Bittersweet Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #5): A Novel (25 page)

“And now that you’re home again,” Ellie said, smiling, “I suppose it’s easy to let your mum take care of you. I know I would give anything in the world to have my own mother back. I think we could visit on a different level; I’d talk about things that are important to me now but that I didn’t give a moment of my time before—”

“It’s good to be home,” Vonnie agreed, “but after being independent, it’s not the same. But believe it or not, I do try to help.”

Vonnie’s tanned arms attested to the fact that she wasn’t being a sheltered houseplant but was indeed doing her share around the farm. Her fair hair, tied up in a becoming knot on the top of her head, the sun-touched tip of her dainty nose, were further proof of it.

“When the gardens are in and the threshing is over,” Ellie offered, “we’ll have some time when we can get together. Would you believe I haven’t been back to see Marfa and the baby—”

“Bonney. Sounds rather feminine for a boy to me.”

“If he’s anything like his dad, it won’t be a problem. I’m so happy for Marfa. Isn’t it wonderful to see one of us happily married, with a family—”

Ellie, knowing Vonnie well, noted the change of expression, the almost unnoticeable tightening of the skin over the fine bones of her face, the flicker of her long lashes.

“I’m sorry,” Ellie said quickly. “I’ve been thoughtless. What I mean, of course, is that—here I am, an old maid, and you... you have suffered the loss of your own happiness—”

With a sharp rattle Vonnie set her cup on the table. Startled momentarily, Ellie began again. “What I mean is—”

“Ellie,” Vonnie said abruptly and stopped, her hands gripping the arms of the chair in which she sat, her slender body curved forward, her face set.

“Yes, Vonnie?” Ellie carefully set aside her cup and turned questioning, puzzled eyes on her childhood friend.

“Ellie...” With a swift motion Vonnie got to her feet, snatching the serviette from her lap and holding it tightly in one hand.

Slowly, Ellie got to her feet also, her eyes fixed on Vonnie with some apprehension. “Vonnie... what is it?”

After one brief, intense look into Ellie’s face, Vonnie turned abruptly toward the window. There, her back turned, one hand gripping the lace curtain, the other still clutching the serviette, Vonnie spoke. Her voice high, firm, steady; without preamble or explanation, Vonnie spoke.

“Ellie, Tom has asked me to marry him.”

S
tanding in the dust of the road, Birdie paused and studied the farmyard spread out before her. But not spread very widely, for it was a small, new homestead, recently cut out of the bush, still raw, exceedingly humble, redolent not only with the tang of fresh-cut trees but with a mysterious drift of hopes and dreams.

“Go by the Dunbars’,” Lydia had suggested when Birdie started out on her mission of acquainting the district with her plan for a reading society. “Tierney Dunbar, the dear, was with us several months as a domestic, having come to Canada under the auspices of the British Emigration Society.”

“I’ve seen her at church, I believe,” Birdie said. “Scotch, aren’t they—she and her husband?”

“Aye, that is, yes. See, I’m still influenced by her. The dear.” Lydia spoke of her former help with fondness, and Birdie, knowing Lydia well, was certain this Tierney lass had stepped into a happy situation when she found herself settled in the Bloom household. An unbelievable story, Lydia was explaining, for Tierney and Robbie, her true love and long parted, had found each
other here in the mostly vacant deep and distant depths of Canada’s territories. Lydia couldn’t help but dwell on it happily.

“It’s what happens when your life is in the Lord’s hands,” she explained, concluding her account, “and when you pray about everything.”

“Yes, yes,” Birdie murmured rather impatiently, only to regret her abruptness when Lydia added gently, “As I do. I pray for you. Daily I pray for you.”

Now, looking at the peace if not prosperity of the Dunbar farmyard, Birdie wondered if there wasn’t something to this praying after all. But it was a fleeting thought, for a slim figure, appearing top heavy with a head of vibrant hair, stepped from the low doorway of the cabin, a basket in her hands, heading toward the clothesline.

Stepping briskly now, Birdie made her approach.

