Hungry Hill (16 page)

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.