Time Is Noon (3 page)

Now while Joan listened and looked at his straight back and narrow dark head, upon which the hair was beginning to turn gray, he played a Bach fugue meticulously and perfectly, making each note round and complete and valued. The choir door opened and four people came in irregularly as they chose and a little apologetically, as though they felt that everyone knew them in other guise than this. There were two women and two men, Mr. Winters and Mrs. Parsons and Mr. Weeks and Miss Kinney. They took their seats and stared earnestly and self-consciously in front of them, except Miss Kinney, who had once been a missionary in Africa. She smiled continually and her eyes darted here and there, as restless as pale blue butterflies.

Then the vestry door opened and the music softened. Joan’s father came in, a priest newly come from the presence of God to his people. Through thirty years this had never become stale in him or usual. He would not come unless from God. Once in her little childhood Joan remembered a delay. The people waited for him, at first patiently and then in surprise, their eyes fixed on the vestry door. Moments passed and the organ rolled on and on and wandered into bypaths of variation, but ready at any instant to come through to the final major note. She was only six years old, but she caught her mother’s wonder and then her anxiety. She heard her mother whisper, “I shall have to go and see what is wrong.” She felt her mother gather herself to rise.

Then the door opened as though on the wings of a wind, strongly and swiftly, and her father strode in with triumph and his voice rang out to his people, “Let us praise the Lord by singing—”

Later when her mother cried, “Paul, where were you? We were all waiting!” he said simply, “I could not get God’s blessing and I could not go to my pulpit until I did.”

But now, in the beginning of his age, his temper stilled, it seemed he had always God’s blessing. He moved tranquil and serene, tall, a little bowed, but his eyes were clear and blue and guileless as a child’s eyes are. He stood before his people and paused. The organ fell silent and the people looked at him, waiting. But before he could speak there was a sound at the door, a step in the aisle and a movement. It was Francis, come to sit beside his mother once again. His father waited for him.

They were complete now. The father was set above them in the pulpit and the mother and the three children were in their accustomed places. Their faces were turned to him, waiting for what they were about to receive.

So they received their food from God. The people rose in the bars of many colored sunshine, and were for the moment caught and held in the brightness. They sang together, and Joan sang, above them all, her big young voice soaring above their feeble old voices, carrying them along, gathering them in its full stream. Then they sat back comfortably and gave thanks and heard the reading of Scripture. They gave too at the due moment small bits of silver that tinkled into the old pewter plates.

In the choir loft Mrs. Parsons rose tall and gaunt, yet with sweetness in her disappointed eyes, and sang, “But the Lord is mindful of His own.” She sang it a little too slowly, clinging to the favorite words, and her voice faded upon the high notes, but she still sang with a touching hopefulness. What she longed for might yet be. So she sang, believing wistfully in what she had not received. She loved these moments of singing, when she could lose herself in vague hoping about the story she was writing.

Emily was so much like her father, so impatient of her mother’s “scribbling” as they called it. Edward had always been hard on her about it. When he came home and found things not quite ready for dinner because she had been writing, he was so hard. And now Emily, although she was only fifteen, was hard too. “You write such silly stuff, Mother!” Her voice was cold and she rattled the dishes in the sink. But Ned—dear boy—he was older than Emily but still he listened to her stories, and his eyes would grow wet. “Neddie, it’s only a story,” she said to him time and again. He helped her to keep on hoping. Some day someone would want her stories. One of the letters would not be a rejection, and Edward would say, “Well, well, Florrie—you were right and I was wrong.” Edward would say what he never had said about anything. “Forgive me, Florrie.” She would just be patient and keep on writing as nicely as she could.

“But the Lord is mindful, is mindful of His own. He will not—” she crooned tenderly, slowly, her eyes misted, her voice thick and soft in her throat. She sat down, strengthened, and began to plan a new story—the best. It was so easy to plan stories in church, in the quiet while the sermon was going on. She drifted happily away.

