CHAPTER VII
EM'LY DUNHAM
"Her name's Em'ly Dunham," announced Miner shortly.
Ambrose, who at this moment was arranging a pyramid design of their new stock of calicoes on a counter in the front of their shop in order to get the best colour effect, looked up quickly and then put his hand over his lips.
"Whose named Em'ly Dunham?" he inquired in a partially stifled voice, with his interest apparently still concentrated on his work.
"You know, the Yankee school teacher," Miner growled. He was standing inside a kind of wire cage which separated the post-office department from the rest of the store of Hobbs & Thompson, the charge of the mail having recently been given to the two men.
"How'd you find out?"
"Letters!" The little man was assorting the mail with an energy that Pennyroyal's one dozen epistles or less a day hardly justified. This was one morning less than a week after the unsuccessful midnight excursion.
Ambrose now crossed his feet, resting his weight on his elbows against the bales of cotton cloth. He was staring solemnly at his partner. "Em'ly Dunham is a pretty name, Miner; kind of soft and gentle, yet with plenty of spirit in it. I am reckoning some one in Pennyroyal ought to try and make things up to her."
With a sigh the other man climbed up to perch on his high official stool. "Ain't you never goin' to stop thinkin' of females and marryin', Ambrose? I thought mebbe when you lost Sarah you was cured!"
Ambrose leaned farther over, shaking his head. "No," he answered simply, "I reckon not. I wonder ef you have ever thought, Miner, of how much them two little words – livin' and lovin' – are alike. I don't think it was an accident, jest the difference of that one little letter. Not that I intend marryin' again – I am through with marryin' forever – it's you, Miner Hobbs, I'm worryin' over." Here, because of his earnestness, Ambrose left his place and coming across the aisle looked down over the wire netting upon his friend. "Miner," he repeated as sternly as he was able, "your time has come. There ain't nothin' so no 'count on earth as an old bachelor. It's worse than an old maid and different, because perhaps an old maid couldn't help gettin' left out, but the Lord's given every man a chance to improve his condition jest by askin'. Course he may have to ask more'n one and mebbe more'n once, but there ain't no age limit to stop him. Then think, Miner, what chances always lies in villages. Why, villages is nature's nunneries. Ain't it time fer you to do a man's part?"
There was silence for a little time, Miner making no response, although from over in his corner Moses growled in his sleep.
Then the tall man coughed apologetically. He looked tired, as though he had been awake many hours the night before. "I didn't mean to rile you any," he continued, "only I can't help thinkin' that a man without a wife is like a little boat a-floatin' on the sea of life without a rudder and bound for nowhere in particular. Ef you don't marry you'll be awful sorry when you're an old man, Miner, and ef you've been kind of overfed on Pennyrile girls, why, this here new school teacher – "
Miner fairly bounced up and down on his stool in his impatience. "Lord, why shouldn't I be sorry when I'm old instead of when I'm young? Mebbe I won't live to get old and then I'd 'a' made myself wretcheder'n a slave and all fer nothin'."
At this second, the door opening, the speaker collapsed, while Ambrose shot backward behind the counter toward the rear of the shop. A flood of June sunshine entered with the girl, and Ambrose heard her name for the second time as she asked the terrified Miner for her mail. He also saw her plainly. She was twenty-five or perhaps a little more, with hair that was brown or gold as the light shone upon it; gray eyes set wide apart – eyes that might at times be cold and then shine warmly like a cloud suddenly shot through by the sun; her mouth was larger and her chin firmer than beauty requires, and yet both showed curves of frequent and redeeming laughter. She was tall, with broad shoulders and a slender body, and there was about her a hint of delicate and unconscious coquetry, noticeable as she talked with Miner while making her purchases, the little man coming out from his retreat to serve her and afterward following her into the street, where he was gone for almost an hour.
In the meantime it was difficult for Ambrose to attend properly to business, for never before had his partner left the store during working hours save for his meals and to attend the wedding of his sisters, two of whom had happily passed from his home to homes of their own. However, no words on the subject were exchanged when Miner curtly explained that Miss Dunham had too many bundles for a lady to carry.
