“What about Denin?”
“Oh, you didn’t know him, then? Why should you? I didn’t myself, but he belonged to one or two clubs with my brother Bob. I may have seen him myself. Awfully fine chap. Everybody liked him, though he was close as a clam—no talker. Came into a ripping place and piles of oof a few years ago. Not much on looks, though he was an A1 sportsman and athlete. Girls thought him a big catch. I’ve heard plenty say so. Well, he married an American girl, a beauty, the day he left for the front, and about a fortnight later she was a widow with everything he had, made over to her. That wasn’t much above eight months ago. But the day Evie and I were tied up, the first of last week, Lady Denin married her cousin, d’Arcy of the —th Gurkhas. Quick work—what? No heartbreak there!”
As there came no answer, Severne supposed that his visitor felt no interest in this bit of gossip apropos of war widows. He glanced up from his hard, flat pillow at the other man, and saw what he took for a far-away look on the scarred face. To change the subject to one more congenial, the aviator began to chat of things at the front; but almost instantly the English-speaking nurse intervened. The two invalids had talked long enough. Both must rest. They could see each other again next day.
Without any protest, and scarcely saying good-by, Denin dragged himself back to his own part of the ward. “‘Nobody home!’ The poor fellow looks as if he wasn’t all there yet.” Severne excused the seeming rudeness of the nameless one.
Denin had not had his full hour of freedom from bed, but he declared that he was tired and that his head ached, so he was allowed to lie down. He turned his face to the wall, and appeared to sleep, but never had he been more vividly awake.
His plan had fallen into ruin with one bewildering crash. The corner-stone had been torn out from the foundation. His duty—or what he had seen as his duty—was changed. After all, Barbara had not been disappointed in her cousin. She had found him her “knight and her hero” as of old. She had loved the man so passionately that she had given herself to him after only eight months of widowhood. If he had heard this thing of a woman other than Barbara, Denin would have been revolted. It could only have looked like an almost defiant admission that there was no love in the first marriage—nothing but interest. He could not, would not, however, think that Barbara’s act was a proof of hardness. Lying on his bed, with his face to the blank white wall, he began to make desperate excuses for the girl.
She had married him by special license at three days’ notice eight months ago, hurried into a decision by his love, and perhaps the glamour of war’s red light. Her mother, too, had given her no peace until she made up her mind. For the hundredth time he assured himself of that fact. And as for the well-nigh indecent haste of the second wedding; why, after all, was it so much worse than the first?
Her marriage with him, John Denin, had been a marriage only in name. She was left a girl, with no memories of wifehood. No doubt this new giving of herself had been another “war wedding.” Trevor d’Arcy in his picture looked like a man who would do his best to seize whatever he wanted. He had of course been going away, perhaps after being wounded and nursed by Barbara. It would be natural, very natural, for her to feel that she would be happier when d’Arcy was at the front, if they belonged to each other. Denin told himself savagely that it would be brutal to blame the girl. She had a right to love and joy, and she should have both, unspoiled. He would be damned sooner than snatch happiness from Barbara, and drag her through the dust of shame, a woman claimed as wife by two men.
“This decides things for me, then, forever and ever,” he thought, a strange quietness settling down upon him, like a cloud in which a man is lost on a mountain-top. “She’s free as light. John Denin died last August in France.”