And with barely time for a cry, he flew with a monstrous plunge away down into the deep, dark blue waters of Connecticut River, rushing, with the tremendous momentum of his speed, twenty feet beyond the furthest edge of the thinning transparent black ice, that he had seen for the merest instant beneath his feet, infinitely too late for even an effort to save himself, and hardly long enough, so lightning-quick was the motion, to know that he was gone.
CHAPTER XI.
WHILE Jeff is paddling about in the water, let us make a few calm observations. We are better situated for that purpose than he, although he may have the advantage of us in point of coolness. What he soused into was not what is called an “air-hole;” it was a broad strip of open water, stretching across the whole width of the river, just at a turn in the channel, and where a sort of ripple caused by some bar or obstruction at the bottom had thus far resisted all the powers of Jack Frost. If this hat-chase of his had been foreseen, any of his Hartford-bred friends would have cautioned him about this bend in the river. If it had not been half-dark, and if he had not been so vexed and eager about his hat, or if he could possibly have imagined the existence of any such hole-in short, if for any reason whatever Jeff had not done it, it would not have been done. But he did; and there he is, at last, scrabbling and slopping in that mush of ice and water that is working and rustling along the edge of the river in the very innermost elbow of the bend. Instantaneous as his plunge had been, and amazing as it was, Jeff was too practised a swimmer not to shut his mouth tight as he went under; and he was too ready and too strong to be either terrified or paralyzed in mind or body, as a feebler person or a less experienced aquatic would have been. So, without trying to free himself from either skates or overcoat, he half instinctively felt the truth, that in that freezing water no man could live more than minutes; and that if he got out at all, it must be at once. No man who has not passed through some such peril understands what efforts can be condensed into seconds, where the jaws of death are even closing over him. But the usefulness of many a long run on land and many a long swim in the sea now showed itself. Even if years of life had been drained in that awful struggle of two minutes, the victory was cheap. Despite the skates (it seemed as if his feet weighed a thousand pounds); despite the weight of his heavy water-soaked clothing, he got his face above water, at one look saw the shore, and went rushing for it with desperate leaps, throwing himself along edgeways, shoulder first, not able to surge his body above the water to the waist, as he had often done in the summer waters of the Sound, but yet decisively mastering the cold, cruel, lapping flood. He struck wet clay, both with knee and hand, just as breath and strength began to fail together. No human being can put forth his very uttermost of strength or motion except for just so long as he can hold his breath. Eagerly enough he scrambled and slopped his way out, clutching ice, mud, leaves, sticks, whatever lay along that soiled and dreary margin. His laden feet sank and stuck in mire; he was bedaubed with the blue-gray clay from head to foot; but he had escaped the deadly river!
However, it was only to encounter a second foe no less deadly. Prompt and ready as ever, he forced his way up the frozen slope of the steep bank; sat down instantly, while his hands should retain some life, and tried his skate-straps. He could not bring his numbing fingers to bear. He took out his pocket-knife, opened it with his teeth, and cut the straps. Already, since he came out of the water, the skates had frozen tight to his feet, and he only knocked them off with a desperate kick. Then the idea came into his mind that it would be a very easy thing for him to freeze to death, there on the farther side of the river, though within plain sight of thousands of the city’s twinkling lights. And-as it always will be with some minds-he thought of it as at once horrible and absurd; and he smiled, though his teeth were chattering fearfully.
“I’ve no hat, either!” he said to himself. But he did not sit still for all this, by any means. It was all in his mind in a flash. As he threw off his skates, he sprang up, his overcoat crackling and stiff already; picked the skates up, thrust one into either coat pocket, and turning northward up the river, set out on a full run. But as the wind met him, it seemed to craunch his face and his head too, all over, all at once, with something that, as he thought, felt more like red-hot iron than arctic cold. It was again a question of minutes; perhaps Jeff was in no less danger than he had been when under water. But he stopped short; tore off the coat, drew it together over his head, leaving just room for one eye to peep out, and once more struck into a vigorous run. It was useless to consider whether he could get home. He must run, until he could run no more, unless he reached help before his running was exhausted.
