A Place Called Bliss Read Online Free PDF Page A

a child of his own meant to him, she gave herself, as always, to fulfilling his wishes. He should have his child, even at the cost of her own daughter’s pain and suffering, if need be. It was a wrenching thought, but not arguable; her years of service and accountability to the Galloway family were part of her very fiber.
    But hasty trip after hasty trip to the dark hold below brought Kezzie, white-faced and trembling, back to her mistress’s side. Sophia was resting more comfortably between pains, due to the laudanum Hugh had asked of the doctor.
    “Take some of it to Mary,” Hugh urged on one occasion when he had been with Sophia while Kezzie was absent, and noting the old attendant’s anguished face when she returned.
    “’Twouldn’t do any good, Mr. Hugh,” Kezzie said, sighing. “She couldn’t swallow it. She just lies there like she’s dead, except she breathes slowly and lightly. Looks like the baby is not going to be born at all. Looks like,” Kezzie’s eyes filled with tears, “we’ll lose them both.”
    “Kezzie,” Hugh exclaimed, “we can’t just sit by and let that happen! That doctor will just have to do something!”
    “He looks in once in a while, that’s all.”
    “I’ll see to it,” Hugh Galloway said, and when Hugh Galloway spoke with that imperious tone of authority, lesser beings could but obey. Kezzie had no doubt the doctor would descend to the side of her daughter. But would he be sober, and would he, could he, at this juncture, be of any help?
    When an urgent knock came on the cabin door, Kezzie opened it to find a shaken Angus.
    “Can you come?” he asked simply.
    “Go find Mr. Hugh,” Kezzie responded immediately. “As soon as he gets here, I’ll come.”
    Angus disappeared on the run.
    Kezzie reached her daughter’s side to find the doctor rolling up his sleeves, wiping his sweaty face with his hands, and drying his palms on his soiled breeches. He threw back the blanket and bent to his task. Kezzie knelt and cradled the head of the unconscious woman in her arms. Unconscious or already dead, for Mary’s head lolled with the doctor’s savaging of her body, and her hand remained limp in Angus’s grip.
    Like a rag doll she was tossed about as the doctor struggled by sheer muscle power to wrench the living child from the dead or dying womb. Torn free at last, the bloody scrap was all but tossed Kezzie’s way.
    Sympathetic hands held out a blanket, and Kezzie wrapped the baby in it even as the doctor was pulling a blanket up overthe face of Mary, wiping his hands on the corner of it before he let it go.
    The baby clutched to her, Kezzie fled the scene. Inside the Galloway cabin, leaning for a moment, white of face, on the door at her back, it was to find herself thrust into another birth scene, for Sophia was groaning and pushing, obviously swept into the bearing-down contractions from which there was no escape. Mr. Hugh’s face lifted to Kezzie with relief, only to blanch at the spectacle: Kezzie in disarray and blood-spattered, a stained bundle in her arms.
    Somewhat dazedly, Kezzie laid the newborn aside and turned her attention to the woman on the bed. Sophia’s face was red, her eyes were screwed shut, and from her twisted mouth issued animal-like sounds as her body made its decision to expel its temporary inhabitant.
    “I’ll take over from here,” Kezzie said briefly, and Mr. Hugh made a hasty and obviously glad escape.
    So busy was Kezzie for the next half hour that she had no time to give to the grief that waited, just outside the door of her heart, ready to rip and rend, as the invading fingers of the brutal doctor had ripped and torn at the flesh of her only child. Nor was there time for her grandchild, except to take a rag and wipe mucous and blood from the tiny face.
    Though to Kezzie it seemed but a few minutes, enough time elapsed for Hugh Galloway to make another check on the situation. He could see immediately that the birth was imminent. But his