With Love from Bliss Page 6

  As if Finch, who knew quality when he saw it, would ever consider such an offer! Still, Charlotte recognized later, it had been used as a lever. But Finch was not the man she thought if he were tempted by all that new wealth. There would be no prestige at all in working for the ostentatious house down the street.

  Charlotte well remembered the first time Sophie Oswald had come to call. She had shaken hands with her hostess as was right and proper, but then she had casually removed her veils, gloves, and wrap, and handed them to Finch. Even he, in fact he particularly, had been haughtily scornful of this embarrassing error in protocol. She had seen the disapproval in his eyes as Sophie Oswald had then proceeded around the room, shaking hands with the other ladies—a horrible gaffe! It would serve Finch right, she thought now, if she threatened to turn him over to the Oswalds.

  On the other hand, if Finch once again declared himself overworked, it might be wise to consider additional help rather than another raise in pay for the existing staff. Yes, that might be the way to go. Franny’s health precluded being sent away to school, and her lessons, though sketchy, had been cared for by a visiting tutor. Now, with Kerry as well to educate, a live-in tutor might be the very thing. Perhaps a governess—someone who could instill in the astonishing Kerry a semblance of common sense along with book learning.

  Therefore she was able to turn to Finch when he finally appeared behind a dinner cart and say casually, “I can see that your tasks seem too heavy, Finch. I believe it’s only right and proper that we relieve you of some of the work, particularly the care of the young ladies, and set about looking for a governess. The Oswalds, I understand, have a governess for their girls and a tutor for their boys.”

  Foiled! the dismayed flash in Finch’s eye seemed to say. One more person to tend to had not been what he had in mind. A governess! A new missy, and now a governess! The gloom on Finch’s long face put somewhat of a damper on the meal, and Charlotte was relieved when he disappeared at last.

  “You know, my dear,” she said to her husband, who was all unaware of the current swirling around his dinner table, “we’re going to have to see to a governess for the girls.”

  “Where are they, by the way? I thought they’d grace the dinner table tonight.”

  “They’ve talked and laughed all day long, though I did insist on a rest for each of them this afternoon. Frances is quite worn out tonight, so I deemed it wise to send their dinner on up to them.” Charlotte sighed. “I’m sure that’s back of this new pressure from Finch concerning more money. Did you hear what I said, Sebastian, about a governess? Doesn’t it seem the sensible way to go, now that we have two female young people to train and bring up properly?”

  Sebastian, replete with a good English boiled dinner complete with Yorkshire pudding and topped off with blancmange, his favorite pudding, mundane though it was, patted his lips and said expansively, “Whatever you think best, my love.” And so it was settled.

  Gladdy having managed to cut her finger on a knife she was washing, Mrs. Finch herself had appeared in the room where the girls were finishing their dinner, to gather up their dishes and see for herself how the new missy and the established missy were hitting it off, if indeed they were. She too took note of the happy faces and the unending stream of conversation between the young lady and the child.

  When Olga Finch had turned toward the hall and was out of hearing range, Kerry, watching with awe the waddling, generous proportions of cook’s anatomy, murmured her last verse of the day, changing only the gender (after all, she had concluded that him could just as well refer to her): “She covereth her face with her fatness, and maketh collops of fat on her flanks.”

  Brumley’s Elixir may be the answer,” Della Baldwin mused aloud, her head, tidily bound with thin brown braids, bent over a newspaper. It was an outdated paper, sent to the Baldwin home by Della’s brother, who worked on the Winnipeg Free Press and often bundled up a dozen papers at a time and sent them off to the bush family.

  “Huh?” Dudley said and stopped chewing momentarily. The sound of his own toast crunching in his ears had caused his mother’s words to be indistinct.

  “Don’t say ‘huh,’ Dudley,” Della corrected automatically, without looking up at the child-man sitting across the table from her. Gangly of leg and arm, awkward of movement, and always hungry, Dudley was concentrating on his breakfast and the effort to bring toast to his mouth without suffering the indignity of its thick layer of golden syrup dripping on his hand, or worse, his Sunday shirt.

