Hungry Hill

by Daphne Du Maurier

  Well, there was an end of it all now. Nothing remained of his coursing days but the silver cups on the sideboard in the dining-room. '

  Such a useless finish. Poisoned by the Donovans. He had never in his whole life harmed one of that family, but he remembered old Morty Donovan cursing him that night in the rain on Hungry Hill. So perhaps the curse was taking effect now. He wished that it could have spared the greyhounds. As John sat alone in the summer-house he began to think about the Donovans, and tried to put himself in their place. Clonmere had been theirs, he reminded himself, before a Brodrick had set foot in the place. And then, of course, like so many other families, the land had been taken away from them after the rebellion in 'bleda and given to some peer or other, and so to the first Henry Brodrick.

  It was natural enough that they should show resentment, and natural enough that they should detest the duty-loving, law-abiding John Brodrick, who stopped them smuggling, and took away the only chance they had of making a bit of money on the sly. Small wonder that one of them took a shot at him when he was riding to church, and small blame if he was glad when the shot succeeded. They said the blood still welled up in the creek beside the drive on the anniversary of the day he died. John and Henry used to go and look for it as boys, but never a drop of blood did they see, unless it was chickens' blood thrown in the water by the woman at the gate-house hard by. Anyway, the Donovan who fired the fatal shot was killed for his work by Brodrick's friends and his house destroyed.

  Little wonder there was enmity between the two families.

  "If I had the energy," thought John, "I would go down to Doon-haven and have it out with Sam, and tell him to make an end to the business. Otherwise the ridiculous feud will never finish. Johnnie and that son of his will start scrapping about something, though I dare say Johnnie would hold his own without help from me or anyone."

  He left the summer-house in better spirits than he had gone into it Poor Lightfoot and Dauntless were dead, but their lives had been happy, and maybe it was better that they should go suddenly, in their prime, even if their end had been painful, than live to an old age of rheumatism and bad teeth, unable to chase a hare when they saw one.

  He came down from the woods to the bank above the house. The hydrangeas were in flower, and Barbara, in her shady hat, was moving amongst them with her scissors. She did not look well these days, sometimes he feared that cough of hers sounded too much like Henry's. No use saying anything, though. The children came running towards him, Johnnie turning somersaults, laying small Edward flat on his face as he cart-wheeled in the air. Fanny-Rosa came out of the house with the baby Herbert in her arms. Five children in eight years; they had not done badly…

  She handed the little fellow to his aunt, and came up the bank to meet her husband. Something touched his heart as she did so. Would she always have the power to move him thus, with her smile, with her eyes, with the feel of her hand on his arm?

  "It's our wedding day on the twenty-ninth," he told her. "We shall have been together nine years. Did you know that?"

  "I'm not likely to forget it, am I?" she said, pointing to the children. "Maybe it's time I wore a cap in the house, and gave up running about the grounds the way I do. They say that the tenth year of married life is the most difficult."

  "Do they now? And in what way would it be difficult?"

  "Why, the husband becomes weary of seeing the same face every night on his pillow, and he looks around him to see if he might do better."

  "How do you know I have not done so already, and cannot find one?"

  "Because you are too lazy, dearest one, andwiththe side-whiskers on your face there's not a woman would look at you."

  "I am not so lazy as you suppose. In fact, I propose taking a step one day this week that will astonish you when you hear of it."

  "And what would that be?"

  "I'll not tell you. You shall plague me as you will, but I shall keep my secret."

  The truth was that John was determined after all to go down to the village to see Sam Donovan, and make an attempt to bury the hatchet of nearly two hundred years. It mattered little for himself, but for his children's sake he felt that it must be done. Why should Johnnie, and Henry, and Edward, and Herbert, and Fanny, be landed with ridiculous squabbles in the years to come? So a week after the poisoning of the greyhounds John set off one afternoon on foot for Doonhaven, having reluctantly refused to accompany Fanny-Rosa and the children on a picnic.

