Already he seemed better, stronger, and less troubled by his cough, and on the very day of his departure the long-promised picnic was held on Hungry Hill. The day was fine and clear from the start, with the soft brilliance that late summer brings, and as the little cavalcade set forth on horseback from Clonmere, with Henry driven in state by Tim the stable-boy, the tip of Hungry Hill, shimmering under the sun, held a promise of warm grass and scented heather, of gay dragon-flies skimming the still lake, of great rocks and stones, rusty with lichen, lying hot and bare beneath the sky.
They climbed the western face of the hill, away from the mine, and then, when the track became broken and lost, and the carriage could go no farther, John dismounted from his horse and helped his brother into the saddle, while Tim, weighed down by the picnic baskets, stumbled in the rear. What a party they were! Barbara-carrying a monstrous sunshade to keep off the flies-and Eliza, with sketching materials and stool and easel (for she fancied her water-colours), and Jane, with two volumes of poetry and escorted on either side by two young officers from the garrison, Lieutenant Fox and Lieutenant Davies, the latter having been asked for Eliza but appearing unaware of his duties, and Doctor Armstrong leading Henry's horse, with Henry himself in the saddle directing one way and John directing another, and Bob Flower, who was a Captain in the Dragoons and thought himself a little superior to the young officers from the garrison, and lastly Fanny-Rosa, who kept the whole party, and John in particular, in a frenzy of anxiety, because she would ride her horse at a distance, over the most uneven part of the ground, and when called to in warning shook her head and would not listen.
At last they came to the lake, with shouts of relief from the young men and cries of delight from the ladies, and Barbara at once busied herself with the unpacking of the food and the setting down of rugs, in case the ground was damp-which of course it was not-and seeing that Henry was not fatigued, while Henry himself lay on his back and closed his eyes and felt the warm grass with his hands and was still and happy.
Fanny-Rosa was climbing a rock to have a better view of the bay, and pulling her petticoats above her knees to give her more freedom, and John, who wanted to be with her, watched her moodily, thinking that if he joined her the others would notice and imagine that he did so because she was showing her legs in this barefaced fashion, which would be perfectly true in a sense and yet not the whole truth. Because he could not make up his mind, he went on standing uncertainly by the side of the lake, wishing he had not come on the picnic, yet knowing that if he had stayed at home he would have been miserable, so his day was doomed anyway.
Jane had disappeared with both her young officers, and Doctor Armstrong, sighing for some reason or other, asked Barbara whether he should help her with the setting out of the food.
"Please do," she said gratefully, hoping he was not feeling unwell (for it was unlike him to sigh), and wondering in the same breath what had happened to the dozen meat patties she herself had packed in the basket. If they were lost there would not be enough chicken to go round, and she must somehow manage to warn the family to take a drumstick apiece and leave the white meat to the guests.
Now Eliza, rather red in the face and frowning, was pulling at her arm.
"I wish you would speak to Jane," she whispered fiercely. "She has gone behind a rock with those two young men. It looks so improper. I hardly know what Captain Flower will think of her."
And Barbara, still frantically searching for the meat patties, answered back rather impatiently that "Captain Flower would do well to look after his own sister, and no doubt Jane and the officers were hunting for butterflies."
Eliza sniffed, and said there were plenty of butterflies about without looking for them behind rocks, and as for that Lieutenant Davies, she could not for the life of her imagine why he had been asked to the picnic at all; he was quite odious, and his laugh was too loud; she certainly was not going to have him looking over her shoulder while she sketched, he would be dreadfully in the way.
"Perhaps he won't want to, dear," said Barbara absently, and oh, what a relief! there were the meat patties after all-she remembered now she had put them in a napkin to retain the heat better.
"Would you tell everyone that luncheon is ready?" she asked Doctor Armstrong, and he went off at once to hunt up Jane and the officers, and they all returned almost immediately, Doctor Armstrong and the young officers watching one another like suspicious terriers, and Jane herself very quiet and demure, her large brown eyes turned upon each in turn.
"How delightful this is, and how well I feel, and what nonsense that the foolish fellows of your profession, Willie, should send me to the Barbados," said Henry gaily, sitting up and looking at the food placed so temptingly in front of him. "Barbara, I starve; two meat patties, please."
And soon the whole party were assembled and tucking in to the chicken and the patties, and the cold bacon, and the jellies, as though they had never eaten before.
Fanny-Rosa sat cross-legged, like a tailor, and John wondered whether he was the only one to notice that her feet were bare beneath her dress-he could see the toes peeping out from under her.
She had sat herself down by Henry and was telling him he was the sultan of the feast, and she was a slave-girl ministering to him.
"How extremely amusing it would be if it were really so," said Henry, making her a mock bow.
"Shall I bring you back gold bangles from the West Indies, and ear-rings? Slave-girls always wear those things, you know, as a sign of submission."
"Please," begged Fanny-Rosa, "and a tambourine also, and then I will dance for you."
