Time Is Noon

by Pearl S. Buck

  “Well, you’ll be wanting to read your letter,” Mr. Moore said. His car set up a fury of noise and stirred a rush of dust. He jerked it into movement and urged the motor with a clatter of gears, and the car, choking, was on its way.

  She thrust the letter into her dress and went upstairs to the attic. It was midmorning, and there was a pause in the work. In a few moments she must go to the kitchen and peel potatoes. But these few moments were empty. Paul was asleep in a clothes basket under an apple tree. She was always happiest when he was asleep. He was just a little boy asleep. The attic was beginning to seem a room of her own. It was her uncontrollable instinct to make a room pretty. She had made little ruffled green curtains for the gable window and a cover for the box. Last winter she had sewed rags into a round rug. Bart’s mother had showed her how. They were rags of colorless old work shirts too torn to wear, but she had dyed them green and brown. She sat down on a barrel chair she had found in the attic and had covered with the green curtain stuff. Now she tore open the letter.

  It had always been a luxury to read Rose’s letters over and over slowly, to extract from them every picture. Slowly through Rose’s meager descriptions she had pieced the picture of a square mission house, dark servants coming and going, a garden thick with ferns and spotted lilies and quick-growing plants. “But, alas, there are snakes and centipedes,” Rose had written. “We have to keep continual watch over David.” David she saw clearly, a small, too thin, intrepid child. David was always running away. David was continually being sought for and found down by the riverside among the junkmen, or in the marketplace. Sometimes they found him first, but other times before they found him there would be knocking at the compound gate and a man would be there, a bare-legged farmer or a riksha coolie, holding the small boy firmly by the hand.

  “He runs away in spite of everything,” Rose wrote anxiously. “Nothing will keep him inside the compound walls.”

  She had read every letter absorbed, eager to see David, laughing at David, ten thousand miles away.

  She tore open the thin Chinese envelope … But this was not true, not these words typed scantily here. A letter could not carry a message like this, a common letter! The lines ran together as her eyes read them. Now let her begin again carefully and quietly disentangle the words. The name of John Stuart—that was the doctor at the station—Rose had told her about John Stuart, a little. “He is a faithful worker,” Rose had said, “a man of few words.” Few words! In this handful of words he wrote, “And without warning bandits came into the town and forced the compound gates. Mr. and Mrs. Winters were killed almost immediately, we heard later from those who were watching in the crowd. The children were saved by their faithful nurse. The little girl was eleven days old. We escaped—” The lines were tangling and twisting again.

  … “Rose, you are to stay here in bed and keep the children here and the amah with you, I shall go out to meet them. I shall speak to them quietly and tell them we are here only to help the people, to give them the true knowledge of God. You aren’t afraid?”

  “No, Rob.” Rose was lying on the bed in the middle of the room, looking at him. She looked like a young girl again suddenly, smiling, her eyes shining. “I feel as though all my life has led up to this hour.”

  “God, in whom we have believed—” he said steadfastly, his hand on the door. There was a great roaring from the street.

  “In whom we have believed,” she repeated, her voice thrilling through the words. He opened the door quickly and went out. The silent little boy broke away from the Chinese woman’s grasp and ran to the window. He screamed suddenly, loudly, “Mother, they hit—”

  The door burst open and the men surged into the room. He was lost—his mother was lost. It was like water rushing into the door and drowning them. A hand reached out and pulled him …

  “They were found, he upon the threshold,” the letter said, “stabbed, and she, stripped and stabbed in the bedroom of their little house against the city wall. It was probably done very quickly. They were buried in the garden secretly at night by friends … I am bringing the children home.”

  She sat with the letter in her lap, trying to know that they were dead. She had been trusting Rose to pray for her, and Rose for weeks had been lying folded in her grave. She would have said that surely she must have known it, that her hope, flying through space, would have met a barrier and dropped, daunted. There had been no sign. She had not felt Rose dead. She had not known. But all the time Rose was dead.

