So, I have that to think about. He is the only Savior. He saved me from fire and water. There’ll be other things further on that I’ll need saving from, too. He saved me when they thought I was dying from my wounds, so there’ll be other times ahead when I’ll need saving. I’m going to trust Him from now on.
I wonder, do you know Him? Did you ever see Him? Do you trust Him, too?
Forgive me if I sound crazy, but I wanted to tell you. I’m going to investigate this, because I know it’s real.
Please write to me again.
Your friend,
Ben
The letter went off, and then Ben began to worry himself lest it would sound crazy to her when it reached her. People didn’t talk about seeing the Lord in the workaday world where she lived nor where he had lived either. People didn’t have such experiences as he had had every day. They didn’t go through such fire, they didn’t stay alive afterward, and they didn’t meet the Lord. It wouldn’t make any difference how long he lived afterward, nothing, nobody, could even make him believe the Lord had not come to him. If they didn’t believe it, they just didn’t know, that was all. Well, he had given the story to Lexie, and this would be a sort of test of what she was. If she made fun of him, he probably wouldn’t write again, at least not more than once or twice. He would know she just hadn’t met the Lord and couldn’t understand until she did.
So he tried to put the matter out of his mind, but he had a sunny feeling in his heart continually, that he was no more alone in a strange land with no place anywhere that wasn’t strange. He had the Lord with him continually. He had found another verse in that borrowed Bible before he sent it back to the sick chaplain. A verse that said, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” So, what did it matter whether he had anyone else or not?
Perhaps Ben Barron wouldn’t have come so fully to believe in what he had been through if life had always been full of fun and joy to him, but the loss of so many things he had cared for when he was younger and the terrible strain through which he had passed had opened his mind to receive. And then, too, that vision had been very vivid.
So the days went on, and the patient was docile and quiet and content. He was not restless, though he knew that as soon as the doctor felt he was able to travel, and the journey could be arranged, he was to be sent home to America on furlough. It was wonderful to look forward to, but he was not impatient because secretly he wanted to wait until there could be a chance of another letter from Lexie. But when he realized this he told himself he was a fool; she was only a child. Well, grown-up of course, but nothing to him but an idea, a vision. And why should he care whether she wrote again or not?
And then one night, in the still darkness, it came to him what was behind this whole feeling, but it came to him clearly then, and he acknowledged to himself what it was. It was because he was troubled that perhaps he should not have told that sacred, tender experience to anyone, even a girl who was in his mind but a child with innocent, lovely thoughts. Perhaps it was a desecration of his Christ that he should have told that experience at all. And why did he choose that memory-child to hear it?
But the days went on and the doctors watched and rejoiced over this patient who had seemed at first so hopeless. He was really getting well, and he was being very docile and doing everything he ought to do willingly. That was an unusual state for a patient to be in. Most of them were so impatient to go away, to get home, but he seemed content to lie here and wait.
Then one day the nurse brought him another letter, and she studied it as she carried it across the hall to his room where he was lying down resting. It must be from a girl. It was a girl’s handwriting. And when she handed it to him she had the pleasure of seeing a brightness in his face, lighting up his handsome features. He was thin and somewhat wasted of course, but he was still handsome, and she wondered what the girl was like. Or would she be his sister? Perhaps. But he only thanked her and smiled. And she had to go her way without having her curiosity satisfied.
Ben Barron sat up on his cot with interest and opened his letter. It was from Lexie. She had written again! And out of the envelope as he opened it carefully, there fell a small unmounted photograph of a lovely girl. Yes, it was the same little girl with the sweet eyes and the charming, innocent smile. She hadn’t thought him quite a fool or she would never have sent him the picture, and there was a look in those eyes of trust and understanding, just as he had hoped there would be, just as he had seemed to read in her child-eyes so long ago. He had taken a girl on trust from memory and now he was looking into the pictured face of that girl, and she came fully up to what such a child should have been. He was thrilled with the picture.
Then suddenly he thought to himself that he had not read her letter yet, and he unfolded the pages. Yes, it was a good long letter, and he felt a joy. Just why he didn’t understand, only he had been so lonely, and now there was someone who was interested enough to write him, interested enough to take hold of the slender invitation he had thrown out and respond to it. He was crazy of course, but he was very glad. He had been waiting, and the letter had come before he was gone. So he read.
Dear Sergeant Ben,
It was wonderful to get your letter from such afar land, and I was so glad to have the little snapshot you sent. It is just like what you were when I saw you. I’m sure I remember you well. Looking at the picture made me sure. Your nice smile is just the same. And I think it was such a good idea for you to send me the picture and ask for mine because it sort of identifies us for each other.
So I am sending you a little picture that was taken for our class book in college, and I happened to have one left over. It’s not a very wonderful picture, but it will give you some idea of what the little girl swinging on the gate looks like now. You see, I’ve been very busy lately, and I haven’t swung on the gate for a long time of course. So I don’t know whether my smile has changed or not, but you can imagine the picture is smiling at you because I am so pleased that you wrote to me.
