This Proud Heart (14 page)

Out of this instinct came a movement as blind and as inevitable as the instinct of a tree to branch, and of a branch to leaf. Out of perfect happiness she began to need her own further growth. Once as a child sitting in a church she had heard the minister speak of one bereaved and he said, “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth,” and he said, “Sorrow is sent to teach the human soul and fit it for larger things.” But she had known no sorrow at all. Mark was simple goodness in his love, her children were healthy and undemanding, and the days were not cumbered by anything. Even Jane said darkly, “Enjoy everything while you can, Mum. The end comes fast enough.” But all such sayings meant nothing. She had never seen death, and it seemed to her that life was endless, and she was glad to have it so. But her content was like earth which nourished seed, and the seed grew by its own health out of the earth. Her very content forced her to creation again. And the beginning was her restlessness.

She had not enough to do. However busy she was, she knew there was an energy in her still unused, a primary function unperformed. She began to feel beyond what her eyes saw in the shape of a tree whipped by the wind, in John building his block houses, in Jane bent over pots, in Jane looking up to answer her at the door, in Jane half startled, wiping her hands on her apron. Jane—Jane—Jane had no curves at all. Her body was cut as simply as a slab of granite—and yet every line had been made, not born, but made by the inwardness of Jane—her straight sad mouth, her stoic chin, her knotty hands, her thin strong shoulders and flat big English feet.

“Jane!” she cried one day at the kitchen door.

Jane looked up, startled, and wiped her hands on her apron.

“Mum?”

John was playing in summer sunshine in the garden. Marcia was asleep in her crib.

“Yes, Mum?” Jane said again.

“What are you doing, Jane?”

“The pots and kettle, Mum!”

“Then come upstairs!”

She heard Jane’s plodding big-footed tread behind her on the stair, following her into the attic. She stood in the door, still wiping her wet arms, looking anxiously at Susan.

“Just stay like that!” Susan said. For suddenly she saw this essential Jane, looking out from among pots and kettles, humble, fearful, living moment by moment in another woman’s contented house, in a timid precious peace, borrowed for a moment from a troubled and tragic life. She stared at Susan with her frightened, habitually pleading look, and Susan, mixing her clay quickly, began the shaping and the making, in frightful silence, in swift sure movement, of this creature. It had been so long since she had fed this strange hunger. But her hand could not forget the cunning with which it was born. All these months the cunning had not been used, or needed. This morning it was here, more strong than ever for being pent. She worked with fierce speed and Jane’s eyes grew more frightened, though she was speechless. And Susan was humming in a sort of fervent whisper, “Oh, that will be—glory for me!” not knowing that she made a sound.

As the time passed, Jane began to make little broken movements, and Susan, disturbed in the passing of hours, cried out, “You’re tired! I’ve kept you standing too long. Why, what time is it?” The noon sun was blazing hot upon the roof and she felt her face wet with sweat.

Jane said anxiously, “It’s not that I’m tired, Mum. But I hear the baby cryin’ and Johnnie’s bangin’ to be let in.”

“I didn’t hear them,” Susan said, half ashamed. She listened and now she could hear Marcia’s clear loud crying and John’s shouting, “Janie—Janie! I can’t opie the door!” But Jane was already gone.

Susan closed her eyes a moment. She need not hurry. She caught the deep hard beat of her heart. Then she opened her eyes to see what she had done. There, life-size, roughly and crudely enough, but serenely true, her clay still wet and dark, stood Jane, wiping her wet arms. But this was more than Jane. Here were all women like Jane, humble women who crept about the hearths of others, cleaning and cooking and sewing, receiving dazedly beyond a small wage such scraps as were given them. And out of these socket-like eyes, out of the half-open drawn mouth, from the whole drooping fragile yet somehow unbreakable figure, Susan could hear a voice. It was not a clear cry as the child’s had been, asking why it was born. There was no question here, for the possibility of question was long dead, since to question is to be able also to rebel, even a little, and there was no rebellion in Jane against anything. No, it was a voice, murmuring in a monotone of pots and pans, of meat to be cooked, of kitchen floors to be scrubbed, of children crying to be fed—nothing more. Only death could cut this murmuring short. One day there would be a sigh, and what had been life nearly dumb would become a simple silence. This was Jane, thousands upon thousands, and Susan, realizing her, went to the window toward the wood, and stared out into its summer greenness. There was sunshine everywhere, the street was brilliant in sunshine. Through the window she could hear the creak of a hammock next door. Now the house was still. Jane had taken Marcia up, she had fed John. But Susan stood by the window, weeping, her body a blaze of pain she could not comprehend, except that she was somehow weeping for Jane.

