Time Is Noon (21 page)

“I have a pen, thanks,” he said coldly, and drew from an inner pocket a black fountain pen, bound properly in gold. The pen in his hand moved him to write. He took out his pocketbook, and from it drew a small neat business card. Upon it he wrote in fine script,
Introducing Francis Richards.
He hesitated. “I don’t like to presume on former acquaintances,” he said.

But now Joan would have dug out his vitals—let him give her something! He never gave her anything—

“You can put down ‘highly recommended,’ can’t you? He’s my brother and he’s a very bright boy. Put it down.”

She was breathing hard over his shoulder. He felt her there, large, implacable in her demand. He wanted to get home, to get away from her, to get home to his supper. She was distasteful to him. He shrank from remembering her. After a moment he wrote down carefully,
Recommended.
Why had he ever thought her like a lovely boy?

She was only a woman and he hated women, especially when they had long hair. Besides, she was taller than he.

She snatched the card from him and ran home. It was in her hand, Frank’s escape. She ran up the steps, shouting for him.

“He’s in his room, I reckon!” cried Hannah from the kitchen. She ran upstairs and into his room. He was on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, his hands under his head, his face flushed and sullen, slack with despair. He turned his eyes toward her.

“Here,” she cried. “I have it—introduction to Roger Bair, aviator! You can go right away—now!”

He sat up on the edge of the bed, his whole body lifted up, his face breaking into light. “I can go?”

“Yes,” she whispered. She was suddenly exhausted. She sat down.

“I haven’t any money,” he said frightened.

“I have—nearly eighteen dollars. I’ll give it to you—”

She looked at him and instantly the tears rushed thick into her throat. If she had not found out, what would have happened to him?

“What’s the matter?” he asked. “You’re white as a sheet.”

She stood up, shaking her head. No, she couldn’t tell him she knew. She couldn’t speak. They were too near to speak.

“Pack your things,” she said. “I want you to go tonight. His plane maybe starts early in the morning. I hear them in the sky in the morning before I get up. I’ll get the money.”

She climbed the attic stairs quickly and opened the round-topped trunk and found the sandalwood box. It was half full of pennies and nickels and a few dimes, but there was a handful of quarters. The quarters were what she had not put into the missionary collection. Her father had given them to her each month on the day of the meeting. “Your mother used to give twenty-five cents each month at the ladies’ foreign missionary society. I would like you to continue it.”

“Yes, Father,” she had replied.

But she had put the quarters in the box. Six of them had gone for Rose. The rest were now to go for Francis. She saw her mother’s eyes twinkle from the grave.

What she could do for Francis was not done until he was away. For his sake she must send him as far as she could. He must not stay a night more, not if she could help it. She packed his garments feverishly into her own bag—fresh shirts, his ties, the dark red tie his mother loved, his garments. He came and went, his black hair tumbled, his eyes shining. But he was not gay. He was silent. His face was grave, tense, tightened. The loose sullenness of his red mouth, still full-lipped as a child’s mouth, was gone, changed to some inner determined control. They did not speak. How could she speak, lest she cry out, “How could you do what you have done?” He did not speak because there was no one but himself in his mind. Everyone in the world was below the horizon of his mind. He moved alone in his life, to take his chance of freedom. If she had spoken he would have shouted at her to leave him alone. He was sore with sickness at the tangle he was in. He felt himself sweeping out of it upon wide silver wings, into the sky.

“There,” said Joan, rising from her knees. “Everything’s in but your toothbrush. Eat your supper and brush your teeth before you go. You can catch the nine o’clock and be in New York at eleven. You go straight to a Y.M.C.A. Tomorrow morning you can go out to the field and find him. You write me a letter how things go—write soon, Frank—tomorrow night.”

“Yeah, sure,” he muttered. It did not seem possible he was really leaving this room. In this room he had lived so long that it did not seem possible he could sleep in another bed. But this very night he must sleep in some strange unknown bed in the city he had never seen. He’d never even once seen New York and now suddenly tonight he was going to sleep there.

“You sell my bicycle,” he said suddenly. “Jack Weeks wants it. He’ll give you fifteen dollars for it, maybe. But be sure you have the money before you give it to him. He’ll cheat you if he can.”

