This Proud Heart (16 page)

Two or three times through the two years he had been away she had had his scanty letters. And last week he had sent her a postcard, “I am arriving July the fifth.”

She worked, as the summer days went on, seeing no one, stopping only when Mark’s car, at evening, turned the corner of the lane. Then she put aside whatever she was doing, though a line lay waiting to be shaped from thought to the reality of clay. Stone! One day perhaps she would work only in stone. She turned away and washed her hands and was there at the gate to meet Mark.

“What have you been doing all day?” he always asked, when he had kissed her.

“Oh, nothing much,” she always answered.

They walked to the house, arm in arm, and she followed him upstairs.

“Busy day for me,” he said. He went into the bathroom and washed and came out again, his brown hair wet and spiky.

“These summer people,” he said cheerfully, brushing his hair before the mirror, “certainly are making good business for me. I could have sold this house three times over just since we took it.”

“We’ll never sell it,” she answered. “I don’t see how we lived in that other one.”

“We didn’t know that when we were in it, though,” he said. “It was all right as long as we thought it was our home.”

But she did not answer. She sat quietly watching him put on a fresh tie. She knew Mark very well now. She knew how to make him happy. She was sure, nearly all the time, that he was happy.

The man and woman and children were finished. The woman had suddenly capitulated and came out of the clay. She stood, docile at last, clasping the child, her head turned a little away. When she was finished Susan cried out of the barn door, “Jane! Jane!”

She had to show someone what she had made. And Jane came running with Marcia, John after her, compelled by the joy in her voice.

“Look!” she said solemnly as they came in, and they looked, standing together before the dark clay figures.

“How you can do it, Mum!” Jane whispered.

And John said, shyly, “Who are they?”

“They are people,” Susan replied. “I don’t know them. I only made them.”

She looked at them, half awed by them now that they were separate from her. When Mark came home in the evening she would bring him here. After all, Jane was ignorant and the others were children. She hungered to see Mark’s face when he saw what she had done. She could not hide them now. She wanted eagerly to share them with Mark.

All afternoon she stayed by them, looking at them, pondering them, seeing them approach her more and more closely. She could hear their separate voices. She could hear them speaking to each other and as she gazed at them she could see them about to move, though she knew she had locked them as they were. She thought, pondering, that she would free them if she knew how, but she did not know how.

When she heard the sound of a horn, blown three times, she rose and went to meet Mark, walking without haste.

“Come and see what I have made,” she said.

“Have you finished something already?” he asked.

“The shape is finished,” she replied.

They went hand in hand to the barn, and she said nothing.

“Well!” he said, and then, “Why, Susan!”

He stared at the four as John had stared.

“Who are they?” he asked.

“Only people,” she replied.

She stood waiting while he looked at them.

“They are not looking at each other at all,” he said. “Why did you make them like that?”

“What do you mean?” she asked. “I made them as they were.”

“They are looking away from each other,” he said. “Especially the woman—see her! She’s looking away from her baby. A woman would look at her baby, I should think, Susan, or at the man.”

“Does it seem wrong to you, Mark?” she asked anxiously. “I had a hard time with her. I couldn’t get her right until suddenly she seemed to fall into that pose.”

“Are they us?” he asked abruptly.

“No, of course not,” she replied.

“Where did you get the models?” he asked again.

She hesitated. It was true that for the woman’s body she had stood naked before a mirror, studying every line of her own body.

“The woman certainly looks like you,” he went on.

“Nothing but her body,” she said quickly.

“More than that,” he said. “There’s a whole look about her that is like you. And the eyes—I’ve seen you turn your head exactly like that and look at the woods beside the little house. Sometimes when we were at meals and I was telling you something, you’d turn your head like that and look away off, somewhere, out of the window, into the woods.”

“If you are going to imagine everything I make is us,” she said impatiently, “then I must stop making anything. I can’t take the risk of hurting you every time.”

“Of course I don’t—I wouldn’t,” he said.

But a strange bitterness was creeping over her like a chill. “Don’t you see,” she went on, “that I must be free from the fear of hurting you, or I can’t work? I have to feel free. I can’t keep thinking, ‘Will he like this?’”

