"I"ve heard of them," said Cameron gravely. "I"ve wondered sometimes myself. Do you believe in G.o.d?"
"Oh, yes!" said Ruth quite firmly. "Of course. What use would there be in anything if there wasn"t a G.o.d?"
"But do you believe we humans can ever really--well, _find_ Him? On this earth, I mean."
"Why, I don"t know that I ever thought about it," she answered bewildered. "Find Him? In what way do you mean?"
"Why, get in touch with Him? Get to know Him, perhaps. Be on such terms with Him that one could call out in a time like last night, you know; or--well, say in a battle! I"ve been thinking a lot about that lately--naturally."
"Oh!" gasped Ruth softly, "of course. I hadn"t thought about that much, either. We"ve been so thoughtless--and--and sort of happy you know, just like b.u.t.terflies, we girls! I haven"t realized that men were going out to face _Death_!"
"It isn"t that I"m afraid to die," said Cameron proudly lifting his chin as if dying were a small matter, "not just the dying part. I reckon I"ve been through worse than that a dozen times. That wouldn"t last long.
It"s--the other part. I have a feeling there"ll be a little something more expected of me than just to have tried to get the most fun out of life. I"ve been thinking if there is a G.o.d He"d expect us to find it out and make things straight between us somehow. I suppose I don"t make myself very plain. I don"t believe I know myself just what I mean."
"I think I understand just a little," said Ruth, "I have never thought about it before, but I"m going to now. It"s something we ought to think about, I guess. In a sense it"s something that each one of us has to think, whether we are going into battle or not, isn"t it?"
"I suppose it is, only we never realize it when things are going along all right," said Cameron. "It seems queer that everybody that"s ever lived on this earth has had this question to face sooner or later and most of them haven"t done much about it. The few people who profess to have found a way to meet it we call cranks, or else pick flaws in the way they live; although it does seem to me that if I really found G.o.d so I was sure He was there and cared about me, I"d manage to live a little decenter life than some do."
They drifted into other topics and all too soon they reached Wilmington and had to say good-bye. But the thought stayed with Ruth more or less during the days that followed, and crept into her letters when she wrote to Corporal Cameron, as she did quite often in these days; and still no solution had come to the great question which was so like the one of old, "What shall I do to be saved?" It came and went during the days that followed, and now and again the fact that it had originated in a talk with Cameron clashed badly in her mind with that word "Rotten" that Wainwright had used about him. So that at last she resolved to talk to her cousin, Captain La Rue, the next time he came up.
"Cousin Captain," she said, "do you know a boy at your camp from Bryne Haven named John Cameron?"
"Indeed I do!" said the captain.
"What kind of a man is he?"
"The best young man I know in every way," answered the captain promptly.
"If the world were made up of men like him it would be a pretty good place in which to live. Do you know him?"
"A little," said Ruth evasively, with a satisfied smile on her lips. "His mother is in our Red Cross now. She thinks he"s about right, of course, but mothers usually do, I guess. I"ll have to tell her what you said. It will please her. He used to be in school with me years ago. I haven"t seen much of him since."
"Well, all I have to say is, improve your acquaintance if you get the chance. He"s worth ten to one of your society youths that loll around here almost every time I come."
"Now, Cousin Captain!" chided Ruth. But she went off smiling and she kept all his words in her heart.
XII
Corporal Cameron did not soon return to his native town. An epidemic of measles broke out in camp just before Thanksgiving and pursued its tantalizing course through his special barracks with strenuous vigor.
