Hungry Hill

by Daphne du Maurier

Genres: Historical Fiction; Sagas; Gothic

Synopsis

A storyteller of cunning and genius - Sally Beauman Hungry Hill' is a passionate story told with du Maurier's unique gift for drama. It follows five generations of an Irish family and the copper mine on Hungry Hill to which their fortunes and fates are bound. 'I tell you your mine will be in ruins and your home destroyed and your children forgotten . . . but this hill will be standing still to confound you.' So curses Morty Donovan when 'Copper John' Brodrick builds his mine at Hungry Hill. The Brodricks of Clonmere gain great wealth by harnessing the power of Hungry Hill and extracting the treasure it holds. The Donovans, the original owners of Clonmere Castle, resent the Brodricks' success, and consider the great house and its surrounding land theirs by rights. For generations the feud between the families has simmered, always threatening to break into violence . . .

Release date: May 1, 2008

Publisher: Virago Press Ltd

Print pages: 528

Sample

On the third of March, 1820, John Brodrick set out from Andriff to Doonhaven, intending to cover the fifteen miles of his journey before nightfall. It was typical southwesterly weather, the clouds traveling low, and the soft, blustering wind bringing scattered showers that fell heavy for five minutes and then passed, leaving a space of blue no larger than a man’s fist in the sky, with a glimpse of a sun that promised nothing.

The road in those days was rough and uneven, and John Brodrick, swinging from side to side in the chaise, called to the postboy to have a care, unless he wished to break the bones of the pair of them and land in the ditch for the night, with no supper into the bargain.

There was constant talk of a new road being built, but there the matter ended, like everything else in the country, and never a penny would come from the Government for the improvement of the roads. The expense in the long run would fall upon himself and the other landlords. The trouble was that none of the others had energy enough to put their hands in their pockets, and if they were prevailed upon to do so would oblige with so ill a grace, and with such a pother of words about the hardness of the times, the arrears of rent, and the slackness of their tenants, that it would save time and temper to leave the matter alone, and let the road become little better than the bogs around Kileen.

However, the elections were pending soon in Slane, and if Hare wished to hold his seat, which no doubt he did, John Brodrick would put it to him pretty forcibly that votes were not given for nothing, and certainly not for Ministers to sit in London twiddling their thumbs and neglecting their own country.

How few men of enterprise there were, when all was said and done. It was not a question of conceit, but he could think of no other man but himself who would have achieved what had just been done that day in Andriff, and who would have had the vision in the first place to know that such an undertaking was possible. Too risky, old Robert Lumley had said in the beginning, shaking his head and bringing up objection after objection—how they would never get a return for their money, and would all be beggared, and be forced to sell their land.

“Risk?” John Brodrick had answered him. “Why, no doubt there is a risk, just as every day in every man’s life he risks breaking his neck when he steps outside his door. I grant you the expense in sinking the mine will not be trifling, machinery will be necessary, much labor will be required, and I admit freely that the land here is a different proposition from that of Cornwall, where they shovel and wheel out ore as fast as they can put it in a barrow, whereas we shall not be able to break an ounce without gunpowder. But the copper is there, ours for the taking. One of the most experienced directors of mines in Cornwall, a Mr. Taylor, has been over the ground with me this past week, and his opinion of the place is the same as my own. There is a fortune awaiting us, on my property, Mr. Lumley, and on yours. If you are agreeable to forming a private company under my direction—and mark you, according to the conditions I have just shown you, which my agent has drawn up, you can see well for yourself I shall be risking more than you—then I can promise you that within a few years your royalty will be more than a thousand pounds a year. If you would rather not be a party to the agreement, then there is no more to be said.”

And he had risen from his seat, gathered his papers together, and made a signal to his agent that there was nothing further to discuss. He had got halfway across the room before Robert Lumley called him back.

“My dear Brodrick, there is no need to be hasty. There are naturally one or two points that require clarifying before I make my final decision.”

And then they had sat down once again, and patiently gone over everything that had been gone into twenty times before, with old Lumley quibbling at his already gross percentage. At last the agreement had been signed, the papers sealed, hands shaken, and some refreshment taken in the old library at Castle Andriff, with John Brodrick impatient to be gone now that his object had been achieved, but forced to stay and exchange a few words with his host for common courtesy’s sake.

