Warning Hill (23 page)

“Didn't mean to, hey?” said Aunt Sarah. “Well, you needn't take on so about it then. It ain't so remarkable, upon my word.”

“I didn't say it was,” cried Tommy. Aunt Sarah still possessed the gift of stirring anger, although she was so old.

“Ho-ho-ho,” said Aunt Sarah. “You act as though it was. You act as though you weren't a gentleman and as good as any of 'em. Ho-ho-ho, don't you forget you're going to own the house once I'm underground.”

Was there ever any one who stuck to an idea as tight as his Aunt Sarah? He could understand how she might love the house, but it was more than that. It gave him a sensation not far removed from awe to see Aunt Sarah fixed in her belief up to the end that the Michael house was splendid, though the water was coming through the roof and its chimney had fallen before a northeast storm. To Aunt Sarah, though her eyes were dim and though everything was fading, there was something to the Michael house which had never grown old for her, and was still as bright as when everything was new.

Marianne was the one who was surprised when she heard that he knew Winnie Milburn and Percy Wright and Charley Lothrop Jones. It was the nicest thing that had happened in a long while when he told Marianne, because Tommy knew that Marianne loved him then. He never saw her except on that beach at night. She made him understand that it would do no good to see her anywhere but there. Say what one might, there was a high romance in those still nights, that made the spirit rise to rare and dangerous heights.

There were difficulties to be overcome, for Warning Hill was very gay. There were parties at the Jellett house, and visits down the shore. All sorts of strange young men were calling for Marianne, young men in automobiles with roaring engines. Up at the Harbor Club, Tommy could see them come and go, with sharp misgivings. Sometimes it seemed wonderful that they were ever able to see each other in those flashing, noisy days. It was Marianne who managed, always Marianne.

Behind a loose stone in the Michael gateposts Marianne would leave a note, or she would pass him at the Harbor Club with a quick nod and a whisper. Marianne had ways of arranging everything, hundreds of little ways. You had the most remarkable illusion that you and she were sharing a marvellous secret which you alone could see. There were a thousand secrets, no matter who you were, when Marianne went by. There were whisperings in the rustle of her dress and dancing in her eyes. But Tommy Michael always knew that they were all for him.

“See,” her eyes would say, “I want to tell you something.”

“Whisper,” her dress would go, “whisper … whisper.”

Now those were the times that Tommy could remember best. He could remember the way his heart would beat when Marianne went past, because he knew she loved him, and somehow inside him all the things they said were locked away, as you might lock letters in a box. And perhaps somewhere just beyond the borders of human consciousness there lies a space where all words go that were spoken once on dark still nights, those banalities which seemed so splendid once, and later were as monstrous as the lines of a schoolboy's poem.

“You know them?” How quickly she turned her head that night! “They're friends of yours—Winnie Milburn, and Charley Jones and—all those other boys? You're not joking, Tommy, are you?”

“No!” A suspicion flashed across him, and it made him start. “Marianne—you didn't think I'd lie to you—any more than you'd lie to me?”

“Oh, Tommy!” gasped Marianne. “Of course I don't—only—only—”

“Only what?” She was sitting very still, looking at him through the dark, and yet he knew that her spirit was dancing like firelight, forever beyond his grasp.

“Only it's so remarkable,” said Marianne. He knew what she meant, and that old pain surged over him, to which he had never become inured.

“Marianne,” he asked, “is it any more remarkable than—than you and me?”

“No,” whispered Marianne. “Oh, Tommy, I think you're ever so wonderful. You know that. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think so. I wouldn't have said I had a headache just so I could come.”

Then he heard his own voice.

“Marianne, you do love me, don't you, Marianne?”

“Yes.” How often she had told him that! “Yes, of course I do!”

“And that's the only thing that matters!” How often Tommy had said so! “It's the only thing, I guess. Don't you forget some day I'll call for you right at your own front door.”

