The Dawning of the Day (32 page)

“Don't
you
be a fool. Go on, back upstairs and let 'em stew in their own juice.” His face had the hatchet look she had seen before.

“I can't put it off, don't you see?” she said to him. “It'll come up again and again.” They stood facing each other in an interval of silence laid against the confusion in the kitchen. Asanath stood behind them, defied and ignored. Past Terence's shoulder, Philippa looked into the brightly-lighted kitchen and saw Suze, the teakettle in her hand, staring down the hall. She realized then the appearance of intimacy between herself and Terence. She walked by him into the kitchen.

Foss was leaning over Helen, holding a glass of water. He straightened up when Philippa came in, and looked at her stonily. Vi was leaning against the dresser with her arms folded across her chest; her strong thin lips curled back from her teeth in a smile of anticipation.

“Well!” she said. “Here's the lady herself.”

Helen whipped the wet cloth from her eyes. “You!” she cried in a thick, choked voice.

“What's the matter?” Philippa asked.

“
Matter
!” Helen exclaimed. “Matter! How can you stand there staring at us all so innocent?” Foss stroked her quivering shoulders, murmuring soothingly, but she shook him off and got to her feet.

“What about the gang you and Steve Bennett put onto my boy? Lying in ambush like a bunch of heathen savages, and him coming home with the blood streaming out of him like a stuck pig, and so sick to his stomach where they punched and kicked him—” She caught her breath sharply; her eyes flooded with tears as her throat and face turned a dark and frightening red.

“Oh, he was a handsome sight coming in the door,” said Vi enthusiastically. “Like to scared Ellie into fits! All I can say is, it's going some when a gang of hoodlums have to lay into a seventeen-year-old boy out doing a chore for his father.”

Philippa looked only at Helen. “Mrs. Campion, I know how upset you are. I'd feel the same way. But no adult in his right mind is going to be responsible for such a thing. Believe me, you're making a great mistake in blaming Steve Bennett and me for this.” Helen opened her mouth, and Philippa hurried on. “Did Perley see any of the people who attacked him?”

Foss said implacably, “It was Young Charles spoke to him first. He started it. Must have given a signal to the others.”

Perhaps Terence was right; perhaps she should have gone into her room and escaped this for a night at least. She put her hands behind her back, lacing her fingers to keep them still.

Viola's smile deepened. “Don't tell us you're at a loss for words, Mrs. Marshall. I didn't think that could ever happen!”

Terence said suddenly, “Why don't you tell them the truth, Philip-pa? They're asking for it. Sock it right to them.”

“Terence!” his mother cried faintly. She put her hand up and twitched at her collar. “Terence, what ails you? Are you drunk?”

“I wish I was. Maybe you'd all look better to me. Go on, Philippa.”

She glanced around at him quickly, and he grinned at her. “Want
me to
?”

She shook her head and looked back at Helen. “Perhaps I
am
to blame after all,” she said gravely. “In an indirect way. I didn't intend for anything like this to happen, I didn't dream it would. I know for a fact that Steve Bennett isn't involved.” She paused, and the attentive silence in the room would have been flattering under different circumstances. “This morning when we discovered the—paint work on the boat and on the schoolhouse door, Young Charles named someone I knew hadn't done it. I told him I thought Perley did it. That was the extent of the conversation. I didn't ask him to avenge me, I didn't act distressed. Later Steve and I agreed to ignore the incident. If Young Charles took matters into his own hands, it was without any encouragement from me.”

“You
named
my Perley?” Helen's mouth worked. She flung out her hands, desperately. “You
dared
to blame him!”

Asanath cleared his throat from the hall doorway, and they all looked at him. “Waal, the girl was a little foolish to go naming names to that young devil, but like she says, no adult with the sense God gave a codfish is planning to take any chances by instigating to riot.” Helen stared at him soddenly. “If I was you, Helen, I'd have Foss get after the Bennett boy and give the Bennett family a sharp prod where it'll do the most good, in its importance.” He chuckled softly, “But in the meantime I'd accept the girl's apology and let her off, this time.”

