Chapter XI: Something to Think About

LEAVING the stormy latitude of High Beech, we retrace our steps to the classic shades of Oxford, where we find the undergraduate Tincroft, some three months after our last parting with him, again quietly ensconced in his rather dingy rooms at Queen's. The time which had thus passed away had not been altogether unprofitably spent by him. He had, for one thing, put himself to school. It is said that a man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client; and I have been told that when a doctor is seriously ill, he generally consults a brother Galen—whether or not it is because he has little faith in his own prescriptions, I have no means of knowing.

On a parity of reasoning, and on the same principle, it would seem that when a man sees occasion to put himself to school, he should not be his own schoolmaster; and yet it is not so. There is, of course, one Teacher of whom all ought to learn, and the neglect of whose instructions is infinite loss. But next to Divine instructions, it is almost important that every man should school himself, listening to his own reason and conscience. And this John Tincroft had done.

First, as to his faint hopes of ever succeeding to the inheritance which he believed to be his, he was kindly enough but faithfully recommended by his monitor to forget them. He was reminded of the law's proverbial delays, and especially of the wearying and wearing and disappointing perplexities of a Chancery suit.

He was told in this new school (for it was new to him) that even if he could and did obtain possession of the Tincroft estate, to which he thought he had a right, and which it now seemed possible would be his—say, if he should live another fifty years—it would not be worth having.

"Therefore," said the schoolmaster, "dismiss it from your mind altogether; and if it must be still battled about, let the lawyers do it."

And John said, "I will."

Next, "You have been shamefully neglecting your preparations for India these many weeks," quoth the schoolmaster; "you know you have."

John hung his head.

"Now this won't do. You know quite well, John, that you are not over-bright. You have no genius; you are not a genius."

"Not a bit of one," John readily acknowledged.

"You have not much talent, even."

John admitted this with a sorrowful shake of his head.

"But you have a little, perhaps, and you used what little you had with a proper amount of industry for a time. But now, what have you been doing since you came back from that harum-scarum—"

"Please, don't. Yes, yes, I know. What have I been doing? Nothing, nothing," John confessed, dolefully.

"For which you ought to be ashamed," said the schoolmaster; "but if you will set to at once, and make up for lost time, we shall get you through your examinations. And you know, John, that you can do nothing better than take that appointment. You won't get rich out there, I daresay. You haven't the talent for that sort, of thing; but then you will, at all events, be doing something for yourself; and, in fact, it is the road plainly pointed out to you by circumstances, and you ought to walk in it."

"True, true," responded John.

"And not falteringly or imperfectly. Whatsoever your hand findeth to do, do it with all your might."

"I will, God helping me," John aspirated.

"The wisest thing I have heard you say yet, John," quoth the schoolmaster; "keep to that, and you will do. 'In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.' And there's another matter in which you require that help. You know what I mean."

John again hung his head and blushed deep red.

"That folly, and worse than folly, of yours, down in the country."

"I was very foolish, very; but was there anything worse than that in it?" John pondered.

"The thought of foolishness is sin," observed the schoolmaster, severely.

"God forgive me!" prayed John, penitently.

"He will if you ask Him truly and sincerely. And He will help you too; but you have something to do for yourself, in which you must ask this help. You must put away from you those vain thoughts, those captivating remembrances. You have no business to be thinking admiringly of any daughter of Eve just now; and of her (you know who I mean) least of all."

"True, true," John confessed.

"Well, then, what a blockhead you must be to go about dreaming and mooning as you have done since you got back to Oxford. Why, the other evening, when you went for that stroll round the Magdalen Water Walk, you looked so distraught, and played such moon-struck antics, that a pair of undergraduates burst out in a merry laugh when you passed them."

"I heard them," John reflected.

"You must have done with this nonsense," the schoolmaster went on. "You have done mischief enough down there already, for anything we know: and the only wise thing you did was when you ran away from the place. Now you must abandon all that folly, and pray to be forgiven the sin there was in it, whether more or less."

"God helping me, I will," said John again, and the best thing he could do or say, it was.

These conferences and lectures went on from day to day, and from the time they commenced John Tincroft began to amend. I am not quite sure that his internal schoolmaster did not—or rather, I am not quite of opinion that he did—receive some assistance from no less a personage than the good old stout Baptist lady at Jericho, who, having been brought into personal acquaintance with the veritable son of the dear little Josiah at Saddlebrook, desired to make his further acquaintance if the gownsman of Queen's would so far condescend as to notice one so far beneath him.

