Toni returned to the barracks confident of victory, and was not at all surprised when, at five o’clock, he met his mother and the sergeant and Denise at the tram station, to find that Mademoiselle Duval had a raging headache and was compelled to remain at home. The sergeant, too, rather liked the arrangement, except that he was afraid that Denise would not be sufficiently polite to Toni. So, on their way to the rendezvous he had warned her.
“Now, Denise,” he said, “I won’t have you running away from Toni and treating him like a dog before his mother this afternoon. You have got to be civil to him.”
“Yes, papa,” answered Denise, with the air of a martyr, “I suppose I shall have to be civil to him before his mother, but Toni really bores me dreadfully.” Oh! Denise, what a story-teller you are!
When they got on the tram it was so crowded that it was impossible for the party to get seats together, so Denise, making a pretty grimace on the sly at her father, went and sat with Toni quite at the end of the car, and out of sight of her father and Toni’s mother, and her first speech, whispered softly in his ear, was:
“Oh, Toni, how nice it is to be together like this.”
Toni answered not one word, but he looked at Denise with his whole soul shining out of his lustrous black eyes, and Denise thought him the finest young soldier in the world.
It was a warm September afternoon, and their road lay through the beautiful valley of the Seine. There were many family parties on the tram, and when they reached the Golden Lion the large garden and even the orchard beyond were full of tables at which people were eating and drinking. There were plenty of soldiers about, and some of Toni’s comrades would have been very much pleased at an introduction to the sergeant’s pretty daughter, but the sergeant would not oblige them, neither would Toni. The party seated themselves at a table under an acacia tree, which reminded Toni and Denise of that other acacia tree at Bienville under which they had sat and munched and loved in their childhood. Madame Marcel unpacked their lunch basket and they ordered wine and tea from the inn and proceeded to enjoy themselves. Under the combined influence of wine and woman the sergeant grew positively lover-like, and, when their tea was over and they got up to walk about the garden, he very soon managed to have Madame Marcel to himself. He was quite unconscious of being assisted in his manœuvers by Toni and Denise and Madame herself, who had a very good mind to give Toni all possible chances with Denise and her ten thousand francs. So presently Toni found himself alone with Denise in a little nook in the orchard, behind a great clump of dwarf plum trees. The soft light of evening was about them, the air was hushed and the stillness was only broken by the faint and distant sounds of merriment. All the world seemed fair and beautiful and peaceful, and the fairest thing of all to Toni was the blue heaven of Denise’s eyes. She wore a pretty blue gown, and a jaunty black hat upon her blond hair. Her eyes, which were as blue as her gown, were usually downcast, but were now upturned to Toni quite frankly. She had loved Toni as long as he had loved her—indeed, the world without Toni had seemed to her quite an impossible place. He said softly to her:
“Denise, in all those seven years that I did not see you did you ever think of me?”
“Yes,” replied Denise. She said this with a simple sincerity that went to Toni’s heart.
“You know every time I wrote to my mother I always put the most important line at the bottom—my love to D. She knew what I meant.”
“Yes,” said Denise, with a little gasp of pleasure, “she always gave me your message.”
“I always felt that sometime or other we should be Denise and Toni as we had been when you were a dear little girl and I was a dirty bad little boy. And Denise, I swear to you, whatever I have done wrong in my life, I have been true to you. I never told any other girl that I loved her, because I never loved any other girl. I took my fling with them, but in every girl I ever saw in my life it seemed to me that I saw something of you, Denise. You need not think that women in the circus are bad just because they are in the circus. There are plenty of them that are just as good in their way as—as Mademoiselle Duval is in hers. They don’t take a religious newspaper, but they stand by each other in their troubles. They help with each other’s children and when a woman’s husband gives her a black eye all the other women fly at him and help to abuse him. Oh, Denise, I think women are very good, and the worst of them is too good for the best of men. Denise, I am not half good enough for you, but I want you to marry me as soon as my time is up. I can get off with one year’s service if I escape punishments, and that I have done and mean to do, for your sake, Denise.” He took Denise’s hand in his—their eyes met and then their lips. A bird in the plum tree above began cooing softly to its mate. The bird seemed, like Toni and Denise, to think the earth was Heaven.
Their love-making was very simple, as were their natures and their lives; they were only a private soldier and a sergeant’s daughter, but they loved each other well and asked nothing better of life than love.
Meanwhile things had not been progressing so favorably with Sergeant Duval and Madame Marcel. The sergeant had been a little too vigorous in his wooing and Madame Marcel, who simply had Toni’s advantage in view, felt called on to repress her lover. The sergeant, who had a big voice in his big frame, had made his wishes concerning his future with Madame Marcel quite audible to all the people surrounding them. Everybody had heard him say:
“Now, Madame, you should think of changing your condition, really. The cares of your shop are too many for you—a great deal too many.”
