The Dawning of the Day (4 page)

“My boy,” said Asanath briefly. “Terence.” The curtness of his remark seemed to imply criticism.

Terence came toward them aimlessly as a feather. Asanath introduced him, and Philippa shook hands. He had the Campion eyes, pale and bright as aquamarine, and a thin straight mouth. He was in his mid-twenties, Philippa guessed, and wondered what preoccupied him.

“Git Mis' Marshall's stuff up off the wharf, son,” Asanath said, and Terence nodded and left them. A faint sound of whistling spun out like a thread behind him. His father said in his leisurely voice, “Terence is some absent-minded. Always thinking something he ain't telling.”

They went up toward the house, and she saw Suze Campion behind the screen door. But in that instant she was not so real for Philippa as the sweet whistlings of the goldfinches in the thistles at the edge of the woods, the sheets snapping like sails on the clothesline in the side yard, and behind them a yellowing field that stretched to the sea. Beyond she saw again the island called Tenpound; in the clear air the black sheep were visible against the sky.

A
t midnight she was no nearer to sleep than she'd been two hours before when the last of the callers had gone home and she'd come to her room to write to Eric and then go to bed. She lay on her back with the high headboard rearing above her and watched ripples of moonlit water move endlessly toward the shore below her windows. The wind had died out at sunset, but the room was filled with a sort of murmurous hush, like the big conch shell that was her door stop.

Foss Campion and his wife had come to supper. Foss was the same as she had remembered him, except for the change from the blue suit to cotton slacks and moccasins. His wife, Helen, was a big woman with short wavy dark hair, only slightly gray, a fine color, and a brilliant hazel gaze. She appeared to overshadow Foss, who had little to say but whose eyes glinted in an amused and friendly smile whenever they met Philip-pa's.

“I understand you're a widow, Mrs. Marshall,” Helen said. She didn't drop her voice, as if widowhood were a faintly disgraceful condition, but said it heartily. “I'm a widow myself, or was, till I married Foss. I have a boy by my first marriage, too, so it gives us something in common.”

“So it does,” said Philippa. “How old is your boy?”

“Seventeen. Perley's real smart. I wanted him to go to high school, but he was so set on being a fisherman he just wouldn't work for his pass. Stayed in the eighth grade for three years!” She laughed heartily.

“Have a roll, Helen.” Asanath held the plate out to her. “You look about starved. I can see your ribs.”

She enjoyed the joke thoroughly, flinging herself back in her chair till it creaked, her laughter pealing around the kitchen, her solid bosom heaving. When the last of the spasm had died away in a diminishing series of breathless gurgles, she wiped her eyes and said faintly, “Oh dear, Asa, you'll kill me yet!” She took two rolls. “If you can see my ribs, you're a lot better off than Foss; he says he hasn't
felt
'em for ten years!” She began to shake again but subdued the paroxysm and buttered her rolls. “I was telling you,” she said to Philippa, “Foss gave Perley a peapod last year and he's been in it ever since. Loves lobstering, he does, and his father was a farmer! So I guess the smell of manure don't get into the blood after all.”

Suze, a vaguely disapproving look on her face, got up from the table and went over to the dresser. Helen's laughter burst forth again; the men looked at her with bemused smiles, except for Terence, who continued to gaze past Philippa's shoulder at the woods outside and seemed unaware of anything that happened in the big kitchen. Helen stopped laughing to bite a roll, swallow hastily, and go on.

“Foss and I have two more. Peggy, she's thirteen, and Schuyler, he's eleven. May Gerrish, she and Peggy never hitched horses at all, but I always say an old maid's got no business handling high-strung sensitive children. Now Peg—”

Foss stirred himself lazily. “No sense bragging on 'em to the teacher, old woman. Leave her something to find out for herself. Your victuals are getting cold, and here's Suze got a lamp lit and the pie ready.”

Helen threw up her head. “I guess you can hold forth when you get going on that fancy new engine of yours!”

“That takes care of you, boy,” Asanath drawled. Suze came and set the tall nickel lamp in the center of the table and turned up the wick so that the yellow light spread over them all.

