This Proud Heart by Pearl S. Buck Read Free Book Online Page B

do, I think.”
    She walked with her mother, her feet familiar with the way. But she was free of her mother now. When she went home again it was of her own will. She entered into the house and began instantly the old habitual round of dishes to be washed, the downstairs to be swept and dusted.
    “I just left everything this morning,” her mother murmured. “I wanted to get to the store early, since it’s Saturday and people pick over things so, and then I thought I’d go round by your place because it’s such a lovely day. Well, I’ll make the beds if you’re down here.”
    She went heavily up the stairs and Susan tied a clean towel over her hair and flew about the rooms. It was pleasant to make order and freshness. She sang as she worked. When she was a girl this had seemed sometimes nearly drudgery, day after day, when her mind had been full of other things she wanted to do. But it had never been quite drudgery because something in her was satisfied as she worked. She was creating and changing. The rooms assumed a shape and an atmosphere under her hands.
    When she was nearly finished, at the top of the house a door banged.
    “Is that you, Susan?” her father’s voice roared down the two flights of stairs.
    “Yes, it is!” she sang back.
    “Come up here!” he shouted.
    And when she had run up the stairs to him he stood leaning over the banister, his hair tousled, smoking his old cherrywood pipe.
    “I want to hear that Sibelius thing,” he said. “Mary’ll never be able to play it. She picks at it so. And it’s got me by the ears these days so I can’t get that tune out of my head.”
    She sat down at his old upright piano, smiling, and opened the pages of Finlandia. He stretched himself on the couch and threw his arm over his eyes.
    “Go on,” he commanded her.
    She played it, fully and deeply, forgetting everything else, as she could not help doing in anything she did. Yes, she could not help forgetting even Mark. She was building a structure of music, filled with stern ineffable pain. She knew how so to fill it. Being so young, pain was still beautiful to her. Though she had never suffered in her life, she knew by an instinct deeper than experience how to make pain. When she finished she was trembling.
    She waited a moment and then turned to her father. His arm had fallen from his face, and he lay, his eyes closed, his lips clenched white about his pipe.
    “Father!” she whispered.
    “Go away,” he muttered. “Go away—go away!” Under his black eyelashes she saw the brightness of tears. “That music—” he muttered.
    She went away, down the stairs. The house was still. She paused a moment at her mother’s door and listened. She could hear nothing. She opened the door softly and looked. There on the bed, still unmade, her mother lay asleep, her breath coming peaceably as a child’s. She shut the door softly and went away, out of this house, back again to her own.

II
    S HE STOPPED ONE DAY when the morning was half over and looked around her living room. Everything was finished in this house. There was nothing more to do. The house looked back at her brightly, the windows clear, the floor shining, everything in its place. There was no room for anything more she could make. The last cushion, the last curtain was done, and one more would be too much. Her small linen closet was full of linen she had embroidered and hemstitched. Outside, the garden was tended and blooming with midsummer. Mark was to make the garden, but she had run out on sunny days and weeded and planted. Yesterday afternoon she had even mowed the lawn. But he was angry at her for that.
    “I was going to do it tonight after supper,” he said. “I looked at it yesterday—it didn’t need it badly.”
    “I just did it for fun,” she coaxed him. “I hadn’t anything to do this afternoon, and I didn’t feel like going away from home—so I just did—”
    “Don’t do it again,” he warned her. “It’s not woman’s