Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [269]
Her letters through the fall and winter keep assuring Augusta that she is well and safe. People drop by–John, Sidonie, Wan, even near-strangers, for not even Boise, which Grandmother had scorned, would leave two women and a child unlooked–after in an isolated house. She speaks of having ice hauled and stored in sawdust against the coming summer. She speaks of her intention to replace the trees that have died, as soon as frost is out of the ground. She discusses what she is drawing or writing. She reports that she has moved her work out to Oliver’s office to avoid competition with Nellie’s pupils.
But one part of her life has been abruptly cut off. It lies on the other side of a stern silence, as a severed head lies beyond the guillotine knife.
Only four letters in more than six months mention my grandfather at all, apart from that reference to her use of his office. The first one, in November, says only, “Oliver continues to send a money order on the first of each month. I am grateful from the bottom of my heart for this sign that he has not forgotten us, though as to the money, we could make do without.” The second, dated December 10, says, “Oliver’s draft which came today was mailed at Merced, California, whereas the others have come from Salt Lake City. I must wait as patiently as I can, to know what this may mean.”
The third, dated February 12, 1891, says, “A money order from Oliver yesterday, this one from Mazatlán, Mexico, and today a letter from Bessie which explains it. He has written to her, and has sent John two hundred dollars on the debt he says he owes him for the collapse of the canal stock. Bessie is uncertain about accepting it–she suggests sending it to me! Of course she must keep it, it is a debt of honor. But oh, it warms my heart that he should take it so! It dispels the gloom of this long cold snowless winter. And I am glad he is now in a position where he can build–he is always happiest when he is building something. Our dear old Sam Emmons is responsible. He and some others own an onyx mine down there, and they have brought Oliver down to construct a short-line railroad and a port facility for the shipment of the stone. I feel it as the beginning of better times. There is hope in this news, as in the first crocus.”
The fourth of these letters, though, has sunk back; it is neither stoical nor hopeful, but depressed and sad. It is a long letter and a gloomy one. The snowfall has been very light, it will be another dry year, Boise is dead and hostile, as if, being the only remaining representative of the London and Idaho Canal, she caught all the blame for the collapse that disappointed so many.
I wait for spring, and fear it, [she says]. Exactly what I am waiting for I do not know, or whether I am waiting for anything real. Sometimes I go rigid with the thought, All the rest of life may be this way! With the drafts from Oliver, and the too-generous checks that Thomas sends me for the poor things I am able to do, and with Nellie’s school for a “grocery account,” we are not in need. But I shall have to get John, or some other hired man, once the weather breaks, to keep Mesa Ranch from burning out. I want to keep it alive–that is the thing I cling to. I do not want it to die! I don’t want to lose so much as one more Lombardy or locust. I am determined, if possible, to get a crop of winter wheat sowed next fall in the acres that Hi Mallett broke. I want the lawn as green as Ireland, however dry the summer. If I dared, I would even restore the rose garden. But I daren’t. That would be to question or resist my punishment. He meant that to be before my eyes from day to day as a reminder, and I