Warning Hill (7 page)

There were many moanings at the bar when that bold figure which had so long adorned it passed away. There were echoes which Tommy heard, that demonstrated a spirit beyond a country lawyer's scope, capable of traveling beyond the Summer County Courthouse and the Summer County Bank, if a thick neck and heavy dinners had not sent it to still rarer distances. There were stories. He was vital and incisive enough to be the hero of local stories, told in the heavy aroma of cigar smoke when hotel chairs are reared up on their hind legs and tired old feet are propped upon the front of the veranda railings and the ashes trickled like glaciers down the vest to mingle with the pins of fraternal orders.

There was the sort of man that Thomas Michael was, and Tommy knew the type—a successful small-town gentleman, who headed the directors of the local bank and was counsel for the trolley company. Now why should he have had a son like Alfred? It must have been a penalty ordained by a tempering Providence.

Tommy could see it clearly, as time allowed him to look back. Of course, old Thomas could never have known what Tommy's father meant. He had no sympathy, surely, for the curse of facility that lost itself. He had no friendliness for failure. He gave no help. He only watched with contempt, tinged with his own self-pity, a phenomenon which he could not understand. They must have had words, for no one with Thomas Michael's face would have stopped with thoughts; and it must have been rather terrible when those two got down to words. Tommy could fancy the old parlor ringing with words until the heavy laces before the windows shook and Thomas Michael's face went purple. He could imagine his father's adroit irony clashing with the fire of an old man's invectives, though all the while poor Alfred must have known that Thomas was dead right. He was useless—damned useless; not fit to carry a corkscrew in his keyring, by God, or to have a bank account. What under the blue heaven had Thomas done to be cursed with the burden of a shirker? What in the devil's name was the use in reading books, if it didn't get you anywhere? What in the devil was he going to do—nothing, and watch the lilies grow? Did he think he was a rich man's son? He'd find out some day he wasn't so blank-blanked rich.

Yes, by God, he would! He'd find out some day when it was too late, that you couldn't get something for nothing. What was the use in heaping advantages on a blank-blank rotten apple? What good had college done? Hadn't it cost five thousand dollars to get Alfred home again? And could he settle down and work in the city? Not by a blank sight, he couldn't. How the blazes could a man get on messing around in bucket shops? What was he going to do? He was getting too blanked old for nonsense and what
was
he going to do? What had he done up to date, unless by some pertinacity of error, to fall in love with a girl no one ever heard of. He hoped by blazes
she'd
make him dance. He hoped—

Aunt Sarah told Tommy often enough those scenes. She'd sat through them in the parlor. She'd even said a word now and again, when Alfred had walked out and slammed the door.

“It's your fault, Tom,” she told him once, when Alfred slammed the door. “Haven't you got sense to see he isn't like you?”

“Why isn't he like me?” roared Tom Michael. “Isn't he my son?”

“It's your fault, I tell you,” said Aunt Sarah. “Have you ever let him do anything he wants? You know you haven't, Tom.”

“Why the blazes should I?” roared Tom Michael. “Don't I know best?”

“Well, well, well,” Aunt Sarah said. “Break his spirit if you want to. You'll have him thinking he isn't worth anything and then he'll never be.”

“You're wrong,” said Tom, biting off the end of a cigar. “When he knows he isn't worth a continental, he'll brace up and get to work—and I'm the man to make him know.”

And they both were right. Alfred Michael knew he was not worth a continental and he never was … and Tommy knew it too. Try as he might not to know, he knew it. Yet there was strength somewhere behind that failure, Tommy also knew. There was a magnificence, as vague and intangible as phosphorescent light, gleaming resplendent in that shadowy man, which often made Tommy's eyes grow dim, because Tommy loved him.

The sun was setting over Michael's Harbor, and the sky was a deep fine red. Tommy could remember the exact color, because ever after he was troubled and distressed when such a redness in the sky heralded other dusks. The wind was sinking with the sun, leaving in its wake that evening silence across which sounds could travel much more clearly than at any other time. Though the bridge over Welcome River was half a mile away, Tommy could hear the occasional clatter of hoofs and wheels, and across the river, snatches of laughter and the shouting of children in the streets, gentle always, half stifled by the distance.

