The Last Runaway (10 page)

“Yes. Thee has not made patchwork using paper templates?”

“No.”

“In England we sew cloth around paper shapes to keep them accurate, otherwise they won’t fit when we sew them together to make the quilt. See?” Honor handed Abigail some paper hexagons.

“But then the comfort will crackle!”

“We take them out once we have sewn them all together.” Honor loved removing the paper templates from a finished piece, a design that had been stiff and formally held in place by paper growing soft and comfortable.

Abigail was peering at the paper templates. “Ten pound flour,” she read. “One cake rennet. I did not want . . . away from Dorch . . . will soon return . . .”

Honor froze. Even as Abigail read out the scraps of words, she knew it was in Samuel’s hand—a brief note telling her he was visiting relatives in Exeter and would be back in a week. The letter had seemed unimportant at the time, enough that Honor sacrificed it for use as templates. Now it carried more meaning, Exeter being where Samuel had met the woman he married.

Honor held out her sewing box so that Abigail could put the templates back. Abigail took her time, though, continuing to inspect the words on the scraps of paper while Honor waited. At last she dropped them in. “I prefer appliqué,” she said, smoothing out her square of red and green and white. “It makes a simple, pretty comfort.” Honor could see that her stitches were ragged, and of different lengths. It was no surprise that her sewing was so uneven, for to make even stitches the seamstress herself had to be steady. Abigail tended to hunch over her patchwork, her fingers and thread a snarl, and sew a few stitches before abandoning it to look down the road toward the houses near the general store, or to get up for a drink of water. Honor knew such restless sorts, even among Quakers, for she had taught several to sew in Bridport. She attributed her own fine sewing to the prolonged periods of silence at Meeting; these had made her thoughts level and her hand steady, which was reflected in her even stitching. But it seemed that silence did not have that effect on everyone’s sewing.

Honor did not try to teach Abigail, to adjust the way she held her needle or advise her to sit up straight and to use a thimble so she wouldn’t prick her fingers and get blood on the white cloth, or show her how to do a double back stitch instead of making a knot in the thread. It was enough to be able to sit with her and work side by side in a familiar rhythm Honor had known her whole life.

“Wait till the others see thy stitching,” Abigail remarked. “They’ll be asking thee to quilt for them at the next frolic.”

* * *

Slowly Honor began to meet other Faithwell residents. Passersby came up to be introduced when they were sitting on the front porch. Abigail took her to the farm west of town that sold milk and cheese, and she met the farmers as well as a few other customers. On the Fifth Day it was raining so hard Abigail declared she would not attend Meeting in such weather. So it was not until the First Day Meeting that Honor met the whole community.

Faithwell Meeting House consisted of a bright, square room with bare whitewashed walls and windows on all sides. It was about the size of Bridport’s, but for half the number of Members, so it did not have the crowded feel Honor knew from home. Benches on four sides faced inward, one of them reserved for Elders—the senior Members whom the community looked to for guidance. An unlit stove sat in the center, its pipe zigzagging up to a hole in the roof.

Honor had been looking forward to Meeting, for she had not attended one since Philadelphia and craved the sense of peace it normally brought. It always took some time for a Meeting to grow still and quiet, like a room where dust has been stirred up and must settle. People shifted in their seats to find comfortable positions, rustled and coughed, their physical restlessness reflecting their minds, still active with daily concerns. One by one, though, they set aside thoughts about business, or crops, or meals, or grievances, to focus on the Inner Light they knew to be the manifestation of God within. Though a Meeting started out quiet, the quality of the silence gradually changed so that there came a moment when the air itself seemed to gather and thicken. Though there was no outer sign of it, it became clear that collectively the Meeting was beginning to concentrate on something much deeper and more powerful. It was then that Honor sank down inside herself. When she found the place she sought, she could remain there for a long time, and see it too in the open faces of surrounding Friends.

