Time Is Noon

by Pearl S. Buck

  He closed the box at once. “You’re right,” he said quickly, and hurried ahead of her.

  In the store, people were beginning to come for their day’s shopping. Since it was Saturday, wives were in from the country, the older ones in calico waists and dark skirts and little stiff hats, and the young women in wash dresses, the sort Mr. Winters hung on a rack and sold for a dollar. Three or four of them stood by the rack, turning the dresses eagerly. She could hear them. “There—that’s real pretty.” “I don’t care for checks, though—looks like apron stuff.” One of them, a plump squat woman who had a coarse pretty face, said, “Yes, when I’m dressed up I like to feel dressed up. Joe likes something fancy on Sunday, too—he’s partial to lace.” She listened, watching them, smiling yet feeling them strange to her. They would be shy of her because she was educated, because she was the minister’s daughter. She said impulsively to Mr. Winters, “Wait on them first—I’m in no hurry.”

  “No indeed,” he said heartily, although any other day he would have obeyed her. What was the matter with him today? She smiled at them when he went back unwillingly toward them. But they did not smile back. Their eyes met hers blankly and they took her courtesy, not recognizing it. She waited, foolishly hurt.

  … Perhaps, she told herself afterward, it was because she was already hurt that it seemed to her that when Mrs. Bradley came in a moment later she thought her cool. What did it matter whether Mrs. Bradley was cool or not? What if Mrs. Bradley only gave her a little nod and held her tight lips without a smile? Had someone told her perhaps after all this long time that Martin had once—Mrs. Bradley always hated any girl whom Martin liked—people laughed at her about it. But then Netta came in and Netta was not cool. She was too warm, too pitying. Netta waved to her and then came near and whispered to her, “I want you to know that I shall always stand by you!”

  “What do you mean, Netta?” she said aloud. She had always the instinct to answer Netta’s whispers very loudly.

  But Netta turned now with fresh warmth to Mrs. Bradley, who was listening. “Oh, Mrs. Bradley, I want to tell you I think the way Martin played last Sunday was just wonderful! It’s so sweet of him to want to keep on playing in this little old village when we all know he could—I said to Ned last night—” She drifted away with Mrs. Bradley, laughing coquettishly. “And Ned said—” She glanced at Ned at the far corner and waved. “There he is—he’s calling me.”

  … “Now let’s see,” said Mr. Winters. He had been arguing mildly over the dresses. “Wouldn’t you care for the blue instead, ma’am? It seems to me blue favors you more than pink—and the blue is a little bigger.” He shook his head to Joan and ruffled his gray spiky hair that stood high and stiff above his narrow, veined forehead. “She took the pink,” he whispered to her with pain a moment later. “A fat woman will always choose pink. I’ve seen them do it for twenty years. Now then—” He was so kind, so very kind.

  When she had the little heap ready he ran into the stock room in the funny jogging trot he had when he saw customers filling the store, and came back holding the blue beads out to her. “I want you to have them,” he said. “They favor you.”

  “Oh, no,” she said, amused. “I couldn’t.”

  Then to her surprise he became suddenly incoherent. He was staring across the store and she followed his eyes. There was Mrs. Winters, her back to them.

  “You take them,” he said, and stumbled on. “What I say is it’s not the old man’s fault. Whatever they say, you remember that. We all grow old, I guess.”

  He plunged away from her and she was left, holding the blue beads. She picked up her package and quietly went home … So something was wrong about her father.

  She entered the house softly, every sense sharpened. While she had sat brooding over her own restlessness, dwelling upon her loneliness, her father had been needing her and she had not known. When would she learn not to think of herself? While she was playing through a summer her mother sickened, saying nothing. In the silence of this house her father was suffering without speaking.

  She took off her hat and went straight into his study without knocking. On Saturday morning he would be writing his sermon. He wrote out all his sermons in an even large hand, whose lines were now becoming a little trembling. Upon his shelves lay piles of manuscript, dated neatly. He never repeated a sermon. It would have seemed dishonest to him.

