I cannot ever know the nature and duration of that love affair. It is not a question I can ask anyone — not Phillip Asher, who, in any event, might not have known a great deal about it (he was only a boy of seventeen at the time); and certainly not Samuel Asher, who may or may not even be alive at this writing. All I have are phrases from the correspondence, more revealing on Phillip Asher’s part than on Etna’s.
Though Etna asserts that her love was genuine, it is Asher who speaks of passion. “The ferocity of love that lies behind the veil of polite comportment,” he writes. And this: “The sight of your face on that morning so many years ago has remained for me a standard by which I judge my own affection for any woman with whom I am close, and the affection of any woman for me. I count you among the most fortunate of persons to have felt so strongly for another human being, however unhappy the outcome. Is this not the point of our existence?” (Italics mine.)
We can only imagine what happened “that snowy morning” in Exeter. Had Etna gone to the house to confront Samuel? To tell him that she had broken off her engagement to the man from Brockton? And why was it necessary to seek Samuel out at his house? Had he already withdrawn from the relationship? Was he about to leave for Canada? Was he engaged to another? And what precisely was the nature of the “unhappy incident” in the “overcrowded” house in Exeter? Were there declarations of love? Were there tears? And why, years later, does Phillip Asher find it necessary to apologize for the behavior of his family? Or does he mean by family only his brother?
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.