CHAPTER IV
"Even so, Love, even so!
Whither thou goest, I will go."
So the boy continued driving on and on, loitering in the faint sweet-smelling May afternoon.
At first after having left the farm his heart had been troubled and his mind uneasy, burdened by an unconscious wave of sex weariness.
"Lord," he said aloud once, "seems such a pity you didn't make all critturs the same sex; I ain't carin' which, male or female, seein' what a lot of trouble we might all then 'a' been saved."
Naturally, so far as Ambrose himself was concerned, he was through with the dangers lurking in feminine society forever! He even intended confessing this conviction to his friend and partner, Miner, as soon as they should be alone together, for even at the moment of his resolution had not the boy's subliminal self whispered that he might need strengthening later on?
After getting well away from his danger zone, however, Ambrose had chosen that the remainder of his spring journey should lie through an unfamiliar part of the state, and so had turned his horse into every likely lane presenting itself until by degrees the ever-increasing beauty of the landscape wrought its effect upon his susceptible soul.
The houses along his route were finer than those of his own neighbourhood and, being placed farther back, showed only a chimney, or the white fluted column of a veranda every now and then beyond the closely planted avenues of beech or maple trees. Sounding across the fields came the voices of the darkies closing their day's tasks with songs. Truly this Kentucky was a happy land in the days before the war, and on this afternoon there were myriads of the soft, green growing things toward which Ambrose's young spirit had yearned,—acres of corn just creeping above the mould, and miles of tiny tobacco plants.
Then unexpectedly this character of landscape disappeared, and old Liza trotted on to a hard white turnpike. The twilight was closing down, but a toll-gate keeper showed himself a few yards ahead, and then a cluster of small stores. Afterward there was nothing further to interest Ambrose until he drove straight up to a big building surrounded by a high fence and set in the middle of a grassless yard without the influence of a tree or vine near it and where from the inside came the murmur of children's voices hushed to a pathetic, uniform note.
The boy knew the place at once for a county orphan asylum, and being what he was, reflected. In times past he had seen these same orphans led through the streets of Pennyroyal, a dreary set of little human beings, dressed alike and made to keep step like a chain gang. "Glory," he whispered, "here am I running away from the fear of havin' to keep step with one person; what if I had been made to keep step with so many?"
The next moment brought him nearly opposite a woodpile, and there he slowed up, for he thought that he heard a noise behind it sounding like a scared sheep or lamb.
"Stop!" What looked like a child's figure instantly rose and ran toward him. "Hide me!" she gasped; "oh, please be quick and don't ask questions." And the girl clung so tightly to the spokes of the gig wheel that had the young man driven on she must have been dragged like a slave at his chariot.
But of course he did no such thing. "Hop in," he replied cheerfully. Then, while the child crouched shivering and panting against his knee under the thin laprobe, Ambrose whistled to indicate his entire lack of concern in this latest adventure, and also to suggest that he rode alone.
Pretty soon, however, he began wondering what character of person he had rescued and from what or from whom she was running away, it being characteristic of Ambrose that first he had done what was required of him, and later had desired to ask questions. In the haste and semi-darkness it had been impossible to tell whether the child was a gypsy or a mere ordinary waif, and she had looked so young—twelve or a little more perhaps. There was nothing much to judge by except that she was little and light and that her eyes were dark and shiny and she had two braids of long hair. But by and by of its own accord the figure under the laprobe started talking. "Don't let anybody take me away,—say you ain't seen me if they come along," she pleaded in such a tone that it was only possible for Ambrose to give a reassuring pat to her head and then to drive more rapidly along. Once when there was a moment of unusual stillness he did peep under the laprobe, only to catch sight of a pair of grateful eyes upturned to his and to jerk back his hand from the touch of cold lips.
Fifteen minutes of what had seemed totally unnecessary hiding, as there were few vehicles abroad on the turnpike at this late hour, and then both the occupants of the gig heard a furious pounding of a horse's hoofs behind them and knew that something or some one was being pursued.
The girl's clasp tightened, and Ambrose could catch, not the words, but the sound of a prayer. Harder than ever before in all their ten years of friendly intimacy the boy now spurred on old Liza. It might have been just as well had he known why he was being thus chivalrous, but there had been no opportunity so far for finding out, and everything in Ambrose played gallantly with this new adventure. He was still a boy with a boy's love of mischief, of hiding, of winning in any kind of game, and susceptibility to instant sympathy.
Old Liza was a retired racehorse, and although her retirement dated some years back, still she was subject to spurts of speed. However, the best of spurts won't hold out long, and soon her driver realized that the wagon behind was gaining on him every moment.
"Keep still!" he ordered, deliberately pulling up short in the middle of the road. With a quick movement, seeing that the truant was completely hidden, he set his carpet-bag up on his lap, and, opening it, began rummaging among its contents. When the other wagon was within hailing distance he turned slowly about.
"Thank the Lord for trifles, stranger," he called. "I wonder now if you would mind pausin' and givin' me a light; I got my pipe and tobacco"—he held out an old-time corncob pipe—"but maybe you be hurryin' on to a sick person."
