Complete works of a e w.., p.762
Complete Works of a E W Mason, page 762
“Obedience, my General, is the soldier’s first lesson.”
“That explains to me why it is first forgotten,” answered Jarras, drily. Then his voice became sharp and curt. “You will choose fifty men. You will pick them carefully.”
“They shall be the best soldiers in the regiment,” said Fevrier.
“No, the worst.”
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 cafés 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 cafés 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 lâche 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 password 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 reassurance such as the gaping house-walls of Vaudère 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 Vaudère 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 Vaudère 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 encumbered 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. Vaudère 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 makeshift 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 anticipate 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.
“The flag of the Patrie,” said Fevrier, and with one accord the deserters uncovered.
The match burned down to Fevrier’s fingers, he dropped it and trod upon it and there was a moment’s absolute stillness. Then in the darkness a ringing voice leapt out.
“Vive la France!”
It was not the lieutenant’s voice, but the voice of a peasant from the south of the Loire, one of the deserters.
“Ah, but that is fine, that cry,” said Fevrier.
He could have embraced that private on both cheeks. There was love in that cry, pain as well — it could not be otherwise — but above all a very passion of confidence.
“Again!” said Fevrier; and this time all his men took it up, shouting it out, exultantly. The little ruined shop, in itself a contradiction of the cry, rang out and clattered with the noise until it seemed to Fevrier that it must surely pierce across the country into Metz and pluck the Mareschal in his headquarters from his diffidence. But they were only fifty deserters in a deserted village, lost in the darkness, and more likely to be overheard by the Prussian sentries than by any of their own blood.
It was Fevrier who first saw the danger of their ebullition. He cut it short by ordering them to seek quarters where they could sleep until daybreak. For himself, he thrust the little toy flag in his breast and walked forward to the larger house at the end of the village beneath the vine-hill; and as he walked, again the smell of paraffin was forced upon his nostrils.
He walked more slowly. That odour of paraffin began to seem remarkable. The looting of the village had not occurred to-day, for there had been thick dust about the general shop. But the paraffin had surely been freshly spilt, or the odour would have evaporated.
Lieutenant Fevrier walked on thinking this over. He found the broken door of his house, and still thinking it over, mounted the stairs. There was a door fronting the stairs. He felt for the handle and opened it, and from a corner of the room a voice challenged him in German.
Fevrier was fairly startled. There were Germans in the village after all. He explained to himself now the smell of paraffin. Meanwhile he did not answer; neither did he move; neither did he hear any movement. He had forgotten for the moment that he was a deserter, and he stood holding his breath and listening. There was a tiny window opposite to the door, but it only declared itself a window, it gave no light. And illusions came to Lieutenant Fevrier, such as will come to the bravest man so long as he listens hard enough in the dark — illusions of stealthy footsteps on the floor, of hands scraping and feeling along the walls, of a man’s breathing upon his neck, of many infinitesimal noises and movements close by.
The challenge was repeated and Fevrier remembered his orders.
“I am Lieutenant Fevrier of Montaudon’s division.”
“You are alone.”
Fevrier now distinguished that the voice came from the right-hand corner of the room, and that it was faint.
“I have fifty men with me. We are deserters,” he blurted out, “and unarmed.”
There followed silence, and a long silence. Then the voice spoke again, but in French, and the French of a native.
“My friend, your voice is not the voice of a deserter. There is too much humiliation in it. Come to my bedside here. I spoke in German, expecting Germans. But I am the curé of Vaudère. Why are you deserters?”
Fevrier had expected a scornful order to marshal his men as prisoners.
The extraordinary gentleness of the curé’s voice almost overcame him.
He walked across to the bedside and told his story. The curé basely
heard him out.
“It is right to obey,” said he, “but here you can obey and disobey. You can relieve Metz of your appetites, my friend, but you need not desert.” The curé reached up, and drawing Fevrier down, laid a hand upon his head. “I consecrate you to the service of your country. Do you understand?”
Fevrier leaned his mouth towards the curé’s ear.
“The Prussians are coming to-night to burn the village.”
“Yes, they came at dusk.”
Just at the moment, in fact, when Fevrier had been summoned to Metz, the Prussians had crept down into Vaudère and had been scared back to their répli by a false alarm.
“But they will come back you may be sure,” said the curé, and raising himself upon his elbow he said in a voice of suspense “Listen!”
Fevrier went to the window and opened it. It faced the hill-side, but no sounds came through it beyond the natural murmurs of the night. The curé sank back.
“After the fight here, there were dead soldiers in the streets — French soldiers and so French chassepôts. Ah, my friend, the Prussians have found out which is the better rifle — the chassepôt or the needle gun. After your retreat they came down the hill for those chassepôts. They could not find one. They searched every house, they came here and questioned me. Finally they caught one of the villagers hiding in a field, and he was afraid and he told where the rifles had been buried. The Prussians dug for them and the hole was empty. They believe they are still hidden somewhere in the village; they fancy, too, that there are secret stores of food; so they mean to burn the houses to the ground. They did not know that I was here this afternoon. I would have come into the French lines had it been possible, but I am tied here to my bed. No doubt God had sent you to me — you and your fifty men. You need not desert. You can make your last stand here for France.”
“And perish,” cried Fevrier, caught up from the depths of his humiliation, “as Frenchmen should, arms in hand.” Then his voice dropped again. “But we have no arms.”
