Warning Hill

by John P. Marquand

  Up to the very doorway of the Michael house his mind kept saying “Marianne!” and the creaking boards were soft beneath his tread, and the slanting sun was bright on everything, with a soft warm light that seemed to rob the porch of its decrepitude and to make the windows shine as if everything inside were lighted, and fires were burning on the hearths. Even the dark front hall seemed brighter as Tommy slammed the door. He knew Aunt Sarah would be waiting for him. She was always sitting in the parlor whenever he reached home, with her shawl about her shoulders, whether the day was hot or cold.

  “Alfred!” Lately her voice had grown high and quavering, and now and then it had a strongly plaintive tone, like some one calling from the dark; “Alfred, are you back again?”

  Tommy paused at the parlor doorway. His great-aunt sat motionless in a half light that strayed through yellowed lace curtains and vines before the windows.

  “I’m Tommy,” he said. “That’s all, Aunt Sarah.”

  “Yes,” said Aunt Sarah, “yes, yes, of course. My mind keeps running back. I’d admire to know why my mind does keep running back. Ho-ho-ho! Sometimes it seems I was a girl and going again to dances, and this … I’d admire to know why you slammed the door just the way Alfred slammed it when he came home. But I’m not underground yet. No, sir! I’m not underground.”

  “No,” said Tommy, “no, Aunt Sarah.”

  “No,” said Aunt Sarah. “And that’s what I told the young man to-day. You were out. Of course you didn’t know. A young man came to try to buy the house. Hey? Yes, to buy the house, and when I said ‘no,’ he wanted the lower fields. Ho-ho-ho! I told him he couldn’t have it till I was underground.”

  “The house?” cried Tommy.

  He did not know why he should have been shocked at such a piece of news, but somehow it was all he had, that house. It had been a part of him for so long with all its dullness and its pain, that now the insolence of some one wanting to buy it filled him with a warm dull anger. Aunt Sarah must have seen it. Now and then she had the strangest way of seeing. She reached out her hand and touched his sleeve.

  “Don’t worry,” she said; “no one’ll get it while I’m above the ground.”

  “No,” said Tommy, “I guess they won’t.”

  “Marianne,” his mind kept saying. “Marianne,” and he knew he could do anything. It was no time to think that the world was changing very fast and that carriages soon would be laid away and that all the life his father knew would soon be gone forever. “Marianne,” his mind kept saying; “Marianne.”

  His mother was in the kitchen, bending over the stove, pale except for a touch of color in her cheeks. As she looked up quickly at his step, she must have seen or felt somehow that he had changed, for when he kissed her she pushed him gently back. Her hands on his shoulders were very thin.

  “What’s the matter, Tom?” she asked, and Tommy Michael stopped, though his mind was saying “Marianne.”

  He had meant to tell her. He had always meant to tell her everything. Yet now that he came to do so, something made him stop, and he knew why. It came over him as he stood there in the middle of the kitchen, that he had always been afraid of her, and that he had never told her much, even when he was a little boy. There was that gap between them which no parent can wholly bridge, that chasm between the generations where disillusion and hope converse in a tongue that neither can understand.

  “Well,” said Estelle Michael, “what is the matter? There’s something. Can’t you—won’t you tell me, Tom?”

  But he could not tell her a word about Marianne.

  “I’m going to play in a match to-morrow,” he answered, “against the professional for the Bayside Club.”

  She drew a step away.

  “What?” Her voice grew sharp. “With everybody looking on, as though you were an actor?”

  “We’ve got to have the money, haven’t we?” Tommy found himself stammering as he spoke. “I—I don’t like it any better than you do, but I’ve got to do it.”

  If she had asked why he did not like it he could not have told, but she did not ask him. Instead he was surprised to see her face soften into a pathetic eagerness.

  “Don’t you?” she asked, “don’t you like it really, Tom?”

  “No,” said Tommy, and then his mother threw her arms about his neck, and held him very tight.

  “Then I don’t care!” How fiercely, eagerly she spoke! “As long as you don’t like it, I don’t care. All I’ve tried to do—ever—all I’ve ever wanted for you to know is that you’re as good as anybody else, Tom, as good as anybody else. Tommy, is that all? It isn’t anything about that Mary Street?”

