“Oh well, if you are going to take that attitude, of course you will have to bear the consequences, but I was just trying to warn you that it is a great deal simpler to come clean and tell what you know. You will be treated with far more leniency than if you persist in lying about it and won’t tell what you know.”
“Very well,” said Lexie quietly and got up to go out of the room, but Elaine detained her.
“Wait a minute, Lexie, there is something I want to ask you. Do you remember a friend of Father’s, a Mr. Harry Perrine, a financier who made investments for Father?”
Lexie looked at her sister thoughtfully.
“Yes, I remember a man of that name who wanted to make investments for Father, and Father wouldn’t have anything to do with him. He said he was rotten and not fit to handle money for anybody, and Mother couldn’t bear the sight of him. He was always coming here at mealtime and hanging around to be invited to dinner, and coaxing Father to invest in this and that.”
“You’re quite mistaken, Lexie. He was a successful financier, and my father put some of my money with him at your mother’s suggestion. I have had this investigated, and he owns that Father put money with him intended for me, and after his death your mother drew it all out and invested it elsewhere. He has all the papers to prove it, and he knows just what your mother did with the money after she drew it out to use for herself.”
Lexie was very angry by this time, but she knew she must not let this be seen. Her talk with Mr. Gordon had fortified her for such a scene as this, so she closed her lips and turned toward the door again.
“Oh! You haven’t anything to say to that!” taunted the angry woman. “I thought that would finish you. There is nothing further you can say!”
“No,” said Lexie gently. “I just felt that I would rather not talk any more about this matter lest I might say something unpleasant to you, and I don’t see that would do anything but make you more angry. I think if this has to be talked about any more I will let you talk to my lawyer.”
“Your lawyer!” laughed Elaine. “Since when did my kid sister have a lawyer? Send him on. I’m sure I can give him a few facts that will astonish him, and he will certainly wish he hadn’t taken you on as a client.”
The sentence ended with a hateful, taunting laugh, but Lexie had gone quietly out of the room, shut the door, and did not hear the meanest part of it. She hurried upstairs to her own dark room and stood for a long time looking out into the starry night, wondering if God really cared for her and was going with her through all this.
And then she bowed her head on the window frame and prayed softly, “Dear God, help me to trust even when things are like this. Help me to remember You are here, walking with me every step of this hard way.”
Chapter 13
The letter that Benedict Barron had written to Alexia Kendall reached her the morning after her fiery talk with her sister and almost precipitated another.
In fact, Lexie almost didn’t get that letter at all. Elaine had been watching for the postman as she expected a letter from one Harry Perrine, and she was close by the front door, ready to fly out before anybody in the house knew that he was there. But Lexie had been watching for the postman also. She had written a letter to Lawyer Gordon as she had promised she would if anything arose at home that she felt he ought to know, and she wanted to get it off in the next mail. She was worried lest she ought not to have let slip those words about her lawyer. Maybe it could do no harm, but she must keep watch on her tongue and not let an angering word break her silence.
Lexie had hurried out from the kitchen door by the side entrance with her letter as soon as she sighted the postman, and met him at the gate. So she got her letter first.
But all these days since that letter had started on its way, Ben Barron had lain on the hard little cot of the ramshackle place they called a hospital, slowly recovering from a serious wound and its resultant illness. The depressing condition had been brought about by his long exposure and the lack of food and rest, following his unremitting fighting of fire and fiends without any assurance that they would sometime reach safety.
Most of the convalescing time he had dreamed and slept by turns and in snatches. He had eaten a little of whatever they gave him apathetically, slept some more, and waked again to dreams of the past. But sometimes there came to his mind the thought of the letter he had sent out so blindly into his old world to a girl who did not know him, and whom he scarcely knew at all. He would wonder if it would ever reach her, and if it did, whether she would be minded to answer it.
