The Ebbing Tide (38 page)

“You felt as if you were guilty of something horrible,” he finished for her. “You've been torturing yourself, thinking you were disloyal to Nils. But you know now that you haven't done anything wrong, don't you? There's no flaw in your loyalty and integrity.”

“How can you say that?” she whispered. “How
can
you? After tonight.”

“Don't you understand yet?” He laughed at her gently. “First, stop thinking that you've fallen, like Lucifer. And listen; whatever I tell you, don't ever forget it. Promise?”

“I promise —”

You never cried when Alec died, you never openly grieved. Don't you know that there was still something locked in you that should have been freed long ago? If you had cried then, as you should have, you wouldn't have cried tonight. You wouldn't even have found yourself in my arms.”

The fire was dying down, and she could hardly see his face, but his voice was quiet and impersonal. “I've been two men to you, Joanna; I've never realiy been myself, as far as you're concerned. Because I could help you, because I happened to be around whenever you needed me and because I could lend you strength — I became Nils to you. In a small way I helped to fill the vacuum his going had left. And, because I bear some resemblance to him — and had the misfortune of falling in love with you, and showing it — I became Alec. That was a trick your subconscious played on you; it unlocked everything you thought you had stowed safely away, out of existence.”

“You've made it very clear,” she said slowly. At least you've made
me
clear to myself. I still don't feel as if I'd behaved very well, though.”

“Joanna, listen. I'm the one who hasn't behaved well.” His voice roughened. “Tonight, I might have taken another man's woman — the way another man took mine while I was away in the Pacific. It's enough to have fallen in love with you. I shouldn't have kissed you as I did a while ago!”

“You've
helped
me tonight,” Joanna said. “I know that now. I don't regret what has happened. It shows that you are strong, Dennis.” And while she said it, she knew it was true. She had found the answer, after all. “I'm sorry if you're in love with me, because I want you to be happy as much as I ever wanted anyone — even Nils — to be happy. But I'm not sorry that you kissed me the way you did, or that I wanted you to kiss me.”

Joanna stood now, her chin lifted, and met his eyes sincerely. “Thank you, Dennis. Thank you for everything.” Her thanksgiving came from her heart, like a prayer. “And now let's go make some more coffee.”

Dennis did not try to reply. He picked up the tray and followed her silently to the kitchen.

H
ELMI DROVE THEM
up to Limerock in the morning. It was dark when they left Pruitt's Harbor, the stars still blazed with cold fire; but they saw the dawn before they reached Limerock, and it was the beginning of another blue-bright, glistening day. Joanna had slept heavily, without dreaming, until Helmi woke her to tell her breakfast was ready. She had met Dennis without embarrassment, and with a sense of well-being that seemed incredible after the multiple shocks and confusions of yesterday.

Riding up to town, sitting between him and Helmi, she treasured her peace of mind as a rare gift. If only Nils would be kept safe, now, and Owen would be all right, she could ask for nothing more, ever.

They let Dennis out on a corner of Main Street. He had errands of his own to do. As they drove away, leaving him on the curb, waiting for the lights to change, Helmi said casually, “I like him. Don't you?”

“Very much,” said Joanna freely. “I hated to think of him when Aunt Mary sold the place to him. Now I hate to think of the Island without him.” She watched her sister-in-law's cleanly cut profile, serenely concentrated as she maneuvered her small car through the tangle of trucks that comprised Limerock's early morning traffic. “I haven't had much chance to talk with you, Helmi. I wish you'd come out to the Island.”

“When I have a vacation, I'll come. I get homesick for it, Joanna — believe it or not.” She gave Joanna a brief wry smile. “There are times when I think of the loneliness at the Eastern End and get very homesick indeed.”

“Do you think you'll ever live there again?” There were several meanings to the question; she hoped Helmi would catch them, and give her the right answer.

“If Mark wants to live there, we shall,” said Helmi. “It's up to Mark.”

“Not wholly,” suggested Joanna. Helmi gave her another glance, unequivocal and green.

