Hungry Hill

BOOK THREE "Wild Johnnie", 1837–1858

When Johnnie looked back on his childhood it appeared to be one, long series of escapades after another, all with the sole object of provoking grown-up people to wrath. It had always seemed to him that there were two worlds, the world of fantasy that he created for himself, where he was master of a lawless band of children who did exactly as they pleased, and the true world of authority, symbolised by his grandfather Copper John, a figure of such power and might that he had only to move about the grounds or enter the front door of Clonmere to rouse in Johnnie a strange fury of rebellion. That grave, set face, that square jaw, those hard eyes, meant that young children must curb their spirits, quieten their voices, and take themselves to the attics if they wished to shout and laugh. And Johnnie, used to sprawling about the untidy living-room at Lletharrog, tumbling his mother's cushions, kicking his muddied heels on the furniture, found banishment to the attics of his grandfather's house a degradation and an insult.

Copper John was therefore an ogre, one of the giants in fairy-stories who lived in a fortress, and Johnnie the gallant young prisoner who ultimately would cut off his head and stand in triumph over his dead body. Family prayers were a time to bait the ogre. This would be accomplished by setting a trap for one of the servants. Sometimes he would fasten a piece of cord round a hassock and lay it underneath the carpet, and, taking himself to the other end of the dining-room and kneeling beside his chair, he would jerk the cord from time to time, shaking the luckless minion upon the hassock, to the great discomfiture of everyone present. Or he would bring in one of his tame mice, and set it free about the floor. Sooner or later the animal would find its way beneath the petticoats of one of the kitchen girls, and he would peep between his fingers and watch the wretched creature struggle with her feminine terror of mice and finally be overcome, uttering a shriek, and thereby incurring the severe displeasure of the ogre. The curious thing was that none of the servants betrayed him to his grandfather. In a sense they seemed to be in league with him, and later in the day Johnnie would go round to the kitchen and sit on the table, where Mrs. Casey would be making pastry, and he would call her his love, and his queen, and tickle the old woman under the chin, so that she would find it impossible to be angry with him, and give him some of the pastry into the bargain. "Master Johnnie is too forward," would be the verdict below stairs, but even so none complained of him to the master. He had "a way with him," so they declared, and so for that matter had all the children, even down to young Herbert with his twinkling brown eyes, and for poor Mrs. Brodrick to be left a widow after barely nine years of married life and bring up this lively brood alone, was a sadness the servants could not forget. In fact Mrs.

Brodrick herself seemed to forget it sooner than they did.

For three months or so Fanny-Rosa had shown every wild extravagance of grief. She had threatened suicide, she had stayed in bed and been nursed tenderly by Barbara and Eliza, she had vowed that she would never be able to continue living, and then, shortly before Christmas, the sisters-in-law had prevailed upon her to accompany them to Saunby for the winter, and the change of scene, the visits of friends, the high spirits of the children, all combined to make her throw off the first transport of grief, and when she returned to Clonmere in the spring she was almost the same Fanny-Rosa as before. Almost, not quite. Something indefinable had gone out of her, never to return. The light, joyous quality, the glow of loveliness that John had awoken in her with his love and tenderness, flickered and died, finally and for ever. Her appearance, her dress, the care of her hair, suddenly these things ceased to matter. Once it had been amusing to buy gowns and hats, because of John, because he would look at her with that light in his eyes, and hold out his arms.

Now there was little point in bothering to purchase material; last season's gown would do for this as well. A widow of twenty-nine might be expected to marry again, and Doctor Armstrong, when he saw Fanny-Rosa after her return to Clonmere, some six months after her husband's death, said to himself that no one of her temperament and vitality would be likely to remain single for long. He was wrong.

All that side of life was finished and done with. The future remained, with one day Johnnie master of Clonmere, Mrs. John Brodrick was a person of importance. One day, surely before very long, her father-in-law would die, and Johnnie would come in for the estate and the money. Fanny-Rosa would be mistress of Clonmere. It would be she who would give all the orders, pay the wages, have the handling of Johnnie's purse; and his fortune would be enormous, no doubt, for the copper was bringing in vast sums, and Mrs. John Brodrick, running the estate for the benefit of her son, would be someone of considerable significance in the barony. She had never forgotten that she was the niece of the Earl of Mundy, and now and again she would remind Eliza and Barbara of the fact, just dropping a casual word or two, but those words sufficient to bring them to some sense of reality, if familiarity with her presence had caused them to neglect it.

Little by little she began to talk of what she would do to Clonmere when the house became hers, or rather Johnnie's, which Barbara and Eliza felt was rather premature. Their father was not yet seventy and enjoyed excellent health, and there seemed small prospect of his making way for his grandson for several years to come.

"It is a pity," said Eliza one day to Barbara, "that Fanny-Rosa talks so incessantly as though Clonmere belonged to her. For my part, I find she has become very altered since John died. She has lost much of her gaiety, and is overbearing."

"Poor Fanny-Rosa," sighed Barbara; "we neither of us know quite how much she misses John. We must be patient and not mind; and don't forget how devoted she is to darling Johnnie."

"I say nothing against her devotion to Johnnie," replied Eliza, "but I find it rather trying when Fanny-Rosa gives orders in the stables, and has my horse saddled for herself when she wishes to ride."

"You forget," said Barbara the peace-maker, "that Fanny-Rosa has been used to giving orders too. She did everything at Lletharrog, and a married woman who has had a house of her own is lost without servants to command. I am always finding her in the kitchen, countermanding my instructions, because she tells cook that certain dishes are bad for the children's digestion, and as she is probably right, I say nothing. Whatever she does, do let us avoid any unpleasantness."

"It amazes me that father does not become annoyed at times," said Eliza. "She flatly contradicts him at dinner very often, which was a thing he never would accept from any of us."

"Fanny-Rosa has travelled, which you and I have never done," said Barbara, "and she has also read many more books. And I have frequently noticed that men will argue quite amicably with women who have had husbands, when they will snub unmarried women like you and me. I suppose they have some sort of superior knowledge of life that we do not possess."

Eliza sniffed. She hated to be reminded of spinsterhood and her middle years. But her brother's widow had come to live with them for good, and Barbara was right, it was no use having any unpleasantness. So "Mrs. John," as she was known to the servants, began to take a more prominent place in the running of the household than either "Miss Barbara" or "Miss Eliza," but in a different way. Meals that were late and rooms that were undusted meant little to her, but if pastry appeared on the table when she had ordered a milk pudding she would storm into the kitchen and shout at Mrs. Casey, shaming her before the other servants, and if some article of dress or a trinket was missing from her dressing-table (and no doubt fallen behind it, for Fanny-Rosa had no sense of order in her room) the housemaid would be summoned and upbraided as a thief, and possibly be sent from the castle at once, without Barbara's permission or even knowledge that any such scene had occurred.

Her children were never quite sure of her. She would spoil them lavishly one moment, and scold the next; and, after their grandfather, the most dominant figure during those years of childhood at Clonmere would be the bewildering, changeful personality that was their mother, sometimes an angel with smiling eyes and a cloud of hair about her face, at others a wrathful demon, a fury from a fairy-tale, with a voice that uttered angry sounds.

The only person to beat Johnnie was his godfather, Doctor Armstrong, or "Uncle Willie" as he was known to the children, and Johnnie never forgave him, because the beating, for the first time in his life, was undeserved.

Aunt Barbara had not been well, she was always coughing these days, and Uncle Willie had come to see her. She had been making a shawl for a sick woman up at Oakmount, and her wool had been left in the drawing-room. Uncle Willie, requested by Aunt Barbara to fetch the shawl so that she could continue working upon it while laid up in her room, found the wool tangled and dirtied beyond repair, and the shawl torn in shreds. The servants, when questioned, admitted to having seen "Master Johnnie" playing with the wool after breakfast. Johnnie was summoned by his godfather and accused of doing wanton mischief. In vain he protested that he had only touched the shawl for a moment and then put it aside, saying that no doubt the nursery puppy had broken loose and done the damage, for which he was very sorry.

He would not have displeased Aunt Barbara for the world when she was unwell. His godfather refused to believe him, and told the boy that he was lying.

Johnnie flushed scarlet. "I am not lying, God damn you," he said (he was just turned ten at the time) and made to leave the room.

Uncle Willie laid hold of him, and being a strong, powerful man, he was able to control his struggling godson.

"You deserve a beating for the mischief and for lying to me," he said firmly, "and that the matter may sink in I shall do the business in front of the servants, so that they may know you for a spoilt, ill-tempered, unmannerly boy."

And there in the stable-yard, before Casey, and Tim, and Thomas, and the women gaping from the kitchen window, Johnnie's breeches were taken down, and his hind-quarters bared to the world, while his godfather gave him a dozen hard strokes with his cane.

Johnnie was too stupefied to cry, but when the performance was over and his godfather had walked back into the house Johnnie suddenly realised what had happened, that his breeches were hanging about his ankles, and that the kitchen girls were sniggering behind their hands. The shame of what he had undergone came over him in a flash, and, plunged into misery that he had never known in his life before, he ran up to the woods and flung himself upon the ground, weeping tears of bitter humiliation. Never, never again could he go back to the house. Never could he face Tim or the servant girls. The indignity, the injustice, the stark horror of the whole proceeding! Passionately he prayed for Uncle Willie's death, and that some kind fate would overtake him too, and bear him away from Clonmere. It became dark and cold, and still the boy lay out in the woods, his handsome face swollen with anger and grief and pain, while the weals on his backside began to smart and prick, and the load in his heart became heavier. His mother would pity him, and no doubt be angry, furiously angry, with Uncle Willie, but she would pity him none the less, and want to put lotion on his sore buttocks. But he did not want her pity, he wanted her admiration and her love. He wanted her to think that he, Johnnie Brodrick, was the most wonderful person in the world, not merely a small boy whose breeches had been taken down in front of servants. His mother would not understand the agony and shame that held him now, the sense of impotence. And desperately, his head in his hands, the tears pouring down his cheeks, Johnnie cried, "Oh, why did my father die? He would not have treated me thus…

.? Dimly, for his boy's memory was short, he saw the tall, dark figure of the man who had been his father, he saw the smile, he felt the pat of his hand on his shoulder, he heard the low, quiet voice, and for the first time he was aware of bereavement, he who had realised little or nothing of it when his father died.

Presently he fell asleep, exhausted by emotion, and here it was that Baird found him, on his way home through the woods to his cottage, and being an old, kindly man with some perception, he carried the boy back to his cottage, saying nothing of what had taken place, although the servants had told him the whole story, with many embellishments. He gave the boy half of his own dinner, and allowed him to go round trapping afterwards, carrying the ferret in his hand.

By nine o'clock Johnnie had recovered something of his former spirits, and was happy enough to borrow Baird's lantern and go home to bed. He went indoors by the side entrance, and crept upstairs to the bedroom he shared with Henry, fearing that his mother or his grandfather might hear him and demand an explanation of his absence at dinner.

"I've been trapping with Baird," said Johnnie loftily, taking off his clothes. "I have had a most interesting day. The ferret made no attempt to bite me, and I was not in the least afraid of him."

"Lucky beggar," yawned Henry; "you might have taken me with you. It's been very dull here. Fanny and Edward were playing at houses, and I don't care much for that; it's too babyish."

"Did my mother ask why I was not at dinner?" said Johnnie carelessly.

"She was not at dinner herself," said Henry sleepily. "She had gone over to Andriff to see Aunt Tilly and the new baby. And Uncle Willie told Aunt Eliza that he thought you might not be in, and she was not to worry if you were late."

This showed a glimmer of understanding on the part of Uncle Willie, thought his godson, but for all that he would never be forgiven.

"Was that all Uncle Willie said?" asked Johnnie.

"I don't know," said Henry; "he went away after seeing Aunt Barbara. I ran beside his horse for a little way. Will you take me to see the ferret tomorrow, Johnnie? It would be such sport to go together."

"I don't know," said Johnnie grandly. "I don't think you are quite old enough for ferrets."

And with that he turned on his side and was soon asleep. But he was careful the next morning to dress with his back turned well away from his brother, and went down to prayers in some anxiety, for fear he should read contempt on the faces of the servants. He realised, however, that Uncle Willie had said nothing of the business to the family.

He was greatly relieved, and his relief took expression in bullying the younger children during the rest of the day. He boasted loudly about his prowess with the ferret, so that Fanny's and the boys' admiration for his skill would cover his own shame at yesterday's disgrace, and, although the day passed happily enough and without incident, he seemed to hear a mocking voice inside himself, whispering that he was in reality no very heroic figure, but a silly child, un-breeched before servants, and one day all the world might know. He listened with interest when his mother that evening mentioned something about "how the library would be his, when grandfather died."

"But my aunt Barbara would surely use the library before me?" he said. "After all, she is the eldest person in the house after grandfather."

Fanny-Rosa laughed at the serious, childlike logic of her son.

"Age has nothing to do with it," she said. "When your grandfather dies Clonmere will be yours. You can do what you like with the rooms."

"Do you mean I shall be the master, like grandfather is now, and the servants all have to do what I tell them?"

"Of course, my darling."

"And could I forbid Uncle Willie the house, and set the dogs on him if he dared to enter it without my giving permission?"

Fanny-Rosa laughed again. "I think it would be an excellent plan if you did," she said.

"Uncle Willie can be very disapproving and tire-some at times, and it would amuse me greatly to see him run for his life."

"Don't you like him, mother?" said Johnnie, greatly daring.

Fanny-Rosa did not answer for a moment.

"I don't dislike him, of course," she said, "but I have never cared much for his dictatorial manner. He presumes so much, because of his friendship with the family. And after all, he is nothing more than a country doctor. Most people would not receive him at all."

"Is it inferior to be a doctor?" said Johnnie.

"Well, it's one of those professions that gentlemen usually avoid. The Services and the Church are the only real professions. Actually, it is much better to have none at all, and just own property, as you will do."

"Perhaps," said Johnnie, after a moment or two, "my grandfather will die next month, and I can set the dogs on Uncle Willie."

The idea, once fixed in his mind, took firm root, and often he would ply his mother with questions as to how they should live, and what they would do, when the great event took place. It seemed to Johnnie that to become master of Clonmere would take away the stain of that beating that rankled in his memory. The servants would never dare laugh at him then. He began to watch his grandfather carefully for signs of failing health.

Sometimes he would enquire anxiously at breakfast as to how his grandfather had slept, and Copper John, unused to such solicitude from his eldest grandson-for it was Henry, like his namesake, who possessed the manners in the new generation combbgan to think that perhaps after all young Johnnie had some natural feeling, and might become a companion by and by. He often felt lonely, these days, did Copper John, with his two sons dead, as well as his little Jane, and Barbara practically an invalid. One day he took the boy with him on a visit to the mine, and was amused at many of his questions, particularly when he enquired of Captain Nicholson whether his grandfather would die if he were pushed down the shaft, "I'm afraid he would, Master Johnnie," said the mining captain, and Copper John was quite touched when his grandson looked thoughtful, and remarked that no doubt there were many dangerous characters about, and his grandfather would do well to keep his stick with him.

"When you are older," said Copper John, as they rode home together, the boy mounted on his pony, "you shall come with me to the mines and help me keep the fellows in order. There is plenty of work to be done."

"I will come with you now, grandfather," said the boy eagerly. "I should very much like to go with you every day."

Copper John laughed, and seemed amused at his flushed, black-haired grandson, who was suddenly beginning to show an interest in the life about him. "Time enough for that when your schooling is over," he said. "Your uncle Henry went through Eton and Oxford before he knew much about the mining business."

"But, grandfather…" began the boy, and then stopped, for he remembered that he could scarcely remind his grandfather that by that time he would have been in his grave for years, and he changed his sentence, and said instead, "I trust you are not over-tired from your ride?", and Copper John said, "No, indeed not, I could ride double the journey and feel nothing of it," which seemed to impress the youngster, for he looked thoughtful again. At any rate, mused Copper John, the lad was becoming civil at last.

That autumn Fanny-Rosa had her young family painted. The picture was hung upon the wall of the dining-room, on the opposite side to Jane's portrait. The group is an attractive one, of the five children in their red velvet pantaloons, playing in the garden of Clonmere. Little Herbert, sitting upon the ground in his petticoats, smiles gaily, and so does Edward, with his crop of curls.

Henry is more thoughtful, and Fanny, with all the responsibility of being the one girl of the family, is a trifle pale, a trifle wan. Johnnie dominates the group, Johnnie with his bow and arrow, his careless tumbling hair, his proud, obstinate, handsome face. He looks out upon the world with arrogance and bravado, as though he is determined to show the people who might one day look upon his portrait that Johnnie Brodrick of Clonmere cares for nothing and for no one.

When Johnnie was fourteen he was sent to Eton.

