The Loves of Ambrose

There was no time for thought, and almost immediately the newcomer dropped down upon the seat, observing at the same instant that the widow and her escort, the Honorable Calvin, were in an opposite pew just across the aisle, though why their pew should be so jammed and his own exactly under the chancel entirely unoccupied he did not then consider. Obeying his first impulse Uncle Ambrose turned a smile upon the widow. It was tremendously gratifying to observe her large bosom heave with emotion, but puzzling when soon after large tears coursed down her quivering face.

Moreover, the persons in Uncle Ambrose's immediate vicinity were also beginning to behave queerly.

"The Lord be praised that one more sinner is called to repentance!" he heard a sister's shrill voice cry out just back of him, and then loud "Amens" boomed all about. But even more alarming – the Rev. Elias Tupper's expressionless eyes were apparently glued upon him, while his face wore an exaggerated edition of that smile of heavenly forgiveness so irritating to the other man's soul.

With a shudder of horror it was now borne in upon Uncle Ambrose Thompson that by misadventure he had placed himself upon the mourners' bench – the seat at revival services specially set apart for sinners overcome with remorse who desired to make open confession.

With a hunted look the unhappy man searched about for some way of escape; there was none, for the congregation had come crowding closer toward the front of the church until every foot of room was occupied.

Folding his arms across his lean chest and lifting his head Uncle Ambrose waited. During the first moments of his discovery his face had grown extraordinarily red, but now was paler than any man or woman had ever seen it before.

Lifting his right hand the Rev. Elias Tupper commanded an intense and awed silence. "Ambrose Thompson is before us to-night openly to confess his sins," he announced in a loud voice.

Still the tall man did not move and not even a muscle of his set face pulsated. A moment of waiting or longer must have gone by – nobody could have guessed the exact passage of time – and yet Uncle Ambrose appeared insensible.

The minister cleared his throat. "If Ambrose Thompson is unable to speak for himself, then I will do my best to speak for him."

But at this the presumably repentant sinner rose up slowly, very slowly, almost it would seem by inches, until he stood taller than any other person in the new red brick church.

"It ain't my way to pray before a audience," he began quietly and with his gray head bowed, although his words could be distinctly heard, "and I don't know as I feel called to do any special repentin' this evenin', seein' as I got up on this here mourning bench by accident and with no idea but to set and listen fer a while. Still I reckon I got sins enough to be sorry 'bout most any time the chance comes." Ambrose then seemed to be reflecting for a moment, and it is just possible that during this pause the thin ghost of a smile played like heat lightning about the end of his sensitive nose, although his expression continued perfectly reverent.

"I wouldn't be a mite surprised though, Lord," he went on in almost a conversational tone, "ef my neighbours wasn't better able to confess my sins fer me than I am fer myself, bein's as we've all got such special talents fer our neighbours' motes. The trouble is I'm none too sure one man can precisely understand another man's, Heavenly Father, you've so many and various ways of revealin' yourself to your children. Course I know, Lord, I've loved fine apparel too dear and smokin' and the outdoors when mebbe I should 'a' been workin' in, and mebbe I've laughed now and then over things folks think should 'a' been cried over. And I've had my hours of distrustin' and repinin' and forgettin' it's God's privilege to run His world 'cordin' to His idees, not mine. But, O Lord, what's the use mentionin' things that ain't cheerful even to you? I'm plumb sorry fer all I've done that's bad 'thout goin' into further details."

And here again Uncle Ambrose paused; however, not one of his strained and over-eager listeners had any delusion that his prayer was finished. He simply had been forgetting them and now remembered. Then he lifted his head and straightened his shoulders, and what he saw through the shining oak ceiling of the new brick church no one shall ever know.

"Ef any one here present is waitin' to hear me say I'm sorry fer any lovin' I've ever done of man – or woman (course I know you ain't expectin' it, Lord) – then I am obleeged to state he or she'll be disappointed. Women is the nearest things I've known on this earth to the angels, and I ain't been disobedient to the heavenly vision."

