The Dawning of the Day (33 page)

She had laid all her clothes out on the Lone Star quilt and had begun refolding them meticulously when someone knocked at the door. The jazz program had ended and someone was playing Chopin. She snapped off the silvery flow of the nocturne and went to the door.

Suze stood in the hall. Her hands, swollen-knuckled and always pale as if their continuous immersion in strong suds had soaked away their color, were folded on her stomach. She looked at Philippa with bleached eyes and said, “I want you to leave.”

“Tonight?” Philippa asked.

“Tomorrow will do. You can go to your friends. I don't want you here any longer.”

She had never before spoken to Philippa with such clarity of intent. “I suppose Mr. Campion wants me to go too?” Philippa said.

“He's gone over to Foss's. But this time it don't matter what Asa wants. I want you to go.” There was a faint but authentic emphasis on the
I
. “You're a bad woman.”

Philippa said gently, “Because of the things they said tonight? Did you believe them all, Mrs. Campion?”

Suze shrugged. “How Foss runs his house don't concern me. Mebbe you're right about Perley. I shouldn't be surprised. I'm positive 'twas him strangled my nice little cat I had before Tom.” She moved her head backward slightly, but she didn't look away from Philippa's face. “No, it's nothing to do with Perley. You're bad because of what you've done to Terence. He never talked in his life the way he did tonight, in front of people. I saw you talking to him in the fishhouse once. What did you say to him?” She didn't wait for an answer. “And I saw you coming down the road with him and that Finnish girl yesterday, like it was all right for them to be together.”

“But Mrs. Campion,” Philippa began. Suze peered up at her.

“You've changed him. He was bad enough, but since you came into this house, he's worse. Swearing and shouting, and tonight saying he wished he wasn't a Campion.”

“That was a cruel thing,” Philippa said. “But he was upset.”

“It's your fault. It would be better if you got off the island altogether.”

Philippa stepped back so Suze could see into the room. “Look, Mrs. Campion. I've started to pack already. I can move out of your house, at least.”

Suze nodded, and turned away. At the head of the stairs she said in her usual vague manner, “Good night.”

P
hilippa stayed on at the Campions' for almost a week more. Asanath insisted, and Suze accepted the terms. Terence had nothing to say, and came in only at mealtime. They lived in the strained good nature of an armed truce. The eventful night was not mentioned. Neither Foss nor Helen came to the house in that time, but one night Viola and Syd came to play cards. Syd gave Philippa his shy smile and duck of the head, and Viola was hearty in the overpowering way of one who savors her superiority.

There was no talk of a meeting to discuss the charges against her, though she had fully expected it. By the end of the week, the two rooms on the second floor of the Binnacle were ready. She had told only Steve about the affair in the kitchen; his face became drawn and austere as he listened, but when she said it was over and done with, he made no comment, except to say she could move into the Binnacle.

For the others she had simply said that she made too much work for Suze. She knew some other versions of the story would come out with the signs of Perley's beating so obvious, with Vi running up to the Percy house, and the men talking as they baited up. But she planned to say nothing, no matter what hints were dropped or what questions were candidly asked. She refused also Joanna's invitation to come and board with them, saying she wanted to keep a certain impartiality.

“I suppose that's best,” Joanna said. “But we'd love to have you, just the same. Nils likes you. He says that you don't talk too much. A remark like that always knocks me into an unnatural silence for at least an hour, and then he asks me if I feel sick.” They laughed, and then she added enthusiastically, “Anyway, I've found a
good
stove for you; it's up in the home barn, and the boys will get it down for you.”

There was no way, after all, of being strictly impartial. The Binnacle belonged to the Bennett family, and it was Steve's idea that the rooms could be made habitable for her. Joanna and Helmi did most of the cleaning and painting; the children ran errands; the men got the heavy things up the narrow stairs and set up the stove. Sooner or later the entire family was involved.

One afternoon when Philippa walked around to the Binnacle after school, there was a blossoming geranium in a gaudily painted lard can.