With each succeeding holiday Fanny-Rosa took up more space for herself and her boys. Barbara, by now a hopeless invalid, seldom left her room, and gave up all the housekeeping into her sister-in-law's hands. Eliza put as good a face upon the matter as she could, but was inclined to spend more time in Saunby these days than she did at Doonhaven. As for Copper John, he carried his seventy years as though he were still barely sixty, and although his thick hair was now white, his figure more bent than it had been, his mind was as keen as ever, and he transacted the business of the mines with the thoroughness and the efficiency of a man half his age. He became possibly a little more formidable to his grandsons as the years passed. There was something awe-inspiring about the grim, set face, the square shoulders, the massive jaw, that seemed symbolic of God Almighty, and when he took his place at the head of the breakfast table, with the open Bible in front of him, the boys would have the uneasy feeling that the Great Presence had indeed descended upon Doonhaven, and with one fierce glint of his eye might sweep them all into everlasting destruction. "I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last," the solemn voice would announce, and young Herbert firmly believed that his grandfather spoke about himself, and waited for a dove to fly down and circle over his head, as it did in the frontispiece of his prayer-book. Fanny, who was naturally of a timid disposition, was frankly terrified of the old man, and vanished to her room whenever she caught sight of him. Henry was the only member of the family who appeared to be on normal terms with his grandfather. He was a frank, engaging child, with a charm peculiar to himself, and strikingly like the uncle Henry he had never known. Perhaps it was this likeness that made Copper John lean more kindly to the boy than he did to his other grandsons, and during the summer holidays he would sometimes walk with the lad about the grounds, the inevitable stick in his hand, his shovel hat upon his head, while Henry asked his opinion on the political affairs of the day, to the old man's silent amusement. Johnnie by now was frankly antagonistic. The commanding voice at dinner, which would allow none other to speak while he himself was speaking, was a source of irritation.

Johnnie, bored, restless, longing to escape from the table and saddle his pony, would mutter to himself, "Get on with you, you damned old fool," knowing that his grandfather's hearing was not what it had been, and taking a silent delight in watching the look of terror on his sister's face when she heard the whisper. The days of practical jokes were over. A fellow who goes to Eton does not put white mice under the servants' petticoats, or balance jugs of water upon the door, but there were other amusements these days that the adult world disapproved of just as much as they had done of the practical jokes, such as smoking in secret behind the stables, and drinking ale with the village lads in Doonhaven.

It was exciting to climb out of the pantry window after dark, when he was believed to be in bed, and go off to the park and meet Pat Dolan, and Jack Donovan, and one or two others, all several years older than himself, but far more ignorant, or so they pretended to be. Lying on their backs in the long grass, with pipes in their mouths (which, truth to tell, made Johnnie feel a little sick), the "young gentleman" would hold forth upon life at Eton, and the number of his friends, and how his tutor could do nought with him, and how he proposed to leave before he was eighteen if he wanted to. "When the old man dies all this will belong to me," Johnnie would say airily, with a wave of his hand. "I shall invite you fellows up to the castle if I want to," and there would be much sniggering from the youths, much flattery and calling of him "a splendid sport, the pick of the pups," words which sent a glow of pride through Johnnie, whose friends at Eton were not as numerous as he would have the village lads believe. In fact, Henry appeared to do very much better in three weeks than Johnnie had done in three years. He adapted himself to the strange world of public school with an ease and grace that his elder brother envied, and Johnnie, resentful of discipline, loathing work, and fresh from a passionate quarrel with a boy who had been his best friend and now forsook him for another, would see his younger brother laughing and contented, befriended alike by his tutors and his companions, and he would wonder miserably what was wrong with himself that he must be at such constant war with everything and with everybody.

"I loathe Eton," he told Henry, on the way home to Clonmere for the long summer vacation, just after his seventeenth birthday. "I've a good mind to ask mother if I can leave. There's no one in the house now worth speaking to, and I find the life there incredibly tedious."

"It was a pity you never took up rowing," said Henry. "It's been half my fun, and all the most amusing fellows row. I'm going to join the beagles next half. Both Locksley and Middleton have asked me to spend a week with them before we go back, and I should rather like to go. Locksley's father has the best shooting in England."

Johnnie was silent. No one had asked him to spend a week when he was only fourteen. He had been to one or two fellows' homes, but he had never particularly enjoyed himself. Friendships seemed to be a burden to him instead of a pleasure. He glanced at his brother, smiling to himself over the paper he was reading, and suddenly saw his own reflection in the window, sombre, scowling, moody, and the contrast depressed him. If that was how he looked always, no wonder fellows found him unattractive.

His mother, as usual, restored something of his self-confidence.

"My darling boy," she exclaimed, throwing her arms about him, "how you have grown in the last three months! Why, you are almost a man. It's surely absurd that you should still be at school, poring over lesson books."

Johnnie hugged her with affection. It was good to have your own thoughts spoken aloud by somebody else. His mother was a wonderful person, but why in God's name had she got a stocking wound round her head, instead of a cap, and surely, with her brilliant hair, that had grown even more brilliant since last holidays, it was a mistake to wear a crimson jacket? She was fatter, too, than she used to be.

"I'm glad you think it a waste to be poring over books," he said. "The fact is there is nothing to be gained by my staying on at Eton, and I want to leave."

"Of course you shall do so," she said. "I shall speak to your uncle Bob about getting you a commission in the Dragoons. You know your poor grandfather is dead?"

"What?" Johnnie shouted in excitement.

"No, no," said his mother quickly, glancing over her shoulder. "I mean Grandfather Simon. Uncle Bob is over at Andriff now, trying to set the place to rights. Everything was in incredible confusion, of course."

"I wish," said Johnnie in low tones, "that it had been Grandfather Brodrick."

"So do I," said his mother; "but what's the use of discussing that? Anyway, Grandfather Simon died very happily. He went to bed the worse for drink as usual, poor darling, and set fire to his blankets.

His pipe must have fallen out of his mouth, and when the servant went to his room he was nearly suffocated by the fumes of tobacco, and whisky, and smoke, all mingled together. The dear old man seems to have been asphyxiated by his own breath. The servant said he looked very peaceful."

"I suppose Castle Andriff goes to Uncle Bob?" said Johnnie.

"Yes, and whatever money there is, which can't be more than twopence. He has left all his port to you, by the way."

"Oh, come, that's something," said Johnnie.

"Can't we get it over to Clonmere, and put it away, so that grandfather does not know anything about it?"

His mother laughed, and for one moment looked like the Fanny-Rosa of other days, as she closed one eyelid, and put her finger on her lips.

"It's there already," she said. "I've got it stacked away in one of the attics. Your grandfather will never find it. And anyway, I'm mistress of the house these days; no one would dare to ask any questions."

"How is Aunt Barbara?" asked Henry.

"Much the same," said his mother. "She never leaves her room, and eats about as much as a sparrow.

Uncle Willie says she can scarcely live through the winter. Of course she ought to be in a milder climate, but she has not strength enough to move."

"What age is she, mother?" enquired Johnnie.

"Your aunt? Oh, I suppose she is not more than forty-eight."

"My family seem to die uncommon young," said Johnnie. "You'd say there was a curse on the lot of us."

"There does not seem to be a curse on your grandfather," said Fanny-Rosa. "Do you know-of course it's only gossip-but I hear the mines are bringing in as much as twenty thousand a year? And still we have cold supper on Sunday nights, and no fires before October. I really can't stand it these days, and have Thomas bring turf up to my room, and a tray too, if I'm feeling hungry. Don't stare too hard at the new housemaid, by the way. She has a squint, and is not quite right in the head."

"Why, whatever happened to Meg?"

"Oh, she and I had a naming disagreement, and I sent her packing. They say now in Doonhaven that the girls won't come out to Clonmere, because I am so difficult. Did you ever hear of anything more absurd? Why, I am the easiest mistress in the barony. As for looking under the beds, I would not dream of it. I'd be too afraid of what I should find."

The two boys laughed. What an entertaining companion their mother could be when she chose, with her easy laugh, her slanting eyes, her expressive gestures, and what did it matter after all if she did let her complexion go to hang with all those freckles, and never brushed the flaming curls, and wore that ridiculous stocking round her hair to keep it in place?

"I've started a great scheme in Doonhaven," she went on, "and that's to be teaching the young girls of the village how to make lace Some half-dozen of them come up to the castle every Thursday."

"What on earth for?" asked Johnnie.

"Why, it's a form of culture, isn't it? And what would they be doing with themselves otherwise? Lying under the hedges with the lads, no doubt. As for the reverend father, he called upon me in great anger, as you can imagine. "It's devil's work, Mrs.

Brodrick," he said to me, "for you to be giving these girls ideas above their station. You'll have them all discontented with their lot before you've finished. And if you want to do good works," he said to me, as I bowed him from the door, "you'd do better to leave the young women of Doonhaven alone, and look to your sister's bastards." I called him something he would not forget in a hurry… Poor Aunt Tilly! don't I send her a parcel of old clothes every Christmas? She has eleven children now, all running barefoot in the streets of Andriff. You'd think Sullivan would make shoes for them, being a cobbler by trade."

The drawing-room at Clonmere had all the old disorder of Lletharrog. There were bits and pieces of lace lying about the floor and on the chairs, and the vases were filled with dead flowers that Fanny-Rosa kept forgetting to throw away. Parcels of books lay on the writing-table, the paper and string beside them.

Fanny-Rosa was constantly seeding for books, and then neglecting to read them when they came. The latest puppy had messed on the carpet, and no one had cleared it up, and there was a lot of sticky toffee in a corner of the sofa that had doubtless fallen out of Herbert's pocket. Johnnie and Henry went along the passage to say good evening to their aunt.

She was lying by the window, her face very pale and wan, but the same gentle, patient Aunt Barbara she had always been, with kind enquiries after their health, and how much she wished she could have felt up to joining them for dinner, but alas, she had not been downstairs since they were home last. She did trust, she said, that their beds were aired. The room in the tower was inclined to be damp, but of course their mother would have given orders for the linen to be warmed, which Johnnie very much doubted, but did not say so. Then she began to cough again, a distressing, tearing sound, and Henry, with his usual tact and good manners, pretended to examine a picture on the wall with great interest, while Johnnie was seized with a horrible nervous fear of laughing. Outside in the passage he collapsed, stuffing his handkerchief in his mouth, and Henry, shocked and upset, begged him to be quiet.

"How can you?" he said. "She can't live much longer. It's horribly sad."

"I know that, you damned fool," said Johnnie.

"I'm every bit as fond of Aunt Barbara as you are. But the sound of the cough…"

And once again he proceeded to rock with silent laughter, the tears running down his cheeks, until Henry too became infected, and they ran down the stairs into the garden, half hysterical, and nothing less than a cold plunge into the creek restored Johnnie, who scattered his clothes in a heap by the bank and dived in without a thought.

It was a good thing, thought Henry, that their grandfather was not returning until the next day. What would be more awful than the sudden sight of him rounding the drive and seeing Johnnie there in all his nudity? They would none of them hear the end of it until the holidays were over.

"Come out, you madman," he called. "One of the maids from the house might see you."

And he glanced apprehensively over his shoulder.

Johnnie shook himself like a dog, and grinned up at his younger brother. He had no towel; he must dry himself on his shirt.

"What a treat for them if they did," he said.

"I bet that pretty one in the kitchen would like to have a look at me."

"Conceited old idiot," replied Henry.

"What have you got to be proud about?"

Johnnie laughed, and did not answer. He began drawing on his clothes and whistling to himself. The sullen gloom that he had Experienced coming away from Eton had gone. His mother had said he could leave at Christmas and Uncle Bob would get him a commission in the Dragoons. He would go abroad and smash a lot of people up, and poor old Henry would still be a schoolboy in tail-coat, with Lights Out at ten o'clock…

"Just in time," murmured Henry, as Aunt Eliza came out of the house and down the bank to greet them.

"Dear boys," she said, giving them each in turn a rather flabby cheek, and an odour of moth-ball, "how delighted I am to see you. Darling Johnnie, such a young man, and Henry, quite a big boy too. You soon won't want to talk to your old aunt."

"Don't say old," replied Henry gallantly, "you look as young to me as ever you did.

How's the sketching?"

"I've done one or two quite pretty little scenes, which I shall show you both some time. Johnnie, you would not care to go to Slane tomorrow and meet your grandfather? The steamer will not be coming for two or three days, and he has no business to keep him in Slane, apparently, so wishes to come down by road.

Tim will drive you in the carriage."

"I don't mind," said Johnnie.

"I'm sure your grandfather would appreciate it.

He has not seen you for six months, you know."

"Doesn't he get very lonely all alone in Saunby?" said Henry, as they went into the hall.

"I can't think what he does with himself, without the mines to watch that side of the water."

"He goes into Bronsea twice a week still," replied Eliza, "and over to your old home at Lletharrog now and again. It's such a good thing Mrs.

Collins is so excellent a housekeeper, and knows how to look after him. With your aunt Barbara an invalid it would be impossible for me to be with him in either place. I seem quite tied here these days."

"You wait until I get my commission, Aunt Eliza," said Johnnie. "I shall invite you to London, and will spend my leave with you. Would you like me in a red coat?"

"I should indeed, Johnnie darling. All the young women would be most envious of me. Is dinner ready, Thomas? I am famishing."

"Mrs. John she says an hour later today, Miss Eliza; she wanted to finish some embroidery."

"Oh dear, what a nuisance! The hours of the meals are changed every day. Yesterday when I came in from my walk the dishes were cleared away, because she took it into her head to eat earlier. I never know where I am."

Johnnie peeped in at the library door. The room was bare and spartan, with the cold chill of a room that has not been used for many months. But his grandfather's presence clung about it still. Even the smell was the same: leather, and pens, and paper. There was something forbidding about it, like church. What a contrast, thought Johnnie, as he ran upstairs, to the babel of the drawing-room, where Fanny-Rosa, flushed and heated, was pinning a dress pattern on to her daughter Fanny, and scolding her at the top of her voice for fidgeting, while Edward and Herbert, climbing over the furniture and locked in combat, were watched with delight and appreciation by two barking spaniels.

The following day Johnnie set out for Slane, in high humour because Tim let him drive the horses-or rather, he had commanded Tim to hand him the reins. Old Casey had been dead for some years, and the one-time groom, now a married man of nearly fifty, sat beside his young master in some trepidation.

Master Henry could be trusted with the horses. He had a natural way with animals, like his father before him, but Master Johnnie had no patience at all, and would tug at the creatures' mouths and flick his whip so that the gentlest animal became a prey to nerves.

"Let the horse do the work, Master Johnnie, leave him alone," said Tim, but Johnnie, who found the pace too slow, was for urging the beast onward.

"Why don't you drive a hearse, Tim? You'd be more suited to it," he said. "Come on, you lazy devils, you're both so fat you can scarcely crawl, like this damned fool who looks after you."

"And that's no fine way to talk, Master Johnnie, to one who knew you when you were a baby."

"Ah, you know my bark is worse than my bite, Tim. I wouldn't hurt your feelings for the world," said Johnnie, and he felt in his pocket for a piece of silver. "Here, you can drink perdition to me when you get to Slane."

"I don't like to take it, Master Johnnie."

"Don't be ridiculous. It isn't every day you drive me to Slane, is it? Make the best of it, while you can."

It was fun to be all on his own in the city, with the horses and the carriage put up at the hostelry, and his grandfather, on enquiry, closeted with the manager of the bank, and likely to remain with him for two hours at least. He wandered down by the river and watched the shipping, and the sounds and the smells of Slane were good to him, because he felt well, and carefree, and was seventeen, and had money to burn in his pockets.

He rounded the corner of a street, and ran slap into two of the fellows from Doonhaven. One of them was Jack Donovan, son of Sam Donovan who kept the shop on the quayside, a tall, well-set-up young man, some half-dozen years older than Johnnie, with ginger hair and prominent blue eyes.

"Why, here's wonders," said Jack Donovan, "young Mr. Brodrick in person. Me and Pat was only saying to one another, it was time you were home from your fine school across the water."

"How d'y do?" said Johnnie languidly, handing him two fingers. "Where are you fellows going?

I'm waiting for my grandfather, and have two hours to spare in which to kick my heels."

"Ah, we'll show you Slane," said Jack Donovan, with a wink. "Sure, it's a grand city when you know your way about. Let's wet our tongues, while we think about it."

"You'd better not be seen with us in a public-house," said the other boy. "Maybe your grandfather will get to hear of it, and lam into you."

"I'll do as I damn well please," said Johnnie. "Lead on, you two, I'm as thirsty as a tinker."

He knew very well that if he was discovered in the company of the two fellows there would be the devil to pay, especially as one of them was a Donovan, because for some reason or other his grandfather disliked the Donovans, and so did both his aunts, and his mother too. Their dislike made him the keener to be friendly.

Soon the three boys were seated round the bar in one of the numerous "publics" in Slane. The atmosphere was stifling, and the place was crowded. There was a fair somewhere in the town, and many of the country people filled the public-house, old men telling interminable stories, shrill, arguing women, and bright-faced country girls with shawls round their heads.

"What will you have? Whisky?" asked Jack Donovan.

