Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [37]
But it was hard to know where that would be. For a while Oliver was surveying something for the Southern Pacific around Clear Lake. Then he was on the loose in San Francisco, refusing to take just anything, turning down the jobs with no future, looking for just the right place that would lead somewhere. He stayed for several months with his sister Mary, who had married a prominent mining engineer named Conrad Prager, and at last he found, through Prager’s influence, a job that excited him. He wrote that he was to be Resident Engineer of the New Almaden mercury mine near San Jose, an ancient and famous mine that had furnished mercury for the reduction of the gold of the whole Gold Rush. In a few weeks he would come East and marry her and lead her West.
Then he wrote saying that he was in the midst of an underground survey and couldn’t get away. He would have to finish it before he could leave.
She waited while the river broke up and the old Mary Powell began again to lay her plume along the high spring water. Crocuses came and went, the apple trees exploded, lilacs drenched the air, summer came with its visitors and boarders. Before long it was a year since Oliver Ward had held her by the ankles over the waterfall at Big Pond. Augusta was pregnant, they were reconciled to some new relationship, they wrote each other a good deal about the contrary pulls upon a woman who was also an artist. Augusta was very strong that Susan should not let marriage destroy her career. It was as if, having all but given up painting herself, she wanted to force Susan to be their double justification. And give her credit—perhaps she recognized in Susan Burling a capacity that she herself did not have.
But she never accepted Oliver Ward. They simply agreed not to talk about him any more than necessary.
Susan waited, not unhappily, diligent in her work, dutiful in her daughterhood, refreshing herself occasionally in the old friendships at the 15th Street studio. Counting from New Year’s Eve, 1868, when she first met Oliver Ward, she had been waiting just a little longer than Jacob waited for Rachel when Oliver came back in February 1876 and they were married in her father’s house.
6
No minister married them. According to the Friends’ service, Oliver met her at the foot of the stair and escorted her into the parlor, where in the presence of forty-four witnesses, all of whom signed the marriage paper, they pledged themselves to each other, “she according to the custom of marriage assuming the name of the husband.” There went the rising young artist Susan Burling.
And no one stood up with her. Augusta, only a month out of child-bed, said she was not well enough—“and if I can’t have you I won’t have anyone,” Susan wrote her. Faithful friendship, the old warmth. But in that same note there is a reference to “my friend whom you don’t want to like.” She knew very well why Augusta stayed away; she may have half-granted Augusta’s reasons.
Susan Burling I historically admire, and when she was an old lady I loved her very much. But I wish I could take her by the ear and lead her aside and tell her a few things. Nemesis in a wheelchair, knowing the future, I could tell her that it is dangerous for a bride to be apologetic about her husband.
While they were honeymooning at the Brevoort House, Thomas called on them, alone. Susan watched his face and estimated his decent politeness for what it was. Later, from Oliver’s home in Guilford, she wrote to Augusta:
I haven’t an anxiety in the world at present, except perhaps lest you may not like my boy when you finally meet him. They tell me stories about his boyhood which please me very much. He was such a plucky boy—hardy, enterprising, generous, and truthful. I shall have to be very weak and praise him to you, for he does not “exploit” himself . . . I am sure Thomas was a little disappointed, and so will you be at first.
In another letter—she wrote too many on her honeymoon—she expressed a confidence that to a critical ear sounds a little shrill:
I might have spared myself all my past misgivings. He has not only the will to spare me and keep me safe in every way but he knows how to do so. I ought to have had more faith in him. I knew he would do all he understood to be a man