The Dawning of the Day (49 page)

“I do know, Steve!” Her voice was sharper than she had intended. “You've been out doing something about it, you've worked something out of your system, and you've come to a logical conclusion.” She moved restlessly, and then her self-control splintered.

“But it's so
unbelievable
!” she burst out wildly. “And at the same time so
final
! You know it's happened, but you can't—you can't—” her voice went high and broke. Through a blur of tears she saw his face contort as if in pain. He reached for her, but she held him off while she fought silently for composure.

“Steve, I can't live on this island,” she said at last. “I'll never belong, and I don't think I want to belong. What the island has done to me, and what I've done to the island, make a pretty rotten story.” She waited, but he made no offer to speak. His dark eyes watched her with neither pity nor anger.

“You told me there was always trouble, that I didn't start anything. But Steve, since I came here two months ago there's been nothing but the
worst
trouble. If that's the true state of affairs here, I don't think I can endure it even with you, either for myself or Eric.” This time he opened his mouth, but she shook her head. “And if you tell me it's not usually
this
bad, then it comes back to me, that I started everything. Steve.” She leaned toward him. “Can you say, and believe it, that these things would have happened anyway? Can you say in all honesty that it's not in everyone's mind that Fort was hounded into running away—and Charles went with him because Fort was his friend?”

“You didn't do it.”

“If you want, you can trace it from the beginning. From the time I saw the Webster children in the orchard.” She gestured helplessly, in despair of explaining. “And they led directly to yesterday.”

He shook his head. “You're so very mistaken. And so conceited, taking it all on yourself. Listen to me, for a change.” He kept one arm hard around her, the other hand holding her chin so she could not turn her face from him.

“Justin never stopped to figure out if that man was worth saving when he threw himself on the grenade,” he said cruelly. “You'd have been some kind of monster if you'd turned your back on those kids. You've got to stop weighing them against Fort and Charles. You understand? As for Fort being hounded, what I told you in the first place still goes. The Campions felt like crowding; place wasn't big enough for 'em. So they used you for an excuse, and the mess began, and every man who took part in it, Campion
or
Bennett, was equally to blame.”

She tried to free her chin from his grasp, but he wouldn't let go. “Let me tell you another thing, Philippa. Gregg and Fort and Charles caused their own deaths. They knew the condition of Gregg's boat. They knew there might be a storm. But Gregg was thirsty and the boys were mad, so they took a chance. And that's the story behind everything like this, Philippa. You're going to be a lobsterman's wife, so you might as well learn the thing first as last. They took a chance.”

He released her abruptly and went to the window. He was a blurred dark figure against the dusk outside. “Here's something else. Maybe you can figure out how you're to blame for this, too. Jude broke down today and told Nils he's got to take Lucy back to the state hospital at Bangor. Seems she spent some time there after Rue was born. Now she's going back.” His voice failed tiredly; he seemed to have run out of words.

“No!” The cry was torn from Philippa.

“Yes. The way Jude puts it, she never did think much of this world, so she's chosen up one of her own.” He turned around. “Can't you figure out some tie-in with yourself?” he asked savagely.

“No, I can't. I knew when I first saw her that something was wrong. This was inevitable, I suppose.”

“So was the other. . . . It would have been something, wouldn't it,” Steve murmured, thinking aloud, “if Perley ever had got hold of Rueand Edwin? That would have set the whole family off for fair. And you stopped that. . . . Those kids are Jude's lifeblood. They'll make out, Philippa.” His voice came clearer. “They've got you to thank for that.”

“But the boys—”

“Listen, I loved Charles as if he was my own kid. I've loved him longer than you've known him. And I can't figure how we're going to get used to not having him around. But I'm telling you the truth when I say they should have known better.” He came back across the room, walking softly in his stocking feet, and stood above her where she sat huddled on the couch. “Listen, my darling, we'll live somewhere else, where you won't have to look at the Campions and hear Vi's horselaugh, where you won't have to remember Lucy Webster or Charles or any of the mess at all. We'll go wherever you want. You pick the place on the coast where you want us to live and where you want Eric to grow up. I can live without this island, Philippa, but I can't live without
you
.”

She tried to say his name but could not. She leaned forward and put her arms around his waist and laid her head against him. His belt buckle cut into her cheek, but the pain was a lifesaving reality and she cherished it. He reached down and pulled her up so that he could look into her face. Her eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Steve, what do you take me for, a cosset lamb, a child bride? We won't go anywhere else to live! This is your place, and it can be mine. But thank you for offering. If you never gave me another gift as long as we both live, that one would be enough.”

“What about Eric?”

“Eric will have us, and the family, and the island itself, the boats—he'll have so much that's wonderful that it will take all the sting out of the bad things.” She moved into Steve's arms and put her cheek against his wind-burned one. “He'll probably learn his lesson much easier than I'm learning mine, Steve. He has so much common sense.”

Steve kissed her. It was a gentle kiss that neither compelled nor demanded. There was no reason for any urgency to cut through their weariness. Their lifetime lay ahead of them. They sank into exhaustion with their arms around each other, as if into sleep, mutely grateful for each other with an emotion which for the moment had no concern with love or passion.

Philippa stirred, once; a threadlike lilt had come unexpectedly into her head, a thin gay ghost. “What was that one Fort played so much?” she murmured. “It had a strange title for a square-dance tune—‘The Dawning of the Day.' That was it.”

That's what we're waiting for, she thought. The end of the night, the dawning of the day. Only Fort and Charles aren't waiting. The day was over for them before it really began. Grief was sharply aroused in her again, but as if he sensed it Steve tightened his arms around her.

The island night deepened into its long, starlit winter solitude. The darkness flowed into the room, and they rested in it.

I
f it can be said of any author that she
lives
the subjects and settings of her books, it certainly can be said of Elisabeth Ogilvie. Although she was born in Boston and at first only summered in Maine, Miss Ogilvie resided most of the year on Gay's Island off the Maine coast, where she “writes, gardens, and tries not to suspect that a bear is at the door, a moose lurking in the alders, or a bald eagle hovering overhead about to bear away my red-gold shag cat, Tristan.” She kept a big black sheep—who did his share by cropping the grass—and occasionally saw a fox saunter nonchalantly across her lawn.

Her novels, all of which have a Maine seacoast setting, earned her a wide and faithful audience:
Storm Tide
,
High Tide at Noon
,
Ebbing Tide
, and
Rowan Head
. She wrote one book of nonfiction,
My World Is an Island
, in which she describes in humorous and delightful detail her unique life on Gay's Island. Even as a child, when she spent vacations in Maine, she was fascinated with the fishermen's life, its freedom and independence, the excitement of the sea, the remarkable lobstermen in their sturdy boats. The conviction grew—and remained ever since—that this was the life about which she wanted to write.