The Loves of Ambrose

Relapsing into silence after this, which was soon followed by a more usual and serene state of mind, the young man shortly after took out from his duster pocket a withered russet apple left over from the winter store, and thoughtfully sunk his teeth in it. Then gradually his tranquillity deepened, increased by the recollection of his having just passed through the fire of the enemy and escaped. Behind him lay the village of Pennyroyal, suspicious yet still unsatisfied, and before him the open, empty, springtime road. At will Liza was cropping wayside grass: the traveller's hands had let slip the reins, and sometimes his eyes wandered to the far-off blue horizon and sometimes dwelt on the closer beauty of the roadsides, where elderberry, sumach and Virginia creeper were tangled in thick hedges, and where young grapevines hung like silver-green garlands under their fine coating of May dust.

In a Kentucky landscape, to those who comprehend it, there is ever a sense of generous growth, of nature's yielding herself gladly to life's eternal purpose. Now dimly this country boy began to understand the motive in the new beauties and new fragrances of each returning spring.

Again the eagerness of the dawn overtook him; and stiffening, he picked up his reins, starting off again, when, turning in from an elbow up the road, Ambrose beheld the one person whom above all others his desire had been to escape.

The figure was occupying the entire seat of a buggy, but was driving along apparently so lost in thought as to seem oblivious of anything or anybody in his vicinity.

"Morning, Ambrose," Doctor Webb began, however, as he appeared directly alongside the other gig, and yet there was nothing either in his tone or manner to suggest that he thought it unusual for a young man to be turning his back upon his natural field of labour at this hour of the morning to drive off in exactly the opposite direction.

"Morning," Ambrose returned, warily attempting to creep past without further conversation. For if the doctor should open the broadside of his humour the secret of his journey might yet be wrested from him. Nevertheless, although the older man had stopped his horse too deliberately to be ignored, he showed no present desire to ask questions. Indeed, the usual smile had disappeared from his kind face, and his deeply lined eyes appeared anxious and worried. Just such a look Ambrose had seen while the doctor sat watching by the bedside of a critically ill patient.

"What troubles you, doctor?" he inquired.

In answer the man leaned across from his buggy, taking one of Ambrose's lean hands in his, and, unaccustomed to a touch with such magnetic power in it, a kind of electric thrill passed through the susceptible boy.

"It's you I've been troubling about lately, my son," Doctor Webb answered, "and now it seems as if Providence had just sent you along for me to speak to this morning. I've brought you out of children's diseases, chicken pox, measles and the like, but I've been seein' symptoms in you lately that have made me powerful uneasy, 'cause in this trouble it ain't in my power to help you through."

Ambrose's tongue was thickening, and his Adam's apple moving convulsively. "Is the disease so serious, then?" he whispered, feeling a hitherto unsuspected though general weakness creeping over him.

The doctor bowed his great head until his double, treble chin rested upon his shirt bosom, concealing his face from view. "Sometimes it's fatal, my boy," he returned, appearing so moved that his big voice sounded hoarse and unnatural. "It's true there's some that gets over it, but nobody ain't ever quite the same afterward."

Ambrose was trying to keep his knees from knocking together. "How have I showed symptoms of the disease?" he asked.

And Doctor Webb's whole body rocked slowly back and forth. "My son, you're showin' 'em uncommon bad this mornin'. I could notice 'em soon as I was ridin' up toward you; your colour is a-comin' an' a-goin', your eyes is shinin' unnatural bright, your heart is a-thumpin' too quick." And here he sighed, so that Ambrose braced his lean shoulders for the worst, although his lips were dry.

"Tell me quick, doctor; ef I kin bear it, what is it ails me?"

"Puppy love," the doctor shouted, and then giving his old horse an unexpected cut with his clean willow switch, off he drove, shaking with laughter.

"Puppy love!" Twice Ambrose repeated the words in a stupid fashion, and then his laughter rang out until it sounded like an echo of the older man's heavier roar. "Durn it," he said to himself, "ef that ain't just another way of sayin' 'Peachy'!"

When finally the traveller entered the shelter of a certain group of low hills near the Kentucky river, it was well past the middle of the afternoon, and there in a hollow he fed and watered his horse and then lay down behind a tree.

CHAPTER II

THE VOICE OF THE TURTLE

In the mean time, however, Mrs. Barrows and her offspring had not been idle. Indeed, no sooner had they become convinced that no information could be had out of Ambrose than they both set off at once hurrying across back lots, the younger preceding her mother like an outrider, thrusting her head and her news into every open door.

