Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

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.

But she went. He was there before her and without a word he began to kiss her and to fondle her with his smooth expert hands. And she had not the heart to ask why two days ago he had not kissed her or wanted to touch her. She did not understand him. He was strange and not to be understood. She only said sadly and at last after long silence, “Why do you love me at all?”

“Why do I love you?” he repeated. They had risen from the log where they had sat. He looked up at her, and ardor flew into his eyes again. “You’re like a lovely boy, Joan,” he said. “I love you because you’re so lovely — and like a boy — you’ve a boy’s head and a boy’s mouth. Look at your hands—” He held outspread on his own palm her strong spare hand. “Even your hand is like a boy’s! I wish you’d cut off your long hair.”

His face was dry and brown and wrinkled in the hard sunlight and for the first time he looked old to her. She saw him for one moment as himself, as Martin Bradley who had always lived in the village. Something repelled her. Was there some odor about him? It was faintly sweet, faintly vile. It was like a perfume a woman might have used upon her handkerchief yesterday.

“We’ll never be married,” she said suddenly.

“Darling—” he began.

“You’ll never marry anybody,” she said.

“Darling,” he began again, and drew her toward him by the hand he held.

But now she knew he was repulsive to her. “No,” she said abruptly. “I’m going to South End to meet my father at the mission.” She remembered that on Sunday afternoon her father went to South End. She could go to her father. She wanted her father.

She strode off sharply and left him on the instant. She held her body straight and hard and she did not look back once to see what he did. But within herself she began to weep. Behind her straight grave face she was weeping inwardly and bitterly, and when she asked herself why, she found herself crying in her heart, “I wish it had not been he who kissed me first.” But she forced her feet to go on and on, and soon she was at her father’s chapel door.

In the small bare room, she sat down at the very back and watched. The room was crowded with shuffling curious people. They were dark and sullen. They were yellow and livid. They were filled with black blood and white, with blood ill-fused and cross-currented. But when they were old, their faces grew placid, aged beyond good or evil, as tranquil after evil years as Mr. Parker or Mrs. Parsons in their goodness. All the faces were upturned to her father who towered over them.

She turned her face upward to him, too, with a rushing sense of safety in his goodness. He was to be trusted because he was so good, so simply good. She lifted her face to him again.

But inside her body something beat and ached strongly. Her defrauded body, denied, drew back upon itself its own ardor. To what should touch and kiss proceed, then? her body inquired most passionately. To which her good brain answered coldly and relentlessly, “He would never have married me.”

So she turned to her father and received from him hungrily another sort of food. Among all the others she sat and received certain words for food. “And Jesus Said, ‘Come unto me all ye—’” Surely this was a sort of food her father gave her, too, while he gave to the others. She listened anxiously when he told of the prodigal son. She listened, groping for something from her father.

But then it seemed to her she could not, after all, bear his unearthly physical presence. While he was standing in benediction over the restless half-subdued crowd she slipped away and swung solitary down the country road toward home. She was glad for the dusk. No need to turn her head now toward that dale, no need, for he was long gone. She was clear of him now. No more — no more of his kisses! Her mother and her father had her back again. She would go back into them. Tomorrow she would humble herself and say to her mother, “I have been a fool.” The prodigal son two thousand years ago in the old story had said, “I have sinned.” Perhaps it was the same thing. She turned at the gate of the manse to enter.

But as she turned she saw someone standing there, waiting for her. It was not a man — not Martin. It was a woman. A trembling hand came out to her and she seized it and knew it.

“Why, Netta Weeks!” she cried. She forced heartiness into her voice. Poor Netta, for whom she was always too busy! They had never had their talk.

“I had to come, Joan — I had to see you—”

“Yes, Netta?”

“Everybody’s saying — they’re all saying—” The voice choked, the twitching hand tried to free itself.

But Joan held it hard. “What are you saying?” she demanded.

“You and Martin — and I saw you once — when I got off the train — I saw him — Oh, Joan, I’ve never told anybody, but we used to go together — and I thought — I was sure if ever he married anybody, he’d marry me!”

Now strength came pouring into her, good scornful prideful strength. Oh, how could she ever be clean of his kisses?

“Did he?” She heard her own voice very cold and clear. “I’m sure he meant it. There’s nothing between Martin Bradley and me.”

“Oh, Joan!” Out of the darkness she felt Netta’s head lean upon her shoulder, and she heard her weep and she felt her hand clutched again. “Oh, Joan, I’m so relieved!”