A Place Called Bliss Read Online Free PDF

attention was caught by the small, blanket-wrapped figure on top of the goods in an open steamer trunk where Kezzie had laid it. Struck, perhaps, by the coincidence of two births, he leaned over the baby, and before hurrying to the head of the bed, Hugh touched the thatch of black hair that even as it dried, showed evidence of a curl, and caressed the soft cheek.
    Sophia, caught in the desperate toils of nature’s relentlessness, could no more have stemmed the forces at work in her body than to hold back the tide itself, and knew not, or cared, that Hugh was present. The indignity of the moment wasbeyond concern. Like an animal caught in a trap, she fought to be free.
    Kezzie watched the crowning, the emergence of the narrow shoulders, and with the slippery rush of expulsion, reached, and caught her Mr. Hugh’s own child. Another Galloway. Another favored and blessed human for whom life would be generous in a world of deprivation and cruel want; gentle, when to the masses it was harsh and uncaring. Blessed, favored baby.
    Gasping, sobbing with a sound between relief and joy, Sophia fell back in Hugh’s arms, only dimly aware that Kezzie was giving the baby rigorous spanks, eventually clearing its breathing passages, wiping it, wrapping it in a blanket.
    “Oh,” Sophia was crying with relief. “It’s over . . . it’s over, and my baby . . . give me my baby!”
    “It’ll be a moment, Mum,” Kezzie spoke from the other side of the cabin.
    “What is it, Hugh?” Sophia asked, turning her splotched face up to her husband.
    “Why—a boy,” Hugh responded, tenderly smoothing the tumbled hair. “Am I right, Kezzie?”
    Kezzie was a moment in answering. In a daze of weariness and tears she looked down, down on two faces wrinkled and red, two heads misshapen from difficult births, two heads covered with black hair, bloody and matted. Gently she touched a small hand of each.
    “Kezzie?”
    Drawing a deep and quavering breath, “Girl, Mr. Hugh,” Kezzie said. “It’s a girl.”
    “Oh, Hugh!” Sophia said. “It doesn’t matter!”
    Hugh cradled his wife, eyes on his old nurse. “Did you say girl, Kezzie?” he asked over Sophia’s head.
    Kezzie turned and faced him, her eyes ablaze in the half light. “It’s a girl, Mr. Hugh.”
    With a soft touch of her lips to the forehead of each child, Kezzie took up the softly mewing baby, walked to the bed andthe man she adored and served, and laid the small bundle in his arms.
    Blinded with tears, Kezzie watched as her Mr. Hugh studied the small face, then, turning his attention to the expectant face of his wife, transferred the child into her waiting arms.
    “Here, my dear,” Hugh said gently, “is your child.”

 
    F rom weakness or happiness, perhaps a bit of both, Sophia’s tears ran down her face, spotting the clean gown Kezzie had put on her after sponging her weary, wracked body. Kezzie had also bathed the baby and dressed her in clothes dredged from the depths of the trunk, clothes they had been assured would not be needed “aboard ship.”
    But now it was over. Her child was here, safely here, she added, giving a thought to poor Mary. A euphoria never known in all her life flooded Sophia’s heart. Turning back the blanket she let her hungry eyes feast on the tiny face and dark patch of hair, and she caressed the perfect wee hands that tended to wave aimlessly in their first taste of freedom.
    Hugh stood silently looking down on the wrapped baby still in the steamer trunk. Too still, it was. Too silent.
    “Dead.” Hugh’s eyes misted; his gaze went from the dead infant to the live one, safe and loved in Sophia’s arms.
    “Did it live at all, Kezzie?” he asked softly.
    “Never took a breath, Mr. Hugh.” Kezzie stood by her Mr. Hugh, also weeping. In an unexpected gesture Hugh Galloway put his arm around his loved nurse, and together they mourned the passing of one they had not known, would never know.
    “Both gone,” Kezzie said in a thick