This Proud Heart (38 page)

“Yes, it has, Blake—anything you think and feel has something to do with me.” That was clear, at least. But she felt as though she were trying to find Blake in a fog. She could hear his voice but she could not see his face.

“Susanne!” Blake’s voice was impatient. “Will you please never speak of this again?”

“You mean you will not tell me, Blake?”

“I do not consider that it concerns you,” he said with dry coldness. He suddenly looked like his father, pale and cold and not really unkind, only unable to feel beyond himself…. “You will not speak of this again, my dear,” old Mr. Kinnaird’s dry voice said to Blake’s mother. And she said meekly, “Very well, Arthur. I am sorry.” “It’s quite all right,” he replied. And he had told his son, “I was always very happy with your mother, my son.” But she had died years upon years ago, though she had been so much younger than her husband. She had died when Blake was so little that he could not remember her. But perhaps she had already come to see that her little boy was only old Mr. Kinnaird over again, and so nothing seemed worth while. It was not as if she had anything else…. Inside of her Susan was crying passionately, “Oh, how lucky I am to have more than Blake—to have more than love—if I had had only love—”

She looked at Blake steadily. She said, not in the least expecting to say it, “I do not have to obey you, Blake.” She felt as if a voice were coming out of one of her own statues. “I am quite independent of you, you know,” the voice said.

“Susanne—”

“No, wait, please. I have not finished. By all means do as you wish about Sonia. But until you can come to some decision about her which you can make plain to me, you will please let me alone.”

“Susanne!” he cried. “You are absurd!”

“I could ask Sonia, but I won’t,” she went on, not taking her eyes from his face. “You will tell me.”

“I can’t tell you—I don’t know.”

“I will wait,” she replied.

“Childish, silly jealousy!” he muttered. “Susanne, you are too simple to be alive!”

“I am simple,” she agreed. “I have to have things plain and clear. My life must be comprehensible to me. I must understand my foundations. I am married to you and to me that means I have no room for anyone else. I am as simple as that.”

“You are a woman,” he broke in.

“I am more,” she replied. “I am a working woman.”

And while she spoke there was her work before her, and it became freedom to her and safety and refuge and expansion and then she was not afraid. When Mark had died she had not died. Even though Blake loved Sonia, she would not die.

“Mary is a fool,” she said aloud.

“She is, indeed,” Blake agreed.

“I don’t mean it in that way,” Susan said sturdily.

She saw Blake’s eyes inquire. Crowne came in with fresh plates and she did not speak. She was thinking, “Mary is a fool to give up her work.” But she went on eating her dinner. Food and sleep and a quiet mind—these were the necessities for work. She had loved Blake intensely and for a while he had destroyed her through love. Now he should not destroy her through sorrow. She would hold off sorrow from her real being, out of which alone came strength for her work.

Crowne had set the coffee out on the terrace and Blake followed her there. Before he sat down, he lifted her chin and kissed her sharply. She did not repulse him or turn her head away. She poured the coffee and handed him his cup and then she saw a look in his eyes, quizzical, a little laughing, and now triumphant.

“You still let me kiss you, at least,” he said.

She turned her head. “Isn’t the river lovely!” she murmured. It was lovely indeed. There was a faint mist upon the water still too cold for the warm night air and this mist was beginning to rise in long wavering lines of cloud, so that soon the stars were caught in a net of mist. It was so lovely that her heart suddenly broke into anguish and the tears rushed to her eyes. She began to tremble a little with inner weeping. She cared very much indeed. She loved him still. She waited a moment, gazing into the mist.

“But I meant what I said, Blake,” she said steadily.

David Barnes, in New York again, was staring at the seven statues she had made.

“These are entirely new,” he said. “I don’t see the slightest trace of France in them.”

“They are American,” she said.

“I doubt you know what they are,” he answered. And after a while he said, “Blake’s had no influence on you, anyway.”

“Yes, he has,” she said.

“I don’t see it.”

