Hungry Hill (58 page)

They stood together, looking at the picture, and then the door of the sitting-room opened, and the Rector came into the room. He had an open letter in his hand, and he was smiling.

“I’ve news for you, Hal,” he said, “but you’ll never guess what it is.

“You’ve found a new job for me,” said Hal, “and I warn you now that I’m not going to take it.”

“Nothing of the sort,” said Tom. “Here’s a letter from your father. He’s crossing to Slane, and he will be in Doonhaven the day after tomorrow.”

The sun was setting in the west over Mundy Bay. Little mackerel clouds had come up against the wind, and now hung motionless in the pale sky, for the breeze had died away with the approach of evening.

Hal stood by the lake on Hungry Hill, looking down on Doon-haven and Clonmere. The village, a small, straggling line by the harbour water, still held the sun, but Clonmere was in shadow.

The trees made a tapestry pattern about the castle, and beyond the trees lay the moors and the white road across the moors that led to the Denmare river and Kileen. The world below seemed unreal and remote, like the mist world of a dream at daybreak. Hungry Hill alone had clarity and brightness, the air was full of scent, and the turf under his feet was firm and green. Even the granite rocks were hot where the sun had been all day.

“This is the picture I should have painted,” thought Hal, “not how the hill looks from Doonhaven and Clonmere, but how we down there must look from Hungry Hill… . Petty and insignificant, little ants running about our business. The Brodricks come and go, the men and women of Doonhaven marry, and give birth, and die, the mines make their song and their clatter for seventy-five years, and then are silent again. It’s all one to the fairies and the ghosts of Hungry Hill. One day I’ll make a picture of it, or if I’m too lazy perhaps John-Henry will.

But whatever happens in this country of ours the hill remains undefeated. He has the laugh on all of us.”

He began walking away from the lake, eastward across the shoulder of the mountain, towards the mines. He had lunched early, and had walked all afternoon alone, in a mood of nerviness and strange unrest which he could not explain, even to Jinny.

His father was to be in Doonhaven tomorrow… . He would see him, touch his hand, talk to him-his father, whom he had not seen now for fifteen years, not since he had walked out of his house when he was twenty years old. So many letters that had remained unwritten from Canada, conceived during his most lonely moments, but never put down on paper. Letters from Doonhaven too, that had come to his thoughts but not to his pen.

Descriptions of the mines, tales of Jinny and the boy. And always the silence between them, always the reserve. It was to be broken at last, and he had a great fear in his heart that the meeting would be a failure. They would stand in front of one another, tongue-tied, awkward, alike in so many ways, different in too much, and then his father would break the silence with that old forced, half-jocular tone that he had used many years ago to his schoolboy son, saying “Well, Hal… how are you, and how’s the painting, eh?”

The answer would be the same, clumsy and shy, dragged from him reluctantly, “All right, thanks,” and then his father, waiting a moment for more and being disappointed, would turn to Tom Caliaghan and be relieved because his presence eased the restraint between them.

His father… . He would look perhaps with pity on Jinny, who from shyness would show herself too eager, too anxious to please. John-Henry would be produced, and his quiet, silent charm would not be in readiness for the occasion, a baby tantrum at being dressed in his best would have given him a sullen, obstinate air.

He would turn away from his grandfather and bury his head in a cushion. The encounter would be a failure from every point of view. As he walked Hal became angry.

Why should his father come suddenly, after all these years, and make a disturbance of the routine ? He had business in Slane, he said in his letter to Uncle Tom-the sale of property in the city, and some matters to do with shipping and the mining company that needed adjustment.

The mines… . Yes, thought Hal, let him come and inspect the mines and see the smokeless stacks and the smashed machinery, the heap of rubble, the general air of desolation. Let him talk to Mrs.

Connor, who had her fifth baby the week after the mines were closed down, and no money in the house, and poor Tim Connor lying drunk in the street at Doonhaven because they wouldn’t give him and his family a passage to America.

There was plenty for his father to see. He did not have to worry, he did not have to put his hand in his pocket.

