Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

Yes, it was soon over. The minister shook hands with them briskly and went away. The old people lingered. They spoke to her. “Well, Joan, we don’t see much of you these days,” and lingering they spoke together a moment. None of them had known Mrs. Mark very well. “She wasn’t a woman you could know,” said Mrs. Parsons gently, “but I am sure she was very good.”

Mr. Pegler pondered. “I didn’t make her a pair of shoes — let me see — not for twelve years, and then they were house shoes — slippers. She came to me that day, I remember, saying she was stiff in the legs. Well, we all have to go, one way or another, and soon it’s all over with us. We’ve had all there is. There’s nothing beyond.”

They fell silent, these old people, looking at a new grave, troubled, frightened. No one contradicted Mr. Pegler, for once. Any day now, any one of them — Miss Kinney was staring down at the coffin, bewildered, as though she had not seen it before. The sexton was beginning to shovel in the earth.

“Why, we are all getting old, aren’t we?” Miss Kinney cried. She looked down upon them, one and another, her small face frightened.

“Come along now,” said Dr. Crabbe, taking her fragile arm in his hand. “I’ll take you home. Your mother will be wanting you.”

“Yes, of course,” said Miss Kinney. “I must go, of course. I can’t leave Mother too long.” She bobbed away beside Dr. Crabbe, a head taller than he, a wisp dropping over his thick rolling body.

Mr. and Mrs. Billings were waiting. They stood together, a little to one side, waiting for her. These two were not afraid. “Everything’s got to die,” Mr. Billings was saying respectfully. He said this often in his butcher shop. He had not sold Mrs. Mark any meat in years. But she was part of the village, so he had come to her funeral.

“Joan, honey,” said Mrs. Billings. “How are you getting on?”

Now everyone was gone except the three of them. And she wanted to tell this plain old pair everything. They stood so honest in the sunshine, their big comfortable bodies, their red honest faces. “I’ve left my husband,” she said. They stared at her. “I just couldn’t go on,” she said quickly.

Mr. Billings nodded. “I know the Pounders,” he said very slowly. “They’re honest folks — though queer. They keep to themselves. I buy a steer or two from them now and then.”

Mrs. Billings patted her hand, sighing hoarsely, “Well, dear—”

“I’m living in Mrs. Mark’s cottage,” Joan said, hurrying on. “She left it to me. I’m to have Rose’s children.”

“That little pretty Rose,” mourned Mrs. Billings. “It’s hard to understand all that’s took place — so much scattering and sorrow these last ten years. Yet it seems only yesterday that your mother went.”

“Yes,” said Joan. They stood in silence a moment. She felt them warmly near her, without condemnation, taking her as she was.

“Well,” said Mr. Billings, clearing his throat, “with all them children you’ll be like the old woman in the shoe. I better send you some meat to make ’em some broth.”

He grinned at her cheerfully and she smiled and tears rushed to her eyes. “You’re two of the best people in the world,” she said.

Mr. Billings laughed. “We’re most common,” he said.

The sexton was shaping the grave carefully, patting down the sod. It was all over and they went away.

But still it was not possible to be sad. Waking next morning, in the little house, it was as though now for the first time she was really beginning to live. Mrs. Mark had given her a place where she could live and had gone quietly away, leaving nothing of herself.

She set the three rooms straight and neat, and put Mrs. Mark’s clothes together. There was very little. Mrs. Mark had lived here without small possessions. She was not willing to be cluttered by many things. In the closet hung two black dresses. They were limp and the folds were faded from long hanging. She had not worn them in years. All the things scarcely filled a bushel basket. Joan packed them neatly and took them into the attic and found a corner under the eaves.

She had not been in the attic before. There was a room finished off in unpainted boards, a room never lived in, clean except for dust. That was David’s room, she decided quickly. This house was now her own! Every room was hers to do with as she liked. There was no feeling of strangeness anywhere in it. It had been given to her and she had taken it. The other house to which she so foolishly had fled for shelter could never have been hers. It was shaped from the beginning by alien life. Though they had all died and left it to her, it would not have been hers and she could not have loved it. But this house sheltered her at once, warmly, closely. She felt as though she had already lived here a long time. She loved the deep walls, the many small windows, the hues of brown and golden stone. There was an old fireplace. Someone had taken the stones of the field, from his own land, and built this house and made a fireplace to warm him and his love. Surely, surely sometime this house had been made in love and lovers had planned it and Mrs. Mark had only kept it for her. And she would live here with all her children, gathering them together beneath this roof.

And warm in all she did, like a southern current through the sea, ran the thought of the letter to Roger Bair. It would be like bringing him, too, under this roof. She put off writing hour by hour — her heart needed its dream. She set the house neat and made the bed fresh, the mattress fresh with sun and wind, and she gathered flowers from the meadows, goldenrod and small starry purple asters and a bunch of scarlet leaves, and when the house was made wholly her own she sat down in the evening of a day of sweet loneliness, when she had seen no other face than Paul’s, to write the letter at last. So how could she be sad?

“Dear Roger Bair—” she wrote. Then she stopped and over her at that instant flowed the meaning of his name. She loved him. All these years she had loved him. Whenever his name had been written in any letter of Francis’, she had seen it above all other words upon the page. But not until now had she been free to know she loved him. Under the shadow of that silent house, love had stifled, alive but not known. Now in this free solitude it came forth, a lovely noble shape, full grown. It had been growing all this time. She sat staring down at the name she had written. To write it had been to open the door and he was there. He had always been there, ever since that morning she had seen him on the flying field. She put aside the pen and sat quietly in her little house, the shades drawn, alone in the lamplight. She could love him fully and freely, quite alone. She could love him and live in her love for him, asking nothing. It was filling her even now, an energy for life. She took up the pen again and began to write swiftly and clearly. I need your help. I am not afraid to ask for it.

When she had asked of him what she wanted she signed her name and sealed the letter and made ready for the night. She had early laid Paul in the bed and he was asleep. She stood in her nightgown, looking down at him as she always did before she put out the light. He lay quietly, his smooth child’s face untroubled, his lips parted and rosy. He was getting tall. He was growing stronger and trying to get to his feet when she put him on the floor. She had watched him, the feeble brain dimly struggling to follow the strong beautiful undirected body, and daily her heart had broken by him. He was all she had and she had often wept to know it. But now looking at him it came to her that he was no longer everything. She had something more at last. Even weeping could not be the same now.