“He’s made me more myself,” she replied, and then because he waited, tumbling his tangled beard with both hands, she went on trying to say what she felt. “I can use mallet and chisel so much more easily than I can my tongue, David. I think when Blake and I first loved each other I threw my life into his and I was lost. I didn’t do anything for a year. And then something my father said made me see I had to find myself again—or I’d die, you know, one day—unfulfilled. And nothing would seem to have been worth having if that happened. And I began to work. I had to work independently of Blake, and I defined myself more and more as I worked—not consciously, except determining to empty myself by thinking of no one.”

“Well!” he exclaimed. “Now I can ask you—what the deuce made you marry him?”

“He gave me something I’d never had,” she said. Then, remembering all the hours of Blake’s passionate love, her mouth quivered and her cheeks grew hot under David Barnes’ close gaze. But she knew she must not look away from him. “He made me a woman,” she said.

David Barnes flung aside his beard. “Susan,” he began very gently, “the first day you ever walked into my studio in that old house in the country, years ago, I knew you were a beautiful woman. Did you know that?”

She shook her head. “No, Dave. I never thought about it.”

He sat down on the bare floor, crosslegged, before her. “I knew you didn’t know it,” he said, “and I wouldn’t tell you. And when you were in Paris and I was helping you, and when you came to my studio I could have told you. I wanted over and over to tell you—but I didn’t. I didn’t feel any man had the right to—touch you, because you happened to be a woman.”

“I never thought of it,” she said. “I didn’t dream—”

“I know it,” he said, “but if I had put out my hand—”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, David,” she said gently.

He got up and sat down on the windowsill. “It doesn’t matter,” he said harshly. “Credit me at least that I never put out my hand. Blake did—but he had no more right than I. He thought of himself—I thought of you.”

“I trust you,” she said.

He gave her a long look.

… But Blake had demanded and she had given and she did not regret it. No, if she had it to do again she would do exactly as she had done, for Blake had fulfilled her life, too. Without him she would not have had everything. She thought of him still with a great rush of passionate longing. She would always love him in the narrow deep way she loved him now. Her mind was separate from his, their beings could never fuse, but in the narrow deep way of body to body, in that sightless sharp agonizing way, her love for him would last as long as her blood beat in her heart. She sat silent thinking this, and David Barnes sat watching her face until he could not bear her look.

“Well, to get down to realities,” he said brusquely, “you’ve got to exhibit these things, Susan. Seven—it’s rather few—but we can get that thing you did in Paris. It’s time you started. It won’t be too easy, your being a woman—it’s a great handicap. The critics expect you to do small pretty stuff. We’ve got to beat it into them that you don’t do Christmas tree decorations and bookends.” He stared at the figures of Sonia. “Gosh, what a workman you are!” he muttered. “Blake seen that thing of Sonia?” he demanded.

“He hasn’t seen any of them,” she said.

“Hasn’t seen them!” David’s hairy face went blank under his beard.

“No,” she said, “he’s been busy—there’s been one thing after another. I suppose it is my fault because I don’t know how to talk much. I haven’t talked about my work to him at all.”

“Hm!” His enormous craggy hands were tearing at his beard again. “It would have been interesting if you had exhibited together—only I’m not sure I’d want to be in your shoes. See here, Susan, I’ve got it—come in on my exhibit—my Titans! I have twenty-one done, and I’m showing them in November, and I’ll give you a place to yourself. David Barnes and Susan Gaylord—I’ll say humbly it may give you a boost.”

She was so grateful for his warmth that she went to him and took his great hand. It was the first time she had ever touched it and it was like holding the knotty root of a tree. He fumbled at her hand a moment, greatly embarrassed, and then pulled his hand away.

“I don’t say thank you, David,” she said gently. “My heart moves at your kindness. But I must work alone, and my work must stand alone. I can’t lean upon your name.”

“You don’t know anything about this game.” He rubbed his big flat nose. “I’ve been through it over and over. I tell you it’s bad enough for a man to go through with the racket—it’s hopeless for a woman. They won’t take you seriously. It’s all bosh about there being any equality. And artists are the damnedest, rottenest, selfish lot—everyone trying to down everybody else. A woman hasn’t a ghost of a show. If she’s good she makes the men rage—they’re jealous enough of each other, but for a woman to rival them—it’s sheer impertinence. You’re damned the day you’re born a woman—that is, if you do anything to compete with men.”