After supper Terence went out. Suze and Helen talked, the current of their voices running fast and light over the deeper, slower stream of men's conversation. Philippa knitted on a sweater for Eric and listened first to one set of words and then to the other. The men talked of lobstering, of seining, of winter gales to come, and of the best places to set traps; the phrases had an alien, half-poetic flavor for her. The women talked of personalities, touching the pattern of daily events and giving the island the substance and dimensions of a world in microcosm.

Later in the evening Viola Goward came in. She was sister to Asanath and Foss, a tall lean woman in whom the Campion features had a curious distinction. Her hair was straight and sandy, and pulled harshly back from her angular face into an untidy knot at the back. There was a penetrating intelligence in the pale eyes.

“How do you do, young woman,” she said brusquely. “I've come over to offer my sympathies. I was a teacher myself.”

“But I like teaching,” Philippa protested, laughing.

“That's because you've never taught on Bennett's Island. I never did either, for that matter, but I've watched the battles from afar. Matter of fact they offered me the school more than once, but I told them I was no fool, thank you very much.”

“Are you trying to scare me off?” Philippa asked in amusement. “Because you can't.”

“She's real brave,” said Foss. “Never turned a hair when we showed up on her doorstep that day. That's courage.”

“Besides, it's the most beautiful place I've ever seen,” Philippa added.

Mrs. Goward shrugged. “It's no Eden. Wait till they start a lobster war, and then you'll wish yourself a thousand miles away.”

“Lobster war!” Helen Campion shrieked it. “How you talk! This is modern times, Vi!”

“Is that
so
?” Mrs. Goward pounced triumphantly on the words like a lean rusty-red fox on a mouse. “Then why did the wardens close off the waters around Shag Island last year? Just for something to do? I suppose none of
you
would come right out and call it a lobster war when the Brigporters and the Rockhaveners were slashing traps off right and left, and heaving ballast rocks at each other, and carrying rifles with 'em when they went to haul!”

Foss grinned at her mockingly. Asanath leaned back in his chair. “You'd ought to be on the stage, Vi. You're real good at making an entrance. Ain't life exciting enough for you without them horror stories? We're neither Brigporters nor Rockhaveners on this island. We're halfway civilized.”

Vi's long jaw grew longer. “Well, it'll be a real horror story, as you call it, if the rest of the Bennett brothers get tired of going dragging and decide to come back here. They're liable to figure the island's not big enough for Campions and Bennetts both.
Then
what, Asa Campion?”

“Now that you've spoke your piece, you can set, Viola,” said Asanath.

Mrs. Goward shrugged and sat down. “Well, big night on Bennett's Island. Steve Bennett took a crowd to the dance over to Brigport. Gregg's drunk and playing that devilish clarinet of his.” Her eyes flickered around the room. “Where's Terence tonight? I thought he'd be right here honeying around the schoolma'am.”

Suze's cheeks blotched with red. She didn't look up from the heavy sock she was knitting. “Well, he isn't.”

“Speaking of the absent,” said Asanath, “where's Syd?”

There was a moment's uneasy silence. His sister gazed back at him steadily. “He's got his migraine again.”

“Thought it was coming on him.” Asanath leaned forward to knock his pipe empty into the stove. “I was over in his fishhouse this afternoon, and he warn't in much of a condition to nail laths.” He sat back, getting out his tobacco pouch.

Viola sat erectly in her chair. “He's just about blind with it,” she said in a dry, expressionless voice. She put her long freckled hands up to stab a loose hairpin in her pug. “So I got clear out of the house. It's about the only thing anybody can do for him. I sent Ellie up to play with the Percy kids, and I took the long way around here, through the orchard. It's been stripped, green ones and all. If the day should ever come when one of those apples was left on the tree past Labor Day, I should think it was the end of the world and prepare to meet my Maker!”

“Websters?” said Helen eagerly.

“Well, 'twasn't chipmunks or porcupines. They're one thing the island hasn't got, though I don't know as I wouldn't rather have them than some of the things we do have.”

“Now, Vi,” Foss said, “you're not being one bit charitable. Those Webster kids can't help it because they're a mite slow.”

“Who are they?” asked Philippa.