John did not profess to condescend, and he would not have known how to do it, if he had tried. It was out of his line, he said, and so it was; but his good-nature induced him to give ear to the request; and the subsequent intercourse with the pleasant and not vulgar, though fat, proprietress of "Rippon's Selection" redounded to John's advantage, though, perhaps, he was not at the time conscious of it.

Not that he had anything further to learn about the signature, which had, by the promptitude of Mr. Roundhand, been duly and legally attested. That subject was altogether exhausted and done with, so far as John was concerned. Neither did good Mrs. Barry and John enter into any discussions respecting the differences which existed between their several and separate religious communities. Indeed, if the compilation of hymns just referred to had not so constantly lain on Mrs. Barry's table, as her favourite book next to the Bible, John would almost have forgotten all about his new friend being a Baptist.

But the charm of the intercourse was that, in the company of the motherly old lady, John could forget his isolation and loneliness, and receive sympathy and kindly regard from one of the softer sex, without the possible intrusion of such wild vagrant thoughts as those which had entranced, yet troubled him, at High Beech Farm.

And so, as we have said, three months passed away the short vacation was over, and with the commencement of Lent term came up Tom Grigson, fresh from the field, and fit for the first week to talk of nothing else but horses, dogs, foxes, and hares.

"By the way, Tincroft, I have been back a week or more, and you have never spoken a word nor asked a question about your old friends at High Beech. Where's your curiosity?"

"I have not thought much about them lately," said John, reddening rather. "The truth is—" he added, and then he stopped short with, "I suppose there is nothing new to tell."

"Isn't there, though? For one thing, it is all done and done for with Mark Wilson."

"I am sorry to hear it. Your brother carried out his threat, then?"

"No, not so bad as that. Brother Dick's bark is worse than his bite generally; and it was so in this case. I don't think in any case he would choose to sell up an old tenant, at least he never has done it. And as to Mark Wilson, the truth is he would have got very little by it, for the live and dead stock, crops and implements altogether, if sold, wouldn't much more than have paid expenses. No, he didn't sell him up. But the fact is, things had got so bad that a week or two before Christmas, Mark himself came and offered to put himself into Dick's hands, to do what he liked with him and his belongings."

"The most sensible thing he could do under the circumstances, I suppose," said John. "And what followed?"

"Why, Richard offered to forgive him his rent—the rector did the same about his tithes—and to let him remain for a time in the house, which isn't much of a place, you know, and to keep his household furniture, which isn't any better, if he would give up possession of the farm at once, which he was glad enough to do."

"Who has the farm, then?"

"Oh, Matthew Wilson, of course, Mark's brother. He has had half a promise of it a good while, supposing Mark should have to leave. And it was only fair that Matthew should get it, if he can make anything out of it, for by all accounts, he has lost a good bit of money by that sottish brother of his."

"Ah!" ejaculated John, mentally. "To be sure. I heard something of this that evening of the picnic." He did not say this, however, but substituted for it, "And what will the poor man do now he has no farm to attend to?"

"Not to attend to, you mean. Well, his brother has promised to employ him on the farm, if the stupid fellow will work; and, at any rate, to take some care of Mrs. Mark and the daughter. But it will be hard lines with them all, for Matthew Wilson is rather a sharp hand, and there isn't much love lost between any of them, I expect."

"A good thing for Miss Sarah that she is engaged to be married. I am glad to think that she will escape from this state of pauperism, at all events," said John, thoughtfully.

"Ah! But there's something else I have to tell you, Tincroft. That affair is all broken off. She and her cousin have had a quarrel, and there is an end to that connection."

"Do you really mean that, Grigson?" demanded John, visibly startled.

"I do mean it; and I reckon that's why Matthew is more willing than he would have been to lend the wife and Sarah a helping hand. Depend on it, he would have had nothing to say to them if Walter Wilson had gone on with his courtship."

"But—but I don't understand it at all. There was nothing amiss, was there, when I came away?"

"No, I suppose not; but a month or two ago, it must have been, the young fellow came post-haste, and quite unexpectedly, from the north, where he had been the last two years, and had a desperate quarrel with the girl. You haven't heard about it before, I suppose, Tincroft?" said Tom, interrupting himself, and looking keenly into his friend's face.

"Of course not, Grigson. How should I have known anything on the subject?" John wished to be told, wincing a little beneath Tom's inquisitive look.

