HIS SECOND WIFE
"Heaven mend us all"
RECONSTRUCTION
"Howlong has it been since, Mrs. Barrows?" asked the Baptist minister.
"Eight years, Brother Bibbs," Susan answered.
They were standing in front of Susan Barrows' cottage one late June afternoon in the summer of 1866.
The minister sighed, flapping his worn coat-tails as a signal of distress. Mrs. Barrows was gazing at the house next door. There the lilac bush which had showed its first blossoms on that morning of Ambrose's runaway had grown to full estate. Its season having passed, however, it was no longer in bloom, but instead, the climbing rose, known in the South as the "Seven Sisters," was spreading itself above the front door, bestowing its flowers against the background of the once rose-coloured cottage.
Susan's black curls moved reminiscently, eight years having wrought no changes in her beyond the deepening of the original plan. "Yes, eight years since Ambrose Thompson brought that orphan child home, and two since she passed away. Seems that Ambrose wouldn't never have got off even one year to the war if she hadn't gone on before, seein' as she wasn't never willing to let him out of her sight a minute longer'n she could help."
"A deeply affectionate nature," remarked the minister.
"A powerful clinger," retorted Susan, "but men is forgivin' to regular features with a high colour." She turned at this instant to look down the street. "I call it chokin' myself to hang on to a man the way Sarah done to Ambrose plumb up to the hour she died. What's always needin' proppin' ain't to my mind worth the prop. Howsomever, the child is dead, and I'm hopeful death does change us right considerable, though I can't see as it changes nothin' of what we were nor what we done in this world—and more's the pity!"
Assuredly Brother Bibbs was growing restless,and Mrs. Barrows talking to cover time. For five minutes before had she not seen him attempting to sneak past her gate to gain refuge in the Thompson cottage unobserved before its owner could possibly have returned from work?
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 removeda 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 onhim. 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 arrivedtoo 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' broughtinto Pennyrile to show usourbusiness, 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 beenknown 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 seethrough 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 gopeaceable, 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 makemerun 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 ofa 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'tseeanything."
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 themornin' 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 weremounting 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?"
EM'LY DUNHAM
"Hername'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 themail 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 whenyou'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 wasabout 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, atight, 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."
THE FEMALE DELEGATION
Therewas 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 wasnotreading 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 sideallowing 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!"
Susan paused for a reply, but her neighbour continued his unusual silence, the while pensively engaged in studying the toe of his boot. Coming farther out on to her porch, Mrs. Barrows' belligerent black curls fluttered like a war banner in the breeze.
"Course we women knowed you men tried to make this Miss Em'ly Dunham go, and shewouldn't, but women ain't so easy turned from things they sets out to do. So I told her we didn't want no Yankee school teacher in our district, that we were talkin' things over and meant to get some one to teach our little darkies ourselves. And that our intention in comin' forth to see her had not been to say howdy, but good-bye."
Here the joy of battle, even though it had resulted in defeat, actually spread a retrospective glow over the mind of the speaker, for, with her saucepan resting on her one hip and her dishcloth on the other, she was forgetting her work in the glory of narration.
"What do you think that girl done when I said them last words to her, Ambrose? She put her head down on the doctor's wife's bosom, bein's as she had more'n the rest of us, and actually shed tears, said she thought that the war was over, and wouldn't we let her stay on for a time until mebbe we'd like her better. And at this the ladies was so outdone they kind of scurried off without gettin' down to anything definite. But I fixed up matters on the way home. I told 'em that if Miss Dunham wouldn't go politefer the askin', why, 'Pennyrile' could try and see what freezin' out would do, so there ain't a single woman or girl in this here town goin' to exchange the time of day with that girl, ask her to come in and set fer a spell or even bow to her on the street."
Still Ambrose remained silent. He knew that Mrs. Barrows was not unkind, but that she loved a fight for its own dramatic sake, and yet what could he do or say to her now that would not by the very force of opposition make things worse for Miner's romance?
Susan was growing restless, for she was missing the clash of steel that usually came from the striking of her neighbour's against hers.
"One of the ladies said we was boycottin'," she concluded, showing plain evidences of her wish to retire into her own home for the night; "seemed kind of foolish to me, bein's as there ain't so much as a boy in it."
Perforce Ambrose had now to withdraw. And yet he said nothing, although as he moved slowly across her side yard Susan thought she heard him mutter: "I was a stranger and you took me in."
Sternly then she ordered her offspring to bed, but, before following her, lingered until the last vestige of her visitor's coat-tail had disappeared, when in feminine fashion she had the final words:
"I reckon it's a good thing we ain't all took in so easy as Ambrose Thompson."
"The tides of love and laughter runIncreasing aye from sun to sun."
