Place Called Bliss, A

by Glover, Ruth

  Angus was an educated man. In him was the mix of the master and the menial, the liege lord and the laborer. And in him the one would not have to be sacrificed to the other. Angus would suffer hardship and hard work, but in it he would be in control and maintain a quiet air of confidence. As a first-generation Canadian Angus would be the perfect model, for in him would be the blend of the gentle, fine ways of culture and the daring, grit, and stamina of the pioneer.

  In a way, Hugh envied Angus. But Hugh knew his place, and it was not on the frontier of the northwest. Even so, the new land and the new ways gave him the liberty he needed, and he was, in his own way, as liberated as Angus.

  Kezzie, standing with her arms around Cameron and Molly, was straight-backed and dry-eyed. Hugh watched her and felt an admiration for his old nurse. Whatever grieving she had done, she had put it behind her. Nevertheless, to Hugh she appeared shrunken, and her eyes, though dry, were full of pain. The children, huddled against her side, were swept up in the final stages of a drama that left them uneasy and wondering.

  Angus, having faced his loss and found it not as heavy as thought at first, was comforted by the fact that, with care and patience, his wife would survive. In her bunk below, Mary hardly understood the day’s significance and dozed fitfully under the laudanum Hugh had insisted the doctor make available to her.

  Sophia, of course, was bedfast, murmuring over her little Margaret Lorena, a name she had promptly produced and which Hugh surmised she had chosen long, long ago, perhaps in dreams of just such a time as this. Her joy, as well as her recovery, could not be compromised by a trip out on deck, with its accompanying heartrending sight of the canvas bundle slid so mercilessly into the sea. As a star is lost in the endless expanse of the sky, so the tiny body was swallowed up in the vast reaches of the sea. But the One who counted the stars and called them each by name was the One who also measured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and He knew the resting place of the small nameless one and would call her forth on that great reunion morning.

  This Hugh understood only dimly from his stiff, limited, formal religious training. But now it served to comfort him. That it might comfort Angus, who had always been what was called a “God-fearing” man, he was quite sure.

  When the rites were completed, Angus stepped to the side of his wife’s mother and murmured, “You’ve overdone yourself. Come, Mam, leave the bairns to these good ladies, and ge’ yoursel’ back to your bed and hae a guid rest.” Angus’s tender words, spoken in the old familiar fashion, turned Kezzie from her study of the empty waves. For once Kezzie listened and followed her Mr. Hugh without argument.

  Someone had Molly by the hand, and Angus put his hand on Cameron’s shoulder, turning toward the companionway that led to their quarters below.

  Cameron, an outdoor boy and losing color from the molelike existence of the past weeks, momentarily resisted Angus’s urging away from the sunshine and fresh air to the dismal hole. Angus, though preoccupied with Mary’s need of him, recognized the brief hesitation in the boy’s stride.

  Lifting the boy in his arms, Angus turned to the rail, and together they watched the waves rise and fall, noting the white wake that indicated that they were, at last, making time toward land, and sanity.

  Finally, with the child’s arms around his neck and the soft cheek pressing his own rough one, Angus hugged Cameron and turned to the ladderlike stairway where Sophia had fallen and which was still just as sticky and hazardous.

  Cameron’s brief resistance had ended. Young as he was he seemed to know the uselessness of it. Angus recognized the submission that marked the oppressed—those who had few if any rights and were considered inferior in all ways to their “betters”—and ground his teeth, hating the subservience in the boy even as he had always hated and fought against the same trait in himself.

  Downtrodden people the world around were catching a glimpse of a better way and, no matter the cost, were following that glimpse. If there was a gleam, for Angus, it was no other than northern lights. To some, their eerie display was equated with the supernatural, somehow, and was unsettling in their strange beauty. To Angus they served as a beacon which, never having seen, he followed.

