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."