Warning Hill (26 page)

“Go back!” The fury in Tommy's voice made Winnie Milburn start. “Go back where you belong.”

“But, Tom!” cried Winnie Milburn, “don't you see I'm sticking with you? I heard all the row and I'm sticking right along.”

But Tommy only half heard him in that sudden blaze of light. He was choking with a hatred of himself and a hatred of the world, a hatred of that close cropped lawn, and of the impeccable gravel on the drive; and the very sight of Winnie Milburn was like a whip lash on his pace.

“And that's a lie!” cried Tommy Michael. “Don't you think I know you now? You're all a pack of liars. Don't you think I know? Liars or else damned fools, like me. Don't I know why you ever looked at me twice? Bcause I could hit a golf ball and you wanted to hit one too, or else you wouldn't have noticed me any more than if I'd been a yellow dog. That's it—a yellow dog. And it was all funny to you too, wasn't it? Fun to watch me make a fool of myself? I guess it must have been, to see me think I was just as good as you. I guess you must have laughed.”

“That isn't so!” In spite of his astonishment Winnie Milburn answered quickly. “It may have been at first. I heard what Sherwood said—”

“You did, did you?” Tommy Michael's mouth grew thin as he tried to erase the agony from his face, and then, in his wretchedness, even pain was gone. “Then—I guess that's all. I know where I am now, all right. It's the first time I ever knew, and I guess he had a right to laugh. I never ought to have said a word to any of you. I'm not like you, and I won't ever be. I guess that's all.”

And Tommy Michael turned without waiting to hear what Winnie Milburn answered, and walked down the Jellett drive, past the rhododendron bushes and through the Jellett gates. But once through those gates his walk became almost a run. Tommy Michael was running, or almost running, away from Warning Hill. Not until much later did he realize that no matter how fast one traveled, or how many friends one spurned, or bridges one might leave crashing into smoky ruin, it did no good to run away.

Already memory was on his back, grimmer than Sinbad's Old Man of the Sea, for not even drink could ever shake its hold. Yes, memory was lashing him already and goading him on toward hate.

XXII

Tommy Michael always said the idea of their laughing was the worst. He could seem to hear them laughing as he hurried down the road. There was Sherwood's hoarse, high shout, and Mr. Jellett's chuckle, and perhaps by then Marianne too was laughing, softly, ripplingly in little waves of sound. Just behind him, no matter how he hurried, her laughter seemed to be just behind him, although the road was empty and he was far away from Warning Hill. On that causeway which crossed the marshes toward Michael's Harbor the wind was blowing fresh and strong. It caught at him playfully with caressing invisible hands, just as the wind had always done, as long as he could remember, but her voice was in the wind, mocking and driving Tommy on.

“I meant it just in fun … just in fun,” the wind was saying. “I never want to see him again.… No, never, never,—never.”

And there was only one wish in him definite and clear, which every one must know. He wanted to go home. Once inside those crumbling gateposts of the Michael grounds, the bushes would shut him out, and there would be a shadowy something which would bring him peace. There would be a friendly something and the wind would change its tone. There would be a whispering in the trees, and the leaves and the dead vines would be moving, as though some one else was there.

And once he got there, it was true. The sun was going down, covering the land with a soft, forgiving light. It was the time when shadows grow as long and as distorted as the darkest thoughts, falling suddenly across the very lightest places, silent warnings of the dark. And the breeze was going down with the sun, sinking to the faintest murmurs. The lulling of the wind was like the passing of a storm. Up through the elm trees rose the walls of the Michael house, gray beneath their cracking paint, taller than he had ever remembered, and solemn with a mystery of their own. And softly, invisibly, about Tommy Michael were moving the ghosts of other sorrows and memories of all sorts of vanished things, which gather about old places and never wholly go. There were a thousand mournful hopes and fears, moving and restless with the setting of the sun, and they made him think half-finished thoughts, formless, unconsoling and yet tranquil in their sadness. Those ghosts were trooping from the door of the carriage house with its sagging roof. They were wandering along that choked path that once led to the water through a mass of shrubs and weeds.

