A Place Called Bliss (24 page)

“How long until we get there?” Margo managed, feeling young and gauche and, somehow, furious because of it.

“Two hours or so. Depends on whether we hurry. And I don’t see why we should. This is one beautiful road. Well, not the road itself, which tends to be rutty after a rain such as we had last night, but look—have you ever seen such green?” Cameron gestured toward the bush that crowded the road, cut back occasionally to accommodate a way into someone’s property.

He was right. It was the new green of spring. Margo became aware of the freshness of the air and found herself breathing deeply.

“Pure perfume,” Cameron said. “No pollution by man. Let’s hope it stays that way. I know it’s pristine—that is, hardly touched—so that it comes as near to Eden as is possible here on this old earth.”

“You sound . . . you sound . . .”

“Foolish?” Cameron asked with a grin.

“I was going to say contented.”

“I suppose I am,” Cameron said. “I like what David said—”

“David?”

“The psalmist,” Cameron responded, and Margo felt herself flush at her ignorance. She hoped this man—so strong and vital and masculine—would not be a spouter of religious banalities. Would that be his one flaw? For that he was near perfection in all other ways Margo was blindingly certain. She hoped rather desperately that she would immediately discover a human frailty and that it would, once and for all, still this strange tumult in her heart.

“The psalmist?” she asked now, and waited for his trite and stilted “testimony.”

“It has something to do with fat paths.” Cameron’s grin was fleeting, but it was there. Was he teasing?

“Fat paths?” Margo asked cautiously, intrigued in spite of herself.

“Fat paths, happy hills, and singing valleys.”

And that was all. Margo sat, stewing, in silence.

Finally, “It’s Psalm 65 if you should care to explore it for yourself,” Cameron added.

“Fat paths?” Margo burst out with after a moment’s silence. “That’s the reason you are a contented man?
Fat paths
?
”

“Would you prefer shining paths?”

What was wrong with the man! Why couldn’t he just preach to her and get it over with!

“The path of the just,” Cameron all but sang out above the clip-clop of the horse’s hooves and the occasional creak of the rather ancient buggy, “is as the shining light.”

With these thought-provoking words ringing in her ears, with a strong shoulder pressed occasionally against hers by the jouncing of the rig, with the wind gloriously fresh in her face and the sound of a meadowlark piercingly sweet filling the blue sky, with Granny Kezzie awaiting her coming with loving arms, and with an unknown but suddenly appealing future ahead of her, Margo found herself believing that the path, if not fat, seemed on the verge of plumpness.

“Just ahead,” Cameron said, “is Bliss.”

T
he small hamlet appeared as if by magic. The rig rounded a bend in the road, the bush fell away, and ten or twelve buildings appeared, bulked around a crossroads.

“As a town, it’ll never amount to much, I suppose,” Cameron said, “and that’s because the railroad doesn’t come through here. Still, we were happy to have our own town with church and school. As for supplies, Prince Albert isn’t all that far away and has much more to offer—flour mill, dentist, doctor, lawyers, and so on. And of course, the Lands Office. It’s gotten so that, to homestead, you have to go farther afield, though there’s still plenty available in the Territories. Your father’s place is the original Bliss place, and it happened to become available when he came here wanting to buy. Most places—as you’ve seen when we drove past—are not nearly so well under cultivation, being much more recently claimed.”

“I noticed,” Margo said. “Such tiny cabins—”

“My folks started off like that. What they have, they’ve worked for, believe me. But we’ve been happy and contented, and I remember the good times more than the bad. It was a tough time when my mother was so ill. That’s when I did my first serious praying.”

“That’s when Kezzie came.”

“Yes, and how we’ve loved having a grandmother, Molly and I. Did you know she lives with me now? Well, of course you know, hearing from her regularly.”

“I knew, but what I didn’t know was that it was on land owned by my father.”

“I see,” Cameron said thoughtfully. “So this has all been a surprise to you.”

With the buggy turning in at the one and only building that could possibly be a general store, Margo was spared an explanation of her surprise regarding her father’s property and his will.

Leaping from the buggy as lithely as he had gotten into it, Cameron came around the rig to offer his hand to Margo.

“Might as well get down and stretch,” he said. “It’s another three miles home. But we’ll stop first at my folks’ place—that’s two miles from here. They are eager to meet ‘Margo’.” Cameron smiled.

“Where’s Granny Kezzie?” Margo asked, walking beside the tall man toward the false-fronted building.

“At my . . . your place.” Cameron made the correction quickly. “She’s not really able to climb in and out of a buggy anymore. Once in a while we lift her into the wagon and have a chair in there for her to sit on, and take her home, maybe for Christmas or some special day, like a birthday. Sometimes we have everyone over to our . . . your place, but Mam isn’t physically able to fix meals for a crowd. She takes care of me, though, to the best of her ability, and it’s great to have her with me. These are days I’ll always cherish, I can tell you that.”

Cameron was holding open the door and ushering the newcomer into the store. One end was given over to food supplies, and here a man was checking a list held in his hand; a small pile of goods was before him on the scarred counter. Both he and the proprietor looked up and watched the approach of Margo and Cameron with interest.

“Hey, Cam,” the proprietor said.

“Cameron,” the customer said, politely and warmly, and both men shifted their gaze to the woman at Cameron’s side.

