Warning Hill

by John P. Marquand

  “I’m well enough, I guess, Joe,” his mother said.

  Tommy had never seen Mr. Cooper look as oddly as he did in their dim front hall. His face had puckered in the strangest way, and he kept looking at his mother.

  “Estelle,” he said, “why will you keep on with this when I—I—?”

  It surprised Tommy to see his mother smile. She looked up at Mr. Cooper and her hand was still in his.

  “Now don’t begin talking nonsense, Joe,” she said, “it won’t do a bit of good—for me.”

  Mr. Cooper rubbed his handkerchief across his forehead. He seemed very much disturbed. He still seemed disturbed when he entered the parlor and gazed at its tarnished lace curtains and at its rug worn full of holes. The parlor had been looking very badly lately, even Tommy could see. The water had leaked through die frames of one of the tall windows, causing a great piece of heavy wall paper to peel. The bottoms of several of the chairs were broken and the upholstery was badly frayed.

  “My goodness,” said Mr. Cooper, “I used to think this room was the grandest sort of place. Good afternoon, Miss Michael!”

  “Didn’t expect to see me about, did you, Joe?” inquired Aunt Sarah. “Well, well, I’m not dead yet. I get up and downstairs every day.”

  Aunt Sarah gave you the most creepy sort of feeling now and then. To Tommy, who had known her always, she was like the Michael house, devoid of any other personality, except what lay beneath the leaking roof. She was a part of the house, speaking for everything else, telling when it all was new, even to the ornaments upon the mantel and the pictures of the Roman Forum on the wall.

  “Yes, yes, I can recall you, Joe, playing in the garden with our Alfred. You used to stuff with cookies. You were a greedy boy.”

  Mr. Cooper endeavored to laugh. He sat down cautiously upon a wicker chair, which groaned protestingly beneath his weight.

  “So I was,” said Mr. Cooper, and when he began to speak he did it so rapidly that you might have thought he had learned everything he had to say exactly like a piece in school. The wrinkles on his face, Tommy saw, tightened, and relaxed with every word.

  “Times have changed a lot since then. I wonder if you know how much they’ve changed—gas lighting everywhere downtown and an electric car line, and trains that only take an hour and a quarter to get you to New York. We used to be a sleepy sort of village. And now we’re a suburb and—” Mr. Cooper nodded his head very slowly, “we can’t stop it—none of us. I’m going to talk business. Do you want Tommy here?”

  “Hey?” said Aunt Sarah.

  “Move nearer and speak louder,” said Estelle Michael. “Yes, Tommy’s old enough to stay. You’ve been kind to Tom, Joe. I don’t know what we’d do if you hadn’t given Tommy work.”

  Evidently Mr. Cooper felt averse to speaking louder. He drew out his handkerchief and mopped his head.

  “I wish,” he said, and his voice was different. “I wish you could see Mr. Jellett in a generous way, like you ought to.”

  “Hey?” Aunt Sarah set down her knitting. “Jellett? So that’s why you’ve come. I thought that was why.”

  “Now listen,” Mr. Cooper spoke louder. “I’ve been friends, haven’t I? I’ve done my best—because—because—it hurts to see good folks going down hill. Look at this house—look at the grounds. You can’t go on like this—I don’t know how you do it, anyway—honestly I don’t, when I know what you have to live on. Now, Estelle, I’ve come here as a friend to-day. You’ve got to believe I’ve come here as a friend.”

  “Yes,” said Estelle Michael; “of course, I know you do.”

  “Hey?” said Aunt Sarah suddenly. “I guess you’d be out talking to Estelle in the kitchen, if it wasn’t something else.”

  Tommy could only understand half of what they were saying, although he was fourteen. The changing tones made more impression on him than the words.

  “It’s about that beach land up to Warning Hill. You can’t keep it, when Mr. Jellett’s bound he’ll have it.”

  Tommy had noticed Mr. Cooper was prone to speak incorrectly when he became excited. As Mr. Cooper spoke, he saw his mother’s lips close tight. All around the room invisible strings seemed to tighten.

  “Well,” Aunt Sarah said, “you talk to me. I own that land.”

  Tommy was looking at his mother. A sharp little sigh slipped from her as if she had been hurt.

  “Aunt Sarah,” she said, “now won’t you listen? Joe’s doing his best.”

