SILENT HOSTILITY
The tumult of Edgar's conflicting emotions subsided into one smooth,
clear feeling of hate and open hostility, concentrated and
unadulterated. Now that he was certain of being in their way, the
imposition of his presence upon them gave him a voluptuous satisfaction.
Always accompanying them with the compressed strength of his enmity, he
would goad them into madness. He gloated over the thought. The first to
whom he showed his teeth was the baron, when he came downstairs in the
morning and said "Hello, Edgar!" with genuine heartiness in his voice.
Edgar remained sitting in the easy chair and answered curtly with a hard
"G'd morning."
"Your mother down yet?"
Edgar kept his eyes glued to his newspaper.
"I don't know."
The baron was puzzled.
"Slept badly, Eddie?" The baron was counting on a joke to help him over
the situation again, but Edgar merely tossed out a contemptuous "No" and
continued to study the paper.
"Stupid," the baron murmured, shrugging his shoulders and walked away.
Hostilities had been declared.
Toward his mother Edgar's manner was cool and polite. When she made an
awkward attempt to send him off to the tennis-court, he gave her a quiet
rebuff, and his smile and the bitter curl at the corners of his mouth
showed that he was no longer to be fooled.
"I'd rather go walking with you, mamma," he said with assumed
friendliness, looking her straight in the eyes. His answer was
obviously not to her taste. She hesitated and seemed to be looking for
something.
"Wait for me here," she decided at length and went into the dining-room
for breakfast.
Edgar waited, but his distrust was lively, and his instincts, all astir,
extracted a secret hostile intent from everything the baron and his
mother now said. Suspicion was beginning to give him remarkable
perspicacity sometimes. Instead, therefore, of waiting in the hall, as
he had been bidden, he went outside to a spot from which he commanded a
view not only of the main entrance but of all the exits from the hotel.
Something in him scented deception. He hid himself behind a pile of
wood, as the Indians do in the books, and when, about half an hour
later, he saw his mother actually coming out of a side door carrying a
bunch of exquisite roses and followed by the baron, the traitor, he
laughed in glee. They seemed to be gay and full of spirits. Were they
feeling relieved at having escaped him to be alone with their secret?
They laughed as they talked, and turned into the road leading to the
woods.
The moment had come. Edgar, as though mere chance had brought him that
way, strolled out from behind the woodpile and walked to meet them, with
the utmost composure, allowing himself ample time to feast upon their
surprise. When they caught sight of him they were quite taken aback, he
saw, and exchanged a glance of astonishment. The child advanced slowly,
with an assumed nonchalant air, never removing his mocking gaze from
their faces.
"Oh, here you are, Eddie. We were looking for you inside," his mother
said finally.
"The shameless liar!" the child thought, but held his lips set hard,
keeping back the secret of his hate. The three stood there irresolutely,
one watchful of the others.
"Well, let's go on," said the woman, annoyed, but resigned, and plucked
one of the lovely roses to bite. Her nostrils were quivering, a sign in
her of extreme anger. Edgar stood still, as though it were a matter of
indifference to him whether they walked on or not, looked up at the sky,
waited for them to start, then followed leisurely. The baron made one
more attempt.
"There's a tennis tournament to-day. Have you ever seen one?"
The baron was not worth an answer any more. Edgar merely gave him a
scornful look and pursed his lips for whistling. That was his full
reply. His hate showed its bared teeth.
Edgar's unwished-for presence weighed upon the two like a nightmare.
They felt very like convicts who follow their keeper gritting their
teeth and clenching their fists in secret. Edgar neither did nor said
anything out of the way, yet he became, every moment, more unbearable
to them, with his watchful glances out of great moist eyes and his
dogged sullenness which was like a prolonged growl at any attempt they
made at an advance.
"Go on ahead of us," his mother suddenly snapped, made altogether ill at
ease by his intent listening to everything she and the baron were
saying. "Don't be hopping right at my toes. It makes me fidgety."
Edgar obeyed. But at every few steps he would face about and stand
still, waiting for them to catch up if they had lingered behind, letting
his gaze travel over them diabolically and enmeshing them in a fiery net
of hate, in which, they felt, they were being inextricably entangled.
His malevolent silence corroded their good spirits like an acid, his
gaze dashed extinguishing gall on their conversation. The baron made no
other attempts to court the woman beside him, feeling, infuriatedly,
that she was slipping away from him because her fear of that annoying,
obnoxious child was cooling the passion he had fanned into a flame with
so much difficulty. After repeated unsuccessful attempts at a
conversation they jogged along the path in complete silence, hearing
nothing but the rustling of the leaves and their own dejected footsteps.