  Now, any day, following this letter, this man would come bringing Rose’s two children across the sea to her, to be hers. Under this roof she must somehow make a place for them, too. The attic stretched about her, down to the eaves. If she could put two small beds there at the south, away from the wind—

  Through the glorious still day she moved in silence. She could not speak to anyone yet. She went in quiet dazed mourning, tears often in her eyes. Whatever she did, she saw Rose at some past moment—Rose, demure even when she was very small, decided, knowing always what she would do, sure of how to make her life. But she could not decide against death. As reasonless as idiocy was death. One could only accept.

  She went the length of the day and of the next day, death a secret in her. It would mean nothing to them that Rose was dead. They had never seen Rose, Rose standing to receive the dress like a shower of summer flowers about her white shoulders, Rose moving about the house with her quiet beaming look.

  Bart’s father said fretfully, “All this government fuss and fidget with farming isn’t going to do any good. Things are getting worse all the time. In my dad’s day—”

  Rose was lying now ten thousand miles away, on a low hill overlooking a Tibetan plain, in a garden beside a city wall. … “Apples won’t sell more than a couple of dollars a barrel this fall,” he continued. “Stew up as much as you can, Minna. We’ll eat apples.” And John Stuart was bringing two children to her, two more little children … “Don’t see how Annie and I can live on the little I get,” Sam was saying. He was afraid of his father and his face was redder than ever. “She’s a good manager, but—”

  “She’ll have to be,” his father said. He soaked a crust in his coffee and sucked it … The children could eat apples and bread and milk. She’d get food for them. She could find a job. But she had less than two hundred dollars left out of the five hundred. Week by week it had gone for little Frank.

  “She can’t manage what she hasn’t got!” Sam cried, goaded.

  “I don’t know as I’ve any call to have to support my son’s wives and children.”

  She spoke suddenly for them all. “We work, all of us,” she said clearly. She was not afraid of him.

  “Lot of women in the house,” he muttered, his mouth full of dripping crusts.

  “Not all the children can be as good as Paul is,” said Bart’s mother. “Anyway, he’s not much trouble.”

  “No,” Bart said, pausing in his chewing, “you’re right, Ma. Paul isn’t any trouble.”

  … No, she thought drearily, listening, only trouble enough to break his mother’s heart. And David was coming across the sea, who was always running away. He would want to run away from this house. Walls could not hold David. She had less than two hundred dollars left, and there were three children—and Frankie—four children.

  In the church on Sunday she sat anxiously, planning, thinking. Paul was still to be healed, but here were these two, coming. She could not pray. The church was not full of remembering, now. She could not sit thinking about the past, even about her mother and father. She had to plan for what was to come. The minister began to speak. “Today we are to pray for one of our members who is in sore affliction. God has seen fit to take to himself as martyrs Robert Winters, son of Mr. and Mrs. Winters, a missionary to China, and his wife. Eight years ago the young couple went out from this church, and today they lie in their graves. Let us pray for our friends, the bereaved parents, the motherless children—” He did not put her name a
mong the bereaved. He did not know her.

  His unctuous voice flowed on. The people bowed their heads. She felt the tears rush to her eyes and got up abruptly in the middle of the praying. Yes, but something had to be done. She had to do something. She felt herself betrayed. While she had been praying … She walked swiftly down the street to the Winters’ house. At a window next door she saw Mrs. Kinney’s old withered head like a skeleton trembling at the window, but she did not call or make a sign of greeting—old Mrs. Kinney’s taking care of herself, living on and on, uselessly. She ran up the steps and rang the doorbell, and Mr. Winters came to the door. They had not gone to church today, but he wore his coat, because it was more decent in such sorrow. It was real sorrow. He choked a little when he saw her and said more loudly than he usually spoke, “It’s been a long time since I saw you, Joan. Come on in. Mattie’s lying down. She’s terribly upset. It seems as though she blames Rob and Rose for it.”

  He followed her into the square neat sitting room. “I’ll go and tell her.” At the door he paused and looked back, his long pallid face melancholy. His voice broke in a sudden squeak and he pattered away, his bedroom slippers clacking.

