Back Roads to Bliss (Saskatchewan Saga Book #6): A Novel (26 page)

“Now then, young lady,” he said brusquely. “Want to tell me what in the world you think you’re doing?”

The law! It was the last straw. Allison’s face crumpled; tears welled and spilled.

“Here, here,” the large man said. “This’ll never do. I think you may be searching for someone. You have all the earmarks of being forsaken. Am I right?”

Allison nodded miserably. But even this contact with another human being was an encouragement, and she spoke up, explaining her predicament. “Do you know a Maybelle Dickey?” she asked at the close of her account.

Of course the policeman did not; the city was large and growing rapidly, with vast numbers of immigrants arriving almost daily, moving on, being replaced by others.

“I don’t know her, never heard of her, wouldn’t know how to find her,” the man said, not unkindly, slapping a nightstick against his sturdy leg in a manner Allison found nerve-wracking. “But,” he continued firmly, “you can’t stay here forever looking for her. You’ll have to move on; you don’t want to be labeled a transient. Get yourself a room is my suggestion.
After a night’s sleep you can consider your options—going back home being the sensible one for a young lady alone.”

England? That was out of the question. Perhaps her face looked as hopeless as she felt; at any rate, the policeman said, “I can direct you to a nearby hotel, Miss, and see that your baggage is taken there. That’ll get you out of the cold, at least. Agreed?”

Allison could only nod helplessly; what other option did she have? Perhaps tomorrow . . . perhaps Maybelle Dickey had her dates mixed. Perhaps the ship’s arrival had been off schedule—Allison wished she had paid more attention to details rather than leaving everything to Theodora—and May-belle Dickey had given her up. Perhaps Maybelle Dickey, like Theodora, was faithless, unconcerned, a deserter. Perhaps, and this seemed most likely to Allison, Maybelle Dickey had never received her father’s letter; perhaps she didn’t even live in Toronto now, if she ever had. Allison felt a stab of bitterness toward her father. It was squelched as being useless, serving no purpose whatsoever, wasted emotion.

The room in the simple hotel was barren, impersonal, not a place one would want to linger. It had a fireplace, however, and was warm, and the dining room was adequate. Paying for her room, ordering a bowl of soup, Allison’s heart quailed to see her funds dwindling. Tomorrow must yield some solution!

But it did not. Allison, in desperation, went from establishment to establishment, speaking the name of Maybelle Dickey so often it became a shibboleth. Almost she expected to hear criers running up and down the streets calling the name of Maybelle Dickey until it echoed the length and breadth of the city.

Her effort was useless before it began. Leaving the area around the railway station and making her way to the mercantile district, she was stunned at the length and breadth of King Street, a glittering thoroughfare of fashion and commerce with magnificent emporiums and elegant shops and thronged with people. And none of them Maybelle Dickey, insofar as anyone
knew. Allison, a country girl in the main, rarely having been out of Midbury, was acutely aware of the swirl of the city about her and felt like a fly on the windowpane of the world, infinitesimal, unimportant, dispensable.

She stumbled back to the hotel both angry and frightened. Helpless. Hopeless.

That night, sitting on the side of the bed, she emptied out her remaining money and counted it. After some figuring, she decided she could pay her hotel room and eat for approximately thirty days or take the train to Kootenay. But what would she do when she arrived? Who would pay her way then? The knowing, too-eager look in Gilly Greenborn’s eyes, until now ignored, had to be recognized as rapacious; Gilly would offer succor, Gilly would extend largesse—but at what price? It was not to be considered. And if she chose to stay here, what would she do when her current funds ran out? She could never hear from her father in thirty days, perhaps not twice thirty days.

Suddenly home and shelter loomed large and important and then faded to far, far away and unreachable. There was no hope from that quarter. She could not go back; they would not come to her. She recalled her father’s stiff and condemning farewell; her mother’s good-bye had been accusing, careless. Home and shelter, mother and father, love and nurture, were nothing but memories; the reality was a small, remote room in a strange city.

At that moment of complete aloneness, Allison was flooded by hopelessness; her unflagging spirit collapsed in despair.

With a sigh that was surrender, a sob that was a prayer, she fell back onto the bed, her meager worldly goods scattered around her, and looked beyond the barren walls, beyond Gilly Greenborn, beyond Maybelle Dickey, beyond Theodora Figg, even beyond her father, mother, and sister. Looked to the One who, through it all, had never forsaken her, the One whose voice she had heard but had silenced, whose presence she had sensed but had rebuffed. In her prosperity, with her youthful
strength, because of her wit and will, she had ignored the presence, turned a deaf ear to the voice.

She heard it now:
When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up
.

With a small cry Allison was off the bed and digging into her trunk, looking for the Bible she knew was there. The passage had rung a familiar bell, and with a little searching she found it; with tears she read it—David’s twenty-seventh psalm. Here was another such as she, needing shelter, needing deliverance: “In the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion . . . leave me not, neither forsake me . . . lead me in a plain path . . . I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the Lord.”

There, secreted away in a small corner of a second-rate hotel, in a burgeoning, bustling city in a vast, mostly unexplored country, the Father found His child. There, on a sagging bed, deserted and alone, the child crept into her Father’s arms. And found acceptance, found love that would never let her go, found rest.

