This Proud Heart (12 page)

“It’s good enough for a first piece,” he said. “But you’ve got to dig out your anatomy. You’ve photographed a body very neatly. You haven’t made it from the skeleton out. When we get to Paris this autumn I’ll send you to a friend of mine—a surgeon—he taught me when I was a kid like you. I watched him until I could have performed a major operation myself. You’ve got to know your insides or you go on doing nothing but photographs.”

She stood in silence, listening. The fountain which had seemed so beautiful to her a few minutes before, so nearly what she meant, was now worthless.

“Sell it—sell it,” he said harshly. “It’s good enough to sell.”

“Shall I put my name on it?” she asked humbly.

“No,” he growled, “it’s not good enough for that.”

So she sold it to Mrs. Vanderwelt for five hundred dollars. But when it stood in its place against the dark yews she loved it a little.

“It’s mine, even if it isn’t perfect,” she thought, and she scratched her name small and deep and secret, in the palm of the outstretched hand. If years later she were ashamed of this, the water splashing so long in the hands would have washed away her name.

“Don’t sign anything,” he said one day in August, “until you have been in Paris two years. Then if I am satisfied, you may begin to sign. You won’t know enough until then to know whether what you do is good or not. Everything you do looks beautiful to you at first. You’ve got to know when you’ve done something bad.”

“I haven’t said I was going to Paris,” she said quietly. “The truth is I can’t possibly go.”

He was blocking out Leonardo da Vinci, his eleventh Titan, that day. He had a man sitting whom she had never seen before, though why he wanted a model she did not know since he seemed never to look at him. He had told him, “Walk about, read, do anything you like except bother me. I don’t want to hear your voice or know anything you think. I’m only paying you for your body. Your mind’s nothing to me. I’ve got the mind to put behind your face.”

Now he turned on her as she sat drawing the detail of a foot, and shouted, “What are you talking about? I’ve already written to my own master about you. I want his opinion on you before I go on spending time on you. If you’re only plastic I won’t bother with you. Carving’s the only thing. That fountain didn’t tell me anything—too pretty—might as well have been made out of mud.”

“I have a husband and a child,” she said.

He turned his back to her and worked furiously for fifteen minutes. Then he threw his beard over his shoulder and shouted above his own din.

“Any woman can have husband and children. What have they to do with you?”

He did not turn his head to look at her, but he half paused for her answer, though he pretended to be studying a line before he proceeded.

“I love my husband and my child,” she said clearly.

He started pounding again very loudly and would not speak to her, and at the end of the afternoon she went away a little early.

“Goodbye,” she said, but he did not answer.

It became a quarrel between them as the summer drew near to its end. He ceased being angry with her when he saw she was not afraid of his anger. Instead he spoke kindly to her, explaining his own reasons.

“Susan, I’ve seen a lot of ’em, but I haven’t seen the authentic gift before. You have it. You may not want it, but you can’t give it away. You can’t throw it away. It’s in you, it is you. Now just because you didn’t know it, because you went and married yourself off young and had a baby, doesn’t mean you have the right to neglect this thing a silly God has gone and given you.”

“I may be able to give it to my child,” she said.

He grimaced with rage and forced himself to calmness.

“Listen to me, Susan. Will you grant that I know more than you do?”

“About some things.”

“About this one thing—my own trade?” He would never say art, hating the word.

“Yes,” she said, “that one thing perhaps.”

“So far as I am concerned, it’s the only thing,” he retorted. “And it is with you, too, though you don’t know it. Let me tell you something. You can’t give it to your child. Who gave it to you? Was there ever a sculptor in your family? Or even a painter?”

She shook her head, but before she could speak he was pounding at her with his words.

“No, and no one gave it to you. You may go on and have a whole nursery full of brats and they’ll all be just like any other woman’s—no better. Why, you won’t even make them a good mother! A woman like you can’t make a good mother—you’re thinking too much about something else.”

“I can be a good mother,” said Susan grimly.

“Don’t think I don’t know all about this business of children, for I do,” he went on. “I’ve had ’em—I’ve got three boys and a girl and not one of ’em knows how to pick up a chisel or wants to.”

