Once she had really prayed for her mother’s life and her mother died. But then her mother was no longer young and there comes a time to die. Paul was only a child, and death was not for him—not for years upon years. She fell upon her knees by her bed, clenching her hands together, her eyes closed, her whole being pouring and concentrated. She felt a power sweeping up from her feet, through her limbs, her body, soaring upward to the cold starry sky, a shining shape of intense desire. “Oh, God, make Paul well!”
… She would give God time. She lived in a waiting intensity through days and nights. The work was to be done, in this house. There was so much work to be done, a routine of sweeping and polishing and cleaning. She worked at it doggedly. On Tuesdays she opened the dark unused parlor and wiped all the furniture and the pictures, all the curly carved surfaces. She knew every surface now without loving any. There was no meaning to any shape. She had never seen anyone sit on the chairs. The window shades were not lifted except on Tuesdays. On Wednesdays she cleaned the pantry. There were three heavy complete dinner sets on the shelves. “You shall have them when I’m gone,” Bart’s mother said often.
“Why don’t you use them?” she answered heartily. “I’d rather you used them now.”
“Use Mother’s good wedding set every day?” Bart’s mother cried in horror. “She never did, nor I. Besides, there’s the trouble of washing them every day. I’d never get over it if some were broken.” They ate from ten-cent-store dishes. She wiped the empty old-fashioned dishes savagely. If they were ever hers, she’d use them every day, every meal, and she’d slash them about in the dishpan.
“I always say,” Bart’s mother’s voice came dolefully from the kitchen, hearing the dishes clatter, “if you break up your few good things, you don’t know where you’re going to look to for more.”
She did not answer. She moved the dishes, wiping their edges. Nothing but things and things. This house was full of silent lifeless things, things to be taken care of. She’d like to walk straight out of it, walk away down the road, anywhere, never to return.
“I must be patient,” she cried, terrified. “How can I expect God to do anything for me when I am so unruly?”
It was very hard to be patient so long. She waited, day after day, prayer seething in her constantly, fretful, desperate, importunate prayer. She nagged at God with her prayers, unbelieving. “There’s nothing in it. Paul doesn’t change a bit.” Nagging desperately again, “There’s no other hope—Oh God, help me—”
She brimmed with a dreadful energy. She polished the front stairs she never used. Living in this house she had come to feel it sacrilege to use them. Bart’s mother’s disapproval made rebellion worthless. “But it means more to clean,” she said, hurt, to Joan’s cry: “Why should we climb up those steep back stairs?” The intensity of hope deferred was making her ill-tempered. She was often angry with Bart’s mother, furious at her large soft stupidity, her unwavering obstinacy … “Oh, God, when—when—is Paul going to get better!”
“Yes,” she answered violently to Bart’s mother, “I did wipe each banister—Yes, I did move the little marble-top walnut table and I did wipe behind the mirror.”
“Well, I’m sure,” said Bart’s mother, bewildered, “I was only asking—if you hadn’t, I was going to—if you had—I’ll begin picking over these windfalls to stew up.”
All the time she was watching Paul, testing Paul, trying to arouse Paul. One day she took him into the parlor and opened the old crack-voiced piano and holding him on her lap, she took his lumpish hands and holding them touched the keys softly. It had rained all day, a dark long day. In the attic she had walked with him, played with him, until the close down-sloping roof shut her in and made her breathless. Against the window the rain had beaten in gusts so that to look out was to see the trees’ indefinite cloudy green swimming in down-rushing water. She was as restless as a child, and taking Paul in her arms she had gone recklessly down the front stairs—“After all, I clean them!”—and to the piano. “Pat-a-cake pat-a-cake,” she was chanting, drumming his fist softly upon the keys.
The door opened suddenly and she turned, Paul’s head bobbing helplessly upon her breast, to Bart’s mother. Her large vague face was violently distorted.
“Now, Joan, that’s one thing I don’t allow anyway. I’ve stood enough. I never did let one of my children touch the piano, and you can’t start Paul doing it.”
She walked heavily across the floor, wiping her hands on her apron, and closed the piano with a bang. Joan rose. Now she knew she hated this woman. She hated them all. No use pretending anymore—no use trying to pretend. She stared into the small yellowish-brown eyes, lost in her hatred. She was holding Paul so tightly he began to cry. She turned and ran from the room … And all the time she knew she was herself hindering God. For how could God help her when she was so wicked and full of hate? In the attic she began to sob. “That old worthless piano—he’s her own son’s child—I don’t want to hate her—” She put Paul in his crib and threw herself upon the bed, sobbing. She cried so much these days. Any little thing would start her to crying.
When she grew quieter she lay in the darkness, thinking. She must just begin again. There were things she ought to do which she had not done. It was very easy for the heathen mothers who promised God a coat or shoes. She rose up and lit the light and found her mother’s Bible, poring over one of the pages heavily underscored. There was one verse blackly underscored: “He that cometh to God must first believe that He is—”
She had not been believing enough. “I believe, I believe!” she whispered fiercely.
