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.
There were his guns, and his rods, and all his old schoolboy books, worn and familiar, and the painting of the chapel at Eton, and the quad of his college at Oxford. There was the case of butterflies, passionate hobby of one summer holiday only, and the collection of birds' eggs, and on the mantelpiece the random objects that he had gathered from time to time in his boyhood: a piece of flint from Hungry Hill, a queer-shaped stone like an egg he had found once on Doon Island, a patch of dried moss from the bogs around Kileen.
"Tomorrow," he said to Jane, "tomorrow we will go fishing for killigs in the creek," and holding her at arm's length, and cocking his head on one side, he observed, "You know you are becoming very pretty."
Jane blushed, and told him not to be absurd.
"She is having her portrait painted," said Barbara. "We all think it a most excellent likeness, although Willie Armstrong says it does not do her justice."
And there in the drawing-room, standing upon its easel, the paint still wet on the canvas, was the replica of the Jane who stood beside him, wearing the new cream gown which had been purchased in Bath that winter, her pearl necklace round her throat, her warm brown eyes full of the expression he knew so well, wistful and a little unsure of herself.
"And what does Dick Fox say to the portrait?" asked John.
"Oh, he is delighted, of course," said Eliza, tossing her head. "He used to come to every sitting, and talk to Jane to relieve the monotony. No doubt that is why Jane has such a simpering look about her in the portrait."
John, glancing at his youngest sister, saw that she seemed distressed at Eliza's words, and that tears, even, were not far distant. He smiled across at her and shook his head.
"Take no notice of Eliza," he said, "the grapes are very sour," and with quick understanding he changed the subject from the portrait.
So Jane is growing up, he thought at dinner, and is falling in love with Dick Fox on Doon Island, and only yesterday it seemed she was a little girl reading fairy stories before the fire in the old nursery. Dick Fox was a good sort of fellow, no doubt, but for a moment there was a nickering jealousy in John's heart that his pet Jane, who had been such a dear companion, should look kindly upon any man but himself, and the thought of her being kissed and perhaps fondled by a scruffy young officer from the garrison was distasteful, and did not bear thinking about.
?'
John started, and "Yes, sir, of course, I shall be delighted," he said, Without a notion of what his father had been talking about.
Barbara gave him a warning nudge with her knee.
"I entered into an agreement," continued Copper John, "to take one-half of the arrears and let him hold the ground at able130 a year. Needless to say I have not received a penny, and gave him notice to quit last March, which he has not yet done. The position is intolerable, as you see."
"Oh, quite, sir. Most intolerable."
"I mean to make every exertion in my power to get the communications opened by a good road between Doonhaven and Denmare, which, you will agree, will be of incalculable advantage to Robert Lumley's and Lord Mundy's estates, and if we can once open up the route from the lakes by Denmare and Doonhaven and Mundy to Slane, I think that visitors to the west would prefer it to returning the same way. Then we might safely build an inn in Doonhaven.
Indeed, it might induce gentlemen to reside in the neighbourhood. What do you think, John?"
"I am of your opinion undoubtedly, sir."
"I don't know whether the Government have money at their disposal for the purpose, but I shall get all the information I can. They might do it all at their own risk. It would be a great matter to open up communications with the west part of the country, and ships of war could be supplied with provisions in the event of another war. I only hope our Ministers will not kick up some row unexpectedly, and get us all into a scrape."
"I hope not, sir," said John.
Very little of what his father was saying made any interest to him, but he hoped that his voice rang with some conviction and that his father would be satisfied.
"The Flowers are at Castle Andriff, by the way," said Barbara. "They were abroad as usual, until just recently. I am glad to say that Fanny-Rosa is not such a harum-scarum, wild thing as she was. Wintering abroad has given her poise and good manners. But I believe she does exactly as she pleases.
And poor Mrs. Flower has no control over the younger girl at all."
"They say some Italian was desperately in love with Fanny-Rosa," said Eliza, "a titled man too, who had a wife already."
"Never listen to scandal, Eliza," said her father.
"It does no good to the hearer, and less to the speaker.
If you come into the library, John, I can show you the exact spot on the plan of Hungry Hill where I think of making a further trial. There is copper there, and at no very great depth either, so that our expenses would be inconsiderable."
John followed his father into the library, and pretended an interest in figures and mining calculations, but all the while his thoughts strayed to Fanny-Rosa. He had not seen her for eighteen months, not since that unforgettable day on Hungry Hill when she had lain in his arms in the heather beside the lake and Henry had sailed for the Barbados. Last year, during the hot summer in London, John had wondered how much she had seen of Henry in Naples. Had she been sorry when he died? His thoughts then had added to the turmoil in his mind, and Fanny-Rosa became a symbol to him of something rare, and beautiful, and unobtainable, a ghost girl in a foreign land he would never see again. She would marry some Italian, and perhaps years later come to Castle Andriff with a brood of babies and a flashy husband, herself coarse and heavy, her charm vanished with the years.
Deliberately he had painted this picture in his mind so that he should not be hurt by the thought of her, and the idea of her marriage to her foreigner, and out of his reach for ever, gave him a peculiar, rather warped, satisfaction. His Fanny-Rosa would be a memory, a phantom thing born out of the loveliness of Hungry Hill, while she who continued living was someone with whom he had no concern. And now all the careful locking of his memory was to be broken by the real Fanny-Rosa, no ghost at all, but alive, and unmarried, and even if every Italian in Naples had made love to her she would be more beautiful than ever, and she was coming to Clonmere next week, Barbara had said. She might want to see the greyhounds, and Jim was given special orders to have the dogs groomed and ready on the day the Flowers were expected, and their coats upon their backs in spite of the warm weather, for the scarlet and grey trimmings were really rather fine, and the large J. L. B. looked well against the background.
About two hours before the Flowers were due to come he became fearful and sick of heart, and going to the far end of the grounds, by the last fir tree, he sat out of sight of the castle and stared across at Doon Island, wondering whether it would not be wiser to get his boat and disappear all day, and not come in to the house and meet the Flowers at all. He felt suddenly that he did not want to see Fanny-Rosa, or talk to her, and if he did, nothing would happen as he had planned; she would hate the greyhounds, scorn his cups, talk all the while about the Italians she had met, and the day would be disastrous, a failure from beginning to end. He was still sitting by the creek when he heard the carriage bowl along the drive, pass under the arch of rhododendrons, and sweep round again to the house, and then in the distance came the sound of Barbara's voice, and Eliza's rather irritating, high-pitched laugh. Barbara called, "John…
John… ea? and he crouched behind the tree, determined not to join them, wondering whether he could return to the house in some way without being seen, and go and shut himself up in his room in the tower. The voices were silent, they must have gone indoors, and he heard Casey come round for the carriage and drive the horses to the stable. Some impulse stronger than himself made him rise to his feet and walk slowly back across the grass to the house. His hands were trembling, and he thrust them into his pockets. He was aware of someone looking down at him from the drawing-room window.
"How do you do, John?"
And glancing up, he smiled, for there was Fanny-Rosa, the ghost of Hungry Hill, and the eighteen months since he had seen her were as though they had never been, were as yesterday, and fresh and vivid in his memory were the touch of her hands and the warmth of her lips as she lay on her back in the heather with his arms beneath her.
Then he was in the drawing-room, he was standing beside her, Bob Flower was saying something in his ear, everyone was talking, and laughing, and eating cake. He heard himself offering Bob a glass of Madeira.
"Father is at the mine," Barbara was saying, "but he will be home to dine with us at five, as usual.
You men had better get off to your fishing while the weather holds."
"I should like to come," said Fanny-Rosa. "Does John not permit ladies in his boat?"
"Why, yes," said John, "why, yes '
And delightfully, joyfully, the whole day had to be planned afresh, for now that Fanny-Rosa would be of the party Jane would accompany her, and the Bule Rock being too far and the sea perhaps too rough for them, they must sail by the island instead, and more food must be put in the basket, and one of Barbara's shawls for Fanny-Rosa in case the wind freshened. What happiness in walking down to the creek, and bringing the boat to the steps, so that Jane and Fanny-Rosa might climb aboard, and then rolling his sleeves above his elbow, and shaking his hair back, and singing out to Bob to cast off from the moorings when the sail had been hoisted and the tiller shipped into place. Down the creek into the open waters of Doonhaven, with the long, straggling island ahead of him and the open sea beyond, and away on the left the great mass of Hungry Hill, green and shining under the sun.
How good to be no longer sullen and wretched and shy, hating himself for his moods, but instead to be doing the thing that he liked, to be sailing his boat, with the wind in his hair, and Fanny-Rosa in the stern beside him.
She had not changed, unless to be more lovely, and there was a grace about her that had not been before. The shawl Barbara had lent her was green, matching her eyes.
She had flung it carelessly about her shoulders, and she looked up at John and smiled, and the smile held a promise, and the promise breathed a hope.
"I hear that you know more about greyhound coursing than any man in the country," she said. "Tell me all you have been doing since I saw you last."
He began to tell her about the greyhounds, at first with diffidence, thinking she would not listen, and then with increasing confidence, making her laugh with his account of the racing crowds, the owners with their petty jealousies and frequent dishonesty.
Bob showed interest too, and asked many questions. It was agreeable, thought John, to speak for once in a way as an authority, and to know that his opinion on the one subject in the world that he knew anything about was listened to with respect.
They anchored for a cold luncheon of meat patties and cress sandwiches on the westward side of Doon Island, and then Bob Flower, looking across at the garrison, bethought him of a friend of his, lately gone as Adjutant to the battalion quartered there, and suddenly there was a suggestion that the party should go ashore, and walk up to the Mess, and enquire after him. John glanced at his sister's innocent little face and wondered if Dick Fox was at this moment watching her through his telescope from the windows of the Mess.
When they came to the anchorage Fanny-Rosa declared that she preferred to stay in the boat; she had come to enjoy the water, not the doubtful claret at the garrison, and surely Jane was not likely to come to any harm with Bob as a companion, for Bob was known to be the soul of decorum. So Jane stepped ashore, looking very pretty and demure, on the stolid arm of Bob Flower, and it was quite a coincidence that Lieutenant Fox should at that moment be coming down the path to meet them.
John put the boat about and sailed eastwards, towards Hungry Hill, and now that he was alone with Fanny-Rosa a queer feeling of restraint came over him. He felt he could not speak, or whatever he said would sound foolish and forced. He kept his eye on the sail, and did not look at her. There, across the water, lay the land, and the great hill rising to the sky. It seemed remote and intangible, the summit golden in the sun, and he thought of the lake, how still it would be, and cold.
"Do you remember the picnic we had there, last September year?" said Fanny-Rosa.
John did not answer at once. He wanted to look at her but dared not. He hauled in the sheet a little closer.
"I think of it very often," he said.
She moved slightly in the boat, arranging the cushion at her back, and now her arm rested against his knee, making a torment and a strange delight.
"We were very merry," she said, "very gay."
She spoke softly, almost sadly, as though reflecting upon a past that could never come again, and John wondered whether it was his love-making in the heather that she remembered, or Henry's laughter and Henry's smile. The old jealousy swept upon him once more, the old anguish, and doubt, and indecision, and putting the boat suddenly about, he bore away from Hungry Hill, towards the open sea. The boat rocked slightly in the swell, and some water splashed in over the bows, trickling down towards her feet.
Fanny-Rosa took off her shoes without a word, and leant closer to John's knee.
"You saw much of Henry, did you not, those few months before he died?"
The words were out at last. He could hardly believe that he had said them. This time he forced himself to look at her, thinking he should see some trace of sorrow in her face to add to his pain, but her unconscious profile was turned towards the sea. She shook the spray from her hair, and tucked her slim, bare feet under her gown.
"Yes," she said; "he seemed to enjoy Naples. It was so unfortunate that he left when he did, tired and unwell. We all felt it very much.", Her voice was calm, conventional.
Surely if she had cared for him or he for her she would not have spoken thus?
"Henry always liked people, and new places. That is where we differed," said John.
"You are not the slightest bit like him," said Fanny-Rosa. "You are much darker and broader.
Henry was more like Barbara."
None of this matters, thought John, as the boat heeled in the freshening breeze, whether I am dark or Harry was fair, or who resembles whom. The only thing I would know is what they really felt for one another in Naples, and why Henry left so suddenly, and his health became worse. Had they loved, and had they quarrelled, and was the last person that his brother thought of lying there in that hotel bedroom in Sens the Fanny-Rosa who sat beside him now?
The boat dipped in the swell, and the sea sparkled in the sun, and Fanny-Rosa, laughing, knelt up against him and held on to his shoulder.
"Would you drown me?" she asked, pushing his hair back from his eyes.
"I would not," he answered, putting the boat into the wind and leaving the tiller, with both arms around her while she kissed him on the mouth.
He understood then that he would never know what Henry had been to her in Naples, no one would know. If there was a story to tell of a man who went away from Italy bitter and disillusioned to die all alone in a little French hotel, the mystery would never be told.
The secret lay locked for all time in her heart.
John would wonder, and John would doubt, he would conjure pictures in his mind to the end of his days of those few months in Naples, and the senseless, futile jealousy would come to him again and again, but it would not be healed.
Henry was dead, Henry with his charm and his gaiety belonged no more to the things that were, and here was Fanny-Rosa alive in John's arms. Such sweet happiness could not turn to poison.
"Will you marry me, Fanny-Rosa?" he said.
She smiled, she pushed away his hands, and settled herself once more on the bottom boards of the boat.
"You will be swamping the boat if you do not look after it," she said.
He seized the tiller and the sheet, and headed the boat again towards Doon Island.
"Will you not answer my question?" he asked her.
"I'm only twenty-one," she said. "I hardly think I want to marry yet awhile and settle down. There are still so many things that arc amusing to do."
"What sort of things do you mean?"
"I like to travel. I like to go on the Continent. I like to do as I please."
"All those things you could do as my wife."
"No, it would not be the same. On the Continent I should just be Mrs. Brodrick, and the men I met would think "Oh, she is a bride," and take no further notice of me. I would have to wear a cap in the house like my mother, and talk about preserves, and needlework, and servants. I care for none of those things."
"I should not expect you to discuss any such matters. If you expressed a desire to travel, why, we would travel. If you wanted to sail in a boat, we would sail in a boat. If you wished to drive to Slane in frost and snow, the carriage would be summoned, and we would drive to Slane, even if the horses died on their feet. You see, I would be a most accommodating husband."
Fanny-Rosa laughed. She glanced at John out of the corners of her eyes.
"I think maybe you would," she said, "but what would you get out of the bargain?"
"I should get you," he said. "Is not that enough for any man?"
He looked down at her, and even as he said the words the thought came to him that of course he was wrong, she would never belong to him or to anyone, because whoever married her would only have part of her, a smile, or a caress, or whatever she chose to give from momentary impulse. The real Fanny-Rosa would elude capture, would escape.
They had come abreast the garrison again, and there were Bob Flower and Jane, and the Adjutant, and Dick Fox, all waiting for them on the causeway. People once more, and conversation, the intimacy between them shattered and put aside for another moment, perhaps another day.
"We are bringing Lieutenant Fox and Captain Martin back with us to dine," said Jane, and they all climbed into the boat-and there was the damned fellow Martin looking with admiration at Fanny-Rosa.