Up to this moment Uncle Ambrose's voice had been low and evenly modulated, but now it changed like the deeper tones of an organ until it came to be the most wonderful music in the world – a voice that was able perfectly to express the richest things of the spirit. "But, Lord, ef ever I'd wronged a woman, I'd not be askin' forgiveness of you; I'd just ask that it be meted out to me in like proportion as it has been meted out to the woman, forever and ever. Amen."

And then not waiting for the closing of the service, and forgetting his hat, Uncle Ambrose passed on down the church aisle, where room was instantly made for him, out into the white stillness of the autumn night, away from calumny and human irritation, and the little congregation seeing him go with a look of added dignity and peace, whatever their former ill-founded suspicions, after to-night believed nothing against him.

CHAPTER XVIII

INDIAN SUMMER

Truth is immortal, and one truth is that there cannot be two pursuers in the game of love.

After the night of the first revival service Uncle Ambrose, making no further visits to the Red Farm, it was the woman who set herself to lure him back again.

In the first place, he had by then convinced her that her mistrust had been unjust and that she had listened to suggestion that was not evidence. So there was but one way by which the widow felt she could make reparation and restore peace between herself and Ambrose Thompson. She must find out the name of Sam's father, for necessarily the boy had to have two parents, and the mother she had known as she had come frequently to the farm on visits to her son up to the time of her death.

The original informant mentioned in the Bible was a female: "And the damsel ran, and told them of her mother's house these things."

Therefore after a certain period of effort the boy Sam himself drove one afternoon into Pennyroyal bearing three perfumed notes written by the widow which he was to carefully deliver at the post-office.

The next afternoon, along about four o'clock, three men appearing in the village street at almost the same time were seen to start off in the direction of the Widow Tarwater's farm. Not that they were together, certainly not; for some little time they were even unconscious of each other's destination. Ambrose, however, made the discovery first, since owing to the enfeebled condition of his livery-stable horse and the disabled state of his prehistoric gig he was compelled to be in the rear of the procession, which was headed by the Honorable Calvin on a high black charger and seconded by the Rev. Mr. Tupper in a neat phaeton drawn by a fat pony.

The tall man could have vowed that the best parlour at the Red Farm had not been changed in more than three decades, except that a criminal looking portrait done in crayons of the Widow Tarwater's late husband, who had been an uncommonly handsome man, hung over the mantel, for there in the same dark corner and on the identical sofa sat Peachy, but a far more flushed and emotional Peachy than her former admirer recalled.

For indeed the widow's cheeks were burning, her mouth tremulous like a worried child's, and after her first greeting of her three visitors, she continued twisting her handkerchief in and out of her fingers, trying to speak and yet plainly not finding courage. So conspicuously was she needing consolation that Uncle Ambrose's long arm fairly ached to accommodate its length to her large waist, nevertheless the presence of his rivals, who may or may not have been suffering from the same pressure, deterred him.

"Ambrose," so much the widow did get out, turning her eyes away from the encouragement she might have received from the ardour of two other glances, to rest them on her older friend, "I feel it my duty, having lately acted kind of suspicious to you, to tell you that I now know who the boy Sam's father is, was – " And Peachy fell to sobbing now in such earnest that she was compelled to bury her flushed face in her handkerchief.

Two of the men stared; many hopeful things had each of them anticipated in this hasty summons from the widow, but not this confession. However, the third man, hopping up, began striding rather irritably about the room.

"If his father was, then fer the land sakes, Peachy, keep it to yourself; 'taint a mortal bit er use startin' things on a dead man."

But whether the widow belonged to the large group of females with a passion for martyrdom or whether she was less a martyr in telling her secret than in keeping it, who shall say? For in reply she shook her head, removing her handkerchief, though permitting her tears to flow faster than ever.

"My late husband was this boy Sam's father," she went on quickly, once she had fairly started. "I might have guessed it years agone if I'd ever thought on it; seems like I can recall now numbers of times when he tried to tell me this himself, and as he was so often askin' me to be kind to Sam and give him a chance I more'n half took a dislike to the lad. Lately I've been goin' through some old papers and, well, there ain't no more to be said 'ceptin' as I've no children of my own I'm goin' to make this Sam my heir; I've already writ out the papers."

