It was worse for the girls, of course. They had to suffer and endure the changes, while he was at Eton. Molly and Kitty had to see poor Frostie go, and have that vile Swiss maid take her place. Lizette had five different nurses in nine months, because no one was supposed to treat her foot correctly. Letter after letter would come from Molly, furious and miserable in turn.
'We never see father alone,' she would write.
'She sticks to him like glue, and if he gets up and goes out of the room she follows him. And at meal-times she talks all the time through us to him, and looks daggers if Kitty or I try to get in a word. And she's changed all the furniture round in the drawing-room, and had new covers made, which Kitty and I think are hideous, and I'm sure father does too, but he won't say so. He seems unable to cope.'
Father, who had always been so magnificent a person, so reliable, so strong, was now, it seemed, a man of no account. The god had fallen from his pedestal. He had no will, no mind of his own.
Whatever Adeline declared in her brisk, downright way, he echoed, not from conviction, but because it was less troublesome. Once only did they come down together to visit Hal at Eton, and the day was a miserable failure. First of all she criticised his room, found fault with his appearance.
'Don't stoop so,' she said, 'you're positively round-shouldered. Henry, this boy ought to have sat with a backboard for an hour every day. And he's far too pale. He ought to go for a good run.
Why don't you join the beagles?'
'I don't want to,' Hal answered.
'In the summer, of course, you'll be made to play cricket. Oh, but you're a wet bob, aren't you? I suppose you chose that because it meant less exertion. Boys are all alike. They need driving.'
She spoke always in that bright, aggressive manner which was so characteristic of everything she did, and which made argument impossible. Her blue eyes flitted up and down the walls of his room, seized upon his pictures. Hal could see her mouth twitch in amusement.
'Studying for the Academy, I suppose?' she said. 'That tree is a bit out of drawing, isn't it? Not that I'm a judge of these things, but I do know a crooked line when I see one.' She laughed over her shoulder at Henry. 'If that's what your old Clonmere looks like, I'm not surprised you let it,' she said. 'I'll be bound it was damp too, with all that water so close. Well, Hal, what else have you got to show us?'
'Nothing,' he said, 'nothing at all.'
'Not very prolific, are you? You'll never make your fortune. What about some lunch in Windsor?
I'm starving.'
And throughout the day it was the same; mocking, teasing, contrasting his lanky, overgrown figure with that of other boys of his own age.
'You seem to lack ambition,' she said, 'you have no interest in anything. Wouldn't you like to be Captain of the Cricket Eleven one day, or head of Pop, or whatever they call it?'
'Not particularly,' said Hal.
'It's no use, Adeline,' said his father. 'I'm fated to have a son who is totally undistinguished.
It's a pity, but there it is.'
He spoke lightly, shrugging his shoulders, but his words stung'
'Your uncle Herbert has asked you all to Lletharrog in the summer,' he said. 'Adeline and I will probably go abroad.'
He did not kiss him. The train steamed away, and Hal was left with the sovereign in his hand. They never came again.
Holidays at Lletharrog or at Saunby became a method of escape. The girls were so pathetically glad to get away from Lancaster Gate. Now that Great-aunt Eliza was dead the house at Saunby belonged to Uncle Herbert too. His family would move there from Lletharrog 'during the summer months.
'I wish we could stay with you always,' said Kitty.
'I never want to go back to Lancaster Gate again.'
'Why, nonsense,' smiled Uncle Herbert.
'I know how fond you are of your father.'
'It's different now,' said Kitty.
Uncle Herbert did not say anything. But later, when the girls and their brother were walking on the sands, Kitty said: 'I heard Uncle Herbert call Adeline that 'damn woman' to Aunt Cathie. They were in the study, and the door was open. I heard him say the whole thing was a tragedy. Fancy him saying damn, and he's a clergyman.'
'No one likes her,' said Molly fiercely.
'If only I had the courage I'd run away and be a governess. She told father that poor little lizette was sly, and that all crippled children had something wrong mentally. Lizette, who is so clever and sweet. It's queer, she dislikes Clonmere, although she has never been there. She's even taken down the picture of it that used to hang in the drawing-room. And whenever anyone talks about the country she makes a laughing, sarcastic remark.'
'Just think,' said Kitty. 'Father has only gone across three times since mamma died, and then he stayed in a hotel in Slane and did his business from there. And when we lived at Clonmere he used to drive up to the mines every day. I don't understand how the mines go on without him.'
'A running concern doesn't need the proprietor's supervision,' said Hal. 'There's a chap at my tutor's whose father owns a coal mine, and he's never even seen the place. He just sits at home and rakes in the dividends. There's no point in working if you can get money for doing nothing.'
'Mamma would have hated to hear you say that, Hal,' said Molly. 'It goes against all she used to teach us.'
'I dare say it does,' answered Hal, 'but what's the use? No one ever talks to us in the way she did. And the fellows at Eton would think I was pi or a fool if I tried to keep it up. If we'd all been living at home at Clonmere it would be different. I dare say father and I would have gone up to the mines together, and I should have had a feeling for them, as though they were all bound up with the family. Now I don't care twopence. And anyway, there will always be loads of money coming from them, that's the main thing. I shall do myself well when I go up to Oxford, I don't mind telling you.'
'Don't forget what Uncle Herbert was telling us the other day about the copper trade falling to bits.
Several mines in Cornwall have been closed,' said Molly.
'Yes, but he also said the more enterprising ones had discovered tin beneath the copper, and would be able to work the tin instead. The price of tin is very high, and the proprietors can go on making fortunes over that.'
'It may not be the same at home,' said Molly. 'Perhaps there isn't any tin on Hungry Hill.'
'Tin or copper, what does it matter,' said Kitty, 'if all the benefit we get from the stuff is living in Lancaster Gate with Adeline, and a Swiss maid spying on us all the time, and father washing his hands of us? I'd rather be poverty-stricken and live in a cabin on the Kileen moors.'
'Lancaster Gate and London would be all right if it wasn't for Adeline,' said Molly. 'We were happy enough when we were alone with father.'
'No, we were not,' said Hal. 'None of us has ever been really happy since we left Clonmere, and you know it. Nothing has been the same since mamma died, and never will be.'
His sisters stared at him. He looked white and strained, and there were tears in his eyes.
'Oh, what's the use of anything?' he said.
'Sometimes I wish I was dead.'
And he ran away from them across the Saunby sands, the dogs leaping and barking at his heels, the wind blowing his hair across his face.
'He's got to the difficult stage,' said Molly; 'boys always get like that. Aunt Cathie said Bob used to be the same.'
'Bob had a home to go to,' said Kitty.
'Hal only has Lancaster Gate.'
The problem of the holidays became more acute as the years passed. Henry's second wife made no secret of the fact that she disliked her stepchildren. There was no question of sharing Henry with his children. She wanted him for herself, and the only way to accomplish this was little by little to wean him from them, make him believe that they cared nothing for him, that none of his friends or relatives was worthy of him, and that she alone understood his needs, his comforts. She had rescued him from a life of wretched loneliness, and now he must cling
