by Ruth Glover
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.
Back 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 an
d 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.”
Robbie, dumbfounded, could only shake his head.
“Are you sure you don’t mind, Robbie?” Alice asked anxiously, and they were the very words he had been struggling with, wondering how to say them to her. Surely God was good. Good to both of them.
“Na na! I’m happy for you!”
And with those words, Robbie Dunbar was once again a free man.
It was that very evening—why wait?—that Robbie wended his way to the Bloom homestead. He had no right to Tierney’s love, but he had to have her forgiveness. But yesterday, at the Bloom table, he had seen something . . . something in her eyes akin to the flame that had blazed between them in earlier days in Binkiebrae, and it gave him hope. At any rate, he decided doggedly, he had to know.
The evening shadows were lengthening when he rode into the Bloom yard, slid from the horse’s back, and knocked on the door of the house.
“Why, hello, Robbie. Come on in.” It was Lydia, friendly, inviting.
“I’ve coom to talk wi’ Tierney,” he said without preamble, looking over Lydia’s shoulder, into the room beyond.
“She’s not here, Robbie. She may be in the pasture with a pail of milk, teaching a calf to drink, or she may be taking a walk, which she does often of an evening. If it’s important . . . will you come in and wait?”
Lydia was cautious in her invitation, remembering the moment Tierney had shared with her about Robbie’s agreement to marry Alice Hoy. In fact, she had often prayed with Tierney, when her heart was about to break and she needed comfort and strength to face the future. A future without Robbie Dunbar, it seemed, was almost more than Tierney could contemplate. The thought of it, or prayers about it, may have been what drove her to these times she got away from the house, to walk the wilderness roads, to sit beside the lake, to be alone with her pain.
“Or,” Lydia offered, “you might rather come back another time—”
“Na na,” Robbie said, studying the farmyard, looking for a glimpse of Tierney. “I canna wait.”
“I hope, Robbie,” Lydia said gently, “it’s good news. That is, it isn’t anything that’ll upset our Tierney.”
“It’s good news, ma’am. The best!” And Robbie’s eyes, turned on his questioner, blazed with something Lydia had never seen in them before.
“Why, Robbie,” she said, “you look—”
“Look how, ma’am?”
“I don’t know how to put it . . . you look—you look different, somehow.”
“I am different!” Robbie, it seemed, could keep it a secret no longer. “I’m as different as night an’ day! An’ thass what I need to tell Tierney . . . it’s part of what I need to tell her.”
Lydia’s eyes, studying Robbie’s face, were slowly filling with comprehension.
“Robbie!” she said wonderingly. “Robbie Dunbar—is it possible you’ve given yourself to the Lord, that He’s become your Savior?”
The answer was clear to be seen. Robbie’s face—in spite of a deep tan and a day’s growth of beard—radiated the transaction that had changed him. Lydia caught her breath, with wonder and with awe.
Robbie looked happy enough to caper; Scotch dignity kept him flat-footed but couldn’t disguise the happiness that glowed from his eyes.
“Yes, ma’am. Thass what happened, a’ reet! An’ thass the first thing I want to tell her.
“I know I have no reet . . . no right,” he continued, humbly now, “to Tierney, or her love. But I jist have to try, don’t I? I’ve niver told her how much . . . how much I care. Though I think she knows.”
Lydia, a romantic at heart, was nodding.
“She needs to hear it, Robbie; she needs to hear you say it.”
“But first—after I tell her about accepting the Lord, and before I tell her I love her—I have to tell her how sorry I am—”
Robbie’s voice faltered. He scuffed his shoe on the porch as he took a moment to get his feelings under control. It was a time of highs and lows for Robbie Dunbar.
“I think, ma’am,” he said, taking a deep breath, “I’ll jist wander off toward the pasture an’ see if she’s there.”
Lydia watched him go with a prayer on her lips—for him and the urgency upon him, and for Tierney, who needed, more than anything, to hear what he had to say.
Turning to the house, the motherly woman wandered aimlessly around the kitchen, checked the reservoir for bathwater, flexed her aching fingers . . .
The screen door slammed.
“Oh, it’s you, Tierney,” Lydia said, asking immediately, “Did you see Robbie?”
Tierney stopped short. “See Robbie? Na na—”
“He’s looking for you. I didn’t know for sure where you were . . . he’s out there, somewhere, looking for you. He wants to talk to you.”
Lydia could barely keep from blurting out the secret.
Her expression turning heavy, Tierney headed for the stairs and her room. “I dinna care to see him. I canna see him . . .”
“But maybe you should—”
“Na na. I made up my mind to that when . . . when—well, you know,” Tierney said firmly yet with a sigh, and she took another step toward the stairs and escape.
“Wait!” Lydia was desperate. “I think . . . I think you should talk to him, Tierney.”
Surprised, Tierney paused. “Whativer can ye mean?” she asked slowly.
“There’ve been some changes . . . changes in the way things were.”
Tierney’s glance sharpened, and she asked again, “Whativer do ye mean? Tell me . . . oh, do tell me!”
Lydia could keep it a secret no longer.
“Tierney, darling Tierney,” the older woman’s voice trembled, and her eyes misted with happy tears, “he’s come . . . Robbie’s come to tell you that he’s accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior. And to ask, now, your forgiveness, too—”
With a choked cry, Tierney was across the expanse of the kitchen; the screen door slammed behind her, the porch resounded to the clatter of her shoes, the steps never felt the touch of her feet as she flew to find Robbie.
Flew to find Robbie Dunbar and saw a vision she was to remember the rest of her life: Striding toward her across the pasture, Robbie’s beloved figure was etched against the last rays of the sun, ringed about with an aura of light. Coming toward her. Robbie, coming to her at last.
Robbie, seeing her, breaking into a run, his leaping and bounding feet—feet that had once taken him away and were now bringing him back to her, his raised arm, his shout—expressing what words had not said all these years.
Stepping out of the loose shoes that so hindered her, her bare feet flying over the grassy expanse that divided them, Tierney sped, straight and true, into the arms of Robbie Dunbar.
Also by Ruth Glover
A Place Called Bliss
With Love from Bliss
Journey to Bliss
