Saxe Holm's Stories / First Series

by Helen Hunt Jackson

My uncle, Joseph Norton, lived in a very old house. It was one of those many mansions in which that father of all sleepers, George Washington, once slept for two nights. This, however, was before the house came into the possession of our family, and we seldom mentioned the fact.

The rooms were all square, and high; many of the walls were of wood throughout, panelled from the floor to the ceiling, and with curious china tiles set in around the fire-places. In the room in which I always slept when I visited there, these wooden walls were of pale green; the tiles were of blue and white, and afforded me endless study and perplexity, being painted with a series of half-allegorical, half-historical, half-Scriptural representations which might well have puzzled an older head than mine. The parlors were white, with gold ornaments; the library was of oak, with mahogany wainscoting, and so were the two great central halls, upper and lower. The balustrade of the staircase was of apple-tree wood, more beautiful than all the rest, having fine red veins on its dark polished surface. These halls were lined with portraits of dead Nortons, men and women, who looked as much at home as if the grand old house had always borne their name. And well they might, for none of the owners who had gone before had been of as gentle blood as they; and now they would probably never be taken down from the walls, for my uncle had bought the house, and my uncle's son would inherit it; and it had never yet been known that a Norton of our branch of Nortons had lived wastefully or come to want.

My uncle had married very late in life: he was now a gray-haired man, with little children around his knee. It was said once in my presence, by some one who did not know I listened, that his heart had been broken when he was little more than a boy, by the faithlessness of a woman older than himself, and that he would never have married if he had not seen that another heart would be broken if he did not. Be that as it may, his bearing towards his wife was always of the most chivalrous and courteous devotion, so courteous as perhaps to confirm this interpretation of his marriage.

My aunt was an uninteresting woman, of whom, if she were not in sight, one never thought; but she had great strength of affection and much good sense in affairs. Her children loved her; her husband enjoyed the admirably ordered system of her management, and her house was a delightful one to visit. Although she did not contribute to the flavor of living, she never hindered or thwarted those who could. There was freedom in her presence, from the very fact that you forgot her, and that she did not in the least object to being forgotten. Such people are of great use in the world; and make much comfort.

At the time when the strange incidents which I am about to tell occurred, my aunt had been married twelve years, and had four children; three girls, Sarah, Hilda, and Agnes, and a baby boy, who had as yet no name. Sarah was called "Princess," and her real name was never heard. She was the oldest, and was my uncle's inseparable companion. She was a child of uncommon thoughtfulness and tenderness. The other two were simply healthy, happy little creatures, who gave no promise of being any more individual than their serene, quiet mother.

I was spending the winter in the family, and going to school, and between my uncle and me there had grown up an intimate and confidential friendship such as is rare between a man of sixty and a girl of fifteen. I understood him far better than his wife did; and his affection for me was so great and so caressing that he used often to say, laughingly, "Nell, my girl, you'll never have another lover like me!"

We were sitting at breakfast one morning when Princess came in, holding a small letter in her hand.

"Look, papa mia!" she said; "see this queer old letter I found on the cellar stairs. It looks a hundred years old."

My uncle glanced up, carelessly at first, but as soon as he saw the paper he stretched out his hand for it, and looked eager. It did indeed seem as if it were a hundred years old; yellow, crumpled, torn. It had been folded in the clumsy old way which was customary before the invention of envelopes; the part of the page containing the address had been torn out. He read a few words, and the color mounted in his cheek.

"Where did you say you found it, Princess?" he said.