Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

But it was a comfort to her, even though she missed it. It was a comfort to her when the grave little wedding took place in the church. The church was full of the people gathered not so much to see the marriage as to see the leave-taking. They stared at this young man and this young woman, whom they had always known and not found worthy of wonder until now. They stared at the tall, pale, delicate-faced lad whose gray eyes seemed already too sunken in his face, and at the short, plump, composed girl beside him, brown as a wren in her plain dress. Marriage was not wonderful. But it was wonderful to stare at them and imagine them crossing seas and strange countries. Nobody in the village had crossed seas except Martin Bradley and Miss Kinney and they a long time ago. Besides, they had come back and stayed just as though they had never gone.

So from everywhere people gathered to the wedding. Let it be so, the priest of God said. Let the congregation see this dedication. God would move their hearts. Joan, entering the church with Rose, saw that everybody was there. People were here she did not know. Her eyes caught the direct stare of a tall, thick-necked, oafish young man, his eyes hot and small, fiery brown under rough red hair. She held Rose’s hand, hard, secretly, by her side. She mustn’t cry, not until after they were gone. There was Mrs. Winters, standing stout and stiff, staring out of a window. Joan understood at once that under that stare she also was saying she must wait to cry. The wedding march sounded delicately under Martin Bradley’s fingers, even perhaps a little scornful. He played it carefully, like an exercise, without expression, completing each phrase and flicking it from his fingers. She paused with Rose before their father, and Rob drew away from Francis, and Rose drew away from Joan, and Rob and Rose stood together. The father, priest of God, stood tall and solemn with his duty. But Joan, sensitive to him, could feel coming from him some force of ecstasy. It shone about him, electric in his face, in his silvery blue eyes, about his white hair. He was at sacrament. His voice rose, high and clear as light, above the two at whom he gazed. He drew them out of the world into the place where he stood and the three were alone.

He said, “We are gathered together this day before God to witness the dedication of these two …”

Joan looked at Rose, so staid, so sure. She doesn’t look like a bride at all, she thought sadly, and turning her head a little she gazed across the aisle out of the open window into a square of clear blue sky. It was June but Rose had wanted no flowers in the church, only the lighted candles, and against her brown dress she carried nothing but a stalk of lemon lilies Joan had picked for her at the last moment — the lemon lilies. She felt vaguely as though if her mother had been here it somehow could not have been like this — not grave like this. She thought passionately, I’m glad I put in my satin gown — I’m glad, I’m glad.

If this was dedication more than marriage then perhaps tonight alone when Rose lifted the gown and put it on, and when Rob saw her, in such a pretty gown, perhaps Rose would look a bride and Rob would see her so, and so it would be a wedding after all.

It was soon over, so soon over. They marched out to the music played perfectly without joy. The people crowded about the two. Here and there a little money was pressed into their hands. “Instead of a weddin’ present—” “Going so far you wouldn’t want glass or dishes—” Miss Kinney darted through them all and seized Rose and thrust a large album into Rose’s hands. “It’s my African pictures — not quite all, but many, many. I wanted to give you what I loved best — Oh, God bless you, dears! You lucky, lucky—” She kissed Rose upon the mouth, and tears streamed upon her cheeks, and suddenly standing on tiptoe she kissed Rob, and darted away. And the crowd, after a moment’s astonishment, remembered she was only Sarah Kinney and forgot her.

In the night, after it was all over, Joan woke suddenly, wide awake. What time was it? After midnight, for the setting moon hung low at her window. By now Rose would have found the gown and would have put it on. She shrank away from her sudden vision of Rose standing before Rob. What would then befall? She ought to have talked to Rose. But what could she have said? What had she to tell Rose, what did she know to tell except the few hot fruitless hours with Martin Bradley?

She remembered that as they were leaving the church she had seen Martin Bradley’s mother, talking to Mrs. Winters. She heard Martin’s mother say, “It’s a comfort to have a son like Martin. He loves his home and his mother.” Her little dried mouth had folded itself complacently. Mrs. Winters had opened her lips and closed them again. She hurried forward to Rob and Rose, forcing her face into a smile at last as they stepped into the old Ford car to go to the station. They had all gone to the station. And then Rose went away with Rob, the train growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared in the west. Joan had watched it until it seemed to enter the sky. She could almost imagine a little hole in the sky where the train was gone, dragging them with it. She and Rob’s mother and father had stood waiting, gazing down the small empty hole. Then they had walked home together.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” Mrs. Winters had said at last, sighing. She usually talked a great deal, but she had walked in silence, not seeming to notice Joan’s hand slipped into her arm. “Well! I’m sure I never looked ahead to this when I bore Rob and nursed him through a delicate childhood.” She paused by the steps of her house and looked accusingly at Rob’s father. “He always took after you.”

The man looked at her palely. He had said nothing all afternoon, not even when Rob took his hand to say goodbye. “Good-bye, Father. Write and tell me how things do at the store.” He had only nodded.

“You come in and get an eggnog,” said Mrs. Winters.

They had both forgotten Joan. She watched them go into the house together and shut the door. Then she turned and walked down the quiet street, bright in the late sun, full of empty brightness. She who wanted everything out of life, what had she after all to tell Rose, she who was left behind in the village?

But I ought to have bought her some sort of book, she thought in the darkness, aching vaguely with heaviness of duty undone for her own. I ought to have, she blamed herself, I ought to have done more for Rose.

The old rich deep sense of family, of need to sacrifice for her own, welled up in her. “I can’t ever do enough for them — not as much as Mother would have done.” And now Rose was gone. She had thought only death could take away, but now life had taken as inexorably. Out of the five of them two were taken, one by death and one by life. I must do everything now for Frank and for Father, she thought, passionately, to comfort herself in the darkness before dawn. And the walls of this house were still safely about her.

Of these two, Francis surely needed her the more. Her father had God. If he were fed the food he liked — and she saw now what she had not seen before, that he loved his food and that even when his hand refused it, his eyes clung to the dish — if no one disturbed his papers, if no one came into his study when he was alone, if his garments were put in accustomed places where he could find them, there was nothing left that human heart could do for him. He missed no one or so it seemed.

… And indeed he missed no one. For now Mary was nearer to him than she had ever been. Her restless changeful body was not here to tempt and disturb him and make him want and deny together, and wonder, troubled, what a man chosen of God ought to do. St. Paul had said clearly in the Epistles, “It is better to marry than to burn,” but there was the scornful overtone that to burn was ignoble. And he did not burn. It was not in him to think of women. He desired to look on no woman’s face as woman. But Mary, alive, lying beside him, kept him at war with himself — the old war in his members. So now when Mary was not there he could think of her happily and peacefully. God had seen fit to afflict him — blessed be God’s will.