Hungry Hill (39 page)

She held him close to her, and kissed the top of his head.

“I do accept it,” she said, “but it makes me afraid, all the same.”

He leant back, his head against her knee, and stared into the fire.

“I often wonder,” he said thoughtfully, “whether poor Johnnie’s despair was not due to a love affair gone wrong. Oh, not that Donovan woman, that was merely a sordid interlude, but something deeper. But who the devil could he have been fond of ? I never heard him mention anyone.”

Katherine did not answer. She went on stroking his hair.

“If only he could have married and settled down, it would have been the saving of him,” continued Henry.

“That ghastly end could have been avoided. Perhaps if you had met him first you might have married him instead of me.”

He turned, half smiling, half sadly, to look at his wife. Her eyes were filled with tears, and she was staring into the fire.

“Sweetheart, what is it?” he said. “I’ve hurt you, I’ve made you unhappy? Selfish, careless brute that I am. I ought to remember you are not well. And here I’ve been, tiring you with family history. My poor darling, your face is white and miserable, what have I done?”

“Nothing,” she said, “it’s nothing, I promise you. Just a sudden foolishness.”

“It’s been a long day,” he said. “You should have rested this afternoon, instead of walking with us through the woods.

I thought it was too far for you at the time. And then lifting Molly about here, after tea. She is too heavy for you now. Does the other little one make a heaviness?”

“The other little one is quiet.”

“I shall carry you to bed, then,” he said. “Come, put your arms round my neck, and hold me close.

Where is your book? That one, by the window there ?

Reach down for it, then. Mr. Dickens again. What would you do without him? I shall read a chapter aloud to you, and then you must close your eyes and go to sleep, and have all the rest you can. Don’t worry about the lamps.

I will come down and put them out when I have seen you safely in bed.”

He carried her along the passage to the room that had been Barbara’s. He left her alone, and went back again to the drawing-room to blow out the lamps.

How unlike Katherine to have tears; she who never gave way, who was so calm, so quiet. She must be very tired. There could be no other explanation. It was not possible that she should have anything on her mind. But when he had read her the chapter of the novel, and had laid it aside, he leant over her and taking her in his arms, he said, searching her eyes, and feeling for his words, “Tell me, darling, tell me the truth-are you happy with me?”

The Town Hall at Bronsea was packed to suffocation. There were fellows straight from the docks, still in their working clothes, with caps on the backs of their heads and pipes in their mouths, men from the smelting works and factories, and their women-folk too, with shawls about their heads, all of them talking in the high, sing-song voice peculiar to Bronsea.

Most of the working people intended to vote for the opposing candidate, Mr. Sartor, the Liberal, and had only come to the meeting to indulge in the free fun of baiting the speaker, but there were a certain number amongst them who sported the blue ribbon for all that.

Clerks from the shipping-office who had met Henry Brodrick personally, seamen who had handled his cargoes back and forth across the water from Doonhaven to Bronsea, men from the smelting-works who had seen him and spoken with him. and the sprinkling of shop-keepers, small tradesmen, doctors, bank-managers and others, who considered it “genteel” to vote Conservative, because it put them in a superior class to the working men and women of Bronsea.

The noise was tremendous, with the clatter of tongues, whistles, and laughter, and then someone from the rear of the hall started up a hymn, and was at once joined by the large mass of people present; the chattering mob changed instantly into a massed choir, solemn and majestic.

Henry, eager and excited, his blue rosette in his buttonhole, his frock-coat immaculate and closely fitting his tall, broad figure, watched them impatiently, anxious to begin. Not that he could do much in such a gathering. They had come to mock him, rather than applaud or listen with any serious intent. There were the members of his family Who had come so loyally to support him. Herbert, now vicar at Lletharrog, and his cheerful, dumpy little wife.

Who, when they were children, would ever have supposed that Herbert, the baby of the family, with his lively ways and twinkling brown eyes, would become a parson? There was Edward, on special leave for the occasion, his curly hair standing straight on end as it always did, bending across to talk to Fanny and Bill Eyre, who had travelled the water for the event.

