With Love from Bliss
Page 11
If his keen eyes failed to find solace in the face of the object of his prayers when he concluded, he was wise enough to say only, “I’ll continue to pray for you, Dudley. I’m sure that God has a future for you, a good future, and that He’ll see you through to that fulfillment. Now, how about a warm-up on the coffee?”
Walking home through the thick night, Dudley was as much in the dark spiritually as physically. But he left behind one praying, believing man, and even then the first rays of promise were gathering. There would be a sunrise.
But there was no glimmer of it the following Sunday.
There was no staying home from church. Della, as rigid in her religious convictions as in all else, determined they should be there this first Sunday after Henley’s grim death. But even she avoided the double desk with the youthful lovers’ initials and took a place on the side bench.
As always, Dudley sat in the cloakroom, rather too silent and quiet, self-conscious under the quick, curious glances of his friends. He couldn’t blame them; tragedy and trauma made for difficult conversation. It would pass, with time, and his former relationship with the young folk of the community would go on as usual. Except in one instance.
Just before the opening hymn, while the pump organ was being played heartily and vigorously by Sally Dewhurst, through the open door came Bert Felker and Matilda Hooper. They were obviously in the final throes of a good laugh, shoving each other playfully as they separated, Bert to sit on the male side, Matilda to sit with the young women.
Matilda shot one straight and meaningful look at Dudley, which said as plain as words, “It’s over, see!” Thereafter, her eyes avoided meeting his stunned gaze.
It hadn’t taken Dudley completely by surprise; he had been half prepared for Matilda to explain, hopefully sadly and reluctantly, that they must part company . . . for the time being. But to flaunt Bert Felker in his face—it was rejection with a slap.
When Sunday dinner was over, Dudley picked up the latest pile of newspapers recently arrived from his uncle and, in spite of the disapproval on his mother’s face (“Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy”), made his way deliberately to the porch and the ancient rocking chair. There had to be an opening . . . an opportunity . . . something . . . somewhere. . . .
Are you doing your yawning exercises faithfully?” Aunt Charlotte asked, stopping by Franny’s room.
“Yes, but I think it’s a lot of . . . bunkum,” the usually gentle Frances said with uncharacteristic emphasis.
At the sound of a word that she considered coarse, Aunt Charlotte felt called upon to issue a reproachful reprimand, though she seemed halfhearted about it. So even though Franny was twenty-four years old and a model of propriety most of the time, Aunt Charlotte said automatically, “That’s not a word a lady would use.” Just the saying of it seemed to lift the aunt’s spirits, restoring, in a way, a semblance of normalcy where the frail young woman was concerned, and whom they so often treated as an invalid.
Aside from the pills and potions that had been prescribed for Franny by their doctor, friends and family came up with certain remedies from time to time, and most of them were tried, at Charlotte’s insistence. “This malingering must be halted,” she had said firmly, “and it will, just as soon as we locate the proper restorative.”
Consequently, Franny had suffered through:
Blood Pills, designed to cure nervous despondency, loss of memory, irritability of temper, locomotor ataxia, and much more;
Orange Wine Stomach Bitters, guaranteed to be “from the fruits of the Seville orange tree in combination with seventeen different roots and herbs,” and treating gastric ailments, want of appetite, low spirits and nervousness, general derangements, and purifying the blood, bones, muscles, and restoring vigor;
Microbe Killer, “one of the grandest remedies known to the present age,” for preventing la grippe, catarrh, consumption, malaria, blood poison, rheumatism, and killing the germs that are the cause of the disease.
In spite of these assurances and more, Franny continued wan and peaked, without energy or interest. It was Kerry, desperate for something to lift her dear friend out of the doldrums—mental, physical, emotional—into which she had sunk, who had come up with “Yawning for Exercise.”
“According to the results of late investigations,” she had reported one day, having just read all about it, “yawning is the most natural form of respiratory exercise. An eminent authority—unfortunately it doesn’t give his name—advances the theory that,” and Kerry found her place in The Youth’s Companion, and read, “‘everyone should have a good yawn, with stretching of the limbs, morning and evening, for the purpose of ventilating the lungs and strengthening the muscles of respiration.’”
