He rang the bell at No.5, and climbed the stairs to the little sitting-room, overfull of furniture, where Aunt Lizette sat day after day, crocheting lace samplers to be sold for blind babies. Queer passionate hobby, that must have its origin, surely, in subconscious pity of her own childhood, when, lame and neglected, she lived in fear of a resentful stepmother. She rose smiling now, as he came into the room, her sallow complexion a little yellower than usual, her eyes blinking behind the spectacles.
"You dear boy," she said, and he noticed once more, with pleasure, that her voice had the soft, warm lilt belonging to Slane and the south, possessed also by his mother, which brought back to him always, rich and loved, the memories of boyhood.
"Your mother told me you would come, and I didn't believe her," said Aunt Lizette, "for surely, I said to myself, a young man has better things to do than to visit an aunt when he comes home."
"Not this young man," said John-Henry. "He can't forget the pep-permints you used to keep in your cupboard."
Aunt Lizette smiled, and took off her spectacles, and now he saw that her eyes were fine and handsome, like Aunt Kitty's, and he thought of the happily assorted household they had been out at Castle Andriff, Aunt Kitty, Aunt Lizette, and Uncle Simon, all living together in harmony, with very few servants and too many dogs, until the children grew up and scattered, and Aunt Kitty died, and Aunt Lizette went on living alone with Uncle Simon. These things happened only in this country.
"And your mother, how is she?" asked Aunt Lizette.
"Very well, and very happy, and I was to thank you for the lace you sent her, which I believe made a table-centre for her dining-room. I'm to give you the money here and now. She wouldn't trust the post at the present time."
He felt for his wallet and took out a note.
"Ah, she shouldn't have worried," said Aunt Lizette. "Time enough when all this shooting is over, and everyone behaves like decent human beings. were they fighting today, tell me, in the streets?"
"They peppered a few shop windows as I came down to see you, but I don't think much damage was done. What's it all about, Aunt Lizette? You must be an unprejudiced person."
Aunt Lizette waited until the serving-maid had brought the tea and closed the door behind her.
"You have to be careful," she said softly. "I've had Meggie with me three years, but she has a brother fighting for the rebels. "I haven't set eyes on him, miss, not for six months," she told me yesterday. She was lying, of course. The cigarettes I keep for visitors have been disappearing lately, and where would they be but down the front of Meggie's dress, so that she can slip out after dark and give them to him at the street corner?"
"You'd better be careful," smiled John-Henry. "You'll have the soldiers coming to search your house."
"And they'd find nothing," said Aunt Lizette.
"I'm a loyal subject of the King, and always have been, like the rest of the family. No Brodrick meddles with politics, although my father tried to stand for Parliament in his hey-days, just before your father was born."
John-Henry munched his buttered toast, and looked round the little room, so filled with furniture from Andriff and Dunmore-where Aunt Molly had lived-and bits and pieces from Clonmere also, treasures that Aunt Lizette had gathered around her with the years and would never part with now.
"As far as I can discover," he said, "no Brodrick has ever done anything but die young or drink himself to death."
Aunt Lizette frowned, and poured him out another cup of tea.
"The war and the Navy between them have made you a cynic," she said, "and anyway it's not true. The Brodricks were always greatly respected in the country."
"Who respected them, and what were they respected for?" asked her nephew.
His aunt sat back in her chair, and folded her hands. They were long and slender, the hands of a young woman, for all her fifty years.
"They were just landlords, for one thing," she answered, "right from the start. They did their duty to God and the King. They were firm to their tenants, but kindly too.
And Clonmere always stood for law and order. The people looked upon it as a symbol of authority, of wise authority."
"Perhaps they did," said John-Henry, smiling over the rim of his cup, "but perhaps also they didn't want authority, or God, or the King-and you see the outcome of it all today. You know their motto, "Ourselves Alone"?"
Aunt Lizette clucked her tongue impatiently.
"That's all nonsense," she said. "They can't exist that way. And don't tell me you sympathise with them, or I won't have you in my house. You ought to be ashamed of yourself, and you wearing the King's uniform a few months ago."
