A Place Called Bliss (19 page)

One place Winfield was no help—in the sickroom. Though he seemed to suffer Margo’s presence at times, the one time Winfield entered, to stand supporting her at the bedside, Hugh had roused with an agitation that brought the nurse swiftly to his side.

“What’s he doing here?” the invalid’s voice demanded. “Get that pecksniffian weakling out of here!”

Ugly red surged up into the handsome face at Margo’s shoulder, while her own face turned pale. “I think you should go,” she urged, and with a dark glance at the man in the bed, Winfield left the room.

“Whatever did he mean?” Margo asked Winfield later. “Pecksniffian—I never heard the term.”

Neither had Winfield, but “weakling” he well understood. “Remember, my dear,” he said with an effort at rationality, “the man is not responsible for what he says. He’s clearly raving.”

“Papa is a great lover of Dickens,” Margo said thoughtfully. “He often read his works aloud to Mama . . . sometimes to me. There was a Pecksniff in
Martin Chuzzlewit
as I remember. Not a savory character . . . selfish and corrupt behind a seeming display of benevolence. Whatever could have possessed Papa—”

“As I said, clearly out of his mind. He’s back in Dickens’ days, living them out in his imagination.”

“I suppose so,” Margo said rather doubtfully and, at the first opportunity, when Hugh had a good day and was lifted into a
chair by the window to watch the snow as it fell and the chickadees as they fed, she sat beside him and hesitantly brought up the subject of Winfield and her proposed nuptials.

“Papa, you know I’m engaged . . . you remember I told you about that?”

“Of course I remember. I haven’t got cancer of the brain.” Hugh spoke more harshly in his sickness than ever in health.

“What do you think of it?”

“Every woman should be married, I suppose.” Hugh was supremely indifferent.

“To Winfield Craven, Papa.”

“As good as any, I suppose. I imagine you have your full wits about you. He certainly has.”

“Why do I get the impression, Papa—” Margo’s voice was smothered as she dared ask the question, “that you don’t like him? You do like him, don’t you, Papa?”

“Like him? Like him? Is it necessary that I like him?” Hugh watched the scene outside the window for a moment, then, with a return to his usual politeness, said, “Marry him, my dear. Yes, yes, you must go ahead and marry. I think,” he swung his sunken eyes toward her, “if your mother were here, she would urge you toward marriage. Believe me, I’m thinking of your best interests. If Winfield Craven is your choice, so be it—marry.”

Margo sighed. Everything, it seemed, herded her toward Winfield and marriage. The alternative—life alone, with no family, and with the burden of the Galloway estate to care for by herself as unready as she was—was too dreadful to contemplate.

Margo’s helplessness and aloneness were emphasized when Hugh slipped away in his sleep, in the middle of the night. Margo was not even at his bedside. Casper woke her and broke the news to her, but aside from his sympathetic face there was no one to whom to turn, no one to put an arm around her,
no one to advise her. When, later in the day, Winfield arrived, Margo threw all reserve and training to the wind and flung herself into his arms.

It was now, when she was at her lowest ebb, when his presence and help were so desperately needed, that Winfield pressed his advantage and urged an immediate marriage.

“Oh, no!” Margo whispered, horrified at the thought of the impropriety of it.

“My dearest, who is to care? Let us please ourselves rather than society at this time. I can’t bear to leave you—tonight or any night hereafter. I can’t bear to let you out of my arms, when you need them so.” And Winfield held her tenderly, wiping her tears away, soothing her fears, assuaging her loneliness.

In Margo’s weakness and need, Winfield did indeed appear as a tower of strength, and it wasn’t difficult for her to be persuaded. Especially when Winfield loved her so and pledged such devotion and faithful attention to her needs.

With Margo’s tearful acquiescence, Winfield stepped in to take charge of the countless details in regard to the funeral, any business problems, and the running of the Heatherstone staff. “With your permission, my dearest,” he had said, and Margo had gladly turned all such matters over to him. How desperately, after all, she needed him!

“One week, Margaret,” Winfield eventually persuaded. “One week after the burial. That’s enough time, isn’t it, my dear, to be ready? After all, it will just be us, the staff, and a couple of close friends. Then—oh, then, my love,” and Winfield’s voice deepened with the thrill of “then.”

Margo was persuaded.

D
ear Margo, my angel child
, Margo read. In a miasma of bewilderment, sorrow, and depression, her old nurse’s love, coming clearly through the pages of the letter, stole like balm into Margo’s battered heart. Oh, if only those loving arms were here now, what comfort they would bring. Even after all these years, Margo felt a rush of warmth toward the distant Kezzie and a very great yearning to lay her head on the withered bosom and feel the tender pats of consolation on her shoulder. With Kezzie, one never wondered about one’s acceptance, never had to deserve that acceptance, never doubted its steadfastness.

But Kezzie, growing old and infirm, was thousands of miles away, wrapped in the vastness that was the Northwest Territory, in one small district called, strangely, Bliss.

