Burgo's Romance

by T. W. Speight

Had he but possessed the requisite capital, he would have gone out to the States, or Australia, and after serving a couple of years to the business, would have bought a cattle ranch or a sheep run, and have sunk or swum by the venture. But, as we have seen, his worldly fortune amounted to the preposterously inadequate sum of fifty pounds, all told.

Sometimes a great longing would come over him when he thought of these things, and a voice would seem to whisper in his ear, "What a consummate ass you must have been to tear up your uncle's cheque! Think of all you might have done with it. Think of----"

But at this point Burgo would jump up and begin to stamp about the room, swearing softly to himself as he did so.

No, not if it would have made him the owner of a dozen cattle ranches, would he have accepted Sir Everard's cheque with the conditions attached to it.

Far rather would he starve.

It was no more than natural that at times his thoughts should revert to his other uncle, Mr. Denis Clinton, who was only two and a half years the junior of Sir Everard. To Burgo he was little more than a name. Uncle and nephew had never met since the latter was quite a child. Mr. Denis Clinton was a bachelor and a misogynist, and a miser to boot. He had no belief in the claims of relationship, more especially in the case of relatives to whom fortune had not proved over kind. And that had been the hap of his sister Elinor--Burgo's mother--who, against the wishes of her relatives, had persisted in marrying a naval lieutenant of good family, but with no pecuniary resources except his pay, and a private income of a hundred a year. When, a few years later, Lieutenant Brabazon died, after a long illness, and deeply in debt, and when his widow found it imperative on her to appeal to her relatives for help, Denis Clinton had contented himself with sending her a twenty pound note, coupled with an intimation that she must not look to him for any further aid. He would not have been the man he was if at the same time he had not told her in the plainest possible terms that she had no one to thank for her indigent condition but herself, and that she had brought it all on by her own headstrong folly.

Between Sir Everard and his brother there was no love lost. They were in every way so wholly the opposite of each other, and had been from their boyhood, they looked at life from two such different standpoints, that there seemed no common ground of unity between them. They had neither seen nor held any communication with each other for nearly a score years, nor had they any desire to do so.

Mr. Denis Clinton was the owner of a large but not very productive property on the borders of Yorkshire and Lancashire, attached to which was an old manor house, in which he lived a secluded and penurious life, "the world forgetting, by the world forgot." As matters stood at present he was next heir to the title and entailed estates.

But although, in his many musings over his position, Burgo's thoughts did occasionally revert to his Uncle Denis, it was never with any serious intention of applying to him for the pecuniary help needed to give him, Burgo, a fair start in life. Even if he could have sufficiently humbled his pride to ask him--which he knew to be an impossibility--he felt sure that his application would have been met by a refusal. All he used to say to himself was: "If my Uncle Denis had been a different kind of man from what he is, if he had been another Uncle Everard, then, perhaps, I might have made known my need to him, in which case, if he had chosen to hold out a helping hand, I should not have turned away."

As matters fell out, his choice of a profession was ultimately determined by accident.