In the spring he was relieved of some of this. Pierre and Nicolas had taken a special spite against their sublieutenant, Paul Verney, and they had shamefully abused one of his favorite chargers. Paul promptly procured for them two months’ incarceration in the military prison. These were two months of Paradise to Toni. He had in him something of a happy-go-lucky disposition, and although he could not shake off his miserable secret he could put it out of sight for a while. It did not trouble him much in the day, but never failed to visit him at night.
It was known, by that time, that he was to marry Denise when the sergeant should retire on his pension, which would be a year from the coming summer. Like a lover, Toni had protested strongly against this, but, as a matter-of-fact, it did not greatly affect his happiness. He liked playing the part of a lover and reasoned, with true Toni philosophy, that he might well enjoy the present without hungering too much after the future. He saw Denise every day, danced with her three times a week, spent every Sunday when he was off duty with her, and ate, several times a week, most agreeable dishes prepared by Denise’s own hands.
Madame Marcel, meanwhile, had returned to Bienville, but promised to make Toni another visit before long. She left the sergeant far from hopeless, and by enclosing a special package of chocolate in the New Year box which she sent Toni and Denise, gave him great hopes. In fact, under Toni’s able instruction, Madame Marcel was playing the sergeant with great skill and finesse, and that infatuated person never suspected it.
It was a happy time with Paul Verney, too. Like Toni, he was an accepted lover, but his marriage was to come off in June. He had taken a small, pretty house in the town, for although Madame Bernard urged and even commanded that the new married pair should live with her, Paul Verney had a sturdy independence about him. His two thousand francs would pay the rent of his house and his parents, by skimping and screwing in every possible way, managed to scrape up two thousand francs more, without letting Paul know how much it encroached on their narrow income. But Lucie, with her quick American sense, saw through it in an instant and positively refused to let Paul take it under any circumstances.
“Paul,” she said, when the subject was broached between them, “I am willing to play at being poor for your sake and for the looks of the thing, but how absurd it is for us not to enjoy what is ours.”
“What is yours, you mean,” mumbled Paul.
“But yours and ours do not exist between persons who love and understand each other as we do. I wish, from the bottom of my heart, it were yours instead of mine—then, I should not have to be so particular always to say ours.”
So Paul Verney, like other men, had to yield to the inevitable feminine, and although they were to live modestly enough, it was, as Lucie said, mere playing at poverty. It seemed to Paul, in fulfilling his childish romance as Toni had fulfilled his, that they were drawn nearer together even than when they were boys at Bienville. The relation of master and servant, which had always been a fiction of the imagination so to speak, seemed to vanish wholly. Toni was Paul’s humble friend and confidant. When Paul would come home, after dining at the Château Bernard and an evening spent basking in Lucie’s smiles and glances, he would feel as if he were stepping on air, and there Toni would be, standing at the window drawing pictures of Denise in an old copy-book. He would glance with a roguish smile at Paul as he helped him off with his clothes, and say:
“Mademoiselle has been kind to-night, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, she is always kind—the darling,” Paul would reply.