Saxe Holm's Stories / First Series

by Helen Hunt Jackson

It was only from one note that we discovered her last name. This was written in the early days of her acquaintance with her lover, and while she was apparently little more than a child. It was evident that at first the relation was more like one of pupil and master. For some time the letters all commenced scrupulously "my dear friend," or "my most beloved friend." It was not until years had passed that the master became the lover; we fancied, Uncle Jo and I, as we went reverently over the beautiful pages, that Esther had grown and developed more and more, until she was the teacher, the helper, the inspirer. We felt sure, though we could not tell how, that she was the stronger of the two; that she moved and lived habitually on a higher plane; that she yearned often to lift the man she loved to the freer heights on which her soul led its glorified existence.

It was strange how little we gathered which could give a clew to her actual history or to his. The letters almost never gave the name of the place, only the day and year, many of them only the day. There was dearth of allusions to persons; it was as if these two had lived in a separate world of their own. When persons were mentioned at all, it was only by initials. It was plain that some cruel, inexorable bar separated her from the man she loved; a bar never spoken of--whose nature we could only guess,--but one which her strong and pure nature felt itself free to triumph over in spirit, however submissive the external life might seem.

Their relation had lasted for many years; so many, that that fact alone seemed a holy seal and testimony to the purity and immortality of the bond which united them. Esther must have been a middle-aged woman when, as the saddened letters revealed, her health failed and she was ordered by the physicians to go to Europe. The first letter which my uncle had read, the one which Princess found, was the letter in which she bade farewell to her lover. There was no record after that; only two letters which had come from abroad; one was the one that I have mentioned, which contained the pomegranate blossom from Jaffa, and a little poem which, after long hours of labor, Uncle Jo and I succeeded in deciphering. The other had two flowers in it--an Edelweiss which looked as white and pure and immortal as if it had come from Alpine snows only the day before; and a little crimson flower of the amaranth species, which was wrapped by itself, and marked "From Bethlehem of Judea." The only other words in this letter were, "I am better, darling, but I cannot write yet."

It was evident that there had been the deepest intellectual sympathy between them. Closely and fervently and passionately as their hearts must have loved, the letters were never, from first to last, simply lovers' letters. Keen interchange of comment and analysis, full revelation of strongly marked individual life, constant mutual stimulus to mental growth there must have been between these two. We were inclined to think, from the exquisitely phrased sentences and rare fancies in the letters, and from the graceful movement of some of the little poems, that Esther must have had ambition as a writer. Then, again, she seemed so wholly, simply, passionately, a woman, to love and be loved, that all thought of anything else in her nature or her life seemed incongruous.

"Oh," groaned Uncle Jo, after reading one of the most glowing letters, "oh, was there really ever in any other man's arms but mine a woman who could say such things as these between kisses? O Nell, Nell, thank God that you haven't the dower of such a double fire in your veins as Esther had!"

All night we sat reading, and reading, and reading. When the great clock in the hall struck six, we started like guilty persons.

"Oh, my childie," said Uncle Jo, "how wrong this has been in me! Poor little pale face, go to bed now, and remember, I forbid you to go to school to-day; and I forbid your getting up until noon. I promise you I will not look at another letter. I will lock them all up till to-morrow evening, and then we will finish them."

I obeyed him silently. I was too exhausted to speak; but I was also too excited to sleep. Until noon I lay wide awake on the bed, in my darkened room, living over Esther Wynn's life, marvelling at the inexplicable revelation of it which had been put into our hands, and wondering, until the uncertainty seemed almost anguish, what was that end which we could never know. Did she die in the Holy Land? or did she come home well and strong? and did her lover die some day, leaving his secret treasure of letters behind him, and poor stricken Esther to go to her grave in fear lest unfriendly hands might have gained possession of her heart's records? He was a married man we felt sure. Had the wife whom he did not love paced up and down and up and down for years over these dumb witnesses to that of which she had never dreamed? The man himself, when he came to die, did he writhe, thinking of those silent, eloquent, precious letters which he must leave to time and chance to destroy or protect? Did men carry him, dead, down the very stairs on which he had so often knelt unseen and wafted kisses towards the hidden Esther?

All these conjectures and questions, and thousands more, hurried in wild confusion through my brain. In vain I closed my eyes, in vain I pressed my hands on my eyelids; countless faces, dark, light, beautiful, plain, happy, sad, threatening, imploring, seemed dancing in the air around my bed, and saying, "Esther, Esther!"

We knew she was fair; for there was in one of the letters a tiny curl of pale brown hair; but we believed from many expressions of hers that she had no beauty. Oh, if I could but have known how she looked! At last I fell asleep, and slept heavily until after dark. This refreshed my overwrought nerves, and when at nine o'clock in the evening I joined my uncle in the library, I was calmer than he.