Hungry Hill (50 page)

A wild hope surged in the heart of each of them. Kitty ran upstairs after her father. Hal went into the drawing-room. He pulled the miniature out of his pocket and looked at it once again. If they were going home he would be able to compare it with the original at Clonmere. What a fool he must have seemed at tea, jolting the teacup, and talking about that fellow Brown, whom he had gone for a walk with once, on a Sunday. Perhaps if he gave the miniature it would make up for it in some way. His father would know that there was something he could do, and it would show too that he knew his father was often lonely and unhappy without mamma.

He decided to make a secret of it, to put it somewhere where his father would find it at an odd moment.

Hal went over to the desk and wrote on a piece of paper “Father-from his loving son, Hal,” and taking the miniature out of his pocket, he wrapped the paper round it, and put it just inside the desk. Then he went and sat down by the fire, and thought about going back home to Clonmere. Kitty must be right. That was the explanation of the whole business and why the Adeline person had brought so many trunks.

Clonmere again, the room in the tower, the horses, the dogs, old Tim, the woods and the creek, Uncle Tom and Aunt Harriet. Life would fall into pattern again, even if mamma could not be with them.

Life would have meaning. He would sail a boat in the creek. He would shoot hares on Doon Island.

He would make a painting of Hungry Hill Kitty came into the room, round-eyed, mysterious.

“Frostie’s upset,” she said. “What can father have said to her? And she’s gone into the spare room to talk to that woman, with her tight-lipped face on, you know, the one she has when she’s worried. Surely Frostie would want to go back home.”

She broke off, as her father came into the room, followed by Molly, who was white and strained. Henry shut the door. He went and stood over by the fire-place. He too looked anxious.

Perplexed also, as though he did not understand what was the matter with Molly.

“You must be sensible, dear girl,” he was saying.

“Why, it’s for all your sakes, far more than for my own, that I have done this. Do you think it’s been easy for me all these years?”

“We were happy as we were,” said Molly, “we don’t want anyone else.”

She began to cry, like a little girl, not like someone of fifteen. Kitty ran over to her and stood beside her.

Hal said nothing. He stared at his father.

“She’s a wonderful woman,” Henry said, “so efficient and so intelligent. The trouble is I’ve let things go to pieces for too long. You’ve all been allowed to do as you like-the servants, Miss Frost, and all of you. Now your stepmother will take a hand and put everything to rights. If you have any affection for me at all, you will be glad that, this has happened.

You’ll soon become fond of her, I know you will.

I can’t tell you what she hasn’t done for me already.”

Stepmother… . Hal went on staring at his father.

“You and Kitty were not in the room when I told Moily,” said Henry, feeling his son’s eyes upon him. “I married Mrs. Price in Nice a fortnight ago. She has been a wonderful friend to me. One day, when you are older, I may tell you all about it. In the meantime I ask you to give her a welcome, and to try to show her some sign of appreciation. Molly seems to have taken it badly, I don’t quite know why. It does not mean I love her any the less.”

Molly was still crying, biting and twisting the ends of her handkerchief. Her eyes were red and swollen.

“You’d better go upstairs,” said Henry in despair. “If Adeline sees you like that she will wonder what on earth is the matter. My God, what a welcome home! I wish to heaven we had stayed out in Nice.”

He began pacing up and down the room.

“Will she live here always?” said Kitty. “Is that why she brought all those trunks?”

“Of course she will live with us,” said Henry impatiently. “She is Mrs. Brodrick now.

You can call her Adeline.”

Molly ran out of the room. Hal could hear her rush up the stairs and slam her bedroom door.

Kitty followed her. Hal felt sick. He did not say anything. He and his father were alone. From the room above came the sound of trunks being dragged across the floor and the low murmur of voices. The little gold clock on the mantelpiece ticked fast and rather shrill.

“It’s for your good,” repeated Henry, “you must try to realise that. The two girls need a woman of culture and breeding to look after them. Miss Frost is no earthly use. It’s not quite the same for you, because you will be at Eton most of the time, but there are always the holidays. Besides, one wants companionship. When you are my age’”

He left the rest of his sentence in the air. What was he doing, appealing to this boy of fourteen for sympathy and understanding; who could not possibly know what he had endured these last years ? The unprofitable days, the lonely nights, which now could be blotted out and forgotten.