Within a few minutes the mother and daughter had arrived together at a small house set midway in the next street, and there, without even pausing to knock, Mrs. Barrows, pulling at a side door, entered a dining-room. Seated at a breakfast table were six girls and one young man, and immediately the six pairs of inquiring feminine eyes were upraised toward Susan, although the solitary male continued the eating of three large fried eggs in spite of the fact that his appearance plainly indicated a bilious temperament.

"Miner Hobbs, he's gone!" said Susan. "Got off most without my seein' him, though I ain't had a good night's rest come this month of May!"

Obviously this information should have been regarded as interesting, and yet, except for a curt nod, Miner apparently had not heard. From earliest boyhood notwithstanding that two more unlike fellow creatures could not be imagined, he and Ambrose Thompson had been closest friends. For while Ambrose was long and fair, Miner was considerably below medium height and dark, with one gloomy, indestructible curl rising above his already furrowed brow. Alike only in both being orphans, Ambrose was untroubled by other ties, while Miner was guardian to six beautiful blond sisters, all exceeding him in size and tranquillity. The drygoods firm of Hobbs & Thompson had been opened up in Pennyroyal a year before, so that to-day Ambrose's unexplained disappearance was not only a failure in personal confidence but a downright business backsliding.

By and by, Miner arose. Still his fit of abstraction appeared too deep to have been pierced from the outside, and yet, sliding past Mrs. Barrows, he attempted to get out of the door. However, his visitor sprang upon him.

"You're sneakin' off to try to catch up with Ambrose," she announced triumphantly. "Well, the Lord knows I ain't one to want to hinder you. But I'm thinkin' you won't succeed, for Ambrose Thompson will lead all of us that aims to keep up with him a powerful long journey before ever we are through with him."

Notwithstanding, in the following of his partner Miner Hobbs fully understood that one must proceed warily; therefore he did not attempt starting until after Ambrose was well out of town, and then he rode slowly along on horseback, never coming into the range of the other traveller's vision, but trying to keep his wheel tracks in evidence, and now and then making inquiries of wayfarers. So that about an hour after Ambrose's entrance into the woods his friend came to the same place and there sought the thicket in which he believed him to have hidden himself.

Face downward Ambrose was lying on the soft earth; but if he felt surprise or anger at hearing the sound of a horse's hoofs, and later a human footfall, he made no sign. Flopping over he merely called, "Hello," keeping his eyes fixed upon the line of hills on the opposite bank of the river. His fishing-pole, fastened to a bush near by, was extended over the water, but Ambrose's only visible occupation was the chewing of a blade of "pennyrile" grass.

In contrast, Miner Hobbs appeared fatigued and harassed.

"I got to find out why you come off to yourself every year, Ambrose," he began angrily. "I know you're doin' somethin' you're ashamed of or you wouldn't be hidin'."

"Wherefore?" smiled the other boy. "Look here, Miner, we're friends, have been since the first hour we met, yet I can't see as that gives you the right to know my business. Friends has got their places, and in my opinion a man can tell his friend just what he wants him to know, no more, and no less, and the friend ain't the privilege to spy out a single other thing."

"But you're doin' somethin' sinful or you would 'a' told me," Miner repeated doggedly, and then, although uninvited, he sat down on the ground close by, commencing to smooth out the Hyperion curl over his brow which his dejection and the heat of his trip had considerably tightened.

"Then we'll let it go at that," drawled Ambrose.

And for the next five minutes both boys sulked, Miner gnawing savagely at his plug of tobacco, Ambrose still chewing on the blade of "pennyrile" grass.

There were no informing signs about the place, so Miner decided that the truant must now merely be resting on his journey.

"You hadn't a right to run off from business," Miner spluttered next. Having made up his mind not to make this accusation, the little man was surprised upon hearing it explode of its own strength.

However, Ambrose, instead of appearing disturbed, attempted to arrange himself more comfortably on the grass, but finding this impossible, his voice suggested richer repose.

"Miner, ain't it ever come to you that the Lord has given human bein's time for more than one thing?" he queried, resting his chin upon his hand. "I hold with work myself most always, but now and then there comes a time, maybe it's just a short time, that is meant for something else, something that belongs to you and is intended for you to do same as your work. Maybe it's restin' and maybe it ain't."

But at this the little man rose up on his feet. "As you've made up your mind you are not goin' to tell me, Ambrose, what is the use of talkin' so much? I suppose you're sure you are not goin' to tell me?"