“Hello there!” she called.

The amazing head of auburn hair peered around the corner of a sheet, followed by a vivid face. “Oh, hello! I didn’t see you...”

“I’m Bernadine Wharton—”

“I know who ye are. And it’s most welcome y’are, too. Gi’ me a moment tae get these things from the line.”

Laying her things aside, Birdie began unpinning clothes, folding them, and dropping them in the basket. It was a strangely rewarding task, simple, homey, satisfying. It was a task reminiscent of other days... other clothes.

“There, that’s it, then. Coom now, Miss Wharton—”

“Birdie, please.”

“Birdie it is. An’ I’m Tierney. Tierney Dunbar o’ Bliss, as thought she would never be anythin’ but Tierney Caulder o’ Binkiebrae.” Tierney sang out the name and the statement as though they were a rhapsody. Here, obviously, was a happy and fulfilled young woman. “So, coom now, Birdie Wharton, and we’ll hae a cuppa together and ge’ acquainted.”

The cabin into which they stepped, though spotlessly clean, was barren of anything but the basic necessities of life. And some of those were in poor supply. The table and chairs were of the
homemade variety, sturdy and plain; the wash basin was scarred, the bit of mirror above it chipped; the pans on the wall were somewhat battered; the range was obviously secondhand. The teapot, however, when it appeared, was porcelain graced with a spray of anemones and glowed in the rude cabin like a jewel in a coal mine.

Tierney caressed it for a moment before filling it. “ ’Twas a wed-din’ gift,” she explained. “Anything here that’s new or shiny was given to Robbie an’ me when we got married. The district jist took me in, as they had taken Robbie in when he first came. Hae ye heard the story, Birdie? ’Twould amaze ye, that’s for certain...”

About to promote the pending reading society and explain how it was to be funded by the pennies of the members, Birdie did some on-the-spot revising of the rules. How could she charge people like the Dunbars, for whom, she was quite sure, a penny was not easy to come by and for which so many uses could be found? Here, obviously, was a couple who would benefit from the fellowship of the society, if not the literature itself. Even while she was thinking through the adjustments, Tierney spoke, softly, jubilantly, wonderingly, telling her story, a story Birdie had largely heard from Lydia.

Having come to enlist and enroll the young Dunbars in her project, Birdie stayed to hear once again the miracle that had brought Tierney across an ocean and a continent “straight as a sparrow to its hoosie,” to the one spot in the world where her heart, in dreams and prayers, had preceded her.

“’Twas the loving hand of the Father himsel’ that brought it aboot,” the Scotch lassie said, concluding the story but still wondering and marveling that it should all have come about.

“An’ now, Birdie,” she invited, “did ye have summat ye wanted to talk wi’ me aboot?” Tierney, in spite of great effort, had yet to correct her accent.

Feeling that her business was humdrum and drab indeed, and entirely without any praises to the “Father himsel’,” Birdie briefly explained the tentative plans for a reading society.

“Of course,” she concluded, “I’ll get back to you when final plans have been made. I have to see what the reaction of the community is, whether enough people will be interested, where we’ll meet,
and when, and all of that. I’m just doing a sort of preliminary survey at this time.”

“It sounds wonderful to me,” Tierney responded with some enthusiasm. “Winters here can be verra lonely; we’re shut in for days at a time. Of course,” she added with a glow in her eyes, “I hae Robbie.”

Rather than a trial, it sounded as though winter or anytime in the small cabin was close to being heaven itself to Tierney, because Robbie was with her.

When it seemed that the young wife was about to go off into more raptures concerning her happiness and God’s goodness—a happiness and a goodness about which Birdie knew nothing—Birdie began hastily collecting herself together for departure.

“Ye’ll hae to coom back an’ meet Robbie himsel’,” Tierney invited, as though she were offering a rare treat.

Birdie stepped from the hand-sawed planks of the floor of a rustic cabin, through a handmade door, onto split-log steps, feeling as though she were leaving as warm, as blessed a nest as could be found in this great Northwest. She felt that, for a moment, she had warmed herself at another’s fire.

