Chapter XII: The Lion's Mouth

WE won't laugh again at John Tincroft and his awkwardness, if it so please you, reader. We see him now under a new phase; his awkward shyness vanished, he is coming out a man, a gentleman, and if it so please you, as I hope it does, a Christian. I have said that John was no hero. I revoke the charge. He is a hero now, and I am absolutely proud of him, as I see him, on that cold January day, on the top of the Tally-ho, dragging on through snowdrifts; for a snowstorm had set in at midday, which had also covered him with its hoary fleece.

It was late at night when he reached the town nearest the Manor House, for the coach was delayed by the snow, which partially blocked the road, and there being no dog-cart to meet him on this occasion, he was obliged to put up at an inn.

The next morning, however, saw him on foot, unencumbered with luggage, for he meant to decline the hospitality which he knew would be offered him, and having transacted his business, to return at once to Oxford. So he plodded on through the snow, which was sometimes up to his knees, and sometimes higher, over the six or seven miles of country road that separated him from the goal of his high duty—which he reached at last.

"I tell you what, my dear Tincroft," said Mr. Richard Grigson to him, when John's story was told: "I am heartily glad to see you, and it is all nonsense about your not stopping here two or three days, or as long as you like, for that matter. Come, draw nearer the fire; you must be frozen inside as well as out."

This was spoken as the two were seated at lunch, after John had, by the help of his friend's wardrobe, changed his wet stockings, boots, and nether garments.

"Thank you, thank you, heartily, Mr. Grigson; but you see I must get back to my rooms at college as soon as I can. This is my last term, and I have no time to waste. But I could not rest satisfied till I had done what I could for the poor girl."

"And that is what I was coming to, Tincroft. I am afraid, as for as that is concerned, yours is a lost journey. Of course, I know all about it, and how innocent you are—"

"No, no; don't say that. I am not innocent, being the cause of all the mischief. It is the poor girl, Sarah Wilson, who is the innocent sufferer from my blunders."

"Well, well, put it that way if you like; but what I was going to say is that I, as far as I am concerned, think it a good thing for young Wilson—Walter—that the whole affair is ended."

"Do you really mean that, Mr. Grigson?" asked John in a troubled tone.

"Yes, I do. I have nothing to say against the girl particularly; but I don't approve of cousins marrying, in any case. And in this case, the young fellow may do better for himself, and can scarcely do worse, than by marrying that young woman."

"I am afraid, then, that I am not to have your help," said John, dolefully.

"Not in patching up the quarrel, just because I think it is a good thing they did quarrel."

"But think of the poor young person," John pleaded.

Mr. Grigson smiled. "You take a great interest in the poor young person," said he.

And John acknowledged that he did.

"Now, I don't," said the squire, bluntly; "for I think she is feather-brained, and won't make a good wife for any man. Look at her up-bringing."

"But that is not her fault," argued John.

"No; but it is her misfortune."

"Then you won't make an effort to set things straight between the two cousins?"

"I really would rather not, my dear Tincroft," said Mr. Richard.

John did not succeed much better in his interview with his clerical friend Mr. Rubric, upon whom he presently called.

Mr. Rubric received the collegian graciously, and would have set lunch before him, if John had not already undergone and duly performed that operation. But he had not much to say in praise of our hero's amiable quixotism.

"Let the matter rest, Mr. Tincroft; you will do no good," said he. "Of course," he added, "I look upon such engagements as being very serious and solemn; and I did what I could to make things straight when young Wilson honoured me with his confidence. But he is an obstinate young man, I am afraid. At least, I could make no impression upon him. And perhaps, after all, it is best as it is, Mr. Tincroft. And let me tell you, my dear friend—" this was spoken in a soft, confidential tone, "that your interference will be interpreted—shall I say?—interpreted unfavourably against yourself. Just consider, Mr. Tincroft."

"Mr. Rubric—" said John, not without dignity, for there is dignity in holiest feeling and intentions, and in taking an honest course, even if the honesty be clumsy, "will you, if you have it in your power, kindly let me know Mr. Walter Wilson's address?"

Mr. Rubric could and did give the address. "But you won't write to him, will you?"

"No, sir; I will go and see him," said John.

The rector looked aghast. "My very good friend, don't think of such a thing," said he. "You don't know what a strong feeling there is against you in that quarter. Why, you will be eaten up alive! Absolutely rushing to the lion's mouth!"

"I think not," said John, serenely. "At all events, I'll run the risk."

That same afternoon saw John trudging back to the little town where he had left his portmanteau, to pass another night at the Saracen's Head. The next day, instead of returning to Oxford, he secured a place in the mail, and at night was on his travels due north, whither we must precede him.