She did not again want any Jane, in flesh and blood, to pose for her. It was not necessary. She saw clearly what she was doing, and day after day she came upstairs and finished the figure, working more surely than she ever had. Those hours with David Barnes a year ago had taught her sureness. She had, without knowing it fully, learned how to model strongly with her thumbs as he did in the rare times he used clay, how to be bold and hard with her material, striking away what she did not want. But upon Jane’s face she worked with such delicacy that it was as though she felt the features out of the clay. Her eyes were half closed, and her fingers went feeling, feeling, into the clay, pressing out each bony plane and surface. Each day when she opened the attic door it was to open it to ecstasy and when she shut the attic door behind her, she shut it as upon that secret ecstasy. She was alive throughout her being. And she told no one. There was no one to tell.

One night she wakened. She felt in her sleep a light pressing unbearably upon her eyelids, and she woke suddenly to find the brilliant moon, setting full and bright as a sun, in the sky outside the window, opposite her bed. She sat up, startled, and Mark spoke, his voice clear of sleep.

“You’re awake, too. It’s the moon.”

And after a moment he said, “Sue, may I come over to your bed?”

And she said—for when had she ever denied him anything?—“Of course, darling,” and fell back on her pillows. She yawned drowsily, but still she was conscious of pleasure in the warmth of Mark’s body. And when he said in a low voice, “Hold me tight, Sue,” she put her arms about him warmly, feeling him dear and not repellent. Thus, following sweet habit, she was not prepared for the sudden chill that crept over Mark’s flesh. In the moonlight she felt his hands falter and the warmth pass from him. He lay quite still a moment, then he kissed her gently and tucked the sheet about her.

“Go to sleep, dear Sue,” he said gently. “I shouldn’t have disturbed you.”

She came instantly out of her half sleep.

“But, Mark, I was loving you!” she protested.

“That’s all right,” he said in the same gentle voice. Now he was getting up, putting on his dressing gown, feeling for his slippers. “Guess I’ll read a while. This darned moon keeps me awake.”

She stared at him. His voice was cheerful, but she felt him changed to her.

“Mark, something is wrong and you are not telling me.”

“Nothing is wrong,” he insisted. “Now you go to sleep.” He was reaching for the light, and then began fingering the books on the little shelf by his bed.

“Mark, you never have lied to me,” she said. She was now so awake that she felt she could sleep no more that night.

“I love you,” he said, not looking at her.

“Of course you love me,” she replied, “and I love you. So what’s wrong?”

He looked at her then and she saw his lips trembling.

“Why, Mark!” she cried in terror. She had never seen Mark weep. She leaped out of her bed and went to him and pulled his head down upon her shoulder.

“Mark—Mark—” she whispered, and holding him, she felt his body tremble and grow stiff against his weeping. “What can be the matter?” she demanded. “Come, Mark, I can’t bear this.”

“Nothing,” he gasped. “It’s nothing—only I feel you’re changing to me somehow. I’m not enough for you.”

For a moment she felt as if she were the man and he the woman. She had listened to other women speaking thus of their husbands. Once at a bridge party at Lucile’s house Trina Prescott had thrown down her cards, crying, “I can’t go on, girls—I’m so miserable! Rob doesn’t care about me any more. He’s changed.” And they had talked it out, pityingly, and she had taken Trina home at last, and Lucile had come over next day to talk it all over again and say, “Women are so soft, Sue! I’d just like to see Hal act different to me! It would mean just one thing—he’s thinking about some other woman, and that’s one thing I won’t stand! I’d tell him where to get off! Didn’t he promise to cleave to me only?”

She had listened in silence to this behavior of women, knowing it impossible in herself toward Mark. But she had not heard before of a man, his head bent upon a woman’s shoulder like this, crying out that he had lost her. It made Mark a stranger, and no more the cheerful, simple, single-hearted comrade in her house. She saw in a terrifying second the far corridors ahead of her, to which this present was but one entrance. But she did not want this life to change. She and Mark had been married four years and she had not dreamed he was not happy. She was frightened.

“Sit down, dear,” she said very gently, and like a child he obeyed, clinging to her. “Now, tell me. I’ve done something to hurt you. But the dreadful thing is I didn’t know what it was. So you must tell me. I love you so.”