“When I was a child,” said a doubtful Aunt Charlotte, ever the stickler for proper protocol, “children were taught that yawning was a breach of good behavior. Now, if this medical testimony may be credited, it is incumbent upon parents—and guardians!—to see that the youthful members of their flock,” and she smiled at Franny and Kerry indulgently, having come a great deal along the path of tolerance in the last years, “not only yawn, but practice what may be called the art of yawning. Isn’t that the heart of the article, Kerry?”
“That’s it,” Kerry affirmed, looking at the invalid for her reaction.
“Wait a minute,” Franny objected, “you can’t just decide to yawn, can you? Don’t you have to be sleepy, or tired, or bored?”
“Apparently yawning can be practiced,” Kerry declared, “and therefore perfected.” And she fell to giving a demonstration.
“At least,” Aunt Charlotte said firmly, “cover your mouth when you do it.”
“‘I will lay mine hand upon my mouth,’” Kerry said, but under her breath so that Aunt Charlotte barely heard, but having heard, awaited the end of the quotation, the tip of her nose pinking only a little. “‘Once have I spoken; but I will not answer: yea, twice; but I will proceed no further.’”
“The day hasn’t dawned,” Aunt Charlotte proclaimed, “when you will not answer. What a day that will be!”
Kerry subsided, as she had learned to do long ago, only breaking over occasionally when Scripture seemed the only way to respond.
And so regular sessions of yawning and stretching had been instigated. “I can’t see any advantage to it,” Franny finally said fretfully. “And the only thing being stretched is my mouth!”
This called for a critical assessment of yawn therapy by Aunt Charlotte, who then advised, “One must yawn with one’s mouth strictly less than fully agape. The muscles it takes to refrain from the full-gape position should help affect the cure, I should think.”
But another week’s yawn experiments failed to lift the invalid from the malaise into which she had sunk.
Not to be defeated in her efforts to bring health and happiness back to Franny, Kerry brought in another magazine, reporting, “Here’s an endorsement for Ayer’s Sarsaparilla. ‘I was unable to sleep,’ this woman says. ‘I had serious trouble with my kidneys, and suffered greatly with pains in my back. I was also afflicted with headache, loss of appetite and indigestion. A friend persuaded me to use Ayer’s Sarsaparilla, and my troubles all disappeared.’ What do you say to that, Franny? You don’t sleep well, you don’t eat well, you have pains—”
“Only since I began the yawning cure!” Franny declared in no uncertain terms.
“Here, then,” Kerry said with a discouraged sigh, “you look these cures over and read the endorsements . . . maybe there’ll be something that will get your attention.” And Kerry left to go about other duties.
Something did get Franny’s attention. Something brought a gleam into her lackluster eyes. Something brought a faint pink into her colorless cheeks. Something quickened her breath. Finally, lying back with the paper clutched to her, Franny thought seriously and for a long time. When Gladdy brought lunch in and attempted to remove the paper, Franny let it go with these instructions, “Put it right here on the
bedside table. And, Gladdy, when you come back for the tray, please bring pen and ink and paper.”
Franny spent a good part of the afternoon on the project. Her composition was covered over when anyone came into the room, and she waited politely until the room was her own again, and then resumed writing. It seemed to take a while—several pages were crumpled and discarded. At last a satisfactory document was completed. Reading it over, with eyes aglow and cheeks flushed, Franny signed and folded it and inserted it into an envelope. When it was addressed and ready to go, she sealed it and slipped it under her pillow.
“Gladdy,” she said later when the maid was replenishing the wood in the fireplace, “please send Gideon up to me. And, Gladdy, don’t say anything to anyone. All right?”
What could she do? As devoted to Frances as was Kerry, Gladdy promised.
