Hungry Hill (4 page)

Lumley, but you won’t have to move for the miners. The work will give employment in Doonhaven, and bring money to the people who are out of work and have no land.”

The lad looked at him doubtfully, and shook his head.

“They say in Doonhaven it doesn’t do to interfere with Nature,” he said. “If the Saints wished for the copper to be used, why then it would be running down the side of the hill in a stream, where we could find it.”

“Who told you that, Tim? Was it Morty Donovan?”

“That is what they say in Doonhaven,” said the boy, refusing to be drawn, and he wished his young master goodnight, and took himself off to the kitchen.

John shrugged his shoulders, and thrusting his hands into his pockets he walked round the house, and down the steep grass bank to the drive and the creek beyond.

The, moon shone upon the inlet below the castle, and a broad path of silver led to the wide stretch of water around Doon Island, whose dark outline hid Mundy Bay and the open sea.

Away beyond Doonhaven, some seven miles distant from Clonmere, rose the black mass of Hungry Hill, remote and forbidding in the moonlight.

Back in the library John Brodrick spoke impatiently to his agent.

“I myself gave permission to the officers of the garrison to shoot as many snipe and woodcock as they pleased on the island,” he said, “as long as they did not destroy a hare or a partridge, and they took it upon themselves to look after the preservation of the game as far as they could. I cannot believe that the officers, most of whom are gentlemen, would have forfeited the pledge.

And yet you say they have half the hares destroyed?”

“It’s what Baird himself was telling me, Mr.

Brodrick,” said the agent, “that it was one or two of the younger officers he saw out shooting, and Morty Donovan was with them.”

“Morty Donovan ? Always when I “have any annoyance or trouble it is Morty Donovan who is responsible. You can call upon him from me, Ned, and you can tell him that if I hear of my game being destroyed on Doon Island without my express permission, then the persons concerned will be punished with the utmost severity, and have to answer for it at the Mundy Assizes.”

“I will, Mr. Brodrick. The man should be ashamed; it’s what I’ve said often enough in Doonhaven.”

“Morty Donovan doesn’t know the meaning of the word, nor do any of his family. So you think they will make trouble when we start work on the mine?”

“I don’t say they will make trouble, Mr.

Brodrick, but for myself, I would not care to be one of the Cornish miners you are importing. It may be that they would do better for themselves if they stopped at. home.”

“You are as bad as the rest of them, Ned. I believe when my back is turned you go and gossip in the cottages like any old woman; yes, and tell your beads too into the bargain.”

“It’s God’s truth, Mr. Brodrick, I never consort with the people at all, except to gather in your rents, which is a sorry business at the best of times; and as for telling my beads, haven’t I handed round the plate at the Established Church Sunday after Sunday for as many years as you have sat in the place yourself?”

“That’s all right, Ned. I’m not complaining.

You’ve always done your duty by me, and I won’t forget it. But what irritates me beyond measure is that an ignorant, halfeducated fellow like Morty Donovan can so play upon the superstitions of the people in Doonhaven as to lead them to believe that what I am doing for the district is some sort of devil’s work or witchcraft, whereas if they had the sense to understand it I am going to put the bread-and-butter into their mouths for nothing.”

“There’s no gratitude in the country, Mr.

Brodrick, that’s the fault.”

“Gratitude, is it? I don’t ask for gratitude, damn it. I only ask for commonsense. Well, that’s enough of the matter. You had better walk home, Ned, while the moon is up.

There’s nothing further I want to discuss this evening.

Don’t forget to tell that woman at the gate-house to keep the gates closed. I’m tired of seeing my cattle on the moors with Morty Donovan’s mark branded on their backs.”

And so alone at last, and the estate book put away, and his papers neatly filed, and all business done for the day.

Presently he would go upstairs and chat with the girls for an hour or so, ask them their opinion about a small property across the water to make a change from Clonmere, from which they could pay visits to Bath now and again during the season, and when the girls had gone to bed he would stir the fire with his foot and tell Henry about the mining methods in Cornwall, the suggestions of the fellow from Bronsea, and how old Lumley had stuck out for his twenty per cent royalty, and what a pity it was that Simon Flower was such a good-for-nothing.

