Hungry Hill (3 page)

Oh, well, father would have his mine, and they would all become millionaires, and that was that. As long as he, John, was not asked to supervise the work at the mine, or take up any position of responsibility, he did not care, and if they would leave the summit of Hungry Hill untouched so that he could exercise his dogs there, and lie on his back in the sun, and be left alone without feeling all the time that his father was expecting him to do something, then the new company could sink a hundred mines for all he cared.

And Jane, who at eight years old was already the beauty of the family, petted but unspoilt, the darling of them all, with her lively imagination and strange fancies- Jane saw a great stream of copper running down the side of Hungry Hill, the colour of blood, and a crowd of miners dabbling in it like little black devils, with her father seated upon a throne like God in the midst of them.

“When do you propose to start the work, sir?” asked Henry.

“Within the course of the next month,” replied his father. “The preliminary excavations may begin even sooner. I have someone coming over from Bronsea to supervise matters, and he will bring an engineer with him. We ought to be underground before midsummer, and with luck should have three months’ trial of the mine before the autumn sets in. We don’t want to lose the top prices, if we have anything to sell. But the return for the first two years is bound to be small, while we are paying off expenses.”

“What about the labour, father?” said Barbara.

“I have engaged a Cornishman named Nicholson to be head captain of the mine,” he answered, “and he will, of course, bring some of his own people over with him.

After that-well, we shall see.”

There was a pause for a moment, and then Henry, glancing sideways at his father, said gently, “There will be a certain amount of resentment, sir.”

John Brodrick rose from the table, and cut himself another slice of pig from the sideboard.

“Naturally there will be resentment,” he said shortly. “There was resentment when the Post Office first came to Doonhaven, there was resentment when the Dispensary was opened. I expect nothing else. But when the people here learn about the wage-packets that the Cornishmen put into their pockets every week, then we shall hear another story. It’s been a hard winter, hasn’t it? Perhaps they will think about the winter to come.

I rather believe they will. And I shall get them coming up to Hungry Hill, asking for employment.”

His son John frowned, picking at the table-cloth with his fork.

“Well, John, what is your opinion?”

The boy flushed. He was never very articulate in his father’s presence.

“Yes, sir,” he said slowly, “they will come to you for employment all right. But they will be bitter about it.

They will think, “Why should we be obliged to him to keep us from starving?”’ It will make a twist in their minds, don’t you see ? And they will do their best to obstruct the work of the mine, even though it feeds them.”

“You appear to sympathise with them,” said his father.

“No, sir,” stammered John; “it’s only that, you see, even now, after all this time, we are looked upon as interlopers; there is no denying it.”

“That is ridiculous,” answered his father impatiently; “we belong to the country as much as they do. Why, your great-grandfather lived here, and your great-uncle before him. There have been Brodricks in. the country back into the sixteenth century.”

“Why did they shoot my great-grandfather, then?” asked John.

“You know very well why they shot him-because he believed in doing his duty to God and the King, and upholding the law. Smuggling was an offence, and he was determined to put an end to it.”

“No, sir,” said John; “that was just the excuse given. The Donovans shot my great-grandfather because the land here was theirs, before it was his, because the old Donovan chiefs possessed Clonmere, and Doonhaven, and Doon Island when the Brodricks were copying-house clerks in Slane, and they could not forget it. And they haven’t forgot” ten it, even to this day. That’s why Morty Donovan lets his tenants steal your cattle, and that’s why your Cornish miners will stay one season on Hungry Hill, and no longer.”

There was a silence, John Brodrick did not answer. He stared thoughtfully at his second son, while the rest of the family, astonished at their brother’s outburst, sat in trepidation, scarlet and ill at ease.

“Very good, John,” he said at length. “Eton and Brasenose have done more for you than I thought. A few years in London, at Lincoln’s Inn, and they will make quite a speaker of you. And now, Barbara dear, if you have finished, I suggest we leave the room for Thomas to clear, and perhaps you will pour out tea in the drawing-room.”

“Yes, father,” said Barbara, and glancing reproachfully at John for the disturbance he had caused, she led the way upstairs to the drawing-room, where the serving-man had already placed the tea-tray in readiness.

