'Desolation reigns supreme,' Hal said to Jinny. 'I never want to see the mines again. Why the devil didn't I leave when my father sold them five months ago?'
The Rector, and his wife, and Jinny were doing their best to help the miners' families, those who had no money put by for such an emergency. It was difficult for Tom Callaghan, because the most improvident of the families did not attend his church, and came under the care of the priest.
'No time for differences now,' said Tom, in consultation with him, a young raw fellow, hardly more than a boy, who had been appointed to Doonhaven only six months before. 'We have got to work together, and see what we can do to help the people. It's the greatest mercy of God that this blow has fallen in midsummer, instead of in winter.'
The young priest was only too willing to co-operate, and to seek advice from the older man.
It was decided to use the parish room belonging to the Rector as a store for food and clothing, and anyone in real need would be able to go there and ask for assistance.
The store was put in charge of Jinny and her mother.
Meanwhile the Rector and Mr. Griffiths were kept busy going backwards and forwards to Slane to see the emigration authorities, for over half the mining population began to clamour now to leave Doonhaven as soon as possible, before the autumn started, and seek a new livelihood in America and Australia and Africa.
It was easiest for those who had saved money and were skilled miners. They would soon fall on their feet again, and it was not difficult to get them a passage.
But the odd-job men, the surface workers, the firemen and others, who were trained in nothing in particular and had spent their pay every week as it came along, these constituted the problem of Doonhaven.
Many of them were local men, or had come from the neighbouring country, and had worked in the mines from early boyhood. They knew no other trade. The older men, philosophical and more easy-going, shrugged their shoulders and tilled their bit of land. It was pleasant in a way to sit in the sun and do nothing for a change; something would turn up before the winter. The younger men, restless and dissatisfied, roamed the countryside in bands, bent on mischief which they felt justified in doing. Fences were broken, chickens and pigs stolen, orchards robbed, and a spirit of terrorism began to spread abroad which brought no sympathy for the men themselves, only harsh words from the magistrates and threats to bring the soldiers ashore from the garrison on Doon Island.
'It will blow over,' said Simon Flower, Kitty's husband, who had much of the easy-going tolerance of his grandfather and namesake.
'In a couple of months' time the fellows will be lifting potatoes and keeping pigs, as peaceful as you or I. Let them have their fling first.'
'Yes,' said the Rector, 'I agree with you.
It will blow over, and they will go back to the land. But first they may do a considerable amount of damage, poor fellows, and cause trouble to themselves and to other people.'
'Seriously,' said Jinny, 'there are several people who have become quite nervous of Jim Donovan and his crowd. They flung stones at Mrs. Griffiths when she was driving into Mundy last week, and lamed the pony. And you know I am certain it was his lot that broke all the windows in the Post Office.'
They none of them really understood, thought Hal, except perhaps his father-in-law, what a shock it had been to the young men of Doonhaven to see the mines go as they had done, almost overnight. The mines of Hungry Hill, which they had known from childhood, and their fathers before them, and to which they instinctively turned for a living, had become dead and lifeless. What irked them most was the fact that the ore was still there underground, waiting to be brought to the surface. They could not understand why a precious mineral should suddenly become valueless.
'The world still needs tin, doesn't it?' Jim Donovan had asked.
How was it possible to explain to him about cheap labour in Malay? No, thought Hal, it was much simpler to give Jim Donovan a drink and tell him to forget his troubles. For himself, he was glad to be free again. Glad that the whistle of the six-o'clock engine and the clanging bells no longer woke him from sleep, and he could lie in bed, if he wanted to, until ten in the morning, and then, leaning out of his bedroom window, sniffing the summer day, decide to take his paint-box and his easel across the harbour to Clonmere, and alone all day, with a sandwich for lunch, paint the still waters of the creek below the house, the low hump of Doon Island, and the great, green shoulder of Hungry Hill.
