With a sigh of resignation, Dorothea left the kitchen and made her way to the parlor, where she spied a man chatting with Cyrus Pearson who fit her mother’s description. He was not quite as tall as Cyrus, but he wore a finer suit with an overlarge but not unattractive boutonniere on his lapel. Dorothea made her way to an unoccupied spot nearby, where she could await a suitable moment to introduce herself, if Cyrus did not see her there first and take care of the formalities.
She fixed a pleasant smile in place and observed the dancing. Abner whirled Mary about; Mrs. Claverton waggled her fingers and called out a greeting as she and her husband passed. Dorothea returned the greeting with a smile and looked around the room for Charlotte, hoping for the girl’s sake that her parents had possessed the sense to allow her to remain home, as befitting her age.
“You have not danced one single set all afternoon,” Dorothea overheard Cyrus chide the young Mr. Nelson, if that was, in fact, who he was. “Surely your health cannot be as bad as all that.”
“It is not for my health that I refrain,” came the reply, in a voice both deeper and more disdainful than Dorothea expected.
“What is it, then? Come, now, my mother made me promise that there would be no young ladies unattended at her party, and I insist you help me.”
“While I regret disappointing the woman who so kindly organized this gathering for me,” said Mr. Nelson, “you will have to satisfy your obligations to your mother yourself. I dance when I am inclined to do so, and at this moment, I am not so inclined.”
“Why not? Look—there are three, four, no, five ladies not engaged at present. Your legs are obviously not broken whatever else might ail you. You will not do yourself an injury if you take one turn about the floor.”
“Nevertheless, I decline.” He paused and gave Cyrus a slight bow. “With my apologies.”
“I cannot understand you, Nelson. You are newly arrived in Creek’s Crossing, and apparently you mean to stay. Surely you wish to make the acquaintance of our charming local beauties.”
Mr. Nelson frowned and indicated his boutonniere. “If their taste in conversation resembles their taste in flowers, we will have very little to say to each other.”
Cyrus laughed, incredulous. “You cannot mean it. I am as well traveled as you, sir, and I defy you to say the ladies of Creek’s Crossing are not as pretty or as charming as those of New York, Paris, or London, without all their artificial graces.”
“Pretty?” Mr. Nelson paused. “Yes, perhaps one or two of them are somewhat pretty, but I do not find ignorant country girls amusing. It is far better for me to avoid them than to subject us both to an excruciating attempt at conversation.”
“I cannot believe you seriously mean this. What about her?”
Dorothea closed her eyes, hoping fervently that Cyrus was directing Mr. Nelson’s attention toward the other side of the room.
“That young lady is Dorothea Granger,” said Cyrus, with a suggestion of pride. “Surely you can see how lovely she is. She is not yet twenty, and yet she is so clever she was appointed interim schoolteacher after your predecessor stepped down.”
“That says more about your school board’s standards than her cleverness. In any event, the manner in which she gazes so longingly at the dance floor suggests that she has not set foot on one in quite some time. I assure you, I have no intention of directing my attention to any woman ignored by other men, especially those here, who know her character.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Cyrus. “Some may say she is too clever for her own good, but no one would ever question her strength of character. Let me introduce you. Miss Granger?”
When he called to her, Dorothea took a quick, steadying breath before turning around to face them. “Yes, Mr. Pearson?”
“Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Thomas Nelson, our guest of honor. He just finished telling me how very much he wishes to make your acquaintance.”
Mr. Nelson masked his annoyance poorly as he bowed to her.
“Welcome to Creek’s Crossing,” said Dorothea. “I regret that so far you have found very little to like about it.”
Mr. Nelson gave not a flicker of acknowledgment, but Cyrus had the decency to appear mortified. “Miss Granger, please accept my apologies for my companion’s boorish remarks. You were not meant to overhear them.”
“You are not the one who should apologize.”
