This Proud Heart (26 page)

“All right,” she said.

Now he was gone. From the window she saw him throw his bag into a cab and go swaying down the narrow street. She stood a moment, and then she turned firmly and quickly and opened the closet door. There was the clay.

She had not time each afternoon for more than a moment’s realization that this was David Barnes’ studio. His smock hung against a door. The first studies of his Titans stood under the shadows of the eaves. She did nothing except to clear a small circle for herself. Indeed she could not. Day was passing day, and like catastrophe she saw the month’s end when Jane’s hand would be stretched out to her empty. She had the children to feed and alone. If she let herself, she could be afraid. This city seemed suddenly too foreign for her. She had been so busy she had not thought of it as foreign before. But now, looking out of the long windows northward, she thought of Tramp’s Woods. The streets were strange, the people sharp and alien. She turned away, summoning her old power in herself. She would not allow herself fear. She could do anything that she must and would.

She would use these very people to earn her children’s bread. She turned and began quickly to model her clay. She would make little figures of such people as she saw every day; old Madame Jeure in the downstairs shop, the corner café proprietor with his barrel stomach who drank his own wine all day, the children playing about the knees of the stone general, a taxicab driver asleep at a curb in the early morning, slumped behind the wheel. These strangers trooped through her mind and her fingers flew. She would make them and cast them in plaster and offer them for sale in a certain little shop she passed every day. She had seen women going in and out with bundles, and in the windows were many small things for gifts. These were only toys she was making, and yet even now a certain content came creeping into her breast, warm and sweet. She was humming under her breath and she caught it and held it to hear what she was singing. “Oh, that will be—glory for me—” It was her old song. She had not sung it since she came to Paris, and where had it come from now, except from this familiar ecstasy in her hands?

“I’ve enough money for a week more, Mum,” Jane said without urgency. She had been out to early market and now she was back, her small thrifty purchases in a round French basket. She was not in the least alarmed. Money came from somewhere, somehow. It was only her duty to spend it as sparely as she could. Susan was seeing John off to school, straightening his tie and finding his cap.

“Goodbye, son. Don’t forget you’re American.”

“Mother! You don’t suppose I ever forget that!”

“No, but remember you’re the only American they know and when they look at you they will think of all America.”

“Mother, I
am
sort of forgetting America! Did we have apple trees and a barn?”

“Yes, darling—we still have. Goodbye, goodbye!” She watched his tall slight figure running down the street, looking so different from everyone else. And Marcia, jabbering a mixture of English and French, was wanting to cut paper dolls.

“Mother, Mother,
où est le
scissors, Mother?”

She found the scissors and settled Marcia in the sunny open window.

“Now Mother must go to work, darling.”

Marcia did not mind. Marcia was already singing in a high sweet small voice a song Madame Jeure had taught her when sometimes she ran away from Jane to see little rolls come out of the oven.

“I don’t know just when I’ll be back, Jane,” Susan called from the door.

“No, Mum,” Jane said at the kitchen door, wiping her hands on her apron.

“I’ll probably bring some money today,” said Susan.

“Yes, Mum,” said Jane.

Susan stepped out into sharp autumn sunshine. Every angle of the many angled crowded houses stood out clear and hard, and the cobblestones, wet with carrying of water, glittered. She turned right and went, as she did every morning and evening, past the little gift shop. She stopped. Two of her little figures were gone from the window, Madame Jeure and the little schoolboy. She hurried in to find the old shopkeeper.

“Monsieur,” she cried, “Monsieur,
est-ce-que
—”

“A-ha!” he replied merrily from behind his counter. His white mustaches quivered with pleasure. He dipped his hand into his drawer and held it out to her. There was a handful of francs.

“Mes Américains!”
he cried roguishly. “They adore the small dolls!”

“Merci
—
merci
—” she said, smiling.

In the street she counted the francs. It was good enough—he had taken his commission, of course. She put the money into her purse. It was pleasant to know it was there, though it was very little, really. Little dolls would not pay all the rent and all the food and the cheerful schoolmistress and Jane’s wage. The days were growing chill and soon she must think of coal. She went steadily on toward the studio where she still spent her mornings, learning in any way she could things she did not know. It was not so much as she used to learn. She had grown skillful at many things now. But she had not yet the large thing she needed. She did not know what she wanted to do next.