  "There'll be picnics a-plenty in the days to come," he told them. "For once in my life I am going to do a piece of work."

  "Don't let it kill you," laughed Fanny-Rosa.

  "It certainly shan't do that," said her husband.

  It was pleasant walking in the October sunshine.

  The path through the woods was crisp with fallen leaves, and the old herons rose from their nests in the trees and flapped away at his approach. The tide was making in the creek. Some of the men were burning leaves up in the park. The good bitter wood smell came floating down to him on the wind. Soon the cock would be in, and he would persuade his father to take a day off from the mines with his gun. They might get a few snipe up in the bog at Kileen, and have another day with the hares on Doon Island. He would suggest to Fanny-Rosa that they stayed on at Clonmere until Christmas. Five small children seemed like ten at Lletharrog. If they went on as they were doing at present he would have to give the farm-house back to his father and take something larger. It was close and sultry down in Doonhaven, more like summer than autumn in the market-square, and the place seemed deserted, as it always did in the afternoon.

  He went down to the quay, and along to Sam Donovan's shop. It was closed, and the shutter was up at the window. He knocked on the door, and presently it was opened by Sam's wife, a thin, tired-looking woman, who was wiping her hands on a dirty apron. A girl of ten or eleven, with a mop of fair hair and light blue eyes like all the Donovans, peered over her mother's shoulder.

  "Is Sam at home?" asked John, aware that his voice sounded a shade too hearty to be natural.

  "He is not," said the woman, gazing at him suspiciously.

  "Oh, I am sorry for that," said John. "I came down to speak to him most particularly."

  The woman made no reply, and after waiting a moment, John turned away. Perhaps he had bungled the business after all. He heard the child whisper to her mother, and then she ran out on to the quay.

  "My father is staying with my uncle Denny, on account of the sickness," she said. "If you want to speak to him you will find him there. Mother and I have not seen him these two weeks."

  John thanked the child, and went back along the quay. Having come down to Doonhaven for the purpose, it was something of an anti-climax to find Sam was not at home, and his good effort made for nothing. The church clock struck four. It was too late to join the others for their picnic. No, he had set himself to the task, and the task might as well be done. He would walk over to Denny Donovan's, and see both brothers at the same time. There was nothing like doing the business thoroughly, now he had made up his mind to it. It was an ideal day for a walk too, the air up on the road to Denmare would be grand after the village.

  Once again he left Doonhaven behind him, and the gate-house, and the park, and struck up westward on the road across the moors. His father had won his way, and the road had been widened in places, and now ran straight through to the Denmare river, but John did not notice that much good had been done by it, only that more people came down from the country to Doonhaven on market days and Saints' days. Denny Donovan's public-house-it was hardly more than a shack-was some three miles along the road, a dirty, tumbled-down place, with a few bedraggled hens scratching in the yard behind. Denny's cart was put up in the shed beside the house, and his pony was turned loose on the moor beside the road.

  "At any rate," thought John, "he is at home, if Sam is not."

  He saw the figure of a woman looking down at him from behind a blind in the upstairs bedroom, and believed that he recog
nised Mary Kelly, the widow of the unfortunate man who had been shot. His courage began to fail him. Perhaps it was nothing but quixotic foolishness after all that had led him here.

  The door of the public entrance was shut, with a bar across it, and John went round the yard to the back. It was odd of Denny Donovan to close his door against possible customers. More likely than not he had run out of liquor, and had been unable to go into Mundy to replenish his store.

  John knocked on the door, and, gaining no response, boldly lifted the latch and walked in. There was nobody below, but he could hear sounds of movement overhead in the bedroom. The public bar had a grey, neglected air about it. There was dust everywhere, and on the bar itself two or three unwashed glasses that looked as if they had stood there for days. He thumped on the bar with his fist, and after a moment or two he heard footsteps coming down the rickety stairs, and Sam Donovan stood before him. He was wearing a night-shirt stuffed into a pair of breeches, and was unshaven. He stood staring at his visitor, and began scratching his ear and half smiling in the old fawning way that was his mannerism.

