Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3818/The Two Recruiting Sergeants
Upstairs, Baby, after many false starts, had finally settled into sleep. Downstairs, the little maid, alternately rattling knives against plates and saying "S'sh" to herself, had cleared away dinner. John, who had been strangely silent during the meal, was in his deep arm-chair, smoking. It was Mary's peace-hour.
She lay on the sofa, for she was always tired by now, reading the morning paper—her first chance at it. As she read, she made little comments aloud, as that the Germans were beasts, or that it was splendid about the Russians doing so well; and this was the signal for John to join in with the latest strategic gossip from the City.
Only to-night he didn't. He just sat smoking and thinking... thinking.
"I suppose the French," said Mary, lazily, "are going to—John!" She looked across at him suddenly, realizing all at once that he had answered none of her questions, knowing all at once that something was the matter.
"Yes?" he said, coming out of his thoughts with a start.
"John, you—," she sat up with a jerk and craned her head forward at him—"you haven't been dismissed?" She clenched her hands tight for the answer. Sometimes at night, when he was asleep and she wasn't, she would wonder what they would do if he were dismissed.
"Silly, of course not," said John with a laugh.
She gave a sob of relief and went over and sat on his knee and put her arms round his neck.
"Oh, John, I was so frightened. But what is it? There’s something."
He smoked rapidly for a little. Then he put his pipe down, kissed her, and lifted her off his knee.
"I want to tell you something," he said; "but you mustn't look at me or I couldn't. Sit down there." She curled herself up on the floor, leaning back against his knees. "Mary"—he swallowed something which had stuck in his throat—"Mary, I've got to enlist."
She was round in a flash.
"What do you mean you've got to?" she cried indignantly. "That beast going to make you?" The beast was John's employer, a kindly man, whose fault it was to regard John as one only among many, a matter on which Mary often longed to put him right.
"No," said John. "But—but I've got to."
"Who's making you, then?"
"I don't know ... I suppose the German Emperor really."
"There’s lots that ought to go before you go. You've got a wife and a child. Let those without go first."
"I know," said John doggedly. "I've thought of that."
She threw her arms round his neck in a sudden passion. "You can't leave me, John, you can't! I couldn't bear it. Why, we've only been married eighteen months. How can you want to go away and leave me and baby and— Why, you might get killed!" Her voice went up to a shriek.
"I don't want to leave you," said John, a strange, terrifying, rapid-speaking John; "I hate it. I hate war, I hate fighting, I hate leaving you—oh, my God, how I hate leaving you, my darling! I've prayed to God all day to stop the war before I have to go, but of course He won't. Oh, Mary, help me to go; don't make it harder for me."
She got off his knee; she brought a chair up opposite to him; she sat down in it and rested her chin on her hands and looked straight at him.
"Tell me all about it," she said. "I'm quite all right." So he told her all about it, and she never took her eyes off his face.
"A man came into the office to-day to talk to us about the war. The Governor introduced him—Denham, his name was ... I knew he was all right at once. You know how you feel that about some people ... He said he thought perhaps some of us didn't quite know what to do, and he wondered if he could help any of us ... Said of course he knew that, if we thought England was in danger, we'd all rush to enlist, but perhaps we didn't quite know how much England was in danger, and all that England stood for—liberty, peace, nationality, honour and so on. In fact he'd come down to see if any of us would like to fight for England ... Said he was afraid it was rather cheek of him to ask us to defend him, because that was what it came to, he being too old to fight. Said he knew some of us would have to make terrible sacrifices, sacrifices which he wasn't in the least making himself. Hoped we'd forgive him. He couldn't say that if he were as young as us he'd enlist like a shot, any more than he could that if a woman jumped off Waterloo Bridge on a dark night he'd jump in after her. On the whole he thought it would be much easier to pretend he hadn't noticed. In fact that's very likely what he would do. But if someone, say the mother of the girl, pointed out the body to him, then he'd have to come to a decision. Well, he was in the position of that mother, he had come down to point out the body. He confessed it wasn't the job he liked best, pointing out bodies for other people to save, but he was doing it because he thought it might be of some service. That was what we all had to realize, that it was a time when we had to do things we didn't like. 'Business as usual' might be a good motto, but 'Happiness as usual' was a thing we mustn't expect…"
John fell into silence again.
"What else did he say?" asked Mary, still with her eyes fastened on his face, as though she were looking at him for the last time.
"That was how he began. I can't tell you all he said afterwards, but I felt as if I'd just fight for him, even if there was nobody else in England…"
"Aren't there lots of people who wouldn't mind going as much as you?" said Mary timidly. "I mean men with no wives or children. Oughtn't they to go first?"
"I suppose they ought. But, you see, you'd never get anywhere like that. A would wait for B who was married but had no child, and B would wait for C who wasn't married but had a mother, and C would wait for D who was an orphan, and so on. That’s what Mr. Denham said."
"I see," said Mary miserably.
"I don't quite understand what we're in the world for," said poor John, "or what the world's for at all. But I suppose the great thing is that—that good ideas should live and bad ideas should die... I haven't done much for good ideas so far, I'm not the sort of person who could... just one out of thousands of others... But I could do something for good ideas out there. I could help beat the bad idea of War... Mr. Denham says if we win there’s lots of men, all the best and cleverest in the country, who are pledged to see that there shall be no more war. Well, that's what I call a good idea... only we've got to win first."
"I know it sounds a wretched thing to say, but what about money?" asked Mary hesitatingly.
"Mother would take you in; there'll be enough to pay her something. We might try and let the house."
And then all the memories of summer evenings and happy Sundays rushed upon Mary and she broke down.
"Out little garden of which we were so proud!" she sodded.
"The Belgians," said John sadly, "were proud of their little gardens."
*****
So far Recruiting Sergeant Denham. Meanwhile Recruiting Sergeant Flossie had also got to work. Flossie, awaken by the shock of war to the surprising fact that, after twenty-two years of vain, idle and inglorious life, she was now of the most complete unimportance to her country, had (for the first time) a sudden longing to "do something." And so, being unfitted for needlework, nursing or the kitchen, she adopted eagerly the suggestion of some stupid and unimaginative old gentleman, and constituted herself (under God) Supreme Arbiter of Men's Consciences for the South-West Suburbs of London. Patriotically aglow, she handed out white feathers to all the un-uniformed young men she chanced to meet... the whitest of all coming to John, as he made his way next morning to the recruiting office.