The Loves of Ambrose

Then, too, the minister's face was uncommonly harassed, and these were disjointed days in the Pennyroyal as well as throughout the entire country. True, the Civil War was over, which Susan called "the uncivilest ever fit on God's earth," but while its wounds and differences were patched up they were by no means healed. And Pennyroyal's disposition to regard herself as one family had made her dissensions peculiarly bitter. There were times in this past year since the close of the war when the minister had wondered if it had not been the bitterest year of all, for notwithstanding that Kentucky did not suffer from reconstruction as the states further south, remember that she was, during and after the war, a state divided within herself.

There was trouble in the Pennyroyal air this afternoon.

"Farewell, Susan," Brother Bibbs suggested, as getting out his pocket handkerchief he removed a slight moisture from his eyes. "Ambrose and Sarah loved one another, that was the main thing. Theirs was a spring mating, and, like the birds whose season they chose, brief, too brief in passing." Attempting now to move, Brother Bibbs found it impossible, since in his moment of sentiment Mrs. Barrows, leaning over her fence, had linked her arm through his.

"Well, thank the Lord the little love bird didn't leave a young one in the nest for me and the male to look after," she argued more leniently. "Come right on in, Brother, and rest yourself, as I kin see Ambrose and his two shadders advancin' toward us up the street, and a peskier pair of shadders than Miner Hobbs and that dog, Moses, I ain't never seen, but it's true the two of 'em ain't left Ambrose to himself a minute since his wife died."

With her free hand Susan now waved a friendly greeting, even releasing at the same time the vigour of her clutch with the other, for Brother Bibbs was a fragile gentleman, an elderly widower, and, excepting in matters pertaining to heaven or hell, greatly subject to the sisters in his congregation.

Also the three figures were almost in plain sight, the little man leaning as usual on the arm of the tall one, with Moses following but a few steps behind.

Miner Hobbs walked with a slight limp. Wounded in the battle of Resaca, he had never entirely recovered, and although not yet thirty years old already showed signs of advancing age in his shrivelled appearance, like a nut whose kernel has failed to ripen.

Moses, however, was remarkably well preserved and, barring a stiffness in his legs and a few grizzled hairs, lighter of heart than in many a year. For since that girl who had come to his home had suddenly gone away with equal mysteriousness his master was once more his slave.

On the surface Ambrose seemed to have changed more than either Miner or the dog. His face had lost its look of easy laughter, the crow's feet about the corners of his eyes spoke of nights of hard service. Perhaps he was even longer and leaner than ever, while the hair upon his forehead was slowly beginning to recede like a wave from the shore.

Now his familiar spirit of fun took hold on him. The little man was talking to him earnestly. "Go easy, Miner," he whispered, bending his tall head, "ef you want to keep your secret from the women; there's Miss Susan less'n a block away." He also continued his teasing even after joining the minister and Mrs. Barrows, managing in a few moments to pass with the two men into his house, leaving the lady bristling with anger.

"There's somethin' fermentin' in the head of every man in this here town," she flared, coming out on to the sidewalk and then following the trio into Ambrose's yard the better to deliver her message, "somethin' you're hidin' from the women, and what men keeps to themselves ain't no good and never was! Suppose we ain't noticed you plottin' new mischief together? Like it wasn't enough," she ended bitterly, "that women has had to bear a war, go half starved, and do man's work as well as their own 'thout bein' asked whether they'd like a war or not. Wonder if the good time's comin' when women kin reveal what they think and not have to stand fer the things they don't have no hand in the makin' of."

Although during this tirade her audience had disappeared, eternal vigilance was forever Mrs. Barrows' motto. So now she went on with her watching, while the three men remained a long time inside the cottage, and by and by, when darkness had fallen, other men with their faces hidden followed in after them. Soon these men came out, and last of all Miner, Ambrose, and Brother Bibbs. Miner was scowling; nevertheless his scowl was concealing an expression of triumph; the minister's figure plainly showed defeat, but Ambrose, whatever his former look, laughed aloud, catching sight of his neighbour through the gloom, standing on a kitchen chair and leaning across the dividing rails between her house and his in order to peep through the closed slats of his sitting-room window.

