Elm Creek Quilts [07] The Sugar Camp Quilt (23 page)

“I suppose you’re right. It was just as well I sent him today. Tomorrow we are going to the lawyer, and there may not be enough time for visiting the Clavertons. Jonathan has not said how long he intends to stay, and he could hardly come home without calling on his fiancée, could he? I’m sure he would agree with me.”

Dorothea did not know what to say. Deliberately or not, her mother had misunderstood her. Dorothea gave her a thoughtful nod and a shrug, making a noncommittal noise that could be interpreted in any number of ways. If she said what she really thought, there would be an argument, and she did not want an argument to spoil Jonathan’s visit.

She spent the afternoon working on the Authors’ Album quilt while Lorena carried fresh linens to Jonathan’s old bed in the attic and prepared a welcome-home feast. The other members of the library board had evidently used their very best needlework, for each block lay perfectly flat with small, even stitches and precisely matched seams. The green, Turkey red, and Prussian blue calicos gave the quilt a lively, stylish air, and the signatures were as varied and splendid as the people who had inscribed them. The only complaint Dorothea could have made was that one of the quilters had used indigo embroidery thread to backstitch over the inked signatures, while everyone else had used black. She decided the variation added a note of humor to the quilt, and rather than pick out the indigo stitches and do them over in black, she decided to scatter those blocks throughout the quilt so that the differences would appear part of the pattern.

The nine blocks Dorothea contributed brought the total to sixty-one, far short of Mrs. Engle’s expected eighty. After considering several arrangements, Dorothea decided to set the blocks on point and separate them with muslin sashing. Before threading her needle, she took pencil and paper from Uncle Jacob’s desk and sketched the quilt layout so that she would have a guide to follow while assembling the rows. A sudden memory came to her of working in that same place as she turned Uncle Jacob’s drawings into usable templates, and she felt a stab of regret that she had not known him well enough while he lived. She had never suspected his courage. She would have respected him more had he not kept the best part of himself hidden.

Her drawings completed, she began sewing the rows of blocks together. It was repetitive, painstaking work, but it allowed her time to her own thoughts, since her mother was too preoccupied in the kitchen to chat.

Jonathan returned just as Dorothea was setting the table. He apologized for his lateness, adding, “Mr. Claverton had so many questions for me I scarcely had a moment to speak to Charlotte.”

“Did you manage to get her to speak to you in return?” said Dorothea innocently.

Jonathan grinned. “She did, and you don’t need to tease me about her shyness. Or her youth. She is a charming girl and she will make a fine wife.”

“And the combined lands of the Claverton-Granger alliance will make a fine farm.”

“Dorothea,” said Lorena reprovingly as Robert came in for supper. “You needn’t be so vicious.”

“What?” protested Dorothea as she placed the platter bearing her mother’s roasted chicken in the center of the table. “I’m merely repeating an observation that you and Father have made many times.”

“Charlotte also allowed me to sample an apple tart she had baked and showed me her needlework,” said Jonathan hastily, in a poorly disguised attempt to forestall an argument. “She is quite an accomplished seamstress. Do you know she already has seven quilt tops pieced for her hope chest?”

Dorothea smiled tightly as she filled the water glasses. “I do indeed know that, since her mother finds nearly every opportunity to update me on her progress. I wonder. Charlotte started so early but she has yet to reach thirteen finished quilt tops. Perhaps she is wiser than all of us and is sewing slowly to delay the wedding.”

“Seven quilt tops is far more than you have been able to complete for your hope chest,” retorted Lorena.

“Since my hope chest and the eight quilt tops within it lie at the bottom of Elm Creek, I am forced to agree with you.”

Robert looked from his wife to his daughter and back, bewildered. “Dorothea has made far more than seven quilts. She made at least three this year alone.”

Lorena took her husband’s plate and began to serve him. “We’re talking about bridal quilts. Dorothea has none of those, but it doesn’t matter anyway because she doesn’t need them.”

Dorothea set down the pitcher. “I may not be as young as Charlotte Claverton, but I am not a spinster at nineteen.”

