Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [34]
Somehow she brought on a quarrel. I have no idea what about, for key letters are missing, perhaps destroyed in anger or in the passion of reconciliation. Augusta had been planning to visit Milton, and Susan with at least part of her sensibility had been anticipating a love feast. But she must have written some note that infuriated dark-browed Augusta, already pretty impatient with Susan’s defection. At the last minute she wrote curtly that she must accompany her parents to Albany, and could not come, and she signed herself “Very truly your friend.”
One letter of Susan’s tells me all I know about it.
Fishkill Landing
Tuesday night
My dear dear girl—
Your note came this afternoon just after Bessie and I had been getting your room ready and making your bed—our bed where I thought I should lie tonight with my dear girl’s arm under my head. It gave me a queer little sick trembly feeling that I’ve had only once or twice in my life—and then I thought I must see you, not to “talk things over”—I don’t care about things, I only want you to love me.
So I hurried after supper and changed my dress and pulled my ruffle down low in front to please my girl [what, Grandmother?] and rushed into the garden for a bunch of roses—your June roses, blooming late just for you (we have been hoarding them and begging buds to wait a few days longer for your coming)—and then down to the night boat. I thought I’d either coax you to land or go with you as far as West Point. And oh! what a sick sunk feeling to see the Mary Powell’s lights already out in the river, going every second farther away! I was distracted. I stood on this landing and wept, and then I walked, and it is only now, two hours later, that I have enough control of myself to huddle here on the bench and write you this by starlight and ask you to forgive me.
I so want to put my arms around my girl of all the girls in the world and tell her that whether I move to New York or stay home, whether she sign herself “Very truly your friend” or “Your ownest of girls,” I love her as wives love their husbands, as friends who have taken each other for life. You believe that love has its tides. Well, there was a strong ebb tide this summer. I can’t explain all that caused it-several things combined—but it only shows me how much you are to me. Little streams don’t have tides, do you mind that?
Now please don’t call yourself truly my friend again. I can stand arguments and scoldings, but—truly your friend! And then to miss you by only that widening gap of water! I should have run, dark lane or no dark lane, and next time shall. As for the chill, I’m a donkey. If I didn’t love you do you suppose I’d care about anything or have ridiculous notions and panics and behave like a fool, and quite break down on this landing? But I feel now as if a storm has passed. I’m going to hang onto your skirts, young woman, genius though you may be. You can’t get away from the love of your faithful
SUB
Like some of Grandmother’s other letters, that one makes me feel like a Peeping Tom. And I don’t know whether to smile or to be obscurely shocked to think of her panting and distracted and tearing her hair on Fishkill Landing, with her ruffle pulled down low to please her girl and a rose wilting in her frantic bosom. If I had to make a guess, I should guess that neither Thomas nor my grandfather ever stirred that amount of turmoil in her breast.
But that episode marked a turning point, and that it did suggests a strength of character in Grandmother that I must admire. Right then, apparently, she put away any pre-emptive right to either