The Dawning of the Day (15 page)

“Thank
you
. And I'll talk to Mark right away.”

“We're goin' to save up,” Faith chanted, irrepressible, “and buy a blackboard! So we can have a school in our brush camp!”

“You hush up your noise, Faith Webster!” Rue's head swung irresistibly toward Philippa. There was a perceptible stiffening of the girl's pale delicate lips, as if to hide a tremble. Then she turned and started up the slope, jerking Faith with her. The younger child whimpered and dragged back. Edwin sprang toward the top, driving his stick before him like a lance.

Philippa said in a low voice to Joanna. “I must speak to them.” But she was reluctant, knowing she would be defeated. The irony was that the presence of Joanna Sorensen, which had drawn them here, was to keep Philippa from saying the one thing that might reach through Rue's defenses. She took a few steps after them.

“Rue,” she said. “Listen to me.” The girl looked back, but the sight of that face, a blank mask, dismayed her. “Won't you come to school? I want you all, very much. Bring Daniel too. We can keep him busy.”

There was no answer. Holding the younger children tightly, Rue ran to the top of the hillock and down the other side.

“That's that,” said Philippa. She sat down tiredly on a rock.

Joanna said, “They've gone wild as hawks. I wonder if it's because of Edwin? Maybe it's that more than the clothing question. Last time I was up to the house Rue had just done a big ironing, and there was more than enough to dress them all decently. You may have to go to Jude after all.”

“I want them to come of their own free will. If I have to go to the father in the end, so be it. But I'll give them, and myself, another week.”

“I wish you luck,” said Joanna. She smiled and reached for Linnea's hand. “I'm one of those people who think a nice cup of tea is a great help. So let's have lunch. I'll give Nils a hail.”

She went off toward the woods with her long purposeful stride, Linnea trotting beside her. They stopped by one of the thick widespread clumps of bay that gave a Mediterranean aspect to the land rising harshly from the brilliant blue sea. Joanna herself, with her lustrous darkness, her warm uninhibited gestures, might have been Latin. She broke off some bay leaves, crushing them in her fingers and holding them for Linnea to smell.

Philippa watched them until they disappeared behind the feathery green screen of some young spruces. She wished she could have told Joanna about Perley. But the only action at this point must come from the children themselves. Philippa, sitting on her rock in the strong sunshine, saw again the spirit in Rue's face; the rigid and terrible pride.

A
fter lunch Linnea slept, sprawled on a blanket in the shade of the woods. Jamie went off on his own affairs. The adults made low, desultory conversation. From the cool tent of the woods they looked out on the sunny landscape of a dream. Words became scarce, voices trailed off. Philippa found herself sinking into a warm lethargy. She resisted it; for her, these interludes often slid imperceptibly into depression, as if the degree of her body's quiescence had some bearing on the defenses of her mind. Nils Sorensen lay on his back, his fair head close to his daughter's; he gazed with half-closed eyes at the shifting green canopy overhead. Joanna might have been asleep, lying curled on her side. One hand touched her husband's.

Philippa got up and walked down over the rough terraces of turf and granite ledge that descended to the sea on the other side of the point. She found a trail winding along between the fringes of second-growth spruce and the sprawling jumble of volcanic rock, and followed it around bay and wild rose thickets. The trees grew closer to the shore now, so that she sometimes walked in shade stippled with sunlight. She came to a little cove, where the beach was no more than a slanting wall of pebbles between two spits of black and rufous rock. The resinous scents around her were spiced with smoke; she saw it rising in a mauve streamer from the rocks at the far side of the cove, and then she saw Kathie and Rue tending a small fire, with the curiously votive air that comes with kneeling before a flame. Daniel and Faith came into view from some further beach, their arms full of driftwood which they dumped beside the fire. Kathie said something and they all laughed, even Rue. She did not look like anyone Philippa had ever seen before. Certainly not like the creature who had turned on her the shallow inscrutable mask.

