Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt (8 page)

She brooded until Andrew joined her. “Are you all right?”

She moved over to make room for him on the bench. “I’m fine. Merely . . . disappointed.”

“Why so?”

“Why so? Why not? All my life, Hans and Anneke have been held up to me—to all of their descendants—as the epitome of the courageous immigrant fulfilling the American dream. And now I find out—”

“That your heroes are merely human?”

Sylvia knew any word she uttered would sound petulant, so she said nothing.

“You have a choice, you know,” said Andrew. “You don’t have to keep reading.”

“Of course I do. I have to see how everything turned out.”

“You already know.” With his thumb, Andrew pointed over his shoulder at the manor.

Sylvia’s gaze followed the gesture, and as she studied the gray stone walls that only weeks before had seemed so strong, so secure, she wondered if she knew anything at all about how things had turned out.

3

Summer and her mother had lived in Waterford since Summer was nearly eleven, but neither had ever heard Waterford referred to as Creek’s Crossing. The details Sylvia had shared about Gerda Bergstrom’s journal had piqued Summer’s curiosity, so she arranged to have Sarah cover for her at Elm Creek Quilt Camp so she could investigate.

She crossed the street to the campus of Waterford College and walked up the hill to the library, where the Waterford Historical Society kept its archives. After scrutinizing her alumni association card, a library assistant led her to a remote room, indicated the location of various books, databases, and maps, and allowed her to search undisturbed. If not for one dark-haired man sequestered in a corner carrel, she would have been completely alone.

Just a few minutes with the map cabinet made Summer realize that she should have allotted more time. It took her nearly half an hour to locate the proper drawer, only to discover that the maps weren’t sorted according to any logical order she could
discern.
Sylvia’s ancestors must have designed this filing system,
she thought ruefully, thinking of the manor’s attic. With a sigh, she pulled open the first drawer and began paging through the maps.

Fortunately, by the time she had to leave, she had found two maps of the county that merited more scrutiny. One, dated 1847, showed only a town called Creek’s Crossing, much smaller than present-day Waterford but at the very bend of the creek where the oldest district of the downtown now existed. The second, dated 1880, depicted the entire state, but Waterford was clearly labeled in its appropriate location. Sometime between 1847 and 1880, the name of the town had been changed.

Remembering the reportorial technique she had learned in her journalism seminar at Waterford College, Summer identified the town’s name change as the “what”—now she needed to learn when and why. The “who,” of course, were the Bergstroms.

Whether the family had played any role in the transformation of Creek’s Crossing into Waterford, she could only guess, but her instincts—and her knowledge of how Sylvia’s family had influenced the town’s fortunes in later years—told her she was not pursuing a false lead.

Summer through winter 1856—
in which we become farmers, and I am unwittingly courted

So passed our first evening at Elm Creek Farm. By morning’s light, my companions had gained more resolve, while I felt my own weakening, as I began to realize how very far I was from home and everything familiar. But, I reminded myself, that was precisely what I had wanted, and since I could not bear to return to Germany in defeat even if I could afford the passage, I had to make the best of it.

By the end of the day, we discovered that our circumstances were not quite as dire as we had imagined. Mr. L. had put in a kitchen garden, so we would soon have fresh vegetables. We learned that an acre of corn had been planted, and this news cheered us immensely. Since much of our land had not been improved, our woods were full of game, and thus we celebrated our second night at Elm Creek Farm with a feast of venison and seed potatoes, eaten by the fireside under the stars.

As the weeks passed, we set the cabin to rights as best we could; Anneke and I filled the spaces between the logs while Hans repaired the roof enough to keep out the rain. Each day I marveled anew at the changes in my brother. He had left my father’s house seven years before knowing a great deal about the textiles trade in Baden-Baden but little of horses and nothing of farming. Now he put in late crops and drove the team as if he were born to it.

Castor and Pollux did not pull the plow, of course. One of Hans’s first acts as master of Elm Creek Farm was to trade them with the owner of a livery stable for a team of till horses, a pig, and a flock of chickens. We were all downcast to part with the elegant creatures, especially Anneke, who grew teary-eyed whenever she saw them prancing before a carriage in town. Hans promised her that one day, when his business was established, he would give her far superior horses, born and bred on our own land. Anneke didn’t quite seem to believe him, but the promise pleased her just the same.

When our immediate needs were seen to, Anneke asked Hans to turn his attention to improving our little cabin. He had made us each a bed by stringing rope between oak posts, upon which Anneke placed straw ticks she had sewn, but only a curtain separated our beds from his, and we had no fireplace, which would surely be a problem come winter. I added my voice to Anneke’s, but Hans instead set himself to work on the barn.

He had met a neighbor, a Mr. Thomas Nelson, whose land abutted ours to the north. His wife, Dorothea, befriended me, and in later years became my dearest friend and confidante—closer to me in many ways than Anneke ever was. Anneke thought Dorothea too solemn and bookish, but I admired her keen mind and sensible temperament. After the day’s work was finished, we enjoyed many evenings discussing literature and politics, and I learned a great deal about our new country from her. Often we gathered at the Nelsons’ home, which despite its simplicity seemed a palace compared to our cabin, but I had too much pride not to reciprocate their kind invitations, and we entertained our neighbors nearly as frequently as they did us.