  His mother looked around the edge of the paper, eyes sorrowful, first of all over the rudeness of his “huh” and then his attention to other, less important details such as food, when his mother had spoken to him.

  “Uh, pardon, Mum.” Having seen her look, Dudley hastened to make the expected corrections.

  Isolated, backwoodsy, in the heart of the Canadian bush the Baldwins might be, but there would be no carelessness of speech or manners in Della’s house, thank you!

  “That’s better, dear. Now then, this that I’m reading should be of interest to you. I was saying that Brumley’s Elixir could be the answer.”

  “The answer, Mum?” Dudley gave a surreptitious lick to one side of the toast where a drop of syrup was in imminent danger of falling.

  “The answer to your problem, Dudley.”

  “My problem?” Dudley, now attentive, asked cautiously. There were numerous things that he wasn’t anxious for his mother to know—smoking occasionally behind the barn, for instance.

  “Yes, Dudley, your problem.” Della sighed and continued patiently, “Your pimples.”

  At least she didn’t know about the smoking. Dudley was both relieved and embarrassed—relieved that his mother apparently didn’t know—yet—about the smoking, embarrassed that such a personal thing as his “problem” should be so frankly and ruthlessly exposed. His skin problem, endured by many young people his age, was a constant source of concern to his mother. He would have been happy to forget it; one glance in the mirror in the morning as he combed his hair, and the youthful ailment could be ignored for the remainder of the day.

  Dudley was an only child. He often wished for a brother or sister, if only to keep his mother’s attention focused somewhere else once in a while! Now he poured himself some milk, missing the glass and slopping a few drops. About to swipe at it with his cuff, he caught his mother’s reproachful eye. She laid the paper aside with another sigh, reached for a dish towel, and mopped up the small mess. At the same time Henley, Della’s husband and Dudley’s father, closed the kitchen door behind him, set down a pail of milk, took off his hat, and grinned at the familiar scene—Dudley spilling something, Della wiping it up.

  “Boys will be boys, eh?” he said with good humor.

  At least he hadn’t said huh. Nevertheless, “Like father, like son,” Della reminded.

  As Dudley moved on to his third piece of toast and a second serving of fried eggs, Henley bent over the washstand located in the corner of a room that was the main living quarters for this family of three. Another section of the log house was divided into two small bedrooms. Home life, for homesteaders who braved the hazards of the primitive bush, was necessarily close quarters. For eight or nine months of the year, heat was a problem to be reckoned with, and large areas were hard to keep warm. Freezing to death was as threatening as starvation. More than one loner had been found frozen in his own bed, having been too sick or disoriented to keep his fire going, gradually falling asleep and never waking.

  Della laid the paper aside, obviously not finished with it or her thought, poured her husband a mug of coffee, brought another plate of eggs and toast from the range’s warming oven, and resumed her place.

  Henley took a seat at the round, oak table. His dark hair was touched at the temples with gray, his warm eyes were surrounded by what people called “laugh lines.” Henley was a good-natured, good-looking man.

  Henley Baldwin had a loving heart, a faithful heart, never wavering in kindne
ss toward his choice of a wife—Della of the sharp tongue and quick temper. On those rare occasions when Della’s conscience was pricked by her unreasonableness and she sought absolution, Henley would say, kindly, “Why, hon, you keep a man on his toes, that’s all. I’d probably be a poor stick of a fellow without you.” Nevertheless, to all and sundry who knew the couple and often felt sorry for the long-suffering husband, Henley deserved better.

  “I was just saying that this,” and she tapped the paper with her finger, “may be the answer to Dudley’s problem.”

  Like his son before him, Henley was puzzled. Surely she didn’t know about the smoking . . . but you never could tell about Della. She knew how to keep things to herself until the strategic moment when her triumph would be complete and the errant person proved guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. In all such matters, one thing was as sure and as certain as winter—Della would, sooner or later, face the guilty party head-on.

  Like his son before him, Henley prompted, “his problem?”

