In spite of his two hours' work every day with Captain Ravenel, Paul
found plenty of opportunity still to be with Toni. They maintained
their attitude of confidence toward each other as regarded their
different lady-loves, and about this time Toni confessed to Paul that
strange and thorough revolution that had taken place in his nature, by
which he had, for the first time in his life, given to another person
something which he might have gobbled up himself, in giving Denise
nearly all of his two sticks of candy. Paul commended this highly in
Toni, and said to him:
"Boys should always give girls the preference in things like that. My
father always gives my mother all the chicken livers--that is the way
with gentlemen. But, Toni," added Paul frankly and seriously, "I am
afraid you are not a gentleman, and never will be one."
"No, indeed," answered Toni, "I am no gentleman--I don't want to be a
gentleman--I am only Toni. But I like Denise almost as much as you do
Mademoiselle Lucie. At first, I meant to marry Denise just because her
aunt keeps a pastry shop, but now"--here Toni expanded his chest, and
looked hard at Paul--"but now, I believe, that is, I almost believe, I
could marry Denise even if her aunt didn't keep a pastry shop. You see,
Denise is so very clean, and I like clean little girls."
Toni, at that moment, had gathered on his person all the dirt possible,
in spite of the earnest efforts of Madame Marcel in a contrary
direction. His hands were grimy, there was a smudge on his nose, and
his blue overalls, which had been clean that very morning, were all mud
and tatters. A more disreputable-looking boy than Toni did not exist in
Bienville. Paul, realizing the incongruity between Toni's sentiments
and his appearance, burst out laughing, but Toni did not mind being
laughed at, and grinned himself in sympathy.
"I know I am dirty," he said, "but I don't mind--I am no gentleman."
Paul's holidays were to end in September, and the Verneys, out of
good-will to Captain Ravenel, and after much serious cogitation,
invited Captain and Madame Ravenel to drink tea with them one
afternoon in their garden. It was a small thing, apparently, this
drinking tea with the advocate and his wife, who were neither rich nor
important people in Bienville, but it meant the rehabilitation of the
Ravenels. In these years of seclusion, both of them had grown timid,
and Sophie rather shrank from appearing once more in that world in
which she had shone so beautifully; but Ravenel, through the point of
view of a man of sense, desired Sophie to go, and his will was law with
her.
So, on the afternoon before Paul left, the Ravenels went over, and
in the little arbor in the Verneys' garden had tea together. Paul
made one of the party, and also Toni, unseen by anybody except Paul.
There was a hole in the hedge, which was close to the summer-house,
and outside that hole Toni crouched. At one or two points in the
banquet, which consisted of cakes and fruit as well as tea, Paul made
excuses to pass the hedge, and every time he handed through the hole a
cake or some fruit to Toni, and, what was the strangest thing in the
world, Toni ate the cakes himself and put the fruit into a paper bag
which he had brought for the purpose. The third and last time, when
Paul surreptitiously handed a couple of figs through the hole, Toni
held up the bag and whispered, "For Denise." Paul nearly dropped with
astonishment.
But this was not the only surprise of the afternoon. The summer-house
was near the open iron gate of the garden, and as the grown people were
sitting, quietly chatting and drinking their tea, Colonel Duquesne
passed by, and, stopping in front of the gate, tried to light his
cigar, but used up the last match in his match-box without being able
to do it. Then Monsieur Verney, who was the soul of good-will and
hospitality, taking from the table some of the matches Madame Verney
used for her tea-kettle, walked to the gate and offered them to Colonel
Duquesne. There was a breeze stirring, enough to make it difficult
to light a cigar out of doors, and Monsieur Verney invited Colonel
Duquesne to come into the summer-house. The colonel, looking in and
seeing Madame Verney smiling and bowing, and the Ravenels sitting
there, accepted Monsieur Verney's invitation and went in. Walking up,
he spoke gallantly to Madame Verney, and to Captain and Madame Ravenel,
quite as if he knew nothing about that past which had wrecked their
lives. He did more: when Madame Verney pressed him to accept a cup of
tea, he sat down at the tea-table, and made himself most agreeable,
addressing Captain Ravenel without effusion, but quite as an old
comrade in arms.
Such a thing neither of the Ravenels had ever hoped or looked for,
and the Verneys, who were the best-hearted people in the world, were
delighted at the success of their invitation.
Colonel Duquesne sat for half an hour and, at last lighting his cigar,
he departed. As he went down the street, he shook his gray head and
said to himself:
"If I had a wife or a daughter, what a wigging I should get when I go
home!"
The next day, Paul was to go back to school, and early in the morning
he and Toni had their last interview in the little cranny on the
bridge. It was a beautiful, bright September morning, but both boys
were rather low in spirits. No boy that ever lived, not even so
excellent a one as Paul Verney, goes back to school with a light heart.
