The Ebbing Tide (31 page)

I'm flattered, I suppose
, she thought bluntly.
Any woman would be flattered to have Dennis Garland care for her. The woman who let him down was a fool, or worse
.

But was it because she was flattered that she felt confused by him, that she'd wanted him to go last night, and then had wanted him to stay? Was it because she was flattered that the now-familiar tension had begun as soon as they were alone, and she'd lashed out at him so senselessly?

The irons were suddenly heavy, the sound of Jamie's voice monotonous and irritating. The house was too small, too close. She was glad beyond reason when Owen and Ellen came home to dinner, yet she was relieved when they went out again, and she could get Jamie to bed for his nap.

It was not a good day. With all she had to do, there was nothing she wanted to do. It took all her self-control not to be short with Owen and the children. She lit the lamps in mid-afternoon to hasten the evening, and went to bed when Ellen did. She read until after midnight. Nils' evening letter she put aside altogether. Each attempt only reflected her own state of mind, and perhaps in the morning she could write a really good letter.

She should have been sleepy by the time she blew out her lamp, but she lay awake for a long time in the chill darkness, listening to the gusts of wind rattle the windows at the side of the house. It had gone around to the westward during the day, and whether it was blowing hard or not she couldn't really tell, for this was when Gunnar's windbreak served its purpose.

She had always loved to lie in bed and hear the wind rising outside, but tonight it was a lonely sound for her. Yet the loneliness she felt could not be assuaged by contact, it was far too remote for that. It made her vividly conscious of Nils' absence from her side; her skin seemed sensitive where the bed clothes touched it, her nightdress constricted her, her scalp itched. She slipped at last into a restless sleep.

It was dark at six o'clock in the morning now, and so she did not wake until the sun touched her face. It was after seven. Jamie still slept; no one else stirred in the house. She knew the weather before she got up; behind the spruces the huge, purple-shaded wind clouds sailed toward the east, and the sound of the wind came to her, a high, steady wail. It was a westerly, a dry, brilliant westerly. And a crazy westerly, because it could roar into the harbor and set the boats to pulling and plunging at their moorings like terrified horses. They'd had a long time to lunge and rear, for the wind had begun to rise at midnight, on the flood of the tide.

She went downstairs and inspected the oil bottle in the sitting-room stove. In the kitchen, she put kindling in the cookstove and started the fire. From the stove, with its satisfying roar and crackle of flames, she went to the sink, to dip cold water into the basin and wash her face. After she had dried her tingling skin, glad of the icy shock, she looked down at the harbor. The early sun sent the long shadows of her own house and Thea's across the field, and touched the dead grass with bright gilt. The air was heavy and trembling with the sound of surf, it even penetrated the walls of the house.

Across the open space between the Sorensen fish house and Grant's wharf Joanna could always get her first morning glimpse of the harbor and the eastern point, and now she saw the rising wall of rock, topped by its wind-twisted spruces; she saw the long dark ledge that reached out to the deeper waters of the outer harbor. Surf piled upon the ledge, dazzling white in the sunshine, and spray flew like smoke to the higher ramparts of rock. It was a beautiful shoreline with its slanting cliff, its crest of spruce, its surf thundering below; but it was a wicked shore when a helpless boat was drifting down upon it. She couldn't forget—ever—how the
Donna
and the
White Lady
had looked, that day in the spring when the ground line had chafed. It had been just such a day as this, cold and diamond-bright.

She looked at the eastern point now, and then looked again; for a moment she stared blankly, but only for a moment. Then she understood.

A boat lay defenselessly on her side against the dark, wet, rock-weed. The boiling surf that sent spray flying on the wind did not touch her now; the waves that had flung her ashore had been pulled back by the retreating tide. And now the boat lay quietly, a spent thing, like a gull tossed away by the sea, its life taken by the very force it had loved.

