“Oh, you must have been,” she said, “when you screamed at me in that horrible way. I was so frightened that I fell back, and I must have fainted.”
Tremulous as I was with love and anxiety, I could not help laughing. “Oh, my dear Agnes, I did not scream at you. That was a crazed Italian who fell through the hole that they dug.” Then I told her what had happened.
She heaved a gentle sigh. “I am so glad to hear that,” she said. “There was one thing that I was thinking about just before you came and which gave me a little bit of comfort; the words and yells I heard were dreadfully oniony, and somehow or other I could not connect that sort of thing with you.”
It now struck me that during this conversation I had been holding my dear girl in my arms, and she had not shown the slightest sign of resistance or disapprobation. This made my heart beat high.
“Oh, Agnes,” I said, “I truly believe you love me or you would not have been here, you would not have done for me all that you did. Why did you not answer me when I spoke to you through that wall of ice, through the hole your dear love had made in it? Why, when I was in such a terrible situation, not knowing whether I was to die or live, did you not comfort my heart with one sweet word?”
“Oh, Walter,” she answered, “it wasn't at all necessary for you to say all that you did say, for I had suspected it before, and as soon as you began to call me Agnes I knew, of course, how you felt about it. And, besides, it really was necessary that you should move about to keep yourself from freezing. But the great reason for my not encouraging you to go on talking in that way was that I was afraid people might come into the tunnel, and as, of course, you would not know that they were there, you would go on making love to me through my diploma case, and you know I should have perished with shame if I had had to stand there with that old Mr. Boyce, and I don't know who else, listening to your words, which were very sweet to me, Walter, but which would have sounded awfully funny to them.”
When she said that my words had been sweet to her I dropped the consideration of all other subjects.
When, about ten minutes afterward, we came out of the shaft we were met by Susan.
“Bless my soul and body, Mr. Cuthbert!” she exclaimed. “Did you find that young lady down there in the centre of the earth? It seems to me as if everything that you want comes to you out of the ground. But I have been looking for you to tell you that Mr. Havelot has been here after his daughter, and I'm sure if he had known where she was, he would have been scared out of his wits.”
“Father here!” exclaimed Agnes. “Where is he now?”
“I think he has gone home, miss. Indeed I'm sure of it; for my daughter Jennie, who was over here the same as all the other people in the county, I truly believe told him—and I was proud she had the spirit to speak up that way to him—that your heart was almost broke when you heard about Mr. Cuthbert being shut up in the ice, and that most likely you was in your own room a-cryin' your eyes out. When he heard that he stood lookin' all around the place, and he asked me if he might go in the house; and when I told him he was most welcome, he went in. I offered to show him about, which he said was no use, that he had been there often enough; and he went everywhere, I truly believe, except in the garret and the cellar. And after he got through with that he went out to the barn and then walked home.”
“I must go to him immediately,” said Agnes.
“But not alone,” said I. And together we walked through the woods, over the little field and across the Havelot lawn to the house. We were told that the old gentleman was in his library, and together we entered the room. Mr. Havelot was sitting by a table on which were lying several open volumes of an encyclopedia. When he turned and saw us, he closed his book, pushed back his chair and took off his spectacles. “Upon my word, sir,” he cried; “and so the first thing you do after they pull you out of the earth is to come here and break my commands.”
“I came on the invitation of your daughter, sir.”
“And what right has she to invite you, I'd like to know?”
“She has every right, for to her I owe my existence.”
“What rabid nonsense!” exclaimed the old gentleman. “People don't owe their existence to the silly creatures they fall in love with.”
“I assure you I am correct, sir.” And then I related to him what his daughter had done, and how through her angelic agency my rescuers had found me a living being instead of a frozen corpse.
“Stuff!” said Mr. Havelot. “People can live in a temperature of thirty-two degrees above zero all winter. Out in Minnesota they think that's hot. And you gave him victuals and drink through your diploma case! Well, miss, I told you that if you tried to roast chestnuts in that diploma case the bottom would come out.”
“But you see, father,” said Agnes, earnestly, “the reason I did that was because when I roasted them in anything shallow they popped into the fire, but they could not jump out of the diploma case.”
