The Dawning of the Day (34 page)

“I tried to be. I started when I was seventeen, kept going the rounds, Navy, Army, Marines, Coast Guard. They wouldn't have me.” He took out his cigarettes. “I was 4-F.” He looked at her quickly, showing a ghost of defiance.

Philippa waited, hiding her sympathy. He wouldn't want it.

“One lousy kidney.” He scratched a kitchen match with his thumb-nail and lit a cigarette.

“I suppose Elmo was a perfect physical specimen.”

The lighted match flamed in mid-air; his stare was cold and angry. “What do you know about Elmo?”

“Only that you had a brother, and he died a hero.” She wondered if she had gone too far, but she hid her uncertainty. “No one's been gossiping, if that's what you think. Steve mentioned your brother when we were talking about the war. My husband was killed, you knew that.”

He nodded, still staring at her defensively. “But why did you say that about Elmo—just then?”

“I was guessing.” She drank some coffee. “I have an older sister who was very pretty and was always perfectly charming to everyone. But I never came into a room without knocking something down, and I used to blurt out everything I thought, no matter what. I hated Jenny for years.”

“I don't know if I hated Elmo.” He looked out of the window again. “He was a pretty nice guy. But I guess I hated them for being so foolish about him. He didn't ask for it. He didn't eat it up. Everybody liked Elmo. I would have, if he hadn't been my brother. He tried to—well, I guess you'd call it take me under his wing, but I wouldn't have anything to do with him. Hurt his feelings.”

“I was the same way,” said Philippa. “I'd lurk around the outside, scowling, and whenever Jenny tried to drag me in, I'd snarl.”

“It was something like that with us. After he was killed, I used to think a lot of things. Sometimes I'd get sore as a boil at him and call him names, as if he'd gone out and got killed on purpose to make my father call him a hero. He should've come back and sooner or later got married, or done something else they wouldn't like, and then maybe I'd have a chance.”

“I was lucky,” Philippa said. “Nothing happened to Jenny.”

He prodded the soil around the geranium with the match. “When I wasn't mad with Elmo, I'd get to remembering the way he looked at me sometimes when I'd tell him to go chase himself. Then I'd think what a crime it was, for him, to go off thinking I hated him. I can't remember acting as if I liked him even halfway.”

Philippa put fresh coffee in his cup. “I'll have to bake some coffee cake,” she said. “I'm quite a cook.” She wished she could think of something to say to Terence, but nothing came to her except the time she had flung Cousin Robert against the door and his sawdust spilled out.

He was watching her warily, and she said, “Regret is the worst thing of all to live with. Rage and grief you can stand, you can get over them, but you can't ever get away from regret.”

“I don't know why they didn't have another one, after me. Maybe they decided it wasn't safe to try again.” He grinned derisively. “Anyway, I wished for a long time back there, when Elmo was dead and I couldn't get into the service, that there was a kid brother. I had all kinds of queer ideas. I thought I could be as decent to him as Elmo tried to be to me, and of course he'd be different from me, he'd be decent too, and in some crazy way we'd make up for the way it was between me and Elmo. See what I mean?”

“I see.” She drank her coffee and looked out at the dark blue water beyond Long Cove, the long wavering ruffles of surf.

“Kathie's like a kid brother, isn't she?” she said finally.

“I guess you'd call it that.” He flushed slightly. “You heard things about us around the house. Heard 'em elsewhere too, most likely. Some people have their minds in the gutter.”

“I've heard both sides,” she said. “There are some who don't believe any harm of you and Kathie, Terence.”

“Good Lord,” he burst out, “I'm twenty-seven and the kid's fourteen. What the devil do they take me for? Sure,
I'm
a half-wit, but Perley's all right, he's just a boy. Any boy worth his salt—” He mimicked his aunt, and for an instant he looked so comically like her that Philippa laughed aloud.

“I'm sorry, Terence,” she said quickly.

“That's all right, I hate the woman.” He pushed back his chair. “Thanks for the coffee. I guess I've been doing a lot of gassing around here this morning. Thanks for putting up with it.”

