Bright Island

by Mabel L. Robinson

  Outside the bay was feather white. Dave was in his element. He headed the boat straight up to each marker and when Thankful pulled up the spray hood, threw it back with a clash. The gleaming water poured off their yellow slickers, the green lobsters writhed on the slippery deck, the slatted pots rose from dark depths, emptied, and fell again. The boy and girl laughed and pulled at the slimy ropes until every last pot had been rebaited. Then they scudded home before the wind and under a sky filled now with high clouds. They grew quiet under the heave and fall of the boat rushed forward by each wave. I’m being carried along before the wind, too, Thankful thought, and I can’t stop myself.

  Jonathan Curtis was better satisfied with the size of the haul than the need of making it on the Sabbath. “I’ll give you a run over to the mainland myself,” he even offered after dinner when he saw his wife packing up what was left of the apple pie for Dave.

  Thankful looked at the dishes stacked in the sink. “I’d just as soon,” she said. “I’d rather.”

  Dave grinned at Mary Curtis. “Would you?” he asked.

  “I’d like it fine.” She handed the package to Dave. “She’s a better sailor than dishwasher.”

  “We sail.” Thankful was firm. “I’m sick of engines.”

  Enough of the wind had gone down with the tide to leave a steady breeze. The boat heeled down on her side with a fair wind straight for the mainland dock. Thankful slouched under the tiller, and then got up regretfully. “You can take her over, I suppose, if I bring her back.”

  Dave took her place. “Now, no advice,” he said, “I can run this boat as well as you can.”

  They slashed along under the silent drive of the wind. Halfway across a great gull swooped around the boat and then dropped gently to the bowsprit. Thankful nodded at Dave. “You see, he can fly as well as I can.” Limpy ignored her, dipping pleasantly with the rise and fall of the keel.

  The dock lay ahead of them, curiously idle and empty except for a Sunday afternoon pair sitting on a pile of rope. “Glad I’m most through there,” said Dave. “First of the week I get my papers. Of course it’s slow season on the boat from now on, but it’s a good time to learn the ropes.”

  Thankful sighed. “I wish I wanted to get away as much as you do, Dave.”

  Dave stared thoughtfully at the pair on the wharf. The man had his arm around the girl. Then he looked at Thankful hauling in the jib. “You know what we might do, Thankful,” he called out to her. “Come over here a minute, can’t you?”

  “Just a jiff.” She made the sail fast. “What do you want?”

  “I got an idea.” Dave looked quite excited. “Now you don’t want to go off to school, and I got a good job.”

  Thankful perched on the centerboard and stared at him. “Well, what of it?”

  Dave’s sunburn seemed to deepen. “Why, you hang around the island another year or so—you know, doing things you want to—and I’ll get promoted—and then”—he waved an explanatory hand at the couple now near enough to look embarrassed—“why then, we could hitch up, too.” He brought the boat up into the wind and held her there fluttering while he waited for Thankful’s decision.

  Thankful continued to stare at him, but as if she did not really see him. “Well, now that’s good of you, Dave, to think of that,” she finally said. “But you know a funny thing happened when you said hang round the island a year or two. I didn’t want to! I’ve thought such a lot about how awful it would be to go that I guess I kind of want to try it.” She looked amazed.

  Dave gave the sail a whiff of wind and slid her expertly up to the wharf. “Oh, well,” he said, “might as well try it. You and I and the gull.” They watched Limpy float his great wings over the dock with an expectant eye for dead herring. “But it wasn’t a bad idea at all. It might work out yet.” He brought his eyes back to Thankful’s startled face. “Well, good-bye. I won’t be seeing you again with us both leaving so soon.” He kissed her gently and leaped up on the wharf. From there he grinned down at her. “I’ll be sending a good-bye present over by your Pa,” he announced, “and I bet you’ll like it.”

