Daphne du Maurier - Hungry Hill

She nodded, and smiled in return.

"I shall be waiting on the balcony."

They watched the boat draw alongside the vessel, and Henry and the master climbed aboard. Almost immediately there was activity, and noise, and bustle, the mate shouting orders from the fo'c'sle, and the creaking of the windlass.

"Don't let us wait any longer," said Jane suddenly. "I hate to see a ship sail out of harbour. There is so much of finality about it."

"There is your brother," said Fanny-Rosa.

"Look, he is turning this way; he is shouting something to us."

"No use," said Copper John, "the wind carries away his voice, and the sound of the windlass… Come, Jane is right. There is little reason in waiting here any longer. We shall see the ship just as well from Clonmere, if we walk to the end of the creek."

A dog ran across his legs as he turned, nearly throwing him on to the cobbles. He swore angrily, and hit out at it with his stick, catching it severely over the back, so that the dog howled, and ran limping to the doorway of the shop where it belonged.

"Keep your animal under control, can't you?" shouted Copper John to the owner, who appeared at the door of the shop, flushed and scowling, and ready to give quarrel. When Copper John saw who it was he turned his back, and walked away from the quay to the market-square, his son and his daughters following.

The man watched them, sullen resentment in his face, and then bent down to his injured dog, muttering to himself, while from nowhere a crowd collected about him, asking questions and giving shrill advice.

"How unfortunate!" whispered Barbara, flushing.

"Did you see?"

"Yes," said Jane slowly, "yes '

Looking over her shoulder, she saw the Henrietta gathering way through the water, as the boats towed her into mid-channel, and the sails broke out upon the yards.

Their father made no allusion to the incident. He helped Fanny-Rosa to mount her horse, and then exchanged a word or two with Bob Flower, giving him some message to take to Robert Lumley, their grandfather, on the next visit to Duncroom.

Doctor Armstrong and the officers shook hands and departed, the Flowers rode away up the hill on the road to Andriff, and the Brodricks, climbing into their father's carriage, drove home to Clonmere. The sun had gone down behind the trees, and the castle and the creek were in shadow. They stood out on the drive for a moment or two, watching the Henrietta in the distance, and then she disappeared behind Doon Island and they saw her no more.

Copper John went slowly into the house, his hands clasped behind his back. Barbara and Eliza followed. Only John and Jane walked down to the far end of the grounds, where the last fir tree spread his bent branches above the sea, and they looked out over the wide harbour water to the last gleam of sunshine that played on Hungry Hill.

"I wish it had not happened," said Jane.

"What do you mean?" asked John.

"I wish that father had not hit Sam Donovan's dog."

"Oh, that… Yes, it leaves a sort of sourness to the day. I would have had a look at the dog, but it would have been no use. My father would have been angry, and Sam Donovan taken it the wrong way."

"You could have done nothing. I only wish it had not happened… Do you really think the Barbados will make Harry better?"

"I am sure of it. He will be in Naples in the spring. You must have heard him arrange a meeting with Fanny-Rosa."

John turned, and began to stroll back towards the house. Jane took his arm. Both were silent, both were thinking about Henry. Jane remembered his gay smile, his laugh, his wave of the hand from the little boat as it drew away from the quay-side to the Henrietta, and she wondered how much of it was spontaneous, natural, and how much might be assumed, a mask hiding his illness from his family and from himself. John saw only a balcony in Naples, and on that balcony a girl who was Fanny-Rosa, with a flower behind her ear that she threw to Henry. Perhaps there were lakes in the hills behind Naples, like the lake on Hungry Hill. Perhaps Fanny-Rosa would bathe there too, and show her nakedness to Henry. Perhaps she would walk with him, hand in hand, and then lie down and let him kiss her.

Henry, who was so much worthier than himself, who was clever, who was charming, who was finer in every way.

Henry, who was ill… The jealousy that possessed him was so shameful and despicable a thing that he was filled with hatred for himself and for his thoughts.

Loving his brother, he yet grudged him one glance, one smile, one touch from Fanny-Rosa, even though that glance and that smile brought a few weeks of gaiety, of forgetfulness, to a sick, perhaps a dying, man. Not only grudged, but hated. And for Henry to think even of Fanny-Rosa in an idle moment was a thing so monstrous and so damnable that Jane, seeing John's white face and burning eyes, was startled and afraid, and said: "What is it? Are you ill?"

"No," he said, "no, it's nothing."

She hesitated a moment, and then went indoors, and John, looking up at the windows of Clonmere, saw that the candles were being lighted, and the curtains drawn, and the evening had come, and it seemed to him that nothing mattered in the world, or would ever matter, but the longing he had for Fanny-Rosa, and he would perjure himself, commit murder, and go to the devil, to have her waiting for him above there, in his room in the tower; waiting for him, John Brodrick, and not for Henry.

The autumn of 1827 was exceptionally trying to Copper John. The weather was wild and stormy, so that shipments of ore from Doon-haven to Bronsea were quite impossible during November, and the new mine that had been sunk was proving less profitable than had been expected. For one thing, Captain Nicholson had gone down too deep, and had reached a level where the amount of water made work quite impracticable, in spite of the new pump, erected at a cost of several hundred pounds. It was therefore decided to abandon the spot, and to take soundings a little farther east, and here, though results at once justified the trial, the ground was so rocky that there was not an inch of it that could be worked without the use of gunpowder. Here again expense was considerable. An Order in Council was obligatory for every ounce of powder imported into the country, and Copper John had to keep his barrels stored in the magazine at the garrison on Doon Island, and sign a form every time a fresh barrel was taken across the harbour. Then the price of copper, which had been exceptionally high, dropped considerably.

The large smelting companies at Bronsea could pretty well dictate their own terms, and Copper John was of the opinion that he would do well to get rid of some of his produce by private contract.

A hard frost succeeded the wet winds of November, and this brought fresh difficulties to the owner of Clonmere, for the potato crop had largely failed, and many of his tenants were in a fair way to starvation. Under the circumstances he was obliged to tell Ned Brodrick to be lenient with the half-yearly rent roll, and those tenants who were rather better off than their neighbours seized advantage of this, and kept back their payments. The inevitable disputes between one tenant and another, which appeared rooted in the character of the people, broke out, and after a long day's consultation at the mine Copper John would return to Clonmere to be faced with some ridiculous tale by his agent which had neither rhyme nor reason to it, and on which he would be expected to give judgement.

It was a little hard, he reflected, that he was the only man in the neighbourhood to take strong measures, and that he received no thanks and no assistance from the adjoining landlords. Robert Lumley was seldom at Duncroom, and when he was there it was only to drive down to Doonhaven and go through the mining accounts, complaining of his percentage. The Earl of Denmare was never in the country, except to fish for salmon, and Lord Mundy was very much an invalid these days, and hardly well enough to bestir himself in local affairs. As for Simon Flower, it was quite useless to appeal to him on any question at all. A man who drank in the stables with his own grooms, and even sat carousing with them in the drawing-room when his wife was a-bed, so the story ran, was no use as an upholder of truth and justice. Besides, the Flowers were abroad, in Italy — Henry had come across them in Florence, and had some idea of joining them in Naples, which his father felt was a waste of time. The voyage to the Barbados had done him a world of good, so he wrote to his family. He was certainly coughing less, and his father was on no account to worry about him. He had no doubt that a few months in Italy would perfectly restore him to health.