“Just some oddities,” said Asanath. Whenever he spoke, mild as he was, all other voices stopped and everyone turned toward him. “You'll see 'em the first day of school. Hope it don't depress you too much. Jude Webster's a good enough carpenter. But his wife's sickly—in her head as much as in her body, I should say—and the kids are a queer lot. Maybe if you put 'em all together you'd get one average set of brains.”

“I think the state ought to do something about them,” said Helen vehemently. “They shouldn't be mixing with normal children.”

Asanath squinted at her through his pipe smoke. “Well, what they got ain't catching.”

Philippa thought of Eric, with the finely balanced intelligence in his eyes, the straight back and perfect coordination, and was thankful enough to make a little silent prayer of gratitude. Suze was saying in her wispy voice, “I'd like to see those Finns go. That girl's as brazen as a brass monkey.”

“I saw her this morning,” said Helen, her eyes alight, “out there in that dory of Mark Bennett's, standing up in it and leaning over the side of Terence's boat while he worked on his engine. Maybe she's only fourteen, but she's a big fourteen. My Peggy now, she's still a nice modest little girl.”

“Probably Kathie thinks Terence is a real good catch,” suggested Viola. “Those Finns marry young. You want to be ready for Terence to come bringing home a bride any day now, Suze, all set to move into the house next door. You know what the men say about girls—when they're big enough they're old enough.” She chuckled without sound.

Asanath cleared his throat gently. “One thing Terence don't have,” he murmured, “and that's migraine.”

Viola stood up abruptly. “I'll be getting back to Syd,” she said. “Good night.” She went without waiting; the goodnights of the others trailed after her. Suze hurried behind her to the door. “Goodnight, Viola!” she called faintly into the crisp still night.

But no one else seemed discomforted by Viola's sudden departure. In a little while Foss and Helen left. Asanath went out with them, and Suze and Philippa stood in the doorway while the men looked out at the moonlit harbor and the boats gleaming on the slate-blue water. The wind had died out and there was only a faint whispering along the shore. “Hear the rote,” Suze said, and Philippa listened and heard the dim, far-off roar that was the surf on the outer shores of the island. Yet at first she would have said there was silence everywhere, except for the crickets and an occasional swish and surge around the rocks.

“Be a fair day tomorrow,” Asanath said.

“Ayeh,” Foss answered.

Their voices were low, the voices of people with all time to spare. The air was cool and aromatic with an indefinable blend of sea and land scents. Philippa was very tired, and she thought how strange it would be to go to bed without first looking in on Eric; but she was faced with the enchantment of an island night in early September, and Eric was safe and happy, looking forward to his new bicycle. And so she was at peace.

Now she lay in bed, with all the faces and voices circling in her brain and no suspicion of sleep in her bones. The kitchen clock struck one. She got up and put on her robe and knelt by the window that looked out on the harbor. In the white light the shore curved away from her, the water flashing suddenly in shadowy spots around the rocks as a ripple caught the moon. The island was like a creature lying asleep on the dark sea. She must add that to Eric's letter, she thought.

Kneeling there with her arms folded on the sill and her chin down on them, her eyes wide with gazing, she tried to remember when she had last dreamed that Justin was alive and had simply gone away from her. She realized she hadn't dreamed it for a long time, which meant she had accepted the fact of his death. Yet in moments like this she was as conscious of him as if he were an articulate presence in the moonlit room.

She stayed by the window a long time, thinking of Eric and Justin and staring at the harbor, the moonlight like snow on the village roofs, the spruces on the opposite point saw-toothed and black against the pale sky. Then she went back to her bed, to burrow into the clean-scented sheets, pull the Lone Star quilt up around her head, and fall asleep.

I
t seemed a shameful thing to begin school when the year was moving into its full glory. Philippa finished classes early for the first few days, knowing how the scents and sounds of the island's late summer flowing in at the windows must have tortured girls fresh from long hours in their playhouses in the woods, and boys who had spent the summer in their father's dories. When the winter came they would be glad of school, and, if Philippa could keep to her ideal, the one room would become for them a world of many horizons. She had no reason to anticipate a failure; she knew what she possessed to give to children and was certain of her ability to reach them. At the same time she realized that every teacher since the first one must have begun each year with the same ardent hope that he would be something more to his pupils than the wind blowing or the tides changing.