  Thankful shoved the tiller over and crawled out into the wind. What would Dave think of next! What utter crazy nonsense! She waved an old paint rag at him and headed up for the island. He was good to try to save her from going off to school. Her heart warmed. He always did stand by me. Limpy flew swiftly after the Gramp and caught at his perch. Thankful reached under the seat and pulled out the pie box. As long as he forgot it, she thought, we might as well eat it. She divided it with the gull who swallowed his share whole and watched hers with small greedy eyes.

  Then she felt better. But she couldn’t get over her astonishment that down somewhere in a depth that she had not probed, she really wanted to try herself out. And with that knowledge the gloom which had darkened her spirit for so long lifted like fog and let in the light. She sprang to her feet and steering the boat with the slight pressure of her body against the tiller, she sang. When had she done this before? Let them try to catch her! Let them try to catch her! Just a twinge, and the recollection was gone.

  The island was good, but so might be the rest of the world. And she could come back to it. Maybe sometime with Dave. But that was all as vague as her promise to Gramp about marrying the sea captain and settling down. Now she was young and strong and filled with zest. The sun dropped, the sky darkened behind the stars, and the sea under them, the wind touched the tops of the sails just enough to drift her into the mooring. The gull’s impatient wings took him out of her sight. But when she ran up the path toward the yellow squares of the lighted windows, the homesick pain at leaving them was gone.

  PART II

  Away from Bright Island

  A Strange Land About Her

  Not really gone, she found, when the day came for sailing away from Bright Island. And she thought as she looked back at the silver-gray house softly touched by the silver-gray fog that the homesick pain would always be as much a part of her as her knowledge of every turn of the roof, every pane of the windows which watched her until she lost them in the mist. That other day when she had thought herself free from the place must have come from some odd excitement stirred by Dave’s words. If he had asked her this morning, she would stay, she would do anything to deliver herself from this ache in her throat, in her heart. But Dave was on the deck of his cutter, and she was here in the motorboat with her little haircloth trunk beside her well covered with her old slicker to keep it dry.

  “Pa, could I take the wheel?” If she could get her hands at work maybe her heart would hurt less.

  “I don’t know as I would.” If Jonathan Curtis was moved by the departure of his last child from the island where he had expected them all to settle comfortably around him in houses of their own, he meant to reveal no softening. Mary Curtis had cried a little down there on the beach when they rowed away from her in the dinghy. Though Thankful knew well enough that she was even now deep in the vegetable cellar sorting the winter turnips. Her mother knew, Thankful realized suddenly, how to turn her feelings into doing things. She’d try again.

  “Why not, Pa?” Her throat would hardly let her talk. “I’ll watch the compass. And anyway the fog is glinting.”

  He shook his head without looking at her. “No handling a boat in those clothes, my girl.”

  She agreed with him bitterly. The slippery new soles and high heels of her shoes were never meant to stand on. The tight-sleeved coat could never swing the arc of the tiller. She crouched beside her trunk and stared out through the fog at the gull wings which cut into it and out. One of those free wild birds might be hers, she thought, though now he was hers no more than Bright Island, and the silver-gray house, and the small sailboat hauled above high water and covered with canvas for the winter. She felt suspended in space between the things which had anchored her and had now let her go, and the unknown anchorage which the future might give her. It was an odd floating feeling which made her giddy and lost. She wished that she
could grasp the hard smooth wheel with her two hands. But then she saw her fingers stiffened in their new gloves and felt as if they would never bend around good hard wood again.

  The boat pushed on down the shore, never even coming in sight of the wharf where she had so often dropped Dave. Down the coast to the big harbor where Thankful had never been. Nor indeed had Jonathan gone there often, and his whole mind was set on the channel buoys appearing and disappearing in shadowy warning. He was going at low speed now and he passed the horn to Thankful. All around them the fog had come alive with nervous hoots held into constant rhythm by the unexcited who-o-o-o of the foghorn at the lighthouse. It steadied Thankful and she slipped her horn’s beat into it, one, two, three.

