One Christmas Day the river was frozen—a rare event in that genial latitude, and hearing that wild geese were flying down toward the bay creeks and coves, the Judge took his gun and a negro and set off, without waiting for Perry, who was not immediately to be found. An hour later the boy returned and heard of his father's departure, and started on horseback to overtake the carriage. He followed the track beyond the mill and almshouse, and across the heads of several peninsulas or necks leading into the wide tidal river. A few frosted persimmons hung yet to their warty branches; the hulls of last autumn's black walnuts were beneath the spreading boughs; old orchards of peach-trees where the tints of green and bud smouldered in pink contrast to the oft-blackened and sapless branches, set off the purple beads of the haw on the bushes along the lanes. Fish-hawks, flying across the sky, felt the shadow of the flocks of wild ducks flying higher; and rabbits crossed the road so boldly in the face of Perry Whaley, that once a raccoon, limping across a cornfield like a lame spaniel, turned too and took both barrels of Perry's gun without other fright or injury than slightly to hurry its pace. As the young man heard the crows chatter around the corn-shocks and the mocking-bird in some alder-thicket answer and sauce the catbird's scream, he said to himself:
"Every thing is attached by an inner chord to something else, and that other thing, free-hearted, carols or quarrels back—except father to me. Can I not, too, find something to love me? There is Marion, the Doctor's daughter, with the chestnut curls falling all round her neck—she loves me, I know; but until I gain my father's love I cannot think of woman!"
The pine-trees above his head murmured rather than moaned, as if they strongly sympathized with him and would presently make loud and angry cause against his enemies. "What is it," asked Perry of his unsuspecting mind, "which makes my father so unappeasable? What is there in me which broods upon his just and honorable life, and which he cannot drive away though he tries? Has he some learned superstition, some religious vow or mistaken sacrifice?"
Perry turned down a lane and then into the bed of a frozen brook, and coming in sight of the broad river, espied his father, gun in hand, stealthily creeping under a load of brush and twigs which the Judge's negro had piled about his back and head, to conceal his figure from a flock of ducks that were bathing and diving in an open place of deep water, to which the ice had not extended.
The gliding brush heap, by slow and flitting advances, had progressed about to within gunshot of the scarce suspecting fowls, and Perry and the negro, from different sides of the cove, watched with the keenest interest—when suddenly, with very little noise, the ice gave way and Judge Whaley had sunk in deep water, loaded down with heavy gunning boots, shot-belt, overcoat and gun. The negro stood paralyzed a minute and then fell upon his knees, unknowing what to do. A sense of joy started in Perry Whaley's breast as strong as his apprehensive fears. He might be made the instrument of saving that beloved life, and dissipating the spell of its indifference!
Nothing but this ardent passion saved Perry himself from drowning. He had crossed the cove ere yet the impulse of parental recognition had taken form, and throwing a rein from the carriage around the negro man's armpits, and seizing a long fence-rail, ran rapidly across, pulling both toward the point of danger.
Judge Whaley had been a powerful man and an accomplished sportsman; and still as resolute as in youth, struggled with all intelligence for his life. He sank to the bottom on first breaking through the ice, then reaching upward made two or three powerful efforts to catch the rim of the ice-field and sank again in each endeavor, weighted down with leather and iron. He had sunk to rise no more when Perry reached the edge of the field, placed the end of the rail over the abyss and planted the negro's weight upon it, and then he dived, head foremost, into the freezing salt depths—where the tide was running—and with the carriage rein looped in his right hand. Before he could lay hand upon his father, that desperate man had seized him by the hair and drawn his head to the bottom, and every instant Perry felt that his remainder of breath was almost run unless he could break that iron hold. Even in that instant of agony, with death painting its awful pageantry on his interior sight, Perry felt a gladder kind of destiny; that perhaps the arms of a father's love were around him, and in another sphere, already about to dawn, the shadow might depart from that kind face and unyearning heart.
But with a sense of more human dutifulness, Perry recalled his residuum of perception. It was necessary to break that drowning man's grapple upon his hair, and taking the only way, if cruel, to assist his father, the young man struck the elder's knuckles with his clinched fist. As they released the rein was thrown about Judge Whaley's shoulders and run through the buckle, and as his rescuer, almost exhausted, swam upward, he made the rein fast to his ankle and seized hold of the rail. Here occurred another agonizing delay. The negro could not pull the rail in, between his own fears and the double burden; the young man was exhausted and cramped with cold, and every instant his father, still submerged, was drowning. At this moment when the renewed probability of death brought no compensations of a tender sentiment, it pleased the tide to whirl Judge Whaley's body inwards, directly beneath the ice-field, and he being now insensible, if alive at all, the negro clutched it effectually. In the awakened pain and hope of that minute, Perry Whaley supported himself along the piece of rail to the solid ice, and assisted to draw his father from the water, and then swooned dead. They lay together, the unwelcome son and the repelling father, under the universal pity of the great eye of Heaven, on the natal day of Him who came into the world also fatherless, but not disowned.
A neighboring farmer sent one of his boys to Chester for the doctor, and by rubbing and restoratives, both the Judge and his son were brought back to circulation and pulsation. Perry soon recovered, but Judge Whaley was saved only with the greatest difficulty. It was nightfall in the hospitable farm-house before he was able to see or speak, and then, a little drunken with the spirits which had been administered, he asked in a whisper:
"Who saved my life?"