Hungry Hill (2 page)

Another cloud came across the sun, a spot of rain fell upon his head, and John Brodrick turned his back upon Hungry Hill and went down to the road below.

When he reached the post-chaise, he saw a man standing in the road, waiting for him. He was tall and bent, and leant heavily upon a stick, a man of about sixty years of age, whose light blue eyes made a strange contrast to the mahogany of his face. He smiled when he saw John Brodrick, a smile that had little welcome in it and no pleasure, but appeared to be caused by some secret mirth of his own.

John Brodrick nodded to him curtly.

“Good afternoon, Donovan,” he said. “You seem to be a long way from home with that bad leg of yours.”

“Good-day, Mr. Brodrick,” returned the other. “As to my leg, he’s used to tramping the hills and the roads, and serves me well enough. And how did you find the site for the new mine looking?”

“What do you know of a new mine, Donovan?”

“Maybe the fairies told me about it,” answered the man, still smiling, and scratching his white hair with the end of his stick.

“Well, there’s no harm in anyone knowing now,” said Brodrick. “Yes, there is to be a copper mine on Hungry Hill. I signed an agreement with Mr. Lumley of Duncroom this very day, and we intend to start proceedings very shortly.”

The man named Donovan said nothing. He stared a moment at John Brodrick, and then turned his blue eyes away from him, upward, to the hill.

“You’ll be having no great advantage from it,” he said at length.

“That we propose to find out,” said Brodrick shortly.

“Ah, I’m not talking about the fortune you’ll make,” said the other, waving his hand in contempt. “The copper will do that for you, aye, and for your sons and your grandsons too, while me and mine grow poorer on the bit of land left to us. I’m thinking of the trouble it will bring you.”

“I think we can take good care of that.”

“You should have asked permission of the hill first, Mr.

Brodrick.” The old man pointed with his stick to the great mass of hill that towered above them. “Ah, you can laugh,” he said, “you, with your Trinity education and your reading and your grand progressive ways, and your sons and your daughters that walk through Doonhaven as though the place was built for their convenience, but I tell you your mine will be in ruins, and your house destroyed, and your children forgotten and fallen maybe into disgrace, but this hill will be standing still to confound you.”

John Brodrick ignored this flow of rhetoric, and climbed into the chaise.

“Perhaps,” he said, “Mr. Morty Donovan would like to take shares in the copper mine, and then perhaps he would not show his dislike quite so plainly? I shall be paying good wages to the men employed in the mine. If your sons feel like doing some honest work for a change I shall be delighted to employ them.”

The old man spat on the ground in contempt.

“My sons have never worked for a master,” he said, “and never shall do while I live. Doesn’t all the land here belong to them by rights, yes, and the copper too, and couldn’t we take it all, if we had the mind?”

“My dear Donovan,” said Brodrick impatiently, “you live in the past of two hundred years ago, and talk like an imbecile. If you want the copper why don’t you form a company, and engage the labour, and erect the machinery?”

“You know well enough I am a poor man, Mr.

Brodrick; and whose fault is it but that of your grandfather?”

“I’m afraid I have no time to discuss those ancient quarrels, Donovan, which are better forgotten. Good evening to you.” And John Brodrick gave a sign to the post-boy to drive on, leaving the old man leaning upon his stick, staring at them, the smile gone from his face.

John Brodrick looked out over the view below them, as the chaise topped the hill. Yonder, across the bay, lay the little harbour of Doonhaven, with Doon Island at the entrance to the bay, and beyond Doonhaven, at the head of the farther creek, stood his own grey castle of Clonmere, like a sentinel guarding the waters.

The chaise rattled down the hill into the town, and past the harbour, scattering the cattle and the geese in the market-place, nearly running over a dog which came barking at the wheels, and avoiding by a miracle a small, barefooted boy who was chasing a hen into a cottage, and so past the Post Office, and Murphy’s shop, and up out of the village beyond the few cottages on the hill at Oakmount, to his own gate-house and the park. The gates were open, at which he frowned, for it was by such carelessness that his cattle had strayed last time to the moors, and were caught and kept by one of Morty Donovan’s men, and branded with Morty Donovan’s mark into the bargain, to add to the usual unpleasantness between the families, and he resolved to speak firmly to the widow Creevy at the gate-house on the first occasion, and to remind her that her position was one of trust, and if she neglected it he had other tenants who might fill it to greater advantage.

