Warning Hill

by John P. Marquand

  “Hey?” said Mr. Street, “what’s that you’re saying, Tom?”

  “My father,” Tommy spoke distinctly, “my father said I’d do it some day.”

  It only went to show that Alfred Michael had died in the nick of time. Yet for Tommy he would be a splendid figure always, in a checked suit, with lightly swinging cane and a bushy brown mustache.

  “Say now,” gasped Mr. Street. His attention was no longer centered on Tommy. “May you strike me down!”

  Jim Street was staring at Marianne, much as Tommy had first stared. His hand dropped limply from Tommy’s shoulder. “Where’d she come from?”

  Tommy had forgotten Marianne. Now that he saw her again, he was no longer angry. She should not be there, he suddenly knew, and he took a step toward her. Marianne was staring, in the same wide-eyed way that she had stared when they first met on Warning Hill.

  “She came over in the boat,” he said. “Come on, Marianne.”

  “All right,” said Marianne, and gazed at Tommy with wide, admiring eyes.

  “Over in the boat!” echoed Mr. Street stupidly. “May you strike me down—if she ain’t Jellett’s girl!”

  Tommy was about to speak again, when he was interrupted by the tooting of a horn and the barking of the spaniels. If a fiery chariot had descended from the sky, it would hardly have been stranger than the sight which met his eyes. An automobile, all red paint and brass, with a man in uniform at its wheel, was in Mr. Street’s yard, between the woodpile and the barn. The ducks were scuttling from it, and a hen was squawking. The automobile was panting and shaking, as such machines once did in the early days of motors, like a dog after a furious race. A man was descending from it, a plump little man, who gave one of the dogs a kick.

  “Marianne!” he shouted. “Marianne!”

  It was Mr. Grafton Jellett, but Mr. Jellett’s face was no longer tranquil. He came toward them, panting and red, somewhat like the automobile itself.

  “Marianne!” he said. “Get into that car!”

  And then he walked straight toward Tommy Michael.

  “You dirty little liar,” he said.

  Tommy’s knees grew weak. His mouth was very dry. He was glad that Mr. Street spoke before he could. Mr. Street straightened his shoulders and pulled at the neck of his shirt. The actual sight of Mr. Jellett in his dooryard had quelled him temporarily, but Jim Street had a wild streak, as all the neighbors said. The neighbors heard his answer too, from open windows, and from the edge of the road, which perhaps was why the news spread so fast over Michael’s Harbor.

  “Now that don’t go!” said Mr. Street, “Tommy ain’t a liar. I’ve known him since he was that high.”

  Mr. Jellett looked at him blankly; his eyes were stony blue.

  “That’s enough, Street,” he said. “I asked him where my daughter was, and he said he didn’t know.”

  Mr. Street grinned and thrust his hands in his pockets.

  “Did you think he was elopin’ with her?” he inquired.

  Then Mr. Jellett no longer seemed angry. It was surprising how quickly Mr. Jellett could grow calm.

  “That will do,” said Mr. Jellett evenly. “Now listen to me—carefully. You’ve had it coming for some time—and any one in the road outside there, come in and listen. I’ve heard what you’ve been saying in town about me, Street, and I don’t give a damn for it—understand? I know what you think I’m doing to the Michaels. It’s what every one thinks about people who are rich, isn’t it? Simply because I’ve offered several times to buy a piece of land from an old woman and a widow, you make it into melodrama. That’s rot. There’s too much popular rot. I’m living here peacefully. I’m paying taxes, as heavy as any one can assess, and I won’t be disturbed, and I won’t have a piece of property next mine that’s a nuisance. You make anything out of that you want to—and be damned to you.”

  “You needn’t blame Tom,” said Mr. Street. “He don’t know anything about it. They’ve seen to that.”

  “Very well, I’ve told you.” Mr. Jellett might have been speaking about the weather. “I’m tired of all this nonsense—and I can take measures to have it stopped.”

  Mr. Street may have been an undesirable character, but for once he expressed a sentiment which was growing very prevalent. He pulled a hand from his pocket, and doubled up a heavy fist.

