This Proud Heart (17 page)

“I can’t,” she was about to say and did not.

“How can you tell?” she asked, wondering. “I copied my own body.”

“Copy—copy—copy—” he roared at her. “I tell you you’ve got to stop copying! A sculptor builds from the inside out—he makes his people the way God does!”

“Perhaps I’d better stick to making babies,” said Susan, but she knew instantly what he meant.

He did not hear this. “The only advantage you have in being a woman,” he was saying, “is that you can let a man feed and clothe you while you work. I had to make stuff to sell so that I could keep myself alive to work.”

“You don’t understand me,” she said hotly. “I’m not like you—I’m a human being—a woman who wants—”

“I had to make a fool of myself over a woman, even,” he went on without listening to her. “Poor as I was, and eaten up wanting to do my work, I had to go and itch after a woman and persuade her to run away from her husband and then I thought I’d never get rid of her. It took me years to see what I know now—that nobody, nothing matters except your work. I wish to God somebody had taken me and beat me over the head and told me what I tell you now, nothing matters to people like us except our work—a few of us are made so—and we do the world’s work. The rest of ’em can only stand and stare at what we’ve done.”

He snatched her out of the world and she stood beside him, bodiless and a flame.

“Shall I break this into pieces and start all over again, after I know anatomy?” she asked.

“No, no,” he said impatiently. “It’s good—too good not to be better, and plenty good to finish.”

“I was going to do it in marble,” she said.

“No,” he said. “Keep marble for your best. I let you cut that fountain just to see how you handled it. Some day or other you’ll put clay aside and never touch it again. You’re made to carve—not to mold. But this’ll go into bronze—I’ll send it away for you. And look here, I’ll enter it for a competition. There’s a man I know who’s been wanting a thing for his father’s hospital—this’d do. I’ll speak to him.”

He walked around the figures, whistling softly, nodding his burly head.

“You’ve made something,” he said at last. “You’ve photographed the rotten detail, but then you’ve forgotten yourself and made something. The woman’s very fine, gazing off like that—clever of you to have seen she wouldn’t have been looking at the man or the baby. Oh, Lord—most people would have said she’d be staring at the baby, the fools!”

He pulled his shabby cap to his ears. “Be ready to start your skeletons on Tuesday,” he said, and in a moment she heard his car whirling up gravel on the drive.

She said to Mark very casually in the evening, “David Barnes came to see my figures today.”

They were sitting side by side on the wide sagging porch. The evening was like every other evening, and she wanted it so. She would keep it so.

“What did he say?” Mark’s voice was pleasant, a little cool. She moved closer to him and curled her hand into his.

“He said it was pretty good, but I don’t really know enough. I haven’t a foundation.”

“He’s a big stiff!” cried Mark. “What you made was wonderful! I want to go over and look at it again.”

“He says I copy people’s bodies, but I don’t create them.”

“What’s he talking about?” Mark growled.

“He wants me to go to New York on Tuesday and begin some work in anatomy. Would you mind? I’d be back by the time you were.”

In the dusk she could hear the sound of Mark’s pipe, puffing. He said at last, “You know I want you to do whatever you like. But I’d make sure that fellow knows his business.”

“I would only go twice a week, and Jane’s wonderful with the children,” she said.

He did not answer. But she had said what she must. After a moment she got up and sat upon his knee and curled herself small into his arms and he held her. For a long time they were silent.

“You’re sweet,” he whispered at last. “When you’re like this you’re so sweet.”

As soon as Mark left the house on Tuesday she went upstairs and changed her flowered morning dress. He had forgotten it was Tuesday and she had said nothing to him. He kissed her and said as he always did, “Exactly ten hours and I’ll be home again.”

“We’ll be at the gate, all of us,” she said. And John had said, “It’s nice Marcia can walk a little, ’cause she can go to the gate, too, on her own feet.”

They walked down the cinder path to the gate with him and waved at him as he went away. And then she had turned quickly to the children. “John, Mother’s got to go away today for a while and you must help Jane take care of Marcia.”

“Where you going?” he asked.

“To New York,” she said.

“What for?” he asked.

“To work.”

