“Now that you are both here,” Bertha Dunn said to her and Lisa, “we women number exactly five.”
“Even our babies are boys,” said one of the young mothers, whose name was Dolly Underwood. Her companion, who giggled with her at their being so outnumbered on all sides, had been introduced as Mary Senensky.
“We’ll be bringing you a hot dinner just as soon as you’ve had an hour to settle in,” Bertha continued, waving aside Harriet’s thanks. “The company’s store on the site provided the groceries that came on the list you sent. It keeps a good supply of most things from decks of cards and chewing tobacco for the men to specially ordered canned milk for the babies. The men sign chits for what they purchase and their pay is deducted accordingly. We do the same on our husband’s accounts.”
As George Dunn invited the new arrivals to step into a waiting buggy, they noticed a sign displayed: WIVES WANTED. Alan had seen such signs before and both Harriet and Lisa knew about them, but it was the first time either of the women had seen one for themselves. They exchanged a smiling glance.
“You’ll have your fair share of suitors here, Lisa,” Harriet whispered behind her hand.
“It’s lucky I have you to chaperone me,” Lisa whispered back in amusement.
They were driven through the sawmill in order that they should see it and get their bearings. Harriet remained smiling, but in her tiredness she thought her head might split at the grating roar of logs meeting the huge saws, and the screech of the planes seemed even worse. The air was heavy with the smell of new wood mingling with the smoke from the sawdust being burned in cone-shaped containers. There were men everywhere. They yelled above the noise to each other and at the teams of horses newly arrived from the forest with loads. Logs rumbled as men cranked handles to release them on rollers from the wagons, adding to the din. On the stacked planks that looked like rectangular buildings in rows, known as drying sheds, other men ran or climbed, agile as monkeys, going about their energy-consuming work. Harriet was conscious of the stares of those who happened to pause briefly to watch the buggy going by. One man, standing by the crock of drinking water on a bench outside the cookhouse, paused with the dipper halfway to his lips, gaping with astonishment. Harriet acknowledged those who collected their wits in time to give some kind of mannerly greeting. She and Lisa were certainly providing a startling diversion in their straw sailor hats and flowery coloured coats. Oh, the noise of those saws!
It was a relief to Harriet when George drove past the bunkhouses that marked the outskirts of the site, and took them quite a distance along an old skid-road to a house out of earshot of the sawmill. The new home was square and two-storeyed, as were the other houses, glimpsed through the trees that were provided by the lumber company for prominent employees. It had good-sized rooms and the luxury of a bathhouse, even though the tin bath would have to be filled with jugs by hand. Since the place was furnished throughout, there had been nothing for the Fernleys to provide, except for a cot and other nursery necessities which had been purchased in Seattle and transported with the piano to their destination. Lisa was pleased to find that her bedroom had shelves for her books, a table and a comfortable chair, providing a haven to which she could retreat whenever Alan was at home.
Harriet had been right in her assumption that Lisa would be in great demand, but neither of them had expected the first would-be beau to call that evening before they had finished unpacking. Alan, who answered the door, sent the fellow away. Three more came soon afterwards, wanting to speak with her, and fared no better.
“I told them,” he informed Lisa, “that you are my ward. They are to let it be known at the site that my house is forbidden territory and no approach must be made to you without my permission. It’s for your own protection. You saw that sign displayed near the railhead.”
She raised her eyebrows. Although she knew he needed to be strict from the start with the men on her behalf, she could not help resenting his high-handed attitude. “What if I see someone I would like to get to know while you’re away somewhere?” she enquired crisply.
He was aware of her annoyance. It was to be expected, for such was the constant friction between them. His answer came on a sharp note. “Then you’ll use your own common sense, I trust. I simply want to ensure that the men know that they’ll get the sack on the spot if they attempt any liberties with you or my wife.”
In the weeks that followed, when Alan was absent most of the time, nobody broke the rule that he had laid down against calling at the house, but it did not stop those attracted to Lisa from drawing her into conversation whenever they met her on the road or in the store or by the stables where she frequently gave sugar-bits and apples to the work-weary horses, many of them the great shires that had been Peter’s particular favourites. Almost without exception the men were powerfully built, whether short or tall, simply by the very nature of the work they were engaged in. It was no trade for a weakling. Accidents were all too frequent as it was.
Although Lisa was careful not to encourage any of those who would have courted her, at least three of the younger men with their good looks, fine physiques, and quick minds, would have had a chance with her if she had felt so inclined. While keeping a distance, she took pleasure in talking with them. It made such welcome change from the endless chatter that went on at the house where Dolly and Mary came daily to visit Harriet and dissect every aspect of motherhood. Much as Lisa loved babies, she found so much intensely domestic conversation increasingly tedious. Alan’s home-comings were like a refreshing, if somewhat stormy, breath of fresh air blowing through the house, for he brought news of the outside world and recounted incidents of interest from his journeyings to the lumber camps.
As always when he and Lisa became engrossed in lively and often argumentative discussions, Harriet would listen from the couch where she rested in the advancing stages of her pregnancy, sewing or knitting garments for the baby. She never made any attempt to join in, content that the two people who meant most to her should stimulate each other in such wide-ranging talk.
