With Love from Bliss

by Ruth Glover

  The coffin was nailed shut; caring neighbors hefted it to their shoulders and deposited it in Gregor Slovinski’s wagon. Pulling out of the yard, Gregor led the dusty cortege down the road to Bliss’s cemetery, where the faithful gathered once more around the coffin settled beside a gaping hole. The black earth that was spilled lavishly at their weary feet was bread and butter to all of them, and a portion of it rested under the fingernails of every man present; it demanded their strength while alive, it claimed their bodies when they died.

  “Ashes to ashes . . .” Parker Jones intoned and, with a prayer, the sad day’s business was accomplished. As one man they turned back to their rigs, their chores, their lives. Most of them trekked back to the Baldwin home, to tie up in the yard again and partake of the bounty the good women of Bliss had provided.

  Lingering over their final good-bye to their loved one, Dudley and Della were the last to leave the cemetery, the last to pull into their yard; a place had been made for them among the dozen or so rigs there. Pulling up in the buggy, Dudley got out and went to the horse’s head, holding her steady and the buggy still. But Della made no move to descend. Fixing her son with a straight gaze, she caroled sweetly, “Dudley?”

  Dudley, red in the face before the undivided attention of all of Bliss, hastened to his mother’s side, reaching a hand to help her down. Though Della’s mouth smiled for the benefit of her onlookers, one didn’t have to look closely to see that it was a tight smile. Della’s eyes, under the edge of her hat and the veil that had been fastened back, were cold, cold.

  Reaching her gloved hand for her son’s outstretched hand, she said sweetly, “Thank you, Dud.”

  How long wilt thou sleep, O sluggard?’” Kerry spoke the words in as merry a tone as she could muster, hoping Franny would be amused.

  Usually greatly entertained by Kerry, laughing her delicious tinkly laugh at her pranks and her so-often apropos Scriptures, today Frances turned her head from the light that streamed in as Kerry went around the room opening drapes and letting the midday sun stream into the bedchamber.

  Following on Kerry’s heels was Gladdy, now a tall and slim young lady; still clothed, however, in her maid’s uniform. Gladdy had indeed made good, being promoted to the status of maid several years ago. But in reality she was so much more. Mrs. Finch, older now and fatter, depended on the quick hands and feet and quick mind of the bright and blossoming girl; Charlotte Maxwell found herself using Gladdy as secretary at times, and—to Gladdy’s supreme satisfaction—accompanying her on numerous outings. The vibrant hair had not dimmed over the years, but its tendency to wildness was subdued somewhat by valiant attempts at taming. Gladdy herself declared that it went boing at the slightest loosening of a pin or slipping of a ribbon. Just now she carried a tray temptingly set with breakfast for two.

  “Wake up, Ishbosheth,” Kerry caroled, standing at the side of the bed and gently tugging at the coverlet that Franny was using as a shield.

  That Frances’s case was not totally hopeless—or perhaps as a sign that she was over the worst of her despair—seemed proven when one gray eye peeped out of the covers, and the hint of a smile played at the corner of her mouth.

  Señor Garibaldi’s cruel desertion had indeed plunged the sensitive Frances to the very depths of despondency. Having glimpsed a better life for herself, with better health and true purpose, her descent into hopelessness was dark and deep. Added to this was a sense of foolishness that she should have, for one moment, thought any man might find, in her pale person, the attractions necessary for love. Yes, Franny suffered.

  Many times Kerry had tried to help, first by sympathy, holding the wounded Franny in her arms, then by words—scorning the dastardly dancing master, expressing gratitude that his falseness had come to light before it was too late, verbally recognizing Franny’s worth as a treasure to all those—the miserable Garibaldi excepting—who knew her.

  “I’ve come to accept his baseness,” Frances had wept eventually, on her long road to healing. “But to have gained such a wonderful measure of strength and health and then to have it snatched from me—I find that more painful than I can say. I was so happy, Kerry! You don’t know what it’s been like, all these years—housebound, unwell, bored!”

  “Shh,” Kerry had crooned, smoothing back the fair hair from the pale face. “You’ll find it all and more, any day now. Now you know the way to happiness—get up and get out, Franny. It can’t hurt to give it a try.”