  But he was not writing. He was sitting as he always did in his old Morris chair, drawn close to a small, neatly piled fire in the grate. He was as close to the flickering blaze as he could be, his pale hands outspread above it. He turned his head slowly when she came in and stared at her as though he did not recognize her. She realized suddenly that now he often looked at her like this. Seeing him sharply in the sunny room she saw how pale he was. He had always been pale, his skin white, his pale reddish hair changing imperceptibly to whiteness, but now he was as white as a figure of snow, his eyes scarcely deepening into silvery blue. She longed to run to him, to enfold him, to tell him he was not alone because she was there, young and alive. But she knew that it would frighten him. She made her voice casual.

  “See, Father, what I am sending to Rose. And I oughtn’t to interrupt you, but I thought perhaps if you had something you would like to put in it, too? It would be so nice for them.”

  He stirred himself slightly, moistening his white lips. “Yes,” he murmured. “Of course. I gave them a copy of the Old and New Testaments, revised.”

  He rose, lifting himself out of his chair by his hands pressing upon the arms. “Yes,” he said helplessly. He stood a moment and put his hand to his head. “What was it? Yes—yes—” He opened a drawer in the table where he kept his small supply of writing paper and took out a fresh pad and a new pencil. After a moment’s thought he drew out another pencil. “They would find these useful.” He held them a moment jealously. There was something precious to him about fresh paper and pencils. “When I was a boy,” he said suddenly, “we were very poor and I had difficulty in procuring writing supplies. I used to write upon the brown paper wrapped about the food. But raw meat always ruined the paper.”

  “They’ll be easy to send,” Joan said. She could see the little serious boy, wanting paper and pencils. He gave them to her reluctantly and that she might watch him, she wrapped the package there and addressed it. “Think how far this has to go over land and sea!” she said, forcing her voice to brightness. He had sat down again and was putting the half-burned bits of wood together, and he did not answer.

  “There,” she said, “it’s ready. And you’ll want to go on with your sermon.” When still he did not answer, she touched his shoulder. “Won’t you, Father?”

  He looked up at her with a sudden nervous gesture.

  “Yes, of course,” he said quickly. “Of course—of course—”

  Yes, surely there was something wrong. She could feel it in the church. In the church there was restlessness. The choir loft was half empty. There had been two new people in the choir lately, a youngish man and a woman, newly come to the village. Today they were not in their places. There was whispering and rustling, and at last Mrs. Parsons, looking frightened, sang the same solo she had sung last Sunday.

  Joan glanced sharply about the church. She knew them all so well that now when Mr. Parker was not there, when Mr. and Mrs. Weeks were not there, when the Jameses and the Newtons were not there, it was as though holes gaped suddenly in sound familiar fabric. Why, a lot of people were not there. But Netta was there, and Mr. and Mrs. Billings, stout, red, and all their three sons. Mr. Billings looked belligerently ahead and Mrs. Billings nodded a little beside him, struggling against sleep, as she usually did. It was comforting to see her, so usual, as though nothing could be wrong. Her fat red hands lay clasped in her lap. She always said with a laugh, “As soon as my hands lay, I go to sleep. Mr. Billings teases me dreadfully about it—but then!”

  In the back, Bart Pounder sat solidly. She caught his eye and looked away. But there was Dr. C
rabbe! Why had Dr. Crabbe come to church today, when he never came?

  Then her father stood up, tall and white. He seemed not to see the empty pews. He closed his eyes and over his face there came the old unconscious reverent ecstasy. “Let us pray. O God, our rock in time of storm—” His grave voice floated about the high and shadowy chancel.

  He opened his eyes and began to preach, and she was somewhat reassured. Then he had, written his sermon yesterday after she left him … There was a slight rustling in the church. Martin Bradley turned his music at the organ. Across the aisle, Netta took a hymnbook from the rack and read it ostentatiously. Joan felt the angry blood rush to her cheeks. She wanted to shout at Martin, to snatch the book from Netta’s hand. But she did not. She sat very straight, her eyes fixed upon her father’s face, listening intently. He read his sermon carefully from beginning to end without once looking up, without lifting or lowering his voice. She did not hear a word of it.

