The Dawning of the Day (7 page)

“You brought a lot of it in with you,” Kathie said. “Right out of the bait butt. I need a gas mask.”

“Nothing the matter with the smell of good bait.” Fort sniffed vigorously. “How are you, Mis' Marshall? You doing any better than Lady La-de-dah, here?”

“I haven't needed oxygen since I came,” said Philippa. “Not even when I pass your bait shed.”

Fort exploded into laughter, and Kathie snickered. Young Charles, standing with his back against the door so that his features were in shadow, made no motion or sound. Kathie said abruptly, “What's the matter with
him
?”

“Oh, he's in one of them brown studies,” Fort explained. “It's an awful dark kind of brown.”

As Philippa went toward the door, the boy moved to one side. “Hello, Charles,” she said.

“Hi.” He swung away from her and turned his back. Philippa said good-by to the others and went out. Behind her Kathie said with forceful clarity, “Anybody doesn't have to be so ugly! What'd she ever do to you, old frosty face?”

No answer from Charles, but Fort was bland and conciliatory. “Now, Kathie, he's setting out to be a woman hater, and it takes a lot of studying.”

Mark Bennett's house at the crest of the point was built low to the ground. When no one answered her knock at the front door, Philippa waited on the wide porch long enough to look over the island. It lay below her in a bath of yellowing sunlight that made it look like a painting by Innes.

Beyond the gulls walking pontifically on the store roof, the fringe of wharves around the harbor, and the gilded village, the schoolhouse sat by itself like a toy building that could be picked up by its belfry. On the far side of the island the sea reached endlessly toward the east. Northward, Isle au Haut was a mystic blue bubble that seemed to float above the horizon.

She left the porch with reluctance to search for the back door. A small shaggy brown dog came trotting around the corner of the house, saw her, and threw back his head in a hysterical outburst. She stopped and let him come up to her. The man who came behind him snapped his fingers and said without haste, “Hey, Max. Let the lady by.” The dog gave him a perfunctory look and returned to Philippa's ankles, his nose cold against them but not hostile.

“It's all right,” Philippa said. “I don't think he's going to bite.”

“He puts on kind of an impressive front, considering he hasn't got a tooth in his mouth to back it up with.” His voice was both deep and slow, what she had come to think of as an island voice that had learned never to hurry. The dog trotted back to him, and the man leaned down to touch the rough head.

He was a spare, tall man with the deep coppery tan that comes to dark skin, his hair black as a crow's wing when he pushed back his cap. He had none of Young Charles's handsome arrogance, but the cheekbones and the lean squared lines of his jaw made him undeniably a Bennett.

“Are you Mark Bennett?” she asked with an inexplicable air of hope. “I'm Mrs. Marshall, the teacher.”

“I'm Steve. Mark's around at the back.” His dark eyes were gentle and incurious. “Is this a duty call or trouble?”

“A very minor trouble.” They smiled at each other. Philippa walked beside him to the back of the house as he said, “Then let's get it over with.” The dog bounded before them, barking with irrational enthusiasm.

“I've ridden in your boat,” Philippa said. “She's lovely.”

He looked at her gravely from under thick black brows. “That wasn't too good a day for a newcomer. But the boys said you didn't turn a hair.”

“I didn't know I could be so convincing,” she said, but at the same time she felt a twinge of pride that the boys should have given her a good report. He walked beside her, moving with a slow ease. A scent of washed and ironed cloth came from his shirt, and suddenly this scent carried a sense of overpowering masculinity with it; she remembered breathing the same aroma, made particularly intimate by the hard warm flesh below it, when she was in Justin's arms. The sensation was so keen now that she was shocked.

She glanced sideways at Steve Bennett and felt a loosening like relief in her chest muscles. He appeared lost in a pleasant reverie, watching the dog's wild noisy circles. And Justin's skin, there where the open collar of this man's shirt lay back from his neck, had never been so brown. There was not the slightest similarity except that all freshly ironed shirts smelled the same.

