Hungry Hill

  "I'm proud of you, dear," she said, "you look very nice. And I want you to be very good, because we are going to see your grandfather."

  He considered this a moment. The word was too long for him, but it had a meaning.

  "Granpie?" he said slowly, his expression brightening.

  "No, not Granpie," she said, "someone else, that you have not seen before. We are going up to Clonmere to see him."

  This could be understood. Clonmere was the house with the balcony and the windows, where they went so often for their walks. And climbing down from the chair, he allowed the ugly beaver hat to be placed upon his head, and the elastic snapped tight under his chin.

  They went downstairs to the hall, hand in hand, and outside in the road Patsy was waiting, with the pony and trap. John-Henry looked to see if the picnic-basket was to be put in the trap, but there was no nigh of it.

  "Picnic?" he said, watching his mother's face, but she shook her head.

  "No, son," she said, "no picnic today."

  He accepted the statement, but it was strange to drive in the trap with Patsy unless food was taken, and Granpie came, with rugs, and sticks, and coats, and parasols. Perhaps the arrival of the trap was a tribute to his velvet suit and the black beaver hat.

  As Jinny passed the study she glanced in through the door, and saw that the Rector was sitting at his desk.

  "We're going," she said. Her voice was calm and steady.

  Tom Callaghan turned round in his chair. His face was grave, but his deep-set eyes were tender as he looked at his daughter and the boy.

  "I've told you," he said, "not to expect anything from him. He is hard and cold, Jinny, not the man you remember as a child, who laughed and smiled and was gay, like our dear Hal. The years have been heavy with him."

  "I don't want anything from him," said Jinny.

  "I only think it right that he should see John-Henry."

  "Yes," said the Rector, "yes, I understand."

  Then she went from the room, with the boy, and they climbed into the trap and drove through the village street up the hill and past the cottages at Oakmount, until they came to the long wall, and the gatehouse.

  Young Mrs. Sullivan was standing at the entrance to the drive, and as the trap drove through she curtseyed to Jinny, who returned the gesture with a solemn little bow.

  John-Henry sat stiff and straight beside her.

  People did not curtsey to her as a rule. Another tribute to the velvet suit.

  He glanced at her hands. She was wearing gloves, a thing she only did in winter, or when she went to church with Granpie on Sunday morning.

  Down the drive bowled the trap, through the rough park-lands and the woods, and there was the creek to the left of them, and the castle standing on the high grass bank above them. There was smoke coming from one of the chimneys, and the windows in the old part of the house had been flung open. There was a carriage drawn up in the turn of the drive before the castle. There was luggage placed on the seat beside the driver. The front-door of the great hall, that Jinny had never seen open, was open now.

  Jinny hesitated a moment, but custom was too strong for her, and in a low voice she bade Patsy drive to the side-door, in the old part of the house.

  She was a little nervous now. She pulled at the boy's lace collar, and straightened his hat on his head. Something of her feeling communicated itself to the child, and he felt shy and uncomfortable; he wanted to stay in the trap with Patsy.

  "No," she said firmly, "you must come with me. And I want you to shake hands very politely when you see your grandfather."

  The side-door was open, but Jinny rang the bell. It clanged loudly, echoing in a passage far away. A servant came to the door-the valet, she supposed, who had travelled over from London with his master.

  "Mrs. Brodrick?" he asked, and John-Henry saw his mother bow again.

  The gesture pleased him. It was so full of dignity. He imitated her, nodding his head up and down, but she frowned, and he supposed it was something that only grown-up people were allowed to do.

  The servant opened a door across the hall and showed them into a large room, a dining-room. The cloth had been removed, but there was a long strip of green baize down the centre of the table.

  This is where we lunched that Christmas Day, thought Jinny, when I was sixteen and Hal was twenty…

  The servant had kindled a small wood fire in the grate, for although it was August the weather was chill. There were two chairs before the fire. Jinny was uncertain whether she should sit or stand. She had expected that Hal's father would have been in the room, waiting for them. The door at the end of the room was open. She remembered that it gave on a passage leading to the new wing, and she wondered if he had gone through there, to the other part of the house. She went on standing before the fire-place, holding John-Henry by the hand, and the little boy looked about him with interest, and pointed to a picture on the wall. It was a young girl, with soft brown eyes and dark curling hair.

  She wore a string of pearls round her neck.

  "Yes," whispered Jinny, "she's very pretty."

  Jinny turned to the other side of the fire-place and gazed at the portrait of Hal's mother. How like him she must have been! That same reserve, that silence for no reason. Then the boy tugged at her hand, and looking over her shoulder, she saw that Hal's father had come into the room. He was not the Henry Brodrick she remembered as a child, not the Henry of the pencil sketch in the study at the Rectory. He was thinner, much thinner, and his face had fallen away, that had been large and firm before. His hair was scarce on top, and nearly white. The mouth was narrow, and the eyes more prominent than she remembered. Then he came forward, holding out his hand.

  "You are Jinny," he said, "and I haven't seen you since you were six years old."

