Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  Immediately Sarah chose the latter, and after Sylvia retrieved them from the back of the closet, the two women carefully unfolded the quilts on Sylvia’s bed.

  Sarah exclaimed over the Log Cabin quilt, for Sylvia had shared Great-Aunt Lucinda’s story with her, and she knew the significance of the black center square. She said nothing as she examined the Birds in the Air quilt, but stole quick glances at Sylvia as if attempting to judge her reaction to it. When Sarah turned her attention to the third quilt, she first noted the fabrics common to all three quilts, then asked, “Do any of these fabrics match those in Margaret Alden’s quilt?”

  Surprised, Sylvia said, “I honestly hadn’t thought to look.”

  She brought out the photos Andrew had taken and gave them to Sarah, who scrutinized them carefully against the quilts on the bed. “Some of them look alike,” said Sarah, “but the scale is so small, I can’t be certain.”

  Sylvia retrieved a magnifying glass from her sewing kit and handed it to Sarah. “If you see something, don’t think you’re protecting me by pretending otherwise.”

  Sarah held the magnifying glass to the photos and studied them at length, but eventually she shook her head, still uncertain. Some of the fabrics looked similar, but as Sarah pointed out, that didn’t necessarily mean Margaret Alden’s quilt had any connection to the quilts in Anneke’s trunk. Quiltmakers of her time did not have the wide variety of prints modern quilters enjoyed, and the fading of the dyes could make even dissimilar fabrics seem alike in a photograph.

  “Maybe we can find another connection,” suggested Sarah.

  “Isn’t the choice of the Birds in the Air block a clear enough connection for you?”

  Sarah dismissed that with a wave of her hand. “It was a common enough pattern. How many thousands of Birds in the Air quilts have been made throughout the years? I’m not going to assume anything based upon that, especially since the blocks don’t even use the same setting.”

  Sylvia was glad to hear it, because she had been trying to convince herself that the same pattern choice was, at best, circumstantial evidence. “Very well, what would you base an assumption on?”

  “Something that would be unique to a particular quilter’s style. Piecing quirks, for example. You know, like how your sister used to chop off all the points of her triangles.”

  “Many quilters do that,” said Sylvia. “Our own Diane is a master of the truncated tip. You’ve chopped off a point or two yourself.”

  “It’s a shame we don’t have Margaret’s quilt here to compare to Anneke’s quilts,” said Sarah. “What about theme or symbolism? The Log Cabin block was supposed to represent the home, with the center square being the hearth or a light in the window, with the light and dark fabric representing the good and bad in life. Using the black center square gave it a special meaning on the Underground Railroad—”

  “Except some say the Log Cabin block was designed to honor Abraham Lincoln,” interrupted Sylvia. “If so, it couldn’t have been used as a signal on the Underground Railroad.”

  “Why not?”

  “Heavens. Didn’t they teach you any American history at Penn State? The Underground Railroad operated much differently after the Civil War broke out, not long after Lincoln was elected. Quilts would have been useful as signals only before the war.”

  “You’re the one who told me about Log Cabin quilts with black center squares,” Sarah pointed out. “Are you saying you were wrong?”

  “I’m saying there are alternative theories, and we can’t have it both ways.”

  “I accept that, but my point is still valid. We might find some similarities in pattern choice to suggest that the same person made all four quilts.”

  Sylvia folded her arms. “I’m not even convinced that the same person made the three from the attic.”

  “Let’s assume they were made by the same person, since they were together in the trunk,” said Sarah. “Did Birds in the Air have any significance in the years leading up to the Civil War?”

  “None that I know of.” But then Sylvia reconsidered. “Well, birds migrate. Perhaps that pattern was a code telling slaves to follow the migrating birds as they flew north.”

  “Except birds only migrate north at a certain time of the year. In autumn—”

  “Yes, I see. Escaped slaves would follow the birds farther south. That wouldn’t do, would it?”

  “If it’s a code, it’s not a very helpful one.”

  “Unless most escapes took place in springtime, to take advantage of fair weather.”

