Time Is Noon Read Online Free PDF Page B

hunted and I knew him right away. He wasn’t so awful black—kind of yellowish.” Over and over she had told it. But then, Netta was a liar. They had listened to her, half believing. Even so, afterwards the boy was whipped by a gang of whites in South End. Men and women had run from Middlehope to watch. Netta shivered when she told of it.
    … In the church after all these eight years her father’s voice was scourging them still. He never let them forget.
    “God will inquire of us that we do nothing for these people. We have shed blood unlawfully, it may even be innocently—and the stain remains upon us still if we do not remove it by our prayers and good works.”
    He was going to ask them again for money for his mission in South End and they did not want to give it. They wanted to forget about South End. The church was suddenly filled with silent strife between the people and her father. She could scarcely breathe. She saw her mother’s head droop, her hands fold tightly together. Only Rose did not mind. Rose was smiling a little, listening. In the choir Mrs. Parsons did not mind, for she was not listening.
    But Francis was staring directly at his father, his face a stone. He had put the ring back on his mother’s hand and he was staring at his father, hating him. What good did it do to go and preach to those people? Preaching was no good. If his father knew anything, any of the things other men knew, he’d see how silly it was to think preaching would save anybody in South End.
    At last it was over. Joan lifted her head to breathe the old atmosphere of peace in the church. It was so pleasant to have peace in which to dream. Where was she? She was walking down the aisle, satin-clad, her long white train—But now her father broke ringingly into conclusion: “Let us live therefore victorious to the end, triumphant, knowing in whom we have believed. And now unto God who is abundantly able—”
    The organ crashed joyfully into dismissal. The people rose eager and relieved, waiting to talk to each other, to saunter out into the sunshine, to make plans for meetings in the week. Her mother gathered the children together and led them down the aisle, her hand upon her son’s arm, and he straightened himself and dropped his childishness and took on the gravity of a young man, and she looked on him with pride shining on her face. She tried to cover her pride decently, but it shone out of her eyes and glittered in her smile and rang out of her voice. On the other side Joan walked, smiling, the sweetness of her dream still alive in her face. They all greeted her with love, with welcome. She was their child, too, the daughter of the village.
    “Well, Joan, I see in the paper you took a lot of honors.” “Joan’ll be famous some day—” “Won’t we be proud to have known her—”
    “Shucks,” said Mr. Billings loudly, “somebody’ll marry her long before that! She’ll have babies instead, and a sight better, too.”
    Joan’s mother held her head a little higher. “Come, Joan,” she said coldly, because she thought Mr. Billings very coarse. He was after all nothing but the butcher and it was a common trade. Then she remembered he gave the parsonage every week a roast of lamb or beef and he was a member of the church and his profession made him coarse, doubtless, so she said, “Good morning, Mr. Billings. It’s a fine day.” But her voice was polite and ladylike, and she turned at once to Mrs. Winters, whose husband was an elder, besides being in the choir, and asked after her peonies. Joan smiled apologetically at Mr. Billings, but he did not mind at all. He winked one of his small merry black eyes at her and his big red face crinkled under his scattered eyebrows. “I sent a tenderloin this week,” he whispered loudly, “specially for you. I thought it would be more kind of suitable, you know, than a plain pot roast.”
    “Thank you,” she said, dimpling at him. She accepted the gift, too, of the