His Comrade's Wife
Directed by Richard RidgelyWhen the news was brought to Marian Percy that her husband had met with a hero's death, she did not weep. Her grief was too deep and bitter for tears because it was mingled with a very terrible regret. While he had lived, she had always believed that her marriage had been a mistake. He had seemed petty, ungenerous, cowardly. She had never suspected that anything fine or noble lay beneath the commonplace mask of his exterior, and now, at his death, she found that she had lost one man in a thousand, a hero. In the hours of her anguished self-reproach, George Harcourt, the friend who had been with her husband's detachment at the time of his death, did everything in his power to help and comfort her. When the doctor shook his head gravely, and said that Mrs. Percy would go mad if she did not weep, it was Harcourt who brought little Dorothy to the stricken woman. After the sight of her little daughter had brought the healing grace of tears to Marian, Harcourt returned to his quarters and puffed very hard on his empty pipe. Should he tell her how her husband really died? Captain Percy did not die a hero; he died a coward. Dispatched for reinforcements by the general in command of the English troops, Percy, once away from the battlefield attempted flight, and was shot as he rode away from his duty. Harcourt, informed of the full particulars by Ram Singh. Percy's servant, immediately set out on Percy's mission. He arrived at the main division of the army, hurriedly delivered his message, and rode on ahead of the reinforcements. He was captured by the Zulus and bound to a stake in the midst of a blazing pyre. When he escaped from his position of deadly peril, and returned to the British lines, he found that Percy's body had been found and that Percy was being hailed as the hero of the day. Rather than smirch the dead man's memory, Harcourt kept silent. Despite the fact that he loved her with all his heart and soul, Harcourt did not tell Marian, But two years later the news came out through Ram Singh, and Marian turned to the true man who had sacrificed all for his honor's sake.
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