Warning Hill (6 page)

“A Mr. Michael, sir.”

“Oh, yes,” said Grafton Jellett. “Show him in.”

V

Of course Tommy never heard of it till later, when everything had changed. It was so much later when all came together piece by piece that it was hard to bring it back. But even then he could see Grafton Jellett rising from his chair and laying aside his book, the edges fluttering on that mantle of his dullness.

“Ah,” he said, “I had an idea you might drop in.”

Alfred Michael glanced about the room and sighed contentedly. It must have pleased him, for he too loved soft carpets and soft chairs. His lips curled beneath his mustache. His eyes met Grafton Jellett's and neither looked away.

“Did you?” he inquired. “I had an idea you might have that idea.”

“Cooper,” said Mr. Jellett, “looks after me pretty well.”

“He would,” Alfred Michael answered.

“Sit down, Michael.” Grafton Jellett was almost friendly. When he told of it afterwards, he admitted he had not meant to ask Alfred Michael to sit down. It was just a moment's whim, a slight indulgence. Perhaps the sight of the ridiculous checked suit and the frayed cravat with its antiquated pin and the whole effort of patched and broken grandeur to look new may have amused him—giving possession a new and pleasant taste.

“Sit down, Michael,” said Grafton Jellett. “A little whisky—no? It's not bad whisky, a special distiller's selection … Ho, hum! … I'm just amusing myself cutting a first edition—‘Jane Eyre'—a presentation copy.”

“Ah?” said Alfred Michael. “Are you?”

He lowered himself into one of the leather chairs and glanced at the book which Mr. Jellett held toward him. To look at Alfred Michael no one could have told that his world was on the verge of ruin. He looked at the book with a genuine interest. Grafton Jellett looked at him placidly, as one who had seen many men like Alfred Michael. Tommy could imagine he must have looked opaque and very dull.

“An expensive habit, perhaps,” remarked Mr. Jellett, “this cutting a first edition. Expensive—but amusing.”

Alfred Michael smiled again. “Why expensive?” he inquired.

“I see,” said Grafton Jellett, “that you don't know the amenities of book collecting. There's a peculiar premium on uncut books.”

“Yes, I know that.” Alfred Michael looked puzzled. He leaned forward and his forehead wrinkled delicately. “But I don't understand you. Why expensive?”

“Eh?” said Grafton Jellett. “Why expensive?”

He spoke with his old dullness, but he looked at Alfred Michael carefully, and no longer with amusement. “You've got something up your sleeve. What is it?”

There he sat in strong silence. He was competing with something which he could not grasp for the moment. He drew back his head in cold caution, though his glance did not falter. For some reason utterly beyond the limits of logic, Alfred Michael had exploded into laughter. It must have been a strange sight—Alfred Michael without a cent in the world, leaning back and laughing at Grafton Jellett in his private room on Warning Hill.

“Why, you poor devil!” gasped Alfred Michael.

“Eh?” said Mr. Jellett. His face had become pinkish. His sandy eyebrows drew together. “What in thunder are you driving at?”

“Excuse me,” said Alfred Michael; “here you are getting pleasure out of cutting rare editions and you haven't been cutting them at all.”

“What the devil?” Grafton Jellett was actually losing his grip. “How do you mean I haven't been cutting this book?”

“It's simply because we're all so technical,” Alfred Michael smiled indulgently. “I hope you won't be annoyed at missing a technicality. In the parlance of the book collector, Mr. Jellett, you're not cutting that book. You're merely
opening
it.”

“Eh?” said Grafton Jellett. At least he was far from dull. He raised a hand to stroke his spare sandy hair.
“Opening it?”

Alfred Michael nodded. “Idiotic way of putting it—isn't it? Don't think I blame you for being confused. ‘Opening' is what they call cutting the leaves of a book. ‘Cutting' is something else again.”

“Eh?” said Mr. Jellett. “Something else again?”

“Cutting,” replied Alfred Michael, “refers to the binder's habit of cutting down the margins when he gives the books new covers. That is what an ‘uncut' means in the catalogues. The paper has its original edge, rough and unfinished. The actual act of opening the leaves has a very small influence on sales. You understand me now?”

