On the afternoon of the day when they returned to Beaupré Paul Verney ordered Toni to report to him at the Château Bernard for a message. Paul and Lucie were having tea together at a little table on the terrace when Toni arrived. Anything more brilliant and sparkling than Lucie’s face could not be imagined. She smiled charmingly on Toni, inquired after Denise and sent word to her to come to the château. Paul looked as cheerful and composed as ever, and said to Lucie in quite a matter-of-fact, husbandlike manner:
“I have some business to attend to, so I must ask you to excuse me.”
Lucie had found out this early in her married life, that when Paul had business to attend to she must vanish, which she did promptly. Then Paul, lighting his cigar gaily, said to Toni, standing at attention, the picture of dejection:
“Well, Toni, I think I have settled those two fellows. I had a talk with the colonel about them to-day and he says that while we were away on the practice march some of their doings came to light, and that we would be able to send them to Algiers as disciplinaires. There is a batch going off next week, and we shall try to send our friends along with them.”
“How long will they be away?” asked Toni.
“That depends,” replied Paul. “We can only send them for a year as it is—if they keep on as they have been behaving here they may have to spend the rest of their lives in Algiers. But to get them out of the way for the present is good fortune enough. I have told the colonel the whole story about Count Delorme, and what a perfectly abject coward you are, Toni, in many ways, and he agrees with me that we had better not open the whole subject, but just get these two rascals off quietly. So if you can manage to keep from bawling like a baby for the next week and will be only half a man, the thing can be settled.”
“I will try,” said Toni, without making any promise of not bawling like a baby.
The good news, however, did enable him to keep from letting the whole thing out to Denise. She found Toni rather depressed and unhappy during that week, but on the morning when the batch of hard cases was put on the train to be started for Marseilles, and Nicolas and Pierre were among them, Toni’s heart bounded with joy. He could not deny himself the pleasure of seeing his two old comrades off. They were the most sullen and angry of all the sullen and angry disciplinaires sent to atone for their misdeeds under the fierce sun of Africa. As the train moved slowly off, Nicolas thrust his red head out of the window and, shaking his fist at Toni, cried:
“Don’t forget—we shan’t forget.”
Toni, however, tried his best to forget, and succeeded beyond his expectations. He had thought himself lucky when Nicolas and Pierre were out of sight, but now, when he remembered that they were in Africa, and called to mind all the chances of fever and cholera and other things that, if they befell his two comrades in arms, would be of distinct benefit to him, he felt positively cheerful, and, as Paul Verney said, if Pierre and Nicolas kept up their career as they had done since they had joined the regiment, they would probably leave their bones in Africa.
So Toni, thrusting off his load of care, more than he had ever done since that secret of the woods at midnight and the dead man lying stark with his face upturned to the murky sky had been laid upon him, grew merry at heart. There was a good deal to make him happy then. Denise was thoroughly devoted to him, and the sergeant, who was being very skilfully played by Madame Marcel, became perfectly reconciled to the match between Toni and Denise. After all, even if Sergeant Duval did not succeed in marrying Madame Marcel, he reflected that Toni would not be ill provided for, as Madame Marcel was extremely well off for a lady of her condition. As a means of advancing Toni’s interests, Madame Marcel was always writing to the sergeant asking him how she should invest such considerable sums as six hundred francs and once even nine hundred francs. This last sum was so very imposing that the sergeant, in giving her his advice, felt compelled to renew his offer of his hand and heart. To this Madame Marcel returned a most diplomatic reply. She said if she could see Toni married to Denise she would feel more like considering the offer. At present it was her only desire to see that happy event come off. Then, possibly, after providing liberally for Toni, she might take the sergeant’s offer under reflection. The sergeant, after receiving this letter, thought himself as good as married to Madame Marcel.
The autumn and the winter passed as pleasantly as the summer. Paul and Lucie, after spending the summer at the Château Bernard, had come into the town and taken the small house in which they played at being poor. It was as pretty a little bower as any newly-married couple ever had. They kept only three servants and Toni still waited on Paul Verney, and there was plenty for him to do. He had no natural love for work and still reckoned it the height of bliss to lie on his stomach in the long grass and watch the gnats dancing in the sun and the foolishly industrious bees, always at work for others, get gloriously drunk on the clover blossoms. But for a private in the dragoons there was not much time for this sort of thing, and if Toni had to work he would rather work for the Verneys than for anybody else. There was a little garden behind the house in which Toni dug and planted and watered diligently under Lucie’s critical eye, and this was the least unpleasant work that he had ever done.
