Time Is Noon (27 page)

She heard him listlessly, hating him. She had to watch herself all the time or she began that foolish sobbing. She wept the instant she was alone—not for him—not for him—“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Weeks—”

Dr. Crabbe telegraphed for her to Francis. He said, looking at her sharply, “You need to have someone here with you—there’s no one else.” She said, “Maybe he can’t come—he’s just new at a job—I don’t know—” She desperately wanted him to come. She needed the sense of her own beside her. But he did not come. There was no answer even to the telegram. They wouldn’t let him off, she thought dully when it was the hour for the funeral and he had not come.

She went with Hannah to the church quietly. Mrs. Winters was there first, just to see everything was right. “Wait a little, dearie,” she said. “Wait till they’re all seated.” She was so kind. But even she had said when they stood looking at him in his coffin, “If he hadn’t been so set on that South End—”

Yes, they were all kind now, when it was too late. She sat in the pew quite alone, and the preacher from Lawtonville mounted the pulpit, and before him lay the casket. He mounted eagerly and then remembered and slowed himself. But it was difficult to walk slowly today. The eagerness crept out of him, his eyes, his voice, the nervous quickness of his hands. Would he please the people, his eagerness was asking? And across the dead the people were looking at him closely, intensely. Would he please them? He began praising the dead man eagerly, fully, remembering to round his sentences, to use the metaphors he had planned. When he prayed he had a small sheet of notes before him upon the pulpit and he opened his eyes now and then to glance at them. He must make a good prayer. It was so necessary for Minnie to—

“And may we so live, O God,” he prayed fluently, glancing secretly at the bit of paper, “that at the end—”

After it was over, Netta wanted to come home with her, and Mrs. Winters said, “Now don’t stay there alone—come over to us.” They all said, “Let us know if we can do anything.” She smiled and thanked them, knowing there was nothing.

She was alone, wherever she was. It did not matter. She wanted to go away from them because underneath all their kindness she could feel their relief. Before her they were decent and grave. But they would go to their homes and look at each other and murmur, “After all, it was best—for everybody concerned.” So she went back to the house quite alone. She must not begin that sobbing again. She had begun to be sick with sobbing.

They were all very kind. Dr. Crabbe came to see her and worried her with his insistent kindness. “What are you going to do, Joan? You’ve got to do something, child!”

She had answered at first quite eagerly. “Yes, of course, Dr. Crabbe, I thought I’d go to New York and be with Frank. He has a job, and I could find something, I know.”

“Hm,” said Dr. Crabbe, staring at her with dissatisfaction. “Looks to me like you better take a good dose of castor oil. Stomach’s probably stopped working with all this—only natural. You look yellow. Have you any money?”

“Oh, yes, Dr. Crabbe,” she said hastily. She wouldn’t take money. She was proud with all her mother’s pride … “Just because my husband’s a minister is no reason why my children should wear other people’s old clothes. Never take gifts, Joan!” … Besides, she had a few dollars again in the sandalwood box, and in her father’s old purse she had found a dollar. His salary had been due next week, but of course now—“Plenty, Dr. Crabbe,” she said brightly. “Honest!” He glanced at her. “How much?” “Oh, lots! Besides, Francis is earning.” “Hm,” he said grudgingly and went away.

They had not ceased to be kind. They said, “Take your time, Joan.” But the third day the new minister and his wife came to see the parsonage. “Not to hurry you at all, Miss Richards,” he said. He was very happy in this new call. His salary would be nearly two hundred a year more. With two hundred—then his red-haired young wife called to him sharply, “George! We’ll have to ask them to repaper the dining room anyway—and do over the floors.” Joan followed them about. “Yes, there is the pantry—that door is the cellar steps—it opens the other way.” All the familiar corners of the house she had always known as instinctively as her own body she was revealing to strangers.

“Don’t know if I’ll like her,” said Hannah, grumbling when they were gone. “She looks the kind that would skimp on butter and count the eggs.” She clattered the pans in the kitchen. “Said she didn’t know if she wanted help at all except this place is bigger’n she’s used to—I’ll lay it is—she don’t look used to much in my opinion.”

