Warning Hill (5 page)

“Ho, hum,” said Mr. Jellett, “ho, hum.…”

He still could enjoy comfort, and the physical richness of things still had a novelty, though he showed it as little as he showed anything else, beneath that impenetrable cloak which lay over him forever. Against that cloak of dullness, worry, pleasure, anger—everything—glanced off harmlessly into nothing. Dully, placidly, he could sit at his dinner table immune to the chattering of thirty guests, just as he could sit at the end of a directors' table when he got downtown, staring opaquely at nothing, speaking tritely of harmless matters, balancing a fork or a cigar—it did not matter which—in his small plump fingers. It did not matter which, because he held everything in a manner which was peculiarly his own, not tightly. Grafton Jellett had been a carpenter's boy once in a lean and distant past, before he discovered it was better to make others work. And he could still use his hands.

But the comfort, the physical richness of possessions, were still to be enjoyed, but not vulgarly. Comfort and possessions were tangible, that was all, not valuable in themselves, save as showing a result as clearly as the total of a column.

Any one who lived the life of Warning Hill as it was rising to its greatness remembers, of course, what Simon Danforth said about him, when Grafton Jellett was still a seventh wonder, and still a trifle new. One remembers, just as one recalls Simon Danforth's suppers in his gun room with the animals' heads glaring from the walls—just as one recalls how Simon Danforth, even in his sixtieth year, could drink two bottles of champagne and balance a third upon his nose when the market was going right.

“Grubby Jellett isn't vulgar, and he isn't
nouveau riche
, and he isn't stupid either. He's so damnably astute he isn't anything at all.”

Those were the days. One can sigh when one recalls them and thinks how the world has changed. Warning Hill may be excellent yet, but surely its tropical luxuriance must be gone, unless it is that the past is always golden and the present always crude. Those were the days when carriages rattled and hoofs pawed the blue gravel drives, and bottles on the sideboard caused no envy, and only simple padlocks guarded cellars full of wine. Those were the days when carelessness and ease joined hands with leisure and made the merry dramas of which Richard Harding Davis wrote. Perhaps Grafton Jellett was thinking even then that those were the days. The battle harness was off his shoulders. He could hear a dozen mowers on his terrace and the scraping of the gardeners' rakes upon his drive, and all these sounds spelled peace.

“Just a little whisky, Hubbard, please,” he said, “a finger's quite enough. Where's what's-his-name—Street, Hubbard?”

“Coming directly, sir,” Hubbard answered, “here he is now, sir.”

“Street,” said Mr. Jellett, “you're not any relation to that fellow downtown they arrested for running a gambling machine in the barber shop?”

It was surprising, now and then, the things his mind turned up, extraneous bits of knowledge, always somehow useful.

“Yes, sir,” said Street. “He's my brother.”

Grafton Jellett glanced up, and for a moment Street ceased to be a piece of furniture. “It doesn't hurt you with me to say that,” he said, “especially because you didn't have to. Tell your brother to change his ways, Street—” Mr. Jellett sipped his whisky slowly. “Is your brother acquainted with some village people called—what's the name—? Michael?”

Those were the days when servants were good servants, and not half-trained shirkers with all those false ideas of democracy. Street stood correctly and attentively, lank and saturnine, perhaps, but he did not bat an eye.

“Acquainted,” he said; “yes, sir.”

“Ho, hum,” said Mr. Jellett. “Street, bring me my slippers, please. My feet are very tired.”

Mr. Jellett picked up his book again, but he was weary of cutting pages. He laid it on his gold and rosewood Empire writing table, and walked to the window, through which there came that peaceful sound of lawn mowers. The lawn outside was as green and soft as English turf. There was a pool where a stone dolphin reared his head and performed the miracle of emitting a ceaseless stream of water through his nose. There were beds of digitalis in the bud, and the rhododendrons were still in bloom. There were groupings of other flowers shaped like moons and stars, and a hundred shrubs and box trees. Some one had mentioned to Grafton Jellett once Pliny's letter, describing a boxwood walk at his summer villa, where the boxes had been cut in fantastic animal shapes. Grafton Jellett had bought a copy of Pliny's letters, and had read that one very carefully. A special man had come from Paris to trim the Jellett boxes, and even then the snipping of his shears gave an added pleasing sound.

