The Dawning of the Day Read Online Free Page A

as high as his head.
    The engine was shut off, and in a sort of entranced silence the boat slid close to the green-slimed spilings. Asanath sat on his heels at the top of the ladder, smiling in the shade of the duck-bill. “Been a miserable long trip, hasn’t it?”
    â€œThe last part was the best.” She looked around at the two boys. Charles was taking off his oil clothes, his head studiously bent, but Fort grinned.
    â€œWe ain’t lettin’ her land till you get the red carpet down, Asa.”
    â€œWhy son, it’s been down for seven days hand-running, with me holding one end and Suze at the other. So start handing her up!”
    Asanath’s hard brown hands reached down to help her over the top of the ladder. She looked down at the boys in the boat. Charles was getting her luggage out of the cuddy.
    â€œThank you both,” she said. “I meant it, you know. The last part of the trip was the best.”
    â€œMa’am,” said Fort, sweeping off his cap and holding it over his stomach. Charles looked up and smiled. How that face must excite the island girls , she thought wryly.
    â€œAny time,” he said. “It was a pleasure. But you’d better thank my uncle, she’s his boat.”
    â€œYou thank him for me. Tell him she’s a beautiful boat.”
    â€œSee, you’re learnin’ the lingo already,” said Fort. “You made a real good choice, Asa.”
    â€œOf course I did,” Campion said benignly. He shook hands with Philippa. “Good to see you, Mis’ Marshall. I’ll hand you over to Suze while these hellions get your gear ashore.”
    They went up the wharf between the walls of new traps, each with a clean blue and white buoy lying on a coiled warp inside. The planks seemed to lift under her feet, and she put her hand out to the weathered shingles of the fishhouse. Campion said, “Place’ll be heaving under you for the rest of the day.”
    Then the wharf gave way to the land, and the ground felt warm and firm through the soles of her shoes. She stopped and looked back at the harbor, beginning at the breakwater and the big wharf on the other side, and following the shore all around to the place where she stood. She knew she would soon become accustomed to the wharves rising out of the water and the houses that were so close to the shore they must shudder in their foundations whenever there was any great surf. But now everything had the high savor of strangeness. Here were the great winds and light and space. She thought of Justin; he used to say there were places that could exalt a man or beat him down to nothing. She knew in this moment that Bennett’s Island was one of them.
    The solitude of noon hung over the island. There was no one in sight but Asanath Campion, lighting his pipe as if he had all day to wait while she stood and stared, and the two boys in the boat heading out across the harbor toward the moorings. She had been expected, yet no one was out to see her arrive. It seemed like an instinctive delicacy on the part of the islanders, to go on with the regular details of their existence as if she were not a curiosity.
    Then she saw someone after all, a young man coming along the shore path between clumps of bay and wild rose. His dungarees rode low on his lean hips, and the inevitable duck-billed cap shaded his face. He walked slowly, with his thumbs in his belt, as if his whole inner self-were far from the spot and there was no force to move him but the wind.
    There were two houses besides Asanath’s on this side of the harbor, the further one white-painted and with zinnias and dahlias a glitter of color in the dooryard, flowers that must have often felt spray from the rocks on the other side of the path. But the house between this one and the Campions’ was boarded up and needed paint. The young man stopped and looked at it. He pushed back his cap, and Philippa saw the craggy profile of a