by Ruth Glover
Winter had been leaving on reluctant feet when Barnabas had been laid to rest in the Bliss cemetery and Robbie had made his offer of help. Alice, who had simply thanked many another neighbor, realizing their own chores kept them from being any real or lasting help, had seen the possibilities of Robbie’s association and had been the one to broach the subject. Surprised, almost speechless, Robbie had only needed overnight to consider her suggestion. Then, with his heart thumping and his hands sweaty, he had agreed.
“Allan,” he had said later to his brother, “it will mean that the Hoy place will be mine. Think on’t!”
“But those laddies—”
“Of course. They’ll be my responsibility.”
“But she’s sick . . . and gettin’ sicker!”
“Well,” Robbie said rather impatiently, “that’s the reason behind the whole plan, ye gowk! The farm will be mine, dinna ye see? Her sickness is incurable, and she knows it; she’s doin’ the only thing she knows to do.”
Allan had scratched his head, shaken it, and mumbled something that sounded like, “Aye then, do it, and see if I hae any sympathy for ye.”
Since the bargain was struck, Robbie had gone over morning and evening. If at times something interfered, Allan, with reluctance, filled in for him. Allan seemed vastly uncomfortable around Alice, though he reached out compassionately to the boys. They responded to him, as to Robbie, with an enthusiasm that hinted of great loneliness, perhaps fear, which was natural with their father put into the ground and their mother so often ill.
“A’ reet, laddies,” Robbie said now, his stomach growling, and his nose twitching in response to something savory cooking on the range and spilling its good smells across the yard. His supper prepared for him and nicely served—that was another bonus for Robbie, a reluctant housekeeper and a careless cook.
Of course, he excused himself, he had so little equipment—one pot, one bread pan, one baking pan, a can opener, a coffeepot, a teakettle, two enameled cups (no saucers), two tin plates, three sets of flatware, one mixing spoon, a tin washbowl that doubled for washing the dishes and, rinsed well, for mixing bread, a tin pail, a milk skimmer and—that was about all. There was no flatiron, hence the unironed clothes. There was no dustpan; dirt was simply swept out the door. No bathtub; he used the galvanized washtub over which he and Allan occasionally spent miserable hours attempting to do laundry.
Yes, this alliance with Alice Hoy not only had its advantages to come but its advantages now; Robbie knew that. He knew, too, that, unless some sort of miracle happened or science devised a way to safely open the human body and excise tumors and cancers (it was happening some places, but certainly not in the bush), Alice Hoy was not long for this world. And, being a gentle person and dear in her own way, Robbie was not selfish enough to want her farm at the price of her life.
But, he argued, the outcome was beyond his help, the end result was certain. Someone, someone had to take on the task as Alice outlined it, painfully and reluctantly, yet with a certain desperation. And it might as well be him, Robbie Dunbar. In fact, he secretly exulted over the tremendous opportunity providence had thrown his way, like a bone to a dog, all undeserved, but yearned for and dreamed of.
Supper, when the milking was done and the chores finished, was fried chicken, with potatoes and gravy and fresh bread.
“I caught the hen,” Barney boasted, “and held it while Mama chopped its head off.” You couldn’t learn too young, on the homestead. Squeamishness was a luxury that could not be afforded.
“Brave lad!” Robbie praised. “An’ was it ye and yer brother been hoein’ in the garden the day?”
“Just me,” Barney said, while Billy explained, “Mama says I pull up too many veg’bles. But I hunted eggs, didn’t I, Mama? Didn’t I?” And he looked anxiously toward his mother.
Alice stretched a thin hand and tenderly pushed back a lock of the fair hair that tumbled over the young brow.
“You certainly did,” she said, and the little face glowed. “And you fed the chickens, too. You were a great help today.”
“And I brought in wood, didn’t I, Mama?” Barney, too, looked to his mother for approval and touch.
“Fresh bread,” Robbie commented, helping himself to a second slice. “How did you manage that?”
