This Proud Heart (15 page)

“Forget what I said, sweet,” he said. “I was tired, I guess. It was a hard day in the office.”

She raised herself on her elbow and looked down at him.

“Do I love you?” she demanded.

He looked up at her.

“Yes,” he whispered, his eyes humble before hers. “I don’t know why, but you do!”

“Promise me you will never forget it!”

“I promise,” he said, as willingly as a contented child.

She looked at him. “Now go to sleep,” she commanded him. “No, don’t move! Stay in my bed, and I’ll go over to yours.”

But he was already asleep. She slipped her arm from under his head and went to the other bed and drew the covers about her. His breathing came and went in a quiet rhythm, but she could not sleep. She lay in a fierce tense determination. Her will was demanding her heart, her brain, her being. He had been right, but he must never know it.

“I’m not going to fail at anything. I can do it all, wife, mother—and myself.” She had been careless and even lazy, letting Mark be hurt through her absorption in something apart from him. For there was that in her which must be apart from him. He had come blindly upon something in. her which was true. She would manage better. She would take thought how to give herself more completely, to live more wholly where for the hour her life was.

But in spite of herself, choose as she might how to realize herself as here and now, in this room, in this night, ready and wishful for sleep, the door shut. In her mind one door and another opened, silently, and she wandered forth, quite alone, while Mark slept sweetly sure of her presence. She lay on, motionless, realizing herself as she never had.

Why should she not be as she was born, and why should she not do and be everything?—not openly or with fuss, as some women did, declaring to themselves the right to freedom, not in fact to do, so much as to be. It was quite true that Mark was not enough for her. But she could not do without him, for nothing was enough for her in itself—not the children, nor the house, nor her parents, nor the town, not the beauty of woods and sky, and still she could not live without them all. Not even her work was enough. If it were possible to live as David Barnes did, all day long carving and shaping and making, at the end of the day she would know, even after hours of forgetfulness of all else, that this also was not enough. For in his own way David Barnes was as limited as Lucile Palmer, and in his way he lived as little of life. Though beauty was his soul’s food, it was not all beauty for which he hungered, but only one kind of beauty. He could see no necessity in childbirth and in growing children, in cleaning and cooking, in planting and singing and in making love to Mark. So much of all this as he could sort out, grasp, and translate into a fistful of clay, or discover in stone, so much he understood. But she—she needed to be as well as to create. Indeed, in her the two were not separate. She could spare nothing from her life, and no one, not Lucile or Jane or Mary and certainly not her children or Mark. She could spare nothing and no one.

“Greedy!” she said to herself solemnly while Mark slept. “I’m greedy as hell!”

But why not? Why should she not have all she could take? The moon waned and she lay in darkness for an hour, thinking furiously. No one could have quite all of her all the time, no one—not Mark, not David Barnes, each clamoring after his fashion. Yet to each she would be what he needed, because she would be herself to the top of every bent. Where she herself most was, she did not know or care. She would have all she wanted of everything. Nobody should limit her, not by love or by blame. The universe was her universe, with all its hours, its lands, its gardens, its skies, its children, its music, its painting, its people, its stars. What could stop her? She would crowd her life full to perfection. She would be all she could be, and she could be what she would. When the room grew light with dawn, she watched the coming day with joy. She did not need to choose between one thing and another, between the old ridiculous finalities of women. She wanted and did make a home, and she would begin, now that Marcia was well born and thriving, to work.

In the ease of this confidence, she suddenly fell asleep to wake two hours later to Mark’s cheerful shouting, “Hey, you girl! Going to sleep all day?”

She woke, and the sunshine was streaming in the window. Mark was dressed, and from downstairs came the hungering smell of bacon. Jane, surreptitiously coming earlier and earlier every day, was making breakfast. There was no noise from the nursery. That meant Marcia had had her early bottle, and John was in the kitchen. But she did not speak of any of this. She remembered Mark in the night and she reached for him and drew his head down to her breast. He murmured, “Forget all that silly stuff I talked in the night, will you, Sue? I don’t know what came over me.”