  "Good-day, Sam," said John, holding out his hand, which the other took, after a moment's hesitation.

  "I've thought for some time I should like a talk with you, and so I went down to your shop this afternoon, but your wife sent me on here. I gathered you had not been well."

  "Ah, it's nothing much that ails me, Mr.

  Brodrick, it's Denny that has had the sickness, and Mary and I came out here to nurse him, They say he caught it from drinking bad water up at Mundy, when we were witnessing there at the Assizes."

  "I'm sorry for that."

  "Would you come up and speak to him? Sure, he's in bed, but that's no matter, and he can speak now the fever has left him."

  John followed Sam Donovan upstairs, and was shown into a small, stuffy bedroom, the same at which Mary Kelly had been standing when he arrived. The windows were tightly closed, and the air was appalling.

  Sam's brother Denny was lying in bed, and his widowed sister was sitting beside him. She had a black lace cap on her head, which John could swear she was not wearing when he saw her at the window. Denny Donovan looked thin and wretched. Whatever was the truth of the story about the bad water of Mundy, at least he had drunk something that had not agreed with him.

  "You're in a poor way, I hear, Denny," said John.

  "I'm easier now than I was, Mr.

  John," said the man, watching him over the bed-clothes, "but the fever had me racked for days and it's a surprise to me that I am here at all, after what I have suffered. And poor Mary here, having just put her dear husband in the grave, thinks nothing of the infection, nor Sam either, but both of them come out here to tend me. There is affection for you, between brother and brother."

  "Yes, indeed," said John, remembering how some few years ago he had seen Sam belabouring Denny on New Year's Day, calling him a rogue and a devil, both brothers having celebrated too freely the passing of the year. "And since we are on the subject of affection, I must tell you what I have come to see you about. First of all, I am sorry for that wretched accident where your husband was killed, Mrs. Kelly, and I want you to believe it."

  "He was a fine man," said the widow. "You would not see another the same, not this side of Paradise."

  "It was a sad business," said Sam. "Here's poor Mary likely to starve, and she with no sons to support her. It's little Denny or I can do for her either, being poor men, with families of Our own. It's what we were saying only this afternoon, that it would be a saintly act if some kind gentleman should befriend her, but where is one to be found in the country?"

  "I would never have given the blunderbuss to Thomas Dowding to carry had I thought he would use it," said John.

  "It was for ornamental purposes," said Denny.

  "He liked to parade it before people. That's what I said to you at the time, Sam."

  "If Mrs. Kelly is really in need of help, I will willingly give it," said John.

  "And don't you think the time has come when we might forget the old quarrel between our families, and make it up? I am the first to admit that much of the provocation has been on our side. We have been lucky, through one circumstance or another, and you have been unfortunate. Shall we say no more about it, and all four of us shake hands?"

  There was a moment's silence. The widow sighed deeply, and San? Donovan scratched his ear.

  "How much would you be willing to allow my sister?" he said.

  "It depends what she's worth to both of you,"

  John replied, and getting up, he went and stood by the window and opened it, breathing in the scented moorland air.

  He had been an idiot to come after all. They had not understood his gesture. They thought that he wanted to buy them off from making further disturbances. It served him right. How his father would scorn him if he knew what he had done. A fool and his money are soon parted… Meanwhile the brothers had been conferring with their sister.

  "Mary thinks she could manage on five shillings a week," said Sam.

  "Very well," said John, "I will see that she gets it." He put his hand in his pocket, and drew out some coins. "This is the first instalment," he said.

  "You had better open an account at the Post Office; the money will be safer there."

  "Fetch Mr. John a drink, Sam," said the sick brother, "to celebrate the occasion. There's a bottle of whisky in the cupboard, and here is a glass for him. I'd join you but for this fever; when the spirit goes down me you would say it was molten lead, so swollen is my throat."

