This Proud Heart (9 page)

She had indeed spent more time than she should have upon the perfecting of the head. Since she had decided against more money, she needed time to make instead of buying what she wanted. As the autumn closed down into winter she bought materials and began to sew and she bought skeins of clear blue wools and began to knit. Her mother brought over a suitcase full of old baby things, yellowed and clean, and one day Mark’s silent mother took her into Mark’s small old empty bedroom of the farmhouse where he had been born and opened a drawer and said, “If you need them—”

But Mark was an only child, and Susan saw his mother’s eyes clinging to the few garments left of that one babyhood, and she said, “I shan’t need them, dear. Keep them safe.”

“I want to help you,” Mark’s mother said.

“If I need help, I will remember that,” Susan replied quietly.

Mark’s large-boned, almost speechless mother never left her own house, so Susan said to Mark often, “Shouldn’t you go and see your mother?” For Mark had grown away from these two old people in a sort of anger at their unchanging clinging to what had always been. “They’re so proud of you—go and see them, Mark,” she urged him, and he said with impatience, “I go there and it’s always the same. They have nothing to say to me nor I to them.”

Looking now at the large bare head of Mark’s mother, she thought, “It would be a wonderful portrait in stone—rocky skull, deep eyes, wide mouth.” Then she put the thought away. She was not going into the attic again, not for a long time, perhaps never.

“Why don’t you go to see your parents more often?” she asked Mark one night.

“What did they ever do for me?” he asked. “I’ve done everything for myself.”

“They gave you life,” she said.

“Bare life’s not much,” he retorted….

Bare life, she thought, remembering Mark’s mother—it was all she had been able to give and Mark did not think it enough. But still it was the most precious thing a woman could give…. If it was all a woman had to give, it was the most precious thing.

She gave birth to John in the narrow cell of a hospital room. The doctor laughed at her.

“You’re as expert at this as the mother of ten!”

She knew this was not true. But she had made up her mind, walking about the cell restlessly, waiting for him to be born, that she would not scream or cry aloud. In another room a woman was screaming, “Oh, am I going to die? I’m afraid I’m going to die!” She wanted the child, she had made him, and he was about to be born. She heard that silly screaming and kept her lips shut when the last moment came.

“How are you, sweet?” Mark’s white face was at the door.

“Splendid,” she answered shortly, her eyes shining with pain, her hands wet. She passed through the next hour in silence.

“Why, you practically had no pain, Mrs. Keening!” the nurse said.

“Silly fool!” Susan thought.

She was lying back now. John was born. She was still swimming in pain. The nurse had for a moment held up a dark-headed little thing wrapped in a blanket. No one knew what pain she had had. She was drenched in pain. But she was glad she had not cried out.

Mark, tiptoeing in to kiss her, whispered, “The doctor said he’d never seen such an easy birth.”

She smiled, not able to speak. Only now was the pain ebbing, leaving her body weak and washed upon the shore. She slept almost without waking day and night for two weeks and woke at last, as drained by sleep as by pain, to return to her own house. Before she left she had locked the attic door, and when she went back, she did not unlock it.

John’s room was the heart of this house, although it was empty except for his crib, a table, a chair.

But after a while she grew used to the bare room, and forgot it in discovering the child, John. She had never lived with a tiny child before, and now she found that he was a person from the beginning. She could never ponder this enough, how in giving a shape one gave also being. She could perceive in him not the slightest likeness to herself or to Mark, or indeed to anyone. He had gone back into the unknown past and drawn from among those long dead a square compact frame, square short-fingered hands, a round head and very bright hazel eyes, and a mouth so smiling and composed that she laughed at its wisdom in this baby face. Once, sitting with John on her lap, she remembered the child of clay in the attic, and she was compelled to go and see it again. She would look at nothing else, and she would come away quickly. She went, and staring at it, she saw the clay had cracked a little in drying and over its face were small fine wrinkles which gave it a strange premature age. But its head was still lifted in the old question, “Why was I born?” She covered it quickly and went downstairs.