"Yes, if you do," said Johnnie boldly.

At home he drank ale, when he could get it, and sometimes a meagre glass of port when his grandfather had the thought of passing the decanter.

"That's the way of it," said Jack Donovan in admiration, as Johnnie threw down his measure in one gulp, and tried to appear composed. "Why, you'd like another, I'll be bound. Here, Pat, another whisky for this handsome young gentleman."

Johnnie took his second dose more slowly.

God, it was good, though. Damn good. Put life into a fellow. And guts too. He'd be damned if he would go back to Eton next half. Uncle Bob should get him a commission right away.

"I'm joining the Dragoons in a few months," he said, watching his two companions.

"That's the life," said Jack Donovan.

"Ah, you'll look brave, Mr. Johnnie, carrying the King's colours. Why, I declare I've a mind to go with you. Have another whisky?"

"I don't mind if I do," said Johnnie, "on condition that I pay."

"Here's your health, then," said his companion, "and the best of luck to the finest young cock it's ever been my chance to meet, and that's God's truth, I'll have you know. Are you twenty-one yet?"

"Seventeen," said Johnnie.

"Now you're lying to me. By all the blessed saints in heaven, you are lying to me. Is he not, Pat?"

"I assure you I am not. I was seventeen in May of this year."

"And drink whisky the way you do. That's something to be proud of. I'd swear you were twenty-one. See that maid looking at you through the window there? She would swear you were twenty-one too, wouldn't she, Pat?"

There was much laughter and swaying about on the stools beside the bar, and Johnnie, surprised that he could still sit straight, laughed across at the girl in the shawl, who smiled back and beckoned.

"Ah, now he's made a conquest, now he's lost to us," lamented Jack Donovan, raising his eyes to heaven. "But maybe if he's only seventeen he'd do best to leave Betty Finnigan alone. She won't take them quite so young."

"What do you mean?" said Johnnie.

The fellow's laugh was suddenly becoming offensive, and he disliked his ginger hair. Perhaps, after all, his grandfather was right not to care about the Donovans. The room was getting damned hot too, and all the people making a hell of a noise.

"I bet you don't put Betty Finnigan where she should be as quick as you knocked down those two whiskies," said Jack Donovan, thrusting a grinning face far too close to his own.

"Oh really? What makes you think that?" said Johnnie.

"Because they don't let you do those things at your fine school across the water," said Jack Donovan.

"Anyone can slip a glass of whisky down his throat, but it takes a man to have a woman."

There was another great burst of laughter, and some of the other people in the public-house turned round and stared at Johnnie.

"Have your fun, boy," said an old fellow, waving his glass. "These young sparks are jealous of you, that's the plain truth of it, isn't it, Betty?"

The bright-eyed girl in the shawl nodded, and smiled again at Johnnie.

He rose slowly to his feet, and looked down at Jack Donovan.

"Thank you for your company, Jack," he said.

"One of these days we'll drink together again.

Meanwhile, I have another appointment." He slammed down some silver on the bar, and put his hat on the side of his head. "Am I going your way, or are you going mine 8? he said to Betty Finnigan…

It was five o'clock by the time Johnnie stood once more outside the bank. It was closed and barred, and the shutters drawn. His grandfather must have left fully an hour ago. Perhaps he would be waiting for him at the hostelry. Well, let the old bastard wait. It would not hurt him. Strange, thought Johnnie, how he did not feel nervous of him any more. His grandfather might look upon him with those grim, cold eyes of his, he might summon him to the bleak, cheerless study, and still he would not care. What had given him this feeling of cool confidence he could not say. Maybe it was the whisky he had taken, maybe it was the feel of the girl in his arms, maybe it was just the fact that he was seventeen, that he was Johnnie Brodrick of Clonmere, and if anyone dared to contradict him he would knock his back-teeth down his jaw, that made it impossible ever to be afraid again of an old man of seventy-five who should have been in his grave years ago.

When Johnnie came to the hostelry he found the carriage drawn up outside, and Tim standing by the horses' heads.

His grandfather was by the open door of the carriage, his watch in his hand.

"Good afternoon, sir," said Johnnie. "Have I kept you waiting?"

It was queer. He wondered if he had grown much during the last months, because he was now taller than his grandfather. Or was it possible that the old man had shrunk? Surely he leant more on that stick of his than he used to do? Copper John looked at his grandson, and replaced his watch in his waistcoat pocket.

"I was just about to leave Slane without you," he said shortly, climbing into the carriage and seating himself in the far corner. "Well," he said, after a moment, "what have you been doing with yourself?"

Johnnie took his handkerchief out of his pocket with a flourish, and blew his nose. It would be delicious, he reflected, to throw caution to the winds and tell the truth, and then watch the expression on his grandfather's face. He fought down inside himself a wild desire to laugh.

"I spent the afternoon, sir," he said, "appreciating the beauties of Slane."

His grandfather grunted.

"You were in the city shortly after two o'clock," he said. "You must have walked three times round the place, and seen all there was to see by four. Open the window your side, my boy; the air is very close in here."

He smells the whisky in my breath, thought Johnnie; now there'll be the devil to pay. I shall have to tell him I felt faint, and was obliged to go into a public-house and lie down. Once more the outrageous laughter rose in his throat. His grandfather said no more, however. He seemed thoughtful, preoccupied, and rather unlike his usual self. Perhaps his interview with the manager of the bank had not been a happy one. It was hardly possible, though, with the copper mines bringing in twenty thousand a year. But his mother was always prone to exaggeration. Possibly the tale was completely untrue, and things were going badly.

Anyway, it was not his affair, thought Johnnie, and yawning, he closed his eyes and leant back against the cushions of the carriage, one hand on the window-strap for balance. He felt delightfully sleepy, incredibly content, and if that was the result of whisky and Betty Finnigan, what the devil would he be feeling like in a few years' time, after he had seen service in the Dragoons? The world was not such a bad place, after all. In a very few minutes he was fast asleep, his face flushed, his black hair tumbled, and looking, if the truth be told, considerably less than his seventeen years.

He did not wake until the carriage rattled down into Doonhaven itself, when he came to with a start, recollecting the presence of his grandfather beside him, and was much relieved, and not a little surprised, to find that his grandfather had also slept, and therefore could not upbraid him for being an idle dog and a dull companion. It was a great temptation to tell Henry how he had spent his afternoon in Slane, but something prevented him: a faint suspicion that his younger brother, instead of shouting approval and patting him on the back, might draw away from him, puzzled, rather put off, and perhaps think less of him than he had done before. The family had dined, of course, and his grandfather had done so in Slane, so Johnnie, feeling that he could eat the house, fell upon the cold supper laid aside for him in the dining-room, and made non-committal replies to Henry's eager questions about the afternoon.

The younger boys and his sister had already retired to bed, and when Johnnie and his brother went upstairs to the drawing-room to say goodnight, he found his grandfather standing before the mantelpiece, with a curious, rather embarrassed, expression on his face. His mother was seated in the chair by the window, and his aunt Eliza opposite her, and they had both put aside their work and were listening to the head of the house. Good Lord, thought Johnnie, he has found out about me this afternoon and is telling them…

"Wait a moment," said his grandfather. "Both you boys had better hear what I am about to inform your mother and your aunt. Sit down, will you?"

His grandsons obeyed. Copper John coughed, and clasped his hands behind his back.

"I don't want to make a long story," he said, "but will acquaint you in a few words with what has happened. I only propose to make a short visit this time, in order to see the mines and discuss the business there, and shall then return to the other side of the water. I shall, in the future, continue to reside there rather more frequently than I have done in the past, making, with your permission, Fanny-Rosa, my headquarters at Lletharrog. Eliza can use the house at Saunby, when she feels at liberty to do so. This house, of course, will be kept open for the entire family, and my grandchildren will continue to make it their home."

He paused, and coughed again. Eliza seemed puzzled, and glanced across at her sister-in-law.

"What will you do, father," she said, "all alone at Lletharrog? It is rather far for you to keep going backwards and forwards to Bronsea. That is why you moved to Saunby in the first place."

"I shall not be alone, my dear," said her father, "that is what I wish to tell you. Mrs. Collins consented to become my wife three weeks ago. We were married in Bronsea, and moved out to Lletharrog afterwards. She is a dear, good, faithful woman, and devoted to me. I am very glad indeed to call her Mrs. Brodrick, and I hope you will do the same."

For a moment there was a great and dreadful silence.

Then Fanny-Rosa said, "Good God!", and Eliza burst into a torrent of weeping.

"Oh, father," she said, "how could you! Mrs.

Collins, your cook, how shaming, how disgraceful, after all these years! What will people say, all our friends in Saunby? They will never speak to any of us again."

"One thing is certain," said Fanny-Rosa: "the news of this will kill Barbara. We shall have to keep it from her somehow."

"Barbara knows already," said Copper John quietly. "I told her this evening when I went to her room. She appeared fully to understand."

"If she had not become an invalid this would never have happened," wept Eliza. "It is because she lay here, with me looking after her, that you became so dependent on '

And once again she was choked by tears.

"Of course," said Fanny-Rosa, "your father is entitled to do as he pleases. It is not as though Mrs. Collins is a young woman, who might.

What I mean to say is, this new arrangement cannot affect Johnnie in any way, I suppose?"

"I assure you," said her father-in-law, "that Johnnie's interest will be affected in no way whatsoever, nor yours, Fanny-Rosa, nor yours, Eliza, nor those of any member of my family.

I am seventy-five years of age. My wife is fifty. I shall, very naturally, make provision for her in my will, but nothing that I leave to her will be taken from any of you.

As to our friends in Saunby and elsewhere, Eliza, you need not worry on that account. We shall live very quietly in Lletharrog, and Mrs. Brodrick will never move anywhere else. It is not even necessary for people to know that I have married again, if you do not wish to tell them. I do hope and trust that none of my family will feel ill-will towards the woman who has so kindly consented to become the one companion of these last years of mine."

No one answered. He looked from one to the other, and then across at his two grandsons. Thomas came in to draw the curtains. As he drew them with a click across the window there was something of finality about the sound, thought Henry, like the end of an epoch. Nothing would ever be quite the same again. Clonmere would continue, he and Johnnie and the boys would come there to spend their holidays, but their grandfather would not be with them. The library would be empty, the hall table bare of the nobbled stick and the shovel hat, and in the little farm-house at Lletharrog across the water his grandfather would be sitting opposite his cook, that large-faced, cheerful woman with the red hands, who made such excellent scones, and had that awful sing-song Bronsea accent. '

Thank the Lord, thought Fanny-Rosa, that he has decided to live at Lletharrog and not bring her here. It won't affect any of us, and I can do as I please with this place. A mercy she was not a young woman, who would produce a family. Old men were such idiots, and one never knew. .

It's all very well, thought Eliza, to say I am to have the house at Saunby. There is nothing I should like better, provided he allows me enough money to run it, but he is always so close, and anyway I cannot very well leave Barbara, although I am certain it is only a matter of a month or two now. But I must try to be firm, and get him to allow me sufficient to live in some sort of style in Saunby. After all, I shall be the only one to survive of all his children.

"If," said Copper John slowly, "no one has anything more to say, I will wish you all a very good night. We will meet at breakfast at eight o'clock.

I shall be going up to the mines as usual."

He kissed his daughter and his daughter-in-law, and shook hands with his grandsons, and went from the room.

Johnnie could hear him walk downstairs and shut the library door behind him. Poor lonely old bastard, thought Johnnie; poor old devil, with no one to give him comfort all these years, his wife some thirty years in her grave, and his sons and his daughters dying off one by one. This is the fellow I've hated and been afraid offor as long as I can remember, and he's human after all. He's like me, he wants the same things, the same comfort. He is not God Almighty, and never has been; he is only a poor, tragic, lonely old man. And good luck to him, thought Johnnie, good luck to him and his cook; mother and the aunts could look as shocked as they liked and say what shame it brought upon the family.

They did not know what the old man must have suffered, they did not understand…

"I say, it's pretty awful, isn't it?" said Henry, as the two brothers undressed and got into bed.

"Rot!" answered Johnnie; "why shouldn't he do what he wants?"

"It will seem so queer," said Henry, histo come here for the holidays and not to see grandfather. I hate changes. I like things to go on being the same."

Johnnie did not answer. He lay on his back with his hands behind his head, and through his mind, in a turmoil, raced the events of the afternoon. Driving the horses, walking the streets of Slane, seeing Jack Donovan and his friend, going into the public-house, having those drinks, and that girl. And then his grandfather's news on top of it all, seeing his tragic, lonely figure, and the thought of leaving Eton, of going into the Dragoons in a few months' time perhaps, of fighting abroad.

Henry was soon asleep, but perhaps because he had slept in the carriage coming home, Johnnie tossed and turned on his bed, his mind more wakeful, more disturbed as the hours passed, and always he seemed to see the grinning, ginger-headed Jack Donovan thrusting his offensive face close to his own and asking him to have another drink. When the stable clock struck three Johnnie sat up and threw aside his bed-clothes.

Henry did not stir, and the house was still and quiet.

"I wonder," thought Johnnie, "if there is any whisky in the cellar." He went out into the corridor, and crept to the top of the backstairs.

They felt cold to his bare feet. He listened a moment, and heard no sound. Stealthily, furtively, he felt his way in the darkness to the kitchen regions. Somewhere a clock was ticking.

He put his hand out and touched the cellar door. And for once in his lifetime Thomas had neglected his duties. The key was in the cellar door', On the second of December, 1856, a cab turned into St. James's Street from Piccadilly, and from thence into Pall Mall, stopping at length before number 17a, which was at that time bachelors' chambers. It was a dark, wet evening, and the driver rang the bell and waited for the janitor to answer it before he opened the door for his passenger to alight. "Dirty night, mum," he said conventionally, holding out his hand for his fare. And as she dropped the silver into it and said "Thank you, my good fellow," with an air like a queen, he grinned, and watched her climb the steps of the building, for she could not have a notion how she looked, with that bright purple velvet cloak round her shoulders and the bonnet that was meant to be the same colour perched sideways on her brilliant hair. Mark you, he said to himself as he whipped up his horse and clattered away down the wet street, I dare say she was a rare good-looker in her day, and there were not many women about who tipped half-a-crown, or men either, for that matter.

"Captain Brodrick is not yet returned, madam," said the janitor. "He said if you came you was to wait, he would not be very long. He's having a hair-cut, I believe, madam, down in Jermyn Street."

"I hope then," said Fanny-Rosa, "that he doesn't let himself be cropped like a convict.

What's the use, I say to him, of having a head of hair like his, and then shaving it off, as though you were doing time? Pray light the gas. The room is like a morgue. What does Captain Brodrick do with himself in such a poky place, I wonder? But I suppose you won't tell me if I ask?"

She laughed, and peeled off her gloves.

The janitor looked uncomfortable. The lady was Captain Brodrick's mother, and though she seemed somewhat unconventional, it would hardly do to discuss the Captain's behaviour. He watched her as she adjusted her bonnet in front of the looking-glass, and, opening a small handbag, flecked some white powder on her face. The result was not very happy.

Fanny-Rosa caught his eye in the looking-glass.

"What's the matter?" she said sharply.

"Nothing at all, madam," replied the janitor, and, bowing, he closed the door behind him.

"Damn fool," muttered Fanny-Rosa, and smoothed away the excess of powder. She gave a twitch to her cape, and fastened the brooch on the face of it. It was a handsome diamond brooch, Johnnie's regimental badge. The pin was always coming undone. She knew she would lose it one day.

She began to walk round the room, picking up the objects on the mantelpiece, opening boxes and examining pictures. Johnnie's desk was shut, but the key was in the tobacco jar on top of it.

Fanny-Rosa opened it, humming a tune to herself as she did so. Papers, and envelopes, and pieces of blotting-paper scattered in all directions.

"Hopelessly untidy," murmured his mother, "exactly like me." There were several bills, none of them paid apparently, and all to account rendered.

Fanny-Rosa read them all. There were one or two invitation cards, which she scrutinised, and a letter, obviously written in a feminine hand, accusing him of neglect and signed "your loving little Doodie."

Fanny-Rosa smiled. Loving little fiddlesticks, she thought. In one drawer she found a doctor's prescription which intrigued her but unfortunately could not be deciphered, and a box of pills that she smelt and tasted but found disagreeable. A step outside startled her for a moment, and she slammed down the desk and began to hum loudly and turn again to the looking-glass. But it must have been the janitor going about his business. The rest of the desk was disappointing.

The drawers were filled with maps and military text-books and orders. Fanny-Rosa turned her attention to the cupboard. It held clothes.

Johnnie's great-coat, and his service jacket, and his top boots. Nothing of interest there, although she liked to touch his clothes, and she let her hand rest lovingly a moment on the service jacket, with the ribbon on the breast. Poor darling! he had worn it out in that terrible Crimea; it was a wonder he had not been frozen to death. Idiotic fiasco. Why anyone had ever gone in for the thing was a wonder to her…

Hullo, what was this? Something in straw stuffed behind the boots. Just what she expected. A bottle of port. And here was another, and another. All empty. She wondered where he kept the full ones.

