With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) (29 page)

“Neder should you let her get avay if she’s da right vun. An’ you ain’t got long to make up your min’!”

“Will you help me pray, my friend?”

Gregor assured Connor that he would, adding, “An’ you, Connor, how about you praying aboud me and, me an’ . . . dis Della arrangement.”

And so it was agreed. They parted company, each much more at ease than before, and feeling that, having committed their way to the Lord and trusting in Him, He would bring it to pass.

K
erry and Gladdy had another Sunday dinner at the Morrisons’, and not only were Gregor and Connor included, but now Dudley must come, too. With his new status as husband-to-be and his plans to take to the road very soon, trekking even farther north and west, there was a dignity about the young man that had been missing when his life was at loose ends and his dreams hopeless.

Kerry worked her wiles, such as they were, on Connor Dougal. Why was it, she wondered, more frustrated than was called for, that he directed such straight looks at her? Why was there very little laughter and repartee on his part, when he was not a humorless person? Why did she feel that Cupid’s bows were falling short of their mark? Half-sick with the sham and the charade, Kerry’s feelings dropped to an all-time low.

It’s not working!
she thought,
and
I can’t wait around here forever. I guess I’ll have to corner him, accuse him and destroy him, and do it ruthlessly!
And it all seemed sadly dissatisfying.

When dinner was over and Mary and Mam were down for their needed Sunday afternoon rest, the young women—Kerry and Gladdy, Molly and Margo—enjoyed the comradeship of doing up the dishes together while the men took themselves off to the shade of a nearby poplar. Even Kerry, who had no previous experience, plunged in and helped.

“Have you had any success in finding a place?” Molly asked.

Kerry shook her head. “No, and I’ll not look much longer.”

Gladdy glanced at her sharply. Was this trip’s purpose, for Kerry, about to come to an end?

“You could take our buggy for a day, if you wish,” Molly said, rubbing the dishrag with Fels Naptha and working up a suds, “and drive around the area. Sometimes people don’t really know how badly they want to leave until the opportunity presents itself. Cash speaks louder than words in instances like that.”

“Thanks, but it isn’t a matter of life and death,” Kerry explained, not wanting to buy a place by any stretch of the imagination; simply needing an excuse to stay in Bliss.

“Did it ever occur to you,” Gladdy asked later in the privacy of their room at the stopping place, “that you’re being as deceitful as Connor Dougal was?”

Kerry flared angrily. “Don’t mention my name in the same breath with that pious trickster! It isn’t the same thing at all! He deliberately set about to victimize—”

“And you’re not?”

“He dropped her like her feelings didn’t matter!”

“Won’t you, when this is over?”

“She never heard from him again!”

“Will they hear from you? Face it, Kerry. You are deceiving them, and you don’t care about their feelings; you’ll pull out of here once Connor is unmasked and go off and leave a real mess here for others to handle. Right?”

“It has to be done,” Kerry persisted stubbornly, and Gladdy fell silent.

But a little seed had been planted, and try as she would, Kerry couldn’t get it out of her mind. The remainder of the day and into the evening she was heavyhearted, restless, torn. At last she threw up her hands, figuratively speaking, in capitulation to what Gladdy had said, and admitted to herself with painful honesty that she was nothing but a miserable fraud, no better than the man she had come to persecute.

With Gladdy already retired for the night, Ida said, “I’m going to my room, Kerry. Will you put out the lamp, please, when you come to bed?” and Kerry, troubled and despairing, went outside, to stand alone in the fragrant night and look up at the stars. Their steadfastness, their quiet, seemed to mock her unquiet spirit.

“‘Behold,’” she cried out to them silently, tears on her cheeks, “‘for peace I had great bitterness.’”

They twinkled on, they shimmered, distant and silent. Feeling like a speck in comparison, Kerry prayed the first spontaneous prayer of her life, tossing it out into endless whirling space to find its way—she knew not where.

But first it was natural, being Kerry and overwhelmed by heaven’s vastness, that a verse of Scripture would come into her mind: “‘When I consider thy heavens,’” she murmured brokenly, “‘the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him?’”

Then she explained humbly—and it was the little waif Kerry speaking—“O Lord, in your Book, when it says ‘him,’ I believe it means ‘her,’ too. Then, O Lord, ‘what is woman, that thou art mindful of her?’ Please, O Lord,” and the cry was a prayer, “be mindful of me!”

The night continued silent, the air continued fragrant, the stars were unchanging. Kerry went inside, prepared herself for bed, blew out the lamp, climbed into bed, closed her eyes, and felt that the dark wasn’t as impenetrable as it had seemed before she prayed.

