Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [183]
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?”
“Only if he’s established and in demand, like Mr. Prager. And, I don’t know, he’s addicted to the West, he’s happier there.”
“At your expense.”
“You don’t like him,” Susan said. “He has great capacities, you’ve never seen him at anything like his best. When he finds something he wants to do, I’ll go to him, infant or no infant.”
She pinched her lids tight on the throb of a growing headache. The dim hall swam when she opened them. She would lie sleepless half the night.
“But I know it won’t be soon,” she said, “and oh, Augusta, I’m only half sorry!”
Her arms went out, she flung herself on her friend and buried her face in stiff silk. After a moment she pulled back her head and spoke to the diamond that winked and went out and winked again in Augusta’s throat. “You pretended to think there was something between me and Frank Sargent. There isn’t–but I’m guilty, just the same. What kind of wife is it who half wants her husband’s bad luck to continue so that she can stay longer near someone else? You.”
2
She was on her way to the kitchen when she saw him coming up the path with his carpetbag in his hand and his coat slung over his shoulder. His eyes searched the porch, he stooped to see in the kitchen window. Then she had the door open and was onto the porch and he leaped up the three steps and engulfed her. He rocked her back and forth, his lips were jammed under her ear. Eventually he held her away and looked her over as if for symptoms of disease.
“Susie, are you all right?”
“I’m fine, there wasn’t a bit of trouble. But how are you? Oh, it’s been so long!”
“Don’t ever do anything like that to me again,” he said.
“I didn’t want to worry you.”
“Worry me. Worry me! Where is she? Can I see her?”
“She’s upstairs, asleep.”
“Where’s everybody else? Where’s Ollie?”
“Down in the orchard with Father. Mother and Bessie and the children have gone over to Poughkeepsie shopping.”
“It’s just us, then. Good.” His hand was feeling along her shoulder and neck; it took her by the nape and held her, the big warm hand going nearly all the way around. “Ah, Susie, how are you, really?”
“I’m fine, honestly