"Look out, Miss Susan, the meetin' is over, and high places is rickety," he called suddenly.

Mrs. Barrows started guiltily, accomplishing her own downfall, and over she went with the wreck of her chair, only to spring up so quickly afterward that her hoopskirts appeared to carry her higher than the laws of gravity.

Although assistance from Ambrose arrived too late, still he lingered. "Ain't you no faith in what men undertakes 'thout advice from women, Miss Susan?" he inquired, and when that lady, breathless for once, was able only to shake her head, he gave her a slow, anxious smile, whispering, "I'm none too sure but you're right," before moving along.

Notwithstanding, at midnight on the same night Ambrose and Miner were riding side by side through the Kentucky woods at the head of a small cavalcade that had come together silently on the outskirts of Pennyroyal. The riders wore masks, excepting Ambrose, who, with face uncovered, squirmed restlessly upon the sunken back of old Liza.

"The men have give their word there ain't nobody goin' to git hurt," he repeated three or four times, until finally Miner turned upon him.

"Mebbe you'd better not have went, Ambrose, ef you haven't the nerve," he remarked testily.

And at this the tall man stiffened. "It ain't nerve, Miner. I just ain't never liked a ten-man-against-one game in my life, and I ain't hidin' my sentiments. No more than the rest of you do I want this Yankee teacher bein' brought into Pennyrile to show us our business, but I'm with this crowd to-night to see he don't get hurt 'cept in his feelin's."

"He's got to git, notwithstandin'!" Miner's attitude was that of a fierce little dog, who even when he couldn't change a situation liked to bark in order to hear the noise.

These men had both fought on the Southern side in the Civil War, but with a difference. Miner had plunged into it at once with pigheadedness and with passion; the full story of why Ambrose had failed to go south when his comrades did has not been told by Mrs. Barrows. At that time most men's hearts were on the one side or the other. Ambrose Thompson's heart was on both sides at once. Indeed, during the first hateful years of the war he had felt like a child whose equally beloved parents were engaged in getting a divorce, and not until after Miner was wounded and the South had showed herself the weaker did he heed her mothering call. And then he was never much of a success as a soldier because of his habit of so frequently misplacing his gun while he helped on a weaker brother, and because of his never having been known to fire at anything in particular. Still his companions did not count him a coward, merely recognizing that his imagination had a longer reach than theirs.

Kentuckians, however, have not the grace of easy forgiveness, and also have a fixed determination to attend to their own affairs. To-night's expedition meant that the teacher sent from the North into the Pennyroyal district to instruct their coloured children must go. Not that Pennyroyal wished her negroes to remain untaught, "seein'," as Ambrose had said, "that readin' and writin' ought to belong to them same as seein' and smellin'," but because they preferred to have time to attend to the matter themselves. Also, the new teacher had been secretly hurried into the county that day, driven through the adjoining town, and finally installed in the Pennyroyal district schoolhouse without Pennyroyal's being allowed a chance to take even a look.

This schoolhouse was an old-fashioned log cabin set in the middle of a clearing in a young papaw grove, and to-night, with a light burning in the front room, the oncoming men could see through a half-opened window the shadow of a figure.

Without waiting for word of command, silently they got down from their horses, forming a line about the house, and then one man, pounding savagely on the closed door, shouted: "Come out from there or we'll drag you out."

There was no answer at first, and when a candle appeared at the opening of the door the wind blew it out so quickly that the person holding it remained in indistinct outline.

Miner, having been previously chosen as spokesman, now advanced toward this door and said: "Ahem!" He was feeling it a different thing to plan to bully a fellow-man by force of numbers and another to make so ugly a statement to his face, while Ambrose in even deeper embarrassment flattened his thin body against the front wall of the cabin until it suggested a tall plank left to rest there over night.

"You got to git away from our district school-house to-night," blurted Miner at last; "Pennyroyal kin take care of its own coloured children 'thout help from the outside. But you needn't be scairt, for nobody's goin' to hurt you if you go peaceable, but there's a horse waitin' fer you out here and we'll 'low you fifteen minutes to clear out."