So back up the creek to the moorings below Clonmere, and he landed the party ashore, and moored the boat, and made fast for the evening. He watched them wander up the bank towards the house. Barbara and Eliza had come down to meet them, Eliza bridling at the sight of a strange officer, and he straightened himself a moment and waited while Fanny-Rosa returned the shawl to Barbara, thanking her, and then hung back to admire the water-garden at the head of the creek.
She was pointing to the young iris, calling over her shoulder to Barbara, and as she stood there an instant, the sun playing in her hair, her face grave and thoughtful as she considered the flower, he knew that no picture he had ever made for himself in the lonely hours could equal the loveliness of this one in reality.
The ghost-girl of his dreams had come alive again, to fill his waking moments with happiness and pain.
"And you are not too tired?" asked Barbara, as they climbed the bank and stood on the drive before the castle.
"No," said Fanny-Rosa, "I am never tired, there is always so much to see, so much to know."
She looked a moment at John, still busy with the boat, and then up at the grey, solid walls, the open windows, the tower, and the tall trees behind the castle.
"How lovely it is!" she said, and then carelessly, pushing back her curls, "I suppose all of this will come to John, now Henry is dead?"
"Yes," said Barbara, "the property is entailed, of course, and everything besides. Poor Henry! and yet, of the two, I think John had always been fonder of Clonmere."
Fanny-Rosa did not answer; she seemed to have forgotten her question. She was bending and patting the terrier that had come down the steps to greet them.
How improved she is, thought Barbara, how really charming and cultured, with no trace now of that foolish wild frivolity bequeathed by Simon Flower. Even Doctor Armstrong, sternest of critics, could not fault her beauty now, or find a hidden streak behind that perfect face.
One morning at breakfast time a groom rode over from Duncroom with the news that Robert Lumley had been seized with a stroke the night before, and was not likely to live. Copper John at once ordered the carriage and set out for his partner's residence.
He arrived to find Robert Lumley unconscious, and Doctor Armstrong, who had been summoned earlier, gave it as his opinion that he would only last a few hours. Robert Lumley's son, Richard Lumley, who was not in the country, was immediately written to, but he would hardly reach home in time to see his father alive. He had never been on good terms with his sister, Mrs. Flower, and thoroughly disapproved of his brother-in-law Simon, so that Mrs. Flower, when she arrived at Duncroom shortly after Copper John, was in a great fluster and agitation that there would be a general family unpleasantness, and seemed more concerned with the prospect of facing her brother, when he should make his appearance, than the fact that her father was lying on his death-bed.
"You will see," said Copper John to his family the following day, when word came from Doctor Armstrong that the old man had died in the night, "that Simon Flower will get what he deserves, and that is what is vulgarly known as "a kick in the pants." I shall be very much surprised if he or his wife has a share in the will."
"It will be rather hard on Mrs. Flower and the girls," said Barbara. "After all, Mr.
Lumley professed himself fond of them, and when he was in the country spent much of his time at Andriff, more so than at Duncroom. He will surely leave them something, and if he does not, then Mr. Richard Lumley will make some provision."
"Richard Lumley is likely to prove as difficult and cantankerous a man as his father," replied Copper John, "and it affords me small satisfaction to have him as partner in the Company. I only wish I could buy him out of the business altogether, and have the concern entirely in my own hands. However, we shall see what happens."
He was away at Duncroom for two days to attend the funeral and afterwards the reading of the will, and on his return the family could see that he was in high good humour.
He took the crepe from his hat and threw it aside in the hall, and sat down immediately to a large dinner of roast lamb and potatoes, saying little until the first edge of appetite had been turned.
"Well," he said at length, leaning back in his chair, and surveying his son and his daughters, "I have this day done a very ingenious stroke of business. I have persuaded Richard Lumley that it would be to his advantage to sell me his share in the mine."
He smiled in retrospect, and crumbled a piece of bread.
"It is quite true," he continued, "that the second mining speculation was a failure. He pointed it out to me himself and I could not deny it. We went down too great a depth. The Company has lately been obliged to pay upwards of three thousand pounds for the erection of an additional steam engine, and no immediate likelihood of profit. There is nothing, I told him frankly, so hazardous as mining, from the point of view of the proprietors, and it is possible that we have now reached the limit in depth to which we can go in safety. "I am," I said, "prepared to make further trials, in other parts of the hill, but with what success I cannot foretell. If you would rather I gave you a good price now for your share, say so, and it may mean the saving to you of a considerable loss. It may, and it may not. It is for you to decide."
Copper John took up his knife and fork again, and went on eating.
"And Mr. Richard Lumley decided to sell?" asked Eliza.
"He did," replied her father, "and I can say in all sincerity that I do not think he will regret his decision. I paid a very large sum for his share, and I have a lease of the ground for a further seventy years.
If you ever have any sons, John, they will be elderly men by then, and can renew the lease or not, as they think fit."
He laughed, and looked at his daughters.
"I imagine," he said, "that by that time there will be little copper left in the heart of Hungry Hill."
"Seventy years," thought Jane, "eighteen hundred and ninety-nine. We shall every one of us setting at this table be dead."
Copper John filled his glass, and pushed the decanter towards his son.
"And what was the result of the will?" asked Barbara.
"Oh, that," said her father, waving a hand in derision. "Just what I said it would be. Richard Lumley has entire possession. I believe Mrs. Flower has a legacy of a few hundreds a year, and some pictures. She took it well, I will say that for her. And I hope she has the sense to keep the money from her husband. The most disgraceful thing I have ever witnessed was the conduct of Simon Flower after the funeral. He could not be found when the moment arrived for the reading of the will, and was finally discovered sitting in the pantry with the manservant, a fellow I have always mistrusted, and the pair of them drinking poor Robert Lumley's port. Needless to say he was in no condition to listen to his father-in-law's will, and went to sleep in the middle of it. Richard Lumley is not likely to have him under his roof again. He had recovered somewhat by the time we all came away- more's the pity, because instead of keeping silent and looking ashamed of himself, he insisted on driving the horses himself, and the last I saw of them was poor Mrs. Flower holding on to her bonnet, the carriage rattling down the drive at an excessive pace, and Simon Flower singing at the top of his voice. One of these days the fellow will break his neck, and it will be no more than he deserves."
"I am afraid Castle Andriff will fall to bits entirely now for want of repair," sighed Barbara. "Poor Mrs. Flower and Fanny-Rosa! I feel very sorry for both of them."
"We need not worry about Fanny-Rosa," said Eliza. "Bob Flower told me she has so many men anxious to marry her that it is just a matter of making up her mind whom to choose. Her last fancy is some relative of her uncle's, the Earl, and I believe he has a title too."
"One thing is certain," said her father, "that regretting as I do Robert Lumley's death, in spite of the fact that he was an old man, the Brodrick family has come very well out of the whole affair."
And, rising from the table, he went into the library to attend to his letters, as was his custom, pausing a moment before entering, in the hope that John might accompany him and ask for further details of the day's transactions. His son made no attempt to take the hint. He was staring moodily out of the dining-room window, and Copper John, his eyes narrowing and his mouth a little grim, entered the room alone.
So that was the reason, John was thinking, why Fanny-Rosa was so elusive the last time he rode over to Castle Andriff. There had been some talk of a cousin, he remembered. No doubt she would marry him and leave the country, and that would put a stop to it all. Perhaps it would be just as well, for if many months passed like the present, he would end by blowing his brains out. The boating party had been in May, and it was now August, and Fanny-Rosa was no nearer giving him an answer than she had been that afternoon. She had so many moods, so many humours, and a day in her company would be one of wild uncertainty.
She would receive him with indifference perhaps, bored and yawning, and accompany him with an ill grace to the hill where he proposed to try his dogs, would find fault with everything he said and did, criticising the way the greyhounds ran, calling it a poor sport and only fit for yokels, so that he would be near to throwing up the whole thing, selling the dogs, and returning home and never going to Andriff again; and then suddenly, like a change of wind bringing fair weather that had been foul a moment since, she would come to him and take his hand, lean her cheek against his shoulder, and ask forgiveness for her temper.
"If you would marry me, Fanny-Rosa," he would say, touching her hair, "then I would be always near, to comfort you when you felt the need of it."
She would say nothing, standing close to him, her hands about his shoulders, looking out from the hills behind Andriff to Mundy Bay below, and she would smile at him and laugh, so that he would be stirred beyond all reason and long only to lose himself in loving her.
Then "Make the dogs race again," she would say, pushing him away. "I want to see them race. I think that Hotspur will be the best, as you say."
And in a moment she would be discussing the points of the greyhounds, with eagerness, with excitement, asking questions about the approaching autumn season, and he would be happy and yet bewildered, wondering what was in her mind and whether she cared for him at all, and if all this play and provocation were simply to pass the time that might otherwise hang heavy on her hands.
The next time he saw her she would be different again, full of some entertainment or other there had been at Mundy House, her uncle's home, where he had guests staying, and where, no doubt, she had met with this cousin that Eliza had heard about, and she would have scarcely a word to say to John, making him feel an outsider, a boor, whose only topic of conversation was dogs and racing. Then he would disappear to his room, or go aboard his boat and sail around Doon Island, forgetting to return to dinner in all probability, even as he had done so often in his boyhood, and, when he did come in, make some indifferent apology, and immediately throw himself into a chair and take up a sporting paper.
Jane, and Barbara too, guessed what was the matter and let him alone, but day by day, throughout the summer, their father became a little more impatient with this son of his, who never discussed the mines, never bothered about the estate, who spent all his time, it seemed, chasing his greyhounds over the unprofitable hills of Andriff, and when he did choose to be home for dinner at five o'clock would sit glum and silent through the meal, or else take too much port and talk arrant nonsense about the politics of the country, of which he knew less than nothing.
"It is extremely fortunate for you, my dear John," he said one evening, when his son had appeared even more absent-minded than usual, and had not showed a sign of interest when his father had mentioned that the new mine, above the Mundy road, was likely to prove the most profitable of the three, "that my endeavours these last nine years have been so successful that, instead of being the luckless surviving son of a beggarly landlord, you find yourself, at twenty-eight, heir to a considerable property and considerable wealth, for which you have not needed to make the slightest exertion yourself, and apparently never will."
There was silence at the dinner-table. Jane gazed steadfastly at her plate, and Barbara and Eliza swallowed nervously. John flushed. He knew he had been remiss, but the port had gone to his head, and he did not care what he said.
"You are right, sir," he said, "I am damned fortunate. Long may the copper flow in the bowels of Hungry Hill. I drink your health, sir, and that of old Morty Donovan, whose death made everything so much easier for all of us."
He bowed to his father, and drank his glass at a sitting.
There was a little gasp from Eliza. Copper John rose to his feet.
"I am sorry," he said, "that you seem to have left what manners you had in the kennels with your greyhounds. Goodnight."
And he strode from the dining-room, slamming the door behind him. The sisters looked at one another in horror.
"John, how could you!" exclaimed Barbara.
"Father will never forgive you. What in the world has come over you?"
"Fancy bringing up Morty Donovan," said Eliza, "the one topic in the world we have always avoided. Well, you have done for yourself flow, and no mistake. I should think it would be better if you went back to London. You've spilt your wine on the cloth too-it will leave a stain."
Jane had turned pale, and was very near to tears.
"I wish you would not nag, Eliza," she said.
"Can't you see that John is miserable?"
"Miserable?" scoffed Eliza. "What has John got to be miserable about, I should like to know? Of course you would take his part, you have always done so. He winks an eye at your ridiculous infatuation for Lieutenant Fox, and no doubt acts as go-between."
"What has Lieutenant Fox got to do with what has just happened?" said Jane.
"Please, please," said Barbara; "there is no sense in you two making a quarrel on top of everything else. John dear, I know you are not yourself at the moment, and will feel differently perhaps in the morning."
She kissed him quietly, and left the room, closely followed by Eliza. Jane went and sat beside her brother. He put out his hand for the decanter, but she placed it just out of his reach.
"What is it?" she asked. And then, when he did not answer, she said gently, "Is it Fanny-Rosa?" She took one of his hands, and played with his fingers. "You see," she said, "I do understand what it must be like for you, because I am going through the same thing myself. I am not infatuated with Dick Fox-infatuation is such an ugly, stupid word-but I am very fond of him, I do believe, and though I know he admires me, and has an affection for me too, he says he may go abroad at any time, and it is not fair to marry young, in the army."
John took her on his knee.
"My poor little Jane!" he said. "What a selfish brute I am, thinking only of my own confounded feelings, and nothing of yours. How dare this young fool play about with your affections? I have a good mind to thrash him."
Jane laughed, in spite of her tears.
"There you are," she said, "you will not stand the same conduct in my Dick that you bear yourself from Fanny-Rosa. Neither is really to blame. Why should a boy of his age, who will see service abroad, saddle himself with a wife? And why should Fanny-Rosa settle down to domestic life if she does not want to?"
"You have more patience than I have, little one," said John. "I believe you would wait contentedly for young Fox for years, and be no whit the worse for it. But I shall become a criminal and probably a murderer if I have to wait for Fanny-Rosa."
"I am sure she is fond of you," said Jane, "I have seen her looking at you. But she is so lovely, you see, and rather spoilt by that absurd father and all the young men she has met abroad, that she must have time to make up her mind about you. Marriage is a serious thing for a woman."
For a moment John wondered whether he should tell her his doubts about Fanny-Rosa and Henry, and the old misgivings he had tried to bury in his mind, and then he decided that he could not, even to Jane. The subject was too personal and intimate, too deeply painful to be probed and pondered at this late hour, with poor Jane distressed, and himself rather drunk.
"You know," said Jane softly, her large brown eyes full of wisdom, "what I am going to say is very improper, and I hardly know how to say it, but I do think that Fanny-Rosa has a very warm, passionate nature, and that if you were possibly a little bolder towards her perhaps she would-would do what you want, and be obliged to marry you."
John felt himself grow hot under his collar. Good heavens, that Jane, his demure, youthful sister, should have the same thought that had so often entered his own head.
"And you," he murmured, watching her under half-closed lids, "not eighteen for three more weeks."
"I have not shocked you, have I?" she asked, doubtfully.
"Shocked me? No, my Jane, you have not. I was just thinking how ignorant a brother and sister can be of each other, and how many years we have wasted when we might have talked of these things. Bless you. I should not forget your advice, but I doubt if it would be any good."
Jane rose from his knee, and smoothed back his hair.
"Don't worry any more," she said. "I think everything will come all right. I have a premonition that it will, and you know my premonitions are generally true."
Then she slipped out of the room and ran upstairs to join her sisters. John helped himself to the rest of the port, and tried to prepare for his interview with his father.
He knew that he must apologise, and the sooner it was done the better. The only possible way to do it was to be well fortified first, stammer a few words, promise to make amends in future, and then leave the library as quickly as possible. Thomas had already looked twice into the room, wishing to clear-he would not be able to delay much longer. And he wondered what he should say to his father, and how he should frame his apology without sounding stiff and awkward and altogether an incredible fool. He got up from his chair and walked carefully from the dining-room across the hall to the library. The door, of course, was closed. He knocked upon it, feeling as Thomas must do when he brought in the letters, and on hearing his father's curt reply to enter, opened the door and went into the room.
His father was seated at his desk, engaged in correspondence, and John was reminded of the old schoolboy days when he had committed some fault and must expect a beating. His father did not even look up as he entered.
"Well, what is it?" he said shortly, intent upon some file or other and turning the pages in search of a document.
"I'm afraid I spoke rather hastily at dinner, sir," said John. "I very much regret if I have said anything to offend you."