Those were the days when everything was changing. There was tar upon the roads. The automobiles were going faster, and the music was playing a restless tune. There was a dance called the “one-step” which was driving the waltz to cover, like some rare animal unfit to cope with a new struggle for existence. A one-step tune was running through everything, chiming into thoughts, and changing the very sound of life. Tommy himself could hear it. He did not know how much he had changed until his Great-aunt Sarah died, leaving him the house at Michael's Harbor and thirty-five hundred dollars in the bank. It seemed to Tommy that a rope had been cut away, which had held him to a shore. He did not know until much later that it was his boyhood and his youth he was leaving, as one leaves a land forever that grows fairer and still fairer as it approaches the horizon's rim.

They were sitting in easy attitudes in Winthrop Milburn's room when Tommy came walking in that last year they were together. It was two weeks after his Aunt Sarah had died. They called to him in lazy pleasant voices. They made remarks about his new overcoat and his new brown hat.

“Is anything the matter?” some one asked. “Look at him—he ought to be at home with Mrs. Schoule.”

A year before Mrs. Schoule had become a joke. One by one they had come to call, just to look at Mrs. Schoule, but they were all good boys. They did not bother to admire Tommy's more sterling characteristics, but accepted them with weary resignation, as they accepted all that smacked of energetic virtue.

“Don't worry,” said Tommy. “Please don't any of you strain yourselves. I'm through with Mrs. Schoule!”

“Through with Mrs. Schoule?”

“Yes,” said Tommy, “through with Mrs. Schoule.”

“Through with Mrs. Schoule?”

“Listen,” said Tommy. “I wish you'd all shut up.”

“We won't shut up,” said Winnie Milburn; “he's through with Mrs. Schoule.”

“And what's more,” said Tommy. “I want to know if you won't come out for dinner. I wish you would. You've all done a lot for me—and I want to do something.”

“Don't,” said Winnie Milburn, “please don't make me cry.”

“Well, you know you have,” said Tommy. “If it hadn't been for you—”

He stopped because every one was begging him in strangled voices please to stop.

“Won't you shut up?” said Tommy Michael.

“All right,” said Winnie Milburn, “all right, but don't take Sherwood Jellett along. Don't be big-hearted and take Sherwood Jellett!”

Maurice, who ran the basement dining room in that hotel which the young gentlemen frequented most, looked at Tommy questioningly, because Tommy had not been there before.

“Champagne,” said Tommy Michael, and looked at Maurice in just the right way, as old Simeon Danforth might have looked. “I'll leave the brand to you.”

And then, ever so much later, he and Winnie Milburn were in a taxicab. Tommy never knew how they got there, or where the rest had gone. He only remembered that his head was very light and singing with soft laughter.

“Where's all the rest?” asked Tommy.

“You're tight,” said Winnie Milburn. “They're all in cabs behind. Where're we going now?”

“I don't care,” said Tommy. “Anywhere at all—just as long as it's somewhere bright.”

“You're tight,” said Winnie Milburn.

“I don't care,” said Tommy; “so are you.”

“Oh, well,” said Winnie, “does it matter?”

There was a silence and then they both began to laugh, but Tommy's mind was very clear.

“Winnie,” said Tommy, “I want to ask you something.”

“Then don't talk—ask it,” Winnie said.

Tommy placed his hands very carefully, one on each knee.

“Winnie,” said Tommy, “suppose I wanted to marry your sister—would you mind?”

“Who?” said Winnie. “You?”

Winnie Milburn's eyes were on him. He could feel them in the half light.

“Yes,” said Tommy. “Me.”

“I get you,” said Winnie. “No. Hell, no. Why should I mind?”

Tommy leaned back in that swaying cab. He seemed to have traveled a long distance. It seemed as though he had always been jolting along a road.

“I guess—” said Tommy, and his voice grew stronger, “I guess I've shown you, then.”

“You're tight,” said Winnie. “Don't be so vague, because it hurts my head. Showed me what, I want to know?”

“I don't know,” and perhaps Tommy Michael didn't. “But you and everybody—I've showed you just the same.”