"I never said I sympathised with them," pleaded John-Henry. "I don't care a damn for one side or the other. It just happens that I have the misfortune to see both sides of a question."
"Don't go and live in Doonhaven, then," said Aunt Lizette, "or you'll get rapidly worse. If it's raining there, and you should say how fine a day it is to anybody, they will agree with you, just to please your face, and save themselves trouble."
"But surely," said John-Henry, "that is the ideal way of living? If everybody did that there would be no arguments, no wars, no senseless fighting of one another."
Aunt Lizette considered this a moment, then shook her head again.
"It wouldn't be moral," she said solemnly.
John-Henry laughed.
"Anyway," he said, "wet or fine, moral or immoral, I propose to go down to Doonhaven within the next day or so, and visit Clonmere. I haven't been down there, you know, since before the war, just before Granpie died. It's probably falling to bits, although the people at the gate-house are supposed to look after it."
"And what will you do?" said Aunt Lizette, "when you get there?"
John-Henry smiled, and stretched out his legs under the tea-table.
"I shall live there," he said. "I may telegraph mother to come down and join me. Do you know, all the time I was in the Navy, and the war was going on, it was the only thing that was real to me? The Mediterranean, the Dardanelles, none of it seemed to sink in. I kept thinking, "This overgrown sub who sweats his guts out in an engine-room and then goes ashore at Malta and overstays his leave, isn't John-Henry at all. The real John-Henry is standing in front of Clonmere, looking across the creek to Hungry Hill. And that's where I belong. That's where my roots are, that's where I was born and bred."
Aunt Lizette put on her spectacles and, moving to the window, took up her crochet.
"I was born there too," she said, "but my childhood was spent in London. And then, when I was ten, and your aunt Molly married, we all went home for Christmas. I shall never forget my first sight of the hills, and the colour of the water in Mundy Bay, and the old paddle-steamer coming in to Doonhaven." She was silent for a moment, bending over her work. "But it's a great big house for a young man to live in all alone," she said.
"There'll be heaps to do," said John-Henry, "to get it right again. The woods will need clearing, and the gardens put in order. No half-measures for me, Aunt Lizette. I'm not a sub in an engine-room any longer. I'm going to be John-Henry Brodrick of Clonmere, and damn all comers! No, not damn all comers, because I like the people, and I want them to like me. And you shall have the best spare-room, Aunt Lizette, and when you come to stay we'll have a big turf fire lit in the great hall to welcome you."
"You don't propose living in the new wing, do you?" she said.
"Why not? My grandfather built it to be lived in, didn't he?"
"Yes, fifty years ago, when there were servants by the score, and carriages, and horses, and the mines working night and day on Hungry Hill.
Doonhaven is only a sleepy village now, with no one to work for you, and the people shooting one another, as likely as not. Ah, now… Do you hear that?"
As she spoke there was a sound of tramping feet at the end of the terrace, where it opened on to the road.
John-Henry leant out of the window beside his aunt.
S
oldiers were going past in the main street, and in the midst of them two men in civilian clothes, with their hands behind them, their caps pulled down low over their eyes. A little crowd had collected on the pavement to watch them pass. A woman shouted out abuse at the soldiers, and one of them, mounted, rode towards the crowd, pressing them back. The tramp of marching feet passed on…
"Ourselves Alone," whispered John-Henry, "and if you found one of them, your Meggie's brother, let's say, hiding in the kitchen, would you call in the soldiers and give him up?"
"He might have murdered innocent people. It would be my duty to give him up," said Aunt Lizette firmly.
"You haven't answered my question," persisted John-Henry. "Would you give him up to the soldiers?"
She looked sideways at him, the dark eyes blinking behind her spectacles.
"I might then," she said softly, "but I'd sign my name to a petition to save him afterwards, all the same."
A shower of rain spattered the windows, and the sky darkened.
"Where are you staying?" she asked him.
"At the Metropole Hotel," he told her.
"Then, dear boy, you'd best be getting back.
You don't want to be out in the streets at dusk.