Copper John did not answer for a moment. Then he pushed aside his papers, and turning in his chair stared up at his son, in much the same way, it struck John, that his house-master used to do at Eton.
"You have not offended me, John," he said, "you have disappointed me. Somehow, after Henry died, I had hoped that you and I would draw closer together. We have not done so, and I do not think the fault lies with me."
He paused, and John realised that he was expected to make an answer.
"I am sorry, sir," he said.
"Your brother showed a keen interest in everything connected with the mines," continued Copper John, "and before his serious illness would accompany me very often to Nicholson's office, where the three of us would discuss matters, and he would now and again make suggestions that both Nicholson and myself found helpful. I think I am right in saying that not once since you returned home have you offered to ride up to the mine with me. Here, at Clonmere, you show much the same spirit of lassitude. There is plenty to be done on the estate, Ned Brodrick would be glad of your assistance, but he tells me he has seen little or nothing of you. It is a source of bewilderment to me, who have every minute of the day filled with work of some sort, to know how you manage to get through your long and, if I may say so, incorrigibly idle day."
The house-master over again, thought John. How many times, at Eton, had he heard those same words?
And the old feeling of stubborn exasperation came upon him, as it used to do whenever mention was made of his idleness.
"Even when you were in Lincoln's Inn," went on his father, "the work you got through in six months I could have done in six days, at your age."
"We are very different, sir," said John. "You have a natural capacity for work. I have not. Since we are speaking plainly I may as well confess that I dislike intensely doing anything for which I have no ability."
Copper John stared at him without comprehension.
Then he shrugged his shoulders, as though further discussion was useless.
"You are now twenty-eight, John," he said, "and your character is formed, and I can say no more. Eton, Oxford, and Lincoln's Inn have done very little for you.
I cannot but be disappointed when I see my only surviving son throw to the winds the fine education and the wide opportunities he has had for becoming a responsible member of the community, and take upon himself, instead, all the faults and failings that are so marked a national characteristic of this unfortunate country of ours. I can only hope that you never sink so low as our neighbour Simon Flower."
If only, thought John, you would have something of Simon Flower's tolerance, something of his natural charm of manner and generosity, something of his understanding that young men like to be left alone to their own devices, we should be getting on rather better than we are doing now.
"This country," said Copper John, "could be a great one, and a fine one, if the people in it had initiative and a sense of responsibility. They unfortunately lack both these qualities, and so, I fear, do you."
"Perhaps," said John, "they have no desire to see their country either great or fine."
"Well then, what, in God's name, do they want?" cried Copper John in sudden anger.
"Since you are one of them, perhaps you can enlighten me?
I have been trying to find out for nearly forty years."
John was filled with sudden pity for this father of his, with whom he had so little in common, and whom he saw now, for the first time, not as a great success, not as the Director of the rich copper mines and landlord of a fine estate, but as a lonely widower, who had lost his favourite son and was deeply disappointed in his second, and who, in spite of all his hard work and toil and concentration, had failed to understand or to please his fellow-countrymen.
"Speaking for myself, sir," said John, "I would say that I desire nothing so much as to be left alone. Whether the people of the country feel this too I cannot say."
Once again his father shrugged his shoulders. It was obvious that the two of them would never talk the same language.
"Tell me," he said, "do you ever think of anything else in life but your greyhounds?"
And supposing, thought his son, that I told him the truth, supposing that I made a confession of all the thoughts that fill my waking hours: how I hate the mines for the ugliness they have brought upon Doonhaven, because they stand for progress and prosperity, and how I cannot walk about the estate while he still lives and owns it, because I take no interest in a thing that I do not possess, and which is not mine alone, and how I am at present ill-tempered, ill-mannered, and more than a little drunk because my mind and my body have need of Fanny-Rosa, the daughter of a man he despises, and the only thing that concerns me at this moment is whether she will belong to me or not, and, if she should, whether she also belonged to my brother who is dead; supposing I make confession of all these things, what would he do but stare at me aghast and bid me leave the room, and possibly the house also? It was better to keep silence.
"Occasionally, sir," he said, "I think of the killigs in the creek and the hares on Hungry Hill, but mostly I concern myself with my greyhounds."
Copper John turned back to his desk.
"I regret," he said drily, "that I have not the time and leisure to join you in your pursuits. As there seems little sense in prolonging this interview any further, I will wish you a very good night."
"Goodnight, sir."
And John left the library, and went slowly upstairs to his room in the tower. He had made his apology-but he knew that the breach between his father and himself was wider now than ever.
Jane's eighteenth birthday fell in the third week of August, and it was decided to have a celebration because of it. The portrait was finished, and hung in the dining-room, and Barbara thought that invitations might be sent out to their various friends in the neighbourhood to come and view the portrait on the birthday itself. The dozen people first invited swelled rapidly to thirty, as is the manner with invitations, and then Copper John wondered, since they had gone so far, whether it might not be extended to embrace all the tenants of Clonmere, for whom refreshments might be set out on the grass before the castle, forof course they could hardly mix with the guests in the house.
Something of the sort had been done when Henry had come of age, and, as Ned Brodrick agreed, it might induce those who were in arrears with their rent to feel it incumbent upon them to pay something.
"It is a relief," said Eliza to Barbara, "that we are able to be out of mourning for poor Henry, otherwise we should have looked like crows, wandering about in our black gowns."
"If we had still been in mourning," replied Barbara gently, "I should never have considered sending out invitations at all, and I am sure Jane would not have wished me to."
"The gown I had the Christmas before Henry died has not been seen by anyone in this country," continued Eliza, with satisfaction, "although I wore it once or twice last winter in Bronsea, and at Cheltenham, when we went for the week."
"I hope it is not white," said John, who had been listening with some amusement to the plans and preparations. "Both you and Barbara are too sallow for white. Jane has a cream complexion, and can stand it."
"I am sure I am not sallow," retorted Eliza. "It has always been understood that I am the fairest of the family. At any rate I do not have freckles on my nose, like Fanny-Rosa Flower."
"Fanny-Rosa's freckles are very becoming," said Jane. "I would like to have a few myself. Now, do not let any of us become angry or irritable at the prospect of my birthday. I am determined to enjoy myself, and I want everyone else to do the same. I shall wear the dress that I have in the portrait, and the same pearl necklace, and if Barbara can really persuade Dan Sullivan to come and fiddle for us, then I shall lead the quadrille myself, with you, John, for a partner. I doubt if I can persuade father to take my hand, even on my eighteenth birthday."
"I shall be honoured, madam," said John, bowing, "but you will be so hemmed about by the entire garrison of Doon Island that your fond brother will be unable to reach you."
The weather was happily fine on the big occasion, and there was a general stir of excitement as the day wore on to afternoon, and one by one the tenants began to arrive, at a slightly earlier hour than the guests to the castle, and most of them somewhat suspicious of the invitation, a suspicion which they took immense care to disguise with smiles, and bows, and curtseys, and compliments of gross exaggeration upon the fineness of the day, the honour that their landlord did to them, and the very great beauty and outstanding accomplishments of all three Miss Brodricks. Barbara had taken care that the refreshments provided for those "outside" were of as substantial a nature as possible, without inviting to excess, and it was not long before every man, woman, and child on the Clonmere estate was plunging an eager hand into the eatables. Ned Brodrick the agent moved amongst them, wearing an old blue velvet coat that had belonged to his and John Brodrick's father. This coat he wore only on great occasions, such as weddings or funerals, and with it an enormous broad-brimmed beaver hat, which, malice whispered, he wore when he begot his numerous offspring. The present festivity was much to his liking, for he enjoyed moving amongst the tenants, agreeing or commiserating with each in turn, whichever should please most, and keeping his ears well open to any piece of gossip which he might spread with advantage and so cause further gossip.
"Master John, if I may say so," he said, in his quavering, sing-song voice, "you are looking better than I have ever seen you in my life, and that's the solemn truth. And what a great piece of sport you are making with these greyhounds of yours. The whole country is ringing with it, so they were saying in Mundy."
"I have to do something with my days, don't I, Ned?" said John, remembering that only a week or so previously the agent had been grumbling to his father that "Master John gave him no help with the estate."
"You have indeed," answered the old hypocrite.
"I only wish my legs were younger, so that I could join you. And what a beautiful man Mr. Simon Flower is, to allow you to keep your hounds in his kennels. And his daughter just such another as himself."
"Miss Flower will be here directly," said John; "maybe you had better pay your compliments in person."
"Ah, now you are jesting with me, Master John," said the agent, with jovial false familiarity.
"What would Miss Flower have to say to an old man like meself? Look at Miss Jane now-you would say she was her dear poor mother over again, and that's what they all say here today," and he moved towards the youngest of his nieces, forgetting that two minutes before he had sworn, to a rather overheated tenant, that Miss Jane had always been, and always would be, the dead spit of her father.
John laughed, and walked down the bank to the drive, for that was the way the carriages would come, and he thought what a wise philosophy was this of his uncle Ned, to frame his conversation and his mood to suit that of whoever crossed his path, so that no offence was ever given and, whatever false utterances he gave tongue to, at least he did it with a smile on his long, thin face, andwitha true endeavour to please rather than to antagonise.
The guests to the castle were now beginning to arrive.
Three boatloads were landing at the creek, and from them poured the young officers from the garrison, each smart as paint in his regimentals, and John could see a flutter from Jane's parasol as she stood with her father on the grass before the castle.
Soon she was surrounded, and poor Doctor Armstrong, who had been snatching a few minutes with her before the crowd arrived, found himself outside the circle, and was obliged to go into the house and gaze upon her portrait instead. Barbara was here, there, and everywhere, seeing that no one was without a sandwich, a piece of cake, or a glass of cowslip wine, while Eliza, not too comfortable in the dress she had worn at Cheltenham, for which she had grown too stout, contented herself with the plainer and less interesting of the officers, who could not get close enough to Jane.
John had walked as far as the park before he saw coming down the drive the horses for which he had been waiting-Fanny-Rosa a little ahead of the groom who attended her. Her habit was green, and matched her eyes, and she wore a ridiculous little straw bonnet that did not cover her chestnut hair.
"Mother begged to be excused," she said, holding out her hand to John. "She said she could not go out so soon after my grandfather's death. As to my father, I left him and Matilda playing cards in the stables with the coachman and your kennel-boy. That is why I have only the groom to attend me this afternoon. I suggested that they all came and brought the cards with them, but they preferred to stay at home. Besides, Matilda has no gown."
"From what I have seen of Matilda," said John, "she would hardly know what to do with a gown if she had one. And I may remind you that the first time I set eyes on you you were stockingless, and your hair was down your back."
"Yes, John, and since then you have seen me with nothing on at all," replied Fanny-Rosa.
"Oh, don't blush and frown, and jerk your head in that manner. Poor Nobby is as deaf as an owl.
Now tell me, pray, what are we going to do besides admire Jane's portrait and drink Barbara's cowslip wine?"
"We are going to dance the quadrille while Danny Sullivan plays the fiddle."
"I don't know that I care for the quadrille. I would rather dance with my petticoats above my knees, like the country girls in the market-square at Andriff."
"Then you shall do so. But to me alone. Not in front of the officers of the garrison."
"I think the officers of the garrison would be highly entertained."
"I have no doubt they would. But if you show them your petticoats then I shall fetch my gun from my room and shoot you."
John walked beside the horse until they came to the trees behind the house, where the drive divided, one part leading to the back of the stables, and they took the horses to the yard, leaving them with the groom, and Fanny-Rosa dismounted, and slipped in at the back door of the castle to go upstairs and change her habit. She came down again within five minutes, looking more enchanting than ever, and, her arm linked in John's with a possessive air that delighted him, they wandered into the dining-room to inspect the portrait.
The room was filled with people, eating, and drinking, and admiring Jane's likeness, and it amused John to see how Fanny-Rosa's manners in public differed from those when she was alone with him or amongst her own family in Andriff. For there, at home, she would be careless, impatient, the wild and wayward Fanny-Rosa who was so close to his heart, but here she was courteous, gracious, with even a hint of the great lady in her bearing.
"Clonmere looks very fine under these conditions," she said to John. "I like to see the people about the grounds, and the house full. It makes for life, and gaiety.
Why does your manservant not wear livery? Ours always does. It would look so much better than that black coat."
"We are too far from civilisation here to entertain much," answered John, with a smile. "Listen, there is Dan Sullivan striking up on his fiddle.
Let us go and watch the fun."
The drawing-room had been cleared, and Barbara, seated at the spinet, with Dan Sullivan beside her, was launching forth into the opening bars of the quadrille.
Her partner, more used to the merry strains of a country jig than the stately measure demanded of him, strove to keep in slow time with Miss Brodrick, and the result, though hardly worthy of the Assembly Rooms in Bath, had a certain liveliness that was not unpleasant to the ear. Jane, flushed and happy, had forgotten her invitation to John, and stood at the top of the room facing the irrepressible Lieutenant Fox, and John, laughing, held out his hand to Fanny-Rosa. The sight of the youth and beauty displayed before him, the fine dresses of the ladies and the scarlet coats of the young officers from the garrison, proved too much for Dan Sullivan.
His fiddle ran away with him entirely. The quadrille, after the first figure, was forgotten, and the strains of a lilting dancing jig soon hummed upon the air, so infectious in its call to caper that quickly decorum and propriety were flung to the winds, the young officers seized their partners by the waists, and there was a general stampede upon the floor, with whistles, and song, and laughter, "for all the world," as old Martha said, watching from the open doorway, "like the boys and girls at Kileen fair." The older generation, shaking their heads, retired downstairs to the dining-room. Copper John, feeling that nothing positively disgraceful could occur while Barbara remained at the spinet, retired to the library with one or two friends, and closed his door upon the sounds of revelry.
The shadows of the summer evening crept upon the castle walls, and a great moon came up behind Hungry Hill and shone upon the creek, and still Dan Sullivan played like one possessed, the sound of his merry music coming from the open drawing-room windows to the grounds below. The madness spread to the tenants outside, already well-primed with food and liquor, and before long the girls had thrown aside their shawls and their shoes, the young men had discarded their coats, and one and all were dancing in the moonlight before the grey walls of the castle.
One of the officers observed them first from the window.
"Come here," he cried to his partner, "look what our example has done," and in a moment the window was crowded with laughing faces and waving hands, and Fanny-Rosa, flushed, andwiththe wicked look in her eyes that John had seen before, turned to him and said, "Let us go down and join them, let us all dance barefoot upon the grass," Doctor Armstrong murmured that perhaps everyone had danced enough for the evening, and to go and caper in the moonlight would hardly be the thing.
"Bother "the thing,"
" said Fanny-Rosa, dragging at John's hand, "it plagues the existence of every one of us. Come on, follow me, everyone." And they ran down the stairs and through the hall into the open, party dresses crushed against uniforms, mittened hands held in white-gloved palms, and so mingled with the excited tenants on the grass, that shone like a silver carpet, magic and mysterious, under the white moon. They danced, guest and tenant, man and maiden, stiff young officers and haughty young ladies, like wild things from beyond the mountains, as though the moon had cast a spell upon every one of them, and it was not until the moon itself was high in the heavens, shining down upon Doon Island, that Dan Sullivan, the sweat pouring from his face, laid down his fiddle and rested his head upon his drooping arms, and the fairy people he had conjured with his wand became mortal once more, with weary backs, and aching feet, dishevelled hair, and scarlet faces.
