Hungry Hill (53 page)

“I understand there is plenty of tin there,” he told his father, “but it’s easier to work than copper, and not so much labour is needed. Uncle Tom told me that several of the miners had been turned away.

They don’t understand it, when they’ve been working there for years.”

“They’ll have to put up with it,” said Henry.

“I suppose so, but Uncle Tom says it’s hard for them, to have their livelihood snatched away suddenly, almost overnight. There was a lot of distress last winter. Many of the younger men are talking of emigrating, and several have gone to America already.”

“That doesn’t concern me. The ones whom I keep employed I take good care to pay well.

I shall continue to do so, as long as the price of tin makes it worth my while to work the mines.”

“And after that, what?”

Henry shrugged his shoulders.

“Close them down, or sell them beforehand, at the psychological moment,” he said, “whichever strikes me as the wisest thing to do at the time.”

“Uncle Tom said you would do that,” said Hal.

“I think he was rather uneasy about it. He said so many people would be thrown out of work.”

“Tom’s a parson, it’s his job to think about those things,” said Henry. “I don’t see that it need concern us. I have a right to do what I like with my own property, and the mines belong to me.”

Hal said nothing. It was not his affair. He remembered suddenly the visit to his mother’s grave at Ardmore, the day before he left. He had driven out in the Rector’s trap, and taken Jinny with him. The grave was tidy and well-kept, and bulbs were planted round it Her father and mother always saw to it, said Jinny; daffodils came every year in spring.

They stood there together, and Jinny swept away the fallen leaves. They read the inscription.

“Katherine-beloved wife of Henry Brodrick.”

Should he tell his father about the visit to the grave? But his father asked nothing. He never spoke of Ardmore.

He did not once talk about the empty new wing at Clonmere.

“So Kitty and Lizette have decided to stay out there with Molly?” he said. “They evidently prefer her company to mine.”

“I think they would return if they believed you wanted them,” said Hal.

Henry did not answer. He was fingering the stem of his glass.

“I suppose,” he said, “you would have a great objection to breaking the entail?”

Hal stared at him.

“What do you mean?” he said.

“Your great-grandfather made a long and very detailed will,” said Henry. “I have to have my heir’s permission to sell the place. It’s something I can’t do on my own. If you agree, naturally I shall make it up to you when you come of age in a few months’ time, and you would have a considerable allowance to live upon. Judging by the rate at which you live up at Oxford, you are going to need it too.”

Hal flushed.

“I’m sorry, father,” he said, “but I can’t do it. I don’t think you quite understand what Clonmere means to me, and to Molly, and Kitty. We belong over there. It’s home to us, whatever you may feel.”

“You haven’t lived there since you were children,” said Henry. “I don’t count this Christmas visit, that was only a picnic. Adeline is always saying that it’s ridiculous, hanging on to the place, paying out vast sums in wages and repairs and one thing after another, and she’s perfectly right. The property is a drain on my income, and gives nothing in return.”

“The gospel according to Saint Adeline,” said Hal bitterly.

“No need to be impertinent,” said Henry. “Your stepmother is a very far-seeing woman, and she talks sound sense. What use is Clonmere to me?

Answer me if you can. I haven’t been there for ten years.”

“That’s your fault, isn’t it?” said Hal. “The place is there, waiting for you. Just the same, only a little shabbier. You loved it once. You love it still.

But you won’t go near it because you are afraid.”

“What do you mean, afraid?”

“Oh, don’t worry. It’s not my mother. She won’t haunt you. She forgave you long ago. She told me that when I visited her grave, which I suppose you’ve never seen. You’re afraid of yourself, of the man you used to be. You’re afraid, if you returned, that he would come out of the shadows and haunt you. That’s why you want to sell it, so that he can be buried, once and forever.”

Hal rose to his feet, white and trembling.

The words had tumbled from him, he scarcely knew what he was saying.

“You’ve been drinking,” said Henry slowly. “I suspected it whet we came in to dinner. And it’s not the first time either.

Adeline warned me about this. She says it’s become a habit with you; she has ways and means of finding out, when you are here. She has seen you creep in here to the sideboard and help yourself, when you think nobody is about.”

“And if I do,” said Hal, “what’s the reason?