“Yes,” said Grafton Jellett. Suddenly he doubled up his fist and slammed it into the palm of his hand. “Yes, I see. It simply means—why, damn that fellow Hewens! Damn those catalogues! Why—damn those dealers tool I'll bet they've been all laughing up their sleeves.”

“They must have,” agreed Alfred Michael.

Grafton Jellett drew in his breath. “Damn their little tricks,” he said. “I suppose,” his eyes were once again opaque and dull, “that you didn't come here primarily to discourse on first editions. Well—what is it?”

“I'm sorry I didn't come to the point before,” Alfred Michael said. “I had no idea you'd be put out.”

“Don't flatter yourself,” said Grafton Jellett, “that you've put me out. What is it?”

“I don't,” said Alfred Michael, “very much.”

(“He had a contempt for me,” was what Grafton Jellett said afterwards. “Confound it, you might have thought I was a squealer, from the way he looked at me. He just sat and twirled that antique gold watch chain. Confound it—you might have thought he was doing me a favor.”)

“The fact is,” said Alfred Michael, “I've come to take your offer.”

“What offer?” Grafton Jellett asked.

“The only one,” said Alfred Michael, “that I'm aware you ever made me, but I don't blame you for not remembering. Six months ago we had a conversation about my shooting box down there.” He turned and waved his hand over Mr. Jellett's lawn. “Down there by the shore. You pointed out at the time that it was an eye-sore which interfered with your view, and I replied that I saw no reason for giving it up. I pointed out that I had explained the matter to Mr. Cooper when you had sent him to interview me. At the end of my explanation, sir,” Alfred Michael kept his eyes on Grafton Jellett as he spoke, “you offered me five thousand flat for a title free and clear, a sum considerably over that land's value, as you pointed out. I refused that sum, and when I refused it, I told you one thing more by way of explanation for a step which you considered, I am afraid, in the nature of a personal affront. I imagine, Mr. Jellett, that you're used to getting what you want.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Jellett, “do you?”

(“Now it made me mad,” said Grafton Jellett, when he told of it. “He sat there as if he was a prosecutor's lawyer and I could see a patch in his elbow. It—it was everything about him made me mad.”)

“I told you,” said Alfred Michael, “that I was fond of my land, that I had a partiality for it, perhaps hard for you to realize, because we've owned it for a long time. We have not come from the city. We owned it when this was actually country. And you told me in reply that you would get it eventually.”

“Well,” said Grafton Jellett, “so I will.” He gazed absently at Alfred Michael and twiddled his thumbs in little circles—one around the other.

“It seems so,” Alfred Michael answered, “because you can have it now. I'll take your offer of five thousand.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Jellett densely, “you will?”

“It just happens—” began Alfred Michael. “Yes, I will.”

Grafton Jellett gazed at Alfred Michael for a minute with pursed lips and dull, vacant eyes.

“You won't get it,” said Grafton Jellett. “I've reconsidered and withdrawn the offer.”

There was a moment's silence. Grafton Jellett twiddled his thumbs and looked at Alfred placidly. Alfred Michael stared hard at the toe of his shiny boot.

“I'm sorry,” he said slowly. “It just so happened at this particular juncture that I could make use of the sum you mentioned.”

“Cleaned up in the stock market, eh?” inquired Grafton Jellett.

“I supposed you knew,” Alfred Michael said. “How much will you buy for?”

“Thanks,” Grafton Jellett twiddled his thumbs again, “but I don't buy on a falling market.”

For a second or so Alfred Michael looked almost ill. “You mean,” he spoke with difficulty, mastered by some emotion, “you're going to wait till the bottom falls out of the market?”

“Yes, that's it,” said Grafton Jellett.

“And you won't make an offer till then?”

“No, why should I?” said Grafton Jellett.

“No reason,” said Alfred Michael. “You're absolutely right in principle.” He drew his feet back preparatory to rising. “Well—I'm sorry you won't buy.”

