A Bride's Agreement

by Elaine Bonner

  The verse excited her, and she determined that she would not miss her daily devotional time regardless of her busy days. Sometimes she could fit in no more than ten minutes. She decided to make hope the topic of her devotions. Reading of God’s faithfulness in keeping His promises to His people throughout the centuries encouraged her to keep hoping for Jason’s love.

  In addition to her personal devotions, she and Jason continued the family devotional time after the evening meal which Jason had begun. They kept the time short, only reading a few verses and praying together, both feeling the family needed the daily time of looking to God together.

  Frank was the only family member who seemed uncomfortable with the devotional time. When Pearl asked Jason about Frank’s faith, his eyes became troubled. “Mom and Dad always saw to it the family was churchgoing and made no secret of the fact they believed faith in Christ was the most important part of a person’s life. I just assumed Frank had committed his life to Christ, as I did. Afraid I was wrong, considering his actions lately. I tried to talk with him about it, but he just shrugged me off.”

  They agreed to pray for Frank to come to a realization of his need for Christ. It hurt to see him trying to deal with the changes in his life by leaning on liquor instead of the Lord.

  Before long school began, and Pearl assumed some of Maggie’s duties. The only item which made it easier for Pearl to complete her work was her freedom of time spent watching Grace. Grace turned six in early September and was attending school for the first time. She and Maggie walked the three miles to school in Chippewa City each day.

  Grace’s school attendance brought the need for new clothes and added another item to Pearl’s growing list of duties. Jason brought his mother’s sewing machine into the kitchen, where Pearl could work and still be available to answer Maggie’s questions as she studied algebra, geography, and natural philosophy at the kitchen table.

  As soon as he could be spared from the fields, Andy would be attending classes also. It had been his father’s dream that all of his children graduate and the boys continue their education beyond the traditional eight years of school. It was an unusual dream in a land where few boys graduated. Those who did normally took more than eight years to reach that goal, and Jason and Frank were not exceptions.

  One rainy Saturday afternoon when Jason and Andy returned from delivering grain to the elevator, Andy’s eyes were as large as wagon wheels. “There were one hundred ponies from Wyoming on First Street! When I’m a man, I’m heading west to be a cowboy.”

  “I can remember when this was the West,” Pearl said when Andy left the room.

  Jason poured a cup of coffee from the large graniteware pot. “He wanted to join the circus when Oliver’s World’s Greatest Shows was in town in April.”

  Leaning against the table, he watched Pearl ironing. “I don’t understand Frank anymore. He used to argue with Dad all the time about continuing his education. Said all he ever wanted was to be a farmer and couldn’t see any reason to go back to school when he was perfectly happy right here. Now all he talks about is attending Windom Academy.” Jason raked a hand through his hair. “Frank wants to become a businessman, and Andy wants to be a cowboy. Don’t know who Dad thought he was building the farm up for.”

  Pearl placed the cooling iron on the stove to reheat and changed the wooden handle to a hot iron. She watched Jason’s back through the window as he walked to the barn. He hadn’t wanted the farm either. Her heart ached for him.

  Grace’s nightmares added to the family’s exhaustion. They were diminishing in quantity but not in intensity. Pearl and Jason asked the Lord fervently to show them how to help the poor child.

  One Tuesday night in mid-September, a bloodcurdling scream made Pearl bolt upright. Almost before she was awake, she’d slipped into the flannel wrapper she kept across the foot of her bed.

  She collided with Jason in the hallway in front of Grace’s door. Corduroy trousers stuck out beneath his night shirt. “I’ll see to her. You need your sleep,” she offered.

  “We’ll both take care of her.”

  It was a conversation they had every night. The result never changed. They stayed up together with the girl until the memory of the nightmare dulled enough for her to go back to sleep.

  Pearl led the way downstairs with a lamp, and Jason followed, carrying the kicking and screaming child. They’d learned from painful and exhausting experience that the screaming wouldn’t end for at least a half hour, and it would be a good deal longer before she quieted enough to allow them to leave her and return to bed.

