Guilty: The Lost Classic Novel Read Online Free

assert himself in any other way whatsoever under his own roof. Naturally, I felt hurt because he didn’t concern himself with my upbringing, seeming to take no interest in the, to me, all-important question of my going to school. This had been arranged for the autumn, but was now indefinitely postponed – officially on the grounds that it would be good for me to run wild for a bit after my illness, though I gathered that in some mysterious way his pacifism was responsible for this, too.
    Looking back, I think he must have given his word notto influence me towards his beliefs and scrupulously interpreted this promise as meaning he must have no contact with me at all, since they were so important a part of him as to appear in every action and word. But, as nothing was explained to me at the time, I could hardly fail to resent the fact that he never asked me to be his companion at home or on his long solitary walks, but seemed, indeed, to avoid me altogether.
    Inevitably, I blamed him for the changes that had come about since his return in my mother, to whom I no longer felt close as I’d always done before, and in my surroundings. In these few weeks the whole atmosphere of my home had changed and become sad, silent, secret. My father himself spent most of his time in the little room he used as a study, working for the various organizations which were trying to preserve the precarious peace of that time, whose representatives occasionally came to see him. I can’t imagine my gentle mother refusing to let these people in, so I suppose it was out of consideration for her that he always admitted them personally and later saw them off the premises, thus, in my eyes, investing their comings and goings with a conspiratorial quality that contributed to the general secretiveness.
    It goes without saying that I didn’t actually
think
in this way. Only, at odd times, while I was in the garden, perhaps, lost in fantasy or playing one of my involved ritual games,
the feeling
would fall on me like a stone, temporarily crushing imagination and interest – the feeling of the closed box that was my home, to which, ultimately, I must return, in which my parents were shut away from each other and from the world, each in silence and separateness, alone.
    The cottage even began to
look
secret to me, the half-drawn shades at the upper windows suggesting the obliqueglances of partially veiled eyes. And the rooms, now that they saw no more social life, developed a queer private life of their own. Often, when I opened a door, I would get the impression of wild activity just arrested, as though the different objects around me had only that moment dashed back to their usual places, where they were waiting impatiently for my departure, so that they could go on with their own affairs. I used to tell myself that one day I’d find out what they were up to by flinging open the door so suddenly that they’d be caught unawares. But I can’t really have been very curious – or, more probably, I was scared of intruding – as I never did try to take them by surprise. Perhaps it was simply that I didn’t have time, for it was summer, and I was always in a hurry to escape into the open air.
    Before, my home had been a warm, happy place where I loved to be. But now I was always slightly uneasy indoors. It was a little frightening to think of my father being there all the time, so close, but invisible, unapproachable, like God. And my mother’s silence made me uncomfortable, too. She spoke very little to me these days, and when I chattered as usual seemed not to hear, going about her perpetual cleaning with a shadowy withdrawn face, as if dedicated to cleanliness and to nothing else in the world. Though she always cared meticulously for my bodily needs, and even made an occasional effort to play with me, I couldn’t help being aware that she had begun to live somewhere else and gave nothing of herself to anyone any more, not even to me. I soon got used to