_The_ SECRET _of_
TONI
MOLLY ELLIOT SEAWELL
_Author of
"The Victory," "The Sprightly Romance of Marsac,"
"The Château of Montplaisir," etc._
ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE BREHM
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
NEW YORK MCMVII
COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
_Published February, 1907_
MISS SEAWELL'S BOOKS.
CHÂTEAU OF MONTPLAISIR.
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.25.
THE VICTORY.
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.50.
YOUNG HEROES OF THE NAVY SERIES.
MIDSHIPMAN PAULDING.
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00.
LITTLE JARVIS.
Illustrated. Cloth, $1.00.
PAUL JONES.
Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, $1.00.
DECATUR AND SOMERS.
Illustrated. 8vo. Cloth, $1.00.
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK.
[Illustration: "Standing there ... gnawing his mustache."]
[Page 235.]
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
FACING
PAGE
"Standing there ... gnawing his mustache" _Frontispiece_
"Not daring so much as to lift her eyes to the altar" 50
"Told him to go home to his mother and tell her
that she had an ass for a son" 82
"Giving Denise two whole sticks of candy" 102
"Had their last interview in the little cranny on the
bridge" 114
"Toni took out a single franc" 124
"Doing his specialty, a wonderful vaulting and tumbling
act" 136
"'This is what you took out of the man's pocket'" 146
Lucie 168
"There was a softness, almost a tenderness, in her
look" 176
"Saw that they were playing another game far more
interesting" 194
Denise 198
"The sergeant, got up as if he were on dress parade" 204
"Was it possible that this demure and correct person
... was poking fun at him?" 224
"A corporal was Toni to become" 296
"Seated themselves directly opposite the newly married
pair" 306
"He stopped and peered over the rail of the bridge" 324
THE SECRET OF TONI
CHAPTER I
Toni's name was Antoine Marcel, but he was never called by it but once
in his life, and that was at his baptism, when he was eight days old.
He had a shock of black hair and a snub nose, and the tan and freckles
on his face were an inch thick, but he had a pair of black eyes so soft
and bright and appealing that they might have belonged to one of the
houris of Paradise. His wide mouth was full of sharp, white teeth, and
when he smiled, which was very often, his smile began with his black
eyes and ended with his white teeth.
At ten years of age Toni was a complete man of the world--of his world,
that is. This consisted of a gay, sunny little old garrison town,
Bienville by name, in the south of France.
He had his friends, his foes, his lady-love, and also he had arranged
his plan of life. He knew himself to be the most fortunate person in
all Bienville. In the first place, his mother, Madame Marcel, kept
the only candy shop in the town, and Toni, being the only child of his
mother, and she a widow, enjoyed all the advantages of this envied
position. He had no father such as other boys had--Paul Verney, for
example, the advocate's son--to make him go to school when he would
rather lie on his stomach in the meadow down by the river, and watch
the butterflies dancing in the sun and the foolish bumblebees stumbling
like drunkards among the clover blossoms.
Paul Verney was his best friend,--that is, except Jacques. Toni, owing
to his exceptional position, as the only son of the house of Marcel,
candy manufacturer, would have had no lack of friends among boys of
his own age, but he was afraid of other boys, except Paul Verney.
This was pure cowardice on Toni's part, because, although short for
his age, he was well built and had as good legs and arms and was as
well able to take care of himself as any boy in Bienville. Paul Verney
was a pink-cheeked, clean, well set up boy two years older than Toni,
and as industrious as Toni was idle, as anxious to learn as Toni was
determined not to learn, as honest with his father, the lawyer, as
Toni was unscrupulous with his mother about the amount of candy he
consumed, and as full of quiet courage with other boys as Toni was an
arrant and shameless poltroon about some things. Toni was classed as a
bad boy and Paul Verney as a good boy, yet the two formed one of those
strange kinships of the soul which are stronger than blood ties and
last as long as life itself.
Toni, being of a shrewd and discerning mind, realized that Paul Verney
would have loved him just as much if Madame Marcel had not kept a candy
shop, and this differentiated him from all the other boys in Bienville,
and although Paul often severely reprobated Toni, and occasionally gave
him kicks and cuffs, which Toni could have resented but did not, he had
no fear whatever of Paul.
Toni's other friend, Jacques, was a soldier. Jacques was about three
inches high and was made of tin. He had once been a very smart soldier,
with red trousers and an imposing shako, and a musket as big as
himself, but the paint had been worn off the trousers and shako long
ago; and as for the musket, only the butt remained. Jacques lived in
Toni's pocket and he was even more intimate with him than with Paul
Verney. There were seasons when Paul Verney's kicks and cuffs caused a
temporary estrangement from him on Toni's part, but there was never any
estrangement between Toni and Jacques. Jacques never remonstrated with
Toni, never contradicted him, never wanted any share of the candy which
Toni abstracted under his mother's nose and ran down in the meadow to
munch. There were some things Toni could say to Jacques that he could
not say to any human being in the world, not even to Paul Verney, and
Jacques never showed the least surprise or disgust. It is a great thing
to have a perfectly complaisant, unvarying friend always close to one,
and such was Jacques to Toni.
