A marrying man

by G. B. Stern

Perhaps more than by anything else, had Gareth's impressions of this first month of war been dented by the peroration of Redmond's third of August speech in the House of Commons. And the sequence of great and small events served but to heighten this prevalent effect of cohesion, of all stray units gathered up and knit together for a joint purpose: North and South Ireland; Great Britain and her colonies; the regular army with the raw recruits; the suffragette with the spoilt débutante; Liberal and Conservative and Labour; France and Russia and Servia and Belgium, rhapsody of concentration on one issue, one ideal ... no single person left out who wanted to be in.... Here was the old dream which for Gareth had previously been symbolized in the absorbed fraternity of "Campbell's Young Men," repeated now on an immeasurably larger scale. One of Them. The glamour of belonging.

Gareth had always been slightly appalled by the burden of each individual responsible for himself; and his visions had naturally taken the trend of mankind serving in a common cause; one need for the scattered energies; one will pushing these along. The world as a sort of club, excluding a few just to strengthen the privilege of membership. In this case it was the Germans who had wantonly put themselves outside the Crusade for Humanity.... Somebody has to be the enemy ... he recollected childhood's difficulty of finding the offensive party in the game of French-and-English——

"I suppose that game will have to go now; and the Berlin polka; and German measles; and Prussian binding; and—and Dresden china—and music—and eau de Cologne—and the dachshund——" he pondered over possible additions to this list of articles that were of obstreperously enemy manufacture.

... The Strand and London and the British Isles—crowded with little people, who in a crisis had proved big enough to be lifted above their petty domestic squabbles, and belligerent beat-your-neighbour-out-of-doors attitude. And he was one of them—One of Them.... More recruits going by, in attire a grotesque mixture of civilian and khaki. Here, there, and wherever one looked, evidences of some personal sacrifice.—That was at once the clarion-call and the march-rhythm of nineteen-fourteen. To participate, to fall in step, one must sacrifice as well....

Suddenly he was conscious of a keen desire once more to live in complete harmony with Patricia. After all, what stood between them but the fact of her book suppressed that his might appear? Viewed in the clearer colder searchlight which recent events had streamed into his flinching soul, it seemed infinitely mean and selfish that he should smugly have acquiesced in this arrangement.

For Pat's was the worthier book of the two. He admitted it now. He would admit it presently to her. It was splendidly generous that she should have aided him in dissembling the fact. But if Gareth Temple were to be identified with the Crusade—and he did not mean to be left out this time—he could straightway make a beginning by stripping himself of the illusion that had hitherto been so pampered—illusion that his book was in the very slightest degree important to anyone but himself. Patricia's should be published instead of his; or—since it was indeed too late except at an enormous expense to withdraw a novel of which he had already received the page-proofs—Patricia's should be published as well as his—and kill it.

Locker and Swyn could well afford a failure.

Gareth hurried home, flushed and exalted by this definite solution of a vague desire; and not at all abashed by the thought that Pat had already once anticipated him, by use of their accidentally overlapping themes, to give herself a spiritual adventure. It stimulated satisfaction in him to remember that it was no valueless contribution he intended to make to the prevailing Fund for Remorseful Egoists. For the first fortnight or so following the outbreak of hostilities, it had seemed doubtful if literature and art were not doomed to be carried away in a waste-paper basket, emptied irrespective of contents. But since the news from the Front had been more hopeful, intellect and civilization had begun to collect themselves; metaphorically, to look round and discover how much of themselves remained after the shock. And John Forrester had only yesterday written to announce that, barring unforeseen complications, they intended to adhere to their original resolution to publish "The Round Adventure" in October. So that by this genuine offering of what was immediately precious, Gareth would not only be subordinating himself fitly to the exactions of a great impersonal Cause; but would also be witness of Patricia's impulsive tumult of gratitude and happiness. Henceforth would exist no reason, no reason at all, why their life together might not be all he had ever pictured it.... He sprang off the step of the omnibus, and walked rapidly up the road to number seventeen.

"Pat! Pat! Where are you?"—impatience was eager to act red-hot upon resolve. "Pat!"

"Here!" her voice came distantly from the very top of the house.