Jonathan’s brow furrowed. “If I had known how much my visit would upset everyone—”

“Heavens, no.” Lorena placed a bowl of cucumber pickles on the table with a bang. “You have been away too long as it is. If I had known how rarely you would come home, I might never have allowed you to study under Dr. Bronson. Don’t let a silly quarrel make you regret your visit.”

“I meant my visit to the Claverton farm,” said Jonathan. “But you are right to chastise me for not coming home more often. I should have come for the harvest. Uncle Jacob wrote and asked me even after you gave me permission to remain in Baltimore, but I refused, without bothering to write and tell him why.”

The room was still. Eventually Jonathan said, “Mr. Claverton inquired about my studies, but mostly he was curious about Uncle Jacob’s will. It is clear he wants to know if I will inherit.”

“He is thinking of his daughter’s welfare,” said Robert. “That is all.”

Jonathan picked up his fork, but he merely poked at his food, brooding. “I hope my negligence of my uncle’s pride will not give you reason to be disappointed.”

“If it has, there is nothing to do about it now,” said Lorena. “If we lose this farm, too, we will manage.”

Robert nodded and clapped Jonathan on the back in a gesture of reassurance. Dorothea murmured her agreement, ashamed of her spiteful remarks about Charlotte, who, Dorothea had to admit, was a sweet and gentle girl. Charlotte could not be blamed for obeying her parents. Perhaps she even wanted to marry Jonathan. He was handsome and kind, and Charlotte probably saw him as a dashing older man. That is, if she were not too terrified to think of him at all.

Jonathan steered the conversation to other matters, and the rest of the family was gratefully diverted. He told them of his studies, the patients he cared for, and the Bronson family, with whom he boarded—the doctor, his wife, and their seven children. Since the eldest were girls, Jonathan shared a bedroom with the two youngest boys, aged four and two years. He confessed he had always considered sharing a small attic bedroom with his elder sister a great hardship until boarding with the Bronsons gave him a new perspective.

Jonathan talked and his family plied him with questions until long after the last bite of Lorena’s sour cream cake had been eaten. It was such a comfort to be together as a family once again, despite the conspicuous absence of Uncle Jacob, that they forgot their quarrel. This time when Lorena asked Robert to play for them, he agreed. They waited in expectant silence as he tuned the long-abandoned fiddle, but when the first pure, sweet notes of a melody flowed from his bow, Dorothea felt suddenly refreshed, as if relieved of a burden she had not known she was carrying. After the second song, Lorena said, “If only we had an organ for Dorothea, so you could play together again, as you did on Thrift Farm.” Dorothea knew from her mother’s expression that she was thinking of Uncle Jacob’s will. Dorothea would not allow herself to hope that Uncle Jacob might have made some small provision for her, so she hurriedly said that she had not played in so many years that she had likely forgotten.

Eventually, their father reluctantly put away his fiddle and went to the barn to get a late start on the evening chores. Jonathan offered to help, so Dorothea and Lorena were left alone to clear away the dishes and tidy the kitchen. They had nearly finished when Lorena reminded Dorothea to check the sugar camp for visitors.

No one had passed through their station since Sam, and recalling Mrs. Braun’s remark that most runaways escaped in fairer weather, Dorothea thought nightly visits to the camp might be unnecessary until spring. Leaving food regularly was surely a waste. Still, she put on her wraps, took a lantern from the hook by the door, and ventured outside.

A light flurry brushed her face as she trudged past the barn, but the night was not as bitter cold as it had been. Uncle Jacob would have been consulting his notes, noting the temperature day and night, checking the sugar molds, carving new spiles. The Grangers had done none of those things, distracted by his passing and learning anew how to run a farm without his supervision. Sugar season would be upon them before they were prepared. If they did not need the sugar and the income from the sale of the surplus, Dorothea would not have been surprised if her parents decided not to tap the trees that year.

“Dorothea,” called Jonathan, behind her. “Where are you going?”

She hesitated only a moment. “The sugar camp.”