It was after this extraordinary occurrence at their shop that Miner left Ambrose and Moses alone for three evenings in succession, the tall man sitting in his chair in the backyard under a ripening apple tree, with Moses at his side and his friend's empty chair near by. But although Ambrose drooped every now and then, he always smiled resolutely afterward. "It'll plumb be the salvation of Miner."
On the fourth night, however, Ambrose, having gone early to bed and fallen into a light sleep, was awakened by a knock at his kitchen door, and on coming downstairs again found his friend outside. "It ain't no hour to be in bed yet," Miner snapped. Knowing the little man had something unusual on his mind his friend led him to their accustomed refuge.
Ambrose and Miner were curiously incongruous figures that night in the garden, for the one man wore an oriental silk dressing-gown over a pair of hastily put on blue jean trousers; the gown, a scheme of deep rich colours and designs, having drifted into the shop one day by accident, had been seized upon by Ambrose to gratify a subconscious craving. It was tied about his waist with a red cord, and as he lolled back in his chair his eyes would travel from their study of his companion's face up toward the stars which he could see shining through the spaces between the leaves of his apple tree.
Miner kept his eyes always upon the ground; he had a chew of tobacco in his mouth, his lips worked spasmodically, but he did not speak, neither did be spit as a vent to his feelings, a tight, small man, buttoned up both inside and out! By and by, however, when nearly an hour had passed in silence, he rose to his feet.
"Reckon I'd better be goin', Ambrose; it's gettin' late. Good night."
But the tall man pushed him back again into his chair. "Lord, Miner, is it so hard for you to tell things, even to me?" he inquired. "Out with it!"
"Don't you go and be puttin' foolish ideas on to me if I tell you," Miner pleaded, "but it's just this: The women have made up their minds to put Miss Em'ly Dunham out of Pennyrile. Course we men tried and failed, so we give up, but when a woman starts out to do a thing, why she does it. Can't you think of no plan to make 'em stop, Ambrose, bein's as you've always had a kind of way with women?"
Ambrose shook his head, his homely face lined with sympathy. Poor Miner was unconscious of his own change of attitude toward the interloper, but surely he must not be turned back from the land of romance within whose gracious habitations Ambrose himself could never again hope to dwell.
"I don't see just what I kin do with the women," he was obliged to confess after a moment of hard thinking, "still ef we keep studyin' and studyin' no doubt we kin find a way."
CHAPTER VIII
THE FEMALE DELEGATION
There was no question – Susan Barrows inspired and headed the female delegation which early the next morning sallied forth to the district schoolhouse to call on Miss Dunham. Also, there was no doubt in the minds of any of its members before their call was made that the Yankee teacher would hastily retreat as soon as she understood that the ladies of Pennyroyal did not desire her presence among them and, furthermore, would not have it. However, of the result of their visit no one was informed during the ensuing hours of that day.
It was evening, before dark and yet some little time after supper, when Ambrose, ruminating on his back kitchen steps and worrying over the present situation, heard a noise of pots and pans that sounded like a skirmish of light artillery proceeding from his neighbour's house next door. So purposely assuming the expression of innocent solemnity that seemed most to inflame Mrs. Susan, he cautiously stepped across from his back yard to hers. On the door stoop he discovered Susan Jr., who, as the occupant of a hard chair, had both white stockinged legs stuck rebelliously out before her and, resting on her spinal column, held "Fox's Book of Martyrs" open in her lap. However, she was not reading it.
Sensing his approach before ever he could speak, Mrs. Barrows made an immediate appearance. She had a saucepan in her hand and her black eyes were wary. They were well matched adversaries, she and Ambrose, and, although already understanding perfectly the object of his visit, some time must pass before the one or the other could be forced into a surrender.
"Raisin' children is killin' work, Ambrose," Susan began at once, darting a direful glance at her offspring.
