Bittersweet Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #5): A Novel (29 page)

“It’s a blessing we’re in the bush,” Birdie remarked, pausing to wipe her forehead. “Fancy what it would be like without the shade while we do this.”

“We can dabble our feet in the river, if we wish,” Lydia said, “but one has to be careful. It’s a river to be wary of. Besides, here it runs between such deep escarpments it makes dabbling a risky business.”

Dabbling, consequently, was rejected in favor of a rest in the shade while they ate the sandwiches they had brought with them, the bright, flavorful tomatoes, and the crisp cucumber slices.

It was then Tierney, flushing prettily and stumbling somewhat in her speech, shared her news.

“Ye’ll be the first to know,” she said, “other than Robbie, of course...”

“Yes? Yes?” Lydia, an incorrigible lover of news, asked urgently. “Weel, I’m goin’ to... that is, Robbie and me, we’re havin’ a babby.”

Lydia’s and Birdie’s responses were wonderfully gratifying. Their oohs and ahs and other exclamations of approval and delight would have impressed any skeptic of the blissfulness of things maternal.

“And to think,” Lydia said reproachfully, “we let you carry those pails of berries.”

“I’m pairfectly healthy an’ strong,” Tierney assured her.

“Still, you should be more careful...” and Lydia delivered a small sermon on prenatal care, a topic largely ignored by reason of the heavy cares and responsibilities of life in the bush. No one in the bush had time nor inclination to pamper herself, and women carried on as usual whether sick or, in this case, pregnant, often working themselves into the grave. That it should not happen to “her” Tierney, Lydia was adamantly insistent.

“We’ll hae to build on to our hoosie,”Tierney said practically, changing the subject wisely, “but thass a guid thing; we need more room.”

The remainder of day—picking until their boxes were full and then driving home—was filled with excited talk concerning the arrival of the newcomer.

“I’d like to think I’m about to be a grandmother again,” Lydia said wistfully, her only grandchild far away on the distant prairie, and Tierney promptly confirmed it.

“With me own mither dead and me da too, this puir bairn’ll need a grandmither.”With that spate of Scots rolling forth, Tierney subsided and made an effort to speak more plainly again.

Tierney was dropped off at home, with the assurance of jars from the Bloom supply, and reluctantly giving over to Birdie the task of lugging a box of cranberries into the cabin. Birdie and Lydia made their weary way homeward, a little sunburnt, greatly mussed, somewhat dusty, and fully satisfied with their day away from humdrum tasks. It was too late, of course, to start the canning, so the cranberries were taken to the cellar to await the morrow and renewed strength and dedication to the task.

Though Herbert was absent from the house, obviously busy elsewhere on the Bloom homestead, someone had been to the post office and dropped off the mail. Spread out on the kitchen table were several papers, a letter from Buster, Lydia’s and Herb’s grandson, and—Birdie’s heart quickened—a plain, white, unstamped envelope for her. Picking it up quickly, she slipped it into her pocket.

Soon she said casually, “I’ll go on up and clean up,” and she disappeared up the stairs to her room. Lydia, sharp-eyed and sharp-witted, noted the letter, observed the shifty hiding of it, understood the seemingly leisurely escape. With a shake of her gray head she went about her own wash-up and change of clothes.

Kicking off her shoes, Birdie dropped on the side of the bed and—it must be confessed—with a certain flutter to her pulses and a spark of interest she couldn’t quell, opened the envelope.

As with the last one, it contained a few lines that, at first glance, revealed it to be another quotation. A closer look seemed to confirm that it was done by the same hand that had printed the other a few weeks previously.

With a strange mix of curiosity and dread—curiosity about the contents, dread that it might be a disappointment, she read:

Her breath caught in her throat. How beautiful! How expressive! How... pertinent. As though chosen for her. Was there someone—some sensitive someone—out there, watching, caring, tuned to her private, inner person? And comprehending enough to offer the encouragement of sentiments such as these? And such beautifully expressed sentiments! What a choice person this must be.

Wanting desperately to know who it was, it was wonderful
not
knowing. To know would spoil it; to know would put the burden of response on her.

Birdie clasped the page to her breast and felt her eyes sting with tears. That
someone
would share with her something so meaningful, knowing her that intimately, understanding the heart of her that personally, was deeply moving, even thrilling.

If Birdie had had any lingering doubts about whether or not the gangling young man Buck was responsible for the new rash of correspondence, she wondered no longer. Not only was he long gone from Bliss, and his brother, who might have been his coconspirator, with him, but the thoughtfulness, the beauty, the meaning of the quotations proved otherwise. No, it was not Buck; it was someone mature, well-read, passionate of heart, fine of spirit.

And so, in her thinking, Birdie began to picture, to see with her mind’s eye, perhaps with her heart, the refined man of the world, removed from civilization and secluded in the wilds, a man who spent his lonely hours and long winter evenings garnering literary treasures. And
sharing them with her
!

With a long, indrawn, quivering breath, Birdie arose from the bed and went to the chiffonier to locate the previous communication she had received, glad now that she hadn’t carelessly discarded it as meaningless.

Now, in the light of the new letter and the insights she was gathering concerning the writer, the other was opened and reread, more appreciated than before, and finally also laid out on the bed. The scholar in her thrilled to the quality of the material; the woman in her was intensely curious about who it was from, and why; the hungry heart in her noted that each had a spiritual application, a
pointing toward God. Thoughtfully Birdie read each quotation again.

They were not hard to commit to memory, so that when they were folded and put away, the beautiful phrases rose and rang like a sweetly tolling bell in her heart. Particularly—
In patient hope I rest for the full day-breaking
!