“I said
Mark
. I want him to come home, Joanna—and soon. Mark has—” She swung the car out of traffic at last into a narrow side street; the early sun threw the blue shadows of houses and bare trees across the snow. “Mark has become very—dear to me, Joanna.” Her hands tightened on the wheel. “That's what you want to know, isn't it?”

“Yes,” said Joanna. There was nothing more to say but it seemed as if the one laconic word wouldn't cover the warm spring of relief that she felt.

“I don't know why it happened like this. Maybe in some queer way I've come to know him better since he's been gone . . . through his letters, and through remembering things he's done and said. Now he is real, and Stevie isn't.” She said the brother's name without a change of tone. “It used to be the other way around. Stevie used to be the only solid thing in my life, and now he grows fainter every day.” She shrugged. “I used to hate the woman who was going to have Stevie some day. Now, I wonder about her, and I hope that she deserves him, whoever she is; but I'm content to be waiting for Mark.”

“The world is full of women who are waiting for their men . . . and they're content about it,” Joanna said. “I mean, they don't want anybody else—”

Helmi nodded. “It's a good thing to be able to see the way clear ahead, if only they come safely home.” She stopped the car; they were in front of the big, old-fashioned rooming house where Bennett's Island people always stayed when they came to Limerock.

Donna had just come back from an early breakfast, and Charles and Philip, who'd slept aboard the
Four Brothers
in Limerock Harbor, were with her. Laurie came in after Joanna and Helmi arrived. She had a room down the hall. She had little to say, and she was pale, but luminously so; her pallor deepened for a moment to its lovely rose when both Charles and Philip offered her chairs, and when Donna called her
dear
. The family spoke freely of Owen, now that the peak of the strain had passed. He had been clear-headed in the evening, grim about his lost fingers but not a despondent as they'd feared. And Laurie had been there, as Joanna ordered; Owen seemed more engrossed by her than by his injuries. Now, in the morning, they all looked at her kindly and with a sort of reverence, because Owen cared for her more than for himself.

Charles was leaving for home at noon. He had his own pots to haul, and Owen's, and he was anxious to get at them. Joanna would go with him.

The
White Lady
was tied up beside the Public Landing when Joanna came down. She'd shopped for a few groceries, and for some birthday gifts for Ellen, who would be thirteen in another week; she'd gone around to the hospital to see Owen, who lay regally in bed with his arms in splints and bandages to the shoulders, and grinned at Joanna with a gallantry that made her forgive him for all the devilish, infuriating things she had once thought she could never forgive. It was amazing how you could know a man for all your life as well as she thought she knew Owen, and still be astonished as this.

Dennis and Charles sat on the
White Lady
's engine box, smoking their pipes in the mild noon, when she came aboard. “Been waitin' an hour,” said Charles, but not sourly. They took her packages from her and stowed them in the cabin. The engine tuned up sweetly; the big harbor was calm and blue, there was an air of enjoyable industry around its shores, the islands made a wavy pale violet line along the horizon.
And I'm going home
, thought Joanna, with the winged lifting of her heart the phrase had always given her. She was going home. Far beyond those near islands—Vinalhaven and North Haven sprawled along the sea—Brigport and Bennett's Island waited, unseen as yet, but waiting as they had always waited for their own to come back, whether across twenty-five miles of water or a whole continent.

Half-way, they met the
Aurora B
. coming in. Link Hall hung out of the pilot-house window to wave at them, grinning all around his cigar. They waved to him with eagerness and affection.

It was a pleasant, uneventful trip. Joanna spent most of it sitting on the engine box, watching the distant island slide by, watching the gulls, and the boats at work. The men talked by the wheel, but she felt no impulse to join them. She sat there, looking at the great bay, half-dreaming, half-planning. . . .

