Death of a Huntsman

by H. E. Bates

  The gardens sloped away sharply, in a series of terraces joined by stone steps, to the river. I was surprised to see them, in contrast to the front of the house, running wild. Tall coarse yellow mulleins, with caterpillar-eaten leaves, had sown themselves all through the flower-beds, among the roses and even, at one place, in broken cucumber frames. Sunflowers were presently going to obliterate the beds of asparagus. Soon there would be nothing to be seen of a plantation of raspberries, struggling with an invasion of white convolvulus in full trumpet bloom.

  I walked slowly through this choking mass of vegetation to the river. A path ran along the bank, heavily shaded by big balsam poplar trees. You could smell the fragrance of balsam leaves in the hot flat air and in the shadow of the trees the river was dark, with deep under-skeins of weed.

  Halfway along the path was a little wooden landing stage with a seat on it. It was surrounded by a hand-rail and a punt was chained to the end. The punt, the little seat, the landing stage and in fact everything about it were, unlike the garden, surprisingly well kept. The punt had recently been painted a fresh bright green and even the name of the house, Orleans, had been picked out in white at the stern end.

  I followed the path for forty or fifty yards along the river and began presently to approach the boundaries of the garden on the other side. It was wilder than ever there, with a few straggling pyramid pear-trees growing in long meadow grass as tall as wheat and in full seed.

  Beyond all this was another hedge of yew, ten or twelve feet high, with a path cut through the grass beside it. I started to walk up this path. Then, halfway up the slope, I heard a voice. It was a man’s voice and it seemed, I thought, to be talking to itself in the hot still air.

  And it was talking very remarkably. I am not sure at this distance of time if I can remember word for word exactly what it was saying but presently what I heard was, I think, something like this:

  ‘It forms a ladder of its web so that it can climb up it to any height—even up a pane of glass. They smell awfully disagreeably but apparently the Romans thought them delicious. They were a favourite dish of theirs.’

  That was about all I heard before I came upon the man himself, standing by the hedge. He was a man of sixty or so, a little under medium height, rather spruce, with very smooth grey hair. He was wearing a cream shantung summer jacket, grey trousers with a chalk stripe in them and a white panama.

  There was nothing in the least remarkable about all this. What was remarkable was that he was holding a branch of about half a dozen leaves in his hand. At first I thought he was talking to these leaves. Then I saw that I was mistaken. Something was crawling up the branch and I concluded, mistakenly as it turned out, that he was talking to that.

  It was a thick, pink, naked, quite repulsive caterpillar.

  If it is surprising for a girl of seventeen to come upon an elderly gentleman in a strange garden talking to an ugly caterpillar it must be equally surprising for elderly gentlemen to have conferences of this kind interrupted by strange girls of seventeen.

  The surprising thing was that he did not show surprise at all. He looked at me, then looked at the caterpillar, which had now reached the tip of the branch, and seemed for a moment undecided which of us to attend to first. Then, very deftly, he turned the branch the other way up, so that the caterpillar could climb up it again, and with the other hand raised his panama.

  As he took off his hat I saw that his eyes, remarkably blue in the brilliant sunshine, transfixed me.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ he said.

  I began to explain how it was I was there, how sorry I was to interrupt him and so on, and he said, ‘Yes. Oh! yes. Yes, of course,’ several times, watching me with the remarkably blue bright eyes while I in turn stood watching the caterpillar.

  ‘Will this lead me back to the house?’ I said.

  ‘One moment. One moment,’ he said and then started to address the hedge:

  ‘It seems I have visitors. About the house. You understand, dear, don’t you? I’ll show you a figure of the goat later. It’s rather a treasure. This one’s a bit of a freak of course. He ought not to be out now. He ought to have been out in May, but that’s how it is sometimes.’