“Molly came today and asked what she could do. Bread making is one thing I dread—it’s heavy work for weak muscles,” and Alice smiled. “So she got it as far as the pans before she left. It was no trouble then to bake it.”
“She’s the one that’s goin’ to marry the vicar?” Robbie, the newcomer and rare-church-attender asked.
“Vicker!” Barney laughed uproariously. “Vicker! She’s going to marry Parker Jones—”
“Pastor Jones,” his mother corrected, and Barney subsided.
“We don’t know that she’s going to marry him, Rob. But they both act as if it’s on their minds. But Molly would be helpful and kind anyway; it runs in the family. The Morrisons were a tremendous help and encouragement when we first arrived. Molly does have good qualities for a minister’s wife.”
Robbie refilled his glass (not an enameled cup, he appreciated), and said, casually, “Oh, say, I’ll have to get Allan to fill in for me here tomorra night.”
“Oh?” Alice asked a little anxiously. Her concern for the farm was great, her concern for the future of her boys even greater. Nothing else, of course, would have persuaded her to make the offer to Robbie that he had found irresistible.
“Aye. There’s an auld acquaintance of mine just coom—”
“From Scotland, Rob? How wonderful!”
“Aye, from Binkiebrae, in fact, and I’ve been invited to eat supper at the Blooms’ tomorra and have a guid visit.”
“Would you like to have your friend eat supper with us one night?” Alice made the offer hesitantly and seemed relieved when Robbie, quickly, thanked her and declined.
“Perhaps it’s best,” she said quietly, then offered a small, apologetic smile.
Robbie helped clear the table and he and the boys did the dishes, he washing and the boys wiping, while Alice, at Robbie’s suggestion, took the rocking chair and watched, her eyes shadowed, her forehead, even in rest, beading slightly.
The shadows were long when the wood box was filled and the house chores completed. Robbie’s last task for the day was to prepare the boys for bed—it saved Alice so much wear and tear, for they were lively and loved to scuffle. He knew, however, that it pained her not to be able to do this intimate thing for them, and so, when they were finally tucked in, he set a lamp by the bedside, and a chair, then handed Alice one of their favorite books and saw her settle for a happy few minutes with her “chicks,” as she called them.
Robbie was weary as he made his way homeward. It was too dark to take the shortcut; he went the longer way around, by the road. Soon now it would be light almost until the midnight hour; soon now there would be even more tasks to fill his day, and he would need the longer working hours. The gardens would flourish and need attention, the young calves would arrive, and the baby chickens. The frost was gone and it was time for seeding; there was always wood to get up for the fires next winter . . . and Alice, Alice would do less and less to help. There would come a day when he would have full charge of the boys, when he would care for her.
Robbie drew a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. To have the extra land, to increase his acreage, to move into the larger, better house, perhaps to bring the rest of his family from Scotland—it was a dream come true and worth every effort and sacrifice it called for.
Wasn’t it?
This girl makes the best cup of tea I’ve tasted since coming to the territories!” Lydia Bloom declared, holding her bone china cup daintily at chin level and looking over its gold-tipped edge with satisfaction.
There were few luxuries in the bush; teatime, for those accustomed to it and determined to hang onto a shred of civilization, was one of them.
“Not to mention the scones,” He
rbert added, biting generously into a warm one slathered with raspberry jam—not that the worm-riddled raspberries of the bush were responsible for it. No, fortunately Herbert and Lydia could augment that skimpy supply with store-bought items. Another luxury.
Ordinarily no self-respecting homesteader would be caught having tea in the afternoon; it was a foolish, foppish thing to do. But Herbert had gained a measure of independence through the acquisition of a hired man. It was another luxury, of course, but one Herbert felt he could well consider at this time in his life. The farm was beginning to produce and, if crops were decent (the growing season was, at best, one hundred days), he would come out ahead at the end of the year.
