Hungry Hill (42 page)

“Forget it, though. Always forget the unpleasant things in life, the pin-pricks, the annoyances.

Wasn’t that one of his mother’s maxims? He would hear from her, now and again, scrappy, disjointed letters about nothing at all, and on the rare occasions when she had visited them it was always to borrow money… . He did not ask her again why she wanted it, he simply wrote out a cheque and gave it to her without a word.

It was distasteful, a thing that had to be put away in a corner of his mind. It was the one secret he kept from Katherine. He dreaded that this carelessness of hers should become known to people, to the rest of the family, to their friends, and there should be some sort of scandal, as there had been over Johnnie.

Meanwhile. there were great festivities ahead.

“On the 3rd of March, 1870, the copper mines would be fifty years old, and Henry was determined to celebrate the occasion in style. There would be a sit-down dinner up at the mines for all the miners employed there, and their families, also for the seamen of the vessels that carried the copper across to Bronsea. Toasts would be given, speeches made, and all the paraphernalia that Henry dearly loved. Then, the following night at Clonmere, another dinner for the county, for all those who had been connected, in some way or other, with the original mining agreement. The Lumleys from Duncroom, the Flowers from Andriff, all cousins, of course, and known very well to him, and certain other neighbours who during the course of fifty years had received benefit from the mines on Hungry Hill.

Bill Eyre and Fanny would bring their son and daughter down from the parsonage in the north, and Herbert and his wife and boys across the water from Lletharrog. Edward, returned from abroad, would also join them, and possibly Aunt Eliza, if she could be induced to face the crossing during the stormiest period of the year. Of course, Tom and his wife would have a place of honour, and old Uncle Willie, who had brought Henry into the world. Molly and Hal and Kitty should sit up for the occasion and have dinner with them. Henry was full of plans, each one succeeding the other with lightning rapidity, until Katherine, laughing, said he made her head dizzy, and anyway she did not know where they were going to put up all the guests. Herbert’s boys would have to sleep in the boat-house, and Edward and his bride in an attic Henry dismissed the matter airily, with a wave of his hand.

“Tom can put up some of them, and Uncle Willie one or two; we shall manage all right.”

And then he smiled, and looked at her slyly. “But in a year’s time,” he added, “we shall have room for twice as many.”

“Why, what do you mean?” she asked.

But he shook his head, he would not be drawn, and she wondered what new project was now in preparation, occupying his energetic mind.

The 1st of March came in, not like the proverbial lion but calmly, serenely, with a soft west wind blowing from Mundy Bay, rippling the creek, and the golden and purple crocuses bursting into flower on the bank below the castle. There were no clouds in the sky, and the sun shone fine and strongly upon Hungry Hill. And one by one, during the day, the Brodricks came to Clonmere. Herbert, from Lletharrog, with his wife Cathie and their two eldest boys, Robert and Bertie; Edward, with his bride Winifred; and later in the afternoon Fanny Eyre, her husband Bill, and their son and daughter William and Maria. Aunt Eliza arrived with the Lletharrog party, and in spite of her seventy-two years had stood the journey better than any of them. And how delightful it was, thought Henry, to have the whole family assembled here under his roof, brother shaking hands with brother, sister-in-law greeting sister-in-law, and young cousins standing warily on one foot watching other young cousins out of the corners of their eyes.

Everybody sat down to an enormous tea in the dining-room, with Aunt Eliza in the place of honour at the head of it, which pleased her mightily.

“So many times I have sat round this table,” she told them, “with your grandfather where you are sitting now, Henry, and Barbara in this place. Your father John was always late for meals; it used to annoy your grandfather considerably, and I must say I dislike un-punctuality almost as much as he did-so very inconsiderate, and careless. Barbara never said very much to John about it, which was weak of her, and of course your aunt Jane could not bear to have him scolded. Poor Jane, she would have been sixty this year, if she had lived.”

