The Dawning of the Day (44 page)

“When Ella Percy tried to push Randall into the fray, Syd flourished the chair at him and said he'd break Randall's thick head in for interfering. And he said Randall was such a yellow belly anyway that he'd hang himself to a spruce tree if the Campions told him to.”

“That's no lie,” Gregg said.

“Then Ella told Clare to go get Foss and Asa. Of course Viola was screaming all the time that Syd had gone crazy, so he told her she was the crazy one to think she could start
that
again. I didn't find out what
that
was, because just about then Kathie lit on me and said, ‘Isn't this a swell fight?' So I thought I'd better move on.”

“Here comes Foss now,” said Gregg. Foss came by Sigurd's house, walking rapidly, with Perley a little distance behind him. Neither looked at the three on the doorstep. Asanath came by in a few minutes, walking at his usual gait. He nodded at them.

“He don't seem to be in no pucker,” Gregg observed. “Mebbe he thinks it will do the old witch good to be trimmed up a little.”

They stood on the doorstep, all caught up in a meditative silence. Philippa was not seeing the harbor but her table under the lamp last night. Syd had had a chance to see the note Jude had brought; she'd forgotten it was in full sight when she handed him Ellie's papers to read. Syd was not dull. He was a very acute little man who could listen around corners and be invisible afterward. It was Syd, too, who had reached Lucy Webster first this morning, and she had not known him; it must have struck him like a blow, that light unrecognizing stare . . .

It was strange that she had never connected Viola with the note, for now it fitted; it was just the sort of thing such a woman would do to provide herself with something to watch. The note had been concocted of the purest essence of mischief. Having no luck with the schoolteacher, who refused to be intimidated, Viola had looked around for a more vulnerable set of victims. Jude Webster would surely squirm like an insect on a pin.

“Come on, Philippa,” Joanna was saying. “Let's walk slowly up past the well. Maybe we'll hear Vi whinnying.”

“Lord, what a day,” said Gregg blissfully. “Wish I'd seen it, that's all. Wish I'd seen old Syd a-cornerin' her with that chair.”

T
here was a week of winter weather when the wind blew day and night, first from the northeast, alternating with rain and wet snow; then the wind backed around to the west, and the cold became a dry and chilling certainty. Where once it had crept, now it seared through the flesh and into the bones. The radio said that all of New England was having a premature cold snap, but to Philippa it seemed that no other place could so vividly express the cold in color and sound and sensation. The wind howled past the Binnacle's eaves by night and around the schoolhouse all day. The surf piled on the harbor point in glittering masses. In the early mornings when the sun came up in a glazed un-clouded sky, the water appeared to steam as far as one could see. It was her first experience with vapor, and she realized after the first day that if she saw it from her window while she ate her breakfast, her face would be aching with cold before she reached the schoolhouse. She was cautioned by Gregg and Steve both not to load her stove too heavily; in turn she cautioned Rob about the schoolhouse stove, and he gave her the patient, bored politeness of all males when given advice by women.

The men didn't get out to haul, but every morning they rowed out to the moorings in bouncing dories to pound off the ice that had formed over their boats during the previous night.

“This is what it'll be all winter,” Steve warned her. “You'll get pretty sick of having a man underfoot before it comes March.”

“I don't think so,” she said. “It depends upon the man. And it's been a long time since I've had a man around the house.”

They were walking down the field one evening, hurrying against the unbroken sweep of wind across the flatlands. He turned her to him and kissed her; their cold mouths warmed in the instant of contact and, as they separated, grew even colder than they had been before.

Then they hurried on, arm in arm. They were taking it for granted now that they would be married in February. Sometimes when she was alone and thought of it, she tried to imagine how it would be to live in the intimacy of sleeping and waking, dressing, calling back and forth between the rooms. She wondered if he would put his arm over her in his sleep as Justin had done, if he would dream of Vinnie and she of Justin. In the past their bodies had learned certain responses; had time merely sent those reflexes burrowing deep into the subconscious, or were they really over and done with, with new responses to learn from new persons?

