Warning Hill (16 page)

“I hope you're satisfied,” she said.

“Hey?” said Aunt Sarah, peering through her spectacles.

“I said,” and suddenly his mother's face was like the flames, “I hope you're satisfied to see your grandnephew turned into a servant.”

“Hey?” said Aunt Sarah. “Nonsense! Blessed are the meek. Don't you forget that, Estelle. Ho-ho-ho—why can't you be meek like me?”

Those were the days when one's elders could quote the Scriptures and do them up in cross-stitch suitable for framing.

It was all a background of words in Tommy's mind. For Tommy seldom listened. Aunt Sarah and his mother were forever wrangling; words were clashing in that house like broken china, fierce words of his mother's and Aunt Sarah's answers, calm and biting, springing from a wrack of shattered hopes. It was just as well that Tommy took it all as part of every day, and that his mind was on something else. Sitting at the table in the lamplight he was thinking of Warning Hill, and the garden, and the waves of Michael's Harbor danced before his eyes. There was a brightness to it, too different from his life for Tommy to forget, and Marianne had waved to him and smiled.

“Where are you going, Tom?” said his mother.

“Downtown,” said Tommy. But he was not. It was the first time he did not tell her the truth.

Looking back, it was so inevitable that Tommy wondered why he was so surprised at what happened that very morning when he was trudging up the road after looking for work in town. If he had known Marianne better, he would have known it would not be the end, for Marianne was used to getting what she wanted. Ever since she was five years old Marianne knew how to skip gracefully along the pathways of deceit, if they led her where she wished.

Tommy remembered as he trudged along the road in the morning that there was a sound of hoofs and wheels behind him which made him step aside. A buggy with one of those shining horses drew up beside him to stop. A man in brass buttons was driving it.

“I say,” he called in a singular voice, “I say, are you Master Michael? 'Ere then, catch 'old of this. It's from Miss Marianne. And don't say I delivered it. Don't say nothing, if you please.”

The man in buttons gathered up the reins and the whip went—snap. Tommy did not know till later he was Henry, one of the Jellett grooms, and probably Henry never realized that for once in his life he drove a chariot of destiny. Tommy was holding an envelope with his name—Thomas Michael—written across it in uncertain little letters.

For a long time Tommy kept that note safe beneath the paper in his upper bureau drawer, and later he kept it in his pocket until the paper parted where it folded. Whenever he read it, he could think that Marianne was speaking through the dancing little letters, it was so like Marianne.

DEAR TOMMY MICHAEL:

I think you're very strong and very nice. I believe I love you. I know I don't love anybody else. I want to play with you because there isn't anyone else to play with. Come down to that old house where you came in the boat tonight, and I'll steal some nuts and candy off the table. I can come down after bed time, because Meachey won't dare stop me, or I'll tell Mamma about her. I didn't mean to be mad. Here's a piece of my hair. Ladies give away their hair in books. Don't be afraid of Papa. He won't catch you because he'll be with Meachey. Perhaps I can steal some ginger ale from the pantry, so please come, if you're not afraid.

Yours truly,

MARIANNE.

And that was why Tommy came back to Warning Hill, in spite of all he said. Those last words—“if you're not afraid—” would have been enough to fetch him. Tommy Michael had enough of Alfred Michael's spirit to take a dare.

“It sort of looked,” said Tommy Michael once, “as if it was always intended. I guess I was bound to forget.”

He meant that he forgot in time that he was different from Marianne in the fair republic of adolescence. Everything was possible when they were a boy and girl, whispering in the dark, on evenings when the wind was fair and the sky was clear. What would Grafton Jellett have said if he had heard them.

“Hello, I knew you'd come,” said Marianne.

“How'd you know?” said Tommy.

“Because people always do what I want. That's why,” said Marianne.

Now every one can guess what Marianne would want, for even as a little girl it was written in her eyes and lips. Marianne wanted ponies and dresses then, and caramels and little dogs with flapping ears and yelping barks. That providence which guides the destiny of restless little girls was bound to change the dogs to beings more exciting to control, both of fickle and faithful breeds, and Tommy would be one.