With the ending of this speech Uncle Ambrose enjoyed one of the most exquisite moments of his later years. Not that he was so transfigured by the proof of his own innocence, since the annoyance that the scandal had caused had passed that evening in church, and most certainly not because he enjoyed hearing the reputation of Peachy's former husband damaged, but because the expressions on the faces of his rivals proved what his wits had already discovered, that the two men were not after the widow for herself, but because of the abundance and fruitfulness of her fields.

What the widow herself saw it was impossible to tell, for almost immediately after, with her face still buried in her handkerchief, she left the room, and the three men could see her through the window hurrying across the front lawn.

Left alone, the Honorable Calvin was the first to speak. Drawing out a delicately scented white handkerchief he wiped a slight dampness from about his lips. "I suppose the widow does not fully understand this boy has no legal claim on her," he said thoughtfully.

The minister sighed, waving a fat hand. "A little remembrance, say a thousand dollars or so, as a start in life would be quite sufficient."

Uncle Ambrose smiled. "I reckon you gentlemen had better talk this matter over with Mrs. Tarwater. Women have such foolish, softhearted ways of tryin' to save the innocent and help the guilty when they're able; 'taint law and 'taint gospel, mebbe, but it's woman."

Then seeing that the legislator had risen to his feet with the first understanding of his suggestion the tall man laid a firm hand on him. "Better let Brother Elias have the first show, Mr. Jones," he drawled; "seems no more'n proper respect to pay the gospel."

So both men waited ten minutes or more, the Honorable Calvin glowering and fidgeting, while Uncle Ambrose, whatever his inner stirrings, remained imperturbably calm until, seeing a stout figure returning to unhitch his pony, with his face wearing an expression more of sorrow than of anger, Mr. Jones waited for no further advice.

Left alone, Uncle Ambrose betrayed his real feelings. First, he looked at himself in a small triple mirror on the mantel, carefully combing with a little pocket comb the thin hairs well to the front of his head over his increasing bald spot, and afterward he walked restlessly about the great room, finally arriving at the window. It was always Calvin Jones he had feared. "Good looks and a silver tongue! Lord, what a combination!"

The sun was now going down at the edge of the Kentucky landscape, in the fields the grain had been cut and stacked and golden pumpkins were lying between the piled up mounds of hay and corn. Over the tips of the grass, which still showed green, autumn leaves were swirling, and hovering above, and through it all a fine, thin mist which might be the coming blight of winter or the lingering spirit of the summer's warmth.

Crossing a meadow and moving toward a big red barn, Uncle Ambrose soon spied Sam driving a long line of cows toward home. With a leap his long legs carried him out the window and swiftly across the yard. "Hullo!" he cried while still some distance away.

The boy's face reddened, but this time from sheer pleasure. "Hullo!" he cried, all his sullenness and resentment gone. And in a few moments the older man's lean, strong fingers held the boy's short stocky hand in a hard clasp. "I am glad fer you clean through," he said simply.

The boy's head jerked toward the house. "Has she told you?" he asked. "It's powerful kind of her when she ain't even liked me."

"Kind?" Uncle Ambrose frowned. "Why, boy, she's plumb magnificent!" And here he curveted a few steps to the side. "Lord! ain't it splendid – life so full of good things happenin' every minute!" Stopping, he gazed steadily and curiously into the eyes of the young man near him, while the cows wondering at the delay pressed their sweet smelling bodies against each other and muzzled their soft noses. The boy's eyes were no longer bloodshot nor ashamed.

"'Bout that other thing, sonnie, your girl?" Uncle Ambrose hesitated. "Don't you tell me nothin' ef you ain't a mind to. Lord! don't I remember how a young fellow hates bein' pried into."

"You ain't pryin'," the boy defended, "and it's comin' on great. I took your advice. I just let myself do all the lovin' I could 'thout stewin' over her feelin's fer me, and then all of a sudden she up and told me she always had loved me, only she was afeard I didn't kire fer her."

Uncle Ambrose's face shone. "A'ire you worth her now, sonnie?"

"Lord, no," the boy answered; "but I kep' straight since that night and I'll keep on. It's lovin' that done it."

Uncle Ambrose raised his rusty stovepipe hat. "Lovin', that's it," he answered.

