This Proud Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

She had made it herself, her mother hovering about, greasing the pans and testing the oven.
    “Seems as if you shouldn’t make your own cake,” her mother had said.
    “I like to make it,” she had answered.
    Now she pressed the silver knife into the rich dark stuff. People were crowding into the tiny room. She could hear Lucile’s squealing voice, “Oh, how scrumptious, Susan!” and she smiled. But this moment was not so deep to live as had been the moment in the kitchen when she had put sugar into a bowl, and butter and the clear yellow of eggs. She had been aware every moment of that making, the stirring and sifting, the whipping of the frothy egg whites, the dark rich fruit—all of it had gone into the meticulous making of the brown and fragrant mound she drew at last out of the oven. She had been aware every instant, “I am making my own wedding cake—” Now cutting and dividing it, listening to jokes and talk of dreams, this cake was no more than any other. It had been precious only in the making.
    Everyone was eating, drinking, talking. She caught Mark’s eyes. “Now?” his lips shaped. She nodded and slipped out. They had planned days before how they would slip out, and going separately, would meet at a certain spot where he had left his small rackety car.
    She ran to her room, changed into a sweater and skirt, and ran down again through the kitchen and the backyard.
    No one had seen her. Yes, someone—her father came hurrying out of the kitchen door, his coattails flying.
    “Susan!” he called in a loud whisper. She stopped, and he came up panting. “I just wanted to—I had to tell you—you’re to count on me, of course, just the same.”
    “I know,” she whispered.
    They paused, looking at each other.
    “Well,” he said, “I guess Mark’s waiting.”
    “Yes,” she said. “I must go, Dad.”
    “Yes,” he said, “of course. Well, goodbye.”
    She kissed him and ran on. Once she looked back and he was still standing there. She waved to him, but he did not move, and she dared not stay and went hurrying to Mark. He was already in the car, and the engine was beating.
    “Nobody see you?” he asked.
    She shook her head and laughed. “Nobody but Dad.”
    He bent his head and kissed her quickly and then the car started, jerking a little. She felt strange and excited. His kiss had still not brought him near. The car stalled.
    “What’s wrong with this thing?” he exclaimed, and jerked at the gears.
    She glanced down.
    “Here,” she said, laughing, “the brake—”
    He had forgotten the brake.
    “You’ve married a stupid fellow, Sue,” he said ruefully.
    She shook her head, smiling. “Dad does the same thing,” she said. “I’m used to it. He curses and swears because the car won’t move.”
    “And you let the brakes go,” he said.
    They were roaring along now, through the windy spring day. And she held in her mind Mark’s words. “You’ve married—you’ve married—a stupid fellow,” he had said, but he was wrong. She had married him.
    “I’m married,” she thought, and wondering, she looked ahead, not upon hills and trees and green meadows, but into bright uncertain years.
    And now, alone, there was still an inner wall of shyness between them to be pulled away—or perhaps it would fall.
    For they would be alone for a week on the edge of this lake, in the little cabin they had borrowed from her father. He had built it for them all when she was a child, but they had not come to it often then. Her mother had hated the stillness, the loneliness, the gnats, the owls in the night, the old rusty stove. So they had given it up, and her father had come alone for a day sometimes. But he never stayed long.
    “Guess I’m not big enough to stay alone,” he would say, joking.
    “You’re grown up, aren’t you?” Susan had asked once, when she was a little girl.
    “I’m not sure,” he had replied gravely.
    But he had kept the cabin.
    “Might want to go there