'It's the best you've ever done,' said Jinny, when after three days he brought his picture home to her and put it up in their little sitting-room, the paint still wet on the canvas. 'Do you know, I am sure that if you took it to London and sent it up to the Academy they would accept it, and you would sell it for a hundred guineas?'
'A hundred rejection slips,' smiled Hal.
'No, Jinny girl, I'd rather not risk the blow to my pride. It's a present for John-Henry's second birthday. He can look at it when he's a man and see the sun, as I have painted it, on the top of Hungry Hill, and think there's the old hill that brought my family good fortune. The grass will be growing out of the chimney-stacks by the time he's turned twenty-one.'
They stood together, looking at the picture, and then the door of the sitting-room opened, and the Rector came into the room. He had an open letter in his hand, and he was smiling.
'I've news for you, Hal,' he said, 'but you'll never guess what it is.
'You've found a new job for me,' said Hal, 'and I warn you now that I'm not going to take it.'
'Nothing of the sort,' said Tom. 'Here's a letter from your father. He's crossing to Slane, and he will be in Doonhaven the day after tomorrow.'
The sun was setting in the west over Mundy Bay. Little mackerel clouds had come up against the wind, and now hung motionless in the pale sky, for the breeze had died away with the approach of evening.
Hal stood by the lake on Hungry Hill, looking down on Doon-haven and Clonmere. The village, a small, straggling line by the harbour water, still held the sun, but Clonmere was in shadow.
The trees made a tapestry pattern about the castle, and beyond the trees lay the moors and the white road across the moors that led to the Denmare river and Kileen. The world below seemed unreal and remote, like the mist world of a dream at daybreak. Hungry Hill alone had clarity and brightness, the air was full of scent, and the turf under his feet was firm and green. Even the granite rocks were hot where the sun had been all day.
'This is the picture I should have painted,' thought Hal, 'not how the hill looks from Doonhaven and Clonmere, but how we down there must look from Hungry Hill… Petty and insignificant, little ants running about our business. The Brodricks come and go, the men and women of Doonhaven marry, and give birth, and die, the mines make their song and their clatter for seventy-five years, and then are silent again. It's all one to the fairies and the ghosts of Hungry Hill. One day I'll make a picture of it, or if I'm too lazy perhaps John-Henry will.
But whatever happens in this country of ours the hill remains undefeated. He has the laugh on all of us.'
He began walking away from the lake, eastward across the shoulder of the mountain, towards the mines. He had lunched early, and had walked all afternoon alone, in a mood of nerviness and strange unrest which he could not explain, even to Jinny.
His father was to be in Doonhaven tomorrow… He would see him, touch his hand, talk to him-his father, whom he had not seen now for fifteen years, not since he had walked out of his house when he was twenty years old. So many letters that had remained unwritten from Canada, conceived during his most lonely moments, but never put down on paper. Letters from Doonhaven too, that had come to his thoughts but not to his pen.
Descriptions of the mines, tales of Jinny and the boy. And always the silence between them, always the reserve. It was to be broken at last, and he had a great fear in his heart that the meeting would be a failure. They would stand in front of one another, tongue-tied, awkward, alike in so many ways, different in too much, and then his father would break the silence with that old forced, half-jocular tone that he had used many years ago to his schoolboy son, saying 'Well, Hal… how are you, and how's the painting, eh?'
The answer would be the same, clumsy and shy, dragged from him reluctantly, 'All right, thanks,' and then his father, waiting a moment for more and being disappointed, would turn to Tom Caliaghan and be relieved because his presence eased the restraint between them.
His father… He would look perhaps with pity on Jinny, who from shyness would show herself too eager, too anxious to please. John-Henry would be produced, and his quiet, silent charm would not be in readiness for the occasion, a baby tantrum at being dressed in his best would have given him a sullen, obstinate air.
He would turn away from his grandfather and bury his head in a cushion. The encounter would be a failure from every point of view. As he walked Hal became angry.
