Hungry Hill (44 page)

Suddenly there would be too many people for Hal, and he would run up through the woods to the old summer-house, where his mother would be resting. She did not walk about much these days, she was always resting. She must have felt that he was there, because she turned her head and smiled at him.

“I rather thought there was a little boy looking at me,” she said.

He came forward, and sat down on the chair beside her.

“I’ve made you a painting,” he said, feeling in his pocket. “It’s of the creek, on a very rough day.”

He presented a grubby piece of paper, watching her eyes for approval with great anxiety.

It was the usual child’s drawing, trees and creek all out of proportion, and the waves a nightmare size, while rain, like ink, fell from a thundercloud.

There was something about it, though, that was not pure childish effort. One tree, bent in the wind, that had life, and the colour of the sky.

“Thank you,” said Katherine. “I am very pleased with it.”

“Is it good?” said Hal. “If it’s not truly good I shall tear it up.”

She looked at him, and took hold of his hand.

“It’s quite good for your age,” she said, “but you’ve chosen a difficult subject, one that even real artists would not find easy.”

Hal bit his nails, and frowned at the picture.

“I like painting more than any other thing,” he said, “but if I can’t paint better than other people I’d rather not paint at all.”

“That’s a wrong way to think,” said Katherine.

“That way of thinking makes a person narrow, and envious, and unhappy. There will always be people in the world who will do things better than you do them. All you have to think about is to do the best you can.”

“It’s not that I mind what people say,” said Hal, “but I want to have the feeling inside me that what I do is good. If I think it’s bad it makes me miserable.”

Katherine put her arm round him, and held him close.

“Go on making your drawings,” she said, “and make them because you are happy to make them, good or bad. And then come and show them to me, darling, and we will discuss them together.”

So the summer passed, and autumn came again, and by the New Year, the architect promised, the new wing would be habitable. Already the roof and the walls were built, and the floors were laid. The partitions between the rooms were under construction. The great stairway led from the big hall to the gallery above, and Henry, with Katherine on his arm, would point out the places where they would hang their pictures. The children ran along the corridors, calling to one another, their voices echoing to the lofty ceiling.

“You are going to like it, aren’t you?” said Henry anxiously. “The whole thing has been planned for you, you know that, don’t you?”

Again and again he would take her through the rooms, pointing out the excellence of the fireplace in the drawing-room, the useful size of the new library, where they could house all the books he had never had room for before. Best of all he liked to show hex the boudoir, and the little balcony outside it.

“You can lie in your chair here in the summer,” he said. “That is why I purposely ordered the long windows, so that the chair can be moved in and out. And in the winter you can sit here, by your fire. When I want you I shall come and stand below, and throw stones up at the window.”

Katherine smiled, and, standing on the balcony, looked out across the creek to Hungry Hill.

“Yes,” she said, “it’s just what I have always wanted.”

He put his arm round her, and they stood together, watching the workmen below.

“In the New Year, when you are up and about again,” he said, “we will take three or four months abroad, in Italy and France, and we’ll buy everything we fall in love with, furniture and pictures. I want a Botticelli Madonna for the head of the staircase, and there’s another fellow, Filippo Lippi, who painted a Madonna exactly like you. It hung above an old altar in a church in Florence, do you remember, we saw it together, the year after Hal was born? We might have nothing but primitives in the gallery, and then, if you fancy them, you shall have your moderns in your boudoir.”

“I’m afraid Henry is going to spend a vast amount of money.”

“Henry wants his home to be as beautiful as his wife. I must have the best there is of everything, for my wife, for my house, for my children. Perfection or nothing. No middle course.”

“Very dangerous,” smiled Katherine, “and only leads to disillusion. Hal has the same idea, I’m afraid, and he will suffer many disappointments because of it.”

In the middle of December Henry had to be away in Slane for four days, for the Assizes, and on the third day, on returning to his hotel from the court-house, he found Tom Callaghan waiting for him in the lounge.

“What’s the Rector of Doonhaven doing in Slane?” he asked, with a laugh. “You’ve not come to be a witness in the case of assault, have you? Come and have some dinner.”