Fanny with the inevitable little crushed expression on her fact that she had worn as long as he could remember, which must have come from being the one girl amongst four brothers, for honest Bill Eyre was easy enough in all conscience. Heavens, what a muster of parsons-because of course besides Herbert and Bill there was the faithful Tom Callaghan, being very attentive surely to the pretty young woman at his side, some friend of Fanny’s. Perhaps Tom was smitten at last, and would take upon himself the bonds of matrimony. Aunt Eliza, over from Saunby, bolt upright and very full of herself, with a lorgnette dangling from her bosom which she kept putting up to her eyes, observing the populace with an expression of extreme disgust, as if she found the proximity of the working people of Bronsea really rather trying, and something which Miss Brodrick, of Brodrick House, Saunby, was not accustomed to in the general way. And lastly Fanny-Rosa, his mother, who had come all the way from Nice; not, she said, in order to see her son get up on a platform and talk with his tongue in his cheek, but because she had not a stitch to wear and must buy clothes. Paris was too expensive, and in France the people were so grasping, they expected ready money for every order given, whereas in England people never bothered about such things; she could buy and owe for years, and if bills did come in it was easy enough to pretend the letter had been lost in transit.

Henry had let her prattle on in this fashion, when he met her in London and brought her down to Lletharrog to stay with Herbert, but he was perplexed by this careless talk of owing money from his mother, who, as he knew well, had a very liberal income and had been provided for in his grandfather’s will in extremely generous fashion.

As for clothes, he never thought his mother cared what she wore. She was always a mixture of finery and slovenliness-witness her appearance this evening. A wrap of really exquisite velvet with a high sable collar put over a shabby black gown, the skirt of which trailed on the ground and had the hem undone and besmeared with dirt. Her top half was magnificent. The vivid hair was white now-this had come since Johnnie’s death-and the slanting green eyes matched the emerald ear-rings; she might have been a queen. But the lower half, with that trailing hem, belonged to any slatternly woman from the market-place in Doonhaven. There they were, his family; and the best beloved of all was absent, because of course she could not possibly undertake the journey in her present state, the baby expected any day now. He knew her thoughts were with him, he could imagine her hand in his and her dear eyes upon him, and her voice saying, “My Henry must say to the people what he believes to be true, and not try to be amusing all the time.”

The trouble was that he found it so much easier to be amusing than to be truthful, and anyway if he once began to take politics seriously it would be the end of everything. Here was the Chairman, ringing a bell for silence, and here was he himself, standing beside the Chairman, with heaven knew how many hostile eyes gazing up at him. But what did it matter, when all was said and done? This was just another way to pass an evening.

He was greeted with cat-calls, boos, and whistles, to which he listened with a smiling face and with his hands in his pockets, and then, drawing out a large stop-watch, he clicked it and proceeded to examine the dial with close interest, at which there was a great burst of laughter from the crowd, which became quiet.

“I must congratulate you,” said Henry, “on being shorter-winded than other mobs I have had to deal with.”

There was another wave of laughter, and Henry, putting up his hand to catch a scarlet rosette that one of the Liberal enthusiasts had thrown at his head, placed it on the other lapel of his frock-coat.

“No doubt the gallant fellow who threw this knows exactly what are the political opinions of Mr. Sartor, the Liberal candidate,” said Henry. “If he does, he is vastly my superior. I understand Mr. Sartor has voted once one way, twice the other way, and three times the first way. He told you all the other day that when he was young he Was a Tory. He said he imbibed Toryism with his mother’s milk-which is interesting insomuch as it shows that he was nursed at home… . He also told you that the Tories were descendants of the Scribes and Pharisees, by which I gather he meant that the Tory party existed while the Ancient Britons were running around in their war-paint, throwing stones at Julius Caesar from the cliffs of Dover. If our historical friend would look back a little farther, I fancy he would find no difficulty in connecting the Tories with the idolatrous priests of Baal; I am not sure but that the Architect of the Tower of Babel might have been a Tory; nay, it is possible that the Tempter, who in an unlucky hour got possession of the ear of the much-deceived, much-failing, hapless Eve, may have been a Tory. Well, that being so, we have done with the Tories, who, it appears, are pretty well bowled out.”