“Don’t hurry,” they all said, but she was in a fever of hurry. Pack up his few things—send the clothes to the mission. She had said to the new minister when they were looking at the bedroom, “Would you take a few clothes of his to the mission? He’d want the—”

The young man pursed his full lips. “I’m not sure just when I’ll be going—I’ve not decided about going on with that work—the people in the church—”

“Never mind,” she said quickly. “I’ll take them myself.”

She was going away, just as soon as she could get things packed. She was glad there was so little—glad nearly everything had to be left because it belonged to the people. Even the dishes from which she had eaten bread and milk and the cakes her mother had made and meat and vegetables and deep pies—old familiar precious dishes—“Run and get me the tall cake dish, darling!” “Where’s the bowl we put fruit in, Hannah!”—even the dishes were not theirs. Nothing had been really theirs. She would take the round-topped trunk—her clothes, the books of course, her mother’s own linen and silver. Perhaps she’d better not take anything at first, just pack and store them somewhere and find Francis. Strange of Frank not even to write!

Then nearly a week after the death, there was Francis’ letter. She came from the study where she had been sorting her father’s books and there was the letter in the hall. “Looks like Frank’s writing, but the postmark isn’t New York. I can’t make it out,” Hannah had called.

She went at once and opened the letter quickly. No, it was not from New York. It was from a place in Michigan, but it was Frank’s letter.

DEAR JOAN—

I lost my job and here I am with a couple of fellows. I’m looking for work here. They say there is a lot of work at General Motors. I expect I’ll get a job. As I am a little short, please send me anything you can.

He did not even know. He had not heard. She tore the letter into small pieces and left the heap upon the table.

… So what could she do? The house stretched about her, empty, inexorable, waiting for her to go, waiting to begin another life. It was through with her. She was terrified of this house. She ran out into the garden. It was nearly Thanksgiving. She had not thought how nearly Thanksgiving it was. But now a load of cornstalks was being drawn to the church door, the cornstalks they always used as a background for pumpkins and fruits. There was a loud shout from the wagon as it drew near, and the horses stopped in front of her, breathing out steam. A strong bulky figure leaped down from the wagon and came near her. It was Bart. She smelled the odor of the dry stalks upon him, clean and earthy. Suddenly she began sobbing again, the sobs that jerked at her very entrails. “Oh, Bart,” she sobbed. “Oh, Bart, Bart!”

He came toward her, smiling, steady, sure, safe. He had his arm about her and she clung to him and he led her into the empty house. There in the empty sitting room she felt his lips upon hers at last. She was still for a moment, feeling. His lips were stiff and hard upon her mouth. Deep within her body her heart drew back in strange dismay. But she clung to him, sobbing. He was strong as a rock, his arms about her were like the walls of a house.

T
HIS RING UPON HER
finger was new and stiff. She had never worn a ring before, because it soon irked her. Someone had given her a ring once when she was a little girl and she wanted to wear it because it was so pretty, a red bit of glass set in a loop of silver-washed metal, but she could not. In a little while it made her restless and she took it off. But this ring she must not take off. She must learn to wear it. She had set it herself upon her hand, a wide band of gold, old-fashioned and heavy. Bart had searched among the rings upon the counter in the little jeweler’s shop in Clarktown while she stood waiting until he had found a ring like his mother’s. “It’s got to last a long time,” he said. When the clerk had fitted it to her finger and given it to them, Bart had tried it on his own hand. But it would go over no finger except the little one, and there it stuck upon the crooked joint.

There was no need to wait. There was no one to consider. Why should she consider those who had not considered her? She would slip out of that old life. It could be nothing to any of them what she did. She did not want to tell anybody she was going to marry Bart Pounder. She did not want to see that surprised look—“Bart Pounder?” She silenced her own heart savagely. “Yes—Bart Pounder—who else is there?”

She went to Mr. Winters, who was an elder, in the evening after store hours. He was there alone, searching over his shelves for something someone had wanted in the day and he could not find. It was his usual evening occupation. “If you can just wait till tomorrow, I can find it,” he said a dozen times a day. Upon bits of paper he scrawled, “Mrs. Parsons—ink eraser”—“a spool of sixty white for Mrs. Bradley”—“Billings a chipping knife.” When she came in tonight she could hear him muttering mildly, “Now where in tuck did I put that?”

