Time Is Noon (4 page)

His voice faded again as the question caught itself into her thoughts. What was God to her? She did not know. It did not matter to her now if he were near or far. She did not believe or disbelieve in God. It was not important. God was like these old people in the church, these loving old people who were kind to her and had known her from her birth and cared for her and would always care for her. He was doubtless there to be called upon if it were needful. But she needed nothing. She had everything. Here was her youth. Here was her beauty. That is, if she was really beautiful?

But she was beginning now to believe secretly and often in her own beauty. She treasured every small affirmation of it that she heard about her. “Joan’s growing prettier as she grows older.” “I believe Joan’s going to be the beauty of the family, though she’s so tall.” “Joan’s eyes are lovely,” and at Commencement there was Mary Robey’s teasing whisper, “Do you know what my brother Tom said, Joan? He said he’d like to kiss your mouth!”

Her lips burned. She had never yet been kissed by any man. Once a shy boy had drawn near at a dance and after a walk in the moonlight he had drawn very near. But she drew back. Her body cried to lean toward him but her heart would not. She laughed because she was so torn in her embarrassment and he drew back too, and she said, half laughing and half crying, “Let’s go back to the others—to the light—”

Yet somewhere the kiss was waiting. She believed in love waiting for her. He would come to meet her, tall and strong, taller even than she was, and she to meet him. She wanted it all, all of love, love waiting for marriage and growing into children, many children. She wanted her house full of children, conceived not in sin but in love. She wanted to work for them, to cook and bake for them, to mend for them, to play with them, to sing to them, to love them passionately, to build about them walls of home and of love and make them safe. Among them she would live safely, too, safe and surrounded by them even as she surrounded them and made them safe. “Miss Joan Richards was married today to—to—” Whom would she marry? “The church was decorated in ferns and June roses. The bride was lovely in white satin and she wore her mother’s wedding veil of lace caught up with orange blossoms.”

Up the aisle she came, under the flowery arches. Rose walked beside her in a new dress of palest shell-pink. She paused a moment to plan Rose’s dress. Then she swept on. Her father stood waiting to perform the ceremony. Her mother was matron of honor. Her mother should have a new dress too, of silver-gray chiffon. What could Francis do? She paused, considering. She wanted them all a part of it. She looked across at him, planning, pausing. He had taken off his mother’s wedding ring mischievously and was fitting it upon his own little finger. The mother was watching him anxiously and he teased her by pretending to let the ring fall.

Then like a scourge cutting across her dreams she heard her father’s voice accusing the people in a solemn anger.

“I say God will not hold us guiltless—”

Her dreams were gone like a mist. She hung her head. She cringed inside her big body. Why wouldn’t he stop talking about that ugly dreadful thing? It happened so long ago. The people were always displeased when he spoke of it, as sober good people are, if their one madness is remembered. It had been so pleasant in the church until he began to talk about it. She could feel the people stirring under his words. There was a dry cough here and there. Only Mrs. Parsons was still smiling her vague misty smile. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mr. Weeks in the choir loft reach for a hymnbook and begin to read ostentatiously. Everybody knew Mr. Weeks had gone to Mr. Bradley that time, years ago, when they were all small, and had told him what his little daughter Netta had said. … And Mr. Bradley had said she was a damned little liar with a dirty mind and that no boy from South End could have been in the village all day because it was workday in the factory. And then Mr. Weeks, raging, had taken Netta with him to South End to find the Negro boy who she said had put his hand on her. And afterwards when Mr. Bradley failed, Mr. Weeks had bought the factory.

South End had been full of bad blood anyway, what with the white workers on strike against Mr. Bradley because he had brought in the Negroes. He had started with all white workers and then times got bad. Men stopped wearing so many stiff starched collars, for instance, just about the time he had bought a new lot of machinery for making stiff collars. So he had lowered wages and then when the whites struck, he put in Negroes.

