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Warning Hill
A Novel
John P. Marquand
To
C. S. M.
I
It was a morning in early June a good many years ago when Tommy lay in the long grass by the shore of the Michael place, looking at the sky. There were vines twisting in uneven spirals up the dilapidated pillars of a near-by summer house. Michael’s Harbor was sparkling in the sun, and the houses of the town across the mouth of Welcome River looked as white as new. The elms above them were like the trees on deep blue china plates. In the distance to the left, nearer to the ocean, the cliffs and lawns and houses on Warning Hill were very plain to see, larger houses even in those days than the houses of the town; even in those days like the palaces in books.
Surely there was no great reason why Tommy should have remembered this one from all those other mornings when the sky was clear and the sunlight seemed dancing on the wind; of all those other ribbons of mornings which have a way of sinking far into the haze of a beginning. He was only seven years old at the time, yet he remembered, perhaps because there is an intuition which warns even a little boy when all his world is near to change. Tommy was making up poetry as children sometimes will, extemporaneously, unconsciously, to please himself and no one else in the world. His yellow head moved back and forth as he intoned it. His eyes were gray and wide.
Then I will get a boat with a big sail, a big sail
And I will sail it and sail it fast
And the wind will blow it until it goes rush and splash
Where the waves are on the rocks—
It was here that a shadow fell across Tommy’s face and made him silent. Now of course Tommy was horribly embarrassed, for no one had ever found him so before, playing make-believe and speaking into the empty air. His father was standing above him; an immense and towering figure he seemed in those days, and powerful in his godlike strength. His father was dressed in his black-and-white checked suit. His mouth was hidden in the bush of his mustache. He was carrying his walking stick, which was immensely large and heavy, which he poked into the grass as Tommy sat up, waiting for him to speak. Always there was something sad in that memory, such as bides in all illusions, especially in those of the days which one loves best. Why is it that the father myth is always first to go? Of course, Alfred Michael had none of those qualities so hopefully bestowed upon him by a lonely little boy. Alfred Michael was at best a slender man whose shoulders were stooped and whose eyes were wistful.
Yes, Tommy was horribly embarrassed. He wriggled like a puppy in the grass, but for a while his father said nothing. For a while his father did not even watch him, but at length he spoke, and not as a grown-up might speak at all.
“Go on, Tom,” he said. “Don’t let me stop you.”
Tommy could only wriggle in the grass, and Alfred Michael was silent again, but at length he sighed.
“Poor boy,” he said, “you’ll bear the burden, too.”
“I’m not poor,” said Tommy, “and I’m not carrying anything.”
“No?” said Alfred Michael, “Well … you’ll see what I mean some day. The world isn’t made for people out of the ordinary running. It’s a devilish hard world.”
Tommy looked proudly up. His father’s checked suit was worn perhaps, but extraordinarily fine. His brown cravat was worn perhaps, but beautifully tied. No wonder the men were glad to have him speak to them at the post office. Not one, not a soul of them, had a tie or a suit like that, or carried a stick to walk.
“In fact,” Alfred Michael leaned upon his stick, “every experiment I make only tends to confirm my opinion of the world’s extreme hardness.”
There was no one else in town who could talk like that. Tommy had heard Elmer, the hired man, say as much.
“Daddy?” said Tommy.
“Yes, my boy,” said Alfred Michael.
“You’re out of the ordinary, aren’t you?”
“Yes, my boy,” said Alfred Michael; “there you have the trouble.”
“And, Daddy,” said Tommy, “you’re smarter than anybody else in town, if you want to be, aren’t you?”
“Don’t use the word ‘smart,’” said Alfred Michael.
“Well … cleverer then, aren’t you?”
“Yes.” His father sighed again. “That’s the trouble. Now don’t ask me why. Little boys mustn’t always be inquisitive.”
“Well, then,” said Tommy, “I want to be out of the ordinary, too.”
For a moment it seemed to Tommy that his father’s face had the strangest expression, just as though he had been hurt, though of course nothing had hurt him.
