Warning Hill (27 page)

“She is—is she?” Tommy Michael was startled by the sound of his own voice. “Well, I'm enough for the Jelletts. You tell Sherwood that for me. You tell him to keep away from her, or Mal will kill him, when he gets home, or else I will, if I get back.”

Miss Meachey gave a puzzling answer.

“Good,” said Miss Meachey. “Now I'm glad I came.”

“You'll tell him?” said Tommy. “I'd tell him myself if I had time.”

“Yes,” Miss Meachey's eyes were bright. “I'll tell him, Tommy, and you'll feel better now. It is always better to think of some one else. I wish I'd seen you long ago. I always wanted to. Don't forget, and now I'll tell you all about the Jelletts. You'd better know it all.”

After she turned and left him at the gate, he never saw Miss Meachey again. It was singular to remember that he and she had only talked that solitary time, for she was like an old friend as he watched her walking up the road to Warning Hill. She had told her whole life, and it was curiously like his own. It left him dizzy and tired. She had told him enough and more than enough about the Grafton Jelletts, all sorts of little tarnished things that were better left unsaid.

XXIII

Mary Street was the only one at the station to say good-by when Tommy Michael left for the war that night. It was curious that he should have felt badly about it, for after all she meant nothing. They had hardly spoken since that night when he came back from Warning Hill nearly five years before, but he was very grateful when she walked with him to the train. It kept his thoughts away to have her stride beside him, slender and silent through the dark.

“Mary,” he said, and as she turned toward him he knew that she was still thinking everything he used to think. The dark was still mysterious to her, and the sun was bright, and anything might happen, no matter how impossible.

“Yes,” she said.

“Thanks for coming.”

“Why not?” she said. “You were lonely. So was I. We're always sort of lonely, aren't we, Tom?”

He never knew how much he told her or how much she may have guessed. Once their hands touched, he remembered, and for a second, though a hundred windows were lighted on that street, he and Mary seemed to be entirely alone, walking in a shadowy silence where she alone knew the way. It was only when he touched her hand. Afterwards his head was aching and he felt very tired.

Not until the train came in could he make up his mind to tell Mary Street what he wanted. Just when the train came in, Mary threw her arms about his neck and kissed him right where every one could see.

“Good-by, Tom,” she said, “and you tell me all about it when you get back home.” She was standing beneath the lights of the station platform, looking at something beyond him, and a wisp of her hair was blown across her face.

“Mary,” he said, and stopped.

She did not answer. Her silence was like that silence in the garden by the summer house when he had called in vain. And he knew that he was leaving something, not Mary, but something of himself.

“Mary,” said Tommy, “I want to tell you—don't have anything to do with Sherwood Jellett. I know what I'm saying. It won't be any use.”

Then Mary Street's face had grown scarlet, and her lips were quivering.

“I guess,” said Mary Street. “I know why you told me that.”

“No, you don't,” said Tommy; “but it's true.”

“I know why,” mockingly Mary Street raised her head, and her voice followed him as the train began to move. “Because she threw you over,—didn't she? So you weren't good enough for them—not you.”

Mockingly she waved her hand, and he could see her try to smile, but all the while her lips were trembling, as if she was angry or sorry for him, either one. And the train was moving faster. It was taking him away as the current of his life had taken him to regions of which he could never tell Mary Street, when he got back home.

“Promise,” Tommy called. “Won't you promise?”

“You don't care,” and her face was wet with tears beneath the platform light “You don't care. You tell me about it, Tommy, when you get back home.”

Would she have promised, if he had spoken sooner, and if the train had not moved away? What would have happened to them both, if he had spoken sooner?

Winnie Milburn saw him in the smoking car, Tommy's face pale and set, staring straight ahead of him, and Winnie sat down beside him as though nothing at all was wrong.

“Hi!” said Winnie Milburn. “I'm feeling awful drunk.”

Tommy Michael started and stared at Winnie Milburn in blank surprise.

“I never thought,” he said, “you'd speak to me again.”

