The Dawning of the Day (29 page)

“See what?” asked Terence cynically. He blew smoke through his nostrils. “The only thing
he'd
believe would be seeing Perley in the act of slicing off their ears, and even then he'd tell you it was a mirage. . . . He's coppering his boat back there. Sky came falling down the beach, crying, and said the teacher wanted him to come quick, it was about Peggy and Perley.” He watched Philippa over Edwin's head. Rue sat in a little dream, rubbing her arm and gazing at the woods as if she didn't see them. “Foss laughed,” Terence said. “He said anybody worth her salary could handle most kids' foolishness. Randall Percy was hanging around, and he said where Sky was all hawsed up about something, mebbe Foss had better go.”

He stopped. “Well?” said Philippa.

“Foss looked around with that rotten grin of his and said, ‘Trouble with
her
is she's been livin' alone too long.'”

She felt the color rising in her neck, spreading heat to her face. She ignored it. “So you came,” she said.

Kathie came up to them, breathing hard. “Not a hide nor hair of 'em,” she said grimly. “But I've been thinking up a way to take care of that Peggy. Rob and I catch her on her way to Gowards' after dark some night, and we haul her off in the woods way behind Mark's, see, so nobody can hear her holler—”

Philippa had to laugh. It put strength into her and got her up onto her feet. “And Terence wants to shoot Perley. But let's be practical. We don't want Terence carted off to Thomaston, and you put into a school for delinquent girls.”

Kathie shrugged. “That's where a lot of people think I should be. What was I doing today, instead of going straight home from school and doing chores for my auntie? I was hanging around the beach where that Terence Campion was working on his engine, shameless hussy that I am. . . . Come on, Rue.” She hauled the smaller girl to her feet. Rue smiled in her odd, self-contained way. Edwin moved close beside her.

They walked back across the meadow. The day had become very still. For a little while the world had resounded with cries and violence, and now the damp shadow had crept imperceptibly across the meadow, smothering the echoes to silence. The strange thing was that the whole drama had been enacted as if on a desert island.

When they reached the shore, no one was left on the beach. They stood there a moment without talking, as if waiting in silent agreement to make a decision. The smell of fresh copper paint blew pungently from Foss Campion's boat. Nils Sorensen was rowing in from his mooring, and his son Jamie sat in the stern of the skiff.

“Well,” Terence said, “what next?” He stood with his hands in his pockets as always, but there was a change in him. Perhaps it was not a change after all, Philippa thought; away from home, functioning as an individual rather than Asanath Campion's son, perhaps he often lost some of his vagueness and became this sharply limned personality.

“If you won't let me shoot the skunk, what then?”

“I think Rue and Edwin had better go home,” Philippa said. “Will you walk home with them, Kathie?”

“Sure thing.” Kathie put her arm through Rue's. “Think up something real elegant now, like pouring gasoline over 'em and lighting 'em up.”

Rue said gravely, “I forgot to thank you.”

“You're welcome,” said Terence, unsmiling.

“Are you going to tell your father about this, Rue?” Philippa asked.

She frowned. “I don't think so. It would worry him awful. He's got enough to fuss about now.”

“If you want to tell him, we'll back you up.”

Rue shook her head. In a queer way it was she who seemed to be most in command of the situation. “I don't want to tell him. He just wouldn't know what to do, Mis' Marshall. He'd be about crazy. I can manage all right.”

“I'll help her manage,” said Kathie. “I'll go back and forth from school with them. There'll be no ambushes without a few broken heads.”

Terence grinned, and Philippa said, “I believe you.”

The girls and Edwin went off past the long fishhouse, and Terence and Philippa turned toward the boardwalk. There was a faint rustle and a rattle of beach rocks from behind the traps stacked between the two camps, and Sky came out around them. At the sight of him, Philippa felt a jolt of desperation, almost as if she were ready to burst into helpless tears herself. At first he peered at the adults blindly through streaked glasses, until he took them off. His eyelids were thickly swollen, and the full childish lower lip had been bitten.