“Are you going to work every day like Daddy?” he asked anxiously.

“No, no—only sometimes,” she replied, and she had left them in the sunshine, staring at her, bewildered by more than they could understand. But she had to go.

It was only a mile to the railroad station at the south end of the town. Mark could easily have driven her there, but she had not wanted to have the morning different from any other. She would walk.

She was able to do everything…. Yes, she was even able to do this. When she was taken into the brightly windowed spotless room she thought for one quick moment, when she saw the long shape under the sheet, that she could not.

“I can, though,” she said to herself. “I can do it.”

And a gentle-faced, quiet-voiced man came toward her and said, “Miss Gaylord? Creighton is my name. My friend Dave Barnes was telling me about you.”

She shook a clean slender nimble hand.

“Will you just come this way?” She followed him into a small room. “Now if you will take off your hat, and put on this—and the gloves—it’s very important never to cut yourself at this work.”

She obeyed, her heart faltering in her breast. He looked at her sharply.

“Is this the first time you’ve done this?”

“I’ve never even seen anybody dead, before,” she answered, and was ashamed of her small voice. She cleared her throat and spoke more loudly. “I am a sculptor, and Mr. Barnes says I must know more anatomy.”

“My God,” he said gently. “It’s like Dave to plunge a girl like you into this right off. Why don’t you start in an anatomy class, or something mild?”

“I can do it,” she answered firmly.

“Well,” he answered, doubtfully, “if you feel faint—”

“I shan’t feel faint,” she replied.

She was glad, when he turned back the sheet, that this quiet body was a beautiful one. If it had been old and gross—but it was young and very beautiful. Once it had been a young man.

“Why did he die?” she whispered.

“There is some strange disease hidden in his brain,” Creighton replied.

“And his family—do they mind?”

“He was a foundling child who was never right. He spent his life in a state institution, a ward of the state. His brain will be of some use, at last.”

It was quite true, she saw when she looked at the face, that it was smooth and empty.

“He looks all right now,” said Creighton. “But I saw him twice when he was alive, and his face was in agony.”

“Pain?”

“Who knows?” Creighton said. “He was never able to speak…. Now I’ll go on with my work, and you had better begin—like this.”

He cut quickly, accurately.

“There’s no blood,” she said, amazed.

“No, it’s been prepared,” he replied. “Now, you see—and here’s the manual. I’d advise you to begin like this. Read a page—to here—and then proceed. Ask me anything. But I’ll go on. Sure you’re all right?”

“Yes,” she said.

She sat down and read slowly, forcing her mind to attention. She read carefully to the end. Then she rose to her feet and took the thin sharp knife, delicate and strong…. She was glad no blood flowed. The flesh was clay. The touch of it was like clay. All flesh was only clay. She could touch cold clay. And clay knew no pain or distress…. The skin was so thin. And when it was laid back like this, the flesh was there, striated. How the muscles wove into each other, fitted to the bone, pulled and moved! And there were the wonderful delicate nerves, and the exquisite lacery of veins and arteries….

“Aren’t you about through?” he asked at last. “It’s time I shut up shop.”

She looked at him dazed.

“I did not dream that was the way an elbow is made,” she replied. “Now I know.”

In the night she lay awake while Mark slept. She could not sleep. “I shall have to find out how it is all made before I try to make anything again,” she thought. After a while she got up and barefoot she walked out of the house upon the grass and stood under the sky. There was no moon and the stars were clear and enormous. Under her feet the grass was wet with dew. In the stillness of the night she stood, feeling everything.

“I am going to the very heart of creation,” she thought. But she was not afraid.

She could not tell Mark anything at all of what she was learning. It had become a habit now that twice a week she went to New York. And he insisted on driving her to the station and meeting her in the evening.

“You can’t walk that distance in the hot sun,” he said tenderly. Once or twice he had asked her, “What do you do when you get there, Sue?” And she had replied, “Just work at anatomy.”

Once he had pressed her a little.

“How do you do it?”

“Oh, I just learn how muscles and bones work,” she answered.

“Must be sort of dull,” he said, and she had cried, “Oh, look, Mark—there’s a blue heron in the creek!”