Mr. Nelson gestured impatiently to his boutonniere. “If you refer to my criticism of this collection of twigs and vegetable matter—”
“I do not refer to it, but since you mention it, I must speak in its defense.” Dorothea gave the boutonniere a quick survey. “It is an unusual arrangement, but its maker’s intention is evident. Those twigs, as you call them, are maple seeds, and maple sugar is a significant part of our local economy. These are the leaves of the elm, which grow in abundance throughout the valley and whose beauty is a particular source of pride for us. The leaves of the rose, here and here, represent hope, while the water lily symbolizes purity of heart. The ribbon I recognize—the mayor’s wife wears a similar trim on her spring bonnet. To speak plainly, this nosegay that you disparage welcomes you to enjoy the beauty and prosperity of the Elm Creek Valley, with hopes that you will remain honest and true to your calling as the educator of our youth.”
“You could hardly ask for a better welcome than that,” remarked Cyrus.
“What I would ask for,” said Mr. Nelson, “is to be permitted to wear the flower of my choosing.”
Dorothea glanced at his hands. “Would that have been a blossom plucked from a round cluster of small white flowers growing on a rather tall stem?”
He almost managed to hide his surprise. “Yes, that’s right. Queen Anne’s lace. You must have seen me discard it.”
Dorothea let out a small laugh. “No, I assure you, I was not paying you that much attention. Nor was your flower Queen Anne’s lace. We call it cow parsnip, although it is actually a member of the carrot family. Curiously enough, while it is edible, it is a particularly noxious weed to the touch. The rash on the back of your hands will pass in two or three weeks, longer if you scratch it. I would offer you a healing salve, but as I am merely an ignorant country girl, I am sure my humble medicines are beneath your regard. Next time, if you wish to choose an appropriate flower, I would recommend a narcissus.” She turned a blistering smile on Cyrus and ignored his companion. “Good afternoon, Mr. Pearson.”
She quickly departed, nearly bumping into Mary as she and Abner left the dance floor. “Goodness, Dorothea, what’s wrong?” asked Mary. “Your face is so flushed! Are you ill?”
“I am not ill.” Dorothea refused to allow Mr. Nelson and Cyrus to see how angry she was. “Abner, will you excuse us, please?” She linked her arm through Mary’s and drew her toward the far end of the room, where she asked, “Have you had an opportunity to meet our new schoolmaster?”
Mary nodded. “Mrs. Engle introduced us. He’s handsome in a bookish way, but I suppose that suits his profession. He certainly doesn’t look much like a farmer. Would you like to meet him?”
“No! No, thank you. I know him as well as I care to.” She told Mary about the encounter.
Mary glanced at the ill-humored schoolmaster and turned away quickly, unable to contain her amusement. “Honestly, Dorothea! Mrs. Deakins may have little talent for flowers, but she meant well, and he had no call to be so unkind. In your place, I would have been tempted to slap him.”
“I did not say I wasn’t tempted.”
“I considered him somewhat aloof when we were introduced, but I had no idea he was so rude.” Mary’s eyes widened and she grasped Dorothea’s arm. “Oh, he’s looking this way. He surely knows we’re talking about him. But I suppose he doesn’t care about the opinion of a couple of ignorant country girls.”
“I suppose not,” said Dorothea, laughing. “Ignore him. We cannot let him think he is important enough to be the subject of our conversation.”
At that moment, she
felt a hand on her elbow. “I’m afraid you must bid your friend good-bye,” said her father, her mother at his side. “We have chores to attend to at home.”
Dorothea let out an exaggerated sigh. “That’s fine, Father. I was merely gazing longingly at the dance floor, wondering if I shall ever set foot on one again.”
Mary giggled as Dorothea’s parents exchanged a puzzled look. Then Dorothea’s mother said, “You did find an opportunity to speak to Mr. Nelson?”
“Yes, I spoke to him, the odious man.”
Lorena’s eyebrows shot up, but before she could inquire, Dorothea hugged Mary good-bye and promised to call on her soon. After giving their regards to the hostess, the Grangers left the party.
“I gather,” said Robert carefully as they walked to the livery stable, “that Mr. Nelson did not make a favorable impression upon you?”
“Entirely the opposite,” said Dorothea, and she told them what had happened.
