Hungry Hill (17 page)

If you ever have any sons, John, they will be elderly men by then, and can renew the lease or not, as they think fit.”

He laughed, and looked at his daughters.

“I imagine,” he said, “that by that time there will be little copper left in the heart of Hungry Hill.”

“Seventy years,” thought Jane, “eighteen hundred and ninety-nine. We shall every one of us setting at this table be dead.”

Copper John filled his glass, and pushed the decanter towards his son.

“And what was the result of the will?” asked Barbara.

“Oh, that,” said her father, waving a hand in derision. “Just what I said it would be. Richard Lumley has entire possession. I believe Mrs. Flower has a legacy of a few hundreds a year, and some pictures. She took it well, I will say that for her. And I hope she has the sense to keep the money from her husband. The most disgraceful thing I have ever witnessed was the conduct of Simon Flower after the funeral. He could not be found when the moment arrived for the reading of the will, and was finally discovered sitting in the pantry with the manservant, a fellow I have always mistrusted, and the pair of them drinking poor Robert Lumley’s port. Needless to say he was in no condition to listen to his father-in-law’s will, and went to sleep in the middle of it. Richard Lumley is not likely to have him under his roof again. He had recovered somewhat by the time we all came away- more’s the pity, because instead of keeping silent and looking ashamed of himself, he insisted on driving the horses himself, and the last I saw of them was poor Mrs. Flower holding on to her bonnet, the carriage rattling down the drive at an excessive pace, and Simon Flower singing at the top of his voice. One of these days the fellow will break his neck, and it will be no more than he deserves.”

“I am afraid Castle Andriff will fall to bits entirely now for want of repair,” sighed Barbara. “Poor Mrs. Flower and Fanny-Rosa! I feel very sorry for both of them.”

“We need not worry about Fanny-Rosa,” said Eliza. “Bob Flower told me she has so many men anxious to marry her that it is just a matter of making up her mind whom to choose. Her last fancy is some relative of her uncle’s, the Earl, and I believe he has a title too.”

“One thing is certain,” said her father, “that regretting as I do Robert Lumley’s death, in spite of the fact that he was an old man, the Brodrick family has come very well out of the whole affair.”

And, rising from the table, he went into the library to attend to his letters, as was his custom, pausing a moment before entering, in the hope that John might accompany him and ask for further details of the day’s transactions. His son made no attempt to take the hint. He was staring moodily out of the dining-room window, and Copper John, his eyes narrowing and his mouth a little grim, entered the room alone.

So that was the reason, John was thinking, why Fanny-Rosa was so elusive the last time he rode over to Castle Andriff. There had been some talk of a cousin, he remembered. No doubt she would marry him and leave the country, and that would put a stop to it all. Perhaps it would be just as well, for if many months passed like the present, he would end by blowing his brains out. The boating party had been in May, and it was now August, and Fanny-Rosa was no nearer giving him an answer than she had been that afternoon. She had so many moods, so many humours, and a day in her company would be one of wild uncertainty.

She would receive him with indifference perhaps, bored and yawning, and accompany him with an ill grace to the hill where he proposed to try his dogs, would find fault with everything he said and did, criticising the way the greyhounds ran, calling it a poor sport and only fit for yokels, so that he would be near to throwing up the whole thing, selling the dogs, and returning home and never going to Andriff again; and then suddenly, like a change of wind bringing fair weather that had been foul a moment since, she would come to him and take his hand, lean her cheek against his shoulder, and ask forgiveness for her temper.

“If you would marry me, Fanny-Rosa,” he would say, touching her hair, “then I would be always near, to comfort you when you felt the need of it.”

She would say nothing, standing close to him, her hands about his shoulders, looking out from the hills behind Andriff to Mundy Bay below, and she would smile at him and laugh, so that he would be stirred beyond all reason and long only to lose himself in loving her.

Then “Make the dogs race again,” she would say, pushing him away. “I want to see them race. I think that Hotspur will be the best, as you say.”

And in a moment she would be discussing the points of the greyhounds, with eagerness, with excitement, asking questions about the approaching autumn season, and he would be happy and yet bewildered, wondering what was in her mind and whether she cared for him at all, and if all this play and provocation were simply to pass the time that might otherwise hang heavy on her hands.

