"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.
[Illustration: "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."