She shut the cupboard, and opened the door into the little bedroom beyond. Nothing here, except his bed, and his wash-basin, and a chest-of-drawers. She hesitated a fraction of a second before opening the bedside cupboard. In it she found a bottle of whisky, half full. She shut it again, and went back into the sitting-room.

"If he must drink," she said to herself, "why doesn't he put it all out on the sideboard?

There's nobody to see. Besides, I would not mind a glass of port myself."

She drew her chair close to the meagre fire, and poked at the coals. Men had no idea of comfort, especially army men. They got so used to early hours and iron beds and general dreariness that they never seemed to expect anything else. Edward was just the same now he had entered the regiment too. Henry was different. He was the only one of the boys who really knew how to live. And Herbert, leaving Oxford to go and be a curate in that Liverpool slum, was quite beyond her. He had been such a bright, amusing little boy too. As for Fanny, well, it was exactly like her to marry a clergyman. Not that she had anything against Bill Eyre; he was a most worthy creature, and had some money too, and after all the Eyres were one of the oldest families in the country. But there was something about a clergyman. ' and slaughter that she could not believe him. Here he was though. The door burst open, and the darling boy came into the room.

"Forgive me, I've kept you waiting," he said, going to her at once and taking her in his arms.

"Have they cropped you now?" she said, turning him about, and he laughed, showing his dark head, and bent it for her to kiss.

"If you had your way, mother, you'd have my hair on my shoulders still," he said.

Johnnie at twenty-six was much the same as he had been at seventeen, but taller, broad-shouldered, though not as tall or as broad as his brother Henry, who outstripped him by two inches. His face had coarsened somewhat, his mouth had become more obstinate, and the expression in his eyes a little arrogant, a little watchful, as though he expected criticism and would squash it before it came.

"Well, what's all the excitement?" he said.

"Why am I to take everybody out to dinner?"

"A celebration," said Fanny-Rosa. "It's really rather an honour. Henry has been made high sheriff for Slane, and he's only twenty-four."

"Good heavens!" said Johnnie. He was silent a moment, and then he laughed. "I always did know Henry had the talent of the family," he said. "He won all the honours he could at Eton, and I did not achieve any. By all means let's celebrate. I don't grudge him his success.

High sheriff of Slane, is it? We must pull his leg about it."

Fanny-Rosa was relieved. Sometimes she was just the smallest bit anxious that darling Johnnie might be jealous of his younger brother's triumphs.

Everyone seemed to be so fond of Henry, in this country as well as across the water. He had hosts of friends. And wherever she went, "whether it was over there, or to stay with Eliza in Saunby, or here in London, people would seem interested when they heard her name, and say, "Are you the mother of Henry Brodrick? But how delightful to meet you! We are so devoted to your son." She was glad and proud of course, and Henry was a dear no doubt, and very charming and good-looking, but she wished sometimes that it would be the other way about and someone would say, "I met your eldest son, Captain Brodrick, last week.

What a splendid fellow he is!" But no one ever did say that. Only once, in London, had she come across a man who knew Johnnie, and he had been very non-committal. "Oh, yes," he said, "I did serve with him at one time, before the war… Haven't seen him since," and then changed the subject. Once she had asked Edward, soon after her younger son had joined the regiment, whether there was any unfair feeling against his eldest brother. Edward had looked most uncomfortable.

"I don't think so exactly," he said, "but you see, poor old Johnnie has such a deuce of a temper, and he rubs fellows up the wrong way sometimes. They don't mind him being as wild as a hawk, but they do object when he has too much port after dinner and calls everyone he sees a swine and a bastard."

"Yes," said Fanny-Rosa, "yes, I see."

And yet, she thought, looking at this eldest son of hers as he brushed his hair before the mirror in his bedroom, how charming he could be when he wanted to, how affectionate, how lovable, and she was certain that his brains were the equal of Henry's, but he did not bother to use them, any more than his father had done. As for his temper, well, that was her legacy, and anyway it showed spirit, a determination not to be beaten.

"We had better be going, Johnnie," she said.

"I told the others seven-thirty."

"Very well," he answered. "There is a cab waiting, Dobson will see you into it. I shan't be a moment."

She went out into the hall, and, glancing back over her shoulder, she saw through the chink of the door that her son had opened the cupboard against the wall.

He's going to have a glass of port, she thought.

I wonder how much he gets through in the day.

The janitor held the carriage umbrella over her head, and she stepped into the cab. Johnnie joined her in a few minutes. He was flourishing a handkerchief, and a wave of eau-de-Cologne filled the cab.

"What does this party consist of?" he asked, stretching his legs on the seat opposite.

"Only ourselves," she said, "and Henry, and Edward, and Fanny, and Bill, and Bill's sister Katherine, whom I think you have not met."

"Is she as dull as Bill?"

"Don't be unkind about your brother-in-law; I'm devoted to him, Katherine is most charming. I rather fancy Henry has an eye on her Be civil and charming to everyone, for my sake. And don't make any remark about Fanny's appearance. She is very sensitive."

"Why the devil does she go out in public then?"

"She only does so tonight because of Henry. Then she and Bill are going off to Clifton, to await the arrival."

"What a confounded wet night it is!" said Johnnie, peering through the glass, and rubbing it with his handkerchief, "and where in hell's name does this fellow think he's going? I swear he's taken the wrong street. Here, you blithering idiot…"

He lowered the window, and began shouting at the driver.

Fanny-Rosa leant back and said nothing. This always happened, driving with Johnnie. Never yet had any cabman taken the right route. By the time they reached their destination he had cast doubt on the cabman's parentage, his personal morals, his cleanliness, the fidelity of his wife, and all to the unfortunate fellow's face. She began to wonder whether there would be a fight when they reached Port-man Square. But Johnnie suddenly changed his tone, gave the man an enormous tip and said he would not have his job for anything in the world, and giving his arm to his mother, he conducted her into the hotel, leaving the cabman red in the face, stupefied, and dumb.

Henry and Edward were waiting for them.

"The others will be down directly," said Henry; "the girls arc titivating, as usual. How are you, old fellow? I can't tell you how pleased I am to see you."

He shook hands with Johnnie, and kissed his mother.

The two brothers had not met for nearly a year.

"Greetings to the sheriff of Slane," said Johnnie. "And how's the law going, and the politics, and all your other interests?"

"Pretty well," smiled Henry. "I believe in dabbling in as many things as possible. They want me to contest the seat at the next election, but I think I'll wait a few years before I do that."

Enterprising chap, thought Johnnie. Always a finger in somebody's pie, but never being irritating about it. Here came Fanny, poor girl, looking grotesque, and the worthy Bill, and '

"This is Katherine Eyre," said Henry. "My brother Johnnie."

Charming, his mother had said, Johnnie remembered, but she had not told him she was beautiful. The smooth, dark hair, gathered in a low knot on the nape of her neck, the serene brown eyes, the cream-white texture of her skin, the whole impression of her, he thought, suggesting repose and quiet, someone withdrawn into herself who brought peace to the beholder. He found himself at a loss for words, and because he was not used to feeling shy before women he began to bluster, to give orders to the waiter in a loud voice, and when they came into the dining-room he complained about the position of the table; it was cramped against the wall, they must have the one in the opposite corner instead. Henry took charge and mollified the waiter. He gently teased his brother and changed the conversation, and soon they were all seated, Johnnie on the left of Katherine Eyre, and, rather than that she should think him a dullard and a boor, he at once plunged into a fantastic tale about the Crimea-she had asked some question on the war-hoping to impress her with its extravagance.

"I should like," she said, "to have been out there and helped Miss Nightingale. Not so much because of the nursing-I hardly think I could have stood it-but because so many of the men must have felt lonely and unhappy and would want comfort."

She looked at him and smiled, and he turned away, crumbling a piece of bread, because he was reminded suddenly of himself in that appalling shambles at Sevastopol, taking a very different sort of comfort in the arms of a slant-eyed, rather dirty little refugee, and how he had gone without whisky for five days and nearly died in consequence.

"I don't think," he said, "you could have done much good…"

And then he saw Henry staring at Katherine Eyre across the table, with such tenderness and adoration that Johnnie felt a strange despair come upon him, a feeling that he was an outcast, a pariah dog, who had no business to be sitting here with his brother and Katherine Eyre. They belonged to another world, a world where people were normal and happy, and had faith and confidence in the future. And above all faith and confidence in themselves.

"Here," he said loudly, "no one's drinking anything. Aren't we going to toast the sheriff of Slane?"

And he thumped on the table for the waiter to attend them. The other people dining in the room turned round at the sound of his voice.

"Henry," he said to Katherine Eyre, "gets his way by being polite to people. I get mine by doing the opposite?

She did not answer, and once again he felt depressed and lost, not because there was any sign of disapproval in her eyes, or condemnation, but because the sight of her sitting there beside him made him wish to be different, someone who was quiet and peaceful like her* self. He felt that very possibly she considered it unimportant whether people got their own way or not, and that in any case to shout and to bluster was something she would never do.

There was his mother laughing and talking to Bill. She enjoyed life, anyway, and would continue to do so whatever happened, and Bill, that honest parson, chatted back politely to his mother-in-laws though no doubt he did not care about the dyed hair and the powdered face. Fanny, giving birth any minute, was like a mouse, and always had been; no chance of her ever breaking the peace; and Edward and Henry discussed the affairs of the day as though the words Conservative and Liberal meant anything at all. No, he was an outcast, and always would be, and no doubt everybody here, except perhaps his mother, wished that they could have dined without him, "Well," he said, leaning back in his chair, "we have toasted Henry's future as a sheriff, what about toasting mine as a civilian?"

There was a pause in the conversation. Everybody looked at him.

"What do you mean, darling?" said Fanny-Rosa.

"Only that I am leaving the regiment," said Johnnie. "I sent in my papers today."

At once a torrent of questions were flung at him.

What did he mean by it? And surely it was a pity, he had always said the life suited him, and one conventional phrase after the other. Only Edward, the other soldier present, made no comment. And Fanny-Rosa, with sudden intuition, wondered whether Johnnie had been re-quested to leave…

"Oh, I'm fed up with the service," said Johnnie. "All very fat and fine when there's some fighting to do, but to stand about all day on a barrack square is not my idea of amusement. I've had it in my mind to leave for some time. What will I do? I haven't the slightest idea, I shall probably go abroad. Anyway, what the devil does it matter? The fact is, Miss Eyre, I find it rather degrading, and not particularly profitable, to be six-and-twenty years of age with deuced little to live on, waiting for an old man of eighty-four to die and leave me all his money-was The speech made an uncomfortable impression.

His sister blushed. and glanced at her husband. His mother smiled a shade too brightly and began talking rather loudly to Henry about his plans for Christmas.

Only Katherine Eyre appeared unmoved. She looked up at Johnnie, her eyes grave and kindly.

"It is a very difficult position for you," she said, "and must make you feel so unsettled. Don't go abroad, though."

"Why not?" said Johnnie.

"I don't think you would be happy."

"I'm not happy anywhere."

"Whose fault is that?"

"Nobody's. It's my misfortune to be cursed with the nature I have."

"Don't say that. You are really the most kind and generous person. I have often talked about you to Henry.

He is very fond of you."

"Is he? I doubt it."

"You like to make yourself out worse than you are. That's foolishness. You ought to come across the water, and take an interest in your country."

"What has my country ever done for me?"

"It's given you your life, for one thing."

She laughed, and his heart smote him because she had so little knowledge of his true character, his selfishness, his vices, his utter want of principle.

"I've always understood," he said, "that I was a seven months' child. Perhaps that is why I lack all the virtues. And the nicest member of my family died the day I was born, my aunt Jane, who might have made something out of me. She was to have been my godmother. I think you are a little like the portrait of her that hangs in the dining-room at Clonmere."

"I suppose," she said, "that you would not like me for a godmother instead?"

He stared at her suspiciously. What the devil was she driving at? The words would have sounded flirtatious, inviting, from anyone else, or deliberately provoking from an older, clever woman. But from Katherine Eyre they were unique, because they were sincere. She looked at him with her calm brown eyes, and once again she smiled.

"Are you afraid I should play the governess?" she said. "I promise you I would never do that. But if my godson had twists I should want to help him unravel the knots."

Johnnie had forgotten the rest of his family, forgotten the people in the dining-room and the passing waiters, the bustle and confusion. It seemed to him that there was no one but his tortured, angry, resentful self, and the blessed, healing presence of Katherine Eyre.

"You are a very unusual person," he said slowly. "I wish to God I had met you before."

"We are going to see a lot of one another from now on," she said, "so the future will make up for the past. You must come and stay with us in Slane."

Why, wondered Johnnie, was she so gracious to him, so kind, as though it mattered to her what became of him, as though she cared for him in some strange personal way, who had only met him an hour before? If he could think for one moment that there was to be someone in life who would bother about him, help him, smile at him, talk to him, why then there was hope indeed. She had asked him to stay in Slane. Did the Eyres live in Slane? He could not remember. How unusual she was, lacking all ordinary convention, and yet bearing no resemblance to the fluffy little coquettes with whom he amused himself in London. Yes, he would go back to his own country, he would stay with Katherine Eyre and her family in Slane, and perhaps, after he had seen a bit more of her, there would be some purpose in living after all. She would be merciful and kind, and if he shouted, and swore, and drank, and lost his temper, she would forgive him. That was what he needed more than anything in the world. Forgiveness. Mercy.

And now Henry was getting up with a glass in his hand, looking proud and happy. His brother supposed there was to be another toast. And Henry said: "Mother, Fanny, Bill, Johnnie and Edward, I have another announcement to make. Today I am the happiest of men because Katherine has promised to marry me. And the wedding is to be in Slane, in two months' time."

Everyone was smiling, everyone was talking at once, and there was Edward patting Henry on the back, and Fanny leaning across to Katherine Eyre and kissing her, and his mother saying, "But Katherine, my dear, how very delightful," and Bill apologising for two Eyres in their family all within twelve months. Johnnie heard his own voice loud and hearty, saying, "Congratulations, old boy; you deserve to be happy, God bless you," and suddenly the atmosphere became unbearable-the pleasure on all their faces, the quick discussion of plans, the women, all excited and eager, talking about wedding-dresses and bridesmaids and God knows what, and Henry looking across with confidence and pride at this Katherine who was to be his bride, his comfort, his loved one…

"You'll be my best man, old fellow, won't you?" said Henry, and Johnnie pushed back his chair and got to his feet.

"Not on your life," he said rudely. "I don't know how to behave in church; you'd better get Edward, or summon Herbie down from Liverpool, then there'll be two chaps there in dog-collars.

No, I'll stand in the street outside, and throw an old slipper at your carriage as you drive away."

He saw the sudden hurt expression in his brother's eyes, and the inevitable flicker of a question, "What's wrong with Johnnie now?" that he had seen so often before, as a child, as a boy, as a man. It's no good, thought Johnnie; I always hurt people, I always make them unhappy; I spoil every party; it would be much better if I went. I don't belong to this sort of happy family atmosphere anyway.

Let Henry marry his Katherine. He is the right sort of fellow for her. They will make one another happy. And she will give him peace and understanding. As for me, I can make my own peace, in my own way, and if it's black oblivion from a bottle or a tart, what the hell does it matter to anyone?

"Sorry to break the evening," he said, "but the fact is I've just remembered I promised to see someone at nine. And anyway, you'll all enjoy yourselves far better without me." He drew a couple of sovereigns from his pocket and dropped them on his brother's plate. "My dinner," he said.

"Goodnight, mother."

And he walked slowly out of the dining-room, conscious that people were turning to stare at him and one or two were smiling, were raising their eyebrows, and one of them lifted a glass significantly. God damn them, he thought, God damn and blast the whole bloody lot of them.

Mechanically he took his hat and his coat and his cane from the attendant in the vestibule. The rain had ceased and there was a wind now, cutting and cold. He walked down the street; here came three fellows arm-in-arm, walking up the pavement towards him.

He expected them to break apart and give him passage, but either they did not see him or they did not choose to do so, and without hesitation he walked into the midst of them, throwing one into the gutter, and the other against the wall, and the third he elbowed into a lamppost.

"Now go and learn manners, will you?" he cried, and the three, too astonished to retaliate, shouted after him, and one man bellowed out for a policeman, but by the time his call was answered, and a crowd had collected, Johnnie was away down the middle of the road.

"Where am I supposed to be going?" he said to himself, and then he remembered his excuse to the family, the engagement at nine o'clock. Well, it was true, now he came to think of it: his colonel was giving a reception at his house in Grosvenor Street. The same pompous old fool who had hummed and hawed that morning, and said that under the circumstances, and it was very painful for him to have to say so, but he hoped Johnnie would realise '

"They shall have the pleasure of my company, if they so desire it," he said. He rocked unsteadily on the pavement, smiling to himself, and on the opposite side of the street a cab rumbled by. He summoned it with a flourish of his cane. "No.11 Grosvenor Street," said Johnnie.