  Sarah nodded to the strippy quilt. “What pattern is this?”

  “It’s just a simple four-patch, as far as I know. I haven’t seen it before.”

  “Maybe one of the other Elm Creek Quilters would recognize it.”

  “Grace Daniels certainly would.” And if the unknown pattern or Birds in the Air carried any special significance, Grace would know that as well. Sylvia needed answers, but she doubted she could wait for Grace’s visit in mid-August.

  When Sarah left to return to her camp director’s duties, Sylvia took up Gerda’s memoir and carried it downstairs to her favorite room in the manor, a small sitting room off the kitchen. She settled into an armchair beside the window and, summoning her inner resolve, opened the book and read on.

  Spring 1856—

  in which my adventure begins

  The dowry that proved insufficient to impress the parents of my childhood sweetheart was more than enough to purchase second class passage aboard the Anabelle Marie, bound for New York from Germany. My heart was broken, and as I was already twenty-five and plain, my mother agreed that I was unlikely to find another suitor in the Old World, and might as well try the New. I wanted to journey not to become a wife, however, but to put an ocean between myself and the only man I thought I would ever love.

  My brother, Hans, who had preceded me to America, agreed that I should come to him and help establish his claim out West. He sent me handbills about Kansas Territory, describing the fertile soil, the mild climate, and the industrious people who had already begun civilizing the wild frontier. Hans’s letters glowed with the promise of the good fortune awaiting us, and since he never once suggested he planned to marry me off rather than allow me to participate fully in his ambitious plans to achieve prosperity, I was all too glad to go.

  I will never forget my first experience of my new homeland after the long sea voyage—the disorienting humiliation of processing, interrogation by men full of their own importance, the babble of languages, the smells of unwashed bodies and unfamiliar foodstuffs. I spoke English passably well, and yet had to correct their spelling of my surname twice before they recorded it correctly. My heart went out to those who could not make themselves understood and waited in queues, fearful and uncertain. At least I could follow instructions, and knew that somewhere outside that vast room, my brother waited. I had thought myself adventurous, a woman traveling so far alone, and yet there were children in my queue far more daring than I.

  Hans found me in the throng. “Gerda,” a shout rang out, and before I knew it, I had been swept into the air by a man I was certain I had never seen before. Dumbstruck, I then recognized in this vigorous, laughing man the younger brother who had left the shelter of his family seven years before. Though my own height still exceeded his, Hans was at least three inches taller and forty pounds heavier than the boy I remembered, but his smile was the same, as were his eyes. His manner was cheerful and confident, as if all the treasures of the world lay before him.

  I never wept, not even when E. had told me whom he would marry in my stead, and yet I nearly wept with joy then to see my brother so healthy and happy.

  We collected my trunk—stuffed full of more books than clothes, which I assumed I could obtain in Kansas, once I knew better what a farm woman needed—and were making our way through the crowd to the exit when we discovered a beautiful young woman desperately arguing with a uniformed bureaucrat. She pleaded in German, he drowned her o
ut in English, and around them gathered a crowd of men, enjoying the spectacle.

  Hans, as I knew he would, halted and questioned some of the men. I started at first to hear Hans speaking so well; his accent was now better than mine, though he had spoken not a word of English when he departed our home. We learned that the beautiful young woman was supposed to have been met by her fiancé three days before. She had never met this man, and did not know how to reach him except by the address on the letters he had sent her father, but she was determined to wait for him until he arrived.

  I suspected she would be waiting a very long time indeed, and was telling Hans so when another man added that the bureaucrat, having failed to convince the girl to move along, intended to hand her over to the police or, better yet, send her home to Germany.

  Hans did not approve of either option. She had come so far to seek her fortune in America, as had they all. Why should she be punished for the failures of her betrothed? He gave me a sidelong look and said, “There’s room in our wagon for one more.”

  I said, “Do you intend for her to accompany us all the way to Kansas Territory?”

  “She can stay as long as it suits her.”