  How she could have seen, Heaven only knew.

  “No,” said Tommy very quickly, “no, there isn’t anything about Mary—of course not—why?”

  When it was too late, Tommy could understand that eagerness. When it was all too late to make a difference, he too would know the hopelessness of watching over another life, soon to set its own course upon a cloudy sea. And the recollection of his mother would return sharp defined and poignant—robbed of her freshness and wistful, watching him with steady anxious eyes.

  XV

  Is it one’s imagination or was there a stiffness to life in 1913, a touch of decorous discipline that is entirely gone? Perhaps it is too close to the present for accurate judgment, but if you were a member of the Harbor Club in those days, you must recall a punctilious rustle, and even in the bar off the locker room, with its relaxing atmosphere of lemon peel and rum, a cool formality that stilled a turbulent spirit. One recalls a kind of Olympic power in those spotless white persons who wandered from the verandah to the putting greens. There was a magnificent richness in their leisure that might have given pause to a week-end guest. As far away as the professional’s house, Tommy felt it that next afternoon. It made his mouth turn dry, and his face grow drawn and pale.

  Sitting upon the workbench, swinging his legs, was a tall hard-faced man with a curling black mustache.

  “Oh, now!” he said, when Tommy came in. “Is this the kid? Oh, now!”

  “It’ll do you no good putting on airs,” said Duncan Ross. “He’ll give you a game now. I’m telling. This is Mr. MacWorth, Tommy, who’ll play you. Are you ready? They’re waiting on the tee.”

  “Who?” Tommy began to stammer. “All—all those people?”

  Out of the windows by the first tee he had a glimpse of ladies’ parasols and white flannels of the gentlemen. Through the open door he could hear a buzz of voices.

  “And what ails you if they are?” asked Duncan Ross. “That’s no way to take on about a gallery.”

  Mr. MacWorth laughed gently. “Listen,” he said, “listen, boy, this is business for me, understand that? I won’t give you any chances. So don’t you start to cry.”

  “Who’ll you want to caddy, Tom?” asked Mr. Ross.

  Tommy cleared his throat.

  “I want Mal Street. He’s out there.”

  “Him?” Duncan Ross frowned. “He’s been running a horse mower. He’s forgotten how.”

  “Yes,” said Tommy, “but I’d like to have him.”

  Mr. Ross walked to the door.

  “Street!” he called. “Come here!”

  The sight of Mal Street did Tommy good. Lank and dark and sullen, Mal picked up Tommy’s bag, and they all walked toward the tee.

  “Tom,” whispered Mal. “Hey, Tom!”

  “Mal,” said Tommy, “you don’t mind caddying? I—I sort of wanted to have a friend.”

  “Mind—? Hell!” said Mal, and it did Tommy good to hear him.

  The contempt which Mal had cultivated for his surroundings was like a cooling breeze. It quieted the jump of Tommy’s nerves to know that Mal would be behind him, indifferent to those people all in white, unshaken in his knowledge of his own superiority, and still a friend.

  “To hell with ’em!” whispered Mal. “That’s what I say. Take your driver, kid.”

  Nevertheless, when Tommy s
tood upon the tee with his driver in his hand, he had again that feeling that he was alone, beyond all help, save for what lay within himself. He seemed very small standing on the tee, clad in his clean white ducks and his new low shoes. All about him was a circle of faces peering at him in silence, idly interested. Mr. Danforth was standing there, and Mr. Wilmer too. And the Hotchkiss girls—dozens of people, all from Warning Hill. As Tommy saw them all, he remembered that his mind moved in a panic, for it was just as his mother had said. He was standing like an actor to amuse them of an afternoon, not one of them more than the saturnine Mr. MacWorth, who was coolly addressing his ball. And then, just as Mr. MacWorth was taking his back swing, Tommy’s eye encountered Mr. Jellett, and beside him, with eyes as cool as Mr. Jellett’s own, was a tall lady in an embroidered dress. It was Mrs. Jellett, and beside her was Sherwood, scowling slightly, and beside Sherwood was Marianne. Marianne was smiling and her eyes were dark and soft. As Tommy looked at her she nodded, making a little face at him as a girl might at school.

