With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) (12 page)

“It’s Kerry. What’s wrong? May I come in?”

After a long silence Franny’s muffled voice gave permission. She was prostrate on her bed, face white in the gloom, eyes puffed.

Kerry flew to her side. “Franny! Whatever is wrong? What is it?”

“You mustn’t be concerned, Kerry. I’m just ill today. That’s all—ill.”

“But you’ve been so well, so . . . happy.”

Franny was silent, too silent; it was an agonizing silence.

“Shall I get Auntie?” Kerry asked, worried and perplexed.

Franny gave a short laugh; one would have called it a bitter laugh if one didn’t know Frances any better than that. “My heavens, no. Above all people, don’t call Aunt Charlotte. Just leave me be, Kerry. I’ll be all right. Please, dear.”

Kerry crept away with the first real unhappiness she had felt in her aunt’s home. That it touched her beloved Franny was worse, she believed, than if she herself were the one suffering.

At the dinner table that evening, Sebastian being absent and only Kerry and Charlotte present, an empty chair gaped loudly of Frances’s absence; she had so often, of late, been present,
adding her special cheer to the occasion. It was a quiet, gloomy affair.

Finally Charlotte, with a sigh, laid aside her serviette, and said, “There is a problem, a very real problem to be faced, Kerry. Particularly by Frances, and we must help her face it and bear the pain.”

“What, Aunt? What’s wrong? Oh, I can hardly stand it . . . I hurt so.”

“Frances hurts far more. Yes, I’ll tell you about it, my dear. You are old enough to be treated as an adult, and we mustn’t ignore that. You’ll need to be an adult, certainly, to help Frances.”

“Anything!” Kerry promised.

“It seems Señor Garibaldi,” Charlotte said in a strained voice, “has been enticing Frances to fall in love with him. By little actions, soft gripping of her hands, looking into her eyes and, finally, declaring her to be his true love.”

“But, Aunt . . . is that so bad? It’s made Franny come alive. She’s been feeling so much better, and I think it’s all because she has hope, now, of a normal future—”

“She has hope of nothing!” Charlotte said in a hard voice. “That man is a blackguard . . . an unprincipled wretch—”

Charlotte’s wrath caused her voice to rise, but her vocabulary was inadequate to express her feelings, and she stumbled now with various descriptions of the dancing master, all of them insulting: shameless fortune hunter, traitor, knave, mercenary.

Kerry’s face must have shown her bewilderment, for Charlotte ceased her tirade, brought her serviette to her face for a moment, and spoke more calmly. Garibaldi (he no longer rated the “Señor”) was a snake in the grass who had inveigled himself into Frances’s affections, very soon urging marriage upon her, which was to be a fleeing away in the night, a private ceremony, then and only then making an announcement to the family. A romantic escapade, he had termed it.

“But, Aunt Charlotte—I still don’t see—”

“The man is a charlatan, Kerry! A mountebank! With the lowest of purposes!”

“How do we know—”

“From Gideon, that’s how.”

Gideon, it seemed, while driving the dancing master back and forth, had become a confidant. From the beginning, Señor Garibaldi had been interested in the family’s wealth. He had assumed that Miss Frances, being the oldest, was heiress to it all. And he had, forthwith, “pressed his suit.” Poor, dear Frances—gullible, taken in by his protestations of love, yearning for someone to love, had been easy prey.

Somewhere along the way Garibaldi had brought up to Franny the subject of her parentage—her mother and father, where were they? Abroad, perhaps? Frances had quickly explained that her parents were dead, that she had been taken in by dear Aunt Charlotte and Uncle Sebastian, and that she was, in fact, a penniless orphan, dependent on their love and provision.

“The change in him was instantaneous, I understand,” Charlotte said with pity. “In fact, his whole expression revealed his dismay. He turned cold, stepped away from her, with condemnation in his eyes for her as though she had betrayed him. Not understanding . . . perhaps not daring to, Frances cried out . . . asking why it mattered, telling him she never had any expectations of living in wealth . . . that she was a simple woman, with simple desires—”

“Poor Franny!” To so belittle herself! And all for nothing! “Did he . . . spurn her?” Kerry stumbled over the word.

