The Loves of Ambrose

"Ain't it about time you was inquirin' concernin' Miss Dunham?" Susan demanded; "you're 'most the only person now in Pennyrile that ain't, and ef there's one thing I more'n another nacherally despise it's folks proppin' up a thing when it's standin' firm and don't need help, and then beginnin' to ease off when mebbe it's likely to fall."

"How is Miss Dunham?" Ambrose queried, and the older woman gave him a curious look. "She ain't dyin' sick yet, Doctor Webb says, but it's worse 'n he thought, 'cause it ain't plain chills and fever; mebbe it's the typhoids."

At this information Ambrose paled slightly, but when his neighbour had disappeared into her house for fresh clothes and supplies his expression grew more peaceful.

"Em'ly's turnin' out a lot better actress 'n I thought," he said to himself. "I wasn't figurin' on her play actin' so long."

He was leaning on his rake, having suddenly lost every atom of energy, when Susan, passing out again, dealt him another blow.

"Ain't you never goin' to stop mopin', Ambrose Thompson? I'm sick of lookin' at you," she said. "Seems like there's nothin' on this earth more tryin' than the way some folks act dead 'cause some one they love is. Ef the Lord hadn't wanted you to live, man, I reckon He'd 'a' took you with Sarah. 'Tain't likely He wants dead folks on His livin' earth!" And then Mrs. Barrows hurried away to her charge, having left behind her sufficient inspiration to persuade Ambrose to finish the task of tidying up his yard.

And so another week went by, Ambrose and Miner in the meanwhile having less to say to each other than at any time in their lives since they had learned to speak, and never meeting any more outside of working hours. Nevertheless when they were together, although Miner's manner continued surly and unapproachable, his eyes constantly watched the face of his former friend, while Ambrose never altered in his old attitude of affection toward him.

Yet on Sunday morning, as Ambrose stood dressing for church in front of his yellow pine bureau, without warning his bedroom door suddenly opened and in stalked Miner. Grave and silent he waited, until when the meeting bell sounded, he started forth to church, leaning as of old on the arm of his friend, and entering his pew sat down beside him.

Ambrose did not pay a great deal of attention to the beginning of the service that day; on coming in he noticed that Susan and Doctor Webb were not in their accustomed places, but afterward he seemed always to have been listening to the August hum of the bees just outside the raised window on his side of the pew. Through it he could also see the deep rose of the ripening pink clover fields, smell their almost overpowering sweetness, till with the weight on his chest which he never shook off these days he wondered if Emily, who loved the outdoors as he did, was not by this time weary of feigning illness.

Then Brother Bibbs so changed the order of the usual Sunday routine that it must have startled Ambrose into consciousness. The elderly man had finished his sermon, but instead of at once announcing the closing hymn to be followed by the benediction, he stood clearing his throat, his little worn face paling with emotion.

"Brether'n and sister'n," he began slowly, "there be faith, hope and charity, these three things, but the greatest of these is charity. I want you now to fall on your knees with me and pray for the life of the young woman lately come into our midst whom we, like the Pharisees of old, have tried to cast out. I want you to pray for that young Yankee school teacher, Miss Emily Dunham, because she is powerful sick, and if the good Lord takes her to Him, I don't see just how we are coming out with the greatest of these three things."

While the rest of the congregation were falling upon their knees Ambrose somehow got himself out of the church, nor did he realize during the moment of his leaving that Miner was there hanging on to his arm. After a time, however, when both men were walking toward the log cabin, he turned to his friend, whispering brokenly:

"I didn't know she was sick really, Miner. I thought she was just play actin' same as I asked her to."

And Miner nodded. "My fault. I suspicioned your ignorance, but I ain't been able to break it. Em'ly told me of your letter soon as it come. She hadn't been feelin' any too well before then, though she'd sort 'er been hidin' it, and afterward she kep' a-gettin' worse and worse."

When finally they had come near the cabin, Ambrose sat down on the selfsame stump where he had waited so long for Emily on the afternoon of their first meeting, and since he would not go inside the house Miner went in without him, promising to bring back news. However, several hours passed and Miner did not return; Ambrose saw Doctor Webb leave the house, stay away half an hour and then go back into it and remain there. Then afterward Brother Bibbs followed him in, and Mrs. Webb and a dozen or more Pennyroyal townsfolk appeared clustering in a hushed group near the little schoolhouse door.