“No, thanks, old fellow. I’ve come to bring you home.”

“What’s the matter?” He seized hold of Tom’s arm. “Is it Katherine?”

“She had a bit of a chill yesterday morning,” said Tom, “and rather foolishly got up, and walked in the garden with the children. By the evening it was worse, and Miss Frost called in the doctor. At any rate, he seems to think the baby is on the way, and asked me to come along and collect you. If you’re ready, I suggest we go immediately.”

His manner was calm and reassuring. Good old Tom, thought Henry; what a stand-by he was at all times! The best friend in the world. He had got the man at the hotel to collect his luggage; it was waiting strapped in the hall. He scribbled a note making his excuses to his fellow magistrates on the bench, and they left the city.

“The children have been spending the day at Heathmount,” said Tom, “helping to make jam in the kitchen.

All in a delightful mess and very happy. We’ve arranged for them to spend the night, or two or three nights, if necessary.”

“I don’t suppose the business will be long, if you say it has already started,” said Henry. “Kitty was not long coming into the world, as far as I can remember.”

“It does not always follow, old boy,” said Tom; “that was six or seven years ago, and Katherine hasn’t been too fit since, has she?

Still, this young doctor seems a capable fellow.

Old Armstrong insists on being present too, by the way. More from affection for you all than anything else.”

“Well, he brought all of us into the world,” said Henry. “He probably knows a thing or two about it by this time.”

It was nearly eleven o’clock when they arrived home at Clonmere. Uncle Willie Armstrong had heard the sound of the carriage, and was standing waiting for them on the steps.

“Glad to see you, Henry,” he said, in his usual gruff, abrupt manner. “Young McKay is with Katherine now. Nothing much happened since you left, Rector. You had both better have a drink.

We can’t any of us do anything to hurry this child into the world.”

He led the way into the dining-room.

“I shall go up and see Katherine,” said Henry, but old Armstrong took him by the shoulder.

“Much better not,” he said; “she’d far rather see you when it’s all over. They’ve laid some cold supper for you here. You’d better eat it.”

Henry found himself surprisingly hungry. Cold beef and pickles. Apricot tart.

“Come on, Tom,” he said, “my wife’s having this baby, not yours. Don’t look so solemn.”

He began to tell them an amusing incident that had happened in court during the afternoon. They listened and smiled, not saying much. Old Doctor Armstrong puffed away at his pipe. Presently Doctor McKay came into the room.

“Well 8? said Henry. “How is she 8?

“Rather tired,” said the doctor. “It’s being something of an ordeal for her, but she is very patient. I wonder…” He glanced across at Armstrong. “I wonder if you would care to come upstairs with me?”

The old doctor rose from his chair without a word and followed him out of the room.

“You would think,” said Henry, “that by this time someone would have invented an easier way for these things to happen.

Why can’t the damn fellows do something? She can’t surfer all this pain for hours on end.” He began pacing up and down the room. “My mother had all five of us and never winked an eyelid,” he said.

“She used to sit up and do embroidery five minutes afterwards, and give all the servants notice.”

He stopped and listened a moment, and then went on walking again.

“Uncle Willie looks at me all the time with a resigned T told you so” expression in his eye,” he said impatiently. “I remember his telling me only last year that Katherine should never have any more children… . He had an idea she had got something twisted inside. Katherine never said anything.

She has seemed quite happy about it all. Women are so strange… .? He hesitated on one foot, looking at the door, “Shall I go upstairs?” he said.

“I don’t think I would, if I were you,” said Tom gently.

“I can’t go on standing here,” said Henry. “I think I shall go through and walk round the new house.”

He lifted a small lamp, and passed through the door in the dining-room that led into the new corridor between the two wings. There was a smell of paint and varnish. The workmen were busy this week on the panelling in the new dining-room. He held the lamp above his head and went through into the great hall. It looked very massive, very bare. The light shone down from the vast skylight in the roof. The place seemed ghostly, grey, and the wide staircase leading to the gallery yawned like a gulf.

“It will be all right,” he thought, “when we have it furnished. A big fire in the open hearth, chairs, sofas, tables, and Katherine’s piano in the corner here.”