One by one the tenants disappeared, laughing, scolding, sighing, with the memory of "Miss Jane's coming of age" to be fuel for gossip for many a long day to come. The carriages were ordered for the guests, the boats were summoned for the officers of the garrison, and John Brodrick of Clonmere, who had seen his castle for the space of a few hours revert to barbarism, stood at his front door bidding his friends God-speed with more sincerity than cordiality.
"Never again," he said firmly, "never again."
And Barbara and Eliza, chastened and drooping, pulled themselves together sufficiently to bow and smile to those who were departing, while Jane, a rebel still, vanished over the grass to say goodnight to Lieutenant Fox.
In the stable-yard John and Fanny-Rosa bent over the sleeping figure of the Castle Andriff groom. He was quite drunk, and equally helpless.
"He will never be able to ride back with me tonight," laughed Fanny-Rosa, who, dressed once more in her green habit, trailed her bonnet by its strings.
"I shall ride home with you instead," said John, "and the moon will light us all the way."
She looked up at him and smiled.
"I shall be home," she said, "before you are even in the saddle."
And leading her horse to the block, she mounted and seized the reins, and nourishing the little whip in John's face, she rode out of the stable-yard, looking back at him, and laughing over her shoulder.
John shouted to Tim to saddle his horse, and in a few minutes he was after her, leading the groom's animal beside him, and Fanny-Rosa, when she saw she was pursued, set her horse to a canter and laughed the louder. He chased her up the drive, past the gate-house, down the road and through Doonhaven, and it was not until she slackened rein beneath Hungry Hill that he was able to come up with her.
"You might have broken your neck," he said, "riding at that devil's pace."
"The devil looks after his own," she said, "he would not let me go astray. Oh, John, the moon…?
Mundy Bay lay beneath them like a sheet of silver, and Hungry Hill itself loomed mysterious and white above the road.
"Let's take the horses up there in the heather," said John.
They left the road, and wandered upon the track they had followed once before, nearly two years ago, on the day of the picnic. Then the sun had burnt the grass of Hungry Hill, and the warmth of the day had clung about the rocks and the heather. Tonight all was silent and still in the soft moonlight. John climbed from his horse, and put up his arms to lift Fanny-Rosa to the ground. She laid her cheek against his, and put her arms about his neck. He carried her to the heather and lay beside her, watching the silver in her hair.
"Have you been happy today?" he said to her.
She did not answer. She touched his face with her hand and smiled.
"Will you love me one day?" he asked her.
She pulled him down close to her, and her hands pressed against his shoulders.
"I want to love you now," she said.
He kissed her closed eyes, and her hair, and the corner of her mouth, and as she sighed and clung to him the thought of Henry came to him once again, ghostly, and unbidden, and even as he held her there against him in the moonlight he said to her: "Did you kiss Henry thus before he left Naples and went to die in Sens?"
She opened her eyes and stared at him, and he read passion there, and wanting, and strange bewilderment.
"Why should you ask me that?" she said. "What has your brother Henry got to do with you and with me? He is dead, and we are alive."
She hid her face against his shoulder, and all the doubt and jealousy that possessed him were swept aside in the great love and tenderness he felt for her, so that nothing mattered, he thought, but the longing that was theirs alone upon this night under the moon on Hungry Hill. The past should be something buried and forgotten, the future a thing of hope and blessed certainty, and the present that held them now was a joy so vivid and so lovely that the very force of it would destroy the phantoms of his dark and questing mind.
Letter from John to his sister Barbara, from Castle Andriff, dated Sept. 29th, 1829.
My dear Barbara, I mentioned to Mrs. Flower my father's being obliged to go to Bronsea immediately, or rather that it was absolutely necessary for him to be there on the 1st of November, and she has fixed on the 29th of next month to complete the business, and Fanny-Rosa and I are to proceed to Clonmere that same day. As she did not say anything about your staying, I did not like to start the question, particularly as Fanny-Rosa talks of crossing the water in the course of the month after we are married. I am glad she has fixed on Clonmere at first, for many reasons. She hopes you will be a bridesmaid on the occasion. We are to be married in Mundy by the Rev. Sadler and go off at once. Would Martha stay with us for a month?
She would be a great comfort, and you might be able to do without her for that time. Find out from her all about it, and also ask Thomas if he would stay as indoor servant, and if he is inclined to stay I shall put him into livery at once. Mrs. Flower has agreed to let her maid go with us for a month. I am sorry she did not propose your staying, but my regret is counterbalanced by the thought of seeing you all at Lletharrog. The necessity of my father's being in Bronsea by the first of November has saved me at least three weeks. I hope and trust he will not object to remain so long, particularly as his changing and going sooner would throw the business out again. Next Monday three weeks will soon arrive.
Find out whether the woman from the Island can cook, and whether she would come for a month. If she says "Yes," then we might have her over for a day and try her ragouts. You must write at once to Miss Grazely for a dress. Don't let it be white!
But it must be very handsome. You won't, I am sure, refuse to accept it from one who, whatever may be his charges through life, cannot at least accuse himself of want of affection for you and the rest of his family. I wish my father would lose no time in ordering the Landaulet painted and lined like the carriage, with arms on it, and crimson blinds, and to be finished as soon as possible. I wish we could have it to take us back to Clonmere-I don't like to take Fanny-Rosa back in a chaise, and we could easily send it on to Lletharrog. Don't write unless you have something particular to say, as letters are often lost here, and make no remark upon my father's being over by the first of November. We shall have time to arrange everything by Sunday next. I shall certainly be home by then.
Your affectionate brother, John L. Brodrick.
John and Fanny-Rosa spent the whole of the first autumn and winter after their marriage at Clonmere, and did not cross the water at all, as they had originally proposed. The family was at Lletharrog, and John and Fanny-Rosa had the place to themselves. It was a time of such peace and happiness to John that he could hardly believe the truth of it, and he would sometimes wonder whether it was not yet another of the secret day-dreams of the past, and he would awake again to black moods and bitter loneliness. Then he would look about his room in the tower and see how in the short time he had been married it had been graced and changed by the touch of Fanny-Rosa. The birds' eggs and the butterflies remained, and the pictures of Eton and Oxford, but there was a dressing-table now against the wall, with little silver brushes upon it, and a mirror, and in his wardrobe there were gowns that hung beside his coats, and beneath a chair a pair of velvet slippers. Her personality clung about the room, and if he stood alone in it, knowing that she was downstairs in the drawing-room or in the garden, he would touch her things with a feeling of strange warmth and tenderness, because they were now so much part of his life, and personal to herself and the love he had for her. She was all that he had dared to hope, and more than that besides. The former indifference and casual coolness she had shown to him were gone, and in their place came a wealth of affection and ardour that he had not believed possible.
She was no longer wayward or capricious. She was his own Fanny-Rosa, loving and true, content to spend her days alone with him and no one else for company, and no fine talk now of Paris and Italy and London, and the people she might meet.
"Are you not weary of me yet?" he would ask, when a wet day would keep them indoors. And she, holding out her arms to him, would say: "How could I ever be weary of you? I love you too well." And he would think to himself that all the talk of similar tastes and occupations, of liking the same books or poems, of sharing a common desire to travel-things which were considered important to the success of marriage-was so much nonsense, and no doubt trumped up by jealous people to prevent a man and a woman belonging to each other, for the only thing that mattered, as was being day by day proven by Fanny-Rosa, was that a husband should have understanding of his wife and know how to make her happy and content. It was a great satisfaction too to have Clonmere to himself, and to know that his father was across the water. It made for ease and comfort to feel that the hour of dining was a thing of not much importance, that it could be six or even seven of an evening, and that when they came in from walking in the grounds, or from shooting the hares and the woodcock on Doon Island, they could fling themselves wearily into the chairs in the drawing-room, and not be obliged to file at once into the dining-room for grace and the carving of the roast. He could give his own orders to Thomas and not wait for his father to do so, he could fill his glass after dinner with an easy conscience, and not be aware of his father's eye upon the decanter. It was freedom at last, freedom in his own home that he loved so well, and when old Ned Brodrick called upon some business of the estate John would pat him on the back, and welcome him in, and discuss anything but the matter in hand, to the agent's perfect agreement.
The servants all relaxed under the change of master. When Baird the keeper came every Saturday morning to present the weekly accounts of the outdoor staff he would find "Master John" sitting at his ease in an arm-chair with his feet on the mantelpiece, instead of writing at the desk briskly as Copper John was wont to do. Master John would greet Baird with a cheerful smile, and, barely glancing at the list given him, reach for a key to the desk and take out the money given in the total, at which Baird would make a mental note to increase the sum by half the following week. And if "Mrs. John" did wander up to the vinery and take the best grapes before they were fit to pick, and finger all the apples so that they were bruised, which would have distressed Miss Barbara greatly, why, what did it matter when Miss Barbara was not there to see, and "Mrs. John" had such enjoyment from the fruit?
Thomas was proud of his livery too, and he would rather wear a tight coat and be told that the kitchen girl thought him handsome, and bring in the dinner an hour late, and finish up what was left in the decanter, than be dressed in his old sober black, and have the table laid by the stroke of five in the afternoon, and be obliged to ask Copper John for the key every time a bottle was needed to be brought up from the cellar.
Each day, during the early winter of 1830, John would say to himself, "Now this morning I positively must ride up to the mines and have a word or two with Captain Nicholson, if only to save my face," and every morning something would come to prevent it. He would rise late, perhaps, Fanny-Rosa taking breakfast in bed and demanding that he should give it to her, and by the time he was up and dressed the best part of the morning would be gone. Or else the day would be crisp and fine, a day for walking the Kileen bog for snipe, and, Kileen being in the opposite direction, why then the visit to the mine must be postponed. On a wet morning he would bethink him of the little brown trout rising in Glenbegh; surely it would be a pity to leave them there, and the mine could very well wait another day. There was always an excuse, and the same held good for business about the estate. Had there been another dispute about the divided ground between Jack Mahoney and the Widow Connor? Why, then, he would say to Ned Brodrick, settle it some way or other that you think best. I know nothing of such matters. Give them a sack of potatoes apiece from our own ground. And the driving to Slane for the coursing would be the only times that he and Fanny-Rosa would venture far from home.
It was a great pleasure to John to have his wife beside him and to see the looks of admiration bestowed upon her, and a pleasure, too, to watch her interest in the greyhounds.
"What has happened," he would smile, "to the wild one who rode her horse across Hungry Hill and would not let me catch her?"
"She has vanished," said Fanny-Rosa, "and a placid, humdrum creature has taken her place. You know, — John, I think I am very much like your greyhound Fancy, before she had her puppies. Maybe women are like dogs, after all, and that is why you understand us both so well."
"I think maybe they are," said John, laughing.
"They need petting and coaxing in much the same way before they will let themselves be handled. But don't forget that Fancy produced poor Hasty, who is my one failure, and has never won a prize yet."
"That was not Fancy's fault," said Fanny-Rosa; "she had a very dull dog for a husband… Now our son, dearest, will certainly grow up to be the most handsome and the most brilliant man in the country. I dare say he will become the Lord Lieutenant, and might even marry a princess of the blood royal."
"I think, on the contrary," said John, "that he will be even more incorrigibly idle than myself."
"I have great ambitions for him," said Fanny-Rosa seriously. "I tell you I think about him very often, lying in bed in the mornings, while you are downstairs having your breakfast. We will call him John Simon, after you and my father, and he will be the prop and mainstay of our old age. We shall have other children too, no doubt, but he will be the pick of the bunch. I hope the next few months will pass as pleasantly as the first have done. Having a baby is very little trouble, it seems to me."
"I want the months to pass slowly," said John, touching her hair. "Don't forget that at the end of March the family will be returning, and my father will be home."
"I can manage your father," said Fanny-Rosa, "I am not at all afraid of him."
"I am sure you can," laughed John, "but it will not be the same. We shall have to be punctual to our meals, and have no dogs inside the house, and I must feign an interest in the mines, and even go with him in the mornings when he rides to Hungry Hill."
"Yes, but I shall be waiting for you when you come back, which will make all the difference. And if you become exasperated we will creep up to our room and console ourselves. I shall not let him bully you, I promise you that. He will find there are two to fight against, and soon there will be three."
"Fighting is to be avoided at all costs," said her husband, "I would rather spend my days underground with the miners than have ten minutes above in disagreeable and exhausting argument with my father or anyone else."
So January and February passed, and March came in with soft winds and warm sunshine, melting the snow from the tip of Hungry Hill, and the young green shoots began to thrust themselves from the brown earth, and the tall trees in the woods behind the castle lost their dark nakedness. The gorse started to flower on the moors towards Kileen, and the bog itself lost the black sogginess of winter, while the honey scent of the gorse and the warm wind from the sea seemed to draw the full peaty flavour from the earth, and the blend of colour, and warmth, and smell made a richness upon the land. Sometimes John would take Fanny-Rosa in his boat, and pull gently about the creek and the waters of Doonhaven in search of the little killigs which the woman from the island would cook for their breakfast, but more often than not they would lie in idleness in the sunken garden that Jane had made at the head of the creek, John doing nothing, as was his happy custom, and Fanny-Rosa intent upon the rich embroidered gown she was making for John Simon Brodrick. The end of March came all too quickly, and on the 31st old Casey the coachman and Tim the groom set off for Mundy to bring the family back by road, as the steamer was not yet plying to Doonhaven, and John and Fanny-Rosa spent the morning in a desperate attempt to set the house to rights, to clear the dogs from the dining-room, where they had grown into the habit of feeding from the table, to remove fishing-tackle and an evil-smelling jar of bait from the drawing-room, and to hide away the innumerable lace caps of miniature size that might draw attention rather sooner than need be to Copper John's future as a grandfather, though, as Fanny-Rosa said, if the business was supposed to be concealed she would have to hide herself.
John stood on the steps of the castle with his arm about his wife, listening for the sound of the carriage wheels, and in a few minutes now, he thought, Clonmere will be mine no longer, the master will return. It will be my father who will walk into the dining-room and summon Thomas, it will be he who will pay the men's wages on Saturday morning, and I shall be no one once again, the idle, good-for-nothing second son, who was supposed to make a living for himself in Lincoln's Inn and failed.
The dogs began to bark outside on the drive, old Baird came through from the stables and stood expectantly, and round the sweep of the drive beside the creek came the carriage, the waving hands of his sisters, their chatter and laughter, and John, holding Fanny-Rosa tightly for one brief moment, said a silent farewell to the Clonmere that was his.
At dinner John resumed his old place on the right hand of Barbara, who, with kindly grace natural to her, wished Fanny-Rosa to sit at the end of the table. But Fanny-Rosa declined, saying she had always heard that the correct place for a bride was on the right of her host. She said this with a sly glance at Copper John, who, knowing very little as yet of his daughter-in-law except that Simon Flower was her father, was inclined to be suspicious, and looked at her somewhat askance. She sat herself down beside him, therefore, and closed her eyes meekly and folded her hands when grace was said, so that John, watching her, thought what a confounded hoax she was, and what a play she would make of all this when she was upstairs in the tower room alone with him. Dinner passed pleasantly, and Fanny-Rosa made herself so charming and winning to her father-in-law that before the meal was finished he was in high good humour, and even jesting with her about the politics of the country, a matter which usually called forth little humour from him and much anger.
Fanny-Rosa has done it again, thought John; another conquest to her credit.
And he saw himself sheltering behind her petticoats for the remainder of his life, putting her in the forefront of any trouble which he himself wished to avoid.
"You see," Fanny-Rosa whispered to him that night, "I will make the old man eat out of my hand before I have finished with him."
