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.
But there was not anybody to do it, so the experiment was not tried.
Perhaps it would have failed if it had been, for John's wandering ideas
were very stubborn, though they were limited to two or three separate
topics.
First of all, his failure at Saddlebrook dwelt on his mind. Up to the
time of that excursion into Sussex, Tincroft had thought but lightly
of his chances of success in the Chancery suit. Possibly he might win,
and then so much the better. But the greater probability was that he
would lose, so his guardian had always averred; for what chance had he
against his prosperous rival and competitor? True, he had occasionally
boasted, as to Mark Wilson, for instance, of his great prospects;
but this was with the natural desire, and yielding to the natural
temptation, to stand at as high a figure as he could in the eyes of
that besotted lump of humanity, as the guest of his friend and Mark's
landlord, Grigson; and not himself believing in his own "tall talk."
The truth is, John would have abandoned the suit on his first coming
of age, or would have sold his pretensions for a very inconsiderable
sum of money down, if he could have thus got rid of any future demands
on his purse. But he was told then that neither of these courses could
be thought of, and that the suit must be carried on. Now, however, a
little clearer light had broken in upon his dull comprehension. Mr.
Roundhand's explanations had done something in this direction. There
wanted only one link, it seemed, in the chain of evidence, and this
had been almost in his grasp, but not quite. His expectations had been
raised, but only to be disappointed. No doubt the lawyer had, since
his return, endeavoured to raise his hope that something might be made
of the Saddlebrook notes of his clerk. But Tincroft saw, or thought
he saw, that this was to let him down gently. At any rate, he did not
implicitly believe in Mr. Roundhand's representations.
But, notwithstanding this, since the vision of property, if not, of
great wealth, had loomed with more distinctness on his mind, he could
not help thinking what a very pleasant thing it would be, could these
expectations be realised. The ideal of a leisurely life of ease had
grown upon him more distinctly during his visit to the Manor House
in—no, I shall not write the name—in that distant county.
His destination to India had never been very much to John's taste.
There was too much work in it, both present and in prospect, to suit
his inherent love of inertness and ease—an inclination probably
inherited from his father, the literary busy idler. It was not then,
as it once had been, or was supposed to have been, that a man had
only to get to India and shake the pagoda tree, and then come home
with a disordered liver and a fabulous fortune. John, dull as he was,
knew better than this; and only for the necessity laid upon him by
circumstances, he would willingly long ago have abandoned his Oriental
studies and prospects.
And during his sojourn in the Manor House, John had seen so much
that was inviting in a life of moneyed ease, that he had thought
how cruel it was to be shut out from it. Not that he would ever
have emulated or imitated Mr. Richard Grigson in his preposterous
activity, with his hunting, and shooting, and cricketing, and other
unnecessary occupations, which his (John's) soul abhorred. But to have
a quiet home, a sufficient income, a tolerable library, gardens and
greenhouses, a corresponding establishment of servants, and—to crown
all—a wife!
Poor John Tincroft! Take which way he would to it, there was the
ultimatum of bliss—those pretty curls, those bright and beaming eyes,
those soft cheeks and pouting lips, that alabaster neck, those gentle
hands!
And so, travelling from Tincroft house and estate to Saddlebrook, and
from Saddlebrook to Oxford, and from Oxford to Calcutta, or elsewhere
in India, and then back again in a trice to Blankshire in England, John
Tincroft's vagabond imagination never halted till it rested on that ark
of no promise to him, the shabby parlour of High Beech farmhouse, with
its knobby-seated chair.
IL was to no purpose that John argued within himself, as he sometimes
did, that all this was vain and even sinful.
"I verily believe," said he to himself on one occasion, "that I am
led captive of the devil at his will," and he dashed the book he was
trying to read on to the floor with such violence that little Mrs.
Barry rushed from the kitchen below in alarm to ask if anything was the
matter, which for the time brought John to his senses.
But again and again, day after day, the image of the enchantress rose
before his thoughts; and not the less so that he well knew, as a man
and a gentleman, that Sarah Wilson could be no more to him than a
bewitching and distracting though delightful memory of the past.
Thus three or four weeks passed away, with little addition to John
Tincroft's stores of Oriental erudition; and the time came when he must
quit the retirement of Jericho for the more classic shades of Queen's
College, with his two solitary rooms therein. Meanwhile, as he was
contemplating this flight, the following epistle reached him:
"DEAR TINCROFT,—This has been a horrid bad season for birds
(videlicet, partridges). The wet weeks at hatching time, and the rats
and weasels, have brought down our bags to a minimum. I was out all day,
the 25th inst., and only bagged a brace and a half. Luckily, there is a
good promise of pheasants; and pheasant-shooting, you know, begins
to-morrow. And then there's a splendid lot of hares, to say nothing of
foxes, on Dick's happy hunting-ground. So I don't mean to see Oxford
till Lent term begins. I shan't lose much by dropping Michaelmas term,
I reckon; and I shall manage to get an excuse."
