Time Is Noon (48 page)

Whether Roger reached her first or whether she saw the notice of Francis’ death first, hardly seemed important. The notice was only a small paragraph, a plane had been lost in a curious manner by a man who had, it seemed, meant to lose it—a man named Francis Richards. She stood holding the paper in her hand, staring at the name. But Francis Richards was not a very common name. Still, it was common enough so that she must keep her head. She must telegraph. But the doorbell had rung at that moment and without waiting there was such a knocking that she put the paper down and ran to the door. He had telegraphed her first, of course. Roger—
but it
was he himself! She knew him instantly. She had not forgotten a line of his face, his body.

“Am I in time?” he asked quickly. She stared at him. “I mean—have you seen the morning paper?”

Then it was Francis!

“Yes, I’ve seen it,” she answered. He came in as though the house were his own and sat down before her. He had come to tell her Francis was dead. After a while, very soon, it would matter that Francis was dead. But not yet.

“It is true?” He had put down his hat. Now he took off his coat. She had never seen him in ordinary clothes before. This was the sort of clothes he wore, this rough brownish stuff.

“I’ve got to tell you. I wish I had been there. He was such an odd fellow—never himself on the ground. People didn’t like him. But in the air he was quite different.” He was swallowing hard, wiping his forehead with a brownish linen handkerchief. “In the air something changed him. He was gay, you know—quite gay, as soon as we’d left the earth. I saw it happen again and again when we went up together.”

He was telling her about Francis and she must listen. It was not right now to look at his eyes, his mouth, his hands.

“He’d been getting on very well—only nobody liked him. I don’t think anybody ever had any proof that he had actually any part in the trouble we had over wages. But he was the sort you’d suspect of discontent. I hope I’m not hurting you?” He was looking at her kindly. She shook her head and he went on.

“I liked him—knowing how he was in the air, you know.”

But he was talking to her at a distance, as though they had never written to each other, as though letters had not come and gone a hundred times.

“Don’t—don’t be sad,” he begged her. He leaned forward and his face was near to hers—very near. She could see lines about his eyes. His skin was fine-grained, burned brown, his teeth strong and even. “No one will ever know exactly what happened. No one was near him—I mean he had no close friends. The men saw him coming to the field, walking along with a woman. She was telling him something, talking to him …

“Sweet boy, haven’t I told you I can’t get a job? Take me with you where you live. How did I find you? I have my ways. No, I’ll tell you the truth
—
I asked a farm fellow—”

“Let me go. Take your hand off my arm!”

But she would not loose him. She was there, still pretty. How did women like that stay pretty so long? God, if she’d only been fat
—
ugly
—
old! But she was pretty. Her breast was against his arm. He could feel it. No white woman had such lovely breasts. She had pulled back her coat on purpose. When he knew what she did on purpose why couldn’t he hate her? But it only made him want her again. And when he wanted her he thought of his mother, and he couldn’t take her
—
not to glut himself. If once he could glut himself, he might get it out of him forever.

He used to sit in church beside his mother. He could sit still a long time feeling her warmth, catching the smell of her, the organ, the sound of his father’s high intense voice, playing intensely upon him.

“Get away!” he shouted. He began to walk quickly, as fast as he could. But she was saying something, hanging to him, never letting him go. There was a smell about her, warm, close. He began to run. But she was saying something.

“And your boy, Frank
—
there’s Frankie
—”

He stopped. “Who?”

“Didn’t Miss Joan tell you? You put a boy in me, Frank
—
he’s almost as big as me now.”

“Joan?”

“She’s been helping me with him this long time.”

“You’re lying!”

“Come home and look at him! Spittin’ image of you, Frank. Your sister knows it
—
everybody knows it if they see him
—
”

Now he could shake her off. Now he must shake her off. He ran through the station and into the field. There the plane was waiting, the little plane in which he had learned to fly. Someone was getting into it, someone else who was learning. He pushed the boy aside.

“I’ve got to,” he gasped, and leaped into the seat and seized the stick. That was the engine roaring. Now, now he was off the ground. There
—
up … up … up
—
as high as he could go, into the sky!

