Back Roads to Bliss

by Ruth Glover

  “A blessed way to look at it,” Angus said thoughtfully. “I’m sure you’re reet.”

  Again Parker Jones’s eyes gazed off as at some unseen horizon, some distant shore. It was almost with a start he came to himself, looked around almost blankly for a moment, and then said, “There’s not much more to say except that my mother needs me now. Not only for comfort and strength but to advise her in the matter of my father’s business. He was in the building trade and had a partner. There will be certain affairs to work out—whether the partner buys the business, what my mother is paid, and so on. Though this is a fine man, someone needs to be there to protect my mother’s interests, perhaps just to shield her from the headache of it all.”

  “You have no brothers, I recall?” someone said.

  “No brothers. One sister, and she’s an invalid. Rather, she was injured in a fall as a child and has never been strong since. Not strong enough to marry, at any rate, or have a family of her own. She and my mother will have each other. But they need me at this time.”

  “Of course . . . we see your point . . . that’s understandable.” The voices chimed in with approval, with patience, with concern.

  “My mother asks me to come,” Parker pursued, as though needing to persuade his listeners. Perhaps he needed to settle his own turmoil of spirit. After all, he had a job, a calling. And there was Molly—

  Molly. There had been a time, not long ago, when he had been unsure of his future, had struggled with his “call.” Faced with the opportunity to leave Bliss for a teaching assignment in a Bible college in the East and broaching the subject to Molly, Parker discovered that she believed her future, for the time being, was here among the people of Bliss. Thankfully there had been an eventual positive solution to his uncertainties; God had clearly convinced him of his call to the ministry of the gospel of Christ and to a pastorate in the bush country of Saskatchewan.

  What would Molly’s reaction be to another delay, to more uncertainty concerning their longed-for life together?

  Parker looked at Angus and indicated the letter. “I’ll need to talk to Molly, Angus, break the news to her myself, if you don’t mind.”

  “Of course, laddie. I’ll say nothing. But won’t you come along wi’ me? Just put on your coat and ride over wi’ me to the hoose. Then, after a good supper, ye can talk wi’ Molly.”

  Angus’s suggestion was a good one. After all, Parker had no rig of his own, and with no barn as yet, it was impossible, in winter, to keep a horse. The roast in the oven would keep.

  “I need the evening to myself, I believe. To think about it, pray about it, come to some peace about it, before I talk to her. But I can’t see any way I can get out of going to be with my mother.” Parker Jones was caught in a loving web—Molly, or Mother?

  “And we’ll all pray with you,” was the last assurance of the men who now donned their outer garments and proceeded out to their rigs, heading home and leaving Parker Jones standing in the doorway, more alone than ever, it seemed to their sympathetic eyes.

  Adonijah Dinwoody and Bly Condon, married men, separately and perhaps wisely came to the decision to say nothing to their wives tonight. Separated by miles of snow and ice from their nearest neighbors, still they had no confidence in keeping anything secret in the bush. How news got around was often a wonder and a marvel—yet get around it did. “A little bird told me,” might indeed be the mysterious method of transportation, and were there not the ubiquitous chickadees at this season when most feathered creatures had wisely flown away? Perhaps the partridge’s drumming, like the Indians’ drum, signaled more than was known; perhaps the owl’s hoot, disembodied in the night, passed the news from house to house. At any rate, the men wisely decided to delay passing on the bit of news that would have caused a ripple of excitement in each shuttered home and given food for thought and speculation: What would Parker do? What would Molly do?

  Tomorrow would be time enough to stir the pot of excitement and interest. Even in the face of a wife’s hungry quest for news, Brother Dinwoody and Bly Condon determined to withhold the pastor’s news. Molly should be the first to know, and she should hear it from Parker Jones himself.

  Shutting the door, returning to the fireside, and picking up his mother’s letter to read it again, Parker realized there was no reason for immediate action. He would write his mother and assure her he was coming. Then when the chinook came and the roads opened, it would be time to leave for Ontario and the town where he had been born and raised. His mother, he noted with a faint smile—for she knew his circumstances—would send the money needed for his transportation.

