QUICK FRIENDSHIP
The next morning, on entering the hall, the baron saw the son of the
beautiful Unknown engaged in an eager conversation with the two elevator
boys, to whom he was showing pictures in a book by Du Chaillu. His
mother was not with him, probably not having come down from her room
yet.
The baron took his first good look at the boy. He seemed to be a shy,
undeveloped, nervous little fellow, about twelve years old. His
movements were jerky, his eyes dark and restless, and he made the
impression, so often produced by children of his age, of being scared,
as if he had just been roused out of sleep and placed in strange
surroundings. His face was not unbeautiful, but still quite undecided.
The struggle between childhood and young manhood seemed just about to be
setting in. Everything in him so far was like dough that has been
kneaded but not formed into a loaf. Nothing was expressed in clean
lines, everything was blurred and unsettled. He was at that hobbledehoy
age when clothes do not fit, and sleeves and trousers hang slouchily,
and there is no vanity to prompt care of one's appearance.
The child made a rather pitiful impression as he wandered about the
hotel aimlessly. He got in everybody's way. He would plague the porter
with questions and then be shoved aside, for he would stand in the
doorway and obstruct the passage. Apparently there were no other
children for him to play with, and in his child's need for prattle he
would try to attach himself to one or other of the hotel attendants.
When they had time they would answer him, but the instant an adult came
along they would stop talking and refuse to pay any more attention to
him.
It interested the baron to watch the child, and he looked on smiling as
the unhappy little creature inspected everything and everybody
curiously, while he himself was universally avoided as a nuisance. Once
the baron intercepted one of his curious looks. His black eyes instantly
fell, when he saw himself observed, and hid behind lowered lids. The
baron was amused. The boy actually began to interest him, and it flashed
into his mind that he might be made to serve as the speediest means for
bringing him and his mother together. He could overcome his shyness,
since it proceeded from nothing but fear. At any rate, it was worth the
trial. So when Edgar strolled out of the door to pet, in his child's
need of tenderness, the pinkish nostrils of one of the 'bus horses, the
baron followed him.
Edgar was certainly unlucky. The driver chased him away rather roughly.
Insulted and bored, he stood about aimlessly again, with a vacant,
rather melancholy expression in his eyes. The baron now addressed him.
"Well, young man, how do you like it here?" He attempted a tone of
jovial ease.
The child turned fairly purple and looked up in actual alarm, drawing
his arms close to his body and twisting and turning in embarrassment.
For the first time in his life a stranger was the one to address him and
not he the stranger.
"Oh," he managed to stammer out, choking over the last words, "thank
you. I--I like it."
"You do? I'm surprised," the baron laughed. "It's a dull place,
especially for a young man like you. What do you do with yourself all
day long?"
Edgar was still too confused to give a ready answer. Could it be true
that this stranger, this elegant gentleman, was trying to pick up a
conversation with him--with him, whom nobody had ever before cared a rap
about? It made him both shy and proud. He pulled himself together with
difficulty.
"I read, and we do a lot of walking. Sometimes we go out driving, mother
and I. I am here to get well. I was sick. I must be out in the sunshine
a lot, the doctor said."
Edgar spoke the last with greater assurance. Children are always proud
of their ailments. The danger they are in makes them more important,
they know, in the eyes of their elders.
"Yes, the sun is good for you. It will tan your cheeks. But you oughtn't
to be standing round the whole day long. A fellow like you ought to be
on the go, running, jumping, playing, full of spirits, and up to
mischief, too. It strikes me you are too good. With that big fat book
under your arm you look as though you were always poking in the house.
By jingo, when I think of the kind of fellow I was at your age, I used
to raise the devil, and every evening I came home with torn
knickerbockers. Don't be so good, whatever you are."
Edgar could not help smiling, and the consciousness of his own smile
removed his fear. Now he was anxious to say something in reply, but it
seemed self-assertive and impudent to answer this affable stranger, who
spoke to him in such a friendly way. He never had been forward and was
easily abashed, so that now he was in the greatest embarrassment from
sheer happiness and shame. He would have liked to continue the
conversation, but nothing occurred to him. Luckily the great yellow St.
Bernard belonging to the hotel came up and sniffed at both of them and
allowed himself to be petted.
"Do you like dogs?" asked the baron.
"Oh, very much. Grandma has one in her villa at Bains. When we stop
there he stays with me the whole time. But that's only in the summer
when we go visiting."
"We have a lot of dogs at home on our estate, a full two dozen, I
believe. If you behave yourself here I'll make you a present of one,
brown with white ears, a pup still. Would you like to have it?"
The child turned scarlet with joy.
"I should say so."