It was Gladdy, many days later, who secretly brought an envelope to Franny, noting as a matter of course that it was addressed to Miss Frances Bentley in care of B. Gideon; this was not surprising, since it was Gideon himself who had handed it to her, rather slyly, as though he too had his instructions not to “tell.” Franny clutched the envelope to her, waiting to open it until Gladdy was gone and she was alone. This scenario was repeated numerous times, and each time it was accomplished in secret, with no one else in the family aware of what was happening under their very noses.
Gladdy wasn’t the only one to notice that Franny’s cheeks blossomed like a rose, that her eyes regained their sparkle, and that she resumed her yawning exercises with new zest. One and all were amazed when she forsook her bed to begin twirling, bending, stretching, performing many more movements than the yawn exercise called for. And thriving on it.
Soon she was rising and dressing immediately after she finished eating her breakfast, followed by occasions when she appeared at the table in the dining room, her presence adding to the feeling of relief and happiness in the household. Miss Frances was well again!
At first Kerry felt extremely gratified—her efforts had paid off. Either Franny was responding to the health regimen in a marvelous way or a miracle had been performed.
There came a day when Franny, with Kerry accompanying her, made a foray into Toronto’s shopping district, a bold experiment indeed. She survived it very well, and was, moreover, exhilarated past all explaining.
When caution was urged upon her, “I’m fine, just fine,” she insisted, flourishing a list of “things” she needed to purchase, and arranging another shopping trip.
The girls had a delightful time together, like nothing that had marked their relationship previously. Once Gladdy accompanied them, and it seemed like an outing for pleasure.
“I’ve needed times like this,” Franny said. “I promise we’ll have more of them.”
“‘Why,’” a smiling Kerry quoted, prompted to the use of Scripture by the jovial mood that was upon them, “‘gaddest thou about so much to change thy ways?’”
Little did she know just how much Franny’s ways were changing and would change.
Franny’s inheritance, until now, had meant little or nothing to her, accepted with supreme casualness. Now she spent money freely. But on what? The latest in couture? Not at all.
It was because of the unsuitability of her purchases that Kerry began to suspect something was not quite right. Franny’s choices were far from the rich, fancy, or fashionable. Rather, they were basic, plain, serviceable. And when Gideon had deposited them in her room, Franny laid them carefully into a trunk that Finch toted down from the attic for her.
“You’d think she were going on the Grand Tour,” Olga reported to Finch, having been in Franny’s room and had a glimpse into the open trunk. “Except no self-respectin’ crayture would step foot in the auld country wiff such a wardrobe as she’s accumulatin’, the lamb. Looks like she were plannin’ a trip to the north pole, it does! And how long do you fink our Miss Franny would survive at the north pole, the precious!”
Kerry had some of the same dark thoughts. When Franny ordered a “bicycle suit,” it was more than she could stand and not burst with curiosity. The bloomers, in particular, were startling.
“A bicycle suit! Franny, whatever for? You’ve never ridden a bicycle in your life! Are you about to start now? And if so, why haven’t you ordered—of all things—the machine itself?”
Franny’s delicious, tinkly laugh, once again ringing musically wherever she went, was her only response, aside from a tantalizing “You’ll see!”
Franny folded the bicycle suit of “blue repellent cloth, bound in leather all around and consisting of five pieces—jacket, skirt, bloomers, leggins, and cap,” and laid it in the trunk beside the plain black Henrietta skirt, washable linen crash walking suit, double-cape macintosh, over-gaiters, corduroy leggins, and other strange purchases, and Kerry could contain herself no longer: “Franny! Either I’m crazy or you are! And since you’re the one making these far-fetched purchases, I think it’s you. I can’t stand it! What are you doing? Where are you going, if going you are? Certainly these things are not for use in Toronto. You’ll have to tell me,” she threatened, “or I’m not going with you again. And Aunt Charlotte won’t let you go alone.”
“The bicycle suit, Kerry? It comes as near to riding clothes as I can get and not wear trousers. Sidesaddle is out of the question. You’ve read the Duchess of Somerset’s memoirs, how the sight of her riding sidesaddle, exposing her woollen petticoats, caused two mule teams so much alarm that to pacify them and prevent the wagons from leaving the trail, she had to conceal herself behind some bushes until they had passed. If one is to fork a horse—”
“Fork a horse?” Kerry asked feebly. This was worse than she had imagined! “Franny! You’re sicker than I thought!”
