Curious, Dirk got up and went into the living room.
“Uncle Dirk,” Martha said when she saw him, “come look. Miss Inga tells stories with her quilts. See? This one shows the steamship she came to America on. And this one is the train her friend rode to get to Montana. The quilt’s for her friend’s new baby.”
Dirk wasn’t much of a judge of such things, but even he could see that Inga’s quilting skills were unique. She had used different colors of cloth—carefully cut and layered atop each other—and fancy embroidery to make her pictures. There was a feeling of real movement in each quilt block.
In the first block was a large green and brown island, shaped like England. It was surrounded by a sea of blue fabric, tiny whitecaps embroidered to make the ocean. There was even a small steamship, departing a western port. Inga had captured the detail so perfectly that it was easy to imagine the ship was actually at sea. The second block showed a train rolling across tiny gray tracks, steam belching from the engine’s smokestack, tiny faces at the windows of the passenger car.
“Isn’t it pretty?” Martha asked.
“Sure is,” Dirk replied softly.
Inga glanced up with a hesitant smile, a tint of pink in her ivory cheeks. For an instant, he caught a glimpse of…
“Are you finished with your figurin’, son?”
Whatever he’d seen in her expression disappeared. Inga dropped her gaze and resumed sewing. With a shake of his head, Dirk turned toward his mother. “Yeah. I’m finished.”
Hattie looked at him, and he knew she understood how worried he was. He wished she didn’t know. She shouldn’t have to worry about money, on top of everything else.
“Well…” She pushed herself up from her chair. “I think it’s about time I took these tired old bones off to bed.” She stepped toward him, laying her hand against his chest. “Don’t fret, son,” she said softly. “It’ll work out. God’ll provide. You’ll see.”
He caught his mother’s hand and squeezed it gently, thinking how like parchment her skin felt, how fragile the bones of her fingers. At one time, Hattie Bridger had been a plump woman, but no longer. Now she seemed to be wasting away right before his eyes. If only there was more he could do for her.
She turned from him. “Carry Suzanne up to her bed, will you, son?”
His throat felt tight as he answered, “Sure, Ma.”
“Good night, Inga.”
“Good night, Mrs. Bridger.”
Dirk watched his mother walk to her first floor bedroom and knew real despair. She might look better than she had before Inga Linberg had come to help, but she still wasn’t well, still wasn’t strong. Dirk wanted to think the doctor’s prognosis was wrong, but he knew he was only trying to fool himself. His ma was dying. Dying by inches and trying hard not to let any of them see the pain she was feeling.
“Mr. Bridger?”
He turned, surprised to find Inga standing close behind him.
As their gazes met, mutual understanding passed between them. He saw sympathy in her pale blue eyes, felt it almost like a balm. For just that moment, it seemed the ever-present sense of heaviness lifted from his shoulders.
“I will see if she needs anything,” Inga told him.
He nodded, the tightness in his throat returning.
Inga moved passed him. He noted that she, too, was slight of build. But unlike his mother’s, Inga Linberg’s willowy figure disguised a surprising strength.
Anger sparked suddenly to life. It wasn’t fair! His ma was only fifty-seven. She shouldn’t look so old. She shouldn’t be dying. She should have a long life stretching before her. If she hadn’t had to work so hard, trying to hold everything together for her family…
He turned around and crossed to the sleeping child on the floor. Frustration made his voice gruffer than he’d intended as he said, “Time for bed, Martha.” He bent down and lifted Suzanne into his arms. “Now!”
“You needn’t fuss over me, Inga,” Hattie protested weakly as she sank onto the stool in front of the dresser.
“I want to help, Mrs. Bridger.” She pulled back the covers on the bed and fluffed the pillows.
The older woman let out a long sigh. “You have been a godsend, young woman. But what will happen after I’m—” She stopped abruptly.
Inga turned to meet Hattie’s gaze in the dressing table mirror. “Mrs. Bridger,” she whispered, “you must not worry. Your son will see to everything.”