  Of course youth is very quick to spot the ridiculous. And suddenly I thought I’d never seen anything quite as killing as the business of holding this repulsive caterpillar on a stick and carrying on a two-part conversation with it and a hedge. It seemed funnier still when, through a break in the hedge, I saw the flap of a big pink sun-hat on the other side and heard a woman’s voice say:

  ‘Of course, dear. That I shall look forward to immensely. Au revoir, Frederick. Goodbye.’

  ‘Au revoir,’ he said.

  Already by this time the caterpillar had climbed to the top of the branch and now the man in the panama, turning to me, deftly twisted the branch upside down so that the caterpillar could climb up it again.

  ‘Do come this way,’ he said.

  To my surprise he began to lead me back down the path, towards the river. All the time he held the branch at half-arm’s length, rather like a torch, and I didn’t think I’d ever see anything quite so fatuous.

  As if to make the whole thing more ridiculous he seemed absolutely absorbed in me. He talked very quickly, in rather a flutey sort of voice, asking all sorts of questions. Then, unable to take his eyes off me, he eventually completely forgot the caterpillar, which finally reached the top of the stick and sat there looking most disagreeably naked and slightly bloated.

  ‘So you’ve come to see this house?’ he said. ‘Well, well. How nice. Indeed. How nice. These are the only two houses that front on the river here. All the rest of the land, you see, is meadow. With a continual danger of floods, you see, so that you can’t build down there. It’s only just here, because of this bend and the big bank, that it’s been possible to have these houses.’

  It was, I still thought, extraordinarily funny: the prattling flutey voice, the enthusiasm, the eagerness, like that of a boy, and always, of course, the caterpillar.

  And presently the caterpillar itself got funnier still. At the path by the river we stopped for nearly five minutes while he went into a prolonged explanation about the punt and the landing stage. By this time I was not listening very closely and he, more and more absorbed in me, was not looking at the caterpillar.

  I saw that it had, in fact, crawled back down the stick and now, slowly and steadily, hunching its back, was crawling up his arm.

  ‘And what is your name? I mean,’ he said, ‘your Christian name.’

  ‘Laura,’ I said.

  ‘How charming,’ he said. The little bright blue eyes glittered, dancing with pleasure as the caterpillar crawled up the neat shantung arm. ‘And what are you?—I mean how old? Seventeen?’

  ‘Nineteen,’ I said.

  The whole affair was so ridiculous that the lie about my age was, I thought, not only in keeping with it all but made it, if possible, more fun.

  ‘Still at school?’

  ‘Oh! heavens no,’ I said. And this time I didn’t lie. ‘I haven’t been to school all summer.’

  ‘No?’ he said. ‘Well, you don’t look like a school-girl. You look too sure of yourself for that.’

  I suppose that flattered me: to be told that I looked as old as I had pretended to be. But even the flattery didn’t quite cancel out the comic tone of the whole situation. The caterpillar was now, I saw, crawling on his shoulder. I watched it fascinated, ready to shriek if it reached his neck.

  He, on the other hand, didn’t seem to notice it at all and presently he said, tapping the little seat on the landing stage:

  ‘Come and sit down for a minute and tell me all about yourself.’

  ‘I ought to go,’ I said. I began to explain how my mother and my sister would be waiting for me. I said something about their thinking, perhaps, that I might be walking back along the road and he said:

  ‘Who has really come to look at the house? Your mother?’

 
‘Oh! no, my sister. You see, she’s to be married soon.’

  The caterpillar had reached the lapel of his shantung jacket, just above the buttonhole. It was arching its head this way and that, feeling the air.

  ‘Is your sister like you?’

  ‘She’s fair,’ I said. ‘Like my mother. I am like my father’s side.’

  The caterpillar decided to start its upward journey towards his neck.

  Then I felt I must ask him a question.

  ‘It’s such a nice house. Are you going far away?’

  ‘You’re almost the first people to have seen it,’ he said. ‘A man did come last Sunday. A stockbroker. From Bedford. Do sit down.’ He tapped the seat again. ‘But I’ve heard no more. Do you know France?’ he said.