We spoke English with the Nelsons, since they did not speak German. Anneke would have preferred to sit silently with her sewing rather than have Hans or me translate the conversation, as her inability to speak English shamed her, but Hans said, “You will never learn if you don’t try, and you need English in America.” He was right, of course, and though Anneke’s attempts at conversation were at first reluctant, she gradually acquired a rudimentary knowledge of English. But in those first years, she spoke rarely to strangers, a behavior that some of the women in town misinterpreted, considering her aloof and unfriendly. Later these same women were to decide that they had been mistaken: Anneke was the friendly and charming one, while I was arrogant and full of strange notions. Their opinions might have troubled me if I had not made other friends through Dorothea, but since I had, I cared not what Anneke’s acquaintances thought of me. Perhaps I was a bit arrogant after all.

Hans and Thomas often exchanged work, and after Hans helped Thomas bring in his harvest, Thomas helped Hans lay the foundation for the barn, about twenty paces east of our front door, between ourselves and the creek. I did not think this a wise location, for although the winds typically blew from the south-west,
placing the cabin upwind of the animals’ odor, I did not relish the thought of passing the barn several times a day to fetch water. I did not mention this, of course, as I knew this to be a ridiculous complaint from someone who fancied herself a settler. It was not until the men began to raise the walls that I understood my brother’s thinking and realized what a marvel of architecture he had designed. He ingeniously built the barn into the hillside with one entrance at the foot of the hill and a second at the crest, so that one could drive the team into either story with equal ease.

The occasion of our barn raising drew the aid of other neighbors: the Grangers, the Watsons, the Shropshires, the Engles, and the Craigmiles. How warmly I regarded them as I saw their carriages and wagons emerging from the forest onto Elm Creek Farm. Some I still hold in high esteem, but to others, my heart has turned to cold stone.

But, of course, I did not know then how I would come to feel later. Neither, I daresay, could they have imagined what scandal we Bergstroms would bring into their midst. If they had suspected, some of them would have brought down that barn upon our heads. It amazes me now, gazing back into the past, that nothing distinguished future friend from foe, and that I never would have imagined who would later shun us and who would prove true.

I race ahead in my eagerness to unburden myself, but I must not allow my urgency to muddle this history.

After the barn, Hans put in a corral, intending, to my surprise, to pursue horse breeding after all. I had thought he had abandoned this idea with the loss of Castor and Pollux, but if anything, his interest had grown. “Mr. L. did not make such a good go of it,” ventured I, when I saw that Hans was determined.

Hans merely grinned at me and said, “Sister, I think I’ve shown you I’m much more clever than Mr. L.”

So I said nothing more to dissuade him, although to this day I do not believe Hans gained Elm Creek Farm through cleverness.

As for Anneke and me, in addition to assisting Hans with the crops as needed, we divided our women’s work in shares that suited us both. Anneke, with her gift for needle and thread, took care of all the mending and sewing. Relieved to be rid of those detested chores, I was glad to care for the kitchen garden. In those days I was happiest working outside, the bright sun on my cheek, the fresh soil between my fingers. Anneke washed and tidied the cabin, while I cooked our meals. We took turns caring for the chickens and, after Dorothea instructed us, milking the cow.

Daily we improved Elm Creek Farm, and daily, too, did Anneke and Hans grow more fond of each other. Theirs was a peculiar courtship, indeed, conducted while they lived in the same small house, with only an elder sister as chaperone. I had always imagined true love to be as mine was for E., evolving slowly over time as friendship transformed from the sweetness of childhood affection into steadfast and respectful devotion. But Hans and Anneke seemed to admire each other from the start, with only a token reluctance on Anneke’s part to abandon thoughts of her first intended. They married six months after their meeting in New York, before the first snow fell.

As a wedding gift for his bride, Hans added to our cabin a fireplace, a root cellar, and a second room. Not long after her own marriage, perhaps because she wished me to know a happiness like that she had found with my brother, or perhaps because she sought greater privacy than my presence would allow, Anneke began entertaining thoughts of finding a husband for me.

Among those who had come to help us those early days was Mrs. Violet Pearson Engle, the twice-widowed dressmaker, and
her grown son from her first marriage, Cyrus Pearson. Mrs. Engle was a stout woman, domineering and loud-voiced, whose main contribution to the barn raising had been to bark orders at we women laboring over our outdoor cooking fires to prepare enough food for all those men. As for Mr. Pearson, upon our first meeting I found him polite, if somewhat disdainful, with a quick grin that some might have called a smirk. But that impression might have been merely my own prejudice, as I never fully liked or trusted handsome men, perhaps because they rarely expressed interest in plain girls such as myself. Still, since he seemed pleasant enough, I thought nothing of it when Anneke suggested we invite him for supper.