Angle of Repose (53 page)

“Will it serialize? Never mind. We must have it. I’ll top all other bids.”

“There won’t be any. Nobody but a friend like you would publish it.”

“If it were something by Mr. James I wouldn’t guarantee to take it with more confidence. You’re sure fire, Leadville is sure fire. Howells will gnash his teeth.”

That beautiful, reassuring smile! “Ah, isn’t it nice to be loved by you two!” Susan said. “Yes, it’s about Leadville, and the Adelaide’s trouble with the Highland Chief and the Argentina. Pricey is in it–do you remember Pricey? I’m sure I wrote you about him, the little Englishman who stood up in his stirrups one day and quoted Emerson to me on the banks of the Arkansas. He was terribly beaten by the Highland Chief thugs when they came in to steal or destroy records in Oliver’s office. There’s a girl in it whom I’ve made the daughter of the villain, and a young engineer who’s in love with her but at war with her father.”

“They sound like people I know,” Thomas said, slumped and attentive.

Susan laughed and felt herself coloring. “Oh, she’s much more attractive than her author, and the hero isn’t Oliver Ward. Actually he’s more like Frank Sargent, your old Staten Island neighbor. He’s a perfectly beautiful young man.”

“In love with you, like everyone else,” Augusta said.

The color would not go down in Susan’s cheeks, though she willed it down. She laughed again. “Frank? Why do you say that? Well, yes, I suppose he was, in a harmless way. I sistered him. It was Oliver he worshipped, and he hated the Highland Chief crowd so, because of Pricey, that he’d have stayed there for years just to beat them. But of course as soon as Oliver won the Adelaide’s case for it, the wretched Syndicate let them both go. Frank’s down in Tombstone, the last I heard.”

“I never can keep Western places straight,” Augusta said. “Tombstone–really, what a name! Is that where Oliver is, too?”

Her interest was false; she did not care where Oliver was. Susan read in her half-flippant exclamation every sort of half-contemptuous dismissal: anyone who was associated with the West, and in particular Oliver Ward, brought a new tone to Augusta’s voice, the tone she used for troublesome tradesmen, tedious women, boring men. Her brother Waldo was a member of the Syndicate to which Oliver had made his disappointing report: there was ill opinion confirmed. Susan understood that her husband’s name was to be mentioned and passed by, not dwelt upon; he was to be walked around like something repulsive on a sidewalk.

She shot Augusta a hot look and said, “Not Tombstone. After he sold the cabin in Leadville he went up to look into a gold strike in the Coeur d’Alene country of Idaho. Now that winter has shut things down, he’s in Boise, the territorial capital.”

“My dear,” said Augusta, and bent her glowing glance on Susan and seemed to forget for a moment, in that searching, half-smiling, meaningful look, what it was she had started to say. “Coeur d‘Alene,” she said after a moment. “He was well advised to choose that over Tombstone. Coeur d’Alene, that’s charming.”

“The mine he’s interested in is called the Wolf Tooth,” Susan said.

Lovers and antagonists, they stared at each other. “My friend whom you do not intend to like” was between them as solidly as if he stood warming his coattails at Augusta’s fire. Susan read in Augusta’s face her opinion of men who followed gold strikes and wound up wintering among the seedy politics of territorial capitals. Her own chest was tight, she felt overcorseted and smothered. She might in a moment jump up and leave the room, or fly to Augusta and throw her arms about her and cry that it made no difference, no matter what direction her life had taken, no matter whom she was married to, Augusta would always have her place. But he’s not what you think him, he’s not! she felt like saying. Why must you always pull back from touching even his name? Why must you act as if I had married a leper or a cad or a ne’er-do-well?

Because the silence was growing tense, she withdrew her eyes from Augusta’s and looked at Thomas. Sleepy-eyed, without untenting his fingers, he said, “How does your story end?”

“Not the way ours did,” Susan said, and made a face and laughed. “The villain has to die, I think. I think he has his men set a powder charge in the hero’s drift, to blow up that entrance to the mine and shut the right people out. The men beat up Pricey when he stumbles on them setting the charge. Then the hero finds Pricey, and goes hunting them with a Winchester. He finds the dynamite and carries it into the enemy’s tunnel before it explodes, and the villain, coming down to check on his villainy, is killed by it.”