Gregor Slovinski stopped by the Connor Dougal place to drop off the mail he had collected on his trip to the post office. Finding Connor taking a break with a cup of coffee and a cold biscuit, Gregor joined him at the table.

“How’s it going?” Connor asked. “I don’t see as much of you as I did before you moved. Having the care of two places really doubles your work. Or will, when Dudley is gone. How are you getting along with Della?” Might as well be blunt about it, Connor figured.

“So far, so good,” Gregor said, spreading syrup on a biscuit and taking a huge bite out of it. “Vat a voman!”

Connor looked at his friend with surprise, perhaps even awe. “You’re kidding, surely! You almost sounded admiring. What would prompt such an evaluation of the brittle and bristly Della?”

“Lissen, my fren’,” Gregor said, seriously. “All dat voman needs is prober handling. You godda know da prober vay to vork mit her. Some peeble don’t . . . ain’t . . .” Gregor was at a loss for the “prober” words to express himself. But he tried. “What I mean iss, she’s been left to run vild over peeble all her life. I betcha she done it to her ma and pa; I betcha she done it to her husban’. I betcha it made her unhappy, doin’ it! Ever’body needs to know where da boundaries iss. Animals need ’em, shildren need ’em, peeble need ’em. Yah?”

“Well, I knew her husband a little; he died soon after I came. He was a good man by all accounts and very good to Della. But you’re right, he didn’t stand up to her. As for Dudley, well, kids are taught to respect their elders. Until recently, Dudley has been as tame as a house cat. Seems he’s finally getting a backbone, and I’m glad for him. It’ll make the difference between a miserable existence as an underdog, or becoming an independent man with a life of his own.”

“Dat Gladdy,” Gregor said admiringly, between sips of scalding hot coffee, “ain’t she somepin’?”

“Dudley’s a lucky young man. I predict a good life for them. A hard one, but a good one. When are they leaving, by the way?”

“Two, t’ree weeks. Now, Connor, vat aboud dat udder young voman, Kerry Ferne? Ain’t we been prayin’? If you don’t get a move on, my fren’, she’ll be gone. Den vat? You’ll be a lonesome old bachelor once more, vit no hopes of anyt’ing bedder.”

Connor was silent for a moment. “I know,” he said finally. “But it’s not right, somehow. I’ll just keep praying and waiting, if that’s what it takes. Not everyone is as lucky as you, Gregor, to fall into the hands
and lands
of the ‘prober’ female.”

Gregor roared his mighty laugh. “Hah, Hah! Vell, I may be on her lands, my fren’, but I ain’t in her hands!” And he slapped Connor on the shoulder until Connor’s cup slopped its coffee, and the chair on which he was sitting shook and wobbled.

“Easy, you great wooly mammoth!”

“I bedder get back home, or dere von’t be no more ubside-down cake for me. Dat would teach me a lesson! Yah!” Gregor grinned, and his huge frame trembled in mock fear of the dreaded Della.

“Upside-down cake! You’re turning her
world
upside down! Yah!”

“Take your Bibles,” the pastor said, “and turn to the first verse of the Gospel according to St. John.”

There was a shifting of the congregation as they opened their well-worn Bibles. Rough fingers parted the fragile pages tenderly, locating the proper selection.

“‘In the beginning,’” read Parker Jones, “‘was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.’”

Reading from her neighbor’s Bible, Kerry heard the words as thunder in her ears.
The Word was with God, the Word was God.

What did it mean? Using words from the Bible as she did, having memorized as many of them as she had, still the meaning of
the Word
escaped her.

But Parker Jones was not done.

“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us,” he explained earnestly. “His name was Jesus. He came down and lived among us, and men beheld His glory—”

And women, Pastor. And women!
cried the listening Kerry silently, her mind just beginning to recognize and her heart just beginning to behold.

“—the glory that was his as the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

In that instant, in a blinding insight, Kerry understood that she had known the word, but not the
Word.
Acquainting herself with the one, she had overlooked the other. Filling her head with the word, her heart had been barren of the Word. And how barren it was! How starving! Like a flower that has sprouted beside an oasis but has never partaken, she thirsted. Parker Jones was continuing, enlightening her further, and she drank it in.

“John tells us that the world didn’t know Him, didn’t recognize Him, didn’t receive Him. This holds true in our day also. Though we have our churches, our preachers, our Bibles, men and women still live in ignorance of the Word. ‘But as many as receive him,’” the voice of the pastor lifted with the good news and Kerry’s hopes with it, “‘he gives the right to become the children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, but born of God.’”