I have pictured the event in detail. (Are not imagined events sometimes more real than events at which one is present?) It is the summer of 1896. Etna, just twenty-three, is engaged to a Mr. Bass of Brockton, Massachusetts, a Mr. Josiah Bass, shall we say, an older man, perhaps thirty-six or thirty-eight. He is a man whom Etna does not love, but whose shoe-manufacturing fortune promises her some independence, which, as we now know, is of paramount importance to Etna Bliss, even if she herself does not understand this yet. In the meantime, a Mr. Samuel Asher, tall like his brother, twenty-seven, an academic with — I am just guessing here — a high forehead (perhaps a slightly receding hairline?), a blond beard, and sloping shoulders, has recently had occasion to visit Etna’s father, William’s brother, Thomas Bliss, an educated and tolerant man who would not shrink from inviting a Jew to his house — particularly an English Jew. (Or does Bliss simply not know about Samuel Asher, who for years may well have been passing for an Episcopalian?) Was this a jointly taught course on the mathematics of navigation? A research project? A steering committee of two? We cannot know. Etna and Samuel have two or three times found themselves alone in the Bliss sitting room while Thomas has been attending to other matters, and they have discovered in each other like-minded souls. (Do they discuss astronomy? No, probably not.) They have, at least once, played tennis with Samuel’s father and his younger brother Phillip. Samuel and Etna look forward to their encounters and contrive to make them happen. Samuel Asher, attracted beyond reason to this striking daughter of Thomas Bliss, even as he is engaged to Ardith Silver of Toronto, Ontario, a woman he met when her family lived in Exeter prior to moving to that Canadian city, manages to come round to the Bliss house even when he knows (though he pretends to forget) that Thomas Bliss is engaged elsewhere. (We will not imagine for Samuel the baser motive of needing female company while his intended is elsewhere.) A summer acquaintance turns to autumnal friendship and then swiftly molts into something very like passion before Christmas.
Indeed, Samuel Asher calls upon the Bliss family on Christmas Eve to bid them a happy holiday. Thomas, who does not yet have any inkling about his betrothed friend’s secret affection for his betrothed daughter, welcomes Samuel into the house. Etna is in the parlor with her mother and Miriam (Pippa already being married and living in Massachusetts), making last-minute adjustments to an impressive Christmas tree that will be lit within the hour. On the sideboard is a cut-crystal bowl of punch, liberally laced with rum. Etna is wearing a plum velvet dress with perhaps a slightly revealing neckline, and she looks almost beautiful on this occasion. Samuel, cheeks reddened by the weather and his anticipation, greets Etna’s mother, then Miriam, and finally, when all other formalities have been observed, Etna, whose cheeks are as red as his. (Might not Thomas, were he alert to romantic oscillations, have detected something amiss in the greeting of Miriam before Etna? Perhaps not.) Thomas mentions how much Samuel must miss his fiancée on the holiday. Samuel agrees politely even as he notes the tiny flinch in Etna’s lovely white shoulders.
(And where is Josiah Bass, Etna’s intended? Away. He is simply away.)
How will Samuel negotiate this tricky evening? For he has a gift he wishes to bestow upon Etna. He cannot give it to her in front of the mother and the sister, because he has not brought them gifts as well. Nor can he give it under Thomas’s scrutiny, for Thomas, though a scientist, would surely detect an unnatural favoritism in the singling out of Etna. A walk is therefore contrived — casually, politely. Samuel invites Mrs. Bliss first, praying that she won’t accept. She does not; it is too cold for her. Etna accepts readily, speaking of the pleasure of seeing smoke emanating from other houses, of encountering carolers along the way. Miriam is tired, she says, and miraculously she declines.
Scarcely able to conceal his relief, Samuel moves with Etna to the vestibule, where they dress for the cold, each carefully avoiding the gaze of the other. Each is aware of a sense of conspiracy at this point, though neither gives anything away.
The pair walk in silence for some time — not toward the houses with the warm fires, as it happens, but away from them. They reach one of the many playing fields of the men’s preparatory school. Together they look at its snowy expanse, lit by a Christmas moon.