"I think you will not," said John. "I think you concentrate on one Brodrick at a time."
If the arrival of the family and the resumption once more of the ordinary routine of home life made a small ache and a clouding of the skies for John, it appeared to have no effect upon Fanny-Rosa. She prattled away to his father, helped Barbara arrange the flowers, read poems with Jane, and discussed water-colours with Eliza, as though all this was just as agreeable to her as when she had sat alone with John, and though he was grateful to her for the ease which this brought upon the household, he wondered that she never said a word of regret for the time that they had spent together. She was a person who would glow and come to life in the company of people, whereas he would withdraw into himself, and he began to see how in their future life together he would sit back, as it were, a little apart from her, watching her move, and talk, and smile, basking in the reflected light of her presence. He would be content to do this as long as she never slipped away from him altogether, and allowed him to love her, and would love him in return.
"Do you know," said Jane to him one day, when Fanny-Rosa had left them and was walking towards the house, "that you look at Fanny-Rosa as though you worshipped her?"
"I do," said John.
"It must make her very happy that you love her in such a way."
"I think she will never know," said John, "or if she does know she would laugh; she would not understand."
"It will be nice to have a baby in the house. He will be sadly spoilt though, by all the aunts'.
"What is it? You are not your bright self these days, little one. I noticed it as soon as you returned."
"I am only a foolish sentimental creature, John. You know Dick Fox is leaving the garrison, and going to the East?"
"No, I did not."
"He is very excited about it. It will mean promotion, you know. He will be away a number of years-quite six or seven, I dare say."
"And does he not want to marry you before he goes?"
"What would be the use, John? He could not take me with him. He is twenty-one, I am just eighteen. By the time he is twenty-seven or eight he may have met someone else he cares for more than me."
"So you will let him go, and say goodbye, perhaps never to set eyes on him again?"
"I have no choice. He will be sad for a few days, and remember the girl of the picture, and then the excitement of the journey and the new sights he will see will put the girl out of his mind."
"And you?"
"Ah, never mind about me. I will be godmother to your baby, John, the fairy godmother who waves her magic wand and brings him good presents, and keeps the ugly witch away."
She blew him a kiss, and wandered off in search of Fanny-Rosa, and as he watched her go he cursed in his mind the young careless idiot, with his damned military ambitions, who could prefer the blood and dust of imaginary Eastern battles to life with Jane, who would give a man so much love and tenderness.
There were other things, though, to occupy his mind, besides poor Jane and her romance that had gone awry. For now his father had returned he had to give an account of his stewardship during the winter, and to explain why the bills had mounted. Ned Brodrick had been questioned, and Ned Brodrick always gave the same answer: "Master John had said it did not matter."
There was a stormy scene in the library when these matters were discussed, a month after his father had come back.
"It would have been better for the men I employ," said Copper John to his son, "that you had spent the winter across the water. As a general rule matters do not become slack in my absence, even for so long as five months at a time, but they have taken advantage of your presence here to do any number of things that I have never permitted. Even Baird, whom I thought I could trust, presents a bill a foot long and tells me he has your authority for doing so."
"I had not realised it was necessary to be so close, sir," answered John.
"Close? No one can accuse me of being anything but liberal with my servants. But I object to being robbed. Some of the items on Baird's account were not only needless but I very much doubt if they were ever purchased. Too late to check up on it now, of course. At the time you could have demanded to see the stuff he claims to have bought, but I suppose you did nothing of the sort. Here are several new farm implements, asked for, he says, by the cowman, of which Ned Brodrick denies all knowledge."
"Perhaps they will last a long time, sir, and then you will not need to buy later."
"You are making fun of me, I suppose, but I find the jest in poor taste. What happens to a man when he lives in this country, that he allows himself to become soft and useless, and lacking in all authority?"
Copper John looked at his son in exasperation.
"I thought marriage might stiffen you, John," he said, "but I believe it has made you more of an idler than you were before. Your wife is worth two of you, and I am glad to see she has such a mind of her own. One other thing that has rather astounded me is that I hear from Captain Nicholson that you did not make one single visit to the mines in the whole course of the winter."
John had been waiting for this. And he had no excuse to give. To say that he preferred spending his mornings in bed with Fanny-Rosa would have sounded flippant, but it happened to be the truth.
"I meant to ride over several times," he said.
"It was very remiss of me. The fact is Fanny-Rosa being unable to ride just now made it difficult, and I did not like to leave her."
"Yet you took her over to Mundy in the carriage several times to attend your coursing meetings?"
John was silent. There was really nothing that he could invent to defend himself.
"I am sorry, sir," he said. "I have been idle, I admit it."
"You are therefore, of course, quite unaware of the trouble they have been having with the new mine, above the road? The pump that I installed there has not proved man enough for the job, and what with the winter rains and the springs bursting there has been considerable flooding. The new pump that I have ordered from over the water cannot possibly be here for a few weeks. Meanwhile we are losing the stuff, by being unable to bring it to the surface. It is a source of considerable annoyance to me and to Captain Nicholson. Here is the summer coming on, and the ore wasting underground."
It was, John thought, the usual story. He had failed in his duties as his father's son. To make his apologies now, to offer to accompany his father every morning, and to sit like a dummy while he and Captain Nicholson discussed technical details of what should or should not be done to the offending pump was a matter of obligation, no doubt, but he could not bring himself to do it. He felt a wave of irritation sweep over him for the whole business.
Baird and his bills, the cowman and the rakes, Nicholson and his ridiculous pump. Why did his father have to take all these things so seriously? John left the library, in an ill-temper with his father and everyone else which was not improved by hearing that Fanny-Rosa and Jane had departed in the small pony carriage for Andriff, intending to spend the day there and return before dark. Fanny-Rosa had said nothing to him of the visit, and the reason was, of course, that he would have forbidden her to go. She was appallingly careless about herself, and because she felt so well was inclined to drive about the country with no thought of her condition. No one but Fanny-Rosa and himself knew how near she was to the time of her confinement, and even they were a little hazy about the actual date. His sisters believed, or pretended to believe, that it would be the early part of July; he himself suspected that it must be somewhere near the middle of May, and already they had reached the last days of April. If Fanny-Rosa was going to have her baby in three weeks' time it was an act of madness to go driving the fifteen odd miles or so to Andriff, in a jolting pony-cart, and return the same day, making thirty miles in all, with only Jane for company.
"You must have been mad to let her go," he said to Barbara. "I cannot understand what you were about."
"But, John dear, they went without my knowledge.
Fanny-Rosa told Eliza she was certain you had decided to go with father to the mine this afternoon, and she felt restless, she said, and a drive would do her good, but I had no idea they proposed to go farther than a few miles or so. It was Tim who overheard them making plans for Andriff."
"Jane should have shown more sense. She lets Fanny-Rosa do as she likes with her, just as I do, and every other damned fool."
"John!" said Barbara in reproof.
"I've a good mind to go down and see Willie Armstrong and have a talk with him. He has promised to attend Fanny-Rosa when the time comes, and would know whether it is folly or not. I know that I have never let any of my bitches travel a jolting road when they are so near to the business, and here I am, having apparently allowed my wife to do something that I would have spared my dogs."
"You forget, John," said Barbara, hoping to soothe her brother, "that Fanny-Rosa's health is excellent, and nothing seems to tire her.
Besides, the event is not for some little time yet, after all."
"Nonsense!" said John. "You know very well that it is within a few weeks. Why we all have to pretend to one another, I do not know. At any rate, I shall go down now and see if Willie Armstrong is at home, and if necessary I shall ride over to Andriff and insist upon Fanny-Rosa remaining there for the night."
He went round to the stables and had Tim saddle his horse, "You are quite sure, Tim, that Mrs. Brodrick and Miss Jane proposed to drive as far as Castle Andriff?" he enquired.
"I am, Master John," replied the man.
"It was Mrs. Brodrick herself who said that they would be there soon after one o'clock, and would have time to offer some refreshment to the lieutenant before he went to catch the steamer from Mundy."
"What are you talking about, Tim?"
"Why, doesn't Lieutenant Fox leave this day for the East, Master John, and the young ladies arranging to say goodbye to him, him likely enough to be murdered by the savages out there, and Miss Jane crying her eyes out because of it?"
"I see…" said John. "No, Tim, I did not know."
So that was the reason Fanny-Rosa and Jane had gone off for the day. Poor Jane wished to bid farewell to Dick Fox, out of sight of the family, and Fanny-Rosa had offered to go with her.
John rode into Doonhaven, and found the doctor in his house, preparing to sit down to cold meat and potatoes, which he suggested John should share.
"You had better come with me afterwards," said the prospective father, falling upon the cold luncheon with a hearty appetite, "and bring back those two madcaps from Andriff. Or you can bring home Jane. I shall stay at the castle with my wife."
"I think Jane will not be in much of a state to return with me," said Doctor Armstrong quietly. "This departure of Dick Fox must have been a great shock to her."
"I would have given a good deal for it not to have happened," said John. "To have a broken heart at eighteen is not much of a start in life. Confound that fellow for trifling with her at all."
"He is only twenty-one himself; they are both no more than children," said the doctor. "I often think what an elderly dullard I must seem to Jane at thirty-five."
"To tell you the truth," John said, "I am more concerned about my wife than about Jane.
Fanny-Rosa's baby is due within a few weeks, as you have probably guessed, and a drive of thirty miles is surely an act of madness?"
"Mrs. Brodrick's constitution is not likely to suffer," said Doctor Armstrong shortly, and he rose from the table to answer the summons at the front-door, for the house bell was ringing loudly.
He was always a little gruff where Fanny-Rosa was concerned. Anyway, he had promised to bring the child into the world, and be godfather into the bargain. He returned now with a note in his hand for John.
"Your servant is outside," he said. "I gather there is some trouble or other at the mine, and your father has sent for you."
John frowned, and tore open the letter.
"Please come up to the new mine without delay," ran the message. "The flooding has become serious, and we need every man available to save the mine from total ruin."
John threw the note across to the doctor.
"There's an end to my ride to Andriff," he said.
"You had better come with me, Willie. I'm afraid the business is serious. My father was telling me about the trouble only this morning. I rather gather they have gone too deep, and the engine they have has broken down and is useless. We shall find no end of a mess, I have no doubt."
The two men, with the servant, were up at the new mine within twenty minutes. As they came up the track they had to dismount and leave their horses with the servant, and push their way through the great crowd of miners, two hundred or more, who were gathered about the entrance to the shaft.
"The water's rising all the time," said a man, touching his hat on recognising John and the doctor.
"There's one poor chap down there drowned. They've just brought the body to the surface, and two others are missing. Mr. Brodrick has been down to the first level himself, but Captain Nicholson persuaded him to return. There he is, sir, at the head of the shaft there."
John saw his father, his head bare, his coat stripped and his sleeves rolled up above the elbows, throw aside the great bucket he had been helping to handle, and shake his head.
"We shall never do any good like this," he said. "The water comes up a foot or more all the time. '
Every few minutes the buckets came to the surface, on the groaning, creaking chains, and the water was splashed to the ground, making a wide stream beside the track, becoming deeper and flowing faster down the side of the hill. The great buckets, usually employed for bringing the copper above ground, were now bringing away the water; and a chain of men, from the flooded level to the surface, were handing smaller buckets from one to the other, each man standing upon a rung of the long ladder that descended to the shaft and passing his bucket to his fellow immediately above. As one or other of the men became exhausted, so a fresh man took his place, and in a moment John himself had thrown aside his coat, even as his father had done, and was taking his turn in the long line. He descended almost as far as the first level, which by this time the flood had reached, and the men who were working there, up to their waists in water, peered up at him through the darkness, their eyes hollow with exhaustion, their faces and bodies pouring with sweat.
"Tell the captain and Mr. Brodrick 'tis no mortal use," said one of them, a great burly Cornishman, who had stripped entirely. "The water is gaining on us all the time, faster than we can bring it away. There's another poor chap must have been caught by it, along the galley, before we came down. I saw his hand just now, floating yonder, but he's washed out of sight… It's the finish of this mine; we can't do any more."
John peered into the great black gulf. There was no sound, apart from the creaking of the chains and the laboured breathing of the exhausted men, except the steady lap-lap of the water as it splashed against the rock-face. The galley path was covered, and was now no more than a dark, narrow channel, disappearing into the gloom. Somewhere down this channel washed the body of a man. The flood-water smelt brackish, sour.
John turned, and climbed his way back up the long ladder to the surface, pressing against the miners as they lifted their useless buckets. Copper John was waiting by the entrance to the shaft, his face set in the expression of grim determination that his son knew so well.
"The water is gaining every few minutes," said John, "the men cannot possibly work there longer than another quarter-of-an-hour. You will have to order them to the surface."
"I was afraid of it," said Captain Nicholson. "Mr. John is right, sir, we had better get the men above ground before more lives are lost."
"I refuse to be conquered by flood-water," said Copper John. "If we can get it away from the galleys that level will be workable again. There is one way by which we might save the mine, and I propose to do it. By blasting away the rock-face on the level, we can force a passage for the water out on to the hill, and the flood will escape. If there's a chance of saving the mine, I am going to do it."
"Very well then, sir," said the mining captain.
"If we are successful, the explosion will break the rock above the level of the road, and the banks will go with the force of the water."
"Damn the road," said Copper John.
"Roads can be built again, with the Government's money into the bargain. The Government will not advance me the money for a new mine."
John turned aside, shrugging his shoulders. If his father cared to risk death playing about with gunpowder on that doomed level, it was his affair. Somewhere a woman was crying-the widow, he supposed, of the drowned man who had been brought to the surface. There was a little crowd gathered about the body. Willie Armstrong was with them. The faces of the miners were white and strained, and all the while there was the ceaseless clanking of the chains as the windlass brought the buckets above ground, splashing the water into the ever-widening stream. Why could not his father close down the mine, order the men to return home, and put a finish upon the business? There was something appalling in this grim fight to save a few hundred tons of copper, for which already two or three men had lost their lives. Captain Nicholson was shouting out orders now, and the barrel of gunpowder was being brought along in one of the trolleys. The miners were pressing forward in excitement, Copper John was calling for volunteers. "If Henry had been alive," thought John, "he would have descended the mine with my father and the others," and vividly the memory of three or four years back returned to him. Once again he saw Henry, tense, excited, shivering with the rain, watching his father set fire to the train of gunpowder. Five men had been killed that fatal night because of the copper. Six, if he counted Henry, who had caught the chill that led eventually to his death eighteen months later. How many would have lost their lives today? John moved away from the group of miners, sickened, hating the scene about him. Once again he was oppressed with his own uselessness. He could not even help the widow of the drowned man, as Willie Armstrong was doing. He could only stand on the fringe of the crowd and wait… This time there was no fighting, no shouting and yelling, and the explosions when they came were low and muffled, a series of low rumbles underground that sounded like distant thunder. The men gathered about the opening of the shaft talked in low voices, and now and again word would be passed amongst the crowd, from one to the other, that a channel was being blasted successfully through the rock-face to carry away the flood, and that for the first time in four hours the water had not risen. John found himself drawn once more to the ladder beside the shaft.
The men moved aside, making way for him. He began to climb down the ladder, and this time a new smell filled the shaft, forwiththe sour flood-water came the bitter, pungent tang of powder and smoke. As he drew near to the level there came to his ears a confused murmur of voices, echoing strange and hollow against the bare, empty rock-face, and beside the voices was a new sound, the full, pressing flow of rushing water, as the flood was sucked down into the new channel blasted in the hillside. Even as John descended now, with Doctor Armstrong close behind him on the ladder, there came the deafening roar of a further explosion, and the crumbling of rock and stones along the galley.
