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.
