Warning Hill

by John P. Marquand

  The houses on the hill had grown very large, all of them like castles. On a stretch of green above him was one of brown rough stones that was larger than the others. Its gray slate roof was a mass of pointed towers. There were balconies in front of its windows, and the lawn came down from it in great long steps. Tommy looked hastily at the shore line. Everywhere before him were the rocks and rough water.

  “Look forward!” called Tommy Michael. It was pleasant to feel that some one else was there.

  “Ready about!” called Tommy. “Stand by to beach her!”

  Though Tommy was pretending, he could manage a small boat. It was pleasant having things both make-believe and real, because you could slip from one to the other as you pleased. Tommy had seen a place to land where the rocks had dropped away to leave a little strip of sandy beach with a stretch of marsh grass behind it. A minute later Mal Street’s skiff nosed into the sand with a flapping sail, and Tommy was shoving in the anchor. Tommy was very careful to make no unnecessary noise. He was sharing the feelings of greater men than he. Balboa would have understood, and old De Soto and Champlain, that Tommy was a brother to them all, as he walked through the marsh grass of a country, where fiddler crabs scuttled to their holes before his step.

  Tommy walked forward a little way and stopped, but no one was in sight. There was only the lapping of the harbor waves. Now that he was off the water, the sun was very warm.

  “Stand by the ship,” said Tommy. “I’m going on ahead.”

  Nothing answered. Only the waves were splashing on the shore. Before him was a small building, whose door sagged half open, and whose windows were gaping like sightless eyes. Its empty stillness startled him, and a curious something besides, as if something was there, though nothing was there at all. The house, the beach and the marsh made a solitary lonely country, because a row of poplars cut it off from the mainland, like a wall.

  “Stand by the ship!” said Tommy. “I’m going through those trees!”

  Of all the sights that Tommy Michael was to see, he could never recall one finer than the one which met his eyes.

  IX

  Tommy was standing upon a lawn. It was magnificently green without a single weed upon it, with every blade of grass exact in height. A freshness of growing things was in the breeze, the scent of flowers and green. It seemed to him that soft hands were touching his face and his rumpled hair as he drew in his breath. He forgot that he was a slender tow-headed little boy, in a faded shirt, torn trousers and muddy shoes, with eyes wide and mouth half open. Far away on the rising ground was the house of brown stones, which he had seen from the water. All about him on the lawn were so many beds of flowers of so many colors and sizes that they seemed to shift and change everywhere he looked. It was ten, twenty times as large as any lawn and garden in Michael’s Harbor. Straight toward the brown-stone house, not far from where he stood, was a broad white path, running straight up steps and terraces among the flowers, and on either side of the path were figures of large green animals. Tommy could see an elephant and a lion and a long-necked bird.

  “Golly!” said Tommy right out loud. “Every one of ’em made of bushes!”

  As he spoke, a voice from behind him answered, “Of course they’re made of bushes!”

  The voice was soft and clear, like the running of cool water. Tommy could almost believe it was not a real voice at all, until he remembered, as he turned himself about, that the grass was thick and that the wind was blowing. He saw that a little girl was standing not ten feet away, looking at him with dark and level eyes.

  She might have been a painting. She had that mysterious power sometimes possessed by a canvas to etch itself upon the memory. The tilt of her nose, the upward twist of her lips, her white frilly dress, her bare legs and socks and shiny little shoes were all a part of an impression and meant nothing in themselves. What Tommy remembered was an unsubstantial something, a lightness in her little body, a glimmer in the depths of her eyes that made you think, should you turn your head, that she might disappear into the sun and dancing shadows. She did not disappear. She even took a step toward him, a light feathery step, and stopped. Her hair was brushed straight down her back like Alice’s in Wonderland. She was smiling faintly and that curious light was dancing in her eyes.

  “Of course they’re made of bushes,” she said again. “They’re like the box trees in Pliny’s garden.”

  Tommy drew in his breath; he had forgotten about the animals by the path.

  “Who—who are you?” Tommy said.

  “I’m Marianne,” she said. “Marianne Jellett. Who are you?”

