Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [165]
Unseen, Susan stood in her arch and watched life gather in the court–bloodhounds, poodle, Soledad, Enriqueta, old Ascención, now the cook, thin as a snake, with a peevish, bitten censoriousness between her eyes and fierce peremptory gestures. Across from Susan a door opened and Emelita, Don Gustavo’s sister-in-law and housekeeper, came out adjusting a shawl over her unfinished hair. She clapped sharply twice. Down in the court Enriqueta popped out of sight and young Soledad quit fooling with the dogs and craned upward. A soft flow of Spanish poured on her; she nodded and went inside. Turning to go back to her room, Emelita saw Susan watching from her place under the vines. A sweet, startled smile passed across her face and left her looking guilty. Her fingers fluttered in the incomparably Mexican, secretive, feminine greeting that Susan had seen flash from carriages and balconies at the time of the paseo. Then she too was gone. One of the bloodhounds rushed at the feeding pigeons and sent them flapping. Susan retreated into the dimness of the shuttered bedroom and found Oliver stretching widely in the wide bed.
“I love the way the Casa Walkenhorst wakes up,” she said.
“Prussian efficiency or Spanish order?” Oliver said. “Who calls the tune, Don Gustavo or Emelita?”
“Oh, Emelita! She’s an absolutely perfect housekeeper. Why she let herself get enslaved to that German, just because he took a vow when his wife died. He prides himself so on that vow, but it’s Emelita who makes it possible.”
“I thought you thought he was so courteous.”
“He watches himself being courteous. With admiration.”
“I can take you back to the hotel.”
“You just try! I love Emelita. She has the kind of face you can only get by devoting yourself to others. She reminds me of Bessie. And really, what a housekeeper! She showed me her linen room yesterday. Dozens and dozens and dozens of linen sheets and pillowcases and bolster covers like this, as coarse as canvas but just like velvet from so many washings. Shelves of everything. If I’d been a true housewife myself I’d have gone down on my knees. It’s a shrine.”
“You ought to see the saddle room. Museum pieces. Enough silver on every one to break down a horse in five miles.”
“That part I don’t like,” Susan said, and sat down on the bed. ”It’s too showy. And their spade bits, and those big cruel spurs. But the house is another thing, it’s so graceful and civilized. And they wake up every morning to the sound of bells.”
Oliver was yawning, smiling, and indulgent. “Once the Syndicate gets its hand on the throttle we’ll change all that. Whistles, we’ll have. Run the place the way Larry Kendall would run it. Plenty whistles, no siestas, no buying pulque outside the company store.”
“You make me hope the mine will turn out worthless. How does it look? What were you talking about so late? Who was there?”
“I’ll answer your questions in order. It looks all right on paper and in the samples. A fellow named Kreps came down here six months ago and studied the faulting, and he thinks he knows where the vein went when it petered out on the Spaniards. Walkenhorst and Gutierrez have sunk a shaft on the basis of his map. I’m supposed to tell them if they’ve hit what they think they’ve hit. Question two, we were talking about that, about the mine. Question three, Don Gustavo, Don Pedro Gutierrez, and our mortal enemy Simpson were there.”
“Why our mortal enemy?”
“His principals sent him down to make an independent report, to check on mine.”
“That’s insulting.”
He was amused. “Why? I’m the Syndicate’s man. Naturally I’m going to make a Syndicate report. So Simpson’s people have sent him down to report the truth.”
“You sound as cynical as Henry Janin. They