  Parker breathed easier for the moment as the pressure for immediate action regarding his time of departure was lightened. His pressure regarding talking to Molly? Heavy indeed. If her longing was anything like his, and he believed it was, it would be a bitter blow to hear she would need to wait—again.

  Rising, he laid aside the letter and went about supper preparations, blessing the dear ladies of the Morrison household for the simple meal ready in his oven. Taking the hot pads in hand, Parker turned toward the roasting pan and was struck—suddenly and for no reason that he could see—by the realization that his concern had been all for his mother, Molly, himself. But there was the church and his responsibility to it.

  God had called him to Bliss. Until God indicated a change of plans, Bliss would remain his field of ministry. If the board agreed, he’d ask for a leave of absence, coming back to the pulpit and parish of Bliss. But there was no one available to take his place during his absence, which, he could foresee, might be a period of six months or so.

  There was only one thing to do: The board would need to write the eastern school for an interim pastor.

  Aye,” the burly blacksmith confirmed, no doubt prompted by the blank faces of the young couple before him. “Ye knew not the law, I can see that. Many dinna. They coom dancin’ in here, thinkin’ we’re going to say a few words ower them, an’ they’ll live happily ever after. And then they find oot about the required residency.”

  The man sighed massively, his wide shoulders heaving. He shook his head, looking at Allison and Stephen with sad, baggy eyes. Condemning eyes, blaming eyes. Here I am, they said without words, ready, willin’, and able, and ye’ve got me here for naethin ’. Perhaps he hoped for some remuneration in spite of the failed wedding plans.

  “Yes . . . yes; I understand,” Allison managed to stammer, digging for a few coins and pressing them into his hand. “We dinna . . . didn’t know. Is there no place one can apply for a special license—”

  “Na, na,” the man said, kindly enough, putting away the coins, folding up the printed ceremony, and beginning to turn away. The two witnesses, with long-suffering faces—they’d apparently been through this before—disappeared as quickly as they had appeared, and as mysteriously.

  Left alone at the side of the anvil, Allison and Stephen gaped wordlessly at one another.

  Finally, dazed and stumbling, they turned and made their way from the dim interior of the smithy to the yard. Here people from the stagecoach were milling around; there was shouting back and forth as the horses were exchanged, as various pieces of baggage were shifted, as people prepared to climb aboard and move farther into Scotland. And life went on normally, for some people.

  The sun had come out, the wind was gone, and the snow was melting; the yard was a churned-up sea of snow and mud. Allison and Stephen, standing ankle deep in the wet mass and watching the activity with unseeing eyes, gave no thought to their feet.

  “What will we do?” It was Stephen who asked, who looked to Allison for some answer to their predicament. And it was a serious one.

  Allison, usually so decisive, had been stunned into silence, into immobility. Her mind, usually so quick, so resourceful, seemed as muddy as the ground.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know,” she whispered through stiff lips, lips that, as they loosened, began to quiver, her teeth to chatter. “Well, think,” the thin figure a
t her side urged.

  His voice seemed to break the spell. Allison looked up at Stephen, noting with sudden contempt how he was standing there like a scarecrow, limp and lifeless. Her sympathy for the white-faced, stricken-eyed, helpless youth faded. “What do you think we should do?” she blazed, driven by the despair and dismay she was feeling.

  Stephen gaped, startled at the question, at the responsibility thrust upon him.

  “How should I know?” he managed, gulping.

  “Do something!” she demanded, stamping her thinly clad foot into the wet snow and being rewarded by an icy surge into her shoe, which she neither cared about nor felt.

  But Stephen, rather than shouldering the dilemma and finding a solution, looked as though his main desire in life at the moment was to flee the premises never having heard the name Gretna Green, never having seen the historic anvil or, perhaps, the girl at his side.

  “Well,” he said slowly, helplessly, “I don’t—”

  “Oh, hush!” a distraught and disillusioned Allison ordered, near to tears and shaking with anger, disappointment, and uncertainty. In her eyes, Stephen’s classic beauty was disappearing as his face settled into lugubrious lines.

