Death of a Huntsman Read Free Page A

run after her.
    â€˜Young lady!’ he called. ‘Young lady!—one moment, young lady, one moment please——’
    It was thirty or forty yards farther on before he caught up with her. By that time she had stopped, bent down and was already lifting the catch of the first of the wicket gates with the handle of her riding-crop.
    â€˜Just a moment, young lady, just one moment——’
    As he stopped he found himself short of breath and panting slightly. She turned very slightly in the saddle to look at him. Her eyes were brown, motionless and unusually round and large. They seemed, like his own, rather too big for her face.
    â€˜Aren’t you aware,’ he said, ‘that this private property?—this path? It’s private property!’
    She did not move. She looked, he thought, fifteen, perhaps sixteen, not more than that, though rather well developed for her age. The sleeves of the yellow jumper were half-rolled up, showing firm brownforearms that glistened with downy golden hairs. Her face was the same golden brown colour, the lips without make-up, so that they too had a touch of brown.
    â€˜You really can’t ride through here like this,’ he said. ‘You’ve been told before. You really can’t, you know.’
    Again she did not move. He did not know if the large motionless eyes were utterly insolent or merely transfixed in frightened innocence and he was still trying to make up his mind about it when he noticed how straight but relaxed she sat on the pony. He had to admit, even in vexation, that she sat very well; very well indeed, he thought.
    â€˜It’s very tiresome,’ he said, ‘all this. You simply can’t ride rough-shod over other people’s property like this.’
    â€˜Rough-shod?’
    Her voice surprised him very much by its deepness. It almost seemed, he thought, like the voice of a woman twice her age.
    â€˜Do you really think,’ she said, ‘I’m riding rough-shod?’
    The eyes, still holding him in enormous circles of inquiring innocence, disarmed him with sheer brightness.
    â€˜That’s neither here nor there,’ he said. ‘The simple fact is that you cannot ride when and how you please over other people’s property.’
    â€˜I was told I could.’
    â€˜Told? By whom?’
    â€˜My mother.’
    At this moment his spectacles began to mist over. For the next second or two she seemed to melt away and become lost to him.
    Uneasily he thought to himself that he ought to take his spectacles off, polish them and put them back again. He began to feel inexplicably nervous about this and his hands groped about his face. Then when he realized that if he took off his spectacles he would, with his weak, short-sighted eyes, be able to see her even less well he made the unfortunate compromise of trying to look over the top of them.
    She smiled.
    â€˜Your mother?’ he said. ‘What has your mother to do with it? Do you mean I know your mother?’
    â€˜You
knew
her.’
    â€˜Oh! and when pray would that be?’
    He hadn’t the slightest idea why he should ask that question and in fact she ignored it completely.
    â€˜My name is Valerie Whittington’.
    â€˜Oh! yes. I see. Oh! yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Oh! yes.’ He was so intensely surprised that, without thinking, he at once took off his spectacles and rubbed the lenses on his coat sleeve.
    â€˜Is the colonel——?’
    â€˜He died last year.’
    Again he polished the lenses of the spectacles quickly on the coat sleeve.
    â€˜We’ve taken the gamekeeper’s cottage at Fir Top. I don’t suppose you know it,’ she said.
    â€˜Oh! yes.’
    Something made him keep the spectacles in his hand a little longer.
    â€˜I can ride down through the park and along by theriver and then back through the woods across the hill,’ the girl said. ‘It’s a complete circle