Stephanie Grace Whitson - [Quilt Chronicles 03] (22 page)

The sad truth of it was that she had lost her nerve. Emilie Rhodes, who had never had a nervous bone in her body when it came to playing the piano in front of a crowd, couldn’t seem to play a simple hymn tonight. With the sounding of the last note—she didn’t dare try an arpeggio—Emilie braved a look over at her cousins, taking a bow as the evening crowd offered polite, but decidedly restrained, applause.

The set of April’s jaw said it all. Emilie was in for a tongue-lashing later tonight. May just looked confused. And Junie—well, Junie was too intent on pretending not to seek out Bert Hartwell’s face in the front row to worry about the accompanist who had missed a few notes during the performance.

I don’t miss notes. What is the matter with me?
The weak applause died down. Emilie felt like slinking into the night. April relied on a strong piano to keep her on pitch. A weakness in her voice to be sure, but not something that the Spring Sisters had ever had to worry about, thanks to Emilie. Until tonight.

She kept her head down as she descended the stairs from the stage to the sand-covered earth. Thank heavens they were seated in the front row. At least she would only feel eyes boring into the back of her head instead of feeling like she was surrounded by people sending either sympathetic or disappointed looks her way. Still, as she settled on the chair next to Noah, she could feel those eyes. Especially Mother’s and Father’s. Was it possible for mere looks to give someone a headache? She certainly had one.

The Spring Sisters had barely regained their seats when Reverend E. S. Smith rose to give the invocation. Then the town band played, and happily for them—and the crowd—the Beatrice Band was much better this year than last. Maybe their improvement would obscure people’s memory of the fiasco that was the Spring Sisters this evening. On the other hand, if that tuba player missed one note or six—
Emilie Rhodes, that is just mean.
Wishing missed notes on a fellow musician. What was wrong with her, anyway?

As she sat, blinking back tears of shame, Emilie gripped the edges of the bench on either side of her lap and hung on, willing herself to sit with her back erect and her chin held high. She pretended fascination with events on the stage, when all she really cared about was getting the night over with so that she could retreat to the Bee Hive, wallow in her failure—and think about tomorrow’s interview.

But then Noah leaned close and whispered in her ear, “Everyone has an off night. You’ll be wonderful tomorrow.” Then he covered her hand with his…and left it in place. Not that anyone else could see. Her white lawn skirt hid both their hands. Which made it even more scandalous, she supposed. She looked up at him. Like her, he was concentrating on what was going on up on the stage. And yet…his hand stayed put. And then, he was being introduced so that he could introduce the evening’s lecturer, Professor C. M. Ellinwood of the Nebraska Wesleyan University.

Noah rose and strode up onto the stage. He looked out over the crowd of several hundred and complimented those in attendance for “choosing Professor Ellinwood’s fine lecture on ‘The Six Days of Creation’ over the Sells Brothers’ Circus.” The latter, as everyone knew, had had the audacity to set up camp this evening in competition with the Interstate Chautauqua. He mentioned that he and Professor Ellinwood had something in common, this being their first opportunity to share an assembly platform. And then he explained that, since the professor’s presentation included “grand and beautiful colored lantern pictures of theological and biblical subjects,” darkness would be required before the beginning of his lecture.

He looked over at Emilie. “And so I am hoping that the Spring Sisters will grace the stage once again and delight us with another number.”

He was giving her a chance at redemption. The girls rose to a smattering of polite applause, and on the way up to the stage, sweet May leaned in and said, “Just imagine them all in their unmentionables. That always works for me.”

May meant well, of course, but Emilie’s mind went straight back to its usual subject. She was fairly certain that Noah Shaw looked amazingly good in anything he wore—or didn’t. And that thought made her blush again. Finally, though, she decided to imagine what April would say and do if Emilie let her down again. Dread of that had the desired affect. Emilie concentrated on the hymn. She didn’t miss a single note. She even dared an arpeggio. This time, the applause swelled.

As the girls made their way back to their seats, Noah moved to the edge of the stage, and as twilight fell and the Tabernacle crowd faded from view in the gathering dusk, he began his recitation. “‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want….’” The crowd stilled. Emilie turned her head just enough to see a few rows of the crowd. People had lifted their heads and were staring, mesmerized, as Noah’s rich voice resonated beneath the Tabernacle roof. With a few quiet remarks, he transitioned seamlessly into the Lord’s Prayer and, finally, back to Psalm 22. Then he ended with one phrase. “‘The
Lord
is my Shepherd. I shall not want.’”

When Noah’s voice died away, it was as if the crowd gave a collective sigh. There was no applause, just silence as Professor Ellingham’s magic lantern projected a colored slide intended to illustrate Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning…God.”

T
he moment the opening meeting concluded and Noah stood up, he was surrounded. Someone held a program up and requested his autograph. While he was signing the program, someone else asked where he’d studied elocution. The program said he was from the St. Louis area. Did he happen to know that wonderful orator Garrison Richards? Another program was thrust forward for his signature. He took the pencil, all the while scanning the crowd for Emilie. Where had she gone? She’d been right beside him only moments ago. Now…now he was in a conversation with overzealous redheaded twins, essentially trapped here at the bottom of the stage stairs.

“We’ve heard so much about you from our mother,” one twittered, “and now we know why.”

“Indeed we do,” the other said. “We’re the Penners. Flora and Fern.” The speaker glanced at her sister. “And we’ve never heard such a beautiful rendition of the Shepherd’s Psalm. Your voice—you project so well.”