But it was a long time before he could speak. He had not put into words even for himself what she now asked him. He had been suffering deeply, dumbly, against his will, not knowing why he suffered.

“You’ve been perfect,” he said over and over. “I’m crazy, that’s all. It’s me, not you. Why, you keep a beautiful home for me—you’re perfect to the children—” He paused and went on. “You’re always dear and lovely to me. I hear other fellows jawing about their wives. Hal doesn’t dare to be ten minutes late or Lucile wants to know why—and she snoops around his pockets, she’s so jealous—why, she’s jealous of the shop stenographer, even! I hear them all and say to myself, ‘My wife’s not like that, thank God!’”

She listened, smoothing his shoulder, feeling its quivering under the thin stuff of his cotton pajamas. “It’s nothing you’ve done.”

“Then it’s something I am,” she replied.

He did not speak for a moment. Then he pulled away from her, and walking about the room, he found his pipe and lit it and sat down on the windowsill and stared out into the moonlight.

“Maybe it is,” he said, “perhaps that’s it.”

Her heart flickered in fear. “That’s much worse,” she said very quietly. “I could stop doing something that hurt you, but it would be very hard for me to stop being what I am. I wouldn’t know how to begin. I don’t think I’ve ever thought how I am. I’ve been so busy all my life, and so happy.”

He got up and drew down the shade against the moonlight and sat down on the bed.

“I never meant to get started on this,” he said. “I can’t tell you what I mean, so I shouldn’t say anything. But I feel all the time that you aren’t here—not all of you. You do everything so well, so much better than anybody else—I know that—”

“Oh, Mark, don’t!” she begged him. “What do I care how I do anything except to make you happy? If what I do doesn’t make you happy, it’s no good. I’ve failed!”

“You do make me happy,” he .said stoutly. “I’m a fool to say a word. I’m comfortable and cared for and you don’t leave anything undone—except—” he paused, and after a second he said, “except perhaps give yourself to me straight through.”

“What do you mean?” she asked. “When have I refused you anything?”

“You don’t—I’m a fool—but I feel as though I never quite had you. See here, Sue—when I’m talking to you, I tell you everything that happens to me, I tell you everything, see? There isn’t any more to me. But there’s so much you don’t tell me. You listen, but only part of you is listening. I think that’s it—I’m only married to part of you.”

He looked down at her earnestly, his face anxious with effort to make her understand. And she did understand, and for the first time in her life she wanted to shrink away from him. For who had the right to ask her to give him the uttermost recesses of her being? To give everything was not within her power. She gave as he was able to receive. She was about to open her lips and say sharply, “If you want all of me, you must be able to take all. If I have held back anything of myself, it is a thing I can’t help.”

But Mark was speaking unsteadily. “It’s as though I held out a cup to you—”

She could have said, “The cup’s too small.” But before she could say it, he cried out, “That sounds terrible—I don’t mean it. The trouble is I’m just not enough for you. The cup’s too small, maybe!”

She did not say anything. She could with a word have made him weep again, have made him afraid lest he lose her altogether. But she would not because it would have been to wound herself more than him. She wanted never to wound anyone. That was the great sin—to wound another person. All her life she had held herself back and she had hidden her true powers because she did not want to shame or wound anyone. But she ought not to need to hide herself from him. Yet she had, she had, and in some blind way he knew it. She was dazed. She would have to think it over, all he had said, and see what it really meant. But now the first need was to comfort Mark, to make him realize, through her love, that he was enough for her and therefore for himself. Whether he was enough for her was not so important as to have him think he was enough. She smiled at him richly, warmly, putting aside everything except that one thing.

“Come here to me, my darling,” she said, her voice firm and clear. “You are talking nonsense, you know. I’m so happy—you are my best and my dearest. You’re the center of my life.” She drew him down upon her breast. It was quite true. He was the center. For she had to have someone like Mark, faithful, immediate, close, for a center from which her life could radiate into all its own ways. He was her earth. Her roots were in him, dark and close and strong, and what flowered above him depended on that. She drew him to her with warm compelling arms, laughing a little, teasing, making love to him. He gave himself to her mood, excited and persuaded. And she closed all her other doors and lived in this one room of their own house, in this secret hour of the moonlit night. She was for the hour as persuaded as he, as swept. There was this difference. At the end of the hour the dream held for him. He lay with his head on her arm, half asleep, smiling, his eyes shut.