This Proud Heart (43 page)

He bowed and shut the door of the car as she and Jane stepped in, and then as Bantie started the engine he went in and shut the door of the house. With the picture of that door in her mind, shut, she went away.

“If I believed in premonitions—” she thought, troubled, “but I don’t.” She thought of Blake with sudden immense longing. This morning’s anger was nothing. In this reality he would come after her quickly when he found her gone, and there, perhaps, in the shabby comfortable plain old house they would find each other as they had not before. Jane’s voice interrupted her.

“I thought he looked poorly the last time we was home,” she said, and sighed. “Well, we all have our mortal course.”

“Hush, Jane!” Susan cried at her. “You always think the worst has happened.”

“It always does, sometime,” said Jane. “Not, Mum, that I don’t hope for the best.”

She would not answer. She could only realize Blake still—no one else. Blake must not stay angry with her for any cause. She was still thinking of Blake when she reached her father’s house and Hal Palmer opened the door.

“Why, Hal,” she cried, “where’s Mother?”

“Lucile’s with her,” he said. His plain round face was sober and his little blue eyes were full of tears. “I guess you’re too late, Sue,” he said. “It was a stroke. It took him just like that.”

She turned to Jane. “Telegraph Blake,” she said, and throwing off her coat, she went in to her mother.

Hour after hour she sat listening to her mother’s talk.

Lucile had risen when she came in.

“My, I’m glad you’re here, Susan. We’ve done all we can, but it’s not like the family. Where’s Mary?”

“I’ve telegraphed,” Susan replied. It was strange how Lucile and Hal should touch her life at these crises of death. For a moment she remembered, more vividly than she remembered last night, the moment of Mark’s death.

“So long as you’re here,” Lucile was saying in a loud whisper, “I’ll go on. Hal has arranged—you know—for everything. The minister’s just been and gone, but maybe he’ll come again now you’re here. Will any other members of the family be here?”

“I am going to send for the children,” Susan said. “And of course my husband will be here.”

“Oh, do send for the children,” her mother sobbed. “They’ll do me good. I just haven’t a thing left to live for!”

“Now, Mrs. Gaylord,” said Lucile in her strong fresh voice, “you mustn’t talk that way. You have your two dear girls and your wonderful grandchildren and there’s lots of us here in the town who love you. And you must remember you’ve been a wonderful wife and mother. You haven’t a thing to reproach yourself for.”

“I’ve done the best I could, I know,” her mother said, wiping her eyes.

“Not one thing you haven’t done for your family,” Lucile said cheerfully. “And now you must be brave. I expect Susan will want to wash and clean up a little from her trip and then go in and see her father.” She turned to Susan. “He looks so natural. As soon as he stopped breathing all the terrible dark red went out of his face, and all the strain—”

“Did he suffer?” Susan asked quickly.

“We don’t know how much,” Lucile replied, “because we don’t know how much he was conscious of. He didn’t say a word.”

“He’d just had a little argument with me,” her mother broke in, her eyes reddening, “over just nothing at all. You know the way he would argue, Susan. Well, it grew worse on him as he got older. I couldn’t hardly open my mouth but what he’d contradict me.”

“The patience you’ve had!” Lucile sighed.

Her mother went on, her swollen lips trembling, “This morning he would go out in the yard and I told him he hadn’t ought to because he’d had a real bad cold. Besides, I said if he felt well enough to go out, he ought to feel well enough to go down cellar and shake the furnace for me. I’d been doing it a day or two because he said the ashes made him cough. And he just turned on me and said he’d be—well, you know how he’d talk—and he wouldn’t ever touch that furnace again. And I said it wasn’t woman’s work. And suddenly his face got red and his veins swelled the way they do—did—when he got mad—and then he fell—” She began to weep.

And Susan, listening, saw him fall. In a small futile quarrel he had died. But no, it was not the small single moment which had killed him. It was the anger of all his life here in this house which he himself had built and lived in and hated all his years.

“I’ll be going.” Lucile bent and kissed Mrs. Gaylord’s cheek. “Send for me if you need me.”

She was gone, and Susan was alone with her mother. She ought to comfort her but she could not. She was weeping too much to speak, not for her father’s death but for his life, and seeing her tears, her mother began to weep again.

