With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) (6 page)

Coming awake in a downy, comfortable bed in a graciously appointed room in Maxwell Manor, an ordinary child would have looked around and exclaimed, “Oh, how pretty, how nice!” One would hope that Kerry, with her Scripture-saturated mind, would find her heart overflowing with something like, “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.” But Kerry’s reaction—perhaps a natural one in view of the disappointments she had experienced all her life—was cautious: “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust,” came to mind. This was followed after a long moment by a hesitant “Alleluia.”

It was this alleluia Gladdy, the maid, heard when she entered the room, a congregation of one for Kerry’s faint praise. It’s hard to say who was the most startled—the praiser or the congregation. Seeing the maid for the first time, Kerry clutched the blankets around her, raising her head from the pillow and staring at the apparition that was Gladys McBean.

Gladdy was a broomstick of a girl with unmanageable hair of a strawberry color, impressive in its wildness. This mop of hair stood out from her head like an explosion of last year’s straw stack, making her head appear to be as wide as her narrow shoulders. She was properly uniformed, however, and this allayed somewhat Kerry’s sudden spurt of anxiety.

“Was yer prayin’?” Gladdy questioned, stepping to the side of the bed. “Or singin’, maybe?”

Kerry’s imagination was immediately captured; young as she was, she recognized in Gladdy one of a kind; her kind.

With her eyebrows almost disappearing into her hair, her hands red and rough, her face untroubled by the worries of the world, Gladdy (her nickname suited her disposition) was unlike anyone Kerry had ever met. Granted, her circle of acquaintances was limited; but anyone with a lick of discernment would see the little maid as a person in her own right. Though Gladdy was learning the rules and would usually adhere to them, one never knew just when she would burst asunder the bands of decorum and be herself.

Just now she was apparently uncertain how to handle this particular situation; never before had she welcomed a stranger to the household by standing at the bedside. In all things, she strove to do what Mrs. Finch, her mentor, would do. In Gladdy’s opinion Mrs. Finch was a fount of knowledge, the final authority, and to be emulated closely. But this was one situation
that hadn’t been covered in Mrs. Finch’s training sessions; she had simply directed Gladdy to “the new missy’s room” to awaken her, prepare her for a bath and breakfast, and hurry about it. Gladdy was, quite literally, aquiver with the magnitude of her obligation. But first off, she had faced this surprising comment and was caught untrained for it and unprepared.

“I was just saying alleluia.” Kerry answered Gladdy’s spontaneous question defensively, as if ejaculations of praise were common occurrences and beyond notice.

“Hallelujah,” Gladdy repeated, savoring the word. “I never heard anybody say it before. That’s why—”

It was all Kerry needed. Sitting up abruptly, drawing up her knees and clasping them in her arms, she said earnestly, “Not
hal
-le-lu-jah—alleluia. King James says alleluia. But,” she added kindly, noting the confusion on the face of the little maid, “I think it means the same thing.”

“King James?” Gladdy repeated, that being the part of Kerry’s explanation she understood best. “We haven’t got a King James,” she said scornfully, for once superior to somebody in her knowledge. “We’ve got a queen—Queen Victoria. God bless the queen!” she finished, as Mrs. Finch herself might have.

“God bless the queen,” Kerry responded properly and automatically, adding, “Well, I know, silly. But she didn’t write the Bible, did she?”

Gladdy was nonplussed, and her quick defense of the good queen stuck in her throat. “She could of,” she said feebly, “if she wanted to. She can do anyfing she wants to. You can, when you’re queen, you know. Anyway, why was you sayin’ alleluia, all alone, and early in the morning like this, not even in church?”

It didn’t make sense to Gladdy. And Gladdy, unlike the “new missy,” was not given to flights of fancy; nothing in her neglected life had encouraged it.

“It’s a shout of praise,” Kerry explained.

“Well, yours was more of a whisper. So, did somefing good happen? Or was you just practicing—in hopes of somefing good happening?” Hope, Gladdy could understand, being of an unquenchably optimistic nature. It didn’t take much for Gladdy to skip and rejoice, in her own way. She was, after all, not much older than the new missy and was no stranger to deprivation, disappointment, even abuse. Gladdy McBean was a survivor.