It was rather pleasant leaning back in the cab, with his head against the cushion, and it seemed to him that the cab arrived in Grosvenor Street far too soon.

He climbed carefully from his seat, and paid his fare.

The lights shone brightly from the house, and there was a red carpet down from the front door to the pavement. A crowd of people had collected outside in the street to watch the arrival of the guests. The door opened for a moment to admit one of Johnnie's brother officers and his wife, and then closed again, "

"Ere, ain't you got a wife, mister?" said a girl at Johnnie's elbow.

He took off his hat and bowed.

"Unfortunately not," he said, "but would you be good enough to accompany me instead?"

The girl screamed with laughter. She was a little painted prostitute who had walked up from Piccadilly to see the fun.

"What would they say to me if I went inside?" she chaffed.

"That's exactly what I would like to know," said Johnnie. "Will you come with me? Or are you afraid? I'll give you five pounds if you do."

The girl laughed nervously, and another woman, her companion, pulled at her arm.

"Come away," she said. "Don't you see the gentleman's tipsy?"

"Tipsy be damned," said Johnnie. "I'm roaring drunk if you want to know. Here, what about this 8? And he shook five sovereigns in his hand.

"All right, I'll do it," said the girl boldly. "Let go, Annie, will you?"

Johnnie offered her his arm, and rang the bell.

Once more the door opened, and a powdered footman stood within the entrance. A hum of voices greeted Johnnie and his companion. Men in uniform and women in evening dress thronged the stairs. At the head of the stairs on the landing, Johnnie caught a glimpse of his white-haired colonel and his stately wife.

"What's your name, sweetheart?" said Johnnie to the girl beside him.

"Vera," said the girl, hanging back, "Vera Potts… You're not going to take me up there, are you, mister?"

"I most certainly am," said Johnnie. He handed his hat and coat with a bow to the second footman, who was whispering to his colleague in great agitation. "Have the goodness to announce us," said Johnnie, moving forward to the stairs. "Captain Brodrick and Miss Vera Potts. Hullo, my dear Robin, how are you?

And your wife? Delighted to meet you. I don't think you have met Miss Potts. Miss Potts, Captain Sir Robert and Lady Frazer. This way, Vera my dear?

People were falling back against the stairway as Johnnie elbowed his way forward, the girl still clinging to his arm. Johnnie himself could see with difficulty, but he was aware of many heads turned towards him, of several blank expressions, of someone calling to him from the hall below in a voice of extreme urgency, but he felt himself possessed of great power and self-confidence. Now his colonel's head was turned towards him, and the conventional smile of greeting froze on the lips of the colonel's wife, as her outstretched hand, in its long white glove, fell before the grubby paw extended to her by her uninvited guest.

"Good evening, Mrs. Greville," said Johnnie, "good evening, sir. May I present Miss Vera Potts, of the old firm of Potts, Piccadilly?"

"Please to meet you, I'm sure," said his companion.

Mrs. Greville had the distant, far-away expression of one who has received a blow between the eyes, and for one moment Johnnie thought she might faint. But she recovered magnificently, she bowed, she murmured.

The colonel was unmoved. He greeted Johnnie with courtesy, and shook hands with Johnnie's companion. Only the little pulse beating in his forehead betrayed his inner feelings.

"Morton," he said, to a crimson-faced young subaltern at his elbow, "I think Miss Potts would be happier outside. Would you have the goodness to see her to the door? There is another staircase, through the landing there, on the left. Thank you. And will you, Frazer, and somebody else, hail a cab and take Brodrick home? I am afraid he is not very well. '?

"On the contrary," said Johnnie, "I am exceedingly well. And I myself will conduct Miss Potts to her friends. Good evening, sir."

He bowed, he offered his arm once more to his companion, and together they sailed down the staircase and into the hall, stared at by a hundred faces; and so his hat and his coat and his stick again, and out on to the red carpet with the door slamming behind them…

Later, much later, Johnnie pulled aside the curtains in his room in Pall Mall. The morning was foggy and grey. For a while he could not remember what had happened the night before, and he reached for the flask in the drawer of the dressing-table. He felt better after a moment or two, and his eye fell on the sleepy form of Vera Potts, who was lying on his bed. Strange, he had no recollection of anything after leaving Grosvenor Street. He went into the sitting-room and stared vacantly about him. There was his coat, and the much-trimmed hat of Vera Potts, and the fur she had worn about her neck. He took another sip from his flask. Then he noticed a telegram lying on the desk. He put out a shaky hand and opened it. When Vera Potts came into the room, looking for her things, she found Johnnie sitting before his desk, the telegram open in his hand. He was staring straight in front of him.

"What's up?" she said. "Not bad news, is it?"

He did not seem to hear her. He was watching the grey December fog break upon the world outside.

"My grandfather's dead," he said slowly. "That means Clonmere is mine."

The funny thing was that he still felt that the library belonged to the old man, and when he opened the drawers of the great roll-top desk, or turned a key in the book-case, he did so with a certain uneasiness, as if Copper John might walk into the room at any moment, and stand there with his hands behind his back, his eyes narrowing under his thick eyebrows, and demand in cold, measured tones what his grandson was about. The place smelt of him. It was grey, austere. And Johnnie knew that he could never sit there, never write letters with any sense of ease because of the shadow of his grandfather, looking over his shoulder.

The thing was ridiculous, of course. His grandfather had not been to Clonmere for more than six years. And Johnnie tried to picture him, that old deaf man of eighty-four, living with his housekeeper-wife at Lletharrog, waiting for death to claim him, seeing no one, writing to no one, except once a month with great regularity to the manager of the mines on Hungry Hill. Surely there was nothing fearful about that distant figure, sitting day after day in the living-room of the farm-house? And yet Johnnie shuddered, for no reason, and he would shut up the roll-top desk, and push away the chair, and leave the library to the cobwebs and the dust, and go out into the sunlight. There was a queer anti-climax in returning home. All his life he had waited for this moment, dreamt about it, planned for it, and now that it had come the savour was lost to him, the excitement was no longer there. "It's come too late," he thought, wandering about the grounds, listening abstractedly to what the agent had to say.

"It's come too late. I no longer care. This should have happened ten years ago, then it might have been worth while." The agent had an irritating manner; he was a fellow called Adams. Johnnie did not know him, and he kept referring to Henry all the time, as though the place had come to him, and not to Johnnie at all. "Yes, Captain Brodrick, your brother, Mr. Henry, ordered those trees to be planted; he was staying here last summer, with the other young gentlemen, when you were abroad." And then, "Mr. Henry suggested that the farm-buildings should be repaired, and he settled the dispute between old Baird and the new man; he decided Baird was really too old for the job, and he engaged the present man, Phillips." And, "Mr. Henry used to go up to the mines fairly frequently. I rather think the letters referring to the business have been going to him."

No doubt, when he was in the regiment, and with his grandfather living in retirement at Lletharrog, Henry had given an eye to the place; but now his grandfather was dead, and Johnnie was the head of the family, Henry could mind his own business.

"In future," he said curtly, "all communications in regard to the estate or to the mines are to be brought direct to me."

The tenants kept asking after Mr. Henry too, looking a little doubtfully at Johnnie, as if he had no business to be there, and was a stranger. Up at the mines it was the same. The former mining captain, old Nicholson, had retired long since, and his place had been taken by a manager, Griffiths, who showed him the accounts willingly enough, and appeared efficient and civil, but who when Johnnie asked some question about machinery, said "that Mr. Henry considered the plant wanted renewing, and perhaps Captain Brodrick would be seeing his brother, and find out what steps he had taken in the matter."

"My brother," said Johnnie, "is particularly busy at the moment getting himself married, and anyway the management of the mines has nothing whatsoever to do with him."

"Of course, now you are home, Captain Brodrick, it is a different matter," said Griffiths hastily. "No doubt you will see to things personally."

And he began talking technicalities, and showing Johnnie figures, none of which meant anything much to Johnnie. But rather than betray his ignorance he nodded his head now and again, and asked questions, and put some sort of bold face on the matter so that the manager would learn his lesson.

"I'm damned if I'm going to be dictated to by Henry or anyone else," thought Johnnie, and on returning to the castle he had all the servants in and cursed them, just to show them that he was not going to stand any nonsense. He was irritated when old Thomas informed him that if the Captain did not require his services he would go and look after Mr.

Henry and Mrs. Henry, in the house they had taken in Slane.

"Go by all means, if you want to," he said.

"I don't want to be served by people who dislike me."

"It's not that, sir," said the old servant, looking uncomfortable;? 'tis only that I know Mr. Henry's ways, and that with your being out of the country so longea" I might not please you."

So Thomas departed to Slane, and so did one or two of the other servants, and Johnnie, in exasperation, sent for the batman who had looked after him in the regiment. He took charge of the house immediately, and shortly afterwards Fanny-Rosa arrived, with three more servants and all her luggage, and two or three dogs, announcing that darling Johnnie could not possibly live at Clonmere all by himself, of course she was going to look after him.

"You know, my darling," said Fanny-Rosa, tucking her arm in her son's, and walking up and down before the houses "what you ought to do is to marry. Some nice quiet, placid creature, who would give you dozens of children, and be about the place if you wanted her, but with no mind of her own to make an irritation.

She would not get in my way or in yours. There must be someone in the country who would answer the purpose.

Good family, of course. None of your upstarts."

"I dislike quiet, placid women,"

Johnnie said, "and so do you; and anyway I'm too much of a ruffian for any woman to marry, so we won't discuss it."

"Henry and his Katherine are ideally happy," said his mother. "It's a pity you can't be the same. A wife would steady you, give you more of a background.

I'm not a fool. I know what I am talking about."

"I've no desire to be steady," said Johnnie, "and if you are going to start lecturing me I shall remind you that this house is mine, and not yours."

Fanny-Rosa glanced at him sideways.

Queer how mention of Henry and Katherine always made him stick out his jaw and smoulder.

"Don't be absurd, darling," she said, "you know I never lecture."

But she made a silent resolve to question this servant of his discreetly sometime as to how much whisky his master was consuming, and where he kept the key of the cellar, and what he did with himself every evening, and whether he received many letters. The great thing at the moment was to keep Johnnie occupied. Fanny-Rosa wrote invitations to every neighbour within thirty miles inviting them to Clonmere to shoot before the season finished. Her brother. Bob Flower, who had married and settled down in Castle Andriff, her cousin, the Earl of Mundy, her other cousins, the Lumleys- everybody who might be induced to make some sort of companionship for Johnnie was pestered with letters and invitations, all claiming that "darling Johnnie was longing to see them," and on accepting the invitations and going to Clonmere the guests would be greeted by their talkative, flamboyant hostess, dressed in every describable colour to clash with her vivid hair. Later, considerably later, in the day, they would be joined by their somewhat flushed and slightly incoherent host, who would be hearty and aggressive in turn, one moment laughing boisterously, the next plunged for no apparent reason in sullen gloom. And the guests would be diffident, embarrassed, uncertain whether they were expected to shoot or to order their carriages and go home. At any rate, when next invited to Clonmere they would find themselves otherwise engaged.

"Extraordinary people are," Fanny-Rosa would say. "Last winter, when Henry and Herbert were here, they had friends over to shoot two or three times a week, inviting themselves. And now the same lot are full of excuses about the roads and the distance."

"It's not extraordinary at all," said Johnnie; "it only means that they liked coming to see Henry and Herbert, and they don't care about coming to see me. For God Almighty's sake stop asking them. I can invite my own friends."

And he would wander around with the keeper, and one or two of the tenants with whom he had struck up a queer familiarity, because there was no one else.

It was on one of these occasions that he came across Jack Donovan, whom he had barely set eyes on since he was a boy, and who brought back vividly the long-forgotten episode in the public-house in Slane. The fellow was little changed, still carroty-haired and impudent, and he stuck out his hand at once to Johnnie and asked after his health, although the gun under his other arm showed only too plainly that he had been poaching.

"Ah, now you've come back to us again, Captain, we shall see some sport," said Donovan. "That's what I was saying down in Doonhaven to the boys; there'll be lively times ahead. Here's the gentleman that will give some entertainment to the countryside."

Johnnie laughed, although at first he had felt like hitting the fellow.

"You'd better join us, Jack," he said, "and find the hares for us."

"I'll find you hares," said the other, with a wink.

"I know the ground like the back of my hand, but I've been obliged to come here quietly, Captain, while you've been from home. It was Doctor Armstrong had the shooting here, and he's no friend to me or my family."

"Never mind Doctor Armstrong," said Johnnie; "you can come and shoot as my guest for a change."

The thought that his godfather disapproved of Jack Donovan was enough to make Johnnie claim the man as a friend at once. Uncle Willie had already made one or two brief appearances at Clonmere, each time adding another pin-prick to Johnnie's mounting irritation. Did Johnnie propose to do this, did he intend to follow his grandfather's example in that, and had he asked his brother Henry's advice about the other? The truth of the matter was his godfather presumed too much on old times' sake. He was over sixty, and past his job, thought his godson, and if he was not very careful Johnnie would have him thrown out of the place and the practice given to a younger man.

"What are you doing for yourself these days, Jack?" he asked, and the man shrugged his shoulders.

"You might well ask me that, Captain, with my elbows coming out of my coat, as you can see for yourself.

There's no trade left in the place at all, and my father's old shop that I have there on the quayside falling about my head. We're thinking of going to America, me and my sister Kate. There's nothing doing here at all."

"You don't have to do that," said Johnnie. "I'll find something for you at Clonmere. Now I come to think of it I want someone to live in the gate-house at the top of the drive. I sacked the people only last week for being uncivil. You and your sister had better move in."

Jack Donovan looked up at him, his light blue eyes suspicious.

"Ah, you're making a game of me, Captain."

"I am not. Why shouldn't you live in the gate-house?"

"Sure, it's for you to say. The place belongs to you, Captain, and you can have what tenants you like, now old Mr. Brodrick is dead. He would never have had one of us Donovans in his gate-house, I can tell you that."

"All the more reason to have one now," said Johnnie, "and if anyone dares say anything against it, you can refer them to me."

He thought very little more about the matter, until in a few days' time the agent came to him in a state of great indignation, and said that Jack Donovan from Doonhaven, and his sister, had had the impudence to move their things into the gate-house, which he, the agent, had promised to one of the Captain's tenants from Kileen, and would the Captain please give orders for them to leave immediately?

"Certainly not," said Johnnie, delighted to make the agent lose face. "I have given permission to the Donovans to take over the gatehouse."

"It is not at all customary…" began Mr.

Adams, but Johnnie told him to go to the devil and went out of the room. That evening at dinner his mother brought up the subject again.

"What is all this nonsense about those dreadful Donovans trying to seize the gate-house?" she said. "The servants are full of it. You're going to turn them out, of course."

"I shall do nothing of the sort," said Johnnie.

"Jack Donovan is a very good fellow, and happens to be one of the few people on the estate who appear to like me. They shall live in the gate-house as long as they want to."

"But, Johnnie," protested his mother, "the Brodricks have never had any sort of truck with the Donovans, you must know that. They are a horrible family. Your father caught his death from visiting one of them. For that alone I can never forgive them."

"Because my father had the misfortune to catch diphtheria from one of the Donovans is no reason for me to dislike this generation," said Johnnie. "I should have thought you would have had more sense. The most reasonable thing to do would be for you to go and see Kate Donovan, and ask if she is comfortable."

"My darling boy, I've never spoken to any of the family yet, and I'm certainly not going to begin now. If she's the sly-looking creature with flaxen hair I saw walking down the drive this morning, I don't think much of her. You ought to have had the Mahoneys at the gatehouse. I like Mrs.

Mahoney. Why didn't you ask my advice in the first place?"

"Because I prefer to use my own judgement," said Johnnie shortly, reaching out for the decanter.

"It's a great mistake," said Fanny-Rosa, watching the amount that went into the glass, "to bring people up from the village who are nothing to do with the estate. I tried it with servants, and it never worked. After all, I ran this place at first, more or less on my own and later with Henry's help, all the time you were with the regiment, and I do know something about it by now. Why don't you finish the decanter while you're about it?"

Johnnie put down his glass and faced his mother across the table.

"I think it is time," he said, "that you and I came to some sort of understanding. For years we used to talk about living here together when my grandfather died, didn't we? And now it has happened, and here we are. And you know, and I know, that it's a failure.

It does not work. What do you propose to do about it?"

"What do you mean?" said Fanny-Rosa.

"Only that would it not be rather better for both of us if you went and lived somewhere else?" said Johnnie.

For a moment Fanny-Rosa did not answer. She played with the table-cloth in front of her, and there were two vivid spots of colour high on both cheeks. Johnnie watched her moodily, hating himself for what he had done, but knowing that he would never now take back his words.

"I see," said Fanny-Rosa. "I've been getting on your nerves. It was a good thing you told me. Mothers are so blind."

She got up, and walked over to the fireplace, and stood for a while with her hands to the blaze.