  He moved along the seat. Skirts were a great deal shorter in those days and I fancied he looked quickly at my legs as I sat down. I thought they were very nice legs and I was glad he seemed to think so too.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t know France. I’ve never been abroad.’

  I suppose the fact that I was watching the caterpillar with such unbroken fascination must have misled him into thinking I was staring solely on him. At any rate the bright blue eyes were continually holding mine in a shimmering, captivated smile.

  ‘I used to live a great deal in France,’ he said. ‘Before the war. Then I came and took this place. But I find the winters very cold in this valley.’

  The caterpillar, I noticed, had disappeared.

  ‘Must you go?’ he said.

  By that time I had really begun to enjoy the whole situation. It appealed enormously to my sense of humour to see that fat bald creature crawling all over him and now disappearing, at last, behind his neck.

  ‘No. I suppose I don’t have to,’ I said. ‘They’ll wait for me.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now you can tell me more about yourself.’

  It was beautifully dark and cool there on the river bank, under the thick poplars, and when a fish rose, just on the line of shadow, it cut the water with a curved slice of silver before it disappeared.

  That was about the only thing that moved in the hot breathless afternoon for the next quarter of an hour, during which he said once:

  ‘Tell me. I’ve really been most undecided about this house. I’m really very fond of it. But I can’t exist in these freezing winters. If this were your house what would you do?’

  ‘Do you live alone?’ I said.

  I don’t know what made me say that. I suppose it’s instinctive in any woman, as soon as a man appears on the scene, to try to assess whether he has attachments or not. I don’t know of course. It may not have been that. At any rate he said:

  ‘That’s another thing. I hardly see a soul from one week’s end to another. Except Miss Carfax. She lives in the house next door.’

  ‘Was that Miss Carfax you were talking to?’

  ‘That was Miss Carfax.’

  Again I started to search his neck for the caterpillar. It was absolutely fascinating to wonder where it could have got to all that time and I must have been so absorbed that I couldn’t have realized fully how much my eyes were fixed on him.

  ‘But let’s not talk,’ he said, ‘about Miss Carfax.’

  Suddenly I got the impression that, with the slightest encouragement from me, he would have become emotional. His bright eyes fairly shimmered, like the heat of the afternoon.

  A moment later I saw the caterpillar emerge on the other side of his coat collar.

  I started laughing at once and he said:

  ‘You’re a very gay person, aren’t you? Are you always so gay?’

  ‘It doesn’t always do to be serious, does it?’ I said and because of the caterpillar I was still laughing.

  All this, of course, may well have looked like a form of encouragement to him and suddenly he moved along the seat, a little closer to me.

  But then, instead of attempting to come any nearer, he merely patted my hand. It was a very brief, avuncular sort of pat, not very serious, but I drew my hand away a little haughtily and with the faintest smile. I was really thinking more of the caterpillar on my own arms and shoulders and I did not grasp, even remotely, that this quick little pat of my hand was really an expression of great shyness on his part.

  I suppose youth never thinks of age as being shy. It merely thinks that a person of sixty ought long since to have got over things like that. It is in fact impossible for the young to grasp that the pain of shyness never really leaves some people, however age may seem to give them certainty.

  That, anyway, was the one and only attempt he made to pat my hand and presently he said:

  ‘It must be rather interesting to have two fair people and two dark ones in the family. Your mother and sister on the one side and you and your father on the other.’

  ‘My father is dead,’ I said.

  His comment on that was, as I afterwards discovered, quite typical.

  ‘Do you miss him very much?’ he said.

  ‘Very much,’ I said. ‘Naturally.’

  That was another thing I had not, at that time, fully grasped. My father had died the previous summer. Shortly afterwards my sister had got engaged to Ewart Mackeson. It did not occur to me that these two events had anything to do with that sulky adolescent sickness of mine.

  ‘Are you on the telephone?’ he suddenly said.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Why?’

