An Elm Creek Quilts Sampler

by Jennier Chiaverini

  Every Christmas the Chevaliers threw an enormous ball, the most eagerly anticipated social event of the year in Philadelphia and beyond. Anyone who was anyone came—with the exception of a few “muckraking newspapermen” who published unflattering articles in the newspapers they owned, editorials about Mrs. Chevalier’s father, the former senator, and her brothers, judges and senators all, any one of whom could become president one day. In hindsight Agnes realized she had grown up surrounded by wealth and power, but at the time, occasions such as the Yuletide Ball were merely parties, with pretty ladies and handsome gentlemen, beautiful music, delicious food—and the opportunity to wear a lovely gown as she danced with Richard.

  She would ask her mother to permit Richard to attend as her guest. He would charm everyone there, she was certain of it. He had such an easy way with people, with none of her own stammering bashfulness. His secret was that he was genuinely interested in whatever his companion of the moment had to say. It was no act with him. He was fascinated with the world and everything in it. Any chance to meet someone he had never met or to try something he had never tried delighted him. Surely her parents would come to like him as much as everyone else did if they would just give themselves that chance.

  “Absolutely not,” her mother declared. “Agnes, how could you ask such a thing? It’s simply unthinkable.”

  “But why? You’ve always allowed me to invite friends before.”

  “Don’t be stupid. This is the Yuletide Ball. We can’t have a stable boy running around smelling of horses’ dirt.”

  “He’s the heir to Bergstrom Thoroughbreds, and his family is as good as any in Philadelphia. But even if he were a stable boy, I would still want him to come. He is a very dear friend.”

  “Indeed,” her mother said dryly. “You won’t want for friends at the ball. The Johnson sisters are coming, and young Mr. Cameron will be there.”

  “Oh, how delightful. The young Mr. Cameron.” Agnes plopped down on an overstuffed sofa in a most ungraceful fashion. “Will he spend the

  entire evening talking about his blasted greyhounds, like he did last year?”

  “Agnes,” her mother gasped, shocked.

  It took Agnes a moment to realize her mistake.

  Her mother’s face was white with fury except for two scarlet blotches in the hollows of her cheeks. “Where did you learn such a filthy word?”

  From Father, Agnes almost said, but she managed to hold it back.

  “I know you didn’t learn that at Miss Sebastian’s Academy. Did your noble stable boy teach it to you?”

  Agnes’s anger got the better of her. “Yes, he did,” she snapped. “That, and a great many other things.”

  Her mother nearly fainted. Too late, Agnes realized her second mistake. She had meant that Richard had taught her other curse words—which wasn’t exactly true—but her mother had understood her meaning quite differently.

  “You are such a trial to me,” her mother said, seizing her by the arm and marching her from the drawing room. It did not occur to Agnes to resist. “You’ll stay in your room until you remember how a young lady should behave.”

  Mrs. Chevalier had to let Agnes out to go to school, but she was watched so carefully that she couldn’t run off to meet Richard and Andrew all that week. The following Monday as she left Miss Sebastian’s, she spotted Richard just outside the tall wrought-iron gates. Her heart quickened with nervous pleasure as she went to meet him, hoping her father’s driver was not paying attention.

  “You haven’t come to see us all week,” Richard said, his brow furrowed in concern. “What’s the matter, don’t you like that café anymore? Or did Andrew say something to offend you?”

  Agnes laughed at thought of Andrew’s saying anything offensive, but she was thrilled. Richard had missed her. She had feared he had forgotten her.

  “I wanted to come. There have been—” She hesitated, wanting to protect him. “Some complications.”

  Richard’s eyebrows rose, but he didn’t ask for more details, which was a relief. As angry as she was with her parents, she loved them and was loyal to them. She couldn’t bear to disparage them before anyone, especially Richard.

  “Any chance these complications will sort themselves out soon?”

  Agnes tried to smile. “Anything is possible.”

  He nodded, then looked past her to the waiting car. Her father’s driver had opened the door to the back seat and stood with his hand upon it, waiting.

