Part 13 (2/2)

Lieutenant Fevrier was puzzled. When dangers were to be encountered, when audacity was needed, one requires the best soldiers. That was obvious, unless the mission meant annihilation. That thought came to Fevrier, and remembering the cafes and the officers dishonouring their uniforms, he drew himself up proudly and saluted. Already he saw his dead body recovered from the enemy, and borne to the grave beneath a tricolour. He heard the lamentations of his friends, and the firing of the platoon. He saw General Montaudon in tears. He was shaken with emotion. But Jarras's next words fell upon him like cold water.

”You will parade your fifty men unarmed. You will march out of the lines, and to-morrow morning as soon as it is light enough for the Prussians to see you come unarmed you will desert to them. There are too many mouths to feed in Metz[A].”

[Footnote A: See the Daily News War Correspondence, 1870.]

The Lieutenant had it on his lips to shout, ”Then why not lead us out to die?” But he kept silence. He could have flung his kepi in the General's face; but he saluted. He went out again into the streets and among the lighted cafes and reeled like a drunken man, thinking confusedly of many things; that he had a mother in Paris who might hear of his desertion before she heard of its explanation; that it was right to claim obedience but _lache_ to exact dishonour--but chiefly and above all that if he had been wise, and had made light of his duty, and had come up to Metz to re-arrange the campaign with dominoes on the marble-tables, he would not have been specially selected for ignominy. It was true, it needed an obedient officer to desert! And so laughing aloud he reeled blindly down to the gates of Metz. And it happened that just by the gates a civilian looked after him, and shrugging his shoulders, remarked, ”Ah! But if we had a _Man_ at Metz!”

From Metz Lieutenant Fevrier ran. The night air struck cool upon him.

And he ran and stumbled and fell and picked himself up and ran again until he reached the Belletonge farm.

”The General,” he cried, and so to the General a mud-plastered figure with a white, tormented face was admitted.

”What is it?” asked Montaudon. ”What will this say?”

Lieutenant Fevrier stood with the palms of his hands extended, speechless like an animal in pain. Then he suddenly burst into tears and wept, and told of the fine plan to diminish the demands upon the commissariat.

”Courage, my old one!” said the General. ”I had a fear of this. You are not alone--other officers in other divisions have the same hard duty,” and there was no inflection in the voice to tell Fevrier what his General thought of the duty. But a hand was laid soothingly upon his shoulder, and that told him. He took heart to whisper that he had a mother in Paris.

”I will write to her,” said Montaudon. ”She will be proud when she receives the letter.”

Then Lieutenant Fevrier, being French, took the General's hand and kissed it, and the General, being French, felt his throat fill with tears.

Fevrier left the headquarters, paraded his men, laid his sword and revolver on the ground, and ordered his fifty to pile their arms. Then he made them a speech--a very short speech, but it cost him much to make it in an even voice.

”My braves,” said he, ”my fellow-soldiers, it is easy to fight for one's country, it is not difficult to die for it. But the supreme test of patriotism is willingly to suffer shame for it. That test your country now claims of you. Attention! March!”

For the last time he exchanged a pa.s.sword with a French sentinel, and tramped out into the belt of ground between the French outposts and the Prussian field-watch. Now in this belt there stood a little village which Fevrier had held with skill and honour all the two days of the battle of Noisseville. Doubtless that recollection had something to do with his choice of the village. For in his martyrdom of shame he had fallen to wonder whether after all he had not deserved it, and any rea.s.surance such as the gaping house-walls of Vaudere would bring to him, was eagerly welcomed. There was another reason, however, in the position of the village.

It stood in an abrupt valley at the foot of a steep vine-hill on the summit, and which was the Prussian forepost. The Prussian field-watch would be even nearer to Vaudere and dispersed amongst the vines. So he could get his ignominious work over quickly in the morning. The village would provide, too, safe quarters for the night, since it was well within range of the heavy guns in Fort St. Julien, and the Prussians on that account were unable to hold it.

He led his fifty soldiers then northwestward from his camp, skirted the Bois de Grimont, and marched into the village. The night was dark, and the sky so overhung with clouds that not a star was visible. The one street of Vaudere was absolutely silent. The glimmering white cottages showed their black rents on either side, but never the light of a candle behind any shutter. Lieutenant Fevrier left his men at the western or Frenchward end of the street, and went forward alone.

The doors of the houses stood open. The path was enc.u.mbered with the wreckage of their contents, and every now and then he smelt a whiff of paraffin, as though lamps had been broken or cans overset. Vaudere had been looted, but there were no Prussians now in the village.

He made sure of this by walking as far as the large house at the head of the village. Then he went back to his men and led them forward until he reached the general shop which every village has.

”It is not likely,” he said, ”that we shall find even the makes.h.i.+ft of a supper. But courage, my friends, let us try!”

He could not have eaten a crust himself, but it had become an instinct with him to antic.i.p.ate the needs of his privates, and he acted from habit. They crowded into the shop; one man shut the door, Fevrier lighted a match and disclosed by its light staved-in barrels, empty cannisters, broken boxes, fragments of lemonade bottles, but of food not so much as a stale biscuit.

”Go upstairs and search.”

They went and returned empty-handed.

”We have found nothing, monsieur,” said they.

”But I have,” replied Fevrier, and striking another match he held up what he had found, dirty and crumpled, in a corner of the shop. It was a little tricolour flag of painted linen upon a bamboo stick, a child's cheap and gaudy toy. But Fevrier held it up solemnly, and of the fifty deserters no one laughed.

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