Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [98]
A freckled hand was laid on her arm. “As long as I’ve already made you mad, let me tell you the rest of what I think.” Susan moved her shoulders very slightly, looking straight ahead. “You’re an artist and a lady,” Mrs. Elliott said. “Sometimes I’ve wondered if you weren’t maybe just a little too much of both, but my views may be peculiar. And it has nothing to do with being fond of you. I am fond of you, though you wouldn’t believe it right now. What bothers me is that Oliver thinks you’re better than he is, some sort of higher creature. He thinks what you do is more important than what he does. I don’t deny you’re special. You’re both special. But I’d hate to see you discourage him from doing what he’s special at, just so you can coddle some notions about dirt and culture. Do you follow me?”
Just for an instant Susan’s eyes flared aside at the craggy, brown, long-jawed face and the blue eyes with their fuzzy eyebrows and the impossible clout bound above them. “I think so,” she said. “But I can’t say I understand you. One day you talk about woman’s slavery and the next you talk like this. I don’t mind your taking my husband’s side against me–or what you think is my husband’s side. Sometimes I do myself. But I want you to know, Mrs. Elliott, that I don’t consider our marriage a slavery for either of us. We decide things together. You think he’s slaving in the City at something he dislikes, just to keep us in comfort down here, but let me tell you, I work too. It’s my money that pays our board.”
“Is that so?” said Mrs. Elliott. “Then it’s worse than I thought.”
5
January 4, 1878
Dearest Augusta–
Christmas was such an utter failure for us that we have not quite recovered our hope for the future, which we planned in the crazy way people do ‘when hope looks true and all the pulses glow.’ Ten years on this coast and then home. Is ten years an eternity? Will you all be changed or dead; will we be ‘Western’ and brag about ’this glorious country’ and the general superiority of half-civilized to civilized societies?
That sounds bitter. There are such good people here, but I simply can’t care for them! I fear I am too old to be transplanted. The part of me which friendship and society claim must wait, or perish in waiting.
This is the way I feel when Oliver is in S.F. When he comes down, it is like high tide along the shore–all the wet muddy places sparkle with life and motion. I have discovered that I am not a serene person at all. I am fearfully down or else soaring. Perhaps I may reach a level resting-place in time. But this little bright town is a desert to me. I go about vacantly smiling upon people and feeling like a ghost. . . .
Good-bye, my darling other woman. It would not be well for one of us to be unmarried. It is better to go hand in hand, babies and all. But oh! it would be lovely to see you!
February 6, 1878
Dearest Augusta -
Miss P. has just brought in little Oliver with his bib on and a chunk of beefsteak in his fat fist-raw steak. Do you approve? I didn’t when Mrs. Elliott first started it, but he seems to enjoy it immensely–any kind of food. His four front teeth are through and two more in the upper jaw are pressing. The gum looks clear over them and they will soon be through. He is so well. What a blessing it is. What should I do–what might I have done –with a sick baby and no doctor I could trust.
It is an awfully hard winter in S.F. and Oliver’s negotiations continue to hang fire. Money is very tight and capitalists are holding on until better times. Oliver thought last week all was settled, but still he is obliged to wait in the most exasperating way. His patience is wonderful, it passeth my understanding. I tell him I am proud of his genius for construction, but he says he has no genius for anything, he just never knows when he is beaten. If he is beaten finally, I have made up my mind that I shall try to come home, for he will almost certainly