  She had been ready to stand on her dignity, to speak at once in defence of Hal, of all that had happened, to accuse Henry if need be of neglect, unkindness, hardness of heart, but at his words her antagonism went, her defences were stripped from her, and she saw that he was shy and uncertain, even as she was herself, and lonely too.

  "Yes," she said, "I'm Jinny, and this is John-Henry."

  The boy put up his hand, as he had been told to do, and looked then around him at the door, wishing they might go.

  "Won't you sit down?" said Henry, pointing to the chair, and Jinny held the boy by her side, whispering to him to be still.

  For a moment Henry did not speak. He glanced away from the boy to the wood fire in the grate.

  "What are your plans?" he said.

  "I shall go on living in Doonhaven, with father and mother at the Rectory," she said, "until it is time for John-Henry to go to school. Then, I don't know.

  It will depend on many things."

  "I suppose," said Henry, "that Tom would like him to be a parson?"

  "I don't think so," said Jinny. "Once, when I was talking about the future, he said that the Navy would be an excellent thing for John-Henry. But we needn't think about it yet."

  There was a moment's pause.

  "And Hal?" said his father. "Did he have any ideas on the subject?"

  Jinny held the boy's hand, which was fidgeting with the lace collar.

  "No," she said gently. "Hal was not interested in education, or professions. He just imagined that-that one day John-Henry would live here at Clonmere."

  Henry rose to his feet, and stood with his hands behind his back, looking down on Jinny and his grandson, "I wanted to sell the place," he said, "many years ago. Hal will have told you that. I would still sell it, but, as you probably know, Clonmere is entailed. When I die, and this boy reaches the age of twenty-one, he can do as he likes. He can break the entail at will."

  "Yes," said Jinny.

  Henry walked slowly up and down the room.

  "Property is a burden these days," he said.

  "There is not the value in it that there used to be.

  We're soon going to enter upon a new century too, and things
are changing fast. This country may be slower to change than most, I don't know about that.

  I've lived away too long either to know or to care."

  He spoke without bitterness, but his voice was sad, as though, since he had looked upon his home, the past had risen up and closed upon him.

  "Will you never come back to live here again?" said Jinny.

  "No," he said, "no, that's all finished and done with."

  He turned and faced her, his hands behind his back, his head a little on one side. That is how Hal used to stand, she thought. He had been part of him after all, a very great part, he had not belonged entirely to his mother.

  "The mines are gone," he said; "they were the great link with this country. They brought good fortune to my family, but I doubt if they brought happiness. That is one of the reasons that I sold them, not to be quit of a bad debt, as most people believe. Now only the house remains, and if you and the boy want to live here, you are welcome to do so. There won't be any money for the upkeep though, not until I die. And I don't propose spending a penny on it in the meantime."

  Jinny flushed. This was the Henry her father had warned her about. The business man, who sought first his own interests, or rather those of the wife at his back across the water, and was not likely to put his hand in his pocket for anyone else, not even his own grandson.

  "It would be rather too big," said Jinny, "for me and John-Henry alone. Living close by, at the Rectory, we can come here often, and later on, when he is older, he will understand that one day it will belong to him."

  It seemed to her that he looked upon her strangely, and with pity, and she held the boy's hand tightly, as though the firmness of his touch gave her strength and consolation.

  "This is the third generation of my family," he said, "to be brought up by one parent only. You have lost Hal. I lost my Katherine. And my mother lost her John, when he was only a year or so older than your Hal. You will find it is not easy, for the one who is left…?

  "No," said Jinny, "it will not be easy. But I love John-Henry, and I am not afraid."

  He looked away from her, up at the portrait of Katherine on the wall. Then, very slowly, he put his hand inside his waistcoat pocket, and drew out a small round leather case. He held it a moment in his hands, and then snapped the clasp. He took from the case a replica of the portrait on the wall, in miniature. The likeness was well done, although the colouring was a little smudged in places, and the hair brighter than in reality.

  "I have not shown this to anyone else," said Henry, "and I never shall. Hal did it for me, when he was a lad… He gave it me the night I brought Adeline back to London with me, and I rather think I never thanked him for it. You see, we were both a little shy of one another."

  Jinny held the miniature, and then gave it back to Henry. He replaced it carefully in the leather case, and put it in his pocket.

  "I've carried it now for twenty-one years," he said, "and Adeline has never discovered it."

  A ghost of a smile appeared on his lips, and in a flash Jinny saw the gay, laughing Henry that once had been, the young man who stood beside her father in the university group.

  "You won't give me away to anyone, will you?" he said.

  Jinny shook her head.

  He turned once more, and looked out of the window at the grass bank sloping to the creek. The sun shone upon a strip of carpet at his feet, and the myriad dust particles danced in a beam of light.

  "You are fortunate in having Tom and Harriet for parents," said Henry. "They will take care of you and this boy, and you won't be alone. Hal's allowance will automatically come to you now, of course, you realise that. And when I die, as I told you before, the child has everything."

  He glanced down dubiously at the small, solemn figure in the bottle-green velvet suit. "An empty house, and a load of doubts and dreams-not much of a legacy," he said.

  John-Henry leant against his mother, and tugged at her hand, his signal that he wished to go. He did not care greatly for the strange man who looked down at him with pity, and he wanted to be back at the Rectory, with Granpie, amongst familiar things that he knew and understood.

