Hungry Hill

  He would hardly have written to anyone else in Naples. Possibly the letter, or letters, had miscarried, And on he went, day after day, in France now, the heat somewhat less oppressive, but the route dusty and exhausting and the sun staring down from a glazed blue sky. On the evening of the fourth of June the coach rattled into the little old town of Sens, some seventy miles south-east of Paris, and drew up at the Hotel de l'Ecu. Tomorrow, thought Copper John, as he descended stiffly from the vehicle, I shall be in the capital, where I am more than certain to have news of Henry. He would no doubt have called upon the Mallets, and might even be staying in their apartment. What a relief it would be to have the journey three-parts done, and to return home together.

  He made his way into the hotel, a dark, stuffy, old-fashioned sort of building, and asked for the proprietor. He came at once, a large man with a cheerful round face, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, for he was in the middle of supper. Copper John, in his poor, careful French, asked him the inevitable question. Had he met with a young man, of slight build and fair complexion, who might seem fatigued or unwell? At his words the expression on the landlord's face changed instantly.

  He put his hand on John Brodrick's shoulder, and burst into a torrent of French that the other could not follow, and then turned, and disappeared a moment, returning with a woman, his wife, and one or two other persons. They all began to question Copper John, each one talking above the other, and finally the traveller, in desperation, said: "I am the father of the young man. In God's name, does anyone here speak English?"

  There was immediate silence. The woman said softly: "C'est le pere. Quelle tristesse! Faut lui montrer la chambre…?

  There was another consultation, in low tones, and then the landlord, his face very grave, asked Copper John to have the goodness to wait a few minutes; he would send for Monsieur Getif, the doctor, who would explain everything, and knew a few words of English.

  Copper John was now greatly alarmed. The people at the hotel had obviously seen Henry, and this doctor they spoke of had attended him. The woman offered him refreshment, which he refused, and he sat down to wait, while they stood respectfully at a distance, watching him, and now and again exchanging whispered words the sense of which he could not catch. The suspense of waiting was well-nigh intolerable, but in about twenty minutes the landlord returned, accompanied by a tall, thin man, bearded, and spectacled, who at the sight of Copper John came forward and bowed, removing his spectacles and polishing them, as a little instinctive sign of nervousness.

  "You are the father, monsieur?" he said, in a hushed tone.

  "I am," replied Copper John. "I beg you to tell me immediately, is there anything amiss with my son?"

  Monsieur Getif swallowed, and made a gesture with his hands.

  "I regret very much," he said, "you have to prepare yourself for a great shock, monsieur. Your son has been gravely ill, with a congestion pulmonaire.

  I did what I could, but the disease was too advanced."

  "What exactly are you trying to tell me?" asked Copper John steadily.

  "Monsieur, you must have courage… Your son died yesterday, at five o'clock in the morning…

  . His body lies in the room above."

  Copper John did not answer. He stared past the doctor and the sympathetic, curious faces of the landlord and his wife, out of the window to the dusty, cobbled street. A cart rumbled past, and a boy driving called loudly to the horse, cracking his whip. The bells on the cart tinkled. The clock on the old church across the square chimed out the hour. He loosened his cravat, and then tightened his hold on his stick.

  "Would you take me upstairs to my son?" he said.

  The doctor led the way, the landlord and his wife following in the rear. They went to a room on the first floor, overlooking the street. The curtains were drawn against the light. Two candles were burning at the head of the bed, and two at the foot. Henry lay between them. There was only a white sheet over him, and his face was uncovered. He looked very young, and peaceful, and still. His clothes were folded neatly on the chair against the wall. His wallet, and keys, and books were on the mantelpiece. A whisper from the wife of the landlord broke the silence.

  "She says nothing has been touched," said the doctor, "it is just as he arranged his things."

  "How long had he been here?" asked Copper John.

  "Six days. He was taken ill the night of his arrival. He would not permit us to send word to England.