Herbert Bloom was more fortunate than most; he had sold a lucrative business—a string of three grocery stores—before he made his move west. He might never have done so, of course, if Lavinia, his only daughter, hadn’t married a dreamer, a dreamer who put feet to his visions. And where had they taken him? Westward to the vast lands being opened and claimed by others with a like sense of adventure. No matter that it was largely uncharted; no matter that they broke trail most of the way. For all of them, struggle and adversity were accepted as challenges to be met; the tools they used were their own hands, their heads, but mostly their hearts. Herbert, a follower, coming along with his money, felt almost an onlooker, an outsider, warming his hands, so to speak, at other men’s fires.
But, Herbert excused himself, why should he struggle and suffer, at his age? He could well afford to be a gentleman farmer, or so he seemed, he supposed, to his hard-pressed, hardworking neighbors.
Luxuries, for them, such as tea with the ladies of an afternoon, were neither expected nor enjoyed; hardships and tragedies, on the other hand, were expected and endured.
So now Herbert sat back, thoroughly enjoying the warm scones so recently taken from the range’s oven.
Tierney, who was beginning to feel more like a daughter than a domestic, and in such a short time—she hadn’t been in Bliss twenty-four hours!—sat down with the elderly couple for their tea. Though Herbert and Lydia had persuaded her to “Sit! Have a cup of tea with us,” she felt a little uncomfortable in the doing, as though Ishbel Mountjoy might pop in at any moment, to gasp and frown at the unacceptable arrangement.
Scones were one thing Tierney knew how to make, and make well. Her thoughts flew briefly to Binkiebrae and the fireplace where all her cooking and baking had been done. Thank goodness the foibles of a cookstove had been learned on the prairie, in the Ketchums’ kitchen, before coming to the bush, and under the gentle tutelage of Lavinia, who, like her parents before her, had flouted the employer/employee system, becoming, along the way, a friend.
“We mustn’t linger too long, of course,” Mrs. Bloom was saying. “After all, that young man, Robert Dunbar, is coming to have supper with us, remember.”
As if Tierney needed reminding. Her head was still awhirl from the unbelievable joy of running full tilt into Robbie Dunbar.
Herbert reached for another scone. Though Lydia looked at him sternly and shook her head, he stubbornly persisted. He was rotund already, and the generous jam on the rich scone was as icing on the cake, and thoroughly enjoyed. “Herbert,” his wife said reproachfully, “we’ll have to restrict our teatimes if you don’t show a little restraint.”
“But we haven’t had tea and scones like these since . . . well, perhaps ever.”
“I know, but there will be more tomorrow . . . and the day after that. If we curb our passions, that is.”
And that good woman pinked straightaway, having, in the heat of the moment, allowed herself the use of a word that had connotations not at all acceptable when a young, single girl was present. Tierney was gazing modestly into her teacup.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Lydia said, flustered, having slopped her tea in her distress.
Tierney set aside her cup, took her serviette, and dabbed the damp stain on Lydia’s generous bosom, feeling, once again, more like a daughter than a domestic. Everything, to this moment, had been pure pleasure. Pure Bliss? Tierney wondered momentarily if the community would, for her, live up to its name.
When she and Herbert had arrived at the two-story Bloom house—made of lumber and still new enough to have retained some of the original color of the boards, and rising out of the bush like a ship in a green sea—Lydia had stepped outside to welcome them. Indeed, you’d have thought a daughter was coming home. Tierney was to understand more and more, as the days came and went, just how deeply the elderly couple mourned the loss of Lavinia, and to love them for their generosity in reaching out to her, Tierney, and accepting her wholeheartedly into their home and their hearts. And it was hard—in light of that—for Tierney to act the part of a true domestic. Even that first evening, donning an apron and attempting to assist with supper had but seemed as if she were the child, Lydia the mother.
Tierney had fallen quite naturally into helping, and Lydia, into allowing it. Soon, Tierney hoped, she might be the one in charge and Lydia the one assisting, for the older woman’s hands were misshapen, and one could tell she was in pain as she used them. Tierney longed to help, to take some of the burden, to make a difference in Lydia’s workload.