Nevertheless the waiting time did not seem long to Ambrose Thompson, since he was living over every moment he had ever spent with Emily, hearing the sound of her laughter, feeling the touch of her hand over his, and then remembering how he had wondered in the days since his surrender whether it would not have been easier for him to have given her up through death.

It was dusk when Miner laid his hand on Ambrose's arm; he had not seen the little man's approach.

"It's past, the crisis," Miner said huskily; "she's better and has been askin' for you."

Then Ambrose rose, but he didn't move in the direction of the cabin; instead, he began running toward home, Miner having difficulty in keeping up with him. And it was hearing Miner's hard breathing behind that finally made him slow up.

"I couldn't 'a' gone to her, Miner," he explained. "Can't you see, ef I should 'a' seen her lyin' there so white and helpless I couldn't 'a' helped takin' her in my arms and tellin' her I loved her. No man kin bear it when it looks like the woman he loves is needin' him."

CHAPTER XII

A LIGHT IN DARKNESS

Afterward, when the two men had parted for the night, Miner went directly to his home, and there in his usual methodical fashion undressed and got himself into bed, although all the time his dark face was twisting and working, his mouth dry, while the mind of the man had no knowledge of what his hands were doing. For Miner, without understanding it, was alone on his high mountain where every man must stand who knows what it is to desire and to surrender. So what does it matter that his mountain was the attic bedroom of a cottage and that the little man who wrestled with the devil stood but five feet two in his stocking feet and weighed only a hundred and five pounds, or even that his "Get thee behind me, Satan," was so differently put?

Because when Miner's fight was over he merely said: "I ain't never been at all certain in my mind that I could love a woman, so more'n likely I've all along been mistaken 'bout Em'ly. Seems like there ain't but one mortal thing on this earth I am sure on and that's – Ambrose!"

And yet the little man recalled nothing of the story of David and Jonathan, and, even if he had, could never have appreciated how their story touched his.

Nevertheless, it was one thing to decide to make a sacrifice of himself and his love to his friend, and quite a different thing to persuade that friend to accept it. For some time poor Miner puzzled; Ambrose would not even go out to the log cabin during the period of Emily's convalescence, though getting daily reports of her condition through him and through Doctor Webb. Susan Barrows, for some unexplainable reason, absolutely declined to speak to her next door neighbour when, after the period of her nursing was over, she had once more returned home.

There were harassed hours when unwittingly Miner came near to laying the case before Ambrose, being so accustomed, in all other matters requiring imagination, to relying on that of his friend. It is all very well to think that he might just have plainly stated his own change of mind and heart, but measuring the extent of the renunciation by what it would have meant to him, so surely Ambrose would never have accepted his sacrifice.

No, some more ingenious method must be devised, and Hamlet did not devote more agony to discovering a plan for avenging his father's death than Miner to finding a way of new life for Ambrose.

One afternoon the little man was limping slowly along the dusty August turnpike leading out from Pennyroyal with Moses, who, feeling his need, had accompanied him, yet, now too stiff to walk far, was being carried in his arms, when the attention of both the man and dog were arrested by the spectacle of an old darky trying to drive a mule, hitched to a wagonload of green-corn, into Pennyroyal, the mule having at this point positively declined to go farther.

It was inspiration in a strange guise, and yet inspiration must necessarily come to us in the character of the events that make up our lives.

The darky coaxed and threatened and beat his willow switch bare of leaves; the mule, spreading her legs to the four corners of the globe, remained firm. By and by the negro got down from his seat and with Miner's aid gathered a small pile of chips, which, with a piece of paper, were placed under the mule and set fire to. Then an instant later, when the mule started trotting amiably off toward Pennyroyal, Miner's heart began singing its own peculiar anthem of thankfulness, and immediately afterward he hurried off for a visit to Emily at the log cabin.

On coming back to the shop so changed was his expression and so cleared his look of doubt that Ambrose, feeling sure Emily had just accepted him, wished to God Miner would confide in him and so let his darkest hour be lived through.