  “Hell!” said Mr. Street. “I ain’t afraid of you. I know what you used to be—a checker in a coal mine, by Jings! Hell! you rich fellers want to own the earth! What harm does it do you to have a poor woman’s property next yours? It gets in your craw when some one else has what you want—that’s what. I know your kind. You’re the sort that gets so set you’ll kill. You’ll grind down widows and orphans! You’ll—”

  Mr. Jellett tapped Mr. Street’s arm with a plump forefinger.

  “Don’t you forget one thing,” he said. “I know toughs, Street, and I have enough on you, if I want to use it, to have you put out of town, just like that. I don’t have to pull you apart to see the way you work, Street. Now don’t make any more speeches, because I know exactly how you feel. Ho, hum … I’m sorry I made a scene. Where’s young Master Michael? Oh, there you are. Don’t come on my place again, if you know what’s good for you. It’s much better to keep where you belong.”

  Tommy Michael found his voice. Mr. Jellett should have noticed then that Tommy was not afraid, as Mal Street might have been.

  “You wouldn’t say that,” said Tommy, “if I was as big as you!”

  Mr. Jellett did not bother to answer. Instead he climbed slowly into the automobile. The engine spluttered and the gears began to grind. Mr. Street’s face was scarlet and his eyes were bright as coals.

  “Get out of my yard,” roared Mr. Street. “You don’t own that!”

  Already the automobile was moving from the yard in a haze of rich blue smoke, when Mal Street gave a loud derisive shout. Mal seemed entirely recovered, and he obeyed his smoldering instincts as he always would, without a second thought. He snatched up a piece of marsh mud and sent it hurtling on its way. It struck Mr. Jellett’s hat and knocked it to the road, but the automobile did not stop.

  “Good boy, Mal,” said Mr. Street.

  And Tommy understood why Mr. Street, ever after that, hated Mr. Jellett worse than he had before.

  XII

  At the poker tables on Warning Hill of a Saturday night, it used to be a marvellous thing to see the faces beneath the swinging lamps, when the cigar smoke grew thick and steady fingers flicked out chips across the soft green cloth. Young Wilmer, as you might expect, could not conceal a thing in that great game of ours, which was so much like life. His hand would begin to shake very early in the session. His eyes and cheeks would glow. Neither could Horatio Judkins hide the signal flags, though he secretly prided himself that his face was an iron mask. On the other hand, Mr. Simeon Danforth could sit for six hours, weary and urbane, gently sipping from the tall glass by his side; and as for Grafton Jellett, a veil would descend upon him which never broke or shivered. To see him leaning back in his chair, with the lower buttons of his dinner vest undone, and his thick neck sunk deep into his high collar, staring vacantly at those beautiful mustaches of his adversaries, which still adorned a poker face in the early nineteen hundreds, you would have said he was very stupid, and though that stupidity of Grafton Jellett’s was a great deal too good to be true, and though every one on Warning Hill knew better—in one way, after all, you might not have been so wholly wrong.

  It was a very stupid thing that Grafton Jellett did, when he clamped the screws down tight upon the Michael house, as he did after that fateful day by Welcome River. There must have been a blind side to him, or he would have seen the way it looked, but that was the trouble with Warning Hill. So many of them did not see and did not even try. There was a serene indifference in kindly folk, miraculously removed from all the pulsing heat and fear which lurks behind the simple act of living. They did not mean to be unkind, for, after all, how could they be, when the
y could not understand? Grafton Jellett himself did not think of the unkindness of it. He had lost that power long ago of projecting himself into other people’s minds because he did not need it in taking his own straight course.

  He did not hate Tommy, or old Sarah, or Estelle Michael. It was worse than that, because he did not think of them at all. It was that urbane, impersonal disregard that made it nearly right to think anything of Grafton Jellett that one chose. And thoughts were free. What were thoughts to Grafton Jellett, who did not give a damn?

  Cléone was the one who told what Mrs. Jellett said when Marianne got home that day—bright-eyed, vivacious Cléone, who fixed the cushions behind Helena Jellett’s head. Cléone told Edward Street, who was pressing Mr. Jellett’s clothes, and so it got beyond the gates.