“Etna,” Samuel says.
He gives Etna the package, which she holds in her gloved hand a moment before opening it. (It hurts me to have to imagine that she has considerably more enthusiasm for this the unopened gift than she did for my own on the college path, but there it is.) There is fumbling with stiffened fingers as Etna undoes the ribbon. The silver gleams in the moonlight. Samuel takes Etna’s hand, removes her glove, and slides the bracelet onto her wrist, nearly as white as the moon. Pointedly, he does not release her wrist.
“I had to give you something,” he says.
“I cannot accept it,” she says.
“You must accept it. You can wear it privately.”
“I am engaged to be married,” Etna says, stating the perfectly obvious.
“As am I,” Samuel says.
Samuel kisses Etna then in a way I think we can safely say Etna has never been kissed before, certainly not by Josiah Bass, for whom we shall invent imperfect teeth and slightly metallic breath. Asher’s kiss unleashes a previously unknown physical response from Etna, and for a few moments she is lost to the world, heedless and uncaring: all that exists is Samuel, to whom she is unreasonably and powerfully attracted. She doesn’t entirely understand what is happening to her (not as Samuel does, for example), and so she labels the fluttering in her abdomen and the erratic beating of her heart love and assigns to it a deathless quality. Already she is imagining an elopement, a sacrificing of her honor.
He loves her, Samuel declares. He says so in the moonlight. He begs her to meet him again — in secret this time — the day after Christmas. He has a suite of rooms at the school, he says, nearly empty now because of the holiday. Etna, quite calm, agrees.
The holiday passes. Etna and Samuel meet in his rooms at one o’clock on the twenty-sixth as planned. Etna removes her coat. Samuel slides back the cuff of her dress, revealing the bracelet. He kisses the underside of her wrist. Etna closes her eyes. There is a moment, we shall imagine, when neither of them moves. Then caution is abandoned.
(The reader must imagine the details of Etna’s subsequent deflowering for himself. I haven’t the heart to describe them.)
Later, lying on a rug in Asher’s study, Etna tells Asher that she will leave the unfortunate Mr. Bass. Asher tells Etna she must not do that. In the aftermath of passion, he has the clearer head of the two of them; a fickle sense of honor is reasserting itself. He tells her he cannot allow her to disgrace herself in such a way. There is no future, he insists. There is only the moment they now have together.
Etna, somewhat bewildered, acquiesces to her new lover.
Etna and Asher meet three times that week in Samuel’s rooms, discovering in each other a sexual compatibility so intense as to be almost frightening. On the fourth meeting, just before the term is to resume, Etna once again says she will break her engagement. Samuel is alternately angry and distraught. His own wedding is only a month away. He has a job and a fiancée waiting for him in Toronto. He then tells Etna he is a Jew.
Etna, either so besotted that she doesn’t care about the import of the revelation, or else the true daughter or her tolerant father, tells Samuel this information is of no consequence. Indeed, she loves him all the more.
They make love again (wildly? passionately? wistfully?), this time interrupted by a sound from a nearby room. A student has returned early, Samuel realizes. Etna dresses, and there is some anxiety (perhaps a comic episode here?) as Asher spirits Etna from the dormitory. Parting hastily, they each reaffirm their love.
Now we come to the Sunday morning in January (the Sunday before the term resumes), wild with a snowstorm sent from Canada (from Ardith herself?). The Ashers — there must be many of them to produce a happy, overcrowded household — are at home. P
hillip, just seventeen, is reading in the sitting room and overhears Samuel being summoned to the door. Phillip, wondering who can have come to the house in such filthy weather, shifts his position on the sofa so that he can better see into the hallway.
An unusually tall and arresting woman in a wet cloak and boots stands before Samuel. Phillip recognizes her as the woman with whom he once played tennis. Bits of urgent conversation make their way into the sitting room. Phillip, intrigued, stands and walks to a library table. At that moment, Etna lifts her face, and Phillip sees there… what? The ferocity of love, he will later write. Etna is imploring Samuel. She is weeping. Perhaps she puts her reddened hands on Samuel’s arms. Samuel tries to calm her, but she will not be calmed. She has broken her engagement, she announces. She cannot marry another man. She loves only Samuel, Samuel who must not marry Ardith. Who must not go away to Toronto. Who must not leave her.
