The Secret of Toni
9781465667724
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Toni’s name was Antoine Marcel, but he was never called by it but once in his life, and that was at his baptism, when he was eight days old. He had a shock of black hair and a snub nose, and the tan and freckles on his face were an inch thick, but he had a pair of black eyes so soft and bright and appealing that they might have belonged to one of the houris of Paradise. His wide mouth was full of sharp, white teeth, and when he smiled, which was very often, his smile began with his black eyes and ended with his white teeth. At ten years of age Toni was a complete man of the world—of his world, that is. This consisted of a gay, sunny little old garrison town, Bienville by name, in the south of France. He had his friends, his foes, his lady-love, and also he had arranged his plan of life. He knew himself to be the most fortunate person in all Bienville. In the first place, his mother, Madame Marcel, kept the only candy shop in the town, and Toni, being the only child of his mother, and she a widow, enjoyed all the advantages of this envied position. He had no father such as other boys had—Paul Verney, for example, the advocate’s son—to make him go to school when he would rather lie on his stomach in the meadow down by the river, and watch the butterflies dancing in the sun and the foolish bumblebees stumbling like drunkards among the clover blossoms. Paul Verney was his best friend,—that is, except Jacques. Toni, owing to his exceptional position, as the only son of the house of Marcel, candy manufacturer, would have had no lack of friends among boys of his own age, but he was afraid of other boys, except Paul Verney. This was pure cowardice on Toni’s part, because, although short for his age, he was well built and had as good legs and arms and was as well able to take care of himself as any boy in Bienville. Paul Verney was a pink-cheeked, clean, well set up boy two years older than Toni, and as industrious as Toni was idle, as anxious to learn as Toni was determined not to learn, as honest with his father, the lawyer, as Toni was unscrupulous with his mother about the amount of candy he consumed, and as full of quiet courage with other boys as Toni was an arrant and shameless poltroon about some things. Toni was classed as a bad boy and Paul Verney as a good boy, yet the two formed one of those strange kinships of the soul which are stronger than blood ties and last as long as life itself. Toni, being of a shrewd and discerning mind, realized that Paul Verney would have loved him just as much if Madame Marcel had not kept a candy shop, and this differentiated him from all the other boys in Bienville, and although Paul often severely reprobated Toni, and occasionally gave him kicks and cuffs, which Toni could have resented but did not, he had no fear whatever of Paul.
