A Bride for Donnigan (8 page)
Kathleen could not believe the report. She waved the words aside with a slender hand and tried to sit up, bumping her head on the overhead planks of the cabin.
“Why did
you
sign up?” Kathleen asked, her hand rubbing her head.
“Told you—lost the captain at sea. There was a mix-up over money. We found we’d lost all else too. Between the two grieves, Mum couldn’t—well, she just gave up. I lost her, too. I was alone—and well—Peg—I met her at work. She sort of took me in. Talked me into joining—and here I am.” She shrugged her shoulders.
“But Peg—” began Kathleen and quickly checked her tongue. She didn’t wish to criticize Erma’s friend.
“She’s drunk,” said Erma flatly. “Don’t think she’s used to drink and she’s just overdone it a bit. She’ll come round.”
Kathleen nodded.
“Truth is, it’s all a means of bracing themselves a bit,” went on Erma.
“Bracing?” asked Kathleen.
“Oh, I know they talk big—wave their glasses and cheer—but there’s not a one of them that isn’t just a bit nervous over what she’s doing, and that’s the way it really is.”
Kathleen nodded slowly. She was beginning to understand.
In the days that followed his signing up and turning over the passage money, Donnigan had many moments of extreme doubt. There were times when he sharply berated himself and declared himself to be a silly fool to have fallen for such a ridiculous scheme.
But always when he returned to his cabin at the end of a long, tiring day, he found himself thinking of how nice it would be to be met by a warm smile, a few cheery words, and a plate filled with something hot and palatable for his supper.
It was at those moments that he could not keep himself from whispering under his breath the count of days until the ship should anchor in Boston Harbor.
He got through the haying season. He was glad for the heavy labor that sent him home so tired at the end of the day that he scarcely thought at all before he succumbed to sleep.
He had a few days of rainy weather and restless pacing. And then finally he was into the harvest season. He hoped with all his heart that nothing would happen to slow him down. But it did. More rain showers. Donnigan found them hard to endure and was almost jubilant when he heard a horse approaching and looked out his kitchen window to see Wallis tying up at the hitching rail.
Donnigan was at the door before the older man had a chance to take a step toward the house.
“C’mon in,” he called eagerly. “C’mon in.”
Wallis advanced on the house, talking as he came. The man’s usual chatter sounded good to Donnigan.
“This foul weather. Ain’t good fer man nor beast. Here I was fixin’ to have my harvest all in before thet there ship brings my lady—and then this here.”
Wallis had turned from saying “Risa” and had begun to refer to the woman as “my lady.” Donnigan smiled to himself. He hadn’t even dared to think of his ordered bride so possessively as yet. For one thing, he still didn’t know one thing about her. Not even her name. It would have been nice to have a name.
“I just got me going good—cut the west field and was hopin’ fer sun—” kept on Wallis. Donnigan paid little attention. He pushed the door shut and turned to the stove as soon as the man entered the kitchen.
“Sit yerself,” he interrupted. “I’ll put on a fresh pot.”
While they waited for the coffee to brew, they talked of farm matters.
“Thet second sow farrowed yet?” asked Wallis.
“She sure did. Got a nice litter. Six—plus a born dead. Got one runt in the bunch, but he’s doing okay,” replied Donnigan.
“Not a big litter—but a fair start,” observed Wallis.
“Yeah. It’s okay for a first one. She should do better next time.”
Wallis knew the first sow had presented a litter of seven piglets—all healthy and of good size.
“They should be good sows,” Wallis commented. “Came from good stock.”
Donnigan nodded as he poured the coffee and took the two mugs to the table.
They sipped in silence for a few minutes and then Wallis spoke again. “Heard who yer gettin’ yet?”
Donnigan shook his head.
Another silent spell.
“Must be kinda hard to wait,” observed Wallis.
Donnigan nodded. “Yeah,” he admitted at last. “A little.”
