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

her, they went into the house. Down the street they could hear somebody’s radio singing, “For you’ll tak’ the high road, and I’ll tak’ the low road!” He shut the door and locked it and in silence they went upstairs.
    She thought sometimes of that curved figure in the attic, its questioning head uplifted away from its womb-shaped body. But she put away the thought quickly. Once, remembering Mark’s humility, she went upstairs determined to destroy it, to break it into bits and send it back to its first clay. But when she stood beside it she could not. It had become a creature. It had a life of its own which she could not destroy. It was strange to make an idea in her brain into a creature which could not be destroyed because it had life. She looked at it a long time, pondering on its face. And within her own body a shape was now being made as surely as her two hands had molded this clay. There was no understanding one more than the other. Here in the bare attic she could not even tell which was the greater creation. Could the child of her body be more sentient than this creature out of her brain? She left it quickly, eager to be rid of it.
    For now she wanted to be only body. She took joy in the quick leap of her body to creation. Immediately her body seized upon the seed of life which had been given it and at once she was with child. She was proud of this and she boasted to Mark one morning, “I’ve begun, Mark!”
    “What!” he cried, “already! Why, I thought—I’ll have to begin counting my cash.”
    They went over their money carefully that night. Mark had had a five-dollar-a-week raise—take that off, say, to pay the doctor. She sat by him, her chin on her hand, while he counted pennies.
    “We can just do it,” he said at last, lifting his head from the sheets of paper covered with small figures. “I’m glad of that. It would have worried me if we couldn’t have paid the kid’s bills by the time he was born. But are you sure fifty dollars will cover the clothes and things?”
    She nodded. “Perfectly sure.” She would see that it was enough. She would make everything herself, and spend no more.
    “It would be easy enough for me to earn a little, somehow,” she said.
    “No,” said Mark. “No, sir! I’m going to provide for my own child.”
    “Mine, too,” she murmured.
    “You know what I mean,” Mark replied with sternness, and he gave her the paper.
    “Those are your running rules,” he said. “Within those limits you have complete freedom, my girl.”
    And the next morning, after she had the house looking back at her with its clean docile morning look, she sat down by the window and studied the figures closely. Fifty dollars—within those limits she had complete freedom. It would be rather fun to see what could be done, what fine stuffs bought, what materials made into delicate small shapes—it might be fun. But she had already wandered into special departments in stores and she knew that fifty dollars—“Our children will have to take what we have to give them,” Mark had said last night, shutting his lips hard.
    She sat alone this morning, looking into the deep green wood. And what had she not to give? There was really no reason why she should not give all she had, too. Why should it be only Mark who gave to the uttermost? A woman gave more of her body, more of her time, than a man could. And why should she withhold what she could give in other ways? She could make the small sunny back bedroom a nursery, the furniture miniature and suited to his needs. There need be no makeshifts. It would not be fair to him, if she could make money and did not. She rose abruptly. Mark was limiting her and limiting the baby. He would have to see that—she would make him see it…. And after she had gazed for a long time into the wood, she went upstairs and changed into her green tweed suit, pulled a small brown hat over her head, and walked firmly and quickly to Mrs. Fontane’s house