Then the little man jumped a few steps backward and the hand of each of his companions slipped toward the trigger of his gun. However, whatever of danger the past moment seemed to have had, it passed swiftly, for the weapon, held by the lonely figure in the doorway, dropped to the ground with a peculiar clatter, and an instant later the voice said:

"There aren't men enough in Kentucky to make me run away like a thief; if I am made to go it must be by force." The tones were low and tremulous, but were sufficiently clear and held no hint of surrender. Then, putting out both hands like a child at play in blind man's buff, the figure groped its way forth from the cabin, moving directly toward Miner and saying: "How can I talk with you, though, when I can't see you? Till to-night I never dreamed a Kentuckian would be ashamed to show his face."

Actually Miner's hand shook as he tore off his mask, for the figure approaching him was that of a woman, possibly a girl, and she must have been preparing for bed at the time the men arrived, for her hair was hanging over her shoulders, and through the opening of her wrapper there showed the white glimmer of a gown.

Even in the midst of his own shame and chagrin Ambrose inwardly chuckled, seeing that for the first time in his life Miner had to discuss a question with a woman without his primeval conviction that man was ordained to be always in the right and woman in the wrong.

"Madam, there has been some mistake; surely you can see that – " he began pompously. But the girl shook her head. "I told you I couldn't see anything."

Something of relief hid in Ambrose's grin this time, for if the Yankee school teacher had a sense of humour even the situation in which he and his companions found themselves was not utterly hopeless.

But an impatient voice now spoke from the crowd. "Oh, fer the love of heaven, can't you understand we didn't know you was a woman? Reckon we'd all 'a' come shyin' out here to drive a woman away? You pack up your duds in the mornin' and leave comfortable, and no more said."

"I won't," came the defiant answer. Then changing her tactics, the girl drew nearer Miner, and putting out one hand almost touched his coat sleeve, although actually he seemed to shrivel away under it. "Do let me stay, at least for a while," she pleaded. "My father was killed in the war; I have to make my own living and this is my first chance. I didn't know you would mind so much. And, please, I am not so very Yankee – Indiana is only just across the river."

There were no tears in the voice, but a sound so suspiciously near them that ten men, shuffling their feet, wished one of their number would speak.

At last an answer came from a long shadow against the front wall of the cabin. "Certain you kin stay, Miss, and thank you. Just move on inside your house now and lock the door, for there's some among us that mebbe won't be anxious to be recognized later on as havin' give you – well, a kind of house warmin' in the Pennyrile."

A moment later, while his companions were mounting their horses, Ambrose lingered, groping before the closed door; soon he touched something of strange formation with a smooth back and a prickly arrangement on the underneath side. "Lord, what a weapon of defence – a hairbrush," he drawled, slipping it into his pocket as he visioned the girl's interrupted preparations for the night. And then when old Liza had caught up with the others: "Boys, ain't to-night enough to cure us of Ku-Kluxing, or whatever you want to call this gol darn business?"

CHAPTER VII

EM'LY DUNHAM

"Her name's Em'ly Dunham," announced Miner shortly.

Ambrose, who at this moment was arranging a pyramid design of their new stock of calicoes on a counter in the front of their shop in order to get the best colour effect, looked up quickly and then put his hand over his lips.

"Whose named Em'ly Dunham?" he inquired in a partially stifled voice, with his interest apparently still concentrated on his work.

"You know, the Yankee school teacher," Miner growled. He was standing inside a kind of wire cage which separated the post-office department from the rest of the store of Hobbs & Thompson, the charge of the mail having recently been given to the two men.

"How'd you find out?"

"Letters!" The little man was assorting the mail with an energy that Pennyroyal's one dozen epistles or less a day hardly justified. This was one morning less than a week after the unsuccessful midnight excursion.

Ambrose now crossed his feet, resting his weight on his elbows against the bales of cotton cloth. He was staring solemnly at his partner. "Em'ly Dunham is a pretty name, Miner; kind of soft and gentle, yet with plenty of spirit in it. I am reckoning some one in Pennyroyal ought to try and make things up to her."

With a sigh the other man climbed up to perch on his high official stool. "Ain't you never goin' to stop thinkin' of females and marryin', Ambrose? I thought mebbe when you lost Sarah you was cured!"

