Susan Evans McCloud - A Vow to Keep

Other Books by Susan Evans McCloud

Where the Heart Leads

My Enemy, My Love

For Love of Ivy

Amelia's Daughter

By All We Hold Dear

The Heart and the Will

First Love, Last Love

Anna

Lady of Mystery

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

1989 Susan Evans McCloud All rights reserved

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher, Deseret Book Company, at permissions@deseretbook.com or PO Box 30178, Salt Lake City, Utah 84130. This work is not an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The views expressed herein are the responsibility of the author and do not necessarily represent the position of the Church or of Desert Book Company.

First printing February 1989

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCloud, Susan Evans.

A vow to keep.

Title.

PS3563.A26176V6 1989

ISBN 0-87579-180-8

eISBN 978-1-62973-983-0

New horizons should go to those with tomorrow in their eyes:
This one is for Heather Jean and Michael Wayne Huff

GRAHAM FAMILY

Oscar and Suzanne [Miller] Graham died February 1856

PERCY

Went to: Benjamin & Claire Gillman

(Their children: Belinda, Ellen, Mary)

LOUISA

Went to: Frank & Edith Bascom

Married: Victor Maughan

STANLEY

Went to: Squire Geoffrey Beal

LAURA

Went to: Aunt Judith Douglas (Scotland)

Married: Jack Armstrong of Selkirk

RANDALL

Went to: Aunt Judith Douglas

ROSE

Went to: Dr. Preston Davies & May (his daughter)

May married John Thomas

CHAPTER

It was a night for dying. A cold wind was wailing, with the cries of lost souls in its voice, brittle rain in its breath. The sky churned with thick, black cloudsthe sky trembled with blackness and cast its vast shade upon the land that lay huddled below.

The bedroom was cold. Percy thought it was cold, though a fire was burning. He didn't like the smell of it, either. His father was there, sitting hunched, half-swallowed in shadow. He never looked up. There was one candle burning. Percy took it and walked with care to the bedside, and looked on her face, and knew that his mother was dying.

He bent down by her head. She opened her eyes and her lips moved, but he could hear nothing. She smiled, and for a moment the sickness and pain were not there, and her large brown eyes grew luminous, bright as a girl's, and her features were gentle and beautiful. Then, with a moan, she fell back against the limp pillow and lay gasping for breath, a wasted and dying woman.

She groped for his hand. He gave it to her and she clung to it with thin, talonlike fingers.

"My children"

Percy heard her."I'll care for them, Mother. Don't fret."

She opened her eyes and looked at him. Don't lose my children," she said. "Out in the coldmy babiesmy Rosie"

There were tears in her eyes. He opened his mouth to reply, but his chin began trembling and the words would not form on his lips.

"Mother, Mother, don't cry!" He bent to touch her. Her skin was hot. He wiped a wet streak from her cheek.

"Would you like Rosie? Would you like to see Rosie?"

She nodded her head. Her chest rose and fell, struggling to draw in the precious air.

Percy ran from the room. He would gather them all. It was time. When he stood Rosie before her she opened her wide eyes and looked on the child. But there wasn't much left of her but that deep gaze which seemed to take them all in: sturdy Louisa, thirteen now, doing the cooking and cleaning, keeping the household together; himself, a young man of fourteen, nearly grown, feeling grown suddenly in a way that was hollow and uncomfortable; Stanley, newly twelve, a scrapper who could care for himself; Laura, eleven, a sweet, obedient girl; Randall, eight, a good boy, a pet of them all; and Rose, little Rosie, the baby, seven years old, Mama's gift child.

Love is like a lovely rose, the world's delightso Mama often said, kissing her. She lay there looking out at the fair face of love until her blue eyes went blind and their father came out from somewhere in the shadows and closed them. Still the children stood there until Stanley said, rather too loudly, "She's dead." And Louisa, with tears in her voice, said, "Her soul's gone to heaven."

"Is it flying up to heaven right now?" Laura asked. Percy nodded his head. Rosie tore from his hands, which had sheltered her gently, and ran past the bed to the window that let in the darkness. She pressed her nose to the glass.

"How will she make it? It's much too fierce, Percy. Just look at the rain. And the wind I can hear the mean, angry wind , Percy"

He pulled her away. He felt weary and strangely ageless. "Come, Rose, back to bed. That's a good girl. If you catch a chill you'll never get better."

There were four of them sick: Laura, Rose, Randall, and the woman who now lay past sickness, past health, perhaps even past love. It was a dismal night. Randall went back to his bed in a stupor. I don't think he knows. I don't think it even got through to him, Percy thought, tucking the boy in. He went out to where Louisa was waiting.

She smiled at him thinly. "Oh, well. It was bound to happen. We knew it." She drew her shawl tightly across her shoulders. Her face was too thin. She and their father had both been sick, though they seemed now on the mend. But she was working too hard, much too hard.

"Where is Stanley?" Stanley could be helping more than he did; he always had to be prodded.

"I won't get the plague," he had said last week, tauntingly, "because I'm too bad. And Percy won't get it because he's too good."

The plague. They knew the word, the proper medical term for the sickness: diphtheria. It wasn't a pretty word; it sat hard on the tongue. It wasn't a pretty way to die, either: a putrid evil in the nose and throat, violent coughing, poison spreading through out the body, the awful smell, then the swelling of the throat, the choking, the panic, the vain struggle for air, sweet air

"You'd best see to Father." Stanley came from behind, jarring Percy from his dark thoughts.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"He's back in the comer, just sitting there, shivering"

"Leave him to his grief!" Louisa cried with a passion that startled Percy.

"It isn't right, him sitting there, staring like she did, all glassy-eyed. He ought to rouse himself Heaven knows what he'll come to. Percy?"

"Yes, I'll go round. I'll check in on him."

"And then off to bed with you. There' s naught to do here, naught we can do till morning." Louisa turned with a sigh, taking her own advice, hurrying down the long, shadow-filled hall.

Percy moved the other way, back toward their parents' room. He stood in the hall. The door was shut. He was loath to go in there, to see her again. And what in the world could he say to his father? What difference could he make?

He took a step, two steps, three: he was past it. Then suddenly he turned, found the handle, and twisted it; the door didn't move. It had been bolted tight from the inside. So be it. The man had the right. There was nothing any human could do for him tonight.

Percy stepped back with a terrible shudder, and groped his way down the hall toward the room that he shared with Stanley, toward a warm bed and the oblivion, the safety of sleep.

When the sun rose next morning it showed the face of a fair, clear day. Though the breeze was still cold, there was the first hint of spring in the air, the false spring that entices. Percy felt it. It seemed to mock him. There was little sign here of the ravages of last night's storm: a few twigs scattered, bent grasses at the edge of the yard, standing puddles. Nothing much to take notice of. And those who were alive went on living, though the sick in their beds took no noticethey had their own work to do, their own struggles to occupy them.