A Regiment of Two

Summary

Two bourgeois husbands, Ira Wilton and Harry Bennett, weary of conjugal tedium, forge a phantom membership in the Thirteenth Regiment so that every Friday they may slip the leash and carouse at their club. Their masquerade gains verisimilitude when Ira’s daughter Laura and her betrothed Jack—an authentic soldier—agree to vouch for the sham. The deception glides along until a burst pipe floods the dining-room; the women, thwarted in mid-escape, telephone the tavern; the men slosh home to perform heroic plumbing. Fate, never off-duty, dispatches the real regiment to the front; seeing a free holiday, Ira and Harry buy moth-eaten uniforms, march three blocks behind the departing column, then duck into a barn, swap kit for fishing tweeds, and vanish to a lakeside shack. A newspaper misprint announces the regiment’s annihilation; the picnickers, picturing themselves widowers, skulk back, shred their tunics with bayonet and ash, and stagger home as battle-scarred survivors—only to learn the Thirteenth is intact and Jack, very alive, is courting gratitude. A quick bribe of cigars silences Uncle Tom, Conrad the cook’s sweetheart is resurrected, and the domestic cosmos resumes its placid orbit.

Synopsis

Ira Wilton and his son-in-law Harry Bennett resort to the subterfuge of telling their wives that they are members of the Thirteenth Regiment, to be sure of having a night off each week, Friday night, for the regiment drills. They substantiate their deception by bringing into their little game Ira's daughter Laura and her fiancé Jack Brent, a genuine member of the Thirteenth. Their deception runs along nicely until one Friday night when the men have gone to the club, their wives find the invitation, and are just about to start out when they discover that the water pipe has burst. Laura informs the men by telephone what is discovered, and warns them to hurry home. They arrive and find that the kitchen and dining room are flooded, and, after all has been given a good soaking, Lord Dudley, an admirer of Laura, manages to stop the flow of water. Just as the trouble concerning the flood has subsided, Jack Brent arrives home and tells the men that the Thirteenth has been ordered to the front. The husbands, seeing a good chance to take a little vacation, purchase soldiers' clothing and fall in behind the Thirteenth Regiment as it passes their wives, but slip out as soon as it is out of sight. They then go to the barn, where they substitute their soldiers' habiliments for civilian clothes and then make all possible haste to the lake, where they intend to spend a little vacation. But their vacation is short-lived, for one day they see in the newspapers that the entire Thirteenth regiment has been wiped out. They hurry home to the old barn, where they get into their regimentals as quickly as possible--not forgetting to add a few rents here and there, to make it appear as if they have had a terrible struggle at the front and in escaping. When they arrive home they observe that Mrs. Wilton's brother has returned from the West and promised to take care of the "widows." In reply to Lena's (the fat cook), question concerning her lover Conrad, they were just about to tell her that he died with her name on his lips, when in come Harry and Conrad with the news that the newspaper report was all wrong. Ira and Harry fix it up with Conrad, and Jack, desiring to keep on the right side of the old man, tells the women that the men had a terrible fight, and brother Tom forgets about asking questions when a couple of good cigars are shoved into his mitt.