“Guess who came scooting down here like a ghost and delivered it,” Joanna said. “Lucy Webster. She looked scared to death to be caught out in broad daylight.”

Philippa went to the window and touched the sturdy red blossom with her finger. Now that I am so nearby, she thought, I shall go to see her often. The neighborliness of the rest gave her a sense of riches, but the sight of the plant on the window, in vital up-springing silhouette against the eastward view, was like a cry in the room.

When the last of the painting was done and the stove newly blacked, Steve came across the harbor at high tide one morning in his boat, and loaded her luggage aboard from Asanath's wharf. Asanath carried it down from the house; he was as affable as if nothing had happened, and Philippa found it easy to behave in the same way. They were parting, apparently, as the best of friends. Suze stood like a shadow in the doorway; she had stood like that on the day when Philippa arrived for the first time.

The day was gray and northeasterly. It felt cold enough to spit snow, and the foam-streaked seas rolled down between the islands with monotonous regularity. It was an ugly day, a day to remind the islanders too vividly of winter. But when Steve had kissed Philippa and gone, and she stood alone in her rooms, she experienced an exquisite lightening of spirit. This was home. She tried the word experimentally.
Home
. However the days went now, she would come home at night to this precious solitude, and wake in it each morning. Joanna had been there already today and built a fire, leaving a saucepan of lobster chowder on the back of the stove and half a squash pie on the dresser. The red geranium blazed against the bleak prospect in the east. The pale yellow paint on the walls and cupboards gave an impression of faint sunshine. Through the open doorway into the small room tucked under the eaves, there was the mosaic of the Log Cabin quilt on her bed.

When she came back after Thanksgiving, she would bring some of the small personal things that she had always kept with her as her lares and penates; wherever she and Eric were, these things were as much their home as the shell is home to the snail. But for the first time, she felt almost as if she didn't need them. This was her home already. It lacked only Eric.

Steve and Joanna had reminded her of the drawbacks to the place. She would get up in the cold mornings and build her own fire; she would have to get her water from the well and take it upstairs. It didn't matter, she told them, when weighed against the fact that this was her own place.

After she had eaten her dinner that first day, in a sort of solemn rejoicing, she went to the store and bought staples for her cupboards. Mark Bennett, who was usually laconic, said, “Welcome to this side of the harbor.” Kathie walked home with her and helped carry the groceries.

“Boy, am I glad you've moved over here,” she said fervently. “I'll get out a lot more in the evenings now. I can say I'm coming to see you.”

“Then you'd better show up,” said Philippa. “I'm not going to uphold you in anything that's against your people's wishes.”

Kathie laughed her great wholehearted laugh. “You think I'm stupid enough to try to put anything over on
you
? What do you think I do when I'm out running around, anyway? It's nothing
bad
. I just keep my eyes and ears open and find out things like—” she rolled her eyes around in elaborate unconcern—“like who beat Perley up, for instance. Perley says it was a gang, and everybody believes him, but I know better.”

“You're a completely abandoned character, Kathie,” said Philippa. She couldn't help laughing; she was happy today, the raw wind whipping across the harbor and stinging her face was part and parcel of her pleasure. Kathie was another portion of it.

“I suppose you think it's immoral or something,” said Kathie. “Well, I wasn't sneaking around. I just happened to be there. It was some fight. Charles kept asking Perley what he saw in the clubhouse, and Perley said finally he couldn't see anything, it was dark. Now maybe he'll think twice before tormenting kids or marking people's boats.”

Nobody else had mentioned the boat, but Kathie with her usual brash innocence saw no harm in it. Philippa said, “Maybe he will. Anyway, it's all water under the bridge now, Kathie. It's over and done with.”

“No,” said Kathie. They had reached the Binnacle, and Gregg was coming from the well. Kathie said under her breath, “It's not over and done with. Wait and see.” She shouted at Gregg. “Ahoy, Skipper! How's life on the poop deck?”