  I must say I was shocked. The very idea of an unmarried woman traveling with a strange man, even when that man was my dear brother, scandalized me. Then, suddenly, it occurred to me that my own mother had planned something very similar for myself, that Hans should marry me off to the first eligible man he could persuade to take me. At least in me, Hans and the young woman would have a chaperone.

  And I will confess something else.

  The beautiful young woman had brought with her a sewing machine, and I, who detested sewing, who thought working with needle and thread the most tedious and unendurable of a woman’s domestic duties, saw in this young woman and her sewing machine the means of escaping the detestable chore indefinitely.

  So I intimated that Hans was welcome to invite her to join us, which he did, in German, so the official would not comprehend. His arguments were charming, if unromantic; he pointed out that one man she had never met was as good as another, and that she was welcome to stay with us until she found her fiancé, or someone else, or decided she would be fine alone, or chose to return to Germany. He hoped, however, that she would decide to marry him.

  She stood there speechless for a long while, and who could blame her for that, so unusual the offer and so enormous the consequences of her reply. But soon she agreed to depart with us, and I had the sense that she was conceding defeat in doing so. If Hans also suspected this, he gave no sign, but cheerfully escorted us outside, where his wagon awaited us.

  That is how I made my acquaintance with Anneke, my brother’s future wife.

  Sylvia clasped the book to her chest, exultant. Her suspicions that the memoir was Gerda’s had been confirmed, and better yet, Gerda’s account of how Hans and Anneke had met echoed the story she had heard as a young girl. Enough details matched perfectly to convince her of the authenticity of the memoir, and enough were dissimilar to further heighten her curiosity. She had never heard of Gerda’s unrequited love, the mysterious E., or of plans to settle in Kansas. Had she forgotten those elements, or had they been culled from the history by the intervening generations of storytellers?

  “Sylvia?” said Andrew from the doorway between the sitting room and the kitchen. “It’s almost time for the new campers to arrive. The Elm Creek Quilters are waiting.”

  Sylvia stowed the book in the drawer of her writing desk and tucked her arm through Andrew’s as he escorted her to the manor’s grand foyer. “How’s the Queen Mary?” asked Sylvia, referring to Andrew’s motor home, still parked behind the manor where they had left it upon their return from South Carolina.

  “She’s ready to sail with the tide.” He pulled out her chair at the registration table. “Are you?”

  “Of course,” said Sylvia, surprised. “You don’t think I’d let you make this trip alone, do you?”

  “I thought you might prefer to cancel the trip so you could bury your nose in that old book of yours. Or look at those old quilts a few hundred more times.”

  “I can read Gerda’s memoir while you drive.”

  When Andrew merely shrugged, Sylvia was struck by the thought that—no, it couldn’t be. Andrew, jealous? Of three quilts and a book? Guiltily she thought back upon her behavior ever since meeting Margaret Alden, and had to admit she had been distracted. Too distracted, perhaps, to pay as much attention to him as he liked. She would make it up to him, she promised herself. She would start by including him in the unfolding tale of her ancestors rather than hoarding Gerda’s memories to herself.

  After their newest guests arrived and Sylvia saw the week off to a good start, she asked Andrew to help her pack for their trip. As they did, she told him what she had learned from Gerda’s memoir, and was pleased to see that by the time her suitcase was full, he was nearly as eager to learn the rest of the story as she was. Then, to show him she was as interested in his family as she wanted him to be in hers, she changed the subject. They chatted about their upcoming visit to Andrew’s daughter, Amy, in Connecticut. Amy’s husband planned to take Andrew fishing, and Sylvia had promised Amy her first quilting lesson.

  Once they were on the road, Sylvia found herself delighted to be traveling again. As much as she enjoyed passing the summer days at Elm Creek Manor, reminiscing about the summers of her girlhood and enjoying the lively activity of quilt camp, she was glad to spend time alone with Andrew. His quiet companionship was as comforting as a favorite quilt, and she grew fonder of him the more they shared memories of years they had spent apart. She liked to tease him that they got along so well because they never ran out of stories to share, and considering that they had more than fifty years’ worth of catching up to do, they ought not to run out of conversation anytime soon.