“But I’m perfectly well, Kerry!” And Franny whirled across the bedroom in as graceful and useless a demonstration as could be imagined. Falling on the bed, she waited until she had regained her breath. Then, sitting up, she said, with a twinkle, “Are you prepared for a surprise? Perhaps a shock?”
“Depends,” Kerry said briefly, hoping, rather desperately by now, that this secret was good and sensible and that the change in Franny was a healthy one, a permanent one. But bloomers?
Franny was fumbling in a drawer, withdrawing a packet of letters, tied—of all things—with a blue ribbon!
“Franny! Don’t tell me you’re in love again!” Kerry was more than a little concerned now. Not again could she stand the heartbreak that Franny—as dear to her as a sister—had already experienced, taking her almost to her deathbed.
“Listen, dear. Listen, and don’t talk for a few moments.” The old, gentle Franny was speaking. In a few words she explained that in the magazine Kerry had left with her—as well as many newspapers she had perused—there were numerous advertisements for a wife. Lonely homesteaders were desperate for female companionship and wrote appeals for a wife; bachelors across the West, with no prospects in their community, had written; organizations set up for the purpose had written, extolling the virtues of such a life and urging a response from females interested in “adventure, satisfaction, and true love.”
“Franny—you didn’t—”
“Shh, dear, and listen. No, I didn’t answer them, though I was tempted. You don’t know, Kerry, how lonely and desperate I’ve been, and how completely hopeless about my future. So, I wrote my own letter, you’d call it an advertisement, I suppose.”
“You wrote—”
“Newspapers, magazines—Winnipeg Free Press, Western Producer, and others—those that were most likely to be received and read in the West. The great and glorious West, Kerry! Where things are happening! Where there’s life!” The near-invalid Franny was replaced for the moment by none other than a fiery fanatic.
“Here,” she said, taking a deep breath and settling down, “see for yourself what I said.”
Silently Kerry took the paper, followed the pointing finger, and read, “‘Single woman, financially independent and with a pioneer
spirit, desires correspondence with interested male, age 25–35, serious intentions in mind. Would prefer a gentleman with some education and polish, and whose dreams, along with mine, will bring satisfaction and fulfillment.’” One further line included the request that mail be sent in care of B.Gideon.
“Gideon has been getting answers—there’s been no lack of answers—and Gladdy has been bringing them to me and mailing mine. You mustn’t blame either of them. I threatened them with murder and mayhem if they told!”
“And that stack represents the responses?”
“Yes, and I’ve read them carefully. Out of them all, I selected one, and we’ve corresponded several times. My last letter, Kerry, informed him of my decision.”
“Decision?” Kerry asked half fearfully. “What decision, Franny?”
“I’ve decided to pack up and go to Saskatchewan. That’s why the clothes, which I deem fit for the frontier; that’s what all the secrecy has been about. I’m going West, Kerry!”
“To marry this . . . clod?”
“Kerry!” Franny said reproachfully. “You don’t even know him! He’s a man of some culture, who, like me, wants adventure and isn’t afraid to go after it. He hasn’t asked me to marry him, as yet, but I know it’s coming. I want to see him, get to know him. So I’m not totally foolish after all!”
“‘Thy tacklings are loosed’!” The remote Scripture, which Kerry had never needed before, was a cry from her heart.
Franny tried to laugh, as she so often had across the years when Kerry used Scripture indiscriminately. But the laugh was of short duration, for Kerry’s face, so dear to Franny, was filled with a mix of pain and bitterness.
“Dear Kerry, trust me,” Franny said, putting out her hand in a small gesture of comfort. “I’ve written him and told him I’m coming. I’ll be on my way just as soon as I can get matters arranged about the transfer of funds—I’m so stupid about banking—and take care of a few matters here and do a bit more shopping . . . it’s been such fun, Kerry. You can’t believe how alive I feel.”