  “My dear,” said Helena Jellett to Marianne, “I think it’s time we had a little talk, my dear, about people. Cléone, levez la fenêtre un peu mais—mais—Marianne, what is ‘take care’ in French?”

  “Prenez garde,” said Marianne.

  That weary frankness of her mother’s Marianne always liked. Helena never put on airs before her children, because, perhaps, she knew there was no need.

  “Prenez garde, Cléone, au courant d’air. Sit down, Marianne, on the little stool. Mon Dieu, Cléone, don’t open the fenêtre quite so wide.… Now, Marianne, I’ve seen a lot of people—particularly before your dear papa and I were married, and when people reach a certain position they become entirely different. I’ve noticed it so often and I don’t ask you to understand, because I’m sure I don’t. We’re different from most other people, particularly people like those you saw this afternoon. We act differently; we do things differently; and we see things differently—so the less you have to do with such people, the happier you’ll be. Dear me … you may understand why I’m so emphatic some day. Cléone, donnez-moi une cigarette!”

  “Oh, Mamma,” Marianne gave a small shiver of delight, “are you going to smoke a cigarette?”

  Those were the days when such a gesture from a lady was enough to shock you, but Helena Jellett smiled tolerantly.

  “Yes, my dear,” she said, “I’ve never minded much what people think—most people. Merci, Cléone.”

  She blew a cloud softly toward the ceiling through delicately pursed lips. Her hand, holding the cigarette, was exquisite. The fingers tapered softly like Marianne’s. Her arm from which her gown slid back was like an arm in alabaster. With half-closed eyes Helena examined Marianne through that thin curtain of smoke.

  “My dear,” she said, “you’re not going to be bad looking. You’ll look like me, thank heaven!”

  “But Mamma,” said Marianne. Naturally she did not care what her mother said about being good-looking, because she knew as much already. “Mamma, I don’t see, just the same, why I can’t know Tommy if I want to.”

  Her mother sighed and blew another cloud of smoke.

  “Donnez-moi the ashtray, Cléone,” she said. “No—no, not there—on the little teakwood table. Now listen to me, my dear. I’ve always done everything I wanted—particularly when I was little. I wanted not to learn my French. I wanted not to improve myself. I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it—but just the same, my dear, I shouldn’t endeavor to know people outside my class, if I were you. It is one of the things I wanted to do which I have most frequently regretted. I rather think one can’t help regretting it eventually. See them if you like when you get older, but laugh at them, Marianne. You’ll be very disappointed if you take them seriously—and now run along. If I’m not mistaken, that’s your dear papa tapping on my door.”

  Sure enough it was Grafton Jellett. He walked into the room softly as, Cléone noticed, was his habitual way when he entered madame’s boudoir, not debonairly like a gentleman of the world, as surely monsieur should have been, but as though he had a fear of the powders and perfumes and other articles of the toilette.

  “Helena,” he said, “are you smoking again? I wish you wouldn’t, Helena.”

  “Grafton,” said Helena, “I wish you wouldn’t be so boringly bourgeois.”

  At this juncture Cléone noticed that monsieur permitted himself just the suspicion of a frown.

  “Helena,” he said, “what were you saying to Marianne?”

  Now madame, Cléone had reason to know, was very beau monde. It was a pleaeure to make the service for madame.

  “I was advising her not to associate out of her class, Grafton dear. Cléone, a glass of water, please.”

  Any friend with sympathy may be sure that Cléone came back as quickly as possible with the water. She could not guess what madame had said in her absence but truly it must have been something épatant. Monsieur’s face was somewhat suffused and what small amount of sandy hair which he possessed was disarranged, possibly because Monsieur had permitted his hands to run through it.

  “I’m glad you think it’s so—damned funny,” monsieur was saying.

  “Now Grafton,” said Madame, “please, not before the servants, Grafton. Oh, dear me, why are you always boring? It’s such a ridiculous affair.”