Of course it had been a crazy, unconventional thing to write that letter. If he had waited until he was really well and strong he never would have written it at all. Though in these war times, plenty of girls were writing bright, cheery letters to boys they had never seen nor heard of before. They were just given an address by somebody, and asked to write to a lonesome soldier. So he hoped this little Lexie-girl would be moved to answer his letter, if it ever reached her.
He sometimes dreamed of what she might think or say or do if the letter reached her. But as the days passed by, the letter faded into the past, and new thoughts about going back to the fight again began to take form in his renewed brain as his body slowly healed. The letter took on less significance. It had been a vagary of his sick mind, out here in that fiery field, a brief respite from the heat and terror. God’s cool mountain with the dew on the grass at the roadside, and one of God’s children smiling and swinging on a little white gate—just a symbol of home it had been, but he still was glad he had written the letter, if only to get it off his mind.
Lexie, holding that letter in her hand, seeing her own name in an unfamiliar handwriting written on it, noting the strange foreign stamp with the war insignia upon it, wondered. She read her name again to make sure and slid it into her apron pocket, one hand safely guarding it as she turned to go back to the house.
Then Elaine’s sharp voice interrupted her.
“Give that letter to me!” she said, stepping out to the small front portico and holding out her hand. “How dare you put it into your pocket and take it in to examine!”
Lexie looked up in surprise.
“But it isn’t your letter,” she said sweetly. “It is mine!”
“Your letter! That’s a likely story. I was expecting an important business letter, and I don’t want to be delayed in reading it. I demand to see that letter instantly!”
Elaine was very angry, and was talking in loud, piercing tones. Lexie was aware instantly of furtively opened doors and windows from neighbors’ houses. They would be too polite to stand around and listen, but they could not fail to hear that an angry altercation was going on between the sisters, and pursed lips and shrugs would be exchanged between those women who heard. Oh, this was terrible!
“Why certainly, Elaine, look and see my name on the envelope,” she said, and held the letter up where she knew her sister could easily read her name.
Elaine leaned over the porch and looked, reached out her hand for the letter but did not quite touch it.
“Give me that letter!” demanded Elaine again. “There is some trick about this! You are as sly as can be. You’ve exchanged the envelopes or something, and you’re trying to open my letter and find out what I’m writing to my lawyer about. Give me that letter, I say!”
“Why no, I won’t give you my letter,” said Lexie. “Why should I? It’s my letter, not yours. Oh Elaine, why will you go on acting like this? You’re fairly driving me to leave. Is that what you want me to do? It would be much easier and cheaper for me to go than to stay here and submit to all this from you. It is shameful for you to act this way, and there is no point to it. What is your idea anyway?”
“Who is that letter from?” demanded Elaine. “I insist that you tell me at once. I don’t want any more underhanded business. After all your threats yesterday, are you doing some foolish thing, writing to some man and trying to get help?”
Lexie laughed.
“Why no, Elaine, I haven’t been writing to any man, and I don’t know yet who wrote me the letter. You haven’t given me a chance to go into the house and open it. It’s probably from someone I met at college.”
“It’s from a man!” insisted Elaine. “That’s a man’s handwriting! You went to a women’s college.”
“Yes, but we had men callers, several men teachers, and often met men in the town and at games and so on.”
“Now don’t try to tell me that you had some incipient lovers out in that dull college town of yours. You aren’t the kind of girl that attracts men, and never will be.”
“Oh,” laughed Lexie amusedly. “Does this look like a love letter? No, I didn’t have any lovers out there that I know of, but I did have a few friends, and this is probably from one of them, or it might be from the dean.”
“No!” said Elaine sharply. “That’s an overseas envelope. I know their look, you know.”
“Oh yes. It is overseas. But there were a number of the girls’ brothers who are overseas of course. It really isn’t important, though, I’m quite sure,” and Lexie slipped the letter into her apron pocket again, with her protecting hand over it.
“Give me that letter! I want to see for myself that you’re not fooling me.”
“No!” said Lexie firmly, and sudden as a bird in flight she flew down the path to the kitchen door and fled up to her room, where she locked her door and sat down to read her letter.
