Seasons of Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #4) (5 page)

And then, remembering how he had stumblingly put off having supper with her and the Blooms, and the reason for it, his joy faltered.

“She’ll understand, when I tell her,” he told Whiskers. “She’ll understand.”

But would she?

W
hat an exceptionally pretty young woman
, was Molly Morrison’s thought as she pulled away from the Bloom buggy and her brief conversation with Herbert Bloom and the new arrival, Tierney Caulder.
Perhaps she and I can be friends. It’ll be nice to have another single girl around
.

Not that there weren’t a few. And Molly’s brow darkened at the thought.

Vivian Condon. Bly Condon’s niece. Come to visit with Bly and Beatrice. Come to visit for the summer and already making one and all aware of her presence, and spring was still saying a lingering farewell.

Molly took a deep breath and determined, not for the first time, to adjust her first reaction, if not her opinion. The tall and stately, beautifully coifed and gowned, assured and vastly
self-possessed young woman, first turning up at church two Sundays ago, was sending waves of fascination down the lanes and tracks and country roads of Bliss, into quiet backwoods spots where any news was of interest, and this was of more interest than most.

Bly and Beatrice, a reserved couple, had introduced his niece to the community that Sunday with, even then, a hint of apology, as though recognizing and needing to explain the splash her presence made, as though a peacock had settled among the partridges of Bliss. Beatrice had, rather anxiously, explained in an aside to a few people that Vivian had suffered through a painful relationship back home and was in need of recuperation and restoration.

As was the Morrison custom, Bly and Beatrice and their niece had been invited home for Sunday dinner. Kezzie, the Morrison grandmother and “Mam” to many, too frail to stand the jouncing of a buggy or wagon, could rarely make it to church but always tended the stove and the oven’s contents, ready for any number of people at the big Morrison table.

Of course Cameron, son of Angus and Mary Morrison, was present, and Margo, the girl he was to marry. Present also, this Sunday as most Sundays, was Parker Jones, pastor of the Bliss church, considered by one and all to be a suitor for the hand of their own Molly Morrison.

“Come on in, everybody,” Kezzie invited, her eyes still startlingly blue, still alive, loving. Kezzie, though aged and bent, declared she would be around to dance at the wedding of her darling Molly. Of course this brought smiles to the faces of Bliss’s believers, whose code allowed for no dancing of the feet but plenty of the heart.

Vivian Condon’s first mistake was to spurn the fragile person of Keziah Skye. Not that the gentle old lady showed any offense. And her family, for her sake, absorbed the slight silently, as kind hosts, reaching out with loving touches and smiles to
the dear family member tolerating the thoughtlessness of the guest.

“Here, my good woman,” Vivian Condon said, removing her cloak and hat and laying them in Kezzie’s arms. Kezzie’s smile of greeting grew a little fixed but remained just as sweet as she took the garments without a word and laid them aside. This she had been prepared to do anyway, as a good hostess; it was the condescending “my good woman” that showed the true mettle of the one who spoke it and the one who suffered it wordlessly.

If Vivian understood before very long that Kezzie was a treasured part of the family and not a household drudge, no word of apology or explanation attempted to correct the situation. Family and guests gathered around the table, Angus spoke the blessing, remembering to ask the Lord to bless not only the food but the friends who shared it, and then the generous platters were passed around.

It was a bounteous spread. If Mary and Angus Morrison, over the heads of their children and their guests, nodded at each other with thankfulness too deep for words, it was understandable. Having come to Bliss before most of its settlers, they had experienced, and well remembered, the years when their table was not nearly so well nor abundantly supplied. Rabbit, partridge, even venison and bear, sometimes just oatmeal, all had been gratefully received and thankfully partaken of until the land was slowly and painstakingly cleared, plowed, and planted, until the garden began to produce, the hens to lay, the herd to grow.

As available land was taken and Bliss began to fill up with other new homesteaders, the Morrisons had been as a rock in a weary land to many of them. Their hard work and determination had paid off, it was plain to be seen; if the Morrisons could do it, so can we, more than one discouraged newcomer said, settled down, and made it through. But the Sunday meals, offered to them upon their arrival, the words of encouragement and the parting prayer, made the difference in many a situation.

The Condons were comparative newcomers; in their log house Vivian would be comfortable but certainly not pampered. Perhaps that was why her eyebrows seemed to arch in surprise over the starched and snowy serviette at the side of each place setting on the Morrison table. Perhaps that was why her eyes widened over the matching pieces of dinnerware, dinnerware that had—if she but knew it—been purchased only a year ago following harvest. Ordered from the catalog and delivered in a barrel (“We have never heard of a broken piece from any we have shipped”) to the post office in Bliss—one hundred pieces had been received for the magnificent price of $7.50. “This genuine English semi-porcelain ware, not first or second grade American, but the genuine English,” the catalog informed, “decorated with a delicate spray of anemone flowers and leaves, put on under glaze, which prevents its wearing off, can be furnished in two colors: Blue and Brown.”

Vivian Condon ate off the anemone-sprayed blue semi-porcelain ware and seemed properly awed, perhaps surprised, to the amusement of Angus and Mary, and perhaps Kezzie, who had served a notable and ancient family for many years in Scotland before coming to Canada and the West.

Someone asked the guest, politely, how long she would be in Bliss.

“All summer,” that young woman said briefly, her interest turned to the slender, dark-haired, fine-featured, intense man across the table from her.

“And you, Reverend,” she asked, studying Parker Jones rather too carefully, “aren’t you an outsider, too? Have you been in Bliss long?”

