Time Is Noon (8 page)

“Did you, Mother?” said Joan, astonished, staring. Such a thing had not occurred to her. She had gone away that first morning four years ago filled with herself and with her wonder at what was about to happen to her, and her strong cheerful mother went home and cried because the house was empty without her! She was immeasurably touched and comforted. It was lovely to be loved. Wherever she went there would be this love to which to return. She put out her hand and patted her mother’s gray hair under the small brown homemade velvet toque. Her mother smiled back to her and the moment was warm and close until in mutual shyness they looked away from each other’s eyes.

“I hope,” said her father gently out of his own silence, “that Rose will not lose her faith, even as you did not, Joan. But I never saw a young soul with clearer conviction than hers.”

A guiltiness fell upon Joan. She ought to tell her father she didn’t really know what she believed. But she shrank from hurting him.

“I hope Rose has a good time,” her mother said with energy and then went swiftly on. “Joan, I’ve been thinking that old gold-brown cashmere of mine could make Rose a pretty jumper dress, and the color would be becoming to her. The skirt’s old-fashioned and it has a lot of cloth in the gathers. I believe I’ll set to work on it. It helps to get to work on something.”

Incredibly soon they were home and soon the house was still except for the sounds of the morning. Hannah polishing the stairs, the whir of the sewing machine from the attic where her mother sewed, her father’s slippered footfall in his study. So it might have been if Rose were there. Rose who in her quietness seemed to add nothing to the noise of the house, and yet now the house seemed empty. But it was not that Rose was gone, not that Francis was in school again. It was that she, Joan, was still there, idle, when the others were busy. She must think what to do next. She must of course earn her bread. Her mother had said many times, “Stay at home a year, darling. Take your time.” But she was restless now that the summer was over. It was time to work, to do something else. She wanted the next thing. The house was suddenly too small, the furniture worn and old and tiresome to her sight.

She went to her own room and closed the door and sat down by the window. Where was the mood of the summer gone? Why was she discontented? But the village was absurdly small, a crisscross of half-a-dozen streets, a little nest of poor houses, a few dull folk. She brought to her memory one after another of the houses whose interiors she knew completely, where not a chair or table had been moved since she could remember. She was weary of them. They stood dingy in the sunshine of this day. It was not enough.

I want something more, she thought resolutely. I must find the thing I can do really well. … Maybe music …

But she knew in her secret heart what she wanted to do, and what she could do well. She could love a man well and keep his house clean and make it beautiful and bear his children. It was all she secretly asked of life, that she might follow this old beaten path. But how could love find her, hidden away in a little country manse?

There was a knock at the door and Hannah thrust in her rough red head. “Miss Joan, your pa says there’s a couple downstairs to be married and will you come and be a witness with your ma?”

She rose mechanically, used to the summons. But today there was acuteness in the moment. Downstairs she waited while her father drew off his study gown and put on his old frock coat. The groom was a young country fellow, a hired man, doubtless, upon some farm. His hands hung huge and misshapen and his great stooped shoulders were bursting his coat. The girl was his mate, a strong squat figure, her arms red and thick, her face broad and low-browed and burned red by the sun. They were foreign, sprung from some peasant soil in an older world. They stood awkwardly, closely together, their dull greenish eyes fixed faithfully upon the minister’s face. She could hear their heavy breathing, and on the man’s thick neck she saw the sweat stand out in coarse drops.

It was over in a moment, a few words, a halting promise interchanged, an instant’s suspense about the ring. He fumbled at the girl’s finger and she snatched the ring from him. “Here, give me it,” she said loudly, forgetting where she was. He watched absorbed while she worked the thing over her knuckle, and then sighed gustily in relief.

“Now come and have some cake and coffee,” her mother said with brisk kindness. It was her custom. They smiled sheepishly and followed her into the dining room with the stumbling docility of beasts. Behind them Joan saw their hands clasped, two rough knotty young hands, holding each other hard. They would go back to some house, some small wooden house in a field, and they would work and eat and sleep and make crude love and rear children together, mated. It was a life. She was suddenly very lonely. She turned abruptly and went back to her room.