When Walter Wilson returned from his journey homewards to his professional pursuits, there was no need for his friends Ralph and Mary to question him as to his speed. A few words were indeed spoken; but at Walter's rather stern request that nothing more might be said on the subject, or rather on the object of his journey, they silently acquiesced.

From that time onward, Walter paid more attention, if that were possible, to business, but his whole nature seemed changed. The frank good humour which, unless he were over-tired or in any respect put out of his way, generally marked him, had departed; and even to Mary Burgess his entire manner was altered. As to his constant pipe, it seemed to have lost its charm. He smoked more than ever, it is true; but he brooded over it.

"I must have some talk with Wilson," said Ralph to his sister one evening, as they were sitting together after a hard day's work.

"No, don't, Ralph. He will come to his old self again soon, I hope. Poor fellow, he has been sadly disappointed, you know."

"In that stupid love affair, you mean. Well, I suppose he has, but that needn't make him so mopish. There are as good fish in the sea as there are out of it, as your favourite, John Newton, says in one of his letters. There, you see, I can quote John Newton as well as you, Mary."

Mary smiled, and then sighed.

"And as to Walter having been crossed in love, after the specimen he has given of being in that happy state, I think I would rather keep out of it altogether, though it is love that 'makes the world go round, go round.'"

Many conversations of a like sort had been held between the brother and sister, but no improvement had taken place in the subject of them, who, on the contrary, seemed to grow more dissatisfied, morose, and silent.

One day, a month or so after Christmas, when both Ralph and Walter were from home, a knock at the front door announced a visitor, and the servant subsequently announced to Miss Burgess that a gentleman, who sent in his card, wished to see Mr. Wilson. The card had on it the name—

JOHN TINCROFT,
QUEEN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD.

"Ask the gentleman to come in," Mary said, after a moment's thought. "I will speak to him."

The gentleman accordingly entered the room, and was rather ceremoniously invited to be seated.

"Walter is not within now, but he soon will be, if you would like to wait," said Mary Burgess.

"I can call again," replied John. "I came in by coach an hour or two ago, and shall not be leaving till to-morrow. I can therefore adapt my time to your friend's leisure. Or, probably, when he sees my card, he will prefer seeing me at the inn where I am now staying;" and Tincroft named a certain inn near at hand.

"I think you had better see him here, if you are really anxious for an interview, Mr. Tincroft," said the lady, hesitatingly. "You see I have soon learned your name, sir. But excuse me," she added, "are you not putting your hand too near the lion's mouth?"

"I really beg your pardon, madam—" John looked rather nervously round as he spoke, especially as these or similar words of warning had been uttered by Mr. Rubric, only two days before; "but—I do not understand your meaning."

"I should apologise, then, for speaking in figures. I mean, are you prepared to quarrel with Walter Wilson, or is it your purpose to quarrel with him?"

"Assuredly not; quite the contrary; but—"

"But you do not yet understand me. The fact is, Mr. Tincroft, your name is not strange to me; and excuse me for saying that I am afraid it will have an unpleasant effect on my friend Mr. Wilson."

"I am also almost afraid that it will, at first; but I also trust that he will ultimately see no reason to regret that I have taken this long journey for the sake of a personal interview. At any rate, I must see him if possible." John added, "May I be so bold as to ask—" and here he stopped short.

"To ask in what way your name came to be so familiar to me?"

"Yes;" John acknowledged that the thought had occurred to him.

"In the simplest of all ways, Mr. Tincroft. In having heard it repeatedly at some former time, but not lately, from the lips of my friend Mr. Wilson; and also from having seen it in letters which he put into my hands."

John looked up inquisitively, but did not speak.

"I am dealing openly with you, you see, sir," continued the lady.

"And no doubt—" John found tongue at last to say, "no doubt your impressions or preconceptions are not altogether in my favour."

Mary Burgess now hesitated; in a moment or two, however, she said, "I would rather not speak of my previous impressions. It is more to the purpose to say that both my brother—"

"It is Miss Burgess, then, whom I have the honour of addressing?"

"I am Mary Burgess, yes; but, as I was remarking, it is more to the purpose to say that both my brother and Walter Wilson are strongly prejudiced against you; and unless your design in coming here is clearly and plainly of a friendly and honourable nature, I am sorry you should have come at all."

"My motive is both honourable and friendly, I know," said John, quietly, "and I trust it will be so understood. Unfortunately, it should be otherwise, I for one shall deeply regret it."

There was another awkward silence; and then again the lady spoke.