What is a man to do? Samuel tries to take Etna into another, more private room to speak with her, but Etna, nearly wild now, will not go. Samuel offers to fetch a carriage for her to take her home. Etna shakes her head. Samuel tells her finally that he cannot break his engagement, that his honor does not permit this. (Can he really have said that? I suppose so. Honor was then a sturdier concept than it is today.) Perhaps he tells her another truth — that his family would never permit him to break his engagement. Ardith is, after all, from a good Jewish academic family like his. Phillip moves to the doorway, and perhaps Etna looks up, catching the young man’s eye. Phillip’s father, having heard the disturbance, has made his way into the hallway. What is this commotion? he asks his son.
Samuel tries to give a respectful answer that will send his father back to his study. Etna, her emotions having spiraled out of control, is clearly too distraught to answer for herself. The Asher patriarch fetches his wife, who is at first taken aback by this melodramatic display. She immediately intuits the reason for the visit and the tears, and announces, in a chilly voice, that she will deal with the young woman (the chilliness uncalled for, since she herself has been weeping in her bedroom at the thought of the departure of her favorite son). Etna, suddenly realizing the horror of her position, her perfect humiliation, turns and opens the door. Samuel, temporarily cowed (thus earning him the lifelong scorn of his younger brother), says nothing and allows Etna to go. Phillip, at first stunned and then moved to aid the striking, if not entirely beautiful, woman, runs to the door and out onto the street. By the time he has reached the end of the walkway, Etna Bliss has vanished.
As I say, this is only my imagination.
But how annoying these letters ultimately are! Though one initially admires Phillip Asher (some eighteen years later) for offering to withdraw from consideration for the post at Thrupp on Etna’s account — such chivalry — he then easily acquiesces to Etna’s dismissal of the matter (though she was quite right in refusing to allow him to do so). Already in the letter of October 21, we see the seeds of deception sown: Asher reveals that he has met me in the hotel, but has withheld from me the knowledge that he once knew my wife. On October 22, in the same letter that we learn Etna was betrothed, Etna allows this deception to continue: “I see no reason to discuss with him [meaning me, N. VT.] an incident of so long ago.” One cannot help but wonder what license this must have given the man from Yale, how this may have made him think in terms of a future for himself with a woman who had, after all, intrigued him for years. How amazing that the mysterious woman he chased to no avail in Exeter should suddenly have appeared at Edward Ferald’s party. (Not such a remarkable coincidence, you might say. Both were, after all, from academic families, and Thrupp was an academic town.)
The exchange of sympathy letters that follows is perfectly acceptable, quite within the bounds of common etiquette, although one additionally wonders why it was necessary for Phillip to apologize for not going to the funeral. It seems a patently obvious excuse to continue the correspondence. And note how, in her letter of November 18, Etna likewise requires a response of Asher. “I should be grateful for any news of [your brother].” She signs this letter Etna Bliss Van Tassel. Why? To remind Asher of the young woman she once was?
And why, on November 24, does Asher think it important to have some reply from Etna before he accepts my invitation to have a drink? To decide how to continue the deception? (I take great offense at the word ultimatum. I hate exaggeration in any man. I think my quote from Milton was simply a warning at most.)
No one reading this correspondence can deny that something more than common friendship was developing between my wife and Phillip Asher. It is not long before one begins to sense the ooze of decorous flirtation between the lines of Asher’s correspondence: “You have grown only more lovely with the years.” Why was this compliment necessary? And this in the same letter in which he declares how inappropriate it is to continue to write to her! Clearly the man does not wish for the correspondence to end at all; he is merely waiting for Etna to assume responsibility for it. One does have sympathy, however, for Etna’s desire in her letter of November 27 not to be dictated to by her former lover’s younger brother; though Asher is correct in his letter of November 29 in suggesting that, with their correspondence, they are crossing a marital, if not moral, line. One can only imagine the poor man’s intolerable dinner at Ferald’s house on Thanksgiving Day. Ferald had position but never any conversation worth listening to. As for his wife, Millicent — well, one shudders to imagine.
