Hungry Hill (8 page)

“You mistake me, sir,” said Henry; “there was never a question of your descending the mine and going into the tunnel. My father’s plan is for you and the rest of us to mount guard at the outlet of the tunnel on the hillside, and to waylay any of these beggars who may appear.”

“Is it foxes or men you are after?”

“Men, Mr. Flower. I have just explained to you.

The fellows who are stealing the copper from the mine.

My father wishes to arrest them and make an example of them. He thinks Morty Donovan is at the back of it.”

“Ah, I’ll not do a thing against Morty Donovan. Didn’t he sell me the father of that same Trouncer I was just telling you of? A wonderful dog, John; you would have appreciated the pair of them. No, why should I lie all night on a hillside to pick a quarrel with Morty Donovan? I don’t see what your father wants to meddle in the business for at all.”

“But, surely, Mr. Flower, you believe in upholding the law ? Are you not a magistrate yourself?”

“Shame on you, Simon,” said his wife; “there is poor Mr. Brodrick over at Doonhaven working all alone to save the property belonging to him and to my father, and you don’t raise a hand to help him. I only wish my brother-in-law were at home, Mr. Brodrick. The Earl of Mundy would never sit by and see such injustice done, and I dare say if I used my influence and perhaps got word to him over the prater…”

“Very good of you, madam, but you see the matter is urgent. I gather think my father hoped that Mr.

Flower would accompany us home tonight.”

“Tonight? Impossible. I shall not stir from Castle Andriff this night for all the thieves in Europe,” said Simon Flower dramatically. “Let Morty Donovan run away with the copper, and may it bring him better fortune than it has to my house.”

And clamping his hat more firmly on his head, Simon Flower sat himself down once more to the piano.

Henry looked across at John and shrugged his shoulders, and at this moment the door of the drawing-room flew open and Simon’s daughter rushed into the room, her face flushed, her eyes bright with anger, and her mass of chestnut hair in a tangle down her back.

“It’s a shame,” she shouted, “a wicked shame, and I told her I would not stand it, and no more I will.

And I’ve scratched her face, and locked her up in the linen-press, and I hope she dies.”

So saying, she slammed down the lid of the piano, forcing her father to silence, and stood with heaving breast, her eyes upon her mother.

The vision that had so suddenly descended upon them was too much for the young Brodricks. They rose to their feet, abashed and speechless, and indeed Fanny-Rosa Flower, at seventeen, would have reduced any man with a sense of beauty to the same state of silence.

Her present anger only added to her loveliness, the flush on her cheeks brought new depth to her slanting green eyes, and the untidy curling hair made her look like a Bacchante from the wild woods. The fact that she was stockingless seemed in perfect keeping with the character. She now noticed, for the first time, that her parents had visitors.

“How do you do?” she said, with something of her mother’s regal manner, but with her father’s smile. “I am sorry to cause such a disturbance, but I have just had a fight with my governess, and I trust it is the last one.”

“Fanny-Rosa,” said her mother, “I am pained and surprised. What will Mr. Brodrick and his brother think of you?

Miss Harris will be smothered in the linen-press.”

She left the drawing-room in great agitation, while Simon Flower regarded his daughter with indulgence from the piano.

“I never cared for that Miss Harris,” he said; “she had a mean, snivelling manner with her that did not suit our ways. I think it is high time that you did without a governess.”

Fanny-Rosa, recovered from her burst of temper, looked out of the corner of her eyes at the two Brodricks, and sat herself down in her mother’s chair.

“I thought you were both in London,” she said softly. “You do not generally come to Clonmere till after Christmas, do you?”

Henry found himself telling once again the story of the mine, and this time he had a more receptive audience.

Fanny-Rosa clasped her bare legs, and never took her eyes off his face.

“I wish I could come with you both,” she said, “instead of my father. I would dearly love to wait out on the hillside in the middle of the night. And if you had a fight with your miners I would not be afraid.”

“I tell you what it is,” said Simon Flower; “your bout with Miss Harris has put you in trim for a scrap. I have little doubt these lads would let you ride pillion behind one of them, and you would give a good account of yourself in the bargain. But you never told us what was the trouble with Miss Harris?”