“It's not as simple as that, Asa,” Foss said grimly. “There's been an injustice done, and—”

“I said to tell the
truth
!” Terence turned on Philippa. “Why didn't you?”

Suze's eyes swam between him and Philippa. “Is this any particular business of yours, son?” Asanath said.

“Yes, it is,” said Terence arrogantly. “All the Campions are wading around in it clear to their gizzards, so I guess I got a right to be heard.”

“Go ahead and talk, Terence,” Vi invited. She laughed. “It ought to be interesting.”

“Terence,” Philippa warned him, “you might as well drop a match into a bundle of oily rags.”

“They need a good rousing blaze,” said Terence. He put his hands in his pockets and smiled at them, rocking a little on his toes; he was his father to the life, suave and leisurely. “You know what drove the Webster kids out of the woods and to school, finally? It wasn't Philippa, here. They were scared out, just as they were scared away from school in the first place. Our Perley did it. Seems he's a great feller for tormenting the little kids half out of their minds.”

Helen made an inarticulate sound and tried to rise, but Foss put his hands on her shoulders and held her down. He watched Terence with a contemptuous smile.

Vi said heartily, “What boy worth his salt never pestered small fry? It's part of growing up. So if the Websters run every time somebody makes a loud noise, well, that's no sign of a duck's nest.”

“What's it a sign of,” Terence asked softly, “when Perley gets somebody to help him ambush a couple of kids no bigger than Ellie? What makes those kids turn white as wax when he comes upon 'em sudden, and they think there's nobody around to save 'em? Pestering, do you call it, Vi?” He laughed. “Why don't you ask Ellie about some of the antics in the schoolyard before Foss took Perley out of the eighth grade, Vi? She'd probably tell you, if she wasn't scared he'd get even with her. He and Peg, that is.”

There was a sudden harsh flush across Vi's cheekbones. Helen burst free of Foss' hands and rushed at Terence. “I know what you're getting at!” she cried. “They told me tonight just what was going on.” Her fists pounded the air in a frenzy. “They didn't want to! I had to drag it out of them, and it just shows how
decent
those two young ones are compared to
her
. How any woman could
think
up such horrible things! And how'd she get such a holt on you, Terence Campion, let alone the way she's muckled onto those Bennetts?”

“Nobody's got a holt on me,” said Terence. “Just happens that yesterday when something came up and Foss wouldn't go, I went. Did they tell you about what happened then, Helen?”

“They told me, all right! Told me the whole miserable story. Perley sat there with the blood running down his face, and said, ‘Mama, I only painted that on the boat and the schoolhouse because they were saying those nasty things about me. I was driven to it.' And I could see what he meant, and I didn't blame him, so there!” She confronted Philippa with such a frantic hatred that it was like a physical blow. “Oh, yes, he told me, and Peggy said it was the truth, how you were stirring up a stink about him torturing those sneaky little Webster brats! Even Sky was upset, but he couldn't say why. He's like that. Perley was
driven
to what he did. He was trapped into it, and then they set on him like they were all so virtuous!”

She took a long moaning breath, and Foss said sorrowfully, “You see how it is. It's a rotten mess. The boy did wrong, painting up the boat and all, but the way I see it, he didn't know what else to do. It was self-defense. He was desperate.”

“Sure he was!” said Terence. “Desperate because somebody's caught up with him!”

The lamplight that had always seemed so clear and bright had an oppressive glare. Each face was ruthlessly distinct. There was no answering them, she would not debase herself by protesting.

“Of course I didn't think Perley did the paint job,” Vi said. Of them all, she seemed to be enjoying the situation to the limit. “I thought it was Young Charles, getting even with his uncle for having the school-ma'am up in the clubhouse with no lights on. But I certainly don't blame Perley a bit. We all know Perley doesn't realize his own strength sometimes, but he's no
monster
!” She grinned at Philippa. “Seems like the pot called the kettle black just once too often.”

“Waal,” Asanath began, “the boy shouldn't a done what he did with that paintbrush. But I can see what happened. Just natural resentment, that's all.” He looked benignly at Philippa. “See what you've done, my girl, all by picking up with those young ones and letting them poison your mind against Perley?”

