Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [174]
“Of course we’re important,” said Thomas. “I would be the last to deny it. But I call your attention to the almost diseased modesty of this young woman we’re speaking of. To hear her tell it, she is a clumsy illustrator and a writer of amateur sketches. The fact is, any editor in the country would jump at the chance to sew up everything she does. I live in daily fear that she’ll be lured away from the Century by gold and flattery.”
“What are you writing?” Augusta said. Where she sat by the fire, the light touched one side of her face, which glowed with dark warmth. Her skin had always been Susan’s despair, it was as flawless as wax fruit. “You have to tell us-we’re your first public. Did you know I’ve kept every single letter from you, ever since you went out to New Almaden?”
“And made up my first sketch for me out of them. If I am anything, you two made me.”
“Nobody made you but yourself,” Thomas said. “I also suspect the hand of God–no other hand could be quite that sure of itself. Now tell us what you’re writing, in those hours when lesser people sleep.”
He was one who could make her believe in herself. Close friend, once a sort of suitor, he was also the most respected editor in the United States. Merely to be his contributor made one’s reputation. She said, “Something beyond me. I’m constantly being stopped by ignorance. I have always to write from outside, from the protected woman’s point of view, when I ought to be writing from within. I’m doing a novel about Leadville.”
“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