I had to hurry and be there for the first notes because you--my
you--would, I felt, be sitting beside me as you have so often. That,
of course, is passion--the passion that makes us unaccountable in our
actions.
I found you naturally: but I found, too, something else. It has always
a little puzzled me why we return to Tristan. There are passages in
that thing as intolerable as anything in any of the Germanic master’s
scores. But we are held--simply by the idea of the love-philtre:
it’s that alone that interests us. We do not care about the initial
amenities of Tristan and the prima donna: we do not believe in Mark’s
psychologising: but, from the moment when those two dismal marionettes
have drained unconsideringly the impossible cup, they become suddenly
alive, and we see two human beings under the grip of a passion--acting
as irrationally as I did when I promised my cabman five shillings to
get me to the theatre in time for the opening bars.
It is, you see, the love-philtre that performs this miracle. It
interests--it is real to us--because every human being knows what it
is to act, irrationally, under the stress of some passion or other. We
are drawn along irresistibly: we commit the predestined follies or the
predestined heroisms: the other side of our being acts in contravention
of all our rules of conduct or of intellect. Here, in Tristan, we see
such madness justified with a concrete substance, a herb, a root. We
see a vision of a state of mind in which morality no longer exists:
we are given a respite, a rest: an interval in which no standard of
conduct oppresses us. It is an idea of an appeal more universal than
any other in which the tired imagination of humanity takes refuge.
The thought that somewhere in the world there should be something that
I could give to you, or you to me, that would leave us free to do
what we wish without the drag of the thought of what we owe, to each
other, to the world! And after all, what greater gift could one give to
another? It would be the essential freedom. For assuredly, the philtre
could do no more than put it in a man’s power to do what he would do if
he were let loose. He would not bring out more than he had in him: but
he would fully and finally express himself.
Something unexpected has changed the current of my thoughts. Nothing
can change their complexion, which is governed not by what others do
but by the action which I must face presently. And I don’t know why I
should use the word unexpected, unless because at the moment I was very
far from expecting that sort of perplexity. The correct thing to say
would be that something natural has happened.
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 to-day 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-bye,
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 too much for him to take in, so he smoothed his hat.
“When you said I was ... debauched ... you were only laughing at me.
That was hardly fair. I’m tremendously in earnest.”
“You’re only play-acting compared with me,” I answered. He had the air
of buttoning his coat after putting a cheque into his breast pocket.
He had got, you see, the cheque he expected: my applause of his
successful seduction, my envy of his good fortune. That was what he had
come for--and he got it. He went away with it pretty bare-facedly, but
he stopped at the threshold to let drop:
“Of course if I had known you would be offended by my having recourse
to Annie’s solicitors for the settlement....”