This Proud Heart (28 page)

She was being drawn out of something hard and cold around her. She was coming out, shy, quivering, alive.

She shook her head slowly, her lips parted, her eyes still upon his. His face was close, too close—

“No,” she whispered. Her breath was hot and tight in her throat. “No—I don’t want to—”

She bent her head.

“Don’t want to what?” he whispered.

—Why did they whisper? No one was there.

“I don’t want to come out of the stone,” she said aloud, and pulling her hands away she leaped to her feet and ran out of the studio.

It was cold in the street. The afternoon was later than she had dreamed. What had they been doing all afternoon? She had neither coat nor hat, but she would not go back. She went straight homeward, her head held high against the wind. People stared at her, but she did not see them…. Was he making love to her? But she did not want it. She never wanted to see him again. She wanted only to get home to John and Marcia and Jane. She had a home, a home to which to go. She had been wise to know her need of a home and keep it about her. She needed nothing more. She had had everything—she had everything now, except Mark who was dead.

She ran upstairs and into the room. Jane was setting the table for supper. The children were carrying in the plates.

“Why, Mother!” John cried. “Your hair—it’s blowing all loose!”

“Where’s your coat and hat, Mum?” asked Jane.

“I must have come without them,” Susan said. She stood with her back to the door, looking at them all. They were all the same and yet they looked at her so oddly. They were strange. No, it was she who was strange to them.

“You’ll catch your death,” Jane reproached her.

“I had to come home,” she said. “I didn’t know it was so late. I just ran out as I was—”

Marcia gave a high tinkling silvery laugh and put down her plate.

“Mother, you’re so funny!” Her voice was full of tolerance and pity.

“I know it,” said Susan humbly.

She went into her own room and brushed her hair and washed her face and hands. She sat down with them and ate the soup Jane had made and the vegetable and the bread pudding. She was safe at home and he could not find her here. He did not know where she lived. But all the time she was eating, all the time she was listening to their voices, safe in the warm circle of the lamplight, her heart was still running and running, down the streets, away from him.

She rose very early and went to the studio and worked on the kneeling woman hours before he came. He slept late and it was mid-morning before she heard the
maître
complaining against him.

“Eh bien,
another piece of triangles! And what is it now, my fine sculptor? No, I will guess—a maiden at her bath—no? Ah, then, a woman washing clothes—no? I confess I see nothing.”

“It is a tiger,” Blake said tranquilly.

“A tiger!”

“I haven’t finished the light yet,” Blake explained, “but you’ll see.”

“Ha, thank you, Monsieur. I am not so sure.”

She heard his voice a moment later asking anxiously, “Do you see how thin the poor old chap’s mustaches are getting? He’s so exasperated at me he’s fairly twisting them off.”

She felt him coming near her. She would not look at him.

“Blake, you promised—”

He had promised he would not come near her while she worked, if he might idle about her in the afternoons.

“No—I’m good—I’m going—But, Susan darling, she’s swell! I can see her on her knees, the blessed lovely thing! I can’t wait for her face—”

She was trembling under his voice. “Oh, go away, Blake, while I work!” she was crying silently. “I want to work—when you are here I can’t work. I keep listening to you. I want to be free.” But she said nothing. She would not turn around. She would not look at him. She waited until she heard him sigh.

“Cold heart—Susan, Susan!”

She waited until he was gone. And then with her mallet and with a chisel of cold fine steel, as narrow as a pencil, she began feeling in the marble for the face of the kneeling woman.

There was nowhere she could fly from him in all this alien city. She must work in the afternoon for her children and there he could always find her. She did not stop when he came in. No, she worked on more quickly than ever. And sometimes she thought perhaps that she only imagined that she needed to fly from him. He was so pleasant and so cool. Sometimes he did not try to catch her hands, he did not once call her “Susan darling,” he did not talk about her “lovely big mouth, as red as holly berries at Christmas, Susan!” He stretched himself on the couch, indolent and kind and detached.

He said, “This old man can’t teach me anything, Susan. I’m going home. He doesn’t understand modern America. I’m too new for him.”

