THE LIARS
Time was pressing. The baron's holiday would soon come to an end, and
the few days that remained must be exploited to the full. There was no
use, both he and Edgar's mother felt, trying to break down the excited
child's pertinacity. So they resorted to the extreme measure of
disgraceful evasion and flight, merely to escape for an hour or two from
under his yoke.
"Please take these letters and have them registered at the post-office,"
his mother said to Edgar in the hall, while the baron was outside
ordering a cab. Edgar, remembering that until then his mother had sent
the hotel boys on her errands, was suspicious. Were they hatching
something against him? He hesitated.
"Where will you wait for me?"
"Here."
"For sure?"
"Yes."
"Now be sure to. Don't leave before I come back. You'll wait right here
in the hall, won't you?" In the consciousness of his superiority he had
adopted a commanding tone with his mother. Many things had changed since
the day before yesterday.
At the door he encountered the baron, to whom he spoke for the first
time in two days.
"I am going to the post-office to register these letters. My mother is
waiting for me. Please do not go until I come back."
The baron hastened past him.
"All right. We'll wait."
Edgar ran at top speed to the post-office, where he had to wait while a
man ahead of him asked a dozen silly questions. Finally his turn came,
and at last he was free to run back to the hotel, which he reached just
in time to see the couple driving off. He turned rigid with anger, and
had the impulse to pick up a stone and throw it at them. So they had
escaped him after all, but by what a mean, contemptible lie! He had
discovered the day before that his mother lied, but that she could so
wantonly disregard a definite, expressed promise, shattered his last
remnant of confidence. He could not understand life at all any more, now
that he realized that the words which he had thought clothed a reality
were nothing more than bursting bubbles. But what a dreadful secret it
must be that drove grown-up people to such lengths, to lie to him, a
child, and to steal away like criminals! In the books he had read, men
deceived and murdered one another for money, power, empire, but what
was the motive here? What were his mother and the baron after? Why did
they hide from him? What were they, with their lies, trying to conceal?
He racked his brain for answers to the riddle. Vaguely he divined that
this secret was the bolt which, when unlocked, opened the door to let
out childhood, and to master it meant to be grown up, to be a man at
last. Oh, to know what it was! But he could no longer think clearly. His
rage at their having escaped him was like a fire that sent scorching
smoke into his eyes and kept him from seeing.
He ran to the woods and in the nick of time reached a quiet dark spot,
where no one could see him, and burst into tears.
"Liars! Dogs! Mean--mean--mean!"
He felt he must scream the words out to relieve himself of his frenzy.
All the pent-up rage, impatience, annoyance, curiosity, impotence, and
the sense of betrayal of the last few days, which he had suppressed in
the fond belief that he was an adult and must behave like an adult, now
gushed from him in a fit of weeping and sobbing. It was the final crying
spell of his childhood. For the last time he was giving in to the bliss
of weeping like a woman. In that moment of uncontrolled fury his tears
washed away his whole childhood, trust, love, credulity, respect.
The lad who returned to the hotel was different from the child that had
left it. He was cool and level-headed. He went first to his room and
washed his face carefully so that the two should not enjoy the triumph
of seeing the traces of his tears. Then he planned his strategy and
waited patiently, without the least agitation.
There happened to be a good many guests in the hall when the carriage
pulled up at the door. Two gentlemen were playing chess, a few others
were reading their papers, and a group of ladies sat together talking.
Edgar sat among them quietly, a trifle pale, with wavering glances. When
his mother and the baron appeared in the doorway, rather embarrassed at
encountering him so soon, and began to stammer out their excuses
prepared in advance, he confronted them calmly, and said to the baron in
a tone of challenge:
"I have something to say to you, sir."
"Very well, later, a little later."
Edgar, pitching his voice louder and enunciating every word clearly and
distinctly, said, so that everyone in the hall could hear:
"No, now. You behaved like a villain. You knew my mother was waiting for
me, and you----"
"Edgar!" cried his mother, feeling all glances upon her, and swooped
down on him. But Edgar, realizing that she wanted to shout him down,
screamed at the top of his voice:
"I say again, in front of everybody, you lied, you lied disgracefully.
It was a dirty trick."
The baron went white, the people stared, some laughed. The mother
clutched the boy, who was quivering with excitement, and stammered out
hoarsely:
"Go right up to your room, or I'll give you a beating right here in
front of everybody."
But Edgar had already calmed down. He regretted he had been so violent
and was discontented with himself that he had not coolly challenged the
baron as he had intended to do. But his anger had been stronger than his
will. He turned and walked to the staircase leisurely, with an air of
perfect composure.
"You must excuse him," the mother still went on, stammering, confused by
the rather wicked glances fixed upon her, "he's a nervous child, you
know."
She was afraid of nothing so much as a scandal, and she knew she must
assume innocence. Instead, therefore, of taking to instant flight, she
went up to the desk and asked for her mail and made several other
inquiries before rustling up the stairs as though nothing had happened.