“I will!” she said. She pressed his head, kissed him, and then leaped from the bed.

“Two minutes for a shower, and I’ll be down,” she cried. Her eyes were clear and bright as a child’s eyes, she was smiling, and when he seized her in his arms for a moment, she was yielding and willing. She would never forget Mark in the night nor a word of what he had said. She would never again cut a single moment short. She put on a fresh blue linen dress and ran downstairs and sat behind the coffee pot and beamed at him. And he adored her and she knew it and held it precious. She must keep him adoring her. And when John came in she caught him in her arms and nuzzled him until he gasped with laughter.

“Mummy—Mummy, I like you so when you’re funny!” he sighed. Well, then, for John she would be funny. She followed Mark to the door and together they sauntered down the garden path and she stood waiting, John’s hand in hers, until he turned the corner of the street.

“Now what would you like to do this morning?” she inquired of John seriously.

He considered and replied weightily, “I s’all make mud pies today.”

“Very well,” she agreed. “I’ll tie an apron around you, and we’ll fetch water in a pail. Only please save all your pies to show me.”

“All wight,” he promised.

And there was Marcia to bathe and feed and she gave herself to this with joy. Every moment was hers to live.

When the house had thus begun its own day she went resolutely upstairs to the attic. For this house must be large enough to comprehend all her life, and this, too, was her life, though Mark and the children did not come here. She shut the door behind her and looked around. There was no reason why she should not make this place into a room in which she could really work. It had been until now an occasional place, where for a few hours, months apart, she came to work at fever speed upon a hasty secret thing. She would work so no more. If she gave herself fully to the others, she would give herself fully here also, that she might be fulfilled. It would not be so much a room of her own as simply one of her many rooms, without which her house would not be complete. She took stock quickly of her materials. They were shamefully lacking. She would make a list of everything—new crayons—she had only the ones Michael had made into stubs—fresh sheets of paper, new tools, there was a new kind of clay David Barnes had told her about—it would have to be clay and not marble here. She would get a couch and an easy chair—there was nothing here to sit upon but a box. She would get a rug and curtains. She needed more light, and the northern gable could be made bigger. As she planned, she found herself possessed by a mounting hunger, which she had scarcely noticed before because she had been denying it. She wanted now to make something more than fountains and small figures. She might make a big thing, a group of figures.

But the house was too small, the room was too small. Well, she could make a small model of the idea first. The idea need not be small. If she wanted to, she could do it life size later. Some day she might want to move out of this attic altogether—build a studio, perhaps, or rent something. When she thought of this she had again that sense of infinite largeness in herself. She could do anything. Why not?

She sat down on the box, thinking quickly, dreaming in great leaps of fancy. If they moved out into the country somewhere into a farmhouse there would be plenty of room for her to work and for the children to play. They had not thought of such a thing, she and Mark, when they were married. A little house on a well-known street near people they knew was what most people wanted. It was what Mark wanted. She stood up restlessly. Suddenly she felt there was no use doing anything to this little house. It was too small for her. She wanted a big house, with room to grow in. She could scarcely wait for Mark to come home that night. All day long it seemed wasteful to do anything to this house. She felt finished with it.

“Mark!” she cried the instant she saw him, “let’s move into the country.”

He stopped, his hand on the gate. “Leave this house?” he asked, staring at her.

“Yes,” she answered impatiently. It took so long for Mark to catch up with her thoughts. But then she had been thinking all day and he had not. “I want more room. I need a real place to work—and the children—”

“You never have really fixed up the attic,” he said slowly.

“It’s too small even to begin in,” she said. “I want to do a big thing this summer when David Barnes comes back. I want to do life-size work. Besides, the children—”

“There’s an old house with a barn,” he said, considering. He suddenly looked very tired, and he began to walk slowly to the house. “Just wait until I’ve washed,” he said.

“Oh, darling, yes!” she said. “I’m too quick, always.”

“I’m slow,” he murmured.

She went into the kitchen, contrite. She would wait until he spoke—wait until after the meal without mentioning it. She would say nothing until he did. He came into the room slowly and sat down, and she smiled at him quickly and his eyes warmed.