And Hal, a little uncomfortable in the magnificence of his new Eton jacket and broad white collar, to which he had been promoted in honour of the occasion and his approaching ten years, gazed up at the portrait of his great-aunt above the mantelpiece, and thought how glad he was that she had stayed young and pretty, and had not become old like Great-aunt Eliza, who used to come out of her room at Saunby and scold him if he made too much noise on the stairs. Even Great-aunt Jane, pretty as she was, would not bear comparison with mamma, whose portrait also hung in the dining-room, and Hal, glancing from the portrait to the original, caught his mother’s eye and smiled. It made a small happiness that she should know he had been looking at her, as though they shared a secret. Someone kicked him under the table. It was Molly, and she was frowning at him. “Don’t dream,” her lips moved, and he realised with a start that he had paid no attention to the cousin on his right, Robert from Lletharrog, who was asking him, with all the superiority of thirteen years, what sort of fish were obtainable in the creek.

“Killigs and pollock,” he said with great politeness. “Perhaps you would like to come with me in a boat tomorrow, if my father will allow it?”

“Oh, sea-fishing,” said Robert scornfully; “that’s poor sport after catching trout, as we do at home.”

“There are brown trout in the lake on Hungry Hill,” said Hal swiftly. “They say the fairies put them there, and at night they become little old men and work in the mines.”

Thirteen-year-old Robert stared at his young cousin, and then turned away his head. Hal was soft, he decided; how very awkward. And he began to discuss cricket with stolid William Eyre.

The weather held fine for the festivities, and the people of Doon-haven stood at their cottage doors to watch the carriages go through the village up to the mines. The road itself was crowded with the younger and more inquisitive of the inhabitants, all agog at the notion of “the gentry” sitting down to supper side by side with the miners. The full moon shone upon Hungry Hill, and it might have been the light of day as the carriages swung round and came to rest before the great drying-sheds, which, swept and cleared, with three immense tables down the centre, had been turned into a banqueting hall for the occasion. Candles, in their brackets, had been placed at intervals along the walls, and long school forms, borrowed for the night, were to seat the diners. At the far end of the shed, pompous and important, stood the members of the catering firm from Slane, who were to serve the food and wait upon the guests. The miners and their families were all seated in their places when the Brodricks arrived, and as Henry and Katherine entered, the manager, Mr.

Griffiths, started three cheers for the owner and a general clapping of hands, which was quite unexpected to Henry, and he stood smiling at the entrance to the shed, with Katherine at his side.

“I will thank you for that welcome after supper,” he told them when the clapping died away. “Meanwhile, let’s get on to the most important business of the evening, and I hope you are all as hungry as I am.”

Soup, and roast mutton and beef, followed by apple tart, with ale to drink, put every man in a good temper. The murmur of voices, which had been low and cautious to start with, rose to a roar, and Henry, winking at the manager, who sat on his right hand, observed that the only way to a fellow’s heart was to fill his belly first. His speech, when he came to make it, was short, for no one, he told them, wanted to listen to anyone but themselves after nine o’clock at night, and as the next day was to be a full holiday for everyone, in honour of the occasion, the sooner they went home to enjoy it the better. He then announced an increase of pay to every miner, from that day forward, which was received with yells of approval and only one discordant note, from some fellow at the far end of the shed who was moved to shout out “And about time too.” Henry, with memories of Bronsea and the heckling he had been faced with then, remained perfectly cool.

“I may say,” he added, “that, speaking as one chiefly concerned with my own interests, the idea of this was not my own, but Mrs. Brodrick’s. It is she you have to thank.”

More applause for Katherine, who smiled, and blushed a little, and said nothing.

