Hungry Hill (20 page)

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.”