“I can’t seem t’help it. We all know I’m dyin’. There’s no point in tryin’ to deny it. But what’s gonna happen to Dirk and the girls when I’m gone? Dear God, what’s gonna happen to them?” She covered her face with her hands. She made no sound, but her shoulders shook as she began to cry.
Inga crossed the room and sat on the stool beside Hattie, taking her into her arms as she would have done one of the children. “You must not worry,” she crooned. “It will be all right. You must not worry.”
It was several minutes before Hattie stilled. Finally, she sat up straight and dried her tears, staring all the while at her reflection. “My son is so unhappy,” she said, the sound of a mother’s broken heart in her words. “He had such big dreams, and they’ve all been stripped from him, one by one.”
“He does not blame you.”
“No.” Hattie shook her head. “He doesn’t blame me. But all the same, it’s killed somethin’ inside him, bein’ stuck here on this farm. He’s dyin’ just as sure as I am. If he’d turn to God for help, he might find release. Only he refuses.”
Inga felt her own heart breaking as she listened. She longed to comfort this woman. She longed to comfort this woman’s son. She hadn’t known, when she volunteered to come here, that this family needed so much more than a housekeeper, and she wondered how she could help them in the way they needed most.
Hattie’s eyes looked watery. “He was always the dreamer, my Dirk. Always the one wantin’ to do other things, go other places. When my husband was alive, Dirk was always tellin’ him how much more there was to see in the world than just our farm in Ohio. If his father hadn’t taken ill, he’d have been halfway around the world by the time he was eighteen.” She drew a ragged breath. “I admit I was hopin’ he’d get married and settle down, have himself a family of his own. He was keepin’ company with a young widow a few years back, and I thought…Well, I thought if he’d just fall in love, maybe it would stop his yearnin’ for wanderin’. Maybe he did love her. Maybe she wouldn’t have him. I don’t know. All I know is, the bitterness is eatin’ at him, and he’s hurtin’ because of it.”
“You are tired, Mrs. Bridger. You should be in bed.”
“He hates this place, Inga. My, how he hates it. But he’s a man of honor, my Dirk, and he’ll never shirk his duty. He’ll stay here till those girls are grown and married, and by then…” Her voice trailed off into silence.
“Wait here,” Inga said softly as she rose from the stool. “I will get a stone from the hearth and then help you to bed. You will feel better after a good night’s sleep.”
“A good night’s sleep,” the older woman repeated, as if not understanding the meaning.
Silently, Inga prayed for wisdom and words of comfort as she went after the warming stone.
Over the years, she had often accompanied her pappa when he’d gone to pray for the sick and the dying, and she had helped her mamma prepare food to take to distraught families. It wasn’t as if she were unacquainted with such situations. Only tonight, the suffering had become personal to her.
By the time she returned to Hattie’s bedroom, the woman had already gotten into her bed. Inga placed the heated stone near her feet, then pulled the blankets up and tucked them around her shoulders.
“God bless you,” Hattie said, her voice weak.
“And you, Mrs. Bridger.”
Hattie’s eyelids drifted closed, and within moments, she slept.
Inga sighed, then extinguished the lamp before turning to leave the room. She stopped with a gasp of sur
prise when she spied Dirk observing her from the doorway, his face obscured in shadows.
When her heart slowed its riotous beating, she said, “She is asleep.”
“You’ve been mighty good to her.”
“I have done what I can.”
“No, you’ve done more than that.”
She wasn’t certain what he meant, but she hadn’t an opportunity to ask before he turned and walked away.
Dirk leaned his forearms on the top rail of the stall and stared at the cow inside. The Jersey was dry now, awaiting the birth of a calf in about six weeks.
He would have liked to let all the cows go dry in the fall and not start milking again until after calving in the spring, the way it used to be done when everything depended upon pasturage and dairymen didn’t feed their cows silage and grain throughout the winter months. But his brother had intended this to be a modern dairy farm with all the most recent inventions, and John had gone to great lengths and expense to make it so. Trouble was, he’d invested all his money in the barn and cows and had put nothing into the house or other livestock. There’d been no money left in reserve at the time of his death. Because of it, his children would go hungry if Dirk didn’t sell milk the whole year round.