Not knowing whether this strange girl resembled the despised Cordelia and would hear her confidences and make fun of them, Kerry grew stubborn about revealing the feelings that had prompted her experiment with praise. As usual, when backed into a corner or when uncomfortable or when words simply failed her, Kerry resorted to Scripture, though, if she were questioned about it, oftentimes she didn’t half understand what she was quoting.

Quoting Scripture, Kerry had found, usually resulted in setting the opponent at a disadvantage, perhaps giving Kerry an opportunity to gather her wits about her. Sometimes, she had noted, it tended to infuriate the other party. Once, taking Miss Perley’s combs back to her, which she had somehow left in the Ferne room, Kerry had looked around at the clothes scattered everywhere, the bed unmade, the soiled dishes on the table, and said, innocently enough, “Where no oxen are, the crib is clean.” Miss Perley’s ordinary treatment of Kerry—at least in the presence of her father—was fawning and petting, but in this instance she had flushed an ugly red, snatched up her combs, and said, “You’re too lippy by far, Miss Smarty!”

Now again, Scripture came readily to Kerry’s defense: “A prudent man concealeth knowledge,” she quoted primly, thus confusing Gladdy more than ever.

“Man? What man?” the little maid asked, momentarily forgetting the bath preparations Mrs. Finch had instructed her to make.

Kerry sighed, sorry she’d brought it up. “It says
man,
but it means women, too, see?”

Gladdy moved across the room to the windows, gave the drapes a yank, and said saucily, suddenly quite sure she had nothing to fear from this newcomer, “No, I don’t see. And now maybe you can see a little better. It’s a sunny day out there,
see?
”

Kerry slid her legs from under the covers, stretched to reach the floor, and stood up. Her attention was drawn first to the dainty nightgown that fell around her ankles in soft luxury, unlike anything she had seen, and certainly like nothing she had worn.

“Who put me to bed?” she asked, half-memories coming to mind.

“Mrs. Finch, I guess,” Gladdy answered. “Now if you’ll just take it orf, we’ll give you the baff you shoulda had last night. I’m Gladys, but I’m called Gladdy, and I’m Mrs. Finch’s helper.” Associating herself with the all-powerful Mrs. Finch seemed more important, somehow, than maid. “Now then, here comes the baffwater—”

Mrs. Finch’s helper turned importantly to the door and ushered in an elderly man. His hair was thinning on top of his head, he was long and thin of body and had a sharp, red nose that twitched from time to time—he was Finch, butler, valet, runner of the household, and now bearer of a container of hot water. He was followed by a nondescript man of indeterminate age, of lackluster color and appearance—Biddle, gardener, handyman, and just now bearer of a zinc tub.

At their appearance Kerry had quickly pulled the corner of the bedding around her nightgown-sheathed form, but the two men seemed not to see her. The tub was set in front of the fireplace, the water poured into it, and Biddle and Finch departed with never a word spoken. But the twitch of Finch’s nose seemed to indicate the guest’s inferiority.

“All right, orf wiff it,” Gladdy commanded, and, when Kerry hesitated, “Take it orf so’s you can baff.”

Gladdy was lately come from the slums of London, gathered up in a sweep that culled the streets for likely candidates for positions in the new world. Some would become wives for bachelors advertising for them; others, like Gladdy, too odd to catch even the most lonely settler’s eye, to go into service. It had seemed an excellent opportunity to the street urchin and to the parents who were overburdened and overwhelmed with a large
family of children usually left to their own devices, roaming at will, picking up a few cents when possible, and keeping from underfoot at the same time.

Though reluctant, Kerry obeyed, having been “baffed” from time to time by Mrs. Peabody or Miss Perley. But never before had her surroundings been so pleasant, never had the soap been so fragrant nor the room so cozily warm. The towel had always been thin and harsh; the clothes held out to her had always been her own faded, outgrown garments, sometimes the very ones she had removed.

“I’ll have you know,” Gladdy was saying proudly, “that this house has a baffroom just for baffing. Missus Maxwell thought you’d ravver have one in your own room this time. Snuglike, in front of the fire.” Just when the fire in the fireplace had been lit and fed, the sleeping Kerry had not known. But it was warm, and it was inviting, and Kerry submitted happily enough.