Nothingcould have been more characteristic of Ambrose Thompson than his sudden decision to have a second look at Miss Emily Dunham. Several days had passed since his conversation with Mrs. Barrows, and village information had given definite assurance that her plan for freezing out the Yankee schoolmistress was being put into execution. And, although little else had had place in Ambrose's mind, so far he had not been able to think out a plan of salvation.
It was curious, however, the effect that the thought of a possible love affair for Miner had had upon him. Actually after their talk under the apple tree his step grew lighter, there was more of the boyhood spring to it, and the stoop in his shoulders that had showed after Sarah's passing certainly became less apparent; even hissmile unconsciously offered more encouragement to well-meant feminine sympathizers in Pennyroyal. For such was this tall man's love of romance that the music of it sounding for another had awakened his own vibrations. Also he had almost driven Miner crazy in his repeated efforts to blow on whatever he considered signs of smouldering passion in his friend until one afternoon, when Miner had fairly pushed him from the shop in order to have peace, coming home to his empty cottage and feeling a sudden horror of its loneliness, he had set out for the log cabin. A vision of Miss Dunham, a meeting, or possibly a conversation with her, doubtless would add the spur his imagination needed in her defence. For poor Ambrose was blind to the fact that he had any interest but Miner's before him, exquisitely unaware that he had lately been growing weary of his own deserted altar and the life of high abnegation he had planned for himself, although once or twice he had wondered, if he lived to so great an age as fifty, how he could possibly endure so many lonely evenings.
July in Kentucky brings a swift maturity. Already ears of corn were full ripe in their sheathsand the other grain bowed by its own abundance. Yet Ambrose took little of his accustomed interest in the landscape. Rapidly he walked in spite of the heat and as rapidly evolved and set aside his plans for aiding Miner and Miss Dunham. He knew his own people; the girl had been sent into Pennyroyal by the Freedmen's Bureau, a product of the Civil War hated by most Southerners; and while Pennyroyal might not mean to be cruel, her pride and clannishness had no parallel outside of early Scottish history. And, in spite of Kentucky's far-famed hospitality, truly there is no other place in the world where an outsider may be made to feel so outside.
Finally when he had come to the edge of the clearing and could see the log school-house ahead, Ambrose was weary, and so sat down on the stump of a tree. He should have preferred to go boldly to Miss Dunham's door and ask that she talk with him, but while his courage had carried him thus far, the recollection of his first visit to her halted him at this spot. Surely the girl would some time come to her door or else be taking a walk through the woods, for the papaw grove of small slender trees was thickly shaded,cool and still, many of the birds that earlier inhabited it having flown farther north, while for those which remained behind it was a season of home responsibilities.
How long Ambrose waited and watched he did not know, since time is of so little importance to a lonely man, and, moreover, he possessed a long and beautiful patience with men and things, even with that Providence whose ways are past finding out. Only once did anything happen to encourage him, and then some one did come out of the school-house door to look toward the setting sun, but she proved to be the coloured woman who was Miss Dunham's sole guardian and caretaker. Still Ambrose managed to keep cheerful, when unexpectedly and without warning a dreadful change came over him. His head sank upon his chest, his delicate nose quivered, and boyish tears sprang up in his eyes. And this change was brought about in the oddest fashion. Ambrose had been idly carving his own initials in the stump of the tree where he sat, when all of a sudden it was borne in upon him that this was the first time in his life that he had ever carved his own initials without some girl'sto entwine with them. And this brought such a longing for Sarah that Ambrose straightway forgot both Miner and Miner's cause, remembering only his own loss and the single plate and cup and saucer that must be waiting for him on his supper table at home.
"Lord," Ambrose whispered, "I'm all in." Then leaping up from his seat he started running, running away from the thought of himself. He must have appeared rather like an animated scarecrow with his straw-coloured hair, his long arms flopping and his legs covering such stretches of ground that his coat-tails stood out straight behind, for in deference to a possible meeting with a young woman Ambrose was wearing the swallow tail and carrying the stove-pipe hat of his wedding journey.
He stopped, however, when the mouth of an old war pistol was suddenly placed in front of his left shoulder.
"Please don't move," its owner said tremulously.
"He stopped when the mouth of an old war pistol was suddenly placed in front of his shoulder""He stopped when the mouth of an old war pistol was suddenly placed in front of his shoulder"
And Ambrose's lips twitched as he answered politely, "I ain't a-goin' to," and then he kept absolutely still, noticing that the arm that held thepistol was trembling nervously and that the girl at the end of the arm wore a yellow sunbonnet and a primrose covered dress, and that the face within the sunbonnet was possibly a shade paler and more startled than his own.
"I am sorry if I frightened you," she apologized after a little further study of her companion, "but I am so often alone in these woods and now that the war is just over and things so unsettled I thought it best to carry my father's pistol, and you startled me so running toward me."