XXI

Yes, Tommy Michael had shown them, or he thought he had, even if he did not know what. Things were going too fast to be sure of anything by then, but he must have shown them something of what he was. A year in business might have taught him differently, but he went to Plattsburg that same May. He dropped everything and went, remembering that his great-aunt's thirty-five hundred dollars was waiting in the bank. He had arrived somewhere entirely by himself. He would never have become an officer at Plattsburg, if he had not. You could not get away from that, even though officers and gentlemen were being manufactured in wholesale lots that spring. He had shown them at Michael's Harbor. He could hear their voices behind his back as he walked down the street.

“Lookit—he's an officer! Look at Tommy Michael. Lookit! He's going to the war!”

Yet, as he stood on Mr. Jellett's doorstep, he had a sense of being nowhere, not of Michael's Harbor and not of Warning Hill. As Tommy Michael waited, he remembered that his mouth had grown very dry, and that he had pressed his nails into his palms so tightly that an hour later he could see the marks. He could stand straight with a lean hard straightness. He could walk with the swift grace of coordinated muscles. He could look anybody in the eye—and yet it all seemed as nothing now that he had reached his journey's end. Instead, an odd thought kept crossing his mind in aimless circles, and the thought was like a panic, for though he had fought against it for as long almost as he could remember, there it was, as strong as ever, the stronger for being ground into the earth.

“I'm just as good as they are,” his mind kept saying; “I'm just as good as they are. Of course—of course I am.”

Even so, he gave a start when Hubbard came back to the door. He hated himself because he knew that Hubbard noticed.

“Miss Marianne will see you, sir,” said Hubbard; “this way, if you please.”

Tommy was in that hall again, and it was curious that nothing at all seemed changed. Though other places had grown smaller, that hall was as large as ever—the same enormous place of golden oak, with a great stairway mounting upward to a gallery, and a fireplace with a suit of armor upon either side, and a row of pictures near the light. And Tommy was just like a very small boy when he walked through that front door, exactly as though time had meant nothing. He stood for a moment looking at those pictures, not because he wished to see them, but only to catch his breath.

“Turners, sir,” said Hubbard.

“Yes,” said Tommy; “yes, I know.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” said Hubbard. There was a difference in the way he spoke that made Tommy turn and watch him. There was just the slightest difference in Hubbard, though he was still impassive and perfectly polite. “I didn't hardly realize until I saw your card. Your father once admired those pictures, sir. I thought you might be interested to know.”

“Oh,” said Tommy. “Thank you.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Hubbard; “may I take your hat?”

“Thanks,” said Tommy.

“Thank you, sir,” said Hubbard. Now what was Hubbard thinking? Tommy never knew, though he sometimes had a suspicion that Hubbard knew everything that was to happen, when Tommy walked down the hall.

“This way, sir,” said Hubbard, “if you please.”

Tommy had never seen the room before. It was the music room, which looked over the garden and out towards the harbor. There was a great black grand piano and sofas and chairs in slip covers of flowered chintz. He could hear the piano as Hubbard opened the door, and he knew the tune, already old even then, whose words went roughly as follows:

“I didn't raise my boy to be a soldier,

I brought him up to be my pride and joy:

Who dares to put a musket on his shoulder

To shoot some other mother's darling boy?”

Then some one began to laugh and Hubbard said “Mr. Michael,” and the music stopped, and Tommy stood by the door.

The room was smoky. Tommy remembered, and the smoke seemed to go with the song. He could remember just the way that room looked ever so long afterwards, the sun coming through the window, the small red and yellow flowers upon the chintz, a table with glasses, a siphon and a bowl of ice. Marianne was sitting by the piano in a dress of filmy blue. Marianne was laughing, her eyes were dancing and bright Seated beside Marianne at the piano, very tall and thin, was Winnie Milburn. It never occurred to Tommy that Winnie might be there, and for some reason Winnie also seemed surprised. Winnie was also in a uniform with a lieutenant's bar on his shoulders, and he looked at Tommy very queerly.

“Hi, Tom,” he said.

Marianne waved a hand at him as he stood by the door, and made a little motion with her head.

“You're late,” said Marianne. “I was just saying I've been expecting you all afternoon.”