Occasionally Friends felt moved to speak and give testimony, as if God were using them as a medium. They spoke thoughtfully, sometimes quoting passages from the Bible. Though anyone could speak if they wished to, Elders spoke more often than others. Honor had never spoken: the feeling she reached at Meeting was not something she could describe in words. Trying to would ruin it.

Yet, though Faithwell Meeting was similar in form to English Meetings, Honor found as she sat, still and silent, that she could not drain her mind. The space was different, the light and the air and the smell, and the many new faces. Then, too, there were the crickets and grasshoppers, and something Abigail called katydids, all noisier and more persistent than any insects Honor had heard in England. Their buzzing and droning and whining produced a wall of sound difficult to ignore.

All of these things were distractions. But Honor had been to unfamiliar Meetings before, in Exeter and Dorchester and Bristol, and she had managed to experience the same silence as at Bridport. At Faithwell, however, she was conscious of being in a place she would be expected to consider home, and because of that, she could not relax and let her mind go. When the silence began to deepen, Honor could not connect to that communal gathering and follow the others. Instead she found herself thinking about Grace’s last, terrible days; about Abigail, beside her, and Adam, across from them on the men’s bench, and the strained atmosphere in the house, and the looks that passed between them which she tried to ignore; of the black man hiding in Belle’s woodpile; of Belle’s jaundiced skin and surprising hats; of Donovan, pawing through her trunk and looking at her with light in his eyes. A few days after her arrival, he had ridden through Faithwell while she and Abigail were hanging out laundry, and had slowed and lifted his hat. Abigail had been horrified.

Honor was not a fidgeter like Abigail, who crossed and recrossed her ankles, blew her nose, wiped sweat from her neck. Honor had always sat very still at Meeting—indeed, could sit for two hours without changing position. But it was possible to sense that someone was not part of the silence, even when they did not move. Perhaps Abigail was disturbed by Honor’s lack of concentration. She shut her eyes and tried again. When that did not work, she opened her eyes and looked for an inspiring face. There was one at every Meeting: someone—often a woman—with a face so attentive and anticipative that they provided silent leadership, even among a group who functioned by consensus. It was almost painful to watch them, for it seemed a violation of their private communion with God. Yet they were a good reminder of the open approach a Friend should take at Meeting.

At Faithwell, Honor found the face on the Elders’ bench perpendicular to where she sat. She was an older woman, with white hair under her cap and bright eyes focused on a distant point outside the room, indeed probably somewhere in her mind’s eye. Her arched eyebrows gave her an open, surprised expression, and the natural line of her mouth fell into a half-smile accentuated by round cheeks. Honor kept glancing at her, and had to force herself to look down so that the glance would not become a stare. Though immensely compelling, the woman’s face was not necessarily friendly. She was someone you admired and respected rather than loved. She did not enable Honor to concentrate as she had hoped, however.

At length a man stood up to quote from the Scriptures. That at least gave Honor something to think about, even if she could not find a way to her own communion with God.

After Meeting she was introduced to many people, but found it hard to remember a long list of unremarkable names: Carpenter, Wilson, Perkins, Taylor, Mason. Only a few stood out: Goodbody, Greengrass, Haymaker. The last she recognized as the dairy farmers they bought milk from; it was Judith Haymaker with the compelling face on the Elders’ bench. Now that Meeting was over her expression was less intense, but she still had widely arched eyebrows over a pale, blue-eyed gaze that Honor found hard to meet for more than a second or two. Her daughter Dorcas was with her; a similar age to Honor, she smiled obediently when introduced but seemed indifferent to this potential new friend. Indeed, though the Faithwell community was polite enough, they did not ask Honor any questions. It was not that she wanted them to—she was not eager to repeat the story of Grace’s death—but her new neighbors seemed solely interested in their own affairs.

Judith Haymaker nodded at a young man standing among the others. “My son, Jack.” As if hearing his name from afar, he looked over, his eyes snagging on Honor’s as none of the other men’s had. His messy brown hair was lightened by blond strands like stalks of hay, and his half-smiling mouth was like his mother’s, but warmer.