But first he would take a turn in the grounds, have a breath of fresh air from the sea to clear his head. He walked down the bank, as John had done, and presently, as he looked out across the creek to Doon Island, he became aware of the figure of his second son, standing aloof and strangely lonely, in apparent aimless meditation.

“Not with the others, John?” he said abruptly.

The boy started. He had been unaware of his father’s approach.

“No, sir.”

There was a silence, neither knowing what to say to the other, and both remembering the incident at dinner.

Then the boy, impulsive, stammered an apology.

“I’m sorry, sir, that I spoke as I did this evening.”

“That’s all right, John. I had forgotten it.”

The father wondered whether he should tell the boy that he understood well enough what he had been trying to express. He was forty-eight, his son was just nineteen. He knew that the first John Brodrick had been shot in the back for the same reason given by his son, he knew too that the Donovans of the present day had not forgotten it. These things he found convenient to forget. It did not do to have long memories in this country. That was the great fault of the people, they remembered too much. He believed in justice, in fair dealing, in scrupulous honesty with those less fortunate than himself, but it was dangerous to go farther than this. Once a man became sympathetic in this country he became soft, he became idle, he allowed his mind to dwell on supposed injuries, on long-dead feuds, on a past that was buried and gone. If John was not handled properly, was not made to understand discipline and service and respect for his elders and betters, he would turn into another useless idler like Simon Flower.

So John Brodrick said no more. He stood by the side of the creel looking out towards his future mine, and his son stood by his side, nervous, irresolute, watching the moonlight shimmer upon the blank, dark face of Hungry Hill.

When John Brodrick told Robert Lumley that his royalty in the mine, after a few years, would be near a thousand pounds, he did so in no spirit of foolish optimism, but in firm belief in the accuracy of his statement. Actually the sum paid into the old man’s account in the Slane bank at the close of the fourth year exceeded fifteen hundred pounds, all initial expenses having been paid off in the second year.

The price of copper had never been so high, and by purchasing three vessels that were wholly employed in shipping the ore from Doonhaven to Bronsea, John Brodrick managed to keep freights low.

Robert Lumley, when he saw how matters were progressing, forgot his former caution and would have had his partner employ double the men he did, so that every ounce of ore might be extracted, but this John Brodrick refused to do.

“We might,” he said, “employ more miners, and merely pick out the best of the copper as fast as we want, but my object is that nothing should be lost to our families, or left behind in such a situation that we never could get at it afterwards. If Captain Nicholson goes down too deep we defeat our own object. The force of water is too great to be dealt with, and in a short time whatever ore is there would be lost beyond recovery.”

Old Robert Lumley would drive down to Doonhaven once in every six months to inspect the mine, and each time he would find fault with some part of it or other, understanding nothing of the work himself, until John Brodrick, who made a practice of riding over every day, and knew the mine as well as the miners themselves, would lose his patience and his temper.

“You complain that the mine is not properly conducted?” he said. “Perhaps you would like to read this letter from the foremost expert in the country, who visited us last month?”

And the old man would peer at the letter of praise through his spectacles, and lay it aside again, and say that anyway, properly conducted or not, the miners were too well paid, and Captain Nicholson in particular.

“In Cornwall,” John Brodrick told him, “they have a custom long established by which the proprietors make a payment to their Captains every year in proportion to the produce, in addition to the fixed salary. I propose to do the same with Captain Nicholson.”

“But that will mean another deduction from our profit, Brodrick?”

“It will indeed, but I consider the deduction necessary.

Captain Nicholson has worked this mine from the start, in conditions that at times have been extremely unpleasant for him and his men, owing to the opposition of people in the neighbourhood, and he has never once suggested returning to Cornwall.”

And so Robert Lumley would argue and protest and finally be won over, and drive away again in his carriage, leaving the Director in high ill-humour, wishing he could buy the old man out of the Company and be rid of him for ever.

