Seasons of Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #4) (29 page)

Just outside the door, benches were set up with numerous basins, bars of soap, and stacks of towels. Pails of warm water must be ready and waiting when the crew came in covered with sweat and layered stickily with chaff. When they made their way, shining of face and damp of hair, to the long tables, even the sturdiest house shook with the vibrations of their boots—oil grain two-buckle plow, seam-riveted western, best Kip with bellows tongue and dirt excluder, fully warranted spring heel plow. Their tread was businesslike as they approached the spread boards. Very little was said as they passed the bowls and platters, filled their plates, and shoveled in the food that had taken so long to prepare and which disappeared in a matter of minutes.

About to go around the table with the coffeepot, Tierney paused, her heart coming up into her throat, her eyes smarting with something more than heat from the kitchen. Seated among the men of Bliss—Robbie Dunbar, her one love and her great sorrow.

Tierney had tried, over the months, to expunge the passion of feeling for Robbie Dunbar that had affixed itself, years ago, to her heart. She had loved Robbie Dunbar for so long it was as if he were part and parcel of her very being. No words had been spoken over them, making them one; no kiss had been exchanged. But if love were a flower to be seeded and grown, Robbie Dunbar was planted, entwined,
established
, in Tierney’s heart, and try as she would, pray as she did, work at it as she might, Robbie Dunbar would not be rooted out.

I am Robbie Dunbar’s
, she had finally admitted to herself. Admitted it helplessly and hopelessly. He might never be hers, but she was his and his alone, and for all time.

I’m doomed. Blessed—and doomed!
she had thought.
I’ll never be heart-free in all o’ me life. Oh, Robbie!

“More coffee?” she asked him now, seemingly as cool as the bowl of sliced cucumbers in sour cream on the table. But the coffeepot, as she poured, was unsteady, and with his thick head of hair so close and his bronzed cheek only a few inches away, Tierney was captured by thoughts other than of coffee, and the cup overflowed.

“Oh, I’m sorry!” she gasped and leaned to mop at the stain spreading on the oilcloth.

Robbie’s face, as she bent past him to the task, was as tight as an Indian drum. His nostrils flared, his dusky skin deepened in color, his breath shortened. One would almost think his head reeled.

Fortunately the other eaters were absorbed with their plates and, after a glance at the accident being repaired at one end of the table, gave it no heed. But the little drama continued.

Robbie, perhaps unable to stop himself, turned his head slightly and looked at Tierney. Pulling back from the spill, Tierney’s face was only a few inches away from his—kissing distance. For a second that seemed an eternity, their eyes met.

Tierney and Robbie, for as long as they could remember, had communicated by glance. Very little—back in Binkiebrae—had been said, very little needed to be said, their feelings were
as plain to be seen as to be stated. A glance said it all, said it poignantly, said it graphically. There was sweet certainty in waiting. And there was time—or so they had thought—time for the fulfillment of the love between them. Were they not destined for each other? Would they not spend their lives together? Would they not grow old together?

Now, again, at an oilcloth-covered table in the middle of the bush country in a remote northern district called Bliss, the language of the heart was blazoned between them, by glance. One short glance—a volume of meaning.

Knowing it was wrong, that he was promised to someone else, still it happened. In spite of tight reins and good intentions—it happened. Like a spark from a struck anvil, it happened.

The moment passed; someone called for coffee, and the moment passed.

Trembling like a Saskatchewan aspen in the spring breeze, Tierney moved on, Robbie turned blind eyes on his plate, and life went on.

Both were grateful for the workload that called them, catching them up in exhausting physical labor. But to turn off the thoughts—that was another matter.

Tierney, doing tasks with which she was well familiar and no challenge mentally, went over and over the explosive moment when her eyes had met Robbie’s. Unexpectedly her heart lurched, and her eyes filled with tears, threatening to expose her turmoil. She swiped at her face furtively with the corner of her apron but found no relief for the pain that twisted her heart.

Robbie pitched sheaves like a madman—with no letup of the misery—all the livelong day.

B
ack home in his own “wee hoosie,” with threshing completed at the Blooms’ for the day, Robbie was bathed and ready for bed but too torn of heart to sleep, and the tumult of his heart brought him to the point of decision. With no one else listening, Robbie found himself talking—at last, at long last—to God.

Lying back on his cot, staring up into blackness, it seemed darkness was no thicker anywhere than in his soul.

“God,” he said, and it was a cry in the night, “listen to me, please. If anyone ever needed You, I’m the one.

“I’m confessin’ to You that I love Tierney Caulder. I’m admittin’ to You that I made a mistake in agreein’ to marry Alice. It was wrong, wrong for me, wrong for Alice, a wrong toward Tierney. Please forgive me for that.

“An’ while we’re on the subject, forgive me—oh, please forgive me!—for my lifetime of selfishness and sinfulness. Forgive me for ignorin’ Your Son, Jesus. Forgive me . . . forgive me . . .”

All that and much more he said . . . prayed, for Robbie slipped from bed to floor, to kneel there and find that his conversation with the unseen Listener had turned to prayer, a prayer between a mortal man and his Maker—a prayer of contrition. It was a time of drawing nigh, of touching grace, of knowing cleansing.

Robbie rose to his feet a man born again—“If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold all things are become new” (2 Cor. 5:17).

Oh, blessed newness! Robbie’s poor, battered heart was light as dandelion fluff as all the old things passed away and the new touched him with glory. The log walls echoed, for a time, with spontaneous expressions of praise.