And in the creeping and in the finding she confessed her foolishness, her waywardness, her rebellion, her selfish independence, her sin. How sincerely she regretted them; how gladly she abandoned them.

Finally, with the very peace of God settled in her heart and stamped upon her face, Allison drifted off to sleep.

She awoke to the realization—clear and bright in the gathering gloom of the room—that she would buy a ticket for, turn her attention to, follow her heart to . . . Bliss.

I
t was a new day, new in more ways than one; new in ways that counted.

“And now, Father, lead me through this day,” Allison prayed before ever rising from bed, and she was conscious of her heavenly Parent’s love, of His presence, warmly reminded of His promise never to leave her nor forsake her.

Never forsake her! The realization brought quick tears to her eyes and a glow to her heart, and for a moment she took time to revel in the wonder of it all: once an outcast, thrust from home and fireside and family, disgraced, guilty, now welcomed, forgiven, warmly embraced,
approved
. It was enough to fill her heart with happiness and her day with sunshine.

Her decision of the previous evening—to make her way to Bliss in the territory called Saskatchewan—held steady, as though it were right and proper.

It was, in fact, the only thing to do. To align herself with the remittance men in British Columbia was out of the question; there wasn’t time or money available to continue her search
for Maybelle Dickey; there was no way of going back, back to Quebec City, to the ship, to England.

The thought of locating Georgina Barlow, probably Georgina Abraham by now, was a slim but substantial lifeline. If this plan was of her heavenly Father, it would work out; somehow it would work out. But there was much to be done.

Rising, bathing, packing took but a short time. At the desk following a quick breakfast, Allison arranged to have her trunk transferred to the railway station. Following her baggage, she approached the ticket office.

The man in the ticket window recognized her immediately, her frantic inquiries of yesterday fresh in his mind.

“No, she hasn’t showed up. And no one has asked about you,” he said rather curtly, perhaps torn between duty and sympathy. He heard so many strange tales, answered so many questions, was asked to solve so many problems, that he might be excused for his reluctance to get involved one more time.

But his tautness melted before her smiling face; his defensiveness faded before the small dimple at the corner of her mouth. It was a total turnaround. Had this young woman been playing games with him? Or was it that she . . . could it be . . . was it possible that under yesterday’s heavy strain, she had
snapped?
For if he had ever seen anyone distraught, it was this young woman, yesterday.

“I understand,” she was saying now serenely. “I’ve given her up—the person I was searching for. And now, sir, I’d like to purchase a ticket for Bliss.”

The man had faced some ridiculous, some dreary, some desperate situations in the course of his workday, but this topped them all—a ticket for Bliss. She
had
snapped! Either that or she
was
playing games with him. In either instance the ticket seller was of no mind to cooperate.

“Bliss, eh?” he said with exaggerated interest, his sympathy dissipated. “We’d all like to find it, I’m sure. And if we could sell tickets to it, we’d have a trainful in a minute. Would you care to settle for a ticket to ecstasy? Or paradise?

“Now, lady,” he concluded, having had enough of this foolishness, “if you’ll just move on; I’ve got serious customers here.”

Allison said with a twinkle, “You don’t understand. Bliss—it’s a place, a real place in . . . well, somewhere in the Territories. Saskatchewan, I think.”

“Saskatchewan, you think,” the man said, becoming peevish. “Well, I can tell you it isn’t on the list of stops for the Canadian Pacific, that’s for sure. Maybe you’re thinking of the Heavenly Express, ma’am. Now, if you please—”

And he dismissed her, moving his gaze past her to the man behind her in line peering over her shoulder, listening with interest.

“Help the lady,” the listener said. “I’ll wait.”

With a sigh, the ticket seller turned back to Allison. “Bliss, you say?”

“Bliss,” Allison supplied. “I have it on good authority—there is a place called Bliss. Would you, could you please ask? Ask someone back there—” and she indicated others working beyond the man serving her. “Perhaps someone will have heard of it.”

“For Pete’s sake!” the man muttered, adding other, less acceptable words under his breath as he walked rather stiffly to a desk in the rear. There a brief conversation took place, and the ticket man, rather subdued, returned to report, “There is a hamlet by that name in northern Saskatchewan. In the bush country, actually. But no train goes there. The nearest station is Prince Albert—the end of the line. Is that where you want to go?”

He sounded skeptical, not sure why anyone would choose to go to the “end of line” by choice. A hopping-off place, that’s what Prince Albert was.

“That’ll be it,” Allison said, though not entirely certain. Still, the little arrow inside her heart pointed in that direction; the peace persisted.

The ticket seller raised his eyebrows when Allison—a young woman of obvious good breeding, whose clothing was
expensive and whose manner reflected the delicate things of life—requested a one-way, second-class ticket.

“You can have tourist-class for just a little more,” he suggested, to be kindly but firmly refused.

Allison walked away, pocketing her ticket, leaving the man shaking his head, racking up one more unbelievable story to tell around the boardinghouse table that night at supper. “Bliss!” he would say. “Can you believe it? Bliss, in the bush? Someone with a belief in fairy tales must have named it.”

This journey would not be like the previous one; there would be no amenities in second-class. Allison understood this, but the state of her finances had demanded the lower-priced fare. She stepped out onto a platform bright with the morning sun and already crowded with people.