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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."
And this time Ambrose laughed to himself. "It's croaks you're always hearin', old fellow, ain't it?" he whispered affectionately. And then – "I reckon it makes no difference to me whether it's a frog or a turtle, a bird or even a tree toad. It's the song of life, I'm listenin' for, Miner."
CHAPTER III
PEACHY
Nevertheless, in spite of Ambrose's intentionally truthful declaration to Miner, for the rest of that afternoon and evening he was never wholly able to get free from the thought of Peachy. However, he did not then stir from his first shelter in the woods, finding endless refreshment in the beauty of the Kentucky river landscape, nor did he surrender himself readily to the lure of the feminine; but poor Ambrose was a victim of the strange force that lies embodied within a universal idea.
A bird appearing on the branch of a tree above his head and bending over, peeped into his face twittering: "Pe-che, Pe-che," as impudently as any small Susan; then, catching his eye, with a little mocking courtesy, flew away. A robin hopping on the grass near the boy's side, pecked at the crumbs left over from his luncheon; her full breast, her air of concentrated domesticity somehow recalled the image of his latest affection – Peachy, the youthful mistress of the Red Farm.
Now in setting out on this spring pilgrimage nothing had been farther from the traveller's intention than any dallying with his familiar weakness. Girls – why, the years behind Ambrose Thompson blossomed with them; never could he recall a season since his extremest boyhood when he had not been enchantingly in love. But actually there was little reason why Peachy Williams should be thrust upon him more than another save that he was growing older and had been devoting some time to her of late. Besides which, she was comely.
Toward nightfall the bird songs became such intimate revelations of love that several times the listener put his fingers into his ears in his effort to fight their suggestions away. And yet it was not until next morning that his decision actually broke.
And then it was not so much a matter of emotion. But he had had an uncomfortable night of fitful dreaming and awakened with yesterday's spiritual elation gone and with an intense desire for human companionship.
Rising first on one elbow, Ambrose made a remark which has probably been considered by the greater portion of the male creation. "I wonder now," he asked himself, "ef bein' looked after and made over ain't sometimes better'n bein' free?"
A very little while after this the boy cooked his own breakfast, with extremely poor results, and then making as pleasing a toilet as his reflection in the river permitted, immediately set out in the direction of the Red Farm. And no longer did Ambrose's face show signs of struggle: his air had now become one of peaceful acquiescence in the laws of nature. He had no idea of committing himself definitely, however, by this visit to Peachy; his mind was not wholly made up and he desired nothing abrupt or startling; it was simply that at present a day of solitary musing did not appear so appealing as her companionship, and moreover, Ambrose shared the universal masculine delusion that his was the important mind to be made up.
A sense of humour means a sense of proportion and therefore an appreciation of values, so Ambrose Thompson, the young Kentucky Romeo, was not without a certain thrifty streak. In driving along it was not disagreeable to reflect that the Red Farm was the richest tobacco farm in the county and that Peachy was its sole heiress. Not that Peachy by herself was insufficient; Ambrose also had pleasure in recalling the firmness of her young bosom, the sheen of her auburn hair, the whiteness of her teeth – and then – how frequently and how delightfully she laughed. That her laugh was non-committal had not up to this time troubled her admirer, who yearned for a feminine audience and had not yet learned to ask that this audience be discriminating.
Even feeding chickens may be made an alluring picture, or at least Ambrose thought so, when he had driven unobserved into the farmyard and waited there watching Peachy, with her sleeves rolled back, flinging the corn to the ground. Also with his accustomed sensitiveness to impressions the boy realized that the girl herself was not unlike one of her own creamy leghorn hens; she, too, was both red and white with her clear healthy skin, red hair, and red-brown eyes – and then the fulness of her figure! The young man laughed delightedly, when turning and catching sight of him the girl started running toward him with short, uneven steps that yet got over the ground very quickly, and actually when she spoke, there was a little cluck to her voice.