  “Henley,” she said impatiently, “his pimples, of course.” And the eyes of both parents turned on the pinking face of their son. Mouth full of breakfast, Dudley stopped chewing momentarily and looked guiltily at his parents as though sorry to have brought this problem upon them. Della studied the young face critically; Henley more casually. It was a thin face, unformed now, with only a promise of what the man would look like. Lank brown hair fell over a high forehead; the teeth, at this age, appeared too large for the narrow face; a faint fuzz sprouted from the long upper lip; and—yes indeed, numerous eruptions blossomed from ear to large ear and hairline to sensitive, tender mouth and chin.

  “He’s no worse than I was at his age,” the man offered. “He’ll outgrow the skin problems; kids always do.”

  “Still, if there is something that can be done—”

  “It don’t bother me none, Ma,” Dudley said mildly and resumed his chewing.

  “I despair of your grammar,” Della lamented, sidetracked for the moment. “Not don’t, and not Ma, for heaven’s sake! You sound just like the Jurgensons! Perhaps Scandinavians don’t know better, but you are English, Dudley, pure English. Now, what were you saying—correctly, if you please.”

  “It doesn’t bother me, Mum,” Dudley said meekly, but not too meekly to refuse to say Mummy.

  “Now, hon,” Henley interjected smoothly, as though from long practice, “what is this about pimples?”

  “Impure blood. They’re caused by impure blood,” Della said with the air of one unearthing a gold mine. “Doesn’t that sound reasonable?”

  “Impure blood?” Henley repeated, peppering his eggs. “With all this good farm food, milk, and all? I find that hard to believe. It’s probably some blockage of the pores, probably too much oil. It’s just an overabundance of youthful, er—” Henley hesitated, ignorant of the word hormones and at a loss to acceptably explain the masculine tides rising in the young man’s system—“vigor,” he finished inadequately.

  “Vigor! The only vigor I see is in his eating.” Della watched a final bite of toast disappear into her son’s mouth, noted the working of the prominent Adam’s apple in the thin throat, sighed, and turned to the paper and her original thought.

  “Yes, impure blood,” she repeated, “and these people should know what they’re talking about much more than you do, Henley. ‘Pimples and sores,’” she read, “‘are all positive signs of impure blood. No matter how it became so, it must be purified in order to obtain good health.’”

  “He has excellent health,” Henley observed. “He’s just growing fast, is all. Here, let me see that.”

  Della turned the paper over to her husband grudgingly. “Why can’t you just believe what I say, for heaven’s sake?”

  Henley located the proper place and said, “This lists additional signs of impure blood as ‘dull headache, pains in various parts of the body, sinking at the pit of the stomach’—say, I had sinking in the stomach just before I sat down here. Do you suppose that means I have impure blood?” Henley laughed, and Dudley with him. Henley was the picture of health.

  “Pet,” Della said in a certain tight tone, and both man and boy knew to beware; “Pet” spoken in this way and in this tone was not an affectionate name. She proceeded in her most gentle voice, “I have great confidence in your wisdom, Henley; you know that. But shall we consider whether, by some chance, this company—trained and practiced in the art of identifying and curing bodily ills—may be better qualified to judge such matters.” Then, gentling her tone even more until it was a soft purr, she finished with the knockout punch: “Wouldn’t you agree, . . . Hen?”

  With “Hen,” a shortening of his name meant to equate his brains with those of a barnyard chicken and only used in contempt, Henley seemed to deflate like a pricked balloon. He gave his wife one sober glance and then turned his attention to his breakfast. One had the idea that the food was not only cold but tasteless in his mouth.

  “It says,” Della continued smoothly, “that it is a wonderful remedy and every bottle is sold with a positive guarantee. Now, isn’t it worth a few cents to give your one and only son a beautiful complexion?”

  “Of course, hon. Whatever you say.”

  Dudley could never understand his father’s quiet compliance, his capitulation in every confrontation. Too young to understand the strength it took to do it, and not fully appreciating the peace that invariably followed, Dudley raged over his father’s humiliation and his mother’s cruelty. Whether to feel more anger at his mother or his father, he couldn’t decide.

  Rising, Della kissed her husband’s cheek, ruffled his hair, and said, “There’s a dear. I was sure you wouldn’t object to my ordering a bottle.”

