Elm Creek Quilts [07] The Sugar Camp Quilt (15 page)

Plainer fare adorned the table service than its original owners could have imagined, but the food was plentiful and delicious. Even Uncle Jacob’s dour blessing seemed heartfelt that night, and although Dorothea ached for her absent brother, she could not dwell on her own misgivings after Constance remarked that she had never sat at a finer table. It suddenly occurred to Dorothea that this was Constance’s first Christmas in freedom. Truly it was a blessing, Dorothea reflected, to have Constance among them at Christmas, as a reminder that so many people still waited to be redeemed from their suffering.

After the meal, they exchanged gifts. Her parents had bought Dorothea a fine edition of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s anthology,
The Poets and Poetry of Europe
, and an autobiography,
Narrative of William W. Brown, an American Slave
. Dorothea wondered how welcome the latter would be on the shelves of the Creek’s Crossing library, but Constance took a special interest in it and reflected that one day she might write her own story. Dorothea was pleased to hear this, for her gift to Constance, as yet unwrapped, was a pen with several nibs, a primer, and a copybook.

Uncle Jacob gave his sister and brother-in-law nothing, but he offered the Wrights two large cakes of his best maple sugar; since the Wright farm did not have enough maple trees to support their own sugaring, the gifts were much appreciated. To Dorothea he gave a collection of the Proverbs, with a narrow strip of brocade fabric marking the thirty-first. Since the verses praised the pious, thrifty, industrious wife, Dorothea knew the placement was no accident.

Then Dorothea returned to her attic bedroom for the Delectable Mountains quilt. “For you, Uncle,” she said, placing the folded bundle in his arms. “I trust it is exactly as you wished it. I hope it pleases you.”

He unfolded the quilt and studied it. “I think it will do. You did justice to my drawings. Thank you, niece.”

“It is lovely handiwork,” said her mother, since her uncle did not.

Dorothea thanked them both. She had hoped for more pleasure in her uncle’s expression, but she should have expected no more than his taciturn approval of her accurate reproduction of his sketches. He took no true delight in anything and was not capable of offering greater appreciation.

The Wrights were examining her quilt—out of politeness, she thought. Mr. Wright looked over each of the blocks in turn, and Dorothea could see him pausing to count the triangle points on the blocks that had three or five when most had four. He looked over the other, odd squares her uncle had drawn, arranged in a diagonal line amidst the Delectable Mountains blocks, looked at Uncle Jacob, then glanced at Dorothea. “Sure looks warm,” he said, returning the quilt to its new owner.

“You did not need to make it so fine,” murmured Constance to Dorothea, so low no one else knew she had spoken. Dorothea glanced at her in surprise and hid a smile. She used her finest quilting skills out of pride, not because her uncle deserved them.

“It’ll do,” said Uncle Jacob, folding the quilt and placing it on the back of his chair. There it sat for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening, while they told stories of Christmases past, while the women brought out pie and tea for dessert, when the Wrights bade them good-bye and headed home, and after Uncle Jacob and Robert left to do the chores. It remained there still when Dorothea came down to help her mother prepare breakfast the next morning.

After all of his demands, after all of Dorothea’s exacting labor, he had not even put it on his bed. “Perhaps he is saving it for company,” suggested Lorena, trying to spare Dorothea’s feelings.

“When do we ever have company?” said Dorothea. “Constance was right. Uncle Jacob did not deserve my best handiwork.”

She deliberately chose not to resent his indifference. The quilt was finished, she had done her best, and now she could move on to a project much more pleasing to her. Seven autographed pieces of muslin had already arrived at Mrs. Engle’s home, and two more belonging to authors that Mrs. Engle had rejected had been sent to Dorothea directly.

At the previous meeting of the library board, Dorothea had been assigned the task of sketching a plan for the quilt, something that would suit the varying skills of the participating quiltmakers and something that could be adapted easily according to the number of Album blocks they made. She and Miss Nadelfrau had joined forces to convince the others to use the traditional Album block, even though Mrs. Engle had balked when Mrs. Deakins remarked that she knew the pattern by another name, Chimney Sweep. Dorothea had needed five minutes of her most tactful persuasion to reassure Mrs. Engle that the block’s association to another, less distinguished profession would not offend the authors, should they learn of it. Miss Nadelfrau’s point that the block would be easy to assemble since it had no curves or set-in pieces ultimately won the argument. Mrs. Engle was less willing to consider that she might receive fewer than the eighty blocks she wanted, as she was accustomed to receiving everything she desired. She insisted that the eighty blocks would be arranged in ten rows of eight, the most pleasing rectangular ratio, and cut short any “pessimistic” suggestions to the contrary. Dorothea decided not to waste breath on further argument and to plan alternative settings secretly, just in case.

