The Dawning of the Day (23 page)

She looked into his eyes and saw the reflection of her own, lid and lash, against his dark chestnut-brown iris and black pupil. In this ghost of her, fragmentary and lost in him, there was an inescapable symbolism. For her who was shy and aloof to the marrow, it should have been intolerable. She tried for a moment to think that it was. Why, the man is a stranger! she rebuked herself. But the shock and the withdrawal didn't come. She returned his kiss instead. Steve was no stranger. She knew now that he had never been a stranger.

They separated with an outer casualness, only the flicker of a small, tender smile between them, and began to eat.

T
he week began with fog and cold southeast winds. The earth oozed moisture, filling every footstep, and the black soil that showed in the marsh, where the tough grass had worn thin, was sticky and spongy. The children tracked it into school, as well as the fine damp gravel from Schoolhouse Cove. On Monday the wind was strong enough and the sea fierce enough to have given most of the exposed traps a serious beating. Foss, Asanath, and Terence were discussing it in the kitchen before Philippa went downstairs that morning. She heard them through the register. They sounded neither depressed nor optimistic. With cynical humor they laid bets on how many traps they'd have left of the strings set to the southeast of the island.

The children went beachcombing before school and at recess. The seas rolled into Schoolhouse Cove out of the fog; each rose in its towering greenish curve the length of the beach, and crashed with uneven thunder; then there was the hissing and foaming on the shore, the churning of pebbles, the sound of gravel sucked out hard and fast as the sea withdrew to form again.

There were treasures to be grabbed from the uneven white scallops spreading up the beach and sliding back. The children ran at the edge of the water like sandpipers, their voices small and tattered on the wind. When they came in to school, they were hoarse from shouting, their feet were wet where water had sloshed in over their boots, their hands were red, cold, and puckered. But their eyes were wild and shining. They were the wind's children today, greedy, drunken, possessed.

The back of the schoolroom was stacked with their loot. A broken toy boat and a buoy only a little damaged by someone's propeller—that was Jamie's; a pot warp, green-slimed but sound, that Sky Campion had cut from a smashed trap. He'd also taken off what laths were left whole. Rue had found a short pine plank in the surf. It was soaked and heavy, and she and Edwin made slow progress up the beach with it, but they looked suspicious when Rob offered to help them, and struggled on alone. One of the Percys found a teakettle. “For my playhouse!” she screamed, and the other little girls looked at her enviously and then looked away, as if they coveted the teakettle too much to bear.

Philippa heard Ralph telling Rob, rather too succinctly, not to lay a finger on the piece of manila hawser he'd found. When he turned and saw Philippa he blushed, but explained: “Some people'd steal the boots off your feet when you were sittin' down, and then say to your face, ‘Well, you wasn't standin' in 'em.'” In spite of the ethics of beachcombing, it seemed that there were times when you couldn't expect others to be incorruptible.

After the first half-hour in school, when the warmth from the fire could exercise its gently persuasive spell over them, they settled down well to work. The Websters seemed to have fitted themselves into their own particular niche.

Rue worked grimly. Sometimes she had an old, anxious expression, as if she thought she would never get caught up. Edwin read; he watched Rue, the blackboard, and Philippa. He sat too tensely. Sometimes the cords of his neck stood out with the strain, and it was obvious that his teeth were clenched. Philippa's own jaw and neck ached for him. He needed a hearing aid and lip reading; he should have training to shape his crude, ugly sounds into words that would make him understood. But she could not even begin to conjecture how it could be accomplished.

It was only when he read to himself that he relaxed. She decided to put off reading aloud until she could get a duplicate of the book for Edwin.

His first penmanship papers were as neat as Rue's. He could control his pen, and the ink did not jet mysteriously out of the inkwell onto him and his paper. Rob Salminen was hopeless; Sky was average; Ralph viewed his pen with aggressive suspicion, and at the end of a penman-ship session his paper was speckled and fingerprinted, and Ralph was hissing all the bad words at his command in stage whispers.

