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!”
“Had their last interview in the little cranny on the bridge.”
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.
“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.