With Love from Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #2) (8 page)

“I’d sooner be put in my grave than work for those upstarts. Think they’re mighty grand, what with all that new money from the hides of those poor little animals—beaver, mostly, now that the buffalo is as good as gone. Work for them? Never!” Finch turned his sliver of a nose ceiling-ward and looked righteously indignant.

“Well, it’s true, o’course, that the mister and missus are superior in every way.” There was satisfaction in Olga’s voice as she basked in her secondhand importance. Not entirely free from the old ways, Olga, and at times Finch himself, aligned themselves with the family they worked for. The Maxwells being “quality” and their wealth considered “old money” commanded a certain degree of respect from Finch and Olga simply on that account. Because of the Maxwells, the Finches considered themselves superior. In other words, the Finches were snobs.

“I wouldn’t set foot in that mausoleum of theirs,” said Finch, with another sniff. “But there! I don’t need to say that when I talk to the mister.” Finch had come far enough so that, in his thoughts, Sebastian was
mister
not
master.

“Yes, talk to him. If you talk to her, she’ll just think of ways to economize or add more jobs for me to do. That little Gladdy’s got so much to learn, her’s not the greatest help.” Olga opened the warming oven and checked the bread rising there.

“She’s a willing little thing; don’t forget that,” Finch cautioned. “We mustn’t let them Oswalds get their hands on her, for heaven’s sake, or she might jump at the chance to work in a gilded palace. And they’d probably give her more money, just to get her away from the mister and missus. Yes, I’ll approach them about additional help. I think,” Finch said, his sallow face turning thoughtful, “dinner will be late today. It’s just too hard, you understand, for you to get it on the table alone, and with only me to serve. Gladdy spilled gravy on the mister’s cuff the last time she helped. Yes, we’ll soon have it a little easier around here, or my name isn’t Newton Finch.”

Olga turned fond eyes on her husband. “Of course it is,” she said, “and of course we will. Now, if you’ll just skedaddle on up and see what the missus wants for dinner, I’ll get started on it. Slowly.”

Dinner was indeed delayed. Seated at the long table in the formal dining room, Sebastian Maxwell looked down its length, frowned, and said, “Whatever can be the matter. I have a meeting to attend this evening.”

Charlotte sighed. It was about time for Finch to expect a raise in pay. And that meant a devious route to draw it to Sebastian’s attention.

“Patience, my dear,” she said calmly, more calmly than she felt. It was too much, really, the way Finch manipulated! She had half a mind to turn him over to the Oswalds. She’d noted and understood the gleam in Sophie Oswald’s eyes the last time she had come to an “at home.” Sophie had followed the impeccable
Finch’s movements carefully, and Charlotte could almost see the idea taking shape: Get him! Hire him! Take him away from the Maxwells. Pay whatever is necessary.

As if Finch, who knew quality when he saw it, would ever consider such an offer! Still, Charlotte recognized later, it had been used as a lever. But Finch was not the man she thought if he were tempted by all that new wealth. There would be no prestige at all in working for the ostentatious house down the street.

Charlotte well remembered the first time Sophie Oswald had come to call. She had shaken hands with her hostess as was right and proper, but then she had casually removed her veils, gloves, and wrap, and handed them to Finch. Even he, in fact he
particularly,
had been haughtily scornful of this embarrassing error in protocol. She had seen the disapproval in his eyes as Sophie Oswald had then proceeded around the room, shaking hands with the other ladies—a horrible gaffe! It would serve Finch right, she thought now, if she threatened to turn him over to the Oswalds.

On the other hand, if Finch once again declared himself overworked, it might be wise to consider additional help rather than another raise in pay for the existing staff. Yes, that might be the way to go. Franny’s health precluded being sent away to school, and her lessons, though sketchy, had been cared for by a visiting tutor. Now, with Kerry as well to educate, a live-in tutor might be the very thing. Perhaps a governess—someone who could instill in the astonishing Kerry a semblance of common sense along with book learning.

Therefore she was able to turn to Finch when he finally appeared behind a dinner cart and say casually, “I can see that your tasks seem too heavy, Finch. I believe it’s only right and proper that we relieve you of some of the work, particularly the care of the young ladies, and set about looking for a governess. The Oswalds, I understand, have a governess for their girls
and
a tutor for their boys.”

Foiled!
the dismayed flash in Finch’s eye seemed to say. One more person to tend to had not been what he had in mind. A governess! A new missy, and now a governess! The gloom on Finch’s long face put somewhat of a damper on the meal, and Charlotte was relieved when he disappeared at last.

“You know, my dear,” she said to her husband, who was all unaware of the current swirling around his dinner table, “we’re going to have to see to a governess for the girls.”

“Where are they, by the way? I thought they’d grace the dinner table tonight.”

“They’ve talked and laughed all day long, though I did insist on a rest for each of them this afternoon. Frances is quite worn out tonight, so I deemed it wise to send their dinner on up to them.” Charlotte sighed. “I’m sure that’s back of this new pressure from Finch concerning more money. Did you hear what I said, Sebastian, about a governess? Doesn’t it seem the sensible way to go, now that we have two female young people to train and bring up properly?”

Sebastian, replete with a good English boiled dinner complete with Yorkshire pudding and topped off with blancmange, his favorite pudding, mundane though it was, patted his lips and said expansively, “Whatever you think best, my love.” And so it was settled.

