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!
[Illustration]