Toni had heard something about the war which occurred a long time ago,
when the soldiers went a great way off from Bienville to a place called
Russia, where it was very cold. In Toni's mind, Jacques had been to
that place, and that was where he lost the red paint off his trousers,
and the black paint off his shako, and the barrel of his musket. Toni
had a way of talking to Jacques, and imagined that Jacques talked
back to him, a notion which, when Toni repeated what Jacques had said
to him, Paul Verney thought quite ridiculous. Jacques told Toni long
stories about that cold place called Russia. Toni knew that there was
another place, very hot, called Algeria, and Jacques had been there,
too. Jacques had been everywhere that the soldiers had been, and he
told Toni long tales about these places in the summer nights, when
Toni was in his little bed under the roof, with the stars peeping
in roguishly at the window, and Madame Marcel's tongue and knitting
needles clacking steadily down stairs at the open door of the shop. And
on winter days, when Toni left home for school and changed his mind and
went snow-balling instead, Jacques encouraged him by telling him that
it was very like Russia.
Toni also found another use for Jacques. When he wished to say things
which his mother occasionally and properly cuffed him for, he could
talk it all out with Jacques. This seemed supremely absurd to Paul
Verney and the other boys in the neighborhood, notably the five sons
of Clery, the tailor, who jeered at Toni when they discovered his
relations with Jacques. But Toni was as insensible to ridicule as to
reproof. The only thing that really moved him was when his mother had
rheumatism and her knees swelled. Then Toni would cry as if his heart
would break, the big tears running down his dirty face as he sobbed
and buried his fists in his hair, and would not be comforted, even
though his mother could sit in her chair by the stove, and stir the
candy kettle, and would give him the kettle to lick, after she had
poured the candy out. But this was never more than once or twice a
year, and the rest of the time Toni was as happy and as free from care
as the birdlings in spring that sang under the linden trees in the park.
Toni had already arranged a marriage of convenience for himself, which
was of the most advantageous description. Across the street from Madame
Marcel's shop was the baking establishment of Mademoiselle Duval, and
Denise, the niece and idol of Mademoiselle Duval, was just two years
younger than Toni and as pretty as a pink and white bonbon--in fact,
she looked not unlike a bonbon. She had very pink cheeks, and very
blue eyes, and a long plait of yellow hair, like the yellow candy of
_mélasse_ which Madame Marcel made every Saturday morning.
Denise was as correct as Toni was incorrect. She always said, "_Oui,
Monsieur_," and "_Non, Madame_," in the sweetest little voice
imaginable, with her eyes cast down and her plump hands crossed before
her. Not a hair of her blond head was ever out of place, and the
blue-checked apron which extended from her neck to her heels was as
speckless as the white muslin frock she wore in church on Sundays. She
was the most obedient of children, and Madame Marcel, when she wept and
scolded Toni for his numerous misdeeds, often told him that she wished
he were only half as good as Denise Duval, who had never disobeyed
her aunt in her life. Toni smiled mysteriously whenever his mother
said this, and chuckled inwardly at something known only to Jacques
and himself, namely, that when he grew to be a man he meant to marry
Denise. What could be better than the combination of a candy shop and a
cook shop and bakery?
And then there were other advantages connected with the match. Many
of the little girls that Toni knew had large and dangerous-looking
fathers, some of them soldiers with fierce mustaches, and these fathers
sometimes kicked and cuffed idle little boys who should have been at
school or at home instead of lying in the meadow or loitering upon the
bench under the acacia tree by Mademoiselle Duval's shop, inhaling the
delicious odors of the bakery kitchen. Denise had a father who was,
indeed, large and dangerous-looking and was a soldier, too; nay, a
sergeant, and had the fiercest mustache Toni had ever seen, but he only
came to Bienville once a year for a few days on his annual leave, and
seemed to Toni a most irrational and singular person. For although he
could, if he wished, have eaten all the cakes in his sister's shop,
Toni never saw him so much as look at one of them.
On this annual reappearance of Sergeant Duval, Toni kept carefully out
of the way. Once when he was hiding under the counter of the shop he
had overheard the sergeant asking Madame Marcel why she did not make
that little rascal of hers go to school, and when Madame Marcel, a
pretty, plump widow of forty, tearfully admitted that she could not, of
herself, manage Toni, the sergeant promptly offered to give Toni a good
thrashing as a favor to Madame Marcel. This, Madame Marcel, in a panic,
declined, and then the sergeant made a proposition still more shocking
to Toni's feelings.
