Perfectly natural. Asceticism is the last thing that one could expect from the Burdens. Alexander Burden, the father, was an exuberant millionaire, in no vulgar way, of course; he was exuberant with restraint, not for show, with a magnificence which was for private satisfaction mainly. I am talking here of the ascetic temperament which is based on renunciation, not of mere simplicity of tastes, which is simply scorn for certain orders of sensations. There have been millionaires who have lived simply. There have been millionaires who have lived sordidly—but miserliness is one of the supreme forms of sensualism.
Poor Burden had a magnificent physique. The reserved abilities of generations of impoverished Burdens, starved for want of opportunities, matured in his immense success—and all their starved appetites too. But all the reserve quality of obscure Burdens has been exhausted in him. There was nothing to come to his son—who at most could have been a great match and is today looked upon in that light, I suppose, by the relations of his future wife. I don’t know in what light that young man looks upon himself. His time of trial is coming.
Yesterday at eight in the evening he came to see me. I thought at first he wanted some money urgently. But very soon I reflected that he need not have looked so embarrassed in that case. And presently I discovered that it was not money that he was in need of. He looked as though he had come, with that characteristic gravity of his—so unlike his father—to seek absolution at my hands. But that intention he judged more decorous, I suppose, to present to me as a case of conscience.
Of course it was the case of a girl—not his fiancée. At first I thought he was in an ugly scrape. Nothing of the kind. The excellent creature who had accepted his protection for some two years past—how dull they must have seemed to her—was perhaps for that reason perfectly resigned to forego that advantage. At the same time, she was not too proud to accept a certain provision, compensation—whatever you like to call it. I had never heard of anything so proper in my life. He need not have explained the matter to me at all. But evidently he had made up his mind to indulge in the luxury of a conscience.
To indulge that sort of conscience leads one almost as far as indulged passion, only, I cannot help thinking, on a more sordid road. A luxury snatched from the fire is in a way purified, but to find this one he had gone apparently to the bottom of his heart. I don’t charge him with a particularly odious degree of corruption, but I perceived clearly that what he wanted really was to project the sinful effect of that irregular connection—let us call it—into his regulated, reformed, I may say lawfully blessed state—for the sake of retrospective enjoyment, I suppose. This rather subtle, if unholy, appetite, he was pleased to call the voice of his conscience. I listened to his dialectic exercises till the great word that was sure to come out sooner or later was pronounced.
“It seems,” he said, with every appearance of distress, “that from a strictly moral point of view I ought to make a clean breast of it to Annie.”
I listened to him—and, by Heaven, listening to him I do feel like the Godhead of whom I have already written to you. You know, positively he said that at the very moment of his “fall” he had thought of what I should think of him. And I said:
“My good Edward, you are the most debauched person I have ever met.”
His face fell, his soft lips dropped right down into a horseshoe. He had come to me as one of those bland optimists would go to his deity. He expected to be able to say: “I have sinned,” and to be able to hear the Deity say: “That’s all right, your very frank confession does you infinite credit.” His deity was, in fact, to find him some way out of his moral hole. I was to find him some genial excuse; to make him feel good in his excellent digestion once more. That was, absolutely, his point of view, for at my brutal pronouncement he stuttered:
“But—but surely … the faults of youth … and surely there are plenty of others? …”
I shook my head at him and panic was dropping out of his eyes: “Can’t I marry Annie honourably?” he quavered. I took a sinister delight in turning the knife inside him. I was going to let him go anyhow: the sort of cat that I am always lets its mice go. (That mouse, by the by, has never again put in an appearance.)
“My dear fellow,” I said, “does not your delicacy let you see the hole you put me into? It’s to my interest that you should not marry Miss Averies and you ask me to advise you on the point.”
His mouth dropped open: positively he had never considered that when he married I lost the confounded three hundred a year for administering the Burden Trust. I sat and smiled at him to give him plenty of time to let his mind agonize over his position.
“Oh, hang it,” he said. … And his silly eyes rolled round my room looking for that Providence that he felt ought to intervene in his behalf. When they rested on me again I said:
“There, go away. Of course it’s a fault of your youth. Of course every man that’s fit to call himself a man has seduced a clergyman’s daughter.”
He said:
“Oh, but there was not anything common about it.”
“No,” I answered, “you had an uncommonly good time of it with your moral scruples. I envy you the capacity. You’ll have a duller one with Miss Averies, you know.”
That was