“I shall hope,” he said, “to see you at Clonmere whenever business brings you to Doonhaven. My daughters will be delighted to welcome you, and my sons to give you some sport with your gun,” and old Lumley, civil enough now he had won his point about his twenty percent share in the future mine, replied with an invitation to the young Brodricks to shoot the hares and the pheasants at Duncroom whenever they had the wish.

And so John Brodrick called to the postboy and climbed into the chaise, just as Lumley’s son-in-law, Simon Flower, returned from hunting, his face and his boots bespattered with mud, his arm round the waist of his twelve-year-old daughter.

“Well,” he asked, smiling all over his handsome, florid face, “and did you get the old gentleman to put his name to your piece of paper?”

“We have formed a company to work the copper mines at Hungry Hill, if that’s what you mean,” said John Brodrick drily.

“Did you now, and all in the space of a few hours?” returned the other. “And here have I been working away these fifteen years trying to get him to put a few slates on the roof of the castle, for I swear to you the rain blows in on my face as I lie in bed, but he won’t allow me enough to get even the mortar mixed.”

“There’ll be money to spare in a year or two that will give you a new roof and an additional wing to your house if you want it,” said Brodrick.

Simon Flower raised his eyes to heaven in mock humility.

“It’s my conscience that will go against me,” he declared, “and I tell you in solemn truth, my dear Brodrick, that if I think the copper is going to come out of the mountains by the sweated labor of young men and of children, why, I won’t touch a penny of my father-in-law’s money; I would rather the roof of my house fell in upon me.”

John Brodrick looked out at the pair of them from his chaise: the smiling, careless Simon Flower, his contemporary, who had never done a stroke of honest work in his life and lived contentedly upon his wife’s money; and the pretty, flushed child, with her slanting eyes, laughing in agreement with her father.

“You had better become a director of the company, Flower,” he said. “It will mean long hours, you know, supervision of the work at the mines, keeping the fellows in order, taking ship to Bronsea every six months to the smelleding works, keeping a check on accounts, and a dozen other things beside.”

Simon Flower shook his head, and sighed.

“It’s a pity,” he said, “that the mines should be started at all. We are peaceful enough as we are. Why do you want to have us all troubled and excited, and the people sweating, and the poor old hill broken into with explosives?”

John Brodrick settled himself in the chaise.

“I believe in progress, and giving employment to all the poor devils who find living next to impossible in this country, and making money to provide for my children, and my children’s children, when I die,” he said.

“Ah,” said Simon Flower, “they won’t thank you for it. All right, Brodrick, go and start your mines and make your fortune, and I’ll sit back and reap some of the benefit.” He smiled, and kissed his daughter on the top of her head. “Think of all the weary miners digging for our comfort,” he laughed, and lifting his hat, he waved it gaily in farewell.

Typical, thought John Brodrick as he looked out across Mundy Bay—typical of nearly every man in the country. Irresponsible, indifferent, their heads full of nothing but dogs and horses; half the year spent on the Continent chasing the sun, and the rest in yawning on their own doorstep. Despised by their tenants, their land a disgrace, and, to crown all, more than a trifle drunk at two o’clock in the afternoon.

He dismissed Simon Flower from his mind with little trouble, having a great contempt for people he did not understand, and, watching the long Atlantic rollers sweeping into Mundy Bay, he began to think about the ships that would presently bear the ore from the harbor at Doonhaven, round the coast and across the channel to Bronsea. The shipment would be the hardest part of the business, for the harbor dried out at low water, which would compel the vessels to take the ground, and in bad weather they might be weather-bound for several weeks at a time. He remembered how, when poor Sarah was alive, they had been held up in Mundy for more than three weeks, on account of the weather, for the master would not risk his ship in the southwesterly gale even for a short distance, and the road was not fit to travel, with Sarah in her condition, just before Jane was born.

