The Dawning of the Day (12 page)

There were no lights on the far side of the harbor, and very few behind them. They went by the long fishhouse, divided into small sections where some of the men kept their hogsheads of bait. An indescribable blend of freshly salted herring and herring long dead hung about this place, as if not only the damp boards of the floor but the beach rocks outside were saturated with it. On the opposite side of the path was the long pebbly beach where the boats were hauled up to be painted and where the men came ashore in their skiffs. Tonight the tide was high, almost to the road, and the water flooded the beach in a black uneasy stillness. Two dories that had floated were mysterious pale shapes, moving gently; when one nudged the other, the sound seemed incredibly loud.

When they reached the big anchor that had been sunk deep into the soil where the marsh reached the beach, Steve stopped. “Let's walk over past the schoolhouse,” he suggested. “It's too pretty a night to shut off so soon.” A cricket sounded almost under their feet. “He thinks so too. And somebody else.”

There were footsteps somewhere behind them, faint and unhurried on the pebbles.

“If I was about ten, now,” Steve murmured, “I'd be lying in wait in the tall grass to see if that was a smuggler. . . . Jamie's talking smugglers. It's that book you're reading to the kids.”

The idling footsteps came closer; the man was a vague figure approaching them. “Evening,” Terence Campion said.

They answered him and he went on. They waited until the sound of his feet died away on the boardwalk.

“How about that walk?” Steve asked.

“I'd like it.” She wondered how long it would be before Asanath's sister, Viola Goward, would ask her about this. They took the path across the marsh toward the schoolhouse. The ground was spongy underfoot, and the night scent of the marsh grass was pungent.

“I wonder what Terence thinks about,” she said. “He seems fairly well insulated from the world around him.”

“You should hear him firing buoys at the wall of his fishhouse sometimes,” Steve said dryly. “You'd know then the insulation's worn pretty thin in spots. It'd be more to the point if he chucked the buoys at Asanath.”

“Why? Because his father doesn't trust him not to get into a mess? That's about the size of it. They're worried sick over him.”

“They should have been worried sick about him a long time ago, and not because of Kathie. She's got more sense, that kid, than most of the grown women I know.” It was the first time she had heard him so definite. “When Terence was born, they already had Elmo, and from what Suze said when they first came here, Terence was a surprise to them and not a fancy one. They hadn't planned on having any more besides Elmo. Suze talked a lot about it when the women got together to do Red Cross work during the war. But I guess she hardly mentions it now. Maybe Elmo hadn't been dead very long.”

“I didn't know about Elmo. They haven't mentioned him. There's not even a photograph.”

“He was killed in the war. Battle of the Bulge.” He said it without expression. They passed the schoolhouse and went out of the school-yard into the rough road leading past Schoolhouse Cove. A long sword of light, far more brilliant than the display over Brigport, swept the southern sky.

“Matinicus Rock Light,” Steve said. He took her arm gently and turned her to face open sea. The light came again. “It shone into my room when I was a kid. There used to be twin towers then. Two eyes, watching us and watching over us. Nothing could get us, I used to think, but we couldn't get away with anything, either.”

He took his hand from her arm, and she was faintly regretful. This was a moment that demanded contact with someone or something. Without it she felt a vast and devouring loneliness all around. The ghost fires in the north and this finger of light probing in the south only served to emphasize it. She thought of Terence walking through it like the ghost of his older brother. Elmo, the wanted brother. She remembered the Webster children with a sure and despairing knowledge that she was predestined to fail with them.

I must be tired, she thought. I've been up and down all day, exalted one moment, nostalgic the next, angry, touched, excited about first one thing and then another. After a night's sleep everything will come all right. I'll be myself, the efficient Mrs. Marshall to whom all things are possible. . . . It was as if someone was mocking her, and she shivered.

“Cold?” Steve said.

“I hate to admit it. It's so lovely out here.” It wasn't lovely. She wanted to get back to her room and secrete herself in it as if it were her shell.