“Worse. He accused her of toying with his affections, of leading him on. Franny fainted, totally overcome, and Garibaldi left her lying there and made his escape. How do I know these details? Gladdy was there, behind the door, hearing it all. She had gone up, hoping to get in on the lesson, but slipped behind the door and listened when she realized something most unnatural was going on. It was she who helped Frances up and got her to her room. Then of course she came for me. Frances, trembling and broken, couldn’t explain much. So between what Gideon, Gladdy, and the little Frances said, I pieced together the sordid story. Oh, the cad!”

Recalling Franny’s white face and her dead eyes, a great fear welled up in Kerry’s heart. What, oh what, did darling Franny have to live for now? Having poor health—for even now she appeared sick, terribly sick, a sickness for which there was no pill, no potion; nothing to occupy her days from now on out; no hope of independence—the future, for Franny, appeared to be a vast wasteland of emptiness.

Strange, that when thrown into a desperate crisis, there was no life-giving, hope-building, faith-strengthening Scripture; among the many Kerry knew, none sprang to mind. If she’d been a little older, a little wiser, and better taught, Kerry might have wondered at this. As it was, she carried her heartache alone, never knowing there was a Friend who surpassed Franny for gentleness, a Burden-bearer who surpassed Aunt Charlotte for comfort, a Father who was more faithful than she could comprehend.

“Oh, Aunt,” she cried, devastated, “whatever will happen to her?”

W
ith the sound of the shriek still echoing through the schoolroom, everyone seemed to freeze momentarily in place. When the echoes died out the silence was as thunderous, in its way, as the blood-curdling scream. Parker Jones’s sermon notes drooped in his hand; a fussy baby, startled out of its small whimper, stared wide-eyed at it knew not what.

Dudley was the first to move. Galvanized into action, he jumped over the outstretched legs of his companions, curveted around the heater, leaped the short aisle in two strides, and turned toward the couple seated at a desk in the center of the room.

Della’s mouth was stretched in a soundless scream, her eyes staring, fixed on her husband. At her side, Henley was slumped forward, his face pressed onto a much-marked desk, just below the initials JB and RM, which were twined together for perpetuity by some forgotten childish swain and more enduring perhaps than the one who carved it. Certainly the desk’s present occupant—face on its marred surface, hands hanging at his side—appeared to have fled this “vale of tears.”

Now there was a shifting of the congregation; a tide moved the crowd as though some giant finger stirred in their midst; all eyes were centered on the scene being enacted in the middle of the room. Parker Jones dropped his notes and hurried forward. From the benches at the side of the room two men leaped into action, one to lift Henley’s head and attempt to look into his eyes, the other to take a wrist and feel for a pulse. They were homesteaders in the Bliss area—Connor Dougal and Gregor Slovinski, each tall, powerful, supremely masculine. As they joined Dudley over the form of his father, none of them knew the bonds this day’s business would make between the three of them and the trouble.

Callused but caring hands were moving Della out of the crowded space, comforting arms were placed around her as the women of the congregation, shocked and pale, reached out with the only help they could give at the moment.

“Clear a bench,” Connor Dougal directed, and its occupants scattered, to stand against the wall, eyes staring from their heads, lips moving soundlessly, perhaps in prayer.

“Help us move him,” Connor continued, and willing hands grasped the dangling legs, the limp arms, and heaved Henley from his crouched position in the childish seat to the narrow bench running down the side of the schoolroom. Here he was laid, one hand and arm falling helplessly toward the floor. Gregor Slovinski’s big fingers fumbled with Henley’s shirt collar and tie, loosening them and unbuttoning the front of his shirt.

Beyond that there seemed little anyone could do. The crowd looked on helplessly as Connor Dougal began chafing Henley’s hands. Gregor Slovinski put an ear to Henley’s chest—his too-motionless chest. The crowd against the wall and in the other seats looked questioningly toward the big Slav as he raised his cinnamon-colored head and spoke through his cinnamon-colored beard the words they dreaded to hear: “Notting, I hear notting. You give a lissen,” and he beckoned forward one figure in the group—Gramma Jurgenson. Bliss’s midwife, and probably
the best prepared of anyone in Bliss to deal with sickness and trauma, as well as childbirth, Gramma went through the same procedures as had Connor and Gregor. She too shook a head, having checked the pulse and breath and finding neither.