… Roger was holding her two hands. “The plane dropped like a shot bird, wheeling, over and over. No one will know what happened. He was burned to death.”

The room was so still. The two boys were at school, the two babies were asleep. She was ashamed of her hands, rough from gardening. He would feel her hands rough in his. Francis burned to death—that was because Fanny had found him. She had tried so desperately to keep them apart. If Fanny ever came back she would say, “I never can see you again. I have taken the child. Now let me never see or hear of you again.”

“Don’t grieve so silently—speak to me—ease yourself to me.” He was caressing her hands. She must draw them away.

“My hands are so—so rough,” she said indistinctly.

“Why should they be so rough?” He was looking at them, tenderly.

“I raise a good many of our own vegetables. The children eat a lot.”

“You don’t make enough at that music?”

“Oh, yes,” she said quickly. “It really mounts up. I work at it several hours every day. But it all helps. Besides, I like gardening. It’s good soil.”

He was still looking at her hands. Now he dropped them as though he had thought of something. He began to feel in his pockets for his pipe. He began to speak as he had before he took her hands. “Well—did your brother help you in any way—financially, I mean?”

“No,” she replied. “No. Francis never helped me in any way. He wasn’t really able to.”

He lit his pipe and began smoking it. He looked around the room and at her. “This is where you live,” he said. “I’ve wondered what a room would be like where you live—you and all your children!”

“It is really where I live,” she said. She must look at him carefully, at every line of his body, his hands, his hair and head, the shape of his mouth, the color of his eyes. This was he. She put aside Francis. Francis must wait now, being dead. He must wait upon this moment of life. Soon Roger would be going. … But he was going even now, standing up, putting on his coat, his hat in his hand.

“Now, I must go. You will not grieve too much?”

She shook her head, not smiling, her eyes steady. “I am too used to sorrow. But it will be sorrow. I remember him a little boy—”

“I must come back,” he said abruptly. He had a very kind quiet voice, the voice of one habitually kind.

“You will come back?” she cried, smiling at him.

“Yes,” he said, “I must come back—to see how you do. You are very solitary here.”

She shook her head, speechless, and he went away.

Now their letters began again, now without pretense.

“I am used to seeing women helpless, leaning upon men. You live on that solitary hillside and are not afraid …”

“… Don’t you see I am not solitary? I have everything.”

He began to write of his wife—quietly, without apology that he had said so little about her. “She is a delicate creature—you would make two of her—a small creature looking like a child until one sees her face. It’s always been like living with a small child.”

She put the letter away. Let her remember Francis—let her remember she had a fresh sorrow over which to mourn. His clothes had come home to this house he had never entered, but it was his home because she was here, because she was the only one to know if he lived or died. She sorted them, his few clothes, his books. She looked at them. There were two little books about revolution, a copy of a book by Marx—she remembered hearing of Marx in college, long ago—a book about communism in Russia. Yes, the papers talked a good deal about Russia. It was all so confusing. Nothing was clear except the days of her life, beginning each morning and ending with the night. She found a picture of his mother among the books. But nothing else—no letter, no trace of how he had lived. His clothes were cheap and old, except his extra flying clothes. Those he had bought of good quality. He had paid well for those.

Strange how agony went out of pain when youth was gone. Sharpness of pain was gone, frantic pain was gone, sorrow was only an ache now, a deep swelling ache. Or was it that having suffered so vividly over Paul she had filled her capacity for suffering, so that now nothing could stab her again? Death seemed not sorrowful anymore, no more since she had come to think of death to free Paul. There was no other healing for Paul. So the sting was gone from any dying. When people died, they were set free. Francis was free, free of Fanny at last, free of himself. No, death could no longer wound her …

“… You understand how I could never leave my wife,” Roger wrote. “She is so defenseless—a helpless creature. You are so strong you are able to bear life as it is.”