He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on the back of his hands.
What was he going to do when his ma died? How was he going to run this place and take care of John’s daughters?
Maybe he should sell the farm. Except he couldn’t do that. This land and house were the only legacy Martha and Suzanne had of their father and mother. If Dirk sold it, he would be betraying the trust his brother had had in him.
The Jersey mooed, and Dirk opened his eyes to look at her. Flower, the girls called the fawn-colored milk cow. The day Dirk had first arrived at the Bridger farm in the winter of ’ninety-six, Flower had gone into labor. There had been a raging blizzard that night with temperatures dropping far below zero, and the birth had been a difficult one. He’d spent the night in the barn, trying to save both cow and calf. That had been his introduction to life on a dairy farm.
And there’d been similar scenes in the twenty-two months he’d lived here. More than he cared to remember. He would probably repeat them countless times before Martha and Suzanne were grown.
He shoved off from the fence, striding toward the barn door. As he stepped outside, he stopped and looked up at the sky. Not a star could be seen because of the clouds hovering low in the sky. There was a nip in the air that told him it would probably snow tonight.
Snow. And he still hadn’t repaired that broken runner on the sleigh. He’d have to get to it first thing tomorrow. It wouldn’t do for them to be without transportation. Not with his mother ailing.
He started toward the house, mentally ticking off a list of more things he needed to do before the next day was done. Then he glanced up, and his footsteps slowed.
In the glow of the lamplight, he saw Inga’s silhouette against the curtains of her upstairs bedroom. She was special, this Swedish minister’s daughter. Her sweet spirit had brought something to their home that had been absent too long.
He looked away quickly. Just what he didn’t need. To think of Inga as anything other than what she was—the hired help.
Bending into the wind, he headed toward the house.
Inga knelt beside her bed—hands clasped, eyes closed, head bowed—and whispered her evening prayers. First she prayed for Hattie Bridger, for an easing of the woman’s pain. Next she prayed for Martha and Suzanne, asking God for wisdom and patience that she might be able to give them the love and guidance they needed. Then she lifted Dirk Bridger’s name before the Almighty.
But she didn’t know exactly what to pray for. Memories of him from the previous three days replayed in her mind. She saw the way he watched his mother and his nieces, understood his worries and concerns. She felt his weariness, his unrest. What words could she say on behalf of such a man?
Finally, she whispered, “Give him peace, Father God. Just let him know peace.”
A squeaky board on the staircase told her that the man in her prayers was climbing to his room at that very moment. Her breath caught in her throat, and her heartbeat quickened. Her prayers evaporated like a mist over the ocean at dawn. She heard each step he took, seemed to feel his nearness as he moved past her room and into his own. She didn’t let out her breath until she heard his door close.
And then she uttered one last prayer.
“Oh Lord, my heart is in danger. Protect me.”
But it was already too late for that particular cry for help, and Inga knew it. She was falling in love with Dirk Bridger.
Hastily, she extinguished her lamp and crawled into bed, burrowing down beneath the blankets, as if trying to escape her discovery.
How could this be? She had met him scarcely three days before. A woman didn’t fall in love as quickly as that. Love took months, even years to grow, and many women never experienced love—not even for their husbands. Most were content if they shared a common regard. Everyone knew that. Everyone. Even a spinster of twenty-two like Inga.
Besides, Dirk Bridger wasn’t her kind. He didn’t attend her church or share her faith in God. He could be sullen and taciturn. He was angry and bitter. He hated Iowa, hated this farm, wanted to go far away. Until the children were grown, he was trapped. He stayed only because of them. He was not a man who wanted to be loved or would love in return.
She rolled onto her side and squeezed her eyes closed.
Even if he wanted to fall in love, it wouldn’t be with her. Men wanted girls like her sisters. Men fell in love with the pretty Mary Malones and the beautiful Beth Wellingtons of this world. Not with the ordinary Inga Linbergs. Not with Inga.
“Oh, Pappa…What have I done?”