XIV

The trouble was that it was all too vague to put your finger on it, but Tommy knew that he was different from all those other boys and girls who plodded to the high school when the autumn came. His life was as hard as theirs, exactly as penurious and as devoid of grace. It was his thoughts that made him different, his life of thought like a foreign land, glittering and unattainable. It was to grow always more distant with the years, though he did not know that it would grow more distant then. How could he know any more than any boy has known, that all life was a struggle against reality until acceptance of it came?

It might have been better if Mr. Danforth had not been kind in that careless way of his which never regarded consequences. He had forgotten, which was not strange, that all things seemed possible in that gay period when boyhood changed to youth.

There was Mr. Danforth's sailboat. Tommy never forgot that day altogether, for its very contrast with his life gilded with exaggeration times like that, until the folly and the grandeur of them were scattered into distorted, prismatic lights of memory. The sails of that boat were like the sides of great white barns. Her deck was like a ballroom floor. Sailors in white duck stood by the side, and even a steward in a white starched coat. There was a table in the cockpit and easy wicker chairs.

“Whisky, James,” said Mr. Danforth, “and tea for Master Michael.”

Somehow it did not seem strange to Tommy that he should be there. It was Mr. Danforth's fault, or grace if you wished to call it that, but Simeon Danforth should have known that there was danger in it. Perhaps he had an intuition when that day was nearly over.

“James,” he said, “call the dogcart to take Master Michael home.” And then he looked at Tommy with a slow weary smile. “And now you've seen it all,” he said; “and all this isn't much. I'm the one who ought to know. It ain't worth a continental unless you use it right, and no one knows just how.”

He should have known better than to say that, for everything seemed possible to Tommy Michael then.

Mary Street was the one who knew. Long afterwards he wondered at the clarity of her vision, for it seemed to him sometimes that the whole story had lain before her always, the story of Warning Hill. She was ever in the background, a silent wide-eyed girl, and it sometimes seemed to him that she had been watching always.

The Street house was a pleasant place to visit. There was an aura of adventure about it in those days, when anything might happen. There were always guns and rubber boots and fishing tackle in the kitchen, and a dog beneath the table. You could take your coat off in the Street house, and sprawl languidly in the chairs.

“Make you easy,” Mr. Street would say; “make you easy, Tom.”

“Yep,” Mal Street would say, “leave your manners at the door.”

Mary was the only one who did not speak. She would brush her hair from her eyes and smile, and that was all.

Life was easy at the Street house, even when he grew older, and when Mal grew tall and lank and scornful. It seemed to Tommy that nothing changed there ever, and it startled him the night he found that he and Mary Street were changing. It was when he had turned seventeen, and he remembered it was a November night, rainy with wind squalls from the northeast; often that night came back to him with the rattle of the rain, as the last of those scenes to be etched clearly on his memory, before he was caught in the tide of life, when all recollections became jumbled in struggle and hope and fear.

He was going to the Street house to pass the night, which was a common incident enough, because he and Mal and Mr. Street were leaving for the duck blinds before daylight. There was a light burning in the kitchen when he arrived, dripping from the rain, and a kettle was simmering on the stove, filling the place with warm moist air that brought out the smells of grease and rubber. Mary Street was sitting at the table, her chin cupped in her hands, and her arms were bare and white.

“They've gone to bed,” said Mary Street. “I've been waiting for you, Tom.”

Now he never knew why it was that the first thought which should come to him was that they were all alone. Though he could not tell why, he was startled by the thought, half startled, half elated. He could see himself standing there, already growing tall, and there was nothing but that hissing kettle and the rain and wind, and he and Mary Street. It seemed to him that he had never looked at her before, that he had never seen her white throat and her bare white arms. All the room was the same as it had been always, but Mary Street seemed different, filled with a new radiance, mysterious and bright.

“We're all alone,” said Mary Street. The same thought must have been upon her. “Every one's asleep.”