It was quite true that once or twice a year a blue heron, in passage, drifted down an aisle of air into the stream. And this morning there was one. And Mark stopped the car because he was excited about birds, and together they watched the heavy graceful creature dip its beak and flutter its wings in the running water and climb again, lap upon lap, into the air.

“I could believe God sent it!” she thought, and smiled. She could not possibly have made Mark see the ecstasy of discovering week after week how the curve of a thigh was made, how the arch of a foot, of uncovering the beautiful mechanism of a hand.

“Creighton says you should have been a scientist,” David Barnes said one day at the end of summer when he came into the laboratory to see what she was doing.

“You have a wonderfully sure touch, Miss Gaylord,” Creighton said, smiling.

“And a cold heart,” growled David Barnes. “Thank God she has a good cold heart. I’ll bet she hasn’t once tried to flirt with you, Creighton.”

Creighton’s fair skin grew bright red, and Susan smiled. They knew nothing about her, these two. Yes, they knew part of her and Mark knew part. But nobody knew all of her.

“She’s going to be a great sculptor, this girl,” said David Barnes. His blunt hand was on her shoulder, strong and sentient. “She can’t be wasted on science. When are you through here, Susan? The summer is over. I’m going back to Paris, and you’re coming with me.”

“No, I’m not,” she said.

“Not through?”

“Not coming to Paris,” she repeated.

“Why not, damn you?”

“Because I can’t leave Mark and the children.”

Creighton was looking at her astonished.

“Yeah, she’s gone and got herself married,” David Barnes growled bitterly. “Here she is, born with the greatest thing a human being can have, and she goes and gets herself tied up to somebody—what is he?—real estate or something—and actually has children by him. She’s got to leave ’em, but she doesn’t know it yet. But God will make her!”

Creighton was silent. He was busily washing his delicate instruments, examining the fine edges, wiping them carefully.

“What you don’t understand is that I have to have everything,” said Susan. “Part of me would be dead if I hadn’t married Mark and had the children. I’d only have been working from part of me, and my work would have been no good.”

“You don’t have to spend your life in jail to know what it’s like,” said David Barnes. “A couple of nights is enough.”

She did not answer. There were things she could not tell David Barnes, just as there were things she could not tell Mark. No one could understand everything…. But putting away her instruments that night she suddenly felt finished here. She knew what she wanted to know. She was ready for something beyond.

“Goodbye, Mr. Creighton,” she said when David Barnes was gone. “I shan’t be back.”

“No?” he asked quickly. Then he smiled a little dimly. “Well, it’s been very pleasant, Miss Gaylord. Some day, when you’re famous, and I see a statue of yours standing somewhere, I’ll think, ‘I helped a little in that.’”

“Indeed you have helped me,” she said warmly. She had worked beside him all summer, and she knew him, but he did not know her.

“It’s been very pleasant knowing you,” he said again, wiping his hands on a towel. “I never dreamed, of course—I guess I never knew a married woman who was interested in anything else. You’re not like anybody else, though, I guess.”

The familiar words woke long echoes in her. When she was a little girl in pigtails she had heard someone say to her mother, “Susan’s different, isn’t she?” And her mother had said, “Sometimes I can’t make her out, myself.” And she had crept away to cry for a little while, vaguely, without knowing why she was crying except that she felt lonely.

“Goodbye,” she said, holding out her hand to Creighton. “You’ve been kind.”

“Not at all,” he murmured, and she looked into his wistful, somewhat startled eyes for a moment, and felt his dry clean hand. He hesitated a moment. “I suppose,” he said, “you think this isn’t very constructive work, this tearing to pieces all the time. But it’s so somebody else can go on. I try to remember that. It’s foundation work.”

“Yes,” said Susan.

She went out and shut the door behind her, softly and finally. “I’m going on too,” she thought to herself.

David Barnes was sitting on the front porch, thumping his stick upon the old boards while he shouted at her.

“I want you to see the big fellows working—you haven’t seen anybody yet but me.”

“Why should I see anyone?” she broke in calmly. “I have to work in my own way. Besides, I want to do American things, not French.”