I paid cash on the spot on the condition that the owner and his family vacate the premises at once so that carpenters and painters and so forth could enter the house to begin the work of restoring it to its former glory. (Hard not to think of Josip Keep here, with his ladders and drop cloths). The fellow I hired to manage the restoration was charged with working overtime to complete the task by the third week in June, when Etna and I would return from our wedding trip to take up residence. It was a daunting assignment, but the man came through admirably, and though we were sometimes plagued with painters and even plumbers (the indoor plumbing being unaccountably difficult to install), I could hardly complain at the transformation he eventually wrought.
It was remarkable as well to note the transformation in myself — and though I do not think it would be quite true to say that we grow or shrink in character and spirit so as to inhabit our surroundings, I did feel that I began to take on the role of the property owner and to shed the somewhat dismal image of a schoolmaster consigned to college rooms. My humiliating collapse on stage was behind me (indeed, I was able to congratulate Arthur Hallock heartily, if not sincerely, on the day of the physical culture vote), and though I was never again to regain my former brief popularity (one could not erase altogether the image of that unmanful collapse in the Anatomy amphitheater), my colleagues seemed, for the most part, genuinely pleased about my forthcoming marriage.
But what can I say of Etna during this time? I hardly knew her true thoughts, and I felt somewhat disinclined to ferret them out, since, I confess, I was fearful lest she change her mind about the wedding. I allowed our correspondence to remain on a pleasant, even-tempered plane, and if it was a trial not to run on at length in my letters about my love for her, I comforted myself with the thought that I would soon be able to say whatever I wanted. I longed to possess Etna, a desire I sincerely hoped would be reciprocated. Whether I was hopelessly naive or simply ignorant of a young woman’s fears regarding her forthcoming physical responsibilities, I cannot say. Of course we had never spoken of such matters (although we did once discuss in great detail the notion of passion within a framework of restraint in Hawthorne’s novel The Scarlet Letter; a thrilling conversation, if I may say so, not only for its intellectual rigor, but also for its thinly veiled erotic content), but I guessed she had some knowledge of them. At the very least, I assumed she would query her sister about certain necessary aspects of the wedding night.
(However often in these pages I might appear to be opportunistic, my love for Etna Bliss was genuine. I had never before known such a feeling, nor have I since. And though I could not help my imaginings — can any man? — I had but the purest of motives in anticipation of my marriage. I wanted first and foremost to make Etna happy, whatever sacrifices that might entail on my part. I think that any man who does not feel similarly about his bride-to-be should not entertain the idea of wedlock. Marriage entered into with even the best of intentions can sometimes be both baffling and trying. To do so with baser motives beggars the imagination.)
(Not that I was immune to the pleasurable anticipation of physical love, however. No, no, to the contrary, I rather think I enjoyed the sexual act more than most, for it allowed me that rare opportunity to escape myself — to shed constricting inhibitions and enter, if for moments only, another universe entirely, one in which I ceased to be a man named Nicholas Van Tassel.)
Etna and I walked arm in arm (man and wife) back to the home of William Bliss, who had generously offered to host a wedding breakfast. I was tongue-tied during this brief journey, and Etna was as well, and had it not been for my loquacious sister Meritable, it might have been an awkward walk indeed. But Meritable, who had journeyed up from Virginia for the occasion, loved to chatter and had any number of questions and pronouncements for both of us. As she was a product of my father’s second wife, we were only half brother and sister, but the resemblance between us was unmistakable. Unfortunately, the physical characteristics of my Dutch forebears do not normally contribute to delicacy of limb or fineness of facial feature in women, and in this Meritable was very Dutch indeed. She was a stolid woman with a broad face and thickish lips similar to my own. She was prone to heaviness, so that she had to walk briskly on stout legs to keep up with Etna and me, lending her queries a breathless air. Where would we be staying the first night of our wedding trip? Had we hired a coach or would we drive ourselves? Had I looked into the matter of purchasing the oak Roycroft dining set she had seen for sale in the newspaper? Did I think that the President of the college would come to the breakfast, since she so very much wanted to meet him? My sister punctuated these queries with bits of news about her brood of seven children (prolific daughter of prolific father): Peter was turning into quite the young scholar, and Quincy, unhappily, had broken his leg. Meritable closed her eyes and uttered a short prayer when she said this, as she was likely to do whenever she mentioned any ill fortune in regard to her children (she was terrified lest she lose a son or daughter to accident or illness); and I cannot help but think these small missives sent heavenward successful, since the seven children of 1900 subsequently became eleven, all of whom are alive and well today — an unlikely, though happy, statistic.