Tomorrow came and her mother was not up. When Joan entered her room this second morning already it did not seem strange to see her mother lying there. But today there was fear in her mother’s dark eyes. “You’d better send for Dr. Crabbe, Joan,” she said, and then, “I don’t feel able to get up and wash myself. Fetch the basin here, dear.”
This was no common weariness. Joan, troubled, watched her mother wash herself slowly, stopping often to rest. The skin on her face and hands shone yellowly. She lay back and closed her eyes and the lids were like shadows upon her face. Joan crept on tiptoe with the basin and towels, and set them down and ran to find her father.
At this hour, at seven o’clock in the morning, he was where he had been for thirty years. She knocked furiously upon the door of the study, for even now she would not have thought of entering otherwise. She had seen her mother there knocking. She knocked impatiently and frightened, and then without waiting she pushed into the room. He was on his knees by the worn old brown leather armchair, his head in his hand. At the sound of her entrance he looked up.
“Father,” she cried, “Father, Mother is really ill this morning—you must go for Dr. Crabbe!”
He stared at her bewildered. The change was too swift for him. He had been drenched in the radiance of God, and now he was back in this drab room. “She seemed to sleep quietly all night,” he protested mildly. “She scarcely moved, although sometimes I have been disturbed by her tossing. I left her still sleeping quietly this morning.” He was so bewildered he forgot to rise from his knees.
Joan’s eyes upon him sharply saw him absurd, upon his knees, his pale blue eyes looking up at her childish and absurd. She repeated harshly, “She’s very ill now—you or Francis must go for Dr. Crabbe. … Francis—I’ll send Francis,” she went on quickly. Of course Francis would be quicker than this old man. It was the first time she had known he was really old.
“Frank—Frank!” she called, leaping up the stairs. “Frank!” She burst into his room. He was sleeping vigorously. The sun was streaming across his bed and over his face and in his sleep he was scowling a little against the strong light, his black brows drawn and his mouth pouted in determination to sleep. He was beautiful in his sleep, in the sun. Even in her haste she caught the moment of his beauty, full of youth and wildness though in sleep. She shook his shoulder.
“Frank, get up! Get dressed quickly and get Dr. Crabbe. Take the car and bring him back with you.”
In the strong sun close to him she saw the faint first stubble upon his lips and his chin. They had been shaved—Francis shaving! He had said nothing. Unknown to them all he had been growing into a man. He had gone and bought a razor and secretly he had shaved. None of them knew, unless perhaps their mother.
“What?” he cried. His eyes flew open and he looked up at her, instantly clear and comprehending.
“It’s Mother,” she said.
“Get out of here!” he roared at her, leaping out of bed. “How can I put on my clothes unless you get out?”
She went away comforted. It was strength to feel his impatience and his haste. She had always thought of him as a boy, a child, a younger child. She remembered him as a strong impetuous baby, a frowning red-cheeked little boy. For years he had been this hobbledehoy, tumbling down the stairs, eating voraciously, demanding loudly his freedoms, absorbed in his next good time. Now he was none of these. He was the one person to whom she could turn. He had leaped from his bed, tall and a man. He was strong. Their blood was the same. …
Upstairs at her mother’s door she listened. She heard his clattering footsteps and a moment later she heard the roar of the engine. She looked out of the end window of the hall. He was gone in a whirl of smoke and scattered gravel.
Downstairs in the sitting room Dr. Crabbe laid upon her shoulders the burden of her mother’s life. The uneaten breakfast was cold in the dining room and Hannah stood sniffling and listening at the door. Her father was there, his face solemn, the eyes grave and pure and exalted. Upon his lips was the stern peace of his continuous prayer, “Is this Thy will, O God? Thy will be done.” Francis stood by the window, staring out into the winter sunshine, his face turned away from them all. His hands were thrust furiously deep into his pockets. But it was to Joan Dr. Crabbe spoke, his loud voice sharp and each word a thrust of emphasis. “She should have told me long ago, Joan. I can’t take the responsibility now—you’ll have to get somebody in on consultation. The idea of her dragging on and on in mortal pain!”