Gregg gave her a sour look. “You got an awful loud voice for a female child. Shatters a man's eardrums.” He set his pails down on his doorstep and hitched up his pants, which as usual were sagging down and under the round of his belly. “Jest keep in mind what the poet says, ‘Her voice was ever gentle, low, and sweet, an excellent thing in woman.'”

“If you don't holler,” said Kathie, “you get downtrodden. Who can afford to be gentle, low, and sweet these days?”

“You ask your teacher about
that
.” Suddenly Gregg remembered his greasy and misshapen felt hat. He took it off and held it against his chest. Philippa smiled and said, “How do you do, Mr. Gregg. I hope you don't find it too unpleasant, having someone upstairs.”

“Nothing I can do about it. Place belongs to the Bennetts. They could rent it to Hottentots if they had a mind to.”

“I'll try not to make any noise, anyway.”

“
You'll
try!” said Kathie with relish, as they went up the stairs. “Wait till he gets his next bottle, and he starts that clarinet a-going!”

Philippa hushed her. Kathie stayed long enough to look at everything, and then, while she was standing by the window, she saw Terence on his way to pick up the mail, and went downstairs with a coltish clatter. Philippa shuddered for Gregg, and wondered how much some cheap rag carpeting would cost.

The afternoon settled into a solitude that was rich and soul-satisfying. Rain began in hard showers against the window, but the fire threw out a live and crackling warmth. She lit her lamp early for the pleasure of its soft yellow light.

She wrote to Eric and told him she had moved in. She prepared schoolwork for the next week. She read a book with her supper, and while she was washing her few dishes, someone came up the stairs; she knew it was Steve and stood there listening, thinking that she had never heard him come up over stairs before. Suddenly the rightness of the scene possessed her, as if all that had gone before were unreality—the meetings in the Campions' kitchen, the escaping into nights that had become so cold. But this seemed as it should be; herself moving in the lamplight, putting dishes away in the cupboard; the sheen of the teakettle on the stove and its singing above the sounds of the fire; the night outside, shut away with its wind and rain beyond the black pane where the red geranium stood doubled by its reflection.

She went over and pulled down the shade just as Steve knocked softly at the door.

S
unday Philippa awoke with the first of the engines in the harbor, but she did not resent the earliness. She built her fire and got back into bed, and lay listening to the engines, the gulls, the crows. She had no view directly on the harbor, but she didn't care; she could see if Steve went by, she could look eastward, and the sun poured in on her as she ate her breakfast.

When she had finished her breakfast, she took one of her pails and went to the well. From up behind Nils Sorensen's house came the sound of children's voices. Philippa hooked her pail on the pole and lowered it into the well. She had a great sense of leisure and lifted the pail up slowly, leaning over the edge and looking down into the wet darkness. She felt the pole grasped by someone else, and looked around to see Terence.

“Let go,” he said. “I'll draw it up.”

“Look here, I've got to get used to this,” she protested, but she let go, and he brought the pail up and set it dripping on the well curb. “Thank you very much. I didn't know there was a man on the island this morning.”

“My boat sprung a leak yesterday. I've got to ground her out and go all over her.” He picked up the pail and started toward the Binnacle. “I'd like to see how you're fixed up, if it's all right with you.” His tone was brusque and cool, as if he had just become aware of his voice as a means of expression.

“Of course it's all right with me. I can even give you a cup of coffee.”

“Thanks.” He gave her a slight sideways smile.

While she got out a fresh cup, she considered the incongruity of it. At first Terence had been as insubstantial as a spirit, then she had actively disliked him, and now he sat at her table and she was pouring coffee for him. She poured a cup for herself and sat down opposite him.

“I haven't had a chance to tell you,” she said, “but I appreciated your coming in on my side that night. It meant a great deal to me. The only thing is, I've regretted getting you in trouble with your parents.”

“I've always been in trouble with them,” he said indifferently. The morning sun cast a harsh illumination on his lean features. “Ever since I was born, I guess.”

“Were you in the service, Terence?”