A marrying man

by G. B. Stern

Plenty for Gareth to do. Sometimes he almost succeeded in deluding himself that this was indeed war-work, or meritoriously akin to it. The first rush to active service was over; had crashed over his protesting tenacity like a wave, leaving him still as a limpet adherent to the rock. He also discovered, to his relief, that there were other limpets on the rock. He did not much like the look of them ... but who was he to complain? Now that the roar and foam and sputter of the wave had died down, the limpet no longer felt seriously uncomfortable....

It would have required a very strong reminder of external circumstances to reanimate Gareth's once flaming visions of all mankind bonded to unity. One could not run about clamorously in an atmosphere already adapted, still, settled, to the new conditions. If he had begun earlier——

Gareth remained where he was.

In the spring of nineteen-fifteen he had the pleasure of assisting in the publication of Pat O'Neill's volume of vivid impressionistic jottings—"The Log-Book"—actual experience, veined by brilliant humour or fiery pity. Published at half a crown, it sold over twenty thousand copies, of which Ferguson's Ambulance Corps reaped the entire benefit. Patricia did not even return to England to savour her success. "... I'm only the gramophone needle," she scribbled to Gareth; "without me these incidents would not be recorded on the wax; but I've created nothing!"—This in answer to the letter of congratulation which he had written at the prompting of one of his best and sweetest impulses; a letter which was generous and sincere, and altogether charming.

It was another whole year before she eventually permitted herself a short holiday in England. She was doing strenuous and useful work with the Corps, and could very hardly be spared from any of her capacities, to which time and emergency had added nursing and first-aid surgery. A second volume of "The Log-Book" had recently been published, and was already humming through its ninth edition ... Leslie Campbell forgave that little matter of "The Reverse of the Medal" withdrawn; he was very pleased with Pat O'Neill. So were Campbell's Young Men—such of the band whose various leaves happened now, for the first time since the outbreak of the war, to coincide. Vincent Alexander had been killed at the Dardanelles; and young Burnett had lost a leg in the same sorrowful expedition; Graham Carr was in London, convalescent from a light attack of typhoid; Ran Wyman, on the other hand, was suffering from nothing worse than a startled discovery of that especial form of Deity that is born and bred solely in Russia, and whose divine simplicity is badly damaged by import into England.

In and out of the office, as in pre-war days; the same arrogance of freemasonry; the same disregard of persons outside the temporarily predominating subject; the same eager brilliant discussions, confident laying down of the law, flippant esoteric allusions; rather more of manliness and common sense, perhaps, and less of windy theory.

And the reader sat at his desk and listened, with the same wistful sense of being entirely superfluous. It did not add any strangeness to the scene that Pat should now be One of Them. She merely occupied the vacant space into which he had always dreamt his own person; and seemed quite at home in it. He had seen practically nothing of his wife during her week's nominal stay at Blenheim Terrace. She was claimed incessantly, and seemed to enjoy the whirlwind holiday; though the old contradiction was visible again between sad dead eyes and mocking up-curve of the lips.... Patricia had received the stamp of war.

"Until your advent, I was the only feminine element in these sacred offices," said Mona Gurney, whom Graham Carr had just introduced.

The latter put in: "And even now we only accept her ladylike little person for the sake of her books' sturdy uncompromising masculinity. Candidly, Pat, did you expect anything like this to be the author of 'Rust on the Plough'?"

Mona Gurney's fists flew up to her huddled shoulders, with a funny little gesture of anger all her own: "Graham, you ask everybody that.—It's silly to expect me to wear straws in my hair and yellow clay on my boots, just because I get good reviews in the 'Agricultural Monthly.'" She turned a small pleading face towards Patricia: "Mr. Campbell is quite as bad. For weeks he couldn't make head or tail of me; then he had an inspiration: invited me to spend a day in the country, led me into a field ... and waited for me to get excited. When I didn't cast myself headlong on the earth and bite it, he was disappointed, and took me back to town."