“I believe!” she cried in her heart every day, every hour, as she swept and washed and mended. “I believe!” she repeated, holding Paul. She gave up the singing now. Instead she murmured over him like a fierce litany, “I believe—I believe in God!”
She began to be meticulous with herself, to read the Bible and to pray a certain time each day as her father had done. In her youth, she remembered with terror, she had laughed at people who were like this. It used to be a joke in the village because Mrs. Parsons always prayed before she began writing on her novel every day. “I want God’s blessing on all I write,” she used to say. “If I have God’s blessing on all I write, some day a publisher will take my book.” They had laughed at her in the careless fullness of their youth. Prayer was for church or to be murmured before sleep. It was like brushing your hair a hundred times, or like keeping your bureau drawers neat—all nice people did such things. Prayer was a nice habit. But nothing ever came of it beyond the feeling of niceness it gave. But perhaps they were wrong. Perhaps there was something there, a power upon which she had not laid hold.
Pray, Rose, she wrote, distracted, pray for Paul.
“God,” she cried to hills and sky, walking through the forests, green again with spring—incredible spring, coming year after year, just the same!—“God, help my little baby Paul!”
In this cunning to persuade God she whispered like a child to her dead mother. “If you are near God now, speak to Him of Paul!” She thought, if there is any way, she will find it and do it … But Paul still did not know her. He ate and slept and grew heavier and she tended him as she always had. For all her crying there was no sign that she was heard.
“Bart,” she said, “I have an idea I want to go to our old church. I want you to stay in the house with Paul once on Sunday.” Perhaps in the familiar church she might recapture the childhood sense she remembered of God’s being near and loving. They used to take it for granted that God loved them.
“You needn’t do anything,” she added to Bart. “Just be in the house—don’t touch him unless he cries.” She was jealous of Paul’s immaculate body. She did not want Bart’s great grimed hands touching him.
He spoke so heartily she looked up in surprise. He seldom spoke to her these days, and to him she did not speak unless she must. Between them there was that eternal wordless question-and-answer waiting. Whenever he opened his mouth,
she drew up her resources ready for refusal. If she should speak to him, he might be led on to ask that question. Silence was safe. At first he had touched her hand often, and made awkward opportunity to brush against her as she passed. She learned to stay far from him, to come and go steadily, cold, never touching. “You’d think I was dirty or something!” he roared at her once. She looked away and did not answer. It was true—his flesh was like filth to her.
Then at last he made no more effort. He came and went from the fields, eating enormously, sleeping immediately after he had eaten at night. She ceased to feel the pressure in him. He was content to be silent toward her as he was to the others. They all lived in the round of silence. Sam was going with a girl now, a fanner’s daughter five or six miles away. Each evening after milking he cleaned himself and ate his supper in solemn uneasiness. He gave up his coarse joking and gazing at her secretly. He was going to be married. He was settled, or soon would be. Bart’s mother fretted a little. “They say Annie Beard is a real good cook, but she’s so free with butter and sugar. I ate a piece of her cake at the church supper once, and it was so rich it was sickening. I don’t care for anything but sponge, myself—more is flesh pander.” She sighed. It was not decent to say more. Her sons were men, and she supposed they must behave like men. Since Bart was not complaining anymore, she guessed he and Joan must have fixed it up. After all, his room was right at the foot of the attic stairs, and she’d told Joan—
“You go right ahead,” Bart said boisterously Sunday morning in the attic. “Paul’s all right with his dad, aren’t you, Paul?” He grimaced at the cradle.
She put on the white chip hat she had had before she was married. She had not worn it for so long that everybody would have forgotten it. Her white linen dress was old, too, but it was simple enough to wear without notice. She was thinner than she used to be and it hung a little on her hips. She had not for so long seen herself dressed like this. Her face was thinner, the lines of her bones clearly shaped, and her mouth was not so full as it once was. Her lips were restrained and set. But she had her clear skin and her mouth was still red.
She turned away from Bart. She knew she was still pretty enough so she did not want him to notice her. “I’ll walk from the Corners,” she said. “I can go in the surrey with them that far. Then it is only a little way.”
But Bart did not see her at all. He had thrown himself across her bed and was staring into the rafters.
She was a little late in church. They were all singing when she slipped into a back seat and sat down. She bent her head a moment and suddenly began to tremble. She was very tired. She had not realized how tired she was until she came to this familiar place. The singing went quietly on. The old folks sang gently:
“We may not climb the heavenly steeps
To bring the Lord Christ down”
The organ picked the notes out delicately, muted. The sunshine fell in bars as it used to fall through the closed windows, and lay upon the dying still air. All through her body little nerves began to relax and tremble. She wanted to cry again. She wanted to cry for herself, piteously and aloud: “I’ve had a hard time. I’ve really had a very lonely hard time.”
