Time Is Noon (9 page)

“You’ll break my heart—every one of you children seem to have your own special way to break your mother’s heart—”

“It’s not fair for you to try to force me by making me sorry for you,” she answered hardly, shocked at her hardness.

There was silence except for the creak of the rockers. Now she remembered that sometimes in the night, when she heard the subdued quarreling voices, she heard also this same swift loud creak. But she said nothing. She stared steadily out into the gray November afternoon. The leaves were gone already from the trees and the red brick church stood tall and bare and angular, immovably large in the landscape. But it was all nothing to her. In less than ten minutes Martin would be home and the telephone would ring. She would hear his voice. She had been waiting for it all day.

“Has he proposed to you?” her mother asked in a dry voice.

“No,” she replied coldly.

“He’ll never marry you, that’s one comfort,” her mother said bitterly. “He’s philandered with one girl after another. It’s a joke in the village, Martin’s girls. And no one knows what goes on in the city. But he’ll never marry anybody—his mother wouldn’t let him even if he wanted to. But he’ll never want to. There’s talk about him—I can’t tell you—” She paused a moment and went on with difficulty. “There’s something downright queer about him. I feel it.”

She would not answer. What did she care what this foolish, little village thought? They did not know Martin. Besides, he had been honest with her. Only yesterday he had said to her, “I won’t pretend never to have loved anyone before. But, darling child, you came when I thought it was all finished. You’ve come like a lovely late spring into my life. And there’s never been anyone like you. You’re everything I’ve wanted—you are a sweet boy, you’re a pretty lady, you—”

“I know all about him,” she said to her mother, her voice very even and clear.

“Joan—Joan—Joan—” her mother cried helplessly. “You’re nothing but a silly child. Don’t you see what you’re doing? Everybody’s talking about you. And your father’s the minister! Why, even Mrs. Winters—”

“Don’t tell me!” she broke in, turning furiously on her mother. “I don’t care—what’s Mrs. Winters?”

Her mother was silent before her fury, but she did not turn away her eyes. She swallowed hard and began again, looking at her steadily, making herself calm and reasonable. “Let’s talk gently, Joan. Every young girl falls in love once with an older man—”

“Listen!” she cried. The telephone rang loudly in the hall and she ran to it. There was his voice at her ear, warm and ardent and rich. He had a beautiful tender voice, not deep, but light and tender as a woman’s.

“Joan?”

“Martin—Martin—”

“Meet me in ten minutes, sweet—in the same spot?”

“Yes.”

She hung the receiver up softly and flung herself into her coat and ran bareheaded from the house into the dusk.

But her mother was in her still. However she might answer rebelliously, however she might run, however she might cry aloud to herself in the dusk that now she would choose her own way and have her own life, her mother had carried her in herself, now she seemed in some strange like way to be sharing her body with her mother. Once she had lain, small and curled, a stubborn part of her mother’s larger being. Now in her own large strong young being her mother held a small dark stubborn part. She could not be free of her mother.

She strode on through the cold darkness and met Martin outside the station and threw herself passionately into the darkness to find his arms and lips. But though it was dark he drew back.

“Wait,” he whispered. “Wait. Someone else got off the train behind me.”

He stood away from her a moment and they waited in the silence. A girl’s figure came by and passed at a little distance.

“Do you recognize her?” he asked in a whisper.

“No,” she replied, shortly and aloud. Her mother in her made her answer shortly. Her mother in her made her go on against her will. “Why should we care? I hate sneaking about.”

He answered very gently. “It’s not sneaking, sweetheart—it’s only being discreet.” He took her arm coaxingly and she could not answer. They walked pressed closely, together in the dusk along a roundabout road by the edge of fields to the other end of the village where he lived. She longed passionately for his arms. She was hungry for his touch upon her. She did not want to make him angry, because when he was angry he did not smile. He was silent then and took his arms away. If he were angry he could leave her with absolute silent suddenness. But her mother was doggedly with her.