But Miner said nothing then. However, when his regular hour came around once more he appeared taking his accustomed chair next his friend's under the apple tree in his yard. And yet here Miner still continued mute, although moving about far more restlessly than usual, while Ambrose, patiently waiting for him to speak, felt the sharpness of his earlier desire succeeded by a kind of apathy. Finally at some little distance off a clock in a church tower struck eight.

"My foot itches to-night, Ambrose," Miner announced suddenly.

"Shake it," advised his listener, whose mind was certainly on a far different line of thought.

But Miner, only squirming and twisting about the more, complained:

"Seems like it's one of them things that can't be shook off. I was just a-thinkin' it might be better to go for a walk than to sit here so eternal."

And here Ambrose, feeling that the little man would never get out his confession to-night, sighed: "Suit yourself, ef you like walking better. I reckon I kin make out the rest of the evening alone."

Nevertheless, Miner did not stir. Instead, taking another bite at a fresh plug of tobacco, he chewed on it fiercely for a moment longer. "I was aimin' for you to come with me," he said, "bein's as you know I ain't able to git on too well with this lame leg."

The soft summer night stirred in Ambrose no inclination for movement, and indeed far rather would he have been alone and undisturbed, yet now getting up slowly, lifting his great height in sections, he offered his arm to his friend.

Then the two men started off together, walking far more rapidly than usual on a summer night's stroll, for Miner seemed to have forgotten his lameness, and the fury of his spirit rushed them both ahead. Every now and then, furtively, he kept feeling in his back pocket, but the tall man did not notice him nor was he for some time aware in what direction he was being led.

A half moon shone in the sky, and the night was clear and still.

Then suddenly at a turn in a country road Ambrose abruptly halted, letting his companion's arm slide from his own. For at this turn in the road to the end of his life must Ambrose Thompson wake to consciousness, since from here in the daylight could be seen the first glimpse of the log schoolhouse, and though not visible by night its spiritual presence was the plainer.

"I ain't goin' with you to Em'ly's to-night, Miner," Ambrose declared quietly; "it's more'n I kin stand and more'n you've the right to ask. I wasn't countin' on you tryin' to outwit me." The words were spoken with only reasonable reproach, and yet the little man turned on the speaker fiercely.

"You jist wait here, Ambrose Thompson, till I git back, and keep on waitin' in the same place, for ef you don't I'll never forgive you, God knows." And off trotted Miner toward the cabin, until his small form was lost in the darkness.

Of course Ambrose waited, it having always been his custom to give way to Miner in small things, and, as he had grown unaccountably weary, stretched himself full length on the ground, and there a moment later the man felt himself in the grip of the primal instinct that all big men and some big women know. His will kept his long clean body still, yet everything else in him called out the strong man's right over the weak. The earth that mothered him proved it in all her moods. And yet there only a few paces ahead of him Miner was holding Emily in his arms. One swift rush and – here Ambrose checked his vision, for he would not stir one foot.

Therefore, at first, the slight crackling noise at some little distance off made no impression upon him, but almost at once and without his own volition his long, sensitive nose sniffed the odour of smoke somewhere in the woods. The next instant a flame shot up in the air and Ambrose with it, for the flame came directly from the neighbourhood of Emily's cottage.

"Lord!" murmured Ambrose as he ran, "Em'ly's house is afire, and she hasn't no one but a little runt like Miner to look after her."

CHAPTER XIII

THE SURPRISE PARTY

He Ran straight on into – Emily.

The girl, having been attracted by the light back of her cabin, had just come out into her yard and so saw the impossible figure flying toward her, and in all the world there was never but one other man so homely and so beautiful.

"I – I thought your house was afire," Ambrose announced huskily.

He had stopped so close to the girl that she caught both his hands in hers, pressing one for an instant against her cheek.

"Something is burning in the woods; it doesn't matter," she answered; "but, oh, Ambrose, you have been such a long time in coming to me!"

The girl's eyes were shining, her figure perfectly distinct, and she wore the primrose dress, yet Ambrose knowing this did not believe he had dared look at her.

"I haven't come to you now," he defended stoutly; "I was just afeard to trust you to Miner in a fire."