“Come,” said Susan at last, “come, we must not. We’ll send Jane for the children tomorrow. And I must go in and see him. And you must rest and let me do everything. Lie down on your bed and let me cover you, and I will bring your supper on a tray.”

She helped her mother undress and put on her old-fashioned nightgown. It was impossible now to imagine that this thick unlovely body had once been the slender pretty shape which had seized and held and imprisoned all the years of her father’s life. But it was—it was! How easily the flesh changed and how easily lost was that bond which she had forged again between herself and Blake!

A few minutes later she stood in the guest room, where her father had been put. He lay on the bed, dressed in his best dark suit, and his black shoes were shining and polished and his white hair smooth. His face and hands were marble and when she put her hand upon his shoulder it felt cold and firm under his coat. It was as though they had clothed a statue. She was not able to bear the intolerable sadness of his face, and she sat down beside him, weeping again. Still it was not death for which she grieved, but life, life which had carved his mouth into such sorrow and had set hollows underneath his eyes, which had given him dreams of love in his youth and then had robbed him, had given him dreams in his age of free islands in a blue and tropic sea and had held him locked in a drab house in a little town. And as cruel as anything was death, which revealed him like this, when he was helpless any longer to hide that which alive he had hidden.

She went away crying most passionately to her heart, “We ought all to be free. Everybody ought to be free for himself, somehow. No one ought to come to death and never have known what freedom is.”

When she took the tray with supper into her mother’s room she found her asleep. She woke at the sound of footsteps and cried out with a little start. “Susan, why—Oh, I forgot. Every time I go to sleep, I forget what’s happened!” She began to cry, and Susan, setting down the tray, put her arms around her. “Anyway,” her mother sobbed, “I always did the best I could!”

“Of course you did,” said Susan. To herself she thought, “It’s true she has, and that is what breaks the heart.”

“Nobody could do more than that,” her mother said, wiping her eyes.

“No one,” said Susan quietly, and fetched the tray.

She longed unutterably for her own. For now this house of her childhood seemed no longer hers. Her part in it had died with her father. In that night, waiting, half expecting Blake, she remembered into the years past, and saw that however her mother had fed and tended them, it was he who had opened the doors of their lives. He said over and over again in the years, whenever a new thing came, “Try it—try it—why not?” It was he who had first put a pencil in her hand, who had bought her the first clay with which to model. And she had had the first desire to model because he whittled from wood little beasts and birds for the amusement of his children. Her mother had cried that day, “Such a mess, all over her hands and her apron!” And he had thrown her one of his looks. “I’ll wash up after her,” he had said, and when she had modeled a little figure he had praised it, and then they had gone into the bathroom and he had washed her hands carefully. And then he said, “There’s no use washing that apron yet. We’ll keep it for the clay. You’ll want to use it lots of times.” He had taken her little blue apron upstairs and hung it in his attic, saying, “There it is when you want it.” He had put a board across the chairs by a window and set the clay there, with a jar of water for mixing it. “You can come up here and you won’t bother your mother,” he had said. “I don’t mind a mess if there’s something to show for it.” All the years of her small girlhood she had sat happily at that board.

All the innumerable small things he had done rose in the night and she remembered him, and the sense of her loss grew intolerably. And yet, she thought, musing, Mary had been repelled by that very largeness in him. When he said, “Try it—try it—” she had shrunk back. “I don’t want to,” she instinctively replied. “All right,” he said, the eagerness flying out of his face. And when Mary was gone he had given Susan a great hug. “You’re my girl, aren’t you, Sue?” he cried…. Mary had sent a telegram tonight. “Brokenhearted. Will come if you think best. Love, Mary.” She had not replied. When everything was over, she would write and tell Mary.

Near midnight the telephone rang, and when she went, there was Blake’s voice.

“Susanne?”

“Blake, darling!” she cried. “Oh, how I’ve wanted you.”

“I’ve only just got your note,” his voice said. It sounded small and far away. “I wasn’t home all day, and didn’t think to call up. Susanne, I’m awfully sorry. How are you, my dear?”

“I’m—Blake, he went so quickly. When I got here it was all over.”