But Paul made the best of it. Toni was depressed at the thought of
being reduced again to the society of Hermann as the only person who
could understand and reply to his talk; for although Jacques and the
horses were equally as intelligent as Hermann, they were not so
responsive.
[Illustration: "Had their last interview in the little cranny on the
bridge."]
"And now, Toni," Paul urged, "pray try and learn to play the violin or
do something to make a living."
Toni shook his head dolefully.
"I don't like making a living, and besides, if I marry Denise, what's
the use? Denise will take care of me--I know she will. She and my
mother will make a living for me."
Paul felt perfectly hopeless at this speech of Toni's--there was no
doing anything with him. Paul returned to school and Toni went back to
his music lessons, but with no better success than before. He was now
quite twelve years old, and he had become a public scandal in the town
of Bienville. Even old Marie, who sat by the monument, scolded him for
his idleness. At last, Madame Marcel, actuated by the press of public
opinion, was forced to put Toni to work. As a great favor, Clery, the
tailor, took Toni on trial, with a view to making him a professor of
the sartorial art. Clery's two sons, aged twelve and fourteen, could
already make, each, a respectable pair of trousers, and Madame Marcel,
tearfully laying aside her ambitions, implored Clery to make Toni a
replica of the Clery boys.
Toni was frightened half to death at the prospect of going into a
tailor's shop, and his mother had literally to drag him there on the
morning when he was to be inducted into his new profession. The shop
was a small room, where two or three sewing-machines were perpetually
going. There sat Clery and his two boys at work.
For the first week or two, Toni was employed in carrying parcels, which
he found onerous enough. He had a way, however, of taking an hour to
do an errand which ought only to have taken him ten minutes, and when
during that first week in the tailor's shop he was intrusted with a
pair of Captain Ravenel's well-worn trousers which had been pressed and
cleaned, and it took him fifty-seven minutes to carry them from Clery's
shop to the Ravenels' door, which was exactly four minutes away, Clery
said that would never do.
As for Toni, these long absences from the shop meant getting back to
his old haunts, and to the things he was not afraid of--the bridge by
the river, and the sight of a cavalry troop going out for exercise, or
a conversation with Jacques by way of encouragement. He had a feeling
of terror when he sat in the shop with the tailor's eye fixed on him,
and the two boys, industriously sewing away on the sewing-machine, and
eying him with contempt. He sat there, this wild and reckless Toni,
who was thought to fear neither God, nor man, nor beast, the most
frightened little boy imaginable. He could not have told, to save his
life, what he was afraid of, but he knew that he was afraid--so much
so that he stayed with Clery a whole year. In that time he learned
absolutely nothing except to carry parcels, which he knew before.
If it had not been for the regard that Clery had for Madame Marcel, he
would not have kept Toni a fortnight. As it was, he found it impossible
to teach Toni the smallest thing about the tailoring trade. He could
not operate a sewing-machine to save his life, nor learn to sew a
stitch or to handle a smoothing-iron. Clery, who knew what a problem it
was, thought long and anxiously over this problem of Madame Marcel's.
All through the winter days, he kept his eye on Toni, hoping that the
boy might learn something; but when the leaves came in the spring, Toni
knew no more about tailoring than he did when the autumn winds swept
the trees bare.
It was then May, and Toni was finding the confinement of the shop
almost more than his soul could bear. It seemed to him impossible that
such a life should continue, away from the fresh air, away from the
damp, sweet-smelling earth, away from horses and troopers. He could not
even see Denise, for Clery had taught him one thing, and that was not
to loiter by the wayside, and sometimes a whole week would pass without
his having a word with the lady of his love.
And Denise, with the clairvoyance of childhood, saw, in the troubled
depths of Toni's black eyes, that he was soul-sick, and in her tender
heart she felt sorry for him. Sometimes she would lie in wait for Toni
under the branches of the acacia tree, and hand him out a tart or a
piece of ginger bread, but even this had no taste in Toni's mouth--life
was so dark and drear to him. How he longed for those happy days when
he scraped and talked in Hermann's garret, or those still better days,
when there was no thought of work, and he could spend the whole day, if
he liked, lying on his stomach on the parapet of the bridge and watch
the silvery backs of the fishes as they tumbled about in the rippling
water! It seemed to him as if Denise was the only soul in the world
who understood and pitied him. Even his mother, who he had hoped would
let him live in idleness all his days, had done this strange and cruel
thing of trying to make him work. Paul Verney wished him to work, Clery
made him work, the Clery boys openly despised him for not working.
Only Denise, of everybody in the wide world, knew what Toni himself
knew--that he was never meant to work.