At the same meeting where Dorothea would present her sketch, Miss Nadelfrau would bring swatches for them to consider, and—assuming they could reach a consensus—the meeting would adjourn to the dry-goods store, where they would purchase and divide up the fabric. Board members would piece blocks at home, completing all blocks by the end of January and the entire quilt top by the last week of February in time for the dance. Dorothea was confident she would find some way to sneak her banned authors into the quilt at an intermediate step.

Dorothea and her mother were so busy making up for the usual chores they had neglected the previous day that it was almost suppertime before Dorothea noticed that Uncle Jacob’s quilt had been removed from the back of his chair. When she was sure he was out of the house, she passed by his bedroom and peered inside, but she did not see it. She was tempted to ask if he had put it in his chest for safekeeping or passed it on to one of the horses, but knew any reply he gave was unlikely to please her.

That evening, as she worked on the drawing and idly pondered more polite ways to inquire about the whereabouts of the quilt, her mother suddenly said, “Goodness, Dorothea. I had completely forgotten Cyrus’s Christmas gift. Have you opened it?”

“Yes,” said Dorothea, wishing her mother could have chosen a different time to ask, preferably when Uncle Jacob could not overhear.

“What was it?” asked Robert.

“A silverplated comb and mirror.”

Uncle Jacob snorted. “That would be a fine gift for himself. I have never met a young man more likely to enjoy gazing at his own reflection.”

“I cannot imagine you know him well enough to determine that.”

“Dorothea,” said her father mildly.

Dorothea set down her pencils. “I am sorry, Uncle, but I do not care to hear my friend so unfairly maligned, especially when he is given no opportunity to defend himself.”

“Then by all means, let us give him opportunity,” said Uncle Jacob, a hard glint in his eye. “Tomorrow when he calls for you, let us have him stay for supper. We will have him make both his character and his intentions plain.”

“He is not coming to call,” said Dorothea. “He is coming to take me to the library board meeting.”

“After he brings you home, then,” thundered her uncle.

Dorothea could not see any way out of it. “I shall ask him.”

“See that you do.”

The room was silent for the rest of the evening. The others went to bed—first her uncle, then her parents—but Dorothea remained to finish her sketch by candlelight. She was nearly done when she heard a creak on the floorboards behind her. She turned to find her uncle, still in his nightshirt and cap.

“Niece,” he greeted her gruffly.

Dorothea hurriedly drew a last stroke and began clearing the desk. “I am sorry if the light kept you awake.”

“I am only looking out for what is best for you.” Uncle Jacob crossed the room in long, slow strides. “He is no good for you and I know you do not love him.”

So he wanted to speak of Cyrus. She almost smiled. She had never known him to be kept awake, troubled by an argument. Usually his confidence in his own perfect judgment provided him sufficient righteousness to sleep soundly every night.

“I have seen nothing to persuade me he is
not
good,” said Dorothea, “and I never claimed to love him. We are friends. Nothing more.”

“Don’t be coy. A young man does not call on a young lady so many times unless he has intentions.”

Dorothea gathered up her papers. “If he has any, time will reveal them.”

“By then it might be too late.” He clasped her shoulder and spoke earnestly. “Niece, if you must marry, choose a good, God-fearing man. If you can’t find one in Creek’s Crossing, then go out west, where a woman is valued as much for her strength as for her beauty.”

The steadiness in his voice turned to trembling as he spoke; his eyes were strained and pleading as they pooled with tears. A tear slipped from his eye, ran down his cheek, and disappeared into his scruff of beard. Dorothea stared at him in stunned disbelief. Suddenly he seemed to come to his senses; he glanced at his hand resting on her shoulder and snatched it away. Dorothea clutched her papers to her chest, too astonished to speak as her uncle hurried from the room, scrubbing his eyes with the back of his fist. In another moment he had disappeared down the hallway. She heard the door to his bedroom close and the latch fall into place.

D
OROTHEA SLEPT LITTLE
, but she woke when the first gray light of dawn touched the attic windowpane, worry fluttering in her chest like a trapped bird. She did not know what to do about her uncle’s unexpected tears. In all the years she had known him, she had never seen him weep. And he had seemed as shocked by his sudden emotion as she.

Dorothea did not like to keep such a troubling secret from her parents, but she knew she must keep silent. Uncle Jacob had too much pride to endure such shame. Any mention might compel Uncle Jacob to banish them from the farm rather than acknowledge his weakness. She could not cost the family Jonathan’s inheritance.

