John Tincroft, bachelor and benedict

by George E. Sargent

But Mr. Sedley had a strong will of his own, and was especially liable to attacks of obstinacy which sometimes seemed to lead on to remorselessness of purpose, and which, as is usual in such cases, gained strength by opposition. It was natural enough, therefore, though not necessarily judicious, that he should silence the objections of these younger members of his family, by the unanswerable argument wrapped up in Le roi le veut.

As to Mrs. Sedley, the meek-spirited wife, it was sufficient for her to know that she must follow in her husband's wake. Had she not vowed to "love, honour, and obey"? So, without any fruitless remonstrances, she prepared quietly to fulfil her duty.

As, however, my story is about John Tincroft, I must follow the fortunes of the Sedley family only so far as they relate indirectly to the continuance of his history. Briefly, then, after long pondering on the subject, and consulting as many authorities as he thought expedient, the ex-lawyer fixed on the then almost terra incognita of Australia as his general, and the part of it known as New South Wales as his particular, destination.

Those were not the times of fast clippers, to say nothing of ocean steamers. As Mr. Sedley, however, could afford to pay good passage-money, he and his set sail one day in late summer from Gravesend, under comparatively comfortable circumstances.

The voyage was attended with the usual variety of monotonous incidents. It was long and wearying, but it came to an end; and about the commencement of the Australian summer, the party landed at Sydney. Not long to remain there, but to proceed a good way up the country to a farm or settlement, which, on the representation of an advertisement, and forgetting his professional caution, the gentleman had purchased without seeing.

The bargain probably was not a bad one, after all; or it might not have been, in the hands of one who understood the ins and outs of a pastoral life at the Antipodes. But, unfortunately, Mr. Sedley would have been at his wits' ends on an English farm; for farming comes no more by nature than gig-driving. Very soon, therefore, he found himself altogether beyond his wits on an Australian settlement. In other words, misfortunes rapidly set in upon him; and to add to his embarrassments, one of those periodical times of depression, to which all now colonies are more or less subject, fell upon New South Wales.

Happily for the Sedleys, their whole property was not invested in land and stock, and they outrode the storm. After the lapse of a year or two, their circumstances began to mend; and they had their share in the returning and increasing prosperity of their adopted country.

But while regaining his lost ground in this respect, Mr. Sedley had still reason to regret the course into which he had been driven by the impulses of his unreasoning obstinacy. In England he had maintained a certain position in social life for which he was very well suited, and in which were combined and concentrated a good many rational pleasures, counterbalanced, it is true, by a liability to be slighted and mortified occasionally.

In Australia, he had none with whom to dispute precedence, or to stand up for his rights, simply because he had no such neighbours. He was "monarch of all he surveyed," it is true; but then it was because he had no equals or fancied superiors his "right to dispute." Wife and children—an ignorant and awkward and untoward woman-help who had come out to the colony under the pressure of circumstances, and at the expense of the home Government—a shepherd and hut keeper (obtained under similar advantages or disadvantages), who drew monthly rations and smoked strong tobacco, and otherwise comported themselves as free and independent savages in a shanty some three miles away—a rough-and-ready bush carpenter and blacksmith, with a rather more civilised groom of the stables at home, and one or two farm labourers, who called Mr. Sedley their "boss," obeying him when it suited them, and setting him aside when it did not, formed the whole of the community within a radius of some ten miles in every direction.

Now, this was not, in all respects, pleasant to Mr. Sedley. Authority is gratifying, no doubt, under certain conditions, and when it can be enforced. But in this case, those conditions were wanting, and all that Mr. Sedley got for his occasional outbreaks of despotic temper was the timid fear of those to whose confiding love he thought he had a right, and the contempt and daring rebellion of the few to whom he looked for unlimited obedience.