A Place Called Bliss (14 page)

While the water heated and the teapot warmed, Mary turned to the newcomer, seating herself and saying, “Now, tell me about yourself, Celia Raab.”

“Well, for one thing, we live about four miles from you. We’re closer to town, near enough to the road so you could stop and see us whenever you go.” Cee Raab looked hopeful as she said this. She was, obviously, as lonely as Mary, but without the company of children and the attention and time they consumed in a long, isolated day.

“I’ll get my story over quickly,” Celia Raab said, adding, “I’m interested to hear yours.”

And the two friends settled down while the kettle came to the boil, to begin a friendship, knowing they had all the time they needed to share whatever they wanted. If time ran out today, all the better; there would be another trip and another visit to look forward to, a small glimmer in a dark winter.

“I may as well tell it first as last,” Cee said. “If I don’t, someone else will. It’s not unheard of, but unusual enough to cause considerable interest. You see, I’m a mail-order bride, I guess you’d call it.”

Mary’s eyes widened. “Hold it,” she said, “while I get the tea things. I must hear all about this.”

Mary made the tea and, as it brewed, set out the remains of a gingerbread cake she had made the day before. Flushing with satisfaction, she drew her few dainty cups and saucers down from the shelf where they were on display, brought from her trunk four crisp serviettes, and served up the treat.

“You’ll stay for supper, of course,” she said, thinking ahead.

“ ’Fraid not,” Cee Raab said with regret. “It gets dark far too soon these days, and we’ve a distance to go. And if you haven’t learned it yet, you will—there are the everlasting chores to take care of. Feeding, milking, egg gathering, not to mention straining the milk and washing the pans and all those things. I guess,” she said thoughtfully, “I’m grateful for them, keeps me from going crazy, I suppose.”

But Cee spoke with such a good humor and the by-now-familiar sparkle in her eyes that Mary wasn’t alarmed. Rather, she was encouraged. Cee Raab had an outlook that was healthy, and Mary was the better for having had a glimpse of it.

“The mail-order bride part—” Mary prodded.

“I guess you know the plight of bachelors here and across the prairies. Truly pathetic, and many of them don’t make it, just fold up and quit. Or almost starve to death.” Again the twinkle. “Well, Bela was one of them. He’d come from the old country—Hungary—five years ago. Worked in the east for a while until he got enough money . . . and nerve . . . to tackle the wild west. And, of course, here in the bush it’s about as wild as you can get. He’d been alone here a couple of years when he met a neighbor of ours from Iowa who gave him my name and suggested he write.”

“So you started a correspondence—”

“Not really. His very first letter was a proposal. It was startling, to say the least. But I looked around me—my first husband had died, I was living with my brother and his wife and not too happy about it, and I had no future as far as I could see. The person courting me was a miserable excuse for a man, but my brother was pressing me to get married again. I saw Bela’s letter as an avenue of escape—not a very good reason for marriage, I suppose. But having decided to accept his proposal, I made up my mind to make a go of it and be a good wife, regardless of the price I had to pay.” Cee’s laughter trilled out, happy and free. “Oh, what a price! I gave up nothing, really, and gained so much. And on top of all the blessings Bela brought into my poor, lonely life, there’s this—” And Cee’s hand was placed gently on her rounded waistline.

Mary couldn’t help it; her eyes misted. “Someday,” she murmured quickly, for she could hear the men approaching, “I want to hear the details of this remarkable love story.”

“And I want to hear yours,” Cee said, confident that her new acquaintance, so simple and honest and direct, had a love story of her own.

After Angus and Bela Raab laid aside their wraps, there were the necessary introductions and the seating around the stove—the designated spot for fellowship in any snow-wrapped, bush-bound home—and the subsequent enjoyment of tea and talk.

The following two hours fled by far too rapidly, a wintry oasis in a long dry spell of meaningful relationships.