He had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile, sheltered somewhat for part of the way by a thin growth of willows, and, fortunately, finding but few fences to climb over, when, as he ranged up opposite the great Arms Factory, he began to feel that he had not running enough left in him to get up opposite the heart of the city and so on to his rooms. There were no houses in sight on his side of the river; for all the land is meadow, flooded deep in the high spring freshets; nor any road, nor living thing.
“There’s just one thing to do,” reflected Jeff. “I’ll cross here and make straight for Aunt Helen’s.”
No sooner said than done. He turned short, ran down the bank, here sloping and sandy, hurried out upon the river, not without a sort of horror of it, crossed over, climbed the dyke, made his way up the first cross-street, and after asking the road of half a dozen different citizens, all of them scared enough, to be accosted by an apparently headless apparition, like a pedestrian Brom Bones, and all icy and crackling as it hurried along, he rang furiously at the door of Deacon Tarbox’s snug mansion.
The deacon himself opened it.
“Please let me in!” said poor Jeff, not very ready with his etiquette at the moment.
“Who are you?” demanded the startled deacon,-not so brave in mere physical matters as in those of conscience. But it was not the custom to refuse charity at that house, though it was not the custom to administer it at the principal entrance.
“Who are you? Go round to the back-door.” And partly irritated at what he conceived to be the presumptuousness of the applicant, and a little dismayed withal by the uncouthness of this goblin, with its one eye peeping out through the opening of the coat, he drove the door to with a most peremptory and undeacon-like slam.
Half dead as he was, Jeff laughed within himself as he dragged himself round the corner of the house-for, as is natural, having now reached succor, the effect of the tremendous strain which his frame had undergone began to come down upon him with a suddenness that he did not at all understand. He reached the back-door, however, just as the deacon opened it with a rather stern-
“This is the proper door for”-
He did not finish his sentence. As he opened the door, a tall figure swayed gently forward against it, then toppled over against him, and slid down to the floor, crackling somewhat, in a heap.
“Dead drunk!” muttered the deacon to himself, with disgust and horror; and his first thought was to bundle the beggar-man out upon the steps and shut the door. Then the deacon bethought him of the fearful cold of the weather; he had kept a daily thermometrical and meteorological record for fifty years in that very house; and considering that a few seconds more or less was nothing to the victim of King Alcohol, he stepped to a window close by, just outside of which hung his record thermometer, and inspected it through the glass.
“Whew!” whistled the old deacon to himself,-”fifteen degrees below! He wouldn’t last long out there!”
And setting down his lamp, with reluctant hands, and a face puckered into lines of contemptuous abhorrence enough for at least one hundred ordinary deacons, Deacon Tarbox bent over the person on the floor, and essayed to draw the coat from his face. The first time he let go in astonishment.
“Why, it’s frozen as stiff as an oak plank!”
A second stouter pull uncovered the face.
“Helen, h
ere! Here, this minute! Lord-a-massy on us! It’s Jeff Fleming!”
CHAPTER XII.
IT is needless to describe the emotions of Aunt Helen, or of Nettie, who, after delaying a few minutes at the river, had sensibly come home by herself, rather than wait, or speculate longer on the strange delay of her escort. The emotions of Yankee women do not make them useless; and first of all, they set sharply to work with the aid of the deacon, to take care of their strangely costumed visitor. Amongst them, they hoisted the young man upon a lounge which they set before the kitchen fire, and stripping off his outer garments, and packing him with hot blankets, he soon recovered his senses and told his story.
“We should be very thankful to Almighty God for sparing your life,” said the deacon solemnly.
“No doubt,” assented Jeff; and, as the deacon turned to say something to Aunt Helen, he added under his breath to Nettie,-
“And for letting me get into danger, too; oughtn’t I?”
“Hush!” said Nettie. What else could she say?
“I’m going to get a soft hat,” continued Jeff. “A tall hat is a delusion and a snare.”
“Still,” remarked Deacon Tarbox, “I have hitherto found mine safe enough on dry land.”