The next time he saw her she would be different again, full of some entertainment or other there had been at Mundy House, her uncle’s home, where he had guests staying, and where, no doubt, she had met with this cousin that Eliza had heard about, and she would have scarcely a word to say to John, making him feel an outsider, a boor, whose only topic of conversation was dogs and racing. Then he would disappear to his room, or go aboard his boat and sail around Doon Island, forgetting to return to dinner in all probability, even as he had done so often in his boyhood, and, when he did come in, make some indifferent apology, and immediately throw himself into a chair and take up a sporting paper.

Jane, and Barbara too, guessed what was the matter and let him alone, but day by day, throughout the summer, their father became a little more impatient with this son of his, who never discussed the mines, never bothered about the estate, who spent all his time, it seemed, chasing his greyhounds over the unprofitable hills of Andriff, and when he did choose to be home for dinner at five o’clock would sit glum and silent through the meal, or else take too much port and talk arrant nonsense about the politics of the country, of which he knew less than nothing.

“It is extremely fortunate for you, my dear John,” he said one evening, when his son had appeared even more absent-minded than usual, and had not showed a sign of interest when his father had mentioned that the new mine, above the Mundy road, was likely to prove the most profitable of the three, “that my endeavours these last nine years have been so successful that, instead of being the luckless surviving son of a beggarly landlord, you find yourself, at twenty-eight, heir to a considerable property and considerable wealth, for which you have not needed to make the slightest exertion yourself, and apparently never will.”

There was silence at the dinner-table. Jane gazed steadfastly at her plate, and Barbara and Eliza swallowed nervously. John flushed. He knew he had been remiss, but the port had gone to his head, and he did not care what he said.

“You are right, sir,” he said, “I am damned fortunate. Long may the copper flow in the bowels of Hungry Hill. I drink your health, sir, and that of old Morty Donovan, whose death made everything so much easier for all of us.”

He bowed to his father, and drank his glass at a sitting.

There was a little gasp from Eliza. Copper John rose to his feet.

“I am sorry,” he said, “that you seem to have left what manners you had in the kennels with your greyhounds. Goodnight.”

And he strode from the dining-room, slamming the door behind him. The sisters looked at one another in horror.

“John, how could you!” exclaimed Barbara.

“Father will never forgive you. What in the world has come over you?”

“Fancy bringing up Morty Donovan,” said Eliza, “the one topic in the world we have always avoided. Well, you have done for yourself flow, and no mistake. I should think it would be better if you went back to London. You’ve spilt your wine on the cloth too-it will leave a stain.”

Jane had turned pale, and was very near to tears.

“I wish you would not nag, Eliza,” she said.

“Can’t you see that John is miserable?”

“Miserable?” scoffed Eliza. “What has John got to be miserable about, I should like to know? Of course you would take his part, you have always done so. He winks an eye at your ridiculous infatuation for Lieutenant Fox, and no doubt acts as go-between.”

“What has Lieutenant Fox got to do with what has just happened?” said Jane.

“Please, please,” said Barbara; “there is no sense in you two making a quarrel on top of everything else. John dear, I know you are not yourself at the moment, and will feel differently perhaps in the morning.”

She kissed him quietly, and left the room, closely followed by Eliza. Jane went and sat beside her brother. He put out his hand for the decanter, but she placed it just out of his reach.

“What is it?” she asked. And then, when he did not answer, she said gently, “Is it Fanny-Rosa?” She took one of his hands, and played with his fingers. “You see,” she said, “I do understand what it must be like for you, because I am going through the same thing myself. I am not infatuated with Dick Fox-infatuation is such an ugly, stupid word-but I am very fond of him, I do believe, and though I know he admires me, and has an affection for me too, he says he may go abroad at any time, and it is not fair to marry young, in the army.”

John took her on his knee.

“My poor little Jane!” he said. “What a selfish brute I am, thinking only of my own confounded feelings, and nothing of yours. How dare this young fool play about with your affections? I have a good mind to thrash him.”

Jane laughed, in spite of her tears.

