Hungry Hill (35 page)

The old pride in his home, that he had known as a small boy when he had coveted Clonmere from his grandfather, returned once more He would show Katherine that he was not utterly despicable, that he was master of his house and of himself, and she would understand why he wished his home to shine for her this day. He went inside to give a last-minute direction to his servant, and was told that Mr. Donovan was waiting to see him in the library. He frowned; he had hinted to Jack a few days previously that he would be obliged if his agent and his sister made themselves scarce while his brother and sister-in-law were staying. Henry did not care for Jack Donovan, and Henry, being his guest, must be deferred to for the period of the visit.

“What is it, Jack?” he said. “Is anything wrong?”

The agent’s face was very solemn. His ginger hair was plastered down with grease, and he was wearing his Sunday clothes.

“Kate’s very low, Captain,” he said gravely. “She’s wondering whether you can slip up to the gate-house and see her?”

“Of course I can’t,” said Johnnie irritably. “You know I have Mr. Henry and his wife coming, and several other people. I shan’t be coming to the gate-house until they have all gone. My brother may be here for several days.”

Jack Donovan’s face became gloomier still.

“She’ll take it very bad, sir,” he said.

“In fact, I don’t know what to do with her, and that’s the plain truth of the matter. Not a wink of sleep last night for the pair of us. And she crying and taking on so, 1 thought I should have to send for Doctor Armstrong. I am glad I did not, with him coming here to shoot today.”

“What the devil’s the matter, then?” said Johnnie, glancing impatiently at the clock.

“The party will be here any minute.”

Jack Donovan coughed, and ran his cap along the edge of the table.

“Women take such fancies into their heads at these times, Captain,” he said. “Say what I would, she wouldn’t listen to me. “I’ll destroy myself,” says she. “I’ll throw myself into the creek, if he turns his back on me now.”

“You be quiet, Kate,” says I. “The Captain is too good a friend to treat you, a respectable young woman, like he might a poor creature of the streets. He’ll see you righted, depend upon it, before the mischief is spread abroad to cause a scandal through the country by which he could not hold his head up before the gentry.” ?

Johnnie banged his fist down on the desk.

“Look here, Jack,” he said. “What in the name of God are you driving at, and what’s suddenly come over Kate to behave in such an astounding fashion?”

“Why, sir,” said his agent, opening his eyes wide in astonishment, “you surely know Kate is in a certain condition, and has been like it, she tells me, these past two months?”

Johnnie stared at his agent heavily, his mind in a turmoil.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it,” he said.

Jack Donovan went on rubbing his cap along the desk.

“The poor creature is that distraught she scarcely knows what she’s about,” he said. “The reverend father is with her now, praying beside her. It’s my belief she’ll have no comfort, though, until she’s seen you.”

“I can’t see her, it’s impossible,” said Johnnie excitedly, pacing up and down the room.

“Surely you can explain the position; she knows perfectly well that my brother and his wife are expected. Is she sure of her facts? How does she know about this-this damned business?”

“Sure, her old auntie down in Doonhaven told her it was certain. I tell you, Captain, it’s enough to break a man’s heart. Here’s this young woman, my sister, given herself to you without thought of the consequences, and likely to kill herself unless we can find an honour” able end to it all.”

There was a sound of wheels upon the drive, and Johnnie, glancing out of the window, saw his brother’s carriage drive up to the door.

“Look here, Jack,” he said desperately, “I can’t deal with this matter now… . Go out, by the back door, and don’t show yourself here until I send for you. Take yourself off, man, for God’s sake.”

He fumbled in his coat pocket for his flask, and drank the contents, and then went out on to the drive to greet his brother, his heart beating, his whole mind in an agony of anger and distress.

“Dear Johnnie,” said Katherine, stepping down from the carriage, giving him her hands; and the sight of her, cool, beautiful, serene, with her calm madonna face, made a damning contrast to the hasty image he had conjured of a flushed, dishevelled Kate in the back bedroom of the gate-house.

“Are you all right, old boy?” said Henry. “You look a bit upset.”

