Margaret Vandercook - The Loves of Ambrose

Ambrose Thompson opened his front door and looked out. It was May, the sun had just risen over Pennyroyal, and before him lay Kentucky's carnival of spring.

The boy drew a deep breath that seemed to rise and quiver over his face like a breeze coming away at the end of his long, curiously emotional nose.

"Glory, what a day!" he whispered; "seems about good enough to eat!" And then he vanished, only to reappear five minutes afterward dressed as a traveller and wearing a linen duster, a stovepipe hat, and carrying a carpet-bag.

Out in the cinder path his glance embraced the quiet street.

"Right foot, left foot" – without a change of expression the boy broke into an irrepressible jig. He was nineteen and stood six feet four in his stocking feet; the wind tilted his tall hat, showing his high forehead, his straight, straw-coloured hair, and solemn, light blue eyes; it whipped back his linen duster, disclosing his lean legs clad in tight trousers, his frock coat, and white stock. An indescribable air of adventure enveloped him. So Abraham Lincoln may have looked on some dress-occasion morning in his youth – all big bones and promises waiting for something to happen.

"I sure am going to give 'em the slip this time," Ambrose panted, stopping to readjust his costume and to take another careful survey of the neighbourhood. In his garden several lilac bushes were in their first bloom, and above his doorway an ardent, over-early honeysuckle had blossomed in the night. The young man put the honeysuckle in his buttonhole.

"I reckon," he remarked, "there ain't nothin' sweet that don't grow in Kentucky," and then with a smile whose shine radiated through his homeliness and a blush that spread to the tips of his big ears, he added: "I ain't just figurin' on the growth of flowers," and was off tiptoeing down his garden walk and stepping across his gate to avoid the creak of opening it.

This was fifty-five years ago in Kentucky, in a little village of some three or four hundred inhabitants, shut in by hills and by inclination in the southwestern part of the state; a community not to be confounded with their high-living, high-stepping blue grass neighbours, for dwellers in the "Pennyrile" were a plainer people, who perhaps drew some of their characteristics from the bittersweet, pungent "Pennyrile" grass that gave the locality its name.

As for the town itself, it rested primly in a cup-shaped hollow with three main streets. One of them, travelling farther than the rest, led in a way to the end of things for the residents of Pennyroyal as it climbed a hill at the foot of the village, set thick with hardy perennials, evergreens, and small white stones, while encircling this hill was Peter's Creek, that by and by grew up to be a river, but it had a tranquil movement, proceeding slowly on its course by reason of sharing the Pennyroyalian distaste for getting any distance from home.

Then the houses in Pennyroyal: although the beautiful open country was all about them, they crowded so close together that they seemed almost to touch elbows, and now and then one of them had appeared to shove the other back in its determination to get the best view of the street. They were mostly cottages, with no front porches, but with sloping roofs and little Gothic wooden fences, and painted white, with green outside blinds, except Ambrose's, and his had been touched with a boy's imagination, its intention being plainly rose colour.

Now in a double row along the outside wooden sidewalk this morning the linden trees were dropping fragrant yellow plumes inches deep in the ruts of the clay road, while over the chimneys whirled the last of the spring's apple blossoms. Bees buzzed among the flowers, birds chattered, flying nervously from one tree to another in an effort to be through with breakfast before the disturbing human element should get about; and hitched to a nearby post Ambrose's horse and gig were waiting.

The young man surveyed his equipage with the eyes of an idealist.

Old Liza had seen service, but her toilet had been made in the spirit of the best foot foremost; her coat had been freshly curried, her gray mane and tail carefully combed, and in her manner there was an air of emotional anticipation.

With one foot hovering above the step of his gig, Ambrose suddenly paused. The laprobe inside the carriage was quivering.

"Holy Moses!" Reaching underneath, the young man drew forth a small black and brown object whose legs and tail were five upturned points of supplication. Setting it upright on the ground, his face hardened. "Ain't I told you you couldn't come with me, Moses?" he began sternly. "Ef ever there was a crittur, human or otherwise, with a talent for bein' where it wasn't wanted, it's you! Besides, ain't I just locked you in the stable?"

The softening in his master's manner, visible in his last question, in the twitching of his eyebrows, in the slight movement of the tip of his long nose, was familiar to Moses. Casually he approached Ambrose's leg, but midway there, sensing defeat and not being an amiable beast, he planted his feet wide apart, barked as loudly as chronic hoarseness permitted, and straightway the young man humbled himself before him.

"Fer the lands sakes don't give me away," he pleaded. "I ain't never had such luck before this, getting off without being pestered." Down on his knees, he patted the stiff bristles, apologetically whispering: "Sorry not to be wishing your company, but Susan and Aunt Ca'line will look after you. Ain't nothin' on God's earth that will keep Susan Barrows from lookin' after every mortal thing she sets eyes on."

Without deigning a farewell, Moses trotted away. A ridiculous looking animal with an ancestry as mixed as any son of Adam, yet he had an enormous self-esteem. You see, though a dog, Moses possessed a self-sustaining ego, which requires no special ancestry or talents to uphold it. For there is a vanity that feeds itself, and many nobler personalities go down before it. Invariably Ambrose's did. Merely christened after the Hebrew lawmaker because of having been found amid some bulrushes, yet Moses may have felt that the name carried its anointment.

But now at last the traveller had fairly started. Swinging into his gig, he arranged his long legs in a comfortable right-angle triangle, taking a final hurried glance around him. "Move on, Liza, faster'n you can, or it's all over with me," he urged, "for things is lookin' kind of nervous."

Three times his wagon wheels had revolved in the clay road when a shutter on the house next door banged open, and like the explosion of a gun a child's voice rent the air.

"He's off! I tell you I see him. He's gettin' away unbeknownst." And a thin, brown figure hopping out of the window on the grass ran toward the street, twittering and moving its head from side to side like an excited bird. An instant later from the same opening a second pair of legs protruded – longer and thinner than the others, clad in white stockings and black cloth gaiters. Like the feelers of a beetle turned over on its back they waved in the air. And from behind a kind of barrel-shaped opening came a voice so tragic and compelling that even old Liza, stopping short, turned an inquiring eye toward the source of the disturbance.

As for Ambrose, although filled with a boy's impatience at interruption, the sight was overpowering. His reins dropped loosely, he stared, gasped, and then shook with silent laughter. Susan Barrows was living in the days of hoopskirts, and now in her effort to slide through the window had been held fast.