Punch/Volume 147/Issue 3816/"They Also Serve"
Jeremy threw away the stump of his after-dinner cigar and began to light another one.
"Where’s the economy of giving up smoking when you've got lots of cigars in the house?" he asked.
"Oh, Jeremy," said his wife, "who says you ought to?"
"The Vicar. Her only smokes one non-throat cigarette a day himself. I told him he ought to give that up, but he said it was different. I say, it will want rather a large soldier for that shirt, won't it?" He sat on the arm of his wife's chair and began to play with the sleeve.
"Jeremy, can't you find something to do?"
"Yes." He went out and returned with his golf clubs, which he began to polish lovingly. "I think I shall have a round to-morrow. If Francis Drake played bowls when the Spanish Fleet was in sight, I don't see why Jeremy Smith shouldn't play gold when the German Fleet is out of sight."
"I thought you said you weren't going to till the war was over?"
"I don't see why I shouldn't. Gold keeps us fit, and it is the duty of every Englishman to be fit just now."
"But you really play gold because you like it."
Jeremy looked up at her in surprise.
"Really," he said, "I don't see why I shouldn't like doing my duty."
"Oh, Jeremy!" sighed his wife. "You know I didn't mean that."
"I know exactly what you meant." He dropped his clubs and began to pace the room. "You're filled with the idea that the only way a man can serve his country is by doing something he absolutely detests. That’s why you made me a special constable." He stopped and glared at her. "A special constable! Me!"
"Darling, it was your own idea entire."
"You said to yourself, 'There are men you would make excellent special constables—men with red faces and angry moustaches who take naturally to ordering other people about, men who instinctively push their way into the middle of a row when they see one, men with a lust for gore, great powerful men who have learnt ju-jitsu. But the fact that they'd all rather like it shows that it can't really be their duty to join; they wouldn't be making a big enough sacrifice. The men we want are the quiet, the mild, the inoffensive, the butterflies of life, the men who would simply loathe being special constables, the men who would be entirely useless at it'—and, having said this to yourself, you looked round and you saw me."
Mrs. Jeremy smiles and shook her head at her husband, sighed again, and returned to her work.
"And so now I'm a special constable, and I wear a belt and a truncheon, and what good do I do? Baby loves it, I admit that; Baby admires me immensely. When Nurse says, 'If you're not a good girl the special constable will be after you,' Baby shrieks with delight. But officially, in the village I am useless... Oh but I forgot, I arrested a man this morning."
"Jeremy, and you never told me!" said Mrs. Jeremy excitedly.
"Well, I wasn't quite sure at the time whether I arrested him or he arrested me. But in the clearer light of evening I see that it was really I who was doing the arresting. At any rate it was I who had the belt and the note-book."
"Was it a German spy?"
"No, it was old Jack, rather drunk. I arrested him for being intoxicated on a bridge—the one over the brook, you know, by Claytons. He put his arm round my neck and we started for the Haverley police-station together. I didn't want to go to the police-station, because it's three miles off, but Jack insisted... He had me tight by the neck. I couldn't even make a note."
"Wasn't he afraid of your truncheon?"
"My darling, one couldn't his old Jack with a truncheon; he's such a jolly old boy when he's sober." Jeremy played nervously with his wife's scissors, and added, "Besides he was doing things with the truncheon himself."
"What sort of things?"
"Conducting the Marseillaise chiefly—we marched along in time to it." A smile spread slowly over Jeremy's face as the scene came bck to him. "It must have looked splendid."
"How dared he?" said Mrs. Jeremy indignantly.
"Oh, well, if you make your husband a special constable you must expect these things. I consoled myself with the thought that I was doing my duty... and that there was nobody about. You see, we made a détour and missed Haverley, and when we were nearly home again he left me. I mean I released him. You know, I'm not what I call a good special constable. I did what I could, but there must be more in it than that."
Mrs. Jeremy looked up and blew a kiss to him.
"However," he went on, "I dropped in on him this evening and made him sign the pledge."
"Well, there you are; you have done some good."
"Yes, but I hadn't got my truncheon on then. I spoke as Jeremy Smith, Esq." He put a brassey to his shoulder and, "Bang," and went on, "I should be no good at all at the front, and Lord Kitchener would be no good trying to paint my water-colours, but all the same I scored an inner last night. The scene at the range when it got about that the President had scored an inner was one of wild enthusiasm. When the news is flashed to Berlin it will give the German Emperor pause. Do you know that the most unpatriotic thing you can do is to make shirts for the wounded, when there are lots of poor women in the village who'd be only too glad of the job? Like little Miss Merton. And yet you think to get out of it by making your husband a special constable."
Mrs. Jeremy put down her work and went over to her husband and knelt by his chair.
"Do you know," she said, taking his hands in hers, "that there isn't a man, woman or child in this village who is idle or neglected or forgotten? That those who wanted to enlist have been encouraged and told how to, and that those who didn't want to have been shown other ways of helping? That it's all been done without any fuss or high-falutin or busy-bodying, and chiefly because of an absurd husband of mine who never talks seriously about anything, but somehow manages to make everybody else willing and good-tempered?"
"Is that a fact?" said Jeremy, rather pleased.
"It is. And this absurd husband didn't understand how much he was helping, and he had an idea that he ought to do something thoroughly uncomfortable, so he ordered a truncheon and gave up golf and made himself quite miserable… and then put it all on to his wife."
"Well, why didn't you stop me?" said Jeremy helplessly.
"I wasn't going to be a drag on you; if you'd volunteered for a submarine I should have said nothing."
"I should be useless in a submarine," said Jeremy thoughtfully; "I should only fall over the white mice. But I really thought you wanted——— Why then," he cried happily, "I might play golf to-morrow, you think?"
"I wish you would," said Mrs. Jeremy.
Jeremy took up his brassey and addressed an imaginary ball.
"Sir Jeremy Smith playing golf in a crisis," he said. "Subject for historical picture."
A. A. M.