He wandered about the empty rooms, his footsteps making a hollow sound. Once he stumbled against a ladder and some pots of paint. There was a little heap of cement in a corner of the drawing-room. The room struck very cold, and air blew in, dank and chill. He turned and went up the great stairs to the gallery above. The children had been playing there. One of them had left a skipping-rope trailing from the top of the stairs. He wandered through his new dressing-room to the bedroom. The paint smell clung about him still.

He wished the room could have been finished in time for Katherine to have had her baby there. Then she could have been carried through to the boudoir and spent her days on the sofa, returning to the bedroom at night. He stood on the threshold of the boudoir. Even now, bare and empty, there was something snug about it, a foretaste of the future. Perhaps because they had planned so much of it together. He turned the handle of the long window, and stepped out on to the balcony. A little wind blew towards him from the sea. He could hear the tide ripple in the creek below. His lamp flickered and went out.

He had to grope his way back in the darkness, through the dark, silent rooms, along the gallery, down the great stairs to the hall. There were shadows everywhere, and the caps and overalls of the workmen, hanging just inside an open door, were like the dangling bodies of men. He tried to picture the new wing as it would be, finished and complete, the carpets on the stairs, the pictures on the walls, the fires burning, and for the first time the image forsook him, his imagination failed.

He tried to see Katherine sitting in the corner of the hall, pouring out tea, with the children beside her, the dogs lying on the floor, and himself coming in from shooting, with old Tom perhaps, and Herbert, and Edward, and Katherine glancing up smiling. And he could not see her. He could not see any of them. There was nothing but this vast, unfinished, empty hall.

“Henry,” said a voice, “Henry… .?

Tom came searching for him from the old house, peering through the darkness.

“Armstrong came down for you,” he said, “he wants to speak to you.”

Henry followed him, blinking in the sudden light.

The door between the two wings closed behind him with a clang. He could hear the sound of it echoing through the new wing that had been shut away.

“What’s happened?” he said. “Is it over yet?”

Old Armstrong watched him from under shaggy brows.

He seemed old and tired.

“A daughter,” he said, “not very strong, I’m afraid. She’ll need a lot of looking after.

Katherine is very weak. You had better go up.”

Henry glanced from one to the other, his friend, and the friend of his father.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, I’ll go to her.”

He ran swiftly up the stairs and met the young Doctor McKay coming along the passage.

“Don’t stay long,” the doctor said, “she’s very tired. I want her to sleep. ‘

Henry looked into his eyes.

“What do you mean?” he said. “Isn’t everything going to be all right?”

The young doctor watched him steadily.

“Your wife is not strong, Mr. Brodrick,” he said. “This has been a very great strain upon her.

If she sleeps, all may be well, but I cannot promise. I think it right that you should know this.”

Henry did not answer. He went on looking at the doctor’s eyes.

“Armstrong told you about the little girl?” the doctor said. “I’m afraid she’s malformed, one foot not quite straight, and rather underweight, but otherwise all right. There’s no reason why she should not be as healthy as the others in time. Now perhaps you will go in to Mrs. Brodrick?”

The familiar new-born baby cry rang in his ear, taking him back to those other times, to the birth of Molly at East Grove. How proud and anxious and excited he had been. And Kitty’s in London. The nurse was in a corner, murmuring to the new little one. She brought the baby out of the cot and showed the child to him.

“Such a pity about the foot,” she whispered. “We aren’t going to say anything about it to Mrs.

Brodrick.”

Henry heard her in a dream. He did not know what she was saying. He went over and knelt beside the bed, taking Katherine’s hand and kissing the fingers.

She opened her eyes and touched his head. He did not say anything. He went on kissing the fingers. The nurse took the baby out of the room, and the fitful cry disappeared along the passage. Henry tried to pray, but no words came to his lips. There was nothing he could say, nothing he could ask. Her hands were so cold, he wanted to warm them. This seemed to him more important than anything else, that he should warm her hands. He kissed them again and again, and held them against his cheek, and then inside his vest, against his heart.