The Ebbing Tide (13 page)

“Give Jamie to Thea,” Joanna said tersely to Dennis Garland. “Thea, watch him for me, will you?” She took him herself from Garland and put him into Thea's arms.

Thea said, “Well, for heaven's sake! Sure, I'll take him, but where's Owen gone to? I thought he started out—”

Joanna didn't hear her. She ran up through the shed and Dennis came behind her. She had no compunction about leaving Jamie with Thea and Leonie, they weren't able to run around the beach in their high heels anyway. And Francis would tell them about Owen.

Going along the narrow path toward the fish houses she saw the
Donna
come up abreast of the
White Lady
, and glimpsed Matthew coiling up what he could of the slackly trailing tow line before he cut it. The boats were rushing in, wind and sea driving them. Then they were hidden by the fish houses, and she thought she would never get to the Old Wharf. Francis caught up with her and Dennis, and with a masterful effort got by them.

They arrived, all three, at the Old Wharf just as the
White Lady
came roistering in on a breaking sea, leaving Francis' boat rolling frantically, and headed straight for the beach. “You take this one,” Francis told Dennis, breathing hard. “Get aboard and make the bow line fast.” He headed down the wharf as the
Donna
came in, riding the
White Lady's
wake. A comber lifted her stern, pushing her nose down. But in another moment she was around the corner of the wharf, sliding in close with a gracefulness that was a tribute to Sigurd's handling. Francis was aboard at once, making the bow line fast while Sigurd tended the stern line. Matthew had put the
White Lady
up ahead, her bow nosing the smooth beach rocks, and he and Dennis had made the lines secure.

The boats were safe, and it seemed years ago in another life that Joanna had looked down to see men running for a dory. . . . Now she looked down again, into the cockpit of the
White Lady
, and saw Owen lying on his back on the platform, his face to the sky. He lay flat and unresistant, in his drenched clothes, his wet forelock soot­black against his gray pallor and his eyebrows an incredibly dark line across it. There was no expression at all in his face. He looked as if he were dead.

Then someone hid him from her; it was Dennis. He jumped lightly down into the cockpit and went down on one knee, she was looking at his tweed shoulders and the back of his narrow, intelligent head instead of Owen.

Matthew had lighted a cigarette and was taking long, hard breaths of it. He stood by Owen's feet. “What's the matter with him?” he said. The others came and stood by Joanna, without speaking; even Sigurd and Thea were quiet this time. Jamie held out his arms to his mother and said pleadingly,
“Mama!”
She took him, without looking away from Dennis. When he stood up, he looked at her as he spoke.

“We'll all have to lend a hand,” he said. “Where can we get a door to use for a stretcher?”

Q
UIETLY
, D
ENNIS
G
ARLAND TOOK OVER
. As quietly, his authority was accepted. There was no waiting to discuss the morning's work; the exhilaration and danger of those minutes were of the past, and besides, they had been tempered by the shock of Owen's collapse. It was incredible and it was frightening. One might have expected it of anyone but Owen. Sigurd's face was drawn, the big hand holding a cigarette was shaking. He had been terrified out there in the dory, not of the sea or of the wind, but of the power that seemed to strike Owen down before his eyes. Owen was strapping and strong and apparently inexhaustible, and now he lay limp as kelp on the boat-shop door.

The four of them carried Owen home, trying to walk gently over the beach rocks. Joanna went on ahead to open the door and stir up the fire. By this time Jamie was in a fury of frustration; he had been snatched up from his play, and to add insult to injury he hadn't been allowed to set his feet on the ground, but had been carried first by one person and then another as if he were eight months instead of eighteen months. The roaring surf and the howl of the wind had excited him, and he was frightened, without knowing why, by Owen. By the time Joanna reached the house with him he was howling without reservations, his eyes streaming, his face red. He was her first responsibility; she talked to him calmly, washing his face with cold water. She gave him a cookie for each hand and took him back to his sandpile.

Now that her first dread was past, she could move swiftly. She went back into the house and saw the men coming up by Thea's. The fire was still alive; she revived it further with some small birch pieces to make a quick hot blaze, and then made ready the sitting-room couch.