Gladdy having managed to cut her finger on a knife she was washing, Mrs. Finch herself had appeared in the room where the girls were finishing their dinner, to gather up their dishes and see for herself how the new missy and the established missy were hitting it off, if indeed they were. She too took note of the happy faces and the unending stream of conversation between the young lady and the child.

When Olga Finch had turned toward the hall and was out of hearing range, Kerry, watching with awe the waddling, generous proportions of cook’s anatomy, murmured her last verse of the day, changing only the gender (after all, she had concluded that
him
could just as well refer to
her
): “She covereth her face with her fatness, and maketh collops of fat on her flanks.”

B
rumley’s Elixir may be the answer,” Della Baldwin mused aloud, her head, tidily bound with thin brown braids, bent over a newspaper. It was an outdated paper, sent to the Baldwin home by Della’s brother, who worked on the
Winnipeg Free Press
and often bundled up a dozen papers at a time and sent them off to the bush family.

“Huh?” Dudley said and stopped chewing momentarily. The sound of his own toast crunching in his ears had caused his mother’s words to be indistinct.

“Don’t say ‘huh,’ Dudley,” Della corrected automatically, without looking up at the child-man sitting across the table from her. Gangly of leg and arm, awkward of movement, and always hungry, Dudley was concentrating on his breakfast and the effort to bring toast to his mouth without suffering the indignity of its thick layer of golden syrup dripping on his hand, or worse, his Sunday shirt.

His mother looked around the edge of the paper, eyes sorrowful, first of all over the rudeness of his “huh” and then his attention to other, less important details such as food, when his mother had spoken to him.

“Uh, pardon, Mum.” Having seen her look, Dudley hastened to make the expected corrections.

Isolated, backwoodsy, in the heart of the Canadian bush the Baldwins might be, but there would be no carelessness of speech or manners in Della’s house, thank you!

“That’s better, dear. Now then, this that I’m reading should be of interest to you. I was saying that Brumley’s Elixir could be the answer.”

“The answer, Mum?” Dudley gave a surreptitious lick to one side of the toast where a drop of syrup was in imminent danger of falling.

“The answer to your problem, Dudley.”

“My problem?” Dudley, now attentive, asked cautiously. There were numerous things that he wasn’t anxious for his mother to know—smoking occasionally behind the barn, for instance.

“Yes, Dudley, your problem.” Della sighed and continued patiently, “Your pimples.”

At least she didn’t know about the smoking. Dudley was both relieved and embarrassed—relieved that his mother apparently didn’t know—yet—about the smoking, embarrassed that such a personal thing as his “problem” should be so frankly and ruthlessly exposed. His skin problem, endured by many young people his age, was a constant source of concern to his mother. He would have been happy to forget it; one glance in the mirror in the morning as he combed his hair, and the youthful ailment could be ignored for the remainder of the day.

Dudley was an only child. He often wished for a brother or sister, if only to keep his mother’s attention focused somewhere else once in a while! Now he poured himself some milk, missing the glass and slopping a few drops. About to swipe at it with his cuff, he caught his mother’s reproachful eye. She laid the paper aside with another sigh, reached for a dish towel, and mopped up the small mess. At the same time Henley, Della’s
husband and Dudley’s father, closed the kitchen door behind him, set down a pail of milk, took off his hat, and grinned at the familiar scene—Dudley spilling something, Della wiping it up.

“Boys will be boys, eh?” he said with good humor.

At least he hadn’t said huh
. Nevertheless, “Like father, like son,” Della reminded.

As Dudley moved on to his third piece of toast and a second serving of fried eggs, Henley bent over the washstand located in the corner of a room that was the main living quarters for this family of three. Another section of the log house was divided into two small bedrooms. Home life, for homesteaders who braved the hazards of the primitive bush, was necessarily close quarters. For eight or nine months of the year, heat was a problem to be reckoned with, and large areas were hard to keep warm. Freezing to death was as threatening as starvation. More than one loner had been found frozen in his own bed, having been too sick or disoriented to keep his fire going, gradually falling asleep and never waking.

Della laid the paper aside, obviously not finished with it or her thought, poured her husband a mug of coffee, brought another plate of eggs and toast from the range’s warming oven, and resumed her place.

Henley took a seat at the round, oak table. His dark hair was touched at the temples with gray, his warm eyes were surrounded by what people called “laugh lines.” Henley was a good-natured, good-looking man.

Henley Baldwin had a loving heart, a faithful heart, never wavering in kindness toward his choice of a wife—Della of the sharp tongue and quick temper. On those rare occasions when Della’s conscience was pricked by her unreasonableness and she sought absolution, Henley would say, kindly, “Why, hon, you keep a man on his toes, that’s all. I’d probably be a poor stick of a fellow without you.” Nevertheless, to all and sundry who knew the couple and often felt sorry for the long-suffering husband, Henley deserved better.

“I was just saying that this,” and she tapped the paper with her finger, “may be the answer to Dudley’s problem.”

Like his son before him, Henley was puzzled. Surely she didn’t know about the smoking . . . but you never could tell about Della. She knew how to keep things to herself until the strategic moment when her triumph would be complete and the errant person proved guilty beyond a shadow of a doubt. In all such matters, one thing was as sure and as certain as winter—Della would, sooner or later, face the guilty party head-on.