And then when she saw he was not thinking about her, out of a strange perversity which astonished her and made her afraid, she wanted him to think of her. She hated herself because she said willfully, “I don’t want you to go, Blake.”

—Ah, but in the morning she wanted him to go!

“Shall you miss me, darling?”

“A little, Blake.”

No, but loneliness was good. One worked when one was lonely.

“A great deal,” he was saying arrogantly. “You shall miss me a great deal, my darling, because you are beginning to love me.”

“I am not!” she cried, furiously. “I’ve had all that!”

He would not allow her to talk of Mark. He laughed when she said she had been married. “You’ve never been in love in your life,” he said, and laughed again.

“I have, I have!” she said, summoning Mark to her with all her strength. But Mark was dead. She could not see him. She could only see the head she had made of him once and she had left it at home in the barn, wrapped in its shroud. And here was today. Blake was coming toward her here in the warm studio bright with the quick sun of a winter afternoon. She stood still, looking at him.

“You’ve never been in love like this,” he said, and he lifted her against him and turned up her face, his hand under her chin. “You don’t even know you’re a woman,” he said. His eyes narrowed. “But you are!” he said, and his voice suddenly strangled behind his clenched teeth. He kissed her and she did not move. How hot was the sun in which they stood, how still the room! But it was not silence. He had broken into her silence and it was gone. Instant by instant she gave herself up. At first his lips touched hers closed. Then his mouth pressed into hers. He was entering into the great silence of her being, where no one had ever entered. Until this moment she had been alone all her life. He drew away from her at last.

“I don’t believe you’ve ever even kissed anyone before,” he said, amazed, a little amused.

She did not answer. She was looking at him, her eyes enormous and filled with tears. She was trembling.

“Don’t cry,” he said. He put his arm about her shoulder. “I’m going to be awfully good to you. Susan, Susanne, you look like a little girl. Why do you cry, darling?”

“I feel afraid,” she said. Yes, she felt afraid, and for the first time in her life, helpless. But he laughed aloud.

“You’re going to be married to me,” he said, and lifting her against him, he kissed her again and again until she was laughing, too, as she had not laughed in years, and crying helplessly through her laughter, “Oh, Blake—Blake—”

“There!” he said, putting her down. “Now get your hat. We’re going out for a celebration.”

Like a clear west wind he was sweeping into all her life, deciding everything in great instants.

“We shall be married right off,” he said, in the middle of the celebration. He was showing her a Paris she had never seen. Her Paris had been quiet winding streets, the old stone general, the little rooms above the patisserie, old Madame Jeure, her little withered face beaming in the morning. There were the Louvre, the Seine and the old book shops, and Notre Dame, huge and silent. These and the people she saw so sharply were her Paris.

But he went on with the celebration, night after night.

“Haven’t you seen this, Susanne? But this is Paris!” She stared over a crowd of mad, gaily dressed dancing figures and shook her head. She sat listening to merry naughty dialogue on a stage, laughing and secretly half ashamed.

“If anyone had ever told me I’d be marrying a child!” he said. “Susan, you’re a child. You’re not very intellectual, you know, my dear. A nice big intelligent child, not at all articulate. What’ll I ever do with you? It’ll be like having a St. Bernard puppy in my house.” He laughed and his eyes shone and she felt stupid and humble.

It was quite true she never knew what to say to Blake. But then she never had talked a great deal. She was always busy doing something. When people talked she always listened carefully, receiving from them not only their words but their gestures and their looks, the sound of their voices, lifting and dropping. If she listened closely enough and let herself feel them, she could feel what they were thinking. So it did not seem necessary to talk.

“Perhaps you are right,” she said to Blake docilely.

But then there were good days in the Bois, sunny cold afternoons, when he took off his coat and rowed her in a little boat on the lake, and then she was not so afraid of him and she asked him shyly, after a few times, “Do you mind if we bring the children?”

“No, of course not, if you want them.”