The mine was a success, and the profits were high, but there had Deen many difficulties to overcome, and they were not all over yet. For one thing, the people in Doonhaven had proved even more obstructive than he had anticipated. He had not expected them to welcome the Cornishmen, he had been prepared for a certain amount of animosity, and had provided, as he thought, against it. For instance, he had huts erected, at his own expense, close to the mine on Hungry Hill, and fitted them up with the necessary furniture, bedding, and cooking apparatus. Some of the men were married, and brought their wives and children.

It was when they went down into Doonhaven to buy provisions that the trouble started. Murphy’s shop would quite unaccountably appear to be bare, without so much as a candle or a bar of soap on the premises, and Murphy himself, with smiles and apologies, declare to the disappointed Cornish housewives that never a candle had he seen for three months, and as for soap, why his own wife had been scouring the beach that morning for a bucket of sand to wash down the floor of the shop.

It was the same if they wished to buy eggs, or butter, or even milk from the farms. The chickens would not have laid since Easter, they would have a disease amongst them, and as for the milk, why the sun had turned it sour and it had all been thrown away, not even the pigs would touch the stuff. In fact the unfortunate miners and their families would have starved had not John Brodrick sent one of the ships express to Slane for provisions, and this perforce became a custom, so that the only means of feeding the workers at the mine was by getting provisions once a week from Mundy, for they could get nothing at all in Doonhaven. It spoke highly indeed for Captain Nicholson that he was able to prevent his men returning home.

They became, with the aid of the provision ship, self-supporting, and by planting vegetables and keeping a few chickens, managed to live in not too uncomfortable a fashion. But even so the potato plants would be lifted in the night for no reason, the cabbages would disappear, and the chickens wander, and if questions were asked in Doonhaven or the neighbouring cottages, the answer would be a shaking of the head and a raising of eyes to heaven. John Brodrick would be obliged to send over sacks of potatoes from his own fields, and cabbage plants, and a brood of young chickens to make up for the loss sustained by the miners.

In winter there would be losses of firewood, and no turf to be had, and the miners be forced to go and cut timber or gather the driftwood below Clonmere, on John Brodrick’s estate, to keep themselves and their families warm. Ned Brodrick went round among the people, and by a deft mixture of threat and persuasion would inveigle some half-dozen of the younger men to try their hands at the mine, and at last, at the beginning of the second year, they began to wander up, in twos and threes, to ask for employment at Hungry Hill, but even so, the animosity against the mine remained.

No, it had not been easy, thought John Brodrick, and indeed it was a relief sometimes to get away from Clonmere and across the water to Bronsea, and so up to the cheerful, homely farmhouse of Lletharrog that he had bought for his daughters, where they would spend two or three months of the winter now, every year. Henry’s dream had been realised, and he had visited Paris, Brussels, and Vienna, while John was still reading for the Bar in Lincoln’s Inn.

It was during the autumn of 1825, when the family had been settled in Lletharrog since August, that John Brodrick had a letter from an anonymous correspondent in Doonhaven. The writing was smudged and practically illegible, but the message ran: “You’d do well to come home if you wish to stop trouble.” The letter was addressed to the shipping-office in Bronsea, and he put it in his pocket and forgot all about it. A week later, when one of his ships, the Henrietta, docked at Bronsea with her shipment of copper, John Brodrick remembered the letter, and as a matter of curiosity showed the message to the master of the vessel. The man looked thoughtful, and did not speak for a moment or two.

“You have not heard from Captain Nicholson, then, Mr. Brodrick?” he said at last.

“No, not since the first of the month, when he writes as a matter of course. Why? Is anything wrong?”

“Maybe he did not wish to cause you anxiety.

There’s little to go upon anyway. No, sir, I’m wondering whether the letter you have there refers to the losses they have had lately at the mine.”

“Losses? What losses?”

“I cannot tell you a great deal about it, sir, having only been in Doonhaven for this shipment, and we were loaded and away in four days. But there’s stuff being taken into Slane and Mundy and other places along the coast, that doesn’t find its way into your vessels, and is not handled by Captain Nicholson or by us.”