Because I can’t face sitting here at dinner between you both, knowing that every day and every night you become more hopeless, more miserable, more utterly dependent upon her for every damned thing. Molly, and Kitty, and I, and poor Lizette mean nothing to you, absolutely nothing. And now she’s trying to get you to sell Clonmere. Thank God I can prevent it. I won’t break the entail, not if you give me ten thousand quid… .?

He broke off excitedly, as Adeline came into the room.

“What on earth is the matter?” she said. “I could hear Hal shouting from the drawing-room. Do you want to call the servants up from the basement?”

“Call the whole world, I don’t care,” said Hal, “but I’d like you to know you’ve made a mistake, for once. I’m not going to be bribed into selling my home to please you.”

“Leave the room, and go to bed,” said Henry curtly. “In the morning you may be able to talk clearly.”

“He may,” said Adeline, “if he doesn’t get down to the whisky decanter first.” She pointed scornfully at his trembling hands. “Look at him,” she said. “I hope you’re proud of your son.

A month in that country of yours has done well for him, hasn’t it? He can scarcely stand up. He could let himself go over there, and revert to type. Now you can see him at last, Henry, as he really is.

And perhaps, since we’ve got down to it at last, you would like to have a look at some of the bills that have come in for him while he’s been away. Oxford tradesmen don’t wait for ever, any more than anyone else.

Most illuminating, they are, I can tell you.

How’s this one for a start? Fifty quid for wine, all supplied to the young gentleman last term.” She threw the bill on to the table. “And here’s another, and another, a whole sheaf of them to keep you busy all tomorrow morning, if you feel that way inclined. And lastly a very pretty little statement from your bank, Master Hal, in which the manager wishes to acquaint you with the fact that you are overdrawn to the sum of two hundred pounds.”

Hal saw the two faces. His father’s a mask, cold and indifferent, and his stepmother’s flushed in triumph.

“How dare you open my letters?” he said. “How dare you?”

“My dear Hal, don’t be so theatrical. The initials being the same as your father’s, of course I opened them, thinking they were his. And here is a billet-doux from across the water, that came by this evening’s post. A thousand apologies for having glanced into it. The writing looks like a kitchen-maid’s, and whoever it is signs herself Jinny.”

She laughed, holding the letter in front of him.

Hal struck out at her, in a blind fury of rage, his blow catching the side of her mouth. She staggered back, her hands to her face, the blood coming from her cut lip in a slow trickle. In a moment Henry was upon Hal, seizing him by his collar, thrusting him against the table.

“You damned drunken young fool,” he said, “have you gone mad?”

Hal shook him off, and stood staring at his father, white and shaken.

“Good God, you may well look ashamed of yourself,” said Henry, “striking a woman, the lowest thing a man can do. Here’s my handkerchief, Adeline; you had better go up to your room and call Marcelle to you. But first this boy is going to apologise to you.”

“I am not,” said Hal.

Henry looked at his son. Hal was pale and dishevelled. The bills lay scattered on the floor. Jinny’s letter had been kicked under the table, and lay crumpled and forgotten.

“Either you apologise to Adeline or you get out of my house,” said Henry. His eyes were hard and cold and without mercy. “You’ve always been a trial and an anxiety,” he said, “ever since you were born. Your mother spoilt you absurdly, and you’ve thought yourself God Almighty ever since. In three months’ time you will be twenty-one, and so far you’ve distinguished yourself only by drinking too much, wasting my money, and painting bad pictures. You don’t think I’m proud of you, do you?”

Hal walked slowly from the dining-room into the hall. Adeline said nothing. She watched them both, the handkerchief still to her lips.

“Remember,” said Henry, “I mean what I say. Either you apologise to Adeline, or you leave this house, finally and for ever.”

Hal did not answer. He did not look back over his shoulder. He opened the front door and stood for a moment gazing down into the street. Then he went out hatless in the rain.

Jinny Callaghan decided to have a clearance on her twenty-fifth birthday. Too many things had accumulated in her bedroom at the Rectory. There were her school books, for one thing, which would be of far more use to the priest in Doonhaven, if he liked to have them, than they could be to her. She would take them down the following morning and risk a snubbing. A present from a heretic, bound with red ribbon. At any rate, it would make father and mother laugh. The sentimental love stories of adolescence she would keep for her goddaughter, Molly’s child, against the day when she would be old enough to read them. Also her work-basket, her first, given her by her mother when she was ten years old. It was fun to sit down on the floor, with her legs tucked under her skirt, and find the old treasures. Here were the photographs.