They came into a small grassy yard bordered with bright flowers and sheltered from the wind by spruces. A tall blond woman in a green skirt and sweater rose from a deck chair and stood looking at them in watchful yet expressionless silence. Across the yard a man was painting the storm sashes leaning in a row against a shed wall.

“Here's company, Helmi,” Steve Bennett said. “Mrs. Marshall, Mrs. Mark Bennett.” He gestured with his head toward the painter. “That's Mark. Turn around, boy.”

The other glanced around at them. He was like Steve and at the same time curiously unlike him. He was angry. He nodded abruptly at Philippa and turned back to his work, painting fast; the set of his big shoulders under blue chambray was rigid.

If she had come into a family scene, it was too late for embarrassment. Philippa said, “How do you do, Mrs. Bennett?” and put out her hand. Mrs. Mark Bennett murmured an answer and took Philippa's hand in a cool brief grip. Her face was wide at the cheekbones and vigorously cut, her skin darker than the pale hair that sprang away from her high temples. Her eyes were like Kathie's, the lucid color of the eastern sea in this day's light; but they had none of Kathie's friendliness, and Philippa thought that the farthest reach of the ocean could not be more distant.

Steve Bennett was moving another deck chair close to his sister-in-law's. She said in a low voice, “Sit down, Mrs. Marshall.”

“Thank you,” Philippa said. They sat down. Mrs. Bennett took a package of cigarettes from the knitting bag hung over the arm of her chair and held it out to Philippa, who shook her head. She lit one for herself, without flourishes. Steve Bennett took one of his own and sat on his heels against the wall of the shed. He scratched Max behind the ears. Both man and dog seemed peacefully absorbed.

“It's not just about Rob that I've come,” Philippa began in the tone of smooth, cheerful confidence that she had learned over the years, to dispel antagonism and tension in parents. Sometimes it worked. She wondered if she would be automatically on the defensive if someone came to her about Eric.

Mark Bennett stopped painting. He took a few steps toward her, the brush in his hand. His dark face was hostile. “What's Kathie done?”

“Nothing,” said Philippa in surprise. “Kathie's a wonder. She's a great addition to the schoolroom.”

The hostility turned doubtful. His black brows drew down. His wife was smiling faintly.

“Does Kathie strike you as a sensible girl, Mrs. Marshall?” she asked in her low voice.

“Shrewd beyond her years, I should say.” That's not to say she isn't vulnerable, Philippa added silently, but she felt that what she had spoken aloud was the right thing for the moment. Steve Bennett, his back against the warm shingles, smiled at her.

“That's what we've been trying to tell Mark. Maybe he'll believe you. He's getting all worn out with the cares of parenthood.”

“Other people's children are a tremendous responsibility,” she said tactfully. She felt as if she were walking in the dark; each remark must be essayed with caution, like a tentative footstep that might plunge her into conversational disaster.

“
Responsibility
!” Mark repeated violently. He wiped his hands on a rag and took out his cigarettes. The hostility had given way to angry bewilderment. He shook his head at the crumpled package. “Good Lord, I wish she had buck teeth and bowlegs. But even that wouldn't keep some of these ginks to home.”

She recognized, then, the source of his anger; it was fear more than anger, the same fear that motivated Suze Campion when she whined at Terence . . . “brazen little girl hang in' on your coattails.”

“Well,” said Steve softly, “you can always send her back to the main.”

“I've suggested it,” said Helmi with pleasant calm, studying the tip of her cigarette. Mark got up and looked at the rest of them morosely.

“She won't go back to run the streets if I've got anything to do with it.” He turned to Philippa. “Give her plenty of home work, make her help you after school, all that stuff. How about it?”

She said, “I'm sure Kathie would run the school for me, if I'd only give her a chance.”

“She would, at that! She's already running the store!” He broke out into relieved laughter, a strong hearty sound, and Steve joined him. His wife looked at them both, smiling. The atmosphere had become subtly warmed, as if a crisis had been passed.

“But you said it wasn't Kathie you came to see us about,” Helmi reminded Philippa. “Is it Rob? Or just a social parent-teacher call?”

“Both.”