Another frequent visitor to the house was Bertha Dunn. She was experienced in midwifery and was to deliver Harriet when the time came. Alan was uneasy about this arrangement, wanting a doctor present, but since the nearest one was many miles away, that was not possible. As for travelling back to Seattle, Harriet claimed it would be too much exertion for her now that she was into her eighth month, and he was forced to accept her decision to have the baby in their home. She began to strike off the remaining days on a calendar.
Lisa waited on her hand and foot, but persuaded her into the exercise of a daily walk in the autumn air, which was a great effort for her. Leo always accompanied them, except when Alan was home. Then he would follow his master around the sawmill or into the forest when Alan took a gun after game.
It happened that Alan had the dog with him when he was in conversation with George Dunn one morning as they came from the office, strolling past a wagon that was being unloaded. Suddenly there was a sound like a cannon’s blast as some chains snapped. Amid shouts of warning a vast log reared up to crash down again in a thunder of noise that shook the ground. Alan and George had sprung clear as had everyone else. Leo, ears flat and head down, streaked away to safety, only - to be caught several yards further on by the flailing hooves of a big workhorse snorting and rearing in fright. The dog was sent flying without a sound to thud down by one of the drying sheds. Alan gave a great shout.
“Leo!” He rushed to the dog and saw at once by the gashed head that death from the hoof had been instantaneous. It was an accident that nobody could have foreseen, but that did not lessen the sorrow that wrenched at him as he stooped to gather up the lifeless animal in his arms. Others came running forward to see if any help was needed and then slowed to a halt as they saw it was too late.
“It’s going to be tough on your wife,” George said sympathetically, clapping him on the shoulder. “Do you want me to do the burying while you go up to the house an
d tell her?”
Alan’s first thought had been of Harriet and the shock it would be. He had bought Leo for her in the first months of their marriage, almost six years ago. He shook his head at the offer that had been made to him. “I’m burying Leo.” He would let no one else do that. “But I ask that all here keep word of what has happened to themselves until I can get home.”
The men nodded, parting to let him through. Lisa, well wrapped up against the cold November day, halted on her way to the store at the sight of him and the burden he carried. With an exclamation of concern she came darting forward and cried out again, whipping off her shawl to cover the dog with it.
“What happened, Alan?” As he told her she wept, cradling one of the limp paws between her gloved hands. Her voice was husky when she spoke again. “I’ll come with you. We’ll find a place for Leo in the forest.”
“No,” he said more gently than he had ever spoken to her before. “Go back to the house and make sure Harriet hears of this from nobody but me.”
She set off at a run, but the bad news had travelled faster. A man who had been driving through the sawmill when the accient had happened, overtook Dolly almost at the Fernleys’ front door. He shouted out to her what he had seen. To Lisa’s dismay she met Harriet rushing along the road without hat or coat, her face ashen, one arm across her swollen figure in support.
Deaf to the pleas of Dolly on the porch imploring her to come back, Harriet called out frantically upon seeing Lisa ahead. “Is it true about Leo?”
Lisa’s stricken face gave the silent answer. With a groan of grief that turned to a shuddering gasp of pain, Harriet collapsed into Lisa’s arms. Dolly came running to help get her into the house.
Bertha moved in and took charge with Lisa to assist her. For the rest of the day and all through the night Harriet was in excruciating labour. She pulled on the length of sheet that Bertha had tied to the foot of the bed until the pain defeated her and she thrashed about helplessly, her screams harrowing. But shortly after dawn she was safely delivered of a son. His lusty yell brought his father bounding up the stairs in relief combined with anxiety for his wife, but Harriet had come through her ordeal and lay smiling in exhaustion against the rumpled pillows.
She received her first visitors later that day. Dolly came with Mary to exclaim over the new arrival and present her with clothes they had sewn for him. Harriet was more touched by totally unexpected offerings that came to the house in the shape of a wooden boat, a Noah’s ark with animals, and a number of other toys made for her by men at the sawmill far from their own wives and families. She thought of the hours spent in the making of the gifts by the poor light of the coal lamps in the bunkhouses.
“My first outing shall be to thank each of these kind men personally,” she declared to Alan who had brought the latest offering to her bedside, a rattle with a ball inside it carved out of a single piece of wood.
“I’ll escort you myself,” he promised, smiling at her.
It was the morning of the third day that she awoke feeling less well. By evening she was bathed in sweat and desperately ill. Alan had word telegraphed down the line for a doctor to come to a dire emergency. Before the high fever from her infected bloodstream took complete hold and she was still lucid, she managed to say what she wanted to Lisa and her husband when each was alone with her. She never knew that the doctor managed to get there by the fifth day after a difficult journey. He saw at once that there was nothing to be done and that had he come sooner it would have been the same. Alan and Lisa took turns at her bedside so that she was never alone. When she died in the early hours of a cold December morning, they were both with her. The baby was just ten days old.
