第25章 Midsummer-Night's Dream(2)

Could it in truth be the owner of the Hermana whom he had thrashed so well as to lay him up in bed?That incident had damaged two people at least,the unknown vanquished combatant in his bodily welfare,and me in my character as an upstanding man in the fierce feminine estimation of Miss La Heu;but this injury it was my intention to set right;my confession to the girl behind the counter was merely delayed.As I sat with Shakespeare open in my lap,I added to my store of reasoning one little new straw of argument in favor of my opinion that John Mayrant was no longer at ease or happy about his love affair.I had never before met any young man in whose manner nature was so finely tempered with good bringing-up;forwardness and shyness were alike absent from him,and his bearing had a sort of polished unconsciousness as far removed from raw diffidence as it was from raw conceit;it was altogether a rare and charming address in a youth of such true youthfulness,but it had failed him upon two occasions which I have already mentioned.Both times that he had come to the Exchange he had stumbled in his usually prompt speech,lost his habitual ease,and betrayed,in short,all the signs of being disconcerted.The matter seemed suddenly quite plain to me:it was the nature of his errands to the Exchange.The first time he had been ordering the cake for his own wedding,and to-day it was something about the wedding again.Evidently the high mettle of his delicacy and breeding made him painfully conscious of the view which others must take of the part that Miss Rieppe was playing in all this--a view from which it was out of his power to shield her;and it was this consciousness that destroyed his composure.From what I was soon to learn of his fine and unmoved disregard for unfavorable opinion when he felt his course to be the right one,I know that it was no thought at all of his own scarcely heroic role during these days,but only the perception that outsiders must detect in his affianced lady some of those very same qualities which had chilled his too precipitate passion for her,and left him alone,without romance,without family sympathy,without social acclamations,with nothing indeed save his high-strung notion of honor to help him bravely face the wedding march.How appalling must the wedding march sound to a waiting bridegroom who sees the bride,that he no longer looks at except with distaste and estrangement,coming nearer and nearer to him up the aisle!A funeral march would be gayer than that music,Ishould think!The thought came to me to break out bluntly and say to him:

"Countermand the cake!She's only playing with you while that yachtsman is making up his mind."But there could be but one outcome of such advice to John Mayrant:two people,instead of one,would be in bed suffering from contusions.As I mused on the boy and his attractive and appealing character,I became more rejoiced than ever that he had thrashed somebody,I cared not very much who nor yet very much why,so long as such thrashing had been thorough,which seemed quite evidently and happily the case.He stood now in my eyes,in some way that is too obscure for me to be able to explain to you,saved from some reproach whose subtlety likewise eludes my powers of analysis.

It was already five minutes after three o'clock,my dinner hour,when he at length appeared in the Library;and possibly I put some reproach into my greeting:"Won't you walk along with me to Mrs.Trevise's?"(That was my boarding house.)"I could not get away from the Custom House sooner,"he explained;and into his eyes there came for a moment that look of unrest and pre-occupation which I had observed at times while we had discussed Newport and alcoholic girls.The two subjects seemed certainly far enough apart!

But he immediately began upon a conversation briskly enough--so briskly that I suspected at once he had got his subject ready in advance;he didn't want me to speak first,lest I turn the talk into channels embarrassing,such as bruised foreheads or wedding cake.Well,this should not prevent me from dropping in his cup the wholesome bitters which I had prepared.

"Well,sir!Well,sir!"such was his hearty preface."I wonder if you're feeling ashamed of yourself?""Never when I read Shakespeare,"I answered restoring the plume to its place.

He looked at the title."Which one?"

"One of the unsuitable love affairs that was prevented in time.""Romeo and Juliet?"

"No;Bottom and Titania--and Romeo and JuIiet were not prevented in time.

They had their bliss once and to the full,and died before they caused each other anything but ecstasy.No weariness of routine,no tears of disenchantment;complete love,completely realized--and finis!

It's the happiest ending of all the plays."

He looked at me hard."Sometimes I believe you're ironic!

I smiled at him."A sign of the highest civilization,then.But please to think of Juliet after ten years of Romeo and his pin-headed intelligence and his preordained infidelities.Do you imagine that her predecessor,Rosamond,would have had no successors?Juliet would have been compelled to divorce Romeo,if only for the children's sake.