“It’s very hard for a parent,” he said, “to be left alone with the responsibility of a young family on his shoulders. It happened to my mother. I believe now that she found it a great burden. Your uncles and I could not understand, naturally, and I have no doubt we were a trial to her.”

Still Hal said nothing. He went on staring at his father with blank eyes.

Henry walked over to his desk, and opened it, and began looking through the pile of letters that had accumulated during his absence. He tore them open one by one, scarcely reading the contents. He could hear Adeline’s brisk, firm tread in the bedroom above as she unpacked her things. There was a constant coming and going on the stairs as the servants carried up the remainder of the luggage. Suddenly a small package and a piece of paper caught his eye: “Father- from his loving son, Hal.” He picked it up, and glanced across at the boy.

“Is this your present?” he said, summoning a smile. “Thank you very much, old fellow.”

He began to unwrap the paper.

Hal did nothing. He made no effort to stop him. It was as though he could not move, could not speak.

He stood in the middle of the room like a dumb thing, powerless to help, his heart aching with a strange anguish but imperfectly understood, his mind mocking, bitter, and a black devil whispering, “Go on, open it, open it; damn you.”

Henry held the miniature in his hands. The paper wrapping fell to the floor. Hal watched his face, but no change came upon it, save that his lips tightened, making two hard lines at the corners of his mouth. It seemed to Hal that eternity passed as his father looked upon the miniature. The clock went on ticking. A cab passed in the street outside. A piece of coal fell from the fire into the hearth and smouldered there. Then his father spoke, his voice sounding distant,” coming from afar.

“It’s very good,” he said, “very capably done.

Thank you.” He opened a little drawer in his desk and put the miniature inside. Then he took a key from the bunch on his chain and locked the drawer. “You had better go up to Molly,” he said. “See that she does something to her face before dinner. By the way, Adeline likes it punctually at half-past seven, so you must all be ready and changed five minutes before.”

“Yes, father,” said Hal.

He waited a moment, but Henry did not meet his eyes. He had turned away, and was staring at the fire. Hal left the room and climbed the stairs to the first floor. The spare bedroom door was open.

There were folds of tissue paper on a chair, and silver brushes on the dressing-table. A strange black evening frock lay on the bed. Someone was drawing the water in his father’s bathroom… . Hal climbed slowly to the second floor.

It was worse for the girls, of course. They had to suffer and endure the changes, while he was at Eton. Molly and Kitty had to see poor Frostie go, and have that vile Swiss maid take her place. Lizette had five different nurses in nine months, because no one was supposed to treat her foot correctly. Letter after letter would come from Molly, furious and miserable in turn.

“We never see father alone,” she would write.

“She sticks to him like glue, and if he gets up and goes out of the room she follows him. And at meal-times she talks all the time through us to him, and looks daggers if Kitty or I try to get in a word. And she’s changed all the furniture round in the drawing-room, and had new covers made, which Kitty and I think are hideous, and I’m sure father does too, but he won’t say so. He seems unable to cope.”

Father, who had always been so magnificent a person, so reliable, so strong, was now, it seemed, a man of no account. The god had fallen from his pedestal. He had no will, no mind of his own.

Whatever Adeline declared in her brisk, downright way, he echoed, not from conviction, but because it was less troublesome. Once only did they come down together to visit Hal at Eton, and the day was a miserable failure. First of all she criticised his room, found fault with his appearance.

“Don’t stoop so,” she said, “you’re positively round-shouldered. Henry, this boy ought to have sat with a backboard for an hour every day. And he’s far too pale. He ought to go for a good run.

Why don’t you join the beagles?”

“I don’t want to,” Hal answered.

“In the summer, of course, you’ll be made to play cricket. Oh, but you’re a wet bob, aren’t you? I suppose you chose that because it meant less exertion. Boys are all alike. They need driving.”

She spoke always in that bright, aggressive manner which was so characteristic of everything she did, and which made argument impossible. Her blue eyes flitted up and down the walls of his room, seized upon his pictures. Hal could see her mouth twitch in amusement.