Oh, she thought, and looked away, catching Dorcas Haymaker’s pale blue eyes as she did. Dorcas did not have the perpetual smile of the rest of her family, but a forceful nose like a carrot and a frown that reminded Honor of Abigail. She looked down at the ground. Were all American women so difficult to talk to?

No. She said a little prayer of thanks for Belle Mills.

Faithwell, Ohio

6th Month 14th 1850

Dearest Biddy,

I write this letter from the front porch of Adam and Abigail’s house in Faithwell. One of the benefits of American houses is that most have porches where one can sit and catch what little breeze there is and yet be sheltered from the sun. It is hot here, as hot as Dorset ever was, and I have been told that next month will be worse. It is not just the heat that enervates, but the inescapable humidity that makes one feel enveloped in a cloud of steam. My dress is damp, my hair frizzed, and sometimes I can barely take in a breath. In such heat it is difficult to summon the energy for work. If only thee were here beside me, to talk and laugh and sew. Then the strangeness of this place would be more bearable—as it would have been if Grace were here. Had she lived, she would have made our lives into the adventure the ship that brought us to America promised. Without her it is more like a trial I am being put through. I wish I could tell thee that I am settling happily into my new life in Ohio. I know that is what thee wishes for me, and I for myself. But I confess, Biddy, if it were not for the impossible journey to reach Bridport, I would immediately buy my place east on a stage from Cleveland. There is little to keep me here.

I do not mean to sound ungrateful. Adam Cox has been welcoming, if rather silent about how I will fit into the household without Grace as the natural reason for my presence. Perhaps he does not know himself what to think. Abigail will think for him, I suspect.

I must try to be fair. Abigail too has welcomed me, in her way. When I first arrived she threw her arms around me, as American women like to do; I had to remain very still and not flinch. Then she cried and said how sorry she was about Grace and how she hoped we would be like sisters. Since then, though, she has not been very sisterly. Indeed, at times I have caught her studying me in a way that is not friendly, though she tries to cover it with questions about how I am, or offers of cups of tea, or a loud cough at nothing. Underlying all that she says and does is the iron rod of an inflexible spirit. Whatever her plans were for Grace’s arrival, they have been put into disarray now that I have come instead. Abigail does not like her plans to be altered.

Of course it cannot be easy to have an unexpected stranger arrive to live in one’s house, especially when that house is as chaotic as hers. She does not seem to have an order to her work; I have not yet discerned which day is wash day, for example, or on which day she bakes. Most noticeable is that the kitchen is not the comfortable centre of the house. Always when I worked with Mother in the East Street kitchen there was a sense of clarity, of light and warmth and happy industry. I could not be miserable in such a kitchen, even when there were things to be unhappy about. By contrast, Abigail’s kitchen is dark and muddled and temporary. It is hard to feel settled in a place that itself is so unsettled. I would like to scrub every inch of it, air it, and make a place for everything so that I may put it in its place. I have tactfully tried to put things in order without offending Abigail, but with little success. Though she said nothing about my scrubbing and sweeping, when I rearranged the crockery on the sideboard, the next morning I found the bowls and plates back in their random stacks. She does her work with such clattering and rattling and slamming that I grow weary just hearing her.

Perhaps thee will best understand what Abigail is like if I tell thee that when she quilts she prefers to stitch in the ditch, hiding her poor stitches in the seams between the blocks. I do not think thee or I has resorted to such a technique since we were girls!

But I am being unkind. Abigail too has had her own unhappiness. She lost her husband to consumption after a long struggle, and she and Matthew were married for three years before he died, yet had no children. That must be a sorrow, though of course we have not spoken of it.

Perhaps it is simply me. I have been unsettled since leaving home—and before then, in honesty, for Samuel’s change of heart shook loose my solid life. So I am seeing my surroundings in that light. We are an odd trio, Abigail, Adam and I, for it is only indirect bonds of duty that hold us together. That is truly what makes the house feel temporary—my position in it is so precarious. After twenty years of living in the secure arms of family, it is a strange and terrifying feeling to be so adrift.