University of Virginia Library

7. VII.
A FAREWELL AND AN APPARITION.

The horses and scrapers were going again busily and
cheerfully, as if nothing had happened, only half a dozen
men remaining with the late foreman to search for the
drowned body. It was a toilsome and discouraging task,
and at last old man Dracutt, chilled and exhausted, consented
to be taken home.

“I telled 'em so, I telled 'em so!” Farmer Corbett
repeated every half-hour, as he watched the ineffectual rakes,
lengthened out by the addition of poles lashed to the
handles, working their way into deeper and deeper water.
And it really began to appear that he was right in his conjecture
that Clint had gone down the steep slope beneath
the unbroken ice. “They won't get him now, at all, —
mark my word, boys, — not without he rises to the surface
an' freezes into the ice, where we may come acrost him
when we come to cut.”

As that day passed, and the next, and the third and
fourth likewise, and the body was not found, the old man
became triumphant, and offered to make large bets in
support of his theory. He would, no doubt, have been

deeply disappointed and chagrined if the body had turned
up at last and proved him to be no true prophet. But
that was not to be. On the fifth day the search was abandoned,
and he again had the satisfaction of reminding
people, with his usual sagacious smirk and arrogant head-shake,
that he “telled 'em so.”

The catastrophe soon ceased to be talked about. As
the frozen surface of the pond was suffered to close over
the spot, so the ice of oblivion seemed soon to form over
the memory of poor Clint. The groups of skaters, once
his daily companions, flying, on swift, ringing irons, along
that shore, and sometimes pausing to observe, one to another,
“I wonder whereabouts under us Clint Dracutt
is!” then speeding on again joyous as ever, were types of
the world out of whose busy and careless life he had disappeared.
Will more be said of you and me, think you,
O my friend! when the universal icy tablet is laid over
our heads also?

There were three or four hearts, however (may we hope
for as many such, and be grateful), that did not forget the
unlucky youth so readily. Upon his grandparents, left
now to their dumb and wretched loneliness, the loss had
of course fallen most heavily. Yet there was one other to
whom it occasioned even greater suffering, though in a
different way. This was Phil Kermer. He had been
really attached to Clint, and would have missed him under
any circumstances that might have separated them; but
the sting lay deeper than that, — he felt that he was responsible
for the boy's death. With him, therefore, mere
regret was consumed in burning remorse.

It was a terrible thing to Phil to be obliged to give up
all hope of recovering the body. He regretted now that
he had consented to remain upon the pond at all. Every
day, and every hour of the day, he was reminded of the

death which his conscience told him his own negligence
and unkindness had caused. It seemed to him that he
was constantly walking over the grave of his murdered
friend. Pass where he would on the ice, there the dead
face seemed to rise beneath it, and with upturned eyes and
still, livid lips reproach him for his crime. And he was
now helping to make merchandise of that ice. The
thought of it became intolerable to him; the very sight
of the pond, which had before been his delight, filled him
with loathing.

Everybody noticed the change that had come over the
late foreman, and he had the sympathy and respect of the
entire community. Emma Welford heard of it, and she
longed inexpressibly to see him once more and speak to
him one little word of comfort; all the interest she had
ever felt in him, all the tenderness he had ever inspired,
returning with tenfold force upon her heart, now that she
knew he was unhappy.

It was generally believed that Kermer was working his
way back gradually and surely to the place which he had
felt obliged temporarily to resign. A week, two weeks,
passed; no other foreman was engaged, and the ice was
at last thick enough to cut. It was Saturday evening, and
on Monday morning, if no more snow should fall in the interim,
the harvesting of the crystal crop was to begin. As
Phil was leaving the pond at dusk, the president stopped
him and put a letter into his hand.

“Think of it till Monday,” said he, “then give us your
answer.”

Phil went into the tool-house, struck a light, and read
the letter. It was a formal proposition for him to resume
his former duties as foreman, with an increased salary.

He put the letter into his pocket, extinguished the light,
locked up the tool-house, and went home. He did not

wait till Monday, however, before coming to a decision.
Before he slept that night his mind was made up. He
determined to decline the offer and to leave the pond.

In leaving the pond, he would, of course, leave the
town; for what would then be left to hold him there but
those painful associations from which he was growing morbidly
anxious to be free? But, before going, he felt he
had a duty to fulfil. He had never yet had the courage to
visit Clint's grandparents since the accident; he would do
so now. And Emma, — ought he not to see her once more
and acknowledge to her that she had always been right
with regard to his one dangerous habit, and then bid her a
final adieu?

The next day he wrote his letter, formally and positively
declining the company's proposition, and in the evening set
out to make his farewell calls. “Emma first,” thought
Phil, with a strange swelling of the heart.

It was a clear January night; beautiful, still moonlight
on the beautiful, still snow. Phil's shadow glided beside him
as he walked, and a darker shadow than that dogged his
every step, — the memory of Clint. It was only two weeks
since they had met together in that house, and then the
boy had been in the man's way. What would not the man
have given to have the boy in his way again to-night!

