The Dawning of the Day (6 page)

Philippa glanced past her at Peggy and met a long and speculative gaze. After a moment the girl bent her head deliberately over her English grammar.

“Did you tell your aunt what's going on?” Philippa asked Kathie, knowing nobody had told anything at home that could possibly curtail the full development of the drama.

Kathie shrugged her square shoulders. “Why should I? It's not my funeral. . . . What'll you do to them? Put the strap to them?” She was far more casual asking the question than Philippa was hearing it.

“Is that what everyone's waiting for?” she asked coldly.

Kathie was not embarrassed. “Miss Gerrish used her pa's razor strop all the time. Brought it with her. It made everybody mad, but she didn't care. I guess toward the end she just didn't give a darn.”

“You may go back to your seat, Kathie,” Philippa said.

“O.K.” She slid off the desk, stretching lazily; she was well developed for a fourteen-year-old under the boy's white shirt. She tucked her thumbs into her cowboy belt and looked down at Philippa. She wasn't offended; her eyes twinkled with humor and a sort of primitive wisdom. “I just wondered, that's all. Maybe you don't think much of pounding them up, but you'll come to it. You can't beat up the fathers and mothers, so you'll take it out on the kids.” She tipped her hand to Philippa in a cocky salute and went back to her seat.

So that was the story of May Gerrish. Philippa remembered the nervous fingers traveling over the badly made-up mouth, the eyes darting behind the glasses, the voice that was calm enough at the start but soon trembled and grew shrill. “Your sister says you're a good teacher. You're young and look strong and got a stubborn jaw. That's enough for you. I'll recommend you, if you think you can stand it.”

“I'm not afraid of bad weather or of isolation,” Philippa had said innocently, and the other had laughed. It was a high, bleating sound.

“There are other things,” she had said.

Philippa wondered then, as she wondered now. But one thing she knew; Kathie must be kept in her place as a fourteen-year-old who was neither hay nor grass. In her candor and her complete self-assurance, she was a rich personality. But she must never be allowed to forget, razor strop or not, who ruled the schoolroom.

T
he way led home through a little lane behind the schoolhouse that came out between Foss Campion's white house, with its dahlias and zinnias, and the empty house with its boarded-up windows. Philippa always experienced a sharp pleasure in the sudden transition from the lush shadows of the lane to the full afternoon sunlight flooding the harbor and shore. Today the wind was east with a salty rockweed smell. The air had a peculiar soft luminosity, the water was a warm quiet blue.

The tide was not yet high, and an adult gull paddled around in the pools among the rocks, where the seaweed streamed bronze across the water. The gull's child, brownish gray and black billed, paddled hard behind her, bobbing its head and crying in a persistent, penny-whistle voice. Across the harbor, children were fishing for pollack off Mark Bennett's lobster car. When someone sang out triumphantly, “I got another one!” the words were as loud and pure as a bell in the still afternoon.

Nothing moved around Foss Campion's house, except the money cat washing herself on the front doorstep. But as she came abreast of Asanath Campion's house, Asanath called to her from the fishhouse doorway. “Got a bone to pick with you, girl.”

She walked down toward him, and he went back into the shop and began painting buoys again. Philippa sat down on a nail keg and looked at him expectantly. She had already learned it was no use to hurry Asanath. He talked in deliberate pauses and phrases. The sun came in through the long low window over his workbench, and the reflection of the water shimmered on the ceiling over his head. He drew a blue stripe around a buoy and said, “I was hauling down the west side today and saw two people who warn't s'posed to be there. S'posed to be somewhere else. I know for a fact nobody's graduated 'em from school yet.” He glanced around at her then, his eyes narrowed and smiling in the fine tissue of sun wrinkles. “You missing any of your scholars? Couple of 'em come to me a little while ago—careful as the devil to wait till
after
school was out—with some of my buoys they'd picked up on the back shore. I didn't let on I'd already seen 'em.”

Philippa said honestly, “Today isn't the only day. It's been three days hand-running. I thought I could handle it without involving the parents.”