  It would give anxiety, he said."

  "Did he speak of his family at all, of me?"

  "No, monsieur, he was too weak. He just lay there, on his bed. He was very patient. It was madame here who heard him cough yester-day morning, and she came in and found him-dying-monsieur, and she sent for me, but it was too late… We are all so very sorry, monsieur."

  "Thank you. I am grateful for what you have done."

  One by one they withdrew from the room, leaving him alone with his son. He took a chair and sat beside the bed. Outside the Hotel de l'Ecu he could hear the carts as they rattled over the cobbled stones, and the jangling bells of the horses. There were the voices of people too, calling to one another. A woman was singing in the house across the way.

  There were things that he should do, and arrangements to be made. He would have Henry embalmed and buried in Paris. Later on they would try to have him removed to England. He would not like to think of Henry lying here, alone, in foreign soil. He must write to Barbara, to Robert Lumley, to the Flowers; there were so many letters he must write. Henry was twenty-eight. He had been twenty-eight three months. He looked younger, much younger, as he lay there on the bed. It made him think of those days when he and Sarah had gone down to visit the boys at Eton. Henry was always so delighted to see them. And at Oxford later.

  So many friends to introduce. He could not remember ever having to beat Henry as a lad, or find fault with him. Such a companion too, these last years, ever since the start of the mine. He would have married soon, doubtless, and settled down at Clonmere with his bride. Now Clonmere would go to John…

  He went on sitting in the chair, staring at the body of his son, and the candles burnt lower, forming spots of grease upon the floor beside the bed.

  After an hour there came a light tap at the door, and the woman of the hotel asked him whether he would come down and have a bite or two to eat; he must keep his strength, she said, he must not give way.

  He remembered that the business of living must be continued, that eating and drinking, and planning and sleeping, were part of existence, that Henry's death would alter none of this. He went downstairs and had his dinner alone in the little coffee-room of the hotel, and after dinner the doctor called and accompanied him to the house of the Maire, Monsieur Jacques-Theodore Leroux, where there were papers to be signed and certain formalities to be gone through.

  The doctor and the Maire both signed the certificate of death, and another paper which would permit the father to have the body of his son embalmed and taken to Paris within the next few days. This necessary business gave Copper John some measure of comfort. It made something to do. He did not have leisure to be alone with his thoughts. When he had left the Maire and the doctor, he walked awhile in the town of Sens until it was dark, and then he returned to the Hotel de l'Ecu and went upstairs once more to Henry's room. It was as though he expected there to be some change, that Henry might perhaps have moved, or the things be disturbed upon the chair.

  But Henry lay still and quiet, as he had been before.

  Only the candles had sunk lower, and now burnt dim and fitful in their sockets. His father extinguished them, one by one, and as he did so it seemed to him an act of finality. It was his farewell to Henry.

  He left the room, and shut the door behind him.

  He asked the landlord for paper, and pen, and ink. He had recollected, when he had signed the death certificate, that the fourth of the month was the day when he always wrote to Robert Lumley and gave him an account of the work at th
e mine. He had omitted to do so in May, because he had been about to set forth on his journey, and had only sent his partner a short note, explaining that he was leaving for the Continent. Robert Lumley would consider him very remiss if he left him without word for two months. It was a good thing he had thought to bring with him the details of the mining accounts for the last six months.

  It would be as well, perhaps, if Robert Lumley had a copy for reference. He dipped his pen in the ink and began his letter.

  At the Hotel de I'Ecu, Sens, Dept. de I'allyonne, France.