Lucie fathomed his character as well as Paul did. She knew of all his strange ins and outs, his courage and cowardice, his foolish loving heart. Denise, by that time, had got the upper hand of Toni as completely as Paul Verney had got the upper hand of Lucie. Like all tender-hearted women, Lucie was a natural and incurable match-maker. Nothing pleased her better than to forward the affair between Toni and Denise. She stopped Sergeant Duval in the street to praise Toni’s virtues, expatiating upon his industry. The sergeant listened respectfully enough until Toni’s industry was mentioned, when a grim look came into his eyes.
“Yes, Madame,” he said, “he is the most industrious fellow alive as long as I am after him and he has the prospect of being put in the barrack prison on bread and water. Oh, there is nobody who works harder than Toni.” Lucie passed on laughing.
But there was a reason why Toni was so willing always to dig in the garden. There was a little sewing-room on the ground floor which had a window that opened on the garden, and at that window Denise, early in the winter, was established with her sewing. She was a beautiful seamstress, and having ten thousand francs to her fortune by no means lessened her inclination to work for the good wages which Madame Verney paid her. And there was a great deal of sewing to be done just then in the little house, so while Toni dug and planted in the garden and worked among the flowers in the little greenhouse, he could glance up and see Denise’s pretty blond head bending over her fine sewing. Toni became so devoted to waiting on Lucie that he grew positively inattentive to Paul, who was compelled to swear at Toni once in a while and threaten to cuff him to bring him to his senses.
At New Year’s Paul’s father and mother and Captain and Madame Ravenel came to Beaupré for a visit. The little house could not accommodate more than two persons besides the master and mistress, so Monsieur and Madame Verney were entertained in great style at the Château Bernard by Madame Bernard. Toni had never been able to see Madame Ravenel without being reminded, as Paul had told him in their boyhood, of a soft and solemn strain of music in a dim cathedral, or of the river taking its way at twilight softly through the grassy meadow where the violets grew. She was still sad—she never could be anything but that—but her beautiful eyes had lost their troubled look and she seemed at peace. Captain Ravenel was the same quiet, silent, soldierly man as always, who was never far from Madame Ravenel’s side. No woman was ever better loved and protected than poor Sophie. On this visit, for the first time, Toni plucked up spirit enough to speak to Madame Ravenel. She talked with him, in her gentle voice, about Bienville and his life there, and of Denise, and how she had been amused at watching them when they were little children together. Toni told Madame Ravenel how he dodged furtively around the corner of the acacia tree and climbed upon the garden wall to see her pass to and from church. Madame Ravenel went to church as much as ever, but now she went a little way within the church, though never close up to the altar, and Captain Ravenel maintained his old practice of escorting her to church and walking up and down in the street smoking his cigar until she came out, when he escorted her home again, and never let her be one waking moment without his protection.
Since Lucie had come into her American fortune the Ravenels no longer found it necessary to practise that stern economy which had characterized the first years of their married life. Lucie made Sophie accept an allowance, small indeed compared with the fortune which Delorme had squandered, but it was enough to lift the Ravenels above poverty. The week that the Ravenels and the Verneys were at Beaupré was a time of quiet happiness to everybody in the modest house in which Lucie played at being poor. Madame Bernard had, of course, declared at first that she could only see Sophie and Ravenel surreptitiously, as it were, but ended, as she invariably did, by driving up in her great coach and absolutely taking Sophie to drive in the face of all Beaupré. This was Lucie’s doing, unaided by either of the persons concerned, by Paul, or by Captain Ravenel, but Lucie was accustomed to triumphs of this sort and knew perfectly well how to achieve them.
One morning, a year after Paul’s marriage, when Toni went to him at seven o’clock in the morning, he found Paul already up and dressed and walking in the garden, and he shouted, as Toni came in:
“It’s a boy, Toni.”
And that very day Toni was taken up stairs into a darkened room where, in a lace and silk covered bassinet lay the little Paul, who seemed to Toni at once grotesque and sacred, as indeed it seemed to Paul himself. The baby waxed and thrived, and, after a while, when Lucie and Paul again had their breakfast in the garden, as they had done in their early married life, the baby was brought out and lay in his nurse’s arms blinking solemnly at the great wide world before him. Paul Verney was a devoted father, and as he had talked intimately with Toni all his life, so he talked with him about this child so longed for and so loved.
“It seems to me, Toni,” said Paul, one morning after breakfast in the garden, when Lucie and the baby had gone within for their noonday rest, and Paul was looking over some papers which Toni had brought him, “it seems to me, Toni, as if I am too happy. It makes me afraid.”
A look of fear came into Toni’s eyes.
“I feel the same way,” he whispered, “everything seems to be too easy—too bright. Now, if the sergeant had kept on opposing me or if Mademoiselle Duval were against me—but I do assure you, Paul, they are both as sweet as milk. I don’t know how long it will last, but if it lasts until I marry Denise that will be long enough. My mother has just sold a little piece of ground she had, on the outskirts of Bienville, and has got a thumping price for it. I think the sergeant is more in love with her than ever, since she sold the ground for such a price.”