“You figger to threaten the kids or bribe 'em?” He put the brush and the buoy down, and leaned against the bench. “Lord, girl, what are parents for? Nobody expects you to deal with these hellions singlehanded. I can't speak for Mark Bennett and his wife, of course, but I guess I can speak for my brother.” He said Mark Bennett's name with a peculiar emphasis of distaste.

“I don't want them whipped.” She wondered if Asanath Campion thought her a stubborn and sentimental fool. “In a way I don't blame the boys. They're choosing what they think is the better part. But the rules have been made.”

“Foss ain't much of a hand with a switch,” Asanath said. “He never gets too haired-up about anything. He's easy, is Foss. Helen's got the temper in that family.” He laughed softly. “Times when Foss walks Spanish, I can tell ye.”

He looked over his shoulder at the harbor. “He's out there now. I'll give him a hail.” He went out onto the wharf and shouted at Foss, who was on the bow of his boat taking up the mooring.

“Be right there,” Foss called back. Asanath began to fill his pipe. “No sense dragging this thing out,” he said. Philippa was not sure whether she was amused or annoyed to have the question taken so smoothly out of her hands.

They waited on the wharf, watching Foss row toward them. Suze Campion appeared around the fishhouse, her small face pale in the bright sunlight, her glasses turned toward Asanath as if Philippa were not there. “What's all that noise about, Asa?” she asked plaintively.

“Thought you was cranberrying, Suze.”

“You
know
they're not near ripe enough yet. I've been washing the windows on the back of the house. Seems as if I can't keep the spray off 'em five minutes.”

Foss's skiff nudged the spilings, and he came up the ladder.

“What's this, a special meeting of the Bennett's Island vigilantes?” He pushed his cap back and winked at Philippa. “Haven't had a chance yet to inquire how my two are behavin' themselves in school.”

“Suze,” Asanath said gently, “why don't you put the kettle on, in case Mis' Marshall'd like a cup of coffee to hold her till suppertime?”

“Coffee's all made, Asa,” said Suze with a ghost of triumph in her eyes.

“Well, let's go inside,” said Asanath and didn't look at his wife again. He went into the fishhouse and the others followed.

“Acts real portentous, don't he?” Foss winked at Philippa. “He'd be good in politics. Specially in giving them fireside chats.”

“Mis' Marshall's giving the fireside chats today, Foss,” said Asanath mildly. “She's got something to say to
you
.”

“It's nothing much,” said Philippa. “I told your brother I was going to handle it myself, although I don't know just how. Sky and Rob have me cornered.” She laughed. “I admire them, really. They're so calm about it. They've skipped school for three days in a row, but why worry? They've almost convinced me that being out of school in this weather is far more important than anything I could teach them.”

Suze caught her breath excitedly.

“Well, I'll be—!” Foss exclaimed. “Excuse me, Mis' Marshall. But Sky, up to tricks! Peg never said a word to home about it.”

“Children stick together,” Philippa said. “Don't whip him, Mr. Campion. Just tell him to come to school. He's an awfully nice little boy and a bright one. He'll settle down.”

Suze said vehemently, “He wouldn't have thought of running off if that Rob Salminen hadn't put it in his head. Mark Bennett's responsible for Rob! He's condoning this, most likely to plague you. Just because the Campions chose you—”

“Hold your tongue, Suze,” Asanath said.

“Now, Suze.” Foss shook his head at her. “Sky don't need anybody to do his thinking for him, any more than Terence did when he was that age. Sure, Terence looked like a proper little minister, the way you dressed him, but warn't he the tyke? Many's the time I've sent him up over the beach holdin' onto his bottom where I warmed it. He could put the curses to me too. The air'd be blue.” He squinted out at the path. “Here he comes now, walking in a dream. Wonder what could have happened? Must have lost his voice when it changed.”

Asanath cleared his throat. They all looked out at Terence on the sunny doorstep. Terence, oblivious, leaned down to rub the yellow tom's arched back. Then he went into the house. Suze left the shop quickly, hurrying up the path without a backward glance.

Foss lit a cigarette and blew out smoke. “I'll talk to Sky,” he said to Philippa. “He'll be there Monday, and every day afterward.”

