SKIRMISHING
The baron had passed a bad night. It is rather vain to attempt to sleep
after an adventure that has been abruptly broken off. Tossing on his bed
and starting up out of oppressive dreams, the baron was soon regretting
that he had not seized the moment. The next morning when he came down he
was still sleepy and cross and in no mood to take up with Edgar, who at
sight of him rushed out of a corner and threw his arms about his waist
and began to pester him with a thousand questions. The boy was happy to
have his big friend to himself once more without having to share him
with his mother. He implored him not to tell his stories to her, but
only to himself. In spite of her promise she had not recounted all
those wonderful things she had said she would. Edgar assailed the baron
with a hundred childish importunities and stormy demonstrations of love.
He was so happy at last to have found him again and to be alone with
him. He had been waiting for him since early in the morning.
The baron gave the child rough answers. That eternal lying in wait,
those silly questions--in short, the boy's unsolicited passion--began to
annoy him. He was tired of going about all day long with a puppy of
twelve, talking nonsense. All he cared for now was to strike while the
iron was hot and get the mother by herself, the very thing it was
difficult to do with this child forever inflicting his presence. For the
first time the baron cursed his incautiousness in having inspired so
much affection, for he saw no chance, on this occasion at least, to rid
himself of his too, too devoted friend.
At any rate it was worth the trial. The baron waited until ten o'clock,
the time Edgar's mother had agreed to go out walking with him. He sat
beside the boy, paying no attention to his chatter and even glancing
through the paper, though every now and then tossing the child a crumb
of talk so as not to insult him. When the hour hand was at ten and the
minute hand was just reaching twelve, he asked Edgar, as though suddenly
remembering something, to do him a favor and run across to the next
hotel and find out if his cousin, Count Rosny, had arrived. Delighted at
last to be of service to his friend, the unsuspecting child ran off as
fast as his legs would carry him, careering down the road so madly that
people looked after him in wonder.
Count Rosny, the clerk told him, had not arrived, nor had he even
announced his coming. Edgar again made post haste back to bring this
information to his friend. But where was his friend? Nowhere in the
hall. Up in his room perhaps. Edgar dashed up the stairs and knocked at
his door. No answer. He ran down again and searched in the music-room,
the café, the verandas, the smoking room. In vain. He hurried to his
mother's room to see if she knew anything about the baron. But she was
gone, too. When finally, in his despair, he applied to the porter, he
was told the two had gone out together a few minutes before.
Edgar waited for their return patiently. He was altogether unsuspecting
and felt quite sure that they would come back soon because the baron
wanted to hear whether or not his cousin had arrived. However, long
stretches of time went by, and gradually uneasiness crept upon him. Ever
since the moment when that strange, seductive man had entered his little
life, never as yet tinged by suspicion, the child had spent his days in
one continual state of tension and tremulousness and confusion. Upon
such delicate organisms as those of children every emotion impresses
itself as upon soft wax. Edgar's eyelids began to twitch again, and he
was already a shade or two paler.
He waited and waited, patiently, at first, then in wild excitement, on
the verge of tears. Yet no suspicion crept into his child's soul. So
blindly trustful was he of his wonderful friend that he fancied there
must have been some misunderstanding, and he tortured himself fearing he
had not executed his commission properly.
But, when they came home at last, how odd that they lingered at the
threshold talking gaily without showing the faintest surprise and
without, apparently, having missed him very much.
"We went out expecting to meet you, Eddie," said the baron, forgetting
to ask if the count had arrived. When Edgar, in consternation that they
must have been looking for him on the way between the two hotels,
eagerly asseverated that he had taken the straight road and questioned
them about the direction they had gone, his mother cut him off short
with, "All right, Edgar, all right. Children must be seen and not
heard."
There, this was the second time, Edgar thought, flushing with anger,
that his mother had so horridly tried to make him look small in front of
his friend. Why did she do it? Why did she always want to set him down
as a child when, he was convinced, he was no longer a child? Evidently
she was jealous of his friend and was planning to get him all to
herself. Yes, that was it, and it was she who had purposely led the
baron the wrong way. But he wouldn't let her treat him like that again,
he'd show her. He was going to be spiteful, he wasn't going to say a
word to her at table, and he would speak only to his friend.
However, it was not so easy to keep quiet as he thought it would be.
Things went in a most unanticipated way. Neither his mother nor the
baron noticed his attitude of spitefulness. Why, they did not even pay
the slightest attention to him, who, the day before, had been the medium
of their coming together. They talked over his head and laughed and
joked as though he had disappeared under the table. His blood mounted to
his head and a lump came into his throat. A horrid sense of his
impotence overwhelmed him. Was it his doom to sit there quietly and look
on while his mother stole away from him his friend, the one man he
loved, while he, Edgar, made no movement in self-defence and used no
other weapon than silence? He felt as though he must get up and pound
the table with his clenched fists, just to make them take notice of him.
But he restrained himself and merely put down his knife and fork and
stopped eating. Even this it was a long time before they observed. It
was not until the last course that his mother became conscious that he
had not tasted his food and asked him if he were not feeling well.
"Disgusting," he thought. "That's all she ever thinks of, whether I'm
sick or not. Nothing else about me seems to matter to her."
He told her shortly that he wasn't hungry, which quite satisfied her.
Nothing, absolutely nothing forced them to pay attention to him. The
baron seemed to have forgotten him completely, at least he never
addressed a single remark to him. His eyeballs were getting hot with
suppressed tears, and finally he had to resort to the childlike device
of raising his napkin like a screen to hide the traitorous drops that
rolled down his cheeks and salted his lips. When the meal finally came
to an end, he drew a sigh of relief.
During the meal his mother had proposed a drive to an interesting spot
in the neighborhood and Edgar had listened with his lips between his
teeth. So she was not going to allow him a single moment alone with his
friend any more. But now, as they got up from table, came something even
worse, and Edgar's anger went over into a fury of hate.
"Edgar," said his mother, "you'll be forgetting everything you learned
at school. You had better stay here this afternoon while we're out
driving and do a little studying."
He clenched his small fists again. There she was at it again,
humiliating him in front of his friend, publicly reminding him that he
was still a child who had to go to school and whose presence was merely
tolerated by his elders. This time, however, her intentions were
altogether too obvious, and Edgar was satisfied to turn away without
replying.
"Insulted again," she said, smiling, and then to the baron, "Do you
really think it's so bad for him to spend an hour studying once in a
while?"
To this--something in the child's heart congealed--to this the baron,
who called himself his friend and who had made fun of him for being a
bookworm, made answer that an hour or two really couldn't do any harm.
Was there an agreement between the two? Had they actually allied
themselves against him?
"My father," said the boy, his eyes flashing anger, "forbade my studying
here. He wants me to get my health back here." Edgar hurled this out
with all his pride in his illness, clinging desperately to his father's
dictum and his father's authority. It came out like a threat, and to his
immense astonishment it took effect, seeming actually to have made both
of them uncomfortable, his mother especially, for she turned her eyes
aside and began to drum on the table nervously with her fingers. For a
while there was a painful silence, broken finally by the baron, who said
with a forced laugh:
"It's just as you say, Eddie. I myself don't have to take examinations
any more. I failed in all my examinations long ago."
Edgar gave no smile, but looked at the baron with a yearning, searching
gaze, as if to probe to the innermost of his being. What was taking
place in the baron's soul? Something between him and Edgar had changed,
and the child knew not what or why. His eyes wandered unsteadily, in his
heart went a little rapid hammer, his first suspicion.