  "He's had enough of me," said Henry, with a smile.

  "All right, young man, I won't keep you any longer. I am going too."

  He walked with them to the hall. The luggage had been put in the carriage, the valet was standing in his hat and coat by the open door.

  "It's a mistake," said Henry, "to walk back into the past. Look forward always, if you can."

  He gazed up at the house, the barred windows of the new wing, the iron balcony above the door. Then he shook hands with Jinny, and touched the boy lightly on the head. He climbed into the carriage, and the servant slammed the door, taking his seat on the box beside the driver.

  "I want you to say goodbye to Tom and your mother for me," said Henry. "I won't see them again. Ask Tom whether he remembers saying to me over thirty years ago, "I would rather be good like the Eyres than clever like you Brodricks'? The trouble is that goodness dies, and lies buried in the earth. Cleverness passes on and becomes degenerate."

  He looked for the last time at the stone walls of the castle, and down across the sloping grass to the creek, and Doon Island, and the grey mass of Hungry Hill. Then he smiled once more at Jinny.

  "You never knew my mother, did you?" he said.

  "She died many years ago in Nice. The last words she ever said to me were, "Don't look serious, Henry boy. Thinking never did anybody any good." I don't know if she was right or wrong, but thinking always brought me pain. You can tell that story to your son, when he comes into his legacy."

  He gave an order to the driver, and lifted his hat, and the carriage bowled away down the drive, and disappeared amongst the belt of trees. As it passed into the woods the herons rose from their nests in the tall branches, and went crying down the creek towards Doon Island.

  EPILOGUE

  The Inheritance, 1920

  AS JOHN-HENRY turned into Queen Street a sentry came out of the doorway of a house.

  "I wouldn't go any further," he said. "They're shooting down the other end and you might get a bullet in your back from one of our fellows."

  As he spoke they heard the rattle of a machine-gun and the squealing brakes of a car. The sentry grinned.

  "Trouble for someone," he said.

  At the far end of the street a car skidded into the pavement, and from the lowered window they could see the nose of the gun pointing across the square. Three men on the pavement flung themselves on their faces. Someone ran from one of the houses to the car and jumped on the running-board. He had a rifle in his hand. A small party of soldiers appeared at the end of the street by the square, and the car gathered speed and turned sideways, up a back street by the farthest house.

  The soldiers fired at the retreating car, and then they began to run across the square towards the big post office at the corner. The men who had flung themselves down on the pavement picked themselves up again, and dusted their clothes, as though nothing had happened. A woman called shrilly from one of the upper windows of a house. The church clock struck five o'clock. John-Henry lit a cigarette and smiled at the soldier.

  "You'd think," he said, "that after four-and-a-half years of war men would be sick of shooting one another."

  The soldier took a fag from behind his ear, and borrowed a match.

  "Not in this country," he said; "there's not a man amongst 'em who wouldn't knife his best friend if he had the mind, and then take flowers to his funeral."

  John-Henry laughed, and threw away the match.

  "That's not fair," he said. "I'm one of them, and I've never wanted to knife anyone."

  He went on walking down the street towards the square, where the shooting had been. Many of the windows were broken, not from the incident of five minutes ago, but dating back over the weeks. The square was clear now of troops, but for the guard standing round the police-station. A young man was talking to a woman on the edge of the pavement.
His face was lean and bitter. He had his hands deep in his pockets.

  "They got Micky Farran," he said to the woman, and then, as John-Henry passed, he stopped talking, and looked down at his feet.

  They moved off together, and it seemed to John-Henry that the streets were empty now, and strangely quiet. Across the square, at the far end, were the remains of the barricade. The barbed wire lay in loose strands. A sudden shower of rain came from the bright sky, and was gone again. In the far distance a steamer hooted, deep and low, and was echoed by the high, thin answer of a tug. John-Henry was thinking of the sentry's words, "Not a man amongst them who wouldn't knife his best friend, and then take flowers to his funeral." It was true, he supposed, and yet.

  Faces of his childhood came into his mind.

  Dear Granpie, with his great, deep-set eyes, his bent shoulders, his white hair, walking through the market-square at Doonhaven, and one of the old women at the stalls lifting a streaming face to his and calling upon the Saints to bless him. He had found employment for the woman's son, and she had never forgotten it. Gran, small, bright and bustling, skimming the cream off the milk with a scallop shell, boxing his ears because he tickled the kitchen-maid's legs with a feather duster, and she half-way up a ladder at the time. Patsy, gardener on week-days and groom on Sundays, who told him the legends of the fairies who walked on Hungry Hill, and the little pixies who burrowed underground and bewitched the miners in the old days. He would not have known how to handle a knife except to whittle sticks or to cut a pig's throat. Perhaps killing a pig made it easy to kill a man…

  The streets looked normal on this side of the city; and as he turned into the terrace where Aunt Lizette had her small flat, and saw a child bowling a hoop in the gardens opposite, it seemed ridiculous to remember the skidding car in Queen Street, the machine-gun fire, and the bitter flat voice of that man on the pavement, "They got Micky Farran. '?