She waited for him to ask why, but instead he said, “Want some company?”

“Certainly.”

He broke into a trot and caught up to her. They walked side by side through the snow, Dorothea following the path she had broken the evening before, Jonathan wading through the deeper drifts. She realized too late that her brother was sure to notice. After a few paces, he indicated the old trail and said, “You’ve been to the sugar camp recently.”

“Yes. Last night.”

“To tap the trees? Already?”

She shrugged. “Just to be sure the camp is in order.”

He shook his head, hands buried in his pockets. “It won’t seem like sugaring time without Uncle Jacob. So you’re going to try to do it without him?”

“I suppose so, assuming we’ll be able to keep the farm.” Quickly she added, “I’m sure you’ll inherit.”

He barked out a laugh. “I am not as confident as you. All that our uncle wanted was my attention, and instead I showed nothing but indifference to him and his farm. I don’t want to be a farmer. I want to be a doctor.”

“Other men have done both.”

“But I am happier in Baltimore. If not for you and our parents, I would not care if Uncle Jacob left the farm to a perfect stranger.”

She gave him a sidelong look. “If not for me, our parents, and Charlotte, you mean.”

“Yes. Charlotte.” He was silent a moment. “I wonder if she would like to live in Baltimore.”

Dorothea could not believe he was actually considering it, but she said evenly, “If you have been disinherited, or if you relinquish the farm, the impetus for you to marry Charlotte no longer exists.”

“She would probably refuse me in any event.” Jonathan looked suddenly to the southwest. “What was that?”

“What?”

“Over there, through the maple grove. It sounded like a dog barking.” He paused. “There it was again.”

That time Dorothea heard it plainly. “A neighbor’s dog got loose, I suppose.” Her heart began to pound with dread, but she reassured herself that they had heard only one dog, and slavecatchers surely traveled with several. Nevertheless, she quickened her pace. “I’m getting cold, aren’t you? Let’s have a quick look around the sugar camp and get back inside to the fire.”

He agreed, and they hurried on through the snow. Dorothea was almost running by the time the lantern light touched the old kettle stand, the abandoned chain suddenly resembling a hangman’s noose. “I’ll be just a moment,” she called over her shoulder as she ducked into the sugarhouse. There she stopped short and choked back a gasp.

Jonathan called out in reply, but Dorothea did not hear him.

A man sat on the wooden bench, huddled in the Sugar Camp Quilt. He squinted and raised a hand to shield his eyes from the lantern’s light. “A dog got me,” he said through clenched teeth. He moved the quilt aside to reveal torn trousers soaked in blood. “I couldn’t run no more.”

“That dog sounds like it’s coming this way, fast,” remarked Jonathan as he entered the sugarhouse. He halted at the sight of the bedraggled man. “Good Lord.”

Swiftly Dorothea set down the lantern and went to help the fugitive to his feet. “We have to get him to the house.”

Jonathan’s expression plainly showed he understood the urgency. “Can you walk, with assistance?”

The man nodded and gasped in pain as they lifted him. On either side of him, his arms over their shoulders, Dorothea and Jonathan guided him out of the sugarhouse. Outside they could hear the dog barking louder now, nearly in a frenzy. It had surely caught the scent.

They hobbled toward the lights of the house. Dorothea thought in vain of the instructions Mrs. Braun had provided for concealing one’s tracks in the snow. There was no time now.

They reached the house and burst into the kitchen. Lorena froze at the sight of them.

“A dog is on our heels,” Jonathan told her as they brought the man inside. “It may be merely a stray, but we cannot take chances.”

Instantly Lorena snapped into action. “Jonathan, take him upstairs and hide him. Dorothea, run to the barn and warn your father.”

Dorothea nodded and fled. The dog’s furious barking had drawn her father to the door of the barn, where she breathlessly told him about the runaway. He glanced worriedly toward the southwest, but told her he would finish the chores rather than raise suspicions by leaving them half-finished. “We must go about our usual business,” he said. “Tell your mother I will make haste.”