“I shouldn’t wonder,” he said, “if you get over that in time. Well, well.…”
A step of that decrepit summer house was near. Alfred Michael seated himself upon it. Tommy could see more easily his father’s gold mounted stickpin, and his heavy gold watch chain.
“Tommy?” said Alfred Michael. And again Tommy was aware of the strangest illusion. He could almost think, absurd though it seemed, that his father was lonely.
“Tommy, do you play here always?”
“When mother doesn’t want me,” said Tommy. “And Aunt Sarah doesn’t make me pick up sticks.”
“I used to play here, too,” his father said. “Time flies, but principles are fixed. Tommy, when you play here alone”—his father had the funniest look—“do you ever make believe there is some one playing with you?”
It was an embarrassing question. Tommy’s intuition, if nothing else, told him it was not a thing one talked about, for of course there was some one. When the wind came off the harbor fresh and salt, the long grasses of the uncut lawn would billow gently, exactly as though some one was running on them with a step too light to crush a single blade down to the earth, and there would be a rustling in the unkempt clumps of shrubbery, laid out once in some forgotten plan, precisely as though another little boy were playing in their depths. He was a part of the light and wind, that other little boy, and impalpable as both.
But he was real enough for Tommy, for you can make such things real if you try. Tommy even had a name for him and a good name too, though he did not know it till later. Spurius was what Tommy called that other boy, because Spurius was his right-hand man, as he had been to Horatius in the “Lays of Ancient Rome.”
“Tom,” said Alfred Michael, “you do make believe there is some one. I’ll be willing to bet you do.”
His father was looking at him, waiting for an answer. Yet he could say nothing. Try as he might, there was nothing, of course, to say.
“Well … I used to play with some one, too.” Now it was most extraordinary. When his father spoke, he did not seem like a grown-up in the least. “Lord knows I wish I still could. I’d almost like to try. I wonder if he’s anywhere around. Suppose you call him? Shall I?”
Alfred Michael was smiling beneath his bushy brown mustache, for Tommy could see his lips curl up and tremble at the corners.
“Maro!” called Alfred Michael, “Hi, Maro … are you there?”
Often and often Tommy remembered that fleeting bit of time, in strange undreamed-of hours … the sun that seemed to be dancing on the wind across the unkempt grass, and dancing through the vines of that sagging summer house and making patterns like letters on the floor, and his father sitting on the step, with his walking stick across his knees, listening as though it was not a game at all.
“There,” his father said, “he’s hiding. He’s always hiding now. Maro, confound you, don’t you hear me?”
“His name isn’t Ma
ro,” and Tommy; “it’s Spurius.”
“Is it now?” said Alfred Michael. “Well, that’s a better name … spurious as the wild ass’s skin, but he used to be called Maro in my day. I studied Virgil young.” With a sigh Alfred Michael pulled himself up from the summer house steps and stared across the river mouth to the houses of Michael’s Harbor.
“Oh, well,” he said, “there must be shadows of lots of boys playing on this shore. Play with ’em while you can, Tom—but would you rather play right now or walk with me to town?”
Surely he must have known the question was absurd. There was no one like Tommy’s father, as strong, or as perfect in his wisdom. Tommy was up in a moment, trotting by Alfred Michael’s side. Through the long weeds of an ancient gravel walk they went, through the ruins of what once had been a rose garden, where a few flowers, choked and pallid, were still combatting its perennial neglect, past what had once been the carriage house, with its yawning door and broken windows, to the Michael house itself. Immense and square and gray it always seemed to Tommy, perhaps because he still was small. Yet even later, when he could remember better, and life seemed like yesterday and not another life, the weathered cupola and the Doric columns by the porch would give that same impression of gloomy strength.
Alfred Michael closed the front door behind them. It made a rumbling noise along the hall, which echoed back from silences, shadowy even in the early morning.
“Estelle!” called Alfred Michael. That was Tommy’s mother’s name. “Tom, where is your mother?”
