The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley Page B

the South-Eastern and Smashem Railway. Nonchalantly I
took out my diary and began to decorate the date—it was Friday the
15th of June—with a red pencil. Covertly my neighbours watched me.
Was a new spell being cast? Presently I tired of arabesques and
whirligigs and decided to paint the whole day red.
      Did I really believe that I had been responsible for
the epidemic? Modestly, I took some credit for it, and in certain
quarters credit was given me. My pretensions were not exploded—far
from it—but the awe with which I had been regarded was now tempered
with a certain good-natured banter that might easily have turned to
ridicule had the term gone on. I expect I had got a little above
myself, not, I prefer to think, in manner, but in my outlook on
life. Once I had been too self-distrustful; now I was
overconfident. I expected things to go my way, and without much
conscious effort on my part. I had only to wish them to serve me
and they would. I had forgotten the era of persecution; I had
relaxed and withdrawn the sentries. I felt myself to be
invulnerable. I did not believe that my happiness was contingent on
anything: I felt that the laws of reality had been suspended on my
behalf. My dreams for the year 1900 and for the twentieth century
and for myself were coming true.
      It never occurred to me, for instance, that I might
get measles, and it astonished me that my mother regarded this as
not only possible but probable. “You will tell me, won’t you,” she
said anxiously, “the first moment that you don’t feel well?” I
smiled. “Of course I shall be all right,” I assured her. “I hope so
too,” she said. “But don’t forget last year, and how ill you
were.”
      Last year, the year 1899, had been a disastrous
year. In January my father died after a brief illness, and in the
summer I had diphtheria, with complications; almost all July and
August I had spent in bed. They were phenomenally hot months, but
what I recollected of the heat was my own fever, of which the heat
in my room seemed only another aggravating aspect; heat was my
enemy, the sun something to be kept out. I dreaded it; and whenever
I heard people saying what a wonderful summer it had been, almost
the hottest within living memory, I could not understand what they
meant—I only thought of my aching throat and the desperate search
of my fretful limbs for a cool place in the bedclothes. I had good
reason to wish the century over.
      The summer of 1900 would be a cool one, I decided; I
should arrange for that. And the Clerk of the Weather hearkened to
me. On July 1 the temperature was in the sixties and we had only
had three hot days—the 10th, the llth, and the 12th of June. I had
marked them in my diary with a cross.
      The 1st of July also brought Mrs. Maudsley’s
invitation, for in those days we still had a post on Sundays. My
mother showed me the letter: it was written in a large, bold,
sloping hand. I had just reached the age when I could read
handwriting that was unfamiliar to me, and this accomplishment gave
me some pride. Mrs. Maudsley did not ignore the possibility of
measles though she took it more light-heartedly than my mother did.
“If neither of our boys has come out in spots by July 10th,” she
wrote, “I should be so very pleased if you would allow Leo to spend
the rest of the month with us. Marcus”—ah,
that
was his
name—”has told me quite a lot about him, and I am most anxious to
make his acquaintance, if you can spare him. It will be very nice
for Marcus to have a boy of his own age to play with as he is the
baby of the family, and a little apt to feel left out. I understand
that Leo is an only child and I promise you we will take great care
of him. The Norfolk air...” etc. She ended up: “You may be
surprised that we should be spending the Season in the country but
neither my husband nor I have been very well, and Town is no place
for a small boy in the summer.”
      I pored over the letter and