  But it had been weeks, and Franny remained, for the most part, huddled in bed.

  Kerry, at first desperately worried, then angry, then worried again, was trying a new approach. Or perhaps it was an old approach, for she recalled the many times Franny had found Kerry’s unusual quotations refreshing, and had enjoyed many a good laugh at the youngster’s frank use of Scripture. Older, wiser, educated, Kerry had found other ways by which to express herself, and the use of Scripture had largely disappeared from her conversation.

  This morning, determined to wake, and shake, the injured Frances, she had searched her mind and her memory and had come up with Solomon’s warning against idleness. That it had pierced Frances’s defenses seemed proven by the peeping eye and the smiling mouth. And sure enough, the use of the name “Ishbosheth” had the desired effect. Throwing back the covers under which she had nurtured her pain, she giggled.

  “Ish . . . who?” she managed.

  “Ishbosheth. The son of Saul, ‘who lay on a bed at noon.’ It was deadly for him, and it’s deadly for you. So awake, thou that sleepest!”

  “Oh, Kerry! You were good for me when you came to me seven . . . or is it eight years ago, and you are good for me now! Have I been a great trial these past weeks?”

  “Never!” the loving Kerry proclaimed. “I just want you to see that . . . that a twirling, dipping, skipping, dancing man is not the man for you.”

  “But,” Franny mourned, “will there ever be another? I don’t want to lie in Aunt Charlotte’s bed all my life! Even I have a natural longing for a home of my own and somebody to love me, and to love.” Franny seemed on the verge of tears again.

  “First things first,” Kerry said, whisking the bedding into order and beckoning forth the waiting Gladdy. “And that’s food. Now you eat, you hear?”

  “You eat with me,” Franny demanded, and Kerry did so, having planned it that way. As they ate their toast and delicately coddled eggs and drank their cocoa, Kerry managed to win more than one smile and several more laughs from Franny, whose color, at the end of the meal, showed a dainty tinge of pink and whose eyes, once again, were full of life.

  When breakfast was finished, and the small talk that went with it, Kerry gathered up the tray, placing the current issue of Canadian Magazine in Franny’s hands.

  “You’re going to get up and get going,” Kerry said firmly. “Now check out that advertisement for the gramophone. Why in the world we shouldn’t have one, I don’t know. I may be as poor as a church mouse—” Kerry hadn’t forgotten the thrusts of earlier, poorer, days by the naughty Cordelia—“but you aren’t. How are you going to spend that glorious inheritance if you don’t get up and get out?”

  Poor Garibaldi—his timing had been poor. Just a few days after his departure, a distant aunt had passed away leaving her not inconsiderable funds to Frances.

  “Let’s see this marvelous machine,” Franny said, and Kerry folded the magazine and pointed. “‘It will entertain every member of the family, from grandmother down to baby,’” she read, looking over Franny’s shoulder.

  “And only fifteen dollars for the large one. And with three free records.”

  “It comes with a guarantee; you can’t get better than that. You love music, Franny! Think what a treat this would be—and how much fun you’d have hunting it up, checking it out, and purchasing it.”

  “It would be wonderful to get out again,” Franny said wistfully.

  “You go ahead and read the magazine. You’ll notice that The Rambler’s Wheel Club has an eng
agement soon; think how healthy you could get out in the air on the newest Bantam with pneumatic tires—”

  “Whatever those are,” Franny laughed, already feeling much better and greatly relieved because of it.

  That Franny found much more of interest in the magazine than gramophones and bicycles was not to come to light for some time. But it seemed obvious, to Kerry and Gladdy and eventually to Aunt Charlotte, that some magic potion or other was working a miracle, once again, in their Franny.

  Could it be love—a second time? And if so, would Franny be any wiser this time?

  Sick at heart, Dudley waited at the pasture fence running between the Baldwin and Hooper homesteads. He was always unhappy with himself to some degree or other, and his present circumstances had him feeling particularly unworthy. Not only did he have no beauty of face or form, being as ungainly and unsure as a newborn colt, but he felt he had nothing appealing about his inner man either.