In mortal pain! The words were an accusing sword to cut her heart in two. While she had been absorbed in her foolish love, while she had heard no voice but Martin’s, seen no face but Martin’s, dreamed of nothing else, and lived for nothing else, her mother had gone in mortal pain. She pushed Martin away and turned passionately to cry out, her heart strangling in her throat. “How long do you think she’s been suffering?”
“Months—maybe even a year—” he answered shortly. “I can’t get the truth out of her—her damned cheerfulness. She always was that way. You hadn’t been born an hour until she was chirruping, ‘I must get up soon, Doctor, as soon as I can. Paul’s got to go to the presbytery.’ And though she nearly died the last time with that great feller there by the window, it was the same thing. ‘I’ve got to get up as soon as I can’—for something or other. Well, Joan, it’ll be a long day now before she gets up, in my opinion. The thing we have to find out is whether or not she can stand the operation or whether it’s too late whatever we do.”
Out of the silence of doom Francis’ voice came shrill and breaking. “Get the other doctor here, can’t you? What are you all sitting here like this for? Just sitting and sitting—” He turned his face toward them, his face a grimace against weeping. He looked away again quickly.
Dr. Crabbe went on as though he had not heard or seen and Joan received steadily his commands upon her life. “I’ll get the specialist up from the city right away—this afternoon or tomorrow. But it means days and days—maybe even years of nursing. This kind of thing goes on and on even if it’s hopeless—she has a strong constitution—a lot of life—unless they decide to operate and something goes wrong.”
Days and years, days and years—She gazed at Dr. Crabbe’s hairy old face and did not see him. She saw her life passing steadily by—days and years—years and years made of day after day after day. She gave them up in an instant’s foresight. “I will take care of her myself,” she said.
Dr. Crabbe rose. “Good thing you’re home, my girl—good thing you’re big and strong!” he said, brusquely cheerful. “I’ll be getting on after that other chap. Now brace up, the three of you. We’re going to do all we can.”
He was gone in a gust, slapping his thick knee, touching Joan’s cheek delicately with his stubby forefinger, clapping Francis’ hunched shoulders and throwing a short nod at the man.
Then they were alone, the three of them. They were alone and separate because the mother who had bound them together was not there. The mother had bound them together, pouring into each of them a part of herself and gathering them into one whole by the parts of herself. Now she had left them. She was fighting for herself alone, and only as they poured themselves into her could they be united. Each must think of something to do for her. Joan saw her father put his hand to his head in his gesture of bewilderment. His eyes were vague and fixed upon the ground. “Yes … yes …” he whispered, forgetting them. “Yes, O God!” He rose abruptly, and left the room. They heard the door of his study shut. He was in his refuge.
Francis said, “I can’t go to school—I can’t sit there—like any other day—” He stood as he had stood, his back to her, his sharp young shoulder blades drooping through his old coat, his hands jammed in his pockets above the wrists.
But in Joan there was a large sorrowful tranquillity. She looked at Francis’ discontented face and her mother in her spoke to comfort him.
“There will be so many times I’ll need you, just as I needed you to fetch Dr. Crabbe. But
just now I have things to do for her that you can’t do. We each have a special thing to do for her. She will want everything to go on in the house as it always has.”
She looked about the room. On the wall opposite hung the Hope drooping over a gray and barren world. She had so hated it. Only yesterday she had planned secretly to take it down to make the house hers. Now she knew she would never take it down. For this house would never be hers. It was her mother’s house and it would always be so. She could live in it only insofar as she took upon herself her mother’s function, her mother’s being.
“Guess you’re right,” said Francis. He turned. “Well—” he said, and sighed gustily and marched from the room. It was the first time she had ever heard him sigh. She smiled with a sad mature tenderness for him and went slowly upstairs. She climbed, gathering herself together for what was ahead of her, for all that she had never planned.