“What's he done?” asked Steve. “Smoked a stogie out behind the schoolhouse?”

“I guess I've still got that to look forward to. Rob hasn't done anything very terrible. He and Sky Campion have been playing hooky for the last three days.”

“I told you to go easy on those tales of your misspent youth,” Steve said to his brother. “Putting ideas in the kid's head.”

“He doesn't need any help,” said Mark. “Neither him nor Sky.” His voice roughened. “What does Foss Campion say?”

“He says that Sky will be in school Monday with a note from home, and he won't run away from school again.”

Helmi said quietly, “Rob will be in school Monday, too. With a note, and all the rest of it.”

“There's one more thing,” said Philippa. “Sky isn't going to be whipped. So it wouldn't be fair to take a switch to Rob, would it?”

“He needs his bottom warmed, I should say,” Mark growled. He picked up the can of paint and went into the shed.

“Better break out your bull whip,” Steve called after him. Helmi arose.

“Will you have some coffee, Mrs. Marshall?”

“I'd love it, but I'll pass it up today. I'd planned on a walk before supper to see what I could of the island.” She hadn't planned anything of the sort, but for some time she had been aware of a great uneasiness in her that had nothing to do with the Mark Bennetts, Kathie, or Rob. It was at once frightening and ludicrous. She stood up quickly as if to shake herself free of something.

“Well, there'll be plenty of days for coffee when the snow flies,” Mrs. Bennett said. They smiled at each other conventionally. Philippa looked out past the line of spruces and down over the sloping ground to the first of the coves that notched the west side.

“How do I get down there?” she asked.

“I'll show you,” Steve said. She felt a start of surprise; he had got up and come close to her while she wasn't looking, and his easy voice so near to her seemed inescapably personal.

“If you'll just point out the path to me—” she began.

“I'll start you on it.” He dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his heel. His brown face was grave and kind as he looked down, lids and black lashes hiding the darkness of his eyes. She said good-by to Helmi and followed in the direction he indicated. He walked before her down the slope, light-footed in moccasins. His shoulders were not as broad as his brother's, he was leaner altogether. The fresh white shirt dazzled; she thought she could smell it again and wished passionately that he had not come with her. She could be silent no longer. She said, more crisply than she intended, “What is the position of the Salminen children in your brother's home? Why are they there?”

He stood against the glitter of the western water and waited for her to come up to him. He held a deep lavender aster between his fingers. “You don't often see them as dark as that,” he said thoughtfully. Then he looked directly at her.

“The kids came a year ago. Their mother is Helmi's sister. She had to divorce the father, and then she had to get out and go to work. He's an alcoholic, spends more time in the lockup than out of it. That's their story.”

“I was wondering—” she began hesitatingly, forgetting what it was that she had wondered.

“They get along all right, if that's what you're wondering. Mark and Helmi don't have any kids of their own, and these fill the gap. Helmi's a cool critter on the surface, but she's not cold. Mark growls at them as if he ate kids for Sunday dinner, but he dotes on them and they know it.” He twirled the aster. “Be better for them if he made good some of his threats, I suppose. But they're sound kids, and Kathie's got a lot more sense than most people credit to her.”

“I could see he was proud of her.”

“He is. But he worries about her, and it makes him bad-tempered. We've got a sister—we're five brothers, by the way, two of us living here on the island, and the sister—and she tells Mark he's got a guilty conscience remembering what a heller he was in his youth.” He laughed, and then held the aster out to her. “Here you are. Don't ever say we didn't greet the new schoolma'am with flowers.”

“I shan't.” The stem was warm and moist from his fingers. Smiling steadily, she tucked it through a buttonhole in her blouse. “Now which way do I go?”

“The path is clear right down to Sou'west Point.” He gestured to the distant point beyond the scalloping coves, and the long ledges showing black in the blue water, with the surf creaming slowly over them. “No need for you to get lost.”

“I always go by the moss on the tree trunks, anyway.”

“I can see that you're the practical kind.” They both laughed. The action was a relief to her; all at once she felt natural again. She said good-by and went off down the path without looking back.