The words fairly burst from his lips in an access of eagerness. Then he
caught himself up and stammered in distress and as if frightened:
"But mother won't allow me to have a dog. She says she won't keep a dog
in the house. It's too much of a nuisance."
The baron smiled. The conversation had at last come round to the mother.
"Is your mother so strict?"
The child pondered and looked up for an instant as if to find out
whether the stranger was to be trusted on such slight acquaintance.
"No," he finally answered cautiously, "she's not strict, and since I've
been sick she lets me do anything I want. Maybe she'll even let me keep
a dog."
"Shall I ask her?"
"Oh, yes, please do," Edgar cried delightedly. "If _you_ do I'm sure
she'll give in. What does he look like? White ears, you said? Can he do
any tricks yet?"
"Yes, all sorts of tricks." The baron had to smile at the sparkle of
Edgar's eyes. It had been so easy to kindle that light in them.
All at once the child's constraint dropped away, and all his
emotionalism, kept in check till then by fear, bubbled over. In a flash
the shy, intimidated child of a minute before turned into a boisterous
lad.
"If only his mother is transformed so quickly," the baron thought. "If
only she shows so much ardor behind her reserve."
Edgar went at him with a thousand questions.
"What's the dog's name?"
"Caro."
"Caro!" he cried happily, somehow having to answer every word with a
laugh of delight, so intoxicated was he with the unexpectedness of
having someone take him up as a friend. The baron, amazed at his own
quick success, resolved to strike while the iron was hot, and invited
the boy to take a walk with him. This put Edgar, who for weeks had been
starving for company, into a fever of ecstasy.
During the walk the baron questioned him, as if quite by the way, about
a number of apparent trifles, and Edgar in response blurted out all the
information he was seeking, telling him everything he wanted to know
about the family.
Edgar was the only son of a lawyer in the metropolis, who evidently came
of a wealthy middle-class Jewish family. By clever, roundabout inquiries
the baron promptly elicited that Edgar's mother had expressed herself as
by no means delighted with her stay in Summering and had complained of
the lack of congenial company. He even felt he might infer from the
evasive way in which Edgar answered his question as to whether his
mother wasn't very fond of his father that their marital relations were
none of the happiest. He was almost ashamed at having been able to
extract these family secrets from the unsuspecting child, for Edgar,
very proud that anything he had to say could interest a grown-up person,
fairly pressed confidences upon his new friend. His child's heart beat
with pride--the baron had put his arm on his shoulder while they were
walking--to be seen in such close intimacy with a "man," and gradually
he forgot he was a child and talked quite unconstrainedly, as if to an
equal.
From his conversation it was quite clear that he was a bright boy, in
fact, a bit too precocious, as are most sickly children who spend much
time with their elders, and his likes and dislikes were too marked. He
took nothing calmly or indifferently. Every person or thing was
discussed with either passionate enthusiasm or a hatred so intense as to
distort his face into a mean, ugly look. There was something wild and
jerky about his manner, accentuated perhaps by the illness he was just
recovering from, which gave his talk the fieriness of fanaticism. His
awkwardness seemed to proceed from the painfully suppressed fear of his
own passion.
Before the end of half an hour the baron was already holding the boy's
throbbing heart in his hands. It is so infinitely easy to deceive
children, those unsuspecting creatures whose love is so rarely courted.
All the baron needed to do was to transport himself back to his own
childhood, and the talk flowed quite naturally. Edgar felt himself in
the presence of an equal, and within a few minutes had lost all sense of
distance between them, and was perfectly at ease, conscious of nothing
but bliss at having so unexpectedly found a friend in this lonely place.
And what a friend! Forgotten were all his mates in the city where he
lived, those little boys with their thin voices and inexperienced
chatter. This one hour had almost expunged their faces. All his
enthusiasm and passion now belonged to this new, this big friend of his.
On parting the baron invited him to take a walk with him again the next
morning. Edgar's heart expanded with pride. And, when from a little
distance away the baron waved back to him like a real playmate, it was
probably the happiest moment in his life. It is so easy to deceive
children.
The baron smiled as he looked after the boy dashing away. The go-between
had been won. Edgar, he knew, would bore his mother with stories of the
wonderful baron and would repeat every word he had said. At this he
recalled complacently how cleverly he had woven in some compliments for
the mother's consumption. "Your beautiful mother," he had always said.
There was not the faintest shadow of doubt in his mind that the
communicative boy would never rest until he had brought him and his
mother together. No need now to stir a finger in order to shorten the
distance between himself and the lovely Unknown. He could dream away
idly and feast his eyes on the landscape, for a child's eager hands, he
knew, were building the bridge for him to her heart.