  “Click!” Mr. MacWorth had hit his ball. Marianne looked at Tommy and made another face.

  “You can do it,” she seemed to say. “You can do it just as well.”

  Now Tommy was a golfer, as Mr. Ross had known. The moment his eye was on the ball the tautness left his wrist and shoulders. He forgot about Warning Hill and everything, as Warning Hill stood watching. Mr. Ross himself could not have made a cleaner drive. MacWorth stared at him. Mal Street silently took his club.

  “The brassie,” said Tommy, and then, as he walked down the fairway, he heard low voices everywhere.

  “Why!” It was a lady who said it. “He did much better than the man!”

  “Did you see him? Did you see him hit that ball?”

  “He’s the Michael boy. Yes … that’s the one, who used to work in the professional’s shop.… Ross taught him.… That’s the one … the old house on the road to the station … yes, he lives here … one of the village boys.”

  At last Tommy knew they knew him, every one in Warning Hill. It came over him in a wave of pride, for of course he was still young. He knew he would never be entirely the same again, and Marianne was watching him. “Marianne,” his mind kept saying, “Marianne!”

  “Hist, Tommy!” It was Mr. Ross whispering in his ear. “That MacWorth will try to rattle you. Don’t you care.”

  “No,” said Tommy, “I don’t care,” and laid a brassie shot dead upon the green. No, Tommy Michael would never be the same again. He was crossing from boyhood into manhood with each step across the turf, with everybody there to see. Tommy could hear the gentlemen betting even money when they began the ninth all even. From the tee he could look over toward the water and the roofs of Michael’s Harbor.

  “Steady now, boy,” whispered Duncan Ross, “and they’ll be after you for lessons as much as me.”

  If you were a member of the Harbor Club, you may recollect how the news spread when they took the turn towards home. The men passing the tea things spoke of it, and Joey had the news down in the bar. One of the village boys, whom Duncan Ross had taught, was beating a professional,—a village boy who had hung around the club. In groups of threes and fours they began trooping down the steps to see them, until, when the sixteenth hole was reached, fifty or sixty persons must have trailed behind.

  Of course, no one ever guessed the half of it, because people are so very dull, or perhaps one did not care. All one saw was a slim tanned boy in white ducks, whose plain thin face was set, and a worried looking man with a black mustache—but it was a good show just the same. Mr. Jellett himself must have thought it was a good show since he had bet on Tommy. He permitted himself to smile slightly as Mr. MacWorth hooked into the woods on the seventeenth, and he asked Mr. Danforth a question in his old dull way. Tommy heard him over the footsteps and whispers, and Tommy nearly stopped his walking.

  “What did you say the boy’s name was?”

  “Michael.” Though Tommy’s back was turned he could hear Mr. Danforth wearily polite. “The name is Michael, the boy you chucked out of the bank, Grafton.”

  “Chucked out of the bank, eh?” said Mr. Jellett. “What bank?”

  Then Tommy heard some one laugh in a hard tinkling way, which made him look across his shoulder. It was Mrs. Jellett laughing.

  “You ought to know that Grafton never remembers anything.” Her words were like the lazy tolling of a bell. “And he isn’t much of a boy to remember, is he? Isn’t this ever going to finish? Marianne, why do you insist on walking all the way around?”

  “Mamma, don’t talk so much!” Tommy’s heart gave a little jump, for it was Marianne who answered. “He’s doing awfully well!”

  “Why, Marianne!” It was Mrs. Jellett. “Whatever’s getting into you, Marianne?”

  “I don’t care,” said Marianne. “You needn’t talk when he’s playing. It’s awfully mean!”

  But Tommy only half heard for his mind was not on them then. He was on the eighteenth green, and Mr. MacWorth was two down, just a friendly match, of course, as Mr. MacWorth was the first to say, and of course Mr. MacWorth was glad to give the boy a chance. He had done it very well, though of course he could not have kept it up, and Mr. MacWorth had never played the course before. Then Tommy knew that he was no longer a village boy, as he stood upon the eighteenth green.

  It was enough to puzzle him that everybody seemed very pleased that he had won. Men who had never looked at him before came crowding up to shake hands or to slap him on the shoulders, until he wondered why he had ever thought them distant.

