The Perfect Host Read Online Free Page A

the scar of it, for he shouted at her. Her conditioning made her immune to the one thing that had taken her father by surprise—the dreadful fact that aloneness can come to any human being, without warning or justice.
    “If you ever leave me,” he said once, “you must find your own way.”
    “Why would I ever leave you?”
    “Because you must. You will. For a year.”
    “You sometimes speak as if you knew the future, Father.”
    “I do,” he responded immediately. “I do because I make my own.”
    “I’ll never leave you,” she said positively, and he smiled.
    She hunted, but only to eat. She loved flowers, but never cut one. She ran and climbed, and in the warm days would leave the house naked and leap through the meadows to the woods which began at the top of the hill. She followed secret glades and deer-runs known only to her, to a secret pool, cold in the shade, but with its margins all but steaming at the end of three midday hours, when the sun vaulted over it on a thick pillar of light.
    One August evening, after swimming and drying her clean brown body in the sun, she returned to the house by the orchard path, stopping for a while by her rabbit-hutches. When the lengthening shadows reminded her of the hour, and her healthy young appetite gave a sudden and hearty seconding, she skipped to the kitchen door.
    It was locked.
    She paused, a small frown flickering between her wide-set eyes, then shrugged. Small and unexpected changes in her environment were part of her father’s way. “Nothing is ‘always,’ Quietly,” he had often said. “Look, child. The spoon is in the drawer. It is there today. It was there yesterday and last year. So by all means say ‘The spoon is in the drawer.’ But when you say ‘the spoon is
always
in the drawer,’you are saying, partly, ‘The spoon will be in the drawer tomorrow.’ You can’t know that!”
    The kitchen door had always been unlocked until now … She shrugged, and went round to the side door.
    The side door and the front door and the wide doors over the cellar steps, and the bedroom windows which opened on the roof of the shed—they were all locked.
    She went back to the kitchen door and stood looking at it. She was eighteen now, strong, well-balanced as she shifted her weight from one bare foot to the other, well-balanced as she thought.
    She was hungry and naked. It was growing cool. She gazed without expression at the expressionless windows. A small breeze stroked her body, leaving a brief puckering of gooseflesh. She stepped to the door and tried it again. It never occurred to her to knock. If her father were inside at all, the chances were that he would be in the study or upstairs, to be called only by thunderous hammering—something unthinkable in that house. There could be no possibility that her father had locked the doors by mistake, for he was not a man who made mistakes.
    Well, then, she must wait. She went to the shed, which was warm and dry, if nothing else. But—it was locked. So was the barn.
    Then she knew.
    “You must find your own way … you will leave. You must. For a year …”
It had been that way when first she was left by herself in the house; when first lunch-time had come and she suddenly realized that he had made no effort to prepare it. Always there had been a warning beforehand, buried in a lesson, perhaps, or mentioned casually in conversation. And this was like him. She must leave, but she would not be sent away, with clothes and money and a starting-place somewhere.
    She went into the garden and looked about her. The tomatoes were green, but edible. It would be a crime to take any of the baby ears of corn, but in this emergency … she shook her head stubbornly. Not the corn. Let it grow. It was not responsible for her plight. A rabbit, then.
    She walked to the hutches. The rabbits tumbled towards her, wanting more food. She smiled at them. There had always been rabbits. Always … suddenly it became clear to