The men put Owen on the couch and flocked out nervously, to stand around in the kitchen and sun parlor. Joanna and Dennis were alone in the sitting room. She watched Dennis pulling off Owen's boots as he had done the other night.

“What's the matter with him?” she asked at last. “You haven't said. . . . What do you want me to do?”

He looked up at her with a brief smile. “His system has put up a big protest, that's all. As long as he's down, you don't have to worry, because he'll have to rest. Time enough to fuss when he's up again. . . . I'll want hot water bottles, heavy pajamas—same as the other night.” She went obediently toward the door, but she had to look back. He was so quietly sure of himself, the way Nils was, and she had a blessed sense of not being alone. If he hadn't been here this would have happened just the same, and she could imagine her rising panic, her ignorance of what to do, her terror that Owen might be dying under her eyes.

She brought down pajamas and blankets, and when she went out into the kitchen with the hot water bottles, the other men were still waiting, and Thea and Leonie hovered by the sun parlor door. Sigurd, chewing his lip, looked like a cowed Viking. It was Matthew who spoke to her, his pleasant face soberly concerned.

“How is he, Jo? What's the matter with him?”

“Too much cheap liquor,” she said frankly. “Too much hell­raising.” It was easy to say it, even in front of Thea, now that she knew she wasn't alone. “You know as well as I do how he's been going. Maybe this will shake some sense into him.”

“He looked awful when he keeled over.” Matthew shook his head. “I was watchin' the boats. I dunno what made me look around, and his face was like wet ashes. Like to scared me silly for a minute, but he was even more scared. Couldn't get his breath, seemed like. I had to grab those oars some quick.”

She filled the hot water bottles with a steady hand, even when Thea moved suddenly close to her elbows. “Who is that feller, Jo? He acts like a doctor.
You
know, don't ye?” Her round blue eyes were sly, her whole peaked face avid.

“Yes, he's a doctor,” Joanna said briefly, without looking at Thea. On an impulse she threw something else into the conversation to keep them busy for the next few days. “He's bought Uncle Nate's Place.”

Thea's gasp was satisfactory; it proved that something had gotten by her. She didn't linger, but took Franny's arm. “Come on, Franny,” she commanded him brightly. “No sense hangin' around bein' a nuisance at a time like this. You can come over later and inquire.” At the door she collected Leonie, and Sigurd followed his housekeeper with less spirit than Dick showed, accompanying Joanna to the well. Thea would drag them all into her kitchen and make coffee, and talk over the latest bombshell, making up the angles she didn't know. Well, at least it would keep her tongue off Owen for a while. Joanna had heard in a round-about way Thea's insinuations to the effect that the only reason she wouldn't “go out” with Owen was that he had contracted something more than pneumonia in his seven-years'-absence.

Matthew waited until the others had gone. “If there's anything I can do, Joanna—”

“Thanks a lot, Matthew. But there probably won't be anything. I don't know.”

“At least I can get you a pail of water.” He took the empty pail and went off down to the shore. Matthew was a good man, she thought. One of the kind she had known during her childhood, industrious, sober, thoughtful. She took the hot water bottles to Dennis.

He had Owen undressed and wrapped in blankets, and he tucked the bottles around Owen's feet. “There, he'll do for a while,” he murmured, and straightened up. His hands were as sure as ever, and they had been gentle, yet strong with Owen, but Joanna, seeing his face, was dismayed.

“You're tired!” she said involuntarily. “You've done too much. I forgot—”

“I'm glad you did. I'd have been annoyed if you'd begun telling me to take it easy.” His smile softened the lines in his face. She had begun to appreciate that slow smile. It came rarely, but it was comforting as the warm steady fire from seasoned wood. To have him here now was almost as good as having Nils.

“I'll make some coffee,” she said. “I guess we can stand it. How about some eggs, too?”

“Eggs it is. How many years since breakfast?” When they came into the kitchen Matthew was setting the water pail on the dresser.

“'Y gorry, damn' lucky you were here, doc,” he said earnestly. “You sure there's nothin' I can do?”

