The Last Runaway

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?”

“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.

Faithwell itself is a tiny, rough sort of place. I know Adam did not deliberately lie in his letters describing it, but when he called it a ‘town’ he was clearly exaggerating. They boast that this part of Ohio is cleared and populated, much more so than ten years ago, but to me it feels like a frontier, with a few houses scratched out of the wilderness. Thee would be amazed at what is called the ‘general store’ here-a shop with mostly bare shelves and little to choose from, set on a track that a coach could never manage. Even wagons frequently get stuck in the mud, or the ride is so jolting one would rather walk.

The Meeting House is pleasant at least, and the Friends kind. I do not know why, but I have not been able to settle at Meeting yet; this is a great disappointment, as I normally take much comfort from the collective silence, and it would do me good now truly to wait in expectation with others. I need to be patient, I know, and a way will open once again.

I have not yet got to know the other families, nor discerned who might become a friend. The women in general here are straightforward, in conversation, in dress, even in the way they walk, which is flatfooted and rather graceless. Thee would smile. At least thee may be content that there is no rival here who would ever take thy place as my dearest friend.

I must stop criticising my new country. I will leave thee with something to smile at: in Ohio they like to call quilts ‘comforts’!

Thy faithful friend,

Honor Bright