A Place Called Bliss (2 page)

Surely her face didn’t reflect the fact that, momentarily, sound faded and sight dimmed; surely her grip of the reins was not because she felt a reeling sensation. Perhaps the strange physical reaction whitened her face.

At any rate the man’s face sobered; his hand came out spontaneously toward her, and he asked, “Are you all right?”

“It was the jump—” Sophia managed.

The young groom, by that time, had found a way through the wall and was coming alongside.

“You all right, Mrs. Hugh?”

Angus Morrison stepped back immediately. “So you’re Hugh’s bride. I apologize for not having been in to meet you before this. It’s lambing time—”

“And you are Angus Morrison,” Sophia said, feeling foolish and struggling for poise. “Hugh has told me about you. And,” she added quickly, “your wife. Mary, isn’t it?”

“Mary, yes. And our bairns—Cameron and Molly.”

“Yes, yes, Cameron and Molly. And you are all coming with us to Canada.” Sophia was aware that she was speaking too quickly.

“We’re going to Canada,” Angus affirmed, “but independently. Our date of sailing and our ship will be the same.”

“But you’re going on to the prairies—”

“Not the prairies,” Angus’s gentle correction continued, respectfully. “The bush country.”

“The bush! I’m very ignorant, I’m afraid. You mean northern Ontario?” The Galloways would be in Ontario.

“Not quite!” Angus’s face lit with a smile. “Much farther north and west—northern Saskatchewan, actually.”

“Saskatchewan—I’ve never even been quite sure how to pronounce it.”

“Very primitive.”

“Why . . . why have you chosen that area? Do you mind—”

“Not at all.” After a long glance at Sophia’s face, perhaps judging whether he might share his reasons, Angus said, “I don’t know if anyone else understands, but how do the names Medicine Hat . . . Elbow . . . Overlook . . . Red Deer . . . Saskatoon sound to you?”

“I see,” Sophia answered slowly.

“And, to be more specific—Bliss.”

“Bliss . . . sounds too good to be true. That’s the name of a place?”

“The place, specifically, to which I’m going. I’ve been in communication with someone there—an acquaintance—and have plans rather well worked out.”

“I’d like to hear more about this . . . Bliss. Come to dinner tonight, Mr. Morrison—”

“Angus, please. Everyone calls me Angus. And thank you. I’ll be happy to join you and Hugh tonight. We have many things to talk about, anyway, details to consider. It’s a big step, at least for me and mine.” The warm brown eyes were lit with the dream that would, after all, come true.

Somewhat numbly Sophia turned her mount and, followed by the faithful groom, wended her way toward the monstrous rock pile that was Heatherstone and could not stop the thought that crept, like a nibbling mouse, into her head:
An attractive man. A virile man. A virile man who has fathered children
. . . .

D
inner that evening in the cold and echoing hall at Heatherstone was filled with talk of Canada from beginning to end. Having heard a great deal about Toronto and Hugh’s plans, Sophia now listened to Angus Morrison’s expectations.

Early on, the Dominion of Canada had implemented a vigorous immigration policy. Agents were sent to Europe, and special fares were offered to immigrants. The provinces and the Canadian Pacific Railway offered inducements also. A revival of prosperity and the extending of the railway brought a brief rush to Manitoba, but settlement there and particularly beyond was slow.

The “beyond” beckoned Angus Morrison. Expressly the area around Prince Albert in the vast northern part of Saskatchewan and, specifically, a district by the name of Bliss.

“How enticing!” Sophia exclaimed. “Fancy living in a place called Bliss! The very name stimulates the imagination!”

Toronto suddenly seemed dull and uninteresting and lacking in adventure. Stricken by her disloyalty, she smiled guiltily on
Hugh; just as guiltily she stifled the thought that Hugh’s cold aristocratic demeanor was almost a reflection of Heatherstone, while the challenges of the raw West were a perfect setting for the vibrant man across the table from her.

“The homestead system,” Angus was explaining, “provides that a settler can have one hundred and sixty acres on condition of three years’ residence and cultivation and a payment of ten dollars, which is a patent fee. You can imagine what that means to oppressed and downtrodden or simply poverty-stricken people.”

“Angus,” Hugh interjected with a smile, “you’ve never in your life been any of those.”

“True . . . true,” Angus conceded. “And most of it thanks to your father. But you, Hugh, are going. Could I stay behind?”

“All this, of course,” and Hugh indicated the heap of rock around them that was Heatherstone, “belongs to my brother.” Ian Galloway and his family were presently in residence at the family home in Edinburgh, where Wallace, the son, was studying. “Much as I love it,” Hugh continued, “there’s nothing here for me . . . or,” with a small smile in Sophia’s direction, “for my offspring.”

To all, rich and poor alike, the new land beckoned, with promise of opportunity. The dedicated and devoted and desperate would survive; the weak and wavering would be eliminated by the very challenges they sought.

Eventually Sophia was to meet Mary and the Morrison “bairns,” Cameron and Molly. Wee Molly was the image of her father, with his black, curly hair, but with the blue eyes of her mother and grandmother. Cammie was, himself, fair and golden.

Mary, far more than Angus, demonstrated an awareness of their station in life and, though not servile, was self-effacing. Perhaps it was natural, when one knew one’s position to be
inferior. Barriers dividing the classes were strong, almost unassailable, as they had been for centuries. To Mary, Sophia was “Mum. Yes, Mum, no, Mum, thank you, Mum,” or “Mrs. Hugh,” while to Sophia, Mary was simply “Mary.”