  Jason sat in the spring rocker in the parlor, whispering comforting words to the girl in his arms, ignoring the kicks and blows. Seeing the pain and concern for Grace etched deeply into Jason’s dry, tanned skin added to the pain Pearl felt for Grace. Pearl sat on the settee, lifting silent prayers for both.

  After a long time, the screams subsided into scattered, wrenching sobs that slowly disappeared into occasional shaky breaths. For the dozenth time, Pearl and Jason urged her to tell them about the dream that frightened her so, but as always, she was unable to describe it. All she would say was, “I’m ‘fwaid you’re goin’ ta be mad and go away, like Mommy and Papa.”

  No amount of reassurances would convince her otherwise.

  “Do you think your mommy and papa are angry with you, dear?” Pearl asked. Why hadn’t she heard that part of Grace’s cry before, instead of only hearing that the child was afraid they’d leave her?

  She nodded, her wet little face brushing against Jason’s flannel robe.

  “Why?”

  “If they weren’t mad, why don’t they come home?”

  Pearl saw the sheen of tears in Jason’s eyes before he bent his head over his sister. His groan ripped through her. “Mommy and Papa aren’t staying away because they’re mad at you, Pumpkin. They can’t come home because they’re in heaven. Heaven is a wonderful place, but people can’t leave there.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why; I only know they can’t.”

  Pearl swallowed the sob that rose in her own throat at the hopelessness in Jason’s husky answer.

  “Why did they go there? Don’t they love me anymore?”

  “Of course they do, Pumpkin. They love you so much that Pearl and I were given special orders to stay with you and watch over you for them.”

  A thumb slipped into her mouth as she considered this, and she was silent for a minute. “Is special orders like a pwomise?”

  Jason’s lips stretched in a sad smile. “Yes. It’s something we won’t ever change our minds about.”

  “I want to talk to Mommy and Papa,” she mumbled around her thumb.

  Jason closed his eyes tight, but Pearl intervened before he could respond. “When I was even smaller than you, my mommy died and went to heaven. My brother, Johnny, and I wanted to talk to her, too. Johnny finally came up with a way we could talk to her, even though we couldn’t see her and she couldn’t answer us.”

  Grace’s big brown eyes searched her face for a full minute. “How?”

  “When we prayed, we would ask God to give her our messages, and tell her we loved her and missed her.”

  “Did He do that?”

  Pearl forced a bright smile. “Oh, I’m sure He did. God takes very good care of people when they go to heaven.”

  Grace looked at Jason for confirmation, and he nodded. Pearl saw his Adam’s apple jerk before he said, “Sure as shootin’, Pumpkin.”

  “I’m goin’ to ask Him to tell Mommy and Papa I love them.”

  “Good idea.”

  They had just tucked her back in bed when Frank’s slurred voice raised in song came through the windows.

  “Drunk again!” Disgust drenched Jason’s whisper.

  “Don’t argue with him now. You need your sleep. It’s less than two hours until sunrise.”

  “Two hours won’t be enough to sleep off that hangover.”

  “Fall term begins tomorrow at Wi
ndom Academy. I expect that’s what brought this on in the middle of the week.”

  “Is that supposed to be an excuse? A man should be able to handle life’s disappointments without resorting to the bottle.”

  “Getting angry won’t help anything and will keep you from needed rest.”

  But he was already heading for the top of the stairs. “I’ll have to put up his horse. He never remembers to take care of her when he comes home in this shape.”

  Pearl couldn’t sleep right away when she went back to bed; she kept listening for Jason to return. She didn’t mind the heavy workload so much, but the emotional tension of dealing with Grace night after night and the strain of Frank’s belligerence and drinking made her weary. She’d told Jason she was meant to be his helpmate, but she didn’t seem capable of dealing with the things with which he needed help the most. If she found these things wearying, how much more must they affect him?

