The Loves of Ambrose

Still at the gate the smile that greeted the approach of this dried-up little man was as radiant as the love of a woman.

"It's mortal good of you, Miner, to be goin' to the oyster show with me to-night, bein's as how you hate gatherin's," Ambrose began affectionately; "you've done give up a heap of tastes fer me first and last, ain't you, old friend? Now ef you'll wait here for me a few moments longer I'll be wholly ready to join you, for I kinder thought I'd like to speak with a few friends before the supper begins."

Ambrose started hastily back toward his front door with such an unmistakably jaunty air, such a forgetting of his rheumatic joints, that Miner's ferret eyes gleamed upon him suspiciously. Besides, was he not wearing an historic long coat, a strangely rusty stovepipe hat, and a white starched shirt over which his large lavender silk tie was crossed like a breastplate, and was he not also revealing yards of newly gray trousered legs?

"You wasn't aimin' to speak to no one in particular, was ye?" Miner inquired.

The long man stopped, noticeably blushing, and then, although the rest of his face remained grave, his eyes twinkled. "S'pose you don't know, Miner, how hard it is sometimes not to lie to the folks you love just because you love 'em? The Widow Tarwater druv past here a few minutes agone, she that was Peachy Williams, and though I ain't had more'n a bowin' acquaintance with her fer nigh forty years, knowin' that the Honourable Jones and our new Baptist preacher the Rev. Elias Tupper, are both after her, I kinder thought I'd like to see which one she favours the most."

Then Ambrose went quickly inside his cottage while Miner patiently waited on the outside, understanding that this moment of withdrawal to his own bedroom before finally leaving his home had become his friend's invariable custom since the death of his second wife, Emily, five years before.

In his bedroom the elderly man was standing before his bureau, where to one side hung the daguerreotype of a young woman.

"It's mortal queer, honey," he said aloud, "how I ain't ever able to go places or to do things 'thout expectin' you to come along, yet there's times when it feels like you'd been gone from me forever and then agen when it don't seem more'n a few weeks."

He was afterward leaving the room with his head bent and his eyes misty with tears when suddenly a smile twitched the end of his nose and the corners of his mouth lifted as he turned once more toward his picture.

"Lord, Em'ly darlin', wouldn't you laugh if three old codgers was to get into the race after the widow instid of two? I would admire to see them sure winners beaten by a dark horse!"

Five minutes later, Uncle Ambrose Thompson as he was now called by almost everybody in Pennyroyal, with every trace of lamentation removed clean from his face, was walking toward the new red brick church, having Miner's arm through his after their custom of more than thirty years. Moses could no longer accompany them, but was resting somewhat deeper under the apple tree than had been his habit in life.

While in the course of their walk Miner never once lifted his hat, Ambrose's was seldom allowed to rest for a moment on his head, for women of all ages smiled upon him and children breaking away from grown up hands came to be tossed in the air by his long arms. Uncle Ambrose had grown very popular with the children of Pennyroyal since the death of his and Emily's only child twenty years before, since it was then that he began bringing home to Emily for repairs all the crying babies he could steal, the boys who had stumped their toes and the girls with torn frocks and feelings.

In the Sunday-school room he immediately sailed up to the widow as gallantly as though his ship had not failed to enter her port in nearly forty years, and this when she was sheltered between the law and the gospel. But before Uncle Ambrose could speak a large soft hand grasped his lean and vital one.

"Welcome!" said the minister with unction.

Three years before, the Rev. Elias Tupper had entered Pennyroyal and with this same soft hand had since patted and soothed his congregation into following where their shepherd led. Indeed, the building of the brick church had been a tribute to his powers and to-night's oyster supper a kind of harvest festival to celebrate the last payment of the church's debt.

Nevertheless an unspoken antagonism had always existed between the Reverend Tupper and Ambrose Thompson, and indeed this was the first appearance of the tall man within the new church's domains.

Brother Tupper was a man of only medium height, but of considerable breadth, with cheeks as smooth and clean as a woman's. And while his lips were thin and his eyes expressionless his face managed to give the impression of a permanent smile, the kind of smile that can come from but one source, having nothing to do with amusement over people or things, nor even contentment in God's plan for His universe, but manifests only a supreme and personal self-satisfaction.