“There'll be other nights,” he said. They began to walk back. “Wait until it's winter and we have those windy nights with a full moon, and the surf crashing in all along the wind'ard side of the island, and the spray flying. Then there's the way it is before a storm, when the stars blaze so close and there's not enough wind for a sigh. The water lies so quiet around the ledges you could land on any of them from a skiff.”

She listened, trying to fight against depression. “Did you ever do that?”

“Enough times so my father would've tanned my bottom if he'd known. I still like to take a dory and go rowing late at night after everybody's climbed under the kelp.”

The short cut behind the schoolhouse lay in a heavy, cold shadow, like a grotto. Philippa imagined Steve rowing in the starlight with long unhurried strokes, lifting the oars sometimes and letting the dory glide of its own momentum over the dark water, past coves that had become mysterious with the advent of night. She could not conceive of anything more peaceful.

“Take me some time,” she said. The sound of her voice startled her, and her face grew heated. But he was already answering her, without surprise.

“All right. Some night when the water's firing.”

“I won't talk and spoil the stillness.”

“No. You're not a gabbler.”

Justin used to say it a little differently:
You weren't afraid of a short silence and you literally bask in the long ones
. “Thank you,” she said to Steve. They came out by Foss Campion's house and went onto the boardwalk, moving quietly.

R
ob Salminen was the janitor of the school, which meant, principally, bringing in wood from the supply stacked in the entry and building a fire when it was necessary. He was responsible also for a fresh pail of water every day and for ringing the bell. The work was neither arduous nor exacting, but Rob found it impossible to carry on without assistance, usually in the figure of Ralph Percy. Sky Campion was Rob's closest friend, but Ralph, by design, managed to arrive at school early enough to help. This meant simply that he and Rob could stay inside the schoolhouse and keep the others out until the teacher arrived. It gave them a fine sense of superiority.

When Philippa reached the school on Monday morning, Rob and Ralph were inside, and the younger Percys were storming a locked door. Ellie Goward stood by, clutching her new pencil box against her chest and staring at them with awe. No one else had come yet. The Percy girls were kicking the door and shrieking at the tops of their voices when Ellie saw Philippa, gasped, and clapped a hand over her mouth.

“It's Ralph's fault!” Clare Percy shouted defiantly. She was the older. “If he'd a let us in, we wouldn't a kicked the old door!”

“But it's too early for you to go in,” said Philippa reasonably. “And it's warmer out here in the sun than it is in there.”

“Well, what's
he
in there for?” asked Clare. Frances, whose upper lip refused to close over her big cramped teeth, added,
“He's
not the janitor!”

“No, he isn't,” Philippa agreed. “But kicking the door won't make any difference either way. Please don't kick it any more. Why don't you girls”—her casual glance took in Ellie, who was still rigid—“pick a nice big bouquet of asters for the bookshelves?”

“Well—” Clare managed to get two syllables into the word. “Are you going to make that old Ralph come out?”

“I have something for Ralph to do. Frances, Ellie, there are some really deep purple asters in the path.”

Ellie went, as smoothly as a small seal diving, and Frances ran the length of the doorstep and jumped off, her skirt flying. Clare looked after them uneasily and then went down the steps, walking with dignity.

Philippa had been conscious of the organ for some time and of Ralph's voice rendering “When the Roll Is Called up Yonder” with the gusto of a drinking song. It seemed a pity to interrupt. She knocked, and no one came. Ralph went on singing, striking vibrant though haphazard chords. Rob shouted over and around him.

“Git away from that door, you little brats!”

Philippa knocked with what she hoped was an unmistakable ring of authority, and there was a stricken silence inside. The gentle wash of surf in Schoolhouse Cove and the racket of crows in the woods beyond became audible. After a moment someone unlocked the door and opened it. It was Rob. He stared at her, stroking his jaw with his hand as if to keep from bursting into dismayed laughter.

“Good morning, Rob,” said Philippa, and walked by him through the entry and into the schoolroom. Ralph sat on the organ stool, solid in his tight dungarees and plaid shirt, his hands on his knees, innocence on his round face.