“It was good for me.” She was lying again, looking at him with the eyes of innocence. “It's the first time in my life I've admitted to anyone how I felt about Jenny.”

He leaned down and carefully dropped his dead cigarette butt in the cuff of his rubber boot. “I've never talked about Elmo either.”

“Then it's been good for both of us.” She walked to the door with him and stood at the head of the stairs while he went down. “Come in again, Terence,” she called after him. “Thank you for carrying my water pail.”

As he went out, she heard Kathie's surprised shout of greeting, ringing from a distant point like the call of the Valkyries. In a little while she saw them from her window, walking toward the beach. She wondered why the innocent must be forever damned by their sense of guilt, while the truly guilty were always so vain about their virtues. Terence walked lazily, his hands in his pockets, and Kathie strode beside him like the young boy she was meant to be.

Joanna had invited her to Sunday dinner, and afterward she and Steve were going to walk around the Eastern End, where she had never been. She was putting her topcoat on when, inexplicably, she remembered Vinnie. She had thought of the girl often since Steve had told her the story, but never with such a cruel brilliance as now. If whatever had happened to Vinnie hadn't happened, she, Philippa, would not be standing here now with Steve's image as tangible a part of her as her own hands and feet. If Justin had not died at Iwo Jima, Steve would not now be waiting with a strong intimate consciousness of her. Each of them had lived through the long agony of disbelief and then the forced brutal realization of the truth. Each of them loved the lost one still, with a particular tenderness burnished by the years. The first love, the lost love, and yet not lost, she thought; for from the first there remained a portion for this slow sweet second flowering.

Y
oung Charles had not been near since she had moved in, though he had been busy enough helping to collect her heavier furnishings. She had met him several times then and wondered if his curtness was due to the fact that other people were in the rooms at the time.

After she moved in, she saw him sometimes from her window, and whether he was alone or with Fort, he seemed morose, walking with his head down and his hands in his pockets. She hoped it was not because of her; by all the laws of high-spirited male youth, he should have come to her in the full panoply of his manhood to claim credit for punishing Perley. He was not one of the silent Bennetts, and the sight of the slow-fading bruises on Perley's face should have made him crow.

She met Charles and Fort by the beach one day when she was going home from school. Charles became busy rolling a cigarette, but Fort's broad merry face broke into a grin.

“Well, how is it, perched up there? Gregg been up yet?”

“No, and neither have you.” She looked from one to the other. “You'll have to see how it looks. It's a real home now. Everybody's been dropping in.”

“Well, sure,” Fort began, his light brown eyes crinkling happily. Charles looked up from his cigarette.

“I see you've been entertaining Terence,” he said in mock elegance. “Among others.”

She lifted her eyebrows, and Fort laughed. “Don't mind him. He's melancholic. You ought to hear the way they cart it to him down at the shore.”

“Cart what to him?”

Fort shrugged his shoulders up to his ears and spread out his freckled hands. “Oh, you know the way they do when they find a new way to twit a feller. Talk about that fancy reparty! They got some real flashing wit going around. Sparkles to beat all get-out.”

Charles swung his head around and said viciously, “Oh, go fry—” He threw down his cigarette and went down the beach. Philippa looked after him regretfully.

“I'll fetch him up some night,” Fort said. “Mebbe you can cheer him up.” His voice grew sober. “He'll get over it sometime, but I know why the girls over at Brigport don't look like anything to him any more. They're kind of raw, kind of like green apples, if you know what I mean. Well, so is he, but he can't see it.”

“What makes you so wise, Fort?” she asked.

His grin seemed to shatter his face into twinkling fragments. “Oh, I learned young the girls warn't ever going to look at me, so I better not waste my heart looking at them.”

“‘Waste my heart,'” Philippa laughed. “Fort, you're a philosopher and a poet.”

“You say that real pretty, ma'am,” said Fort. “Thank you kindly.” They both looked down at Charles, a solitary dark figure at the edge of the water, kicking beach rocks overboard. “I'll bring Gloomy Gus up real soon.”

“Do that,” said Philippa. “We'll make a party out of it.” She called good-by to Charles, but he didn't look around.

