Don't let's talk about it any more. I'll carry you to bed," said John, who always changed the conversation when he drew near to matters affecting his conscience, and taking the little girl in his arms, he carried her to the room she still shared with the old nurse Martha.
Martha was at. supper, and Jane undressed solemnly before her brother, folding up her clothes as she had been taught to do, and she knelt at his knee and said her prayers with a devout intensity and a lack of embarrassment that wrung his heart. When he had kissed her and tucked her up, he went down the corridor to the drawing-room, but paused outside the door without entering. Somehow Eliza's chatter and Henry's good-natured teasing would have jarred upon him this evening, and turning round he went down by the back staircase, and so out of the side-door to the stables across the yard, where his bitch Nellie lay, with her litter of puppies.
Tim the stable-lad was awaiting him with a lantern, and together the two boys knelt in the straw, their shoulders touching, while John held the weakling of the family in his strong but gentle hands.
"Poor pup!" he said. "We'll never make anything of him, with this squashed foot of his."
"Better drown him, Master John," suggested Tim.
"No, Tim, we won't do that. He's healthy enough, it's only that he'll not be winning any prizes for me, but that's no reason why I should take his life. All right, Nellie, I wouldn't hurt your babies."
John always forgot his problems when he was with his dogs. Their devotion and their dependence brought out the best in him, and he would willingly have passed half the night in the stable but for the fact that Tim must have his supper and go to bed.
"Is it true, Master John, what they're saying in Doonhaven?" asked the lad, as he bolted the stable-door and put the empty pail down by the pump.
"What are they saying now, Tim?"
"Why, that Mr. Brodrick is going to blast away the whole of Hungry Hill with dynamite that's coming over in a ship from Bronsea, and we are all going to be turned out of our homes to make room for the Cornish miners he'll be bringing."
"No, Tim, that's a fairy-tale, and you're a rogue to repeat it. My father is going to sink a mine in Hungry Hill, true enough, he and Mr.
Lumley, but you won't have to move for the miners. The work will give employment in Doonhaven, and bring money to the people who are out of work and have no land."
The lad looked at him doubtfully, and shook his head.
"They say in Doonhaven it doesn't do to interfere with Nature," he said. "If the Saints wished for the copper to be used, why then it would be running down the side of the hill in a stream, where we could find it."
"Who told you that, Tim? Was it Morty Donovan?"
"That is what they say in Doonhaven," said the boy, refusing to be drawn, and he wished his young master goodnight, and took himself off to the kitchen.
John shrugged his shoulders, and thrusting his hands into his pockets he walked round the house, and down the steep grass bank to the drive and the creek beyond.
The, moon shone upon the inlet below the castle, and a broad path of silver led to the wide stretch of water around Doon Island, whose dark outline hid Mundy Bay and the open sea.
Away beyond Doonhaven, some seven miles distant from Clonmere, rose the black mass of Hungry Hill, remote and forbidding in the moonlight.
Back in the library John Brodrick spoke impatiently to his agent.
"I myself gave permission to the officers of the garrison to shoot as many snipe and woodcock as they pleased on the island," he said, "as long as they did not destroy a hare or a partridge, and they took it upon themselves to look after the preservation of the game as far as they could. I cannot believe that the officers, most of whom are gentlemen, would have forfeited the pledge.
And yet you say they have half the hares destroyed?"
"It's what Baird himself was telling me, Mr.
Brodrick," said the agent, "that it was one or two of the younger officers he saw out shooting, and Morty Donovan was with them."
"Morty Donovan? Always when I "have any annoyance or trouble it is Morty Donovan who is responsible. You can call upon him from me, Ned, and you can tell him that if I hear of my game being destroyed on Doon Island without my express permission, then the persons concerned will be punished with the utmost severity, and have to answer for it at the Mundy Assizes."
"I will, Mr. Brodrick. The man should be ashamed; it's what I've said often enough in Doonhaven."
"Morty Donovan doesn't know the meaning of the word, nor do any of his family. So you think they will make trouble when we start work on the mine?"
"I don't say they will make trouble, Mr.
Brodrick, but for myself, I would not care to be one of the Cornish miners you are importing. It may be that they would do better for themselves if they stopped at. home."
"You are as bad as the rest of them, Ned. I believe when my back is turned you go and gossip in the cottages like any old woman; yes, and tell your beads too into the bargain."
"It's God's truth, Mr. Brodrick, I never consort with the people at all, except to gather in your rents, which is a sorry business at the best of times; and as for telling my beads, haven't I handed round the plate at the Established Church Sunday after Sunday for as many years as you have sat in the place yourself?"
"That's all right, Ned. I'm not complaining.
You've always done your duty by me, and I won't forget it. But what irritates me beyond measure is that an ignorant, halfeducated fellow like Morty Donovan can so play upon the superstitions of the people in Doonhaven as to lead them to believe that what I am doing for the district is some sort of devil's work or witchcraft, whereas if they had the sense to understand it I am going to put the bread-and-butter into their mouths for nothing."
"There's no gratitude in the country, Mr.
Brodrick, that's the fault."
"Gratitude, is it? I don't ask for gratitude, damn it. I only ask for commonsense. Well, that's enough of the matter. You had better walk home, Ned, while the moon is up.
There's nothing further I want to discuss this evening.
Don't forget to tell that woman at the gate-house to keep the gates closed. I'm tired of seeing my cattle on the moors with Morty Donovan's mark branded on their backs."
And so alone at last, and the estate book put away, and his papers neatly filed, and all business done for the day.
Presently he would go upstairs and chat with the girls for an hour or so, ask them their opinion about a small property across the water to make a change from Clonmere, from which they could pay visits to Bath now and again during the season, and when the girls had gone to bed he would stir the fire with his foot and tell Henry about the mining methods in Cornwall, the suggestions of the fellow from Bronsea, and how old Lumley had stuck out for his twenty per cent royalty, and what a pity it was that Simon Flower was such a good-for-nothing.
But first he would take a turn in the grounds, have a breath of fresh air from the sea to clear his head. He walked down the bank, as John had done, and presently, as he looked out across the creek to Doon Island, he became aware of the figure of his second son, standing aloof and strangely lonely, in apparent aimless meditation.
"Not with the others, John?" he said abruptly.
The boy started. He had been unaware of his father's approach.
"No, sir."
There was a silence, neither knowing what to say to the other, and both remembering the incident at dinner.
Then the boy, impulsive, stammered an apology.
"I'm sorry, sir, that I spoke as I did this evening."
"That's all right, John. I had forgotten it."
The father wondered whether he should tell the boy that he understood well enough what he had been trying to express. He was forty-eight, his son was just nineteen. He knew that the first John Brodrick had been shot in the back for the same reason given by his son, he knew too that the Donovans of the present day had not forgotten it. These things he found convenient to forget. It did not do to have long memories in this country. That was the great fault of the people, they remembered too much. He believed in justice, in fair dealing, in scrupulous honesty with those less fortunate than himself, but it was dangerous to go farther than this. Once a man became sympathetic in this country he became soft, he became idle, he allowed his mind to dwell on supposed injuries, on long-dead feuds, on a past that was buried and gone. If John was not handled properly, was not made to understand discipline and service and respect for his elders and betters, he would turn into another useless idler like Simon Flower.