The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“That depends,” replied Paul. “We can only send them for a year as it is—if they keep on as they have been behaving here they may have to spend the rest of their lives in Algiers. But to get them out of the way for the present is good fortune enough. I have told the colonel the whole story about Count Delorme, and what a perfectly abject coward you are, Toni, in many ways, and he agrees with me that we had better not open the whole subject, but just get these two rascals off quietly. So if you can manage to keep from bawling like a baby for the next week and will be only half a man, the thing can be settled.”

“I will try,” said Toni, without making any promise of not bawling like a baby.

The good news, however, did enable him to keep from letting the whole thing out to Denise. She found Toni rather depressed and unhappy during that week, but on the morning when the batch of hard cases was put on the train to be started for Marseilles, and Nicolas and Pierre were among them, Toni’s heart bounded with joy. He could not deny himself the pleasure of seeing his two old comrades off. They were the most sullen and angry of all the sullen and angry disciplinaires sent to atone for their misdeeds under the fierce sun of Africa. As the train moved slowly off, Nicolas thrust his red head out of the window and, shaking his fist at Toni, cried:

“Don’t forget—we shan’t forget.”

Toni, however, tried his best to forget, and succeeded beyond his expectations. He had thought himself lucky when Nicolas and Pierre were out of sight, but now, when he remembered that they were in Africa, and called to mind all the chances of fever and cholera and other things that, if they befell his two comrades in arms, would be of distinct benefit to him, he felt positively cheerful, and, as Paul Verney said, if Pierre and Nicolas kept up their career as they had done since they had joined the regiment, they would probably leave their bones in Africa.

So Toni, thrusting off his load of care, more than he had ever done since that secret of the woods at midnight and the dead man lying stark with his face upturned to the murky sky had been laid upon him, grew merry at heart. There was a good deal to make him happy then. Denise was thoroughly devoted to him, and the sergeant, who was being very skilfully played by Madame Marcel, became perfectly reconciled to the match between Toni and Denise. After all, even if Sergeant Duval did not succeed in marrying Madame Marcel, he reflected that Toni would not be ill provided for, as Madame Marcel was extremely well off for a lady of her condition. As a means of advancing Toni’s interests, Madame Marcel was always writing to the sergeant asking him how she should invest such considerable sums as six hundred francs and once even nine hundred francs. This last sum was so very imposing that the sergeant, in giving her his advice, felt compelled to renew his offer of his hand and heart. To this Madame Marcel returned a most diplomatic reply. She said if she could see Toni married to Denise she would feel more like considering the offer. At present it was her only desire to see that happy event come off. Then, possibly, after providing liberally for Toni, she might take the sergeant’s offer under reflection. The sergeant, after receiving this letter, thought himself as good as married to Madame Marcel.

The autumn and the winter passed as pleasantly as the summer. Paul and Lucie, after spending the summer at the Château Bernard, had come into the town and taken the small house in which they played at being poor. It was as pretty a little bower as any newly-married couple ever had. They kept only three servants and Toni still waited on Paul Verney, and there was plenty for him to do. He had no natural love for work and still reckoned it the height of bliss to lie on his stomach in the long grass and watch the gnats dancing in the sun and the foolishly industrious bees, always at work for others, get gloriously drunk on the clover blossoms. But for a private in the dragoons there was not much time for this sort of thing, and if Toni had to work he would rather work for the Verneys than for anybody else. There was a little garden behind the house in which Toni dug and planted and watered diligently under Lucie’s critical eye, and this was the least unpleasant work that he had ever done.

Lucie fathomed his character as well as Paul did. She knew of all his strange ins and outs, his courage and cowardice, his foolish loving heart. Denise, by that time, had got the upper hand of Toni as completely as Paul Verney had got the upper hand of Lucie. Like all tender-hearted women, Lucie was a natural and incurable match-maker. Nothing pleased her better than to forward the affair between Toni and Denise. She stopped Sergeant Duval in the street to praise Toni’s virtues, expatiating upon his industry. The sergeant listened respectfully enough until Toni’s industry was mentioned, when a grim look came into his eyes.

“Yes, Madame,” he said, “he is the most industrious fellow alive as long as I am after him and he has the prospect of being put in the barrack prison on bread and water. Oh, there is nobody who works harder than Toni.” Lucie passed on laughing.

But there was a reason why Toni was so willing always to dig in the garden. There was a little sewing-room on the ground floor which had a window that opened on the garden, and at that window Denise, early in the winter, was established with her sewing. She was a beautiful seamstress, and having ten thousand francs to her fortune by no means lessened her inclination to work for the good wages which Madame Verney paid her. And there was a great deal of sewing to be done just then in the little house, so while Toni dug and planted in the garden and worked among the flowers in the little greenhouse, he could glance up and see Denise’s pretty blond head bending over her fine sewing. Toni became so devoted to waiting on Lucie that he grew positively inattentive to Paul, who was compelled to swear at Toni once in a while and threaten to cuff him to bring him to his senses.