going for a stroll, sir? Let me come with you, I have lain here long enough.'
And to show how he despised his weakness, Henry threw aside his coverlet and rose to his feet, humming a little tune gaily under his breath, and at once began to discuss some business of the estate with his father, who, taking his arm, walked with him through the woods towards the home farm in the park.
'They will go too far, and father will be so occupied in talking that he will not remember,' thought Jane, 'and then this evening Henry will be so exhausted that he will eat no dinner, and Barbara will be anxious, and when I look out from my room, some time after midnight, I shall see the light under Henry's door, and I shall know he is not sleeping again.'
She went on sitting in the little summer-house, by her brother's vacant chair, and wondered what his thoughts had been, this spring and summer, lying up here day after day, when he had first risen from his bed after his illness. Henry, who so enjoyed activity, discussion, people, and travelling, to be obliged to do without them, and without even the strength to help his father with the business of the mine. Anyone but Henry would have become morbid, restless, irritable, but if he felt any of these things he did not show them. He had always a smile for each member of his family, some jest to make, some amusing observation, and would be full of plans of what they would all do when he was well again, the parties and the picnics they would have.
'We will have one more picnic, anyway,' he had said, that very afternoon, 'before I sail for the Barbados.
We will take the horses, and go to the lake on Hungry Hill, as we used to do when we were children, and Willie Armstrong shall come, and young Dickie Fox from the garrison-ah, don't blush, Jane-and Fanny-Rosa Flower, if Mrs. White will let her, and her brother Bob, if he is still on leave from his regiment, and we will all enjoy ourselves immensely, and no one will be sick, or sad, or sorry.'
And in his excitement and delight at the project he had brought on an attack of coughing, and vividly, horribly, she would remember the night of the trouble at the mine, and Henry standing in the library, shivering in his wet clothes. Well, that was all over, anyway. No more thieving, no more fighting, and Morty Donovan was dead. Sam Donovan had sold the farm, and was keeping a shop in Doonhaven. How angry the proud old man would have been-he would have considered it a disgrace for a Donovan to keep a shop. The other brother lived in a poor way on the road to Denmare. He kept a few pigs, and a cow, and sold whisky without a permit. No, the Donovans would never trouble any of the Brodricks again. The old mine was flourishing, and a new one had been started, and more men than ever were employed. Everything was going smoothly. They would all be so happy, but for the anxiety about Henry. And a little shiver came over Jane. The summer-house felt lonely suddenly without Henry, queer and deserted, as though he had already left for the Barbados and the sun was no longer shining through the trees. They should be thinned, she thought; one day they will enclose the summer-house, and the sun will not come to it at all, and she picked up her book of poetry, and the cushions, and the coverlet, and went away down through the flower-garden to the house.
As she stood on the slope above Clonmere she could see John and Doctor Armstrong mooring the boat in the creek. They had been over to Doon Island to exercise John's greyhounds. John was looking up and laughing, his lock of dark hair falling over his face, and he saw her, and waved his hand. The dogs were coupled together, and stood shivering in the bows of the boat, eager to spring ashore, straining at the leash that held them. The great silver cup they had won last season was now John's proudest possession, and graced the sideboard in the dining-room. He had shown it to Fanny-Rosa Flower, when she had driven over with her father and brother to enquire after Henry, and Jane had been secretly amused when Fanny-Rosa told him, with great seriousness, that he should have his family crest put upon the cup, to give it greater majesty, and that he should also have the Brodrick coat of arms stamped upon the dogs' blankets.
Poor John, he had sat quite abashed and silent, while Fanny-Rosa drank her tea, watching him out of the corners of her eyes; and Jane had wondered how much of what she had said she really believed and was a little unconscious snobbery inherited from her mother, and how much was deliberate teasing, done to amuse herself and to provoke John.