Ablutions over, she was bundled into a luxurious towel while Gladdy struggled to brush her dark curls, curls that had never known proper cutting and that now, encouraged by the soft water, good sudsing, and sufficient rinsing, curled riotously around her face, over her shoulders, and down her back.

“Coo,” Gladdy said admiringly, “it’s pretty. But,” she added quickly, “it needs cuttin’ orfly bad. Didn’t no one never give yer a hair cut?”

What made Gladdy an expert on hair care was questionable, seeing as how her own wild and frizzy mop totally defied control.

The clothes Gladdy offered were secondhand, being outgrown by “Miss Frances” according to the maid, whose voice softened as she spoke of the other young person under the Maxwell roof.

“Well, where is she? Tell me about her!” Kerry demanded, eager yet hesitant to meet the girl mentioned first by her aunt, now by the maid, and always with a certain tenderness. Her experience with friendships had not been encouraging, but in spite of that, she was finding herself excited at the prospect. To date her new acquaintances had been limited to her aunt, a fat, barely remembered someone undressing her, and this wild-haired creature who was giving her a “baff” and remarking on her uncut tresses.

“She’s waitin’ to meet yer,” Gladdy said in reference to Miss Frances. “She won’t have her brefuss until you get there. Most times you’ll go downstairs to eat, but Miss Frances always has her brefuss in her room. Unless you’re sick. You’re not sick, are yer?”

“I’m perfectly well,” Kerry answered rather huffily. “I’m just small.” This eating in her room—rather a strange practice, Kerry thought, but a nice one. She and her papa had eaten at Mrs. Peabody’s boarding house table . . . most of the time. When Papa didn’t have enough “blunt,” as he called it, they sneaked food into their room, food purchased at the shop on the corner—pasties, usually, and not bad. When Miss Perley joined them it became a picnic, with the added excitement of keeping it from the landlady; they carefully picked up every crumb and hid all signs of their lawlessness. Once, when she was sick with a putrid throat, Mrs. Peabody had brought soup in to her and hadn’t even scolded when some of it slopped on the bedding. No, Mrs. Peabody hadn’t been mean; it was her daughter, Cordelia, who was a snitch and who gladly told her ma whenever she found signs of food in the Ferne room. Kerry had always been afraid Papa would refuse entrance to Cordelia, who was the only playmate, albeit an undependable friend, Kerry had.

But here, in this house, somewhere under the spreading roof, was Miss Frances, surely much nicer than Cordelia, if tones of voice meant anything.

“How come,” Kerry asked curiously, “Miss Frances eats her brefuss . . .
breakfast
in her room? Is
she
sick?”

“Miss Frances ain’t—isn’t in good helf,” the London waif explained. “Some days she feels better than ovvers, and Gideon takes her for a drive, or somefing like that.”

“How is she today?”

“I don’t know, maybe good, cause Mrs. Finch said to take you to her room as soon as you was baffed and dressed.”

Walking down the hall in Gladdy’s wake, clad in sweet-smelling clothing of unknown material and style but making her feel pretty just to be in it, Kerry felt as if she were in a dream. Was this real? Would it . . . could it . . . last?

But the portraits that graced the halls were heavy, imposing, substantial. Stiffly posed, the Maxwell ancestors gazed condescendingly on the humble passersby from gilded frames, secure in their exalted position, unshaken from their eternal imperturbability.

Down this hallway trod the two small beneficiaries of Maxwell largess: the maid who was nobody in her own right but who felt herself wonderfully superior to underprivileged maids serving a household of less consequence; the orphan, dependent upon Maxwell bounty for her very existence, but who would forever resist all efforts to restrain or constrain her uniqueness.

Each girl watched the tips of her shoes as she walked, as first one and then the other peeped from below the hem of her skirt. The girls’ satisfaction dimmed their regard for the rich carpet that glowed underfoot and closed their eyes to the intimidating stare of generations of Maxwells, who certainly must have sniffed in disdain at the insignificant parade: Gladdy, reveling in serge-topped boots laced halfway up her leg, and costing, as she was occasionally reminded by Mrs. Finch,
sixty cents;
Kerry, with a satisfying tingle up her backbone, reveling in chocolate-colored, nine-button shoes of the best kangaroo stock, only a little too large and costing, had she known it, $1.65, a grand sum indeed.