A shutter went crashing against the wall outside and he heard the rain come down like a million hurrying steps.

“Yes,” said Tommy, “and it's an awful stormy night.”

Then there was a catch in her voice that made him start.

“Tom,” she said, “did you ever think—you and I—we've always been alone?”

All at once he understood. They both were lonely, as lonely as the wind.

“Yes,” he said, “that's so. I guess we're always wanting things.”

She nodded, and her eyes were on him wide and deep, as though she could see everything.

“Yes,” she said, “we don't want what we've got. We want all sorts of other things. Tommy, isn't it awful always to be alone?”

“Yes,” Tommy said. “Yes … I guess I know what you mean.”

Yes, Mary was the one who saw. He always remembered that.

“Tommy,” she said, “I wish we weren't—”

“Weren't—what?” he said.

“Weren't always thinking about other people—other things that aren't like us. I see it from my window. I always see it now.”

“See what?” he asked, but even when he asked it, he knew what she saw, and perhaps even then the vision of it lay somewhere behind her dark still eyes.

“You know,” she said. “It's Warning Hill.”

Mary Street, Mary Street!—He could remember always something delicate and unreal, as she sat by the table that stormy autumn night, staring into nothing, speaking of Warning Hill. And he always thought of Warning Hill, immense and ominous, and of Mary Street before it, slender, solitary, lashed by the wind and rain.

“Listen,” said Tommy, and it always seemed to him that he was afraid of something in the night outside. “It isn't so much Warning Hill. I've been there, and I know.”

She had risen as he spoke, and was standing near him, and he knew she was not listening to what he said, but to something in the night outside.

“No,” she said, “no, Tom, you don't know.”

“Listen,” said Tommy. “Listen, Mary. If you want something badly enough, you get it, if you only keep on wanting. You get it. Wait and see.”

“No,” she said, and how should Mary Street have known? “I'll never have it because it's always changing, once you get it. Don't I know? And I'm not made like that, nor you. We'll go on wanting always.”

There seemed to be something, that drew nearer in the storm that made him set his lips and clench his hands.

“Tom,” she said, and all at once her voice was very sharp and very certain, “we'll never get there. We'll never get to Warning Hill.”

“Just the same,” said Tommy, “I'm going to keep on trying.”

“Yes,” she said, “I know you will. We'll neither of us stop.”

Then all at once he was startled and very ill at ease, because suddenly her face was different, as though a light were on it. He tried to laugh, but he could not. Even his voice was strained and hoarse.

“Mary,” he said, “I don't know what you're talking about—really, Mary Street. I don't understand half of what you're saying.”

He saw her smile that fleeting smile of hers before she looked away, and then he heard her breath drawn sharply. It was almost like a sob.

“Oh, yes, you do,” she said. “You just don't want to see. We won't be happy, either of us, Tom, not ever. Now—good night.”

She was standing there in front of him, her face turned up toward his. Mary Street, Mary Street!—He could remember that she was no longer aloof or far away. It was the strangest thing. In that moment they were just alike and both alone, and yet he stood there with his heart pounding in his throat.

“Good night,” he said. “Good night, Mary.”

Somehow when he spoke the whole room was different. Somehow just by speaking, he knew that he and Mary Street would never be the same again. Something that was struggling with him loosed its hold.

“Tommy,” she whispered in the strangest, trembling way, “Tommy Michael—please.… Oh, well, good night.”

And then he knew he had lost something. He knew it even then, but only later he knew that Mary Street had seen, that Mary Street had tried to bar the way to Warning Hill.

All that came to be left to Tommy Michael were pictures such as those, flashing bright from a haze of other days, which were gone into some space behind forever, as the winds must go. Sometimes of a sunny day in some quiet place he could nearly hear their echo in the ceaseless hum of little living things like small, distant voices of forgotten years. From a distance, those years seemed a peaceful time for all that everything was changing, with new faces and new voices. The tapping of Aunt Sarah's cane would return on that thin air, and the memory of her voice, always fainter like a dying echo, telling of the greatness of the Michaels when the house was new.