"A hundred rejection slips," smiled Hal.
"No, Jinny girl, I'd rather not risk the blow to my pride. It's a present for John-Henry's second birthday. He can look at it when he's a man and see the sun, as I have painted it, on the top of Hungry Hill, and think there's the old hill that brought my family good fortune. The grass will be growing out of the chimney-stacks by the time he's turned twenty-one."
They stood together, looking at the picture, and then the door of the sitting-room opened, and the Rector came into the room. He had an open letter in his hand, and he was smiling.
"I've news for you, Hal," he said, "but you'll never guess what it is.
"You've found a new job for me," said Hal, "and I warn you now that I'm not going to take it."
"Nothing of the sort," said Tom. "Here's a letter from your father. He's crossing to Slane, and he will be in Doonhaven the day after tomorrow."
The sun was setting in the west over Mundy Bay. Little mackerel clouds had come up against the wind, and now hung motionless in the pale sky, for the breeze had died away with the approach of evening.
Hal stood by the lake on Hungry Hill, looking down on Doon-haven and Clonmere. The village, a small, straggling line by the harbour water, still held the sun, but Clonmere was in shadow.
The trees made a tapestry pattern about the castle, and beyond the trees lay the moors and the white road across the moors that led to the Denmare river and Kileen. The world below seemed unreal and remote, like the mist world of a dream at daybreak. Hungry Hill alone had clarity and brightness, the air was full of scent, and the turf under his feet was firm and green. Even the granite rocks were hot where the sun had been all day.
"This is the picture I should have painted," thought Hal, "not how the hill looks from Doonhaven and Clonmere, but how we down there must look from Hungry Hill… Petty and insignificant, little ants running about our business. The Brodricks come and go, the men and women of Doonhaven marry, and give birth, and die, the mines make their song and their clatter for seventy-five years, and then are silent again. It's all one to the fairies and the ghosts of Hungry Hill. One day I'll make a picture of it, or if I'm too lazy perhaps John-Henry will.
But whatever happens in this country of ours the hill remains undefeated. He has the laugh on all of us."
He began walking away from the lake, eastward across the shoulder of the mountain, towards the mines. He had lunched early, and had walked all afternoon alone, in a mood of nerviness and strange unrest which he could not explain, even to Jinny.
His father was to be in Doonhaven tomorrow… He would see him, touch his hand, talk to him-his father, whom he had not seen now for fifteen years, not since he had walked out of his house when he was twenty years old. So many letters that had remained unwritten from Canada, conceived during his most lonely moments, but never put down on paper. Letters from Doonhaven too, that had come to his thoughts but not to his pen.
Descriptions of the mines, tales of Jinny and the boy. And always the silence between them, always the reserve. It was to be broken at last, and he had a great fear in his heart that the meeting would be a failure. They would stand in front of one another, tongue-tied, awkward, alike in so many ways, different in too much, and then his father would break the silence with that old forced, half-jocular tone that he had used many years ago to his schoolboy son, saying "Well, Hal… how are you, and how's the painting, eh?"
The answer would be the same, clumsy and shy, dragged from him reluctantly, "All right, thanks," and then his father, waiting a moment for more and being disappointed, would turn to Tom Caliaghan and be relieved because his presence eased the restraint between them.
His father… He would look perhaps with pity on Jinny, who from shyness would show herself too eager, too anxious to please. John-Henry would be produced, and his quiet, silent charm would not be in readiness for the occasion, a baby tantrum at being dressed in his best would have given him a sullen, obstinate air.
He would turn away from his grandfather and bury his head in a cushion. The encounter would be a failure from every point of view. As he walked Hal became angry.
Why should his father come suddenly, after all these years, and make a disturbance of the routine? He had business in Slane, he said in his letter to Uncle Tom-the sale of property in the city, and some matters to do with shipping and the mining company that needed adjustment.
The mines… Yes, thought Hal, let him come and inspect the mines and see the smokeless stacks and the smashed machinery, the heap of rubble, the general air of desolation. Let him talk to Mrs.
Connor, who had her fifth baby the week after the mines were closed down, and no money in the house, and poor Tim Connor lying drunk in the street at Doonhaven because they wouldn't give him and his family a passage to America.
There was plenty for his father to see. He did not have to worry, he did not have to put his hand in his pocket.
It was not his fault. No, he had got out of the affair like the shrewd, clever business man he was, just before the market struck rock-bottom. He could look at the families, and the stricken mine, and fellows like Jim Donovan who roamed the countryside with murder in his heart, and then go back to his house in Brighton and to Adeline, and live in comfort and security. The tenants would continue to pay their rent to a landlord they never saw, and the mould and the damp would eat the walls of Clonmere. It would not matter to Henry Brodrick. Hal had crossed the shoulder of the hill, and now stood on the ride above the deserted mine. Below him were the dressing-sheds and the tall boiler-house chimney. Someone had lit a fire of the rubble that lay before the boiler-house. The smoke rose in the air, black and foul, and coming down closer, Hal could see a crowd of men laughing and talking through the smoke, throwing bits of refuse and broken timber on to the fire to increase the blaze.
One of them bore a great plank on his shoulder, torn from a bench in the counting-house, and hurled it amongst the rubble in the fire.
It was Jim Donovan. Hal climbed down over the heap of slack that lay behind the shaft and joined them.
"Some of that timber would come in handy during the winter, if you saved it," he said. "Why not make a stack of it instead of burning it now? Then you can come down in the colder weather and chop it up for your families."
One or two of the men hung back, looking to Jim Donovan for advice. He stared at Hal aggressively, his cap on the side of his head giving him a knowing, cock-sure expression.
"Good-evening to you, Mr. Brodrick," he said.
"And you just having a stroll, I presume, round your father's ancient property, to see that no further damage is done to the place, and if it is, why you'll go and report it to the magistrate, no doubt, and have us poor fellows clapped into jail."
"I wouldn't do that, Jim," smiled Hal; "you ought to know me better. You can destroy all that's left of the mine, for all I care. But you might be glad of some of this stuff for fuel a bit later on."
Jim said nothing. His mouth had an ugly, sullen set to it, and he kicked a larger piece of timber into the fire.
"I hear Mr. Griffiths is going up north to live," he said. "They say he has a house across the border waiting for him. And then he has the cheek to tell us he knew nothing about the mines being closed. The fellow's a liar."
"Shame to him for it, then," said another, "putting furniture in it as cool as you please, all these past four months, and us poor fellows as ignorant as babies. You'd say there was no justice in the world."
"Nor is there," said Jim Donovan fiercely, "except when you take the law into your own hands. As for Mr. Griffiths, he's welcome to his fine house, for all I care. But I tell you I'd like to wring his neck, and all the rest of them that's deceived us."