“She’s dusting the books,” said Tommy.
“Oh!” said Alfred Michael; “in with the books, eh?” He walked down the hall with Tommy close behind him, raised his hand to the glass knob to the room where the books were kept, and seemed to hesitate before he turned it, as though he had forgotten something and wanted to go back.
“Estelle?” he said. “Oh, there you are.”
The book room was upside down. On the worn pine floor were books in crooked heaps, which swept upward and covered the two armchairs by the fireplace in crumbling leather waves. His father’s table in the center of the room, generally covered with stray sheets of paper, had been invaded and almost obliterated by these books.
And there was his mother. Tommy remembered her best in times like that. She would always be in a gingham dress as she was that morning, with her head wrapped in a towel, struggling through an eternity of dust, surrounded forever by a chaos which would never be reduced. His mother was on her knees with a duster in her hand. Her mouth was a stubborn line, combatting the weariness of her eyes, offsetting the whiteness of her face, which looked like a face of wax. She was dusting off the tops of the books and was slapping their leaves together. The sun was coming through an open window, and showers of dust particles leaped into the path of the sunlight, and danced like little living things until they dropped away.
His father, as he stood by the open door, had the queerest look, as though something had hurt him again, though of course the idea was silly.
“Good Lord!” he said. “Good Lord, Estelle!”
Tommy’s mother looked up, but she did not smile.
“Won’t you go out, Alfred?” she said, “you and Tommy both go out.”
“Yes,” said Alfred Michael, “yes, of course we’re going, dear.”
“Then don’t just stand there,” said his mother. “Alfred … please!”
“Of course not,” said Alfred Michael; “we’re going, dear. You won’t lose my papers on the table?”
“I guess the world wouldn’t end if I did,” said Tommy’s mother. “It wouldn’t if I burned all the papers in the house!”
“We’re going, dear,” said Alfred Michael; “I just came in to ask if I might take Tommy out with me.”
“Where?” Tommy’s mother looked up from the books, very quickly, Tommy thought.
“To my office, dear,” said Alfred Michael. “I want to read my mail, and Tommy likes to go.”
Tommy’s mother sighed. She was looking very, very tired.
“Tommy,” she said, “let me see your hands.”
“They’re clean, Mother,” Tommy said.
“Take him up and wash them, Alfred,” his mother said. “Wash them clean, so he won’t smear the towel.”
“Come, Tom,” said Alfred Michael. They came to the stairs leading to a landing where a tall clock was ticking. “Come, Tom,” his father said, “I’ll help you up.”
He lifted Tommy right into the air. They were up the stairs in no time, and in the dark back hall.
It was the first bathroom ever known in Michael’s Harbor, but even when Tommy was little, that was long ago. It was lighted by a window of orange and violet glass. The zinc-lined bathtub shone vaguely. Peeping over the edge of the wash basin Tommy could see that purple and yellow flowers were glazed upon its surface.
“Daddy,” said Tommy, “Daddy?”
“Yes,” said Alfred Michael.
“Daddy, when you come in here, it’s funny sometimes, isn’t it?”
Alfred Michael made a strange noise, not exactly like a laugh.
“Nearly everything’s funny, Tom,” he said, “depending on how you look at it.”
“No,” said Tommy, “I don’t mean funny that way. I mean it makes me think.”
“Think what, Tom?”
Tommy stared up at Alfred Michael, and his eyes were very round.
“Sad things,” Tommy said.
“The deuce!” said Alfred Michael. “You’ve selected a queer place to be sad in.”
“The deuce,” said Tommy when they reached the hall.
“Here now,” said his father, “only fathers speak like that. They have their reasons sometimes.”
“But Aunt Sarah’s calling us,” said Tommy. “She heard us through the door.”
Aunt Sarah had that propensity. Aunt Sarah was forever stopping you when you had something else to do, and of course you had to go when Aunt Sarah called, because she was very old.