Now for the life of him Ambrose could not refrain from frowning, because, while his lips said, "Thank you," to himself he protested: "I ain't able to bear it; this man actin' toward me as though he was forgivin' me some mortal sin every time we meet."

Neither was the widow's greeting of him cheering, since forty years had not completely wiped away a certain never-explained retreat.

The promised plenitude of Peachy Williams' girlhood had been nobly fulfilled in the Widow Tarwater, for now she suggested an abundant harvest. A handsome black silk gown folded over her more than ample bosom, a double chin rippled from under the soft fulness of her broad face, her skin was white and crimson as a child's, her auburn hair without a thread of gray in it, and her huge brown eyes never having looked deep down into the waters of life showed none of its troubled reflections.

Uncle Ambrose nodded approvingly at her appearance the while she looked at him coldly, saying: "I ain't seen you to talk to in a long time, Ambrose Thompson."

His reply flatteringly included the member of the Kentucky legislature on the widow's right. "'Course you ain't, Peachy," he answered gallantly, "for when big stars is shinin' so close to a planet, t'ain't to be expected that the planet kin notice the little ones twitterin' about in her neighbourhood."

And yet when supper was served the widow found herself placed at a table for four whose other occupants were three men instead of the two whom she had expected.

CHAPTER XV

ORIGINAL SIN

The Widow Tarwater was in truth a pleasing vision.

Not once had Ambrose Thompson left her side, yet he had been uncommonly silent. Thoughts, rose coloured as a boy's dream of a holiday, were floating before his mind's eye; he had been but dimly conscious that two plates of warm soup had lately flowed into him the while the conversation around him flowed on unceasingly. For the spirit of romance, which is an eternal though elusive thing, was surely taking fresh hold on him this evening as his pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, and only Miner Hobbs, the little wooden figure of a man seated several tables off, was yet aware of his friend's exalted state.

At the present moment the Rev. Elias Tupper was talking to the widow. He had but lately traversed the room crowded with tables and resplendent with decorations of harvest apples, pumpkins, goldenrod and tall tasselled stalks of corn, dispensing pleasantries as one would lollipops; and now amid much joking, laughter, and nudging had been allowed to take his place next the widow, only the legislator, who was making but a few weeks' visit in Pennyroyal, appearing disquieted.

It was past seven o'clock and assuredly the new Baptist Sunday-school room was now the centre of Pennyroyal's social activities, when unexpectedly the tall figure of a boy lurched into the room – Pennyroyal's black sheep, a boy taller than any man in the village save Ambrose Thompson.

There was a dismayed flutter and then an uncomfortable silence.

Now there are black sheep and black sheep with extenuating circumstances, but this boy had none of the extenuating circumstances – a respectable family, money in the bank, or a line of distinguished but self-indulgent ancestors; no, he was simply a sandy-haired, loose-jointed boy of about twenty-one who worked about the Widow Tarwater's stables – one of nature's curious anomalies, a boy without a father.

He looked about the homely, cheerful company at first with defiance, and then, feeling the weight of his loneliness and degradation, fell to crying foolishly. "I don't see why I ain't a right to your church social; if I ain't no name of my own, I got to be the son of some man in this town!"

It was such a sudden, unlooked for accusation piercing the holy covering of every hard-shelled Baptist brother in the new Sunday-school room that for the moment the little group of men were staggered. Then while they were making up their minds as to which one should have the privilege of throwing out the intruder, a familiar tall figure was seen crossing the floor, and putting his arm about the lubbering, drunken boy.

"Come along, sonnie; steady now," he whispered, leading him quickly away.

Half an hour later, sauntering back to the church social, Uncle Ambrose found that supper time was past and that the tables having been cleared away there was more and more room for conversation. Once again he sought the Widow Tarwater's side, but this time was received more graciously, for, putting out a trembling hand, she clasped Uncle Ambrose's with gratitude. "I'm obliged to you, Ambrose Thompson," she said. "That boy's ever been a thorn in my flesh. I have kept him at the farm because my late husband was good to him, but after to-night I don't feel called to have him stay on."

The Rev. Elias Tupper's voice thereafter was sufficiently loud to reach the ears of a number of the members of his congregation who were grouped about nearby.

