Warning Hill

by John P. Marquand

  “Oh,” said Mr. Jellett, “do you?”

  (“Now it made me mad,” said Grafton Jellett, when he told of it. “He sat there as if he was a prosecutor’s lawyer and I could see a patch in his elbow. It—it was everything about him made me mad.”)

  “I told you,” said Alfred Michael, “that I was fond of my land, that I had a partiality for it, perhaps hard for you to realize, because we’ve owned it for a long time. We have not come from the city. We owned it when this was actually country. And you told me in reply that you would get it eventually.”

  “Well,” said Grafton Jellett, “so I will.” He gazed absently at Alfred Michael and twiddled his thumbs in little circles—one around the other.

  “It seems so,” Alfred Michael answered, “because you can have it now. I’ll take your offer of five thousand.”

  “Oh,” said Mr. Jellett densely, “you will?”

  “It just happens—” began Alfred Michael. “Yes, I will.”

  Grafton Jellett gazed at Alfred Michael for a minute with pursed lips and dull, vacant eyes.

  “You won’t get it,” said Grafton Jellett. “I’ve reconsidered and withdrawn the offer.”

  There was a moment’s silence. Grafton Jellett twiddled his thumbs and looked at Alfred placidly. Alfred Michael stared hard at the toe of his shiny boot.

  “I’m sorry,” he said slowly. “It just so happened at this particular juncture that I could make use of the sum you mentioned.”

  “Cleaned up in the stock market, eh?” inquired Grafton Jellett.

  “I supposed you knew,” Alfred Michael said. “How much will you buy for?”

  “Thanks,” Grafton Jellett twiddled his thumbs again, “but I don’t buy on a falling market.”

  For a second or so Alfred Michael looked almost ill. “You mean,” he spoke with difficulty, mastered by some emotion, “you’re going to wait till the bottom falls out of the market?”

  “Yes, that’s it,” said Grafton Jellett.

  “And you won’t make an offer till then?”

  “No, why should I?” said Grafton Jellett.

  “No reason,” said Alfred Michael. “You’re absolutely right in principle.” He drew his feet back preparatory to rising. “Well—I’m sorry you won’t buy.”

  Mr. Jellett’s lips relaxed. “The trouble with you fellows,” he said, “and I’ve seen a lot like you since I started my own broker’s office, is you expect extra consideration. Why should you get it? You go into a game when everybody’s warned you you’re bound to lose. You go in with professionals and then, when you get cleaned out, you seem to expect some credit for being amateur. Now Michael, I know men’s faces, and I’ve watched your face. You’re dead flat broke. You may know more than I do about old editions, but not about business, because you’re an amateur. You come in and laugh because I don’t know the difference between cutting and opening a book, and yet you don’t expect me to laugh when you’ve made a damn’ sight worse blunder in a piece of trading. Now why should I help you out of your hole? I’m not saying I won’t, but exactly why on earth should I?”

  “My dear sir,” Alfred Michael was on his feet, worried and solicitous, “what unfortunate remark of mine could have made you suspect I was asking or anticipating anything from you? I beg you—please believe I should never dream of such a thing. I may be an amateur, as you say, but I’ve followed the races and I know exactly what to expect, which is nothing. As you so clearly opined, I am all through—but I said I was sorry about that bit of land, because I feel this is positively the last time I shall offer it to you—your last chance, sir, of having it—and shall we say—of opening its pages?”

  “You’ll be back,” Grafton Jellett said.

  “No,” answered Alfred Michael, “I shan’t. I’ve reconsidered and withdrawn the offer.”

  Grafton Jellett leaned back in his chair comfortably.

  “If you’re going to try anything in the nature of a contest, you’ll be sorry, Michael. I told you I’d get that beach, and I mean it.”

  “No,” said Alfred Michael, “you’re going to be mistaken for once. You won’t get it. Well, good afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon,” said Grafton Jellett. “You’ll be back.”

