Hungry Hill

  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.

  She smiled then.

  "I can feel your heart," she said; "it's throbbing, like an engine in a ship."

  "Are you warmer?" he asked.

  "Yes," she said. "I would like to leave my hand there always."

  He went on kneeling there, and presently, about six in the morning, the workmen came walking along the drive below the castle, whistling and talking, the gravel scrunching under their boots. Somebody went and told them to go away.

  It was Tom Callaghan who did everything. He took all responsibility upon his shoulders. He kept the children at Heathmount, out of Henry's way.

  Then Herbert came over, and took them back with him to Lletharrog, the nurse and the baby as well as the older children and their governess. It was Tom who remembered about Ardmore, and he remembered too the hymns that Katherine had loved best, and her favourite flowers. Henry saw and heard nothing.

  The only thing for which he gave orders himself was to stop all building on the house. He spoke to the men himself. He was quite calm, and knew what to say. He gave every one of them a sum of money, and shook hands with each, and thanked them. And they took away the bricks, and the cement, and the ladders, and all the paraphernalia of building, and did not return.

  The architect went back to England, leaving the roll of plans with Henry. He put them away in his desk and locked it. He never looked at them again.

  He went down to Heathmount and stayed with Tom, and then, after a few weeks, he became restless. It was no use, he said, every part of Doonhaven held a memory that gave him no peace. He would have to go away. He would let Clonmere, perhaps for a number of years.

  "I don't think I should do that," said Tom gently. "You must remember the children. It's their home, and they are devoted to it Molly is twelve now, Hal ten, and Kitty seven. It's an age when children feel things. Let them keep their home.

  Memories to children are precious, and not bitter. You must always remember that."

  "They will have to come alone then," said Henry. "I can't live there. There's no meaning in anything.

  Life is finished, that's all there is to it."

  "I know, old fellow," said Tom. "But if you would try to accept it, surrender to it, you would find the pain easier to bear. It's only going to add to suffering if you build up resentment against it. And that is what you are doing now, dear boy, it is indeed."

  "I build up resentment against nothing and no one," said Henry, "except myself. You see, Tom, I killed her. That is something that I can never forget, or forgive. I killed her."

  "No, Henry, you must not think that. Katherine was not strong. I have talked about it all to McKay, and to Armstrong too. She had not been well for years, there were definite signs of internal disorder that could never have been cured."

  "You are being kind to me, Tom, but it's no use.

  This last baby should never have been born. I knew it. And I would not let myself think about it because I loved her so much… Very well. We won't talk about these things again. Anyway, we shan't have the chance. I'm going away."

  "Yes, Henry, I think you should go away, for a little while. But don't forget this place is your home, and the home of your children. And we are always here when you want us."

  "You're my greatest friend, Tom. Sometimes I think the only true friend I've ever had-was "Where will you go, old fellow? What will you do?"

  "I don't know. I have no plans. I want to go somewhere where I shall not be reminded of her every second of the day."

  Tom tried to reason with him, but Henry would not listen. No argument, no gentleness, no patience, nothing did any good. Already the harsh lines of sorrow began to show on his face. The warm, carefree smile, that when it came lit up his eyes and the whole of his expression, was a thing of the past. When Henry smiled now it had a twist in it that was bitterness concealed.

  "Don't you see," said Tom, in a final attempt to break down the great wall of bitterness, "that every day you are taking yourself farther from Katherine, instead of drawing nearer to her? She will be with you all the time, if you will only forgive yourself and open your heart."

  "Of course I see," said Henry, despair in his face, spreading out his hands in futility. "She has been dead now nearly two months; she belongs to the past, the past that can never be recovered. There is no other argument. I can't open my heart. I have none. She took it with her when she died."

  "No, Henry."

  "Yes, Tom Yes…"

  Henry left Doonhaven in the middle of February, and went to London. He stayed there for a few weeks, and then travelled abroad He went to Italy and Greece. France was at war with Prussia, and he was unable to visit his mother. She preferred to stay in the south, she wrote, and risk the consequences, rather than return at the present time.

  Conditions were difficult though; she wanted more money… He wrote her a large cheque. It did not seem to matter any more. Her extravagance failed to worry him. If she wanted to take the money and throw it down the nearest sewer she could do it, if it gave her any pleasure. Good luck to her for snatching what trivial happiness she could find.

  He wished that he could be equally successful.

  Italy and Greece proved a distraction. He met people he had not met before, and they helped, because they knew nothing of his life. He found that if he lunched or dined with comparative strangers and talked a lot it prevented him from thinking about Katherine.

  He went back to London in May and bought a house in Lancaster Gate, and when he had settled down, and made some sort of routine for himself, lunching and dining out frequently, and seeing many friends, old and new, he sent for the children. It seemed to him that he could bear them again, and to have them about the house would make another distraction.

  The bustle of their arrival made a strange excitement. The two cabs driving to the front-door, and Herbert, bless him, getting out with the usual twinkle in his eye and a broad smile on his face. There was Molly, grown in a few months beyond recognition, and Kitty, very leggy, with two front teeth missing, and Hal, rather white in the face and serious, looking up at him with large eyes. Miss Frost and a pile of luggage, the nurse and the baby Lizette. Molly threw her arms round his neck.

