It
was a heavy stroke for this unfortunate couple. They had
trifled with life, and were now rudely reminded of life's
serious issues. Jean awoke to the ruin of her hopes; the
best she had now to expect was marriage with a man who was a
stranger to her dearest thoughts; she might now be glad if
she could get what she would never have chosen. As for
Burns, at the stroke of the calamity he recognised that his
voyage of discovery had led him into a wrong hemisphere -
that he was not, and never had been, really in love with
Jean. Hear him in the pressure of the hour. "Against two
things," he writes, "I am as fixed as fate - staying at home,
and owning her conjugally. The first, by heaven, I will not
do! - the last, by hell, I will never do!" And then he adds,
perhaps already in a more relenting temper: "If you see Jean,
tell her I will meet her, so God help me in my hour of need."
They met accordingly; and Burns, touched with her misery,
came down from these heights of independence, and gave her a
written acknowledgment of marriage. It is the punishment of
Don Juanism to create continually false positions - relations
in life which are wrong in themselves, and which it is
equally wrong to break or to perpetuate. This was such a
case. Worldly Wiseman would have laughed and gone his way;
let us be glad that Burns was better counselled by his heart.
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