Then Mr. Rosedew came down the side, lightly of foot and cleverly; while the under–supercargo leaned upon the rail and sorrowfully watched him. Ponderously then and slowly, with his great splay feet thrust into the rope–ladder, even up to the heel, quite at his leisure descended that good bargeman, Issachar Jupp. This noble bargee had never been seen to hurry himself on his own account. He and his deeds lagged generally on the bight of a long and slack tow–rope.
The sailors, not entering into his character, thought that he was frightened, and condemned his apprehensive luminaries, in words of a quarter the compass. Then Mr. Jupp let go with both hands, stood bolt upright on the foot–rope, and shook his great fists at them. “Let him catch them ashore at Wapping, if the devil forewent his due; let him catch them, that was all!” Thereupon they gave him a round of cheers, and promised to square the account, please God.
Mr. Rosedew and the bargeman looked up from the tossing wherry, and waved their last farewell, the parson reckless of Sunday hat, and letting his white locks glance and flutter on the cold March wind. But Cradock made no reply.
“All right, govʼnor!” said Jupp, catching hold of the parson; “no call for you to take on so. Iʼve a been the likes o’ that there mysel’ in the days when I tuk’ blue ruin. The rattisination of it are to fetch it out of him by travellinʼ. And the Tap–Robin are a traveller, and no mistake. Dʼrectly moment I comes to my fortinʼ, Iʼll improve self and family travellinʼ.”
Zakey, to assert his independence as his nature demanded, affected a rough familiarity with the man whom he revered. The parson allowed it as a matter of course. His dignity was not so hollow as to be afraid of sand–paper. The result was that Issachar Jupp, every time, felt more and more compunction at, and less and less of comfort in, the unresented liberties.
As he said “good–bye” at the landing–place—for he had seen the Sally coming—he put out his hand, and then drew it back with a rough bow (disinterred from long–forgotten manners), and his raspy tongue thrust far into the coal–mine of his cheek. But John Rosedew accepted his hand, and bowed, as he would have done to a nobleman. Even if a baby smiled at him, John always acknowledged the compliment. For he added Christian courtesy, and the humility of all thoughtful minds, to a certain grand and glorious gift of radiating humanity.
Cradock Nowell was loth to be sent away, and could not see the need of it; but doubtless the medical men were right in prescribing a southern voyage, a total change of scene and climate, as the likeliest means to re–establish the shattered frame and the tottering mind. And so he sailed for the gorgeous tropics, where the sun looks not askance, where the size of every climbing, swimming, fluttering, or crawling thing (save man himself) is doubled; where life of all things bounds and beats—until it is quickly beaten—as it never gets warm enough to do in the pinching zones, tight–buckled.
Meanwhile John Rosedew went to his home—a home so loved and fleeting—and tried to comfort himself on the road with various Elzevirs. Finding them fail, one after another, for his mind was not in cue for them, he pulled out his little Greek Testament, and read what a man may read every day, and never begin to be weary; because his heart still yearns the more towards the grand ideal, and feels a reminiscence such as Plato the divine, alone of heathens, won.
John Rosedew read once more the Sermon on the Mount, and wondered how his little griefs could vex him as they did. That sermon is grander in English, far grander, than in the Greek; for the genius of our language is large, and strong, and simple—the true spirit of the noblest words that ever on earth were spoken. How cramped they would be in Attic Greek (like Mount Athos chiselled); in Latin how nerveless and alien! Ours is the language to express; and ours the race to receive them.
What man, in later life, whose reading has led him through vexed places—whence he had wiser held aloof—does not, on some little touch, brighten, and bedew himself with the freshness of the morning, thrill as does the leaping earth to see the sun come back again, and, dashing all his night away, open the power of his eyes to the kindness of his Father?