This Proud Heart (18 page)

“Good God, you’re as ignorant as one of those cows over there!” he bellowed, pointing his stick at the hill. “Nobody’s heard of you here—you’ve got to say you are a pupil of somebody well known.”

“Oh, well,” she said peaceably, “you’re well known.”

“But you need Paris!” he groaned. “You don’t understand art if you haven’t been to Paris!”

She did not answer. Marcia was coming up the garden path, dancing, ahead of Jane. She fell and lay a moment, doubting whether to cry, and decided against it. She struggled to her feet, dusted her small hands together, and began to climb the steps again nimbly. They watched her as she reached the top step and turned a beaming face toward Susan. And Susan opened her arms and took her and set her on her knee and looked arrogantly at David Barnes.

“Wait till they’re grown up,” he said harshly, “wait till they’re gone—and they’ll go the first minute they can, because they’re selfish as all human beings are and you’ll be left with nothing to show for yourself. It’ll be too late, then.”

“What you don’t see,” said Susan, “is that I am not giving up anything. I shall have everything—see if I don’t!”

“You can’t,” said David Barnes. His voice was gentle as she had never heard it. “That’s what you don’t see now, my dear. You’ve got to choose in this life. There isn’t time for everything.” He clumped his stick and rose. “Well, some day I’ll see you in Paris. I hold to that.”

“Perhaps you will,” said Susan, smiling. “Didn’t I say I was going to have everything? Perhaps Paris, too.”

“You can’t, I tell you.” His voice was inexorable. “If you’re in Paris, you won’t have this. No, don’t argue—wait! I’m never wrong.”

She laughed, and he walked down the path and out the gate and down the road, his short body rolling from side to side.

She watched his solitary figure. It disappeared and she sat, rocking Marcia in her arms. In a little while John would come home from fishing in the brook and Mark would turn the corner of the lane. It was nearly sunset and there was a chill of autumn in the air. Marcia was getting to be so big. Soon she would be two years old. It was nearly time for another child. But did she want another one just yet? She was not sure, after all. She wanted first to use this knowledge which was fresh in her. It seemed a long time since she had made anything at all. There was no haste about children. She was young and there was plenty of time for everything.

The gate opened and Mark came in. She heard his step upon the path and her ear sharpened. She knew the rhythm of his step as well as she knew the rhythm of her heart’s beating. It was changed. His step dragged.

“Mark!” she called. She stood up and put Marcia down.

“Yes, Sue,” he answered. His voice was tired. But then he was often tired at night. His tall frame looked so strong, but he had not much real energy. There was not in him the tirelessness of her own resilient body.

“Is anything wrong?” she asked. He came nearer, and she could see him smile faintly.

“No, dearest,” he said. He stooped to pick up Marcia, and came up the steps heavily, holding her, and sat down. “I keep thinking I am going to feel less tired now the summer is over. But I don’t,” he said.

She looked at his white face and into his eyes, deep set with fatigue.

“I am going in to make you a good strong soup,” she said and forgot everything but Mark.

“I’m all right, Sue,” he said in the morning at breakfast. “There’s nothing the matter with me. It’s been a hot summer.”

She was about to say, “Has it? I hadn’t noticed,” but she did not.

“Sure you’re all right?” she asked. He smiled and nodded his head and the old quiet faithfulness in his blue eyes and big-featured homely face smote her to the heart. She leaned toward him.

“I love you more than anything,” she said earnestly.

“Do you, dear heart?” he said simply, and she saw tears rush to his eyes.

She got up and went to him. “Why, darling,” she cried softly, and put his head against her breast.

“I’m all right,” he muttered. “Just tired. We mustn’t scare the children.”

John and Marcia were staring at them with large bewildered eyes. She went back to her seat.

“You’re going to have a vacation,” she said firmly.

Before he could answer Jane came in, holding out an envelope to Mark.

“It’s a telegram, sir,” she exclaimed, horrified. “Somebody’s passed on, I doubt.”

“Who could it be?” Sue exclaimed.

Mark tore it open.

“What’s this?” he said. “Sue, it’s for you. It’s from Barnes.”

She took it from him quickly and read, “Hurrah for Susan Gaylord stop your group considered best in Halfred Mead contest stop can you meet me here New York their office eleven o’clock today stop postponing sailing on your account Barnes.”