It was not his fault. No, he had got out of the affair like the shrewd, clever business man he was, just before the market struck rock-bottom. He could look at the families, and the stricken mine, and fellows like Jim Donovan who roamed the countryside with murder in his heart, and then go back to his house in Brighton and to Adeline, and live in comfort and security. The tenants would continue to pay their rent to a landlord they never saw, and the mould and the damp would eat the walls of Clonmere. It would not matter to Henry Brodrick. Hal had crossed the shoulder of the hill, and now stood on the ride above the deserted mine. Below him were the dressing-sheds and the tall boiler-house chimney. Someone had lit a fire of the rubble that lay before the boiler-house. The smoke rose in the air, black and foul, and coming down closer, Hal could see a crowd of men laughing and talking through the smoke, throwing bits of refuse and broken timber on to the fire to increase the blaze.

One of them bore a great plank on his shoulder, torn from a bench in the counting-house, and hurled it amongst the rubble in the fire.

It was Jim Donovan. Hal climbed down over the heap of slack that lay behind the shaft and joined them.

“Some of that timber would come in handy during the winter, if you saved it,” he said. “Why not make a stack of it instead of burning it now? Then you can come down in the colder weather and chop it up for your families.”

One or two of the men hung back, looking to Jim Donovan for advice. He stared at Hal aggressively, his cap on the side of his head giving him a knowing, cock-sure expression.

“Good-evening to you, Mr. Brodrick,” he said.

“And you just having a stroll, I presume, round your father’s ancient property, to see that no further damage is done to the place, and if it is, why you’ll go and report it to the magistrate, no doubt, and have us poor fellows clapped into jail.”

“I wouldn’t do that, Jim,” smiled Hal; “you ought to know me better. You can destroy all that’s left of the mine, for all I care. But you might be glad of some of this stuff for fuel a bit later on.”

Jim said nothing. His mouth had an ugly, sullen set to it, and he kicked a larger piece of timber into the fire.

“I hear Mr. Griffiths is going up north to live,” he said. “They say he has a house across the border waiting for him. And then he has the cheek to tell us he knew nothing about the mines being closed. The fellow’s a liar.”

“Shame to him for it, then,” said another, “putting furniture in it as cool as you please, all these past four months, and us poor fellows as ignorant as babies. You’d say there was no justice in the world.”

“Nor is there,” said Jim Donovan fiercely, “except when you take the law into your own hands. As for Mr. Griffiths, he’s welcome to his fine house, for all I care. But I tell you I’d like to wring his neck, and all the rest of them that’s deceived us.”

His voice had risen, and he moved closer to Hal, his fists clenched, His friends murmured in approval, closing in behind him.

Poor devil, thought Hal; he’s had a couple down at the pub in Doonhaven, and it’s got him on the raw, instead of laying him out quiet and peaceful.

“All right, Jim,” he said, “curse old Griffiths if you want to, but he’s had no hand in the business, I promise you. He knew no more about it than I did, and that’s a fact.”

Someone whistled in derision, and another man laughed.

“Ah, laugh away,” said Jim Donovan.

“Mr. Brodrick is like the rest of the gentlemen, smooth-faced and easy-spoken. It’s him that is laughing at us all the time. So you didn’t know the mines were to be closed, Mr. Brodrick? And when your father sold them to the London company, that was news to you too, I’ll be bound? We know a bit more than that, I can tell you. We know you were go-between all the while, through from Mr. Griffiths to your father and the London company. Why, didn’t you have the letters running through your hands day after day, from Slane and London and Bronsea, besides those that you get at home? I may be the son of a poor man, Mr.

Brodrick, who has only a few pigs and cows grazing on a piece of ground as big as my hand, when in days gone by we owned all the land hereabouts that your father holds now, but by all the blessed saints in heaven I’m not such a fool as I look.”

He turned round on one foot, to survey the effect of his speech upon his companions.

“That’s right, Jim,” said one of the men, “you have the heart of a lion, I’m always telling you.”

Hal shrugged his shoulders. He was suddenly bored by them, and their deliberate misunderstanding of the position.

It was useless to argue with a fellow like Jim Donovan anyway. He was tired now after his long tramp on Hungry Hill, and wanted Jinny, and his supper, and his bed before facing his father the following day.