  Hubbard was there when Alfred Michael went out, and Hubbard remembered him, too—a queer, shapely, smallish gentleman, who took his hat and cane and nodded. He remembered because that gentleman said a peculiar thing when he went out, which sometimes made Hubbard creepy when he took his port in the pantry of an evening. It was just before they came to the door. The gentleman had been whistling to himself, when suddenly he stopped whistling and looked at a picture. He stopped short and peered at it and then put his stick behind his back.

  “Ha!” he said, “a Turner! Better ones in the National Gallery—eh?”

  “Yes, indeed, sir!” Hubbard answered.

  “Ulysses—do you remember him sailing into the soft light? No one else will ever get the feeling or the color.”

  He was shabby, but only a gentleman would have spoken so naturally to one of the help.

  “You must return again, sir, to admire it when the light is better,” Hubbard said.

  “Again?” the gentleman looked at him. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

  “I can’t say as I do, sir,” answered Hubbard, “though of course I have been in service in the old country in houses reputed to have them. Now at Lord Errol’s in Cumberland the kitchen maid, I recall, used continually to be disturbed by a gentleman in shorts, sir, with a noose about his neck, but hardly real, I think, sir. No, sir, as a churchman, I don’t believe in them.”

  “No?” The gentleman gave his stick a twirl. “Then I can’t suppose you ever will see me back, but—you might tell the kitchen maids not to be disturbed.”

  VI

  The thing about it all that hurt Tommy most in all the years to come was the certain knowledge that every one in all of Michael’s Harbor knew everything, though he was the last to hear. He could imagine the whispers and the shrugging of shoulders, for of course no one could understand and a futility over all of it could not help but breed contempt. They knew his father for a weak man, and perhaps they all were right, but Tommy loved him still.

  In the hall of the Michael house there hung a wretchedly executed portrait of a man past middle age, which seemed to Tommy to explain everything much better than any words. It was the picture of his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Michael, ruddy faced, with gray eyes frowning from under heavy brows and with the white mutton-chop whiskers of this traditionally benevolent old gentleman. Poorly done as that portrait was, those whiskers were something of a travesty, because it was a hard old face, despite its hearty ruddiness. The eyes and mouth were hard. The nose was pointed and straight. No wonder Thomas J. Michael made money at the law. Relentless patience and courage were all translated to the canvas even by the inept hand of that forgotten artist, those and a self-importance which set better with the whiskers. Though that energetic old gentleman had vanished a decade and more before, wafted to glory on the wings of apoplexy, the spirit of his self-importance seemed still hovering restlessly to crop up sadly before one’s eyes. The summer house by the shore, and the coach house and all the jig-saw scrolls upon the eaves spoke of Thomas Michael’s efforts. The very frame of the portrait was like him, immense and golden and as heavy with balanced and disproportioned decorations as the Fourth of July orations he once delivered by the soldiers’ monument upon the green.

  There were many moanings at the bar when that bold figure which had so long adorned it passed away. There were echoes which Tommy heard, that demonstrated a spirit beyond a country lawyer’s scope, capable of traveling beyond the Summer County Courthouse and the Summer County Bank, if a thick neck and heavy dinners had not sent it to still rarer distances. There were stories. He was vital and incisive enough to be the hero of local stories, told in the heavy aroma of cigar smoke when hotel chairs are reared up on their hind legs and tired old feet are propped upo
n the front of the veranda railings and the ashes trickled like glaciers down the vest to mingle with the pins of fraternal orders.

  There was the sort of man that Thomas Michael was, and Tommy knew the type—a successful small-town gentleman, who headed the directors of the local bank and was counsel for the trolley company. Now why should he have had a son like Alfred? It must have been a penalty ordained by a tempering Providence.

