The sergeant’s views on the subject of Toni’s marriage to Denise were very much enlightened that afternoon by Madame Marcel’s requesting an interview with him in her own room. The sergeant arrayed himself in his best uniform, paid a visit to the barber, waxed and dyed his mustaches to the ultimate point, and then presented himself at Madame Marcel’s door. Madame Marcel was the most unsophisticated of women, but this did not mean that she could not play a part, and play it well. Her part was to persuade the sergeant that, after Toni and Denise were married, she herself might become Madame Duval, a thing she had not the slightest idea of doing. So she received the sergeant in the most gracious manner, smiled at him, talked about the happiness of their children, and seemed to think that married life was the only road to real bliss, and that one could not marry too early or too often. The sergeant saw that she had set her heart on the marriage between Toni and Denise and that he would stand no chance whatever of establishing himself in the comfortable back room of Madame Marcel’s shop unless he agreed to the match. So far he was quite correct, but in his further assumption that by agreeing to it he was making good his title to the armed chair which he coveted by the kitchen stove, he was miles out of the way.
The result, however, was the same—that after much running to and fro, and as many legal documents for Denise’s ten thousand francs as for Lucie’s fortune, the matter was arranged; and on the day fortnight that they had made a family party to the Golden Lion and had eaten and drunk in the garden, they made an excursion to the same place to celebrate the betrothal of Toni and Denise. It was too late then to sit out of doors, so they had their little feast in a private room of the Golden Lion with a glowing fire on the hearth. Madame Marcel insisted on being the hostess on this occasion, and ordered a truly gorgeous supper. There was a heart-shaped cake on the table with love birds pecking at orange blossoms, and all the candies were hearts and darts and loves and doves. Everything wore a sort of St. Valentine’s air. Denise, in a beautiful pink silk gown, sat next Toni at the table. There were several of the Duvals’ friends and two or three of Toni’s comrades.
When it was time to drink the bride’s health, Toni went a message out to where Madame Bernard’s carriage stood in the courtyard. Out stepped Paul and Lucie, leaving Madame Bernard in the carriage. When they appeared in the supper-room there was a general commotion. Toni had kept this impending honor a secret from every one, except Denise, and Sergeant Duval was the more impressed by the compliment of Paul Verney’s coming through having it sprung on him as a surprise. Lucie shook hands with Toni, kissed Denise on the cheek, remembered the Sergeant and Mademoiselle Duval and Madame Marcel, bestowed bows and smiles on all present, and, as she always did, brought an atmosphere of kindness and gaiety with her. Paul shook Toni’s hand and pronounced an eulogy upon him, looking gravely into Toni’s eyes at the time, and neither one of them winked. He spoke as if, when Toni’s time was up and he should leave the regiment, he would be as much missed as the colonel himself. Then he proposed the health of the betrothed pair and it was drunk with all honors.
The two pairs of lovers looked at each other—it recalled their childish days at Bienville. How seldom does the course of true love run smooth, and how smoothly had it run for them. Then Lucie and Paul left, having almost persuaded the Duval faction that they had done themselves great honor by securing Toni for Denise.
The next morning it was Paul Verney’s turn at the riding-school, and as he walked along in the crisp autumn air, feeling as if Heaven was around him as well as above him, he came face to face with Toni. Toni’s eyes were wide and dark with terror, his face was pale and he gnawed his mustache furiously. The change since Paul had seen him the night before was enough to shock any one. Toni did not wait to be asked what was the matter, but, coming close to Paul, said in his ear:
“They are here—Pierre and Nicolas—they lay in wait for me when I got back to the barracks last night—they were in the batch of recruits that came in yesterday.”
“What of it?” said Paul, who was not easily shaken.
“They told me that unless I stood by them they would tell all about—those—those things that happened when I was in the circus, and about Count Delorme’s death, and the rest of it. You know, sir, I am as innocent—as innocent—” He pointed upward to a bird that sang and swung upon a bough close by. His speech seemed to fail him. Nicolas and Pierre in a single night had resumed all their old sway over him; he was once more under the dominion of fear.
“They were not conscripted, those two rascals?” said Paul.
“No, they told me that the authorities were hot after them about the Delorme matter. A twenty-franc piece was found which had a mark on it and was traced to Count Delorme. It was the piece which they put in my pocket and which I threw after them. Nothing could actually be discovered against them, but they could not well get out of the way, so they concluded the best thing to do was to enlist in a dragoon regiment, and as they couldn’t get away from this part of the country, they thought it best not to try, and so came here.”
Toni wiped his forehead, on which the big drops stood.
“Toni”—Paul spoke sharply—“be a man. Do you suppose when Denise promised to marry you that she thought she was marrying a poltroon to be scared by a ghost—afraid of a whisk of a rabbit’s tail?”
Toni groaned heavily. The little while that he had been free from fear of his secret made its return seem the more dreadful to him.
“It’s—it’s—it’s a very horrible thing to feel that you have two men at your heels ready to swear that you have been engaged in murder and robbery and arson.”
“But if you have not committed murder and robbery and arson, you have nothing to fear,” replied Paul, speaking sternly. Toni made no answer, but shook his head. Paul then tried persuasion on him, but nothing could lessen Toni’s fear of his two old companions.