  Once she saw, how blind not to have seen before! But they had all been so known to her, the familiar people, the well known, the people who had been like a fringe of family, an outer wall of safety. She had grown up secure in their friendliness. They had their little ways. Had they not all laughed at the breakfast table when their mother begged their father, “Don’t preach about foreign missions too often—remember the Kinney’s!” Or she had said, “Mrs. Winters didn’t like your quoting St. Paul about women last Sunday—that is an irritating verse, Paul!”

  But these were dear faults, the whim of people loved and known. Then how, suddenly, could people become hostile? How could walls fall and safety fail when one had nothing?

  She listened day after day at the study door and heard her father’s footsteps, walking to and fro, soft, and all but soundless. Sometimes they stopped and she heard a deep murmuring, a sighing that was almost a moan.

  But when he came out he was himself, very still, very composed. He came and went to his tasks. And she would not ask Hannah anything, although Hannah always knew the village gossip. Hannah was cross in the kitchen because she was making desserts which were usually too much trouble, and because he was still steadfast against temptation. He put aside even her chocolate pudding which he loved.

  She would, she decided, walking about the garden, thinking swiftly, go and ask Ned Parsons. Ned, who had loved her—surely he had almost loved her?—would tell her. She would not give him the time to put her off. She would say straightly, “What is the matter with my father?”

  She put on her hat and went to the store. It was nearly noon and women would be at home cooking their dinners. He was there, checking piles of gingham at the back counter, his pencil behind his large ear, his coat off and his dark vest unbuttoned.

  “Oh, hello, Joan!” He scarcely paused. Once he would have rushed to greet her! The store was empty. Even Mr. Winters had gone to lunch. “What can I do for you?”—Ned, the clerk. She remembered his face, mooning at her above his guitar.

  “Do you still play the guitar?” she asked suddenly.

  He looked at her above a pile of flowered stuff, his eyes round. He laughed, embarrassed.

  “Yes—I do.” He coughed and swallowed and fumbled at his ear for his pencil. “Say, I have to thank you a lot for something, Joan. I guess you didn’t know what you did when you told Netta and me to go off that time. We—I guess I saw she was a kid, too. But she was a little older—not enough to amount to anything now, but when you’re kids—” He laughed his high silly laugh.

  “I’m very glad,” she said. She looked at him clearly and fully, but he was fumbling over the folds of the garish gingham.

  “Yes—well—” He glanced at her furtively and grew very red and went on fumbling busily. “We’ve always expected great things of you, Joan. I always thought you were too good for us—your education and all—and your music writing.”

  “Ned Parsons,” she said suddenly, “tell me what’s the matter with my father.”

  He looked up at her then, startled by her suddenness. “Well, now—”

  “Straight!” she commanded him.

  “Oh, nothing, but some folks think he’s too old,” he blurted. She gazed at him intently, taking each word. “Then there’s some says he pays more attention to the niggers down at South End—they say that you have to be a nigger or a heathen or he has no interest in any body.” He began shifting piles of cloth.

  “Then what?” she demanded, despising him.

  “Oh, well—you know how people are in a little town. They want a young fellow—up-to-date and all that. There’s a fellow over to Lawtonville they’re talking about.”

  “I see,” she said clearly. “Thank you, Ned.”

  She turned, and he called after her, “Not that there isn’t a good strong handful that don’t want him turned out. I’m one of them—Netta and I both are, Joan!”

  “Thank you, Ned,” she called back.

  So now she knew what it was. She was like a child, bereft. Grown people, those whom she had trusted, had turned and left her. They stood alone, she and this old man.

  People were tired of them. They had grown tired of the same face in the pulpit, saying the same things, the same eternal things. They wanted something brighter and more amusing. She began thinking of them one by one. Which of them would stand by her father, which of them would not? But when she began thinking and remembering how they had last looked, how they had last spoken, she could not be sure of any of them, not even of Miss Kinney, who would be swayed by the last person she heard. There was Dr. Crabbe, Mr. Pegler, Mrs. Mark. But they were not the church, and Mrs. Mark had her legs. There was no one of whom she could be sure.

  She entered the house and went quietly to her room. Then it came to her that there was no more shelter in this room, no more safety in this house. All that she had thought was safety forever about her was gone, unreasonably gone and not to be regained. This house in which they had all made a home belonged to their enemies. It belonged to the church. It could not be a home, this house given and taken away at the whim of a crowd. They had built a home under foreign shelter.