  Folding the paper, laying it aside, and beginning to gather up the breakfast dishes, she directed, “You men go and get ready for church while I take care of the dishes and get a chicken in the oven. First, Henley my dear, I know you’ll take care of straining the milk. Dudley, you seem to have gotten a smidgen of syrup on your shirt front; wipe it off, dear. That’s my boy. Do you think you can keep yourself clean while you hitch up? Your shoes, particularly—watch where you step. I’ll be ready in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. I do so look forward to Sunday service and the inspiration of Parker Jones’s sermon. Now you pay attention this morning, Dudley, and don’t sit in the back with the Jurgenson boys. Don’t you think that’s a good suggestion, Henley?” She turned to her husband with a brilliant smile.

  Henley swallowed a last gulp of coffee, heard his name, turned toward his wife, and said apologetically, “Sorry, hon, but I was swallowing. What was it?”

  “Henley, Henley, that wool gathering will surely get you in trouble someday,” Della said lightly. “Time to stop daydreaming, Pet. I said I thought the Jurgenson boys were a bad influence. Would you agree?”

  “I’m sure you’re right, hon.”

  Beyond Dudley’s remembrance were the early days when Henley’s submissive responses—“Whatever you say,” and “You’re probably right, hon”—had greatly irked his bride. Confrontations, even the smallest difference of opinion, had thrown Della into such a miserable mood that the young husband, to keep the peace, had begun using the terms. At first, he only succeeded in angering her further. But eventually, as Della became convinced that Henley was not being sarcastic, her annoyance ceased, and she took his answers as confirmation that her opinion was correct, her way best. Never had she understood that Henley was avoiding the scenes that had so marred their first weeks of marriage and so shocked him. And since he never spoke in anything but a peaceable tone, Dudley, too, usually heard without reaction. His father’s words, after all, were the words that set everything right.

  But as he grew older, things didn’t seem right. Dudley had a natural rebellion toward his mother’s overbearing ways and his father’s knuckling under. Once, in the barn, after a particularly strained encounter between his parents, ending with the accustomed giving in by his father, Dudley had burst out, “W
hy, Pa . . . why don’t you stick up for yourself? You know you were right in there. I know it; I think Ma knew it, too. Why do you give in like you do?”

  Henley had rested on the handle of the pitchfork he was using to clean the stalls and said, reasonably, “She means well, son. Some people have this nature, you see, where they need to be right. I think your mother may be threatened in some way when anyone opposes her. It doesn’t hurt me to let her have her way, to give in, to bite back an angry response. It would only make for considerably more trouble if I didn’t.

  “And I don’t like trouble, son.” Henley spoke with a certain grimness. “I guess that’s your whole answer. I’m just grateful it’s me and not you. You’re the apple of your mother’s eye. Everything she does for you is out of love, I’m sure. I pray you’ll be allowed to grow up to be a real man. That’s what I want for you.” Then, with unexpected passion, he said, “I’d lay down and die for that.”

  His usual calm restored, Henley resumed his work.

  Eventually Dudley was to conclude that his father sometimes took abuse in order to keep his son from facing it. It made him uncomfortable, even guilty at times. And, at times, he felt like a miserable milksop—the very thing he criticized in his father—hiding behind his father rather than facing up to his mother’s unreasonableness. But it was so much more peaceful that way . . . he was, he guessed, more like his father than he had realized.

  Buggy was the preferred mode of travel on Sunday, which meant that Dudley rode alongside, the one-seater buggy not accommodating more than two unless a person stood behind the seat. The weather being pleasant, numerous rigs could be seen making their way toward the hamlet called Bliss and the schoolhouse, which also served as the place of worship for the community. Here, people were alighting—some gracefully, some awkwardly; women holding skirts away from the rig’s wheels, children jumping over; men greeting one another with hearty handshakes; women, at times, planting a kiss on a proffered cheek. Bibles and quarterlies were gathered up, and the adults made their way into the small white building to look for seats that would accommodate their bulk. Children lingered outside as long as they could.