“Girls, girls.” A woman—obviously the twins’ mother—pushed her way through the small group gathered around him. “Let Mr. Shaw take a breath.” She beamed up at him, “You must forgive Fern and Flora their zeal. It’s my fault, I’m afraid. I’ve been singing your praises ever since I learned that you were the same lecturer I heard at the conference last year.” She paused. “And I must say I’m more than a little envious of my friend Henrietta Rhodes. She’s out-paced everyone with last evening’s dinner party. I’m hoping to convince you to join the Penner family for a meal at some point during the assembly. We’ve one of the cottages here on the grounds.”

Noah nodded without really listening. Finally, he caught a glimpse of Emilie heading off in the direction of the campground with May. She wasn’t even looking his way. What did that mean? Was she upset?

The twins’ mother was still talking. Noah nodded while he signed other programs. It had begun. Anonymity would be impossible now—at least insofar as the few hundred people who’d attended this evening’s session were concerned. And all he wanted to do was follow Emilie back to the Bee Hive.

But then he noticed a young girl standing back a bit, clutching a program, waiting. Hardly daring a glance in his direction, and yet…waiting.

“Wonderful,” the twins’ mother was saying. “We’ll look forward to it.” She spoke to her daughters. “Come along now, girls. We mustn’t monopolize Mr. Shaw’s time. There are many others who wish to speak with him.” She headed out into the night, the two girls following along.

Even as he wondered what he’d just agreed to, Noah moved toward the girl, noting her simple calico dress, which was clean but faded. He bent down. “May I help you, miss?”

The girl nodded. “I liked your ‘Lord is My Shepherd.’” Noah had to strain to hear the words. “My mama used to say it every night for prayers.” Tears gathered in her eyes.

Used to say it.
Everything else faded away as Noah concentrated on the young girl remembering a mother who was, for whatever reason, no longer saying prayers with her.

“My mama taught me,” Noah said, as quietly as possible. When the girl looked up at him, he gave a little nod. “She’s been gone since I was about your age. I miss her every day. But I’m glad she taught me that psalm. Every time I recite it, I pretend that God has opened a window in the sky and she’s looking down on me, smiling. Sometimes that makes me cry, but mostly it makes me feel better.”

The girl nodded. She started to hold the program out to him, but then she sighed and took it back. “I don’t have a pencil.”

Someone handed Noah a pencil. He asked the girl her name and wrote,
For Elizabeth, Psalm 119:92
,
Noah Shaw.
“That’s another verse that helps me,” he said and recited, “‘Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then have perished in mine affliction.’” The girl looked over at him with a little frown. He smiled at her. “You’ll understand it better when you get older, but one of the things I think it means for you and me is that even when we feel sad, we should keep on saying the Shepherd’s Psalm.”

The girl nodded and thanked him in a shy, half-whisper. Noah watched her make her way across the pavilion and to the side of a work-worn man in a battered hat, who was waiting just at the fringe of the light. When the girl looked up at him and said something, the man looked over at Noah and tugged on the brim of his hat. Then he and the girl disappeared into the night.

Could a poor child be an angel in disguise? Feeling humbled—and convicted that he shouldn’t be so self-centered when it came to these moments after a performance—Noah shut all thought of Emilie out of his mind and took up the work. He signed programs and conversed with strangers about everything from the beautiful assembly grounds to the new courthouse being erected up on Sixth and Grant Streets to Mr. Wilde’s new novel about a surreal portrait of a man named Dorian Gray. And then he caught up with the redheaded Penner twins over at one of the cottages. He apologized for not paying better attention and learned than he’d agreed to a Sabbath-day luncheon with the family. They would collect him directly after the eleven o’clock service.

It was ten o’clock by the time Noah could seek out the Bee Hive. The campground had been set up like a small town, with named streets and numbered tents, both of which facilitated the moving of people and the mail, the latter delivered daily. As Noah walked up one street and turned onto another, the sounds of voices and the glow of lighted lamps shining through the canvas made him think of the Indian tepees Ma had embroidered on his quilt. She had described the glow of campfires on the prairie. He didn’t think she’d ever described glowing tepees, but as Noah looked around him, the effect of lamps lighted inside the canvas tents was almost magical. Did tepees glow this way on winter nights when snows kept their owners close to home?

Ma had said someone told her that among the Indians, the woman owned the tepee. It was the woman’s job to take it down and put it back up again, and the woman was the one to haul it across the prairie when the tribe moved. She’d seen a long line of Indians go by once. She said the women were walking alongside ponies dragging a conveyance made by attaching the tepee poles to either side of the pony, and then suspending the household goods on a blanket or buffalo skin between the poles. A travois, they called it.

Low thunder in the distance made Noah looked toward the west. Ma had heard that tepees could stay in place even in a very high wind. She’d thought about that the night a storm blew her wagon over. That was the night Pa died, although Ma had never said that, exactly. She just didn’t talk about Pa all that much. It was as if one night she was on the trail with him, and the next she was headed the other way with a freighter who’d agreed to give her a ride back to where she came from.

A lot of people at the assembly tonight had expressed a wish for rain to relieve the heat. They might get their wish tonight. Noah looked about at the campground. What would happen to all these tents if a storm blew through? He frowned, thinking of the huge tree branch arching over the place where Emilie and May would be sleeping. On a hot summer day, such a thing was a boon because of the shade. But on a stormy night?

The sound of laughter brought him back to the moment and interrupted the worry. Group laughter. And above the laughter, the strumming of a guitar from the direction of the Bee Hive. He knew a quote about bees. Benjamin Franklin, he thought. What was it? Something about a spoonful of honey catching more flies than vinegar. Why anyone would want to catch flies, Noah wasn’t sure. He remembered the quote. “Tart words make no friends; a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.” He didn’t like thinking of himself as a fly, but one thing was certain. He was being drawn to the Bee Hive.