On a flat rock beyond the fire, at the edge of the sea, Terence was cleaning fish while Edwin watched. Edwin, without his stick, with his thin body hunched in repose and his bleached head canted forward, was also a stranger. Terence, too, had a new aspect. As he rinsed the fillets in the water, the white meat flashed in the sun. Then he washed his hands and his knife, and handed the knife to Edwin. The boy held it reverently. Philippa knew from the movements of his hands that he was opening and closing all the blades. He followed Terence back to the fire, not running or leaping nervously, but carrying the knife with care.

Kathie, talking cheerfully, arranged the fish in a frying pan. The children squatted on the rocks to watch the cooking. Their faces, defenseless in the full flooding of the sun, were soft with their childhood.

Terence stretched out on a level place and propped himself up on one elbow. He pushed back his duck-bill and took out his cigarettes. As he put one in his mouth, he seemed to look directly toward Philippa. She blushed and grew tense; suddenly she felt like the worst sort of Peeping Tom. She waited stiffly for him to make a sign that he had seen her among the tree trunks, but now he was fishing out a match and scratching it with his thumbnail. Edwin came and sat down near him, and Terence glanced over his shoulder and smiled; she saw the flash of his teeth.

She moved backward, cautiously, until she was out of sight. Because she knew Terence was on the defensive about his relationship with Kathie, innocent or not, she felt guilty at coming upon them like this. If Terence had seen her, he would have suspected her of spying. He would have classed her at once with the rest of the island.

She walked back along the path to the Sorensens much faster than she had walked before.

S
teve Bennett was on Nils's wharf to catch the dory painter when they rowed ashore in the late afternoon. The children went up the ladder first. As Steve swung Linnea over the top, he said, “Six new freckles.”

“They're sun kisses!” Linnea shouted furiously.

“Freckles,” said Jamie, propping himself against a hogshead as if he were blasé instead of sleepy. Linnea screamed, “Sun kisses!” and burst into loud weeping. Steve held out his arms to her, but she beat him off. Joanna stood up, balancing herself expertly in the dory. “It's airing up,” she said. “Small craft warnings. Very small craft.” She went up the ladder with an ease that Philippa admired, smiling affectionately at her brother. “Never mind, Steve, you can make up with her later. She's so tired she doesn't know whether she's afoot or on horseback. See you later, Philippa,” she called down. “You can leave your berries with ours till you want to send some to your friends. We'll keep them in the cellar where it's cool. Hasn't it been a wonderful day?”

She went home, leading Linnea by the hand. Gregg sat on his doorstep, taking the mellow heat of the sun, and she gave him a serene greeting as if Linnea's wails were not drowning her out.

Steve took Philippa's arm as she reached the top of the ladder. “Will you scream if I tell you how many new freckles you've got?” he asked soberly.

“No, I'm old enough to face up to the bitter realities. There comes a time in a woman's life when she has to admit that freckles are freckles, and if she has them she'll just have to be gallant about it.” He laughed and sat on his heels to reach for the water pails of cranberries that Nils handed up. There were also four pot buoys and a collection of strangely gnarled, curved, and antlered driftwood.

Steve touched one of the buoys with his foot. “That's mine, isn't it?” he said.

Jamie, in the middle of a yawn, sprang to attention. “I found it. It was hung up in the rocks near the Devil's Den, and I lugged it clear around the point to the dory.” His blue eyes, glistening, watched his uncle's face.

Steve brought out a handful of change, picked out a quarter, and gave it to him. Jamie put it in a pocket of his faded dungarees and carried the other buoys to the fishhouse. Nils put the dory on the haul-off and sent her out away from the wharf. “Better get that driftwood under cover too, son,” he said. “Know which is yours?” he asked Philip-pa.

“This one that looks almost like a gull in flight.” She picked it up, stroking the thin satiny curve of the wings.

“Never knew it to fail,” said Steve. “Let a woman get near a beach, and she's always lugging home driftwood. May I carry your driftwood around the beach for you, ma'am?”

“Oh,
thank
you!” she exclaimed effusively. “But I'm stronger than I look, really!”

Nils's eyes flickered behind his thick light lashes. “Try again, boy. Maybe she'll let you carry along some berries for Suze and Helen.” He handed up a lard pail full of cranberries,.