  “Just a little longer, laddie,” he murmured into Cameron’s ear as, carefully, he made his descent. Fiercely, silently, he promised the boy that he should grow up free. Free to be an equal, to lift his head and look all men in the eye; to say “no” when “yes, sir” was expected; to arrive at his destination in life, be it success or failure, by his own choice. He, Angus, would suffer the present indignities gladly, to pass this on to his children. Angus could see the light, and it was sweet. For himself, and for Cameron, he would do what was necessary. It was enough to keep him putting one foot ahead of the other, down, down . . .

  From the dark depths he looked up, up to the patch of blue sky, the light, and breathed out his promise and his prayer.

  “Tomorrow, please, God—Bliss!”

  Canada—1878

  E arly reports hadn’t been favorable to the settling of the Canadian northwest. The “Emigrant’s Guide” featured a sketch of Jack Frost bundled in furs and wearing snowshoes, nipping the nose of a nattily dressed man wearing a top hat and bearing a backpack marked “silk stockings, kid gloves.” A bird flew overhead quacking “Who’s a goose now?” while a wolf snapped at the man’s slipper-clad heels. Stuck in heaped snowbanks were signs reading “Travelers taken and done for,” “Fine land for turnips if you can plough it,” and “Fine grassland 3000 feet below the surface of the snow.”

  No matter. Men, whether fools or heroes, persisted in daring the elements and the unknown and made their way west. From them word trickled out and around the world. The sound of their footsteps—whispering through prairie grasses and muted by dense forests—would swell, over time, to the tramp of hundreds of thousands of determined homesteaders who would tune their ears, and eventually their hearts, and rise up and follow.

  And, for those with the listening ear and the brave heart, there was excitement and music and breathtaking beauty.

  One’s blood stirred at the pounding thunder of buffalo hoofs; wild geese calling in a vast blue sky was music set to beauty; a lark’s song, high and piercing at dawn, was the sweetest of sounds. Endless vistas of prairie grass bending in the wind was an awesome sight. One could grow heady with breathing deeply of the unique fragrances of a land untainted by anything more than the smoke of a campfire. Sunsets were glorious beyond capturing on canvas.

  The sight of cowbirds riding the rumps of horses, picking off gadflies, was enough to keep one entertained through a day’s travel; the crack of a rifle on the still air and the bounty it assured were sources of satisfaction. The chickadee’s cheerfulness touched the coldest day with charm, and the grinding of ice as it broke in the rivers in spring was as welcome as a royal parade.

  Wrap a man in an unbelievably light, warm robe made of two hundred or so unsplit rabbit skins fastened head to tail, lay him beside a fire of poplar wood with a bowlful of stars tipped overhead, and you had one supremely contented and cozy individual.

  Indians, when encountered, were sociable. They gathered wherever men congregated, along with the whiskey-jack looking for food. True, the Métis, people of mixed blood, were showing signs of discontent, which caused some unease but which was largely overlooked by the land-hungry immigrant. Trouble, brewing off and on for some years, was downplayed, and immigrants, like Angus Morrison, were assured that the area was under firm control. There was no hesitation in his decision to head for Prince Albert and Bliss.

  George Bliss, Angus had been informed, was an early settler in an outlying district, and as the homesteads adjacent to his were under consideration, the area was referred to as, simply, Bliss. Many had reason to find it otherwise, for it was as plagued with problems, as say, Pile of Bones, which for obvious reasons was eventually named Regina. But Bliss had its allurements, being in the bush country, which appealed to Angus as to others who shuddered at the
endless blankness of the lonesome plains.

  Mary had regained her health before the Morrisons made the decision to push on; the season for travel was short, and they would need to locate and build a shelter before winter made many things impossible.

  The farewell with Kezzie was hard.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come, Mam?” Angus asked one last time, knowing the trip would be difficult, yet letting Mary’s mother know she was welcome in his home and in his plans.

  “Na, na,” Kezzie said firmly. “My place is here with Mr. Hugh . . . and the bairn.”

  “It won’t be long until the railway will extend up that way, I’m sure,” Hugh consoled them both. “And then you can visit back and forth.”