Naturally the other man hesitated. Ambrose's solemn long face was fairly plain to view, also his manner of having all eternity before him. Eying him suspiciously, the newcomer thrust forth his own lighted pipe, Ambrose managing to keep his carpet-bag between them.
"You ain't seen anything of a runaway girl?" the man asked.
Ambrose nodded with irritating precision, the time being consumed in scrutiny of his questioner's face. The man had lantern jaws, small, hard eyes, and an expression of official authority peculiarly annoying to certain members of the laity.
"There was a girl a piece back hidin' behind a woodpile; thought maybe she was playin' hide and seek." Here the speaker laughed. "Reckon you suspicioned she was a pretty fair runner if you're chasin' a girl along the high-road with that horse. Most any human would have had the sense to hide." Here the reins flapped on old Liza's back and she took a few steps forward.
Evidently Ambrose's words had not been without effect, for the stranger did not hurry on at once, neither did he reveal any misgiving in connection with the young man nor the amount of property being transported at the front of his gig, for the country people of that day were accustomed to doing their own carrying.
Safety with honours! A smile began playing about Ambrose's face, when suddenly a kind of miniature convulsion shook his leg, followed by a choking, spluttering noise that was plainly a terrified sneeze.
And instantly the hand of the man in the wagon reached forward, but he was not within reaching distance, and at the same instant Ambrose, seizing hold of his passenger, made a flying leap from the gig. Then catching the girl's hand in his he ran with her, ran gloriously, hardly conscious of the light figure being drawn along. All day his long legs had been cramped with sitting still; this, then, was the thing that he had most desired: leaping ditches, tearing across ploughed fields to the woods ahead, with the frightened girl panting but keeping close to his side, and behind them the enraged, shouting figure of officialdom.
Once in the woods the hiding was easy; twisting in and out among the trees not only did Ambrose lose his pursuer, but himself. For if he had counted on anything, which he probably had not, it was that the man would not run after them for any length of time, leaving his fast horse to stand in the road.
Finally, the girl and boy both dropped down on the ground. The long May twilight was past, still they could see the outlines of each other's forms, and Ambrose could hear the beating of the girl's heart against her frock like the fluttering of an imprisoned moth.
He could not help reassuring her. "You're safe, sis, don't worry," he drawled. "Keep still and maybe in a minute I'll find some water."
But she would not let him leave her, and tagged along until they finally discovered a little stream. Then, as Ambrose had some stale bread in his pocket, together they feasted for a short time, when, as the moon of the night before had come out again a trifle larger, Ambrose decided to inquire concerning his companion's plans. She now seemed entirely peaceful, and, though rested, had made no mention of moving along. However, for some time longer he watched her with that solemn stare of his. She was chattering gayly enough about nothing ("there was never a time when a female wouldn't be able to talk," he thought), but by and by she must be interrupted.
"I wonder now," he said when there was no longer any sound either of fear or fatigue in her voice, "if you would kindly be tellin' me which way you would like to be goin' and what friends you was plannin' to run to to-night when I picked you up back on the road? I ain't to say acquainted with this part of the country, but I reckon I can help to find them. It's gettin' late and I ain't easy in my mind about Liza."
For some absurd reason he felt himself placed upon the defensive.
The girl was shaking her head. "I ain't no friend but you."
Ambrose whistled. "Well, bein's as I am what one might call a recently adopted friend, maybe you'll so much as tell me where you're thinkin' of spendin' the night."
"I ain't thinkin'," was the answer, and at this Ambrose swore softly, though you may count on his having sworn under his breath.
"Look here, you got to tell me a straight story. I ought to 'a' made you before," he confessed. "I reckon I knew you were runnin' away from that orphan asylum and I kind of wanted to help, even more when that fellow came after you, but we can't go traipsin' around all night, and I got to find Liza. You oughtn't to have run away from a good asylum if you hadn't no friends."
Ambrose knew himself for a liar before the girl on the ground began rocking herself back and forth with her hands clasped over her knees.
"I ought to, I ought to, I ought to," she repeated until her words had the swaying influence of a chant. "You know nothin' about it. I have been in that place so long I can't remember anywheres else. How can I have friends? I don't know nobody, I don't love nobody, I ain't nobody! Why, there's mornings when I get up and lookin' at the other orphans, seein' we are dressed alike and got to do the same things at the same time all day, I begin to think maybe there ain't any me. I'm just one of them—any one." She began crying now, but that did not interrupt her passionate speech. "I've been thinkin' of runnin' away a long time. P'raps I'll have a hard time; I don't care. Ain't I a right to find out?"
And this of course the young man could not answer, so he only passed his hand over his brow. "Well, you might 'a' stayed at the asylum a little longer," and then because he was Ambrose, "or at least till I got safely past that woodpile."
"I was too old," she defended. "I ought not to have stayed so long as I did, only nobody knew what to do with me." She was looking up into her companion's face close, that she might find something more of help in it. "Maybe you know some one that might want me? I know lots of things, cleanin' and cookin' some——" She would like to have continued to pour out her poor list of accomplishments, but Ambrose stopped her.