“Is it all right?” he asked thickly.

“Yes, because of you,” Philippa said. She wanted to put her arms around him, but instead she took his glasses and blew on them and cleaned them with her handkerchief. The boy was sodden with his tears, and looked as if he had found no escape from misery in his crying.

“You're a quick thinker, you know that?” Terence ran his hand roughly over Sky's crew cut. It was too much. The tears sprang into Sky's eyes again and flowed over as if he had passed the point where he could control them.

“My father didn't think it was anything bad,” he blurted. “That's why he didn't come, honest. He doesn't know about the way Perley is. He thinks it's just teasing. That's why he didn't come.”

“I know that, Sky,” Philippa said. “If he'd had any idea of what was going on, he would have come.”

“I don't want to go home.” Sky mopped his eye with his sleeve, but the tears ran without stopping. Terence gave him his handkerchief.

“Battery acid got onto it once, but a few holes don't matter,” he said. “You want to run away, Sky? That's what I always wanted to do.”

Sky nodded vehemently. “I don't want to look at Peg and Perley ever again. She wouldn't
do
anything, but she's just as bad. First I only wanted—” his voice flooded again—“just to get even with Perley. He's always pushing rotten herring down my neck and pinching me on the inside of my legs where it hurts.” He swabbed his face with the worn handkerchief. “All I wanted to do was get even with him. But the whole afternoon I've been thinking about how little and skinny the Websters are, and the things Perley can do to
hurt
, and Peggy making believe she was going to be friendly when all the time she knew—” The word climbed and cracked. “And I don't want to go home!”

Philippa handed back his glasses. “I'm licked at this point. I can't think of an answer. Can you, Terence?”

He stood looking at the boy, his face thinned and old. “I could give you an answer, but it wouldn't do Sky any good. I'm nobody to talk to a kid. Trouble with Sky is, he's in the wrong family.”

Sky looked from one to the other from under his red lids. Philippa reached for him instinctively, and then put her hands behind her back. “Terence, he'd rather have
you
help him,” she said.

“Oh, lord,” Terence said between his teeth, but he put his arm around Sky.

Philippa went on past them; when she had walked by Jude Webster's camp, she was in full view of the Campion houses, and she wished at this moment more than anything else on earth to turn and walk the other way, to find Steve. But she could not in all honor do it. She had brought this upon herself; if she had left the Websters in the woods in the beginning it would be no concern of hers what Perley did and that Sky was at this moment wretched and trembling.

She must go to Foss about it, she knew; she knew also what the answer would be. Helen would show the honest, understandable fury of the mother animal, shrieking to protect her young. But Foss would be different. Couldn't she go beyond the stories of hysterical kids? he would ask her silkily. He would be generous in naming Sky a liar. Sky was a dreamer, Sky was inclined to be underhanded. He would tell her all this.

She had no logical reason for believing Foss would protect the others, including his stepson, rather than his own son, Sky; it was simply that she
knew
. It would be less harmful, Foss and Helen would reason, to name Sky a liar than to admit that Perley might be a dangerous sadist.

She couldn't face talking to Foss now. She could not guarantee herself the proper behavior.

S
teve came in after supper. At the sight of him in the kitchen doorway, she felt as weak and lost as Sky must have felt, coming out from behind the traps. She was tired from the afternoon, and meals with Asa and Suze were becoming a strain.

“Want to walk?” he asked her from the doorway. “There's one constellation I haven't shown you yet. Shows up real pretty tonight.”

“Just what I need before I settle down to arithmetic papers,” she said briskly, and went for her coat.

“By gorry, son,” Asanath said, “there's one thing ain't changed over a thousand years and that's the way of courtin' a girl. Walk her out and show her the stars, that's the brave boy.”

“Maybe he isn't courtin',” said Suze, quite pertly.

“No comment,” said Steve. “That's what all the politicians say when they don't want to start a rumor.” Philippa smiled in the darkness of the hall. She stayed there an instant longer than necessary, to keep the image of him in her mind as he had appeared in the doorway, wearing his big leather windbreaker and the dark blue ski cap.