  Tommy could see it clearly, as time allowed him to look back. Of course, old Thomas could never have known what Tommy’s father meant. He had no sympathy, surely, for the curse of facility that lost itself. He had no friendliness for failure. He gave no help. He only watched with contempt, tinged with his own self-pity, a phenomenon which he could not understand. They must have had words, for no one with Thomas Michael’s face would have stopped with thoughts; and it must have been rather terrible when those two got down to words. Tommy could fancy the old parlor ringing with words until the heavy laces before the windows shook and Thomas Michael’s face went purple. He could imagine his father’s adroit irony clashing with the fire of an old man’s invectives, though all the while poor Alfred must have known that Thomas was dead right. He was useless—damned useless; not fit to carry a corkscrew in his keyring, by God, or to have a bank account. What under the blue heaven had Thomas done to be cursed with the burden of a shirker? What in the devil’s name was the use in reading books, if it didn’t get you anywhere? What in the devil was he going to do—nothing, and watch the lilies grow? Did he think he was a rich man’s son? He’d find out some day he wasn’t so blank-blanked rich.

  Yes, by God, he would! He’d find out some day when it was too late, that you couldn’t get something for nothing. What was the use in heaping advantages on a blank-blank rotten apple? What good had college done? Hadn’t it cost five thousand dollars to get Alfred home again? And could he settle down and work in the city? Not by a blank sight, he couldn’t. How the blazes could a man get on messing around in bucket shops? What was he going to do? He was getting too blanked old for nonsense and what was he going to do? What had he done up to date, unless by some pertinacity of error, to fall in love with a girl no one ever heard of. He hoped by blazes she’d make him dance. He hoped—

  Aunt Sarah told Tommy often enough those scenes. She’d sat through them in the parlor. She’d even said a word now and again, when Alfred had walked out and slammed the door.

  “It’s your fault, Tom,” she told him once, when Alfred slammed the door. “Haven’t you got sense to see he isn’t like you?”

  “Why isn’t he like me?” roared Tom Michael. “Isn’t he my son?”

  “It’s your fault, I tell you,” said Aunt Sarah. “Have you ever let him do anything he wants? You know you haven’t, Tom.”

  “Why the blazes should I?” roared Tom Michael. “Don’t I know best?”

  “Well, well, well,” Aunt Sarah said. “Break his spirit if you want to. You’ll have him thinking he isn’t worth anything and then he’ll never be.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Tom, biting off the end of a cigar. “When he knows he isn’t worth a continental, he’ll brace up and get to work—and I’m the man to make him know.”

  And they both were right. Alfred Michael knew he was not worth a continental and he never was … and Tommy knew it too. Try as he might not to know, he knew it. Yet there was strength somewhere behind that failure, Tommy also knew. There was a magnificence, as vague and intangible as phosphorescent light, gleaming resplendent in that shadowy man, which often made Tommy’s eyes grow dim, because Tommy loved him.

  The sun was setting over Michael’s Harbor, and the sky was a deep fine red. Tommy could remember the exact color, because ever after he was troubled and distressed when such a redness in the sky heralded other dusks. The wind was sinking with the sun, leaving in its wake that evening silence across which sounds could travel much more clearly than at any other time. Though the bridge over Welcome River was half a mile away, Tommy could hear the occasional clatter of hoofs and wheels, and across the river, snatches of laughter and the shouting of children in the streets, gentle always, half stifled by the distance.

  Tommy was standing by the gate posts of the Michael drive, looking toward the elms as well as he could, which was not very well, for his right eye was puffed so that he could hardly see. Nevertheless, he could notice how dark the leaves were growing, approaching in the darkness the shadows on the lawn, and soon he knew that everything in the world outside—the house, the trees, the bushes, would be nothing but one vast shadow until morning came. He did not notice Mr. Street approach until he was close beside him, which was not strange, because Mr. Street walked gently in spite of his great height.

  “Tommy,” he said, “is your daddy home?”

  Tommy shook his head.

  “Where’d he go?”

  “He went for a walk,” said Tommy, “up toward Warning Hill. I’m waiting for him now.”

  “Hah!” said Mr. Street. “Why’re you waiting—a little shaver like you? Isn’t your daddy often out nights?”

  “I don’t know why,” said Tommy, “but I’m waiting.”

  “Well, put this in your mouth,” said Mr. Street, and gave Tommy a little paper bag with red and green stripes on it. Inside was a piece of yellow candy on a stick. “It’s an all-day sucker,” Mr. Street explained. “You got it coming to you.”