“Silly fellow,” said Henry, patting his brother on the shoulder, for their father had not yet come upstairs; “what induced you to speak so, at such a time? You know the irritation it causes my father just to mention the Donovans. And to damp his ardour, too, about the mine.”

“John dear, it was thoughtless,” said Barbara, “especially when you were late for dinner too. Now you will be in his bad books for a week at least.”

“Oh, confound everything,” said John wearily, throwing himself into a chair. “Why do I never do anything right? And why does everyone, myself included, always dislike hearing the truth? You don’t think I like the Donovans, do you? Old Morty Donovan’s a scoundrel, I know that.”

He held out his arms to Jane, who came and sat on his knee, her arms round his neck.

“What shall we do, sweetheart? Shall we run away together, and build a little cabin on Doon Island?”

“It would be horrid in the winter,” said Jane, laughing, and playing with his collar; “you would soon become ill-humoured, and vent it upon your Jane.

Henry would endure discomfort better than you.”

“Henry endures everything better than I do,” sighed John, “don’t you, old fellow? You attend all the lectures at Oxford with the greatest equanimity, and are on breakfasting terms with half the dons. He has a visiting list of acquaintances, too, nearly a yard long. The only fellows who visit me in my rooms are tradesmen, or sporting chaps wanting to sell me a dog.”

“Do you suppose,” broke in Eliza, “that once the copper mine starts paying we shall all be very rich?”

“So rich, Eliza,” said Henry, winking at John, “that all the impoverished Earls of the country will come from miles around to court you. You had better start planning your wardrobe soon. Poor Mrs. Murphy will have to get in a good stock of needles and thread and material.”

“Mrs. Murphy,” scoffed Eliza; “thank you very much. I shall purchase my dresses in Bath or Cheltenham, I shall never go to Mrs. Murphy again.”

“That would be rather unkind,” said Barbara. “We could always allow her to make some of our things. She tries so hard to do her best, poor woman. You could keep your Bath finery a secret from her.”

“Barbara, the peace-maker,” said John, “who pleases everybody and vexes none; where should we be without you? Jane, stop playing with my collar, you little plague. Isn’t it your bed-time? Do you want me to carry you to bed, or will you wait for Martha to fetch you?”

“I haven’t said goodnight to father,” said Jane.

“Then you shall say goodnight, and afterwards I will take you to your bed,” said her brother.

The child ran downstairs, and, listening at the library door, heard voices coming from within. She saw the wide-brimmed hat on the settle, and she made a face up at John, who was watching her from the stairs.

“It’s Ned Brodrick with father,” she whispered.

“Never mind, go and kiss him goodnight,” said John.

Jane’s small shoulders shook with laughter, and then, drawing herself up and composing her face to suitable gravity, she knocked at the library door. Her father was standing before the fireplace, confronting his visitor, whose features, though leaner and more cadaverous, bore a striking resemblance to his own. Ned Brodrick was, in point of fact, his natural brother, and John Brodrick, with a curious sense of family duty, had made him his agent now for a number of years. The mother, an extremely respectable woman who had been dairy-maid at Clonmere when she had caught the roving eye of John Brodrick’s father, lived on a small pension in one of the cottages at Oakmount, and Ned dwelt with her. The ten pounds annuity left to him by his father when he died in 1800 was given to him with the pious hope, expressed in old Henry Brodrick’s own words, that “the sum would keep him out of the mischief that had brought him into the world.” The hope had not been fulfilled, however, for Ned Brodrick, disregarding his father’s wishes, had become the parent of no less than four illegitimate children, all by different mothers. He was glad, therefore, to supplement his annuity by what he could earn as agent to his brother, and he was careful never to presume upon his relationship in any way, so that John Brodrick was always “Mr. Brodrick,” and his nieces “the young ladies.” He was, as it happened, as good an agent as John Brodrick could hope to find, and if he made a little extra for his own pocket now and again by falsifying the rent-roll of the tenants, it was no more and no less than any other man would have done in his place.