  She stood by the window, staring across the wintry garden. All these flowers her mother had planted in foreign soil, the lemon lilies, the ferns they had dug from woods and streams. Her mother had wandered through woods in spring with a trowel and a basket, crying aloud over bloodroot and trillium and feathery mosses. Before she went, Joan thought savagely, she would dig them all up and throw them away. She would chop the roses at the roots and hack the lily bulbs. Who could help growing old? They were all growing old. They were old—old—the church was nothing but old people. Yet who turned Mr. Parker out of his house because he was old, and who took bread away from Mrs. Kinney because she was over eighty years old? Then she was suddenly afraid. What did people do when the roof was taken from over them and wage was stopped and there was no more bread? What would she do with this old man? She had no one.

  But they helped her to be proud. On Sundays before their strangeness she could pretend she knew nothing. She could receive coldly their meaningless friendliness. She sat in the pew where once they had all sat to hear a proud priest, listening fiercely now to an old mumbling man.

  For it was impossible not to see that he was now nothing but an old man. He mounted the pulpit steps wearily and he clutched the handrail when he descended. Only for a moment, that first moment when he faced his failing congregation, did he throw up his head and straighten his shoulders. Soon he forgot. Soon he was poring aloud over his manuscript, reading strange dreamy stuff to which the few listened, bewildered or scornful.

  “And I dreamed I saw as though the heavens were rolled away, a fair land, through which flowed serene a river. The name of the river was Peace, and there was room for everyone there on its banks, the young and the old, and they lived together safely. Dreams are not meaningless, not vagrant. Dreams—”

  “I must take him away,” she planned passionately. She wanted to run up now and lead him away and shelter him.

>   Yet he would not be sheltered. In the house when they were alone it was necessary to pretend with him that everything was well. He came home from a meeting of his vestry, stricken and bewildered, muttering replies to himself. Waiting for him, standing at the dining room window watching for him, she wept when she saw him dragging himself across the gray frost-bitten lawn. His lips were moving and he made angry, futile gestures that were like weak blows.

  But when, anguished with tenderness, she ran to the door, he pushed her feebly away, panting a little. “Is—is supper ready?” he asked. “I feel—a little faint”

  “Oh, what has happened?”

  “Nothing—nothing,” he replied with unusual irritation. “I’m just a little tired. I’d like to have supper right away—as soon as I wash—”

  He went slowly upstairs. Standing at the foot, she heard him moan softly at the top step. “O, God—” But after a moment he went on and he did not call her. She must, she perceived, allow him to remain what he had always been. He must remain a priest or he would die. But a little later, out of the absolute silence in which they sat at the table, she asked again, “Father—can’t you tell me? Couldn’t you talk it over with me?” He answered, “Women do not understand these things. There is nothing in which you could help me. I trust in God.” She smiled at him, pitifully, and let him be. At night, lying awake, she could hear praying, in long stretches of monotone. He was still putting his trust in God …

  And if he gave up his trust in God he would have nothing left. People had drawn away and left him. One by one they had all gone. Mary was gone. She used to lie here in this bed and in the night when he awoke to a strange aching loneliness he could look over and see her dark head or put out his hand and touch her warm breathing body. Now his own feeble warmth could scarcely change in a whole night the chill of the sheets. And in the night they all seemed to mock him. The members of his spiritual family! In the night he even wondered if what they said was true. Perhaps he was getting old. But if he was too old to preach, what could he do? There was the little insurance he had all these years in the Ministers’ Relief Fund. Mary had made him take it when Joan was born. It had seemed not trusting in God, but she kept at him. And he could draw it out in another two years. It would all be his, then. He planned in the darkness that he might rent a little room in South End and go and preach to the unsaved. “And the common people heard him gladly.” “For so persecuted they the saints before you.” He began murmuring the strong resolute words and after a while they helped him. He began to feel the old arrogant determination to make his people do God’s will. No, he would not retreat before his people. The Lord had appointed him—the Lord alone could dismiss him. He would not speak to anyone. He put his trust in God. He slept fitfully before dawn …