  My dear Mr. Lumley, You will, I am sure, learn with regret that the journey to Italy for the recovery of poor Henry's health has proved fruitless. He was unable on his return to proceed further than Sens in France, where he expired yesterday, the third of the month. It is a heavy blow to me, and will be so to the rest of my family, but we must pray to the Almighty to enable us to bear it with fortitude. I take it for granted that you have received the 1499, the whole of your royalty for last year, but I have nothing as yet to remit from the new mine, though I have great expectations that it will prove even more profitable than the first…

  BOOK TWO

  Greyhound John, 1828–1837

  THE SUMMER OF 1828 passed slowly, and the days seemed endless to John in Lincoln's Inn, when, standing at the window of his rooms and looking out upon the narrow, stuffy court, he would think of the sea breaking on the shores of Doon Island, and the tide running swiftly up the creek below Clonmere. His work, as usual, held no interest for him, and he would loll in his chair, biting the end of his pen-holder, a heap of untidy papers before him on his desk, while now and again a clerk would appear and ask for some note or other from his file, which it would take an eternity to find. He longed for home more than he had ever done in his life before, and now that Henry was dead it would have been easy enough to give up this farce of the law in London, with the natural and true excuse that his presence was necessary at Clonmere. But something prevented him from doing so, a queer twist that had come into his mind with his brother's death. It seemed to him, during those long weeks in London, that he was in some way to blame for being alive and well, when Henry, who was so much better than himself, lay cold and dead in a gloomy French cemetery. It would not have mattered had it been the other way round. The family would have soon forgotten him. But Henry, so gay, so clever, adored by his sisters and well-nigh worshipped by his father, how could he ever be replaced?

  They would never get over the loss. They would discuss the circumstances of his illness over and over again, just as they had done at Lletharrog when his father returned from France, and always there would be a sigh, and a harking back to that evening in the mine the winter before.

  "It was that night that he caught the chill,"

  Barbara would say. "Don't you remember how he came back to Bronsea the following week with a high fever, and was in bed here all during Christmas?"

  "And yet," Eliza would answer, "Henry had often been wet to the skin before and taken no harm from it.

  John was probably wet too that night, were you not, John, and you suffered no ill consequence?"

  "Henry worked gallantly that night; I shall always remember it," said his father. "He did not spare himself. He was an example to all." And John, listening, standing with his hands in his pockets looking out of the farm-house window at Barbara's trim little garden, would feel an unconscious reproach in his father's words. If John had worked harder that night possibly Henry would not have had so much put upon him. He was aware of being no help to the family. He was the one brother now, to whom they would all turn, and yet he failed them. He knew that he should have made some effort to try to take Henry's place, not in his father's affections but in his esteem, by offering to go to Bronsea and to take some sort of responsibility upon his shoulders. Shyness prevented him, a feeling of inferiority, and a fear that if he spoke or moved, his father would think, "How hopeless a fellow he is compared to Henry!" It was better, therefore, to do nothing. He would just sink into himself and be silent. And so, instead of accompanying his father into Bronsea, he would take his rod and go fishing in the stream below the farm-house, thinking all the while about his dead brother out in France, wondering what his thoughts had been that last week, lying ill and lonely in the hotel. And his sisters, in the parlour at Lletharrog, would say to one another, "John is really very selfish. He seems quite unmoved by Henry's death." The only one who guessed the true turmoil of his mind was Jane, and she would come to him sometimes, and put her arm around his neck, but he knew that even Jane, with her intelligence and intuition, could not understand the fierce thoughts that troubled him. At the end of the fortnight he returned to London, and when his father wrote from Clonmere during the hot, dreary month of August, asking him whether he would be joining them as usual, he answered that pressure of work forbade it, indeed that it was unlikely that he would cross the water at all while they were there. His father made no answer to this palpable untruth, but a long letter came from Barbara, full of reproaches, saying that none of them could understand what had come over him; it was as though he had no affection for his home at all. And John, biting his pen-holder in his stuffy London office, tried to tell his sister that the very reason why he did not come was because he loved his home too well. He saw himself, in all the pride of possession, walking round the grounds with his father, discussing some alteration, looking up at the windows and the grey stone walls, and how the momentary delight would suddenly be shattered by the feeling that all this was coming to him through tragedy and mischance, that in reality he would have no right to any of it — Clonmere belonged to Henry, lying in his grave, and his father knew it too, his father would be thinking the very same thought as they walked before the castle together. No, it was useless. Barbara would not know what he meant.