And Ambrose's voice was honey: "Most anythin's killin' work, ain't it, Susan?" he returned, depositing himself on the floor of her stoop so that his long legs overhung the side allowing his feet to touch the ground. "I've heard of folks lyin' in bed and doin' nothin' but singin' psa'ms continuous, and yet comin' to the same end."
"It's a lot peacefuller way." Mrs. Barrows' interest was now so plainly concentrated within her saucepan, whirling a kitchen towel around and around in it until its revolutions were fairly dizzying, that nothing could seem more remote from the remarks and behaviour of herself and her neighbour than any introduction of the subject uppermost in both their minds.
However, Susan Jr. did not belong to that noble army whose lives were at the present instant recorded in her lap, for, shutting up "The Book of Martyrs," she sniffed:
"I didn't do nothin' but laugh and tell the female delegation about the King with his ten thousand men who marched up a hill and then marched down again," she explained.
And in the face of this information what was the use of either Mrs. Barrows or Ambrose trying further to avoid the issue? The time had come for a voluntary surrender.
"She won't go, or at least she says she won't, though there ain't no use in me tellin' you, Ambrose, bein's as from Susan Jr.'s words you've already guessed," Susan struck in. "But when we ladies got out to the district school this mornin' in the bilin' sun, what do you think, that girl came a-runnin' out to meet us a-wavin' her hand and smilin' and pretendin' she believed we'd come to welcome her to 'Pennyrile.' And then before any of us ladies could speak and tell her our errand, why, she began showin' us around the old school-house and sayin' she knew we would understand, 'cause we were women too, how hard things would be for her if we didn't help her, until most of the delegates either plumb forgot the reason of our visitation or else was too skeered to speak up. It wasn't so with me!"
Susan paused for a reply, but her neighbour continued his unusual silence, the while pensively engaged in studying the toe of his boot. Coming farther out on to her porch, Mrs. Barrows' belligerent black curls fluttered like a war banner in the breeze.
"Course we women knowed you men tried to make this Miss Em'ly Dunham go, and she wouldn't, but women ain't so easy turned from things they sets out to do. So I told her we didn't want no Yankee school teacher in our district, that we were talkin' things over and meant to get some one to teach our little darkies ourselves. And that our intention in comin' forth to see her had not been to say howdy, but good-bye."
Here the joy of battle, even though it had resulted in defeat, actually spread a retrospective glow over the mind of the speaker, for, with her saucepan resting on her one hip and her dishcloth on the other, she was forgetting her work in the glory of narration.
"What do you think that girl done when I said them last words to her, Ambrose? She put her head down on the doctor's wife's bosom, bein's as she had more'n the rest of us, and actually shed tears, said she thought that the war was over, and wouldn't we let her stay on for a time until mebbe we'd like her better. And at this the ladies was so outdone they kind of scurried off without gettin' down to anything definite. But I fixed up matters on the way home. I told 'em that if Miss Dunham wouldn't go polite fer the askin', why, 'Pennyrile' could try and see what freezin' out would do, so there ain't a single woman or girl in this here town goin' to exchange the time of day with that girl, ask her to come in and set fer a spell or even bow to her on the street."
Still Ambrose remained silent. He knew that Mrs. Barrows was not unkind, but that she loved a fight for its own dramatic sake, and yet what could he do or say to her now that would not by the very force of opposition make things worse for Miner's romance?
Susan was growing restless, for she was missing the clash of steel that usually came from the striking of her neighbour's against hers.
"One of the ladies said we was boycottin'," she concluded, showing plain evidences of her wish to retire into her own home for the night; "seemed kind of foolish to me, bein's as there ain't so much as a boy in it."
Perforce Ambrose had now to withdraw. And yet he said nothing, although as he moved slowly across her side yard Susan thought she heard him mutter: "I was a stranger and you took me in."
Sternly then she ordered her offspring to bed, but, before following her, lingered until the last vestige of her visitor's coat-tail had disappeared, when in feminine fashion she had the final words:
"I reckon it's a good thing we ain't all took in so easy as Ambrose Thompson."
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.
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."