Johnnie suddenly remembered her as she had been twenty years ago, with that same cloud of hair, now dyed and patchy, falling about her face, and how, when he was a little boy, she had swept him up in her arms and held him close. He could remember the scent she used then, and the lovely cool smell of her skin. Now her chin sagged a little, and the powder, so carelessly applied, had sprinkled upon her dress, so that there were spots of it on the satin. His heart ached, and savagely, in his mind, he cursed the years that had come between them, that could never now be bridged; years that had changed her from a laughing, careless girl to this rather ridiculous figure of middle-age, that touched him only because of the past, not through the present.

"Well, don't let's make a tragedy of it," she said lightly. "If you would rather be alone, thank heaven you said so in time."

Johnnie wheeled round his chair, and stared with her into the fire.

"You don't understand," he said. "It is a tragedy. For years I used to think about this, and you being here with me, and what we would do together. And now that we are here, it's a God-damn awful failure.

Isn't that the greatest tragedy that can happen to anyone?"

They gazed into the fire, he with his glass in his hands, she with one hand upon his shoulder.

"I wonder," she said suddenly, "what would have happened if your father had not died."

And there was something in her voice that caught at his heart and made him look up at her swiftly and take her hand. But when he swung her round her face was smiling, there were no tears, and she began talking very rapidly about finding a little villa, perhaps in the south of France, for the autumn and winter. She had often thought she would like to do so. As a girl, she said, she had always spent winters abroad, in France and Italy. It had been most amusing; the only thing was that of course it might be rather expensive…

"Blow expense," said Johnnie. "You know perfectly well that I should allow you anything you want. All that we can arrange."

"Darling," she said, "how sweet and generous of you," and she patted him on the head, which was worse, he thought, than if she had stormed and raved at him.

"I wonder if Eliza would care to come out with me," she said, "as a change from Saunby? We could stay at a hotel and look for a tiny villa together. I think I shall write to her tonight. I should prefer Monte Carlo to anywhere else. More going on…

And she opened the door and left him in the dining-room alone, and he thought suddenly how after all these years he knew nothing of his mother, nothing of her mind or her heart. And whether he had broken that heart by his words this evening, or whether she had none to break, was something that he would never know, or anyone else. No one but Almighty God would ever look into the soul of Fanny-Rosa and read the truth.

The next morning he woke full of remorse for his hard words of the evening, and went along to his mother's room to apologise and ask her to stay. He had been drinking too much, he said, she must not take any notice of what he had said; but he found her surrounded by boxes and books and every describable article, clothes long put away, hats, sashes, gloves, relics of the years that had gone.

"So amusing," she said. "I keep coming upon things I had forgotten. Here is a little old hat that I wore when I became engaged to your father," and she picked up a crumpled straw object, the size of a saucer. "It might do for the kitchen-maid on Saints' days," she added, tossing it aside.

"Here is your first shoe," she laughed, showing him a scarlet baby slipper. "I must not throw that away.

You only wore it a few weeks, your foot grew so quickly. Look at this satin gown. I had it new to wear in Bath, where your father and I once spent a week of tremendous gaiety, and then I started Edward shortly afterwards and was soon too large to put it on. Most annoying, I remember. With a little alteration it would do very well for me now." She held it up against her.

Johnnie watched, despair in his heart. There was so much sadness, it seemed to him, in all these things that had once been part of her.

"I think we were very foolish yesterday," he said.

"You had better change your mind and stay."

"Oh, nonsense," she answered; "it's a great mistake to go back on a decision. I learnt that many years ago. Besides, I am beginning to look forward to my little villa. I shall enjoy seeing a lot of people again, and going about. You are treading on that muff, darling. Would you mind moving?"

And he thought that perhaps after all she was not acting, she really had a wish to go, and, because that seemed to him almost more tragic than if she had longed to stay with him, he went downstairs to the dining-room and drank half a bottle of whisky. In a week's time she had gone…

Johnnie shut himself in the house and saw no one.

The weather was bad, it rained day after day. The mist would hang about the creek and hide Doon Island, and Johnnie, staring from the windows, would watch the mournful, driving rain, hear the sucking sound of it in the gutters, and see the low, grey clouds sweeping over Hungry Hill.

Then, because there would be nothing else to do, he would go out into the rain and walk up the drive through the park, and go into the gate-house and talk to Jack Donovan. The man amused him; he had a coarse, easy sort of humour, and a fund of stories about the people of Doonhaven that appealed to Johnnie's warped sense of the ridiculous. Probably most of them were untrue, but that did not matter. And Johnnie in his turn would relate his experiences abroad, generally the more discreditable ones, because they made Jack Donovan laugh the loudest. The time he had broken into a harem in Turkey and made love to a veiled lady when her husband was from home was a favourite one with the Donovans combecause Kate Donovan too would be of the company, watching him round the corner of her eyes while she pretended to cook her brother's dinner. She had smooth fair hair, almost white in colour, parted in the middle, and Jack told Johnnie that it reached below her waist and she could sit on it.

"Let's have a look at it," said Johnnie, and she pretended to be shocked at once, refusing and making a pother about it, but her brother urged her.

"Go on, Kate; you should not be so proud before the Captain."

And after much persuasion she let it down, peering through her hands at Johnnie. It transformed her at once from a rather ordinary young woman to something original and intriguing, and Johnnie thought what a delight it would be to wind his fingers in the hair, twist it into knots, and make play with it.

This sight of Kate Donovan with her hair down gave him an excitement, and soon almost every day he would wander up to the gatehouse and look in and have a chat with the brother and sister. The little stuffy kitchen, with its smell of cooking, its dingy lace curtains, its tawdry crockery, its china figures of the Virgin and St. Joseph on the mantelpiece, and the large wooden crucifix on the wall, became more homely to him and more comfortable than the cold, empty rooms down at Clonmere.

Gradually Jack Donovan took to being out when Johnnie came. His sister would bring a bottle of whisky from the cupboard, and a glass, and pour it out for him, saying the afternoon had a chill to it.

Johnnie would watch her over the rim of his glass, amused by her pretence of shyness, which he knew very well was assumed, and then he would ask her to take down her hair, and after much shaking of her head and turning away from him she would do so. It would be quiet in the kitchen, with no sound but the ticking of the clock, and Johnnie, with the whisky inside him and Kate Donovan on his knee, would feel a pleasant lethargy steal over him, as he played with her long flaxen hair. How much more comfortable it was to be doing this than sitting all alone in the dining-room at home. Through half-closed eyes he would see the picture of the Pope on the wall opposite, with the rosary beneath, and the incongruity of what he saw compared to what was going on in the kitchen made the laughter rise within him, so that he would hasten to bury his face in Kate Donovan's hair and hide his amusement from her.

Sometimes, back at Clonmere, he would suffer from reaction. It was really rather lamentable, he would think, to go up every few days to his own lodge and make love to his lodge-keeper's sister. Conversation with Kate was impossible, she had none; he went to see her for one purpose only. It was a way of passing the early autumn days of 1857.

He would suffer from reaction most when he paid his occasional visits to his brother's house, East Grove, in Slane. A longing would come over him, that had neither rhyme nor reason, to see his brother's wife Katherine. As soon as he entered her house he would be aware of a sense of peace that he experienced nowhere else. She would come to him, across the drawing-room, and give him her hands, and say, "I am glad to see you, Johnnie. You are going to stay the night, of course," and would take no denial.

Thomas would carry his bag to the spare room upstairs, and then tea would be brought, and he would sit beside Katherine while she poured it out, watching her hand on the tea-pot, the curve of her shoulder, the long, slim neck, the exquisite, calm profile.

"What have you been doing with yourself, Johnnie?" she would ask, laying a hand on his knee and looking in his eyes, and he would be filled with sudden loathing for his life and everything he did. Loathing for his useless, hopeless days, the lying in bed in the mornings, the futile pretence of seeing Adams the agent, the sitting alone in front of the whisky bottle in the dining-room, the walking up to the gate-house and the sordid fumbling interlude with Kate. The return to Clonmere and the whisky bottle once again. He gazed round the drawing-room of East Grove. It was comfortable, kindly, with the fire in the grate and the polished brass fender. The carpet was a soft green, and the shining chintzes had apples in them. There were flowers on the table, flowers on the mantelpiece. Katherine had some work on her lap, for she was expecting a baby shortly, but this work she put away, because, she said, such domestic sights were not particularly interesting to the beholder.

"I wish, Johnnie," she said, "you would leave Clonmere for a time and come and stay with us. I should love to have you here, and when Henry is out-wh he is very often-you would be a companion. I don't seem to see very much of my godson."

"I should like it," said Johnnie, "more than anything."

"Well, then?"

He shook his head.

"No," he said stubbornly, "two people who are happy, like you and Henry, don't want a third coming in to spoil the harmony."

"Don't be foolish, Johnnie," she said.

"It would only make us happier if we thought you were being happy too. It's lonely for you in that big house all alone, and although I am not going but and about much just at the moment, we could read together, and I would play to you, and Henry would love to have your company when he returned in the evening."

Johnnie thought what it would mean to sit here, day after day with Katherine, in the peace and quiet of Katherine's house. Just to sit and watch her hands, folded as they were now, would be enough. Just to listen to her calm voice, and now and again to have her eyes smile at him, as she glanced up from the book she would be reading.

Presently, when Thomas had removed the tea, Katherine went to the piano and played very softly.

She seemed so remote, so detached from the world, as she sat there on her music-stool, looking away towards the window. What does she think of, Johnnie wondered. What goes through her mind?

Does she give to Henry the peace she gives to me? He closed his eyes, and as he listened to her playing, Johnnie created the illusion for himself that this was his room, his house, and his wife who was sitting there at the piano, and that when she had finished she would come and bend over him, and touch his hair, and ask him if he was content. Then the door opened, and Henry came into the room, radiant, smiling.

"Hullo, old fellow; this is a surprise," he said, and Johnnie rose from his chair, a guest in his brother's house, the dream shattered into foolishness.

Katherine closed the piano and went at once to her husband. He kissed her, and stood talking to Johnnie with his arm about her.

"How do you think she's looking?" asked Henry proudly, and without waiting for an answer he plunged into an account of his day, telling some amusing story about the civic luncheon he had been obliged to attend, where the honorable member for the city had made a tactless speech.

"I suppose," said Katherine, "you smoothed the whole thing over, and invited all those who were offended back to dinner?"

"I did nothing of the sort," said Henry. "I wished the affair well done with, so that I could get home to my wife."

And once again he bent his head and kissed her, and Johnnie saw her look at his brother with an expression that brought a pain to his heart.

"She loves him," he thought, "he makes her happy," and as he dressed for dinner, and heard them talking to one another in the room next to his, he thought suddenly of all the women he had never loved, who had made a momentary excitement and no more.

What a dreary, worthless little procession they made through the years, ending now with Kate Donovan in the gate-house kitchen. Oh God, he thought wearily, if everything had been different, if I'd never gone into the regiment, never been through that blasted senseless war, but stayed here in the country, met Katherine and asked her to help me. Perhaps she would have married me instead of Henry. We would have lived together at Clonmere and she would have had my children, not his; and she would have looked at me in the way she looked at Henry ten minutes ago.

There was a little pot of flowers on his dressing-table-she must have arranged them there before he came up to dress for dinner- and a book beside his bed, and a fire in the grate-signs of her care, her thoughtfulness-and there was a neatness and a comfort about the room so different from his own bleak bedroom at Clonmere.

In the room next door he pictured Katherine sitting before her mirror, brushing her hair, while Henry wandered in, fastening his collar and tie, the intimacy between them a natural happy thing, making them closer to one another than before. It was something that he would never know, this sharing of life between a husband and wife. The only memories he had were sordid, grey…

Dinner at East Grove was at seven o'clock. The candles were lit on the polished table. A parlour-maid helped Thomas hand the plates. And Johnnie, seated beside Katherine, compared her ways and his brother's once more to his own, when, sprawling alone in his dining-room, he would be faced sometimes by a stained cloth and tepid food, and after cursing the servant until the man was white with fear, he would decide not to eat at all, and stretch out his hand to the decanter instead.

When Katherine had risen and left the brothers together, Henry glanced across at him, with a curious half-shy expression, and said: "I suppose you would not care to make me your agent, would you, Johnnie?"

"Why, what's the matter with Adams?" said Johnnie.

"I don't mean you should dismiss Adams," replied Henry, "but allow me to act as-well, as overseer, for want of a better expression. You're letting the place go rather to pieces, you know, old boy, and it seems such a pity, when I think of all the care and trouble and expense put upon it by grandfather.

Don't be annoyed with me for saying this. I've wanted to speak to you about it for some time."

Johnnie flushed, and stuck out his jaw.

"I don't know what you're talking about," he said. "The place is run in the way I like it to be run, and that's all there is to it. As a matter of fact I think very little of Adams, and I shall no doubt be my own agent in future. You would probably find it more trouble than profit."

"All right," said Henry swiftly. "We'll say no more about it. I only suggested it, as I thought it might help, and take some of the business off your shoulders. Been up to the mines lately?"

"I have not," said Johnnie, lighting his cigar.

"There is nothing to go to the mines for. The only interest to me is to see what gets paid into my account at the bank. Why do you ask?"

"No reason. Only that I believe it encourages the fellows employed there if they feel the owner takes a bit of interest, and enquires after their welfare, and the work too, now and again."

"Any other advice?" asked Johnnie.

Henry pushed the decanter towards him.

"Only to go a bit slow on this, old fellow," he said, "and see rather less of the Donovan family."

Johnnie laid down his cigar.

"Who the hell's been talking to you about the Donovans?" he said.

"You know what this country is like for gossip," said Henry. "What goes on in Doonhaven is all over Slane in a couple of days. Jack Donovan isn't much of a chap, you know. He has a bad record for poaching and pilfering generally. And he's been heard boasting in the public-houses here that his sister has you by the ears, though he didn't use quite such a polite expression."

"God damn everyone," shouted Johnnie. "Why the hell can't people leave me alone?"

"They would leave you alone," said Henry, "if you would leave the whisky alone."

Johnnie leant back in his chair and stared at his brother.

"It's damned easy for you to talk, isn't it?" he said. "You are happy I and married to the woman you love. There's precious little for you to worry about.

You have your Katherine. Let me enjoy my Kate."

He laughed, and poured himself another glass of port.

"I'm sick and tired of people telling me what to do," he said. "I suffered from it in the army, and I'm not going to stand it in civil life."

"I'm not trying to preach at you," said Henry quietly. "I'm only telling you to beware of Jack Donovan. If you choose to have an affair with his sister I can't stop you. But do keep your head."

"The Donovans are my friends," said Johnnie.

"They're the only people in this country who have showed any friendliness to me since I came back to it."

"Very well," said Henry. "I won't say any more. Let us go into the drawing-room and ask Katherine to give us some music."

Yes, it was easy enough for him, thought Johnnie, watching his brother turn the pages for Katherine at the piano, while she looked up at him and smiled.

Tonight they will be together, she with her head on his shoulder, and tomorrow he will wake, and Katherine will be beside him. And the next day and the next. When he is irritable she will soothe him. When he is tired she will rest him. When he is gay she will join in his gaiety, and when he is solemn she will be solemn too. They belong to each other, she is going to have his baby. And I belong to nothing and to no one; I'm nothing but a useless, ill-tempered drunkard, whose only amusement in life is to make love to my lodge-keeper's sister.

"Johnnie," said Katherine suddenly, looking up from her music, and smiling across at him, "you are going to stay a little while with us, are you not?"

And Henry, with his hand on her shoulder, glanced at him too.

"Yes, Johnnie, I wish you would. I'm out a great deal, and I should like to think of you here with Katherine. I know you would be happy. I know she would look after you."

Johnnie watched them, Katherine at the piano with the lamp-light shining on her smooth dark hair, and Henry his brother, playing half-consciously with the lace on Katherine's collar. The little gesture, familiar, intimate, broke into Johnnie's dream.

"No," he said, "no, I shall leave you both in peace and go back to Clonmere."

When Johnnie returned home one of the first things he did was to dismiss his agent Adams, telling him that in future he would look after the estate himself. This would show Henry, and anyone else who chose to criticise him, that he was not so incompetent as they liked to believe. For a month or so he rose earlier in the morning, answered his letters, walked or rode round Clonmere, and even went up to the mines once or twice a week. Then he had the misfortune to catch a chill and be laid up for several days, and as he lay alone in his dreary bedroom, with only his manservant to minister to him, depression once more came upon him, and his energy of the past few weeks seemed futile and absurd.

What good did he achieve, after all, by riding up to Hungry Hill and sitting in the counting-house?

He merely wasted Griffiths' time. During the hour he would spend in the place, the manager would be fretting to be gone. And it would be the same about the estate. He was certain his tenants disliked him.

No one gave him a welcome, except the Donovans. And by God, he thought to himself, tossing on his bed, they are my only friends; no one else cares one ha'porth about me. I could lie here and die before anyone came to see me. His godfather, Doctor Armstrong, looked in upon him one morning, and read him a lecture on self-indulgence.