His companion bowed his head.

"All right then, it ain't necessary," Miner rejoined. "I know what 'tis. There ain't but one thing that could ever come between you and me and that's – a girl. If it ain't Peachy Williams that has lured you from home, then it's some one else. I've been expectin' this to happen a long time, and I've been tryin' to prepare myself for this day," – here Miner choked, and coughed in order to conceal his emotion – "but I've always said to myself: Ambrose's easy, but he's open, and he'll surely tell me in time to get a brace. Of course I know, Ambrose, that you've been plumb crazy about girls since the Lord knows when, and been sendin' mottoes and valentines since you were able to talk, but I didn't think you would reach the marryin' stage fer quite a spell. Still I can see for myself that this spring trip looks like business. It passes my knowledge," – Miner relented – "but it's you. Seems as if I couldn't bear havin' females worritin' me save those my parents and the Lord put on me to the last day I live, but you, Ambrose, you ain't never had petticoat sense and never will. Good-bye." And there was unutterable scorn in Miner's last words, as he moved away, mingled with the affection he was to feel for no living thing save Ambrose. When with head bowed, he was unconsciously treading underfoot the flowers that sprinkled his path, a fishing-pole and line deftly circled through the air caught its hook in his coat sleeve.

The one boy struggled, while the other jerked, and then a rich voice drawled: "Please come back, old man, for if you really want to know why I've run off to myself each spring for these past five years so it clean hurts you not to know, I reckon I've got to tell you."

Then Miner returned and sat down again. His friend's behaviour was now even more puzzling than before, for although Ambrose was close by, his eyes had a faraway look in them, his eyebrows were twitching, his slender nostrils quivering, and indeed, he had the appearance of a man having strayed off some great distance by himself.

"Swear you'll never give me away, Miner," he began, and holding up one of his big hands in the sunlight – his hands which were the truly beautiful thing about him – he made a mystic sign to which his companion swore.

"You won't understand when I do tell you," he hedged, "but I've been comin' away off to myself every spring since I was a boy on account of the 'Second Song of Solomon.'"

And at this Miner groaned, shutting his near-sighted eyes. "Lord, he's the chap that had a thousand wives!"

Then back to earth came Ambrose, his blue eyes swimming in mists of laughter and his shouts waking all the echoes in the hills.

"Wives!" he cried, rolling his long body over and over in the grass, and kicking out his legs in sheer ecstasy, "Miner Hobbs, if ever you git an idea fixed in your head, earthquakes won't shake it. Wives, is it? Why, I ain't given Peachy Williams a thought of my own accord since I started on this trip, nor any other girl, for that matter, so I can't for the land sakes see why I have been havin' her poked at me so continual! 'Course there wouldn't be sense in me denyin' that I have a hankerin' for girls; flesh and blood, 'ceptin' yours, Miner Hobbs, cannot deny the kind we raise in Kentucky. However, they ain't been on my mind this trip. Old King Solomon done a lot of things besides havin' a thousand wives – they was his recreation. He builded a temple and founded a nation and wrote pretty nigh the greatest poetry heard in these parts."

Here the speaker commenced pulling at the damp earth to hide his embarrassment, and then made a pretence of examining the soil that came up in his hand.

"It's the 'Second Song of Solomon' I'm meanin', Miner, and I've already told you you ain't goin' to comprehend me when I do explain," he continued patiently, "but bein's as it's you, I reckon I've got to try. It's that song about spring. Ever since I was a little boy and first heard it, why it began a-callin' me to get away for a little space to myself to try and kind of hear things grow. It's a disappointin' reason for me sneakin' off, ain't it, and foolish? I wish I had been doin' somethin' with more snap to it, just to gratify Pennyroyal. But at first, you see, I didn't mean nothin' in particular by not tellin', knowin' that folks would think my real reason outlandish, but by and by when the town got so all-fired curious and kept sayin' I was up to different sorts of mischief, I just thought I'd keep 'em guessin'." Now the long face was quivering in its eagerness to make things clear. "Why, it seems to me from the time that the first green tips come peepin' up between the stubble in the winter fields I kin hear that Solomon Song a-beatin' and a-beatin' in my ears. 'Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds has come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.'"

But poor Miner was making a cup for his ear with his hand. "But turtles ain't voices, Ambrose, that anybody knows of," he murmured dimly; "it's frogs we hear croakin' along the river bank."