DARKNESS AND CONFUSION
When the train pulled into the station at Bains, the street lamps were
already lit, and though the station was bright with its red and white
and green signals, Edgar unexpectedly felt a dread of the approaching
night. In the daytime he would still have been confident. People would
have been thronging the streets, and you could sit down on a bench and
rest, or look into the shop windows. But how would he be able to stand
it when the people had all withdrawn into their homes and gone to bed
for a night's peaceful sleep while he, conscious of wrongdoing, wandered
about alone in a strange city? Just to have a roof over his head, not to
spend another moment under the open heavens! That was his one distinct
feeling.
He hurried along the familiar way without looking to right or left until
he reached his grandmother's villa. It was on a beautiful, broad avenue,
placed, not free to the gaze of passersby but behind the vines and
shrubbery and ivy of a well-kept garden, a gleam behind a cloud of
green, a white, old-fashioned, friendly house. Edgar peeped through the
iron grill like a stranger. No sound came from within and the windows
were closed. Evidently the family and guests were in the garden behind
the house.
Edgar was about to pull the door-bell when something odd occurred.
Suddenly the thing that only a few hours before had seemed quite natural
to him had now become impossible. How was he to go into the house, how
meet his grandmother and her family, how endure all the questions they
would besiege him with, and how answer them? How would he be able to
bear the looks they would give him when he would tell, as he would be
obliged to, that he had run away from his mother? And, above all, how
would he explain his monstrous deed, which he himself no longer
understood? A door in the house slammed, and Edgar, in a sudden panic at
being detected, ran off.
When he reached the park he paused. It was dark there, and he expected
to find it empty and thought it would be a good place to sit down in and
rest and at last reflect quietly and come to some understanding with
himself about his fate. He passed through the gateway timidly. A few
lamps were burning near the entrance, giving the young leaves on the
trees a ghostly gleam of transparent green, but deeper in the park, down
the hill, everything lay like a single, black, fermenting mass in the
darkness.
Edgar, eager to be alone, slipped past the few people who were sitting
in the light of the lamps, talking or reading. But even in the deep
shadows of the unilluminated pathways it was not quiet. There were low
whisperings that seemed to shun the light, sounds mingled with the
rustling of the leaves, the scraping of feet, subdued voices, all
mingled with a certain voluptuous, sighing, groaning sound that seemed
to emanate from people and animals and nature, all in a disturbed sleep.
It was a restlessness that had something foreboding in it, something
sneaking, hidden, puzzling, a sort of subterranean stirring in the wood
that was connected perhaps with nothing but the spring, yet had a
peculiarly alarming effect upon the child.
He cowered into a diminutive heap on a bench and tried to think of what
he was to say at home. But his thoughts slipped away from him as on a
slippery surface before he could grasp his own ideas, and in spite of
himself he had to keep listening and listening to the muffled tones,
the mystical voices of the darkness. How terrible the darkness was, how
bewildering and yet how mysteriously beautiful!
Were they animals, or people, or was it merely the ghostly hand of the
wind that wove together all this rustling and crackling and whirring? He
listened. It was the wind gently moving the tree tops. No, it wasn't, it
was people--now he could see distinctly--couples arm in arm, who came up
from the lighted city to enliven the darkness with their perplexing
presence. What were they after? He could not make out. They were not
talking to each other, because he heard no voices. All he could catch
was the sound of their tread on the gravel and here and there the sight
of their figures moving like shadows past some clear space between the
trees, always with their arms round each other, like his mother and the
baron in the moonlight.
So the great, dazzling, portentous secret was here, too.
Steps approached. A subdued laugh. Edgar, for fear of being discovered,
drew deeper into the dark. But the couple now groping their way in the
deep gloom had no eyes for him. They passed him by, closely locked, and
they stopped only a few feet beyond his bench. They pressed their faces
together. Edgar could not see clearly, but he heard a soft groan from
the woman, and the man stammering mad, ardent words. A sort of sultry
presentiment touched Edgar's alarm with a shudder that was sensual and
pleasant.
The couple stayed thus a minute or so, and then the gravel crunched
under their tread again, and the sound of their footsteps died away in
the darkness.
A tremor went through Edgar. His blood whirled hot through his veins,
and all of a sudden he felt unbearably alone in this bewildering
darkness, and the need came upon him with elemental force for the sound
of a friend's voice, an embrace, a bright room, people he loved. The
whole perplexing darkness this night seemed to be inside his breast
rending it.
He jumped up. To be at home, just to be at home, anywhere at home in a
warm, bright room, in some relation with people. What could happen to
him then? Even if they were to scold and beat him, he would not mind all
that darkness and the dread of loneliness.
Unconsciously he made his way back to grandmother's villa, and found
himself standing with the cool doorbell in his hand again. Now, he
observed, the lighted windows were shining through the foliage, and he
pictured each room belonging to each window and the people inside. This
very proximity to familiar beings, the comforting sense of being near
people who, he knew, loved him was delightful, and if he hesitated it
was simply to taste this joy a little longer.
Suddenly a terrified voice behind him shrieked:
"Edgar! Why, here he is!"
It was his grandmother's maid. She pounced on him and grabbed his hand.
The door was pulled open from within, a dog jumped at Edgar, barking,
people came running, and voices of mingled alarm and joy called out. The
first to meet Edgar was his grandmother with outstretched arms, and
behind her--he thought he must be dreaming--his mother.
Tears came to Edgar's eyes, and he stood amid this ardent outburst of
emotions quivering and intimidated, undecided what to say or do and very
uncertain of his own feelings. He was not sure whether he was glad or
frightened.