Steve pulled at an imaginary forelock, saying gravely, “Bless your kind heart, Cap'n Sorensen. You was always a good friend to the young folks.” Jamie looked on in mild astonishment as the adults laughed.

“Thank you for a wonderful day,” Philippa said to Nils.

“I'm glad you could come with us,” he answered. “Be neighborly.”

Coming onto the path, with Steve beside her, she felt a ludicrous embarrassment at Gregg's hail from the doorstep. Then, between the long fishhouse and the beach, they met Rob, Sky, and Ralph, who chorused a little too loudly, “Hello, Mrs. Marshall! Hi, Steve!”

I'm tired, she thought irritably. And the man bothers me. She looked at him sideways; his dark profile was imperturbable except for the agreeable lift of his mouth. She looked away again, and saw Young Charles and Fort far down the beach at the edge of the tide, bailing out a skiff. Young Charles didn't glance up. There was something obdurate about his shoulders as he knelt on the middle seat of the skiff. But Fort grinned and waved his bailing scoop.

“Hey, teacher, can I come to school tomorrow, huh?” he shouted.

“I'll be looking for you,” she called back, but still Young Charles didn't look up.

At the beginning of the boardwalk she stopped and reached for her cranberries. “Thank you very much for carrying them.”

“You're welcome,” he said equably. “I'd like to carry them all the way, but you seem to have your mind made up. . . . It'll be a fine night. No moon, but plenty of fire in the water. Let's go rowing.”

She was unprepared for her own reaction. It was as if two entirely separate entities had shouted their answers simultaneously at her, the
yes
of one and the
no
of the other resulting in chaos. For an instant the chaos held, and then she said in a voice of suave reluctance, “I'd love it, but I wouldn't enjoy it the way I want to. I'm almost asleep on my feet now, and I still have a little work to do for tomorrow.” She looked past him, across the green and russet of the marsh to Schoolhouse Cove, and groped for the rest of the words; she came back to his face and said with the right anxiety, “But you
will
ask me again, won't you?”

“You're half drunk with air and sun. You won't need to be rocked tonight.” He added, without emphasis, “I'll ask you again. Don't doubt that.” He turned back.

I
n the morning her alarm clock awakened her to a raw gray chill in the room, and a booming of surf on the harbor points. Her windows rattled in a long, sustained gust. She slid from under the covers, wincing at the icy sea of linoleum beyond the island of braided rug, and shut the windows. Eric had let her know he considered the weather to be disappointingly fair, but here was his storm. She was excited enough on her own account.

It was a northeasterly; the wind came down between the islands with a wailing rush. Foam-smeared seas ran high past the harbor mouth and crashed on the end of the breakwater. The high point out beyond the Campion house helped to shelter the harbor. Cat's-paws struck downward over the trees and hurried continually across the gray water, but there was very little action of the boats, and the usual gulls walked on the wet black roofs of the fishhouses or stood, breasts to the wind, on the half-submerged ledges outside Nils Sorensen's wharf.

The house strained in the wind. The buildings on this side of the harbor had no real protection from a northeaster, with the open meadow behind them. The wind baffled capriciously around corners, un-latching doors and then slamming them, shaking windows that should have been in the lee, sending strong drafts down stairways, whining in the chimneys.

When Philippa went into the hall, she looked out at Long Cove and the meadow. The rain was beginning to patter like hail on the glass. Through the blurred panes she saw the dead yellow grass, blown toward her in a smoothly rippling sea. Beyond Long Cove there was the tumbling race of whitecaps and fountains of spray shooting high off the end of Tenpound.

Where would the Webster children stay today? Perhaps they would come to school. She didn't really believe it. A brush camp, Nils Sorensen had told her, could be as tight and snug as a house, if it were built well and deep enough in the woods.

But I will get to them soon, she thought, too excited by the storm to be depressed. Down in the yard the yellow tom chased a whirling leaf with fierce abandon. She laughed, and started downstairs.

“I'm going by the way things look,” Asanath was saying. “I'm going by the human element.”

“The human element!” Terence shouted derisively. “You know everything, don't ye? You're the bully boy with the glass eye!”