  She sat waiting. Once in this very room Rob had had a birthday party and the cake had been on the square carved center table, and he had given the first piece to Rose, and Rose had eaten a little of it and tied the rest in her handkerchief and had taken it home. That was the difference between Rose and herself. Joan always ate her cake immediately. Rose said, “I knew there’d be ice cream and things I couldn’t take home, so I saved the cake and two pieces of candy.” But she couldn’t think ahead like that. Rose had worn a pink dress, and she a yellow one.

  Mrs. Winters came in suddenly. She looked older. She was thinner, much thinner. Her skin seemed loose on her, as though the flesh had melted away from under it. Although the day was warm she wore an old black cloth cape around her shoulders.

  “Well, Joan,” she said, “I’m sure—”

  Joan rose quickly and put her arms about her and for a second Mrs. Winters leaned against her. Then she withdrew herself and sat down, dabbing her eyes quickly with her handkerchief. “If I’d been listened to,” she said. Her full bluish lips trembled a little. “I was never listened to. Now this has happened—the two children—I’m not a bit well myself, and business has been dropping these two years in the store. If Rob had only listened to me and stayed home. What are Reds? I couldn’t seem to understand.”

  Joan said quickly, “We can never understand. I’m to have the children.”

  Mrs. Winters looked at her dubiously. “But how are you fixed?” she said.

  Joan smiled. In this room she had once eaten all the cake on her plate at once, not thinking of tomorrow. “I’m all right,” she said sturdily. “I live on a farm. I have a little son of my own, you know. There’s a big house—plenty of room in the house.” She’d take the house and wrap it about the children, her children.

  “I’m not real well,” said Mrs. Winters at last, looking about the neat room. “Rob was such a good boy. He never upset a thing. What I say is, people have no right to go off to the ends of the earth and leave their children for other people to bring up. But I’ll do my duty by my own son’s children, of course.”

  Mr. Winters sat drooping, saying nothing.

  “But I want them—they’re Rose’s children too,” Joan cried. “I’ll come to you sometimes and you can advise me and help me—”

  Mrs. Winters shook her head sadly. “I’ll do all I can, I’m sure,” she said. “I always want to do all I can—and I do—”

  “Of course you do,” said Joan quietly. Mrs. Winters looked old and tired and bewildered, more completely bewildered than she had on the day when Rob and Rose were married. “Goodbye,” said Joan. “Don’t worry. I can manage.” She went away quickly.

  She strode through the street and down the road, her heart firm and sorrowful and exulting. She was to have the children. She went recklessly, her big body impetuous with generosity. She didn’t know how to manage, but she would manage. She must write to Francis and tell him. He never wrote to her, but she kept on writing to him anyway, because her mother would have wanted her to.

  And then there she was at Mrs. Mark’s little stone house. She stopped short. She might go in, since she was early today. She hadn’t heard anything of Mrs. Mark for a long time, and she had not gone to see her. She had not wanted Mrs. Mark’s ruthlessness probing her—Mrs. Mark’s disgusted voice, “What’d you go and marry in a hurry like that for? A lout—”

  But today she could forestall Mrs. Mark. She did not matter today—nor what she had done. She opened the door and called and a small voice answered and she followed it. Mrs. Mark lay buried under a thick cotton quilt. Her face looked out at her with the withered waiting look of an aged and suffering monkey. “I’m glad you’ve come, Joan Richards,” she said. “I’ve waited a mortal time for anybody to come. I been dead since yesterday noon from the waist down. I’ll never stir out of my bed again.”

  “Oh, Mrs. Mark!”

  She waited, groaning a little, while Joan heated soup she found congealed in a pot. She drank it slowly, and a thawed look came about her wrinkled mouth. “Wash me off,” she commanded. “Hot or cold water, it doesn’t matter from the waist down, but make it hot above. I like to feel as far as I can.”

  When she was cleaned and fed, Joan said anxiously, “I’ll have to find someone to come and stay with you.”

  “I won’t have a soul,” said Mrs. Mark promptly. “You can put some bread and milk by me and the clean bedpan and come back in a day or so. I hate fuss. It isn’t going to be but a week or two at most. An inch or so and it’ll hit my heart.”

