Margaret Vandercook - The Loves of Ambrose

"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: