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.
'What do you think is her latest whim?' said Henry. 'Nothing more than that I should pull down the miners' huts and build them brick cottages instead. I shall be ruined.'
'An excellent plan,' said Tom decisively. 'First, because those huts are a disgrace. And secondly, because you have more money than you know what to do with.'
'That,' agreed Katherine, 'is what I am always telling him.'
'The trouble is,' said Henry, 'that you both have Noncomformist consciences. And you try to give me one too. My grandfather would not have listened to you.'
'From what I hear of your grandfather,' said Tom, 'he was a godless man. At least you do not work the mines on Sundays, as he used to do.'
'And that also was Katherine's doing,' smiled Henry. 'I tell you, Tom, I have married into a family which has so many principles that they quite bewilder a fellow. Take my advice, and avoid 'em like the plague.'
'I would rather be good like the Eyres than clever like you Brodricks,' said Tom Callaghan. 'The only reason you are not as hard a man as your grandfather is because you had the sense to marry Katherine. Here we are at church, and there will be three other people in the congregation besides yourselves, I have no doubt.'
The little church stood quite alone, windswept and solitary, looking out over the wide waters of Mundy Bay. But for all its stark position, exposed to the four winds and the rains of winter, there was something comforting and strong in its grey solidity, something ageless in the lichen that clung about its walls.
Inside all was peaceful, all was quiet, as though no evil thought, no hard memory, could penetrate the still serenity. The gales might blow, the floods might come, but the church of Ardmore would withstand them all, a small bastion in eternity.
Henry, kneeling beside Katherine, watched her calm profile, her dark eyes turned to the altar, and he thought how no man but himself would ever know how beautiful she was, how true, how tender. Was Tom Callaghan right? Would he be as hard a man as his grandfather but for Katherine? The thought was an uncomfortable one, and, like all uncomfortable thoughts, he dismissed it as absurd. He was not hard. Tom must have been joking. He had always, as far back as he could remember, thought about other people before himself. Put duty before pleasure, right before wrong. He could say, in all good conscience, that he had never done a low, foul, or evil thing. True, he had been lucky, successful and happy in his work and his friends; but luck, after all, was a gift from the Almighty, and anyway he was grateful for it. No, Johnnie had been the hard member of the family. Johnnie had been the selfish, ruthless one, spreading misery, poor devil, wherever he went. Tom Callaghan ought to have known him.
And Henry, making the General Confession in a loud, clear voice as was his custom, 'We have erred and strayed from Thy ways like lost sheep,' thought, as he always did, that really the words did not apply to him, or any other normal law-abiding fellow who lived an honest life and did his duty to God and the Queen. They applied to the thieves, and the adulterers, and the drunkards, who never even bothered to come inside a church.
When the service was over, and Tom Callaghan was changing in the vestry, Henry and Katherine went and stood in the churchyard and looked down upon the sea.
The long rollers from the Atlantic swept past them up the bay. A robin was singing from a gorse bush beneath them, his song plaintive yet sweet, strangely nostalgic in the cold, clean winter air.
'I am glad we had Molly christened here,' said Katherine. 'We will do the same with the next baby, and with all our children. And when the time comes for us to go, I should like you and me to lie here, dearest, together.'
'Don't be morbid,' said Henry, drawing her to him. 'I hate discussions about death. Kiss me instead. There