"Please make all needful arrangements about my rooms and books, and
so forth, and call on Dry, my tailor, in the High Street, and one or
two others that you know of, to set their minds at rest that I haven't
run away."
"There is not much going on down here. Rubric isn't come back yet
from the Continent, and we have got a Cambridge man to do duty for
him—a good sort of fellow enough, but he can't shoot."
"The harvest is all got in now, though a late one, and the wheat has
turned out an average crop, Dick says. Ditto the barley; and turnips
are splendid. But I forget, you are no Agricola. I wish I was going to
be one, that's all."
"By the way, I have been over to the Mumbles a few times since you
ran away from us. I wish you had gone; I should like to have your
opinion of Kate Elliston."
"Dick sends his messages, and says when you like to have another
turn out, you know the way to, and the ways of, Liberty Hall. So says
also—"
"TOM GRIGSON."
Matters were not much improved with Tincroft when he got, back to his
old rooms at Queen's—not at first, that is; but gradually, he slid back
into his old habits, and, partially at least, forgot the disturbances
of the last three months of his existence. In other words, there was a
lull in the visible current of the maelstrom, that was all.
One day came the scout Barry to his room, with a face full of
importance.
"Very busy, Mr. Tincroft?"
"Not very—not more than usual. What is it, Barry?"
"I wouldn't trouble you, sir; but my mother is in such a way."
"Your mother?"
"She keeps going on at me for not telling her before. You know my
mother, sir?"
"I can't say that I do," said John, wondering whether the scout had
lost his senses. "I know you have a mother—that is, I heard as much
from your wife while I was staying at Jericho. But I never had the
pleasure of seeing her, except, to be sure, her back once," added John,
with a strict regard to veracity.
"That's very true, sir. You see she doesn't like to be stared at,
mother doesn't; that's why, Mr. Tincroft."
"Was she afraid that your lodger would stare at her?" asked John,
without much apparent curiosity.
"Well, partly, sir; otherwise, she is afraid of being stared at when
she goes out, which she never does if she can help it, letting alone
the getting up and down stairs."
"Ah! How so?" asked John, crossing his legs, and biting the feather end
of his pen.
"The truth is, she is so uncommon stout, and she doesn't like it to be
seen or known. It isn't her fault, sir; she starves herself to keep it
down: that's what mother does. But the more she starves, the fatter she
gets, poor thing," said Barry, pathetically.
"Oh," said John, "then I think I should leave off starving myself if I
were in her place."
"That's what I tell her, but what's the use? None at all," remarked
the affectionate son, in a tone of pathetic remonstrance. "But that's
neither here nor there," added he, reverting to his primary topic.
"Mother's uncommon sorry she didn't know about who it was had our rooms
till you was gone, not till a week ago: and ever since she has been
going on in a way, sir; ever since she knowed you was a Tincroft."
"And why—why?" asked John, with a new interest awakened. "I mean, what
reason has she to care about my being a Tincroft?"
"Well," said Scout, "that's what I wanted to know of mother."
"Yes; well?"
"Oh!" says mother. "I have known Tincrofts before in my time. You see,
sir, before mother got so overgrowed with starving, she was out and
about a good deal, here and there as a monthly—" and here Mr. Barry
jerked his head once or twice knowingly—
("Monthly! What's that?" John put to himself, mentally, for the term
was lost upon him. Not to appear ignorant, however, he nodded his head,
too; and Barry went on.)
"And so got acquainted with a many high families. And by reason of
this," continued the dutiful, "she laid up a good bit of money against
the rainy day; so now she lives comfortable if it wasn't for her
fatness, which is none of her choosing, if you'll believe me, sir."
John Tincroft showed no signs of disbelief, so Mr. Barry still
proceeded.
"The house we live in is mother's, sir; she bought it and paid for it,
and set me up with furniture, wife and all, fifteen years ago, bless
her; and I'm down in her will for everything when she dies, which,"
added the son, "won't be for many years to come, if God pleases. Only
as she is five-and-seventy, if ever a day, and with her fat, too, much
isn't to be expected."
"I dare say not," said John, dreamily, for he was wondering what would
come next. Then he added, "And your good mother, did you say she wishes
to see me?"
"Ever since she heard of your being a Tincroft, sir; and more
particularly when I happened to mention your having come up from
Sussex, where you had been on some law business, as you told me, sir. I
hope there was no harm in mentioning that?" said Barry, solicitously.
