"Humanity holds suicide a crime now. Once, I learn, it was not so. Great heathen men destroyed themselves, yet do not lack marble statues for it. Only yesterday, as one might say, a man was cut off and buried at crossroads with a stake through his belly if he dared to die by his own hand. The Church recognises no shades of meaning in this matter, and so to-day, as often as not, a coroner's jury bleats out a solemn and deliberate lie—so that a man shall be buried with the blessing of the Church and rest in God's acre against the trump. But there's no greater piece of solemn humbug than that eternal verdict."
"I thought much of these things when my eyes were put out. I have been on the brink myself, but 'twas ordained my thread should run. A man must be mad to destroy himself—mad or else a coward."
"Most times cowardly perhaps," answered Myles. "But to be a coward is not to be a lunatic. Suicide is one of those matters we shut our eyes about—one of the things we won't face and thresh out, because the Church is so determined on the point. Not but a man may picture circumstances when a self-death would be a great deed. You may lay down your life for your friend in more ways than one. Such a thing can rise to greatness or sink to contempt according to the mainspring of the action. Some at least might think so, and that's why I'm on this subject. I feel a shadowy fear sometimes that Christopher Yeoland might have had some such fancy—would even have done such a crack-brained deed for love of Honor. I bid his friend be very plain with him and explain the gap that his going left in her life. I made it as clear as I had power to. Honor distinctly told me that she still loved him too well to marry any other man. That was all he had need to know, and I asked Clack to make Yeoland return to her on the strength of her confession."
"And now he does."
"How might he have argued when you consider his great love for her? Is it not possible that he thought so? Is it not possible that he said, 'I am the obstacle. Let me go beyond reach, and Honor—who still feels that nothing can wipe out our old understanding—will be in reality free?' Might he not reason in that way?"
The old man shook his head.
"Not to the extent of blotting himself out by death. Had the cases been reversed, I could almost picture you destroying yourself, since your views are what they are. You might do it, worse luck—Yeoland never. Besides, what necessity? Such a course would be merely like a stage play under these circumstances."
"But there was an inclination towards just that in him; towards a theatrical sort of way—unreal."
"You read him like that. But he wasn't so superficial as he seemed to a man of your build of mind. You don't find Honor superficial? No—he wouldn't kill himself, because the necessity wouldn't appear from his point of view. As I say, you'd blunder into the act much sooner than Yeoland."
"Not so at all. You misunderstand me."