"Then why, Madame," he said gallantly, twirling his mustache, "do you
not marry again? If I were young and handsome enough I should offer
myself, and then, I warrant you, I would make that young rogue of yours
behave himself."
Whether this were an offer or not, Madame Marcel could not determine.
She might have fancied the dashing, fierce-looking sergeant, with
his five medals on his breast, but that proposition to thrash Toni
robbed the proposal of all its charm. And besides that, Madame Marcel,
although she praised Denise, felt a secret jealousy of the little
girl's perfections. Toni, as a rule, was less afraid of soldiers than
any other people, especially if they were cavalrymen, for Toni dearly
loved horses and was not the least cowardly about them, and felt a
secret bond of sympathy between himself and all who had to do with the
cult of the horse.
Bienville had been a place of considerable military consequence, in
the old, far-off days, and still retained evidences of having had ten
thousand troops quartered there in long rows of tumble-down barrack
buildings. But not much remained of this former consequence except the
old barracks, a hideous war monument in the public square, and a very
grim old woman, the widow of a soldier in the Napoleonic Wars. Toni
regarded the monument and old Marie, in her mob cap and spectacles,
sitting proud and stern on a bench in the public square, as belonging
to each other. All the soldiers, and even the officers, saluted old
Marie as they passed--tributes which were received with proud composure.
Everything else in the town of Bienville was gay and cheerful, except
the monument and old Marie. It was now garrisoned by one cavalry
regiment only, and was a depot for horses and cavalry recruits. There
was a big riding-school with a tan-bark floor, where the new recruits
were broken in and taught to ride. It was Toni's delight to crawl in by
the window or the small side door, and, hiding under a pile of horse
furniture in a corner, watch the horses gallop around, their hoofs
beating softly on the tan-bark, their eyes bright and glistening, their
crests up, and their coats shining like satin with much currying at the
hands of brawny troopers.
Toni did not know what it was to be afraid of a horse, and loved
nothing better than to hang about the barracks stables and
riding-school and take cheerfully the cuffs and kicks he got from the
soldiers for being in the way. Especially was this true on Sundays
when he did not have Paul Verney's company, for Paul went to church
obediently, while Toni, after submitting to be washed and dressed
clean, was almost certain to run away, disregarding his mother's
frantic cries after him, and spend the whole morning in the delightful
precincts of the barracks stables. Jacques liked it, too, and told Toni
it reminded him of those glorious old days when his trousers and shako
were new and he carried his musket jauntily, in the long red line that
set out for Russia. So Toni haunted the barracks stables to please
Jacques as well as himself.
One glorious and never-to-be-forgotten day, a good-natured trooper had
hoisted Toni on the back of a steady-going old charger, who knew as
much about teaching recruits to ride as any soldier in the regiment.
The old charger, being offended at finding the small, wriggling object
upon his back, took it into his head, for the first time since his
colthood, to plunge and kick violently, and ended by bolting out of the
barracks yard and making straight across the edge of the town, through
the meadow to the old stone bridge that spanned the river. The trooper,
who had meant to oblige Toni, suddenly realized that the boy was the
only son of his mother and she a widow. Jumping on another horse, he
galloped after Toni, down the stony street, into the green lane and
across the bridge.
The old charger, who was eighteen years old, gave out at the end of the
bridge and came down to a sober trot. He had not, with all his efforts,
got rid of the small, wriggling object on his back. As for Toni, he
had the time of his life. It was the one full draft of riotous joy
that he had tasted. It was better even than licking the candy kettle
on Saturday mornings. The wild flight through the air, as it seemed to
Toni, the snorting breath of the old charger, the delicious sense of
bumping up and down, lifted him into an ecstasy. When the trooper came
up the horse was sedately browsing by the wayside, and Toni, with his
arms clasped around the horse's neck and his black head down on his
mane, was in a little Heaven of his own. The trooper, who had expected
to find Toni lying by the roadside, mangled, was immensely relieved and
swore at him out of pure joy, and, as a reward for not having got his
neck broken, allowed Toni to ride the old charger back into the town.
This was not to be compared with that wild flight through space, that
glorious bumping up and down, that sense of delight in feeling the
horse panting under him; but it was something.