“Mr. Winters, will you please tell them I shall be leaving the manse right away?”

He left off muttering and turned to her, kind, protesting. “Now don’t you let them hurry you.”

“No, but I have made my plans.”

“Going away?”

“Yes, I’m going away.”

Next morning Mrs. Winters came bustling up the steps. “Joan, I came right over. Mr. Winters told me. What are you going to do?”

“I’m going away, Mrs. Winters.”

“Yes, but—”

“I’m not a child, you know. I’m grown up. I have my plans. I’ll write you.”

Mrs. Winters could not help. No one could really help. It was better to be silent, to make her own life. She would not forget that only by death was her father saved from these people.

But when she said good-bye to Hannah, she clung to her a moment. Hannah said, patting her back briskly, “Did you write me that little letter, Joan, so’s if I don’t make it with this new minister’s wife, I could go and try some of the summer folks over at Piney Cove?” Joan released her instantly. “Yes, Hannah.” She opened her bag and took out the letter.
This is to introduce Hannah Jackson, our general servant for more than twenty years. We have always found her clean, honest
—

“It’s hard on a body,” said Hannah fretfully, “at this age to be having to find a new place and I haven’t chick nor child.”

“Yes, it’s hard,” said Joan quietly. “It’s hard at any age.”

There could not be, of course, any white satin nor any of that dreaming. White satin would have sat strangely upon her with Bart standing by her in his bursting blue suit. So she put on her old orange wool dress and her brown coat and the small brown felt hat and she and Bart stood before the county clerk, repeating his words. He was a small, wry-faced man with big loose lips in a wizened face. The day was cold with November and his thin-curved nose was damp and red, and he wiped his hand across it often. “You can sign there,” he said, pointing with his nail-bitten forefinger.

She signed her name steadily, “Joan Pounder.” Steadily she forced her hand to the name she had taken for her own, shaping its unfamiliar letters for the first time. She stood and watched Bart hold the pen clumsily like a farm tool in his great hand. He wrote his name in a childish angular scrawl beside her neat small script. She stood for an instant looking at the two names. Then she said, “Take me home, Bart.”

“Giddap there!” he shouted at his two horses. He clacked the reins across their backs and they began to trot briskly, their rustbrown coats shining in the wintry sun.

“I’ll get a car one of these days,” he said. “But I’ve got to get ahead a little. And a car’s no good for plowing. Got to have horses on a farm, car or no car.” He turned to grin at her. A look she was beginning to know came over his face. His nostrils thickened a little, his lips parted and loosened. “I don’t know if we could sit so close in a car though, my girl,” he whispered heavily. He had small yellowish soft-looking teeth set in gums too wide and pale. She looked away quickly.

They were moving out of the country she knew into a rugged hilly land, whose valleys were dark with woods. Between the rough fields were stone walls piled of the stones from the land. Everywhere the last colors of autumn were subsiding into dun and gray. Only the oak trees still burned dully red, but a few more nights of frost would strip them, too. Then it would be winter. She was glad for Bart, she told herself, gazing straightly into the dying landscape. If it had not been for Bart she would have been quite alone and winter was coming. In so short a time had she been left quite alone.

Then at a bend of the narrow earth road rose a big frame house with green blinds, an oblong of white against the land. A few great maple trees stood about it, their skeleton limbs not hiding it.

“There’s the house,” said Bart, pointing with his whip. “The folks will be expecting us. Don’t you mind my mother.”

He had never mentioned his home before except to say shortly, “I live with my folks. I’m to have the place if I stay with them—so I’m staying.”

They drew up and the door opened and now she was near enough to see them, his father, his mother, his brother. They came out, one by one, his mother last, and stood waiting for her. Her heart rushed eagerly toward them; she peered through the dusk to see them—father, mother, brother. But she liked the house, so cleanly white and green, she liked the maples. Under their bare limbs the unraked leaves lay in a carpet of ashy gold.

She wanted to like everything. Here was to be her home. She was glad they were all to live together. She did not want to live alone with Bart. A tag end of Scripture flew into her mind: “And the lonely he hath set into families.”