“What a rude young man,” said Lorena, but she smiled. “Of course, he assumed he was speaking in confidence, unaware of your eavesdropping.”
“I was not eavesdropping. I was merely waiting for an appropriate moment to introduce myself,” said Dorothea. “Besides, you have often told me one should not do in secret what one would be unwilling to have known in public.”
“Not all deeds fall into that neat category, dear. Nor all words.”
Her father shook his head. “Are you sure you did not misunderstand him, Dorothea? His father is such a reasonable, just man. I considered him a friend and was disappointed when he returned to the East. It is difficult to believe his son could be so unlike him.”
“I understood every word with perfect clarity.” Dorothea threw up her hands and quickened her step. “I cannot bear for you two to defend him! Whatever fine qualities his father may possess, Mr. Nelson the younger does not share them.”
“Still, it was a fine party,” offered her father.
“He seemed as oblivious to its charms as to those of everything else in Creek’s Crossing,” retorted Dorothea, quickly outpacing her parents.
“Cheer up,” called her mother. “He has only just met us. Perhaps once he knows us better, he will decide to move on to some other town, where the women have greater skill with flowers.”
Dorothea tried to stay angry, but she could not help it; she burst out laughing. “One can hope,” she said. She paused and allowed her parents to catch up to her. She thought, but did not say aloud, that if Mr. Nelson did leave, Creek’s Crossing would need another schoolteacher.
Her father was right. It had been a fine party, but it was wasted on Mr. Nelson. Dorothea’s thoughts went to the small farmhouse to the southwest where Abel and Constance Wright were finally enjoying the comforts of freedom. No wedding supper, no bridal quilt, no wedding party had marked their homecoming. How much more appropriate it would have been for the people of Creek’s Crossing to welcome Constance with music and celebration, and to allow Mr. Nelson, the convict-turned-schoolmaster, to eat a cold supper alone.
DOROTHEA’S FATHER AND uncle finished the harvest, aided by the threshers and a spell of temperate weather that made Dorothea wistful for the long-ago days that she and Jonathan spent exploring the shores of Elm Creek barefoot and happy. Once they wandered so far they scaled the peak of Dutch Mountain, unaware of the distance they had conquered until the entire Elm Creek Valley lay spread out before them. They returned home to Thrift Farm late for their chores, but it never would have occurred to their parents or the other adults who occupied the cabins scattered about the main residence to scold. They were a community of Christians with strong Transcendentalist inclinations, and they believed children had to be allowed to pursue their own hearts’ desires without adult interference. If they had not also believed human beings were obligated to treat the animals in their care with respect and kindness, the Granger children might never have learned any part of what it meant to run a farm.
Dorothea wondered what had become of those optimistic men and women who had tried to build a utopia in the Pennsylvania wilderness. None had perished in the flood, but after Thrift Farm lay underwater, the group was forced to disperse. There was some talk, at first, of moving out west to start again, but the money for the journey and the perfect plot of land could never be found. Singly or in pairs, the former residents of Thrift Farm drifted away from the Elm Creek Valley like cottonwood seeds on the wind. Dorothea’s parents occasionally received letters from friends who had gone to Kansas or California; Lorena would linger over them, caressing the precious words with her fingertips.
Uncle Jacob had taught the Granger children how to run a farm properly and a child’s proper place within the household. Their education was swift and jarring, but they learned. Dorothea’s parents caught on more slowly, but Uncle Jacob eventually made able farmers out of them. Dorothea learned, too, that as hard as Uncle Jacob worked them, there were advantages to his methods: Her days were no longer hers to fill as she chose, but the forest did not reclaim the fields and the crops did not fail. Jonathan no longer complained of hunger in the middle of the night and his persistent headaches disappeared. Dorothea grew three inches the first summer after Uncle Jacob took them in, after which he ordered Dorothea’s mother to put her in long skirts rather than dungarees and forbade her to wander the valley as if she were, as he put it, a wild Indian or Irish.