  “Andrew and I will be at the café as usual,” Richard finally said. “Come see us when you can.” He gave her one quick smile before turning and walking away.

  Her heart sank to see him go.

  Two weeks went by, and not once could she slip away. Richard met her once again outside Miss Sebastian’s, but only once. After that, she had no word from him. Her hopes dwindled as the Christmas holidays approached. Both her school and the boys’ school would be closed for a month, and Richard would be going home to Elm Creek Manor. She knew his travel schedule—which train he would take, what time he planned to leave—and as that hour approached, she realized what she had to do.

  Swiftly she packed a suitcase and left a note for her parents with the butler. Then she hired a cab to take her to the train station. She bought a ticket and hurried as fast as she could to the platform, where she searched frantically for Richard.

  Then she spotted him in the center of a knot of passengers waiting to board the train.

  “Richard,” she called to him. Her voice was swallowed up in the noise of the station. Frantic, she screamed his name. He jerked his head in her direction, his face lighting up with recognition and astonishment.

  He left his place in line and made his way through the crowd to her side. “Agnes, what are you doing here?” He glanced at her suitcase but said nothing about it.

  “May I come home with you for the holidays?”

  “Your parents won’t mind that you’ll miss their party?”

  “I’m sure they will, once they find out.”

  He studied her for a long moment. For a while she feared he would refuse. He was offended by her gall and never wanted to see her again.

  But then he picked up her suitcase and offered her his arm. “I’d be delighted to have you come. If I’d known you could, I would have asked you weeks ago.”

  She took his arm, too overcome with relief to speak. That, Agnes later realized, was when she first knew she loved him.

  The train ride west was one of the happiest occasions of her life. Finally she and Richard had the chance to talk alone for hours. Richard truly listened when Agnes spoke, unlike all the other men she had known, who would smile indulgently and exchange looks over her head, chuckling as if she were an amusing child. Richard didn’t agree with all of her opinions—especially regarding the troubles in Europe—but he never once treated her as if she was nothing more than a harmless, silly decoration. To someone who had spent her life learning how to be an ornament, this was a revelation.

  When they arrived at Elm Creek Manor, Agnes was nervous and excited. She didn’t regret her decision to come home with Richard, but she wished his family had expected her. Maybe then Richard’s sister Sylvia wouldn’t have greeted her with such obvious shock. Maybe then Agnes wouldn’t have earned Sylvia’s immediate and intense dislike. It was obvious that Sylvia was the queen of this household, just as Agnes’s mother ruled the Chevalier home. With Sylvia against her, Agnes feared Richard would not remain hers for long—if it was, in fact, right to call him hers.

  “Your sister doesn’t like me,” she told him that evening before they retired to separate bedrooms a respectful distance apart. Richard laughed and told her she was imagining things, which made her heart drop even lower. From that moment she knew he would be forever blind to Sylvia’s barely contained malevolence.

  Gradually, Agnes won over the others. She got along well with Richard’s elder sister, Claudia, and the young cousins even asked her to join in their games occasionally.
Sylvia’s husband, James, was a true gentleman, kind and thoughtful, much like Richard himself. Only Sylvia remained aloof and resistant.

  Agnes understood the source of her resentment: Sylvia was selfish. She had a husband, a sister, a loving family, but that wasn’t enough for her. She also wanted her younger brother all to herself, and no young woman from Philadelphia was going to steal him away.

  How ironic it was that Sylvia was treating Agnes as Mrs. Chevalier treated Richard. If those two headstrong, jealous women ever encountered each other—Agnes giggled at the thought. She wished she could share her amusement with Richard, but she didn’t want him to know how her parents felt about him. No doubt he suspected the truth, but she would spare him the insulting details.

  Instead she doubled her efforts to befriend Sylvia. When she sensed how proud Sylvia was of her quilting, she made certain to praise Sylvia’s needle-work—the fineness of her stitches, the intricacy of the designs.