She opened the door of the square hall to the studio and there she took off her hat and coat and put on her brown smock. Then she went into the studio. Sometimes there were other students working there, but Monsieur taught no classes. If certain young persons of gift, he would say, shrugging his thick shoulders, wished to come and watch him and learn, he would ask them questions sometimes and discover their ignorance for them—nothing more. But no one came every day as she did, early, before he had finished
-petit déjeuner.
She came in every morning and took up the task she had left off the day before, the making of an armature, the shaping of a plaster mold, the preparation of a bronze. He came in, wiping coffee and honey from his mustaches.

“Ah, Susanne, you are here!”

“Yes,
Maître.
What shall I do when I have finished this?”

“Let me look at you—you are pale!”

He had her by the shoulders, her face turned to the window.

“I am quite well.”

“You do not eat enough. You do not play. In the evenings you must go out with the other students and play. You go home—what do you do at home?” he asked her.

She smiled, not answering.

“You are not in love?” he asked her.

She shook her head violently. In love! These French thought of nothing else.

“No, you mustn’t be in love, Susanne. It is a great curse to work. Once, yes. Everyone must be in love once, to discover it is not so much. You have been in love once?”

She hesitated, and then said quickly, “Yes, once.” Had she not been in love with Mark?

His hands dropped from her shoulders.

“Then go to work,” he said abruptly. And he himself turned to the huge block of marble which he was measuring and studying. He was beginning a new piece, a commission, a statue of Clemenceau. Susan had been watching for days the sketches he made.

“How to make the body crouch behind that great head,” he had kept muttering. “The man’s body is nothing—an appendage, merely, to the ferocious head.” He had not been satisfied with anything and for a week he had been prowling around and around the great block of marble, fretful with discontent. Now suddenly he shouted at her.

“Ha, Susanne! I forgot something!”

“What is it?” she asked.

“What time is it?”

She glanced at her watch. “Nearly ten.”

“Then he will be here—that fellow!” he complained. “As if I am not sufficiently troubled with this old monster, today I must have a new pupil from Barnes—a genius, Barnes tells me, he cables me, if you please, a genius of the modern! And Robert cannot come—today when at last I see how my monster lies in the stone, today when I wish Robert to begin the preparation, Robert has cut his hand upon some trivial play of his own! Robert cannot wait patiently for the monster—no, he must hack at something for himself and have his hand infected and hanging in a sling, and I am desolate. Unless—shall I make the new pupil—no, he will ruin the monster. The monster is old—primeval. I have told Robert many times, ‘You are a marble cutter—an excellent marble cutter—never a sculptor, do you hear? Leave the tools alone!’”

She had often watched Robert, the marble cutter, a large, dark, amiable fellow, chipping off the first flakes of marble, breathing hard as he bent over sketches, measuring with pursed lips, depths and angles from the model in clay or plaster which stood before him.

“I could do it,” she said aloud.

He stared at her and pushed his mustaches up from his red lips.

“Ha,” he said, “only perhaps!”

“Try me,” she said, and then she thought of her children and she said quickly before shame overtook her, “Will you pay me what you pay Robert?”

There, she had said it, and now she was ashamed, but she had said it. Robert made a living wage at cutting marble.

“Money—money,” the old sculptor growled at her. “You Americans! And what if you spoil my marble?”

“I’ll pay for it,” said Susan. She was picking up the mallet and chisel.

“No—no,” he cried, frightened. “Well, then—yes, wait—only when I am in the room, do you hear? I shall watch every stroke!”

Two or three French pupils had come in and were beginning to work, watching them curiously. She did not know them. Sometimes one or the other had invited her to go out with him, but she had shaken her head. “I have no time for pleasure,” she always said quickly, and added unwillingly, “Thank you.”

She began to knock off an edge, a corner.

“Oh, my God,” the old sculptor groaned, “so fast?”