  John tore the letter into shreds, and did not write again. The family must think what they liked of him.

  And instead of going home John went up to Norfolk to stay with an old Oxford friend who bred greyhounds for coursing, and most of the early autumn and winter when he could make an excuse to leave London he would be in Norfolk, thinking and talking greyhounds, for, as he told his friends, "Dogs are the only things I understand, and the only things that understand me." To John, a greyhound was a thing of beauty and of moods, sensitive and delicate. And when highly bred, the more temperamental, the more inclined to brilliancy if rightly handled, or to hopeless failure if indifferently trained. He would study each dog individually, know which one could be expected to do well on different days, how one would sulk in the rain and wind and lose interest at a trifle, how another would work with a staunch heart whatever the weather.

  John would have great tenderness for them, touching them gently with his strong, square hands. Then the training would begin, and finally would come the reward for his skill and patience, the excitement of the course itself, the betting, the shouts of the spectators, and Lightfoot, the greyhound that had seemed so fragile and nervous a creature when he first had her, would prove her breeding and her worth in a few minutes before the crowd, doubling and twisting with the frightened hare, making escape impossible. Once more John would be clapped on the back and congratulated, with another great silver cup to his name, and Lightfoot, shivering in excitement and ecstasy, crouching at his knee.

  In March the coursing season came to an end, and John, who had thought of little else for the past six months but his greyhounds, was faced with the prospect of another long summer in London, making up his arrears in work, or giving up finally and for ever the farce of Lincoln's Inn and settling down with his father and his sisters at Clonmere. If he threw up his work in London he would be able to idle pleasantly through the summer at Clonmere, race his dogs in the neighbourhood during the autumn, and bring them back to Norfolk again for the three months after Christmas, when the family was at Lletharrog.

  The prospect was too good to be laid aside, and he wondered to himself if he had been a very great fool the year
before in taking his brother's death in the way he did. The thing had been a tragedy, but tragedies become less poignant as the months pass, and no one in the world would have grudged the possession of Clonmere to John less than Henry.

  So in May John said goodbye to the files of paper, the ink, and the dust of Lincoln's Inn, andwitha feeling of freedom he had never known before he embarked on the steam-packet to Slane, and travelled down by road to Doonhaven, his greyhounds and his kennel-man accompanying him. When he came to the rise of the road past the mine on Hungry Hill, and looked out across Doonhaven to Clonmere, standing grey and solid at the head of the creek, a strange feeling of pride and delight swept over him that he had never sensed before, Clonmere had suddenly become more personal, more significant, the thing of beauty he would one day possess.

  His homecoming was a happy affair. His father and his sisters had walked out along the drive to meet him, and there was no question of coolness, no shadow of restraint. His father shook hands with him warmly, remarked how well he was looking, and then proceeded to enquire after the greyhounds. The dogs at once descended from the box and were exhibited with pride, and then the whole family walked back to the castle along the path by the creek, chatting and laughing, a sister on either side clinging to John's arms. The little path beneath the fir trees felt hard and springy under John's feet, and there was the lively scent of young summer in the air, a happy blend of pine, and primrose, and rhododendron, and the salty, pungent, muddy smell of a bubbling ebb-tide.

  They came out of the woods by Jane's water-garden, at the head of the creek, and here there were new plants to be admired, and a new flagged path to criticise, Jane, flushed and excited, holding on to his hand, and so on to the boat-house, where one of the men was busily engaged in painting John's sailing-boat, the gig being already in the water.

  Everyone smiled, everyone was happy, and John himself felt something warm and new stirring in his heart which he could not express. He ran up to his room in the tower.