"Mr. Tincroft," she said, "I have read somewhere that half the troubles in life—the minor troubles I mean, of course—would be escaped, if those who live in the world would be but true to each other, open and straightforward. And I very much believe it. Now we two are thrown into each other's society under rather exceptional circumstances, and, at any rate, we are strangers to each other. Is it not so?"

It certainly was so, John admitted.

"But that is no reason why we should not be plain and outspoken. I told you a minute ago that I would rather not speak of my preconceptions of the Mr. Tincroft of whom I had heard. Let me say now that those preconceptions, as far as they may have been unfavourable, are to a great extent removed. At any rate, I believe I may trust you."

"You do me great honour," said John, with a kind of pleasurable emotion.

"And I ask you, Mr. Tincroft, to trust me. Do you think you can?"

John had never been addressed in this way before by any living woman. Have we not said that it was his misfortune to have been, from childhood, almost bereft of female society? To be sure, of late, he had known Sarah Wilson, and had seen something—a very little—of Mrs. Mark Wilson; he had been intimate also with good obese Mrs. Barry, and had been waited on by Mrs. Barry the younger. But here, setting aside the female domestics of the Manor House, his experience almost ended.

It was a wonderful thing to John to be appealed to with such confidence, and in such well-chosen language, as he thought it, by a ladylike woman to whom, less than an hour ago, he had been a complete stranger, and to be thought by her as worthy of trust.

"Could he trust her?" Yes, to be sure he could; and he answered her with a little more enthusiasm than was his wont that he could and would. "If I only had a sister to have advised with and consulted, mine would have been in many respects a different and a happier life," he silently reflected.

I am not sure, and John was not sure, that this lurking regret might not have been half-revealed to the gentlewoman on the opposite side of the hearth, by the sigh which accompanied it. At any rate, she said, with a half-smile,—

"Think of me for the little while we are together as a sister."

"I will indeed," said Tincroft.

"Allow me then to ask—you said a minute or two ago that your intentions are honourable and friendly—allow me to ask you to confide those intentions to me."

And John did. He told his whole story from beginning to end. He stammered awkwardly at first, perhaps; but he gained courage as he went on. He did not spare himself in the least. He painted himself in darker colours, or, at least, he placed himself in a more preposterous light than that in which we have represented him. He declared himself so heartily ashamed of his folly in that last month of his sojourn at the Manor House, that his fair auditor had to check his self-accusations. On the other hand, he warmly vindicated poor Sarah from any intentional or unintentional cause for real blame; while, with much good feeling, he described the unhappy circumstances by which she had been and was still surrounded—her wretched home, her unkind relatives at Low Beech, the scandal-loving and scandal-breathing social atmosphere of the place, and a great deal more of the same sort.

"I am come," said John, "to say all this to Walter Wilson. I have made up my mind, of course, to hear myself harshly abused, because I really deserve to be abused by him. I will submit to any mortifications and humiliations he may see fit to demand from me. I will do anything in my power—and I wish more were in my power-if only the mischief I have so foolishly and wrongfully done may be remedied. I hope you believe me in this, Miss Burgess," he added.

"I believe you to be sincere and honest in all you have said," the lady responded; "and now I will be open and candid with you. It is an unusual course I am taking, perhaps, and I suppose the polite world with which you are acquainted—"

"Not a bit of it," thought John.

"Would say that I am very bold at the least; but then I do not belong to the polite world."

"Nor do I," said John aloud; "and if you can only assure me that I may hope to be the means of reconciling the two cousins, I shall be satisfied. I shall not care—I shall not so much care, at any rate—what is thought of me."

"We will not discuss that, Mr. Tincroft. But I must tell you, having promised to be candid, that from what I know of Walter Wilson, your appearance here will probably so rouse his passion that you will not get even a hearing."

"I am sorry for that," said John.

"He will only think, and perhaps say, that being already tired of your new toy, you are only anxious to resign it to the old possessor."

"But you do not think so, Miss Burgess?" John asked, anxiously.

"No, I do not; but our judgments of each other so much depend on the points of view from which they are taken. Now, my friend Walter has been wounded in his love for his cousin, and also, I may say (having promised to be candid), in his self-love. He looks upon you as the destroyer of his peace, and he will naturally attribute to you the worst motives for what others would, it may be, consider very generous and self-denying."

"I see all this, Miss Burgess," said the penitent; "but what better can I do?"

"Will you entrust your cause to an advocate?"

"Willingly; but you see it is not my cause so much as that of others. It is Miss Wilson's cause, and not only hers, it is Walter Wilson's cause also."

"You are right; and the greater the need of an advocate. A man needs a strong, or at least an unexceptionable advocate, when he is at odds with himself. Now, I am almost sure Walter will not hear you. Will you place your cause—his, I mean, and his cousin's—in my hands?"

