“Now come up with me, Mr. Jupp,” said Crad, taking care not to look at him, “out at this door, in at the other. Poor little soul! she has been so good. You canʼt think how good she has been. And she has taken her medicine so nicely.”
“Pray God Almighty not to [condemn] me, for not [condemning] myself enough,” said Issachar Jupp, below his breath, as he leaned on Cradockʼs arm.
It was his form of prayer; and it meant more than most of ours do. Though I may be discarded by turtle–dove quill–drivers for daring to record it, will he ever be worse for uttering it? Of course, it was very shocking; but far more so to men than to angels.
CHAPTER VIII.
Little Looʼs fever “took the turn” that night. Cradock went away, of course, now her own father was come; and the savage bargee would have gone on his knees, and crawled in that fashion—wherein all fashion crawls—down the rough stairs, every one of them, if the young man would only have let him. We are just beginning to scorn the serfdom of one mind to another. We begin to desire that no man should, without fair argument, accept our dicta as equal to his own in wisdom. And I fully believe that if fate had thrown us across Shakespeare, Bacon, or Newton, we should now refer to our own reason what they said, before admiring it. For, after all, what are we? What are our most glorious minds? Only one spark more of God.
And yet the servience, not of the mind, but of the heart to a larger one, is a fealty most honourable to the giver and the receiver. In a bold independent man, such as Issachar Jupp was, this fealty was not to be won by any of that paltry sentiment about birth, clanship, precedency, position, appearance, &c., which is our national method of circumcising the New Testament—it was only to be won by proof that the other heart was bigger than his. Prove that once, and till death it was granted.
Now, the small Loo Jupp being out of danger, and her father, grinning like a gridiron with the firelight behind it, every day at her bedside, the force of circumstances—which, in good English, means the want of money—sent Cradock Nowell once more catʼs–cradling throughout London, to answer advertisements. His heart rose within him every day as he set out in the morning, and in the same relative position fell, as he came home every evening.
“Do, sir, do,” cried Issachar Jupp, who never swore now, before Cradock, except under strongest pressure; “do come aboard our barge. Iʼve aʼmost a–got the appointment of skipper to the Industrious Maiden, homeside of Nine Elms, as tight a barge as ever was built, and the name done in gold letters. Fact, I may say, and not tell no secrets; I be safe to be aboord of her, if my Loo allow me to go, and I donʼt swear hard at the check–house. And, perhaps, I shall be able to help it, after Loo so ill, and you such a hangel.”