Now the mother drew her children’s lives into her. She drew them by her willful dominations and by her catastrophes of weakness and by her little cheerfulnesses. Joan never could know, though she opened the door a score of times a day, what woman she would find there in the bed. She came in when Francis was gone to find her mother washed and fresh and sitting in her bed, cleaned and freshened. While they were downstairs, while Dr. Crabbe was dooming her, she had risen in sudden willful strength and put the best linen on the bed and upon herself she put an orchid-colored bed-jacket which Joan had once given her at Christmas, which she had never worn because of its delicacy of silk and cream lace, but which she had cherished. For two years it had lain in her drawer, on top, hiding by its beauty the old and mended garments beneath. She kept it there for the pleasure of seeing it whenever she opened the drawer.
Today when Joan came in she lay propped up in her bed, faint but triumphant. She was panting a little. “I’ll be up tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll just take today to rest. Tell Dr. Crabbe. And Francis is to go to school. And you mustn’t write a word to Rose, because before the letter gets to her I’ll be up and around. Tell Hannah I’ll have my breakfast. Don’t I look lovely? It’s the first chance I’ve had to wear this.”
And Joan was gladly deceived. The orchid jacket, the bright, dark smiling eyes, the neatly piled white hair, the brown strong hands upon the counterpane, nearly deceived her. She ran down and called to Hannah and then she went out into the garden to gather a handful of short-stemmed violets to put upon the tray. She bore the tray herself, entering the room with a quick gaiety. After all, they might be wrong, all of them. She would not tell Rose yet.
Her mother’s eyes warmed at the violets. “You’re the only one who would think to do that,” she said. “Not many people know a flower on a tray seasons all the food. I never taught you, Joan. You’ve always known. Rose now, would be careful, but she’d forget the flowers—and of course men don’t think.”
She began to eat happily. “What did Dr. Crabbe say?” she asked. “Did he say I just needed a little rest? Sit down a minute, child. It’s so pleasant to talk.” The whole room was pleasant in the morning light, in the vigor of her mother’s voice.
But on the bed, very near her mother’s face, Joan was undeceived. The eyes, if they stopped their sparkle even for an instant, were sick and dulled. Her mother could made her eyes sparkle, but the impulse failed quickly and the eyes were veiled as a sick bird’s eyes are veiled. She cried out suddenly, “Why didn’t you tell us you were in pain? Why did you let us go on leaning on you?”
Her mother put down the bit of toast she held. “Did he say I had such pain?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“It is true,” her mother said slowly. “I have often such pain. I shall never be healed of it, and so I have learned to bear it.”
“But you may be healed of it,” Joan cried passionately, yearning over this woman, her mother. “He is going to bring a city doctor to see you this afternoon.”
Her mother stared at her, startled. She pushed the tray away. “I won’t see him,” she said suddenly and loudly. “Do you hear, Joan? I won’t have a stranger peering into me. Dr. Crabbe was with me when all the babies came. He’s different. Besides, I know myself. I know—” Her lower lip began to tremble and she looked piteously at Joan. Above the gay bed-jacket her face shrank into grayness. “Don’t let me die!” she begged, in a whisper.
“No—no—no” said Joan passionately behind her clenched teeth, tears hot under her eyelids.
But in the late afternoon her mother was willful again and stubborn against the new doctor. Joan, waiting beside her, saw her grow momentarily strong with her stubbornness. She sat braced by her pillows, her hair smoothed, her gaze upon the door. Her eyes met the doctor’s eyes, freshly and strongly with a shock of life.
“Mary, this is Dr. Beam—Mrs. Richards,” said Dr. Crabbe.
“How do you do?” said Dr. Beam languidly. He stared perseveringly at her face and hands.
“Patient has vitality,” the doctor murmured to Dr. Crabbe wearily. He was a tall drooping gentle figure, his hat and gloves still in his hand because no one had come forward to take them from him and put them down for him.