I could do with a little Bliss,
Margo thought a trifle grimly, not certain that even the coming wedding would supply it. Perhaps it was just because Kezzie was there, perhaps it was her strange desire to flee the present circumstances, but Margo picked up the letter with a sigh, and, shaking her head as if to rid it of the
impossible dream of Bliss, a dream that had often gripped her heart ever since Kezzie’s arrival there, read on.

For me, shut in with my aches and pains, time seems to stand still. At times, now that my Mary is well, I wonder what I am doing here. But, of course, I know there is no need for me anymore at Heatherstone
. No need! Now, more than ever, there was a need for Kezzie at Heatherstone. Tears splashed the pencilled pages, tears for Kezzie and her feeling of uselessness, tears for herself, Margo, and her feeling of helplessness. Two great needs—so far apart, with no chance of fulfillment.

Yes, my Mary, to the uninformed, is well. Those of us who know her, however, know that she is not strong. And that is hard for me, when I can do so little anymore to help. Dear Molly is such a blessing. As you know, she is about two years older than you and has been raised here on the frontier. I guess you could call it the frontier, but we have come a long way. The railroad has made a great difference. Unfortunately it does not come through Bliss but bypasses us for another route to Prince Albert. That growing little city is about twelve miles from us, too far to run in often but close enough to be available for many things not stocked here in our small Bliss store
.

The letter drooped in Margo’s hand; she pictured again, as across the years of Kezzie’s letters, the area called Bliss, in the heart of the bush. Margo had watched, in imagination, as Angus had cleared land, planted, harvested; Margo had lived through the exhaustion of threshing day vicariously and the long, lonely winter days of isolation. She had thrilled to the occasion of the chinook and its warming breeze; she had knelt, in imagination, to brush aside the snow and rejoice in the finding of spring’s first crocus.

Wistfully, through the written word, Margo had watched as Molly and Cameron, whom she could not remember in person, had grown from youth to maturity. Almost she could see Cameron’s thick, fair hair and blue eyes and Molly’s tossing mane, as black and curly, it seemed, as her own. Margo could
picture their injuries, described by Kezzie, laugh at their predicaments—Cameron learning to ice-skate in skates too large, stuffed with paper; Molly determined to ride a calf. She studied the crude drawing of the log cabin, coloring in new rooms as Kezzie reported their addition to the original structure. She studied the wisps of thread and scraps of material Kezzie sent, at Margo’s pleading, so that the child in the east could picture more completely the children in the bush and how they were clothed.

In imagination she had taken the buggy ride to Prince Albert for supplies, had bundled herself against the cold when the sleigh made the same trip. She had rejoiced with Bliss’s residents when, at a certain crossroads, a small hamlet had sprung up, with a post office, a store, a smithy, and, soon, a granary, and was named, appropriately, Bliss. None of Kezzie’s often vivid accounts of hardships, blizzards, discouragements, could change Margo’s impression of the place called Bliss. Until she could go to heaven, Bliss would do!

With her father lying dead in his coffin in the drawing room, with the weight of the family businesses hanging like an ominous cloud over her head, with the responsibility for the running of Heatherstone on her shoulders, and with Winfield waiting impatiently to become a bridegroom, Margo’s youthful dream of Bliss dissolved in the tears that now fell on Kezzie’s letter.

Molly, it seemed, as Margo resumed her reading, was in a fair way to marry the new, young minister who had come to the recently established church at Bliss. Cameron, Kezzie reported, was managing a superior farm just a few miles away in Bliss; he was, after all, in his mid-twenties.
And still single
, Kezzie wrote, as she had before.
As you know, women here are hard to find—single women, I mean—and not everyone wants to become a pioneer bride. What’s more, Cameron seems to have this idea that God is going to send along the right one, and he needn’t worry about it. You see, Margo
, and Margo could almost hear Kezzie’s frustration,
this entire family has the idea that God is in control of things. I must say it makes for peace
,
even in trying times, and seems to give a contentment that I, for one, can’t really understand. But I would like to. The older I get, the more I need peace, Margo. But certain things go along with it—confession, for one. Well
, another sigh, Margo supposed,
some things are easier said than done
. Now what, Margo thought, could darling Kezzie find so hard to confess, when she had been such a good woman? Hadn’t she been, since childhood, a staunch member of the Established Church? Dear Kezzie!

Margo finished reading her old nurse’s letter, folded it, and put it away until such time as it could be answered. Somehow she would have to make time before the wedding to write Kezzie and tell her of Hugh’s death, her forthcoming marriage. . . .

With a sigh equal to those of her faraway friend, Margo, with a wrench, put aside her dreams of someday visiting Kezzie and her family, laid aside, forever, any hope of a buggy ride to Bliss.

T
hunk! Thunk!
The dropped handfuls of dirt thudded on the coffin containing the final remains of Hugh Galloway. Wet dirt . . . clay, molded by the gripping hand into a solid ball, plastered itself to the rain-splashed box, to melt apart in the downpour and drip back to the earth from which it had been gathered.