"Mark him off, lieutenant," said the mayor, pompously; "he's our
little hunchback."
"Shall I mark you in his place?" asked the lieutenant, with a smile
that turned the mayor's blood to water. "No? You would make a fine
figure for a forlorn hope."
A man burst out laughing, but he was half crazed with grief, and his
acrid mirth found no response. Then the roll-call was resumed:
"Gestel?"
"Present!"
"Garenne!"
There was another silence.
"Robert Garenne!" repeated the officer, sharply. "Monsieur the mayor
has informed me that you are liable for military duty. If you are
present, answer to your name or take the consequences!"
The poacher, who had been lounging on the bridge, slouched slowly
forward and touched his cap.
"I am organizing a franc corps," he said, with a deadly sidelong
glance at the mayor, who now stood beside the lieutenant.
"You can explain that at Lorient," replied the lieutenant. "Fall in
there!"
"But I--"
"Fall in!" repeated the lieutenant.
The poacher's visage became inflamed. He hesitated, looking around for
an avenue of escape. Then he caught my disgusted eye.
"For the last time," said the lieutenant, coolly drawing his
revolver, "I order you to fall in!"
The poacher backed into the straggling rank, glaring.
"Now," said the lieutenant, "you may go to your house and get your
packet. If we have left when you return, follow and report at the
arsenal in Lorient. Fall out! March!"
The poacher backed out to the rear of the rank, turned on his heel,
and strode away towards the coast, clinched fists swinging by his
side.
There were not many names on the roll, and the call was quickly
finished. And now the infantry drummers raised their sticks high in
the air, there was a sharp click, a crash, and the square echoed.
"March!" cried the officer; and, drummers ahead, the long single rank
shuffled into fours, and the column started, enveloped in a throng of
women and children.
"Good-bye!" sobbed the women. "We will pray!"
"Good-bye! Pray!"
The crowd pressed on into the dusk. Far up the darkening road the
white coiffes of the women glimmered; the drum-roll softened to a
distant humming.
The children, who did not understand, had gathered around a hunchback,
the exempt cripple of the roll-call.
"Ho! Fois!" I heard him say to the crowd of wondering little ones,
"if I were not exempt I'd teach these Prussians to dance the
farandole to my biniou! Oui, dame! And perhaps I'll do it yet, spite
of the crooked back I was not born with--as everybody knows! Oui,
dame! Everybody knows I was born as straight as the next man!"
The children gaped, listening to the distant drumming, now almost
inaudible.
The cripple rose, lighted a lantern, and walked slowly out toward the
cliffs, carrying himself with that uncanny dignity peculiar to
hunchbacks. And as he walked he sang, in his thin, sharp voice, the
air of "The Three Captains":
"J'ai eu dans son coeur la plac' la plus belle,
La plac' la plus belle.
J'ai passé trois ans, trois ans avec elle,
Trois ans avec elle.
J'ai eu trois enfants qui sont capitaines,
Qui sont capitaines.
L'un est à Bordeaux, l'autre à la Rochelle,
L'autre à la Rochelle.
Le troisième ici, caressent les belles,
Caressent les belles."
Far out across the shadowy cliffs I heard his lingering, strident
chant, and caught the spark of his lantern; then silence and darkness
fell over the deserted square; the awed children, fingers interlocked,
crept homeward through the dusk; there was no sound save the rippling
wash of the river along the quay of stone.
Tired, a trifle sad, thinking perhaps of those home letters which had
come to all save me, I leaned against the river wall, staring at the
darkness; and over me came creeping that apathy which I had already
learned to recognize and even welcome as a mental anæsthetic which set
that dark sentinel, care, a-drowsing.
What did I care, after all? Life had stopped for me years before;
there was left only a shell in which that unseen little trickster, the
heart, kept tap-tapping away against a tired body. Was that what we
call life? The sorry parody!
A shape slunk near me through the dusk, furtive, uncertain. "Lizard,"
I said, indifferently. He came up, my gun on his ragged shoulder.
"You go with your class?" I asked.
"No, I go to the forest," he said, hoarsely. "You shall hear from
me."