Bittersweet Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #5): A Novel (26 page)

“You remember, Mr. Kruger, that you mentioned an interest in some kind of class, to begin in the fall, that adults might attend, learning, studying together?”

“Ya, I remember,” Big Tiny said. “Have you been working on it?”

“Yes, indeed.” And Birdie was off and running along lines that were familiar to her, once again the teacher, once again properly businesslike.

“My idea is to make it a reading society. We can go from book to book and subject to subject, fine literature, historical matters, even novels. That way it will be a pleasure as well as a learning tool.”

“Sounds good to me,” the good-natured man responded.

“But it will depend on how many people show an interest, as the Dunbars already have. I think I may count on your interest, Mr. Kruger, right?”

“Ya, of course. I’m very enthusiastic about it myself.”

“It was your suggestion that put the entire thing in motion,” Birdie said and wondered why it gave her such satisfaction to supply this large man with this bit of appreciation. Why did she feel such a glow about it all?

Riding along companionably, it occurred to Birdie that here, in this soft-spoken, bighearted man, she might have a friend. She—the friendless one—might have a friend. Along with the glow came a lump in her throat.

Life, indeed, seemed to be opening up for Birdie Wharton. Life in Bliss might yet be just that—blissful.

“By the way,” Big Tiny said, reaching down into the box of supplies, “I picked up the Bloom mail.”

Dropping the reins momentarily, which made no difference whatsoever to the plodding horse, he shuffled through the assortment of letters and papers headed for homes along his route.

“Here,” he said, turning toward Birdie, a small sheaf of mail in his hand.

On top, staring her in the face—a plain, white envelope bearing her name. No stamp, obviously stuffed into the Bloom box by hand—a local epistle.

Birdie’s eyes widened. For one long moment she looked at the envelope, then raised her eyes.

Big Tiny Kruger’s expression seemed incongruous; holding toward her an envelope that was a cruel stab to her heart, his face was kindly, his smile open, his eyes interested.

No doubt he saw her expression; perhaps he sensed her turmoil of spirit. “It’ll be good news, I’m sure,” he said gently.

“We’ll see about that,” she said grimly. And taking it in her hand, she thrust a thumbnail under the flap and ripped the envelope open. No matter that Big Tiny was watching; no matter that she might unveil and reveal the whole miserable account of the previous letters. Birdie had had enough. Without care for the repercussions and with a certain fury, she dragged forth one white sheet, opened it, scanned it... and blinked.

Blinked several times, frowned, read more slowly:

She read it once; she read it twice. Then, stupidly, she read it a third time. Expecting some tommyrot from Buck or perhaps one of his brothers, she couldn’t immediately grasp the beauty of the scribbled quotation. Even the quick reading, with her mind half on the poem, half on her questions concerning it, the wonder of it gripped her; the meaning of it demanded earnest thought and study, perhaps memorization.

When, dazed, she looked up, it was to find Big Tiny’s blue eyes—from underneath his black mop of hair and above his black mop of beard—twinkling down at her like two stars in a dark night.

Slowly she folded the paper; slowly she inserted it into the envelope.

“Well?” Big Tiny questioned.

“It’s... it’s nothing. That is...”

“It’s not upsetting, then?” he probed, possibly worried on her behalf. “Not unwelcome—?”

“No. No... I think it may be... rather... good news.”

“That’s good, then.” And Big Tiny turned his attention to his driving.

Staring off into Saskatchewan’s “blue ethereal sky,” her heart struck by the thought of the Originator of it and all the other beauty around her, and someone’s—some unknown someone’s—concern to bring it to her attention, Birdie’s hat slipped again, and the recalcitrant curl escaped and her color heightened, and she knew it not, nor cared.

I
f her cup had been full, Ellie would have scalded herself, so startled was she and so violent was her reaction upon hearing Vonnie’s announcement: Tom had asked her to marry him.

But her teacup was almost empty. And, thankfully, Vonnie was not watching; her back was turned as she gazed, seemingly intently, out of the window at nothing any more fascinating than the familiar farmyard.

Carefully, as though in a dream (or was this another nightmare?), Ellie set her cup aside, dabbed automatically at her trembling lips with her serviette, and spoke. Spoke in as calm a tone as though Vonnie had announced that a chicken had escaped the hen house. And the words she spoke were casual, as though chickens escaped the hen house every day; the tone was conversational, as though a chicken’s flight was an incident not unexpected, certainly not to be worried about.

“Well then, I wish Tom, and you...”—though Vonnie hadn’t said, Ellie had no doubt that she had accepted the proposal—“much happiness.”

Now Vonnie turned from her study of the farmyard—or the bush, or the sky, whatever she had fixed her attention upon while she had, simply and starkly, blown Ellie’s world to smithereens.