In this cold week she dwelt on their marriage more and more, and was grateful that other issues seemed to have fallen back. Fort was hardly ever seen these days. It was quiet in school. Rue and Edwin had come back. Vi was not seen striding around the harbor or hurrying up the back path to the Percy place, but then not many of the women came out into the wind that week. The story of the attack with the chair had gone the rounds, but to see Syd scurrying meekly before the wind to his fishhouse, like a gull feather blown over the water, was almost enough to make anyone believe it had never happened. The preponderant reaction was a delighted incredulity. Philippa wondered if this was to be the finish of the long siege, this ridiculous pursuit with a kitchen chair, captioned by Gregg's hoarse whisper, “He must've thought she was one of them Bengal tigers.” If he had killed her, it would have been tragic; but he had not killed her, so one could overlook the intent or the intensity of passion to which he had been driven. The end was ridiculous, and Vi's yammer was hushed for a week, though no one expected it to be hushed for long. But was this to be the end, after all? Philippa hoped so with the devoutness of prayer.

Steve went ashore on the
Ella Vye
in the middle of the week to have a lost filling replaced. From the schoolhouse windows she watched the stubby-nosed boat plunge along outside Long Cove. In two or three days he would be back; until then she would move in a sort of pleasant vacuum, marked off in patches of light and dark.

On her way home she stopped at Jude Webster's shop and knocked. When he opened the door for her, she saw a half-finished trap on the bench. He was nervously cordial.

“Come in, come in! Sit down!” He brushed off the top of a nail keg. His eyes were shadowed behind the glasses, and his face seemed sunken around the mouth.

She said, “I only wondered if you were going away after all.”

“No. No, I'm not.” He gestured toward the trap. “You see. Well, Nils and I are going to work together from his boat, for the winter at least.”

“Oh, I'm glad,” she said sincerely. “Nobody would dare bother you then. At least I don't think they would.” She laughed at her own extravagance. “Nils doesn't say much, but people seem to stay away from him.”

“Yes.” He laughed too, jerkily. He scuffed shavings with his foot and looked out, squinting, at the dazzling surge of the harbor outside the small window. The fire snapped in the oil-barrel stove.

“How's Lucy?” she asked him.

He still watched the harbor; she saw his Adam's apple slide as he swallowed. “She's all right, Mrs. Marshall. She didn't even get a cold out of—out of that sleepwalking. I can't understand it.”

“Perhaps she's stronger than she looks.” Philippa got up. She knew when the key was turned in the lock. Jude had his pride, after all; he might be poor in everything else but that. He had come to her humbly in his distress, but she needn't expect him to come again. She put her hand on the thumb latch, and at its click Jude looked hopefully around.

“I must get home and do my housework,” she said. “Would Lucy like some company, do you think? Or something to read?”

“I don't think so,” he said with his painfully courteous smile. “She never gets bored.”

“Then she's very lucky,” Philippa said.

Quite suddenly during the night the wind ceased, and when it began again, it blew gently from the south, the sea paled, and the sound of surf decreased so sharply it seemed almost quiet for a little while, till one became again aware of the rote.

The men went to haul that day. Hardly anyone had come in by the time school let out. They went farther from the island in their winter fishing, and traps shifting during storms had to be found and returned to their original places.

Philippa had been at home for nearly an hour when Kathie knocked on the door with the usual fanfaron.

“Come on to the shore!” she cried. “Hurry up, or you'll miss it!”

Philippa had been writing to Eric, but Kathie's excitement was contagious. “What is it?” she asked, rising from the table.

“You'll see when you get there!” She had Philippa's coat off its hanger and was holding it out.

“Tell me what it is,” Philippa demanded while she put on her things. “It must be a whale at least, the way you're acting.”

Kathie laughed. Philippa remembered the first time she had heard that laugh outside the windows of the schoolhouse, and she had wondered whether the unique and vivid possessor of it would be her friend or her enemy. Still remembering, she allowed herself to be swept down the stairs as if by a strong wind and along the road to the beach.

