But now there was no need to go to her own room for solitude. In any room she could sit down and be alone. No one would come in, no voice call, unless it were Hannah’s voice from the kitchen. “I declare, Joan, we’d better tell Mr. Billings not to send so much meat, even if he does give it. It’s tedious eating at one hunk o’ beef or pork the whole week long!”
“Yes, it is,” she called back. Their voices echoed through the silent house.
There were fewer people from the church who came to see them. She seemed to remember that when her mother was there people were always coming, people asking her mother questions, running in and out. “Oh, Mrs. Richards, I did just want to ask you one more thing — would you have strawberry ice cream at the supper, or apple pie? I think men like pie, but—” “Mrs. Richards, Mother says could you come over a minute and look at Danny’s throat and see if you think she’d ought to send for the doctor?” “Mrs. Richards, can you remember if the choir sang ‘Lift up your heads, ye gates’ last Easter or the time before?”
But few came in now. Sometimes if she were in the garden cutting flowers, one would stop. Mrs. Winters might say, “Did you hear from them this week, Joan? I had a letter last week. They’ve reached their station. I can’t pronounce it. Rob says it’s awful hot and lots of flies and mosquitoes. He’s all worked up over the blind people. What does Rose say?” And she would answer, “I haven’t heard lately from Rose, Mrs. Winters. Rose never was good at writing letters.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Winters, “I don’t know, I’m sure.” She sighed, hesitated, and then said sharply, “Those lemon lilies’d ought to been cut before they seed like that, Joan. It uses up the bulbs to let them seed.”
“I’ll cut them,” Joan promised.
She watched Mrs. Winters down the street. Mrs. Winters had resigned from the missionary society. She did not even come to meetings. To Joan she said privately, “What I have to give’ll go to Rob straight. I can’t afford to drop my money for everybody anymore. We’ve got to do what we can for our own.” Sometimes she worried. “I don’t know, but I’ve a notion Rob isn’t using what we send for himself. He keeps writing about the poor. I’ve said to him that the poor we have always with us, and what I send is for him. But nobody listens to me. What does Rose say?”
What did Rose say, indeed? There was so little in her letters. Her large even handwriting covered the pages and left them almost as empty as before. “The Lord blessed us this morning in the baptism of seven more, four women and three men. The work is prospering in spite of the opposition of many against us. But we remember ‘Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you and—’”
She cried to Rose across the sea, “Rose, where is your home, and how does it look? Did you wear the satin gown? Are you and Rob in love with each other? Do you walk in your garden in the evening hand in hand, do you eat together and make little jokes together and forget sometimes the blind, the maimed, the poor?” But there was nothing in Rose’s letters which could not be read aloud in the missionary meetings. They listened seriously, politely, at last indifferently. They were not real people, the converts. She could not see their faces. Still they were doubtless saved, those distant brown creatures.
“Things seem to be going so well,” Mrs. Parsons said kindly. She was the president now, but they had always to prod her and correct her. They called out half-a-dozen times in the meeting. “We can’t pass a motion without a second, Mrs. Parsons — Madame President, I mean—” “Oh, yes,” murmured Mrs. Parsons, blushing, recalling her wandering thought. She had been happily dreaming while they were talking, dreaming about the story she was writing, a dear story about a young girl and a man — perhaps this time, surely this time … When Rose’s letters were read she thought to herself that it would make a sweet story, the two brave young missionaries — her mind was full of their images, going hither and thither, two white and cloudlike shapes, blessing the dark, bound multitudes bending in devotion before them. Maybe if she could write it just as she saw it, this time somebody would want to publish it.
There was a murmur of assent over the little roomful of women, knitting, sewing, crocheting. Mrs. Billings always darned. “I’ve got such a’ lot of boys,” she said with laughter. “They’ve got legs like centipedes, I think. I call ’em my thousand-leggers.” Their minds were full of their handiwork. “Knit one — purl two — turn and knit two, purl one—” Mrs. Weeks whispered steadily to herself. “It’s nice they’re so ready to hear the Gospel,” she called aloud. “Knit one, purl two — and turn—” Only Miss Kinney had no handiwork. She sat, smiling, her eyes large and shining, plucking at her lips with one hand.
“When I was in Africa,” she would often begin, but almost immediately one of the women would interrupt vigorously, “Madame President, don’t you think we ought to take up the matter of the next bazaar? Our budget—” To a neighbor she would whisper, “You’ve got to shut Sarah Kinney off, or we’d never get through.”
And on the old, comfortable, married faces there was the same expression, “Poor thing — but you’ve got to shut her off — she’s getting so queer!”
Yes, Rose’s letters read beautifully at the missionary meetings. But they broke no silence, in the house. Francis had scrawled his first letter.
DEAR JOAN.
I got a job, but no flying yet. I’m an errand boy and I have to do anything they tell me, but yesterday they let me help clean a plane. If I keep on right I’ll maybe learn to fly some day. They tell me everybody starts like this at the bottom. Send the bicycle money to me here. I have a room across the street with a fellow I know here. I am okay.
The silence in the house grew deeper. What was there now for her to do in this house? She polished the tables and the chairs and changed the flowers every day, and learned to be troubled by the shadow of dust. It became important to her if a curtain hung awry or if a book were not straightly placed. But no hand except the wind’s displaced a curtain, and no hand except her own touched anything. Her father moved from study to dining room and thence to sleep. If he went for an instant into the parlor, it was never to remain. It was to wait while she found his hat, to rest a moment when he returned, and his coming and going left nothing.
Once or twice Ned Parsons called. “Joan, want to go to the picnic Thursday?” Did she want to go? That first summer she had gone to everything. So she went once. But they were all younger than she, they seemed far, far younger. In this short time new boys and girls had grown up and she was too old for them. She felt very old. They came to her politely. “Miss Richards, will you have potato salad?” “Miss Richards, do you mind if we climb the mountain?” She might have cried back at them, “But I’ll go with you — I love climbing.” But there was Netta Weeks to warn her, poor ghastly Netta Weeks, trying to be one of them, trying to be noisy and gay, refusing to sit among the older folks, insisting on playing games and following the young couples about. Joan, watching, was stabbed with their contempt, their helpless toleration. Behind their cold tolerating young faces they were gnashing their teeth to cry to each other, “The silly old maid — why doesn’t she leave us alone?”
“No, of course I don’t mind,” said Joan smoothly. “I’d rather stay and talk to your mothers anyway.”