CHAPTER XII
A LIGHT IN DARKNESS
Afterward, when the two men had parted for the night, Miner went directly to his home, and there in his usual methodical fashion undressed and got himself into bed, although all the time his dark face was twisting and working, his mouth dry, while the mind of the man had no knowledge of what his hands were doing. For Miner, without understanding it, was alone on his high mountain where every man must stand who knows what it is to desire and to surrender. So what does it matter that his mountain was the attic bedroom of a cottage and that the little man who wrestled with the devil stood but five feet two in his stocking feet and weighed only a hundred and five pounds, or even that his "Get thee behind me, Satan," was so differently put?
Because when Miner's fight was over he merely said: "I ain't never been at all certain in my mind that I could love a woman, so more'n likely I've all along been mistaken 'bout Em'ly. Seems like there ain't but one mortal thing on this earth I am sure on and that's—Ambrose!"
And yet the little man recalled nothing of the story of David and Jonathan, and, even if he had, could never have appreciated how their story touched his.
Nevertheless, it was one thing to decide to make a sacrifice of himself and his love to his friend, and quite a different thing to persuade that friend to accept it. For some time poor Miner puzzled; Ambrose would not even go out to the log cabin during the period of Emily's convalescence, though getting daily reports of her condition through him and through Doctor Webb. Susan Barrows, for some unexplainable reason, absolutely declined to speak to her next door neighbour when, after the period of her nursing was over, she had once more returned home.
There were harassed hours when unwittingly Miner came near to laying the case before Ambrose, being so accustomed, in all other matters requiring imagination, to relying on that of his friend. It is all very well to think that he might just have plainly stated his own change of mind and heart, but measuring the extent of the renunciation by what it would have meant to him, so surely Ambrose would never have accepted his sacrifice.
No, some more ingenious method must be devised, and Hamlet did not devote more agony to discovering a plan for avenging his father's death than Miner to finding a way of new life for Ambrose.
One afternoon the little man was limping slowly along the dusty August turnpike leading out from Pennyroyal with Moses, who, feeling his need, had accompanied him, yet, now too stiff to walk far, was being carried in his arms, when the attention of both the man and dog were arrested by the spectacle of an old darky trying to drive a mule, hitched to a wagonload of green-corn, into Pennyroyal, the mule having at this point positively declined to go farther.
It was inspiration in a strange guise, and yet inspiration must necessarily come to us in the character of the events that make up our lives.