The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

But Toni, looking up at the colonel’s short, soldierly figure and determined air, was seized with one of those sudden panics which often overcame him. He could not have said a word to save his life, with the colonel’s keen eyes fixed on him. So, jumping up and seizing hold of Jacques in his pocket, Toni ran as fast as his legs would take him to the garden gate, through the narrow street, and up into his own little attic room, and did not feel safe until he was tucked in his own bed with Jacques under the pillow to keep him company.

It was the habit of the colonel to take a walk in the park very early every morning directly after his breakfast coffee, and it was also Captain Ravenel’s practice to pass through the park at the same hour. His, however, was not a pleasure stroll, but was for the purpose of taking to the post-office some hundreds of envelopes which he addressed every day for a pittance, with which to eke out his half-pay. The two men had been friends in past days, although the colonel was much older and higher in rank than Ravenel, but they passed each other morning after morning without a word being exchanged, Ravenel gravely saluting the colonel, and the colonel slightly returning the bow, and each man felt a tug at his heart for the other man.

Colonel Duquesne was a great stickler for the moralities, and Ravenel’s fall had been to him a terrible shock. He understood what little Lucie, and Paul Verney, and Toni did not understand in the least, the particular thing which had befallen Madame Ravenel. It was the old, sad story of a villainous husband to a sensitive and dependent woman, of a man a thousand times better than the husband loving the wife silently, of hearing her unjustly accused in his presence, and even suffering the indignity of a blow. That blow drove Sophie Delorme into Ravenel’s arms. It seemed to her, in the horror and shock of the moment, as if there were no other place for her. She could not go to her grandmother, Madame Bernard, who had arranged the match between Sophie and Delorme and who had shut her eyes stubbornly to the wretchedness of the marriage. Apart from Madame Bernard, Sophie was singularly alone in the world. Her small fortune had been squandered by Delorme. She loved Ravenel because she could not help it, and so these two poor souls, like goodly ships driven against each other by storms and hurricanes, to their destruction, this man and this woman were driven together, driven to transgress the moral law, driven by the iron hand of fate into a position, the last on earth that would have been expected of them.

The victory of passion and despair over honor had been brief. In three weeks they recoiled from what they had done. Delorme had promptly begun proceedings for a divorce and Ravenel had besought Sophie to repair their fault as far as possible in the eyes of the world by marrying him as soon as the decree of divorce should be granted. But Sophie was a deeply religious woman and it seemed to her an increase of wrong-doing to marry Ravenel. There was but one way out of it and Ravenel, by employing one of the best ecclesiastical lawyers in France, discovered that there were certain technicalities in the religious marriage that Delorme had not complied with, and it was possible to have the marriage, religious as well as civil, annulled. Only then did Sophie consent to marry him. For her he had sacrificed his position in the army, his standing in the world and his modest fortune, and had done it as if it were a privilege instead of a sacrifice.

No woman of Sophie Ravenel’s lofty ideals could fail to appreciate this, but neither could she forget that she had fallen from her high estate. However she might strive to be happy, Ravenel could not but see that she would live and die a conscience-stricken woman. She made no moan, however, but secretly took on herself the whole sin. Ravenel did the same, taking on himself all the blame. And so their married life, although sad and colorless, was one of exquisite harmony. They led a most retired life, rarely leaving their house except for Sophie’s early visit to the church and the walk in the park in the afternoons. Whenever she appeared on the street, as Paul often had noticed, Ravenel was never far away, and Sophie, had any affront been offered her, had his protection close at hand. To them one place was the same as another and, as Colonel Duquesne had imagined, necessity had much to do with their settling in Bienville. An officer on half-pay has not much choice of residence, and the little old house in Bienville at least gave them a shelter. So they had come, bringing their remorse with them, likewise their love.

The wages of sin in their case was not luxury. They lived as poorly as gentle people could live and exist. They kept no servant, and as it was painful for them to have to dine at the cafés, Sophie, with the assistance of one old woman who was still active at seventy-five, prepared all their meals. With her own hands she made those cheap and simple black gowns whose fit and style were the despair and admiration of the professional dressmakers in Bienville. In this matter of her dress and appearance, Sophie retained all the pride which had ever been hers when she was, as little Lucie said, the gayest and best-dressed woman in Châlons. It was a part of a duty that she owed Ravenel, for with the fine generosity of a woman she reckoned herself much in Ravenel’s debt, and felt she should lose as few as possible of those charms that had won him to his downfall. She never lost her appearance of elegance, by dint of an ingenuity, little short of miraculous. She uttered no complaining word, and no day passed over her head that she did not tell Ravenel he was the best man in the world.

There was a wheezy old piano in the little house, and on this she played to him the airs that had charmed him in the days at Châlons. She was externally the most modest and reserved woman in Bienville,—and who shall say that she was not the same in her soul? Be not too free, you virtuous people, to condemn this poor lady; there are sinners and sinners, if you please.

“Not daring so much as to lift her eyes to the altar.”

As for Captain Ravenel, his wrong-doing had placed on him, according to his way of thinking, an obligation of a life most spotless. He had always been, as Colonel Duquesne had said, a man of high character, but when love and misery and fate had made him, in a way, the destroyer of the woman he loved and respected most on earth, it raised him to a pitch of heroic virtue. Like Sophie, no drudgery was too great for him and when she was preparing their modest dinner, Captain Ravenel was digging in the garden. By the labor of his own hands, he raised the most beautiful pease, potatoes and melons that had ever been seen. He would have worked every hour of the day, except that he felt as Sophie did with regard to him, that he must not lose all of those graces and habits of a gentleman which had first made her love him. In the afternoon he dressed himself in his well-brushed frock coat and together he and Sophie took a walk, and sat and listened to the band playing in the park. This was their chief recreation. At night he sat up many hours addressing those envelopes and circulars which he took to the post-office early in the morning and for which he was paid a pittance. Like Sophie, no complaint escaped him, and for every protestation of love and gratitude she made to him, he returned in twofold. They were not happy—life had no happiness to give two souls like theirs, situated as they were—but they would have died if they had been torn apart.