A Place Called Bliss (12 page)

“Well, buy a faroe if you don’t have one,” Pierre instructed. “We’ll have to make shingles. Slow us up some.” When he saw Mary’s worried face, he continued heartily, “No matter. I have a feelin’ snow is goin’ to hold off. Plenty time. One window be enough?”

“Two,” Sadie said firmly, and at Mary’s nod Pierre docilely pencilled in two windows.

“Better buy double panes—that is, storm windows—if you can afford ’em.”

A brisk fall morning saw the Morrison carts ready to roll. With reluctance Mary embraced her new friend but was able to mount the buggy with a rising feeling of excitement. With
a slap of the reins she turned the horse to follow the carts. As arranged, Pierre would bring back the two extra oxen with the empty carts, and their new owners would take possession. “You’d do well to sell that last cart,” he advised Angus, “and get you a wagon as soon as you can. With bobs in place of wheels you’ll have transportation winter as well as summer.”

With the children vying over the privilege of carrying the cat, which they had named Patches, and a basket of food at her feet that Sadie had prepared for the day’s meals, Mary felt as if she were once again embarking on a tossing sea for some distant port. But this was a wilderness of living green and not a sea of water. Remembering the horrors of that other navigation, Mary breathed a prayer and set her sails—and her horse’s ears—facing directly into the small opening that led to . . . what? For mice and misery she was prepared, for hard work and hardship, for lonely days, anxious hours, and wrenching homesickness. But there would be sunsets too glorious to describe, fulfillment too satisfying to be expressed, and freedom past anything known or experienced. And there was her newfound Friend to see her through both good and bad. Mary squared her shoulders, lifted her face into the wind’s nip, called a strong “Giddap!” to the horse, and set her sights and her heart on Bliss.

W
ith wee Margaret, often called Margo, fully recovered, life in the Galloway household returned to normal. Sophia, greatly relieved over her daughter’s improved health, became a hostess of some note, constantly giving and attending “at homes” and joining several organizations devoted to doing good to the poor and downtrodden. Hugh’s business enterprises prospered, and he was more and more involved with them and spent less and less time at home.

Margaret’s world was small. There were daily visits to Sophia and Hugh—if his schedule permitted—but mostly her days and months and years were spent in the upstairs nursery in happy association with Kezzie . . . Nanny . . . Granny.

The Galloways made their first trip back to Scotland when Margo was five years old.

“Perhaps we shouldn’t ask Kezzie to make the trip,” Sophia ventured to Hugh as plans were being laid, still resisting the unseen bonds that existed between Kezzie and Margo and suspecting they were those of love rather than dependency alone.

“Are you prepared to take charge of the child yourself?” Hugh asked pointedly.

Sophia hesitated, reluctant to admit that she was not, and just as reluctantly, eventually advised Kezzie that her presence on the trip would be needed and to please prepare herself as well as Margaret for the voyage and a stay of three months or more.

“I thought she’d be more pleased about it,” Sophia said to her husband in a somewhat injured tone.

“Well, think of it, my dear. Mary, her only child, isn’t there, and all her own siblings are dead. Other than a few friends, there’s little or no reason for her being happy about that long trip. Maybe,” Hugh said so quietly that Sophia barely heard, “she has bad memories of the trip over.”

“As we all do,” Sophia agreed, adding, “but we, of course, have the blessing of our child, while Mary—”

“Yes—Mary,” Hugh repeated simply. “Mary, and Angus.”

“Do you ever think of making a trip to the Territories, Hugh?” Sophia asked. “Wouldn’t you like to visit Angus someday . . . see how he’s doing?”

“I’d like it very much,” Hugh answered warmly, or as warmly as Hugh Galloway ever allowed himself to speak. “We’ve had a letter or two, of course, and Kezzie keeps us up-to-date on what’s going on, and it all sounds as if they are prospering. After much hard work, of course. But go see them? No, not, at least, until the railroad goes through.”

“Surely Kezzie will want to go then. Perhaps live with them. She’s getting old and bent, Hugh—”

“Kezzie has a home with me as long as she wishes it,” Hugh said firmly. Sophia sighed; Kezzie, to Sophia, was such a mixed blessing. A veritable tower of strength at all times, and totally dependable, yet there was something. . . . Never able to put her vague unrest about Kezzie into words that Hugh would accept or understand, Sophia sighed again.

Hugh, his face in his newspaper, heard, raised an enigmatic but unseen eyebrow, and said no more on the subject.

Margo’s clearest memories of her early years were of that trip to the land of her parents’ birth. Perhaps it was the general air of excitement and the hustle and bustle of disembarking on Scottish soil, being met by members of the staff of Heatherstone, the fawning over by one and all as they commented on her black and curly hair, her dark eyes, her impish smile, her lovely clothes. But more likely it was due to the encounters with her cousin Wallace, already in his teen years but childish to a marked degree, and spoiled. True, he was neglected in some ways, his mother being dead and his father absent most of the time. Wallace spent most of the year in school in Edinburgh but had come home for the special occasion of his uncle’s visit from America. He showed little interest in most of the gifts Sophia had painstakingly selected for him but received with a chortle of satisfaction the bow and arrows that were fashioned, supposedly, in the manner of those of the American Indians. The small scar that was to remain on Margo’s upper arm all of her life was forever a reminder of Heatherstone, Scotland, and Wallace’s tormenting ways.