That’s the way it ought to be
, her lonely heart cried out as she turned her feet toward the road and the next farm.

Very shortly she heard the clip-clop of a horse’s hooves behind her and, stepping aside into the grass at the edge of the road, heard the cheerful voice of Big Tiny Kruger.

“Whoa! And is that you, Miss Wharton, out and about in the heat of the day?”

Birdie couldn’t keep the pleasure from her voice (anyone would be glad for a ride, wouldn’t they?), though her prim words revealed none of it.

“Why, it’s Mr. Kruger, I believe. And what are you doing out like this on a busy day?”

“Just taking the week’s cream to Bliss. It’s carted to Prince Albert today and will spoil if I wait another week. Climb in, and I’ll tell you about it.”

With alacrity, Birdie stepped up into the buggy, her hat tipping a bit in the effort, a lock of hair coming loose and her cheeks pinking—surely from the small effort involved.

“I know about cream, Mr. Kruger,” she said when she had seated herself, speaking rather severely, perhaps to compensate for the fact that she was a little breathless. Clutching her papers and her bag with one hand, she attempted to right her hat with the other. It didn’t help her equilibrium any to look up at the big man at her side and catch—without any doubt—a keen,
noticing
look in his eye.

Startled, and not quite sure what this meant but knowing she must proceed with caution, still Birdie’s heart lifted. Immediately she stifled unacceptable responses; quickly she took it for what it obviously was—a look of friendship. And yet—against her very will, in opposition to her good sense, without her permission, a frisson of pure pleasure ran through Birdie’s rather gaunt frame.

“So you know about cream,” Big Tiny said, a twinkle replacing the previous glint in his eyes, a glint of unknown meaning.

“I come from a small town, Mr. Kruger. A town where cows were kept behind many homes. My family had to buy its milk, but still, I knew where it came from.” Birdie’s tone was crisp, as though she couldn’t believe she was engaged in a conversation concerning cows and their output.

“But did you know that we keep it from souring by hanging it down the well?”

“Of course,” Birdie responded with some annoyance. “The Blooms, however, have an icehouse. A reasonable edifice to erect, I should think.”

“To dig, you mean. It’s mostly underground. And I’ll have one, I suppose, in due time. When I’ve been here as long as, er, some people.” Good, kind Big Tiny Kruger would not point out the obvious—that the Blooms had been here much longer than he and, moreover, were able to afford a hired man.

Realizing that Herbert and Lydia had arrived with money to invest and ease their way, while many homesteaders arrived with
little but their bare hands for resources, gave Birdie a small sense of shame for her small dig concerning the icehouse. She thought back to the Dunbar farm and cabin—meagerly supplied, poorly furnished, hardly productive, struggling in all respects, yet bursting with everything that mattered, like hope and confidence, youth and resilience. Money wasn’t everything; an icehouse wasn’t the answer.

“And did you know that the selling of it supplies us with our living expense?” Big Tiny was saying, continuing their conversation. “Cream and eggs—the money they bring in is how we get by from harvest to harvest.” His big fist indicated the box at his feet, a box he had removed from the seat at his side when he invited her to ride.

Big Tiny was returning from the store with a few items he couldn’t raise for himself—sugar, tea, yeast, salt, baking powder. He would set these simple staples into his cupboard with a grateful heart, knowing that, once again, he had kept the shadow of starvation from his door by his own hard-won provision. What satisfaction these homesteaders must feel! Having left all things familiar and secure, striking out into the unknown to survive by the skill of one’s own hands and wits—it was a moving thought to Birdie Wharton. It made her comfortable paid position seem most colorless in comparison.

“How did we get to discussing the price of cream and eggs,” Big Tiny said, shaking his head, “when there’s so much more to talk about? You, for instance—weren’t you going to tell me why you are trudging these dusty roads when you don’t need to, when school is out and you should be enjoying a well-deserved rest?”

Of course! The reading society! Birdie had found her thoughts straying far, far from the business at hand.