She lingered as long as she dared before going downstairs to help her mother with breakfast, where she learned that her uncle had taken a cold breakfast with him to the sugar camp. “He has gone several times a week since late summer,” remarked Lorena. “Perhaps someone should remind him that this is not the time of year to tap the trees.”

Dorothea knew he had left early that morning to avoid her. “Let’s not tell him, or he might not spend so much time away from the house.”

Lorena allowed a small smile, but she looked worried. “I wonder…” She hesitated. “I wonder if he is, perhaps, not altogether well.”

Dorothea held herself perfectly still. “What do you mean?”

“Have you not noticed he has been even more irascible than usual? He is more forgetful, more snappish. Do not forget he is fourteen years my senior, and he drives himself hard.”

“He drives us all hard.” Still, her mother’s words brought Dorothea a small measure of relief. An illness would pass.

Her uncle did not reappear even for lunch, and while Lorena wondered aloud if someone ought to run to the sugar camp to look for him, Dorothea was glad he remained absent. She spotted him trudging through the old wheat field, now shorn and muddy and dusted with snow, as she went outside to meet Cyrus’s carriage. In her eagerness to leave, she climbed inside without waiting for Cyrus to assist her.

She delivered Uncle Jacob’s invitation to supper as they crossed Elm Creek on the ferry, the water too turbulent there to freeze over completely during all but the coldest winters. Cyrus seemed pleased to be asked, but he declined, citing the presence of two important out-of-state business associates. When she inquired what business, he grinned and said, “The pursuit of lucre. I regret that I do not engage in the altruistic profession of teaching, such as yourself, or the essential craft of farming, like your uncle.”

Dorothea noticed he did not mention her father. Robert might spend the rest of his life working Uncle Jacob’s land, but no one who knew him considered him a farmer. Dorothea often thought he would be happier living in a rented room in a city back east, writing philosophical essays at the behest of an indulgent patron.

She brightened considerably as the distance increased between herself and her uncle, now that the unhappy prospect of subjecting Cyrus to his baleful scrutiny had been averted. The library board meeting passed pleasantly, the members settling on a popular green, Turkey red, and Prussian blue color scheme, then leaving for Mrs. Engle’s favorite dry-goods store to purchase fabric. Dorothea had brought some of her saved wages, believing that each of them would be responsible for purchasing her share of the fabric, but to her surprise, Mrs. Engle insisted on paying for it all.

“She thinks she’s going to win the quilt,” said Mrs. Claverton to Dorothea when the others were in another part of the store selecting bolts of calico. “She doesn’t mind buying so much fabric for a quilt for herself.”

Before Dorothea could reply, a thunder of horses’ hooves passed just outside, followed by loud shouting somewhere down the block. Dorothea and Mrs. Claverton were the first to the door. From the front steps they saw three men on horseback leveling their rifles at the door to Schultz’s Printers. One man slid down from his horse, pounded on the door, and shouted for Schultz to come out. Dorothea saw the flicker of a curtain in an upstairs window, but no other sign of life within. Then from somewhere unseen came another cry, a furious shout that Schultz had escaped through the back door and was fleeing down Water Street. The man at the door leapt back onto his horse and raced off with the others, vanishing around the corner.

The rest of the women had crowded onto the steps after Dorothea and Mrs. Claverton, but none of them knew what to make of the commotion.

“Isn’t the eldest Schultz girl a friend of yours?” Mrs. Claverton asked Dorothea.

Dorothea nodded. “A very dear friend.”

“Well, go on, then.” Mrs. Deakins nudged her. “Go find out what’s the matter.”

Dorothea, who had been on the verge of dashing over to the printers to see if she could help, now resolved to stay away. “Mary would not be there. She’s married with a home of her own.”

Mrs. Deakins sniffed and went back into the store, disappointed that her appetite for gossip would not be satisfied. The rest of the library board followed, Dorothea last of all. For the rest of the shopping trip, the other women speculated on the curious incident, but Dorothea was too worried about Mary’s father to participate in the conversation. No one knew who the men were, or what their purpose with Mr. Schultz could have been. Mrs. Collins declared that one of the strangers resembled a cousin’s husband, but when she admitted he was a farmer in Maryland, no one was inclined to believe her.

As Cyrus drove Dorothea home a few hours later, she recounted the scene to him and asked him what he made of it. As it happened, he had been on Water Street at the time and had witnessed the three men apprehending Mr. Schultz. He stood accused of assisting a fugitive slave across the Maryland border by concealing him in his wagon. The men claimed to be law officers and announced as a warning to other would-be lawbreakers that they were taking Mr. Schultz to Maryland to stand trial.