“Hey, Barn,” Cameron replied in kind, and “How are you, Parker? Struggling over what you can afford, I guess. Miss Galloway, I’d like you to meet our right Reverend Parker Jones. He’s a good man, but just to make sure, we keep him on short rations. This other character is Barnabas Peale. Gentlemen—Miss Galloway.”

Margo offered her hand, to have it soundly gripped and shaken.

“Welcome to Bliss,” each said, while the minister quickly removed his hat.

After a moment, “Barn” went about filling the list the minister handed over to him. “Do your best with it,” Parker Jones said. “You know my salary as well as I do . . . and my tastes.”

“Yeah. They run to the cheap—beans, mostly.”

Parker Jones turned his attention to Margaret. His smile was sweet, for a man, and Margo’s first and natural impulse to criticism and perhaps skepticism because he was a “man of the cloth” melted away, and she found herself quite liking the man without knowing him.

“They like to make light of my housekeeping abilities, Miss Galloway,” the minister said sadly. “I’d like to see how well they’d do by themselves. Cam, here, had to call into service his aging grandmother to take care of him, and Barn, poor, desperate man, just married for the third time.”

Cameron didn’t linger; he picked up what mail had arrived for his household and his parents’ and turned to go.

“Mam is waiting to see her dear Margo,” he explained, and his tones came across as tender ones. The other two nodded, murmured their good-byes, and Margo and Cameron returned to the buggy and the final lap of their journey.

The town of Bliss—what appeared to be several business establishments, including a barbershop and livery stable, interspersed with a few small houses and, at the end of the street, a
white frame schoolhouse—soon disappeared as the buggy was enveloped once again in bush.

“The church?” Margo asked, thinking of Parker Jones and his congregation, of which, she supposed, Cameron was a part.

“The school serves as the church here, as in many places across the Territories. We just double up on its usefulness. It’s a good plan. The schoolhouse is central to everything in these new districts and is often the first building to go up. Canadians are serious about good education.”

“Parker Jones—he keeps house for himself, I gather.”

“Now he does. He started off, about a year ago, living around with the church families; a month here, a month there. Not good. He had a terrible time, no place to study, bunking with the boys of the family. And then there’s this: people shouldn’t know every intimate detail of their pastor’s life. Just imagine every woman in the congregation having washed your underwear, for instance, or knowing your best pair of socks is full of holes.”

Margo couldn’t restrain a laugh at the very thought of Parker Jones suffering such indignities.

“So, what was the solution?”

“We built him a house . . . cabin, of course, mostly called shack hereabouts. One that’s big enough for now and can be added onto should the need arise. You’ll hear it here first,” Cameron said with a grin, slanting Margo a look, “but my sister, Molly, is already decorating that cabin—in her mind, of course, and, I imagine, in her dreams at night.”

“And how does Parker Jones feel about all that, or does he know?”

“Oh, he knows, all right. His dreams—nightmares, possibly—probably have to do with making his small remuneration stretch to feed one more mouth. I can’t call it a salary; whatever comes in in the offering plate, that’s it. People are good about taking in garden stuff, baked goods, and so on. And he seems to have a knack of dropping in for a call near mealtime. But who am I to fault him for that? I hated being a bachelor so much I prevailed on Mam to take pity on me. It’s not only the
meals and all the work they mean, it’s the company. Especially in winter. But there—I don’t imagine you’ll be here that long. Make a quick visit, check on your investment here, and get back to civilization, right?”

“Well—” Margo hesitated. The buggy seemed a poor place to talk business. “We’ll need to discuss . . . everything.”

After a keen glance at Margo’s face, Cameron offered, “Of course, I expect that. Anytime, Miss . . . by the way, is it all right if we just dispense with formalities? They seem out of place, having known you through Mam for so many years, and with the ties my father had with yours, and with his more recent business dealing with me. What do you say? I’m Cameron to most people and just plain Cam to a few—take your choice.”

“Cam . . . Cameron, of course. And you have a choice, too—Margaret, as most folks call me, or Margo, as Kezzie has always called me.”

“Who do you think of yourself as?”

“Margo.”

“Margo it will be. Well, Margo, here we are at the Morrison homestead.”

And it was as “Margo” Cameron introduced her to Mary, then Angus when he had made his way in from the barn. Their welcome was warm and sincere, not surprising after Sadie LeGare’s friendly greeting and Cameron’s easy camaraderie.

“Come in . . . come in! We’ve looked forward to meeting you, especially since your father visited us a few years ago.”

Margo was ushered to a comfortable seat, and conversation ran naturally along the lines of her father’s last illness, old memories, and earlier connections. Never had Margo been made so welcome, never had she felt so comfortable.

The door slammed, and everyone turned toward the sound. The doorway framed a girl—young woman. Perhaps she had been running; perhaps she was excited. Her piquant face was delicately flushed, her black-lashed, blue eyes were sparkling. And her hair, smokily riotous, had escaped the ribbon that had
tried to restrain it and curled in pure abandon over her forehead and around her ears.

Automatically, Margo reached a hand to her own head to tuck up the stray curls. For one fleeting moment, gone as quickly as it came, she had the giddy sensation that she was looking into a mirror.

T
he moment went as quickly as it came. Like a lightning flash on a dark night, for one split second giving startling clarity, so the moment came and went, as if it had never been. And indeed, had it?