The Dawning of the Day (5 page)

Her acquaintance with Eric—in analytical moments she looked upon it as an acquaintance because there was so much she did not and could not know about her son—had deepened her perception of children; she always approached them with respect, an open mind, and a certain wariness.

She had no illusions about country schools, where she had learned just how frustrating, and how rewarding, a teaching career could be. She thought she knew what to expect in the schoolhouse on Bennett's Island.

There were nine pupils instead of twelve who came the first day. They ranged from the third to the eighth grade. She was grateful for the single third-grade pupil, for he was just the age of Eric. Jamie Sorensen was a fair and serious eight-year-old who returned her gaze with grave attention. It was all she could do not to smooth down the cowlick at the crown of his yellow head whenever she leaned over to look at his work.

It was toward the two eighth-graders that she looked for the first signs of unrest. Yet in the beginning days she met nothing in Peggy Campion and Kathie Salminen but what she brought to them, a guarded willingness to take her at face value. Peggy, the daughter of Foss and Helen Campion, was tall like her mother and had the same fine carriage. Her sweater and skirt outfits were well chosen, her fawn-brown hair was brushed to a sheen. She considered Philippa with bland blue eyes that neither promised nor threatened.

Kathie was the girl whom Philippa had heard discussed—in a somewhat unfriendly manner, she remembered—in Asanath Campion's kitchen, the one who rowed out across the harbor to hang over the edge of Terence Campion's boat while he worked on his engine. It was hardly credible that they should be friends, for Kathie had so much gusto, and the young man seemed nothing more than a vague shadow, withdrawn and preoccupied. And he was at least ten years older than the girl.

She wasn't an islander, but she and her younger brother, Rob, were living with their aunt, Mrs. Mark Bennett of the store and post office. Kathie was sturdy and square shouldered, with bright blue-green eyes set at a faintly Oriental angle above broad cheek-bones powdered with freckles, a snub nose, and a wide mouth. Often she gazed at Philippa over the heads of the others with a certain air of comprehension, as if they shared a common sophistication. Yet with the others she had a good-humored straightforwardness, and the first time Philippa heard her robust laughter ring out in the schoolyard, she laughed too, from sheer pleasure in the sound. Kathie will be my friend or my enemy, she thought. And whichever it is, she'll be superb at it.

The others were less distinct at first, but she had them sorted out in a few days. Of the three red-headed Percy children, Ralph showed the strongest resemblance to their older brother Fort. He had the same comic good nature in his broad freckled face. He and Schuyler Campion shared the seventh grade. His two younger sisters were plain, fidgety youngsters with shrewd little faces and sharp elbows.

Schuyler, called Sky, resembled neither his father, Foss, nor his sister, Peggy. He was a short, black-haired, plump boy with a round intelligent face, his eyes dark and unwinkingly intense behind his glasses. His constant companion was Rob Salminen, Kathie's brother, a lank faunish towhead who made it clear to her at the first that the reason he wasn't in the seventh grade with Sky and Ralph was the stupidity of previous teachers who had never been able to teach him fractions.

The fifth grade consisted of a prim little girl whose tight sandy curls appeared to have been formed on a pencil; she was Ellie Goward, Viola Goward's daughter, and therefore niece to Asanath and Foss. Ellie had the Campion eyes but none of the Campion assurance, and Philippa wondered if she would ever be able to get by that small, locked face.

These were her pupils sitting before her, nine of them, looking at her from hour to hour with varying degrees of expectancy or suspicion. But there should have been several more children, she realized—the disputed Websters. She had heard of them for the first time, as she had heard of Kathie, in Asanath's kitchen. But when on the first day of school she asked about the Websters, not one of the nine raised a hand. After a long moment of silence, she thought that Kathie Salminen shrugged slightly.

“Do you have some information, Kathie?” Philippa asked.

“Nobody's seen them around the harbor all summer. They don't play with the other kids.”

Their absence was easily explained, then. If they kept to themselves and the home was an unsettled one with an ailing mother, it was possible they didn't know or care about the opening of school. At the close of school the first day she asked Kathie where the Websters lived, intending to walk around there directly and look for them.