Ambrose leaned farther over, shaking his head. "No," he answered simply, "I reckon not. I wonder ef you have ever thought, Miner, of how much them two little words – livin' and lovin' – are alike. I don't think it was an accident, jest the difference of that one little letter. Not that I intend marryin' again – I am through with marryin' forever – it's you, Miner Hobbs, I'm worryin' over." Here, because of his earnestness, Ambrose left his place and coming across the aisle looked down over the wire netting upon his friend. "Miner," he repeated as sternly as he was able, "your time has come. There ain't nothin' so no 'count on earth as an old bachelor. It's worse than an old maid and different, because perhaps an old maid couldn't help gettin' left out, but the Lord's given every man a chance to improve his condition jest by askin'. Course he may have to ask more'n one and mebbe more'n once, but there ain't no age limit to stop him. Then think, Miner, what chances always lies in villages. Why, villages is nature's nunneries. Ain't it time fer you to do a man's part?"

There was silence for a little time, Miner making no response, although from over in his corner Moses growled in his sleep.

Then the tall man coughed apologetically. He looked tired, as though he had been awake many hours the night before. "I didn't mean to rile you any," he continued, "only I can't help thinkin' that a man without a wife is like a little boat a-floatin' on the sea of life without a rudder and bound for nowhere in particular. Ef you don't marry you'll be awful sorry when you're an old man, Miner, and ef you've been kind of overfed on Pennyrile girls, why, this here new school teacher – "

Miner fairly bounced up and down on his stool in his impatience. "Lord, why shouldn't I be sorry when I'm old instead of when I'm young? Mebbe I won't live to get old and then I'd 'a' made myself wretcheder'n a slave and all fer nothin'."

At this second, the door opening, the speaker collapsed, while Ambrose shot backward behind the counter toward the rear of the shop. A flood of June sunshine entered with the girl, and Ambrose heard her name for the second time as she asked the terrified Miner for her mail. He also saw her plainly. She was twenty-five or perhaps a little more, with hair that was brown or gold as the light shone upon it; gray eyes set wide apart – eyes that might at times be cold and then shine warmly like a cloud suddenly shot through by the sun; her mouth was larger and her chin firmer than beauty requires, and yet both showed curves of frequent and redeeming laughter. She was tall, with broad shoulders and a slender body, and there was about her a hint of delicate and unconscious coquetry, noticeable as she talked with Miner while making her purchases, the little man coming out from his retreat to serve her and afterward following her into the street, where he was gone for almost an hour.

In the meantime it was difficult for Ambrose to attend properly to business, for never before had his partner left the store during working hours save for his meals and to attend the wedding of his sisters, two of whom had happily passed from his home to homes of their own. However, no words on the subject were exchanged when Miner curtly explained that Miss Dunham had too many bundles for a lady to carry.

It was after this extraordinary occurrence at their shop that Miner left Ambrose and Moses alone for three evenings in succession, the tall man sitting in his chair in the backyard under a ripening apple tree, with Moses at his side and his friend's empty chair near by. But although Ambrose drooped every now and then, he always smiled resolutely afterward. "It'll plumb be the salvation of Miner."

On the fourth night, however, Ambrose, having gone early to bed and fallen into a light sleep, was awakened by a knock at his kitchen door, and on coming downstairs again found his friend outside. "It ain't no hour to be in bed yet," Miner snapped. Knowing the little man had something unusual on his mind his friend led him to their accustomed refuge.

Ambrose and Miner were curiously incongruous figures that night in the garden, for the one man wore an oriental silk dressing-gown over a pair of hastily put on blue jean trousers; the gown, a scheme of deep rich colours and designs, having drifted into the shop one day by accident, had been seized upon by Ambrose to gratify a subconscious craving. It was tied about his waist with a red cord, and as he lolled back in his chair his eyes would travel from their study of his companion's face up toward the stars which he could see shining through the spaces between the leaves of his apple tree.

Miner kept his eyes always upon the ground; he had a chew of tobacco in his mouth, his lips worked spasmodically, but he did not speak, neither did be spit as a vent to his feelings, a tight, small man, buttoned up both inside and out! By and by, however, when nearly an hour had passed in silence, he rose to his feet.