For the middle of the week she assigned compositions to all but the younger children. She wrote the usual list of suggestions on the board: The Season I Like Best, My Secret Ambition, My Favorite Place on Bennett's Island, Pets. They could write the first draft of their papers at home, and copy them in ink at school.

The fog continued into the next day. Violent wet winds blew in strong gusts into the schoolroom whenever a door was opened. The floor was damp with muddy footprints. The excitement of the storm had worn thin, the children were tired of it, and besides, there was nothing on the beach this morning. When the school settled down to work there was an undercurrent in the room. It was a familiar phenomenon. Every teacher has felt it, that ripple of unease too imperceptible at the first to quell but heavy with potential disaster.

Philippa set the older ones to copying their compositions on white paper, and called the lower grades up for their reading. The wind wailed through the belfry, but inside the fire burned redolent of well-seasoned birch. There was the scratching of pens, the shifting of feet, a mutter from Ralph Percy, and a subdued flurry of snickers.

Out of the corner of her eye Philippa saw Rob Salminen raise his hand to go out. She nodded at him. “Put on your jacket,” she said. The boy grabbed it off the hook and went out with it half on. A gust blew in, rattling papers and causing exaggerated shudders among the girls.

A minute later Rob was blown in, gasping ostentatiously. Doors slammed behind him, the window shades flapped as if alive, and a handful of papers blew off Philippa's desk onto the floor. She leaned down to pick them up, and in that instant the thud, the cry, and the uproar came almost simultaneously.

When she straightened up, with the certain knowledge that the day's trouble had begun, most of the children were on their feet, gazing at Edwin and Peggy. An enthralled astonishment, not quite delight, seemed uppermost. Philippa had seen it before, on adult faces glimpsed in the light from a flaming house or circling a highway accident. Something had happened to break the monotony.

Edwin still knelt in his seat with the heavy geography book in his hands. Peggy pressed her cupped fingers over the top of her forehead. She looked white and sick. Rue stood by her own desk; she was as pale as Peggy.

“Everyone sit down,” Philippa said to the rest. “What happened, Rue? Why did he do it?”

Edwin moved around and slid down into his seat, still gripping the book. Rue came forward and held out the paper to Philippa. It was Edwin's composition, half copied, entitled, “The Birds Around My House.”

The white sheet had clearly been down on the muddy floor. The ink had run in places, the paper was smudged and wet, and marked squarely across it was the wet soleprint of a girl's shoe.

As Philippa looked at it, a hush of suspense fell over the schoolroom. They had seen what had happened, or part of it, and she had seen none of it. Yet she must judge, and they were waiting. She glanced at Edwin, who stared back with light, brilliant eyes. Peggy also watched Philippa. The involuntary tears had cleared away, but her fingers still moved tenderly over her forehead.

Rue said, “It blew off his desk and she stepped on it. It was delib'rate.”

“It wasn't.” Peggy ignored Rue and smiled contemptuously at Philip-pa. “It was an accident.”

How neatly and symmetrically the wet rubber sole had been printed, to make a dark diagonal pattern across white paper and blue lines and Edwin's meticulous writing—the writing he formed with a spellbound devotion as if it were his one art.

“What makes you think it was deliberate, Rue?” she asked.

“Sure it was delib'rate,” Kathie said in a loud whisper.

“Be quiet, Kathie.” Philippa turned back to Rue.

“It
was
on purpose,” Rue stated flatly. “I saw. She stamped on it when he went to pick it up. She almost got his fingers.”

“Rue, will you make Edwin understand that he mustn't take the law into his own hands? If he thinks someone is bothering him, he must let me know. I am the person to ask the questions and give out the punishments.”

“He doesn't
think
someone's bothering him. He
knows
it,” said Rue.

“Whichever way it is, I am still in charge. I know how Edwin feels. He's worked hard over his paper, and he was doing it beautifully. But next time he's to come to me.”

Rue stood by her desk for a moment longer. Then she sat down, dipped her pen, and went on writing. Philippa went along the aisle and laid a clean piece of foolscap on Edwin's desk, along with the spoiled sheet. He sat forward as if to study the ugly mark. Philippa looked down at the rough whirl of pale hair at his crown and at the thin knobby neck. At least, she thought heavily, I didn't gush “Oh, I'm
sure
Peggy didn't mean to do it . . . !” I'm sure she did mean it.

