Read Online Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Wallace Stegner
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gossip, and despised his arrogance. And what a collapse is coming to that whited sepulcher of a reputation! Mene mene tekel upharsin. Only a little, and Theodore Tilton will bring it all down with his charge that Beecher committed adultery with Tilton’s wife.
On days like this, the young ladies stayed at home and received, the young men circulated from house to house. Grandmother thought them “almost too boastful” about the number of houses they must visit before night, and found some of them almost too far gone to dance by the time they reached the Beaches’. Her own callers were few and left early. Augusta herself was receiving on Staten Island and would not be at this party. The dancing had broken up as a group of young men prepared to depart. She went into the main parlor, got herself a glass of punch, and stood by the west window watching the sun embed itself in long flat clouds. In the small parlor the Reverend Beecher was defending, against no opposition that Susan could hear, the practice of selling church pews. Through the doorway Mrs. Beach, buoyant upon her bustle, caught her eye and beckoned.
Susan, blushing pink, went in obediently and took a chair. Nods and smiles acknowledged the youthful sobriety that would rather listen to uplifting conversation than dance. Beecher’s ophidian glance rested on her briefly, Mrs. Beach widened her lips in the premonition of a smile, she got an earnest, frowning regard from an unseasonably sun-blackened boy too big for the gilt chair he was perched on. She had met him, barely: one of Beecher’s cousins, newly arrived from somewhere. He had a sandy mustache and fair short hair that clustered on his forehead. He looked outdoorish and uncomfortable and entrapped, and his hands were very large, brown, and fidgety.
With her own hands in her lap she sat and let Beecher’s opinions reverberate around her. Her blush faded; she made herself prim. Then through the window she saw a cab draw up outside and three young men in overcoats and high hats get out. Two of them were Augusta’s brothers Dickie and Waldo. Impulsively she started to rise.
Mrs. Beach said, “Susan Burling, sit down!”
The monologuist halted; all eyes were on. Burning, she said, “I saw someone coming. I thought . . .”
“Minnie will let them in.” Mrs. Beach returned her attention to the great one, and Susan sat on, telling herself she would never again accept an invitation to this house. When the newcomers came in to pay their respects she barely shook hands with the Drake boys, both of whom smelled of toddy and cigars and were very willing to share her company. (“A complicated young man,” she wrote to Augusta once. “I think I shall not reply to his letter after all.” It isn’t clear which brother she referred to; both took a considerable interest.)
“Excuse me,” she said breathlessly to the room at large, and escaped.
She went up the stairs in a furious rustle of taffeta, wishing that every tread were paved with the face of Henry Ward Beecher. To do what? Read? She was too upset. Better to work at her drawing. But her room offered neither work surface nor adequate light. The library, then. Nobody would be there with the party filling the other rooms. Downstairs again, and along the hall (skating on her little feet like a swallow flying?) to the heavy oak door. A peek—no one inside. She popped in.
I see her there like one of her own drawings, or like the portrait by Mary Curtis Richardson on the wall behind me: a maiden in a window seat, flooded with gray afternoon. But where her drawings usually suggest maidenly yearning, and her portrait suggests some sort of pensive and rueful retrospection, this window-seat maiden suggests only concentration. She had the faculty of sinking herself in whatever she was doing. In five minutes the Reverend Beecher was forgotten with a thoroughness that he would have found insulting.
Some time later the door opened, letting in a wave of party
On days like this, the young ladies stayed at home and received, the young men circulated from house to house. Grandmother thought them “almost too boastful” about the number of houses they must visit before night, and found some of them almost too far gone to dance by the time they reached the Beaches’. Her own callers were few and left early. Augusta herself was receiving on Staten Island and would not be at this party. The dancing had broken up as a group of young men prepared to depart. She went into the main parlor, got herself a glass of punch, and stood by the west window watching the sun embed itself in long flat clouds. In the small parlor the Reverend Beecher was defending, against no opposition that Susan could hear, the practice of selling church pews. Through the doorway Mrs. Beach, buoyant upon her bustle, caught her eye and beckoned.
Susan, blushing pink, went in obediently and took a chair. Nods and smiles acknowledged the youthful sobriety that would rather listen to uplifting conversation than dance. Beecher’s ophidian glance rested on her briefly, Mrs. Beach widened her lips in the premonition of a smile, she got an earnest, frowning regard from an unseasonably sun-blackened boy too big for the gilt chair he was perched on. She had met him, barely: one of Beecher’s cousins, newly arrived from somewhere. He had a sandy mustache and fair short hair that clustered on his forehead. He looked outdoorish and uncomfortable and entrapped, and his hands were very large, brown, and fidgety.
With her own hands in her lap she sat and let Beecher’s opinions reverberate around her. Her blush faded; she made herself prim. Then through the window she saw a cab draw up outside and three young men in overcoats and high hats get out. Two of them were Augusta’s brothers Dickie and Waldo. Impulsively she started to rise.
Mrs. Beach said, “Susan Burling, sit down!”
The monologuist halted; all eyes were on. Burning, she said, “I saw someone coming. I thought . . .”
“Minnie will let them in.” Mrs. Beach returned her attention to the great one, and Susan sat on, telling herself she would never again accept an invitation to this house. When the newcomers came in to pay their respects she barely shook hands with the Drake boys, both of whom smelled of toddy and cigars and were very willing to share her company. (“A complicated young man,” she wrote to Augusta once. “I think I shall not reply to his letter after all.” It isn’t clear which brother she referred to; both took a considerable interest.)
“Excuse me,” she said breathlessly to the room at large, and escaped.
She went up the stairs in a furious rustle of taffeta, wishing that every tread were paved with the face of Henry Ward Beecher. To do what? Read? She was too upset. Better to work at her drawing. But her room offered neither work surface nor adequate light. The library, then. Nobody would be there with the party filling the other rooms. Downstairs again, and along the hall (skating on her little feet like a swallow flying?) to the heavy oak door. A peek—no one inside. She popped in.
I see her there like one of her own drawings, or like the portrait by Mary Curtis Richardson on the wall behind me: a maiden in a window seat, flooded with gray afternoon. But where her drawings usually suggest maidenly yearning, and her portrait suggests some sort of pensive and rueful retrospection, this window-seat maiden suggests only concentration. She had the faculty of sinking herself in whatever she was doing. In five minutes the Reverend Beecher was forgotten with a thoroughness that he would have found insulting.
Some time later the door opened, letting in a wave of party
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