  "Father darling, I am so glad to see you."

  And Kitty and Hal also thrust themselves against him, eager and anxious. It made a warmth, a queer glow for which he was unprepared, and then everybody was talking at once, and wanting to see the rooms. The house, that had been silent and a little dreary, was enveloped. The children with their youth and vitality took possession. They ran upstairs to see the schoolroom, with all the curiosity of youth, their feet stamping overhead, and Herbert and Henry sat down in the drawing-room to tea.

  "They're such dears," said Herbert, "all three of them, and the baby too. We are going to miss them sadly. But how are you? You're looking much better than I expected you would."

  "I'm very well," said Henry; "London suits me, you know, always did."

  He plunged into an account of his travels and the people he had met, and for the first time in his life Herbert saw in Henry a likeness to their mother. Like her he chatted of trivialities, being amusing for the sake of being amusing, exaggerating often, skimming over the surface of things because it was easier than finding the depths. Herbert wanted to know what was really in his brother's heart, if he suffered less-he had exchanged many letters with Tom Callaghan on the subject-but every time he tried to sound him Henry evaded the issue, and talked about something else.

  Henry was
building a defence about himself that would be hard to penetrate. Perhaps the children would draw him out of this, bring back the old Henry with his true charm, his unselfishness, his unaffected gaiety.

  Herbert left after tea, so that Henry could be alone with the children, and they came down about six o'clock, washed and changed, carrying books under their arms as they had always done at Clonmere. It made a pain at once, that they should so instinctively remember their routine, and he began to question them about Lletharrog and all they had done-anything rather than that Molly should sit down, as she used to do, with Hal and Kitty on footstools, and open the book. They chatted for a while politely, like small visitors, and then Molly, leaning against his arm, said: "Would you read, father? Like mamma used to do. Then it will be just like being at home again."

  And she settled herself on the arm of his chair, with easy confidence, while a smile of anticipation lit up the eager, white face of Hal. Henry took up the book and cleared his throat, hardly seeing the print, feeling inadequate, helpless, a sham before his children. The story was one that he remembered Katherine reading to them very often at Clonmere, and as he read, not taking in the words or the meaning, he wondered how it was that the very familiarity of the proceeding, the memory of the words, did not tear their hearts with pain, as it did his. The old ways, the old routine, which to him were now agony and unendurable, were something to which they clung for security. He wanted to lose the memory of that world; they wished to hold it.

  He read for two or three pages, and then he could bear it no longer. It seemed to him a mockery of the time that was gone. The children might live in the world of what-used-to-be; they must live in it alone.

  "I'm afraid I'm not very good at reading aloud," he said, "my throat gets sore. You'll have to do it instead, Molly."

  "That won't be the same," said Hal quickly.

  "Molly is only our sister. She can read to us in the schoolroom."

  "Perhaps father would rather play a game," said Kitty.

  "We have Happy Families. I know where it is, on the top of the toy-trunk."

  She ran away upstairs to fetch the cards.

  Hal busied himself carrying a table into the middle of the room.

  "I wish we had a piano," said Molly.

  "I've been learning while we stayed with Uncle Herbert. I shan't be able to practise here without one."

  "I'll get you one," said Henry.

  "When we go home, Molly can play on mamma's piano," said Hal. "It was so very soft.

  Uncle Herbert's piano banged a bit. How long are we going to be in this house? Until the summer holidays?"

  Henry got up from his chair, and moved restlessly towards the mantelpiece.

  "We shall be here indefinitely," he said. "You must all learn to look upon this house as home, now you are getting older. You'll be going to school, Hal, next term. I'm not certain about the holidays.

  Perhaps we might all go and stay with Aunt Eliza in Saunby."

  The children stared at him aghast. Kitty, who had returned with the cards, stood on one leg, biting the end of her hair.

  "Aren't we ever going home to Clonmere again?" she said.

  Henry avoided their eyes. He did not know what to say.

  "Yes, of course… sometime," he said, "but it's let at the moment; I thought perhaps they would have told you at Lletharrog. Some people called Boles, friends of Uncle Bill and Aunt Fanny, are living there."

  The children went on looking at him without understanding.

  "Other people?" said Hal. "Living in our home?

  Using our things? They won't touch mamma's piano, will they?"

  "No," said Henry, "no, I'm sure they won't."

  "How long are they going to be there?" asked Molly.

  Each one of them looked shaken and distressed. He had not realised that they were so fond of their home. He thought that children liked change, enjoyed variety. He began to feel irritated. They were staring at him as though he were in some way to blame.

  "I don't know," he said, "it depends upon their plans."

  He had not the courage to tell them that Clonmere had been let to the Boles for seven years.

  "There are many advantages in London," he said, smiling, and talking rather swiftly. "You two girls will be able to go to dancing classes, and music lessons, and all that sort of thing. And meet other children. Hal must learn to find his level with other boys, before he goes to Eton. All your uncles agreed with me that London was much the best place for education. There will be plenty for you all to do. And I promise you that I'll give you whatever you want."

