For a moment there was a silence fraught with a thousand possibilities.
Then Owen sprang from his seat and crossing the intervening space, as it
were in a bound, seized his friend savagely by the shoulders.
"Say that again, Barry! Say it if you _dare_!"
With a fury of which he was unconscious he shook the other man
violently; and Barry broke away with an expression of annoyance.
"Good God, Owen, what do you think you're doing? What do you mean by
attacking me like this!"
"I'm going to knock your damned head off for telling me a lie!" His tone
was dangerous. "How dare you say that Vivian is married when you _know_
she is engaged to me?"
"Look here, Owen." Barry stood facing him, panting a little. "It's only
because you're my pal that I don't retaliate in kind. Any other man who
calls me a liar has to go through it, and that's a fact. But as it's
you, and as I know I've done the business badly--well"--his voice grew
suddenly wistful--"let's sit down and talk it over quietly, shall we?"
Something in his tone made the other man turn cold; and when he replied
his manner had lost its vehemence.
"See here, Barry, I'm sorry I attacked you like that. The fact is,
I ... I think I can't have understood rightly what you were trying to
tell me. You said something just now about Miss Rees being married to
Lord Saxonby. Well, what, exactly, did you mean?"
The very quietness with which he spoke made it still more difficult for
Barry to answer him.
"I meant just what I said." He fidgeted nervously with a cigarette as he
spoke. "Miss Rees was married--quietly--to Lord Saxonby this morning."
"Lord Saxonby? You mean that chap who hung round her before I went
away?" Owen's voice was studiously self-controlled, but his hand shook
as he played with a silver pencil-case on the table before him.
"Yes. That's the man."
"I see." For a moment he bent his head over the table, and when he
looked up Barry understood that he had accepted the truth at last. "So
she's played me false, has she? Married another fellow without troubling
to let me know. Well, there's no more to be said, I suppose. I must make
up my mind to be the laughing-stock of my friends, to be pointed at by
men and women, jeered at in the clubs, as the fellow who was
jilted ... thrown over for another fellow!"
He paused; then resumed in a louder tone.
"It's an ugly word, Barry--jilted. And by Jove, it's an ugly thing. Odd
how naturally women take to it, isn't it? They won't steal, as a
rule--draw the line at murder, but they think nothing of making damned
fools of men who are insane enough to believe in them!"
He laughed bitterly; and his eyes looked grim.
"It would have been quite easy to let me know, wouldn't it?" He flung
the question at his friend. "A sixpenny wire--even a cable wouldn't have
ruined her, would it? And it would have been much less brutal than to
let me come home expecting to find a blushing bride waiting for me!"
"I expect she ... she thought you'd see it in the papers," said Barry
rather lamely. "Although it was kept pretty quiet here there were
paragraphs about it, of course, and she may have supposed you would see
them."
"Hardly the thing to leave it to chance," said Owen drily. "After all,
when one gets out of an invitation to dinner, one generally sends an
excuse; but ..." he broke off, and his eyes blazed suddenly "... look
here, Barry, you know, and I know, that this woman has played a low-down
trick on me. I thought her--well, no matter what I thought her--but
anyway I know her now for what she is. And I'll be infinitely obliged to
you if you'll be good enough to drop the subject now and for evermore."
"I say, old chap, I'm awfully sorry----"
Barry's impulsive speech got no further, for the other raised his hand
to cut it short.
"All right, Barry, we'll take it all as said. Henceforth no such person
as Miss Rees--I mean Lady Saxonby--exists for me; and if you'll remember
that it will make things easier for us both."
"Very well, Owen." Barry felt emboldened to light a cigarette; and then,
with a tactlessness born of mental discomfort, he asked a blundering
question. "What shall you do now, old man? Have another shot at big game
for a bit, or what?"
"Another shot--I say, Barry, why on earth should I go back the moment
I've got home? Oh, I see!" He smiled cynically. "You mean town won't be
very pleasant for a bit? Well, I daresay it won't, but thank God no one
will dare to say much to me!" His jaw squared itself rather
aggressively. "But I don't intend to quit. On the contrary, my firm
intention is to remain here, do some good work, and, incidentally,
marry."
Barry swung round and faced him, openly surprised.
"Marry? But--whom?"
"Oh, I don't know ... at the moment; but someone. You look astonished,
Barry! Why shouldn't I marry? Ah, I see! You think because one woman's
turned me down no one else will care to risk her happiness with me!
Well, of course my value is considerably depreciated, no doubt; but
after all, men are in the minority, and I daresay I'll be able to find
some girl to take pity on me!"
