'I suppose,' said Adeline before dinner, 'Clonmere was fit for a pigsty, and you picnicked in the dirt without any qualms?'
'On the contrary,' said Hal, 'Molly fed us like fighting cocks. And no one could go short with Uncle Tom and Aunt Harriet at the Rectory.'
'Is that the Rector whose wife spends all her time in the kitchen?' said Adeline. 'I gather he's your only neighbour for miles. How your father ever stood the life beats me.'
'The Callaghans are the kindest people I've ever known,' said Hal. 'Uncle Tom and my father were always together in the old days.'
'Faute de mieux,' laughed Adeline. 'I don't think he would find a great deal in common nowadays with a stuffy old parson living at the back of beyond. If it was not for the entail he would sell the place tomorrow. He's told me so, scores of times.'
Henry came into the room, and dinner was announced a few minutes later.
Hal ate in silence, burning with indignation.
What a liar the woman was, talking light-heartedly about his father selling Clonmere!
He would never do such a thing. But during dinner Adeline talked through him all the time, kept making allusions to the absurd expense of hanging on to places that brought no benefit to anybody, and were only a drag on capital. Never once did she mention Clonmere by name. She talked of friends of hers in the north of England who, she said, had been saddled with an empty house and a derelict estate for years, and had just got rid of it.
'They sold the land at a wonderful price for building,' she said, 'and are thankful to be quit of it. Now they intend spending most of their time abroad, I believe. Of course there were no children, and there was none of that absurd entail business.'
It was not until she had left the room after dessert that Henry began to ask questions about Doonhaven and Clonmere. His manner was off-hand and indifferent, but beneath it lay an anxiety, a strange desire to hear and to know, which he wished to conceal. How were the Callaghans, he asked? Was old Tom much changed, much older? Had the Boles taken care of the grounds, or was everything becoming overgrown?
Was the agent civil? Did Hal hear any talk about the change-over to tin in the mines, and the prospects for the future?
'I understand there is plenty of tin there,' he told his father, 'but it's easier to work than copper, and not so much labour is needed. Uncle Tom told me that several of the miners had been turned away.
They don't understand it, when they've been working there for years.'
'They'll have to put up with it,' said Henry.
'I suppose so, but Uncle Tom says it's hard for them, to have their livelihood snatched away suddenly, almost overnight. There was a lot of distress last winter. Many of the younger men are talking of emigrating, and several have gone to America already.'
'That doesn't concern me. The ones whom I keep employed I take good care to pay well.
I shall continue to do so, as long as the price of tin makes it worth my while to work the mines.'
'And after that, what?'
Henry shrugged his shoulders.
'Close them down, or sell them beforehand, at the psychological moment,' he said, 'whichever strikes me as the wisest thing to do at the time.'
'Uncle Tom said you would do that,' said Hal.
'I think he was rather uneasy about it. He said so many people would be thrown out of work.'
'Tom's a parson, it's his job to think about those things,' said Henry. 'I don't see that it need concern us. I have a right to do what I like with my own property, and the mines belong to me.'
Hal said nothing. It was not his affair. He remembered suddenly the visit to his mother's grave at Ardmore, the day before he left. He had driven out in the Rector's trap, and taken Jinny with him. The grave was tidy and well-kept, and bulbs were planted round it Her father and mother always saw to it, said Jinny; daffodils came every year in spring.
They stood there together, and Jinny swept away the fallen leaves. They read the inscription.
'Katherine-beloved wife of Henry Brodrick.'
Should he tell his father about the visit to the grave? But his father asked nothing. He never spoke of Ardmore.
He did not once talk about the empty new wing at Clonmere.
'So Kitty and Lizette have decided to stay out there with Molly?' he said. 'They evidently prefer her company to mine.'
'I think they would return if they believed you wanted them,' said Hal.
Henry did not answer. He was fingering the stem of his glass.
'I suppose,' he said, 'you would have a great objection to breaking the entail?'
Hal stared at him.
'What do you mean?' he said.
'Your great-grandfather made a long and very detailed will,' said Henry. 'I have to have my heir's permission to sell the place. It's something I can't do on my own. If you agree, naturally I shall make it up to you when you come of age in a few months' time, and you would have a considerable allowance to live upon. Judging by the rate at which you live up at Oxford, you are going to need it too.'
Hal flushed.
'I'm sorry, father,' he said, 'but I can't do it. I don't think you quite understand what Clonmere means to me, and to Molly, and Kitty. We belong over there. It's home to us, whatever you may feel.'
'You haven't lived there since you were children,' said Henry. 'I don't count this Christmas visit, that was only a picnic. Adeline is always saying that it's ridiculous, hanging on to the place, paying out vast sums in wages and repairs and one thing after another, and she's perfectly right. The property is a drain on my income, and gives nothing in return.'
'The gospel according to Saint Adeline,' said Hal bitterly.
'No need to be impertinent,' said Henry. 'Your stepmother is a very far-seeing woman, and she talks sound sense. What use is Clonmere to me?
Answer me if you can. I haven't been there for ten years.'
'That's your fault, isn't it?' said Hal. 'The place is there, waiting for you. Just the same, only a little shabbier. You loved it once. You love it still.
But you won't go near it because you are afraid.'
'What do you mean, afraid?'
'Oh, don't worry. It's not my mother. She won't haunt you. She forgave you long ago. She told me that when I visited her grave, which I suppose you've never seen. You're afraid of yourself, of the man you used to be. You're afraid, if you returned, that he would come out of the shadows and haunt you. That's why you want to sell it, so that he can be buried, once and forever.'
Hal rose to his feet, white and trembling.
The words had tumbled from him, he scarcely knew what he was saying.
'You've been drinking,' said Henry slowly. 'I suspected it whet we came in to dinner. And it's not the first time either.
Adeline warned me about this. She says it's become a habit with you; she has ways and means of finding out, when you are here. She has seen you creep in here to the sideboard and help yourself, when you think nobody is about.'
'And if I do,' said Hal, 'what's the reason?
Because I can't face sitting here at dinner between you both, knowing that every day and every night you become more hopeless, more miserable, more utterly dependent upon her for every damned thing. Molly, and Kitty, and I, and poor Lizette mean nothing to you, absolutely nothing. And now she's trying to get you to sell Clonmere. Thank God I can prevent it. I won't break the entail, not if you give me ten thousand quid…?
He broke off excitedly, as Adeline came into the room.
'What on earth is the matter?' she said. 'I could hear Hal shouting from the drawing-room. Do you want to call the servants up from the basement?'
'Call the whole world, I don't care,' said Hal, 'but I'd like you to know you've made a mistake, for once. I'm
