The Dawning of the Day (31 page)

“What made you figure on keeping this all to yourself?” he asked brusquely. “Where was I supposed to come in?”

“You've come in now. You're the innocent victim because I'm the real object of the attack.” She managed to keep from sounding apologetic.

“There's such a thing as keeping too quiet. It could have been something worse than this. You're too blasted independent.”

“As a hog on ice, my family always maintained.” She realized weakly the source of his anger; it was not with the smear at all but with her secrecy. It was rather a domestic issue, as if between man and wife. Shesaid eagerly, “Steve, listen. Without proof, I couldn't talk to the parents, so I felt in all honor I couldn't mention it to anyone else, even you. Don't think I wasn't tempted. I ached to drop it all in your lap. But that wouldn't solve anything. All I could hope was that when I had these children safe, in school, the trouble would have a chance to fade decently out of existence.”

“But after what happened yesterday—”

“It was hideous. I wanted to walk into that house and hurl the truth at them like a pail of ice water. But how could I? Had I
seen
Perley hiding in the woods? How could I prove Peggy wasn't being sweet and generous to some little ragamuffins, who are vicious liars if they say Perley ever tormented them? The children themselves knew better than to start a row. The Websters were hounded out of school last winter, and not one child in that school told anyone about it. They just wanted to avoid trouble.”

The skin was drawn taut over Steve's cheekbones. His eyes had a curious glitter she had never seen before. She went on, “Have you ever tried to talk to the parents of a boy like Perley or a girl like Peggy? If you had thirty pages of proof in black and white, they'd throw it in your face and revile you! Foss wouldn't come when I sent for him, and he didn't see Sky the way Terence and I found him behind a pile of traps. They'd tell me Sky was lying or even worse—they'd bully Sky into saying it never happened.”

She leaned against the building, out of breath. Her throat was dry. He stood looking at her from under his lids as if he had never really seen her before. “I can understand why you didn't want to throw a match into the brush pile,” he said slowly. “And that's what this place is. But good Lord, woman, the mess stinks to high heaven! I'm not going to wait until Perley hurts the kid to do something about it. How much proof do you have to have? Kids marked up with cigarette burns? Broken bones, or an eye put out?”

There was an undramatic violence in him that amazed her; she had not thought him capable of it. “What
do
you want to do?” he asked. “If you could handle this the way you wanted to, what would you do?”

She shrugged. “Rue doesn't want her father to know; she says it would drive him crazy, and I think she's right. Kathie walks back and forth with the Websters, and there'll be no long trips around through the orchard. And as for this—” she glanced at the door—“I suppose I'llignore it. At least nobody will get any satisfaction out of seeing me squirm. What about you?”

“I put on some paint and act as if it hadn't happened.” He pulled off his work gloves. Suddenly Philippa felt unsteady and her eyes burned.

“Steve, I feel responsible—I brought this on myself, I know, but I didn't think what I would do to you!” The words burst out. She had no control over them. “I came to this island, I loved it at first sight, I met you—”

“And loved me at first sight?” His mouth curved.

“Why should
I
have been the one to uncover the disturbances?” she protested. “Look what's happened to you because of me.”

He put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a little shake.

“Listen to me. You didn't start anything. There never was peace here. Leaving the kids out of it, there still wouldn't have been peace. Oh, sure, all the talk's been involved with the kids, I know. The Campion women brought along some of their mainland ideas, and according to
them
, any youngster who doesn't seem right should be shut off from the rest. The way we've always done out here, a kid who was downright feeble-minded could go to school, if he was harmless. There might be something he could learn. And as far as plaguing them in the school-yard, that's been done to other kids, and if the teacher didn't bother, it was just too bad for the victims, unless they went home and told their parents.”

“But the men,” she objected. “The way Foss reacted yesterday. The things Asanath says about my stirring up a mare's nest—”

“They probably mean just what they say, as far as the Websters are concerned. They hate to hear the women yammering, and you've started them up in good style. So the men don't bless you for it. They probably don't think anything's really
hurting
the Webster kids . . . nawthin' to get riled up about . . .” He drawled it out like Asa, and grinned at her.

“But as for the other business—which didn't have anything to do with the kids in the first place—that springs from the fact that the Campions moved on here thinking it was El Dorado and found themselves pretty well surrounded by Bennetts. They'd like nothing better than to take over. Asa said in the store one day the island had had the Bennett religion long enough; time they showed us what the Campion religion was like.”

“And how do the Bennetts feel about the Campions?”

He shrugged. “They don't bother us any. They bought their places here, and they don't look as if they'll become public charges. We've seen 'em come and seen 'em go. Why should they matter to us, as long as they don't haul our traps or become public nuisances? We were here before they came; we'll be here long after they go. If Young Charles's father was here, he might needle the Campions a little, just for the fun of it. But the rest of us are pretty peaceable.”

She said thoughtfully, “Still, I can see why you make Asa's hackles rise. That air of careless power can infuriate.”

“You wouldn't think Asa would be that easy to infuriate, would you? But he's been head of the Campions for so long, I guess he figured on being the Big Man out here. Probably thought this handful of Bennetts had gone to seed, intermarried till they were all soft in the head.” He took out his cigarettes. “But this business with the kids may give them a good chance to prod us up. Jude's a Bennett man; we brought him out here and set him up, just as Foss brought Randall Percy. It's only a matter of chance that Young Charles isn't trying to fuss up Randall, by the way—just to raise hell and to annoy the Campions a little bit. Randall's easy to fuss up, he's scared to death of lobstering. But he's also Fort's father. So Young Charles won't plague him.”

“What about the Campions and Jude?” she insisted. “You don't mean they'd condone anything that happened to Rue?”