Ambrose inclined his head, not daring to make any further move, for the girl still held her pistol so confidingly near the neighbourhood of his heart; nevertheless, he was able to see that Miss Dunham had changed since the day of her visit to their shop. Her eyes were bright, but the laughter lines had disappeared from her mouth and chin, and while she still meant to be firm, the man could see that the firmness cost.
Her pistol drooped listlessly downward. "You must not mind; it isn't loaded," she explained, "and even if it were, I couldn't shoot."
But still she handled the weapon in so ingenuous and distinctly feminine a manner thatAmbrose reached out. "You wouldn't mind my having a look, Miss Dunham?" Emptying the barrels, a single shot slid into his hand.
"Oh, oh," cried the girl helplessly, "I am so sorry; I might have killed you." Then she wavered for a moment and except for Ambrose's arm might have fallen. The yellow sunlight bathed her and her dress in a golden light. It was a curious thing for the tall man to have a woman's eyes so nearly on a level with his own, though she righted herself almost instantly and taking off her sunbonnet began making odd pats at her hair as girls so frequently do after almost every upsetting situation.
"I didn't faint, I never have fainted in my life," she explained indignantly. "I did feel a little sick, because as I didn't know my pistol was loaded I might so easily have——"
"Just so," Ambrose answered gravely, and then without rhyme or reason both of them laughed, not just for an instant, but for the longest time, as though one of the funniest things in the world had just taken place; and afterward, without asking permission, Ambrose walked back with the girl to the log cabin. He would havegone home immediately, then, but at her door Emily turned to him with hot cheeks like a child longing to make a request and yet afraid.
"Would you mind staying and talking to me for a little?" she begged at length. "You see, it seems to me I haven't laughed for such a long while, and I like to laugh so much."
And Ambrose's face quivered in its old sympathetic fashion. "Course I will," he almost added "honey," but stopped himself in time. "Ef you and I can set a while on this bench by the door I wouldn't be a mite surprised ef we couldn't think up some way to make livin' in 'Pennyrile' a heap more of a laughin' matter for you."
THE REVELATION
Afterthis it was extraordinary the number of absolutely unassailable reasons that kept Ambrose so frequently on his way back and forth from the village to the school-house. Certainly twenty-four hours rarely passed without his getting up a wholly new idea to assist Miss Dunham, and therefore Miner, about which it was necessary to ask her advice. And possibly Emily encouraged him in this, for often she had postponed or put aside a perfectly good suggestion with the proposition that they talk the question over later, and that Ambrose come out again to the log cabin to see if they were of the same mind.
Of course Ambrose was extremely particular not to permit the hours of his visits to conflict with those of his partner, but as Miner no longer spent his evenings with him, naturally he concludedthat these evenings were devoted to Emily, and therefore his appearances were usually made during the long summer twilight. And this not with any idea of hiding or of disloyalty, but simply that he should not be in his friend's way; for Ambrose's heart was singularly light these days and the sun shone with its old glory. Why, even the one little cloud that had troubled him for a while had been with laughter pushed away. On his mind during the first of his two or three visits had been the thought that Miss Dunham could not know of his presence in the midnight raid.
They were in the woods together one evening, a little beyond the papaw thicket, when Ambrose, thrusting his hand into his pocket, drew forth a carefully wrapped up package. "It ain't a present; it's yours already," he announced, pushing it toward Emily with his face crimsoning, and digging his toes into the earth like a big, awkward boy.
Slowly the girl unfolded her lost hairbrush, and, though her eyes immediately shone with laughter, womanlike she kept her lids down, asking with a kind of over-emphasized wonder,"How on earth, Mr. Ambrose Thompson, could you ever have come upon my hairbrush?"
And in another moment Ambrose had confessed everything of his own part in the raid, told his story miserably and without extenuating circumstances, and ending with the statement that he couldn't endure to have her friendship until she knew the full extent of his unmanliness.
Then Emily allowed herself to look straight at him and her laughter brimmed over. "Why, I've known all along," she whispered, putting her hand for just the briefest, comforting second over the top of his. "Don't you suppose that I recognized the voice coming from the longest shadow I ever saw as soon as I saw the longest man in Pennyroyal?"
Two weeks afterward it happened as usual that Miner and Ambrose were both in their shop closing up for the night, but, what was most remarkable, Miner was allowing Ambrose to do the greater part of the work, and for fifteen minutes had been sitting on the top of a vinegar barrel idly whittling at a stick and every once in a while clearing his throat as though he were getting ready to speak, notwithstanding hekept his face turned from the sight of his partner.
"Looks like Miss Dunham's gettin' more cheerfuller lately," he blurted at last, not glancing up, but whittling so briskly that the chips about him on the floor looked like the shorn curls of a lamb.
Ambrose lifted his face from the depth of a large ledger where he had been laboriously writing down the day's accounts. "Yes, ain't she?" he returned happily; "seems like she's sorter too big to be hurt by other folk's meannesses." Then walking across the shop he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder with a gesture that was almost a caress.