Again she made a face, threw a look at Thomas and then, for a flickering instant, at Augusta, and then looked down at her hands. She felt embarrassed, all her pleasure in the evening was gone. In this room hung with the trophies of culture, her story sounded melodramatic and rough. She felt like a squaw explaining how you tanned a deerskin by working brains into the bloody hide and then chewing it all over until it was soft. Augusta was sitting with her head bent, frowning at the jeweled hands on her knees.

“I know nothing about explosives,” Susan said. “I know nothing about the motives of criminal, drunken, brutal men, nothing about the working of mines, nothing about how it feels to be beaten up or to hold off a gang of thugs with a Winchester. Oliver keeps all that to himself, he thinks I should be protected from it.”

Another quick clash with the dark eyes. Augusta’s mouth was pursed, her brows raised as if she asked a question. You see? Susan meant to tell her. I’ll defend him. I declare his right to be.

“But I nursed poor Pricey,” she said to Thomas. “They broke his nose and his cheekbone and kicked out his front teeth and hurt his head so that he was never right afterward.”

“I believe your qualifications are adequate,” Thomas said with his slow smile. “How about the engineer and the young lady? Wedding bells?”

“I . . . don’t know. I don’t think so. She has been raised in the East, she is altogether above her father, though he was once a gentleman. I think, don’t you, that a girl with any delicacy of feeling couldn’t bring herself to marry a man indirectly responsible for her father’s death. No matter how much she was in love with him.”

“An unhappy ending?” Augusta said. “Oh, Sue, why?”

Susan’s oppression had grown until she felt she would shrink away to nothing under the weight of it. Her story, barbarous to begin with, and hence open to Augusta’s unspoken scorn, was silly when told from the woman’s point of view, and hence open to her own. It was as if Mr. James should write a dime novel. And Thomas’s imperturbable consideration could not warm away the chill. She knew that with Oliver in New York an evening like this would simply not have happened. The one time they had gone together to dine, the studio had been full of dark spaces, uncomfortable silences, too much trying on both sides.

“Isn’t that the way things do end?” she said–she threw it at Augusta like a stone.

Again Thomas rescued them; his tact was clairvoyant. “However it ends, we must have it,” he said, and yawned and sat up straight. His smile was of a steady, incomparable sweetness. Susan had tried many times to draw it; she thought it the friendliest and gentlest and most understanding expression she had ever seen on a human face. “Isn’t anyone else tired? It’s nearly two.”

“I am,” Susan said. “Terribly, all of a sudden.”

Promptly, with a queenly rustling of taffeta, Augusta rose from her hassock, and in an instant, in a look, everything was right again, all the love that had radiated through the familiar room until five minutes ago was restored. It was like coming out of chilly woods into sunlight. “We’ve kept you up too long,” Augusta said. “It was utterly stupid of us. You shouldn’t be allowed to overdo.”

Through a danger of tears, with lips gone suddenly trembly, Susan said, “How could either of you two ever be thoughtless? It’s beyond your capacity.”

They went with their arms around one another to Susan’s bedroom door, and there they stopped. Augusta was inches taller than Susan, and her bearing made her taller than she was. Her dark eyebrows were bent in a slight frown; her hair came in a dark wave across her forehead. The moment of her breathing woke a diamond like a blue-green firefly in the hollow of her throat. She took Susan by the arms. “Sue, are you happy?”

“Happy? It’s been one of the happiest evenings of my life.”

“I don’t mean tonight.”

“Of course,” Susan said steadily. “I’m very happy.”

“This young man, Frank Sargent, does he mean anything to you?”

“He’s a friend,” Susan said, and steadied her eyes on Augusta’s face, conscious of a faint astonishment. “He’s ten years younger than I am. Anyway I’ll probably never see him again.”

“You wanted this child that’s coming?”

“Yes.”

“Does Oliver know about it?”

“Not yet.”

The dark head bent toward her, the dark eyes narrowed, glowing with a question, the jewel winked in the hollow throat. “Why not?”