  Then they were at the dock where men rushed about instead of leaning idly against the piles to watch you land. Thankful looked at her father when he had made the boat fast, and knew that he had no more idea than she had about what to do next. She could feel him hating to leave his boat. She pulled off the old rain cape and folded it on the seat. From a box under it she took out Dave’s present which had come over by boat only the day before. She had only to look at it to feel again that warm gratitude that made Dave suddenly near and dear. He had saved her from the horror of the red and black hat with this small neat casque which fitted closely over her fair hair. It was not even uncomfortable! How could Dave have known so exactly what to get! She could see him, big and clumsy in the shop, fingering the hopeless muddle which she would never have faced, and finally balancing this small blue felt on the tip of one great finger for the saleswoman to wrap. Her eyes stung as she smoothed it and turned to Jonathan stowing away and tying down everything removable on his boat.

  “The bus is where they said it would be, Pa,” she told him. “If you’ll take the trunk over there to it, you won’t need to get out of sight of the boat. I can manage the rest of the way.”

  Jonathan looked up from the compass which he was locking into the diddy box. Thankful knew his relief, and how he would feel when he could set up that compass and go sailing away from this noisy harbor. She knew how he would feel. And she must go on the other way. For one hot, wild flash her spirit flung itself back with him, and she was chugging home to the peace of the warm kitchen, and her wide-open windows under the eaves. She was amazed to find herself climbing the slippery dock ladder and leaning over to help Jonathan swing the trunk up from the dinghy. You went right on, she decided, after you had once started because part of you had to stay steady even when all the rest was shaken. She walked over to the bus which stood empty except for the driver who hoisted the small trunk to the top with a swing of one arm.

  Jonathan stood awkwardly at the window where he could watch his boat. “Good-bye,” he said, and she thought that he bent forward to kiss her, but the bus shot ahead with a whoosh, and Thankful saw him lope back to the edge of the dock.

  She suddenly knew great relief, as if some hard struggle had come to an inevitable conclusion. She need fight herself no more about going ahead. She was cut away from the last mooring. She had no choice but to go on. The youth rose in her and tugged her on, as it had away from Dave when he had asked her to stay. She settled back against the cushions and pondered with great interest on the ugliness of the passing town.

  The bus turned into a wide street so crowded with trolley cars and automobiles that Thankful could not believe it would find space for itself. The rush of the cars past the window made her draw her head in and edge out on the seat. The clang and roar beat like heavy surf over her, yet there was something oddly exciting about the way she was dashed through it. She held her breath as if she were about to swim under water.

  The driver slewed around a corner and ducked his head in at Thankful at the same instant. Her breath whistled through her teeth, but miraculously she was still afloat. “Got to meet a train,” he announced and pulled in to the curb just as a great engine roared into the station. The noise of the street was but a faint murmur behind it. She clapped her hands over her ears and even her hands were strange in their stiff gloves. She reassured herself with a swift recollection of the picture of the school, quiet and high on a hill.

  She dropped her hands in her lap tight closed together. The driver was not bringing freight, but girls and boys, the street suddenly alive with them. Behind them poured porters with neat strapped bags and coats and pigskin cases spattered with odd bright labels. Great trunks filled the platform by the baggage car. The driver flung a handful of checks at a truckman and hoisted the bags up beside her trunk. Instantly the bus was full of young people. Thankful had never seen so many together in her life. Nor could she think of any live creatures, wild cattle ranging in pasture, porpoises slashing under her boat, she could think of none so terrifying as this milling bright group full of laughter.

  From her corner her eyes followed them warily until she realized that they saw her no more than the spare tire. Once a tall dark boy swayed with the bus against her. He smiled down at her with a brief, “Sorry,” and returned to the girl beside him, her arm locked in his for steadiness. The two seemed to know each other well, she thought. Her intent eyes dodged through the crowded bus to see them. They called to each other and their speech sounded odd to Thankful and pushed her still further outside like a foreigner. Nothing on the island had prepared her for these bright creatures!

  She remembered how Gladys had scorned them as stuck-up, and thought how easy it would be if she, Thankful, were now sitting at a high school desk with her own kind of people around her. But she still wanted stubbornly not to be there. The island would not bear thinking about, but living with Gladys was another matter.