“But I do like this,” Mark insisted. “Come here, Susan.” He put his arm around her. “I think it’s wonderful. I feel so humble before you. I don’t understand how you do it. It’s like magic. But—”

“But?” she asked him.

She stood in the circle of his arm, not leaning against him, not knowing that the woman she had made stood thus also, apart, within the circle of a man’s arm.

“It’s—I can’t express how I feel—but you seem somehow to escape me. It’s the old trouble—I can’t forget it. I’m not good enough for you—it comes to that.”

Mark’s arm dropped. He put his hands in his pockets. She stood alone.

“I can break this thing to pieces in a few minutes,” she said slowly. “Then it would be gone from between us.”

“Susan!” he cried, his face horrified. “Why, you’ve spent days on it—weeks!”

“I could break it in a moment,” she repeated.

“Look here, Sue—I’d never forgive you. I’d be miserable—I couldn’t be happy if I thought you were not doing something you wanted to do.”

“But if I make you unhappy—”

He broke in. “I promise you—I’ll never say a word again about us.”

“I shall know if you are even feeling it,” she said, “and the knowledge will be handcuffs on my wrists.”

“I won’t—I’ll think about something else,” he said fervently. “Sue, please kiss me!”

She turned toward him and saw his beseeching anxious eyes. She took him in her arms and felt his arms about her. He was afraid of her. Why was he afraid of her? There was something about her that made people afraid, and when she felt their fear she was frightened. She pressed herself against him.

“Hold me close,” she whispered, and obediently his arms enfolded her. “Close—” she whispered, “closer than that!”

She strained against him for a moment. But he could hold her no closer. Then she said quietly, “Come, darling, let’s go and find the children.” Mark turned with her and she locked the barn door, and they went together to the house.

When she came in she went upstairs and hid the key in a little box in her desk. “I shall never take him there again,” she thought. She was wounded somewhere, somehow—no, perhaps she was only very tired. She brushed her hair freshly and put on a yellow linen dress that made her eyes darker than ever. Then she went quietly downstairs.

On the sagging porch Mark was sitting, smoking, with Marcia on his knee, and John was on the step beside him, hugging his knees as he talked, exactly as Mark often did.

“I tried worms, Daddy,” he was saying, “and one kind of fish don’t like worms.”

“Flies, then.” Mark’s voice was warm with interest. “You must study the sort of fly that is in season, son, and use that for bait.”

“M-m-m,” Marcia was humming, under her breath. She held a small rag doll with no arms. Their voices made her reality again. These were her real world, these three.

“Well, my darlings!” she said warmly, deeply. She went out to the porch. “Ready for supper?”

John leaped to his feet and Marcia dropped her doll. Her eyes met Mark’s and they laughed. They were very close now, with these two children. He rose and put his arm over her shoulder and all of her life was suddenly here. The thing she had made was cold clay.

The house was full of the sweet heavy odor of brambleberries and sugar, cooking. She was in the kitchen with Jane making jelly. The children were out in the sunshine but again and again John was drawn to the kitchen.

“It smells so good,” John said,

“You’re like the bumblebees,” Susan laughed. The bees were drumming against the screen door, frantic at the sweetness they could not reach.

John stood before the glasses of the dark jelly. “I could eat it all up,” he cried.

“You shall have some this minute on bread and butter,” Susan said gaily. She fetched one of the loaves of brown bread Jane made.

“Marcia, too,” said John earnestly.

She cut the bread and buttered it thickly while they watched her. She looked at them and there fell upon her again one of those moments of intense reality. Time paused and held everything for the moment as it was, the big kitchen with its clean rough floor and small bright windows, Jane at the stove, letting the purple-red syrup drop from the long pewter spoon, Marcia in her high chair, John waiting, his eyes upon her hands, herself—She handed him the bread and time began to flow again.

“There,” she said, “eat it and you will feel better.”

“Shan’t we give the bees any?” asked John. “They want it dreadfully.”

She poured a little of the hot jelly into a saucer.

“Set it down on the step and see what happens,” she said.

He was gone and she and Jane were filling glasses again, one by one, and setting them aside to cool and jell.

