John Tincroft, bachelor and benedict

by George E. Sargent

And so he departed, leaving Tincroft in a brown study. For John had lately become more addicted to brown studies than ever. And not altogether without reason. At any rate he had more than one source of disquietude. The first was in the unprofitable nature of his engagements. Do what he might, he had found that grinding mathematics and classics in boarding schools at so much an hour (with frequent gaps between), is about on a par with brickmaking. To supplement this occupation, he had lately tried his hand (as his father Josiah had done before him) at literary composition, but thus far had failed in making any impression on stony-hearted editors. So, if the truth must be told, he was more than ever under a cloud, for his small reserve fund was melting slowly away.

Next, our friend was under much concern regarding the health and comfort of the poor girl who was now his wife. He had conscientiously performed his promises, he had sought to make her happy; and he had found, if not happiness, yet a degree of quiet repose in this union, which perhaps compensated in some measure for the absence of more congenial companionship, which he might have found in a more intellectual and cultivated help-meet. I believe he was even proud of his young wife, and though her bloom was somewhat faded, John loved, as of yore, to sit by her side (not now on a knobby chair, though a cheap one) and contemplate the charms which had first enthralled him. Be this as it might, I know that he cherished her as a thing of price, and would not allow, so far as he could prevent, his own anxious cares for the future to disturb her mind.

And Sarah seemed grateful to her John, and desirous of pleasing him; very submissive, too, to his little whims, she would have been, I think, and very indulgent to his peculiarities, if there had been any need for submission and indulgence. But, notwithstanding all this, poor Sarah pined. She missed the fresh air and the freedom, perhaps, of her native place, and of High Beech Farm, with all its drawbacks. John had watchfully noticed this almost from the first; and now, of late, during the last six months—dating, let us say, from the evening of the fireworks—she had more manifestly fallen off in health and spirits, giving way sometimes to tears on very slight occasions, as John thought, which perplexed him mightily.

In truth, on looking back, John remembered that on that very evening just mentioned, on their return from the pyrotechnics, Sarah was suddenly seized with violent shakings and tremblings, which terminated in hysterics as soon as they reached their own little parlour. And he had reproached himself at the time, as he still did, for having kept his tender little wife too long standing on the damp ground and in the miasmatic air of the river-side meadow. Perhaps Tom Grigson could have better accounted for this sudden affection; but he was a good fellow, and he did not.

Another of Tincroft's worries was in the increasing necessity felt by his mother-in-law for those afternoon "lyings down" which used to excite his sympathy, as well as puzzle him, but the too obvious cause of which began slowly to dawn on John's unsuspicious and unimaginative mind.

With all these cares, however, John was not unhappy. To a considerable degree they were counteracted by the Mens conscia recti, which, at any rate, lightened his burden. Then his friend Grigson was constant.

And, lastly, if he wanted a little good solid talk, was not there his old friend Mrs. Elizabeth Barry, with her cheerful, old-fashioned piety (old-fashioned, I mean, in her way of expressing it), and her favourite hymn-book, of which John became at last positively enamoured. He was ever a welcome guest at the Barrys; and in virtue of his family relationship to the obese old lady, Sarah was admitted into her presence-chamber, not altogether without a beneficial effect. And this connection was advantageous in obtaining for Sarah the sometimes help and sometimes sympathy and sometimes cheering companionship of little Mrs. Barry the younger, when John was away on his professional engagements, or racking his brains (alas, in vain it seemed!) in a small closet about nine feet square, which he called his study.

But a change was impending; and to show how "great events from little causes spring" (am I right in my quotation?), his gracious Majesty of Great Britain and Ireland was little aware how he was helping of John Tincroft's fortunes when, on a certain trivial occasion, he changed his Cabinet Ministers, and, of necessity, appointed a new Lord Chancellor.

"Tincroft v. Tincroft.—This suit is at last ended in favour of the Sussex branch of the family. His lordship, in giving judgment, remarked that whatever doubts or uncertainties in relation to the legitimate heirship of John Tincroft, the claimant of that branch, might formerly have been entertained, had been entirely removed by the latest evidence produced in his favour." So the newspapers report.

"I congratulate you with all my heart," said Mr. Roundhand when next they met. "You won't be a rich man, you know; but there is the estate, such as it is, unencumbered; and though the funded property has been pretty considerably reduced, and may be more so before affairs are finally wound up, there will be something to patch up the old house with, and to give you a fixed income, if a small one."