Hungry Hill

by Daphne Du Maurier

  If I were not a parson I should envy you."

  "But because you are a parson you take care to preach at me instead," laughed Henry, "and no doubt wish to warn me not to lay up treasures upon earth, where moth and rust corrupt. It's no use, Tom, old fellow. I live in the world, and although I don't count myself a materialist I believe in using to advantage, and in enjoying too, what the world provides. There is no sin in that, as far as I can see."

  "I think I know what Tom had in his mind," said Katherine. "When a man is happy and contented, with nothing going wrong, he is in danger of the deadliest of sins, which is complacency. No, Molly dear, no more sugar, you have had plenty. Any more will give you a pain. You may play with mamma's locket instead."

  The child, who had puckered up her face, was soon distracted by the dangling chain and the little case that opened and then closed with a snap.

  "Training starts, you see, Tom?" winked Henry. "Molly wants sugar, but is fobbed off with something else! No complacency there. I would let her eat all the sugar her small stomach could hold, and then wait for the inevitable pain. That would teach her a lesson, and she would not eat sugar again."

  "That's where you are wrong," said Katherine.

  "Molly is too small to connect cause and effect. The pain, to her, would have nothing to do with the sugar. A baby must be distracted, then when reason dawns she must learn obedience, and the necessity of obedience."

  "She has it all arranged," said Henry, "from the first lessons in A. b. c. down to the final examinations. I never knew anyone take the upbringing of children so seriously. I cannot remember my mother ever teaching us a thing. She certainly never corrected us."

  "It's a wonder to me that you are fit for society at all," said Tom. "You take my advice, and leave the education of your offspring to Katherine."

  "Very well," said Henry, "and if they don't come to heel quickly I'll flay the hides off 'em.

  One thing at least, they'll never want for anything."

  "The next deadly sin," murmured Tom-"too much money. Poor Katherine, you are going to be fully employed, I can see."

  Henry threw a nutshell at his friend.

  "Supposing you leave my sins alone," he said, "and give me a word of practical advice instead.

  There's to be a by-election at Bronsea, as you know. Old Sir Nicholas Venning has died.

  I'm thinking of contesting the seat in the Conservative interest."

  "Are you indeed?"

  "It would give me a lot of fun, if nothing else, and the Brodricks have had connections in that county ever since 1820."

  "And what does Katherine think?" said Tom.

  "Katherine thinks that her husband's energy is such," smiled Henry's wife, "that if he does not plunge into politics it might be something worse.

  And it will keep him out of mischief."

  "A truly wifely remark," said Henry.

  "No high ambitions for me, you observe, Tom.

  No hope or even suggestion that I might become Prime Minister. Just a kindly smile that it may "keep me out of mischief."?

  "I agree with Katherine," said his friend. "Go ahead by all means, make your speeches, give your dinners, kiss the Bronsea babies, and accept the rotten eggshells with a bow. I wish you all the luck in the world. And if you do succeed in finding your way to Westminster, I will cross the water too and listen to your maiden speech, and tell the people sitting next me that Henry Brodrick is my oldest friend. You might get me a bishopric in twenty years."

  "Seriously, though," said Henry, "I might easily win the seat by a handsome majority, although it has been held by a Liberal for so long. The family will rally round me. Herbert at Lletharrog-I told you he had the living there, didn't I, and is living at the old house? — and Aunt Eliza at Saunby. I can spin a good yarn about my Bronsea connections, although perhaps I won't say much about my step-grandmother who lives in the village and curtseys whenever she sees Herbert."

  "I believe you are a snob after all," laughed Tom.

  "Indeed I am not, but it doesn't do to produce the skeleton in the cupboard on a political platform. I tell you what, we'll take a house in London for the season, whether I win or not, and you shall come and stay with us. It will look well to be seen about with you, and will show that I have a respect for the Church."

  "Can't you damp his ardour, Tom?" said Katherine. "We were talking of complacency, and there he stands before you, more pleased with himself than anyone living. Come, Molly, we will leave your papa and your uncle to discuss the world, and go and play with your beads by the fire in the drawing-room."

  Later in the day, when Tom Callaghan had gone back to take Evensong in Doonhaven, and Molly had been put to bed, and the long curtains were drawn across the windows, Katherine lay on the sofa that had been Barbara's and was now moved close to the fire, and Henry sat on the floor beside her, her hand against his lips.

  "Am I really complacent?" he said anxiously.

  "Are you getting tired of me?"

  She smiled, and ran her fingers through his hair.

  "To the first question "yes,"? she answered, "to the second "no." Oh, I don't mean complacent, dear one. But when a person is very happy he is apt to become less sensitive, less aware. And I would not like you to become too worldly, too preoccupied with business, and money, and the success of Henry Brodrick."

  "I can't help being happy," he said, "married to you. Every day I love you a little more. And whatever I do, whatever I accomplish, is because of you; don't you know that?"

  "Yes, dearest, I do, and it makes me very proud, but a bit worried too. You put me first in life, before God, and that is not right."

  "God is not real to me as He is to you," said Henry. "You I can touch, I can hold, I can kiss, I can love. God is something mysterious, intangible. And so, in a humble way, you take the place of God."

  "Yes, sweetheart, but people pass away, and God is eternal."

  "Damn eternity. I don't want eternity.

  I want you, and the present, forever and forever." He leant across the sofa, and buried his head against her.

  "I can't help it," he repeated, "I can't help loving you. It's in my blood. My father was just the same about my mother, and although I barely remember him-I was only four years old when he died-I can recollect him standing by the creek, watching her as she played with Johnnie, and Fanny, and myself, and I shall never forget the expression in His eyes. My aunt Jane was another. If she had not been killed in an accident she would have died of a broken heart, grieving over some fellow on Doon Island. It's no use, Katherine, we Brodricks are made like this; you must accept it."

  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.r />
  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! '