The Secret of Toni

by Molly Elliot Seawell

“They were not conscripted, those two rascals?” said Paul.

“No, they told me that the authorities were hot after them about the Delorme matter. A twenty-franc piece was found which had a mark on it and was traced to Count Delorme. It was the piece which they put in my pocket and which I threw after them. Nothing could actually be discovered against them, but they could not well get out of the way, so they concluded the best thing to do was to enlist in a dragoon regiment, and as they couldn’t get away from this part of the country, they thought it best not to try, and so came here.”

Toni wiped his forehead, on which the big drops stood.

“Toni”—Paul spoke sharply—“be a man. Do you suppose when Denise promised to marry you that she thought she was marrying a poltroon to be scared by a ghost—afraid of a whisk of a rabbit’s tail?”

Toni groaned heavily. The little while that he had been free from fear of his secret made its return seem the more dreadful to him.

“It’s—it’s—it’s a very horrible thing to feel that you have two men at your heels ready to swear that you have been engaged in murder and robbery and arson.”

“But if you have not committed murder and robbery and arson, you have nothing to fear,” replied Paul, speaking sternly. Toni made no answer, but shook his head. Paul then tried persuasion on him, but nothing could lessen Toni’s fear of his two old companions.

Paul went on to the riding-school. Pierre and Nicolas, proud of their accomplishments as riders, were anxious to exhibit their skill. Neither of them was as graceful a rider as Toni though, and Nicolas was beetle-browed and red-headed, while Pierre was a combination of a fox and a monkey. Sergeant Duval was a judge of men, and not all their accomplishments inclined him favorably toward them, nor did he, after a month’s trial, have reason to reverse his opinion, for, from the beginning, two worse soldiers could not be found. They were always under punishment; they either would not or could not learn their duty, and it was a source of regret to their superiors that they would receive so many punishments they would probably be obliged to serve another enlistment. The sergeant did his whole duty in reporting them, and Paul Verney, in whose troop they were, in punishing them. Paul very much hoped that they would reach the limit and have to be sent to Algiers as disciplinaires.

Toni went about like a man in a dream. Part of the time he was the happiest fellow alive, and part of the time the most miserable. In his happiest moments with Denise, he was haunted by a dread of what Nicolas and Pierre might do, and in his paroxysms of fear, when he waked in the night and lay still and trembling amid the snoring troopers around him in the barracks, the thought of Denise comforted him. For Denise found out that there was something the matter with him, and gently chid him for not telling her, and when Toni would not, for indeed he could not, poor frightened fellow that he was, tell her, Denise did not grow petulant, but showed him a tender confidence. There was much more in Denise than mere prettiness and blondness and neatness and coquetry. She was a soldier’s daughter and was not without some of Sergeant Duval’s resolution. So Toni found that with all his grief and anxiety he had the quiet, unspoken and, therefore, more helpful sympathy of the woman he loved. Denise did not worry him with questions—that was much.

The sergeant and all the men in the troop knew of Toni’s former associations in the circus with Nicolas and Pierre, but as neither of the two latter had succeeded in making himself an object of admiration to his comrades, nothing they could say would injure Toni. Still, they maintained their strange power over him. Toni would have liked never to speak to them nor to be seen with them, but when they would come after him he had no capacity of resistance—he would go with them, cursing them, but unable to withstand them.