“Oh, my dear—I am sorry!” He was silent a moment. She heard the empty singing of the wires and she waited, half sobbing. He would say that he was coming to her. His voice began again. “Susanne, it’s much better so. I hope my father dies like that.”

“But I shan’t see him any more! The house is so empty!”

“I know.” She could hear him cough a little. “After all, Susanne, he was old. He’d had his life.”

She wanted to cry into the telephone, “Oh no, that was it—he didn’t have his life!” But she did not. A sort of dreariness was seeping into her as she listened to Blake’s voice.

“I won’t ask you to come, Blake, unless you want to.”

“Susanne, darling,” his voice said, a little defiant, a little apologetic, “I never go to funerals. I doubt if I shall go to Dad’s. My own I suppose I must attend. But I hope no one else will—not even you. It is barbarous to go to funerals. No, Susanne, you go if you must. Then I beg you to take the next train home. It is so foolish to mope about on these occasions.” She did not answer, and he called again, “Susanne, are you there?”

“Yes,” she answered, “I am here.”

“Do you hear me?” he asked.

“Yes, I hear you.”

“You understand how I feel, don’t you?” he begged.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“Then—is there anything else I can do?” he asked. “I will, you know, Susanne, short of—”

“No,” she replied, “no, thank you, Blake. I’m going to bed. Good night.”

“That’s best,” he agreed. “Good night, Susanne.” His voice died into distance, and she put down the receiver.

Why had she thought last night—was it only last night?—that flesh could be a bond?

She suddenly began to weep as she climbed the stairs and she could not stop. She undressed and bathed and went to bed, her body trembling with weeping she could not stop. She did not know why she was weeping so ceaselessly, but she knew it was for more than death.

She opened the door next day to John and Marcia, ravenous for their coming. The thought of this moment had quieted her weeping at last in the night. She had remembered, “John and Marcia are coming tomorrow!” A great beam of comfort shot like light into her desolation. She dwelt upon them with passionate love. They were her children, whom she had made, whom she loved. In the morning she said to herself, “I mustn’t cling to them or think of myself. I must remember that this is the first time they have seen death.” And so when she opened the door, she would not let her heart out to enfold them. Instead, though she kissed them warmly for her secret comfort, she said cheerfully, “Come in, my darlings. Are you cold? Jane, could you make some chocolate for all of us?”

They were shy with her, not knowing how she would be changed. So she tried to be as she always was for them. And all the time her heart revelled in them, in their health and good looks, in their fresh cheeks and clear eyes. She forgot that Marcia had any fault, and saw only her slight dark graceful prettiness, and John was strong and beautiful, fair-haired and blue-eyed as Mark had been, but handsome and alive, quick to move and his mouth delicate.

“Jane told us, Mother,” he said gravely. “She said the funeral would be today.”

“Are we going?” Marcia asked quickly.

“Yes,” said Susan calmly. “Grandmother would be hurt if we did not. And there is no reason why we should not, since we love Grandfather so much. Let’s go in now and see Grandmother. She’s in her room in bed.”

They went in shyly and stood beside the bed. Mrs. Gaylord reached for their hands and burst into tears.

“You’re all I’ve got,” she sobbed, and they turned distressed eyes to Susan. Susan sat down on the bed, and John sat down and began to stroke his grandmother’s hand.

“I’m awfully sorry,” he said, his voice breaking. “I’m just terribly sorry.”

But Marcia stood staring at the old woman’s distorted face.

“Of course,” said Susan gently, “we have all of us a lot to live for—each other, and lots more. Now, Mother, you’re going to have something hot to drink, and then suppose you get up and let’s all take a walk.”

“Oh, I couldn’t!” Mrs. Gaylord sobbed. “It certainly wouldn’t look right, Susan!”

“We needn’t walk through the town,” said Susan. “But let’s get outdoors, into the sunshine. Marcia, you go and tell Jane to serve the chocolate here.”

Her practical voice calmed them, as she meant it should, and Marcia ran out.

“Are they going in to see him—before—before—” Mrs. Gaylord whispered.

Susan turned to John. “Would you like to see Grandfather as he is now, darling?”

He looked at her, his eyes widening. He turned a little pale. “Could I tell you after while?” he asked.