And yet, somehow, Peachy did not seem to feel the same degree of surprise that her visitor did at his own unexpected appearance. She blushed when he kissed her hand with an ardour peculiar to Ambrose though foreign to custom in the "Pennyrile," but she betrayed no wonder at his visit in the broad daylight when plainly he should have been at work in his store. Neither did she ask questions. Notwithstanding, after a few words of greeting, Ambrose had the impression of being shooed into the house, Peachy using her white apron for the purpose.
Yet this had not been his intention, for indeed he had arrived at the farm an hour before dinner, with the idea of taking Peachy out for a walk and then possibly confiding to her the original purpose of his escape from Pennyroyal; surely she could be made to understand better than any one else, and his mood was now one requiring sympathy. Instead, however, there was something mysterious the matter with the girl's costume, so that Ambrose shortly found himself divested of his hat and duster and shut up in a sticky parlour with the family album on his lap for entertainment, and only one window open to give him just enough light to be able faintly to see and air to keep barely alive. On entering the room his first impulse naturally had been to fling open wide all the windows, but hearing his hostess's cries of horror, both his arms and his inclination had weakened. Although truly the lawn about the Red Farm house was exquisitely green and free from dust, yet the thought of possible desecration to the best parlour had the effect of reality.
Now although Ambrose was miserably settled according to Peachy's directions, and in spite of having expressed the desire to change her dress at once, the girl still lingered on, her face wearing a look that troubled her suitor as it was so unlike her usually placid and admiring one. Her red lips were drawn, her brow puckered, her atmosphere one of extreme disapproval. Under the circumstances Ambrose's forehead was naturally moist with perspiration and his face not overly clean, yet his clothes, notwithstanding being somewhat crumpled and dusty, were plainly his Sunday best.
"What is it, Peachy?" he asked, first studying himself solicitously. Then, following her shuddering gaze across the crimson splendour of the Brussels carpet, he beheld a track of mud made with footprints so large that they could belong to no other feet than his. His eyes dropped. Surely his feet were caked with mud – mud from the shadowy cool depth of the woods, from the banks of that celestial river so lately deserted by him. Yet, seeing the girl's unhappiness, again the young man surrendered and so for a longtime (it was hard to tell how long) continued sitting in the same place. Peachy had gone away, to remain perhaps till dinner time, and taken his shoes with her. So Ambrose's feet were now encased in a pair of hot carpet slippers, a whole size too small for him, so that he could not even shuffle without crumpling his toes or else walking about in his socks.
Several times he sighed, pushing back his long hair, a gesture with him expressive of mental unrest. Why, oh, why, had he given up his original plan of two days' solitary freedom and companionship with nature? Peachy had never seemed less alluring, and as for physical comfort or even the pleasure of her society, had he gained either? Cold shivers every now and then had their way up and down the young man's spine in the course of his meditations, notwithstanding the warmth of the room. For he knew himself to be easily stirred, so supposing that he and Peachy had taken the walk together that morning and something serious had happened! By and by young Ambrose began to feel as utterly uninterested in female charms, as cool and remote as a snow-capped mountain, and at about this moment Peachy returned to the room.
She was wearing a pure white dress and, moving over into a dark corner, smiling at her suitor, she sat down on a small sofa. Here, by dint of pinning his toes down into his slippers, and letting his heels rise above them, Ambrose managed to arrive a few seconds later. He was close up beside her, as comfortably near as Peachy's starched clothes permitted, liking the clean smell of her dress, the perfume of her body; there were odours about her of warm new milk, of fresh honey, of ripening fruits.
And quite by accident, it seemed to him, the girl's plump hand was laid near his, so that a moment later it required pressing. Then the kerchief about her full breast, rising and falling softly, showed a hint of something whiter and softer beneath. With surprising rapidity the boy's recent regret for his lost holiday began slipping away from him. The room was still close, but a breeze blowing in from the partly raised window fanned them both. Perhaps Ambrose's head was swimming from fatigue and drowsiness, perhaps from his sense of his companion's nearness, of her readiness to fall into his arms with his first desiring touch.