For some time the fear had been growing upon him that the child he believed himself to have rescued was not so much a child as he had first supposed. Of course he had never seen her very plainly and there was nothing to judge by in her short, scant dress. "Would you mind," he now inquired, "tellin' me just about how old you are?"
"Sixteen."
Ambrose groaned. For in Kentucky half a century ago, you must remember, sixteen was thought an age nearer that of a woman than of a girl.
"Then I've got to take you back to the orphans," he announced.
However, his declaration had not even the distinction of being listened to, for the girl, with her chin sunk in her clasped hands, was plainly thinking of something else. Now she put one hand timidly on his coat sleeve, and Ambrose could see that she had a curiously pointed chin and that her eyes were like deep wells with the moonlight shining down into them. "Maybe you'll tell me where you're thinkin' of stayin' the night?"
"The Lord knows only." And here yesterday's adventurer had a sudden vision of himself setting forth on his journey to be alone with nature. On the morning of the second day he had been almost caught in a trap of his own setting, and now at nightfall was probably in a worse fix. "I had been thinkin', though, of spendin' the night somewhere peaceful-like in the woods," he growled.
The girl clapped her hands together and, yawning, drew closer to her new friend, almost as if she meant to rest her head upon his shoulder.
"Then let me stay with you, please," she begged, and Ambrose could feel her warm breath on his cheek. "The woods is big and there's plenty of room for me, too. I shan't be afraid with you, and I've never seen the stars, except through the window."
The boy rose. "No," he said harshly, "you can't stay alone in the woods at night with me. I reckon before this I understood you didn't know nothing."
Half an hour afterward they found old Liza cropping grass, a little off the main road where they had left her. When both of them had returned to the gig Ambrose drove on in silence with an uncommonly bored face.
Later the moon went behind a cloud and a light mist fell, and then the girl's body began swaying gently backward and forward. Once she fell too far forward, when, still frowning, her companion slipped an arm about her, and a moment later she was fast asleep with her head resting on his shoulder.
Ambrose breathed deeply of the odour of the fresh wet earth. It was like the perfume of her young body; the moist curls about her face like the damp tendrils of new vines. Soon the boy's shoulder ached, and his entire left side, including his leg, seemed to have gone to sleep. Now and then he wondered if it ever should wake again in this world; and yet try as he might Ambrose Thompson could not make up his mind that he actually disliked the presence of the girl with him, and never from youth to old age had he the talent for deceiving himself.
"Poor kid," he murmured more than once, "she must 'a' been lyin' awake nights plannin' to run away, with no place on God's earth to run to."
Seldom did he allow himself the pleasure of looking long at her, and only once did his lips move toward hers, and then, though his face worked, they were drawn sharply back.
"Lord!" he whispered after this, "whatever shall I do with her?" A stranger in that part of the country himself, he knew of no one to ask to shelter the girl, and take her back to the asylum he would not. Should he turn her over to a stranger she would promptly be sent back there in the morning. Yet here were the lights of a village showing close ahead of them, and every now and then old Liza stumbled, almost falling from weariness.
Ambrose's prayer half awakened the girl. Anyhow, she sat up for a moment rubbing her eyes, to hear him asking: "Whatever is your name?"
"Sarah," and then her head swayed again.
But Ambrose sat straight up giving his reins an unexpected joyous flap. "Glory, why ain't I thought of it before?" he asked of no one. Then aloud: "When Abraham drew near to the land of the Egyptians didn't he admonish Sarah, his wife, to say she was his sister that it might be well with him and that his soul should live?" He grinned silently. "I'm findin' the patriarchs pretty useful this trip, but I reckon if Abraham could say that his wife Sarah was his sister to save his own skin, I can tell the same kind of a one to save a girl."
"Wake up, Sarah," he urged, when a few moments later he drew rein before a red brick tavern door, "and if anybody asks questions, recollect you are to say you're my sister."
However, on that same evening, when Sarah put up her lips for a sister's good night kiss, it was the boy who turned away. There was something in this girl that called to him too strongly, something fragrant and as yet unawakened, and then he had not dreamed she was so pretty, with her scarlet cheeks and big, heavy-lidded eyes, some poor little child of Eve from a far different land than his blond Kentucky. It looked, too, as though the little force the girl had, had now spent itself in her one effort of running a way, and hereafter some one would surely have to look after her. "Not only had she never been taught at the asylum to think for herself," the boy reflected, "she ain't never even been allowed to."
Nevertheless the girl slept untroubled in her high-post bed in the best guest chamber of the tavern, while Ambrose in a tiny room close under the roof, lay awake for a long time. He was not in the woods alone as he had dreamed of being, and yet he was not unhappy. He was not listening to the voices of nature as he knew her, but to the stirrings of his own blood, to the beating of his own heart.
More than once in order to stay his restlessness Ambrose had risen from his bed and stood leaning and looking out of his window at the stars and breathing deep the odours of the night. Still he could see nor feel nothing except the presence of the strange girl near him, the appeal of her utter helplessness. And yet the boy did not understand that the song of life he had come forth to hear was being sung to him for the first time to-night. For he only kept repeating to himself over and over: "Whatever am I to do with her, poor little kid?" until he also fell asleep.