“Their mother?”

“Three mothers!” he shouted derisively. “Three different women I’ve had ’em by! And the brats are all alike!”

She did not answer and she would not talk with him any more. For what could he know of the little house by the wood at the end of a lighted street, and the safety of Mark loving her and telling her she was what made his day worth living to the night? If she went to Paris—but she would not go to Paris, not with John waiting for her, warm and clean and rosy in his high chair in the kitchen. She could not go.

At the end of every day she knew she would not go to Paris. But in the morning when she was sweeping and cleaning she wished she had not that five hundred dollars in the bank for the fountain. And David Barnes knew she had it because he would take nothing for his marble. She had tried to give it to him and he had said angrily, “I don’t want your money. Keep it. I’ve got all I need.”

“Your children—” she began and he burst out at her, “Hell, I don’t give them anything.”

“Not your children?” she cried.

“I don’t want ’em.”

“You had them,” she accused him.

“I didn’t—their mothers did.” He chuckled and then bellowed with laughter.

She gazed at him a moment, unbelieving, amazed at such a heart in a man so passionate for beauty.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he answered. His voice was indifferent, but his eyes grew suddenly warm.

“Look, Susan!” he whispered, “Look!” She looked at the line of his finger drawn along a rough edge of marble. “That’s how the head bends. I haven’t seen it until now.”

His face was tender, alight, and though she had hated him for a moment, now she leaned forward, seeing.

“The marble lies to the curve,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “You see it?”

She nodded. They looked at each other with a perfect comprehension, forgetting everything.

They took up their quarrel again next day. For there was the money in the bank. So she could not say, “I have no money.” And she could not say, “I want to spend it on my family. They need it.” For she was no good at telling lies. She said to him plainly, “I cannot go, because none of them would understand—my husband, my mother, my friends—no one would understand,” and then she added, “unless perhaps my father.”

“What of it—what of it?” he roared at her, wringing his blunted roughened hands. “What the blazes does it matter if they understand or don’t?”

He was quivering, but suddenly he stopped short, and sat down and leaning forward with his hands on his knees he began to speak in a gentle voice. “Susan, does it mean nothing to you that you may become one of the great of your generation, perhaps of all generations?—No, I won’t put it on that—Susan, you have a deep desire in you, deeper than love and mating, deeper than motherhood. It is to create, in that way peculiar to you, the things you feel and see. No one can do it but you—no, wait—that doesn’t matter—the thing is this, you’ll never be happy, not even happy as a woman, unless you are satisfying that desire.—No, wait—you’re not to speak. I won’t ask you again. See here, I’ve made a reservation for you—third of September—not my boat—I’m going next week—I know gossip. But you can tell me before I go. No, I don’t want one word.”

He got up and rolled out of the room, and she put on her hat and walked homeward. On her porch Lucile was sitting with her third baby in her lap, and Susan stopped a moment and went up the steps. It was a little boy.

“I’m glad it’s a boy, anyway,” said Lucile, her voice proud and discontented together. “Women have too hard a time in this world for me to want to bring any more here.”

Susan stooped, smiling, over the small grave pink face. She slipped her hands under his body and stood holding him to her. What was there in a baby’s body held like this to the breast? She stood a moment, confused and feeling. Then she put him down and kissed Lucile’s cheek and went away before she saw the surprise in Lucile’s eyes. At the end of the street was her own house waiting for her, and John would laugh when she came in the kitchen and Jane would say tenderly, “He’s been that good today. Shan’t I stay and serve your dinner, Mum? I ’ave it all ready.” And Mark would come home. She hurried as fast as she could and ran up the steps, her heart hot to be there.

She did not go to the studio for a week, and he did not write her or seem to notice it. She was quite happy, she told herself, very happy at home. The day before he was to leave she went once more to tell him goodbye, and there he was, working alone. She came in from the door open on the terrace as she always did. He was kneeling before the Titan, the afternoon sunshine falling across the figure. He was hammering swiftly, sure of his creation. And when she saw him her little house shook upon its foundations.

“Well?” he said, looking up. For her shadow had fallen black upon the marble.

“I came only to say goodbye,” she said. She knew exactly what she wanted to say.

