Time Is Noon (11 page)

Then perversely she found a pleasure in it, the pleasure of something to do. Last night she had wept herself to sleep—yesterday she had met Martin in the dale where she would never meet him again. But this morning was another life for her. There were things she must do—a house, a family, a sick woman to be tended. When Francis had swallowed his breakfast and dashed up the stairs to see his mother, before school, when her father had wiped his lips and folded his napkin meticulously into the old silver ring that he had had since he was a child and had gone away into his study as usual, it was somehow pleasant to sit there in her mother’s place. It was pleasant to answer Hannah.

“Miss Joan, I’d better be getting down to the butcher’s.”

“I think you needn’t go today, Hannah. We’ll have baked beans tomorrow—Francis likes them—and today we can have that meat left over made into hash.”

“Just as you say,” said Hannah, docile as she had never been before, Hannah who had once spanked her for spilling a tin of coffee into the sink. She clattered a heap of dishes together and went back into the kitchen.

Now as she sat in her mother’s place the whole room began to shape about her in a new way. It was almost like a strange room in some other house. All her life she had seen the table, the chairs, the pictures, the old carved buffet, from her own place and in a certain same composition of planes and angles. At this moment these were all changed, just as the garden was changed as she looked out of the window. She could see from the window what she had not seen before when she sat at the table—the north corner of the lawn, the two big maples, and the front of the church and the steeple, but with the top cut off. She felt the whole house gather about her strangely. Today she was something more to it than she had been yesterday. Yesterday it had looked to her mother but today it looked to her. And it was more to her, too, than it had ever been. Yesterday, only yesterday afternoon, it had been no more than a place from which to escape. In the afternoon after the heavy Sunday dinner it had been dull and close and heavy about her, and she had been impatient with its dinginess, and so she had escaped into the sunshine and then against her own will her feet went toward the dale. But this morning she did not want to escape—she must go all over the house, straightening, freshening, putting fresh flowers in the vases. It was almost her own house.

The door opened and Francis thrust his head in the crack. “You still sitting there? Say, Joan, I didn’t want to wake her up. She was sound asleep and she looks awfully tired, even when she’s asleep. Besides, I didn’t want to tell her I’d be home late tonight—we’re going down the road—a bunch of us—”

She found herself speaking for her mother anxiously. “But, Frank, your lessons—”

But to him she was nothing but herself. “That’s my business,” he retorted, and banged the door.

She jumped from her seat. She was furious with him for a second, a sister’s fury, but her father came in helplessly, and she paused. “What is it, Father?” she asked.

“On Monday afternoon,” he began, “I usually make pastoral visits, and I’ve mislaid my little black book. I cannot remember where I went last, and I usually mark the name. Your mother wrote down the complete list for me alphabetically in a little black book, and I can’t find it.”

She was needed again and so assuaged for Francis’ independence. “Where did you have it, dear?” she asked. Her voice was rich with kindness, as her mother’s was when any of them needed her.

He put his hand to his brow in a gesture of bewilderment. “I can’t remember,” he said in agitation. “Your mother—”

He was for the moment as different to her as the house. Was this simple creature the priest of God whom she saw coming out of the vestry every Sunday morning to preach to them all, radiant with assurance? She said as she would have said to console a child, “It must be in your study somewhere. I’ll come and hunt for it.”

She went out and he followed her hopefully. Under a heap of his papers she found it. “This it?” she said, holding it out to him and smiling.

“Yes,” he answered, and laughed a small noiseless laugh and sat down at his table, instantly forgetting her. She went back to the dining room and began to clear the table. She hurried happily. There was a great deal to do.

All morning the house grew thus at once more strange and more real. She tiptoed several times to her mother’s room, but each time her mother lay motionless in sleep. Heretofore her own room had been the only real part of the house to her. In her own room she had been meticulous, placing the furniture exactly, studying the effect of each picture and small ornament. But the rest of the house had been neutral, a place in which to live and share life. There were certain pictures she did not like and secretly she had wished when she came home from college that her mother would take them down from the walls. She had thought often, If ever I have the chance I’ll take them down. Now she looked at them uncertainly—Hope sitting upon the world, Christ entering Jerusalem, Samuel in the temple. But, no—her mother would be up tomorrow. The house was not quite her own.