  Inner man! He gritted, thinking about it. Inner boy, more like!

  Man or boy, that inner person was not only sick at heart but angry as well. Angry at his father for leaving him and for the situation it had put him in; angry at his mother for the bonds she—willingly and knowingly, perhaps purposely—twined around him, binding him to her and to the place.

  It was not a good binding; they were not bonds of passion for the soil as had bound his father. They were not bonds made before a preacher, pledging to stand by another person for better or for worse. No—and Dudley ground his teeth helplessly—they were the bonds of weakness. He simply had not, he felt, the guts to stand up to his mother.

  Even thinking the word brought forth an eruption of guilty feelings; it was a word his mother never would have countenanced in the mouth of her son. That he thought it rather than speaking it aloud caused him to see his bondage in a more hateful light than ever.

  Leaning on a fence post in utmost dejection, waiting for Matilda, remembering his mother branding him Dud before the people of the community and recalling his feeling of humiliation brought him very near to tears. And tears were an even more hateful sign of weakness. Dudley’s hand came up—not to wipe his eyes but to form a fist in an unfamiliar gesture of defiance. But it was the fence post he slammed, and that futilely, for he felt no better afterwards than before. Like everything he did—it was ineffectual.

  Across the fence, in the Hooper pasture, also coming to fetch the cows for milking, Matilda saw him and came to meet him, as often happened at this time of day.

  Watching her come, skirts swinging freely with her movements, hair blowing back from her face, Dudley wondered with an ache in his throat whether she would be willing to trade that freedom for the existence he had to offer and feared not. His only hope was that she would wait. Present conditions would not—could not—last. Just what would change, he didn’t know. He was long past the age for fairy tales, yet still some faint hope struggled in his despairing heart in a dream as old as childhood and as fragile.

  A truer affection than Matilda’s would have settled his every fear with a few simple words. A smile, a squeeze of a hand would have done it. Perhaps Matilda’s love hadn’t ripened sufficiently, perhaps she wasn’t capable of the kind of understanding that was needed, perhaps she needed to grow up a little more. Whatever the reason, Dudley despaired of happiness before she spoke.

  “How could you let her humiliate you like that?” was the first thing that burst from her.

  How to tell her his mother had taken him by surprise; how to explain he was still Della’s son and owed her the courtesy due her as his mother; how to say that he had never, in all his life, spoken rudely to her or to any adult?

  How to pour out his misery? How to plead for her patience, her understanding? How to offer her marriage and a home, when that home wasn’t fully his? How to ask her to wait?

  Instead, he was silent, his head down, his boot scuffing the ground at his feet. Realizing how childish that seemed, he stopped abruptly. He felt his cause was lost before he spoke.

  Nevertheless, he tried. “Tilda—what she said, what she called me, doesn’t mean that’s what I am.”

  “A dud, you mean? I certainly hope not. But how in the world are you going to face everyone now, Dudley? That moment, right then, was the time to say . . . to do something.”

  Dudley gathered a little courage. “What, Tilda? Slap down my own mother?”

  “Of course not that. But surely . . .” Matilda’s voice faded away in the face of the impossible situation.

  Into the heavy silence came the faint sound of cowbells. Matilda fidgeted a moment, looked toward the other end of the pasture, and said, “Look, I’ve got to go. Dad and the boys are waiting for the cows. I’ll see you Sunday.” And she turned and walked—striding free and standing tall—away from him and toward her future.

  Hunched and miserable, Dudley stumbled toward his.

  When the chores were done, the cows turned out, and the milk strained, Dudley went outside and stood beneath the porch’s small overhang, restless and uncertain. With sudden determination he stepped down and turned his steps toward the road.

  “Dudley? Where in the world are you going this time of evening? Dudley—” Dudley was rather proud of himself—that he plodded on, ignoring the demanding call. Della’s voice faded behind him as he turned his steps in the direction of the homestead next to theirs—Connor Dougal’s.