“You are not coming?” he said gently, so gently that it was the voice he might use before one dying or dead.

She shook her head, and he rose to his knees and put aside his tools and went over to the table and wrote an address upon a bit of paper.

“If you ever know you are wrong,” he said, “you may write to me there. But do not write me for anything else. I have no other interest in you.” And he went back to his work, taking up his tools and kneeling again before his Titan.

She went home then through the afternoon light and did not know whether it was night or day. She had the bit of paper in her hand and she went upstairs and put it under the statue of the child she had never finished. Then she stood looking about the still empty room. It was emptier now than ever, and it would always be empty. And as she stood, she heard Mark’s step in the hall, and his voice calling her.

“Susan? I’m home early!”

She ran downstairs to him and threw herself upon his breast. “Mark—Mark—Mark—” she cried, over and over, clinging to him.

“Why, Susan—why—darling—” he said, frightened.

“Oh, Mark,” she said, and then laughed and drew away and wiped her eyes. “I didn’t expect you so early. I’ve never been so glad to see you.”

“Is anything wrong?” he asked, still troubled.

“No—no—” she said. “I love you—I love you—”

They clasped each other close and kissed as they had not in many months. And that night she turned to him resolutely in the dark and said, “Mark, it’s time we had another child. I want another child.”

And he said, longing and afraid, “Sue—are you sure?”

And she answered steadily, “Sure.”

She slept dreamlessly, and woke to sunshine streaming across her room, and when Mark was gone she plunged into her house with pleasure that, for the moment, was complete. She felt satisfied, as though a hunger had been fed. She went upstairs gaily and began turning mattresses and beating pillows. She swept and mopped and dusted and then, sitting on the sills, she washed the windows, her hair blowing in the autumn wind. She worked with joy, delighting in the making clean, in the order, in the freshness. Yet all the time only part of her was working and she knew it. She ran downstairs when the door opened at noon and John came in holding Jane’s hand, his cheeks rosy, his brown eyes full of peace.

“Milk,” he said, “an’ bread.”

“You shall have your lunch,” she promised him.

“Shall I give it to him?” Jane asked, her pale eyes begging.

But Susan shook her head. “I want to, today,” she answered.

“I’ll come again this afternoon,” Jane said, and went out, shutting the door softly behind her.

Left alone with the child, Susan washed him and put him in his chair and fed him, and he ate, thinking as he did so, of all he had done.

“I made a house,” he said, “a big house.”

“Yes, darling?”

She dwelt on him with adoration, loving him to pain. He was beautiful. He was what she had dreamed, her child with Mark’s eyes and her mouth. When he had eaten she carried him up to bed and undressed him and tucked him in for his nap. He looked up at her with Mark’s faithful pleasant eyes, and she was faint with love for him. But even then, and even though she ardently wanted many children, she knew part of her was waiting and not in all of this. She pushed the knowledge away from her and drew her chosen life about her, close and warm.

She had thought at the end of the summer, aching a little, that she would miss David Barnes very much, miss him and what was given her there in the huge old ballroom studio. The night when she had cried to Mark for a child, she had been desolate in one part of herself. But the days closed around her quite happily without David Barnes and with no other work done than caring for the house, for John, for Mark.

Mark said with content, “I’ve been too busy this summer, I guess, girl. It’s good to have time to talk again. People don’t buy so many houses in the autumn and winter.”

He had not known that she also had been busy apart from him. But then he had had another increase in salary and he felt happy and successful and overflowed in detailed accounts to her of all his day’s doings. Sitting together over a meal or under the light of the lamps, she sewed and listened, quite content. Yes, she was quite content, except sometimes in the midst of fire-glow and lamplight, when the wind howled in the wood. Then she lifted her head and listened. Upstairs John lay warm and asleep. All was well. They were safe, and one day followed another in the old safe pattern she had known all her life. But when she heard the sound of the wind in the night she felt, and she knew, without knowing how, that there was more than this, although with this she was perfectly content. Even when she and Mark went upstairs together, his arm about her, hers about him, in true love, she could see corridors, wide and empty, stretching before her, down which she had not yet walked.