Amongst the skaters the man and his feats stood out. He was the observed of all observers, and not vainer was he of his accomplishments than was Augusta at being singled out for attention in the face of so many damsels of his acquaintance, all, as she foolishly supposed, equally desirous to bask in the sun of his smile.
A small match will kindle a large flame if combustibles be there. Fired by her too apparent satisfaction, and Mrs. Ashton’s presence, his excessive vanity induced him to perform what, with the imperfect skates of the period, was a distinguished feat. He was ordinarily proud of his calligraphy. Now, he wound and twisted, lifted his skates or dashed them down, until he had scored upon the ice an alphabet in bold capitals; but whether he had miscalculated his space, or the strength of the ice—broken into for the use of cattle at the upper end—or the crowd of inquisitive or envious followers had been too great for its resistance as he had made the last curl of the letter Z, the ice gave way, and he was plunged in up to the neck, amid the shrieks of women and the shouts of men. His chin had caught upon the ice with a stunning blow; but it rested there, and, aided by the buoyancy of the water beneath, upheld him until, with returning sense, he struggled to bring his shoulders above the surface, and upheave himself. He trod the water, and it sustained him, but the ice would not. He was forced to content himself with the use of his hands beneath as paddles, to relieve the pressure on his chin, and wait for help, which seemed an eternity in coming.
He had been in the water some time when Jabez and Mr. Ashton appeared on the scene, amongst women shrieking with affright, and men rushing about without presence of mind, or paralysed to powerlessness. Mr. Travis alone seemed to have a thought, and he had sent for ropes and hatchets to cut a way to him through the ice itself. But there was a question, would his strength hold out?
“Will no one save him? Will no one save him?” cried Augusta, piteously.
“Fifty pounds to him who will save my son!” was the cry of the frantic father, who had witnessed the accident from his own carriage window. “A hundred!—two hundred pounds!—five hundred pounds to anyone who will save him!”
“It’s noan a bit o’ use, measter,” said a working man, with a shake of his head. “Men wunna chuck their lives aweay for brass; an’ yon ice is loike a pane o’ glass wi’ a stone through it.”
Unfortunately, impulsive Ben Travis had darted forward to his rescue at the outset, and his ponderous weight had cracked the already broken ice in all directions. He had himself retreated with difficulty; and now no offers of reward would tempt men to put their own lives in peril, though Kit Townley was there, urging others to the attempt, and Bob, the ex-groom, had rushed for ropes they had neither pluck nor skill to use, since a noosed cord, flung like a lasso, would have strangled him.
“Oh! save him; save him, Jabez!” implored Augusta, as he and her father came up.
Jabez looked at her strangely. His head seemed to spin. His face went livid as that on the ice. Had his secret devotion no other end than this? True, she had called him “Jabez,” but so she had called him in his servitude. She had appealed to him as one she trusted in implicitly; but the appeal sounded as made for one she loved, and that was not himself, but he who, as boy and man, had wounded him in soul and body. The very tone of her cry was as a knell to his hopes and himself. It was his foe and his rival who was perishing! Was he called upon to risk his life to warm a serpent to sting him again? The conflict in his breast was sharp and terrible. “If thine enemy hunger, give him food,” seemed to float in his ears.