How lovely she was. though, thought Jane, and how amusing a companion, and how extraordinary it was that Doctor Armstrong, who had been at Clonmere at the time of the visit, should have said so firmly, after the Flowers had departed, that Fanny-Rosa was too flamboyant and restless for his taste, and had a careless streak to her nature that was not due merely to youth but was part of her blood. 'What type do you admire, then?' Jane had enquired, in all innocence, and he had looked back at her very earnestly, as though he longed to say something, but had not done so, and instead he observed that doctors were forbidden by their profession to admire anyone, in case they became patients, and he left it to Dickie Fox and the young officers on Doon Island to do all the admiring for him.
All this passed through Jane's head as she watched her brother and the doctor climb from the boat with the dogs, and she wondered what Doctor Armstrong would say if he knew that the book of poems in her hand had been sent across to her from the garrison by Lieutenant Fox, with one page in particular marked with a cross-a love poem, by an Elizabethan poet, entitled 'On Entering My Lady's Chamber.' Perhaps he would find it shocking.
And now Eliza was leaning from her bedroom window, calling that Thomas had rung the dressing-bell, and it wanted but a quarter of an hour to dinner, and if John and Doctor Armstrong were going to walk the dogs to the kennels they would be late, and father would be put out.
Father was coming down through the woods at this moment, with Henry leaning on his arm, and Barbara had joined them from the walled garden, a basket of nectarines on her arm, the fruit still warm from the sun, and Jane was aware of a strange feeling of happiness, of security. We are all here, she thought, the whole family, smiling and chatting and at ease with one another, dinner will soon be on the table, Thomas is walking through from the kitchen with his tray, the doors and the windows of the castle are flung open, catching the last gold rays of the sun before it sinks westward behind the trees. If only these moments would linger, would stay forever, and there would be no packing up and departing, no covering of the furniture with dust-sheets and closing of shutters and taking the steam-packet from Slane one chilly autumn morning, and a winter ahead chat might bring uncertainty and change.
So the long days of August passed, and September came too early and too fast, with the preparations for Henry's journey to the Barbados. It was arranged that he should leave Doonhaven by his father's ship, the Henrietta, which was sailing with her cargoes to Bronsea, and from there Henry would go to Liverpool and embark for the West Indies.
Already he seemed better, stronger, and less troubled by his cough, and on the very day of his departure the long-promised picnic was held on Hungry Hill. The day was fine and clear from the start, with the soft brilliance that late summer brings, and as the little cavalcade set forth on horseback from Clonmere, with Henry driven in state by Tim the stable-boy, the tip of Hungry Hill, shimmering under the sun, held a promise of warm grass and scented heather, of gay dragon-flies skimming the still lake, of great rocks and stones, rusty with lichen, lying hot and bare beneath the sky.
They climbed the western face of the hill, away from the mine, and then, when the track became broken and lost, and the carriage could go no farther, John dismounted from his horse and helped his brother into the saddle, while Tim, weighed down by the picnic baskets, stumbled in the rear. What a party they were! Barbara-carrying a monstrous sunshade to keep off the flies-and Eliza, with sketching materials and stool and easel (for she fancied her water-colours), and Jane, with two volumes of poetry and escorted on either side by two young officers from the garrison, Lieutenant Fox and Lieutenant Davies, the latter having been asked for Eliza but appearing unaware of his duties, and Doctor Armstrong leading Henry's horse, with Henry himself in the saddle directing one way and John directing another, and Bob Flower, who was a Captain in the Dragoons and thought himself a little superior to the young officers from the garrison, and lastly Fanny-Rosa, who kept the whole party, and John in particular, in a frenzy of anxiety, because she would ride her horse at a distance, over the most uneven part of the ground, and when called to in warning shook her head and would not listen.
At last they came to the lake, with shouts of relief from the young men and cries of delight from the ladies, and Barbara at once busied herself with the unpacking of the food and the setting down of rugs, in case the ground was damp-which of course it was not-and seeing that Henry was not fatigued, while Henry himself lay on his back and closed his eyes and felt the warm grass with his hands and was still and happy.
Fanny-Rosa was climbing a rock to have a better view of the bay, and pulling her petticoats above her knees to give her more freedom, and John, who wanted to be with her, watched her moodily, thinking that if he joined her the others would notice and imagine that he did so because she was showing her legs in this barefaced fashion,