"You've only yourself to blame for the condition you are in," he said, without an ounce of sympathy, and sat for fully twenty minutes declaiming the evils of alcohol. Then he departed, and Johnnie, feeling rather worse towards evening, bade his man bring up a bottle of port from the cellar, after which he was sufficiently recovered to put on a dressing-gown and eat cold bacon and potatoes by the fire in the dining-room, where Jack Donovan, full of sympathy, sat with him to bear him company.

"Here's Kate been fretting herself sick for the sight of you these past few days," he said, "and nothing would content her but that I should come up myself to the castle to see the Captain. How do you feel, then?"

"Like hell," said Johnnie.

"It's lying here by yourself that does it, Captain.

As for physic, the man has yet to be born that drew any strength from the stuff. It's what you have there in the bottle that will do you most good."

"That's the way I like to be spoken to, Jack.

By heaven, you're the only friend I have."

"True for you, sir. It's what Kate was saying to me only this morning: the Captain's fine friends and relatives would let him die before they gave him a thought. I tell you what it is, sir, you have too much spirit for them, that's the trouble. You like to go your own way, and why shouldn't you? Here's that dirty fellow Adams going round saying you don't know one end of your property from the other. I'd scalp the brute."

"Oh, he says that, does he?"

"Sure, 'tis out of spite because you took the agency out of his hands. I can tell you one thing, Captain, and that is I'll give you a hand any day with the property, when you haven't the mind to be bothering with the place."

"That's very good of you, Jack."

"Ah, don't mention it. No trouble at all.

I dare say I can squeeze more out of the place for you than Adams. What do you say to Kate coming round and straightening things up for you here in the house?"

"I'd be very obliged if she would," yawned Johnnie. "None of my servants here flicks a duster in the rooms from one day to the next."

The port was taking effect, it was making him sleepy, and satisfied, which the medicine of his old fool of a godfather would never have done, and it was pleasant, thought Johnnie later, lying in his bed once more, with a fire lit in the grate, to see Kate moving noiselessly about the room, drawing the curtains and shutting out the grey November afternoon, folding his clothes and putting them away, and afterwards, when he was practically asleep, creeping to his side and lying down on the bed beside him. He thought of East Grove, and his brother and Katherine sitting down now to their tea in the drawing-room, and later Katherine playing the piano, and Henry sitting back in his chair, turning it so that he could watch the lamp-light on his wife's hair.

"He has his Katherine," thought Johnnie, "I have my Kate. What the hell do I care?"

And pulling Jack Donovan's sister close to him, he sought oblivion, while the rain began to patter again on the closed window and the darkness fell.

It was easy, as the winter passed, to rely more and more upon the company of the Donovans. Jack had a shrewd, rather cunning business head upon him, and in less than no time, Johnnie noticed, he had the affairs of Clonmere at his finger-tips. He dealt with the tenants, he paid the wages, he took upon his shoulders all that his master could not be bothered to do.

"I don't know how I'd manage without you now, Jack," Johnnie would say to him. "You save me all the work that bores me stiff, and I don't have to worry any more whether the fellows dislike me or not."

"Dislike you?" said Jack Donovan. "Why, Captain, you're the best-liked gentleman that's ever borne the name of Brodrick. Aren't there men and women down in Doonhaven that speak to you who never spoke to your brother, or your grandfather? Even Father Healey himself said to Kate the other day, "The Captain is a credit to the country."

It was indeed rather remarkable, thought Johnnie, that the priest of the district, who to the best of his belief had never in his grandfather's time had as much as a nod from any member of the family, far less entered inside the park, should now smile and bow to the present owner of Clonmere, and even take tea with him in the stuffy kitchen of the gate-house. He was really, Johnnie decided, quite a good sort of fellow, and he found himself fumbling for five pounds to give to the priest for distribution among the poorest families in the district.

"Never before," said Father Healey, counting the coins carefully, and putting them away in a shabby leather purse, "never before has a Brodrick given a thought to any of the poor stricken members of my flock. And there's my church, with the roof soon to fall in, and how am I to find the money to repair it?"

Johnnie remembered his balance in the bank, swollen by the copper from Hungry Hill, and promised a cheque to Father Healey.

"Didn't I tell you the Captain was a gentleman, father?" said Jack. Donovan, peering over the priest's shoulder to see the amount of the cheque. "He's as simple-hearted as a child with his money, and twice as generous. Kate, pour the reverend father another glass of whisky, and the Captain too."

"Not for me, child, not for me," said the priest, holding up his hand. "I must be on my way. It is a joy to see a man of your position," he added, looking at Johnnie, "happy in such humble surroundings, and with so little thought of the honour he does those he visits."

"I should be lost without Jack and Kate to look after me," smiled Johnnie.

"And they would be lost without you," said Father Healey.

"Here is Kate, a dear child I have known from her birth, with a mind and heart as innocent now as the day I baptised her, and showing you, I am well aware, a devotion that could not be equalled by the highest in the land. It would be a terrible thing if such devotion were ever to be cast aside as worthless, and an innocent heart betrayed."

"What the devil does he mean?" thought Johnnie, but he shook hands with the priest, and assured him that neither Jack nor his sister should ever want for anything while he was living in Clonmere.

"I believe you," said Father Healey, opening a vast umbrella to shield his stout person from the rain.

"You have given proof of your honour and generosity to me in person, and this blessed child, with no parents living and only her brother to care for her, trusts herself in your hands."

And leaving the gate-house, he turned down the hill towards the village.

"Ah, he's a great saint, the reverend father," said Jack Donovan, glancing at his sister, "and has a tenderness for Kate. He'd die rather than see her wronged, just as I would myself. I tell you, Captain, if I ever saw my sister shamed I'd strangle her with my two hands. And you know that, don't you, Kate?"

"Yes, Jack," said his sister softly, looking meekly at the work on her lap.

"There's some gentlemen, Captain, believe it or not," said Jack Donovan fiercely, "who would seize advantage of a young woman's innocence and make game of her when her brother's back was turned, and the poor creature herself as ignorant as the babe unborn. Why, it's disgusting."

Johnnie shrugged his shoulders, and finished his glass of whisky. Surely Jack was not going to feign ignorance at this late hour of ail-that had taken place under his roof during the past months? As for his sister's innocence, anyone less innocent than Kate the second day she had put her hair down in the kitchen would be hard to find.

"You had better come down to the castle in the morning, Jack," he said briefly, rising to his feet. "Phillips has brought me in a bill for meal and cattle feed I can't make head or tail of."

"Won't you stay for a bite of cupper, Captain?"

"No, I don't think so. Goodnight, Kate."

He arrived home to find a letter from Katherine, reproaching him for his neglect of East Grove for so many weeks. She had hoped so much, she said, that he would have paid them a visit at the New Year, and he had never done so. His goddaughter Molly was flourishing, and Henry very proud of her, and as Johnnie would not come to see them she proposed that they should visit Johnnie. If Henry brought his gun next Saturday would there be any woodcock left, and any hares on Doon Island? Her brother, Bill Eyre, was with them, and would come too.

The letter put Johnnie in a fever of unrest.

The house was disreputable. No comfort for Katherine; she would be cold and miserable, she could never stand the place for a day. Yet how dear to see her again, to have her sitting in his drawing-room, if only for a couple of hours.

During the few days before Saturday came he threw himself with a fury of energy into the business of getting the house into shape. Servants were cursed, dismissed, and taken into service again, all within the hour. He walked round the grounds with his keeper, arranging the shoot. He even sent out invitations to his godfather, Doctor Armstrong, and one or two other people in the district, to make more sport for Henry.

"I'll let them know," he said to himself, "that I can put on as good a show as my grandfather ever did."

The morning of the great day was crisp and fine, and Johnnie, up earlier than he had been for several weeks, walked down to the creek and looked across at the snow-tipped crest of Hungry Hill. The sun shone into the windows of Clonmere, the doors were opened wide, and the dining-room table, laid for cold luncheon, looked clean and inviting, for the first time in months.

The old pride in his home, that he had known as a small boy when he had coveted Clonmere from his grandfather, returned once more He would show Katherine that he was not utterly despicable, that he was master of his house and of himself, and she would understand why he wished his home to shine for her this day. He went inside to give a last-minute direction to his servant, and was told that Mr. Donovan was waiting to see him in the library. He frowned; he had hinted to Jack a few days previously that he would be obliged if his agent and his sister made themselves scarce while his brother and sister-in-law were staying. Henry did not care for Jack Donovan, and Henry, being his guest, must be deferred to for the period of the visit.

"What is it, Jack?" he said. "Is anything wrong?"

The agent's face was very solemn. His ginger hair was plastered down with grease, and he was wearing his Sunday clothes.

"Kate's very low, Captain," he said gravely. "She's wondering whether you can slip up to the gate-house and see her?"

"Of course I can't," said Johnnie irritably. "You know I have Mr. Henry and his wife coming, and several other people. I shan't be coming to the gate-house until they have all gone. My brother may be here for several days."

Jack Donovan's face became gloomier still.

"She'll take it very bad, sir," he said.

"In fact, I don't know what to do with her, and that's the plain truth of the matter. Not a wink of sleep last night for the pair of us. And she crying and taking on so, 1 thought I should have to send for Doctor Armstrong. I am glad I did not, with him coming here to shoot today."

"What the devil's the matter, then?" said Johnnie, glancing impatiently at the clock.

"The party will be here any minute."

Jack Donovan coughed, and ran his cap along the edge of the table.

"Women take such fancies into their heads at these times, Captain," he said. "Say what I would, she wouldn't listen to me. "I'll destroy myself," says she. "I'll throw myself into the creek, if he turns his back on me now."

"You be quiet, Kate," says I. "The Captain is too good a friend to treat you, a respectable young woman, like he might a poor creature of the streets. He'll see you righted, depend upon it, before the mischief is spread abroad to cause a scandal through the country by which he could not hold his head up before the gentry."?

Johnnie banged his fist down on the desk.

"Look here, Jack," he said. "What in the name of God are you driving at, and what's suddenly come over Kate to behave in such an astounding fashion?"

"Why, sir," said his agent, opening his eyes wide in astonishment, "you surely know Kate is in a certain condition, and has been like it, she tells me, these past two months?"

Johnnie stared at his agent heavily, his mind in a turmoil.

"This is the first I've heard of it," he said.

Jack Donovan went on rubbing his cap along the desk.

"The poor creature is that distraught she scarcely knows what she's about," he said. "The reverend father is with her now, praying beside her. It's my belief she'll have no comfort, though, until she's seen you."

"I can't see her, it's impossible," said Johnnie excitedly, pacing up and down the room.

"Surely you can explain the position; she knows perfectly well that my brother and his wife are expected. Is she sure of her facts? How does she know about this-this damned business?"

"Sure, her old auntie down in Doonhaven told her it was certain. I tell you, Captain, it's enough to break a man's heart. Here's this young woman, my sister, given herself to you without thought of the consequences, and likely to kill herself unless we can find an honour" able end to it all."

There was a sound of wheels upon the drive, and Johnnie, glancing out of the window, saw his brother's carriage drive up to the door.

"Look here, Jack," he said desperately, "I can't deal with this matter now… Go out, by the back door, and don't show yourself here until I send for you. Take yourself off, man, for God's sake."

He fumbled in his coat pocket for his flask, and drank the contents, and then went out on to the drive to greet his brother, his heart beating, his whole mind in an agony of anger and distress.

"Dear Johnnie," said Katherine, stepping down from the carriage, giving him her hands; and the sight of her, cool, beautiful, serene, with her calm madonna face, made a damning contrast to the hasty image he had conjured of a flushed, dishevelled Kate in the back bedroom of the gate-house.

"Are you all right, old boy?" said Henry. "You look a bit upset."

"Of course I'm all right," said Johnnie swiftly. "How are you, Henry? And Bill, too? Brought your gun, I hope? Good. Where's the doctor? There are one or two others coming. Let's start walking through the woods, shall we? Wait though.

I haven't shown Katherine her room."

His manner was so agitated, his speech so inconsequent, that Henry and Bill Eyre exchanged a glance of understanding.

"Don't bother about me, Johnnie," said Katherine. "I shall be perfectly happy if you want to get off to your shoot."

"Damn the shoot," said Johnnie; "your comfort is the only thing that matters," and he started pulling the bell-rope in the hall so violently that it broke.

"I think it would be best if we left Katherine to do as she pleases," said Henry smoothly. "Here come Uncle William and the others, and there's Phillips and the beaters. What about getting into the air, Johnnie old man, and cooling down a bit?"

Everything was going wrong, thought Johnnie. It was not thus that he had planned the day. Katherine was now to be left alone, apparently, instead of coming with them, and surely he had told that blasted idiot Phillips to meet them up by the farm where they were to shoot first, and not come down here on to the lawn in front of the house with that ragged collection of youths and urchins who looked as if they had been grubbing in the barn after rats? The strong drink he had taken, on top of his interview with Jack Donovan, and the pent-up excitement of Katherine's visit combined, put his temper quite out of control.

He started to shout and rave at the keeper, who had chosen, for some unknown reason, to get himself up like a scarecrow, and was wearing a pair of very old darned breeches, with a patch in the seat, instead of the new corduroys that Johnnie had ordered especially for the occasion.

"By heaven!" said Johnnie. "This is too much, when a fellow disobeys my orders to such an extent," and hardly knowing what he was about, he lifted his gun and fired straight at the unfortunate fellow's backside.

The keeper fell forward on to his face, with a cry of pain, and Johnnie, dazed and bewildered, watched his godfather and Bill Eyre rush forward to the man's assistance. Henry took hold of his brother's arm and led him back into the house.

"I don't think any damage has been done," he said, "but under the circumstances I think it would be best if you stayed at home, and allowed me to conduct the shoot. That is, if we decide to shoot at all after what has occurred."

The affair had happened so suddenly, and was so ludicrous, that Henry hardly knew whether-to laugh or to be angry, but there was something tragic, almost frightening, in the expression on his brother's face, and he did not like to leave him alone.

"I'll call Katherine," he said; "she'll stay with you."

And he went into the hall and looked up towards the landing.

"No," said Johnnie. "No?

He felt sick and tired and bitterly ashamed of having made such an exhibition of himself, and to have Katherine know of his behaviour was the last thing he wanted in the world.

"Here," he said, calling to his brother and feeling in his pocket for a couple of sovereigns, "give the fellow this-tell him I'm sorry-and go out and enjoy yourselves, if you can. It's as well I don't come with you. Even if nothing had happened, I should have spoilt your day. '?

Now his futile ridiculous anger was spent he was exhausted, he wanted to forget everything and everybody. He went into the library and shut the door, and sitting down in his grandfather's hard upright chair, he buried his face in his hands. He could hear Katherine's soft footstep in the bedroom overhead, as she unpacked her clothes, and presently the distant sound of shots came from the woods above the castle. The house was peaceful, still.

And then he remembered the stuffy kitchen at the gate-house, the crucifix and the rosary on the wall, and Jack Donovan, and Kate, and Father Healey. The miserable tangle he had got himself into, shaming and sordid, filled him with despair, and bitter, useless anger. He could picture the family at the gate-house, the old aunt from the village, probing, questioning her niece, and Father Healey, with his rosary dangling over his fat stomach, muttering prayers beside the hysterical Kate. The thought of seeing her, or touching her, revolted him. It was humiliating and degrading that those hours of drunken oblivion should result in this claim upon him, and that a woman for whom he cared nothing should feel herself bound to him because of what had passed between them. Again he heard Katherine's footstep overhead, and her low voice as she said something to the housemaid, and he remembered his visit to East Grove last summer, when Henry, proud and happy, had confided to him that Katherine was expecting a baby before Christmas. How tender his brother had been, how anxious, how full of solicitude, insisting that his wife should rest upon the sofa, should not tire herself in any way; and it had made a pang at the time in Johnnie's heart because of the closeness they must ' have for one another. He envied his brother, envied the calm serenity of his life, the still, untroubled progress of the months while Katherine waited for her baby to be born, and Henry's pride, his unaffected joy when his daughter came into the world. And now, at the end of Johnnie's drive, at the gate-house, was a woman in precisely the same state as Katherine had been nearly twelve months ago, because of Johnnie. The knowledge of it revolted him, made him shudder; he never wanted to look at her again.

How many times before this must have happened, in his own family, amongst his own forebears; and he remembered the tale of his great-grandfather and the sons he had scattered about the countryside. Perhaps he had thought little of it, and ridden through Doon-haven and thrown a coin to a dark-haired brat grubbing in the street, knowing it was his, and thought no more about it. Not Johnnie. He could not live thus. He could not live at Clonmere and know that there was a slatternly, unattractive Kate hiding herself in her brother's shop in the village, and later know of a child, with his own blood in its veins, calling Jack Donovan "uncle."