Grafton Jellett, however, looked at none of these sights. Instead, his eyes sought a spot where the lawn sloped steeply to the shore, for the sea seemed to be all about that lawn, giving it the effect of a magic island on a day when a clear sky made the water blue. Just where the lawn reached the shore, about two hundred yards away, was a square of salt marsh and a beach. Just short of that marsh the lawn stopped abruptly, as though at a command, and instead of impeccable turf there was a tiny square of rocky waste, overgrown with juniper and brambles. There was a building on that square, the condition of which was enough to prove that Mr. Jellett did not own it, for it was hardly more than a shack, turning gray from the weather. It was a duck-hunters' shelter, a strange structure enough to be left on Warning Hill. Old Thomas Jefferson Michael had built that shack when Warning Hill was nothing but a rocky pasture land where only cattle watched the Atlantic waves breaking on the rocks.

Grafton Jellett swung open a French window, opening on his lawn. The sea breeze struck him brusquely and ruffled his sandy hair, and made his gray coat flop as he stood looking out, a small figure growing already slack about the waist.

“Oh, Campbell!” Mr. Jellett called. It was not unpleasant to see the stir out on the lawn. “Campbell!” shouted some one. It was like echoes across Elysian fields. It was not unpleasant to watch Campbell arrive at a shambling run, as a first-rate superintendent should.

“Campbell,” said Mr. Jellett, “you were going to plant a line of poplars where the lawn slopes to the shore. Don't bother, Campbell.”

As Mr. Jellett closed the window, a tap sounded on the door, and with the tap a gentle scuffling and whispering, reminding him that it was the children's hour. Once again circumstances were obliging him to emulate the kindly Longfellow, and to throw his study open to busy little feet. Unfitted as he knew he was to play the part, Mr. Jellett seemed to anticipate it with pleasure, for he smoothed his coat carefully and expanded his chest.

“Come in,” said Mr. Jellett.

They came in side by side, nice children both of them, clipped and brushed neatly as the box trees on the lawn—Sherwood on the right and Marianne on the left. Many and many would be the times that Sherwood was to blush at the clothing he wore then. Sherwood's round little face was framed in reddish yellow curls, falling to his shoulders, like the Prince's in the Tower, and he was dressed in black velvet. Sherwood kept his eyes on his patent-leather toes, because he was afraid of his father already, and was beginning as early as that to feel bored by his company. It was Marianne who tripped forward as a child should, light on her feet, restless and laughing. Her white dress from Paris was a downy puff of ruffles, which made her curiously unsubstantial. And already Grafton Jellett was disturbed by her, because she was not afraid at all.

“The children have a surprise for you,” said Miss Meachey, as she closed the door. “Sherry, dear, can you say the little poem we've learned?”

“No,” said Sherwood.

“I can,” said Marianne. “I can say lots and lots, can't I, Meachey?”

“Miss
Meachey,” said Mr. Jellett. “Now, Sherwood, will you say your poem if I give you a bright new quarter?”

“No,” said Sherwood, “I can get a quarter any time I ask Mamma!”

“I can say it!” said Marianne. “We all got dressed for it. Miss Meachey got all dressed too. You ought to have seen her getting dressed, Papa!”

“Won't you sit down, Miss Meachey?” asked Mr. Jellett.

“Papa,” said Marianne, “why do you always ask to have Miss Meachey sit beside you?”

Dullness descended upon Grafton Jellett in cloudlike beneficence. “Suppose you children run out on the terrace,” he said. “No, Marianne—the poem can wait. Of course I know you can say it. That's it … run along.”

Miss Meachey was good to look at, standing by the door. Even her plain black dress with its billowing sleeves was restful to the eyes. It gave an added luster to Miss Meachey's soft dark hair, and a most alluring whiteness to her hands and throat. She stood by the closed door, tall and mysterious like a figure in a painting, which hinted of turret stairs and of silk and gold gleaming in the dark.

“Really, you should be more careful,” Miss Meachey said.

“Careful, eh?” said Grafton Jellet. Miss Meachey smiled, as some one might who was a good deal older.

“You've never been a nursery governess,” Miss Meachey said. “You underestimate what children understand.”