“Why not? Well, first he was in Denver and Leadville, back and forth, and much too busy to be bothered with that sort of news. Then he was off in the mountains where mail was very uncertain. I didn’t want my letters falling into other hands. Sometimes people in places like that get so hungry for news of any kind that they literally read other people’s letters.”

Steadily the dark eyes watched her. “Is that a real reason?”

“No.”

“What, then?”

“Why do you ask?” Susan said with a flash of returning resentment. “You’re not really interested in him.”

“I’m interested in him because I’m interested in you. Why haven’t you told him?”

“Because I’m afraid he’ll think that with two babies hell have to take any job that comes up. I want him to find just the right place, where he’ll be happy and have a chance to prove what he can do.”

“Will he come home for the birth?”

“I don’t want him to unless he’s found what he wants.”

“But when he does find it, he’ll send for you and you’ll go.”

Susan took a breath. She found it hard to bear up under the weight of eyes. “Augusta, if your husband’s profession took him a long way away, and he sent for you, wouldn’t
you
go?”

“With a four-year-old and a new baby? To a wilderness?”

“I wish you liked him.”

Augusta looked for a moment at the ceiling. Her hands shook at Susan’s shoulders. “Of course I like him! I couldn’t dislike anyone so close to you. But I love you, my darling, do you see? He’s kept you from us for five years, he’s taken you out of the world you belong in. Thomas is right, you
are
remarkable. You’re more remarkable even than you were.”

“Then he can’t have been bad for me,” Susan said, and shrugged her shoulders free while Augusta with bent head watched her, frowning. “Anyway you don’t have to worry that he’ll send for me soon. Things haven’t gone well for him, poor fellow. The Wolf Tooth doesn’t seem to be much of a mine, and Heaven knows if he’ll find anything around Boise.”

“Isn’t there anything an engineer can do in the East?”

“Only if he’s established and in demand, like Mr. Prager. And, I don’t know, he’s addicted to the West, he’s happier there.”

“At your expense.”

“You don’t like him,” Susan said. “He has great capacities, you’ve never seen him at anything like his best. When he finds something he wants to do, I’ll go to him, infant or no infant.”

She pinched her lids tight on the throb of a growing headache. The dim hall swam when she opened them. She would lie sleepless half the night.

“But I know it won’t be soon,” she said, “and oh, Augusta, I’m only half sorry!”

Her arms went out, she flung herself on her friend and buried her face in stiff silk. After a moment she pulled back her head and spoke to the diamond that winked and went out and winked again in Augusta’s throat. “You pretended to think there was something between me and Frank Sargent. There isn’t–but I’m guilty, just the same. What kind of wife is it who half wants her husband’s bad luck to continue so that she can stay longer near someone else? You.”

She was on her way to the kitchen when she saw him coming up the path with his carpetbag in his hand and his coat slung over his shoulder. His eyes searched the porch, he stooped to see in the kitchen window. Then she had the door open and was onto the porch and he leaped up the three steps and engulfed her. He rocked her back and forth, his lips were jammed under her ear. Eventually he held her away and looked her over as if for symptoms of disease.

“Susie, are you all right?”

“I’m fine, there wasn’t a bit of trouble. But how are
you?
Oh, it’s been so long!”

“Don’t ever do anything like that to me again,” he said.

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Worry me.
Worry
me! Where is she? Can I see her?”

“She’s upstairs, asleep.”

“Where’s everybody else? Where’s Ollie?”

“Down in the orchard with Father. Mother and Bessie and the children have gone over to Poughkeepsie shopping.”

“It’s just us, then. Good.” His hand was feeling along her shoulder and neck; it took her by the nape and held her, the big warm hand going nearly all the way around. “Ah, Susie, how are you, really?”

“I’m fine, honestly I am. I’ve been up and around for days. I’ve even worked some on the galleys of my story.”

“You’re crazy. You ought to be in bed.”

“After nearly three weeks? I’m perfectly well.”

But she went up the stairs slowly, helping herself by the rail, stepping up one step and bringing the other foot after. Coming behind her, he was not persuaded by the bright smile she threw over her shoulder. “Should you be climbing stairs?”

“As long as I take them slowly.”

“Let me carry you.”

“My goodness, you’d
really
put me back to bed!”