In a night autumn came rushing. The wind blew cold across her sleeping and when she opened her eyes in the morning it was to find upon her bed a shower of leaves from the maple tree outside her window, dry leaves veined with yellow. She sprang up to shut out the cold and saw early frost upon the green grass. The chill woke her sharply and she did not go back to bed. She must get to work this day. As soon as breakfast was over she would work on the prelude she had begun last spring and never finished. She would go over to the church and work alone at the organ. She dressed resolutely and swiftly and ate her breakfast quickly.

Her mother worried, “Joan, you haven’t eaten enough.”

She answered, “I want to get to work, Mother, I must work this very day. I have an idea for my prelude.”

But her mother did not hear her. She sat listening, her head lifted, her hands hovering above the coffee cups. There was a clatter on the stairs and the door burst open and Francis fell into the chair beside her.

“Say, Mom, gimme my food quick, will you? Jackie Weeks said he’d help me with my math this morning if I got there early, and I want to get it done so’s I can go nutting. I’ll bet the frost was hard enough last night to make ’em drop. He’s a shark at math. Lord, how I hate math!”

“Perhaps Joan would help you, darling,” said his mother. “Here—let me butter your muffin. I wish you wouldn’t go so much with Jackie.”

But she would not wait, Joan told herself. She had her own work to do. Besides, her mother had not even heard her. “I’m not good in math, I’m afraid,” she said, and then hated her selfishness. “Of course I will help, Frank,” she said.

“Jackie’ll do it quicker,” he said carelessly, and she was released.

With her music under her arm she walked across the still frosty lawn and into the quiet church. Outside the air was pungent and fresh, electric with cold, but here in the church it was warm and still and untouched by freshness. There was a faint aged odor, the odor of old people, a little sweet, a little dying. She tiptoed through the empty aisle, past the empty pulpit, and sat herself at the organ and opened it and immediately the waiting keys invited her. She was tired of idleness—work was pleasure. She spread her pages and played the first bars softly and critically. She played on and then broke off. There she had stopped writing it down last spring just before Commencement. A melody had come to her and she had written it down in haste and then left it incomplete because they had called for her, Mary Robey and Patty, her roommates.

“Joan—Joanna! Practice—practice for the senior parade!”

The senior parade was the most important thing in the world to her then. It was nothing now—less than a memory. Strange how she could hear their voices and yet she did not want to see them—not really. They were over, somehow. She wanted—she wanted—not them—someone. She set herself resolutely to the music. Slip there into a fourth, now minor it in the left hand, now repeat the theme slowly and so through the variation to the last bar—the last chord—major, minor? A fifth, perhaps. She moved her fingers tentatively over the keys, humming the air softly—so—to a minor sixth. There let it be. Though it might sound unfinished, she could not find another end.

She tried it over again from the beginning. The church, empty as a shell, echoed deeply behind her. It flung back at her her own lonely music. The melody ran through the arches and came back again to her ears and she listened, absorbed. Not quite right somehow, not quite right. The minor note was not introduced soon enough into the melody of the right hand. It began too gaily for its end. The minor note must be sounded very soon, there in the beginning. She put her pencil to her lips and dotted in a note and then tried it over softly.

“That is right,” said a voice out of the church. She leaped up from the seat and turned. There beneath the pulpit in the front pew sat Martin Bradley. His hat was on his knee and in his hand was a roll of music. She remembered instantly that it was Friday morning. Of course he always practiced on Friday mornings. How could she have forgotten it when all through her childhood her Friday mornings had echoed with strains of his music from the church? She ran quickly to the choir rail.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” she gasped, looking down at him.

He rose gracefully and smiled. “Why?” he asked simply. “It’s been delightful. That was a charming little thing—delicately sad. What is it?”

“I made it,” she answered shyly.

His face, upturned like this, was new to her, a narrow sensitive face. He did not look old at all, even with his gray hair.