No, the vessels would have to make fast time during the summer months, for the winter would necessarily be a slack period, and he thought with satisfaction of the two or three fine ships he had noticed lying alongside the wharfs in Slane a few weeks back (one of them newly launched, the paint on her barely dry), which might be purchased for a comparatively low figure if he went about it at the earliest possible moment, before the story of the new mining company was spread abroad. Owen Williams, of Bronsea, would keep his eyes open for likely vessels his side of the water. It was lucky he had already come to such an excellent agreement with the firm for the future handling of the ore and its distribution to the smelleding companies. He supposed he would be crossing to Bronsea with increasing frequency during the years to come, and he decided he would have to look out for some small property within easy reach of the port, for to stay in Bronsea itself would be impossible. It would make a change for the girls, too. Clonmere was lonely and cut off from all amenities—they were beginning to remark upon it now they were grown up, especially Eliza. It was a different matter for the boys, Clonmere was a vacation to them after Eton and Oxford, but girls could not hunt hares on Doon Island or paddle the bogs after snipe.

The chaise was passing the little church of Ardmore, strange, lonely landmark by the sea, the farthest outpost of the scattered Doonhaven parish, and now the road rose and twisted to the foot of Hungry Hill. John Brodrick called to the postboy to stop.

“Wait for me a moment,” he ordered. “I shall not delay you long.”

He climbed a short way above the road, until the boy and the chaise were hidden, and after walking for five minutes or so he came upon the site of the future mine. He stood for a while looking about him, his hands behind his back. Curious to think that in a few months there would be shafts sunk, and chimneys built, and all the grim reality of industry, a road cut here where there was as yet no path, the lean-to sheds, the huts of the miners, the hum and whine of machinery.

Now the scrubby grass blew softly in the wind, and the sun, coming for an instant from behind a cloud, shone upon the lichened stone so soon to be blasted by gunpowder, and suddenly a snipe rose from the ground in front of him, twisting and darting in erratic flight.

John Brodrick looked upward, and above him stretched the great mass of Hungry Hill, wild and untrodden, the summit hidden in mist. He knew the hill in every mood, in every season. In winter, when cold and frost left Doonhaven untouched, there would be a cap of snow on the top of Hungry Hill, and the lake near the summit would have a thin sheet of ice upon the surface. He would see the white face of the hill from the grounds down at Clonmere. Then the gales and rain of February would come, hiding the hill in a curtain of driving mist, until one morning in early spring he would wake to a day of unbelievable brilliance and promise, the air full of that spongy softness, so tender and so beguiling, that belonged only to this country of his birth, and there would be Hungry Hill smiling under the blue sky, the mist dissolved, the gales forgotten, a continual temptation to forget the business of the day and the work of a conscientious landlord, an everlasting reminder that there were snipe to shoot, and hares to hunt, and fish hiding in the waters of the lake, and warm, rough grass where a man could fling his body and lie sleeping under the sun.

Yes, the heat of midsummer too, the silence and the peace, the hawks that hovered in the sky, the butterflies that skimmed the lake, and bathing in the lake as he remembered doing when he was a boy, the water cold and clean.

Now the hidden wealth of Hungry Hill would be revealed at last, her strength harnessed, her treasure given to the world, and her silence disturbed in the name of progress. The forces of Nature, thought John Brodrick, must be made to work for Man, and one day, this country, so poor and so long neglected, will take her rightful place among the rich nations of the world. Not in his time, nor in his sons’ time, but maybe in little more than a hundred years it would be possible.

Another cloud came across the sun, a spot of rain fell upon his head, and John Brodrick turned his back upon Hungry Hill and went down to the road below.

When he reached the post chaise, he saw a man standing in the road, waiting for him. He was tall and bent, and leaned heavily upon a stick, a man of about sixty years of age, whose light blue eyes made a strange contrast to the mahogany of his face. He smiled when he saw John Brodrick, a smile that had little welcome in it and no pleasure, but appeared to be caused by some secret mirth of his own. John Brodrick nodded to him curtly.

“Good afternoon, Donovan,” he said. “You seem to be a long way from home with that bad leg of yours.”

“Good day, Mr. Brodrick,” returned the other. “As to my leg, he’s used to tramping the hills and the roads, and serves me well enough. And how did you find the site for the new mine looking?”

“What do you know of a new mine, Donovan?”

“Maybe the fairies told me about it,” answered the man, still smiling, and scratching his white hair with the end of his stick.