"Don't talk like that, Owen!" Barry spoke hastily, and his blue eyes
looked rather stern. "You don't want a girl to take you out of pity, do
you? That's not much of a basis for a happy marriage, is it?"
"No, Barry." He took the rebuke well. "I was talking like a fool. But
honestly, I do mean to marry--as soon as possible. Oh, I daresay I'm
taking it the wrong way, but it seems to me that there's only one thing
for a man in my position to do, and that is to show that he's not
heart-broken because one unscrupulous woman has treated him badly!"
"That's all very well--but what about the other woman? Are you going to
marry the first girl you meet, irrespective of love, or what _are_ you
going to do? I can understand your feeling for Miss Rees has changed its
nature--love and hate are akin, I know, but still----"
"No, Barry, you're wrong." He spoke very gently. "I don't _hate_ Vivian.
Why should I? She merely exercised her feminine prerogative and changed
her mind. Besides, one only hates big things. Vivian isn't big. She's
very small, or she'd not have done this thing. If she'd asked me to
release her, I'd have done it, and never have uttered a reproach. It's
the heartlessness, the unnecessary cruelty of this that hurts me so. I
loved her, Barry, and she knew it. Loved her in the right way, in the
way a man should love the woman he's going to marry; and my love meant
so little to her that she chucked it away without even telling me she
was tired of it."
"But to marry, out of revenge, as it were, is small too."
"Out of revenge? Come, Barry, what are you thinking of?" Owen rose and
spoke with an eerie joviality. "There'll be no revenge about it! Mayn't
I marry and settle down like another man? I'll guarantee that the first
woman who wants me can have me; and if she plays the game she shan't
regret it, for I'll play it too!"
"But where will you look for her?" Barry could not understand this
attitude of mind.
"Look for her? Oh, I'll look for her all right--and she'll turn up,
never fear!" He moved restlessly. "There's always some woman ready to
enter a man's life when he throws the door ajar--and here I'm positively
flinging it open, inviting the little dears to come in!"
"But, I say, Owen"--Barry looked anxiously at his
friend--"you ... you'll be careful, won't you? I mean, you won't let any
twopenny-halfpenny little chorus-girl, or ... or girl out of a shop come
in, will you? You see, if you let them all know...."
"Chorus-girls are sometimes worth a good deal more than
twopence-halfpenny," Owen reminded him quietly, "and I daresay a girl
out of a shop would make a jolly decent wife. But I wasn't contemplating
them when I spoke."
"Of course not," assented Barry hastily. "I only meant----"
"You only meant to give me good advice," said Owen, more kindly than he
had yet spoken. "All right, old man, I understand. You must forgive me
if I'm cross-grained to-night. You see I've had a shock----"
He broke off abruptly.
"There, I'm not going to whine about it. It's over, done with, and a new
chapter's started." He yawned ostentatiously. "Barry, I shall call upon
your good offices as best man yet--unless you hurry up and marry Miss
Lynn first."
"Oh, Olive and I are in no hurry!" He laughed a trifle awkwardly. "You
see, she is so young--only just eighteen--and her people won't hear of
it for a couple of years."
"Well, that will soon pass." He turned towards the door. "I must be off
now, Barry--it's late, and I'm pretty fagged. See you in the morning, I
suppose?"
"Of course. I say, Owen, sure you won't stay here to-night? I can give
you a bed, you know."
"Thanks awfully, old chap, but I'd rather get home. I've heaps of things
to see to. Thanks all the same."
Still talking, the friends crossed the hall, and Barry unlatched the
door of the flat.
"Well, so-long, Barry. Awfully glad to have seen you again." He gripped
the younger man's hand, and Barry understood what the grip implied.
"Good-night, Owen. See you to-morrow."
Two minutes later Owen had disappeared round a bend in the staircase;
and Barry went slowly back into his sitting-room, feeling curiously
tired, as though he had been indulging in some violent physical
exercise.
"Poor old chap! What a beast that girl is!" He had never liked Miss
Rees, and now felt, naturally, that his dislike was justified. "But I
hope to goodness he doesn't go and do anything rash. He's got a pretty
good head on him, though, and I daresay a lot of this talk is mere
bravado."
He turned off the light and went into his bedroom. On the dressing-table
stood a silver frame holding a photograph; and Barry took up the frame
and studied the portrait carefully.
"Olive, you'd never play me a trick like that, would you! My God, I hope
you don't! It would just about kill me to have to lose faith in you!"
The deep eyes looked up at him candidly, the sweet mouth seemed to
smile; and with a sudden blissful certainty that the original of the
photograph was as true and straightforward as the picture proclaimed her
to be, Barry put down the frame again, and began, whistling, to prepare
for bed.