Five
The family awakened the next morning to six inches of snow on the ground with more snow falling and the wind blowing even deeper drifts.
“Won’t be able to take you into town for church,” Dirk told Inga when he returned from the barn. “Not in this storm. Doesn’t show any signs of lettin’ up. Sorry. Besides, the sleigh needs repairs, and I haven’t got to ’em yet.”
Inga purposely kept her gaze on the skillet. “I understand. It is all right.” She was almost relieved. She couldn’t imagine sitting beside him in a sleigh for more than an hour each way. Not after her revelation of last night.
Dirk stepped over to the sink and washed his hands in the basin. Despite her better judgment, she cast a surreptitious glance in his direction. He had yet to shave, and the stubble of his beard darkened his jaw. His eyes still carried the look of sleep about them. When he’d removed his hat, he must have smoothed his thick brown hair back with his hands, for it had a finger-raked look about it that she had already become fond of.
She’d known what would happen if she looked at him. Her heart raced. Her knees weakened. Her fingers began to quiver. “What am I to do?” she whispered to herself as she stirred the diced potatoes, ham, and onions in the frying pan.
“Did you say something?” He looked over her shoulder. “Mmm. Hash. My favorite breakfast.”
Her heart thumped so loud she thought he must surely hear it. “I know. Your mother told me.” Her voice sounded hoarse.
“So what do you call this dish in Sweden?”
She wished he would move away. His cheek was much too close to her own. She couldn’t breathe with him so close, couldn’t think. “Pytt i panna.”
“Be ready soon?”
“Ja. Soon.”
“Okay. Back in a jiff.” He turned and strode out of the kitchen.
Inga scarcely had a moment to pull her ragged nerves together before she heard the sound of children’s feet on the stairs. She stirred the hash again, then turned toward the doorway as the two girls rushed through it.
Wisps of wild, red hair—pulled free from their braids as they’d slept—curled around their freckled faces. Their green eyes, the color of unripened apples, were sleep-fi
lled, just like their uncle’s had been. They were still wearing their night-gowns, and their feet were bare.
“I’m hungry,” Suzanne announced.
“Good. Breakfast is nearly ready. But you must get dressed before we eat. It is too cold for bare feet.” She felt her equilibrium returning. She could deal with the children much better than with their uncle. “Get your things and you can dress beside the stove where it is warm.”
Martha yawned, rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, then said, “Our room is freezin’.”
“Mine, too.” Inga smiled at them. “Did you know it snowed in the night?”
Sleepiness vanished in an instant. Both of the girls dashed to the window.
“Look at that!” Martha exclaimed.
“Snow! Snow!” Suzanne chimed in.
“Let’s make a snowman.” Martha glanced over her shoulder at Inga. “Can we?”
“A snowman?” It had been many years since she’d made a snögubbe. Perhaps as many as twelve or more. There had always been so much work to do, she’d had little time for play. While her younger sisters had romped in the snow, Inga had been helping their pappa. Suddenly, she realized how much she had missed it. “Ja,” she answered, “we will make a snowman.”
Suzanne jumped up and down. “A snowman! A snowman!”
“But we must wait until the snowfall stops. For now you must both get dressed so we can eat our breakfast. Go on with you. Get your clothes.”
“Come on, Suzanne. Let’s hurry.”
The children raced away, scampering up the stairs, sounding like a stampeding herd of reindeer.
Inga turned to the stove and stirred the hash again, smiling to herself in anticipation.
A moment later, Hattie entered the kitchen. “Mornin’.”
Inga lifted the skillet, holding the cast iron handle with a towel. “Did we wake you?” she asked as she turned toward the table.
“No. I’ve been awake for some time now. Just didn’t want to get up.”
“The children are excited about the snow.”
“I know. I heard.” Hattie sank onto a chair. There were dark circles beneath her eyes, and her coloring seemed sallow. Still she was able to smile as she said, “I’m surprised Martha remembers about makin’ a snowman. Last time would’ve been with her daddy. As for Dirk…” She left the sentence unfinished.
Robin Lee Hatcher - [Coming to America 02] Page 5
