Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [171]
“You won’t be back,” Frank said somberly. “I feel it in my bones.”
“I think so. I hope so. Who could know for sure?”
“I suppose you’re glad to be getting away.”
“In a way. Not altogether.” She laid her hand on his wrist. “We’ll miss you, Frank. You’ve been a dear, true friend.”
As if a butterfly had alighted on his wrist and might be scared away by a movement, Frank stood still. She knew precisely what froze him there. His eyes on her face, his strained smile, made her want to hug him and rock his head against her breast.
“You know how I feel about you,” he said. “Always, from the minute I came in here and saw you in your little traveling hat. The day they hanged Jeff Oates.”
“I know,” she said. “But you mustn’t.”
“Easier said than done. You know how I feel about Oliver, too.”
“He feels the same. There’s nobody he trusts more.”
The laugh that came out of him struck her ear unpleasantly. “He should read Artemus Ward: Trust everybody, but cut the cards.’ ”
“I don’t understand.” Troubled, she started to take her hand away, but he caught it with his right hand and held it down on his left wrist.
“Nothing. Forget it. I’m just . . .” Smiling, he studied her; he shook his head and laughed. “You’re beautiful, you know? And kind. And talented. And intelligent. You’re a thoroughbred.”
“Frank . . .”
“You’re everything good I can possibly imagine in a woman.”
She tugged at her anchored hand. “You’re forgetting.”
“I’m not forgetting anything,” Frank said. “I know who you are, and who I am, and who Oliver is, and what a gentleman does in the circumstances. I know all about it, I’ve thought about it enough. But I can’t get up on my hind legs and cheer about it.”
What could she do but smile, an affectionate, shaky smile.
“Once you kissed me, by mistake,” he said. “Would you kiss me good-bye, not by mistake?”
Only for a second she hesitated. “Do you think . . . ? Yes. Yes, I will.”
She stood on tiptoe to brush his cheek with her lips, but while she was still coming up, with puckered lips, she saw something happen in his eyes, and she was grabbed hard and he was kissing her, not on the cheek, but hard and hungry on the mouth. It was a long blind time before he let her pull away.
“That wasn’t . . . fair,” she said.
“It’s little enough. I’m not made of wood.” He would not meet her eyes. He began carrying the luggage outside to be ready for the buggy.
With the skirt still against her face, Susan looked across at Oliver, his fair hair rumpled, his neck and arms burned dark, working at the table under the ornate oil lamp. She felt she owed him something, she wanted to say something that would restore them. Crossing behind him, she slipped one hand over his eyes and with the other held the skirt under his nose. “Smell. What does that smell like?”
Obediently he sniffed. “Mold?”
“Oh, mold!” She yanked it away. “It smells like Leadville, that’s what it smells like. Can you imagine? It makes me homesick. In spite of everything, I want to go back.”
Half turned in his chair, he took her outburst with complete seriousness. When he was very tanned, as now, his eyes were as blue as blue turquoise. “Sue, I wouldn’t count on it.”
One last time she sniffed at the skirt–sniffed and couldn’t be sure she had really smelled in it that intoxicating essence of the mountains. She gave it up. “I suppose not. It just came over me like a gust. For a second I knew exactly who I was: Mrs. Ward from Ditch Walk. I guess I’d better get ready to be the Wandering Jew again.”
“He’s immortal, isn’t he?” Oliver said. “He never gets to settle down. We’ll make it, sooner or later.”
“In Heaven, I expect.”
“Oh ye of little faith. Come on, Sue, we’ll make it. We’ll get that right job and that house and that yard and that attic. We really will.”
“It’s hard to see how, or when.”
“Mañana,” Oliver said. He gave her a pat on the hip and turned back to his notes and map. “Hadn’t you better get packing? We’ve got forty miles to ride tomorrow.”
She had to laugh. No sooner did the talk get around to settling down than it was time to go somewhere.
End of dream number three, which like the Santa Cruz dream was more hers than his. A short dream, but intense, it had briefly enchanted the artist as well as the wife. She put it aside, and did not mope, and made the most of the trip back. It is a commentary both on her personally and on the Genteel Female that she rode the two hundred and fifty miles to Mexico City in a little over five days, and on the way, literally writing and drawing in the saddle, made all the notes and some of the sketches for a third Century article.