"It will be the making of you, if you mind what you are about John," said Mr. Rackstraw; "and as to that plaguey Chancery suit and the Tincroft estate, it isn't worth your while staying in England to be the winner—or the loser, which is the more likely of the two."
He did not add audibly, "And I shall be well rid of you into the bargain," though probably, he thought it within himself.
John Tincroft had already commenced making preparations in a small way for his expatriation, as well as for his future duties; that is, he had plunged head foremost into certain Oriental histories, under a misty idea that they would be useful to him when he got to Calcutta.
John Tincroft, though an Oxford "gownsman," was a shy and awkward youth, of about two or three and twenty. He had never had the advantage of society—ladies' society, of course, is meant; and this deprivation had been hurtful, for it had made almost a misanthrope of him. In this respect, however, he had been the victim of circumstances.
His mother he had never known: he had no sister nor aunt nor fair cousin to initiate him into the mysteries of easy intercourse with his species. His school breeding, and, after that, his college training, together with his guardian's want of sympathy, had had the further effect of monasticising his young life. And this effect, which had grown into a habit, had been intensified by his narrow circumstances. Everybody knew that John Tincroft was under the cloud of straitened means, and who does not know, or cannot understand, how this evil reputation (according to worldly maxims) inexorably closes one door after another against those who lie under it?
Tincroft, at any rate, had felt it keenly, and it had increased his natural shyness.
The isolation of which we have spoken had favoured him in one respect, however: it had made a hard student of him, which, perhaps, he might not otherwise have been. For, to tell the truth, John Tincroft was not over-bright, though, under the circumstances, which otherwise were in his disfavour, he had thus far, and almost to the end, passed through his college course creditably.
More than this, he had happened to be of some use to Tom Grigson, the hospitalities of whose home he was about to experience. How the young freshman in his first term managed to get into trouble with the authorities of the university, and how the older and remarkably quiet fellow-collegian was accidentally, but fortunately, able to help him out of it; how the two thereafter formed a kind of friendly acquaintance; how Tincroft aided Grigson in his attempts at scaling some of the lower heights of Parnassus; how, in return, the younger occasionally enticed the elder to the Minor dissipations of a boating trip to Nuneham, a scamper to Woodstock on hired hacks, a stroll to Wytham strawberry gardens—(are they there still, I wonder?)—or a cricket match on Bullingdon Green, must be left to another pen or another time.
Once, I grieve to say, the volatile Tom induced the sober John to a surreptitious badger-draw in Bagley Wood, where they had "capital sport," as Tom averred; and on another occasion—but this is a secret—the two started off, under shelter of a winter evening, to the neighbouring town of Abingdon to witness the débût of a young actress at a temporary theatre there, the severe morality of Oxford forbidding stage-plays within the precincts of the sacred university town; and once, only once, the recluse was entrapped by his tempter into the revelries of a wine-party—once was enough, for, as the due punishment of his sin, poor Tincroft had a splitting headache which lasted him three days. All this, in more minute detail, must remain untold.
To compensate for these occasional outbreaks, it is only fair to say that the influence of the steadier gownsman was often exerted in keeping his more mercurial friend from mischief, and in prompting him to a decent attention to his studies. An assurance of this fact from Tom Grigson himself had been the procuring cause of invitation to Grigson Manor House, which was presided over by the head of the family—Tom's elder brother.