“I been doin’ a bit of fixin’,” went on Wallis to Donnigan’s surprise. “Ya know—when ya look at a place as a woman might—ya see it a little different.”
Donnigan nodded. He hadn’t even thought to look at his place through a woman’s eyes. It looked just fine to him.
“So what’re you doin’?” Donnigan asked his friend.
“Well, I put glass in thet there winda in place of the oiled paper.”
Donnigan nodded. He had always wondered why a body would bother to have a window you couldn’t see out of.
“An’ I patched the roof. Rain ain’t comin’ in at all now.”
Wallis stopped to take another long draft from the coffee cup.
“I figured how I might put up a few hooks on the wall,” went on Wallis. “Ain’t a place to hang bridles or nothin’.”
Donnigan nodded. His bridles all hung on pegs in the barn.
“Might even put up a shelf or two,” went on Wallis. “Kinda stack up the dishes and food stuff so thet they don’t need to sit on the floor.”
“Sounds good,” said Donnigan with another nod.
“Figure I’ll have it all fixed up fer her,” Wallis concluded, looking real pleased with himself.
They played a game of checkers to help pass away the long hours of the rainy day, and Donnigan fixed pancakes and pork gravy for their supper. It was dark by the time Wallis retrieved his old Willie from the barn where he had been taken out of the cold rain and fed his supper.
Donnigan hated to see his friend go. He sure hoped the sun would be shining again on the morrow.
Donnigan began to take stock of his own cabin. Though it was sturdy and basically neat for a bachelor, he soon realized that it wasn’t exactly the kind of home that would bring pleasure to a woman. He felt panicky. He didn’t know where to start or what to do to make it more homey.
He did add a few more shelves and pegs. There would undoubtedly be more things that needed to be put away and hung up after there were two people occupying the premises. Then he went a step further and divided the one big room into two smaller ones. The smaller room at the east end became a bedroom with some privacy and the larger room was the living-kitchen space. Donnigan felt proud of himself for thinking of the idea. He even cut another window into the east end so that the bedroom would have a window all its own.
It was hard getting the job done. Donnigan was back at the harvest again with the weather cooperating quite nicely. His evenings, when he would have wished to put his feet up and rest his back a bit, were spent instead working on the changes to the house.
But even when he got the jobs completed, he still felt uneasy. The house still looked like just what it was: a bachelor’s quarters. Donnigan finally gave up. When it came to frills and gingham, he was out of his element.
He did take a look at the yard. He had thought that he kept it fairly neat. Now he could see that what he thought of as neatness might also be seen as clutter. He went to work moving the woodpile a ways from the door, stacking it neatly in a long row against the back fence. He filled in a few holes that had been made by the sows when they had escaped their pens one day while Donnigan had worked the fields. He even thought of constructing a fence, but there wasn’t time for that.
“It needs—it needs something,” he admitted as he stood back and squinted to get a full look at the house and yard before him.
He wasn’t sure what was missing, but he felt the picture he was getting was rather bleak and dull and desolate. He tried to go back in his mind to other houses he had seen in his younger years. His memory brought forth white picket fences and rose bushes in full bloom.
“Can’t fix that,” he said to himself, but, still dissatisfied, he shifted about to look at the house again.
At last he went to a shed and withdrew a spade. All along the path to the house and the wall by the door, he turned up the fresh soil and shook the grass roots from the dirt.
When he had finished his spading, he headed for the meadow behind the house. He had noticed many varieties of wild flowers there and considered some of them to be quite pretty.
He was disappointed to find that many of the prettier ones had finished their blooming season, but he went to work on what he found.
The transplanting was not easy. He had to trek back and forth, back and forth, one small plant after another held on the shovel surface so that its roots would not lose the dirt around them until it reached its new abode.
He was almost done with his task, gently patting another small plant in place while the sweat traced streaks down his dusty face, when a voice spoke directly behind him. Donnigan had heard no one approach and the voice startled him and brought him upright on his knees.
