Time Is Noon (10 page)

But she went. He was there before her and without a word he began to kiss her and to fondle her with his smooth expert hands. And she had not the heart to ask why two days ago he had not kissed her or wanted to touch her. She did not understand him. He was strange and not to be understood. She only said sadly and at last after long silence, “Why do you love me at all?”

“Why do I love you?” he repeated. They had risen from the log where they had sat. He looked up at her, and ardor flew into his eyes again. “You’re like a lovely boy, Joan,” he said. “I love you because you’re so lovely—and like a boy—you’ve a boy’s head and a boy’s mouth. Look at your hands—” He held outspread on his own palm her strong spare hand. “Even your hand is like a boy’s! I wish you’d cut off your long hair.”

His face was dry and brown and wrinkled in the hard sunlight and for the first time he looked old to her. She saw him for one moment as himself, as Martin Bradley who had always lived in the village. Something repelled her. Was there some odor about him? It was faintly sweet, faintly vile. It was like a perfume a woman might have used upon her handkerchief yesterday.

“We’ll never be married,” she said suddenly.

“Darling—” he began.

“You’ll never marry anybody,” she said.

“Darling,” he began again, and drew her toward him by the hand he held.

But now she knew he was repulsive to her. “No,” she said abruptly. “I’m going to South End to meet my father at the mission.” She remembered that on Sunday afternoon her father went to South End. She could go to her father. She wanted her father.

She strode off sharply and left him on the instant. She held her body straight and hard and she did not look back once to see what he did. But within herself she began to weep. Behind her straight grave face she was weeping inwardly and bitterly, and when she asked herself why, she found herself crying in her heart, “I wish it had not been he who kissed me first.” But she forced her feet to go on and on, and soon she was at her father’s chapel door.

In the small bare room, she sat down at the very back and watched. The room was crowded with shuffling curious people. They were dark and sullen. They were yellow and livid. They were filled with black blood and white, with blood ill-fused and cross-currented. But when they were old, their faces grew placid, aged beyond good or evil, as tranquil after evil years as Mr. Parker or Mrs. Parsons in their goodness. All the faces were upturned to her father who towered over them.

She turned her face upward to him, too, with a rushing sense of safety in his goodness. He was to be trusted because he was so good, so simply good. She lifted her face to him again.

But inside her body something beat and ached strongly. Her defrauded body, denied, drew back upon itself its own ardor. To what should touch and kiss proceed, then? her body inquired most passionately. To which her good brain answered coldly and relentlessly, “He would never have married me.”

So she turned to her father and received from him hungrily another sort of food. Among all the others she sat and received certain words for food. “And Jesus Said, ‘Come unto me all ye—’” Surely this was a sort of food her father gave her, too, while he gave to the others. She listened anxiously when he told of the prodigal son. She listened, groping for something from her father.

But then it seemed to her she could not, after all, bear his unearthly physical presence. While he was standing in benediction over the restless half-subdued crowd she slipped away and swung solitary down the country road toward home. She was glad for the dusk. No need to turn her head now toward that dale, no need, for he was long gone. She was clear of him now. No more—no more of his kisses! Her mother and her father had her back again. She would go back into them. Tomorrow she would humble herself and say to her mother, “I have been a fool.” The prodigal son two thousand years ago in the old story had said, “I have sinned.” Perhaps it was the same thing. She turned at the gate of the manse to enter.

But as she turned she saw someone standing there, waiting for her. It was not a man—not Martin. It was a woman. A trembling hand came out to her and she seized it and knew it.

“Why, Netta Weeks!” she cried. She forced heartiness into her voice. Poor Netta, for whom she was always too busy! They had never had their talk.

“I had to come, Joan—I had to see you—”

“Yes, Netta?”

“Everybody’s saying—they’re all saying—” The voice choked, the twitching hand tried to free itself.

But Joan held it hard. “What are you saying?” she demanded.

“You and Martin—and I saw you once—when I got off the train—I saw him—Oh, Joan, I’ve never told anybody, but we used to go together—and I thought—I was sure if ever he married anybody, he’d marry me!”

Now strength came pouring into her, good scornful prideful strength. Oh, how could she ever be clean of his kisses?