“Two years,” the pastor replied, helping himself to a generous mound of rice. “And you might as well call me Parker, everyone does, usually. Oh, I get Pastor or Reverend in church, but I think most of these people are my friends, not constituents only.

“But I wouldn’t class myself as an outsider; I have been well received by the folks of Bliss. My vision goes only to its
boundaries. In other words, I guess you’d have to say I feel that this is my parish.”

Vivian Condon’s next insensitive move was to ask, as she held the gravy boat in her hand and looked around, “Potatoes—are there mashed potatoes?”

“Rice,” Molly said, handing her the bowl. “There’s rice.”

“Oh,” flatly. “Oh. That’s fine, I’m sure.” And Vivian laid aside the gravy, took the bowl offered by Molly, and helped herself to a few grains of rice. “It’s just that I love potatoes . . . mashed potatoes. They seem so right with gravy of this sort.”

Mary, at her end of the table, bit her lip, but whether from laughter or vexation was not clear. Her eyes raised to her husband’s, however, and it was Angus who spoke.

“Yes, potatoes would be better, I suppose,” he said agreeably. “Have you ever lived on a farm, Miss Condon? If not, of course you can’t know how all root vegetables—carrots, turnips, potatoes—wither during a long winter. We hope we put enough away in the fall to do us the rest of the year, until a new crop comes in, but when winter is over they are a sorry sight indeed. I suppose if we dug around in the bin in the cellar we’d come up with a few shrunken tubers.” Angus smiled at his own description of the few remaining potatoes in the cellar under his feet. “But we’ll save them for stew and things like that. We feel blessed, I suppose, to be able to buy rice as a substitute. There were years we couldn’t, and subsisted through the last weeks of winter on oatmeal and pancakes and whatever we could manage.”

“But,” Vivian said blankly, “the store—”

“Yes, the store. But most of us are into it for more money than we care to think of, come spring. We still have a fair supply of rice on hand—right, Mary?—and we’ll make it through in fine shape.”

“The potato seed is in the ground, and that’s good news,” Cameron said cheerily. “Margo here, for the first time ever, helped plant a garden.”

“Yes, and I loved doing it,” that young lady chimed in. “And I can hardly wait until we can reap the rewards of our efforts. The lettuce, very soon now, should be ready to pick. My mouth just waters, thinking about it.”

And so the meal progressed along happier lines. But it was quite clear, as the afternoon wore on, that Miss Vivian Condon did her best to monopolize Parker Jones. She had no competition, for Molly, clearing the table, putting Grandmam down to rest and returning to help with the dishes, went about it all quite naturally. Never would this independent young woman lower herself to compete for the attention of any man, even her adored Parker Jones.

But Vivian’s conversation was scintillating, clever, even interesting at times. So lately come from “civilization,” she was full of news that the community of Bliss was slow in hearing. Molly had been raised in Bliss, and though a self-possessed young lady of considerable charm and plenty of independence, felt herself today, to some degree, to be at a disadvantage. Parker Jones, a city man born and raised, Bible-school trained, had chosen to come to this backwoods corner of the world and had immersed himself in its culture—or lack of it—wholeheartedly. But surely, Molly thought, there must be times when he yearned for wider contacts, for more intellectual conversations, for something more challenging than the people of Bliss offered.

And so it was there, around the comfortable circle chatting amiably in the Morrison home that Sunday afternoon, that the first hint—just a troubling nibble—of concern, raised its head in Molly’s thinking.

She had been so sure, had felt so secure in the relationship that had sprung up between herself and Parker Jones. Parker, Molly well knew from their many close conversations, struggled with a sense of inadequacy and was often tempted to feel he wasn’t doing the job properly, that the needs of his parishioners were more than he could meet. Consequently he delayed and could not bring himself to face a decision concerning marriage.

“What if I fail,” he had brooded. “There are so many needs, such deep needs, and sometimes I don’t seem to connect with them.”

“Give yourself time, Parker!” Molly had encouraged. “Not every problem is settled overnight. Look at the good being done, the sermons being preached, your life being lived before us all. Think on these things.”

“I need to settle this, Molly,” Parker had said, more than once. “Can you be patient? Who knows if I’ll even be here, in Bliss, the rest of my life. Would that matter?”

“But, Parker,” Molly had said in a low voice, “don’t you know that I’d go with you, wherever you went, and I’d support you, whatever you did?”

Parker’s hand had reached for hers and, she thought, his eyes may have misted.

“Be patient with me, Molly,” he had asked, beseechingly.

And Molly was content to wait, though being patient was not in her makeup. Miss Molly Morrison was learning many lessons these days, lessons of curbing her impatience, her tongue, her reactions. To be a good preacher’s wife—that was her goal, and it was worth any sacrifice if Parker Jones was the preacher.

Of course it would mean sacrifice. Parker’s salary, if such it could be called, consisted of the scant offerings received Sunday by Sunday. “Not enough to keep a bird alive unless that bird is a chickadee,” Herkimer Pinkard had declared one Sunday when he was given the task of counting the meager change in the offering basket.

And truly Parker might have suffered if it were not for the generosity of the good folk as they shared what they had. Though money was scarce, food was usually abundant, and many a box found its way to the little parsonage and the pastor’s table. And sometimes Parker Jones managed to time his calls to coincide with mealtime and was never slow in accepting a hearty invitation to join the family at their meal. Whatever was served, he partook of it gratefully. Many a cook was rosy-cheeked at his compliment.