“Not physical vitality, though,” grunted Dr. Crabbe. “Sit down.”
“Will to live, perhaps,” hinted the doctor. He held his hat on his knee, dropped it, and set it at last upon the floor beside his chair. He fixed his large vacant eyes again upon her, without noticing Joan.
“There is nothing really wrong,” Joan heard her mother say, brightly. “I don’t know why they got you here.” She arranged the covers briskly. She looked suddenly well, her hands normal with vigor.
“Yes,” murmured Dr. Beam. He rose, unexpectedly alert. “Let me see your abdomen,” he demanded. His languor was gone. He was avid, keen for knowledge of her. No, not knowledge of her, for what was she to him? She was nothing. It was the thing in her body which interested him. Without it, with nothing but health, she would not have existed for him. She did not exist for him now, except as the possessor of this malignant life in her, this monster feeding upon her. He felt her abdomen with his long thin delicately probing fingers. His face grew sharper. His eyes were black and narrow and inquisitive and about his lips the skin was hard and white. He was excited by what he felt.
“Hm—hm—” he kept murmuring to himself. “Hm—hm—”
At last he knew everything. He covered her exhausted body quickly, and turned to Joan. “Where can I wash my hands?” At the door he commanded, “Fetch my hat and gloves along. I shan’t need to come back. Crabbe, I’ll meet you downstairs.”
Downstairs with Dr. Crabbe she waited. He rumbled along of other things. “Miss Kinney’s down with that queer fever she brought back with her from Africa—don’t believe she’ll ever get over it—old girl, her mother, sound as a dried hickory nut—never saw the beat of it—she’ll outlast us all—I don’t dare hope to be at her funeral myself. Mr. Parson’s got bronchitis—needs outdoor life instead of clerking in an office the way he does. Where’s your pa?” he asked abruptly.
“It’s his afternoon for the mission.”
Dr. Crabbe coughed suddenly and went out to the porch and spat in the yellow rosebush under the window.
“Well … yes,” he said, coming back and sitting down.
“Well, you can tell him when he gets in. Here’s Dr. Beam.”
Upon the threshold Dr. Beam stood in cultivated haste. “I need not stop, I think, Crabbe,” he said. “My car’s waiting. You’re quite right—no use—the whole organ’s hardened and everything is hopelessly involved—if you’ll come along I’ll talk as we go—”
“Back later, my dear,” said Dr. Crabbe.
Joan at the window watched them move down the walk to the street, the tall slender stooping figure and Dr. Crabbe, short and burly and rolling along like a sailor. They were talking excitedly. She could see Dr. Beam’s face now as he climbed into the motor. It was eager and animated. One long probing forefinger stabbed the air as he talked. Dr. Crabbe thrust out his square sh
ort hands. They were tossing her mother’s life back and forth between them. She sank suddenly into a chair and wept bitterly.
But weeping could not endure for long. The house clamored at her now as it had clamored at her mother. Hannah, thumping in from the kitchen, dried her tears at their source. “What’ll your pa relish for his supper, Miss Joan?” she asked mournfully.
Joan wrenched her mind from its torture to think of her father’s appetite. She must remember there was also her father.
“He’ll be tired coming in—a milk soup, and corn muffins—he likes them—”
“I have a little chicken left over—Frank likes chicken,” Hannah suggested.
There was Francis, too.
“Your ma—” Hannah began.
“I’ll go and ask her,” Joan replied. Upon the stairs she hesitated. She was dragging her steps slowly, hating to go in. Her mother’s vivid eyes would be turned on that door waiting, searching. No use lying to her, no use pretending she had not heard those two words, “hopelessly involved.”
She put her hand upon the knob and swallowed. Her mouth was dry. She was afraid to see her mother’s eyes.
But when she went in the room was in shadow. She had not known that the sun had set in the little while she was away. Her mother’s form was shrunken, a little heap. She could not discern her face.
Time Is Noon Page 9