“She told Tilly and me it was time we learnt to fold up our clothes, and I said I would not. All young ladies, she said, should do so from habit, and not have them strewn about the floor like girls from the kitchen.

“What would your uncle, the Earl of Mundy, say to your slovenly ways?”’ she said. “Maybe he would forgive me if I sat by his side and pulled his whiskers and told him how handsome he was,” I answered her. And with that she looked down her long nose and said I must learn a page of French verbs, so I scratched her face for her, as I told you before, and had her shut in the linen-press, and I can tell from your eyes that you would have served her the same, Mr. Brodrick.”

She looked slyly across at John, who blushed to the roots of his hair and laughed under his breath.

Fanny-Rosa then helped herself to a large piece of cake, and poured herself some tea, while the eyes of the two Brodricks were drawn irresistibly to the fascination of the slim bare feet.

“You have been on the Continent, have you not?” she said to Henry, with her mouth full of cake. “Ah, I know all about you, our footman is cousin to your cook. We were in Paris ourselves last winter, because my grandfather let my father have some money to spend, and we went to Paris instead of buying new curtains for my mother’s bedroom.”

“Yes, you baggage,” said Simon Flower, “and whenever we visited a picture-gallery what should we find in every room but a trail of young Frenchmen behind us ? So in the end the people were bowing to us, thinking we were a royal procession.”

“It was a Miss Wilson who was our governess then,” said Fanny-Rosa, “and I slipped away from her twice when she was conducting me through the streets, so that she thought I had been abducted, and went in tears to the policemen, but they, being French, did not understand her. She was forced to go to a quiet place in the country when we returned, as she had developed nervous trouble. Would you believe it, but I have had a dozen governesses since I was fourteen, and I had my seventeenth birthday last month, so this is the end of it all.”

“You will be the end of your parents too,” said Mrs.

Flower severely, entering the room at this moment, after a vain attempt to mollify the unfortunate Miss Harris. “You may think yourselves lucky, Mr.

Brodrick, that your own sisters do not behave in similar fashion, and I trust you will not give an account of this daughter of mine to Miss Brodrick when you return.”

“I tell you what,” cried Simon Flower.

“Why do you two boys go back home at all?

Let your father go down the old burrows after the miners if it pleases him. You shall stay and dine with us, and we will pay another visit to the cellar, and Fanny-Rosa shall come with us.”

But Henry shook his head and moved towards the door, much to his brother’s mortification.

“You are very kind, sir,” he said, “but we have already delayed far too long as it is. My father will be in some anxiety concerning U.”

Simon Flower waved a careless hand, and sat himself down to the piano.

“I’ll shoot with your father any day he fancies, on Doon Island,” he said. “I’d never refuse an invitation of that sort. But to go crawling or my stomach after Morty Donovan in the middle of the night, no, I will not do it, and ye can tell him so to hia’oux”

“bb’face.”

And with that he burst once more into song, joined by the faithful setter, and the two Brodricks left Castle Andriff to the confused sound of clashing chords, a rich baritone voice, and the barking of at least half-a-dozen dogs, while the elder daughter of the house, an enchanting barefooted figure, waved to them from the stone steps.

Dazed, bewildered, and still slightly intoxicated, the two brothers rode home at a pace that would have infuriated Copper John could he have seen them. It was not until they were within sight of Doon-haven that they drew rein, and Henry pulled himself to his senses.

“You know, John,” he said, “my father is perfectly right. This country will never prosper while it continues to breed people like the Flowers.”

John did not answer. The prosperity of the country meant nothing to him. Henry could continue his observations in his critical fashion and abuse Simon Flower if he wished. The only thing that mattered to John was this: that never in his life had he set eyes on anything quite so lovely as Simon Flower’s daughter Fanny-Rosa.

