The Go-Between Read Online Free PDF

I could hardly wait for it: “Nineteen
hundred, nineteen hundred,” I would chant to myself in rapture; and
as the old century drew to its close, I began to wonder whether I
should live to see its successor. I had an excuse for this: I had
been ill and was acquainted with the idea of death; but much more
it was the fear of missing something infinitely precious—the dawn
of a Golden Age. For that was what I believed the coming century
would be: a realization, on the part of the whole world, of the
hopes that I was entertaining for myself.
      The diary was a Christmas present from my mother, to
whom I had confided some, though by no means all, of my aspirations
for the future, and she wanted its dates to be worthily
enshrined.
      In my zodiacal fantasies there was one jarring note,
to which, when I indulged them, I tried not to listen, for it
flawed the experience. This was my own role in it.
      My birthday fell in late July and I had an
additional reason, an excellent one, though I should have been
loath to mention it at school, for claiming the Lion as my symbol.
But much as I admired him and what he stood for, I could not
identify myself with him, because of late I had lost the faculty,
which, like other children, I had once revelled in, of pretending
that I was an animal. A term and a half at school had helped to
bring about this disability in my imagination; but it was also a
natural change. I was between twelve and thirteen, and I wanted to
think of myself as a man.
      There were only two candidates, the Archer and the
Water-carrier, and, to make the choice more difficult, the artist,
who probably had few facial types at his command, had drawn them
very much alike. They were, in fact, the same man following
different callings. He was strong and sturdy, and this appealed to
me, for one of my ambitions was to become a kind of Hercules. I
leaned to the Archer as the more romantic, and because the idea of
shooting appealed to me. But my father had been against war, which
I supposed was the Archer’s profession; and as to the
Water-carrier, though I knew him to be a useful member of society I
could not help conceiving of him as a farm labourer or at best a
gardener, neither of which I wanted to be. The two men attracted
and repelled me at the same time; perhaps I was jealous of them.
When I studied the title-page of the diary, I tried not to look at
the Sagittarius-Aquarius combination, and when the whole conception
took wing and mounted to the zenith, drawing the twentieth century
with it for a final heavenly romp, I sometimes contrived to leave
it behind. A zodiacal sign without portfolio, I then had the Virgin
to myself.
      One result of the diary was that I went to the top
of the class for knowing the signs of the zodiac. In another way
its influence was less fortunate. I wanted to be worthy of the
diary, of its purple leather, its gold edges, its general
sumptu-ousness; and I felt that my entries must live up to all
these. They must record something worth while, and they must reach
a high standard of literary attainment. My ideas of what was worth
while were already rather advanced, and it seemed to me that my
school life did not provide events fit for such a magnificent
setting as my diary was, or for the year 1900.
      What had I written? I remembered the catastrophe
well enough, but not the stages that led up to it. I turned the
pages. The entries were few. “Tea with C.’s pater and mater— very
jolly.” Then, more sophisticated: “Jolly decent tea with L.’s
people. Muffins, scones, cakes, and strawberry jam.” “Drove to
Canterbury in 3 breaks. Visited Cathedral, very interresting.
Thomas A’Becket’s blood. Très riping.” “Walk to Kingsgate Castle.
M. showed me his new knife.” This was the first reference to
Maudsley; I turned the pages more quickly. Ah, here it was—the
Lambton House saga. Lambton House was a near-by preparatory school
with which we felt ourselves on terms of special