Oh God, how sordid, how lacking in beauty was this life he led! Was there no way out of it, no finish to the business? He looked at the gun he had laid aside, propped against the wall. Yes, there was always that way. But suppose it did not work?

Suppose he made a mess of it, as he had made a mess of everything else, and all he did was to blow half the side of his face away and continue to live? Johnnie touched the gun, ran his hand along the barrel. Perhaps he would not miss, after all.

But he lacked the courage, that was the fact of the matter. He would have to obliterate fear with whisky before he set about it. He opened the long drawer in his grandfather's desk, and pulled out a bottle that was about a quarter full. Not enough there, he thought, to make a proper job of it. And then, as he was uncorking the bottle, the door opened and Katherine came into the room. She stood on the threshold, looking at him, and he stared at her foolishly, the bottle of whisky in his hand.

"I'm sorry, Johnnie," she said. "I came to find a book. I thought you had gone out shooting with Henry and the others."

She turned away, quietly, with delicacy; it was as though she had suddenly come upon him in his bath.

He put the bottle away in his desk, and shut the lid.

"Please don't go," he said. "I–I want to talk to you."

She turned round once more, watching him with her grave, kind eyes. What must she think of me? he wondered.

"The day has gone wrong," he said-"my fault, as always. The others have gone shooting without me."

She came over to him, and put her hand on his shoulder.

"What went wrong, Johnnie?" she said. "Can I do anything to help?"

Anything to help… There she stood beside him.

He had only to make one move and she would be in his arms. Katherine, the remote and distant one, with her madonna face, her soothing, gentle hands.

He turned away abruptly.

"No," he said harshly, "you can't help. Why should you? Nobody tan. Why don't you go and join Henry and your brother?"

She did not move. She went on standing there, looking at him.

"You're unhappy," she said, "and when people are unhappy they do foolish things."

He saw her glance at the open drawer from which he had taken the bottle of whisky, and from there towards the gun, propped against his desk.

"Well?" he said aggressively, "what about it?

Wouldn't it be simpler if I put an end to myself?

No one would care."

"There you are mistaken," she said. "Many people would care. Your mother, Henry, your other brothers, and Fanny. All your friends."

"I have no friends," he said.

"I thought I was your friend," she answered.

He did not say anything for a moment. Katherine his friend…

"You have Henry, and your baby, and your home," he said. "Why should you bother about me? I'm not worth it, anyway."

"One does not love people for what they are worth," she said gently. "One loves them for themselves."

What did she mean? When she said the word love, did she mean pity? Did she discuss him with Henry when they were alone together, saying, "Something must be done about him"?

"If you think you can reform me at this late hour you're wasting your time," he said.

She went over to the window and stared out across the garden.

"This could be such a happy, peaceful house," she said, "and you don't allow it to be so. You put your sad, angry thoughts about it."

"It would be happy and peaceful if you lived here always," he said, "instead of coming for one night."

"You mean," she said, smiling, "that my cheerful thoughts would dispel your gloomy ones? I wonder if they would be strong enough."

Her profile was turned from him again towards the window. That is how I would have her painted, he said to himself, if she were mine comstanding so, with that wrap about her shoulders, and her hair gathered low on the nape of her neck.

"Anyway, you will live here one day," he said, "you and Henry, after I am dead. And your portrait will hang on the wall in the dining-room, beside Aunt Jane and the picture of us all as children. Perhaps it will bring back the peace that I have destroyed."

She looked at him gravely, and he wanted to kneel beside her and hide his face in the folds of her gown like a shame-faced lad.

"You may marry, Johnnie," she said; "you may have children."

Her words stung him to the reality of the present.

Once again he saw the gate-house kitchen, the priest, the weeping Kate.

"Never," he said violently, "never, I swear it."

The horror of his position came upon him with renewed force; he began walking up and down the room, running his hands through his hair.

"I shall have to leave Clonmere," he said, "I shall have to get away. I can't possibly stay now this has happened."

"What has happened, Johnnie?" she said.

He had spoken without thinking, and now he stopped short, flushed, and guilty, and confused. What in heaven's name would she. think of him if she knew what he had been doing these past months, culminating in the present degradation at the gate-house? She would be aghast, revolted. .

"If you have done something you are ashamed of," she said quietly, "why don't you ask God to help you?"

He stared at her hopelessly.

"The Almighty has no time for people like me, Katherine," he said. "If he did I should not be in the mess I am now."

And suddenly he was aware, fully and unmistakably, of the great gulf between them, which because of his years of guilt, and vice, and self-indulgence could never be bridged. He saw the gentle pattern of her life, calm, and quiet, and untroubled, believing in God because she was naturally good, naturally free from temptation and trial. She told him, with simplicity, that one day he might marry, not knowing that the only woman he would ever want as a wife would be herself, the only children he could ever bear to hold the children she might have given him. Would he ask God to help him? Yes, if Katherine had taught him how to pray, if Katherine had knelt beside him every night, if Katherine had been the mistress of Clonmere, his wife, his loved one, then indeed there would be peace in his house, and peace in his heart too, and godliness, and joy. Should he tell her? he wondered. Should he risk everything and confess his love, his misery, his shame?

"Katherine," he said slowly, and came towards her, his hands outstretched, his eyes beseeching, and he saw the sudden understanding in her eyes, the blinding flash of intuition, as she turned white and leant against the wall.

"Why, Johnnie," she said in wonder, "why, Johnnie…? And then there was a sudden footstep beneath the window, the crunch of gravel, and the sound of Henry's voice, gay and confident, calling to his wife. She turned, and Went out of the library, leaving him alone. He stood there staring at the place where she had been.

Johnnie sat in the cabin of the Princess Victoria, in Slane harbour, waiting for the steamer to weigh anchor. His manservant had stowed away his trunks and baggage beneath the berth, and had taken himself off to his own quarters. The vessel rocked slightly, and now and again, through the open port-hole, came the mournful hooting from another ship progressing down the harbour. From the deck above came the tramp of feet, and an occasional whistle.

Through the darkness glimmered the lights of Slane.

There was a draught coming from the port-hole, and Johnnie's ulster, hanging on the door, swayed back-Wards and forwards. His light portmanteau, placed on a chair by his servant, slid gently to the cabin floor. The label upon it stared up at the owner. "Captain Brodrick. Destination London." And then what? Johnnie shrugged his shoulders. London and beyond…

He had only a hazy recollection of the past few weeks, and an imperfect memory as to how he had got himself upon the Princess Victoria at all. He had written dozens of letters. That was the chief thing that stood out in his mind. He had sat down to his grandfather's desk in the library at Clonmere and written letters to everyone who knew him, letters asking forgiveness of his relatives and friends. Why had he done so? He did not know. He could not remember.

But that the letters had been written and dispatched was as clear as the fact that he was now on board the Princess Victoria, because some of the answers to them lay upon the berth beside him. The vessel, proceeding down-stream, hooted again, mournful, insistent.

Johnnie got up and closed the port-hole, and reached for the flask in his ulster pocket. Five hours until midnight. . And then farewell to Slane, farewell to this country of mist and tears, and away to what future, what ultimate destination, only the Almighty in his heaven knew.

Johnnie picked up one of his letters at random.

It was from his brother-in-law, Bill Eyre, and was written from the parsonage at East Ferry.

My dear John, I thank you from my heart for your most kind and considerate letter, I feel too deeply my own weakness and sins of omission not to pity and pray for you, who are now so greatly tempted. I have not allowed a single day since leaving your house to pass without imploring the Holy Spirit's inspiration and direction for you. God forbid that I should cease to pray for you.

And now, my dear Johnnie, don't think I am taking an unwarrantable liberty in beseeching you by all the mercies of God, by the value of your immortal soul, by all you hope of a future state, by every consideration which is dear to you, to abstain from your soul and body destroyer (drink). Oh, my dear Johnnie, how I tremble, fearing some awful calamity may occur which might bring you to an early and dishonourable grave. No words can express the agony I felt, for your family's sake, during that last visit to Clonmere, when I saw you hastening to an end too dreadful to think of, and observed the fearful excitement under which you laboured at that time. I am sure you will not take offence at anything I have written. My dear Johnnie, commending you to the care of your heavenly Father, and again imploring His grace for you, believe me your most affectionate brother-in-law, Bill Eyre.

Johnnie threw the letter aside, and took another drink from his flask. He picked up a second letter from the pile. This was from Henry.

My very dear Johnnie, I have had a long talk with Uncle Willie Armstrong about you and matters in Doonhaven. The lady may leave this country for America, if Jack Donovan and Father Healey will let her. But I much fear that these two people are playing a very deep game. They want you to marry her, make you a R. c., and get the property into their hands. You may be angry with me for writing this, and you may also be angry when I beg of you, as your brother and friend, to make Jack Donovan and his sister leave the gate-house. I wish he would leave the country, and if not, be out of your sight and out of your way as much as he can. I beg and pray of you not to drink; all will be well if you do not. The many talents God has given you ought not to be thrown away. Give it up, old fellow, and make yourself, and every friend (and they are note few), happy…

There was more of it, but Johnnie put it down, and took up a third. This was from his godfather.

I have seen Kate Donovan, and she is willing to leave the country in a few months' time. There is no evidence at all as to her condition. Donovan professes his willingness to agree to any arrangement it may please you to make with regard to his sister, and I suggest that the next step is for them to quit Doonhaven, and for you to authorize me or your brother to pay their travelling expenses to wherever they think fit to go, and when I hear from them that they have arrived at their destination, Henry or I will state, through you, what you are prepared to do for their benefit. My reason for this, of course, it will be perfectly superfluous for me to tell you, as you will see at once the advisability of not perpetrating a scandal by the presence of the parties in the place where such scandal occurred. Your absence, however, will conduce most of all to the proposed arrangement. I am every hour more confirmed that you ought to remain away for some time.

Believe me, dear Johnnie, Yours ever, William Armstrong.

How glad they must all be, thought Johnnie, in the secrecy of their hearts, to be rid of him, and what a fine, noble exit he was making, running away from responsibility like a rat, leaving other people to clear up the mess he had made. He was certainly heroic, was Captain John Brodrick, late of Clonmere Castle, Doonhaven. And here was the gem of them all, here was the scrap from his aunt Eliza.

My dear Johnnie, Do not make me unhappy in talking as if there was anything to forgive between us, as I assure you most solemnly there is nothing on earth that would give me greater delight than to promote your happiness in every way. I suspect that your affections are concerned in some way at the moment, causing you to write as you have done, and I only wish that the lady whom you honour, whoever she is, could reciprocate your feelings, for all our sakes. I know not how to thank you sufficiently for making me a present of able100, and also for the loan of the 300 I had from you previously. I have always considered you the kindest and most honourable of my nephews, and the longer I live the more reason I have to do so. My dear love to you, and my sincere thanks for all your kindness.

Your affectionate aunt, Eliza, Johnnie laughed. The kindest and most honourable of all her nephews… He picked up the bunch of letters, and threw them in a corner of the cabin.

Someone tapped on his door.

"If you want to stretch your legs ashore, sir, the last boat is just due to leave," called the steward. "She will be bringing the pilot aboard shortly after eleven, and you could return with him."

Johnnie glanced round the lonely, dingy cabin that was to be his home for the next forty-eight hours.

"Thank you," he said. "I shall take advantage of it."

The lights of Slane beckoned across the water, and Johnnie, his hands deep in his ulster pockets, thought of the one letter he had not written, therefore receiving no answer in return.

What could he have said to her that was not better expressed by his silence? Since that morning when he had looked at her in the library, and she had understood, and had gone from the room, they had not been alone together. The day had passed, and the night, and nothing more was said; and in the morning she had gone. They had all departed-Henry, and Katherine, and Bill Eyre, and his godfather-and the words he had wished to speak were never uttered, the help he yearned to ask for would never be given. Captain John Brodrick.

Destination London…

He wondered, standing there on the quay-side, whether she was sitting now in the drawing-room at East Grove. Perhaps she was playing the piano, and Henry was lying in his chair before the fire, listening to her. He began to walk, heedless of his direction.

And staring straight in front of him, brushing the people from the pavements as he was wont to do, he found himself presently standing before her house, with no knowledge of how he had reached it. The curtains were drawn across the windows, and a chink of light came from the shutters.

He stood there, his hands in his pockets, looking at the door. A cab passed along the street, and in the distance he could still hear the muffled river noises-a whistle, the clanging of a bell. He went forward and lifted the knocker on the door. In a few minutes it was opened by Thomas, who peered at him through the darkness without recognition.

"Is Mrs. Brodrick at home?" said Johnnie.

Then Thomas gave a start, and opened the door wider.

"I didn't see it was you, sir," he said apologetically. "No, I'm afraid Mr. and Mrs. Henry have gone out to dinner."

"Never mind," said Johnnie, "it doesn't matter."

"Would you care to come in and wait, sir? They may not be home until after ten. There's a nice fire in the drawing-room."

Johnnie hesitated. Even here, standing on the threshold, the peace of the house enfolded him, the kindliness, the warmth.

"Perhaps I will, Thomas," he said slowly.

The man showed him into the drawing-room and withdrew, shutting the door behind him, first turning up the lamps and poking the fire.

Johnnie went and sat in Henry's chair.

Opposite him was Katherine's chair where she had sat before she went out to dinner, because on the chintz cover was the imprint of where she had been. There was her needlework on the low stool before the fire, and a book she had been reading. In the corner of the chair was a little white woolly lamb. She must have been sitting with her baby daughter on her lap, showing her the lamb, while Henry, in the chair where Johnnie sat now, leant back and watched them both. Then the nurse would have come down and taken the child up to bed, and Katherine, moving on to the stool to have the warmth of the fire, would take her needlework and talk to Henry, ask him questions about his day. Then they would go upstairs to their room and dress for dinner, Henry grumbling a little, perhaps, because of the inconvenience of turning out, but content enough at heart because he always enjoyed himself wherever he went, on all occasions.

Katherine would wear the white gown she had worn that night at Clonmere, and before leaving the house she would look into the drawing-room a moment to see that the lamps had been turned down and that the guard was before the fire. He could see her standing there by the door, the light in the hall shining in her hair, her cloak about her shoulders, and she would leave behind her something of herself, fragrant, indefinable, the blessed peace of her presence that he felt now, as he sat there, in the chair that was not his… But it was not any use sitting there, because he had to go away, he had to go to the ship and across the water and not return again, perhaps, for months, for years. It was no use sitting there in this house that did not belong to him.

He got up, and looked for the last time about the room. He touched the piano that was hers, the keys where her fingers had rested. He went over to her desk and saw the neatness of it, the stack of smooth white paper, the little scarlet pen. He wanted something of hers to take with him, and on a sudden impulse he picked up the small black leather volume that was lying on the top of the desk. It was a copy of the New Testament. He put it in his pocket, and going out into the hall, he lifted his coat and his hat from the chair where Thomas had placed them. The hall was deserted. Thomas had gone back to the kitchen.

The grandfather clock ticked slowly in its corner.

It was five minutes to nine. Two hours before the pilot boat would return to the ship. Johnnie opened the front door and again stood looking up and down the empty street. There were other places in Slane where there would be warmth and comfort, places where he might forget the dark, dreary cabin of the Princess Victoria and the grim finality of the labels on his luggage, "Captain John Brodrick. Destination London." A little wind blew round the corner of the street, and the door of Henry's house shut behind him with a slam. Farewell to Slane. Farewell to his country. Johnnie laughed, thinking once more of Aunt Eliza's letter, and turning his coat collar up against the wind, and pulling his hat over his eyes, he began to walk up the street towards the city.

It was to East Grove that the police came, two days afterwards. They arrived while Henry and Katherine were having breakfast, and the inspector asked to speak privately to Mr. Brodrick. Henry came out into the hall immediately, leaving Katherine in the dining-room.

"You are a relative, I believe, sir, of Captain Brodrick?" said the man.

"I am his brother," said Henry. "Is anything the matter?"

The inspector explained to him, in brief words, what had happened. Henry went with him at once.

They were narrow and dark and not of great attraction, the back streets of Slane, and the house to which the inspector brought him was grey, with a cheap, garish look about the beaded curtains at the window. A frightened-faced woman was waiting for them in the hall.

"It's not my fault," she began, on sight of Henry. "I've never had anything happen in my house like this before, and you know it, Mr. Sweeny. You can't get me into trouble about it."

Her voice was shrill and nervous. The inspector bade her hold her tongue. He led Henry upstairs to a bedroom on the second floor, and taking a key from his pocket, he unlocked the door. The room was in disorder. Johnnie's boots were in one corner, his clothes in another. There were some half-dozen empty whisky bottles, balanced with great nicety, one on top of the other, in the middle of the floor, and round the neck of the highest was a woman's garter, crimson in colour, made of shabby silk. Johnnie himself lay on the bed, half-dressed. He looked in death more peaceful than he had ever done in life. The sullen, angry expression had gone for ever. His eyes were closed, as though he slept, and his black hair was thick and tumbled like a little boy's.

In one hand he clutched an empty bottle, and in the other the New Testament.