  Andrew had bought the motor home after his wife’s death to make traveling between his daughter’s house on the East Coast and his son’s on the West more comfortable. “I don’t mind having no permanent address,” he had told Sylvia once. “It beats moving in with the kids.” Sylvia agreed, but she noticed he took on a permanent address readily enough when she invited him to live with her in Elm Creek Manor.

  After Sylvia began her partial retirement from Elm Creek Quilts, she had more time to join Andrew in his cross-country travels. His children had been startled to meet her. Apparently they never imagined Andrew would find a lady friend only three years after their mother’s death, so devoted had he been to her throughout their more than fifty years together. But among her own friends Sylvia had seen that those who had known happy marriages were more likely to find love again than those who had been miserable. Granted, Sylvia had needed an interim of half a century, but she hadn’t been looking.

  Lately, unless they had merely learned to hide their feelings better, Andrew’s children and their spouses had come to accept her, and it seemed that their father’s newfound happiness pleased them. So Sylvia and Andrew passed much of the summer on the road, stopping by Elm Creek Manor for only a few weeks at a time, visiting the best fishing holes and quilt shops in the country and having a grand time.

  At her insistence, Andrew had stopped fretting about appearances, and what other people thought of an unmarried couple traveling together. Sylvia thought his worries were nonsense. Most people were too busy managing their own lives and problems to give the private lives of a couple of senior citizens a second thought. Besides, since they both still wore the wedding bands of their first marriages, people probably assumed they were married to each other.

  “If that’s what people assume,” Andrew would say, “then why not—”

  “Don’t even suggest it,” Sylvia would reply firmly before he could finish the thought. Andrew would scowl grumpily for a while, but eventually his good humor would return. In recent months, he had learned to stop hinting at marriage, and thank goodness for that. Honestly. To become a bride again, at her age. The very idea made her
laugh. What Andrew’s children thought of their father remarrying, if they thought of it at all, Sylvia refused to conjecture.

  The visit kept both of them so busy that Sylvia couldn’t find a moment to take up Gerda’s memoir, so as much as she enjoyed playing with Andrew’s grandchildren and teaching Amy how to piece a Sawtooth Star block, she was glad to return home, unpack, catch up on all the camp news, and settle into her armchair with the book.

  For days we journeyed from New York City west across the state of New Jersey and into eastern Pennsylvania. At first, Anneke spoke little, perhaps intimidated by her unfortunate circumstances or ashamed that her fiancé had abandoned her. She had won my sympathies, however, as I understood something of what it felt like to be cast adrift by a man.

  For his part, Hans conducted himself as a true gentleman, and before long he had charmed Anneke’s story out of her. We learned that she was from Berlin, the third youngest of seven daughters. She had never met the man she was to marry, although she possessed a daguerreotype of him. I thought his physiognomy suggested a crafty, duplicitous nature, but Hans told me I was imagining things, influenced by what I knew of his behavior. Still, Hans looked none too pleased when Anneke carefully tucked the portrait away in her satchel instead of discarding it by the side of the road.

  That small satchel contained a few dresses, some undergarments, two wool blankets, a Bible, and twenty dollars, all her worldly goods, save the sewing machine. Cumbersome though it was, she had brought the sewing machine with a singular purpose: to earn her keep, since she had no dowry, and did not wish to be a burden to her new husband. She had planned to purchase bolts of fabric in the East and take them out West to her husband’s homestead in Missouri, where an enterprising woman could earn a modest fortune by sewing shirts for the unmarried men who populated the West. Anneke’s thrift and practicality made me ashamed of the many books tucked in my hope chest among the coverlets my mother had made, as I disliked sewing too much to create anything useful myself. I was more embarrassed still that I, a spinster of twenty-five, had brought a hope chest in the first place, while Anneke, younger than I by at least six years and traveling to America to meet her husband, had not. In comparison I no doubt seemed vain and foolish, me with my plain face and unwomanly stature beside Anneke’s dainty beauty.