"That boy," he announced, folding his short arms across his chest and sighing deeply, "is a painful example of original sin."

Since his return to the room up to this time Uncle Ambrose had made no remark, but now clearing his throat he eyed the last speaker for so long in silence that a little clacking noise was heard close by him and an old, old woman with an ear trumpet held to her ear leaned so far out of her wheeled chair that only her daughter's restraining hand kept her from falling.

"Original sin, Brother Elias?" The tall man drawled his question thoughtfully. "I wonder now why you speak of this boy's weaknesses as original sin? I've done lived in Pennyrile a right smart number of years and I ain't been witness to a single original sin. Seems like every fault a human crittur commits is just a plain copy of some fault that has gone before him. And I reckon it's more'n likely there's a good many original sinners among us men here to-night that has been original along pretty much the same lines as this here boy."

There was an unspoken yet moving appeal in the sympathetic tones of the well-known voice, softening some of the women listeners and a few of the men, but the Hon. Calvin Jones had still to be heard from.

There are men in this world to whom even the simplest exchange of words is a chance for oratory. So the Honorable Calvin, frowning and with one finger thrust in his coat, by his dramatic silence held his audience for a moment spellbound.

"May I inquire," he thundered, "if this lad whom Mr. Ambrose Thompson has just rescued and – er – defended, is any relation of his?"

In the interrogation itself there was no offence, but to every grown-up person who heard, the insinuation was plain enough.

To the tips of his big ears Uncle Ambrose flushed. "No, sir, he's not my son," he answered the man, who was a stranger to him before this evening, "and maybe I'm glad and maybe I'm sorry. For I won't say since my daughter and Em'ly's died that I ain't thought most any kind of a child's better than no child at all." He hesitated and then went on in pretty much his same old fashion of talking to himself: "Come to think of it now, mebbe in a way this boy is a son of mine, for I kind er think that every young man that plays the fool is the son of every man that's played the fool before him."

And then with a friendly smile he turned again toward the widow.

"Ambrose," she faltered, with two round tears rolling down her plump cheeks, "Brother Elias and Mr. Jones advise against it, but maybe you are thinkin' I ought to give that boy another chance."

The tall man pressed the soft hand and shook his head.

"No, Peachy, I ain't never felt in my life that I knowed what another person ought to do, but ef I've studied 'em long enough and close enough I know pretty well what they will do. I took that boy home to spend the night with me, but I'll be drivin' out to your place with him to-morrow toward sundown. I'm more'n anxious fer a little old-time chat with you."

CHAPTER XVI

THE ETERNAL FIRE

Uncle Ambrose poured the grace of forgiveness upon the pile of buckwheat cakes on his guest's plate next morning in the form of an over-supply of maple syrup, saying kindly: "Eat well, sonnie; we ain't goin' to talk over the events of last evening till you are feeling a little stronger in the stomach."

And though the boy crimsoned and looked sullen, he proved his recovery by his application to the cakes.

"I was an awful fool last night," he mumbled apologetically a few moments later.

"You were," Uncle Ambrose replied, "but then being a young fool ain't so bad; it's bein' an old one that's serious," and his faded blue eyes twinkled self-accusingly, while the boy went on talking into his plate.

"Course I didn't know what I was doin' when I bust into that social. Not that it matters; nobody kires fer me about here, and I'll pretty soon be clearin' out. The widow won't want me back to the farm."

Uncle Ambrose leaned on his table, facing the young man so squarely that the boy was obliged to raise his bloodshot blue eyes to his.

"Nobody don't kire fer you in Pennyroyal? That ain't the important thing; don't you kire fer somebody, Sam? That's what keeps a man straight. If we was stone images now set up in a desert, why, we might hope to have people come a-worshippin' of us, but bein's as we are just ordinary – sometimes very ordinary – human bein's, seems like we might do the lovin' end ourselves." The older man searched the face opposite him keenly. "How old are you?" he inquired suddenly.

"'Bout twenty," was the answer. "I wasn't more'n eight or ten when Farmer Tarwater brought me to his farm and give me my schoolin' till I was a good sized boy. He was more of a friend to me than anybody's ever been."

