A marrying man

by G. B. Stern

"You must take action at once. Stern action. Appeal to her sense of shame. Tell her she's too old." Pregnant interval of silence during the glove-buttoning process.... "Can you?—thanks ... or are you too upset?... Thanks. And tell her—she's above all—a wife."

And Mrs. Worley departed, immensely inflated with the consciousness of having impressively performed an unpleasant duty to her neighbour.

Gareth, left alone with the revelation that Kathleen was all this while deceiving him, that "people were beginning to talk," and "God knows how far the business has gone," Gareth ought no doubt to have aged visibly beneath the deadly blow, and sat quite, quite still for many hours, with hair turning slowly white.

Gareth experienced a momentary shock, certainly; the Songs his Mother Taught Him were responsible for that: honour and plighted troth, and—perhaps this was his fault; he should have shielded the woman—he had been neglecting her shamefully for the book ... the book! he had his secret love, why should she not have had hers the while? They needed something—at their age they needed something, when there were no children. He speculated on the personality of Napier Kirby. He had barely come in contact with him, at Rapparee House. Had they been very happy, the guilty pair? Rather, were they at present very happy? since no explanation now was required for Kathleen's unpunctuality. He wished she would come in and tell him all about it; where Kirby had taken her, and what he had said—but Gareth knew that would not do. He must either continue in ignorance, or display the qualities moral decency decreed should in these cases be displayed: indignation, jealousy, insulted honour, "you-shall-not-quit-my-roof,"—Gareth hunted about for these tendencies, desperately alarmed to find as substitute a gentle rosy glow of benevolence towards the erring couple, mild curiosity, and a purely whimsical desire to inform Mrs. Worley of the line he intended to take up in the matter.

It would have to be blindness, foolish complacent blindness to what was happening beneath his very eyes. An attitude rather damaging to his vanity, certainly, but he had failed to make Kathleen happy, and had no right, no right whatever, to rob her of the happiness she had gathered elsewhere. They had dragged on each other long enough; each should now enjoy the last topsy-turvy parcels they each had drawn from the bran-pie of youthful adventure. Gareth knew that before this year's summer he could not have been guilty of such incredible coolness in the face of disaster; but the madness of their holiday time, and then his book ... he had neglected Kathleen and must pay the price in silence.

Oh, let him at least be frank! Gareth replaced on the mantelpiece a black china cat with glassy yellow stare, which he had been hypnotically regarding, and threw himself in the arm-chair, shading his eyes with his hand. Let him be frank with himself! It was no question of payment—it was deliverance. It was a well-nigh sobbing relief. She was going. After all these hot aching years of strain, fortune in a wild fervour of generosity was tossing him one gift after another, culminating with this: that without any effort of action on his part, he was to be left alone; alone to live his life, and write his books, and ... dream his dreams of another girl; one who came in a breath of wind as fragrant and as cool, as Kathleen's presence had been a nightmare of harassed tightly puckered misery. The ethereal mist-maid of his visions had been so much with him of late, slipping in and out of the pages of the book, that he would not have been at all surprised to see her materialize like any Galatea. She had flitted through so many fanciful love-scenes, that Kathleen by his side at nights gave him an uneasy sense of treachery. If Kathleen were gone, then no one need ever step between him and the love he might have found, once, in youth. Perhaps even now, if he were alone—he half stretched forth his arms, "Oh, my dear, my dear" ... in a great rush of gratitude for his impending release. He had been so tired, with that patient tiredness which is worst of all; and himself would never have jerked off the yoke; he was the man, the bread-winner—Songs his Mother Taught Him ... no, Gareth would have kept faith with Kathleen, though it wore away his very life in fretted atoms. But now—he had only not to see.

When Kathleen entered, flushed, and with a certain vibrant quality to tone and gesture, he asked no questions, pretended to be deeply immersed in work; "Extra rush; autumn season." He had never told her about the book; this dream should not be damaged by too close handling. Perhaps, if she went before it appeared in print—it was still more than a third removed from completion—perhaps then he need never tell her. Gareth had dreaded that telling; dreaded her quick practical comments; dreaded the interest she would surely display. He wondered when she and Kirby were planning to make definite escape, and wished—again with a flicker of amusement at the thought of Mrs. Worley—that it would not be such manifest bad form to ask.

The book was not running as swiftly as it had done in Ilfracombe. He believed he might complete it by the end of the year—if he were alone.

September tiptoed so mildly into October, that in London, where berries do not redden in the hedges, the end of summer came as scarcely a shock. The skies were still blue, and the leaves still green; and if the sun rose an hour or two later, who can tell across London roofs and through London windows? If the sun dipped an hour or two earlier, so much the better for London lovers, who await longingly the shadows in a city where there is no solitude.

Napier and Kathleen were content to dawdle through the days, curiously heedless whether their intimacy were apparent to all eyes. Napier, indeed, was willing enough that Grace should hear rumours of his errantry ... he never lost sight of his resentful love for Grace and her provocative indifference, except in very rare moments when Kathleen's veritable monsoons of passion—hot wind from out of the desert—swept away all angry fidelity. Misunderstanding the woman as he did, misunderstanding the esoteric causes for the brilliance and beauty of this her last leap towards the sun, he approved of her extreme recklessness as to discovery, setting it down to a capacity lightly to enjoy a light flirtation, to revel bountifully in the fun which the passing moment yields to its devotees; her stormier moods he attributed to the devastating power of his own fascination. Naïve glee at his ability to inspire such genuine emotion, mingled with a somewhat unpleasant, perhaps even racial desire that he could all the while shout to Grace: "There you are! There you are!" ... making her a present of Kathleen's body and soul, in order that Grace might better appreciate him, the recipient of these.