She looked at Mark, breathless. “I never dreamed—of course, I won’t go—”

“Of course you will!” cried Mark. “Hurry up and get ready! I’ll be late for once.”

“I shan’t be easy a moment with you not well,” she protested stubbornly.

“I’m all right, I tell you!” he cried. “See here—you come back on an early train and I’ll meet you and stay home and rest—go to bed if I don’t feel just right.”

“Promise?”

“Promise!” he said gaily, and she ran upstairs.

“You do look all right,” she said from the train window. “If you didn’t, I couldn’t go, Mark.”

“Of course I am,” he said, looking up at her. “You look lovely, Sue—you always do.”

She smiled and blew him a kiss and then said practically, “I think the children will be all right for the day. I planned everything with Jane.”

“You’re a perfect mother,” he said. She felt his eyes adoring her. The train began to move. “Forget us all for a while,” he said. “Have a swell time, darling!”

She waved as long as his tall loose figure was in sight. Then the train curved about a hill and he was gone.

She could put them all safely out of mind now for a while. Out of mind did not mean out of heart. They were always in her heart. She sat by the window, gazing steadily out to the passing country. Her mind ran ahead over the hills. Soon there would be the suburbs, and then the Jersey flats and the sculptured towers of the city. Her mind played about them. She might sometime make a group of men, working against the tops of the towers. She pondered it, planning, weighing the relation between the human beings and those towers they had made. The figures might be larger, in the foreground, or they might be very small, shadowed, bent, crushed by what they themselves had made. She put the idea away, undecided, into her brain’s storehouse. She wanted next to do not a group but a single human figure, pliant and swift with life running electric through bones and muscles, through veins and nerves. David Barnes had been right. The knowledge to which he had compelled her was precious, a source for creation. She smiled, remembering that all summer Creighton had not understood what she was doing. But men only understood women as far as their own wives went, and Creighton’s wife, if he had one, would be a small mouse of a woman, worried with house and cooking, who could not bear his work. Susan could hear her say primly, “My husband’s a scientist.” But in herself she would be saying, “I can’t bear dead bodies. I won’t think about them.” Susan laughed a little to herself, softly, seeing her.

The train began to swerve through streets and a faint sour-swampy odor drifted into the window. Far ahead she could see the pearly towers, rising against a misty blue sky. She breathed deeply, her hands clasped tightly together. She was glad she had put on her russet dress.

All the way through the traffic, while she sat in the taxicab, her heart was thumping in her breast. It seemed another creature in her. She was sitting quite composed, holding in her this heavily beating heart. She was not in the least excited, except for this excited heart. And when she entered a quiet, deeply carpeted office, it swelled and quickened to suffocation in her throat.

“What name?” asked an indolent voice from behind a telephone switchboard.

“Susan Gaylord,” she said.

A blond head appeared above the board, and a girl’s startled face looked at her.

“My word!” she exclaimed. “Just a minute—sit down, please.”

She cried into a mouthpiece, “Miss Gaylord—Susan Gaylord—yeah, sure!”

Susan sat down in a plushy chair and waited. Across the room the girl’s unwinking blue eyes stared at her. And in a moment a fresh-faced young man came rushing to her with both hands held out to her.

“Miss Gaylord! We were waiting for a telegram from you. We’ve just called Dave Barnes to come right over. He’s been fuming about.”

She rose to her feet. “I didn’t think of sending a telegram,” she said shyly. “He sent for me, and I came.”

But the young man seemed scarcely to hear her. He was holding her by the arm, guiding her down a passage into a bright square room, filled with dark-toned furniture.

“Sit down, sit down,” he was saying. “I’m Jonathan Halfred, by the way—my father’s son, only—nothing more. Now, tell me everything about yourself. I can’t tell you how excited we are over your work. It’s simply perfect, you know. The memorial hospital to my father is to be opened at the New Year, and we wanted a big group in the huge square entrance hall, and nothing was big enough. I don’t mean cubic feet, you know—I mean in feeling—and then Barnes sent us your marvelous piece. Of course, it’s got to be in bronze—huge, twice the size of life, at least.”