“Well, something else seems to have jumped out of it,” said the old gentleman, “and something with which I am not satisfied. I have been looking over these books, sir, and have read the articles on ice, glaciers and caves, and I find no record of anything in the whole history of the world which in the least resembles the cock-and-bull story I am told about the butt-end of a glacier which tumbled into a cave in your ground, and has been lying there through all the geological ages, and the eras of formation, and periods of animate existence down to the days of Noah, and Moses, and Methuselah, and Rameses II, and Alexander the Great, and Martin Luther, and John Wesley, to this day, for you to dig out and sell to the Williamstown Ice Co.”
“But that's what happened, sir,” said I.
“And besides, father,” added Agnes, “the gold and silver that people take out of mines may have been in the ground as long as that ice has been.”
“Bosh!” said Mr. Havelot. “The cases are not at all similar. It is simply impossible that a piece of a glacier should have fallen into a cave and been preserved in that way. The temperature of caves is always above the freezing-point, and that ice would have melted a million years before you were born.”
“But, father,” said Agnes, “the temperature of caves filled with ice must be very much lower than that of common caves.”
“And apart from that,” I added, “the ice is still there, sir.”
“That doesn't make the slightest difference,” he replied. “It's against all reason and commonsense that such a thing could have happened. Even if there ever was a glacier in this part of the country and if the lower portion of it did stick out over an immense hole in the ground, that protruding end would never have broken off and tumbled in. Glaciers are too thick and massive for that.”
“But the glacier is there, sir,” said I, “in spite of your own reasoning.”
“And then again,” continued the old gentleman, “if there had been a cave and a projecting spur the ice would have gradually melted and dripped into the cave, and we would have had a lake and not an ice-mine. It is an absurdity.”
“But it's there, notwithstanding,” said I.
“And you can not subvert facts, you know, father,” added Agnes.
“Confound facts!” he cried. “I base my arguments on sober, cool-headed reason; and there's nothing that can withstand reason. The thing's impossible and, therefore, it has never happened. I went over to your place, sir, when I heard of the accident, for the misfortunes of my neighbors interest me, no matter what may be my opinion of them, and when I found that you had been extricated from your ridiculous predicament, I went through your house, and I was pleased to find it in as good or better condition than I had known it in the days of your respected father. I was glad to see the improvement in your circumstances; but when I am told, sir, that your apparent prosperity rests upon such an absurdity as a glacier in a gravel hill, I can but smile with contempt, sir.”
I was getting a little tired of this. “But the glacier is there, sir,” I said, “and I am taking out ice every day, and have reason to believe that I can continue to take it out for the rest of my life. With such facts as these before me, I am bound to say, sir, that I don't care in the least about reason.”
“And I am here, father,” said Agnes, coming close to me, “and here I want to continue for the rest of my days.”
The old gentleman looked at her. “And, I suppose,” he said, “that you, too, don't in the least care about reason?”
“Not a bit,” said Agnes.
“Well,” said Mr. Havelot, rising, “I have done all I can to make you two listen to reason, and I can do no more. I despair of making sensible human beings of you, and so you might as well go on acting like a couple of ninny-hammers.”
“Do ninny-hammers marry and settle on the property adjoining yours, sir?” I asked.
“Yes, I suppose they do,” he said. “And when the aboriginal ice-house, or whatever the ridiculous thing is that they have discovered, gives out, I suppose that they can come to a reasonable man and ask him for a little money to buy bread and butter.”
Two years have passed, and Agnes and the glacier are still mine; great blocks of ice now flow in almost a continuous stream from the mine to the railroad station, and in a smaller but quite as continuous stream an income flows in upon Agnes and me; and from one of the experimental excavations made by Tom Burton on the bluff comes a stream of ice-cold water running in a sparkling brook a-down my dell. On fine mornings before I am up, I am credibly informed that Aaron Boyce may generally be found, in season and out of season, endeavoring to catch the trout with which I am trying to stock that ice-cold stream. The diploma case, which I caused to be carefully removed from the ice-barrier which had imprisoned me, now hangs in my study and holds our marriage certificate.
Near the line-fence which separates his property from mine, Mr. Havelot has sunk a wide shaft. “If the glacier spur under your land was a quarter of a mile wide,” he says to me, “it was probably at least a half a mile long; and if that were the case, the upper end of it extends into my place, and I may be able to strike it.” He has a good deal of money, this worthy Mr. Havelot, but he would be very glad to increase his riches, whether they are based upon sound reason or ridiculous facts. As for Agnes and myself, no facts or any reason could make us happier than our ardent love and our frigid fortune.