“Good evening, Miss Jane,” he said now, with his customary bow and his usual look of solemnity, so far removed from mischief that it seemed hardly possible he could have ignored Henry Brodrick’s will.

“Good evening, Ned,” replied the child, turning swiftly from him and lifting her face to her father.

John Brodrick picked Jane up and kissed her on both cheeks, his hard, rather ruthless expression softening as he did so. This little daughter was very dear to him, dearer almost than Henry, if it were possible, and he looked forward to the time when she should become a companion to him and not merely an enchanting plaything.

“Goodnight,” he said gently, “sleep well,” and watching her for an instant while she opened the door, he then dismissed her from his mind and turned back again to his brother.

Jane climbed the stairs in search of John, but of course-it was typical of him-he had forgotten his promise, and she had to wander along the passage to his room in the tower, at the end of the house.

Jane found him with the window flung open, looking out towards the creek, shining silver under the moon, with the dark hump of Doon Island away in the distance.

She knelt on the window-seat beside her brother, and they were silent for a moment.

“John,” she said presently, “what will they do to Hungry Hill? Will they spoil it, so that we can never go there again for picnics?”

“They will spoil the part where the mine is to be,” said John; “there’ll be chimneys, and shafts, and engines. You’ve seen pictures of mines, haven’t you ? But they won’t touch the wild part at the top, and they won’t spoil the lake. We can still go there and enjoy ourselves.”

“If I were Hungry Hill I should be angry,” said the child. “I should want to slay the human beings who dared interfere with me, You know how the hill looks in winter, John, when the clouds are upon it, and the rain drives down. Like a giant, frowning. If I were my father I would not have sunk my mine there, I would have found another place.”

“Yes, but other places don’t have the copper, sweetheart.”

“Then I would go without the copper.”

“Don’t you want to be rich, and marry an Earl, like Eliza?”

“Not in the least. I am like Barbara, I only want all of us to be happy.”

“I should be happy if I didn’t owe money to half the tradesmen in Oxford,” sighed John.

“Are you very much in debt? It’s a bad thing, I have heard my father say, to owe money, especially to people in a lower station than oneself.”

“It isn’t bad. It’s merely irritating.

Don’t let’s talk about it any more. I’ll carry you to bed,” said John, who always changed the conversation when he drew near to matters affecting his conscience, and taking the little girl in his arms, he carried her to the room she still shared with the old nurse Martha.

Martha was at. supper, and Jane undressed solemnly before her brother, folding up her clothes as she had been taught to do, and she knelt at his knee and said her prayers with a devout intensity and a lack of embarrassment that wrung his heart. When he had kissed her and tucked her up, he went down the corridor to the drawing-room, but paused outside the door without entering. Somehow Eliza’s chatter and Henry’s good-natured teasing would have jarred upon him this evening, and turning round he went down by the back staircase, and so out of the side-door to the stables across the yard, where his bitch Nellie lay, with her litter of puppies.

Tim the stable-lad was awaiting him with a lantern, and together the two boys knelt in the straw, their shoulders touching, while John held the weakling of the family in his strong but gentle hands.

“Poor pup!” he said. “We’ll never make anything of him, with this squashed foot of his.”

“Better drown him, Master John,” suggested Tim.

“No, Tim, we won’t do that. He’s healthy enough, it’s only that he’ll not be winning any prizes for me, but that’s no reason why I should take his life. All right, Nellie, I wouldn’t hurt your babies.”

John always forgot his problems when he was with his dogs. Their devotion and their dependence brought out the best in him, and he would willingly have passed half the night in the stable but for the fact that Tim must have his supper and go to bed.

“Is it true, Master John, what they’re saying in Doonhaven?” asked the lad, as he bolted the stable-door and put the empty pail down by the pump.

“What are they saying now, Tim?”

“Why, that Mr. Brodrick is going to blast away the whole of Hungry Hill with dynamite that’s coming over in a ship from Bronsea, and we are all going to be turned out of our homes to make room for the Cornish miners he’ll be bringing.”

“No, Tim, that’s a fairy-tale, and you’re a rogue to repeat it. My father is going to sink a mine in Hungry Hill, true enough, he and Mr.