Death of a Huntsman Read Free Page B

if I take the path through here. If not I have to go back the same way again and you know how it is. It’s never so nice going back the same way.’
    He murmured something about no, it was never so nice and then put on his spectacles. Clear, fresh and with that remarkable blend of insolence and innocent charm, she stared down at him, making him feel a baffled, fumbling idiot.
    â€˜So it was your mother told you about the path?’
    â€˜She just said she was sure you wouldn’t mind.’
    Why, he wondered, did she say that?
    â€˜She said you were the sort of man who never did mind.’
    Again he felt baffled and stupid.
    Then, for the first time, the pony moved. Up to that moment she had kept remarkably still and it was in fact so quiet, standing erect in the hot September sun, that he had been almost unaware that it was there until now, suddenly, it reared its head and shuddered.
    Instinctively he put one hand on its flank to calm it down. It quietened almost immediately and she said:
    â€˜I’m afraid he’s really not big enough for me. But he’s the best we can afford for the time.’
    She ran her hand down the pony’s neck, leaning forward as she did so. He saw the muscles of the neck light up like watered silk. At the same time he saw the flanks of the girl tauten, smooth out and then relax again.
    â€˜Does your mother ride now?’ he said.
    â€˜No,’ she said. ‘Not now.’
    â€˜She used to ride very well.’
    â€˜Yes. She said you’d remember.’
    Again he felt baffled; again he groped towards his spectacles.
    â€˜Well,’ she said. ‘I suppose I must go back.’
    She started to turn the pony round. He found all his many uncertainties stiffen into astonishment.
    â€˜I thought you wanted to go on?’ he said— ‘over the hill?’
    â€˜You said you didn’t want me to.’
    â€˜Oh! yes I know, but that was—I admit—Oh! no—well I mean——’ He found himself incapable of forming a coherent sentence. ‘By all means—it was simply that I didn’t want—well, you know, strangers——’
    â€˜I ought to have come and asked you,’ she said. ‘I know now. But you were never at home.’
    â€˜Oh! no, no, no,’ he said. ‘Oh! no.’
    The pony was still facing the cucumber house, uneasy now. Sunlight was catching the angle of the roof panes, flashing white glare into the animal’s eyes in spite of the blinkers, and Harry Barnfield put his hand on its nose, steadying it down.
    â€˜I’ll be putting up jumps next week,’ he said. ‘In the meadows there.’ The touch of the animal brought back a little, but only a little, of his assurance. ‘You could—well, I mean if you cared—you could use them. I’m never here weekdays.’
    She smiled as if to begin to thank him but a flash oflight from the cucumber house once again caught the pony’s eye, making it rear.
    â€˜You’d better turn him round,’ he said, ‘and take him along. It’s the sun on the cucumber house.’
    â€˜I will,’ she said.
    He moved forward to unlatch the gate for her. The pony also moved forward. A new wave of uncertainty ran through Harry Barnfield and he said:
    â€˜Remember me to your mother, will you? If she would care—Oh! I don’t suppose she would like a cucumber? We have masses. We have too many cucumbers by far.’
    â€˜We neither of us care for them,’ she said, ‘but I’ll tell her all the same.’
    She rode through the gate. He shut the gate after her, leaned on it and watched her ride, at a walk, up the path. After forty or fifty yards the path began to go uphill to where, against the skyline, clumps of pine grew from browning bracken hillocks before the true woods began. The morning was so clear that he could see on the tips of these pines the stiff fresh crusts of the light