"Reckon I'd better be goin', Ambrose; it's gettin' late. Good night."

But the tall man pushed him back again into his chair. "Lord, Miner, is it so hard for you to tell things, even to me?" he inquired. "Out with it!"

"Don't you go and be puttin' foolish ideas on to me if I tell you," Miner pleaded, "but it's just this: The women have made up their minds to put Miss Em'ly Dunham out of Pennyrile. Course we men tried and failed, so we give up, but when a woman starts out to do a thing, why she does it. Can't you think of no plan to make 'em stop, Ambrose, bein's as you've always had a kind of way with women?"

Ambrose shook his head, his homely face lined with sympathy. Poor Miner was unconscious of his own change of attitude toward the interloper, but surely he must not be turned back from the land of romance within whose gracious habitations Ambrose himself could never again hope to dwell.

"I don't see just what I kin do with the women," he was obliged to confess after a moment of hard thinking, "still ef we keep studyin' and studyin' no doubt we kin find a way."

CHAPTER VIII

THE FEMALE DELEGATION

There was no question – Susan Barrows inspired and headed the female delegation which early the next morning sallied forth to the district schoolhouse to call on Miss Dunham. Also, there was no doubt in the minds of any of its members before their call was made that the Yankee teacher would hastily retreat as soon as she understood that the ladies of Pennyroyal did not desire her presence among them and, furthermore, would not have it. However, of the result of their visit no one was informed during the ensuing hours of that day.

It was evening, before dark and yet some little time after supper, when Ambrose, ruminating on his back kitchen steps and worrying over the present situation, heard a noise of pots and pans that sounded like a skirmish of light artillery proceeding from his neighbour's house next door. So purposely assuming the expression of innocent solemnity that seemed most to inflame Mrs. Susan, he cautiously stepped across from his back yard to hers. On the door stoop he discovered Susan Jr., who, as the occupant of a hard chair, had both white stockinged legs stuck rebelliously out before her and, resting on her spinal column, held "Fox's Book of Martyrs" open in her lap. However, she was not reading it.

Sensing his approach before ever he could speak, Mrs. Barrows made an immediate appearance. She had a saucepan in her hand and her black eyes were wary. They were well matched adversaries, she and Ambrose, and, although already understanding perfectly the object of his visit, some time must pass before the one or the other could be forced into a surrender.

"Raisin' children is killin' work, Ambrose," Susan began at once, darting a direful glance at her offspring.

And Ambrose's voice was honey: "Most anythin's killin' work, ain't it, Susan?" he returned, depositing himself on the floor of her stoop so that his long legs overhung the side allowing his feet to touch the ground. "I've heard of folks lyin' in bed and doin' nothin' but singin' psa'ms continuous, and yet comin' to the same end."

"It's a lot peacefuller way." Mrs. Barrows' interest was now so plainly concentrated within her saucepan, whirling a kitchen towel around and around in it until its revolutions were fairly dizzying, that nothing could seem more remote from the remarks and behaviour of herself and her neighbour than any introduction of the subject uppermost in both their minds.

However, Susan Jr. did not belong to that noble army whose lives were at the present instant recorded in her lap, for, shutting up "The Book of Martyrs," she sniffed:

"I didn't do nothin' but laugh and tell the female delegation about the King with his ten thousand men who marched up a hill and then marched down again," she explained.

And in the face of this information what was the use of either Mrs. Barrows or Ambrose trying further to avoid the issue? The time had come for a voluntary surrender.

"She won't go, or at least she says she won't, though there ain't no use in me tellin' you, Ambrose, bein's as from Susan Jr.'s words you've already guessed," Susan struck in. "But when we ladies got out to the district school this mornin' in the bilin' sun, what do you think, that girl came a-runnin' out to meet us a-wavin' her hand and smilin' and pretendin' she believed we'd come to welcome her to 'Pennyrile.' And then before any of us ladies could speak and tell her our errand, why, she began showin' us around the old school-house and sayin' she knew we would understand, 'cause we were women too, how hard things would be for her if we didn't help her, until most of the delegates either plumb forgot the reason of our visitation or else was too skeered to speak up. It wasn't so with me!"