“Did he?” She heard her own voice very cold and clear. “I’m sure he meant it. There’s nothing between Martin Bradley and me.”

“Oh, Joan!” Out of the darkness she felt Netta’s head lean upon her shoulder, and she heard her weep and she felt her hand clutched again. “Oh, Joan, I’m so relieved!”

She shrank away from the leaning head, from the weak hot hand. She did not want to be touched. No one must touch her. “Nothing—nothing at all,” she repeated cheerfully. “Good night.” She moved away quickly toward the house.

But she never went to her mother with any confession of herself. She was saved it. For she could not speak that same night, not with the dry sterile pain she bore in her defrauded body. It was so dry a pain that she felt fevered with it. Her mouth was dry, her palms were dry, when she thought, I will never see him again—I will not. If he comes back I must remember the moment this afternoon when I hated him. I must hold fast to that hate, because he’s never really loved me—never wanted to marry me. While I was loving him terribly, he was only—playing.

She scarcely saw the others in the lamplight. Beside the fire with them she was immensely alone. Far away she saw them, heard them. Her father was saying, “I had a very good meeting at the mission, Mary. I believe the Spirit is working among those people.”

Francis sat in the next room at the dining table whistling as he sharpened a pencil for his homework. She knew the tune, she had heard it often during the winter, and she had sung it at a campfire, delighting in knowing that while she sang her voice rose clear as a thrush’s note above every other, but she could not have spoken its name tonight. Her mother read aloud a letter from Rose, but she could not understand what it told, though her mother said contentedly as she folded the letter, “I am glad the cashmere fitted. The gold is almost the color of her eyes.”

Nothing was near to her. She sat hunched deeply in the old blue chair, staring into the fire, crying to herself, “How shall I ever be clean of his kisses?” And then to her terror she made another cry. “What shall I do if he never kisses me again?” She shivered and stared into the fire, her book open on her knees. Where were they? Why did they not come near, these who were her own? Why was the fire cold? Her mother caught her look and her instinct flew awake, like a bird frightened by the chance touch of a wind, threatening storm.

“Joan, you are ill!”

“No,” she answered quickly. “No, not ill. I’m tired. I’m going to bed. I’m all right.”

She fled from them. She could not speak tonight, not when there were two voices clamoring in her. How could she silence one—how not speak what she did not want to tell? She must wait until she was clear, until she was sure she was glad that Martin was never to touch her again. She lay in her bed and began to sob suddenly and quietly, her face in her pillow. The door opened and she stopped her sobs instantly. She held her breath. It was her mother, driven by unease.

“Sure you’re all right, child?”

She swallowed and turned her face up in the darkness. She made her voice, even and careless. “Sure—only sleepy.”

Her mother came over to the bed, and went to give her one of her seldom given kisses. But she did not move to meet it, and in the darkness the kiss fell upon her hair. Her mother laughed. “Where are you? There—good night, darling!” She patted the covers, waiting a little. But still Joan made her voice even and careless. “Good night, Mother.”

So her mother went away and the door closed. Perhaps tomorrow she could tell. But tonight her breast was hard and cold and shut. She must weep to ease herself, weep as long as she could, so that she might sleep at last.

She was awakened by a soft uncertain knock at the door. It was not a knock she knew. She heard it through her sleep and she seemed to come up for a long way toward it, through a long silence until she heard her own voice calling drowsily, “Yes—yes? Come in—” But she was not awake. She was not awake until the door opened and she saw her father standing there in the doorway, his gray cotton bathrobe clutched about him. He looked immensely tall and thin and out of the folds of the collar his neck rose bent and thin as a bird’s neck, and his head with the high white brow looked much too large for the thin neck.

“You’d better get up, Joan,” he said. “Your mother’s ill this morning.”