John wished he could talk in that easy, gay fashion. He supposed Henry had learnt how to do it on the Continent, and Fanny-Rosa too.
"If the Barbados prove disappointing,"
Fanny-Rosa was saying, "then you must come back and join us in Naples. I am quite determined to go to Naples for the winter."
"Father and mother have said nothing about Italy to me," objected her brother. "I should think such a project extremely unlikely."
"You will be with your regiment, and have nothing to do with it," said Fanny-Rosa. "If I make up my mind father and mother will obey, We will go to Naples and gaze at Vesuvius, and listen to music, which will delight father, who will become sentimental and drink more than is good for him, and I shall buy a heap of gowns and dress like a Neapolitan, and wear a flower behind my ear, and throw kisses to you, Henry, from a balcony."
"Take no notice of her," said Captain Flower. "I regret to say that both my sisters are quite mad. Matilda, the young one, is even worse than Fanny-Rosa. She spends all her time in the stables, now we have no governess in the house.
Castle Andriff is like an asylum."
"Poor Mrs. Flower!" said Barbara. "You ought to try and help her, Fanny-Rosa, and set Matilda a good example. Jane is a great help to me, and she is nearly three years younger than you."
"Ah, but Jane thinks always of other people, Miss Brodrick," said Fanny-Rosa, "and I think only of myself. "Enjoy yourself while you can," said father to me only yesterday; "we may all be dead before the year is out."
"That is certainly true," said Henry, "but before it happens let us meet in Naples, as you suggest, and I will claim that kiss from the balcony."
And so they continued through lunch, laughing, and teasing, and making plans, while John filled his mouth savagely with cold fat bacon, thinking of Lincoln's Inn, and his gloomy chambers, and the grey, damp fogs of December, that had nothing in common with sunny Naples and balconies.
After lunch there was more conversation, and then sighs, and yawns, and a feeling that everyone must do as he pleased.
Henry rested in the shade of a boulder, with Barbara beside him, under her large sunshade, and Jane and the young officers read poetry behind a clump of heather.
Eliza had planted herself down in front of a stunted gorse-bush, through which she could peer from time to time at Lieutenant Davies and tell herself how very plain he was, and lo
ok from him back to her easel, upon which a sketch of the distant harbour of Doonhaven was taking slow shape. Bob Flower was asleep and snoring loudly, which, thought Eliza, was very ill-mannered of him, and he ought to be looking after his sister, who had disappeared.
John was throwing stones aimlessly into the lake.
He had been a fool not to bring his rod, a trout was rising now in the middle, he could see the sudden ripple and the plop of the water, and he began to stroll along the edge towards the farther end of the lake, out of sight of the picnic party. How warm it was on Hungry Hill, how silent and how still. No one would know that only three miles or so to the eastward were the tall, ugly chimneys of his father's mine. The soft moss squelched under his feet, and there came to him the sour, boggy smell of the cold lake-water, and the scent of the heather as well. Poor Henry, he thought; this is what he would like, standing here with the little soft wind in his face, not lying down under a rug with his head on his arm.
A louder splash than usual caught his ear-there must be some big trout in the lake, after all-and he climbed over a boulder to have a sight of the fish, and oh, God! it was no fish jumping at all, but Fanny-Rosa, naked, with her hair falling on her shoulders, wading out into the lake, throwing the water aside with her hands.
She turned and saw him, and instead of shrieking in distress and shame, as his sisters would have done, she looked up at him, and smiled, and said, "Why do you not come in too? It is cool and lovely."
He felt himself go scarlet, and the sweat broke out on his forehead. Saying nothing, he turned away and began to walk rapidly in the opposite direction until his foot caught in a rabbit-hole and overturned him, and he slipped sideways into the heather, cursing and blaspheming, and sat for a while nursing his injured ankle, while a lark rose from in front of him and hovered in the air, singing his song of freedom.
Presently-hours must have passed, he thought; he did not care- he heard someone come and sit beside him, and turning he saw Fanny-Rosa, dressed once more, her face glowing with her swim, her hair wet on her shoulders.
"You think me shameful," she said softly, "you have a great disgust at me."
"Ah, no," he said swiftly, sweeping her with his eyes, "you don't understand. I came away because you were so lovely…?
And he stammered, and could say no more, because she was smiling at him, and the smile was too much.
"You won't tell Miss Brodrick, will you?" she pleaded. "She would never ask me to Clonmere again, and maybe she would write and tell my mother."
"I won't tell anyone, ever," said John.
They were silent, and she began to pluck at the grass with her hands, which were small and slim. She laid them beside his a moment in contrast, and then, when he still said nothing, she put her hands on top of his, and in a low, quiet voice she said: "I think you are angry with me."
"Angry?" he said. "Fanny-Rosa, how could anyone be angry with you?"
And suddenly he had his arms round her, and she was lying on her back in the heather, with her eyes closed, and he was kissing her.