Margo was always to remember, too, the trip from the ship to Kirkcudbright. Though Scotland was no longer considered home by Kezzie—with Mary and Angus and the children and Mr. Hugh all in America—she obviously retained a deep love for her homeland and described it to Margo with feeling.

“Look now, lassie,” she was to repeat time and again, especially as they approached familiar territory. And Margo would look and, often, remember.

“This is the River Dee,” Kezzie said as the carriage left the ship behind and approached familiar territory. She seemed to feel it necessary to apologize because now, at low tide, it was all a sea of mud.

“The Dee empties into the sea here at Kirkcudbright. When the tide is in, Kirkcudbright is one of the best-looking burghs of the Stewartry, in my opinion,” Kezzie continued.

“Birds!” Margo interrupted. “Canada geese.”

“Greylag geese, lassie. Below the town is where you’ll find birds—herons. Oot there,” Kezzie nodded in the general direction of the sea, “on St. Mary’s Isle, there’s been a heronry for centuries. Perhaps we can go see it while we’re here. We can visit the old priory ruins at the same time.”

“Priory?” Margo questioned.

“A religious hoose,” Kezzie explained, and Margo, none the wiser, blinked her dark eyes and nodded.

Hugh, listening idly—while Sophia leaned her head back, her eyes closed—added, “The old home of Lord Selkirk is there, too.”

Making a connection between the history of the old home and the new, Sophia opened her eyes to ask, “Didn’t Lord Selkirk help establish the Red River Colony?”

“That he did; made quite a name for himself overseas.”

There followed a brief discussion, meaningless to small Margo, concerning certain Scots and their contributions to society beyond their homeland: Andrew Carnegie, of course, who started work as a bobbin boy, following the skill of the weaver father who took his family from Dunfermline to the new world to make a fresh start; Canada’s first and second Prime Ministers were Scots—John Macdonald and Alexander Mackenzie; Canada’s Fraser and Mackenzie rivers were named for Scotsmen; and of course there was John Paul Jones, founder of the United States Navy, who came from Solway’s shores.

Scotland had, indeed, a superior educational system and was turning out “lads o’ pairts,” or lads of talents, but, with no appreciable place or way to use those talents at home, emigration was the answer for many. The 1800s were years of mass migrations, triggered by economic factors such as a fall in the price of kelp, one of the few Highland industries; a fall in the value of the small Highland beef cattle; and a failure of west coast fishing. Most hurtful of all were the infamous Clearances when large numbers of Highlanders were evicted from their long-held ancestral crofts—landlords had come to realize that mutton and
wool brought better profits into their coffers and needed fewer workers than beef and dairy products.

As is so often the case, something good came from what was a terrible upheaval and misery. And Angus Morrison was a prime example; thrust, by necessity, from everything his people had known for untold generations, he would find a new challenge and future—not only for himself but for his children and his children’s children—in a new land.

“A few miles east are the ruins of Dundrennan Abbey,” Kezzie was murmuring quietly to a wide-eyed Margo as she peered from the carriage window. “Of course you dinna know aboot her yet, but you will—Mary Queen of Scots spent her last night in that Abbey—”

“Oh, look!” Margo pointed to the quaint town coming into sight: Kirkcudbright.

“Don’t point, dear,” Sophia said automatically, while Kezzie whispered, “Home!”

Accustomed to the noise and confusion of a vigorous city, Margo couldn’t restrain her cries of pleasure at the color-washed houses with their blue slated roofs.

“The Tolbooth . . .” Kezzie breathed as they rolled past the ancient prison with its slender Mercat Cross dating from 1610. “Witches were tried here, lassie . . . as late as 1805. . . .”

“Enough, Kezzie,” Sophia said sharply. History or not, her child should not be subjected to topics of witches or burning.

The shadow cast by this reference to witches was nothing compared to the fear that was to haunt Margo upon their arrival at Heatherstone.

It was pleasant enough pulling up to the courtyard of the massive house so like her own home in Canada with but subtle differences; the greetings by staff and Hugh’s brother Ian were, as expected, cordial. Margo’s eyes went automatically to the only other child present, her cousin Wallace, in his early teens.

Gangly, small-eyed, and already pimply faced, handsomely clothed over narrow shoulders and thin legs, Wallace watched his father kiss Sophia and stoop to kiss the cheek of the child,
and he followed suit. Lifting her round cheek for his kiss, Margo jerked and barely restrained an unacceptable shriek when the boy pressed his lips further and took a quick nip at her ear.

Around her, everyone was busy—Kezzie helping with the unloading, the adults getting reacquainted, the staff turning back to the house, their arms and hands full. Margo clapped a hand to her stinging ear and stifled her outcry but was not quick enough to hold back the tears that filled her eyes. Wallace stepped back, keeping hooded eyes on Margo’s face. As young as she was, she understood the satisfaction on his countenance and determined then and there that, come what may, she would never give him such satisfaction again. It was a vow that was tested repeatedly.