Winnie leaned back comfortably.

“Don't be an ass,” he said. “If we want to fight, haven't we joined the army?”

All at once Tommy felt ashamed, with a leaden shame that made him sick of everything he was.

“Winnie,” he began.

“Yeh?” said Winnie Milburn.

“I didn't mean what I said up there. I don't know what was the matter. I guess I was sort of crazy—I—”

“Hell,” said Winnie Milburn, and he opened his eyes lazily. “That's all right. You had to take a crack at somebody. Every one takes cracks at me.”

“I mean,” Tommy was groping for an elusive thought. His head was aching, and he was very tired. “I mean I was no good. I ought to know enough to take a licking. I always get licked—and I didn't take it right. That's what I mean.”

He was still speaking. He was telling Winnie Milburn everything that had happened before he knew that he was going to tell him. He was telling Winnie about his father, and the house, and the mud by Welcome River, and of the houses that looked like castles up on Warning Hill, and while he spoke it sounded like an old story. He hardly seemed a part of it all while he told.

“Hell,” said Winnie Milburn. “That's all right. But here's what you don't see. You're not any different from anybody else. Everybody's about the same—good and bad, no matter where you see 'em. You think it's money, but you're crazy in the head. There're kinds of people, that's all—some you like and some you don't. It doesn't do any good to kick it all over when you're mad. You're still the same kind, whether you want to be or not. And what I say—if you want to fight, we're going to the war, and if people throw you out, you're not their kind and you ought to be damned glad.”

Winnie Milburn took a gold cigarette case from his pocket and tapped it softly with a delicate forefinger.

“The trouble is,” he said, “you think everybody who carries one of these is like everybody else that does. You've been talking half an hour and that's all you've been saying. What difference does it make, if you're the same breed of cat? Here—take the damned thing. Take it!”

“Here!” cried Tommy. “What are you doing that for?”

“Oh, don't argue!” sighed Winnie Milburn. “Take it when I tell you. There—now do you feel any better? You ought to. You're just as good as I am now, except you're not as drunk. And what I say—if you want a fight, we're going to the war.”

Winnie Milburn smiled cheerfully. Apparently the idea of the war pleased him, for he began to sing, in a way which made others in that car turn and stare at them, the very same song he had laughed at earlier that afternoon. It was the one about not raising my boy to be a soldier. As Tommy Michael listened, he clutched at the back of the seat in front.

“Can't you sing something else?” he asked.

Winnie Milburn stopped and asked him why.

“Because—it makes me think,” and he did not want to think.

“About Marianne?” inquired Winnie Milburn airily. “Don't be such a hog. Do you want to know something amusing? She gave me the sack just before you came in. You're not the only one.”

Winnie was a better man than he was. Tommy could never understand why Winnie should have been the one to go. They were in a patch of woods all cut with little paths. The trees were small and broken, and branches with fresh leaves were on the ground. They were standing up, both of them very dirty, and Winnie was lighting a cigarette, when all the woods became a shrieking torment, like other woods at the end of marches through the dark. When Tommy staggered to his feet, there was nothing left of Winnie Milburn but a heap of rags and blood, not a face and not a voice. Winnie Milburn was nothing any more.

XXIV

Tommy Michael thought he was through with them. It showed how little he knew of the world, or of the Jelletts either, to have thought he could get away for good from the Jelletts or from what the Jelletts meant.

Tommy Michael was thin and pale and his uniform was old. There were those gold V's on his left cuff and one on his right—eighteen months and wounded once.

Fifth Avenue was filled with motors, for it was five in the afternoon. There were hundreds, thousands of them, all new and shining, like the cars which once passed his house toward Warning Hill, and once he heard a clattering of hoofs. Perhaps you remember that carriage that rolled in solitary splendor back in nineteen-nineteen, like the last of a species, but vigorous and new. A pair of bays drew it, in silver-mounted harness; a coachman and a footman were on the box in silk hats and plum-colored suits and silver buttons. It was a pure association of ideas. When Tommy Michael saw that carriage, he always said he did not seem to be upon a sidewalk. He was standing on the edge of a dusty road and that other carriage was rolling by.