Tommy was standing by the gate posts of the Michael drive, looking toward the elms as well as he could, which was not very well, for his right eye was puffed so that he could hardly see. Nevertheless, he could notice how dark the leaves were growing, approaching in the darkness the shadows on the lawn, and soon he knew that everything in the world outside—the house, the trees, the bushes, would be nothing but one vast shadow until morning came. He did not notice Mr. Street approach until he was close beside him, which was not strange, because Mr. Street walked gently in spite of his great height.

“Tommy,” he said, “is your daddy home?”

Tommy shook his head.

“Where'd he go?”

“He went for a walk,” said Tommy, “up toward Warning Hill. I'm waiting for him now.”

“Hah!” said Mr. Street. “Why're you waiting—a little shaver like you? Isn't your daddy often out nights?”

“I don't know why,” said Tommy, “but I'm waiting.”

“Well, put this in your mouth,” said Mr. Street, and gave Tommy a little paper bag with red and green stripes on it. Inside was a piece of yellow candy on a stick. “It's an all-day sucker,” Mr. Street explained. “You got it coming to you.”

“Thank you very much,” said Tommy.

“You ain't got much to thank me for,” said Mr. Street. “At that, you ain't, but next time you see Mal he won't do what he done to you again.”

“You tell Mal,” said Tommy, “I'm going to lick him some day.”

“Huh,” said Mr. Street, “who told you so?”

“My—my father did.”

“Your daddy's a good man,” said Mr. Street, “but he's awful optimistic. Huh—here he's coming now.”

Sure enough, Alfred Michael was walking down the road, staring at the red sky, and the last of the sun was on him; it gave him a reddish-golden glow and his walking stick was like a bar of gold. But when he reached the gate and the sun was off him, it seemed to Tommy that his father must have been walking a long time.

“Ah,” he said, “break the news, Jim.”

“Alf,” said Mr. Street, and cleared his throat, “she faded out, Alf.”

“The deuce you say!” said Alfred Michael.

Jim Street coughed. “Seen Jellett?”

“Yes,” said Tommy's father. “Jellett faded, too—balked right at the barrier. Why, Tom—you here too? How's your eye?”

“It's all right,” said Tommy. “I don't mind it now.”

Mr. Street nodded gravely. “He's a sport,” he said, “just like his daddy—a dead game sport.”

Tommy always remembered how pleased his father was. It seemed to Tommy that he had never looked as happy or as proud.

“That's something,” he said. “That's something, isn't it?” and he dropped his hand on Tommy's shoulder.

Mr. Street coughed and cleared his throat. “Alf,” he said, “I've known you since we were kids, and you only have to look in the mirror to see a dead game sport.”

Later, Tommy knew that Mr. Street's recommendations were of as doubtful value as Mr. Street was himself. But it only made the pathos stronger. He looked up at his father proudly.

“There're some things that stay bright, Tom,” he said. “Don't be forgetting that.”

“Daddy,” said Tommy, “here's Mother.”

His mother was hurrying down the driveway, slender in her gingham dress, and, though her mouth was half open, it still seemed to be a thin straight line. Though her face was still like a flower of wax, her cheeks were redder, and her eyes were very bright.

“Get off of this place,” she said to Mr. Street and caught her breath. “Get off—you coward!”

There was something dreadful in her anger. Even Tommy knew that. It was the first time he had ever seen anger rise in a woman, beyond all reason and restraint. It was frightful, that change from a bent and narrow figure with a duster in her hands, into sublimated fury.

“Now, Ma'am—now, Ma'am—” began Mr. Street.

“Get off this place.” The voice of Estelle Michael was shriller. “How dare you come here, you gutter scum, after what you did to my boy? Tommy, fetch the riding crop. It's over the mirror in the hall!”

“But, Ma'am—” began Mr. Street, holding out his hands.

“Estelle!” Tommy's father spoke sharply. “I told you it was my fault; I told you I'd take the blame!”

