DAWNING PERCEPTION
After he had put a long stretch of road between him and the hotel, Edgar
stopped running. He was panting heavily, and he had to lean against a
tree to get his breath back and recover from the trembling of his knees.
The horror of his own deed, from which he had been fleeing, clutched at
his throat and shook him as with a fever. What should he do now? Where
should he run away to? He was already feeling a sinking sensation of
loneliness, there in the woods, only a mile or so from the house.
Everything seemed different, unfriendlier, unkinder, now that he was
alone and helpless. The trees that only the day before had whispered to
him like brothers now gathered together darkly as if in threat. This
solitariness in the great unknown world dazed the child. No, he could
not stand alone yet. But to whom should he go? Of his father, who was
easily excited and unapproachable, he was afraid. Besides, his father
would send him straight back to his mother, and Edgar preferred the
awfulness of the unknown to that. He felt as though he could never look
upon his mother's face again without remembering that he had struck her
with his fist.
His grandmother in Bains occurred to him. She was so sweet and kind and
had always petted him and come to his rescue when, at home, he was to be
the victim of an injustice. He would stay with her until the first storm
of wrath had blown over, and then he would write to his parents to ask
their forgiveness. In this brief quarter of an hour he had already been
so humbled by the mere thought of his inexperienced self standing alone
in the world that he cursed the stupid pride that a mere stranger's
lying had put into him. He no longer wanted to be anything but the child
he had been, obedient and patient and without the arrogance that he now
felt to be excessive.
But how to reach Bains? He took out his little pocketbook and blessed
his luck star that the ten-dollar gold piece given to him on his
birthday was there safe and sound. He had never got himself to break it.
Daily he had inspected his purse to see if it was there and to feast his
eyes on the sight of it and gratefully polish it with his handkerchief
until it shone like a tiny sun. But would the ten dollars be enough? He
had travelled by train many a time without thinking that one had to pay,
and still less how much one paid, whether ten or a hundred dollars. For
the first time he got an inkling that there were facts in life upon
which he had never reflected, and that all the many things that
surrounded him and he had held in his hands and toyed with somehow
contained a value of their own, a special importance. An hour before he
had thought he knew everything. Now he realized he had passed by a
thousand mysteries and problems without noticing them, and was ashamed
that his poor little wisdom had stumbled over the first step it took
into life. He grew more and more discouraged, and his footsteps lagged
as he drew near the station.
How often he had dreamed of this flight from home, of making a dash for
the great Life, becoming king or emperor, soldier or poet! And now he
looked timidly at the bright little building ahead of him and thought of
nothing but whether his ten dollars would bring him to his grandmother
at Bains.
The rails stretched away monotonously into the country, the station was
deserted. Edgar went to the window shyly and asked, whispering so that
nobody but the ticket-seller should hear, how much a ticket to Bains
cost. Amused and rather astonished eyes behind spectacles smiled upon
the timid child.
"Whole fare or half fare?"
"Whole fare," stammered Edgar, utterly without pride.
"Three dollars and thirty-five cents."
"Give me a ticket, please."
In great relief Edgar shoved the beloved bit of polished gold under the
grating, change rattled on the ledge, and Edgar all at once felt
immensely wealthy holding the strip of colored paper that guaranteed him
his liberty, and with the sound of coin clinking in his pocket.
On examining the timetable he found there would be a train in only
twenty minutes, and he retired to a corner, to get away from the few
people idling on the platform. Though it was evident they were harboring
no suspicions, the child, as if his flight and his crime were branded
on his forehead, felt that they were looking at nothing but him and were
wondering why a mere boy such as he should be travelling alone. He drew
a great sigh of relief when at last the first whistle sounded in the
distance, and the rumbling came closer and closer, and the train that
was to carry him out into the great world puffed and snorted into the
station.
It was not until Edgar took his seat in the train that he noticed he had
secured only a third-class passage. Having always travelled first class,
he was again struck with a sense of difference. He saw there were
distinctions that had escaped him. His fellow-passengers were unlike
those of his first-class trips, a few Italian laborers, with tough hands
and uncouth voices, carrying pickaxes and shovels. They sat directly
opposite, dull and disconsolate-eyed, staring into space. They must
have been working very hard on the road, for some of them slept in the
rattling coach, open-mouthed, leaning against the hard, soiled wood.
"They have been working to earn money," came into Edgar's mind, and he
set to guessing how much they earned, but could not decide. And so
another disturbing fact impressed itself upon him, that money was
something one did not always have on hand, but had to be made somehow or
other. And for the first time he became conscious of having taken the
ease in which he had been lapped as a matter of course and that to the
right and the left of him abysms yawned which his eyes had never beheld.
It came to him now with the shock of suddenness that there were trades
and professions, that his life was hedged about by innumerable secrets,
close at hand and tangible, though he had never noticed them.
Edgar was learning a good deal in that single hour of aloneness and saw
many things as he looked out of his narrow compartment into the great
wide world. And for all his dark dread, something began to unfold itself
gently within him, not exactly happiness as yet, rather a marvelling at
the diversity of life. He had fled, he felt, out of fear and cowardice,
yet it was his first independent act, and he had experienced something
of the reality that he had passed by, until then, without heeding it.
Perhaps he himself was now as much of a mystery to his mother and his
father as the world had been to him. It was with different eyes that he
looked out of the window. He was now viewing actualities, it seemed to
him. A veil had been lifted from all things, and they were showing him
the core of their purpose, the secret spring of their actions. Houses
flew by as though torn away by the wind, and he pictured to himself the
people living in them. Were they rich or poor, happy or unhappy? Were
they filled with the same longing as he to know everything? And were
there children in those houses like himself who had merely been playing
with things? The flagmen who waved the train no longer seemed like
scattered dolls, inanimate objects, toys stationed there by indifferent
chance. Edgar now understood that the giving of the signal was their
fate, their struggle with life.
The wheels turned faster and faster, along serpentine windings the train
made its way downward from the uplands, the mountains took on gentler
curves and receded into the distance. The level was reached, and Edgar
gave one final glance backward. There were the mountains like blue
shadows, remote and inaccessible. And to Edgar it was as though his
childhood were reposing up there where they lightly merged with the
misty heavens.