Mr. Jellett's lips relaxed. “The trouble with you fellows,” he said, “and I've seen a lot like you since I started my own broker's office, is you expect extra consideration. Why should you get it? You go into a game when everybody's warned you you're bound to lose. You go in with professionals and then, when you get cleaned out, you seem to expect some credit for being amateur. Now Michael, I know men's faces, and I've watched your face. You're dead flat broke. You may know more than I do about old editions, but not about business, because you're an amateur. You come in and laugh because I don't know the difference between cutting and opening a book, and yet you don't expect me to laugh when you've made a damn' sight worse blunder in a piece of trading. Now why should I help you out of your hole? I'm not saying I won't, but exactly why on earth should I?”

“My dear sir,” Alfred Michael was on his feet, worried and solicitous, “what unfortunate remark of mine could have made you suspect I was asking or anticipating anything from you? I beg you—please believe I should never dream of such a thing. I may be an amateur, as you say, but I've followed the races and I know exactly what to expect, which is nothing. As you so clearly opined, I am all through—but I said I was sorry about that bit of land, because I feel this is positively the last time I shall offer it to you—your last chance, sir, of having it—and shall we say—of opening its pages?”

“You'll be back,” Grafton Jellett said.

“No,” answered Alfred Michael, “I shan't. I've reconsidered and withdrawn the offer.”

Grafton Jellett leaned back in his chair comfortably.

“If you're going to try anything in the nature of a contest, you'll be sorry, Michael. I told you I'd get that beach, and I mean it.”

“No,” said Alfred Michael, “you're going to be mistaken for once. You won't get it. Well, good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” said Grafton Jellett. “You'll be back.”

Hubbard was there when Alfred Michael went out, and Hubbard remembered him, too—a queer, shapely, smallish gentleman, who took his hat and cane and nodded. He remembered because that gentleman said a peculiar thing when he went out, which sometimes made Hubbard creepy when he took his port in the pantry of an evening. It was just before they came to the door. The gentleman had been whistling to himself, when suddenly he stopped whistling and looked at a picture. He stopped short and peered at it and then put his stick behind his back.

“Ha!” he said, “a Turner! Better ones in the National Gallery—eh?”

“Yes, indeed, sir!” Hubbard answered.

“Ulysses—do you remember him sailing into the soft light? No one else will ever get the feeling or the color.”

He was shabby, but only a gentleman would have spoken so naturally to one of the help.

“You must return again, sir, to admire it when the light is better,” Hubbard said.

“Again?” the gentleman looked at him. “Do you believe in ghosts?”

“I can't say as I do, sir,” answered Hubbard, “though of course I have been in service in the old country in houses reputed to have them. Now at Lord Errol's in Cumberland the kitchen maid, I recall, used continually to be disturbed by a gentleman in shorts, sir, with a noose about his neck, but hardly real, I think, sir. No, sir, as a churchman, I don't believe in them.”

“No?” The gentleman gave his stick a twirl. “Then I can't suppose you ever will see me back, but—you might tell the kitchen maids not to be disturbed.”

VI

The thing about it all that hurt Tommy most in all the years to come was the certain knowledge that every one in all of Michael's Harbor knew everything, though he was the last to hear. He could imagine the whispers and the shrugging of shoulders, for of course no one could understand and a futility over all of it could not help but breed contempt. They knew his father for a weak man, and perhaps they all were right, but Tommy loved him still.

In the hall of the Michael house there hung a wretchedly executed portrait of a man past middle age, which seemed to Tommy to explain everything much better than any words. It was the picture of his grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Michael, ruddy faced, with gray eyes frowning from under heavy brows and with the white mutton-chop whiskers of this traditionally benevolent old gentleman. Poorly done as that portrait was, those whiskers were something of a travesty, because it was a hard old face, despite its hearty ruddiness. The eyes and mouth were hard. The nose was pointed and straight. No wonder Thomas J. Michael made money at the law. Relentless patience and courage were all translated to the canvas even by the inept hand of that forgotten artist, those and a self-importance which set better with the whiskers. Though that energetic old gentleman had vanished a decade and more before, wafted to glory on the wings of apoplexy, the spirit of his self-importance seemed still hovering restlessly to crop up sadly before one's eyes. The summer house by the shore, and the coach house and all the jig-saw scrolls upon the eaves spoke of Thomas Michael's efforts. The very frame of the portrait was like him, immense and golden and as heavy with balanced and disproportioned decorations as the Fourth of July orations he once delivered by the soldiers' monument upon the green.