  “Yes, sir,” Duncan Ross was saying. “A good boy—that’s what he is.”

  “Take him down and give him a drink,” suggested Mr. Wilmer. “Boys, they’re all on me!”

  “Oh, Wilmer,” said some one, “do shut up!”

  It was very pleasant; they all seemed to like him. Toward them all he felt a sudden warmth and kindness, and just for a second, he always said, he was plunged in a glittering illusion. For one bright beat of time Tommy Michael thought that he was one of them. They were proud of him. They all were saying it. They never knew that he could play like that. He must enter the open in August. They would see that he did. For a moment Tommy stood with bright eyes and parted lips before illusion crashed.

  “Thanks,” said Tommy, “you’re—you’re awful kind.”

  Afterwards every one remarked how nicely he took it, naturally and modestly and not in the least like a spoiled boy. But Tommy always said he should have known what would happen if he had not been so young.

  “Tom,” said Duncan Ross, “Mr. Jellett wants to see you. Look, he’s over there.”

  Sure enough, there was Mr. Jellett, plump and small in his white flannels. He was standing a little apart on the edge of the green with Mrs. Jellett beside him, and—yes, Marianne, very cool and prim.

  “Oh, Michael,” said Mr. Jellett, “Michael,” and Marianne made a little face exactly like a little girl in school.

  Then Tommy knew there was something which was not right. It was in the way that Mr. Jellett called his name, exactly as if he was calling for a cup of tea. As Tommy walked towards him, he thought that every one was watching him, which was not true, of course, but Mrs. Jellett was watching him, and so was Marianne.

  “You did very nicely,” said Mr. Jellett “Here—take this!”

  Tommy’s eyes grew round. Mr. Jellett had stretched out his hand. He was holding a brand new bill. Tommy opened his lips, but he could not speak. He was staring at that bill and a slow dark flush came to his face.

  “Here,” Mr. Jellett could read faces still, “what’s troubling you? Haven’t ever been tipped before?”

  “No,” Tommy could hardly find his voice to answer. “No!”

  The strange thing, Tommy always said, was that he never realized exactly where he was or what he was until he saw that bill; and now he was all alone, hemmed in inexorably by circumstances and all alone; and he was ashamed, though he could not tell why, most horribly
ashamed. He had always been brought up to something else, yet there was Mr. Jellett handing him a bill, for nothing, his eyes upon Tommy stupidly round and blue.

  “Never had a tip before, eh?” said Mr. Jellett. “Well, it’s time you got used to it. Take it, son.”

  Tommy’s knees were weak beneath him and he felt deathly sick.

  “I don’t want it,” Tommy stammered; “really, thank you, sir, I don’t.”

  “Don’t want it?” said Mr. Jellett. “Why, what confounded nonsense!”

  And then it was all clear, perfectly clear in spite of the years which lay between. Slap-slap … once again the horses were trotting down the road, and once again, as though it were yesterday, that shining carriage was going by while he stood with his father staring through the dust. Tommy was not one of them any more than he had ever been.

  His voice choked, “No, sir, I don’t want it.”

  “Papa!” cried Marianne. “Don’t you see he’s—of course he doesn’t!”

  “Why, Marianne!” said Mrs. Jellett. “Marianne!”

  And then they all were looking at Marianne, and her face turned very red. As Mr. Jellett looked, she raised her eyebrows slightly.

  “How do you know anything about him? Do you, Marianne?”

  “Know him, eh?” said Mr. Jellett stupidly.

  There was a pause, the slightest beat of time, but it seemed to Tommy that all the world was in it, as they stood there watching Marianne. Marianne smiled ever so slightly and gave her dress a little pat.

  “Always picking on me, aren’t you, Mamma?” Marianne spoke in the weariest way. “How should I know him?”

  “That’s what I’m asking you, my dear,” replied Mrs. Jellett. “You’ve been doing nothing but talk about this match, now I come to think of it. And no sooner did you drag me here than you insisted on following all the way around.”

  Now how was Tommy to guess, for he did not know her then, at the rareness and subtlety of Marianne? Marianne knew what was what. Marianne had begun to laugh. Yes, she was looking at Tommy and laughing, as unattainable as something in a picture.