“I can’t make up my mind where to introduce the fifth,” she added with impulsive confidence.

“Let me see.” He mounted the steps lightly, a spare, graceful figure, and came to the organ and sat down. Very precisely and clearly he began to play her prelude. Strange to hear her own music come like this from his hands! She was intensely conscious of him, his look, his presence; the church was full of his presence. Suddenly he began to vary it. “How’s this—and this—” He modulated softly, plainly. “Is it your idea still?”

“Yes, yes, that’s lovely,” she said eagerly. “Now bear upon that sixth and repeat it in the left hand. Yes!” she cried delightedly. “Why didn’t I see how to do it myself?” He played on. The fine black hair grew smoothly upon his neck, a little silvery at the edge. She was listening to the music, thinking about the music, but she saw his brown neck with the fine short clipped hair smoothly upon it, and the white about his ears, as smooth as though the white were brushed evenly over his hair. When he turned to her, questioning, she saw the dark skin wrinkled closely about his eyes, but he was not old, not as old as she had thought he was. She liked the spare distinguished line of his shoulder. “So—to the minor end,” he finished, and wheeled around and smiled at her.

“Thank you,” she said with ardor, and he smiled again quickly and then she was shy and began to gather her music together.

“Don’t go,” he said.

“I must,” she answered, and then wondered at her urgency. She did not need to go. She might linger here as long as she liked and no one would miss her. But still she was urgent to go away. What should she talk about to him? For now she did not see him at all as Mrs. Bradley’s son, for whom the old woman searched out tidbits. He was a man, mysterious and able, who made his own life in a great city, and only slept in this village. Doubtless he knew many women, beautiful and clever, and she was only a girl out of school. Beside his finished slightness she felt herself too hearty and too big and hopelessly young. Then she found herself looking down into his smiling steady eyes, and she saw he thought she was pretty. She was relieved and at ease, and mischief rose in her. She smiled back at him.

“I must go and help my mother. She’s making a dress for Rose.”

“You look like a tall pretty boy. A boy doesn’t sew!”

He was teasing her and she laughed with pleasure. “I can cook and sew and sweep and make beds and lead missionary meetings and dance and swim—”

“Surely out of so much there is something we can do together?”

She felt a heat run into all her veins. It was the first time a man had ever asked her—she dismissed with huge momentary scorn all the boys she had ever known, and looked at him, shy again. “Do you sometimes walk—on a Sunday afternoon?” he continued.

“I can,” she said with gravity.

“Then Sunday—about four? If I let you go now?”

“At four,” she promised, very gay.

He turned again to the organ, smiled at her, nodded, and began to play long smooth rills of notes. She walked softly away and the music followed her across the lawn and into the house. She went to her own room and opened a window and the music mounted and climbed in, muted but still clear. He was playing gloriously now, swiftly and triumphantly, clear, climactic chords. She sat down to listen, and leaned upon the window.

Strange how she had forgotten they were in the church! Something had begun for her, though she did not know what it was. But she knew that now the house was empty no more and now she had plenty to do. There were a hundred things she could do, wanted to do. Why had she felt so empty yesterday? Life was rushing again and full and deep with promise. Anything might happen to her any day now in Middlehope. She laughed and turned contentedly to her desk, and opened the pages of her music score. She would write in the notes he had given her, that muted varying fifth which introduced early the minor theme. Sunday afternoon would be here before she knew it.

“But I can’t see what you find in that old man!” her mother was crying at her.

“He isn’t old!” she cried back hotly.

They were in her mother’s bedroom, and her mother had shut the door so that she might say what she had to say. She sat down in the rocking chair and began to rock frantically back and forth, her arms folded tightly across her bosom in the way she had when she was beside herself. Joan stood by the window, rebellious, determined, furious that her mother made her still a child.

“He’s forty-five if he’s a day! You’re twenty-two! Why, he’s old enough to be your father! You’re Ned Parsons’ generation!”

“Ned Parsons bores me,” she answered shortly.

“I thought this summer you liked him—”

“Only to play with—”