The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

But, like most demigods, Toni was not happy. Perhaps it was a part of the general quarrel which every human being has with fate. But Toni’s principal quarrel was that he was haunted with fears of all sorts. This madcap fellow, this daring bareback rider, this centaur of a man, to whom nothing in the shape of horseflesh could cause the slightest tremor, who could ride four horses at once and could do a great many other things requiring vast physical courage, coolness and resolution, was, morally, as great a coward as he had been in the old days when he ran away from all the boys in Bienville except Paul Verney, and ran away from home rather than face his mother after having taken a single franc. He was mortally afraid of a number of persons: of Clery, the tailor in far-off Bienville, for fear he might set the police on him; of Nicolas, who had the upper hand of him completely, and of a friend of Nicolas’, Pierre by name, who was the most complete scoundrel unhung except Nicolas himself. Both of these two men Toni could have whipped with one hand tied behind his back, for he was unusually muscular and, though somewhat short, a perfect athlete. His two scampish friends, Nicolas and Pierre, were wretched objects physically, such as men become who are born and bred in the slums, who have behind them a half-starved ancestry going back five hundred years, and who are on intimate terms with the devil. For a circus rider may practise every one of the seven deadly sins with perfect impunity except one, that of drunkenness. A circus rider must be sober.

They had drawn Toni into many a scrape, but here again Toni’s strange cowardice had saved him from taking an actual part in any wrong-doing. He watched out for Nicolas and Pierre, at their bidding, he knew of their wrong-doing, where they kept their stolen gains, how they cheated the manager, how they abused the women. But Toni himself, although the associate of two such rogues and rascals, and in many ways their blind tool, had kept himself perfectly free from the commission of any crime or misdemeanor. His heart remained good—poor Toni!

He still hankered, mother-sick, for Madame Marcel. Once every year since he had run away he had written to her as well as he could, for Toni’s literary accomplishments were very meager, a letter all tear-stained, telling her he was well and trying to behave himself, and he hoped she did not have rheumatism in her knees and that he was sorry for having stolen the franc. He even sent her a little money once a year, which Madame Marcel did not need, but which Toni did, and in these letters he always sent his love to Denise, but he never gave his address nor any clue to his employment. He was afraid to give any address for her to answer his letter, and so did not really know whether his mother were alive or dead.

His heart still yearned unceasingly after Paul Verney, the friend of his boyhood; and none of the young ladies in tights and spangles had been able to put out of his mind little Denise in her blue-checked apron, and her plait of yellow hair hanging down her back, and her downcast eyes and sweet way of speaking his name. He never heard the church-bells ringing on a Sunday morning that his Bienville Sundays did not come back to him—his mother washing and dressing him for church; the sight of Denise, in her short white frock, trotting along solemnly with her hand in Mademoiselle Duval’s; Paul Verney smartly dressed and hanging on to his father’s arm; Madame Ravenel, in her black gown, standing just inside the church door, with Captain Ravenel, grave and stern-looking, standing outside—and then the world in which Toni lived seemed like a dream, and this dream of Bienville the only solid reality.

One friend remained to him, the ever-faithful Jacques, now battered almost beyond the semblance of a soldier. Toni continued his friendship for horses. Half of his success with them came from the perfect understanding of a horse’s heart and soul which Toni possessed. The other half came from that strange and total absence of fear where actual danger was concerned. When the circus tent caught fire in the midst of a crowded performance, Toni was the calmest and most self-possessed person there, and careered around the ring doing his specialty, a wonderful vaulting and tumbling act, while the canvas roof overhead was blazing and no one but himself saw it. When the bridge broke through, with the circus train upon it, Toni was the first man to pull off his clothes and jump into the water, and assisted in saving half a dozen lives. He was regarded somewhat as a hero and daredevil, while secretly he knew himself to be the greatest coward on the face of the earth. Nicolas and Pierre knew this weakness of Toni’s from the beginning and traded on it most successfully.

“Doing his specialty, a wonderful vaulting and tumbling act.”

The company was performing in the fields outside of Beaupré, but as they were playing a whole week’s engagement in the town, some of them were quartered in the little hamlet close by. Within sight of the hamlet’s church-spire was a beautiful château standing all white and glistening in the sunlight, surrounded by prim and beautiful gardens watched over by sylvan deities in marble. On the broad terrace a fountain plashed, and lower down a beautifully-wooded park stretched out. Over the stone gateway leading into the park were the words “Château Bernard.”

The first time Toni saw this was when he was on his way to the midday performance in the town of Beaupré. He stopped, and the meaning of that name flashed into his mind in a second. Little Lucie, that charming little fairy whom Paul Verney loved so much, and of whom he had confided, blushingly and stumblingly, some things to Toni in those far-off days at Bienville, seven years before, when he and Paul had sat cuddled together on the abutment of the bridge,—the sight of the name “Château Bernard” brought all this back to Toni.

It was a beautiful, bright spring morning, like those mornings at Bienville, except that to Toni the sun never shone so brightly anywhere as it had shone at Bienville. He stopped and gazed long at the château, his black eyes as soft and sparkling as ever they had been, although now he was a man grown. But there was an eternal boyishness about him of which he could no more get rid than he could cease to be Toni. There had not been a day in all the years since he left Bienville that he had not thought of Paul Verney, and thinking of Paul would naturally bring to his mind the beautiful little Lucie who was like a dream maiden to him—not at all like Denise, who was to him a substantial though charming creature. He reckoned that Lucie must be now twenty, and Paul must be a sublieutenant.