The next day we all went out hunting. The Radletts loved animals, they loved foxes, they risked dreadful beatings in order to unstop their earths, they read and cried and rejoiced over Reynard the Fox, in summer they got up at four to go and see the cubs playing in the pale-green light of the woods; nevertheless, more than anything in the world, they loved hunting. It was in their blood and bones and in my blood and bones, and nothing could eradicate it, though we knew it for a kind of original sin. For three hours that day I forgot everything except my body and my pony’s body; the rushing, the scrambling, the splashing, struggling up the hills, sliding down them again, the tugging, the bucketing, the earth, and the sky. I forgot everything, I could hardly have told you my name. That must be the great hold that hunting has over people, especially stupid people; it enforces an absolute concentration, both mental and physical.
After three hours Josh took me home. I was never allowed to stay out long or I got tired and would be sick all night. Josh was out on Uncle Matthew’s second horse; at about two o’clock they changed over, and he started home on the lathered, sweating first horse, taking me with him. I came out of my trance, and saw that the day, which had begun with brilliant sunshine, was now cold and dark, threatening rain.
‘And where’s her ladyship hunting this year?’ said Josh, as we started on a ten-mile jog along Merlinford road, a sort of hog’s back, more cruelly exposed than any road I have ever known, without a scrap of shelter or windscreen the whole of its fifteen miles. Uncle Matthew would never allow motor cars, either to take us to the meet or to fetch us home; he regarded this habit as despicably soft.
I knew that Josh meant my mother. He had been with my grandfather when she and her sisters were girls, and my mother was his heroine, he adored her.
‘She’s in Paris, Josh.’
‘In Paris – what for?’
‘I suppose she likes it.’
‘Ho,’ said Josh, furiously, and we rode for about half a mile in silence. The rain had begun, a thin cold rain, sweeping over the wide views on each side of the road; we trotted along, the weather in our faces. My back was not strong, and trotting on a side-saddle for any length of time was agony to me. I edged my pony on to the grass, and cantered for a bit, but I knew how much Josh disapproved of this, it was supposed to bring the horses back too hot; walking, on the other hand, chilled them. It had to be jog, jog, back-breaking jog, all the way.
‘It’s my opinion,’ said Josh at last, ‘that her ladyship is wasted, downright wasted, every minute of her life that she’s not on a ’oss.’
‘She’s a wonderful rider, isn’t she?’
I had had all this before from Josh, many times, and could never have enough of it.
‘There’s no human being like her, that I’ve ever seen,’ said Josh, hissing through his teeth. ‘Hands like velvet, but strong like iron, and her seat – ! Now look at you, jostling about on that saddle, first here, then there – we shall have a sore back tonight, that’s one thing certain we shall.’
‘Oh, Josh – trotting. And I’m so tired.’
‘Never saw her tired. I’ve seen ’er change ’osses after a ten-mile point, get on to a fresh young five-year-old what hadn’t been out for a week – up like a bird – never know you had ’er foot in your hand, pick up the reins in a jiffy, catch up its head, and off over a post and rails and bucking over the ridge and furrow, sitting like a rock. Now his lordship (he meant Uncle Matthew) he can ride, I don’t say the contrary, but look how he sends his ’osses home, so darned tired they can’t drink their gruel. He can ride all right, but he doesn’t study his ’oss. I never knew your mother bring them home like this, she’d know when they’d had enough, and then heads for home and no looking back. Mind you, his lordship’s a great big man, I don’t say the contrary, rides every bit of sixteen stone, but he has great big ’osses and half kills them, and then who has to stop up with them all night? Me!’
The rain was pouring down by now. An icy trickle was feeling its way past my left shoulder, and my right boot was slowly filling with water, the pain in my back was like a knife. I felt that I couldn’t bear another moment of this misery, and yet I knew I must bear another five miles, another forty minutes. Josh gave me scornful looks as my back bent more and more double; I could see that he was wondering how it was that I could be my mother’s child.
‘Miss Linda,’ he said, ‘takes after her ladyship something wonderful.’
At last, at last, we were off the Merlinford road, coming down the valley into Alconleigh village, turning up the hill to Alconleigh house, through the lodge gates, up the drive, and into the stable yard. I got stiffly down, gave the pony to one of Josh’s stable boys, and stumped away, walking like an old man. I was nearly at the front door before I remembered, with a sudden leap of my heart, that Aunt Emily would have arrived by now, with HIM. It was quite a minute before I could summon up enough courage to open the front door.
Sure enough, standing with their backs to the hall