"Gladly," said Tincroft, "if—"

"If—But let me explain myself more clearly. My brother and Walter Wilson will be in very soon now," said Mary Burgess, looking at the timepiece in the room, and speaking hurriedly. "If they find you here, your name will greatly excite them both, I am sure; and I doubt whether Walter would hear a word from your lips. Go now, and leave me to do your errand. I will tell them all that you have said—"

"Don't forget to say that it was all my fault, Miss Burgess."

"No, I will not forget that; and I will try and smooth the way for a meeting between you and Walter to-morrow. I believe, and am sure, this is the best thing to be done. And you shall have a note from me in the morning. Where are you staying?"

John named the inn.

"Do you agree to this, Mr. Tincroft?"

John did agree to it. What else could he do? And then he took his departure.

"If I had but had a sister—and such a sister!" quoth John, sorrowfully, as he took his way to his inn.

A meeting did take place between John Tincroft and Walter Wilson on the morrow; but the reader shall be spared the particulars of this interview. It is enough to say that John had, metaphorically speaking, put his hand into the lion's mouth.

Some of our former chapters will have shown that Walter Wilson, though sterling in principle, and true-hearted as far as he knew himself, was egotistical, dogmatical, and hard judging. These characteristics showed themselves forcibly and unpleasantly on the preceding evening, when, on his return home, Mary Burgess performed her promise to John Tincroft. It was a disagreeable office she had undertaken, and we may say, in passing, that any one proposing to be a mediator or mediatrix between contending parties should expect no selfish pleasure to spring from the efforts thus made. Miss Burgess had no such expectations, but she did not shrink from the self-imposed task.

At the first mention of Tincroft's name, and of his near vicinity, Walter started to his feet, and would have rushed out then to "have it out," he said (whatever this might mean), "with the miscreant." But he was restrained by the interposition of Ralph, who also persuaded his friend to hear all his sister had to tell.

As Mary went on, describing John's honest, compunctious self-accusation, Walter uttered not a word, but smiled bitterly and contemptuously. But when, with kindling eloquence and womanly sympathy, she spoke of his cousin's unhappy surroundings, and of her guilelessness, notwithstanding the rancour with which she had been slanderously assailed—a guilelessness in which the amiable advocate believed—he rudely interrupted her, and bade her cease dinning him with her pleadings.

"I made Sarah a fair offer the last time I saw her," he said, fiercely. "I told her that if she would confess and apologise—"

"Confess what?—apologise for what?" his friend asked, mildly.

"To having deceived me; for having laid traps for that Tincroft, meaning to turn me off when she had secured her richer prize. That's what I meant, and what I said."

"But knowing that she was not guilty of such baseness, how could she make such a confession and apology? Did she not deny the charge?"

"Deny! What has that to do with it? Deny! Of course she denied it. Oh yes—yes, she could talk fair enough, calling me 'Dear Walter,' and all that sort of thing. But do you think I was going to believe her?"

"But after she denied it, and explained—did she not explain?"

"Oh, to be sure: she was ready enough with her explanations."

"And after that, if in her sorrow for having offended you, she had confessed to an untruth, should you have believed her then?"

"I might, or I might not," said the unhappy young man, sullenly. "At any rate, it is all over with us now," he added; "and as to that canting hypocrite who has come over you—"

Here he was interrupted by the strong, determined voice of Ralph Burgess, saying gravely, but good-temperedly notwithstanding—

"That will do. You must not abuse my sister, Walter. You don't know what you are saying, or how you are saying it. If you were not beside yourself, you would not do as you are doing. For my party I think your cousin has had a happy escape. There are two words which I have somewhere met with in the Bible that describe your feelings towards her, and these are 'implacable and unmerciful.' And if you don't mind my saying it, or if you do it doesn't much matter, there is another word that tells how you are conducting yourself now, and that is 'arrogantly.'"

"Oh, that is it! Is it?" said Walter, as leaving the room, he lighted his chamber-candle and was seen no more that night.

A brief note from Miss Burgess informed John Tincroft of the non-success of her attempted mediation. And while he was pondering what next he should do, the door of the room at the inn in which he had taken breakfast opened and admitted Wilson. The interview was short and sharp. Much abuse was heaped upon the head of poor John, who bore it patiently. And then, with a declaration that he had done with his cousin for ever, Walter said that the other might take his leavings and welcome.

"You will some day be sorry for the injustice you are now doing to your cousin," said John, sorrowfully; but the latch of the door was in Walter's hand as he spoke, and in the next instant he was gone.

There was nothing more for John after this but to return, not to the Manor House, but to Oxford, which place he disconsolately reached on the fifth day after his departure from it.