How will you get down to Doonhaven when you go? I don't know that the trains are running, or if the steamer goes from Mundy."
"I've got my car, Aunt Lizette."
"You be careful, or they'll take it from you, and you trussed up like a fowl in the bottom of it-if you're not lying in a ditch with a bullet in your back."
"Maybe I'll join the rebels," he said, mischief in his eyes.
He kissed her goodbye, and went back through the silent streets to his hotel. There were sentries everywhere now, and he was challenged three times. The people were off the streets. The blinds were drawn across the windows of the houses. John-Henry went into the bar of the hotel. It was empty, except for the bartender and one young fellow of about his own age, or a little older, sitting in the corner, reading a newspaper. He glanced up when John-Henry entered, and then looked hard at him, with that questing stare of recognition which a man wears upon his face when he sees someone after a spate of years and has difficulty in finding a name. John-Henry turned his back, and ordered a whisky-and-soda.
"There's been a bit of trouble this afternoon, hasn't there?" he said to the bartender.
The fellow wiped a glass with a napkin, and glanced imperceptibly at the man in the corner, who had resumed his reading of the newspaper.
"Three people killed in the square," he said quietly, "or so I am told. I don't know anything about it. I've been in the hotel all day."
He went to the other end of the bar, and pretended to be busy with some glasses.
"Scared," thought John-Henry. "If he says a word more the chap reading a newspaper may inform against him. Where the devil have I seen that man before?"
But the newspaper was up in front of his face.
John-Henry sipped his whisky-and-soda, and thought about his aunt Lizette living all alone in her flat in the terrace, the youngest and most frail of all her family, and the last survivor-both Aunt Kitty and Aunt Molly had died during the war, in early middle-age. We're a funny family, he thought, we either go quickly, or live to a rude old age. Grandfather Henry Brodrick was getting on for eighty when he died in Brighton. And his wife wouldn't let him be brought across the water and buried at Ardmore, she wanted him in the big white cemetery at Brighton. John-Henry remembered the letter coming from his mother when he was at Dartmouth, telling him that his grandfather had died, and in the holidays they had gone and picnicked at Clonmere and dreamt dreams about the future. The war came so swiftly, spilling the dreams…
The door of the bar swung open, and three officers came in. They were laughing and joking.
"I tell you it's true," said one of them. "A whole party was over in London a year or so ago, and asked to see Casement's grave. They had brought wreaths and flowers and heaven knows what else. And the governor of the place hoodwinked 'em and showed them where Crippen or some chap was buried, and they went down on their knees and crossed themselves, and said "Hail Mary." Funniest thing you ever saw, said the governor."
The officers leant against the bar and ordered drinks.
"They're not human," said another. "We ought to have orders to shoot the lot. They're the scum of the earth, and always have been."
The first officer glanced across at John-Henry.
He had merry eyes, for all his hard mouth.
"What are you drinking?" he said.
"The spirit of the country," said John-Henry, raising his glass.
"You'd better have one with us, then," said the officer, laughing. "It's the thing we are trying to down."
He put his hat on the bar, and John-Henry looked at it closely. The hated emblem of a hated band. Yet the man seemed harmless enough, and was only doing his duty, and obeying orders.
"Do you belong to this God-forsaken country?" asked the officer.
"I do," said John-Henry, "and what's more I intend to live in it."
"You must be crazy," said the other, "unless you're a sportsman. They know how to breed horses, if nothing else."
"Good woodcock shooting, where I belong," said John-Henry, "and snipe in the bogs, and hares on Doon Island and Hungry Hill. That's the only sort of shooting I care about, not this monkey-business you fellows have to do."
"Doon Island?" said one of them. "I had a friend garrisoned there at one time. It's quiet, I believe, down west of Mundy. The people won't play either way."
"Too idle," said John-Henry, "like myself.
They only want to be left alone. And now what about having a drink with me? I don't suppose I'm the first of my countrymen to offer you hospitality."
The bartender came forward, and John-Henry moved up closer to the officers.
"Four whiskies-and-sodas for these gentlemen and myself," he said.