Across the park they went and through the second gate, past the belt of trees that his grandfather had planted, past the rhododendron bushes that had been the pride of poor Sarah and were now watched so tenderly by her daughters, and down on to the smooth gravel ride beside the creek and the sunk garden, through the archway of stone, and so back to where the sweep on the ride ended before the grey walls of Clonmere Castle.

The Brodricks dined at five, and by the time John Brodrick had washed and changed his travelling clothes, dinner was upon the table, with his family assembled round it, ready to welcome him after his week’s absence in Slane and Mundy. His wife Sarah had died some years previously, and his eldest daughter Barbara now filled her mother’s place at the end of the table. She came forward to kiss him, her example followed by her two sisters, Eliza and Jane. Henry, John Brodrick’s eldest son, had already welcomed his father on his arrival, and now stood by the sideboard sharpening the carving-knife in preparation for his father’s attack upon the roast pig. Thomas, the serving-man, stood in attendance by his side. Before carving, John Brodrick said grace, and this formality disposed of, he proceeded to slice the meat on to the plates handed him by Thomas.

“Is it true, father,” asked Barbara, “that there has been some horrible plot to assassinate the Cabinet Minister during his tour of the country?”

“I fear it is only too certain that there was some such plot,” answered her father, “but luckily it was discovered in time, and no harm done. The whole affair must have been inspired by some of the dregs of the people, and whoever was responsible will be brought to justice. There was talk of little else in Slane, needless to say. It will have some effect at the elections.”

“And is Mr. Hare to stand for the County again?” asked Henry.

“I understand so. Which reminds me, Henry, there is something you can do on the occasion. You can tell all my freeholders to hold themselves ready to vote as I wish them, and if any should absent themselves on the day without valid excuse of ill-health, he will find himself without a roof over his head.”

“I can vouch for one or two,” laughed Henry, “who will find themselves stricken with fever when the time comes, and the priest by the bedside.”

“The Reverend Father will keep himself scarce, and out of trouble, if he has any sense,” said John Brodrick, and he took his place at the head of the table.

The empty chair by his side caused him to frown.

“John is late again,” he said. “Did he not know I was returning?”

“I believe he went across to the island,” said Barbara swiftly. “He wanted to arrange a day’s shooting with one of the officers in the garrison.

Perhaps he has had some difficulty in bringing the boat back.”

“I will not stand unpunctuality from anyone, and certainly not from a nineteen-year-old boy,” said her father. “Clonmere is not Andriff Castle, and I have not the careless go-as-you-please temperament of Simon Flower.

You can all of you remember that. Kindly teach your brother better manners, Henry. I thought civility the least you would learn at Eton and Oxford.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Henry, exchanging a glance with his sister.

“John has never had any idea of time,” complained Brodrick’s second daughter Eliza, who thought, by seeming to side with her father, to find some favour. “He was still fast asleep at breakfast this morning -Thomas had to call him twice.”

The unfortunate John, entering at this moment, found all eyes upon him in sympathy, excluding Eliza’s and his father’s, and, hastily making his excuses and flushing scarlet as he did so, he took his seat at the table and added to the misery by spilling the gravy on the cloth.

“Curious,” observed his father drily, “how a prolonged stay in this country makes a boor of a fellow, so that he dribbles his very food. Your friends at Brasenose College would hardly recognise you. However, let us talk of other things. Thomas, you may leave us. Master Henry and Master John will wait upon the ladies. No, the fact of the matter is,” he said deliberately, looking round at his children, when the servant had left the room, “I have something to tell you all, concerning the future.”

He laid his knife and fork upon his plate, smiling at Henry as though in confirmation of some previous conversation, while the rest of his family waited for him to continue.