"Peachy," Ambrose was whispering, when stealthily the door of the parlour opened, and there stood Peachy's father, his red face wearing such an expression of amusement and coarse understanding that instantly Ambrose felt a return of his former coldness. His boots having been cleaned and returned to him five minutes later, he followed the farmer and his daughter into their dining-room.
There the meal was a hideous one to him despite his hunger and the good and plentiful food. For seated at the family table, were several farm hands, white overseers of the negro labourers, and they made stupid jokes, shoving their elbows into one another and grinning idiotically from Peachy to him. Their ugly thoughts were like palpable close presences in the room, destroying all possible illusions for the boy, and yet the girl herself seemed not to mind. Instead, she blushed and bridled, sending challenging looks at Ambrose across the spring freshness of his piled-up plate of new potatoes, jowl, and spring greens each time he attempted putting his fork up to his mouth.
So that after a while, inch by inch, the boy felt himself being pushed into a corner where he had meant to walk one day of his own accord. And by the time dinner was over, not only had all desire passed from him, but apparently all will power as well. For next he allowed Peachy to lead him to an enclosed summer house. This summer house was some distance away from the big place and so shut in by carefully trained vines that it allowed no opportunity for distracting views or vistas beyond. It was what one under some circumstances might have called, "a chosen spot."
Now there is no reasonable explanation of why Peachy Williams, the chief heiress of "the Pennyrile," had so set her heart upon the possession of Ambrose Thompson. Lovers were plentiful, and among them the rich owner of the place adjoining her father's, and Ambrose had no fortune worth mentioning, and, moreover, was distinctly homely; but perhaps Peachy was drawn as many another woman has been before – by the lure of the unknown; for never could she have any proper understanding of Ambrose Thompson's temperament. Times were when he appeared more ardent than any of her other suitors, and then his attention being distracted, both physically and mentally he faded from sight. Now in contrast Peachy's own disposition was direct and simple. At a distance from the Red Farm to the village she recognized that her lover might be difficult to control, but near at hand she believed him tractable, and in a measure this was true, for Ambrose could always be managed by his friends up to a certain point – only the trouble was that at this time of life Peachy Williams did not understand where this point ended.
Like a long tallow candle slowly melting from the heat, the young man was now lolling idly on the narrow circular bench of the summer house appearing so limp and dispirited that he seemed incapable of any kind of opposition.
Would the afternoon never pass? Could he ever remember having been forced to remain so long in the society of any one woman? So long that he ceased to have anything he desired to say or any possible idea that he wished to express; indeed his mind felt as clean and empty as a slate wiped by a wet rag. Why in heaven's name didn't Peachy herself have something to say once in a while? Before this day his calls had been short evening ones, when he had had opinions of his own and to spare. Could the time ever come in a man's life when he might want a girl to be inspiration as well as audience, to have an idea of her own now and then?
"Oh, Lord," Ambrose groaned half aloud. If only he could think of some plan of escape, but in the rash enthusiasm of his arrival at the farm had he not promised Peachy to remain all day? And now in his exhausted condition even his imagination had deserted him. Certainly he could think of no excuse for getting away at once.
Yet more and more depressing were Peachy's long silences, her frequent laugh more irritating, since Ambrose could find no reasonable excuse for laughter in the dulness of the interminable May afternoon with nothing to look at but the ground at his feet, or the lacing of leaves overhead, except Peachy, stitching, stitching everlastingly on something so white and weblike that Ambrose felt he too was being sewed in, made prisoner for life.
His long legs twitched, fairly his body ached with his longing to be off, until by and by even the girl was made to realize that things were not going as she had reasonably expected.
"What is it ails you this afternoon, Ambrose?" she asked at last, wistful if he had but known it. "Wasn't there something special you wanted to say to me to-day, else why did you come so out of your regular time?"