If nothing else, Uncle Jacob’s restrictions on the children’s carefree wanderings allowed them more time for books. Jonathan’s aptitude for the scholarly life was apparent even to his uncle, who generally mistrusted such inclinations. It was Uncle Jacob who first introduced his nephew to the local physician, who, after a year as his tutor, recommended that the boy broaden his experience in a larger city. For two years Jonathan had lived in Baltimore, and as proud as Dorothea was of his accomplishments, she could not deny feeling an occasional stab of envy.
In the past Jonathan had returned for at least part of the harvest, but that year he did not, citing important ongoing cases that his mentor insisted he observe to the end. Uncle Jacob grumbled but did not order him home, and instead kept on the hired hands and agreed to exchange work with Abel Wright. He had done so every year as far back as Dorothea could remember, even though the Wright farm was nearly eight miles away, southwest of Creek’s Crossing.
This season Abel Wright came to their farm first, but despite Lorena’s repeated entreaties, he did not bring his wife with him, saying that she sent her apologies but had so much work to do in her new home that she could not spare even a day away. The next week, when Uncle Jacob and Robert were to help at the Wright farm, Dorothea was pleased when Uncle Jacob told her she and Lorena must come, too, to assist Mrs. Wright however she needed.
“At last we can give her a proper welcome,” said Lorena. “We should take a gift. Something useful for the home.”
“And something to eat,” said Dorothea. “A wedding cake.”
“Yes. That’s a fine idea.” Lorena instructed her to begin beating eggs for the cake while she searched the house for an appropriate gift.
Dorothea went to the hen house, gathered eggs in her apron, and hurried back to mix the cake batter. She cracked the eggs in her mother’s large mixing bowl and beat them until her arm ached, pausing only to build a fire in the oven. The eggs were stiff and the oven hot by the time her mother returned, hesitating in the doorway, hands behind her back.
“Did you find something?” asked Dorothea, mixing sugar into the bowl.
Lorena nodded and revealed what she carried.
Dorothea recognized the quilt top before her mother unfolded it. The appliqué sampler quilt top was the first she had begun after coming to live with Uncle Jacob, and it had taken her nearly two years to complete. At that time she had still believed she might complete the customary thirteen tops for her hope chest, but was practical enough to realize that just in case she could not, she ought to make at least one very fine top that could serve as her bridal quilt. Knowing she was hu
ngry for details of city life, Jonathan had written of a new style of appliqué quilt the fashionable ladies of Baltimore were making. Their intricate designs created still life portraits in fabric—floral bouquets, nestling birds, wreaths, beribboned baskets, urns of greenery. Inspired by her brother’s descriptions, Dorothea sketched images from her own life, capturing her memories of Thrift Farm and the Elm Creek Valley with every stitch into the fourteen-inch squares. She had drawn each appliqué template by hand on old newspapers and had spent a good portion of her modest savings on the soft muslin background, bleached to a snowy white by the sun, to which she had sewn the calico flowers, leaves, and figures. She arranged the sixteen blocks in four rows of four, then fashioned an appliqué border of elegant swags gathered by roses. Once she had succumbed to a local superstition and had slept beneath the unquilted top so that she might dream of her future husband. She woke the next morning with no memory of her dreams, a worrisome omen that now made perfect sense.
“You want to give this to the Wrights?” she managed to say. “But—but it is not finished yet. It is not quilted.”
“Yes, and the fact that you never bothered to do so tells me it is not very close to your heart. Not so dear that you cannot bear to part with it. Mrs. Wright can quilt it herself, or she can leave it as it is for a summer quilt.”
Dorothea thought quickly. “A quilt is a fine idea, but perhaps Mr. Wright would prefer a Rail Fence quilt. I have enough blocks finished. Do you remember how he admired them?”
“We don’t have time to stitch your blocks together. Besides, this is a gift for the bride. The flowers will suit the occasion.”
Dorothea said nothing.
“Constance Wright came north with little more than the clothes on her back,” said Lorena. “Wouldn’t she treasure this beautiful quilt? Wouldn’t it be a wonderful expression of the friendship we hope will grow between us?”
Elm Creek Quilts [07] The Sugar Camp Quilt Page 4