  Tommy Michael drew another deeper breath. For a moment Tommy came near to running away, for he knew he was in the enemy’s country, once he heard that name. He was vaguely aware of something which was not right, of a disloyalty to memory—and yet he stayed without ever knowing why.

  “I guess you don’t know me,” he said. “I’m Tommy Michael.”

  She put her head a little to one side, as a bird might, Tommy thought.

  “Are you?” said Marianne. “I was just hoping something strange might happen, and nothing strange has ever happened until now. C’est une bonne chance—that’s French. Do you know French?”

  “I’m going to study it,” said Tommy, “when I go to high school in the fall.”

  “I learn it from Miss Meachey,” said Marianne, “she’s my governess, you know—and then I’ve learned some bad words too, from Cléone. She’s mamma’s maid, and sometimes when I don’t have anything else to do, I say them to Henri. He’s our chauffeur, and he’s French too. He thinks they’re ever so funny when I say them.”

  She smiled at Tommy faintly. Her voice was exactly like the rippling of a brook, it seemed to Tommy Michael. He could not understand half of what she said. Yet it was so strangely pleasant that he stood there, not knowing what to answer, and it seemed to him again that soft hands were touching his face.

  “You like me, don’t you?” Marianne inquired.

  Tommy nodded slowly.

  “Well, I don’t mind,” said Marianne. She smoothed the ruffles of her dress with a thin little nervous hand, and laughed. It was very pleasant to hear her laugh. It was like the singing of the birds, it seemed to Tommy, and the whispering of the wind.

  “I knew you did,” said Marianne, “I could tell.”

  “How?” asked Tommy.

  “I don’t know, but I could tell,” said Marianne.

  Tommy saw that she was looking at him, at his shoes and trousers, and at his sun-bleached shirt. It was that frank unwavering curiosity of a child, which sees everything without the light of charity or expedience. Tommy realized he was as different from her as a being from a different world. Tommy became aware that his shoes were caked with rich salt mud. His trousers, never very passable, were also muddy. Such things had made little difference where he came from, but on that lawn, beside the impeccable whiteness of Marianne, he felt a proper twinge of awkwardness. His shirt, of a sort known as the Garibaldi blouse, was secured about his middle by a string—a “stomach string,” Tommy called it, which he now noticed had become undone and was twining rakishly about his legs. He found himself blushing with a new shame as he endeavored to push it back.

  “This isn’t my best clothes,” Tommy explained. “I’ve got a blue suit I wear to church.”

  “Oh,” said Marianne, “I don’t mind, but we’d better go and sit under that tree, perhaps. If one of the gardeners came, he might not know what to think.”

  “What,” said Tommy, “would he think?”

  Yet even then he must have had an inkling of what she meant.

  “Oh, nothing,” said Marianne.

  She skipped before him, nervously across the grass, now and then looking over her shoulder to see if he would follow, just as Lorna Doone had done in the Valley of the Doones. She stopped beneath a young copper beech with bending branches which nearly touched the grass.

  “Sit down,” said Marianne. “It’s—it’s really
cooler here.”

  She paused and patted the pleats of her dress and looked at him from the corner of her eye.

  “It’s funny,” said Marianne, “I know who you are. I’ve seen you lots of times.”

  “You’ve seen me?” stammered Tommy, and it seemed a most peculiar thing that she should have ever seen him.

  “Yes,” said Marianne, “often when I go driving. I’ve seen you by the gates of that old house with a cupola on top. I’ve wondered who you were.”

  Tommy felt his face grow red.

  “It’s my house,” he explained. “It may be old, but it’s a pretty big house.”

  Then he wondered for the first time, if she had invited him beneath that beech so that no one else might see him. It was not a pleasant thought, but it would not go away.

  “What do you do?” asked Marianne.

  “Do?” echoed Tommy. “I milk the cow and split the wood, and help my mother inside.”

  “Do you?” said Marianne. “I’ve wondered what boys did down there. What else?”

  “I work,” said Tommy, “for Mr. Cooper in the bank, running errands, sweeping out in the afternoon, winters, and all day, summers. I’ve got to help at home.”