“They cannot,” gasped Dorothea.

Cyrus shrugged. “They can take him since they have him, but I doubt much will come of any trial. No one has any evidence Schultz aided runaways in the past, and he can always claim that the runaway climbed aboard his wagon and hid amongst his freight when Schultz was not looking. His son-in-law and brother have already headed south to fetch him. On one point, however, the constables are quite correct: Schultz did break the law.”

“A law that has existed for more than fifty years without this manner of enforcement. The people of Pennsylvania would never stand for it.”

Cyrus grinned. “That is precisely the problem. The southern states have had enough of northerners mocking federal laws that support slavery. Until a stronger law is enacted—and it is coming, mark my words—it’s little wonder they believe they must enforce the laws themselves.”

Dorothea felt sick at heart thinking of Mr. Schultz’s wife, of Mary and her younger sisters. “If they are as adamant as you say, I cannot see how this will end without violence.”

“Schultz should have thought of that before choosing a time of heightened animosity to help runaways.”

Dorothea could not reply. She never would have imagined the unassuming Mr. Schultz capable of such courage. Likely he had acted on noble instinct, helping the fugitive in an instant of need without thinking of the potential consequences to himself. Circumstances requiring heroism often did not permit contemplation or forethought.

Suddenly she had another thought. “What became of the fugitive slave Mr. Schultz assisted?”

“I gather he escaped, which is unfortunate for Schultz. Perhaps they would have been satisfied with the return of the runaway.”

Dorothea shuddered, thinking of the various dreadful punishments captured runaways received at the hands of slavecatchers: beatings, starvation, amputations. “Unfortunate for Mr. Schultz, but fortunate indeed for the runaway. Perhaps Mr. Schultz considered it a worthy sacrifice.”

Cyrus chuckled. “That would not surprise me.”

Dorothea supposed it was amusing that Mr. Schultz had outsmarted the slavecatchers, but she could not manage even a smile. She marveled at Cyrus, who seemed to have a depthless well of good cheer to draw upon even in the face of horrors.

L
ORENA WAS DISAPPOINTED THAT
Cyrus could not stay for supper, but she seemed to forget the invitation when Dorothea told her about Mr. Schultz. “We must send word to Mrs. Schultz that we will help her however she needs.” Lorena wiped her hands on her apron and sent Dorothea for a pen and paper. “She will need a lawyer familiar with Maryland law. Dr. Bronson will surely know someone.”

While her mother wrote to Mrs. Schultz and Jonathan’s mentor in Baltimore, Dorothea packed a basket of food for the family. Lorena sealed the letters and tucked them into the basket as Dorothea threw on her wraps, instructing her to ask her father or uncle to drive her to the Schultz’s if the men were in the barn, and to take a horse and ride alone if they were not.

Dorothea hurried outside, and when she entered the barn, she found her uncle alone, sitting on a bench cleaning mud from his boots. “I’m looking for my father,” she asked, peering around for him. She was reluctant to ask her uncle to drive her or to try to ride off on horseback against his wishes, because he would surely forbid the errand.

“Last I saw he was bringing in the cows.”

“I will meet him.” As she turned to go, Dorothea glimpsed a familiar cluster of color amid the folds of the rag her uncle rubbed over his boot. “What’s that?” Before the words were past her lips, she knew. “My quilt. That’s my quilt.”

He glanced up at her, unconcerned. “No, it’s my quilt.”

She could not comprehend it. “You are using the quilt I gave you for Christmas—the quilt we both put much thought and labor into—to clean mud from your boots?”

He studied her for a moment before saying, “I told you I wanted serviceable fabrics. It can be washed.”

“Even the most thorough scrubbing could not remove those stains. Surely you know that.” Dorothea could not bear to look upon the ruins of her quilt any longer, and she suddenly no longer cared if Uncle Jacob attempted to stop her. Without a word of explanation, she saddled her mother’s horse and rode off down the road to the Elm Creek ferry. Absorbed in his work, Uncle Jacob did not interfere.

Either her uncle was crueler than she had ever supposed, or he was going quite mad.

The Schultzes lived on the upper story above the printers, and Dorothea arrived to find several horses and wagons already tied up outside. She could hear fervent and angry voices on the other side of the door as she knocked. Mary answered, her face ashen and eyes rimmed in red. Dorothea embraced her and offered words of comfort and asked about Abner, but Mary was so upset she could only cling to Dorothea and choke out that she had not heard from any of the men yet.