F. O. Langley

“ When Lieutenant Banner receives orders he at once puts his cap on, pushes it to the back of his head and passes a weary hand across a worried brow. When he has confused himself to the top of his bent he searches round for other victims. On this Sunday night ill luck directed his footsteps to my billet; seeing me in bed, he became positively aghast, though I firmly believe he was inwardly delighted to discover so depressing a sight.
You may imagine the colloquy that ensued; how he repeated to me, with a nice sense of climax, the news which I had already received from the corporal. ”

“ In fact, my hobby in life is other people's feet; I have fitted a hundred pairs of them with socks and with boots, and I have assisted personally at the pricking of their blisters, and the trimming of their excrescences. What a fall from our intellectual heights! ”

“ We sit round the old Yule hot-water pipe, and from the next classroom come the heavenly strains of the gramophone, one of those veteran but sturdy machines which none of life's rough usages can completely silence or even shake in its loyal determination to go on and keep going on at all costs. ”

“ No one does, my boy; you are what we refer to as a something civilian. You must forgive us, Bill; it is one of the too few pleasures in the life of the mobilized Territorial.
Has that rosy, well-groomed body of yours ever sought repose on the tessellated floor of a public hall? ”

“ We start off for the Continent and then we halt and ask ourselves, "Won't they be wanting us to go to Egypt and have a word with the enemy there?" So we come back and change our underclothes and start out again; but we haven't got far before a persistent subaltern starts a scare about invasions. At that we halt again and have a pow-wow. Thick underclothes for the Continent; thin underclothes for Egypt, but what underclothes for home defence? And that, old man, is the real difficulty about war: what clothes are you to make it in? ”

“ Dear Charles,—Half-a-dozen officers of the battalion, including your own pet terrier, have got cut off from the main body, but are all alive and well, as you shall hear. We have come down from our war to the peace station in order to gather together the few hundred recruits who have been enrolled to bring up the brigade to its proper establishment, and fill the places of those luckless fellows whose flesh was too weak for Imperial service, however willing their spirit might have been. ”

“ What else can one eliminate? The only thing is to reform one's life and learn to be a pantechnicon; one may also, with a little ingenuity, use one's clothes to serve a double purpose. I have only got as far as evolving a scheme for tying up all the outlets of my breeches and then filling them with air, so that one leg makes a bolster and the other a pillow—two articles which, you will observe, were omitted from the inventory. ”

“ If, in the next generation, Britain continues to exist as a nation and not as a depôt for the training of waiters in the Berlin restaurants, then indeed we shall have something to rely on in these adaptable young fellows. ”

“ Our willy-nilly hosts are all firmly convinced that we want conversation confined to the more gruesome experiences of their friends and relations who have got mixed up in this war, but otherwise they are kindness itself. At the house I at present inhabit it is found absolutely essential that the father and the mother, three daughters, two maid-servants, the nurse, and even, I believe, the infant son, should rise from their beds at 5 o'clock when reveillé is, at the whim of the G.O.C., put at that unforgivable hour. ”

“ The tune serves to recall the distant past, when we used to wear silk socks and shining pumps, to glide hither and thither on hard floors, and talk in the intervals, talk, talk, talk with all the desperate resource of exhausted heroes who know that they have only to hang on five more minutes and they are saved. ”

“ I'll tell you my opinion of these soldiers, Charles, amateur or professional. Feed them like princes and pamper them like babies, and they'll complain all the time. But stand them up to be shot at and they'll take it as a joke, and rather a good joke, too. ”

“ Herbert closed the door softly behind him and went out, leaving Ermyntrude alone. She had let him go. He had gone. He had left her alone. Her—Ermyntrude—alone. It has been truly said that women are queer creatures. They do not like being left alone.
Chapter LVII.
Herbert picked up his hat and stick and passed out of the spacious hall into the street, closing the door softly behind him. It was his habit when angry to close doors softly behind him. He was frequently angry; men often are, and with reason.
"There's something I want to ask you," said Cecily. ”

“ Charles, I believe we'd all be lying out in the rain at this moment but for that assistance. The equipment of the Boy Scout on billeting duty consists of a piece of white chalk and a menacing demeanour. Thus armed, he knocks at every likely door, wishes the householder a good morning and registers on the door-frame the number of men that may be left till called for within, even while the policeman is still endeavouring to explain the international situation and the military exigencies to the slow-thinking rustic. ”