“Well, Toni,” answered Paul gaily, “we don’t deserve our happiness—that much is certain. I am no more fit for Lucie than you are fit for Denise—she’s a thousand times too good for you and always will be—but we can enjoy our happiness just the same.”
Another year passed, and Toni had come to believe that this earth was Heaven and would have been most unwilling to leave it for the brightest prospects above. Denise was then very busy sewing at her wedding trousseau, and Toni would be Paul’s servant only a little while longer. A corporal was Toni to become—an honor that Toni had no more dreamed of than of succeeding President Loubet. This honor was equally astonishing to Sergeant Duval. But all the same Toni was to be promoted and was not to ride in the ranks any longer. This distinction he had not coveted, as it implied a great deal more work even than he had to do as a private soldier.
But one must accept honors even when thrust upon one. It made the prospect of the riding-school seem less attractive to Toni. He not only began to feel that the separation from Paul would be harder than ever, but from Lucie also, and the little baby Paul. In some unaccountable way this little morsel of humanity had stolen his way into Toni’s heart, so much so, that when the baby preferred to play with Jacques in preference to all the expensive toys which were lavished on him, Toni actually tied Jacques around the baby’s neck and made a solemn gift of it to him. It seemed almost incredible to Toni that he could give Jacques away, but it was to him very like the bestowal of a splendid heirloom on a child who is to carry on the traditions of a great family.
As for the sergeant, ever since Madame Marcel had sold her piece of ground, he had treated Toni as a son. When Toni was made a corporal, he could command his own time much more than when he had been a private soldier, but Denise, like most brides, was so taken up with the important matter of the trousseau that she had very little time to bestow on Toni. Toni, never having questioned her authority in his life, quietly submitted to this.
“A corporal was Toni to become.”
At last the great day drew near—it was only a week off—the day of Toni’s marriage. Toni expected to be frightened to death, but Paul warned him that if he showed the white feather he should have the long-promised cuffing as soon as he returned from his wedding tour. The sergeant also suspected Toni’s courage and kept a stern eye on him in the last day or so before the wedding, but Toni maintained his courage and declared the only thing he dreaded was the march up the aisle of the church and back again, in which apprehension he did not stand alone among bridegrooms. Although it was only the wedding of a corporal and the sergeant’s daughter, it was to be quite a grand affair, chiefly through the exertions of Lucie, who dearly loved to make a gala out of everything and particularly out of Toni’s and Denise’s marriage. She had bestowed presents on them with a lavish hand and Paul, out of his small pay and allowance, had given Toni a handsome gold watch.
The great question of the honeymoon and where it was to be spent came up. Being a corporal, Toni could get a short leave—how much he did not know.
The next day Toni laid his case before Paul when he and Lucie were at breakfast in the garden. The boy could now toddle about, his dark, bright eyes like his mother’s. He was fonder than ever of Toni and liked to be carried on his strong arm. Toni was holding the baby thus and he was clutching Jacques devotedly in his little hand. Lucie suggested a whole week, but Paul shook his head at the mention of a week’s leave for a corporal.
“It would be very unusual,” he said.
Lucie said nothing at all, but when Paul had gone off, went up, and, taking the baby out of Toni’s arms and laying her soft cheek against little Paul’s rose-leaf face, said to Toni:
“I think I can manage it.”
And she did, in a manner precisely like Lucie. She dressed herself in her prettiest gown and hat, took her white lace parasol and, getting into a carriage, went in search of the colonel of the regiment. When she found him she poured out the story of Toni and Denise and all about Bienville, including her childish love affair with Paul. And then she went on and recounted with such inimitable drollery her efforts to wring an offer out of Paul, his horror at her American ways of doing things, and the perplexity which a Frenchman always experiences in his love-affairs with an American, that the colonel burst out laughing and agreed to do anything Lucie should ask, and what she asked was one whole week of leave for Toni’s honeymoon. The colonel also promised to protect Lucie from Paul’s wrath when he should hear how Toni’s leave had been obtained. This was needed, for Paul scowled and growled that women should not meddle with such things, to which Lucie promptly agreed, except when it should be some affair in which, like this, a woman was deeply interested.
Mademoiselle Duval hankered very much to go on the honeymoon with Toni and Denise, but having heard that Paris was a very sinful place she doubted the wisdom of trusting herself there even for a visit. Toni contrived to make her understand that Paris was a great deal more sinful even than she suspected it to be, that there were few churches and the means of salvation were limited, and finally convinced Mademoiselle Duval that she would risk her soul’s salvation by venturing in that wicked town.