So the sermon began. Because of this sermon the children had gone quietly every Saturday of their lives, though the day was a holiday. In the bare study they knew their father sat and searched the Scriptures for them all. They could not go in there for any cause. They tiptoed through the house with their small friends following them, their goal the cookie jar in the kitchen. With their hands full of cookies they burst out of the silent house, and ran down to the end of the street, released and joyful and screaming with glee. About them were trees and meadows and under their feet the grass green, thickly green, and the day was a holiday.

Their voices sang and shouted and they played with desperate pleasure and at times fell into quarreling. But even the quarreling was sweet and intense. They gave no thought to their father in his study, searching the Book to find food for their souls, even as they gave no thought to their mother cooking and baking for them in her kitchen and making and mending for them. All this was of course; it all made the foundation of their life safe, and for them it was forever.

Of God they knew nothing except what they were told. They believed, or thought they did, what their father told them. They trusted him about God. When he said God was a kind father who did not let even a sparrow in the garden suffer, they believed him. Besides it seemed true because all the sparrows they saw were plump and busy. When he told them the very hairs of their head were numbered they believed him, for they were used to love. They would not have thought it strange if their mother numbered their hairs, because she so loved them, and it was not strange in God. They were important and complacent and sure of God, believing He loved them and cared for them.

There was also Jesus Christ who died for their sins, and the Holy Ghost. But the Holy Ghost was a shadow and without substance or shape, and they left it at that. But Jesus was real, “Gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” He was touching and real, though more real before his resurrection than afterwards. Afterwards he became arrogant and proud. He said, “Touch me not.” But before, when he was a man, he said “Come unto me,” and “suffer the little children.” Then they understood him. They would have rushed to him, laughing and shouting if they had been near him, because he was real to them, though dead.

But when he hung on the cross for their sins they were uncomfortable and guilty about themselves although they did not know why. They only knew they were sinful and everybody was sinful. They were “conceived and born in sin.” Long ago Joan had used to wonder what “conceived in sin” was. She asked her mother one day, “Was I conceived in sin, too?” Her mother’s eyes opened in surprise and her dark cheeks flushed and she said quickly, “When you are older I will explain everything. Would you like to take Francis and go and play with Netta Weeks? You can take a couple of cookies so she can give one to little Jackie.”

Still she never did quite explain. But after a while Joan knew it could not be a thing for which she alone was to blame. If everybody was so conceived it was a common sin and so she forgot it because there was so much else to think of in the crowding seasons. There was so much to enjoy and she wanted never to think of unpleasant things. She chose to be happy and to laugh.

But Rose could not forget. Once Rose asked her miserably, her lips suddenly dry, “Joan, do you—do you understand about being conceived in sin?”

Joan was shocked by the question. She knew by then how life began inside a woman’s body, out of a man’s body, but it was secret knowledge. She had learned it secretly at school, guiltily against her will. She had listened, surprised, and had shouted angrily, “I don’t believe it.” But she was compelled to believe it. “I know,” said Netta Weeks. “How do you know?” Joan demanded loudly. But Netta only smiled foolishly. Joan felt sickness rush over her. She went away but she could not forget. It was a long time before she could forget when she looked at her father and mother. But she made herself forget at last, so that she could escape from it.

But she could not bear to speak of it even to Rose. Indeed between them, spoken, it would be the more shameful. Her healthy flesh crawled at the thought, outraged. “I don’t know anything about it,” she said shortly. She ran out into the garden and picked a great handful of her mother’s red roses.

So Rose asked no more. She grew inwardly toward herself. She read her Bible every night even in winter, however cold her bedroom was. She never hurried at her prayers. If she felt tempted to hurry and to get into her warm bed she punished herself and prayed more slowly. Rose was ready always to go to church, to dream, to take the bread and wine, the tears filling her eyes easily as she thought of him who died for her sins. She felt herself full of sin. She saved every separate sin and remembered it when the bread was crumbling upon her tongue and when the wine burned her lips delicately, because it was so sweet to feel herself washed clean by Jesus’s blood. It was almost sweet to sin that she might be washed clean. But that again was sin, to want to sin, and so she prayed in ecstasy, to be forgiven again and again.