Aunt Sarah was in her room. There was a large dark bed in it and a dark wardrobe and a bureau. Aunt Sarah was sitting in a chair of the same dark wood, which had a bunch of grapes carved high upon its back. A sewing table was in front of her and her stick was propped against it.
“Hey?” said Aunt Sarah. There were funny little lines that ran right down to Aunt Sarah’s lips when she spoke. “What was the boy saying in the bathroom?”
Though Aunt Sarah was deaf, sometimes she exhibited prodigies of hearing.
“He was saying,” Alfred Michael raised his voice, “that it made him think.”
“Yes,” said Aunt Sarah, “my hearing hasn’t wholly gone, though you may pretend it has. Well … what does it make him think?”
“Sad things.”
“Hey?” Aunt Sarah cupped her hands behind her ear, and Tommy’s father moved closer to her chair.
“Sad things.”
“Hey?” said Aunt Sarah. “Mad things?”
“Confound it!” Alfred Michael drew in his breath. “No, Aunt Sarah, sad things!”
“Ho-ho!” said Aunt Sarah. “Sad things, does he? Well, I should admire to know, all in all, why he shouldn’t be sad.”
“We’re going now,” said Alfred Michael. “Come, Tom.”
“Have you ever done anything not to make him sad?” said Aunt Sarah. “Where’s Estelle?”
“Dusting the books,” said Alfred Michael.
“Hooks?” said Aunt Sarah. “What hooks, I want to know?”
“Books, Aunt Sarah! I said books.”
“Well, what if you did?” said Aunt Sarah. “You needn’t take on so about it, Alfred. Not that it makes any difference to me what she does. She comes of working people. She must be used to work.”
Alfred Michael’s face grew red again, very red, and for a second he did not answer.
“I wonder,” he said at length, “exactly how you think it helps things to say that. Can’t you ever be fair to her? Can’t you ever?”
; Aunt Sarah seemed very much pleased. She hummed softly and gave the strings of her lace cap a little tug.
“Ho-ho!” said Aunt Sarah. “All I can say is that if I had married … and I had my chances, though I suppose you won’t believe it … my husband wouldn’t have been ashamed to have me meet people.”
“You don’t understand, Aunt Sarah,” Alfred Michael moved toward the door as he spoke. “No one wants to know us now.”
Aunt Sarah sat up straighter in her chair, and looked as though she did not understand.
“Not want to know us?” she said. “Alfred, are you crazy?”
It all was very strange to Tommy. For no reason he could see, his father began to laugh.
“It isn’t your fault if I’m sane. I’ll be up again for tea.”
Of course his father was very brave. Tommy’s heart was warm. Standing right in Aunt Sarah’s room, his father had spoken back to her and had looked her in the eye.
“That proves it,” said Aunt Sarah. “There’s a curse upon the house.”
Alfred Michael was at the door, and gently propelled Tommy through it, but as Tommy went, he had a final glimpse of Aunt Sarah, seemingly cheered by the interview, reaching for her sewing.
“Yes,” said Aunt Sarah, “there’s a curse upon the house. Alfred, haven’t you forgotten something? Come back and kiss me, Alfred.”
Once outside Aunt Sarah’s door, it almost seemed to Tommy that his father had forgotten him.
“Confound the women!” Something must have been hurting his father from the way he spoke. “I wish there was a man. Lord! I wish there was a man.”
“Daddy,” said Tommy, “there’s me.”
Suddenly Alfred Michael was on his knees beside him, holding him very tight.
“God bless my soul! Of course there is,” he said.
II
Now why Tommy felt it he could not tell, but he knew it was a time of change. There was a restiveness in the very air about him, and the noises of the trees. It set him to thinking of strange things, of sad things. As they walked past the granite posts of the drive, past which the white macadam road went by to town, his father drew his pipe from his pocket, a grimy curved pipe carved in the shape of a Negro’s head. He drew a deep breath, and puffed a heavy cloud of his tobacco smoke which went racing into nothing.
Warning Hill Page 1
