John Tincroft, bachelor and benedict

by George E. Sargent

Poor John Tincroft! Without intending it, he had so many years ago placed himself in a position from which, as an honourable man, he saw no way of retreat open; and he had married a wife who could neither sympathise with, nor even understand him intellectually, and whose dulness, if he had not successfully striven against the feeling, might long since have wearied him.

Too uneducated to be his companion, too feeble-hearted to attempt or even to desire to improve herself up to his standard, and too fond of ease to be a stirring housewife and home-sweetener, what was to be expected of the Sarah of our early narrative but that she should sink down into self-indulgent indolence of mind and body, now that calls for exertion were not imperative?

Happily for her soul's welfare, or for anything that might, in the course of God's providence, occur to rouse her to thoughtfulness, and resuscitate her interest in the life present, as well as to implant a corresponding interest in the life to come—happily, too, for her husband's comfort—Sarah had avoided the rock on which both her parents had made fatal shipwreck. For I must add to what I just now wrote relating to the departed Mrs. Mark, that the habit she had acquired when she was the mistress of High Beech Farm clung to her with terrible tenacity when she became the guest of Tincroft House. Frightened and warned by these examples, the daughter steered clear of the vice which would inevitably have made her home, her husband, and herself miserable.

And Tincroft House, for all I have written, was not a home of misery, nor even of positive discomfort. It might perhaps have been to you or to me, reader, under similar circumstances; but John was easily satisfied; he had never known the true happiness of domestic life, and he believed he had as much of it as was good for him—as much at any rate, he might have argued, as falls to the lot of poor mortals in a general way.

He was, in fact, in a similar position to that of a person who, having been blind from infancy, is necessarily ignorant of the pleasures and advantages of eyesight. Moreover, John was really fond of his Sarah, in spite of her dulness and her frequent transgressions of grammatical rules, her dropped or superfluous h's, and her many provincialisms, of which, if we give no examples in the dialogues in which she bears a part, it is because we think a story is as well and effectually told without such minute personifications and descriptions as with them. I daresay all the speakers in Old Testament histories were not alike pure Hebraists, any more than those in the New discoursed in choice Greek or Syriac. But we do not find the sacred writers holding up either their solecisms or their vulgarities to notice. So, if the reader pleases, Sarah shall still speak with reasonable accuracy.

Yes, John Tincroft was still fond of his wife. I don't doubt that, as he sometimes sat by her side, the old feeling of admiration came over him which had formerly reconciled him to the knobby-seated parlour chair at High Beech Farm; and he forgot (even if he had ever suffered his mind to dwell upon) the want of congeniality which held them, husband and wife, intellectually at a distance from each other.

Besides all this, John had perception enough to have found out long ago, though he had too much delicacy and kindness to have ever told of his discovery, that, true and faithful as his Sarah was, and had always been, she was never his lover. Grateful to him the poor little thing was when he rushed forward to rescue her, at what cost she could not help knowing, from the worst consequences, or what might have been the worst consequences, of his own, or say of their joint imprudence. But even at that time she had sobbed out:

"I don't love you, Mr. Tincroft—not as you ought to be loved, you know."

And John had taken her, hoping and believing that the love would come in due course. But it had not, and he knew it. A quiet, noiseless wife she was, timid, submissive, and sometimes even slave-like to the benefactor who had ransomed her from ill-will and scorn and poverty. But there the matter ended.

"Poor Sarah!" John sometimes reflected. "She has given me all that is in her power; and I am better off with that than many a husband is with the woman who has made stronger and louder professions. And why should I complain?" And he never did complain.