“Oh,” said Percy, “a lot I did! You might as well say Raby lent a hand by lending Jeff her shawl.”
“I was the cause of it all,” said Raby. “But you forget dear old Julius; I’m sure he lent a hand.”
“The dog was rather in the way than otherwise,” said Scarfe; “dogs always are on the ice.”
Jeffreys, as he walked silently beside them, could afford to smile at this last remark. But in other respects he found little cause for smiling. He was not yet a purified being, and even the peril he had been in had not cast out the fires of pride and temper that lurked within him.
It now stung him with an unspeakable misery to find that he was supposed to owe his life to one whom he so thoroughly mistrusted and dreaded as Scarfe. He persuaded himself that it was all a delusion—that he could easily have extricated himself without anybody’s aid but that of the faithful Julius; that Scarfe had run absolutely no risk in crawling out to him on the ladder; that, in short, he owed him nothing—if, indeed, he did not owe him resentment for allowing himself to be credited with a service which he had no right to claim.
Ungrateful and unreasonable, you will say, and certainly not betokening a proper spirit in one so recently in great danger. Jeffreys, as he walked moodily along, was neither in a grateful nor reasonable mood, nor did he feel chastened in spirit; and that being so, he was too honest to pretend to be what he was not.
To any one less interested, there was something amusing in the manner in which Scarfe took his new and unexpected glory. At first he seemed to regard it doubtfully, and combated it by one or two modest protestations. Then, becoming more used to the idea, it pleased him to talk a little about the adventure, and encourage the others to recall the scene. After that it seemed natural to him to be a little languid and done-up by his exertions, and, as a hero, to establish a claim on Raby’s admiration. And finally, being quite convinced he was a hero of the first water, he regarded Jeffreys with condescension, and felt a little surprise that he should remain both silent and apparently disdainful.
As Raby was beforehand with her in blaming herself, the wind was taken out of Mrs Rimbolt’s sails in that quarter, even had she been disposed to let out in that direction. But it was so much more convenient and natural to blame Jeffreys, that the good lady was never in a moment’s doubt upon the subject.
“How excessively careless of him!” said she; “the very one of the party, too, whom we expected to keep out of danger. It is a mercy every one of you was not drowned.”
“It’s a mercy he wasn’t drowned himself,” said Percy; “so he would have been if it hadn’t been for Scarfe.”