And then across his wrinkled face there marched a host of memories, while keeping his eyes on the sky among whose soft clouds there might easily have been floating any number of angels, he repeated the toast made immortal by Kentuckians: "The ladies, God bless 'em!"

Suddenly hearing the noise of a horse's hoofs trotting away from the neighbourhood of the farmhouse, Ambrose whirled, and before his companion could guess what ailed him, started running back across the lawn.

But this time Peachy was not to be so easily found. Uncle Ambrose searched for her in the yard and in the garden, in the place where the old summer house, now a ruin, had once stood, and then when the sun had disappeared and only an afterglow remained, found her leaning over a turnstile facing an orchard.

"I hope I ain't kept you waitin', Peachy," he remarked, a trifle breathlessly.

The woman smiled and slipped her arm through his that they might both lean together on the turnstile. "Most forty years, Ambrose," she returned with a finer enjoyment than she could have felt in her youth.

And her sixty-year-old suitor blushed. "I know more'n I did then, Peachy; I was frightened of your managin' ways." He was feeling a considerable anxiety, for the woman beside him was like a piece of fruit, no longer in her summer time, but reaching her perfection in late autumn.

Very quietly then Peachy withdrew her arm.

"I'm managin' now, Ambrose," she confessed. "Seems like growin' old don't lose us our faults; it kind er makes 'em set deeper. I should be sorry to try you, but I'm some past fifty and ain't able to change."

However, Uncle Ambrose simply put his arm around her, drawing her closer to him. "Lord, Peachy, ef that's all, don't you fret. You kin manage me now all you've a mind to; I ain't worryin'. I was young and didn't understand then that no man kin git on comfortable in this world 'thout bein' managed by a good woman." And he laughed and kissed her with an ardour that was in its way as good a thing as the springtime.

A minute later, the light dying quickly down, the autumn moon rose up above the orchard, and with the disappearance of the day the warmth ended so abruptly that, with a little shiver, the two middle-aged figures moved away, the woman watching the man anxiously. "It ain't moonlight we're needin', Ambrose Thompson," she whispered; "I'm thinkin' it's the light of the fireside."

PART FOUR

HIS FOURTH WIFE

"There are diversities of gift, but the same spirit"

CHAPTER XIX

"'LIZABETH"

A very old man leaned over, touching a cane-bottomed rocking chair with his carpet slipper. "Seems sort er more sociable like to see a little female chair a-rockin'," he remarked to himself, for the room was otherwise unoccupied, and even the house itself.

It was a December night and snowing hard. By and by the old man got up, and crossing over to a side window where the blind had not yet been pulled down, stood there for a moment frowning and saying impatiently: "Ef that don't beat all!" for mingling with the noises outside there sounded a faint and monotonous crying.

He was an uncommonly tall old man with a head like a highly polished billiard ball rising above a fringe of thin white hair; he had a straggly beard, while over his dim blue eyes the eyebrows arched like cornices.

Finally he shuffled back toward his place by the kitchen fire, and there getting down the family Bible commenced to read, first stuffing both fingers in his ears, although every now and then partially removing one to make observations. He was reading the twenty-second chapter of St. Matthew:

"For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven." However, on the third reading he shut up his book, keeping three bunches of pressed flowers inside to mark the place, and half humorously and half with the irritability of old age, sighed: "I don't feel as ef I could stand it a inch longer. What mortal use is there in me tryin' to make myself at all comfortable this evenin' with that noise eternally pesterin' me? Seems like it has always been my experience a man has got to give in first an' last."

Then wrapped in the faded splendour of a once gorgeous silk dressing-gown the old man disappeared into his bedroom, returning with a shawl crossed over his shoulders and a knitted muffler tied about his head. On opening his door he listened again for a moment, but, as the crying had not ceased, waded across his yard through the snow in his carpet slippers until he knocked with his big blue-veined old hand hard against the locked back door of a cottage adjoining his.

At first there was no answer except a continuing of the sniffling, snuffling noises which only made the visitor rap more vehemently, when at length the door opened and there stood a woman holding a lantern above her head.

"Uncle Ambrose Thompson, what kin you want o' me this time o' night?" she asked; "it's goin' on nine o'clock! You ain't sick?"