Uncle Ambrose waved the last statement aside. "Mebbe he was your friend and mebbe he wasn't, but the thing that worries me about you most, Sam, ain't last night's scrape nor the rest of the foolishnesses you been gettin' into in this village. It's you settin' right here at my table and you more'n twenty, been raised in Kentucky and got eyes in your head, and yet tellin' me you don't kire fer nobody! The Widow Tarwater told me I could bring you back to the farm this evenin' ef you was feelin' yourself, but mebbe you'd better stay along with me 'till I kin kind of find something to prop up under you."

But the boy's tanned face grew redder than usual. "I didn't say I didn't kire fer no one; I said there was no one kired fer me. There's a girl – "

Now the tall man's hand struck the breakfast table until the plates on it fairly danced.

"Glory, I knowed you'd more sense 'n you showed!" he announced triumphantly, and coming around to refill his visitor's plate put his arm affectionately around his shoulder. "You got the best thing on earth, boy, to keep you goin'; you got to learn a girl to love you." Uncle Ambrose's emotional old face quivered with the glory of the chase. "Course your girl don't kire fer you now, you ain't worth it, but you up and show her what lovin' her has done fer you. And mebbe I'll keep right 'longside of you, Sam."

This confidence was by no means finished, but at this moment a thin, brown shadow, faithful as the rising and setting of the sun, appearing at the dining-room window, Uncle Ambrose's further remarks were choked off. Returning from the kitchen a moment later he put down more cakes on the table and then shook his guest's hand in farewell. "I got to leave you now fer the day; Miner's come to git me to start fer the store, but there's one thing I want you to recollect while you're waitin' here fer me, sonnie, and that's that the good Lord sends a new day once in every twenty-four hours just to show folks they kin begin agen."

It was a long day in the shop both to Miner and Ambrose. Inevitably the little man had grown more morose and bitter as the years went by. For in spite of Emily's and Ambrose's pleading he had gone but seldom to his old place under the apple tree after their marriage, and when his six sisters made homes of their own he had lived entirely alone. Indeed old Moses had seemed the only companion he had ever cared for except Ambrose, and on the day of Ambrose's second marriage the dog had moved himself and his allegiance from the tall man's house to the little one's and had never gone home again except to be buried.

Ambrose kept surreptitiously watching the clock from the noon hour on until his partner removed it clean out of sight in the back of the shop: however, an hour before closing time Ambrose began putting away his share of the stock, remarking airily, "I thought I'd git away a little sooner than usual this evenin', Miner, ef you don't mind."

To this the little man at first returned nothing, but seeing his friend step over to their assortment of new neckties and laying aside his old lavender one begin to match a bright red one to the shade of his own complexion, he sighed. "I reckon you feel it comin' on agen, Ambrose?"

Ambrose nodded. "It started last night at the social," he replied truthfully, "and then those other two men's actions kind er sicked me on. Peachy has done ripened and sweetened considerable; mebbe you noticed it, Miner?" he ended hopefully.

But Miner only scowled. "She's fat and old, but t'aint nothin' to you, Ambrose Thompson, once you're started. I was kind er hopin' you'd be faithful to Em'ly."

However, in the midst of his reproach his partner had vanished; nevertheless, ten minutes later, he came back into the shop and seating himself on the counter appeared lost in thought for some little time.

"Miner," he confessed finally, "I am a-settin' here tryin' to git a little light on the subject of myself. I ain't feelin' unfaithful to Em'ly 'cause I'm noticin' the widow; I never felt unfaithful to Sarah when I married Em'ly. I tell you, Miner Hobbs, that what's workin' in me now is that I ain't able to git old and give up 'thout makin' a fight. It ain't gray hair and wrinkles that make folks hate gettin' old, it's dryin' up, losin' their spark, so to speak. Now there's nothin' that makes a man feel such an all fired lot younger as fallin' in love over agen." He laughed. "'Course I ain't recommendin' dynamite, Miner, which is fallin' in love with a new woman when you got an old one. That's my way, 'cause fate's done sent it so fer me, and we got to make our lives out of what we git. But why can't a man just start in ever so often fallin' in love agen and recourtin' his wife till he gits himself and her all woke up as in the old days? I ain't sayin' it's as easy with a stale girl as with a fresh one, but, Lord!" – and here the shadows chased each other across the luminous elderly face – "I could 'a' kep' on courtin' Em'ly till kingdom come and thanked God fer the chance, ef He had but seen fit to spare her to me so long."