“ In supposing that I should at least be thorough about my sleep, I reckoned without my old though not always welcome friend, Banner. His view is that when a crisis arrives it is up to the people involved to be at least busy, if not worse. ”

“ My wife never draws any at all, knowing it is much safer where it is, and as for Albert, our only son, he takes no interest in the stuff. When we, in moments of self-denial, slip a coin into the slit of his money-box, he is merely bored, being as yet unable to unlock the box and get the coin out again, owing to ignorance of the whereabouts of the key. I explained all this to the telegraph boy, but his heart didn't soften ”

“ Cating, as we do, for all tastes, we have in our rank and file a serio-comic artiste from the lower rungs of the music-hall ladder. We had a busy time with him at our Great Inoculation Ceremony (First Performance) on Saturday. We could not put too strick a discipline upon men into arms arms we were just about to insert fifteen million microbes apiece, and our private was not slow to seize his opportunity. ”

“ You will remember how, four months ago, we collected ourselves together in accordance with our long-standing engagement to protect these islands against the foreign trespasser, the condition of our contract being that our service should begin (as charity should) and end (as charity often does) at home. In the bad old days when I was at the Bar I should of course have known that contracts are apt to turn round on those who make them; but now I am only a plain soldier and I am unable to understand why I should be made to stay at home when I desire to go and make a nuisance of myself abroad. ”

“ He took her to his office and begged her to be seated. "Repose all confidence in me, Madam," he said, "for I am not without experience in husbands. Good fellows on the whole, with their gladstone bags and their pince-nez and their unmistakable respectability. ”

“ We all contemplate that time when our valises shall be, unhappily, no longer with us. The odd things we must still have are: towel, razor, soap, shaving soap, shaving brush, tooth-brush, extra bows, socks and so-on's, mess-tin, knife, fork, spoon, revolver, ammunition, compass, clasp-knife, field-service pocket-book, note-books, sketching-books, lamp, flask, bandages, mug and house-wife. ”

“ Sometimes I tremble to think in what terms I may inadvertently ask some gentle soul later on in life to pass the marmalade, or with what expletives I may comment upon some little defect in domestic life. ”

“ Think what literature might have achieved had it not always been obsessed by its desire to find some brief definition good enough for woman! I think it is our chief difficulty in appreciating the supposed greatness of Vergil that he couldn't do any better than "Varium et mutabile semper." ”

“ It is quite refreshing to step, over a hundred strong, into a village with no pre-arranged scheme of board and lodging. Like every other wanderer in a strange part, we turn first to the policeman. We march towards him at attention ”

“ You will recollect that I compensated him for the loss of it with a shilling. It makes it all the more pognant that it was my last shilling. I put it into his money-box, the key of which is accessible to miscreants. ”

“ Here we form fours, form two deep, slope arms, order arms, present arms, trail arms, ground arms, take up arms, pile arms, unpile arms, move to the right in fours, by the left, left wheel. The essence of these manœuvres is that they make it impossible for even the most acute enemy to guess which is our real direction. ”

“ Every rank is prepared to be shot, if need be, but desires, if possible, not to have it happen at dawn; so each officer, taking his order from his superior, puts on his margin before instructing his inferior. ”

“ It will be simply full of husbands; you wouldn't care to try it, at any rate to let us show it you?"
"But my husband," she repeated.
"Is essentially a London man? Madam, we do not wish you to take any of these husbands we shall show you if they do not suit your requirements; but do let us show them you."
"I know that my husband is coming from London," she persisted.
"Believe me, Madam," he protested, "I should not accuse you of being mistaken, even if your husband should prove to be in this train I recommend. He might have deceived you." ”

“ The enemy are ill-assorted allies: Captain Parr, a dashing player of great courage and very ready tongue, and Lieutenant Sumners, one of those grim, earnest fighters whom no event however sudden or stupendous can surprise into speech. ”

“ Constant efforts to keep a watch in the dark are trying to the nerves, and when something substantial does emerge which one may get a grip on... what use is it for an officer to say that no violence is required and enough is done for present purposes if the enemy is successfully observed and quietly apprehended? The first enemy to approach turned out, on arrest, to be just an innocuous cow ”