  “Now see here,” he offered feebly.

  And then, defensively, he said the words that once and for all ruined himself in the eyes of his chosen love: “This was all your idea, you know.”

  It was a definitive moment. Allison’s eyes grew wide. For a moment she was shocked into silence. The portent of his words, his meaning, finally reached her.

  Those who knew her best would have been dumbfounded at the maturity of her reaction, the control in her voice. Expecting a quick and contemptuous lashing out, they would have applauded the brief and taut response.

  When she could trust herself to speak, she said, “I’ve given it some thought and come to a good conclusion, I believe, since you don’t have one. I think it would be well if you boarded the stagecoach, Stephen, and proceeded to Edinburgh. Perhaps Mr. McCloud will take you under his wing; he may have some clerical work you can do in the export business he told us about.” It was a subject that had helped fill the long hours of the journey.

  Before Stephen’s mouth could open and he could utter another word, good or bad, Allison added, “I’ll talk to him,” and she hurried to the side of the Scotsman who, with his wife, had been watching, highly curious, the small drama being played out before them.

  “Mr. McCloud,” Allison said rapidly, reaching his side, “is it possible that Stephen—his name is Stephen Lusk—could go on with you?”

  “Go on?” the man asked, taken aback.

  Allison was at her best. She dared not fail; Stephen’s future, perhaps his life, hinged on her. Having led him, willy-nilly, into this disaster—as he had so humiliatingly pointed out—it was up to her to get him out.

  “Yes,” she said, her face flushing prettily and her eyes damp with emotion, an emotion not lost on Mr. McCloud. “You see, I’m going back. But it would be a dreadful decision for him to do so. I’m sure you understand.

  “It would be such a . . . a boon if you could take him on to Edinburgh with you, put him to work. Could you, Mr. McCloud?” Allison’s gray eyes pleaded. Mr. McCloud had to feel he was her champion, the solution to her problems.

  “He’s educated, Mr. McCloud,” Allison added persuasively. “I know he could be an asset to your business.” If she had laid aside, once and for all, her dream that Stephen’s education would make a way for him in her father’s business, it was not apparent as she outlined Stephen’s abilities now.

  Before Mr. McCloud could utter the refusal that could be read in his face, Allison opened her bag and withdrew the purse—her grandmama’s contributions—and held it out.

  “Would this help?” she murmured, hefting the coins in her hand, bringing a gleam to the Scotsman’s eyes. “This would pay his way and keep him until he could become a help and an asset. Please, Mr. McCloud!”

  In spite of himself, Crispus McCloud’s hand was reaching for the coins Allison was jangling before him. “Weel . . .” he said, and Allison caught the change of tone, the assent, perhaps grudging assent, in his voice.

  “Oh, thank you! You won’t be sorry. I’ll see to that.”

  And Mr. McCloud, sharp businessman, who knew and recognized a kindred spirit, believed her.

  “A’ reet, then, lassie,” he said, pocketing the money. “But what’ll ye do?”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Allison—without a farthing to her name—reassured him with more confidence than she felt. “I’ll be all right. I’ll go home, of course.”

  For the single, unemployed, untrained girl of the day, there was no choice. Allison knew it and bowed to the inevitable. Mr. McCloud knew it and agreed.

  “Weel, guid luck to ye then, lassie,” he called after Allison as she sped through the muck back to Stephen.

  “Mr. McCloud has work for you, Stephen,” she said brightly. “Think of that! He’s waiting for you over there now, ready to get back into the coach. You just have time to join them; they’re about to take off.”

  “I’ll not,” he said stubbornly. “I’ll not go to Edinburgh. I’ll not work for that man. Why,” he asked crossly, “didn’t you give me that money, Allison? I could have gone on myself; the money would have kept me very nicely—”

  Allison heard him with disbelief. How little she had known him, after all. She shook her head sadly as, for a moment, she had the distinct feeling that her young love, her first love, crumpled and fell soundlessly into the broken earth at her feet.