Netta had told all the little girls at school that a Negro boy had stopped her on her way to school when she was alone in the lane. “See, he did this to me!” She pulled up her skirt and put her hand inside her thin thigh. “And my father took me right over to South End and we hunted and I knew him right away. He wasn’t so awful black—kind of yellowish.” Over and over she had told it. But then, Netta was a liar. They had listened to her, half believing. Even so, afterwards the boy was whipped by a gang of whites in South End. Men and women had run from Middlehope to watch. Netta shivered when she told of it.

… In the church after all these eight years her father’s voice was scourging them still. He never let them forget.

“God will inquire of us that we do nothing for these people. We have shed blood unlawfully, it may even be innocently—and the stain remains upon us still if we do not remove it by our prayers and good works.”

He was going to ask them again for money for his mission in South End and they did not want to give it. They wanted to forget about South End. The church was suddenly filled with silent strife between the people and her father. She could scarcely breathe. She saw her mother’s head droop, her hands fold tightly together. Only Rose did not mind. Rose was smiling a little, listening. In the choir Mrs. Parsons did not mind, for she was not listening.

But Francis was staring directly at his father, his face a stone. He had put the ring back on his mother’s hand and he was staring at his father, hating him. What good did it do to go and preach to those people? Preaching was no good. If his father knew anything, any of the things other men knew, he’d see how silly it was to think preaching would save anybody in South End.

At last it was over. Joan lifted her head to breathe the old atmosphere of peace in the church. It was so pleasant to have peace in which to dream. Where was she? She was walking down the aisle, satin-clad, her long white train—But now her father broke ringingly into conclusion: “Let us live therefore victorious to the end, triumphant, knowing in whom we have believed. And now unto God who is abundantly able—”

The organ crashed joyfully into dismissal. The people rose eager and relieved, waiting to talk to each other, to saunter out into the sunshine, to make plans for meetings in the week. Her mother gathered the children together and led them down the aisle, her hand upon her son’s arm, and he straightened himself and dropped his childishness and took on the gravity of a young man, and she looked on him with pride shining on her face. She tried to cover her pride decently, but it shone out of her eyes and glittered in her smile and rang out of her voice. On the other side Joan walked, smiling, the sweetness of her dream still alive in her face. They all greeted her with love, with welcome. She was their child, too, the daughter of the village.

“Well, Joan, I see in the paper you took a lot of honors.” “Joan’ll be famous some day—” “Won’t we be proud to have known her—”

“Shucks,” said Mr. Billings loudly, “somebody’ll marry her long before that! She’ll have babies instead, and a sight better, too.”

Joan’s mother held her head a little higher. “Come, Joan,” she said coldly, because she thought Mr. Billings very coarse. He was after all nothing but the butcher and it was a common trade. Then she remembered he gave the parsonage every week a roast of lamb or beef and he was a member of the church and his profession made him coarse, doubtless, so she said, “Good morning, Mr. Billings. It’s a fine day.” But her voice was polite and ladylike, and she turned at once to Mrs. Winters, whose husband was an elder, besides being in the choir, and asked after her peonies. Joan smiled apologetically at Mr. Billings, but he did not mind at all. He winked one of his small merry black eyes at her and his big red face crinkled under his scattered eyebrows. “I sent a tenderloin this week,” he whispered loudly, “specially for you. I thought it would be more kind of suitable, you know, than a plain pot roast.”

“Thank you,” she said, dimpling at him. She accepted the gift, too, of the admiration in his eyes. He was an old fat man, coarse and ignorant, but even so it was worth taking his look which lingered a moment upon her face. Everything was worth having, every least bit of love, all admiration. She wanted flowers strewn to walk upon. She turned from one to the other, laughing, greeting, taking everything. It was all lovely. She lavished her promises richly. “Yes, of course I’ll come!” “Oh, picnics are fun—I’ll make a chocolate cake—I make grand cake!” She forgot her mother and Francis who was pulling them impatiently along. “Gee, I’m starved, Moms,” he was muttering behind his grave grown-up face. “Church always makes me hungry—” She forgot Rose stealing softly along behind them. She was full of herself, a queen returned to her kingdom, a woman returned lovely and young.