Uncle Ambrose shook his head, surveying his neighbour sympathetically, but oh, so disparagingly! She was so plainly an old-time old maid, flat in the chest and angular, a hard and bony structure, with a face that was equally barren save that its desert waste had lately been swept by a storm.

"No, I ain't sick, child," Uncle Ambrose answered, "but you are – heartsick. And what's more it seems likely I can't stand that noise you keep on a-makin'. You come over and set by my kitchen fire a space and kind er talk things out with me. I reckon I ain't altogether lost my soothin' powers!"

Before his glowing fire the old host comfortably placed two rocking chairs side by side. For the past seven years Ambrose Thompson had been a widower for the third time and, since Peachy's death, having come back home from the Red Farm, had lived all alone in his once rose-coloured cottage, looked after only by his neighbours.

Picking up a crazy quilt cushion from his chair, the old man surveyed it tenderly. "This was my Em'ly's make," he explained; "seems, 'Lizabeth Horton, that you and me 're most like strangers, havin' lived side by side only a little piece like seven years. Em'ly she was the second of my three wives." And then thoughtfully passing his hand backward over his high bald crown, Uncle Ambrose smiled in a kind of slow and puzzled fashion.

"No, now I've done mixed things up a bit; I'm gittin' a little oncertain these days. Em'ly wasn't never the sewin' one," he continued, "besides, this crazy quiltin' business was most too new fashioned fer my Em'ly. I kin recollect now bringin' that sofy cushion in from the farm, so it must 'a' been Peachy's. Funny how I keep puttin' everything on to Em'ly these days!"

Then seeing that his caller's red-rimmed eyes had been yearning toward the coffee pot at the back of his stove, the old man put it down before her with a nicked but brightly flowered cup and saucer, and afterward, settling himself in his own place, peacefully began smoking, finding a kind of unholy joy in the old maid's horrified glances about his untidy but nobly littered kitchen.

"S'pose you go ahead now 'n tell me just what ails you?" Uncle Ambrose suggested after a reasonably sustaining pause.

And straightway Elizabeth returned to the slow and monotonous weeping that had so disturbed his nerves for the past few hours. However, he let her alone for a time, and except for moving restlessly about in his chair and biting hard on his pipe stem made no other signs until at last he placed a trembling hand on her bowed shoulder. "'Lizabeth Horton, there is some women that just nachurally runs away to tears, but I wouldn't waste myself entirely ef I was you. Seems like when a female has cried 's long as you have, she must need something to fill up the places that has gone dry on the inside; so you take another cup of coffee; it may be bitter but it's liquid. I ain't sayin' I ain't used to women's weepin', but I'm gittin' older an' – "

Elizabeth at this gulped down her second dose. "I hadn't ought to cry so much, Uncle Ambrose," she apologized, "but you must know I'm havin' to give up my little home and it most breaks my heart."

Uncle Ambrose looked meditatively about his ancient and patched fourteen-foot-square kitchen, and his dim eyes shone with the never failing pride of possession. "These cottages ain't so bad," he said defensively. "I been living in mine off'n on fer most seventy years, and I kin remember when yours and old Mrs. Barrows', now deceased, was built like it. Still I am obleeged to say there may be finer places; more'n likely now this nephew's house is stylisher where you're bein' took in to live. Seems like I've done heard it's in a su-burb and sets up on a hill. Kind er onnecessary Pennyrile's havin' a su-burb, but mebbe you're thinkin' the young folks won't be good to you when you go up there to dwell."

Now that her crying had ceased the old maid's face looked gray.

"It ain't that I ain't goin' to a good home, Uncle Ambrose," she explained, "and I suppose they'll be as good to me as they can to a piece of furniture that don't fit in and ain't nowheres needed in their house. I can't expect a man to understand, but when a woman don't never marry and hasn't a husband or children of her own, seems like all she has to set store by is just things, havin' a home of her own. I done my best to keep mine since mother died and her pension stopped, by picklin' and preservin', but somehow I can't manage it." And now the woman's voice held the quiet acceptance of defeat which is sadder than any protest of tears.

She was looking into her lap at her knotted, hardworking and yet unsuccessful hands as she spoke, or else she would have seen the light of the understanding she denied in the old face opposite hers, which had not, I think, failed any woman in nearly threescore years.