“I'll go with you,” Kathie volunteered helpfully.

“Oh, I think I can find it,” Philippa said. Kathie looked disappointed for a moment. Then her grin came, broad and debonair.

“Wish you luck!” She sang out over her shoulder, and left.

Alone in the room, Philippa heard the ticking of the old wall clock become wheezily loud in the silence; it was a great silence to follow a day filled with the multiple stirrings of children. It was a familiar silence, unaltered in texture by the fact that this was a one-room schoolhouse on an island whereas last year she had experienced it in a modern classroom in a city school. This building had no indirect lighting, no solar heating, no colors planned to rest young eyes. It was a square white schoolhouse with a belfry; under the belfry at the end of the dark entry the firewood was stacked. There were outdoor toilets. It didn't matter. She was pleased with it all and looked forward to a precious sense of freedom in her work that she had never felt before. This school was
hers
.

The desks and seats were a concession to progress, but around the walls were the narrow and supremely inhospitable benches of the past. She was sure that the New England poets over the west windows, and the British poets over the east windows, had been the benign ghosts of the place for generations. There were books in the corner bookshelves upon which Philippa's mother had been raised. There were later ones, too, but Philippa was relieved to see that no one had invaded this schoolroom with progressive nonsense about the unfitness of
Black Beauty
,
What Katy Did
, and
The Five Little Peppers
.
Robinson Crusoe
and
Moby Dick
in Victorian editions had been much handled. A cottage organ stood in the opposite corner.

There was a certain charm in the stove's bulky ugliness and long stovepipe, a promise of aid and comfort in the months to come. The lighting might not have been scientifically the best, but in those early September days the big windows held a sweep of stunning color. The west windows looked across the russet marsh to the harbor and the activity of the beach where the men rowed ashore from the moorings or hauled up their powerboats to be painted. From Philippa's desk, through these same windows, she looked in an opposite direction, up the long easy slope of mown grass to the Bennett Homestead and the solid mass of spruce woods over beyond. The children at the back end of the room on one side could see the mail boat come out around Tenpound Island and go past Long Cove on her way to the harbor.

At recess they played “steal eggs” or “giant steps” in a yard edged with thickets of goldenrod, great puffs of asters, and wild rosebushes turned wine-red. The smell of the marsh was pungent here, and the great wild brightness of the sun on the sea cast a peculiar clarity all around. Sometimes the children went down over the old sea wall onto the shore of Schoolhouse Cove. Black duck and sheldrakes flew up at their approach, but if there was a seal he would ride in the swell, looking like a swimming dog, fascinated by the children's noise.

A lovely place to play, Philippa thought, remembering the paved or graveled schoolyards she had known.

She went around the harbor that first day and found the Webster place as Kathie had described, set back against the woods and hidden by big spruces in front. It was like an empty house. No one answered her knock, no cat came crying, though the Percy children were playing around their house a little distance away. She waited for a little while, hoping to hear a stir inside, but there was nothing. She went home, not deeply concerned. There was no need to rush anyone. She would wait a day or two; then if they hadn't come, she would go to the house again, in the evening, when the father would be home.

Almost immediately there were events in school that required extra attention and took her mind off the Websters. Schuyler Campion and Rob Salminen were neither insolent nor mischievous. But they began to stay away from school. In the mornings they came and behaved well. In the afternoons they did not appear.

T
he first time Philippa asked their older sisters where they were, she expected some casual story about upset stomachs and too many green apples. Peggy Campion looked at her as blankly as her cousin Terence did. “I don't know anything about Sky,” she murmured.

Kathie said, “I started back to school before Rob did.” She was frankly entertained by the mystery. No one else had seen the boys, a rather astonishing fact in view of the size of the community. The next morning they were there with the rest. They had no written excuses.

“Forgot to bring it,” Sky Campion said.

Rob grinned at Philippa without shame. “Forgot mine, too. I'm numb, I guess.”