There was active hostility now in each of the three. The betrayed child
perceived with satisfaction how their anger gathered helplessly against
his own little, despised person. Every now and then he cast a shrewd,
ironic look at the baron's sullen face and saw how he was muttering
curses between gritted teeth and had to restrain himself from hurling
them out at him. He also observed with sarcastic glee how his mother's
fury was mounting and that both of them were longing for an opportunity
to attack him and send him away, or render him innocuous. But he gave
them no opening, the tactics of his hate had been prepared too well in
advance and left no spots exposed.
"Let us go back," his mother burst out, feeling she could no longer
control herself and that she must do something, if only cry out, under
the imposition of this torture.
"A pity," said Edgar quietly, "it's so lovely."
The other two realized the child was making fun of them, but they dared
not retort, their tyrant having learned marvellously in two days the
supreme art of self-control. Not a quiver in his face betrayed his
mordant irony. Without another word being spoken they retraced the long
way back to the hotel.
When Edgar and his mother were alone together in her room, her
excitement was still seething. She tossed her gloves and parasol down
angrily. Edgar did not fail to note these signs and was aware that her
electrified nerves would seek to discharge themselves, but he courted
an outburst and remained in her room on purpose. She paced up and down,
seated herself, drummed on the table with her fingers, and jumped up
again.
"How untidy you look. You go around filthy. It's a disgrace. Aren't you
ashamed of yourself--a boy of your age!"
Without a word of opposition Edgar went to his mother's toilet table and
washed and combed himself. His cold, obdurate silence and the ironic
quiver of his lips drove her to a frenzy. Nothing would have satisfied
her so much as to give him a sound beating.
"Go to your room," she screamed, unable to endure his presence a second
longer. Edgar smiled and left the room.
How the two trembled before him! How they dreaded every moment in his
presence, the merciless grip of his eyes! The worse they felt the more
he gloated, and the more challenging became his satisfaction. Edgar
tortured the two defenceless creatures with the almost animal cruelty of
children. The baron, because he had not given up hope of playing a trick
on the lad and was thinking of nothing but the goal of his desires,
could still contain his anger, but Edgar's mother was losing her hold
upon herself and kept constantly slipping. It was a relief to her to be
able to shriek at him.
"Don't play with your fork," she cried at table. "You're an ill-bred
monkey. You don't deserve to be in the company of grown-up people."
Edgar smiled, with his head tipped a trifle to one side. He knew his
mother's outburst was a sign of desperation and took pride in having
made her betray herself. His manner and glance were now as composed as a
physician's. In previous days he might have answered back rudely so as
to annoy her. But hate teaches many things, and quickly. How he kept
quiet, and still kept quiet, and still kept quiet, until his mother,
under the pressure of his silence, began to scream. She could stand it
no longer. When they rose from table and Edgar with his matter-of-course
air of attachment preceded to follow her and the baron, her pent-up
anger suddenly burst out. She cast prudence to the winds and let out the
truth. Tortured by his crawling presence she reared like a horse
pestered by crawling flies.
"Why do you keep tagging after me like a child of three? I don't want
you around us all the time. Children should not always be with their
elders. Please remember that. Spend an hour or two by yourself for once.
Read something, or do whatever you want. Leave me alone. You make me
nervous with your creepy ways and that disgusting hang-dog air of
yours!"
He had wrested it from her at last--the confession! He smiled, while the
baron and his mother seemed embarrassed. She swung about, turning her
back, and was about to leave, in a fury with herself for having admitted
so much to her little son, when Edgar's voice came, saying coolly:
"Papa does not want me to be by myself here. He made me promise not to
be wild, and to stay with you." Edgar emphasized "Papa," having noticed
on the previous occasion when he used the word that it had had a
paralyzing effect upon both of them. In some way or other, therefore, he
inferred, his father must be implicated in this great mystery and must
have a secret power over them, because the very mention of him seemed to
frighten and distress them. They said nothing this time either. They
laid down their arms.
The mother left the room with the baron, and Edgar followed behind, not
humbly like a servitor, but hard, strict, inexorable, like a guard over
prisoners, rattling the chains against which they strained in vain.
Hate had steeled his child's strength. He, the ignorant one, was
stronger than the two older people whose hands were held fast by the
great secret.