A marrying man

by G. B. Stern

"Is that meant for a taunt?" He flushed hotly. "I'd have enlisted, but I'm over age."

"I know."

"Well——"

She was making havoc in a trunk at the far end of the room now, half hidden by an enormous old arm-chair on three legs.... "Most people seem to have tumbled into some sort of war-job by now, that's all."

Patricia was deliberately behaving like a brute. His futile efforts to engage her promise that they should "do something together," had deadened her to a cold fury, all the chillier for her previous glow of reaction. For she perceived clearly, could not help perceiving, that his actual motive in thus pleading for combined effort was less affection for her than sudden panic of his inability to find himself a place anywhere on the crowded slow-turning machine. He hoped that her initiative might serve for two. And to this end, for the shielding of his own self-respect, he would have prevented accomplishment of her apportioned labours. Pat was not setting forth in any subjective mood of vainglory. Things had to be done, and the ego who did them mattered not at all save in efficiency. But Gareth Temple was totally incapable of submerging his morbid sense of Gareth Temple.... She determined that this time at least he should expose himself—if only to prevent all future errors of illusion on her part.

And nothing that she could have said would have increased to such an extent the terror to which he was naturally prone, as her last remark. Other people—other people's books—other people's wars——

Was he again to be the one left out?

A rapid mental survey among his friends; thence to casual acquaintances.... He could not find a single companion for his isolation. Guy Burnett had obtained his commission in the London Scottish; Alexander, surprisingly, had enlisted in the ranks; Ran Wyman was war correspondent in Russia; Graham Carr had departed on a secret service commission; Leslie Campbell neglected publishing, for an important post connected with the Commissariat, for which he had revealed an unexpected fund of expert knowledge. Jim Collins was head of a branch of motor transport; and Lulu did canteen work with the Y.M.C.A.; and Mr. Golding, from next door, was a Special Constable, and dug trenches in Hyde Park on Sundays. Fred Worley went every night to Victoria or Charing Cross to fetch the wounded; while Trixie sat all day long romantically in the Tower, mending soldiers' socks. And Mrs. O'Neill and Anne organized sewing and knitting classes in great multitude. Everybody busy; everybody rushing about with portentous faces, and bits of uniform—letters or buttons or badges—stuck about them to signify they were a certified part of the new-erected slow-grinding hardly tested machinery of war. Yes ... and via Collins he had learnt of Napier Kirby among the first to pass brilliantly the examination for the Royal Flying Corps; of Grace, training to be a nurse; of Bobby, a strenuous member of the Motor-Cycle Cadets. From Jim, too, had come news of Kathleen as superintendent in a large munition factory....

While he had been obsessed with misty and beautiful visions of a people linked by a common stress and a common sorrow to finding place in a common cause.... How did one find place? How had all these cogs slipped into movement? Gareth wished passionately that he had been of military age, that he might have enlisted, and been quit of the necessity for initiative. And even then enlistment was voluntary. What his temperament demanded was to be hauled into action, with no other option but to submit. He was lost and confused amid this pell-mell scurry, this upset of tradition and habit and circumstance.... If he could have begun when the others began, to perceive exactly by what process of single steps they separately attained to their goal; as far as possible to imitate them, to get carried on with the impetus of the rush.... He was resentful now at being confronted by the necessity of making his own rush.

Above all, resentful of Patricia. She stood as epitome of the entire faction of persons who had so annoyed him by obtaining before himself an assured position in the scheme of war. She, at least, might not have confronted him with the climax of insult. She was his wife ... a traitor in the very camp. "I'm off to Belgium on Thursday." The easy announcement had mocked his impotence. She had meant it in mockery....