  He felt as though he were pleading with them, that they were his judges. Why should he feel this? They were only children, Molly not yet thirteen. "I want to do what is best for all of you," he said. "I think, I'm certain in fact, that this is what mamma would have wished."

  The children did not say anything. Kitty slowly shuffled the pack of Happy Families. Hal drew imaginary lines on the table. Molly reached for the pack of cards from Kitty, and handed them to Henry.

  "Will you deal, father?" she said.

  They drew their chairs to the table, and as he dealt out the cards he could feel the constraint amongst them.

  The pleasure was gone and they were strangers, being polite to one another for courtesy's sake.

  "I've hurt them," thought Henry. "I've broken their faith in some way. And there's no one to tell me what to say, what to do."

  He could feel their eyes upon him as he pretended to examine his cards….

  "They'll forget all about it," he told himself; "children accustom themselves to everything. That's the blessing of being a child."

  And as the months passed Henry felt this to be true, because none of them even mentioned the idea of going home again. They were content, he decided, and because he wanted to believe this, he never questioned them, for fear that they should tell him they were unhappy, The months became one, two years, and except for occasional visits to Saunby and Lletharrog they did not leave the house in London.

  The girls attended classes, Hal went to school, the little Lizette learnt to talk and to walk, limping on her poor club foot that could not be straightened. Henry, restless, uncertain, feeling that his children needed a deeper understanding than he could give them, evaded responsibility by giving them presents; while in his heart all the while there was a feeling that what he did and what he gave them brought them no closer to him.

  When a letter came to him from his mother in the spring of '74, condoling with him on the death of Aunt Eliza at Saunby and asking for a rather larger cheque than usual, Henry determined, quite suddenly, to go out to Nice and stay with her.

  He had not seen her for nearly seven years.

  Perhaps, at last, he would be able to persuade her to return and live with them. The truth was that he was lonely, in mind and body and soul, and Molly at fifteen was still too young to be a true companion. The thought of his mother's gaiety, her wit and her charm, seemed all the more endearing after an absence of seven years. Surely she, more than anyone in the world, would understand this feeling of unbearable loneliness, that became worse, not easier, as the years passed?

  He went to France the day after he had seen Hal safely off to his first half at Eton.

  The air was brilliant in Nice and the sun shone.

  He called a porter, and collecting his baggage, went in search of a fiacre to drive him to the villa.

  No attempt on his mother's part to meet him at the station. She had probably forgotten the day of his arrival. It was pleasant driving along the wide promenade, watching the people. The driver turned away from the sea-front and drove up behind the town, threading his way through a network of little, narrow roads. Once or twice he had to ask his way. They came at last to the Rue des Lilas (in which there were no lilacs), and stopped in front of a small, shabby villa that badly needed a coat of paint. The gate was half off the hinges. When Henry opened it a bell jangled shrilly, and two dogs set up a chorus of barking from in
side the house. No one came to the door, however. The driver put down the luggage on the step, and waited.

  Henry went round to the back of the villa. The door was also closed, and the dogs went on barking from inside the house. Henry returned to the front.

  "Nobody about," he told the driver.

  He became aware that a woman was watching him from a window of the villa next door. He turned his back, and once more wrestled with the handle of the front door. It was the right house, for looking through the glass pane of the door he could see the sitting-room, and a photograph of Johnnie on the mantelpiece.

  Then a voice called: "Try under the loose tile-you may find the key there."

  The woman from next door was standing on her verandah. She was about forty-six, rather handsome, with steel-grey hair and strikingly blue eyes. She was obviously amused at the situation.

  "Thank you," said Henry, taking off his hat.

  "I don't appear to be expected."

  He bent down, and found the key under the tile.

  He held it up for the woman to see. She laughed, and shrugged her shoulders.

  "I thought it would either be there or in the flower-bed," she said, "Mrs. Brodrick is usually a bit casual about her hiding-places."

  Henry thanked her again, and paying off the driver, he took his luggage inside the villa. The dogs came out of the sitting-room, sniffing at his heels. The room smelt of them. It was stuffy, the windows were all shut. There was a saucer of food for them in one corner, and biscuit spilt upon the floor. Dead flowers were stuffed into cracked vases. The chairs and sofas were creased and stained where the dogs had been lying. On a table was a cup that had held coffee, the dregs were in it still. One of his mother's shoes lay beside it, and the other had been kicked under a chair. A wood fire in the grate had not been cleared.

  Henry left the room and went into the dining-room. This was obviously never used. His mother had her meals on a tray in the sitting-room. The kitchen was full of crockery that had not been washed, and there were vegetables, uncooked, crammed into a coal bucket. He went upstairs and found his mother's bedroom. Her clothes were littered about the room, and the bed had not been made. There was a tray of breakfast things still lying on the end of the bed. Across the passage was a spare-room, intended no doubt for him. There were clean sheets and blankets folded on the bed, but the bed was not made up. He went downstairs and stood looking out on the neglected garden, feeling sick at heart, and filled with depression. Somehow he had not expected it to be like this. He had made a different picture in his mind. The Englishwoman was still on her verandah, watering some flowers in a pot.