“There you are,” she said, “you will not stand the same conduct in my Dick that you bear yourself from Fanny-Rosa. Neither is really to blame. Why should a boy of his age, who will see service abroad, saddle himself with a wife? And why should Fanny-Rosa settle down to domestic life if she does not want to?”

“You have more patience than I have, little one,” said John. “I believe you would wait contentedly for young Fox for years, and be no whit the worse for it. But I shall become a criminal and probably a murderer if I have to wait for Fanny-Rosa.”

“I am sure she is fond of you,” said Jane, “I have seen her looking at you. But she is so lovely, you see, and rather spoilt by that absurd father and all the young men she has met abroad, that she must have time to make up her mind about you. Marriage is a serious thing for a woman.”

For a moment John wondered whether he should tell her his doubts about Fanny-Rosa and Henry, and the old misgivings he had tried to bury in his mind, and then he decided that he could not, even to Jane. The subject was too personal and intimate, too deeply painful to be probed and pondered at this late hour, with poor Jane distressed, and himself rather drunk.

“You know,” said Jane softly, her large brown eyes full of wisdom, “what I am going to say is very improper, and I hardly know how to say it, but I do think that Fanny-Rosa has a very warm, passionate nature, and that if you were possibly a little bolder towards her perhaps she would-would do what you want, and be obliged to marry you.”

John felt himself grow hot under his collar. Good heavens, that Jane, his demure, youthful sister, should have the same thought that had so often entered his own head.

“And you,” he murmured, watching her under half-closed lids, “not eighteen for three more weeks.”

“I have not shocked you, have I?” she asked, doubtfully.

“Shocked me? No, my Jane, you have not. I was just thinking how ignorant a brother and sister can be of each other, and how many years we have wasted when we might have talked of these things. Bless you. I should not forget your advice, but I doubt if it would be any good.”

Jane rose from his knee, and smoothed back his hair.

“Don’t worry any more,” she said. “I think everything will come all right. I have a premonition that it will, and you know my premonitions are generally true.”

Then she slipped out of the room and ran upstairs to join her sisters. John helped himself to the rest of the port, and tried to prepare for his interview with his father.

He knew that he must apologise, and the sooner it was done the better. The only possible way to do it was to be well fortified first, stammer a few words, promise to make amends in future, and then leave the library as quickly as possible. Thomas had already looked twice into the room, wishing to clear-he would not be able to delay much longer. And he wondered what he should say to his father, and how he should frame his apology without sounding stiff and awkward and altogether an incredible fool. He got up from his chair and walked carefully from the dining-room across the hall to the library. The door, of course, was closed. He knocked upon it, feeling as Thomas must do when he brought in the letters, and on hearing his father’s curt reply to enter, opened the door and went into the room.

His father was seated at his desk, engaged in correspondence, and John was reminded of the old schoolboy days when he had committed some fault and must expect a beating. His father did not even look up as he entered.

“Well, what is it?” he said shortly, intent upon some file or other and turning the pages in search of a document.

“I’m afraid I spoke rather hastily at dinner, sir,” said John. “I very much regret if I have said anything to offend you.”

Copper John did not answer for a moment. Then he pushed aside his papers, and turning in his chair stared up at his son, in much the same way, it struck John, that his house-master used to do at Eton.

“You have not offended me, John,” he said, “you have disappointed me. Somehow, after Henry died, I had hoped that you and I would draw closer together. We have not done so, and I do not think the fault lies with me.”

He paused, and John realised that he was expected to make an answer.

“I am sorry, sir,” he said.

“Your brother showed a keen interest in everything connected with the mines,” continued Copper John, “and before his serious illness would accompany me very often to Nicholson’s office, where the three of us would discuss matters, and he would now and again make suggestions that both Nicholson and myself found helpful. I think I am right in saying that not once since you returned home have you offered to ride up to the mine with me. Here, at Clonmere, you show much the same spirit of lassitude. There is plenty to be done on the estate, Ned Brodrick would be glad of your assistance, but he tells me he has seen little or nothing of you. It is a source of bewilderment to me, who have every minute of the day filled with work of some sort, to know how you manage to get through your long and, if I may say so, incorrigibly idle day.”