  “How charming,” Agnes said, admiring Sylvia’s current project, an elaborate quilt with appliquéd baskets, flowers, and other intricate shapes. “What pattern is this?”

  “It’s a Baltimore Album quilt.” Sylvia went on to explain the history of the style. Agnes listened, nodding as if fascinated. Once she glanced up and caught Claudia’s eye, and she saw that Richard’s elder sister was trying to hide a smile. Claudia knew what Agnes was about, even if Sylvia didn’t.

  When Sylvia’s long-winded explanation finally drew to a close, Claudia spoke up. “Do you quilt, Agnes?”

  Agnes realized she had an ally. “No, I don’t know how. I wish I could, but I know I could never make anything as lovely as this.” She gazed at Sylvia’s quilt in admiration.

  “All it takes is practice,” Sylvia said briskly, but Agnes could tell that the compliment had pleased her.

  “I wish that were true,” Agnes said. “But I don’t have your talent, Sylvia. I suppose I’ll just have to keep buying my comforters in the shops in Philadelphia.”

  To her surprise, Sylvia pursed her lips, offended. “Naturally you’d want to do that. Out here on the frontier, however, we don’t have that luxury.”

  “Sylvia,” Claudia warned.

  Agnes quickly added, “What I meant to say was that I would prefer a handmade quilt like those you have in Elm Creek Manor, but since I can’t quilt, I—”

  “You’ll buy something made by someone with better sense.” Sylvia glanced away from her work to frown at Agnes. “I hope you remembered to pack all you’ll need, or you might need to go home early. Our humble shops out here in the country are no match for those in the heavenly land of Philadelphia.”

  The rebuke stung. Perhaps Agnes had gone on about Philadelphia during her visit, but it was only to show the Bergstroms how wonderful she found Elm Creek Manor in comparison. If only they knew how much she longed to take the happy clamor of their family back home with her. She left the room before she burst into tears. She would not humiliate herself further by allowing Sylvia to see her cry.

  It was not an auspicious beginning, Agnes thought, turning away from the window. She and Sylvia had come a long way since then. In the past two years, since Sarah had reunited them, they had become friends. Agnes never would have dreamed it.

  She never would have dreamed that she would one day be able to quilt like Sylvia, either, but she had learned. Sylvia had tried to teach her, but when those lessons failed miserably, Claudia finished the job. Now Claudia was gone, and Sylvia would soon join her. Once again, Agnes would be alone.

  She took a deep breath to fight off the tears. It wouldn’t do to break down when Sylvia needed her friends to be strong. Then she remembered the round robin center in her sewing box. Yes, that was what she needed, something to keep her busy so she would stop glancing at the clock and wondering why the nurse hadn’t been back with news of Sylvia in such a long while.

  The other Elm Creek Quilters, who had been so eager to see her center design, barely noticed as she took out the round robin quilt and began to work. She had strip-pieced a background for her appliqué, with varying shades of blue for the sky and green for the grass. After trimming this piece into a large circle, she had sewn pieces of gray and white onto it, creating a portrait of Elm Creek Manor in fabric. A scrap of black cotton became the rearing horse fountain in the front of the manor, and a narrow strip of blue was the creek in the distance. Now she was adding the final touch: a grove of trees at the northeast corner of the manor, where the cornerstone patio was, where the main entrance to the manor had been before the south wing was built in Richard’s father’s day.

  Richard had told her so much of the manor’s history—how Hans Bergstrom had placed the cornerstone with the help of his sister and wife, how the manor had served as a station on the Underground Railroad, how the estate had flourished over the years, and how it had sometimes faltered. Once he mentioned that the north garden was a perfect spot for a wedding, and once that the ballroom in the south wing could accommodate several hundred guests. His hints thrilled her, but she had other ideas. When she married, it would be in a proper church, and the reception afterward would take place in her parents’ home. They would insist upon it. As far as Agnes was concerned, if she did somehow manage to convince her parents to accept Richard, she would let her mother do whatever she wanted for the wedding in gratitude.

