Journey to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #3) (8 page)

Now Anne’s pink lips parted and she seemed to breathe, for the moment, the free air and blessed opportunities of the Canadian North West. And to think it beckoned to her!

As the result of another question, Mrs. Mountjoy was asking, “How is this financed? The money—which it would take for a woman to make such a move—is advanced either by the prospective employer or the British Women’s Emigration Society. The debt incurred is cared for very simply: It is usually discharged by the employer withholding up to one-half of the monthly wage, to keep until his investment is repaid, or to send to Canadian authorities designated to collect loans on behalf of the immigration agencies.”

“How would one go aboot getting work?” Anne asked, trying to keep her interest from showing in her voice.

“The association has a standard application form,” the commanding woman confided. “It is in the form of a contract. Then, there are lists of job opportunities available, and they work on both ends, getting worker and employer together. You may be sure it is well overseen. The Y.W.C.A.—Young Women’s Christian Association—takes a very active part in all of this.”

Anne and Tierney were impressed by this piece of information.

“Tell us,” Anne asked, “aboot wages. What may one expect to receive in the way of pay?”

“First of all, let me mention that a maximum work day of ten hours is set. I know you will be impressed by this, considering the longer hours women work in your factories, and at jobs that have no appeal for them. Here, you will be putting your womanly skills to work and need not fear that you are unqualified. A minimum wage of fifteen dollars a month is offered, and an overtime rate of fifteen cents per hour is also set. Clear enough?” Ishbel Mountjoy looked carefully around the circle of women before she continued.

“Let me read a typical contract form, in part: ‘I shall have every Sunday evening free after half-past six, unless a different arrangement has been agreed upon. I shall be addressed as ‘Miss’ and be referred to as ‘housekeeper.’”

And now it was the turn of the raggle-taggle group of women to look impressed, and they looked at each other and nodded solemnly before turning their attention back to Mrs. Mountjoy and the continued reading of the contract.

“‘I shall have the use of a suitable room one evening a week in which I may entertain guests until ten o’clock . . . comfortable lodgings shall be provided for me by my employer . . . I shall be privileged to enter the house by the front door . . .’”

“But what if a place is unacceptable, not what it was represented to be?” a hesitant listener asked. “After all, you can’t really know until you get to a place whether you want to stay and work there.”

Confirming nods could be seen all around the group, which had now swelled to a dozen women, with a few males listening disgustedly for a few seconds and moving on, shaking their heads and tapping their foreheads.

“Either party may terminate the arrangement, the contract, at any time simply by giving two weeks’ notice. As you see, everything to make for a satisfactory situation is being cared for. This is very important—a point that has helped many to make the decision to sign up. You’ll be interested to know that hundreds are responding, here and in other European countries, and we shall continue to spread the word until every
need is met, on both sides of the ocean. Not only the men needing wives and the households needing domestic help, but the girls and women needing desperately to have a choice about their future.

“Let me ask you, seriously, ladies: Do you
have
a future, as things are now? If not, you may view this opening as God’s hand of guidance for your life.”

Ishbel Mountjoy was invoking powerful forces here. But it seemed to have the desired effect. Women took deep breaths and seemed relieved of some worrisome uncertainty—whether or not the Almighty would look with favor upon such a project.

“Transportation . . . travel—” The fact that it was such a huge undertaking, and at such a distance, put an edge of fear into the voice of the inquirer who had probably never been farther from home than the distance from Scottish croft to Aberdeen streets.

“All cared for by the Society. All one has to do is sign up, arrange to meet me here at a designated time, and the rest follows automatically. Now, any more questions?” Mrs. Mountjoy was all business . . . pleasant business. It seemed she believed in her Society and its objectives.

“What about the weather?” The questioner seemed to have settled the weightier problems and now honed in on secondary problems.

All heads lifted from their pamphlet reading, and all eyes waited for the answer. Everyone had heard stories of the prairies, the blizzards, the dust storms, the mosquitoes! If you knew anyone who knew anyone who knew anyone who had contact with an emigrant in the territories, you knew about these legendary problems faced by pioneers in the West.

A light laugh issued from the otherwise businesslike, rather stern mouth of Ishbel Mountjoy. “You see me before you. I’ve lived through all seasons there and have survived in rather fine fashion, wouldn’t you say?”

The doubt on several faces may have persuaded Ishbel Mountjoy to bridle a bit and add, “Your own highland weather
would cause many a delicate female to cringe, and we’re not expecting women of delicate sensibilities to respond to the challenge of the Canadian West. This is for the woman with the heart of an adventurer. The woman of courage, strength, determination, and even humor. For every woman who quits, a thousand stand ready to take her place.
And
her man.”

Again that reference to marriage. And it may have had the desired effect, for several women brightened. Well, marriage was the least of Tierney’s thoughts! In fact, she had determined, when Robbie Dunbar sailed away, that she would never consider marriage again.

But a pioneer, a woman of adventure! As a lone star braves the night’s overwhelming darkness and endures, so Tierney responded to the challenge of the tremendous odds presented by the speaker. Was challenged and, in her heart, cried out a silent but vigorous “Aye!”

Glancing at Anne to see what her reaction might be to all of this, it was to see Anne’s lips parted slightly; she was breathing quickly as though having run through a troop, her color was high as though she had walked through a gale, and in Anne’s eyes something flickered that Tierney recognized as a glimmer of that same star that had risen on her own dark horizon.

Anne’s eyes were the exalted eyes of one who explores untraversed regions to mark out a new route—a true pioneer, a dedicated adventurer.