But behind her, she was quite conscious, she had left a wake of
whispered comment and suppressed giggling. On the first landing she
hesitated, the rest of the steps she mounted more slowly. She was always
unequal to a serious situation and was afraid of the inevitable
explanation with Edgar. She was guilty, she could not deny that, and she
dreaded the child's curious gaze, which paralyzed her and filled her
with uncertainty. In her timidity she decided to try gentleness, because
in a battle the excited child, she knew, was the stronger.
She turned the knob gently. Edgar was sitting there quiet and cool, his
eyes, turned upon her at her entrance, not even betraying curiosity. He
seemed to be very sure of himself.
"Edgar," she began, in the motherliest of tones, "what got into you? I
was ashamed of you. How can one be so ill-bred, especially a child to a
grown-up person? You must ask the baron's pardon at once."
"I will not."
As he spoke Edgar was looking out of the window, and his words might
have been meant for the trees. His sureness was beginning to astonish
his mother.
"Edgar, what's the matter with you? You're so different from what you
were. You used to be a good, sensible child with whom a person could
reason. And all at once you act as though the devil had got into you.
What have you got against the baron? You liked him so much at first. He
was so nice to you."
"Yes, because he wanted to make your acquaintance."
"Nonsense. How can you think anything like that?"
The child flared up.
"He's a liar. He's false through and through. Whatever he does is
calculated and common. He wanted to get to know you, so he made friends
with me and promised me a dog. I don't know what he promised you, or why
he's so friendly with you, but he wants something of you, too, mamma,
positively he does. If he didn't, he wouldn't be so polite and friendly.
He's a bad man. He lies. Just take a good look at him once, and see how
false his eyes are. Oh, I hate him!"
"Edgar, how can you talk like that!" She was confused and did not know
what to reply. The feeling stirred in her that the child was right.
"Yes, he's a bad man, you can't make me believe he isn't. You must see
he is. Why is he afraid of me? Why does he try to keep out of my way?
Because he knows I can see through him and his badness."
"How can you talk like that?" she kept protesting feebly. Her brain
seemed to have dried up.
All of a sudden a great fear came upon her, whether of the baron or the
boy, she knew not. Edgar saw that his warning was taking effect, and he
was lured on to win her over to his side and have a comrade in his hate
and hostility toward the baron. He went over to her gently, put his arms
about her, and said in a voice flattering with the excitement quivering
in it:
"Mamma, you yourself must have noticed that it isn't anything good that
he wants. He's made you quite different. You're the one that's changed,
not I. He set you against me just to have you to himself. I'm sure he
means to deceive you. I don't know what he promised you, but whatever it
is, he doesn't intend to keep his promise. You ought to be careful of
him. A man who will lie to one person will lie to another person, too.
He's a bad, bad man. You mustn't trust him."
Edgar's voice, soft and almost tearful, seemed to speak out of her own
heart. Since the day before an uncomfortable feeling had been rising in
her which told her the same, with growing emphasis. But she was ashamed
to tell her own child he was right, and she took refuge, as so many do
when under the stress of overwhelming feeling, in rude rejoinder. She
straightened herself up.
"Children don't understand such things. You have no right to mix into
such matters. You must behave yourself. That's all."
Edgar's face congealed again.
"Very well. I have warned you."
"Then you won't ask the baron's pardon?"
"No."
They stood confronting each other, and the mother knew her authority was
at stake.
"Then you will stay up here and eat by yourself, and you won't be
allowed to come to table and sit with us until you have asked his
pardon. I'll teach you manners. You won't budge from this room until I
give you permission to, do you hear?"
Edgar smiled. That cunning smile seemed to be part of his lips now.
Inwardly he was angry at himself. How foolish to have let his heart run
away with him again and to have tried to warn her, the liar.
His mother rustled out without giving him another glance. That caustic
gaze of his frightened her. The child had become an absolute annoyance
to her since she realized that he had his eyes open and said the very
things she did not want to know or hear. It was uncanny to have an inner
voice, her conscience, dissevered from herself, incorporated in her
child, going about as her child, warning her and making fun of her.
Until then the child had stayed alongside of her life, as an ornament,
a toy, a thing to love and have confidence in, now and then perhaps a
burden, but always something that floated along in the same current as
her own life, keeping even pace with it. For the first time this
something reared itself up and opposed her will. A feeling akin to hate
mingled itself in her thoughts of her child now. And yet, as she was
descending the stairs, a little tired, childish voice came from her own
breast, saying, "You ought to be careful of him."
On one of the landings was a mirror. The gleam of it struck her eyes,
and she paused to scrutinize herself questioningly. She looked deeper
and deeper into her own face until the lips of her image parted in a
light smile and formed themselves as if to utter a dangerous word. The
voice within her was still speaking, but she threw back her shoulders as
though to shake off all those invisible thoughts gave her reflection in
the glass a bright glance, caught up her skirt, and descended the rest
of the stairs with the determined manner of a player who has tossed his
last coin down on the table.