Yet by the shore the waves of the harbor were fresh and new. Tommy Michael wondered sometimes what led him to the shore. It must have been because he had played there so often long ago. The summer house where he had played was a formless thing covered by its vines, and the grass, already sere and brown, was tall about it, billowing softly in the dying wind. And Tommy did not seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter as he stood there. Across the mouth of Welcome River the houses of the town stood faintly white, like graves, and the elms above them were like the trees on plates and the sky behind them was very red.

Through the pain in Tommy Michael there ran memories of frayed ribbons of mornings beneath the sun. It must have been the billowing of the grass which brought him so near to the beginning. It was not hard for Tommy to think back. He was lying in the grass. His father was standing above him in his checked suit, leaning on his cane.

“No?” his father was saying, and you might have thought his voice had never gone. “Well, you'll see what I mean some day. The world isn't made for people out of the ordinary running.”

There was a frightful clarity to it, and then all about him memories were darting through the dark—his father's voice, his mother's voice—and then there came a surge of loneliness, so bitter that it was almost fear. The grass was moving in the dusk, exactly as though some one was running on it, with a noiseless step as light as air.

It must have been that loneliness which made him call, involuntarily, in a tortured voice. It did not seem absurd out there in the dark, to call on something that was lost, never to be found.

“Spurius!”

He was calling to something that was gone, and he gave it that same old name.

Even when his own voice broke through everything, he could not stop himself.

“Hi! Spurius! Are you there?”

There was a rustling, nothing more, only the rustling of the wind; and he was all alone. That magic he once had known had never been; and Tommy Michael was all alone, faced with the most terrible truth that man has ever learned.

“There's only me,” said Tommy Michael; “yes, there's only me.”

And that was how Miss Meachey found him, standing by that ruined summer house, staring at the grass. When Tommy Michael first saw her, surely he had a right to be startled. She was walking down the weed-choked path with a long dark cloak about her, like a shadow come to life.

“Is that you?” He heard her call before he saw her. “Is that you, Tommy Michael?”

Then Tommy saw her, tall, dark, and bare-headed, and all wrapped in her cloak.

“Who—who are you?” asked Tommy Michael, and he did not know. Except once when he had shaken hands, years back, he had only seen her from a distance.

“I'm Miss Meachey,” she said, “Isabel Meachey. I'm the Jelletts' governess. Don't you know?”

Tommy Michael did not answer. She was nearer, and he could see her clearly.

“No one sent me,” said Miss Meachey. “I just came. I thought you might be here.”

“But what did you come for?”

Miss Meachey still was good to look at. There was hardly any need to think how much more beautiful she must have been ten years before, as she stood there in the dusk.

“Because you need some one,” Miss Meachey said, “you may not know me, but that doesn't mean I don't know you. I know all about you—everything. There wasn't much for me to think about. I've watched you all the time.”

She paused, and Tommy saw that she was smiling.

“Poor Tommy Michael!” Miss Meachey said. “You'll let me call you Tommy? You don't mind? Why did you ever love her?”

“Did you come here”—it was not strange that Tommy was incredulous—“did you come here to be kind? It's too late, I guess, for anybody to be kind.”

Miss Meachey nodded.

“I know, but that's just why I came. I suppose it does seem queer to see me all at once, all alone in the dark, when you've never seen me before. I never thought, because it seems we've been friends for so long. I know just how you're hurt.”

“How do you know?” It was all very curious. It no longer seemed strange that Miss Meachey should be there. Before she ever told him he knew there was a sadness in her and a disillusion exactly like his own. Miss Meachey too was hurt. The only difference was that she had suffered it so long without complaint, as women can.

“Don't you see?” There was an eagerness in her answer. “Because we're on the fringe of things, and we're the saddest people in the world, brought up to something that we've never had, and wishing for all sorts of things, wishing, wishing. If we don't take care, we get to be the courtiers,—and the courtesans. And it's dreadful.… Oh, I know.”

“Yes,” said Tommy dully. “I guess you're right. I guess that's what we are.”