“Why should we be discreet? We have nothing to hide.”

“Sweet …” he began, and he reached for her hand and thrust it into his overcoat against his breast. She felt her hand there alive with a separate life. But still her mother drove her hard against him. She had not been willing to hear what her mother said, but she had heard and was saying it over again.

“What’s the end of it all, anyway? Martin, aren’t we ever going to tell anybody?”

Now he stopped and in the lonely back road took her in his arms and kissed her. Against his kisses the voice of her mother struggled once more. “Isn’t our love ever coming to anything?” He gave her no answer except his kisses. He held her against his hot thin body and kissed her again and again and again, hard strong practiced kisses that played intolerably upon her young unused flesh. For a moment the thunder in her ears silenced her mother’s voice, the thunder of her own rising rushing blood. So she was silenced. She put her head down upon his shoulder and stood trembling against him.

In her home her mother said no more. Days passed and she said no more. She moved usually about her household tasks and if she were quiet, Joan would not speak of it. She would not ask why her mother was quiet because she did not want to be shaken in her love. She would not give up her love. She worked every day upon her music, long hours alone in her room, long hours alone in the empty church, but now she was never lonely. She had conceived the idea of a love sequence in music. Each day she would put into it some meaning of her love with Martin. But she had not yet really begun to write it into a shape. As yet it was only a drift of melodies in her imagination.

For now she lived entirely in the secret life of her sudden love. To her mother she was always pleasant, always ready to be helpful, to conciliate her. There was a quick cry always ready on her lips, “Let me do it for you, Mother!” Sometimes her mother would let her take a broom or a duster from her and sometimes she would not. Sometimes she answered tranquilly, “Thank you, child.” But sometimes she cried bitterly, “Go on and do something you really want to do.” Out of this bitterness once she looked at Joan and said hopelessly, “I expected too much—I seem always to have expected too much from my children.” Then Joan went away quickly and in silence, for she would not hear her mother speak of that one thing which now fed her.

Yet she still wanted the old family love about her and now she turned eagerly to her father, grateful for his guileless ignorance of all that went on about him. She knew her mother had not told him anything—why tell him who understood only the mysteries of God? So in the daytime, when she was waiting for the night and Martin, that she might escape her mother she went sometimes with her father along the country roads when he went to visit his people, and she sat silent in his silences or heard him talk of his far thoughts.

In the silence she thought of Martin. But it was not really thinking. It was not her brain saying words and making thoughts about him. It was only that if she were left alone for a moment without occupation, talk in her ears, tools in her hand, a task to be done, suddenly she was empty and in that emptiness there was only Martin. Nothing she could read in books, nothing she had once learned in school, had any meaning for her now. There must be something for hands and feet to do, a question to be heard and answered, or else she was empty and in the emptiness was Martin.

So when her father talked she listened, her upper surface hearing, answering what she scarcely heard. He said, not talking to her, but speaking aloud to himself as he often did riding along the country roads, speaking aloud to himself or to God, “I must enlarge the chapel at South End. I am grieved continually that in that village of several hundred souls there is no real church. People live together like savages without marriage laws and their children are not baptized. Even though they are black they are nevertheless souls in God’s sight. But I need help—I need help—the people in Middlehope don’t help me—”

She listened, and for a moment she heard. Black souls—she remembered. Miss Kinney and Africa. South End was like Africa. The people were black. They were savage—that meant they lived together without marriage laws. At missionary meetings no one spoke about South End. But since she was born she had known that people did not like to pass that way by night. Ever since the factory closed things had been worse, quarreling and feuds between families. Peter Weeks kept saying he was going to open the factory again, but meanwhile people lingered on, waiting and quarreling and drinking.

Her father’s voice continued gently and calmly.

“But if my people do not see it as I do, yet I can say as Christ said also, ‘I have other sheep not of this fold.’ I will tell them God has spoken to me of it. I will proceed upon God’s call and leave it to God that my people will hear his voice also.” He spoke as definitely as though what he had planned to do was done.

