John Tincroft, bachelor and benedict

by George E. Sargent

"I shall have plenty of that when we are buckled together, father," he said, one day (in John's hearing), when he was remonstrated and reasoned with for running away from his "little wife."

Dear old John! Do you wonder, reader, that with all his experience on the one hand, and his inexperience on the other, he drew doleful pictures of the after-life of that bright boy and the cousin whom he was doomed to marry?

"I can't do any good by saying anything about it to Tom," thought he to himself, "and if I could, I haven't the right to interfere; but I pity the poor boy with all my heart."

No wonder, then, that under the mood of the time, and while the shadow of death was yet upon him, John felt more embarrassment than he had ever expected to feel when thrown into his friend Tom Grigson's company.

Here for the present we must leave, not only this subject, but also the Manor House, and enter the humbler precincts of Low Beech Farm.

A habitation into which death has entered, or which, as at, Low Beech, is for the time brought into intimate connection and fellowship with the grave, seems to be cut off from the rest of the world, and to gather around it an atmosphere of oppression and gloom. The darkened windows, the noiseless footsteps and subdued tones of voice which every inhabitant adopts, as though fearful of awakening the dead, and all other signs and tokens of grief, whether simulated or real, seem to mark that house as set apart from the common and ordinary and vulgar associations of everyday existence.

And yet it is not really so. The business of life must be carried on; and the passions and habits and dispositions of the living will be found to be held very little in check even by the near presence of the dead. At Low Beech, for instance, the sordid carefulness of old Matthew and his wife had not disappeared beneath the dignity of parental sorrow. No doubt they mourned for their son after a certain fashion; that is, they would rather he had been alive and well and well-to-do, and rather also that, seeing he was doomed to die, the blow had not fallen so as to place them at an inconvenience and possible expense.

But things having happened as they had gave no reason for neglecting the business of the farm and house. So Mrs. Matthew went about her work as usual, while Elizabeth was preparing and "making up black," as the mother explained to the clergyman who called to condole with the family on their bereavement; and Matthew went looking after his men, and feeding his stock, to all appearance little moved by his proximity at home to his dead Walter.

But he was moved, nevertheless. He couldn't make it out anyhow, he muttered to his wife. He had varied his opinion, as we have seen, on the subject of Walter's pecuniosity or impecuniosity; and now, at the last, he was utterly bewildered. He shifted his views almost every quarter of an hour, at one time thinking his son must have got a nest-egg somewhere or other; and then returning to his firm conviction that if Walter had been well off and prospering in Australia, he would never have returned to his home.

I do not think that I, the chronicler, am bound to explain, or attempt to explain, the motives (if there were any) for Walter Wilson's reticence about his money matters, both to his friend Tincroft and to his relatives at Low Beech. I incline to the opinion, however, that there was no distinct reason for his silence; and that, had he lived a short time longer, a part, at least, of the old people's curiosity would have been satisfied. This, however, is but a conjecture; and it is certain that, respecting his worldly possessions, Walter Wilson "died and made no sign."