Tomorrow came and her mother was not up. When Joan entered her room this second morning already it did not seem strange to see her mother lying there. But today there was fear in her mother’s dark eyes. “You’d better send for Dr. Crabbe, Joan,” she said, and then, “I don’t feel able to get up and wash myself. Fetch the basin here, dear.”

This was no common weariness. Joan, troubled, watched her mother wash herself slowly, stopping often to rest. The skin on her face and hands shone yellowly. She lay back and closed her eyes and the lids were like shadows upon her face. Joan crept on tiptoe with the basin and towels, and set them down and ran to find her father.

At this hour, at seven o’clock in the morning, he was where he had been for thirty years. She knocked furiously upon the door of the study, for even now she would not have thought of entering otherwise. She had seen her mother there knocking. She knocked impatiently and frightened, and then without waiting she pushed into the room. He was on his knees by the worn old brown leather armchair, his head in his hand. At the sound of her entrance he looked up.

“Father,” she cried, “Father, Mother is really ill this morning—you must go for Dr. Crabbe!”

He stared at her bewildered. The change was too swift for him. He had been drenched in the radiance of God, and now he was back in this drab room. “She seemed to sleep quietly all night,” he protested mildly. “She scarcely moved, although sometimes I have been disturbed by her tossing. I left her still sleeping quietly this morning.” He was so bewildered he forgot to rise from his knees.

Joan’s eyes upon him sharply saw him absurd, upon his knees, his pale blue eyes looking up at her childish and absurd. She repeated harshly, “She’s very ill now—you or Francis must go for Dr. Crabbe. … Francis—I’ll send Francis,” she went on quickly. Of course Francis would be quicker than this old man. It was the first time she had known he was really old.

“Frank—Frank!” she called, leaping up the stairs. “Frank!” She burst into his room. He was sleeping vigorously. The sun was streaming across his bed and over his face and in his sleep he was scowling a little against the strong light, his black brows drawn and his mouth pouted in determination to sleep. He was beautiful in his sleep, in the sun. Even in her haste she caught the moment of his beauty, full of youth and wildness though in sleep. She shook his shoulder.

“Frank, get up! Get dressed quickly and get Dr. Crabbe. Take the car and bring him back with you.”

In the strong sun close to him she saw the faint first stubble upon his lips and his chin. They had been shaved—Francis shaving! He had said nothing. Unknown to them all he had been growing into a man. He had gone and bought a razor and secretly he had shaved. None of them knew, unless perhaps their mother.

“What?” he cried. His eyes flew open and he looked up at her, instantly clear and comprehending.

“It’s Mother,” she said.

“Get out of here!” he roared at her, leaping out of bed. “How can I put on my clothes unless you get out?”

She went away comforted. It was strength to feel his impatience and his haste. She had always thought of him as a boy, a child, a younger child. She remembered him as a strong impetuous baby, a frowning red-cheeked little boy. For years he had been this hobbledehoy, tumbling down the stairs, eating voraciously, demanding loudly his freedoms, absorbed in his next good time. Now he was none of these. He was the one person to whom she could turn. He had leaped from his bed, tall and a man. He was strong. Their blood was the same. …

Upstairs at her mother’s door she listened. She heard his clattering footsteps and a moment later she heard the roar of the engine. She looked out of the end window of the hall. He was gone in a whirl of smoke and scattered gravel.

Downstairs in the sitting room Dr. Crabbe laid upon her shoulders the burden of her mother’s life. The uneaten breakfast was cold in the dining room and Hannah stood sniffling and listening at the door. Her father was there, his face solemn, the eyes grave and pure and exalted. Upon his lips was the stern peace of his continuous prayer, “Is this Thy will, O God? Thy will be done.” Francis stood by the window, staring out into the winter sunshine, his face turned away from them all. His hands were thrust furiously deep into his pockets. But it was to Joan Dr. Crabbe spoke, his loud voice sharp and each word a thrust of emphasis. “She should have told me long ago, Joan. I can’t take the responsibility now—you’ll have to get somebody in on consultation. The idea of her dragging on and on in mortal pain!”

In mortal pain! The words were an accusing sword to cut her heart in two. While she had been absorbed in her foolish love, while she had heard no voice but Martin’s, seen no face but Martin’s, dreamed of nothing else, and lived for nothing else, her mother had gone in mortal pain. She pushed Martin away and turned passionately to cry out, her heart strangling in her throat. “How long do you think she’s been suffering?”