  ‘If I sell the house I might perhaps give a little farewell party before I go away. If I do I would like to ring you up and invite you. Would you care to come?’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  In thought he stared at the water, still holding the branch of leaves, and I could not see the caterpillar. I still longed for it to complete the picture of fatuity by crawling up his neck, but a moment later I thought I heard voices from the direction of the mullein-strewn wilderness nearer the house, and soon they were growing louder.

  ‘I think my mother and sister must be coming this way,’ I said.

  Suddenly I saw that the caterpillar had appeared again. It was sitting on the far lapel of the shantung coat.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question,’ he said.

  That is the sort of opening youth likes and I said at once, with what I thought was splendid sarcasm:

  ‘Since you ask me a new one every five seconds it’s rather hard to know which question you mean.’

  ‘About the house.’

  Up to that moment I simply couldn’t have cared one way or the other whether he sold the house or not. What on earth had I to do with the wretched house? Then from farther up the bank I distinctly heard my sister say:

  ‘I think Ewart will rave about it, don’t you? All this bit by the river. I must get him over tomorrow.’

  I didn’t hesitate a moment longer. I simply turned and smiled at him in a calm off-hand sort of way and said:

  ‘If you mean about selling the house I wouldn’t sell it for worlds. Nothing would induce me.’

  I thought he seemed relieved at that, almost delighted. He actually gave me a fussy little pat on the shoulder.

  ‘I hope you will come over to tea with me one day,’ he said, ‘while this beautiful weather lasts. I would love to show you the butterflies.’

  I simply couldn’t think what on earth he was talking about. He murmured something else about not really wanting, in his heart, to part with the house and how glad he was about my turning up that day and helping him to make up his mind, and then my sister and mother arrived.

  He went towards them and, still with the caterpillar sitting on his chest, gave a little bow, at the same time raising his panama.

  ‘I have been talking to your charming daughter without knowing her name or telling her mine,’ he said. ‘I’m Frederick Fielding-Brown. Good afternoon.’

  ‘Mrs George Burnett,’ my mother said. ‘Good afternoon,’ and I saw her suddenly look with pale startled eyes at the extraordinary spectacle of the shantung jacket and its naked cat
erpillar.

  ‘I should like to bring my fiancé over to see the house,’ my sister said. ‘I love it.’

  My sister, seeing the caterpillar too, looked equally startled.

  ‘By all means,’ he said, ‘though to be perfectly honest I haven’t really made up my mind finally whether to sell it or not.’

  Back in the car my sister was half-irritated, half-amused.

  ‘Stupid little man,’ she said. ‘First he wants to sell his house and then he can’t make up his mind. And did you ever see anything quite so priceless? That revolting caterpillar on his coat—did you see that caterpillar?’

  I could only stare out of the taxi window and down the valley to where, on the river, the water-lilies were gleaming as white, entrancing and duck-like as ever in the sun.

  ‘I didn’t see anything,’ I said, ‘and if it comes to that I don’t think he was stupid. I think he was rather nice. He was very charming to me.’

  Two days later my mother was congratulating me on having at last had the good sense, as she put it, to shake myself out of myself.

  ‘A bicycle ride will do you all the good in the world,’ she said. ‘I can’t think why you haven’t taken to it before. Would you like me to pack you some tea?’

  ‘No thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ll stop in a village somewhere and get some.’

  An hour later I was sitting in the drawing room at Orleans, taking tea with Frederick Fielding-Brown. The afternoon was hot and brilliant. The yellow venetian blinds were drawn half-way down at the windows. There was a strong scent of lilies in the air.

  ‘I didn’t think you would come over so soon after my letter,’ he said.

  Youth is not always sarcastic and sharp and quick to see the comic side of things. Sometimes it is splendidly tactless too.

  ‘I hadn’t anything else to do,’ I said, ‘so I thought I’d just come over.’

  He was very tolerant about that. He smiled and asked me to help myself to tomato sandwiches. They were, I thought, very good tomato sandwiches, with rather a special flavour to them. I remarked on this flavour and felt that I was being clever when I told him I thought they were piquant.