Hungry Hill (19 page)

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?