Warning Hill (15 page)

“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.

XIII

Mr. Cooper was right when he said that no one would give Tommy work in Michael's Harbor,—not the butchers, nor the grocers, whose business was growing large, nor Mr. Green, the druggist with his brand-new soda-water fountain, nor any one at all. That was how Tommy became a servant, as his mother chose to call it; his mother was as proud as Sarah Michael in her way.

The sequel to that Sunday afternoon stood out as another of those moments which have the property of remaining clear in spite of time. The recollection of it sometimes made a lump rise in Tommy's throat, because he had been such a very little boy. There was the veranda of the Harbor Country Club, and laughing talk and a clattering of dishes. And there he was, in dirty shoes and stockings, plodding up the wide front steps from the carriage block, too innocent to know those steps were not for him. A thin man in black was hastening forward.

“Get to the caddy house where you belong,” said the thin man. “Don't you know the rules?”

“Wait a minute, Charles,” said a voice, and ever afterwards it seemed to Tommy the kindest voice that he ever knew. “Never be too hasty, Charles. Come here, boy. Don't you remember me?”

Tommy remembered surely enough. It was Mr. Simeon Danforth, sitting heavily before a round table on which were some teacups and some tall glasses. Mr. Danforth did not smile and Tommy liked him for it.

“Charles is always officious,” said Mr. Danforth. “Don't mind Charles. Sit down, boy, and don't think any one is looking at you. Catch your breath. There isn't any prison sentence for walking up those steps. Have a cup of tea? Charles, pour out some tea for Mr. Michael.”

Mr. Danforth did not laugh or even smile, but looked at Tommy soberly, with a weary, urbane countenance.

“Drink your tea,” said Mr. Danforth, “and you'll be doing more than I've done for a long, long time. You don't think I'm making fun of you, do you, boy?”

“No, sir,” Tommy said.

“That's right,” said Mr. Danforth. “I don't want anybody to think I'd do that—and no one else will either, while you're sitting at this table—understand?”

Everywhere there were voices and a clattering of dishes in the kitchen. Mr. Danforth's hair was gray, but his eyebrows were very black, and they moved together as he spoke.

“Yes, sir,” Tommy said.

“That's right,” said Mr. Danforth. “Treat everybody decently. It won't do any harm. Now, boy, do you want to talk? What brought you here besides your shoes?”

“I'm looking for a job,” said Tommy. “They won't give me one downtown.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Danforth, “so that's the game? Come on this way.”

Mr. Danforth rose from the table and walked slowly down the steps. They walked down a path past a row of automobiles and then by a carriage shed, where horses were waiting and coachmen lounged smoking in the sun.

Everywhere there were voices and a clattering of dishes in the kitchen. As early as that the Harbor Club had risen in all its gigantic shape from out of a hard-working farming land to stand as a monument of something, rather beyond one's grasp. For those were the days when one still wondered what such things were all about; and the idea of play was novel enough to set the vulgar laughing. Tommy could imagine what his Aunt Sarah would have said, if she could have seen that enormous building of decorated shingles surrounded by broad piazzas.

“Do you know what this place is for?” inquired Mr. Danforth.

“No, sir,” Tommy said.

“Well,” said Mr. Danforth, “perhaps the less one knows the better. Come along.”

Beside the path was a small house, like one of the fishing houses on Welcome River, standing in a grove of yellow pine trees. The door was open and Mr. Danforth walked inside, with Tommy following; and they were in a room not unlike Mr. Street's carpenter shop, where he sat whittling duck decoys in the winter. In the full light of a window was workbench with a vise and tools, and along the wall were a great many of those sticks that gentlemen carried in bags. A tiny little man in short trousers with a hard red face was looking over a driver, whistling between his teeth.

“Morning,” said Mr. Danforth. And that was Tommy's first sight of Mr. Duncan Ross, as good a hand as ever took a rich man's money. “How are the fairways?”

“Only moderate,” said Mr. Ross, “and the greens is thick enough with worm casts so a good hoe couldn't clear them.”

Mr. Ross wrinkled his face and winked in a way that made you want to laugh, without knowing what there was to laugh about.

“Always give the members an excuse,” said Mr. Ross, “and then they'll keep on trying.”

“Here's a boy for you, Ross,” Mr. Danforth slapped his hand on Tommy's shoulder, “to work in the shop; and Ross, if anybody doesn't like him working here, you let me know.”

Mr. Ross rubbed his hands on the side of his trousers, and the muscles rippled in his forearms.

“Very good, sir,” said Mr. Ross.

“That's all,” said Mr. Danforth, “but let him loose on Monday afternoon. I want him to come sailing with me. Three o'clock sharp, boy. Walk right through the gate and ask for my house. The man'll let you through. And now, Michael, keep your tail up. Keep it up and wagging.”

Without another word, Simeon Danforth turned and strode out the door, and not until he was gone did Tommy remember that he had not thanked him. Curiously enough, through one of those odd complexities of a boy's mind, Tommy never thanked him in open words, but it may have been as well. He did not know till later that the finest deeds are the ones for which no thanks are given or expected, such as the careless help of tired men for boys in dusty shoes.

Tommy stood alone in the professional's shop. Duncan Ross looked at him with narrow eyes.

“Well, laddie,” said Mr. Ross, “I'm hoping you're not lazy—because I'll work it out of you if you stay here.”

“No, sir,” said Tommy, “I'm not lazy.”

“That's it,” said Mr. Ross. “Mind your manners and your ‘sirs,' understand, when the toffs come to the links.” Mr. Ross screwed his face into a little knot, and winked his eye. “Have you ever read now ‘The Legend of Montrose'?”

“Yes, sir,” said Tommy. And when he answered a lump rose in his throat. A picture of the room in the Michael house had come before him, with the rain pattering on the windowpanes, a friendly quiet room where even his mother seldom called him, where everything was dingy and yet still bright. “Yes, sir. We've got a library at home.”

“Have you so?” said Mr. Ross. “Well, maybe, I'm not promising, but maybe we'll agree. Take hold of this, now. No—no—with the thumbs around it so—”

And for the first time in his life Tommy held a golf club in his hand. For the first time without his knowing it, Tommy had walked with bowed head beneath a yoke of spears. But his mother knew it, with an illogical intuition all her own, when Tommy told her at supper, and her face grew very hard.

“Tommy,” she said, “hold your spoon right and sit up straight.” But she looked across the table at Aunt Sarah, who was stirring her cup of tea. It was a cloudy look like smoke above a heap of wood before the flames burst through.