“In this land of chivalry?” she said, smiling a little.

“Chivalry,” he said pompously, “is only for the ladies, Susan. And ladies don’t present any serious competition to men, you know. You’re no lady, damn you! Look at your hands!”

She looked at them. They were grimy and calloused and the fingernails were broken. The other day Blake had taken her hand and looked at it and put it down again with a grimace.

“Charwoman!” he had said, and she had smiled and not replied.

“Lucky your hair curls,” said David Barnes grimly, “though it won’t do you any good with the critics.”

She looked at her seven statues, and they looked back at her. She was sure of their voices, having heard each clearly in its time. “I’m not afraid,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me about being a woman.”

He pulled his old cap out of his pocket with a jerk.

“I shan’t worry about you,” he said, beaming at her suddenly through his beard. “You’re through the woods and on the other side again, I see. Get your own show going. I suppose it won’t make you mad if I go and see it and say what I think in the papers.”

He was through the door when he turned and stuck his head in and grinned at her from under his brows.

“Say, Susan,” he called, “I’d make you one of my Titans, darned if I wouldn’t, if you weren’t a woman!” He roared out his huge laugh and banged the door. Suddenly she heard shrieks and going to the window she saw him rolling down the street, his beard flaring in the breeze, his cap over one ear. Out of his pockets he was dropping pennies and children were pouring out of alleys and doorways after him, and he was whistling and pretending not to see them.

It was because her life with Blake seemed suddenly to have fallen into nothing that she first spoke to him of her work. On what had their life been built, she asked herself, wondering and sad, that now because she closed her door at night, the day seemed strained to emptiness? But she could not open the door, not while he said nothing of Sonia, not while he would open no door for her into himself.

Once, when they parted at midnight at the head of the stairs, he smiled, and underneath the smile she saw his eyes grow angry though his voice when he spoke was light.

“Isn’t this a sort of physical blackmail, Susanne?”

She shook her head and answered him directly and without heat. “No, Blake. It’s very simple. The thought of your flesh makes me a little sick—nothing else.”

He was silent, and she saw he was shocked. She was beginning to know now that simplicity and directness were what he did not know how to meet.

“Pleasant wifely remark!” he said at last, and this she did not answer at all. And then at her door he had demanded, “Do you want to divorce me, Susanne?”

“Oh no!” she said quietly. “Why do you ask me that?”

“You don’t love me any more,” he said.

“Yes, yes, I do!” she exclaimed. “I love you—I always love you. Only there is myself. It stands away from you, waiting. I can’t force myself. That would be wicked for me to do.”

He stared at her a long time, and then he took her head in his long slim hands and kissed her brows.

“Good night,” he said, and went away and she shut her door. There was no need to lock it. She knew Blake.

But she did not know what he was thinking behind his sea-gray eyes. She did not want to separate from him. What she had told him was true, that his flesh repelled her now while she did not know what Sonia was to him. She could not give only her body to him when the door was shut between their minds—no, no. That was too vile. Once Trina, in the freedom of woman’s talk, had said, “You’ve got to go on sometimes when you’re as tired as an old cat. They turn sour on everything if you don’t. It’s the only way to keep peace.” She reflected on this, her body lying cool and quiet under the moon as it caught the corner of the window. But she could not so violate her selfhood, and such peace was not peace when it was so bought. There was something precious in her, which she was, and that must be kept whole. It was not her mere body. It was the energy which, working without impediment of distress, guided her mind to vision and her hands to create what she saw. Not even Blake could be allowed to stay that energy, because it was the deep stream of her life and when it stopped, all stopped, and she was lost. And lying in her bed in the big quiet room, she pondered on some other door into herself which she could open to Blake, while passion waited.

Then it came to her that she had never opened to Blake that part of her. Perhaps now, if she did, they might find a new means of union. She decided at dawn that she would tell him of her seven statues, and ask his advice about exhibiting them. It would please him, perhaps. She would keep nothing back from him any more of that deepest part of her life. She had hidden herself, and now she would hide nothing more from him. So, deciding, she felt happier and released and she slept at last.