“Months—maybe even a year—” he answered shortly. “I can’t get the truth out of her—her damned cheerfulness. She always was that way. You hadn’t been born an hour until she was chirruping, ‘I must get up soon, Doctor, as soon as I can. Paul’s got to go to the presbytery.’ And though she nearly died the last time with that great feller there by the window, it was the same thing. ‘I’ve got to get up as soon as I can’—for something or other. Well, Joan, it’ll be a long day now before she gets up, in my opinion. The thing we have to find out is whether or not she can stand the operation or whether it’s too late whatever we do.”

Out of the silence of doom Francis’ voice came shrill and breaking. “Get the other doctor here, can’t you? What are you all sitting here like this for? Just sitting and sitting—” He turned his face toward them, his face a grimace against weeping. He looked away again quickly.

Dr. Crabbe went on as though he had not heard or seen and Joan received steadily his commands upon her life. “I’ll get the specialist up from the city right away—this afternoon or tomorrow. But it means days and days—maybe even years of nursing. This kind of thing goes on and on even if it’s hopeless—she has a strong constitution—a lot of life—unless they decide to operate and something goes wrong.”

Days and years, days and years—She gazed at Dr. Crabbe’s hairy old face and did not see him. She saw her life passing steadily by—days and years—years and years made of day after day after day. She gave them up in an instant’s foresight. “I will take care of her myself,” she said.

Dr. Crabbe rose. “Good thing you’re home, my girl—good thing you’re big and strong!” he said, brusquely cheerful. “I’ll be getting on after that other chap. Now brace up, the three of you. We’re going to do all we can.”

He was gone in a gust, slapping his thick knee, touching Joan’s cheek delicately with his stubby forefinger, clapping Francis’ hunched shoulders and throwing a short nod at the man.

Then they were alone, the three of them. They were alone and separate because the mother who had bound them together was not there. The mother had bound them together, pouring into each of them a part of herself and gathering them into one whole by the parts of herself. Now she had left them. She was fighting for herself alone, and only as they poured themselves into her could they be united. Each must think of something to do for her. Joan saw her father put his hand to his head in his gesture of bewilderment. His eyes were vague and fixed upon the ground. “Yes … yes …” he whispered, forgetting them. “Yes, O God!” He rose abruptly, and left the room. They heard the door of his study shut. He was in his refuge.

Francis said, “I can’t go to school—I can’t sit there—like any other day—” He stood as he had stood, his back to her, his sharp young shoulder blades drooping through his old coat, his hands jammed in his pockets above the wrists.

But in Joan there was a large sorrowful tranquillity. She looked at Francis’ discontented face and her mother in her spoke to comfort him.

“There will be so many times I’ll need you, just as I needed you to fetch Dr. Crabbe. But just now I have things to do for her that you can’t do. We each have a special thing to do for her. She will want everything to go on in the house as it always has.”

She looked about the room. On the wall opposite hung the Hope drooping over a gray and barren world. She had so hated it. Only yesterday she had planned secretly to take it down to make the house hers. Now she knew she would never take it down. For this house would never be hers. It was her mother’s house and it would always be so. She could live in it only insofar as she took upon herself her mother’s function, her mother’s being.

“Guess you’re right,” said Francis. He turned. “Well—” he said, and sighed gustily and marched from the room. It was the first time she had ever heard him sigh. She smiled with a sad mature tenderness for him and went slowly upstairs. She climbed, gathering herself together for what was ahead of her, for all that she had never planned.

Now the mother drew her children’s lives into her. She drew them by her willful dominations and by her catastrophes of weakness and by her little cheerfulnesses. Joan never could know, though she opened the door a score of times a day, what woman she would find there in the bed. She came in when Francis was gone to find her mother washed and fresh and sitting in her bed, cleaned and freshened. While they were downstairs, while Dr. Crabbe was dooming her, she had risen in sudden willful strength and put the best linen on the bed and upon herself she put an orchid-colored bed-jacket which Joan had once given her at Christmas, which she had never worn because of its delicacy of silk and cream lace, but which she had cherished. For two years it had lain in her drawer, on top, hiding by its beauty the old and mended garments beneath. She kept it there for the pleasure of seeing it whenever she opened the drawer.