But as he grew John turned to Mark more than to her. All day she tended him and took care of him, but he never leaped to her arms as he soon did to Mark. And Mark doted on him. Now when he came home he did not, as he always used to do, go to find Susan. He went straight to the nursery, and sometimes the sound of laughter was the sound by which she knew he had come home. There was something close and warm between the two of them, and often, hearing their laughter, she did not go in, but went on with her work in the kitchen. At such times she paused and looked out of the window and the walls of the kitchen fell away from her and she seemed to be plodding alone through the wood yonder. She had been more lonely rather than less since John was born. It was as though she had finished something and begun nothing else. The days went on in a routine of work for her hands and her brain waited.

“I’ve been neglecting my friends,” she told Mark one night at the table. “I’m feeling a little out of things. I’m going to have a party, Mark.”

“Swell,” he said. “It’s an age since you saw anybody. Sure you feel able?”

“I feel stronger than ever,” she said.

It was quite true that she was restless with some energy which even John’s coming did not use. Her mother said mournfully, “Don’t overdo, Susan. It’s time you had help.”

“Oh, John’s so good he takes almost no time at all,” she said impatiently.

And her father stopped in one day. She heard his stick pounding the hall floor and when she hastened out, there he stood, his cap over one ear.

“Sold a poem,” he said. “I got twenty dollars for it. Your mother says you’re overworked.” He was fumbling in his pocket.

“Oh, my goodness,” cried Susan, “do I look overworked? I feel I haven’t half enough to do. Look at me!”

He looked at her and grinned. “You look about as overworked as the Statue of Liberty,” he said. “Well, then, why don’t you come and play for me again?”

“There’s John,” she said.

“Bring him along,” he replied. “Why not? It’ll do him good—let him hear some music.”

“I will,” she said, after a moment. “Why not?”

And she fetched the child and took him with her, and in his own attic her father made a nest of pillows for him on the cot.

“There—you can forget him,” he said. “Now for the music.”

And playing, she forgot him in the music.

But the music only increased the restless loneliness in her. “Perhaps I do need people,” she thought. “I must have a party.”

“Are you all right?” her father asked abruptly when she closed the piano. “Happy, and all that?”

“Oh yes,” she said, smiling. “Why not? I have everything—Mark’s doing awfully well—he sold the Grainger place the other day—to a sculptor—isn’t that interesting?”

“Everything’s not always enough,” her father said.

“Susan, Susan!” her mother called up the stairs. “Are you coming down?”

“Yes, yes!” she called back, and picked up sleeping John.

Downstairs in the bedroom, her mother sat with him on her knee, rocking him. He slept easily and deeply.

“You’re lucky he’s so healthy,” her mother whispered. And then she said in the same breathy whisper, “I’m glad you have him. A married couple needs something else after a year or two, ’specially the woman does. At first you’re all wrapped up in each other and getting started, but then when your house is all settled and the man’s coming and going regularly, you feel the need of something more.” She paused awkwardly. “—That is, I suppose you and Mark are like everybody else.”

“I don’t know,” said Susan, and then she said, “We’re very happy.”

“You should be,” her mother said. “I know Mark’s people are plain, but they’re solid. I think that kind of man makes the best husband. I always felt your father would have been happier if his father hadn’t been a professional musician. It’s made him unsettled in his mind all his life, and that hasn’t been easy for me.”

“What was grandfather really like?” asked Susan. She remembered in her childhood an angry voice, a huge white tangled head, and darting, incessantly moving hands.

“I’ve about forgotten,” said her mother. “He died years ago. I never cared for him and he didn’t like me. I never understood what he said. He always talked so you didn’t know what he meant. I like things to be plain.”

Upon her knee John opened his eyes and smiled amiably at them both. They laughed back at him, forgetting their talk, for the moment agreed in him. Then her mother sighed.

“It’s no time till they’re grown…. Susan, Mary will have it that we send her to some other college, though she knows her tuition won’t cost her anything here with her father a professor. She’s so much harder to manage than you were.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants,” said Susan, “and that’s always hard. Let her go, Mother.”