  This is, thought John, the most senseless moment of my very senseless life, to be drinking whisky with the Donovans, and preparing to keep Mary Kelly for life. I don't think I shall have the courage even to tell Fanny-Rosa.

  The widow appeared to have recovered her spirits, and, joining John in his glass of whisky, asked after the children.

  "Handsomer boys than yours, Mr. Brodrick," she said, "it has seldom fallen to my lot to see.

  They are like the blessed angels in heaven."

  "You would not think so, Mrs. Kelly, if you lived with them," said John.

  The lunacy of the whole proceeding struck him so forcibly that he could hardly restrain himself from laughing out loud. Here he was, being flattered and patted on the back by the very people who had poisoned his dogs, and giving them money into the bargain.

  "Well, good-day to you, Denny," he said, setting down his glass. "I hope you will soon be better and about once more. Let it be a lesson to you never to drink water again."

  He went down the stairs, followed by Sam and the widow, who escorted him to the door with smiles and fine speeches.

  "Good afternoon, Mr. John," said Sam.

  "Sure, if there is anything I can do for you at any time, down in the shop, you have only to pass me the word."

  "Right, Sam, I will remember," said John, and he set off along the road back to Clonmere, shaking with laughter at the fool he had made of himself. At any rate, it might have the result of keeping the Donovans quiet for another ten years.

  He arrived home to find the family returned from their picnic, and sitting down to dinner. The children had enjoyed themselves, and Johnnie had lost a front tooth.

  Fanny-Rosa was flushed, and freckled, and adorable. Everyone was in high good humour, perhaps because Copper John was passing a few days in Slane, and the atmosphere in the house was the lighter for his absence.

  Willie Armstrong joined them for dessert, and the curtains were drawn early, and the candles lit, and they all sat round the fire to roast chestnuts.

  "By the way," said the doctor, "you will be glad to hear, Barbara, that there is not the slightest likelihood of an epidemic after all. The cases were isolated, and have come into no contact with other people. This diphtheria, as they call it, is a very dangerous disease."

  "How thankful I am," said Barbara. "I could not bear to think of fever in the district with the children about."

  "Dennis Donovan is an extremel
y lucky man to have got over it so quickly," said Doctor Armstrong; "but they are all alike, that family, they have the strength of twenty oxen."

  John threw his uneaten chestnut into the fire and stared across at his friend. "Did you say Denny Donovan had diphtheria?" he said quietly.

  "Yes," answered the doctor. "Why, what's the matter?"

  John rose to his feet, and went over to the window. He stood for a moment thinking rapidly, and then turned about and faced his family.

  "I'm afraid I have to tell you all," he said, "that I did not know of this, and I have been with Denny Donovan this afternoon."

  His friend, his sisters, and his wife stared at him aghast. In a few Words he told them his story.

  His voice was quiet and low. When he had finished he looked across at Fanny-Rosa, as though asking for her love and understanding. She stood very still, terror in her eyes that he had never seen before.

  "If you have brought the infection home to Johnnie, I shall never forgive you," she said.

  So much of the room was dark. He could not even see the pictures of Eton on the wall. Nor the cases that held the butterflies. Nor the birds' eggs. And it made a loneliness lying there, because he loved the things that belonged to him, and when he could not see them he felt shut out, a stranger, someone who tossed and turned upon a bed that was not his own. He kept falling too, into a bottomless pit, the sides of which were clammy cold like the rock-face of the mine, and his father, peering at him from above, would shake his head and turn away, saying that he was not worth the saving, he would never make anything of his life. Then his father would change into his tutor at Eton, looking at him over his gold-rimmed glasses, fingering his report. "Brodrick minor lacks initiative…? That was the trouble. He had always lacked initiative. He had never wanted to serve his country, or practise at the Bar, or help his father run the mine at Doon-haven, or do any of the things that people expected him to do. He only wanted to be left alone. The greyhounds had understood him best; they stood beside him shivering and expectant, their long, slim bodies quivering in excitement, their eyes, keen and intelligent, waiting upon his word.