Miss Meachey's throat was quivering. There was a trembling about her lips. It was startling, because a moment before her face had been so calm.

“Don't say that. I may be, but it isn't what you are—not yet. Don't let the Jelletts smash you. They're always glad to do it—but they haven't smashed you yet. And don't you care for the Jelletts. They'd never understand. Hate them—the way I do, Tommy Michael.”

“Why do you hate them?”

Somehow it was as though she had snatched away her cloak, and her breast was white with scars.

“Why?” Miss Meachey raised her hand. Her fingers gripped his arm.

“Because they don't know what it is to be kind. They've forgotten all about it. They're rotten and they'll smash themselves—like—like rotten apples. That's the way they'll go.”

It was ugly—that idea of Miss Meachey hating them all the time.

“What's the use?” Tommy sighed and shook his head. “I suppose you thought you were as good as they were too. What's the use?” Through the darkness he could see the lights already twinkling on Warning Hill, tiny specks against the sky. “Nothing can ever happen to the Jelletts. They'll be laughing,” Tommy Michael's voice broke; “I wish I was dead. I wish—”

And then Miss Meachey began to laugh. It was not pleasant to hear her, and she still held his arm very tightly.

“I know,” she said, “I've wished it too—and I used to think they were wonderful, but they're not. You wait and see. Do you know what happened to-night? What do you think Grafton Jellett found after you went away?” Miss Meachey laughed again. “He found his wife had run away with his secretary. Yes, she ran off with that blond Hewens this afternoon. And I'll tell you something more. I might as well. Do you know what Grafton Jellett thinks? He thinks I'm going to marry him.… And I'm going to laugh in his face. I can do it now—laugh right in his face. I've got enough of his money—and I'll laugh at him. I'll laugh—”

Miss Meachey had begun to laugh already. She threw back her head and her shoulders shook at the immensity of her joke, whatever it might be.

“Don't!” cried Tommy, because the sound was terrible. “Won't you please be quiet?”

“Why don't you laugh too?” inquired Miss Meachey. “I had to tell some one, and I thought you'd like to know. Are you still thinking about Marianne?”

“I wish,” cried Tommy, and again it seemed as though everything was breaking, “you'd leave out Marianne.”

“Then leave her out yourself,” replied Miss Meachey. “You're the one who'll have to do it, because she won't leave you. She'll want you again. She'll change her mind before to-morrow, because she cares about you, Tommy. In her way, she cares. You'll have to do the breaking. She'll want you back again.”

“She can't want me much—not after—what she said.”

It was worse than if Miss Meachey had never told him that Marianne cared.

“Oh,” said Miss Meachey, “they never mind what they say. She had to say something hard to make things right. That's why I say they'll hurt you if you love them. You won't be the only one. There's a girl in the village now, and I suppose she cares, but wait till Sherwood's finished—”

Bitterly, sneeringly, Miss Meachey spoke, and it was an ugly thing to hear. Between the words he could feel the venom and the pain, and all at once Mr. Jellett's house was like a hideous dark shape. Slowly on the harbor breeze the last fair thought was leaving Tommy Michael. Out of the shadows Miss Meachey had come to send it spinning with her laugh and her twitching face. Slowly Tommy Michael raised his head.

“What girl are you talking about?”

“Haven't you heard?” inquired Miss Meachey. “If you hadn't been away, you would. It's the Street girl—Mary Street.”

Tommy Michael drew in his breath, and something seemed to be pressing on his chest. He could remember so well. He remembered with a sharp tenderness that choked him and hurt his eyes. It was not so long ago, back in the beginning, that she was standing barelegged by Welcome River, her hair in wild wisps across her face, staring across the harbor to that magic place where the houses stood,—tall like castles.

“Tom,” she was calling, “you take that boat … I want to see you go. You tell me what it looks like, Tommy, when you get back home.”

And all that time he had been away, and now his boat was on the rocks with that big sail that would carry him so fast. The waves upon the rocks were lashing at him, not waves of water, but more like tongues of flame.