The Making of a Soul | Page 4

dead, not ill ... what is this wonderful piece of news I might have read in the papers--and did not?"
There was a moment's tense silence, broken only by the crackling of the gay little fire on the hearth.
Then Barry said heavily:
"Miss Rees was married to Lord Saxonby this morning."
CHAPTER II
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,