Though she did not tell him, she did not quite enjoy herself always without the children. She had been so anxious that Blake should see how beautiful they were. She had explained to him how she had wanted them—how she had wanted many children—and flushing, she had paused to think with delicate inward amazement that now she could have her other children. She had not until now thought of having children with Blake. Even now she did not feel it in her body, but only in her mind.

But he said lightly, “You shouldn’t have children, you know, Susan darling.” He was stirring a spoon in a tall green glass. They were lunching together as they did every day. “It’s sheer waste for you to use your body like that. I’m not going to let you, you know.”

“Oh, Blake, you don’t understand,” she cried earnestly. “Indeed it’s not like that. I can’t tell you how I feel when I’m having a child—as though not just my head and my hands were working, but all of my being, my blood, my breath—”

“You’re in love with
me,
you know, Susan,” he said suddenly. Over the green glass his eyes looked stern and a little cold. She was bewildered. “Yes, but, Blake, when people are in love, they want children.”

“I don’t want children,” he said, “and I’m frightfully in love with you, you old-fashioned darling!”

He put out his beautiful long thin hand and caressed her palm under the table and she caught her breath. His touch was frightening, it was so strong, so sweet. But she need not be afraid of it now. She was going to be his wife—only why was she a little afraid? When they were married he would want children. It was only because he had never been married, because he had never really had a home. His mother had died when he was a little boy, and his father had not married again. There had been a great deal of money and much travel.

“I do so want you to love John and Marcia,” she had said anxiously. “Marcia has very long eyelashes and John is such a dear good boy.”

“I can’t imagine them,” he had said. “You with children! You’ve made them up to frighten me.”

But she did not want to play.

“No, really, Blake. It’s very necessary to my happiness that you love them.”

“Then I promise to love them,” he said gaily.

It was true he had been very good to them. But she was not sure that he loved them.

He was very good to them in a careless fashion. “Here!” he would call to them, “Catch!” And he tossed francs at them. “Go and buy balloons! I like to look at children holding balloons.”

“Must I buy only balloons, Mother?” asked John, distressed.

Blake shouted his high clear laughter. “No, you literal-minded youth! Balloons mean what you like. Only I like balloons.”

“I’ll buy one for you,” said John, anxious to be good in this new situation.

John was a little afraid of him. She could feel his delicate tentative fear. He was very polite, remembering always to say “Good morning” and to say “Thank you” to Blake’s small gifts. But more often than not he was bewildered by the gifts. “What shall I do with it, Mother?” he inquired after Blake was gone one day, staring at a grotesque pottery tiger whose head twisted backward to look over its own tail mournfully.

“I really don’t know,” Susan answered honestly.

“I think it is
jolie
,” said Marcia pertly.

Marcia was not at all afraid of Blake. But she was never shy of anyone and she was afraid of nothing. “I like you,” she told him at once. “I like you very much.”

“Good,” he replied pleasantly. “Everybody does,” he added, mischievously, “that is, nearly everybody. Sometimes Susan doesn’t.”

“I do,” Marcia replied seriously, “if she doesn’t, I do.”

She put her hand protectingly into his and looked at Susan arrogantly. It was absurd, a child’s arrogance, a child’s fondness, but Susan had to put out her own hand and touch him….

“If you don’t like the tiger, I will have it,” Marcia declared. “Give him to me, John.”

“Well,” he agreed. “I don’t want it.”

Marcia seized the tiger. “I will call it Blake,” she murmured, stroking it. “Dear Blake, nice Blake!”

“It really isn’t at all pretty,” Susan said, “although I’m glad you didn’t say so before Blake.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t!” John cried, his eyes large with horror.

“I like it,” Marcia insisted.

It was not very easy to tell Jane that she was about to marry Blake. She waited until the children were in bed one night. Then she went into the kitchen and said directly, because she did not know how else to say it, “Jane, I’m going to be married.”

Jane looked up from the dishpan.

“Oh, Mum!” she said. “Not to a Frenchman!”

“No,” said Susan, “to an American, from New York.”

Jane stared at her. She had not yet seen Blake. “Is there an American in this town, Mum? I never see a Christian soul here, myself.”