“Deacon,” said Jeff, “go a-skating with us next Saturday afternoon, will you?”
The Deacon smiled at the young joker; it was unnecessary to say any thing.
“Well,” observed Jeff after a little, “I believe I’m all right, auntie. I’m sorry to have made you so much trouble, and slopped up your nice clean kitchen so.”
“Don’t say a single word about it,” interrupted the good old lady.
“Well, auntie, I’ll do as much for you some time, then. I guess I’ll go up street now, at any rate.” And he essayed to rise, but sank back, looking up at Aunt Helen with a face of such queer astonishment that she laughed.
“You’ll go straight to bed-that’s what you’ll do,” said she, with decision: “and lie there all day to-morrow, if necessary, too. Nettie, come and help me get the south chamber ready.”
In truth, the young man’s strength seemed to have dissolved away as if it had melted with the ice on his clothes. His hands would hardly close on the back of the lounge, as he tried to help himself to a sitting posture; he seemed to have no spine; his legs he could hardly move at all. And as besides he began now to feel intolerably sleepy, he was quite unable to oppose the purpose of his hosts, even if it had been less obviously necessary than it was. So they got out the old-fashioned warming-pan, and inspired with genial warmth the cool depths of the great old-fashioned bed in the guest-chamber; made a nice little fire in the stove; and then deputed the deacon to act as his “grim chamberlain,” and see the patient safe under the bed-clothes. Even with the deacon’s aid, it was not without a good deal of effort that Jeff crawled upstairs, undressed himself, and got into bed.
Few people know, when they stop at any place, how long they are to stay. Jeff called at Aunt Helen’s to get dried and warmed, as the great and good Dr. Isaac Watts went to Sir Thomas Abney’s for a visit. He did not, like the famous divine, stay all his life, and at last die in these casual quarters, but he staid all night, and then staid ten weeks; and he came near enough to dying, besides. Before morning he was taken with very sharp pains in his chest,-indeed, he waked up all of a sudden towards daylight with a howl evoked by the first of them, and that evoked besides a couple of extraordinary old ghosts in white to his beside in a twinkling-to wit, the deacon and Mrs. Tarbox. There was no help for it, however; the old lady, an experienced nurse, said it was-to use her orthoepy-peeripanewmony. She was right in the diagnosis, though obsolescent as to nomenclature. After a pretty tough siege with flannels dipped in hot water, the doctor came, and on examining the patient and hearing the story, looked solemn, prescribed, and, after getting downstairs, questioned Aunt Helen closely about any family tendencies to lung disease. There had been one or two cases, it appeared, within a generation or two. “Then,” said the doctor, “we must be all the more careful; that’s all. One thing is in his favor,-he has plenty of strength, and, I judge, perfectly clean health. So no need to be frightened at present, though he’s a pretty sick man.”
You see, the doctor knew Aunt Helen. Doctors will talk pretty plainly to people that they know are safe; none are more close-mouthed, however, to fools.
Well, Jeff had a long fight with the cruel enemy that had seized him. As often happens where people have never been ill, disease seemed to take his physical frame by surprise, and to master it and ravage it before it could organize its defence, like a horde of barbarians swooping down without notice upon a wealthy and peaceful land. When once, however, the assault was exhausted, though it left him for the time being a mere phantom of himself, his recovery was steady and natural. All the time he was incessantly nursed and petted, by the deacon and the two women. Their care, the doctor said, certainly shortened his imprisonment a fortnight; and he jocosely threatened to collect of them a suitable addition to his fees. Throughout the first stage of the disease, there was nothing for them to do except to be strict in following the doctor’s directions, and to wait. But when the danger and the pain were over, and the time came when only weakness was left, and the sick man could begin by tiny gradations to resume something of the enjoying part of life, though at first with a passiveness much more complete than that of an infant, then came the empire of the women. Except the transactions of a mother over her child, nothing can exceed the proud authority, and immense sense of fulfilling a destiny, which a woman displays in tending a sick person,-more especially if it is a favorite and a man. Why not? As the stoical stockbroker observed on hearing the roar of the lions, “Let ’em roar, for that’s their biz.” Nor was the deacon a whit behindhand, according to his lights. To be sure, he would have made a very poor fist at displaying the occasional bouquets of hot-house flowers with which Nettie used now and then to beautify the room; and as he was one of those opprobriums of the late Lowell Mason, who can’t sing, nor learn to sing, any more than a three-cornered file working across a handsaw, so he would have made wild work with Nettie’s ever ready songs. Nor could he compound the magical confections of every kind, wherewith dear old Aunt Helen used to gratify his appetite, that grew more and more ravenous as he gathered strength, the old lady sitting by in the extremest happiness while he demolished in five minutes some delicacy whose harmless and nourishing yet flavorsome quality had occupied her, more or less, very likely, for half a day.