Paul went on to the riding-school. Pierre and Nicolas, proud of their accomplishments as riders, were anxious to exhibit their skill. Neither of them was as graceful a rider as Toni though, and Nicolas was beetle-browed and red-headed, while Pierre was a combination of a fox and a monkey. Sergeant Duval was a judge of men, and not all their accomplishments inclined him favorably toward them, nor did he, after a month’s trial, have reason to reverse his opinion, for, from the beginning, two worse soldiers could not be found. They were always under punishment; they either would not or could not learn their duty, and it was a source of regret to their superiors that they would receive so many punishments they would probably be obliged to serve another enlistment. The sergeant did his whole duty in reporting them, and Paul Verney, in whose troop they were, in punishing them. Paul very much hoped that they would reach the limit and have to be sent to Algiers as disciplinaires.
Toni went about like a man in a dream. Part of the time he was the happiest fellow alive, and part of the time the most miserable. In his happiest moments with Denise, he was haunted by a dread of what Nicolas and Pierre might do, and in his paroxysms of fear, when he waked in the night and lay still and trembling amid the snoring troopers around him in the barracks, the thought of Denise comforted him. For Denise found out that there was something the matter with him, and gently chid him for not telling her, and when Toni would not, for indeed he could not, poor frightened fellow that he was, tell her, Denise did not grow petulant, but showed him a tender confidence. There was much more in Denise than mere prettiness and blondness and neatness and coquetry. She was a soldier’s daughter and was not without some of Sergeant Duval’s resolution. So Toni found that with all his grief and anxiety he had the quiet, unspoken and, therefore, more helpful sympathy of the woman he loved. Denise did not worry him with questions—that was much.
The sergeant and all the men in the troop knew of Toni’s former associations in the circus with Nicolas and Pierre, but as neither of the two latter had succeeded in making himself an object of admiration to his comrades, nothing they could say would injure Toni. Still, they maintained their strange power over him. Toni would have liked never to speak to them nor to be seen with them, but when they would come after him he had no capacity of resistance—he would go with them, cursing them, but unable to withstand them.
In the spring he was relieved of some of this. Pierre and Nicolas had taken a special spite against their sublieutenant, Paul Verney, and they had shamefully abused one of his favorite chargers. Paul promptly procured for them two months’ incarceration in the military prison. These were two months of Paradise to Toni. He had in him something of a happy-go-lucky disposition, and although he could not shake off his miserable secret he could put it out of sight for a while. It did not trouble him much in the day, but never failed to visit him at night.
It was known, by that time, that he was to marry Denise when the sergeant should retire on his pension, which would be a year from the coming summer. Like a lover, Toni had protested strongly against this, but, as a matter-of-fact, it did not greatly affect his happiness. He liked playing the part of a lover and reasoned, with true Toni philosophy, that he might well enjoy the present without hungering too much after the future. He saw Denise every day, danced with her three times a week, spent every Sunday when he was off duty with her, and ate, several times a week, most agreeable dishes prepared by Denise’s own hands.
Madame Marcel, meanwhile, had returned to Bienville, but promised to make Toni another visit before long. She left the sergeant far from hopeless, and by enclosing a special package of chocolate in the New Year box which she sent Toni and Denise, gave him great hopes. In fact, under Toni’s able instruction, Madame Marcel was playing the sergeant with great skill and finesse, and that infatuated person never suspected it.
It was a happy time with Paul Verney, too. Like Toni, he was an accepted lover, but his marriage was to come off in June. He had taken a small, pretty house in the town, for although Madame Bernard urged and even commanded that the new married pair should live with her, Paul Verney had a sturdy independence about him. His two thousand francs would pay the rent of his house and his parents, by skimping and screwing in every possible way, managed to scrape up two thousand francs more, without letting Paul know how much it encroached on their narrow income. But Lucie, with her quick American sense, saw through it in an instant and positively refused to let Paul take it under any circumstances.
“Paul,” she said, when the subject was broached between them, “I am willing to play at being poor for your sake and for the looks of the thing, but how absurd it is for us not to enjoy what is ours.”
“What is yours, you mean,” mumbled Paul.
“But yours and ours do not exist between persons who love and understand each other as we do. I wish, from the bottom of my heart, it were yours instead of mine—then, I should not have to be so particular always to say ours.”
So Paul Verney, like other men, had to yield to the inevitable feminine, and although they were to live modestly enough, it was, as Lucie said, mere playing at poverty. It seemed to Paul, in fulfilling his childish romance as Toni had fulfilled his, that they were drawn nearer together even than when they were boys at Bienville. The relation of master and servant, which had always been a fiction of the imagination so to speak, seemed to vanish wholly. Toni was Paul’s humble friend and confidant. When Paul would come home, after dining at the Château Bernard and an evening spent basking in Lucie’s smiles and glances, he would feel as if he were stepping on air, and there Toni would be, standing at the window drawing pictures of Denise in an old copy-book. He would glance with a roguish smile at Paul as he helped him off with his clothes, and say:
“Mademoiselle has been kind to-night, hasn’t she?”
“Yes, she is always kind—the darling,” Paul would reply.
“When she is got up in her velvet gown and her big silk mantle, and her bonnet with plumes on it, she always reminds me of the general’s charger at a grand parade. And she is about as much to be feared,” said Paul, laughing. “I would rather encounter a dozen Madame Bernards than one Sergeant Duval. I think the sergeant lives for the purpose of catching you tripping—that is to say in the event that your mother doesn’t marry him.”
“Women are the oddest creatures in the world,” Toni said solemnly, blinking his eyes. “There’s my mother. She has been a widow for twenty years and, if you believe me, the way she is fooling the sergeant would put a sixteen-year-old girl to the blush.” Then Toni told about the box of chocolate. “And it will be boxes of chocolate straight along until she gets me married to Denise, and then—pouf!—away will go the sergeant. She would not marry him to save his life. The sergeant is a fine man, too—better than I am, but she loves me best.”
These hours of confidence were not among the least pleasant in the lives of Paul and Toni.