Faces loomed up at him from the darkness, eyes, and teeth, and hands, and there was his father himself, his own face blackened by the powder, a great scratch at the corner of his eye from which the blood was running.
"We have done it," he shouted: "the water has dropped three feet already; look at the mark there on the wall beside you '
The water gurgled and hissed like a live thing, and as it poured in a great black stream into the passage blasted for it the men on the level hacked and tore at the crumbling rock with iron crowbars and picks, making a passage larger yet, so that the tumbling waters should escape. Copper John seized a bar from the man nearest to him.
"Harder than that, young fellow," he cried, and lifting the crowbar, he drove it fast into the rock, bringing down a shower of stones and rubble.
There was a great burst of laughter from the miners, and one after the other they smote at the rocks and stones, plunging along the galley with no fear now that the flood-water had found its outlet, and John and Doctor Armstrong were caught with the same excitement, the same fury. They too seized crowbars and joined in the confusion of sound, breaking away the crumbling rock, while the black, slimy water sank from their knees to their ankles, evil-smelling, frothing, sucking its way in one black stream down the gully in the rock-face.
"Your father is unbeatable," said Captain Nicholson. "I would never have attempted this if he had not been here."
And Copper John, hearing his words, turned and laughed shortly.
"Would you stand by, then, and see some thousands of pounds lost beyond recovery? Come on, man, and put your back into this business."
It was getting on for seven in the evening when the little party returned above ground, weary, begrimed, but triumphant, with the news that the water had now sunk below the level, and because of the channels blasted in the hillside, would not rise again.
"Once we have the new engine erected," declared Copper John, when he made his short speech to the miners assembled at the entrance to the shaft, "we shall be able to keep the water down permanently, and any further flooding will be out of the question. I want to thank every one of you for your work and loyalty this day, and I can promise you that I shall not forget it."
He looked round upon the great crowd of men, and something striking and undaunted in his bearing, the keen eyes in the smoke-blackened face, the grizzled hair, the square, determined jaw, and the bleeding scratch at the corner of his eye, drew forth a shout of appreciation from the weary men before him. "Three cheers for Copper John," shouted someone, and a roar went up from the crowd about him, a roar half hysterical in its sudden release from fear, and they began to press forward to shake hands with him, forgetting their fear in him as a master because he had proved himself a leader, and Copper John, laughing and protesting, found himself borne on the shoulders of the miners to see the havoc he had created on the hill.
"Your father is a very lucky man," said Doctor Armstrong. "He has won popularity for himself, and has saved his copper into the bargain. Shall we go and look at the damage?"
The sun was setting over Mundy Bay, and John, blinking his eyes after the darkness of underground, saw the first cloud of evening forming in the western sky.
It was later than he thought.
The servant, who had been waiting all the afternoon with the horses, came towards him now, with a grin on his face.
"You ought to see the road, sir," he said; "there's a cataract falling down over it, and they tell me it's destroyed entirely. The banks have given way in all directions, and the whole road is falling into the sea. It's a good thing Doonhaven lies in the other direction."
Suddenly John saw Doctor Armstrong's face stiffen, and even as he watched it the same fear clutched at his heart and he felt the blood drain from his face.
"Good God, Fanny-Rosa…" he cried.
He began to run down the side of the hill towards the road, but even as he did so he knew it was useless-the flood-water was pouring out of the side of the hill in a great bubbling cascade, and the torrent of water, let loose, was crashing down on to the road beneath, bearing with it earth, and rocks, and stones. Already wide, ugly cracks were appearing in the ground not far from him, and the crowd of miners, pointing and laughing, were throwing stones and sticks into the cauldron, making game of the disaster, betting one another how long the road itself would stand the strain.
"Call my father," shouted John to Doctor Armstrong; "tell him that the pony and trap are out on the road, returning from Andriff…" and without waiting for a reply, he began to plunge waist-deep across the stream, to gain the road the other side of the fall, that might as yet have escaped the worst of the flood. Before his eyes rose the ghastly picture of what might be. The pony and trap coming along the road, the two girls chatting, with no knowledge of what lay before them, and then round the bend of Hungry Hill the sudden avalanche of earth and stones from the breaking banks of the road, and the mighty crash of the released flood-waters.
He stumbled down the side of the hill, his breath sobbing, and his mind black with fear. Once he looked over his shoulder, and saw his father and the doctor following him, and some of the miners, Captain Nicholson amongst them, aware suddenly of what might be. As John ran he prayed, who had said no prayer since childhood, and he kept calling her by name: "Fanny-Rosa… Fanny-Rosa."
He came now to the edge of the hill, and there was the road, littered with great rocks and boulders and loose earth, more devastated even than he had feared, and a channel of water seeping through it all from the torrent beyond, and God in heaven! — was that an overturned trap lying there amongst the rocks, and a horse kicking feebly, and someone standing in the midst of the road calling and crying for help…
"Fanny-Rosa… Fanny-Rosa…"
Fanny-Rosa… Fanny-Rosa…"
He held her against his heart, he lifted her in his arms, he carried her away from the water and the rocks to the side of the road, to the banks as yet untouched, to the soft, wet grass, kissing her hands, and her lips, and her hair, as she clung to him, weeping.
"I am safe," she cried, "no harm has come to me, I am safe, but Jane, tell them to find Jane, where is Jane '
And down upon the road came the earth, and the stones, and the angry flood-waters of the mine on Hungry Hill.
That night at Clonmere John Simon Brodrick was born, he who was to be known in the family as "Wild Johnnie," but there was no fairy godmother to wish blessings upon his dark head and to wave a magic wand; she had forsaken him, and stolen away into the shadows after her brother Henry.
When the baby was three months old Fanny-Rosa said that a change of air would be good for him. He was not putting on the weight that he should, and although Doctor Armstrong insisted that he had seldom seen a more robust infant or one with greater lung-power, Fanny-Rosa retorted that doctors knew very little about babies, and anyway the instinct of a mother was the strongest thing in the world. So John and his wife and son and all the greyhounds took themselves across the water, and settled down in Lletharrog for several months.
There was a calm, happy atmosphere about the farm-house, and at night-time, with the boy safely asleep upstairs in charge of old Martha, the nursery-parlour would have something of peace and quiet about it, the curtains drawn, the candles lit, a small fire burning in the grate, and Fanny-Rosa sitting in the arm-chair next to the fire, bending over the new gowns she was making for the fast-growing Johnnie, looking up at her husband now and again with her vivid smile, generally to make some remark upon the precocity of their son.
It was, John thought, a good idea of Fanny-Rosa's to come across the water to Lletharrog. In the sheltered valley here, with the animals about the farm, and the little village close at hand, the placid stream winding below the house, the disaster of the early summer seemed more distant, and could be forgotten for many hours of the day. The shock and tragedy of Jane's death became blurred, and, in retrospect, a conclusion perhaps more fitting than the many long years of spinsterhood there might have been.
John knew his sister too well. Not for her the quick parting and the soon forgetting, the marriage a year or so later with somebody else. Jane would have sighed, and wilted, a flower with a drooping head. It was better to have gone as she had, suddenly, and bravely, at the foot of Hungry Hill, leaving behind her no bitter memories, only the portrait of a girl of eighteen years, the brown eyes warm and hopeful, the small slim hand touching the pearls at her throat. John would miss her, there would be a great emptiness in his heart because of her, but here, at Lletharrog, he believed it best that she had gone.
The first weeks after her death had been very hard to bear. His father, stunned and suddenly aged, had shut himself up in the library and would have speech with no one, not even Barbara. What agony he endured alone in his dark, cheerless room they none of them knew. But when he emerged, and they feared to find him broken, a shadow of his former self, he was little changed from the man he had been before, only the lines were deeper in his face, the eyes were harder.
John, whose loathing of the mine since the flood had increased tenfold, found it more impossible than ever to discuss business with his father, and he would watch him ride off every morning after breakfast, on his daily visit to the mine, with a feeling of bewilderment, almost of revulsion. When his father announced in tones of great satisfaction, barely three weeks after Jane had gone from them, that the new steam engine had arrived and been erected, and would pump all the water from the new mine without the slightest difficulty, and they would be shipping ore to Bronsea within a month, John had risen to his feet and left the room.
It was not long afterwards that Fanny-Rosa had suggested the move to Lletharrog, and John, for the first time in his life, had been glad to leave Clonmere.
He reflected that now he had a wife and a son, and there was every likelihood of more children to come, he could not continue to live in his father's house with any great pleasure. For six brief months, after his marriage, he had known the pride of possession, but with the arrival of the family Clonmere had ceased to belong to him. One day, years hence perhaps, he would possess it again, but until that day it was better to visit it at intervals, as a guest, and in the meantime find somewhere for himself and Fanny-Rosa and young Johnnie.
"The trouble is," Fanny-Rosa said, "that you make no attempt to stand up to your father. You and the girls are all frightened of him. A good quarrel and a lot of shouting would clear the air."
"I detest quarrelling, and shouting even more," said John. "Clonmere belongs to my father, and until he dies it is better that we do not try to divide it. Therefore, dearest, we have our own house this side of the water, where no one can interfere with us, I can race my greyhounds, and you can have your babies."
"I think maybe you have the devil's pride in you, John. You want Clonmere so much that you do not wish to share it with anyone else."
"Maybe I have the devil's pride, and maybe you are right, and maybe too I do not wish to share my Fanny-Rosa with my own black-headed, screaming devil of a son, who has got all the faults of his father, and the wickedness of his mother, and no good in him at all. So the sooner you have another baby the better, to put young Johnnie's nose a little out of joint."
Fanny-Rosa put her arms about her husband, and smiled the way she did, telling him he was jealous, and a bear, and she did not love him at all, and then she was gone in a flash, laughing over her shoulder, the old elusive Fanny-Rosa that had won him first on Hungry Hill.
The problem was made easier for them during the winter by his father suddenly buying a house some thirty miles from Lletharrog at the new fashionable watering-place of Saunby, which was within an hour or so's steaming distance from Bronsea, and more accessible in winter than the long drive backwards and forwards made Lletharrog.
It was therefore suggested that John and Fanny-Rosa should remain on at the farm-house and make it their headquarters for the future, while Copper John and his daughters passed the winter at the new house in Saunby, which was promptly named Brodrick House and became their permanent address while living that side of the water. The arrangement suited everyone, and John did not have the bother of finding a house for himself. He was content with Lletharrog, and so was Fanny-Rosa, and so apparently was Johnnie, whose nose remained entirely in place when his sister Fanny was born the following April, and did not shift in the slightest at the appearance of small Henry a year or so later. Johnnie was in fact the tyrant of the household, and no one, except his mother, was allowed to gainsay him in any way whatever.
He was a handsome child, with his father's dark hair and eyes, but, as old Martha said, with his mother's ways and his mother's quick temper into the bargain. If he wanted a thing he shouted for it, and when he had it soon tired of it, and shouted for something else.
"The boy never seems content," John would say, staring in perplexity at his small son, who had thrown a fine toy into the fire because he had not liked the colour. "Why does he not sit quietly, like Fanny?"
"He has so much spirit," said Fanny-Rosa, "haven't you, my darling?"
Her darling scowled, and began drumming with his heels on the floor.
"I have never beaten a puppy I reared, and I don't propose to beat my own son," said John, "but I wish to heaven I knew the right way to handle the little fellow, so that he would keep quiet at least.
Look at him, now, pulling at Fanny's hair.
I don't remember that I ever pulled Barbara's."
"No doubt you did, and you have forgotten," said Fanny-Rosa, lifting her boy and giving him a lolly-pop. "Call Martha, and tell her to take Fanny upstairs; she is being silly, and upsetting Johnnie'.
"I should have said it was the other way round," said John.
"Nonsense! Fanny always whines when her hail is pulled, and the whining excites Johnnie. It is most irritating for him. You shall walk with me to the village, my darling, and we will see what old Mrs. Evans has in her shop for you. And if you are a very good boy you shall have dinner with father and mother, and drink ale out of your New Year mug as a special treat."
Why Johnnie should suddenly deserve a special treat, after throwing his toy in the fire and pulling his sister's hair, his father was at a loss to understand, but at least the promise had the desired effect, the scowl vanished, a radiant smile came over the boy's face, transforming him immediately from an ugly imp into a small object of great charm and attraction, and he trotted off hand in hand with his mother, a model of good behaviour.
John shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, and went off whistling to visit the greyhounds in their kennels. The upbringing of children was beyond him. No doubt women knew what they were about, although he had an uneasy feeling that Copper John would have leathered him as a youngster had he behaved to his sisters as young Johnnie behaved to poor Fanny, but to take down the little chap's breeches and lay hands on him was something he could not bring himself to do. When there was noise and confusion in the house because of Johnnie, his father would go into the garden, or down to the river, and come back again when it was all over. Somehow, it seemed to him the easiest thing to do. And little by little this policy of avoiding trouble would creep into everything.
Fanny-Rosa ran Lletharrog, and Fanny-Rosa could deal with the servants. If one of them was idle or rude, well, Fanny-Rosa must dismiss him. If old Martha did not understand Johnnie and had words with Fanny-Rosa, well, let old Martha be pensioned off, but for heaven's sake let there be no scene about it which he would have to face.
"You are as bad as my father," said Fanny-Rosa, "escaping from your responsibilities. What a good thing for you that I am not a timid, frightened little woman, dependent upon you for everything."
"You are dependent upon me for the only things that matter," said John, putting his arm round her waist.
"Ah, you great useless one," laughed his wife, "would you forget I am the mother of three children, and maybe a fourth before we know where we are? And all you do is to sit about all day and look at me, and yawn, and smile, and wander down to the kennels to pat your greyhounds, and even they are becoming as lazy and contented as yourself."
It was true that John had no longer the same interest in coursing. The season would come along before he realised how the months had slipped by, and his dogs, having become slack and spoilt during the summer months, with too rich a diet and too little exercise, would need several weeks' hard training before entering into competition. This required considerable energy and concentration from their master, which he found himself unable to give.
"It's no use, Fanny-Rosa," he said one day, after returning from a meeting where his dogs had failed to win more than a few points from the critical judges, "my coursing days are over. The excitement I had from it once has gone, I don't know why. It seemed to me, watching this day, that the dogs were running loose, here and there over the course, for no very great purpose, and all to destroy a hare, which maybe had a family somewhere. No, I think in future I'll take my rod and go down to the river, and even if I should catch a very small fish, why, I could put him back again, and he'd be none the wiser."
And John would throw himself into his chair, in an untidy living-room of Lletharrog, no longer recognisable as the neat, trim parlour of Barbara's days, and pulling tiny Henry on his knee, and with Fanny looking over one shoulder, and Johnnie over the other, ha would proceed to show them the precious case of flies, the gaudy feathers proving an irresistible attraction to the children. There would be a dog on the opposite chair, and a cat on the hearth-rug, nuzzling a brood of young kittens, while toys, needlework, and books lay strewn about the floor, and Fanny-Rosa, seized with a sudden passion for dressmaking, leant over the table with a large pair of scissors, preparing to cut wastefully into the folds of an evening gown to make herself a jacket which might hide something of her once more widening figure.
