Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [239]
He works far too hard; he always has. It is a thing I have sometimes held against him, that his family must come second to his job. Now he has to make one last trip to the mountains to complete some field work for the Irrigation Survey, and that means Ollie must start East without seeing his father again. It is a great pity, for they are very close. But what can I do? Ollie can’t afford to pass up the chance that St. Paul’s has given him. He will be lonely, and will miss his pony and the excitement of the construction, to which he attends all day, riding the line with Wiley or his father. He lives on his pony.
All through our stay in Victoria he talked about the canyon as if it were the Paradise from which we had been evicted, and from the moment of our return he wanted to go out there. Yesterday I threw up my hands over everything that needs doing here, and rode out with him. Wiley was there, and showed us the changes. He and Frank share our old bedroom, two draftsmen use the others, the shack overflows with men. It seemed a very different place from the quiet canyon where we lived on hope. But it pleased me to see that the trees we planted are doing well, and that the poppies have seeded themselves around the knoll and bloom without human encouragement.
It was strange, that return to Eden. There went the river below, there went the clouds overhead, just as before. The sun beat down as I remembered–sometimes I have thought I could smell the scorched gravel of that gulch! There was everything as we had left it, but changed, too. The sleepiness of our seclusion was replaced by a great busy-ness, and strange faces kept looking out of doors where I was used to seeing only the faces of our local community of saints. It made me melancholy, rather, and I am sure it bothered Ollie too: his memories were thrown out of line. But of course I could not get him to talk about it. He folds things in, and thinks about them, and does not give them outlet, and that worries me for his future. He can be easily hurt.
On the way back we rode past John’s old cabin, and found its little flat obliterated by a great construction camp of eighty men and two hundred horses. There Frank is supervising the tearing down of a whole hill to make the diversion dam that will throw the river into the Susan and later into the Big Ditch. Frank has lost, I am afraid, some of his freshness and exuberance, and has grown almost somber. Like Oliver, he drives himself into the work with a relentlessness that I fear will break him down.
Oh, Augusta, you know my hopes! You know my anxiety, though being the ideal creature you are, married to that ideal man who completes and supports you, you cannot comprehend the unworthy contradictions of someone less sure of herself. You were of course right, years ago, about Frank’s feelings. But he is a thorough gentleman, he understands. So it does not alarm me that Oliver is to be gone for two weeks. I am quite safe, on this mesa and in myself, and I find the same satisfaction in work that Oliver and Frank seem to. This morning, amid all the disorder, I blew the dust from my table and wrote for two hours. Tomorrow I want to go up to the Big Ditch and sketch the teams pulling their scraper-loads of dirt up the banks. My “Life in the Far West” series must include the preparations for the future, for that is what life in the Far West is about.
The Mesa
August 30, 1889
Darling Augusta–
This morning I sent my little boy away, and I know his heart broke as mine did. Nellie and I have been trying to keep up his courage and determination with our tales of what wonders he will see, and what fine things he will learn, and what fine men he will study with and what fine boys he will come to know as friends. But this morning after breakfast I sent him to his room to get dressed and ready–he was to catch the ten-thirty train–and when he didn’t appear for a long time I went in and found him ready dressed in his new school clothes, just sitting on the bed with his eyes big and dark and