She was rushed into the torrent of his warmth, his enthusiasm, his frankness, his beaming looks.

“I’m so glad,” she kept saying. “Of course, I am glad.” And then she interrupted him to say, conscientiously, “I think I ought to tell you that we—Mr. Barnes and I—don’t think it is my best work. I have learned a great deal since I did that. I’ve been studying anatomy all summer.”

“It cannot be improved upon,” he assured her.

She smiled, knowing it could, but she let him pour out his tumbling praise. Praise could not deceive her when she had in herself, in the feel of her own hands, the knowledge of what was good.

And then the door opened and David Barnes came in.

“Well!” he said, and pushed back his brushy gray hair. “You don’t deserve all this luck, but you’ve got it, and I’ll see you through. You can bring the whole kit and caboodle to Paris, now—not that you’ll get any real work done until you park them somewhere for good.”

She did not heed him.

“Can I see the place where it’s to stand?” she asked Jonathan Halfred.

“Of course!” he said heartily. “We’ll just run over there.” He took up the telephone. “Tell Briggs to pick me up on the Avenue entrance in five minutes,” he ordered, and in five minutes they were stepping into an enclosed car, through whose sides no sound of the city could penetrate. She had never seen such a car.

The two men were talking but she did not listen. She was saying to herself that if, when she saw them again, her people, if they did not seem good enough, she would simply do them over. She must have this first thing she did right. She turned to David Barnes, interrupting him without knowing it.

“If I think they’re not good enough,” she said, “I shall do them over again. I can do them.”

“It’s good enough to sell,” said David Barnes. “But you can make up your own mind.”

She said no more, sitting tensely, waiting until they reached a shining new building, still unfinished. She followed them to the bronze doors and stood at the entrance of a great hall, whose light fell from a round window in the roof.

“Here it is,” said Jonathan Halfred. “We set it here just to get the effect. Of course it’s far too small as it is.”

He pulled off the sheet and she saw them, standing in the glare of the light. She saw them as though she had not been their creator. She saw them as creatures in themselves, and she turned to David Barnes.

“I’ve got to do them over,” she said.

“Oh, now—” Jonathan Halfred began, but she did not hear him. She was talking to David Barnes.

“They’re made to look like people,” she said, “but they’re not people.”

He said, looking at her, “Not many passing by will know the difference.”

She said, “I’ll always know it and it will make me miserable in the night.”

They gazed at each other steadily. Jonathan Halfred was looking from one to the other, dazed, as though they were speaking a language he did not understand.

“It must be much bigger,” said Susan.

“You’re a silly fool,” said David Barnes, between his teeth, “you’re a silly fool and nothing can stop you, because you’re right. You don’t need me at all—I’ll go back to Paris.”

He turned and stumped down the steps, and Susan said to Jonathan Halfred, “Promise me to have it destroyed, and I’ll send you the real one.”

“But—but—” he began.

“No, promise me,” she commanded him. “I’ll have it here in time.”

“It seems folly,” he said at last, still dazed, “but I’ll promise.”

“Now I want to go home,” said Susan.

“Oh, you must stay for lunch,” he exclaimed. “No,” she said. “I must go straight home and begin. I see exactly what to do.”

She had known instantly what was wrong, she thought calmly, sitting in the nearly empty train, and she knew how to make it right. She remembered now that Mark had told her to telegraph him her train, and she had meant to do it, and then had forgotten. He would not know she was coming. It was much earlier than she had expected to be ready to come, but there had been no use in staying after she saw what she had to do. She wanted to be home, to go straight to the barn and begin work. Her mind was already in the barn, shaping the new clay.

It was early afternoon of the September day when she stepped from the train, and she turned straight homeward. The air was dry and cool and she could walk fast. A half hour and she would be home. She planned as she walked, minutes for telephoning Mark, minutes for seeing the children and hearing Jane say, “John’s gettin’ that lively, Mum, and Marcia breakin’ herself to be the same. Today I says to ’em—” And then, and then, she would slip into the great cool barn and mix the clay and take it into her hands—no sketches, no pictures. She had the feel of it ready in her hands. She closed her eyes and bowed her head and saw again the square noble hall, the place in the light where her people would stand. She could feel the power in her gathering to make them as they really were.