The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

Denise understood him perfectly, only the sergeant did not in the least understand Denise.

It was on an early autumn afternoon that Toni met his mother in the third-class waiting-room at the station. When he took her in his arms he felt himself a little boy again. Madame Marcel was not much changed, except that her hair, of a satin blackness like Toni’s when he had last seen her, was now amply streaked with gray.

“Mama, Mama!” cried Toni, kissing her, while the big tears ran down his cheeks, “your hair is gray and it is I who have done it.”

“No, no, Toni,” cried Madame Marcel, who was kissing him all over his face, and, who, like most mothers, was unwilling to admit that the prodigal had been at fault, “your mother is growing old, my son; that is it.”

She was still handsome, though, and very well dressed in her black bonnet and silk mantle, and looked quite the lady. Toni felt proud of her as he escorted her through the street, carrying her bags and parcels on his arm; and Madame Marcel felt proud of her handsome young soldier with his trim uniform, for Toni, under the guidance and recommendation of his corporal, had developed into a model of soldierly smartness in dress. Toni showed his mother up stairs into the neat room he had engaged for her, and Madame Marcel stowed away the provisions she had brought for herself and Toni, being a thoughtful soul. Then Toni sat in his mother’s lap, as he had done when he was a little boy, and told her everything that had happened to him, except about Nicolas and Pierre. He was trying to oust those two villains from his mind and to shut the door on that terrible secret that he shared with them. He told his mother about Denise and Mademoiselle Duval; and Madame Marcel, knowing Denise to be the most correct of young girls, with ten thousand francs as her fortune, rejoiced that Toni had fallen in love with her, for it was clearly impossible that Denise, or any other girl, could resist her Toni, now that he was clean and was doing his duty.

After a while, a tap came at the door, and when Toni opened it, there stood the sergeant, got up as if he were on dress parade under the eye of the general himself, his mustaches beautifully waxed, not only waxed but flagrantly dyed a shining black. He greeted Madame Marcel with effusion, and then said:

“I came to request that Madame Marcel will have supper with us to-night. She has not yet made her arrangements, perhaps, and my sister and my daughter will be most pleased. I am sorry, Toni, that I can not ask you, but you are due at the barracks.”

“The sergeant, got up as if he were on dress parade.”

It struck Toni that this was a scheme for getting him out of the way. He saw something in the sergeant’s eye which indicated a very deep interest in Madame Marcel, and then recollection came surging over Toni of the proposition which the sergeant had made some few years before, to marry Madame Marcel for the purpose of thrashing the little boy who hid trembling under the counter. Toni was too big to thrash now, but the sergeant always appeared to him to be about nine feet high. Toni did not approve of the match in the concrete, but in the abstract, as the sergeant’s advances to Madame Marcel might result to the advantage of Toni and Denise, Toni determined to encourage him. He felt sure that his mother, like most mothers, was more in love with him than with any other man, and would hardly dare jilt him for the finest sergeant in the French army. So Toni, on his way to the barracks, turned over things in his mind, and determined to forward the sergeant’s suit up to a certain point.