Was it possible? Could there yet be a daybreak for her? Almost... almost she found herself not quoting but praying. Was that, after all, the intent of the mysterious writer?

T
he first flakes of winter were drifting down, as gentle as a baby’s breath, as deceitful as a faithless lover’s kiss. Promising beauty, promising quiet and peace, by the flakes’ rapid profusion the weather quickly turned threatening. Single flakes, airy and lovely, soon became a thick blanket, a shroud through which it was difficult to see clearly. The whiffle of snow on a horse’s back and swirling around the buggy became a thick coating and a trackless wasteland.

As sight blurred, sound faded. Falling with no sound whatsoever, which could, of itself, be terrifying in its remorselessness, the snow deadened all of life’s normal activities. No bird sang; the dog’s bark was indistinct, issuing as it were from behind a curtain. Voices drifted as from an empty void, ghostly rather than human.

Ellie had been uneasy that morning as she climbed into the buggy and headed for a home clear across Bliss and well into the neighboring district of Fairway. One of the Monck boys had arrived, galloping up to the house furiously, announcing in a high,
thin voice that his mum was in a bad way and needed Ellie to come.

It was Greta Monck’s thirteenth child, and with every one after the third she had been certain she would not pull through. People suspected that, weary of bearing and raising babies, she had a secret, spiteful desire to go to her eternal rest and leave her husband with the gargantuan task of raising them all by himself. But, strong as a horse and more prolific, Greta always managed to pull through in fine fettle. The latest addition always blended into its host of siblings and was simply called “Baby” until the next Baby arrived, when it was granted its own name. All the family joined in the naming and scoured the pages of the Bible for their choices. Beginning with Asher, they had proceeded methodically through the alphabet.

It was Nimrod who came, pell-mell at his mother’s urging, to engage Ellie’s services for the birth of the thirteenth child. The three girls in the family, weary of the work and bombarded day and night by boys, gave two-year-old Baby the name of Uriah and declared that the newborn should be named immediately. Letters V, W, X and Y would be bypassed, and the newborn would bear the name Zebulun. There was no alphabet remaining; there would be no more babies!

Greta had borne Zebulun with the dispatch that had marked all her other births. By this time, the oldest daughter was practiced in the art of midwifery and had things well under control by the time Ellie arrived. Other than a few futile gestures, Ellie had nothing to do, and Zebulun arrived as easily and as casually as all the others. With a few encouraging words to the new mother, partaking of a cup of tea and a piece of bread and butter prepared by Jezreel, the middle girl, Ellie put on her coat, hat, and gloves and bade the boisterous family good-bye one more time. It was almost a relief to shut the door on the teeming horde of humanity—cooped up in their log house like baby chicks in a box, crowded and trampling over each other with happy carelessness—and breathe fresh air again.

When Ellie stepped outside, ready to mount the buggy and begin the return trip, she first congratulated the sheepish father who, as always, had escaped to the barn for the birthing ordeal, and then turned her thoughts to the weather, looking up with anxiety. Her earlier fears were confirmed: It was a snow sky.

Sullen in appearance, the heavens hung heavy and full; the buggy and its occupant seemed bug-size under the menace of the big Saskatchewan sky, and like bugs crawling through the bush, Ellie and the rig crept homeward to shelter.

And didn’t make it.

The first few flakes of winter would have charmed her if she had been inside her own home, watching through a window, with the stove blazing at her back, the wood box and the water pail full, and a line stretched from house to barn. As it was, it was with mounting dread she noted the thick coat accumulating on the horse’s back and, in spite of its body heat, staying. She had covered her knees with the old quilt kept under the buggy seat for such purposes but found herself shivering in spite of it, her hands becoming numb in their tight grip on the reins.

“Giddup, Ned!” she urged time and again, and Old Ned would quicken his pace, bobbing his head in rhythm, plowing through the unbroken blanket of snow that very soon covered the road before him, the grass at the side of the road, and the bush beyond that. It was, shortly, a white, white world.

In such a blizzard, it was easy to lose one’s bearings. Bush people had reason to be grateful for the growth that crowded most roads, making turns improbable if not impossible; they could follow the road home whether they could see it or not. There were, however, numerous logging roads taking off here and there, entrances to homesteads, and, every mile, an intersection with its four roads.

Finally, the buggy looked like nothing so much as a snowdrift on the move. Ellie’s shoulders were white, her head snow-capped, her lashes snow-laden.

Old Ned plowed on, slowly now, blindly, by instinct. The reins, Ellie finally realized, were useless, and she dropped them to pull
the quilt up around her and huddle on the buggy seat, her inadequately gloved hands growing colder and stiffer by the moment, her feet becoming blocks of ice.

Where are we
! Trees were no landmark, for they were everywhere. Now ghostly in appearance, they faded into the gray sky behind them. A sky that was lowering even more as the afternoon waned and the early dark came on, earlier and darker than usual.

We should be in Bliss by now! We must have taken a wrong turn
! Ellie’s eyes had been shut while she prayed. It was all she knew to do. But opening her eyes, it was to find herself completely disoriented.
It’s up to you, Ned
!

Many were the accounts of horses making it through when driver or rider knew not where he was. Ellie was confident that Ned would make it home, make it
somewhere
, if she gave him his head. But would the buggy? Already it was dragging, bogging down. And the dark settled rapidly, making sight impossible.

The problem was the drifts that began to pile up. The wind, absent at first, now seemed determined to get in on the act. Hampered and bounded by the phalanx of trees and brush, it swept down the open area of road as though it were a tunnel, driving the loose snow before it, piling it in great heaps here and there.