  “Thank you very much,” said Tommy.

  “You ain’t got much to thank me for,” said Mr. Street. “At that, you ain’t, but next time you see Mal he won’t do what he done to you again.”

  “You tell Mal,” said Tommy, “I’m going to lick him some day.”

  “Huh,” said Mr. Street, “who told you so?”

  “My—my father did.”

  “Your daddy’s a good man,” said Mr. Street, “but he’s awful optimistic. Huh—here he’s coming now.”

  Sure enough, Alfred Michael was walking down the road, staring at the red sky, and the last of the sun was on him; it gave him a reddish-golden glow and his walking stick was like a bar of gold. But when he reached the gate and the sun was off him, it seemed to Tommy that his father must have been walking a long time.

  “Ah,” he said, “break the news, Jim.”

  “Alf,” said Mr. Street, and cleared his throat, “she faded out, Alf.”

  “The deuce you say!” said Alfred Michael.

  Jim Street coughed. “Seen Jellett?”

  “Yes,” said Tommy’s father. “Jellett faded, too—balked right at the barrier. Why, Tom—you here too? How’s your eye?”

  “It’s all right,” said Tommy. “I don’t mind it now.”

  Mr. Street nodded gravely. “He’s a sport,” he said, “just like his daddy—a dead game sport.”

  Tommy always remembered how pleased his father was. It seemed to Tommy that he had never looked as happy or as proud.

  “That’s something,” he said. “That’s something, isn’t it?” and he dropped his hand on Tommy’s shoulder.

  Mr. Street coughed and cleared his throat. “Alf,” he said, “I’ve known you since we were kids, and you only have to look in the mirror to see a dead game sport.”

  Later, Tommy knew that Mr. Street’s recommendations were of as doubtful value as Mr. Street was himself. But it only made the pathos stronger. He looked up at his father proudly.

  “There’re some things that stay bright, Tom,” he said. “Don’t be forgetting that.”

  “Daddy,” said Tommy, “here’s Mother.”

  His mother was hurrying down the driveway, slender in her gingham dress, and, though her mouth was half open, it still seemed to be a thin straight line. Though her face was still like a flower of wax, her cheeks were redder, and her eyes were very bright.

  “Get off of this place,” she said to Mr. Street and caught her breath. “Get off—you coward!”

  There was something dreadful in her anger. Even Tommy knew that. It was the first time he had ever seen anger rise in a woma
n, beyond all reason and restraint. It was frightful, that change from a bent and narrow figure with a duster in her hands, into sublimated fury.

  “Now, Ma’am—now, Ma’am—” began Mr. Street.

  “Get off this place.” The voice of Estelle Michael was shriller. “How dare you come here, you gutter scum, after what you did to my boy? Tommy, fetch the riding crop. It’s over the mirror in the hall!”

  “But, Ma’am—” began Mr. Street, holding out his hands.

  “Estelle!” Tommy’s father spoke sharply. “I told you it was my fault; I told you I’d take the blame!”

  “You!” Tommy’s mother whirled on him with a half-raised hand. “Of course, you’ll take the blame. Did you ever do anything else? Can’t you stand up and be a man for once? If you can’t, I can! Tommy, did you hear me?”

  “Before God, Ma’am—” Mr. Street’s face was white. “Get your riding switch if you’ve a mind to—”

  “Jim,” said Tommy’s father, “you’d better go away.”

  “Yes,” said Estelle Michael, “he’d better go—and you too, for all the good you are. What have you done to help us? Must I always be the one?”

  “I’ve tried, Estelle.” Tommy looked up startled, because his father’s voice was so very queer. “I swear I’ve tried, Estelle. Won’t you remember that?”

  But his mother did not answer. She had turned and was running towards the house, with her hands before her face.

  “Daddy,” said Tommy, “Daddy, what’s the matter?”

  For surely something was the matter. Tommy knew it, even when Alfred Michael took his hand, because he said the strangest thing.

  “Your mother’s tired, Tommy, but you mustn’t blame her for anything she says. I hope that you’ll be like her, if—you don’t grow too hard.”