ON THE TRAIL
The waiter, after serving Edgar with dinner in his room, closed and
locked the door behind him. The child started up in a rage. His mother's
doings! She must have given orders for him to be locked in like a
vicious beast.
"What's going on downstairs," he brooded grimly, "while I am locked in
up here? What are they talking about, I wonder? Is the mystery taking
place, and am I missing it? Oh, this secret that I scent all around me
when I am with grown-ups, this thing that they shut me out from at
night, and that makes them lower their voices when I come upon them
unawares, this great secret that has been near me for days, close at
hand, yet still out of reach. I've done everything to try to get at
it."
Edgar recalled the time when he had pilfered books from his father's
library and had read them, and found they contained the mystery, though
he could not understand it. There must be some sort of seal, he
concluded, either in himself or in the others that had first to be
removed before the mystery could be fathomed. He also recalled how he
had begged the servant-girl to explain the obscure passages in the books
and she had only laughed at him.
"Dreadful," he thought, "to be a child, full of curiosity, and yet not
to be allowed even to ask for information, always to be ridiculed by the
grown-ups, as if one were a stupid good-for-nothing. But never mind, I'm
going to find it out, and very soon, I feel sure I will. Already part of
it is in my hands, and I mean not to let go till I hold the whole of
it."
He listened to find out if anyone were coming to the room. Outside, the
trees were rustling in a strong breeze, which caught up the silvery
mirror of the moonlight and dashed it in shivering bits through the
network of the branches.
"It can't be anything good that they intend to do, else they wouldn't
have used such mean little lies to get me out of their way. Of course,
they're laughing at me, the miserable creatures, because they're rid of
me at last. But I'll be the one to laugh next. How stupid of me to allow
myself to be locked in this room and give them a moment to themselves,
instead of sticking to them like a burr and watching their every move. I
know the grown-ups are always incautious, and _they_ will be giving
themselves away, too. Grown-ups think we're still babies and always go
to sleep at night. They forget we can pretend to be asleep and can go on
listening, and we can make out we're stupid when we're really very
bright."
Edgar smiled to himself sarcastically when at this point his thoughts
reverted to the birth of a baby cousin. The family in his presence had
pretended to be surprised, and he had known very well they were not
surprised, because for weeks he had heard them, at night when they
thought he was asleep, discussing the coming event. And he resolved to
fool his mother and the baron in the same way.
"Oh, if only I could peep through the key-hole and watch them while they
fancy they're alone and safe. Perhaps it would be a good idea to ring,
and the boy would come and open the door and ask what I want. Or I could
make a terrible noise smashing things, and then they'd unlock the door
and I'd slip out."
On second thought he decided against either plan, as incompatible with
his pride. No one should see how contemptibly he had been treated, and
he would wait till the next day.
From beneath his window came a woman's laugh. Edgar started. Perhaps it
was his mother laughing. She had good cause to laugh and make fun of the
helpless little boy who was locked up when he was a nuisance and thrown
into a corner like a bundle of rags. He leaned, circumspectly out of the
window and looked. No, it wasn't his mother, but one of a group of gay
girls teasing a boy.
In looking out Edgar observed that his window was not very high above
the ground, and instantly it occurred to him to jump down and go spy on
his mother and the baron. He was all fire with the joy of his resolve,
feeling that now he had the great secret in his grasp. There was no
danger in it. No people were passing by--and with that he had jumped
out. Nothing but the light crunch of the gravel under his feet to betray
his action.
In these two days, stealing around and spying had become the delight of
his life, and intense bliss, mingled with a faint tremor of alarm,
filled him now as he tiptoed around the outside of the hotel, carefully
avoiding the lights. He looked first into the dining-room. Their seats
were empty. From window to window he went peeping, always outside the
hotel for fear if he went inside he might run up against them in one of
the corridors. Nowhere were they to be seen, and he was about to give up
hope when he saw two shadows emerge from a side entrance--he shrank and
drew back into the dark--and his mother and her inseparable escort came
out.
In the nick of time, he thought. What were they saying? He couldn't
hear, they were talking in such low voices and the wind was making such
an uproar in the trees. His mother laughed. It was a laugh he had never
before heard from her, a peculiarly sharp, nervous laugh, as though she
had suddenly been tickled. It made a curious impression on the boy and
rather startled him.
"But if she laughs," he thought, "it can't be anything dangerous,
nothing very big and mighty that they are concealing from me." He was a
trifle disillusioned. "Yet, why were they leaving the hotel? Where were
they going alone together in the night?"