The coming of the babies made little difference to Fanny-Rosa's looks. She was, so her husband thought, as lovely as the day he married her; she was still wayward, careless and capricious, the true daughter of Simon Flower. Her servants never knew where they were with her. One day she would be generous, indulgent, giving them roast for dinner and suggesting a holiday for the lot of them, and the day after a scolding whirlwind would burst into the kitchen, with a packet of sugar in her hand which she swore had been stolen from her untidy store-cupboard, and a flow of language would escape from their flaming mistress that the servants would declare afterwards could only have been learnt from the lads in her father's stables. John, hearing the tirade of wrath from the living-room, would laugh quietly to himself and go out into the garden. Fanny-Rosa would have her scene, and enjoy herself hugely, storm upstairs to the children's bedroom afterwards and probably beat the frightened girl from the village who had replaced old Martha, and then, like a burst of sunshine after rain, come singing after her husband, with small Henry tucked under her arm and Johnnie capering at her heels.
"Visiting Lletharrog," Eliza would say, on returning to sedate Brodrick House, Saunby, after a stay of a week with her brother and his family, "is like visiting a bear-house. There is nowhere to sit, because the chairs are full of dogs or kittens or babies' napkins. The cooking is atrocious. I can swear my bed was damp when I arrived, but I did not like to say anything, as Fanny-Rosa had embroidered me a nightgown fit for a queen, which was laid out upon the sheets. The first morning she put the whole household to making jam. I am sure none of it will set, for the shocking waste of sugar-the children all upon the table eating it up as fast as it was put into the pan."
"And yet dear John seems very well content?" asked Barbara, her forehead wrinkling in anxiety.
"Oh, he's as happy as the day is long, in all the confusion. He does nothing whatever but sit in his chair and laugh. He has grown side-whiskers, to save himself the trouble of shaving, he told me."
"And the children?"
"The children are all very pretty and quite uncontrollable, and as for darling Johnnie, he may be wild and quick-tempered, but he is the most affectionate of them all, and quite attached himself to me, calling me his "most dear aunt Eliza," and would I marry him when he became a man!"
Poor Eliza, who would soon be forty, was proud of any proposal these days, even if it came from her six-year-old nephew.
Once a year John and Fanny-Rosa and the children would be invited to Clonmere for a period of three months, and as Copper John spent most of his day at the mines, and his evening in the library, the invasion of the young family caused little disturbance to his routine. Fanny-Rosa, with her usual artfulness, made herself particularly charming, and young Johnnie, grasping instinctively that bad behaviour might very well result in discomfort to himself, was quiet and subdued in his grandfather's presence, and only let his spirits soar when the sound of horses' hoofs had died away along the drive.
Then there would be a shout, and a whoop of delight, and a flourishing of bows and arrows, and woe betide young Fanny playing with her dolls outside on the grass, or Henry struggling with his top, or baby Edward sucking his comforter when their eldest brother was about, for the doll would be in the rhododendrons in three minutes, and the top flung into the creek, and the baby with his petticoats tossed above his head, and Johnnie himself doing a war-dance with a cock's feather stuck in his dark curls, aiming an arrow at his protesting aunt Barbara, who defended herself behind a parasol. "Johnnie darling, you must be careful, you will do some damage," and Johnnie darling, caring not at all, launched his arrow with a war-cry into the parasol, and then took to the woods to torment old Baird, pulling his peaches off the walls, digging up the lettuce plants, and puncturing the old man in the behind with an arrow when his back was turned.
"Why should Johnnie be so wild?" asked Barbara of her brother, removing the nest of young mice from her work-box. "We never played such pranks as children. He is so intelligent and affectionate in other ways, but he appears to lack a sense of proportion."
"He has the faults of all of us, and none of the virtues," said John. "I cannot beat him, because I see him do all the things that I have always longed to do myself, and never dared."
"I cannot believe you ever wished to pour a basin of slops over poor old Mrs. Casey, when she was peeling the potatoes, or tie a cracker round a cow's udders, as Johnnie did yesterday, so Mahoney told me," protested Barbara. "The last was a most dangerous thing to do."
"It certainly shows a rather warped sense of the ridiculous," said Johnnie's father, "but I would dearly love to do such a thing myself."
"I don't believe it. You just say that to defend Johnnie."
"The boy will be ruined, you know, unless someone takes him in hand," said Doctor Armstrong seriously, who was Johnnie's godfather. "If he were mine I should beat him regularly, once a week, until he learnt manners. What is the use of his having intelligence unless he knows how to use it? Besides, he is not all that clever. Young Henry there will have a far better brain, you wait and see, and no nonsense about him."
"I don't believe beating Johnnie would do any good," said his father. "I've seen more high-spirited dogs ruined by a whipping than were ever made by one.
Upbringing has little to do with forming character, that is my opinion. Johnnie was born wild, and he will stay wild, and nothing you or I or Fanny-Rosa can do will ever change him."
And John, at thirty-six, with one or two grey hairs already in his dark head, thrust his hands into his pockets and strolled off across the grass in search of his first-born, thinking with a smile and a pain in his heart of his son's begetting, and how he was created out of love, and passion, and doubt, and tenderness, under the white moonlight on Hungry Hill.
"The truth of the matter is," said Doctor Armstrong to Barbara, "that the boy is not enough of a Brodrick, and rather too much of a Flower. When I think of what goes on at Castle Andriff, I find myself shaking my head over the future of Clonmere."
For to good, sober Willie Armstrong, born and bred in Buckinghamshire, and with fifteen years in the service of his king, life over here was something he found difficult to understand, especially as led by Simon Flower of Andriff. A man of fifty-eight who spent most of his time in the cellar or playing cards with his groom, while his roof crumbled above his head and his tenants mocked him to his face, was, so Doctor Armstrong considered, a figure more to be pitied than despised, but when he allowed his young daughter Matilda to elope with a cobbler from the village, a fellow already married, and invited her to live with her lover in the lodge of Castle Andriff and have one baby after another, then, Doctor Armstrong considered, a man such as Simon Flower was a menace to the country that had bred him. He could not understand how the old fellow could hold up his head in society, but then society was very different here from what it was the other side of the water.
The scandal of Matilda and her cobbler caused little concern, and even Mrs. Flower, who might have been expected to die of shame, merely heaved a sigh and declared that "poor Tilly" had never been quite the same after she fell off a horse at the age of fourteen, and really poor Sullivan was quite a good sort of fellow, and so obliging the way he came to do odd jobs about the castle for nothing.
"The person who takes it hardest is Bob," said Fanny-Rosa, putting away one of Edward's small gowns to send to her sister, "and it really must be rather trying to come home on leave, with one of your friends, and have your brother-in-law touch his hat to you at the gate, and Tilly scream "How are you. Bob?"' from the window of the lodge. It is inconvenient that both Tilly and I are expecting at the same time. This gown of Edward's would have come in for our baby, but, poor girl, I cannot very well grudge it to her."
Yes, it was a strange country, thought Doctor Armstrong, and he wondered sometimes why he continued to live in it, for his original reason for retiring from the army and taking up the practice in Doon-haven was there no longer. All that remained was a picture on the wall of the dining-room at Clonmere to remind him of a dream that could never be. He attached himself to the family for the sake of her who had gone, and it seemed to him that there was a quality each one shared in common with her, a smile, a gesture, a turn of speech, a softness of the voice, from Copper John with his dry humour, seldom shown these days, down to the infant Edward, with his warm brown eyes and slow baby chuckle. Clonmere might become like Castle And-riff, and indeed when Fanny-Rosa and her children were in residence there seemed every likelihood of its doing so, with the dogs, and the toys, and the sewing that littered the rooms, and John might become another Simon Flower, now he was putting on weight and taking no exercise, but the charm they brought upon the place was greater than the disturbance they created, the castle itself seemed the warmer and the brighter for their presence.
"The fact is," thought the doctor, "John, and Fanny-Rosa, and that tumbling godson of mine belong to the country, belong to Clonmere; they are part of the air and the soil, and they thrive here, like the pigs and the geese and the cattle. The Brodricks are Doonhaven, and Doonhaven is this country."
Two days afterwards he stood by the bedside of the oldest representative of the family, Ned Brodrick, the agent, seized by a stroke while riding round the estate, like his father before him, and as the old fellow breathed his last he winked solemnly at the doctor, fumbling with his hand under the bed-clothes, and produced a bag of coins he had hidden there for years, part of the rent roll of Clonmere, which he should have handed long since to the brother who employed him.
The whole family attended his funeral, Copper John and his daughters standing with bowed heads beside the agent's grave, and it seemed to the people of Doonhaven, who wailed aloud as was their custom, the most natural thing in the world that the coffin should be borne upon the shoulders of Ned's four illegitimate sons.
It was in September 1837 that Thomas Dowding, the Clerk to the Doonhaven Mining Company, returning from the mine in the late afternoon with the sum of able300 upon him, to be banked in the Post Office in Doonhaven until the following day, when the money would be taken to Slane, had his unfortunate encounter in the market-square with Sam Donovan, Sam Donovan's sister Mary Kelly, and James Kelly, his sister's husband. Mary Kelly, a foolish, excitable woman, was selling vegetables at her stall hard by the Post Office, as was her weekly custom, and, according to accounts given later by people standing by, a cabbage rolled from the stall at the feet of Dowding's horse, causing the animal to rear on his hind legs and throw the rider.
The Clerk, irritated by the circumstance of his fall, rose to his feet from the dust, and accused Mary Kelly of deliberately rolling the cabbage in the hope of an accident. Whereupon Sam Donovan and James Kelly, who emerged at that moment from the public-house opposite, proceeded to set upon the Clerk, and one of them, whether it was Kelly or Donovan no one seemed to know, seized his purse and scattered the contents on the ground.
Bank-notes and coins flew about the market-square, and the Clerk, alarmed at the turn of events, reached for his blunderbuss, with which he had been armed by Copper John for fear of robbers, and discharged it into the air, with the idea of subduing the people, who were by this time grubbing on hands and knees in search of the scattered notes. Unfortunately the shot struck James Kelly in the eye, wounding him mortally, and in a few moments the whole of Doonhaven was in an uproar. The Clerk, terrified for his life, took refuge in the Post Office, where the postmaster, with con siderable wisdom, had the sense to bar his doors and windows and send a lad, by a back entrance, for the police, and also for the Director of the mines, Copper John himself. Before very long order was restored, the body of the luckless James Kelly was removed to the house of his brother-in-law, Sam Donovan, where his widow had already preceded him in a state of hysteria, and Thomas Dowding, the Clerk to the Company, was taken in a closed carriage to the county jail in Mundy.
He came up for trial at the next Assizes, where he was acquitted, after a great deal of contradictory evidence had been heard, and dispatched from court with no more than a severe reprimand to the effect that he must in future be more careful in his use of firearms. The Clerk, considerably shaken by the whole event, was glad enough to relinquish his post to the Company and take himself to another part of the country, where it was hoped that time, and the change of scenery, would banish all memory of the affair from his troubled mind.
That was not the case, however, in Doonhaven. The old hatred of the mines, which had sunk into abeyance now for ten years, flared up again, and the Brodricks were looked upon askance in the village of Doonhaven or as they rode about the countryside. Once again the Clonmere tenants had their fences broken, their crops burned, and their cattle maimed. It could not be forgotten that the blunderbuss carried by the Clerk had come from the walls of Clonmere Castle itself, which fact, according to the supporters of the Donovans, made Copper John no more nor less than a murderer.
James Kelly, who in his lifetime had been a slow-witted fellow, with a partiality to strong ale, became in his death a martyour, the very paragon among men. He was, or so his widow declared, made in the likeness of the Saints, and never an angry word had she received from him in the fifteen years of their married life.
"He was too good for the world and for me, God help him," she said; "and as for those same Brodricks who set themselves to destroy his sweet life, the good God will see fit to punish them in His own time."
It so happened that John, who with Fanny-Rose and the children was spending the summer at Clonmere, became involved in the affair through chance, since it was he who had given the blunderbuss to the Clerk a few weeks previous to the accident. John found himself summoned as a witness, and was obliged to attend the Assizes with his father. The whole proceeding seemed to him fantastic and absurd, and it was only when he discovered two of his favourite greyhounds, which he had left in great health and spirits the night before, dead by poison that he realised he now had incurred the hatred of the Donovans in place of his father. It appeared to him the basest sort of revenge, to strike at a man through the torture of dumb animals, which were guiltless of any crime whatever.
"What the devil am I to do?" asked John of Fanny-Rosa, when they had buried poor Lightfoot and his brother under the old walnut tree in the walled garden. "I can't go down to Sam Donovan's shop and ask him if he poisoned my dogs. The fellow would smile in that sickening sly way of his, and tell me he did not know I owned a dog."
"But Tim saw that son of his climb through the fence last night, coming from the direction of the kennels," said Fanny-Rosa. "It is obvious that he did it.
Why don't you take a stick and thrash the lout within an inch of his life?"
"Yes, and be summoned by Sam for assault," said John wearily. "Oh, confound it, what's the use? Poor Lightfoot will never run again, or Dauntless either. They gave me the happiest moments of my life, after you, Fanny-Rosa. Maybe it's foolish of me, but this business has saddened me more than anything that has happened for years."
He went away by himself, and sat in the little summer-house up in the woods, where Henry used to lie ten years previously, and he thought about Lightfoot and Dauntless, how he had trained them both from puppyhood to be the champions of their year, and now they lay stiff and motionless, having died in agony, without their master near them. He wondered if they had cried for him in the night, and felt themselves lost and deserted when he had not answered them. The fun of those old coursing days, that first season in Norfolk, when Lightfoot had won all the points and all the cups, and then later, in this country, travelling over to Mundy with Fanny-Rosa beside him, the shouts of the crowds, the smile of the judge, Lightfoot slim and eager, waiting upon his master's word, his master's hand. There had been beauty in that dog, and a soul too, he could swear. They had understood one another as human beings rarely did. He had neglected the dogs these last years, allowed them to grow idle and fat like himself.
Well, there was an end of it all now. Nothing remained of his coursing days but the silver cups on the sideboard in the dining-room. '
Such a useless finish. Poisoned by the Donovans. He had never in his whole life harmed one of that family, but he remembered old Morty Donovan cursing him that night in the rain on Hungry Hill. So perhaps the curse was taking effect now. He wished that it could have spared the greyhounds. As John sat alone in the summer-house he began to think about the Donovans, and tried to put himself in their place. Clonmere had been theirs, he reminded himself, before a Brodrick had set foot in the place. And then, of course, like so many other families, the land had been taken away from them after the rebellion in 'bleda and given to some peer or other, and so to the first Henry Brodrick.
It was natural enough that they should show resentment, and natural enough that they should detest the duty-loving, law-abiding John Brodrick, who stopped them smuggling, and took away the only chance they had of making a bit of money on the sly. Small wonder that one of them took a shot at him when he was riding to church, and small blame if he was glad when the shot succeeded. They said the blood still welled up in the creek beside the drive on the anniversary of the day he died. John and Henry used to go and look for it as boys, but never a drop of blood did they see, unless it was chickens' blood thrown in the water by the woman at the gate-house hard by. Anyway, the Donovan who fired the fatal shot was killed for his work by Brodrick's friends and his house destroyed.
Little wonder there was enmity between the two families.
"If I had the energy," thought John, "I would go down to Doon-haven and have it out with Sam, and tell him to make an end to the business. Otherwise the ridiculous feud will never finish. Johnnie and that son of his will start scrapping about something, though I dare say Johnnie would hold his own without help from me or anyone."