Then Emily laughed the low understanding laugh that was her greatest charm, and all the while drawing her companion with her toward their bench in front of her door, she sat down beside him, still keeping one hand in his gently resisting fingers; there seemed to be no fear and no shyness about Emily to-night; she was too exquisitely a thing of love.

"Yet you were willing to trust my life and soul and everything there is about me to Miner," she said slowly. "Ah, isn't that like a man! But, dear, Miner hasn't been near me since early this afternoon," she continued, "and then he came for such a funny Miner reason. He wanted to tell me that if ever I'd thought he had any leaning toward me, it wasn't in no ways true. Because so far as he could see there wasn't nothin' a woman could be or do that could make up for her troublesomeness."

With this Emily quietly withdrew her hand and sitting still wondered if Ambrose had even heard her, for he did not speak at first, yet when turning he looked at her, the light of the fire making his face quite clear, the girl's eyes filled with tears. "Has it been so bad as that?" she whispered.

Ambrose nodded. "I ain't ever goin' to be able to tell you how I love you, honey, but it seems like everything that has gone before in my life and is comin' after is done made up fer by to-night."

Then after a little, when they had talked for a while and been silent a while longer, Emily put her head down on Ambrose's shoulder so that he might not see her face.

"I am thinking about Sarah; every woman thinks about the other woman some time," she confessed.

"Little Sarah?" Ambrose waited. "Was you wantin' me to say I didn't love her, honey? 'cause I can't. Would it 'a' been fairer to you, I wonder, ef I hadn't had a heart big enough fer lovin' some one before ever I set eyes on you? Sarah was young and needed me, and I reckon I loved her all I was able to then, but there wasn't so much of me to love her with as there is now. You see, Em'ly darlin', the dark waters has sort 'er passed over me, and I ain't in my springtime no more. Then lovin' and losin' does learn us a lot: but I ain't never goin' to care fer nobody as I do fer you, 'cause nobody else'll ever understand me and match up to me same as you do." But here Ambrose, sighing, pushed back his faded straw-coloured hair with the old puzzled gesture. "Still, honey, ef anything ever happens, I feel just obleeged to tell you, I reckon I'm the kind that plumb couldn't live on this earth without lovin' some one."

For a troubled instant Emily hesitated, and then with a sympathy so perfect that it was to last for ever and ever, and with another understanding laugh, she lifted up her head and kissed her truthful lover.

So that by and by when the fire in the woods back of them had died down they were both so happy that they neither saw nor heard the figure in the papaw grove stealing along a few yards to one side of them, though in the darkness of the tangled thicket it stumbled several times and for want of a helping arm limped painfully along.

Nevertheless five minutes later Ambrose and Emily both jumped hurriedly to their feet. For unexpectedly there sounded a noise as of many persons approaching the log cabin along the route which Ambrose had just taken. In another moment a procession came into sight and at the head and front walked Mrs. Barrows in her best purple linsey petticoat and scoop bonnet and carrying a basket on her arm. Following her were ten, twenty, thirty or more of the leading citizens of Pennyroyal, male and female, attired in their Sunday clothes and bearing packages.

"It's some kind of a forgiveness party," Ambrose whispered nervously; "seems like I'd better hide," and once again he attempted to flatten his thin body against the wall of the cabin.

Susan Barrows took Emily in her arms. "We're surprisin' you, child, and I hope we're pleasant," she explained. "Fer my own part I ain't never had nothin' happen to me suddint in my life that ain't been plumb distasteful, so I argued some with the folks to let you know we was comin'. But there's people in villages that finds things so slow and samewise it appears they think any kind of a start's better then nothin' happenin', so here we are!"

Susan's speech having been somewhat longer than her neighbours cared to listen to, the men and women of the party in the meanwhile had come crowding up around Emily until she had the sensation of shaking hands with a dozen persons at once, and all of them were smiling at her and saying how glad they were to know she was well again and wouldn't she live always in Pennyroyal, until Mrs. Barrows was actually thrust to one side. However, in that instant she managed to unearth Ambrose, who, appreciating what was taking place, had thought it best to step forth out of the shadow. Sheepishly he extended his hand to his neighbour and in the moonlight Susan got a good view of his face.