"Ah, well, I don't know, I'm sure; but I am glad you have not heard of it before from any other quarter, for the truth is—I am rather loth to mention it, but the truth is (it all came out afterwards through Rubric, who told Dick all about it, and Dick told me) that you, John—there don't be alarmed, dear fellow—" for John began to show lively signs of astonishment, "that you had something to do with the quarrel."

And then, by cautious degrees, and tenderly (for Tom Grigson was a true-hearted friend), came out the whole story, much as I have told it.

"But don't take it to heart, Tincroft," added the good fellow; "Dick and I both thought it right you should know what has been talked about. But, of course, it is no fault of yours. If the poor girl has been silly, or her father stupid, or that Walter Wilson outrageously and madly jealous, you can't help it, you know. So think no more about it; I shouldn't if I were you."

"How can I help it?" asked John, sadly. "For it is my fault—it is all my fault. I see it now. But I must know more about it, Tom, if I can. The poor girl—poor Sarah; how does she take it?"

"Why, she is sadly enough, by all accounts. But no wonder, you see, considering the trouble that has fallen on the whole of them."

"And, Tom—tell me true, dear Tom—don't you think the young fellow, Walter Wilson, will come round again? Lovers' quarrels, you know, are said to be only the renewal, or revival, or something of the sort, of love. Not that I know anything about it; but don't you think he will come round again?" asked Tincroft.

"Why, how should I know?" responded Tom, laughing a little at John's earnestness. Then he added, "Nobody believes it will be, or can be made up. The fact is (it may as well come out), young Wilson has been crammed with so many stories, and is consequently so sure that you did make love to Mark's daughter, and that she encouraged you, on the principle of having two strings to a bow (in this affair I should say two beaux to her string), that he is determined never to speak to her again. At least, this is what I have heard."

"But, Tom, you don't believe what they say about me and Sarah Wilson, do you?" John Tincroft asked piteously.

"No, of course, I don't, my good fellow, and Richard doesn't believe it either. Why, you don't think we believe it, do you?"

"No, not if you say so, Tom. But I am so bewildered with your news that I don't know what to think." And John pressed his two hands against his forehead. "To think that the poor thing should be suffering through my fault!" he added.

"I don't see much fault in it, Tincroft," argued Tom Grigson. "Of course, if you had never seen Miss Wilson, this could not have happened. And if you hadn't gone up to her father's house so often, it might not have happened."

"True, true, true," groaned John.

"But as what can't be cured, must be endured, we had better drop the subject, my boy."

"Ha! I'll think about it, that will be best," said John, dreamily, as was his wont when his mind was otherwise occupied than with the exact words he was speaking.

"I don't know about thinking, dear fellow. Thinking doesn't always do good. I have been thinking all day what a blockhead I have been not to tell Dick about that horribly long bill of Dry's; but I didn't tell him, and I don't like to write directly after coming up. So I have made up my mind not to think about it all this term. I recommend the same to you. You'll forget it all the sooner through not thinking about it."

"But not thinking about Dry's bill won't pay it, Tom, will it?" asked Tincroft, gravely.

"No, that's the worst of it," laughed Grigson; "so I shall be obliged to think about it some day, whether I like it or not."

"Ah! Just so!" said John; and then the friends separated.

John did think about it. He passed an almost sleepless night in troubled thought; and the next morning after chapel, drawing his friend Grigson aside, he proposed a walk round the Magdalen Water Walk.

"Very good, John, it will give us an appetite for breakfast."

"Grigson," said John, after they had gone round and round the walk, almost in silence, and they were returning into the High Street through the cloisters, "I am off by the Tally-ho to-day. Can I do anything for you at the Manor House!"

"The Manor House! Tally-ho! What is the meaning of this sudden freak, Tincroft?" his friend naturally enough asked.

"I don't wonder at your wondering. Look here, Tom, I have been thinking all night of what you told me yesterday, and though I know very well that I am a blockhead, and you know it too—"

"I know nothing of the sort. You are one of the best fellows I know. You have kept me out of a world of mischief here, and if you are not up to some things that some of us know too much of, you are none the worse for that."

"Well, blockhead or not, Grigson, I have made up my mind not to be a knave."

"Ho! Ho! Sets the wind in that quarter?" thought Tom, within himself. And then he said, rather sharply, "You don't mean to finish up by marrying that girl yourself after all, do you?"

