This Proud Heart (20 page)

Everything was still when she drove to the gate. She missed a rhythm of noise without being able to remember what it was she missed. She stopped a moment, in the path, trying to remember. Why was the windless brilliant air so silent? And as she stood there a laborer in rough blue overalls came around the house.

“Well, Ma’am!” he shouted in a loud joyful voice. “We struck water, Ma’am, half an hour ago! Yes, Ma’am, two hundred feet down, fifty feet into rock, there’s a regular run of the clearest, sweetest water you ever saw or drunk!”

He held out a cupful of water to her.

“It’s too late,” she said.

She left him staring after her and went quickly into the house and shut the door.

She had telephoned for the children to be brought home, over her mother’s wondering, hurt protest.

“Susan, you ought not to stay in that house. Come home for a while.”

“No,” she had said, “no. I want to stay here tonight—this very night. I want the children to come home. It’s quite safe—we’ve pure water now to drink.”

“You’re not crucifying yourself, I hope, Sue,” said her father. “You’re not taking comfort in suffering as much as you can?”

She thought a moment. “I don’t think so,” she said at last. “No, it’s not that. It is only that I feel better here than anywhere else.”

So Jane had brought the children home, and she had eaten supper with them quietly and helped Jane put them to bed.

“Shall we kiss you good night for Daddy, too?” John asked, his voice bright with interest.

“Yes,” said Susan.

Their kisses fell upon her heart, but she did not weep. Jane was weeping steadily, silently, her face turned away as she worked….

She read far into the night that first night. When she had bathed herself freshly and braided her hair as she always did, she laid herself down on her bed and took up a book and read, carefully, hour upon hour, word after word. She had not wept and could not weep. She turned the pages one by one until she was weak with weariness. Then she closed the book and looked at the clock. It was three o’clock. Mark had been dead exactly twelve hours. She looked over to his empty bed, and blindly she rose from her own bed and went desperately into his and curled her body into the hollows his body had made and put her face into the pillow where his head had rested. And suddenly, like a river breaking out of rock, she felt tears rush at last to her eyes.

People were so strange. They felt that their presence, their very number, could comfort her, or at least could keep her from remembering that he was dead. They crowded to see her, to chat carefully about other things. Hal came every day, and over and over again he said, “If there’s anything I can do—any job at all around the place—”

“Thank you, Hal,” she said. It was better to finish with weeping in the night because then one’s eyes were dry in the day, when people kept coming. “I’ll tell you,” she promised.

But she did not miss Mark in such things as Hal meant. Mark had not been one to do much about the house. She had not depended on him for such things as women usually depend on men to do. Without thinking, she had done things herself, so that Mark had not even known of them. It was always easier to do things herself and get them out of the way. No, she missed Mark in ways no one could supply for him. She missed him nightly coming home. She had not known, when he was living, how the day rose to the peak of six o’clock, when he came home. Now, knowing he would never turn the corner of the lane again she grew tense with hopeless waiting.

“He isn’t coming,” she said to herself resolutely. “I’m never going to hear the three notes of the horn again.” But she listened as though she would, until six o’clock had come and gone. Then the evening stretched endlessly ahead. She took as much time as she could, helping Jane put the children to bed. And each night they kissed her gaily for Mark. That kiss kept him alive for them, and so she suffered its pain.

And every evening people came to see her. Lucile came down almost every evening, leaving Hal with the children. She chattered industriously of her day, of what “the girls” were doing, of what Susan ought to do, “to take her mind off herself.”

“Of course I know you don’t feel like it now, Sue, but just as soon as you can I think you ought to join the bridge club again. All the girls say so. There’s lots of things you can do to fill up your time, Sue.”

“Yes,” said Susan vaguely. There was a huge moon tipping the edge of the barn, the first full moon since Mark died. They had always sat together and watched it rise. Even on cold winter nights they had put on coats and run out, shivering and gulping the cold air and laughing. “Let’s do it as long as we live, Sue!” Mark had said….

Lucile was asking her something.

“I didn’t hear—I’m sorry,” Susan said.

“I just said I always wondered how you happened to be in New York that day Mark was taken,” Lucile said. “He kept saying over and over that nobody must call you because it was so important.”