There was a red place on Peggy's high forehead, half into the thick shiny hair. “How does your head feel, Peggy?” Philippa asked.

“Better,” said Peggy indifferently.

Philippa went back to her seat and smiled at the awed fourth-graders. “Let's read some more,” she said. She must not let the children know how angry she was.

S
chool had just begun in the afternoon when she saw Helen Campion emerge from the lane and pass the big boulder outside the windows. In spite of the dense fog and rough raw winds, she was dressed as for a formal call in her good fall coat of dark green tweed, and a green felt hat with a pheasant feather slanted recklessly. She passed by the window unaware of Philippa. Her face, fresh colored from the wet wind, was both troubled and determined.

Philippa glanced around at Peggy. But Peggy was studying the history quiz written out on the blackboard, as if all that concerned her in the world was the meaning of “Fifty-four forty or fight.” In a moment Mrs. Campion's firm step was heard on the doorstep, and the children looked up alertly. This morning there had been a crisis to enrich the monotonous passage of time. This afternoon, a visitor at school. When the knock came at the inner door, all heads but Edwin's turned, and Philippa, in spite of a slight dismay, remembered Charles Lamb's remarks on the drama of a knock on the door. The children and Charles Lamb understood one another. I must introduce him to them, she thought, and went to let Mrs. Campion in.

“How do you do, Mrs. Campion,” she said, smiling. “What a nice surprise! You're our first visitor.” Helen flushed. She gazed at Philippa with a strangely helpless expression.

Philippa said, “Come and sit by the fire.” She led the way down the aisle.

Helen followed her massively, but when she reached the front of the room, she ignored the chair Philippa offered. She faced Philippa across the width of the desk; the effect of helplessness was gone.

“I don't need to sit down for what I've come to say,” she said loudly. “It won't take long.”

“I'm sorry you won't sit down,” Philippa said. “We were all so pleased, thinking we had a visitor.”

“There's no call for you to be sarcastic.” Helen pressed her gloved fingertips hard against the desk. Her eyes, attractively crinkled and brilliant when she was laughing, now looked cold and small above her fleshy red cheeks. “You must know what I've come for, unless mebbe you figger to ignore it, seeing as you've some pets in the class.”

“I have no pets, Mrs. Campion,” Philippa said evenly.

“Then why did you let that Edwin Webster get away with practically knocking my girl out this morning?” She turned and stared glassily at Edwin.

There was a rustle through the classroom; the children, all but Peggy, were fascinated. Sky was in Philippa's line of vision. He was looking at his mother as if she were an interesting phenomenon of nature instead of a relative.

“Edwin thought Peggy stepped on his paper deliberately, Mrs. Campion,” Philippa explained. “He shouldn't have struck her. He knows it now. He didn't get away with anything.”

“Then why is he still sitting there, as if he was fit to mix with the others?” Her voice trembled. “Why isn't he kept by himself where he won't be a danger? He could have killed her! She was scared to come back to school this noon. She kept saying she wanted her seat changed, but she knew you wouldn't do it!”

Philippa was skeptical about Peggy's fear but did not show it. She glanced around at the class. “Kathie, will you change places with Peggy, please?”

“Sure,” said Kathie. “Edwin and I always get along.” She began to take her books noisily from her desk. Peggy retired behind the lifted top of hers.

“I didn't know Peggy was afraid,” Philippa said gently. “And she could have asked me to change her seat.”

Somebody snickered. “Class,” Philippa murmured. The two girls arose, their arms full, and passed each other at the back of the room. Kathie was grinning. Peggy's profile was haughty and immobile. As she took her new seat, her mother said emotionally, “To think I had to come out in this awful weather to see that justice is done for my poor child!”

Those at the front turned in their seats to study Peggy. She returned their look proudly, but the blush began in her throat and moved up over her face, and Philippa was sorry for her. “I'm sure you all have plenty of work to do,” she said reprovingly, and then smiled at Mrs. Campion. “Now won't you sit down and visit with us awhile?”