  “I’m listening,” said Aunt Sarah. “You be quiet, Estelle!”

  Aunt Sarah spoke as though his mother were a little girl, and just as though she was a little girl, she was quiet. She was afraid of Aunt Sarah, it seemed to Tommy, just as he was afraid; and Mr. Cooper, too, did not seem wholly at his best. Perhaps, as Tommy sometimes thought, he already knew that nothing could shake Aunt Sarah. When Mr. Cooper sat in his favorite room in the bank he was large and calm and cool, but now he did not seem to know exactly what to say.

  “No, Miss Michael,” Mr. Cooper cleared his throat as if something impeded his speech. “I know the way you look at it but Mr. Jellett does not feel the same. He may not understand the way I do. He has too many other affairs to think about but he means to do right. He came to see me yesterday and he sent me to say he’ll give six thousand dollars for those two acres of beach. Now think of it, Miss Michael, six thousand dollars, and he says it is his last offer. Now think of it Miss Michael. Alfred was ready to take five.”

  At the sound of such an enormous sum there was a silence in the Michael parlor. The old velvet hangings on the wall seemed to shake, and Tommy saw his mother’s hand was trembling, as she sat looking at him. He heard Mr. Cooper breathe deeply. There was a creaking in the hall outside, as old houses will sometimes creak, which sounded exactly like a footstep. You could almost think that some one had strode across the hall and was standing by the parlor door.

  “Hey?” said Aunt Sarah at length. “Six thousand dollars?”

  “Now, Miss Michael,” Mr. Cooper spoke hastily, “it’s more than it is worth. You can’t go wrong to take it. Think of Estelle, think of your grandnephew! Can’t you forget a piece of spite, Miss Michael—or sentiment, if you want to call it that?”

  Then his mother spoke suddenly—the first and only time that Tommy had ever known her to beseech.

  “Can’t you do it? Can’t you? I’m so tired—and can’t you think of Tom?”

  “You be quiet, Estelle,” Aunt Sarah’s head tossed back. “You never cared for Alfred and that shows it! Don’t it matter to you to have pride?”

  She was not an old woman for a moment; her face was like old Thomas Michael’s in the portrait by the stairs.

  Now what made Mr. Cooper angry Tommy did not guess, until, long afterwards, he knew that Joe Cooper had known his mother years before. Perhaps he never rightly guessed the strain under which Mr. Cooper was laboring, or he might have forgiven Mr. Cooper for what he said out of charity, instead of remembering always, with bitterness fresh distilled, that it was Joe Cooper with his fat red face who rent the veil of illusion and tarnished everything Tommy thought was bright.

  “Pride?” said Mr. Cooper. “Pride, is it?” Mr. Cooper was a coarse man whose life had made him coarser. “What you see to be proud of in Alfred Michael’s more than I can guess. Why should you hang on to anything out of sentiment for him? What has he ever done for you except lose your money? What’s he ever done?”

  Aunt Sarah pulled herself forward in her chair.

  “You be quiet,” she said. “We all knew Alfred, Joe—and Tommy’s here.”

  Oh, the way that children learn! You cannot hide a truth from children without its appearing noiseless as a shadow at some unexpected time, and striking with a careless angry word. Perhaps Joe Cooper would never have said it except for an old woman’s stubbornness, but Tommy was bound to learn. Mr. Cooper was speaking of his father, yet nothing struck him down, and no one said a word in his defense. That was the worst of it. No one sai
d a word. His mother sat white-faced and silent. Aunt Sarah’s thin blue-veined hands lay motionless on the arms of her chair.

  “And what if Tommy is here?” Mr. Cooper cleared his throat again, and Tommy stood quietly on the torn old carpet, and his eyes were very wide. “Ain’t it time he knew what his father was? I want to know why any one should suffer out of sentiment for a man who never did a decent thing by anybody. Now, Miss Michael, I’ve been doing what I could. Mr. Jellett’s offered you six thousand, and he’s bound to have that beach. Won’t you take it, ma’am? If Mr. Jellett wants something, you can’t stop him.”

  “Hey?” said Aunt Sarah. “What’ll he do if I don’t sell?”

  “If you don’t sell, ma’am,” Mr. Cooper had difficulty in keeping his voice pitched high, “he’s going to make the town put it on sale. He knows there’s five years back taxes on it.”