For it was excitement to see dreams and yearnings even in old faces. She knew she made them remember again, love again, because she was so living and so young. The few young people were timid of her, she was so confident and so gay. There was Netta Weeks, who hadn’t gone to college after all. “Father says he can’t spend the money now until the factory pays,” Netta had said everywhere. Now she clutched at Joan, and whispered; “I want to see you—I want to have a real old-fashioned talk like we used to have—” “Of course, Netta,” Joan answered quickly. Poor Netta—she understood her—she understood everybody—she pitied them all—she was full of richness for them all. A young man nearby looked at her covertly, a tall stolid young farmer, and instantly she knew it, though she did not look at him, for he was a stranger. But she lingered a moment, letting him look at her.

So at last they came out into the sunshine of the cloudless day and at once Francis broke away and strode whistling across the grass. He was glad to be out of the church. No use remembering things. Sometimes in the sunshine like this he felt maybe he had imagined he had seen the hanging Negro, or made it up from talk he heard around South End. The people talked about it still, some, on lazy afternoons around the streets there. But at night he knew he had seen.

“Hi there,” he shouted loudly to a boy across the street. “Meet you this afternoon!”

“I’ll go along and start the meat,” her mother said.

“I’m coming,” Joan answered. She looked about her. Everyone was scattering now, suddenly hungry and remembering their Sunday dinners.

“I’ll wait for Father,” said Rose.

“Then I’ll go and help Mother,” she replied.

But there was one more person to come out of the church. It was Martin Bradley. He came gracefully down the steps, his music rolled under his arm. He always waited and came out alone. Now he lifted his hat easily. “How do you do, Miss Richards?” he said. “It is nice to have you home—I hope, to stay?”

She was surprised. He had never spoken to her so directly before and never had he called her Miss Richards. She looked into his melancholy brown eyes. He was a little shorter than she, a very little—no, they were the same height. “Why—I don’t know—for a while, anyway,” she stammered, suddenly taken aback. He lifted his hat again and she saw his smooth dark hair, white at the sides. He smiled slightly and pleasantly, but only with his lips, and walked away. She strolled smiling across the lawn to the manse. It was strange how when one was grown up, people seemed different. She had known Martin for years, on Sundays a part of the organ, on weekdays a face in the village. Now suddenly he took on a shape for himself; he was even rather handsome in a quiet secret oldish way.

But what his shape was she did not know and the little wonder she had now faded, at least for the moment. It was driven away by the warm noon, by the peace of the shadowy lawn, by the roses hung upon the porch and now by the smell of broiling steak and spiced apple pie. She ran up the steps and into the house. There was food upon the table, hot and delicious, ready, waiting to be eaten. She was suddenly very hungry.

On weekdays the house became itself again. It no longer belonged to the red brick church and to the village—it belonged to them. It was theirs to live in as they chose and each of them lived his own intense life, intensely alone and yet always warmly, intensely together. There were the occasions of every day when they were drawn together by a need of each other, not so much by the need of any one of them as by the need of all of them together.

In the mornings Joan drowsed in the sweetness of half-waking sleep. Her body was at once heavy and light, her mind deeply slumberous, and yet on its surface awake to the sunshine, to the angles of familiar furniture, to the smoothness of the sheets against her limbs and to the softness beneath her. There was no need to rise. There was no urgency yet to work. Life was still waiting and still holiday. Each morning her body was appeased with sleep and she was not immediately hungry. She could sleep as long as she liked, she told herself, and eat when she liked. This was her home and she was free in it. She smiled, deeply free, deeply happy, and turned upon her pillows to sleep again.

But then her sleep would not come. Perversely her mind crept out of her languorous body. It crept downstairs and saw the others at the table together. Her place was empty. Her father hesitated before grace, as he always did if one of them were not there. He asked, “Where is Joan? Is she ill?”

“Let the child rest,” her mother answered comfortably. “This is her vacation—let her be.”

So they went on without her. But they missed her and she knew they did. The meal was not complete. They were not wholly fed unless they took their meal together. Her mind came creeping upstairs and into her body again. It urged her body lying inert, her eyes closed. She found herself thinking, I miss them, too. I’d rather have breakfast with them than all alone. I want to be in my place among them.