She could not bring herself to throw them away. Father in his university days, with a group of friends. He looked very dear and wicked, as he probably was. Mr.

Brodrick stood by his side, and Mr.

Brodrick’s brother Herbert, who also became a clergyman, and sometimes wrote to her father. They all looked very merry. Here was one of herself as a baby, sitting on her mother’s knee in a white starched frock. What a little fright, with round eyes like boot-buttons! A picnic-group taken at Glen Begh, with themselves and all the Brodricks as children. Molly had not changed at all, she was still the same laughing, happy person today that she had been at ten years old. But no one would have thought Kitty, the ugly duckling, would have grown into a beauty. Jinny looked for the wedding-group, taken two years ago, of Kitty Brodrick’s marriage to her cousin, Simon Flower. They were standing on the steps at Castle Andriff. Kitty was really lovely, and she herself as a bridesmaid seemed such a dowd in comparison.

Lizette, poor dear, would never quite lose that pinched, strained expression, but she was tall, nearly as tall as Kitty, and no one could see her foot under the long bridesmaid’s dress. It was so like Kitty, sweet and generous, to insist on Lizette living with them at Castle Andriff, and happy-go-lucky Simon did not mind.

When Jinny had cleared out her bedroom cupboard she felt for a box on the shelf. It was fastened, and bound with tape. She hesitated for a moment, and then she took down the box, and sat beside it on the bed.

She undid the tape, and lifted the lid. It was full of letters. on top of the letters were some half-dozen paintings. There was one of herself, with her hair down her back, which he had done that Christmas when they had all come to Clonmere. There were two of Clonmere, and a pen-and-ink sketch of Doon Island. The remaining paintings were of mountains, snow-covered, and vast stretches of land that looked bare and unfriendly. Jinny gazed at them slowly, one by one, and then put them aside, and took up Hal’s letters. The first wild, miserable ones were from London, and then there was that brave, hopeful letter written in Liverpool, the night before he sailed for Canada.

“I know you believe in me, Jinny,” he said, “even if nobody else does. And one day my father will be proud of me too.”

The remaining letters all bore the Winnipeg post-mark, and most of them had been written in the early years in Canada. She could see the dates on the envelopes-nearly every month in 1881 and ‘82. The letters had a light-hearted, schoolboy flavour; everything was new and exciting, he was so glad he had taken the big decision. Oxford, and all that Oxford stood for, seemed another world already.

“I see we lost the Boat Race as usual,” he wrote, “so my leaving the boat did not give them any better luck! I thought of the crew on the day, and said a prayer for them, but as I was out on the ranch rounding cattle all day from sunrise to sunset I had not much time to waste thinking of my friends. It’s a grand life, and I’m enjoying every minute of it.”

They were full of hope, these first letters; he was going to make a success of ranching, he was certain of it.

“Of course the first few years will be the hardest,” he said, “and it’s difficult living on the allowance I get from great-grandfather’s will. But I haven’t had to ask my father for a penny, and that is all that matters.

Tell Molly I have grown a beard and look strikingly handsome.”

There was a smudged snapshot enclosed in one of the letters written about this time. Hal bearded, in his shirt-sleeves, looking a great ruffian. He stood arm-in-arm with two of his fellow ranchers.

“We drive down to Winnipeg once a month,” he wrote in ‘83, “and spend all our money and see the sights and treat the girls. Last month we had a free fight in a saloon, Frank, my partner, getting rather wild in his cups and knocking another fellow over the head. Of course I had to back him up, and we spent a night in jail for our pains. My first experience behind bars. If Adeline got to hear of it she would say “I told you so.” Thank dear Uncle Tom for his most welcome cheque. He mustn’t do it again.”

And then in ‘84 and ‘85 the tone changed, slowly, almost imperceptibly.

“Frank is getting impossible,” he said, “and I think we shall have to part company. I am going to try on my own and see if I can’t do better. I have enough money saved to buy a small ranch, where I can be my own boss.”