It was Lucas who stood beside him. Donnigan felt the color rise in his tanned cheeks. He opened his mouth to explain what he was doing, then closed it again. Lucas would have to be a fool not to see for himself.
Donnigan rose slowly to his full height and swatted the dust from his knees with the pair of work gloves he retrieved from the ground.
“Howdy, Lucas,” he said, hoping that his voice held more warmth than he presently felt. “Didn’t hear you arrive.”
“You were busy,” observed Lucas, and Donnigan wondered if he saw a glint of amusement in the other man’s eyes.
“Thought the place looked rather bare,” Donnigan offered in embarrassed excuse. “Don’t want her shocked by the drabness of it all.”
Lucas made no reply to Donnigan’s remark. He was carefully studying one of the small plants that Donnigan had just placed along the walk. “Where’d you get that one?” he asked simply.
“Down by the crick,” replied Donnigan, rather pleased that he had found such a pretty little cluster of flowers.
“What is it?” asked Lucas, bending down to get a closer look.
“I don’t know—but it was blooming and I thought it—that a woman might think it rather pretty.”
“Maybe it’s a weed.”
Donnigan straightened his shoulders and looked at the other man evenly. “I might not know the first thing about flowers—but I’ve made it my business to know weeds,” he replied evenly.
Lucas rose to his feet again and nodded in concession.
“Come in,” said Donnigan, moving toward the door. “I’ll put on the coffee.”
“Can’t stay,” said Lucas, and Donnigan hesitated.
“Wire came today,” said Lucas. “The ship’s in.”
Donnigan whirled to face the other man. Suddenly he felt like a small boy waiting for the Christmas that finally arrived. It was all he could do to keep himself from tossing his hat in the air and giving a loud whoop. He restrained himself and gave a slight nod instead.
“Wallis know?” he asked as calmly as he could. He looked at Lucas and was surprised to see the undisguised glow in the other man’s face.
“I’m stopping over there soon as I leave here,” Lucas replied.
Donnigan swallowed hard. Never had his emotions played such havoc with his normally calm demeanor. He shifted his feet uneasily, feeling that he would surely burst at any minute.
“It’ll take ’em a couple weeks to get here,” Lucas continued. “They’ll catch the train from Boston—then connect with the stagecoach the rest of the way. Jenks says he hopes to have them out here week from Saturday.”
A week from Saturday! Donnigan’s thoughts raced. After waiting for weeks—months—it suddenly seemed so soon and yet so long until he would actually be meeting—seeing for himself the one—He couldn’t even think about it. It made his heart race.
He shifted again.
“Well, I’d better get on over and tell Wallis,” Lucas went on. “He’s right anxious.”
Donnigan swallowed again and managed to nod his head.
Then Lucas reached into his inner coat pocket and withdrew a piece of folded paper.
“Here’s the name of the lady you’re to meet that Saturday,” said Lucas casually, and Donnigan held his breath as he accepted the sheet. He felt a cold sweat encase his body, and he took a long, deep breath to steady the pounding of his heart.
He had to say something. Anything. Just so that Lucas wouldn’t think him a complete fool.
“Suppose you’ve known your lady’s name for weeks,” he managed.
Lucas nodded his head. Took a step toward the team that waited where they had been tethered to a tree in the lane. Then paused and said simply, “It’s Erma,” and then walked away—but not before Donnigan had caught the excitement in his eyes.
Donnigan watched the man leave and then went in to put on the coffee. He knew that Wallis would be over just as soon as he got the word.
He was very conscious of the paper in his shirt pocket. He wanted to seize it quickly and pore over its contents—and yet could not bring himself to touch it. That little slip of paper—the name that it bore—was going to change his whole life.
He stoked the fire and filled the coffeepot with fresh water and poured in a handful of grounds before he allowed himself to sit down at the kitchen table and reach a trembling hand to the breast pocket.