Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

Her mother’s cheeks flushed darkly. She received the embrace warmly but with shyness.

“You’ve grown so I hardly know you. You take after Paul’s family, growing so—” she said, half-embarrassed. “When I think of you I still think of a little girl about twelve with two pigtails and suddenly there you are, taller by a head than I am!” She looked up into her daughter’s eyes. “I’m almost afraid of you,” she said. Her face sobered and the two looked at each other in an instant’s gravity. There was strangeness between them. The girl could not bear it.

“I’m the same!” she whispered, frightened, looking down, her head drooping. The undertone of a lost child was in her voice, and her mother recognized it and knew her again.

“Of course you are,” she replied quickly. “Now, dear, if you are coming — then don’t be too late.”

So her mother was herself, practical, able, managing. Under the familiar dominion things were right again. She was happy and safe once more. She began to brush out her hair, humming the tune they would perhaps be singing later in the Brick Church, since it was her father’s favorite: “How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord.” The sunshine brightened gloriously with the mounting day. Out of what had been the silence of dawn now sounds arose, the clack of the latch at the gate, her father’s quiet measured step down the stairs, Hannah’s quick dump of coal into the kitchen range, her brother’s shout for a clean shirt, the tinkle of the piano. Rose was playing a hymn gently. Everything had begun in the house.

She came into the breakfast room a little late but sure of their love. She was the eldest daughter in the home, the dearly beloved, the young queen. She caught the fond look in her mother’s eyes and smiled regally. Though with her lips her mother might say “Pretty is as pretty does,” her eyes were proud upon her daughter.

“I do like that green dress,” she said. “I’m glad we got it instead of the white one. It won’t show soil so much, either. And you can wear those ruffles real well — though you are so big.”

Thus her lips spoke staidly and with composure. But in her mother’s eyes the girl saw other words. “Joan is lovely — Joan is what I dreamed I might be — she is big and lovely and strong. She will do everything I have not been able to do.” All this was clear in her mother’s eyes before she turned away and began to pour out the coffee. Then she subdued her pride decently. Rose cried out, “Oh, Joan, you are lovely!” But the mother said quietly, “Sit down, dear. Father is waiting to say grace.”

At this Joan looked penitently at her father, waiting to give thanks before he could eat. She wanted to please him, too. She cried out eagerly, “I’m sorry, Father dear!” He did not reply, but waited mildly. By his peaceful remote look she knew he could never see that her dress was green and ruffled and her hair shining in its large soft mass at her neck. He was a man of God. Her mother was warm and quick and human and she knew her children’s bodies intimately and loved them with secret passion, secret because she was afraid of showing herself out, lest something, lest somebody, have a hold whereby to thrust and injure her heart through her children. If anyone praised them she answered tranquilly, “They’re good children and that is enough.” But her very tone showed that it was not really enough. They were a great deal more and she knew it and rejoiced in it.

But the father knew nothing about his children except that they had souls to be saved. He painfully hoped and believed they were saved. He could not forbear, even in his thanks to God for daily food, to slip in a petition that was really for them, since he knew his own soul of course was safe. “Save us, O Lord, we beseech Thee, and if this day be the day of death for any of us, accept our souls and let us live with Thee to all eternity. Amen.”

Death and eternity — these two words took shape and meaning when he spoke of them in his deep grave way. God also lived for the brief moment of his address. This man could call upon God, and out of the sureness of his belief God was summoned and lived. But when his voice ceased and all their eyes were opened again, God and Death and Eternity returned to their shadows and were no more.

Instead there was life, this life in this room, the painted yellow walls, the fluttering white curtains, the worn brown carpet, the books overflowing from the rest of the house, books everybody had read and were done with, but which could not be thrown away because they were books. Upon the shining table were the very means of life, fruit and milk and bread and butter and eggs and bacon and a glass pot of marmalade which caught and held the sun deeply — so deeply that when Rose reached for it Joan said, “Put it back in the sunbeam, Rose. It’s ambrosia in the sun.”

Rose smiled and set it back, ready to please her sister. But she was silent, for she seldom spoke if she were not questioned.

Then the door opened with a burst and Francis came in. He looked at his mother first and she looked at him and the pride she took in her children blazed in her look.

“Come here, son,” she said. “Let me tie your tie again.”

“Can’t ever get a bow right,” he said, smiling wryly. He folded his long legs and dropped before her, kneeling, and leaned his arms upon her lap and gazed into her face confidently. She pulled the ends of his red tie loose and set it again with neat compact movements. She had bought the tie and chosen it red because her son was as brown as she was and she loved red secretly, although she felt it now a color unbecoming to her age and she would not wear it except as an edge to a collar or as a seldom seen lining. When she was young she had always a red dress among her others. But now instead she loved her son’s round dark chin above a red tie, and she liked to put a red rose in his buttonhole. The blackness of his hair and eyes were richer for red. Now as she finished he clasped his arms about her waist and pressed his face into her bosom.

“You smell nice, Mom,” he murmured.

She patted him on the cheek and straightened a lock of his hair. There was no embarrassment in her when her son made his love to her. She was not shy of him as she was of her daughters.

“Go and eat your breakfast before it is cold,” she said, and to the maid Hannah she said, “Bring in fresh rolls for Francis.” The boy rose and moving with the lazy grace of his too swiftly growing youth, he dropped into his chair and began to eat. But now his father saw him and spoke to him. “Are you not going to give thanks to God?” he asked.

The boy looked at him coldly, unwillingly. Then meeting that clear solemn priestly look he wavered and bent his head an instant and moved his lips, and so placated the man of God who was his father. But he did not summon God.

So the early morning life went on with energy in this room. Hannah brought in fresh bread and fresh coffee, and they all ate robustly except the father, who took his food sparingly. But to this they were all accustomed. Until he had delivered himself to his people of what he had learned newly about God he would not eat heartily.

For his hungry body was his temptation. He loved food. When he was a child he grew fast and he was always hungry, always eating so much that his brothers laughed at him. Then, after he was converted by the missionary in his thirteenth year, he began to know that he must fight to subdue his big body. For how could a man save his soul if his body were master? He had sat at his mother’s dinner table on that cold November Sunday, among all his vigorous brothers and sisters, and had let his piled plate stand before him. “I will take one-third of everything — no more,” he promised God. The rich smell of the chicken gravy moved in his nostrils. The fragrance of baked potatoes, of golden mashed turnips, of hot biscuits, made him faint. There was the sharp sweetness of honey, the spice of the pickled peaches and the heavy intoxicating perfume of hot mince pies. Across the table the missionary ate delicately, refusing much.