Read Online Death of a Huntsman by H.E. Bates - Free Book Online

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    â€˜I am not in the habit of telling you twice,’ Edna Whittington said. The voice was icy. ‘Get your things at once and go home.’
    The band had begun playing. He clenched the stem of his glass, then relaxed his fingers and looked straight at the ice-grey microscopic eyes of Edna Whittington.
    â€˜She’s not going home,’ he said.
    â€˜Will you please mind you own business?’
    He found himself drawing on remarkable reserves of calm, backed by the echo of a voice which kept saying ‘I feel in a wonderful way that we’ve been growing up together.’
    â€˜Child!——’
    â€˜I have told you, Edna, that she is not going home.’
    â€˜Will you kindly mind your own business!’
    He lifted his face, pushed his glass aside and looked straight into the eyes of the girl.
    â€˜Shall we dance?’ he said.
    She hesitated for a fraction of a second. He thought he saw at the same time an indecipherable shadow run across her face, as if she were actually in a turmoil of indecision. And for a moment he was in horror that she would fail, break down and go home.
    Instead she smiled and got up. As the skirt of the yellow dress moved into full view from below the table he remembered the shining lamp of the solitary remaining quince burning in the blue November glassiness above the lake on cooling crystal afternoons, the last phial of thesummer’s honey, and he knew that now, at last, there was no need to doubt her.
    A moment later they were dancing. They danced perhaps twice round the room before she even looked or spoke to him. Then slowly she lifted her face, staring at him as if she could not see him distinctly.
    â€˜You’re the bestest good one,’ she said. ‘The most bestest good one in the world.’
    And as she spoke he found, suddenly, that he could not bear to look at her. Her huge brown eyes were drowned in tears of happiness.
Chapter 11
    It was nearly three o’clock when Edna Whittington said to him in a husky discordant voice that betrayed, at last, the first snap of anger:
    â€˜If you feel you’ve enjoyed yourself enough I should like to go home.’
    â€˜I’m ready whenever you are,’ he said. ‘Shall I take you alone or shall we all go together?’
    She paused before answering; and he thought for a moment that she was going to laugh, as she sometimes did, distastefully. Instead she picked the minutest shred of tobacco from her mouth, looked at it and then flicked it away.
    â€˜We’ll go together,’ she said. ‘I want to talk to you.’
    â€˜As far as I’m concerned there’s nothing to talk about.’
    â€˜She’s my daughter,’ she said, ‘and I want to talk to you.’
    â€˜Very well, Edna,’ he said. ‘Talk to me.’
    â€˜I’ll talk to you,’ she said, ‘at home.’
    They drove home in frosty darkness, under a starry sky from which the moon had gone down. The girl sat in the back of the car, as before, and no one spoke a word.
    When he pulled up before the cottage no one, for nearly half a minute, moved either.
    â€˜Will you come in?’ Edna Whittington said at last.
    â€˜No thank you.’
    â€˜Then I’ll talk to you here.’ She turned to the girl.
    â€˜Go inside, Valerie. Here’s the key.’
    The girl did not move or answer. Harry Barnfield turned, saw her sitting there motionless, mackintoshless, cool in the yellow dress, and said:
    â€˜Better go.’ He took the key of the cottage from Edna Whittington and handed it to the girl. ‘I think it’s better.’
    â€˜I’m going,’ she said very quietly. ‘Good-night. See you tomorrow.’
    Then, and he could only guess what it cost her to do it, the girl leaned over, turned his head with her hand and kissed him on the lips, saying:
    â€˜Thank you for everything. Good-night.’
    Before he could move to open the door for her