The Last Runaway (9 page)

Daily life here feels more precarious than it did at home. What Bridport did not have Dorchester or Weymouth was sure to. In the American towns I have visited on my way here, and especially now in Faithwell, I sense that we must be self-sufficient, that we cannot rely on others because they are not always there to be depended upon. Most here grow their own vegetables, as we did, but there is no one selling lettuces should one’s own be eaten by rabbits, as Abigail’s were—here one simply goes without. Many keep their own cow as well. Abigail and Adam do not have a cow, though they do keep chickens; we buy milk and cheese from one of the outlying farms.

I have painted only a very brief portrait of Faithwell. I do not yet have a place here, but with God’s help and the support of Friends, I hope to find one. Please be reassured that I am safely arrived, and am well looked after. I have a bed and enough to eat and kind people about me. God is still with me. For these things I am grateful and have no reason to complain. Yet I think of you all often. Though it is too warm to use it now, I have laid the signature quilt across the end of my bed, and at the beginning and end of the day I touch the signatures of all who are dear to me.

Your loving daughter,

Honor Bright

Appliqué

SHE COULD NOT
stay. Honor knew this within half an hour of arriving at Adam and Abigail’s in Faithwell. It was not the messy kitchen, where dishes left over from dinner were still piled in the sink, or the mud that had not been swept from the hallway, or the inedible supper, or the smokiness from a stove that did not draw well. It was not the mouse droppings she spied in the pantry, or the tatters of cobwebs fluttering in corners, or the tiny room Adam showed her that held no more than a bed, so that her trunk had to sit in the hallway. None of these things would have put her off.

She could not stay because Abigail clearly did not want her there. A tall woman with a wide forehead and dark, staring eyes, she had broad shoulders and thick ankles and wrists. On meeting Honor she hugged her, but there was no warmth in the contact. Defensive after the unpalatable meal she served, she rattled off a list of excuses as she showed Honor around the house. “Watch thee doesn’t trip on that rug—it needs tacking down, doesn’t it, Adam?” “This lamp does not usually smoke—I was in such a fluster about thy coming so unexpectedly that I didn’t have time to trim it properly.” “I would have swept, but knew thee and thy trunk would bring in dust I would have to sweep away again.” Abigail had a way of making the faults of the household seem the result of everyone but herself. Honor began to feel guilty for being there at all.

As a child she had been taught that everyone has a measure of the Light in them, and though the amount can vary, all must try to live up to their measure. It seemed to her now that Abigail’s measure was small, and she was not living up to it. Of course she had recently nursed and then lost a husband, and so could be forgiven for being somber. But Honor suspected her unfriendliness was part of her nature.

Adam Cox did not try to defend Honor or make her feel welcome, but sank further into himself, sober and quiet—stunned by the double loss of his brother and his fiancée, Honor suspected. Though their courtship had been conducted almost entirely through letters, he must have looked forward to the arrival of a lively, beautiful wife. Now he was stuck with the quiet sister and a difficult sister-in-law.

He only became animated as they were sitting on the front porch after supper and Abigail brought up Honor’s decision to come to Ohio. “Adam told me about Grace’s family,” she said, rocking vigorously in her chair, her hands idle, for it was too dark to sew. “He said thee was to be married. Why is thee here instead?”

Adam sat up, as if he had been waiting for Abigail to bring up the difficult topic. “Yes, Honor, what happened with Samuel? I thought thee had an understanding with him.”

Honor winced, though she knew eventually this question would have to be answered. She tried to do so in as few words as possible. “He met someone else.”

Adam frowned. “Who?”

“A—a woman from Exeter.”

“But I am from there and know most of the Friends there. Who is it?”

Honor swallowed to ease the tightness in her throat. “She is not a Friend.”

“What, he married out of the faith?” Abigail practically shouted.

“Yes.”

“I assume Bridport Meeting disowned him?” Adam asked.