He left the summer-house in better spirits than he had gone into it Poor Lightfoot and Dauntless were dead, but their lives had been happy, and maybe it was better that they should go suddenly, in their prime, even if their end had been painful, than live to an old age of rheumatism and bad teeth, unable to chase a hare when they saw one.
He came down from the woods to the bank above the house. The hydrangeas were in flower, and Barbara, in her shady hat, was moving amongst them with her scissors. She did not look well these days, sometimes he feared that cough of hers sounded too much like Henry's. No use saying anything, though. The children came running towards him, Johnnie turning somersaults, laying small Edward flat on his face as he cart-wheeled in the air. Fanny-Rosa came out of the house with the baby Herbert in her arms. Five children in eight years; they had not done badly…
She handed the little fellow to his aunt, and came up the bank to meet her husband. Something touched his heart as she did so. Would she always have the power to move him thus, with her smile, with her eyes, with the feel of her hand on his arm?
"It's our wedding day on the twenty-ninth," he told her. "We shall have been together nine years. Did you know that?"
"I'm not likely to forget it, am I?" she said, pointing to the children. "Maybe it's time I wore a cap in the house, and gave up running about the grounds the way I do. They say that the tenth year of married life is the most difficult."
"Do they now? And in what way would it be difficult?"
"Why, the husband becomes weary of seeing the same face every night on his pillow, and he looks around him to see if he might do better."
"How do you know I have not done so already, and cannot find one?"
"Because you are too lazy, dearest one, andwiththe side-whiskers on your face there's not a woman would look at you."
"I am not so lazy as you suppose. In fact, I propose taking a step one day this week that will astonish you when you hear of it."
"And what would that be?"
"I'll not tell you. You shall plague me as you will, but I shall keep my secret."
The truth was that John was determined after all to go down to the village to see Sam Donovan, and make an attempt to bury the hatchet of nearly two hundred years. It mattered little for himself, but for his children's sake he felt that it must be done. Why should Johnnie, and Henry, and Edward, and Herbert, and Fanny, be landed with ridiculous squabbles in the years to come? So a week after the poisoning of the greyhounds John set off one afternoon on foot for Doonhaven, having reluctantly refused to accompany Fanny-Rosa and the children on a picnic.
"There'll be picnics a-plenty in the days to come," he told them. "For once in my life I am going to do a piece of work."
"Don't let it kill you," laughed Fanny-Rosa.
"It certainly shan't do that," said her husband.
It was pleasant walking in the October sunshine.
The path through the woods was crisp with fallen leaves, and the old herons rose from their nests in the trees and flapped away at his approach. The tide was making in the creek. Some of the men were burning leaves up in the park. The good bitter wood smell came floating down to him on the wind. Soon the cock would be in, and he would persuade his father to take a day off from the mines with his gun. They might get a few snipe up in the bog at Kileen, and have another day with the hares on Doon Island. He would suggest to Fanny-Rosa that they stayed on at Clonmere until Christmas. Five small children seemed like ten at Lletharrog. If they went on as they were doing at present he would have to give the farm-house back to his father and take something larger. It was close and sultry down in Doonhaven, more like summer than autumn in the market-square, and the place seemed deserted, as it always did in the afternoon.
He went down to the quay, and along to Sam Donovan's shop. It was closed, and the shutter was up at the window. He knocked on the door, and presently it was opened by Sam's wife, a thin, tired-looking woman, who was wiping her hands on a dirty apron. A girl of ten or eleven, with a mop of fair hair and light blue eyes like all the Donovans, peered over her mother's shoulder.
"Is Sam at home?" asked John, aware that his voice sounded a shade too hearty to be natural.
"He is not," said the woman, gazing at him suspiciously.
"Oh, I am sorry for that," said John. "I came down to speak to him most particularly."
The woman made no reply, and after waiting a moment, John turned away. Perhaps he had bungled the business after all. He heard the child whisper to her mother, and then she ran out on to the quay.
"My father is staying with my uncle Denny, on account of the sickness," she said. "If you want to speak to him you will find him there. Mother and I have not seen him these two weeks."
John thanked the child, and went back along the quay. Having come down to Doonhaven for the purpose, it was something of an anti-climax to find Sam was not at home, and his good effort made for nothing. The church clock struck four. It was too late to join the others for their picnic. No, he had set himself to the task, and the task might as well be done. He would walk over to Denny Donovan's, and see both brothers at the same time. There was nothing like doing the business thoroughly, now he had made up his mind to it. It was an ideal day for a walk too, the air up on the road to Denmare would be grand after the village.
Once again he left Doonhaven behind him, and the gate-house, and the park, and struck up westward on the road across the moors. His father had won his way, and the road had been widened in places, and now ran straight through to the Denmare river, but John did not notice that much good had been done by it, only that more people came down from the country to Doonhaven on market days and Saints' days. Denny Donovan's public-house-it was hardly more than a shack-was some three miles along the road, a dirty, tumbled-down place, with a few bedraggled hens scratching in the yard behind. Denny's cart was put up in the shed beside the house, and his pony was turned loose on the moor beside the road.
"At any rate," thought John, "he is at home, if Sam is not."
He saw the figure of a woman looking down at him from behind a blind in the upstairs bedroom, and believed that he recognised Mary Kelly, the widow of the unfortunate man who had been shot. His courage began to fail him. Perhaps it was nothing but quixotic foolishness after all that had led him here.
The door of the public entrance was shut, with a bar across it, and John went round the yard to the back. It was odd of Denny Donovan to close his door against possible customers. More likely than not he had run out of liquor, and had been unable to go into Mundy to replenish his store.
John knocked on the door, and, gaining no response, boldly lifted the latch and walked in. There was nobody below, but he could hear sounds of movement overhead in the bedroom. The public bar had a grey, neglected air about it. There was dust everywhere, and on the bar itself two or three unwashed glasses that looked as if they had stood there for days. He thumped on the bar with his fist, and after a moment or two he heard footsteps coming down the rickety stairs, and Sam Donovan stood before him. He was wearing a night-shirt stuffed into a pair of breeches, and was unshaven. He stood staring at his visitor, and began scratching his ear and half smiling in the old fawning way that was his mannerism.
"Good-day, Sam," said John, holding out his hand, which the other took, after a moment's hesitation.
"I've thought for some time I should like a talk with you, and so I went down to your shop this afternoon, but your wife sent me on here. I gathered you had not been well."
"Ah, it's nothing much that ails me, Mr.
Brodrick, it's Denny that has had the sickness, and Mary and I came out here to nurse him, They say he caught it from drinking bad water up at Mundy, when we were witnessing there at the Assizes."
"I'm sorry for that."
"Would you come up and speak to him? Sure, he's in bed, but that's no matter, and he can speak now the fever has left him."
John followed Sam Donovan upstairs, and was shown into a small, stuffy bedroom, the same at which Mary Kelly had been standing when he arrived. The windows were tightly closed, and the air was appalling.
Sam's brother Denny was lying in bed, and his widowed sister was sitting beside him. She had a black lace cap on her head, which John could swear she was not wearing when he saw her at the window. Denny Donovan looked thin and wretched. Whatever was the truth of the story about the bad water of Mundy, at least he had drunk something that had not agreed with him.
"You're in a poor way, I hear, Denny," said John.
"I'm easier now than I was, Mr.
John," said the man, watching him over the bed-clothes, "but the fever had me racked for days and it's a surprise to me that I am here at all, after what I have suffered. And poor Mary here, having just put her dear husband in the grave, thinks nothing of the infection, nor Sam either, but both of them come out here to tend me. There is affection for you, between brother and brother."
"Yes, indeed," said John, remembering how some few years ago he had seen Sam belabouring Denny on New Year's Day, calling him a rogue and a devil, both brothers having celebrated too freely the passing of the year. "And since we are on the subject of affection, I must tell you what I have come to see you about. First of all, I am sorry for that wretched accident where your husband was killed, Mrs. Kelly, and I want you to believe it."
"He was a fine man," said the widow. "You would not see another the same, not this side of Paradise."
"It was a sad business," said Sam. "Here's poor Mary likely to starve, and she with no sons to support her. It's little Denny or I can do for her either, being poor men, with families of Our own. It's what we were saying only this afternoon, that it would be a saintly act if some kind gentleman should befriend her, but where is one to be found in the country?"
"I would never have given the blunderbuss to Thomas Dowding to carry had I thought he would use it," said John.
"It was for ornamental purposes," said Denny.
"He liked to parade it before people. That's what I said to you at the time, Sam."
"If Mrs. Kelly is really in need of help, I will willingly give it," said John.
"And don't you think the time has come when we might forget the old quarrel between our families, and make it up? I am the first to admit that much of the provocation has been on our side. We have been lucky, through one circumstance or another, and you have been unfortunate. Shall we say no more about it, and all four of us shake hands?"
There was a moment's silence. The widow sighed deeply, and San? Donovan scratched his ear.
"How much would you be willing to allow my sister?" he said.
"It depends what she's worth to both of you,"
John replied, and getting up, he went and stood by the window and opened it, breathing in the scented moorland air.
He had been an idiot to come after all. They had not understood his gesture. They thought that he wanted to buy them off from making further disturbances. It served him right. How his father would scorn him if he knew what he had done. A fool and his money are soon parted… Meanwhile the brothers had been conferring with their sister.
"Mary thinks she could manage on five shillings a week," said Sam.
"Very well," said John, "I will see that she gets it." He put his hand in his pocket, and drew out some coins. "This is the first instalment," he said.
"You had better open an account at the Post Office; the money will be safer there."
"Fetch Mr. John a drink, Sam," said the sick brother, "to celebrate the occasion. There's a bottle of whisky in the cupboard, and here is a glass for him. I'd join you but for this fever; when the spirit goes down me you would say it was molten lead, so swollen is my throat."
This is, thought John, the most senseless moment of my very senseless life, to be drinking whisky with the Donovans, and preparing to keep Mary Kelly for life. I don't think I shall have the courage even to tell Fanny-Rosa.
The widow appeared to have recovered her spirits, and, joining John in his glass of whisky, asked after the children.
"Handsomer boys than yours, Mr. Brodrick," she said, "it has seldom fallen to my lot to see.
They are like the blessed angels in heaven."
"You would not think so, Mrs. Kelly, if you lived with them," said John.
The lunacy of the whole proceeding struck him so forcibly that he could hardly restrain himself from laughing out loud. Here he was, being flattered and patted on the back by the very people who had poisoned his dogs, and giving them money into the bargain.
"Well, good-day to you, Denny," he said, setting down his glass. "I hope you will soon be better and about once more. Let it be a lesson to you never to drink water again."
He went down the stairs, followed by Sam and the widow, who escorted him to the door with smiles and fine speeches.
"Good afternoon, Mr. John," said Sam.
"Sure, if there is anything I can do for you at any time, down in the shop, you have only to pass me the word."
"Right, Sam, I will remember," said John, and he set off along the road back to Clonmere, shaking with laughter at the fool he had made of himself. At any rate, it might have the result of keeping the Donovans quiet for another ten years.
He arrived home to find the family returned from their picnic, and sitting down to dinner. The children had enjoyed themselves, and Johnnie had lost a front tooth.
Fanny-Rosa was flushed, and freckled, and adorable. Everyone was in high good humour, perhaps because Copper John was passing a few days in Slane, and the atmosphere in the house was the lighter for his absence.
Willie Armstrong joined them for dessert, and the curtains were drawn early, and the candles lit, and they all sat round the fire to roast chestnuts.
"By the way," said the doctor, "you will be glad to hear, Barbara, that there is not the slightest likelihood of an epidemic after all. The cases were isolated, and have come into no contact with other people. This diphtheria, as they call it, is a very dangerous disease."
"How thankful I am," said Barbara. "I could not bear to think of fever in the district with the children about."
"Dennis Donovan is an extremely lucky man to have got over it so quickly," said Doctor Armstrong; "but they are all alike, that family, they have the strength of twenty oxen."
John threw his uneaten chestnut into the fire and stared across at his friend. "Did you say Denny Donovan had diphtheria?" he said quietly.
"Yes," answered the doctor. "Why, what's the matter?"
John rose to his feet, and went over to the window. He stood for a moment thinking rapidly, and then turned about and faced his family.
"I'm afraid I have to tell you all," he said, "that I did not know of this, and I have been with Denny Donovan this afternoon."
His friend, his sisters, and his wife stared at him aghast. In a few Words he told them his story.
His voice was quiet and low. When he had finished he looked across at Fanny-Rosa, as though asking for her love and understanding. She stood very still, terror in her eyes that he had never seen before.
"If you have brought the infection home to Johnnie, I shall never forgive you," she said.
So much of the room was dark. He could not even see the pictures of Eton on the wall. Nor the cases that held the butterflies. Nor the birds' eggs. And it made a loneliness lying there, because he loved the things that belonged to him, and when he could not see them he felt shut out, a stranger, someone who tossed and turned upon a bed that was not his own. He kept falling too, into a bottomless pit, the sides of which were clammy cold like the rock-face of the mine, and his father, peering at him from above, would shake his head and turn away, saying that he was not worth the saving, he would never make anything of his life. Then his father would change into his tutor at Eton, looking at him over his gold-rimmed glasses, fingering his report. "Brodrick minor lacks initiative…? That was the trouble. He had always lacked initiative. He had never wanted to serve his country, or practise at the Bar, or help his father run the mine at Doon-haven, or do any of the things that people expected him to do. He only wanted to be left alone. The greyhounds had understood him best; they stood beside him shivering and expectant, their long, slim bodies quivering in excitement, their eyes, keen and intelligent, waiting upon his word.
He liked to take their muzzles in his hands, shake them slowly from side to side, and whisper absurdities under his breath. Lightfoot, proud and disdainful, not even straining at the leash that held him, and the sudden spring and dive, the twist and turn, and there would be one hare the less on Doon Island.
The room was too hot, it was like a furnace closing in upon him, and when he asked for a window to be opened someone with a voice he did not recognise bade him be quiet, bade him rest, as though he were a child and old Martha was in charge again.
If only he could leave his bed and go out once more, and smell the heather and the grass on Hungry Hill. Bathe in the little lake and feel the soft wind upon his naked body. Fanny-Rosa would come too, she would not be afraid of the infection in the open air'.
"The man recovered from his bite, the dog it was that died."
He remembered reading that to the children one evening by the fire in the living-room at Lletharrog. Somehow it suited the present occasion very well. In two days' time it would be the twenty-ninth of October, and his and Fanny-Rosa's wedding day. Maybe she would just venture to the end of the corridor and look in upon him, lying here in the room in the tower. She would wave her hand, and blow a kiss to him.
The darkness was upon him once again, and whether it was day or night he did not know, but in a moment of strange lucidity he suddenly saw the whole chain of incidents that had brought him to his bed, and how, but for the lending of the blunderbuss to the Clerk, he would be out in the garden now with Fanny-Rosa and the children. The Clerk riding down from the mines, with three hundred pounds in his purse.
"Jane always said the mines brought ill-luck upon the family," he thought, "but my father will not believe it. He will still be selling copper twenty years hence, when all that remains of me is the silver cup I won for coursing in 1829."
He must have slept a long while, because when he woke he could see a chink of daylight coming through the drawn curtains, and he could hear the pigeons in the woods behind the castle, and the familiar clanking of pails in the stable yard. He felt very tired, and peaceful, and content.
"At least," he thought, "if I have been the dullest of the Brodricks, I have also been the happiest."