  Ah, those were the days when sleeves billowed like balloons and skirts still made what polite observers called a frou-frou when ladies walked across the floor, and little baskets were invented to cover carriage wheels when ladies went to drive. Yet surely Grafton Jellett must have found that all the yards of silk and laces which were invoiced on the bills did not temper a single whit the sharpness of a lady’s tongue. He was not the only one to feel it that afternoon, however, because of course Cléone repeated the whole conversation. It was marvellous how bits of gossip used to travel through the gates of Warning Hill. Long before Tommy Michael knew who she was, he knew what Mrs. Jellett had said. It all, to Mrs. Jellett, was a ridiculous affair, when it came to forcing the Michaels to sell their beach.…

  But it was not ridiculous to Mr. Joseph Cooper, whatever they might have thought on Warning Hill, for Mr. Cooper could understand what went on in simple minds. He had learned it in a hard school of his own, where emotion must give way to common sense, and whence materials were drawn for lurid barn-storm melodrama. Mr. Cooper had seen a dozen farms back in the country go under the auction hammer, while men stared blankly at unpainted walls and women wept, but they had not been friends of his. That was what made the Michael business hard. The Michaels were friends of his, and he knew what people would say downtown.

  Promptly at four o’clock on Sunday afternoon, just a day after that fray by Welcome River, Mr. Cooper walked between the gateposts of the Michael driveway. Tommy could remember it perfectly, because the day had marked a great event already.

  That morning, after church, Tommy had told his mother everything that had happened on Warning Hill. She had led him into the old front parlor where Thomas Michael had so often stormed at Alfred, and Aunt Sarah had listened too. Aunt Sarah was sitting there like a distant reminder of something which was past, a gnarled old piece of furniture, which had the gift of speech. Her hands moved mechanically at her knitting with an even, dogged skill. Aunt Sarah could carry the most elaborate stitches in her head—knit one, purl one—purl three, so swiftly and so endlessly that every month Tommy would bring a package of Aunt Sarah’s knitting to the dry-goods store for sale. All the time that Tommy spoke—in a loud tone, so that she might hear—Aunt Sarah kept on knitting.

  “Hey?” Aunt Sarah would say occasionally, and Tommy would repeat politely the sentence he had said before, always with that suspicion that Aunt Sarah had heard him the first time well enough.

  His mother had sat with her head bent forward, very thin and pale in her rusty alpaca dress, with her hands, reddened and chapped, folded tightly in her lap. Only once she interrupted.

  “You are as good as any of them. Don’t forget it, Tom.”

  When Tommy had finished Aunt Sarah spoke.

  “Tell him the whole of it, Estelle. Only don’t, for goodness’ sake, be bitter, the way you always get. Ho—ho—ho—you’re always bitter.”

&
nbsp; And Estelle Michael, her lips tight, her eyes flashing, told about the beach and how his father died.

  “It was an accident,” his mother had said, looking at Aunt Sarah hard.

  “Hey?” said Aunt Sarah. “Yes—of course it was an accident.” And then she added a remark which others might have thought surprising. “You keep away from those Jelletts, Tom. They’re a bad lot, and not the same as you. Now, Estelle, why will you always be getting bitter?”

  Tommy was thinking strange thoughts, when Mr. Cooper came up the drive that Sunday afternoon, which seemed to scud across his mind like clouds across the sun. They were unpleasant and half-formed, those thoughts, exactly like clouds mounting in the west before a heavy storm. When Tommy saw Mr. Cooper he put down his ax by the woodpile where he had been splitting stove wood, and came towards him.

  Mr. Cooper was growing stouter, and his head and face had changed little from earlier times. The skin was slightly looser, especially around the jaws, making the beginning of curious little wrinkles. Mr. Cooper had a large handkerchief in his hand which he occasionally passed over his forehead.

  “Tom,” said Mr. Cooper, “why did you sling that piece of mud at Mr. Jellett?”

  “I didn’t sling it,” answered Tommy.

  “Then who did?” asked Mr. Cooper. “Of course I said you didn’t—understand.”

  “So you’ve come about that?” said Tommy. “Well, I won’t say.”

  “None of your sass, Tom,” said Mr. Cooper. “Is your mother in?”

  Already his mother had opened the old front door, and once they were in the hall, Mr. Cooper took her hand.

  “Estelle,” he said, “you’re looking dreadful ill.”

  Tommy looked quickly at his mother. But she seemed exactly as he always remembered her, her face thin and transparently white, and her hands very slender.