  Pearl stood on the porch the next evening watching Frank herd the milk cows into the barn. Their bawling filled the air. Complaining of the heat as much as of their full udders, she thought, wiping the back of her hand over her brow. It would be hotter in the barn, but at least they would be free of the sand whipped around by the prairie winds. One hundred degrees in the shade. It certainly didn’t feel like the middle of September.

  In spite of their heavy workload, the men always milked the cows. Frank was handling the milking today because Jason refused to allow him in the fields due to last night’s drinking. Her own work had kept her from even considering helping with the milking in the past. Not that she’d ever milked a cow before; but she’d seen it done, and it didn’t look too hard.

  She stuck her head in the kitchen door where Maggie was pumping water at the sink to fill the bedroom water pitchers. “I’m going to the barn. Keep an eye on Grace.”

  Frank was taking a milk pail down from its peg when she entered the barn, the air thick with the odors of cows and hay. “I’ve come to help.”

  Frank shook his head. “Jason wouldn’t like that.”

  She reached for a pail. “Nonsense. Will you teach me, or shall I teach myself?”

  Grinning, he took the pail from her. “Afraid it’s the cows who wouldn’t approve of you teaching yourself.”

  Almost two hours passed before she looked up from the three-legged stool beside a brown-and-white cow to see Jason looking down at her with a puzzled frown. “Maggie told me I’d find you in here. What are you doing?”

  She giggled. “Well, if you can’t tell, I’m obviously doing it wrong.”

  “I don’t want you doing the milking.”

  A shrug lifted the shoulders of her damp blouse, and she continued her pulling. “I’m glad to do it. You and your brothers have more than you can handle already.”

  “You’ve been working sunup to sundown and beyond yourself, and you don’t see me trying to take on any of your workload.”

  The cow’s tail hit her full in the face. Pearl sputtered and shook her head. “It’s not the same thing.”

  He grinned and grabbed the cow’s tail to keep it from striking her again. “It’s just the same thing. I don’t want you doing this.”

  “But I like helping you.”

  “Let me finish.” He took her arm just above the wrist and gently tugged.

  “Ouch!”

  In a second he was kneeling in the straw beside her, holding her arm between his callused hands more gently than she would have believed possible. “Your wrists are swollen!”

  He touched his lips to them, and her breath caught in a light gasp at the sweet, spontaneous gesture. “They… they’re fine, truly. I just didn’t realize milking was so hard.”

  He kept her arm in his hands as he turned his gaze to hers. The corners of his mouth tipped up. “Did I actually hear you admit there’s something a man can do better than a woman? After all the times you told John and me that you could do anything we could do?”

  “I didn’t say a man could do it better; I only said it’s hard. My muscles will become accustomed to it.”

  He stood, pulling her up with him. “No, they won’t. You aren’t to do it again.”

  It was the first time he’d given her an order. An order it definitely was, in spite of his tender tone.

  When she opened her mouth to protest, he laid his fingers over her lips. “I spend all day in the field and around animals, until I can smell them in my sleep. I don’t want my wife to smell like cows.”

  The gentleness in his eyes stilled any further protest. “I only meant to help. You’ve been so tired lately.”

  His hand cupped her chin lightly, his thumb tracing her cheekbone. She trembled at his touch. “You are so sweet.” His husky whisper sent goose bumps down her spine. He was so close. Was he… was he going to kiss her?

  “So what do you think of her first day’s milking?”

  Jason and Pearl jerked apart at Frank’s voice. Jason frowned at him. “Was it you who taught her how to do this?”

  Frank leaned against the stall and raised his eyebrows at Pearl. “Told you he wouldn’t like it.”

  “You’re right; I don’t.”

  The coldness in his voice had the effect on Pearl of being dumped in ice water. “You needn’t bellow at him. It was my idea.”

  He stepped around her and dropped down on the stool. “Well, I’m taking over now.”