“Well,” said her mother, doubtfully, “I don’t know if we can manage it. She’s so silly in why she wants to go.”

“Why?”

“Why, she says she doesn’t want to go to the same place you did and feel she has to keep up to what you did and be class president and valedictorian and all.”

“She doesn’t have to—”

“Of course, I told her so. But she says she wants to go where nobody knows her.”

“She’d better go, then.” Susan picked up her baby. “I must go home. Mark will be waiting.”

“You think we’d better let her go?” Her mother followed her to the door.

“I certainly do,” Susan returned. That deep foolish ache in her deepened a little, causelessly. For of course it was foolish to be angry with Mary because she wanted to be free of her older sister.

The next day she called them up one by one, her old friends, to come to her house.

“I haven’t seen you all for ages,” she cried into the telephone. “I miss you—I’m lonesome for you. Besides, John’s practically grown up!”

For a day her home was full of speed and business. She hurried with John and she flew about her kitchen, singing.

“It’s fun being so busy,” she cried to Mark joyously at lunch. “I believe I don’t have half enough to do!” But she had taken time to make his favorite lunch and he ate it with pleasure.

“I expected nothing but scraps today,” he said.

“It doesn’t take half an hour,” she said, “and it’s all fun.”

She had left until the afternoon the pleasure of flowers in vases, and to this she gave herself with pains, making of each a small perfect picture. Then she dressed herself, and lastly upon John she put a pair of minute blue linen rompers. And at three o’clock she held him in the crook of her arm and opened the door to her friends, and they came in and the quiet house was full of talk and laughter, and little sudden screams of joy and surprise. It was the height of this one day, her friends, filling her house full.

“Have a good time?” Mark asked, picking up a sandwich and munching it. Everyone was gone and the house had returned to its stillness.

“John was awfully good,” she said busily over the dishes. The house had been so noisy with their voices that now the silence seemed dead.

Mark took up a dish towel and began wiping the plates as she washed, rapidly and deftly.

She paused and then turned to him, her hands still in suds.

“I have the queerest feeling that they didn’t really like me,” she said in a low voice.

“Why, girl!” he cried, and came to take her in his arms. But she shook her head.

“No, Mark, don’t—my hands are all soapy. Besides, I can’t think why.”

He began wiping again. “Did they say anything?”

“No—no—they admired everything—they loved the sandwiches and cake—we had wonderful bridge—” She paused, pondering. “I kept feeling all the time that they didn’t like it because I’d—managed—alone—with John, and all.”

“Forget them,” said Mark sharply. “They feel guilty. Most women are a lazy lot—yelling for help whenever they have a little work to do.”

“Lucile said a strange thing. She said, ‘Girls, I think we ought to boycott Susan because she’s making labor conditions harder for the rest of us. She’s a scab.’ Of course she laughed when she said it. They all laughed.”

“Forget it, I say,” Mark repeated. “Say, Susan, maybe we won’t stay here all our lives. Sometimes I think it’s better to get away from your home town where everybody knows everything.”

But she went on. “I told Lucile, ‘You have two, Lucile. I’m sure when I have two, I’ll need help.’ But I don’t think I shall, Mark. I want to be busy—busy—I don’t have half enough to do.”

“Forget it,” said Mark. “You suit me.” He came over to her and took her in his arms and she felt his body against hers, solid and good, and she was grateful.

After all, she had Mark and John. She expected too much of people like Lucile. She would be content with what she had, with Mark and John. For the moment she was a little less lonely. Perhaps if she drew the walls closely enough about her, if she made her house big enough only for these, she would not be lonely. It was dreaming that made people lonely.

Then one day the doorbell rang and when she went to it there stood Michael in riding breeches and a blue shirt, inches taller and broader.

“Hello,” he said gently, and smiled.

“Why, Michael!” she cried.

“I saw that head of me you did and I decided to look you up,” he said. “It’s better than ever. What else have you done?”

“Nothing,” said Susan, “unless you call a baby something.”

But he had walked past her and was going straight upstairs to the attic.

“You mean that unfinished child I saw once? I’ve never forgotten it.”