  “Ho—ho!” said Aunt Sarah. “Does he? I guess I know where he found that out. Well, he won’t get it while I’m above the ground. I’ll pay up the taxes. We can manage, with what Tommy makes, I wouldn’t wonder.”

  Mr. Cooper shifted his weight on his chair so that it creaked; and drew out his handkerchief to mop his forehead.

  “Miss Michael,” he said, “I guess I can’t keep Tommy any more.”

  “You can’t?” Suddenly Tommy’s mother spoke with that strange energy of hers whenever Tommy’s name was mentioned. “What’s wrong with Tom?”

  When Mr. Cooper turned to face her he was very red indeed.

  “He took the Jellett girl across in a boat, and he chucked a piece of mud right square at Mr. Jellett’s neck—and Jellett found he was working in the bank. I couldn’t keep him after that.”

  “You can’t!” A bright spot stood out on his mother’s cheeks. “And he put you up to getting rid of Tom? Haven’t you spine enough to say you won’t?”

  There was nothing tired about Tommy’s mother then. That flame of energy in her which was never quenched was so real to Tommy that he could feel the force of it; and a strength, infinitely greater than his own, seemed to hold him up. Estelle Michael was the one who gave Tommy his streak of hardness and his flash of fire.

  “Now there,” Mr. Cooper wriggled in his chair. “Don’t you see, Estelle? I’ve done what I could. I even paid him more than he was worth, and Jellett was mad enough, too, when he found it out. I can’t go against Jellett. He controls the bank stock. You ought to know that Jellett’ll fix it so no one’ll dare have Tom work for them, even if they want. He owns half the town or can own it. You can’t go against Jellett; Miss Michael, won’t you listen to sense and sell that beach?”

  Now there was a picture for you, blatant in its melodrama, and ringing yet with a faint, far laughter of absurdity, for every one was struggling with an oddly different thought. There was old Aunt Sarah Michael, standing for some sort of pride or tradition, or heaven knows what, as though the Michaels had anything really to be proud of. There was Tommy, facing something that was gone forever, knowing that all he had thought had been as nothing, and that all he had believed was a misty sort of fancy. And there was Estelle Michael and the corpulent Joe Cooper face to face with something else; and perhaps, though Tommy could only guess in later days, another hero was falling in the dust. Aunt Sarah regarded Joe Cooper evenly through her spectacles and spoke in a level voice.

  “You tell Jellett that he don’t get that beach from me while I’m above the ground.”

  Then Estelle Michael turned on Joe Cooper, so quickly that he pushed back his chair.

  “You yellow dog!” she said. Though her voice was low, there was an undercurrent in it that made it like wild laughter.

  “Oh, say!” Poor Joe Cooper! He was never a valiant man. “Now, Estelle, it ain’t my fault. I’m doing the best I can.”

  And so perhaps he was. But Estelle Michael leaned over him with both her hands tight clenched.

  “You coward!” she said. “To help kick over my boy! Go and help starve us out! You leave the house, you double-dealing coward!”

  Poor Joe Cooper! There was nothing left for him to do. He tried to explain, but what was the good in telling Estelle Michael that Grafton Jellett owned half the town, when it was Tommy who was struck? As Joe Cooper left she slammed the door behind him and he never came back again. She slammed the door but not so quickly that Tommy did not follow Mr. Cooper down the drive—a little boy, half out of breath, with round gray eyes. But Tommy did not feel like a little boy. He was out of the land of make-believe again.

  “Is that true,” he asked, “what you said?”

  “About what?” Mr. Cooper stopped to look at him. After all, Joe Cooper had done the best he could.

  “About—nay father. It isn’t true that he never did a decent thing?”

  Mr. Cooper coughed. There was a whispering in the elm trees. The shadows of the leaves danced against the walls of that ugly square old house.

  “Forget it, Tom,” said Mr. Cooper. “Tom, I’m awful sorry for anything I said.”

  His gaze wandered to the overgrown bushes and the sagging shutters, and a score of little wrinkles creased and uncreased on his cheeks.

  “It’s shirt sleeves,” said Mr. Cooper sententiously. “Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves in three generations.… You forget it, Tom.”