“Good morning, Ralph,” said Philippa. Ralph ducked his red head.

“Good morning, Mis' Marshall.”

“The music was very nice,” said Philippa, “and I don't mind your helping Rob to build the fire. But once it's started, I think you'd better go outside until it's time to ring the bell.”

“I'll warm their backsides for kicking that door,” said Ralph virtuously.

“I've spoken to them about the door. But they're right about it, you know. You're not the janitor.” She gave him a sideways smile on her way to hang up her coat, and he grinned and stood up. “You don't have to goout this moment,” she said over her shoulder. “I want to talk to you. You too, Rob.”

She sat down at her desk. Ralph stayed on the organ stool, and Rob lighted on a first-grader's desk with an air of impermanence, like a grackle lighting on a treetop.

“Why did the Webster children stop coming to school?” she asked.

The good-natured expectancy in Ralph's face was smoothed to nothing. Rob gazed at the New England poets. Philippa waited, listening to the crackle of the fire. She looked out and saw Sky Campion sauntering through the lane, studying something in his hand. She returned to Ralph and Rob.

“What was the matter, couldn't they keep up with the work? Did Mrs. Gerrish ask them to leave?”

“Gorry, no,” said Ralph. “She didn't say anything, not that I know of. But she didn't say anything when they stopped coming, either. She didn't act very surprised, come to think of it.”

“Maybe she was relieved,” said Philippa. “It's not easy, trying to teach children who aren't very bright.”

Ralph stopped swinging on the stool. “Who ain't very bright?” he demanded. “I know I'm a numbhead when it comes to those foolish problems, but—”

She laughed. “Present company always excepted, Ralph. I mean the Webster children.”

Rob's fair eyebrows lifted in a movement like Kathie's. “They aren't foolish. Unless maybe Edwin. He doesn't talk so good, and the other kids used to plague him.”

“Rue's the smart one,” Ralph said. “She's as queer as a two-dollar bill. They all are. But she's smart. I live right next door,” he explained importantly. “She gets the work done, fixes Jude's dinner box for him, cleans up the other kids, and they go out about the time we're starting for school and stay all day.”

“I wonder why she left school,” Philippa said. “I wish someone could tell me.” She began to straighten things on her desk. It seemed to her that she could feel the glances darting back and forth beyond her. “I wonder,” she murmured, “why Mrs. Gerrish didn't try to get them back. Rue, anyway.”

Rob's voice was jerky. “I guess they made her nervous. She acted—well, kind of afraid of them, because they were different from us. It was like she didn't know how to handle 'em.”

“She didn't like Rob and Kathie either,” Ralph said, “but she could fight with them. Kathie used to throw the—” He blushed. “Throw it right back at her.”

“But why did the Websters really go?” She appealed to them as if they were two reasonable adults. “Because she was stiff with them? Did she ignore them?”

“I guess they got tired of being tormented,” said Ralph.

Philippa sat back in her chair. Her lack of surprise was in itself a surprise to her. “How were they tormented?”

“You know how kids plague other kids that are kind of queer.” His freckled face was stolid. “They prod at 'em, stand in their way and won't let 'em by, call names like—well—” he flushed. “Ask 'em if they lived under rocks and ate cutworms, and if their mother was so crazy they had to keep her locked in the cupboard under the sink. . . . They took an awful lot of it, when they were standing around before school and when they were passing back and forth on the road. But they didn't leave until it got warm enough for them to stay in their brush camp. I guess they didn't have anywhere to go before that. Jude wouldn't stand for them to stay out of school.”

“But if he'd known what was going on—”

“They knew better than to tell. It would've been worse for them if he'd made a chew about it.”

“Who did it?”

Ralph shrugged. “Different ones, different times. Perley Fraser was in school then.” He glanced up at Philippa uneasily. “Guess we all thought it was fun to plague Edwin, he makes such crazy noises. But my brother Fort came out from behind a boat on the beach one day and caught me at it, and like to knocked my head off.” He rubbed his ear reminiscently.