"No," said John, mildly. "I don't wonder at your thinking so, of course. But that isn't my meaning. For all that, I have done her great wrong, not wilfully, not wickedly, I hope not, at least not intentionally, only as there is sin in most folly, and if not sin there is harm. Yes, I have harmed the poor girl," continued John, sadly. "I see it all now, and I must undo it if I can."

"If I can understand what you are aiming at, may I be carbonadoed, dear fellow," rejoined Tom.

"I'll explain my meaning, if I can. You see, don't, you? That by going so often as I did to High Beech Farm, I laid myself open to suspicion."

"Well, if you come to that, of course the idea was that you were smitten. I know more about that sort of thing than I did then, for I know, before I came up, there was no road so pleasant to me as the road to the Mumbles. An abominable road it is to be sure, but then there was a Kate at the end of it; and so I made a point of riding out there every day almost."

"A gate?" said John, whose mind, occupied with one idea, could with difficulty take in another.

"A gate! No, no, a Kate—Kate Elliston."

"I see, I see! My dear fellow, I wish you joy and success. But, as I was saying, I did lay myself open to suspicion. And I was warned about it. Your brother warned me, and so did Mr. Rubric; and at the time I am afraid I was more vexed than pleased with their kind intentions. But that does not matter—my being suspected. The worst of it was, the poor girl came to be suspected too. And then, it seems, stories have been told about her, and she has lost a husband that was to be, and all through me. You said as much as this last night, Tom."

"Did I? I don't know that I did, Tincroft."

"Oh, but you did. And now, the least I can do, and the only thing I can do, as an honourable man, is to try and make things straight again between young Wilson and his poor cousin."

"You'll be a clever fellow to do that, John," observed his friend, thoughtfully, and inwardly quoting a couplet he had somewhere met with in his reading—

"Who now to sense, and now to nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about his 'meaning.'"

"And how in the world will you set about it?" he asked.

"Ah! There I want your advice, Tom. I don't think it will do for me to go to the farm. There would be more suspicions then, I suppose."

"Yes, decidedly, I should say. No, I wouldn't go to the farm if I were you."

"I am glad you think as I do about that," rejoined John Tincroft, beamingly. "For, to tell you the truth—may I, Tom? I know I may, though, and that you won't betray me."

"Not I, John. Say on."

"Well—" and then he whispered in his friend's ear, "if things hadn't been as they were with me, and if Sarah Wilson had been free, I should have been proud to make her my wife; but under all the circumstances of the case, it wasn't to be dreamt of for a moment. I didn't think so much about it then as I ought to have done. And I ought to have kept away on that very account. But I have seen my terrible mistake since, and must do my best to remedy it."

"Whew!" whistled Tom. "You want to put yourself out of temptation, then?"

"No, the temptation is past and gone, I hope. At least, I know I have striven and prayed against it. No, it is not of myself I am thinking, but of her. And it strikes me—doesn't it you?—that if I were to go and see your brother and Mr. Rubric, and tell them honestly that all the fault was mine, and that the poor girl was as innocent of anything like flirting as any modest girl could be, don't you think they would believe me, and try to sot matters straight again?"

"They would believe you, of course, John, as readily and strongly as I do. But as to setting matters straight—well, I think it likely they would try. I know they feel a good deal for—well, say for Walter Wilson, and I daresay they will for his cousin when things are put before them in the way you have put them now."

"Thank you, Tom; I should not care undergoing any mortification."

"Oh, no occasion for mortification that I can see," said Tom Grigson, cheerily. "There's no mortification in doing what is right, I think; and you are right in this, old fellow."

"Thank you heartily, Tom," said John, warmly. "Then we'll turn back, and I'll take my place for the Tally-ho, and then go and pack up a few things for the journey."

"But, I say John," said his friend presently, as they were emerging into the High Street, "suppose things shouldn't turn out as you wish to make them; what then?"

"I would rather not think about it," quoth John. "But now, can I do anything for you with Mr. Richard about that bill of Dry's?"

"Thank you, John; no, I think not; I fancy you have as much on your hands already as you can well manage," replied Tom Grigson, with a merry laugh.

And then presently they reached Queen's, and each went to his own rooms.

"As good a fellow as ever lived, and as honourable a man as ever breathed; and his honour will undo him. If he doesn't marry S. Wilson after all, I'll be—carbonadoed. There! Shall I go after him, and tell him so? No, I don't think I will."