It was the
Donna
. Joanna knew it before her eyes scanned the moorings. She could see Sigurd's boat riding wildly, but safely; Francis' boat, Matthew's, Charles', even Owen's, which shared the
Donna's
mooring. The emptiness where Nils' boat should have been was as shocking to her as a physical hurt. For so many years the Donna had lain safely at her mooring, she had ridden out one storm after another—until that day in the spring. It had been a close call then. But this storm had taken her.

For an instant longer Joanna looked, her throat thickening. Then she shut her eyes. The boat seemed unscathed lying there, its rounded, sleek, white side gleaming in the morning sun. But no one needed to go and look closely at the
Donna
to realize what had happened to the other side, the side on which she lay.

Joanna's closed eyes stung. How long had the sea wrenched and pulled at her until she had parted her mooring and drifted into the surf? She had been such a proud and graceful thing, but now she was wreckage. She had never been known to let her captain down, whether he was Stephen Bennett or Nils Sorensen. But somehow, someone had let the
Donna
down, and while the Island slept, this was what had become of her grace and beauty and loyalty.

Joanna went upstairs, past the sleeping children, and into Owen's room.

“Get up, Owen,” she said. She blinked the tears back and stared hard at his sleep-heavy dark face to keep them from returning. “Nils' boat has gone ashore. She parted her mooring somehow. She's lying on Eastern Harbor Point now.”

“
Jeest
,” said Owen on a long slow breath, and sat up. She went downstairs again, fixed the fire automatically, and put on her coat. She was past the windbreak when Owen caught up with her. He didn't say anything as they walked together around the shore and out on the Point. She knew what he was thinking. He was responsible for the care of the moorings, and he'd slipped up, he'd forgotten. He'd been so intent on his pursuit of Laurie Gibson that he hadn't checked up on the mooring since that storm in the spring. He'd mentioned the need of a new pennant but evidently he'd let it go, putting off the task until a gale had come to catch him with the job undone.

She was not angry with him. He was suffering enough. It wouldn't help anything, or bring the
Donna
back again, to resent his neglect. She thought wryly,
He must be really smitten with Laurie
.

The side upon which the boat lay had been bashed in as if it had been no more than an eggshell. The wind tore at Joanna with its full strength out here on the Point, and fine, stinging spray blew against her face, but she didn't notice. She looked impassively at the wreck. She knew enough of boats to realize how much the
Donna
was bruised and broken beyond immediate repair. The splintered planking, the twisted timbers, the great hole where there had once been a graceful curve; she looked at it all, and reckoned the loss, but it was as if another Joanna stood there on the shore with Owen. Some part of her that could not bear this blow had shut itself away.

She glanced at her brother. His face was hard, cut like red-brown stone. There was a quick glitter on his lashes, and she turned away, shoving her hands down hard into her pockets. For Owen it was still their father's boat, and since they had been children the
Donna
had ridden the same mooring, and had never once broken away. Whenever they saw her there, it was something of their father left to them. And now Owen stood on the wet stones in the biting November wind, and knew perhaps a heavier, more barren, solitude than he had ever known before.

Joanna saw it all, without pain. The pain would come later. She began to walk away from the boat, wanting to get home before she broke down. She heard Owen's boots on the stones and knew he was coming behind her.

They met Sigurd coming around the beach, his yellow hair blowing in the wind, his heavy shirt open over his chest. “
Allsmägtige Gud!
. It's Nils' boat, ain't it?”

Yes, it was Nils' boat, and she would have to write and tell him what had happened. But there was something else. All the way to the house she moved under the shadow of it, like someone who had awakened to the vague knowledge of tragedy and is trying to remember what it is.

Owen stopped to speak to Sigurd, and she went on. In the house the teakettle was boiling noisily, and she pushed it back, and stood by the fire as if to warm herself. But she knew that no fire could reach the coldness she felt. . . . Other boats had gone ashore before this, and had been as badly broken up as the
Donna
. There had never been any good reason to believe that the
Donna
's security was a sure thing; every boat took a chance lying there in the harbor. But yet she could not help saying to herself,
Why should Nils be the one to lose a boat?
Of all the boats in the harbor it had to be his that had broken away from her mooring.