Quarantine was put on for three weeks, and was but lifted for a few hours when a new batch of cases came down. Seven weeks more of isolation followed, when the men were not allowed away from the barracks except for long lonely walks, or gallops across camp. Even the mild excitements of the Y.M.C.A. huts were not for them in these days. They were much shut up to themselves, and latent tendencies broke loose and ran riot. Shooting c.r.a.p became a pa.s.sion. They gambled as long as they had a dollar left or could get credit on the next month"s pay day. Then they gambled for their shirts and their bayonets. All day long whenever they were in the barracks, you could hear the rattle of the dice, and the familiar call of "Phoebe," "Big d.i.c.k," "Big Nick," and "Little Joe." When they were not on drill the men would infest the barracks for hours at a time, gathered in crouching groups about the dice, the air thick and blue with cigarette smoke; while others had nothing better to do than to sprawl on their cots and talk; and from their talk Cameron often turned away nauseated. The low ideals, the open boasting of shame, the matter-of-course conviction that all men and most women were as bad as themselves, filled him with a deep boiling rage, and he would close his book or throw down the paper with which he was trying to while the hour, and fling forth into the cold air for a solitary ride or walk.
He was sitting thus a cold cheerless December day with a French book he had recently sent for, trying to study a little and prepare himself for the new country to which he was soon going.
The door of the barracks opened letting in a rush of cold air, and closed again quickly. A tall man in uniform with the red triangle on his arm stood pulling off his woolen gloves and looking about him. n.o.body paid any attention to him. Cameron was deep in his book and did not even notice him. Off at his left a new c.r.a.p game was just starting. The phraseology beat upon his accustomed ears like the buzz of bees or mosquitos.
"I"ll shoot a buck!"
"You"re faded!"
"Come on now there, dice! Remember the baby"s shoes!"
Cameron had ceased to hear the voices. He was struggling with a difficult French idiom.
The stranger took his bearings deliberately and walked over to Cameron, sitting down with a friendly air on the nearest cot.
"Would you be interested in having one of my little books?" he asked, and his voice had a clear ring that brought Cameron"s thoughts back to the barracks again. He looked up for a curt refusal. He did not wish to be bothered now, but something in the young man"s earnest face held him.
Y.M.C.A. men in general were well enough, but Cameron wasn"t crazy about them, especially when they were young. But this one had a look about him that proclaimed him neither a slacker nor a sissy. Cameron hesitated:
"What kind of a book?" he asked in a somewhat curt manner.
The boy, for he was only a boy though he was tall as a man, did not hedge but went straight to the point, looking eagerly at the soldier:
"A pocket Testament," he said earnestly, and laid in Cameron"s hand a little book with limp leather covers. Cameron took it up half curiously, and then looked into the other"s face almost coldly.
"You selling them?" There was a covert sneer in his tone.
"No, no!" said the other quickly, "I"m giving them away for a promise.
You see, I had an accident and one of my eyes was put out a while ago. Of course, they wouldn"t take me for a soldier, and the next best thing was to be all the help I could to the fellows that are going to fight. I figure that book is the best thing I can bring you."
The manly simplicity of the boy held Cameron"s gaze firmly fixed.
"H"m! In what way?" Cameron was turning the leaves curiously, enjoying the silky fineness and the clear-cut print and soft leather binding. Life in the barracks was so much in the rough that any bit of refinement was doubly appreciated. He liked the feel of the little book and had a curious longing to be its possessor.
"Why, it gives you a pretty straight line on where we"re all going, what is expected of us, and how we"re to be looked out for. It shows one how to know G.o.d and be ready to meet death if we have to."
"What makes you think anyone can know G.o.d on this earth?" asked Cameron sharply.
"Because _I_ have," said the astonishing young man quite as if he were saying he were related to the President or something like that.
"You have! How did you get to know Him?"
"Through that little book and by following its teachings."
Cameron turned over the pages again, catching familiar phrases here and there as he had heard them sometimes in Sunday school years ago.
"You said something about a promise. What was it?"
"That you"ll carry the book with you always, and read at least a verse in it every day."
"Well, that doesn"t sound hard," mused Cameron. "I guess I could stand for that."
"The book is yours, then. Would you like to put your name to that acceptance card in the front of the book?"
"What"s that?" asked Cameron sharply as if he had discovered the fly in the ointment for which he had all along been suspicious.
"Well, I call it the first step in knowing G.o.d. It"s your act of acceptance of the way G.o.d has planned for you to be forgiven and saved from sin. If you sign that you say you will accept Christ as your Saviour."