“As I was saying, Mum,” Jane went on where she had left off, “my husband was as good as gold. He never drunk nothin’, except on Fourth of July a glass of beer, which he would to keep the Fourth, Mum, he used to say, just to show me he was independent, him bein’ American and me English. It was only a joke, Mum—for he worked steady and he never hit me once, and what more could you ask of a man, I’ve always said.”

“What, indeed,” Susan murmured.

“There’s plenty who haven’t the luck that you and I have, Mum,” said Jane mournfully. “Mr. Keening’s the same, isn’t he, Mum? Never takes a drink, and just the same, day in and day out. It’s a wonderful disposition in a man.”

“Yes, it is,” said Susan.

And when her world was happily encompassed by the walls of the house, by the rim of the hills against the sky, she heard one day the clatter of a car. She was making a pink linen frock for Marcia, because Marcia’s eyes were as dark as her own, and the doorbell rang. She heard Jane’s voice, and then, harsh and impatient, she heard David Barnes say, “I’ve had the devil of a time finding the place.”

She rose at once and put down the dress, and at the door of the room Jane said, “There’s a gentleman downstairs. He’s in such a bad temper, Mum, he must be somebody!”

“I’ll come at once,” said Susan.

But she did not go down at once. She stood a moment after Jane was gone. Then she went into the room where Marcia was taking her afternoon nap. She was waking, yawning and stretching her plump legs. Susan gathered her into her arms and put on a fresh frock and brushed her short dark curls.

“Somebody has come to see us,” she said, and with Marcia in her arms she went downstairs into the living room where David Barnes stood staring out of the window. He was thicker than ever, and burly in his rough tweeds.

“I’ve kept you waiting,” she said brightly, “because I wanted you to see Marcia. She wasn’t born when you were here.”

He turned, holding tightly in his hands a short heavy blackthorn walking stick. His cap stuck out of his pocket and he shoved it down impatiently.

“Is this all you’ve been doing?” he demanded.

“It’s enough, isn’t it?” she replied, her eyes hard and shining.

She sat down with Marcia on her knee, but he stood bluntly before her. He had changed, she thought. He was older.

“Have you worked at all?” he demanded.

She did not answer. Marcia was struggling down and when she was free she cried, “Janie!”

“Let her go,” said David Barnes. “She doesn’t want you. Who’s Janie?”

“She helps us,” said Susan.

“The child prefers her to you,” said David Barnes. “You’re a rotten mother. I told you you would be.”

“I’m not!” Susan said in a low voice.

“What have you done?” he demanded. “—If you have done anything.”

“I have done something,” she said.

“I want to see it,” he said sternly.

There was nothing left to her now except what he chose for her to have. Home, Mark, her children, were gone. There was only this fierce short figure, this voice, these angry eyes, demanding her powers. She rose and went and fetched the key which weeks before she had put into the little box, and without a word they went to the barn which she had not entered since she stood there with Mark.

Mark had said many times, “Aren’t you going to work at your figures again, Sue?” and she said each time, “I don’t think so, darling. Somehow I want to be with you and the children, these days.” Once in the deep soft stillness of the country night she had said to him, “Let’s have more children, sweet—Marcia’s going on two.” But he had said, “No—not yet. I don’t want you to unless you’re certain.”

“I feel certain,” she murmured. His shoulder was beneath her head, flesh and blood, warm and sure.

“No,” he said, “no—not yet….”

She opened the great stone barn door and David Barnes strode in and turned, as he might toward light, to where the figures stood, and looked at them. She stood beside him, waiting. The wet clay had dried slowly under the great sheet she had spread over them, and now when she drew it aside, they stood unmarred, dried to a pale and tawny silver.

He looked at them without a word. It was a long time, but she waited. Above their heads was the rustle of pigeons nesting in the rafters, and a few feathers fluttered softly down and settled on them.

“You still won’t study anatomy,” he growled at last. “It’s so damned good you don’t deserve your luck. But the skeletons aren’t right. I tell you you’ve got to study skeletons and muscles. I won’t have any more shilly-shally from you. I know a fellow in New York and you’ve got to go and work under him three times a week. He does nothing but anatomy.”