He listened with half an ear to the stories of the fighting, how the Town Hall, in a city farther north, had been seized by the rebels and set ablaze, and then the fellows had spent all their ammunition and taken to their heels and hidden out in the mountains.
"We went out to look for them," said the officer, "and brought them all back, two of them dead from lying out there in the cold. We shot the rest next morning.
Oh, we have lively moments. It's not all sitting on our backsides."
And this, thought John-Henry, has been going on through the ages, and my family took no part in it.
They lived at Clonmere, and built their mines, and raised their copper, and came in here to Slane to the shipping-office without caring a damn who bled on the roadside, as long as they lived in comfort at Clonmere. And all I care about is for this lunacy to be over so that I can do the same. The officers had swallowed their drinks, and were fixing their belts.
"And now what?" said John-Henry.
"Patrol," said the first officer, "and maybe a knife under the ribs. Come and join us."
"Not I," smiled John-Henry.
"We'll come and shoot woodcock with you," said the officer, "when we've killed enough of your countrymen.
Goodnight, and good luck."
"Goodnight," said John-Henry.
The bartender was putting up the shutters and fastening the bolts.
"That's the last of them," he said, "there won't be any more tonight. You'll go up through the hotel entrance, if you please."
John-Henry glanced round the room. It was empty, except for himself and the bartender.
"There was a man in the corner," he said, "when I first came in. I seemed to recognise his face.
Do you know who he was?"
The bartender shook his head.
"We get all sorts these days," he said.
"He must have slipped away very quietly," said John-Henry. "I'm sorry about it, because I had a feeling he came from Doonhaven."
The bartender ran a cloth along the side of the bar.
"If he came fr
om your home," he said slowly, "it's a pity he saw you drinking with the Black and Tans."
John-Henry stared at him.
"What do you mean?" he said. "I don't know those fellows. They're nothing to me."
"No," said the bartender, "but this is a funny country… Goodnight, sir."
He switched off the light over the bar as a signal of dismissal.
John-Henry walked slowly up the stairs to bed. He drew aside the curtains of his room, and looked at the sky. The rain had cleared, and the stars were shining. There was a clean fresh smell in the air of washed streets, and night itself, and early spring. The church bell tolled out the hour. Down in the street, below his window, the patrol marched by with tramping feet.
The rain had all gone by morning, and the sun was shining as John-Henry drove out of Slane along the road to Mundy. His spirits were high, for he was young and in good health, and his car ran well, and he was going home. The dream of boyhood was to come true at last, Gone were the years of war, of stress, and duty, of travelling strange waters, of sweating under tropical skies. He had come back again, to the place where he belonged. And the air had a softness to it, belonging to no other country, the very hills were magic, with the morning mist upon them.
Aunt Lizette had doubted that he could live alone at Clonmere, twenty miles from any railway station. He would not know, she had said, what to do with himself; assuming that because he was war Weary he must be restless too, seeking company, and sport, and entertainment. John-Henry smiled, for restlessness belonged to the days at Salonika, where nothing was certain and nothing was true and fear was present in great measure; a man who trod his own soil and smelt his own land could never be restless, not if he loved it well. As for company, why, he had his own thoughts and dreams to spin at leisure, and the fascinating exploration of the past to make him understand the present.
What was John-Henry but the outcome of the years?
And looking back into the past he would learn about the future. Maybe a hundred years ago old Copper John had travelled this same road from Slane to Mundy, in confidence and strength, bequeathing to his great-great-grandson no ruggedness of character, no hardness of heart or monetary ambition, nothing but a strange facility for figures; so that lightning sums in the head and absurd mathematical calculations were the easiest thing in the world! Irony of time, that this was the only legacy handed down from the founder of the family fortunes, whose life's work, the copper mines, lay rusted and lichen-covered in the folds of Hungry Hill. Why, thought John-Henry, do I have a sentimentality for very small puppies, and birds that are maimed, and even wounded, blundering bumble bees? Is it because the son of Copper John loved greyhounds better than men, and could not destroy as much as a wasp upon a window-pane, for the good God made all things to live under the sun?
Hungry Hill Page 47