“Well, there’s no harm in anyone knowing now,” said Brodrick. “Yes, there is to be a copper mine on Hungry Hill. I signed an agreement with Mr. Lumley of Duncroom this very day, and we intend to start proceedings very shortly.”

The man named Donovan said nothing. He stared a moment at John Brodrick, and then turned his blue eyes away from him, upward, to the hill.

“You’ll be having no great advantage from it,” he said at length.

“That we propose to find out,” said Brodrick shortly.

“Ah, I’m not talking about the fortune you’ll make,” said the other, waving his hand in contempt. “The copper will do that for you, aye, and for your sons and your grandsons too, while me and mine grow poorer on the bit of land left to us. I’m thinking of the trouble it will bring you.”

“I think we can take good care of that.”

“You should have asked permission of the hill first, Mr. Brodrick.” The old man pointed with his stick to the great mass of hill that towered above them. “Ah, you can laugh,” he said, “you, with your Trinity education and your reading and your grand progressive ways, and your sons and your daughters that walk through Doonhaven as though the place was built for their convenience, but I tell you your mine will be in ruins, and your house destroyed, and your children forgotten and fallen maybe into disgrace, but this hill will be standing still to confound you.”

John Brodrick ignored this flow of rhetoric, and climbed into the chaise.

“Perhaps,” he said, “Mr. Morty Donovan would like to take shares in the copper mine, and then perhaps he would not show his dislike quite so plainly? I shall be paying good wages to the men employed in the mine. If your sons feel like doing some honest work for a change I shall be delighted to employ them.”

The old man spat on the ground in contempt.

“My sons have never worked for a master,” he said, “and never shall do while I live. Doesn’t all the land here belong to them by rights, yes, and the copper too, and couldn’t we take it all, if we had the mind?”

“My dear Donovan,” said Brodrick impatiently, “you live in the past of two hundred years ago, and talk like an imbecile. If you want the copper why don’t you form a company, and engage the labor, and erect the machinery?”

“You know well enough I am a poor man, Mr. Brodrick; and whose fault is it but that of your grandfather?”

“I’m afraid I have no time to discuss those ancient quarrels, Donovan, which are better forgotten. Good evening to you.” And John Brodrick gave a sign to the postboy to drive on, leaving the old man leaning upon his stick, staring at them, the smile gone from his face.

John Brodrick looked out over the view below them, as the chaise topped the hill. Yonder, across the bay, lay the little harbor of Doonhaven, with Doon Island at the entrance to the bay, and beyond Doonhaven, at the head of the farther creek, stood his own gray castle of Clonmere, like a sentinel guarding the waters.

The chaise rattled down the hill into the town, and past the harbor, scattering the cattle and the geese in the marketplace, nearly running over a dog which came barking at the wheels, and avoiding by a miracle a small, barefooted boy who was chasing a hen into a cottage, and so past the Post Office, and Murphy’s shop, and up out of the village beyond the few cottages on the hill at Oakmount, to his own gatehouse and the park. The gates were open, at which he frowned, for it was by such carelessness that his cattle had strayed last time to the moors, and were caught and kept by one of Morty Donovan’s men, and branded with Morty Donovan’s mark into the bargain, to add to the usual unpleasantness between the families, and he resolved to speak firmly to the widow Creevy at the gatehouse on the first occasion, and to remind her that her position was one of trust, and if she neglected it he had other tenants who might fill it to greater advantage.

Across the park they went and through the second gate, past the belt of trees that his grandfather had planted, past the rhododendron bushes that had been the pride of poor Sarah and were now watched so tenderly by her daughters, and down onto the smooth gravel ride beside the creek and the sunk garden, through the archway of stone, and so back to where the sweep on the ride ended before the gray walls of Clonmere Castle.

The Brodricks dined at five, and by the time John Brodrick had washed and changed his traveling clothes, dinner was upon the table, with his family assembled round it, ready to welcome him after his week’s absence in Slane and Mundy. His wife Sarah had died some years previously, and his eldest daughter Barbara now filled her mother’s place at the end of table. She came forward to kiss him, her example followed by her two sisters, Eliza and Jane. Henry, John Brodrick’s eldest son, had already welcomed his father on his arrival, and now stood by the sideboard sharpening the carving-knife in preparation for his father’s attack upon the roast pig. Thomas, the serving-man, stood in attendance by his side. Before carving, John Brodrick said grace, and this formality disposed of, he proceeded to slice the meat onto the plates handed him by Thomas.