The curé shook the lieutenant’s arm gently.
“Did I not tell you the chassepôts were not found? And why? Because too many knew where they were hidden. Because out of that many I feared there might be one to betray. There is always a Judas. So I got one man whom I knew, and he dug them up and hid them afresh.”
“Where, father?”
The question was put with a feverish eagerness — it seemed to the curé with an eagerness too feverish. He drew his hand, his whole body away.
“You have matches? Light one!” he said, in a startled voice.
“But the window — !”
“Light one!”
Every moment of time was now of value. Fevrier took the risk and lit the match, shading it from the window so far as he could with his hand.
“That will do.”
Fevrier blew out the light. The curé had seen him, his uniform and his features. He, too, had seen the curé, had noticed his thin emaciated face, and the eyes staring out of it feverishly bright and preternaturally large.
“Shall I tell you your malady, father?” he said gently. “It is starvation.”
“What will you, my son? I am alone. There is not a crust from one end of Vaudère to the other. You cannot help me. Help France! Go to the church, stand with your back to the door, turn left, and advance straight to the churchyard wall. You will find a new grave there, the rifles in the grave. Quick! There is a spade in the tower. Quick! The rifles are wrapped from the damp, the cartridges too. Quick! Quick!”
Fevrier hurried downstairs, roused three of his soldiers, bade one of them go from house to house and bring the soldiers in silence to the churchyard, and with the others he went thither himself. In groups of two and three the men crept through the street, and gathered about the grave. It was already open. The spade was driven hard and quick, deeper and deeper, and at last rang upon metal. There were seventy chassepôts, complete with bayonets and ammunition. Fifty-one were handed out, the remaining nineteen were hastily covered in again. Fevrier was immeasurably cheered to notice his men clutch at their weapons and fondle them, hold them to their shoulders taking aim, and work the breech-blocks.
“It is like meeting old friends, is it not, my children, or rather new sweethearts?” said he. “Come! The Prussians may advance from the Brasserie at Lanvallier, from Servigny, from Montay, or from Noisseville, straight down the hill. The last direction is the most likely, but we must make no mistake. Ten men will watch on the Lanvallier road, ten on the Servigny, ten on the Montay, twenty will follow me. March!”
An hour ago Lieutenant Fevrier was in command of fifty men who slouched along with their hands in their pockets, robbed even of self-respect. Now he had fifty armed and disciplined soldiers, men alert and inspired. So much difference a chassepôt apiece had made. Lieutenant Fevrier was moved to the conception of another plan; and to prepare the way for its execution, he left his twenty men in a house at the Prussian end of Vaudère, and himself crept in among the vines and up the hill.
Somewhere near to him would be the sentries of the field-watch. He went down upon his hands and knees and crawled, parting the vine leaves, that the swish of them might not betray him. In a little knoll high above his head he heard the cracking of wood, the sound of men stumbling. The Prussians were coming down to Vaudère. He lay flat upon the ground waiting and waiting; and the sounds grew louder and approached. At last he heard that for which he waited — the challenge of the field-watch, the answer of the burning-party. It came down to him quite clearly through the windless air. “Sadowa.”
Lieutenant Fevrier turned about chuckling. It seemed that in some respects the world after all was not going so ill with him that night. He crawled downwards as quickly as he could. But it was now more than even inspiration that he should not be detected. He dared not stand up and run; he must still keep upon his hands and knees. His arms so ached that he was forced now and then to stop and lie prone to give them ease; he was soaked through and through with perspiration; his blood hammered at his temples; he felt his spine weaken as though the marrow had melted into water; and his heart throbbed until the effort to breathe was a pain. But he reached the bottom of the hill, he got refuge amongst his men, he even had time to give his orders before the tread of the first Prussian was heard in the street.
“They will make for the other end of Vaudère. They will give the village first as near to the French lines as it reaches and light the rest as they retreat. Let them go forward! We will cut them off. And remember, the bayonet! A shot will bring the Prussians down in force. It will bring the French too, so there is just the chance we may find the enemy as silent as ourselves.”
But the plan was to undergo alteration. For as Lieutenant Fevrier ended, the Prussians marched in single file into the street and halted. Fevrier from the corner within his doorway counted them; there were twenty-three in all. Well, he had twenty besides himself, and the advantage of the surprise; and thirty more upon the other roads, for whom, however, he had other work in mind. The officer in command of the Prussians carried a dark lantern, and he now turned the slide, so that the light shone out.
His men fell out of their rank, some to make a cursory search, others to sprinkle yet more paraffin. One man came close to Fevrier’s doorway, and even looked in, but he saw nothing, though Fevrier was within six feet of him, holding his breath. Then the officer closed his lantern, the men re-formed and marched on. But they left behind with Lieutenant Fevrier — an idea.
He thought it quickly over. It pleased him, it was feasible, and there was comedy in it. Lieutenant Fevrier laughed again, his spirits were rising, and the world was not after all going so ill with him.
He had noticed by the lantern light that the Prussians had not re-formed in the same order. They were in single file again, but the man who marched last before the halt, did not march last after it. Each soldier, as he came up, fell in in the rear of the file. Now Fevrier had in the darkness experienced some difficulty in counting the number of Prussians, although he had strained his eyes to that end.
