She was nearly as tall as himself, andwiththe warm cape wrapped round her, and her smooth, dark hair showing from her bonnet, she might have been a queen.
"How are we for time, Tim?" asked Mr.
Henry.
"It's just turned the quarter, sir," replied the coachman, holding open the door of the carriage.
The master was a great stickler for time, like the old gentleman. It would never do to be late for church.
But he had a graciousness about him and a courtesy, quite different from his grandfather.
And now the mistress was seated in her corner of the carriage and the master was tucking the rug round her, putting her feet in the foot-warmer, the whole done with such a loving care and so much gentleness that Tim remembered the talk at "the back" of how there was another baby expected before many months. The nurse was standing in the open doorway, holding little Miss Molly in her arms, the child Waving a plump hand to her father and mother. And then Tim climbed up to his seat and gathered the reins in his hands, and the carriage bowled away down the drive, under the archway past the rhododendrons, and swept round beside the creek and through the woods to the park.
Henry held Katherine's hand under the rug and wondered, for the five hundredth time, perhaps, what she was thinking about; so detached, so remote, her calm, quiet manner different in every way from his own eager impetuosity.
"Are you warm enough?" he said anxiously, peering into her face. "Are you sure you feel equal to the drive?"
"Yes, of course," she answered, warming his heart with her smile. "I feel very well indeed.
And I could not bear to miss the weekly drive to Ardmore, you know that."
He leant back again in the carriage, reassured.
Uncle Willie Armstrong had impressed upon him to be careful with her.
"Your mother," Uncle Willie had told him, "gave birth to all you boys without turning a hair in the process. She had all the toughness of old Simon Flower. But if you're going to follow your father's example and rear a large family, I advise you to do it rather more slowly than he did. Your Katherine is a much more delicate plant than Fanny-Rosa Flower."
And here they were, with young Molly barely a year old and another one already on the way. But perhaps Uncle Willie Armstrong was inclined to fuss…
Henry gazed out of the carriage window. The trees at the far end of the park, close to the road, were looking a bit shorn after their lopping in the autumn. Still, they would be all the better for it, and would be well enough in two or three years' time.
Katherine was bowing and smiling at Mrs. Mahoney at the gate-house. Henry purposely turned his head away. The gate-house brought unpleasant thoughts, reminders of something that was best forgotten.
Jack Donovan and his sister had left the country and gone to America, no trace of them remained in the little lodge at the entrance to the drive, and yet whenever Henry passed through the gates he would remember, for all his wishes to forget, the insolent, familiar manner of the fellow when his fare was paid to him, the furtive, crafty expression of his sister, and through them both the helpless, tragic eyes of poor Johnnie the last time he had seen him at Clonmere. No, those things were not the best food for thought on a Sunday morning, and Henry, once more caressing Katherine's hand under the carriage rug, began to chatter lightly and gaily about nothing at all, of the shooting party the week before, of Petty Sessions the following Tuesday in Mundy, of a letter received from his mother Fanny-Rosa from Nice the day before.
"You noticed," he said to Katherine, laughingly, "that it was full of the usual extravagances. I believe she is having the time of her life."
"I wonder," said Katherine.
"Oh, dearest, you don't know my mother sufficiently well to judge. I quite thought poor Johnnie's death would break her completely, but I am inclined to think, after the first shock of it wore off, she dismissed the matter from her mind and poor Johnnie too."
"Your mother is not so superficial as she would have everyone believe," said Katherine. "She pretends to other people, and to herself as well."
"My mother pretends to no one," said Henry, "you can rest assured about that. No, she has her little villa, and her foreign counts, and her casino, and is very well content. Look, there is that disagreeable Mrs. Kelly actually curtseying to you. What have you done to the people of Doonhaven? I have never known anyone of that family smile at a Brodrick before, unless it was to do something very dirty afterwards."
"Perhaps," said Katherine, looking sideways under her bonnet, "the Brodricks never smiled at the people of Doonhaven."
"I am quite certain they did not," said Henry, "and that is why the first of them was shot in the back. What do you think of the new road out to the mine? The new surface is a capital affair, quite different from the old gravel that became almost impassable in winter.
Grandfather would have been pleased with it."
"I think, with you, that it is a great improvement, but I should like it better if the miners' houses had been taken in hand at the same time. Some of those huts are a disgrace. I cannot bear to think of little children being obliged to live in them."
"Are they really so bad?" asked Henry. "I'm afraid I have never been through them, and have only concerned myself with the efficiency of the mine. I can easily give orders to have the wood strengthened, and the worst places painted. That should keep out the cold and damp."
"Why not give orders to have them pulled down altogether, and brick houses built instead?" said Katherine.
"Dear heart, that would cost a lot of money."
"I thought the mines made such an enormous profit last year."
"So they did, but if we once start pulling down the miners' huts and building them small palaces, there will be no profit at all."
"Now who is exaggerating?" smiled Katherine.
"The miners don't ask for palaces, Henry love. They only ask for a bit of warmth and comfort, which, considering how hard they work for you, I think they deserve."
Henry pulled a face.
"Now you make me feel a worm," he said.
"Very well then, I shall go into the matter, and see what can be done. But I warn you they won't be grateful.
They will say, in all probability, that they prefer the old wooden cabins."
"Never mind about gratitude," said Katherine, "at least those little children will be warm… Hungry Hill has a smiling face today. Do you see the sun on the ridge? It looks like a crown of gold."
"Hungry Hill has too many moods for my liking," said Henry. "The bad weather before Christmas interfered with the work, and a whole shipment of copper was held up."
"Nature works slowly, in her own time," said Katherine, "and if you become impatient she gets angry. Why, there is Tom Callaghan walking to church. His horse must be lame. I wonder he did not wait for us to pick him up in Doonhaven.
Tell Tim to stop the horses, dear."
Laughing, Henry climbed out of the carriage, and called out to the curate, who was walking ahead of them, covering the ground with immense long strides.
"Tom, you madman," he shouted, "what do you mean by not waiting for us? Come and take a seat beside Katherine. We are seriously affronted."
The young curate turned, and smiled. He was a great big fellow, with a fine handsome face and a brown beard.
"The morning was so lovely," he protested, "and Prince wanting a shoe, so I promised myself the treat of a walk. The first few miles were delightful, but I was just beginning to think myself a martyour."
"You can make the sermon shorter in consequence," said Henry, "Come, jump in and bury your pride.
Katherine is quite disgusted with you."
"I have never known Katherine disgusted with anyone," said the curate.
Tom Callaghan was an Oxford friend of Henry's who, with a very small amount of persuasion, had accepted the appointment of curate to the living at Doonhaven, and whose weekly duty was to take the service at the furthermost church in the parish, the little church by the sea at Ardmore. He could have done much better for himself across the water, but his affection for Henry was such that he preferred to bury himself in isolation, to be near his friend, rather than win esteem and prosperity in a large town.