  So Angus and Mary contented themselves, said farewell, and went by Grand Trunk Railway and Morgan Central to Milwaukee, and from there to St. Boniface, Manitoba. Here they crossed the Red River by ferry, reaching Fort Garry and the jumping off place for the long haul to Prince Albert.

  Prince Albert was a community of growing importance for the homesteaders slowly filtering north. Here, beyond the vast, stretching plains of the south they came to settle in the park belt and on the fringe of the forest belt. Norwegians and Finns, Orkneymen and Highlanders, Europeans and a few Asians—adventurers all, settling here and to the south. New Stockholm came into being, and the Icelandic settlement Thingvalla; Romanians came and built the first Romanian Orthodox Church in North America. Hungarians, under Count d’Esterhazy, settled at Kaposvar . . . the Austrians named their new home Ebenezer . . . and on and on it went across the Northwest Territories.

  The usual mode of travel was the Red River cart. Before its raucous skreek-skrawk faded forever from the northwest, it would have been in use one hundred years. While the buffalo were plentiful, the Métis formed trains of hundreds of carts, trailing their trading goods across the prairie, carts screeching to high heaven and raising a veritable storm of dust. Immigrants had been quick to see the cart’s advantages. It was light and strong, could carry up to a ton of goods and, with wheels removed, it floated like a raft. And repairs were as available as the nearest tree—it was made entirely of wood.

  Mary was appalled by the shriek of the cart, and Cammie and Molly always covered their ears.

  “Why does it make such a horrendous noise?” Mary asked one day. “It sounds like a lost soul wandering through—well, it does!”

  Angus laughed. “Think of it as prairie music,” he said, and he pointed out the cart’s advantages to her and the children, who approached the man-made monster as though it were a being ready to leap on them at any moment.

  “For one thing, repairs are possible. If we have a breakdown, let’s hope it’s near a tree. Then all we need are a few tools, like an axe, a knife, and maybe a drill.”

  “Still, why the racket?”

  “The axles are wood, of course, and so are the wheels. Dust gets in the wheels, and if they were greased they’d just gum up, so the hubs are left dry.”

  “And we put up with that.”

  “’Fraid so. But look—the two-wheel design reduces chances of bogging down . . . it can be drawn by one animal . . . and oh, there are numerous advantages to it. You’ll see.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Mary said doubtfully and studied less critically the general all-purpose vehicle of transportation on which Cammie, all hesitation dispelled, was clambering, with Molly not far behind.

  When Angus said wood, he meant all of it. Their entire rig was joined by wooden pegs; some others, Angus reported, were joined with rawhide or shaganappi thongs.

  “Then, if we broke down,” Mary said with a twinkle, “we’d have to hope we were near a cow.”

  Angus gave her a hug, partly affection, partly relief. Mary would adjust—she was as dedicated to the idea of becoming a homesteader as he was.

  “These wheels,” Angus pointed out, “are six feet high, and deeply dished. See, they have twelve spokes fixed into holes in the rim—”

  “Which is all wood, has no grease, and is never going to let us forget it.”

  “It won’t be a silent passage, that’s for sure,” Angus admitted. “Especially if we are fortunate enough to get in with a caravan.”

  “Oh, I do hope so,” Mary said fervently, reluctant to cross the wilderness alone.

  While travel by oxen was slower, it was Angus’s decision to purchase them for their transport; Angus was informed that, though slow and difficult, they could live off the land while horses required grain to supplement the grass that was bountiful but not enough, by itself, to maintain vigor and health.

  Rates by water were high—freight was fourteen and a half cents a pound. Angus figured carefully, shipping only the basic farm equipment and packing on the carts their household goods as well as the smaller tools and enough food to see them to Prince Albert. At the last he invested in a buggy and a horse. Without them Mary and the children would walk most of the way, and Mary, though gaining, should not be tested so cavalierly.

  Three carts, three oxen, a buggy and mare, and a cow tied behind—that was the array that joined the group ready to start up the trail, scorning the prairies and setting their sights and their hopes on the fertile belt that was known as “the bush.”