“I have managed them for the past twenty years,” replied Madame Marcel, who thought herself better qualified to keep a candy shop than the sergeant was, and who understood perfectly what the sergeant was driving at.
“True,” said the sergeant, floundering a little, “but a woman should not stand alone—she is not able to do it—that’s the truth. She is being taken advantage of at every turn.”
“And sometimes,” calmly responded Madame Marcel, “the advantage is on her side. I have managed, during my twenty years of widowhood to accumulate a competence. Toni will not be badly off when I die, and when he marries I mean to make him an allowance equal to the income from his wife’s dowry.”
This seemed sinful waste to the sergeant, who thought Toni did not deserve such generosity. That superfluity of which Madame Marcel spoke he considered had much better be expended on a worthy veteran who had served his country for more than thirty years, and who would like extremely to end his days in affluence. But it was plain that Madame Marcel had the best of him in the argument that a woman could not take care of herself, so the sergeant changed his tactics.
“But it would be so much more comfortable for you, Madame, to have a protector—a husband I mean. Toni will get married and go off, and that will be the end of him.” The sergeant snapped his fingers. “But a kind and affectionate husband, a man of steady habits—”
“Most men of bad habits are very steady in those habits,” replied Madame Marcel. She was not a satirist and her remark was the more telling because of her sincerity.
“You are right, Madame, but I mean a man of good habits, a man who doesn’t spend most of his time at the wine shops, who has some domestic virtues. I believe, Madame, that the non-commissioned officers in the French army are the finest body of men in the world for domestic life. I never knew a sergeant, or a corporal either for that matter, who was not a good husband.”
“Then I couldn’t go amiss if I should take any one of them,” answered Madame Marcel demurely. “There is a very nice man, a corporal lately retired, who has bought out the cigar shop near me at Bienville. Gossip has linked our names together, but I had not thought of marrying him.”
“By no means should you marry him,” cried the sergeant, realizing that he had been too general in his commendations. “He is probably after your shop and after that nice little competence, which, I judge from your words, you have accumulated. No, Madame, you could aspire to a sergeant—it would be sinful to throw yourself away on a corporal.”
Madame Marcel smiled mysteriously, but a good many of the listeners smiled quite openly, particularly a party of soldiers near them. One of them behind Madame Marcel’s back undertook to enact the part of Madame Marcel while his comrade, mimicking every action of the sergeant’s, managed to convulse all who observed him as he followed this love scene. The sergeant folded his arms, twirled his dyed mustaches, and reflected. He had not made a single breach in the defense as yet. He had heard that women were easily made jealous, so he concluded to try it as a ruse de guerre.
“For my part,” he said, “I have concluded at the end of my present term of enlistment to marry and settle down. I may say to you, Madame, in strict confidence, that I have considered the charms of Mademoiselle Dumont, the dressmaker, whose establishment is a short way from yours, Madame, at Bienville. She is a most estimable woman, of a suitable age, and has given me some marks of encouragement—in fact, I believe it was generally thought among our acquaintances, at the time of my last visit to Bienville, that I should have proposed to Mademoiselle Dumont before I left. My attentions, I admit, had been somewhat compromising. I had sent her a large basket of figs, and, one day, when I went fishing, I also sent her my whole catch, besides having taken her and her sister on an excursion into the country, and having entertained them handsomely. I thought, when I saw Mademoiselle Dumont for the last time, that she seemed a little piqued, and I have reason to know that she reckons herself rather ill-treated by me; but it is by no means unlikely that on my return next summer I shall offer my hand to Mademoiselle Dumont.”
“Perhaps you have not heard,” remarked Madame Marcel sweetly, “that Mademoiselle Dumont was married about two months ago to Hermann, the Swiss violinist, who taught Toni to play the violin.”
This was a facer for the sergeant, but he carried it off better than could be expected.
“So she married Hermann, the fiddler?—a Swiss fiddler! Then she was more chagrined than I supposed. I suspected she would do something rash if I went away without proposing. Poor, poor creature! As for Hermann’s teaching your Toni to play the violin, why Madame, Toni could no more play the fiddle than he can command the regiment. Very well! Mademoiselle Dumont would have been no match for a sergeant. I am glad now that I did not propose to her, as she certainly expected me to do. She is much better matched with a Swiss fiddler than with a sergeant who has seen service for more than thirty years.”
The sergeant eyed Madame Marcel closely. Was it possible that this demure and correct person, in her neat black bonnet and graceful mantle, was poking fun at him?—Sergeant Duval, of the dragoons! But Madame Marcel looked so innocent that it was impossible to fathom her; and just then Toni and Denise appeared on the scene. The instant Madame Marcel’s maternal eye fell upon Toni, she knew that something had happened, and that that something was good. And presently it was time to go home, and they all journeyed back to Beaupré. They walked to their lodgings together through the soft purple twilight of September. Toni went with his mother to her room, and, taking her in his arms, poured out his heart to her. His mother kissed him and shed a few tears as mothers will do under those circumstances. And then Toni had to run for the barracks as hard as he could.