“Now there's a fine turn-out for you,” his father was saying, “though personally I wouldn't check those horses quite so high.”

And really it was the most singular thing. Tommy Michael said that nothing which had happened made the slightest difference. He had not escaped in the least from anything he used to think. His uniform was shrunken and creased; his shoes were scarred and scuffed about the toes. The voices on the sidewalk, and all the roar of noises upon the air became hushed before the slapping of those hoofs upon the asphalt. He could even hear the jingling of the curb chains as the pair of bays went past, and again he thought that he had never seen anything so splendid. There was exactly the same insolence and splendor which he had known before, and nothing he had seen or done had diminished it one jot.

“It's just the same,” he found himself saying; “it's just the same.”

And then he knew, in spite of everything, that he was Tommy Michael still, that he had only lost himself for a little while. It had always been the Jelletts, and it was the Jelletts still. The idea which they personified was mocking him, laughing at him again, in the voices all around him, and he could not get away. That was what Tommy always said. He could not get away.

“Tommy!” He remembered how he had started, when he heard his own name. “Hey—don't you know me, Tom?”

Mal Street was the one who saw him. He did not seem just right to Mal, because though Tommy looked, he did not appear to see. Mal was in a private's uniform, which was a good deal too small. His face was very angular and brown and mobile, that same wild face where anger and humor ran unchecked. Even the army had not managed to take the slouch from Mal's shoulders. From looking at him you could imagine what he thought about the army and all discipline in life. A lock of his hair had slipped from beneath his cap and was dangling across his forehead.

“Buddy,” said Mal, “they can't make me salute you now. I got out yesterday. Say—who won the war?”

Tommy began to laugh, and all at once everything was better.

“The M. Ps,” said Tommy.

“Yeh?” said Mal. “And who helped the M. Ps?”

“The Y. M. C. A.,” said Tommy.

“Yes,” said Mal. “You know your stuff, but I won some of it, now I'm saying, when I wasn't in the pen.”

Mal was sure to have been the sort you saw around the guardhouse who never fitted in. But it was not a time to think of that. The sight of Mal filled Tommy with a nostalgic pain.

“And now,” said Mal, “I'm going back home, I'll tell the world—just as soon as I hit the station, kid. Ain't you coming too?”

Tommy always said it was very strange that the sight of Mal and the sound of Mal made him want to go back again. It seemed as though a black veil that was all around him began to shake. Something bright and peaceful came in little flashes through his mind. It was June, and the sun would be out, the long summer sun. It would be sparkling on the water. It would make the shadows dance through the trees. He could remember. The waves would go rippling on the shore, more and more loudly as the sun went down, and shot a final beam toward the houses on Warning Hill.

“Not yet,” said Tommy. “I don't want to go back—much.”

Then Mal said a surprising thing, because you would not have thought that Mal had the intuition.

“Oh,” said Mal, “it's them Jelletts, is it?”

Tommy looked up quickly, his face a painful red. For some reason Mal's guessing only added to his humiliation.

“How did you guess that?” he asked, and he did not seem to have been away at all, and it all might have happened yesterday.

“Mary,” said Mal. “She wrote.”

“Mary?” Then Tommy remembered something else. “Is—is she still playing around with Sherwood Jellett? Look here—I said—”

Sometimes it struck him as curious that he had nearly forgotten, for all at once he knew it was the only thing that mattered in the wreck that he had left behind. Mal Street leaned toward him. His eyebrows came together in a thick dark line.

“If there's any worrying about her,” he remarked, “I'll do it, and I guess Mary can look out for herself. Don't you worry. Hell's smoke! You ain't afraid of them Jelletts?”

“No, you fool!” Tommy always said that he was startled at his own anger, because he could not understand why he should have been angry. Mal seized his shoulder. For once Mal displayed marvellous good sense.