Warning Hill (1964) by John P. Marquand

Author:John P. Marquand [Marquand, John P.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504015738
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

XIV

The trouble was that it was all too vague to put your finger on it, but Tommy knew that he was different from all those other boys and girls who plodded to the high school when the autumn came. His life was as hard as theirs, exactly as penurious and as devoid of grace. It was his thoughts that made him different, his life of thought like a foreign land, glittering and unattainable. It was to grow always more distant with the years, though he did not know that it would grow more distant then. How could he know any more than any boy has known, that all life was a struggle against reality until acceptance of it came?

It might have been better if Mr. Danforth had not been kind in that careless way of his which never regarded consequences. He had forgotten, which was not strange, that all things seemed possible in that gay period when boyhood changed to youth.

There was Mr. Danforth’s sailboat. Tommy never forgot that day altogether, for its very contrast with his life gilded with exaggeration times like that, until the folly and the grandeur of them were scattered into distorted, prismatic lights of memory. The sails of that boat were like the sides of great white barns. Her deck was like a ballroom floor. Sailors in white duck stood by the side, and even a steward in a white starched coat. There was a table in the cockpit and easy wicker chairs.

“Whisky, James,” said Mr. Danforth, “and tea for Master Michael.”

Somehow it did not seem strange to Tommy that he should be there. It was Mr. Danforth’s fault, or grace if you wished to call it that, but Simeon Danforth should have known that there was danger in it. Perhaps he had an intuition when that day was nearly over.

“James,” he said, “call the dogcart to take Master Michael home.” And then he looked at Tommy with a slow weary smile. “And now you’ve seen it all,” he said; “and all this isn’t much. I’m the one who ought to know. It ain’t worth a continental unless you use it right, and no one knows just how.”

He should have known better than to say that, for everything seemed possible to Tommy Michael then.

Mary Street was the one who knew. Long afterwards he wondered at the clarity of her vision, for it seemed to him sometimes that the whole story had lain before her always, the story of Warning Hill. She was ever in the background, a silent wide-eyed girl, and it sometimes seemed to him that she had been watching always.

The Street house was a pleasant place to visit. There was an aura of adventure about it in those days, when anything might happen. There were always guns and rubber boots and fishing tackle in the kitchen, and a dog beneath the table. You could take your coat off in the Street house, and sprawl languidly in the chairs.

“Make you easy,” Mr. Street would say; “make you easy, Tom.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.