“Yes. He has gone to live in Exeter, and joined the Church of England.” That was what was hardest: Honor could almost manage the thought of Samuel no longer loving her, but for him willingly to leave the faith that was the very foundation of her life was a blow she did not think she could recover from. That, and the embarrassment in Samuel’s parents’ eyes whenever she ran into them, and the pity in everyone else’s, had made her say yes to Grace’s suggestion to emigrate.

Thinking of this, she found she was gripping her hands in her lap. She took a deep breath and tried to relax her fingers, but her knuckles were still white from being forced to think of Samuel.

Abigail shook her head. “That’s just terrible.” She sounded almost gleeful, but then frowned, perhaps recalling it was those circumstances that brought her this unwelcome guest. Something hard and cruel in her sidelong glance gave Honor the guilty feeling that, once again, she was at fault.

Though it was warm, that night she huddled under the signature quilt in the tiny bedroom, seeking solace.

* * *

Later Honor admitted to herself that she had not hidden her dismay at her new home well, and Abigail might easily have taken offense. The ramshackle, frontier nature of the house extended to Faithwell itself. When Adam brought her from Wellington, she’d thought the scattering of houses had been just the announcement of a larger settlement nearby. The next morning she discovered otherwise when she and Abigail went for a walk. Though it was raining and the road in front of the house had turned to mud, Abigail insisted on going out. It was as if she dreaded being alone with Honor—Adam had left early for the Oberlin shop. When Honor suggested they might wait until the rain let up, Abigail frowned and continued putting on her bonnet. “I hear it rains all the time in England,” she countered, tying the ribbon tight under her chin. “Thee should be used to it. Thee won’t wear that gray and yellow bonnet, will thee? It’s fancy for Faithwell.”

Honor had already decided to store Belle’s bonnet; she wondered if she would ever find a place to wear it. Grace would have managed to wear it here, she thought.

She followed Abigail along the track, picking through the mud to planks that had been laid alongside for this purpose, though the mud covered them as well. They passed a few houses, similar in construction to Adam and Abigail’s, but no one else was out. The general store was also empty apart from the owner. He greeted her kindly enough, with the sort of open, honest face she was familiar with among Friends back home. The shop itself was small and basic, the space given over primarily to barrels of flour, cane sugar, cornmeal and molasses. There were also a few shelves carrying a jumble of bits and pieces such as candles and bootlaces, a tablet of writing paper, a dishcloth, a hand broom—as if a peddler had come along and convinced the shopkeeper he needed one of each in case someone asked for it someday.

Honor maintained a strained smile as she looked around, trying to mask what she was thinking: that these barrels and shelves represented the limitations of her new life. A metal pail, a packet of needles, a jar of vinegar: these lone items, sad on their shelves, were all there was to Faithwell. There was no additional room full of tempting sweets or beautiful cloth, no corner to turn with another row of shops on a mud-free street, no duck-egg-blue floorboards. Adam’s letters to Grace had not been lies, exactly, but he had made the town out to be thriving. “It is small but growing,” he had written. “I am certain it will flourish.” Perhaps Honor should have paid more attention to Adam’s use of the future tense.

Back at the house she tried to help Abigail: she washed dishes and scrubbed pots, shook out the oval rag rugs scattered throughout the house, brought in wood for the range and hauled out ash from the stove to dump in the privy—“Outhouse,” she murmured. With every task she asked for instructions so that she would not offend Abigail with different ways of doing things that might imply her hostess was in the wrong. Abigail was the sort of woman who thought that way.

She made her big mistake while sweeping the kitchen and pantry. “Does thee have a cat?” she asked as the mouse droppings accumulated in the pile of sweepings, thinking this gentle suggestion might solve the mouse problem.

Abigail dropped the knife she was using to peel potatoes. “No! They make me sneeze.” She disappeared into the pantry and came back with a jar of red powder, which she tapped into bellows and began blowing into the corners, her movements jerky and accompanied by sighs. Honor tried not to stare, but curiosity overtook her, and she picked up the jar. “What is this?”

“Red pepper. Gets rid of vermin. Doesn’t thee use it in England?”

“No. We had a cat.” Honor did not add that their cat, a tortoiseshell called Lizzy, was a good mouser. She used to sit next to Honor while she sewed and purr. The thought of her old cat made her eyes sting, and she turned back to her sweeping so that Abigail would not see her tears.