She did not, however, stay upstairs long. She knew that to make much of that letter would only be to continue the controversy with Elaine. She must make light of the whole thing. With fingers that trembled just a little at the thought of a letter from anybody for herself, she opened the envelope and unfolded the letter. Later she would read it more carefully, of course, but just now it was as if she must take the whole thing in at a glance and be ready to be composed about it if Elaine should venture to climb the stairs and try to investigate.
Lexie had a trained eye, used to taking in a good deal at a glance, and the whole lovely idea of the letter burst upon her mind like a sweet picture. That boy, with his books in a strap and his handsome, laughing eyes—yes, she remembered him! Of course! She even remembered his asking her if her name was short for Lexicon. She laughed and swept her eyes downward to the quiet, wistful, respectful closing, and then folded the letter and locked it quickly inside her old suitcase under the bed. She ran downstairs and began to help Cinda in the dining room, making out a list of small necessities that must be ordered from the store.
Suddenly Elaine entered like a frowning nemesis.
“Who was that letter from? I insist on being told.”
“Why should you be told?” asked Lexie innocently. “It was from an old friend I used to know in my school days. He’s in the armed forces now, and he was just sending me a greeting the way all the boys in the army do. It isn’t important.”
Elaine gave her an angry, suspicious look, but Lexie went out the back door and down the field to the store. Then Elaine went back to her own scheming. On her way Lexie had an opportunity to think over this remarkable surprise, remember more definitely the boy who had accosted her on her white gate so long ago, and try to think just how he had looked. A nice smile, a twinkle in his eyes, pleasant words—to just a little girl! And to think he had remembered it all these years!
When Lexie came back from the store with the yeast cake Cinda had sent her for, there was a look of unexpected brightness in her pretty, wistful face that quite gave old Cinda pleasure. She knew there had been some sort of a quarrel between the two sisters, and she was glad to see that Lexie no longer looked as if she had been crushed. There was a lightness and a brightness that was more of what Cinda would like to see in Lexie’s face.
And all the morning as Lexie went on her sunlit way across the meadows and did her other errands at the store, and back again, she was thinking back to the day she had swung on the gate and seen the nice, big boy! And to think he had written to her! Remembered her all these years, and thought of her when he was under fire! He said that the memory of her face had helped him bear the heat and fire and terror. Thanked her for just being herself, a little girl with a smile in her eyes for a stranger boy.
As soon as lunch was over and the children started off to their play again, Elaine retired in a huff to her bed and a nap. Lexie stole upstairs to her room and locked the door, and there in the quiet she read that letter over again. Read it several times, and reveled in the fact that she had a letter from a young man across the sea who remembered her.
When she knew the letter by heart she took her fountain pen out of her handbag, hunted up some stationery from her little old desk in the attic, and wrote an answer to that letter. Somehow it seemed to her that she must answer at once, that a letter like that demanded an immediate reply. A lonely soldier boy who turned back to his childhood for a bit of comfort! She would let him know that she remembered, too.
Dear Sergeant:
Yes, I remember you. You were a tall boy with curly black hair and a nice smile and twinkles in your eyes. I was wonderfully surprised that you noticed me, just a little girl.
I remember what you said, too. You asked me if my name, Lexie, was short for Lexicon. I laughed over that a lot all by myself, afterward.
But I am very much surprised that you thought of a little girl when you were under fire, and quite pleased that the thought of my mountain helped you through hard places. Dew on a hot forehead would be pleasant, and I’m glad I was that to a brave soldier, for somehow I know you were brave. You looked that way the day I saw you.
Your letter came to me here at the little white house, down by the white gate where I went to meet the postman. I just happened to be here or I wouldn’t have got the letter. I’m glad I came.
I’ve had some hard times, too. Your letter came on one of the hardest days and made a bright spot in what would otherwise have been a very dark day. I thank you very much for taking the trouble to write me.
