CHAPTER X
THE REVELATION
After this 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 concluded that 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 he kept 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 Miss Dunham 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 Ambrose Thompson 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 thought you were 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 that might 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:
Dear Miss Dunham: I've got to quit comin' to see you and I can't say why, except it's best.
Then I haven't got the old reason, for to-night it's come to me the way to make Pennyroyal not treat you so bad. Can't you give out that you're sick, for if only the Pennyroyal ladies can get the chance to take care of you they'll be real pleased. Seems like letting people do good things for you is the surest way to make them quit doing mean; it's kind of human nature.
And there is one other thing I'd like to say to you: It's about Miner; he's a whole lot bigger than he looks and there can't no man on earth beat him at loving if you'll only help him a little at the start.
Yours truly,
Ambrose Thompson, Esq.
It was an odd, stiff letter, and yet that afternoon when Emily had received it she laughed and placed it inside the folds of her primrose dress; although a moment afterward she sighed with the thought of the lonely hour before sunset.