“If you really want to move out,” he said, “there’s an old house on a hillside, about a mile to the south of the town, with a creek.”

“Could we go after supper and see it?” she asked, and stopped herself again. “No—we’ll wait. You’re tired.”

“We could go,” he said. “The evenings are long now.”

“I think of the children, too,” she said.

“Of course,” he agreed.

“John wants to play in the woods all the time now,” she went on, “and I’m so afraid of that deep ravine.”

Mark looked up suddenly.

“That’s so,” he replied. “I’d forgotten about that. Well, we’ll go tonight. I do want time to think it over, Sue, though what I said holds good. You’re to have what you want.”

“We’re not deciding anything,” she agreed. But she felt herself already out of this house.

In the clear twilight they drove out of the town southward, and down a country road through trees to an old house built of rough field stone. It stood heavy and sound against the tawny evening sky. There was no light in its windows, and when they reached it they saw the blinds were shut and crossed pieces of wood had been nailed against the door. Without a word Mark tore them away and forced the door open, and they entered, walking about the rooms. Every room was empty and clean except for quietly gathering dust. Susan stood a moment in each, pondering, feeling. Could she live here? Was this her house? They did not speak until they went out on the long pillared porch.

“The barn is over there—it’s stone, too,” Mark said. He pointed to the right and she saw it, huge, under a sloping roof.

“That would be room enough even for me,” she said. Instantly she longed for it. Blocks of marble, blocks of granite—the barn was big enough for hugeness.

“I like this place,” she whispered. “Look at the hills—and the old trees! Is that a well over there?”

“We’re not deciding tonight,” he said abruptly.

“No,” she agreed, “we’ll come and see it by daylight.”

They drove home in the dusk, and when the car was put away they sat upon the porch of their small house.

“I feel,” said Mark, out of silence, “as if we hadn’t lived in this house yet to the full.”

“We won’t go unless you want to,” she answered quietly. But she knew they must go. For this house had no room for all of her. Mark’s wife, the children’s mother, could live here happily, but there was no room for Susan Gaylord. She thought, “I’ll go alone tomorrow and see it for myself.”

The next day when she went alone to the stone house she knew it was her home. She walked through the rooms, planning.

“Mark,” she said at noon, “I must have that house.” He looked at her with his humble faithful eyes. “All right, Sue,” he said. “Whatever you want.”

Even Mark said, when the moving was over, that it was a good home, better than the other.

“Look at the children!” said Susan. “It’s worth it just for them!”

John was running across the meadow to the brook. Jane came in, her face wrinkled with pleasure, carrying Marcia.

“Mum, there’s brambleberries in the back garden,” she said. “I shall put up jelly.”

Jane, living in a little room over the kitchen, was perfectly happy. “’Twould be nonsense for me to come and go,” she had said when they moved. “You won’t notice me, Mum, I promise you that.”

“It is you I think of,” said Mark to Susan.

“I can do my work here,” Susan answered simply, and he was silent.

In the big empty barn she set up her materials and her tools. The size of the place possessed her. Far above her were the cobwebby rafters. There were the bins which had once held the harvests of earth. Now they were to hold what she made. They were great enough to hold the largest figures she could make. She threw open the great barn doors to the hills. Upon the space of their greenness was John, a tiny moving mote in the sunshine, and beyond the hills was the sky.

And she in the midst of this spacious new universe felt stirring in her the old enormous need to take clay and make it into shape and form and create being. She began to draw the figures of a man and a woman, and between them she put a child, and after a while into the woman’s arm she put a baby. These four were the unit in this universe. She drew them over and over again, day after day, covering huge sheets of paper, spending endless hours upon a hand, a mouth, upon eyes looking. But the woman escaped her. At last, unsatisfied, she put aside the pencil and paper and took the clay. Perhaps out of the solid stuff she would move toward the clearer shape. She made them far smaller than life, experimenting, trying out each movement. If the woman came right she would use this as a model, and perhaps even cut them out of final marble when David Barnes came back.