Then she was awake indeed. “I’ll be there right away,” she said. But even though alarm was beating in her breast she waited to leap out of bed until he had shut the door softly and carefully and until she heard his slippers pattering down the hall. He had always been shy of his body before his children. She had scarcely seen him even in his gray bathrobe except as a shadowy figure slipping in and out of the bathroom, a towel over his arm. If he met her at such times he did not speak to her. Because of him she stopped now to tie her own kimono securely about her waist and to find her slippers. But she stayed no longer. She hurried fearfully down the hall. Something was about to happen. In the early morning she felt life impending, large, looming, unknown. At her mother’s door she hesitated, dreading not so much to go in as to begin upon something that was about to change. “I’ve got to go on,” she said half-aloud, and opened the door, dreading.

Instantly her dread sharpened and focused upon her mother’s face. The room was empty except for her mother’s face, lying upon the pillow, turned to the door, waiting for it to open. The blankets were drawn tightly about her shoulders, tightly about her neck. Her body lay small and scarcely mounded under the covers. But the face was vivid. Withered, and strangely yellow in the hard morning light, it was vivid because of the great dark despairing eyes.

“I’ve got to give up, Joan,” she said. “It’s my legs. They won’t hold me. I got up to take my bath and they gave under me like old rotten sticks.”

She stared down at her mother’s face, horrified at the change. Surely it had not looked like this yesterday—this was the whiteness of the pillow and the counterpane, this was the bleakness of the gray hair drawn back from the forehead. She was afraid again. “What shall I do?”

“Go downstairs for me when you are dressed.” Now it was her mother deciding, and somehow she was immediately comforted. “See that everything is right for the breakfast. Let me see—It’s Monday. Tell Hannah not to buy much meat—not a big roast or anything. There’s enough left from yesterday—maybe have baked beans for dinner tomorrow and that hash tonight. Frank likes beans. See that your father gets his two cups of coffee—like as not he’ll forget to ask. And I’d started to write to Rose. You’ll find the letter in my desk. Just put a little note in saying I don’t feel so well but I’ll be up tomorrow and mail it so she’ll get it tomorrow. Now hurry, dear—”

“Yes, Mother,” she answered. She felt lighter. Listening to her mother’s commands, hearing her mother’s voice strong, the room was natural to her again. Her mother turned over and closed her eyes. Now she looked more herself and as she might look sleeping. Closing those great shadowy eyes made her face her own again.

“Don’t you want anything to eat?” Joan asked.

“No,” her mother answered drowsily. “I want only to rest. I’ll be up again tomorrow. I’ll just rest a little today. Such a help to have you—”

Her voice dropped off into a whisper and Joan went away. But at the door her mother’s voice caught her and held her back. It came strongly and clearly, so clearly that she turned instantly and saw her mother’s eyes open again. “If Hannah has boiled eggs for breakfast, and she will if you don’t tell her not to, you crack Frank’s for him. He minds hot things—his skin’s so tender.” The eyes stayed open until she answered. “Yes, I will, Mother.”

In her mother’s place at the table she felt strange to herself. Everything was strange because the mother was not there. It was she who bound them into one and when she was not in her own place they were each separate and desultory and critical of each other. “You have made my coffee too sweet,” her father said in mild surprised rebuke.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, in equal surprise. He did not then, as he seemed to do, eat whatever was before him. It was that her mother always set before him what he liked. The eggs came in boiled and she cracked two in a cup for Francis, a quick irritation hot in her breast when they burned her fingers. Why should his fingers not be burned? He was late to his breakfast as usual. She should have called him. Now she remembered that each day their mother called him several times and she had forgotten this morning to call him at all. She must go—but before she could rise he was at the door.

“Say, what’s the matter?” he demanded indignantly. He halted, his eyes astonished upon Joan. “Say, where’s Mom?”

“She’s ill,” Joan answered coldly. But when she looked into his tempestuous face she felt herself beginning to feel like her mother. His cheeks were ruddy and dark and he had put on his red tie. Her voice grew milder. “I forgot she always called you. Here are your eggs. It’s late—you’d better begin.”

Now she could remember what her mother did for Francis. Now she knew she had always secretly noted with a small inner jealousy everything her mother had done for Francis. But she did it all too, this morning, half against her will, buttering his toast, stirring the sugar and cream into his coffee, putting the jam in his reach. Even her voice for the moment sounded like her mother’s voice. “Hannah, bring in fresh toast for Francis—Frank, pass me Father’s cup.”