And instantly Susan could see Mark, desperately ill, insisting that she must not be called because of him.

“I didn’t want to go that morning,” she said, “but he wanted me to. He said he would come home early and rest, if I would go.”

“Well, he said it was awfully important,” Lucile repeated.

“It seemed so that day,” Susan said, and added, “It doesn’t seem important enough to talk about now.”

Lucile was silent a moment. Susan could feel her wondering what to say next.

“You are all so kind to me,” she said gently. “I’m better and I think I’ll sleep tonight.”

And Lucile had got up quickly and kissed her warmly on the cheek.

“I’ll say good night, then, Sue, dearie. And see you tomorrow! Say, there’s a grand new serial started in one of the magazines. I’ll bring it along.”

She shut the gate briskly and Susan could hear the gears of her car jerk as she pulled away. Then, as it did at the end of every day, night fell upon her. There was the long night to live through before day could come. She sat watching the swinging moon. She could go to bed, but it was easier to sit awake here, easier to think of Mark here than shut into the intensity of loneliness in that room. She remembered again every line of his face….

And as she remembered, she thought of the modeled head which she had never finished. She had not thought of it in months. But now in the night, she wanted instantly and intolerably to see it. She wanted to feel in her fingers the lines of his face. She went into the kitchen and fetched an oil lamp and matches, and then she crossed the patch of moonlit grass into the immense darkness of the barn.

She lit the lamp and put it on a box. Then she went to the shelf which he had put up at the end of the barn and felt along its rough length until her fingers fell upon the shape she knew so well. She carried it to the light and took off the cloth she had wrapped about it, and there in her hands lay his face. She knelt, holding it, gazing at it. It looked exactly like him now. Death had made it look like him. It was finished at last. She knelt, holding it, and after a while she bent her head and laid her cheek against the cheek of clay. It was cold against her warm soft flesh and the lips were still. She wrapped it up again and holding it in the hollow of her arm she took up the lamp and went to the shelf and put it back.

It was at that moment she caught sight of the curved shape of the new born child. And there fell upon her a knowledge of fresh death. There would be no more children, now that Mark was gone. She had not even thought of it, but now this child she had shaped out of clay made her remember everything. Instantly she became aware of herself alone in the huge barn. She put down the lamp and stood terrified because of her loneliness. If she called, no one could hear. There was no one to hear. Jane and the children were asleep, and they would not wake. Her voice would not reach anyone. There was no one to care, as Mark would have cared, where she was. He would not have thought of letting her come to the barn alone at night. There might be a tramp, like the one who hung himself in the wood. She looked about, possessed by a childishness of fear. Above her were the long angular shadows of the beams. She stood in a little circle of dim light, but all around her were shadows and the blackest silence. She wanted to snatch the light and run. But where would she run? There was no one.

“I am a fool,” she said aloud. Her voice echoed in the emptiness. She heard the echoes knocking against each other hollowly. “I’ve got to do something,” she thought. “I’ve got to do something with my hands or I’ll go really mad.”

She looked about her and there on the shelf before her was the patient clay, waiting. And she took it up and mixed it and slowly the familiar stuff began to make her remember. She had promised that she would make the people over again. There was a little pile of letters on her desk. Several days ago there had even been a telegram which she had read and not answered. She began to remember everything gradually, while she worked. She had not wanted to work. She could not begin. She could not think of it while she was keeping Mark alive. Now, through the feel in her hands, she began to stir out of a sleep. Her body had not slept, but something in her had slept as though it were dead. But not dead as Mark was dead. For now, up from her hands, through bone and vein and nerve and muscle, desire was moving, the old voracious desire, electric still. She began to work fast and with a terrible energy, as though for a long time she had been hindered and now the hindrance was gone. She forgot she had ever been afraid. She forgot everything again, until the dawn came.

And when the dawn came she could work no more. Then she walked back to the house slowly, her ankles wet with dew and mists in her hair, and she bathed and lay down and slept for a while as though she had drunk too much wine.