But the deacon could talk, and he could read aloud; and, when Jeff gathered strength enough, he used to take his turn in these employments with the ladies; and the kind old soul was just as happy in it as they were.
“You are three angels, you three,” said Jeff one day, as they all stood at his bedside. “I didn’t know there were any such people in the world.” And the tears stood in his eyes; for when one is so very weak, one cries very easily. However Jeff laughed too, though rather feebly, and finished his extravaganza. “When you three get to heaven, you won’t know the difference, for you can’t be a bit better than you are now, and you won’t find you’re a bit better thought of. Angels are plenty there; stay here, where you are needed.”
As for the choice of reading, Nettie brought mild new novels from the Young Men’s Institute Library. She got pretty much whatever she wanted from kind-hearted Mr. Boltwood, for the sake of the sick man, who was one of his constituents, and a favorite,-as he was, in fact, with everybody who knew him. Aunt Helen used to listen a while, sometimes, to these wonderful productions; but her sound sense and practical piety were usually unable to bear the unnatural atmosphere very long. She would shake her head, and rise and depart, saying, that, for her part, she thought that there must be a special providence for young folks nowadays, to preserve them through all the nonsense they read. Her selections were different; she often chose some book of travels in the Holy Land or the East; such as Warren’s “Recovery of Jerusalem,” which, in spite of its dry method a
nd confused arrangement, she read-as it deserves-with close attention and great delight, from title-page to finis. The story of the wonderful Moabite stone, too, enchanted her, Jeff insisted, exactly as “Robinson Crusoe” or the “Arabian Nights” does a small boy. So did Rawlinson’s “Five Great Monarchies,” and any other books she could get hold of, of the class which may be called unintentional illustrations of Scripture. And, indeed, they are the best supports and the best commentaries on that wonderful book, the unitary and symmetrical heart-growth and chronicle of sixteen hundred years of the existence of man, and of God’s words and works through him. The deacon, again, chose an entirely different department; and by the way, Jeff showed his natural tact-unless it was merely the languid passiveness of an invalid-in allowing his three angels to choose their own respective fields wherein to expatiate. The deacon always read him, firstly, the daily paper,-one New York one and one Hartford one,-and many a shrewd and dry comment did he make upon the chronicles of events, and then upon the use which the editors, those prophets of the nineteenth century, made of them in the editorial columns. When this was not enough,-to tell the truth it usually was,-the good old man used to confer upon Jeff his greatest literary favor. That is to say, he would read to him his own daily portion, which he always took in course, of the “Exposition of the Old and New Testaments,” by that great and sound divine, the Rev. Matthew Henry. Of this monumental work, the worthy deacon possessed a noble copy of the London edition of 1761, in five volumes folio. In this instructive commentary, the deacon was accustomed to read a suitable portion every evening before family prayers, sometimes to himself, and, occasionally, when he lighted upon some striking passage, aloud, for the good of whomsoever it might concern. No wonder the deacon loved it, and had already read it through in course three times, being now well advanced in the fourth; for, as he was accustomed to say with devout thankfulness, it was, under God, due to the weighty reasonings, and powerful applications of that book, that in his youth he had been brought to a realizing sense of his lost state, and ultimately to a trembling hope that he had laid fast hold upon eternal life. It used to put Jeff asleep.
Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe Page 423