“You!” Tommy's mother whirled on him with a half-raised hand. “Of course, you'll take the blame. Did you ever do anything else? Can't you stand up and be a man for once? If you can't, I can! Tommy, did you hear me?”

“Before God, Ma'am—” Mr. Street's face was white. “Get your riding switch if you've a mind to—”

“Jim,” said Tommy's father, “you'd better go away.”

“Yes,” said Estelle Michael, “he'd better go—and you too, for all the good you are. What have you done to help us? Must I always be the one?”

“I've tried, Estelle.” Tommy looked up startled, because his father's voice was so very queer. “I swear I've tried, Estelle. Won't you remember that?”

But his mother did not answer. She had turned and was running towards the house, with her hands before her face.

“Daddy,” said Tommy, “Daddy, what's the matter?”

For surely something was the matter. Tommy knew it, even when Alfred Michael took his hand, because he said the strangest thing.

“Your mother's tired, Tommy, but you mustn't blame her for anything she says. I hope that you'll be like her, if—you don't grow too hard.”

Tommy looked up at the elm trees, and it seemed to him that he had never seen the leaves so dark, and the sky, too, was growing darker, because the red was leaving it now that the sun was down.

VII

His mother did not come down to supper. It was the first time that Tommy had known an evening meal go by without her sitting at the foot of the table in the golden oak dining room that old Thomas Michael had built. There was no one to correct his manners. Aunt Sarah usually supped upstairs on her dark wood sewing table. Tommy was not sorry. It was a great deal pleasanter to be alone with his father, waited on by Nora, the Irish maid, just as though Tommy also was a man. The conversation, too, was pleasanter, for it did not deal with the price of things, or bills, or bits of village gossip, and there were no complaints about dirty hands or the natural drooping of the spinal column above a plate. Instead, his father talked to him exactly as though he were a man.

“Tommy, how's your eye?”

“It doesn't hurt. Daddy?”

“Yes?”

“It wasn't Mr. Street's fault.”

“No, of course it wasn't.”

“Daddy, aren't you hungry?”

“No.”

“Why aren't you hungry?”

“Because there are times when people aren't. You'll know. Eat your eggs, Tommy.”

“I'm not hungry either. Daddy—why was the sky so red?”

“Eat your eggs,” said Alfred Michael. “Don't you see? I want you to grow up to be a man.”

“The sky was awfully red,” said Tommy, “redder than the coals in the fireplace.”

“Yes,” said Alfred Michael. His face gave a curious twitch. “Tommy?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

Alfred Michael had risen from the table, and Tommy saw that he had not touched a bit of food, and he was doing a most astounding thing. He was snapping his watch chain from his vest, and more curious than that, there was no watch upon it.

“Daddy, where's your watch?”

“Gone,” said Alfred Michael, “but the chain isn't. The chain is for you. Take it and put it away, and don't tell any one about it till to-morrow morning.”

“You mean,” said Tommy, “it will be a surprise?”

“Yes,” replied his father gravely, “probably. I want you to keep it safe until you are able to wear it. It's a good gold chain. Perhaps when you look at it sometimes, you'll remember what I'm going to tell you now.”

Alfred Michael coughed, looked at Tommy and coughed again, and suddenly seized a tumbler from the table and drank the water in it very fast.

“Confound it!” he said. “I've never done this sort of thing before. I—I'm hanged if I know exactly what to say—!”

He paused and laughed, and though Tommy could see nothing to laugh at, he remembered that something had really amused his father, transiently but genuinely, none the less.

“Promise me not to cry, will you, Tom? No matter what happens, give up crying. You've got to be a man.”

“Yes,” said Tommy. “Daddy, why don't you want the chain?”

“I'm tired of it,” Alfred Michael said. “You'll probably get tired of it too, but don't get as tired as I am. Don't be a coward like me.”

It was shocking to hear his father say such a thing. Tommy felt something rise within him—loyalty or love, he never knew just what—which made his face grow red, and made him want to cry.

“Huh,” said Tommy. “You're not afraid of anything, I guess.”

Though Alfred Michael helped himself again to water, something was wrong with his voice.