  That first evening on the trail, by the campfire, sore, dusty, but well-fed and safe, Mary wrote her mother.

  Dear Mam:

  We started rather early this morning with the children excited, the animals much less so, and Angus in great good humor. Thirty carts travel with us. The sky, though big, is not big enough to contain the sound of these greaseless wheels. I suppose I shall get used to it.

  I’m so grateful for the buggy. Of course I had to hold the horse in, even stopping at times to allow for the slower progress of the oxen, which everyone in this caravan uses. We were on the trail about three hours when one cart broke an axle. The owner, a Mr. Parkey (although it could be Parki, or Parkee, or!), sent his son back to Fort Carlton for a new one. This slowed us considerably, but the boy joined us just a few minutes ago, the axle tied to the back of the riding horse they fortunately had brought along. The Parkey children took turns riding it, until, that is, the breakdown. Then, turn by turn, I tried to give the littlest ones a ride. One woman, I believe her name is Mrs. Swart, is far along in her time, and I only hope we make it to civilization before the child is born. Nightmares of those days on board ship often haunt me. She, as most others, walks rather than endure the rigors of the carts. The noise of these contraptions makes one’s blood run cold, and the severe jolting one endures in them shakes one’s very bones. In spite of it all we made 12 miles today and should do better many days.

  We did not have to dismantle the carts and float them over water today; all our lakes and rivers were shallow. I expect when we do and I see my little Molly afloat, I shall struggle with the images I cannot help but conjure up occasionally of my precious baby, set adrift and so alone in the waters of the Atlantic.

  S ophia turned herself critically before the handsome gold and white French mirror that had been hung in her boudoir and could find no fault with it, and very little with herself.

  Hugh had been mistaken when he implied that Toronto styles would be out of date. Eaton, that estimable merchant, did his overseas buying personally and from the best European manufacturers. His goods, readily available in the Toronto store, were thoroughly up-to-date.

  Little Margaret Lorena was just a few months old, and already Sophia’s waist could be cinched in to the required eighteen inches. In attendance that morning, Kezzie frowned and pursed her lips even as she laid out the new corset.

  “Oh, come, Kezzie,” Sophia said, noting the disapproval, “it isn’t all that painful, you know.”

  “It isna natural,” Kezzie maintained, adding darkly, “and you willna be able to eat a bite.”

  The corset’s iron grip molded Sophia’s figure into an hour-glass shape, the approved look of the day. Always previously fortified with whalebone, corset stays made of p
lant fiber had been substituted by a Dr. Warner. “A reward of ten dollars will be made,” the good doctor promised, “for every strip of Coraline that breaks with four months’ ordinary wear.” With more pleasure than usual, Sophia reached for the “Fancy Four-Hook Summer Corset” with heliotrope bands (blue and pink had also been available), which supposedly not only added elegance but strengthened the corset as well. Surely this garment would be less constricting.

  There was a rising tide of alarm, among some parents, that motherhood for the next generation was in jeopardy due to the corset. If a girl survived croup, which was treated by a poultice of mashed and roasted onions and hot skunk or goose oil, if she survived acne treated by acid nitrate, if applied spiderwebs successfully stopped bleeding from childhood injuries, and if the boiling of toads with tincture of arnica and butter had cured her of any rheumatism or sprains, she might still succumb to the grip of a corset that crushed her lungs and other internal, important, if unnamed, organs.

  Sophia sighed; there were so many things to worry about! She wanted to give Hugh the son he longed for, and in spite of the necessity to be a slave to fashion, wondered about the corset and its effects.

  Today Sophia chose cashmere stockings rather than balbriggan, and when they were on, reached for the first of the four petticoats that were the prescribed proper wear.

  Wondering if she would ever become used to the luxury of dressing elegantly, Sophia ran her hand appreciatively over the taffeta silk waist Kezzie held out to her. Of royal blue, its inlaid front was of white silk and intricately tucked and trimmed with fancy embroidered gimp. The sleeves were tucked ten times, and the French back had five rows of tucking.