Toni, trotting soberly home, concluded that he would not tell his
mother, but he meant to tell Jacques all about it, and, putting
his hand in his pocket, Jacques was not there! Oh, what agony was
Toni's then! He burst into a fit of weeping, and, rushing back to the
riding-school, crawled around frantically everywhere the troopers
would let him go, searching for his loved and lost Jacques. The story
of his ride had got out by that time and he was not kicked and cuffed
when he searched, with streaming eyes and loud sobs, for his dearly
loved Jacques. But Jacques could not be found, not even along the stone
street, nor by the lanes, nor across the old stone bridge, and the day
grew dark to Toni. He searched all day, and when he went home at night
and told his mother of his loss, Madame Marcel wept, too. It was no
good to promise him a whole company of tin soldiers. They were only tin
soldiers, but Jacques was his friend, his confidant, his other self,
his oversoul. Toni cried himself to sleep that night. It was so lonely
up in the little garret without Jacques! And Toni knew that Jacques
was lonely without him. Toni pictured poor Jacques, alone and forlorn,
lost in the tan-bark, or trampled under foot in the street, or floating
down the darkling river, or perhaps being chewed up by the goats that
browsed on the other side of the bridge. In the middle of the night
Madame Marcel was awakened by Toni's groans and cries.
"Oh, mama, mama!" he cried, "how lonely Jacques must be! What is
he thinking of now? He has no musket to take care of himself. Oh,
mama!"--and then Toni howled again.
The next day Toni was up at dawn searching for his beloved. He searched
all the morning, but he could not find the lost one. When he came home
to dinner at twelve o'clock, he met Paul Verney, and Paul saw by Toni's
woebegone look and tear-stained face that some calamity had befallen
him. Toni had looked forward with triumphant pleasure to telling Paul
about that wild ride on the old horse's back, but he could give it no
thought. Paul was kind and sympathetic and understood Toni's sorrow,
which was of some little comfort to the bereaved one. While the two
boys sat together on the bench under the acacia tree, close to Madame
Marcel's shop, up came little Denise, as neat and pink and white as
ever. One of her hands was closed, and, as she approached Toni, she
said, in the sweetest small voice in the world:
"Toni, is this yours? I found it in the street,"--and, opening her
little hand--oh, joy!--there was Jacques, his shako a little crooked,
one of his legs out of plumb, but it was Jacques. Toni, without a word
of thanks, seized Jacques, and, rushing off, flew to his favorite spot
for meditation--a little corner on one of the abutments of the old
stone bridge. Once there, he kissed Jacques and held him to his breast,
and told him of the heart-breaking search made for him, and Jacques,
as usual, was silently sympathetic and understood all that Toni had
suffered.
Meanwhile Paul Verney, ashamed for Toni's want of manners in not
thanking Denise and all unaware of the great wave of gratitude that was
surging through Toni's whole being, went into the shop and told Madame
Marcel of Toni's good fortune. Madame Marcel was so overjoyed that she
not only invited Paul to help himself to whatever he wanted in the way
of sweets, but ran out and, catching Denise in her arms, kissed her
and brought her into the shop and invited her, as she had invited Paul
Verney, to select what she wished. Denise, with characteristic modesty,
took two small sticks of candy, but Madame Marcel gave her, as well as
Paul, a large bag of very beautiful bonbons.
It was late in the afternoon before Toni appeared, his eyes shining
like the stars that peeped in at his little window, his wide mouth
showing all his white teeth. Madame Marcel took him by the hand, and
they went over with state and ceremony to thank Denise for restoring
the loved and lost Jacques. Toni felt indignant that Mademoiselle
Duval, a tall, thin, elderly, heartless, maiden lady, should laugh
at Jacques when Toni displayed him, and tell Madame Marcel she could
have bought a couple of boxes of tin soldiers for one-half the bonbons
she had given Denise. But Toni had known all the time that very few
grown people know anything about boys, and was simply filled with
contempt for Mademoiselle Duval. She was thin and ugly, too, not round
and plump like his own mother, and had the bad taste to prefer clean,
well-mannered little girls to dirty and greedy boys. Up to that time,
Toni's feelings toward Denise had been purely of a mercenary character,
but from the day she restored Jacques a little seedling sentiment
sprang up in Toni's heart; the great master of all passions had planted
it there. It was something like what he felt for Paul Verney--a sense
of well-being, even of protection, when Denise was near. She had acted
the part of a guardian angel, she had restored Jacques to him, and she
did not seem to mind his dirty face and grimy hands. She acquired a
bewitching habit of dividing with Toni the stale apple tarts her aunt
gave her, and, beckoning to him across the street, she would have him
sit by her on the bench under the acacia tree and always give him at
least two-thirds of the tarts.
A few days after the tragedy of Jacques' loss and return, Sergeant
Duval, Denise's father, appeared for his annual visit to Bienville.
The story of Jacques was told to him, and when he came over to pay his
call of ceremony on Madame Marcel, he was so rude as to twit Toni about
Jacques. Toni, much displeased at this, retired to his usual place of
refuge under the counter, and concluded that when he married Denise he
would contrive to be absent during Sergeant Duval's annual visit.