The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“Oh, what a thing is courage,” thought Toni, “to be a brave man all around.”

But he was learning to master his fear a little, or at least to control the outward expression of it. He and Denise walked briskly through the park. Denise, it being still their honeymoon, would have liked to loiter a little in the twilight shadows, but Toni making the excuse that he would soon be due at the barracks, they lost no time. He took Denise’s hand in his. She thought it was a lover’s clasp, but in truth he felt that old clinging to Denise for protection as well as affection. He wished that he could have put his hand in his pocket and felt Jacques, but Jacques was now the treasured possession of the little Paul. Toni was glad when he got out of the park and into the lighted streets.

He had to go to the barracks and Denise was to return to their lodgings. They parted under a dark archway and had the opportunity to exchange a farewell kiss. Toni wondered if it would be the last kiss he would ever give Denise. For the first time, Denise, looking into Toni’s troubled eyes, began to suspect something was wrong with him, but she said no word and went quietly home.

It was then nearly eight o’clock and Toni was kept busy at the barracks for an hour more. He was off duty that night and was allowed to spend it at home, and at ten o’clock he left the big barrack yard to go to his lodgings. The afternoon and early evening had been brilliantly lovely, but now a cold rain was fitfully falling and the night sky was dark with storm-clouds which raced across the face of the moon. The streets of the little town grew deserted, and Toni, as he walked rapidly along, saw Nicolas and Pierre, in imagination, behind every wall and tree and corner. There was a short way to his lodgings, which led through the narrow and dark streets, but the long way led by the railway station where there were always people moving about and a plenty of light, and Toni concluded to take the long way home. He ran nearly all the way, longing to get to the circle of light made by the railway station. There was one place where he had to cross a bridge which spanned the iron tracks, and it was quite dark. Toni felt his heart thumping and jumping as he neared this place. Once across it, he would feel comparatively safe, and would walk along quietly in the glare of the electric lamps.

As he got to this place he heard a smothered cry, and, frightened as he was, he stopped and peered over the rail of the bridge. Near the track two figures were wrestling desperately. In the half-darkness, Toni could see that each one was trying to throw the other on the railway track. Far-off sounded the roar and reverberation, the thunder and shaking of the earth, of the fast-approaching express train. Toni was thrilled with horror and frozen to the ground. He could not have moved to have saved his life. In fact, there was no way for him to reach the two men struggling to destroy each other, except by leaping over the bridge twenty feet below. The huge headlight of the onrushing train cast a ghastly glare over the black earth, intersected by lines of steel, and revealed to Toni that the two figures in mortal struggle were Nicolas and Pierre. Nicolas was the stronger of the two, and he was trying to throw Pierre under the wheels of the advancing locomotive, but Pierre hung on with unnatural strength. He could not drag himself away from the track, but he clung fiercely and desperately to Nicolas. In an instant more the train thundered upon the two men and wild shrieks cut the air above the roar. The locomotive gave a sudden jar, and then plunged ahead and came to a stop. Toni, holding on with both hands to the parapet of the bridge, could have cried aloud in fear and horror of what was passing before him. A dozen figures of men with flashing lanterns appeared at once, and by the side of the track they picked up Pierre and Nicolas where they had been pitched. Both of them were quite dead.

“He stopped and peered over the rail of the bridge.”

All of Toni’s faculties had seemed numbed while he had watched this tragedy of less than five minutes’ duration, but in the space of a second the instinct of flight developed in him, and he turned around and ran, retracing his path, as if a thousand devils were after him. His heart was thumping still more wildly than when he had followed the same road a little while before, but now it was for joy. Toni was a primitive creature and was not troubled by any scruples in rejoicing at the death of his fellow man, when that fellow man had worried and troubled him as Pierre and Nicolas had done. He kept on thanking God in his heart, and even whispering his thanks as he ran.