Her eyes snapped. "Good Lord! what a turn you've done give me!" she exclaimed, and then taking a closer survey: "Ambrose Thompson, I ain't more'n halfway suspicioned 'bout you and Em'ly Dunham before this night, but ef ever there's a surprise party in this village when you don't get there first, why I'd like to know!"

PART THREE

HIS THIRD WIFE

"Is there no ending of mirth?Will time former unloosenFresh fonts clear, bubbling, and brightFrom the drainless youth of the earth?"

CHAPTER XIV

THIRTY YEARS

Pennyroyal bore witness to the permanence of material things untroubled by spirit. Thirty years had passed since Ambrose Thompson's last honeymoon, and yet the little town had not greatly changed.

One afternoon in October, when from the same double row of linden trees, with only here and there a fallen comrade, a shower of wrinkled golden leaves was filling the ruts in the same road that once held the blossoms of an earlier spring, the door of a cottage opened and an elderly man stepped forth, humming a tune and began walking slowly down toward the front gate. He was dressed in gala attire and, observing a bed of purple asters that were growing near his path, stooped to gather one of the flowers. Getting up with a groan, he placed a hand on the small of his back, remarking testily: "Looks like I was gettin' powerful onlimber these days," and then jigging stiffly about to disprove his assertion he placed the aster in his buttonhole.

Pennyroyal was unusually stirred up over something, for at five o'clock her streets were filling with people in their best clothes, all moving toward the same spot – the new red brick Baptist church, with a cupola, which stood where Brother Bibbs's old frame meeting house had once held place.

A carriage advanced slowly, an open Victoria drawn by a pair of handsome Kentucky horses and containing besides the coachman two other persons, a man and a woman. The man was a product of an oratorical period in Kentucky; he had the beak nose, the rolling black eyes, long hair and heavy forensic shoulders that had already landed the Hon. Calvin Breckenridge Jones as representative of the Pennyroyal district in the State Capitol at Frankfort, while it was a common supposition that only a lack of money had kept him from climbing higher. His companion, the Widow Tarwater, was the richest widow in the county.

Now as the carriage drew near the man at the gate, the bow with which he greeted the widow had in it the dignity and devotion of a benediction.

"Lord, what a woman!" he exclaimed a moment later in a deliciously rich and reasonable voice. "Looks like there's some people same as fruits, they don't noways mellow till age gets 'em."

Then once more lifting his hat, the speaker, Ambrose Thompson, now a man of almost sixty, attempted pushing back the hair from his forehead, apparently forgetting that his hair had retreated so far backward over his high dome that the few remaining locks tastefully arranged in front suggested the ripples left by a receding wave along a shore. Also his face was deeply lined and his shoulders stooped considerably, and yet in spite of these and other signs of age in some indefinable way Ambrose Thompson had kept his boyishness. Not having travelled more than a hundred miles out of Pennyroyal, nevertheless he had the eternal youthfulness of spirit which belongs to all life's true adventurers.

"Ambrose Thompson's lookin' powerful spruce this evenin', ain't he?" A woman of about forty, with quick birdlike movements, shrieked this remark into an ear trumpet which was being held up by a shrivelled figure in a wheeled chair that had just been projected forth from the house next door with such suddenness that it seemed likely to spill out its feeble occupant.

The old woman's head nodded helplessly, and yet out of her withered face her black eyes still shone with an unquenchable fire. At this instant Ambrose, catching sight of Mrs. Barrows, blew a kiss across his dividing fence to her, so that she laughed, before replying, the pleased monotonous laugh of deafness and old age.

"Ef it's an evergreen spruce you're meanin', Susan Jr., then you're more'n right, for it seems Ambrose Thompson's leaves are forever green and the sap runnin' in him same as spring. But hurry me along, I don't want to miss nothin' of this oyster party, and mebbe ef you kin set me right about in the middle of the new Sunday-school room, I kin sort er reckon on what's goin' on."

The two women then moved so rapidly down the street that they almost ran into a man who was hobbling in the opposite direction leaning on a cane; his face as dry of any human emotion as though it had been a squeezed-out dishcloth. He was attempting to move past the wheeled chair without speaking, when a claw hand reached out after him. "Scared of a female past eighty, Miner Hobbs," the old voice cheered. "Ain't it a God's blessing no woman has run off with you – yet?"