Pearl Buck - Time Is Noon

“You never did care about me, Jo. I’ll never get over liking you — loving you.”

“I did wrong to marry you, Bart. I see that. You would have been really happy with someone else — maybe with her. I’m going to set it right.”

“I’d rather you came back. I liked it the way it was before the kid came. You acted happy enough then.”

She did not answer. She was putting things away, setting the room straight. She fetched some carrots to cook for Paul’s dinner and began washing them. She watched their color come clean and clear out of the water — a pure deep color. It was beautiful the way color came out everywhere, out of the mud of the earth. The carrot was a shape of color between her fingers, mysteriously made … He was standing there endlessly and she could not forget him. She was mad to have him gone and the doorway empty to the sky. She fixed her mind steadily upon the carrot, slicing it firmly.

“You’re not coming back, sure enough, Jo?” he asked helplessly.

Now she knew, quite simply, that if she had again to lie beside his great body she would kill herself. Pain and hurt, right or wrong, there was something still beyond these. Her body could not again be subject when her mind, her heart, revolted. She would kill her body and set herself free. She began to tremble.

“No, never, Bart.”

“Gee,” he muttered, “Ma and Pop’ll never get over it — never get over the talk.”

“I can’t live to save them from that, Bart.”

“You sure?”

“So sure I’m going to ask you to bring the trunk with my things.”

He spat in the dust by the door and wiped his enormous hand across his mouth. He was in deep distress, she could see. She was sorry for him. He was suffering in his way. But he had not mentioned Paul’s name. He began to talk again sullenly, scuffing the thick toe of his shoe against the threshold. “You act so high and mighty. But Ma says the kid’s your fault. Your old man was crazy — everybody knew he was—”

“Go home, Bart,” she said, steadily. “I don’t want you here. I’m happier when you are not here.”

He looked at her bewildered. But now she was trembling very much. Her head whirled with giddiness.

“If you don’t go away at once,” she said clearly, “I shall take Paul and go where you can never find us. I’ll do that even if it is at the bottom of some river.”

“Gee,” he muttered. “I’m not hurting you—”

“Go — go—” she said tensely, her eyes forcing him, her will pushing him. He stared at her, and went slowly down the path. Not until the gate slammed, not until the air was cleared where he had stood, could she quiet her trembling. Let her forget — let her think of lovely shapes and colors, growing out of the earth. Let her never remember Bart and those years — or anything he had ever said.

Through the open door she could see the long lovely flowing together of the undulating hills. The sky was cloudless and the breeze was stealing in about her, pure and mild as the water in a sunny stream, as cleansing.

After a while, when her body was still, she opened the letters. One was from John Stuart, telling her when he was coming. “Dear Madam,” he began formally. David was well. But the baby, Mary, had been ill. The artificial food had not nourished her. He had done the best he could, but she cried incessantly. Yet when she ate, she was ill. It was difficult to understand God’s purpose.

The other was from Francis, a few scratched lines. His handwriting was exactly what it had been when he was a boy in school, loose, nervous, irregular.

It’s too bad about Rose and Rob. But I can hardly remember Rose, somehow. She was the only one of us that did what she wanted, but she got killed for it. That’s life for you. I’m going on regular flying as soon as there’s a vacancy.

She read the letters through and tore them up. Bart had touched them, he had taken them from his pocket. She rose and washed her hands. Then she went upstairs and planned. Here there must be a bed for David. She must buy a table and a chair. But she could take a little of her own money now. Yesterday the score had come from the music publishers and it was not too difficult to do. She dared to buy a bed for David and a crib for Mary to lie beside her.

The future was warm about her again. Bart was walking down the road, away from her, his figure smaller each moment that she planned. She was making her life, shaping it about the children. One had to take life and make it, gather it from here and there — yellow curtains, carrots, a bed for a little boy, milk for a sick baby, sheets of music to write, her unfinished child, a house — out of such and everything she would make her life. And underneath was the strong sustaining web of love unspoken. What if it were unspoken and unreturned? A phrase came flying out of her childhood, her father, from the pulpit, reading, “And underneath us are the everlasting arms.” She had caught the phrase then because it was lovely, listening to him idly in the careless fullness of her childhood. But now when all childhood was gone she could take the beautiful words, like an empty cup, and fill them to the brim with her own meaning, her own secret meaning.

In the dusky October evening they stood waiting at the train, she and Mr. and Mrs. Winters. She had forced herself to learn to leave Paul alone sometimes. It was not very far, not really. The house stood just beyond the village, and if she put him on a quilt upon the floor and locked the door, he must be safe. But even so, she left her heart behind to guard him, and now she stood impatiently.

They were silent and somehow forlorn in the dusk, the three of them. “If I’d been listened to at first,” Mrs. Winters said now and then, but Mr. Winters said nothing at all and Joan could not talk for thinking of Rose. Rose had gone away so sure of God’s will. But she was not saved alive. The train came whistling and pounding in, and paused a second at the wayside station. It was a great through train that did not commonly stop at a small place unless someone asked it, and that was seldom. But it stopped to bring home from very far this tall stooping gray-haired young man, holding in his arms a wailing baby. Beside him, clinging to his coat, was a small thin boy in a brown cloth suit, looking in steadfast silence at all he saw. They stood far down upon the platform, their few worn bags about them. Joan saw them first and went running.

“Oh, give me the precious little thing!”

She took her from him, this fragment from Rose, this child her sister Rose had given her. It was unutterable comfort to hold her close at last. “You’re home, my darling,” she murmured. “David, my darling, you’re home. Oh, how tired you all look!”

“To the bone,” the man said. He gave her the baby but he still clung to David’s hand.

“Well, well,” Mr. Winters was saying. “Well, here you are.”

“My mother and father died,” said David, “so they couldn’t come with us.” His voice was sudden and clear out of the darkness.

In the evening she sat listening to John Stuart. She had brought the children home with her and bathed them and fed them. It had been her sacrament, the bathing of their childish flesh, the giving of the bread and milk. She had washed and comforted the wailing baby and soothed her chafed limbs. She had heated the creamy milk and fed it to her and watched her small worn face settle into sleep. Across from her, David sat watching. “My Uncle John doesn’t know how to make Mary stop crying.”

“Uncles don’t, so well,” she said. She looked at him, waiting, ready for worship of him. But she must not hurry him. His mind was full of images she did not know. She must wait until he showed himself.

“Are we going to live here?”