Daphne du Maurier - Hungry Hill

She could not bring herself to throw them away. Father in his university days, with a group of friends. He looked very dear and wicked, as he probably was. Mr.

Brodrick stood by his side, and Mr.

Brodrick's brother Herbert, who also became a clergyman, and sometimes wrote to her father. They all looked very merry. Here was one of herself as a baby, sitting on her mother's knee in a white starched frock. What a little fright, with round eyes like boot-buttons! A picnic-group taken at Glen Begh, with themselves and all the Brodricks as children. Molly had not changed at all, she was still the same laughing, happy person today that she had been at ten years old. But no one would have thought Kitty, the ugly duckling, would have grown into a beauty. Jinny looked for the wedding-group, taken two years ago, of Kitty Brodrick's marriage to her cousin, Simon Flower. They were standing on the steps at Castle Andriff. Kitty was really lovely, and she herself as a bridesmaid seemed such a dowd in comparison.

Lizette, poor dear, would never quite lose that pinched, strained expression, but she was tall, nearly as tall as Kitty, and no one could see her foot under the long bridesmaid's dress. It was so like Kitty, sweet and generous, to insist on Lizette living with them at Castle Andriff, and happy-go-lucky Simon did not mind.

When Jinny had cleared out her bedroom cupboard she felt for a box on the shelf. It was fastened, and bound with tape. She hesitated for a moment, and then she took down the box, and sat beside it on the bed.

She undid the tape, and lifted the lid. It was full of letters. on top of the letters were some half-dozen paintings. There was one of herself, with her hair down her back, which he had done that Christmas when they had all come to Clonmere. There were two of Clonmere, and a pen-and-ink sketch of Doon Island. The remaining paintings were of mountains, snow-covered, and vast stretches of land that looked bare and unfriendly. Jinny gazed at them slowly, one by one, and then put them aside, and took up Hal's letters. The first wild, miserable ones were from London, and then there was that brave, hopeful letter written in Liverpool, the night before he sailed for Canada.

"I know you believe in me, Jinny," he said, "even if nobody else does. And one day my father will be proud of me too."

The remaining letters all bore the Winnipeg post-mark, and most of them had been written in the early years in Canada. She could see the dates on the envelopes-nearly every month in 1881 and '82. The letters had a light-hearted, schoolboy flavour; everything was new and exciting, he was so glad he had taken the big decision. Oxford, and all that Oxford stood for, seemed another world already.

"I see we lost the Boat Race as usual," he wrote, "so my leaving the boat did not give them any better luck! I thought of the crew on the day, and said a prayer for them, but as I was out on the ranch rounding cattle all day from sunrise to sunset I had not much time to waste thinking of my friends. It's a grand life, and I'm enjoying every minute of it."

They were full of hope, these first letters; he was going to make a success of ranching, he was certain of it.

"Of course the first few years will be the hardest," he said, "and it's difficult living on the allowance I get from great-grandfather's will. But I haven't had to ask my father for a penny, and that is all that matters.

Tell Molly I have grown a beard and look strikingly handsome."

There was a smudged snapshot enclosed in one of the letters written about this time. Hal bearded, in his shirt-sleeves, looking a great ruffian. He stood arm-in-arm with two of his fellow ranchers.

"We drive down to Winnipeg once a month," he wrote in '83, "and spend all our money and see the sights and treat the girls. Last month we had a free fight in a saloon, Frank, my partner, getting rather wild in his cups and knocking another fellow over the head. Of course I had to back him up, and we spent a night in jail for our pains. My first experience behind bars. If Adeline got to hear of it she would say "I told you so." Thank dear Uncle Tom for his most welcome cheque. He mustn't do it again."

And then in '84 and '85 the tone changed, slowly, almost imperceptibly.

"Frank is getting impossible," he said, "and I think we shall have to part company. I am going to try on my own and see if I can't do better. I have enough money saved to buy a small ranch, where I can be my own boss."

Somehow the idea must have come to nothing, for after six months of silence he wrote again, saying that he had been lucky enough to get a position in a bank in Winnipeg, which was a pleasant change after the rough life of the past few years.

"I've come to the conclusion that you have to be born to ranching to make a real success of it," he told Jinny, "and the climate is pretty hard for someone like myself who doesn't belong to the country. I lost about a stone in weight last winter. The early mornings were the worst, getting up in the dark and going out into the snow, and no proper food either. How I longed for one of Aunt Harriet's cakes! Now I'm in the town it's much easier, and I have quite comfortable lodgings."

But the bank did not last two months, for the next letter came from Toronto, and was only a few lines.

"I've started painting again," said Hal. "After all, it is the thing I like best, and what I've always wanted to do. No one to give orders, and my time is my own. One or two people here say I've been a damn fool to try anything else. I don't suppose I shall make a fortune at it, but I feel free again, which I haven't done for some time."

There was silence then for a year. The next letter, written in the autumn of '86, was one of quiet despair. The handwriting was changed, shaky, and in places almost impossible to read.

"I've been very ill," he said, "my health has all gone to pieces. Adeline was right about me after all, and you were wrong. I'm useless, a failure, and I would end it all if only I had the courage.

I sold one or two pictures, but I haven't done any work now for months. Think about me sometimes, Jinny, and when you do, remember me as I was that Christmas at Clonmere, when I was twenty, and you were sixteen. You wouldn't think much of me now."

This was the last letter he had written to her, three years ago. She had answered the letter, and many months later it had been returned to her, with the words "Gone away" written across the envelope. She remembered going down to the study and telling the whole story to her father, the tears running down her cheeks. He had been so kind and understanding, and had read Hal's last letter sitting beside her, with his arm about her shoulders.

"If only I were a man," Jinny said, between her tears, "I'd go out to Canada and bring him home.

I know I should find him."

Tom Callaghan looked at the eager, hopeful eyes, the small, determined chin.

"I believe you would, Jinny," he said, "but God made you a woman, and perhaps one day you will find your Hal, and give him greater comfort."

Three years ago… Jinny put the letters carefully back in the box and the paintings on top, and closed the lid. She would never throw them away, she would read them again and again, until she was an old woman of eighty. Maybe Hal was dead and suffered no longer, but it made no difference. She would always remember the boy who had held her hand in the dark, ghostly wing of Clonmere that Christmas Day, and was haunted and alone. He would be nearly thirty now, if he was still alive; a boy no longer. Hal, who had sat on the table in the dairy drinking buttermilk and dipping his finger into the cream when her mother's back was turned. Hal, teasing her, laughing, his hands in his pockets. Hal sailing his boat in the creek… Jinny had many pictures in her mind, all of them dear and sweet. And they would have to last her all her life, for there would never be any more.