She did not answer, letting him talk. On their homeward way her father turned his small old car and they passed by South End. He drove slowly past the chapel, full of plans.

“It’s an ugly place,” she said, looking down the dirty broken street, the shabby people shambling out of doorways.

“It is ugly because it is full of sin,” he replied tranquilly.

But now she did not want to hear him. She wanted to hurry away from South End and get home, for the afternoon was late and she must be there to meet Martin.

Yet her father had his part in her, too. If her mother had made and fed her body, here was her father, and he had fed her spirit. Day by day, week by week, by his presence, by his words, he had shaped something in her. Her mother’s part in her was passionate and dark and strong and hard with good sense. “He will never marry you,” her mother cried in her continually now. But her father’s part in her was not weaker than her mother’s. He was not in her blood. He had not shaped her bones or created her flesh. But he had breathed into her life of a sort, a life not of this world. He had informed her spirit. He said, “It is ugly because it is sinful,” and she understood him.

She could not, therefore, forever live quite wholly in her body with Martin. Her soul had a hunger, too. Her father had not satisfied her soul, but he had fed it enough to keep it alive. It was alive and hungering in her so that she wanted to talk to Martin, to feel his mind and hers in communion. But he did not talk to her. When she talked he listened smiling, tolerant of her as of a child, and then he took her into his arms and kissed her again and again. It was his only answer to her, and after a while she foresaw, dimly, that this would not be enough. But as yet this was enough, or nearly enough for joy. The very strength she had from her mother’s share in her being, the dark earthy strength, made her hungry for joy and Martin was the only means that had come to her. She did not see him for himself, but only as a means of joy. For it was indeed joy to have him kiss her as often as he would, because it was a man’s lips upon hers. It was a joy to have his hands upon her hands, even though she was secretly ashamed because her hands were broader than his and harder in the palm. It was joy to have his touch smoothly upon her throat, delicately at her breast. She called these lips, these hands, this man’s shape that stirred her, Martin. That he could by his music also move her heart did not make the true Martin the more clear to her. He had her by the blood.

And yet he did no more than kiss her and fondle her when they were alone—no more than that. He was very guarded. She made her joy out of very little—a moment or so every day when she could meet him at the train, a half hour in the church when they were alone on Fridays. There by the organ she bent to him while he played, leaning her cheek against his hair, watching his quick supple narrow hands upon the keys. Or she waited for him, sitting quietly in a pew while he played over and over again a phrase that did not please him. And he let her wait.

For now as months went on he changed, as often as a woman might change—as she, indeed, never changed, because she did not know how. It was her being to be straight and simple and unchanging. But he was delicately hot and cold, and she did not know what to do with him, or how to shape herself to his changefulness. Sometimes he was anxious and then he forced her to leave him soon. The church, he said, was so near her parents. They might be discovered. He was afraid her mother might discover them. He was cold and hot together, a strange cold hot creature. Sometimes he kept her waiting miserably, shy because of her youth and his maturity. Sometimes he came late to practice and he said coldly and formally when he found her already there, “Good morning, Joan,” as though she were a little girl, and he went directly to the organ and began to play, and did not touch her. In his aloofness he behaved as though he had never touched her. Then she did not know what to do. Once in the spring, in a fury of hurt she had run noisily out of the church and to her own room, and there she sat shivering by the window she still must open to hear him play. He played on and on steadily. Surely he did not even turn once to see if she were there. When at last he stopped she closed the window. … Now he missed her. Now with some excuse he would come to the door of the manse and ask for her. …

But he did not. She saw him walk quietly and gracefully down the street toward his mother’s house. That day and the next she did not go to meet him anywhere. He did not call her and she forced herself to silence. On Sunday morning he came into the church before the people as he always did, and he did not look at her. But by now her heart was like a beaten puppy. For her own sake she must not go to meet him again. She swore she would not meet him in the afternoon in the deep hidden spot they had, a small well-like dale between two sharp little hills, halfway to South End.