The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Toni’s mind had not projected itself very far. He knew that he would have to serve his time in the army, and it had occurred to him that he would certainly be put in the cavalry, and he said as much to his mother. But Madame Marcel, who could not persuade herself that Toni was not an innocent and guileless creature, could not endure the thought of turning him loose in a stable, to bear the kicks and cuffs, the jokes and jeers, of a lot of rough stablemen.

She asked Toni if he would be willing to learn the trade of a tailor. Clery, the tailor, lived opposite them, and was a very respectable man, who made a good living for his family. But Toni hastily objected to this—he was afraid of the five Clery boys.

So Madame Marcel and Toni kept going around in a circle for many days and weeks. Finally Madame Marcel one morning, taking Toni by his hand, having washed him clean for once, and dressed him in his best Sunday suit, carried him off to see Monsieur Hermann, the Swiss, in regard to converting Toni into a second Sarasate or Ysaye. Hermann lived in two little rooms at the top of a rickety old tenement, and Toni’s heart sank as he climbed the stairs, holding on tightly to his mother’s hand. He did not like Hermann’s looks—a big, blue-eyed Swiss, who imagined that he resembled Lohengrin and Siegfried, and dressed the part as well as he was able by cultivating a head of long curly blond hair and a huge blond beard.

Madame Marcel explained, as mothers are apt to do under similar circumstances, that, finding Toni totally unfitted for anything else, she had determined to make a musician of him. Hermann smiled. There was nothing of the artistic temperament visible in that tousled head of black hair, those bright, dark eyes which changed their expression as quickly as the little river under the stone bridge changed its look on an April day of sun and rain. And Toni had hard, muscular little hands, which did not seem to Hermann as if they could ever wield the magic bow. Toni himself looked sulky. He had no mind to be a fiddler, and did not mean to learn. However, his mother arranged that he should go the next day to take his first lesson, and then they went down stairs, Toni clattering ahead.

He rushed off to the cavalry barracks at the other end of the town. It was the time for feeding the hundreds of horses in the long rows of stalls, and Toni had a few happy moments, crawling in and out as the troopers would let him, quite regardless of the Sunday suit. Oh, if he could only live with horses all the time instead of people! Now that Paul Verney was gone, he felt that it was useless for him to try to have a talking friend. But horses could understand perfectly well, and he could find much greater companionship in a horse than in a fiddle.

“Told him to go home to his mother and tell her that she had an ass for a son.”

He firmly resolved not to go next morning to take his music lesson if he could possibly help it; but when the time came he could not help it, and he started off, at a snail’s pace, for Hermann’s lodging. Hermann, leaning out of his window, saw Toni come slouching along, looking as if he were going to his execution. He scowled at Hermann, leaning out of the window. Few small boys love lessons on the violin, which is a difficult instrument, but well worth giving one’s days and nights to, thought Hermann. When Toni finally appeared, he was the image of stolidity and stupidity. Hermann put a violin in his hands, and tried to explain the scale to him, but Toni was hopelessly inept. He could not understand those queer-looking things called notes. His mind wandered to the riding-school, where he knew the troopers were going through their exercises. He thought of the day he took that glorious wild ride on the old cavalry charger. He began to wonder what Paul Verney was doing, and reflected that it would be well for him to frame an excuse some time that day to go into Mademoiselle Duval’s shop, so she would give him a bun.

It may be imagined to what a pass Toni’s state of mind reduced poor Hermann, who finally rapped him smartly over the head with the violin bow, and told him to go home to his mother and tell her that she had an ass for a son. Toni, at the first rap from the bow, which did not hurt him in the least, howled terrifically, and, rushing off home to his mother, told her, between his sobs, a harrowing tale of how Hermann had beaten him most cruelly with the violin bow. However, Madame Marcel could not find a scratch on him to corroborate Toni’s sensational tale, and flatly refused to believe him. In spite of Toni’s protests, he was sent back to Hermann’s lodgings for his music book and the little violin which Madame Marcel had asked Hermann to provide for the boy. He returned home, carrying both music book and violin, those instruments of torture, and seriously considered studying tailoring after all, as two of the Clery boys were doing. But Clery made his boys work, and Toni had great hopes that Hermann would never be able to get any work out of him.