CHAPTER IX
"The tides of love and laughter run
Increasing aye from sun to sun."
Nothing could 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 his smile 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 sheaths and 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's to 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"
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 the pistol 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 that Ambrose 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 have gone 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."