“Goodnight,” he said shortly, and turned away, making for the cinder track that led down to the high road. But Jim Donovan and his friends followed close at his heels.

“Not so fast, Mr. Brodrick,” said Jim.

“Maybe the lads and I haven’t finished talking with you yet. There’s many an account to settle between our families, going back over the years. Wasn’t it my own first cousin that was murdered by your father and your mother, travelling home in their carriage after a banquet, the horses whipped on to him by the coachman, and my poor cousin’s brains spattering the road, and them driving on with never a care for him? It was common knowledge they were glad to see him dead, for the scandal your uncle brought upon his sister.”

Hal looked over his shoulder at the angry man.

“For the Lord’s sake, Jim,” he said, “go home and get to bed and sleep off your temper. Take him off, some of you fellows, or carry him there, if he can’t walk. I’m in no mood to start a quarrel about my uncle or my father or anyone else.”

The men stared at him without answer, and Hal moved off down the cinder track. He had walked scarcely half a dozen yards before a stone struck the side of his head. It was a sharp, jagged stone, breaking the skin. Hal turned round to face his assailant, and another stone caught him above the eye.

“You damned fool,” he shouted. “What the hell do you think you’re doing? If you want to fight, come on, and I’ll fight you fair.”

He ran up the path towards Jim, his temper thoroughly roused, the blood pouring down his head from the jagged stone. He was met by an avalanche of stones that brought him to his knees, and the moment he was down the men rushed upon him, shouting, excited, one seizing his arm and twisting it behind his back so that he could not hit out at them, one or two of the others throwing themselves upon his body.

“Drag him down to the road and let him lie there, like your cousin,” said one, and “Burn him in the fire,” shouted Jim, “let him feed the flames.”

Someone tied a handkerchief round his eyes, hard and tight, and the blood from the wound in his head began to trickle into his eyes, warm and sickly, and he could see nothing.

The men were shouting and laughing, and now some of them were seizing his arms, and the rest his legs, and bearing him away up the binder track to the fire by the dressing-sheds.

“You bloody idiots,” said Hal, weak and faint from the mauling they had given him. “Do you want the whole country down upon you, and twenty years apiece at the Mundy Assizes?”

Someone hit him on the mouth-Jim Donovan no doubt-and then he was thrown face downwards in a heap of rubble, choking, suffocating, while his hands were bound behind him.

“Ah, leave him there to rot,” said one of the men, “and come away home, Jim. We’ve had sport enough for one evening, haven’t we?”

The sight of Hal lying in the rubble, dazed and half-conscious, made the men uneasy. Jim had led them into this, and now it was best to get away, and maybe put several miles between them and Doonhaven.

The sound of their voices grew fainter, and lying there in the rubble, Hal could hear the crunch of their boots as they climbed the heap of slack above him and made away across the hill. The blood went on trickling into his eyes behind the bandage, and even found its way to his mouth. He felt faint, and deadly sick.

The bonfire died away beside him, and he could tell by the stillness and the silence that darkness was falling fast.

“Jinny will be worried,” he thought. “She’ll go round to the Rectory and get hold of Uncle Tom.”

What an idiot he had been ever to talk to Jim Donovan and his friends. He should have turned back across the hill as soon as he saw them. A fat lot of use it had been showing sympathy with the silly bastards. Hal rolled over on to his side, and worked loose the piece of rope that bound his wrists together. Then he tore off the handkerchief they had placed across his eyes. He found, to his dismay, that he could not see at all. One eye was closed up entirely, from the cut above it, and the other was gummed with the clotted blood. He would have to find water to bathe his eye before he could make his way home, five miles or more in the gathering darkness. He struggled to his feet, and peered about him, trying to gain a sense of direction. There was water hard by, surely, close to the dressing-sheds, where the tin used to be washed, but with his closed eyes, and the murky evening light, he could not remember whether the sheds had been to the right or to the left of the heap of rubble where the men had thrown him. He moved forward slowly, his arms outstretched, and as he took step by step, faltering, as helpless as a blind man, he thought of his father arriving tomorrow morning in the steamer at Slane.