“Is it true, father,” asked Barbara, “that there has been some horrible plot to assassinate the Cabinet Minister during his tour of the country?”

“I fear it is only too certain that there was some such plot,” answered her father, “but luckily it was discovered in time, and no harm done. The whole affair must have been inspired by some of the dregs of the people and whoever was responsible will be brought to justice. There was talk of little else in Slane, needless to say. It will have some effect at the elections.”

“And is Mr. Hare to stand for the County again?” asked Henry.

“I understand so. Which reminds me, Henry, there is something you can do on the occasion. You can tell all my freeholders to hold themselves ready to vote as I wish them, and if any should absent themselves on the day without valid excuse of ill-health, he will find himself without a roof over his head.”

“I can vouch for one or two,” laughed Henry, “who will find themselves stricken with fever when the time comes, and the priest by the bedside.”

“The Reverend Father will keep himself scarce, and out of trouble, if he has any sense,” said John Brodrick, and he took his place at the head of the table.

The empty chair by his side caused him to frown.

“John is late again,” he said. “Did he not know I was returning?”

“I believe he went across to the island,” said Barbara swiftly. “He wanted to arrange a day’s shooting with one of the officers in the garrison. Perhaps he has had some difficulty in bringing the boat back.”

“I will not stand unpunctuality from anyone, and certainly not from a nineteen-year-old boy,” said her father. “Clonmere is not Andriff Castle, and I have not the careless go-as-you-please temperament of Simon Flower. You can all of you remember that. Kindly teach your brother better manners, Henry. I thought civility the least you would learn at Eton and Oxford.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Henry, exchanging a glance with his sister.

“John has never had any idea of time,” complained Brodrick’s second daughter Eliza, who thought, by seeming to side with her father, to find some favor. “He was still fast asleep at breakfast this morning—Thomas had to call him twice.”

The unfortunate John, entering at this moment, found all eyes upon him in sympathy, excluding Eliza’s and his father’s, and, hastily making his excuses and flushing scarlet as he did so, he took his seat at the table and added to the misery by spilling the gravy on the cloth.

“Curious,” observed his father drily, “how a prolonged stay in this country makes a boor of a fellow, so that he dribbles his very food. Your friends at Brasenose College would hardly recognize you. However, let us talk of other things. Thomas, you may leave us. Master Henry and Master John will wait upon the ladies. No, the fact of the matter is,” he said deliberately, looking round at his children, when the servant had left the room, “I have something to tell you all, concerning the future.”

He laid his knife and fork upon his plate, smiling at Henry as though in confirmation of some previous conversation, while the rest of his family waited for him to continue.

It was a proud moment for John Brodrick. For months now, ever since the possibility of extracting the copper from Hungry Hill had become a certainty in his mind, he had thought and dreamed of little else. He had set himself the task of breaking down the apathy and mistrust of his neighboring landlord with determination, for he knew that his capital alone would not cover the initial expenses. Besides which, the actual site of the mine was not entirely his possession. Part of the lands of Hungry Hill belonged to the Duncroom estate of Robert Lumley, and without his consent to form the company the mine could not be started. And at last old Robert Lumley had signed the agreement, and the work could begin. It was not, John Brodrick told himself, as he gazed proudly upon his young family, that he wanted a fortune for himself or for them. The money would come, he knew that, he took it for granted. Henry would live in comfort at Clonmere after him, and Henry’s children. He would buy more land, plant more trees, build another wing onto the castle, and buy land the other side of the water too, should he have the mind.