“I'd like to get a prescription filled at some drugstore in Limerock. How would I go about it?”

“Well, you could call up, but I figger the storm's prob'ly put the cable out again between here and Brigport. But I can get over to Brigport as soon as the wind goes down.” His good-natured face puckered in concern. “But I dunno how I could read all that stuff over the 'phone—”

Dennis laughed, and reached for his pipe. “I'll go with you. If they send it out next boat-day that'll be soon enough.” After Matthew had gone, he said, “Good chap. They're all the best sort. I'm proud to know them.”

“Finest kind, my brother Stevie would say.”
He'd say you were the finest kind
, she added silently. She'd had something to write to all of them; whatever resentment her brothers might feel at the idea of the Place going out of Bennett hands, it would be lessened considerably by this incident. The house would seem empty when he had gone.

“You missed your boat,” she reminded him. “You wouldn't have been able to get over there anyway—but it's come and gone, and we've never given it a thought.”

He drank coffee and smoked, looking at peace in spite of his obvious fatigue. “I'm not going for a while, if it's all right with you. Owen will have to be kept quiet, and I want to talk to him.”

“Yes, of course it's all right with me,” she said calmly. But she felt her hands go nerveless with relief, so that she had to set down her cup.

She got Owen up to his own room the next day. It was an agonizing trip, as much torture to Joanna as to Owen. She knew now what Matthew had meant when he said Owen's color was that of wet ashes. It was hard not to let her fear show in her voice when she and Dennis came downstairs again.

“I've never seen Owen sick,” she protested. “And he looks so terrible. Will that prescription really help him?” It was a senseless question, but she wanted assurance badly.

“Part of that comes from his nerves. The prescription will help, yes. It's a sedative. He'll have to leave liquor absolutely alone, and it's going to be hell for him. The sedative will take the edge off it.”

“What makes it worse is that he's afraid, himself.” She had seen the silent panic of the trapped animal in Owen's eyes.

“Yes, he's afraid, but he needs fear.” Dennis' easy voice, the impersonal, almost academic tone, was like a reassuring hand laid on her shoulder. “This may be a big help to him in the long run. He's been through a terrifying experience, you see. His own boat was almost on the rocks, and he couldn't save her—he didn't have the strength. That realization took the last shred of his resistance, and he gave up.”

“My father's boat, too,” she said. “The
Donna
—it's my husband's boat now, but my father had it built when we were small. Owen still thinks of it as father's boat, and if anything happened to her, it would go as hard with Owen as if he lost the
White Lady
.”

Dennis nodded. “He'll never tell you these things, because to a man like Owen, such a confession is an open show of weakness. To know the disease is half the cure, somebody said once. This experience may force Owen to look at the facts.”

“I'm glad you're here,” Joanna said. “I can't tell you how glad—” She had a desperate fear that her voice would quiver, so she said nothing else. But she lifted her chin, and looked at him directly. If she couldn't say anything more elaborate, her honesty must be enough.

A unique atmosphere of peace pervaded the house while Owen lay in bed. Dennis sat with him for an hour or more at times, and Joanna could hear the murmur of voices, but Dennis never told her what they talked about. She only knew that little by little the trapped look was fading out of Owen's eyes. One day when she brought him breakfast he gave her the old, mocking grin.

“What a life! Layin' abed while those other poor sons o' bitches have to go haul!”

“I know you love it. Resting on your laurels—”

“Rustin' on 'em is more like it,” he drawled. “You know how long I've been sober, my girl?”

“So long I can't believe it,” she said tartly. But her eyes held a twinkle that answered his. It was good to be swapping remarks with him again; better to know he had his feet braced.

After the rush of the day, when both Jamie and Owen were asleep, the evenings were long and slow and pleasant. Sometimes she was astonished at how contented she felt, whether she and Dennis were talking, or whether he sat on the other side of the lamp reading. Sometimes at the minute sound of a page turning, she would look across at his long-jawed face with its finely cut, yet strong mouth, and wish passionately that Nils could know him. Oh, Nils would know him when he came home, since Dennis had bought the Place, but she wanted him to know Dennis now, and she wanted Dennis to know Nils.