“Of course I’m all right,” said Johnnie swiftly. “How are you, Henry? And Bill, too? Brought your gun, I hope? Good. Where’s the doctor? There are one or two others coming. Let’s start walking through the woods, shall we? Wait though.

I haven’t shown Katherine her room.”

His manner was so agitated, his speech so inconsequent, that Henry and Bill Eyre exchanged a glance of understanding.

“Don’t bother about me, Johnnie,” said Katherine. “I shall be perfectly happy if you want to get off to your shoot.”

“Damn the shoot,” said Johnnie; “your comfort is the only thing that matters,” and he started pulling the bell-rope in the hall so violently that it broke.

“I think it would be best if we left Katherine to do as she pleases,” said Henry smoothly. “Here come Uncle William and the others, and there’s Phillips and the beaters. What about getting into the air, Johnnie old man, and cooling down a bit?”

Everything was going wrong, thought Johnnie. It was not thus that he had planned the day. Katherine was now to be left alone, apparently, instead of coming with them, and surely he had told that blasted idiot Phillips to meet them up by the farm where they were to shoot first, and not come down here on to the lawn in front of the house with that ragged collection of youths and urchins who looked as if they had been grubbing in the barn after rats ? The strong drink he had taken, on top of his interview with Jack Donovan, and the pent-up excitement of Katherine’s visit combined, put his temper quite out of control.

He started to shout and rave at the keeper, who had chosen, for some unknown reason, to get himself up like a scarecrow, and was wearing a pair of very old darned breeches, with a patch in the seat, instead of the new corduroys that Johnnie had ordered especially for the occasion.

“By heaven!” said Johnnie. “This is too much, when a fellow disobeys my orders to such an extent,” and hardly knowing what he was about, he lifted his gun and fired straight at the unfortunate fellow’s backside.

The keeper fell forward on to his face, with a cry of pain, and Johnnie, dazed and bewildered, watched his godfather and Bill Eyre rush forward to the man’s assistance. Henry took hold of his brother’s arm and led him back into the house.

“I don’t think any damage has been done,” he said, “but under the circumstances I think it would be best if you stayed at home, and allowed me to conduct the shoot. That is, if we decide to shoot at all after what has occurred.”

The affair had happened so suddenly, and was so ludicrous, that Henry hardly knew whether-to laugh or to be angry, but there was something tragic, almost frightening, in the expression on his brother’s face, and he did not like to leave him alone.

“I’ll call Katherine,” he said; “she’ll stay with you.”

And he went into the hall and looked up towards the landing.

“No,” said Johnnie. “No ?

He felt sick and tired and bitterly ashamed of having made such an exhibition of himself, and to have Katherine know of his behaviour was the last thing he wanted in the world.

“Here,” he said, calling to his brother and feeling in his pocket for a couple of sovereigns, “give the fellow this-tell him I’m sorry-and go out and enjoy yourselves, if you can. It’s as well I don’t come with you. Even if nothing had happened, I should have spoilt your day. ‘?

Now his futile ridiculous anger was spent he was exhausted, he wanted to forget everything and everybody. He went into the library and shut the door, and sitting down in his grandfather’s hard upright chair, he buried his face in his hands. He could hear Katherine’s soft footstep in the bedroom overhead, as she unpacked her clothes, and presently the distant sound of shots came from the woods above the castle. The house was peaceful, still.

And then he remembered the stuffy kitchen at the gate-house, the crucifix and the rosary on the wall, and Jack Donovan, and Kate, and Father Healey. The miserable tangle he had got himself into, shaming and sordid, filled him with despair, and bitter, useless anger. He could picture the family at the gate-house, the old aunt from the village, probing, questioning her niece, and Father Healey, with his rosary dangling over his fat stomach, muttering prayers beside the hysterical Kate. The thought of seeing her, or touching her, revolted him. It was humiliating and degrading that those hours of drunken oblivion should result in this claim upon him, and that a woman for whom he cared nothing should feel herself bound to him because of what had passed between them. Again he heard Katherine’s footstep overhead, and her low voice as she said something to the housemaid, and he remembered his visit to East Grove last summer, when Henry, proud and happy, had confided to him that Katherine was expecting a baby before Christmas. How tender his brother had been, how anxious, how full of solicitude, insisting that his wife should rest upon the sofa, should not tire herself in any way; and it had made a pang at the time in Johnnie’s heart because of the closeness they must ‘ have for one another. He envied his brother, envied the calm serenity of his life, the still, untroubled progress of the months while Katherine waited for her baby to be born, and Henry’s pride, his unaffected joy when his daughter came into the world. And now, at the end of Johnnie’s drive, at the gate-house, was a woman in precisely the same state as Katherine had been nearly twelve months ago, because of Johnnie. The knowledge of it revolted him, made him shudder; he never wanted to look at her again.