  Here was a man who had started out, independently, when he was not much older than Dudley. Just a boy himself at the time, Dudley could recall something of those days—his father’s offered friendship and help and the good relationship that had developed. He had seen the young Connor strengthen and mature until he became a man of stature, not only physically but in other ways that counted, ways that couldn’t be spelled out but that made him a man in the eyes of the community. No doubt, Dudley supposed now, half bitterly, Connor was a man in his own eyes. And that’s where it counts most, Dudley thought with a burst of insight into his own sad self-evaluation. Weighed in the balances and found wanting!

  “Come on in, Dudley.”

  Connor’s voice greeted Dudley as he stepped up onto the small porch outside the screen door of the lean-to that was Connor’s kitchen. The original log house, at first serving as front room, bedroom, and kitchen combined, had been enlarged by the addition of the lean-to; the main room, now divided, with a small bedroom at one end, made comfortable living quarters for the bachelor.

  How Connor Dougal had stayed single was a mystery. Thick, brown hair hanging rather boyishly over clear hazel eyes, generous nose, and square-cut, good-humored face made for a very attractive package. Add to this his homestead proved up as required and his farm well stocked, he lacked only—according to the community—a wife.

  But Dudley was far from any thoughts concerning the bachelor state of his neighbor. He had found, in the last few days, a level of friendship from this man that he hadn’t known before. Now, instinctively, as a chick would seek refuge under a wing, Dudley turned toward Connor. There was something that drew him—just what, he couldn’t put a name to. He wasn’t long in finding out.

  Dudley had known that Connor attended church regularly. He knew Connor was a man of principle. He now knew him to be a man of compassion. He would almost immediately know him to be a man of God.

  Connor had been drinking a cup of coffee over a late supper. “Sit down, man,” he said right off to the young man who seemed to stand so awkwardly inside his door. “Sorry the flapjacks are all gone, but there’s coffee.”

  Dudley took the mug, added the cream and sugar that were proffered, and took a seat opposite Connor at the table. Leaning an elbow comfortably on the white oilcloth, Connor said, “It’s good to see you. I was hoping you’d come by.” At Dudley’s raised eyebrow he added, “I hadn’t had an opportunity to talk with you, to tell you how sorry I am for the loss of your father. A good man—Henley Baldwin. You’re a lot like him, I think, and,” with a smile, “that’s a compliment.”

 
“Yeah . . . I guess,” Dudley murmured in a low tone of voice, looking down into the mix of coffee and cream. “That’s what everyone says. Even Ma.” Dudley didn’t add that when Della said it, it was no compliment.

  “How’re you making out?”

  “All right, I guess.” Dudley, it seemed, wasn’t certain of anything.

  Connor studied the young, defenseless, rather doleful countenance of his visitor. “If not, Dudley, and there’s some way I can help, you’ve only to ask.”

  “I know.”

  Dudley continued to stare into his cup; Connor stirred his coffee thoughtfully. This was something more than a casual visit, he surmised. Just how to approach an unspoken problem was a problem in itself.

  Perhaps he offered up a silent prayer for guidance. At any rate, his next words were inspired, though they obviously pained the young man opposite.

  “And how is it with Matilda? If I’m not mistaken, you two are something more than friends.”

  Dudley shifted in his chair. Dudley cleared his throat. Dudley, after all, could only nod and mutter, “Yeah, well, I guess maybe that’s over.” There—he’d faced it! Said it!

  “I see. Well, a bachelor’s life isn’t so bad, you know.” Connor smiled. Then, with no answering sign of amusement from Dudley, he added thoughtfully, “But if you’re unhappy, I could help you pray. I always find comfort that way.”

  “Yeah, I guess that’d be all right,” the younger man said but without enthusiasm.

  Connor set down his cup, bowed his head, cleared his throat, and prayed. To Dudley, staring down at a crack in the white oilcloth on the table, it was obvious the pray-er knew what he was doing. His words, though simple, were straightforward and earnest.

  Connor prayed that Dudley, having lost his earthly father, might find comfort in the care of the heavenly Father; he prayed that, for the days ahead, Dudley might have the loving hand of the Father leading, guiding, and directing. He prayed that, as the Scripture promised, all things would work together for good.