“Studying for the Academy, I suppose?” she said. “That tree is a bit out of drawing, isn’t it? Not that I’m a judge of these things, but I do know a crooked line when I see one.” She laughed over her shoulder at Henry. “If that’s what your old Clonmere looks like, I’m not surprised you let it,” she said. “I’ll be bound it was damp too, with all that water so close. Well, Hal, what else have you got to show us?”

“Nothing,” he said, “nothing at all.”

“Not very prolific, are you? You’ll never make your fortune. What about some lunch in Windsor?

I’m starving.”

And throughout the day it was the same; mocking, teasing, contrasting his lanky, overgrown figure with that of other boys of his own age.

“You seem to lack ambition,” she said, “you have no interest in anything. Wouldn’t you like to be Captain of the Cricket Eleven one day, or head of Pop, or whatever they call it?”

“Not particularly,” said Hal.

“It’s no use, Adeline,” said his father. “I’m fated to have a son who is totally undistinguished.

It’s a pity, but there it is.”

He spoke lightly, shrugging his shoulders, but his words stung’

“Your uncle Herbert has asked you all to Lletharrog in the summer,” he said. “Adeline and I will probably go abroad.”

He did not kiss him. The train steamed away, and Hal was left with the sovereign in his hand. They never came again.

Holidays at Lletharrog or at Saunby became a method of escape. The girls were so pathetically glad to get away from Lancaster Gate. Now that Great-aunt Eliza was dead the house at Saunby belonged to Uncle Herbert too. His family would move there from Lletharrog “during the summer months.

“I wish we could stay with you always,” said Kitty.

“I never want to go back to Lancaster Gate again.”

“Why, nonsense,” smiled Uncle Herbert.

“I know how fond you are of your father.”

“It’s different now,” said Kitty.

Uncle Herbert did not say anything. But later, when the girls and their brother were walking on the sands, Kitty said: “I heard Uncle Herbert call Adeline that “damn woman” to Aunt Cathie. They were in the study, and the door was open. I heard him say the whole thing was a tragedy. Fancy him saying damn, and he’s a clergyman.”

“No one likes her,” said Molly fiercely.

“If only I had the courage I’d run away and be a governess. She told father that poor little lizette was sly, and that all crippled children had something wrong mentally. Lizette, who is so clever and sweet. It’s queer, she dislikes Clonmere, although she has never been there. She’s even taken down the picture of it that used to hang in the drawing-room. And whenever anyone talks about the country she makes a laughing, sarcastic remark.”

“Just think,” said Kitty. “Father has only gone across three times since mamma died, and then he stayed in a hotel in Slane and did his business from there. And when we lived at Clonmere he used to drive up to the mines every day. I don’t understand how the mines go on without him.”

“A running concern doesn’t need the proprietor’s supervision,” said Hal. “There’s a chap at my tutor’s whose father owns a coal mine, and he’s never even seen the place. He just sits at home and rakes in the dividends. There’s no point in working if you can get money for doing nothing.”

“Mamma would have hated to hear you say that, Hal,” said Molly. “It goes against all she used to teach us.”

“I dare say it does,” answered Hal, “but what’s the use? No one ever talks to us in the way she did. And the fellows at Eton would think I was pi or a fool if I tried to keep it up. If we’d all been living at home at Clonmere it would be different. I dare say father and I would have gone up to the mines together, and I should have had a feeling for them, as though they were all bound up with the family. Now I don’t care twopence. And anyway, there will always be loads of money coming from them, that’s the main thing. I shall do myself well when I go up to Oxford, I don’t mind telling you.”

“Don’t forget what Uncle Herbert was telling us the other day about the copper trade falling to bits.

Several mines in Cornwall have been closed,” said Molly.

“Yes, but he also said the more enterprising ones had discovered tin beneath the copper, and would be able to work the tin instead. The price of tin is very high, and the proprietors can go on making fortunes over that.”

“It may not be the same at home,” said Molly. “Perhaps there isn’t any tin on Hungry Hill.”

“Tin or copper, what does it matter,” said Kitty, “if all the benefit we get from the stuff is living in Lancaster Gate with Adeline, and a Swiss maid spying on us all the time, and father washing his hands of us ? I’d rather be poverty-stricken and live in a cabin on the Kileen moors.”