Lying back once again on his cot, Robbie looked up now into darkness that no longer seemed impenetrable. Perhaps his inner eye saw beyond to a throne room and perhaps his inner ear heard distant rejoicing, the “joy [that] shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth” (Luke 15:7).

And gleaming through the window—a star; the blackness of the Canadian night had been pierced by a single light. Robbie’s darkness, now, had been lit with hope. It was a small glow but enough to point the way.

“Now help me, Father, to do what needs to be done.”

Robbie waited until the chores at the Hoy place were finished for the day, until supper was over, until Billy and Barney had been put to bed. If Alice wondered why he lingered, she said nothing.

When the day’s activities were over for her, Alice returned to the room where Robbie sat waiting, seated on a straight-backed chair pulled up to the round oak table, hands clasped before him, face serious.

Seating herself across from him, some inner sensing prompted Alice’s “Yes, Robbie?”

Robbie tried to speak, failed, cleared his throat, began again. “Alice, I’ve sum’mat to say to ye . . .”

“Yes, Robbie?”

“It’s aboot us—you an’ me.”

“Yes, Robbie.” Alice’s glance sharpened, but her tone was gentle.

“It’s aboot . . . aboot our agreement to marry.”

“Yes,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “Go ahead, Robbie. We haven’t talked for a long time.”

Robbie, breathing a prayer, felt encouraged to proceed. At least Alice was open to talk about this most important aspect of their future.

“Our arrangement,” he began, “wasn’t fair to you. You made it at a time when you were vulnerable, full of grief over the loss of your husband. I feel now that I took advantage of you—”

“But, Robbie,” Alice said softly, “I was the one who brought it up. You merely agreed to my . . . my proposal. You were very kind—”

“Maybe not kind, Alice,” Robbie said slowly, flushing a little, shifting in his chair. “Greedy, maybe. Oh, I was willin’ to take on the care o’ the laddies. But—you see—I wassna free to pledge myself to anyone.”

“Not free, Robbie?” Alice was puzzled.

“Nae. Not free. My heart was promised elsewhere. I shouldna hae—”

“Oh, Robbie—don’t! You see, I’ve . . . fallen in love! I haven’t been able to find a way to tell you, but I’m in love!”

Robbie’s heart plummeted. This—Alice’s love—he hadn’t counted on. What, oh, what had he done, that she should fall in love with him!

“In . . . love!” Robbie stammered.

Of all the ways this conversation might have gone, to learn that Alice had fallen in love with him was not one of them. To break off a business deal was one thing; to boldly break free
from someone who had just proclaimed love for you—Robbie didn’t know how to do it, what to say, how to proceed. He barely stopped himself from groaning aloud.

“Yes, in love!” Alice was saying, her face pinker and healthier than he had ever seen it and her eyes brighter than any bottle could have made them. “And I didn’t know how to tell you. I was afraid . . . I didn’t know how to go about confessing something so . . . so special and so wonderful.”

“Confessin’,” Robbie repeated, dazed.

“Oh, Robbie!” Alice laughed. “Don’t look so astonished! Surely you guessed—”

“Why should I? There was nothin’, nothin’ . . .”

Once again words failed Robbie Dunbar. How, oh, how would he handle the situation now? Wanting, needing, praying to be free, it seemed he was more enmeshed than ever. What was the honorable thing to do?

“There will be someone else,” he explained, desperately. “God will send along someone . . . someone better than I could ever be—”

“Robbie—don’t you understand what I’m saying?”

Apparently Robbie’s face spoke of his confusion, for Alice continued, “I don’t believe I’m making a bit of sense to you, Robbie. Weren’t you about to tell me you wanted to be free of our arrangement?”

“Aye, oh, aye,” he said humbly, still not wanting to inflict hurt on this one who had offered him so much.

“And I’m telling you it’s all right. In fact, it’s just perfect!”

“It is?”

Relieved to hear her say so, still Robbie was taken aback. Alice, happy to be free of him?

“But,” Robbie stumbled on, “you said . . . you said you’re in love—”

“With Quinn, Robbie! With Quinn Archer!”

Quinn Archer! Comprehending at last, Robbie fell back weakly in his chair, overcome.

“You . . . an’ Quinn Archer?”

“Yes, Robbie—a love match. It’s been developing right under your nose, and you haven’t caught on. At first I couldn’t believe it—that God would send along someone to love me. Not just to care for me and the boys—no,” she cried, believing Robbie was about to interrupt, “it’s all right; don’t apologize, Robbie.

“You and I, we never pretended it was anything but necessity,” Alice continued. “But even so, I was so hesitant to bring it up, to tell you the way things were going. I knew you had your heart set—if not on me—then on the farm.”

Robbie squirmed. But the farm had been laid on the altar, and Robbie was happy to leave it there.

“Na na,” he disclaimed. “Nae more, nae more. I’m happy as a lark at daybreak, wi’ me own sma’ holdings.”

“Oh, I’m so glad! And Robbie,” Alice pinked again, “I’ll be in good hands. Quinn is a fine man.”

“The best!” Robbie agreed wholeheartedly.

“And, Robbie—there’s been no more of the . . . the medicine. That’s over and done with. I think, Robbie,” Alice said hesitantly but bravely and honestly, “I wasn’t sick after all, except maybe in my mind and in my heart. I was just so weak; I didn’t want to face life without Barnabas. I was just . . . just taking the coward’s way out.

“But when my carelessness caused Billy’s burn—oh yes, it did, Robbie. I feel terribly responsible for that. And when I saw what my withdrawing from Barney was doing to him—well, I just had to come back to them and to life, even if it were hard. And thank God,” Alice said softly, “Quinn was there for me.”