Grafton Jellett stood up and thrust his hands into his coat. “Sometimes,” he said, “I get tired of being careful. Why should I be careful? Here, look what I've brought you.” He drew a leather case half out of his pocket.

“Put it back!” said Miss Meachey. There was more color in her cheeks. “Please—not now!”

Grafton Jellett smiled frostily with his eyes on Miss Meachey's face. “A cold proposition,” he said. “You're a very cold proposition, Meachey.”

“Am I?” said Miss Meachey. “Well, so are you.”

“Oh, the devil!” Mr. Jellett sighed. “At any rate you're real.”

“Yes,” said Miss Meachey. “And so are you. Most men are—now and then.”

“But not women,” sighed Grafton Jellett, “hardly ever women. You're the only one I've ever seen play her cards like a man. You go after what you want without any sentiment or funny business. Ho, hum … Meachey, I wish I'd known you twelve years ago.”

Yes, Miss Meachey was good to look at, standing by the door, so young and at the same time ever so old; she seemed to have lived other lives, and miraculously to have kept the knowledge. She was glancing at the copy of “Jane Eyre” as it lay upon the writing table, a tale of another nursery governess and another stranger gentleman.

“Do you know what I'd advise?” Miss Meachey said. “I'd advise you to send me packing while you can.”

“Thanks,” said Mr. Jellett, “for the tip. It goes to prove what I said before—you and I are real, the only ones in—in—” he moved his head slowly about and blinked placidly, “in a whole square mile. And, Meachey, you don't know how refreshing it is when you get where I am, surrounded by clothing dummies and simpering women, and men living on dead men's money, to see some one who's real. You and I know what it means to have our backs to the wall.… Ho, hum … Oh, I've eaten out of a pail—I've run a donkey engine. Now—that's something to remember. I was hanged if I'd keep on, as everlastingly hanged as you are that you—that you'll—”

“Continue in the nursery?” asked Miss Meachey.

“That's it,” Grafton Jellett nodded feelingly. “That's exactly it! Ho, hum … I can remember—Does it bore you, Meachey, to hear me talk? But I don't care if it does.”

“Of course,” said Miss Meachey, “you wouldn't care.”

“You know me, don't you, Meachey?” Mr. Jellett nodded placidly, though Miss Meachey did not speak. “Now I can remember the first company I ever formed—on a shoe string, but nobody knew it till I sold out. I can remember how mad that fellow—what was his name?—it's queer how bad I am at names but then names don't mean much—how mad he was when he found he'd given me five times too much. He was the first man I ever made angry.”

“But not the last,” Miss Meachey said, and Grafton Jellett shook his head.

“Not by a long shot,” he answered. “Ho, hum … you're a wonder, Meachey; you've got as much of a poker face as I have. Right now I'd write out a check for ten thousand to know what you think of me.”

Miss Meachey moved a step from the door, and she laughed very, very softly at some thought of her own.

“It may be worth more,” she answered, “not to have you know.”

Grafton Jellett smiled, and for a moment his whole face relaxed, so that its placidity seemed to leave it for something else, and the edge of that cloak of dullness fluttered vanishing into nothing.

“Meachey,” his voice was nearly gentle with the laughter in it, “do you honestly think that you can shake me down?”

Yes, those were the days when men were men. Those were the days worth looking back upon. Perhaps Grafton Jellett knew it even then, because in that brief space he was very much himself and confidential almost.

“So many people have tried to, Meachey,” he added, “and haven't done it yet. No, sir—not a continental one.”

“I must be going,” said Miss Meachey quickly. “Some one's coming down the hall.”

And she was out the French windows to the terrace before a word could be said to stop her. If Grafton Jellett sighed when he saw her go, surely he had a reason. The sight of her was a song to his spirit. Her eyes and her laughter were laden with challenge, like the challenge of distant places, peaceful in eternal summer seas, with blue lagoons beyond the barrier reef, and not a footstep in the sands.

Hubbard was standing in the open door. It was marvellous how Meachey could have told that he was coming, because his step was almost noiseless.

“A gentleman to see you, sir. A Mr. Michael.”

“Who?” Dully, heavily, Mr. Jellett looked up from his leather chair.