University of Virginia Library

4. IV.
PHIL ASSERTS HIS INDEPENDENCE.

Mr. Phil Kermer boarded at the very worst place in
the world for a man of his tastes and temperament, namely,
the village hotel. When he returned home that evening,
he was not in a mood to go quietly to bed and think
of his sins, which would have been by far the most wholesome
thing for him to do. On the contrary, he took the
very course which led him still further from the happiness
which he (like so many of us) wished to clutch and make
his own, without first earning it by honest endeavor.

He felt blue, in short, and thought he would assert his
independence and warm his heart a little by taking a
dram. Finding half a dozen good fellows in the bar-room,
he invited them to drink with him. Then, as your good
fellows can never bear to be outdone in generosity, each
felt under obligations to treat in return. So it happened
that Phil asserted his independence a good many times,
for it is good fellows' etiquette to drink again with the
man who has drank with you. Considerable confusion
seemed to arise at last with regard to whose turn it was to
treat, as well as with regard to things in general, and Phil
somehow found himself doing the honorable thing again,

and still again. The result was that he, for the first time,
went to bed that night decidedly and unmistakably —
independent.

Clint, in the mean while, went home sober enough, — a
little more so, in fact, than he had expected to be on that
occasion. What he had said to Emma, and what she had
said to him, I could never learn; but this I know, that
lovers have returned from their wooing with lighter hearts
under their jackets than Clint carried that night into the
gloomy old house, and up stairs to his sad bed. He lay
awake a long time, thinking what a fool he had been, and
wishing himself where neither grandparents, nor Emma,
nor Phil might ever hear from him again, until they should
some day learn, with bitter remorse and envy, what a
noble, great, renowned, rich man he had got to be.

Waking early, and looking out on the still, white morning
(the storm was over, but the earth was covered, and
the laden trees drooped with their beautiful burden of
snow), and remembering that he was “in the ice,” he
jumped up, and felt his interest in life revive as he thought
of the exciting day's work before him.

“Never mind,” thought he; “Phil 's a good fellow. I
don't blame him. I won't be in his way another time. I 'm
his right-hand man this year, and that 's enough for me.”

So he forgave Phil, who was necessary to him; but was
quite far from forgiving his grandparents, of whose happiness
he was himself so necessary a part.

He ate his pie secretly in the pantry, and went out into
the snow, — the first to make tracks through its calm
and unsullied purity that memorable morning. Arrived
at the tavern, he found Phil in bed, sick.

“A cold, — an awful headache, — that 's all.” And the
haggard foreman fixed his eyes steadily as he could on his
right-hand man. “Has it stopped snowing?”

“Yes; the sky is clear as a bell.”

“That 's deused unlucky, with this headache on me!
How much snow fell?”

“About five inches.”

“The wooden scrapers will do. Take the key, Clint, —
it 's hanging on that nail there; go and open the tool-house,
and start the men when they come. I 'll be there
soon.”

“All right,” said Clint, and hurried away, proud of the
importance of his duties.

The men had had warning that, if it snowed, they must
be on hand with their teams as soon as the storm was
over; and when the sun rose on the dazzling scene, not
fewer than a hundred laborers and sixty horses were
already on the pond.

Clint went around among them, pompously giving orders,
only to get laughed at. When they learned that Phil was
sick, they went to work in their own way, choosing the way
that would most annoy Clint, in preference to any other.

“I cut ice 'fore ever you was out o' your baby-clo'es; an'
think I 'm goin' to be gee-hawed about by you?” said old
Farmer Corbett, whose contempt for Phil's “right-hand
man” seemed to be pretty generally shared by the rest.

Clint was enraged at their conduct, as well as alarmed.
Phil had told him the day before, that, as the ice was, it
would not do to put many teams on it together, but that
they must be scattered over the pond. The men, however,
would not believe but that the ice was twice as thick
as it was; and, for want of specific orders from Kermer,
they all went to scraping on one side. In vain Clint
shrieked his commands to them to scatter. To and fro
and athwart the icy field went the men and horses and
scrapers, sometimes almost huddling together, just the
same as if he had not interfered.

“Stop your clack, and go and git some more hammers,
or mallets, or suthin', to knock off the balls with” (for the
snow was damp, and the horses' feet “balled” badly), “if
you want to do anything,” said the old farmer; and went
off with his loaded scraper to the bank.

The hammers were needed; and Clint, disgusted,
tramped back to the tool-house to get them. To his great
relief, he there found Phil, who had just arrived in a sleigh.

“Phil, you ought to be out there!” said Clint.

Kermer, who was feeling dreadfully shaky and remorseful
and cross, took offence at what seemed to him impertinent
dictation. For the very reason that he was conscious
of a guilty neglect of duty, he was the more sensitive to
being told so by a boy.

“I know my own business,” he answered sharply.

“Yes; but,” persisted Clint, “if you can't be out there
yourself, do just come and enforce my authority. They
won't mind a word I say. The men and horses all get
into a heap; and they 'll be through the ice as sure as you
live. Old Corbett says I don't know anything.”

“And so you don't!” broke forth Phil, furiously, perhaps
remembering last night, and thinking that, but for
Clint, who was then in his way, he should not have made
a beast of himself, as he had done, and lost his self-respect,
and all hope of Emma, whose scruples regarding his one
bad habit he had so quickly and so shamefully justified.
“Your authority?” he went on, with quite savage contempt.
“You have no authority! If old Corbett is there,
it 's all right. What do you want?”

Clint, quite stunned by this violence, stammered out
something about hammers. Phil gave him four, and told
him to be gone. The young man, white with suppressed
anger, thrust two or three of them — one a small sledge,
or stone-hammer, weighing several pounds — into his

overcoat pockets, and went out of the building very much
as he was accustomed, in his bad moods, to walk out of the
house at home. This was the last the foreman remembered
of that unfortunate transaction.

He felt at once that he had done wrong, and that he
ought to call the boy back and speak kindly to him.
“I 'm a brute!” he muttered, clasping one hand convulsively
to his forehead, and steadying himself with the
other, as he staggered back against a work-bench.

There, half sitting, half leaning, with his head bowed and
his face covered, he remained, feeling himself still too weak
and shaky to appear among the men, and thinking no very
happy thoughts, be sure, when he was roused from his
stupor by a wild cry, or rather a tumult of cries. It came
from the pond. He was on his feet in an instant; he
knew that something terrible was happening. He rushed
out of the tool-house just in time to see a thronged field of
the frozen surface undulate and break up, and a reeling
and plunging mass of utterly helpless men and horses go
down in the ice.