Finally, when Bela’s sigh and glimpse of his pocket watch indicated the time had come to leave, Cee said, with a rush, “Oh, I’ve forgotten my most important part. Is it possible . . . do you think?”

“Yes?” Mary prompted.

“When it’s time . . . for the baby . . . would you come, Mary?”

Mary’s eyes grew wide; perhaps the shadows in them were discerned by the expectant mother, for she said, with a rush, “Am I asking too much? Please . . . feel free to tell me if I should look for someone else. But I thought . . . having two of your own—”

“Yes,” Mary said slowly, “I’ve had two of my own. But not these two,” and she indicated Cammie and Molly playing quietly nearby. “There was another. . . .”

Angus’s hand reached for his wife’s as Mary’s tale faltered. “We lost our second child on the trip over. I’m not sure Mary has gotten over the experience. Cameron is ours by love, not birth.”

“It’s time,” Mary said into the silence that fell with only the popping of the poplar wood to interject sound, “it’s time . . . for healing. I don’t know how much good I’ll be, Cee, but I’ll come and do what I can, and gladly.”

Obvious relief struggled with uncertainty on Celia Raab’s round face.

Angus’s words sealed the bargain. “Good girl,” he said quietly to his wife. To his new friends he said, “Get word to us, and I’ll see that Mary gets there. Now, if you are sure you can’t stay for supper—”

But Bela Raab was rising and turning toward his coat and overshoes; Cee took Mary’s hand in a quick grasp and, smiling, said through tears, “Thank you, my friend.”

With the cutter once again at the door and Bela waiting, Cee, bundled and swathed, gave the children bearlike hugs and said her good-byes. With her hand on the doorknob, she turned, drew the enveloping scarf away from her mouth, and said: “I almost forgot the best part . . . the best part of my story. It’s about my heritage. You see,” the gray eyes shone, “I’m the child of a King.”

“A . . . a king?” Mary questioned, clearly surprised, and clearly puzzled by such an amazing confession.

“By birth,” Celia Raab explained happily. “New birth, actually. I’ve been born again.”

“Why then . . . why then . . .” Mary whispered, beginning to grasp the implications of what this new acquaintance was saying, “why then, we’re sisters.”

“Oh, Mary! Have you . . . are you—?”

“Yes! Yes!” Mary was singing, her joy in her friend more than she had known it would be. “I’m part of the family!”

In spite of Cee’s girth, the two women wrapped their arms around each other; in spite of Cee’s awkwardness, the two women performed a small jig of pure delight before they stepped apart, Mary’s tears mopped by a corner of the clean apron she had donned and Cee’s tears disappearing into the wool of her scarf.

“And Bela?” Mary finally asked.

“Bela, too,” Cee said. “It’s what finally caused me to write and tell him I’d come. He ended his letter, you see, by telling me he was a Christian and had prayed over the whole plan and hoped I was the same, and praying, too. How could I have come, otherwise?”

After the cutter disappeared, with Mary and Angus and the children waving a shivering farewell from the snowy step, the small house seemed a bright haven to the little family who shut the door on snow and ice that went out across their known world,
over the bush, over the silent and frozen lakes and the frozen tundra, to the north pole, and beyond. Here they were safe, here they were content. Here, in this wee spot, their dreams were incubating and, with spring and sun and showers, would blossom into reality.

Mary chattered on about her new friend, telling as much of Cee’s story as she knew. “To have a friend and not too far away, Angus,” she said, “means so much. And then to know she, too, is part of the family . . .” Starry-eyed with the wonder of it, Mary’s voice trailed off.

Bela, it seemed, as overflowing in his witness as his wife, had left a small but clear testimony with Angus. On top of all that Mary had shared across the past months, it was all that was needed.

“Do you think,” Angus asked quietly after the children were snug in bed for the night, “there’s room for one more son in the family?”