“I see a great deal,” said Philippa. Her lips felt unnaturally stiff. It was not a Webster who told me, she thought, it was Sky Campion who came to warn me. . . . But she couldn't implicate him. She knew beyond a doubt that Helen would always sacrifice the healthy child for the sick one, without realizing that her unreasoning, passionate defense of Perley was only setting him more deeply in his ugly ways. Her blind protection would grow more blind, more intense, as his offenses grew more dangerous, and in the end she would weep, and blame everyone else as she was blaming Philippa now.

“No one poisoned my mind against Perley,” Philippa said. “I've seen enough, and heard enough, to realize what the picture is. Every child on this island could tell you something about Perley—that is, if they weren't afraid of retaliation in one form or another. Mrs. Campion—” she gazed directly into the frantic, red-rimmed eyes. “Believe me, I'm not blaming Perley alone for this. I think that in many ways he's unhappy. Maybe he feels slow and inadequate compared to Peggy and Sky. Maybe people have been too impatient with him, have called him stupid too often. He senses his own limitations, and feels trapped by them.”

Now her eyes took in Foss, challenging him to face the truth for this once, instead of sliding away from it with a smile and shrug. “It may be that he's heard so much at home about Jude Webster and his wife and children being queer and slow-witted that he thinks he's at last found somebody inferior to him—and that whatever he does to them is perfectly fair, the triumph of the strong over the weak.”

Foss's face was blank. She appealed to Asanath. “
You
must understand! Can't anyone be honest here but Terence? Do you realize that by calling me and everyone else a liar, you're condemning that unhappy boy to Heaven knows what?” Her voice got away from her in its desperation. “It doesn't stop at twisting arms and bending fingers and punching children in the stomach! It goes on and on, don't you realize? It could go from killing kittens to—to
killing
.”

There was a short silence, and then Helen's voice rose in a wail. “You've just taken a dislike to my Perley, like all the other teachers!”

Philippa felt engulfed in a wave of despair, and the impulse to sickness was so strong that she turned involuntarily toward the door. Terence stopped her. He spoke to her alone, but behind them the others listened. “They're all tarred with the same brush,” he said. “There's only one thing I wish. I wish my mother'd had the guts to step out on my father, so I could think I might be somebody else besides a Campion!”

He walked across the silent kitchen and went out. Philippa did not look at the other faces, but went directly to her room.

She turned on her radio; there was a demoniac outburst of old-fashioned jazz, and it shut out any sounds from downstairs. She picked up her hairbrush and began to brush her hair, hard. Sound came squealing and writhing from the radio; it seemed to bounce from wall to wall, and Philippa was caught in the center. But it was better than listening to what was said downstairs. As she brushed her hair, she looked at the room in the lamplight, at the small-flowered paper, the old-fashioned furniture, the bleak engravings and the sentimental prints, the drawn shades, the locked door. She had shut herself into her cave; she would snarl if anyone threatened her privacy.

When her wrist ached from the brushing, she went over to her worktable. She found that she was trembling, and thinking of Steve. Now there was no question of not telling him the things that had happened to her, only of how to tell him. What befell one of them was the concern of both; it was the beginning of their experiences together. I wish it could be a pleasanter beginning, she thought. He must feel that he's taken hold of a thistle. Then the rage she had suppressed downstairs engulfed her. She held to the edge of the table, watching her fingernails go from pink to white, and let the storm sweep past. If she had allowed it to possess her in the kitchen, she could have silenced Helen's hysteria and Vi's malicious gaiety without raising her voice; she would have shown them what a ruthless passion anger could be. But afterward she would have felt weak, chilled, and degraded. She had learned young the penalties of her tempers. Her opposition might be awed or even frightened by her icy intensity, but she was the one who, afterward, suffered as from any excess.

She could sit still no longer. She got up and began to take her clothes out of bureau drawers, with no definite idea except perhaps to rearrange them. She wanted to be out of the house, she wanted to see Steve with such a longing that her throat ached as if she were going to cry. But there was no way to manage it, until tomorrow. If only she could have gone for a walk to tire herself, but there were Asanath and Suze to pass in the kitchen, even if the others had gone.