Appointment With Love

by S. I. Kishor

Six minutes to six, said the great round clock over the information booth in the CEntral Station.  The tall young army lieutenant who had just come from the direction of the tracks lifted his sunburned face and his eyes narrowed to see the exact time.  His heart was pounding great beats that shocked him because he could not control it.  In six minutes, he would see the woman who had filled such a special place in his life for the past thirteen month, the woman he had never see, yet whose written words had been with him and sustained him unfailingly.

He placed himself as close as he could to the Information booth, just beyond the ring of people besieging the clerks.  

Lieutenant Blandford remembered one thought in particular, the worst of the fighting, when his plane had been caught in the midst of a pack of enemy fighters.  He had seen the grinning face of one of the enemy pilots.  

In one of his letters, he had confessed toher that he often felt fear, and only a few days before this battle, he had received her answer:  "Of course you fear ... all brave men do.  Didn't King David know fear?  That's why he wrote the twenty-third psalm.  Next time you doubt yourself, I want you to hear my voice reciting to you: 'yea, though I walk in the valley in the shadow of death, i shall fear no evil, for thou art with me....'  And he remembered:  he had heard her imagined voice and it had renewed his strength and skill.

Now he was going to hear her real voice.  Four minutes to six.  His face grew sharp.  

Under the immense starred roof, people were walking fast like threads of color being woven into a gray web.  A girl passed close to him, and Lieutenant Blandford stared.  She was wearing a red flower in her suit lapel, but it was a crimson red pea, not the little rose they agreed upon.  Besides, this girl was too young, about eighteen, whereas Hollis Meynell had frankly told him she was thirty.  "Well, what of it?"  he had answered.  "I'm thirty-two."  He was twenty-nine.

His mind went back to that book -- the book the Lord Himself must have put into his hands out of the hundreds of Army library books sent to the Florida training camp.  'Of Human Bondage' it was, and throughout the book were notes in a woman's writing-in habit but these remarks were different.  He had never believed that a woman could see into a man's heart so tenderly, so understandingly.  Her name was on the bookplate:  Hollis Meynell.  He had got hold of a New York telephone book and found her address.  he had written, she had answered.  next day, he had been shipped out, but they had gone on writing.

For thirteen months, she had faithfully replied.  When his letters did not arrive, she wrote anyway, and now he believed he had loved her and she loved him.  

but she refused all his pleas to send him her photograph; that seemed rather bad, of course.  But she had explained it:  "If your feeling for me has any reality, any honest basis, what I look like won't matter.  Suppose I'm beautiful.  I'd always be haunted by the feeling that you had been taking a chance on just that, and that kind of love would disgust me.  Suppose I'm plain (and you must admit that this is more likely), then I'd always fear that you were only going on writing me because you were lonely and had no one else.  No, don't ask for my picture.  When you come to New York you shall see me and you shall make your decision.  Remember both of us are free to stop or to go on after that -- whichever we choose ..."

One minute to six ... he pulled hard on a cigarette.  

Then lieutenant Blandford's heart leaped higher that his plane had ever done.  A young woman was coming toward him.  her figure long and slim; Her blond hair lay back in curls from her delicate ears.  her eyes were blue as flowers, Her lips and chin had a gentle firmness.  in her pale green suit, she was springtime come alive.  

he started toward her, entirely forgetting to notice that she was wearing no rose, and As she moved, a small, provocative smile curved her lips. 

"Going my way, sailor?" she murmured.  

Almost uncontrollably, he made one step closer to her.  then he saw Hollis Meynell.  

She was standing behind the girl.  A woman well past 40, her graying hair tucked under a worn hat.  She was more than plump; her thick-ankled feet were thrust into low-heeled shoes.  but she wore a red rose in the rumpled brown lapel of her coat.

The girl in the green suit was walking quickly away. 

Blandford felt as though he were being split into two, so keen was his desire to follow the girl, yet so deep was his longing for the woman whose spirit had truly companioned and upheld his own; And there she stood.  Her pale, plump face was gentle and sensible; he could see that now.  her gray eyes had a warm kindly twinkle. 

he did not hesitate.  his fingers gripped the small worn blue leather copy of the book that was to identify him to her.  

This would not be love, but it would be something precious, something perhaps even better than love, a friendship for which he had been and must ever be grateful.  

he squared his shoulders and saluted,  held out the book to the woman.  while he spoke he felt choked by the bitterness of his disappointment.  

"I'm Lieutenant John Blandford, and you must be Miss Meynell.  I am so glad you could meet me; may I take you to dinner?" 

The woman's face broadened into a tolerant smile.  "I don't know what this is about, son," she answered, "but the young lady in the green suit who just went by, she begged me to wear this rose on my coat And she said if you were to ask me out to dinner, I should go and tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street.  She said it was some kind of test!" 

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