“Gone,” she said briefly. “Probably apoplexy.”

Della sobbed aloud; Dudley, standing off to the side, felt as though the world were reeling and put out a hand to the nearest elbow for support. It was Matilda’s, and for a moment they held onto each other; then, even then, remembering the proper thing, they stepped apart.

Face-to-face with his first death as a pastor, Parker Jones called for attention and prayer. Whether Della heard him is questionable; her face told the story: disbelief, struggling with panic.

Between his mother’s stricken countenance and his father’s still face, Dudley felt as though he were in a bad dream. Or a nightmare that was worse, if such could be, than the one of the previous night, a night that now seemed a long time ago and a million miles away. At least he had awakened from that one; there would be no awakening from the horror of this one.

Connor Dougal was quietly seeing to the removal of the body of Henley Baldwin. “Do you have a wagon?” he asked Gregor. “I rode, myself.”

“Yah, I got vagon,” Gregor answered, nodding. “And I’ll bring it to d’ gate. Somebody,” and his gaze circled the room, “help wit’ the Baldwin rig, a’right?”

Parker Jones was administering what solace he could to the colorless Della. Two of the women were rubbing her hands, one on either side; another was wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. Though the day was warm and bright with sunshine, Della was shivering, and the shawl would help.

Blankets were collected from someone’s wagon and placed on the bottom of Gregor’s wagon, with one reserved to cover the staring face of the dead man. One of the Jurgenson boys held the horses, and someone brought around the Baldwin buggy and horse, with Dudley’s horse tied behind.

Though Connor Dougal was prepared to lift the lifeless form of his neighbor and carry it to the wagon, Gregor was the likely one for the job, and he knew it. Making his way back through the crowd and shouldering the younger man aside with a grunt, Gregor bent his mighty frame, gathered Henley into his arms as a child would cradle a rag doll, and made his way through the stunned crowd to the wagon.

The congregation followed silently as Della was half led, half carried by Parker Jones and Connor Dougal, helped into the buggy (no foolish babble now about assistance—without it the half-fainting woman would never make it home).

“Will you drive, son, or shall I?” Connor asked Dudley. Not that he was of an age to be a father figure to the younger man, but the gentle term was offered as a measure of comfort. Indeed, Connor Dougal was only in his mid-twenties, but he was a vigorous, hardened man of the soil, one of Bliss’s best advertisements.

Having come from Scotland and homesteaded next to the Baldwins as soon as he was old enough to stake a claim, Connor Dougal had carved his small domain from the thick bush as they all had and were still doing. Only a “bee” at the time of the raising of his buildings—cabin and barn—had given assistance. In turn, that same help was offered readily to other settlers in their time of need. It was a system that threaded the frontier with strong bonds—they needed each other, and no one knew when that need would arise. Here was one example: Henley Baldwin, alive and singing a hymn one moment, stone-cold dead the next. Shivers of fear touched the good folk of Bliss—how quickly, how unexpectedly tragedy could happen. If Parker Jones were smart, the deacons thought to a man, he would strike while the iron was hot and, next Sunday, warn sinners that they were in imminent danger of facing their Maker. Religion was serious business on the frontier.

But Parker Jones, too compassionate for devious tactics, walked back to his small log parsonage with heaviness of heart. Had he been—to the dead man—all that a pastor should be?
Ordinarily taking Sunday dinner with Molly Morrison and her family, he had made his excuses and walked alone to face his responsibility or the lack of it. Feeling the call of God on his young life, preparing himself at Bible school in the east, answering the call of this small rural congregation in the northern reaches of Saskatchewan, Parker quaked at the accountability that was his. Needing a wife, wanting a wife, still he hesitated, wondering how he might divide his attention and feeling that God might come off second best. It was a decision of mammoth proportions, to Parker Jones.