She would not listen to any reasonable thought that came to her; that it was Owen's fault and no unfair gesture of fate. If he'd been on the alert and had seen to the pennant in time the
Donna
would be riding the waves this morning with the rest of the fleet. . . . To dwell on this would have quickened her with the wholesome invigoration of justified anger. But she couldn't think about Owen, only of Nils.

Nils would be heartsick when he got her letter and knew what had happened to the white boat he'd put on her mooring that noontime when he'd said good-bye to the Island and all it held dear for him. She could almost see the way he would look, the quick tightening of his face, the shuttering of his eyes, when the letter was in his hands and the written words were flat and cold and cruel with the message she had sent. No matter how she tried to sheathe the truth, nothing could really blunt its edge. The
Donna
lay ravaged and broken on the rocks; there was no miracle that could restore her overnight to her mooring.

She went to the window and looked across the harbor toward the Point, and at the boat lying upon the coarse, jagged shore. Owen was coming toward the house, walking slowly, his head down as if he were tired. He stopped and waited, looking down past the Binnacle. Someone was coming; out of apathy rather than curiosity, Joanna watched, and saw Dennis Garland joining Owen in the path. They talked for a few moments, turning to look across the harbor, and she knew that Owen was explaining the cause of the wreck. Then she saw Owen glance up toward the house; her apathy vanished before a tide of dread that threatened to roll over her completely, until she saw that Dennis was not coming home with Owen after all. Owen was walking up the path alone. The tide ebbed out, leaving her as spent as the sea had left the
Donna
.

She shut her eyes against a sudden terror from within. What was there about Dennis that should affect her so? She looked back over the days since she had first known him. But now she couldn't think clearly about their congenial talks, their shared jokes, the safe,
good
part of knowing him; she was thinking about the way she had come to feel when she saw him, when she heard his voice, when she met his eyes. There was nothing either safe or good about this, and she hated it, she loathed it, she had refused to face it until now. The tide of dread began to race back, it caught her and tumbled and buffeted her in the surf, it tried to pull her out into the inky-green depths and then tossed her back again into the breakers.

Was it true, then, that like the
Donna
she was slipping her mooring—the strong, secure mooring of Nils' love—and drifting toward Dennis? She shook her head wildly, trying to stop the pounding in her ears.
Think calmly
, she told herself.
Think straight
. There was no reason on earth that should draw her toward Dennis. He had charm, yes; but Nils had charm too. He had a strong personality, but so did Nils. She liked the cut of his face, the shape of his hands, his build; but this shouldn't constitute love, or even attraction. And his gray eyes could not stab her as deeply or as sweetly as Nils' blue ones could do. Dennis loved her; but she had been loved before, and had never looked back at the lover.

Then why this quickening whenever she saw Dennis on the road, or when he caught her glance? She could not deny it, although she wished with all her heart that she could. Dennis drew her in spite of herself; merely to hear his name stung her with a pain as elusive and bright as quicksilver.

It was time to take it all into account. She stared out at the
Donna
, whose wet white side gleamed against the dark rocks. Owen was coming up by the windbreak, and she looked past him as if he didn't exist. She must write and tell Nils that he'd lost his boat. But she mustn't tell him that he was in danger of losing something far more important.

She looked down and discovered that her fingers were clenched tightly on the edge of the sink, so tightly that the tips were white. She loosened them, one at a time.

She knew what she must do now. From this moment on, she would have absolutely nothing more to do with Dennis Garland. Whatever he might think or wonder, she must keep far away from him.

W
HAT WAS LEFT OF THE
Donna
was hauled up on the grassground, where no waves could ever reach her. Owen was moody and downcast about it, and a pall hung over the house. Jamie was fractious, Ellen looked wan, and when the children were thus affected, Joanna took steps.

“Forget it, Owen,” she said to him one evening, after the children had gone to bed. She spoke with a philosophical crispness which she didn't feel. “Forget it, will you? I'm thankful it wasn't a boat that's in use. We can rebuild her sometime, after the war, when we can get the material. And for the time being we might as well forget about it.”