  Still, she spoke with common sense. “He’s a good man, Stephen, with a good business. And just think of it—you’ll be working at a profession—”

  “I’ll not,” Stephen repeated, unmoved from his refusal. “Nothing will change my mind—”

  “You might like to know, Stephen,” Allison interrupted quietly but tensely, “that those are my father’s horses about to turn in at the gate. That’s my father’s carriage, that’s my father’s coachman driving, and that’s Buckle—the real Buckle—sitting there beside him. I don’t know who’s inside—”

  Like a bolt of lightning or as though shot from a cannon, with no word of farewell, Stephen Lusk’s cold feet took him across the churned-up yard, thrusting past anyone in his path, to the open door of the stagecoach. He barely touched the step as he dove into the dark interior and disappeared.

  Sitting down on a bench in the smithy yard, Allison, calm and collected to all appearances but with heightened color and quickened heartbeat, reached into her bag for the Balmoral boots. Seemingly intent on changing her wet shoes, her attention was given—from the corner of an eye—to the two coaches, one leaving the yard, the other entering.

  Hurryhurryhurry! she was pleading soundlessly to the public conveyance bearing Stephen away, and Hide, Stephen, hide!

  Finding Stephen gone and determining he had fled by means of the stagecoach, would her father insist on pursuing him? It seemed likely to Allison, for Quincy would be filled with rage, intent on pouring it out upon the helpless and hapless male creature who had the effrontery to bring disgrace upon the name and house of Middleton. Frightened though she was, she determined to forestall any such action on her father’s part by causing a delay by any means possible. Every minute would count as the public coach made its way northward, and so Allison dawdled, careless, unconcerned, or so it seemed.

  Poor, weak Stephen—Allison couldn’t find it in her heart to be angry with him and, admitting she was largely responsible for the present fiasco, even felt a little pity for him. But in some ways Stephen was better off than she was, Allison thought with a shiver as the heavy, ornate coach bucketed into the yard and the coachman pulled the horses to a walk and then a halt. Stephen was well away and safely out of the reach of retribution; Stephen, if he stayed with Mr. McCloud, would be set up with work, perhaps a career much better for him than becoming a shopkeeper like his father.

  While she—

 
; Better by far not to think what her fate might be. Perhaps bread and water for a season; perhaps—heavens!—a beating. Certainly disgrace.

  But to cringe, to grovel, even to snivel, was not in Allison’s makeup. Though her insides felt like pudding, her chin, her quaking chin, was up. Her expression, she hoped, was serene, perhaps even a little haughty. To the servants, certainly haughty. To her father, when he stepped from the carriage—

  It was not Quincy who stepped from the carriage.

  Allison was calmly removing her soaked slippers and putting on the despised boots when the coach pulled up alongside (if her father disapproved of the public display of her feet, one more infraction couldn’t make much difference to the punishment awaiting her). Jenks, family coachman, hauled on the reins, and the hostler from the inn came hurrying. Although Allison refused to look up, giving her attention to her present occupation, she knew Buckle, sitting beside Jenks, was looking down at her.

  Slowly she finished tying the laces, casually she raised her eyes. “Why, hello, Buckle,” she said pleasantly. “Hello, Jenks.”

  Jenks, gruff Jenks—always gentle with Allison and Sarah, saddling their ponies, teaching them to ride—was expressionless, his attention focused on the horses’ ears. Buckle had a grim look on his rather priggish face. He had been long-suffering with her across the years, perhaps at times even entertained by her exploits. His reaction now caused Allison’s heart to squeeze—it was, obviously, a reflection of her family’s disapproval. What she had done went beyond the unacceptable to the intolerable.

  “Good day to you, Miss,” Buckle said politely, his eyes moving on, searching the yard and the few people there, obviously looking for Stephen.

  Finally, unable to delay the moment any longer, Allison lowered her gaze, with dread eyeing the door of the coach. It opened, and she held her breath. But the foot that was thrust out, reaching for the step, was a female foot, conservatively shod, a large, no-nonsense sort of appendage to a sturdy limb—Mrs. Buckle’s foot, Mrs. Buckle’s limb.