How many times before this must have happened, in his own family, amongst his own forebears; and he remembered the tale of his great-grandfather and the sons he had scattered about the countryside. Perhaps he had thought little of it, and ridden through Doon-haven and thrown a coin to a dark-haired brat grubbing in the street, knowing it was his, and thought no more about it. Not Johnnie. He could not live thus. He could not live at Clonmere and know that there was a slatternly, unattractive Kate hiding herself in her brother’s shop in the village, and later know of a child, with his own blood in its veins, calling Jack Donovan “uncle.”

Oh God, how sordid, how lacking in beauty was this life he led! Was there no way out of it, no finish to the business? He looked at the gun he had laid aside, propped against the wall. Yes, there was always that way. But suppose it did not work?

Suppose he made a mess of it, as he had made a mess of everything else, and all he did was to blow half the side of his face away and continue to live? Johnnie touched the gun, ran his hand along the barrel. Perhaps he would not miss, after all.

But he lacked the courage, that was the fact of the matter. He would have to obliterate fear with whisky before he set about it. He opened the long drawer in his grandfather’s desk, and pulled out a bottle that was about a quarter full. Not enough there, he thought, to make a proper job of it. And then, as he was uncorking the bottle, the door opened and Katherine came into the room. She stood on the threshold, looking at him, and he stared at her foolishly, the bottle of whisky in his hand.

“I’m sorry, Johnnie,” she said. “I came to find a book. I thought you had gone out shooting with Henry and the others.”

She turned away, quietly, with delicacy; it was as though she had suddenly come upon him in his bath.

He put the bottle away in his desk, and shut the lid.

“Please don’t go,” he said. “I-I want to talk to you.”

She turned round once more, watching him with her grave, kind eyes. What must she think of me? he wondered.

“The day has gone wrong,” he said-“my fault, as always. The others have gone shooting without me.”

She came over to him, and put her hand on his shoulder.

“What went wrong, Johnnie?” she said. “Can I do anything to help?”

Anything to help… . There she stood beside him.

He had only to make one move and she would be in his arms. Katherine, the remote and distant one, with her madonna face, her soothing, gentle hands.

He turned away abruptly.

“No,” he said harshly, “you can’t help. Why should you? Nobody tan. Why don’t you go and join Henry and your brother?”

She did not move. She went on standing there, looking at him.

“You’re unhappy,” she said, “and when people are unhappy they do foolish things.”

He saw her glance at the open drawer from which he had taken the bottle of whisky, and from there towards the gun, propped against his desk.

“Well?” he said aggressively, “what about it?

Wouldn’t it be simpler if I put an end to myself?

No one would care.”

“There you are mistaken,” she said. “Many people would care. Your mother, Henry, your other brothers, and Fanny. All your friends.”

“I have no friends,” he said.

“I thought I was your friend,” she answered.

He did not say anything for a moment. Katherine his friend… .

“You have Henry, and your baby, and your home,” he said. “Why should you bother about me ? I’m not worth it, anyway.”

“One does not love people for what they are worth,” she said gently. “One loves them for themselves.”

What did she mean? When she said the word love, did she mean pity? Did she discuss him with Henry when they were alone together, saying, “Something must be done about him”?

“If you think you can reform me at this late hour you’re wasting your time,” he said.

She went over to the window and stared out across the garden.

“This could be such a happy, peaceful house,” she said, “and you don’t allow it to be so. You put your sad, angry thoughts about it.”

“It would be happy and peaceful if you lived here always,” he said, “instead of coming for one night.”