It was not quite three o'clock when the
White Lady
put into Brig-port Harbor, to pick up the Bennett's Island mail. Dennis and Charles went ashore, to walk up the steep rocky hill to the store. Joanna stayed aboard the boat, too contented to move. An occasional boat came in from hauling and tied up at the lobster car out in the harbor; then the polished surface of the water was broken up into endless ripples of silver on blue, and the rock reflections were shattered into splashes of wavering rose and tawny color. Between the brief interruptions of an engine, or a man's voice calling from a wharf, or the sound of oarlocks, the silence was absolute. Of course it meant a storm, but how lovely it was, how wonderful the stillness, and the splendor of light. . . . She was almost sorry when she heard the footsteps sounding hollowly on the wharf, and Charles and Dennis came aboard again.

“Old Fowler's in a mellow mood,” said Charles, tossing her mail into her lap. “Prob'ly figgered out a way to get out of payin' his income tax.”

“Or he's had a fruitful week cheating widows and orphans,” Dennis suggested. He cast off the lines, and Charles started the engine. As the
White Lady
backed and turned, he went into a lucid and profane discussion of the Fowler dynasty of Brigport. Joanna heard him only distantly. One of her letters was from Nils.

They were going down through the Gut now, among the moorings where the Brigport power boats and sloops rolled in the
Lady's
wake, and where the high rocky walls on either side of the narrow passage magnified the engine's roar tenfold. But Joanna didn't look up. She read Nils' letter twice before it really penetrated her awareness, before she could grasp in its entirety the fact that Nils was on his way home. There were no details.
He was simply coming home
. By the time she received the letter, he would be on his way across the country. He'd written from San Francisco.

She had always imagined that if she ever received such a letter she would shout it out wildly; but now she stood by the cabin with the letter in her hand and she didn't want to shout, or to cry, or to laugh. She didn't know what she wanted to do; she only knew that in a little while her happiness would descend upon her and she would feel like shouting
then
. But now the knowledge belonged to her alone, and it was too soon to share it with others when it was hardly real to herself.

Little things would make it real; when she told Jamie and Ellen, for instance. And when Jamie did or said something, and she could think,
Nils will be seeing him soon
. And when she remembered she could tell Nils things instead of writing them. And when she went to bed at night, knowing that in a little while, when she put out her arm in her sleep, Nils would be there.

Her heart began to beat hard, suddenly. She stared over the
White Lady
's bow at the Island coming out beyond Tenpound, its rocks rosy in the lowering sun, and knew that the letter was real at last; her happiness was beginning.

S
HE TOLD CHARLES AND DENNIS
when they reached the wharf, she told Ellen when she reached the house. And when the storm broke the next day, with wind and snow, never had a blizzard been more completely ignored. There was a holiday air in the house. Jamie talked constantly about Papa. Ellen moved around with a look of secret happiness. She said nothing, because it was her firm philosophy that if you talked about anything too much, it was likely not to happen.

Sigurd tramped up the path through the storm. He was boisterously happy. He'd sagged when Owen was hurt, and he was still horrified about the lost fingers, but at the same time he was so excited about his brother's return that he couldn't speak without shouting; his great voice reverberated through Joanna's small kitchen, and Jamie stared up at him in fascination. He went out to the barn and split wood for an hour, as if he were compelled to do
something
strenuous. He filled the woodbox to overflowing, piled more wood in the sun parlor and then went home, singing lustily in the teeth of the storm.

The storm gave way to a thaw. Then it appeared that the holiday air belonged to the whole Island. Nora called, and Mateel, and Leonie; and whenever Joanna went out, the men spoke to her about Nils.

Laurie came back to her teaching, with a wedding ring on her finger and a bloom of happiness about her that enchanted her pupils. The news that she and Owen were married diverted the attention from Nils for a day or so, and of course there were daily telephone bulletins about Owen that were good for several hours' conversation at least. But Nils was coming, he would be here any day now, and so everything swung back to him, sooner or later.

The thaw and its deceptive tinge of spring added to Joanna's intensity of waiting. Every morning she awoke at dawn, to the early morning crying of the gulls, who seemed to think it was March instead of the first of February, and wondered how she could bear this day if there were no word from him. At night she went to bed tired but happy in a light-headed, incredulous way. Young Charles bounded in daily; he had his heart set on a big time at the clubhouse by way of a welcome home. Finally, she vetoed it as tactfully as she could.