Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

For when she was young Mary was always wanting something from him, something more. In the night he would hear her weeping because she had not something more. “What is it, Mary?” he had asked again and again patiently. At least now that she was dying he had nothing wherewith to reproach himself; he had always been patient with her. And always she had answered, “I thought there would be something more.” “I do not understand,” he replied, patient still. Indeed there was no understanding her, who was in so many ways a very good wife for him a minister, for the people loved her. With the people she was always pleasant and cheerful. But when he was a man with her alone, how changed and difficult a woman!

Now he said to Joan carefully, “You do not understand the circumstances. Your mother knew that for nearly a year I have been niggardly and thought that I must be robbing them of something of my services to them. And all the time your mother knew she did not need all I gave her — all the time your mother—”

“But she saved it bit by bit, out of what you gave her!” she cried at him. Her voice was like Mary’s voice, crying in the night.

She heard her own voice sound suddenly like the voice she heard crying behind the closed door. What made her think of night when it was broad day and the sun was across the table, shining on the silver molasses jug, shining on the white cloth and the blue plates? Hannah came in with a plate of toast and they waited until she was gone. Then her father began to speak patiently to her, his voice tranquil, reasoning, his voice that was always quiet in the night.

“I have always put first, above all, the Lord’s work. Let God’s work be done and He will see that I and mine are fed. To save for ourselves is to distrust Him, the giver of every good gift. And shall we save when others have nothing, not even a house where they may go to have their souls fed?” But suddenly while she stared at him she heard his voice take on a human angry passion. His priesthood dropped from him. “Besides Joan, it was hard of her. All this time — she knows I have not had where to turn for a little money and the work is just beginning to prosper and to let it go now would be to waste it all. She knew it — she heard me pray. At night when we prayed together she heard me ask God for money and she had all that money and she kept silence — there on her knees before God, beside me, she kept silence, knowing there was all that money in my own house — money that was really mine!”

Here was his hurt, too. She wavered, her eyes fell, and she sighed. He went on eagerly, his blue eyes pleading. “And now, what will she do with it? She has all she needs—” He had quite forgotten her mother’s voice, struggling against the deathly sleep.

“Joan and Rose — Joan and Rose—” her mother had said. She could not remind him. She poured his coffee in silence and let him have his way. After all, it was not for himself — it was for God. But now it seemed somehow the same thing.

Almost every day her mother had said, “Don’t tell Rose — don’t spoil anything because of me—” But now they could not listen to her, although Christmas was less than a month away. Dr. Crabbe hooked his thumb at Joan as he left the bedroom and when she followed him downstairs he whispered to her hoarsely, “Better have Rose come home. I can’t answer for these days. Like as not she’ll slip off in this sleep. It might be a month — it might be any day. Her whole body’s full of poison — everything’s giving way at once. Get Rose home — needn’t tell your mother — she don’t know one day from another now — let her think vacation’s begun.”

She nodded miserably and plodded upstairs in great weariness. It would be good to have Rose home. Maybe Rose could take a turn at night now. Dr. Crabbe had spoken of a trained nurse, but trained nurses cost a great deal and besides, the village would never understand the preacher’s having a trained nurse when there were two grown girls in the family. She went into her own room and sat down at the small desk and wrote to Rose, chewing the end of her pen, thinking how to spare Rose — Rose who had not seen the change, the nearing inexorable death which no vitality could push away more than a little while. She wrote carefully.

In the evening when the letter was mailed she told them. She told her father and he looked up from his book and the gravity upon his face settled into a somber depth. “I feared she was worse,” he said, and went back to his book. But he sighed again and again and soon he closed the book, putting the marker carefully in its place, and he went away.

“Does Dr. Crabbe — do they think she is going to die soon?” asked Francis as soon as his father was gone. He had said nothing at all. He had idled about the room, restless until now. But before she could speak he rushed on, “Don’t tell me — I won’t hear it—” and he burst into a loud sob that was like a hiccough. He coughed quickly and turned to a bookshelf and after a moment’s fumbling drew out a book and opened it and stared into it. “Rose ought to get here by Thursday night,” he said. “I’ll go and meet her — you needn’t bother.”

“Thank you, Francis,” Joan answered gratefully. She longed to touch him, to seize his hand, to lean on him a little, but she could feel him resisting her touch, fiercely demanding that he not be touched. He was so strange these days. But she had not time for him now, not time to think about him or even to ask him what was the matter and why he was so fierce and moody and easily angry with her and with them all. So she passed him quietly and went back to her mother.

Rose came and it was good to have her. Joan had not realized how good it would be until she came downstairs and saw her standing neat and compact in the hall, her gloves still on and her brown coat still buttoned about her. She ran down and threw her arm about her sister and put her face down into the furred collar and felt Rose’s smooth cold cheek against her own hot flesh. Rose stood sturdy and still under the embrace. It was good, it was good to have the family whole again.

“Here’s your bag, kid,” said Francis, coming in and throwing it down. They stood there an instant, the three of them, and looked at each other in a second’s silence, feeling themselves together. But it was a new sort of communion. It was without their parents, without the older ones. They were the strong ones, the able ones. The other two were old and ill. The other two were the ones to be cared for and protected. The study door opened and the father came out. He had been sleeping on the couch in his study and his thin white hair was pushed in spikes above his high brow.

“Well, Father,” said Rose quietly, “how are you?” She went forward and stood on tiptoe and met his pursed lips with her own soft red mouth. He always stood stiffly and pursed his lips and kissed as though it were a thing he had newly learned to do and so it was hard for him.

“Your mother is very badly,” he said directly.

“Yes, I know,” she said, unbuttoning her coat. With the father’s coming the moment between the children was not broken. They were tender to him secretly and embarrassed at their tenderness and a little impatient with him.

“I’ll take up the bag,” Francis said abruptly.

“Thank you, Frank,” said Joan, and she waited a moment for him to turn the landing and said to Rose, “You wouldn’t have believed how he has changed and grown up—”

“He certainly wouldn’t have offered to take a bag upstairs for one of us before,” Rose agreed, picking up her gloves and hat and pocketbook, and they started slowly upstairs.

Now Joan must tell Rose. Before they went into that room she must prepare Rose for the way death could look in a still living human face, and for the way death could look out of dark human eyes. In their mother’s body death sat, looking out of her eyes, breathing its stenchy breath out of her nostrils. She pushed the moment off frantically. She said lightly, “No, you wouldn’t know Frank at all. Why, he even cracks his own eggs at breakfast now!” She tried to laugh.