Alan was stunned with grief. Harriet was laid to rest in a plot near the sawmill beside loggers and lumbermen who had suffered fatal accidents, wooden crosses bearing their names. Everybody attended the burial service there, and the great crowd of men stood bareheaded in the first few flakes of snow. One of them, a Pole with a magnificent voice, sang the Twenty-third Psalm. Afterwards the house was a bleak and empty place. Alan never went in or out of it without going first to his son, always picking him up if he was awake and sometimes when he was not, which made it difficult for Lisa to keep him to a routine. But she never made comment. Alan needed comfort in his bereavement, and he could only find it in his son.
When one of the travelling preachers came some weeks later to hold a service at the sawmill, Alan had the baby baptised Harry. Since Harriet herself had made no firm choice, he thought that their child should be named after her.
Lisa devoted herself to Harry, a robust, thriving infant with every sign of being as black-haired as his father when new growth replaced the birthhair on his well-shaped head. He was a handsome baby, and a contented one, giving her almost no trouble. Alan never questioned her care of his son or the running of the house. He left all domestic decisions to her. In their individual grief they were polite to each other and almost formal in their conversation in a way that each found strained and uncomfortable. The lively sparks no longer flew between them. It was as if Harriet’s passing had changed them both irrevocably.
There were other changes, too, although at first Lisa was not aware of them. It was only gradually that she realised that Dolly and Mary no longer called at the house as they had done in the past. Since they had always been more friendly with Harriet than with her, she did not give the matter much thought. Bertha was still a regular visitor, eager to take little Harry into her arms and give advice on teething troubles and weaning that were quite unnecessary. Lisa had looked after enough babies in her orphanage days to know how to handle one healthy baby boy Sometimes Bertha took charge of him for a few hours to give her a break to do other things that demanded her time.
He was six months old when Lisa began to be aware of an ominous shift of attitude towards her among some of the men at the sawmill. There were those who still grinned or whistled their appreciation at the sight of her or tried to exchange a little flirtatious banter, but the less likeable among them made their leers more open and their remarks in her hearing became ribald and offensive. She ignored the unpleasantness as if she were deaf, but it was not hard to guess that these men were putting their own interpretation on her living alone with Alan now that his wife had gone. She had been in the West long enough to know that in pioneering circles women were considered to be either good or bad, and to be suspected of living in sin meant a complete destruction of character.
She understood why Dolly and Mary had stopped calling on her, for in their eyes she was no longer respectable company. She fumed at such stupidity. How did anyone suppose that a widower could have his child cared for without a woman in the house? Moreover, Alan worked longer hours and stayed away for longer periods than he had done when his wife was alive, which should have been a sure indication that his home had lost all attraction for him. At least kind-hearted Bertha had shown no sign of withdrawing her friendship. In any case she was frequently in the house when Alan was there and was able to observe for herself that there was nothing between the two of them, for he was always abstracted and coldly restrained, his personal grief unabated.
For the first time Lisa began to be nervous during Alan’s absences. Men had started to hang around the house at times, but as yet nobody had broken his rule about calling there. Then one evening when Alan was away there came a knock at the door. When she opened it she found a man she knew only by sight standing on the doorstep.
“Hi, there, ma’am,” he said softly, a look in his eyes that was all too familiar. “I figured you might be lonely and would like to talk a while.”
“I’m never lonely,” she replied sharply. “Go away. You know better than to break the rules regarding this house.”
He rammed his heavy boot in the door as she was about to close it and he leaned an arm against the jamb. “Don’t be hasty. You’re not scared of me, are you?”
“No, I’m not,” she replied icily, “but I want you gone. Get your
foot out of this door.”
From the parlour, Bertha called out: “Is that my George come for me?”
The man at the door stepped back with a wry grimace. “My mistake. I thought you were on your own.” He disappeared into the darkness quickly.
“Who was that?” Bertha inquired as Lisa returned to take up her half of the patchwork quilt they were making together. “An unwanted caller,” Lisa replied uneasily.
Bertha looked thoughtful. “Has it happened before?”
“No, but I’ve been half expecting something like that to occur. I wouldn’t have opened the door if I’d been here on my own.
Bertha paused in her sewing, her needle at rest. “Why don’t you leave here, Lisa? This is no life for you, buried in the forest with somebody else’s baby to look after night and day. It’s different for Dolly and Mary and myself. Our menfolk are here and we want to be with them, but you have no such ties.”
Lisa did not look up from her stitching. “I can’t leave little Harry. I wouldn’t want to anyway.”
“I would willingly take over your duties, if that’s what is worrying you. With our own children grown and gone from the nest, it would be wonderful for George and me to have a baby in the home again. Alan would be able to see Harry whenever he liked and have a room with us instead of this place, which he wouldn’t need any more. He’s hardly ever at home these days as it is.”
“No.” Lisa shook her head firmly. “You mean well, I know, but it’s out of the question.”
“Tell me why.”
Lisa looked up for the first time. “I love Harry as if he were my own. More than that, when Harriet was dying she entrusted him to my care. I intend to look after him until such time as Alan tells me to leave or some other circumstance arises over which I have no control. Even then, I’ll continue to do whatever lies in my power for the child.”
What the Heart Keeps Page 19