She put his letter down and began to weep. She wept aloud, in the middle of a shining morning, in the midst of spring. For now she was mortally wounded. Because she was strong she must bear to the uttermost. Because she was strong, he said, she must again give up what she wanted. She wrote back to him wildly, out of her intolerable hurt. He answered, “I cannot make her suffer. Shall the deer suffer because it is the deer, because it is not born the lion?”

She was silent in her agony—shaking and trembling, feeding the children blindly, going blindly about the house. “Joan, you don’t laugh!” David cried. “I wish you’d laugh again about something!” Frankie was silent, watching her with great melancholy eyes.

She flung back at Roger, “And shall the lion suffer because it is the lion? It suffers the more being strong also to suffer … Let us not write anymore. You are not free. I can see it.”

She would end it. She sealed the letter and mailed it in hot hurry. Let it all be over. She was wounded to the core. He could wound her as death could not wound her, as even Paul had not the power to wound her. She walked back into her house. Let her be content with what she had. She had so much. She would stretch it to be enough.

She put a smile upon her face resolutely. Paul was walking, clinging from chair to chair, turning himself about the leg of the table, panting with his struggle to walk. Mary was already on her feet, a small nimble thing. They were all there in her house. David was frowning over his arithmetic. In the kitchen she heard Frankie moving about quietly, getting supper for her. In his delicate way he held himself aloof from the others, never quite like them, knowing himself, serving them in small ways unasked, shy of sitting down with them.

“Sit down, Frankie,” she said every day.

“Yes’m, I’m nearly ready to.” But he delayed if he could.

Then as she stood among them, Paul saw her. For the first time in his life he really saw. He looked up at the sound of her coming, and he staggered toward her, three steps, and caught her around the knees and looked up at her. Out of his dim gaze something focused in his mind for a moment and he spoke—“Mamma?”

It was his first word. She stared, incredulous with joy, into his upturned face. Why, he knew her—Paul knew his mother! She fell to her knees and seized him and began to laugh and to sob. “Children, David, Frankie, did you hear Paul? He called me!”

He pulled at the blue beads about her throat, the beads Mr. Winters had given her long ago. She had put them on this morning because of her blue dress.

They came running around her, David shouting, Mary clamoring with glee at the noise, Frankie smiling. “Say it again, Paul!” cried David.

“Say it, darling,” she urged. “Once more—Mamma—Mamma—say it, Paul!” She was avid to hear the word again, to repeat the moment.

But Paul had slipped to the floor and was staring at the beads, spreading them over his hands, as though he could not hear her. The moment had gone. “But anyway he spoke once,” she said fiercely, getting up from her knees. “I’ve heard his voice once, even if he never speaks again.”

He was mumbling over the beads. She turned away quickly.

“Now, David, do you need help with your arithmetic? Yes, Frankie, toast the bread—we’ll have toast and milk for supper, all of us.”

But Paul really had spoken to her. In the great desolation—“I have ended what was between Roger and me”—there was the little taper burning. Once Paul had spoken to her.

“Did you think I was going to let you get away from me like that?” Roger was there. She opened the door in the morning and he was there. “Your letter came last night. She and I were there alone. I saw her as I’ve always known she was—always in my heart she was—never wanting to see. You made me see her—”

He clenched his hands upon her shoulders. Across the room Mary was pausing, astonished. She saw Mary’s eyes, staring, astonished, at this stranger bursting into the house.

“Roger, it isn’t so easy—”

“No, it isn’t so easy—It’s so hard you’ve got to help me know what to do. She’s here. I brought her.”

“Roger!” she cried at him in consternation. “What have you told her?”

“Nothing at all except that you were the sister of one of my best men who was killed, and I wanted to see how things were. Come,” he said brusquely.

She followed him down the narrow grassy path to the picket gate. There in the road was a small low car. Roger’s wife sat there.

“Millicent, this is Francis Richards’ sister. You know I told you …”

She put out her hand and felt a cool slight touch upon it. “How do you do?” It was a light, pretty voice. She lifted her eyes to the face. “Will you come in?” she said quietly. This was the face Roger had once loved very much. He had said, “I was once very much in love. I was very young.” Yes, this was a helpless creature. The pretty, aging face turned to Roger, questioning, helpless.