And then Uncle Ambrose slipped off the counter and went away and drove Sam out to the Widow Tarwater's Red Farm, which was now twice the size it had been in her youth, since Peachy had married the young man owning the place adjoining hers.

Yet somehow Uncle Ambrose's anticipated visit proved a disappointment.

In the first place, both of his rivals were there before him, and there was something in their attitude and in the widow's manner that made him hot with the desire to get the representatives of the law and the gospel out behind a fence and have everybody roll up their sleeves. However, since no open accusations were made and a woman was present, what was there for him to do but to make a short stay and then return slowly home? – home, to live through what was perhaps the most extraordinary experience of Ambrose Thompson's entire lifetime. For nearly sixty years he had lived in the village of Pennyroyal, been a friend to all its people, his life had been there for them to see and interpret, and yet with the first breathings of calumny the record of his whole career was smirched. Still he made no protest, for what does denial count if a man's character cannot save him? His visits to the widow were continued, however, and always he found her in a flutter between affection and fear. Nevertheless, Uncle Ambrose was merely biding his time, but in the meanwhile Miner's silence and devotion were more healing than any ointment.

CHAPTER XVII

THE REVIVAL SERVICE

Ambrose was raking the dead leaves in his front yard two weeks after the oyster supper when Susan Barrows summoned him across to her with a wave of her ear trumpet. All day she sat outdoors in her wheeled chair, huddled in rugs, until the snow came, with her eager old eyes fastened on the street, her curiosity hungry after eighty years.

Ambrose knelt beside her with his lips to her trumpet.

"They're sayin' ugly things about you," she whispered. Then seeing the hurt in the man's face that even Miner had not fully understood, she rested her trembling hand on his gray head. "Talkin' but not believin', Ambrose Thompson. I ain't sayin' that some people don't agree to this ugly story, since whatever's ugly naturally pleases 'em, but the most of Pennyroyal is just rollin' this bit of scandal 'bout you under their tongues like a sweet morsel and then spittin' it out, knowin' it ain't fitten to swallow. But what worries me is that I'm afeard you'll be losin' the widow. Here's Brother Tupper startin' in with a series of revival services to-night at his new church, and the legislator neglectin' the welfare of his State to keep close to the widow! Not that it's the law I am so much scared of as the preacher. Peachy's plump and jelly-like and kin be easy shook, and I ain't been a female eighty years 'thout knowin' how easy 'tis to work on our religious feelin's. You goin' to the revivin'?"

Not at once did Uncle Ambrose reply; instead he seemed to be considering.

"I'm not at all sure, Miss Susan; seems like I've felt kind of lonesome in church since we lost Brother Bills, but I've more'n half way promised Peachy; she seemed so dead set on my attendin'."

Susan grinned. "Ef she's worryin' about you needin' religious instruction, Ambrose, don't you lose hope. It's a powerful wifely sign."

And so Uncle Ambrose went on back to his work, vaguely comforted though not yet certain whether or not to obey the widow's request. To tell the truth, he had comparatively little faith in his own chance with Peachy, since his befriending the boy Sam had brought with it so unfortunate a result. And yet the thought of the possession of the Widow Tarwater had daily grown more and more alluring as his rivals' claims progressed, and she seemed so much less ready for his picking than in past times.

Late that evening when the first of the present series of revival services was in full swing, a tall man cautiously entered an open door. He had never yet been inside the church itself, and to-night found it crowded to the doors with men and even women standing in the aisles. Uncle Ambrose felt annoyed, for having made a special effort to be subservient he certainly desired that the widow should know of it, and, moreover, though he preferred not having the matter discussed, frequent rheumatic twinges in his right leg made standing for any length of time an impossibility.

Now he shoved himself forward, politely edging his way between saints and sinners alike, hoping that Mrs. Tarwater would at least get a passing glimpse of him, when at the front of the church, to his immense surprise, he discovered an entirely empty pew.