Herbert, his arms folded, smiled as he watched his brother. How this took him back to their boyhood and the Debating Society at Eton, Henry standing with his hands in his pockets and his head a little on one side, just as he was doing now, enjoying himself hugely and tickling his schoolboy audience under the ribs. But soon he was wading into thornier subjects, interrupted, now and again, by voices at the back of the hall.

“You ask me to define a Liberal?” Henry called. “All right, I will; someone who is liberal with other people’s money. As a matter of fact, there are no such things as Liberals now. There are only Constitutionalists and Revolutionists.”

This caused a storm, of course, and Fanny, glancing uneasily over her shoulder, wondered how difficult it would be to reach the door if trouble broke out.

“Hoot twice as loud as that: I shall be delighted to hear you,” Henry was saying. “There is nothing like excitement and difference of opinion to add zest to life. Why, if we had no differences of opinion we should all be in love with the same woman.”

Another shout of laughter greeted this sally, and Tom Callaghan, pulling his beard, shook his head sagely and caught Bill Eyre’s eye. This was all very good fun, no doubt, but not the way to win an election. Henry must have seen the glance, however, because before three minutes had passed he was deeply involved in the great question of the day.

“I am convinced,” he said, “that institutions which have become venerable with time, and which are fixed firmly in the hearts and minds of the people, should not be ignored. The fact is that ignorance of what is really involved lies at the root of all these evils. The British Constitution is based on two pillars, the Church and the State. Those who would separate the Church from the State, and cause it to seek an asylum amongst the sects, would destroy the very essence of the constitution. Change merely for the sake of change is never desirable. Change and decay are invariably linked together.”

How true, thought Aunt Eliza, change and decay; it put her in mind of her father and those last long, dreary years of his during his retirement at Lletharrog, alone with that dreadful housekeeper who had got hold of him. Eliza was sure he had left her more money in his will than was fair, and it was monstrous the way in which the silver tea-service had disappeared. It should have been hers by right as the only surviving daughter; change and decay, how clever Henry was! ‘

“The improvement of the working classes must be founded upon religion,” said Henry.

Tom Callaghan sat up in his seat. Ah, this was some of Katherine’s doctrine. Henry would never have thought of it for himself.

“Education based upon any other foundation will be of no avail; but education based upon religion will raise the lower classes to their proper position in society. I hope and expect,” Henry continued, “to see a great revival in the Church before long, if the clergy don’t mistake the forms and ceremonies of an objective religion for the inner forms of Christianity.”

Herbert blinked. Was this a sly hit at him?

He had gone through an Anglican phase at Oxford, but that was over long ago. How very odd to hear old Henry talking in such a solemn way. Did he really mean what he was saying, or was it just to try the temper of his audience ?

“We-the Conservative party-have enfranchised the masses,” Henry was saying, “and it is now our duty, it is the duty of every man, to spread the blessings of education amongst the enfranchised masses.

I am a firm advocate of compulsory education.

No man, in my opinion, has a right to bring up his children as he would his pig or his beast.”

How amusing, thought his mother Fanny-Rosa, to see Henry so serious and talking such nonsense. It seemed only yesterday that he was running up the staircase at Clonmere stark naked, his hands clapped on his small behind, while she ran after him with a slipper, which she had no intention of using. Such a lovely afternoon! The children had taken all their clothes off and played on the grass in front of the castle.

Barbara had looked down from her room and had been so shocked, and begged her to get them indoors before their grandfather returned. No doubt Henry and the others had all been brought up like pigs; it had been so much easier to let them run wild… . And suddenly she saw Johnnie, with the Indian feathers in his black hair, peering at her from the rhododendron bushes, his bow and arrow lifted, and John saying to her, in his low, quiet voice, “I can’t beat him, whatever he does. We made him, you and I; he belongs too much to both of us.” But all that was finished, none of that must ever be thought about, it was dead and gone, and so were they; this was reality, sitting now in this crowded, uncomfortable hall, listening to Henry.