In his December 6 letter, Asher pursues Etna (in an epistolary manner) to Exeter with news of his election. He then places the acceptance of the post of Dean in her hands. Is not this token of his affection as tangible as a jet brooch? And when he receives no reply? He accepts the post, as he was certain to have done all along.
I do not wish to speak for any other reader of this correspondence, but I cannot help but point out the manner in which both step outside the bounds of common friendship with the slightly frantic exchange of January 15 and 18: “Forgive my silence.” “You do not need my forgiveness.” Note that there are no polite salutations in these letters, lending the exchange the breathless quality of that between lovers. Both Phillip and Etna continue to speak of the inappropriateness of the correspondence, but neither seems willing to end it. Indeed, Etna deepens the bond between them with her “ethical questions” letter. The questions are absurd, and one cannot help but have a little sympathy for Asher, whose discomfort is all too apparent in his reply. (Of course it is not ethical to rent a room which is kept secret from the spouse; what was Asher supposed to say?) Etna’s syntax is garbled in her letter, as if her thoughts had addled her grammar. The questions are nearly impossible to follow, and, really, one aches to edit this missive. There is, as well, a certain stiff quality to her prose and — how shall I put it? — a less than rigorous intellect on display here.
Though Asher’s response and return questions are perfectly reasonable under the circumstances, I find appalling his presumptuous reporting of my conduct during the early months of 1915. It goes without saying that I find it disingenuous in the extreme when he states, on February 15, that he wishes to assuage his familial conscience. This is mere posturing, I think, and worse — a way to excuse his already inexcusable behavior.
I was, of course, distressed to see that on February 20, Etna invites Asher to call her by her Christian name — a bit coquettishly, I might add. And I cannot pretend to have been anything other than grievously wounded by the final letter of April 20. “My dearest Phillip,” Etna writes (weeks of intimacy leapt o’er in a single endearment!). What happened between the frantic letter of March 9, when the reality of her situation was sinking in, and the short missive of April 20 inviting Asher to meet her? I assume it is the cottage she means to show him. Were there more letters that were not saved? Had they seen each other in the interim?
Though I was hurt to discover this correspondence, and particularly hurt to find that last affectionate letter, I was already, at the time of the discovery, an animal with ma
ny wounds. Nicholas Van Tassel was stumbling maniacally, arrows poking out in all directions, spilling blood upon the plains.
A man makes a rash pronouncement and then spends the rest of his life regretting it. In the cottage, I spoke of divorce. I wished to punish, to assert my authority. I would take away the marriage with a word. I would humiliate my wife. A foolish declaration by a foolish man. Did I take any enjoyment in shocking Etna with my decree? Did I take pleasure in seeing her pale face, the way the strength in her legs gave out? For a moment, perhaps, I had had some satisfaction. But to what end had I done this? To deprive myself of the woman with whom I had been obsessed for fifteen years? The only woman I had ever loved?
I don’t know how I managed to drive the Stevens-Duryea or even where I drove it, for it was already dark by the time I crossed into Thrupp. I had long since turned on the headlamps of the car, which illuminated the surface of the road but not anything beyond the circumference of the electric light, and so it was as if I drove blind through a landscape deeply foreign to me. As a weary horse will seek the barn, however, the Stevens-Duryea finally made its way to Moxon’s house. I parked it in the drive.
A manservant answered my frenzied knock.
“Professor Van Tassel,” Jackson (first or second name, I never knew) said, “Professor Moxon is not here. He will not be back until Thursday.”
“I’ll wait for him,” I said.
I walked into a sitting room and laid myself on the sofa. Jackson was kind to me that night, for which I will always be grateful. He let me sleep and brought me soup and let me sleep again and had the wisdom not to ask me any questions. When I stood up finally, late the next morning, he led me to a bathroom, where I bathed and shaved. I ate a breakfast of eggs and toast and sat for some time at the table. I did not think as I sat there; no coherent thoughts were formed in Moxon’s house. After a time, I stood up again and went out to the motorcar and drove away.