  “Yes, so I see.” She grasped her skirt to keep it from tripping her in the straw and hurried out of the barn. Whatever had she done to change his attitude so suddenly? Everything was wonderful, and then…

  “Why do I keep forgetting, Lord?” she asked through clenched teeth, her shoes hitting the hard soil of the yard sharply with each step. “When am I going to learn not to read love into each kind word and look Jason gives me?”

  Jason barely noticed the white streams hissing into the pail. His heart felt like someone had plucked it out of his chest and stomped on it. He’d been so touched that Pearl wanted to spare him. In another moment he would have kissed her, told her that he loved her.

  Then Frank had spoken, and the thought flashed through his mind that perhaps she had done this not to spare him further work but to help Frank.

  She’d pleaded Frank’s case to him last night, when he’d expected her to be as disgusted with the man as he was himself. She knew Frank had the responsibility for milking tonight. It was he she was assisting, not her husband.

  Before they were married, when he and Frank had argued over escorting her home, she’d said she’d always enjoyed Frank’s company. It was no secret his brother was considered wildly attractive by most of the single women in town, in spite of the fact he barely said hello to them. He wasn’t shy with Pearl. He was as comfortable with her as he was with Maggie. What if Pearl…?

  “No!”

  The cow turned her head to look at him, and he patted her flank. “Sorry, Bessie. Wasn’t yelling at you.”

  He picked up the pail and walked slowly across the barn, dreading going inside and facing Pearl.

  Leaning against the barn door, he listened to piano music from the open windows mix with the music of the prairie insects and allowed the thought he’d stamped out a minute earlier to wriggle inside his mind in all its ugliness.

  What if his wife was falling in love with his brother?

  CHAPTER 12

  Pearl returned smiles and greetings as she moved down the aisle of Windom Academy recitation hall, joining the rest of the audience during the intermission of the musicale.

  She was glad to see it so well attended. With the economic depression, the school was having difficulty meeting its debts, the same as everyone else. Male students had offered to provide the labor required for a much-needed well, but the funds from the musicale would purchase the necessary supplies for the well and windmill.

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” Jason said near her ear.

  She felt absurdly lonely watching him move through the crowd to stop beside Amy Henderson. Always in publi
c he played the devoted husband, and she cherished his touch at her elbow or back and his endearing looks, even knowing they were only for show. The first few days and weeks of their marriage, she’d wondered if he could possibly be falling in love with her. He was so sweet, and the way he would look at her sometimes—well, even now it made her heart skip a beat. But since the episode in the barn, he’d not touched her in their home unless it was accidental. He remained friendly and even joked as always, but there was a definite cooling in his attitude. She was at a loss to understand it.

  Amy and Jason parted, and she watched for him to return to her. Jealousy burned through her when Miranda stopped him with a gloved hand on his arm, darting a triumphant look at Pearl.

  She turned decidedly away. What right had she to be jealous? She knew when she married him that he loved Miranda. The knowledge did nothing to decrease her pain.

  How had Miranda become so self-centered, she wondered for the hundredth time. With all the unmarried women today seeking employment, her desire for a life of leisure was particularly unseemly. Even Chippewa City was filled with women working beside men—proprietresses of boarding houses and hotels, waitresses, maids, milliners, seamstresses, clerks, secretaries serving the professional men, instructors in music, school teachers, even a banker. Look at the wife of the Windom Academy’s headmaster—why, she taught, acted as housemother to the young women boarding there, and cooked for twenty to forty teachers and students daily! If a woman hadn’t a family to care for, the world certainly had plenty of places for her to fill a need.

  Restlessly she moved toward a painting on the wall, one of many in an exhibit by Amy. Frank was in a group of young men nearby, she noticed, discoursing on the need for area farmers to support the new grain house in town, which had already advanced the local market two cents above list.

  “It’s so good to see you again, Mrs. Sterling. You don’t get into town nearly often enough.” Pearl started at Amy’s gentle voice.