Her quickened breathing sounded fluttering at Joan’s ear. She turned and looked at Rose curiously, small strange silent Rose. Rose’s hands were folded in her lap, little white immaculate hands which she washed many times a day, soft pale hands, full in the palm, pointed in the fingers. Sometimes it seemed as if she and Rose were not sisters. She could not understand Rose’s patience. She was resigned as old people are resigned, ready to suffer. It seemed to Joan that Rose even liked to suffer.
One day in a spring cleaning her mother had flown at her for being so slow and dreaming. “Rose, I declare, we’ll never get cleaned up in the sitting room if you keep stopping for nothing.” And Rose had turned her face to her mother, smiling, drinking in her anger. “I’m wicked,” she had answered in a strange passionate whisper. “I know I ought to be beaten, Mother.”
Her mother, shocked, paused in her sweeping and stared at Rose straightly. “I’ve never beaten any child of mine,” she said, outraged.
“No — no,” Rose urged. “But I really ought to be!”
And yet she was so small and childlike, her little figure so roundly childish, her face as pure as a child’s face, her voice gentle, her leaf-brown eyes sweet. She had no wants, she never asked for anything. She wore uncomplainingly Joan’s quickly outgrown garments. This very hour she had on Joan’s last summer’s dress, a blue voile, now a little faded. Joan felt a rush of love come over her. She must see that Rose had something new. The next dress should be for Rose. Some day she would buy Rose new things from head to foot. She wanted Rose to be happy. It was so pleasant when everybody was happy.
Her father’s voice came earnestly into her ears, “So let us take thought before it is too late what God is to each one of us. He is not far from any of us—”
His voice faded again as the question caught itself into her thoughts. What was God to her? She did not know. It did not matter to her now if he were near or far. She did not believe or disbelieve in God. It was not important. God was like these old people in the church, these loving old people who were kind to her and had known her from her birth and cared for her and would always care for her. He was doubtless there to be called upon if it were needful. But she needed nothing. She had everything. Here was her youth. Here was her beauty. That is, if she was really beautiful?
But she was beginning now to believe secretly and often in her own beauty. She treasured every small affirmation of it that she heard about her. “Joan’s growing prettier as she grows older.” “I believe Joan’s going to be the beauty of the family, though she’s so tall.” “Joan’s eyes are lovely,” and at Commencement there was Mary Robey’s teasing whisper, “Do you know what my brother Tom said, Joan? He said he’d like to kiss your mouth!”
Her lips burned. She had never yet been kissed by any man. Once a shy boy had drawn near at a dance and after a walk in the moonlight he had drawn very near. But she drew back. Her body cried to lean toward him but her heart would not. She laughed because she was so torn in her embarrassment and he drew back too, and she said, half laughing and half crying, “Let’s go back to the others — to the light—”
Yet somewhere the kiss was waiting. She believed in love waiting for her. He would come to meet her, tall and strong, taller even than she was, and she to meet him. She wanted it all, all of love, love waiting for marriage and growing into children, many children. She wanted her house full of children, conceived not in sin but in love. She wanted to work for them, to cook and bake for them, to mend for them, to play with them, to sing to them, to love them passionately, to build about them walls of home and of love and make them safe. Among them she would live safely, too, safe and surrounded by them even as she surrounded them and made them safe. “Miss Joan Richards was married today to — to—” Whom would she marry? “The church was decorated in ferns and June roses. The bride was lovely in white satin and she wore her mother’s wedding veil of lace caught up with orange blossoms.”
Up the aisle she came, under the flowery arches. Rose walked beside her in a new dress of palest shell-pink. She paused a moment to plan Rose’s dress. Then she swept on. Her father stood waiting to perform the ceremony. Her mother was matron of honor. Her mother should have a new dress too, of silver-gray chiffon. What could Francis do? She paused, considering. She wanted them all a part of it. She looked across at him, planning, pausing. He had taken off his mother’s wedding ring mischievously and was fitting it upon his own little finger. The mother was watching him anxiously and he teased her by pretending to let the ring fall.
Then like a scourge cutting across her dreams she heard her father’s voice accusing the people in a solemn anger.
“I say God will not hold us guiltless—”
Her dreams were gone like a mist. She hung her head. She cringed inside her big body. Why wouldn’t he stop talking about that ugly dreadful thing? It happened so long ago. The people were always displeased when he spoke of it, as sober good people are, if their one madness is remembered. It had been so pleasant in the church until he began to talk about it. She could feel the people stirring under his words. There was a dry cough here and there. Only Mrs. Parsons was still smiling her vague misty smile. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Mr. Weeks in the choir loft reach for a hymnbook and begin to read ostentatiously. Everybody knew Mr. Weeks had gone to Mr. Bradley that time, years ago, when they were all small, and had told him what his little daughter Netta had said. … And Mr. Bradley had said she was a damned little liar with a dirty mind and that no boy from South End could have been in the village all day because it was workday in the factory. And then Mr. Weeks, raging, had taken Netta with him to South End to find the Negro boy who she said had put his hand on her. And afterwards when Mr. Bradley failed, Mr. Weeks had bought the factory.
South End had been full of bad blood anyway, what with the white workers on strike against Mr. Bradley because he had brought in the Negroes. He had started with all white workers and then times got bad. Men stopped wearing so many stiff starched collars, for instance, just about the time he had bought a new lot of machinery for making stiff collars. So he had lowered wages and then when the whites struck, he put in Negroes.
Netta had told all the little girls at school that a Negro boy had stopped her on her way to school when she was alone in the lane. “See, he did this to me!” She pulled up her skirt and put her hand inside her thin thigh. “And my father took me right over to South End and we 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.