“Oh, not that. I told you, they don't think there's anything to it. They told you the kids were feeble-minded. If you had believed them and ignored the kids, that might have driven Jude off sooner or later. He's no fighter. He's not much of a lobsterman either, and the space he takes up with his pots doesn't amount to Hannah Cook when the island territory is practically unlimited. So they don't worry about competition from Jude, but it would be one for their side if they drove him off. I don't know if you see what I mean.”

“I do,” she said quickly. “It wouldn't be much of a victory in a material sense, but it would be symbolic of something.”

“That's it. You've fallen head first into island politics, Philippa.”

She glanced at the newly painted door.

“Is that island politics too?” “If that's proved to be Perley's, the Campions will be properly horrified, but underneath they'll see it as an extra prod at the Bennetts. They won't be too shocked.”

She said slowly, “I can understand the strain between the two families. That's more or less natural in small places, where the least thing can mushroom overnight into a big issue. But I can't stand thinking the children are going to be drawn into it.” She felt cold and very tired. “I can understand how both things started. Maybe Helen and Vi would have realized after awhile that Rue and Edwin were all right, and the business with the Websters would have died a natural death. But now—” She kept looking at the door; it seemed to her she could see the letters through the paint. “Now they've come together; and each supplements the other and makes it far worse. It's not pleasant to think about, Steve.”

“You don't have to think about it. After all, you said yourself a war of nerves is a natural state of affairs in most small places. It doesn't make the Campions any worse, or the Bennetts any better. We can all take care of ourselves, and nobody really wants a feud breaking out. It's just island politics.” Unexpectedly he took her into his arms. “The devil with privacy,” he said. He kissed her forehead and her eyelids with the faintest gentle brushing of his lips. She held her face up to him silently; she was quivering inwardly, as if at the end of a long race.

R
ob was doing well with his fractions, Philippa thought. She put the last of the arithmetic papers away and stood up to stretch, walking lightly across the room with an instinctive desire to make no sound. Whenever she caught herself like this, putting her feet down as the cat Tom did, she was amused; it was something that had come to her in the Campion household, where they were all so silent in their movements. It was not the cat's natural stillness but caution, as if they were treading on explosives. She wondered how it had been before Elmo died, if he had been a loud, happy, vigorous force in the house, making them all so conscious of him that they had forgotten themselves. Now that he was gone, perhaps they had all been thrust back into some dreary terrain of acrimony and resentment, and they could find no frontier by which to escape.

Terence was knitting trap heads down in the kitchen. Asanath and Suze were in the sitting room; the fatalistic tones of Asa's favorite commentator droned up through the ceiling. She wondered what Terence did when he was out. There were not too many evenings in the week when Gregg was sober enough for a nondrinker to want to sit in his kitchen. Kathie's aunt and uncle were strict about her studies and bedtime. What did it leave for Terence, except to stand in the lee of a fishhouse, to smoke and stare into the darkness pricked by mainland lighthouses?

The shocks of the morning had retreated safely into the distance allowed for dreams. She had gone through her day as if unconscious ofthe blatant black letters standing between her and the rest of the island, as if no one were staring at her back, snickering or shaking a head in sympathy. She had gone to the store in the morning and had waited with the rest for the mail boat to come. Joanna Sorensen had invited her to come in for coffee in the afternoon. Helmi had come too, and as the talk reached back into the past, Philippa sensed the solidarity that held these people, their unconscious assurance, inherent as the circulation of their blood or their ability to breathe, that this place was theirs. There was a timeless quality in the way they spoke; their memories began in the island, years before the Campions came. No matter where they went, they would always be islanders.

This was what the Campions hated. This was the source of the frustration behind their calm smiling eyes. They'd been able to buy property, on the island besides their own houses; they owned the boarded-up house intended for Terence and the Percy place. But land and shore front weren't enough, Philippa knew, and she had a curious sympathy for them. A person could live out his life and go to his grave with his bankbook showing prosperity, and yet be sere and bitter from wanting an intangible. . . .

Now back in her room at the Campions', she thought that she heard voices outside. Sometimes the wind made queer sounds around the windows, and she went on with her writing. But there was no mistaking the heavy tramping on the back steps and the agitated opening of the back door; voices were raised, Terence pushed back his chair, and Asanath turned off the radio and went out into the kitchen with measured steps. Philippa stopped typing. Helen's voice rose by shrill stages to a passionate crescendo, and Viola's cut vibrantly across it. The men's tones mingled deep and unintelligible. Someone came out into the hall; she recognized Asanath's step again. He called to her.

She opened her door and went out to the head of the steep straight flight, and looked down at him. He was half in light from the kitchen, half in darkness. The melee went on beyond, and Helen was crying hysterically.

Her first thought was that someone had drowned, one of Foss' children, perhaps. She felt slightly ill.

“Has there been an accident?” she called down to Asanath.

“Nobody's dead. But you better come down, my girl.” He cleared his throat. “They seem to think it's some of your affair.”

Philippa started down. Her hands felt clammy and her heart was beating rapidly. She wished she could go back to her room and close the door, but that would have shut out nothing. It would be waiting for her tomorrow, whatever it was.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
. . . . She was astonished to find herself silently quoting the phrase in time with her feet on the stairs.

Terence came out from the kitchen. “Don't drag her into this,” he said angrily. He stepped in front of Asanath.

Philippa stopped with her hand on the newel post and looked from one face to the other. Asanath smiled. “She's got a right to defend herself,” he said.

“What's going on, Terence?” Philippa asked.

“Somebody just put the wood to Perley. Gave him a hiding over on the beach.” He blew smoke from his nostrils. “The fools think you put a gang up to it.”

“I think I'd better see about this.” She stepped down, but Terence stood in her way.