"You been goin' out to see her yourself considerable lately, ain't you? So mebbe she ain't needin' much other comp'ny," Miner suggested, raising his eyes and then lowering them quickly before the other man could catch his glance.
Ambrose hesitated. "Why, mebbe I have," he confessed slowly; "funny I ain't ever thought of it in that light! You see I've been a-tryin' to do what you asked and hatch up some scheme to make 'Pennyrile' understand and like MissDunham better, but Em'ly and me ain't come to any conclusion yet that's good enough, so I reckon that's why I keep on a-goin'."
"Em'ly!" Miner sprung off his barrel top like he had been struck. "So it's come to that, has it?" And by this time his sneer and anger were so unmistakable that his companion, whose expression had been perfectly frank a moment before, turned a dull red and for the first time in his life his eyes dropped before those of his friend.
"I ain't callin' her Em'ly to her face, Miner, at least not more'n once or twice," he answered painfully, feeling himself turn hot and cold in the same instant, and an awful weight settle itself upon his chest. Then a relieved light broke over him. "Mebbe now I'm thinkin' upon her as Em'ly because some day you and she——"
"Liar!" The little man, blinded with passion, struck out somewhere into the region of his friend's chest and, when Ambrose caught his hands and held them, twisted and growled like a little dog in the grasp of a big one, repeating over and over in a thick voice, "Liar, liar, you know you want her for yourself, you know you love her, so what damn use is there in you pretendin'before me?" until his rage had partly spent itself.
Ambrose had made no sort of answer or defence; indeed, his big hands had seemed to cling to Miner rather than to restrain him, besides which there was something in his appearance that would have made it hard to continue angry with him even if you had not loved him.
"I didn't know, Miner," he said at last, hushed and frightened, "I didn't know until you spoke it. I reckon I do love her, but now I know I won't see or speak with her no more."
Then when Miner had banged his way out of the store the tall man, sitting down on the deserted barrel, began to shake, and there was shame on his face and the look of a man who has suddenly heard that the ship on which he is sailing must go down. For several hours he remained in his shop, sometimes walking up and down and then reseating himself on the barrel, but wherever he went and whatever he did old Moses dragged his rheumatic legs after him. Two or three times the man patted the dog, whispering reassuringly, "It's all right; don't you be worryin' none about me, old fellow."
It was so dark in the shop that when Mrs. Barrows, carrying a lantern, opened the door she could not at first find Ambrose. And afterward, when he did come toward her and her light fell full upon his face, to Susan's eternal credit let it be set down that she turned away her eyes.
"You come along home, Ambrose Thompson," she began sternly; "ain't I been watchin' and waitin' for you to go by to your supper these past two hours? It's mighty nigh time I was gittin' to bed and I ain't able to sleep less'n my mind's easy."
Taking the man by the arm she led him toward home, talking in a tone that few persons had ever heard from Susan. "Whatever's happened to you to-day, Ambrose Thompson, don't you be scaired," she said once. "I tell you it's the folks that things never happen to that ought to be scaired, 'cause you're livin' and they ain't." And then when Ambrose would have left her at her gate, climbing up the few steps that led into her yard she was able thus to place her hands on his shoulders.
"Ambrose," she said then, "there was a neighbour remarked to me the other day, 'Ain't AmbroseThompson changed a lot since his wife died?' I told her, 'No, folks don't change none in what I calls their fundamentals. They alter some; of course learnin' life don't mean to make no exception of them with troubles, but leopards don't stripe, nor zebras spot, nor human bein's get made over by experiences. You been livin' lately thinkin' you was changed entirely inside by Sarah's death, but you ain't changed—you've just been restin'. You've seen other folks git over things that hit 'em as hard as Sarah's dyin' done you, but course you thoughtyouwere differ'nt." Leaning over, Susan gave Ambrose a peck certainly intended as a kiss. "It's awful hard, boy, to wake up sometimes, after one has been adreamin', but I reckon you're wakin' up."
Susan was correct, Ambrose's dream had passed and by morning no mists of it remained. Since the revelation of Miner's accusation in the shop he had made no effort at self-deception, understanding now why since his meeting with the Yankee school teacher his world had been again so strangely vivid, so full of adventure, that even his trips back and forth to the shop had been filled with delightful impressions, ideas thatmight some day be confided to her. For, after all, is there not so much of life in the smallest place in this world when you are fully alive in it, and so little in the biggest when you are not?
Then the bitterest part of Ambrose's fight was that he knew Emily to be his real mate, knew that Sarah had been a boy's spring fancy, but that the summer had now set the seal of her warmth and fruition upon his second love. Moreover, he also knew that Emily might be made to care for him, since love like his is rarely without its answer.
Nevertheless when dawn came he had written this letter and taken it out to the post: