Chapter XXIII: A Month of Wonders

CHRISTMAS had come and was gone; it had been gone a month or more, and there had been an unwonted bustle in Tincroft House. The best rooms, usually shut up, had been duly put in order, and for a whole week, fires had been kept burning in them—that is to say, in the great or state parlour facing the south, on the first floor, and the chamber adjoining; and also in another pretty room on the same floor, that had a verandah in front of the French windows which opened upon it. The prospect from this window was chilly enough now, certainly; for the distant plantation on which it looked was bare of foliage, and the meadows which intervened were brown with wintry frosts where they were not white with the contains of the last snowfall; and the tastily laid-out flower garden beneath the window, with which John had taken such pains—for he was fond of flowers—was, like everything else, under the ban of winter. But it was the nicest, "sweetest, darlingest room in the house in spring and summer and autumn," said Sarah; and this one was to be Helen's room—so Sarah had decreed.

John Tincroft had kept to his word. Whatever he had done with the previous chapters of his unfinished work, whether consigned to the Red Sea or elsewhere, he had not written a line since the day when we last fell in with him. He had something better to do, he said; for he had fully determined, then and there, that Walter Wilson and his daughter, on their arrival in England, were to make Tincroft House their home as long as they liked to stay there. For that they would both arrive, he professed to be sure.

"There's nothing like a long sea-voyage," he had said to his wife, "for setting people to rights when their health gets out, of sorts. Your cousin won't die on his way home, bless you," said he, perhaps with more confidence than he really felt; but he was determined to believe in his own prognostications too. "We'll get him down here, and you shall see how soon we shall set him up again."

"You don't know that he will come down here at all, John, if he does get to England alive," said Sarah, meekly. It should be said that this dialogue took place the very day on which Walter's letter was received, when the pair were seated together after their pieless dinner.

"Ah, but he must," said John; "why, where else is he to go? And where is that dear little Helen to go? They have no other friends in England, you see—at their first landing, at least, they won't have; though we must try and make friends between them and Walter's father and mother and all the rest. But this will be a work of time. And when your cousin and his darling girl get out of the ship, they will have nowhere else to go. And that is why I say we must go to London, or wherever else it may be, and see Walter at once, so that he may know he has got a home; and not have to wait, and run the risk of getting ill again in some strange hotel."

"And, besides, Sarah—think. He writes about his small property out there—small, you observe, he distinctly writes 'small'—and of having sold it; and having enough to live upon when he gets to England, and to leave to his Helen when he dies—which, it is to be hoped, he won't do for many a long day. But I will be bound to say that it is little enough he has saved. And my private opinion is that it is not much he will have to live upon when he gets back. For there's the long voyage, and that swallows up a great deal of money. So it will never do to let your cousin sink for want of help. I wonder whether he has kept to his old profession of land-surveying. But that isn't the question now. The first thing is to make him and his Helen comfortable, and get him well again. There will be time enough then to think how we can set him on his legs once more."

This was a long speech for John to make; but he made it. And what is more than can be said of some long speeches—whether delivered at Westminster or elsewhere—the speaker believed in every word he uttered. We know better, of course. We know that Walter Wilson was a rich man. And John's friend, Tom Grigson, had also been told the same thing. But John Tincroft knew nothing about this; for, as I have said, he rarely heard news of any kind; and he had never happened to hear of Sarah's cousin, save that he was married; and he had not seen Grigson for a good many months.

So, in his former fashion (and not an uncommon one with others besides John Tincroft) of arguing upon false premises, he arrived at once at the conclusion that his old rival was coming home in forma pauperis, or something like it; and he was quite ready, you see, to "heap coals of fire upon his head," in the true New Testament fashion; and, for the matter of that, in the Old Testament fashion also.

Sarah answered this long speech of John's by saying that she was ready to do anything he thought right to be done; and that if he did not care to remember her cousin's former perverseness, it wasn't for her to put him in mind of it. And then she cried again a little, but her tears were not bitter ones; and she went over again the lesson she had so recently learnt by heart—

"Oh, John, I love you; I love you; I do love you, and only you."

And then, when these raptures were calmed down a little, they began to plan what they should do for Walter's comfort, and for poor motherless Helen's also. And that was how "the sweetest, darlingest room" in the whole house was fixed upon for Helen's room.

And the very next day—cold as it was—Sarah and John went over to Trotbury in the passenger van which passed through the village every morning, to make a call at the paperhanger's, to select a new paper for the walls. Of course John knew nothing about this sort of thing, so he left Sarah to choose, and was quite prepared to approve her taste, wherever it might lead her. And it led her to admire a most wonderful pattern, composed of trellis-work on a light ground, interwoven with climbing, twisting foliage, bearing the most impossible flowers and luscious fruits, with birds of paradise and many other either imaginable or unimaginable specimens of the animal creation nestling in, or soaring above, or disporting below the branches.

After this being settled to their mutual satisfaction, the pair proceeded to the upholsterer's and selected what furniture they had previously decided on as needful for the rooms especially set apart for the expected guests. Then they returned home, tired with their unwonted exertions, but satisfied with their day's exploit.

And then, as I have said, the month following had been occupied by them and Jane and the house-boy, with the aid of painters and paperhangers and a charwoman or two, in so furbishing up the old house (in those especial apartments, at any rate) that a report was spread abroad that a member of Parliament, at the very least, was expected to pay a long visit to Tincroft House, if not to take it off John's hands entirely.

Under all these circumstances, it is no wonder that Tincroft had to discontinue his researches into Chinese Cosmogony, or whatever else had previously bewildered his brain; nor that Sarah had, for the time, been roused into such unwonted activity of mind and body that the lines of languor and dissatisfaction which had for so long a time been half-spoiling her pretty face, were fast disappearing, so that every now and then John caught himself in a confused contemplation of that same yet altered face, in amazement, and thinking, in an odd kind of way, of the old days at High Beech so many years ago, when, without intending it, he ventured so near the maelstrom.

Of course, in all this preposterous activity, with its still inure preposterous origin and design, John was doing what you and I, reader, supposing we are extremely worldly-wise and knowing, should never have thought of doing; and we are at liberty, of course, to smile at John's simplicity, in suffering his good-nature to outrun his discretion. But then John was simple have we not said so a score of times? But then again, oh reader, there is a simplicity that is worth more than your worldly wisdom and mine put together—an uncalculating simplicity, a Christian simplicity, a wonder-working simplicity. And John's simplicity was of this nature.

It worked wonders. It always had worked wonders. It had worked wonders in the genuine respect for him which it had created and sustained in the thoughts and feelings of those who were always ashamed after having been betrayed occasionally into making an innocent joke at his expense. It had worked wonders in men with whom he had dealings—hard-headed men and not over-scrupulous perhaps, who would have prided themselves in getting the upper-hand and taking advantage of clever fellows with all their wits about them, but who would have felt many extra twinges of conscience had they at any time taken advantage, and made a gain, of John's simplicity.

It had wrought wonders with the poor children of the village, uncouth and home-neglected as they were, whom he taught from Sunday to Sunday in a large class in the Sunday school, and who looked upon him as alike a mine of erudition (though they wouldn't have used those express words) and a model of human kindness and forbearance. For though I have said little about John Tincroft from a theological and "professingly Christian" point of view, it must be once for all understood that it is not because I have nothing to say, but that this has not been quite the place in which to make a parade of it; it is not, out of place, however, to say that he was "a teacher of babes" in the school of Christ.

His simplicity had worked wonders, too, in the rough, garden-robbing neighbourhood in the midst of which he dwelt, inasmuch as though no steel-trap and spring-gun warnings were set up on his premises, the apples in his orchard generally hung secure till they were plucked by his own hands, while those of the law and fury breathing country squire and J.P. on the rising ground a quarter of a mile off, though surrounded by a high brick wall, regularly received more than one annual (or seasonal) nocturnal visit. On one occasion, truly, John's exposed orchard was robbed; but such an outcry of shame followed upon it from the whole country-side round that the daring yet easily enough executed deed was never repeated:

"For all agreed the rogues were mad,
To rob so good a man."

Above all things, John's simplicity had worked wonders in winning the respect and esteem of the woman he had so many years before married to rescue from reproach and poverty, that he might protect and provide for her. Of course it was very simple to do this, when he might have made a much better match if he had only waited till he came into his property. Everybody who knew anything about it had said this over and over again. Richard Grigson had said this, and so had Tom Grigson; so also had Mr. Rubric, and also Mr. Roundhand. But all these loved him for it. But Sarah had not yet loved him for it. How could she love (with woman's love) a man whom she had begun by despising and laughing at, and ridiculing and making jokes about? All in a silly, flirting, coquettish sort of way, to be sure; but still she had done it. I ask, how could she love such a one, though, in desperation, she had taken him for her husband?

Well, his simplicity had not wrought this wonder yet; but it had done more, it had made her regard him with veneration.

"Because he is so good, you know," she had said to herself, over and over again, any time within those twenty years which had passed and gone; while, at the same time, she might have been—and no doubt was—vexed with him for being so learned, such a clever fool, in fact; and with herself for being such an unclever one.

But, in the month which had now passed away since that letter came to Tincroft House, a new light had broken in upon Sarah's feeble mind. How kind John was, and how forgiving! What could be the meaning of it? To think of how he had read all that letter, which she did not dare read herself when she found out who it was from; and, instead of being in a great angry rage, as most of the men would have been—so Sarah thought and believed and argued—and of visiting it home upon the weaker vessel, how he had not had a word to say that was not good and kind to her, and about Walter!

And then to think that such preparations were being made to receive her cousin! I don't know whether Sarah most longed for or dreaded the meeting with Walter. If it was the first feeling, it was not because there was one particle of guilty love in her composition. Nothing of the old ideal of her cousin Walter as her lover remained in her mind. It had not lasted long—it was not the sort of affection to last long under any circumstances, perhaps.

But seeing that they had parted, never to meet again, as they thought, and in anger with each other, and seeing that Walter had gone his way, and married a wife (not Sarah) so many years ago, and that she (Sarah) had also gone her way, and married a husband (not Walter) so many years ago, there was not any danger of harm arising, in thought or word, from their meeting. Besides, was not Walter so ill as to be doubtful whether he should live to reach England at all? All this passed, though I have no doubt in a confused sort of way, through Sarah's mind as she thought of what was to be. No doubt she would like to see Walter again, and to be friends with him.

Wasn't he her cousin before he had ever thought of being her husband, or it had been put into her little head to be his wife? And now that her resentment of his treatment of her had long since faded away, carrying with it her dreams of what might have been, but was never to be, her cousinly regard still remained. And, though she dreaded the meeting—she did not exactly know why—she should like to see him again, and was glad it would be in her power to comfort him, in her small way of comfort-giving, in his sorrow, and to nurse him in his sickness.

But it was when she thought of the young Helen that Sarah's feelings expanded to such an extent as to overflow her full heart. There was no danger in indulging these womanly out-goings of affection and sympathy for the motherless girl.

"I will be her mother, and make up to her as well as I can for what she has lost, poor dear," said she to herself.

And then she began to wonder what Helen's mother had been like, and to make an imaginary character of her, full of beauty and love and all manner of perfections. And the young Helen was to be a copy of her mother. There was a mysterious, and yet, in some ways of looking at it, a natural instinct in all this, perhaps. That which is mysterious I do not, of course, pretend to explain; but it was natural, surely, for Sarah to wish for an object on which to expend a store of love within, which had hitherto lain dormant because there had been no demand for it.

Helen was not many years younger now than her (Sarah's) little bud of mortality would have been had it pleased God to spare it to her. And, in her foolish thoughts, it was as if that little bud was coming back to her at last, in another form, and expanded into a lovely flower.

And then, from these vagaries of imagination, Sarah's more sober thoughts came back again to legitimate home; and, day after day, as she looked at her husband's patient countenance, and heard his quiet, uncomplaining words, and reflected how good he had been to her all those past years, and given her so much more, to say the least of it, than she had given him, she seemed to herself to be waking up from some distressing if not hideous dream, till she could not contain her self-reproach on the one hand, and her thankfulness on the other.

And one evening, when they were by themselves in John's gloomy-looking study, whither they had repaired after a hard day's work in putting the finishing strokes to their preparations, poor Sarah fairly gave way, and, throwing her arms around John's neck, and hiding her face on his breast, she sobbed out her penitent confession of shortcomings and her new-found love.

"I do love you now, John, dear, dearest husband. I have never loved you as I ought to have done, till now. But I love you now, dear, good, good John!"

Yes, it had come at last. John had never given up hoping for it; and now, after so long a time, it had come to him. His wife loved him.

Happy John Tincroft!