But Charles came alone, and earlier than she had expected, just as she got home from school one blustery afternoon. He walked into the kitchen and stood against the door.

“Sit down, Charles,” she said. “It's nice to see you.”

“Haven't got time.” He stared at her broodingly, then blurted out, “What in Old Harry did you have to stop off in the clubhouse for, that night?”

She was measuring coffee, and she put the spoon down and looked at him. “What business is it of yours, Charles?” she asked quietly. “It was nothing in the first place, and it's gone by long since.”

“You think so?” His laugh was exaggeratedly sinister. It would have been funny if she hadn't been so angry with him. She went back to measuring coffee. Suddenly Charles came forward and knocked the spoon out of her hand.

He shouted at her, “Don't you care what they're saying? And now you're living up here alone, that just makes it worse! How can you stand there and not turn a hair? Vi and Helen are out for your scalp, and they're dirty. They won't stop at anything till they get everybody wondering if there isn't some fire under all that smoke. And Asa won't call 'em off. He could, but he won't till he gets tired of listening to 'em.”

“I know all that, Charles,” she said. “And it's not a pleasant prospect, but I don't think they can hurt me very much. I'm thinking about you at the moment.”

“
Me?
” He flushed.

“I'm not in the habit of discussing my conduct with anyone. But because you were one of my first friends here, I'll make an exception and ask you a question: Do
you
believe Perley had any real reason to call Steve and me by the names he painted on the boat and the door?” He stared at her almost in horror, and then his blush deepened. He opened his hand and studied his palm. When he looked up again, his eyes were shiny, as if they were wet.

“I was mad,” he said harshly. “You giving that moron a chance to get something on you.”

“But he didn't get something on me,” she argued. “You've done me an injustice, Charles. You could at least have given me the benefit of the doubt.”

“I never really thought anything! I just—”

“You just thought
maybe
. And the
maybe
was enough. I think Perley got a little extra on the beating because you were so mad at me.”

“I'm not sorry I mohaggled him,” he said defiantly. “He had it coming to him.” Then he smiled at her, tentative and appealing. “'Course it made you a lot of trouble. I guess I've been a fool. Think there's any hope for me?”

“Well, you're still a growing boy. I'd say you had quite a future ahead of you.”

“Go ahead, cart it to me.” But his smile became a grin, charmingly vain once more.

Charles and Fort came up the next evening, just after Steve had arrived. Fort had his fiddle case under his arm. “Thought we might have some music, if you're agreeable,” he said.

Charles was aloof again, as if he hadn't forgiven her and Steve. He sat forward, his elbows on his knees, and stared at the floor as Fort tuned his fiddle. Philippa watched him covertly while she knitted on Eric's sweater.

Fort began to play, and “The White Cockade” was brave in the room. If Gregg had his fifth, the time-keeping foot couldn't bother him. Steve was trotting his foot too, lightly, and one of Charles's began to move, jerkily, as if it were entirely separate from his mood. Fort went from “The White Cockade” to “My Love Is But a Lassie Yet.” He loved to play; it was in his face and the way he pressed his cheek to the smooth tawny wood and curved his hand about the neck. The fiddle was cheap and old, but the tones were true.

Fort clowning on the beach as he scrubbed out hogsheads that had held rotten bait was one person; Fort with his cheek to the fiddle and the scroll turning back from his big hand, the bow dancing staccato in the other, was someone else.

There were tunes that Philippa didn't know, and still he went on, as if he were caught in a mesh of his own weaving. Sometimes Philippa and Steve smiled at each other faintly across the room. Then she caught herself glancing quickly at Charles to see if he had noticed, but she couldn't tell.

Fort stopped at the end of a reel to adjust a string. Steve held out his cigarettes to him, but Fort shook his head and went on playing. Now it was something quiet, as simple as Brahms' “Lullaby” and with much the same quality. His eyes were half shut, and his freckled face took on a peaceful maturity. By middle age, Philippa thought, Fort would be a rare person. Now he veiled his sensitivity with unsubtle humor, but it showed in spite of himself when he played.