  The bus, well out of town now, swept along a shore road with gray waves swishing against it. Thankful was glad that the fog was too thick for her to see the outlying islands. Her lungs caught at the salt damp air as if they had stopped breathing through the city. The boy in front of her bent down to the open window where his face was on a level with hers. “Smells good, doesn’t it?” he said, and she nodded breathlessly. He straightened up and Thankful knew that he hadn’t even seen her.

  Some sensitive plate in her mind had registered his face, clear and dark, and she thought how unlike Dave and her brothers he was. He seemed so carefully made, as finished as a beautiful sloop. Even his voice was different, clipped and sure. When he said, “Chicago doesn’t smell like that!” Thankful thought how far to come to school, and her own island seemed suddenly near.

  “Clam flats!” sniffed the girl who clung to his arm. And Thankful laughed because the tide was in.

  The boy bent again, his eyes searching the cove. “If Donnel hasn’t put my boat off …” He frowned into the fog—then, “It’s there! It’s there!” and Thankful for the life of her could not help turning her head to see it.

  He had a boat, that boy, a beautiful expensive-looking knockabout, polished and fine like himself. Swifter than the Gramp, she conceded, but not so staunch. I could out-sail him in a stiff breeze, she thought, and then remembered that there was no chance. It was as if a candle had been lighted and then blown out. Then it was Robert this, and Robert that, as if they all liked him and his boat.

  The bus left the sea so suddenly that Thankful had not known it was gone until she felt thick smooth air in nostrils which knew only the sharp tang of the ocean. Her head went up, alarmed like a deer, at the close pressure of the trees over the bus. The car moved swiftly through the shut-in road, straight inland. Even the mainland had never had this close heavy smell! It must be better, she thought, when she could get out of the bus. Six miles from the sea, the catalogue had said. And already she felt as if she were a fish gasping for the wash of the cold water across its gills.

  Mile after mile. Then the bus swerved through stone posts up a gravel drive and gritted to a stop before the white colonial house of the catalogue. Thankful’s ears hummed and she felt as if she were still rushing on though she sat immovable in her corner. She watched the bright stream of boys and girls pour out between
the pillars and knew that she must follow them.

  Thankful sat there. What was she doing here? Daughter of an islander, thrust into a life which had nothing to do with her. Which never could take her in. She would go back. But what of Gramp, she suddenly thought. Daughter of an islander, but granddaughter of a sea captain who sailed himself into every port. She walked out of the bus through the wide door of the great house.

  She went through the office where she signed her name and answered the questions of a worried little man, and then back into the hall to claim her luggage with the rest. They were clustered about her small trunk, and the girl whom Robert had called Selina was bending over it in laughter. Thankful saw how strange it looked among the thick-skinned bags and she hardly knew how to claim it. She stood quietly waiting until Selina straightened up and saw her.

  “Oh, it’s yours.” The girl continued to smile. “Isn’t it cute? I’ll tell John to take it around with the other maids’ luggage.”

  Thankful knew nothing to say except the truth. “I’m not a maid. I am going to study here.”

  The rest of the crowd had backed away and she could hear the high chatter of their voices drifting until they no longer pressed upon her. She gained confidence. “Yes,” she repeated, “I’m going to study here. And this is my trunk.” She looked at the slip in her hand. “It is to go to room 312.”

  “My Lord!” The girl stared at her with round blue eyes. “Look what I’ve drawn!” And she held out a slip marked 312.

  Thankful shook her head. “I don’t know what you mean. Is there a mistake that we both have the same number?” She was finding it hard to breathe.

  “It means—oh, my Lord!—it means …” The tragic intensity made Thankful tremble. “It means that we are roommates!”

  It had not occurred to Thankful that she might be put in the room with someone else. She had always had her own room. And to be penned up with this girl who looked upon her as a servant! “I don’t like this any better than you do,” she said surprisingly. “Come back in the office where we got the numbers.”