“I see it,” she answered calmly. But she was not calm. Inside of her a feverish eagerness rose. She saw coming out of the stone the crouching negligible body, propelling the huge fierce beautiful head. She had only to proceed thus—thus—these two-great corners off, left and right, but the base must be left square for the figure squatting on its pedestal.

A door opened and someone came in. But she did not turn. She never turned when the door opened. “Ah, you are here, Monsieur,” she heard the
maître
say—now she must cut—carefully—where under the stone the shoulder would round, thickly, sullenly. She must not forget to look at the model. Ah, but the model now was wrong! The neck was too long. The shoulders must be hunched. She turned, forgetting everything else. She cried out,
“Maître,
the model is wrong—here—see? The shoulders must be so—” She began chipping again strongly.

He leaped to her side. “Stop—no more—let me see—you will ruin me—”

He seized her hand, and before she could pull free her gaze passed into a man’s amused gray eyes, very cool, very level, very handsome under straight black brows. She did not see them. She clung to the mallet and chisel the
maître
was pulling from her.

“Leave me alone!” she cried. “I see what I am doing. I see him—Clemenceau! He had no such neck. See!” She put her chisel and mallet safely into her left hand and seizing a pencil she began to draw quickly. “He is so,
Maître
—like this!”

“Ah,
he!”
he groaned. “Is it my Clemenceau or yours?”

She stared at him and began to laugh. She put down the mallet and chisel.

“I am not a marble cutter,” she said proudly. “I was wrong. You must wait for Robert.”

“No—wait—you are so quick,” the
maître
murmured, troubled. “Wait—what if you are right?”

She stood waiting. She knew she was right. But it did not matter whether she was right or wrong about this. The substance of the marble under the chisel, the instinct of her hands, guiding the tools, had loosed the old dark wild desire. She wanted to make, she must make, a thing of her own, a big thing—

“Yes, you are right,” the
maître e
said suddenly. “I see what you see. Go on—”

“I asked for money,” she said. “I take it back,
mon maître.
I do not want money. If I do Robert’s work, will you give me a piece of marble for my own?” She must have the marble. She would make more little clay people for money, but if she had marble—

The old sculptor stared at her. His eyes looked suddenly sunken above his mustaches.

“And why are you a woman?” he inquired sadly. “A woman tells
me
—Barnes is right, when he says to me, ‘God grows careless nowadays, throwing his gift anywhere.’” He sighed, shrugged, jerked his mustaches. “Yes, what do you want? A piece of my marble! Well, you shall have it on one promise—no more ideas of your own. From now on you will follow the model. And leave off within an inch, I tell you. Do you hear? You will be finishing it according to your headstrong fashion. You are that abomination—a woman with a mind! I hate such women. Why does God send me such a gift by a woman?”

She paid no heed to all this.

“May I choose my marble today?” she asked. Her eyes were bright upon him. “When I have finished for today, I mean?”

He growled into his beard and stalked away. She took up her mallet and chisel, in a triumph both gay and grim. She would have the marble. And then she would begin at last her own work.

“You seem to have the old boy frightened,” said a fine voice, full of laughter.

She turned, startled, and saw a tall, rather young man, in a gray suit. It was the man with the gray eyes. She had forgotten him.

“He’s only upset because I wanted to change his model,” she answered shortly. She turned and began chipping bits away now from the arms she could see folded under the stone.

“I am Blake Kinnaird,” the pleasant clear voice said again. “David Barnes told me to look for Susan Gaylord.”

“Well, here I am,” she said. But she did not stop for one instant the knocking of her mallet, the diligent slip-slip of her chisel. She was thinking … and when she found exactly the right marble, she would feel what she was to make. The marble would tell her. She would go among all the pieces until she found it, as large a piece as she wanted. She wanted to make something big. She was a sculptor, not a modeler. She wanted no more clay—well, only the small figures for bread until she could sell a big thing—she wanted to work direct in stone—no drawings, no models, nothing but feeling out the thing in the stone…. She did not hear the voice again, nor did she look over her shoulder to see where it was gone.