The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“You haven’t been very polite to us,” he said, “but we shall meet again. Remember I promised you that when we parted two years ago, and we never go back on what we say.”

This troubled Denise and when they were alone Toni told her as much as he thought well for her to know of Nicolas and Pierre, but it was not enough to disturb her very much on her wedding journey. Toni, however, again felt that old fear clutching and tearing him. His courage had been merely outward, and outward it continued. He was apparently the most smiling and cheerful bridegroom in the whole city of Paris, but no man ever carried on his heart a heavier load of anxiety and oppression.

Madame Marcel had given Toni a little sum of money which was quite beyond his corporal’s pay for his wedding tour, and they had taken a little lodging in the humbler quarters of Paris, and here they were to spend the precious week of their honeymoon. It was still bright daylight at seven on a June evening when they reached their lodgings and removed the stains of travel. Toni, in the gayest manner possible, proposed that they should take a stroll on the river bank before going to their supper. It was a heavenly evening and a gorgeous sunset was mirrored in the dancing river as Toni and Denise leaned over the parapet of the bridge of the Invalides, holding each other’s hands as they had done when they were little children sitting on the bench under the acacia tree at Bienville. Toni could have groaned aloud in his agony. He would be the happiest creature on earth if only those two wretches had not appeared. He was happy in spite of them, but then the terrible thought came to him that they had promised to kill him and Paul Verney, too, and they were of a class of men who usually keep their word when they promise villainy. He felt an acute pang of sorrow for Denise and an acute pang for himself and for Paul and Lucie—so young they all were, so happy, and that happiness threatened by a couple of wretches who would think no more of taking a man’s life than of killing a rat, if they had the opportunity.

He looked at the crowds of gaily-dressed people which filled the streets with life. He looked at Denise in the charming freshness of her youth, her tender eyes repeating with every glance that she loved Toni better than anybody else in the world. He considered all the splendor and beauty around him—the dancing river and the great arched, dark blue sky above them in which the palpitating stars were shining faintly and a silver moon trembled—and he could scarcely keep from groaning aloud at the thought of being torn from all he loved. But he gave no outward sign of it. Denise thought him as happy as she was.

After their supper at a gay café they came across one of those open-air balls which are a feature of Paris, and they danced together merrily for an hour. Everybody saw they were sweethearts and some jokes were made at their expense, which Toni did not mind in the least and would have enjoyed hugely, but—but— Afterward they walked home under the quiet night sky. In place of their gaiety and laughter a deep and solemn happiness possessed Toni as well as Denise, except for this terrible fear, black and threatening, which would not be thrust out of his happiest hours.

Paris in June for a pair of lovers on a honeymoon trip, with enough money to meet their modest wants, is an earthly Paradise. Denise loved to exhibit her muslin gowns, made with her own hands, by the side of her handsome corporal, in the cheap cafés and theaters which they patronized. They found acquaintances, as everybody does in Paris. The lodging-house keeper became their friend and invited them to her daughter’s birthday fête. They went out to Versailles on Sunday and saw the fountains plashing, studied the windows of the magnificent shops in the grand avenues, and were perfectly happy, except for the black care that sat upon Toni’s heart. Life could be so delightful, thought Toni, but his would end so soon. Toni almost felt the knife that Nicolas would stick into him. He pondered over the various ways in which he might be killed—a blow like that which felled Count Delorme might do for him. He imagined himself found dead in the streets of Beaupré some dark night, and the story of how he came by his death would never be known. And he thought of Paul—that his body might be found in a thicket of the park of the Château Bernard, just as Count Delorme’s had been. Toni was an imaginative person and the horror of his situation was enhanced by the Paradise of the present. He wondered sometimes how he managed to keep it all from Denise, but he did for once.

Too soon the time came when he had to return to Beaupré. It was on a wet and gloomy day that he and Denise alighted from a third-class carriage at the little station. They walked straight to their modest lodgings, and then Toni went to seek Paul. His leave was not up by several hours, so he need not report at once. He found Paul at the headquarters building in a little room where he worked alone. When Toni came in and shut the door carefully behind him, Paul whirled around in his chair expecting to see a radiant, rapturous Toni. Instead of that, Toni dropped the mask which he had worn before Denise and looked at Paul with a pair of eyes so distressed, so haunted, so anxious, that Paul knew in a moment something had happened.

“Well, Toni,” he began, and then asked, “What is the matter?”

Toni, instead of standing at attention, leaned heavily against the desk—his legs could hardly support him.

“The day I was married,” he said, “when Denise and I got in the railway carriage to go to Paris, Nicolas and Pierre got in, too.”