“ Before setting out we had been threatened with the heaviest penalties if we were discovered at any moment in a dereliction of duty, which meant that the Adjutant proposed to pay us a surprise visit and had every hope of discovering responsible officers asleep at their posts. Those who know will tell you that the hour before dawn is that during which an attack is most likely in real war ”

“ What is more, we are beginning to find scope for little luxuries even in this narrow compass; there are mess tines, for instance, of the larger sort in which one may, with a little ingenuity, have a complete bath. ”

“ We don't know where we are going or why we are going or even if we are really going at all. It may be that we are on our way to the Continent; it may be that we are on our way to the coast to assume the defensive; it may be that the authorities are pulling our legs and are watching from behind the hedges en route to see how we take it. We march on till we are told to stop. We stop till we are told to march on. ”

“ Meanwhile we watch with interest the effect of our new recruits upon the battalion as a whole. You will remember that those recruits are from all classes, and the presence of the so-called Non-manual is cleared marked in the daily conversation overheard. Thus in the good old B company you will hear: "'Ere, Bill, where's me pull-through?" "I ain't seen yer ruddy pull-through." "You'm a liar; you've bin and took it." "Get off with yer, I ain't. If yer want a ruddy pull-through, why don't yer pinch Joe's ruddy pull-through? ”

“ I trust it is only our self-consciousness makes us think that we are looked upon as frauds, who have obtained by false pretences the field-glasses, electric torches, knitted wares, tears, hand-clasps and choicest superlatives of our friends. It becomes worse as time passes ”

“ He asks himself always, "Is is soldierly?" and never "Is it common-sense?" He is at present in trouble with his superior officer for having frozen on to his ace of trumps long after he should have parted with it. But those text-books say, "Keep your best forces in reserve," and the little trumps must needs be put in the firing line first.
As to the other officers of your acquaintance, each is making merry, as the season demands, in his own fashion. One is studying, not for the first time, a map on the wall showing the inner truth of the currents in the Pacific ”

“ The recruit is an excellent fellow, whose only fault is that he didn't start before. Now and then he is a plutocrat, as I have found to my cost. It was my first job to prearrange the lodging of two hundred of them in their temporary billet, an unoccupied mansion originally designed to house twenty persons at the outside. ”

“ This kind lady has not only made our sojourn one long series of simple luxuries, she has been through the whole of our kit and washed and repaired the lot. Think what you may about the Church when you are a civilian in affluence, but when you are a soldier in distress turn to it first for succour. ”

“ The tooth, as teeth will, had to be removed; the parents, as parents may, advanced a shilling upon it; and the godfather, as godfathers needn't, telegraphed to say he was coming forthwith to the locus in quo. Things were so when Mr. (I didn't catch your name, Sir," and I turned to the telegraph boy) "threatened to liquidate us unless his debt was satisfied. Business is, as he very properly remarked, business. Now for my suggestion: Albert," and I turned to him again, "will have the telegram, which being from his god-father, is rightly his. ”

“ It seems to me that the War Office ought to have discovered some shady nook about the human body where one's drinking water could be kept cool. Also I think they have wasted space by not utilizing the inside of one's field-glasses for the carriage of something or other. A combination sword and razor would also be an economy. ”

“ In F Company as now constituted it runs: "Angus, have you seen my pull-through anywhere?" "No, Gerald, I have not." "You are sure you haven't taken it by mistake?" "I assure you I have not; but, if you want a pull-through, I am sure Clement would not mind your borrowing his temporarily."
Among our last draft of recruits was a newly-joined officer who had been at the military business before. What he liked about us was that we are Territorials, immune from this new "platoon" system. "I like people," he said, "who call half a company a half-company." ”

“ He even cedes a little of the ground he has gained. Glancing at his music, I must admit that he is in a dangerous situation, heavily wooded in the treble, with sudden and sharp elevations and depressions in the bass, and the possibility of am ambush at every turn. ”

“ In The Daily Mail's list of Situations Vacant, such as Housemaids (Hmds) , Between-maids (Bmds) , Working Housekeepers (Wkg-hkprs) and Cook Generals (Ckgns) , appears the following:—"Young Lady wanted for cinema acting. ”