No, it was the principle of the thing with which he had most concern. There was wealth in this country of his, ready for the taking, and only the laziness of his fellow-countrymen prevented them from enjoying it. He looked upon it as a duty, something he owed to his country and to the Almighty, to glean the hidden wealth from Hungry Hill and to give it, at a price, to the peoples of the world. He glanced up at the portrait of his grandfather that hung above the mantelpiece in the dining room, John Brodrick who had built Clonmere, and had been shot in the back in 1754 on his way to church, because he had tried to put down the smuggling along the coast. He knew his grandfather would have approved the starting of the mine. It would have been a matter of principles, just as it was for his grandson. Well, maybe the people would shoot him in the back as they had done the first John Brodrick, and maim his cattle, and set fire to his crops, but they would never frighten him from doing what he believed to be his duty. Smiling, he looked at each of his family in turn.

“This afternoon at Castle Andriff I signed an agreement with Robert Lumley, forming a company to work a copper mine on Hungry Hill,” he said.

The young Brodricks stared back at him in silence, and he thought, with mingled pride and amusement, how like they were to one another, and how each one, from tall Henry down to the little Jane, although possessing features and a personality of their own, had the one characteristic in common, the unmistakable Brodrick quality of knowing themselves to have more brains and breeding than the usual run of their fellow-creatures.

He remembered his father Henry, who had broken his back out hunting at Duncroom, and how, when they would have carried him on a hurdle to a neighboring cottage, to place him on a bed, he cursed them, saying, “God damn you, let me die in the open, in my own time,” and they waited there, five hours under the rain, while he stared up at the sky.

And here was his own boy, Henry, twenty-one next year, with that same look of easy confidence in his dark eyes, as he smiled across the table at his father, the only one with whom he had already discussed the mining prospects, and who had shown his usual gay enthusiasm and willingness to help.

There was Barbara, twenty-three, and the eldest of the family, her soft brown hair falling over her forehead, which was wrinkled a little as she thought over the news, for Barbara needed time to consider when any new project was put before her; she was conservative by nature and mistrusted changes. Eliza, her sister, and a year younger than herself, stouter, fairer, and more like her dead mother in appearance, was already speculating upon what the future should bring for herself. Father would make a fortune, of course, and then perhaps they need not live all the year at Clonmere, but could visit Bath during the season, and even the Continent perhaps, as Lord Mundy’s daughters had done a year ago.

The Continent passed through Henry’s mind too, as he watched his father’s face. He loved Clonmere, he loved his family, and he believed that the sinking of the mine would be a sound proposition, workable in every way, and a benefit to the people and the country. If it meant that he would be able to go to France, to Italy, to Germany, to Russia, to see all the pictures and to hear all the music that he had heard discussed in Oxford, why then, the sooner Hungry Hill was open to pick and shovel and machinery the happier he would be.

His brother John stared out of the window, down to the creek below the house. He and his sister Jane were the darkest of the family. There was something almost Spanish about their olive skins and their warm brown eyes, a southern gypsy quality that the others lacked.

Mines upon Hungry Hill, he thought, noise and machinery to drive away the wild birds and the rabbits and the hares, and a crowd of wretched devils working underground day after day, glad of the employment to keep themselves from starving, and cursing the master who gave it to them, all in the same breath. He knew how it would be. He had seen it happen before in Doonhaven, whenever his father talked to the people about progress. They were all smiles and civility to his face, and as soon as his back was turned they muttered among themselves, and went and broke down a fence, or stole a cow, or lamed one of his horses, in a strange, impotent resentment.

Oh, well, father would have his mine, and they would all become millionaires, and that was that. As long as he, John, was not asked to supervise the work at the mine, or take up any position of responsibility, he did not care, and if they would leave the summit of Hungry Hill untouched so that he could exercise his dogs there, and lie on his back in the sun, and be left alone without feeling all the time that his father was expecting him to do something, then the new company could sink a hundred mines for all he cared. And Jane, who at eight years old was already the beauty of the family, petted but unspoiled, the darling of them all, with her lively imagination and strange fancies—Jane saw a great stream of copper running down the side of Hungry Hill, the color of blood, and a crowd of miners dabbling in it like little black devils, with her father seated upon a throne like God in the midst of them.

“When do you propose to start the work, sir?” asked Henry.

“Within the course of the next month,” replied his father. “The preliminary excavations may begin even sooner. I have someone coming over from Bronsea to supervise matters and he will bring an engineer with him. We ought to be underground before midsummer, and with luck should have three months’ trial of the mine before the autumn sets in. We don’t want to lose the top prices, if we have anyt