But when she woke she could not work again. There was no desire in her. She was cold with lassitude, though it was impossible to lie in bed. There was nothing to do except to get up and dress and let the day begin again.

“Sue, you’re looking downright sick,” her mother kept saying. “If you won’t come home, I shall come and stay with you. Mary can look after your father a week or two.”

She had taken the children there one afternoon before Christmas, because suddenly, at three o’clock, she realized she was already watching the hands of the clock move toward six. Her father had come downstairs when he heard the children and now he was whittling a little ship for them. He whittled beautifully, each stroke true to the design in his mind. John stood at his knee, silent with pleasure, but Marcia was whirling around and around, singing, “A little boat—a little—little boat—”

“I don’t want to be left with Mary,” he growled. “Every time she comes home from that business school in New York we have less to talk about. If anybody’s going, let her go.”

“Yes,” said Susan eagerly, “why not? Let her come, Mother.”

“Well, if you want her,” said her mother with her habit of reluctance.

She did not really want Mary. She wanted no one. But Mary would be better than her mother. Mary would be thinking about herself, and not about her. Mary would not notice if she were pale in the morning. … When would she really sleep again, long deep hours of sleep instead of little torn fragments of unconsciousness from which she woke to know again and again that Mark was gone? … And Mary would not notice her and cry at her, “Susan, you’re eating nothing.” When would she know hunger again?

“It’s very good of you to spend your holiday like this, Mary,” she said when Mary came in with her bag. Mary was different every time she came home. She had grown very tall and her sallowness had changed into plain, dark, thin good-looks, and she was learning how to dress herself.

“I don’t mind coming,” she said carelessly. “Where’s my room?”

Jane had made the small guest room fresh, and Susan had brought a yellow rose and put it in a vase on the dressing table. Now she led Mary upstairs and hesitated. Mary was at once familiar and strange. But Mary dismissed her. “I’ll be down after a bit,” she said, and Susan went downstairs.

It was still hard to talk to anyone. She had grown used to Mark’s easy talk of small and pleasant things. He had talked without waiting for her to speak first or to answer, and she had fallen into a habit of listening to him and dreaming as she listened, because what he said did not fill her mind. But it was comforting and pleasant, and now when people waited for her to talk she did not know how to begin.

But Mary did not talk, either. It was almost like having no one in the house. She sat reading for hours, and then she would fling the book aside and put on her brown tweed coat and stride bare-headed across the fields. And at night she went upstairs early, making no demand of Susan beyond her short, “Good night, Sue. See you in the morning!”

Then Susan was left alone with the night again. There were many small things to fill the day, the children, the house, bits of sewing. Marcia’s dresses wanted lengthening and she lengthened them. John wanted a red sweater and she knitted it. Mark used to watch her fingers and say, “I like to see your hands at work. They know exactly what they are to do and they do it quickly.” She smiled, being secretly a little proud of her nimble, strong fingers. But now there was no value in swiftness, since there was no hour toward which she worked. Yet she could not stay her hands because they were used to their own quickness and worked as they would without her.

She could read a little, and sometimes she walked home to play on the piano, until one day her father said, “I’m going to have that piano sent to you. I have my own upstairs, and nobody in this house cares for music since you’re gone.”

“Susan can have it, of course,” her mother said half resentfully, “but I don’t think you ought to say I don’t like music, Father. I’m fond of a good tune.”

He had not answered, he never answered her, and the piano came. It was a way to spend hours out of a day and Susan was grateful for that.

But whatever she did the day was over, and there was the long night in which she could not sleep. And in despair at its endlessness and her own intense wakeful empty mind and without any desire for work of her own, she put on her old blue coat and went across the frosty grass to the barn and lit the oil lamp and without any desire still she began to shape again the dark mass of clay which was slowly taking form. The first hour she worked doggedly, against her will, aware always that Mark was gone and that she did not care what she did. Then out of the deeps of her brain, deeper than thought, deeper than knowledge, the old slow fire awoke, and she began to go beyond work into creation. Then only could she forget that Mark was dead. And the habit of the nights grew until at last as soon as her hands touched the clay, she could forget, and it was as comforting as dreamless sleep, and so she ceased to be afraid all day because night was ahead.