"Why had he come?" Barely was Ambrose able to repress another groan. For the life of him he could not now have told what had drawn him that morning to the Red Farm. Whatever desires or emotions had then stirred him were gone, his head was heavy, his blood moved languidly, even the necessary domestic noises of farm life were inexpressibly annoying. Could Peachy ever have spelled romance? Sighing aloud Ambrose put up his hand to wipe fresh moisture from his brow, and then coloured.
"I'm afeard you're ill," the girl continued, suddenly solicitous, and again with a movement that suggested a motherly hen: "You're so quiet and unlike yourself and yet so nervous and wriggly."
Ambrose yawned. "I slep' out last night, so mebbe I'm tired," he confessed unadvisedly; then immediately observed the same expression on Peachy's face that had been brought there by the presence of his muddy boots in her parlour. Her lips had tightened, though her brow was smooth; it was that gentle but awful look of the born manager.
"I knowed you'd been doin' something foolish," she stated calmly. "Anybody else'd remember there is chills and fever out of doors these spring nights. It's the spring that has set in on you; your blood needs thinnin'. I'll get you some sassafras tea." Relieved by Ambrose's revelation, Peachy was for at once starting off, but the young man caught at her skirts.
Truly the spring was not at present working on him nor did his blood at this hour require thinning.
"Don't go, Peachy; it ain't sassafras I'm needin', thank you just as kindly," he said, touched and a bit shamed by her interest. "To tell you the truth, I'm beginnin' to feel restless wantin' to get back to the woods ag'in. I'll come back to see you soon," he pleaded, observing that her head was being shaken with unmoved persistence. Her reply was final:
"You'll do no such thing, Ambrose Thompson; you'll stay right here till your queerness has wore off. Haven't I been worryin' over you ever since dinner? Think I'll let you go moonin' off now by yourself with no one to look after you?" Like young Juno both in her majesty and plenitude, Peachy did this time move out of sight, leaving her victim greatly shaken.
In a few moments Ambrose knew that a bitter herb compound would be poured down his reluctant throat; later he might be placed in bed between hot blankets and more sweat drawn from his lean frame. Really there was no limit to Peachy's particular kind of mothering femininity, and since her intentions were kind – Ambrose knew himself of old – before kindness he would go down like a struck ten-pin. Already he could feel the blankets closing in over him, and now in truth he shook with a chill.
Soon after his tall form arose, and then crouched as it crept forth from the summer house, stopping only long enough to pin a white paper to the outside arbour, when with leaps and bounds it disappeared inside the stable, to reappear a few moments later with old Liza hitched to his high gig. Driving as rapidly as possible he soon got past the outside farm gate leading into the road.
So when Peachy returned with cup and spoon in hand she found her shrine deserted and instead read this note pinned outside among the vines and scrawled in the handwriting of Ambrose Thompson:
You were right, Peachy dear, I'm not myself to-day. I am cold and my heart action is uncommon feeble, so I think I'd best not stay to worry you. Maybe I'll be coming back to the farm some day when I'm feeling different.
Your respectfulAmbrose.However, safe on the road, Ambrose, looking back and catching a far image of Peachy with his letter in her hand, decided that never again should he return to the Red Farm. For not only was Ambrose fleeing, but knew the reason why. Peachy was a manager, and had that moment in the parlour before dinner been longer – well, thank God and old Liza, he was still free.
"Good Lord, deliver me!" the boy prayed, though being a good Baptist he knew no litany save that of his own soul.
CHAPTER IV
"Even so, Love, even so!
Whither thou goest, I will go."
So the boy continued driving on and on, loitering in the faint sweet-smelling May afternoon.
At first after having left the farm his heart had been troubled and his mind uneasy, burdened by an unconscious wave of sex weariness.
"Lord," he said aloud once, "seems such a pity you didn't make all critturs the same sex; I ain't carin' which, male or female, seein' what a lot of trouble we might all then 'a' been saved."
Naturally, so far as Ambrose himself was concerned, he was through with the dangers lurking in feminine society forever! He even intended confessing this conviction to his friend and partner, Miner, as soon as they should be alone together, for even at the moment of his resolution had not the boy's subliminal self whispered that he might need strengthening later on?