“Fifty years ago today,” continued Henry, “my grandfather John Brodrick signed the original agreement with Mr. Robert Lumley of Duncroom, for a mine to be started on Hungry Hill. The original miners were mostly Cornishmen, a few of whom are with us today as pensioners, and whose sons have carried on their work and are settled amongst us. The rest of you, if not all from Doonhaven and the neighbourhood, belong to this country, and know that our granite hills do not yield easily to pick and shovel like the chalk cliffs of other, easier lands. From the beginning my grandfather had to import gunpowder to do his work, and blast the copper out of Hungry Hill, and although today machinery and explosive are modernised, we still have to deal with the same old stubborn granite. We still have the westerly gales that prevent shipment of the cargoes to Bronsea during the winter months, and, perhaps most important of all, we still have to contend with that strange fluctuating affair known as the copper trade itself, the ups and downs of which are beyond you, and very often beyond me too, and have their origin in the varying claims and discoveries of other countries. The copper mines of Hungry Hill have had their difficulties, like every other mining concern. My grandfather had to contend with riots and floods and many other vicissitudes in his time, which, I am glad to say, have not been my portion. The troubles today are rather different-the law of supply and demand, the labour shortage, the more favourable life, on paper if not in actuality, offered many of you in America, and the fact that the deeper we go in search of our copper the more reluctant are the old granite bones of Hungry Hill to give it to us. One day, perhaps not very far distant, we shall strike for the last time and know that the best of the copper has been brought to the surface, and that what remains is not worth the cost of raising it. Until that day, my friends, I wish you good luck and God-speed, with all the thanks in my heart for your loyalty, your energy and your courage.”

And with these words Henry sat down, wondering, as the applause rang in his ears, whether his grandfather would have made the same sort of speech, or whether, in the manner of fifty years ago, he would have kept his listeners a full hour, and be damned to them if they showed signs of impatience. Griffiths, the manager, made reply for the miners, and then there were songs, and talking, and more songs; and finally, about eleven o’clock, when the air in the drying-shed was becoming thick and hazy with smoke and the company boisterous and rather over-full of ale, Henry, and Katherine, and the rest of the family slipped away, and summoned the carriages, with all the satisfaction of a good deed done.

“Well,” declared Aunt Eliza, “I only hope those men are grateful for all Henry has done for them. But they are all the same; every kindness is taken for granted, and it was just the same in my father’s time. Personally, I consider all these improvements only make them lazy. Great bits of machinery to bring the stuff up above ground, when I can remember every ounce of copper coming to the surface in a bucket.”

“You ought to have been a director,” laughed Henry; “hard as nails, and not a penny extra to the miners. Is it true my grandfather used to flog ‘em in the early days?”

“It would have done them no harm if he had,” she replied, “and I know he quelled the riot they had in ‘25 by blowing several of them up with gunpowder, and quite right too. There was never any trouble afterwards.”

“It must have left a great deal of bitterness, all the same,” said Katherine.

“Stuff and nonsense! They learnt their lesson.

My father always used to say that if you once showed weakness to these people they paid you back fourfold in treachery.”

“Surely there is a middle way, between extreme hardness and foolish weakness?” said Katherine.

“What, for want of a better word, I should call understanding.”

“Don’t you believe it,” said Henry. “The people don’t want to be understood, it would spoil their sense of injustice. They revel in their wrongs.

My grandfather was perfectly right. Do you think I shall get any more work out of my Doonhaven miners now I have raised their wages? Not a bit of it. “Ah, Mr. Brodrick’s gone easy,” they’ll say; “we’ll take an extra half-hour for dinner, and smoke another pipe of “baccy.”

“Did you raise the wages to get more out of them?” asked Katherine. “I thought you did it because we agreed they were too low, and the families were suffering.”

Henry made a penitent face, and felt for her hand.

“Of course I did,” he said, “but you know the proverb about killing two birds with one stone… .

Here, what the devil is Tim up to?”

The carriage lurched suddenly, throwing Henry against his wife. There was a jerk, and a sliding of hoofs as the horses were pulled to a standstill. Tim was shouting to the animals, and the carriage rocked between the wheels. Henry flung open the door and stepped down into the road.

“It wasn’t my fault, sir,” said Tim, who, white in the face, was climbing down from his seat.

“He walked right out into the centre of the road, and was under the horses before I could stop him… . He must have been drunk, of course.”

He went forward to hold the horses, while Henry bent over the prone figure of the man who had stumbled in front of the carriage. The second carriage had stopped behind them, and Tom and Herbert, realising there had been an accident, came running down the road to assist them.

“What’s wrong? Is anyone hurt?” asked Tom.