  “And maybe you’ll be alone!” Joan cried.

  “Everybody’s alone,” said Mrs. Mark.

  “I’m glad I came by when I did,” Joan answered.

  But Mrs. Mark looked at her with suspicion. “Don’t you go thinking I prayed and you came by. I don’t pray. I lie here and take it, though it’s not coming to me more than to another. It’s chance—just as it was chance you came by. There wouldn’t have happened anything different, no matter what—”

  “I wouldn’t leave you if it weren’t for Paul,” said Joan.

  “Get along,” said Mrs. Mark. Her eyes were small and sharp and dark with the never-dying tragedy of an ape’s eyes. “Get along with you.” She shut her eyes and waited for her to go.

  “I’ll go, but I’ll be back tomorrow,” said Joan. But Mrs. Mark would not answer and she went away.

  She had stayed longer than she realized in Mrs. Mark’s cottage. When she reached the Corners, the sun had swung over the zenith and was on its way downward. There was no sign of the surrey. She searched the deep dust of the road and saw the narrow rut of its wheels, double, coming and going. There was the slight wavering of the right hind wheel, slipping a little. It was loose on its axle. They had come and gone, then. They had not waited. There was no sign of restless horses’ feet, stirring the dust.

  She set her lips and struck out in long strides.

  Paul would be hungry, and they would not feed him. No one had ever fed him except herself. It was not easy to feed him, not pleasant. It took a great deal of patience. She had to prepare his food and mash it soft and push it back into his mouth again and again when it ran out. They would let him lie hungry until she came. It never seemed to occur to any of them that Paul belonged to the family as much as Bart did or Sam. But she must not be bitter. It was easy not to be bitter about small things when all was well. But now sorrow stretched her soul.

  She quickened her steps until she was half running through the hot dust. She took off her hat and let the sun beat down on her. Her thoughts marched to her feet. She must manage to get back to Mrs. Mark somehow tomorrow. She had put bread and milk and tea beside her and two tins of soup, and had filled the little spirit lamp freshly. If she could only find someone to go in every day—maybe Fanny would if she gave her a dollar more ev
ery week. She must get more money somehow. Maybe if she wrote to Francis he could send her a little.

  Or maybe she could earn something somehow. She used to think she’d write songs. But what could she sing now? She had no song to sing. Songs could not be made out of the sort of days she lived. She could not even sing to Paul. She was living in deepest silence now that she knew she would pray no more. She strode on under the hot blue sky.

  She had not prayed these last two days since the letter came. There was no use in it. Everything was stopped in her, every voice—even her own voice. The sky was blue emptiness, deeply, endlessly empty and blue. She stopped a moment to hear the utter stillness of the sky. But it was not quite still. There was a faint steady approaching drum of noise. That must be the plane. She turned her face up quickly. Far above her the silver flight went past, out of the sky and into the sky again. The sun poured its heat down upon her and she stood abandoned to it, her face turned upward. The sky was not empty. The sky was a sea for that ship to sail upon. She smiled, forgetting—That could be a song if she went on with it. Then she remembered that Rose was dead and she began to hurry again.

  When she turned the bend of the road by the big elm she heard the noise. She was so used to silence heavy about the house that she could not believe it came from the house. Someone was shouting, a man’s voice, loud, hoarse, bellowing. She heard the crack of wooden furniture overturned. A woman’s voice screamed—a strange voice she did not know. She began to run. Noise was coming out of the silent house. Something had happened to Paul. She ran faster, her mouth dry, the perspiration upon her body stopped. The surrey was still standing at the side of the road. The horses were kicking and tossing their head at the flies, and they whimpered when they saw her. She ran across the grass. She could hear the voices, Bart’s father, Bart’s sullen voice, Bart’s mother begging, “Now Father—” The strange voice crying and crying, Sam’s complacent voice coaxing: “Let up, Pop—it’s done, isn’t it?” She ran into the open side door of the dining room, gasping. “Is Paul—is Paul—” and stopped.