“Bring your excuses this afternoon,” Philippa told them pleasantly. They went back to their seats and worked hard all morning. At noon she reminded them again of their excuses.

“Sure,” said Rob.

“Yes, Mrs. Marshall,” Sky answered.

They did not come that afternoon. This time Philippa did not ask if anyone had seen them. In the morning the boys were there. When she called them to her desk and asked for the notes from home, there was a familiar atmosphere in the room.

The first time she had encountered it, in her first school, her stomach had been cramped with panic, and all her sentimental fancies about children had fled in the same instant. She might have been facing a roomful of monsters. There was a terrible ten minutes of hating them and being terrified by them simultaneously, until by some groping, sweating method that was nothing she had been taught but a product of pure, desperate pride, she had gained control of the situation. Now, as she felt the collective tensing of the class, their anticipation as tangible as smoke, she understood. This business of Rob and Sky, and the way she handled it, would tell the rest whether she was to be respected or fair game. With a certain wry amusement behind a serene face, she leaned back in her chair and folded her hands. The boys were as serene.

“No notes?” she asked.

Sky snapped his fingers. “Forgot it again!”

“I told you we're regular numbheads,” Rob reminded her.

‘This afternoon,” she said gently, “will be the last chance. You may go back to your seats.” They went, docilely. Only the smaller children watched; all other heads were bowed in concentration. Philippa studied the variety of partings, cowlicks, ribbons, and barrettes. The atmosphere was thick with suspense. This afternoon was the last chance. They could hardly wait. Philippa knew exactly how they felt. She called the fourth grade up to her desk, and while they read aloud she thought, Last chance for what? It was a matter of importance that she handle the situation herself, if it was humanly possible. It was inexcusable to go to the parents at the first sign of trouble.

The afternoon took care of itself; the boys didn't come. Whenever her back was turned, Philippa felt the eyes upon her and wondered what sort of precedent May Gerrish had set. Did they expect that in the face of this candid defiance she would show trembling hands, a nervous flush, outright anger? She would prove to them that the world of school could revolve tranquilly without Sky and Rob. For the last half-hour she read
Moonfleet
aloud and was amused to see them trapped into exchanging one sort of suspense for another.

In the morning Sky and Rob were in their seats again. “Do you have your notes?” she asked, as if she had never asked it before. Sky gave her a luminous and steadfast hazel glance and then looked out the window as if the question bored him. Rob said cheerfully, “Nope!”

“Then you'd better go home,” she said. “Both of you. Don't come back until you have your excuses.” She nodded at the door. “Run along. We'll be right here when you get back.”

Ralph Percy laughed aloud, as if she had said something very witty; he had a broad, comic face like Fort's. Everybody watched Sky and Robgo down the aisle to the door. Sky walked straight out with a purposeful air, but Rob, as token that he wasn't greatly disturbed, tweaked Kathie's ear when he passed her. She grabbed her ruler and gave him a violent swipe across the seat of his corduroys.

Rob burst out laughing, and ran after Sky. While Philippa read Psalm 101, she watched to see them go past the windows on their way home, but they didn't appear. They could have taken a roundabout way, she thought, crawled under the windows on their hands and knees, and thus saved face with the others by keeping them in suspense as to whether or not they had decided to obey her. She knew. Once she had been eleven years old and had lived by her own incredibly complex code.

The morning routine swept them all in its wake, and the boys did not come back. Philippa was not surprised when they didn't come in the afternoon. Neither were the children. There was a certain bustle about them, a flattering alertness to her every gesture, a subdued air of carnival. They were not sure who was to be thrown to the lions, but they expected a worthy climax to three days of anticipation. Then they would know whether they were to respect or despise Philippa for the rest of the year. Oh, they would be impartial enough, she knew. They would go over to the winner, no matter who, and woe betide the loser.

Before the first class of the afternoon started, Kathie Salminen came and sat jauntily on the corner of Philippa's desk, swinging her long, scratched brown legs, her pale fine hair flaring out from her face like a dandelion blossom. “Rob never came home this noon,” she said. “He's run away. So has Sky. You can ask Peg.”