Burning Secret Read Free

in summer, when we’re visiting.”
    “We must have a couple of dozen dogs at home on our estate. I’ll tell you what, if you’re good while you’re here I’ll give you one of them. He’s a brown dog with white ears, a young one. Would you like that?”
    The child flushed red with delight. “Oh yes!” It burst out of him, warm and enthusiastic. Next moment, however, second thoughts set in. Now he sounded anxious and almost alarmed.
    “But Mama would never let me. She says she won’t have a dog at home because they make too much trouble.”
    The Baron smiled. At last the conversation had come around to Mama.
    “Is your Mama so strict?”
    The boy thought about it, looked up at him for a second as if wondering whether this strange gentleman was really to be trusted. He answered cautiously.
    “No, Mama isn’t strict. Just now she lets me do anything I like because I’ve been ill. Maybe she’ll even let me have a dog.”
    “Shall I ask her?”
    “Oh yes, please do,” cried the boy happily. “Then I’m sure Mama will let me have him. What does he look like? You said white ears, didn’t you? Can he fetch?”
    “Yes, he can do all sorts of things.” The Baron had to smile at the light he had kindled so quickly in the child’s eyes. All of a sudden the boy’s initial self-consciousness was gone, and he was bubbling over with the passionate enthusiasm that his timidity had held in check. It was an instant transformation: the shy, anxious child of a moment ago was now a cheerful boy. If only the mother were the same, theBaron couldn’t help thinking, so passionate behind her show of diffidence! But the boy was already firing off questions at him.
    “What’s the dog’s name?”
    “Diamond.”
    “Diamond,” the child said, crowing with delight. He was impelled to laugh and crow at every word that was spoken, intoxicated by the unexpected experience of having someone make friends with him. The Baron himself was surprised by his swift success, and decided to strike while the iron was hot. He invited the boy to go for a walk with him, and the poor child, starved of any convivial company for weeks, was enchanted by the idea. He chattered away, innocently providing all the information his new friend wanted and enticed out of him by means of small, apparently casual questions. Soon the Baron knew all about the family, more particularly that Edgar was the only son of a Viennese lawyer, obviously a member of the prosperous Jewish middle class. And through further skilful questioning he quickly discovered that the child’s mother had expressed herself far from happy with their stay in Semmering, and had complained of the lack of congenial company. He even thought he could detect, from Edgar’s evasive answer to the question of whether Mama was very fond of Papa, that all was not entirely well in that quarter. He was almost ashamed of the ease with which he elicited all these little family secrets from the unsuspecting boy, for Edgar, very proud to think that what he said couldinterest a grown-up, positively pressed his confidences on his new friend. His childish heart throbbed with pride to be seen publicly on such close terms of friendship with a grown man—for as they walked along the Baron had laid an arm around his shoulders—and gradually forgot his own childhood, talking as freely as he would to a boy of his own age. Edgar was very intelligent, as his conversation showed: rather precocious, like most sickly children who have spent a great deal of time with adults, and was clearly highly strung, inclined to be either fervently affectionate or hostile. He did not seem to adopt a moderate stance to anything, and spoke of everyone or everything either with enthusiasm or a dislike so violent that it distorted his face, making him look almost vicious and ugly. Something wild and erratic, perhaps as a result of the illness from which he had only just recovered, gave fanatical fire to what he said, and it seemed