“With a written note,” said Philippa smiling. “We've been having a silent duel about it.”

“He'll have his note. Next time anything comes up, you hike straight to me. If the people on this island can't work with the teacher, there's plenty wrong with them.”

“Or the teacher,” said Philippa. She did not feel like smiling now; she was inexplicably touched by the forthright goodness and common sense of these people. She stood in the doorway and looked at the two brothers, her eyes shadowy and grave, her mouth relaxed from its firmness into an unexpectedly young curve. The incident of the truants was a small one, but there was nothing small about the sincerity of the Campions. One feels, she heard herself explaining to Justin, that if something big happened—though I don't know what it could be, these children don't have a chance to be delinquents—it would be considered frankly and honestly by all concerned.

“Thank you,” she said to them both. “It's something off my mind. Or it will be, as soon as I see Rob's people.”

“Good luck,” Asanath said. Foss, leaning against the bench and smoking his cigarette, smiled and said nothing.

She went up to the house thinking of coffee and a square of Suze's gingerbread. Justin used to laugh at her conviction that it was necessary to have something in her stomach before she plunged into a new element. As she came into the sun porch that reached across the front of the house, she heard voices in the kitchen and hesitated. Suze Campion's words rose and fell, faint and dreary, like the little wind that sometimes blew all night past the eaves.

“When your father was twenty-five, he had a home and a family and money in his strongbox—he wasn't letting brazen little girls hang on his coattails till all the tongues was wagging—”

“Whose tongue is wagging besides yours and Vi's and Helen's? Sure, the old man's got plenty to say, but then he never did have much use for me.”

Philippa was astonished. She hadn't thought Terence was capable of such vigorous bitterness. Up in her room she could still hear Suze; not the words, but the monotonous, woeful tone. Again Terence slashed across it.

“Your father says, your father says. Why doesn't he tell
me
what he says, the oary-eyed old hypocrite? No, he can't, he's too busy being ‘good old Asa.' Everybody loves him, everybody harks when he opens his mouth, even the schoolma'am listens like he was God—”

“Terence,
hush
!” his mother cried.

There was a short silence. Then suddenly he began again, his voice soft but venomously clear. “And I'm not getting Kathie Salminen in trouble, if that's what you're all so green about the gills for. Maybe I'm a disgrace to the Campions, but I haven't got around to misusing fourteen-year-old kids yet. You're all fit to be tied because she's a Bennett, or just the same as one. Listen. If you've got any more gurry to throw, you keep it off her, or I'll give you something to howl about for the rest of your life.”

The screen door slammed. Philippa looked out and saw him going along the path. There was a rather alarming stillness from the kitchen, and she wondered if Suze were all right.
If Eric ever turned on me like that
, she thought,
I would die inside
.

Then she heard the teakettle move on the stove and let her breath go normally again. It was time now to think of the Mark Bennetts. Rob Salminen's truancy also had to be stopped. She went down the front stairs and out the front door without meeting Suze at all.

A
fter the brilliance of the day outside, the low-roofed store on the wharf was dim. It had its own peculiar atmosphere, a blend of oranges, oil clothes, and trap-head twine. Kathie was alone, sitting on a nail keg, her feet braced against the potbellied stove. She was reading a Western story magazine. When she saw Philippa, she got up quickly, lean as a boy in her dungarees.

“Gosh, hello, Mrs. Marshall. Can I get you something?”

“I don't want to buy a thing,” said Philippa. “Just tell me where to find your aunt and you can go back to the rootin' tootin' West.”

“She's up at the house. Follow the path around the corner. Is it about Rob?”

“I'm afraid so.”

Kathie laughed happily. “Don't worry about it. Rob won't. He doesn't care a hoot. That's the way I am, too.” Footsteps sounded on the wharf outside the door, and Fort Percy and Charles Bennett came in. “Look what a gull dropped,” Kathie said, and went behind the counter. She crossed her arms on her chest and leaned against the shelves, looking inscrutable. Fort grinned.

“What's eating you, Kit-kat? Hello, Mis' Marshall. How you standing this rarefied air we got out here?”