"What are they all," I said, "the old romances? You take Paris and Helen and Menelaus. What's that? You take Launcelot and Arthur and Guinevere. You take Paola and Francesca and her husband, what's-his-name, or Tristram and Iseult and Mark. Two men, one woman. Triangle and trouble. Other way around you get Tannhauser and Venus and Elizabeth; two women, one man; more triangle and more trouble. Yes." And I nodded at him again. The tide of my thought was pulling me hard away from this to other important world-problems, but my will held, struggling, and I kept to it.
"You wait," I told him. "I know what I mean. Trouble is, so hard to advise him right."
"Advise who right?" inquired John Mayrant.
It helped me wonderfully. My will gripped my floating thoughts and held them to it. "Friend of mine in trouble; though why he asks me when I'm not married — I'd be married now, you know, but afraid of only one wife. Man doesn't love twice; loves thrice, four, six, lots of times; but they say only one wife. Ought to be two, anyhow. Much easier for man to marry then."
"Wouldn't it be rather immoral?" John asked.
"Morality is queer thing. Like kaleidoscope. New patterns all the time. Abraham and wives — perfectly respectable. You take Pharaohs — or kings of that sort — married own sisters. All right then. Perfectly horrible now, of course. But you ask men about two wives. They'd say something to be said for that idea. Only there are the women, you know. They'd never. But I'm going to tell my friend he's doing wrong. Going to write him to-night. Where's ink?"
"It won't go to-night," said John. "What are you going to tell him?"
"Going to tell him, since only one wife, wicked not to break his engagement."
John looked at me very hard, as he stood by the window, leaning on the sill. But my will was getting all the while a stronger hold, and my thoughts were less and less inclined to stray to other world-problems; moreover, below the confusion that still a little reigned in them was the primal cunning of the old Adam, the native man, quite untroubled and alert — it saw John's look at me and it prompted my course.
"Yes," I said. "He wants the truth from me. Where's his letter? No harm reading you without names." And I fumbled in my pocket.
"Letter gone. Never mind. Facts are: friend's asked girl. Girl's said yes. Now he thinks he's bound by that."
"He thinks right," said John.
"Not a bit of it. You take Tannhauser. Engagement to Venus all a mistake. Perfectly proper to break it. Much more than proper. Only honorable thing he could do. I'm going to write it to him. Where's ink?" And I got up.
John came from his window and sat down at the table. His glass was empty, his cigar gone out, and he looked at me. But I looked round the room for the ink, noting in my search the big fireplace, simple, wooden, unornamented, but generous, and the plain plaster walls of the lodge, whereon hung two or three old prints of gamebirds; and all the while I saw John out of the corner of my eye, looking at me.
He spoke first. "Your friend has given his word to a lady; he must stand by it like a gentleman.
"Lot of difference," I returned, still looking round the room, "between spirit and letter. If his heart has broken the word, his lips can't make him a gentleman."
John brought his fist down on the table. "He had no business to get engaged to her! He must take the consequences."
That blow of the fist on the table brought my thoughts wholly clear and fixed on the one subject; my will had no longer to struggle with them, they worked of themselves in just the way that I wanted them to do.
"If he's a gentleman, he must stand to his word," John repeated, "unless she releases him."
I fumbled again for my letter. "That's just about what he says himself," I rejoined, sitting down. "He thinks he ought to take the consequences."
"Of course!" John Mayrant's face was very stern as he sat in judgment on himself.
"But why should she take the consequences?" I asked.
"What consequences?"
"Being married to a man who doesn't want her, all her life, until death them do part. How's that? Having the daily humiliation of his indifference, and the world's knowledge of his indifference. How's that? Perhaps having the further humiliation of knowing that his heart belongs to another woman. How's that? That's not what a girl bargains for. His standing to his word is not an act of honor, but a deception. And in talking about 'taking the consequences,' he's patting his personal sacrifice on the back and forgetting all about her and the sacrifice he's putting her to. What's the brief suffering of a broken engagement to that? No: the true consequences that a man should shoulder for making such a mistake is the poor opinion that society holds of him for placing a woman in such a position; and to free her is the most honorable thing he can do. Her dignity suffers less so than if she were a wife chained down to perpetual disregard."
John, after a silence, said: "That is a very curious view."
"That is the view I shall give my friend," I answered. "I shall tell him that in keeping on he is not at bottom honestly thinking of the girl and her welfare, but of himself and the public opinion he's afraid of, if he breaks his engagement. And I shall tell him that if I'm in church and they come to the place where they ask if any man knows just cause or impediment, I shall probably call out, 'He does! His heart's not in it. This is not marriage that he's committing. You're pronouncing your blessing upon a fraud.'"
John sat now a long time silent, holding his extinct cigar. The lamp was almost burned dry; we had blown out the expiring candles some while since. "That is a very curious view," he repeated. "I should like to hear what your friend says in answer."
This finished our late sitting. We opened the door and went out for a brief space into the night to get its pure breath into our lungs, and look to the distant place where the moon had sailed. Then we went to bed, or rather, I did; for the last thing that I remembered was John, standing by the window of our bedroom still dressed, looking out into the forest.
XX: What She Wanted Him For
He was neither at the window, nor in his bed, nor anywhere else to be seen, when I opened my eyes upon the world next morning; nor did any answer come when I called his name. I raised myself and saw outside the great branches of the wood, bathed from top to trunk in a sunshine that was no early morning's light; and upon this, the silence of the house spoke plainly to me not of man still sleeping, but of man long risen and gone about his business. I stepped barefoot across the wooden floor to where lay my watch, but it marked an unearthly hour, for I had neglected to wind it at the end of our long and convivial evening — of which my head was now giving me some news. And then I saw a note addressed to me from John Mayrant.
"You are a good sleeper," it began, "but my conscience is clear as to the Bombo, called by some Kill-devil, about which I hope you will remember that I warned you."
He hoped I should remember! Of course I remembered everything; why did he say that? An apology for his leaving me followed; he had been obliged to take the early train because of the Custom House, where he was serving his final days; they would give me breakfast when ever I should be ready for it, and I was to make free of the place; I had better visit the old church (they had orders about the keys) and drive myself into Kings Port after lunch; the horses would know the way, if I did not. It was the boy's closing sentence which fixed my attention wholly, took it away from Kill-devil Bombo and my Aunt Carola's commission, for the execution of which I now held the clue, and sent me puzzling for the right interpretation of his words —