THE impatient hunter felt the time had come to creep up on his game. The three-sidedness of the sport annoyed him, and so did the tone of it. To sit there and chat was rather pleasant, but he was after more than mere talk. Social intercourse, with the mask it puts over desire, always, he knew, retards the erotic between man and woman. Words lose their ardor, the attack its fire. Despite their conversation together on indifferent matters, Edgar’s mother must never forget his real object, of which, he was quite convinced, she was already aware.
That his efforts to catch this woman were not to prove in vain seemed very probable. She was at the critical age when a woman begins to regret having remained faithful to a husband she has never truly loved, and when the purple sunset of her beauty still affords her a final urgent choice between motherliness and womanliness. The life whose questions seem to have been answered long before becomes a problem again, and for the last time the magnetic needle of the will wavers between the hope for an intense love experience and ultimate resignation. The woman has a dangerous decision to confront, whether she will live her own life or that of her children, whether she will be a woman first, or a mother first.
The baron, who was very perspicacious in these matters, thought that he discerned in Edgar’s mother this very vacillation between passion to live her own life and readiness to sacrifice her desires. In conversation she always omitted to mention her husband. Evidently he satisfied nothing but her bare external needs and not the snobbishness that an aristocratic way of living had excited in her. And as for her son, she knew precious little of the child’s soul. A shadow of boredom, wearing the veil of melancholy in her dark eyes, lay over her life and obscured her sensuousness.
The baron resolved to act quickly, yet at the same time to avoid any appearance of haste. Like an angler, who tempts the fish by dangling and withdrawing the bait, he would affect a show of indifference and let himself be courted while he was the one that was actually doing the courting. He would put on an air of haughtiness and bring into sharp relief the difference in their social ranks. There was fascination in the idea of getting possession of that lovely, voluptuous creature simply by stressing his pride, by mere externals, by the use of a high-sounding aristocratic name and the adoption of a cold, proud manner.
The chase was already growing hot. He had to be cautious and not show his excitement. So he remained in his room the whole afternoon, filled with the pleasant consciousness of being looked for and missed. But his absence was felt not so much by the woman, upon whom the effect was intended, as by Edgar.
To the wretched child it was simple torture. The whole afternoon he felt absolutely impotent and lost. With the obstinate faithfulness of a boy he waited long, long hours for his friend. To have gone away or done anything by himself would have seemed like a crime against their friendship, and he loafed the time away in the hotel corridors, his heart growing heavier and heavier as each moment passed. After a while his heated imagination began to dwell on a possible accident or an insult he might unwittingly have offered his friend. He was on the verge of tears from impatience and anxiety.
So that when the baron came in to dinner in the evening, he received a brilliant greeting. Edgar jumped up and, without paying any attention to his mother’s cry of rebuke or the astonishment of the other diners, rushed at the baron and threw his thin little arms about him.
“Where have you been? Where have you been? We’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
The mother’s face reddened at hearing herself included in the search.
“Sois sage, Edgar. Assieds toi,” she said rather severely. She always spoke French to him, though it by no means came readily to her tongue, and if any but the simplest things were to be said she invariably floundered.