Page:Punch Vol 148.djvu/308

"So you've got it on," said Francesca, as she surprised me before the looking-glass in my dressing-room.

"Yes," I said, "I've got most of it on. There are a few straps I'm not sure about, but we can fit them in later."

"You'll never get those straps right," said Francesca; "there are too many of them. No civilian could possibly cope with them."

"But when I wear this uniform," I said, "I'm not a civilian. I'm a soldier, every inch of me."

"But you can't be said to wear the uniform properly until you've got it on, straps and all, so if you can't put on the straps you'll be a civilian to the last day of your miserable life."

"Things might go better," I said, "if you'd come and help a chap instead of splitting straws at him. This Sam Browne belt will be the death of me."

"Don't give in," said Francesca, "and don't get so suffused. An officer in a Volunteer Defence Corps should be more determined and less purple in the face. Infirm of purpose, give me the leather."

"Take it," I said, "and do the best you can. I'm fed up with all these brass rings and studs and buckles."

"I wonder," said Francesca, as she took stray shots with the strap-ends―"I wonder if Sam Browne, the inventor, can ever have dreamed of the agony his belt would some day cause to a thoroughly inoffensive family. There―the belt is safely on, the straps are all tucked up tight into something or other. You look fairly like the illustrated advertisements. Now let's study you at a distance."

"Not yet, Francesca. I haven't got my sword on yet. I refuse to be inspected without my sword."

"One sword forward! Quick! Isn't it a beauty? Which side ought it to go?"

"There is a prejudice in favour of the left side, and you'll find a place specially provided for it there."

She jammed it in and stood off to coutemplate the effect.

"Of course," I said, "a sword is a superfluity. They don't really wear swords now-a-days at the Front."

"But you," she said, "are really wearing this one, and that's all I care about. Why, the hilt alone is worth all the money."

"Yes," I said, "the hilt is extraordinarily handsome."

"It's the most bloodthirsty and terrifying thing I've ever seen. But tell me, now that you've got the whole uniform on, what are you?"

"I am," I said proudly, "a Platoon Commander or a Commander of something of that kind. They won't let me call myself a Lieutenant for fear of my getting mixed up with the regular army, but I'm a subaltern all right."

"A grey-haired subaltern," she said, "one of the most pathetic things in literature. Don't you remember him in the old military novels? A most deserving man, but so poor that he could never rise in rank. The gilded popinjays turned into Captains and Majors and Colonels, but he, although he kept on winning battles and saving the army, remained a subaltern to the end. I never thought to have married a grey-haired subaltern."

"Well, you've done it," I said, "and you can't get out of it now. Another time you'll be more careful."

"Let's go out," she said, "and take a walk through the village and show you off."

"But I don't want to be shown off," I said. "This uniform is meant for work, not for show."

"And do you mean seriously to tell me," she said, "that, after bruising my fingers on your straps and rings and buckles and Sam Browne belts, I'm to get nothing out of it, not even a little innocent open-air amusement? Come, you can't mean that."

"Yes, I can. I'm not ready for the open-air yet. The uniform's not accustomed to it."

"But," she said, "you must begin some time or other."

"I know I must; but I shall do the thing gradually, so as to coax the uniform into the air. One day I shall stand in the lower passage, where there's always a draught, and the next I can open all the doors and windows in the library and walk about there, and then by the end of a week or so I might work out into the porch, and so, bit by bit, into the garden. But it'll be a slow business, I'm afraid."

"Volunteer uniforms," said Francesca, seem to take a lot of hardening."

"They do," I said; "and besides there's another objection going out."

"What's that? Your modesty?"

"No," I said, "my pride. We might met a regular soldier."

"We should be sure," she said, "to meet dozens of them, and they'd all salute you. I should love to see them doing it."

"But suppose they didn't do it, where would you be then, Francesca, and how would you feel about your grey-haired soldier boy? These regulars might fail to realise the importance of my grey-green volunteer uniform or even to recognise its existence. Such things have happened."

"But Tommy Atkins is a hero, and no hero could be so cruel as that."

"Oh yes, he could," I said. "It wouldn't cost him a thought. All he would have to do would be to look straight at me and not to raise his hand to his cap. It's the easiest thing in the world."

"Then you're afraid?" she said.

"No," I said, "I'm not. I feel as if I could face fifty Germans, but just at present I'm not going to chance it with Tommy Atkins."

"You're the most disappointing Platoonist I ever knew," she said. "But perhaps you won't mind my calling the children. There's no reason why they shouldn't see their father, the Field Marshal."

"Yes," I said, "you may call in the children."

[Dr. Pannewitz, in an article in the Berliner Tageblatt, advocates the slaughter of 20,000,000 pigs, in order to preserve the potato supply, remarking that they are more dangerous than the English army, etc., put together.]