In the evening when Adam returned, Honor heard Abigail whispering to him out on the porch. She did not try to listen; from the tone she knew what Abigail was saying: she could not stay. But where could she go?

* * *

The next afternoon, when Abigail decided they had done enough housework for the day, she settled into the rocker on the front porch with a quilt she was working on and a bowl of new cherries from a tree behind the house. Honor had picked them so the blue jays wouldn’t eat them all. Fetching her sewing box, she joined Abigail. She had not worked on a quilt since being on board the
Adventurer
—her journey since then had been too disjointed, and her sewing time at Belle’s was spent on bonnets.

Though she’d thrown into the ocean all of the hexagons her mother had cut out for her, Honor still had some bits of cloth from home, a few shapes she had already pieced, and fabric tacked around templates, ready to be sewn together. Most women who made quilts had half-started projects waiting for the right moment to be taken up again. Honor looked through the rosettes and stars she had already made, wondering what she should do with them. The shapes and colors—brown and green rosettes made from Grace’s and Honor’s old dresses, the beginning of a Bethlehem Star in different shades of yellow—reminded her of Dorset, and seemed foreign in the bright American sunlight. She did not think she could make something from them that would complement Ohio life. However, she was not ready to sit with pen and paper and work on a new design: it was too soon, and she needed a clear head, and inspiration.

Honor glanced at Abigail’s quilt; if she were with her mother, or Grace, or her friend Biddy, she could offer to help if she did not want to work on her own project. However, she did not dare ask Abigail, who would doubtless take the offer the wrong way. Besides, Abigail’s quilt was in a style Honor could not imagine making: a floral appliqué of red flowers and green leaves spilling out of a red urn, sewn onto a white background. Honor had always preferred patchwork to appliqué, feeling that to sew pieces of fabric on top of large squares of material was somehow cheating, a shortcut compared to the harder task of piecing together hundreds of bits of fabric, the colors blended so that the whole was graduated and unified and made a pleasing pattern. Though some quilters despaired of the rigid geometry and the accuracy required for making patchwork, to Honor it was a happy challenge. Since coming to America she had seen these appliquéd quilts—usually red and white, sometimes with green as well—everywhere, in inns and guest houses, hanging on lines and over porch railings for airing. They were bright, cheerful, unsophisticated. Some of the quilting patterns were beautifully executed, of feathers or vines or grapes, sometimes padded so that the pattern stood out. But the overall look was not to her taste.

The block-piecing style of other American quilts was a little more appealing. Such a quilt consisted of a dozen or more blocks made up of squares and triangles set out in patterns with names like Bear’s Paw, Monkey Wrench, Flying Geese, or Shoo Fly. More challenging than the appliquéd quilts, they were still too simple for Honor. She preferred her templates.

However, she must work on something—piece more shapes she might use later, when her head was clear and she had longer stretches of time. Honor began threading needles. She had poked five threaded needles into her pin cushion when she felt Abigail’s eyes on her.

“What is thee doing?” Abigail demanded. “Why so many needles?”

“I get them ready so I do not have to stop each time I run out of thread,” Honor answered. Belle Mills had not been surprised by her needle threading, but Belle was a seamstress.

“Now isn’t that efficient,” Abigail said in a tone that suggested efficiency was not something to be aspired to.

Honor pinned together two green and brown hexagons already tacked to templates, and began a quick overhand stitch in white thread, her preferred color for sewing, whatever the color of the cloth. She paused at the end of the row to fit in another hexagon, run the thread under the cloth, and begin sewing, two sides now.

Abigail was staring again. “How does thee sew so fast?”

“I keep my thread short.” Honor had noticed that when Abigail threaded her needle she cut off thread as long as her arm.

Abigail picked up one of the rosettes Honor had already made. “Look at those stitches,” she declared, pulling at the seams. “They’re so even. I haven’t seen stitches that fine since I was a girl in Pennsylvania. One of our neighbors had a hand this good.” She crinkled its petals. “Is that paper in there?”