CHAPTER XIX
Toni got back to the barracks, he knew not how, stumbling along through the rain and darkness, and throwing himself on his rough bed lay awake and agonized the whole night through until the bugle call next morning. He could not eat that whole day nor sleep the next night and pined like a woman. During that day he saw Nicolas and Pierre a dozen times at least, and they always flashed him a mocking glance which he understood perfectly well and which gave him a feeling as if a red-hot iron hand were clutching his heart, for Toni was of an imaginative nature.
He did not see Denise that day, and spent another sleepless and horror-stricken night. The next morning it occurred to him, as a means of escaping Denise’s tender and searching eyes, as well as the hateful company of Pierre and Nicolas, that he might possibly sham illness and be sent to the hospital. He did not need to sham, however—he was in a high fever and the surgeon swore at him for not reporting before, so he found a temporary haven of refuge in the hospital. There he spent several days. The doctor, who was a clever young fellow, was a good deal puzzled by the case. He could not make out whether Toni was malingering or not. He evidently wished to be considered ill—at the same time there were indications about him of his being really ill. If he had not had the reputation of being an admirable soldier, the doctor would have suspected Toni had done something wrong and was in hiding, as it were, in the hospital.
The sergeant called to see him and was rather rough with him considering that nothing was the matter with Toni.
“Do you think I would lie here and take all these nasty messes if there were nothing the matter with me?” cried poor Toni.
There was indeed something very serious the matter with him, but it was a kind of suffering which not all the doctor’s instruments and medicines could reach. Denise, with her aunt, called twice to see him, but both times Toni feigned to be asleep as soon as he distinguished their voices, and it was against the rules to disturb him.
A week passed, on the second morning of which he found a long, sharp knife under his pillow, and at the end of that time the doctor turned Toni out of the hospital, much against the latter’s will. He had then to resume his duties, of course, and affect cheerfulness as well as he could. He succeeded rather better in the last respect than might have been expected, and Denise only saw in him the weakness and lassitude which she thought were due to his recent illness.
On the day fortnight after Paul Verney’s wedding, he returned with his bride—the honeymoon of a sublieutenant is inevitably brief. The very next day the practice march was to begin and Toni did not see Paul Verney until the next morning when the troop was forming in the barracks square.