Here, at home, it was expected. Canada, Sophia understood, would be different. There would be a great leveling of stations, every man no better or worse than his neighbor. Perhaps it was part of the appeal for Angus and Mary, as for many others weary unto death of oppression.

But now it made a difference, and Sophia and Mary, though cordial, were not friends. Mary in her small “cot” and Sophia in the colossus that was Heatherstone were miles apart.

Moreover . . . there was Angus. And Angus was Mary’s husband. Mary lived in a cot, Mary would travel steerage, Mary would endure the rigors of pioneer life, but she would do it all with Angus.

Like a sickness she couldn’t shake, Sophia’s fascination with Angus Morrison plagued her thoughts in the daytime and her dreams at night. It became almost an obsession with her to test his seeming devotion to duty. Was it real or a cloak to be donned when he approached the family? Was it surface only, the deference he displayed? What would it take for him to break over the boundaries? Could she . . . command his attention?

To reach beyond the overseer to the man himself became a passion with Sophia. Because of it she asked his attendance at countless dinners, to private planning sessions, for advice concerning packing, anything for intimate time with him. Finally, there were long rides together over the estate, picnics in the woods, trips in the carriage together to town.

Never considered beautiful, though always smartly dressed and graciously mannered, Sophia, as the weeks came and went, bloomed.

There came a day when her brilliant color and sparkling eyes prompted her one and only compliment from her husband.

“The estate of marriage is very becoming to you, my dear,” he said, and it may have been the dry tone of his voice, but Sophia tensed and only relaxed when Hugh returned to his papers.

Perhaps Sophia was alarmed, and warned. Perhaps . . .  who knows . . . she had satisfied her hungry fixation on a man other than her husband. At any rate, there came a day when Angus’s presence was not demanded, and Sophia settled into becoming Mrs. Hugh Galloway of Heatherstone, soon to be transported to Toronto, Canada.

Soon, to her delirious happiness, she was able to inform Hugh that she was to present him with a child. Now contentment wrapped her in a beauty that even ungainliness and a swelling waistline couldn’t dim.

Mary, too, was pregnant. The two pregnancies brought about the happy decision to take Kezzie along to Canada.

Kezia Skye, Mary’s mother, had been with the Galloway family since her marriage to their gamekeeper. Though he was dead, Kezia, or Kezzie as she was fondly known, maintained her position as nurse and nanny to any and all Galloway offspring. Finally, with Wallace, Hugh’s nephew, growing out from under her care, Kezzie became seamstress or whatever other household position could be found for her. “We’d no more turn her out than our own aunt,” Hugh maintained.

It was Hugh who came up with the plan to take Kezzie along to Canada. “She’ll be indispensable,” he said. “She’s been like a mother to me, and she’ll be like that to our son. I don’t know what kind of help along that line we’ll be able to come up with in Canada. How comfortable to have our Kezzie, someone we can trust absolutely.”

Kezzie herself was ecstatic. Mary was her only living child; it hadn’t been easy to face old age without her daughter and her grandchildren.

“Of course,” Hugh explained to Sophia when this was mentioned, “Cameron isn’t Mary’s child.”

Sophia raised her eyebrows.

“Nor Angus’s,” Hugh added quickly.

“Not Angus’s? You mean—Angus hasn’t . . . ah, fathered a son?”

“A strange way to put it,” Hugh said, and Sophia flushed.

“But Cammie is a true Morrison,” Hugh continued. “It so happens that the boy is a relative—the child of Angus’s cousin, or maybe it’s a second or third cousin. The young man was lost at sea, I believe, hastening the delivery of the baby, and the mother didn’t survive. Angus and Mary were newly married and took the wee’un in as their own.”

“Does he—Cameron—know?”

“Oh, I expect he does, in a casual way. It won’t sink in for a while. But it doesn’t matter. His name is Morrison; he’ll be a son of the family. And he’ll go with them to the new land.”

Kezzie’s devotion, however, reached beyond her own flesh and blood. She was bonded to “Mr. Hugh” by duty and years of service and felt her life was inextricably bound up with the Galloways. To serve as nurse to another of the clan—Kezzie knew no greater fulfillment.

“Kezzie,” Hugh warned when they talked about it, “Mary is to have another child, and she’ll be far from you. You’ll be staying in Ontario with us, you know.”

“No matter,” Kezzie maintained stoutly and loyally. “At least there won’t be all that water atween us. We’ll be on the same continent.” This and more she said, with a mighty rolling of r’s. In Kezzie the Scots burr was very strong; in Angus, as in Hugh, much of it had been—if not lost, then greatly muted, and an English accent substituted. Lowland Scots, after all, was but a northern form of English, being directly descended from the old Anglian speech. Originally, the northern English dialect spread into Scotland from Northumbria and steadily ousted the various Celtic dialects as it pushed northward. This Anglian speech developed into the distinctively “Scots” form of the English language that was so richly obvious in Kezzie.

And so it was settled: Kezzie was to accompany them.

But delay after delay put off their sailing date. Sophia, dreading a shipboard confinement and an unknown ship’s doctor, consulted her own physician.

It was then old Dr. McGee pronounced heartily: “No need to worry! I’ve calculated very carefully, and there’s plenty of time to make landfall. Never fear, yon child will be a Canadian! No, my dear, this baby won’t be born aboard ship.”