This intense and secret life Rose kept within herself and because she lived inwardly, outwardly she seemed always mild and gentle and obedient and her blue eyes were saintly in their mildness. The villagers said often, “She is an angelic child—so
good.
” And hearing it she felt pleasure, a strange pleasure, tingling in all her body. She planned fresh goodness, a set number of kind deeds every day. She took flowers to old Mrs. Mark who lay in her little stone house, at the edge of the village, bedridden with creeping paralysis. She took flowers until Mrs. Mark said plainly, “I haven’t any more vases, child. Anyways, roses bring on my hay fever. There—I know you mean well enough, but I’ll take the will for the deed.”

“Yes, Mrs. Mark,” said Rose, shrinking away from the harsh fretting old woman. But still she could not give up her goodness. By the time she reached home she remembered that she must not mind being persecuted for her goodness. So she still went to see Mrs. Mark and took her apples and a jar of jelly she had coaxed from her mother, and she welcomed her bitterness. Once when the old woman railed against her useless legs she said gently, “God has a meaning in it, dear Mrs. Mark. He sends us suffering to fit us for heaven.” She had heard Mrs. Parsons say that when little Emma Winters died.

Then the old woman rose up against her. She braced herself against her cottony pillows and shouted at her, “Get out—don’t you dare talk such stuff and nonsense to me! I’d like to know what sense there is in God’s keeping me on my back like this—I could have been a useful woman with my legs. Don’t talk to me! You don’t know anything—you palaver like your father. Go on out and play where you belong.”

Rose gathered up her books gently and went away. At first she was angry and hurt and then she remembered Jesus and exultant righteousness filled her. She had been like Jesus. She had answered nothing. When her enemies persecuted her she was like him, a lamb, innocent, led to the slaughter. But she gave up going to see Mrs. Mark and prayed for her instead, at night, safely in her own room.

Now in the church she sat quietly before her father, her face upturned to his, her spirit subject to his. She loved the hours when he rose to preach, dominating her, telling her what to believe. He was not her father now. He was her priest, her savior. She loved him passionately. He stood for Jesus to her, Jesus who died for her. Now she would be washed, from head to foot, made clean and new. She cried out in her heart, “Wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” She sat waiting to be cleansed, cleansed and filled anew with love—love—love. Her eyes shone, her lips parted, her breath came soft and quick. She forgot everything except her savior, her beloved savior.

Her quickened breathing sounded fluttering at Joan’s ear. She turned and looked at Rose curiously, small strange silent Rose. Rose’s hands were folded in her lap, little white immaculate hands which she washed many times a day, soft pale hands, full in the palm, pointed in the fingers. Sometimes it seemed as if she and Rose were not sisters. She could not understand Rose’s patience. She was resigned as old people are resigned, ready to suffer. It seemed to Joan that Rose even liked to suffer.

One day in a spring cleaning her mother had flown at her for being so slow and dreaming. “Rose, I declare, we’ll never get cleaned up in the sitting room if you keep stopping for nothing.” And Rose had turned her face to her mother, smiling, drinking in her anger. “I’m wicked,” she had answered in a strange passionate whisper. “I know I ought to be beaten, Mother.”

Her mother, shocked, paused in her sweeping and stared at Rose straightly. “I’ve never beaten any child of mine,” she said, outraged.

“No—no,” Rose urged. “But I really ought to be!”

And yet she was so small and childlike, her little figure so roundly childish, her face as pure as a child’s face, her voice gentle, her leaf-brown eyes sweet. She had no wants, she never asked for anything. She wore uncomplainingly Joan’s quickly outgrown garments. This very hour she had on Joan’s last summer’s dress, a blue voile, now a little faded. Joan felt a rush of love come over her. She must see that Rose had something new. The next dress should be for Rose. Some day she would buy Rose new things from head to foot. She wanted Rose to be happy. It was so pleasant when everybody was happy.

Her father’s voice came earnestly into her ears, “So let us take thought before it is too late what God is to each one of us. He is not far from any of us—”