  It was useless to ask him. Tommy Michael was not the forgetting kind. He sat by the old gateposts, as he had often sat before, watching Mr. Cooper vanish down that white and dusty road, towards that bridge over Welcome River. The bushes rattled in the breeze just as though another child might be near him, but Tommy had given up pretending. He was thinking of his father, an immense and kindly figure. He could remember little things, the sparkle of his watch chain, and the sweet smell of tobacco smoke from that curiously carved pipe.

  “Tommy,” his father was saying, “Tommy, please don’t cry.”

  Then he heard that rustling sound again, and it was louder than the wind.

  “Tommy,” some one was saying, “Tommy!”

  It was Mary Street, and not that boy he had once known. Mary Street, bareheaded and barefooted, with those dark restless eyes of hers, as shy and unsubstantial as that child of make-believe. She must have been hiding, watching him all the time.

  “Tom,” said Mary, “I’ve been waiting for you ever so long. Tell me what you saw, Tommy, up to Warning Hill.”

  In those last visions of a childhood that was fading, it never seemed strange that Mary should come to hear of the strange and golden place. He knew, because he was still young enough not to be dull, that she thought of it too. In her mind also there was something that was bright; and Mary was trying to reach that something. Perhaps he knew already that the curse of restlessness was on them both, pulling them forward from where they both belonged.

  “It wasn’t much,” said Tommy, “only they’re different from you and me.”

  “No,” said Mary, “you’re fooling, Tom. How do you mean it wasn’t so much?”

  How could Tommy tell her? He could not know how few adventures are very much when all is said and done. But he told her as best he could of that path lined with bushes cut like animals—and of the room with silver on the sideboard that might have been gold. Was there any wonder that Mary listened with her gaze very far away? Her little hands tugged restlessly at an edge of her gingham dress, and she nodded her head when Tommy had finished.

  “Tom,” she said suddenly, “will you take me when you go again? I guess I don’t want to think about it any more. I want to see it too.”

  Tommy Michael rested his chin upon his knees and shook his head.

  “No,” said Tommy, “no, I’m not going any more.”

  All at once grimly he seemed to know the world and his own place in it. All at once he was dwarfed before a power and magnificence which he could never touch.

  “Look,” said Mary softly, “here comes a carriage.”

  Sure enough, it was coming down the road. Tommy could hear the horses hoofs go slap-slap-slap. A victoria was
coming, for there still were horses on Warning Hill. A pair of bay horses drew it whose coats were shining as brightly as the carriage wheels, as brightly as the top hat and buttons of the man who drove them. A lady and a little girl were in the carriage. The lady was in a billowing white dress which took up so much room that the little girl seemed crowded to one side. She was holding a sunshade above her head, twisting it carelessly this way and that. As she looked from side to side, her eyes met Tommy’s and lingered for a moment before she looked away. The little girl was looking too. Indeed she turned half around as the carriage passed—slender in a white frilly dress with her hair straight down her back; all at once she smiled and quickly waved her hand.

  “Oh!” gasped Mary. “It’s the girl you brought over in the boat. Lookit! she’s waving again!”

  Tommy could not explain what happened; he found that he was smiling also and looking down the road; and Mary Street’s eyes were very dark and very far away.

  “Tom,” said Mary, “you like her, Tom, and you’ll go back. She knows you will. You’ll go back some day and—and whether you go with me or not, I’m going too!”

  Now why should Mary Street have said a thing like that so very long ago? She saw the world in a strange clear way which was nearly always right. For after all it was always Marianne, cruel, wilful, careless Marianne—with restless eyes and slender hands as restless as her thoughts. Yet Tommy Michael could not know that. He was too near to something which was inexorable and cold and strong.

  “No,” said Tommy, “I got other things to do, I guess. And didn’t I tell you once? They’re not like you and me.” But even as he spoke, his mind was on a painful, lonely path which a million others had also trod, without Tommy’s even knowing. He hardly heard his own voice because of another voice.

  “Tommy,” his father was saying, “Tommy, please don’t cry.”

  There was one thing he must do. It was absolutely clear, and it seemed so simple then, as all things did. As simple as the tasks of heroes which were invariably met and conquered. He would have to be as strong as Mr. Jellett before he could have peace. He would have to start at once to be as strong as Mr. Jellett.