It is true, a horrible temptation beset Kermer as he
approached and saw the light in the windows, and all his
old feelings toward Emma surged up again. He believed
that she would have married Clint, if he had lived. Now
that Clint was gone, perhaps he, Phil — But he would
not allow the thought to shape itself in his mind. To
profit in any way by the boy's death would, he felt, make
him a murderer indeed. “No, no!” thought he, crushing
down his heart as it rose rebelliously; “this very thing
makes a union with her utterly and forever impossible; I

should always feel that I had gained her by getting rid of
Clint. I won't forget this now when I come to see her.”
And he did not forget it.

They met almost in silence at the door, so much were
they overcome by the emotions the occasion called up in
each. The children ran to him, as of old; and Sissy,
remembering the fun she had the last time he was there,
asked for Clint. “What have you done with Clint? Did
you put him down under the ithe? Won't the fitheth bite
him there?”

“Hush, hush,” said Emma; while poor Phil was unable
to speak a word.

But the little chatterbox ran on. She wished to know
how Clint could get up to heaven, now that the ice was
thick and hard all over him, and would Phil cut a hole to
let him pass through?

“I with he would n't go to heaven,” she said; “for I
want him to come and make a wheelbarrow of Tommy, and
let me be a bag of potatoeth, and thell me like he did lath
time. Will you let me be a bag of potatoeth, Mithta Phil?”

But Phil, cut to the heart by the innocent prattle, said
he did n't believe he could make a wheelbarrow; besides,
the blacksmith's shop (namely, the old grandfather) had
gone to call on a sick neighbor; then what would they
do if the wheelbarrow should break down? So Sissy
was put off, and the children were soon sent out of the
room.

Then Phil told Emma of his determination to leave
town, probably never to return. She had not expected
that. She had hoped that he had come to say something
very, very different. Why did he go? she asked. And
he told her something of what he had suffered.

“But we all know it was an accident; then why do you
blame yourself so?”

“Because I am to blame,” answered Kermer, with solemn
self-condemnation. “And that brings me to speak of
what I have come to say to you to-night.”

What could that be, if he had not said it already?
Emma could not conceal her agitation. Never before had
she felt so powerfully attracted toward this man. Suffering
had softened him; his old self-complacency had vanished,
and in its place humility, and charity, and sweetness
of spirit surrounded him with their warm and living atmosphere.
This change in himself, together with a similar
change in her, perhaps (for she too had suffered), rendered
him more than ever susceptible to the charm of her presence,
and he felt compelled to keep a fast hold in his mind
upon his strong resolution, to avoid yielding to that influence.

After a pause, holding her hand and looking into her
eyes, he said to her: “I thought I ought to acknowledge
to you, before I go, that you were altogether right in what
you required of me, and that I was altogether wrong. It
may seem a mere mockery for me to make that confession
now; it is too late for it to do anybody any good. Yet I
felt I ought to make it.”

Why was it too late? Why did he go, now that the only
obstacle that had before separated them seemed to be removed?
for he declared that he had forsworn his habit of
dissipation forever. The real cause of his leaving her was
too painful a subject for him to talk about, and he could
only say that he went “because he must.” Then the conclusion
was forced upon her that he did not care for her
any more; that he had, perhaps, never really cared for
her, and her womanly pride was roused, giving her unnatural
strength for the separation. She was wonderfully
dignified and cold till he had reached the door; then
he opened his arms, and she fell sobbing upon his breast.
He kissed her once and again, and breathed forth I know

not what passionate parting words with his farewell, then
hurriedly departed from the house, like a strong man fleeing
from a great temptation.

In the street, he did not know what to do with himself.
He felt more utterly forlorn and desolate than he had ever
believed it possible for a man to be and live. “Go back
to her!” whispered one passion in his breast. “Go to the
bar-room!” whispered another and darker passion. He
resisted both.

He could not go at once and make his farewell call on
the old couple, and so he wandered down a lane that led to
the pond. Why he should choose to revisit at that time a
scene which he could not behold without a pang, it is not
easy to say. But sometimes pain itself, especially when
associated with some object of affection or respect, has a
fascination for us.

He went down to the shore, and stood by a high board
fence that served as a shelter to a farmer's hot-beds, — the
wintry sky above him cloudless and pure; before him the
cold, shining silence of the moonlit ice. There were no
skaters on the pond that night, and its stillness was
broken only by its own wild and solitary noises.

As Phil was gazing in the direction of the spot where
the catastrophe had occurred, he became all at once aware
of what seemed a human figure walking on that part of the
pond. In a little while, it appeared to be approaching him.
Nearer and nearer it came, until he thought he ought to
catch the sound of footsteps, but not a sound was heard.
Silently as a ghost, out of the ghostly silence it came, gliding
along the ice. Now it stood still, and now it threw out
its arms wildly and beat its breast. And now it assumed
to the eyes of the amazed spectator a mien and shape that
made his blood run cold, — the mien and shape of the
drowned youth, Clinton Dracutt!