There was no more to be obtained at Saddlebrook; and so after another day or two spent in futile inquiries, Mr. Foster and his client, for the time being, turned their backs upon the dull town, enlivened only by the attractions of the George; and in due time arrived at Oxford to report their want of success.
[CHAPTER IX.]
A RIFT IN THE CLOUD.
ON the day after his return to Oxford, John Tincroft entered upon his temporary lodgings at Jericho—an outlying district of the university city. I need not stop to explain how it came to bear this Oriental name.
On taking possession of the little sitting-room, John made a great show of literary industry. He covered the round table with papers, and all the minuter paraphernalia of a diligent student. He piled up his books of reference and instruction within reach of his hand, when seated at the aforesaid table, in the arm-chair placed at his disposal. He hung upon the walls his store of maps and diagrams of the Indian dependencies and their cities; and he rather ostentatiously displayed, spread open on a second chair, his bulky dictionary of some unknown tongue, perhaps (for who is without some weakness?) to strike with astonishment the brisk college scout, should he happen to enter the room in his absence, or the equally brisk little wife who undertook to take care of the lodger's apartments, also of his outer and his inner man.
For Barry was a married man, without encumbrances however; much to the comfort of the student, to whom a squalling infant would at that time have been, as he said, an unbearable nuisance.
The little wife, though she kept no servant girl, was not the only female in the establishment, as Tincroft soon learned. There was upstairs, in a back apartment, a mysterious old lady, the mother of the Oxford scout. I say mysterious, simply because John Tincroft chose to make a mystery of her, on the ground that he had been in the enjoyment of his lodgings some days before he heard of her existence, and because he was then told that she very rarely left her room. Once, indeed, as he was ascending from his room below to his chamber above, he caught a glimpse on the landing-place of a very broad back and shoulders in feminine gear, and a high white muslin cap above the shoulders; but these disappeared within the doorway of the back apartment before he arrived at the top stairs, and for that time, and during the whole time of his sojourn in Jericho, he beheld the vision no more. It did not matter to him, John thought, and as he dismissed the mystery from his mind as soon as formed, we also may dismiss it too for the present.
Great as was the show our friend Tincroft made of his studious inclinations and intentions, he was never less inclined to set to work than at this present time; and when he forced himself to begin, his vagrant thoughts perpetually forced him to lay down his books or his pen (whichever might be in his hand) in despair.
"For which I ought to be whipped if there were anybody to take me in hand," quoth John to himself, in a scold.