On the following Saturday evening the Brodricks were seated round the fire in the library, having dined early, as was their custom. Jane had been gathering cones from the woods during the day, and these she now scattered on the smoking turf, making the fire hiss and crackle, the better to shut out the sound of the wind as it moaned in the trees behind Clonmere. There was a full gale blowing outside in Mundy Bay, but the long Atlantic rollers swept past the entrance to Doonhaven, while the straggling length of Doon Island acted as a natural breakwater.

The tide ebbed swiftly in the creek below the castle, making a strong ripple against the wind, but so sheltered was Clonmere from the full force of the gale that only the sudden tremor of the woods above the house gave warning that the still weather had broken at last.

Henry was seated at his father’s desk, writing a letter to Barbara at Lletharrog, while John sprawled as usual in the most comfortable chair, one hand fondling the ear of his favourite greyhound, the other propping up a book he did not read. He was watching the cones as they burst in the fire, and Jane, glancing up at his half-closed eyes, wondered what he was thinking.

The week had been quiet. No further pilfering had been discovered at the mine, and though a watch had been stationed on the hillside every night no one had come upon the hill save the watchers themselves. Yet there was a strange feeling of unrest in the air, a brooding sense of disquiet. And the miners, watching one another in suspicion, went about their work sullenly and in silence.

It was not only at the mine that this atmosphere prevailed. Down in Doonhaven, when Jane, accompanied by old Martha, went to make a purchase at Murphy’s shop, and would have chatted as usual in her happy way to Murphy, whom she had known from babyhood, the man avoided her eye, looking uncomfortable, and muttering some excuse, disappeared into the back of his shop, leaving a young ignorant lad to serve her. It seemed to her too that the people in the market square stared at her with hostility, and when she smiled and said good-morning they turned their backs and pretended not to see.

Doonhaven had suddenly become a place of whispers, of figures peering round doorways and then withdrawing, and Jane, who had a place in her heart for all comers and loved the people of Doonhaven, returned home with a heavy feeling of foreboding.

“I don’t like it,” she said to Henry. “I believe my father takes this business of the mine not seriously enough. All he thinks about is to catch the few miners and to punish them for taking the copper. He does not realise that his mine is hated by every one of the people in Doonhaven.”

“The trouble is that they are jealous,” said Henry.

“They would like all the benefits of the copper, and none of the trouble in getting it. Father knows what he is talking about. If you were not firm with the people in the country nothing would ever be done, and no progress would be made.”

“We were happy enough without progress.”

“That is just sentimentality, and you have been listening to John.”

Jane threw another cone on to the fire. It spat and hissed, and became still. Soon there was no sound but the scratching of Henry’s nib at the desk, and the occasional rustle of a page as John turned the leaves of his book. Suddenly the dog pricked his ears and looked towards the door, and the door itself opened, and their father, Copper John, stood upon the threshold. His coat was buttoned to his chin, his hat was pulled low over his brow, so that little of him could be seen but the long nose and the thin lips above the square jaw, while in his hand he carried his favourite stick, short and nobbled, with a head on it like a club. Behind him, in the hall, stood the agent, Ned Brodrick, his lean, mournful face a contrast to the forceful determination of his more fortunate brother.

“I want you two boys to accompany me immediately,” said Copper John. “We are starting for the mine in five minutes. Outside in the drive I have some dozen of the tenants waiting, also Parsons, the customs officer, Sullivan from the Post Office, Doctor Beamish, and one or two others that have mustered. There is no time to lose.”

The three young Brodricks had risen to their feet, Henry tense and alert, John a little bewildered, awoken too rudely from his dream, and Jane pale and anxious, clasping her hands in front of her.

“Is anything wrong, sir?” asked Henry.

Copper John smiled grimly.

“Word has come that there are some thirty men or more marching out from Doonhaven to Hungry Hill, and leading them are the half-dozen miners suspected by Captain Nicholson. They are out to do mischief, of course, and I propose to stop them.”

Jane followed her father and uncle into the hall, where her two brothers were fastening their coats, their faces pale and excited in the dim candle-light.

The door was open on to the drive, and she could see the small huddled group of men waiting for her father, shuffling their feet on the gravel, talking amongst themselves in whispers. One or two of them swung lanterns in their hands, and all carried heavy sticks.