“What, you here again, you white–livered young sneak!” cried Issachar Jupp, reeling in at the door, just as Cradock was coming out; “take that, then——” and he lifted a great oak bludgeon, newly cut from the towing–path of the Basingstoke Canal. If Cradock had not been as quick as lightning, and caught the stick over the bargemanʼs shoulder, there would have been weeping and wailing and a lifelong woe for Amy.
“Hush,” he said; “donʼt make such a noise, man. Your child is at the point of death, in the room overhead.”
Poor Crad, naturally of a bright complexion, but pale from long unhappiness, might now have retorted the compliment as to the “pallor jecoris.” The bargee turned so pale, that he looked like a collierʼs tablecloth. Then he planted his heavy stick on the ground; else he would have lain flat on his threshold.
“My Loo, my Loo!” was all he could say; “oh my Loo! Itʼs a lie, sir!”
“I wish it was,” replied Cradock; “take my arm, Mr. Jupp. Donʼt be over–frightened. We hope with all our hearts to save her, and to–night we shall know. Already I think I perceive some change in her breathing, though her tongue is like a furnace.”
He spoke with a tone and in a voice which no man ever has described, nor shall, but which every born man feels to be genuine, long ere he can think.
“[Condemn] me for a [sanguineous] fool,” cried Jupp, with two enormous tears guttering down the coal–dust, and his great chest heaving and wanting to sob, only it didnʼt know the way; “[condemn] my eyes for swearing so, and making such a [female dog] of myself, but what the [Hades] am I to do? Oh my Loo, my Loo! If you die, Iʼll go to [Hades] after you.”
Excuse me for washing out this speech to regulation weakness; perhaps it was entered in white on high, as the turn of a life of blackness.
Cradock turned away, and trembled. Who can see a rugged man split to the bottom of his nature, and not himself be splintered? I donʼt believe that any can: not even the cold iron scoundrels whom modern plays delight in.