“I’ll sell it and send you the money,” she said steadily.

“If I don’t get the job—” he said.

“If you don’t get one job, you’ll get another,” she replied in the same even tone. “You don’t come back—you’ll get the job, though—I feel you will.”

He looked at her deeply from under his black brows, questioning her. Did she know something? Who could know when he told nothing? Even at the store when other fellows boasted of the girls they knew, he was silent. No one ever saw him with any girl. He was never with any girl. He never walked with any girl. He and Fanny met and parted in the darkness of the wood beyond old Mrs. Mark’s house. Fanny went south and he went north. He withdrew into deeper silence. Silence was safe—never tell, and no one could know.

“Supper’s ready, and your pa’s waiting,” Hannah’s voice shouted from downstairs.

“I’ll go and tell him,” said Joan. “He won’t understand, but he’ll have to be told.”

She went downstairs to the dining room. The table was set for three. Soon it would be set for only two. She had an instant of terror. How swift was change, how insecure was life! This home had seemed for many years as permanent as her own body. Her mother, her father, Rose, Frank, herself, these five, had seemed as safe as the setting and rising of the sun. Her father came in at Hannah’s call and she saw him freshly, sharply, in the power of the moment. He was a frail old man, and he was all that was left to her of what was the safety of her childhood.

He looked vaguely about. “Where’s Francis? I’ll sit down. I’m tired today.” He took his seat at the head of the table, clinging to the sides of the chair as he sat.

“He’s coming,” she replied, and sat down. She would tell him quickly, now, before Frank came down. “Father,” she said, “Frank’s got a job. At least, probably, and he’s going to New York.”

He had begun to dip up the thick soup in the bowl before him in haste for its heat and warmth. When she said this he looked up at her, the spoon poised above the bowl.

“A job?” he repeated. “He isn’t finished school. What’s it mean? Isn’t he going to college? It’s strange if my son doesn’t go to college. And I thought he’d begun to give weight to God. He’s been so regular in his attendance at church I thought he was—”

“He has a job,” said Joan, raising her voice and shaping each word plainly. “He wants to go. He’s going tonight.”

“Tonight!” the old man repeated, astonished. He paused and said at last, “I wasn’t told.”

“He didn’t know until tonight,” said Joan. “You have to take a job when you get it.”

“What job?” he asked.

“Martin Bradley’s helping him,” she answered.

He went on with his soup in silence. He would talk to Francis, he thought to himself. He would not talk to Joan. Women knew very little. Francis would not tell her, but he would tell his father. He waited until Francis came in, and looking up saw his son unwontedly. The boy’s cheeks were very red and his eyes looked like Mary’s eyes. He came in quickly, and sat down quickly and began to eat, and he said nothing, after all, to his father.

The old man felt cut off from these two young creatures. They told him nothing. They were full of plans of which they said nothing to him. He wiped his mouth and began, gently, “Joan tells me you are going away.”

“Tonight,” said Francis. “Hannah, bring me some raisin bread.” He was in sudden high excitement. “Hurry, old girl! It’s your last chance—I’m going away.”

“You’re not!” she retorted, pausing at the door, and disappearing.

But he shouted after her. “I’m going away this very night—going to get a job in the big town!”

“No such thing—who’d have you?” she replied amiably, bringing in the raisin bread and plumping it down before him.

“He really is, Hannah,” said Joan.

“Not to New York!” said Hannah. Her scraggy face puckered as though a thread had been suddenly drawn about the lips.

“Yes,” said Joan.

“Your ma,” said Hannah mournfully, “wouldn’t have heard to it. She said Frank was to go to school till he was twenty-two. I mind, because she was counting the years until you’d be through, the three of you.”

“I’m going to be an aviator,” Francis boasted, his cheeks full of raisin bread.

“You’ll break your neck,” replied Hannah, unbelieving. “You can’t walk downstairs without a tumble.”

“An aviator!” said the old man suddenly. “I wasn’t told.” It came to him vaguely that they even told the servant more than they told him. Yet he had always done his best for them. He had prayed for them greatly. He had gone into deep agonies of prayer for their souls. “O, God, my Father, save my children’s souls and bring them into the knowledge of Thee.” They sat there, young and intolerably hard, not knowing of his yearning after them. They were always making jokes about things he did not understand. There was Francis now, his thumb to his nose, grimacing absurdly at the servant. He was not answered and he sighed. “I suppose,” he said patiently, “you must do as you think best.”

