The Burning Secret Chapter 3 by Stefan Zweig

CHAPTER III

THE TRIO

THE plan, as appeared only an hour later, proved to be excellent. It worked without a hitch. The baron chose to be a little late in entering the dining-room, and when Edgar saw him, he jumped up from his seat and gave him an eager nod and a beatific smile, at the same time pulling his mother’s sleeve, saying something to her hastily, and pointing conspicuously to the baron.

His mother reproved him for his demonstrativeness. She blushed and showed genuine discomfort, but could not help yielding to the boy’s insistence and gave a glance across at the baron. This the baron instantly seized upon as the pretext for a deferential bow.

The acquaintance was made. The lady had to acknowledge his bow. Yet from now on she kept her head bent still lower over her plate and throughout the rest of the meal sedulously avoided looking over at the baron again.

Not so Edgar. Every minute or two he turned his eyes on the baron, and once he even tried to speak to him across the two tables, an impropriety which his mother promptly checked with a severe rebuke. As soon as dinner was over, Edgar was told he must go straight to bed, and an eager whispering began between him and his mother, which resulted in a concession to the boy. He was allowed to go to the baron and say good-night to him. The baron said a few kind words and so set the child’s eyes ablaze again.

Here the baron rose and in his adroit way, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, stepped over to the other table and congratulated his neighbor upon her bright, intelligent son. He told her what a pleasant time he had spent with him that morning—Edgar beamed—and then inquired about the boy’s health. On this point he asked so many detailed questions that the mother was compelled to reply, and so was drawn irresistibly into a conversation. Edgar listened to it all in a sort of rapturous awe.

The baron gave his name to the lady. The high sound of it, it seemed to him, made an impression on her. At any rate she lost her extreme reserve, though retaining perfect dignity.

In a few minutes she took leave, on account of Edgar’s having to go to bed, as she said by way of a pretext.

Edgar protested he was not sleepy and would be happy to stay up the whole night. But his mother remained obdurate and held out her hand by way of good-night to the baron, who shook hands with her most respectfully.

Edgar did not sleep well that night. A chaos of happiness and childish despair filled his soul. Something new had come to him that day. For the first time he had played a part in the life of adults. In his half-awake state he forgot that he was a child and all at once felt himself a grown man. Brought up an only child and often ailing, he had never had many friends. His parents, who paid little attention to him, and the servants had been the only ones to meet his craving for tenderness.

The power of love is not properly gauged if it is estimated only by the object that inspires it, if the tension preceding it is not taken into account—that gloomy space of disillusionment and loneliness which stretches in front of all the great events of the heart.

In Edgar there had been a heavily fraught, unexpended emotion lying in wait, which now burst out and rushed to meet the first human being who seemed to deserve it. He lay in the dark, happy and dazed. He wanted to laugh, but had to cry. For he loved the baron as he had never loved friend, father, mother, or even God. All the immature passion of his ending boyhood wreathed itself about his mental vision of the man whose very name had been unknown to him a few hours before.

He was wise enough not to be disturbed by the peculiar, unexpected way in which the new friendship had been formed. What troubled him was the sense of his own unworthiness and insignificance. “Am I fit company for him?” he plagued himself. “I, a little boy, twelve years old, who has to go to school still and am sent off to bed at night before anyone else? What can I mean to him, what have I to offer him?”

The painful sense of his impotence to show his feelings in some way or other made him most unhappy. On other occasions, when he had taken a liking for a boy, the first thing he had done was to offer to share his stamps and marbles and jacks. Now such childish possessions, which only the day before had still had vast importance and charm in his eyes, had depreciated in value. They seemed silly. He disdained them. He couldn’t offer such things to his new friend. What possible way was there for him to express his feelings? The sense that he was small, only half a being, a mere child of twelve, grew upon him and tortured him more and more. Never before had he so vehemently cursed his childhood, or longed so heartily to wake up in the morning the person he had always dreamed of being, a man, big and strong, grown up like the others.

His restless thoughts were mixed with the first bright dreams of the new world of manhood. Finally he fell asleep with a smile on his lips, but his sleep was constantly broken by the anticipation of the next morning’s appointment. At seven o’clock he awoke with a start, fearful that he was too late already. He dressed hastily and astonished his mother when he went in to say good-morning because she had always had difficulty getting him out of bed. Before she could question him he was out of her room again.

With only the one thought in his mind, not to keep his friend waiting, he dawdled about downstairs in the hotel, even forgetting to eat breakfast.

At half-past nine the baron came sauntering down the lobby with his easy air and no indication that anything had been troubling him. He, of course, had completely forgotten the appointment for a walk, but he acted as though he were quite ready to keep his promise when the boy came rushing at him so eagerly. He took Edgar’s arm and paced up and down the lobby with him leisurely. Edgar was radiant, although the baron gently but firmly refused to start on the walk at once. He seemed to be waiting for something. Every once in a while he gave a nervous glance at one of the various doors. Suddenly he drew himself up. Edgar’s mother had entered the hall.

She responded to the baron’s greeting and came up to him with a pleasant expression on her face. Edgar had not told her about the walk. It was too precious a thing to talk about. But now the baron mentioned it and she smiled in approval. Then he went on to invite her to come along, and she was not slow in accepting.

That made Edgar sulky. He gnawed at his lips. How provoking of his mother to have come into the lobby just then! The walk belonged to him and him alone. To be sure, he had introduced his friend to his mother, but only out of courtesy. He had not meant to share him with anybody. Something like jealousy began to stir in him when he observed the baron’s friendliness to his mother.

On the walk the dangerous sense the child had of his importance and sudden rise to prominence was heightened by the interest the two adults showed in him. He was almost the exclusive subject of their conversation. His mother expressed rather hypocritical solicitude on account of his pallor and nervousness, while the baron kept saying it was nothing to worry about and extolled his young “friend’s” good manners and pleasant ways.

It was the happiest hour of Edgar’s life. Rights were granted him that he had never before been allowed. He was permitted to take part in the conversation without a prompt “keep quiet, Edgar.” He could even express bold desires for which he would have been rebuked before. No wonder the deceptive feeling that he was grown up began to flourish in his imagination. In his bright dreams childhood already lay behind him like a suit he had outgrown and cast off.

At the mother’s invitation, the baron took his mid day meal at their table. She was growing friendlier all the time. The vis-à-vis was now a companion, the acquaintanceship a friendship. The trio was in full swing, and the three voices, the woman’s, the man’s and the child’s, mingled in harmony.