“Enjoy yourselves,” Asanath called after them.

When they reached the bottom step, Philippa slid her arm through Steve's, and without speaking, he pressed it against his side as if he felt her need without words. Almost at the same time she felt rather than heard an approach, and a light flashed in their faces. Young Charles said, “All nice and cosy.”

“Almost like having an open fire,” Steve said. His arm tightened on Philippa's hand. “Take that bug light out of our eyes, will you?”

The light went out. Charles's words moved toward them sullenly through the night. “So long. I'll be going. Sorry I rampsed in.”

“No, wait.” Philippa reached out and found the heavy wool of a sleeve. The arm braced against her touch. “Come for a walk with us, why don't you?”

“Look, I'm not Jamie. I don't have to be pacified with a nickel for a bottle of pop. Forget I was here. It won't happen again.”

“But you must have come for
something
!” said Philippa. She wished she could cuff him out of his tough, hurt patience.

“Look,” Steve said suddenly, “I'll go down to the shore and see a man about a punt.” He left them with a faint scrape of moccasins on dry grass.

“What a guy,” Charles muttered. “Always the perfect gentleman. It's enough to make me sick.”

“I thought you and he were friends.”

“We were. Well, now that everybody's made such a song and dance out of it, I'll tell you what I came for. I've got to go to Brigport for salt tomorrow morning—Mark's run short of it—and I'm taking my father's boat. You want to go?”

“I'd love it.”

He couldn't keep the jubilance out of his voice now. “See you around eight, then. 'Night, Phil.” When he got a little way off, he sang out in a clear ringing tone that pierced the island silence, “Watch that Steve now! He ain't been the same since he came back from the Navy!” He went away, whistling loudly.

Steve came up behind her and slid his arms around her. It was as natural as breathing for her to lean back against him; she shut her eyes and rubbed her cheek gently against his jaw. His arms tightened and she grew weightless within them. She felt that she could have stayed like this forever, cherished and hidden. But her natural pride canceled the weakness. It's because I'm tired, she thought, and straightened up. Steve released her and yet she was not released; it was a facet of him that he seemed to relinquish gracefully and hold fast at the same time. His hand slid gently from her waist and caught her fingers.

“Is Charles a problem to you?” he asked.

“Not in himself. But I don't like him to feel the way he does. All that energy and charm wasted, these bursts of anger, these grievances—”

“He'll live through it, you know, and be the better for it.” As they walked along, they heard his whistle, sweet and shrill from around the harbor. “That charm you mentioned has been a trial to his mother. Too many women go for it like drunks for a bottle. It's been a tossup whether he'd break a good girl's heart or be ruined by a bad one. So you, my love, give him a true mark to steer by.”

“Thank you, Steve,” she said. They came to the Foss Campion house, whose lights shone out across the boardwalk and cast gleams on the restless water. The radio was on; they could hear indistinctly a man's voice talking fast and crackling bursts of laughter. She wondered what Sky was doing; there had been no chance to speak to Terence later. She refused to think of Perley and Peggy, or even of Rue. Tonight was for herself.

“Let's go to the clubhouse,” Steve said. “It's too cold to stay out and look at stars.”

“What's at the clubhouse?” she asked idly, contentedly.

“A place to sit in the dark and be warm. Come winter we'll have to marry up to get in out of the cold.” He laughed and put his arm around her waist. They walked through the village like this, out of range of lamplit windows. Gregg was playing a simple tender song like a woman singing in the night. They stopped and listened to it, not speaking, and then they walked on again into the lane.

Steve had a key to the clubhouse. “One of the privileges of being on the Board of Governors,” he explained. “I can entertain my girl in here. Of course there are plenty who aren't on the Board of Governors who can still entertain their girls in the clubhouse, but they don't come in by the door.”

“One of the prerogatives of public office,” said Philippa solemnly. “You come in by the door.” He swung it open and she walked in. He came behind her, turned her toward him, and took her into his arms. She put her arms around him and said softly, “Steve, oh, Steve.”