In the late afternoon light, the beach at first glance looked as it always looked at the end of a working day. Most of the men were there. Foss and Perley were dragging a skiff up to high-water mark, Young Charles was hauling bait boxes behind him over the wet stones with a clatter. Nils stood alone outside the long fishhouse, smoking and gazing meditatively at the scene.

Philippa looked the length of the beach and then at Kathie. “Well, where's the whale?”

“I never said it was a whale!” Kathie's laughter spilled out of her, loud and delighted. Nils Sorensen looked around, taking his pipe out of his mouth.

“
Allmägstige Gud
,” he said solemnly, “I just heard a loon.”

Kathie, holding Philippa's arm, hurried her on for a little distance and stopped at the far corner of the long fishhouse.

“You've brought me out on false pretenses,” Philippa said. “I thought I was going to see a sixty-five-foot whale at least, with a mermaid sitting on his head. I'm going home.”

“No, wait,” Kathie said under her breath. She took Philippa's arm in a tight grip. “Look, Randall Percy's rowing ashore.”

“I've seen Randall Percy rowing ashore many times. And there's Fort, over there by the anchor, talking with Jude Webster. What's so strange? What ails you today, Kathie?”

“Come back a little,” Kathie said hoarsely. She glanced quickly at Nils. They turned and walked a short distance from the head of the wharf. “Nils is waiting for Randall,” she said. “I don't know what he's going to do. And Randall, he's been fussing around in the harbor for a long time, because he's scared to come ashore. Rob heard Nils talking to Mark about it, and he came flying to tell me; then I came to tell
you
.” She said it with extravagant pride.

“But I don't understand,” Philippa said.

Kathie explained patiently, “Nils caught Randall cutting off Steve's traps.” She gave each word an equal value, as if explaining to a young child. “Don't you see? He came into Sou'West Cove all throttled down because he was looking to see if any of his traps had drifted in from outside, and there was Randall. Nils saw him cut off a buoy, and when he came up alongside, Randall like to've fainted dead away. The buoy was still on the washboards; he hadn't had a chance to throw it overboard. Nils took it and went off and left him, without saying a word.” She nudged Philippa's side. “Look, there's the buoy on top of those traps on the wharf, the black and red one. I'll bet Randall was some sick all the way home. I'll bet he'd have gone straight to Spain if he'd had gas enough.”

Philippa thought despairingly, How can there be anything more? Aloud she said in an aloof, cold voice, “Is that why you wanted me to come out here, Kathie?”

Kathie's blue-green eyes had the glitter of the sun on the sea. “I knew you wouldn't come if I told you why,” she said, “and you'd tell me I shouldn't come back either. When something happens around here, you have to take advantage of it, good or bad.” Her excited glance swung back to Randall, then to Nils standing on the beach.

“But Kathie, this is terrible, can't you see?” She longed to turn and run back to the Binnacle; she felt as if she could not endure any longer the dreadful inconclusiveness of the war of nerves. Yet some pride held her there, with the girl and yet opposing her. Kathie looked at this with the eyes of fourteen, avid for experience. Anybody's experience would do; she would rejoice in its drama even if, as in the case of Lucy, she felt the tragedy. But Philippa looked at it with the eyes of thirty, eyes that told her someone was going to get hurt.

“Look,” Kathie said, clutching her elbow.

Randall appeared at the head of the beach. He walked slowly, as if he could hardly lift his boots. He had been walking slowly whenever Philippa had seen him since Fort had stopped going to haul with him, but today he showed a meek and dreadful resignation, as if he were ascending the steps to the headsman's block. It was not easy to watch. Philippa moved, but Kathie, spellbound, tightened her grip, and there was no way to remove it short of slapping the tense hand.

“How's he ever going to get by Nils?” Kathie whispered. “I bet his stomach's twisting.”

Randall kept on coming. He took a diagonal way across the beach so that he would reach the road at a point beyond Nils, nearer home and safety. He kept his eyes rigidly forward, as if to catch Nils' eye would be to spring the trap. Philippa sensed the aching effort it cost him not to wipe his forehead, not to hurry. At last he was on the path toward home. And then Nils spoke to his stiff back.