The singing softened in an “Amen,” and the people sat down. All their backs were to her, but she could recognize them. That was Miss Kinney’s summer hat, the tan leghorn with the circle of red cherries. There sat Mr. and Mrs. Billings. He had grown fatter than ever, and Mrs. Billings was already nodding, bless her heart. But the boys were gone. In the organ loft she saw Martin Bradley’s back, angular, as neat and spare as ever. His hair was almost white. He was moving his fingers over the silent notes as he always did during Scripture reading. Old Mr. Parker was dead. She had read that in the paper one day. He had died just before he was to retire on his savings, as he had feared he would. He had saved and saved for an annuity, going pinched all his days that he might be independent in age, and someone else was using it, someone who never cared for him, for he never married. “I have never made enough to warrant my inviting a lady to share my poor fortunes,” he used to say. Once he had said it at a church supper—that was when Mrs. Mark still had her legs. “I have asked the Lord concerning a wife, but there was no answer. I fear I asked amiss.” Mrs. Mark, cutting smartly into a huge white-iced cake, had shouted loudly, “That’s it, Brother Parker—you never asked a miss!”
Everybody had roared, and Mr. Parker smiled painfully and went out of hearing. Mrs. Mark was known to be a little indelicate for a lady.
Joan sat, smiling, remembering, forgetting for the moment why she had come. There was so much to remember here in this place—her mother, Francis, Rose, herself. It hurt most of all to remember herself. It was like remembering someone else, a young ardent girl. The door of the vestry opened and she looked up quickly, remembering her father. But instead a youngish bald-headed man came out in a dark business suit. He began to speak in a sharp practical voice.
“Today’s lesson is found in—”
He read quickly, plainly, without acknowledging any poetry in what he read, and sat down abruptly. A woman in the choir rose and sang in a sharp clear soprano. It was his wife. She remembered that definite high voice. “Is there only one bathroom in the manse? What sort of a kitchen stove do you have?”
She bent her head, waiting for the song to finish. When the congregation sang, she could go back to remembering. The soft murmuring of old voices, the muted organ—remembering, she might remember God. Her father could so invoke God in this place. Oh, that she might feel God true!
There was a short practical sermon, a few notices read. “There will be the usual meeting in the vestry after service. I shall discontinue the Wednesday prayer meeting while I am away on vacation during July.” A strange young man passed the collection plate and she shook her head. She had forgotten to bring money.
Then suddenly when they rose to sing the last hymn she could not face them. She could not bear the pressing questions, “Joan, what’s become of you?” “We never see you anymore.” “It’s nice to see you in the old home church again, Joan.” She was at their mercy, because they had all known her so well. She could not hide herself. She turned and hurried out of the church and went down the street. After her came the soft sound of their peaceful aged singing. The singing made the noon unreal.
… “Was Paul all right?” she asked Bart.
“Sure he was,” Bart answered. His voice sounded thick and queer, as though he had been drinking. But he could not have been drinking in this house. When a stranger asked Bart’s father for a match even, he would not lend it if he knew it was to light a pipe or a cigarette. “That’s flesh pander,” he said. And to drink even cider was wicked.
She looked at him closely. But he did not look at her. His red hair was tumbled and he smoothed it roughly. “You’ve been asleep,” she cried.
“Yeah,” he muttered.
“Asleep when you were to take care of Paul!”
“Well, he’s all right, isn’t he?”
Suddenly gorge rose in her. She could not bear to look at Bart. She let it pass. It did not matter, so long as Paul was safe.
She importuned Rose to pray for her, while she hung her own prayers on God. And she so prayed that she almost prayed herself into believing that her prayers must drive through the walls around her and reach an ear beyond. But in the night it was hard to believe. In the night, alone in her attic with Paul, the round-topped trunk pushed against the door, in the darkness of the deep night she might doubt and did often doubt. … “I must remember this is only because it is night and everything is so still, and because there is no one near me. I must remember that I believe in God and that the morning will come soon.”
She thought humbly of Rose who was so good, so sure. Rose’s prayers would count with God. In the night it was a comfort to think that far across the sea Rose was praying for her, too. And in the morning, when the sun came streaming through the treetops, it seemed to her that Rose’s prayers must be answered.
“Good morning, Mr. Moore!” she called gaily. It was one of the moments of forgetting. The morning was clear over the hills, the earth was throbbing with sun and heat. The air was still and fertile with warmth. She felt her feet sure and vigorous upon the rich grass. It was impossible not to hope this morning. Paul was so well, so placid, so good.
Mr. Moore grinned at her, his gums toothless. “Foreign letter for you,” he said. He liked to bring her a foreign letter. “Makes your eyes shine!” he said, as he always did.
“Good!” she cried heartily. “I knew something nice would happen—it’s one of those mornings!”
“It’s not a bad day,” Mr. Moore admitted. It was so warm he had taken off his coat and was in his brown vest and gray chambray shirt. He was a little embarrassed as she reached out her hand freely for the letter. “I might have kept on my coat if I’d known you were coming out,” he apologized.
She took the letter and smiled at him warmly. It was Rose’s letter, the address neatly typed. Rob had never written. Rob was so busy, Rose said—and he had his own parents to whom to write. Rob was opening a new field often, Rob was pushing northwest among the Mohammedan peoples, over the deserts, into the high barren plateaus near Tibet, where the men looked like Indians, lean and dark and fierce.
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