The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

The performance was almost ready to begin when Toni handed in his franc with a trembling hand. The place was full; everybody in Bienville seemed to be there, and many persons from the surrounding country, but Toni managed to slip himself between two stout peasant women with baskets in their laps, and contrived to see the whole performance without being seen. He gave himself up, à la Toni, to the enjoyment of the moment, putting off until four o’clock the hated interview with his mother and the still worse one that he must have with Clery.

“Toni took out a single franc.”

But the circus to him was a sight well worth a dozen whippings. The view of the prancing horses, so wonderfully intelligent, the beautiful young ladies in gauze and spangles, the riders in their satin suits,—all were a dream to Toni. He did not see any of the grease spots on the costumes, nor the paint on the faces of the lovely young ladies; all was a foretaste of Paradise. It came to him in a moment what his real destiny was—to be a circus rider. At once his imagination seized upon it. He wondered himself that he had managed to exist so long without the circus. All that vaulting and jumping and leaping, that careering around on the backs of brave horses, must be heavenly—it could not possibly be work.

Toni saw himself, in imagination, one of those glorious beings. Two things only did not fit into this picture which he drew of his future—his mother and little Denise. He could not imagine either of them in the place of those short-skirted, fluffy-haired young ladies, with pink silk stockings and very stout legs.

Just before the end a pony was brought out which succeeded in throwing three clowns so successfully that the audience was in roars of laughter. The ring-master challenged any one present below a certain weight to come out in the ring and try to ride this astonishing pony. Toni, without his own volition, and knowing no more of what he was doing than a sleep-walker, wriggled out from between the two fat peasant women and got down in the sanded ring. There was a roaring in his ears and a blur before his eyes, and he could not have told how it was that he found himself upon the back of the kicking, plunging pony careering around that dazzling circle. All Toni knew was that he was the pony’s master. There was no shaking him off.

Shouts and cheers resounded, each increasing as the pony, still making desperate efforts to get rid of Toni, sped around the ring. But Toni held on as firmly and easily as if he had been born and bred in a riding-school. He had not the slightest sensation of fear, any more than on that day so long ago when the old cavalry horse had run away with him. The cheers and cries increased as the pony, realizing that Toni had the upper hand of him, came down to a steady gallop.

The ring-master advanced and cracked his whip a little, and Toni fully expected the pony to start anew the wild antics of the beginning. Instead of that, the pony came to a dead halt which was expected to throw Toni to the ground, but did not. He looked up, however, and caught sight of the ring-master standing close to him. He was a fierce-looking man with black eyes like Toni’s. The sight of those eyes waked all the cowardice in Toni’s nature. He thought he should have died of fright while that man was looking at him, and then it came over him that hundreds of eyes were looking at him all the time. He slipped off the pony’s back and like a hunted creature dashed toward the nearest opening of the tent and fled—fled homeward. He meant to creep up stairs and crawl under his little bed and stay there until his mother came up stairs, when he would catch her around the neck and tell her all about the franc and ask her, yes, actually ask her to give him a whipping just to restore things to their normal balance. He felt that he deserved five hundred whippings.

As he raced homeward, he passed Clery’s shop without looking that way. Suddenly Clery himself darted out and seizing him dragged him through the shop and into a little back room quite dark. Clery, who was an honest fellow, meant to do Toni the greatest service of his life, and said, holding him by the collar:

“Toni, you are a thief!”