It was a proud moment for John Brodrick. For months now, ever since the possibility of extracting the copper from Hungry Hill had become a certainty in his mind, he had thought and dreamt of little else. He had set himself the task of breaking down the apathy and mistrust of his neighbouring landlord with determination, for he knew that his capital alone would not cover the initial expenses. Besides which, the actual site of the mine was not entirely his possession. Part of the lands of Hungry Hill belonged to the Duncroom estate of Robert Lumley, and without his consent to form the company the mine could not be started. And at last old Robert Lumley had signed the agreement, and the work could begin. It was not, John Brodrick told himself, as he gazed proudly upon his young family, that he wanted a fortune for himself or for them. The money would come, he knew that, he took it for granted. Henry would live in comfort at Clonmere after him, and Henry’s children. He would buy more land, plant more trees, build another wing on to the castle, and buy land the other side of the water too, should he have the mind.

No, it was the principle of the thing with which he had most concern. There was wealth in this country of his, ready for the taking, and only the laziness of his fellow-countrymen prevented them from enjoying it.

He looked upon it as a duty, something he owed to his country and to the Almighty, to glean the hidden wealth from Hungry Hill and to give it, at a price, to the peoples of the world. He glanced up at the portrait of his grandfather that hung above the mantelpiece in the dining-room, John Brodrick who had built Clonmere, and had been shot in the back in 1754 on his way to church, because he had tried to put down the smuggling along the coast. He knew his grandfather would have approved the starting of the mine. It would have been a matter of principle, just as it was for his grandson. Well, maybe the people would shoot him in the back as they had done the first John Brodrick, and maim his cattle, and set fire to his crops, but they would never frighten him from doing what he believed to be his duty. Smiling, he looked at each of his family in turn.

“This afternoon at Castle Andriff I signed an agreement with Robert Lumley, forming a company to work a copper mine on Hungry Hill,” he said.

The young Brodricks stared back at him in silence, and he thought, with mingled pride and amusement, how like they were to one another, and how each one, from tall Henry down to the little Jane, although possessing features and a personality of their own, had the one characteristic in common, the unmistakable Brodrick quality of knowing themselves to have more brains and breeding than the usual run of their fellow-creatures.

He remembered his father Henry, who had broken his back out hunting at Duncroom, and how, when they would have carried him on a hurdle to a neighbouring cottage, to place him on a bed, he cursed them, saying, “God damn you, let me die in the open, in my own time,” and they waited there, five hours under the rain, while he stared up at the sky.

And here was his own boy, Henry, twenty-one next year, with that same look of easy confidence in his dark eyes, as he smiled across the table at his father, the only one with whom he had already discussed the mining prospects, and who had shown his usual gay enthusiasm and willingness to help.

There was Barbara, twenty-three, and the eldest of the family, her soft brown hair falling over her forehead, which was wrinkled a little as she thought over the news, for Barbara needed time to consider when any new project was put before her; she was conservative by nature and mistrusted changes. Eliza, her sister, and a year younger than herself, stouter, fairer, and more like her dead mother in appearance, was already speculating upon what the future should bring for herself. Father would make a fortune, of course, and then perhaps they need not live all the year at Clonmere, but could visit Bath during the season, and even the Continent perhaps, as Lord Mundy’s daughters had done a year ago.

The Continent passed through Henry’s mind too, as he watched his father’s face. He loved Clonmere, he loved his family, and he believed that the sinking of the mine would be a sound proposition, workable in every way, and a benefit to the people and the country. If it meant that he would be able to go to France, to Italy, to Germany, to Russia, to see all the pictures and to hear all the music that he had heard discussed in Oxford, why then, the sooner Hungry Hill was open to pick and shovel and machinery the happier he would be.

His brother John stared out of the window, down to the creek below the house. He and his sister, Jane were the darkest of the family. There was something almost Spanish about their olive skins and their warm brown eyes, a southern gypsy quality that the others lacked.

Mines upon Hungry Hill, he thought, noise and machinery to drive away the wild birds and the rabbits and the hares, and a crowd of wretched devils working underground day after day, glad of the employment to keep themselves from starving, and cursing the master who gave it to them, all in the same breath. He knew how it would be. He had seen it happen before in Doonhaven, whenever his father talked to the people about progress. They were all smiles and civility to his face, and as soon as his back was turned they muttered amongst themselves, and went and broke down a fence, or stole a cow, or lamed one of his horses, in a strange, impotent resentment.