Bowing his head over the oak table, the icicles around Angus’s heart melted in a God-sent chinook that warmed and melted all resistance, and tears—first of repentance and then of pure joy—ran down his craggy Scottish face to be absorbed eventually by that long-suffering apron as Mary wrapped her arms around her husband and welcomed him to the family of God. Now, truly, her heart told her, they would be a close-knit unit. Now they could be the parents they ought to be; now they would be the influence and blessing this new land needed.
Yea
. . . yes, yes, yes . . .
happy is that people, whose God is the Lord
.

Mary’s letter, long unmailed because of many interruptions including storms and birth, was finally to be completed.

Dear Mam:

I hope you don’t think we’re dead or, at the best, snowed in. We have been that—snowed in. Thank God for a good
woodpile and a fairly well-filled cellar. As I told you, we did a lot of preparing, or as much as time allowed, before winter hit.

We’re so blessed, Mam. Since my last attempt at writing, more than one significant thing has happened to add to those already considerable blessings. First, Angus found the Lord! That does seem like a ridiculous way to put it, as if the Lord were lost or something. It’s more like the Lord found Angus, for he’s the one who was lost, and the Lord, the Good Shepherd, was the one doing the seeking. It all came about this way.

It being a long day, with no interruptions, Mary filled the time with writing the details of the Raabs’ introduction into their lives, of learning that Celia was a Christian and her husband, also, of how Bela had quietly dropped a word in Angus’s ear as they visited in the barn and how the Holy Spirit had used it to fan the small flames already ignited and smoldering into a bright flame in Angus’s heart.

My joy is complete
, Mary wrote, trying to express the happiness.

It seems to me that both husband and wife should believe, truly making them one, and that a father and mother should be of one mind in what they tell their children and how they live before them.

As for the Raabs, they have become dear and trusted friends. And how we do need one another on the frontier. One never knows when an emergency will arise. Cee Raab is what is known as a mail-order bride, a fascinating story and one that turned out well. Others, in like situations, find themselves not only married to a stranger but one for whom they have little or no liking, and with whom they have to live
in the most close, even most intimate, association. I shudder to think of it, shut in for long months with some unwashed, uncouth, unlearned—Oh, I could go on and on as I conjure up the dreadful picture of such marriages.

Though I dreaded it much, I promised Celia that I would be with her at the time of the birth of her expected bairn. Some stranger came for me, since Bela would not leave Cee in her fears and anxieties. Believe me, it took a lot of pluck on my part, and more on Angus’s part, to climb into the sleigh of a complete stranger and head out into the whiteout with no sure destination in sight. But people are honorable and helpful, and women are much respected, and I was perfectly safe, being delivered to the Raabs’ door.

Of the birth I will write but little, Mam. It brought back memories, few of them good. I tried to think about Molly’s birth and the joy, but horrible memories of my wee Angel’s arrival and death threatened me every moment. Oh, how I prayed (and Angus has told me he did the same, here with the children), and somehow I got through. And I was able to be happy for my friends in the safe arrival of wee Howard, who was almost immediately called Howie, whether or not due to his howls I can’t say!

I stayed another day with the Raabs, and Cee and I had many a good talk. We long to spend more time together. Homesteads, though isolated from each other, are not so, extremely, and it is possible to visit from time to time. Prince Albert, I understand, has its Merrie Minglers Sewing Club, about which Cee and I are somewhat dubious, not being the greatest seamstresses. But we will surely set up some system just as soon as we can find out what other women may have settled in our district.

You know, of course, that we have no school as yet, and that I am teaching Cammie and will teach Molly. Usually, in these homesteading areas, the community is quick to build itself a school, and this will come along in due time. Right now our children are too scattered. But with spring and better weather, the available land will be taken up, it is believed. And when a school is erected, Mam, can church services be far behind? This thought occupies our thoughts and prayers very much. Many such church services carry on without a minister, with the women (I must admit, sadly) usually carrying the responsibility. Cee and I are willing to do this but feel blessed that in our case we have menfolk who are as eager for spiritual things as we are.