After a while she opened her eyes, but she did not look at him. She watched the lark flying overhead, and then she put up her hand and touched his cheek, and his mouth, and his eyes, and his dark hair, and she said: "You've wanted to kiss me for a long time, have you not?"
"For nearly ten months," he told her, "I have thought of nothing else."
"Is it a disappointment to you," she said, "now that you have?"
"No," he said, land he wished he could tell her something of the fullness in his heart, something of the tenderness he felt for her, something of the longing that swept his whole body. But words were things of such difficulty, he could not juggle with them, he could only look down at her lying there in the heather, and suffer and worship.
"I thought," she said, "that it was only your old greyhounds you cared for," and she held up her hands for him to kiss the fingers one by one. "That day you came to Andriff," she told him, "in the winter comd you remember? — it was you who seemed light-hearted then, and your brother who was serious. But now that I know you both better I think it is the other way round. Henry is gay, and you are solemn."
When she spoke of Henry he was aware instantly of a pang of jealousy, and he remembered how she had laughed and flirted with his brother all through lunch, and had not looked at him. The memory made a twist in his mind, and he sat up, and gazed out across the hill, and the lark that had been singing overhead came down to earth and was hidden.
"You like Henry, don't you?" he said. "Everyone does."
"I like you both," she said.
In the distance they could hear the sound of voices calling, and Fanny-Rosa made a face.
"They are wondering what can have happened to us," she said. "Perhaps we should be going back."
She got up and brushed her dress, humming to herself, and John, watching her, a pain in his heart, thought how little she guessed the feeling that possessed him, and how foolish she would think him did she know.
He had held her and kissed her, and this was to him a thing of so great a magnitude that he knew in all certainty his life from henceforward would be coloured by what had happened that afternoon. Never would he forget the sight of her naked body in the water, never would he lose the touch of her hands and her lips, as she lay in the heather.
But for Fanny-Rosa it had been an interlude, a moment of enjoyment after her bathe, and he wondered, loving her, whether she would have done likewise with his brother, or Willie Armstrong, or the young officers from Doon Island. She gave him her hand now, like a child, as Jane used to do, and led him across the hill back to the lake, and as they walked she told him some nonsensical story about Simon Flower and his tenants-how he had given them all whisky one Christmas and sent every man home drunk-and he looked at her profile and the cloud of chestnut hair, and the happiness he had was sharp, and bitter-sweet.
She dropped his hand when they came within sight of the others. That is the end of it, he thought; now the day is finished, there will not be anything more, and he went silently to see to his horse, and saddle him, and help Tim with the rest of the horses; for to have laughed and chatted and made conversation, as Fanny-Rosa was doing, would have been beyond his power. They were alien to him now, the group of people; he would rather be alone or in the company of stolid Tim.
"What a day it has been, and how I have enjoyed it!" Henry was saying, "and you are all to come and see me embark on the Henrietta, and wave farewell."
Down they went through the stones and the heather to the track where the carriage had been left, Fanny-Rosa starting the lilting chorus of a song, and the others joining in, the young officers loudest of all. The brilliant blue of the sky had faded now to the still white of a September evening, and little mackerel clouds had gathered about the sun. The first shadows fell upon Hungry Hill. The lovely day, thought Jane, is coming to its close, and behind us we leave the lake, and the rocks, and the heather, and our voices will not trouble the stillness again. Already the day belongs to the past, something we shall look back upon and say to one another, "Do you remember this? Do you remember how Henry laughed, and sang a song with Fanny-Rosa Flower?"
So the party descended to the road, and clattered down the hill into Doonhaven. And there, in the square, were Casey, and another man, and the groom from Castle Andriff, waiting to hold the horses, and everyone dismounted and walked with Henry to the harbour, where the Henrietta lay at anchor, the men casting the sails from the yards preparatory to departure.
Captain Nicholson was on the quayside, having superintended the final stowing of the cargo, and Copper John stood beside him, with the master of the vessel. He smiled as he saw his son approach, and, with a word to the others, came to meet him.
"Not too tired, boy?"
"No, sir. I have had one of the happiest days of my life," said Henry. ' "Good. That is what all of us wished for you. You have cut it rather fine, though.
No time for prolonged farewells, or anythin
g of that sort. The master wishes to weigh anchor as soon as you go on board. The wind is fair, and if it holds you should have a speedy passage to Bronsea."
Henry kissed his sisters, shook hands with his brother and his friends, and the usual forced words of jollity came to the lips of each in turn. "Bring us all back a shawl, Harry, from the Barbados," said Eliza, and "Do remember your cough medicine, dear," from Barbara, while there were injunctions from the young officers not to lose his heart to the native ladies. "Get well quickly, my boy, that is the only thing that concerns me," said his father, and then Henry turned and went down the steps to the waiting boat, and the boat pulled out across the harbour to the Henrietta.
He stood up in the stern, waving his hat, and smiling.
"We will meet in Naples," he called to Fanny-Rosa. "That's a promise, isn't it?"
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.
Hungry Hill Page 9
