Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [176]
“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?