  “Oh,” said Marianne, and that was all. The decorous smoothness of the lawn, everything, seemed to be laughing at Tommy Michael.

  Then in that way in which a mind will flash back sometimes, Tommy remembered who she was. It was on the road to Michael’s Harbor long ago. A carriage was coming down that road, with a body of yellow and red panelling upon it, and its wheels made a shining blur. Four bay horses were drawing it. Out of the white dust cloud which eddied about them they lifted their forefeet as though they heard music. A little girl in that carriage was watching him. Her hair was down her back like Alice’s in Wonderland. She wore a tiny hat with ruffles on it.

  “Mamma!” Tommy heard her voice above the slapping hoof beats and the rattling of the wheels. “Look, Mamma, is that a common little boy?”

  There she was looking at him again, with her hair still down her shoulders. She must have seen something astonishing on his face, for she had stopped smiling.

  Tommy remembered, and got slowly to his feet.

  “I guess,” said Tommy, “I hadn’t ought to have come here. I guess you never knew anybody like me.”

  It was curious, but as he spoke, she looked like any other girl. She was standing beside him. Her lips were parted, small red lips.

  “Why?” Her very voice had changed. “I don’t know what’ you mean.”

  “I guess,” said Tommy, “people like you and me ought never to know each other. We’d never know what each other means. I came over here because I remembered something. I hadn’t ought to have come.”

  There was a moment’s silence. She looked at him, then looked away, and pulled at the edge of her dress.

  “But I want to know you,” said Marianne, “and I can know you if I want to.”

  “No,” said Tommy, “I guess you wouldn’t want to if you did. I guess I hadn’t ought to have come. I’m going now.”

  “But I want to know you.” Music—her voice was like the softest music, and all at once she was gentle and very kind. “Don’t you like me?”

  Surely any one is very foolish to speak lightly of the intellect of children.

  “Yes, I do,” said Tommy, “but it wouldn’t do any good. You’d only laugh.”

  “No, I wouldn’t.” She was strangely eager. “You can come here every day, right by this tree, and no one will ever know, and I’ll bring you down ice cream. I don’t suppose you often have ice cream.”

  “I guess you’re always used to getting what you want,” said Tommy, “from the way you sound. All you kids up here must always get everything you want. I’ve got to be going now.”

  Surely Tommy must have had a second sight that afternoon. He only knew much later how used Marianne was to getting what she wanted, even when she had no right.

  “But how are you going?” Marianne’s mind was always darting back and forth, like something in a cage, when she could not have her own way. “How did you come?”

  “In a boat,” said Tommy. “I’m going to sail her back.”

  “To the harbor?” There was more color in her face. “Well, I’m not proud. I’ll sail back with you—so there. Patrick is over at the station to meet the train, and he can drive me back, and leave me by the gate, and no one will know a thing about it. He’s only bringing a maid.”

  Often Tommy was to wonder what would have happened if he had told her no. He was standing in that sunny place with his whole life in the balance, though of course he did not know. Does any one ever know until it is too late?

  “It won’t make any difference,” said Tommy, “you’ll be proud just the same.”

  “And I’m going just the same. Where’s the boat?” Her eyes were very bright.

  “You’ll get your dress all dirty,” he objected.

  “What if I do?” began Marianne. “I’ve got lots of others.—Oh, Jiminy!”

  In the polite school which Marianne attended this was a strong expression. Her voice had dropped to a whisper.

  “Jiminy! There’s papa! He’s coming down the path. We’d better run!”

  “Marianne!” some one was calling not very far away. “Marianne!”

  “Hurry!” Marianne seized his arm. “Run! He’ll be furious if he sees us!”

  “Why?” asked Tommy, and he did not stir a step.

  “Marianne!” came the voice. “Confound it! Marianne!”

  “Won’t you run?” Her breath came very fast. “You haven’t any business here. You’re—oh—you’re a village boy!”

  That flame in Tommy flared into his face. That last thing Marianne had said was too much for him to bear. In a vague way he felt that it was time for action, and he wrenched away his arm.

