CHAPTER XXVI
Parson Rasba piled the books on the crap table in his cabin and stood them in rows with their lettered backs up. He read their titles, which were fascinating: “Arabian Nights,” “Representative Men,” “Plutarch’s Lives,” “Modern Painters,” “Romany Rye”—a name that made him shudder, for it meant some terrible kind of whiskey to his mind—“Lavengro,” a foreign thing, “Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases,” “The Stem Dictionary,” “Working Principles of Rhetoric”—he wondered what rhetoric meant—“The Fur Buyers’ Guide,” “Stones of Venice,” “The French Revolution,” “Sartor Resartus,” “Poe’s Works,” “Balzac’s Tales,” and scores of other titles.
All at once the Mississippi had brought down to him these treasures and a fair woman with blue eyes and a smile of understanding and sympathy, who had handed them to him, saying:
“I want to do something for your mission boat; will you let me?”
No fairyland, no enchantment, no translation from poverty and sorrow to a realm of wealth and happiness could have caught the soul of the Prophet Rasba as this revelation of unimagined, undreamed-of riches as he plucked the fruits of learning and enjoyed their luxuries. He had descended in his humility to the last, least task for which he felt himself worthy. He had humbly been grateful for even that one thing left for him to do: find Jock Drones for his mother.
He had found Jock, and there had been no wrestling with an obdurate spirit to send him back home, like a man, to face the law and accept the penalty. 184 There had been nothing to it. Jock had seen the light instantly, and with relief. His partner had also turned back after a decade of doubt and misery, to live a man’s part “back home.” The two of them had handed him a floating Bethel, turning their gambling hell over to him as though it were a night’s lodging, or a snack, or a handful of hickory nuts. The temple of his fathers had been no better for its purpose than this beautiful, floating boat.
Then a woman had come floating down, a beautiful strange woman whose voice had clutched at his heart, whose smile had deprived him of reason, whose eyes had searched his soul. With tears on her lashes she had flung to him that treasure-store of learning, and gone on her way, leaving him strength and consolation.
He left his treasure and went out to look at the river. Everybody leaves everything to look at the river! There is nothing in the world that will prevent it. He saw, in the bright morning, that Prebol had raised his curtain, and was looking at the river, too, though the effort must have caused excruciating pain in his wounded shoulder. Day was growing; from end to end of that vast, flowing sheet of water thousands upon thousands of old river people were taking a look at the Mississippi.
Rasba carried a good broth over to Prebol for breakfast, and then returned to his cabin, having made Prebol comfortable and put a dozen of the wonderful books within his reach. Then the River Prophet sat down to read his treasures, any and all of them, his lap piled up, three or four books in one hand and trying to turn the pages of another in his other hand by unskilful manipulation of his thumb. He was literally starving for the contents of those books.
He was afraid that his treasure would escape from him; he kept glancing from his printed page to the serried 185 ranks on the crap table, and his hands unconsciously felt around to make sure that the weight on his lap and in his grasp was substantial and real, and not a dream or vision of delight.