Were Tierney’s eyes any less expressive? Surely Anne saw her own commitment mirrored there as the girls looked searchingly at one another. If what Ishbel Mountjoy had set out to do was instill in her hearers a sense of well-being, power, and importance, of being in charge of their own future, she had wonderfully succeeded where Tierney Caulder and Anne Fraser were concerned.

“Be on this spot at noon three days from now,” Ishbel Mountjoy said, striking while the iron was hot, “with whatever you wish to take with you—no more than two bags each, please. Now, who wants to be first to sign up?”

A
ll right, girls—time to ascend.”

Tierney and Anne looked at each other, stifling grins. Through the gloom of the ship’s hold where they were quartered, amid the scuffle and scurry of preparing to go up on deck, in spite of the heavy odor of too many bodies in one space—the girls found occasion to laugh. Ascend, indeed!

No matter the moment’s disarray, no matter the occasion’s emergency, no matter the situation’s aggravation, Ishbel Mountjoy kept her poise, kept her standards. Her good English schooling and training never forsook her. Canadian she may have become, but English she would remain until the day she died. Where Ishbel Mountjoy went, there went a little bit of England. And there went propriety.

“I can imagine,” Tierney had said one time to Anne, shaking her head in unbelief at the woman’s magnificent aplomb in the face of some emergency, “the ship goin’ doon and the billows risin’ over our heads, and Mrs. Mountjoy strictly insistin’, ‘One at a time, girls, one at a time.’”

Ishbel Mountjoy was the perfect choice to represent the British Women’s Emigration Society. Not only could she give a lucid explanation about why a move to Canada was advantageous, painting an attractive picture of all it had to offer the downtrodden, abused, discouraged, and neglected females of the British Isles, but her very appearance and demeanor spoke of solid Victorian virtues. Wherever the name of the good queen was invoked, there went morality, excellence of character, modesty, decency. And there went Ishbel Mountjoy.

The group Mrs. Mountjoy had managed to assemble—with the help of others who had spread themselves over England, Ireland, and Scotland—was a motley crew, about forty-five females in all; there were farm girls, slum girls, impoverished girls of a slightly better “class”; girls from families with too many children to provide for them properly; girls whose parents had died, leaving them no alternative but to seek refuge with reluctant relatives.

There were those among them who could not rightly be called “girls,” being more advanced in years, though still single—for one reason or another marriage had passed them by. There were several widows who had been left with no means of support, women weary of serving as scullery maids or laundresses in the homes of the favored and titled. But all, regardless of age, were in good health (or represented themselves as such, desperately fearing being turned back because of some illness or disease), and were, in normal times, full of life and the sense of adventure. It couldn’t help but spill over from time to time.

But after several days at sea with the ship wallowing in the grip of a storm, even the healthiest among them appeared peaked, pale, and wan. Some suffered the miseries of severe seasickness, and with facilities for personal grooming limited, were in considerable disarray of body, not to mention mind and spirit.

There were some three hundred females quartered in a space that would have been overcrowded with one-third that number.
And yet they considered themselves favored; men, they understood, were in a hold below where farm animals had been kept previously, and the air, what there was of it, was noxious. For eating purposes, they understood, there was a large table in the middle of the hold, but so wretched was the food, the men from the kitchen dare not come in lest they be mobbed, even killed. Standing at the door, they literally threw chunks of meat to the sweating, swaying, cursing pack of men; they tossed in potatoes, cooked in their jackets, deposited cans of water at the door, and fled.

“Good catchers and tall fellers get most of the grub,” one poor, thin young man had conveyed to Anne when a lull in the storm had allowed groups of emigrants to “ascend” for air and exercise.

Eventually a delegation of men had insisted on seeing the captain. “We’ll take over the ship and turn her back to Liverpool,” they threatened, “if things don’t improve.”

Word seeped into the women’s compartments that the captain, recognizing the problem and the desperation, had chosen fifty men, given them free passage, and put them to work preparing decent meals, feeding the starving horde, and cleaning the toilets. Even the women benefited from the improved menu.

Today, feeling better, and the weather being conducive, the women and girls had bathed themselves, in a limited fashion, washed hair for the first time since leaving land, and were looking forward to going up on deck to dry it.

With Mrs. Mountjoy’s businesslike order, “Assemble for ascending,” the girls jockeyed for position at the foot of the ladder. A pained glance from the eye of their leader reminded them of their manners, and with a sigh they obeyed the injunction of their morning devotions, led by Ishbel herself: “In honor preferring one another.”

As the girls were preferring one another, stepping aside as graciously as they could to allow for a peaceable lineup, awaiting the command to “ascend,” Tierney’s thoughts flew to
Binkiebrae and home. Her heart was still raw from the painful separation from family and loved ones, her thoughts were still full of the memories of that wrenching leave-taking and the probability of never seeing James again.

“Maybe,” she had offered between tears and sobs, “you’ll come oot to Canada after a while, James. Could it be, d’ye think?”

“Na, na, sister, never think on’t. I’m fer Scotland. And Phrenia, she’d never agree t’ leave her folk. See, it’s like a game of dominoes—one after the other, leavin’. Someone has tae stop it, or Binkiebrae will be a ghostly place. Na, na, it’s guid-bye fer all time, I’m thinkin’. Onless ye coom back, and I dinna think ye’re aboot to.” And James’s eyes, too, puddled with tears, tears of which he was not ashamed.

According to Anne, her farewells had been more subdued. Angry at first, flatly refusing permission for her to go, her father had found himself helpless in the face of Anne’s adamant preparations, short of locking her up. And how would that end? With her continuing with her plans when she was eventually loosed, with nothing gained in the end by him and his demands.