Read Online Death of a Huntsman by H.E. Bates - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: H.E. Bates
Ads: Link
down the road, very fast. As it turned under dark trees by a bend, she realized that the headlights were not on. He was bent forward over the wheel, glaring wildly through the thickish spectacles into a half darkness from which trees rushed up like gaunt shadows.
âIâll kill you, Iâll kill you,â he kept saying. âIâll kill you first.â
She started screaming. Out of the darkness sprang a remembered figure of a Harry Barnfield in a white straw hat, white flannel trousers and a college blazer, a rather soft Harry Barnfield, simple, easy-going, good-time-loving, defenceless and laughing; one of the vacuouspoor fish of her youth, in the days when she had kept a tabulation of conquests in a little book, heading it
In Memoriam: to those who fell
, her prettiness enamelled and calculated and as smart as the strip-poker or the midnight swimming parties she went to, with other, even younger lovers, at long week ends.
Almost the last thing she remembered was struggling with the door of the car. When at first she could not open it she struck out at Harry Barnfield with her hands. At the second blow she hit him full in the spectacles. She heard them crunch as they broke against the bone of his forehead and then the car door was opening, swinging wide, and she was out of it, half-jumping, half-falling on to the soft frosted grass of the verge.
The car, driven by a blinded Harry Barnfield, swerved on wildly down the hill. She was conscious enough to hear a double scream of brakes as it skimmed the bends and then the crash of glass as it struck, far down, a final telegraph pole.
Chapter 12
On the afternoon of Harry Barnfieldâs funeral the wind rose greyly, mild in sudden rainless squalls, across a landscape bare of leaves. The heads of many of the mourners were very bald and as they followed the coffin, in a long slow line, they gave the appearance of so many shaven monks solemnly crossing the churchyard.
At the house, afterwards, there were tea and coffee, with whisky and gin for those who preferred somethingstronger. The Hunt was well represented. The city gentlemen, J. B. (Punch) Warburton, Freddie Jekyll and George Reed Thompson, were there. The Sheriff of the County was represented. The Masters of several other Hunts, two from a neighbouring county, together with three local magistrates and two doctors from the local hospital were there. Colonel and Mrs Charnly-Rose, Justice Smythe and his two daughters, both excellent horsewomen, and several clergymen, farmers, horse-dealers and corn-merchants were there. It was impossible to say how many people, from all sections of society, from villagers to men of title, had come to pay tribute to Harry Barnfield, who as everyone knew was a good huntsman, a good sport, a great horse-lover and a man in whom there was no harm at all.
In addition to the tea, coffee, whisky and gin there were also cucumber sandwiches and many people said how excellent they were. Several people, as they ate them, walked out of the crowded house into the garden, for a breath of fresh air. Others strolled as far as the edges of the meadows, where Harry Barnfieldâs horses were grazing and his run of brushwood jumps stood dark and deserted beneath a squally sky.
As they walked they wondered, as people do at funerals, about the future: what would happen, who would get what and above all what Katey would do. Across the fields and the hillside the wind blew into separated threads the wintry blades of grass, over the parched fox-like ruffles of dead bracken and, rising, rattled the grey bones of leafless boughs. âWeâll miss him on thefive oâclock,â the city gentlemen said and confessed that they had no idea what would happen, who would get what or above all what Katey would do.
Nor could anyone possibly hear, in the rising winter wind, in the falling winter darkness, any sound of voices weeping across the hillside in the night-time.
He first met her on an
âIâll kill you, Iâll kill you,â he kept saying. âIâll kill you first.â
She started screaming. Out of the darkness sprang a remembered figure of a Harry Barnfield in a white straw hat, white flannel trousers and a college blazer, a rather soft Harry Barnfield, simple, easy-going, good-time-loving, defenceless and laughing; one of the vacuouspoor fish of her youth, in the days when she had kept a tabulation of conquests in a little book, heading it
In Memoriam: to those who fell
, her prettiness enamelled and calculated and as smart as the strip-poker or the midnight swimming parties she went to, with other, even younger lovers, at long week ends.
Almost the last thing she remembered was struggling with the door of the car. When at first she could not open it she struck out at Harry Barnfield with her hands. At the second blow she hit him full in the spectacles. She heard them crunch as they broke against the bone of his forehead and then the car door was opening, swinging wide, and she was out of it, half-jumping, half-falling on to the soft frosted grass of the verge.
The car, driven by a blinded Harry Barnfield, swerved on wildly down the hill. She was conscious enough to hear a double scream of brakes as it skimmed the bends and then the crash of glass as it struck, far down, a final telegraph pole.
Chapter 12
On the afternoon of Harry Barnfieldâs funeral the wind rose greyly, mild in sudden rainless squalls, across a landscape bare of leaves. The heads of many of the mourners were very bald and as they followed the coffin, in a long slow line, they gave the appearance of so many shaven monks solemnly crossing the churchyard.
At the house, afterwards, there were tea and coffee, with whisky and gin for those who preferred somethingstronger. The Hunt was well represented. The city gentlemen, J. B. (Punch) Warburton, Freddie Jekyll and George Reed Thompson, were there. The Sheriff of the County was represented. The Masters of several other Hunts, two from a neighbouring county, together with three local magistrates and two doctors from the local hospital were there. Colonel and Mrs Charnly-Rose, Justice Smythe and his two daughters, both excellent horsewomen, and several clergymen, farmers, horse-dealers and corn-merchants were there. It was impossible to say how many people, from all sections of society, from villagers to men of title, had come to pay tribute to Harry Barnfield, who as everyone knew was a good huntsman, a good sport, a great horse-lover and a man in whom there was no harm at all.
In addition to the tea, coffee, whisky and gin there were also cucumber sandwiches and many people said how excellent they were. Several people, as they ate them, walked out of the crowded house into the garden, for a breath of fresh air. Others strolled as far as the edges of the meadows, where Harry Barnfieldâs horses were grazing and his run of brushwood jumps stood dark and deserted beneath a squally sky.
As they walked they wondered, as people do at funerals, about the future: what would happen, who would get what and above all what Katey would do. Across the fields and the hillside the wind blew into separated threads the wintry blades of grass, over the parched fox-like ruffles of dead bracken and, rising, rattled the grey bones of leafless boughs. âWeâll miss him on thefive oâclock,â the city gentlemen said and confessed that they had no idea what would happen, who would get what or above all what Katey would do.
Nor could anyone possibly hear, in the rising winter wind, in the falling winter darkness, any sound of voices weeping across the hillside in the night-time.
He first met her on an
Similar Books