Someday perhaps the war will end and you will come home, and then perhaps you can come to the hometown. I would like so much to see you again.
Your little-girl-friend,
Lexie
(Alexia Kendall)
Lexie slipped out the back door and whisked across the fields to the post office with her letter, and when she returned she went straight up to the attic to put things right. She hadn’t had time before, and Elaine hadn’t even gone back to attempt clearing up the mess she had made. Lexie was appalled. Blankets and pillows and papers and books spread out in a heterogeneous mass, papers and old letters all scattered over the top. She stood still for a moment, angry tears springing into her eyes.
Then she remembered.
Her Lord was with her. He would know how hard this was for her to bear, seeing her mother’s precious things that had been so carefully guarded and put away in such lovely order, now all crumpled up and thrown around, some of them crushed in balls and thrown under the edge of the eaves.
Lexie dropped down in the midst of all the disorder and struggled with her tears. “Dear God,” she prayed softly, “please, help me now. Help me to forgive her, and not to let her know I am angry.”
Then she lifted her head and went to work.
First of all, the precious letters she gathered into a neat pile. The box they had been packed away in was sprawled at the other end of the room with its sides torn down, and its cover bent in two. Elaine was evidently angry because she couldn’t find what she was searching for, perhaps. Well, why think about it? Just get things in order as quickly as possible, and then put them all under lock and key and hide the key or keep it always about her. That would be the only safe way. She would probably have to go down to the hardware store and buy some more locks. Or perhaps a hammer and some nails would be better. That ought to make things safer, for she was well aware that Elaine could never pull a nail out of a board, and it wouldn’t be easy for her to open a box that was nailed up. She must be prevented from p
ulling things to pieces again.
So, carefully, thoughtfully, she put her precious belongings into safekeeping, and finally nailed up the boxes securely.
She was almost done with her work when the stair door opened and Elaine’s shrill voice complained: “What on earth are you doing upstairs, Lexie? Here I lie down to rest and just get to sleep, and you set up the most unearthly noise right over my head! It seems to me that you are just doing this to be disagreeable, and you know how easily I get one of those awful headaches. I feel one coming on now, and I just know I’ll have it all night.”
Lexie stopped in dismay.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Elaine. I thought you were still sitting out on the porch.”
“But what are you doing?”
“Why, I was just nailing up some boxes so things won’t get all over the place.”
“You mean you are nailing up boxes you don’t want me to look into. That makes me quite certain you have something more that you are afraid I will find.”
“No,” said Lexie sadly. “I just wanted to put things away. It looked terrible up here. I’m only straightening up. But I’m quite sure there is nothing up here you would want to find. Oh Elaine, I wish you wouldn’t be so unfriendly. You give me the feeling that you are just here to fight me.”
“Really? Well, if you want me to treat you differently, you know what to do. Come clean. Tell me all you know about that money. Then I’ll be as friendly as I always used to be.” Lexie sighed.
“I’ve told you all I know already and you won’t believe me. What is the use of talking anymore?”
“Well, there isn’t any use. Not if you keep to that attitude, of course,” and the stair door closed with a slam. Then she could hear Elaine’s footsteps clicking back to the living room.
Lexie took a deep breath and, turning, went on with her work. But she drove no more nails at that time. There was no need to make her sister angrier than she already was.
When the attic was in neat order again, and all traces of the onslaught were removed, Lexie went quietly downstairs and marshaled the children home from the neighbor’s sandpile, which had become the unfailing rendezvous of attraction to them. Their mother seemed to pay no more attention to them than if she had never heard of them, unless she thought somebody else was finding fault with them or attempting to punish them, then she roused to a scathing sarcasm. But Elaine, after her tempestuous outburst, had gone back to her bed and was soundly asleep at last, an old mystery-story novel lying open by her side. So Lexie was free for the time being. After the children were fed, she coaxed them off to bed by telling them a couple of stories while Cinda reluctantly prepared a special tray for Elaine, to tempt her to relax and stop tormenting Lexie.
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