After tightening up the girths, then—for that noble cob, at the saddling period, blew himself out with a large sense of humour (unappreciated by the biped who bestraddled him unwarily), an abdominal sense of humour which, as one touch of nature makes the whole world kin, induced the pigskin to circulate after the manner of a brass dogʼs collar—tush, I mean a dogʼs brass collar—in order to learn what the joke was down in those festive regions; therefore, having buckled him up six inches, till the witty nag creaked like a tight–laced maid, away rode the parson towards the Hall. Much liefer would he have walked by the well–known and pleasant footpath, but he felt himself bound, as one may say, to go in real style, sir.
The more he reflected upon the nature of his errand, the fainter grew his hopes of success; he even feared that his ancient friendship would not procure him a hearing, so absorbed were all the echoes of memory in the pique of parental jealousy, and the cajoleries of a woman. And the consequences of failure—how bitter they must be to him and his little household! Moreover, he dearly loved his two little quiet parishes; and, though he reaped more tithe from them in kindness than in kind or by commutation, to his contented mind they were far sweeter than the incumbency of Libya–cum–Gades, and both Pœni for his beadles.
He thought of Amy with a bitter pang, and of his sister with heaviness, as he laid his hand—for he never used whip—on the fat flank of the pony to urge him almost to a good round trot, that suspense might sooner be done with. And when the Hall was at last before him, he rode up, not to the little postern hard by the housekeeperʼs snuggery (which had seemed of old to be made for him), but to the grand front entrance, where the orange–trees in tubs were, and the myrtles, and the pilasters.
Most of the trees had been removed, with the aid of little go–carts, before the frosts began; but they impressed John Rosedew none the less, so far as his placid and simple mind was open to small impressions.
Dismounting from Coræbus, whose rusty snaffle and mildewed reins would have been a disgrace to any horse, as Amy said every day, he rang the main entrance bell, and wondered whether they would let him in.
That journey had cost him a very severe battle, to bear himself humbly before the wrong, and to do it in the cause of the injured. In the true and noble sense of pride, there could not be a prouder man than the gentle parson. But he ruled that noble human pride with its grander element, left in it by the Son of God, His incarnationʼs legacy, the pride which never apes, but is itself humility.
At last the door was opened, not by the spruce young footman (who used to look so much at Amy, and speer about as to her expectations, because she was only a parsonʼs daughter), but by that ancient and most respectable Job Hogstaff, patriarch of butlers. Dull and dim as his eyes were growing, Job, who now spent most of his time in looking for those who never came, had made out Mr. Rosedewʼs approach, by virtue of the ponyʼs most unmistakable shamble. Therefore he pulled down his best coat from a jug–crook, twitched his white hair to due stiffness, pushed the ostiary footman back with a scorn which rankled for many a day under a zebra waistcoat, and hobbled off at his utmost pace to admit the visitor now so strange, though once it was strange without him.
Mr. Rosedew walked in very slowly and stiffly, then turned aside to a tufted mat, and began to wipe his shoes in the most elaborate manner, though there was not a particle of dirt upon them. Old Jobʼs eyes blinked vaguely at him: he felt there was something wrong in that.
“Donʼt ye do that, sir, now; for Godʼs sake donʼt do that. I canʼt abear it; and thatʼs the truth.”
Full well the old man remembered how different, in the happy days, had been John Rosedewʼs entrance; and now every scrub on the mat was a rub on his shaky hard–worn heart.