About nine o’clock, when he was through with his stable work and was standing in the barrack square, he saw Paul Verney passing by. Toni stood at attention, with such a look on his face that Paul Verney stopped and spoke to him.
“What do you want, mon enfant?” he said, after that pleasant form of address with which the officers speak to their soldiers.
“To see you, sir, in private, for a little while,” answered Toni under his breath.
“Very well, then, come to my quarters at half-past nine.”
“Was it possible that this demure and correct person ... was poking fun at him?”
So at half-past nine Toni presented himself at Paul’s quarters. It never seemed to them to be at all strange that Paul should be sitting at his ease, smoking, in the chair before his writing-desk, while Toni stood stiffly at attention. The sympathy which bound them was too close for those trifling distinctions to count, and between the officer sitting and the soldier standing it was still Paul and Toni in private. Paul was smoking now, and on his desk, under the green-shaded lamp, lay a pretty little note. He was composing an answer to it with as much care and precision as if it were a report to the Minister of War. The light of the lamp fell on his blond head and fairish complexion.
As Paul looked at Toni, he could not but think how Toni was improved by being made into a soldier. He was certainly the best looking young fellow in Paul’s troop.
“Well, Toni,” said Paul, “out with it. I saw you on the tram to-day with Denise.”
Toni turned red under his tan and sunburn. His mouth came open in a delighted grin, showing every one of the large, white teeth. He brought his straight, black brows together and said, in that tone of intimacy which carried the officer and the soldier back to the days when they belonged to the great democracy of boys and huddled together in the nook on the old bridge at Bienville:
“Denise loves me.” He did not think it necessary to say how much he loved Denise. Paul rose, and, putting both hands on Toni’s shoulders, gave him a vigorous shake of affection.
“I am deuced glad to hear it,” he said. “If you don’t behave yourself to that sweet girl after you are married I promise you the handsomest drubbing you ever had in your life. What do you think the sergeant will say?”
“God knows!” said Toni, dolefully shaking his head. “I think he wants to marry my mother, or marry the shop, that is. You see his term is up, sir, next year. But I don’t think my mother wants to marry him or anybody else.”
“But would it be a good thing if the sergeant thought it would help his chances with your mother if he agreed to let you have Denise?” asked Paul, who was usually the soul of candor, but who, like all men, was Machiavellian in love matters.
“That it would, sir,” answered Toni.
“Very well,” said Paul, grinning sympathetically at Toni, “I shall speak to the sergeant myself about you. Unluckily the sergeant knows us both too well—he used to see us when we were boys together at Bienville. Still, you have been a good soldier, Toni, and I don’t think anything can be said against you.”
“Except—except—” here Toni’s eyes grew wide and bright with fear, “except about Nicolas and Pierre.”
“I hope we shall never see or hear anything more of those two rapscallions again,” replied Paul, “and, at all events, it is not worth while to say anything about that part of your life. Toni, you are, in some respects, the greatest coward I ever saw.”
“I know,” answered Toni frankly. “I always was, you remember. I can’t help it. But, at least, I am not afraid of horses, nor of guns, nor of fighting, if an officer will only stand by me and look at me very hard.”
Paul sat down at the desk and fingered the little note to which he was composing a reply. He began to reflect how much better off Toni was than himself. Toni was not held back from the girl of his choice by any consciousness of inequality in worldly position, although a girl of Denise’s beauty, merit and fortune might certainly look higher than Toni. But Lucie Bernard—when Paul thought of her millions of francs, her beauty, and then saw himself, a sublieutenant of dragoons, the son of a middle-class advocate at Bienville, his heart was like lead in his breast.
“Toni,” said he presently, “do you remember how Mademoiselle Lucie Bernard used to look in the old days at Bienville?”
“Perfectly,” cried Toni. “Don’t I remember the day that she talked with you in the park when I showed you where she was, and when Madame Ravenel fainted, didn’t I tell you so you could bring the water in your cap? Oh, I remember Mademoiselle Lucie well. She was the prettiest little lady and she is just the same now. I have seen her several times since I have been here and she always smiles and nods at me so sweetly.”
Paul could not confide so frankly in Toni as Toni had confided in him, but, nevertheless, they understood each other without any more words. Paul sat and frowned and looked at his note.
“Ah, Toni,” he said, “this world is full of thorns for a sublieutenant of dragoons without any fortune. You may go now.”
Toni went toward the door but paused, with the knob in his hand. “I think,” he whispered, “you will soon be as happy as I am,” and then he vanished through the door and went clattering down the corridor.