  “Run away yourself,” he answered, and it was all because she had called him a village boy, though it was exactly what he was. He turned his back upon her and walked out from beneath the tree. She said something which he did not hear, but he heard the rustle of her dress, and Marianne had gone. Tommy Michael stood alone upon the sunny turf. He had drunk the wine of life itself, and now, whether he wanted it or not, the wine was in him. Whether he wanted or not, he was out in the sunlight to meet whatever came—and Marianne had run away.

  X

  A thought was pulsing through Tommy. It was in the wind about him and in the garden air.

  “Come now, Tommy,” the thought was saying, “your father wouldn’t have been afraid.”

  That same thought had come to Tommy when he had taken his first high dive off Munsey’s Bridge, while every one waited to see if he dared, and earlier yet, when he first rode a horse in back of Mr. Marston’s livery stable. But now those rustic feats of daring appeared slight tasks before what he was facing. Now he was risking himself for an idea, so half formed that he could not wholly grasp it.

  Tommy saw that a short plump man was walking down that path which was lined with bushes cut like animals. He had on a gray suit with beautiful straight creases. His hair was sandy-colored and very thin on top of his head. His face was plump and placid, like a fat man’s face, Tommy thought, but not as happy as a fat man’s face; his eyes were the same light blue as Marianne’s, but you could not see behind them. When he saw Tommy he stopped walking.

  “Hello, young man,” he said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Nothing.” Tommy swallowed, and strove to steady his voice. “Just looking around.”

  “Just looking around, eh?”

  The plump little man did not seem angry, or even interested. He did not seem anything at all. Tommy did not guess till years were gone, that Grafton Jellett must have been in a very genial mood that day.

  “What are you looking for? And how the devil did you get here?”

  “I wanted to see,” said Tommy. “I came over in a boat. There isn’t any harm, is there, just looking around?”

 
“Over in a boat, eh? Well, how do you like it?”

  “It’s not so bad.”

  “Not so bad, eh?” A ripple of something—you could not tell what—passed over that gentleman’s face. “Do you know who I am, son?”

  “I guess,” said Tommy, “you’re Mr. Jellett, aren’t you?”

  “You guess so, eh? Well, you guess right. And you’re not afraid of me, eh? Well, I own this garden, son.”

  “Well,” said Tommy, for he seemed called upon to speak, “we’ve got a garden too.”

  “You’ve got a garden too, eh? Well, well.… Did you happen to see anything of a little girl down here—about two years younger than you, son?”

  “No.” Instinctively he lied. It seemed the proper thing to do, since Marianne had run away.

  “Well, well,” said Mr. Jellett, and suddenly he began to chuckle; “and you don’t think the garden is so bad, eh? Not as good as yours, eh, son?”

  Tommy’s face grew hot. He could feel, even then, the condescending impoliteness. Mr. Jellett, like Marianne, was amused because he was a poor boy with mud upon his shoes.

  “I like our garden better,” Tommy answered, and closed his lips. “It’s got weeds in it, but I like it better.”

  Mr. Jellett gave another coughing chuckle.

  “Have you got time to see the rest of it, son?” asked Mr. Jellett.

  “Yes, I guess so,” Tommy answered.

  “You guess so, eh?” said Mr. Jellett. “Come along.”

  As they walked side by side, the things that Tommy saw were blurred in his memory, for he knew that Mr. Jellett was laughing at him all the while. That was why, the only reason in the world, why Mr. Jellett let him walk along those paths. There were enormous flowers and miles of paths, it seemed to Tommy, always with flowers along their edges. They passed man after man on hands and knees, weeding and snipping at those flowers, and everything was perfect, without a single weed. Now and then the men would look up when they saw Mr. Jellett and Tommy walking side by side. They walked on shady paths where ferns grew on rocks and water gurgled out of fountains. They walked in the sun where flowers grew like the flames in a driftwood fire, until finally they stopped near that brown-stone house. There was a great stone railing in front of it, surrounding a flat space covered with grass, large enough for all the boys in the Harbor to play ball.