And now you have told me a wonderful thing about your experience that night of so much fire. I am glad to know, because it makes me sure you are a Christian, and your experience matches something that has happened to me. I’d like to try and tell you, if you don’t mind.
You see, my father died, and then my mother, just a little over a year ago while I was still in college, and now I am on my own. There hasn’t been much money, but I found some work and was getting through. I’ve just a few weeks more to go now before the end with a nice job promised when I finish. But my half sister telegraphed me her husband was reported missing in action, and she was very sick and was coming home with her three little children.
I couldn’t stop her. She didn’t give me time, and the house is half hers. Of course I knew I must stay and help her out. Things haven’t been easy. I haven’t been through fire, but sometimes sharp words can burn your soul very much like aflame of fire. I’ve had to give up going back to my college, but I have been able to arrange to finish and take final examinations at the university in our nearby city. Still it is not going to be easy to stay here. My sister does not approve of my finishing college. She feels I ought to go to work. But I can get a better job if I have a diploma.
Things have been rather awful sometimes, and one night when I couldn’t get to sleep, thinking it over and wondering how long this kind of thing could go on, suddenly I seemed to feel the Presence of the Lord in the room, and to realize that I wasn’t alone in this. God was here, and He knew why it had to be. If I trusted Him, it would all come out the way He has planned.
You see, though I’ve never seen the Lord the way you describe, I’ve known about Him always. When I was a little girl I took Him for my Savior. But I’m afraid I haven’t done much about it since. Of course I’ve prayed and sometimes read my Bible, and gone to church when I could, but I haven’t taken the trouble to get better acquainted with Him. And while I lay there with the feeling of that Presence in my room, it came to m
e that God was letting all this happen to me to call my attention to Him, and to His love for me. While I had had comforts and good times, I had practically forgotten Him, and it seemed there was nothing would call my attention back to Him but trouble and sorrow. And it even took a lot of that. So I began to see it all, that He really loved me, and wanted my loving service.
My sister wasn’t ever interested in religious things. She didn’t join the church when I did, and never wanted to go to Sunday school, and she used to taunt me saying I thought I was so awfully good because I went to church, whenever I did anything she didn’t like. And I began to see that perhaps the thing that I had to do was to show her how I had a Savior who could help me through hard places. I knew I hadn’t been doing that at all. And somewhere I had heard that the only thing God has put us here for is to witness for Him.
So I knew, there in the darkness, with the feeling of God’s Presence in the room, that henceforth I was going to try to do that.
But I knew I could never do it of myself. It would have to be Christ living in me, instead of myself, and living my life for me.
So that’s how it is with me now. I’ve just started, but I’m trying to let Him have His way in me. That’s why I’m glad you told me about meeting the Lord, for if you hadn’t, I never would dared tell you all this. What you have told me has made me feel that we are really friends because we both belong to Christ.
I’ve never talked about such things to anybody else but my mother now and then, and she was very shy of it. So maybe I do not know how to say such things, but it certainly makes me glad to know someone who can talk the way you do.
I am so glad you are getting better, and I do hope you will not have to go back and fight under fire anymore. But I know if you feel that it is needed you will go. But God will be there, and nothing can hurt you. You may not always be able to see Him, but He will be there, and I am glad.
Your friend,
Lexie
There was a grave, sweet look in Ben’s eyes as he finished the letter, and then he thoughtfully turned back to the first page and read it over again. In his heart there was chiming a pleasant thought. “Dear little girl,” it said. “I never knew a girl could be like that.” And later when he thought it over again, he said to himself: “If Norine had been like that, she never would have done what she did to me. That is, she never would have led me on to believe she cared the way she did when she didn’t really care at all, only wanted me for an added trophy.”
Ben Barron had read the letter through three times before the nurse came back, and he had such a renewed, happy look that she could not help but notice it.
“Well, I guess you must have had good news in your letter,” she said as she handed him his glass of orange juice.
“Why, yes, thank you. I did. By the way, when is that doctor coming again?”
“Well, he said he was coming in tomorrow. Why, don’t you feel as well?”
“Oh sure! I feel as if I could go into the fight again.”
“You do?” she said with surprise. “But I think you’re due for a furlough before you go into any more fights. At least that’s what I heard the doctor say the last time he was here.”
A happy grin dawned on Ben’s lips.
“Suits me all right,” said Ben. “I’m getting right fed up on lying here in a hospital.”
“Well, you’ve been a pretty good patient, and we’ll all feel sorry to have you go. Not sorry for you, you know, but sorry for ourselves. We’re going to miss you.”
“Thank you,” said Ben with satisfaction.
“Do you know what I think about you?” said the nurse, lingering a moment with misty eyes upon her patient. “I think if there ever was a real Christian, it’s you, even if you are a soldier.”
