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

Susan, take them away and see what they want.”
    They were all laughing at once. Two of the women were quarreling good-naturedly over her. “Come to my garden first, Susan.”
    “No, now, Diana, you know Michael’s got to begin school in a fortnight.”
    “I’m sure I can do them both,” said Susan. “I work very fast once I see my shape.”
    “Well, then, Michael first, and then my garden.”
    She was put into a car and driven away, Mrs. Fontane murmuring, “You’ve begun, Susan. God knows where you’ll end.” And they drove miles into the country to stop before a huge white house, the kernel of which had once belonged to a mortgage-ridden farmer, and she stood in an ivory paneled hall and went into a long chintz-curtained room where a big curly-headed blond boy of fourteen or fifteen was slouched in a chair over a book.
    “Michael!” his mother cried, and he thrust out his head.
    “What?” he said. His voice was surly but his head was an angel’s.
    “There!” his mother cried. “Do you blame me for wanting it in stone or bronze or something?”
    “No,” said Susan. The old frightening beautiful desire was rushing up in her like water from a sealed fountain, opening. “No, it’s beautiful.”
    “Shut up, you,” the boy muttered over his book.
    “Shut up yourself,” said Susan. “Let me see your head. Your mother wants me to make it and I will.”
    “I won’t have it,” said the boy. “I get so sick— She talks like that at school even—before the fellows. I won’t have my head made.”
    “You can’t help it,” said Susan, laughing. “I’m going to do it. And I’ll show you exactly how I do it. It’s fun. You can mix some clay, too, if you like. I shall do it in clay and then in bronze. It ought to be bronze,” she said to his mother.
    The two women stood by. She felt their quick admiration and was made strong by it.
    “Come to my house this afternoon,” she said to Michael. “At two o’clock. We’ll work in my attic, you and I together.”
    He looked at her doubtfully. “I’ll ride over on my horse,” he said.
    “All right,” she said, and turned away from him. “Now where’s the garden?”
    “You do know how to manage him,” his mother whispered. “You’ve no idea how difficult Michael is! I’m always glad when he goes back to school. Goodbye, Susan. When am I to see the head?”
    “A week,” said Susan, “—in clay, that is.”
    “And, oh, dear, I almost forgot. How much will it be?”
    Susan breathed deeply and leaped off. “Two hundred dollars,” she said firmly.
    Michael’s mother looked at her a second, and then said quickly, “Two hundred—very well, Miss Gaylord.”
    It was impossible to tell whether she thought it much or little. It did not matter, Susan decided, in the garden.
    “You see,” Mrs. Vanderwelt’s light hard voice was saying, “the shrubbery makes a natural arch there, so that a fountain would be quite nice.”
    “Yes,” said Susan, and stared at the arch. A fountain—she’d always had ideas about water and stone. The things people bought and called fountains were so ugly. Water should be used as part of the whole, not as a thing in itself. “Will you let me think about it?” she said. “I want to make a picture of stone and water, not just a fountain.”
    “Will you?” said Mrs. Vanderwelt. “That sounds fascinating. And how much do you think—”
    “I haven’t any idea until I have my picture,” said Susan. “If you care to set a limit—”
    “Well—shall we say five hundred dollars?”
    “All right,” said Susan. “I’ll remember that.”
    She was driven back alone, and when they reached the steps of her little house, the colored chauffeur opened the door and she got out and walked up her own steps into her own house.
    In the living room where she had sat a few hours before she now sat down again, her hat still on her head. On the table was the sheet of Mark’s figures. Fifty dollars he had written, and