Every now and then great drifts of clouds obscured the moon, and the
darkness was then so intense that one could scarcely see the white road
at one's feet, but soon the moon would emerge again and robe the
landscape in a sheet of silver. In one of the moments when the whole
countryside was flooded in brilliance Edgar saw the two silhouettes
going down the road, or rather one silhouette, so close did they cling
together, as if in terror. But where were they going? The fir-trees
groaned, the woods were all astir, uncannily, as though from a wild
chase in their depths.
"I will follow them," thought Edgar. "They cannot hear me in all this
noise."
Keeping to the edge of the woods, in the shadow, from which he could
easily see them on the clear white road, he tracked them relentlessly,
blessing the wind for making his footsteps inaudible and cursing it for
carrying away the sound of their talk. It was not until he heard what
they said that he could be sure of learning the secret.
The baron and his companion walked on without any misgivings. They felt
all alone in the wide resounding night and lost themselves in their
growing excitement, never dreaming that on the high edges of the road,
in the leafy darkness, every movement of theirs was being watched, and a
pair of eyes was clutching them in a wild grip of hate and curiosity.
Suddenly they stood still, and Edgar, too, instantly stopped and pressed
close up against a tree, in terror that they might turn back and reach
the hotel before him, so that his mother would discover his room was
empty and learn that she had been followed. Then he would have to give
up hope of ever wresting the secret from them. But the couple hesitated.
Evidently there was a difference of opinion between them. Fortunately at
that moment the moon was shining undimmed by clouds, and he could see
everything clearly. The baron pointed to a side-path leading down into
the valley, where the moonlight descended, not in a broad flood of
brilliance, but only in patches filtering here and there through the
heavy foliage.
"Why does he want to go down there?" thought Edgar.
His mother, apparently, refused to take the path, and the baron was
trying to persuade her. Edgar could tell from his gestures that he was
talking emphatically. The child was alarmed. What did this man want of
his mother? Why did he attempt--the villain!--to drag her into the dark?
From his books, to him the world, came live memories of murder and
seduction and sinister crime. There, he had it, the baron meant to
murder her. That was why he had kept him, Edgar, at a distance, and
enticed her to this lonely spot. Should he cry for help? Murder! He
wanted to shriek, but his throat and lips were dry and no sound issued
from his mouth. His nerves were tense as a bow-string, he could scarcely
stand upright on his shaking knees, and he put out his hand for support,
when, crack, crack! a twig snapped in his grasp.
At the sound of the breaking twig the two turned about in alarm and
stared into the darkness. Edgar clung to the tree, his little body
completely wrapped in obscurity, quiet as death. Yet they seemed to have
been frightened.
"Let's go home," he could now hear his mother say anxiously, and the
baron, who, evidently, was also upset, assented. Pressed close against
each other, they walked back very slowly. Their embarrassment was
Edgar's good fortune. He got down on all fours and crept, tearing his
hands and clothes on the brambles, through the undergrowth to the turn
of the woods, from where he ran breathlessly back to the hotel and up
the stairs to his room. Luckily the key was sticking on the outside, and
in one second he was in his room lying on the bed, where he had to rest
a few moments to give his pounding heart a chance to quiet down. After
two or three minutes he got up and looked out of the window to await
their return.
They must have been walking very slowly indeed. It took them an
eternity. Circumspectly he peeped out of the shadowed frame. There, at
length, they came at a snail's pace, the moonlight shining on their
clothes. They looked like ghosts in the greenish shimmer, and the
delicious horror came upon him again whether it really might have been a
murder, and what a dreadful catastrophe he had averted by his presence.
He could clearly see their faces, which looked chalky in the white
light. His mother had an expression of rapture that in her was strange
to him, while the baron looked hard and dejected. Probably because he
had failed in carrying out his purpose.
They were very close to the hotel now, but it was not until they reached
the steps that their figures separated from each other. Would they look
up? Edgar waited eagerly. No.
"They have forgotten all about me," he thought wrathfully, and then, in
triumph, "but I haven't forgotten you. You think I am asleep or
non-existent, but you'll find out you're mistaken. I'll watch every
step you take until I have got the secret out of you, you villain, the
dreadful secret that keeps me awake nights. I'll tear the strings that
tie you two together. I am not going to go to sleep."
As the couple entered the doorway, their shadows mingled again in one
broad band that soon dwindled and disappeared. And once more the space
in front of the hotel lay serene in the moonlight, like a meadow of
snow.