For the first time he definitely missed Mary. Mary would have spoken to Francis. But he could not think of anything to say. He sat over his tea until Francis had finished his dessert and rushed to his room for his things. When he saw him carrying his suitcase, he half rose from the table to help him, to show his son that he felt his going. But Hannah was ahead of him. She had perceived that this was no joke, and had rushed to pack some sandwiches.

“Give me that bag,” she said sharply. “You’ll be hungry riding. It always makes you hungry to ride on the train. But your ma wouldn’t have let this be. There’s been no managing you since your ma went. There now—get away. I’ll carry it myself. I’ve carried Joan’s bag to go to college, and Rose’s bag to go to heathendom—I’ll carry it myself—”

“Father,” said Joan, tucking on her hat, “don’t hurry. Sit and finish your tea. I’ll drive him to the train and be back—After all, it’s only New York—it’s not far.”

“New York’s only the place I hop off from,” laughed Francis. He was free, he was free! Fanny maybe was waiting this very moment in the wood, down by the brook in the warm dark summer night, but he was escaping her. He need not come back. He would never come back.

“Good-bye, Hannah—send me cookies once in a while.” He gave her a great kiss.

She was crying a little, but she retorted in pretense of anger, “And where I’ll send them to you, I’d like to know, and New York as big as all get out?”

“I’d smell ’em coming,” he replied gaily. “Good-bye, Dad.” He felt the cool dry old hand cling for a moment in his own hot palm and he dropped it quickly. “I’ll write.”

The old man rose and followed them wistfully to the door.

“You’ll go to church, won’t you?” he begged. “You’ve been so steady in attendance.”

“Good-bye—good-bye,” cried Francis.

The old man heard the flying gravel in the darkness and they were gone.

… “Good-bye, Frank,” Joan said brusquely. The train stood ready to move. The steam blew back out of the darkness, white in the night. She looked at him, his eyes level with hers. He was as tall as she now, and his shoulders were broad as a man’s. His face was a man’s face in the shadows, angular, dark. There was knowledge in his eyes. She shrank away from the knowledge in his eyes. She did not want to kiss him. But suddenly he changed. There in a moment he changed. He threw his arm about her and put his head upon her shoulder and she could feel his cheek against her bare neck.

“Joan—” he said in a small voice. Why, he was afraid, she felt him afraid! How foolish she was to think he was grown up! He was only a little boy. Whatever he had done, he was only a little boy. She put her arm about his big young body and held him hard. But in a moment he had straightened himself and smiled, his eyes wet.

“It’s very—it’s funny to be leaving home.”

“I know,” she said, releasing him. She must always know exactly when to release him, that he might not feel he had given away anything of himself and so suffer.

“I’m glad to go, really,” he said.

“I know,” she said steadily.

The train whistle blew and he stepped upon the first step.

“All aboard,” said the conductor.

“Remember,” she whispered, longing to do everything for him, “remember—I’m here—always—like—like Mother was—”

For a second his face stared hard at her, then the train tore him away before she heard his answer.

Now she must find some sort of life in this empty house. It had seemed so small and crowded when they were all there. She had been used to going to her room that she might be alone to dream, to read, to write her music. It used to be so noisy a house. Her mother liked noise and took no pains for quiet. “I like to hear footsteps,” she used to say. “I like to hear your footsteps everywhere—I like to think, that’s Joan—there’s Rose—here’s my boy coming.” She had complained against the father. “Why do you creep up the stairs, Paul? Why do you wear those slippers all the time? I like to hear a man’s step ring hard and clear!” Once she said to Joan, out of a long silence as she sewed, “Your father’s a good man, but I wish he would whistle or sing. I like to
hear
a man. I’m glad Frank’s always making a noise in the house.”

But now there was no need to go to her own room for solitude. In any room she could sit down and be alone. No one would come in, no voice call, unless it were Hannah’s voice from the kitchen. “I declare, Joan, we’d better tell Mr. Billings not to send so much meat, even if he does give it. It’s tedious eating at one hunk o’ beef or pork the whole week long!”