"None at all."
"Thank ye, sir."
"But why should the old lady be concerned about my having been down to
Sussex?" John wanted to be told.
"Why, sir, she says of course then you must be one of the Sussex
Tincrofts, begging your pardon for using mother's words."
"Oh! No harm in that; and as to that, I am one of the Sussex Tincrofts,
the only one left," said John. "Did she say any more?" he asked, his
interest growing stronger.
"Yes, sir. She asked your given name; and when I said it was John, she
was rather put out, and said it ought to have been Josiah, or else
Makepeace."
John Tincroft started from his chair, and then took what Barry
afterwards described as "three skips and a jump to the window just like
a flea." And as that useful personage was bedmaker by profession, there
was less that was startling and odd in his simile. After looking out of
the window, and making sure that the dome of the Radcliffe Library was
in its proper place, he turned again to the half-alarmed scout, with a—
"Dear me, Barry! Why, my father's name was Josiah, and my grandfather's
was Makepeace. And what came next?" he demanded, wildly.
"Why, sir, she said she nursed a little Josiah Tincroft when he was
brought into the world, and Makepeace Tincroft was his father."
"Come with me, Barry; come with me this instant," shouted John, as,
rushing to the scout and clutching his arm, he dragged him to the door.
"You must go with me to my lawyer, Roundhand, you know, in St. Aldates."
"Yes, sir, yes, certainly, Mr. Tincroft; but won't you put on your cap
and gown, sir?"
"Ah! Yes, yes," and John relinquished his hold.
"And excuse me, sir, you have only got your slippers on. Here are your
boots, Mr. Tincroft."
"Thank you, Barry. Ah! I forget myself sometimes," said John, as he
properly equipped himself. "And now I am ready," he added.
"But, Barry," said he, as they, having taken a short cut, were crossing
the Peckwater Quadrangle of Christ Church, "there must be some mistake,
I think. For I happen to know that the nurse's name on that occasion
was Elizabeth Foold; and your mother's is Barry."
"That's just it, sir," replied the scout, without showing any symptoms
of surprise, happening to be tolerably well acquainted with John's
absence of mind. "You see most girls or women take another name when
they get married; and that's how mother's name is Barry now. Otherwise
for five-and-thirty years or more, before she fell in with my father
(and lost him ten years after), her name was Elizabeth Foold; and so it
stands in her old Bible and her Rippon's hymn-book, that she used to
take to chapel with her. For mother's a Baptist, sir; but a good woman
for all that, and one that would not deceive you for anything you could
name, Mr. Tincroft—not if she knew it."
The information conveyed to Mr. Roundhand by his client and the
unexpected witness was too important, as well as welcome, not to be
immediately turned to account. Proceeding at once to Jericho, and the
old lady having forgotten or overcome her aversion to being made a
sight of in her eagerness to behold the grandson of the "dear good
gentleman, Makepeace Tincroft, and his lovely, patient Susannah," the
two visitors were at once admitted to an audience.
"To think—" exclaimed the amiable obesity, as she filled up the
whole space of a ponderous and well-seasoned and doubly-strengthened
easy-chair, large enough to accommodate a pair of ordinary-sized
mortals with comfort, "To think," said she, as tears of gladness rolled
down her plump cheeks, "that I should ever be permitted to set eyes on
the only son of that dear little infant that I fed with pap, yes I did,
more than fifty years ago! And he is gone, the poor dear! Ah, well, we
must all go, my dear," she added, addressing John; "some sooner, some
later—"
"Like crowded forest trees we stand
And some are marked to fall."
"It is a blessed thing to be prepared, my dear."
It was a little while before the old lady could be made fully to
comprehend what was wanted of her. But as soon as the matter was
explained by the lawyer, she entered into it with great heartiness.
Even the terrors of having to take a journey to London, and give
evidence before the Lord Chancellor or his Vice, were counterbalanced
by the ardent desire to see dear little Josiah's son righted. Meanwhile
she recognised, and was ready to swear before the Mayor of Oxford to
her signature on the certificate. And in confirmation of truthfulness,
in respect of that handwriting, she produced her old pocket Bible
and her Rippon's hymn-book, in which her name was written in full.
Manifestly the writing tallied.
The reader will be mistaken, however, if he thinks that the way was
even yet clear for the ending of the Chancery suit. Like a wounded
snake, it dragged its slow length along more than two years before it
was finally settled.
And we must refer the curious inquirer to the law reports of that
time for further particulars. We also must leave John Tincroft to his
interrupted Oriental studies—if he still pursued them—for a space of
three months or thereabouts, while we take up another of the threads of
our story.
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