“We’re planning a quiet wedding,” she said rapidly, fixing Ellie now with her light blue gaze. “After all, I haven’t been a widow for very long, and Tom—well, Tom’s been ready for marriage for a long time. That is, his place is ready... his house—”

Vonnie, for all her outward aplomb, was actually stumbling.

But was his heart ready? Ellie, though her lips spoke proper words, was having trouble with her thoughts, which were wildly scattered. Was Tom really and truly heart-free and ready to turn from one love to another? Or was he acting from hurt, rashly? And would he live to regret the day and the decision?

Caring for Tom as she did, as she always would, yet not enslaved by him or by the need to keep him tethered to her, Ellie may have been more troubled than torn, more filled with sympathy than sorrow.

And yet the haste with which he had made the transfer of his interest couldn’t help but sting—one more wound that would need the Lord’s healing. Along with the nightmares, Ellie laid the fresh hurt, almost a humiliation, at the Father’s—her heavenly Father’s—feet. If there was healing for the one wound, there was healing for the other. It was all that made the future—the long, chill winter, for body and soul—livable.

Still, when Vonnie left, with cheeks ablaze and a triumph in her eyes that she couldn’t hide, perhaps didn’t care to, there was for Ellie the refuge of her earthly father readily available to her.

She sat at his feet, her head on his knee as he rocked gently in his old chair at the side of a dead fire, his rough hand caressing her head, soothing her brow, and her choked voice poured out the story. Bran had known, of course, that Tom hadn’t been coming around, that Ellie was ominously silent concerning him, and that things between them were not as they had been. Now Ellie explained, to some extent, and Bran listened gravely.

“I know,” she said finally, “in my heart of hearts I know I made the right decision—for me, for Tom. And yet it hurts that he could
turn so quickly to... someone else.” Especially to Vonnie, was the unspoken accusation.

“If you’re sure—” her father said hesitantly, wanting her happiness above all.

“You see, Dad, there was no future for us,” she rather dully summed up. “I’d held on to an empty dream for too many years—”

“I don’t understand, have never understood,” her father said with a sigh, “why you can’t just settle down and marry and be happy. But that there’s some obstacle I understand, though you’ve never wanted to... or been able to... put it into words. That’s all right,” he insisted loyally as Ellie’s eyes squinched shut in the secret pain she had harbored for years. “Your business is your business, and you don’t need to make explanations to anyone if you don’t want to. But where will it end, Elliegirl? How will it all end? I won’t,” he added gently, “always be here.”

“Only God knows,” Ellie said, her voice muffled against her father’s overalled knee. “But I feel, in some ways I feel as though I’ve taken a step out of darkness. And yet I can’t see ahead.”

“One step at a time,” Bran confirmed, “is all you need. It seems God is at work. We’ll watch for the next step.”

All too soon—the next step.

That night the nightmare returned in full force. And this time there was no silencing the struggle Ellie went through—experiencing the fire and the smoke and attempting to escape it—and she had desperate need of her fathers. Her earthly father, hearing her cries, hastened to her side to shake her awake, put his arms around her, and comfort her. Her heavenly Father, ever present, ever loving, also put His arms around her, to bring her to the dawning.

“I’m all right, Papa,” she managed at last, the soother rather than the soothed. For Bran Bonney, on his knees at his daughter’s bedside, was groaning in his helplessness, with unaccustomed tears wetting his cheeks.

“It’s all right, Ellie,” her heavenly Father murmured, as she moaned in her helplessness and fear and with accustomed tears dampening her cheeks.

Comforted by both fathers, earthly and heavenly, Ellie went back to sleep. Nothing could be so bad but what, with her fathers, she could make it.

Breakfast was ready; coffee was bubbling in the old granite pot; oatmeal was simmering; toast awaited, browned and buttered, in the warming oven. Bran, for some reason, was delayed at the barn.

Pouring herself a cup of coffee and adding cream—the only thing that made it palatable to Ellie, a true tea drinker—she sat down beside the window, opening her Bible, needing its solace, perhaps its confirmation regarding the direction her life was taking. Sometimes she felt so alone, walking, as it were, a strange path far removed from the accepted and recognized way, a path that led... she knew not where.

“Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art mine” (Isa. 43:1b), she read.

How comforting! Indeed, God had seemed to call her by name in the night, assuring her He knew where she was. Perhaps, even, where she was going. Encouraged, she read the next verse: “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee—”Yes! Yes! Yes! One could lie back in the Father’s arms and rest,
float
through the deep waters of life. “... when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee”!

As lightning strikes a tender stalk of wheat, so God’s Word—personal, pungent, apropos—pierced the trembling heart of the reader.

Unable to talk to any human being, and seldom to God, about the tragedy that had taken old Aunt Tilda’s life and the burden of responsibility that had settled on her, hampering and hindering her life, she understood, at last, that the Lord had known,
had cared, all the time. Into Ellie’s mind sprang the chorus of a familiar hymn: “Some thru the waters, some thru the flood, some thru the fire, but all thru the blood...”