Burning Secret Read Free Page B

although observing all decorum ; she even left the table soon for the sake of the boy, as she apologetically added.
    Edgar protested vigorously that he wasn’t tired, he was ready to stay up all night. But his mother had already given the Baron her hand, which he kissed respectfully.
    Edgar slept badly that night, full of a mixture of happiness and childish desperation. Something new had come into his existence today. For the first time he had become a part of adult life. Half-asleep, he forgot his own childhood state and felt that he too was suddenly grown up. Until now, brought up as a lonelyand often sickly child, he had had few friends. There had been no one to satisfy his need for affection but his parents, who took little notice of him, and the servants. And the strength of a love is always misjudged if we evaluate it only by its immediate cause and not the stress that went before it, the dark and hollow space full of disappointment and loneliness that precedes all the great events in the heart’s history. A great, unused capacity for emotion had been lying in wait, and now it raced with outstretched arms towards the first person who seemed to deserve it. Edgar lay in the dark, happy and bewildered, he wanted to laugh and couldn’t help crying. For he loved this man as he had never loved a friend, or his father and mother, or even God. The whole immature passion of his early years now clung to the image of a man even whose name he had not known two hours ago.
    But he was clever enough not to let the unexpected, unique nature of his new friendship distress him. What bewildered him so much was his sense of his own unworthiness, his insignificance. Am I good enough for him, he wondered, tormenting himself, a boy of twelve who still has to go to school and is sent to bed before anyone else in the evening? What can I mean to him, what can I give him? It was this painfully felt inability to find a means of showing his emotions that made him unhappy. Usually, when he decided that he liked another boy, the first thing he did was to share the few treasures in his desk with him, stamps and stones,the possessions of childhood, but all these things, which only yesterday had seemed full of importance and uncommonly attractive, now suddenly appeared to him devalued, foolish, contemptible. How could he offer such things to this new friend whom he dared not even call by his first name, how could he find a way, an opportunity to show his feelings? More and more, he felt how painful it was to be little, only half-grown , immature, a child of twelve, and he had never before hated childhood so violently, or longed so much to wake up a different person, the person he dreamed of being: tall and strong, a man, a grown-up like the others.
    His first vivid dreams of that new world of adulthood wove their way into these troubled thoughts. Edgar fell asleep at last with a smile, but all the same, the memory of tomorrow’s promise to meet his friend undermined his sleep. He woke with a start at seven, afraid of being late. He quickly dressed, went to his mother’s room to say good morning—she was startled, since she usually had some difficulty in getting him out of bed—and ran downstairs before she could ask any questions. Then he hung about impatiently until nine and forgot to have any breakfast; the only thing in his head was that he mustn’t keep his friend waiting for their walk.
    At nine-thirty the Baron came strolling nonchalantly up at last. Of course he had long since forgotten about the walk, but now that the boy eagerly went up to him he had to smile at such enthusiasm, and showed that hewas ready to keep his promise. He took the boy’s arm again and walked about in the lobby with the beaming child, although he gently but firmly declined to set out on their expedition together just yet. He seemed to be waiting for something, or at least so his eyes suggested as they kept going to the doors. Suddenly he stood up very straight.