Obviously the Blooms’ need had not only been what Tierney could do for them physically. Deprived of their daughter and her family, isolated as they were so much of the time, getting older and not always in good health, Lydia and Herbert would get their money’s worth from the pleasure Tierney’s very presence would bring. Responding to this need and sensing the sincerity of Herbert’s and Lydia’s reaction to her being there, Tierney counted herself blessed and determined to be all that they had expected, and more.
“Now, Herbert,” Lydia was continuing, “it’s a good thing supper will be later tonight so that this Robert Dunbar can get his chores done and eat with us, because you’ve had three . . . three scones.”
“So I have, my dear,” Herbert said comfortably. “Do you make anything else, Miss Tierney? Muffins, perhaps?”
Lydia’s color hinted at apoplexy. “Herbert!” she said severely, taking up the plate of scones and rising, hurrying them out of reach, “enough of that! Now, Miss Tierney, shall we adjourn to the kitchen and see how the roast is coming along?”
The Blooms were among the fortunate few to have an icehouse, thus keeping meat available even in warm weather. Already Tierney had found opportunity to marvel at the goods and chattels in the well-stocked pantry, and, indeed, the house itself, so well furnished, so comfortable, so generously equipped. The little home in Binkiebrae, two rooms, a loft overhead for sleeping, a scullery for washing up—that was it. Yet it had been cozy, homelike, fitting the Caulders and their simple needs. Tierney thought of it now with nostalgia. But realizing it held James and his bride with little or no room for her, she counted herself blessed to be here, surrounded by the generosity of a couple named Bloom, who, not knowing her, had seen fit to take her to their bosoms. And generous bosoms they were, in all ways.
A little hymn of praise rose in her heart, even passed her lips. With all these blessings the chief one, now and forever, was the faithfulness of the One in whom “all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”
What safety she felt!—held in the everlasting arms of God and placed in the hands of these good people.
When Robbie appeared, slicked and shined and obviously fresh from a bath, Tierney found herself restrained, bashful. There was, now, none of the heedless rushing into his arms. He, too, looked a little uncertain.
“Hello, Robbie,” she greeted him, subdued, remembering her impulsive rush into his arms the day before and his spontaneous response, and blushing a little. Then she excused herself and returned to the kitchen, to fumble ineffectively with the roast and to bumble through the making of the gravy. Lydia Bloom, after a keen look at the younger woman’s flushed face, stepped in, and soon supper was on the table.
Herbert stepped
to the porch and rang the bell hanging there. Thus summoned, the hired man, Ahab, soon joined them. With little ceremony they sat up to the table. The food was simple but bountiful, and, as appetites were hearty, the meal progressed with few interruptions as they filled their plates, cleaned them, sat back with satisfaction, and awaited the inevitable pudding that Lydia, English through and through, had provided.
Over a final cup of coffee, Herbert spoke. “Ahem!” and everyone perked up their ears. “Ahab told me this afternoon that he is leaving us.”
Lydia looked up, surprised. “Oh, I’m sorry. Is anything . . . wrong?”
“Not a bit of it,” the hired man assured them, digging into his blancmange after flooding it with thick, golden cream and stirring it thoroughly. “It’s just that I’ve finally saved up enough to get started on my own place. I think I mentioned that to you before—it’s been my plan from the beginning. I can’t get started any younger,” he finished quite seriously.
Lydia nodded, relieved. Her kind heart could not countenance any problem that she and Herbert might have contributed to.
“Of course, I think we knew that. But we’ve been so satisfied—”
“He has to go, Mother,” Herbert interrupted, “if he’s to get a cabin up before winter. Just where is this place, Ahab?”
“It’s in the Nipawin area.”
“There’s still some land around here—”
“I know, but my cousin is over that way, and I’d like to be near him.”
“Can’t say as I blame you. But this puts us in the way of needing to look for someone to take your place. Do you have any suggestions, Robert?”