.
I can’t tell you how glad I was to get your letter, for you see, I had worried a good deal lest you would think me presuming, now you are grown up, to dare to write to you, right of out of the blue, when you weren’t the little girl I remember anymore. But you see, I felt as if I had a proper introduction because you came to me in my troubled vision of you that dark night among the fire and pain. So when the nurse brought me your letter, I was really glad. And when I read the letter I was doubly so.
I am sitting up now a little while every day. I was in a deck chair on a sort of scaffold they call a porch when your letter came, and it seemed to me the sky looked bluer, and the few trees around were greener after I read it. I suppose that may sound childish to you, but after you’ve been in a hard, narrow bed for weeks and weeks, and wondered if you would ever get up, and after you’ve wondered if anybody would know or care if you didn’t, a voice from the faraway home-place seems very sweet, and very nearly puts one out of his head. So, thank you for the letter.
It would be nice if you had sent me a little snapshot of yourself. I’d like so much to see how you look now you’ve grown up, so I will know you if I ever get home and have a chance to see you. And I’m sending you one a fellow took of me in London before we came out here. I’ve been keeping it just as a sort of souvenir of London, but I’d like to send it to you. It will be more as if we were talking to one another. I’m not sure they will let it get by the censors, but if they don’t, it won’t be much loss, so I’m sending it.
This letter is getting pretty long, but there’s one more thing I’d like to tell you before I close, because I’d like somebody to know about it, and there is no one else I’d care to tell it to or who would likely understand. But I have a feeling you will.
It’s about an experience I had while I was lying out in that hot dark field with fiery pain in my shoulder, and more planes bringing more fiery bombs coming on and on. One had just exploded near me, and I was thinking that the next one would be the end for me.
And then suddenly there was a great stillness, and I wondered if perhaps I was dead after all. But then I heard a voice speaking. It said “I am here with you!” And I looked up and saw that it was th
e Lord!
I had never seen Him before, of course, but I knew Him by the nail-prints in His hands, and by the great glory-light in His face. I wonder if you have ever seen Him, or heard His voice? Please don’t think I’m crazy. I’m just an ordinary fellow, but my mother used to talk about Him, used to read me stories from the Bible. A verse I had learned from my mother came back to me then. “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned.”
I had been through a river, a deep wide river, but it did not overflow me, though I had thought at one time it would; and then I had been through fire, fire after fire, but I was still alive! I had not been burned. I was startled. That verse had come back into my life, spoken just for me, spoken by the Lord Himself! It wasn’t anything I had just imagined. I had heard His voice speaking the words! You don’t know what it did to me. It is something I can never forget. And because you are the only friend in touch with me now, I want you to know about it. Do you mind?
Just today I got to thinking those words over that I heard Him say to me, and I asked the nurse if she knew whether there was a Bible anywhere that I could read for a few minutes. She said yes, there was a chaplain in the next ward now who had one, and she would borrow it for me. So she did, and I looked up that verse, and then I read on. A little further on there was another verse, almost like a signature to a letter. It said, “I, even I, am the LORD; and beside me there is no savior.”