Ben Barron looked startled.
“Oh!” he said embarrassedly. “I’m not much of a Christian. I never claimed—”
“No, you didn’t claim to be, but you just acted like one. You don’t always have to go around talking about what you believe to make an impression. It’s when you stand pain with courage and don’t get mad when you can’t have everything to eat you want. It’s when you speak kind to the nurses even if they bring your bathwater too hot and forget to bring you cold water when you’re thirsty. You live like you know God. Not just having been brought up polite, but as if you had a real gentleness in your soul like they say Christ had!”
“Yes?” said Ben Barron, wonderingly. “Well, that’s extraordinary of you to say that, because I just had a letter from a friend I used to know in America, and she talked something like that, but not about me, you understand. She was talking about some of the hard things she had to bear, and it seemed to be her idea, too, that it wasn’t all in profession whether one was a Christian or not. She seemed to think a Christian had to go through fire, like a soldier, to prove the Lord was his Savior.”
“Well, there’s soldiers and soldiers. Plenty of them are brave to stand fire, but not everyone can keep a civil tongue in his head when he’s suffering. It takes something more than human nature to do that at times. I know for I’ve seen plenty of ’em.”
“Yes?” said Ben Barron, thoughtfully. “I guess it does. It takes a divine nature. And if you’ve seen anything like that in me I guess it was because I met the Lord out there on the field of fire.”
“You—what?”
“I met the Lord. He came and stood beside me. He spoke to me. And I guess it’s up to me, since then, to act a little different from what I used to act when I was just on my own and acting out what I felt.”
The nurse stared.
“That might make a difference! You certainly are different. I am sorry to see you go! We need more like you. You’re a loyal soldier if there ever was one,” and brushing away the mists from her eyes she hurried out to get another man’s orange juice, another man who definitely was not a Christian.
But Ben Barron sat still with his glass of orange juice in his hand and stared into the distance. She thought he was a Christian! Lexie thought so, too. Was he? He certainly had not known he was. He certainly had done very little about it in the past. And yet he had given a testimony to that nurse! Was it all because he had met the Lord out there in the fire under the stars? Well, it was time he did something definite about this! When he got somewhere where they had such things, he would buy himself a Bible. That ought to help!
Chapter 15
Lexie was enrolled now in the university, and very busy every day with her study, and doing what duties she could find time for between about the house. Elaine found a great deal of fault with her, and hindered her in every way she could. When she would discover Lexie studying she would demand some service from her—lemonade made, or cakes brought, and would she please go across the street and see what the children were doing, and bring them home and give them baths and dress them up?
Lexie made protests now and then, urging a heavy schedule at college, and examinations imminent, but this only brought scorn from Elaine.
“Such silly nonsense! A great big girl like you going to school at our age! You ought to be back at home getting the meals and cleaning the house and helping me with the children.”
“Helping her!” Lexie complained to herself. “As if she ever lifted a finger for those children, except to scold them, or protect them against others’ protests!”
But what was the use of protesting? Elaine always won in the end, unless, as on a few occasions when there was a great stress in her own work, she simply ignored Elaine’s request and went on with her study. But she always paid bitterly for this in reprisals and sharp words that scorched her very soul. Oh, it was not easy to live this kind of a life, and so far as she could see, she was getting nowhere in making any impression on her sister. She only grew sharper day by day, and more exacting. She complained continually, and Lexie’s nerves were on edge all the time. Oh, would this ever be over?
The one bright spot now in the happenings of the day was the occasional letters that c
ame from abroad, from Benedict Barron.
Sometimes Lexie wondered what her mother would say to her keeping up a correspondence with an utter stranger. Yet somehow she couldn’t help but feel that it was all right and her mother would approve of the letters that passed between them. He was so very respectful, and he was a Christian. He seemed so sincere, and so sort of lonely, just as she was. And yet she sensed through it all that there was danger in such sort of blind friendships. He was lonely now, and so was she, but sometime, when he would perhaps come home, and meet his old friends, and get into his old life again, would he forget her, and was she laying the foundation for sadness and disappointment in her life?
Well, suppose she was. People had to have some sorrow in their lives. Hadn’t God sent her this friendship? She wasn’t counting great things on this, just a nice, pleasant—perhaps passing—friendliness. As free on the one side as on the other. No lovemaking nor any foolishness. Why should she not enjoy it? Why not be glad about it? She hadn’t much else of earthly pleasure to enjoy. Even her college where she had a number of casual friends and acquaintances had been taken away from her. Had that been right? Ought she not to have fought to keep that college life until it was over? And yet Elaine had seemed so helpless, and it had been borne in upon her that for their father’s sake she must stay here for a while. Perhaps Elaine wasn’t really sick. Perhaps she was perfectly able to work, to keep house and care for her children, to even get a job to support them. But it had seemed so heartless to charge her with that, yet continually it came to her that her sister was acting a part and wasn’t really sick at all.