  As it turned out, neither Agnes nor Richard had the wedding they had imagined.

  His proposal and the ensuing ceremony took place over a span of a few short days in March of the following year, 1944. Richard had returned to Elm Creek Manor for his school holidays, but this time she did not accompany him. Instead she waved good-bye from the platform as his train pulled out of the station, then she returned home with her brother, who had accompanied them at Mrs. Chevalier’s insistence.

  The next time she saw Richard was several days before he was actually due back. It was mid-morning, and he had come straight to the front door instead of throwing pebbles at her window and signaling her to meet him outside. Her mother’s voice was frosty as she informed Agnes she had a caller waiting in the drawing room.

  Agnes’s heart pounded as she went downstairs. Her mother’s tone told her it was Richard waiting—but why? What was he doing back so soon? Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

  When she entered the room where Richard waited, he was pacing back and forth, hair tousled, face flushed, eyes bright with excitement. She was too startled to speak, but he looked her way at the sound of the door. He crossed the room swiftly and seized her hands. “Agnes, I have something to ask you.” He dropped to one knee. “I love you with all my heart, and I know you love me, too. Would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

  Agnes stared at him. Why was he asking her now? He knew she was just sixteen. He knew he ought to ask her father first, and not for years yet. Why—

  Then she understood. He and Andrew—all their bold talk about enlisting—

  Her legs were suddenly too weak to support her, but Richard helped her to a chair. “Please—” she choked out. “Please—”

  He smiled, but there were tears in his eyes. “You don’t have to beg, darling. I’ve already proposed.”

  She wanted to strike him for joking at such a time. She hated him. She loved him so fiercely she could never let him leave her. “Please tell me you didn’t enlist. Please tell me you’re not asking me this because you’re going off to war in the morning.”

  “Not in the morning.” His face was close to hers. He stroked her hair gently. “I have two weeks.”

  Her chest tightened up with sobs, so many that she thought they would tear her throat open. But she swallowed them back and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Unsteadily, she rose from her chair. “Will you excuse me, please?”

  “But Agnes—”

  “I’m going to seek my parents’ blessing.” Without waiting for a reply, she left the drawing room. Her mother was in her sitting room writing letters.

  Agnes took a seat beside
her and waited for her mother to look up. She refused to acknowledge her daughter’s presence, to punish her for the undesirable caller. Agnes wondered what punishment her mother would contrive for what she was about to say and realized it didn’t matter. Nothing could hurt her more than the thought of Richard’s going off to war.

  Finally her mother looked up. “Yes, dear, what is it?”

  “Richard Bergstrom has asked me to marry him. I would like to have your blessing, and Father’s.”

  Her mother’s face went white in fury, but her voice was perfectly controlled. “Absolutely not.” She resumed writing and nearly tore the paper with her pen. “If you’re not pleased with the young Mr. Cameron we’ll find someone else suitable for you, but you shall decline Mr. Bergstrom’s proposal and instruct him never again to speak of it.”

  Agnes felt as if she were watching the scene play out from a great distance. “No,” she heard herself say. “I shall not decline.”

  Her mother slammed down her pen. “You shall. You have no choice. You are too young. Do you really believe any judge within two hundred miles of here would allow a Chevalier daughter to marry under such suspicious circumstances?” Her voice was high and shrill. “They value their livelihoods too dearly for that, I assure you. Not one of them has any wish to be the man who allows a disobedient child to destroy the Chevalier family’s good name.”

  Agnes grew very still. For the first time she saw her mother clearly, without fear. Agnes held the power now, and her mother was the frightened one. No matter what happened next, Agnes would never submit to her mother again. She was free.

  “Richard has enlisted. He leaves in two weeks.” Each word was as cold and distinct as if it had been chiseled in marble. “I will spend every moment between now and his departure by his side—every day and every night. I would prefer to do so as his wife, but I will do so as his mistress if necessary. Since you are so concerned with the Chevalier family’s good name, perhaps you should consider carefully whether you truly wish to withhold your blessing.”